The Voice on the Phone

Passed away today of a heart attack. Funny that his baby got her start as a scream queen. Now she gets big sacks of money schlepping goo that makes your poop more predictable. Of all the movies he had anything to do with, this was the only one it saw. I remember my brother said that he would never have children because of this movie.

He has two beautiful daughters. I checked the older one for tattoos and birth marks, but the second one has been to wily to sneak a peek under her hairline. I'll start to worry when neighborhood pets start disappearing.

Never Getting Through This

Well, then. I have officially been locked in the new and improved man cave for the last hour doing absolutely nothing about the homework I have to do for "professional responsibility" class tomorrow. To remedy this, I include a picture of an image from page 14 of a Google search for "random insensitive funny."

I chose this one (and went through 13 pages of weird images that are guaranteed to make some happy, some horribly offended, and some wonder why man ass is allowed through Google's safe search features) because I have had this plaguing memory that has been poking through from my subconscious and into my waking general malaise of college life as a 30+ year-old, totally entitled, white guy.

Anyhoo, on to the memory. I am not sure exactly how old I was, or even the year, but I know that I was too young to spell (because at the time, Papa and Neenee thought it was cute to spell things out instead of just saying the word in front of a precocious child with no concept of spelling but a vast vocabulary filled with gems like "poopy" and "existential fingerbang") and it was probably sometime during the Carter administration.

It was sometime at night and I was piled into the back of the parents' harvest gold Country Squire station wagon:

Oh the awesome power.

My parents were chatting idly about something or other, spelling words out whenever I piped up in the back, probably in an effort to piss me off and then send me into a quiet, brooding mood reminiscent of that kid from the Shining whenever he let his stink finger do the talking (I had the same haircut at the time). In what seemed like the eternal ride home up Route 45 from my grandparent's house, I laid my head back and contemplated opening the car door and flinging myself out into the weeds speeding by. I touched the door handle and then became preoccupied with how the handle actually opened the door (hey, I was probably younger than 2 years-old and hadn't yet discovered fire, so shit like that was fascinating). I followed the handle into the door with my tiny hand and pressed on the foam insulation where handle met the inside of the door.

I then had a memory inside of this one, that of the urgency of finding food without teeth. I don't know why, but for some reason, that soft, pliant insulation reminded me of pressing harder on a surface for a little more sustenance. Lest this memory fade forever, replaced by black letter rules that all essentially tell me not to have sex with a client, I submit it, humbly, to this digital ether, in a little tiny corner much like my mind, that no one reads and few intentionally stumble upon.

Back to it, then. May Tom Waits play me out to a better understanding of ethical behavior....

Sands keep on Sifting Down

So, I attended a little swaray held over the weekend by one of my new young college friends. I spent most Saturday in the library getting ready for Monday, then off to celebrate with a case of Guinness and some camaraderie.

Sunday morning, I awoke feeling of death and surrounded by the torn husks of a nearly empty White Castle crave case. My memory of the evening was sharp, and disappointing. Last alcoholic beverage consumed by me was around 3:00 AM on Sunday morning. I was the oldest person there, the first to arrive and the last to leave.

Putting my several faux paus aside, I watched the local football team lose horrendously to an indifferent opposition. They had given millions of dollars to a man who had exceeded his shelf life by almost a decade. I really felt for the guy as he threw interception after interception.

Watching abysmal football made me think about my own career choices. I had a steady job as a state civil servant. It would have been nearly impossible to get fired from it, save riding into work on a stripper's bare back whilst fumbling for vials of cocaine from her sweaty, soulless wisps of over peroxided hair, sans clothing. But I digress.

My job wasn't terrible. I worked for people who were nice enough. The workload was manageable in an 8-5 day and I had a good support network of friends in town. Now I am here, hanging out with 22 year-olds, drinking way to much and spouting my philosophies on life to complete strangers. I am going to school to pursue a career that is iffy at best, provided I do not fall into one of those sinkholes like misappropriating client funds or 'really' developing my borderline alcoholism into a career.

I get at least two emails a day lauding the events happening at school. Networking is key to landing a job in the legal field, they all say. But I wonder, isn't networking the key to landing any kind of job? Do I really want to go another $100K in debt for the possibility of humiliating myself in front of a judge on a daily basis, or worse, spending real time in a federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for a little slip up that wouldn't make an Illinois politician bat an eye?

I have been telling myself all day, as I stumble through the last effects of a two day hangover and the beginnings of a long week of classes, that everything will work out and life will reward what I have put into it. Then I think, there's some guy working as a file clerk with the same aspirations as me and the same shot at realizing them from the comfort of a desk and union backing.

Meh. I'll change my mind in a week or two and once again be lost in the glamour of uncertain financial future. Right now, the only idea that comes to my mind is "judgment proof". Sounds like a promising career in the making.

That Cancerous Yearning

This morning I went to the discount tobacco place in a nearby sketchy neighborhood to get my reasonably priced tobacco products (seriously, a tin of chewing tobacco is $1.50 cheaper than anywhere else in town). As I alighted from the store with my purchases, I observed a little old lady feebly walk across the street. As she entered the parking lot, her eye caught something on the ground. She picked up a six inch long brown stick about the width of a pinky finger. As I pulled out of the lot, she took a bite out of the stick and I saw, for the first time in a long time, the familiar gray viscera of a certain popular meat product that I used to move case after case of in my father's old warehouse. Pangs of homesickness erupted throughout me. It was not that some random lady picked up some random trash and ate it. It was a fond reminiscence of the countless hours spent moving boxes, the dust caking black in my nostrils and the pain shooting in my back the next day, that hit me the most.

I did not see if she took another bite, but as I made my turn out of the lot, I looked back and there was a wry smile of satisfaction on her face. She snapped into a free slice of road meat. It's the little things...

The Sweet Release of Death

So, my postings are shit, to say the least. I have been extremely busy studying my ass off while accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt in pursuit of a professional degree that will end in my subpar transcript being the lead bearer of my failure in a saturated job market, but I digress.

A few things that I have learned whilst living in this great white north:

1. The sun doesn't shine as harshly as in Lower Alabama.
2. If the majority of your family moves to Lower Alabama, Minnesotans will refer to you as the "sophisticated southern gentleman."
3. No one notices that you pounded 15 Coors lights in an hour solely because happy hour only lasts for 45 minutes before you have to take an hour long shuttle to get home.
4. If you put a New Orleans Saints bumper sticker on your car, you will have a large collection of key scratches on your paint job within 12 hours.
5. Personality is key.
6. Near Beer isn't even close.
7. Liquor stores that sell real beer close at 8:00 PM on weeknights.
8. It really isn't worth scheduling 8 hours of class time on Tuesdays and Thursdays so you can have Fridays off.
9. Marriage is still a wonderful experience, but terrifying when you don't know how to console your wife because she keeps getting screwed over by "Minnesota Nice"
10. Honesty is so much better than being nice.


Anyone have any words of wisdom? Anyone still reading this? Leave a comment. I am so lonely in my mundane life of potential failure or potential success.