Two Stars

A-lure

Born to be the Softest

There was once a man ...

...who had no sharp edges....

...no right angles...

...only the smoothest contours...

..soft and forgiving...

..like a warm towel...

...or the soft breath of the sleeping infant...

..but with mittens where hands would be.

no chafe...

...no threat...

No, he was softer than all of that.

Wooden

Some Ideas for Sitcoms

Here's a few ideas I've had for TV sitcoms.

1. A brilliant but lonely genius with several degrees in robotics is disappointed by his intellectually inferior friends. He decides to use his knowledge of robotics to create a humanoid robot that will share his passion for the high and lofty. But, a freak accident creates EARL( Electronic Artificial Robot Lifeform) a hillbilly robot whose favorite pastimes include dog breeding and racism. This unlikely pair learn to live together, and our brilliant but lonely genius learns a thing or two about friendship.

TITLE: MAKING FRIENDS

2. Two best friends, fat Sam and skinny Bruce meet an early demise. When their monthly fishing trip goes awry Bruce and Sam's bones are picked clean by a school of hungry piranha. Strangely the two survive and come to live in a culturally diverse inner-city group home. Sam and bruce couldn't be any more different but their bone structures are identical. Hilarity ensues as the members of the group home mistake them for one another.

TITLE: SKELETWINS

3. Homicide detective Sean Simon's career is threatened when he is struck in the eye by a suspect's bullet. A chance encounter on a new assignment teaches sean that his injury has given him special psychic powers. Lifting his eye patch to expose his grizzly mangled eye hole, Sean witnesses the murder as if it were happening before his eye. Sean must now use his special ability to try and catch the cities killers before they can kill again. Sean can see with one bad eye what the rest of the force will never see with two.

TITLE: DEATH PERCEPTION

4. Two twin brothers separated at birth unwittingly become friends when they move down the street from one another.

Theme Song:

"Mama left them both to die when they were kids
Now they're all grown up, look what they did!
They started out in different cities, Somehow they both ended up in Cincinnati.
Now they're living on the very same street.
Who would really think that they would ever meet?
Brothers who see eachother every day
Now, lets hope they don't decide to be gay..........together
They're two of a kind,
they're there for eachother
they have the same mom,
but they don't know that they're brothers
Brothers Amigos they don't know that they're brothers

TITLE: BROTHERS AMIGOS

Excuses

No posts in many moons. I've been diverting many of my creative juices into a project forthcoming...


with its very own Blog.

also...ive done some tagging on this here blog and instituted a handy list on the bottom left there.

Mother Fucker Never Told a Lie

Several months ago I came upon a poorly screen printed t-shirt at my local Good-Will thrift/retail/whatever store with what looked like a comic on it. The print consisted of about a hundred tiny panels, many of them indecipherable, which seemed to be telling a story about George Washington. I've kicked myself in the ass for months for not snatching it up only because it would have been too big for me to wear. The comic depicted our founding father reeking havoc and handing out asses wherever he went. Since that day I've been struggling to figure out exactly what I saw.

Today I happened upon someone's avatar in the A.V. Club comment threads and immediately recognized it as a drawing from the fabled t-shirt. I inquired as to its origin, and in little time was informed that it came from a comic/video created by Brad Neely a little googling and my months of anticipation were generously rewarded...



whites of your eyes, BITCH!

Comedy

Matt posted his mini-comic adaptation of a short story I wrote some years ago.
Check it out over on his page.

Here's the short with all spelling and punctuation errors in tact,
written in all the subtlety and elegance of second person...

Wake up. Your eyes open, and through the sleepy haze and sideways beems of light that irritate and force your eyelids to shut back, you see a soft smear of red. You close them back momentarily and feel the tears well up in the sides of your eyes. You blink once, then twice, and then look at the ground as you try and open them again. The ground below you is cement. Its smooth cement and your black shoes with thier hard black soles make a tapping sound as your foot taps nervously.

You follow your shoes up to your pants. Your pants, black also, the material is soft and flowing yet heavy, all the way up to your waist. Someone walks by. "Good luck", they offer, and they slap your back through a dark blue jacket, through a stark white, pressed shirt. You turn your head to meat them. Theyve turned their head and theyre walking away with a clip board in their hand, checking off a list.

On the other side of soft smear of red you hear the murmuring of a voice, loud, yet full of bass and hard to understand, followed by a chorus of laughter and then clapping. On a table beside you, you see a nearly full bottle of water. You grab it, quicly remove and drop the lid, and drink the whole bottle in a few quick gulps. You begin to look around for someone else. Noone is around you so you walk closer to the soft red curtain and pear around it. After your eyes adjust to the bright light, you see a man wearing exactly what your wearing, at a microphone, making hand gestures, he catches you out of the corner of his eyes as you lean out further to see the enourmous audience that waits on each word. He quickly looks back to the audience as you run briskly backwards strait into a young girl and nearly knock her off of her feet.

"hi", you say, "where am i?"

She hesitates and then laughs with all her lungs "Save it for the show" she says

You look at her, squint your eyes slightly, and bring your brow way down, you gesture back at the red curtain "wait, you mean, i have to go out there?"

She once again laughs up internal organs and offers up a "you're better than ive heard, i gotta go, Good luck again"

The murmuring voice on the other side of the curtain crescendos and breaks off. The laughs are cut short by more clapping and applause that last longer this time. Through the curtain comes a beam of light that hits the floor in a semi circle. With the beam comes a man.

"hey", there you are, "i got em warmed up for ya"

He grabs a towel on a nearby table and wipes off his face, the girl breezes by you and out beyond the red curtain. You can hear her voice in the murmur of the PA system. The man dressed like you sits with relief into a chiar next to the table. "tag" he says "your it"

Behind the red curtain the murmer reaches a slow down pace and she pronounces with a sing song finale voice in four long sylables, someones name.

The man in the chair looks at you, he stares you right in the eyes.

he laughs "now you can go"

You walk slowly forward toward the curtain , the girl rushes past you "get out there" she says half serious.

You push past the curtain, the spotlight hits you unexpectedly almost shoving you back out. You squint against it and then push forward again in a straight line to the microphone at the middle of the stage.

You grab the microphone it makes a loud noise as you pull it "hi" you offer "i dont know what im doing here"

The crowd roars with laughter

--------------------------------------------

Reading over it again, it's kinda like a weird episode of Quantum Leap.
Kudos to Matt for finding a better tone in which to tell it.

Too Many Lions

In case you're wondering, this is an actual book. As you may have gathered its the story of an alligator who hungers for the flesh of a nubile human. The alligator persists in his hunger and nearly claims his prey. The book ends with the hopeful thought that if he can get big enough, someday this dream will be a reality.

In the spirit of this book. I present the books publishers, and you with the following story i've written and illustrated entitled "There's too many lions at the mother fucking zoo!"

Suicide Note

Dear Reader,

 

Life is an endless parade of death and disillusionment, marching thoughtlessly forward as the path of incredulous hope is crushed with ease under the heel of it's careless sole.  At approximately 1 AM this morning I swallowed what remained of a bottle of tums and washed them down with a mouthful of Alberto’s VO5.  As the calcium courses through my veins aided by the volumizing proteins of my milky death rinse, I come here in my final anguished moments to post my last grievances with this brutish world.

 

What a cruel ride it’s been.  To everyone along the way who has tried in every way to make it as soul-crushing and horrible as possible, I tip my hat, I couldn’t have done it without you.  But, the real credit goes to the man who’s been with me since the beginning.   He’s an all-consuming voice in my head and he calls himself Dr. Safety.

 

As life has pulled my fragile frame through the proverbial mangler, Dr. Safety has been at my side assuring me that the pointless pain of living can be forever soothed by what he refers to as "the mortal therapy."  As the brittle walls of my shaky existence come crashing down around me in a hell storm of torturous reckoning, I leave my case in the hands of the good doctor and in the faith of his velvet cure.

 

To those left behind, I assure you now that you’ve played no small part in my untimely voyage to the infinite.  Each of you like the many stones of a great wall has played some role in the aggregate of my shattered being.  Reckless guardian, reviled lover, off-handed heckler, this note is for you.  I have forgotten nothing, and the pain of each encounter resonates within me at a deafening frequency which grows louder each sunless day.

 

Why now then? You might be asking yourselves.  Well the answer to that is simple.

 

As the autumn of my youth approaches, my pride has contracted me to build my modest home on the banks of a mighty torrent.  In the throws of a raging tempest my foundation was unearthed and my life’s work was carried out to the vast sea where the ashes of my indentity litter the ocean floor.  Looking back perhaps I shouldn’t have played that many PowerBall tickets. 

 

And now with my chalky death soon approaching,

 

Goodbye cruel world, Good morning Doctor

 

I regret everything,

 

My life in cars.

I owned my first car before I ever had my license. It was a 1976 Chrysler Cordoba centennial edition with a bronze coin on the fender to commemorate our nations independence. Ironic, considering the car is named for a Spanish town and whose television ad features Spaniard Ricardo Montalbon Talking about his “needs” in a car as if it were a loving wife or a seasoned hooker. It was bright hot yellow with a black vinyl landau top which featured 2 small side windows in the rear framed by ornate chrome branches. Dispite being the “small chrysler” as ads suggest this car was the biggest thing on the road A smooth ride to be sure with a big gas guzzling v8 engine with standard 8 track cassette player and Chronometer(read clock) in the black vinyl dash which smelled perpetually of armor-all and cigarette smoke.

I worked all summer when I was 15 and payed my dad 750 dollars for the car. From time to time I would sit in its huge soft Corenthian leather seats and imagine driving it around. Once I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to pull it out of the drive way and drive it a few hundred yards. I got it stuck in the ditch trying to pull it back into the driveway. I employed my friends and siblings to help me get it out before my dad got home from work. The car was broken down before my 16^th birthday. My dad felt bad that I never got to drive it and pitched in come the next summer when I bought the second vehicle I owned and never drove.

This second vehicle was a late eighties modal Nissan light duty pick up. It was silver and it was missing a gear. We planned to change out the transmission and convert it to an automatic. After several failed attempts to find the tranny, I eventually sold it to my uncle who wanted to fix it. I’m not sure that he ever got it running, but for the brief moment it was mine it sat back at the top of the yard where I could point it out to my friends as we pulled away on the school bus.

By the time I got around to buying my third vehicle I was graduating high school and just got my license. It was 650 dollars, it was a 1989 ford escort sedan, it was red, and it got about 30 miles to the gallon. It had no title, instead I was given a “bill of sale” written on wide ruled notebook paper. I drove this car for the better part of my 2 years at college. I lived off campus, about seventy miles off campus and drove it the 140 miles every weekday. Most teenagers have some sort of foolish brand loyalty, it usually comes from what their parents own or want to own, and in better cases from shoddy anecdotes. I'm not proud of it but at one point I owned a shirt which depicted Calvin(of Calvin and Hobbes) urinating mischeviously on Ford's logo. I think I won it or bought it at the county fair, but why I agreed with it is still unsure. The teenage mind is capable of grand leaps of logic. Yet if fords were said to be made cheaply, this car was no exception. It did last me 2 years, though, with the exception of 2 major repairs to the timing belt and transmission.

At some point I decided it was imperative to remove the ford emblems from the car. You see during many of my junior high and high school years I had been duped into a brand consciousness. As my family was dirt poor this meant buying second hand and discounted nike shoes, and buying brand apparel knock offs and flea markets. For a while I thought this bought me a little bit of normalcy and if I could make sure no stray cockroaches were in my backpack in the mornings and try hard not to spill any any kerosene on my shoes from the space heaters then all the other kids would think I was just like them. Eventually through the help of hard rock bands and outsider friends I became enlightened and made sure to cut any and all brand signifying tags off my clothes which lead naturally to pulling the little plastic brand logos off my little escort. In the absence of the brands I placed a couple hard rock bumper stickers on there and felt pretty good about myself.

By graduation my friends and I were planning a road trip to California, for one reason or another this was going to be done in my car. Driving to and from school along the highway I noticed dark grey European looking car with a high windshield and wipers on the headlights. It looked educated, stoic, visually economic, slightly eccentric, and dark. Everything I wanted to be. It was a 1992 Saab 900 sedan, automatic, the headlight wipers were long since busted and the seat warmers no longer worked but aside from a heater core it didn’t seem to need much else. It looked exotic, it smelled classy, it had a decent stereo. I payed the man 1200 for it and drove it home.

We packed the car and headed to Jeff City to pick up my girlfriend to head west. Her parents gave us a resounding NO, and we drove it back home and took her car to Chicago. Had we tried to take it out west, the alarm system which relied on a battery in the keychain would have stopped us in our tracks as it did when we returned. We found a way around the alarm system and hooked up a push button starter. The headliner fell down and I replaced it with a rage against the machine poster; the one with the black and white burning monk in front of the old 40s coupe. This car gave me all sorts of problems but was too beautiful to just let go of. This seemed to be my philosophy with a lot of things.

It used gallons of oil monthly but it moved me to St. Louis. Eventually the waning transmission gave out completely and it sat in my dads yard where several people inquired about it but no one really wanted it. Eventually my dad used it in a trade for a minivan.

My dad loaned me his huge-ass, 5 miles to the gallon, Ford Econoline van while I was looking for another car. A ride my friends would endearingly refer to as the “stalker van”. One friend said jokingly “ I bet that thing can stop on a dime”…”oh man” I told her “ it can stop on a whole bunch of dimes” Driving back to my dads a goose hit the windshield luckily it didn’t come all the way through.

Das had a friend who worked a car auction. At these places all you can do is get in and start the car, and put it in gear and sit there. There are no test drives. This friend could drive the cars around the lot though and said he would do this for me. I found a little grey Nissan Maxima that I liked. He drove it and it ran fine. I waited for the car to come down the line and called my bid as the jabbering auctioneer dribbled out 50s and 100s I was surrounded by shifty looking used car salesmen and probably bidding against the cars owner. Luckily he stopped bidding at 750 which is where I had planned to stop and the car was mine. I came to get the car the next day which is when I realized the car was very close to the one we tested but slightly different. As we pulled out the car shifted nicely into second and the topped out at about 40 mph without shifting into third. I got out of the car and cussed at it. There are no refunds at the car auction. I was stuck with this crap car and had to do something. What followed was one of the worst ordeals of my semi-adult life and after a couple months of skeezy junkyard owners, mistaken transmissions, and big favors the car was finally running properly. This 89 Nissan Maxima was made just at the point when cars started getting curvy as opposed to the boxy style of the 70s and 80s. I hated this car for what it represented. I didn’t even like the look of it. It was a v6 and I was now an environmentally conscience suburbanite. The radio was a joke but it was a workhorse and it lasted me a few years. It still ran when I gave it to dad about a year ago.

Which takes us to the 1989 Toyota Corolla I own now. In my opinion a beautifully simple car, great on gas mileage, relatively simple to repair, I wish I owned one of these cars for every color. I got it cheap from a friend because I had to replace a couple parts to get it running. I really like this car.

The transmission went out. I replaced it. Then, The engine went out. I replaced it. Now, and this has all happened in the course of 7 or 8 months, I’ve been struck by a careless driver who gave me bogus insurance Info and a phone number that doesn’t work. My brakes are out and my trunk and bumper are smashed in. I have liability only. On the phone my dad said “Maybe your not supposed to have this car” and I’m thinking maybe he’s right…but ill try and fix the brakes and see what I can do about the trunk but she’s starting to get loud and run funny again and I foresee that after not so long she’ll be put out to pasture as well.

These cars have problems sure. But does that mean that they don’t deserve love?

I’m tired of driving half dead cars until they fall over exhausted, I want to be able to keep one running for more than a couple years. Even if I could afford a newer car it wouldn’t be the same I’ve grown an appreciation for these old vintage clunkers, which still exist in spite of bad odds and numerous owners. I can’t help from getting a little romantic.

Canary in the Mineral Area

The history of St. Louis is built on mounds. Thousands of burial mounds which have not survived modern earth movers littered the area, once giving St. Louis the nickname " Mound City". Many of these mounds are thought to have been built right around 1000 years ago by a network of native americans known as the the Hopewell Culture. Most notable of these are the Cahokia Mounds just east of St. Louis.

The largest Cahokia mound "Monk's Mound" stands 90 meters tall and and is the largest man made earthen mound found anywhere in North America. But, you already know this.

What you might not know about are a network of mounds about 70 miles south of St. Louis. These mounds, it has been fairly well documented, were built starting in the 1860s in southern Missouri towns such as Bonne Terre, Park Hills(Formerly Flat River), and Leadwood. These towns which are perhaps better known as the "Mineral Area" or the "Lead Belt" were once the site of the largest lead mining outfit in history. Lead ore(Galena) was mined from as much as 200 feet down in some places. Leaving vast underground caves, some of which are now tourist destinations, others far too volatile.

Only a small percentage of Gelena is profitible as lead or other metals such zinc or copper. The rest is a refuse known as "chat". Piles of of this white sandy gravel grew as the mines prospered in some places such as Flat Rivers "National Chat Dump" towering over the small town and covering as much as 20 acres.

As the article shows, these piles began a process of re-mining in the 1950s and by the seventies were but a tribute to their former glory. And, by the time that I began seeing them in the 80s and 90s were even smaller. Yet even at this dramaticly smaller size to me and to my friends and family they were still these major landmarks known as the "chat piles".

Once, early in my teens, myself and several of my friends climbed one of these awkward dunes without a desert, making the heroic climb to the top and then inevidible running then falling down the opposite side. By this time they had become a playground for at ATVs. There were rumors that at the top one might happen upon a hidden sink-hole and be sucked down into the sand never to be found again.

The mounds, though picked over for lead and other metals still pollute area rivers and streams, air, and ground to some extent. One study found that 11 percent of children in the area were beyond the level that constitutes lead poisoning which is said to lead to...

"lower intelligence scores, poor attention levels; hearing, speech and language problems; reading

disabilities; reduced motor skills and poor hand-eye coordination."

Now it begins to make some sense.

While I can't help feeling a little romantic about these mining relics, I also feel a bit betrayed. A brief look back puts me living at one point or another in Desloge, Park Hills, Doe Run, and Old Mines, all lead mining sites Old Mines named for being the eldest in Missouri, mined in the 1720s. And once in Pevely which borders the town Herculaneum, the infamous site of the state's smelting facilities, evacuated several years back as lead levels became dangerously high.

As a child no one ever told us this. I really had no idea the mounds had anything to do with mining. I thought it had something to do with the adjacent glass factory, which as it turns out was built to make use of it.

So next time you ask me a question and I sing the answer back to you to the tune of the Gilligan theme, or I say something a little too loud and then repeat it back to myself as I walk away, I'm not trying to be a dick. I've just got enough lead coursing through my veins to make me legally retarded.

.

Ok, maybe not the best movie mash-up on You-tube.

It's no Curious Case of Forrest Gump

or Brokeback to the Future
But heres the point, As it says, both of these films came out in 1999.

American Beauty also came out that year which is essentially the same film.

I'm only beginning to realize the impact this concentration of films had upon my impressionable 17 year old mind.

They all focus on a central character, an every-man, who has been offering his life to the machine and finds a convenient exit in order to live out his true existential calling.

These were my heros, and in many ways still are, as the movies themselves are representations of the ideas of those who would soon become my literary heroes Sartre, Thoreau, Vonnegut, Orwell, Huxley and the like, though lately I find myself reading things far less confrontational....so it goes.

Any way you want to slice it though, 1999 was a great year for movies .It was the year of Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, Titus, Payback, Dogma, and Eyes Wide Shut...though I can't say I watched that one until a few years later And, it was also the year of Office Space which is strikingly similar in theme to the big 3 above.

But if you were 17, an outsider, and had seen The Faculty, and Disturbing Behavior the year before, then you knew that the status quo were all sheep pulling their wool over your eyes anyhow. 1999 was the nail in the coffin.

Collectively we let our stubble grow, started appreciating bed-head, got familiar with eastern-thought, wore dark colors, and tried to find the back door. Our great war , tyler told us, was a spiritual war, our great depression our lives.

Those of us who didn't stay home voted for Nader.

The rest is an inconvenient history.

Life is a Driveway

www.toothpastefordinner.com



Over a period of years I've let go of my childhood dream of writing the next great American novel. I have since given myself over to the more realistic adult dream of writing books for children. Let's take a peek at some of my work shall we...


XML Data Management 4 Kids is one of a collection of office system networking and analysis books I've created for the younger set. Others include: Dot Net Frameworking and Configuration Issues 4 Kids, Practical Component Model User/Client Systems 4 kids, Java Security Basics 4 Server Management Personnel 4 Kids, also Digital Cameras For Dummies 4 Kids, and the Complete Idiots Guide to Micro-Information Distribution Nano-circuit Encryptions.



Dinosaurs in Space: The True Story of How Dinosaurs Brought the Word of God to the Rest of the Universe is a child's guide to some of the first known interactions between God and the dinosaurs. This book has received much acclaim from the scientific and critical community. The New York Times called it "Unbelievable"... and Dr. William H. Phelps of the Center for Dinosaur research in New Mexico said "...well...true...I cannot prove it didn't happen...good...science". Over several books the Dinosaurs in Space travel all over the universe always surprised nobody else has heard of the Bible.



Let's Have a Look at: Uranus is from my series of children's science books featuring the frisky Professor Knows-it-all. While most "scientists" give Uranus a topical treatment at best, Professor Knows-it-all probes deep into the little known parts of Uranus with plenty of large color photos throughout. Part of the Let's Have a Look At series, The Doctor tackles other subjects including Household tools, and Teen Pregancy.



Firemen: Why They Eat Children is a book about staying safe in a world full of strangers. Other titles from this series include Indians: Why God Won't Let Them Fight Back, Police Men: Guns Can Be Funs, Exploring Vans, and Mommy, I Can Make a Stew Too.

Remember books are for kids but adults can read too!, So give the kid you envy in you one of these books today, he might be less disappointed in the adult you've become!