This is probably what I would look like if I was a white guy

The Grey Space

I sort of wonder if the census is going to call me "oriental" and how long it'll be before that gets taken seriously.

Color Me Robotized

4/21/86-1/23/07; I miss you, sis

X Marks the Spot

There are these maps you can order that use various databases to create a neat, color-coded, block by block map of people's Faith in a given area. There is a free sample pack you can get but, if you want the whole set, that costs you. I'm sure there are some special deals you can get, though, if you are ordering them for a church. I guess they use some census data to reflect socio-economic status and independent survey data to reflect Faith involvement and Faith interest from household to household. This is, of course, all based on the head of the household.

Churches looking to increase their numbers in these rough economic times can utilize these maps so that they can plan programs to effectively engage the communities around them. Let's pray to their God-game that some of them are using this information to better serve the poor not by hosting youth lock-ins and spaghetti feeds but by seriously looking at methods to break the cycle of poverty.

This serious investigation into the staggering disparity between Christian-say and Christian-do could lead to a massive reconfiguration of the Church, transforming this group of people into a progressive, healthy movement in a world that has passed the point of dark to become almost farcical. With the largest religious movement in the richest nation in the world reconfigured to do good, suddenly, the world begins to smile.

It's a pretty picture to think about.

I like Humpty Dumpty better.

No one is going to claim that this blog is anything to speak of. When I began it, it was with an understanding that The Cold Shoulder blog, much like The Cold Shoulder writing, would probably be a late-bloomer and hit-and-miss at best. I really do know that drinking + carousing ≠ good writing (see overrated) but, damn it, I'm going to make absolutely sure.

This is not an apology for the early stages of a new blog so much as a promise of better things to come. Better real things. Lord help me if I begin to rely on a trademark gimmick to trick you into coming back. With any luck, my trademark will be consistently enjoyable writing.

Fuck Hat-guy.

...Sliding Into Third

Here is a piece of a work in progress. Currently untitled, revised, or looked at too often. The line breaks will most likely disappear in a later draft but reappear if and when I read it out loud. I'm tricky that way. As a whole, Snugglekitty & Other Bedtime Stories will be an interactive work in that you can come back here and compare the final drafts of poems to early stuff like this.

...she’s such a cut-up

when she’s cut up

and when she coughs up,

sometimes it sounds pretty as

the songs that she suppressed, forgot

then improvised the chorus

but batted a lash and waved that ass

so no one seemed to notice.

At some point, maybe I'll post the earliest draft of that poem Jordan Porter called Twilight. He wasn't entirely off-base.

Rerun

This is from Fall of 2006. I wrote it for an assignment on dialogue (I think). It won an award and a contest but failed to make me a stud with the ladies.

Lawns Like White Elephants

As Ronald “Ron” Johansen awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found on his front lawn a very large and very dead elephant. Now, the appearance of a deceased elephant on one’s front lawn is not an entirely foreign sight if one lives in an exotic locale such as the high deserts of Africa, the outskirts of Bangladesh, or certain parts of Wisconsin, but Ron Johansen and his family and his lawn were proud and productive citizens of Cheboygan, Arizona. While Cheboygan, a bustling tourist community in the summer season, is known for its jeep tours of the desert and its proximity to various canyons, it is not well known for its elephants—and for good reason: until this morning, no one had ever seen an elephant in Cheboygan.

The noble creature’s carcass didn’t seem to be harming anyone or anything—though its presence probably wasn’t great for the grass. Ron wondered if he might be able to just leave it there and let it decompose and, hopefully, fertilize his lawn and make it greener than Steve Schuster’s lawn next door. Walking cautiously around it, Ron found that there was no note or anything attached to the elephant to indicate its origin and, stranger still, there didn’t seem to be any tracks or drag marks around the lawn. It was as if the beast had materialized in that spot for the sole purpose of confusing Ronald Johansen. A minivan drove by carrying Cindy Martinez’s boys to Tomahawk Middle School and Cindy Martinez to the Southwestern novelty store she owned in town. Next door, Steve Schuster walked out to the sidewalk in his bathrobe to pick up his newspaper. For everyone but Ron, it seemed, it was a perfectly normal Tuesday morning.

Loosening his tie and rolling up his sleeves, Ron stretched his back and shook out his arms and legs. It had been a long time since he played third string fullback for Cheboygan High School intramural football league but he figured it would come back to him. He sized up his adversary. The elephant was very large and, dead, looked very much like a large boulder. Ron tried to make a mental projection of the best way to roll the thing to the curb; that would be the easy part. Calling the Cheboygan Sanitation Department and explaining to them that they needed to come and collect a two-ton dead elephant, that would be difficult.

“Mornin’, neighbor.” Steve Schuster, newspaper under his arm, was waving at Ron as he walked back into his house. He didn’t seem to notice the impending man v. nature battle that was about to take place between Ron and the elephant.

“Mornin’,” replied Ron. He didn’t know if Steve had heard or not since he was already inside. Had they known each other better, Ron might have asked Steve to help him roll the dead animal off his lawn. Taking a few deep breaths and glancing briefly at the sky in silent prayer, Ron launched his whole body weight into the elephant on his lawn. It didn’t budge. He attacked again. Nothing.

“Honey? What are you doing? Where did that elephant come from?” Rhonda Johansen, Ronald’s wife of twenty-three years stood on the threshold, dressed for work with a travel mug of coffee in her hand.

“I don’t know. I came outside this morning and here it was. Can’t get the darn thing to budge.”

“Well …well where did it come from? Is there a note or something on it?”

“No, hon, I checked. Think we ought to call poison control? I was pushing up against it just now.”

“Why on Earth would we need poison control for that?”

“Well maybe it’s poisonous. Like some snakes have poisonous skin.”

“Snakes are reptiles.”

“Elephants are reptiles, right?”

“What?”

“Like Gila Monsters and Rattlesnakes.”

“No.”

“What?”

“Elephants aren’t reptiles, silly.”

“Then what are they, then?”

“Marsupials? I don’t know. Honey, what are we going to do about the dead elephant on our front lawn?”

“I had thought about leaving it here. It might decompose into fertilizer.”

“We can’t just leave it there. What will the neighbors think?”

“I don’t think they’ll notice.”

There was a moment of silence while the Johansens thought about this. Though it was still early in the morning, a monsoon cloud was forming in the North. The morning sunlight, not yet obscured by clouds, reflected dully off the elephant’s back. It was Rhonda who broke the silence.

“We can’t just leave it out like this for everyone to see.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Can we cover it with blue tarp?”

“I suppose.”

The Johansens went into their cluttered garage and, after moving some boxes around, emerged with a paint stained blue tarp.

“We’d better get Ronnie to help us.”

Ron went inside to wake his daughter, Ronnie.

“Where did the elephant come from?” asked Ronnie, wiping sleep from her eyes. Cheboygan High School had a late start today. She had hoped to sleep in.

“We don’t know. Help dad and I cover it with a tarp.”

“Okay.”

Together, father, mother, and daughter, they covered the once magnificent beast with the paint stained blue tarp, weighting the corners with some desert rocks and the lawnmower. Rhonda refilled her travel mug and watched the blue mass, breathing with wind, shrink and disappear in her review mirror. Ronnie looked forward to seeing a boy at school and went back to bed. Alone with a tarp—covered elephant, Ron smoked a cigarette and remembered the newspaper was still on the sidewalk.

I'd Hit That Business Model

Found in Newsweek:

"Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model."

-Robert Hintze, founder of dating site BeautifulPeople.com, on kicking off 5,000 members for having gained weight during the holidays.

Remedial Stunting 101

We're working on a new rule for Skull&Poems that requires members to have at least one run-in with the Law during the writing process. For more on this, consult the American Music reader for a pretty entertaining story about how Josh, Jordan, and Jesse were run out of Tennessee.

In the course of the last month and a half, I have driven a little over 3,000 miles on highways through the Midwest, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest in what retrospect is sure to paint as a foolish, juvenile attempt to find myself. As I've been traveling, I've been writing toward a chapbook of my work tentatively titled Snugglekitty & Other Bedtime Stories. This sets up a loose parallel between myself and the American Music boys but with fewer amusing anecdotes.

Home-based in Arizona, the car I drive reflects the frontier spirit of the Grand Canyon state with its dark, tinted windows and only one license plate on the back. I've since been told that most states (and, by most, I mean the ones I have resided in) frown on tints as dark as mine and require a front license plate. I drove my car for a year in Minnesota and never had a problem since, I assume, the cops had more important things to worry about than to tell an out-of-state college student that his car looks like it might have a gun in it.

Then I came to Oregon and it is here that the anti-climactic, only mildly interesting story begins. If you've made it this far, well, you are more invested in this entry than I am. Driving to Target, I was pulled over by one of Oregon's finest. He told me that he pulled me over because he initially thought I was an Oregon vehicle and did I know that tints as dark as mine aren't okay here and did I know I needed a license plate on the front of my car and what was my business in this area anyway? Perhaps growing up in Eugene gives me an Oregonian look so I should have known better. We spent four or five minutes establishing that, no, I am not an Oregonian, I'm not employed in Oregon, and I hadn't really broken any laws. He seemed suspicious that I was "visiting my mom for a while" and asked what that meant. I watch a lot of Law & Order and am not sure I had to answer that but why make things more awkward? And then he drove off and I drove off and that was that.

Now, if I was a more interesting person, this would have led to my being asked to leave the state of Oregon or, if nothing else, detained down at the station while they ran my name and license plate for outstanding warrants. Maybe they would find out about the unpaid parking ticket issued in St. Paul this September and then it would all be over. Alas, it did not go this way so Snugglekitty & Other Bedtime Stories will not have an entirely true story about being run out of Oregon.

It will, however, have a wealth of other, more interesting, and completely true stories about my life and experiences. Have I ever told you why I don't date Asian girls anymore?

Title Track

The most recent draft of what will likely be the first entry in the upcoming Snugglekitty & Other Bedtime Stories.

Snugglekitty and Friends

Walking by the lake,

everything was grey.

“Hold my hand, I’m cold.”

I rubbed her wrist for warmth.

Only two decades made her

so frail.

I told myself it was fine,

told her she was beautiful.

Convenience or cowardice

(probably cowardice)

kept us from ever communicating beyond

bedsheets, whispered

Nothings between drops of sweat and listless sighs.

I told myself it was fine,

told her it was comfort.

Nothings strained to something when

Her body whispered

it was not hers alone.

She threw away her cigarettes.

I told myself it was God’s will,

told her everything was fine.

Walking by the lake,

two again.

(barren heart with barren womb)

“Hold my hand, I’m cold.”

I held my breath, felt the void,

told myself things were not fine,

told her it was God’s way.

Slashed herself up with sadness.

Paling wrists in darkened water

somehow restored hope.

“Hold my wrist, I’m cold.”

I held her hand,

told her everything was fine.