Originally posted 4-24-04

Before heading out to the bar tonight, I spoke to my friend Mindy from work. We ended up talking for quite a while. She is an interesting girl. In an earlier conversation she had asked why I referred to Luis as "the boy." I told her it was in homage to The Simpsons. It was not unusual for an angry Homer to refer to Bart as "the boy."

It makes sense, because when you're angry at someone you tend to objectify them, or at least strip them down to their most base characteristics. It creates a distance, an impartiality, I think. But what do I know? I'm not really here to break down the psychological significance of The Simpsons. That would take all night.

Mindy asked me if Luis was bothered by being called that. I had to think about that one. "I don't know," I said. "I'll have to ask him."

This evening, Luis and I had driven to Blockbuster Videos so that he could rent a movie. It is a short distance away from my house. On the way, I asked him my question.

"Does it bother you that I call you 'the boy'?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Well, what would you prefer I called you?"

"Jackass." He laughed.

"Shut up, boy, I'm not going to call you that."

At the video store, Luis chose to rent Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. It is one of our favorites. I really need to purchase that movie for my Tim Burton collection. (It's not a truly loyal collection; I refuse to purchase his remake of Planet of the Apes.)

I also rented Kill Bill Volume 1 for Miguel. Also, I might as well watch it before I finally go to see Volume 2.

Originally published 12-7-03

There have been quite a few things on my mind as of late.

The first is, obviously, The Art of Clown Warfare.

A few nights ago, I was making myself a light lunch, (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,) when my littlest brother, Luis, stumbled into the kitchen. He had been sleeping, as he usually does at 2:30 am. I asked him, "What, do you want a sandwich too?"

He told me to shut up.

I asked him if he was thirsty, and he said that he was.

"There is some apple juice in the fridge," I told him, handing him a glass.

He poured himself some, and, still bleary-eyed and stumbly, went back to his room. I abandoned my sandwich and followed him.

Luis has a queen sized bed, so I laid down along the foot of it. The boy is so small, he doesn't even take up a quarter of it. And, like me, he edges up right to the side of the bed when he sleeps.

"Get out of here, they'll here you!" Luis protested as I loudly complained that his bed was uncomfortable.

"Who'll hear me?" I asked.

"The clowns," he answered, with a tone that is usually reserved for imbeciles.

"What clowns?"

"The ones under the bed!"

"Boy, you don't have to worry about clowns," I admonished, "You just have to know how to fight them."

"What are you talking about?"

"Clowns aren't built for speed. They have big, floppy shoes that make it hard for them to run. They usually wear wigs, and you can pull them down over their eyes so that they can't see. Don't try to punch them in the nose, though. That's the most protected spot on a clown."

I leaned in closer, as if to impart a great secret.

"What you really want to do when fighting clowns is to take out one of the clown cars. See, you blow up just the one car, and you're actually taking out at least 20 clowns."

We laughed hysterically at the idea. I left him to sleep, and, still chuckling, went back to finish making my sandwich.

Original Post September 20th, 2003

Friday was "Take Your Parent To School Day" at Fees Middle school.

No, I do not attend the school myself.

I had promised my youngest brother Luis that I would accompany him on the mystical journey that is a half-day in the sixth grade. I do not have my one o'clock Italian class on Fridays. Thus, I had no excuse for not going. My mother works as a teacher herself, and from what I understand it is frowned upon for a teacher to leave a group of thirty first-graders alone for even a day.

My older brother I know wouldn't go, my sister is in Mexico, and my younger brother is in the Army. But what kind of excuse is that, really? "Lousy brother, running of to fight in Iraq, sticking me with Luis, make me get up all early on my day off," I grumbled.

But I was curious. The rest of my siblings and I had all gone to school pretty much together, so I always caught wind of their antics. But for the littlest Lopez, Middle School and indeed, school in general, was a solitary struggle. I remember Middle School as being a critical time for me in developing my personality. It was a time when I learned to defend myself with my keen mind rather than my fists. (Although, had my mind been a bit keener I might have realized that if I just kept my mouth shut and stopped insulting the larger kids who already didn't like me I wouldn't have had to worry so much about defending myself.) But I digress...

The Plain-Waffle Blues

I arrived at my parent's house to pick the boy up. He was already dressed and waiting for me. We both partook of waffles. Luis ate his plain. Mine were garnished appropriately with butter and syrup. We finished eating and were on our way.

We arrived to his first class 10 minutes late.

"Heh heh, it's all coming back," I thought.

Luis was sent to the office to report in for being tardy. While he was doing that, I sat in the classroom and acted like I had had nothing to do with it (another skill I learned in Middle School.)

When he returned, it was time for "Writing."

The Blue Chalk Blues

Luis is in several adapted classes so that he can receive more attention from his teachers. I too, knew this pain. I was in an very low math class that I lovingly referred to as "Adapted Math." It wasn't that bad though. I made the best boxes and "learning wheels" in that entire class. Of course, that was in High School, not Middle School... but I digress yet again.

The boy was working on alphabetizing words. He was doing okay, but then he hit the words that begin with the same sets of letters, in this case, "snare," "snort," and "sneer." His teacher spent some time trying to make him understand. Then I took over and spent some time trying to get him to understand. But he wasn't grasping it at all, it seemed. I was getting a bit frustrated, and so was Luis.

"Insanity," said Albert Einstein (not the florist, the physicist) "is performing the same action over and over and expecting different results." (I'm probably slightly misquoting that, but I have never been very good at translating German. (The quote I read was in English, but the latter is still true.))

I spied a chalkboard that someone had deviously tried to hide by hanging on the wall. Fortunately, I have read "The Purloined Letter," and ever since I have been excellent at finding objects hidden in plain sight.

"May I use the chalkboard?" I asked the teacher.

"Of course you may," Teacher replied.

After choosing the blue piece of colored chalk, I furiously began to write the group of words down on the board. As I had begun to suspect, the problem Luis had been having was not with the words per se, but it lay in that he was confusing the order of the beginning sets of letters. After getting him to cross out the letters that were the same, he could then focus on the "a," the "o," and the "e." He arranged them with little difficulty.

We completed the rest of the assignment like that. He got a 100% on the paper, and you know, I like to think that it was my 100% too.

The Blue Shirt Blues

The next class we went to after that was P.E. (Physical Education, which always sounded kind of dirty to me.) While the kids were changing, I waited patiently with a few other parents. One of them was a really odd guy who kept making jokes about computer tech at his work who was also the boss' son. From what I understood he fried a couple of very expensive computers and the guy assured me that it was all really very funny.

It's strange to meet people that are over forty that you are pretty sure nobody likes.

We were all herded down to one of the smaller gymnasiums by two whistle-wielding gym teachers. Once inside, all the children ran around like mad for a minute and then settled into a pretty tight formation of columns and rows. I was impressed. (My Middle School had little numbers painted on the ground for us to stand on, and even then we would have trouble.) The gym teachers led them in a series of stretches. The class was co-ed, and standing there awkwardly while a bunch of 13 year-old boys and girls did jumping-jacks without fail conjured up the image of a very envious Phill. I immediately lost it, and had turn away so that the kids wouldn't think I was laughing at them.

After stretching, they played a game called "Pac-Man" in which a few kids in blue shirts were the ghosts and the rest of them were the Pac-Men. Luis was given a blue shirt and thus was a ghost. An incredibly slow ghost. If the arcade game had had ghosts as slow as that, I could have beaten it with one quarter. The Pac-Men kids could only move along the lines painted on the gym floor, though, so my snail-paced pal managed to tag out a few, and you know, I like to think I managed to tag out a few, too.

The Spelling Bloos.

Luis had another class which was basically English. He had a spelling test, a journal that he had to write in, writing exercises to do, stuff like that. I guess that first class he had was more to reinforce some of the skills he was learning in other classes.

The boy cracked me up in that class. They were all reading The Pinballs by Betsy Byers. I saw it on their desk. "Oh yeah, The Pinballs! They're called that because they get bounced around from place to place, right?" Luis was surprised that I knew. He was even more surprised when the tests were handed out and the first question on it was "Why are they called the Pinballs?" When I told him I wasn't going to help him with his test, he wasn't so much surprised as he was pissed.

I passed the time by re-reading The Pinballs, which I hadn't read in at least nine years. The book was old even the first time I had read it, having been written in 1977. But I enjoyed it then and I was enjoying it now. The book is about three previously-unfamiliar kids who are all placed in the same foster home. A couple things jumped out at me while I was reading in that class. At one point, the sassy, street-smart, rebel girl states that she read that "Someday everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes."

Was this pint-sized punk foretelling the arrival of reality television and it's strangle-hold on prime-time television? This name-calling Nostradamus?

Maybe it was one of those self-fulfilling prophecies.

But what struck me the most was that throughout the majority of the story the kids are just waiting. Hoping and waiting that their respective parents will appear and all their troubles will melt away.

It reminded me of that time in life when all you can really do is wait. Wait and hope. I know I wasn't conscious of it, but 90% of the time when I was a kid I always felt that I was just waiting for things to happen to me. Now that I am older, I realize, it should be just the opposite. I should be out making things happen. But I don't, of course. I've just gotten so good at waiting.

And it's nice to be good at something.

When the tests were all finished, I was not surprised to see that Luis had just made up answers to the reading test. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had done pretty well on his spelling test. Indeed, throughout the day I had been continuously impressed by what he was capable of. Which is either bad of me, or good of him, depending on how one might choose to look at it.

The Boozeless Blues

The final bell rang, signaling the end of our truncated school day. I drove Luis back home and dropped him off. On my way back to my own house, I stopped to fill up on gas only to discover that my driver's license was missing. I had taken it into the school with me, along with my bank card. The bank card I still had, which was a relief, but I could not find my ID. Perhaps it had slipped out of my pocket when I had been sitting in those little chairs. "Oh well," I sighed, "Maybe it's for the best."

I try to be optimistic. If by some freak chance there is a kid somewhere in that school who looks like me and finds that ID, he's probably going to have a pretty wild weekend.

The End Blues

I am the clean up crew. Sort of. Torn away from the fundraiser that I was passionately supporting, I find myself at home. To be fair, I have eaten two more burritos than I had planned on this evening, and have embarrassed at least one more co-worker than planned. Employer levels of chagrin were as expected.

Now all I have to do is be at work on time tomorrow morning. In about 6 hours. This should work out okay. Sleep does not come easily. I have spent too many evenings frolicking with fading gods and dying demons. Now they all come to me on quiet weekday evenings. Their immortal hearts break when I tell them, I too, I must meet various daylight responsibilities that keep me alive. Alive and leached bleach white of mystery and wonder. A physics formula expresses the exact amount of inspiration.

Pain will bring you back, I tell them. That universal conduit is ever active. Stakes are raised and stakes are laid. The tears fall, but foolish boy I have many more all whetted on sharper stones than you.

Let's not get all artistic now. I am a dude. I weigh about 200 pounds. I am fairly strong. My speed is average. I can retain a great deal of information, but my ability to access it decreases inversely.

It is likely I did not use that mathematical expression correctly.

Dogs and years lie on the floor around me. Water laps the shores of places I've visited and will never be again. All that love is let go, swirling around in the Milky Way; a star or planet may catch it but if not, away it will go. Frozen.

Frozen, all this energy will be. All our love and hopes and dreams and all those things we wish we had done will end up the same. A frozen chunk of something, unusable. Will we stand around and point out all the things we wish we'd done? That was the time I almost told her I loved her. I kissed her then, but turned away before she could reply.

Regrets may be the secret of entropy. All the things we never wanted to happen will happen forever.

The snarl on my lips is difficult to argue with when the rest of me is frozen cold, so cold.

Watson and I have just returned from the pet store. Sometimes it seems I am only working to supply my dog habit. I picked up about 40 dollars worth of chew bones. It seems like a lot, but when I leave for work he's certain to chew up $40 worth of something, so I prefer springing for the dog bones. His most expensive chew toy to date has been my Nintendo DS. So in that outlook, I'm actually making money here.

This morning as I lay dreaming, I could swear I woke up to the sound and smell of the ocean. Perhaps an errant seagull had struck my window and flown away before I got my wits about me. But that explanation would just raise a slew of further questions.

I finished reading Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's a rollicking good time and is amazingly offensive towards Africans, women, and gorillas. The French receive some glowing praise.

Burroughs' views are fascinating to me. This is Racism with a capital R, and yet it is so different from the discrimination I observe today. While ignorant and offensive certainly, the stereotyping is almost devoid of malice. It's just the way he understands the world and is almost to be expected when people were so...far away from each other, I suppose. Today I imagine thinking abstractly is something of a given. The Gordian Knot is my preferred example for distinguishing kinds of thinking. There's a massive knot in the city of Gordium. Nobody can untie it. Alexander the Great comes by and just slices the thing in half. For the win.

So I think I can understand why these views were so tenacious at the time. What worries me now as I grow up is that we don't have that excuse anymore. People can learn about other cultures and beliefs and political systems without great effort. But they don't.

Something practical I learned from Tarzan: lassoing my prey. Tarzan was fond of climbing above his quarry and dropping a rope down over its neck. Then he would jump down and stab it or wrestle it or both. In my case I was attempting to bring in a frightened little dog from the exercise yard at work. Small dogs are tricky. They are extremely likely to bite out of fear. Being bitten by them is not pleasant and the injury often superficial, but that isn't the reason I try to be careful. My concern is that following a dog bite, any dog bite, certain protocol must be followed according to Arizona law. It usually doesn't end well for the dog.

This little dog was snarling and lunging as I approached it. I knew the dog; I had carried it out to the exercise yard in the first place. She had only been in the shelter a day and was still nervous about the whole thing. Having been outside for a bit, I think she developed a taste for it.

When she saw that her ferocious display was not causing me to run away in terror, she took the initiative and ran. She couldn't go far; it was a small side yard. There was an electrical utility meter, a waist-high faded green metal box, on a square of concrete next to the chain link fence. My little dog had wedged herself in the right angle formed between the fence and the box. In her little foxhole she could see me if I approached from either side. I considered rushing her, but in that narrow space her 15 pounds and four legs gave her the advantage over my 220 pounds of biped.

The dust kicked up from our merry chase glowed fiery red in the setting sunlight. I pondered my next approach as the dust settled lazily around me. The thin coat of sweat on my face felt gritty. The traffic noises of weary commuters almost drowned out the low growl from behind the utility box. I grinned. This was my concrete jungle.

I made a loop in the thin black nylon leash and I crawled onto the utility box. I peeked over the edge. The little white dog was growling fiercely at the spot she had last seen me. The very spot where I now wasn't. I took a moment to feel very clever. I dropped the loop neatly around her neck. The poor dog was utterly confused and it was a few seconds before she looked up and saw me grinning down at her. Like most people, she was not pleased.

I hopped down and gently tugged her out into the open. She squirmed and snapped. When this failed she became intent on gnawing through the leash. I picked her up, cradled her in my arms, and carried her inside.

When I was visiting Machu Picchu I wandered off from the tour group and found three small American-suburb style houses with no roofs. They were furnished with some simple furniture, but no beds. I told the guide but I never found that spot again.

That's a lie. I have never been to Machu Picchu. It was just a dream; how I knew it was Machu Picchu I do know. It was only when I looked up some pictures did I discover that the waking world's Machu Picchu does indeed have many ancient domiciles without roofs. (Rooves? Like hoof and hooves? Probably not, but why not?)

It seems I know much more about the world when I'm asleep than I do when I'm awake.

Cheebus, it's almost nine pm. But I still have so much to do. Need to finish the last half of my collection of Philip K. Dick short stories. Still have to listen to a podcast about Lovecraft. Oh, my laundry. I better do that now before I forget.

Done. Er, in the dryer.

I purchased Everything All The Time by Band of Horses and I still haven't listened to the whole thing while lying in the dark. Also Tegan and Sara The Con but I'll probably just dance around to that. In the dark, I guess? Does that still count as brooding? I hope so. Brooding requires practice and if I'm not careful I may end up going out and enjoying myself.

My bike is fixed. I've been meaning to ride that thing.

What else. I already made a strawberry-banana milkshake and discussed who holds the existing copyrights of Peter Pan with my sister.

What else. Play with the dog? Ongoing, technically. I usually read in bed, lying on my back holding the book up in the air. Despite being markedly out-of-shape, my arms and shoulders are still very strong and I credit this to my reading habits.

Watson and I play a sort of quick-draw game. He will jump on the bed and drop his Kong (the only toy that has survived for more than a month) onto the bed next to me. Then he waits. When I reach the end of a page I snap my hand down and try to grab the toy while he lunges for it. Watson usually reaches it first. He is closer to the toy and his level of concentration is well beyond mine. But sometimes I get it first. Sometimes we reach a draw, which is sort of a loss for me because I get bitten.



Something I was supposed to look up. Tick fever. That's it. A dog at work may have tick fever. He's an adult brown-and-white pointer mix and he's really sick. He's not eating or drinking much. I administered some subcutaneous fluids to him this morning. Usually, the fluids will make a large visible bubble under the skin that will slowly dissipate into the body. But not this guy. His body was sucking up the fluids as quickly as I could get them in. I worry about him.

I was headbutted by a mastiff yesterday. I was bending down to give him an oral de-worming treatment and he was jumping up to lick my face. Our heads are about the same size so it was almost an equal transfer of energy, like those little silver balls in a Newton's Cradle. Click.

So away I go to read and do those other things. Laundry should be dry by now. All my REI clothing dries very quickly.



Sometimes I feel like an empty suit laid out on a bed.

I woke up last night to find ants amassing in the kitchen so I dumped acid all around. Which is how I solve most of my problems.

Ender is ill and I am home watching him. He has a fever and he threw up a little but I suspect that's because he ate an entire bowl of popcorn. We've all done it.

Now he's passed out on the couch. It pleases me that he already has life pretty much figured out.

Have you ever been up all night drinking and then the next morning to discover that you've invited a bunch of people to be friends on Facebook?