Michael Rossi's Blog, page 3

Off The Reservation – Prologue

Things are about to get a little interesting. Below you will find the prologue to my book, Off The Reservation. The job of a prologue is to entice the reader to keep turning those pages.

For my prologue, I choose a few paragraphs from one of my most shocking confessions; a not-so-sneaky attempt to grab readers’ attention. Some writers will consider this skulduggery, and they are probably right. I am not sorry. Self-publishing means competing against millions of talented voices for readers’ consideration, and I wanted to leave it all on the page.

Although my humor tends to be very sarcastic (the chip on my shoulder weighs a ton), everything you are about to read actually happened. I have done my best to recreate these scenes with honesty, but please understand that I have changed all of the names (including my own), some of the descriptions, and a little of the order to protect anonymity. There are no composite characters.

PROLOGUE

Anne’s blue eyes went wide like those of a wild animal. Her long, tan legs arched over in a backwards somersault as she flung off me. She grabbed her underwear from the bottom of the bed as she rolled—a single, choreographed, fluid motion. She had been a dancer in her youth and still possessed some of the grace. Her shoulder-length blonde hair whisked around her tan face, trying to keep up with her head as she frantically searched for the remainder of her clothes.

I watched stunned, oddly fixated on her tresses, which seemed to defy gravity when she flew through the door. Once out the room and around the corner, Anne bound up the wooden staircase, leaving me naked on the bed of the first-floor guest bedroom. The bedroom is situated directly in the path from the kitchen to the garage—a path Romano would be walking in seconds.

Lying there naked, I ran the calculations. Was it too late? For what possible reason would my Uncle Romano’s adult nephew, a nephew he had adopted at eight years old and had been the ring bearer at his wedding to Anne, be lying naked in his downstairs guest bedroom at three in the afternoon?

Post Script: I paid an editor to copy-edit my book. The manuscript I sent him did not have a prologue; I added it later. Small, local bookstores will take a look at your book, for a non-refundable fee, to see if they would be willing to place it on their shelves. One such bookstore, Left Bank Books, here in Saint Louis, immediately rejected my book, but kept the $25. Convinced of my own brilliance, I emailed the girl back, demanding to know her grounds for rejecting my story. I was certain that this was all just a scam to get indie writers to spend money, with no hope of their work ever making it to the shelves. I was furious! Her email back was simple, “You spelled prologue wrong,” she said. I angrily checked, and sure enough, I had spelled it wrong. The first fifty copies of my book that were printed have a Prolouge, instead of a Prologue. I quietly thanked her for her time, and then made breakfast with the egg on my face.

Plus-Sized Models Are Trying To Kill You, And Not In The Good Way

Dear Women,

Before we begin, I should tell you that I almost titled this post, “READ THIS IF YOU THINK YOU ARE FAT”. Practically every single woman scanning that label would have clicked on my post.

You ladies are obsessed with weight. It seems like every other story I see on television or the internet, is just another version of you telling me how fat or ugly you think you are. Maybe, if you got together and boycotted every product that had a commercial pushing a solution to fatness or ugliness, you might start to solve whatever is wrong with you, or at the very least begin to recognize what’s right about you.

I am not here today to discuss women’s negative body issues; quite the opposite. I am here to complain about your issues, ruining my bike-ride today. As I was about to leave for my regular ride, I saw a commercial for plus-sized lingerie. Now, don’t get me wrong; I like some meat on a woman. If you are a plus sized model that wants to try and kill me by riding my face, you can consider that challenge accepted.

My problem with the advertisement was that its goal was to be inspiring. It even included the hashtag #imnoangel. That ad is telling me that big girls want to bang, and frankly, I want to bang ever girl in that ad. Good job on that part. What that ad is trying to tell you, is that it is not only acceptable, but desirable that you are over-weight.

My bike-ride was ruined because I couldn’t stop thinking about that company’s blatant attempt to kill American women. Heart disease, cancer and diabetes all make the top ten list for causes of death in this country (1st , 2nd and 7th). It is a mathematical certainty that the majority of you will die from one of these diseases, and all of science agrees that diet and exercise play a huge role in putting that death off for a while.

Years before I was born, the powers that be convinced the American people that Twiggy and Barbie were sexy, and look how much trouble that has us in. Sorry, but I am putting my foot down on this one. The company that released that ad should face attempted-murder charges.

I get that some people are big because of genetics or illness, but that’s not the case with the bulk of them (pun intended… my immaturity is a concern… as is my over-use of ellipses). I have been chunky all of my life. I have always wished to be thinner, but I am not an idiot, I know exactly how to fix that situation. I also don’t give a shit if I die, but you all seem to care about your lives, so why are you not outraged?

You can be as proud as you want, but you cannot deny that you wish you were thinner. Americans spend $60 Billion annually, attempting to either lose weight or maintain it. I try to imagine how stupid this argument would sound, to one of the more than eight-hundred-million people in the world considered undernourished. In case you don’t know, that is twice the population of the United States.

The bottom line is that I don’t care if you are fat. I also don’t really care if you die. I am pissed because you made me quit my bike-ride at the ten –mile mark, instead of the usual twenty. I am going to have to make those ten miles up over the next week. It is going to suck, but if I don’t do it, I might die earlier and the plus-sized models will have already won.

Off The Reservation – Disclaimer

I have found that I care less about the money I make selling books than I do about having readers at all. Being a writer in the age of Amazon means competing for a world-wide audience, and my skills just aren’t there yet.

My goal, is to be making a living as a writer, within three years. I don’t need to earn millions, but if me and my laptop can go anywhere we want, anytime we want, and still eat, that would be a life worth living. The only way to make that happen is to gather readers where I may, and hope they stay with me while my writing improves.

Amazon allows me to share only ten-percent of my book on this blog; should I want it to remain free to Prime members. We will start with that. I will post a piece of my book each week, and see how it goes.

My story starts with a disclaimer instead of an introduction. If you are not at least a little offended by my life, you should probably go and get that checked out. You are messed up.

This book is dedicated my sister, my children, their mothers, and a special thanks to CB, NK, JH, and JJ.

Disclaimer

What follows is an honest account of an incredible life—not an incredibly good life, but an extremely unlikely one, and at times an utterly disastrous existence. I don’t suspect you will gain any knowledge from me through these stories, as most of the lessons, learned in the hardest of fashions, you will recognize as common sense. This story is meant to entertain, not teach.

Before we move forward, your first step should be to summon up your inner sadist. You don’t have an inner sadist? Bullshit… Everyone wants to witness a train wreck, even if they peek at it through their fingers. Actually, you will need to imagine that the train is full of children and baby pandas as it smashes into a bus teeming with elderly churchgoers on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Too far? Probably… But as you will see, going too far is just something I do.

People like to witness disaster for the same reason they like Jerry Springer; it makes them feel better about their own lives. You have my personal guarantee that this story will make you feel comparatively better about yourself, but I must warn you that if you came looking for redemption you’ve come to the wrong place. There will be no redemption here.

Although this story is in no way clinical, I have been diagnosed with two different mental illnesses. It goes without saying that if a person has a disease, he or she suffers from that particular ailment. From my experience, it would be much more accurate to say that it is the people with whom I am surrounded who suffer from me having them. This story isn’t about mental illness, but I will refer to these diseases from time to time, due the peculiar way they affect me. By no means do I want or expect any sympathy whatsoever; there are plenty of people much crazier than me living perfectly respectable lives.

Due to the varying relationships I have with the many characters in this book, publishing my story is kind of a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may scenario. Let’s just hope those chips aren’t too heavy and they don’t all land on my head. Still, in an effort not to be sued, all of the names, some of the descriptions, and a little of the order has been changed to protect anonymity. If there is one thing I have learned in my just-over-forty years on earth, it is that as a people, we hardly ever remember things the same way. Arguments birthed from differing personal accounts of events stretch from courtrooms to war-zones all over the world. To those of you who believe certain details of my story do not jive with the way you saw it, I offer you no quarter. If you are looking for apologies or solace, write your own damned book.

Among these many characters are my two wonderful children. Although they are the most important and influential people in my life, it hardly seemed appropriate to write much about them in this story. Maybe someday I will write a book about being a terrible father, but for now I will resign myself to writing about being a terrible person.

Note: If you do in fact write your own damned book, can my name be Xander Richmond, please? I didn’t have the balls to name myself that in this book, but I really feel like I could be a Xander Richmond.

All Hail Horny Bob!

Mania. Good for stuff… Long bike-rides. Writing. Not good for some stuff too, like drinking. I’ve already gone on a ride, so now I think I’ll just write so I don’t decide to make a fucking cocktail at three in the afternoon, and wake up tomorrow having fucked your dog and shit in your purse. Let’s see where this takes us.

Whilst on today’s ride, I postulated a not an original question to myself: Who is going to be the first person with the chance to live forever? When I was a kid my imagination was sparked by the idea that Spanish invaders were partially invading because they believed there to be a fountain of youth somewhere in the Caribbean. The kid in me would stomp through the woods thinking it was possible that I might discover the fountain instead and keep it for myself. I looked around a little the first time I was in Florida, as an adult, I’m not gonna lie.

As I got older, I quickly realized that the laws of the universe do not allow anything to live forever. I love science but it has a nasty habit of taking some of the magic away. The history lesson here is that we were once so stupid, as adults, that we killed people looking for a “fountain of youth”.

And then, just as I was about to banish the probability of immortality to the depths of one-in-a-googolplex, the universe created a possibility where none had ever existed. I am talking about the storage of information.

From the moment we learned to write, we started the slow climb to where we find ourselves today. The most popular website in the world is based on a number with 100 zeros. Math can barely keep up with the how much data we can now store and share and I have been alive for all of it. Moore’s law has kicked in now, and we are seeing some real shit.

There is a mountain of science fiction tales with the premise that someone, or everyone, exist only in a computer. In almost every single story, the development leads to disaster for humanity and the known universe. The problem is that it probably isn’t going to go down like that at all.

Assuming we don’t destroy ourselves, there is no doubt in my mind that eventually somebody is going to figure out how to tie all that data storage together, in the right order, and upload their own consciousness. It is probably going to be some obnoxious programming genius named Bob. He spends ninety percent of his time in front of a screen, and at least half of that watching porn in some think-tank. That will be humanity’s first potential immortal; Horny Bob.

All Hail Horny Bob!

Single White Male

Well, it would appear that I have once again found myself single. I can’t really complain about that; I’ve been pretty lucky so far. When you consider that I bring about as much baggage to a relationship as a Jewish lady at a Catskill Passover, I should get a few points for experience, but I probably won’t.

As I spiral down my typical ride of self-loathing and heart-break, I can’t help but wonder what comes next for me. I suppose I could join a dating website. I shop online for everything else; why not a new girlfriend? Maybe I could join Farmersonly.com? Whenever I see that commercial I wonder if they will somehow find out that I am not a farmer, should I sign-up.

While I typed that last part, I was suddenly gripped with anxiety over my potential online dating profile. I have dedicated myself to telling the truth with my words, so I am more than a little concerned over what my honest bio might look like. Let’s take a look.



Single White Male In Search Of A Woman, Of Any Race, Just Fucked Up Enough To Make Him Happy.

Hello ladies; my name is Mike. I am a forty-one-year-old waiter/writer, somewhat desperate to finally find true love in what is likely to be a very short life (thanks to the way I’ve lived it). Applicants must have experience dealing with children, alcoholism and mental illness. My level of maturity is maintained at a constant twelve-years-old. If we go on more than one date, you can expect judgement, score-keeping and a little name-calling. My goal will be to figure out what makes you tick, and then carefully deduce the best course for using that against you. I will do nice things, but not because I care; I will do these things so that I can test to see if you are paying attention. I need constant attention. Finally, you should know that I used to be pretty great in the sack, but these days, if I even get a boner right-away, it will be cause for celebration. Hit me up, if you have any Viagra.

Yikes! That sucked. I was about to run into traffic just then, when a sudden, calming thought over-took me. I am a writer. I am also a decent salesman, and thus a professional-level liar, literally. What if I applied these skill-sets to a relationship search? Let’s take a look.

Single White Male… In Search Of Love.

Hello ladies; my name is Mike. I am currently enjoying, what I consider to be, the prime of my life. I am a creative and intelligent single-parent, but I also know how to have a good time. I am considered young for my age, so you had better be ready for some adventure. I am looking for a long-term relationship, where I might get to really know, and love, all of your idiosyncrasies. I will try to keep things playful; I will give you nick-names. If you are the one for me, you can regularly expect small tokens that represent my adoration for you. I am also a patient lover that really likes to take his time. Reach out me if you are interested, or just want to talk.

Maybe I just need some me-time.

Post Script: Here is a statistic: An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older or about one in four adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year. When applied to the 2014 U.S. residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, the figure translates to around 63 million people. This data comes from the internet, and although I think it is probably bull-shit, I will use it anyway to prove my point. Why are there no internet dating sites for us crazies? Think about it. People with mood disorders are demographically likely to be single, needy and prone to impulsive purchases. We might be the best possible market for a dating website. There are certainly more of us than farmers. I don’t have the talent required to create a site like this, but to whomever does, can I please suggest we call it Plenty of Madness? Has a nice ring… No?

Hookers Are Racist And I Can Prove It

If I told you that I lived in the vortex of the nation’s swirling conversation on racism, you might guess that I reside somewhere in Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina, but you would be wrong; I live in Saint Louis, Missouri. I’m not here to give you a long history lesson, but in order for us to move forward you need to understand my city. The basic history of Saint Louis’ African American community…

Blah, blah, blah…

I originally wrote some pretty smart stuff there, using lots of twenty-five cent words, but even I wanted to impale my retinas from boredom after reading it. Here’s the shortest possible version of what I just deleted: Civil War ends, integration slowly begins, World War II ends, suburbs are created, interstates are built, middle class whites leave the cities, poor stay, elderly stay, blacks stay, tax base gets smaller, old people die (or move to Florida), tax base gets worse, urban plight ensues and diversity disappears. This brings us to the mostly segregated America we live in today.

Note: I wasn’t alive or responsible for anything I just mentioned. I will not take responsibility for these things; just as I will not take responsibility for any of the other atrocities we can’t seem to help inflicting upon one another; with one small exception. I have personally purchased drugs in my life, and if you have ever bought drugs you own at least a tiny bit of responsibility for the millions of lives the drug war has destroyed. If you have never bought drugs, bully for you, but don’t get too sanctimonious, if you have ever owned a diamond you shoulder the exact same amount of responsibility. Our recent history seems to be filled with piles of dead bodies black or otherwise, thanks to drugs and diamonds.

Now, here in Saint Louis, our cultural differences have finally come to a front, and this city has dominated the headlines for the last year. A single catalyst quickly ignited long-stacked kindling, and the conversation became serious overnight. The black community saw one of its young members killed and decided that was all they needed to know. Whites watched as blacks looted and rioted, and decided that was all they needed to know. Modern, polarized media fed that confidence in opinion; for whatever side you found yourself. Current news outlets have helped create an unwillingness to accept new information about, or empathize with, an opposing point of view. Nothing to worry about; compromise is only the cornerstone of democracy. I am sure it won’t be a big deal if it disappears.

What I am trying to say, is that if you only watch Fox News or MSNBC, you are just as ignorant as a person that never watches Fox News or MSNBC. While we are on the subject, don’t watch CNN at all please. You people are hard enough to communicate with already.

The thing all of these talking heads like the most is catching somebody famous being racist. Those people throw around racist allegations like borscht in a food fight. I really hate when I am called a racist by someone who doesn’t like what I’ve said or done. I have only been called a racist by African Americans, so my next request is directed at them. Stop doing that please. I wasn’t alive for slavery, white flight or the civil rights movement. I have never been a police officer, lived in the south, or forced my maid to use a separate bathroom during a thunderstorm. I will also admit to saying the “N” word many times, but the overwhelming majority of those occasions were when I was signing a song written by an African American… badly. White people can’t rap, Eminem is a fluke. That’s not racist, is it?

All of that being said, I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t get irritated when I see a kid with his pants hanging way down, or struggle to understand an urban-English conversation. Thankfully, before I can give in to the temptation to pants the kid, or smack those language murderers in the face with a dictionary; I remind myself that white and non-white cultures have evolved more separately than ever over the last fifty years, and non-whites’ cultural evolution did not come with the education and social safety that most of the people I know took for granted. So I guess the answer is that I am a little bit prejudiced, but so are you; whatever your race may be.

You are probably asking yourself right now, “Why would I listen to this white guy about racism,” or more likely, “When is this white guy gonna start talking about the hookers?”

To your first question, the answer is simple. Two years ago I shuttered my business as a self-employed freight broker to embark on my life-long dream of being a professional writer. Regardless of my passion toward this goal, you can’t deposit dreams, they don’t pay the rent, and ex-wives won’t accept them for child-support; so I got a job working nights as a fine-dining waiter. As a result, I have spent the last two years in a work setting that consists of about twenty-five employees, and of these, only eight are white. I am immersed in an overwhelmingly multi-cultured environment for the first time in my life.

Restaurant workers are a strange bunch. Working within the confines of an independent restaurant is a bit like consuming an elixir each evening for the sole purpose of reducing your maturity. As a result, restaurant workers talk to one another with the same level of respect, sensitivity and tact as the average teenage boy when there are no parents around. As you may have guessed, there is an openness of racial discussion in these jobs that corporate America would never tolerate in an office setting. My newest life-lesson to be learned was: Only by working side by side with African Americans for years, while getting to know their personal stories of triumph and struggle, will you ever begin to understand the culture. I also want to be invited to a black cook-out someday. I think I could learn a lot and the food always smells delicious when I walk by one.

Now to answer your second question; you know, the one regarding the hookers. With the exception of a few oases in Nevada, prostitution remains illegal in the United States. I am not here to discuss the legality of the world’s oldest profession in detail, but it does concern me that there are so many edicts in our dusty law-books that regulate women’s use of their own vaginas. It is also pretty obvious that a woman’s body, or more specifically a man’s blind desire to touch that body, has been one of the best field-levelers in the battle of the sexes throughout human history. Cleopatra, Anna Nicole Smith and Holly Madison had to work with what they had. No judgement here, I can only imagine how fun it must be for you ladies to manipulate the strings on our libidos.

As to the morality of prostitution, let’s turn to the dead-north on the moral compass of Americans; Jesus Christ. If I open to the Apostle Mathew’s book in my trusty bible, I eventually get to section twenty-one, verse thirty-one. For those who have never read it, this is not some obscure section of the bible. The book of Matthew is considered to be the most important by Christians, due to the many parables describing very clearly how Jesus felt human beings should treat one another. Verse thirty-one deals directly with Jesus’ view of hypocrisy (Jesus really dislikes hypocrites) and states that hookers and tax collectors, currently occupied within those trades, will get to heaven long before even the most revered priests. This is one of my favorite stories about Jesus, I picture him in the temple, robes flowing, kicking ass and knocking over tables.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” – Matthew 21:31

Seems pretty clear…

Now that we have discussed Jesus, racism and hookers, let’s get to the matter at hand, shall we… What makes me think that most hookers are racist, and how can I prove it? Many of you fine people are likely wondering where one even goes about finding a prostitute in the first place. Some women believe that most strippers moonlight as hookers. With exceptions of course, I have personally found this generally untrue. I am by no means an aficionado, but by living in Saint Louis I have been exposed to more strip-clubs than the average American. We have so many strip-clubs in greater Saint Louis that they fit into perfect little niches, based entirely on their vulgarity. I’ve spent many a night in places I would describe as “just naughty”, but I also know that there are bars in this town so lacking in empathy that they conjure up images of a human landfill, if you are drunk enough. Don’t go to those places

Access to hookers operates the same way as just about every other service in this country; money equals opportunity. If you are wealthy, you can fly to any number of Latin American countries to be waited on hand and foot by however many courtesans you can afford. You can even pick them from a website like a fantasy football team; I’ve seen it.

Should you be less prosperous or more locally inclined, there are several services and clubs you can join as well. There are no ads for these places, but they exist, I assure you. I know a guy that belongs to a service/club that lets him know when traveling porn-stars are in town, as well as their private booking rates. Seems pretty stupid to me, the porn-star sex curve is the last place I want to be graded.

My professional interactions with prostitution occurred primarily in a small shack in Centerville, Illinois where I would take one of my customers when he was in town. There were actually two shacks on that lot, but my customer preferred the one with Asian girls. Does that make him racist or prejudiced? The cost was just shy of $300, including tip, and although I’ll never go back, the place was clean, the girls were nice and they are actually pretty skilled at the back-rub portion of the hour.

For all of the other men in search of company, men of less means, there is Backpage, also known as Craigslist’s lesser-paid, Mexican equivalent (Like how I inserted a racist joke there? The Mexican guys with whom I work would find that joke hilarious, if I could figure out how to translate it). In 2010, when Craigslist closed the adult section of its website, buyers and sellers of sex stampeded to Backpage, making it the nation’s second-most popular classified site, overnight. Alexa, the company that totals the traffic to all internet sites, ranks Craigslist as 57th, and Backpage as 569th. While we are on the subject of sex and the internet, the world’s leading porn site, Pornhub, ranks at 63rd, one slot below Alibaba (China’s version of Amazon, Ebay and Yahoo, wrapped in one company), but well above both CNN and the BBC.

Backpage operates just like Craigslist does. You open to Backpage’s adult services, and then click on the escorts tab to get to the day’s list of available prostitutes and sneaky vice cops. The individual ads all use crazy tittles and lots of emoji to both get your attention, and fool the anti-prostitution software at Backpage. After a moments review, you will likely believe as I do, that the anti-prostitution software at Backpage might not work very well.



As you delve into the ads themselves, a trend begins to reveal itself. Nearly every other posting clearly states: No Black Men or No Thugs. You will also come across a few politically-correct, racist prostitutes with ads that say: No AA, or No African Americans. How nice of them. Some of the escorts merely type these words into the ad, while others have posted fancy signs, along with pictures of themselves, describing the racist policy in bold letters. Oh, the power of the meme. However it is said, it is quite clear that horny, black men should not even attempt calling these women.



What is most surprising is that just as many black women as white women are denying their services to African Americans. I left several messages for these advertisers, letting them know that I was a blogger interested in interviewing them regarding the apparent rampant racism in prostitution. I am yet to receive any calls back, but one of my co-workers called as well, posing as a potential customer. He asked the girl, herself an African American, why he could not have access to her no-no parts. “I love my brothers,” she told him, “but Y’all too aggressive.” I was shocked by the statement, likely because of my age. My personal stereotype regarding the sexual proclivities of black men is more akin to Billy D. Williams or Barry White; so smooth, soul-filled and charming that a girl couldn’t help herself. I guess you know you are old when even your racism is out of touch.

Wanting more information, I turned back to the internet for answers. After all, what is the internet for, if not logic and reason? The many theories I found are hilarious, but entirely too racist and disgusting to relay here; even for me. My favorite was a blog I discovered written by a black guy who talked openly about his penchant for paid sex. After voicing his disgust over the “No Blacks”policy, he postulates two possible reasons why the hookers are racist. First, he goes with the obvious endowment concern (picture the late, great Madeline Kahn in Blazing saddles screaming, “It’s Twoo… It’s Twoo,” over and over). His second argument is that the escorts, or likely their significant others, are afraid to service him because the sex is so good that they may fall in love. There is no picture on the blog, so unless he looks like the Old Spice guy, sings like Marvin and screws like Christian Grey, I find this a highly unlikely excuse.

In the end I found no real answers. I never promised answers; I only said I would prove that many hookers, black and white, are racist. I have done that. If this city wants to fix its problems with race, maybe it should start by taking some baby steps in that direction. I say we start with the hookers and here is my request:

Ladies… I don’t have a problem with you being a prostitute, or even preferring one type of customer over another. Personal prejudices are a personal choice and you can be a little prejudice if you like. However; please don’t be a racist, and for god’s sake don’t be a hypocrite…

Because Jesus really, really hates that.

Post Script: My personal bible is a relatively expensive NIV study bible printed in 2006. In case you have never seen one, a study bible is half filled with footnotes to help you understand the passages. Ironically, the notes in my study bible skip interpreting Jesus’ thoughts on prostitution in the book of Matthew all together. The irony is that a corporation published a copy of the bible for sale less than ten years ago, but ignored Jesus’ thoughts on a subject, in a section about honesty, because those who would buy this book don’t agree with Jesus. WOW! I have to assume the good people at the publishing house are believers, so it takes some real balls for them to disagree with Jesus Christ. I would never do that.

Life and Death, In a Day

Twitter is a strange place. I call it a place, but it is actually more like a person. Unlike Facebook, it never seems to sleep and doesn’t filter; just unending raw thoughts, one-hundred and forty spaces at a time. Almost nobody I know personally uses Twitter, but as an aspiring writer it is an invaluable tool. Although still kind of a Twidiot, over the last year I have slowly come to sort-of understand this bastion of social media.

Basically, Twitter is the reverse of Facebook; instead of friending people and hoping they have forgotten about the ass you made of yourself the last time you saw them, you follow people, and hope they follow you back. Although it is considered bad form, once you follow someone, you can message them, or you can “tweet” to them. When you tweet someone, your tweet shows up in their feed, as well as the feeds of anyone following both of you. Sounds pretty simple right?

For me, the biggest difference between Twitter and Facebook is that I don’t personally know anyone with whom I tweet. Every day, I spend a little time finding interesting people to follow, and a little time sharing fellow twit’s thoughts that I find funny, or interesting. It didn’t make much sense to me at first, but over the last year I have really come to enjoy my time on Twitter. It is a lot like a never-ending game of Survivor between millions of people; all vying to be the cleverest. I am in.

This brings us to the odd, strangely beautiful and somewhat awe-inspiring experience I had yesterday. I was searching through users, like any other day, when I came across a guy from Saint Louis who was tweeting from the hospital where his wife had just given birth. I followed him because he was funny, but I was surprised when he immediately followed me back. You would think he had at least a million more pressing matters. Suddenly, I remembered what it was like being a guest at the hospital, while your wife does all the real work getting the baby out. It is the strangest combination of excitement, uselessness and boredom. You read everything you can get your hands on, as you contemplate a life-time with a new child. I didn’t have Twitter for my experience, but I surmise that the distraction would have been nice. Here is his tweet:

Jr moore ‏@jrmoorecomedy – Anybody that says child birth is beautiful, has never seen it before. #horrific

Feeling kindred, I shot the guy a funny message about over-population and suggested that he can now kill someone, should he desire to zero-out his balance with humanity. Thankfully, he wasn’t offended by my joke, and moments later suggested that the mailman should die. He doesn’t know me at all, so I wondered if he would still make that gag if he was aware that I was once a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby; born to a black-haired, dark-skinned, Sicilian father. It would have been really funny if he had said pool man instead of mailman.

A few minutes later, I was again back to the main Twitterverse searching for more funny people to follow. Twitter doesn’t decide what posts get seen by whom, like Facebook, so the stream moves really fast. My point is; unless you live on Twitter, which some do, you miss quite a bit. Much like life, great experiences with Twitter happen by accident; blind luck.

While scanning the feed, the following tweet caught my eye:

I don’t know how to say this so I’m just gonna say it. My wife and friend of almost 30 yrs @MistressMental died Sunday night.

I didn’t know this man, wasn’t following him, nor did I follow his newly deceased wife. Somebody I was following shared his Tweet from the previous day. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the man’s wife had suffered a surprise heart-attack on Sunday, and died suddenly. She was one year older than I am, and also like me, she was bipolar and a little crazy. I am not disrespecting the dead there; I am a card-carrying member of the American Madness Society so I am allowed to call out crazy when I see it.

The man’s next post to all of his wife Cate’s Twitter followers was to let them know how much they all meant to her. Here it is:

Cate loved her twitter so much and the people she met on here! It was such a big part of her life each and every day. Thank you all.

It would seem like lying if I didn’t confess that the above message brought tears to my eyes. I know, I can be kind of a pussy sometimes, but I guess I wouldn’t have a very good shot at being a good writer if that wasn’t true. The reason for tearing-up was the overwhelming sense of connection I suddenly felt about two absolute strangers, living in different parts of the country. One man was nervous and excited by a new life he had helped create; one he will love and cherish until his last instant. The other man had just lost someone he knew most of his life and obviously loved dearly. Not only had he lost her; she had been ripped away without any notice whatsoever.

Births and deaths are rare in my little world, but they happen; they have to happen. The fact that I had digitally grazed the existence of two strangers, in a matter of minutes, in their most intimate of moments, gave me a flash of understanding as to how big this world is, and how we are all connected. I am not altogether comfortable discussing these feelings, so I am struggling not to make some sort of Lion King – Circle of life joke right now to cover them up. The reality is that many of us feel so disconnected, but humanity is right there in front of us. All around us are strangers waiting to be friends. If it takes twitter or Facebook to connect, so be it. Or, maybe that’s just me.

Later yesterday morning, after I finished some writing, I went for my regular bike-ride. As I rode along, I could not get the morning’s Twitter events out of my head. All I could think about were these two men I now knew existed. One of them was probably driving home at a crawl with his precious cargo strapped in tight, the way I had. While the other was likely surrounded by friends and family; still in a state of shock, and being asked what kind of casket his dead wife might like.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that I never asked whether the new father’s baby was a boy or a girl. I didn’t ask, and upon further consideration, I don’t really want to know. I’ll just hope he had a girl, and she has been here before.

Thanks For The Memories

Do you remember getting twelve cassette tapes for a penny and a promise? I do. My first interaction with Columbia House was in 1990, and it was the beginning of what turned out to be a very colorful sunset on the millennium. Everything was about to change, especially the way we bought and played music. I also turned sixteen in 1990, so it happened to be the dawn of my adulthood, or at least a reasonable facsimile of adulthood anyway.

Having been recently emancipated, I was living in a crappy apartment that year. I had a job, several girlfriends and a two-year-old Mustang GT, which I loved more than all of the rest combined. The money to buy a car had been given to me by my guardians in exchange for becoming emancipated. Being emancipated makes you a legal adult as much as two years early; thereby eliminating most parental fears over the potential costs of your impending teenage shenanigans. Although wealthy already, my guardians spent nothing on the trade; using only the money the government gave them to raise me… money they had been hoarding since I’d left home. Paying for both sides of a deal is never a bargain, but it really can seem that way when you are sixteen.

I loved that Mustang the instant I got behind its wheel. Powerful, sleek and grumbling; its ground effects would almost kiss the ground, as I buried the pedal wherever I went. Proof that I drove like a jack-ass came in the form of six speeding tickets, well before that first year was up. The moment I barely drove off of that car lot, I felt invincible. I say “barely drove”, because I hardly knew how to even operate a stick-shift at the time. I remember spending that whole first day grinding the car’s gears, to the sounds of Two Live Crew screaming from the tape-deck. I knew from that very first night that additional practice was required, and I was going to need a lot more music with which to enjoy my magical car.

You are probably wondering who in their right mind would hand a sixteen-year-old boy absolute freedom and a very fast car. I happen to currently be the father of a sixteen-year-old son, and although he is a much better person than I ever was, this scenario sounds terribly reckless. In the interest of honesty, I have to admit that I hadn’t actually been given the money to buy a used Mustang. I was handed the keys to a brand new, paid-for truck the day of the emancipation; a truck I quickly traded in for a used sports-car (with payments). As a legal adult I could do anything a real adult could do; like enter contracts to buy and sell cars.

My second foray into binding agreements was a direct result of the first, and it would be with Columbia House Music Club. That first shipment of twelve tapes included music staples from AC-DC to Poison, as well as relative newcomers, like Warrant and Nine Inch Nails. I considered driving like a madman, while listening to big-hair glam rock as loud as possible, the pinnacle of teenage endeavors. Looking back on it now, I probably still agree.

Over the years I would enter into two separate agreements with Columbia House and another with BMI, but never actually purchase one single album from either of those companies, as I’d agreed. I had been given the power to make promises, and then break them, and a lifetime of promise-breaking started with music clubs.

I don’t know if you noticed, but Columbia House filed for bankruptcy earlier this week. When I heard the news, I was sad and grateful; all at the same time. So I say goodbye Columbia House; thanks for the memories… and paying for both sides of the deal!

Post Script: Stealing music twelve tapes at a time was nothing compared to the wholesale robbery I would commit when digital music came along. For that I offer additional thanks to Napster, Monster and Limewire.

The Ninth of August

On this date, seventy years ago, at 11:01 A.M., an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. In a flash, the city was destroyed and the worst conflict in human history was over. It wasn’t the first one detonated, and since that day, well over two thousand additional nuclear devices have been exploded. Why do I know these facts? The best answer I can give, other than I am a giant nerd, is that August 9th is also my sister Omelia’s birthday. Annually, on this day, I am obliged to reflect upon the luckiest circumstance of my life. In a past filled with crappy childhood events it is the one bright light, and the greatest gift I have ever been given; an amazing older sister.

I know many people that hardly get along at all with their siblings and it makes me shake my head, because I know I wouldn’t even exist if it were not for mine. Although I like to imagine that her experience of being my sister is just like having Robin Williams for a brother, the reality is that it’s probably more like being born before Charlie Sheen, but without any money. Regardless of the messes I make, she has always been steadfast during my fits of madness and celebrated any successes, without a single thought for herself. More like a mother than any mother I have ever known, she is certainly the best mother I have ever seen. I am still oddly convinced that love is the most powerful force in the known universe, and she has so much that it oozes from her and infects anyone who comes near.

I freely admit that I am in no way a traditional follower of the bearded man in the sky, but I am forced to concede that there is some truth there, when believers say, “When god closes a door… “, or, “God only gives you what you can handle.” If these things were universal truths, the world wouldn’t be so fucked up, but I have personally seen this happen too many times to dismiss it as mere coincidence. What I am trying to say, is that had I been born with a garden variety sister, and not the very best one, I would have likely turned out to be a vile fucking monster, and not merely the asshole that I am. I just don’t think we can call that luck.

So those are two things that I know occurred August 9th; one was a bright light unleashed upon the planet, harnessing the power of the universe itself, with the ability to affect the world around her… And the other was just another atomic bomb.

Post Script: I wish I had a video of my sister and I doing our dance so I could post it here. That’s right, we have our own dance. If you don’t have a sibling dance you have missed out.

Goodbye… Dream-Killer

Last Thursday evening a dream died. Not a dream so much as an intricate fantasy that always starts the same. Sometime in the future, I’ve just published a ground-breaking book that changes the way the world looks at pretty much everything, and Jon Stewart is introducing me as I strut across the Daily Show stage. There has been only one segment and commercial break, because that’s how important I am. Oprah Winfrey has been bumped at the last minute to accommodate my schedule.

What have I written, you ask? Irrelevant; in the reverie I avoid pesky details like what the book is about, how long I worked on it, or what made my story better selling than the bible. There was no writer’s block, editing issues, or arguments with cover designers… No, none of that, just sweet instantaneous success for every written sentence I have ever fabricated; past, present or future.

After making him laugh so hard during the interview that he pees himself a little, Stewart finishes by announcing that he is quitting the Daily Show to make a movie out of my new book. I have seen Rosewater, so I respectfully decline. The moment is a little awkward, but Jon is grateful when I tell him that he can be an associate producer when the time comes. He offers to quit anyway, so that I might take the reins of his show, being smarter and better suited, but I decline this offer as well. I am afraid my oeuvre will intimidate the seasoned Daily Show writers.

Now, back in the real world, none of this can happen because somebody has decided to leave the party early. Jon Stewart has taken his toys and gone home. I know I should be grateful for the many years he made me laugh, and think, at the same time. I should also acknowledge that outside of comedy, men who make important choices have been forced to think twice about stupid decisions, with a man like Stewart out there waiting to bust their balls for it.

So what do I say to the end of an era on The Daily Show? I say fuck you Jon Stewart… You Dream-Killer!

Post Script: I never stopped loving Arby’s!