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

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

"He's got the oil on his chain, for a ride in the rain. No baloney. Ride around on my bicycle like a pony..."
- Tony's Theme - The Pixies


stop me if you've heard this one. anyone who's been over to my apartment in Perrysburg would have seen this on my wall and been forced to endure the story that goes with it so i apologize to whoever has to sit through it again but i just unpacked this license plate from a box full of posters and Kaytee wanted to know what it was so i thought i'd tell the story one last time before i threw it away.

it's not a real license plate, although you might not be able to tell while looking at such a masterpiece of deception (hey kids! suppies needed to make your own: side of a corn flakes box, magic marker, keen eye) check it out, i even drew fake screws on there. hell, even the highway patrol would look at my little fake registration sticker and, at the worst, say "sir, these plates are expired."

so here's the history of it. at my old apartment i started to notice something right around summertime. right about the time that i started leaving the windows open and it was warm enough to hear the sounds of the world. only the sounds of the world seemed to be the sounds of Journey's Greatest Hits. every single day. i'd open the window, toothbrush hanging out of my mouth and BAM "any way you want it! that's the way you need it! any way you want it..." i was like, "who the hell likes Journey enough to listen to that shit every day?" and don't get me wrong, i've got some shit music of my own that i wouldn't wish on anyone, but this was coming from the parking lot every morning and night like clockwork. what was it? tail-gate party pre-games for the Journey concert at the Ohio State Fair? two kids from the 80's making out in their car? the lamest poltergiest in the history of ghost stories? nope. none of the above.

it was the Wild Pony.

some little dude with a brand new (at the time) Ford Mustang GT. all shiny and chrome and baby blue and he was out there lovingly rubbing it with a rag. i thought, "isn't that sweet" and closed the window. next day:

"ANY WAY YOU WANT IT, THAT'S THE WAY YOU NEED IT..."

and the next. and the next. and the next. this douchbag was waxing and stroking his car every fucking day. and parking it under the one tree in the lot for protection from the sun. and running out to move it when someone parked too close. and leaning on it with his goofy sleeveless shirt with not a muscle in sight. it was getting on my nerves. and he'd leave a towel hanging out of the trunk after each waxing. i'd stare at that white towel dangling there and wonder what the significance was. it reminded me of that movie "Cruising" with Al "Scarface Took It Up The Ass???" Pacino. in that movie, Al goes undercover in leather bars to find some killer who's stalking gay men and he wears a bandana in his right pocket and gets scolded by some guy because right pocket means you like to take it in the ass and the left pocket means you like to give it in the ass. and yellow rag means you like "watersports" and a red white and blue rag means that you'll shout out "America love it or leave it!" when you're getting butt-fucked. okay i made the last one up. and i might have the left pocket/right pocket thing backwards so i'll never risk wearing a bandana. i started to wonder about the significance of those Journey lyrics. "any way you want it?" hmmm.

anyway, point is, i started imagining all sorts of signals this clown might be sending with his towel in the trunk thing. i started calling friends to describe the scene and they kept suggesting that i shouldn't get obsessed watching my neighbors (again! scare ya?) and what do i care if he waxes his car every day? oh yeah, one more thing. the most important detail. he had a personalized license plate that said:

WLD-PNY

that's right. he was the Wild Pony. there's no denying it. i mean, if you put that on your license plate, i guess you want to be called "Wild Pony?" am i wrong? how can you NOT fuck with a guy like that? all this would have been reason enough but there was more:

he had another car. he had a car that he was ashamed of. he had another car that he never washed once. it was an old Grenada or something. rusted out. no back bumper. parked up against the fence in the corner of the lot where no one could see it without squinting. and he would only drive it when the weather was really bad. and he would get things out of the truck when it was really late at night. you know why? because he was ashamed of it. it was like he was hiding a deformed child in his basement. i had to do something. i started thinking that he should be proud of that other car. i decided that there was room in the world for another Wild Pony and i took some time away from my morning rituals to make him another personalized license plate. that's right! it's the Wild Pony 2! say it with pride! say it with pleasure! Infectious Grooves said that. oops, you already clicked on that picture, didn't you? i guess i ruined the joke with the punchline first. my fault. oh well, fuck it. Tarantino did the same thing by showing the "Pussy Wagon" before he showed the key-chain and no one complained about that.

so anyway, i sneaked out and taped the new plate onto his Grenada so that he'd finally give some love to this neglected car and maybe, someday, he'd crank Jouney's Greatest Hits out of an old 8-track one-speaker sound system in that second no-bumper car. and maybe he'd drive THAT car slowly around the parking lot, ashamed no more, skinny arm hanging out the driver's side window, sunglasses at night like Cory Hart told him too...alas it wasn't meant to be.

when i came home, i saw my gift had been refused. my lovingly hand-crafted Wild Pony 2 vanity plate lying in the cornfield next to our parking lot. sigh. oh well, it's like Journey always said...no, wait. the Pixies said it better:

"I got a card in my spokes. I'm practicing my joke, I'm learning..."

::: david - 10:31 PM [+] :::
...

"I am the lizard king! i can do anything! except fly."
- Chris Chelios


a moment of silence for the death of my leopard gecko "Chris Chelios" aka "Monkeyman" aka "Lobster Boy" aka "Lizard." lived a long colorful life. when i say colorful i mean that he changed colors, not that his life was action-packed. he didn't do much. sat on his tree, ate any creature that had a head smaller than his (that's why you should never feed a lizard a snake, it'll be hanging out of their mouth forever, like you freeze-framed "Lady and the Tramp" on the spaghetti eating scene) and every couple of weeks he shed his skin like the monster in the first "Alien" movie. i know i said that a "lizard was a pet with few rewards" on my drunken list and i still maintain that i put more into the relationship than he did. However, he entertained guests by gobbling down crickets and worms like popcorn and he will be missed.

when he was discovered stiff i wasn't quite sure what to do with him. made a little memorial shrine with an old picture, read his suicide note to his fans, then finally started the funeral arrangements. didn't want to flush him or throw him in the trash so i wrapped him the aluminum foil that was holding some Christmas banana bread and took him down to the Ohio River for a Viking Funeral (except i had no intention of lighting him on fire like the Vikings did) i stumbled around in the dark until i got as close to the edge as i dared and then i threw him off into the sky. the thing is...

i never heard him hit the water.

my headlights later revealed his silver casket to be nested at the top of a tree on the riverbank that's too thin and hanging too far out over the water to risk climbing. oops. turned out he didn't fly away after all. not much of a funeral i guess. with my luck they'll find a dead body back there and match the treads of my basketball shoes and i'll try to explain that i was creeping around the river to bury my lizard and after that alibi i'll be handcuffed and grilled under the light faster than you can say "it's Geico not Gecko!" the lizard in the tree would save my ass though:

"i swear officer, i was down there to bury my lizard."

"prove it."

"thought you'd never ask. we're going to need a helicopter..."

::: david - 2:46 PM [+] :::
...

“The first rule of Rough House Club is don’t talk about Rough House Club.”
- Fight Club (abandoned first draft)

“Go...go...go...go Jesus, it’s your birthday, we gonna party like it’s your birthday...and we don’t give a fuck if it’s your birthday!”
- 50 (aka fiddy) Cent - as performed by me & The Bucketmen at The Christmas In Queens Concert For Disabled Children and the Endanged California Rattlesnake

“Here’s to Ben!”
- Blue Velvet



what up fuck knuckles? haven’t been on here in a while because i don’t have a phone line in this place yet. so here’s what i did last night:

Bar Christmas Caroling!

even though i predicted this night would end in violence, it only started out that way. the only punches in the face were between two of the guys i was hanging with and that was, of course, the result of young men simply talking about Fight Club waaaaay too much. this Bar Christmas Caroling thing though? slam dunk. had a blast. the first all-nighter since i got here. this girl Kelly, who knows this guy i work with, Kyle (you know the Kyle in Tenacious D? well, that ain’t him. but he does know all the words to their shit) they had the idea and, as dangerous as it sounded, i figured what the hell. turned out drunken Christmas Caroling is something that is lovingly embraced by strangers in lots of places. although i think the flashing Santa antenna on Kelly’s head might have helped our cause more than we know. pictures to follow.

the first bar we hit, and i can’t remember the name, was the fucking jackpot. and actually the rest of the them never really topped that one because...we had a back-up band!!! we come crashing through the door after some pre-game drinking at an apartment (that's where the lively Fight Club discussion was, and the half-hearted jabs that always result. more "Rough House Club" than "Fight Club" i’m afraid) and in this first bar are these two high school science teacher looking mofos crooning some Beatles “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” like they were on Star Search. i think K & K just went up to ask them to stop playing but it turned out they were more than happy to join our band instead. who knows, maybe in the moments leading up to our invasion, their audience had been slipping back into their beers.

First a heartfelt "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer," then a "Jiggle Bells." i think. i was next to the band and the guy with the guitar leans over all smiley and says to me, “you guys doing this for some kind of charity?” and i felt like i had to give the right answer so i lied. i say, “yeah, we’re raising money to save the snakes.” and he smiled and went on playing, not hearing a word i said. “saving the snakes” jumped into my head because i lied about that once before in order to hang out on the set of video shoot in LA with my friend Holly...

she knew a guy who knew a guy who was in this band Rocket 88? i think that’s what they were called. anyway, H has (had) a boa constrictor named Snakey! who they wanted to put in their video and i was visiting at the time so i tagged along. it was chaos on the set and this assistant director was all-business and i felt like i had to have a reason to be there so when some assistant to the assistant asked who i was, i pointed to Holly’s cooler full of Snakey (you know i had the weirdest dream the other day that you were getting married) and i said i was the “snake wrangler.” that must have carried some weight because he would come back and ask what i needed in hour intervals and i’d pull some something out of my ass like, “uhhh, we need the temperature not to exceed 78 degrees.” or “i need to take the snake back from the stage because his ears are sensitive” or "can i get an orange juice?" and then i hit the table full of food near the wall. oh yeah, the place where they were filming was some backlot on James Cameron’s property. it had all these framed posters of his movies and this weight room (it looked like shiny nautilus machines had been brought in recently to replace the free weights. pussies. that explains his transition from “Terminator” to “Titanic”) where we’d sit and eat pizza and wait 5 hours for them to put Snakey in guitar case for his, her, it’s, big moment. the guys in the band found their way back there too so they could call their girlfriends and wives in the corners. however, i couldn’t help but notice they were slipping off their rings when the cameras were rolling. anyway, story for another time. i got some pictures i'll throw up sometime. i sneaked a little Fuji disposable in there and got a shot of the story-boards the director was looking at. turns out there was a story of such complexity behind that video that film students could write their thesis about it and never really understand all of the subplots and motivations. i’ll try to sum it up anyway. here’s the classic three-act structure, even though it won’t do it justice:

1.) band plays decent Social Distortion sounding song.

2.) band members go home one by one.

3.) last dude opens guitar case and sees a snake in it. Boo!

The End.

fuckin’ Fellini would be scratching his head. Fassbinder would throw the pages in the air and say it was too much to think about. friggin’ Takashi Mike himself (genius director behind “Visitor Q (aka “With This Rock I Thee Wed”) would scream “I been looking at script for SIX HOUR! it make no sense! much dishonor! i return to school to study!”

getting distracted here. back to the bars. so we started off with a back-up band, not raising money for the snakes (Kyle just told me the name, but i already forgot. "Piper's" or something. whoa. wait a minute. Pied Pipers? Snakes? you can't make this shit up dude), we drank a quick beer there and then ran off to the next one. went to a couple more places i don’t remember. saw two girls grinding on each other and started to complain about fake lesbian antics, then trailed off and stared at their asses like the hypocrite i am. what can you do? at one point i asked the one girl, “tell me, you did that for the benefit of the guys watching, or did you do it for you?” her response was, “we just like having a good time!” this was no answer and i couldn’t pursue that line of questioning because i didn’t have the energy to scream over the 5th encore of “Brown Eyed Girl” on the jukebox. i complain about these things and i’m singing along anyway. Billy Joel’s "Piano Man too." i ain’t afraid of the hits. i’d sing along with Piano Man even if it didn’t say “talkin’ with Davey, who’s still in the Navy...”

okay, what else? oh yeah! went to a place called "Casey’s" with the midget on the bar who pours drinks in everybody’s mouths. funny stuff. they talked about that bar in the issue of Maxim with Shannon Elizabeth on the cover. they had a sign behind the bar that said “Midget Wanted” crossed out with “We Found One!” written under it. as if they turned over a garbage can or shook out a rug and POW! there he was. poor little dude. his real name is Sean even though the signs call him “Man Boy.” and he doesn’t just run around on the bar, he seems to live on it. there’s this little treehouse looking structure on the left where he retreats sometimes, not unlike those clocks where the little man comes out with the hammer to ring the bell? we throw down ten bucks, the lights start flashing and he jumped out with a Sombrero on his head and poured some sweet Willy Wonka tasting drink into everyone’s mouths. mine included. it was fun but i felt sort of bad too. but there’s a time and place for everything and, as much as i wanted to, i couldn’t grab the little fucker, run outside and scream, “you’re free! run away! back to your tree!”

went to some other bar where people were all glaring at the flashing Santa on Kelly and mumbling about the girl with “the blinking shit on her head” so we didn’t sing there. tried to request a Christmas song on the jukebox to do it but got tired of waiting through the rest of the crap songs. found some place down the road and got about 5 strangers to join in on the “Dashing through the snow...” intro. i suggested "Little Drummer Boy" and got mocked by Girl #2 (guy to girl ratio obviously wasn't too cool) for a long time after. i tried to explain that we could take it to a new level by doing a sad Christmas song and getting the drunks to hold lighters in the air or something. she just kept interrupting me by saying “Rum pum pum pum.” i still think it was a good idea.

on to some place called “Bar 11” that looked like the set to a bad science fiction movie. silver foil on all the walls and lights and tinsel everywhere. i think that’s where the night ended. some more Fight Club talk. at some point i told them all about the second time i went to see Fight Club in the theater and ruined it for the guy two seats down (and you thought my Real Time Reviews spoiled shit!) this guy deserved it though. okay, sorry to the people who already heard this story multiple times but i got to repeat it 'cause i’m all proud of myself and if i try hard enough it can be like the moral to this whole evening:

okay, i had already seen Fight Club and wanted my brother and my dad to go see it too. my sister was around and decided that she’d meet us there. however, she’s late everywhere she goes (later than me, if that’s possible) and me and my brother decided to save their seats. it was sorta full in there but there was a bunch of empty seats in a row on the rail. like three empty seats, then this one guy by himself, then three empty seats to his right. me and my brother sat down and watched the door for my dad and my sister and figured we’d just ask this guy to move down one seat when they got there. can you picture the scene? three empty seats. one guy. my brother. me. one empty seat to my right. and as the movie starts my dad and sister come walking in and i lean over to ask this guy to please move.

he says no.

i ask my brother who’s right next to him, "what did he say?” i’m not being a smart ass. i honestly can’t believe it.

“he said no.”

my dad and sister are standing there on my right and i’m fumbling to explain, “i don’t know, that guy won’t move. seriously. he said no.” my dad gets that vein on his head and says something like “maybe he’d move if you cracked him in the head with your drink” (i guess he was thinking for a minute that the “drinks” in a theater are in glass bottles and not soft cups with smiling Disney characters on them but he was angry so you know how that gets) and after a second my dad and my sister move up two rows behind us to sit down in disgust.

a few minutes of the movie go by and i can’t concentrate because of this fuck and i keep leaning over my brother to look at him. young guy, flannel shirt. looks like anyone. i lean over my brother some more and ask him his name. he ignores me. i ask again. and again. and again. i’m like a Tourette’s victim over here and i keep on him until he finally sighs and says, “Ben.” i say something like “Ben, i can’t believe you wouldn’t move down one seat when it wouldn’t effect you at all, but it would mean we could all sit together.” Ben says (wait for it) “that’s why I get here on time.”

pause for effect. Ben has some balls on him. interesting because, according to most of the guys i wasn't hanging out with last night, Fight Club is all about balls and castration and little else. i sit back and try to watch the movie for awhile but i can’t stop thinking about him. i lean over my brother again (who’s getting annoyed with me at this point) and say, “Ben, i’m going to fuck you up when this movie is over.” he glares at me and tells me to fuck off and my brother is sort of laughing now. i sit back shaking my head a try sooooooooo hard to watch the movie. problem is this:

when some asshole says or does something to you, you don’t have time to say or do what you WOULD have done because you don’t have time. the situation is over and the stranger is gone and you kick yourself for all the things that you coulda woulda and shoulda done. well, here’s how this situation is different:

I get to sit FOR TWO HOURS with this prick and think up all sorts of good shit to say. i start in with the most ignorant shit, misusing “irony” as usual by says, “how ironic is that Ben? you get your ass beat at a movie called Fight Club? who’s gonna believe it!” and “see that beating up there? that’s you as soon as the credits roll, better run to your car!” keep in mind that i probably would do none of this but he’s just sitting there in silence and i smell blood and realize that i can say anything and he won’t do shit. i ask him what kind of music he listens to, i ask him what his hobbies are. at one point i guess i asked him if he enjoyed surfing because my sister told me that she heard the people in front of her whisper, “he just asked him if he enjoys surfing???” at one point my brother even gets off a good one. he looks down at the empty seats to Ben’s left and says “i see you brought all your friends with you.” funny shit. i was having fun. people around us were snickering or muttering. Ben was sinking down in his seat. eventually he would just give me a thumbs up whenever i said anything and stopped looking over. i kept on him. i asked how it felt “to take a big stand about not moving down for anyone, ever again, and making sure you got there early and have it backfire and fuck up your movie?” he shakes his head and gives me his thumbs up. for a while i even watch the movie. until i have one of the best ideas i’ve had, before or since. i realize this:

i’ve seen this movie. i know how it ends. i can ruin the ending.

sure, i’ll be ruining the ending for my brother because i’m going to have to lean over him to get to Ben, but it’s a small price to pay. all wars have casualties. you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. all that shit. so, at about the point when Brad Pitt is standing in the doorway with rubber glove asking Norton is he wants to “finish her off” i say:

“Ben, i can’t resist it. okay, see that dude? and that dude? IT'S THE SAME DUDE! that’s the twist Ben. that’s how it ends. turns out that guy was never there. i just ruined your fucking movie. how does that feel.”

he just gives me a thumbs up and my brother shakes his head at me and says “thanks dickhead” because i ruined it for him too. and some of the muttering people around me were mad too, i think, since the muttering picked up again. still, i’m all satisfied and i sit back smug and watch the rest of the movie, my mind finally at peace. and at about the point when you realize that Tyler Durden IS the narrator and that is really the twist, Ben stands up. i tensed up because there always is the chance you can get you ass kicked by anyone ("skinny guys fight till they're burger." - Tyler Durden)but he just slides past (“when you slide by in the aisle, do you give ‘em the crotch or the ass?” - Tyler Durden) and heads for the exits. i will admit though, the bastard got the last word. he said to me as he cleared the row:

“Save my seat for me.”

("whoa!" - Tyler Durden) well, what can you do? he was gone. i fucked up his movie. and he got the last word. it’s a trade-off that i still think about.

So here’s to Ben. raise your beer, wherever you are. and if there’s a dude on the bus who won’t move over to let you sit down, maybe you pull off one of his headphones to hear what he’s listening to, and then tell him how the song ends. or not. problem is, if it’s a Christmas song, they usually have a happy ending. except "Little Drummer Boy." maybe it does, but it sure sounded like the end of the world or something when i was little.

okay, i got a Zagnut from last night to eat. fingers are loose enough to work on some fiction now. i know i said there’s a moral in there somewhere. sorry if i couldn't get you to one. maybe if you squint hard enough. okay, maybe there never was. i just like telling people about Ben and it won’t stop any time soon if these drunken conversations keep turning to “Fight Club” in between the Christmas songs. and hey! Kyle and Kelly and Jim and Mike and Ron and Russ and Girl #2 and the Man-Boy. good time. great idea. or, as Ben would say, "thumbs up!" wait, when i said great idea i meant the Drunken Bar Christmas Caroling idea. not the“tranquilizing a midget, tagging his ear with a tracking device, building him a doghouse and putting him to work bartending” idea. okay, who am kidding. that idea isn’t that bad either. and girls can keep grinding on each other until i can research that subject a little further.

and Merry Christmas Ben, you selfish motherfucker. i hope you can’t ever think of that movie without thinking of me. As queer as it sounds, i have a hard time not wishing you were sitting next to me every time i watch it.

::: david - 6:22 PM [+] :::
...

“The lessons here cannot be avoided. Big Business is humorless. And...at Disney, nobody fucks with The Mouse.”
- Harlan Ellison - “The 3 Most Important Things In Life”



since everyone has all that Christmas shopping to do (btw, the most disturbing Christmas song lyrics heard on the radio lately are the "mommy kissing santa" song, the song that says "waiting for the man with the bag," bag of what? drugs? heads? and the song that mentions "children with their eyes all aglow," creepy. what the hell is that? Village of the Damned?") and since no one’s got time to watch movies...i’m gonna do it for you! again! by having me watch this movie, right at this moment, you can save some of that precious time that Daylight Savings robbed from you. see, scriptwriters will tell you that one page of a script equals one minute of screen time, so we’ll say one page of my website equals three minutes cause it's as dense as a 70s bush, so you'll still save about an hour by me watching movies for you. you just read what i wrote, pretend you’re sitting here with me in my new apartment eating popcorn surrounded by a wall of dust and boxes and POW! you sneaked in a movie right there at work, right there in your cubicle or on your smoke break. yep, that’s right! it’s back! and this time it’s wearing a badge...

THE REAL TIME REVIEW!

tonight’s movie:

The Pirates of the Caribbean

starring Johnny “21 Jump Street” Depp, a cute blonde girl who shot an arrow through my heart in “Lord of the Rings," the dude from Brazil, Natalie Portman, and the guy who was writing in his own shit in “Quills.”

-FBI needs 300 words to say “don’t steal shit.”
-those forced previews again on this dvd eh? where you can’t skip unless you push menu, since they hope that people will hit fast-forward, then sigh and watch them anyway. Disney is big on this forced previews crap.
-what the hell is this preview? Hidalgo? what is that? no one will be able to remember that stupid title. hey, it’s Viggo! the King himself. if anyone wants to see Viggo in his prime check out "Carlito’s Way" (i’m wearing fucking diapers!”) or "G.I. Jane" because he kicks the ever-loving shit out of Demi Moore in that movie.
-true story my ass. looked like deleted scenes from "The Mummy."
-i'm not used to the buttons on the remote on this loaner dvd player. i'm fumbling around in the dark like Kevin Spacey lighting his cigarette in "Usual Suspects."
-here we go, movie’s starting. no credits. i like it when they do that.
-”bad luck to be singing about pirates” he says. he’s right. just ask Kristy McNicol in “The Pirate Movie.”
-a Disney movie. what am i thinking.
-ha! look at these fops. tell me, why are all Englishmen homosexual?
-someone just said “Holy Mary, mother of god,” i can’t begin to tell you how utterly sick i am of that phrase being whispered in awe as a shortcut to actually awing the audience.
-great entrance for Depp's character with the sinking boat. more characters should have big introductory moments like that.
-hey, Natalie Portman! oops, guess not.
-is that her mom? oh flashback. i was confused. see what happens when flashbacks aren’t in black and white?
-that reminds me, the other day i was bragging about things i invented but couldn’t prove it. here’s one more: T-shirts that say “Got MLF?” my idea i swear.
-i’m still confused. is this curly-haired little girl supposed to be the young version of Orlando Bloom? i’ve always thought Orlando was a strange name for a girl.
-one of my ex-girlfriends was in love with Orlando Bloom and had a picture on her fridge of Legolas, with her lovely long blonde hair flowing over her elfin ears and bow and arrow. i thought it was odd for my ex to swoon over a magnet with a chick on it but those were the only lesbian tendencies i noticed in her.
-nice wigs boys. is that why most of the soft white men in our goverment have those big fluffy heads of overly-styled gray hair? they want to be English fops like those pictures in the history books? every faggot on Fox News has that same look. big soft fat face, weak chin, American flag necktie.
-sweet, a sword. let’s get some swordfights cookin' here.
-where the hell did Depp go?
-wait, that girl just said she had a dream about “when we met” but she’s talking to a dude. hold on. if that dude was the little boy, and she was the little girl then...hey! Orlando Bloom is a dude! then who the fuck was that hot chick in Lord of the Rings? does he have a sister with the same name?
-black people have entered stage left! watch them be either wacky or wise.
-damn she looks like Natalie Portman.
-there’s Johnny Depp! hello. he’s drunk.
-lot of exposition by these foppish dandies about this “Black Pearl” ship
-i thought there were pirates in this movie? spending an awful lot of time land-locked here boys.
-check out Depp. he’s hammered.
-but he swims like the Man From Atlantis.
-she’s not breathing. loosen that corset Depp. he did!
-now where’s he going? water is THAT way shithead. are we gonna hit the seas sometime this year people?
-Orlando is sporting the Ethan-Hawke-sixth-grader-catfish-looking facial hair.
-lame ass sword fight.
-hello! his name is NOT Indigo Montoya! prepare to sigh.
-Little Debbie snack cake break...okay i’m back. my first groceries for my new crib were purchased today. the essentials only. bread, peanut butter, spaghetti supplies and pickles.
-never have the two leads in a movie sword fight in the first twenty minutes because there is ZERO suspense. you know neither will die, unless the rest of the movie is a flashback (hopefully in black and white for the narrative-impaired like me)
-now he’s in jail? for fucksake. you know what the “secret of the black pearl” is? it’s that there are no pirate ships in this damn movie.
-you know, the girl who rented me this snoozer had to tell me, “when the movie was over, i sat there a second, then turned to my friend and said, i think i loved it!” i should have thought about her statement a little more than i did. clearly she meant to say, “i’m supposed to love it, right? okay! then i do!”
-hey! a pirate ship! 'bout fucking time yo.
-you know what's a good pirate movie? "Roman Polanski’s Pirates." much sweatier and greaser than this.
-how can a man move a glass eye around in the socket? Gangs of New York screwed that up too.
-that’s the third person who got bonked in the head, crossed their eyes, and keeled over. so stupid. does anybody really think that's funny? fucking lame.
-let me check something...okay. we’re at the 45 minute mark and still on freaking land. unacceptable.
-oh, now we finally set sail. 50 minutes in? watch it turn out to just be a dream someone is having under a tree.
-gee, back on land again. what a shock. you know, there’s more high seas action in “Conquest” (an unusually expensive X-rated feature i own)
-are those robot pigs?
-notice that the bucket of water that Depp throws on that actor keeps generating steam. that's because actors are pussies and need warm comfortable water thrown in their face on the set or else they'll shit themselves.
-check out Disney inserting that crap about Depp's character having sun-stroke to explain his "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" type antics. so fucking obvious that Disney was scared and forced those lines in there after they saw some early footage.
-so is the monkey cursed too?
-if i was to do a porn parody of this i’d have chicks with huge hairy bushes and have pirates having to cut their way through the jungle with swords. i’d call it, “The Curse of the Black Curls”
-skeletons. oh boy, here comes the computer crap.
-the line “start believing in ghost stories, you’re in one” is a good line actually.
-ha! the monkey is cursed! little skeleton monkey. skeleton parrot would have been funnier.
-nice styrofoam cave. looks like a Star Trek set.
-Depp is so drunk it’s not even funny.
-“Captain Jack will get you high tonight...take you to that special island...” name that tune.
-i wonder if Depp had to get faced every day to motivate himself to pimp his skills to Disney.
-i thought this movie would be much funnier than this.
-why would the monkey be cursed too?
-Not Natalie looks hot walking the plank.
-she’s got some weird snarling thing going on with her bottom teeth.
-the pirate with the CG eye just used the word "ironic" incorrectly.
-now Depp is pretending his character is drunk, when he’s clearly been drunk since the first day of shooting.
-why does everyone keep saying "more of a guideline than a rule?" wasn't that from "Ghostbusters?"
-blame the French jokes. yawn. pandering to the "freedom fries" idiots.
-the underwater pirates are very cool. of course, underwater zombies are always cool. add a zombie vs. shark scenario and we’re talking perfection.
-okay, they look like corpses in the moonlight because that's their true form right? and that's why the guy from Quills says he can't taste anything, because it runs out their rotted ribcage, right? they're like walking dead, right? so why does Depp's moonlight x-ray version make him look rotted too, if he just got cursed 10 minutes ago? he shouldn't have rotted yet. or at least have his skeleton be all shiny like in a medical lab.
-"the question is, where do they find all these skeletons with perfect teeth? i think they got a skeleton farm over there in India!" name that movie. it's twice the movie this is. i'm watching it next.
-"like the Pirates of the Caribbean, the neighborhood watch don't like what they're seein'!" - little Kottonmouth Kings for ya'll! what's their problem with the neighborhood watch anyway? seems like a silly nemesis for them to dwell on.
-now is where i take the time to blame my friend Steve for recommending this crap. to punish
him i will reveal that, in high school, he used to record Kansas videos and M.A.S.H. episodes.
-skeleton fight ending. reminds me of "Army of Darkness."
-what an insanely over-hyped, instantly-forgettable movie this was.
-"Army of Darkness" got it done. this did not.
-this movie would be a reasonable length if it wasn't for that meandering clusterfuck of a first act.
-i just realized a huge mistake they made. okay, if they threw "Bootstrap" Turner overboard after they stole that gold then that means that Bootstrap was cursed too. and that means that he wouldn't be able to drown since we saw all the cursed pirates casually strolling underwater in that one scene earlier. so that means that Orlando's daddy isn't dead after all...at least until Orlando lifted the curse by cutting his hand. thanks son! imagine the scene: Bootstrap, tied to a cannon on the bottom of the ocean hoping to one day get set free when thousands of miles away Orlando bleeds on the coin. At that moment Bootstrap turns mortal, looks down at a fish tugging on whats left of his sac and BLURP! he drowns. bet he died angry. hey, maybe this movie is actually funnier than i gave it credit for!
-some thoughts regarding "Army of Darkness" that sum up my opinion of this flick:

one third the budget
half the running time
ten times more fun

::: david - 8:12 PM [+] :::
...

“Come talking that trash and we’ll pull your card.”
-NWA

hanging out with co-workers last night. place called The Trivia Bar? it had Trivial Pursuit questions on the table. not too much time spent on that concept. now that i think back though, i regret not having this one dude’s back while he was the victim of a verbal assault from some college professor at the end of the table. it wasn’t until after this professor left that my friend told me about some of the things he’d been saying. some highlights:

-the prof started smacking himself in the head with his own wallet when my friend mispronounced “dichotomy” (even though he used it correctly).

-he told my friend that, since he was so young (he’s in his twenties) he isn’t allowed to have an opinion on most subjects.

-he insisted that my friend didn’t know the difference between argument and opinion. this apparently was his main point all night.

it really angered me that i wasn’t involved in that discussion because i was distracted at the other end of the room explaining something to some another group of co-workers. this other group i was actually warned away from because they’d been known to “not just play Dungeons and Dragons indoors harmlessly, but to actually run around the woods with weapons” but since “Return of the King” is coming out this week, and no one in their right mind would probably go see all 5 hours of it with me, i’ll hitch a ride with the hard-core fantasy nuts. hell, if you were going to see “Backdraft” wouldn’t you want to hang out at Denny’s with some firemen afterwards and listen to them dissect the problems in the film? that’s what i’m saying. anyway, what was i talking about, oh yeah, i’m explaining to a group of co-workers down the bar about how there’s a certain time of day when all the females are standing in a certain place by their work-stations, and if you stand in a certain place, you can look down a row of asses and compare them all. as important as this was, it was no excuse for leaving my friend at the mercy of this fuck. not to Monday Morning Quarterback here, but here’s how it should have went down...with me involved:

-asshole jumps on my friend for mispronouncing a word and i instantly point out that when he was citing the ten commandments for an example he was not really citing the ten commandments. people always fuck this up. the ten commandments, the tablets that Moses brings down, are a bunch of goofy crap about feeding goats and wheat harvests. the “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not steal” etc. are from Moses verbally repeating what he was “told” on Mount Si’nai. the stone tablets are ten things about farming (much more practical rules actually) and not the stuff that people argue to put in courtroom lobbies and school. these fuckwads who want to mix church and state with the Ten Commandments in schools ‘n shit don't even know what they actually say. they apparently never even read the Book. notice the capital "B." check it out for yourself: Exodus 34:13-28. good ammo against any zealot. anyway, he wasn’t a zealot, he was making some left-wing point, however, he still could have been blown out of the water by my pointing out that mispronouncing a word (while using it correctly) is nothing compared to parroting facts that are wrong.

-asshole tells my friend he’s too young to have an opinion on any subject. i then point out that, even though he’s in his early twenties, he’s probably fucked more females and punched more people in the face than the professor did at that age, and therefore he has more than enough experience under his belt to talk about anything he wants. actually, just looking at the crusty old fuck, i’d guess that the professor lacks experience to compare opinions (actually opinions about opinions, more on that later) with a thirteen year-old. sure he read more books but this is where i’d begin to steer the conversation away from “knowledge” and “facts.” this is my favorite tactic. a quick verbal spanking on the high road, then the inevitable journey to my favorite place: the low road. this reminds me of my parody of “Good Will Hunting” i wrote called “Good Ass Kicking” where they’re at the bar and the kid with the pony-tail spouts off all those facts and the hero challenges him to belching contest, then beats his ass, instead of that lame quote-duel. my parody was sadly eclipsed by their own parody in "Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back" oh well. bonus! other things i came up with first but can’t prove:

the car antennas shaped like lighting bolts. someone bent mine all to hell back at college and i would make creative shapes out of it to cover up the damage. years later these lightning bolts antennas were all over. my roommate Gary can verify my invention. also, i had a sun-visor that had a gash in it and i would store cds in there, years later guess what? new cd-holder visor. bastards. oh yeah, the wheel. i invented the wheel. i made one out of Legos when i was three, while Thus Spake Zarathustra was playing in the background. off track here, back to the bar scene:

-asshole keeps yapping about the difference between argument and opinion and forgets to do one crucial thing: offer an actual argument or opinion about anything BESIDES arguments or opinions! i would explain how tiresome this is by asking him if he likes to read books about books or go fishing for fishing rods or look at photographs of photographs. THEN i would give an example of an opinion:

the professor’s name was Lee so i would say “isn’t that a girl’s name? what’s that like?” and i would keep the conversation on his girlish name for at least the duration of 3 more beers.

so anyhow, this friend’s friend was the guy who brought Professor Lee out that night so we’re going to try to get him out again at some point and give him the verbal lashing he deserved. to be fair, i might not even be needed, since my friend also has a lot to say (it’s so easy to think about good shit later), but he was hammered and his mouth wasn’t moving as fast as his brain or he wouldn’t have even needed the back-up i failed to give him.

in unrelated news:

-Beefheart’s “Trout Mask Replica” rocks.
-The Cramps “Look Mom No Head” also rocks and is everything i hoped it would be.
-Cold’s “Year of the Spider” does not rock, in spite of the great album title and the promise of that excellent single “Stupid Girl.”
-i have pictures on my walls now
-i bought the new "Naked Lunch" dvd, Criterion Edition, even though my dvd player is broken because i'm stupid like that. i also have no love for Criterion because i believe they are over-priced scam-artists and not half the company Anchor Bay is. thing is, they had the actual movie poster on the cover (dude with a typewriter for a head) instead of the bullshit huge actor's face nonsense and i'm a sucker for the original poster every time.

and at the risk of sounding silly, like i’m offering an opinion about an opinion, here’s some trivia about some trivia: from a withered deck of Trivial Pursuit cards in that bar that looked to be at least 20 years old, at least half the cards i pulled from the box contained questions about Lord of the Rings. only one on the Ten Commandments. freaky.

::: david - 5:14 PM [+] :::
...

"There are no healthy minds, and nothing saves any man except accident - the accident of not having his malady put to the supreme test."
- Mark Twain - The Memorable Assassination



FICTION:



Glass Car Crash (part 3)



That's when Steven saw her. He’d been behind her car since the bottle-neck between the road flares. Her car looked familiar. He figured it was because it was a blue car. His car was blue. Most cars were blue. The car he’d slapped mirrors seemed like years ago.

How do ghost stories always start?

It was a year ago tonight. . .

That car had been gone so fast he didn’t have time to get her numbers. Just her eyes. He remembered the eyes. They looked like the eyes in the sideview mirror in front of him, burning in the orange glow of the flares. Looking back. Looking down. Looking up. Looking back. It had to be her. The only problem was, if he was seeing her eyes in the sideview mirror, it couldn’t be her. That mirror was shattered when the cars connected.

Her car would be fixed by now. It was hot out when that happened. A year ago tonight...

He started his routine anyway, starting with the eyes in the mirror. She moved her head away and he looked for the rearview mirror. Inside. On her windshield. Where the hell was it? She didn't have one. All he could see was the shadow of movement, her knuckles drumming on her steering wheel. Then he noticed the streak on the side of her car. Was it blood? Was she part of the crash? If she was involved, then why was she in line with him, creeping past it? He wondered if maybe she'd come back to the wreck for something. Or maybe she just drove over something from the crash and didn't know it. Maybe there was blood on everyone’s car.

He rolled down his window, leaned out and looked down. Nothing on the road. He looked back up and saw that she was still missing from her side mirror.

good game. . .

He thought he saw a flash of teeth. Then nothing. He checked his hands on the wheel. Ten o’clock and three o'clock. He wasn't drifting. She must be drifting. Then he could see hereyes. Her ear. Her mouth. He could see the shape of her nose now. He realized that she was drifting out of the line, sliding to the left, moving towards the crash. All cars were stopped now. She was still creeping towards the light, drawn like a magnet into the sparks and flares and twisted metal.

What the fuck? What is she doing? Is that what happened? Was she circling back and getting in line over and over? She think this is the line for a rollercoaster? Is that how she got blood on her car?

While Steven thought these things, he was unconsciously popping his cigarette lighter in and out, in and out, in and - suddenly it sprang out of its socket and his fingers missed it. He fumbled after it as it dropped between his legs. He arched his body and it rolled under his ass.

He was so caught up in thinking about the car in front of him that he reached down for the hot coils as if it was just a penny he’d dropped. Then he was burned and both feet were kicking for the brake as he contorted and swatted the smoking lighter down onto the floor-mats.

100 % of all car crashes are caused by stinging insects. . .

He bit down on the burn and remembered something that happened a long time ago:

His first day at work at a fertilizer factory, he was given the simple job of gluing boxes together, mercifully far from the chemical stench. And after a couple hours in the box line, his glue-gun discharged across the knuckles of his leather glove. He wiped his hand on the corner of his table and went on working. The problem was, that glue came out of the nozzle at something around 300 degrees. It started eating through the glove at about a quarter inch every three minutes. He didn't know any of this and just kept on working and his gloves were eventually covered with hot glue by the time he was lining up behind the men pushing towards their lockers for their first break. Steven was shuffling along, laughing to himself at the lockdown style of movement the mob had acquired, then suddenly he was hopping around and trying to shake his hands loose from his wrists. He remembered thinking that it must have been a spider or a wasp or a bee that had crawled inside his glove, forgetting about the hot glue he’s been working with for the past three hours. And while he was jerked around fighting with the gloves, he elbowed the wrong guy in the face and started a fight. He was hit about five times before he even realized
what was happening. When he was knocked to the ground he looked around and saw one of his gloves between someone’s boots. He saw the glue on the knuckles and realized what had stung him. Angry at himself, he clenched his teeth, then retrieved the glove and stuck it back on his hand. He found a random boot in the crowd, then reached up over the ankle and worked his fingers under the sock. When the hot glue touched his skin, the man that owned the ankle was screaming higher than Steven thought possible. He grabbed another leg and wiggled his fingers into the sock until he heard another scream. Then he locked onto another and this time the shoe and sock slipped off. He squeezed that bare foot as if it was hanging off a cliff. Then suddenly there were more feet than he could deal with and the lights went out. He wished he would have kept one of those gloves on to throw one burning punch before he took that beating. He wished he’s have grabbed one more ankle before he was kicked into unconsciousness. He wished he was still down there among those feet, burning his way through the line until the glue on his gloves had grown cold.

His heart was pumping hard thinking about what he should have done that day, and that’s when Steven crunched into the car in front of him.

* * *

Steven was twisting his heels in the stones, head down, grinding his way up to her car to say he was sorry. He almost laughed, thinking about how he just crashed at a crash. He looked back at his hazard lights, and the rows of anonymous headlights behind them. No horns yet.

Now what if someone hits my car. A crash at a crash at a crash at a crash at a crash. I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, perhaps she’ll fly. . .

The girl’s head was outside. She was hanging out her window, staring at he walked up. Steven decided, at least while she was just a head in a car, that she was perfect. He wondered how much time he’d have. He glanced back, satisfied that the line was still dead in the water. He looked down at her.

"Sorry."

"What was that?” She laughed without smiling. Steven had never seen someone do that before, and for a second he thought she was injured. “No, let me guess,” she sighed. “You're going to tell me you hit the gas instead of the brake, right?"

"Yeah, I mean no. Sorry."

"So what were you smoking back there?"

"Huh? Nothing, I just wasn't looking and I..."

"No, I mean,” She wrinkled her nose. “What's that smell?"

"Has to be the crash." He looked up and down the street while he hid his arms behind his back and rubbed them together to brush off the burnt hair and black ash.

He jumped back as she suddenly stepped out and walked around to the back of her car to look for damage. Steven got the feeling that she didn't really care, that she was just going through crash etiquette. He followed her lead and crouched down next to her in the red glow of her taillights.

"I don't have any insurance," he said, fumbling around his pockets. "Here. You can have my driver's license instead." He dug through movie ticket-stubs and video rental cards and dollar bills folded into tiny airplanes. "Wait, how about you hold onto this. It’s my 'Joe's Last Chance Video & Gas' card."

"What?" She stood up arms crossed.

"Take it. So you'll know who I am. It's got a free movie on it! C’mon, it's worth more than my license. See, look at the back. . ." He held the videostore card under the taillights, nine checkmarks in ten boxes were visible. ". . .see what I’m saying. . ." He took out his driver’s license and turned it over under the lights. "See. Not
an organ donor. Ain’t worth nothin’."

The girl gave up half a smile, trying to stay mad. She turned before a full smile could crack, quickly walking back around to the front of her car and waving him away.

"Forget it. I don't care.” She announced. “The car is scratched. So what. I always hate how people treat cars like they're made of glass. Any time bumpers touch, the cars stop in the middle of the road, fuck up everyone else’s day, while they get out and wander around confused with phones stuck to their heads, clogging the road for hours. I mean, how can cars not run into each other. How bad is that..."

"What about this crash right here. You see the toys under the wheel? What if there was a baby under there too. . ."

"Shut up. There’s no baby under there." She put a foot back into her vehicle. A cop was finally walking toward them, he looked big, swelling as he approached, backlit with all the color and sound of the wreck. He started kicking the flares out of the road. The line of cars was eager to move, grumbling and twitching behind them like dogs waiting for the back door to open. No horns yet though. Steven decided he had a little more time. Maybe three minutes tops. He leaned down on her door and tried harder.

"Glass cars? Is that what you said. You ever really think about that? Glass cars I mean? Ever wonder what it would be like to drive one? See all around you while you're driving? Just looking out the windows driving a normal car doesn’t effect you, it’s too much like watching TV. If you could see under your feet you'd realize just what you were doing, how fast you were really going? It would be something different. . ." Her other foot was in now and the door was closing. “. . .and if two glass cars crashed? Imagine that shit. Glass cars crashing. Two glass cars exploding on impact, shards raining down on the road until there was nothing left. Except two people standing there on the highway, staring at each other with steering wheels in their hands.”

She slammed her door.

"Stop trying so hard,” she said.

"Sorry." He said, stepping back. He turned to walk away, defiantly thinking about the glass cars crashing in his head, rewinding and watching the impact over and over, imagining him and her slowly walking towards each other, windshield cubes crunching under their heels like wet March snow, his bare feet gathering cuts and shards with each step.

He started to walk away and heard the creak of her window rolling up behind him.

"Is it so hard to take the time to having a fucking conversation with someone..." he muttered, almost to himself.

The sound of the window stopped. The click of the door opening. Then her voice.

“My name is Ashley,” she said.

Ten minutes later, they were together in her car, windows down, moving fast. He noticed that she seemed to be looking for long roads so she wouldn't have to turn, maybe to keep the conversation going. It seemed to work. They talked about a lot of things. They talked about why dogs hang their heads out of windows. They talked about a friend of a friend of a friend’s dog that got it’s head caved in by a sideview mirror. They talked about cops needing to know where you were going because they’re as curious as everyone else. They talked about a man she’d seen today at the gas station, a man who gave up his place in line to carry a case of beer to a girl’s car. They talked about how he wouldn’t have done that for another man. They talked about how the story was oddly touching anyway. They talked about how neither of them knew what day it was. They talked about how they didn’t know if the season’s had changed. They talked about when dog’s had nightmares and yelped in their sleep. They decided that they were dreaming about cars.

Eventually they had to turn and the conversation stopped.

"Okay, you want to save some time?” She asked him. “We know each other a little bit however I still think we won’t take the chance of telling a story too interesting too soon."

"What do you mean?"

"’Cause if you told a story too interesting too soon, something incredibly interesting that happened to you, I would think you were lying. Right?"

"No. Why would you think that?"

"So instead. . .” She went on, ignoring him. “. . .you'd just keep telling me interesting stories about someone you know, right?"

"Not really."

"Do it then."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tell me an interesting story about yourself, only pretend it’s someone else’s story instead. So I can believe you.”

“Uhhh, I don't really have any friends more interesting than me.”

“You’re missing my point, dude.”

"Here's something,” Steven said after another turn. “Last summer, my roommate tied dead flies to his fingers. I still don't know why."

"So why did you tie dead flies to your fingers?"

"I didn't, I said that. . ."

"No!” Her foot kicked the gas and the car lurched. “You're not playing the game right."

"I guess I’m not. I’m just trying to tell you that my roommate did this. The thing with the flies. I don't think they were supposed to be dead. I think he killed them when he was tying them on to his fingers. I think he wanted to have them flying around when he shook hands with me or something."

"Why would you want to do something like that?"

"I didn't." Steven sighed. "I said, my roommate, James, did this thing. I don’t know why, maybe he thought it would freak someone out. Freak me out. You know, I’m shaking hands and I look down and see all flies buzzing and circling around. Like if you saw someone yawn and there was a lightning bug in their mouth."

"What?"

"I don't know. Something he said he saw once on the subway. Never mind. Listen, I don't get this game."

"Maybe I should take you back to your car."

"No. We got to see how long we can leave it there, remember? Maybe they'll think I was in it. Dead or something. Maybe they'll check the ditches, see if I crawled out, you ever read Tom Sawyer? When he walks in the door at his own funeral. . ."

"They ain’t gonna think anyone is dead. All they’ll do is tow your car. All you got is a smashed license plate, they won't even think you're hurt. They'll think you ran out of gas. I’m the one with blood on her car.” She turned to look at him.

“Yeah, I meant to ask you about that.”

“Wait a minute. Did you ask me about Tom Sawyer? She turned to search his face. “Don't tell me, you're one of those little boys who used to play dead, laying out in the middle of the playground, or under the monkeybars, and waiting for someone to check to see if you're hurt or alive or crying or whatever."

"Maybe."

She made did an abrupt one-eighty and headed back. Steven knew he was losing her and he quickly tried to tell her a story like she wanted.

"My roommate jerks-off to bug footage. . ."

. . .and I drive around looking for glass cars to crash. . .

"You're still not doing this right, give it up.” Her foot relaxed and the car slowed.

They drove on, with more small talk. At least their version of it:

They talked about driving with your teeth on the steering wheel, and how hard it is to take sharp turns that way. They talked about how they knew all the straightest roads within a hundred miles. They talked about the best roads and the best times to keep the sun behind your car and out of your eyes. They talked about the roads where the airplanes came the closest to your car. He asked her again if she really read Tom Sawyer and Ashley sighed and told him that, even though it was considered a “little boy’s book,” she read it several times. Especially the part where Tom takes Becky’s punishment, and now she wondered how much pain he’d take, if he’d give up a finger for her instead of the spanking. Steven guessed that it would depend on which finger. She flashed her brights and pointed out a large plastic square lying in the ditch. It had the letter “S” on it and he told her about the church sign box he saw earlier. He got excited and told her it must have come from the word “sins.” She laughed and said it was from another sign box about a mile back, and actually it had blown off the word “hamburgers.” He talked about how the word “road” should be spelled “rode” because it made more sense that way. Then, after a very slow left turn, he admitted that “rode” was how he insisted on spelling that word when he was little. She agreed that children might give roads the respect they deserved if it had a different name. Then she told him that she herself had said “smashed” potatoes for years. On a long stretch of highway, he told her about one night, a year ago, when he was driving along listening to the hits and an 18-wheeler roared past him with its light off on the wrong side of the road. He turned around to follow it, and then quickly turned around again after the first “wrong way” sign he passed. He was still ashamed he didn’t follow that truck. He wasn’t sure he ever saw it. This story seemed to slow Ashley’s car down even more. She turned and told him about a something that happened last summer, “a year ago tonight,” just like the ghost stories always started out. A car was drifting over into the middle of the road, and, when she saw the car purposely holding its wheel on the dotted line, she did the same. She said that she gripped the wheel with both hands, for the first time since Driver’s Ed., and heard herself saying:

“You want to play fucking games?”

“Then what?”

“I forget.”

“Why didn’t you swerve?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I think it’s because the dotted line turned yellow, like it was telling me I was scared. I don’t know.”

Three miles of silence after that. Small talk seemed exhausted until:

“My roommate showed me a videotape of a miscarriage last night, I mean, last summer.”

“Why the hell would you have something like that on tape?”

“I just said my roommate had it. . .” Steven sighed.

Ride the road? Rode the rides? Steven thought. What the hell’s the difference?

“Just messing with you,” she laughed. “You’re never going to get this right.”

“It’s you that’s all over the place,” Steven said, starting to get angry. “You say ‘a year ago tonight last summer’ and there’s snow on the road? How the fuck can-”

“Here, I'll show you.” She interrupted. “I’ll start it off. Friend of a friend of a friend of mine was in some third-world country for spring break. Wanted to do something different than the beach thing, so she thought she'd do that ‘running with the bulls’ thing. Now she saw this video in her Spanish class where she learned that they ran with the bulls everywhere, you didn't really need to go to the big one in Barcelona or whatever. Hey, what the hell does ‘third world country’ mean anyway..." She trailed off, looking impatiently at Steven. "Your turn, do this one with me!"

"Uh, friend of a friend of yours-”

“Friend of yours.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Keep going,” she said, rubbing her eye with her fist.

“And he was at the running from the bulls-”

“Why is it suddenly he instead of she?”

“It’s my friend now remember. So he’s at the running from the bulls-”

"Running with the bulls."

"Wait, isn’t it actually the running of the bulls..."

"No, it would be running for the bulls before running of the bulls so there’s no way it’s running from the bulls..."

"That's not what I said."

“That is what you said."

"Anyway, he's fucking running. And there’s bulls. And he never was the kind of guy who took chances. He's not exactly gutless, just missing some guts. So he’s prepared, equipped, and when it starts, and the bulls come up out of the ground..."

"What? They don't come out of the ground. Forget it. Go on."

"They come bursting out onto the street, and he ties a green bandanna tight onto his head, and instead of running, he turns around to face the horns head on." He glanced over and Ashley wasn’t looking at him but he could tell from the speedometer that she was interested. "Now it’s your turn. Keep it going."

"Okay, well, she quickly realized that there was only one bull to run from, and it wasn't even a bull. It’s an ox or something, half-starved and half-dead, and no one could even get it to move, let alone run. She says, 'why doesn't someone take the goddamn plow off its back.’ No bullshit, it really had a plow on its back. Then this native starts jabbering and pulling her back into the mob of students, all realizing they got suckered now, and she sees that other locals were setting up flags in a rice field to get everyone to run up and down these rows in front of the plow, you know, like when they corral you through the lines for the rollercoasters. It’s true, they were trying to get the tourists to do their farming for them. It was right about then that she started to suspect the ‘Extreme Sports/South American Tour’ she'd arranged through her Spanish class was a rip-off. She wondered about the next thing on their tour schedule. It said ‘scenic mountain-bike tour of Chad’ on the brochure and now she was starting to wonder if ‘Chad’ was just some dude and not really a country. Or maybe she’d be riding a bike with no wheels, up on blocks, attached to some kind of a corn-grinding machine, with some indigenous creatures holding up postcards of some scenery, running past her head.”

“Not bad.” Steven was smiling.

“Your turn.”

"Okay, so, um, there’s lots of bulls, and they’re all snorting and coming straight at him and he's only got a couple seconds before they run his ass over. So while he's standing there, trying to keep his eyes on the animals while everyone running by him keeps grabbing his arms and elbows and trying to spin him around in the right direction, he wonders, what’s worse? Ten bulls, or one car coming at you? Or ten bulls instead of two cars. Ten bulls or three cars? Doing the math, he’s thinking that every bull equaled about three and a half cars, until he starts to understand the differences. Even though cars got eyes, they don't have the horns and-"

"Cars got horns. My turn. So she's getting real bored waiting for this ox to move, and finally some kid puts headphones onto the thing's ear..."

“Slow down, it’s still my turn. Hey, is that a cop?” Steven leans over her and squints out her window. She smells good, like shampoo and gasoline. “I hate cops. They always want to know where you’re going just ‘cause they want to know where you’re going. It’s got nothing to do with the law...”

“You’re drifting,” she said and she pushed him back into his seat with an elbow.

“Sorry, I just hate it when they pull you over and ask you questions they don’t have to. I’ve got a surprise for them next time though. At my last job, I was doing some wiring in the basement and I found an old dog-pile of chicken bones and baby clothes and I tossed them in my trunk just hoping I’ll get pulled over because that shit looks suspicious as hell. Bones, baby clothes, and I even got a stuffed rabbit with tiny rabbits for feet, that I found on the side of the road a couple years back. That kind of trunk stash is so suspicious, the next cop would have back-up and S.W.A.T. vans and helicopters surround me before I even pulled out my license and video-rental card. That’s what they want you know? They don’t want to stop anything, they just want to find shit. Like a dead baby in a trunk. It’s a game. And the next cop that pulls me over is never going to live that shit down. The other cops will probably glue a stuffed rabbit to his hood and-”

“Dude, you’re drifting I said. What happened with the bull. Fuck it, I’ll finish it. So they put these headphones on the ox and-”

"No, I’m still going,” Steven jumps back in. “So realizes that the bulls have hearts and brains and they’re nothing to be scared of and he waits there in the middle of the road until he can see the big gold ring in the biggest one's nose. Red eyes, steam shootin’ out it’s nostrils..." They laughed together at that and Ashley started to open her mouth again. Steven just got louder:

"Then he pulls the gun out from behind his back and BAM! Pops a bullet right through one of those eyes, snuffing it out like a candle. Later, the videotape will show that the bull he shot was in no danger of running him over. The monster's head goes down, brain dead and its feet still chugging, like it’s the first drill at football practice, and it digs this huge trench in the road, throwing stone and bricks and dirt in a huge rooster-tail behind it...” He stopped. “What? What are you staring at?"

"Bullshit. Never happened."

“What?”

"I’ll prove it never happened. Watch. Ready? Okay. So, then what happened?” Steven just stared. “See? Never happened. There you go again. Trying too hard. My turn. So she gives up wanting to run, and she decides a picture of her next to an ox with headphones is better than no souvenir photos at all. So leans in to pet, or kick, the ribs on this bony thing. And, even though the music ain't working, she leans in close to that nasty fly-ridden ear to hear what the boy had playing on his headphones. Not a tape or a CD, it’s just those headphones that are only headphones. Radio, you know? And can you believe it? Over in that crazy country..."

Ashley reached down and cranked her radio full blast.

"And this was the song she heard!" Nothing but static.

"That would have been funny if you played a song." Steven smirked. “Or if we’d have been hunched over a campfire. Or if the ox had a hook for a hand.” Ashley sighed and shrugged.

"Sorry, they can’t all be gold. Every day can’t be Halloween." She clicked off the knob. "Problem is, I forgot I lost my goddamn antenna..." She trailed off, thinking about the little girl again, then suddenly hit her brights then the brakes. "Back where we started! There's your car. Looks sad sitting there all alone. Guess they finally called off the search, huh?"

Steven wiped a streak through the steam on his window and looked around. The crash was more than just over. It was gone. Not a single car, flashlight or pylon. Not a piece of metal, streak of blood, pink or purple toy under a tire, or even the glitter of bloody ice cubes on the road. Nothing. Nothing he could keep so he could prove that it had even been there. Just long tubes of black and gray ash from the flares. He’d tried to pick those up before and watched as his fingers sent them into the sky like dandelion seeds.

Then he saw a small piece of something on the road near him. It was glass, beating with the red pulse of her car’s hazards. He opened his door and reached down to retrieve it. It wasn’t from a smashed windshield, it looked like a glass screw.

Impossible. Steven thought. It would splinter as soon as it was screwed into something. Even if the drill was glass. Even if the cars were glass. Even if the factory was glass. Glass screw, glass hammer, glass bullet. They can’t exist.

He thought about two glass cars driving down the road and how no one would be able to see them unless the sun was out. And no one would ever know what they had been if two of them ever crashed. He wondered if that’s why crash sites always seemed to have too much glass. Maybe there was a glass car in there too that no one ever saw. And there was glass everywhere, on every road, if you ever got down on your knees to look. Every square inch of the highways sparkled with tiny shards, as common as snow on the tops of mountains. Glass cars crashing would leave no evidence at all. It would be as if they were made of ice.

Steven wondered if the road ever noticed these things like he did.

He stepped out of her car and turned to look at her as he slowly closed the door. He stopped when saw that she was reaching out to touch her sideview mirror with a finger. Then he flinched when her finger disappeared into it. For the first time he noticed that there was no glass inside of it. He didn’t understand. He was sure that he’d seen her eyes reflected in that mirror when he first drove up behind her. Confused, he slammed his door and heard something rattle and through the window he saw the sideview mirror’s empty socket fall off her door and rattle across the road under her headlights.

It was her. She was the car that he had slapped hands with earlier that night.

good game

She stretched out her window and leaned over her roof to point her finger at him and say:

“So, do you intend to pay me for all the damage you’ve done today?”

Who ever said driving wasn’t a sport?

* * *

In his car now.

“My roommate ties bugs to his fingers.”

“Prove it.”

“Sounds good to me.” He cranked the steering wheel hard and headed home.

Steven remembered how James had been crouched over a stinky dog dish with dead flies hanging off his fingers and he was hoping she’d see something equally ridiculous when they got there. He wasn’t sure how this game of hers worked, all he knew was that James' fly-infested handshake had to be a victory of some kind.

James was outside when they got to the house. He saw that Steven had a girl with him and he ran up to their car smiling with his hands behind his back. Steven and Ashley caught James’ grin as if it was a yawn as they got out of the car.

“James. Meet Ashley...” She was holding out her hand just as he’d hoped she would and Steven’s teeth cracked through his smile. He couldn’t wait to see what horror James would press into her hand.

Something flashed in his peripheral vision and was gone before he could focus on it.

Hell was that? It’s too cold out for lightning bugs. I can’t remember whether we called them fireflies or lightning bugs when we were little. I know one of those names was supposed to be scary.

“Ashley. Meet. . .”

James stepped between them and his hands came around from behind his back and Steven’s teeth clicked as his mouth snapped shut on his name.

James had successfully leashed ten lightning bugs...

fireflies

...to his fingers. They hovered and flashed their rapid-fire greeting as James reached for her hand. Ashley’s eyes swelled under the living fireworks of his handshake as she squeezed. The insects jerked left, then right, pulling on their strings in unison like a frightened school of fish. Then they slowed and circled back to their handshake, tying their fingers together in an electric hum of light and motion.

Invisible, Steven walked past them, catching something flying past his head on his way to the house and crushing it in a metal fist of car keys.



-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 5:17 PM [+] :::
...

"Phone's ringing dude!"
-Big Lebowski
-My Paris Hilton Fuck Tape

if anyone is curious, here's the Paris Hilton video everyone is babbling about. yes, it is me in the video and i just have to add that she is quite an annoying fuck because she never stopped wiggling around and yappin' and messing with her goddamn phone and it got on my nerves something fierce and it's too bad that the battery dies on my camera before you get to see my inevitable dickslap that mercifully knocked her unconscious. the irony is that i banged this dunce named Paris Hilton...at a Best Western! now that's irony! i think. did i use the word irony correctly? don't worry about it, i said the same thing to her at the check-in counter and she didn't know whether i was being "ironic" either. course she wasn't the brightest thing in the world. poor thing believed that my camera was actually a humidifier. sucker! okay, enter at your own risk:

this is what it looks like when you fuck an idiot

like beth said, "joke her if she can't take a fuck."

so anyway, i was looking at the grad schools around here like Pittsburg and Carnegie Mellon and i hear that at CMU it's not just a problem of boy to girl ratio, there is a problem of girl to "Dave" ratio. this is an actual statistic (i read it somewhere so it has to be true): there are more dudes named "Dave" on that campus than there are girls. clearly this fact hits close to home and i won't be applying there.

oh yeah, as part of our all-request Tuesday night - this one goes out to Sean: another excerpt from my 57-volume work "Everything That Is Wrong With The Matrix." today's comment deals with the first film:

how come Neo-Geo never tries to unplug friends/family or girlfriends from the evil tubs of goo when he realizes what's up? obviously they aren't his biological mother or father or brother or sister, but they would be someone that he thought of as family or friends or whatever that you'd think he need to release at least one person he knew from his/her cannibalistic hell between kung-fu/bad techno/and K.D. Lang courting (oops i mean Trinity). but he never mentions or even wonders about these people? you know why he doesn't think of that? because this filmmakers didn't think of that! Ted just happily plays videogames and figures fuck 'em! let them go on sucking off electric machine teats in their tubes! living off the liquified dead ain't so bad! hey, check out my new sunglasses!

and if anyone can explain to me how Neo-Geo can stop bullets but not fists...please let me know. you know what else can't be stopped? a wet dick to the face! just ask Paris "crawlsaroundtoomuchinthesack" Hilton. POW! speaking of Paris: The Real World's on. score! i want to be on The Real World so i can spend the whole season making airplane noises with my pants around my ankles. i'd do it, i swear.

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

"I have never seen anything like this."
-Sime Vuckov (head of pediatrics at a hospital regarding a one year-old patient who was attacked by fourteen other babies in day care. The children bit the victim more than thirty times when the supervisor briefly left the room)


anyone else hear about that? talk about a sign of the times. speaking of "Sign O The Times!" when i'm done moving all my boxes into my new apartment, i'll be able to get into my cds today and bust out Prince's masterpiece! thanks for reminding me kids!

out buying a sofa the other day (a bright blood red sofa to go with my new black leather chair) and i got distracted by all the props in the showroom. they have all these fake cardboard TVs and stereos and plastic fruit and bottles of wax that look like wine...and mixed in with these things:

real books.

i found this highly disturbing. most of the other fake stuff, like the stereos and TVs seemed to come from a place called Theater Props or something. but the books? they all came from libraries. all handcovers with that great book smell, some even with the library cards still in them. with name on them. doesn't anyone else find this shit utterly fascinating? i know these books were long out of print and destined for the burn pile and sold for a quarter at the most but still, someone spent months or years writing those things and that's the afterlife they get? props in a furniture warehouse? imagine that someday the author goes in there and sees the book he spilled his guts into sitting on the shelf next to a cardboard stereo with the knobs painted on. that would be upsetting i think. and some of these titles were good. i wrote the titles of these poor abandoned books down as fast as possible as the sales person showed me around. this seemed to confuse her. here's the best ones on my list (starting with the best one, really an excellent title for anything, song, movie, whatever) and what i think they might be about:

-The Blue Hammer (this is why you should talk to your hammer, and not just when you need it to hammer something)

-The Radical Alternative (whoa. this book should never be cracked. whatever the "radical alternative" is should remain a mystery)

-One Sunburned Week (aka "Men Without Hats")

-Over There! (what? where? sucker!)

-Grave Error (great drive-in movie title)

-Pop Machine (i once got in trouble trying to break into a pop machine in 2nd grade. they lined us up and went down the line asking every kid who did it. it was right out of a Holocaust movie. except for that fact that the poor little bastard i blamed for it didn't get shot in the head. i would have felt bad if that had happened and maybe i wouldn't have broken into at least two more pop machines later in life)

-Captain Blood (and the book was red)

-Damn Yankee (with Ted Nugent on guitar and crossbow)

-A Man And His Money (with his mind on his money and his money on his mind! at first i thought this said "a man and his mommy")

-Good As Gold (can't think of anything. this one probably sucks)

-Beggarman (wasn't that a Pearl Jam song?)

-Paul's Kite (i'm no expert, but i think it's safe to assume three things happen in this book. the kite is a metaphor. the kite ends up in a tree. Paul cuts down the tree)

-Where Are The White Woman At? (okay it wasn't called this, but it had "white woman" in the title and right now i can't read my own writing)

-Sledgehammer (notice how it ain't "The Blue Sledgehammer," that's because it has it's own song to keep it happy)

-Steel Birds (a pointy pointy, anoint my head, anointy nointy. name that tune)

-Come On By (on my way)

-Fly In A Cobweb (i take it back, this is the best title. isn't that the shit? fly in a dusty cobweb, stuck but it won't be eaten? shot in the ass by a monkey! oh the sweet irony!)

so there they are. i'm going to go back and rescue at least three of them when i go pick up a painting i got that they won't deliever. i feel like they were left at the dog pound, scratching at the cage. you can't leave them like that or they'll start biting each other.

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

"Did you bring a horse for me?"
"Sorry, looks like we're shy one horse."
"No, you brought two too many. . ."
-Once Upon A Time In The West

"One point twenty-one jigawatts?!?"
-J. Robert Oppenheimer


When you get done doing the math with that first quote, you're left with Charles Bronson standing over three dead bodies, next to his new horse. Once Upon A Time In The West came out on DVD today. For anyone who doesn't have 4 hours to spend watching the most difficult western of all time, just watch the first ten minutes where the dude tries to catch a fly in his gun barrell. i say this all the time and i'll say it again:

i wish i would have thought of that.

saw the best name for a band i've seen in some time. didn't have any cash on me or i would have made a blind purchase. the band was called None More Black. and right when i thought i couldn't get any better, i look on the back and see a song titled, "The Ratio Of People To Cake." genius.

my daily Matrix comment (from my upcoming work "Everything That's Wrong With The Matrix Volumes 1-12") will deal with the second movie:

Ted walks into a room with keys hanging on hooks and covering every square inch of the walls. in this room there is a man sitting at a table, also covered in keys. the man is working on a machine with a key in it. the man removes the key and blows some metal shavings off the teeth of the key. Ted then asks, "Are you the keymaker."
what??? okay, i know the keymaker is a program but how can he resist the sarcasm?
"No, I'm the pizza maker. the keymaker is next door, making pizzas you fucking toolbox..."

you know, i was tearing apart this movie at work and this woman pipes up and says, "i don't care what you say, i knew i was going to love that movie before i even saw it." i was shocked into silence. i find this statement of hers very telling. this pretty much illustrates everything that wrong with this kind of shit. you can also apply this lesson to the Star Wars fans who can't accept how shite those sequels are too.

notice we've changed our clocks again? so it's dark at like 4:30? this is unacceptable. it ain't World War II anymore. the only argument i've heard that makes even a little sense is when someone says to me, "you don't want the little kids to wait for the bus in the dark do you?" but i've thought about that and wouldn't it make more sense to adjust the starting time for grade school, rather than having the entire fucking country pretend it just travelled through time!?!?!? check it out:

you're at the bar, it's going to close at two, it's last call and you look up at the clock and - POW! time warp! you lost an hour! then, just when you get used to it - POW! you just travelled an hour forward! Marty!!! It's 1955! why do we play this game? don't adjust the clocks. adjust the schedules if darkness is a problem. stop the madness. i will not accept this time-travel delusion anymore. go ahead, Morris Day. ask me what time it is.

::: david - 11:09 PM [+] :::
...

"For overspeeding--first offense - I would enlarge the numbers, and make them readable at three hundred yards - this in place of a fine, as a warning to pedestrians to climb a tree."
- Mark Twain on the subject of license plates, originally published in "Harper's Weekly," 11/5/1905 (from a letter to the editor)



FICTION:



Glass Car Crash (part 2)



It was cold out and she was back on the road, taking the turns harder and harder. The ice had cracked every branch it could, splintered sticks and limbs covered the streets and she thought it looked like something big had skimmed over the neighborhood, then decided not to land there after all. Distracted by the debris, she slowed down and took a wider turn on the next corner. She was worried that her car would slide, but she was grinding so much wood under her wheels that she didn't want to stop and deal with a punctured tire. The worst thing was, something in the air around these houses was blocking out the song on the radio. Too many TV antennas? She stepped back on the gas.

She was taking the turns faster and faster, her foot easing off for the stop signs, but still not stopping the car. She thought she might be able to round those corners at that speed forever. She rounded a corner and saw a rusted car in the middle of a farmer’s field. There was snow and ice covering the ground but she could see that someone had plowed around the car. She didn’t understand why someone would leave it out there and work around it through a change of seasons. She considered knocking on the door of the farm house to ask someone but then it was behind her and she was coming into town. She concentrated on speed.

Three turns after the field, her car started sliding. Even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to, she turned her wheel one way and felt her tires slide the other way. There was no control at all. More angry than scared, she released the steering wheel, crossed her arms and closed her eyes. Her bumper clipped a mailbox and the car stopped. She laughed to herself, as if another child had just tagged her and the game was over.

You’re it!

She opened her eyes and saw a small girl ten feet away sitting on half a snowman. She was staring at her. She glared back at the girl for a couple seconds, then reached over and opened her passenger door. She leaned outside and looked at her wheel where it had stopped. Her wheels were tight against the curb.

Then she saw the red.

Bright streaks cutting through the black and brown slush in the gutter. She blinked and took her hand off the door. It started to swing shut by itself and she quickly shoved it open again, hoping now the red was gone. It was still there. She slowly leaned out further and traced its trail to the source. She couldn’t tell what it was. The thing she'd hit wasn't recognizable. Blood. Fur. Cat? Dog? One thing she was sure of, it was that little girl's animal. Her elbow bumped the volume knob and suddenly the static on the radio was a white roar. She reached to turn it down and the door slammed shut.

Why are you trying to bite me?

She opened her driver's side door and put a foot out onto the road. She realized that, from her angle on the snowman, the little girl couldn't see the red comet trail. The curb was hiding everything from her. She was coming over, though. And she’d see everything in about five more steps. She watched the little girl slide sideways off the half snowman, staring intently at something else instead. The little girl started to crunch through the snow towards her car. Now she could see what the little girl wanted.

Her antenna was sticking out of the snow, two feet from the dead thing. And for some reason the little girl wanted it. She quickly got back in her car, started the engine and rolled back several yards. She swatted at the radio knob to turn off the noise and turned it up full-blast instead. In a panic, she opened up the passenger door again and reached out for the dead thing against the curb so that the little girl wouldn’t see it.

She stopped. It was still alive. A long tail was whipping and spasming wildly in the red slush around it. The little girl was two steps closer, and for a moment she thought about grabbing the creature and cramming into the broken mailbox.

The little girl was next to her now, only her eyes visible above a bright green scarf, not quite close enough to read an emotion. Then they were.

The little girl’s eyes reminded her of a time back in college when she was coming home from work and a football had bounced into the street. At the time, she thought that the best way to avoid the ball was by gunning the engine and timing its path to bounce safely between her tires. She was wrong. The football was chewed under with a squawk, gutted and mangled on the screws and works under her car, then left flopping and hissing on the road behind her. She knew how it must have looked, her speeding up like that at the last second. She thought it must have looked deliberate as hell. And she knew there was no way to explain anything to the ones playing the game. It was funny and tragic at the same time, only she realized it was a joke that only she would understand. So she stabbed the gas pedal hard again and tilted her rearview mirror to watch the boys walking onto the road, slowly approaching their dying football in anger and confusion.

The little girl's hand was reaching for something. It hovered in the air, then hooked down to grab the antenna from the snow. She got to it first and threw it back over the little girl’s head into a bush. Then she grabbed the animal, stuffed it into the mail, flipped up the flag on the box, jumped back behind the wheel, turned the static down to a hum, and stomped the gas. Even around the corner, where her heart finally slowed down, the song never came back on and she finally turned off the radio. Then she punched down the rearview mirror so she wouldn't be tempted to look back.

Hours later, red and blue lights on the horizon slowed her back down. She squinted and saw the flash of a yellow light mixed in with the colors. A tow-truck. It was a crash. She coasted into a line of cars corralled in a bottleneck of roadflares and her car was slowed to a crawl. For a crazy second, she wondered if the thing that had clipped those branches above the town had finally landed. She turned off the radio, forgetting about her antenna, then quickly turned it off again. She creeped by the crash, a metal pretzel of glass and metal that woke her up and got her blinking again. She decided to kill time trying to figure out what kind of vehicles were involved in the wreck.

Too many wheels for one car, too much glass for a motorcycle, too much chrome for an airplane, too much rubber for a train. . .

The cop up ahead slowed her line of cars to 3 mph so she had even more time to study it. She decided the crash was confusing her only because the cars inside the wreckage were all the same color. She'd heard somewhere about blue cars being the least likely to have a crash. Apparently that statistic wasn’t counting the times that blue cars crashed into each other.

She tried the radio again and heard a song trying to fight through the noise. She wondered if maybe it was conversations between the cops or firetrucks. Was that possible? She played with the tuner, hoping to decipher the words. She wondered if the cops and firemen ever sang their information like that. Then her line of cars stopped completely and the song was gone.

She slowly turned her steering wheel hand over hand over hand over hand, until her car was pointing at the crash. Then she raised her foot off the brake slow as she could, and started inching towards it. The line of vehicles was loose enough for her to slide out and she was convinced that she was moving slow enough that no one would notice what she was doing.

She needed her car to be just a little closer. A road flare was snuffed out under her tire as she played with the radio knobs, convinced she could find the song coming from inside the crash.



-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 9:00 PM [+] :::
...

"They'd stick by you if they could. But that's just bullshit, baby. People they just ain't no good."
-Nick Cave

"Lighthouses are more important than churches."
-Ben Franklin

"Where are you from?
"Toledo, sir."
"How far is that from the river?"
"The Ohio River sir?"
-Apocalypse Now


finally saw Matrix Revolutions. It sucks. finally saw Terminator 3. it's much better than Matrix 3. T3 has some beautiful vehicular mayhem about 20 minutes in and some surprisingly powerful moments, like the Governor holding a coffin with one arm and mowing down LA's finest with his other arm. Matrix boast the worst quasi-religious shit dialogue since...the last Matrix movie. don't get me started on the plot holes. like why don't the machines tap into the solar power right above the clouds? like how do all the Smiths (meaning all the assimilated humans at the end) detonate without killing everyone plugged into the Matrix? why don't they have an EMP anywhere in the city for the last battle when it's the best weapon to fight the squids? where are the other 30 hovercrafts when the battle starts? why doesn't this movie end with a Rage Against the Machine song like the other two? how does Fishburne get so fat eating nothing but oatmeal? how does Ted continue to stop bullets with his hand but he can't stop a punch? fucking stupid. and that twist i thought i'd predicted one movie back when i emerged angry from Matrix Reloaded (which now looks like a fucking masterpiece compared to this mewling monstrosity) where i predicted it would be "eXistenZ Part 2: eXistenZZZZZZ?" turns out i made the same mistake i always do: i thought about the story more than the filmmakers did.

it does have a cool battle about halfway in with these Battlebot dudes vs. swarms of flying squid machines. but the whole time i was thinking it reminded me of something and then suddenly i realized what it was. and any child of the 80s will know exactly what i'm talking about. three words:

Galaga Bonus Round.

it's so true. i've never been so dead-on accurate in my entire life. except maybe when i called Rammstein "Nine Inch Nazis" and that phrase swept the country like a West Coast wildfire. serious. Galaga bonus round. watch it and you'll see what i'm talking about. no don't watch it. just trust me instead.

my step-brother gets on a plane for Iraq at 5:00 am today. if you're reading this, send me massive email bro. and that's all i'll say about this war because i don't need no Agent Smith-looking Patriot Act-enforcing dudes knocking on my door because of my rants. i'll just save them for a nose-to-nose shoutfest with the next drunken arm-chair general i encounter. you know, i'd pay real money to cross-paths with one in the next couple days. i will be taking the low-road on that political debate and i'll put that fuck's head through the floor faster than he can say "america love it or leave it." okay, this is my promise: i am putting my elbow through the window of the next car i see with a "god bless america" sticker on it. i'll take a picture of it too so nobody thinks i'm joking.
i'm in a shit mood tonight. i want to fuck someone up so bad right now i can hardly contain myself. where's my Grand Theft Auto? i think i just regressed about 10 years watching Jessica Lynch crap on CNN. look at that dull expression on her face. wait, that's Elizabeth Smart. Jessica just said that "god saved her." never mind what i think about those beliefs for a second. how does that sound to someone who's son or daughter was in the hummer with her and got killed (apparently they were all shooting while she was curled up in a ball in the back) and then she says that shit to the cameras? since she was chosen to be "saved" i guess she's also saying her god killed them. them being everyone else in the truck who wasn't doing the sandcrab manuever under the seats? i that's what she must be saying with her "god saved me" horseshit. believers and non-believers can finally agree! people shouldn't speak! stupid fucking bitch should have left her tongue over there. and hey! i just discovered a new commercial to hate instead of those smug "Truth" anti-smoking ads:

anyone catch the ones with the people wearing the words "Child Abuser" across their backs as they lead their weepy-eyed children in and out of resturants and elevators while a troubled bystander looks on? "trust your instincts" the commercial tells us. that's all we need, to trust the instincts of the same bitch who normally takes an interest in a mother and child when she's glaring down her nose because the child isn't being disciplined enough. got to encourage these people to trust those feelings that make them want to spank or rescue every child they see in public because they know what's good for everyone else. fucking psychics or something! they see words on people's backs! hopefully the letters on my back read "Chronic Masterbator!" goddamn these commercials piss me off. they know what's best, they're just waiting for this chance to make a phone call and turn someone in. the ones that will flood this hotline? you've seen them before. they're the ones that sigh oh-so-impatiently when someone's child is acting up in line at the airport. they try to let everyone know that they wouldn't stand for such behaviour. now it turns out those nosy cunts will also be deputized to weed out child abusers as effectively as they glare at parents who don't spank their kids hard enough in grocery stores, all with the power of their minds! it's a miracle! trust your instincts? fuck you. you know, i see words on people's backs too! you know what they tell me to do? and i wouldn't trust a stranger to flush a toilet that isn't their own, why the fuck would i trust one to judge someone's parenting skills after riding two floors with them in an elevator? goddamn people are worthless. i would destroy this TV right now if it wasn't mine. i'm like the descent of man over here, i'm like the first knuckle-dragger on that evolution chart - look for me about three dudes to the left of the upright human.

got a new apartment. small but it's got a view of the Ohio River, a view of an ancient train yard, and a view of a big green bridge. hopefully it'll be good for writing. i move in two weeks.

::: david - 12:54 AM [+] :::
...