erratic scribbler

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2

gimme my rightful parking space!
2007-07-03 01:13:00
One of the nicer community-outreach programs that the university promotes is one in which some of the handicapped people come to campus and help keep it clean. Some of them are very noticeable - inadvertently putting out their cigarettes with an uncontrollable and likely communicable level of drool - while others blend in quite nicely with the inebriated underclassmen. They are given trash bags and spears and despite their somewhat limited capacity of expression, they do manage to convey what a shitty job it is. We tend to think that they're probably happy to be a useful member of society, even if they're just picking up our garbage. I think you have to be fucking retarded if you're happy to be a useful member of a society that thinks like this.During lunch today I walked to get some coffee at the student union but took a detour towards the public restroom when I got there. While still in the hallway I heard a lot of noise coming from the other side of the door. At first I expect...
More About: Space , Parking , Gimme

play it again, adam
2007-07-03 00:52:00
I discovered today that I had one song in iTunes that I had listened to 99 times. I'm a bit surprised that it took this long, but the first song to reach 100 on my play count is:(drrrrrrrrrrrrrrumroll...)American Girls, by (surprise surprise) Counting Crows.I could go on and on at length - and have - about what makes this song s'damn cool, such as how it's your basic "boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy doesn't appreciate girl, boy loses girl, boy starts wearing girl's clothes" story, but all I really need are these lines:If I make you cryplease tell me whyand I'll try againif you let me try.Keeping in mind that the 100 plays does not include the number of times I've played this song on my guitar, I think it's safe to say I've analyzed these four lines probably more than anything by Shakespeare. And still I don't know if the narrator is indicating whether he intends to try or not to try to make her cry again.Because sometimes making someone cry is a good thing. Sometimes it...
More About: Play , Adam

carousel
2007-07-02 01:10:00
Sometimes the best time spent is coming back to a thing.Like finding a book Friday night hidden on a shelf. You depart immediately for coffee and bring it back, don your favorite fleece sweatpants and sit in the best chair in the house. The cat sits on the stool next to you, the iPod in your pocket. You read. You remember.Then on Saturday you wake up early so you can feel the morning sunlight careen from the surface of your coffee cup onto a page of the book. It's a book you read in high school, one you chose to read from a list, one you chose more-or-less because you had to get written permission from your parents to read it. This morning, there's a breeze just light enough to carry the smoke from your cigarettes away.Through the day you just want to get back to it. You spin and you spin and you spin and think about how the book has stayed the same but seems so different, but it's only that you're different, like how three weeks after you've died your hair will be different be...
More About: Ouse , Carousel

because freedom is better than fame
2007-06-27 02:58:00
To catch up:a credit carda defunct bank accounta cell phone billa laptopa personal loanand a check to my parentsWhile the others are more pertinent, I'm starting with the last. I've already written the check and tomorrow I'll drop it in the mail. They'll get it probably on the day I get paid, or maybe the day after. One down.The problem is, what happens next?See, I'm not paying my parents back first because of any sort of familial loyalty. Ostensibly they sent me 100 bucks a few months ago during the first week I went a few days without eating. But with the check came a note:By cashing this check you are agreeing never to blog about anyone in your family EVER AGAIN.Imagine that:You've gone a month without a job, despite trying every single day. You've forced yourself to swallow your damn pride (it's a small but bitter bitter pill) and ask for some help because without it you'll have to go an entire week without eating. And three days later you stand with that note in one ha...
More About: Freedom , Fame , Bett

forgive us our trespasses
2007-06-26 02:46:00
One of the most formative moments of my entire life happened on a Wednesday morning when I was in eighth grade. We were in religion class, learning about God and Jesus and all that happy shit, when it occurred to me to ask the nun who taught the class why I should believe the Bible. If the fucking cunt-rag had taken a minute to examine my syntax and the obvious omission of one very important word (I didn't ask why I should believe in the Bible), my life would have taken a markedly different careen.As it is though, I am stuck with the memory of being castigated for asking a fairly obvious and innocuous question. All I meant was that these stories had been passed down orally for thousands of years, and then written down and guarded by monks with a vested interest in the particular words within them. All I wanted to know was why I should believe it literally, as she was at that moment positing. But the bitch threw me out of class. As I stood outside the rectory in the cold November su...
More About: Forgive , Tres

mr. gibbs, i feel sullied and unusual
2007-06-24 21:12:00
Brash and shameless with its combustion of daybreak yellow and hellfire red, the peach burns for the tree as well as the fruit-stand. Patient as a masochist, the avocado waits wearing its bruises on it sleeve. The peach wants to sear your hand; the avocado only to be spanked. All too willing to dribble its juices down your chin, the peach is a bit too high-school cheerleader. Providing its own lubricant under its toughened skin, the avocado is the librarian who quivers while removing the dust jacket from a copy of Tropic of Cancer. You can have the cheerleader anywhere you like when she's willing, which is often enough. The librarian, though, only after-hours, and only if you keep quiet. Whereas the peach is the uterus of nature, the avocado is its vagina.The green of the avocado is not the green of decay. Nor is it the green of envy. It is the green of life, of the cycle of Spring come time and time again. It is nature striving for balance, the most delicate substance secreted ben...
More About: Gibbs , Feel , Lied

not a Jedi yet
2007-06-23 14:55:00
I don't remember a time in my life in which I wasn't aware of the Star Wars saga. After all, I've been around only about a year-and-a-half longer, and have had every bit as forceful an impact on popular culture and the collective mind of the populace. But one of the reasons I love the Star Wars saga so much - aside from lightsabres - is that I relate to so many of the characters.When I string together long sentences of questionable grammatic integrity, I feel like Yoda. Sometimes I feel like a bumbling idiot who everyone wishes would fall off a cliff and die pointlessly, which is to say, like Jar Jar. When my student employees come into my office with various predicaments, most of which aren't work-related, I try to view the student as Luke and myself as Obi-Wan:Student: "I'm not not sure if I should break up with my boyfriend or not."Me: "Mos Eisley spacesport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."Student: "What does that mean?"Me...
More About: Jedi

the scribbler historical society
2007-06-18 23:35:00
Today I learned that one of the places in town where I had an apartment has now been turned into a museum. While I am a little surprised about learning of its existence the way that I did, I say it's about damn time that people begin to acknowledge how important I am to 21st century American life.However, one museum is not enough. There should be commemorative cigarette dispensers and soda machines. There should be underwear racks in department stores labeled: "The Erratic Scribbler Memorial Underwear Rack. No pictures please." Bronze casts of my hands should be used to support the breasts of the Speaker of the House. There should be shoes: The Nike Scribbler - perfect for cushioning your feet when you prop them up as you read.Don't think I expect these things for nothing though. Here's a list of my achievements to this point:Contributing to the tradition of American Letters, I have begun no fewer than seventeen masterworks of literature.Contributing to The Sciences, I recently i...
More About: Society , Historical , Hist , Tori

if you wanna view paradise...
2007-06-17 02:03:00
A few weeks back I was excited to have an extra three dollars to my name, which meant that I could go for out for an afternoon coffee. I remember enjoying the coffee - and being outside my apartment - very much, but I made the mistake of checking out the bookstore on my way back home. Window shopping, it seems, does not engender a sunny disposition in yours truly.Today, for the first time in three months, I have not only cash in my wallet but have a positive balance in my bank account as well. I'm'a gunna take myself out for breakfast, buy some jeans that are more accommodating to my post-poverty waistline, and I'll download at least three songs that I've been wanting for months. After that, I'll start paying back some people who don't thankfully employ hired goons, which is good because if said goons were as tenacious as the collectors who call seven times each day, I'd be paste by this time tomorrow. I also made a promise to keep a savings account that I never touch, not ju...
More About: Paradise , View , Arad , Paradis

such a squirt
2007-06-15 18:37:00
A few days ago someone at work emailed us a list of trivia questions and promised a fun summer prize for the person who got them all right first. Due to my unparalleled intelligence, I won. So they gave me a squirt gun.Let me rephrase: they gave me a squirt gun.Granted, the powers that be had the foresight to put a note on it that says "Not to be used at work." But my genius resides in matters of syntax and semantics, vis-a-vie: the 'at'. Does it mean 'while on the clock' or 'while on the premises'? What about when I'm on break? As politicians and religious leader everywhere can attest, words are malleable. De-do-do-do de-da-da-daRegardless, what surprises me is they don't seem to know better. The students who work for me tell cautionary tales about what happens when I get bored, especially if I get bored and have a digital camera nearby. I think mostly everyone in this place knows the havoc I can spread with a simple roll of duct tape. I wouldn't have given me a squirt gun...
More About: Such , Squirt

the really scary one
2007-06-12 01:52:00
The newest of my recurring dreams began maybe about two or three years ago and it comes back about once every other month or so. When I tell you about in a moment, I know already that I'm likely going to fail in conveying exactly how fucking terrifying I find it. Even now, with the lights on and the sun in the sky, I'm shaking a little bit just thinking about it. I'll do my best to get it across, but already my heart is racing...It's a house. That's basically it. I think it might be my grandparents' house, or that it might start out that way. If nothing else, there is always one piece from that old brick farmhouse: a huge, ultra-vivid oil painting of Jesus Christ. I know that sometimes I go past the painting and he grabs at me, leaving streaks of oils on my clothes and skin, and other times I go through the painting, leaving bits of my skin burning on its surface. Sometimes one of these two things is what begins the bad part of the dream, sometimes it's the beginning of the e...
More About: Scary , Really , Ally

recurring dream number one
2007-06-10 15:42:00
Dad and I are driving through the woods in his blue truck, listening to one of his mixed tapes that are the background to every happy childhood memory I have of him. In fact, this scene in and of itself, including the October-evening setting, is made entirely of things I loved from my formative years. But there's a squirrelly sense of foreboding.The day is growing dark. The sky has taken to reflecting the autumn leaves in the last hour, and for one of those persistent reasons that only exist in dreams, we have to find a place to stay. Dad no more than voices this thought to me when suddenly we come to a clearing. It's huge - probably at least a mile in diameter. And, as luck would have it, there's a big blue-stone castle in the middle of it. Odd, sure, but it's a place to stay.We enter the castle and are heartily greeted by Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. As we're talking, nearly every Disney character enters the room. In fact, over the years that the dream recurred, new characters ...
More About: Dream , Recurring , Number

silence and lucidity
2007-06-07 23:40:00
"I could bound myself in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams." - HamletThis post is the result of two friends. One threatened promised to kick me in the left testicle if I didn't write another post soon. The other asked, a few months ago, "You write an honest blog and you'll write about anything. But what's the one thing you're most afraid to write about? And would you do it?"Here's the answer to both parts of the question (and the salvation of my left nut):The vast majority of my dreams are more fun than playing in a sandbox on a rollercoster that ends at a brothel in Singapore. They are very much like movies, to the point where I see myself in my dreams as a character amongst the action and the sleeping-me is merely a camera. Often I'm running around on a pirate ship, or the Death Star, or a brothel in Singapore. Like most dreams, weird things happen rather out-of-the-blue, but in my dreams they're funny. Hilarious. I have w...
More About: Silence , Lucid , Luci

in search of the white
2007-06-03 16:34:00
?The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - Jack KerouacFor me it's not the mad ones. For a long time I thought it was, that I, like Kerouac, sat straddled between two worlds - the normal world and the mad one. As much as he loved the mad ones, Kerouac wasn't, at heart, one himself. His books, though autobiographical, aren't about Jack Kerouac. They're about the people around him, the people he admired and therefore longed to be. Neal Cassady. Gary Snyder. And others as well. His books aren't so much about their madness, but about his madness for them, a madness he gets across with his language and his style while he himself becomes so much set dressin...
More About: Search , White

to summarize...
2007-05-31 20:52:00
because you don't want it, but you can't help chomping on orange-oily-feces-covered salty fries even when you have a rotted tooth and washing them down with a coke bought from a vending machine shaped like naomi after you diddled its pooter and its pooper at the same time in hell.
More About: Mari

getting it right
2007-05-30 22:17:00
This afternoon I got to edit two documents that are to be used at a state-wide conference. The grammar was atrocious. But it wasn't atrocious enough. Because the documents were written in pirate-speak, and I was asked to make them 'sound more pirate-esque.'I totally LOVE being known as 'the pirate guy' almost as much as the fact that a state-wide conference is requiring words such as scalawag, savvy, scurvy-mongrels, swag, and booty.

pleading the five
2007-05-25 21:30:00
I have a lot to do over the next week and I don't know that I'll be around much for blogging. So just in case, I've asked Avitable to shoot me five questions that I now answer to keep you all so fascinated with the complexities of me that you won't notice if I don't post.1. If you could get any celebrity in a room and say or do anything to them, who would you choose and what would you do?Who? Naomi Watts. What would I say? It would be hard to talk with my heart hammering in my throat, but I'd get out a garbled version of 'yer pretty.' What would I do? Anything she'd let me. And anything she'd want. And maybe a few things she wouldn't want but I might talk her into.The more difficult thing to answer is the nature of the room. Should it be a hotel room? My own bedroom? Her bedroom? I simply don't know. If my answer were Tom Cruise, the room would be an acting class. But the lovely Ms. Watts needs no such thing. This part I shall have to ponder.2. Who is your favorite autho...
More About: Leading , Five , Lead

ignorance
2007-05-25 15:46:00
Last night I couldn't resist an invitation from the best singer in Cleveland to join her for open-mic night because we're friends and because listening to her sing feels like willfully closing your umbrella at the height of a tempest. Such a fiercely open display of a pure and luminescent youthful soul that yet knows pain and flesh is impossible for me not to absorb whenever I can.She had asked me to read some of my poems. I was hesitant because I'm usually the guy making fun of the people reading poetry at open-mic nights, or at least that's how it seems. In truth I am actually assaulting the poems themselves for having the literary flavor of a McD's Double Cheeseburger. and having seemingly taken about the same amount of time to prepare. But, with me anyway, flattery will get you everywhere, and her asking me to read was flattery enough. (FYI: if the flattery doesn't work, be adorable, have pretty eyes, a great laugh, and/or show me your boobs.)This is why I was sitting at a...
More About: Nora , Ignorance

pressed to passage
2007-05-24 02:29:00
there are adorable tiny silver tea spoons. i pick one up and scoop the lint from your navel. what i do next is a question for your least-waking moments, the ones where you toss in the heat-driven oasis, in the rumbling viciousness, of your dreams. no matter how many grains of sand you scramble, they'll still take away your driver's license. can you handle a life lived without the comfort of circles? if the planets turned suddenly menorah, nothing but the sunflowers would notice the sudden light and the breeze. but you, you just might feel something like love, like ivory, like a handkercheif, like a warm basket of breadloaves.the ocean might be lessened, but only because we stepped from it. the sky might be bluer, but only because we sometimes cry. your lips might become more red, but only if i can place one soiled shoe in front of the other long enough. i might just hit you again, but only because i meant to land. gravity means nothing at all in the face of love. the most powerful...
More About: Pass , Sage

Darkness
2007-05-23 08:30:00
I'm breaking one of my own blog rules at this very moment - never blog drunk. This little rule is an extension of a larger personal philosophy: never say anything of importance whilst inebriated. I find it's best to enjoy being drunk and not to say anything that might be a) taken the wrong way, or b) bring down the general happy mood.But it's almost 3 AM and I can't sleep. I've smoked too many cigarettes today, and most of them have been in the last hour.Tonight I went up to my favorite bar for my last open-mic night. A few friends came out for a while and we had a good time. Then I hooked up with another group of friends and ended up staying out way longer than I should have (which, honestly, happens to me a lot). I had a really, really good time, especially when my favorite singer dedicated my favorite song of hers to me, just because she knows that I love it so much. Such a night should never have produced the darkness I feel right now.Needle in the hay. Needle in the hay.I ...
More About: Ness , Darkness

proper motivation
2007-05-22 22:53:00
In order to help my progress from carnivore to vegan, a friend of mine has suggested that we build a very large plaster-woman that will shoot tofu from her nipples. I think that would definitely help the transition, and this got me thinking of other things I don't like that could be made better if boobs were somehow involved:Roast beef - We ate this nasty-ass version that mom would cook in the crock-pot all fucking day and we ate it every Saturday for years. It was so gross and nasty. If you made the mistake of taking a swallow of milk whilst chewing, you'd be chewing on that dry piece of cud for at least half and hour. Ugh. I can't eat roast beef to this day, and honestly I don't like steak all that much for the same reason. (I know, I know - I don't deserve the penis I was granted.) However, if a woman were to slather that concoction between her breasts to create a sultry-foody valley of roast beef, I would totally lick it up.Corn on the cob - In the place where I grew up, th...
More About: Motivation , Motiva , Prop , Rope

I've always thought old Don Quixote had it a littl...
2007-05-17 21:07:00
I've always thought old Don Quixote had it a little mixed up: why is it such a big deal to dream the impossible dream? The real trick is to do the impossible dream, to nail the unshaggable virgin, to wear the unwearable underwear. One too many hits with the windmill, I think.Since 1999 I've had a dream, an accomplishment requiring a serious level of dedication, fortitude, and microwave popcorn. I've never got around to it because there was always something else to do. But I don't have to look for jobs any more, and I don't have to work at the cafe until Monday. I have no money, so even going out for coffee is out-of-the-question.I think, therefore, I am going to touch the sun. Starting, paradoxically, tonight.So:popcorn? check.napkins? check.water? check.cigarettes? check.red vines? check.M&M's? check.comfy chair? check. all six Star Wars movies? check.book to read during episode one? check.things to throw at Jar Jar and Ewoks? check.cell phone placed in case my legs atrop...
More About: Thought , Litt , Always

cafe vignette
2007-05-16 23:14:00
There's an older dude who comes into the cafe where I work who dresses mostly in browns and sports a Sam-Elliot-style, mustache that, unlike ole Sam, he twists into thick grey handlebars at the ends. There are two things I love about this guy. One: I want to compliment the guy on having the sack to walk around like that everyday. And two: Even though I've never seen him wear one, I always picture him wearing a cowboy hat.There's a lady who orders a sandwich to go every day, but brings her own container for the sandwich. My mind dazzles with the stream of interrogation this particular curiosity inspires. But it also really pisses me off for some completely inexplicable reason.There's a guy who comes into the cafe with whom I've had many weekend conversations since before I began working there. I hadn't seen him in a while, and when he came in today he professed a great deal of shock at the amount of weight I've lost. He asked me which diet I went on. I told him I went on the o...
More About: Cafe

Upon returning from a walk to the store during an ...
2007-05-15 19:49:00
Upon returning from a walk to the store during an 83-degree afternoon, and upon taking the first bite of the Nutty Fudge Bar you just bought, and upon discovering that it got just a little melty, and upon realizing that you took your shorts off because it's really hot in your apartment, do not do what seems to be the most logical thing and wipe your chocolaty fingers on your underwear.Because it'll only make you look like you somehow left a poo-streak on your hip.
More About: Store , Stor , Return , Walk , Turn

sublime silliness
2007-05-15 17:06:00
I hate commercialism, but I love commercials. This billboard, which I saw in a neighboring neighborhood, never fails to make me laugh.And for three days now my favorite thing to exclaim is: "Zwack is Most Good!" It might just be the z/w combo, but I don't know that I'll ever fully understand why this amuses me so. Though I do understand why it annoys the people who are now avoiding me.
More About: Ness , Line , Lines , Lime , Silliness

true crime
2007-05-14 16:27:00
It was dark, but not stormy. Yet the scream that suddenly shot its way through my upstairs apartment was certainly befitting such a classic setting. It rattled my nerves the way that a shattering bottle of bourbon does - sharp and bitter and hinting of ominous things to come. I hit the mute button on the remote for the stereo; there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood and they make a lot of noise during most parts of the day, especially, it seems, the parts during which I'm trying to sleep or to read. That scream hadn't sounded like a kid, though, and it hadn't sounded like a squeal of pleasure or excitement. For all of its noise it sounded more like the steady click of the hammer on an old .45.Then another scream tore through the darkness and the trees. I didn't even pause to put my shoes on.Descending to the parking lot, I saw a man bending over the front seat of a car, as though maybe he'd left something on the passenger seat and was retrieving it. Except that he had his t...
More About: Crime , True , True Crime , Rime

sunday bits
2007-05-05 21:32:00
I found this list on the Modern Library's website ranking books, one column listing the editors' choices and the other column ranking readers' choices. There are some fascinating disparities, but either way, the real choice here is do you want to read what some people think you should read or what everyone else is reading? I think I'll just continue choosing for myself thankyouverymuch.A friend sent me a link to this site. For years I've been keeping a list of what I've read, partially to keep a count and partially just for my own edification. What I love about Web 2.0 is that there is now a website for pretty much any person's interests, and you can meet other people with the same proclivities.Though I'm not sure how it developed, and I'm sure it developed unconsciously, I sometimes choose the type of book I read by the weather. For example, I almost always choose to read a Tom Robbins book or two around Christmas. It's usually in October that I read an author or two whom...
More About: Sunday , Bits

Perhaps more than most things in life, I thoroughl...
2007-05-05 18:27:00
Perhaps more than most things in life, I thoroughly enjoy living in a place where, upon someone spying my copy of The Fountainhead in my back pocket at the coffee shop this morning, I found myself quite suddenly engaged in a very lively debate on several matters philosophical with three other people, all of whom gave all appearances of being very intelligent, well-read, and in possession of a very refreshing command of their powers of retention.Their powers of observation, however, were worse than a blind man performing a colonoscopy. For example, I would assume that I didn't bring such a tome with me because my ass needs the padding (it does, but that's another story). While I may choose to opine upon another person's choice of reading material (okay, I likely would because I like talking about book just slightly less than I enjoy talking about sex in all is wonderful manifestations), but I would keep said commentary brief. My unexpected breakfast companions, however, had no suc...
More About: Life , More , Things , Most , Thing

the federal blogger protection program
2007-04-29 16:16:00
I used to go by a different name. A different blog. I can't go into detail, but for personal reasons I had to delete that blog after over a year and more than 300 posts. Worse, I'd developed a respectable readership. (The size of the readership was respectable, mind you. I can't safely speak for the readers themselves.) But it had to go. I had to disappear, become an unperson, visit Room 101 on my own terms. There were other options, sure, but for the sake of integrity and artistic freedom (blogging is writing and therefore it can be an art-form), I choose to enter The Federal Blogg er Protection Program .The Program, as we call it on the inside, is actually pretty nice. I have an escort everywhere I go, which is kind of like having a friend. And this friend is paid to never leave you, no matter how much you complain, use him, put cigarettes out on his arm, puke in his car after a long night in Singapore, shove hot dogs up his ass, go over the minutes of his cell-phone plan, circle...
More About: Al B , Logger

putting the view in the interview
2007-04-26 20:37:00
Being unexpectedly unemployed is a taxing and tedious business. It's pretty easy to spend 40 hours each week working your ass off in the hope that someone else might pay you to do 40 hours of work each week. If you take a part-time job, you have to weigh the benefit of being able to eat with needing the time to find a real, full-time job.Add in the fact that I'd just moved a few months ago and had depleted my savings to do it, and then was unfairly fired (they are in a very actionable position, and I'm an actionable kind of guy) from the job I'd moved here to take and have therefore had to balance setting up interviews against whether or not I had the bus fare to get to and from the interview at that moment, and this whole thing has gotten seriously out of hand with how serious it's become. I try really, really hard never to take anything - especially myself - too seriously, but most things lose their levity when you've gone two days without eating. Luckily, I've been fat all...
More About: Interview , The View , View , Putting , The V