The Wayward Irregular

The Client Wishes Only For Your Death: Terrible Advice from a Freelancing Insider

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:00:51 +0000

I’m sitting here, a pint sized Hoyo de Monterrey balanced on this ancient keyboard, and things are turning squirrely. There’s a solid length now between me and the days of pawing over a feed reader, each post a possible morsel of sustenance, each headline some terrible missile aimed for my guts. I don’t write about [...]

It’s Big, Ugly, Brazilian and Brilliant: Ice Packs and Bro-Fights

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:02 +0000

What a strange new hobby I’ve adopted, this last year spent writhing around under florescent lights with men whom intend me harm, gnashing teeth and painful grunts—I think this is what the 80’s were like. I do this by choice, the writhing and wrestling thing. Hours upon hours of each week dedicated to the art [...]

Future Televisions and the Dirty Blood Credits

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:08 +0000

Wandering into an electronics store and buying an expensive television off the wall, on a whim, is like stuffing a cooked ham into a tube sock and referring to it by a woman’s name—that is to say, the activity completely baffles me. White haired fifty something’s with popped windbreaker collars and spotless internet shoes seem [...]

And the Horsemen Came, And They Feared the Man Nathan Fillion

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:00:35 +0000

In my years on this planet I’ve arrived at two infallible truths: Ranch dressing has no discernible equal, and Nathan Fillion needs to star in a goddamn blockbuster movie already. I’ve had enough of the Twitter campaigns, blog posts, speculation, want, lust, need, and all manner of gripping your knees in a cold shower and [...]

When We First Learned of Lust: The Nintendo Christmas

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:00:54 +0000

Much like ranch dressing, Thriller, and the Sears catalog—The Nintendo Entertainment System shaped my life in ways that were both very important and wildly confusing. When the thing first arrived on our shores, it cost about ten-kerbillion American dollars, so for most of the lower middle class, we had to wait a few years for [...]

Alex Blumberg and the Womp Womp Box

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:00:48 +0000

There’s a certain level of self awareness required to enjoy sloppy fast-food ice cream in the company of another man. Generally, for those of my ilk, it’s a devious and perverse little slice of life—sitting alone in a quiet room and absorbing every calorie, savoring each granule of processed sugar, the promise to yourself that [...]

Ancient Squares of Cardboard, and All That Valueless Postage

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:00:14 +0000

My younger brother briefly showed an interest in baseball, and as a result, his grandchildren will likely snort off-world caviar from the bellybutton of alien slaves. I had my brief affair with the game, but it was rather fleeting, manifesting in a couple of those long-triangle felt banners that young boys used to tape to [...]

Changing Chairs with The Licorice Stick

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:12 +0000

I once played the clarinet for seven years, and it was those kinds of decisions that set the tone for much of my adolescence. For my graduating class, the whole band thing started in the fifth grade, and I think we were picking out our instruments at the end of the fourth. As with most [...]

It’s Not Going to Win, It’s Not Going to Claim My Body

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:00:01 +0000

It’s that moment where I feel the virus dig in and take hold, the moment where I contemplate throwing myself out of a window—the moment when I realize I’ve got a cold, and I’m going to spend the next several days leaking. The shades come down with a dangerous mechanical slam, red lights and sirens [...]

Now We’re Knuckle-Deep Into This Geek Foolery

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:00:39 +0000

I was home, but I had to eat fast—three men in Texas were waiting for me. It was more like ten, eight for sure—we’d pick up the last two if necessary—but three of them were in Texas and they were ready to get murderous. Dammit, I forgot the caffeine, things are going to get heavy [...]

The Fruit Magic About Jade Stone Machines and Electromagnetic Floor Mats

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:00:19 +0000

After an hour on the mat, I struggled to feel the jade working it’s magic, and as I pretended to imagine toxins leaving my body, I planned an escape. The mechanical bed was fit with pounds of jade stone, apparently blessed with flute music or some mystical nonsense that probably involved a self-anointed priest, eagle [...]

Dreary Fluorescence In Tractor Country

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:00:26 +0000

The man was a redneck, more so than the the kind Nebraska traditionally produced, like he was born over an ancient redneck burial ground, or grew up over a redneck fault-line of some sort. Taylor and I clicked right from the starting pistol, meeting at community college and quickly bonding over a love of sock [...]

He Quietly Cuts Himself When the Guitarist Doesn’t Wipe Down the Pizza Stations

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:00:52 +0000

The rough looking Pizza Hut located about a mile from my home has been taken over—and successfully operated—by a hardcore metal band currently taking a break between albums. This is an assumption mind you, as I can find no alternative explanation for the gruff crowd that serves me soda and swipes my credit card at [...]

We All Stand in a Triangle Here: Downtown Folk Have a Crooked Language

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:00:07 +0000

Fifty paces from a coffee shop hawking overpriced sandwiches, I witness some kind of dusted-up vagrant using a Diet Coke can as a toilet, and it was then I knew I was downtown. The peoples of downtown live in a variety of converted housing, old rat hovels repainted and laid with mahogany floors, or new [...]

Boiled Highways and Gravel Mountain Suicides

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:00:34 +0000

Wild and rumbly, the car was an impostor, and when we sped together over back-county mountains, I knew it tried damned hard to keep me from killing myself. It was a fourteen-hundred dollar maroon behemoth, a 1978 Mercury Cougar with a cracked windshield that spent it’s original years under a tarp in some old codger’s [...]

He Sleeps on Old License Plates and Has To Fight Rats for His Dinner

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:00:10 +0000

My bulldog, whom I hold in higher regard than many of my contemporaries, looks as though he’s been living in a tire fire for the past six years. Dogs get skin infections, I now know, and dogs with wrinkles get them in horrible ways. What starts as a little spot we treat with ointments, slowly [...]

The Gentleman’s Guide to Smoking a Tobacco Pipe (Without Looking Like a Hipster)

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:00:54 +0000

Learning the fine art of the tobacco pipe can be a tremendously rewarding experience, just so long as you don’t look like a complete tool-bag while doing it. For nearly as long as our species has been roasting food over a fire, we’ve been altering the tobacco leaf and dancing with it’s introspective ghosts. I’ve [...]

It’s Probably Long Division or an Ancient Germanic Language

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:00:16 +0000

While sitting in the front row and struggling to comprehend how one is expected to divide numbers using a little slash, it hit me like a chalkboard eraser to the eyeball: I was going to remain in the third grade for eternity. It was wild how quickly I accepted the fate – I would sit [...]

There’s a Special Quiet In The Cloudy Ones That Does It For Me

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:00:16 +0000

The disagreement: A gentleman with whom I work tells me that the best way to take your meals is outdoors, and I respectfully tell him that he is a godless heathen. He loves it – can’t possibly absorb enough sunlight and bathe himself all over under it’s vitamin enriched rays. The context: When you’re queuing [...]

Perhaps The Yellow Bag is a Multi-Purpose Survival Device

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:00:32 +0000

When they opened a new IKEA store a few miles from my home, little did I know this would prepare me for inter-galactic space travel. The titan blue box finished it’s month long and near-silent birth only recently – the store pasted against the horizon as a deity defiant monolith marked in four letters from [...]

There’s One For Each of Us, and Mine Is Called Keith and The Girl

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:00:59 +0000

Everyone has a morning show they watch or listen to, regardless of how accurate the words before that comma truly are. Part of the waking routine for the living can vary – coffee, a shower, blowing your nose and lighting a cigarette, wildly scrambling a fresh corpse from your bed then calling your dad’s lawyer, [...]

Ten Ton Fantasies, The Taibbi Man Crush, and I’ve Never Read Ellison

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:00:50 +0000

Often, I sit down with eight fingers on the middle row, and not a damn thing other than a messy sneeze can get them active. They say – the royal they – they say that in order to be a writer you must simply keep writing. Marvelous, thanks they. The advice boils down to doing [...]

The Inexhaustible Patience of P. Finnegan and the Terrible Funnel of Questions

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:00:26 +0000

When hired at the agency where I shared space with an indomitably patient Irishman, little did he know that my presence would eventually correlate to his daydreams involving elaborate suicide. I’ll save you the backstory for this multifarious ride, the job, the people, the locations and all the things. This brief tale will be our [...]

The Treasure Cave, The Gorilla, The Cliff Diver, Rolling Music and Bubble Guns

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:40 +0000

You don’t simply experience Casa Bonita, Casa Bonita is thrust upon you. The restaurant, tethered to our realm in Lakewood Colorado, translates from the Spanish directly into “Beautiful House,” or “Oiled Beef.” The place is organic, breathing in and out, its tendrils plunge into your mind the second it’s name is mentioned in mild conversation. [...]

More Dark Stuff: Savage Grief for Internet Explorer 6

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:00:13 +0000

If the internet browsers Firefox, Safari, and Chrome are your chiseled jaw pioneers – convertible cars and pitch black hair that never moves, then Internet Explorer yields more the image of an elderly gray sweater sitting in the corner, throwing offered spoons of cornmeal across the room in a wet-lipped fit. Only four commas in [...]

Automata: Hallowed Be Thy Game

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 07:45:05 +0000

Dark noir flows over New York, the swath of tonight’s brush is wide and grim. The 18th amendment has passed, and with it the cessation of all robotproduction - if it makes you toast it’s permissible, but if it reminds you to pick up more bread at the grocery - you’re heading for the pokey on a one-way...

It’s On The Top Shelf, Next To The Cardboard Box of Heeby Jeebies

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:00:37 +0000

There is a program we’re able to watch on our collective radio-with-pictures boxes, and it’s aptly dubbed Unsolved Mysteries – a show that literally accomplishes nothing. It comes on, peels your eyes open, then pours a slurry of nightmares into your tender ocular meats, all while playing a synthesized theme song. It’ll tell you about [...]

Marijuana Dispensaries Are The Great Evil Devil Satan

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:00:34 +0000

We are at the precipice of the “adult book store” for a generation who grew up with Nirvana as make-out music; we the pastel thinkers, we the children of the flannel button-up. In Colorado, legend goes, there’s a medical marijuana dispensary (read: retail outlet) to match every Starbucks in-state serving up burnt cups of coffee. [...]

The Burnout Even Keeps it in the Bathroom

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:04:19 +0000

Plodding to face the bathroom mirror completely in the nude wasn’t the issue, it was the pinch in my right elbow that encouraged me to consider other dimensions in space-time. The routine for years has been an unknowing homage to whatever pasty large Aryan toe heads I share ancestral DNA with, those battle axe people, [...]

Merlin Mann: Productivity Demiurge (or) My Job Isn’t Abusive, I Just Ran Into The Door

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:00:20 +0000

“Money is the reason people say they leave a job, but culture is the reason that money became an issue.” - Merlin Mann, Time & Attention

Pastel Flirtations In Showbiz: The Rock-afire Explosion

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:00:21 +0000

A quiet hush, a me-ma-me, and a clearing throat – all wisps slicing the quiet preparation behind the curtain. On it’s other side things are vibrant and full of life – youth dancing and feasting in celebration of another happy season, these things take so long year to year. The lights are dim, but spirits [...]

Feeding From Craigslist: A Tragedy In Five Examples

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:42:22 +0000

Having freelanced for a goodly set of years now, I’ve been required to scrummage a chicken bone or two from the mighty internet machine phenomenon known as Craigslist. If you aren’t familiar with what exactly Craigslist is – allow me to lay the information over your brain in moist strips in an elegant way that [...]

The Motley Talents of Jonas Friendly: Bones And All

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:00:32 +0000

A quick note: The following work of fiction is a conclusion to part one, the tale of a rubber thumbed recluse named Mr. Friendly. As before, it’s a little more dark than the fare you may be accustomed to from your humble author, so I’d like to caution the more sensitive readers / listeners. Maybe [...]

The Motley Talents of Jonas Friendly

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:00:41 +0000

A quick note: The following work of fiction is a little more dark than the fare you may be accustomed to from your humble author, so I’d like to caution the more sensitive readers / listeners. Maybe skip this one if you’re squeamish, have problems with violence, or are nauseated by birthday cake. Otherwise, please [...]

Kicking the Leaves with Kay, Crazy Comes With an Odor

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:00:38 +0000

“I’d have to say, well, nachos,” said Kay, sitting in the guest chair and looking at her feet. She peers over the notepad in her lap, and ponders the toes of her shoes. “Red wine too, but you can’t kill yourself as fast with chips and cheese.” I thought for a moment, then wrote “nachos” [...]

No Academy for the Pixel Painters, No Sanctuary for the Learn-Thirsty

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:00:40 +0000

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. The dates, somewhere where the end of the nineties dropped cocoon and developed the colors of the dos-thousands, and the setting, your average college metropolis with a majority of the population likely under legal drinking age. Third Eye Blind and Sarah Mclachlan gripped [...]

Geoff-Jeff and His Magic Flight on Wings of Buffalo

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:00:18 +0000

Not long ago I spent an afternoon like a situational comedy unemployed father figure, sitting in the office amongst my miscellany and looking at things that traditionally only receive the occasional dusting or replacement on the shelf when bumped. I pulled out an old video camera I had purchased many-a-moon ago and with it, eleven [...]

Languish of the Heathens: To Sleep Like an Adult

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:00:15 +0000

On my first date with my wife all those not-millennia ago, the evening progressed better than could be expected, and at roughly three in the morning we fell asleep in each others arms. Now, take that warm fuzzy feeling I’ve just gently placed in your belly – hold it and feel it’s glowing natural warmth. [...]

Freelancing May Have Aged Me Irreparably

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:00:34 +0000

I’ve penned with, to those who know me, alarming regularity about how I have become aged well beyond my years due to my career as a freelancer. That reads far too noble on first glance, as in reality I mean my prior statement not in reference to any degree of “being learned”, but instead in [...]

Miscellany: Chaptisode 2, White Jeans Day

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:00:27 +0000

You know the classic question, “What superpower would you have?” – or more precisely, “If you had to choose between the ability to fly, or the ability to be invisible, which one would you choose?” I think I finally have my answer. I’d want to be able to fly. I considered only briefly the ability [...]

Miscellany: Chaptisode 1, The Green Thermos

matthew@electricdynamic.com (Matthew D. Jordan) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:14:45 +0000

To make an opening statement both thought provoking and profound, I’m often required to fight the urge to use a quotation by someone who’s words can slice to the quick better than mine, like Mark Twain or Bronson Pinchot. In this case, I shall use something I heard over the recent holiday: “You’ve just been [...]