Jeff Phillips's Blog, page 15

Micro-fiction 6/15/11

Micro-fiction exercise for 6/15/11

Freckles were abandoned in the creation of this child when God received a strange phone call. It was prayer, a rather selfish. "God, please please please let me get this job!" But little did the Praying Man stop to consider that God actually preferred his competition to get the job, as his family situation was a bit more dire; having been unemployed for 11 months and a child on the way. Urgency spelled its way to this gentleman more so than the recent college grad. So God abandoned his freckle making in the DNA canvas to push more of his weight into making sure the unemployed man got the job. And he did! God's will, will hath its way on Earth! But the Praying man, the recent college grad, was bummed to the nth degree and got hammered on O bombs at the corner bar and decided to drive to the suburbs to see his girl friend. And in its own twisted, unplanned revenge on God's will, the praying man hit a woman biker, sideswiped her as she crossed the intersection. She certainly had the green light. Right of way. The paramedics arrived quickly and rushed her off to the hospital but not in time. She died from massive blood loss and hemrhaging. It turns out she had a bun in the oven. With child, two lives were crossed off the roster of the living. It was the fetus in which God had forgotten to spackle with freckles.

Tube Image

Sometimes I'm a sucker for those self help deep relaxation tapes. Cheesy as it may be, I have a tape that really does the trick for me after long day, and especially if my mind is still active when I crawl into bed. So I was listening to it last night and it got me to a good point where I was slightly hallucinating behind my eye lids, which I enjoy, and a good relaxation listen will do this for me. I started to see myself from a third person omniscient, cartoon-like! I was wearing some colourful, frilly, Beatles-esque band uniform. My hair was parted a bit like the flat top character from Dick Tracy. So the cartoon me jumped into a big tube from a platform high in the sky. The tube networked with other tubes, and down I slid like a wacky water park rider. Yet I got deep into this network and the tube took me not to an opening at the end where I'd slide back out to fresh air, but to a dead end where my feet stopped me with a thud.
A tingle of claustrophobia. To shimmy back up the long, long, long tube was to be my escape.
I said to "hell with that." I took a deep breath, and exhaled away the cartoon imagery, and rolled over to welcome restful slumber.
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Sometimes I get ideas or images in my head that I feel compelled to write down, and if for whatever reason I'm not able to write it down right away, and I wind up forgetting it, I get really frustrated and upset with myself. I had a realization late last night, a sort of zen to put myself at peace for the fizzling of a "gem" idea. I began to look at the formation of ideas not only from a materialistic, put em down onto paper approach...but the experience of the idea is just as important, and that if it doesn't stick as hoped, well, it was probably a little wave.

Woozy Debate

I was reading a short story in the most recent New Yorker on the way home today, about a baby girl who turns out has a brain tumor, and its subtle description of hemorrhaging and brain bleeding made me pretty woozy and I still feel a bit woozy even though that was about two hours ago. I guess I'm of the faint of heart. An aspect of my novel which I'm currently revising deals with some biologically vivid induced wooziness. A bit of panic disorder.
The New Hampshire Republican debate is on. I'm not a Republican but I like Ron Paul, not for a president, but I do like his rants I've seen before on conspiracy theories and I like that there is his voice somewhere there in Congress. Michelle Bachmann is annoying. Romney has a very politically fake smile on his face as he looks on while listening to the others speak. Rick Santorum in a "this or that" question to get to know their "personalities" said he would choose Leno over Conan. He just lost my "support." Not that I even pondered supporting him. I haven't seen Newt speak much so far.
I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat. I very much feel that American politics needs to develop a strong third, fourth and fifth party even. I fear that no domestic or foreign policy will get solved through the endless two party stickling and butting of heads. It makes way for either big government or big business.

Eyes and Ears, Unlikable Ones

I read recently an article in The New Yorker about one Thomas Drake, now an "enemy of the state" because he shared information with the media about NSA inefficiency and un-lawful surveillance. The NSA had developed a computer program which tracks all electronic communications, phone calls, e-mails, facebook messages, etc. etc. But there was an encryption component so no individuals could be identified unless there were certain patterns which called for a warrant. But the NSA moved forward using the technology in secret without further finishing development of the encryption component. The whole scenario sounds very X-Files, which I have been watching a lot of recently. It reminds me of a time in 2004, when I was living in a basement apartment. My cell phone got shitty reception down in the unit so I had to step outside to make phone calls. Several times when calling my mom in Maine we would hear a clicking and it would disconnect. Usually I would make this phone calls in the evening, after work or a rehearsal, and it would be dark outside. One time I made a call during the daylight and my mom called out the clicking noise. And it disconnected. Then I noticed an unmarked car parked down the street, idling. This clicking/disconnection thing happened a few more times and I would notice the unmarked car parked down the street, idling. I finally gathered the courage to approach this car. Too many clicks. Too many disconnected calls. The car drove off as I got closer. My deduction for this circumstance was that the neighbors above me were selling drugs and were being tapped, dragging my phone calls under suspicion as well. Until I can get my hands on my FBI file...
I stand with Drake.

Gunned Down! Bang Dream!

Last night I dreamt that I was on my way from swimming at a strange overheated, overcrowded local pool house. A black SUV drove by a house and fired away! Just ahead of me. Some folks ducked for cover. A woman emerged from a garage bleeding from the head, a bullet nicked her temple. The SUV came around again for another round of shooting. I made the mistake of giving these punks the bird. They started firing away at me! I ran and ducked for cover underneath a pile of leaves in a backyard, but they drove around to the street on the other side which exposed me and they fired at me as I darted away again to hide in a trash can. I got some bullets to the back.
This morning as I was getting ready for the day, groggy as hell because the vivid dream, or nightmare, must have sapped a lot of adrenaline (I'm certain the brain still fires synapses to gear up the adrenal glands while in deep REM sleep), I thought a little bit about these jerks who gunned me down in my subconscious. I thought about if this were to happen in real life...if I was in a moment of "there's no way out of this" I'd be sure to get a good look at their faces. So I would know who to come back and haunt like crazy. Like throw plates at their head and pull their hair and push them while they're using the bathroom. Retribution can be a bitch. I'd be a petty ghost I think.

HH4Kidz

Another sample sketch. My hair is looking a little shaggy. Should I go here even though I'm a big kid now?


Oh yeah, and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, just search Wood Sugars.Or stream from http://www.woodsugars.com/listen

Wav Form Dance to a Sketch of Ours

We're in the works to have some of our Wood Sugars Comedy podcast sketches animated, but in the meantime Wood Sugars Eliaz figured out how to create groovy wav forms.

Oh yeah, and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, just search Wood Sugars. Or stream from http://www.woodsugars.com/listen

ITB S2 E8

We have a new episode up of our comedic variety show podcast, Inside the Barrel. In this episode we interview funny gals Ever Mainard and Rasa Gierstikas of The Shit Show, a kickass stand-up open mic here in Chicago. We also feature the band Lola Balatro! We tackle some slightly economic and educational issues in some of our sketches. But why listen to me yak about it, listen to it! -> ITB S2 E8.

Lake House by the Shoddy Seaport

I dreamt the other night that my girlfriend and I were at a point we were looking to raise a family, and so, we were looking at houses. I looked at one incredible gem of property set on a lake. Three stories plus a basement, which was part underground, part ground level due to an incline. There was a little bar/cafe on the ground level section which we could either utilize for our own pleasure or rent out to another business, although the owner of the property looking to lease it forewarned that no business would stick there so might as well enjoy it for our own. His asking price was $1899 a month! A steal for this, dare I say it again, gem of property, right on the waterfront with a dock and boat ramp! The owner, a middle aged bespectacled man with thinning grey hair warned me of "the haunt." This he mumbled, and when I asked him to clarify he cleared his throat and said "a demon." Which wasn't too surprising because now my dream had shifted the surrounding neighbor to an abandoned seaport.
We leased the property anyway and had one hell of an adventure trying to calm down a boy's demonic spirit throwing a temper tantrum. A phantom roller coaster erected itself as a vapor around our property. We had to chase his apparition around its twists and turns.

2 Year Anniversary for a little know book - Whiskey Pike!

Today is the 2 year anniversary of my book Whiskey Pike: A Bedtime Story for the Drinking Mankind. I would be more than honored if you took a swig of whiskey today and placed an order for your own copy of this bedtime storybook (for adults) for your bed stand.-> Order Here!