A Day in the Life
6:30 A.M.
An alarm clock goes off. A long arm emerges from a mess of blankets and fumbles around sleepily for the source of the noise. It’s a classic rock radio station, once again playing Rush. The hand knocks over a lamp and a glass of water in its search for the nuisance. The glass is saved from shattering on the tile floor by landing on one of the textbooks strewn across the floor, which it promptly spills its contents all over. The hand reaches its destination: the snooze button, which it hits eight times.
6:40 A.M.
An alarm clock goes off again. It’s the classic rock radio station, once again playing Rush, but it might be the other classic rock radio station so at least this isn’t getting too redundant. The hand arises once more. This time it firmly grasps the clock radio and, with a fantastic pull, jerks the cord from the outlet and sends the alarm clock flying across the room, where it hits the opposite wall with a satisfying whack. Content, the figure under the covers rolls over and resumes sleep.
8:30 A.M.
It’s at this point the figure finally emerges from its hibernation and sleepily gets to his feet. His name is Daniel and at this point he’s only awake because his window is open and his neighbor apparently just pulled up in his car, which has the stereo on full blast which is tuned to a classic rock radio station which is playing Rush. Gathering from his cell phone that it is 8:30 and he’s already missed most of his class, Daniel then begins to wonder why the alarm clock is on the floor across the room and why his literature textbook is completely soaked in water. Coming to the conclusion that he shouldn’t worry about it, Daniel decides to go to school.
Now Daniel looks like every other lazy ass, goofy looking seventeen year old white kid with a lot of hair. His hobbies aren’t that unique from every other degenerate hippie bastard his age; spend all day with the friends smoking, go out at night and try to get laid, go to someone’s house, crash, and repeat the next. He’s the kind of guy that spends weekend nights in the back of cars and on people’s floors. He’s the guy that’s up at 2 a.m. pulling stickers out of his ass because he landed in a cactus after jumping a fence to get away from the cops that raided the party. He’s the guy you’re not sure if he’s going to be a major success or legendary failure, because he’s leaning both ways all the time.
There isn’t that much background for him. He was born the twenty second minute of the twenty second hour of the twenty second day of April 1991 (to twenty two doctors they say.) He’s lived his whole life in Tucson, the city where dreams go to die. But that doesn’t mean anything; aside from the local law enforcement Daniel loves his hometown and all the freaks, geeks, hobos, criminals, druggies, crazies, maniacs, and just straight up weirdoes that inhabit it, partly because he can relate to each of them somehow, and partly because he’s never lived anywhere else before. He’s someone that feels like life is one big blur, not necessarily in that the days go by fast, it’s just he can’t differentiate one day from the next so he just goes with the flow, not knowing where life will lead next, not sure if he’ll be pulling stickers out of his ass one day or be sitting in class the next trying to write about himself in the third person.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Letter to My Friends
My friends-
So it’s been 17 years or maybe more and some things have changed. For one I am no longer a fetus. I was born April 22nd 1991 to a pissed off construction worker and a woman who would undertake many careers, but is now a pissed off bus driver. It’s cool though, having two parents who are both utterly frustrated with how their lives turned out will probably make me a better person but seriously not really. If anything, having two people telling me to go to college and not repeat their mistakes makes me want to drop out of school and spend all my time smoking hash and going to Pink Floyd concerts, like my dad did when he was my age. The only problem is that Pink Floyd has broken up in those thirty or so years so I would only be smoking hash all day, which is kind of boring without the prospect of seeing Pink Floyd in concert after the hash runs out.
But one thing I learned to do early on was read. My parents were crazy about reading so I had most Dr. Seuss memorized by the time I was four, even though I didn’t find out he wasn’t a qualified physician till years later, but that doesn’t matter now. It still took me until Kindergarten to finally learn to spell my last name, which I think is impressive because, honestly, how many five year olds know how to spell a fifteen letter last name of German descent? It’s okay, I got all day.
Things kind of hit a rough patch around the second grade. I discovered I had no interest whatsoever in school so I usually sat around zoning out or playing Oregon Trail while all my friends made paper snowflakes and learned how to write in cursive. Somehow my teachers attributed my school-induced braindeadness to a crappy reading ability and thus I spent the next two years in the lower level reading class where we played some dumbed-down version of bingo in order to improve our literacy skills…or something like that.
Everything changed when I got to sixth grade and wrote a story for Language Arts or whatever the hell they called English then. I have a terrible memory but from what I recollect some of my relatives got a hold of it, and it led to an aunt and uncle from Virginia, who I don’t think I’ve seen in person since Clinton was president, sending me a book on how to write great fiction every Christmas. It’s slightly redundant but the store credit I get from trading it in is pretty sweet.
So I’ve been called a good writer but I never really believed that. I always thought everything I wrote gargled balls. Even when I have a good storyline and interesting characters, which I don’t usually have as I often make the story up as I go along, I feel it always goes downhill after five pages or so and that’s lame dude.
Because of that I don’t really consider myself a writer. It may be one of the few things I’m moderately good at, but I don’t consider it a talent or really a hobby. Whenever I write for fun I just get frustrated which leads to a lack of fun, therefore I don’t end up happy with what I wrote, just bewildered as to why there’s a foot-shaped hole in my computer screen. Then I conclude the best idea is to pretend it was already like that and go do something not frustrating, like drive down Grant Road at five in the afternoon.
So before I kick in my computer screen I’ll end this “letter to my friends,” but if we were all actual friends I wouldn’t be writing to you about this, and if I did you guys would probably make fun of me for writing, and then we’d go party. Yeahhh.
Love, Daniel
So it’s been 17 years or maybe more and some things have changed. For one I am no longer a fetus. I was born April 22nd 1991 to a pissed off construction worker and a woman who would undertake many careers, but is now a pissed off bus driver. It’s cool though, having two parents who are both utterly frustrated with how their lives turned out will probably make me a better person but seriously not really. If anything, having two people telling me to go to college and not repeat their mistakes makes me want to drop out of school and spend all my time smoking hash and going to Pink Floyd concerts, like my dad did when he was my age. The only problem is that Pink Floyd has broken up in those thirty or so years so I would only be smoking hash all day, which is kind of boring without the prospect of seeing Pink Floyd in concert after the hash runs out.
But one thing I learned to do early on was read. My parents were crazy about reading so I had most Dr. Seuss memorized by the time I was four, even though I didn’t find out he wasn’t a qualified physician till years later, but that doesn’t matter now. It still took me until Kindergarten to finally learn to spell my last name, which I think is impressive because, honestly, how many five year olds know how to spell a fifteen letter last name of German descent? It’s okay, I got all day.
Things kind of hit a rough patch around the second grade. I discovered I had no interest whatsoever in school so I usually sat around zoning out or playing Oregon Trail while all my friends made paper snowflakes and learned how to write in cursive. Somehow my teachers attributed my school-induced braindeadness to a crappy reading ability and thus I spent the next two years in the lower level reading class where we played some dumbed-down version of bingo in order to improve our literacy skills…or something like that.
Everything changed when I got to sixth grade and wrote a story for Language Arts or whatever the hell they called English then. I have a terrible memory but from what I recollect some of my relatives got a hold of it, and it led to an aunt and uncle from Virginia, who I don’t think I’ve seen in person since Clinton was president, sending me a book on how to write great fiction every Christmas. It’s slightly redundant but the store credit I get from trading it in is pretty sweet.
So I’ve been called a good writer but I never really believed that. I always thought everything I wrote gargled balls. Even when I have a good storyline and interesting characters, which I don’t usually have as I often make the story up as I go along, I feel it always goes downhill after five pages or so and that’s lame dude.
Because of that I don’t really consider myself a writer. It may be one of the few things I’m moderately good at, but I don’t consider it a talent or really a hobby. Whenever I write for fun I just get frustrated which leads to a lack of fun, therefore I don’t end up happy with what I wrote, just bewildered as to why there’s a foot-shaped hole in my computer screen. Then I conclude the best idea is to pretend it was already like that and go do something not frustrating, like drive down Grant Road at five in the afternoon.
So before I kick in my computer screen I’ll end this “letter to my friends,” but if we were all actual friends I wouldn’t be writing to you about this, and if I did you guys would probably make fun of me for writing, and then we’d go party. Yeahhh.
Love, Daniel
Saturday, January 24, 2009
List for Living (no particular order)
1. necessitate
2. inopportune
3. insinuate
4. douchebag
5. insatiable
6. gnarly
7. oracular
8. laconic
9. dank
10. sonically
11. pimpin'
12. Wu-Tang
13. preposterous
14. astronomical
15. insignificant
16. psychonaut
17. indeed
18. ass clown
19. vinyl
20. appropriate
21. characterize
22. gulag
23. shenanigans
24. tomfoolery
25. yadadimean
26. redundant
27. redundancy
2. inopportune
3. insinuate
4. douchebag
5. insatiable
6. gnarly
7. oracular
8. laconic
9. dank
10. sonically
11. pimpin'
12. Wu-Tang
13. preposterous
14. astronomical
15. insignificant
16. psychonaut
17. indeed
18. ass clown
19. vinyl
20. appropriate
21. characterize
22. gulag
23. shenanigans
24. tomfoolery
25. yadadimean
26. redundant
27. redundancy
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