The Nervous Breakdown

You're Jammin' Me

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:43 GMT

GRAND BLANC, MI-

This post was deleted by the "left wing" community of DKos. I therefore repost it here, a much more friendly site.

Unlike most on the left, I have no problem with the wiretapping bill. The only reason freedom of speech was ever semi-granted by the Founding Fathers is because they knew (in their infinite wisdom, except when not diddling or horse whipping their slaves) that no one listens to anyone, minus themselves, anyway. "That's just old Clem. He don't mean no harm."

The passage of ISA Amendments Act of 2007, or S.B. 2248, or WTF #10563, has rattled a few people but otherwise been ignored by those rattling their babies' toys, wondering when to start the first French, piano and Latin lessons, as well as preparing the now-babies of the future to become overconfident, preening adults.

But there is something we can do besides complain. Lord, I hate complainers. If I never heard another complaint, I would forever stop complaining.

Let's, then, accentuate the negative. An effective proactive response to any action against the Executive Branch, or our knee-wobbled Congress, amounts to a wolf crying, "Human!" No one cares. They can't be bothered. They're busy.

I suspect most of us still have phones, even if we can only afford pre-paid minutes. In our pockets and hands and cars and even underwater while scuba diving, we have power. We are the people, or we are the people (revisit Taxi Driver). If not, I wonder what we are. We'd better prove it to ourselves because those damn dirty apes are ready.

Here's the plan. Join with me, won't you? Don't waste your time on telethons. Jerry Lewis, it's over. Hire a head shrinker, and I don't mean a psychotherapist.

Whenever picking up the phone, wait for an inappropriate pause and say something suggestive of but not exactly a threat...just enough to draw the ear of someone who looks like Harrison Ford at the beginning of Apocalypse Now.

Example: "I'm going to my favorite bar on the Lower East Side, and I've got a bomb in my pants." Or, "This is Azzam Mahmud. I am positive and convinced that you would provide me with the solution to a money transfer deal valued at U.S. $13 Million and subsequently a joint business venture involving detonation work."

Before freedom of speech was dismantled -- and it's been happening in far more important ways than wiretapping -- no one listened to anyone. Hate all you like on the President of the Poor Choice in Ranch Society; no one cares about that, either. They've heard it before. They've said it themselves or believe otherwise (and there's no convincing them that the moon is not the devil's white eye, waiting for us to sign the contract, for hell is located beneath Promontorium Kelvin, Lat: 27.0°S, Long: 33.0°W, Diam: 50 km, Depth: 1.88 km, Rükl: 52).

It's time to act, and I mean that in the literal sense. We can jam the wiretapping in seven-to-ten strokes, if a 100,000 Americans would simply use their cell phones to some kind of purpose, for once. All they need do is call someone, anyone, and say, "If not for laws and the fact that I don't have a terminal illness, I would blow Bush's head off with a sniper rifle. But, of course, I am hobbled by my lack of being hobbled, though it could always be worse."

Is that so much to ask? While calling home from Blockbuster to discuss this night's debate over whether to watch 300 or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, throw in something like, "Let's rent every 9/11 movie, for inspiration."

We all want free speech, but when we lose it, speech matters more. Not only that, but we can get our free speech back any time we like by jamming the NSA. Okay, so a terrorist plot or two slip through. 9/11 generated created so much business that it bolstered free enterprise. The terrorists always do us a favor; they just take the long way there. We, on the other hand, need utter only a sentence or two and delude ourselves that something will change. For now, and perhaps ever, that's the best we can do in this imperfect life. After all, nobody ever said life was fair, except parents, teachers, coaches, politicians, and just about everyone not preying on the underclass, which would be a third of the nation's population.

A Story Starring Zac Efron as Deux ex Machina and a Burmese Python as Itself

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:51 GMT

GULF BREEZE, FL-

Over the weekend I visited the local zoo for the first time since moving to Gulf Breeze in February.

Our zoo has kind of a silly name. It's called The Zoo - Northwest Florida.

(I tried calling it the Northwest Florida Zoo once, but was promptly corrected. It's The Zoo - Northwest Florida or nothing.)

Before we left Utah, I was excited to learn Gulf Breeze had a zoo. I promised myself I'd visit early and often.

Once we got here, though, with one thing and then another, The Zoo visit kept getting postponed.

But I decided to go last week when my boss told me The Zoo is in danger of closing.

The land it's on still isn't paid off, Mike explained. Plus it suffered substantial damage during hurricanes Ivan and Dennis. Also, it's never received public funding, making the other financial struggles all the more difficult.

I was shocked when I heard about the lack of public funding. So far as I know, that's almost unheard of for a U.S. zoo.

Back in Utah, the Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, and Parks program was really robust.

I like starting sentences that way. "Back in Utah," we did it this way. "Back in Utah," blah blah blah. Really endears me to my new neighbors.

Before going to The Zoo, I read up on it.

It turned out my boss had left out one little detail regarding its travails.

Namely, that The Zoo - Northwest Florida was recently the victim of a scam.

The nature of the scam was that someone contacted The Zoo pretending to represent Zac Efron, one of the stars of High School Musical.

This person claimed the kids wanted to help out. Plans were made for a big fundraiser.

The staff of The Zoo - Northwest Florida projected that proceeds from the fundraiser would be enough to get the zoo through the end of the year.

Everyone was happy.

Then the hoax was revealed.

I feel terrible admitting this, but I think that's kind of funny.

It's so ... plotted.

As a person who has trouble devising plots, I'm always delighted when one falls in my lap.

Maybe I'll write a High School Musical script about the kids putting on a fundraiser to save The Zoo.

The pathos of the story is that one can sense how desperately The Zoo staff must have needed a deux ex machina in order to be so easily taken in by some random person.

So, if you're a panhandle resident, please contact your council members or commissioners about getting the zoo some funding, so they can take proper care of the animals, and Zac Efron doesn't have to save the day.

In the meantime, let's go to The Zoo.

The first thing you'll notice about The Zoo is that there's a snake undulating into view.

And you'll be glad your husband isn't present, because he's not fond of snakes.

You, though, are willing to take them on a case by case basis.

And this one seems very good.

It's a Burmese python. The zookeepers seem to be taking it out for a drive.

They encourage everyone to get close to the snake, so you do.

Or maybe she gets closer to you.

And you keep getting closer, until one of the zookeepers says, "Ma'am, you'll want to step back a little."

For a while the zookeepers let us pet the python.

But eventually they pick her up and carry her away.

I had new fiction recently at The Raving Dove. Please stop by and check it out.

The Failed Proof of an Equation for Home, Which May be the Fault of a Writer with Poor Math Skills, or the Fault of Putting Colors into a Formula

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:36 GMT

SARANAC LAKE, NY-

When the sum of a place is made up of three lines on a topographic map, four promises to yourself (two of which you've already broken), a graying man you call your father, and two dozen shades of green in June, it makes you wonder if you got the equation correct.

Two times, en route to my father's house last Saturday, I caught myself saying, "I'm going home."

I had to backpedal, correct myself each time so the person I was talking to, who knew I lived in New York, could understand I only meant I was visiting my father in Vermont.

Home.

How much of that word is habit? How much of it truth?

Enough truth, I suppose, to tattoo two of this place's maple seed pods onto my back.

Enough truth to have the homing buzz kick in again.

I tend to visit my childhood stomping grounds in cold, bland months now, when the landscape is either brown or white, when the mountains rise in some manner of magnificence, but the valley feels hard, like the life I remember there.

So it shocks me each time when I arrive in summer—I think it means to do this—when I round a certain bend and the river valley opens up before me, softer now, and some homing instinct imprinted low in my belly sends a rush of signals to my fingers, my toes, my breasts and my twitching thighs.

Sometimes, I swear, it hits my ovaries, as well.

I try to blink it away.

And then, I let it pull me home, into the driveway, up the path, past the hydrangea bush that has engulfed half the front stoop, and into a sturdy wooden chair at the kitchen table.

I sink into silence.

Into grass.

Into a rainy night.

Into a bed where I sleep for 10 hours straight.

When I stumble down the stairs, the rain has eased.

We walk the dogs through the pines, into the hayfield that runs down to the river.

(The river about 10 years ago.)

I wear a pair of my father's rubber boots, which are too big; the heels flop to the ground and drag with each step.

He motions to the lower part of a S-curve in the swollen river.

"You used to be able to draw a straight line from here to those trees," he points.

Water now occupies that line.

My father guesses the current has eaten 100 ft. of river bank and farm field in 30 years.

Nearly brown from the new rain, from farm fields and streams emptying ruptured contents into its vein, the dark-hued liquid moves downriver with deceptive speed.

Imagine the sand, the loam, the grass, the pebbles, stones and bundles of clover that have gently caved in, bit by bit, that have found new repositories: on the opposite shoreline, on the river bottom, in a farmer's field 100 miles south.

A silent migration.

The lines on the map—the one thing I counted as static in this equation—are no longer correct.

It might be time to admit, I do not "do" math.

I do not know the equation to this place, only the force of its magnetic pull and push.

Pull and push.

Push

and

pull.

JENNIFER DUFFIELD WHITE also calls the Adirondack Mountains of New York home. When not muddling over the notion of belonging and place, she plays, edits and writes from her official place of residence. You can contact her here on the comment board or on her MYSPACE PAGE.

The Best Little Camera in Maryland: My Fisheye View of the World

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:52 GMT

COLUMBIA, MARYLAND -

Every Christmas, my mom asks my brother and I for a list of things we'd like. It's never anything huge - we're a really simplistic family - but little things we think of that we'd never buy for ourselves.

My big little thing, the thing I'd love to have but would never buy for myself, was a fisheye camera.

I love photography and have, in the last couple of years (with thanks to The Nervous Breakdown and Jilly's gentle prodding), gotten back into the grain of taking photos of just about everything. It was my hope that by having a fisheye camera I'd be able to take photographs that presented a completely different view of the world.

So, on Christmas morning, wrapped in warm pjs and heavy wool socks (New Hampshire, in case you were not aware, is friggin' cold in December and my parents have wood floors which conduct zero heat) and fighting with my parents' dog for space in front of the Christmas tree, my dad handed me a rectangular box wrapped in shiny paper.

Could it be? I wondered.

My dad looked far too pleased with himself for the box in front of me to be anything else and when I unwrapped it, the lens of a silver fisheye camera stared up at me from brightly colored packaging. I may have squealed with delight and frightened the dog. It's the little things, sometimes, that bring me the greatest joy (there was also a very awesome light switch plate cover with my favorite painting on it: Tournee du Chat Noir). It's always been that way in my family.

It took me forever to finish the first roll of film, but a couple of days ago I dropped it off for processing and it arrived today, complete with a CD of its images so I wouldn't have to spend the better part of an afternoon fighting with the scanner here in my office.

I held no expectations of my little camera - all I asked of it was that it work...and work it did. I'm including a few of my favorites from that first roll of experimental film. Now that I know what I'm doing, hopefully the second roll will come out even better.

St. John's campus in Annapolis, Maryland

Dragon boats at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland.

Overcast day on Federal Hill in Baltimore, Maryland

Sunset over the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland.

Long shadows in Annapolis, Maryland.

Winter in our backyard, here in Columbia, Maryland.

Climbing Mountains

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:40 GMT

DANBURY-

I'm not sure when I first fell in love with books about mountain-climbing. On the surface of things, my love makes no sense. I hate heights. I hate being cold. And the idea of being without proper toilet facilities for more than the length of a short camping trip gives me the screaming willies. So from where comes this strange love?

I think it has to do with the fact that mountain-climbing is the perfect metaphor for all great human aspirations. And for me specifically, I think it must have to do with being a writer. Writing, itself, is like scaling a peak. And trying to get published after one has written, well, a lot of writers will tell you that Sir Edmund Hillary had it a lot easier. What's a little frostbite compared to mountains of rejection letters?

But write we do and aim to be published we also do. We also occasionally drink wine, after which we write our friends emails - OK, we drail them - asking, "Gee, I know I'm almost 46 years old and the best shape I'll ever be in was over a decade ago, but do you think there's still a chance I could climb Everest?"

Seriously, some days when you are a writer, hiking 29,028 feet into the thinnest of air seems preferable.

In "Everest," Walt Unsworth writes of the men who assailed that mountain: "Three things they all had in common: faith in themselves, great determination, and endurance."

Sounds like a bunch of writers to me.

In "Alone to Everest," Earl Denman speaks for himself: "I grew up with an ambition and determination without which I would have been a good deal happier...but the target was set high and each rebuff only saw me more determined to see at least one major dream through to its fulfillment."

OK, he speaks for me too.

In Nick Heil's "Dark Summit," at one point the author seeks to inhabit the mind of a climber near the top, making the decision whether to go on or not: "If crossing the last section of ridgeline appeared difficult - and what didn't at such altitude? - even more difficult would be returning to the world down below with this business unfinished. The summit wasn't the end of the journey, but it was its culmination - the cure for the thing that had gnawed inside him for so long. What folly to think that anyone climbs Everest for the views, or the thrills, or the bragging rights, or, vaguest of all, because it's there. What's there is this: the chance to be worthy of your own dreams."

So now we've dispelled the "because it's there" myth.

Recently I finally read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air," a book that many would say all other Everest accounts are measured by. I don't know why I put that one off for so long. Perhaps I was worried it might disappoint? Disappoint, it did not, despite that some library patron before me sought to ink out all the "naughty" words, replacing them with G-rated synonyms. (You really gotta wonder about some people. There are men and women dying on the mountain in brutal conditions, but they shouldn't be allowed to say "fucking"? What fuckwittery.) The book is every bit as gripping as others have said it is (although my favorite book on climbing disasters remains James M. Tabor's "Forever on the Mountain").

But as I read, something began to gnaw at me, an idea that had been percolating beneath the surface of all these accounts I'd read, and then it finally hit me: None of these people, at least the ones who made it to the top, were happy.

Krakauer himself writes of his summit experience: "Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation; against all odds, after all, I had just attained a goal I'd coveted since childhood. But the summit was really only the halfway point. Any impulse I might have felt toward self-congratulation was extinguished by overwhelming apprehension about the long, dangerous descent that lay ahead."

And really, read enough of these books and you realize that it's not just the "How the hell do I get down from here?" little problem that characterizes the summit experience, but a genuine sense of anticlimax. This points to one thing, a thing that maybe we've all known all along but keep forgetting: It's not arriving at the destination, Stupid. It's the journey. It's every moment of the journey.

Back in my days working as an independent bookseller, I had a favorite customer that I've written about often in the past: Mr. Hanrahan. Mr. Hanrahan was a blue-eyed, steel-haired, wire-glasses-wearing natty dresser who one day walked in wearing - gasp! - jeans and a T-shirt. I asked him what was up and he said it was the first day of his retirement. I'd never even known what he did for a living so we started talking about that. Turns out, he'd worked for NASA back in the day when they put the first man on the moon. Mr. H talked about what an amazing time it was, how the whole country was behind what they were doing and how anywhere they went they were treated as heroes; bought a lot of free beer, too. Naturally, being the insensitive boob that I am, I asked if life was a disappointment after all that glory; if attaining greatness, peaking so young, had meant that nothing else could ever match that experience. He was confused by my question. He said that, no, that he'd always known that there would be other challenges in life - different, to be sure, but they'd be new and it was all good.

I guess that's really the key when you get right down to it: It all really is just a constant glorious journey, with every moment counting for something, and no one peak overshadowing it all.

So, tell me about your own aspirations. What are your goals? Have you achieved them already? Did it make you happy? Did you set new goals? Do I have to do any more work today?

Be well. Don't forget to write.

Discover The Magic Of Compound Interest, Get A Broker, Remember The Rule Of 72, Retire A Millionaire, Don't Be A Sailboat Without A Rudder And Other Pearls From Adult Community Education

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:01 GMT

By My Little Pony

SAN ANTONIO, TX-

Fundamentals of Investing meets Tuesday nights in Room J113 at Sandra Day O'Connor High School on the east side.

Sandwiched between J111 (the scantly attended Build Your Own Drip Irrigation System) and J115 (the chockablock Flipping Properties Made Easy (despite the national housing downturn, Texas will post price gains in '08)), Room J113 is painted penitentiary gray except for the door and door frame, both of which are a shade I've heard my mother refer to as burnt sienna. Across the hall in J112 is a class tantalizingly titled Unintended Consequences.

The course opens with a vague but provocative question: "Do you realize you are living through a time period of major, revolutionary change?"

It's hard to pinpoint what change we're talking about here. iPhones? Oil prices? The first African American presidential nominee?

"We're living longer, spending more and saving less," comes the grave response. "But the days of traditional employer-funded retirement plans are going fast."

Restless legs and busy fingers begin to settle.

"Fact is, you are going to be responsible for your own retirement, and that's scary. But it can be done."

Don, our antediluvian instructor, is missing an ear and a sizable chunk of the right side of his head where an ear is supposed to be, as though he bore the brunt of a massive sledgehammer whack. Amazingly, his speech is unimpaired and actually quite pleasing; he has the sweet drawl of a Texan granddaddy. Don's personal uniform consists of high waisted khakis, a black leather belt, substantial white K-Swiss sneakers and a short-sleeved forest green polo shirt with the words Adult Community Education embroidered in white thread above a tiny pocket. He is a retired air force officer and former professor of industrial psychology, including 12 years at the University of Puerto Rico. He would describe his own personal investment style as "ultra, ultra conservative."

Don tells us we can become millionaires if we want. He is going to teach us the basic concepts, principles, research techniques and vocabulary we need to become millionaires and the rest is up to us.

A huge mastodon of a man enters J113, out of breath and sweating moderately. Summer has just officially started but it's been in the upper 90s for weeks. He stuffs his enormous self into the tenth grade desk behind me despite twenty five alternative seating options available. His huffing rustles the back of my hair and I want to move, but more than that I want to seem equanimitous and polite so I stay put.

Don tells us that over the course of...the course, we will need to do some serious thinking about our living, and our lives. His reliable fumbling with English lends spice to an otherwise bland subject.

No answers are right or wrong, he continues. Maybe we want a Porsche. Maybe we want a skiing chalet in Colorado. Maybe we want to spoil the grandkids.

What we don't want, he stresses, is to be a sailboat without a rudder.

"Here's your Bible," he says, tossing a Standard and Poor's Security Owner's Stock Guide on the tiny tablet of each small desk.

The man behind me's breathing has slowed to normal.

Financially, romantically, occupationally - I've always been a sailboat without a rudder.

Before Don no one had ever put it quite that way, as such a bad thing. A thing not to be.

A laissez faire approach to life has served me well so far with a few notable exceptions, exceptions that have in all honesty propelled me here, to J113 and the woolly world of purposeful personal finance.

What do I what do I what do I want?

Retiring a millionaire sounds pretty good. I will aim for that.

In order to retire a millionaire at age 65, Don declares, you have to get cozy with the Rule of 72, a mental shortcut for estimating compound interest. Albert Einstein may or may not have called compound interest "one of the most powerful forces in the universe". And while Einstein was a physicist not an economist you get the drift: compound interest is a big fucking deal. It's how you accumulate wealth.

The Rule of 72 looks like this: Years to Double = 72 / Interest Rate and sounds like this: Money doubles every 8 years if it grows at at rate of around 9% per year.

So, in order to retire a millionaire at age 65, you must have the following rather huge amounts tucked away in "growth vehicles" (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, appreciating raw land, whatever) earning around 9% each year.

Stay with me.

And brace yourself:

Age 25 $31,250

Age 33 $62,500 (see? it doubled in 8 years)

Age 41 $125,000

Age 49 $250,000

Age 57 $500,000

This rudderless sailboat finds herself slightly behind schedule.

Don instructs us to fill out four trees' worth of soul-sucking paperwork apparently lifted from various banks and brokerage houses: Financial Goals Worksheet, Income & Expenses Worksheet, Personal Net Worth Worksheet, Personal Risk Assessment Worksheet.

While we grapple with zeros and negatives and generally disappointing numbers, Don buoys our spirits. Most people with big houses and new cars every year are not wealthy, he lectures, pacing the length of the double whiteboards. They just have a high income. There's a big difference between the two, he insists, though you can't always tell in a consumer-oriented society like ours. Wealth is what you have in assets, not what you spend. Wealthy people make their assets beget assets.

Over the course of...the course, besides "Remember The Rule of 72", we learn Don's other favorite maxims: "Make Assets Beget Assets" and "Make An Agreement With Yourself" (to pay off the balance in full each month on any credit card, to save 10% of each paycheck, to pour savings into growth vehicles, to get a living will).

"Do you mean we should be saving 10% before taxes or after taxes?" the woman I suspect is a Russian bride asks.

"Yes," Don responds.

She repeats the question louder, slower, taking his age in to account.

"I...said...yes," Don bellows back.

The Russian bride cringes and the rest of us exchange impish grins. "Anything and everything you can," he insists. "If you can't do 10%, how much can you do? 1%? Whatever you can. As much as you can. Financial advisers will tell you this over and over. Do 10. 10 is the baseline. Try to get to 40. I want to see you get to 40!"

It's fun to see Don show emotion just because it's so rare; his emotion, and fun, in this class.

Every now and again a chorus of laughter from one of the other rooms will echo off the cement walls and a silent but palpable wistfulness pervades J113. The learning taking place in our room is the sobering, serious kind that sucks while you're doing it and rocks in retrospect.

The weeks go by.

Don teaches us to decode the NYSE composite list in Barron's, the differences between common and preferred stock, how to read annual reports, questions to ask your broker. After the lexicon's been broken down, retiring a millionaire seems so idiotically simple even the teenagers whose desks we're borrowing could do it.

One night we come to class and he's written a list of local brokers on the board. Nothing wrong with a discount broker like the ones online, Don says, but me, I like to know the person I'm giving my money to.

Time to put knowledge into action, he enthuses, then spends thirty minutes explaining warrants.

I am financially terrified.

During breaktime I hang around the classroom, hoping to get Don alone. After weeks of hangnail-picking research plus two Sundays on the living room floor with a calculator, I know who I want: mostly Pfizer and Medtronic (which both happen to be on sale at the time of this writing) and (because I personally can tolerate some risk and I love the company) Continental Airlines. Pfizer's an interesting case because it has a direct purchase plan, meaning you can cut out the broker altogether and just buy stock directly from the company itself with no enrollment fees.

"Don," I begin, summoning my fledgling investor confidence, "I really want Continental."

He shakes his dented head. "I wish you'd pick a different sector. Or buy Southwest."

"But Continental's nearly bottomed out," I venture. "It's so cheap."

"They could go bankrupt," he points out.

"The American government won't let all its airlines go bankrupt," I reason.

"Not all of them," he concedes, "but which ones will survive?"

"I don't know," I say weakly. My classmates are filtering back into the room and making their way to their desks. "How do I know?"

Don purses his lips and shoves his hands into his khaki pockets. "Well, you'd have to watch closely and see how they respond to the fuel crisis. Watch how quickly and how deeply they cut costs. See if they get rid of the unions. That would be a good. Then they'd have to get rid of their retirement packages. And so on."

"OK," I whisper.

"It's gamble-y," he finishes.

A shadow falls across the tablet of my desk as the kodiak of a man behind me raises his hand. "Yeah, what about what everybody says, 'buy low, sell high'?" he asks.

Don approaches the front row of adolescent furniture and plants himself there, crossing his heavily sun spotted arms. "Do you have the guts?" he suddenly shouts. The class is riveted. "Do you have the guts to buy when everyone's selling? Then do it!Go ahead! Buy GM!"

The old adage works, he says, but most people don't have the stomach for it.

My favorite of Don's accidental neologisms typically follows a group illumination, like when he asked if we'd ever really thought about the fact all public utility companies in the United States are monopolies.

"Bonds in utility companies? Come on! Think they're going out business any time soon? Know any house that doesn't need a plug?"

Our class is full of copious note takers, me clearly in the frontrunning, though I'm writing about the class not about investing, but no one knows that and besides, when Don says this about municipal bonds everyone stops writing even me and looks up in wonder.

Taking in our expressions he casts his most charmingly confused English phrase upon us:

"Am I whipping your appetite yet? Huh?"

Don totally whips my appetite. I want bonds. Now. A lot of them. Why didn't I even think about this shit before? Off course, rudderless sailboat.

As it turns out municipal bonds mature in like 5 years and since I'm not a U.S. citizen (and only Allah knows if I'll ever be) I don't have that kind of time. Instead I decide to contact the guy at Wachovia recommended by Don.

We meet in his office on my lunch break. We agree that stocks are the best option for my particular situation and he opens my account. I give him my money and he gives me a nice smile.

Don is not satisfied with this. All class every class he continues to pull the existential anxiety trigger. Now we know how to retire a millionaire. What about when we retire? What are we going to spend the fruits of our labor on? We must think ahead.

"You have to figure out what you want," he commands from the front of the room, sometimes fixing his dour, deeply lined gaze on me. "Put some direction in your life. What do you want?"

I look out the classroom window to a) avoid Don's beady squint and b) check if a metaphorical answer might be sitting around the football field.

Nope.

It's likely the people who carve their goals and rewards in stone do achieve results faster and more fully than those of us who trawl the seas rudderlessly, happily visiting unexpected atolls. Me, I'm not convinced it's necessary or even prudent to set in concrete what you want if you find yourself (as I do) in immigration limbo.

But there's no denying how genuinely thrilling it is to go to bed knowing your money is working for you.

Hopefully your appetite is whipped, at least a little.

TNB does not endorse any of the financial information or advice in this post. Clearly, taking financial advice from an anonymous pony is capricious at best. Pay off your credit card and sign up for a class in your own community.

Just In Time for Summer: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, ,

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:16 GMT

MILTON, FL-

1. Why We Went

A couple of Fridays ago when I got home from work, my husband Kelly said, "Matt wants us to go tubing with him tomorrow."

Matt is Kelly's coworker. They've become friends.

Until Matt, I'd never seen Kelly make a new friend before. I used to think it was because he was shy, or didn't want new friends.

Now I realize it's because he felt like crap pretty much the whole time we lived in Utah.

Kelly was never hot on living there. And after his son Kody moved out of state, he expressed his desire to leave regularly and emphatically. I was the one who insisted we stay so long.

Now I feel sort of guilty about that.

So if Kelly, via his new friend Matt, wanted us to go tubing, then tubing it was.

2. The Sun, the Sun ...

I was not without misgivings, however.

Most of my misgivings concerned the sun.

Four or five hours is a long time on the water in the sun, especially for someone whose legs are sort of blue from lack of exposure.

But there was nothing to be done for it.

Kelly wanted to go tubing, and so we went.

3. Cleopatra's Barge

At first all was well.

It was a hot day. The water felt great. And for the first time in my life, I understood what Coors Light is for.

Evidently Coors Light is for drinking while you float down the river in a tube, because for the first time in my life, it didn't taste like piss.

We drifted past little docks with paths leading away from them back into the woods, presumably up to someone's unseen house.

We fantasized about living in such a house.

Sometimes as we floated along on our tubes, a canoe cut a path among us.

In some of these, both parties paddled, but others were set up like miniature Cleopatra's barges, with a man paddling from the stern while a woman reclined in the bow.

The women in our party roared their approval at this arrangement.

Periodically, as we rounded a bend in the river, we'd come upon a sandy bank. People clustered along these small beaches, eating, drinking, smoking, having a good time.

4. Heart of Darkness

Eventually, though, the atmosphere took a Joseph Conrad kind of turn.

Now when we rounded a bend in the river, we were as likely to see people fighting as partying.

Standing in the water near one beach, two men, both wearing red swim trunks and baseball caps, shouted and shoved each other.

Maybe they were fighting about rights to the outfit.

Around the next bend, pairs of men yelled and shoved each other, too. They were with the same group as the Red Shorts, and making fun of them. Even as I watched, though, the shoving between two of them went from joking to serious.

I guess one of them joke-shoved too hard.

5. Jurassic Park

There was something really interesting about drifting past these angry tableaux. It was like being on an amusement park ride. The velociraptor lunges at you, but then you ride on past and wait for the next thing to look at.

6. A Separate Peace

The next thing to look at turned out to be drunk people climbing to the top of a pine tree and jumping out.

The water they were jumping into was only about four feet deep.

This worried my husband, who has a scar on his forehead from the time he dove into unfamiliar water and hit an anchor. He didn't want someone else to experience a similar fate.

Kelly moved over to the side of the river where the jumpers were. "It's only this deep," he showed them, pointing to the spot where the water hit him, for emphasis.

In retrospect, I think that was really sweet. At the time, though, I felt a little impatient.

"Oh just let them jump and break their heads already, so I can start CPR," I thought crossly.

CPR had been put in my head by a woman from our group, who announced "I'm CPR certified!" as soon as she saw the people in the tree.

One of them in particular evoked A Separate Peace. As he climbed, a branch cracked under his feet. He cried shrilly, "My glasses! I'm losing my glasses!"

Oh Christ, I thought, that's the one. But he managed to jump to safety.

We disanchored ourselves from the bank and continued downstream.

7. The Pre-Raphaelite

Then the miasma that had overcome the river population at large infiltrated our group, as one of the couples we were with started bickering.

The source of their strife was Canoe Girl, who sat by herself in shallow water, next to a canoe.

(The real source of their strife was, of course, Coors Light. Let us take a moment to remember the fabled words of Homer Simpson: "To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!"

But the ostensible source was Canoe Girl.)

The woman accused her husband of flirting with Canoe Girl. She lamented Canoe Girl's tight young body, which had not borne two children, as had her own.

"What, the 12-year-old?" her husband asked, puzzled.

I stayed out of it, but internally I had to agree with the husband that, of all the people on the river one could measure oneself against, Canoe Girl was an odd choice. Though not 12, I don't think she was a day over 17.

And while she was slim in her bikini, there was a pre-Raphaelite quality to her--pale, curly haired, melancholy--that was at odds with the stereotype of tanned, smooth haired, giggling beach girl beauty.

It's true that a couple of men from our group talked to her, but I had the impression they were more paternal than flirting--checking up on the little maiden all forlorn.

After all, one doesn't normally see just one person with a canoe. So you knew there had to be some kind of story there.

They asked if she was all right. She said, melancholily, that she was just waiting for her boyfriend.

Then the river caught us again and we drifted away.

8. ... From It We Must Run

I have to admit, I looked at Canoe Girl, too. I was trying to figure out how she kept all that pre-Raphaelite skin from burning.

By this point, there was a serious gap in experience re: Me v. Everyone Else, because I stopped at two Coors Lights, whereas everyone else had around 20.

As a result, I was entering states of ever increasing cat-like alertness as my fight-or-flight mechanism reported danger.

Of course, most of the danger was self-inflicted, as people drank too much, jumped out of trees into shallow water, picked fights with loved ones, and fried under the sun. But that didn't stop my mechanism from kicking in.

By the time we reached the halfway point I was sitting bolt upright on my tube, rather than draping myself over it in the traditional manner.

"You look like you're sailing," Kelly said.

9. Bad Girls

One is not supposed to look like one is sailing while one is tubing. I began to suspect that my super erect posture, sobriety, and catlike readiness were not endearing me to the other women in our group, none of whom I'd met before.

At one point, when the ladies were engaged in hilarity too shrill and drunken for me to participate in, Matt attempted to console me for my outsider status.

"They're bad girls, Dawn," he said. "You don't want anything to do with them."

"Dawn's a bad girl, too," my husband said at once, loyally.

Oh, dear husband. Once upon a time that was true. But by my rough calculation, it's at least 15 years since I engaged in any bad girl behavior of note.

But I couldn't think of any way to say so without appearing argumentative, and frankly the idea made me a little depressed. I smiled wanly and turned my thoughts to shade, aloe vera, and past transgressions.

*With no apologies to David Foster Wallace, 'cause after all, titles can't be copyrighted. So take that, sucker!

** Nevermind, David Foster Wallace! You know I didn't really mean it--right??

*** With two weeks' worth of hindsight I've decided maybe I would go tubing again after all, but only if I can bring a Super Soaker full of sunscreen with me.

Always Fun When the Good Guys Win: An Interview with Jonathan Evison, Author of 'All About Lulu'

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:26 GMT

LOS ANGELES-

And here's some more good news:

Jonathan Evison, contributor to TheNervousBreakdown.com, has just published his debut novel, All About Lulu, which comes to us from the fine people at Soft Skull Press in New York. The movie rights have sold, the buzz is building, and critics are calling it "a viciously funny and deeply felt portrayal of a blended family and one man's thwarted longing."

In short, it's a great story. And one worth sharing.

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mr. Evison about his recent life and times, and I've posted the transcript of our meandering conversation right here at TNB.

Enjoy!

-BL

BL: Tell me about Lulu. Where is your head at right now?

JE: Lulu is my "debut." (Read: I've got three other novels collecting dust under my hip-waders in the basement, and three more that I literally buried--salted the earth, the whole nine yards.) My head is in the clouds right now. I'm overwhelmed by the reception the book has enjoyed so far, thrilled to have sold the film rights, some foreign rights, and the rest of it, and trying to catch my breath before I hit the road. Thank god I've got my next novel in the can already, because quite honestly, I think it'd be hard for me to focus at this juncture.

BL: When does the book come out?

JE: It was set for release in July--and as far as print media reviews are concerned, that's the official "release"--but actually, they released it six weeks early because we had some momentum headed into Book Expo America.

BL: So it's in stores as we speak.

JE: Yes, and frankly in way more stores than I ever expected.

BL: "Momentum." Describe.

JE: Well, if nothing else, the film stuff generates a little buzz, and the option got a little coverage in L.A., shortly before BEA. Also, like yourself, I've built a pretty sizable online network in the past couple of years, so I was stacking up a decent number of pre-orders and building a lot of anticipation among my "people."

BL: Do you have any strange birthmarks or tattoos that you might like to share with our readers?

JE: I'm pretty sure I was born with a prehensile tail, and my parents are afraid to tell me. I've got this little vampire-bite-looking-thing above my coccyx.

BL: Tell me about the film rights. How did all that go down?

JE: Well, I'm blessed with amazing advocacy--the whole deal took me completely by surprise. I was actually in the Galapagos when it went down, working on my final rewrites. When I got back to Quito, I had an e-mail from my film rep telling me we had an offer.

BL: You were in the Galapagos?

JE: I live pretty large for a guy who lives on fishcakes and cheap wine.

BL: Is the film in pre-production? Have they cast it? Or was it simply an optioning and now you wait and see?

JE: They're out to directors right now, and I can't divulge any names, but I'm pretty excited about them.

BL: Jesus, man. Are you having a hard time reigning yourself in? Are you twitching?

JE: I'm just doing the same thing I've been doing for twenty years--throwing a whole bunch of shit out there and seeing what sticks to the wall. The only difference is, stuff is really starting to stick.

BL: Tactile.

JE: Yes.

BL: Where are you right now?

JE: I'm in my sweat pants in my living room way the fuck out in the woods on an island, with a beer by my side.

BL: What's it like living in a remote island hamlet? (Or do you even live in what would qualify as a hamlet?)

JE: It would qualify as island living in a 70's split-level. I love it out here. The city is only a half hour ferry ride away, and yet I can walk for miles in the woods behind my house.

BL: You bastard. I'm huffing smog in Hollywood.

JE: The basin is actually pretty beautiful if you take away all the development.

BL: Yeah. L.A. would be great if you just got rid of...L.A.

JE: In all honesty, I like L.A. quite a bit. If it were easier to get out of L.A. on a moment's notice, I could see living there again...at least part-time.

BL: Yeah. I know. I give it shit, but I like it too. I always tell people it's underrated. But when you live here, and you love the outdoors, it's impossible not to entertain fantasies of living off the grid. Grass is always greener.

JE: You ever head out to Big Pine or anything?

BL: No, not yet. Unfortunately. I hear it's great.

JE: Dude, my beagle Dave is going ape shit behind the house right now. I'll bet he's got a racoon treed or something.

BL: Do you need to tend to the situation, or does Dave have it under control?

JE: I don't like to brag, but Dave is a swingin' a big old shaggy dick. For a beagle, anyway. And no, it's all under control. Dave can take care of himself.

BL: My wife gets weirded out when dogs have giant penises. Or not necessarily weirded out, per se, but rather grossed out. The whole red rocket thing has a tendency to leave her rattled. She's thankful that our dog Walter is only moderately well-hung.

JE: It must be the smog. My buddy down there has a big old dog named Henry Higgins and he's hung like a field mouse.

BL: I'm sure we're all poisoning ourselves irreparably.

JE: Promise me all this dog dick stuff is gonna make the cut come editing time.

BL: This is our lead. This is pure comic gold.

JE: My terrier, Sparky, is in on the action now--they're both going ape shit out there!

BL: Does Sparky have a giant penis too?

JE: Mid-range.

BL: Shifting gears. I suppose our readers will want to know about your writing habits. How exactly do you work? How often? What time of day? Et cetera.

JE: I get up between 5 and 6 a.m., five or six days a week, put in maybe three hours, then a couple more, slightly less focused hours (editing usually) in the evening. I really have to stay disciplined to keep my focus, especially on a novel with forty-odd pov's that cover twelve decades, and one that has Colonel Sanders and Bigfoot in it.

BL: Discipline.

JE: Pretty easy to be disciplined when you love to do a thing. I never had problems getting up early to go to baseball practice, for that matter.

BL: And how did you find an agent?

JE: I've had four or five agents over the years, including some luminaries. But the truth is, you really need to find the right agent for you. The way I did it was counter-intuitive: I solicited editors (whom I profiled very specifically, and very thoroughly) unagented, and when I started getting bites, I interviewed seven different agents, all willing to rep me, and picked the one I liked best--the one who really connected with my work, and had a gameplan right from the get-go.

BL: How long did it take to get a sale? Soft Skull Press is publishing, correct?

JE: Well, the first offer came in pretty quickly, maybe six weeks. And yes, Soft Skull is publishing, and I really couldn't have landed at a better time and a better place. They've really been incredible in terms of support; they solicit my opinions on almost everything, and they really make me feel as though I'm partnering with them.

BL: That's great. And what about plans for a book tour?

JE: Twelve cities and growing. As for publicity, the usual blogosphere and print media route, along with some radio stuff (I used to be a syndicated talk show host). But what's really great with Soft Skull is that their street cred is gold. So there's a lot of grassroots opportunities with indie booksellers and the like.

BL: So backtracking a bit: I'm curious. You said you contacted editors unagented. How did that work out? Did you email? Call? How did you approach it? What was their response? The old adage is that most of these editors won't look at unagented books.

JE: Most things I do are counter-intuitive. Most editors don't like e-mail solicitations, either (which is how I did it). But it wasn't a carpet-bombing campaign, that's the most important thing--I knew exactly who I was soliciting, what titles they'd acquired that were apropos, etc. In the end, the work will always speak for itself.

BL: So proper reconnaissance is key. And then of course the book has to be stellar.

JE: Yes, research is huge. You can't waste people's time.

BL: What's your book about?

JE: It's about a kid growing up in a family of bodybuilders who falls in love with his new stepsister in the wake of his mother's death.

BL: How many times have you answered that question?

JE: A hundred? And I still don't like my answer.

BL: How are Dave and Sparky doing?

JE: Dave is now sawing logs on the couch next to me, and I'm betting Sparky is rooting around under the hot tub for mice. (Terriers!)

BL: It's good to have a good ratter around.

JE: Yes and no. Neurosis. The fucker won't come in at night. He just hangs out under the hot tub getting muddy.

BL: Have you tried sedatives?

JE: I've tried yelling.

BL: A lot of our readers are writers or aspiring writers. In light of your recent experiences, do you have any advice for them? Any insight?

JE: I have a little speech that goes something like this: Work your ass off until you’re too exhausted and too discouraged to go on--then work twice as hard. And quit saving those damn rejection letters--unless they’ve got some substantive editorial insight, throw the fuckers away! Burn them! Bury them! Whatever. Just release them and concentrate on the word. Don’t lose sight of why you’re putting yourself through all of the labor and suffering and isolation. If you’re doing it to be published--congratulations, you’re a douchebag. If you’re doing it because you have to, because you feel the compulsion to articulate the oftentimes inarticulate, if you’re doing it to inspire yourself and try and make sense out of the senseless, to rush at unseen truths for the sake of understanding, well, then, eventually you’ll break through--if you work hard enough. Eventually could mean fifteen years and two failed marriages and no dental insurance. It could mean driving around town in some broke-dick Datsun, dragging your bumper. It could mean eating a lot of fishcakes. A LOT of fishcakes. But you’ll break through. Also, have some self-respect--I know, I know, it’s cold out there, but seriously, you’ve got to self-identify as a writer. If you’re at party or something and someone asks you: "So, anything published?"...don’t start stammering and explaining and trying to save face. Just tell them to stick their thumb up their ass, and go find a cute girl or a cute guy to flirt with. Write to grow and understand and challenge yourself, not to publish.

BL: Alright, man. Sounds good. Huge congratulations once again on all the wonderful success. Always fun when the good guys win.

JE: Thanks so much.

Snapshot: Chasing the Ghost

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:51 GMT

THE DEEP SOUTH-

Its nearly midnight on Island Drive

lights in the trees

and all of heaven waits for me to breathe~

standing on the pedals and coasting line to line

I am chased by the ghosts

the ghosts of Jesus and Evel Knievel

of cutter girls in Underdog pants

strobe lights and cotton candy

black Astroturf and hotshot amazons

angel dogs and porcelain dolls and broken cassettes of Bobby Brown

peach icees in the runway lights

the velour of Green Broughams

redneck luchadores and Comcast evangelists

gays for the Kingdom and golden heart ugly girls

goth queens breaking open jars of bees

tweenage tweakers twirling glowsticks

Judas tied the noose

Afro-centric Apostolic gas station Pentecostal churches play that funky music white boy wipe me down

klu klux cakewalks at the middle school gym

bagboys fists up distortion pedal stomp

pork rind boogie, monster be nice

In Grime We Trust

beauty and chaos, lust and degradation, redemption and pain

and the last Ghost of all is me

900 miles high and rising

over the waters

Jesus and me, into the trees

Like Breath

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:43 GMT

By Alexander Maksik

PARIS -

We’re walking together along the trail beside the river. After a late winter the low hills are still green and there are wildflowers even now. There’s the smell of sage and dust and pine and if you look north up Highway 75 you can see mountains capped with white.

We’re bare-chested wearing sandals and shorts. It’s my father’s birthday today. He’s fifty years old, six feet tall, thin. His dark curly hair has lightened from the sun. There are patches of grey at his temples.

I’m shorter than he is with dark hair on my legs and arms, hair that my father found unsettling when it first began to appear at fourteen - a feature, which seemed to him impossible. It must have been a terrible reminder of time passing. How could this boy with the big brown eyes and the round cheeks be sprouting the body hair of a Sicilian?

Once while the two of us were on the couch watching a baseball game, my legs on his knees, he asked, laughing, “Where did all this hair come from?”

I stared at the screen.

This summer I’m back from a year in Australia. It’s the first time in six months that he’s has seen me without my shirt on and I see him register the new hair on my chest.

I’m home for a few months, living in my old bedroom. The same smells. The same posters on the wall. I know it’s my father who won’t take them down. I know that my mother would like to make my old bedroom into something else, something new. She pushes forward, she tears things apart, moves furniture around. She pulls her husband along, forces him to make decisions, spins through their house on the river, telephone to her ear, making plans.

I think about the night to come. After the three of us have dinner and a bottle of wine, after my father opens his birthday presents, I’ll put on my shoes, find a jacket and go out. I’ll meet some friends from high school at a bar in town. And after I kiss my mother good night and she goes upstairs to bed, my dad will follow me outside and stand out on the driveway.

He’ll say, “Have a nice time, sweetheart.”

And I’ll say, “Ok, I will,” and get into the old Land Cruiser that he bought from a helicopter pilot in Boise for three thousand dollars, a car that he’d wanted since he drove one in Africa twenty-five years ago where he climbed to the top of Mount Kenya. I imagine him there at the summit, his eyes clear, feeling invincible.

He was young, newly married. He breathes deeply and feels the purity of conquest, the certainty of his life. He stands there with a hand on the iron cross hammered into the stone. He feels heroic and powerless. There he was standing atop a great mountain in Africa with all the wonder and sadness of real joy.

Tonight, he’ll stand outside in the driveway, and the sprinklers will beat time, and the moon will be half full, and I’ll start up the car and turn on the radio. I’ll ignore the vague feeling of irritation. It’s not as if I’m going off to war. Why can’t he just say goodnight? Though I know the answer somehow.

And he’ll stand in the driveway in his slippers and his robe. He’ll want to say something about the choke, about not flooding the engine. He’ll catch himself. And instead he’ll watch me glide up the driveway, slow at the street, turn left and vanish into the night.

We turn down off of the main trail where it begins to cut away from the river. I lead us along a small path, which ends at a rocky bank. The river has made a sharp turn here and left a deep green pool. Above it a knotted rope hangs from a tall Aspen. The bank descends fast.

I drop my towel on the rocks, grab the rope and climb atop a pile of felled trees. I lean back pulling the rope to my chest, taking in all the slack. I jump and sail out above the water, where I let go and plunge through the air breaking through the surface. My father watches me fall.

When I come up for air I’m down stream with the current. Grinning, I pull myself onto the bank and walk back towards my dad, my skin drying fast in the sun and warm wind.

My dad smiles at me, proud. He dives head first off the bank and lets the river take him.

The afternoon my parents were to arrive in Sydney, I got to the airport early. In the cab on the way there I imagined how I’d appear to them. My hair was nearly to my shoulders; I was tan and strong from surfing everyday. I wore new clothes.

Waiting outside customs I thought about myself, about what they would think of me, their son with his long hair and his suede jacket. I leaned against a pillar and waited with limo drivers holding signs, men nervously shifting bouquets of flowers from hand to hand, mothers holding babies.

Then the doors slid open to reveal my parents. My mother looked mostly the same, big brown eyes; beautiful, explosive, bright, hair cropped a little shorter, deeper lines at her eyes.

But my father, for the first time in my life looked old. He was pale from the Idaho winter, tired from the flight. There was more gray at the temples, more gray everywhere. Even his skin seemed gray. So shocked by the sight of him, I didn’t immediately go towards them. Having been so prepared to be observed, it threw me off to find that I was the observer. The sight of my father scanning the busy terminal for his son briefly paralyzed me.

All morning I’d been imagining this moment but not once had it occurred to me that it would be my father who had changed. And in realizing this I also realized that not once in my entire life, not in twenty years, not really, had I considered for an instant my parents would ever change.

I watched them: My mother grinning slightly, squinting into the crowd. And my father, mouth slightly open, chin tilted upwards, eyes darting from side to side. Finally, I stood up straight and smiled at them. Immediately they saw me, my mother’s jaw dropping at the sight of my long hair. My father strode quickly towards me and we hugged each other hard. Whatever plans of aloof cool I may have had were gone. Holding my father, I felt briefly as if I were holding him up.

Nearly immediately he looked healthy and young again. Once he had spent a day on the beach, smelled the air, swam in the ocean, slept, run along the cliffs at Coogee, he no longer appeared frail.

Six months later we’re standing side by side on the log pile. I have the rope pulled tightly to my chest.

You just lean back, you make sure you pull both your feet up right away and let the rope take you. When you get out over the pool you let go. Easy.”

“Be careful,” he says.

I glide out over the pool, and drop. When I come up I say, “Your turn, old man.”

He’s still standing on the logs.

“I think I’m going to skip this.”

“Oh come on,” I say. By now I’ve climbed up next to him and placed the rope in his hands. “It’s not difficult. I mean if you’re not old.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Ok,” I say, “Let’s go home and play cards grandpa.”

He exhales loudly, looks at me and shakes his head as if admonishing both of us. He tightens his grip on the rope. He leans forward keeping his feet planted on the logs. He reaches out and up with both arms as if he’s reaching for something lost, something far away, as if he’s standing on a chair straining for something too high to touch.

His weight transfers outwards - arms, shoulders, chest and, only when they have to, his feet come off the log so that they swing fast beneath him making a gentle sweeping arc from log to sky. It’s as if he’s preparing a backflip but he is preparing nothing. He is entirely passive, waiting for this thing to be done.
The first lesson he ever taught me about fielding a ground ball is to charge. Go towards it. Act. Do not be acted upon. The first rule of all sport. The first rule of everything.

His feet swing upwards higher into the air. He’s still clutching the rope as it slackens and when he begins to fall it snaps tight and tears from his hands. He falls through space. He could be piloting a rocket, roaring upwards through the atmosphere.

But he is falling down.

When he hits the shallow water his arms are still extended upward. The back of his head slams hard against smooth round river rock.

I look down at him. He’s unconscious, eyes closed, the water pulling gently at his body. His head is resting on the stones while he trembles slightly with the current. He looks delicate, fragile as if at any moment he might vanish. He looks like a body in the water, a body caught in an eddy after floating for hours.

He looks dead.

I leap from the log an scramble down to him. In the moment it takes for me to get there, he’s slipped further into the water so that the weight of his head on a single stone serves as the only anchor. I slip my arms through his and pull him onto the bank.

There is a moment of absolute quiet. I’m kneeling. I’m holding my father. I’m looking down on him. There is a small trickle of blood from the back of his skull.

The three of us used to go camping in the summers when I was still a boy. We’d set up a large army camp tent at the edge of a lake. There was a cooler in the back of our old Toyota Corona, a green Coleman stove and a lantern. At night we’d sit around a fire and drink hot chocolate. And then my father would take me to the edge of the lake to look at the stars.

The two of us would stare silently up at the sky. Eventually I’d get cold and impatient. He’d always insist on staying a little longer. It smelled of pine trees and smoke.

“You have to always remember to wait,” he told me once. “You have to think about where you are before you can leave.”

“I will. I do.”

We’d turn back to the low fire and walk slowly toward my mother and our camp. The three of us would sleep heavily together, side by side.

His eyes flutter open. The first thing he sees is my face looking down at him. He sits up slowly. I put my arm around his shoulder. He breathes deeply. He touches the back of his skull. He looks at the blood on his fingers and raises his eyes to mine. There’s something foreign in his expression, something I’ve never seen in his face before.

Terror.

Slowly we walk along the trail towards the house where my mother will be reading.

We’re silent for a while. I can’t shake the dull, heavy sound of his body hitting the rocks or the sight of him lying unconscious in the water. I hold tightly to his shoulder.

At the house my mother looks at the two of us.

We put him in bed and call his doctor. He should have a CAT scan. Concussion maybe. Bring him in today.

My mother shakes her head. “What in the fuck were you thinking?”

She touches her hand to his cheek. She waits until somewhere in his expression she finds something; assurance perhaps, and then she walks downstairs to make him some tea.

I sit on the edge of my parents’ bed. I touch a warm washcloth to the back of his skull where he’s been bleeding. We sit in silence looking at one another, my father smiling weakly, the color drained from his face.

That night I stay home. The two of us walk slowly to the edge of the driveway. The moon is half-full. The air smells of wet grass and clay. For a few moments we stand together looking up. And then we turn and walk back towards the house lit up pale.

The next morning he wakes with a pounding head. The fall has given him some bruises on his back, a sore neck. The doctor calls. None of his vertebrae are cracked; his spine is unharmed.

But swept away by the river, along with the slight bit of blood that trickled from his head, was also his sense of smell. As his skull cracked against the stone it was gone, flowing from his body like water, like blood, like breath.

ALEXANDER MAKSIK is a fiction writer, poet and freelance journalist living in Paris. His writing has been published in France, the UK and the United States. Most recently he's written for Nerve.com, Crate, The San Antonio Express-News, Inkwell and Explorer Guides. He's just finished his first novel. You can read his poetry and fiction here: pont-des-arts.blogspot.com. And you can reach him here: akolyamaksik@gmail.com.

The Idiosyncratic Parody of Automobile Eroticism and the Ravishing Gratis of Hopeless Information

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:08 GMT

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND-

"We already know that the world is far more complex, and strange, and beautiful than we thought."

Albert Einstein once said that, but in the office where he conjured up the thesis of relativity ("thou shalt not involve one's self in irrelevant 'stop n chats' on the street, thou shalt not ask a man how his family is unless completely necessary, thou shalt not take your shoes off at a dinner party"), and routinely ordered his wife Mileva, by contract, to deliver "three meals a day" and make sure that his desk was 'for his use only', the hapless enemy of Aryans could never predict that time cannot heal the gradual degeneration of beauty.

Right. And what has any of this sentimentality got to do with mecaphilia, the sexual attraction to cars?

We're getting off colour here. Michael Richards made the same honest mistake, and look where that savage Israelite is now; very little hair, washing cars, bursting through the car doors doing impressions of himself when he didn't hate blacks (but not the cars of blacks, that would be an awful entry in Al Sharpton's diary, too much irony even for a leader of traditionalism). What's the score here? What's next?

A simple study into Paraphilias is not easy viewing. Most websites on the internet will fill your head with graphic imagery and occult details that you could never hope to understand, and why not? Indeed. Why not? The internet has been no good since Tom started writing things on schoolboards about social networking and pothead transgenders from Texas started weeping openly on camera about the sudden demise of Britney Spears, innocent children searching for immediate facts on the Greeks, hounded by perverts offering them a share of their Nigerian fortune and blonde paraplegics being anally penetrated by thoroughbred stallions. But shit, the world is run on mindless perversions, so who are we to question the money that feeds a man's children?

Chremastistophiliacs get off on the thoughts of being robbed.

Harpaxophiliacs are turned on by burglary.

Iatronudiacs are fond or exposing themselves to physicians.

Nasophiliacs feel strong lusts for their partners' nose.

But what happens when you start up your 1962 Beetle one morning and the front end of the car suddenly puts a large tent in your pants? What to do when you wake up in the middle of the night to upset all of the neighbourhood cats by blasting semen all over the bumper of your black Trans-Am?

Danger, is what happens (enjoy, my fair readers; enjoy my gift to you, my returning gift, my myhr and frankincense of apology for being away for a while):

Anyone want 500 pounds of gruel? (Pickup only)

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:53 GMT

By Steve Dupont

BIRMINGHAM, AL -

Right. So I'm enjoying a leisurely breakfast the other morning, tapping away at a new column for Gonzo Politico over a bowl of New and Improved Old World Corn Gruel, when this god-awful beeping sound nearly caused me to dump steaming hot gruel in my lap (And, you don't have to be Einstein to figure out that: Gruel + Groin = Unbridled Obscenity).

You know the beeping sound I'm talking about. The one that indicates the backward locomotion of a freight carrying vehicle. Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

Upon further investigation, I was actually rather excited to discover the vehicle in question backing into my own driveway. I couldn't recall having purchased any oversized consumer goods lately, so I thought maybe a large and very generous gift was aboard this vessel. A pinball machine? A trampoline? A Nordic Track home fitness system? A dune buggy? A giant chocolate Jesus sculpture?

I left my steaming hot bowl of New and Improved Old World Corn Gruel -- like Ike Turner leaving Tina on a motel room floor -- and raced outside to claim my oversized booty.

He he. I just said "oversized booty." He he ...

Anyway, so I get out there just as the delivery dude is hopping down from the cab -- a 50-ish, haggard looking dude who bears a striking resemblance to Gary Busey. In fact, chillingly so ...

That is to say, the dude had freakishly large teeth and was rather ... not disagreeable, per se, but ... volatile in his temperment. After all, the exchange between us started out well enough. It just went sideways awfully quick.

"Hey man," I said. "How's it going?"

(no answer as he unlatched and flung open the back door of the truck)

"So, whatcha got for us today?"

"Gruel."

"Say again?"

"Gruel. It's like grits or oatmeal or something."

"I know what it is ... I just wasn't expecting ..."

"You gonna refuse delivery?!"

"No, it's fine, I mean ..."

"You think I like lugging around 20-pound bags of gruel all day?! If I don't unload 'em here I'm just gonna hafta unload 'em back at the depot! And explain why I come back heavy! Gas ain't cheap you know!"

"Tell me about it. It's mostly cause of dollar devaluation, but they never tell you that on the news."

At this point Mr. Faux-Busey just stares at me, as if attempting to telepathically melt my face.

"So do you want the f--king gruel or what?!"

"Yeah, sure, I mean, I don't want you to get in trouble at the Gruel Depot or anything."

At this point Faux-Busey just smiles this kooky, maniacal smile. Kinda like this:

(I'm sorry to have to include not one, but two, Gary Busey photos in this post, but I'm telling you -- the dude looked just like him! In fact, maybe it WAS him! His voice was very different though, so probably not, unless he was acting! Busey is an actor you know!)

Long story short, I now have a wall of gruel in my driveway. 25 bags, each weighing 20 pounds, for a grand total of 500 pounds. And not only that, but Mr. Sunshine himself, Faux-Busey, is coming back next month with ANOTHER 500 POUNDS OF GRUEL!!!

See, despite the fact that I hold a degree in English from a prestigious and very expensive American university, me don't read so good. Especially things written by lawyers in their fancy-dancy lawyer writin'. For example, my contract with the Old World Corn Gruel Corporation (OWCGC) for the sponsorship of Gonzo Politico. Upon closer examination, it clearly states that I shall receive X dollars per month or -- the key word there being OR -- the equivalent in OWCGC product, as deemed appropriate ... blah blah blah.

Turns out Old World Corn Gruel is even more economical when purchased in bulk! Who knew it was even available in 20-pound bags?

You want?

Of course, I already called every food bank and soup kitchen within a 50-mile radius and nobody will take the stuff! I felt like George Costanza in the "Muffin Stump" episode. Folks are all like, "You want to donate 500 pounds of WHAT?! Why don't you donate it to the zoo for the hippos to eat or some sh-t."

Ouch.

As much as I'm sore at the OWCGC, that one cut me deep. Real deep. This isn't hippo feed, ladies and gentlemen! This is Old World goddamned Corn Gruel! One of the most nutritious AND delicious foodstuffs available on the market today! Dare I say tantalizingly toothsome!

So it's right here for the taking. If you've got a pickup truck or a Chinook helicopter and can swing by ASAP (before it rains -- chance of T-storms tomorrow!) this treasure trove of nature's goodness can be yours -- absolutely FREE OF CHARGE!

I could eat all the gruel myself, by the way. Easy.

I'm only doing this because I care about you.

STEVE DUPONT is the author of Therein Lies the Probem, a novel, and many online columns including the brand new Gonzo Politico. His official Internet headquarters is at SteveDupont.com.

Rotate the Crops

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:35 GMT

by Paul A. Toth

GRAND BLANC, MI-

How tired of thinking, how sawed off my seeing, how heard my hearing, how tasteless my tasting, how senseless my ability to smell, how unfeeling what I touch. Just the same, so easy to relearn how to think, see, hear, taste, smell, touch. It's only a forced illusion, a child's card trick. Yet this deception serves as a thicker pair of glasses, a re-tuned hearing aid and...an artificial brain, nose and tongue.

Rotate the crops, Kierkegaard wrote (laugh, but I have ethics; I keep the neighbors at bay and love them when they're on the other side of the ocean). I may not believe in a god, but I know fear and trembling. They're hobbies of sorts, the kind that irritate oneself for the want of something better to do. But if the crop is the imagination, yes, rotate it, a degree, 360 degrees, or some degree between.

Take a walk. Think like a biologist. Be Darwin now. It all looks different, operating within another system. It operates outside the influence of capitalism, or so inside that it's back outside again, with the cans and plastic cups -- NEVERTHELESS! -- it can be done.

Take another walk. Walk on tiptoes, or pretend to do so if suffering a herniated disc. No, don't walk on tiptoes: Danger, unless wearing a helmet. Forget toes. Rise within and see like a mountain. Whether resembling a mountain or not, a true mountain cannot see; the human has that advantage. But if the mountain could see, then its perspective would earn envy and imitation. For the human, it is different, but it can be faked, and that is enough and there is more.

Take a third walk. Walk and walk and walk. March. Keep going, walk, march. Run in front of cars. Yell racial epithets. Do it for a three years. Now a millionth the experience of a soldier is known. Once home, read Nausea; no, that title is cited only for its pointfullness. Read Camus. In America, Camus is famous, but in France, he bid a less than fond adieu. No need to worry that reading Camus will make one appear to be appearing to appear hip. Those days are gone, or these exercises need not be performed. Certain smells -- YOU KNOW THE ONES! -- remain new: Never mind the mind. It will come and it is coming but never mind that for now. Smell the smells, unless in Iraq. No one will care until the wall.

Take a hundred walks or a thousand drives. Look for weeds, crickets, cicadas (kill them on sight or sound), uppity birds, wait and wait, something is coming, like a hallucination but not quite that, something else. The mind will run beyond breathlessness, wildly or with grace, like horses. Watch out for artificial obstacles; men are always building them.

Ignore all hurdles. Jumping one only leads to the next, until retirement or a positive steroid test result. Forget retirement. Golf is a game of small, black holes amidst over-mowed lawns. Do not play games with life. This has nothing to do with life. This is about living. Let the servants worry about life; it's half their job. Pay them more. See Karl Marx in the mirror. Scary!

If all of these suggestions should fail, beat the head against the keyboard. It will fail the goal, but, just in case one goes mute, the face will display the alphabet, and a few words may be spelled by contorting the face. Better to visit the zoo. Kneel backwards behind a donkey and wait for a kick in the head from an ass. Now go Dali on this gifted moment. In the zoo, notice the burning giraffes.

Feed the giraffes.

A Letter to Myself...With the Hope that 10 Years Makes a Difference

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:06 GMT

THE FUTURE -

Dear You,

If all goes well and according to plan, you (that would be me) should receive this long lost letter on your 37th birthday, ten years after I (that would be you) sent it. It's 2008 here at the moment, June to be exact. You will turn 27 in close to three months. Exciting, I know.

It's been a rough year so far, not in terms of terminal illnesses or deaths or deep and beleaguered sadness, but tough in the sense that the life you had planned for yourself all those years earlier isn't exactly panning out the way you had thought it would. For one thing, your wardrobe isn't at all what you'd envisioned it to be...so that's mildly depressing.

You're single at the moment, stuck contemplating the unfairness of distance and intelligence while tidal waves and earthquakes and other such heat-of-the-moment news stories make your pissant problems seem tiny in comparison. Your general state of mind is apathetic...pretty much towards everything. This includes love, the state of the US economy (which is absolutely horrible, by the way - I hope things have gotten better in ten years), and the fact that your current career does little to fulfill you other than produce a paycheck and offer up something other than boredom.

It's my hope that this letter finds you in good health and with a better sense of the world about you. It's a terrible thing to be as cynical and angry with the state of things as you were at 27 and I would hate to think that I spent the next ten years growing even more cynical and angry. I hope you've fallen in love - again - with someone who loves you back and who'd move mountains to make it work. If you haven't...well...I hope you've at least gotten a dog.

Wait...you got a dog, didn't you?

Hmm...let's see...current events. Corn futures are down...porn sales are up...cats and dogs have begun living together in harmony, which may, quite well, signal the end of the world...and the answer to the question of life, the universe, everything is still 42.

Seriously, though, you're working on a novella at the moment. It's a satire about the end of the world, filled with lots of funny dialogue and ridiculous and zany characters.

(Sidebar: I apologize if this subject hits a nerve - ten years is a long time and it's completely within the realm of possibility that you're getting this just after the apocalypse. Congratulations on surviving, by the way...I hope...)

Did you get it published or did you do what you always do and file it away in that box under your bed, never to be heard from again? Pull it out and dust it off, dammit! Honestly, you survived an apocalypse! I think you can survive a publisher...

The point of all this nonsense is that it has to get better - the general pressures of life: to be someone magnificent, to do good in a world that refuses to acknowledge anything other than evil, to live a life with someone other than your best friend and fish - all of that pressure has to dissipate over ten years. If it hasn't, then dear god, woman, what the hell have you been doing?

In closing, be happy. The woman you are now is still trying to learn how to be happy...still learning to be still. So if I've learned anything in ten years, I hope to goodness that it's how to be happy...and the drums. I really, really, really wanted to learn the drums...

Love, Me

P.S. On the off chance you met him and fell madly in love, turn to your left and say hello to Luke Wilson for me... What? A girl can dream, can't she?

Six True Conspiracy Theories

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:00 GMT

by Paul A. Toth

GRAND BLANC, MI-

Conspiracy humbuggery plagues the Internet, but not all conspiracy theories are tricky cells in the information supervirus. Via thorough research into the Barney Milleresque filing cabinets of my imagination, and from reading blogs that remind me of why I don't document my day-to-day life, I have investigated thousands to a couple of conspiracy theories and absolutely believe everything I read when I agree with it. Therefore, I will attest that the following conspiracies are relatively factual to the best of my limited knowledge, if I remember ever having or claiming to have that knowledge.

1) AIDS DID NOT ORIGINATE IN MONKEYS. Actually, the original story is true but incomplete. What has failed to be reported is that scientists discovered a clique of monkeys deep in what remains of Africa's jungles. However, these monkeys exhibited strange behavior. They were peculiarly lethargic and often nodded out. Upon further exploration, scientists discovered used syringes strewn about the monkeys' territory. Thus, it is only known how monkeys began the spread of AIDS, not the manner in which one or more acquired the virus in the first place. Tragically, the Monkey King would not allow for a needle exchange program.

2) THE WARREN COMMISSION REPORT IS A COVER-UP. As often occurs, the cover story bears some connection to reality. There was a lone shooter, and that lone shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald. However, Mr. Oswald was not hired by the mafia or disgruntled Cubans. He was hired by Jackie Onassis.

3) JIM MORRISON IS ALIVE. Keith Richards is alive; ergo, Jim Morrison is alive. Invented sources assure me that Morrison lives in a tree near his "grave," where he laughs at those leaving graffiti. He "vanished" after having realized that he was not quite a poet, though he had his moments, especially as rendered by Val Kilmer.

4) MARILYN MONROE DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE. Most can guess Marilyn Monroe was so narcissist that she would never have even contemplated suicide, except when Joe DiMaggio swung out in the sack. However, in a drug-induced stupor, Monroe imagined that she was her mother, then tried to breastfeed herself, only to choke on her own boob. At the time, and until now, this could not be reported, as such a tale would have contributed to a Red scare and Communist-devised fetishes meant to destroy America.

5) MARY MAGDALENE AND JESUS CHRIST HAD A THING GOING ON. Perhaps. What is certain is that Jesus told numerous lewd parables while drunk on "grape juice," all documented in the "Lost Land Scrolls," preserved in the Vatican's secret Masturbation Library.

6) FDR ALLOWED PEARL HARBOR TO OCCUR. Unlike the rock solid evidence backing the invasion of Iraq, FDR could not so easily sell the Second World War to the American public. Therefore, he indeed allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to occur. Unfortunately, that hardly marks the end of the story. FDR was also Hitler, and Tojo. Thus, he declared war on America and Japan the next day and vice versa. Hitler had remained a street artist, while FDR adopted the mustache and tyrannical powers until now attributed to innocent Adolf. The role of FDR was played by Edward Herrmann. Thus, the Greatest Generation defeated the Greatest Generation, and that is why half of the Greatest Generation is known as the Greatest Generation. The rest were bastards.

*NOTE TO "KIP": If I mix my metaphors, it's only to give you something else about which to complain, or to complain about, depending upon your opinion of Winston Churchill. Negativity obviously dominates your life by not preoccupying you. You should consult a life planner so that you may become too busy to waste time on the Internet and news from the liberal media.

The Nervous Breakdown

You're Jammin' Me

A Story Starring Zac Efron as Deux ex Machina and a Burmese Python as Itself

The Failed Proof of an Equation for Home, Which May be the Fault of a Writer with Poor Math Skills, or the Fault of Putting Colors into a Formula

The Best Little Camera in Maryland: My Fisheye View of the World

Climbing Mountains

Discover The Magic Of Compound Interest, Get A Broker, Remember The Rule Of 72, Retire A Millionaire, Don't Be A Sailboat Without A Rudder And Other Pearls From Adult Community Education

Just In Time for Summer: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again*, **,***

Always Fun When the Good Guys Win: An Interview with Jonathan Evison, Author of 'All About Lulu'

Snapshot: Chasing the Ghost

Like Breath

The Idiosyncratic Parody of Automobile Eroticism and the Ravishing Gratis of Hopeless Information

Anyone want 500 pounds of gruel? (Pickup only)

Rotate the Crops

A Letter to Myself...With the Hope that 10 Years Makes a Difference

Six True Conspiracy Theories

Just In Time for Summer: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, ,