..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Sunday, August 28, 2005

“I need to return some videotapes..."
- American Psycho



FICTION:



Swatter



-Where’d you go?

The drive starts off bad. Cars honking as I’m white-knuckling the wrong way up the last one-way street rather than driving all the way around the block like I’m supposed to. And I’m messing with the broken phone the whole time, still thinking that if enough of the pieces stay together when I open it, maybe it’ll work again. All I need is for the screen to come on so I can get those numbers out of it. I think about last summer when the phone died the first time and decided to delete all the numbers in the address book (90% of them were hers) and how she took out the phone that day, saw all her friends and family erased, and whispered all sad, almost to herself, ‘where’d I go?’ I didn’t understand her question until now. She’d thought I’d erased her on purpose. And I didn’t admit it then, but she was right. It did feel just like that.

-Where’d you go? I ask myself. That’s all I really want to know.

I drop the movies into the slot and stop to look at a sign on the wall in the vestibule.
It says ‘This Could Happen To You!’ and nailed under this warning is a melted videotape.
Bullshit, I think to myself. They did that with a blowtorch just to scare people.
I was walking back to my car with my head down when I saw it.

A huge praying mantis, almost a foot long, slowly marching towards that glowing white sign, a beacon so bright I saw it from my apartment across the river, a lighthouse cutting through a mile of river fog. I stare up at that sign and the mad collision of bugs buzzing around it and wonder what kind of creature would want to climb into that hurricane of webs and wings and stingers. I start to get nervous watching the mantis creep across the parking lot even though I swear the damn thing just looked both ways for oncoming traffic. I bend down, and its head spins all the way around to look up at me. You never see them around anymore, maybe because the female’s habit of eating her suitor’s head while he’s banging away on her shiny green ass doesn’t help improve their numbers.

God damn that thing moves like no other bug I’ve ever seen.
Maybe it’s the size of it that’s so strange. Maybe it’s because it’s the only bug I’ve ever seen with a neck. Maybe I’ve never really looked at one before. Or maybe it’s something else.

I get closer. I stare at its feet, watching the way it tests the concrete like a child dipping a toe into the deep end of the pool. Its body looks heavy, like a vegetable, so big I can actually hear it taking steps, big enough that I’m wondering if it can scream. Its torso moves independent of its legs, as if four bugs got broken in half and the wrong parts were glued back together. And those claws that gave it its religious name lend it more human movements than any insect should have. And that strange goddamn head? There’s more intelligence in those eyes than most cats. Especially that dumbass cat she left behind. And it looks like a cat, cleans its face like a cat. Good thing there’s no green cats in the world or somebody’d get confused, scream, and try to swat it. I stare at the tips of its antennae. They wave through the air toward me, like a baby’s feet treading water, smelling my breath or hearing my voice or whatever the hell it is they do. I suddenly realize what it looks like. What it is that makes those bugs such a shock to see.
It’s half-man, half-horse, half-cat, half-bug. A praying mantis is like a tiny green centaur.

* * *

-Where’d you go?

-Nowhere.

-Just tell me the truth.

-I swear.

I picked up the antenna and tried to bend it back into shape.
I tried to screw it back into the top of the phone, as if that was enough to make it work again even though the screen was shattered and the battery was bobbing in a nearby mud puddle. I sigh and hold out an open hand.

-Then just give me my fucking key back.

-No. Everything I own is in there.

-I don’t give a shit. If you’re leaving me, then really leave this time.

-I am, trust me.

-Fine. I don’t want you coming back when I’m not home.

-Why? You think I’m going to stick fingerprints on all your records?

-Now I do.

-Fuck off.

-Give me the key.

-Don’t hurt my cat.

-What? Where the hell did that come from? I would never hurt that stupid cat...

-I just thought that...because you’d never hurt me...you’d take it out on the cat instead.

-Like you just took it out on my phone?

She shook her head and turned away. I tried to think of everything I’d been meaning to say. Then her ride was there, and she was gone, and I was still sitting in the street trying to put my phone back together. I fished the battery out of the puddle and watched them drive off. Should have known it would be her ‘best friend’ coming to pick her up. That’s who she must have called on my phone before she broke it. The phone didn’t even have her name stored in there, just the words, ‘best friend.’ I wondered who else she called on my phone tonight. Guess I’ll never know. Guess that’s why she broke it. Unbelievable. Her best friend shows up to get her before the fight really picks up steam. Coincidence? And now the two of them are going to drive around all night and talk shit about me. Perfect. And what was that shit she said about hurting her cat? If she cared so much about her cat, why’d she leave it behind? She only said that crap about her cat because I ranted for about a week after her best friend got smacked in the face by that asshole. And even though I secretly thought that if any girl deserved to get hit, it was her, I was still ready to defend her.

Now the two of them were driving around judging me? Was this a joke? I mean, now when I think about my girlfriend’s best friend (fuck, that’s a mouthful) getting hit in the face I start to think, was it really that serious? Especially since it was that crazy bitch that got hit. I wasn’t there to see it, but they acted like it was this big, last-round uppercut. After the bell when the gloves were down. At first, anyway. They changed their tune later. But how bad was it compared to what she did to him? I didn’t see any bruises. It’s just skin against skin, right? Out loud I said the usual, of course, ‘Don’t let me ever see him around,’ and ‘I always knew he was a pussy,’ and ‘I’ll beat his ass when I see him, seriously I will.’

It was straight from the playbook, but I meant all of it. Honestly, what kind of gutless fuck hits a girl? I’d never do that. That’s what I said then, and that’s what I was saying now. Then, after all their crying and all my tough talk, this idiot, my girl’s best friend, she takes this guy back?! Starts saying it wasn’t really a punch. More of a backhand, she says. Almost an after-thought, she explains. Half-hearted. Didn’t even feel it. Precisely one-third as hard as she hit him since she was moving in the other direction. Who slowed down the videotape and watched it with a stopwatch and a slide rule to figure out all that math? My girlfriend stomped her foot and told me to stop worrying about it, said it had nothing at all to do with me.

-It was more like a ‘swat.’ That’s the word she used. That’s what they both told me.

-Rhymes with ‘twat,’ I said. No one laughed, so I stopped talking about it. But I didn’t stop worrying about it. I swore next time I saw him out in the wild I’d pretend that it was her best friend I was hitting.

-Please, I just don’t want to talk about it anymore, she pleaded.

And now they were driving around judging me after they forgave that fucker? Even though I proved my restraint tonight? Even after all this shit in the middle of the street? She smashes my cell phone at my feet so I can’t check the numbers she called and it’s my fault?

And still I stood there and did nothing except quietly reassemble it like it was a jigsaw puzzle I just got for my ninth birthday. Thanks for the challenge, honey! I didn’t get you nothin’! I was going to scream at you, but now I think I’ll just happily sit here in this mud puddle next to these mosquito eggs and floating candy wrappers and oil slicks of dog piss and see if I can solve this phone in six moves or less.

And why’d she say that about her cat? Let me get this straight. She thinks I suppress all my anger against her and her and him and everyone else in my life, then lose my temper direct it all at her stupid animal? Just because one time, six months ago, I smacked it on the nose with a fly swatter when it was licking my goddamn ravioli? She thinks about all this way too much.

* * *

After ten minutes, the praying mantis is safely across the parking lot and starting up the pole to the blinding white sign above. It taps at the smooth metal pole with a claw, and I’m thinking there’s no way it’s getting up there without a little grappling hook and some action-movie theme music. Then suddenly it’s climbing, holding onto nothing that I can see. I smile for the first time since she left.

I turn to go back to my car and almost run into about five people watching me watching that bug. Head down again, I walk quickly through them all, bumping into a woman with a bright green shirt. The kind of crazy green that means 'don't eat me' in the insect world. No wonder I bumped into her. All she needs are the big fake eye spots on her back like the caterpillars have to fool the birds into thinking they’re snakes and her camouflage would be complete. When my shoulder hits her elbow, she squawks like an animal and drops her copy of ‘Godzilla 1975’ to the concrete, almost tripping over it. One of her kids quickly retrieves it. I keep moving, waiting for her to make another noise. Once inside my car, I hear someone finally spot the mantis.

-Ug!

One of her boys sees it first. It’s not an ‘ug,’ I almost tell him, it’s a ‘bug,’ stupid. She squawks, he grunts. Does this family use any words to communicate?

Then I start thinking. What if because I drew this crowd, one of them ends up killing it? How long will they watch it climb before someone takes off a shoe? Is it cold enough outside for someone to take off a shoe? I don’t need that kind of guilt right now. I stop at the parking lot exit and idle, watching even more people gather around the sign. Look at these clowns. I never should have stopped to look. It’s like Tom Sawyer white-washing that fence. People driving by are gonna think that ‘Used Movies For $9.95!’ is the best deal ever.

Finally everyone walks away except for that woman in green and her two little boys. I start to pull out into traffic, and that’s when I see a blur of motion in my rearview mirror. It’s the woman in green, swinging at the pole with her videotape. My heart jumps, and I’m so angry I punch the dashboard hard enough to crack something in the car or in my fist. You fucking bitch. Did you just kill it? Why the hell would you kill it? Was it climbing too slow for you? Was it looking right at you?

Wait, maybe she missed it. I’m at the bridge again, and I want to go back and look, but it’s all these fucking one-way streets in my way. In the corner of my eye, I think I see a cop. Then he’s gone. To get back, I’d have to cross the bridge, do a U-turn and then circle the block to get back there. I do it. I’ve got to see if it’s really dead.

I turn and turn and turn and turn and think the only thing that separates rats from cats is the fact that cats actually look into your eyes. They seem to know what eyes are for, and I think that bug did, too. Then I wonder why the hell every road in this town seems to anticipate the direction I need to go and place an arrow, red light, or dead-end in my way.

That’s when the cop pops back out of the glow of the fog to nail me for my illegal U-turn. His flashers fill my car with color and confusion like the smoke machines and lasers lighting up a stage when a musician reappears to surprise a weary crowd with an unwanted encore. He walks up and shines a flashlight in my eyes and asks what I’m doing, and through the glare I see that he’s really a she. I tell her I’m taking back some movies and I need to get there before midnight or they’ll be late again. For a second, she seems like she’s going to let me go. Then she says ‘show me the movies’ and, of course, I can’t. She stands there shaking her head and writing the ticket while I babble about one-way streets and bugs and bright green shirts and videotapes, not realizing what I must sound like. She interrupts me by ripping the ticket from the book five inches from my face.

-Right there’s the court date if you want to dispute anything, she says, and then she’s gone. I laugh, imagining myself explaining everything to a judge.

Now I definitely got to go back, I think to myself as I read the fine on the ticket. Now that bug’s life is worth a hundred and sixty bucks.

I’m finally back at the video store and running toward that sign. The praying mantis had made it about five feet up the pole. The top half of the bug, the human half, is intact but hanging onto nothing, a hooked claw still pulsing in the night air. The bottom half, the animal half, is detonated below, a green comet streak of gore and legs trailing down the pole behind it. I grind my teeth so hard I think they’ll explode in my mouth.

-You stupid fucking cunt, I whisper. It would make sense to no one but me, but I’d fucking punch you square in the face right now. Then I’d grab your eyes and mouth like a bowling ball and drag you back to the scene of your crime. If I did that kind of thing, I mean. Which I don’t. Something should be done though, I decide. I need to say something to her. How could I find her? I should never have left the parking lot in the first place.

Wait a minute. I remember. She rented ‘Godzilla 1975.’ Who the hell would ever pay to watch that movie? An ill-fated Japanese disco musical? Grown men roller-skating and fighting in monster suits? I laugh to myself as I drive straight to a 24-hour store and scrounge the sale bins for my own copy. Turns out it should be called ‘Godzilla $19.95’ because that’s how much that piece of shit costs. Now we’re up to one hundred eighty bucks and climbing for that bug.

The next day I park my car in direct sunlight, roll up my windows and place my new movie on my dusty, cracked dashboard. So this is how a dog feels, I think as sweat rolls down my nose. I stare at the videotape, wondering if it really will melt. As I look at it, I think I see green streaks from the mantis along the edge, then I remember that it isn’t the movie that killed it.

I’m shocked to find that it does melt. It takes almost eight hours. I swear I didn’t blink the entire time, so no one could have switched tapes or snuck in a blowtorch. Eight hours, and it actually melts as I watch. It could have been the heat stroke, but I swear I saw it happen. If I’d stared out the window instead, the world would have looked like one of those time-lapse movies.
I could have watched a traffic signal flashing like a strobe light, or a tree straining for the sun, or a bowl of fruit shrinking into mold while it’s being painted, or a swing-set being constructed around a child by its parents, or a bird’s nest being built from plastic bags and gas station receipts, or a flower closing around a dying, broken ant, or her dead cat curling into a rising boil of maggots under my bed, , or a drive-in screen slumping toward the cars on the ground during a thousand drive-in movies...

* * *

For three hours after the ravioli incident, I explained to her the physics of a fly swatter and why it wasn’t my fault that it hit her cat that hard. I looked it up online. I went to the library. I pulled out a tape measure and a bathroom scale. I reenacted the crime with a stuffed animal. I drew her a diagram in the tomato sauce. She wasn’t buying it.

Last night when she broke my phone and left me, I went back inside and sat in the dark with two rented videotapes that we never got around to watching carefully balanced on my knees. One box had a picture of a half-man, half-woman on it. The other one had a half-man, half-shark. Seventy-two hours ago, she was standing next to a bubblegum machine in the video store with me laughing and saying that those two movies would make a damn good theme night. The half-man, half-shark movie fell off my knee first. I heard her cat panic at the noise and crash headfirst into the closet door. I picked the movie up and read the receipt taped to it. Two days late already. I’d take them back right now, but I didn’t want to leave the apartment. Without my cell phone, I needed to be at home to get her call. I sat in the dark waiting for her to think I’d calmed down and call me so I could yell at her some more. Her cat creeped up to sniff my leg. Can they smell anger? Or is that dogs? I heard him licking his paw and picking at his claws. He licks himself like he’s injured every time I look at him wrong.

Look at that thing. He bashes his own head into the closet door and now I’m the enemy? You know, I’ve seen people hit their dogs with newspapers across the nose and the dog still lovingly looks up at them like they’d drag them out of a fire and twenty miles to the hospital. This cat gets a small nudge off my lunch last winter when I’m trying to eat my last can of ravioli, and it still licks its foot like it’s broken in ten places.

I’ve noticed that when her cat sleeps in sunbeams, it looks green in direct sunlight, but only if you stare at it too long. I told her this once and she asked me, ‘how do you know green to you is green to me?’ Then she said it didn’t matter, that ‘everything turns green when you stare at it too long.’ She had a point.

I sat in the dark, and I thought about all the things I had to do for her to take me back last time. Like tell her why I loved her. This seemed like such a simple question, but it was very important to her. I swore I already had a list of things written down somewhere, ready to be read to her in case of just such an emergency. It was a good list, I swear. It started at her feet and ended at the tips of her antennae, and it described everything I loved about everything in between. I just never got around to writing it. I mean reading it. She would scream that I could never tell her one thing that I loved about her, and I would swear that I had that list somewhere if she’d just give me a fucking minute to go look for it.

-I wished you’d make eye contact more, I joked. Then she was glaring at me and I changed my mind.

Okay. The top of your head always smells good, I offered.

-That’s it? She waited for more.

I just stood there, and at that moment she hated me. I deserved it.

I always suspected she had a different kind of list for me. And the fact that I never took movies back on time would be in the top five.

I sat in the dark and stared out the window, watching for her headlights to hit the trees at the end of our street. My neck hurt from staring at that one spot, and I turned to stretch and look across the river while my muscles relaxed. That’s when I saw the glowing sign of the video store cutting through the fog hanging on the water. It was the only thing I could see. On the other side of the bridge, down a bizarre series of pain-in-the-ass, one-way streets. Five more bucks in late fees if I didn’t get there by midnight.

Okay, screw it, I thought. I’d run the movies back right now and be back in ten minutes. She couldn’t call a broken phone anyway.

* * *

Eight hours in a car. Doesn’t sound crazy? Try it without driving anywhere.

I rub my eyes and get ready to open the car door. I hesitate, thinking about the time my VCR ate my favorite movie, and after I pulled out all the entrails out of the machine, I tried to fix it myself. I took all the crunchy sections and cut them out, then I spliced the undamaged parts of the tape back together. I figured, hell, whatever’s missing couldn’t be too important, right?

Then I was watching that movie with some friends and the hero was walking down the street when the picture skipped, flashed, jumped and suddenly that hero was walking in the other direction and sporting a black eye. Everyone was like, ‘what the fuck?’ and we laughed and tried to come up with our own scene to fill in the gap in the tape, our own reasons why his eye suddenly went black.

I check the rearview mirror. Even though my eye didn’t suddenly go black, I know I don’t come out of the car the same way I went in. I could have done anything with those eight hours, and instead I wasted all that time watching the sunlight twist a videotape into a lump over the course of an entire workday. The sign in the vestibule will read ‘It Happened To Me!’ and under it will be a picture of me, 10 pounds lighter, covered in sweat, grinning like a wrestler on the scale who just made weight. When I think about it all later, I’m guessing I probably just ended up squeezing that movie in my fists and smashing it into the dashboard anyway. I mean, who the hell would sit in a car for eight hours to watch a videotape melt?

The next day she still hasn’t come back. I treat her cat with more care than I ever did before, and she’s not even around to see it. I walk into the video store holding the fucked-up videotape, and I tell the twelve-year-old manager behind the counter that my girlfriend left this movie in my car, and could I pay for it, please? Some number is still visible on a twisted sticker and he looks it up in the computer.

-Nineteen ninety-five...plus tax, he says.

-Of course it is, I laugh.

He looks at me funny while I’m smiling.

Actually, it’s over two hundred bucks, I almost tell him. And climbing.

Instead, I tell him I’ll need a receipt. He sighs and prints one out, ripping it off the machine and throwing it at me even angrier than the cop did with the ticket. I study the paper and just like I’d prayed (something I never did before and haven’t done since) there’s the rental history of the masterpiece ‘Godzilla $19.95’ and a list of names and numbers. I match a name up with the night she left me. Wait. Who left me? I’m confused, did my girl really rent a Godzilla movie the night she broke my phone? She’d never watch that shit. Suddenly I see the name I’m looking for on the bottom left-hand corner of the page. That’s her name? Weird. I could have sworn I knew her.

And there’s her address. They shouldn’t give this out to just anyone, I think to myself. What if some crazy bastard was stalking someone? Remind me to change my address to a fake one when I renew my video store membership.

Back in my car and I see that I’m low on gas. I’m not gonna make it to her house, and I still got five days of back and forth to work before I get paid again. I stop at my dad’s house, and he bounces a ten-dollar ball off my chest, not even taking the time to make a little green paper airplane out of it like he used to. He turns away before I can say thanks and mumbles something about how I need a sense of responsibility. Or does he say ‘sense of direction?’ I start to leave then stop in the doorway and turn around, the screen banging loudly against my foot. He looks up at the noise. I quietly explain to him that I’ve never been so motivated in my life. That actually I do have a sense of direction this time. That I know exactly where I’m going.

Running down his driveway, I remember my dad once telling me that it’s illegal to kill a praying mantis in this state. And I’m glad I wasn’t thinking about this fact when I got pulled over or that officer would have had to taser me when I excitedly explained to her that I was now her partner and this could be a goddamn buddy-cop film we were in.

On the way down the last one-way street, I see a car that reminds me of my girlfriend’s best friend, and I think about how this ‘best friend’ never referred to my girlfriend as her best friend. I always thought that shit had to be mutual. Isn’t that like saying you’re someone’s husband but they aren’t your wife? Like still referring to a girl as your girlfriend even after she’s gone?

I drive straight there. I’m there fast as fuck. No wrong-way trips down one-way streets. No bridges or rivers. No U-turns or cops. No crushed, steaming videotapes splintering and hissing and unspooling around my white and purple knuckles.

She comes to the door and stares at me. My eyes have trouble focusing on her face through the metal screen. I can’t seem to tell her why I’m there even though I had a whole speech ready. I was going to ask her if she thought those bugs could sting you. Ask her if that’s why she had to kill it. I was going to explain that it couldn’t have hurt her, that they actually devour much more harmful insects, things that can sting you, that she didn’t need to kill it just cause it was moving slow enough for her to catch, that it’s not okay to kill something just ‘cause it can’t make any noise, that she’s teaching her two boys not to respect life, that they’ll end up abusing women when they’re older if she continues to step on every creature slower than her. And I’d ask her if she noticed that it was looking right at her.

I say none of this. I ask her one question instead. And she’s as confused as I was when my girlfriend said the same words to an empty phone.

-Where’d you go?

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t come out or let me inside. She’s standing on the other side of the screen door thinking about the question instead of the answer, and I’m looking at her through that screen door thinking about the ravioli incident with the cat and the physics of a fly swatter. I remember loudly reading something to my girlfriend about how a solid object like a hand can always be sensed and easily avoided by an insect. And how it’s that screen on the end of the stick that makes up the average flyswatter that does all the magic. It’s that screen that makes it possible for the fly not to see it coming.

And even though I’ve never hit a girl in my life, that’s when my arm shoots out and plows through her screen door, my fist disappearing halfway into her mouth, the heat of her breath on my knuckles loaded with the words she never got to use.

This is not something that I do, I think to myself. Never before and never again. And it’s not a swat, not a slap or that backhand that you always see in the movies. It’s a full-tilt right-cross to the teeth right at the end-of-the-round bell that sends her spinning around on one foot, her hands grabbing and ripping down the hole in the screen door to keep herself standing. I turn the knob and push her back, prying the door open with my foot. She struggles hard to keep me outside, so I step through the hole she tore in the door and start wiggling my way in. She runs away, and inside the house it’s dark and smells like warm laundry and candles. I turn and see her two boys coming around the corner, eyes wide in shock at the sight of me squeezing through the hole like a barnyard animal being born.

For some reason, they come running at me, and I get them both into headlocks and pick them up off the ground. The kids are choking, and the woman is screaming and fumbling with the phone while her mouth bleeds down her hand, streaming through the black curls of cord tangled around her arm. Do they still make phones like that? Does anyone still rent videotapes? I tighten my grip to quiet the boys, wondering if the woman will use words or grunts to describe the scene to the cops like she described that bug to the kids. I’m almost laughing as I picture myself in court, explaining my week to the judge.

I imagine myself pointing with a broken car antennae to a drawing of an insect, a big bug the way a child draws it, a huge cartoon creature with a smile on its face and shoes on all fifty of its feet and a telephone in its claws. I’d start at those fifty green shoes and work my way up, carefully listing everything that makes the praying mantis unique and everything I love about them. Or, at least, everything that makes a bug worth two hundred bucks and three days of my time. The jury would nod their understanding. I imagine my next exhibit, photographs of my orange-stained shirt from the ‘ravioli incident.’ And then my last piece of evidence before the defense rests. A detailed diagram of the scene of the crime, your honor. An impossible map of one-way turns and bridges and rivers. I point to this map and I ask everyone in the room:

How could I have possibly driven there? On an empty gas tank? Impossible, I’d say to them all. It wasn’t me. Before or since. I call my girlfriend as a witness. And not just to see her again, I swear.

The boys are biting me now. I feel their tiny fists on my arms, their sticky, candy-covered fingers pinching my skin. I lean down and I can smell their hair. I’m thinking to myself, if I was an insect, if I really did these kinds of things, I’d eat their fucking heads they smell so good.



© 2007 david james keaton

::: david - 10:25 PM [+] :::
...

"With a dying world below, and a microphone..."
-Live

here's a question for you:

what's a better invention? the "Cheese-us?" or Fish Jerky? these are two things i thought up recently and they didn't generate a tenth of the excitement i had when i thought of 'em. The "Cheese-us" would simply be a Jesus...made out of cheese!!! think about that! fucking genius. you could subsitute it for communion wafers. and my other invention is Fish Jerky. i had four bags of jerky at work and was thinking, why not Fish Jerky? just the name Fish Jerky sounds cool enough to start making it. who's with me? anyway, the "Cheese-us" almost inspired a call to the human resources complaint line at work. didn't happen though, probably because i was begging for them to call, cause that's just free publicity for my "Cheese-us!" never mind.

yes, The Devil's Rejects is a masterpiece. it is the nastiest movie i've seen in a looooong time. it's the movie you wanted when you saw "House of 1000 Corpses" and said, "goddammit, this is the same cutesy post-modern bullshit that Rob Zombie said he was tired of." notice the perfect 1970's credit sequence. i thought it was "The Wild Bunch" for a minute when the dude says "if they move kill 'em" then POW "directed by Sam Peckinpah" comes on the screen. except this time the dude goes, "you're not getting off that easy bitch" or something equally inspiring and POW "directed by Bobby Zombie" on the screen and these big monolithic letters for the title. so 70's i almost dug out my 45 of "Seasons in the Sun." and notice the only time "Freebird" has ever been cranked where it doesn't make you groan. that alone is a milestone. added bonuses, forced sodomy at gunpoint, taunting of Christians, unexplained multi-racial families, dude from "Dawn of the Dead," Zombie's wife's naked ass, the chick from "Tremors 2" naked and humiliated, and more dust and blood and highways than i could have hoped for. good shit. this is what a horror movie should be like. it should make you feel all wrong, like you're 9 and you sneaked into something you shouldn't have.

i still have no computer. i'm at the radio station trying to post and host at the same time. so there will be typos here and wrong songs played there. not yet though. some guy just requested an 8 minute Stone Roses song, and since requests have been scare tonight i'm going to play it. i'm trying to showcase Stereophonics with a song an hour by them since they got that new "Sex Violence Other" album out. i heard a couple songs off it and it sounded like the Doves to me. not sure how i feel about that.

lately i can't read anything about the Evolution Vs. Intelligent Design (aka Flat Earth Theory) without a vein in my balls throbbing in anger. i do recommend the article in the new issue of The New Republic for the last word on the subject. there's enough information in there to destroy any Creationist in zero point two seconds.

here's some more hate-mail i sent to hack reporters. this one going to a newspaper in my hometown of Toledo:

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i just read the Bob Frantz article about the potential 911 movie and i have to comment on what a worthless piece that was. never mind his right-wing slant, what a lousy bit of writing. he had no point when he started and none when he finished. it read like a zero draft, like a rambling high school paper. how do you employ someone with such a lack of skill? the disrespect for the craft of writing (even if it is just an editorial) is appalling.

but what i liked most about this man's article was the way he summed up the combination fetish/horror reaction to everything 911. he's exactly the same person that says "remove the Trade Center from the poster of the new Spiderman movie! we haven't healed yet!" then turns around and buys a 50 dollar commemorative 911 coin, made from metal found a ground zero. think about that? what's more offensive? maybe it's the person who collects that coin because he can't understand that he's the worst kind of rubbernecker and death junkie and tries to pass himself off as a patriot. meanwhile, no movie can EVER show the trade center and it must be erased from the current ones because this tragedy needs to be hijacked for some obvious grandstanding. i would love to take a roll of those 911 coins in my fist and punch every one of these people straight in the mouth.

-djk
pittsburgh

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no response this time though. last time i sent something to him he fired back "thanks for reading!" which pretty much negated everything i had to say. i guess i didn't learn my lesson. listening to The Lemonheads now. these songs are too short, don't even give you time to juggle the cds. you know, it's so true about how you run out of favorite songs almost immediately when you're deejaying. i've come to rely on requests as my lifeline to fill the last two hours.

p.s. just noticed Mike Vernon from the Red Wings is talking trash in my comment box on the previous post down there. he should realize that the last time he actually won a fight was against our mutual friend Jerry. it wasn't pretty and, strangely enough, it was on TV...

::: david - 2:02 AM [+] :::
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"What if half the things ever said turned out to be a lie?"
- Prince "The Truth"


first off, i'm on the air in an hour so go to the WYEP website. that's W Y E P dot O R G. request some songs and i'll play all that shit. i swear i will. do it dammit. it makes the time go faster.

so what's up with the cars lately with the loud mufflers? it's not that there's a big engine, it's just some bullshit where they got a hole in the exhaust and it's sounds loud so suddenly these assholes think they're the fast and the furious. it reminds me of little kids who put a card in the spokes of their tricycle to pretend it's a motorcycle. you sound like fools. stop it.

okay, since i got my songs ready early, here's a question to ponder while i kill this last hour. What irritates you more:

1.) people who get all excited to correct you when you're talking about an event after midnight and you say "night" and they're like "uhhh, actually, that's the morning" as they wipe the drip of snot from their nostril. does anyone really think it's morning until birds start chirping? of course not. but people jump on this technicality like they've spotted the yeti. or...

2.) people who exaggerate the importance of their mailbox by saying "it's a federal offense" to mess with it. i'm so sick of hearing that. not just because i was involved in some random mailbox destruction but because people seem to think they're in the FBI because they heard that "federal offense" phrase about the mail. as if their mailbox is going to have a circle of men in black suits with earpieces trying to figure out exactly how i climbed up the pole to shit inside AND put up the flag.

so which is it? which is more annoying? at work they voted that it's actually me (even though i wasn't offered as a choice) because i waited long and hard to be able to send an Elvis book back to it's publisher just so i could sing "return to vendor!" while i taped the box shut.

ever hear of the Red King Syndrome? based on a character from Alice in Wonderland. it's when they didn't dare wake up the king because they thought they were all part of his dream and they would cease to exist if he opened his eyes. it's also the name of a great graphic novel about the lame-sounding but incredibly thought-provoking "Miracleman." anyway, i keep thinking about that. how maybe no one exists until i look at them. at work i kept doing that to people. i'd turn around and say "look, Jamie just got here!" and tell him how he better entertain me quick before i turn around and he disappears again. he blinked slowly and shook his head, not really worried about the danger of me looking away from him. still not sure if this theory is true. obviously, there's no way to ever prove it. it's kind of like a reverse of a classic Sisters of Mercy song title, changing it too:

"You Don't Exist Unless I See You"

::: david - 7:30 PM [+] :::
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