Tooth Skinner

2012-12-08T12:36:00.003-08:00

Paper for Creative Non-Fiction Class

To Die: An Essay of Death and the Mind and Things

“To die, to sleep -
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...” –William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“We are the naturalists, the collector of specimens.” I’m paraphrasing Aldous Huxley’s words. To him, the human mind was our last remaining “Darkest Africa”. Sixty years after Huxley wrote “Heaven and Hell” things have not changed much. We are still scratching around in the dark, still looking for the door handle to the inner recesses of the mind. I’m there alongside the rest; I am the collector of specimens within this realm of the subconscious. No, not the subconscious; deeper still; as Huxley puts it, “The Antipodes of the Mind”.

In “Heaven and Hell” Huxley proposes that Heaven is within our own minds. I cannot agree or disagree with him. However, if he is right or wrong, the search may yield fruit regardless. And so, I go into the mind hoping for God or Heaven or both and preparing for some dram of enlightenment even if God or Heaven is not to be found.

There is a point in a man’s life when he thinks of death and of what lies beyond the doorway. It is at this time when life takes a back seat, when the bags are packed and he contemplates the journey ahead, into the unknown. I’m sure I’m not dying, not anytime soon, I thought. But who can say, really? Life is so fragile; this bag of meat and bones is so… “mortal” that we can never be certain when it will expire.

Ludwig Wittgenstein a philosopher and professor of Cambridge says, “The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.” This is a rather profound statement. What purpose is there in studying the afterlife and the mind? So many men have lived and died without giving this question much thought and perhaps they are/were happier for it. But I can’t shake the words of Socrates from my head (perhaps these words were Professor Wittgenstein’s inspiration as well during his years of studying philosophy): “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I would add to that: the search for God, Heaven and the ultimate Truth is never in vain. I may even say that the finding of God pales in comparison with the search, or as the maxim goes: life is about the journey, not the destination.

It is obvious that we do not live in Heaven. Our consciousness is tuned, like a radio, into the physical world. We cannot survive in this world without the ability to maintain this state. And yet, is it too farfetched to think that we have the ability to change our conscious state? It happens all the time. You’re sitting on the bus, miserable, stuck in the reality of your situation. Suddenly, a fight breaks out on the bus, or the bus driver swerves, nearly missing a Coca Cola delivery truck and you’re now aware of something beyond your little world. Maybe it’s the survival instinct kicking in? But it’s another state of consciousness; one of many.

What does this have to do with the “Antipodes of the Mind”? There is an inner and outer world, just as there are eyes that perceive the outer world and eyes that perceive the inner world, just as a person suffering from Dementia or Schizophrenia sees things you and I don’t see. The eyes record and the mind translates. The inner eye records and the mind translates. What happens in the outer world really means nothing beyond what we “translate” it to mean.

Bear with me. I’m juggling handfuls of sand right now. Abstract thoughts can be slippery sometimes. Am I talking about perception here, that to change my perception would lead to enlightenment? That is exactly what I am talking about. But wait, there’s more.

Huxley uses a number of examples; artists, poets, musicians, who see life differently. This isn’t just any artist, any musician, any poet, but rather those who have created something profound, that have seen the inner light of life, a glowing “is-ness” that is reminiscent of the Dharma body or natural law, the life of the Righteous. He continues to explain that we mere mortals can achieve this state through meditation, fasting (which is: robbing the brain of sugar) or … drug usage (more specifically hallucinogens: acid, psilocybin, mescaline, etc.).

Huxley theorizes that the mind comes equipped with a restricting device, a flow restrictor that funnels our conscious perception into that of the mundane for, as I stated before, the purpose of survival, the ability to function in reality. However, there are some born whose restrictors fail, leak by; they are savants or mad or both.

Let’s step back a bit. Beyond all of this reality, what we see, what we feel, what we perceive to be important, worth dying for, worth living for, is something else. This is my thesis. This is my point. And to call it Heaven doesn’t have any more effect on “it” than to call a rock a rock; rocks don’t care what you call them, they just are (or a rock “is”). To say God is to use a mortal word, a word of mortal consciousness, our default plane of perception, and words hold no significance beyond the veil of mortal consciousness. They are just tools us smart monkeys use to make sense of reality.

This is not entirely true. I meant it more as a stab at logic and science which are merely the ‘rules or observations of the sandbox’ and nothing more. You see, there are words or combinations of words (popularly known as sentences and paragraphs) that are divine, that create images in the mind, that can be perceived and translated in the mind and bring the reader/ listener to a state beyond. However, this is a bit off topic.

Let’s head back to Wittgenstein’s statement, “… what problem does this really solve?” What purpose does the Shaman serve? What purpose does the Poet serve or the madman? Will the knowledge of Heaven, God, the Dharma body put food on my table, cure me of incurable diseases, put my kids through college (I have no kids, so this point is moot)? Maybe this is my thesis. Maybe this is my point.

Why does the actress in the horror movie walk into the dark room where there is obviously something frightening and dangerous within? We cannot be alive just for the sake of being alive. We cannot just survive. And so, here is the answer: meaning. Of course, “meaning” is just another question and the answer to that question is what I have been getting at all along, what does the man behind the curtain want with us? And how can we ever know what he wants if we cannot see him, hear him, communicate with him? And, to go back to a point I made earlier, is the answer the answer or is seeking the answer the answer. And so, I present to you the REAL answer. It isn’t meaning, at all! It is, rather, the enigma of HOPE. That is what we must cling to, climb, and pray we never reach the end of.
-D. Gage

It's Not Yet Over

2012-12-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

I can finally put quotation marks around "Dreams in Ebony" because, though I missed my 50,000 word goal (NANOWRIMO) I did reach 44,000 and I consider that a good size novel. And being a novel, as the rule dictates, I can now " " it.

"Dreams in Ebony" Excerpt: Gentle Thoughts

I want to say something important but every time I write all that comes out is filth. I suppose that’s because my life is full of it. I have thought many times to quit this novel, to delete it, to throw it out and forget about it, but I can’t. I know there is something here.

This is the scene and this is where it starts and this is where it ends and everything in between is rubbish and I hate myself for wallowing in it.

I don’t want to say something important, I want to say something profound but what is profound? I could tell a story and you wouldn’t realize I’m telling you a completely different story than the obvious one.

Take Moby Dick. It’s a whaling adventure story on the surface. Yet it’s really a story about obsession. And even that doesn’t do it justice! There is a deeper hidden meaning within the story that is so profound you really can’t put it to words. You can feel it but only if you’re ready to feel it.

This is not Moby Dick. This book is crude, borderline porn. But somewhere in it there must be a profound ineffable message. As the writer, I find it hard to feel that feeling towards my own work. As the writer, I am biased and I think, most of the time, that it is great, that it is genius. That is a guess of sorts. But other times it seems like trash, and I want to stop writing because I feel sick when I write it; I feel like I am doing a swan dive into hell of my own volition.

Here I am baring the bones of my own writing process, the Wizard of Oz throwing back the curtain without fear. Why does the author want to write this book? See above. What does the author think of the subject matter? See above. Yet it is important that you know my heart in this, that I am sorry, not only for my sins but for writing them down. It’s important that you know that I share your hate and disgust and shock. It’s important that you know that I am not evil just misled. It's important that you know, even in a pile of filth the most precious thing can be found.

Girls of "Dreams in Ebony"

2012-11-18T12:37:00.000-08:00

TARA

Tara was new and red and solid. She wasn’t petite; she was substantial. She was athletic and voluptuous. She had an overbite and a sweet smile, a condemning frown, and I saw her scream in anger once and she reminded me of a howler monkey with sharp canines, upper teeth jutting out. Her face was brushed with light freckles and her skin was pale; her face was square with rounded corners and framed in a corkscrew mane of sun-dried tomatoes. Her waist was narrow and her hips full and her breasts fuller and she had full, toned thighs and average feet full of bones and ligaments that seemed too proud to walk on the humble earth. She wrapped them in designer high-heel sandals made by Gucci.

Tara preferred wearing lavender tank-tops that showed her freckly shoulder blades and freckly cleavage and her un-pierced navel. Around that, she had a smooth layer of healthy fat covering muscles and organs and ending right above a pair of six-pocket jeans made in Bangladesh that hugged her deadly sex; a uterus wrapped in denim.

SHEILA

Sheila was small and dense, with short cropped platinum blonde hair, fair skin and dimples. She was Scandinavian and her eyes were the color of glaciers and Norwegian day skies. Her teeth were perfect. She suckled candy every moment she got and she brushed her teeth when there wasn’t candy in her sauna-hot mouth and, as a result, her teeth were white and perfect.

At ninety pounds even, Sheila was a woman you could pick up like a child and she giggled a lot and liked silly girl things. And the mind of her man was confused when she snickered and talked in her baby voice and her mature tits jiggled and her adult uterus shed its lining once a month and she had a grown-up job and she collected dolls and she knew the capital of all fifty states by heart. Her man would see a wife one minute and a daughter the next and she kept you on your toes with this divided disposition.

Sheila, post-Goth era, dressed in flower prints, spring for spring and fall for fall and in winter she wore black with tiny white flowers that looked more like snowflakes. She covered her body in long sleeved blouses with tassels and long pants, never skirts, which terminated in leather boots with average length heels that zipped up along the ankle bone. She was Euro-feminine and I don’t know what that means.

At home she wore cream blue T-shirts or white or pink with a sunflower on the front or an infamous cat with a bow or an old Scandinavian death metal band T-shirt ‘Fetus Stench’ that was full of holes and a bleach stain near the waist for house cleaning days. At home she wore sweat pants and pastel ankle socks and her guard was down and she lay on her stomach on the living room floor, ankles crossed and reading Blender magazine with a picture of a female musical celebrity on the cover and she had a bowl full of butterscotch candies beside her.

SHELBY

Shelby was a queen. She preferred silk and lace over cotton and polymers. Heels were not a woman’s right but her duty and the heels molded her spine into goddess pose eternally.

She had small breasts that she never liked and so she wore bras all the time that made them seem larger. She dyed her hair black every other week and she spent hours in the bathroom. Her skin was gypsum and nearly transparent on Chemo days. Fun colors were for serfs not high born ladies. She walked like a queen and acted like she knew more than most and maybe she did.

Her nails were painted candy red and were manicured in the French fashion, but what that means I don’t know. She was obsessed with handbags, the smaller the better unless she would be out all day or if she were going to Chemo, then she carried a colossal bag that had everything a self-respecting woman would need on such days.

To the stranger, Shelby looked like the ice queen and she didn’t say much except for her eyes which spoke volumes and her lips which said ‘take me’ without breath. To everyone she was unapproachable and dangerous but I was not everyone. I was her inside man, the beast to her beauty, her guardian and champion and the high priest of her holy temple.

ALICIA

Alicia was a beast. Alicia was a fetus dead in the amniotic fluid of earth. Alicia was the stain of semen on your Sunday shirt.

At times, Alicia seemed emaciated, just bones and skin and a rare bit of fat to protect her barren womb. She was a spine with cornrows and glowing red eyes in the shadows, a wraith with toasted nipples and a burning cunt. At other times, she was full and fleshy and brown sugar and pan-seared butter. And again at other times, she was the African warrior, bare feet, bare breasted, spear in hand and dressed in tribal beads.

She wore women’s clothes with ignorance and despised anything restricting like bras or girdles or stockings. She wore men’s clothes when she wanted or no clothes more often than not. She wore the bed and the couch like thrones and she walked like a panther on the prowl or hopped like a rabbit in the brush. Some days she flew like a Raven in the cold air and perched like a vulture ready to devour your virtues and swallow your morals whole.

Most of her clothes lay scattered on the floor, chairs, stuffed in hampers and she had no need for hangers or drawers. All she hung in the closet was a bright blue dress, an Alice in Wonderland costume, that she wore when the mood struck her and she guarded this dress and the matching tights and shoes with her life, growling at the mouth of the den with her litter of pups inside.

JANET

Janet was a mother who wore her age well. She had silver hair she never dyed and wrinkles around her eyes she wore like a noble woman. She had liver spots on her folded hands and on her cleavage above her sucking breasts that were trimmed with pearl colored lace bras. Her body was getting old, time was pulling her skin, her meat, her bones down into the soil beneath her feet and yet a spirit of youthfulness and pride kept her upright and that spirit was sex appeal. In the parlance of our time, she was a veritable MILF.

She was quiet and passive but I know she wanted to fight and dance and fuck. And she hated the number fifty and her expired womb was incredibly still hungry. She came back from Spain, not for love, but to be loved and she knew no other man who had touched her like Adam.

Yet Adam had moved on and Janet was death and Adam wanted more than an ending. Adam couldn’t see in Janet’s aging body what I saw, what I’m sure many men would see in Janet: vintage wine. I think he saw Janet’s mother, his own mother, tall panties and menopause, adult diapers and dentures. I think Adam was never found of his mother. Adam was into girls, young and alive and pert.

When Adam touched a girl, Janet got wet and jealous. When Adam kissed a girl, Janet had a little orgasm of death and her maturing thighs quivered with the life left in them. I would watch her when Adam ignored her. I would study her when Adam cared nothing for her.

Excerpt Time

2012-11-03T13:11:00.002-07:00

Except from "Dreams in Ebony"

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“A quote from some woman named Lewis Carroll.”

“Lewis Carroll? Lewis was a man.”

“Oh no. I’m pretty sure she was a woman.”

“Alicia, believe me, he was a man. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was his real name.”

“Well, she looks like a woman in her picture.”

“Don’t you have anything more important to do? I’m trying to work.”

“It’s raining out and I’m dreadfully bored.”

“Dreadfully? I never thought I would say this but I think you read too much.”

Alicia sneered. “If you don’t know where you’re going… I don’t think any of us really know where we are going. Do you know where you’re going?”

I looked up from my work. “To hell,” I wanted to say but I didn’t. “Is something bothering you, Allie?”

“No way! I’m just thinking about what you’re gonna do when I’m gone.”

I tossed my pen down and took a drink. “Okay. So, where is it you’re going? And why are you leaving?”

She didn’t answer right away; she just dug at the crotch of her jean shorts, involuntarily swaying her foot back and forth. Finally, she said, “I don’t think I can just explain it to you that easy. I don’t think you would believe me if I did.”

“I want to believe you,” I said. I really meant it too. While Alicia could be frustrating at times, her mind fascinated me and if she was willing to open up and show me what was going on up there I wouldn’t argue.

“I have been dreaming about death.”

“What about it?”

“About ‘me’ dying.”

“You’re twenty three. If anyone around here needs to worry about dying it’s me.”

She got to her feet and walked to the window. “I really, really like fall time. So, pretty. I like leaves but they don’t live very long, do they? They’re dying and falling from the trees. I wonder if the tree is sad when its leaves die. I would be if I were a tree. It must be sad being a tree.”

“Are you sick or something?”

“No. Not yet.”

NANOWRIMO

2012-10-31T15:45:00.000-07:00

Nanowrimo starts tonight (or tomorrow for people in other parts of the world). I decided this would be a good time to actually finish something I started and so I am going to write a novel: Dreams in Ebony.

Here's a bunch of philosophical garbage concerning this impending work:

In the case of Dreams in Ebony there are many unbelievable characters who engage in some rash and unbelievable acts and therefore, like fantasy, the author must work harder to legitimize the characters and their actions or risk losing the reader or worse: misguide the reader down a path the author did not want the story to go. This is, as stated before, not fantasy, not erotica, not a dime store romance, but rather a dark drama of sexual deviants. And despite the dark nature it is imperative that the end result of the work bring the reader to a good place where this chaotic world somehow settles into something more palatable; or at the very least, a return to normalcy, a cool breeze that hits the face of the movie goer as he steps out of the theatre.

Furthermore, or perhaps, deeper down the rabbit hole, a writer is bound by the oath of morality to create a positive message, regardless of how antipodal that message may be, for his reader due to the inherent dangers of parables woven into all stories and their ability to effect the moral compass in the subconscious mind of the masses. Think of the effects of violence in television or the rise of sexual promiscuity, a product of the expanding porn industry thanks to the Internet. These things are excellent examples of writer’s oath (or the oath of any artist) ignored. Gun don’t kill people, people don’t kill people, the media, the writer, the artist, the musician, the photographer, they kill people.

-D. Gage

Remember When? A Manifesto of Sorts.

2012-09-22T15:11:00.000-07:00

What is important in life? Is it material gain? Is it friends and family? Is it hard work with a good harvest? When it’s all said and done, when you’re dying of whatever disease or ailment that fate should curse you with, when you have nothing left but a few moments to look back and ask yourself “was it all worth it” or “did I do my best”, will you have regrets? Isn’t there a girl you didn’t kiss but should have, a hamburger you wanted to eat but didn’t, a trip you could’ve taken but you were too afraid to leave home?

I have always believed that having experiences is the purpose of life, the “remember whens”, the funny anecdotes, the pain and pleasure, the friends and enemies. If I pursue this mode of thinking, if I focus on experience alone with no regards to sowing and reaping; and if I one day find myself alone and homeless, sleeping under a bridge, hacking out my lungs and lighting another cigarette, it will have all been worth it to have been part of the experience of life. I will have my memories. As muddled and vague as they are or will be, I will have those memories and that’s more than I can say for someone too afraid to live.

I remember back in the mid-nineties when I was high on magic mushrooms, lost in an airport parking lot in the dead of winter. I remember working for a printing press in Tyler, Texas, helping to produce tracks for YWAM, and witnessing to sinners on the streets of downtown Dallas. Once I lived in a tiny, cockroach-infested apartment in Reynosa, Mexico and I hiked through the boreal forests, muskegs and wild lands of Alaska when I was a boy. I was friends with Pastor’s sons and drug dealers, harlots and saints, geniuses and morons, shallow jerks and deep philosophers, hopeless poets. In the seventh grade I spent an entire semester playing chess and an entire summer getting drunk and stoned. I have been a painter, a musician, a film maker and a dishwasher at a resort sixty miles out of town. I have been in love, found a soul mate and lost her, found her again and lost her again. I have been married and I have watched the horrors of chemotherapy tear apart the woman I love. I have been deep under the ocean in a warship and jammed in the back of a bush plane in inclement weather bound for Russia. I have seen the crumbling of communism first hand and the poverty of our Mexican neighbors. I have been a prince and a pauper, a god and the most mortal of men.

It’s these memories that keep me alive. It’s these stories that help me get up in the morning. I want to never have regrets. I’m sure I will. However, I can’t help but try my best, to make the decisions good or bad, regardless of the outcome and to be willing to live with the consequences. I only have one life to live, if Western theology is true, and I owe it to myself to live it as best as I know how.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not condemning hard work or success but I am saying that you can’t take it with you and I’m sure you don’t need a PhD to get into heaven nor will it keep you out of that other place. However, your experience, the love and loss, pain and pleasure, is more immortal than your fancy cars and I-phones, your degrees or even other people’s opinion of you. All you really own is your soul and your conscious self. Feed it with experience.

-D. Gage (alias Nosmo King)

image from: http://planetsave.com/2012/01/05/the-green-life/

2012-09-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

IBS Entry 9-16-12

I think the most important thing that anyone could write down on paper is the truth. I have tried my best to be honest, to be forward, and to be unapologetic for stating my beliefs. But I am not always successful. My failure comes, not from a need to lie but rather from not knowing the truth. This is what philosophy is: you live a life; you organize it; you take the clues you are given and you arrange them in lucid pattern and present them to the world. And it is not from lack of trying or lack of caring that leads those patterns, those theories, those philosophies to failure but rather the lack of clues. I am only one man; I have lived only one life, and it is not unfeasible to think that I only have one view, one voice concerning the universe.

So, how do you reach the truth? If I have failed you and others have failed you, who will not fail you? Aristotle said once: “an unexamined life is not worth living”. And so, I argue that it is up to you to find your truth. You are your own salvation and you will never fail unless you quit trying.

Some people might need a little help along the way. Some people might need a lot of help. But in the end they are responsible for their own soul, their own path, their own philosophy. I cannot tell you how to live your life and I wouldn’t expect you to take what I say on face value. Question everything. Examine everything. Don’t play the fool. Question me!

-D. Gage

Back But for How Long

2012-09-16T01:13:00.002-07:00

I have tried my best to be a closet freak. I have tried to cut off ties to the cyber world but I have failed and now I am back. It has been a long year and a tough year and nothing good has come of it. I do have a handful of college credits under my belt, more than I did last year. But beyond that I have nothing to show but a deeper dent in my computer chair and carpel tunnel syndrome from playing video games. My brain is mush, my bank account is drained and all for nothing.

I suppose nothing is lost but time and it's now the day to put pen to paper and drag that great American novel out of my twisted mucked up brain, the "child of my understanding" as Cervantes would call it.

The thing that I'm most afraid of is not failure but mediocrity. Let's say I write this book. Alright, that's a feat not everyone does every day but then what? Let's say I get it published. An even more difficult feat (unless I decide to self-publish but what good would that do my ego or my pocketbook)? And then you stumble upon my book whilst perusing through all the thousands of new books on Amazon. Let's say you buy it and read it. What then?

The world spins on and all I can do is write another one. Your copy of my first book collects dust on your shelf or is deleted from your Kindle and my name is forgotten. Mediocrity.

Here is another word: profundity. Ah, why shoot for the moon when there are billions of galaxies to explore! Why settle for a hamburger when fillet mignon is within reach? Why settle for a good book when you can have a great book or better yet: a profound book?

However, most profound books were written on accident. That's my belief and so chances are good that good is what you'll get. Then again, you'll get nothing if I don't start.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

-D. Gage (alias: Nosmo King)

Abstraction: A Quick Rant about Authorship

2012-04-18T15:30:00.001-07:00

Lately my curiosity has drifted towards abstract designs through the venue of storytelling and creative non-fiction. After all, what is image without meaning? And what purpose does storytelling serve if not to create symbol for abstract thought? This is often called theme or moral lesson, yet maybe there is more to it. Maybe there is an aspect of storytelling that is so complex and so abstract we don’t even have a word for it. Maybe even the shallowest yarn can have a deep meaning that, while escaping the conscious mind, cannot avoid being absorbed by the sub-conscious mind. Anything that can affect the sub-conscious mind is a dangerous tool.

Not that I am against a good old fashioned philosophical rant to break up the monotony of fiction (see Melville, Steinbeck, Hemingway, et cetera). These are thrilling to read. These are deep gems I mine up from the dark earth and show them to the world. That’s a good analogy, mining the depths of literature for brilliant gems of wisdom. Of course, the analogy continues. What good is a gem but something pretty to look at? And when it ceases to sparkle it’s no more than an expensive paper weight without application.

Something can be taken away from a story (as mentioned earlier) no matter how shallow the theme. And wisdom is best ingested in subtle bites, like slipping a pill into a dog’s treat, or a virtue within a good story. The medicine is hard to swallow. We connect that thought with the memory of the past, the nasty spoonful of something that was meant to taste like grapes but tasted more like the bottom of a pharmacist’s shoes.

And so is wisdom. Wisdom isn’t fun. It's too much like discipline and discipline is never fun no matter how good it is for us. And so we use stories like dog treats. And good authors, wise authors, inject medicine into our treats.

Authors are doctors of wisdom with no accountability regarding theme, virtue or sound philosophy. We need a Hippocratic oath! Perhaps once there was such an oath; the religious critics of righteousness and secular critics of unassailable logic. Yet the acceptance of subjectivism has caused so many schisms in the moral fiber of the literary evaluators that they lack any kind of amalgamation of virtuous ethos.

Wow, that sounded all scholar-like. How’s this? We can no longer decide what is right and wrong and therefore there is no right and wrong therefore evil prevails. Through story after story, this collective erroneous philosophy and wicked virtue seeps into our society. Thus, as writers we can only be fighting for the return to virtue or playing fiddle while Rome burns and laughing maniacally. The Jedi or the Sith Lord, you decide.

I can’t expect anyone to believe this. I am reduced to a quack with an “End of the World” sign wrapped around my neck. I’m just a bit of color in drab world, too low brow for the nobles, and too high brow for the prots. I’m looking for a place in line to stand only to discover no one wants me there, not if I plan on complaining the whole time, at any rate.

Complaining? I don’t know how to do anything else, sorry.

-D. Gage (i.e. Nosmo)

East of STEINBECK!!!!

2012-04-14T10:08:00.004-07:00

I have been reading East of Eden by J. Steinbeck recently and, with all the other things on my plate at the moment, I wondered if I was wasting my time. I even went so far as to say to myself that John Steinbeck wasn't really all that people made him out to be; that he wasn't deep enough, profound enough for me right now.

And then I read chapter 13 of East of Eden and then I was knocked off my feet. I have read that chapter five times now and I still can't stop thinking about it. Profundity indeed!

I am blindly reading Steinbeck, which excuses my ignorance, though I'm not certain whether that statement makes any sense to anyone but me. Anyhow, the following is an excerpt from East of Eden- chapter 13:

In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and

even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I

believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the

individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of

extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man…. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most

valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual…. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

-Steinbeck

Fan Letter

2012-03-26T13:08:00.003-07:00

This is fictional.

Dear World’s Greatest Author,

I never thought I would be writing to you a letter, but here I am. You know, you are my favorite author. I have read every one of your books and short stories. I keep them all on a special shelf right below a poster of that movie based on your best-selling novel.

I wanted to congratulate you on the birth of your son. What a wonderful gift! I bet he’ll grow up to be a brilliant writer like you some day. I saw his picture on your website. What a cutie! He definitely has your eyes. I have two sons myself and they are a joy, most of the time anyway. Isaac is a year old and Henry is three.

I wanted to see you at the writer’s conference last May but my one year old came down with the croup so I had to stay home. I was so disappointed. I wanted to see you so bad! I have only two copies of your books that are signed; both I got off of Craig’s list. They are authentic. I think. Either way, it’s something, right? I was so mad at my son for getting sick. I suppose it wasn’t his fault. But I don’t think he understands what you mean to me. I don’t think anyone does. I hope you do.

I wanted to tell you how pretty your wife is. I saw her pictures on your web site. I can’t imagine a man as gorgeous and talented as you being married to an ugly woman. She is very lucky to have you. I wish my husband was a writer. He’s not very romantic. Instead, he is very practical and boring. I can’t imagine that you’re like that. It would be impossible. I read all your books and it’s like I know your mind. I can imagine who you are just by your writing. You are so open-minded. My husband isn’t very open-minded.

I wonder if your wife is open-minded. She would have to be, I guess. Or maybe she doesn’t condone the type of writing you do. Maybe she doesn’t appreciate it. It must be hard living with a woman like that, someone that doesn’t value your genius. Now that I think about it she has shifty eyes. I don’t really trust her. I bet you don’t trust her either. Maybe you’re just waiting for the right opportunity to leave her, the right woman to come along and make you happy.

You should leave her. I think I should leave my husband, as well. We could get a cabin and get away from it all. You could write your books and I could read them and tell you what I think of them. I write a bit of erotic fiction, too. I bet you would like it. It’s a bit dark, I guess. Darker than what you write. Have you ever heard of snuff stories?

Well, my love. I look forward to the nights we can make love in our feces and tie each other up, et cetera. Until then, keep writing and know: I love you.

Love,
Your Biggest Fan

* * *

Dear My Biggest Fan,

You need therapy.

Signed,
The World’s Greatest Author

Haruki Murakami

2012-03-23T01:09:00.001-07:00

My fiction-writing professor told me this is the most acclaimed writer of our day and that he is coming here to Oahu on the 10th of April. I have been stealing away time to read some of his short stories in hopes to get some idea why this Japanese fellow is 'most acclaimed'. I can't put my finger on it, really. Maybe literary fiction is as abstract as poetry in terms of what makes it good? Maybe good literary fiction is all a matter of opinion (or any fiction!)?

I suppose it would be difficult to write good fiction if you couldn't tell good fiction from bad. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe spotting good fiction is someone else's job? A writer writes, he doesn't judge, he just writes. And if he's lucky...

Between writing and school and worrying about bills, I'm over-taxing myself. My brain is turning to mush and I just need some sleep! I have been in school since January 2011 without a break and I am, after spring semester, going right back in. I can't afford a break; literally. Going to school is paying my bills!

Oh well, that which does not kill us...

-D. Gage

The Tale of the Jack Ass

2012-03-19T07:41:00.012-07:00

Here's submission #2 for Fiction Writing Class.
I just thought I would point out something before you read this. My attempt in writing this story was to elicit some sort of emotional response. When it was shared with the class I was happy to find that it did. In fact, one guy was nearly in tears talking about his Aunt who had cancer and, basically, scolding me for being a heartless bastard. I'm not sure he realized that this story, while fictional, is based on events from my own life! Anyhow, if you hate the Narrator, feel sorry for him, love him or whatever, let me know. I'm not pulling punches anymore in my fiction.

The Tale of the Jack Ass
by D. Gage

I watched her watching people.

I took a sip of my soda.

The cold AC of the shopping mall eatery made my skin break out in goose bumps, which contrasted with the burning sensation from the hot sauce I had liberally drizzled onto my burrito moments before.

I was not that far from the girl in the pink Lolita dress. She was probably nineteen, maybe twenty. Her bleached white hair was tied into piggy tails framing a baby doll face that was cluttered with piercings. She had a tattoo of a star on her left cheek. She wore Goth makeup and black combat boots with black and white striped nylons covering her slim legs that disappeared beneath the frilly hem of her pink dress. She was an enigma of fashion yet somehow that drastic juxtaposition between the innocent, little Lolita girl-look and the rebellious Goth girl-look worked for me. She looked like what Alice would look like if she had, instead of falling down the rabbit hole, fell into a tattoo parlor.

She looked at me, smiled and turned back to her coffee. God! I would rip off that dress and make a woman of her if I could just get her alone. But I couldn’t. I took a bite of my burrito. She didn’t notice me. I took a drink of my soda. Her eyes wandered aimlessly towards the large glass wall of the eatery’s terrace; her pale, ivory neck curved flawlessly.

A pigeon struck the glass with a thump and fell down dead. She giggled. She sipped her coffee from a cardboard cup, crowned with a white plastic lid that was smudged with ebony lipstick. I was in love.

* * *

Years ago, I married a girl with cancer. I suppose you don’t choose who you fall in love with. If I could I might have chosen differently. Nevertheless, I found myself standing at the altar, watching this thirty year old redheaded Catholic girl walking down the aisle towards me, dressed in a white wedding gown. She was radiant and I was in love.

Carol and I were wild lovers. It’s as if we were spitting in the face of cancer with our sex. I mean, we did it three or four times a day. And we had sex all over the place; on the washing machine, in the back seat of the car, on the couch, on the bed, on the bathroom floor, on the back patio while the neighbors were having a BBQ. Sometimes it went on for hours.

“Open the curtains,” she said.

“The lights are on,” I told her.

“Let the world see me!” she said. Her breasts heaving as she rode me like a cowgirl.

Other times we laid in post-coital bliss with only the moon light embracing our naked bodies; warm, spent and happy; Adam and Eve alone in the garden of Eden.

Well, I suppose it wasn’t always like that. There were many days when the Chemo and cancer and drugs were too much. Those were quiet days when you didn’t talk too loud or move too fast for fear of disrupting the delicate balance of Carol’s disease.

Those were the quiet days Carol and I spent lying on the bathroom floor after a twenty minute long seizure. Carol would stop breathing and stop moving, her heart barely beating. I would cry. I would beg her to wake-up. I would place the lens of my glasses under her nose, looking for her breath to fog them up.

Before I met her, she had signed a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ addendum to her Will which made it illegal for medical professionals to perform any life-saving feat should the need arise, which meant that if she didn’t start breathing again it would be pointless to bring her to the hospital and I would have to sit and watch her die, incapable of doing anything about it.

“Come on, baby. Don’t leave me here alone.”

There were lots of seizures and morphine hallucinations, temporary blindness, night terrors and fatigue, not to mention the sickening smell of sulfur on her skin, her lips, her sex. There was the feeling of powerlessness when she told me the doctors found another tumor, this time in her stomach, which was why she was unable to keep any food down. She was living on health shakes and green tea.

God, this shitty, messed up life! But that was what made our passion louder and longer and deeper, knowing that any moment she could be gone, that any morning I could wake up and she wouldn’t. What a fire we had! Every little thing meant something profound, every household accessory we bought, every meal we ate, every movie we watched, every kiss… profound!

* * *

The girl in the pink Lolita dress pulled out her cell phone, held it up and took a picture of the dead pigeon. She looked at the picture and then laughed again. I have always liked pigeons. Most people don’t. They’re filthy birds who live on garbage.

What was I thinking? I had no place to take this strange, macabre goddess once I lured her in. I couldn’t take her home. I didn’t have the money for a hotel room.

I glanced down at my wedding ring. I started to slip it off but then I paused. I looked up. The girl was getting to her feet. She started walking away. She dropped her trash in the bin that said RECYCLE which was only eight inches away from the bin that said TRASH. The wedding ring hovered over my knuckle. “It’s now or never,” I thought to myself. But I hesitated. I thought I should just go home to my wife; that I should try, somehow to make things better, to fix her.

“Make good what is yours.”

* * *

It had been three years since Carol’s cancer had gone into remission. We drifted apart afterward; after the fear of death, the fear that was a catalyst for our unrestrained passion, was no longer there, we had nothing holding us together other than the lack of motivation to get divorced.

Death was no more a threat to us than it was to any ordinary couple. And just like any ordinary couple, we had nothing in common, nothing left to say. She stayed up late and slept on the couch. I went to bed early and slept on the bed. On and on this went, drifting further and further into apathy.

The passionate lovemaking was replaced with sporadic sex-making, then replaced by head aches and ‘not-in-the-moods’, until it was almost a taboo topic to bring up. So, I resigned myself to concentrating on my hobbies and my work. And I kept my manly urges to myself. Could I really stay celibate the rest of my life just to stay true to a woman who was incapable of having a healthy relationship?

The Chemo had done a number on her brain. She developed bi-polar disorder, mild schizophrenia, agoraphobia. All of this was shameful to her Catholic sensibilities, her stubborn Irish pride and so she covered it up with lies, lies that I could see right through. I couldn’t trust her. She pretended everything was normal. It’s easy to pretend when your mind can’t grasp reality half the time.

I just wanted to be free from this prison of responsibility. I wanted to be rid of this anchor tied around my neck that was named ‘Carol’. But I couldn’t leave her. What would people think of me when they found out I left my wife because she was sick? What would I think of myself? What kind of jack ass does that?

* * *

I didn’t miss a day of church from my baptism day until my twentieth birthday when I finally moved out of my parent’s basement, got a job working for the city recreation center as a janitor and started living my own life. Every Sunday afternoon my mother would call and ask me where I was; why I wasn’t in church. Every time she called I was high or drunk or getting laid, which only compounded the guilt trip she never failed to lay on me during those calls.

Two years later I met Carol in a British-themed bar called Watson’s Pub. She had dark auburn hair and wore tight blue jeans and was drinking a Guinness straight from the can. I fell in love with her that very night.

A month later we got married and my mother stopped calling on Sundays and I got a better job working for the Postal Service as a mail man. Carol had an inheritance, not a large one. Her father had owned a construction company which he built from the ground up and he was also very savvy with stocks and bonds and when he died he left his only child, Carol, three hundred thousand dollars.

Three hundred thousand. That’s about the cost of two years of Chemo-therapy, hospital visits, morphine prescriptions, and other related expenses.

“Sometimes I feel like that money could be used for something more important,” she said to me one day.

“What’s more important than saving your life?” I asked.

She never told me. But the thought that something else was more significant to her than her own life made me a little disheartened. Maybe she was right. Maybe there was something more important than her. But the need to survive for the sake of our love was too strong to make me quit on her.

Back then, anyway.

* * *

“I don’t know if I would like that,” Shelia said.

“What don’t you like about it?”

“Well, I do like the idea of getting all that attention from other men but I think I would feel bad for you.”

“You don’t get it, do you? I like the idea of you being a slut. It turns me on.” I paused. “Hold on one second.”

I flipped off my head set, walked to the bedroom door and stood there for a moment, listening. I could hear my wife downstairs talking to herself as she always did. I could hear the roar of the cars outside. Our townhouse was built close to a busy highway which would have bothered some people but the sound of traffic always soothed me to sleep at night. It was a constant reminder that life goes on, that the world was still there, that I wasn’t alone.

I stepped back to the computer, slid the head set on and said, “Hello?”

“Hi. I’m here. Were you checking on your wife?”

“Yeah. She’s down stairs. So, where were we?”

“What’s she doing down there?” asked Shelia.

“I don’t really want to talk about her.”

When I asked her out, the girl in the pink Lolita dress told me her name was Shelia. Shelia was twenty two. Shelia had a thing for married men. Shelia had always been close to her father until he committed suicide three years ago.

Shelia loved her father more than any other man. No one could compare to him and so she never dated during high school but instead she would run home every day after school and wallow in her father’s affection. She told me this. She told me she knew her mother was jealous of her father’s fondness of her. She told me she liked seeing her mother jealous. She told me that she would fantasize about kissing his lips in a sexy grown-up way and watching her mother seethe with anger. She had the power of youth and beauty, tight thighs and firm, young breasts. At the age of forty, her mother had sagging tits and wrinkles and couldn’t compete against this charming Lolita.

“I’m gonna get a divorce. Then we can be together for real,” I told her.

She didn’t answer at first. I could hear her soft breath over the microphone.

Finally she said, “That’s a pretty big decision. Maybe you should wait and think about it for a few weeks.”

* * *

There was this mobile that hung from our bedroom ceiling. It had moons and stars and a big sun hanging down from the center. Carol made it years ago out of wire and paper mache. She painted it with metallic gold and silver model paint. She gave it to me as a birthday present.

I remember I was really drunk and I thought it was the stupidest gift I had ever gotten. I told her this and she got angry and threw the thing against the wall. A second later she fell to the floor and started having a seizure. She nearly died and I felt so guilty that I stayed up all night repairing the mobile and then, when it was finished, I hung it above our bed.

Now, the mobile was caked in dust. A few stars and a moon had broken off; they had been kicked under the bed. When I looked at it I thought of the seizure she had on my birthday. And I thought about the day she went into remission; that day life had, for once, handed her a good deal. And then I thought about the past few years and how she seemed to have forgotten that life was precious, that we could die of cancer and lose each other at any moment.

Carol was lying next to me, lost in her own thoughts. She rarely ever came to bed anymore but now she was sick with the flu. She was dehydrated, her lips cracked and dry, her forehead burning with fever. She always came to me when she was feeling sick. I tucked her in and crawled into bed next to her. We just laid there in silence, listening to the cars speed past on the highway.

I felt my cell phone buzz and I glanced at Carol. She had fallen asleep. I pulled the phone out of my pocket. It was Shelia.

Thinking about you.

I replied back:

Thinking about you to.

That was a lie.

* * *

The county fair was on a Saturday and it was raining. I told Shelia I would meet her at the fair. But, when I got off the bus and walked through the muddy parking lot of Johnson’s Field, I received a call from her saying she wasn’t going to make it.

“Are you kidding me?” I said.

“I swear I told you already that I was going to a concert today,” she replied.

“You told me it was tomorrow.”

“Whatever. I’m not going to be there so… why don’t you take your wife to the fair like a good husband?”

“Shelia, my wife hasn’t left the house in over a year. She’s not going anywhere.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

I thought about leaving. I could walk home from here; it was only a few miles. But I was wet, cold and pissed that Shelia had stood me up; pissed that she mentioned Carol and my ability as a husband. She didn’t have a clue what I was going through. I don’t think anyone did. I didn’t talk about it much so I couldn’t blame anyone for not understanding, but still…

I walked through the fairgrounds, hell-bent on finding the beer tent. Instead, I found the girl at the 4H kiosk. There’s nothing better to take your mind off of your problems like a bored teenage girl.

Overall, the fair was not going very well. Most of the patrons looked as miserable as I was. This girl looked even more miserable than most.

“Hey, your name in Deborah, right?” I asked the cute blonde. I recognized her from some church function Carol had dragged me to a year ago. Deborah sat with her feet tucked up against her tanned, sexy thighs.

She was chewing gum and texting. But, when she realized I was talking to her, she handed me a brochure. “If you have any questions concerning 4H there’s an address for the website in the brochure,” droned the teen. And she went back to texting having never even looked at my face.

I stood there, watching her and after a moment she looked up at me as if she was annoyed that I was still there. “Did you need anything else, sir?”

“You look bored,” I said.

“No way. Having a helluva time,” she sneered. She tossed her cell phone into her purse and began file her nails with a peach emery board. She glanced back up at me and blew a bubble with her gum.

“You know there is this maze made of hay bails. No one is using it because of the rain. I was thinking you and I could check it out,” I said.

“Why would I want to do that?”

I pulled a small bag out from my jacket and the girl recognized it immediately.

“Hell yes! I’ll go,” she said.

Deborah brought a camouflage poncho -probably her father’s- and I had a towel and a pipe and a bag of weed. We quickly got lost in the hay bail maze, smoked a bud and had some pretty crazy sex. Before we finished, the rain began falling harder than it had all day and the poncho was leaking bad. So, she tossed it aside.

I felt like a virile stallion with the rain pounding on my naked flesh; this beautiful young girl pounding down on me with her naked flesh! I felt like a Greek god! I can’t tell you what Deborah felt. However, when we got back to the 4H kiosk she was smiling from ear to ear. Maybe it was the pot, but I like to think it was the wild sex in the pouring rain.

* * *

I was at work when I got the call from Johnson’s Community hospital that Carol’s cancer had returned and it was more aggressive than the first time.

“I can’t do this again,” she told me.

“I know,” I replied. “But what other option is there?”

She didn’t reply but I knew she had already decided on her ‘other option’.

A week later, after a long day at work, I returned home to find Carol lying on the floor, her head resting in a pool of bile, her arms folded up against her like she had had cramps in her stomach. A bottle of pills and several empty wine bottles sat on the coffee table. It looked as if she was trying to get to her phone on the kitchen counter but fell before she could reach it.

The strangest part about the whole scene was a sense of relief. I knew it was wrong to feel this way but I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t happy. But I wasn’t mourning her loss, either.

The police questioned me and I explained to them about my wife’s failing health, her refusal to go through treatment a second time. I thought they were going to blame me for her death. Maybe I was responsible. I didn’t feel responsible.

After Carol’s funeral, I went to the bar to drink. A few days before, my parents cleaned out the townhouse, putting my stuff in storage and giving Carol’s things away to charity. They were sensitive to my grief, despite the fact that I had none. They thought I was in shock. I wasn’t. Or, if I was, it was the shock a convict feels when the warden suddenly releases them from prison without warning.

Now, I could get back on my feet! I could live my life to the fullest. I toasted myself with a glass of whiskey, swallowed it down and pulled out my cell phone to call Shelia.

“Hey, beautiful! How are you?”

At first, she didn’t respond. I could hear her soft breath over the phone. Finally she said, “I’m moving to Florida with my mother.”

“You’re what?”

“Don’t make a big deal out of this, alright. I’m just not ready to be with one man exclusively.” She paused. I was stunned. “You know what? I got a job at Disney Land, so I’ll be working when I get there.”

“Disney Land is in California,” I said.

“Oh… which one is in Florida? Never mind, I have to go. And Aaron, I’m sorry about your wife. I think you should go see a grief counselor. It would be good for you. My mom went to one after my dad died and it helped her a lot.”

“Don’t... Look… Can’t you just… you know, stick around for a little while; see if we can work this out?”

“No.” I could hear her mother’s voice in the background. “What? Dammit, mom! I have to go. My flight leaves in twenty minutes, so…”

She hung up the phone.

I tried to call Carol, but I forgot she was dead. I thought about erasing her number out of my phone but something stopped me. Something hit me, something I had never expected. Carol had been an anchor, a constant. That’s what a spouse is, a rock to stand on in a storm. Even in her sickness she was there for me.

Now, she was gone. Now, Shelia was gone. Now, I had nothing. Life started hurting even though I had spent so much time building up this armor of cynicism and detachment. I needed someone to tell me everything was alright but the only person who would do that was buried in the ground.

I paid my tab and staggered out of the bar. I thought about going to her grave, maybe bring flowers. I couldn’t do that. The idea made my stomach churn. I thought about going to the airport to find Shelia. No, she would probably be gone before I could get there. I thought about Deborah. That was a waste of time, I mean, it wasn’t even raining!

I don’t know why I went there but I found myself driving back to the townhouse. I still had a key. I opened the door and looked in. Everything seemed cold and dead and dark. I walked through the empty rooms trying to remember what it had looked like before the furniture had been taken out, before the pictures had been removed from the walls and the nick-knacks Carol had gotten from her grandmother so long ago, had been given away to the Salvation Army.

There was a strange sense about the place that reminded me of a story I heard as a child about a death in the family and doves flying out of a radio that played ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. It was creepy, like ‘Catholic church’ creepy. Death, creepy.

I slowly walked up the stairs. My heart was beating fast. I was sweating. A knot was swelling in my throat. The floor boards creaked under my weight as I stepped through the hall and into the bedroom. The bed was gone.

I stretched out on the floor and listened to the cars on the highway outside through the window and a started singing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ under my breath. I looked up, I saw the mobile still hanging there, stars and moon missing and only a metallic gold sun remained. I started to cry.

* * *

I was lying on the couch and Carol was with me. It was the Sunday after our one year anniversary and a warm beam of light spilled out across the carpet of the living room and onto my bare arm. From the open window a tranquil breeze found its way in, cooling my warm sunlit skin. The light also fell on Carol’s dark red hair, causing it to shine brilliantly like fire.

“One day we’ll have a baby,” Carol promised. “After this whole cancer thing is over with.”

“A red-headed baby?” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “With your blue eyes and perfect German nose.”

“And he will be stubborn and he’ll talk too much,” I added.

Carol poked me in the ribs. “Stop it. I don’t talk too much,” she said. She laughed and I laughed. I buried my perfect German nose into her dark auburn hair and squeezed her gently.

“One day, everything will be wonderful,” I told her.

And we fell asleep.

Submersible Fiction

2012-02-20T11:08:00.002-08:00

Chlorofluorocarbons
by D. Gage

Under the sea there are no waves. There is no rocking back and forth. No heaving up and down. It turns without you knowing, it sinks without telling you. There is no up and down or left and right. There is only water and darkness and machines and you.

There is no rocking back and forth, no forward to aft, no side to side. But there are lines that take you to chow, lines that lead to ‘pissing in bottles’, lines for loading number 10 cans onboard, lines to talk to supervisors about work, lines to smoke. There are lines of metal with compressed fluids and gases, falling waste and rising water to the captain’s stateroom two decks above where God gets his coffee and donut every morning served in and on china.

The synthetic mooring lines underway are stowed in the outboard of the side passageway, starboard the nuclear reactor. It’s hot in there and white. It leads to a large engine room that is equally as hot and complicated. It leads to the smoking area in the Auxiliary Sea Water bay, just an old, butt-stuffed coffee can surrounded by pipes the width of a man’s ribcage, pipes covered in foam padding, padding painted sea-foam green. There are large, grey pumps and gauges and valves and dirt and grease and oil and sailors smoking.

Thirty minutes left. I sit in an equally depressing compartment beside a plant that is leaking refrigerant. The fat guy in the blue prison uniform with his name sewn on his chest is laughing at my jokes. He is probably thinking about his wife or maybe his pickup truck. He wouldn’t tell me if he was. His uniform clashes with the fire-engine red diesel behind him. He doesn’t realize he’s supposed to be wearing the dark blue coveralls, the ones with his name sewn on his chest, like everyone else.

There is no heaving up and down. Not down here. Only the ribcages of resting sailors, tucked away in their bunks like bags of hot dog buns at the grocery store, heave up and down. Refrigerant doesn’t smell. It has just a hint of oil that mixes with the Freon in the belly of the compressor. Yet, by itself, it’s odorless. It’s heavier than air, too. And so it creeps along the decks and plunges into the deepest bilges where it rises like unattended bathwater.

I scribble a good guess in each column of my logs. I know this place so well. I know the machines; the pressures and temperatures and levels. I breathe in a mouthful of chlorofluorocarbons. My head is swimming. I want to smoke a cigarette. They say the cherry of a cigarette is hot enough to turn Freon into phosgene gas which is a nerve gas that was employed in WWI to kill Nazis. Cigarettes will kill you. I have always known that.

I know the pulse of the crew on the deck plate level, the Ward room, the Control room. I know the crew because I’m a smoker and people in the smoke pit like to gossip; unless a Master Chief is back there smoking a cigar. Then, words are guarded, then it’s Master Chief this and Master Chief that and ‘aye, aye Master Chief’. Brown nosing cock suckers. No one is smoking now, not with this refrigerant leak.

The man in the blue prison uniform is trying to get a suction on the bilge pump. There is too much air in the suction line and the viewing port is dirty. You can barely see the light behind it. Twenty two minutes until I get relieved from watch. I want to smoke a cigarette but I know about WWI nerve gases. I try to put it out of my mind. I think about chow. It’s late. Mid-watch meals are very predictable; chuck wagon stew and ravioli and left overs, sometimes breaded chicken wagon wheels, never chocolate chip cookies. Those are for lunch on Fridays with sliders and fries. I breathe in another breath of chlorofluorocarbons. My brain is giddy. Mid-watch meals have short lines but no cookies.

The man in the blue uniform has the butt end of his flash light against the steel pipe and his ear on the other end. I can hear the gurgling water as if I were listening in his place. It’s like hearing a heartbeat through a stethoscope. My senses are so magnified now.

I lean back on the gritty deck plate. I think of how dirty the steel deck plate is and how I don’t care because I am one with all this. I am the Zen master of this submersible war machine. My soul is grey and sea-form green. My heart is fire-engine red and hydraulic fluid flows through my veins. My chest heaves though the boat does not. I rock forward and aft, side to side, though the boat moves undetected. My ears pick up sounds of fluid passing through pipes and it seems like such a supernatural power; the power of a Zen master.

My soul drifts along into bilges, through steel bulkheads, over pumps and pipes and ball valves and gate valves and electro-hydraulic control valves and butterfly valves and check valves, hull valves and back up valves, big valves and tiny little valves and in-between valves. Spend enough time down here and you forget the real world; you forget that valves are not people. Valves and coffee cans and cigarettes and chicken wagon wheels and chuck wagon stew.

“You never told me about your wife,” says the man in the blue prison uniform.

“She has cancer,” I tell him.

“Oh. Is she hot?”

I shrug.

“Do you have a photo of her?”

“No.” I’m thinking about greased ball bearings and Pascal’s law of hydraulic theory, not cancer, not women or wives. The man in light blue uniform grabs a nearby sound-powered telephone, rotates the handle on the side of the box, which sounds like a toy I had as a child, and speaks into the phone.

“Control, machinery room, request permission to secure number one Scrubber.” A pause. “Secure number one Scrubber, aye.” He hangs up the phone.

“Did you shut down the Burners,” I ask.

“Is the refrigeration plant leaking?”

I nod.

“Then, I shut them down,” he replies.

“I need a smoke,” I tell him.

“Go for it. Then I won’t have to listen to you bitching about your wife dying of cancer.”

“I never said she was dying.”

“Oh. I just guessed.”

A heart leaping siren rips through the air. It pauses. “Light smoke in the engine room! Light smoke from the Auxiliary Sea Water bay!” blares over the intercom. The siren kicks in again. Then, “Prepare to emergency ventilate!” Damn smokers are burning down the boat!

There is no heaving up and down, under the sea. Not unless you’re trying to get to the surface real quick; which we are. The bow of the boat shifts upward as if the planet just tilted and you’re running up or down hill to get to the scene of the casualty depending on its location in contrast with yours.

I’m climbing down to Control. I’m wearing a face mask that plugs into these manifolds in the overhead that give me air to breath. I’m climbing through throngs of panicked sailors who are trying to get on station. The manifolds are taking too long. I hold my breath, disconnect, place my thumb over the nipple of the hose’s end in case of smoke and I make a run for it. I don’t get too far before I’m winded. I plug back in and wish I could smoke a cigarette.

The ship curves and levels and the Fairwater planes on the boat’s sail break the ocean’s surface and smack the surface as the hungry ocean tries to swallow us up again. The boat shutters from the impact. I climb through the aft Egress hatch and into the Control room. It’s rigged for black and the Officer of the Deck is behind the curtain at the periscope. I can’t see anything. The Officer of the Deck doesn’t see anything through the periscope or he would have called out ‘Emergency Dive’.

I start turning valves, draining sumps and feeling pretty ‘Zen master’ despite the situation. I’m not worried about dying; I’m not thinking about my wife with cancer or anything like that. I’m just here in the moment like a gear or a shaft, spinning, working, doing my job, part of the machine. I deftly make my way to the front of the Control room. “Chief of the Watch, Control is ready to emergency ventilate.”

“Control is ready to emergency ventilate, aye.” Emergency ventilate and ventilate are no different. Not that I can tell, anyway.

We don’t ventilate yet, not without say so from the Captain. I have to ‘stand by’, sailor speak for ‘wait’. I run over the valve ‘line up’ in my head to ensure I didn’t miss any valves. That would cause a casualty and the worst casualties are the ones that go down during another casualty. It’s really a common problem, compounded casualties.

The Fairwater planes slap the surface again and the Diving Officer yells at the junior sailor who is trying to control the ships depth with a steering column that look like it was ripped out of a WW2 bomber. He doesn’t get paid enough to steer a billion dollar war ship but here he is none the less. I think I’m laughing but I can’t tell. The chlorofluorocarbon fumes are still messing with my head. I black out a second, maybe longer.

“Commence ventilating,” says the Chief of the Watch over the intercom.

I hear the massive steel blower in the fan room behind me scream to life. My ears pop and I feel fresh air on my skin. I can’t smell the air but I bet it smells delicious. Then, suddenly the blower shuts down.

“Aux of the Watch, report to Control!”

I’m already there but they don’t see me in the back of the dark room. Reality sinks in. I just screwed up. I just made everything worse and everyone knows it. My head is light, my feet are numb. I make my way to the front of the room, not so deftly this time. My heart is beating bunny-rabbit-fast. The hydraulic fluid in my veins is now ice cold. Valves are not people but just try ignoring them during a casualty aboard a Navy submarine and you’ll regret it.

I’m almost to the Chief of the Watch’s station. The room lights up with multiple hues that paint sailor’s faces with horrifying grins of agony beneath clear plastic masks. My stomach reels. My legs are weak. Things spin. I think of how bad it would be to vomit in this air mask. Colored faces stretch impossibly and begin vibrating and thumping in time with my heart beat. I can almost taste the flavorless chlorofluorocarbons on my tongue.

I fall face first.

Under the sea there are no waves save the ones men bring with them.

That Ain’t Working

2011-12-02T10:19:00.001-08:00

I could be doing any number of other things right now. I could make an honest attempt at a medical degree with which I could help heal the sick. I could get a high paying job, squirrel money away, buy a sail boat and become a full-time blue water sailor. I could sell dope or get high or make an effort toward increasing my resume of Face Book friends. I could run for congress or run a marathon or open a brothel. I could be just another Nobody from Nowhereville. One in 7 billion.

But I’m not doing that. Instead, I’m writing.

Writing isn’t hard work. It isn’t hard work like ditch digging is hard work. It isn’t mentally taxing like rocket science. In fact, if I could actually make a living just writing I would feel as if I had played the system, that I was crafty enough to pay my dues without trying too hard. “The world owes me a living”, that would be my song.

Speaking of songs, do you remember a song by the Dire Straights called “Money for Nothing” where the narrator of the song regrets not having learned to ‘play the guitar, play the drums, that ain’t working, that’s the way you do it, your money for nothing and your chicks for free’? Sometimes I think that way about writers who make a living writing; minus the free chicks.

I’m not saying writing is a walk in the park. There is a lot of effort that goes into research, editing, rewriting, Etc. There is a lot of stress that is often hinged upon fear of Writer’s Block, not to mention the stress of not having a steady, reliable income. But at the end of the day, when that royalty checks roll in, I think I would feel a bit guilty. My aches and pains wouldn’t come from suffering for the greater good; wrenching heavy machinery all day, or hauling logs, or even a ten hour shift waiting on tables. Instead my back would ache from being hunched over the computer, my fingers would be sore from punching keys, the tips would smart from paper cuts. No wonder Hemingway drank so much!

Maybe it’s just the idea that only a fortunate few can make a living creating and being creative, and maybe I don’t think that I deserve that or that ‘chances are’ I would not be so fortunate. Despite the lack of suffering for the greater good (at least in a way that is widely accepted as proper suffering) there is a place –NO- a need for artists and poets and even… novelists. Someone has to do it. Why not me?

-D. Gage (I decided to pull out my old pen name)

Timmy and the Coin

2011-11-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

Timmy and the Coin
Heads I win; tails you lose. That was Timmy’s down fall. He was stupid.

There is this part of me that believes all stupid people are faking it to get attention. I guess it was hard for me to fathom that anyone could be that stupid so they had to be pulling my leg. Timmy was faking it. I have no proof but I can feel it in my gut. As they say, ‘bad publicity is better than no publicity’.

And so Timmy played stupid so that at least he would be one of the gang; the stupid guy who fell for all of the stupid tricks and riddles, who never understood any of the jokes and insisted that you continue to repeat them which drained any humor the joke might have had to begin with. Timmy.

During our ‘half-baked’ fantasy games after church, Timmy always played the villain. He was loose with the fists and didn’t fear to let them fly in our direction. We, my best friend Danny and I, were not fighters. We were scholars and adventurers. So, when dumdum Timmy went into a rage and knuckles sandwiches were on the menu, Danny and I would take flight and giggle and laugh as we fled the rancorous behemoth that we had provoked.

The escape! The escape, as we saw it, was far more fulfilling and electrifying than the fight or even the initial taunt. Timmy gave us that. Timmy bestowed on us the chance to live out that epic chase where we could flaunt our running skills, our deft feet leaping over chairs and down flights of stairs. Thank you Timmy. You made my childhood complete.

-Nosmo

Island of Matrimony

2011-10-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Island of Matrimony
“I never want to see you again,” she shouted.
“It’s a pretty small island. I think that might be difficult to pull off,” he replied.
“Fine, you stay on that half of the island and I will stay on this half.” She dragged her foot in a line across the sand until she reached the palm tree.
“How are you planning to divide up the palm tree,” he asked.
“Well, I suppose when the coconuts fall, whichever side they land on, they belong to the owner of that side.”
“You’re incredible,” he shouted. “A freaking genius!”
“You’re mother thought so. My parents, on the other hand, said marrying you was the worst mistake I could have made. I should have listened to them. I guess I’m not that smart after all.”
“Sharon, you do realize we are going to die out here. We’ve got no drinkable water, no shade and how long do you think these coconuts are going to last us?”
“What, you want me to just forgive you, to run into your arms and die there? What you did…”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a pig. I know. Whatever! I just…” He sunk his head down into his hands.
“When the tour guide finds out we’re missing he will come looking for us, Mark,” Sharon replied, her voice growing softer.

Mark didn’t answer. He just wiped his sleeve across his wet nose and stared off into the endless blue ocean.
Sharon slumped down next to the palm and began rummaging through her purse. She found the lip stick she was looking for a smeared it on. “You know I would have been willing to forgive you if you had been honest with me up front.”
“Honest? I stopped trying to be honest with you years ago. It only makes things worse.”
“What does that mean? Are you saying I’m some stuck up bitch, Mark? Are you saying that I don’t understand that you have needs? I have needs to you know. You just seemed to forget that.”
“Needs? Three hours of foreplay and romance? Kind of hard to pull that off when I don’t get home from work until eight O clock at night, Sharon. You’re problem, the problem with women in general, is you want it all; the hard working husband, the money and the hours of cuddling. I may be able to do a lot of things, Sharon, but extending the hours of the day past twenty four is a little out of my reach.”
“I think I have the right to be a little unrealistic once in a while.”
“Are you listening to yourself? You have the right to be unrealistic? Who says crap like that?”
“I do.”
“Yeah, you do,” he sneered.
There was a long pause.
“Was she better than me?”
“Oh god! Are you serious? How am I supposed to answer that? If I say ‘no’ you won’t believe me and if I say ‘yes’ you’ll just get all bent out of shape.”
“No. No I won’t. I am serious. Why her? Why, out of all the women in the world, did you pick my sister? Tell me.”
“Half-sister,” Mark replied.
“Fine! My half-sister. As if that makes it better.”
“I slept with her because she was there; she understood what I was going through. And I have no clue if she was better than you because I couldn’t finish.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I broke down and started crying. I felt guilty. I felt frustrated. So, I laid there in bed and cried while your half-sister comforted me. It’s all pretty pitiful. I should be pitied not scolded.”
“Oh, trust me I do pity you!”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Fine.”
“Whatever.”
Long pause.
“Look, Sharon. Life is complicated, you know? Sometimes things get screwed up and you make choices and regret them later. It’s human nature to screw up.”
“Human nature? ‘Man’ nature, you mean. Men are pigs. Everyone knows that. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.”
“Alright. Yeah. We’re all pigs. So, what now?”
Sharon dug her foot into the sand. “I suppose we pick up the pieces and move on.”
“You’re not talking about the ‘D’ word, are you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Wait a minute. What are you talking about? What are we talking about? We’re on a freaking deserted island.” Mark picked up a coconut. “Excuse me Mr. Coconut. My wife and I would like to file for divorce. We have all the applicable paper work with us here.”
“Mark! Mark, quit being an asshole. The boat is coming back and when we get home we’ll talk about this. Alright? I’m not saying I want a divorce I’m just saying that something needs to change.”
“What about the kids? How are we going to split them up?”
“Why do we need to? I said I didn’t want a divorce.”
Mark chucked the coconut out into the ocean. “Who said you get to decide? What if I want a divorce? What if I want to run off and get married to your half-sister?”
“You’re a dick! Fine. When we get back…”
“’If’ we get back.”
“’When’ we get back you can file for divorce. But you’re not getting the house.”
“I built that house,” Mark replied.
“I’m pretty sure your brother built it, Mark. All I remember you doing is complaining about your blisters and your fear of insulation.”
“That stuff will give you lung cancer, Sharon. They put the Pink Panther on it so you think it’s safe. It’s not safe.”
“Mark, what’s that on the horizon?”
Mark turned and gazed out the direction Sharon was pointing. “A seagull?”
“It’s not a seagull, Mark. It’s the tour boat looking for us. We need to start a signal fire.”
“With what?”
Sharon was rummaging through her purse again. “I have a lighter. We can start the palm tree on fire.”
“Why do you have a lighter? The last time you had a lighter… Sharon did you start smoking again?”
“No.”
“You’re lying to me. I can tell when you’re lying.”
“I needed to relieve some stress after I caught you cheating, alright. Now, shut up about it and help me start this tree on fire.”
As the two were bent over trying to light a fire a seagull gracefully landed on the top of the palm tree. It burrowed its beak in its side, digging out a louse. It defecated on the man below and then took off again, flying eastward.
“You’re a freaking genius, Sharon. Give that stupid lighter. I’ll do it.”
“Oh, I see; only men know how to light fires, is that it? You’re such a pig!”
“We’re getting a divorce when we get back. I swear.”
FIN

What I Got Out of Classical Studies Class

2011-10-15T00:43:00.000-07:00

So, I wrote this one act play after finishing the Iliad for my Classical Studies class. I hope you enjoy it.

Greek Orthodox

Hera: Well, now what?
Zeus: Meh. Start over again, I guess. What do you think about Greece?

Hera: For cooking?

Zeus: No, no. As a name for a country.

Hera: Whatever. But promise me no more one eyed giants and harpies and that kind of junk. Ok?

Zeus: Ah. Let me have my fun! We’re running out of time anyway.

Hera: What in Cronos’ name are you talking about, ‘running out of time’?

Zeus: You ever heard of the Jews? Taking over management soon. We’re going to be obsolete.

Hera: What?

Zeus: Yeah. They said something about this Jesus guy. I don’t know. He sounded like a real downer to me. ‘For all have sinned, love ONE god with all your heart.’ One god. You believe that? I mean, I’m cool with it except that the one god isn’t me.

Hera: Who is it?

Zeus: Some dude. I don’t know. Yahweh or something like that.

Hera: Sounds like a tool.

Zeus: I know, right? He’s a god. He gets to pick his own name and that’s the one he picks?

Hera: So, what you’re trying to say is you’re going to be unemployed soon?

Zeus: Umm. Yup.

Hera: Great.

Zeus: I’m still getting 1% royalties off of that Homer guy. And do you know how much gods get for unemployment?

Hera: No, how much?

Zeus: Well… I’m not sure. But I bet it’s a lot.

Hera: We could take out a second mortgage on Olympus. And I could work at Aphrodite’s beauty salon. We’ll make ends meet.

Zeus: Cool. You know, I hope this Yahweh doesn’t do the whole lightning bolt thing. Remember that Thor guy? God, was he annoying.

Hera: Yeah. I remember him.

Zeus: I remember I says to him one day, ‘Thor, dude, that’s my thing, man.' You know what he said to me?

Hera: No. What?

Zeus: I’m going to be a famous comic book character one day. La de da! Comic books? Are you shitting me? Hey Sven, you ever heard of the Iliad? I’m all over that bitch! Comic books. Whatever.

Hera: He sounds like a tool.

Zeus: I know, right?

-Nosmo

Just for Shits and Giggles

2011-10-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

Just a silly little super short story.

Jesus looked around the alleyway. When he saw the coast was clear, he ripped a big fart.
‘Jesus Christ,’ shouted the homeless man who had been hiding behind a pile of rubbish.
‘Yes,’ Jesus asked.
‘Oh, never mind,’ said the homeless man.

-Nosmo King

Thoughts in Writing

2011-10-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

"The choice word, the correct phrase, are instruments that may reach the heart, and awake the soul if they fall upon ear in melodious cadence; but if the utterance be harsh and discordant they fail to interest, fall upon deaf ears, and are as barren as seed sown on fallow ground." -Frank H. Vizetelly, 1000 Useful Phrases

Practice Copy: Two Short Pieces

2011-10-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

Tiling the Ocean Floor
I have here a thousand tiles of various colors. The majority of them are white yet there are many other hues: blues, reds, greens, etc. First, I must determine the length and width of the room I want to tile, then calculate the number of tiles for each the length and the width of the room to include any odd corners, pookas, shower stalls and water closets. I must then calculate the area and the number of tiles needed to fill that area.

With all this ‘math and measurement’ rigmarole taken care of I can then determine a pattern. I would like to stay as symmetrical as possible because my wife fancies herself to be very conservative and I want to make her happy. Yet, I also would like some contrast and interest. I don’t want a ‘show floor’ perfect tile job. If I did, I would just pay someone else to do it for me.

There is a balance between math and art. Neither can exist without the other. There is also a balance between engineering and know-how or ‘tribal knowledge’. Tribal knowledge, in its purest form, is magic, old wives tales, mythology or, perhaps, voodoo. How utterly poetic is it to associate this concept with the maintenance and operation of a nuclear powered submarine in the U. S. Navy?

The same ignorant mind smacks the T.V. to get it to work or kicks the jukebox, snaps his fingers and smiles like the Fonz and his favorite ‘cool guy’ record starts spinning. I felt like I was putting my life in the hands of modern day barbarians; one hundred and fifty Henry Winklers dressed in Navy blue. “Ehhh, no problem, it’s just a nuclear reactor. No sweat.”

A motor generator is used is several applications yet in this particular instance it was used to convert AC power to DC power (I think it also translates Chinese to English but I can’t be certain or perhaps it’s Top Secret, in which case, I am unable to divulge such information to you). Said generator is controlled by a circuit card. The exact purpose of the card is unknown to me as I spent my Naval career banging pipes and cleaning shitters yet I do know that they’re important enough to delay an ‘underway’.

I know this because we were preparing to get ‘underway’ when the thing started smoking and burning. “Light smoke in the engine room, light smoke from the port motor generator!” I swear the worse part of any casualty aboard a U.S. Navy vessel is the annoying alarms. I think I would rather burn to death then hear that hideous, heart stopping sound again.

The card gets replaced and the generator tested again. More smoke.

I have owned, in my life, five different computers. I have put them all through the worst hell computers can go through and yet, after all these years, I have never seen a mother board catch fire or even smoke. That’s what you get using nineteen eighties technology in the 21st century. Slick back your hair, flip up your collar and kick start the submarine, Fonzy.

Thank the gods no one sounds the alarm this time but the word of the faulty equipment spreads quickly throughout the crew. Everyone loves a good story that ends in “The underway has been delayed for another day.” This means I get to sleep in a king size bed as opposed to a submarine rack which accommodates only half my body.

There is a myth ‘third time’s the charm’. It seems to work as the third card plays fair and stays cool.
It’s in my nature to challenge anything that forsakes logic so it wasn’t long before the question broached my lips: if card A fried replaced by card B that fried replaced by card C that worked and no one can explain why; and if the loss of the generator was important enough to keep the boat tied to the pier, why shouldn’t we (by ‘we’ I mean someone else) determine why cards A and B failed and why card C didn’t fail and what keeps card C from failing when we’re ‘ass’ deep under the pacific ocean somewhere?

PFM, petty officer, PFM. Pure fucking magic. “Prepare to dive!”

Meanwhile, the tiles end up arranged in a hideously mundane pattern, a border of baby blue and four baby blue tiles in the center. I could sleep on this floor, not because it’s comfortable but because the pattern puts me to sleep just looking at it. Maybe I should tile the bed room.

Moderately Crisp Copy
I gave up my career in music because of a weak heart. I mean this in the literal sense of a ‘weak heart’.

I remember seeing pictures of my seven year old self in PJs, wearing a cape/towel and a pair of Huey Lewis and the News style sunglasses singing into a hair brush/ microphone. I sang at church, in the car, in the woods, to a large crowd in eastern Russia. I wooed girls with renditions the Beach Boys ‘Little Surfer Girl’ over the phone, I learned to play the guitar at the age of seventeen and started a silly little Christian band with a three song repertoire and a tweed covered Harmony amp we found in the church’s attic. There was no one more bound and determined to be a rock star then I was.

Why did I fail?

Chocolate cake is good. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting is better. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and bits of chocolate ribbons and chocolate sprinkles washed down with a glass of chocolate milk… prepare for chocolate vomit.

There have been a few times in my life when I was able to juggle three titles; artist, musician and writer. Creativity and artistic expression are wonderful, but, then again, so is chocolate… in moderation.

Instead of tackling them all at once I took each in turn, in phases, starting nearly from scratch each time the mood hit me to paint or write or sing. Slowly, I was becoming the most useless thing in the world; a jack of all trades and master of none.

I struggled to narrow it down, to concentrate on one form. Yet I was harassed by my own skewed logic. I want to be a rock star to rock the world, to get the girls. I want to write because I love it yet also because the ‘writer’s lifestyle’ seemed to fit my lifestyle. I want to be an artist but I have no patience for it. I want to sing because I’m a natural; I want to write because I’m a natural; I want to draw because…

I can, from my vantage point, see an easel with a horrible painting (it looks like cow dung smeared on a white fence); I quit two hours into it. I can see a guitar case lightly layered in dust and a computer screen with this short story on it; smokes and a fan, tangled cables and my sleeping dog, unfinished homework and boxes that should have been stored in a closet months ago. It’s here in this messy hole that I think about what was and what will be, what could happen and what will never happen. There is a life waiting for me that I can’t have because I am unwilling to give up the one I have now.

Everything that was, is and will be in my life, all balances on a single thought that was planted into my head so many years ago: ‘You are very talented and it would be a shame if you did not use that talent for some greater purpose.’ I’m paraphrasing here but either way it’s a lot of pressure to put on a young boy. My life, as a consequence, has ranged from the sweetest heaven to the most bitter hell. I have been gorging on a smorgasbord of chocolate delights… wearing my chocolate vomit like a badge of honor.

But I just want to take a break from it all because my heart hurts.

Raise Your Hand If You Want to Punch Me

2011-10-02T18:29:00.000-07:00

Notes for Transcyberphilia

• Femininity is a gift from the ancient aliens who produced us (genetically) through Neanderthal DNA and their own DNA.

• Masculinity is a trait given to us by our Neanderthal ancestors, a trait that allowed us to survive in our pre-modern world. Coupled with the intellectual edge of our feminine DNA, we were able to not only survive nature, but conquer it, as well.

• In a matter of speaking, feminine DNA is really the dominant DNA. It was inevitable for our race to create the technology that we see today as we are slowly becoming less Neanderthal and more Alien.

• You may notice a rise in homosexuality in our modern age. This is not unheard of. Yet, looking back in history, it seems that the societies that embraced or indulged in such practices were modern for their time. More importantly they lived in urban societies. This shows, in my opinion, that it is possible for DNA codes to lie dormant in human populations and are only triggered based on social changes. What purpose would homosexuality serve (scientifically)? Obviously, population control. The more men having sex with men the less men impregnating women.

• This is only a step towards Alienism. The second step is a move towards the transsexual. In essence, men desiring to become woman and therefore they are not fulfilling their (Neanderthalic) responsibilities of procreation.

• Even if you don’t agree with the Alien Ancestor concept, it’s hard to deny the theory of population control through homosexual and transsexual culture. It beats the alternative: war, famine and pestilence.

• One may argue that the world is not over populated and I might agree with you. However, natural function is blind. The issue here really isn’t the overall population but the ever increasing number of urban dwellers. Just as the chameleon changes its color without thought or a frog changes its gender without the approval of frog committees, so to does human society lapse into homosexual and transsexual behaviors to control its population.

I don't want to make excuses for what I write. Sorry.
-Nosmo

www.helpmepaymybillsplease.com

2011-09-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

How do I feel this morning? Like I'm making deals with demons to keep the Devil off my back.

My Internet was down all weekend. I thought my modem was broken. I tried swapping out cables, modem, resetting my Internet settings on my computer. I was so pissed! I just wanted to surf the Internet. But instead, I had to spend all day yesterday reading and writing and other things I used to do before the Internet came along.

I called my Internet provider this morning in an attempt to trouble shoot the problem with someone a bit more tech savvy than me. "Please note that your Internet has been temporarily suspended due to late payments. Your current balance is 301 dollars. Would you like to make a payment now?" Aggggggg.

When I got to school I was a bit short with the lady at the financial aid office who told me she was processing all the Stafford loans as quickly as possible and that it was likely she would get to mine in the middle of the week or perhaps the next week. Whaaa. I filed that paper work on the 6th of September, it's the 26th now! Whatever.

I got all these financial problems but looking back I must admit that I have played the system well. By that I mean: I was discharge from the military in January. I have not been employed since, yet I have successfully paid for a two bedroom apartment at 1950 a month, a 400 dollar a month car payments, 90 dollar phone bill, 90 dollar cable/Internet bill, utility bill that runs between 350 and 400 each month, put food on the table and supported mine and my wife's nicotine/ caffeine habits. All of this on the sunny isle of Oahu, Hawaii.

I don't want to be homeless but if I become so, I can't really complain too much, can I? Maybe. Squeeky wheels always get the grease.

-Nosmo

Don't Read if You're Allergic to Crap!

2011-09-21T15:10:00.000-07:00

Just a few ramblings I scrawled down in my note book over the past few weeks:

- Blogger just got my digits. I wonder if he'll call?
- Sometimes I think I'm too enlightened, too open minded for my own good. I need a nice dose of bigotry to put me back into my place.
- When I die it will be 'naked' on a public toilet. (There will be twenty guys in line waiting to take a shit. Eventually, they will figure out I'm not coming out of that stall on my own two feet.)
- Let's just get this over with!
- Does the term 'irish vagina' mean anything to you?
- This world will not change, not for you. You must change to face it or suffer. The choice is yours.
- Art is perspective. There are many starving perspectives.

I love dogs!!! I just hate their owners.

-Nosmo

I am 16 going on 21, lallalalala!

2011-08-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

I was coming back from grocery shopping this morning. I have to go in the morning because my car's registration has expired (as well as my driver's license) and 'that' is the time of day when people get pulled over less. That's my theory. The darkness also shrouds my out of date registration sticker from prying cop eyes.

I was thinking about young drivers. In America, a person as young as 16 years old, can get their driver's license. But at 16 you cannot do the following: vote, have sex with an adult, look at pornography, watch rated 'R' movies, join the military or drink alcohol. You can, however, get behind the wheel of a car, without supervision, and drive into traffic, risking the lives of other drivers, as well as, pedestrians. I can honestly say at 35 I am not emotionally stable enough to drive! 'Move faster! Quit tail-gating me!'

Lately, I have been arguing (to myself because I'm weird like that and I have a lot of time to myself) all the issues concerning age restriction. Most of the arguments went like this: 'There are those that are young that are mentally and emotionally mature enough to do the things that the government will not allow them to do based on their age. There are those who are not mentally or emotionally mature enough to do those things and yet they are old enough. And since the government can't rely on a person's judgement regarding whether they are ready, nor can they rely on a parents judgement to determine if their child is ready, they have to 'draw a line in the sand' concerning age limits.

I understand this but what I don't get is how they come up with these numbers. At 16 I can drive a car but I can't shoot a gun or fight a war. At 18 I can shoot a gun and fight a war but I can't drink alcohol. A 15 year old can have sex with a 15 year old but a 21 year old cannot have sex with a 15 year old, because that 15 year old is not mature enough to make the decision that they should or should not have sex. Unless they make that decision with another 15 year old. What!?! Who comes up with this crap?

-Nosmo King