To Whom it May Concern,

I had to rewrite this post about Blogger being an abysmal failure of a platform, because Blogger is an abysmal failure of a platform. Apparently I am not allowed to use the character "!" as well as copy, paste, add links or anything remotely useful.

The point is, is that there is a new blog that I am posting on, that has a better url, a better title that matches the url, and some other stuff that I don't want to get into.

So if you are one of the seven people who has become acquainted reading my fiction, poetry, rants, lists and anything else is that is vaguely homoerotic and associated with creativity then go here:

howfarisohio.wordpress.com

Thanks. The whole team appreciates the effort.

Ten Reasons I Should Not Do Color Commentary for the Seattle Mariners

1) I have a short attention span.

2) I swear often, and without realizing it.

3) I drink. A lot.

4) I wouldn't make baseball knowledge a priority career-wise.

5) I'd probably start reading and stop paying attention to the game.

6) The Mariners suck right now. I wouldn't want to be affiliated professionally with a dismal organization.

7) I would talk about things other than baseball. Not that announcers never do that, but I would do it too much. 

8) I don't live in Seattle and hate commuting.

9) The food there is too expensive.

10) I mumble.

The Trouble with Sleep/Lost in the Supermarket

There is this crick in my neck this morning. It is an ancient dull bruise that yearns and mutters and gives my spirit a testing. The curve that follows from my ear to my shoulder blade, is a worn band, sputtering and sweating, and I favor that whole side of my body. If I want to look in that direction, I move my body in that direction, I cannot twist my neck. I must have a karmic deficiency. Each morning it is a weakness in a new location. My bones must be brittle my muscles must be thin and stringy, a weak padding for a weak skeleton. Yesterday a left forearm, the day before that a right wrist, the other day each hand somehow. 

I search the mattress for rocks, tacks, sticks, lumps, bottles, or maybe even a dwarf that would barrage me with little fists, small enough to bruise my muscle, and soft enough to not wake me. He must be tenderizing my body in preparation for a feast of theirs, where I am the centerpiece. I strip the sheets and shake the pillows, but a bare mattress is just a bare mattress without a knife strong enough to waste on a task such as this. The only thing inside a mattress is springs and boards, and some foreign agents giving me comfort. Today there would be no dwarves, no lumps, no offenders.

I go out. I lose myself in consonants and vowels, fragments and formations. I put my glasses back on, and my skin feels different. I walk back and forth on the bridge. I walk back up the hill to where we started. Guarded under blankets positing darkness. The only thing I can imagine is Judge Holden waiting for me at the outhouse. And now there is an ache in my stomach to accompany my neck.  I wait for my girlfriend to go to work, then I go to the store.

What I enjoy about chain supermarkets is that every store has nearly an identical layout. The differences are subtle, either the floorplan is mirrored, or departments are swapped in a discreet manner. It feels the same, it is the same for all practical purposes, but the environment is just so subtly different, that this couldn't be a different store on a different day, this is this store, today. I traverse the aisles, and I pause in a frozen food aisle, underneath a sign curiously labeled "novelties" and notice some odd products. Unconventional combinations of two different food groups. The Safeway version of the national brand, a minute variation on the original. Frozen entrees, lined up and pushing out past the glass. A thundering hum of that of a windstorm preceding the light misting of the vegetables. I crank my neck over, and the tenderness is still present, like a house-guest who fell asleep in the bathroom - you just forgot about it.

I wander about and mill on certain items, and scoff at others. I feel the rippling cascade through my shoulders once again. I purchase some chicken, and the woman behind the counter asks if me and the middle aged woman in line are together or separate. The middle aged woman quickly protests, and laments the fact that a conversation had to come to this precipice. I give a low false intonation, an extended no with a squelching of the eyes. The chicken smells good.

I've come to notice people staring at me. I catch sideways glances, and notice pursuing peripheries, they are taking notes, they are measuring my height. But they could be secret shoppers, with a professional demeanor. Most people who work at grocery stores, that are adults, take themselves too seriously. 

I couldn't imagine a secret shopper working lackadaisically.

I arrive at the checkout counter, the ten item or less line, and plop my items onto the conveyor. I have some Safeway brand cookies that were beyond cheap at a dollar, two bags of chips, for my girlfriend and I, she gets the baked ones, I get the Mission chips, the chicken from before and a box of Banquet Maple Syrup Sausages for a dollar. I am wretched. I must have interrupted two cashiers talking, one of them glances at me, and scurries off without a word. The balding man with blue hair who is my cashier doesn't make eye contact, and counts the cracks in the ceiling as I put in my Safeway club card and my debit. He doesn't react swiftly enough for me to print out a receipt.  I must redo my purchase, and I mutter and act perturbed and offended on some karmic level, and he calls me Mr. and looks me in the eye. I look at my feet and say glibly "Thanks." There's a voice in my head talking about generosity of spirit. Don't I know it.

Post-Script - Formatting on Blogger is a fucking joke, and I'm not laughing.

Dogtors!

I overheard a man on the bus today talking about how he is training his dog to sense low blood sugar. He mentioned that his girlfriend had type 2 diabetes, or hypoglycemia, one of the two, and that the dog senses when her blood sugar is perilously low. He said her dog was the on the verge of retirement, (she's getting old,) and that this dog was groomed as the replacement.

As far as I have ascertained, this is true. These dogs sense low blood sugar reactions, which occur often at night, and will wake people up to warn them of impending death.  I can see the value in this, the task of sensing the impending death of myself, or a loved one, awake has been never suited me too well. I am not much better in my sleep, so the dogs have arrived to save the day. This all seemed very possible and likely as my ears creeped over my book, listening to Will prod him on. I looked at this man, who now appeared to be sitcomesque in his immaculate appearance, which was very strange. Perfectly combed hair, not a speck of hair anywhere on his face, and a big full smile of blinding white teeth. I like my strangers telling me bullshit to be beraggled, drunk and screaming incoherently.

Apparently cancerous cells emit a specific odor not detectable by humans, but detectable by dogs with their sensitive hearing and smelling senses. This is the standard scientific explanation to prevent you from going to google to find out more about this and stop reading this post. Because I know lots of people are reading this, and expect nothing but journalistic integrity from me. I cannot disapoint my followers. They are my lifeblood.

ANYHOW, I think Lassie would do an appropriate job of barking to warn me of extremely low blood pressure and seizures- this has serious merit. But dogs that sniff cancer?

Alright, if they can detect the early onset of cancer, kind of like a doctor, after the dog warns you of the tumor, and the doom implicit in it's implications (aside: how could you distinguish the dogs "warning" from any other "warning," like "I'm hungry" or "Take my bitch ass for a fucking walk?") wouldn't you inevitably end up going to a doctor anyway? What, do you save maybe one co-payment? What's the difference between this and being regularly scanned and tested for cancer? Could there be perhaps, in addition to the dogs that detect cancer, an entire field devoted to dogs practicing medicine? A hospital staffed exclusively by dogs trained in the medical field? Could there be institutions educating dogs in the field of medicine? Would there be older professor dogs teach the student dogs, wearing tweed jackets with patches on the elbows and maybe a little dog cane? Does this not seem as preposterous as the dog sensing the tumor? Isn't he just as qualified to treat it?

Then someone made an interesting point. Perhaps these dogs are good for people that arehypochondriacs or at the very least paranoid they have cancer. Again, maybe these people should be seeing doctors anyway, which they will if they pass the first test, which is presumably a dog barking.

 

The stranger said that the dog won't tell you what kind of cancer it is, but that whether or not you have it. Good! Because wouldn't that be just too much? All of this is believable, except that the dog knows what kind of tumor it is. Now I don't believe a word of it. Anyway, I would ask the dog(tor) whether or not it is in remission. I would ask if it is a benign tumor. Is it a malignant tumor? Can the dog only detect tumors? Can it detect blood cancer or melanoma as well or exclusively tumors?

 

With this new information, I am dropping my health insurance, and going to the pound, with some great references I have received from a stranger screaming about his chicken coop when he was a little boy, of some great dogtors to check out. Have a nice day. Don't get cancer.

Friendship Application

Please fill out the following test to be considered for friendship in this season of recruiting. The autonomous individual James Case, who we represent, appreciates your interest in becoming his friend. He wishes he could respond to every application individually, but he knows that is not within the realm of possibility.  Mr. Case gave us this set of questions, which he feels would best single out the strongest candidates for potential friendship.

Part I : List the following basic information
1) Name:
2) Age:
3) Gender:

4)Nationality/Ethnicity
5) Measurements:

6) Hair Color:
7) Astrological Sign:
8) Wonderlic Score:

Part II : Answer the following short answer questions as truthful, graphic and concise as possible

1) Do you consider yourself to be a good person?

2) Would you check my mail for me whenever you visited my house?

3) Are you seeking to fufill any of your own personal needs in a friendship with me? 


4) Do you have a criminal record? Why? Why not?


5) How often would you be available to chauffeur me on my errands?


6) What kind of car do you have? (If you do not have a car, don't bother.)


7) Does the car have cup holders? How many?


8) How vast is your disposable income? What is the exact dollar figure you would feel comfortable lavishing upon me without feeling used?


9) Describe your diction. Imagine yourself reading me poetry or bedtime stories after tucking me in.


10) Describe your experience in forgery, siphoning, accounting, larceny, group leadership, international finance and sandwich-making.

11) Would you be willing to perform fellatio on me?

Questions 12 - 15, are if you answered yes to Question 11. If you answered no, move immediately to Question 17

12) How often?

13) Do you spit or swallow?

14) Please describe the level of enthusiasm and technique of your fellating.

15) Would feel uncomfortable with me videotaping the fellating in order to properly critique your work?

16) Please provide three personal recommendations and phone numbers of persons you've fellated in the past.


17) Imagine I have been bitten by a venomous snake, which will kill me, unless I am fellated. Would you reconsider your non-fellatio stance?

Only answer Question 18 if you have changed your stance on fellatio. If you remain non-fellatio and pro-death then move on to question Question 19 immediately.

18) Please describe your level of enthusiasm and technique of your fellatio under the circumstances of venom extraction. Provide three personal references and phone numbers of fellatio performed in the past under the circumstances of venom extraction, if applicable.

Part III. The final part of the application consists of three long answer questions. Please take as much time as you need with each question, and use the back of this application or an additional piece of paper if you feel it is necessary. This portion of the application will be looked at most carefully.

1)What is your favorite thing about me, your potential friend?

2)Which aspect of your personality would best mesh with Mr. Case's personality? What do you see as being the strongest bind of your potential friendship?

3)You wake up in the middle of the night. You spring out of bed and burst into my bedroom, but there is only a faint impression of my gorgeous figure in the sheets. You whip your head around when you hear my screams emanating from below, I am courageously kicking and screaming to warn you of the events that are transpiring. You run downstairs, and hear my muffled cries of terror from the basement, you try to open the door but there is too much blood on the handle. The cowards holding me hostage are demanding your suicide in turn to let me live. What do you do?

Signature:

Date:

Blood Type:

Thank you for applying to be a friend of James Case. He appreciates your interest and will get back to you shortly. (Approximately 6-8 months)

The King Of Nails

The king of nails is out standing in his field.

The headlights pass street signs,

But they're all different,

I trickle my eyes back towards the road,

then I see him. 

The straw of his hat peeking pass its silhouette

My car curves past the bend, 

I could smell his breath,

the window half down,

between a sieve and a shell.

 

This couple at the bar are yelling over the crowd and I hear it:

"Not all birds can fly."            

I tell the story at the house, and we get back to talking.

My chin has stubble, and the creak in the stairwell match it

Lapse in attention, the center becomes the edges,

The floor becomes the house.

And an immobile, brutish bird,

Born in a nest tethered and tarred,

Joints lathered with a thick fog,

And spider webs adorning its imagination, 

Its survival is a tragedy of some proportion.

I see the sound, and wonder,

How many more ways until it's over.

I'm walking there, on the side of the road

Twigs and loose gravel tear my feet,

my skin is unaccustomed and tender. 

A cinematic view breaking through the streetlights

A thank you note written on my sleeve

There's a lesson hiding in the night

Like a deserts regrets concerning water.

This cassowary, this dodo, this emu

must be a testament of treatment.

Is there a reason they were given wings?

Is this empty night, of murmuring robins and silent wings,

our evolutions stasis?

A bottleneck can be a destination.

I gaze at the moon and agree;

Its a careless sloven sculpture.

Each house I slept in 

Was like the moral in a story,

Told in ambivalent voices, and drenched in melancholy.

I lie patient on the floor, my eyes shut

Counting every aching reoccurrence.

I'm taking my doctors advice,

I will be less earnest, and will eat more carrots.

I sit in the waiting room, 

Flipping through all the magazines, 

It came without surprise when I read, 

"Flightless birds almost always live on islands."

The in joke now, is that reunions 

Are an exercise in dull surprises,

I keep on glancing up at the skyline, murky, gray and constant.

I nod and smile,

But I wish there was a a keeled breast for me, 

to keep me full

to cover the gap, 

to shoulder the load.

The king of nails must have been born in a parking lot.

I close door with a thud, I named it eternal reoccurrence,

And head home where the sky is sovereign and open.

Weekend in Massachusetts

Roll on down the hill, feel the wind and the rush of temptation,

Draw me a portrait, of its slope and its turbulence eroding your face, 

blades of grass, blurring metaphors. Later you crawl into bed with

yourself and one too many pillows. The cup on the table whispers "myth"

And you're back on the crest of the hill, near the bakery and

your old house, where they called you a hero. Smell where the sand

sleeps, where the granite steps fade away into a beach, from your old house up around

the corner, a place my uncle watched through his telescope, and I with him, the sound

salient and slowing near the deep end of the neck. They all have good

jokes out there, they wrote them in advance 

They know people with names like Pettigrew and Constance,

and names like Willy are accepted until your thirty. The ice cream

stand is the social center of the town, where I'm from the scene

is grocery stores and cigarettes and looking for answers to questions

we never securely tied down, at the top of the hill before we rushed down

for good. I crawl into bed in my uncles attic, and like clockwork I see the mound

out near the baseball diamond. Out there, they love the patron saint of hopeless causes,

myths and ground balls drooping between your ankles. I define my life when it pauses,

and there is time.

There is time to not look at my watch

There is time to sit on porches and talk about my father.

There is time to walk down the spit to the club and dive in head first, little legs underwater.

There is time to coast, and say goodbye to what wasn't mine

There is time to ponder

There is time to dip my feet in near the edge of the dock and wonder.

Then I'm on the south side of town again, and I look at my watch until I can't look any longer.

My legs cramp up, so I go into the back of the trailway, and the mixture of piss and shit rattles,

I come back to work, and the gravel seems different now, it seems like it missed me, this battle

wasn't a battle. It was the way things are.

I look at my watch.

The band had rotten and broken off.

I threw it somewhere in the bottom of my pocket.

I roll on down the hill with you, you know, our wagons fuse is nearly done my rocket

is your rocket.