remedial exercise

when in doubt, ask a teacher. i have a close friend who teaches advanced placement u.s. history and a.p. economics to high school seniors. when i confided to her that i was distressed at having writers block for over a month, she did what any good teacher would do. she gave me a homework assignment.

my problems with writing this blog seem to be a symptom of the constant anxiety i have always been prone to. i worry about how much i worry. i sometimes lay awake at night wondering if i am worrying enough.

sometimes, though, life gives me something concrete to worry about. i try not to be superstitious, but i really could do without the month of april. i wrote in my last post about how creepy things seem to happen in this month. a few days after writing this, something horrible DID happen to someone close to me. close enough that there was no way i could not be deeply affected. as to what this was, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to write about it in detail, at least not at this time. as of this writing, pieces are being picked up, damage repaired.

hopefully, with the passage of time, this event will move from being "the worst thing that ever happened" to being just another thing that happened. life does go on, but i spent a couple of weeks or so being stressed enough that the concept of writing my blog seemed trivial to the point of being ridiculous.

the real hard part for me is that i would like to think of myself as a writer. i can't do that if i am not writing.

when i told the teacher about my problem, she told me in so many words to dismiss all of the psychological reasons for writers block. just write for, say, two hours a day, about anything, absolutely anything. as she pointed out, my day job is to cook food at a restaurant. if i suffered from "cooks block", i would soon be unemployed. think of writing as my second job, and i will find the time and energy to get it done.

this teacher has an exercise she sometimes gives her students. they will be given a question, one example she cites is "to what extent (twe) was woodrow wilson an effective president of the progressive era?". the students are then given eight minutes to write on the subject. they must write steadily for the entire eight minutes without pausing to reflect or ask questions. the exercise is almost physical in nature, as the students may not stop moving their pens. they can write about anything relating to the topic, they can make personal observations, raise more questions for discussion, probably even confess total ignorance of the given topic, as long as they write about it for eight minutes.

after the eight minutes are up, then the students can re read, re write, do research, etc. the exercise seems to be almost more about the skills of thinking quickly and getting thoughts in writing quickly than it is about knowing early twentieth century american history.

so here is the question i was given. just for fun, i am going to try typing my answer in only eight minutes. i haven't decided if i will correct spelling errors. here goes:

" to what extent is the phrase "keep austin weird" lame and pretentious?"

i live in austin, texas. about 4 years ago, this expression began appearing seemingly everywhere on bumperstickers, signs, and t-shirts, said t-shirts usually being worn by tourists. this town has it's share of eccentrics, but weird? this is a university town known for having an educated populace and for being tolerant of different lifestyles and points of view, at least compared to the rest of the state. that's weird to someone? did "keep austin iconoclastic" have too many syllables? i have a new expression for you: keep austin safe - from whatever advertising/ marketing dipshit thought up "keep austin weird".

i am a little embarrassed that it actually took me all eight minutes to come up with the preceding paragraph, but at least i'm writing again. thanks teacher.

spring angst

i am eating breakfast and listening to NPR right now. they just did a story about today being the ten year anniversary of the columbine massacre.

that means today also marks ten years since my dad passed away.

there was probably not any connection. dad had a tv in his hospital room but was probably to far gone with cancer to be aware of much of anything.

but it's funny how things can get connected in our minds. these two events happening on the same day marked the beginning of the end of my fascination with crime and violence. i suddenly made the connection of violence to real pain and suffering. i can't hear a horrible story anymore without thinking about the aftermath for the people involved.

i try not to be superstitious, but april has become kind of a creepy month for me. things i don't have time to write about now have happened in this month.

i'm going to work now. i'm going to pull out of this downer mood by cooking cajun food today. for whatever reason, i can't stay depressed while making gumbo or jambalaya. if you're not feeling good, i hope you find something that works for you. later

expletive deleted

walking through my neighborhood today, i saw a thirty something, clean cut yuppie type playing in a driveway with a small boy, presumably his son. the boy was very cute, curly haired, maybe three or four years old. the man was tossing a ball at the kid, who was trying to hit it with a toy tennis racket. as i passed, i heard the man say (in a pleasant tone, not yelling) "swing a little slower, when you swing with all your strength, you miss the motherf****r."

 i don't even have kids, and even i know that you don't drop major league cuss words in front of a small child without expecting to hear them again. children learn by imitating the grownups in their worlds. 

the next time that man hears this oedipal swear word, it will be from that child. trust me, his parents will be mortified.

i kind of wish i could be a fly on the wall and see it happen.

believe me, i am not uptight about profanity. i love hearing offensive language used creatively and in proper context. the problem i have with using bad words casually is that they lose all impact. if i am upset enough to curse out loud, i want it to get someone's attention. if i am going to go on a tirade, i want it to be very distinct from everyday conversation.

if that child's parents aren't careful, that kid will grow up with a really bad attitude and end up working in food service.

actual exchange i overheard at work two saturdays ago between line cook danny and waiter jimmy:

danny: "dude, you got over hard eggs because you sent the ticket in over hard. if you want f***ing over easy eggs, than f***ing ring them up over easy."

jimmy (shouting) : "stop swearing at me, c***sucker, and get me those g***amn eggs!"

it's great fun to work in a place where the level of discourse could not get much lower.

silent underbelly

South by Southwest draws to a close tonight. despite a reported 10% drop in badge sales, the 24 hour cafe i cook for was as busy as any previous SXSW. i was busy cooking obscene amounts of carb heavy foods tuesday through saturday. i can't complain though. i'm glad to be employed. i am  glad to have picked up a set of skills that can earn me a living.

not that i am some kind of master cook. i spend most of my days cooking bulk amounts of soup and various sauces. i make a first class pollenta (with herbs) and really good baked mac & cheese. i can say that most of the food i make seems to go away. someone is eating it. i also do a lot of purchasing of supplies, spending thousands of dollars of someone else's money every week without squandering to much.

 the skills i am actually referring to might have less to do with the finished product and more to do with such qualities as being able to stay on my feet for up to nine hours without complaining (too much), or being able to work at a hot stove all day without setting myself or the kitchen on fire. i spend all day wielding a ten inch piece of razor sharp steel (this is a literal description. if your knife won't fling hair off your arm, sharpen it!) without cutting myself more than two or three times a year.

it is also a matter of pride with me that i have called in sick twice in sixteen years. i was given a week off when my dad died. every other shift i have been absent for was covered in advance. i have an annoying habit of showing up and doing my job to the best of my abilities.

i am not some kind of iron jawed super cook. i am driven as much by insecurity as anything else. for a variety of headache inducing reasons, i still feel like i am proving myself almost every day i work. i would be devastated if anyone ever accused me of being a slacker, or of not pulling my weight.

once i get over being devastated, though, god help anyone saying that about me.

**********

i am currently reading a book called You Can't Win by a man named jack black-not to be confused with the comedic actor. this book was written in 1926.- the book is blacks criminal autobiography, detailing his progression from youthful tramp to sneak thief to house burglar to safe cracker, and on through hard jail time before reforming himself in middle age.

this book was a childhood favorite of william s. burroughs, who was fascinated by this unveiling of the late nineteenth century american criminal underbelly. the book is overflowing with detailed descriptions of thieves and fences, pimps and prostitutes, corrupt cops and shyster lawyers, opium smokers and morphine addicts. burroughs freely admitted to appropriating characters and even whole passages from this book for one of his last novels, The Place of Dead Roads.

early in the book, the author leaves kansas city sometime around 1889 and takes to the road. he falls in with a group of kindly tramps who give him pointers on how to ride the rails and the various scams he can pull to get food and money. one of these involves handing a stranger a card with words to the effect of " hello. i am deaf and mute. i have had all my money stole. i need money for train fare to Great Falls, Mont. i have not ate for days."

black asks a tramp what he would do if he ran into an actual deaf person who exposed him as a fake. the tramps reply: "why, i would do what anyone does when they're caught doing something wrong. i'd cuss the hell out of him."

********

South by Southwest kicked in on tuesday. my shift was long and left me exhausted and somewhat irritable. i was riding the bus home and listening to my ipod when a man and woman boarded. from where i was at the back of the bus, i could see that they were both dressed a little odd, sort of like gypsies with lots of scarves and bandanas. they stood out also because they were both somewhat large- i'm 6'2 and weigh around 230 pounds. they were both, the woman included, about my size. they sat across the aisle from me.

the woman leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. i looked up and slid my headphones off. she shoved a laminated piece of notebook paper in my hand. in magic marker it read "i am a deaf person and i am hungry..." i handed it back and shook my head.

i feel like i have to defend myself here. first, the only cash on me was a twenty, and i needed it. after almost two decades in austin, i have seen plenty of panhandlers. these people just didn't fit the profile. their clothes, odd as they may have been, were clean. these people did not smell bad. i mentioned their size. sorry, but these folks weren't missing any meals. more significant to me, i ride the same bus twice a day five days a week. i had never seen these people before ( and i didn't see them the rest of the week). i believe they were drifting through. were they really deaf? i don't know. if they were, i feel sorry that they have to deal with this, but i still didn't have any money for them. and most deaf people learn to get by without accosting strangers on the bus.

the bus stopped at an upscale shopping center built around a Central Market grocery store.

the man and woman rose to get off, the woman first. as they were moving down the aisle, the man kept turning around and glaring at me. i stared straight ahead and tried to ignore him.

the bus driver decided to keep the bus stopped for a couple of minutes to keep from getting ahead of schedule. the man walked around to my window. he pointed at me, then made the "whatchew got man?" gangbanger gesture of slapping his chest with both hands and then spreading his arms wide. he repeated this, then stepped back and mimicked shooting me with a pistol. not every work day ends with a death threat.

i did not ask for this. i probably should have just ignored him, but.....

as it was, all i could think to do was to meet his i-kill-you glare and give him by biggest, goofiest, "aww shucks" grin. this seemed to confuse him. as the bus finally drove away, i shook my head laughing and turned away. i glanced up and saw him as a diminishing figure standing by the curb, still shooting at the bus.

i could wish all kinds of horrible fates upon this man, fantasize about how i should have stood up to him, kicked his ass. but the sad truth is that, deaf or not, he has let himself get to such a bad place that punishing him couldn't change anything. in a weird way, i found myself hoping that he and his lady friend got what they wanted without any more ugliness.

 

the next day, i told this story at work. my sarcastic friend doug said that it sounded like i was a victim of a mime drive-by.

slings and arrows

this post brings me back in to the real world for a little while. the last four posts have been chapters of a science fiction story about a dystopian, near future austin. the story deals with the nature of reality and perception. since i am also trying to have a little fun writing this, you can be guaranteed that future installments will touch on my favorite subjects : drugs, guns zombies, religion, firearms, extraterrestrials, conspiracy theories, and mental hygiene. 

*********

speaking of drugs...

saturday morning brunch was in full swing at the cafe i work at. people were waiting 30+ minutes for a table. cooks are yelling, waiters are running, etc.. a phone call comes in for the manager. 

as related to me:

"this the manager?"

"yeah"

"i thought you might want to know, the guy who cleans your carpets? he's a drug addict. he's all strung out on drugs."

manager: "and you want me to .... ?"

"i just thought you would want to know."

manager: "well, we're kind of busy here dude. later."

there's a couple of problems with this. first, he is a carpet cleaner, not a commercial airline pilot. who cares what he does as long as the carpets are clean? second, of all places, you call a 24 hour diner in austin, tx expecting people to be shocked by substance abuse? you must be high.

if the manager had not been so busy, he would probably have asked the anonymous caller if he thought the guy might be holding.

******

one of the cooks i work with, lets call him jim, told me this story.

he had been off work and partying pretty hard for a couple of days. he was planning to spend a quiet friday night at home, trying not to be hungover and sick for the next mornings shift. suddenly, a large group of his friends showed up and insisted he get cleaned up and come with them. they had something fun planned.

he was a little shaky and kind of out of it, but he couldn't help but notice that his friends were dressed oddly. some of the guys were wearing cheap suits. one young lady was " decked out like that dole pineapple chick."

they drove to a racetrack a few miles outside of town, but it wasn't racing that was going on this friday night. it was lucha libre, masked mexican wrestling.

 evidently, a touring company of wrestlers had rented this old racetrack with it's decrepit wooden bleachers ( i saw Survival Research Laboratories there in '96 or '97) for a no holds barred extravaganza, masked heros and villains throwing each other from one end of the ring to the other in ritualized combat.

since lucha libre doesn't usually come to central texas, the event was packed. mexican families had travelled who knows how far to root for their favorites and hiss at the bad guys. "we were probably the only white people there."

they had arrived in two car loads. as jim stood in the gravel parking lot trying to get his bearings, two of his friends began pulling grocery sacks out of car trunks. everybody had to carry at least two bags. jim assumed that his friends had loaded up on beer and snacks.

when they finally found a spot large enough for all of them near the top of the bleachers, jim found out what the bags really contained: about a shelves worth of H.E.B. corn tortillas.

jim was told that it was lucha libre tradition to throw corn tortillas at villain wrestlers. to jim, this made as much sense as anything else. when the first match began, jim got in to the spirit of things and began tossing tortillas down the bleachers. it didn't occur to him until later that he and his friends seemed to be the only ones doing this.

at first people were laughing. then they were not laughing. then they were shouting.

things reached critical mass when jim decided to see how far he could hurl an entire package of corn tortillas. "i hit this old lady right in the face. she screamed, and everyone around her stood up."

before jim and his friends could get what they had coming to them, an armed security guard told them that they were about to start a riot and would now be leaving. now.

the only other thing jim really remembers from that night is hearing the words "pinche gringo" over and over.

jim is actually a very cool guy, but i fault him for accepting dubious instructions in a culturally unfamiliar environment. he may be proof that god does, indeed, watch out for fools and drunkards.

the story reminded me of a mentally unbalanced friend of mine from high school. his mother was a scientologist with a murky past as a "showgirl". she was also canadian. 

she liked me because her son was usually a complete jerk to her, whereas i had been raised to be respectful of my elders. she liked to tell me stories about her past because, unlike her son, i would listen politely.

to hear her tell it, her and her first husband had been some kind of hippy free spirits during the seventies. their favorite thing to do was to follow gordon lightfoot all over canada and the northeastern u.s., much like the deadheads that used to follow the grateful dead. they followed him on tour from town to town, seeing every show they possibly could.

to distinguish themselves from your everyday gordon lightfoot fans, they came up with a novel way of expressing their affection: they threw turquoise jewelry onstage. i asked, but she had no idea how they came up with this.

mr. lightfoot was the recipient of many airborne bracelets, rings, and necklaces, all with lovely polished blue stones until a fateful evening when a stage hand saw them in the act. during intermission, the manager of the club invited them backstage to meet the man himself.

this should have been the high point of their lives, instead an unsmiling gordon lightfoot asked them to please, please stop throwing things at him.

i can imagine canadas finest songsmith explaining patiently that it was hard enough to remember all the words to "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" without having to dodge stone jewelry, eh?

that's all for now. think twice before throwing things.

tesla waves chapter 4

seconds. everything on the bus happened in a space of about twenty seconds max.

later, i replayed the assault in my head and broke down my reactions as follows:

first, i became completely detached from the situation. i went in to absolute denial. i thought for an instant that maybe if i closed my eyes he would go away. i would open them again and he would be sitting calmly in his seat, not lumbering towards me screaming and flailing. maybe he would not be there at all. i seem to have already hallucinated twice today. maybe he was just part of an ongoing trend. maybe if i breathe deeply and concentrate, i can disbelieve him away.

that didn't work. he was real enough to give me a swollen left ear and turn both of my forearms in to one big contusion.

the denial part of my response-to-crisis lasted maybe a half second. the next half second was spent having a deep existential conversation with the universe-something along the lines of "why me? am i not a good person? did i screw up in a previous life?"

a half second later and the universe had yet to reply, but the part of my brain given to self preservation was saying a lot. i raised my arms in front of my face to take the first salvo of punches. the pain in my arms turned to numbness with amazing speed. then he wasn't punching anymore but instead was trying to pry apart my upraised arms, probably trying to get to my throat or my eyes. 

i was trapped in a bus seat designed for one small person, not two large guys. i got both of my feet off of the floor and up to the seat. i used my legs to launch me sideways into the seat behind mine. i ended up crumpled into a sort of fetal shape with my legs in the air and my head on the seat and in no better of a position to fight, but at least he is not right over me.

when a wave person goes mayhem, they lose all of their higher brain functions and become creatures of pure rage. they have the psychotic energy and overwhelming  desire to kill, but, fortunately for the rest of us, the effect does not increase their coordination or reaction time. the wave stands there, unable to comprehend how i could be in front of him one instant and gone the next. an attacker with just a little more awareness would simply slide over and continue his attack, but this is beyond him-for now. i need to get out of the seat and in to the aisle, where i will at least have a little more room to maneuver.

luck seems to be with me, as the driver is now on his feet shouting profanity laced threats. the still detached part of my brain hopes that he remembered to stop the bus. the more present part of my brain moves me in to the aisle. just as i have my feet under me and am beginning to stand, the wave whips around and throws a fist like a stone at my head, i duck, but my left ear takes the blow full on. i see stars....

and like that i go blank. if the stress of everyday life can send me in to a fugue state, just how long did i think i could fight without going blank?

that should have been the end. blanked out and helpless, the wave should have pounded my skull in or crushed my larynx or driven rib bones in to my heart and lungs.

but it wasn't my day (to die). when i blank, usually that's it. lights out. this was different. this episode had.... substance.

i was in a darkness that wasn't true darkness, but something more like an energy without room for light. there was a voice.

"what's shaking there, bobby?"

the darkness parts like frost being wiped from a car window. the mayhem wave is standing over me, screaming, but at the same time he is not there. he is at the other end of a long tunnel.

the voice again : "oh dear. can't have that now, can we?"

i wake up, not knowing if i have been out ten seconds or ten days. at the other end of the otherwise empty capmetro bus, the wave is clubbing the driver to the floor with one brutal punch after another. the driver has maybe two seconds before something irreversible happens to him. i stand there on rubber legs, trying to shake traces of the blank effect from my head. i know i should be saving the drivers life, but i don't know the how of this.  hear the rear door slide open behind me, and this almost makes me laugh. how drunk or stoned would someone have to be to board a bus not noticing a murder in progress?

"excuse me please." someone crowds past me in the narrow aisle and i register a glimpse of short blond hair and wire rimmed glasses and realize that it has to be the snotty college kid who had been studying me like a bug under a microscope.

the wave is standing with his legs parted slightly for balance. he doesn't notice the kid standing behind him until the kid launches a kick between mayhem boys' legs with such brutality that i swear it can be felt standing almost ten feet away. my hands move reflexively to cover my own privates.

any man not wearing a titanium jock strap would have been permanently disabled by a kick like that. the wave is still on his feet, though. before he can turn all the way around, the kid slides his right arm behind his neck and and curls his left arm in front of the neck. the kid is seriously outweighed by the wave, but using this choke hold he has the wave on his knees and then on the ground, out cold, maybe dead for all i can tell. u. t. must be offering courses in submission fighting 101.

college boy looks at the two limp bodies at his feet, not even bothering to check the drivers' pulse. he walks up to me and grabs my i.d badge hanging from my throat. he begins reading my name and vital information out loud, like he is relaying information to an unseen partner. i realize that his glasses probably double as a bluetooth.

i wonder if he is an undercover agent or just a teenage martial arts freak. he glares at me, and with a snarl in his voice, says:

" great. first anger, then violence. your damn lucky you only fought a defensive battle. they ought to send you back to the ..."

"let me guess" i interrupt "back to the chalkboard?"

he laughs. "you wish."

he sighs, his shoulders sag. he looks at the bodies.

"fulton, you have had a long day. get your sorry ass home before the cops get here."

to be continued.

tesla waves chapter 3

i don't want to think about chalkboards or anything else. i have a borderline migraine and the mounting sense of space and time dislocation that usually comes shortly before my going blank for an hour or two. i don't need the damn bus driver testing my mental health.

"excuse me?" i say to the driver. he doesn't say anything in reply and just looks straight ahead, making me believe that i may have only imagined that he spoke to me.

my wave badge serves as a bus pass, entitling me to yet another free ride. i board the bus and find a seat as far to the rear as possible. most of the other passengers appear to be u.t. students heading to evening classes.

some of these college kids notice my badge and are sneaking glances at me as i sit down. one guy, cant be more than nineteen or twenty, is staring at me through wire rimmed glasses while typing on his blackberry.

probably a psyche major, taking field notes on me like a zoologist in a rain forest.

i would like to tell him that it is always, always, rude to stare, that i hope i wouldn't behave like him if our positions were reversed.

but i can't work up any real anger towards him because right now i am too worried about going blank. fortunately, i have just enough presence of mind to remember the meditation techniques they taught me in the hospital after i was diagnosed. i start counting my breaths while concentrating on the back of the seat in front of me.

after a few minutes, my headache recedes. when i look up, reality is in it's rightful place. the bus has stopped at the far western edge of campus and the students are all gone. 

as the bus pulls back in to traffic, i hear a voice behind me.

"don't tell me."

i look. the voice belongs to a heavyset young man with a ragged beard and a mountain of dark curly hair covering his forehead almost to his eyes. what gets my attention mostly is that he has a wave badge safety pinned to his flannel shirt.

but he is not being friendly. he is not making polite conversation with a fellow wave person.

"don't tell me. don't tell me. don't.... tell... me..!"

he is yelling and squeezing his eyes shut, a line of spittle running down his chin. in a wave person, this can only mean one thing : mayhem effect. when his eyes open, he will become homicidal to the person closest to him.

his eyes open, and he sees me looking at him, only two seats away. he stands, and i realize how big he is just as he lunges toward me, fists swinging at my head.

to be continued

tesla waves chapter 2

all i am doing is waiting for the bus when a motorcycle cop notices me and pulls to the curb. he talks to me without lifting his face shield.

"feeling okay tonight?"

no. in fact, i hate life right now. but what business is that of his?

"feeling fine, officer."  i force myself to smile.

his question isn't friendly, and he has not picked me at random. wave people have to carry visible identification. it's the law. most of us wear a laminated badge hanging from a neck cord. i also wear an old school med alert bracelet, just in case.

it's the law because approximately thirty percent of wave people become randomly violent. so many of the screamers got shot that the badges were mandated as a way of persuading the cops to use non lethal force.

the cop has a microtaser on the back of his right hand. his fingers are drumming on the handlebars, excited at the possibility of suddenly extending his right arm in my direction and scrambling my neural impulses even worse than they already are. i wonder if i should explain to him that i was diagnosed with the blank effect, not the mayhem effect. that won't matter, though, if he really wants to hurt me.

"yeah, had some problems today. just wanted to see how you were doing. what happened to your head?

what happened to your head, dude, i mean, to make you want to be a cop? i don't dare say that though.

"oh, man. i walked in to a door... shit....!"

act goofy 'cause that's what he expects. he nods and pulls away from the curb, his electric bike humming quietly, leaving nothing behind but the smell of ozone.

the real reason i have a one inch gash on my forehead is that i had what you might call an "episode" at work today.

one second, and i am about to get in to a fight with an asshole waiter (i'm a superior life form because i work in the kitchen).

the next second, and the dumpster next to us begins asking me questions. i had a split second to ponder this phenomena, and it's implications regarding my overall stability. i mean, it's never a good thing when inanimate objects start talking, right?

then the viewmaster changes scenes again and i am on my side, gravel sticking to my cheek, staring at the waiters shoes. i think he must have sucker punched me.

but when i look up he is shaking and talking rapidly.

"dude, dude, it's gonna be okay. they're calling an ambulance right now. just stay still man. they're calling an ambulance." he repeats himself.

i try to say something like: could you please explain to me what happened, and how i came to be in this position?

but all that comes out of my mouth is "whaaaa?"

"dude, you had a seizure or something, they're calling an ambulance" he says for the third time.

that gets my attention. please god, not an ambulance. if i go to a county emergency room, they will call my counselor. my counselor would probably review my case. she might decide that i shouldn't be working, or worse, living in my own apartment. at the very least, she would probably put me on some meds. the kind that will leave me less of a person than i already am.

you have to think about these things when you're a ward of the state.

i sit up. "uhuhuhuh. no fucking ambulance"

"dude, you're bleeding!" and i am. blood is running in to my eyes.

the nameless girl, i think she used to be a waitress but now she's a manager, appears suddenly at my side, hugging me while toweling blood off of my forehead.

"ohhh bobby." she says, exasperated, but with a catch in her throat like she might cry.

i like it when people say my name out loud. it jogs my memory without me having to look at my i.d. card- (fulton, robert daniel, a.k.a. "bobby". d.o.b. 3-8-1988 FWB (federal wave benefits) number... same as my social security number, which i never could remember anyway)-

the ambulance hums to a stop a few feet away. at least they didn't come down the alley with lights and sirens.

the paramedics are all grins and beer guts as they swagger up to me. "what's happening there player?"

i don't know what i'm supposed to say to that. i really just want them to go away.

"he a wave? did he fall out, all of a sudden like?"

my coworkers both nod.

"got a lot of this going around town. some moron put in the wrong feed on the lakeway tower. caused a big ol' surge."

the girl is still hugging my shoulders. "so... what's that have to do with bobby here?"

"look honey, they make anything that uses electricity with a buffer coil these days. folks like your friend here? they don't got one of those."

they seem just then to notice i'm bleeding. they ask if i have hemmo fever.

"are you serious, since when do we have that in austin? he's a wave. he doesn't have the plague."-the girl again. they ask if i can walk to the ambulance. i don't move.

"i'm not going with you. " i finally yelp.

they both look disgusted. one of them mutters something about fucking shockheads.

"you know, he is a person, and you fine people are treating him like a broke down car. what's wrong with you?"

now they're mad at both of us. the waiter steps forward. 

"have you guys had dinner? just fix him up and forget to document. i can get you anything you want, on the house."

the thought of free enchiladas seems to work for the paramedics. they spray the blood away, sanitize the gash, and staple my head. all in less than five minutes.

at least the dumpster kept quiet through all of this.

......

i finally remembered that the manager girls name was haley. haley wanted to pay for a cab to get me home, but i felt like i had caused her enough problems for one day. she asked me three times if i was sure i was okay to take the bus. i finally got away from her.

the bus is approaching. i see that it's not smart, it still has a living, breathing driver. the few remaining capital metro drivers are almost all near retirement age and practice surliness as an art form. they speak only when spoken to, and never look at your face.

the bus pulls up. the door slides open. the driver turns to me, grins and says;

"well how's my favorite chalkboard doing this evening?"

to be continued

tesla waves

i remember having a viewmaster when i was a kid. this was a plastic binocular looking thing that showed 3d images on little cardboard disks that you had to manually turn to view the next images. i had a whole shoebox of these disks. my favorite was the one that told the story of the apollo moon landing.

moon landing. a rocket with spacemen went to the moon and came back in 1969, almost 60 years ago.

i add the moon mission to the list of things i know. when i'm scared or depressed (i'm both right now), i start making a list of all the things i know. sometimes i remember something i don't remember knowing about, like my viewmaster and the moon missions. i picture the three dimensional scene of the return capsule burning with fire as it approached the earth, which was a white and blue half disk in the lower right side of the scene. i was scared to death of the fire and confused about how the astronauts could have splashed down safely after this.

my third grade teacher explained the concept of re-entry to me, something about how the speed of something coming out of space into earths atmosphere produces fire., and that this is what makes shooting stars, which are small meteors burning up when they hit the atmosphere.

sonofabitch! something else i didn't know i knew. i guess the spaceship must have been fireproof.

i would be happy about remembering so many things in one day, but i am confused and scared because the viewmaster with it's manual scene shifter was the first thing i remembered when my day shifted from work to whole foods without any memory of how i got from there to here.

 i must have cried out because people in the store were looking at me and then not looking at me like they were embarrassed for me.

my cell phone buzzed and i fumbled to answer it.

i know the managers name is adam. "hey dude, uh, you left the kitchen without clocking out or saying goodbye and you left a pot of soup on the stove. was this intentional?"

i'm beyond embarrassed. i'm mortified. i start stammering out an apology.

adam just seems tired.. "dude it's okay. nobody is mad at you. do you want to go on home or come back to work?"

i need to go back to work. i need to complete tasks.

adam says to relax. that he will come and get me. he reminds me that my new phone has the memory cue app.. he suggests i study it while i wait.

i go the store's outside cafe and find a table away from other people.

i activate the memory cue and review a series of wikipedia articles which explain to me, for probably the umpteenth time, about how the last major energy crisis was solved when a team of scientists funded by a texas billionaire studied the notes of a genius named tesla who thought that electricity should flow through the air from the source to the user, not through wires. he also thought that the planet was covered with some kind of naturally occurring electrical grid that could be tapped into for free.

well, not exactly free. it took a multi billionaire funding thousands of brilliant minds about twelve years, but they finally cracked the code. figured out where tesla had got it wrong when he came so close to getting it right. the electricity was everywhere and needed only a special magnet to pull it out of thin air.

these articles have been customized for a reader like me. which is a polite way of saying they were dumbed down. i had a problem understanding science even before my brain got fried.

shockhead. frybrain. the current politicly correct term for people like me is "wave people".

i hate that. call me a frybrain 'cause that's what i am.

everything has a price. people like me were the price of free energy. after the squat, black pyramids housing the e-receivers began appearing just about everywhere, people like me started acting funny. some of us were vague, detached from reality. some of us went completely crazy, even became violent. some of us heard voices.

and there were a lot of people, like me, who might remember how to tie their left shoe but not their right.

a car honks and i look up. it's actually two cars, one with adam and one with his wife. i put the phone away and stand up.

adam smiles weakly. "hey dude, my shift is over, so i'm just going to put you in my car, i'll pick it up tomorrow."

he gestures towards the passenger door of his car and walks to the other car.

wtf! he knows i can't drive with my condition. oh yeah. smart car. i get in the passenger seat and fasten the seat belt.

the car leaves the parking lot and merges in to traffic. a computerized female voice says "arriving at seraphim diner in...fifteen...minutes."

exactly fifteen minutes later the car parks itself behind the diner. i walk in the back door and in to the prep kitchen. people look at me. some have names, some don't. some like me, some don't. i wash my hands, find a cutting board and a knife, then realize i have no idea what i'm supposed to be doing.

a girl without a name walks up to me. "hey, i'm glad you came back. we need california rolls for dinner and maybe some ziti. then you can stock the kitchen and go home." she gives me an artificial smile.

all of this takes me about ninety minutes. every so often i glance up from my tasks. here and there government mandated signs are posted on the walls. safe food temperatures, basic first aid, federal minimum wage.

the one i keep looking at details the employment rights of "wave people". the feds consider me disabled. since my employer gets most of my salary rebated by the i.r.s, i have a right to demand customized video memory cues and memstim programs.

i don't make these demands. it means a lot to me to remember how to do something. my california rolls have all seven ingredients. i stock almost everything on the proper shelves the first time.

as i throw my trash in the dumpster, i smell pot. the nameless girl and a nameless guy are smoking just around the corner. they didn't look to see who was throwing out the trash.

"....wave people. just stops what he's doing around two o clock and walks out without a word, adam has to go drag him back."

"why did he bother?"

"well. he's not so bad some days. plus we get a lot of his salary back from the feds."

"have they thought about just not paying him? not like he would remember."

i round the corner and walk into a cloud of smoke and laughter. they both look at me, startled and then frightened. the guy hands a pipe to me like some kind of peace offering.

"can't. my memory is already fucked. remember?"

it seems like i am trying for sarcasm, but i don't know what that word means.

i form my hands into fists.

the dumpster clears it's throat.

to say that this changes everything..... gross understatement.

i look at the dumpster. it is still an industrial sized metallic trash container . green paint giving way to rust in spots, Central Texas Refuse stenciled on the side facing me. but it has suddenly acquired sentience. and it is talking to me.

"you didn't pay for anger, so i'm not allowing that indulgence. are you ready to be a chalkboard again?"

to be continued

r.i.p. lux interior, frontman for the cramps. b. 1947-d. 2009.

it's a pretty fair assumption that anyone who would read my blog has heard the cramps. they were punk before there was punk. i mean, some people date punk from about 1976 when the ramones, heartbreakers, blondie, television, et. all began playing c.b.g.b.'s in new york.

1976. the cramps formed in 1972. a band out of time if there ever was one.

his passing comes only about a month after the death of ron asheton, founding guitarist of the stooges, the original proto punk band. also this week, i heard on the radio that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the plane crash that took the life of buddy holly, a music pioneer so original that he could only be labeled in the context of what came AFTER him.

so rock music is at least half a century old. that's a hard number for me to wrap my head around.

almost as hard of a number as sixty two, the stated age of lux interior.

recorded media seems to cause a sort of time displacement. elizabeth taylor will always be the liz taylor of Suddenly Last Summer or Cleopatra. we don't have to think about her being in her eighties if we choose not to. 

this same time displacement effect hits me when i think of someone from a band like the cramps or the stooges hitting their sixth decade. recordable media of all kinds hold these people suspended in time, wild, crazy, maybe bare chested and drug fueled. rocking like there is no tomorrow, no future, only NOW. RIGHT NOW.

that these people dare to age, dare to live in the same time stream as us regular folks, seems almost deceitful. that our stars dare to have the same mundane problems as us, that they would die ordinary deaths in a hospital or while watching t.v. at home, seems to betray the idea of rock stars needing to die before they get old.

it is almost like there are two parallel time streams that cross over meet only to inform us that someone is not the person you remember from a decades old album cover or some concert back in 19-whenever.

i will remember lux interior by playing the cramps rockinandreeelininauklandnewzealand c.d. really loud tonight. 

 condolences to his wife and family.

blast wave

a bizarre coda to the previous posting....... a little before 8 this evening i heard a KA-THUWMP noise followed immediately by the back of my house shuddering violently. this was way to powerful to be my friend the raccoon. what freaked me out mostly was that it sounded a bit like someone slamming the back door.

the problem with this is that my place is a very old (c. 1923) shotgun cottage that was divided down the middle and added on to to make a ramshackle duplex. my longtime neighbor moved in october, so the building has been unusually quiet. this noise sounded like an angry person slamming the back door of the unoccupied apartment. not cool. i would know if anyone was moving in.

the noise also sounded like a large, dead limb might have fallen from the tree overhanging the house. said tree presumably being how the aforementioned raccoon gets on the roof. 

so once again here i am walking around the house with a flashlight. i shined the light into the windows of the empty apartment and onto the roof of the building. nothing.

so i went back inside. soon, i heard sirens, lots of them . they were coming from somewhere to the northeast of my block, the rear of my place facing east-northeast. the sirens went on for a real long time.

i began checking the internet. about an hour later the austin-american statesman website reported that there had been a gas explosion at an address maybe a 5-10 minute walk from me.

apparently, a house exploded right as firefighters were arriving to investigate a gas smell. one firefighter was taken to the hospital with a knee injury.. three occupants of the house, a mother and two daughters, were taken to st. davids suffering from gas inhalation.

these are early reports, so i hope that this is as bad as it gets. i hope the mother and daughters haven't been too traumatized and get back on their feet soon.

for me to feel the blast at my place, houses on either side of this house probably suffered structural damage, at least had windows blown out. people inside would have been scared half to death.

that's all. it's a strange world sometimes. take care of yourselves.

bad places, real and imaginary

we heard gunshots from time to time.  there would be a brief pause in whatever task we were occupied with - typically me loading a bong and kyle tuning or re-stringing his bass - and one of us would ask:

"wattaya think?"

and the other would venture his opinion:

"hmm... four or five rapid shots, kind of a flat, hollow crack .... i'm gonna guess a low caliber auto, .22 or .25"

the other person would nod his head. but sometimes there were disagreements.

"check out that boom. i'm guessing a .357"

"dude, you don't know what you're talking about. that was a shotgun."

i still can't believe i was that nonchalant about how some of our neighbors frequently shot at each other over (most likely) crack deals gone bad. i'm older now. these days, if i heard gunshots that close to my house, i would hit the floor, call 911, and make plans to move. like, immediately.

but i haven't heard gunshots in a real long time. the above story was a typical scene when i lived near downtown houston in the late 1980's. i lived in a bad neighborhood for a variety of reasons, most of which i tend to cringe at now.

why did i want to live there? i grew up in a suburb of houston, miles and miles of urban sprawl between me and anything that might excite or interest me. there was no culture, high or low, where i grew up. no museums or art galleries, but also no live music venues, no eccentric or colorful characters, no independent media. i might have been nineteen before i bought a book or record at anyplace other than baybrook mall.

in my late teens, i began tagging along with friends when they would go to punk shows in houston. sometimes we would go during the daytime to check out a neighborhood called montrose. this part of town was known to most people as "the place where all the homosexuals lived". that didn't matter to me. i have always thought of myself as an outcast, so i  kind of liked the idea of a group of people marginalized by society-at-large taking over a part of town and creating their own little enclave. i was never uncomfortable seeing men with large mustaches or women walking arm in arm.

where you have a gay community, you tend to also have cool things like record stores where purple hared salesclerks could tell you off the top of their heads when the new nick cave album was due out or when black flag was coming to town. that was real important to me at the time. so was wanting to find the kind of place where i could be myself.

so i got the idea that i should move to oz rather than trying to bum rides there on the weekends. a couple of years later and i was living as an urban pioneer surrounded by hostile crackheads. i had seriously romanticized life in inner loop houston. yeah, there were a lot of cool things, but there was also drugs. lots of drugs. and prostitutes. and aids. and people partying their way through dead end lives, just like i was doing at the time. oh, and thanks to crack there was crime. lots of crime. i got mugged and assaulted once walking home from work. once the initial shock had worn off, i took a certain perverse pride in living in such a dangerous place.

but i never really became all that tough or street smart. that i never got hurt really bad was probably due more to dumb luck than anything else. after the mugging, i began seeing my neighborhood and my lifestyle as not being so much exciting or "bohemian", but rather just dirty and sleazy.

***********

nineteen years later and life is much more laid back. the dangerous places i lived in in houston have mostly been plowed under and turned in to condominiums. the last time i visited, i saw no obvious hookers or drug dealers. that is undoubtedly a good thing. i am realistic enough these days to know that the seamier side of life contains much misery and early death.

but i couldn't help myself, i felt a little let down that things were so clean and safe looking. i think my problem in my twenties was that i confused proximity to danger with the level of meaning in my life. what's life without risk?

i thought of living with danger and risk just before christmas. it was about midnight. i was getting ready for bed. mostly undressed. i had just turned the television off, leaving the house eerily silent, when suddenly there was a very loud, kind of scraping noise at the back of the house. this was followed by a loud thump coming from the roof. then there came what sounded like footsteps on my roof, someone walking the length of the house and back again. i wondered if i was imagining all of this, but i looked over at my cats. both of them were staring raptly at the ceiling.

someone is on my roof? all i could think was that it must be some idiot playing a joke who had gotten the wrong house. but i was also reminded of my years in h-town, when someone sneaking around your house was rarely a good thing. the steps were continuing as if the person was stomping in a circle. the house was actually shaking a little.

i thought about calling the cops, but i still have a macho streak in me. i wanted to confront this jerk and scare the hell out of him. i frantically threw on some jeans and work boots. as i was doing this, a loud scraping noise came from the front of the house, followed by an enormous thump on my front porch just feet from my door. it sounded like my unwelcome visitor had swung down off the roof by way of the front awning.

i grabbed a huge maglite flashlight, the kind police often use-in addition to being very bright, it's also heavy enough to hurt someone. my plan was that i would momentarily blind the perp with the light and tell him in no uncertain terms to leave and never come back. if he tried anything, i would hit him upside the head and then call the cops.

heart pounding and adrenaline coursing through me, i turned the locks and threw open the door, maglite at the ready.

there on my porch was the biggest damn raccoon i have ever seen. really, he was as big as a medium sized dog. he looked at me. i looked at him. i closed the door and went to bed.

biscuit trauma

it's friday morning, which means when i get to work today essau (the asst. manager, that's his real name) is going to ask me to make biscuits and gravy for weekend brunch special. i kind of dug my own grave on this when i started making a small batch of biscuits for me and my saturday brunch coworkers a few months ago. essau took notice of this, and decided i should make a big batch to sell.

the problem? i don't have a mixer, i do it all by hand. making a dozen biscuits is easy, making 4 or 5 dozen at a time has started to tear my left shoulder out of its socket. essau says that we can start ordering frozen biscuits. no way in hell, dude. pride will cause me to continue making the damn biscuits until my shoulders disintegrate. 

enough about that. this is my first post for blogger. i have had a blog on my myspace page for two years now, but technical issues with that sight are driving me crazy. at the suggestion of my friend rosa, i started a blog here.

in the future, i will be writing about any and everything. books, music, politics, and general everyday weirdness will all get their due.

i won't lie, i am a whore for comments, even negative ones. disagreement is welcome if it leads to intelligent debate. name calling, however, will not be tolerated. please check back frequently.

brian

currently reading: Samaritan by richard price