FireVaney

It isn’t a question  of effort.  It’s a question of  where  and/or  how   the effort  is  applied.  You do too much of the wrong thing and too little of the right thing.  (And by you , I mean me .)  *  I hate it when the love for a song withers.  *  Odd little crumb hole. *  *  “Why not go out? Go to a movie.”  “I hate movies. Movies make real life dull.”  *  Bed bugs  copulate  through traumatic  insemination.  A  female  bed bug does not  have  a  genital opening. †  Now why, on  EARTH,  would  GOD allow  this ,  for example? ‡  *  We were in a dorm cafeteria, eating ice cream for breakfast, when Arron told Dena, “You can tell a lot from the way a girl licks an ice cream cone.” Dena smiled. At the time, she was dating Aaron’s roommate. §  *  I was young, not yet ten, when my father called from Kent...

Middle school. Gym Class. Outside. Field. Football. Picked last. As usual. Snubbed by quarterback. As usual. Playing for losing team. As usual. Gym teacher: Mr. Klip. He stops the game. Pulls a large EGG from his windbreaker’s pocket. Tells the class: “Go long.” We—the class—we’re confused. He Hail Marys the egg. I start running, hesitantly running ( hesitancy runs in the family), not fast enough, not to reach the egg before it hits, before it SPLATS, the ground. (Not that it’s clear that it’s not hard-boiled.) Doesn’t matter. Why? Egg DOES NOT hit the ground. No. Instead: A great brown bird, it BURSTS from egg. Flies past goal posts. Lands on tree branch, a low-hanging tree branch. Everybody: aghast . “Everybody,” but Klip. (“ Aghast ” not at low-hanging tree branch, no. “ Aghast ” at bird burst egg, or egg burst bird, or what have you.) I walk to tree, look up at bird—adult hawk, mayhap. But maybe, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Staring. Klip, he’d given me a leather gauntlet. When? Dun...

For me, today was Precedents Day. I looked into becoming a firefighter. I shopped for and purchased a Holy Bible. I shopped for and purchased a bra at Victoria’s Secret. The bra is a wonder bra and it is leopard patterned. I can’t believe I actually bought a bra. * I can’t believe I actually bought a Bible . † Also, Thad gave me a haircut today. He’s a medical student, not a barber. ‡ My hair might be the shortest it’s ever been. Another precedent: I dropped my underwear in the toilet—my red underwear. § I’ll bet you don’t own any colored underwear. I’ll bet you own more briefs than boxers.  My grandfather calls me up in the middle of the night because he can’t figure out how to turn off his new TV. ** (It’s his first TV with a remote control.)  Somewhere, I heard, or maybe read, that Americans eat enough ice cream every year to fill the Grand Canyon. No doubt I eat enough to fill a small ravine.  1 August 1997  * [03/12/23: For the life of me, I cannot recall w...

No, really, there is a smudge on the inside of my Daewoo’s windshield. It’s an odd sort of smudge. You only see it at night or when the sun is blazing itself directly at it. I’ve tried wiping it away with towels and water, and then with towels and 409, and yet the smudge remains. Where did it come from? I have no recollection of spraying the windshield with any sort of smudge-creating liquid. Could it be the amassed leftovers from my periodic sneezing? If so, wouldn’t that make it organic and hencethus wipe-away-able? Despite my efforts the smudge remains. The smudge remains despite my efforts. Or, perhaps, it recurs. Unless it reoccurs. What I’m saying is that it comes and goes. What if the stuff of my sneezes is inorganic? Or at least not organic. Or semi-organic. Or semi-inorganic. Perhaps I am a Cylon after all. What makes (the “reimagined”) Battlestar Galactica so good, so seemingly REAL is, perhaps, the “fact” that it IS real. Or was real. Or some nearly accurate variation of w...