I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain

I just saw my hometown get nuked. I sat on the grass in the shadow of one of the university's structures and watched as the seemingly unending plume of fire and electricity thundered in to the sky, and looking around I was somehow not even surprised to see no one running, no one screaming. We all stared silently, almost peacefully, at the oncoming wall of fire that never quite engulfed our tiny bodies.

I saw the bomb fall, or at least saw it's jet plumed path arch across the sky. It was being carried by an orange rocket shaped something like the Bell X-1, the old test plane that broke the sound barrier, but this one was slightly different, and I watched it scream from the north and slam in to the earth near my parent's house. I'm about to puke just trying to remember this long enough to write it down.

I know I thought briefly of how sad I was that I would not be around to reshape the world with the other survivors, that despite every hope ever had for having a long life full of meaning and purpose and adventure, it was beign arbitrarily ended in one brilliant flash. More than any other emotion though, I just sat in resignation, watching my death fly towards me.

I was not alone on the campus. Behind me was a marching band decked out in blue, their drums silent. To the east a middleschool girl's soccer team stood in the long grass, their feet unmoving, their grass stained soccer balls forgotten, and south from me, towards the fire and the whispering death, stood some college students. Their books lay upturned on the dirt.

I thought of the woman I love, and how angry I was that I couldn't hold her one last time, of how useless I was to protect her from the mushroom cloud rising up in the south.

The walls of fire kept advancing, never seeming to kill us. The first one seemed to swallow everything, and from inside we could see the finger of death carving a white hot hole in to the pale blue early morning sky. Electricity arced from the earth to the peak of the explosion, and wave after wave of fire seemed to roll outwards, mocking us with it's absolute endign power.

In a nuclear explosion, one of three things will kill you; the explosion its self, if you are in the kill zone, the fire storm from the explosion if you are within a mile or so, and lastly, most horribly, the radiation kills the rest. It is the vulture that rides in the contrails of death, and I could feel it sinking it's claws in to me before the cloud had risen.

I could feel the radiation turning my thumbnails in to blood red splotches on my swelling fingers, the pressure building and building as the brilliant whiteness overcame me and boiled every liter of liquid in my body.

I woke up with a start, panting. I knew immediately that I had been dreaming, but that white hot image was burned in to my brain, searing my eyes with its ghost. My girlfriend was in the shower, and I stood by the washroom door for a few minutes just to hear the water and catch my breath. We had been dying moments before and now something as simple as listening to a shower on monday morning was healing me.

She didn't answer to my knock so i'm here writing this and for some reason hoping i'm not too late.

Zombies are nuts for brains.

You're welcome.

Nino and the Bike Kid

This last December I went out to Frankie's with my room mates Asher and Nino. Asher, as you might remember, is the guy with warrants out for his arrest in Alaska, on top of a couple felony counts for destroying a public high school's baseball field in his 4x4 a few years back. Nino, or “Jeremy Motherfucking Ginino” as he calls himself, is another Alaskan born deviant with a look faintly reminiscent of a balding Robert Downey Jr. and a chortle that simply ooses bong resin. I met these guys when I moved in to The Asylum, and though we started hanging out because of our mutual love for playing guitar, I quickly found myself 'too busy' to hang out; they only play Metallica. Only.

So the three of us had gone down to Frankie's and spent a good four hours tooling around the pool tables and hitting on the bartender when, in a five minute period, both Asher AND Nino got kicked out. I shit you not, one second Asher is sweet talking the bartender, the next she's screaming at him to leave 'cause he apparently robbed her friend (never happened) after going home and messing around with her, drunk (probably happened) and then went to where her boyfriend worked and bought smokes while laughing at him (definitely happened). Nino was booted shortly after for yelling at the bartender and calling her a string of names I've actually never heard before.

I followed him out, ducking under a barrage of insults and alcohol-veiled threats.

Once outside we tried to think of another bar to go to, at which point I found out that getting kicked out is a nightly occurrence for these two, and the nearest bar that would take our unholy triumvirate was in fucking Gresham. We started home, hoping to pick up a twelve-pack at the Korean market, when the real highlight of the night happened.

We were stumbling down the sidewalk, reeling from bush to telephone pole to bench when a scrawny hipster rolled up to the next light on his eco-friendly Schwinn, about a block away. This kid was the quintessential portland biker; Too-tight, too-short black jeans, moldy chuck-t's, a ratty german army sweater with holes chewed in the elbows and a mop of black hair protruding frantically from his head and face. Clinging desperately to this ensemble was a pair of coke bottle glasses with a thick patch of black electric tape holding the right lens in place. His bare white knuckles shook in the frigid air as he waited for the light to change.

In a blink, Nino took off in a dead run. Towards the hipster.

"Oh fuck," the kid screamed, seeing what looked like Mr. Hyde on a bender tearing down the street towards him. I’m not sure of exactly what ran through his mind at that moment, but I can only assume that he looked at Nino, barreling silently towards him, and assumed that he was getting bike-jacked.

On a busy street.

At ten thirty.

On friday.

In south east portland.

On the safe side of 82nd.

Apparently a lot of that shit happens in this part of portland. To chicks.

Bike Kid literally STOOD on his pedals, and in the frigid evening air I was certain I saw smoke rising from the blur of his back tire, but Nino had a good half brewery coursing through his veins and was quickly approaching the sound barrier. Bike Kid screeched away down the street, looking in terror over his shoulder at the Italian juggernaught thundering after him, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs. "NO MAN, NO! NO! Come on man, NO!"

Three blocks away, Nino was thirty feet behind and giggling like a drunk squirrel. "NO DUDE, PLEASE, NO! NOOOO!" Four blocks away, Nino was six feet from Bike Kid but laughing too hard to keep going. He stumbled to a drunken jog as Bike Kid tore off in to the night, and by the time Asher and I got up to him he was collapsed against a scooter shop's front steps, panting and laughing.

"I...I...I...I wasn't gonna," he panted, "I wasn't gonna...d...do anything to him! I just wanted to run, man!"

Two months later Bike Kid moved in to The Asylum. He still hasn't recognized Nino.

Oh for FUCK sake!

So, i ran across this horrendous picture on Geekologie.com the other day and it's been gnawing at me like i can only assume this guy was at the seatback ahead of him.

This image was used in a Telegraph.co.uk article about how airlines are starting to have to reconsider charging Jabba's cousins extra for traveling with, shall we say, NORMAL people. Don't get me wrong, i've got a little bit more to love myself, but this is taking that expression to a whole new level. This is 'more to love' in a "Me and Twins, but I ate them" kind of way.

For fuck sake, people, if you have to go somewhere and you look like this, just fucking WALK. You could use it.

The Cabin and The Dog-Bear

I was spending a solitary, woodsman like night out at The Cabin and had decided to take a stroll up to the shop for better cell reception, since my coverage with Cricket is spotty at best near the zipline and what kind of manly man would i be if i didn't have at least three bars. I grabbed a lantern, pulled on my cowboy boots and headed up the path to the looming shadow of the shop. Regardless of how close i got, though, my signal didn't improve. I decided to improvise. Adapt and overcome as the Marines say.

I headed over to the gate with the intention of trying my call from the top of the driveway, overlooking West Chehalem church. I figured that cell reception would probably be a little better near a house of God, and if nothing else i could enjoy a nice quiet starry night overlooking my beloved Wilamette Valley.
As i approached the fence i could swear i heard something rustling and crackling in the brush on the far side. Attributing the sounds to either a deer or my overactive imagination, i set to the task of unhooking the chain that runs through the gate.
The chain had just come loose and the gate was swinging open behind me when there was an audible SNAP off to my left, towards Dave and Bev's old place. I lofted the lantern high, expecting to see the swiftly retreating posterior of some curious woodland creature, and was met instead with two glowing orbs, about three feet off the ground, forty feet away.
A startled "Oh wow," was somehow all I could squeeze out of my lungs, to which the orbs responded with a long, low grrrrrrowl.
Somehow, my first thought was "Bear." I stepped back to the gate, but the aluminum section had already swung wide behind me and was out of reach. "I know, i'll climb the gate," i though, "Bears can't climb gates."
This thought process was both instantaneous and completely rational to my adrenaline soaked brain. As far as i was concerned, climbing a four foot metal gate and standing on the top of a fence post was an adequate and efficient escape from what i could only assume was a famine crazed blackbear bent on my consumption. Cause bears can't climb, right?
Right.
However, even as that idea started coalescing my brain, the glowing eyes moved. They began approaching me fast, accompanied by some heavy footfalls and continued growling.
"Oh great, it's a wolf."
Quickly the whole 'gate+fence post=safety' plan went out the proverbial window, and i clung to small iron gate with my left hand while the chain hung limply from my right.
A frantic stream of "Oh wow oh wow oh wow" spewed from my mouth, since as everyone knows, animals won't eat something that's talking to them. I don't know if it's an ethics issue or maybe feelings of inadequacy (would YOU eat something so obviously more advanced than your entire species?) but i figured that a wolf wouldn't attack something that was yelling at it like a bat just figuring out sonar.
As the giant critter entered the circle of light that my lantern threw off, i had a few ideas for additional items that we should keep at the cabin:

A Baseball Bat

A Ninja Sword
A Park Ranger
An Automated Defense System

And my personal favorite

A Bazooka

Step by agonizing step, the giant beast entered the lamplight, revealing its self to be not a bear, not a wolf, not even a giant radioactive badger, but a huge, loping, grey haired guard dog with bejowled face and slowly wagging tail. The beasty gave me one last growl and trotted off down the hill in the exact direction i planned on going.
Composing myself and taking a moment to empty the excessive amounts of urine that had somehow started filling up my boots, i braced myself and continued on my shaky way down the hill after the monster. I had cell reception to find.

All told, it was quite a fun night.

The Nightmare Before Thanksgiving

I had a bit of a fun experience the week of thanksgiving.

My roommate Asher, the felon with an IQ that couldn't prop up a hot weels car, is humping some train wreck he brought home. I caught a brief glimpse of her when he was somewhat forcefully herding what I thoughtwas a fat, homeless wookie towards one of our apartment's washrooms, and I specifically remember thinking, "Oh how sweet, a rescue pet."

Please understand, there is no single trait to this person that earned my scorn or even incited my gag reflex this strongly...it has more to do with all of the traits acting in unison. See, when I glanced away from the commercial i was watching to eyeball whatever it was making the floor shake as it lumbered drunkenly down the hall, my eyes were met with something half Tim Burton, half Honey I Blew Up The Kid And I Ate It And I'm Still Hungry.

Beneath the tangled mess of what I think was hair, I caught sight of a pasty, sagging face, bruised faintly with two purple spots of mascara, as if to remind the world that yes, this is a face and yes, here are the eyes. The lips drooped in something half way between an intentional pout and the grimace of a mouth that just swallowed an infant with a full diaper. Whole.

My roommate saw me, saw me see It, did a glass-rattling about face and shoved It back down the hall. And I went back to pretending that I cared about Vh1.

The Creature, once squeezed back in to Asher's 7x9 room, bitched for a good half hour about how she "really likes him a lot" and though I heard him respond, the only words I understood were "don't you ever call me an asshole." Apparently i missed some prominent plot points in their conversation, but i was fifty feet away in the living room watching music videos on late night TV, so i forgive myself.

The love affair escalated in to sobbing and a couple well timed shouts of 'DUUUUUUDE' when, after a brief silence, she started yelping.

Now, I assumed he was showing her pictures of cake and then hiding them, but it's just as possible she had summoned a gargantuan burst of energy and rolled on her back. A person of her girth could seriously damage any partner if anything relating to cowgirl is attempted, and in damaging, lose said partner, which is an unacceptable risk for such yetis, so without a forklift or the jaws of life, standard missionary is generally the best way to go. But I digress.

My ears, though impressive and mostly all powerful, can't usually translate crazy woman noises (a redundant title, I know), so I decide there was nothing for it; I turned down the TV and sat back in my chair, intent on figuring out just what the hell Sasquatches baby sister was doing down the hall.

It became readily apparent that they were at least attempting 'the nasty' when her cries became slightly more joyful (ruling out the whole cake+picture+peekaboo scenario), though I was a little taken aback by Asher's dangerous use of the old classic, the switcheroo.

See, technically a crazed, crying zeppelin of a woman is not the same as a girl who's saying no, so I'm pretty sure he's safe, but still the whole idea of bedding a female creature who is messily and negatively emoting is one that I avoid out of self preservation and not a little bit of fear.

Tear and name-calling just aren't sexy or safe.

This whole ordeal had gone on for what seemed a respectably long time when I heard him yelling at her that he'd "got nothing to prove to her," "who gives a fuck if he couldn't get it up," "why the fuck do you like it so much, I didn't even achieve penetration," and my personal favorite, "no, I don't give a fuck about having my dick in your mouth"

Repeat until sunup, or until vomiting ensues.

Needless to say, I live with some classy kids. Anywho, the sun was not up by the time I finished writing this shit down, but I was sick to my stomach, and nausea never blends too well with insomnia, so to stave off madness or boredom I thought I'd share this lovely evening with you via the 'net.

I'd also like to say this opportunity to say that I hope he's drunk, because taking that girl home sober, even out of pity, is an affront to just about anything with a penis.

Except, of course, Lady Gaga.