Chestnut War Part 1

We could not afford to purchase the house. The landlady  offered it to us "cash," using an aphorism that I thought only my mother used. "That way we don't need to work through real estate agents" 

But we couldn't afford to buy it. Not that it was an amazing house. It was a total grandma house with an illegal added back addition and patch work moss embedded into the shingles of the garage roof. When it rained. water would seep from the corners of the basement and push out quarter sized spiders. But it was huge worth crannies and storage that made me imagine its past. This used to be a speakeasy. Or a stop on the Underground Railroad! Never mind it's a 50s bungalow, I knew it had a story beyond the mundane. But it would have been easy to stay.

We moved  to another little suburb 10 minutes away. Cuyahoga County is partitioned into dozens of baby fiefdoms that feel very different to those that live in them. 

"Those are River people. We live in Bay"

"Oh we live in the heights. Shaker, not Cleveland"

It felt no different  but I was glad to have a place and time off that let me take advantage of cheaper move rates during the work week. The new landlady, a silver haired British lady, told us that the previous tenant complained of a tree with a bad smell. It was the one in the front. Just be careful. An FYI.

An aside that for a spell I dabbled in field biology. Not scientifically but I challenged myself to identify trees by their bark not the leaves. Because, will the tree have leaves in winter? I kept a puny life list of birds in the dog eared coffee stained Audubon bird guide. For a brief summer I knew the difference between broad leaf and and narrow goldenrod. I cant anymore but I remember it wasn't the width of the leaves! I knew the difference between Joe Pyed Weed and Boneset. A trash ailanthus tree against a native black walnut. The scientific name of the House Sparrow is Passer Domesticus. Of the common Robin...Turdus Migratorius. I'm better than the average person but the average person knows nothing. Its enough to impress anyone who isn't even a bit of an outdoors person.

However this tree was unusual. Big serrated leaves akin to the embellished arrowheads you would use for a football logo. Pipe cleaner flowers that spindle out like the paper strings from a New Years popper.What was it? I then consulted my North American Tree guide by Audobon (This was a series of gifts for a few birthdays with each book in the series a nice faux leather cover in a solid color. They looked slick on a coffee shelf even the ones i never used. The guide to North American mammals. Weather. The Night Sky. Insects and Spiders. Mushrooms. Wildflowers. I never got the freshwater fish one.

Source: Audubon.org

And scanning through the plates and margin notes (In red pen so it stands) I deduce it is a Slippery Elm!

Of this, I am certain. Fucking nailed it.

But, then in early September the flowers wither. They fall in wormy macabre heaps of fuzz onto the ground. They are replaced by angry fuzz balls looking the results of an awful experiment.

Look at how I merged this tennis ball and puffer fish. It hurts like a mother fucker and the needles stay sharp eternally. They are botanical razors at the first budding of the fruit and still equally as sharp once they dry into husks. 

And I had seen this before. In college. During one of those amateur naturalist treks with an ex-girlfriend. Those spines were longer and better defined. And the inside of that seed was soft. So soft that I assumed it was velvet. And not an analogy, but literally this was velvet. This is where it came from before it was stitched onto couches.

It was a chestnut! And where that first husk was rare here was a whole tree of them. In my front yard and so fecund that it was a hassle  to be around it. 

Hadn't this tree been wiped out? A symbol, like the Passenger Pigeon or bison, of where manifest destiny symmetrically everyone?

Was this a post-modern living fossil? Was it worth anything? Was it a "Notable Tree" as some signs around town said in select front yards?

Did we have something special?

A Nice Catholic Wedding

Reading through the old sections of this blog I realized that the old (well its technically the younger me) legitimately tried to make this a fiction blog. At that point I had TWO blogs and the old Blog of Plenty is long gone. It maybe cached on a very lonely and boring Google server but that was supposed to be "funny" blog and this one the "serious" writing one. They both had readerships of zero and zero times two is still zero.

In addition to new sketches and writing prompts I put up short stories I wrote before the blogs. These were mostly from writing courses in college. And it shows. I am surprised I never shared this one. It is indeed very personal (Not in the impactful way. Just that it is based on real events) albeit a bit hyperbolic. Like with this blog and my Twitter I have a tendency to self diagnose through public written media. Here is what i said now please let me know what you think. While few have read this the fact no one does has helped ensure I stay out of trouble. Anyway, here it is.

Tromelin Island (Source)

A Nice Catholic Wedding

There are no brochures for Tromelin Island. I can’t just walk down to street to the travel agency and book a flight to Tromelin. There is an airstrip there but no one to check my bags or tell me how to put my seatbelt on correctly. To get to Tromelin I will have to go to Reunion first and talk to officials in the French military. Getting to Reunion is hard enough because it’s a drop of gravel, smaller than Rhode Island, east of Madagascar, but at least it has scheduled flights. Once there I will ask for permission to visit Tromelin, an island where the highest point is a seven-meter sand dune next to a French meteorological station. Except for sea turtles and giant albatrosses, no one lives on Tromelin. A pilot can drop me in or the French Navy would strap me to an Exocet and fire at a single square kilometer of sand. There are no phones on Tromelin.

This is something that is really great to do when you are bored: go to the CIA’s webpage and find their World Fact Book. They have every country, protectorate, colony, and spit of sand on the planet listed there. When your roommate is going into hour three of talking to his girlfriend, the fact that Baker Island is built on bird shit becomes interesting.

I have become Mr. Geography because there is no music that can drown out the sounds of two Catholic kids planning their wedding. They say ‘hun’ a lot. There is something so ‘plain as day’ about ‘hun’ but they just love it. Kevin says it with every sentence. Other kids use ‘like’ but Kevin uses ‘hun.’


“Oh c’mon, hun!”


“I don’t even know 75 people, hun.”


“It is going to be your special day too, hun.”


“I think June would be better, hun.”


“I just don’t see why we have to pay someone to tape it, hun.”


Kevin needs to try using that word at the beginning of a sentence. He keeps on going, an oral rubber stamp that just slams on ‘hun.’ So saccharine, like that donut on his desk. How long has he had that thing out?

The donut has been sitting on my desk all this time. I wonder if it is still any good? Grandma made them for me, with extra Smuckers strawberry jam and granulated sugar, calling it a Polish donut.

Nervous, I start to twirl a pen in between my finger. The ends click against my desk and Melanie asks, “What is that noise?”

“Nothing, hun.” I put the pen away

Melanie has a nasally scratchy voice that makes her sound like a nine-year old is inside her. Her voice squeaks over Kevin’s cell phone, but I don’t pick up any words; the hard click-clack of the pen drowns out the words. Just like how a dog hears, I only pick up intonations and not words. She did not like Kevin’s attempt to end the conversation. Her voice becomes frenetic and exasperated, coming through in pleading whines. Bad answer, Kevin, I think as I bring up another country profile. The only herd of reindeer on Earth not affected by Chernobyl lives on the Falklands.

I still can’t hear the conversation and I’m not really interested, but I know the gist. She calls in waves and whenever she gets a headache or struggles with an assignment, Kevin’s phone bleats. A bad day at the convenience store, a big presentation for a class, or another fight with her mom and there goes the night. Some nights, Kevin goes to the bathroom and talks to her in there, but this apartment is small and I can still hear the litany. The only British soil ever occupied by German forces in World War 2 is the island chain of Guernsey.


Does Kell hear me? He never mentioned any of my conversations with Melanie. He is pretty cool, but sometimes it would be nice to relate. He has had girlfriends before, and Melanie is being tough tonight. I don’t think I am going to get any homework done tonight. “I understand that you had a bad day, hun. I know that you are excited about the future, hun. So am I, but we talked at five and at seven already.” Melanie tells me she is tired and will go to bed soon. She needs this last conversation. “Ok, hun. I am sorry. What were we talking about before I interrupted? The wedding, right?” She starts to sound a little happier now. “What flowers? I don’t know hun. Just some pretty ones, like you.”


Her favorite flowers are sunflowers, Kevin. If you are going to marry this girl, if you are so in love with her then know her favorite flowers. “Why does this guy have a girlfriend”, I ask to myself, under my breath while scrolling to the ‘s’ section for South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. After two failed attempts to cross Antarctica by foot, Ernest Shackleton died and is buried in Grytviken, South Georgia Island.

I know all this shit about Melanie that only Kevin needs to know. She loves the name Emily but that is going to have to wait after they are married. Her favorite flower is the sunflower and color is powder blue. She doesn’t get along with her sister because they were both competing for the one slot left in their mother’s broken heart. Her periods come in during the middle of the month—usually pretty heavy. Kevin sprinkles in a few ‘huns’ to calm her down.

Melanie gingerly jumps from mood to mood. One second she is raving about how Kevin ignores her and then she giggles coyly at the trailer for the latest Disney movie. One mention of that wedding and she is all juice boxes, church picnics, and little pink rug rats. Kevin realizes how content she feels and slouches in his chair, looking up at crack in the ceiling, arching his back and stretching.

It is already 11:17 and Melanie feels a lot better. “I am sure you are going to look great that day, hun,” I tell her as I launch a game of Minesweeper. She asks me about names and I agree with her that I always liked the name Emily. She asks me about the honeymoon and I say maybe Canada because neither of us can speak a foreign language. Then she asks me the weirdest thing yet and I don’t know how to answer. “What’s that, hun? Um that is kind off a weird question. I don’t know, hun. Kell is in the room.

“Damn straight, Kell is in the room,” I think to myself. Latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates saturate my brain. Only 46 people live on the Pictarin Islands. I hear my name, but I pretend that I am too engrossed with geography to really care. This conversation needs to end.

Kevin answers Melanie, “Well sure you’ve given me some, but what can I do? You haven’t decided to expose your beautiful body to me.”

There isn’t enough obscure geography to rectify that—not enough Cocos, Marshall, or Glorioso Islands to scour away the image of a naked Melanie. The image reminds me of white bread, puffy, plain and only good when toasted. Shivering, I bring up the website some French kid made for Tromelin Island. The website hasn’t been updated in three year, but it has pictures. Tromelin is a perfect tear drop in the Indian, alone and dotted with green bushy blemishes. Kevin chuckles and I imagine Melanie’s ticklish laughter filling her own apartment.

“No, a four hour one would not be cool, hun. That is a lot of blood in just one area.”

These are two Catholic kids from Northern Virginia; I can’t believe this conversation. Don’t they stop this kind of talk in church?

Kell can hear me, but I whisper, really softly, into my phone. I catch an image of Kell in the reflection of my monitor and he hovers at his computer, still on the islands page.

“What is that, hun? Now? I thought you were going to bed? It is a long drive.” I swivel around in the chair and look at Kell. His back is turned and hunched over the desk. I didn’t notice this earlier, but he has the hood up around his head. I wonder if he is cold and whether I should turn up the heat. Melanie asks whether she can come over again and I say, “Hold on, hun. Let me ask.”

This sweater is a product of the Northern Mariana Islands, but it still says “Made in the U.S.A on the tag.” The islanders did not make the hood thick enough because I hear Kevin perfectly. 90% of Nauru’s interior is devastated due to unchecked phosphate mining, but that is not so concerning as to let me ignore this conversation. I know he wants to ask if she can come over. If she can swing down from her own school just to spend the night. I look at the clock at the corner of the computer screen and it blinks 11:20. She’ll be her by 1am. Kevin does ask me if she can come over, struggling over his words and a couple of ‘um’s and ‘so’s. He says, “It will only be for the night and she’ll leave with me in the morning.” I don’t respond. Mayotte is the only island in the Comoroes archipelago that rejected independence from France.

Kell does have his hood on, but does he have any headphones on? I don’t think he heard me that time. Maybe he has some way to really tune everything out. Maybe that is why he gets so much work done. I twist my neck and try to scan his side, looking for a thin black cord running down to the computer tower. Melanie chimes in again and I tell her to keep waiting. She gives me an annoyed sigh. “Hey, Kell,” I ask again. “Um, so is it cool if Melanie comes over tonight? It will be only be for one night, this night, and she’ll leave when I go to my morning class. She won’t be here in the afternoon like last time.” Kell doesn’t answer. The sound of hard taps against the mouse fill up the air. I am sorry if he is mad because of Melanie’s last visit here. It wasn’t cool of her to skip her classes and drink all that juice which she though was mine. She should have gone home, but she needed my input on something for the wedding. I think it was the food and that is a tough decision.

No headphones and he is only six feet away. Kell ignores me and I can’t help but feel annoyed. I’m asking him and offering him my word. She will not be here in the morning. Melanie is only going to spend the night. Her voice comes through the phone again and she is getting stressed out. I hold the phone and tell her to calm down. “Just a bit more, hun. I’m asking.” Putting the phone down on the desk, I lick my lips and brew up some strength to ask Kell again. He stills has his hood up. “Kell, sorry if you are busy, but can Melanie come over tonight? Just for the night? Is that cool?” I hear something over the phone, Melanie’s voice telling me something. I quickly pick up the phone and hear what she has to say. I tell her to wait just a little longer, maybe pull onto the side of the road and wait or just drive slowly. I turn to Kell. “Is that cool? She is already kind-off on her way. She had a real bad day.”

The air outside is filled with water. Rain comes down in hypnotic sheets and headlights hover across the road. There is only offshore anchorage for Europa Island because of a surrounding coral reef. Bouvet Island features thick glaciers that rise from the sea. Jarvis and Navassa Island can have Navy SEALs airdropped onto them at any sign of foreign invasion. Even Kingman Reef, a hunk of natural architecture that pokes three feet above the Pacific, has more protection than me. Melanie has a car and the motivation. Kevin asks me if she can come over; I think this is the fourth time and I say, “Sure.” I catch him off guard, maybe he was expecting an argument, but Melanie is already ripping down a wet Interstate, driving uncharacteristically fast with her perfect Catholic wedding in mind. Kevin says thanks.

That went a lot easier than I thought. I tell Melanie the news and she is happy. She need to study for her sociology class and tells me she has a treat for me.

“Oh really?” I ask and wonder what it could be. Maybe that is why she was asking all those questions earlier. I ask what the treat is and she says cake. Cake samples for the wedding. She tells me how excited she is and how her mother sent her some newspaper clippings from back home about houses in Herndon Heights. She wants a nice wooden duplex, close to the town square and the church where we’ll be married. She has a list of potential ring bearers and wants me to help choose the entertainment.

“I need to graduate first, hun. So do you.” She whimpers and says that it never hurts to plan early. “Your right, hun. Two years isn’t bad at all. Sorry. Can’t wait to see you.” She giggles and pecks me a kiss over the phone. She says she’ll be there soon and says goodbye. I peck her goodbye also and flip the phone close. The phone is hot with latent heat making it feel uncomfortable and hostile.

I write down the coordinates to Tromelin.15.52 South by 54.25 East. I stuff the note into my wallet, in case I ever get the chance to go to Tromelin. Tromelin Island has no girlfriends or roommates. Tromelin Island isn’t time to think or read, but the cure for two Catholic kids planning their wedding. Melanie must be over the county line now. The room feels weird without the mention of ‘hun’ and ‘I love you.’ Kevin thanks me again and I close the Fact Book Page. I open a search engine and look up the French translation for “Ready, Aim, Fire!”

Journal Entry 9-27-19

This is the work double speak. I am sure it applies to any office

"My computer doesn't work" really means "I don't know how to use my computer"

"The copier was jammed" really means "I jammed and but don't want to admit to it"

"Oh, I missed that email" really means "I ignored it."

"I didn't see the calendar invite" really means "I ignore calendar invites"

"I don't do email. Can you send it to me via paper" really means "I don't care about the thing at all. And this is my way to deflect"

"No one ever told me" really means "I never listened"

"Whatever you think" really means "I don't want to make a decision"

For sure there are times when these are true. And I have used specific granular ones like "Thats a landlord issue" to buy some time.

But the response, like earlier posts, is "Ok"

Ok something being "Let me help you because you are so cool. Can you be my friend!? You are so pretty and funny and its not big deal!"

Ok something being "I do not like you but my duty and honor say I must help you!"

Its rarely neutral. Its like when my wife texts back "K." Shit...that means something is up!

I found a real honesty when a co-worker once verbatim called me an asshole. We worked it out and it was refreshing where all the other niceties seemed draining.

I should stop blogging about work while I'm in my feelings. I should find something else to validate me.

Journal Entry 9-25-19

When I mention where I work, people have a lot of assumption. I work at a K-8 public school, by the way. But, I am not a teacher so that is usually the first assumption I have to correct. And Im not really an educator nor a coach so I then have to adjust that. "Are you the custodian?" No, I wish. Those union guys make a giant amount of bank.

No, I am kind of the catch call for anything non-educational. This befuddles people because "Well isn't there a purchasing department for that"

Yeah, that's me. We cant afford a department so we have a person that does that.

But this isn't me complaining about work. Its fine. This is about assumptions.

People assume that this must be very hard. Lots of sad stories of angry kids, beat up kids, and drama. And it happens but the educators focus on that.

"So, what is difficult about your job?"

And I don't like thinking of anything as "difficult" but I am shocked. Shocked not so much at what happens but at the fussy goofiness of what I am asked to manage.

"Someone moved my chair!"
"The students tried to use the trash can after I emptied it!"
"You booked us this room but there is someone in there and they won't leave!"
"I don't read emails but still need to know what is happening today"

To which I say "Ok" or "I will investigate"

Journal Entry 9-20-19

If anything this blog is a horrible journal. That is what I say when my wife tells me "You spend too much time on Twitter."

"Don't worry, honey. Its like a journal. No different than what others have done for hundreds of years!"

Dear Diary...is it a journal when you are writing with the intent of people seeing it but no one actually ends up seeing it. Isn't it just a bad story? Bad joke? Lame tweets?

Dear Diary...I am worried that I should maybe print out all these scintillating articles and store somewhere. We produce so much text and copy but none of it is printed. Maybe that is a good thing but where will the 2019 equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls come from? I am sure someone is printing all the Trump tweets and a Benghazi bro has all of Hilary's emails printed (and laminated) somewhere. We got that going.

Dear Diary...I should actually journal for my audience of none.However, because I get up at 2:30am every day with anxiety about work or my family that is all I want to talk about. But I don't want to get fired. And I want my children, when they inevitably blame me for how damaged they (Or their world) are and don't want to hear "You shared all your secrets on your blog! I never consented to that!"
At work I did come up with a good retort to a co-workers but she always disarms me by playing with her hair when we talk. No clue why that phases me but it instantly saps any wit, insight, or vitriol from my comments.
At work, I did learn about Fucking Hooray moments which I will try to affirm daily.

Fucking Hooray because I rediscovered a favorite album of all time Re by Mexican band Cafe Tacvba (Its like the U/V in Chrvhces. Not a typo) all the way back from the year 1994.



I am a product of my environment so few albums I have listened end to end but that was one and from a very tender age. Fucking Hooray!

Picaresque

I described my son the other day as picaresque as he has entered a a mischief making phase coupled with the usual mercurial up and down of his rage. Why am I driving 90 mphs each morning? Its not because I am late but because the sooner I can drop both kids off the sooner they are separated and the sooner they stop fighting. Its knives out every commute.

And when I said that the person listening said "What does that mean?"

"Picaresque? Like a roguish scamp that dodges in and out of trouble."

"And that means?"

"Pain in the ass, essentially. But still lovable! Don't get me wrong"

I know the word picaresque from the Spanish version picaresca/o. And I know this because in 9th grade Spanish we read El Lazarillo de Tormes which is considered the first of the genre. That is all I remember and that it was written anonymoulsy and like any Spanish* (The country not the language) book it was hated by the church and was satire but I never found this funny. At least Don Quixote and Sancho got into bar fights.

Huck Finn is kind of picaresque. The crew from Always Sunny is picaresque albeit usually these are younger characters. In describing my son I employ more the roguish qualities than the low social class or, you know, exposing the flaws of the supposedly civilized society (My kids be pretty basic. Save for the fighting. God stop fighting!).

I remember the word picaresque because of my 9th grade Spanish teachers, Mrs. Ceida Fernandez. Who then taught me in 12th grade Spanish AP lit. She was Cuban but vehemently left leaning and very pro-PR, which was a statement in my school that heavily catered to families who wanted to have their kids learnt to speak English well and/or catered to expats. "You guys, in your whole careers, here at Baldwin take 4 instances of US history and only one of Puerto Rican history. What do you think of that?"

Not sure but I know that Ticonderoga is a real kick ass name for a fort.**

Mrs. Fernandez seemed kind of odd because for a Cuban expat living in PR she was pretty anti-American. Or, I should say, anti-imperialist to use woke language. Which is funny because most Cubans living in PR were very pro-American and rather conservative. Its like the Cubans in Miami and part of why Florida is such a wacky electoral state.

This paints her as pretty negative. She was a great teacher and was always a straight shooter with all the kids. She was our 12th grade senior class adviser and my school had a Mormon kid named Jeb who spoke zero Spanish and she was cool with him speaking in her mildly accented English. Just this was kind of quirky but its an inside joke of a "you had to be there." Otherwise known as bad writing.



*Brief segue that how I learned Spanish is how you likely learned English especially in middle/high school. IE a lot of literature. And I loathed anything continental but enjoyed pretty much any Latin American and/or PR writer we read. This is because of not just where I grew up but also the school I attended. I am hyper aware of this privilege and consider it likely one of the greatest things I ever enjoyed. School is cool guys!

**And a pencil. Which teachers at my school insists is the best but I still buy them the generic kind. Its a pencil, everybody. To which they counter, "Yeah but THIS (holding up the Ticonderoga) IS a pencil!"

Experiment: Some phony non-fiction

He had developed a habit of sleeping on the  couch. This was before the first trial. Some biographers believed there may have been a case of undiagnosed sleep apnea, but there never was an official review or suspicion. "He didnt mind it all," said Parker, Nelson's first son through his second wife. "He felt like a rogue." It showed he could remain unbothered even by something as quotidian as sleep.
"The couch would swallow you alive," continued Parkee. "Sit on it and you would never comeback."

Gerardo never left notes on this habit but other interviews claimed he loved it.  "I think he felt that he was on some journey" said his daughter, Philomena, also from the second marriage, citing her father's penchant to narrate everything. "So he was always bumming on someone's couch. My dad would would eat dry toast on the floor under the table sometimes and tell us he was eating his rations after being shot down over France. He would be ready to go after this bit of energy, crawling over trenches, back to camp. So, it was just another story to act."

An anonymous co-worker told me that she asked Nelson once if/how their parents ever had sex. "Houseguests sleep on couches, not spouses," she told me in our chat. When I asked the children they both answered similarly. "Never thought about it. They are my parents, you know?"said Parker.

After Work

What is the best feeling in the world after work?

It needs to be something quick and satisfying. Likely carnal.

Using a bathroom that is your own.

Drag on a cigarette.

Taking off your bra. (Or so I've heard. Ok...read on Twitter jokes and E card memes)

For me, right now, it is eating a piece of bread. Two pieces to get real. I get home and put two pieces of rye bread in the toaster (24 grams of carbs total!) and then eat them dry with a diet Coke. Then, if I ate no bread during the day, I roll forward some of carbs (30 grams per meal!) and eat another with a pad of butter.
These are not gourmet slices. But to me they are the level of the brown bread at Cheesecake Factory which is my favorite kind of mass market bread.

I then take my metformin pill with this quick meal. One of those esophagus busting pills. The biochemistry is lost on me but I then feel the opposite of my bread reverie. I want to throw up and I feel a distinct pain in ankle. It's going to snap! Its because you ate bread! Where is the couch and something to clutch?

Clutcher

In the last year, I have developed an awful habit of sleeping from 9:30pm to 3am. This obtuse schedule aligns with nothing.

No evening news. No reading before bed. No tinkering with hobbies. Its pass out at a time when most people are looking forward to doing something, anything, that is not a responsibility.

And the early morning? Not even the fucking birds are up!

I don't wake up from these rested, mind you. Instead I wake up anxious and often sweaty and stiff. I have a penchant for passing out not in a bed or even a sofa (which would offer some dignity) but instead a small love seat in my living room. My head rests on the skinny part of the cushion just past the arm. My legs jut out over the other arm rest. Then I have my cat who sleeps above on the top of the love seat nestled between the cushions and wall.  And I don't have blankets but instead several pillows that I clutch.

I'm a clutcher when I sleep. I need to hold onto a pillow or wadded up blanket. Its my partner in this journey and when I wake up I look at it all groggily, "Where did this come from?" Its part of my nest which is much more appropriate to describe when I sleep. Pass out and then nest.

Being up at 3am, and feeling a tingle in your fingers despair in your heart sort of anxiety, I sometimes work. I knock out some emails and shuffle the papers I drag from the office. This makes me feel better and sometimes a coworker says "Wow you were up early. Email at 3:45am!" This small degree of attention makes my day ("You read my email?! Best friends?!) which counters any drowsiness. This also makes me make stupid mistakes which on my lower days I blame on others but mostly sends me into panics to make it right. "Don't worry. I got it! How can I make it up to you! Oh, I know! Let me wash all your dirty dishes after you eat lunch!"

This is hobby time. This is when I sleeve and unsleeve Magic cards. Clean my fish tanks. Or I keep plunking away at my world in Minecraft. I keep making little structures in the world and poking from island to island on it.

"Someone will see this and know that someone else came through! I will leave this chest with some iron ingots and sticks. A furnace and a crafting table. That way if they come through they will be set. Like a cache when sailors used to search for the Northwest Passage!"

I then stop when I see it is 5:30am or when that ennui hits that because its just me in this little world that no one will see this save for the stories I make up in my head. What I utter aloud in the basement clutching the Xbox controller.

Or I read, which used to keep me up, but now lulls me back into what is actually sleep. In that case I clutch the book.

Its a time for vices left alone with my reptilian thoughts.

Here is a good comeback to what that prick Velez said to me in 12th Grade AP Spanish. I am going to snoop at him on Facebook and think about it!

This would make a great story! Write it down, now before you pass out again!

We got that new shipment of laptops and I need to inventory them and I know Peyton with a E is going to ask why she doesn't get a new one and here is what I am going to say. No...wait, what about this.

I can't be mad at Peyton with a E. She looked really good yesterday.

Like all my posts this had a point (albeit imagined) when I began but now I want my early morning nap.

The Second 9/11 Post

Blogger has this function where it tells you how many people have viewed a post. I am lucky to crack into the double digits but a year ago I made a "9/11 Post" and it has so far gotten 109 views! I wonder how people came across it? That is a lot of porn bots! I don't know what else to say but because the day merits it and because it seemed to draw some attention here is another 9/11 post.

I have a tie for favorite non-fiction books albeit if I want to read a fun non-fiction book it will be Shea Serrano (Illustrated by Arturo Torres) Basketball and Other Things. But the tie is between two books that explore the same history albeit their focus differs.

One is Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile which was the first audio book I made a point to purchase (as opposed to schlep back and forth from the library) and felt quite sad when I upgraded my car ("You got a new whip" as one co-worker told me. Note that harboring a tiny work crush on her I had no heart to say "what is a whip?" But I put it together.) and it had no CD player. I know, first world problem but Blackstone Audio version read by Christopher Lane is poetry. There is an art to voice work and if my time watching maybe too many cartoons has thought me is that it matters. But that is for another post.

The second is Ghost Wars by Steve Coll which has a very haunting closing line that I recall quite often.

Some people cross themselves when they hear or see something awful. Another school shooting? Then let me put this down and cross myself "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." There. Or "Thoughts and Prayers" I once worked at place whose primary donor base was predominantly wealthy Jewish folks and they thought me something that was quite lovely "May their memory be for blessing" From one of my favorite fiction books, Watership Down, I have line for grief and loss that goes "My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today"

Some people play with their hair. Or have verbal cues. They fill in sentences with empty wordy pauses. Like and you know and actually. A director at my school bites her lip. Tap pens. I once got told by an office mate "Hey stop shaking the damn floor with your leg! Nervous!?"

Whatever makes you feel better.

But, the closing line in Ghost Wars is "What an unlucky country."

It makes sense in light of the story which the author frames as ending on September 10, 2001. No spoiler alerts (Its non-fiction and history) but the reference is made to maybe if this one anti-Taliban leader had not been assassinated then the history of 9/11 (and the US and Afghanistan) would be radically different. And note that none of this is narrative stretching. This all happened 9/9/01 and into 9/10/01. Unlikely the wheels of the Saudi plot would have unraveled but such eerie confluences are why we enjoy history. Or, at least, I do.

And this quick "aw shucks" (Note that it's attributed to Hamid Karzai who would become Afghan President after the NATO invasion) moment is not meant to be dismissive but burdened by years of violence and tribal war in Afghanistan. You need to read the book but I say it whenever the violence or tragedy of our world seems inevitable. And that what separates us from it is indeed our race, class, and wealth but also a decent amount of chance.

I say it often after mass shootings and their inevitable not just occurrence but "burn and turn" on our consciousness. "What an unlucky country"

You can't drink the water in the western basin of Lake Erie because of toxic algae blooms? "What an unlucky country"

Being very 2016...The Comey Letter. The Pussy Grabbing Clip "What an unlucky country"

Don't dismiss this as just poetry. If you have read this blog then 1)I am sorry and 2) You know I enjoy a good geopolitical thriller and 3) Harbor a reptilian desire to throw it all away and join the foreign service. I would have likely been one of those international volunteers that died in the Spanish Civil War. Maybe I would have run into Hemingway!?

And these books have them in spades particularly Charlie Wilson's War which is the more biographical/adventure one (focused on the history of the US intervention in the Soviet-Afghan war and one character in particular) then the other which is a broad history of Afghanistan and all the countries who (for what seems no good reason) decided to muck around.

I make it a point to re-read these books regularly (maybe once a year) and I am half way through Ghost Wars on this 9/11 anniversary. What I enjoy about the book is that, as one review says on the back of my copy, has "few heroes, many villains."

The world made by 9/11 (The War on Terror, Axis of Evil, etc) seems old in light of a new dynamic of Fake News, climate change, and increasing hyper nationalism. Threats now feel internal instead of some mysterious force scrambling up rocks in the Khyber Pass. This is not to dismiss the complexities of why this all happened and what a "War on Terror" means* but while the memory of 9/11 will never fade for me (If nothing for its salience and tangled history) the world it supposedly changed forever now feels reset. And loaded anew is something blunter.

I have often said that tragedies can't be zero sum. In college, during the 1 year anniversary of 9/11, it was very popular to say (or see) signs on my mostly left leaning campus that any US overseas ballyhoo (The War on Drugs for example) caused X number of 9/11s. So think of that! And while this is true I think it is foolish to quantify pain especially in light of such naked violence. This is not something we judge on one on those charts in your doctor's office. So, even 18 years later, I hope that those 3000 so people's memories be for a blessing.



*If you want my big fat guy on his random blog take then terrorists inherently want headlines and not necessarily violence. So a global war against them by say invading Iraq seems foolish when changing hearts and minds would be better. This is my "Jimmy Carter" school of neo-conservatism (something you may only hear on this blog) and the idea that certain American ideals, along with agendas, can be pursued through international escapades.

Kid Tricks

My kids cant read yet and my son fights homework with a rage usually saved for rock throwing at riot cops (ok, son. We are not trying out for the  Gaza tear gas toss back squad!) but dont say I never taught them.

Everytime my kids see a narwhal they scream...

"There goes a narwhal! Motion in the ocean! Air hose broke!"

Which is a bit from an episode of MST3K.

They also say "Hi-keeba" instead of "Hi-yah" when pretending to karate chop which is also MST3K.

And dont say the word troll because the kids will sign the Troll Toll song from the Always Sunny Nightman episode.

Take that, Fortnite!

Writing Prompt-Where Are You Now

In an effort to keep writing I decided to follow a writing prompt. This writing prompt is

"What time is it? What would you usually be doing? How would it be different if you were in a different place but at the same time?"

I know this is not the fruits of the muse but this is also a random blog in the lonely sandbar of the Internet. These are fiction pieces so buckle up because that was never my strong suit albeit I dreamed of it. I'm more of a personal essay guy with maybe a quirky work memo or bathroom graffiti in the quiver.

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My cousin shared with me a meme about Ohio. It went like this:

In Ohio we have nine seasons

1) Winter
2) 3 Day Spring
3) Fake Summer
4) Construction Season
5) Face Melting Summer
6) False Fall
7) Second Summer
8) Real Fall
9) Early Winter

Then over the 7 there is a little star that reads, "You are Are"

I gave it a like when I saw it on the Facebook feed. I have not see her since a weekend back in HS when we visited her family when my uncle, her father, suddenly passed. That was 20 years ago but she popped up every day with some meme or blessing. I showed the seasons one to Ricardo in the smaller truck this morning before we left the yard. "Hey, check this out"
"Oh, Ive seen that except its for Minnesota."
"Oh...you have family in Minnesota?"
"Yeah! They moved there after the hurricane back home. Work at Mayo Clinic. Facility services, the whole family. 2 shifts back to back."

And maybe its because of the meme but it does feel unusually hot. Could it be that powerful? At one of the schools I deliver the secretary has a printed cartoon meme by her desk. And she told me, once when I pointed it out, "I love them. They are little ideas that get in your head. That is what they mean. Little ideas. Like viruses."

It is late September and usually the water route would be slowing down but this week it has been busier. Feeling it not just in my arms but in also the heave of the truck as the full bottles sway forward in their bays. When I leave the depot and pull onto Wakinmer Avenue I tap the brakes slowly and ease into the stop with all the inertia at my back. Each of the 100 jugs sloshing and glugging to every beat on the street and every footstep up back steps.
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Ugh, this is where I stopped because I realized I wanted to start talking about fluid dynamics which sounds so lovely (Fluid Dynamics! It can be raunchy or clever or just a great name for a bar. Or a boat.) but I know nothing about it.

Speaking Of Helicopters

While we are still on helicopters...

The trailer for the second season of Jack Ryan on Amazon TV came out and I am sucker for anything "spy" and/or geopolitical (albeit its still a derivative of a Tom Clancy property so get ready for cringe) and for sure I will be watching it this November.



In the first season there is a cool scene that I want to add to my list of dreams.* In it our titular hero is at a party. This is before he has emerged as the hero and is trying to convince people that he indeed is the only one that can solve the problem. Its a party in someone's backyard on the Chesapeake Bay and while our hero is trying to convince people (and flirt with the love interest) a Coast Guard helicopter shows up over the horizon and just lands right there in the middle of the party. Then two people come out and approach Jack Ryan and go something like "Mr. Ryan I am Officer So and So and I am here to escort you to the Pentagon under orders of the Secretary of Defense. Lt Whats Their Face is here to drive your car back to your apartment while you get in the helicopter with me." And then he goes and everyone is shocked at what this mysterious stranger has wrought. And what could they know!

I want that to happen to me. I am pulling up to the office or dropping my kids off at school and a chopper just buzzes the building and swoops into the parking lot "Hey! The President needs you to write a very long email! You need to come with us to Washington, now!"

And I would get in, no questions asked!


*Note this list includes 1) Owning a shirt that says "Staff" on the back 2) Planting a tree and 3) Making a citizen's arrest.

Fire Birds

I don't know what inspired me but I felt the need to re-watch one of my favorite movies as a child, recently. So I paid the $3 to digitally rent and watch Firebirds starring Nicolas Cage and Tommy Lee Jones

The Go-Go 90s

If you are one of my Russian porn bot readers then you may have seen it as Wings of the Apache which was the international release title.

I watched this movie way too much as a kid. It was one of those return to the video store and immediately renew movies to re-watch. The lone copy in Buho Video in Rio Piedras? Oh that was mine effectively.

That all said this movie is awful. Its like Top Gun but with helicopters save there is no awesome soundtrack or memorable one-liners. And if Top Gun did have maybe a tongue in cheek (or purposeful?) gay theme then...oh boy is the movie beyond manly.

"When do they get to the part where the blow up the cartel? That is all we want to see, right? Them kicking ass?" asks my wife about 75 minutes in and I realized I may have been doing a lot of fast forwarding as a kid.

The movie opens with a title screen/opening crawl. Like Top Gun!

Its about the war on drugs and a statement from Pres George HW Bush about the war on drugs. We are going to get you, ya drug dealers.

This is where the movies reaches its first radical 90s moment as it was a simpler time with the War on rugs. The War on Drugs made GI Joe and Cobra team up! Who cocaine must be a hell of a drug to get that to work. And while this was boiled down to simple "Just Say No" back home it has complicated socio-economic impacts domestically and abroad. That is beyond this blog (Because this blog is kind of like the Firebirds of blogs) but you don't send military advisers to a country without some ripples.

And in this case the country is...South America. All of it. The movie never names a specific country save it is set in the Catmarca Desert which per some cursory review is around Argentina. Which is not even close to where I think a hack writer would want to site a drug cartel movie (Really expecting the Columbia with a U to show up on the title screen) but that location looks a lot like the desert they train in over in the US so likely a money saver. The whole thing irks me know as an adult geography nerd as it is some "Africa is a country" tone deafnesses.

We then meet our here, Jake Preston played by Nicolas Cage.

Look...a lot has been said about Nicolas Cage and he has been in a lot of good stuff. He won an Oscar! But he is ALWAYS going hard. Going at 13 out of 10. And in this movie it is not charming or goofy but insufferable. He is chewing the scenery and trying to play a version of Maverick from Top Gun that would never make it past a first draft.

The most emblematic is this scene which is played 100% seriously



Oh this movie is cringe inducing. One particularly awful scene (that I luckily can't find) is one where Nicolas Cage and his love interest (Played by Sean Young who based on research for this article was kind of a minor sex symbol in the 90s. I was way too young which really sums up my explanation for a lot in this movie) have a training flight. And he lays it on thick and awful. He flies behind her helicopter and says "I got a great view of your tail" and then flies over her helicopter in a kind of inverted upside curve (which is cool to see) and then says "As I recall you like me on top." Which she laughs off because it was the go-go 90s and well...I think the Army still has a sexual harassment problem except now there is at least a class people take.

Another cringe-y scene takes place in a laundromat where Nicolas Cage is once again trying to "charm" her bu you know grabbing her and pinning her against the machines but she eludes him all while folding what seems like 30 pairs of lacy delicate pairs of underwear. Its a whole basket full of them. She has no other clothes! This movie took 3 guys to write do you know that?

Tommy Lee Jones is in it and he is always fun albeit it is funny now to see him being chided for being the "Old Man" at 40. That was his shtick even back then. He has got aphorisms for days and channels everything from that search scene in The Fugitive where he lists every house he wants searched. Except that scene was good. My favorite aphorism is "You are going to be busier than three peckered goat."

The hell?!

He also pronounces helicopter as "hee-low-copter" during random times. This would be endearing if consistent (maybe its the old gruff veteran way of saying it) but its not so it is annoying.


Aside from the mean old drug dealers (For real there is a scene that is supposed to create pathos I think where Nic Cage watches a new clip about a major drug bust but that police are helpless to stop the endless tide of drugs. Did Sean Hannity write this?) there is an internal conflict because Nic Cage's character has an eye dominance problem and he can't fly the Apache without fixing it. I never got this much as a kid and still not too much today but it is due to having to use a sort of heads up display in one eye and then use the other eye to watch a screen (or look out the window). But these are two man aircraft so isn't someone supposed to fly and the other shoot? I am sure its a legitimate problem (and I appreciate its not something super hackneyed like the pilot has got the "shakes" after his buddy died) but it feels a bit too specific and underwhelming. This is where they wanted to get the verisimilitude badge?

Don't worry that is also solved by Tommy Lee Jones and some, again, women's underwear. Tommy Lee Jones straps what I assumes is his wife's underwear to Nic Cage's head and ties a sort of periscope to his eye with that and a ton of duct tape. Then they go for a drive in a Humvee around the base with him only using that scope. I guess it forces his weak eye to do all the work? I don't know but Nic's wingman says "I always said you would look good in red panties, Jake"

Really? How did that come up? Of your wingman? Maybe "You always look good in red" but that seems really granular.

I am not one to judge but I think one of the writers had a clear thing going on

Of course I was drawn to the action which TBH there is very little of. The final 15 minutes or so with a lot of setup through convenient exposition. The cartels have hired a super mercenary to protect them. He is unstoppable. Literally entire armies of other sovereign South American countries can't stop this one guy so they need Nic Cage and the Apache helicopter. These helicopter scenes are fun albeit they don't have the deep pit of your stomach feel of good action scenes. I think I just liked helicopters and had not discovered AirWolf just yet.

I am no expert on military tactics or helicopter warfare but watching as an adult I have to think

• Does it make sense to have helicopters dog fight like this? Can we just shoot the mercenary helicopter down with like a jet? Or a missile? This is the only way?
• I know the cartels had a lot of money and ended up effectively running some SA countries but these guys are sophisticated enough that they could buy two freaking fight jets to fly along with super mercenary?!

The movie then ends as you expect. At one point my wife asked me if Sean Young's character dies ("Because this movie fucking hates women!") to which I say not because its pretty much paint by numbers style. This would be a bit charming if maybe the movie were self aware but it plays it dead serious.

I'll leave you with the trailer which comes off a jumbled and wimpy for what is supposed to be a man movie. It doesn't tell you much but gives away everything. Enjoy and remember to keep your nose up.

Trailer for Fire Birds on TrailerAddict.

White Claw

Today social media is a buzz because of reported shortages of White Claw hard seltzer. And supposedly  Ohio is the number one drinking state for it. Which makes sense because Ohio has become Arkansas on a lake.

"That's unfair," you say. "Its beyond popular so how can it be trash. Elitist much?"

Or "Slammimg on White claw is slamming on things women inherently like and you are projecting the patriarchy"

Or "You had a post about loving fizzy water once even posting a blurry photo of Lacroix. Please stop hypocrite"

To which I say...someone read this?!

My recent diet changes had me try Whiteclaw and...its not bad. It needs to be stop time cold. Absolute zero cold. Crack the sap in tree branches cold so it sounds like the January forest is alive. We are dancing school cold! Then it feels pleasantly sharp and winnows the bottle of the Dimetap battle aftertaste. Because of this I glug them down. Your hand itself is the enemy.

They are not that bad. I have 4 in the fridge and I feel powerful.