Adventures In Pizza Delivery

I was delivering a pizza to 29th and Cable. A poorer area right behind the sleasy place I work in. The drive was less than a minute and a half, so I was looking forward to making a good deal of money driving a pizza to someplace I could walk to.

The house was nothing fancy. Standard. White picket fence. Typical American dream bullshit lodged in the middle of a pseudo-ghetto.

The house had a screaned in porch.

I climbed the step and opened the door. I was shocked to find a man sitting in a chair on the porch.

As I got my senses back, I realized that it wasn't a man in the chair. It was a mannequin.

Of George W. Bush.

Masterbating.

The joys of pizza delivery.

Brotherhood is Forever

This year got off to a bitter-sweet start for me.

Just five minutes ago I said good-bye to a great friend of mine, three weeks ago, I said good-bye to another.

The times are definetly changing, and the friendships that once seemed like they would always be there seem to be splitting apart as we all go our seperate ways.

But does it really split up?

I don't think so. Although these two friends are missed, the friendship is still there. These two men are my brothers. We have been through so much together.

The friend I just said good-bye to is one of my oldest and dearest friends. I remember making videos with him for school projects. Macbeth, Farenheit 451, Gone With The Wind 2. We didn't always agree, but these fights made our friendship stronger, these fights proved we'd be friends forever.These videos are important to my past and to who I am. The cooperation needed to create these required massive amounts of effort on both parts. Without this friend, I would be a much different person. I remember visiting him in the hospital when he injured his knee. I remember hanging with him when he was kicked out of football.

I honestly think that without him, I would have abused drugs and not be in college. He was always, and still is, a positive influence in my life. It is because of this, I am proud to call him brother.

The other friend joined the military. He is working towards a life long dream, and closer to accomplishing his passion than anyone I know. He was given the gift of knowing what he loved at an early age. Although it pains me to see him go, I am happy that he is so close to his dream.

I can't forget the long nights of drinking and bullshitting. Beercakes and the legendary walk in Greenwood. These are also ties that bind and some of my favorite mnemories in life.

I wish I could see them both more, but they are happy with what they're doing. I wish them luck. I don't know much in this life, but I do know that distances may strain our brotherhood, but it cannot and will not break them. If I go five, ten, fifteen or even twenty years without seeing either one, I know that when we meet again, we will still be bound by mutual respect. We will still be friends. We will still be brothers.

Just Thought...

In case anyone was wondering what I was writing these days, here's a sample:

Harvey Kopelson was sitting in the break room at his funereal home. He was reading the paper when he heard a slow, loud trudge up the flight of stairs from the embalming room. The heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway and he sighed right before Everett Gibson entered the room.
“Hey, uh, Mr. Kopelson. How’s it going?” Gibson said, his eyes looking at the wall behind Kopelson, then the clock above, coming to rest on the table in front of the man who signed his paychecks.
“Fine,” Kopelson said.
“I’m going to lunch. Do you, uh, want me to get you anything? Like, maybe a salad, or something, not that you’re uh, fat, but I’ll get you something if you really, uh, want me to. It’s no trouble.”
“I’m fine Gibson. I’m just reading the paper and getting ready to start arrangements with the Collins family.”
“Really? Do you want me to, uh, help?”
Kopelson closed his eyes exhaled loudly.
“No, Gibson, I’m fine. Go to lunch.”
“Because, I’ll help if you, uh, want me to. I have a lot to offer like…um…”
“Just go to lunch, okay.”
“Well, uh, okay. I’ll be back in an hour. Are you sure you don’t want anything?”
“I’m sure. Just go.”
Gibson walked over and shook Kopelson’s hand. The insincere handshake was quick and weak. Gibson’s hand felt like egg salad.
Tom Menke was going on break too. He walked into the room and almost ran into Gibson.
“Hey, uh, Tom. What’s going on?”
Tom was caught off guard. He looked over at Kopelson, who was wiping his hands with a napkin. He left his office late specifically to avoid Gibson.
“I’m good. Just going to lunch. I’ve been going over numbers all day and need some food.”
“Do you want me to, uh, get you something? I’m going to Wendy’s. Do you like Wendy’s?”
“I’m fine. I brought my lunch from home today. See you in an hour.”
“Okay, uh, well I’m going now.”
Gibson extended his clammy hand. Menke took it apprehensively and shook it briefly; a mild wince came to the face Gibson wasn’t looking at.
“So, I’ll, uh, see you guys in an hour.”
“Bye Gibson,” they both said-- a tinge of excitement in their voices. He plodded out of the room and Menke put a can of soup in a bowl, then the microwave. He sat down by his boss.
“Tom, I don’t like that guy,” Kopelson said.
“I know. He creeps me out a little,” Menke said.
“He creeps me out a lot. He looks like Orson Welles on crack.”
Menke smiled, falling into the familiar topic.
“And not the good Orson Welles,” Kopelson continued, “the fat-ass money whore Welles that died endorsing frozen peas.”
Menke laughed.
“He keeps offering to buy me stuff, it’s really irritating. One of these days I’m going to take him up on the offers, I swear,” Kopelson said.
“Did he try the lunch buying line on you too?” Menke asked.
“Yeah, I think it’s a misguided attempt to buy our love.”
“Or our asses,” Menke said.
Both men cracked up.
“You know, Harvey, we should tell him to shower,” Menke said, “He keeps coming into my office and I don’t like it. He came in yesterday and I think he kept asking about my family, but I have no idea exactly what he said because the stench was so bad.”
“He smells like B.O. and failure.”
“Why don’t you fire him?” Menke said.
“I hate to admit this, but he does damn good work. I like how he prepares the bodies; I just wouldn’t let him talk to the families if my business depended on it.”
There was a brief silence between the men. Menke got up and took his food out of the microwave. It had gotten cold. He put it in again and sat back down.
“This one time, it was after I setup the Stone family, I walked into the basement and saw him leaning over a cadaver. I don’t think he was expecting me. He gave me this look. It scared me. He looked like a kid who was making out and had the father walk in. Frightened, but angry. You know?” Menke said.
“Yeah, I know. The sick fuck.”
“Maybe we should go down there every half hour or so. We don’t know what he’s up to,” Menke said.
“No, I’d rather have him fucking corpses than fucking up my head seeing his pasty, white ass ramming some car crash victim,” Kopelson said.
“True.”
The microwave beeped.
Menke went over to the microwave and brought his soup to the table. He began eating.
“Do you ever check to see if he’s fooling around with the cadavers?” Menke said.
Then the door opened and both mouths closed. The same crawling thud entered the house, but was broken up by a stumbling thump. After a few seconds, it continued.
Gibson lumbered into the room.
“Hey, uh, guys. I was gassing up my car and I bought you guys some Snicker’s. Do you like Snicker’s?”
Gibson handed them the candy. Nobody made eye contact. Menke continued to eat his soup, Kopelson picked up his paper.

For Comparison

I've been scrolling the blogs lately and have noticed a lot of people writing poems. Although I don't think poems should be limited to any group or groups of people, I do think the majority of people write shitty poems. I submit to my readers two poems. The first one I consider to be the average blog poem, the other to be on of my average poems. Dare to compare and tell me what you think:

Poem One: I Am by Heaven's Paradise:
I Am
I am a writer
I am a poet
I am a blonde
I am a blue-eyed girl
I am an introvert
I am in denial
I am a recovering self-mutilator
I am a girl recovering from depression
I am a recovering alocoholic
I am a recovering drug addict
I am dealing with the loss of two friends
I am a smoker
I am a rape victim
I am a recovering anorexic
I am a recovering bulimic
I am an inch away from relapse
I am only 19
I am

Now Hide by me:
I saw the best minds of my generation
blown away by RPGs, lost in a world of ogres
and demons, cyborgs and mutants, diving into
a country that never existed
fighting revolutions in a simulated era,
as pizza boxes grow old and infested,
possessing apartments and dormrooms,
covering the ground in a carpet of fast food
wrappers, socks glistening
with dried semen, half of a dead child
buried in the garbage of it's father,
skipping classes others would kill to be in,
emersing in a future that won't come,
typing erotic messages and nerotic errors
pulling out their simulated clocks,
ejaculating with help from a middle-aged
mailman in Ohio, living the same way,
losing jobs and wasting air,
smoking cigarettes,
throwing the butts on the floor,
satisfying desires for food, drink, sex, sleep
between (six)teen, twenty-(six) and thirty-(six) hour sessions
with a possesive box, spending parent's money
on electronic currency,
while begging girls in other states for codependant
roller coasters and never meeting,
dancing around and around
the circle of addiction,
waking up at seven at night,
forced into sleep at four the next morning,
never leaving the same four walls,
gaining weight, losing brains,
flies buzzing around their heads,
picking though their trash,
picking through their lives,
maggots squirming ten feet away,
ignoring visitors when dragons invade the new homeland,
while the old homeland is being depleted
more and more each day.

which is more effective?

This Time of Year...

This time of the year makes me think about somebody. A man I used to call friend. He's gone now. His body is still around, but the person I owed loyality to by virtue of the label "friend" is no more.

This friend and I came to Lincoln together. All of our friends from high school stayed in Omaha. It was just us. During that awkward phase of college he was a godsend. I don't know where I would have been if he hadn't gone to lunch with me or smoked on the front steps of Able when I was bored. We had each other's back until we could establish where we wanted to go in college. He was a distinct character in one of the most formative years of my life.

After our freshman year, he decided he wasn't feeling comfortable at the university. He decided to transfer to another college a few hours from here. The rumor mill said it was for a girl, he said he wanted smaller classes. I had faith in him. He was my friend. So I wished him luck and said goodbye. After that we lost contact.

Then midway through first semester, second year, I got a surprise phone call from him. He was in town. He didn't want to go back to his college yet. He wanted to shoot the shit. We caught up on old times. He seemed like the man who watched my back not even six months earlier. He informed me that the next semester he was coming back to the university.

He was going to live off campus, free books, good parking pass, and grocery money on a weekly basis. He would have what I wanted. He would became the first of our friends to move out of their parents' house.

I said goodbye and went to bed. I was glad I would have my friend back again. We were supposed to have good times together. We were supposed to live it up.

He moved in, I helped. We discussed the upcoming year and the adventures we would have. School was starting in a week and the times we would have would be remembered forever.

The next day the slide began...

He let a friend from his frat move in. I was glad for him at first. Living alone can be depressing and company can make life more livable. Things were positive. They got jobs together, they went to classes together, and they partyed together. Things seemed to be looking up for my friend.

Then he missed class. He said he slept in, but I know the truth. He was playing on his computer until six in the morning, at which point he crashed. He woke up the next day at eight. I asked him how classes went and he told me. We both shrugged it off as no big deal.

Then one class became two, then two became five. Then the biggest mistake happened: my friend and his roommate went to a party...

...on the east coast.

I had been invited but declined. I had too many things in town that needed to be looked after. My affairs were not in order and I wanted to do homework. Thank god I didn't go on that trip.

Three weeks later I got a phone call from his mom. She didn't know where he was, she hadn't heard from him in weeks. Not a phone call, not an email, not a text message, letter or carrier pigeon. She was scared. A friend of hers tried to stop by the apartment and saw his car there. The police went inside and couldn't find anything. I told his mom he was in another time zone and that was all I knew. She thanked me and promptly hung up.

I don't know what happened on that trip, but when my friend came back, I was shocked to find he was no longer my friend. He was a body. He didn't care about anything anymore. I asked him what happened and why he didn't make some effort to at least inform people that cared about him what his status was.

What happened? The car broke down and his roommate didn't care enough to fix the vehicle. He fucked around as long as he could. Why didn't he tell anyone where he was? "I didn't think about it."

That's when I knew my friend was dead. He didn't care about school, which had long since passed him by. He didn't care about work, which had long since fired him, and he didn't care about friends, who had long since forgotten him.

He lived in Lincoln the rest of the semester. I use the term lived in a very liberal sense. His diet consisted of fast food and caffiene. He days were no longer seperated. He awoke whenever. He got on his computer and played for as long as he could, fighting ogres or robots. After twelve, sixteen or even twenty six hours of this he would fall asleep and repeat the process for three more months.

The last time I saw him I almost cried. His aparment was a swamp. Anything that could hold garbage did hold garbage. The kitchen trash had overflown with empty beer bottles, discarded cigarettes packs and moldy taco bell. The only clan part was the area the refrigerter door needed to swing open. The only thing in there was Mountain Dew.

As I proceeded deeper into the swamp the trash only piled higher. Old compter boxes, cigarette butts and Taco Bell wrappers replaced the carpet. The coffee table's surface was nothing but beer bottles. I tried to start a conversation with him, but anything we could talk about was quickly snuffed out when he had to fight some monster on his computer.

I left, but I didn't say goodbye. Not this time. He wasn't my friend anymore. He was a bum. He let his life slip out of his fingers and the man I called friend died with it. Now he was a rotting piece of garbage, surrounded by pieces of garbage. A living, breathing part of the landfill he had made of his life and apartment.

He joined the service, but I haven't talked to him since. I don't know if he has changed or if he is the same person I left behind in that dump. Whatever he is now, I know one thing for sure: he is no longer the friend he used to be. That man is dead, and a part of my ever dimming past. I wish I could see my friend again and thank him for his help, but that's impossible now. He passed away and didn't even get a proper burial.

I Can't Get Behind...

Well, I hope you both have been enjoying the slew of postings on this site. Don't get used to it because when school starts again I'll go back to ignoring this thing.

I've been thinking a lot about things that I hate. Just stupid shit, pet peeves if you will, that drive me fucking nuts. Taking a que from Shatner and Rollins I have compiled a brief list of things I can't get behind.

1- Foot Notes: I hate reading a book, stopping, going to the bottom of the page, reading the explanation for the text, losing my spot, and being more confused then when I went to look at the damn foot note in the first place.

2- Small desks: I have a fucking desktop computer. I need a desktop that can hold it. I hate it when the fucking keyboard is either jammed up against my hands or halfway over the edge, coming dangerously close to falling off everytime I hit a key.

3- Internet jukeboxes: Yay! Every song humanity has ever recorded at your finger tips. But wait, the songs are a buck a piece, and you might end up having some fat chick play "Don't stop believein'" to relive her youth, completely missing the spirit of Journey.

4- People using their teeth like a swiss army knife: Your teeth can only handle so much. Why would you want to jeapordize them by opening up a Pepsi bottle or tearing open a bag of candy with them You're about to do some damage to your teeth anyways, why start the process before you even dive into it?

5- Cats: They go to the bathroom inside your house, they shed fur on everything, add another mouth for you to feed and don't even look cool. Why not take the contents out of a full vacuum bag, tape them together and once an hour kick it around the house. It's the same thing and you don't even have to feed it.

6- Rubbing your ears when you have a stocking cap on over them: Cotton, wool or polyester, it doesn't matter. Having this sensation numbs my spine and makes me wince.

7- Guy at bar who is cut off for the night but still wants more booze: It's over dude. Stop trying to guilt me into making the situation worse. I don't care if you'll buy me a beer if I buy you one, the bartender looks pissed and the bouncer hasn'y physically removed anybody for a while. Just sit down, shut up and wait for the fucking cab.

8- Paychecks that bounce: I did my job, why can't you do yours? I came in, did what I was supposed to and didn't stab anybody. How about giving me my reward? Don't you know that it's wrong to cheat a tryin' man?

9- Dictionaries that use the word you're looking up to define the word you went to the damn dictionary to figure out in the first place: obsess (v): to be obsessive. Yeah, no shit! Dictionarary (n): something that is supposed to help me.

10- Guys with blogs who rip off actors who played Capt. Kirk: If I wanted to here your pointless rip off of a William Shatner classic, I'd save myself the trouble and listen to his actual fucking song.