Bad Writing III

[Due to popular-enough request, here's part three of bad writing. Parts one and two.]

Apparently alcohol and anesthetic don’t mix. I woke from a coma three weeks later with the ultimate pain in my leg. The bullet had pulverized my femur and severed my femoral artery like a hot steak knife through a balloon. They reattached it with a piece of artery from a hoodlum who had been gunned down by police after shooting some drunk passed out in an alley minutes after I was admitted. My femur was replaced with titanium like Lieutenant Dan’s.

I couldn’t stop thinking of Forrest Gump, and how he persevered through so many injustices. Then I thought of Jenny, the slut with AIDS. You assume she had AIDS because she was so promiscuous. Then I wondered how Forrest didn’t get AIDS, and how his son didn’t have AIDS, then I considered the fact that maybe she didn’t have AIDS. If so, why was it so alluded? Was it cancer then?

These thoughts troubled me for days until my family visited. They filled my outpatient recovery room with warmth and joy like that experienced by a house filled with the scent of onion and garlic. They offered to pay for my stay at the hospital but I declined because they were poor.

The next morning the surgeon approached me and asked, “how’s the leg?”

“It’s not doing so great,” I told him.

“Well, I hope it gets better. Because I put you in a coma, I’m going to pay for your stay at the hospital.”

“That’s great,” I exclaimed.

Explosive Diarrhea

I have 23 minutes to write an entry before my time is up. The more observant among you will notice that I’m referring to the time left before the day is over, but you are wrong. I have 23 minutes to disarm a bomb here at the library.

What am I doing at a library so late you ask? Well, it’s a good story, so grab some pop corn or nothing. I was researching Buddhism’s impact on the Mexican male’s dominance over females between the ages of 15-25 in the 1990s. I read most of Hooper’s A Brief History of Buddhism, Berringaring’s The Pervasiveness of Buddhism, and Palladorianos’s The Dissemination of Zen. Apparently, there was no influence.

Being the slow reader that I am, it took me nearly sixteen hours to read through those books. By the end of the last book I realized that the library had closed.

“Ah, but the lights should have turned off! This story is a farce!”

Nay, good reader. Here’s the good part! The lights stayed on because the librarian was arming the bomb she left to explode the library! Weird, huh? Anyway, I realized this only because I heard the arming sequence. It sounded like a phone dialing, sort of, but louder and higher pitched and when she was done, I heard a computerized voice: “Arming sequence complete. Bomb has been activated.” I don’t know where she got the bomb.

“Uh, so why aren’t you trying to disarm the bomb?”

Hah, funny that you ask that. I tried, but I mean, it’s a bomb! Have you tried disarming a bomb? I have no idea what the hell to do! It’s a pack of explosives with an alarm clock counting down to midnight. What am I supposed to do?

I’m going to put it in the toilet. Yes, with the lid down. That’ll work, right? Alright, I’m doing it. Hold on. Okay, it’s in there. Okay, the library’s exploded. Well, this sucks. At least the Wi-Fi still works.

Adventures in Bad Writing II

[Time for more bad writing! Here’s part one.]

The sun kissed my fresh bullet wound with a gentle warmth. I was awakened by the cold steel of a revolver to the back of my head as it struck me like a pile of bricks burying my hangover. I told him to take my wallet, it was all I had. He took it and then shot me in the leg.

There was bread in the air and it was the only thing that kept me going. I staggered to the bakery leaving a trail of blood across the floor like a river of red death. “I’ll like some bread please, sir,” I asked the gentleman behind the counter, built strong like a wolf and with the hands of a killer, a medieval knight perhaps, or a small bear.

“There’s no bread,” he said nonchalantly as though it weren’t a bakery. “This is a coffee shop,” he continued, “we don’t serve bread. Only coffee and pastries.”

“I’ll have a pastry then,” I said feeling faint. I’d lost a lot of blood and perhaps I was delirious, but I don’t think I was. It was a damned fine pastry, flaky like pie dough, chewy like a good pastry. There was strawberry jam inside, it reminded me of my leg. “Hey, gotta phone?” I asked the shopkeeper. “My leg’s busted.”

I took the phone and collapsed. I woke up in the hospital with a team of surgeons working on my leg. “What is this?” I asked them.

“He’s out,” said one surgeon.

“He’s out?” asked the anesthesiologist.

“Yes, he’s out. He’s conscious.”

“He’s out or he’s conscious?”

“He’s conscious.”

“Well, let’s put him back out.”

“Put him out? He is out. He needs to be unconscious.”

“What do you mean he’s out? He’s conscious.”

“That’s what I mean, he’s out. He’s out of the anesthesia.”

“Oh!” Said the anesthesiologist knocking me out again. Or in. I wasn’t quite sure then.

Holding Patterns

Do you sometimes wake up in the morning and realize your life is reminiscent of the classic Bill Murray comedy, Groundhog Day, but only a lot worse?

What makes it a lot worse is that you're not nearly as funny as Bill Murray, this indefinite starting over again isn't distilled in a 90-minute comedy, and instead is real life, which is often more tragic and time does not go back to 6:00am the previous day and instead rolls out to the next day, week and year ad nauseum, finding yourself older, possibly fatter and more bitter than before, and whatever consequences you've accrued the previous day IN FACT carries on with you moreso than just a memory.

It kind of stinks knowing full well of your real-life limitations of the situation of letting history repeat itself. Instead of dreading of hearing I've Got You Babe waking up, you still channel Cher, wondering if you can turn back time. Either way, you've got to accept the harsh truth and move on from there...but what is there to do? With time working against you, there's only a finite number of options to help you get out of such a pattern without the do-overs. Wing it? Go carpe diem and see if you organically fall out of it? Or once you're actually aware of such a bad habit, try to figure out what's causing this pattern to repeat and change things to prevent it from happening again? But how does one start in this process in the first place?!?









Answers: Maaaaaaaaybe...; TONS; YES?!?; Perhaps not.; Perhaps the best way to go.; You tell me...this is MY start in figuring all this out!

Jerks

Oh sweet cheeses of the heavens, do I hate people sometimes.

I say this at a strangely ironic time when I've managed to surround myself and try to reconnect with the people I really care for and love, but no matter how hard one tries, the jerks seem to wiggle out of the woodwork like the wily roaches that they are. This is seriously a difficult entry to write right now, with my heart filled with happiness thinking of all the people I have in my life, but still. WTF JERKS?!?!?

I have to admit even though it's kind of embarrassing to say that UCLA tends to have a high output in the Jerk department. I went to UCLA, and I'm not going to say that I didn't get out of there a jerk, cause there are some who think I did.

For example, when I used to go around with my ex who went to illustrious UC Berkeley campus and was wearing some kind of Cal paraphernalia, at least ONE person would walk by saying "GO BEARS!" or ask if he knew what the final score was for the football game. I have never or have seen any other Bruin walk by someone with a UCLA this or that and say, "GOOO BRUINS!" (I haven't seen anything similar for 'SC, BTW). I used to make the excuse that there are just more of us Bruins down here in LA, and perhaps seeing a Cal fan down here is a treat. But they seem to do that up north as well, and I can guarantee a Bruin up north wouldn't be all a-giddy seeing a UCLA sweatshirt worn about town.

This past Saturday I was working at an event, taking money for peoples' admission. As I look up at the person I was helping, I realize that I've seen this gal before. Where is she from? How do I know her? I've worked with her before, or have the same friends. So I say, "You look familiar...!" Without looking up, she continues to fiddle with her change and retort, "Yeah, I look like a lot of people." While I reeled for a moment for such a snarky reply, I persisted and kept thinking, "Did you go to UCLA?" And she just affirmed my inquiry and walked away.

It's later that I remember her name and where I know her: She's a hometown friend of a good friend of mine second/third year and we went on many dinners and adventures together! And yes, she did finally get a look at me but did not bother to try to acknowledge an old connection.

Now I'm not writing this to say that all the jerks of the world are UCLA-raised, as there are very awesome people from UCLA who are jerk-free, and there are buckets of jerks who couldn't even go near UCLA.

Take, for example, the lady in the truck today. I'm trying to make a left turn at a light where I have a protected turn during rush hour when the cross traffic gets the red and there are two cars still trying to turn left into two full lanes of traffic, leaving them blocking the intersection. The last car was this lady in the truck, who all of a sudden is in the middle of the intersection when I'm supposed to be able to take my special left turn. And then she gets angry. AT ME. She throws her hands in the air in frustration and looks at me and shoots me some dirty looks and mouths something I can't understand. I'm just sitting in my car watching all of this, and thought, "Wait...am I angry right now? Am I psychically cussing her out? I don't think so..." and just realized she's getting mad at me for no reason at no fault to me. WHY?

Thankfully I have a small car and am able to maneuver past her big truck so I can make the left at the protection of her frustrated self blocking the opposing traffic. I didn't see if she happened to have UCLA plate frames or not. Would it surprise me? Not really.

Justified Bumming

I am currently the Mayor Pro-Tempore of Box City.

I'm not lying. There's a large branding campaign going on there, and the name of the city is EVERYWHERE.

Okay. I'm house sitting for my friend who moved to a new place less than a week before she planned on going on a trip that took her across the ocean. She had thought of taking her babies (two boy cats) over to their old daddy's to sit, but it seemed the stress of putting them in a new house and then shuttled off to a different place for two weeks would have been too traumatic for them. Instead, they get to hang out with their cool aunt who still won't let them stay on the couch and sleep in bed with her which is kind of a mutually disappointing arrangement).

House sitting is always an interesting thing. It's almost like living that person's life for the duration of the time you're there, except you're trying to do your own thing, too. Last year, I had to house sit for my boss when her entire family was out of town. In a way it made things convenient, since I worked out of her home office, and I got a taste of what it would be like to work at home. It also showed me why it's probably better I don't work at home when trying to maintain a 9-5 job. When I was staying there, I also was responsible for walking their dog, but not being a dog owner myself, I wasn't entirely sure of the whole process of dog walking, particularly that dog. But I think I got things figured out.

This house sitting situation isn't quite as convenient as the aforementioned house sitting gig. Instead of having the advantage of sleeping at my workplace, I'm actually staying about 7 miles in the opposite direction from work, and against traffic. Since the place is still Box City, most of the house is still packed up, and I wonder if I can do simple tasks like cook something or watch TV (I can watch TV and access Internet, but the DVD player is still packed away somewhere.

Perhaps it's better I'm not equipped to cook on the brand new stove, as to not stink up the place of onions or even worse, burn the house down.

If there's any big challenge, it's the fact I'm sleeping in a new space. It's a bit unnerving for a bit, but it's just something to get used to. My host's concern for me was that this new house is right in front of a pretty big street in a pretty big city, but having grown up across the street doesn't bother me. What bothered me was when I wake up to a machine sighing...like a fan or a tape drive turning on and then falling asleep. Or ready to mince me into bits. I have yet to figure that out.

On Drinking

It’s impossible to recuperate from a night a ton-heavy drinking without drinking some more in the morning. It’s a necessary tenet by which I’ve lived for a few years now. I don’t understand why people suffer through nauseating and painful hangovers when they can drink their problems away.

On that note, I don’t understand why people don’t drink all their problems away. It’s easy enough: just drink. Presto, fucking solved.

Son failed his Algebra test? Scotch.

Can’t find your keys? Rum.

Wife cheating on you? Vodka.

Car accident? Tequila!

Conversely, why not celebrate every bit of happiness with a belt or two? I can always go for a drink after a day of laboring in construction, why not your wife? I’m sure it’ll hit the spot after forcing a nine pound gremlin through her vagina.

Hell, there’s no solid reason not to drink to pass the time. Why in the world would anyone sit around doing nothing, waiting for time to pass? It doesn’t make any sense. Whether you’re waiting at the airport between flights, waiting for the wine at church, or waiting to feel sleepy at night, just drink.

This is why it’s imperative that everyone have a flask. You never know when good or bad things or no things at all will befall you.