Sitcom Novel?

So I have this retarded/brilliant idea I've been passing around through the corners of my mind for a little while now. See, I don't like short stories, but I love novels. I don't like movies, but I love TV. It doesn't seem to make much sense, that I want to read full-length but watch 30 minutes at a time. I really like the self-contained plot, but then watching the characters grow throughout a season, watch them and their lives develop as they grow and change. Never has this been more brilliantly played out than in the Office. It's basically perfect. And I want to do it in novel form.

Yeah, I don't know, a sitcom novel. It would basically feature the same cast of characters, probably two to four main characters with eight to ten ancillary characters that operate throughout the whole novel. The book itself would be divided into somewhere between fifteen and twenty sections, of approximately the same length. These sections would include a self-contained storyline and basically read like an episode of a TV show.

And that's about as far as I've thought it out. But I'm pretty sure I want to use the characters from this short story I wrote. I just have to figure out an overarching plot line and then all the minor little events that will make up the sections.

So what do we think? IM me or comment, bitte?

Bah.

1) You know how people in the media talk about college students that graduate with loads of credit card debts and then they cut to some tent set up outside of spring break and some doofusy girl is talking about how she knows it's bad to have debt, but oh well. That's me, minus the whole spring break scenario.

2) I like to fancy myself some kind of music nerd. Then I talk to actual music nerds and realize I'm not. Alas, I have a life that involves things that aren't music. Like TV and drinking and writing and studying. It sucks but it's true. This was never more apparent than my stuttering, retarded interview with American Steel in which Rory proceeded to be the nicest dude ever and I pretended to have a single clue what I was talking about. Result: I'm a douchebag.

3) I'm tired. And I don't give two shits about school at all. Hence my grades are going to suck and my parents are going to spend all of Thanksgiving break poking me with sticks. It's how they punish us. Just poke, poke, poke.

4) I'm still deciding what I will ask Lincoln's advice for when I go to DC this weekend. Mr. Lincoln, how do I get my printer to stop dog-earing all my papers? Please, you freed the slaves and started and then ended the bloodiest war in American history, so surely you must know how to fix this.

This motherfucker is bad ass.

Don't tell my mom you guys.

- "Great Lakes/Great Escapes"//The Lawrence Arms (Oh! Calcutta!)

Modern Life is like picking berries on a sweet summer's eve

Modern Life is War at the Beat Kitchen 9/9.

Week in Review

My room is trashed. I'm currently surrounded by discarded Coke cans and beer bottles, plus an old pizza and my clothes, which have managed to explode out of my room into the hallway. There are various snack foods ingrained into the carpet. I haven't changed my clothes in two days. I spent the last of my money buying a cheap cheeseburger and some generic form of Dayquil. I've been sick all week and ensconced in newspaper, so my schedule has been sleep, class, newspaper; repeat. I stared at InDesign for over eight hours yesterday. I thought I was going crazy, plus I was swearing revenge on vigilante freshmen journalists who don't fucking understand what being 'unbiased' means. They also don't understand the difference between 'conspiracy theories 'and 'facts.' I know, it's a fine line. I skipped class today, again (off to a real great start!) and am contemplating if I should reply to this email the lead singer of Orange sent me, defending the similarities between "Suburban Home" by the Descendents and his own song "Republicans." I care way too much about people liking me (whether it seems that way or not). I'm going to Walgreens to go buy some new food with money I don't have. If I can get through Saturday night and only spend the last five dollars in cash I have, oh boy, I will be so fucking proud.


I can't decide if this is perfect or really lame.


I do wish my apartment didn't smell like ashen popcorn though. Ugh, roommates.

Many Days Have Passed

My drinking exploits this weekend have left me a little fucked up. Friday night I tripped over my jeans and fell on the corner of this trunk in my room and am now rocking a major bottleneck bruise. Last night I just couldn't get my ass on the barstool at the L&L so I landed on the floor like a cockroach on its back and that somehow fucked up my ankle. Sometime after that is where my memory cuts out. Too much beer. I handle the first like, four beers real well, then I get to about eight and I should be done, but at that point I need beers like Meursault needed water that fateful day on the beach. So anyway, I hit the point past counting, which I think means about 12 and I'm gone. Only this time I seriously was gooooone. Black out! Shout it out loud, the devil's keeping time on the brake pad now.*

Gross.

Two of these, about four cans of Miller Lite, two Old Styles and then who knows.

In conclusion, I'm out forty bucks at least.

I can't say I'm filled with pride. Blacking out does not equal pride. Not only that but I've basically spent the whole weekend in a venomous booze-filled haze or asleep. I think I've been sober a whole six hours out of the past 48. And to where am I headed tonight? A bar. A bar with cheap beer and punk rock. Goddammit.










*The Falcon/"Blackout"

A Cent and a Half

Now that I've stolen Against Me!'s latest album, New Wave, from my editor and have listened to it, I can safely say the following:

Against Me! sold out. Not their punk ethics nor their original anarcho-stance nor their Gainesville roots--they sold out their fans.

See, after Green Day made their epic move to Reprise from Lookout! and got endless and increasing shit for being sell-outs, no punk band can move to a major and not expect to get shit on. Green Day could feign ignorance to the reaction. Nobody else since could ever doubt the shit storm. My question is therefore always, why? Why take the heat? Is the financial and promotional support really worth it? For the millionaire members of Green Day the gamble obviously paid off and wound up with them being the biggest band in America over the past couple years. Whether AM!'s gamble will pay off or not is yet to be seen. I doubt it though. And in the meanwhile, they isolated their older fans. They didn't appear to give two fucks what their fans thought about their move to Sire or any of the overproduced, boring music that followed. My impression of the situation is that Against Me! chose not to care about their fans because they thought, "Hey, we don't need you, we'll make a more accessible album and replace you." Not. Cool.

However, all was not lost. If AM! did make an incredible record, we could forgive and forget their major status and move on. They essentially had to prove that the punk ethics and boxed-in sound was indeed, restricting them. They had to make London Calling II. And they didn't. They made some slick, boring, toned-down Butch Viggy sounding record. They made an album that sounds like some-band-pretending-to-be-Against Me!. These guys were all punk and passion, they were fucking roots rock. Not only did the expensive studio sound not work in furthering their music, it tears them away from what made them Against Me! in the first place.

I waited for the album's release to pass judgment on these controversial minstrels. I went to their show a few months ago and had a killer time. I had hope. But now that I've heard New Wave, not only did it confirm my worst suspicions, but the music itself was far worse than I even thought it would be.

In the words of New Wave's miserable excuse for a song, Stop!

This Wasn't Originally What I Was Going To Write About...

I need a job. Fast. But instead of looking for one I've been thinking about freelancing which is so above my head it's less thinking and more fantasizing. Nonetheless...

So last week I hung out with my friend Laura, before becoming part of team effort to finish off my roommate's keg in our kitchen at 4 a.m. We were getting saline solution at Dominicks in Roger's Park and Laura was checking out this guy in front of us. Well, not the guy, but his food choices: whole grain bread, vegetables, low fat granola, cottage cheese, healthy shit. He noticed her inquisitive gaze and some small conversation about health food ensued. She said that lately she noticed that a lot of people make healthy choices. I flashbacked to my days as a bagger at Jewel and tried to remember the general trends. Couldn't recall any, but it raised an interesting question. Are fatty food sales down and health food sales up? Health food is in the media, it's available in the stores, but are we buying it? After all McDonald's attempts to healthy up, thousands of people still order burgers and fries. Is the same true with groceries?

As a journalist, I've been trying to figure out how I can ascertain this information. And wondering how original this idea is. I'm betting I could go to the sources, but seeing as "I'm with the DePaulia" doesn't exactly illicit immediate respect outside of the DePaul/Lincoln Park community, it might not be possible. I'm thinking I explain the idea to Conklin, gather contact information, harass and hound people at Nabisco and Whole Foods, etc. and maybe even do a little spying at the grocery store myself. Hopefully Conklin can work his contacts at the Trib and I could actually get something published outside of The DePaulia or punkbands.com. Michelle Stoffel, future freelance journalist? Better than future desk clerk or Potbelly delivery person...ugh.

And random Lawrence Arms lyrics...
Hesitation was the station I used to get on at. Now it's asshole. Can you picture that?

It's Been A While

Can I just say that I didn't used to be so melancholy and bitter?

Because my sleep schedule has become insane again and I have about a week to blow doing absolutely nothing, I spent a few hours reviewing shit I wrote about a year ago, and damn, I used to be funny. I used to write shit that was funny. Not like the pseudo-sophisticated half-assed funny I try to pull off now. Funny shit. What happened?

Oh right...that.

Anyway, it's time to get over myself and start being funny again! I'll get right on that with thinking.












I reference too much South Park.

Uhhh...yeah

I updated/placed the final revised copies (so far at least) of Great Lakes/Great Escapes and The Blue Wizard. They're below the rambling of thoughts I wrote down this morning. In retrospect I hate both of these pieces and continue to insist I've written one good piece in my whole life. And it's the equivalent of hackneyed "Maybe I'll Catch Fire" era Alkaline Trio--what with all the pop sensibilities and relatively depressing content.

And now it's back to my serious attempt to write a philosophy essay, wasting away until Saturday and the end of the quarter, and listening to more nonstop Strung Out trying to figure out if this new album is really good or really not...uhhh....yeah.

Thoughts Thought When I Should Be Sleeping

I've been fooling around with this stream of consciousness format for a little while. So far this is the best that's come out of it and all it does is prove I'm very insane and very emo all in one quick punch.



Sometimes I feel like my entire life flows into me all at one moment. Occassionally this occurs to me in delightful instants when my brain has been obliterated by heavy drinking, or in a strange blip of neural connection, I realize that for the next thirty-seven seconds, I will have everything I want. These never last long, but they feel good.

Othertimes, I'll suddenly remember something that's been hiding behind folds in my neural pathways: some silly little memory about shower curtains in a community bathroom my freshman year or the sudden realization that a year ago beautiful things said from an ocean away fucked me up more than I take into account.

And then these thoughts lead to an onslaught of a million others. Suddenly it's not the distraction of this shitty mattress that's keeping me awake, it's every minute of my life piled on top of me until breathing is just a fantasy from the past.

I figure I don't really know what I want. I figure I'll never get it anyway. My throat gets dry from being so tense and suddenly everything seems impossible and I'm staring at a digital picture of myself and I'm horrified.

I'm wondering when the post office opens and I'm listening to freshman year favorites the Postal Service and I'm falling back into darkened streets in Columbia where I'm walking home in a maroon shirt and blue pants with my visor hanging over my shoulder and staring at Greek letters on top of giant Southern estates and feeling more connected to the yellow bricks I used to steal bacon off of in games with the neighbors as my mom comes home from work early in the morning. And it's 6 a.m. there and here.

I'm thinking that the layers of everything I can't see are hiding very important things from me. Hidden declarations of love that were hiding lies. Hidden memories of how naive I used to be, when I would be lying awake, taking calls where you would be pseudo innocently convincing me to go out with my replacment and all I wanted was an ID and a six pack so I can obliterate the very notion of it.

I'm keeping such a tight grip on everything that eventually it turns me against myself. After all, we carry all the years with us; they're inside all at once. I am simultaneously being smacked in the lunchroom in fifth grade and dripping inside acoustic guitar and beers with Jenny on a Saturday night that hasn't happened yet, on a timeline that spins back around inside me and disappears inside a bowl of crunched paper that will soon hold a lonely can of spaghettios, resting on scars that won't fade and don't make sense. I was drunk, I tripped, I was upset, I missed, I'm hydroplaning into a tree and hearing the roots shatter while I lie and watch everyone believe it.

I'm screaming at myself for ruining everything. And I'm screaming at you for insisting you know better. I'm blaming you for keeping me up tonight. Nothing is verbalized and there are no promises--and I would prefer it that way. If, by chance, you never want to talk to me again I'd prefer if we never really talked to begin with. And it becomes solidly impossible to admit that I don't know what I'm doing even though I know I don't know. And this is why I'm happy when I'm drunk because nobody holds me accountable. Not even me.

I'm sure there were four good years. I'm sure those were the most ignorant years, where bliss came from the sheer unawareness I walked across every morning, occassionally in heels that made you lecture me on the walk back home; the lecture that cracked everything open and just became injustice afterward. You have no idea how hard I tried, how I try so hard I'm nothing but effort anymore.

I'm sick of my mouth and the fingertips that are spilling words that come from God knows where and who knows where He is anymore anyway. I'm back in Young Life singing old Bruce Springsteen with the girls with green and blue hair and listening to the Dead Kennedys in the car with the redhead. We're at a McDonalds on Manchester road where we'll spend countless evenings at Steak n Shake and that custard place and Bread Co because this is the suburbs and we don't have anything better to do.

And I will always have something better to do; something better I should do; something better I won't do. I like to keep myself down. I like to be berated for it. I like that you make me uncomfortable when the lights are on. It kills me that I don't know you. It kills me that you're probably right. It kills me that I'm probably not strong enough for this and certainly not good enough. And killing myself only makes me weaker and makes my knees hurt again--this time not from the scrapes I got tripping over stairs when my equilibrium got stuck in bottles that get recycled and leave me forever.

In ten minutes I won't be me anymore. I'll be ten minutes more tired and six minutes more annoyed from listening to the loud garbage trucks outside and three minutes more frantic because I fear I'll never sleep again and one minute more relieved because I've written enough bullshit to calm myself down for awhile.

And so now the moment is over. And I forget where I've been. And it hides again. And everything's just as completely fucked up as it ever was and I'm pretty much solely responsible.

















People throw these words around. And they don't mean anything.

The Blue Wizard

Moving out of the comfort zone is never easy and rarely productive...

The Blue Wizard

“This game has been loading forever.” I was staring at the letters “L-O-A-D-I-N-G” scroll over and over the screen; Adam was just staring at the buttons underneath his fingers. We were sitting Indian-style on the gray carpet in front of the couch in the living room.

“It’s cause the PS2 is so old,” he added without looking up.

“Mom, can we get a Wii?” I yelled out to my mom who was chopping stuff in the kitchen.

“A what?”

“A NINTEND WII.”

“No, you can use your Playstation, dear.”

“Bitch,” I whispered. Adam and I laughed. The weird woman in the corner kept taking notes. I don’t think she heard me.

“Do you always play these games after school?” she asked. She faked her voice when she talked to me and Adam. She made it sound nicer—like a nicer voice would make us feel better. She talked to mom like an army man. “Do you always play these games,” she repeated.

“Most of the time,” I answered. Finally, the game came back on.

“Do you have friends to play with?”

“Uhh…” I had to beat N. Gin on this level by shooting him with all kinds of long-range weapons. It always takes major concentration. I didn’t have time to talk to this lady.

“Boys? Do you have any friends that you play with?” she asked, again.

“We have friends,” I answered real quick, just to shut her up.

“Does your mom ever plan activities for you?” She wouldn’t stop asking questions. Ever since she came here she just asked questions, and they were stupid questions, about Mom and Dad and Adam and school, dumb adult questions. And she wrote down everything we said in a yellow notebook she kept on her lap.

“We do stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

While I was listening to her, some stupid mutated animal beat me with a club and killed me. That was enough for me to tell her off.

“You messed me up,” I told her.

“Excuse me?” she asked, pretending like she didn’t understand what I said.

“You messed me up,” I repeated for her real slow. “Stop asking us questions; you’re making it hard to play.”
She laughed in a real funny way and scribbled something in her stupid notebook. Adam and I couldn’t stand her. She was worse than being around Mom or Dad—at least they let us play our games and leave us alone.
“Time to go,” Mom yelled from the kitchen.

“Go where?” I yelled back.

“Remember what I told you about your father and his visiting rights.”

“Dammit,” I whispered to Adam and rolled my eyes. We laughed again. I had totally forgotten about visiting rights. Apparently some judge ordered Dad to be around us. It didn’t make any sense to me. He either wants to be around us or he doesn’t—I don’t care either way—but why should someone else tell him he has to? When I grow up, I’m not taking crap like that from any judge.

Mom came over and told us to save our game or she would be forced to shut it off. We complained so she bent down to the console and was about to flick it off. We agreed and saved our game and then she turned it off and turned off the TV and told us we needed to wear our coats. Mom was a lot nicer since the lady with the notebook came here.

Dad was waiting outside next to his shiny new car. He talked to me and Adam all the time about the engine and the intake valve and stuff I don’t understand or care about because it’s supposed to make us men, not fruity fairies like Mom would have us be. Adam doesn’t eat fruit anymore because Dad said that. I could care less what Dad thinks of fruit, I eat what I like. If Dad called us stupid Cheetos I wouldn’t stop eating them either.
Mom grabbed our hands and took us over to Dad. The lady stood on the sidewalk and just watched.

“Here are the kids,” she said and threw our hands at him.

“Who’s that?” he asked her, leaning over to see past her shoulder.

“A social worker, Roger. A social worker from the state. Because of that late night call the police received from your neighbor I’ve got this bitch tailing my ass and more appointments with my lawyer, you can bet on that.”

“Is she coming to my place?” he asked.

“Yes, Roger. I told you this already,” Mom squawked like some kind of parrot.

“Oh goddamnit. I can’t deal with this shit, Mara. Get in the back seat of the car, kids.” We climbed into the back of Dad’s car.

“Where’s Adam’s safety seat?” she barked.

“Oh, I forgot it.”

“You still don’t listen to a fucking word I say, do you? We’ve got a social worker here and an unrestrained child. But whatever, whatever. I’m not attached to you anymore. You can get in hot water with her. I don’t care. But Roger, you are not leaving me alone with these kids forever, you better clean up your act so I can get some time to myself.” With that Mom walked away and the ‘social worker’ came up and introduced herself and told Dad she’d be following him today. Dad said that was okay, especially because we’re going to Chuck E. Cheese.

“I didn’t know we were going to Chuck E. Cheese,” Adam whispered to me.

“Me neither. Guess Dad wants to impress this lady as much as Mom does.”

* * *

There were a million kids at Chuck E Cheese. It was a Friday night anyway, and think more kids go there on Friday nights. Dad was talking to the lady, saying that we go to the park a lot, we eat lots of apples and carrots, and rent family movies at night. I rolled my eyes. My dad was such a liar.

“Why does everyone act different around this lady?” I asked Adam.

“Maybe she’s like, a wizard,” he replied, ripping a bite of pizza off his slice.

“You think?” I said looking back at her, studying her to see if I could see something magical about her. I don’t know if I believe in angels and ghosts and wizards and stuff—but I do know this—I’m not scared of them. She didn’t look like anything special to me. “I don’t think wizards wear blue suits,” I replied.

“She’s probably an evil wizard anyway.”

“An evil wizard?”

He was real quiet for minute, then he whispered, “She scares me.”

“Adam, you can’t let people scare you,” I said, turning his shoulders to me so I could look at him. “Mom or Dad or this lady or your teachers: nobody should scare you.”

“I don’t mean to be scared. I can’t help it,” he said looking at the table.

“You have to stand up for yourself Adam,” I added. But he looked sad. I had to say something to make him feel better. “You’ll do it eventually. Don’t worry about it.” I smacked his back.

After dinner my dad handed us a bunch of coins and we ran off into the arcade. I played the Whack-A-Mole first. It’s the game I’m best at. I hit the crap out of those ugly little raisin guys; watch them run back into their holes after they feel my mallet smash down on their little brains.

I ran out of the coins dad gave me real fast. So I went back over to him to get more.

“Where’s your brother?” he barked at me like a dog. The wizard in blue was getting a soda so she wasn’t around to hear him talk like that.

“I don’t know, can’t I just have more coins?”

“Not until you find your brother.”

“But Dad—“

“I’m not arguing with you Ryan,” he said grabbing my shoulder and pulling me close to his face. “Bring your brother over here and then you can have more coins.”

I ripped my arm away from him and marched off to find Adam. Dad is a bastard, Mom is right about that. I checked the Skee-ball first. He wasn’t there. I checked the basketball and some of the racing car games but he wasn’t there either. I went into the tubes and the ball pit and I still couldn’t find him. I was getting bored of looking so I decided it was time to just deal with Dad. The wizard in blue was back sitting and talking with him, so I knew he’d be nice to me so long as she was there. Maybe she is a wizard, since she makes Mom and Dad act so nice to us all the time.

“Dad I couldn’t find Adam,” I said and held my hand out for some coins. Instead of grumbling at me he looked scared and shocked. So did she.

“Where have you looked, son?” he said crouching on his knee and placing his hand gently on my shoulder. I looked down at his hand and back up at him. He looked at me like I should just play along.

“Everywhere. He’s not around. Can I have my coins yet?” The lady jumped up and immediately went over to one of the employees.

“Shit, Ryan, how’d you lose your brother?” he said, not playing anymore.

“I didn’t lose him, Dad, he’s around here somewhere. I just want my coins.”

“Now we have to go find your brother,” he barked at me again.

“Fine,” I sighed and walked with him to go look for Adam. My dad held my hand the whole time we were looking. I’m not sure why. He never holds my hand for anything and frankly, I don’t need him to. It felt weird to have his fat, smoky fingers over mine. Pretty soon everyone was looking for Adam, even Chuck E., but nobody could find him. The social worker called mom to tell her what happened. Dad tried to stop her but she wouldn’t listen to him. Eventually Mom showed up in her fancy evening clothes and just looked pissed off. She didn’t even try looking for Adam. Mostly she just talked to the manager and kept putting her hands on her face and pacing. When she caught sight of my dad she started screaming at him. So he started screaming at her. The lady in blue just shook her head and took secretive notes. My mom was yelling and stomping her foot and pointing at dad and then at the arcade and then at the floor. Dad’s mouth was open real wide and he was waving his hands in the air and taking careful steps toward her. They were both pecking at each other like chickens. I heard the social worker lady yell, “Oh would one of you please do something!” and that’s when I saw Adam.

He looked different than I’d ever seen him. His face was scrunched up like a little angry bulldog. He was marching across the floor, with his fists clenched tight. He was gonna do something and I wasn’t gonna get in his way.

I watched him climb onto the booth and then lift himself up onto the half wall. He stood up on the edge of the booth and breathed one big, giant breath. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up,” he screamed as loud as I’d ever heard him yell in my life. My parents did. They listened to him. They shut up and just stared.

“Adam, get down from there right now,” my mom screeched after awhile.

“Fuck you!” he yelled and jumped off the wall onto my dad. Adam threw his arms around him and started kicking him with his sneakers. They lit up with every foot that landed on him. Mom tried to pull him off Dad but it only freed up Adam’s arms so he could punch Dad in the face. He kicked at Mom too so she dropped him and he kicked her in the shin. His shoes were lighting up like rocket ships. Anytime my parents would come close to him, Adam would smack them or kick them, screaming all kinds of bad words. Everyone was staring at them.

Eventually Chuck E. grabbed Adam and started dragging him away from our parents. He stopped after that, so Chuck E. put him down on the ground. He sat there a minute and then smoothed out his shirt. Then he looked up at me—nodding like he had finally done it. He got up. “I’m not scared of you,” he said to my parents. “And I’m not scared of you either!” he shouted at the blue wizard. I just smiled. He really had done it.

* * *

An hour later, we were sitting in the back of the blue wizard’s car. She was still out there talking to the police and yelling at my parents.

“I wasn’t lost,” Adam said to me suddenly. “I was hiding. But after I watched them for awhile I couldn’t take it anymore. They don’t understand at all.”

“They’re idiots,” I said, staring outside as the police tried to calm our parents down. Mom and Dad were screaming at the police as the social worker started walking toward us. She got inside the car and threw that yellow notebook on the chair next to her.

“Where are we going?” Adam asked her.

“Somewhere your parents can’t hurt you anymore,” she answered.

“They didn’t hurt us,” I said.

“Oh sweetheart, but they did. What Adam did today was because of your parents, because they hurt him so much he felt he had to hurt them back. Your parents are what we call unfit—they’re not good enough for you right now.”

I looked over at Adam to see if he understood that. He shrugged.

“I still don’t understand where we’re going,” I said.

“You’re going to go to a children’s home tonight,” she answered. “And then probably with a foster family for awhile after that, until your parents can get their lives together and learn how to treat you right.” At the stop light she turned around to look at us. “Everything will be okay.”

“Do they have a Wii there?” Adam asked.

“No,” she answered.

“A Playstation?”

“No, dear, I’m afraid not.”

Adam crossed his arms. “Then I don’t see how everything will be alright.” I agreed.

Simple solutions to serious problems

UPDATED: took the troops part out (after all, people are dying over there) and replaced it with a section about George Bush needing a spanking...or something like that; changed the last paragraph.

A parody of this

Simple solutions to serious problems

Columnists know everything. See how I have all this space in the newspaper, you only get that if you know a lot more than everybody and are willing to insist your opinion on everyone. And frankly, I do know more than everybody and I’m more than willing to enlighten you. Therefore, I am going to let you know the simple solutions to all the problems currently plaguing society.

Gasoline is expensive, people! I don’t know if you’ve noticed – I personally haven’t since the red line is practically my second home– but apparently this is true. I don’t know why it’s expensive – because nobody knows. It’s a scientific mystery.

Anyway, the important thing to remember is that you can do something about it. In fact, there’s a lot of things you can do – siphoning gas from your neighbors’ tanks, for example. Furthermore, swiping the license plates of a vehicle of the same model as your own, and switching them before pulling into a gas station also works. This way you can speed out of the station without paying and someone else will be blamed. Just remember to take them off later. Highjacking a tanker and hiding it behind some bushes in your yard is also a good idea. With solutions like these, your money-crunching gas problems are over. You’re welcome. Next.

This troop withdrawal issue is sure getting out of hand. The Democrat-controlled Congress is basically giving the President until the count of three to clean up that mess he made - only he’s locked in his room with his hands over his ears. Who will win this titanic battle of the wills? If Congress wants to assert its authority, it has got to back up those demands with some action. This involves running interception between George Bush and all food. If he’s not going to listen, he can go to bed hungry. Furthermore, he is grounded – not allowed out to the ranch in Texas and no friends over to the House; this includes Cheney and Rove and Condoleeza Rice – until he has solved this whole Iraq problem. Then, if he’s good, he can have dessert.

Onto politics. The political landscape is rife with scandal, inadequacy, lies, inaction and tired rhetoric. My suggestion is to start listening to alternative music. You should probably start going to indie movie houses and wearing mismatched, quirky outfits bought at vintage stores. Moving to Wicker Park would probably help a lot too. Then you can discuss politics over expensive microbrews. Cause quite frankly, that’s just how problems get solved. Writing smart-alecky columns is probably most helpful though.

The news media is such a waste too. How can we possibly stop these talking heads from ruining the country with their impossibly obnoxious opinions? Boycott? Letter bombs? Stealing Tucker Carlson’s bowtie when he’s not looking? No, I’m afraid that none of these are permanent solutions (despite the giddy thrill of bowtie stealing). The only solution is a cage match to the death. Yes, take Bill O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper, Hannity, Colmes, Glenn Beck, even Nancy Grace, and throw them all in a giant wrestling cage, give them one weapon of choice and let ‘em go at it. The last commentator standing gets to be the official voice of the country. After all, he or she will have earned it with blood and sweat, and that’s hard to argue with.

There you have it. Four huge problems completely settled, solved, and put to rest. All because of me and this column. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the one true religion is Taoism. Another problem solved. Swoosh.

Footnotes

It has been suggested I footnote some of my shit, so that people get what the Sub or Jawbreaker is. I'm not necessarily opposed to this idea. It's just not really literary. But I can be unique, if the general consensus is that it's necessary. It's a better option than fucking up the pacing and explaining shit in the story.

Let me know.

Great Lakes/Great Escapes

REVISED. Still not good. But whateverIdon'tgiveafuck. Another Lawrence Arms reference in the title.

Great Lakes/Great Escapes

“Little boxes lined up against water, radiating artificial light, emitting human life. Darkness finds its way into little cracks between streetlamps and inside abandoned apartments. There's little space for it—inside a city that glows at night.

'Eventually, eastward, the city drops off completely, just a few blocks short of where the land does. There's still reminders of the urban playfield: concrete, trees in careful rows, bits of fencing, marked pathways. But nobody can fully remove themselves from the city without falling into the water. Past Lake Shore Drive there's just you and visions of the world. There's a place where you're not really anywhere…”

"Wait, what?"

"Right here,” she continued. “You're not anywhere. You're not in the lake; you're not in the city; you're in the middle. You're not really anywhere," she said.

His eyes clawed her with curiosity. She gets so poetic sometimes. It was an utterly endearing quality, especially when her words get infiltrated with sloppy bits of booze. Her hair was falling out of the sloppy ponytail she'd roped up after leaving the bar, wrapped inside the hoodie he gave her twelve blocks ago. It hung off her slender shoulders and bunched up at the wrists, puffed at the waist and fell over her hips. She looked remarkably small and thin underneath it, with only her chest popping up and almost out of her shirt. It was the first thing he noticed about her when they met. He wouldn't lie. She knew it anyway. It was the first thing anyone noticed.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," she dismissed playfully.

He smiled and wrapped his thick arms around her and bent her to the ground in a drunken dip. She laughed and shoved him away and started stumbling toward the lake.

"Don't do anything stupid," he called after her.

"Stupid like what?" she yelled without looking back at him.

"Stupid like trip."

She got too close to concrete's edge. As the water broke against the rocks and splashed high as her head, the droplets that fell hit her, spraying her with the freezing lake. She shook it off like a dog, post-bath and zipped his hoodie. She turned and watched him half-waltzing, half-stumbling toward her. He looked so big and dumb. She cocked her head and smiled, reaching her hand out toward him. It was nothing short of shocking: an invited hand-holding session? Not merely tolerated, but instigated by her? He took the rare opportunity and wrapped his big fingers over hers. She dug her fingers between his, a locking grip, and began strolling the concrete boardwalk.

She had trouble keeping her balance, even with his hand sturdily keeping her upright. She needed more support, so he wrapped his arm around her and held her up by the shoulder, pressing her up against his side. A sudden chill of solemnity swept over her.

She ran her fingers over his side, up against the ribs and down to his stomach. He looked over at her, wincing pain written across his face. It didn't hurt. The scar was several years old; it didn't feel any different than letting her fingers sweep over any other part of him. It was just the sudden awareness of his personal history—history now shared between them, that made him feel pain scar tissue doesn't cause.

His scars were impressive compared to hers. Hers were plentiful quick swipes with little blades, his few were long drags with large razors. She glanced up at his neck, the scar he couldn't hide. She immediately gathered the slips of information in her mind: the blood thinners, the sleeping pills, the blood across his bed, the instant regret and the subsequent call to the police. It made her shudder. She still didn't understand why. It's not like she judged him or anything. It's not like she'd never tried herself, stood on the edge of ten-stories. It was just so horrible to hear, to think about, to recall each time. To think the hand she had been holding was the same hand that did that to him. She almost felt embarrassed by it, to lavish such pity on him, pity she wouldn't even consider putting upon herself.

"Do you ever think about hurting yourself again?" she asked, quite randomly.

"No," he spat back. He would not talk about this.

"You're a liar."

"How would I hide it from you anyway?"

"I didn't ask if you did it. I just asked if you thought about it."

"No. I'm happy," he replied and pushed her closer into him, hoping to quash her words by keeping her mouth up against his ribs.

"I'm happy too," she said lifting her head off his chest. Her words were lingering. She had more to say, and if he didn't acknowledge it she'd get cold and detached and he didn't really feel like dealing with that either.

"So what are you saying, you still think about it?"

There was anxious silence between them.

"Sometimes," she said, pulling away from him and making her way to a grassy slope. He followed her and watched her tumble over onto the ground, lay her hands underneath her head and stare straight up, ignoring his looming presence.

"Don't," he said with serious intent, refusing to lie down next to her until she acknowledged the pleading command.

"I won't."

"You can always call me. Even if you just feel like it," he spoke clearly, still standing over the girl who was still ignoring his stare.

"I can't. It’s not something I can just call someone about. I could've called all kinds of people and I never did. You don't just go around announcing it to everyone."

"I'm not saying you did it for attention, okay? I'd never insinuate that."

"Of course it wasn't about attention,” she said, sitting up suddenly. “You of all people should know that."

He fell over onto the ground with frustration. "I know it's not about attention okay. It's about…" He froze. It was about…it was about…

She looked over at him, staring with blank eyes, waiting for an answer. "About what?"

"You know."

"All I've got are psychology definitions." Something about displacement, the self-loathing and impulse toward self-destruction, something about lacking the capacity to deal with the pain.

She lay down next to him, curled up inside him. There were no more words left.

"Do you ever really stop thinking about it?" he said, purging the words from inside him because they were starting to make him sick—the things he never admits.

"No," she replied in casual defeat. "The alarm goes off some mornings and I throw the blanket over my head. Just hide inside this little pocket I've made on my bed, but it's impermanent.

"It's different."

"Not really."

"The complete end is somehow the same as sleeping in?" he jested.

"In a way," she said, "Yeah. The alarm goes off and you just don't feel like being awake. Not ‘cause you're tired, just ‘cause you don't feel like doing life that day."

The attraction of the escape kept both of them. There was no denying it. The alarm. The classes. The hourly wages. The drive. The teachers. The idiots in class, the useless texts, the minutes falling away serving customers, the wiped energy and uncontrollable tendency to press eyelids together. The emotional entanglements, the bad movies, the forever of survival, the pressure of a cabbie on your tail, the disappointments of trials you don't learn from, the hangovers you know are coming, the bleak realization of a future unknown, the incapability to just function properly in the world. No more mistakes or heartbreaks or lost and lonely days. It was easier to sleep through it. Wake up on the other side of it, put on a Jawbreaker CD, drown in good music, warm affection and the stores of liquor lying on a shelf underneath the sink. It was why they were there, bodies at rest, eyes absorbing the nothingness that is the lake at night.

She couldn't think about it anymore. She got up. It took her a while, she had to sit up and let the alcohol in her brain settle so that things wouldn't spin so much. Then she rolled over onto her knees and pulled herself up. He rose to his elbows to watch her wander to the water.

She was hanging on a railing overlooking the harbor.

"I wanna fall in."

"No you don't," he wanted to say. But he couldn't pull the words out of his mouth. Instead he shifted his weight to his legs and got up, wandering over to her, letting his body smash into the railing and his head slump on his shoulders, so he could get a look at this water.

"Oh, it's a romantic notion," she blurted out after his silence. "Fall into the water and just live there, floating in an infinite abyss. It's stupid."

The night looked weird, orange glow was rising out of the city while absolutely pitch darkness overtook the water.

"It's not so stupid," he said.

"Reality check," she said, disagreeing with herself more than him. "We'll just get wet and cold and probably caught up in the tide. We'll die." She thought for a second. "We're not so hard to understand. You and I."

"What do you mean?" he asked, rotating his upper body on the railing so he could get a better look at her.

"I mean, everyone who's ever gotten smashed and slipped out for a few minutes; who's ditched a class or hit the snooze or put on headphones cause the train's too loud or daydreamed or posted pictures of the beach on cubicle walls. They get it, in a small way." She felt unsure about the words she had just said. Maybe it was an oversimplification. Maybe he wouldn't understand. "I don't know,” she said after the silence and pulled herself away from him, closer to the lake. Very few understood, really. Very few could stand on the borders of the lively city and the dead sea and actually understand the threshold between them. “Can’t I just want nothing sometimes?” she pleaded to the lake underneath.

It started downtown. The first set of city blocks went out. It spread north a little, then almost the entire south side shut down. Then it climbed up at them by streets. Street by street every light shut off. It passed over them, past Fullerton, and Belmont, up past every el stop they had been memorizing for years. Past the end of the brown, red and purple lines. Every light was gone. Suddenly, there was no city. No northside, no downtown, no Sears Tower, no distant sea-side lights, no rumbling el, no glowing bar lights. It was all gone. It was the lake extended over the ground.

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

“Holy shit,” he agreed – tense fear rising in his throat with images of looters and bodies on sidewalks, insane gunmen, drunken rapists, utterly melodramatic chaos gutted him.

“This is so cool,” she blurted out.

“What?” he asked, whipping his head around to see the darkness where her voice came out. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“This is just dangerous.”

“Please! The city is completely black. What an amorphous moment,” she said, falling back into her poetry.

“It’s not symbolic philosophy time. Okay? It’s get real time. We’re in serious danger. We have to get back home.”

“Why? Why go back in there? It’s more dangerous in there than out here. Haven’t you seen 28 Days Later?”
“See! See!” he accused in exasperated tones. “This is exactly what I mean. This is not a movie, okay? This is real life. Get a grip.”

She just stared at him, her eyes grilling deep black holes on his forehead. “You don’t understand,” she said finally, turning away, wandering back to the hill and lying down.

“Now look,” he moved on, “Let’s just…go, okay? Let’s go get someplace safe.”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t say a word. She was pissed. He sighed.

“No,” she said, comfortably placing her hands beneath her head. “No, we’re safer here.”

“We have to get home. It’s the best place to be.”

“We’ll never get there.”

“So we might as well just say here?!” he shouted.

“Yes. Just ‘til morning; ‘til things get better.”

There was the space of silence between them, surrounding them, dying beneath their feet.

“Look, I’m not leaving without you,” he bartered.

“Then it looks like you’re not leaving.”

He looked around; his eyes had adjusted to the dark: vague outlines of the landmark buildings, stars sprinkling overhead, some trees, some waves breaking over rocks, her. Even if they were safe there – it wasn’t where he wanted to be, not where they should be. The trip through the city wouldn’t be fun, true. It would be difficult and dangerous and yeah, worse stuff could happen. But staying there?

He lay down next to her. She leaned toward him, cuddled into his side. She was smiling. He could just barely see it. She was more than content to stay.

And in the end, maybe she was right. Maybe they were best off right there. But this wasn’t where he wanted to be. Not anymore.

A Broken Record Has A Thousand Answers

“Oh God, that’s enough,” I said tipping the bottle back toward her. “That’s Gold, dude. You can smell it from the other room.” She just sort of shrugged and poured it into her Diet Coke until the dark and murky liquid curled toward the rim of her blue plastic cup. “How the hell can you drink that?”

She just laughed. “You get used to it.”

It took too much these days to get all of us drunk. So we just bought more. Or ate less. The alcohol soothed everything, including a hungry stomach. Last week, we sat around calculating how much we collectively spend on alcohol every month. When the number hit around 300 we stopped because we decided we plain didn’t want to know. That night we all decided we’d drink less. But then the next night came around; someone had a bad day, someone had a good one, someone hates their boss, someone wants to celebrate finishing Moby Dick, we all want to be together; we all want to curse the world. And alcohol is good for all of this.

“Hey, hook up some music, would ya?” Aaron told anyone but himself, squawking from his perch, hanging over the floral, garage-sale, living room chair.

Carli hopped over to the speakers, casually placed on the floor for lack of adequate shelving. She took another sip of her rum-reeking drink, turned on the stereo and spun the volume knob up. We were all really good at listening to music loud. As the night goes on, we’ll be singing and stumbling around in what some may call “a dance,” but is really more a drunken shuffle. Carli fell over on the couch next to me while Aaron grabbed another drink. We were really into playing Trouble after finding it for 75 cents at flea market in Kenosha. We put the board between us on the couch, leaned our heads together and flung our feet on the sharp, wooden armrests, four Converse tapping to Dillinger Four.

“I had to buy Head and Shoulders yesterday,” she said to me, tilting her head off my shoulder and looking up at me to see that I stopped moving my green peg and listened to her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It was like seven bucks.”

“Jesus. Wasn’t there something cheaper?”

“Yeah,” she said sitting up, “but it said DANDRUFF SHAMPOO across the front and I didn’t really feel like checking out with a big fat loudspeaker shouting “I have Dandruff!” It was pretty pathetic. Like I give a shit what the bagboy at Dominick’s thinks? I’m not sixteen.”

I laughed and nodded and we went back to our game. I knew why she told me this. She was always telling me of these kind of self-effacing things. She liked to make fun of herself, partly because it deflected others from making fun of her and partly because she makes fun of everyone else and wants to level herself. She didn’t particularly feel like being a bitch.

We had almost assembled all four pegs into the Finish Line when Greg and Kat arrived. Carli got up to greet them and I kind of knew our cute moment of Trouble was over.

The game gets shoved back under the couch and conversation replaces it. A few more swallows of our drinks and our heads are lifted into the air. Greg’s telling us how Lifetime is coming to the Sub. We spend about thirty minutes deciding whether or not we should swing the fifteen plus alcohol for Lifetime. This is how we judge bands these days – are they worth cover? Maybe if we drink before we go and remember to take shorter showers and keep the lights off. Carli brings up Jenna’s wedding. We have to save up for that. That shiner of a wedding. Nobody thought Jenna would get married, especially not at twenty-five and especially not to north suburbs, preppie, Old Town loft-renting, car-owning, teeth whitener Brian Anderson.

“Oh yeah. How the hell are we ever going to afford that?” Aaron complains. “Are they at least having an open bar?”

“I’m not going if there’s not,” I complained

“I don’t think any of us are,” Greg agreed. “Besides, you can’t have a fancy fucking wedding without an open bar. It’s morally irresponsible.”

“Maybe we’ll catch fire before then,” Carli added wistfully. Her phone rang. It was on the other side of the couch. She had to reach over me get it, brushing her chest and shoulders up against me, offering a shy smile afterward. She didn’t mean to. After reading the caller-ID screen she walked into the kitchen to answer. We were, apparently, not privy to this conversation.

“Dan is coming over,” she said upon hanging up, trying to mute her giddy excitement. He was there quickly, shuffling in, carrying a vaguely uncomfortable self-consciousness. He shook everyone’s hands, introducing or reintroducing himself. Aaron took him to the kitchen to get a drink. I leaned into Carli and hissed, “So you invited the fat, emo skinhead?”

She gave me the most sour look she could conjure up. A marked difference between her annoyed-but-joking sour looks. I watched her walk away and felt red with regret. I had probably permanently shattered the glowing image she had of me as the platonic best friend. She got up without saying anything and went into the kitchen to smile and pet the man I had just relentlessly word-murdered. He wasn’t fat, just big. He wasn’t a skinhead, he was just obviously trying to get ahead of the balding pattern. He wasn’t emo. Why would I even say that? Nobody in their mid-twenties should be accusing anybody of being emo. I’m not sixteen.

But I had spewed these words and now they stamped a bright ‘asshole’ on my forehead. All this permanently banned her to the kitchen and wrapped the two of them together. She was leaning against the cabinetry and he was inching his way closer to her, setting his drink down right by her side so that he couldn’t be any farther than elbow’s length. She was leaning her hips out toward him and he would bend his neck close to her lips when he couldn’t hear her. I was sloshing my drink back so I could hop into the kitchen for a convenient “just getting a drink” interruption.

Before I could swallow the remaining swigs, Aaron was waving me down; apparently he said something I was supposed to respond to. Everyone was now staring at me staring at the kitchen. It’s bad getting caught like that, it makes everything so fucking obvious.

“The show last week, dude?”

“Yeah?”

“It was good, yeah?”

“I guess. I had to be at work at like seven the next day, so I was pretty sober.” The words were sullenly sad, like extinguishing candles at a vigil. Everyone knew I hadn’t answered the question, and for about forty seconds we all came to terms with the fact that we should probably be sitting in a circle on fold-out chairs in the basement of the YMCA. I should be introducing myself and they should be responding “Hi, Will.”

Luckily none of these sputters of “should-bes” last long. A pass of the bottle and a refocus on the song playing and we’re all fine. But not tonight. Tonight Kat decided to ignore protocol.

“You know, we could all probably get out of this if we didn’t drink so much.”

“Get out of what?” Greg sneered.

“This bullshit life we live. We wouldn’t have to live on cigarette-strewn streets in Uptown. We wouldn’t have to worry about keeping the heat off in order to afford to go see live music. We could have cable and painted walls and computers that aren’t seven years old. We could afford to go to our friend’s wedding instead of cynically jeering her about an open bar. I could give my dog something better than Target dry food in used Cool-Whip bowls.”

Everyone shut up and stared at the floor except me. My eyes moved back to the kitchen where Carli and Dan were delightfully oblivious of our agonizing living room lecture. I was practically begging Jesus or Buddha or Krishna or Angelina Jolie to send Carli back in here because she would defend us. She would surely defend our poetic, drunken, mosh pits and Reckless Records, butter ‘n bread, cheap cigarettes and used jeans, circular, repetitive lifestyle.

Kat got up and declared that she was ‘only kidding really,’ tousled Aaron’s hair and went to the kitchen for more alcohol. ‘Good,’ we all thought, ‘drown that fucking mouth out.’ But the damage was done. Our heads all hung through our shoulders. Nobody wants to hear that shit, no matter how fucking useless a Lakeview apartment would be; or how little any dog cares about the bowls he’s eating out of; no matter how much we really don’t want to have real jobs and real lives and real credit scores; or how much we’d prefer to go to an Against Me! show than eat for the day; no matter how many times, over and over, sober or wasted, we’d choose our own lifestyle over all the other bullshit lifestyles society offers us, nobody wants to fucking hear that.

We all crawled into the kitchen so that we wouldn’t have to think about the words Kat had puked on the floor earlier.

“Who cares about that shit, Kat? Who needs it?” Carli retorted to the conversation Kat had dragged into the kitchen, our Green zone. “Is that really what you want?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m just saying,” Kat added doubtfully.

“Are you gonna start going to church too?”

“No, but don’t you think it gets to a point – “

“So you’re assuming this is what we’re going to do for the rest of our lives? We’re not gonna all eventually move on? Do something else? I still like living this. This is still the good life to me. I mean if you’re ready to move on, I guess that’s fine. But I didn’t think you’d go Jenna on me just yet.”

“Go Jenna?” Dan asked. Being new to the group he had yet to figure out all our hackneyed references.

“Our friend who’s getting married for real,” Carli informed him.

“’For real?’” he asked, air-quoting the phrase.

“’For real,’” she quoted back to him with an understood eye roll. He smiled and put his arm over her, like he was comforting someone who just lost a friend. The conversation was primed for new comments, a change in direction.

But Kat wouldn’t quit. This thought was nagging at her and she wouldn’t shut up until Carli had talked her out of it. “Are our lives so horrible we have to be drunk, drooling and mindless every night?”

“Who’s drooling,” Carli snapped.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, Kat, come on. Who did you hang out with today that’s making you spew this shit? Were you with your parents? Your older brother came to town…is that it? Run into some old self-righteous friends that strut Michigan Avenue and operate on Red Bull and ego?

“No. Nobody. I just got to thinking.”

“We all have those days, Kat,” Carli replied, pouring herself another drink.

“You should really cut it,” Greg said to her. “You’re gonna get too drunk.”

“I’m used to it,” she replied.

“We’re all so fucking used to it,” I muttered. The whole night went jade.

There was more chatter, more music, more singing and dancing and spilled drinks and Trouble. By two, we scarfed our necks and stumbled out Aaron’s door into the dead winter night. A few drunken refrains and trips over the lips of sidewalks later, we were dragging ourselves up millions of steps, up to the red line. Dan, Kat and Greg were heading south. Carli and I were heading north. We shouted obscene phrases at each other from across the platform, until the southbound train came. They all made sloppy faces through the glass. Except Dan, who smiled at her. She smiled back. The blissful joy of mutual affection realized. And they disappeared in a silver steel box.

And then it was just me and Carli, huddled on an aging wood bench under weird orange lights. She leaned her bobbling head onto my shoulder. Her jacket was falling off of her, letting the cool night air whip across her open-necked shirt. But she didn’t care.

“Doyouthink that, maybe, what, what Kat said is true?” I asked her, in a sorry slur of words. “That we’re all just pathetic drunks?”

“We’re all pathetic, Will.”

“Then maybe we should stop drinking so much. We always talk about – “

“That’s not what I meant.”

We could hear the El rumbling off in the distance, pulling itself closer toward the station. We stayed in a haze on the bench, even as the train flooded to a slushy stop in front of us. When the doors slid open, we pulled ourselves off the bench and wandered inside. We threw ourselves onto some backwards-facing chairs. The train made its signature sing-song noise, “Doors closing.” They shut. The train started, and glided away.

This One Isn't As Good...

In My Opinion. But Maybe It Is. I Don't Know. Read and Compare.

It was a squirming, writhing pink bit of life. It stood out from the cotton blanket underneath it only because it was moving so intensely. He looked down on it, lying in its crib. It grabbed and kicked at the air, wanting nothing more than to free itself from the plastic prison. It wasn’t the bars that kept it in – but the mere reality that it couldn’t get up off its back. It didn’t have the strength to free itself. So it wriggled and screamed and cried itself into exhaustion. After several minutes of hesitation, he reached into the crib and pulled the child out. At first he held it with his hands, but upon catching its bright, wide eyes he carefully placed it against his blue jean shirt. The warmth the child produced alarmed him and almost caused him to drop it back in its crib. But he had been through this with the others and quickly calmed himself. Its head bobbled about, trying to find a place against its father’s shoulder. He waited, frozen stiff in place until the child rested its head and moved its tiny thumb into its little wet mouth. He sighed a large breath and closed his eyes, hoping that indescribable bond would instantly forge between him and the child. He was hoping that the child’s warmth would be more than body heat, that this feeling his wife had described would fill him. So he held it closer to him and wrapped his arms tighter around it. He could feel the fuzzy texture of its footed pajamas, feel it’s miniature legs as they slipped together and apart again, he could feel the fluffy hair on the round head and the soft skin on the back of its neck. But he could not feel that feeling.

His heart sank deep into his chest. He tried to ignore it and concentrate on getting the baby to sleep. So he rubbed its back and swayed slowly to and fro, but he couldn’t ignore the way his heart hurt. He had never believed in the heart in an emotional way before. It was an organ before – but now, after all these years, it was pain. It had a certain emotional excrement. He couldn’t quite figure out what the two had to do with each other, but somehow that place in his chest where his heart beat was inextricably tied to this feeling. It was safe to say he had never felt love. Love was something he saw, something he said, someway he acted. Love meant something, but he never felt love in his chest the way he felt this pain. One could not call him cold for this. He wanted desperately to feel love, especially for his children. But he never could. Love would have kept him there. Love would have outweighed the responsibilities and the struggles and the late nights and the chores and the dirty diapers and the constant nagging. But between him and his children there was nothing. He had always known he didn’t love the children’s mothers. He had been through that struggle long ago and discovered it was impossible to love a real woman. He only loved their original incarnations, when he first met them and they still pretended with all their makeup and high heels– when they never farted or complained and flirted with their eyes, when there was late night conversations and trips to the beach. Then came the nagging and the constant requests for jewelry. The stories would repeat themselves and the bitching about work would start. And then the red hot intense regret for having said “I love you,” would appear. Because then he realized that he didn’t love them at all. And then one of them got pregnant. After years of the women, he was excited for years of children. If ever a man could love another – it would be his own child.

The child came. A daughter. And yet he did not love her. He tried to talk about this with the girl’s mother and she told him that he would learn to love the child. That he better learn to love the child. But months passed and he never learned. The little girl was nothing but a blinking crying eating pooping breathing cooing rolling smiling screaming needing thing. It was to him an itch. It had only to be scratched and he felt nothing more than that. He resigned himself to live this way, loving neither his girlfriend nor his child. But then he watched her with the baby. He watched her love it and hold it and pet it sweetly and he realized that he would never feel that – only that he needed to. More months passed and the need to feel that love consumed him. He wanted to love the child, feel connected to his child. And yet he never did. So one night he left. And that was all.

The experience changed him though. His life was now in total pursuit of love. When he found a woman he believed he loved, he quickly proposed and they wed and started a family. This, his first real wife, kept him constantly connected to the baby. He went to all her doctor appointments, read all the literature, attended la maze classes, and stayed in the delivery room when the child was born. He was even there when the nurse handed his wife the child. She held it, wrapped in its little pink blanket and smiled up at him. He placed his arms around her and smiled back, waiting for her to pull the blanket away from its face, so he could look into its brand new eyes. When she did, he looked down on it and saw – to his complete horror – that it was wearing the same face as his first daughter. And he knew instantly that he did not love her and never would. His wife never understood why he filed for divorce, but she quickly realized that she had no choice in the matter, because one night he left. And that was all.

The room was reflecting deep blue now. The sun was completely gone from the world outside the windows and the night had crept in and filled the house. It was distantly quiet, except for the rhythmic breathing of his first son against his chest. He had been holding the child for nearly an hour now, and still, the child was just a being that clung to him. Perhaps this is all there is, he thought. Perhaps love is all an illusion and he is the only one who knows it. Perhaps love is left to the young and he was too old now. Perhaps love was something that had to be earned. Perhaps his heart can only feel pain and he can’t feel love in the same way. Perhaps love is only something you can see, something you can say, someway you can act. Perhaps love is not at all something that can be. Perhaps this is love.

He lay the tiny boy back in its bed. He stood over it, watching it again. It wasn’t moving anymore. Now it was just a still, quiet thing, blending inherently into all the other still, quiet things in the room. Without the warmth of this child against his chest, he didn’t feel anything at all toward it. And the warmth was quickly cooling. He walked towards the door, his large white sneakers swishing against the carpet. He pushed the shiny gold handle down and the door was released from its shell in the wall. He passed through the hole and out into the empty hall. He peered into his own bedroom and saw his wife sleeping inside the wide white bed. He then instantly glanced down the hall to the front door. The streetlights from outside painted the floor like the white lines outlining a road. He began slowly churning towards them, the warm lights, like a mosquito into a zapper. When he reached the door he looked outside at a world of possibilities. He grabbed for the door handle and gripped it tight so that his knuckles turned white. He squeezed it so desperately he could feel tiny beads of sweat forming in the palm of his hands. Pain began flowing through each finger in his clenched claw. He turned the knob and ripped the door open. Only it didn’t open. His hand flew off the knob, but the door remained in the wall, bolted by the lock. He turned away from the windows and threw his back against the door. He caught his breath and looked at his world. A dark hallway. And that was all.

He moved away from the door and back to the bedroom he shared with his wife. He used his feet to remove his shoes, one at a time. He didn’t even bother to take his clothes off. He just pulled the blanket off the bed and slipped inside its warm pocket. He shuffled over to the side his wife was sleeping on and wrapped his arms around her, wishing only for the connection body heat provides. She breathed in and quietly moaned. “I love you,” she whispered into the blueness. The pain returned to his heart. To her, this was love. But he could not bring himself to respond in like. So he closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.


Her eyes flew open. She held her breath and waited for his response. It did not come. She breathed in the air, the void, the space where she should have heard “I love you too,” and it made her sick. And so she lay awake for many hours wondering, “Is that all?”

I Write Shit With Long Titles

Why I Want To Destroy The Checkout Stand Of Dominick's
Or
I Don’t Make You Read My News, Now Do I?

"She's got the biggest tits. He's got the longest dick.
And I get to read about it every week.
You hear that sucking sound? It's culture going down."
- The Falcon/"The Celebutard Chronicles"

I love punk music. I listen to it all the time: it’s my thing. I’ll put that out there, even though it comes with an automatic stigma, like any label. Upon revealing that, my angle is probably predictable. I’m going to push the usual DIY, underground, “fuck the man” ethics that pump through the heart of every punk.

So yes, that’s where I’m coming from. I’m dedicated to local, independent punk music and reading material. And that’s just fine for me and a bunch of other people in the thriving punk scene. Meanwhile, I have friends who are dedicated to fashion, gender studies, Nietzsche, exercising, even Middle Eastern anthropology. And that’s cool too.

And this is kind of the way of life in America. Everyone’s an individual. Pretty much everyone’s passionate about something, and so we surround ourselves with people who are passionate about similar things, forming behaviorally predictable groups. Just look at the neighborhoods of Chicago: people live with others like themselves and then branch out. Not everyone respects that, but it seems to me that's generally how it works, and I think it works well enough.

But then along comes the mainstream media, oozing through every filter and permeating our lives, ruining everything. It’s not that the mainstream media is ‘bad’ per se, it’s that it suffocates individual lifestyles; it’s that it forces itself upon everyone, creating arbitrary standards of things I’m supposed to know and care about.

I can deal with most of it, except for one tiny, little part: the total unearthly saturation of celebrity gossip. Celebrities and their overpriced Hollywood culture have infiltrated every aspect of mainstream media and culture. I can’t watch TV or buy a pack of gum or sit in the SAC pit without inadvertently watching, reading or hearing about Britney and her shaved head or Anna Nicole and her methadone.

And I don’t care about any of this. Britney Spears could decide she was dedicating her life to Jesus or nudism or garden gnomes and I wouldn’t care. And I have the freedom to not care, just like someone else has the freedom to care. But I absolutely deserve the freedom to not freaking hear it all the damn time.

See, I know from experience not everyone cares about what I do. Not everyone cares how incredibly cool Dan Andriano’s voice is. Nor does everyone think the latest update from the Lawrence Arms is the most exciting news of the day. And only a select few really want to debate whether or not Against Me!’s jump to a major will effect their music.

And I get that. And I get that a lot of people read that paragraph and went, “What? Who cares?” cause the things I really want to watch, read and hear about don’t dominate society. Yet, somehow, my head is swimming with someone else's niche crap like germs on CTA station handrails.

Where is the freedom to keep my head unclogged of information I find useless and silly? If everyone had to hear about Naked Raygun reuniting, or Dillinger Four’s ever-changing release date, I bet many of them would get pretty annoyed and curse us punks for assailing them with our niche crap.

So you see, I’m not trying to criticize the people who want to know what Paris Hilton did yesterday, I just want that group to deflate to a fair size. Keep celebrity news on the magazine rack and leave it out of everything else.

However, I must add, in a fine print kind of way, while I respect everyone’s right to delight in whatever they want for whatever reason, there really is no comparison between Lindsay/Britney/Brangelina celebrities and real musicians.

People who speak honestly and from the heart, contributing thoughts and ideas and quality works into the vast stream of human existence deserve way more attention and discussion than any celebrity yammered about on TV or gracing the cover of a gossip rag.

But that’s just my opinion.