oh well i don't know, no one likes me

part 337.2 of a novel: evening juice

2008-10-03T01:25:00.001-07:00

The lump tends to wake up late and be in a rush in the mornings. It is doubtful she will have time for breakfast. In all fairness, she probably didn’t get enough sleep the night before, but to her fault she usually shuts off her alarm and goes back to bed. As a result, the carton of orange juice with about enough remaining for a half a glass, left out the previous night, and intended to be thrown out in the morning will probably not be thrown out until the evening when the lump arrives home from work and craves something fruity, nothing much, just a sip. These cravings of course will only be filled with disappointment as it is realized that the carton has been left out and the contents spoiled. And that is why she’ll take a sip of her roommate’s, the Smarmaloid’s, orange juice.

part 337.1 of a novel: the lump

2008-10-03T01:24:00.000-07:00

There was a girl who I called the lump. She lived at 108 Hudson St. She did many things with her face. Sometimes her face grew a mouth and the mouth ate food. This is not uncommon for North American females in the post-millennial world. The lump’s face movements to create a mouth and consume food are not the reason why I have decided to make many efforts to ensure the face movements of other North American males in the post-millennial society are ignored and my face movements are her main priority. To clarify, the lump is the name I have given my present girlfriend.

part 335.3 of a novel: smoking cigarettes

2008-10-01T02:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve never smoked a cigarette. Once I tried to light one for someone. We were walking up a hill. It was windy. I cupped my hands and held the cigarette in my hand and the match in my mouth. I refused to do it any other way and almost burned off my lips because of it, but even backwards and a failure it felt pretty good to strike that cupped hand posture and to this day I’m glad I didn’t have things reversed with the cigarette in my mouth and the match in my hand because I’d probably be addicted.

part 335.2 of a novel: crumble's face

2008-10-01T01:29:00.000-07:00

My friend always has crumbs on his face. He doesn’t brush them off before he goes to bed. He feels like they keep him satisfied in the middle of the night. He says he’s less likely to feel restless and roll around and whatever. I don’t believe him. I think he’s afraid of brushing his teeth, but I don’t know. I guess it’s better than having stains—chocolate, tomato sauce, milk mustache, etc—on your face. A little crumble snack is more satisfying I suspect.

part 335.1 of a novel: purple onion soup

2008-10-01T01:20:00.000-07:00

purple onion fruit- This is also the name of a band that became Ok Computer. Ok Computer is a band that plays radiohead songs on a karaoke machine, but instead of singing radiohead songs they read passages from Robert Heinlein. The passages are done to the rhythm of the music. It’s worth seeing a couple times. I saw them when they read the entire Sending Giraffes to the Inter-Galactic Night at the Bowling Alley in Elephant Suits. As purple onion fruit they mostly played Green Day and Ozzy covers. Their performance of “Mama, I’m coming home,” at the middle school talent show won them an honorable mention ribbon.

part 334.2 of a novel: i got a phone call

2008-09-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

I got a phone call. I was standing on carpet, but I was in a phone booth. I was barefoot. It felt very odd to me. The person called me on my cell phone. I asked them if they could call the phone in the booth. They said they couldn’t. They doubted that phone even worked. I agreed with them. Then they said something that reminded me of a line from a famous novel that continues to remain unread at the bottom of my bookshelf.

part 334.1 of a novel: my apathy was a reaction by my body to disguise the addition of illiteracy to my list of character flaws

2008-09-30T00:58:00.000-07:00

My brain was shrinking. I’ve been doing experiments. Last week, I spent Tuesday looking at can of peas for the first three hours of my day. I almost missed work. I brought the can of peas with me. Somehow I did not eat them. Removing the label helped, but then I got curious what the dried, adhesive tasted like. I could really only taste aluminum. I gave a moment’s thought about swapping my shrinking brain for the contents of the can, but only managed to open the drawer where the can opener is kept and not actually take it out and wind it around my skull. I do not remember how Tuesday ended. There was no can of peas in the cabinets or at my office when I woke up Wednesday.

part 332.1 of a novel: city of bikes

2008-09-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

When I first moved to the city I found all kinds of bikes. “This city is great,” I thought, “People are always leaving bikes around for me to use, but then one day I went to unlock my bike from a stop sign and found someone had stolen the front wheel. I thought, “Well I guess I don’t have a bike anymore.” The next time I walked past the bike the back wheel was gone as well. Then the handlebars went and the bike seat. And I thought, “What’s the use of having a bike if by the end of the week all that’s left is the frame,” but I wasn’t sad. I kind of liked knowing I had a bike with no wheels and no steering wheel.

part 328.1 of a novel: pocket lamps

2008-09-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

September is a month that most people live in at least once. I have lived in September twenty-four times. I do not remember every single second I’ve lived in September. I know that at some point or another I’ve had things in my pocket during the month of September, but I can not remember what those things were. I thought, maybe I had a light bulb in my pocket once in September, but I checked various record keeping systems and it turns out I’ve only had a light bulb in my pocket in October and April. There are no records of what was in my pockets for September.

part 327.2 of a novel: shallow end

2008-09-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

I thought of a pool party in the summer before high school and how some girls in my grade were kissing their sophomore boyfriends in the shallow end. I didn’t go swimming. I liked to do handstands in the shallow end, but was afraid I would have kicked the girls and their boyfriends in the head. Instead, I sat on a deck chair and just watched them. One of them saw me and called me a pervert.

part 327.1 of a novel: daffodil shells

2008-09-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

I used to cook eggs before the sun came up. The eggs were yellow and looked like soggy lawn furniture. Daffodils sometimes shell their retarded offspring and people eat them and think they are eggs. Other animals sometimes try to shell their feeble-minded babies and sell them, but people rarely eat them. Humans sometimes put half bike shells on the heads of their mentally retarded children, but people don’t try to eat them. A long time after the sun set I was thinking of eggs and worrying that the ones I ate the morning before were retarded daffodils. I worried about the ones I would eat in a few hours too, before the sun came up again.

part 326.1 of a novel: blurry day yeah 764

2008-09-25T00:31:00.000-07:00

I ate two noodles and a girl was in the clean sheets that I made. A metal tin filled with water after I gave it quarters. I gave it five quarters after I swiped a card and a larger woman than the one in my bed gave me ten dollars in quarters so I could put the dirty sheets in a metal tin and clean them. The girl in the clean sheets brought home two and a half noodles. She ate half a noodle and I ate two noodles. She said, “I am full,” and picked at the wall next to the table because there was crud on them. Her bowl still had one percent of the half a noodle and I thought, “I will eat that one percent of the half noodle.” She put the crud from the wall in her bowl, but I ate the one percent of half a noodle anyway. She did not care for this, but then I told her about the clean sheets and she jumped in them and asked me if I loved her anymore. I was not done eating the two noodles, but I said, “Sure,” and ate the rest of the two noodles. Then I felt guilty because I had a dream about a girl smaller than her and made the sheets dirty.

part 325.5 of a novel: bathmat

2008-09-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

For twelve months I walked into the bathroom and either washed my hands in the hip level fishbowl or sat on the knee level fishbowl or climbed into the fishbowl for people who like to get clean lying down. Every time I walked in I thought, “I should get a bathmat.” I never did go get a bathmat.

part 325.4 of a novel: baseball group of men

2008-09-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

There is a baseball group of men and they have lots of big guys and some little guys and some guys you forget about until one of them says, “Hey one time in Little League they threw me the ball and I ran home with it and when I got home the phone was ringing so I picked up and it was the coach and he said, ‘Can you bring back the ball?’ So I did and then I went up to bat and hit the ball and ran around the bases and no one tagged me and that’s when I knew I would have a long future in this game and I stopped learning to read and my teacher didn’t care because I showed a lot of athletic promise and everyone knew that one day I would become something of a moderate professional on a baseball group of men.”

part 325.3 of a novel: outside 7-11

2008-09-23T23:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there are people outside of 7-11 with Styrofoam cups and they say things like, “I know this guy with a Hitler mustache and a very tiny dick and I think he goes to my dentist because my dentist has this ring that looks like a swastika, but he never shows it to me when I ask and instead will say things like, ‘Now let’s talk about this gum problem you got.’ You see, I got this really bad gum problem. I think I need reconstructive surgery and I’d really appreciate if you could give me a few cents and help me out.” I always give six cents. When I leave I always make sure I have six cents to give to the people outside of 7-11.

part 325.2 of a novel: crumpled pictures

2008-09-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

I have a pile of crumpled pictures in the corner behind the door. They sometimes unfold themselves and run around the apartment and eat things I want to eat in the morning. They unfold themselves and eat all the eggs and then run back to the corner and crumple themselves back up. I have not had eggs for breakfast in a month. I go to the supermarket and buy a carton. I bring them home. I put them in the refrigerator. I brush and floss. I go to sleep. Crumpled pictures unfold themselves. I do not have eggs when I wake up. I am not mad at the crumpled pictures. They can not help themselves. They are mostly blurry pictures and old preschool photos.

part 325.1 of a novel: front door

2008-09-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

The front door laughed. I told it I did not appreciate its mockery. My neighbor opened their door and asked if I would be quiet. I told them this matter didn’t concern them. My neighbor’s dog barked at me. My neighbor encouraged the dog to bark more. I went to grab the dog and kick it on one of the roofs across the street, but the door ran away. It ran into my neighbor’s apartment and barked. The front door laughed. I did not appreciate this. I drew a Hitler mustache and a very small penis on the door. The small penis was microscopic and was meant to be demeaning. The door did not appreciate this and said things about me and my character. It was clear it did not respect me. I thought, “Oh well.” I do not care much for respect. The door called my dentist and the next time I went in to get my teeth checked the dentist shook his head at me and said, “I heard about the small penis and the Hitler mustache.” I left without getting a checkup. I did not feel comfortable with this man’s hands in my mouth.

Part 324.2 of a novel: Blurry Day Yeah 744

2008-09-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

I looked at the bed sheets for a long time and everything felt perfect in the world. My bed did not feel pain in its forehead from the bed sheets. I was happy about this. Sometimes beds will be young and freshly harvested or enslaved and feel pain about their new location in the world and their reliance on bed sheets. It is a cultural thing. It is not cultural shock. The editing process destroyed this term from all my writing. I have snuck this one by them though. It is not culture shock. They will only allow me to say my work is not culture shock. If I say it is culture shock then they will not accept it so I have to live with my work not being culture shocked. This is a very difficult thing to live with. I sometimes think, “Oh, fuck. There goes the neighborhood. My writing will suffer. I shouldn’t have moved into this house. My writing is naïve and doesn’t understand basic things, but its demise was not culture shock.” There is not culture shock in the barn.

Part 324.1 of a novel: hot dog stand

2008-09-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

I saw a girl go to the back of the hot dog stand and I followed her, but when I got back there she was not there and all I found was the girl who worked the hot dog stand. This confused me. The one girl who went to the back of the hot dog stand did not look like the girl who worked the hot dog stand. The hot dog stand was very small. I do not know how anyone could disappear behind it. The girl who worked the hot dog stand asked what I was doing. I did not know. I pretended I was conducting interviews. She seemed interested. I asked her if she was interested in getting conducted for an interview. She said she would. I asked her questions. I did not record any of her answers. I said, “How many times have you put a hot dog in a bun and sneezed?” I don’t remember what she said. She asked me at one point if I was going to write down any of her answers or record them. I told her I remembered everything she said. She seemed skeptical. I took a step back. And then another. I took a third step and then I was running away.

part 323.2 of a novel: Blurry Day Yeah 734

2008-09-18T15:34:00.001-07:00

Someone is standing on my feet. Not on them. Their soles are on my soles. I am standing on a doormat. They are standing on a doormat. All that separates us is a doormat. I jumped. They jumped. We both landed on the doormat, on each other’s soles. If it weren’t for this person on the other side of the doormat then I would fall into their world and end up on this other world’s ceiling and if I wasn’t here then they would end up on the ceiling in my world. It is very strange to think about. I don’t know if makes sense. For instance, when I leave the doormat they leave the doormat and step on the tile. When I walk down the stairs they walk down the stairs. We step on stairs and on each other’s soles. It would be kind of weird to one day step on something and fall through it and land on the ceiling in another world. I guess this sometimes happens when you go swimming, but it’s not like you fully leave this world.

part 323.1 of a novel: doormat

2008-09-18T15:34:00.000-07:00

There was someone with a doormat that said, “Mets.” I have never liked the Mets. I thought about knocking on the door and saying something like, “My name is John Franco,” even though my name is not John Franco. I wonder what they would say if I said I was John Franco. Maybe they would say, “Hello John,” or, “Who is John Franco?” or, “No you’re not. I’m John Franco.” I also thought about saying something different like, “Hello, I am Todd Hundley.” I think I would rather be Todd Hundley than John Franco. I did not knock on the door of the person with the doormat that said, “Mets.”

part 322.4 of a novel: blurry day yeah 724

2008-09-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

Someone said, “I should have left five minutes ago.” I did not disagree with this person. I tried to find them a Band-Aid. I did not have any. Hair was clotting the sink or the bathtub or both or neither. I don’t know. It was definitely hair though, not a Band-Aid. I heard footsteps. I pretended they were a form of bird doing things. I do not know what sort of things. It would depend on the bird. I do not know what form of bird it was. This is why I don’t know what sort of things it did. There was a heart shaped something on the kitchen counter. I put it in the garbage disposal. Someone asked, “Where are my sunglasses?” I turned off the garbage disposal. I felt very excited. This was the wrong reaction. I thought, “Andre Agassi.” This did not feel like the right reaction either.

part 322.3 of a novel: the trumpet

2008-09-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

I remember playing the trumpet when I was eleven. I played it for a month. A man named Milt tried to teach me to play. He had a mustache. I was not good at the trumpet. I quit. He seemed a little upset when I quit, but not really. He knew I didn’t practice. The other trumpets practiced more than me. I was holding everyone back. He patted me on the back and said it was nice knowing me and I said something like, “I just don’t think I have the lips to be a great trumpeter,” but I think we both knew I was making excuses.

part 322.2 of a novel: my grandmother part 213

2008-09-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

My Grandmother sometimes says things like, “Garrison Keillor is a strange man.” Other times she says, “I think you should send a story to The New Yorker like Garrison Keillor did when he was young.” Other times she say things unrelated to Garrison Keillor like, “I worked at a mental institute,” or, “When I sold the house it was a very hectic time, but I managed and I think it’s for the better.” Then other times, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, but she’ll talk for a long time and I kind of zone her out and just nod my head.

part 322.1 of a novel: soap shop

2008-09-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

My mother worked in a soap shop and read off a note card and told customers things like, “This soap cleans really good. It can clean the bottom of a lawnmower and make your skin feel soft afterwards. I think that it is the best soap I’ve ever used.” My mother spoke in a monotone when she read the note cards about soap. The manager said she should act more excited. My mother added exclamation points at the end of each sentence on her notecard. This did not help.

part 6.1 of a novel: dad said

2008-09-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

In college my father would suggest I read Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens (or if that link doesn't work try this one and I kind of feel that neither are going to work so the information is lost, so instead I've decided to write about Richard Wright in the comments section of this post). I checked it out of the library and it ended up sitting on my desk for a month. I never read [Other books my father suggested I read that I never got to: Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, The Bible…Sorry Dad. I did read Stephen King’s On Writing.] it.

part 321.4 of a novel: plate of rice and peas

2008-09-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

The evening started with a container of rice I found in the refrigerator. There was a can of peas. I cooked both of them together. It was not a great meal. I put spices on the rice. I watched reality shows on MTV and thought, “How can these people go out to eat every night?” I got jealous of them. I thought, “Maybe I should be allowed on the show and be able to go out to eat every night.” I think it would be funny to go out every night and order a plate of rice with peas and wear a video camera on my head.

part 321.3 of a novel: Blurry Day Yeah 714.2

2008-09-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

Blurry things are in the house. I want to be a kitten. We have a dog. It cut its ears on the toilet. We went and gave it the Heimlich, but didn’t know what we were doing and that’s when our dog turned into a kitten. We like to call its head a puppy and its body a haircut. I don’t know why we don’t just get a new dog because it is a little strange telling people that we have a dog when it is obviously a kitten, but I think people accept it and understand where we’re coming from.

part 321.2 of a novel: a whiffle ball

2008-09-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

I was playing wiffle ball in the back parking lot one day and I found a syringe near the stairs of the people next door. I did not knock on the door and say, “Hello, is this your syringe.” I ignored the needle and continued playing wiffle ball. The game continued until the ball was hit over the fence. We could not get the ball. It fell into a pit of grills.

part 321.1 of a novel: Blurry Day Yeah 714.1

2008-09-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

There’s a lady outside the window and it sounds like she is making it rain and I want it to be a very famous rapper throwing money around, but I highly doubt it is. I suspect it is just a woman watering the plants. I asked her what the fuck she was doing and she ran off, but I followed the hose and found it led to the bus station and I thought, “I’ve never ridden the bus in this place,” but I didn’t care about that thought. I forgot about that thought. I wanted to drown it with the lady’s hose. I was more concerned with why I thought the closet she was hiding in was a bus station. I didn’t try to answer any of these questions though. I just pressed my tongue to the door of the closet and let it say whatever it wanted and it said things like, “These calm tides are really pissing me off and I don’t think there is an understanding alive that will ever solve the differences that are present in my medicine cabinet right now, but don’t fear things will be amusing once I have that hose and you go to sleep and I can drown your guitar in the bathtub,” or “What the fuck is going on?”

part 320.3 of a novel: intimate parts

2008-09-15T10:54:00.001-07:00

One person whispered, “I haven’t seen you in so long. It’s nice to see you. There was a lengthy time when we didn’t see each other. I’ve missed you. Your intimate parts are fading. I haven’t had a chance to say hello to them in so very long. I forgot what they looked like. Remember when I sent you a four page email and you said, ‘my intimate parts will always be yours’? I remember that. I saved it and printed it and put it on my wall. I highlighted the part about intimate parts. You don’t have to be embarrassed. These are things that happened. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Even if you don’t still feel the same way. A lot of time has passed. I understand. We aren’t the same people. I don’t know if I could write a four page email to you again anyway. Maybe I could. Maybe if you showed me your intimate parts again I could. I can hardly remember what it was like. But if not, then I understand. We haven’t seen each other in so long…”

part 320.2 of a novel: blurry day yeah day 714

2008-09-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

I always say things get blurry. I don’t want everything I ever say to be blurry, but it seems like things are always getting blurry and I can’t help but think about these blurry parts for long periods of time. The lawn care man was a brother or something. He clipped the grass and drove a pickup. Sometimes he would rake things and his friends would say, “Why are you always raking your sister’s lawn.” Then the brother would say that he didn’t know. The wife’s husband owned a rifle company. He shot squirrels off the front porch. All the lawn care people hired to plant the giant Christmas tree stopped and clapped. The wife brought him a drink. The lawn care people hired to put in the Christmas tree watched the wife and got boners. These boners displaced themselves at different rates. The squirrel did not have a body to return to. It remembered seeing its friend get run over by a lawn mower. That’s all that was left of this squirrel, the thought of its friend and the lawnmower. The brother did it. Then he raked the remains into a ditch. Now the brother was on the floor of the shed. He was listening for things in the ground. Spiders crawled on him. He was not really listening to things. He overdosed on things he got from a friend of a friend who knew a pharmacist. The lawn care guys hired to plant the Christmas Tree went to the shed to get a shovel and displace more of their boners. There were five of them. They found the brother. The brother had not taken all the pills. Squirrels that still had bodies were sniffing the pills. The lawn care guys hired to put in the Christmas tree watched the squirrels eat the pills. The lawn care guys hit the squirrels with shovels and then cheered. They thought the squirrels had killed the brother. The Christmas tree fell over. The husband shot a bluejay. It did not have a body to return to anymore.

part 320 of a novel: graham

2008-09-15T10:39:00.000-07:00

Once a person called my phone and said, “Hello is Graham there?” I was not Graham. I said, “No.” They said, “Hmmm.” I told them I think they had the wrong number. They thought about this. They hung up. A few more people called asking for Graham. Then after a few weeks no one called asking for Graham. I do not know what happened to Graham. Another time someone called and said, “Hello, how are you? I think we talked last Wednesday. You had been mowing your lawn.” I told them I hadn’t been mowing my lawn. I said, “I don’t have a lawn.” They said, “Okay,” and hung up. A week later they called again and said the same thing about my lawn. This time I said, “My lawn died three years ago.”

Part 5.1 of a novel: the toilet

2008-09-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

Oddly, probably my favorite brand of toilet is made by the company American Standard. Not because they make a particular comfortable model. No, I just always found the name kind of ironic. The company obviously wanted a strong name. They wanted something that would invoke trust, but in doing so they basically allowed millions of people to piss daily on this idea. Sure, in most cases it is nothing more than a mold of porcelain, but for me personally I can’t help but think that I am doing more than just watering the porcelain holy lands; I legitimately feel I am pissing on the American standard of life. I could care less, but it always amuses me and puts a goofy smile on my face which if I’m at a urinal standing next to someone usually leaves them feeling a bit uncomfortable and rushed.

part 319.2 of a novel: blurry day yeah day 704

2008-09-15T00:51:00.002-07:00

One of the rats knew how to play an instrument or something that is not an instrument, but can kind of look like an instrument if your head is blurry. Nothing about this made me like this rat. I thought of breakfast foods instead of thinking of reasons why I might like the rat. I thought, “Danish, soupy eggs, stale cereal, girls with crooked teeth, old ladies with droopy ears, salmonella on celery, rolling hills, the flock of pond ducks, people selling oranges after trading away their stock options, four page emails, old Christmas trees, little boys of the world that are unsatisfied with their name because it is Seth, and hamburgers. Then I yawned and somehow this yawn got all over the bed and it woke up some of the people sleeping and they said, “What are you doing? What happened?” So I told them, “I fell in paint.” They did not understand because I hadn’t fallen in paint. I could not tell them I had only yawned. I wanted to tell them, but I couldn’t. They thought I was still mad at them for making me go to a movie I didn’t want to see. They did not understand that I didn’t mind seeing that movie. They misinterpreted what I said when I said, “I would rather wait and see it when it comes to cable TV.” They got upset and thought, “No, he doesn’t even know what are breakfast foods and what aren’t. I would not eat soupy eggs.”

part 319.2 of a novel: 3 books

2008-09-15T00:51:00.001-07:00

I’ve only met this particular man one time. One time he said a lot of things and bound it in a standard bounded object and I skimmed through the first one hundred leaflets of that standard bounded object. Another time he was curious about the idea of infinity and looked up the theory in a math book and then said, “Hmmm, I think I will say something about this.” I heard part of what he said. I was in San Fransico and heard him from the clearance rack. The third time I met him I was mowing the lawn and I was wearing headphones and then I heard his voice and he said, “Once, I ate a lobster. Then another time I went to this award ceremony for porno stars.” That’s all I know of this man. I would like to revisit him.

part 319.1 of a novel: 2am

2008-09-15T00:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when it is 2am and I am walking down a dark street the thing I am most afraid of is seeing a rat with a skunk strapped to its back. I’ve walked down various streets before. Sometimes I see rats. Other times I see skunks. These both scare me. The thing that would scare me the most though would be seeing a rat combined with a skunk. Then the rat could jump on your neck and gnaw at your face and the skunk could spray itself into the wounds.

part 318.5 of a novel: blurry day yeah 694

2008-09-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

I wanted to think about important things, but all that my head created was a man with sunglasses. He was smiling real loud. He did not have teeth. Maybe he did. The trees were blowing. Or they were still. I could not tell. Things were very blurry. I don’t know why. My girlfriend’s old roommate was in my bed. I said, “What is that foot doing on my pillow?” She did not understand. Her foot was not on the pillow. I tried to say, “What are you doing in my bed?” I couldn’t move my lips. I looked to the man with sunglasses. He looked at me and smiled. He had teeth. They were made out of legos. I thought, “I want red teeth too.” My teeth began to hurt. I said, “My bed hurts.” My girlfriend’s old roommate got confused. I said, “Hah. I’m not the only blurry one.” The man with the sunglasses smiled and shook his head. He began to look like a tree blowing in the wind. Maybe he was standing still. Maybe the tree ate him. The tree had lego teeth. Her foot was not on the pillow. She was going to step in a bear trap. I said, “My foot hurts.” I tried to say, “Watch out. You are going to step into a bear trap.” She did not understand. She looked at my foot and said, “Why does your foot hurt.” I tried to say, “Not my foot stupid, your foot,” but my teeth hurt and the tree was smiling and everything in my mouth was blurry and the best I could manage was, “Bears don’t have feet either.” Then she said, “Ow,” and I went to eat cereal, because there was nothing I could do for her, but all that was in the box was cracked teeth and legos so I gave the bowl and jug of milk to a tree.

part 318.4 of a novel: green pepers, meat, and bread crumbs

2008-09-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

When I got home I asked the gumball machine, “Are you hungry?” It said it was. I didn’t have much in the refrigerator. Only a few green peppers, some meat, and a container of bread crumbs. “Do you want some meat?” I asked. The gumball machine said it had never eaten meat.

part 318.3 of a novel: Mr. golf clubs, Mrs. dollhouse

2008-09-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

I have never found a gumball machine in a dumpster even though I’ve been known to write on my resume, “I once found a gumball machine in a dumpster.” This is not true. The only place I found a gumball machine was in a flooded basement and I’m not even sure the basement was flooded. I think the floors were painted blue. I am not sure though. One side of my head says, “Your boots were wet.” The other side of my head says, “No, they were blue because you stepped in wet paint.” Regardless, I found the gumball machine on a table next to a set of golf clubs and a doll house. I did not rescue the golf clubs or the dollhouse because they were fucking and I didn’t want to interrupt them. The golf clubs did say, “Look at that ass. Have you ever seen an ass that good?”

part 318.2 of a novel: dead gumball machines

2008-09-13T15:40:00.000-07:00

Once I saw a meter maid pick up a gumball machine and crack it against the side of a building and then dump all the gumballs on the sidewalk. Children and adults ran over and collected the gumballs. They felt rich. No one cared about the dead gumball machine.

part 318.1 of a novel: oliver's science project

2008-09-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

Oliver was in my third grade class. His full name was Oliver Todd. For his science project one year he melted pennies and made little BBs for his BB gun. He brought in his BB gun to show everyone and ended up shooting the teacher’s assistant in the eye. Then he got scared and secluded himself in a closet yelling that if anyone moved he would shoot them. The teacher’s assistant lay on the ground holding her eye. I was very scared. I covered my eyes. I did not want my eyeballs to get shot out. I did not see what happened. When I uncovered my eyes our teacher, Mr. Doug was carrying off an unconscious Oliver Todd in one hand. Mr. Doug held the BB gun in the other hand. Oliver Todd’s head was bleeding. One kid who didn’t cover his eyes because he had glasses said Mr. Doug threw his chair at Oliver and it hit him in the head. The next week the teacher’s assistant was leading class. She wore a patch on her right eye. We never saw Mr. Doug again. No one really knows what happened to Oliver Todd. Some say he went to jail. Some say he went to a private school. Others say he somehow got a hold of his BB gun in the principal’s office and killed himself.

part 4.1 of a novel: The other two jobs...

2008-09-13T12:06:00.001-07:00

There were these other two jobs. Both were working at almost identical tennis clubs. Like with my two jobs working with the disabled persons I did everything by the book at one of the tennis clubs while at the other one I was pretty careless. Also, the only difference in the two tennis clubs was that one of them was predominantly frequented by blind people. It may not be right, but I’ll admit that from time to time it was pretty fun to steal the members’ rackets and replace them with umbrellas.

part 317.3 of a novel: the lonely referee

2008-09-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

Three people were in a place. The place was between two doorways. There was an orange ball. One person was a referee. The other two guarded their doors. The orange ball was an orange ball. Someone kicked the ball. The ball went towards the doorway. A person stopped it or maybe they didn’t. Sometimes the ball would go through a doorway. Other times it wouldn’t. The two persons guarding their doorways would yell and get very nervous. Sometimes they would get depressed at how many times the orange ball made it past them through the doorway. The referee did not do much accept say, “Let me play. I want to play.” The two persons did not let him play. He sat down on a stool and stopped watching the game. He took out a notepad and began writing a four-page email to someone.

part 317.2 of a novel: goodbye little plop

2008-09-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

I did not buy a cookie. I bought a salami sandwich. I bought it from a man with a sack. He asked me, “What kind of sandwich would you like?” I said, “What do you have?” He said, “He had a variety of choices.” I said, “I like my chances. Pick me out a winner.” The man reached into his sack and picked out the salami. I gave him a dollar. This man did not have any cookies. There were no cookies. I called my sandwich a cookie. “Look at this cookie I am eating,” I said. Meat fell out and into the street. I did not pick it up. Half of it leaned up against the curve. I said, “Goodbye chocolate chip.”

part 317.1 of a novel: blurry day yeah 684

2008-09-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

The heating vents came on. I got sweaty. I went to turn on a fan. I did not have a fan. I put a video recording of a fan blowing into the VCR and turned on the TV. There was a lot of blurriness. I couldn’t tell if it was me or the tape was worn out. I tapped the VCR. I blinked really fast. Everything was curved. The fan warbled. I didn’t like this. The heating vent laughed. It jumped out of the wall. I ignored it. I did not want to talk to it. I did not want it to think it was an individual. It ate food out of my refrigerator. I did not know what this meant. I became worried. This did not seem like a sign from god. I wondered how many more hours of freedom I had left. The heating vent was becoming a man with a bald head and a mustache. It ate an apple. A cane was hooked onto his arm. I said, “I’ll give you my eye for that apple.” I don’t know why I said this. I did not even want an apple. I did not want to acknowledge the heating vent as an individual. I looked at the refrigerator. I pretended it was my dog. “Would you like a treat?” The refrigerator barked. The heating vent gave me the apple and reached for my eye. There was something resting on top of the refrigerator. The day seemed to be endless. I tried to think if I had a patch in the medicine cabinet or not. My refrigerator was not my dog. It was not housebroken. It pissed all over the linoleum. I thought, “I guess I’ll have to euthanize it.” The heating vent reached into my head. I felt it grab onto the wires behind my eyeball. I did not want an apple. Then everything became more blurry then before. The heating vent let go of my eye. The fan dropped the TV on his head. I’m not sure what that meant. My eyes filled up with water. I thought of all the water in a fishbowl turning to glue. More water came into my eyes. I couldn’t see. Everything was blurry.

part 3.3 of a novel: there was this kid named alan and he had an ipod

2008-09-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

There was this kid named Alan [One time he bought me three shirts on ebay because I didn’t have a debit card at the time. For five dollars I got a Jurassic Park velociraptor shirt, a Star Wars shirt, and one other random]. He had an Ipod. He once let me use it during a class we had together. I think the class was called Military Strategies. There was only one girl in the class. Anyway, the day Alan let me borrow the Ipod a pen had exploded on my fingers so as I was scroll through his playlist I was lightly painting the scroll wheel a faint blue. It wasn’t until I played around for fifteen minutes and the color began to darken that I noticed what I had done. I began wiping the Ipod on my shirt hoping that Alan wouldn’t notice. Eventually, the blue was very faint and I gave it back to Alan. I don’t think he noticed or if he did he never said anything. A week later he asked if I had any CDs he could borrow and put on his Ipod. He said he liked the Sex Pistols so I brought him one of their CDs. I also brought him something by a band called American Nightmare. They were a favorite at the time. He returned them a few days later and said he liked the Pistols, but the other one wasn’t really his thing.

part 3.2 of a novel: stealing from wal-mart

2008-09-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

Apparently, some Wal-Mart employee once chased after a guy who didn’t actually steal something and the guy tried to drive off, but as he did the employee grabbed onto the guy’s arm, which was out the window, and onto the side view mirror. The employee ended up being dragged across the parking lot injuring the guy’s arm and breaking his side view mirror. Lawsuits followed.

Part 3.1 of a novel: There was this band...

2008-09-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

Lowlife used to play these basement shows at a church which was incidentally enough my grandmother’s church. She was a believer in Unitarian Universalism. They used to rent the basement out to these young high school boys who would put on the show. Anyway, I remember going to a show where Lowlife played and their lead singer was taking a piss on the side of my grandmother’s church. In a cosmic sense I don’t know what this means, but I do know that if I ever read any of these stories to my grandmother I’ll make sure to leave out this section.

Part 316.3 of the novel: This old man...

2008-09-11T10:01:00.001-07:00

This old man was in the woods and then his hip gave out and he couldn’t walk anymore and the old man’s brother was off shooting coyotes and this old man thought, “I wish I had my chainsaw. I would cut down a tree and make myself a new leg and when I was done I would cut off my leg and put the new wooden one on in its place.” Then the old man heard a gunshot and his brother laugh and he thought, “Well, I hope he didn’t shoot someone’s dog.” Then his hip started to feel better and he stood up and walked over to the truck and took his chainsaw out of the back and sat on the tailgate. He didn’t feel much like working anymore so he sat on the back of the pickup truck and took off the saw’s chain and began to sharpen it. Then he looked at his watch and wondered when his brother would be coming back empty handed, talking about the meanest dogs anyone had ever seen, even though all he ended up doing was firing off some warning shots and laughing while the dogs took off running.

Part 316.2 of the novel: blurry day yeah 674

2008-09-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

The day was blurry. I kind of yawned a few times. Then I did yawn and I think that’s all that happened except that I ate a banana and it was pretty green and not ripe at all and the peel didn’t want to come off the banana, but it didn’t matter because there was this boy’s uncle down the street with a drawer full of knives and a closet full of cooking utensils. Then there’s that other guy. He is old and must be someone’s uncle, but I saw this guy walking around carrying a chainsaw or something. And I don’t know. I walked over to a set of buildings where there were some balconies on the backside and I threw small rocks at the potted plants sitting on the edge. And none of the plants fell, but old no.2 pencils somehow did. They were useful. I thought about returning them and maybe getting a Christmas card or something, but I don’t think that’s how it works. I’m not sure. I could be wrong. Someone wrote me a four page email detailing it all, but I discarded it without reading it and I’m not sure if I’m in the wrong or right anymore. I closed my eyes and someone had taken those no. 2 pencils and returned them already.

Part 316.1 of a novel: A man said...

2008-09-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

A man said things that weren’t clear. He said, “Okay, umbrella. Do you know why I have this umbrella? Yes, I was asking you, umbrella. So please answer me. Umbrella, why do I have this umbrella? I sure hope you don’t ask me why I am asking you because then I’ll just ask you why you asked me after I asked you. Please umbrella. Please answer me.” The man was no longer holding the umbrella. It had fallen from his hand. At one point it had been in his hand. Now it wasn’t. It fell down. It fell out of his hand and now it was down on the ground.