And Now It's Time For A Breakdown

I haven't been doing so great. 100 Word Stories' weekly challenge time is not bitching time, but last week happy time and bitchy time intersected spectacularly when my Internet died repeatedly, making work back up and cut into my getting-of-the-topic, writing, and submitting time. Yes, I only have five minutes of free time.

I guess what I'm trying to tell you is I wrote something not great for Wings. I could have gone on at great length about birds, I could've had another Paul McCartney adventure, but for some reason I wrote about something I've never drank in my life.

Red Bulls are so good, I drank a hundred of them and I didn't get wings, but I cleaned my gutters and I didn't even need a ladder to get to the roof, I just jumped! Then I helped change a tire by totally ripping off the tire, and then I threw the tire, and the tire flew all the way across town to the dump and killed a hobo, but I don't feel bad about that--I can't feel anything but pure unadulterated caffeine rushing through my veins, busting up my brain and I think I'm having a heartattack!

I only said I never drank a Red Bull, I didn't say I've never felt like that. I totally clean my gutters all by myself fueled only by Folgers and a deep-seated rage for the gits who put up the gutters without a downspout near the corner where the pine needles collect. Also, I know nothing of hobo clobberings.

Read and listen to my crazy going on and far more focused tales here. The speed at which I read my story is the only thing that saves it.

And Now It's Time For A Breakdown

Walk Four Blocks In My Shoes And You'll Be Four Blocks Away From Me With My Shoes

One of many entertaining parts of living in a constant state of having no money is realizing how obscene the price of shoes is. Growing up, there was a store called Alexander's, where shoes were always two pairs for $10. The price went up as my feet got bigger but then my feet never got as big as the women around me so it wasn't like I could share shoes the way we all swap the clothes around depending on who fits into what. Alexander's had the best shoes.

My current shoes are "utility" cross trekkers from Payless. They look like sneakers to me, but they're not in the "athletics" section, which only adds to the flaming stupidity of it all. My first pair was $19, then when those split I had to pay $25, and now they're $27, because I guess the sweatshop union asked for an extra penny to skimp on the glue along the front of the sneaker.

Because I'm a cheap bastard, I occasionally poke around to see what other shoes are out there in the hopes of finding a better deal, see what the cool kids are wearing these days.



...they have to be kidding me. $60 for sandals and...flip-flops?

This may offend flip-flop lovers, but I don't like those things, and not entirely because I introduced my knees to the concrete with my face several times while "getting used to" those plastic beach thongs with the button that catches in everything.

I don't need to see dirty feet. You pay $60 for shoes, I better not be able to see your krunky toenails because I will cut you. Same goes for the $159 high-tops. What the hell are they made of? Waterbeds? Clouds? DEAD COWS?

Man, I hate buying shoes.

Walk Four Blocks In My Shoes And You'll Be Four Blocks Away From Me With My Shoes

Songs of My Misspent Youth: I Don't Mind At All

I turned I Don't Mind At All by Bourgeois Tagg into a state of mind.

What what who?

Yes, I was a moody child, but this song used to pop up in the strangest places. On one of my Monty Python tapes, in a card store as I was looking for black balloons for my 16th birthday party, and again on the Monty Python tape the morning I was headed to a funeral. Who in their right mind watches Monty Python before going to their grandfather's funeral? Someone who wants to hold on to better days for just a few minutes longer, that's who.

In 1987 when this song hit mainstream radio, I was in the middle of my Monty Python gathering phase. Every weekend the shows were on Thirteen, and my aunt got me the rest off MTV. To fill the rest of the tape, she taped some videos, and there it was, this song that sounded like the greatest Beatles song never written. My Poppy would watch those Python tapes with me on Sunday mornings, even after I made him sick with the live organ transplants bit in The Meaning Of Life. That time countered all that made me grumpy in the world.

It wasn't just metal in my eyes and great injustices done to those I loved and daft things people would say to me, though. It was all how I took it. Seriously, I cracked and became my own therapist, and this song was my Zennest Zen counsel. I stopped saying I didn't care about things and started saying I didn't mind. I saw a difference. Was it worth being a grumpy bastard? Was it something I could change? Let it go, Indiana.

Embedding the video wasn't allow so you'll need to go here to see it, but thanks to the new obsession, imeem, here's the song:

Songs of My Misspent Youth: I Don't Mind At All

The Shadow Toast

The 100 Word Stories' weekly challenge usually brings out brand new stories.

True, my offering for the double themes of Magic Toaster and Who Knows? was written out in a new way for the challenge, but this one is part of something else, something bigger, something really really old.

Life was never the same for Alex after his brother was poisoned by their father. He kept to himself a lot before then, but after his brother began communicating through the toaster, things turned around.

At first he tried to convince himself there was nothing magic about the toaster, he’d been drinking the first time it spoke, maybe he was developing schizophrenia, who knows? Sure, he'd like to do what the toaster told him and throw it in the tub with dad, but it made great toast. Browned evenly, not too burnt. It didn’t even need to be plugged in.

All 11 stories are popping up here, full of mystery and buttery crunch.

The Shadow Toast

I'm Not There

I always liked coming home.

Didn't matter how sick or tired I was, when I saw the sign at the end of the block, I knew I was safe. Even when I wasn't.



When we moved here 28 years ago, one major selling point was the backyard, because I liked the park by the rat water but now it was too far away. The backyard would be good for me, I heard. Because I had imagination of a seven-year-old, the backyard was as terrifying as the rooms that had no lamps yet. Then the sun came out.

It may seem like I'm going all Pocahontas, but this house and the land it's on may never be mine in the sense that I can't be removed from it, but I belong to this land. I've bled for the house. But the air makes me live and at the end of the day it's what I want to see. It never leaves me. This is where I am. This is my home. This is my safe place.



The air is getting colder and soon the flowers will stop blooming. Until next time.

"Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back."
-- Bruce Springsteen

I'm Not There