Category: Writings

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.

I’m agitated. I’ve been distraught lately. You would think that, coming home for Christmas Break, it would be all bubbles and stubbles, but it’s not. It’s been hell.

See, there’s been something weighing on my mind. It has to deal with my brother, Bryce. Bryce is a great guy. He’s funny, intelligent, and a great kisser. I mean… has black hair. (ahem) Anyway, that is why this is such a hard post to write, and I’ve put if off for as long as I could.

Let me set it up. Last weekend Megan and I came to Big Stone to help my father move stuff into our new upstairs. My mother has had this dream addition for years. I had never pictured it ever happening, because my mom has grandiose dreams and little motivation to realize them. My brother literally pictured himself married, with children, before coming home to enjoy the addition.

Well, ladies and gents, the dream is realized. This itself poses fundamental problems of happiness, but I won’t get into them here. The majority of the work is done. It’s quite a livable space now. Soon Bryce can move into my parent’s old bedroom and I’ll have the bunk beds all to myself. That’s right; I said “bunk beds”.

So, in between moving the largest most complex entertainment center ever and listening to my mother say, “Well, it didn’t look that yellow in the can,” we managed to escape the house with Tony. We were looking for a copy of Amadeus because if Megan watched it and wrote some things about it, she would get extra credit in her Music class. The movie was nowhere to be found. The most helpful comment we got from the different movie rental establishments that we visited was, “Why do you want a stupid movie about Beethoven?”

Stoners are so funny.

Driving back in failure, Tony says, “Hey, Miles. Remember when I said that Bryce and I have had a bad semester?”

Yes.

“Well, … let me put it this way. Bryce doesn’t have a major yet, but he has a minor.”

What? You heard right. My brother got a minor. As in “a Minor in possession of alcohol”. As in a fine, a ticket, jail time, execution. This was quite the shock. My brother… sure he was the black sheep, but I had no idea how dark his coat was.

The best part was yet to come. We finally found a copy of the bloody movie. My mom knew someone whose son loved the movie and they lent us their copy. So, we were sitting there, about to start watching the movie, eating food, when the phone rings.

Tony answers the phone, and I can hear his side of things. “Hello Rausches. … Hey, how did you know it was me? … Like, now? … Okay, here’s your brother.” And Tony hands me the phone. My conversation with my brother confirmed that he was planning on telling them right now. He asks to speak to mom.

I hand the phone to mom. I can hear her side of things. “Hello? … Hi. … What do you mean ‘bad news’? … What?! … Ha, ha, very funny. Lindsey better not be pregnant. … You know what? I don’t want to know. Here’s your father.” Mom, unable to bear the news that was soon to come, passes the phone off on my dad, who actually was in the bathroom at the time.

She comes back asking me and Tony what the phone call is about because Bryce couldn’t tell her. She tells us, “He said, ‘Bad news. Lindsey is pregnant. No, I’m just kidding.’ What a shithead.”

We decided to watch the movie as Bryce tells my dad in the bathroom the whole story. We hear some yelling, but just a little, and then a lot of talking. We watch the movie and things go on. They are both a bit disappointed in my brother, and my mom turns a wary eye towards me, as if to say, “Well, if Bryce got caught once, how many times have you not gotten caught?”

It’s true. I’m better at getting away with things then Bryce is.

This whole thing, though, is not what I’m angry about. It’s about what happened when I wasn’t home. Bryce came back to Big Stone a couple days before I did because of how his test situation turned out.

I get here to realize that Bryce has already turned the Minor into a joke. A whole joke concept that I was left out of the loop on. He does this, he slips the word “minor” into a sentence.

It’s a minor setback.
That’s quite a minor chord.
A man who digs in the ground is a minor.

Think of all the “minor” puns I could have used? Think of all the funniness that there could have been! I feel slighted. I should have known from Tony’s introductory joke, those days ago, that this sort of thing would happen.

So, to make up for things, here is my minor list.

• Make a minor change.
• That’s a minor problem.
• It’s a minor setback.
• That’s quite a minor chord.
• If you throw a piano down a mine shaft, I’ll show you A-flat Minor.
• A psychic was involved in a minor collision downtown. She had an auto-body experience.

Ok, those last two weren’t mine especially. I realized that, in the heat and anger of my typing, I had forgotten all the good ones that I had come up with or heard. But the rest were minor. Hehehe. I crack me up.

I don’t post during Finals Week. I have my studies to consider.

Sorry, Bryce. Bug me Monday.

Well, it’s that time again, when life gets a little weird. It is the time of year that mothers will gladly run you over with their Toys-R-Us shopping cart to grab that last stupid $20 piece of plastic kids call a toy. I am personally not a fan of the Christmas season.

“But Bryce,” you say, “there are a plethora of reasons to love the holiday season, how can you not be a fan?”

Well, random student, my feelings started when I got the flu every Christmas Eve for three years in a row. What can I say? God hates me.

Second, this holiday season tears people apart, sometimes literally. I mean, you never see people dog piling over a stupid “Furby” on Earth Day, do you? And how can you ever forget the disappointed look on the young ones’ faces when they saw you bought them a stapler instead of that stupid doll they wanted so bad. Whiny brats don’t realize how some kid from Canada would kill for a good stapler.

Third, I hate the television programming on Christmas. It’s as if the TV networks got together and have played the ultimate Holiday prank:

“Hey, let’s ALL play “A Christmas Story”!”

So that is why I have been less than pleased with my holiday seasons. What’s better than fighting over that last “A Very *NSync Christmas” CD, watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” 12 times in the same day, and seeing your friends holding back tears when they see the crappy gift you bought them while asking you if you kept the receipt? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe lighting myself on fire.

Quiet cutting sounds throughout
Sterling silver’s perfect glint
Prison places dealing doubt
Depressed and Dying for a stint

Frigid forests working lines
Waking where Aurora grows
Awful astral dyn’sty mined
Depressed or Dying, no one knows

“Never, nothing” resultant phrase
Rested wretched boring dope
Brightened Belle of daring praise
Depressed, not dying; I can cope

People of Southwest Minnesota State University, we must come together. One of the simple joys in life is sadly at risk and we must do something about it. I am talking about the threat of Do-Not-Call Lists being activated preventing friendly telemarketers to attempt selling products to you and your family. Since this controversy has started, like you, I have just been sick to my stomach. It is as if I have been told my parents quit loving me or that my brother is in love with me. What are we to do?

To start we could all quickly do our best to get on that list as soon as humanly possible. Why so soon? Judges are lining up to strike this �Do-Not-Call List� unconstitutional. Luckily a whopping 50 million people managed to squeeze their names and phone numbers on that list before judges made their ruling.

I think the greatest sign that people are ready for telemarketing to be over would be the length it took congress and President Bush to pass a bill allowing the list, a week. They passed this thing faster than Vanilla Ice�s career started and ended.

I realize many of us have started getting really good at comeback lines for the telemarketers, telling them you had no parents, carrying on conversations for as long as they would allow, trying to convince them you were Amish and of course everyone�s favorite flat out swearing at them. The best part is, they can not swear back! What a great country we live in.

Another great part of the lists is that telemarketers have to respect everyone that�s on the list already, unconstitutional or not, they have to buy the list to see who not to call and if they dare to call those people anyways they are slapped with a large fine. How large you ask? About the price of 2 to 3 books or $11,000.

Now this whole battle is not over yet. Telemarketers have their �Freedom of Speech� arguments while everyone else in the United States argue that they are annoying and should for the love of God leave us alone. The best we have been able to get is the list and a few other legal requirements from the telemarketers. Even if you are happy about these latest developments with our friendly telephone salesmen just remember, the next time you desperately need to change your phone service, get a new mortgage, or have that urge to get another credit card maybe they won�t be so eager to help you out.

My cousin Brenna is a great girl. She’s a writer. She’s a card. She’s all that and a bag of Frito Lays (to borrow from popular culture).

Bren is currently attending St. Olaf near/in/outskirts of Northfield, Minnesota (yes, Minnesota). It has been her habit for the last couple of years to come to our house for Thanksgiving. She lives originally in Rapid City, which is something like 6 or 7 hours from Big Stone. St. Olaf is something like 3 or 4 hours from Big Stone, the other way. That is something like 10 or 11 hours driving if she wanted to go home. Seeing as how she loves us much more than her original family, she typically stays in Big Stone with us.

This year was no different. The irony of Brenna (being a cousin on my dad’s side) staying with us for Thanksgiving is that my mom’s side of the family is the one that comes to visit us. She has kinda become the nth cousin. They all know her name, and most of them know her major, though they argue about it. As it is, we always have a good time when Brenna hangs out with us.

The trip to get her even started off good. It was my brother, my father and I, braving the open road at night. Bryce, to not feel like such a back seat loser, tried his best to start conversation topics. The one that actually got a conversation going was “What activities were you or are you involved with in college?”

My dad went first. He started off with clubs and organizations. Jobs could only be counted if the school was your employer. This was great news for me because I have three jobs for the school right now. “Well, I went to a lot of events to watch; does that count?”

Bryce got angry. “Dad, you can’t count that. That’s like saying, ‘Well, I went to a basketball game once and tossed the ball back when it went out of bounds.’ You can’t say that.” My dad immediately apologized (after tears) and we pulled the car over and hugged for what seemed like forever.

When we recovered, we pulled back onto the open road. My dad’s total number of activities came to 14. It was my turn. I named off clubs and organizations and the like. The numbers climbed, soaring up to 12. I wasn’t going to be outdone by my dad, so I asked a simple question. “Can jobs, if they are for the university, be counted?” Bryce said yes, and I said 15.

I felt victorious, wondrous, and powerful. Bryce read off his list of activities. “I’m in the paper, I write for the Spur.”

“One.”

“I … I was in ROTC at SDSU.”

“Two.”

“And I was undefeated grand world champion of intramural wrestling one year in a row.”

“… three… Wait, weren’t you the only one in that weight group? And you only wrestled once?”

But we didn’t have time to get into it. There we were, at Brenna’s dorm. We waited for her for a bit, grabbed her stuff, and headed home. The only thing I regret about the trip back is that we never asked Brenna the number of activities she was in. I would have to guess 39.

The weekend was peppered with cribbage. One game we played had Bryce and Lindsey versus Dad and Me/Brenna. We won the game, but you couldn’t tell by our playing method. It seems that every hand that we had there was a question as to which stupid, crappy card we should toss. We’d be faced with a host of retard cards and the choice would come to toss either a three or a seven.

It came down to which number do we hate more? We tossed a three the first time. The card that was cut was a two. We had a ten and a jack. So, thanks to dropping the three, we had nothing. If we had a seven, and tossed that, the card that was cut would be an eight. After a couple times of this happening, we would moan and scream when the card was cut, even if it was good. Good or bad, we always screwed it up.

We also never paid much attention to the game. We got into an argument. Brenna chastised me for still believing my “disillusionity.” I argued back, ridiculing (I’m sure) her writing. Then I yelled out, “Maybe I enjoy my disillushunamentity!” I did this while she was taking a swig of Sprite, and, as a consequence, it appears to have come out her nose, boiled her brain, and forced her to leave the table.

Thanksgiving hit full force, like a fat kid accidentally pushed off the Empire State Building by his just as fat, but less sensitive, first cousin. There was turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and wine. Oh, there was wine. Grandma, if you’re reading this, Bryce needs to be talked to about his drinking problems.

The highlight of the dinner was my grandparents recounting a very interesting story about pie crusts. You might think that I’m joking, but the story was awesome. There is really no way to tell it in text on a website. To fully enjoy it, you had to have been there. To get a nice second-hand reiteration, you must see Bryce and I perform it.

The story goes like this. My grandma has recently come to realize that kids these days are more fans of store-bought crust over hand-made crust. “Kids these days don’t know what good pie crust is!” So, she decides not to do hand-made crust for Thanksgiving. “Well, I said, to hell with getting up at 6 in the morning to make pie crust they don’t even like.”

She sends my grandpa out to get some store-bought crusts. He says, “So this pretty young girl helped me find the pie crusts, and I just reached up and grabbed five of them, because Alyce needed five, and… well, how was I supposed to know there were two in a tin? I thought it was expensive.”

Grandma gets the tins and makes the pies. She checks on them that night, to see how they look, and discovers that she forgot to remove the paper between the crust and the filling. “You know that feeling when your blood turns to water? That’s how I felt seeing that paper there.” Grandma is a bit overdramatic.

Grandpa, that night, has a dream about it. Yes. Grandma couldn’t sleep all night, and Grandpa had a dream about it. “I had a dream about the damn thing. … In my dream the damn thing just lifted out, you know. My dream didn’t show what to do if it doesn’t.” Grandpa does what the dream says, but it doesn’t work perfectly. He has to do some nifty amateur surgery, but he figures it out. My uncle Kevin says, “Wait. So this pie is store-bought crust?” and my grandmother, with a huge, guilty smile on her face, can only say, “Yes!”

The activity around our household was minimal after that. We did go to Unity Square one day to play basketball. I was definitely not suited for such an athletically inclined activity, but my team won. Thanks to Tony’s underestimation of my luck, I managed to score a few points, even.

We watched TV. We saw the top celebrity battles. The runner-up was that battle between Britney and, Limp master himself, Fred Durst. I think this is a pretty weak battle. I could see how certain people would have watched it with delight, muttering “burnage” as blows were dealt, but I took no notice of the debacle. The number one was Eddie Van Halen versus David Lee Roth. Take that for what it’s worth.

It was time to take her back. Bryce and Brenna and I met Megan at China Moon in Madison to begin our trip. It came down to everyone being done and me talking with a plate full of food when Brenna said, “You ready to go?” I look down at my plate, at my watch, at them, and back at my plate. “Gimme a sec.” So, I stuffed a whole bunch into my big, fat, stupid mouth, and we left.

On the trip up was nice. We listened to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (voted the number one album by Rolling Stone Magazine), lots of rap music, and then Nirvana. Megan is a huge Nirvana fan. So we started talking about how she’s going to marry him in Heaven.

“Wait, so then where do I fit?”

“Ok, we can get married in heaven, and he’ll be our son.”

And that started the topic, if you could adopt dead people in Heaven, who would you adopt? This is truly a heated argument. One person would pick someone, Lincoln, and the other person wanted that person to begin with. So, then the second person would pick a rival, John Wilkes Booth, to spite the first person. Exempt are deities and people still alive, as much as we all wanted Paul McCartney.

The list the Megan and I came up with is:

• Kurt Cobain
• Lead singers of Sublime, Drowning Pool, Blind Melon
• Mother Teresa
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Catherine Hepburn
• Steven Spielberg
• Alexander the Great
• Emily Dickinson
• William Blake
• Robert Frost
• Walt Whitman
• Mufasa
• Rainbow Bright
• Hedy Lamarr
• Nemo’s Mom
• Charlie Chaplin
• Harry Houdini
• FDR
• Cain
• Abel
• Adam
• Abraham
• M. C. Escher
• Tycho Brahe
• Joseph Smith
• Tupac
• George Washington Carver
• Jack Benny
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• Sigmund Freud
• Jesse James
• Wyatt Erp
• Karl Marx
• Machiavelli
• Crazy Horse
• Kate Smith
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• Josef Stalin
• B. F. Skinner
• and some I can’t read anymore.

It was dark in the car. As the list rambled on, my words became muddled. Soon it was impossible to see the paper anymore, so we quit the game. It’s food for thought, though. I’m just hoping that God has something like this in place already. Then we don’t have to spend all the time getting names on a petition.

We got there safe and sound. We dropped Brenna off and drove back home. The trip home was mostly uneventful. We stopped at a Burger King, and then Bryce and Megan left me there. I was devastated that my brother and my girlfriend would double cross me like that. Shameful.

Shameful.

The next day we had church. I played guitar, but (once again) pissed off my mom while doing so and just quit playing halfway through the last song. We hit the store to buy some goodies. The fun thing about that was when Bryce slipped a douche and a package of Vagisil. Megan thought it was my mom’s, so she didn’t say anything.

So, Bryce said, “Miles, why are you getting Vagisil?”

So, not to be outdone, I say, “Wait, you got extra strength? How bad do you think my burning and itching is?”

I love going to store with my brother.

piece-
es
frag-
ments
all black blocks back to back
are white blocks wall to wall.
but
.
“…biased for or against, hence, being
based on…”
tv
radiono
tv

red, orange,
yellow, green,

blue, indigo,
violet, brown,
squares.
upclose it hurts;
downclose it hurts.

flicker flash flat flight
across
– cords – screens – tubes – wires.

then, I hear
“this just in…”
then, I see
“this just in…”
then, I say
“we are not good enough for this knowledge.”
– or – are we too good?
and; it still comes in pieces.

How many trillions of times have you heard your friends tell you that a movie sucks. How many times have your friends told you how some new song is �Da Bomb.� Well you, as I, know that the song they are talking probably is not �da bomb� and that movie they said sucks, well, you won�t even go and see it anymore cause it sucks, right?

I know I am guilty of this, if I may be so bold; I am a hardcore wrecker of movies. I am that guy who leaves the early show at the movies and decides to yell, �Boy that twist in the plot was awesome. And here we all thought the good guy died, but nope, that shizzled my mizzle!�

You really have to go to movies without seeing any trailers and talking to nobody about the film so you can truly decide if you like the movie or if you have your obnoxious buddy screaming, �This movie blows� stuck in your head. It also helps when watching a movie you don�t watch it with someone who doesn�t care for the film. I was watching �Dude, Where�s My Car� with some friends and the jerks whispered to me, �You know the guy can�t find his car, right?� I stood up and yelled, �WHOA! DUDE, why did you just do that!!!� then I stormed out of the theater and called my parents to pick me up. Talk about rude, huh?

It is almost comical how the slightest comment on either side of something can ruin it or just make it uninteresting. If by �almost comical� you mean �awful�. I have been told I will love Hanson and that �Zoolander� is a stupid movie. Well, I didn�t care much for Hanson and disowned my friend, and, let’s face it, �Zoolander� is genius.

Basically, there is a plethora of music and movies out there that you just have to experience yourself and ignore your friends� reviews, unless your friends are Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper.

I hate you, who are reading this. You have no right to have this notebook. You are going to read this, and you are going to judge me for it. You will sit there and read my words and think in horror how you would never think those things let alone do them.

What if you had to to survive? Until you can say that you are where I was, you can’t judge me. Unless you can say that you know exactly how I felt, you can’t judge me. I’m willing to bet that none of you can judge me. At least, not yet.

This is my story.

Dark, bright colors. Dark, bright colors. Dark, bright colors. The disorientating headache of light. A sleep hangover colors my thoughts, perceptions, and mood.

Blink, blink, blink

“You’d better wake up in the next five minutes, or you can walk to school.”

Are you giving me a ride? I knew even as I said this that I should have looked at her first.

“Ha. No. Brian can give you a ride.” As she answered me, I could see the alcohol in her eyes. It was only 8:20. Had she started drinking already?

Did you even go to bed?

“Get up or walk.”

A clean t-shirt, jeans, and a piece of toast later, Brian was dressed and ready to drive me over to school. Brian was a nice guy in public, but at our house he wasn’t. He was my mom’s new boyfriend. He actually slept at night, so he was only hung-over instead of drunk. Too hung-over, it seems, to beat my mother for not making his breakfast. He just grunted at seeing no eggs, bacon, and orange juice. I grabbed my coat and bag, and we walked out to the car.

I was fourteen back then. I was doing my best. It wasn’t enough.

We got into his nearly broken down Pontiac Grand Am. I always pulled out my headphones at this point. There is nothing worse than the painful, uneventful, superficial, wasteful conversation with my mother’s new lover. I had recently developed a taste for the worst in pop music. I won’t bother to name what artists there were in my tape player. Naming people would not only date me, but it would perhaps embarrass me.

He would always talk, headphones or not. He would spill about whatever stupid things he had to do that day, or how much he really did love my mom and how I should judge him by what he does to her, everyday. I had listened the first day my mother was too inebriated to take me to school. I hadn’t listened again.

It was winter now. Today was not particularly bad, weather-wise. It was still winter, and I still hated it. The snow had started to melt around town, leaving unsightly brown puddles for one to step in. The cars looked so ugly stained with brown. I would sometimes watch Brian, checking to see if he was human or not. I would wait for his skin to start to peel away from the sides of his neck, where he had used some handy theatre glue to put it on. I watched and watched. I’m sure I looked interested in him, and maybe that is why he would always talk to me. Maybe he thought I could hear him.

The car stopped. “Here we are, kid.” I didn’t turn off my music. I had gotten good at lip-reading Brian’s speech. I zipped my bag up and got out. I didn’t wave at him, I didn’t say ‘goodbye’, because I didn’t want Brian in my life.

I wanted my dad. The problem is that I don’t know my dad. I’ve never met him or seen him. My mother doesn’t even have pictures. She won’t even tell me about him. “When you’re 18, then you can look for him, but I won’t help you.” Sometimes, I really hate her.

I walked to my favorite bench. This is where I normally met Ruth every morning. We would, one of us, sit here until the other showed up. Usually, Ruth was first, because usually I was late. It didn’t matter if school had started, we would always wait for the other. If one of us missed school the other one would miss school, too. Ruth wasn’t there yet, so I sat and waited.

At noon, I was sure that she wasn’t coming. I was hungry. I was not very upset at missing school, but missing lunch was starting to get to me. I would give her two more minutes, then I would go in and eat, then I would come back out. It was simple plan. It would –

NOPLEASELETMEGOSOMEONEHELPME

Dark, bright colors. Dark, bright colors. Dark, bright colors.

Blink, blink, blink.

I was on the ground, staring up into the chilly blue of a clear winter day, covered in my own saliva. What was that? What had happened? It was like a voice had come into my head. Not only that, but the voice had carried with it the violence of a struggle. The pain of it wasn’t in the words, but it came on the wind like a pair of malevolent hands. I felt them grab a hold of me, shake me, push me.

I rolled to my stomach to get up. As I did, blood came trickling down my coat-covered arms and spilt out onto the pavement and over the backs of my hands. I couldn’t help but scream. I pulled off my jacket and looked at my blood-covered arms. There were words cut deep into my forearms. It wasn’t my doing. It wasn’t me, I swear. The right arm said “dirty” and the left one said “filthy”. It was done in careful, scripted lettering. I felt nauseous.

Then, for some reason, I thought about Ruth. Ruth’s house was a good walk from school. Was it her voice that I heard? Was it her that had somehow left those marks on my arms? I left my hunger behind me and began walking. I had a feeling I would find an answer there.

If you read this site during this prior summer, you know that I worked in the Science Center. My job during those three wonderful months was as an office assistance (read: secretary).

I had a very bad experience on the job my second day. My first day was Monday. Work started at 8 in the morning. This worked well the first day. I was motivated, happy, and ready to conquer my responsibilities. Seriously. I throttled my responsibilities that day.

The next day was horrible. I woke up in a cold sweat; my head bounced off my pillow. “Oh, no.” I was late by about AN HOUR. Horrible punishments ran through my mind. How could I make this up? What could I do to make this better? I felt terrible. How could I ever prove to Nancy that I was a good employee to be trusted and kept around?

As it turned out, Nancy was understanding. My hours were not yet defined, and I was allowed to come to work at 900 everyday instead of 800. Still, to protect against any sort of further lateness, I set my watch fast by five minutes.

Why? I did that because I went home for lunch everyday. I would come home, make my sad, little lunch, and then turn on FUSE TV to watch some quality music videos that weren’t retarded hip-hop “boob movies” or stoner-poser punk bands dancing like they had live wires attached to their genitalia. After eating my meal and watching my TV, I would sit and wait until I was able to go back to work. After a while, I began to fear being late. What if my hour took an hour and five minutes? If I set my watch ahead by five minutes, I would leave earlier and arrive there sooner.

It was the perfect plan until I learned that I had only to subtract five minutes to get the real time. Pretty soon those five minutes made no difference. My body had learned that 1200 actually meant 1155, and that was good enough for me. I was never late, but I was never scared, either. I had lost the fear.

Flash forward to fall. School is in session; leaves are falling; winter is panting like a horny 8th grader on his first date, trying to get into Autumn’s pants. It comes to that fateful day when we all must change the time pieces we carry to go backwards one hour. It is like we are denying inevitable march of time by forcing it to go back and relive that one hour it took from us. It is just as much a statement about man’s feelings on his own time limit on earth as it is a way to keep more sunlight around for longer.

This year, when that day rolled around, I, like so many others, went to go fool Mother Nature once more by making that number on the far left of my digital watch one digit smaller. To do this on my watch, you hold down the “Adjust” button, aptly named in that it adjusts the time. I push in and hold down the button. It’s supposed to take 1.5 seconds. One hour later, I still am not able to adjust time/date of watch.

What?

I think back to my summer and where my watch has been. It makes sense that it got damaged along the way. Still, this is a disappointing outcome. Think of it. I am now unable to change my watch’s time or date. The date function only comes in handy after or during time travel, and I hung up those rocket boots years ago. The time factor is applicable at least twice a year, and maybe more depending on what sort of April Fool’s Joke you have planned.

I have a dilemma now. I can handle the time just fine, but it takes a bit longer. I now have to look at my watch, absorb the numbers, subtract one from the far left number while continuing to subtract the five from the right number. This is a quad step process. This takes years to get down cold. It’s like converting to military time except I subtract a little less than 12.

Being the owner of a watch bears with it some responsibilities. People count on you to give them the time in a clear, concise fashion. They don’t have time for you to derive the time. People continue to ask me the time. I look down at my watch and begin the process of figuring the time out. When I look back up to give it to them, they are gone. You know how embarrassing it is for a digital watch to take longer to get the time from than an analog one?

People usually think one of several things. One is that I’m obviously special ed and have never really learned to tell time. They begin to expect an answer like, “fifty o’clock and noon minutes.” Two is that I’m pretending to not know the time because I hate them. They expect an answer like, “it’s dork o’clock; good thing you asked.” Three is that they become afraid that my silence is a statement on the fact that time is relative not only amongst creatures on earth but amongst humans themselves. They expect an answer like, “is there really such a thing as time? Can we truly quantify that which holds different weights and breadths for each person, thing, and location?” There are not so many people like that, though.

I was getting better at it, though. I was getting faster on my calculation time. Pretty soon I was able to give the time in almost a timely fashion. I was so proud of myself. Last weekend, we went to the dome, my family and me. My sister was sitting there. She asked me what time it was. I started to tell her the whole story about my watch, the story you’ve just heard. I saw, “Look what happens when I hold down this button. It normally should -”

It worked. The button worked. I was able to set my time, after so long of not being able to, after so many tiring hours of beating my watch against the wall trying to dislodge whatever it was that was blocking my button. I suddenly felt like a huge idiot. I was actually only half-way done with my story to Molly, but I didn’t feel like finishing it.

Now my watch is set to the correct time, but I still hesitate. I glance at the watch, and I know that I don’t have to do any math to figure out what those numbers mean. I can look at them and know if/when I am late. But, for some reason, my life feels a bit emptier. I feel less useful, less unique. I’m sure I’ll get over this, though; all I need is time.