On The Topic of the Virtues of Smoking a Pipe

Today was, essentially, a wash. One of my best friends in the world was having his bachelor party, and I would have loved to go... except I had to work. Further, I couldn't take the day off because I need to take next Saturday off to attend his wedding. The plan then was that they would take off for the day to Glenwood to swim, as that seems to be the sort of thing one plans their day around when attending a hot springs. Later that evening when they got back, we would catch up at Leela's or Paris downtown, share a couple of pints and maybe a pipe or two.

Unfortunately, and I can't blame this on any of them (though there's an irrational part of me that would like to), they encountered automotive problems, and what should have been a three hour drive turned into a 4 and a half hour drive, and add on blizzard conditions. So, that's a no go for pints and pipes: they had to cancel. Bummer. So, I got all bummed out and depressed and trekked home.

It's 10 now, and I'm trying to think of some way to salvage my Saturday night, but nothing's coming to mind. Earlier in the day, my pal Arthur had made an offer to hang out, but I had to turn that down because I did not foresee my previous plans being canceled.

So, you know what I did? I sat outside, in the rain, and had a pipe, and what a glorious pipe it was.

I have what's called a "sport pipe." It's mostly just an apprentice made pipe with a shallow bowl that's supposed to last no longer than 15 minutes, but through some forces that are largely mysterious to me, this pipe lasted for 30. Truly a Hanukkah miracle, though not on par with a day's oil lasting eight.

At any rate, I sat outside, listening to the rain, the trains, puffing, and thinking. I thought about my friend David's birthday I missed and made the determination to buy for him his very first pipe and tobacco. He deserves it.

I thought about the Daily Dime and how I'd missed two days this week and really didn't want to miss a third, but didn't know what I was going to write about.

I thought about the day and what a bummer it was overall.

I thought about pipes, and what a curious tradition it is, but what a powerful one. I don't smoke mine too often, perhaps once a week, and that's usually in the company of others. I might smoke it by myself once every 5 or 6 weeks, and it's usually only at times, like tonight, where I feel an irrational depression, and I really want to pull out of it. And it's a panacea. It works, and I'm not sure which part of this causes the even feeling or the mellowing. I don't know if it's perhaps the scent, or the series of long breaths (which are smoke free, every one of them) i must take to stoke the pipe and keep it stoked, the fact that I'm forced to stop and be slow, to take time and think, or if it's something beyond that. Not to attribute mystical attributes to an object, but it's been my experience that it has a power to mold and steer conversation in a way that other smokes do not.

At any rate, I smoked my magic pipe (insert pot joke here. HA HA HA! YOU SO FUNNY!), and felt contented and happy. I came inside, sat down, and whipped out a true to real life story.

Let us seal these meetings
With the raising of a pint,
And the stoking of a pipe.

"You Realy Saved My Ass Back There.

Holy fuggin' crap. Last night, I looked at my review sheet for my history exam and wondered, "When are we taking this stupid thing? We have a paper due tomorrow, but what about the test?" So I wracked my brain trying to remember if we'd had a paper due last test day or not. There are only 3, maybe 4 tests given in the semester, so they're weighted pretty heavily. At any rate, I couldn't remember, and this morning when I got to class (I arrived 10 minutes late because the highway was determined to go no faster than 50 mph), my good friend Nicole turns to me and says, "there's no test today. She forgot to give us the whole study guide."

o rly.

ya rly.

So, apparently, God heard my question last night and decided to give me the most (apart from not having it altogether) satisfying answer. "That'll do pig, that'll do."

In other news, I met a fascinating young woman yesterday. We talked for a good twenty or thirty minutes about writing endeavors. She's short fiction turned poetry and I'm mostly short fiction. But we talked, and she was really cool. She said she'd bring a flyer to me for her "poetry feature" (not entirely sure what that is) next week and I gave her my blogger address.

Blogger address? What kind of stupid way of getting to know people is that?

I know.

Hanging at the Gym

So, one of my new year's goals, the one I've been the least successful at (though its unsuccess competes with my writing goal) was to run a few times a week. This goal had a two fold purpose: the more long term purpose of "getting in shape," which is a revatively nebulous goal but includes, though is not limited to, being in better physical shape. Pretty complex, huh? That's the more long term "overarching" goal, with a much more immediate one of being able to walk all over Ireland (since our time there will be mostly spent walking) without chaffing like a mugger fugger and without geting all winded and pouting like a wee school lass.

So today after school I'm going to the rec center to run for a minimum of 45 minutes, but as long as I feel is necessary. I even borrowed 10 bucks from my mom to do it.

In thinking on why this goal has been such a collosal failure for me, I've come to the conclusion that at this juncture I'm too timid to do my running outside and in gyms where the everyday joe and the stereotypical shallow gym butterfly (because that's all that are there, right?) can see me, and of course, ridicule me. Especialy the last two people I mentioned. At least at the rec center, the beautiful people aren't present, at least in their overwhelming numbers, and I can also swim if I want. Something I haven't done in years.

The ironic part is that since I've made activity my goal, my activity dropped from 2-3 times a week to roughly 3 times every 2 weeks, when my goal became five. I used to go to tae kwon do 3 times a week, and I've since stopped. A part of that is the available number of times I can go to tae kwon do, and the available number of chances I have to go since I've been more active in being church.

So, what I'm asking for is accountability. If you see me or talk to me, and if you otherwise give a damn, ask me if I've run or been to "fight club."

Why thank you.

But Not Your Friendly Syphilis

I hate my upstairs neighbors. They are chuweros in the purest sense of the word, as defined by definition 1.

it is now 2:17 in the A fuckin' M! i have no clue what these people do, but i can guarantee one thing they don't do: corral their little shit goblin children on the weekends. it sounds like kid fight club upstairs, and this is not a rare occasion. i went to bed about an hour and a half ago, and this nonsense was going on then, and it's still going on. i'll be almost asleep, i can feel my sleep cycle 2 spinning up, and my conscious mind spinning down, then WHAM, it sounds like a someone has dropped cinder on a wood floor, but our floors are CARPETED! WHAT MAKES THAT NOISE! IF THE KIDS ARE BEATING THE HELL OUT OF EACHOTHER, THEY NEED TO BEAT HARDER!

i want them all to get terrible debilitating syphilis. the kind people used to get in the 1800s, not that friendly glamour syphilis we have now.

The Photograph As Time Machine

The clarifier: I love my family to death and thank God for them daily. I also enjoy my extended family, some more than others, but I think that's fairly unavoidable.

I was at the house a couple of nights ago looking through old photographs with my mom, and it was uncanny: I felt nostalgia. I usually don't feel this concerning things that are actually sentimental. I feel nostalgia when I watch old cartoons, read an old book, but never over things that are inherently sentimental. But there I was.

I could see my mom as a girl no older than seven (looking exactly like my sister at that age), a teenager, a young woman. I could see my grandpa as a young man, before his accident that left him a quadriplegic, a young father, the cripple. Time stretched back into 40s, 50s, now my grandpa is an infant, now he's no more and I'm staring at great grandparents. People I've never met. Great great grandparents, aunts and uncles that have all left this world before I arrived.

Staring at these pictures, I felt disembodied, as though I flowed forward through time, and ebbed backwards through it. People I'd never seen, but now wished I did. My dad as a baby, his bald watermelon head, his parents as teenagers, grandpa with his first car at sixteen, back when the people knew that good habits started with responsibility. I almost felt as though I could reach out and join my grandpa hitchhiking on those Arizona roads, ride with my mom from Iowa, or sleep in the crib next to my infant dad.

I left my parent's house thinking about the photographs, thinking about people I haven't met but am deeply connected to.

These photographs solidified a decision: I want to write a book that will never get published. The only person to see it will be my kids, and their kids, and so on. The book will be entitled "The Last Thing I Ever Remember," it'll be a book simply of my memories and nothing more. Anything and everything I can remember recorded for my kids. They will record what they remember, and so on.

Imagine: your grandfather hands you a book and says, "my grandfather started writing in this book, and we want you to keep on writing."

Sleep, You Elusive Bastard

So, I haven't been sleeping the greatest for the past couple of weeks. Roughly since I saw 300. Mostly, that was a stretch of about two weeks where I didn't get a lot of sleep, and slept hard when I did sleep. This week, I've just not been sleeping well at all. I'll go to bed at my regularly scheduled times, or what feels right to me, and then toss and turn and wake up a whole bunch and wake up feeling like I just got done running. Well, tonight I go to bed at 12, and then wake up with a burning sensation in my left eye and left nostril. I tossed and turned when I went to bed and feel like I've been asleep for maybe a half hour. I toss and turn for what feels like about fifteen minutes, and then look at my clock. I was really asleep for four hours, but now I feel pretty awake and not going back to sleep any time soon.

But it's not as if I need any less sleep. Quite the contrary. Tuesday, I stayed home from school due to a forming migraine and slept an additional 4 hours to my already existing 7. Thursday, I took a nap after school, and while my body usually limits itself to 30 minute naps, an entire hour went by and felt like mere minutes. And I could have slept more, but made myself get up. I just wish I knew why this nonsense was going on. Y'know what? I don't even care why it's happening. I just wish I'd go back to regular sleep.

Everything Here Sounds Disgusting

That's going to be the name of my new restaurant. Here's a few of our key dishes:

• Gastritis Fries
• DeEsophagizer
  
• Pungent Patties
• Soylent Burger

What respectable joint is complete without a signature drink? Which is why I present:

• The Runs.
  What is it? I sure as hell don't know, but damn if it ain't delicious.

And like all respectable sit down family places, there's always the ever present threat of some food monstrosity bound and determined to reek havoc on your fine dining experience, unless of course you can defeat it in an act of unparalleled bestial wrath, and consume it in a furious bout of timed gorging. So, to satisfy the eXtreme glutton in us all, Everything Here Sounds Disgusting proudly, and humbly, presents

THE COLOSTOMIZER!

My only regret is that I don't have a font large enough to bring the powerful and immense grandeur of this proud beast to your screens. The exact size and weight of this "terror of the modern age" cannot be determined, but I can tell you this: it will not be bound by our petty 18" plates. It's massive bulk hangs over the edge, gracefully. The buns have sealed themselves to the top of this bulk with the concrete grip of hot molten grease, rivers of boiling cheese cascade, playfully, down the sides. It truly is a creature deserving of our greatest respect.

Now, you'd think we'd be done there. Not so. Not so. Last night, as I go to lay down on my head, three simple words are uttered into my head. Three simple words which jostle me from my rest, and impel me to write them down. Three. Simple. Words.

I present to you the crown prince of Everything Here Sounds Disgusting:

Irritable
Bowel
Burger

Everything Here Sounds Disgusting. "Yeah. It's that good."