Stone Cold Stories

JCN 3001 (part 1)

2008-11-21T11:28:00.001+01:00

Miniaturization. A process that became popular in the early 20^th century. A process doomed to reach an abrupt halt. After a while it became obvious that you can only make things smaller to a certain point. Practicality finally became an issue, as man realized his microchips were getting microscopic and his notebooks were getting so thin they could break like a plate of glass. Cell phones were so small that you could hardly press the buttons. DVD players were the exact same size as the disc itself.

There was a time when computers were so big they filled the whole room. They were slow and could hardly do anything. Then only NASA computers were so big they filled the whole room. They were powerful and incomparable to ordinary PCs. Now the NASA uses a single laptop the size of a 10 cent paperback novel to calculate the upcoming trip to Mars. Extremely powerful computers are in every household and PC became an insult.

In 2059, a square inch of integrated circuitry did all of Wall Street’s accounting. Von Neumann’s scheme was long gone and nanotechnology was on its way. AI was in the works. And in this time of absolute miniaturization and near perfection, the JCN 3001 was built. A computer the size of a five-storey building. It was so powerful, that only a computer of equal size would be capable of precisely counting its capabilities. A power plant had to be built next to this behemoth to keep it running. But it was worth all the trouble, as the task it was to fulfill was even more monumental than the engineering feat that made it possible.

JCN, short for Joint Computing Network, was going to tell us the future. By determining the exact position of every single molecule, it was in theory possible to predict their position at any given point in time using complex equations that are not unlike those used to forecast the weather. What this means is that we could know, with absolute precision, what will happen to anyone or anything, anytime. A house might burn down, a book could get stolen, a president assassinated. We would know the position of the bullet a second before it hit the target. A minute before. An hour after. I could tell the names of the grand grandchildren of the policeman who bagged the bullet as evidence.

Needless to say, the project was top secret. What might be unexpected, though, is that the project was completely private. It was the government that didn’t know about it. For once, the military was kept in the dark. And we, scientists from all over the world, were determined to not use the information for good or for evil, but for studying. We wanted to know everything. But when we turned the JCN on and initiated the computing process, we did not learn much. Actually, we were as clueless as ever.

It was programmed to give us data for the next day and then wait for further instructions. We compared the data with what really happened as the day unfolded, and we were amazed. Everything was perfect. Our super secret super computer predicted the future. We turned it on again and waited. Watched and listened, as the giant structure silently whirred, fed with electricity from its own power plant and cooled with jet engines surrounding it from all sides. And then, JCN 3001, greatest thing man ever built, spat out data for a week and shut itself down.

And at the end of all that data, all those numbers and coordinates for every single molecule, all of which needed to be translated into understandable form, six letters appeared.

The End

We stared silently.

Summer in the City

2008-09-25T18:23:00.000+02:00

One written way back in July...

Old people don’t sweat much. Probably because they don’t drink much, either. And that’s probably why old people are just dried-up versions of their already balding and menopausing children.

My point is, old people don’t sweat much.

I suppose it’s no real advantage in the long run, what with instead of perspiration they are incontinent. But in the summer, not sweating comes in handy.

In 1724, German-Dutch physicist Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit says the temperature of the air around me is 95°. Around 1742, Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius tells us it’s 65 degrees outside. Then in 1747, Carolus Linnaeus inverts the scale, so it’s only 35°. The numbers keep getting smaller, but it sure as hell isn’t getting colder.

Some of these old people, they might actually remember buying their first Swedish thermometer, that’s how old they are.

Searing hot concrete all around me, I’m standing in a narrow shade thrown by a lamp post. Unfortunately, the air around me doesn’t care I’m in the shade, and it’s just as warm behind the lamp as in front of it. And I’m not getting any cooler.

Old people walking down the street and up the street and across the street, they walk around me and they don’t sweat. Some old men are wearing leather shoes, some are wearing sandals, but with socks. All of them are wearing suit pants, shirts. Most of them are wearing a jacket. Some have a cool 1950s hat. One or two have sunglasses. Not one of them has a wet forehead or dark stains around their armpits. Not one of them tries to avoid direct sunlight.

That star of ours, that Sun, it’s raping the atmosphere. Penetrating the last bits of ozone, rimming the thermosphere, bitch-slapping the troposphere. I can’t help but wonder, is it just me, or did it just get warmer?

Old ladies, twice as many of them on account of WWII, well these old ladies are wearing long tweed skirts. Cardigans. Coats. Dragging five different shopping bags from five different stores, they go around town looking for the cheapest milk and freshest vegetables. It’s hot at least like hell, but you don’t see them wiping their faces with handkerchiefs. Or hiding under those Versailles silk umbrellas.

I have certified UV filter glasses, but most of these retired versions of sepia-toned photos don’t even squint.

Looking around me for a bigger lamp post, or maybe a bus stop or phone booth, just anything throwing a wider shade, I see other people my age. Short skirts and tank tops, see-through short-sleeved shirts, flip flops, bottles of cold water in everyone’s hands; they are all dying out there. More deodorant on them than the kids in China can produce. Empty cans of Adidas and Old Spice; it’s just more heat coming down on us from in-between the wider and wider spread legs of the ozone layer.

Selling body spray is the perfect business: just by selling it, you help create a bigger demand.

I take a run for it, dodging rays of light and hiding behind mailboxes and fat people. I get to the corner of the street and take a left, and I made it. Banks and publishing houses and stores, big buildings shading this half of the street. But it’s a little crowded here, with much of the same people I saw dying out there in the sun. Teens and their parents, we are all hot and thirsty and tired, and the seniors are roaming the streets free.

A regular Day of the Almost Dead.

When I see movies like Sunshine or Day After Tomorrow, I’m thinking yes please. Kill the Sun and bring on the ice age. Because ultimately, it’s much better to be cold than to be hot. You can always put on another layer of clothes, but when you’re hot, even being naked doesn’t help.

Anyway, when dusk finally comes, it’s time for the youngest offspring of Man to take over the city. Air-conditioned bars, park benches, and bus stops. The young, recovering from the heat with booze and smokes and dope and coke.

It’s our turn to live a little.

Until the big white face rises up above the horizon and calls for the old people to come out and pay. A curtain call for most of them, the seniors take their place under the stellar spotlight and do their thing. Then winter comes to claim them.

The things that are nigh...

2008-09-16T19:21:00.001+02:00

What does a temperature drop of 20 degrees and constant rain for three days tell you? Some say ‘who cares,’ others say ‘global warming did it.’ Me, I think the Apocalypse is coming. Not out of some religious belief or based on any hard evidence. I just sort of feel it. Like when an old man feels weather changes in his old rotten joints, only I feel the imminent end.

And really, why couldn’t I? These kinds of stories always have the one person who knows destruction is nigh and no one believes him. Did anyone listen to the sheriff in Jaws or the architect in Towering Inferno or the scientist in Day After Tomorrow? I don’t think so.

It came to me as the same sense of knowing you get right before a car hits you. Or when an unlikable hockey team is about to score against your guys and win. Or when you bet on a horse and then it trips. When the shit’s right about to hit the fan, the split second when you see it and know everything’s going to hell, that’s what I feel looking out my window.

Day one, everyone just said it’s raining and carried on. More layers of clothing, a lot more umbrellas in the streets. Someone occasionally stepping in a puddle or getting showered by a passing car hitting a pot hole. People complaining but generally not caring much. Me, this is when my feeling started.

Day two, some villages got flooded a bit, but it was hardly a reason to call Noah. People, still used to all that cancerous sun light, got annoyed by all the clouds and darkness. Dark clouds and even darker darkness, to be exact. Wet twilight all day long, that can spoil anybody’s day, right?

Day three, people are depressed and cold and some are angry and jumpy. Some start saying this is typical pollution weather. Other stopped caring, knowing they can’t do anything about it. Me, I fear every new hour, because it’s always an hour less till judgment day. Day three, I begin to more than just suspect everyone will die. I’m what you call 100% sure.

Day four, it never comes. Because on the night of day three, IT came. Around seven on that fateful last night, it really started pouring down. I mean, it was Saigon. Over the top. Rain so thick I couldn’t see across the street. City infrastructure gave up and streets turned into rivers. Basements were pools, roofs were sponges, gardens were swamps. Imagine a bucket of water dumped on you every second. Well, this was worse. And by this time, I wasn’t the only one saying the Second Coming is here. Actually, there were people screaming Jesus is coming back.

Not that I particularly believe in that stuff, but the weather was really becoming biblical in proportions. Noah’s little boat would’ve been screwed in this. I mean, when whales start drowning, you know you got a problem. When mountains become islands, it’s obvious you’re fucked. When the pope has nothing to say, it’s mayhem in the Western World.

By eleven o’clock, half my neighborhood drowned and the other half was about to. The feeling I had that the end was coming, well it was mutual. From something deep inside, it turned into an inevitable certainty. A hint of what was to come became the shit that hit the fan. And then some.

At midnight, the last person on Earth drowned, and that person was me. For some reason, I had to witness it all. For some reason, I’m now flying to a planet not so different from Earth, and telling this story to the masses. Not as a soon to be forgotten warning, but as an oral history of my home.

And people listened.

And it started raining.

The Flying of the Bulls

2008-08-12T01:47:00.002+02:00

I expected to have a similar experience as Kafka, which he recorded in his story Aeroplanes in Brescia, but there were two problems. First, I don’t know what it was because I didn’t read the story, and second, there was no Red Bull in 1909. Of course, I’m talking about going to an Air Race event on Sunday.

Officially, it was called Red Bull Air Race Duel, and a duel it was indeed. Two pilots, a guy from Austria and a guy from Hungary (I think), flying between giant inflatable cones built up on pontoon platforms on Mozart’s Blue Danube. (Only the river’s sort of green/brown and anything but beautiful.) It was a timed race, and the idea was to fly the course faster than the other guy. Well, obviously. But instead of watching this race, I got to see other things that in their own way were even more interesting than two blue planes performing death-defying acrobatics under the Bratislava castle hill.

I went with my sister, who was mostly interested in taking pictures of the race, not the race itself. I pretended to be completely uninterested, only there as company, but I was actually going in hopes of seeing some cool flying and maybe a plane crash killing thousands. So there we were, getting off the bus at the bridge off-ramp and walking to the desperately crowded river bank. The organizers said a hundred K would attend, but I, never being good at guessing the number of people in a crowd, thought it was a lot more.

We decided to walk back to the bridge, onto the actual road, as did many other people. Maybe not the safest thing, but who cares, it was an adrenaline sports event. We walked up a grassy knoll leading to the asphalt-topped two lanes our bus covered just minutes ago. It was no place for lone gunmen, as someone decided to use the steep hill as a toilet, and the few meters of hiking were a test of the senses: the smell, the even worse sight of the shit-covered napkin. What a great day to be a fan of dangerous flying.

Merging with ongoing traffic may be pretty risky for two people, but since a rather large mob already decided to do so before us, the cars and semis, or their drivers to be precise, were alert and went by slowly. Our view of the river was OK, but the inflatable cones, the important part of the river, were blocked by trees on the river bank. We did see a plane fly through the obstacles a few times and do some wacky stuff, but our position was less than ideal for observing and practically useless for taking pictures. Also, leaning over the railing was anything but pleasant. We were on the part of the bridge that wasn’t above water, but it was still a pretty nasty fall down to all the people on the ground.

Speaking of people, I did have the chance to observe some pretty interesting stuff. First, on the bridge there was a couple of Russians standing all around me and the sis. To be honest, I only assumed they were Russian based on their looks, but I was unable to distinguish any words, so maybe they were speaking Ukrainian or whatever. But there was one guy with them who had the looks of a mobster on vacation from the underbelly of Moscow or Yekaterinburg. He had the shirt unbuttoned to reveal a hairy chest, the golden chain and big golden watch, the rascally, rugged looks, and the cool sunglasses. You know, a Russian.

Down under us, the people I was afraid I would crush as I’d fall on them, they were mingling among parked cars of the Red Bull people. There was this shiny new Hummer, the kind (and color) they have on CSI Miami, which is exactly what we both told ourselves, probably because the car is the only memorable thing about that catastrophe of a show. And this being Europe, and not exactly the rich part of it, big cars like this are rather rare, so a few people were taking pictures with it; something I found pretty stupid. Later I made my sister take a picture of me standing in front of an old Soviet car we found in a different parking lot, just to privately parody the hillbillies with the H2.

Of course, we soon abandoned our position on the bridge, not just because it was no good, but also because two metro cops were attempting to crowd control us all off the road. I though the two of them would make a wonderful couple on a TV show. One really thin and short, the other so fat you’d think he ate the small guy’s family for breakfast. But before we departed, we had the honor of hearing a man from the crowd argue with the cops in a very disrespectful manner. It had me thinking how cool it would be if the two cops called in a SWAT team and arrested our collective ass for slowing down traffic or something.

The plane we just barely saw from the bridge, that was just one of the pilots doing a test run and then flying back to a small airport which I didn’t even know existed before. Now, as we climbed back down the grassy knoll and didn’t shoot anyone, as we merged with the masses on the river bank and failed to be awestruck by Horatio’s truck, four planes flew above our heads, making people look up and stare straight into the shining sun. My parents’ daughter took some pictures, the shutter clicking rapidly to the sound of the four engines. The planes, by the way, reminded me of all the WWII movies I never enjoyed; their motors sounding the same as all those Junkers Stukas and Messerschmidts. If only they released bombs instead of the green smoke trailing their every complicated spinning move. Now that would’ve gotten the adrenaline flowing.

We did see the planes flying overhead, but from our position on the river bank, the inflated cones were now completely hidden behind the same trees that were in the way when we were back on the bridge. There was no chance of moving closer to Mozart’s muse, there were just too many people. Small children and everything. But, naturally, I had a plan. The bridge is not just the road. It also has a walkway for us regular pedestrians, and I wanted to go up there, but it was crowded as well. We tried anyway, but all we saw was a kid sitting on a bench in the shade and gasping for air. He was the nerdy metalist type. Long hair and concert T-shirt, but also glasses and outdated slacks. Then, more people everywhere, and no planes to be seen through either more tress, the bridge’s pillars, heads of other people, or lack of trying hard enough.

Anyway, it was a hot day and I couldn’t blame the nerdy metalist for almost fainting. The only refreshment available to the masses was a Red Bull stand selling (or giving away, I don’t know which since we couldn’t get near it) cans of their sugary beverage. In a more developed country, or a more fierce capitalistic society, there’d be Pakistanis and Gooks selling lemonade all over the place. This once again being the lamer part of Europe, where everyone‘s still so used to not being able to get anything they want (a thing we had here under the big red star and hammer and sickle), nobody thought of complaining or opening their own refreshments stand. They all brought their own water, everyone but us. My sister, the poor thing so used to better services from the time she spent in England, didn’t want to bring our own water, thinking we could buy some there. Here. But no. We were thirsty the whole time.

There was a dark blue chopper filming the whole thing, probably a Red Bull company copter documenting this promotional happening for the suits back in wherever’s their HQ. Naturally, it wasn’t in the air all the time, because neither were the planes. It landed in a field behind some more trees, where no one would stand even if there weren’t any fences closing it off. We decided to walk over there, giving up on seeing any of the stunts and the whole race, mostly because the sister of my nonexistent brother wanted to take pictures of the chopper landing. I admit it’s a pretty cool thing to see, and it was always my dream to fly (in) one of those things. Maybe a Huey cruising above the rice fields of southern ‘Nam. But this Bell they had here would do, too.

Probably because this just wasn’t our day, we missed the landing, but at least we got close enough for the wind from the rotor to cool us off. Then it went back to action, and my genetic double got the money shot done. We walked back to the mob under, on, and above the bridge, and this is when I posed with the ancient Lada Samara, a car named after the creepy girl in the creepy Japanese movie. Or, more likely, a car with absolutely no relation to the creepy girl from The Ring, or Ring-u if you will. This is also when my sister complained about the lack of political immigrants selling soda, and so we decided to walk to the nearby mall and buy bottled water suitable for infants. Not that I’m particularly picky when it comes to water, but that’s what they were selling. Evian or pool water, it all comes from the same source.

The mall and the subsequent bus stop on our way home were both filled with people who, most likely, gave up on seeing any airborne action just as we did. But it wasn’t all a useless waste of time, I suppose. I got to see crappy police work, crappy organization of a public event, and even someone’s old dried up crap. And at the end of the day, I got to wonder. All the people who had the good spots and saw everything, they probably had to arrive hours before the thing started, and they baked in the hot Sun we’ve come to hate and fear so much, because it kills the glaciers and causes cancer. So were the two planes flying between four cones worth all the trouble? Probably not.

Grave New Awakening

2008-08-12T01:46:00.000+02:00

It’s funny how the mornings never change. Sure, there are small differences, but as a whole it’s always the same. These painful mornings after were the reason I never used to understand why people drink. Why go through all the trouble? Of course, I used to wonder about this before I started drinking myself.

In a way, this is similar to smoking. One always says, as a child first trying it out, after a few minutes of coughing and spitting, that he or she will never smoke. But, come the right age and the wrong friends, there we all are. Smoking.

So these mornings I never used to understand, they go like this.

And this is the worst case scenario.

Well, no. It could get worse. But anyway.

After opening my eyes, there’s the split second of Who the hell am I and what’s going on? and then my brain reboots. Now I know my name, and after looking around, I know I’m in my bed in my room. The inevitable question follows: How the hell did I get here?

A few times I woke up at a friend’s place, and then that question was preceded by Where the hell am I? and succeeded by Seriously, how did I get here?

It’s always such a mystery, getting home. Walking, taking a bus or a cab, whatever it is, I just never remember going form A to B. B being bed, of course. It’s like my brain is still somehow capable of picking up stuff when I’m not moving, but when I want to go somewhere, all the nervous system resources go into limb coordination, and my memory is fried. Not that I remember everything that went on when I was sitting on my ass, but at least there’s more.

Blackout syndrome, I suppose, is a perfect name. The bits and pieces of the evening always start with a fade-in and end with a fade-out. Everything engulfed in a darkness of having no clue. Hence, blackout. And apparently, this syndrome works something like this: Alcohol impairs the brain’s ability to transform information from short term to long term memory, so everything you do you only remember for maybe seven minutes. Tops.

By repetition, it is possible to get some things through to the long term section. I guess that means that if I remember throwing up, I probably did so a couple of times. But how ‘bout I skip this part.

After not remembering how I got home, more questions arise. My favorite one being Where’s my cell phone? It always turns out to be either still in my pants somewhere in the corner, or on the shelf right next to my head. With weak, trembling hands I take it and check outgoing calls.

God forbid I called someone and don’t remember it. Well, it would be OK with friends but a little awkward with relatives. Hey, grandpa, come on out and partayyy..!

Another fun thing to do is check the photos I might’ve taken. Usually there’s either nothing or just one blurry image of nothing in particular. Sometimes, however, I surprise myself with the level of artistry me and my cell phone managed to produce. Well, to be fair, it’s me, my cell phone, and my intoxication. Together, we do the great shots of hammered friends and tired bus drivers and cops in pursuit.

If I do find a new photo in the gallery menu, I tend to wonder how it got there. More often than not, the pictures tell me nothing. Only once did a slightly out-of-focus shot of two guys fighting help enlighten the previous evening and how the blood got on my shoes. Enough shock value for one morning?

I wish.

The hardest part comes next. Getting out of bed. As I try to sit up, the taste in my mouth hits me hard. The taste, and the dryness. When my feet are finally on solid ground, I swear for the umpteenth time that I’ll never dink again. And I hope everyone else from the party is also having such a great time right now.

The real oh for fuck’s sake moment comes when I find my wallet and it’s once again empty. Always the same story with this. I don’t take too much cash, because I figure the less I take the less I spend, which translates into the less I spend the less I drink and the more I remember afterwards. What usually happens is I either take extra cash just in case or I spend the little I take and then have a date with the ATM. In both cases the results never vary.

Grunting about being broke, I stumble and wobble and limp around the house. Pointlessly moving to shake off the dizziness of still being a little bit drunk. Pointlessly hoping the headache will, pretty please, go away soon.

But really, I don’t drink that much. I might actually drink a lot less than I give myself credit for. It’s just that when I do, I like to do it big time. And writing about it is so much fun, because everyone can relate to it. I myself have read and heard tons of stories and accounts like this, and I must say I always found a piece of me in them. Someone might tell me about how they found a mitten in their pocket and don’t know where it came from, and I’m thinking Yes, I hear ya, brother.

Everywhere, these stories keep coming up because everyone keeps drinking. Young people, old people, business men, doctors, mothers, fathers, sailors, soldiers, hobos, and bums. Even priests and old ladies receiving the blood of Christ. Wine used to be safer to drink than water. It’s not just a socially given, traditional kind of thing, it’s in the very nature of people. And I want to believe that everyone hates the morning after.

After I drain the rest of the poison out of my system and manage to eat something, I start to look forward to meeting the people involved in yesterday’s session again. The conversation we have the following day always tends to consist of the same sentences.

Great time we had yesterday. Yeah, but can you tell me what happened after, say, eleven o’clock? Oh crap, I was going to ask you the same thing. We never remember anything! You bet. But I think we’re missing on a lot of fun this way. Uh huh. There’s always this line and we never fail to cross it. Not just cross it, we fucking jump over it and never look back. Yeah, but remember when you tripped over that chair? No way, so that’s why my foot hurts. Ha, wait till you see my knee…

And on and on until we set the date for the next gentlemen’s meeting.

Oh, the shots and chasers, the music and jokes and musings about years past. Funny how I always can’t wait, completely forgetting what a grave new awakening will follow. Funny how we always all end up in the same situation. I guess one day we’ll do this so many times we’ll remember everything.

You know how the old memory saying goes: Repetition makes perfect!

Dogs that lick and dogs that bite, hounds that howl through the night

2008-08-04T17:28:00.001+02:00

So polio and small pox and rabies are supposedly practically non-existent in our age of penicillin and whatnot. But if FDR were to rise from his grave, you wouldn’t want him coughing in your face, never mind the fact there’s a dead president around. And if a poor Russian immigrant with suspicious spots were to sit next to you on the bus, germ warfare is the first thing running through your head, even though the Cold War is over. So when a dog bit me, who could possibly blame me for freaking out? All these diseases, genetic, viral, bacterial, fairytale, they still exist somewhere on the planet, no matter what other people from WHO tell you. And it is my belief that they all exist in the filthy mouths of dogs.

Take my street for example: dogs of all shapes and sizes in all the gardens and on every sidewalk, doing their business, their owner thinking that if they fertilize it enough, the pavement just might bare fruit one day. I see dogs of all the popular sorts: Golden Retrievers and Lab puppies and crime-fighting Nazi Shepherds and sanctified Bernards with little barrels attached to their collar, in case there’s an avalanche in the suburbs of this the Capital City. And then there are the old women dogs. The small, fluffy, cute little dusters with legs. And lets not forget the dangerous hounds. The big Boxer and Doberman and Bulldog and Pitbull and Cerberus. Because in a neighborhood built in the 1950s and still mostly inhabited by the original owners, you really need these Baskervillians to guard you from uncanny old ladies and their grandchildren.

But not everyone has a dog. Some people have two. This one guy, died a few years back, used to live a few houses upstreet from us, he had four four-legged best friends. That’s sixteen legs in the house that don’t do any valuable, money-earning legwork.

My house, or rather,, ma parent’s house, or even my grandma’s house, come to think of it, well our house is one of the maybe five or six properties on the long street that are K-9-less. And I dare say it always will be that way, because our failure to succumb to the general feeling of fondness towards dogs is genetic.

In reality, there are no cat people and dog people. There are just dog people and normal people. Feel free to leave the cats out of the equation, because what are cats if not just smaller dogs that don’t want to be in a committed relationship? You have to wash them, feed them, love them, and clean up after them the same way you do with dogs, only cats don’t give a rat’s ass about you and leave whenever they want wherever they want. So my point is, my family’s not a bunch of cat people. We’re a bunch of normal people. (Normal, of course, only when it comes to this K-9 issue.) And just as we hate dogs, we hate their owners.

Pretentious assholes might not be the correct term, but it sure as hell sounds right. Your typical dog owner will do one of three things: talk about their pet all the time, make you pet their pet even if you don’t want to, and stick it in your face that they are part of a special community. Dog owners are not regular people. Despite popular belief, they might not even be people at all. Maybe some kind of missing link between man and dog. Werewolf is what I think it’s called.

A typical dog owner, member of this just slightly obnoxious and annoying community, is completely blind to the fact that not everyone likes dogs. They think you don’t mind when it sniffs around your ass and licks your fingers and jumps on you and tears your wind pipe out. How could you mind? It’s so adorable and cute and here doggy, good doggy. A person with a dog will typically socialize with another person with a dog very easily. You know, because they “get it” and you don’t. They have a dog for barking out loud, and the dogless just have no idea.

When I was out with a bunch of friends once, one of them brought her adorable little bitch, and it was just impossible to talk her (the person), because any kind of conversation would be 25% you talking, 25% you waiting for an answer while she was watching her dog 25% her saying “yes, you’re a good doggy” instead of talking to you, and then finally the 25% of distracted answers would come. And what’s even worse than your friend with the dog is your other friends interacting with the dog. It’s incredible how people known to use harsh language and drugs turn into people saying “Here boy!” to a female animal and throwing sticks instead of throwing parties.

Yes, I would say I’m oppressed. I probably wouldn’t complain about it to a black person or a Jew, but still I think I’m being discriminated against. Walking home means watching big barking beasts running towards me and just barely being stopped by the fences holding them in. Beware of dog signs were the first thing I learned to read and it will be the last thing I’ll read as well. And the best part is the dog huggers actually think they are the minority that should complain about discrimination. They complain about having to put up those beware of dog signs and buying leashes and vaccinating their dogs. Because to them, Planet of the Dogs would be the ideal world. A place where everyone gets to step in dog shit and get licked and barked at and bitten and be happy about it. They think it’s normal to walk behind their pets with plastic bags, hunting for their turds. They think it’s OK to feed dog chow to animals that once used to be scavengers and predators and can very easily be those things again.

But I wouldn’t want to go on a rant here, so let me get back to those diseases. Why did I mention those? Because every night, and especially during the warm months (lately I noticed those are all year round), I am forced to listen to the insufferable howling of these domesticated beasts. All around me, on my street and the parallel streets and the perpendicular streets, from every direction, dogs yell and scream and bitch and moan all night. And it’s not the full Moon, and they are not being tortured and they are not lonely, so I figure the only reason this cacophony of howls is on air all night every night is because all those dogs are sick. Flees, worms, rabies, polio… heck, even TBC and the plague and Tourette syndrome and Guillain-Barré and cancer, these dogs must have it all, or if you don’t think so, then tell me why won’t they shut up and let me sleep?

A Beatnik's Question

2008-06-22T14:18:00.003+02:00

The innermost deepest feelings dictated to masses
What to do when you are on the edge of a cliff?
A wallpaper of lies covering the wall of truth
What to do when you are bleeding to death?
Nowhere to hide from the darkness of pain
What do do when you die in vain?

A pleasurable notion of reading Huxley's work
Walking through the doors the law has locked
It escapes me as I burn in flames of aging
What to do when you cannot stop life?

Put the knife in...

2008-06-17T19:19:00.000+02:00

She freaked out. Of course she did. After all, her five-year-old was holding one of those ridiculously big Michael Myers-style kitchen knives that was bigger than his whole arm.

Samuel jumped out of bed as loving and protective husbands usually do when their wives scream in terror. Little Andy screamed as well and dropped the knife to the floor. It missed his toes and made a loud metallic noise.

Vera freaked out again, jumped out of bed as well, took Andy in her arms, cried and sobbed and demanded to know if Andy’s alright. Samuel was confused at first, for everything happened much faster than one could read.

“Daddy left this knife in my room,” said Andy sobbing, obviously frightened by all the freaking out. “I wanted to return it, but I’m not supposed to go downstairs alone in the dark.”

Vera attempted to calm him down and assured him he has done nothing wrong. Then she took him to his room where she tucked him in and told him everything is “a-ok.” She returned to the master bedroom when he finally closed his eyes and seemingly went to sleep.

Samuel did not get any of that loving, caring treatment his son got.

Vera hissed and murmured and did everything she could not to yell at her husband at the top of her voice. What’s wrong with him? What the hell was he thinking? Does he realize what could’ve happened? This is not over yet. She’s taking Andy to her sister’s in the morning.

Samuel knew when he wasn’t welcomed in the bedroom.

Like that time he returned home drunk. Or that time he had a short-lived affair with his secretary.

But now, Samuel was both confused and angry. What just happened? Does Vera actually believe he left that thing in Andy’s room? She didn’t even ask him what his version was. She just blindly believed that little cat-killing maniac without even questioning the stupidity and downright insanity of his statement.

What the hell, Vera? We never even told him not to go downstairs in the dark! What kind of nonsense is that?

It seemed obvious to Samuel, now getting dressed in the bathroom where he left his clothes after showering, that no one is ever going to believe him his son Andy is deranged. That he killed a cat and tried to kill his mother and put the blame on his father. No one is even going to consider the possibility that this kid, age five, could be dangerous.

But what is dangerous?

Is it not the ability to hide one’s full potential? After all, piranhas are small too, but you wouldn’t swim with them.

Could his son be a piranha? A predator cloaked in cute little pajamas with Spider-Man, who secretly possesses enough will and mind-power to kill his own parents and get away with it?

Samuel, dressed, shoes tied, keys in hand, couldn’t decide whether to stay or leave the house. Sit in the kitchen and wonder about the monstrosity of his son or go out and drink till he forgets all of this? He was about to decide for the latter when a new thought entered his mind uninvited.

What if Andy was telling the truth?

Could he be so stressed out from work that he gave his son a knife and forgot all about it? Or was it the dead cat that freaked him out so much he now unconsciously wants to frame Andy and prove he’s a killer?

He heard footsteps upstairs, going from their bedroom to Andy’s bedroom. Vera was probably checking in on Andy, maybe taking him to sleep with her in the large bed, maybe taking him to Wanda, her sister.

If Samuel was imagining all of this, if the cat just died and if there was nothing more to it, then it must mean he is slowly and steadily going crazy. Crazy as in toys in the attic. Crazy like truly gone fishin’. Crazy like there’s no tomorrow. Crazy like a…

A parent who kills his child?

Samuel suddenly found himself spiraling out of control. Truly worried that his son is pure evil, and he is the only one capable of seeing it. The only who sees right through those big beautiful eyes.

Samuel suddenly found himself with another knife in his hand. A smaller one, but not one bit less deadly.

Samuel suddenly found himself walking upstairs, cold sweat oozing from the pores on his back, making his shirt damp.

Samuel suddenly found himself truly stark raving mad, standing in the bedroom door, looking at the evil son curled up, embraced by his easily fooled mother. Both asleep as if nothing was happening. Both asleep as if this little bed-time drama wasn’t about to reach its explosive climax.

Samuel suddenly found himself holding a knife covered in blood.

Was he crazy? Was he a killer or was he suicidal?

And most importantly, was he right?

Ghosts of May: A Contemplation

2008-06-07T20:34:00.001+02:00

I now find my life to be somewhat empty. Well, emptier.

Finishing high school must be the most bizarre experience I’ve had in years. Not that high school here is the same as high school I know from such crap as 90210 or Smallville. We don’t do cheerleaders and football players. Cool kids and geeks. Chess club. Lockers in the hallways. Evil gym teachers that mock the fat guy. We have less competition based on who’s faster, stronger, smarter, or sexier and more friendship and general camaraderie.

So why was finishing high school so strange?

Reason number one is the way it all ended. Written and oral tests from four subjects, two of which were required and two I could choose myself. So basically, five years of study, of tests, grammar, books, and discussion; it all just boiled down to fifteen minutes that really matter. For some, convenient. For others, lucky. For most, unfair. But who am I to criticize our educational system? I only had to go through it.

Reason number two is what I do now. After two weeks of cramming everything into my head, I am now officially sick and tired of any kind of learning process. Only it doesn’t stop here. Now I have entry exams to two universities, but no will to study for them. Week one after finishing high school was my brain submerged in a bowl of booze. Week two is my brain trying to concentrate on more of that stupid math I hate so much. And if I don’t make it to university, it’s all work and no play for me.

Reason number three is the people I will and won’t miss. For years I have loathed the building I had to visit five times a week. Now, I’m strangely unable to imagine life without it. I’ve become institutionalized like some sort of inmate released after doing some serious time at Folsom. For years, I’ve maintained steady friendships that are now broken down according to who’s going to which university in which city. People I never liked stay in town while others go to Prague or wherever. Maybe sometimes not having friends could be good. At least there wouldn’t be anyone to miss.

Reason number four is summer break. It’s going to be my longest summer break ever, since this year I finished a month sooner. Somehow, however, I’m not really looking forward to it. For a student like me (above average, but not enthusiastic about school at all), this is a dream come true. But I’ve always been the type of person who only realizes how he liked something when he loses it, so really, this dream come true is just too bitter to make me happy.

To sum it all up, May just sucked this year. I missed half of it by studying and I can’t remember part of it by partying. The other part of that remaining half of it I just spent procrastinating. But I know exactly what I’m going to do next.

Finish that darn dead cat story.

Never Mind the Dead Cat

2008-04-28T21:37:00.000+02:00

It was very important that little Andy never saw Ocultus dead. It was his pet cat for five years, (or in other words, all his life) and it would be a terrible strike to his young, innocent soul. Innocent, that is, if we are to believe that toddlers are little angels and not future serial killers or evil dictators. Hitler, after all, was a cute kid, too.

But of course little Andy’s normal, thought Samuel, his father. Putting the dead cat in a plastic bag, he was thinking about his son’s big blue eyes, and of the things that lie hidden beyond. What if he killed Ocultus?

Yes, what if Andy killed his pet cat? The way its neck was broken indicated foul play, and Ocultus seldom approached anyone else but Andy, which means he had a perfect opportunity to kill the cat.

Killing small animals is the first indicator of a serial killer, Samuel said to himself, remembering that CBS special on murderers. What’s up with that channel, anyway? Three CSI’s, Cold Case, Num3ers with its pseudo-cool spelling, and all the other crime shows. Could this be why my son is turning into a killer?

His wife Vera had no idea about his worries, and she would probably kill him herself if she ever found out. What kind of a father is he, anyway? Thinking his own child is turning out to be the next Michael Myers.

Samuel threw the bag into the trunk of his Cadillac and the lifeless body inside it landed on the carpeting with a soft bump. He got into the car and started the engine. Vera was waving at him from an open kitchen window, and he nodded his head. Mission accomplished.

It was Vera’s job to keep Andy inside the house long enough for Samuel to get rid of the body, and it was a pretty difficult job, because Andy loves to play outside in the garden. She left the kitchen and entered the living room, where Andy was sitting at the TV, not really watching Spongebob, but rather playing with toy cars, pretending it’s a drive-in cinema.

My God, he is so adorable, thought Vera, and after looking at her son for a while, she told him daddy was done repairing the septic tank, and he can go play outside now. Andy got on his little legs like a spring and vanished behind the back door. Soon, she could see him through the kitchen windows riding his tricycle around the garden.

Meanwhile, Samuel took the cat to the vet, where they said they would dispose of the body. Only they didn’t use the word body when he called, they said corpse. “Yes, Mr. Rosenstock, bring the corpse over, we’ll take care of it. Put it in a plastic bag and wear gloves when handling it.”

He pulled into the small parking lot adjacent to the veterinary clinic. It was a pretty big concrete building, looking more like a motel than an animal hospital. He took the bag from the trunk and entered the lobby. The receptionist, a dashingly attractive young student of medicine who worked there part time to pay for her apartment which many local pet owners visited on numerous occasions to make mad passionate love to her instead of their wives, raised an eyebrow upon seeing Samuel with a black bag.

“I called earlier today,” he started, but she remembered who he was before he got to finish his sentence. She told Samuel the doc will be with him shortly, please wait. And so he did, putting the cat body-bag on the floor next to a row of chairs, where he sat down and shifted through some magazines, all of them new issues, unlike the common stereotype that all magazines in every waiting room are totally out of date.

“Ah, Mr. Rosenstock, come on in,” said the doctor, and vanished back in his office before Samuel even noticed him. He entered the room, complete with a desk, an examination table, filing cabinets, medicine supplies, et cetera. There was also a yellow biohazard bag on the table, and the doc told Samuel to put his bag inside.

“Um, I was thinking,” Samuel said hesitantly, “Think you could do an autopsy? Tell me how it died?”

“That is a little unusual,” he replied, “But If you’re going to insist…”

Samuel nodded and so the doc took the yellow bag containing the black bag to another room, which Samuel assumed was the OR. He hesitated whether to follow the doc inside or not, but when he called him in, Samuel entered.

“How did you say Ocultus died?” he asked. Samuel said he didn’t know exactly, but that he had suspicions someone might’ve did it on purpose.

“Forgive me my sense of humor, but are you telling me you think this was a felidaecide?” He chuckled, but stopped when he noticed Samuel wasn’t amused at all. “Look, Mr. Rosenstock, there’s not much I can tell you. The fifth vertebra is dislocated, which cut the spinal cord and caused immediate death. Your cat did not suffer. What else do you want?”

“Could a child do this?” he asked bitterly.

“A child? Think some troublemakers did this?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“It certainly seems possible. Only I can’t imagine what kind of person would do this to an innocent cat.”

“An evil person, doc. An evil one.”

Samuel left the clinic as fast as he could; avoiding any questions the vet might’ve had about his suspicions. The last thing he needed was his wife getting a call from the veterinary clinic telling her Samuel thinks their child is crazy. The last thing he needed was for it to be true.

Vera called her husband to tell him they’re out of milk, and then she went outside to keep a closer eye on Andy. She found him staring at a dead bird under their apple tree. She ran to him and dragged him away from that dismal sight.

“Mommy, what do you think happened to that bird?”

“It must’ve fallen from the nest,” she said and she hastily made up some parental crap about bird heaven. Then she told him to go play with the hose, and while he watered sunflowers, she threw the small dead bird into a trash bag and threw the bag into the trash bin. She figured it’s ok to throw away such a small body, and there was no need to take it to the vet. She also figured her husband wouldn’t want to go back again anyway.

He’s been so distracted lately. I wonder what’s on his mind.

Samuel pulled over at the store, bought milk, drove away. All in record time. On his way back he paid little attention to the road, but rather watched the children playing outside on the curb and on front lawns. He wished his own son would play happily outside, but instead he was afraid Andy was hunting for game. A cat is a relatively big animal compared to his childish body, so Samuel figured this must’ve been going on for some time already. First he killed a mouse. Or a bird. Maybe a squirrel or a guinea pig. Then a cat. Then maybe a dog. And then?

When he returned home, Vera was on the phone with a neighbor (or so he surmised from that one half of the conversation), and so he went outside into the garden to check up on Andy. He was kicking a ball around a tree, laughing and enjoying himself in such an innocent and cute way that Samuel felt more than stupid for thinking that little angel could be a future mass murderer.

He played soccer with Andy for about an hour, until he was tired and saved by Vera’s summons to the table. They had meat loaf, a favorite of Andy’s, and this time he even managed to cut his food all by himself. Vera was visibly proud of her crafty son, and so Samuel pretended to be pleased with this little achievement as well. Deep down, however, he was wondering since when was Andy so handy with a knife? And did he really want him to be?

In bed, Samuel told Vera about his visit to the vet, and brought up the possibility that maybe someone killed Ocultus. Of course, he made it sound as if he was talking about some teenage punks or junkies, but he had the image of Andy holding the lifeless cat somewhere deep inside the back of his mind, and it was slowly pushing its way through erotic fantasies involving that medicine student, creeping inside Samuel’s head and driving him crazy.

“Oh my, do you think there are kids like that around here?” she asked Samuel, referring to his suggestion of cat-killing adolescents, but he wasn’t listening. “Where are you?” she asked him silently and turned on her side to turn off the lamp. She was surprised to see Andy standing at the bedside.

Standing there and holding a knife.

to be continued

No Sign of L

2008-04-15T23:27:00.003+02:00

A very short but quite challenging story about the preservation of letters and words and everything else we hold dear when it comes to communication. What would happend if someone took away our alphabet? Or even just one tiny little piece of it?

I did everything in my power to find it, but it’s just gone. I peeked under the bed, under my desk, behind the sofa, just everywhere. Between the books in my room and among the spoons and knives and forks in the cupboard. I even went through the garbage and I searched the attic and the space under the house. The shack in the garden. The garage. I’m pretty sure I exhausted every option, but it’s nowhere to be found.

I can see why this is no reason for anyone not knowing what’s at stake to get excited. Me, I am very excited. Frightened, that’s even more fitting. Petrified. I mean, I’m the one who was supposed to take care of it. I was the keeper, one might say. How I was appointed this task, I don’t know. As far as I can remember, dad was the keeper when I was a kid, and then without any kind of warning, I got appointed this task after his demise.

I’m no expert, as you have no doubt surmised, but I think it works this way with every keeper. From generation to generation, the keeper traditions and know-how are passed on, so that each and every servant of our cause has a successor.

Right, I guess it’s time to say something about the cause. Or, even more fitting, the mission. There are as many keepers as there are tongues and words and fonts and written forms. Each keeper gets assigned one item. He or she must protect and preserve the item at any cost. Often with extreme prejudice.

Yes, sometimes, it gets nasty.

It is surprising how many mad scientists and sinister bad guys there are in the universe, bent on dominating everything. It is even more surprising that what they want is not money or power. They want something tinier. Something that seems to be of no use. Of no big significance. But that is nothing more than a misconception.

They want to own the very means of our communication.

Imagine the keeper of R did not manage to keep it safe. Imagine not having any R’s to write, to say, or to otherwise use. How is a person supposed to express thoughts without an R?

See how giving away our R’s to some mad man’d be the end of everything?

And this is why I need to find that damned item of my keeping. Before some guy in a dark coat sporting a sinister moustache and maybe even a hat to go with the smirk on his face finds the item and destroys humanity.

But how am I to find it? I searched every nook and cranny. Every shadow, dark spot, narrow street, and bad neighborhood. It’s not on any riverbank and at no church or square or causeway or in the underground, on the tracks or on any station. I’m running out of ideas as to where to go and search for my artifact of humanity. This invention of man that I had in my keeping.

What to do now, I don’t know.

What I do know is that there is no sign of it.

No sign of…

Musique concrète

2008-04-12T20:39:00.000+02:00

“Marmalade, I like marmalade,” he mutters as he takes the half-empty jar (yes, he’s that kind of guy) off the shelf in the rustic cupboard. His hands are already full, as he already collected bread and three eggs from other shelves in other cupboards.

He lights the small blue flame of the stove, finds a clean pan and he gets to work. Soon enough, melted butter sizzles on the hot metallic surface that has seen hundreds of eggs before and will see even more of them in the future.

While breaking the eggs, he recalls other such occasions. “Breakfast in Los Angeles, macrobiotic stuff…” He recalls all the breakfasts he has ever eaten or prepared, and already he makes plans for the future ones. For Alan, breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day; it is the only meal of the day.

As a roadie for a famous band, he seldom has time to eat lunch, for at that time of day the band is either on the move or preparing for a show, and he never eats dinner, for at that time of day the band is either performing or throwing a party no Grand Vizier would be ashamed of. It is a hectic life, and in such hectic conditions it would be impossible to survive without something to hold on to, and Alan has his breakfast ritual.

“Macrobiotic stuff,” he mutters again and shakes his head, baffled by the life-style of the rich and successful. “Macrobiotic stuff…”

He remembers the small piece of bacon still left in the fridge, and he retrieves it with great enthusiasm, for he likes bacon even more than he likes marmalade. He puts the two slices in the center of the pan and watches them curl and sweat fat as the fry in the butter.

In the meantime, he opens the box of cereal and he pours the crispy golden delicatessens in a bowl full of milk he prepared earlier. This he eats as if he had never eaten before, gulping and swallowing spoonfuls, and soon he throws the silver spoon back into a completely empty bowl. The bacon is done and he picks it up with a fork and puts it on a dirty plate he didn’t have time to clean since the day before yesterday. Then he moves on to preparing the eggs, pouring them into the pan full of half-burnt fat. This may not be a healthy breakfast, but at least it isn’t that macrobiotic stuff.

He drinks some orange juice and then he spreads a thick layer of butter and marmalade on two big loafs of bread. “Marmalade, I like marmalade,” he mutters again. He eats it with one hand, stirring the eggs with the other. Then he prepares two toasts and eats them with the eggs. It tastes better than any room service crap, for it was prepared with love and patience, and also the pressing knowledge that Alan won’t be eating anything else until six o’clock tomorrow.

Rise and shine.

Morning glory.

It took longer than usual today, so he washes the dishes in haste, leaving the knife, fork, and bowl unwashed but still fit for tomorrow’s duty. As he leaves the kitchen, he leaves three things behind: the echo of the doors banging as he shut them hastily, the smells and fumes of cooking, and a dripping tap that goes on and on, forever dripping small drips of water into the sink.

Until someone removes the stylus from the album.

Never stay out drinking, 'cause this is what happens...

2008-03-28T22:57:00.002+01:00

This is a little experiment gone wrong, but there are parts of it I really like that wouldn't work on their own, so here's the whole thing. My abomination of grammar, proper story-telling, and also a departure form my usual first person narration.
Due to some explicit content, reader discretion is advised.

You step into the shower. Turn on the water, not really caring whether it’s hot or cold, because damn, you are so hung over that nothing can be worse than the headache you’re having. It takes you a while to find the plastic bottle you were looking for, takes even more time to open it, and a hell of a lot of effort to squeeze its gooey contents out on your hand. The shower gel is yellow. A shade of yellow similar to that of thick urine you watched exiting your body a minute ago, still half asleep, just standing there and passing the remainder of last night’s drinks of which you had one too many, thinking, Oh God, I hate Mondays. And holding that shower gel in your hand, letting it slowly flow down your wrist and right down to your elbow, letting it drip down from in between your fingers, that’s when you remember all the things you did last night. You see a somewhat shaky image of yourself drinking shit with your buddies, and while there are bits and pieces of the evening missing, you can still remember one thing very vividly. Your old time friend you used to mock because you knew she wouldn’t stay mad at you, that girl you always thought was just a friend you sometimes have fun with, well now you remember that last night she seemed an awful lot more attractive than usual. Last night you thought you could marry her right then and there. Be with her for the rest of your sorry excuse for a modern, exciting life. Or you could’ve just screwed her right there on the spot. Last night you thought, to hell with all those skinny blond bitches that spend more time shopping than breathing, fuck all beauty queens and models and anorexic actresses. You don’t need any of that, because you have this girl you now realize is so hot in a strange, ordinary kind of way, that you were ready to pronounce her the Most Beautiful Person in the whole world. That’s right. You were that drunk. Only, hey, here’s the catch. It wasn’t just all the booze thinking for you. You’re pretty much sober right now, and you still can’t get her out of your mind. And you ask yourself, what’s wrong with me? And then later, no, why should there be anything wrong with me? I sort of noticed her good looks even before I got drunk, so I can’t be wrong, right? Only, the thing is, you don’t know anything right now, except that you have to pour more gel in your palm because what you managed to squeeze out of the bottle with your shaking hand the first time is now gone, most of it all around your feet dissolving in the lukewarm water, and you just can’t, seriously man, you just cannot think about her today. Not today. Because today is your job interview. Yes, you moron. It’s your job interview today and you spent the whole night drinking and dancing your ass off with a bunch of people you’d probably hesitate to call friends in case they don’t think the same way about you and it would be sort of embarrassing. So now you start actually showering instead of just standing there and wasting expensive water, and after you finish that, you shave your ordinary face and brush your relatively normal-looking teeth and then you get dressed in one of your slacks, shirt, and causal jacket because you want to create the impression of an easy going, cool kind of guy, not a person who is desperate to get the job because otherwise he’ll be just another loser who’s not doing the job of his dreams (which this interview is totally not about) and not studying what he intended to because all your quasi friends told you that’s not the right thing for you and you just really want to please everyone, don’t you? And now that you are already late, and still thinking about that suddenly very attractive friend of yours you think you love but somewhere deep down you know it’s just temporary, you get on the bus and you realize another thing that all sorts of sucks. The person who’s taking you to the interview, the person who has the connections and arranged this thing for you, is another person you thought you loved back in the day, before your maybe friend started dating her and you found out that she’s nothing for you, but you still feel sort of uneasy around her and you try to be nonchalant when you’re with her, but she finds that very cute and she’s always coming onto you and although you like that, you resist the temptation because you know how it would end, but now you have to spend time with her and be thankful and do all that stuff you got to do when someone tries to save your miserable ass. So when you get off the bus in front of the building and meet her there at the door finishing a cigarette she will not admit to have smoked, suddenly you find yourself thinking about two girls in ways you never did before or never wished you did. And isn’t that just a marvelous start of your week? But don’t forget where she is taking you right now, where this hall leads to, where this elevator will take to, where you almost run to because by now you are fucking late; don’t you forget that it’s your job interview today and it almost started without you.

You’ve always been the kid everyone saw potential in, but you never really managed to live up to those ideas your relatives and supposed friends had about you. You never managed to start going in the right direction. The problem was that you didn’t want to do what others told you to do, not because you thought you were supposed to control your destiny yourself, but because you never really wanted others to think that they helped you and that they are the cause of your good fortune. But now you finally realized that this approach got you nowhere, so here you are sitting in the office of some guy who is offering you a job you are actually interested in, and never mind your girl friend (but not girlfriend) standing there next to you, because you are now finally ready to take advice from others and be thankful for things. So you answer all the standard questions about past experiences and where do you see yourself in five years career-wise, and all that crap you prepared for, and then he asks you friendly questions, and irrelevant questions, and funny questions, and you realize, this being not your first or last realization today, that things are going well and your future boss is a cool guy and you really not only need but suddenly also sincerely want this job.

So after the interview is very successfully over, you invite your friend to coffee or something, you know, to thank her, but you really expect and also kind of wish that she would decline because she doesn’t have time or because no thanks, that’s not necessary, glad to help you, but she actually said yes, so now you’re stuck with her in a nearby café. Your headache returns with a bang and as she talk and talks and forever just talks about things you don’t care about but pretend you do, your mind drifts far away, to yesterday’s little party. To how you wore a suit after a pretty long time and remembered how cool you look in it, to how this wasn’t actually supposed to be such a wild celebration, to how you did shots with your best maybe friend, to not remembering exactly what the occasion was anyway. Somehow you managed to actually forget what the party was about, but still you can’t get one face out of your head. Now that’s just messed up, man. You need to focus on something else besides that nice and sincere smile that just sort of invites you over to her place to do stuff with her you can’t even imagine doing with her because somehow she never really was the center of your sex-dreams world. For some reason, her breasts also come to your mind. They’re pretty, as far as you could tell through the dress, not too big but definitely not small, them probably being the best part of her slight chubbiness, although she’s far from fat, more like just simply not thin. Yes, that’s it. You got parts to grab her by, but she’s not overweight at all. What she actually is, you now once again realize, can only be described as perfect and ideal. Earnest, pretty, funny, unreachable because even if you did hook up with her, you’d be the laughing stock of your pseudo friends, because although you guys hang out with her, some of you also make fun of her and mock her in a no, I’m just kidding kind of way and no one would accept the idea that you’re dating her. It’s like dating your cousin or something. At least to them.

And finally you get rid of your company and the thank you visit to the café is over. You were seriously losing all hope that she would ever shut up and just finish her espresso, but now she gets up and thanks you even though you’re the thankful one, and then she leaves and you pay the bill and go to the men’s room, where you watch yourself pass whatever’s left of last night’s shots and also probably some of your breakfast orange juice and the water you had in the office half an hour ago, although maybe it’s too early for that to be leaving your body just now. And as you stand there holding your cock, your dick, your dog, your wiener, your tail, your little you, and maybe even your penis, you think of her again, and it could be the last bits of alcohol exiting your system, or it could just be common sense, but anyway, you remember that she is not really the girl of your dreams at all and that sometimes she reminds you of one guy your one true friend hangs out with a lot, a guy you’ve met and somewhat befriended but who is just as unattractive as the girl you are now going to stop thinking about. Instead, you recall other things from last night. Like when half of your not really friends started winking at each other and saying things under their breath and you knew they were talking about you and probably discussing either how to get rid of you or how you’re no fun. This of course makes you angry, because sometimes, when these guys want something, you’re their best buddy, but now they are excluding you from their little group, and although you have been having fun right up until now, this attitude of theirs really just spoiled your evening. And maybe that’s why you started noticing that girl you already wasted half a day on when you couldn’t get her out of your head. And as you leave the bathroom, with all of yesterday’s party now crystal clear to you, you have another one of those epiphanies, those sudden realization you somehow keep having all day. You realize that you hate everyone. You hate the girl for messing up your mind. You hate your associates for not being your friends. You hate this other girl because although she got you a cool job, she just had to order the most expensive coffee they had. You hate the guy who just came in to take a piss because he temporarily interrupted your flow of ideas about who you hate and why. But now you finish urinating and you leave the bathroom and the café and you remember you hate everyone on the street. Oh, and, yeah, that’s right, you almost forgot. You hate yourself, too. You hate yourself because you let all this shit happen to you. You let yourself think that a bunch of cool kids are your friends and you let yourself fall in love with every other bitch from school and you let yourself go ahead and party with all these people who don’t even know you properly, because you wear a bit of a mask in public, don’t you? Because you know no one would like the real you. You know this because you hate yourself. And hate yourself you should. Hate every inch of your body. Hate every bit of your character. You suck. And it’s a shame, really, because everyone saw so much potential in you, they expected so much crap from you, and what do you do instead of achieving something? You go out with some people and then you question your whole life the next day. That is so you, man, that is so typical.

This The Night I Almost Died

2008-03-14T18:22:00.000+01:00

It is night and I have been drinking. Not so much that I would call myself drunk, but definitely tipsy. Walking straight is no problem, although I occasionally trip over some small imperfection of the pavement, one I would most likely spot if I were fully sober and if it were day.

The date is late October, that being not much of a date, just a mere setting to indicate what the weather is and what the atmosphere of the leaf-covered, windy street is. As I walk I see no decorations for the upcoming holiday, but I do sense a strange presence of spirits living inside houses that stand along each side of the road, crumbling under the weight of their age.

A sound startles me suddenly and I stop to look around, half afraid, half ashamed of my fright. I see no one behind me, not a soul anywhere before me, and not a living thing in the windows of these Houses of Usher that surround me. To shake off the unsettling feeling of being watched, I check the time and resume walking in a faster pace.

Many steps away from where I encountered the noise, maybe halfway down the street, a silhouette becomes visible on the horizon. At first, it is nothing more than a black spot moving slowly in the dim light of the few street lamps still working in this godforsaken part of town. But as we walk towards each other, the spot turns into a dark figure, which now steps into a cone of yellow light that reveals the features of a mustached man in his fifties, wearing a dark coat, black bots, gloves, and a hat.

I tell myself not to panic, but panic I do as only a few steps are now the distance between us. So sudden was the appearance of this man, only a few minutes it took before he was before me, that I did not have time to think about who he was and what were the dangers of walking past him. Now, when it is too late, when our close encounter is inevitable, my mind is flooded with unease and with ideas that give me a cold sweat.

On this night of nights, on a street covered in darkness that is only rarely penetrated by a dying light, I become sure that this man will stop me to mug me or even to kill me with a knife already covered in the blood of a madman’s innocent victim. Three steps are now the distance between us, not more than two or three meters before our paths cross.

Oh ghosts of abandoned houses! You who killed yourselves long ago to escape the unbearable life of the poor, you who died peacefully in your beds at night not knowing it was your last night before the Judgement comes, you nocturnal creatures invisible to the living, please accept me as one of your own, for I am about to die by the hand of man suspicious in looks and behavior.

I look at him, ready to be stabbed, and he looks at me and tips his hat to bid me a good evening. That is our whole encounter. He is now walking behind me, on his way to wherever he is headed, and so am I, making the distance between us ever so greater with each step.

Maybe I have, after all, been drinking more than I thought.

A soon to be true story

2008-02-17T17:18:00.001+01:00

This is why there’s a doctor about to stitch an open wound on my head:

Not so long ago, I said enough. I said this in a very dramatic way, maybe even hitting the table with my fist. I don’t remember. But I’m sure it would’ve made a pretty cheesy scene in a B movie.

The reason why I said enough is I was really pissed off.

The thing I said enough to was letting other people do whatever they want.

That is, if you even want to call them people.

I am of course talking about tough guys with shaved heads. The type that wears big black boots and bomber jackets that make them look even bigger than they are. And in their pockets, you just know they’re carrying at least a knife.

I believe these people are usually referred to as skinheads.

All they do is work out, shoot up on steroids, and act as if the whole world belongs to them. Their IQ is most likely even lower than their moral standards and they don’t take shit from anybody.

My problem is, neither do I.

When I see a muscular bald guy walking down a street, my only wish is to kill him. To show him that he’s not above the rules, that no one’s scared of him. Because that face of his, the look he gives everyone he passes by, it’s not as intimidating as he thinks.

Unfortunately, most people think the exact opposite and they’re not about to stand up to them.

Most policemen you see, they’re big and hairless. All security guys and henchmen. Most sex offenders. Aggressors. All the thugs. Even the mafia, the ones who are supposed to be elegant men with greasy Andy Garcia-like hair, even these people are just Hitler enthusiasts and benefactors of the head-shaving industry. Sovereign motherfuckers.

They invaded everything.

You know how in Fight Club, all the men with bruises were members of Project Mayhem? Well in reality, all the men without hair are part of some secret organization hell-bent on acting like arrogant asses and beating others.

This one time, I was at a concert. Front row. Time of my life. And suddenly, two gorillas elbow their way through the crowd and throw stuff on the stage. Of course, no one tells them anything, because they are big and they have shaved heads. So they continue to trash-talk and move around in the crowd, stepping on people’s feet and hitting them.

The reason they do it is because they can do it.

And that is also the reason why I got angry. Furious. For the remainder of the concert, even after these two idiots left, all I could think about was how kneecapping them would teach them a lesson.

That’s when this story really started.

Later I told my friends about the two dickheads. The response was each had a similar experience to top mine. Most shocking was the one you probably already know if you have ever watched the movie Duel and pictured the truck driver being nothing but muscle and shit instead of brains.

My friend was driving home from somewhere, and for no reason, a hairless individual started blowing the horn at him and hitting his car. Then the man rolled down his window and shouted something at my friend and continued road raging and harassing my friend for several kilometers.

Of course, this was not really done for no reason.

The man’s motive was he could get away with it.

Here’s when I said enough, as I mentioned earlier. And here’s when you could say this story really started. Because we decided to make our own Project Mayhem. A crusade against the bold arrogance of the bald.

Don’t picture us as vigilantes or avengers. We were so much more than that. Soon, we were an army. Because for every cockface weightlifter out there, there are ten people he pissed off or abused.

Ethnic minorities especially.

And we did unto them as they do unto us. An eye for an eye, dignity for dignity. And when it finally got uncontrollably out of hand, even life for life. But you don’t want to hear about that. This story started with my head sporting a big open wound, and that’s how it’s going to end.

Who would want to hear about the street war I accidentally started? About the news reports of stabbings and beatings piling up and filling every aspect of daily life? About the fear that soon transformed into anger that immediately transformed into violence? There is no way I’m telling you our revenge group soon became the oppressor we once hated so much. I am certainly not going to imply that the message of this story is supposed to be something along the lines of power corrupts or don’t do it just because you can or violence is not the solution.

All these things, they are really just the result of my head getting spliced open.

On our first day of active hatred and resistance, my associates and I were verbally attacked by I’m guessing either a chemotherapy patient or a skinhead. His problem was friend number one’s long hair, friend number two’s The Who T-Shirt, friend number three’s tan, and my short hair that wasn’t 100% Adolf-approved short enough.

And by verbally attacked I mean the guy came to us and grabbed me by my collar and started yelling and threatening to kill us. Then he threw me into the crowd of my three bystanders and put on a brass knuckle he took out from his pocket.

And that’s about everything I remember.

Friend number two got his arm broken, the other two are OK, and I have, among other things, a concussion. And as much as it hurt, I must say it was absolutely worth it. Because this is when the story began.

Our attack was featured on a soft news TV show three days later, and the interview I gave, it changed everything. I said all the stuff everyone thinks but won’t say. That the police will never catch the guy because chances are, he was a cop himself. That the guy deserves the same knuckle treatment I got. That people should not be afraid to stand up to anyone. And hey, I know how this sounds, but it’s exactly how it happened. I gave a speech that moved a nation. It would be a pretty cheese scene in a B movie, wouldn’t it?

And that concludes the story of why a doctor was about to stitch an open wound on my head. And it really starts the story of public upheaval, underground groups, rebellion and anarchy.

But that’s a whole different story.

A short but artsome rant

2008-02-01T23:00:00.000+01:00

Learning about the 15th century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, I wonder what happened to art these days. Looking at The Ghent Altarpiece, I question civilization. Knowing you’re probably googling it right now, I guess books and galleries are dead.

The very fact that spell-check underlines Eyck as a mistake catapults us back to the Stone Age.

Standing on the sidewalk and observing all the graffiti, I can’t help feeling there is no real art left in this world.

I take my camera and photograph every obscure and unimportant thing I can think of. If I can’t think of anything, I just take pictures of trees and clouds. Two hundred photos is all my memory card can handle.

I keep fifteen of them.

Fifteen pictures out of two hundred that I present to others. That’s 7.5% of my work that’s worth showing to people. Approximately one thirteenth of my work that’s not laughable. Embarrassing.

People see these pictures and they think, Wow, this guy is an artist.

Yeah, sure I am. Because Michelangelo had to do thirteen statues before he got it right, too.

Then I borrow a handycam and I shoot stuff. Everything safe for the plastic bag in the wind. Then I put it on youtube and suddenly I’m an artsy filmmaker. I get comments like, Wow, this is good. This reminds me of (insert any director you like).

What’s sad is that instead of becoming an artist, all you become is just another person with a Mac and a camera, but you still think you’re the next best thing.

Oh yeah, and speaking of Mac, all people can do is bitch and moan about Microsoft, but hey, why don’t you start your own multi-billion corporation from scratch?

I hate it how those MacBooks are all white. They look like a compressed fridge.

But seriously, now that I’m a photographer and a cinematographer, I can progress further. With the -grapher bases covered, my next step is becoming a musician.

What I do is I learn to play the guitar just good enough to be able to make a demo. My singing is no good, but I hide it by covering a Beatles song and writing my own stuff easy.

The lyrics make little to no sense, but they include the words love, God, Iraq war, and my mother, so I guess I’m gonna be alright.

And if that doesn’t work, I can still have a sex scandal.

You think Mozart was just plain good? Oh please. I bet he fucked half of Vienna before he became famous.

Oh right. He was six years old. My bad.

The problem with art is that it’s not defined properly. You say art when you see a Monet painting, but you also say art when you see spray paint on a wall. OK, technically you’d call it street art, but I bet you can see how the key word is not “street” right now.

To become a painter, all you have to do these days is dump a bucket of paint on a canvas and add some straight lines. Maybe a circle. It takes about ten minutes, but it’s immortal.

Ever wondered how long it took van Eyck to paint the bleeding lamb on the altar?

Ever seen it?

I guess what I’m doing right now is I’m becoming a writer. I already became everything else, so why not do the easiest one, too?

The fact that I’m posting this on the internet and thinking how clever I am just proves my point that everyone being able to express themselves is basically what killed art.

I mean, in a couple centuries, this is hardly going to be quoted as often as Shakespeare is now. The to be’s and not to be’s of this time can be found on lame blogs like this one, smartass icons and banners, clever T-shirts, text messages, doors of toilet cabins.

Everyone is an artist, which means no one is.

Unfortunately, this story is not odor-free...

2008-01-12T15:21:00.000+01:00

I’m on a bus and it’s worse than hell.

Not that I have anything against public transportation. No. I’m a big fan, actually. More people should take the bus to wherever they’re going instead of buying five cars for every possible occasion. Really, the city should do something about all the nervous drivers killing jaywalkers and polluting the air and burning what little we have left of fossil fuels. Maybe a Got bus? ad campaign would do the trick

But this one bus ride I’m taking, it’s just awful.

The bus is almost empty. There’s only three people standing, including me, and maybe half the seats are taken. I don’t know about the other two guys, but the reason I don’t sit down is this bus disgusts me.

I guess I’m just that lucky guy who always gets a hobo sitting within smelling distance. Or a guy who ate the most garlic ever. Or a guy who sweats like a pig.

Or an old man who smells like week-old urine.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything as mind-numbingly sickening as this guy.

He smells of old age.

He smells of ear infection.

He smells of dandruff.

He smells like a dead dog rotting in a sewer in Mexico.

He’s got this disgusting growth on his ear; it even makes me sick just writing about it.

You got to wonder what this guy’s mental condition is. Either he has the biggest tumor on the dignity center of his brain, or it’s just Alzheimer’s of unprecedented proportions. What else could turn a man into a reeking bag of hygiene’s worst nightmares?

He’s the reason soap wakes up all sweaty and shaking.

He’s why Freddy Krueger visits shampoo every night.

Oh, and did I mention he stinks?

All I can do is look around at all the calm faces of people sitting around this abomination of fresh air and wonder, how come no one else is holding back vomit except me? I have to open the window and stick my head out into the cold wind just so I don’t pass out. And the little oxygen I manage to get into my brain I burn on wondering about these people just simply ignoring the stench.

Then the seat farthest away from this guy becomes vacant. The bus stops and two people get off. But they’re not holding their noses and they’re not throwing up on the sidewalk. They just get off and walk away. One of them the person formerly sitting on the seat the farthest away from what I can only call that guy.

But I don’t sit down. Because that’s another thing I hate besides old people already decaying before they even die. Warm seats. The second worst thing on a bus.

Don’t you just hate it when you sit down and you can still feel the body heat left over by the previous person? Not that it’s really body heat. It’s all their farts and pissed pants and hairy asses and bloody hemorrhoids imprinted on the fake leather seat forever. And when I accidentally sit down on a warmed-up seat, this image of a thousand gigantic asses of fat old women just storms through my head and catapults me back on my feet.

So I remain standing next to the open window and not far enough from that guy.

And the bus just goes on and on forever before it stops on the next stop, which is when I consider getting off prematurely. Alas, before I make up my mind the door closes and I’m stuck with old stinky boy and the people who ignore him.

I wonder what would happen if I told the man to get off. If I told him he smells worse than a record-breaking pile of manure. Would anyone even agree with me or am I the only sane person on this six-wheel gas chamber bus?

Of course, I say nothing, because by now I must be green as a carton character eating Castor oil and I’d probably throw up if I tried to speak.

By the time I manage to get enough fresh air through the window so I don’t have to worry about collapsing on the floor from a stench-induced fatal seizure, I’m halfway home. I tell my self, it’s only going to be five more minutes. But who am I kidding, it’s at least seven.

As I get more oxygen, I start to remember some other encounters with filthy people on buses and trams and in the streets.

A guy sleeping on a bench, in desperate need of a diaper.

A woman with hairy ears and what looked like drool on her coat’s lapel.

Two constructions workers who probably hit a septic tank pipe while digging the foundations of some rich guy’s new house that will now stand on a pond of someone else’s spilled shit.

And of course gypsies, but let’s not even get into that.

Now I’m thinking about the kid I was a hundred percent sure pooped his pants when suddenly the guy stands up. Out of the blue, the old crap-sack is getting off the bus. I should be jumping with joy, but instead I’m just disgusted even more. His blue slacks are all worn out and yellowish on his ass and I know it’s not just because he sits around in the sand too much. I know what that yellowish stain is, and it’s definitely not dirt.

I turn around and miss out on him stumbling out onto the sidewalk and slowly and disgustingly walking away, and it’s all I can do not to barf out my intestines. But I’m free. It’s just a couple more minutes in the bus and the air is getting better with each blow of the wind coming in through my life-saving open window.

Next stop, a man gets on and sits where the old guy sat before. And he just has to smell the piss and feel the farts, but he doesn’t get up. It sickens me even more and I have to close my eyes, imagine something nice.

These ignorant drones on the bus are even worse than the old guy. They pretend they don’t smell all the bodily fluids he soaked himself in. They pretend they don’t see that awful thing on his ear I am once again not even going to describe because I’m turning green already.

These people, they pretend everything is OK, but maybe if they did something, the guy would go away. Maybe if people weren’t so ignorant, old body bags like this guy wouldn’t even exist.

I don’t know

All I care about is I’m getting off.

My stop is being stopped at.

I take a last look around at the gassed people and I step into the cool breeze of fresh January air and it’s a symphony to the senses.

My nose is dancing to the Blue Danube.

It’s ballet in my lungs.

I feel so clean and fresh this must be a deodorant ad.

It would be a happy ending to this gut-wrenching stench fest if it weren’t for that dog shit I almost step in. What a day this is. Really. I am so throwing up when I get home. And if after reading this you’re not doing the same thing, then you people are just as weird and insane as those reek-tolerant jerks on the bus.

The Saturday Morning Constant

2008-01-07T12:33:00.000+01:00

I would see her every Saturday. The Phantom of the Supermarket, pushing her shopping cart and shopping. Me, doing the same thing. Buying small potatoes, apples and oranges, bread and butter, pieces of cake, and, well, you get the picture.

We would often meet in the aisles of yoghurts and meat; I’d see her buying shampoo while I was looking for shaving cream. Like some kind of Saturday morning constant, she was always there, every week. Sometimes I bumped into her every five minutes, sometimes there was no sign of her until I caught a glimpse of the black hair and gray-black checkered coat she always wore, across half the big store, for only a second or two.

Without her, shopping for groceries would just not be it anymore. Not because she was physically attractive. She was actually around forty, maybe even forty five, or in other words, almost twice my age. No, it wasn’t any primordial testosterone-driven urge that made me want to see her. It was the feeling I had when I saw her that everything is as it should be. The Sun still shines, the paper gets printed every day, and she shops when I do. A balance, you might say. But that’s not everything. I wanted to see her every week because she was mysterious. Her appearance, her self-conscious moves, it was all something that allowed me to imagine. To dream and to wonder. To ask questions.

Who was she?

Maybe a single mother who goes shopping early in the morning not because the store is still quite empty, but because her daughter is still asleep at the time. Could be the daughter is either sick or still very young, demanding constant care, so her mother can only leave the house when she’s resting. It would also explain why my mystery woman always looked so tired. She had these sacks under her eyes, and wrinkles. All of it unsuccessfully hidden under make-up.

Why was she always dressed so fashionably?

It was either black trousers that emphasized her still very presentable ass, or it was an elegant knee-long black skirt that showed off her thin legs and medium high-heel shoes. Almost always the same black blouse with enough buttons undone to expose a bit more than just her cleavage, if you looked from the right angle. And the coat, either on, or folded in the shopping cart. I always wondered what was up with the cocktail party clothes she used to wear. I like to think she had a busy social life, went to clubs and discos, but no matter how hard I tried not to think of her as a hooker; it inevitably crept into my mind. It made more sense and tied in with the daughter theory better. If she had a sick child, she did not wear those clothes to parties, but to work. And once again, it explained her tired eyes.

How did she get here? (And also, where did she live?)

I had never seen her in the parking lot. Not once. Come to think of it, I only saw her leaving twice, but, of course, by the time I paid and got out, she was gone. This was actually one of the things I liked speculating about the most. When I parked my car and when I was leaving, I always guessed which one was hers. Was it the VW Golf? Or was she rich? Maybe one of the Mercedes A-Classes scattered across the lot, a car ideal for a woman (and mother). Then again, a very realistic possibility was that she lived within walking distance from the supermarket. That was what I found the most romantic (for lack of a better word). The thought that she was always around, and whenever I needed to know everything is as usual, I could just go buy something and imagine she was somewhere near.

Did she recognize me the way I recognized her?

We passed around each other between stacks of milk cartons. We waited in the same line for the butcher. But very seldom did she look at me, and even then I saw no trace of recognition in her face. Really, if I could ask her just one thing, I’d want to know if she remembers me. If I mean to her what she means to me. Do I give her that sense of stability and continuity I get when seeing her? But I can’t ask her anything. Not anymore. Not since I had to start talking about her in the past tense.

It’s still hard for me. Not knowing where she is, what has become of her. One Saturday, she just wasn’t there. I thought, oh well, maybe her alarm clock didn’t work or something. But next week, she wasn’t there, either. And the following week. And then the last Saturday of the month. She was nowhere to be seen. Shopping lost its sense. I no longer felt my day was complete without seeing her. I actually thought about asking around, maybe someone else would recognize the description and at least wonder as I did, if not give an answer. But in the end, I didn’t ask anybody, only myself.

Did her daughter die?

Tragic as it sounds, it’s still no reason why she would stop shopping groceries for so long. I mean, everybody has to eat, even a mourning mother. Unless she left town to live with her own mother, or the mother came to live with her and take care of her. Or there never was any daughter and my elusive Saturday constant just left town. Maybe a vacation. Or she moved because she got a better job.

Or did she die?

Anything can happen to anyone. A car could’ve run over her, or maybe she fell in the bathtub and broke her neck. Or maybe her pimp killed her, or one of her customers. No, for the last time, she was not a hooker.

So really, who was she?

A woman who, like me, lived alone, and, like me, shopped on Saturday mornings. An ordinary person, with a middle-class job, a flat big enough to entertain up to five guests each Friday, maybe her friends, or colleagues, which would explain why she had day-old make up on her face, and her clothes, the same she had on yesterday, worn for the last time before she puts them into the wash machine when she returns home from the supermarket.

No. I’ll tell you who she really was. A perfect stranger, whom I turned into something else, imagined things about her that were not true. She was your ordinary forty-something woman that I automatically assumed was a prostitute just because she wanted to look pretty. From the day I first saw her, I stared at her, “accidentally” bumped into her just to have another look at her. I treated her like an animal in the zoo. I turned her into a phantom, and she probably knew it, felt my eyes on her back, so she found another supermarket. Maybe because she was afraid I’m some sort of stalker, maybe because she though by staring at her, I was mocking her.

I apologize to you, mysterious lady, wherever you are. I meant no harm, and I miss you. You made my day complete. Now, I’m alone in a big store and I feel lost.

Firecrackin'

2008-01-01T23:51:00.000+01:00

So here I am. Cold. Drunk. About to lose my fingers.

It’s New Year’s God Dammed Eve. It’s the last day of this lousy thing we call 2007. And I’m probably the only person who doesn’t give a crap. This whole fireworks business, the celebrating, the food and booze, I hate it all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy getting drunk, it’s just that I don’t think the coming of the new year is a good reason to do so.

All this day is about is you have to buy a new calendar.

You have to get used to writing a different number in the date.

Because that’s all 2008 is. A number. Really, the actual year is not 2008 AD, because they didn’t start counting the years right after Jesus was born. So forget about 2008. Forget about New Year’s Eve.

Forget about fireworks. That’s what I should’ve done.

Last year, it was better. Less fun, but definitely safer. I stayed at home, celebrated with my parents. We watched TV and we ate junk food and we drank some champagne at midnight and that was it. The TV programs were horrid, my mother moody as always, and I was stuffed with chips and sandwiches two hours into the seemingly endless evening. But it was at least safe. Safer than this frat party I’m at right now.

At home, there was no sin.

No brain damage from too much alcohol (and pot).

No vomiting.

No one got raped.

No one got their fingers torn away by firecrackers.

But it was no fun.

What they do on TV over here in this fucked-up country is they do these big shows. These events. These celebrations. Filmed in front of a live audience two or three months before December 31^st. They are full of celebrities, most of them twice as old as their plastic surgeons make them look like. Some of them dead before it even gets aired.

These celebrities, they perform their ten-year-old sketches. Tell their 20-year-old jokes. They sing 40-year-old songs on playback, not even trying to fake it. Really, I’ve seen better lip sync on Japanese cartoons. And all this is so unappealing to my generation, because the general assumption is that I should be drunk at some party and not at home watching this with my folks. My demographic, we really don’t even have a choice. It’s either get shit-faced or be bored to death.

And somewhere in the middle of this big show, we start to quarrel. Then we start to argue. Then we fight. We fight because I want to watch something else but dad has the remote. We fight because dad wants to go out to smoke but mom wants him to quit the habit. We fight because mom bitches about everything.

All I’m thinking is, I could’ve been so wasted by now.

Not last year. But this year, definitely.

This year, I went to a friend’s place with a bunch of other guys from school. We started drinking at six and stopped at two in the morning. Last man standing. And that’s when my tragedy comes in. That’s when we decide to get out of the house and light some fireworks.

That’s when I take the firecracker. That’s when I remember how safe it was last year.

When midnight approaches, the text messages start pouring in. Every stupid friend and relative, they feel the need to wish you a happy new one. They write these stupid poems and rhymes that don’t even make sense and they send them expecting to get an equally funny reply. Some smartass thank-you message. A clever pun. A good joke. Well they can all bite me. I never reply to these well-wishers. I usually turn my cell phone off, and erase all that shit in the morning.

Then the hour strikes. We drink a glass of champagne and we get some well-wishing phone calls from even more friends and relatives and then we go to bed.

That’s how you celebrate at home.

The way you do it is you don’t enjoy it at all. It’s an ordeal.

At the party, this year, we did free style. Whoever was sober enough to get the champagne bottle opened poured some to everyone who could find a glass and that was about it. We were about fifteen second off with the countdown. 2008 started late.

But back to how we got the great idea with the fireworks.

So I have the firecracker in my hand and I’m lighting it. The red tip of the green roll of paper filled with powder catches fire. It sparks more than it burns. It’s what’s called a fuse, I think. It’s supposed to hiss or burn or whatever for about five second before it explodes. Five seconds. One for each finger I’m going to lose.

Last year, at home, I went to bed at about a half hour into the new year. But I didn’t fall asleep until at least two a.m. There was just too much noise outside. Red and green and blue explosions of cheap Chinese pyrotechnics kept me awake. All I could think about was, why is this such a big deal? What difference does it really make to change the date? It’s not like everyone starts over with a clean slate. All the problems we had in December are right there in January smiling at us and waiting to destroy us.

This year, I won’t go to sleep.

This year, I’ll be in pain.

In about three seconds. The fuse is burning and hissing and sparking, and it’s doing those things real fast. And all I can do is I stare at it. I don’t know why I don’t let go. Why I don’t throw it away like the instructions say I should. I guess I’m too drunk not to be hypnotized by the red glow of the burning tip of the firecracker.

This year, I forgot to turn my cell phone off. This year, all the messages came in on time. But this year, I was too much under the influence to care. Sure enough, the usual collection of happy new years was piling up right on schedule. First a message from mom wondering if I’m alright. Then a message from a friend I hate. One from a guy I haven’t seen in years. Some from people I don’t like but don’t show it. Another one from mom. Then some more from people I consider annoying.

And the funny thing about these poems and rhymes is, there’s only about six or seven of them, and each year I get them all, but each year a different person sends a different one.

The way that happens is they all think they are so clever.

Last year, someone got a message. He liked it, so this year, he decides to send it himself. Only the thing is, the person who sent that last year’s favorite, he liked the thing he got that year, so now that’s the one he’s sending this year. Get it? You get the same shit every year, from the same people, but they all think they are sending you something you haven’t already read five times.

But text messages are the last thing on my mind right now.

I got about a second and a half before the firecracker explodes. Instead of throwing it away, I think of all the great memories I have with those fingers. Like when you see your whole life before you die. Only it’s just the life of your falanges.

Like when I totally gave my math teacher the finger.

Or when I scratched an itch until I ripped my skin and started bleeding.

And of course, there was that time I held an explosive and risked losing them.

Oh, wait. That’s actually happening right now. But lucky for me, the firecracker was cheap and probably not stored properly, so instead of exploding and tearing half my hand off, it only burned out. Quietly, harmlessly. Instead of pain, there is relief.

Instead of blood, there’s just more alcohol.

Instead of 2007, there is 2008.

Instead of calling an ambulance, I read another happy new year greeting shining there on my cell phone’s LCD.

So what's this all about?

2008-01-01T17:50:00.000+01:00

It's about human nature.
It's about all the things in life that suck.
It's definitely not about me trying to express myself.

It's called Stone Cold Stories because I like the song Stone Cold by Rainbow. And because I'm cold and arrogant and I hate tear jerkers. The short short stories that will appear here are going to be just that. Cold and arrogant. They are going to represent what I think. What I like and dislike. You might call them rants.

Updates will not be regular, but there will be at least one new post each month. That is the minimum. But there's probably going to be more than that, so don't worry.

Not that you care that much.

So anyway, enjoy and post comments. Destroy me. I like criticism.