Jeff Phillips's Blog, page 4

The Race Against Time

Last Thursday January 10th, I missed my bus. Did the bus tracker, it would be 12 minutes. Might as well walk the 15 minutes to the L stop. So I walked. The bus I would have been on, had I waited, arrived at the L stop vicinity a slight half minute after I did via walking. I crossed California Ave and it's good I crossed when I did, because if I had been on that bus, I would have been plucked up over the hood of a tan SUV that squealed around from the northwest intersection of Milwaukee Ave.

The SUV proceeded to push the petal going north. My first thought was, what fuck, you in such a hurry to get through a yellow light you'd run somebody down? A stream of 5-10 Chicago Police squad cars rounded the corner in pursuit, some unmarked cars in there too. Sirens pulsing, sight and sound of chase.

As I entered the L station some State Police cars raced up to join them.

While I waited for the ever delayed Blue Line, a fire engine went up to take care of some sort of business. This was some 5 minutes after the first fury of wheels.

An exciting morning. The news wasn't saying much for awhile into the morning. Though some people on Twitter mentioned Police helicopters in Lakeview, and @Marcusgilmer tweeted a pic of the crash at School and Paulina - http://twitpic.com/bu26dl. That was it! There were the ramifications.

I thought, well that's feasible, from where I saw it at, not too far from that intersection, and  at it's speed, it would crash without a doubt within minutes. Then I read that the pursuit began on the west side of Chicago, around 4300 West Altgelt. Early reports said the SUV was pulled over for a routine traffic violation. Shots were fired at the police then it took off. So, it travailed quite the distance, and amazing work on the part of the driver to have avoided crashing sooner! I wonder if the driver had any prior getaway experience under their belt. I later read that it wasn't a "routine" traffic violation they were fleeing, but an attempted break-in of someone's van. More up-to-date story here, more specific "information" versus my frazzled eye witness glimpse - http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/01/10/roscoe-village-hit-and-run-crash-leaves-one-critically-injured/. 

They didn't want to do time so they fled. Given enough cop cars accumulating in this race, over the course of time, the perpetrators did not beat the buzzer. Time wins every time. 

My morning commutes have been pretty tame since.

Read-Head

I spent much of last year reading, and plan to spend much of the coming year doing even more of it, so I've laid down some reflections.

I wasn't much of a reader when I was a kid. I avoided it when I was younger so I could play baseball, other sports, make believe in the woods, etc. I didn't have the attention for it, I suppose I was restless. When I was 10 I got into the idea of making movies, and messed around with my parent's camcorder. At this time I learned that a film director was a profession, and I decided that was what I wanted to be when I grew up. I shot a bunch of little movies, some comedy, some sci-fi, creating space ship sets in my basement, some clay-mation. Mostly these were made up as we went a long, though in early high school I started to experiment with writing a variety of short screenplays, some shot, though many remained as exercises in writing the form. When I was 16 I acted in my friend James N. Kienitz Wilkins' movie Fight A Force of Friendly Fire. I had heard some actor interviews talk about "method acting" and I was curious, I investigated this "technique" some and decided I would try some method acting out on this film. I feel with some surges of intensity I alienated some friends, though it was a rush, I was addicted to it, I decided I had more fun acting, being on screen, on the stage, so I decided more so than a film director, I wanted to be an actor. 

These days I focus more on myself as a writer, though I do some acting from time to time, mostly in our Wood Sugars projects. But my time exploring film and acting was an important period to put me on a path to explore myself as a writer. Some of my writing experiments began as a way to develop new material to act in or shoot on film, such as my early collaborations with Daniel Mac Rae. It was a great experience to act in new material he was writing, and see his pieces progress through various drafts along side the rehearsal process. I learned a lot about writing from him. 

The relationship between reading and writing is a tight one. Most accomplished authors when imparting advice to writers mention they should read, a lot. To be a serious writer, is to be serious reader (as paraphrased from many different authors). The reason may be obvious. Writers create using language, and reading is important in building up a command on language, in exercising the imagination. Some times painters have to stock up on paint. I also think it's important to actively engage in the form you enjoy creating in. If you don't enjoy reading, then how do you expect anyone else to enjoy reading what you're writing.

As mentioned, I didn't read a lot as a kid. I had spurts though where I enjoyed it. In 5th grade I enjoyed Goosebumps and Michael Crichton. In 8th grade I wiggled my way into an Honors English class, as most of my friends were smart kids and I wanted to fit in. My teacher, Mr. Berry, however changed the way I thought. Mr. Berry seemed to have a bohemian past, on his wall was a banner "No Matter What We Study, Everything is Connected." I remember many engaging philosophical class discussions. Each week we had to write "lit logs." They were a sort of informal book report, where we'd write a letter to a classmate, they would respond, all in conversation about the books we were reading outside of assigned class reading. The vibe of class discourse, for perhaps the first time in my life, got me thinking, or attempting, to think deep, to really examine human nature, the meaning of life. I was also going through puberty, so maybe my brain was also going through complimentary changes. Through writing these lit logs, though on a weekly basis I didn't have the time or reading speed to finish every book, I found myself genuinely curious about books, and had a blast talking about them. 

In high school, well, I spread myself thin with sports and extra curricular activities, and making some movies, that I barely read what was assigned for class, though I did make every effort to. Many evenings I'd fall asleep with a book open. 

I started to take reading seriously again in college. Many of the great actors seemed to be voracious readers. Dustin Hoffman, Richard Burton, Al Pacino, Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, all seemed to mention literature throughout various interviews. Tom Hanks I believe kept an active book list on his MySpace page. I felt that, to further myself as an actor, I should probably deepen my "sensitivity to language." Naturally, in theatre school we read a lot of plays. I read some novels and poetry on the side, trying to correspond reading choice material to parallel an acting role, to perhaps expand my understanding of a character perspective or time period. For my role in Magnets: Hyena Daniel Mac Rae recommended Cormac McCarthy's Child of God and Outer Dark, as well as Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares. Such books buttressed a visceral thought process and inspiration toward bringing the character Jerry Thompson to life. This, over the years, led to my interest in authors as artists, just as for a long time I was quite interested in various actors, or film directors before that. And this of course led to my urge to throw down more writing of my own, and not just as material to shoot. I found a thrill in language sometimes being its own means to experience a story. I began to see literature as a mind expanding drug. Words, stimulating imagination, put the author inside my head, while at the same instant, I was put inside their's. 

I have a lot of writing goals for 2013. Though as active as I want to be as a writer, I want to be even more active as a reader, pushing myself further, eating up more pages than I ever have. One, because I quite enjoy it. Two, because I'd like to keep growing as a writer, and as a person (reading has been linked in brain studies to increased empathy). I also find; the more actively I read the more fluid word choices feel as I write.

I will be writing some more about my reading. Much in the vein of those lit logs, some posts here may be, not as a book review or a book report, an exploration, a further dialogue about literature. I remember watching Martin Scorsese's documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies where he showed clips and talked about the movies that inspired and influenced him. I'd be interested to do something similar here with novels and short stories and essays as I continue my own journey through the creation of literature.

Essay, Essay

I've dusted off high school, I think. I've come to love the form of the essay. Partly in thanks to George Saunders, George Orwell, Mark Twain, Daniel Pinchbeck, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Terrence McKenna, Tom Bissell, as well some of the live lit events in Chicago, I've discovered a peck in my tastes where the form serves as a fresh foray into the mind and experience of another. Like a documentary, yet through language play. High school, college, formal school in general can sometimes make us bitter to the form. The pressure of deadlines, grades, assigned topics that bore us, these things drive the idea of an essay into a negative crevice. 

As I've played with various personal essays, though selfish and self indulgent, and a myriad of subjects that intrigue me, I find myself reminded of the power of it. Sparked is an obsession to continue exploring the creation of my own little essays in the coming year. Like the Roman dude in the Little Caesars commercials running around saying, "pizza, pizza!" there is a little writer dude in me revving me up with "essay, essay!"

As a quick call back, there are some posts here on The Igloo Oven that I am quite proud of, and would like to bring them back to the forefront for a tiny bit, so they're not digitally buried as time moves onward. In 2013 I aim to knock out more that I'm proud of, and hopefully an evolution of these experiments. 

Burning Ink - an experiment in the woods; writing and fire.Gross Harris - reflections of a door-to-door sales gig.Poon Men - cheating in sports when sci-fi becomes everyday.Blood Doper, Midnight Toker -the power of red blood cells.Planets as Pluckers of Vibrations of Soul - are gaseous giants pointless satellites in the circle of life?Elephant Conquest - juvenile instincts take hold in politics.

Through the Last Synaptic Assignment

The end of times comes easy to our imaginations. Doomsday is ascribed to political discourse, relationship strife, petty incidents of inconvenience. Just the other day I accidentally dropped a hot dog on the floor of my kitchen and it was not a pretty scene. A rare hissy fit in the face of stress built from the day. The fiscal cliff fades to a joke as my rushed dinner rolls around in the mud I tracked in from the cold, December rain.

Here I am, December 22nd, 2012, writing. The end of the world did not happen. We may all be subtly both relieved and disappointed. Apocalypse is a cultural fantasy. It amounts to a wiping out of debts financial, emotional. All baggage blazed to ash. Start afresh in a new dimension. Though the prophecies were not taken seriously at large, I think most, if not all, of us can admit to thinking about the what ifs at least for a flash. I recently read 2012: The Return of Quetzlcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck as a pseudo reflection. The book explores the origins of the prophecy through myth and various interpretations by thinkers on the fringe. My take away is: I hope this date does transition us into a new Golden Age where creativity, rationality, and good will can merge into a way of life that is invigorating, refreshing across a wide spectrum of social class, seeping into behavior and policy organically through a cultural shift in value. We’re all hungry for something better suited to all of us, and frustrated, because we still cling to old perspectives on how to solve problems, even problems posed by new technology that may not apply to old frameworks. A greater change may come our way when we all lay exhausted from ideological battle, and our interactions slip to the slap happy, and we decide we like it there better.

The evening of December 20th I joined a friend at his holiday party. Enjoying beer in the 11 o’clock hour I found that time had slowed. I had checked my phone at 11:01pm. When I felt like it had to be getting well past midnight and I should be getting on home, I found that it was only 11:17pm. When I then felt as though, shit, it must be passed 1am, it was 11:40pm. I wondered, hey, maybe this is it, the final hour, rolling time into a slowed tube of perspective, my last synaptic assignment of consciousness? 

The next morning I awoke, December 21st, my commute was quiet, strangely so. Ah, a travel day for most with Christmas around the corner, easily explained away, though it had a flavor similar to the opening of The Walking Dead. I got out of work early, went home, read in my lazy boy until I felt sleepy. But it was an odd type of sleepy, and almost felt as though consciousness itself was just draining away from my cells. I once had a dream about the end of the world, where the universe technically expanded so far that it snapped apart, but instead of it being a violent experience, it was quite peaceful. Vision, sound, touch, all senses just faded as though the body was a biological movie projector reaching the end of a reel, no longer conducting the electromagnetic wavelength of experience. And it was actually beautiful. As I sat in my chair, feeling this ooze of sleepy, I thought on this old dream, and again wondered, is this how we go? 

I awoke from a quick nap maybe 15 minutes later, though it felt much longer. Groggy, I got up and wandered around my apartment. It was dark out, the neighborhood still, my girlfriend not home from work yet. It had that feeling at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey where Dave existed as an old man in that white lit home. What was that feeling; mystery, relaxation and loneliness melted into one new sensation? 

I picked up my phone to text her to see when she’d be home, but in looking at my recent text history I couldn’t find her name at first. And I briefly wondered if I awoke into a new dimension, and she had gone to another.

She arrived home 10 minutes later and my life went back to normal. The slow oozing of time squished back into the fast flow we’ve all grown used to. But the reprieve from being too tightly conscious of time as fixed rhythm, as I sensed in that hour at the bar, in the cat nap on my chair, is a taste of what we all may need to recharge our batteries, and help us recover from those moments where we feel so rushed from modern life we drop our hot dog on the floor and it rips doom into our tempers.

Bad Friday

The Connecticut shooting earlier wrests a gnawing in my gut this evening, as it does with many of you. A truly horrifying occurrence and just imagining what the families and community members affected must be experiencing brings pain. 

I do not believe there are simple solutions. Would tighter gun laws actually prevent something like this? Maybe it help a little to slow a pissed off person from grabbing a firearm off a shelf. But someone warped enough to commit to a plan? Drug laws exist, but people find a way to get their hands on their desired goods. Someone hell bent on destruction can find a way. Arming teachers? Would a wild west shootout be a safer place for kids? Today's mass murderer killed himself in the end, I hardly think he'd be deterred by the possibility of being shot down. He had something dark to express, some awful impression he wanted to leave on the Earth, and so he did. Coming out unscathed, preserving his own life, doesn't appear to be on his malevolent itinerary. 

Perhaps an armed good Samaritan could have limited the damage and limited lives lost, yes, but damage would most likely still have to occur before another would become fully aware that a danger needed to be snuffed. So it's not as though arming everyone is a full on solution to eradicating violence. Unless we were all trained to have ninja reflexes and catch every bad action at the slightest inception of the act...even Superman couldn't stop every bad thing from happening, and he had laser eyes.

And the Trayvon Martin incident? Gang territories? Could concealed weapons create more travesty as hyper sensitive and paranoid fellows try to prevent travesty?

The incident, its causes, its symptoms, its prognoses are complicated, and knee jerk solutions have their devil's advocates. This may not be a time for I-told-you-so's to be flung from either side of the aisle.

When these shootings occur the question is thrown; "why would anyone do such a thing?" But the perpetrator is explained away as a monster. They may very well be one. But how is a monster made? Cerebral anomaly? Demonic possession? Weeks after James Holmes went on his rampage we all seemed to forget about him. No psychological lessons lifted as to explore a social cure, an antidote to the atrocious. Perhaps until we dig deeper with this question, turning it on it's rhetorical back, we remain open for frightening repetitions. 

It's easy to want to put ourselves on lock down after watching the news, to subconsciously write suspicion on other people's foreheads. We don't know them or their intentions, keep them at bay. But if we take it so far as to shut out and shut in, what cycles are reinforced? Sick stuff floats in the cold shock waves of alienation. There may always be bad people in the world, but at the risk of sounding like a hippie long since laughed away, a little social warmth may slow the poison from circulating, penetrating, infecting, and spreading.

The best course may really be to hold loved ones close, and not stop there, hold our communities close and make a deep mental note not to wait until events like these happen to remind the people around us that we're all in this, cruising through a flawed society, together.

Planets as Pluckers of Vibrations of Soul

The second day after I was dropped off at college I got plastered on vodka with some friends down the hall. Inebriated and lying on her kitchen floor, I was later informed I said to my new friend Hala, "you're so cool you could be your own planet."

I forgot about this laugh until a night last week when I got up to pee in the middle of the night and a bright light shone in through the glass-brick of the bathroom window. Thinking it was something out of the ordinary, a helicopter beaming down a search light possibly, a UFO, I opened up the vented portion of the window to peak out through the screen. It was the Moon. A bright ass Moon shining down.

I continued to think about that luminous body when I crawled back into bed. I started to think about planets in general. With many of these orbs screaming through space at high orbital velocities, with no climate or with a wicked and inhospitable atmosphere unsuitable for human life, I wondered what the fucking point of these celestial rocks were. Birthed by the condensing of pressurized particle, these beasts boast desolation.

In thinking about ghosts for a moment, suspending disbelieve, most accounts of haunt investigations point to spirit life being conducted through electromagnetic energy; high EMF readings, bodies of water nearby. A ghostly presence sometimes makes itself known through sound detected through devices capable of picking up a spectrum inaudible to the human ear. Or through cold spots, changes in temperature, or sudden bursts of object movement, fiddling with how our bodily senses perceive physical clues. An apparition is a rarity, utilizing tremendous streams of energy when it does appear. Different strokes of frequency for different quantum folks.

I began kicking around the far fetched and occult soaked without apology theory that perhaps any and all planets are indeed a locale for driving the energy of life. We're familiar with life forms on Earth and how we fit into the biosphere. I'm intrigued with a brewing notion I have that other planets drive life in different ways, on different planes, hosting hierarchies of spirit worlds that operate through a different wavelength of energy. The dense pressures of Jupiter and Saturn may crush human tissue but may be perfect for conducting the electromagnetic waves of a soul. The rings of Saturn may create the perfect gravitational force to draw such spirits. And let us not forget the odd hexagon that appears at the top pole of Saturn. Clean edges within a gaseous swirl are indeed perplexing to modern science, but may have causes and effects via different laws that would blow our mind. Oceanic or ice planets may conduct energy at different speeds than the gaseous giants and serve the cohesion of a type of soul we've never pondered before. 

Though crisp, rocky planets such as Mercury, or the moons of various planets may have no atmosphere, they are particularly battered with a shower of radiation, which may lay the arena for a level of spiritual dance that our telescopes have no way of catching. Perhaps the ancients were more advanced than us, more highly attuned as they ascribed planets to the status of Gods, tremendous hosts to the concept of a soul. Perhaps my drunken compliment to my friend was an unconscious acknowledgement of this age old fact that planets, as Pythagoras once claimed he could sit in a field and listen to the sound of them, are electric stages for phantasm operas. Something may have been plucking Gustav Holst's psyche as he composed and orchestrated The Planets, beyond astrological homage, but a possible yearning from a non-local segment of his higher self, struggling or partying as a ghostly plankton bobbing the depths of Neptune.

Planets could be immense tuning forks of consciousness, not just as astrological tugs on us Earthlings, but as places in and of themselves a sort of radioactive, organic, decaying cathode ray tube-like, balled up matter to be receivers of beings. 

And these burning stars, spinning hot plumes of radiation, these are the big leagues for the existence of the biggest, baddest, and most advanced of souls. Or, as we are a complicated species indeed, just because our bodies are smaller than a Red Giant, doesn't necessarily scratch us off the running for being the most advanced of incarnations. 

These are fanciful, "spacey" ideas, but as I close my eyes at night and sometimes wonder about what the fuck is out there, how mind blowing space, time, the age of the universe is, and whether I actually have a soul that will outlast this sometimes polluted body of mine, they serve as exciting fantasies to put me at ease as I drift off to a dream-state, anticipating hypnagogic gradations of immortality.

Madness & Groove

As a lad, I used to dabble with music. I played the piano, violin, saxophone, mandolin, guitar, but I never went all out with one instrument, mastering chord theory and harmonics, etc. And I wish I did. Ever more I recognize the power of sounds, not just via sweet melodies or tones, but also in textures. There are some textures that are quick to get under my skin, for instance a car alarm, or my girlfriend's grating blender.  Precise cacophonous sounds like these have the power to stop me in my tracks, and shut down my concentration in a deep, petty way. 

Yet sounds also have that power to sooth, such as water lightly bobbing and echoing in a tub, and excite - food frying. And complex music can wash away a rotten day, the gunky build up of angst addled karma. Since we're in the throes of Christmas now, I think of Nat King Cole singing O Holy Night. That song will forever give me the chills. 

And I wonder how exactly these sounds trigger us. They're like keys not only along the musical scale, but are buttons as on a garage door. Certain sounds are the pass code to unlocking behavior. Some combinations may work differently on the neural sensory pathways of different people. Some may not give a shit about Nat King Cole's rendition of O Holy Night and many may be un-phased when a blender is suddenly on and grinding at arrhythmic intervals. 

As music and sound can be recorded with physical means, such as grooves on a record, or magnetically (tapes) or digitally, these electromagnetic waves can get themselves etched in our unforgiving memories, intertwining with other pathways. I must have had a splendid Christmas one year with O Holy Night as background music. Perhaps as a child I had a bad run-in with a blender, and so anger floods now when a blender makes itself known. 

But I also stop to think about the potential of a collective unconscious sometimes, and how emotional reactions to music may not be so much clipped into personal memories, there's a reason why a million plus people get a deep kick out of seeing a certain musical group live.  They seem to melt with the progression of the music. I've had experiences like these, seeing and hearing a band for a first time. The music itself surely not background to an old memory, but a new experience, electromagnetically unlocking behavior. 

And I'm not alone in hating the sounds of grating things, or the sound of the car alarm that won't stop piercing awareness.

On a cosmic level, I wonder if energy patterns can act like grooves of a record, and certain chord progressions (I mean, B minor tends to make us all melancholic) excite the quantum particles along these unseen electromagnetic grooves. Since our bodies are electric conduits when it comes down to it, many of us will be swept up this burst of flow. But of course not all. Some, for whatever reasons of stress and neural shut down, may be closed to these channels, and so the wild behaviors and madness may not be sparked by the groove of a certain tune.

And the more energy sucked into the flow of the groove, the deeper it gets, until, it scratches. We get stuck for a bit, then we move on, ushering on new musical eras. But every once in awhile we discover that old cosmic record and it still possesses an ancient aural power over us. Stumbling upon the jukebox plugged into that mysterious Akashic record, we, for a moment, can go back in time, and lose ourselves.

And so I wish I had stuck with music. The architecture of sound, when mastered, can exert much control over people, for better or worse. I hope I don't come across as a mini Napoleon wanting to take over the world, more so I'm interested, at the risk of sounding like a hippie, how good music can save the world.

Not Safe For Tourists - Indie Incubator Screening

Our short film Not Safe For Tourists unfortunately didn't make it among the top 15 finalist picks in the National Film Challenge. But we still like our film, like supportive parents, we'd pin a blue honorable mention ribbon on its bulletin board.  Or give it a trophy with a plastic, gold looking movie camera on top. Though our friend Alex Gianopoulos of Ultimatum Pictures made it with his film The Missing Link, so we can't act like "we're too cool for the competition anyway and it's all political" because he's a good guy who makes good films. We hope he wins!

So, we're unveiling our piece at the Indie Incubator Film Fest tomorrow night. If you're in Chicago, you should try and check it out. 

Oh, and here is a trailer. Remember, this was written, shot, and edited in 72 Hours. I muddied my work shoes and got honked at by Metra conductor for this one! Wood Sugars Donny almost got hit by a train. And Wood Sugars Eliaz didn't sleep much over the course of that weekend. But we all got to eat pizza and play make believe on a nice October weekend, so goddamn it, we in turn are victorious after all.


Not Safe For Tourists [Trailer] - National Film Challenge from Wood Sugars on Vimeo.

Angel

Wednesday evening I settled in my living room to eat some leftovers and watch something on Netflix. I heard a piercing knock outside my apartment. I stopped, look toward the bay windows, but let it go, resumed my meal. Maybe it was the wind causing an odd creak. A few minutes later I heard it again. Followed by another tap against the glass of the window. Being on the second story, this resembled the romanticized activity of throwing pebbles to gain the attention from an object of desire. 

I stood up to look out the window, and sure enough their was a boy, late teens, serious face, looking up to window with seemingly dark intents. I shuddered at his intensity, as though he'd been out there for some time throwing objects up my way, ready to toss potentially a brick to make a hateful mess of shards. 

Awakened in me was a long standing fear of people outside my window. From a childhood dread of aliens hovering outside my window to beam me up and make cuts to my skin tissues, to the chatter of a neighbor across the street one day in my early teens reporting a strange man had been lurking in the woods behind her house. She had called the police, who chased the man off. To more recently, several years prior I had a falling out with a friend whom I feared may belligerently show up to my previous apartment, on the first floor, and break through the window to come bludgeon me in my bed. Though I did have one pleasant memory of a stranger outside my window, when I had first moved to Maine at 10 years of age, I was in my room and heard some rustling outside my window. I had looked down, saw a kid named Chip I knew vaguely from school. I went to down to see what was up, he and some other friends were playing hide and go seek. I soon joined in the game and made some new friends.

So Wednesday night with the sight of this guy I thought about turning off the lights and hiding. He continued to stare up at me as I debated retreat. To nip it in the bud, to learn more on the mystery of the encounter, I opened the window and asked, "can I help you?"

He walked closer to the gate and spoke, but I couldn't hear him. I repeated. He spoke, again inaudible. I noticed the storm window was down, I slid that barrier up and repeated my inquiry.

"What apartment does Angel live in?" He asked.

"Um, I don't know an Angel that lives in this building, sorry."

"I'm looking for Angel!"

"I don't know an Angel around here, sorry."

He continued glaring up at me.

Then he turned and ran across the street. I closed up the window, resumed my dinner.

A few minutes later I heard the door to the foyer below open, and then some footsteps coming up the stairs. My girlfriend had left for a Zumba class not too long before, and it would be another hour before she returned home. Who the fuck then was coming up the stairs, toward my door?! It had to be this guy unsatisfied for not having tracked down Angel! I thought about whether the wood of the door could withstand unreasonable ferocity. I scanned the room for a beer bottle in case defense was necessary.

A key inserted and opened the door. My girlfriend entered, her Zumba class having been cancelled. I told her how relieved I was, told her about the guy throwing pebbles and wanting to find a dude named Angel. 

"Weird, " she said. "When I parked my car there was somebody across the street staring up at our window." Timing wise, I placed this after he hustled off.

I went to the window, couldn't see him, but still fear there is an impulsive teenager out there who thinks somebody named Angel lives in my apartment and he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants from said Angel.

Being a King & Shit

I think I would like to be King someday! After nearly 3 decades as a living specimen trying to figure it out, I've found my vocation. I do have some royalty in my blood after all, so, I really should give this a shot. But, in this day and age of blowing our wad over the sweet sound of liberty and the sacred document handed down from God called the Constitution, I have to be very discreet. I've found a way to do this actually, I've been learning about this thing called an LBO. Stands for Leveraged Buyout. Where we restructure an institution, say a candy company, load them up with a shitload of debt, get my cut from that, but do that line of credit in that company's name, so they have to pay for it, hahahahaha. But I'll get really good with statistics, at least in presenting statistics so it looks like a pretty enticing package that anyone who is like "yeah, I want to grow my company!" will snack on, especially a candy company, ahahaahaha, 1 pun point for me.

But when the company starts to struggle because everyone start wising up to things like diabetes, and rising resulting health care costs, and so they try cutting back on candy, hell no am I going to not collect on my due profits, what do I look like a fucking idiot? So therein lies the next step to being a little King without everyone knowing it. We'll force the people doing all the work for me, hahahaha, to take pay cuts, or else we'll have to lay off staff because we're falling on hard times . If I'm effective here, I'll keep on raking in some sweet wealth and can have a ball living the high life of kings, while they take the hit and have trouble with the bills, oh well, in life there are winners and losers am I right? 

If the workers start getting a little testy though, which I've seen happen from time to time, I ain't going to shit my pants because I'm going to spin it like they're a bunch of fucking assholes trying to squeeze a bunch of money because they are so greedy and un-fucking-civilized, and would rather have no job than make a little less money. Then I'm going to turn the public on them, and then they'll be unemployed too, and I can turn the public on them even more. If this little plan B ends up being the case, it might even work out better for me if I want to be King, because then I can get rid of unions all together by making it look like they're raining on everyone's parade, because they're a bunch of thugs who only care about themselves and have no regard for what it would be like for an executive to have to eat lunch at an Olive Garden instead of the finest Italian trattoria. I mean think about how that would feel, that would be stupid embarrassing. Once I can get rid of the unions, then I can really start pushing that excessive government regulation, like minimum wages, are holding us back. I'll really do it up here, and say things like "oh the tyranny that is choking us job creators! We just want to help you by giving you jobs!" But what I really want is my own kind of tyranny by getting a real kind of liberty going that allows me to be tyrannical, now that's liberty brosef. Man, if I can just get people to work for me on food scraps from my feasts, that would be best for my bottom line and this is feasible if I can stir up enough shame to weigh them down on top of their own debt. That will really get me feeling overwhelmed with joy when I watch 4th of July fireworks because the freedom to be King without having to call it that, because I don't like labels, I'm hip believe it or not, man this kind of freedom is all I ever wanted. A little serfdom bringing in my surf and turf, hahahahaha.

I'm going to wish upon a star, maybe the headlights on a the limousine of a candy CEO heading to a bankruptcy hearing, hahaha, or better yet, I'll put this on my vision board, because dreams really do come true.