A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid
No revelations to report on today. But it’s not even 9:00 am, and so you have to keep an open mind. The only half-way coherent thought skittering across the cantaloupe cranium of my brain comes at around 8:00 am today, as I watch the local news and think to myself, these people are total chumps. They seem to affect the strangest affectations, coming across as some parody of what they believe normality to be, and it freaks you out. A couple of years ago, I remember reading about how CNN was thinking of introducing Ebonics into their newscasts, getting their lead anchors to drop slang to spice up the evening news. And it kind of makes you wonder. But in hindsight they may have just been underestimating the president and his penchant for international debacle, making watching the nightly news as entertaining as your favorite sitcom, with more of an apocalyptic bent. Because, can it get any worse (the president is currently en route to the USA after the puppet elected Iraqi prime minister ducked out on meeting with him, basically, because he didn’t feel like it)?

On my way in to work this morning, I drove by the Christian Brothers Academy, like I always do. It’s basically some kind of training center for future Abu Ghraib war criminals, from what I could gather, and they do this flag raising ceremony out in front of the school. What this features is 3 younger-looking kids lackadaisically standing around the flagpole as one of the older students shows them how to raise the flag. And I always note as I drive by the unambiguous distraction I must be in their very important proceedings, cruising in to work ten minutes late, with NOU blasting from my car stereo. What if one of these kids were to ascertain a copy of 13-Point Program to Destroy America? Would years of military training unravel instantaneously? Would they show up the next day with a now-altered uniform, the arms cut off to reveal the scars of a new tattoo? It seems unlikely to me, but you never know. And you have to leave room for revelations, of which there is just no lack of in this landscape.

I only meant half the things I said in the end
Hanging out with Melissa, the downstairs neighbor, and looking on as her three-year old son Lucas runs around the apartment. This is his main method of transportation, as he darts from one end of the apartment to the other, stopping long enough to deliver some random fact to us about the cartoon he is watching. We marvel at his energy, and it kind of begs the question: at what crucial point do you stop sprinting and begin the more lackluster trudge from one place to another? I don’t really know, but it’s sometime, somewhere along the way. Or is it just that the distances increase, forcing you to chose different methods of transport? He sprints into the kitchen one more time, accompanied by the sound of a steam train, whoo, whoo. “Mommy, this is Ryan,” he says two times in a row, pointing at me. “This is Ryan.” “I know,” she says back to him, “I realize that.”

It has been a pretty good week, in retrospect. Old man Vonnegut says that you should point out the good when it’s there to be pointed out, and so it seems right to do so. It’s just that it’s easy to forget against the vast tapestry of bad. But sometimes the cosmos align in your favor, and you can’t help but point out how rad everything feels, if only for a fleeting moment.

Last night I could hear A. playing “Bach’s Six Suites” on guitar in his room. It’s all high to low, and perfectly melodic. And I’ve never heard a song draw such an exact in between before, simultaneously making you want to cry and not cry. And I had the feeling, just before sleep, that everything was going to be filled with radiance and sunburst potential if you would only let it.

20 darts into your backs
You really just have to appreciate Joy’s outfit today: she is wearing a T-shirt, with some haphazard blue swirling print, which contains the message, Land of Liberty. It seems almost hilarity invoking as she sits there, slumped over on her desk, reading True Romance Magazine. The worker who distains work, and flat-out refuses. Where else on the planet could you be employed to do this? You really just have to love the public sector, with its collective distain and lurid scowls, walking by my window all day.

I have just returned from a 30-minute lunch break, which I very explicably stretch into an hour-long break, messing around on the computer and wolfing down a sandwich. My grandmother’s house is right down the road and so I can go over there and make lunch and then leave again. I actually find myself fist pumping today when I notice her car is not in the garage, and am alarmed by this same reaction. After about 20-minutes, as I’m preparing to go, leaving behind a literal bread crumb trail of what is my apparent lunch-making experience, she comes through the door. “—Oh, you would never believe,” she starts in, no introductions, as usual. It makes you feel inanimate and not there, always being talked at like this. But then maybe I’m just uptight, always needing some kind of formality. Why not just cut to the chase, to the heart of the matter— of whatever matters? She was sitting on a bench in the mall, apparently, preparing for the Homeric trek to the car, when she met someone of a similar ilk, with a similar aged grandson. “You would never believe that her grandson works with computers and makes $84,000 a year,” she says with great exuberance. “And his next promotion is going to bring him over the 100,000 mark.” Oh, I tell her, non plussed. That’s good. This is the great leveling fact, and grandma has brought it around, gift wrapped in a special package to reveal to me. There is some sort of club maybe, where grandmas of the world unite and have trading cards of their respective grandchildren, inclusive of statistics and salaries and life achievements printed on the back. Can’t I just be left alone, make lunch in peace and not be distracted by all of this? I’ve almost come to the point where I can block out what I don’t need to hear. But I can hardly ignore this kind of scather. “Why don’t you work with computers?” she wants to know. But the whole thing is, I already do.

Make your mark on a darkened dance floor

This weekend was crazy. All that I seem left with now, in the flickering movie theatre of the mind, is a curious montage of various dance partners, both willing and not. There’s something funny about being turned down by somebody, revealing your gesticulating movements long enough for the potential dance partner to figure out that you are a deranged lunatic who warrants all out alienation. But equally as funny are the people who end up misinterpreting all of that as you lure them up from their booth at the side of the floor to dance to “Beat It”. It's probably safe to say there are certain places around town that i should no longer be permitted entry.