A few weeks ago I planted some sunflower seeds along the cinder block wall in my backyard. I gave the planting area extra water every day and pulled out any weeds that I deemed to close for comfort.

After a week or so, quite a few plump little shoots were stretching their flat leafy arms in the sunlight. My care continued; watering, weeding, and crushing between my fingers the box elder bugs that dared nibble the young leaves.

By week the third, my seedlings seemed capable of caring for themselves. They had staked their claim above the sunlight-stealing grass and would be happy enough with the morning dew and the lawn sprinkler my father turned on every other day.

The weekend came and I had outslept the morning. My bee-line to the kitchen for breakfast was interrupted by my father coming in from the backyard. An aura of heat entered with him. Flecks of green stuck to his sweat-stained t-shirt. He had spoken of his intent to cut the grass the day before. My father intends many things and does little else. Perhaps it was my failure then, to lump his desires, the grand and the mundane, into the same category of possibility.

"Did you cut down my sunflowers?"

"I had to cut the grass, son."

He stepped around me and I felt his inhuman warmth and smelled the cut grass and sweat from a job well done.

My father is a man who cuts down the flowers with the grass. I tend to the flowers, keep them safe from hungry insects yet fail to stop the whirling-blades machine that makes the lawn just a lawn again, not a place of living things.

I wonder now, were there not a wall preventing him, if my father would cut the world down into even, yellow-green rows. I wonder, and despair.

"Certainly in a period when masters are many, one must put forth considerable effort. But at the time when the world is sliding into decline, to excel is easy."
-Way of the Warrior


Like all men, I suppose, I seek strength and recognition. The two must exist together for a time, but after that only one is needed, as it will make up for the other.

At times I ponder over the need for a gun. In my years, I have never needed one. In the news I hear of plans for nuclear weapons being passed out like Halloween candy and I wonder, what manner of warrior would I be with a gun? An ant warrior, with a fierce bite, but hardly enough to matter if I battle anything other than ants. There are giants among us, with power enough to melt my gun and carbonize my body long before I could ever come within firing range.

And now a couple of Swiss bankers have that knowledge and they've not been stingy with it. If I have the right to bear arms, why not nuclear? I could put up a sign in front of my house "Warning: Mutually Assured Destruction" to deter thieves and religious solicitors. Well, perhaps not Jehovah's Witnesses. I think their beliefs are founded on exactly that sort of thing.

No, I will abandon my search for power through traditional weaponry and continue working on my Funk Bomb. When activated, it will cause Mutually Assured Dancing, with an awesomeness radius that will cause shimmying and jiving for miles around the blast site, making it impossible to get anything done in that area for years to come.

I dreamt of a skyscraper smack-dab against the tiniest town. From the highest floor, I pressed my face against the glass and tried to make out the lives below. The owner of the skyscraper was the brother of my friend, who I was there to visit. A cloud drifted below me and slowly wisped apart. I felt strange, like a strand of hair trying to grow through scar tissue. The sun was on its way down and I wanted to go home, a long motorcycle drive away but I wanted to go home, or at least far away when it finally got dark here. There were no birds; that's what had been bothering me there were no birds nor roughest beast, the skyscraper and the tiniest town was nestled in a wilderness without. I'd seen enough empty trees, heard enough of empty men and I wanted to go home.

Someone described me as a hippie some time ago. Jokingly, I hope, because I do not consider myself part of that philosophy. Hippie-ness seems to be founded on peace, love, and laziness. I always got the feeling that a hippie doesn't own a tv, for instance, but would happily take one if it was gifted to them.

What I do, am doing, is adopting more of a Buddhist philosophy of accepting my desire for certain things, trying to understand that the desire will not necessarily go away even if it is satisfied for a time, and to learn to enjoy the wanting as much as the having.

I hope to learn to revel in such things as knowledge, music, conversation, and physical activity and lust for them to the degree that I reserve now for strawberry cheesecakes, alcohol, and cutting off Hummers.

What I am, I think, is an economist. A grizzled old economist that hates hidden costs, referred to as "externalities." Like if McDonald's fed me for free, the cost appears to be nothing. But factor in the externalities of obesity, diabetes, and, no joke, scurvy, and the cost of my free food skyrockets.

Also I don't have health insurance so I really should take better care of myself. I've taken seriously my President's suggestion that "the rest of us" should just "not get sick."

It's such a simple solution, it has been overlooked by men of genius and average intelligence alike, and it took this one to figure it out.

To add more stringy okra to this political stew, an Arizonan is running for president. Don't vote for an Arizonan. We're crazy. Superheated dust particles can sneak through the blood brain barrier (I imagine) and once there they build tiny sandcastles that they defend with little sand-guns. Ever vigilant, they ensure that no ideas pass from the left hemisphere to right hemisphere without filing the proper paperwork.

As a result, the corpus callosum is one of the deadliest places in the human brain. If you're an idea.

But we're mad, I tell you, mad! If elected, President McCain will appoint me head of the Department of Fremen. We'll live in the coolness of our subterranean dwellings and ride giant worms to and fro.

All disputes will be settled by duel. The weapon: those long foam pool noodles, aka, the Funoodle. This is the item we have in the greatest abundance, and it spans across all ethnicities and class divisions.

Hmm...maybe we should all vote for McCain. I want my giant ridin' worm! YEEEEEHAAAAW!!! [fires funoodles into the air]

Pants down for freedom! The United States is going old-school and not imprisoning people without a trial. Sort of. Most of us have at least agreed that we shouldn't.

Mr. President doesn't seem to care for it. If the government were Las Vegas, the man would have been branded a jinx long ago. Already, anything he opposes gains the virtue of not being supported by him. If he bets against a horse, I would bet on that horse to win. If he bets on a horse to win, I would bet on that horse to somehow cost the United States billions of dollars and thousands of American lives, which is worse.

I wish our President would quit gambling and just go back to drinking.

I am a firm believer in Hru-doo, which is kind of like the Voodoo my older brother studies but firmly entrenched in science. Some time ago, I began a ritual to create a new being. My Hru-doo manual outlined the procedure. Relatively simple, as sci-thaumatics goes. It is technically a sacrifice, but I didn't have to make any ridiculous symbols or chant any magic words.

All I had to do was kill every monk seal in the world. Now that that's taken care of, I can claim my reward.

In hindsight, I should have specified what new being I wanted. Ah, well. At least I don't have to worry about those damn seals knocking over my trash cans. Still, I got myself pretty excited for a cybernetic monkey army.

One of my other esoteric studies, as of two days ago, is the Way of the Samurai. Technically I am a ronin, since I have no master. So far it's going okay. The Way of the Warrior touches upon a variety of aspects of daily life that might seem to have little to do with wildly swinging a sword around and shouting made-up Japanese (the cornerstone of my previous experience).

Cleanliness is important. Getting up early is important. Not losing my temper. Seeking improvement in all things, never protection. Be prepared for death; live as if already dead.

Which reminds me, when I die I need my brain destroyed so I don't come back as a zombie. And maybe shoot me with a silver bullet so I don't come back as a werewolf. Oh, and a stake through the heart so I don't become some weepy brooding vampire. Most importantly, bury me in a speedboat so I don't come back as a manatee.

Tee hee. Shunning my cell phone now makes me invisible in Europe as well as the US. Well, except for all the video surveillance, I mean. But I welcome video surveillance because I can bring back the old-tymey disguise kit.

No one ever suspects the organ-grinder.

I also hope to employ modern technologies. My buddy Scott has promised in a legally binding Facebook wall comment that he will build me one of those monkeys with brain-controlled robotic arms.

This is only a few steps away from my dream: to implant four robotic arms onto my body and then two, longer tentacles. I will then terrorize crime under the moniker "Graduate Student Squid".

Evildoers beware.