You judge. You judge me based on your horrid, horrid jealousy.

It's tea for me tonight. And tea for me last night, too. No alcohol, not tonight. Not last night either. I haven't left my house since I got back from Oklahoma a few days ago except to go to work and band practice. Why? It's not because I'm boring, I'll tell you that much right now. No, it's because I'm sick. Not really sick, but the kind of sick where you think you're getting sick. It all started when I went to Oklahoma..

Ah, to get away for a few days- fresh air, a change of scenery, leaving behind the hounds of hell that catapult through the house at all hours of the night and early, early fucking mornings. It's always nice. Leaving behind the foul stench of the Trinity River and the orange overturned bowl of pollution that domes the D/FW sky is simply refreshing. The sweet, cool breeze from the Oklahoma hills shocks the senses like a sharp cheddar, or a stout wine. Or a sponge filled with asbestos. It's poison!

Let me explain. I live in filth. For those that know me and have been to my house on some sort of regular basis, it will come as no surprise to hear that a common question upon entering my house is, "When did you get robbed?" You see, besides having three dogs who can come in and out of the house as they please since our foundation is fucked and whose natural penchant is to kill squirrels and rats and tear them apart on my kitchen floor, couch, or kitchen couch, and having a roommate who, by his own account, is a total slob, there's me- a roommate that really doesn't care too much for social graces, and so therefore doesn't really care if there are melon rinds and tripe lining the hallway. I don't care if anyone sees it - I didn't make the mess. Hence, I will not clean the mess. My own room is not particularly disgusting, most of the time. Sure, there's always clutter- piles of clothes here, stacks of papers there, the occassional cat shit when I don't stay on top of cleaning the litter box, which is admittedly too often.

The point is, and this is not a decision that was conciously made- it happened organically- mine is what some might call a punk house. In fact, I've been to squats that were less filthy. Can't say it bothers me too much. I'm kind of into it, actually. Were it not for my sweet, gracious and mildly OCD-about-cleanliness girlfriend, this place would probably never be clean.

I say all of this to posit a question. How is it that I, a person who actually kicks up more dirt and germs when I walk into my house, showers maybe once a week (on a good week), and spends most of my time in seedy bars and even worse rehearsal rooms, manage to stay relatively healthy most of the time, even while being a smoker, keeping odd, irregular hours, and subsisting on a majority of junk food? Why, were we to believe all the Purell commercials, I should've been dead a long time ago!

I think my body has adapted to the grime, and let me tell you something, people. When it all comes down, and we're foraging for food and hiding in sewers waiting to stab some guy in the calf as he walks by because he's got a piece of edible food in his hands, and there's a man walking around with a 9mm handgun offering to shoot you in the head for the meager price of a piece of bread (read Flan by Stephen Tunney to fully appreciate this reference), guess who's gonna be around a negligible amount of time more? Me, that's who.

More than anything, I have a sneaking suspicion that leaving my filthy house and my filthy city to go to a clean city, and an even cleaner house to sleep in is really what got me sick. All that clean air, no dust in the pillows, no cat hair on the towels, that really did me in. It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed to get to work today and inhale spray glue and burning fabric fumes at the screenprinting shop.

It's those little things, though, that really start to make you feel better. My cough is already fading, and my phlegm is clearing up from a dark green to a light yellow, which is good. My girlfriend told me so.

What's this stupid pond metaphor all about?

What a stupid fucking picture. You should be ashamed of yourself, Urshel Taylor. This picture, to me, embodies the stupidity of Thanksgiving, and what it means to people who refuse to see the past staring back through its shallow, watery grave, as we modern day narcissists stare at the surface of the pond and pat ourselves on the back for a history well done. But, Brendan Kelly said it best, so here it is- the best song about Thanksgiving ever written. Maybe not, but at least for my current purposes, yes, it is.

"Third graders holding hands. Indians and Pilgrims celebrate their newfound land. Tried to teach me that at school. Make the white race look superior, that's always been their rule. Now I can't believe we celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday of unity and peace. If I had my way, we'd all dress in black, and Daddy would serve up the white meat. 'Cause genocide is nothing to celebrate. Extinction don't deserve a parade. Well, we perpetuate those lies with the turkeys that we buy. I tried explaining to my mom, but she's too afraid to admit to herself that her race is a killing machine. Take a look around your town and who do you see? The Native American's surprisingly absent in his own indigenous land. Do you want to know why? It's 'cause we killed them all. It's not that hard to understand. Yeah, so I go to college, and you know what I learned? That 80 million people were killed by my grandpa, your grandpa, and all of their friends. They bleached out our continent but that's not the end. The last full blooded Aborigine died a century ago. If it's possible, there's a place in the Southern Hemisphere with a history even worse than our own. No one finds it peculiar that a tropic island is full of people just like you and me. 'Cause Australia's a piece of shit floating in the Pacific bouyed by the blood of the Aborigine."

Yeah, take that, Australia!

Bagmen and Basketball.

"..No, I played guard. We were pretty good that year. We won state the year before. Yeah, we had this short Irish kid on the team that was the star, even though he couldn't have been more than 5'2". Hmm? Oh, 6'3", 6'4", depending on which shoes I'm wearing! Haha. Yeah, I don't know, Irish people are just short. In fact, that year we went to Ireland to play a tournament, and we just KILLED all the teams we played. I'm talkin' like 140-6. Every time. We played like seven different schools all over Ireland. But it seemed more just like exhibition games. There was no table showing what place we were in, or who we were gonna play next, no Round Robin, nothing. We basically just drove around and beat the shit outta these short Irish teams. I was pretty good friends with the coach that year, and at some point I asked him, "What the hell are we doing here, Coach J? This ain't even a challenge at all! That's when he told me that he was a bagman for the IRA, and he brought us over to Ireland to deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars- in cash- to 'em. The schools were just drop points. We were the alibi!"

The above is a paraphrased conversation that I eavesdropped on recently. Crazy, huh?


God bless 'em.

It's mine!

I did it. I've bested my ebay foes, and acquired...



...a stupid ass jacket that I paid $40 for. This would have been a mitzvah had the Stryper Zippo that I was really vying for not been greedily snatched from under me at the last ebay second. I have sworn my vengeance, however, and vengeance will be mine. I'm gonna swoop the fuck out of that Stryper hog. He won't even know what hit him. At which point I'll be stuck with more useless Stryper crap. But, let it be known across the land- I will spend every dime I have to exact revenge on the one who has slighted my honor! I will not stand to be disrespected, and have the privilege of owning a severely ironic lighter taken from me in such a cruel, heartless way. Prepare to be disappointed. (I was talking to myself in that last sentence.)

Sparrows: Nature's Freedom-Givers.

A few years ago, I had a job at a movie theatre in Southwest Ft. Worth, a place I affectionately referred to as "Murray's Theatre," as the projectionist there was, and incidentally still is, my friend Ryan Murray. In fact, he was the reason I got the job there in the first place. I was in college at the time, and still under the delusion that I would not always be employed at such low-level, low wage jobs, and so therefore took the job none too seriously. Not that I don't do the same now, it's just that back then I had less to worry about financially (i.e. no rent, no car payment, no three kids to feed, and no three d.u.i's to pay off), and I wasn't under any stress about getting fired. I took numerous days off, for various reasons, and was met with very little resistance from the general manager, a quite old for forty 5'2", balding shell of a man. Were one to look back at my schedule requests from that time (I'm sure this information is easily attainable from the corporate offices of AMC.), one would find such reasons for being off as "Building Pirate Ship," and "Going on Tour." Oddly, the former happened, but not the latter. At least, not at that point. I may someday revisit the Pirate story should anyone be interested. I digress.

The job at the theatre was not so bad. Okay, yes it was. It was horrible. Initially, I took the job because I was told that I could train to become a projectionist. That would be a sweet job. Of course, one cannot just become a projectionist, one must work behind the refreshment counter for a time, one must truly immerse oneself in the essence, the tao, of a functioning movie theatre to truly understand what it means, what it is to wind celluloid film through metal spools and past hot lightbulbs! You fucking dumb grasshopper. Regardless, I held onto hope, and put in my time as a refreshment server. "S'let me get this straight- because no one else has EVER asked for this before. I understand that you invented this brilliant technique- you want me to fill the popcorn halfway, right? Mm-hmm. Then apply butter? Then fill the rest of the bag? And then one more shot of butter? So the butter's evenly dispersed throughout the whole bag? Good sir, I am in your debt."

I got pretty good at the job, rarely stole money from the register, and even learned how to switch the bags of syrup for fountain drinks in the back so I could make the suicide drinks for the kiddies that utilized Twizzlers as straws. Why, I even worked there long enough to help train a crew of newcomers in the way of the concession stand. How long had I worked there? A month? Three? I don't remember, though I do know it was long enough for me to convince a new hiree that one of the initiation processes for working at a movie theatre is to have a drink of butter soda, a concoction I learned about from my friend Nick, who had also spent a good deal of time working for the theatre industry. Butter soda is nothing more than soda water (generally found right next to the Sprite button) with a few pumps of movie popcorn butter sprayed into it. It should be noted that hot grease instantly congeals when sprayed onto a cool beverage. It should also be noted how disgusting it tastes. Another fun thing was to have the new hirees wandering around the lobby watering the plants. The plastic plants.

But, as it usually does, humiliation of others soon grew tiresome, and I found it harder and harder to force myself out of bed on those early Saturday mornings for employee meetings that I knew were completely pointless and trivial, and I tried my hardest to find a way out of them. What could they possibly have told me? How to upsell a frankfurter? Fuck that. People buy hotdogs when they want a hotdog. Namely, when we're out of nacho cheese.

And so, it happened early one fateful Saturday that this very interior dialogue was traipsing its way through my likely cobwebbed mind, and as my unwilling eyes felt the sunlight prying at the four hours of sleep that preceded it, my ears became the catalyst that would truly be my Prince Charming, that which would fully rouse me from my slumber. I slept with my window open during that time, so I could hear the birds in the morning, so I could feel the breeze across my neck as I slept, so I could pretend that I was connecting with nature somehow. The birds in the trees directly outside my window were particularly loud that morning, and I remember being quite upset at first, until I realized that they had in fact woken me up when my alarm had failed to, and, had they not, I would surely have been late to my important movie theatre meeting! I simultaneously thanked and cursed the birds, and lay on my back in my bed with eyes closed, waiting for the sun to pierce my eyelids enough to force me onto my feet when- a louder bird than the rest. 'What was that? Oh, nothing. I have to get up. I gotta be there in 45 minutes. Goddamnit, why do I have to go to this stupid-' Wait. 'What the fuck did that bird just sa-' Wait. And right there is where my mind was made. The moment that I literally smiled to myself, agreed, pulled the sheets back over my head, and went immediately back to sleep. People, you can believe me or not, but I heard the bird directly outside my window sweetly sing, "Sc-ree-ew it! Sc-ree-ew it!" I never went back to the theatre. Except to watch free movies.

And then, for a few years, nothing happened. I did things, acquired debt, and found roommates.

Until yesterday, when I exited my room to get ready for work. I walked into the living room, and there, on the window sill, was a friendly sparrow, flapping its wings maddeningly against the glass frame in a futile effort to escape its climate controlled surroundings. I wondered what path this creature must have taken in its short life that could have put it in such a dangerous position, what with the three dogs that live herein that pride themselves on killing things in the yard and playing with said things on my couch. The dogs had already begun the hunt, and I knew it was only a matter of time before this creature's bones were crushed and its feathers strewn about my bathroom floor. I noticed the door to the backyard was opened, so I corralled it as best I could towards the kitchen, and eventually it flew out on its' own accord, with the dogs in-tow, and I quickly shut the door.

Five minutes later I came back into the living room, and there it was again, in the same spot I had found it not ten minutes earlier! This time I have no clue as to how it got in, and the dogs were more determined than ever to murder this helpless, yet by all rights, stupid, creature. I put the dogs in the backyard, and began trying to lure the bird out of the house with a broom. This was no easy task, as it became more and more clear that the bird simply did not want to leave. I must say that I would love to have a live-in bird, if I knew that I would not walk out one morning to find a beak at my feet. So, determined to save the bird from itself, I began an epic struggle with the broom to rid my house of the winged magnificence. Eventually, I did, and went about the rest of my morning with no mishaps or wacky adventures. I left for work, and about 45 minutes into an hour drive, I realized that I was missing my cell phone. Panicking, I searched my car at 75 mph to no avail. My means of communication was gone. There was nothing I could do. When I arrived at work, I talked to my girlfriend on my boss's cell phone, and asked her desperately if she could find my wayward phone by calling it with her cell phone when she got to my house. I received a call a short while later informing me that she had indeed found it by the very place that I had had my struggle with the squatting sparrow. Relieved that I didn't have to worry about trying to contact 200 people for their phone numbers, I went about the rest of my day with much less on my mind.

You see, for a while now, I have received much undeserved grief from my friends for my constant use of a cell phone that was given to me for business purposes- one that I don't even pay for. I shrugged off their annoying banter-"Sorry I have more friends than you. Fuck off." But, after just one day of being untethered to that which has, in truth, made my life much easier over the past year, my memory rushes back to the days that I never had a cell phone, and as much as I wonder now how I ever got along without it, I distinctly remember a time when I thought about how I could ever get along with it.


I shall never forget my savior sparrows, and a special place lasts in my heart unto this day for their spirits to nest, so long as they don't use the kind of trash to make the nest as their living counterparts do, like Big Mac wrappers and condoms.

Poop suicide. Microwave oven. These are not bad song lyrics. Not as in these song lyrics are 'not bad,' these are not 'bad song lyrics.' Get it?

To wit: I had a dream the other night in which I was participating in a wedding of some sort. Not as the groom, mind you, but someone in the actual wedding party. That information is pretty inconsequential to the story, anyway. Who cares? The point is that I was at a wedding. But the real point is that not only was I at the wedding, rap superstars Eminem and Will Smith(a.k.a. The Fresh Prince) were also in attendance. I'm not sure if you know, and to be honest, I'm not sure I know, but I believe that Eminem has much disdain for Will Smith and his rapping career, as I have heard some quite disparaging comments about Will Smith's street cred in some of Eminem's songs. Perhaps this is why, in my dream, they were not friendly towards one another, even though we were presumably all there to celebrate the union of sacred matrimony of our good friends. Well, leave it to narcissistic pop stars to make everything about them, huh? Can't you take a day off, fellas? Gee willikers! Anyhow, it wasn't long before Eminem and The Fresh Prince got into a dust-up, an ol' fashioned roustabout, a fist fight. Well, seems Fresh Prince, in a fit of rage, perhaps not only towards the shock rapper Eminem, but towards himself at his realization that, yes, perhaps he had lost some of that original street flava that catapulted him to the vast success he has today- what with fighting robots and using his gigantic ears to sail around the world sans motor- proceeded to fight dirty. To literally hit below the belt, immediately rendering Eminem immobile, and thereby ending the scuffle that could very well have been the pop fight of the year! As you might imagine, Eminem was quite upset, though at the time, no one in the dream knew it. In fact, we thought the commotion was over, and soon I found myself at another part of the wedding, in a kitchen, standing with the bride and Will Smith. Oh, we were having a joyous time, and the conversation was lively and vivacious! This quickly changed as we soon became aware of an extremely angry Eminem, who said, with an air of crazed satisfaction in his voice, "Oh god, I'm so happy this just happened." We turned to look, and on a pantry shelf, Eminem had espied a 9mm handgun, and reached over, picked it up, and leveled the piece at our friend Will Smith's face! Terror! Abject fear! The worst was yet to come, however. Seems Eminem takes getting a square punch to the nuts pretty fucking personally, because at this point he informed all of us that he would not be shooting Will Smith, which brought a brief moment of respite to all parties concerned, until he, in the very next breath, informed us that Will Smith would be shooting himself. Not only that, but he was to blow out his own brains with his head inserted into a nearby microwave. I'm not sure if Eminem did this as a further token of disrespect to the Fresh Prince(there is much in the hip-hop world that I am not privvy to), or just to keep the inevitable mess under some sort of control. And to top it all off, in order to humiliate us all, the grave act was to be performed in simultaneity with the bride and I.. shitting our pants. The Fresh Prince was given the gun. On cue, the bride and I... well, the bride and I shit our pants, okay? What else were we supposed to do?! Don't you dare judge me and fictionbride! Then Fresh Prince shot himself in the microwave and died, I guess. Our attention had been immediately diverted as we shit our pants, which stands to reason, as I'm sure shitting one's pants is quite disturbing. But the disgust one might feel as feces rolls, drips, or pours down one's leg after an in-pants shit is not what distracted us from the poor prince's untimely(and frankly, stupid) demise( why the fuck didn't he use the gun on Eminem? My brain is a moron.). No, we immediately noticed, as we each looked between our legs, that we were shitting onto a giant pizza! Capital! I began commenting on the bride's poop, noting that it looked not at all unlike the mole sauce we have at my place of employment. We began laughing and chatting, and the dream sizzled away, back into the ether...

And then last night I dreamed I cut off both of Big E. Small's arms and accidentally killed him. I think he's already dead, though. In real life. I don't know how he died. Shit, I barely knew the guy. I couldn't even name one of his songs. Lay off. Am I on trial here?! Am I free to go or not?!

Weep, sad woman. I can tell that your sacrifice is supreme.

An old man died at the opera today. No, not on stage. You could say he died on life's stage, but that's just being melodramatic. And dumb, frankly. Besides, he didn't even die. Well, he could've. I, of course, didn't go to the hospital with his family after they carted him out of the theatre on a stretcher. I sat back down and watched the rest of the opera. That's why I went. To see the opera. All's I know is one minute, we're waiting for Act II of La Triviata to start, and the next, bam! Some old guy bites it, and ladies start swooning like mad! One old biddy was particularly perturbed that her opera Sunday had been interrupted. She possessed the snoot of a rich cartoon woman. She was surely "old money," and the life of luxury afforded her an air synonymous with the way she treats her money: spent. Zinged her good, huh?

Luckily, this unfortunate mishap occurred just after the first act in a four act number, so it didn't take long for the crowd to settle back into the good spirits they arrived at Bass Hall with. I mean, as good of a spirit as you can hope for when the end of the opera showcases the death of the main character, the heroine, the scorned lover, the ultimate martyr, the fucking HEART of the damned opera! So sad. At any rate, it didn't stop the standard standing ovation at the end.

It should be noted that audiences of live theatre of any sort are also playing a role. Perhaps an even more challenging one than the ones performed onstage. It is a rare occurrence in human interaction when 500 or more people can be completely silent for 3 1/2 hours. Not to mention curbing all basic mammalian urges to cough, sneeze, fart REALLY loudly, or, y'know, move. I sure do love italics. They write the best operas.

As the mighty fall asunder, So also must we.

It's nearly impossible for me to write while listening to music, but for tonight, I feel that it is completely apropos and necessary for me to do so. It is nearing four a.m., and I must go to sleep immediately, as I am to go to the opera in the early afternoon tomorrow. I am listening to Stryper right now. I went to a Stryper concert tonight. Why, I even had a backstage pass. I've paid my dues. I didn't pay to go to the show. I get what I want, when I want it. That's what happens when you live life the way I live life. Tonight marks the second time I've seen Stryper. My friend Scott and I saw them in 2003 at the same place that we saw them tonight. So much can, and rightly should, be said about Stryper. Scott is a greater fan than I ever was, but to be fair, he is a good five years older than me, and therefore had a chance to be more into them in the 80's than I could have been. I must thank my father for introducing me to the band that I would, a mere twenty years later, attend in concert and heckle in a drunken stupor during a prayer in a concert venue where 1,100 people were completely silent. Let's see Motley Crue do that. This happened in 2003, the first time I went to see them, but this year, as they closed out the show with a nearly ten minute prayer, I did my best to heckle them and break the awkward silence that, upon further review, was only awkward to me in my slightly inebriated state. People: I warn you! For your own happiness, for nostalgia to truly remain nostalgic, I beseech you: DO NOT go to see bands twenty years after you liked them initially. This may be an obvious point, but believe me, please. You WILL be disappointed. Sure, you'll be impressed that they can play their instruments so well, but then you'll remember- "Oh yeah, they've been playing the same fucking songs for TWENTY years. They goddamn better be good at their instruments!" I saw Stryper for the first time in 2003. I saw them again in 2005. Tonight. What a fucking bummer. We met the band, too. I made fun of the new bass player (not Timothy Gaines, the REAL bass player for Stryper) for playing a five stringed bass. T.G. never would've done that. That's what we fans call him. T.G. That stands for Timothy Gaines. He's not in Stryper anymore. I also reminded Michael Sweet, the lead singer/ guitarist for the band that I met him and shook his hand in 1993 at a mall in Tulsa, OK when he was touring Christian book stores to support his horrible solo album which housed the hit "All this and Heaven too." Surprisingly, he didn't remember me. That's why I hate rockstars. So pretentious. So quick to forget. Life is a series of disappointments. I couldn't even swindle any squares out of their $25 Stryper shirts for my backstage pass, which I told them afforded them more liberties than the 'meet 'n greet' wristband they received for purchasing the awful new Stryper album for $20 at the show. If you think I'm lying, you're a damned fool. I have no shame. I also do not have $25 for a t-shirt. Schmoozing the merch guy didn't help either. So, I'm listening to a "best of" Stryper album that I downloaded when I came home tonight. It's the only thing I could think of to make myself feel better. People get old, people. Let the memory live where it is. Don't try to raise the dead.

Leaves of Death, Feet of Fire.

Truly, delivering pizzas is not for the faint of heart. Had you said this to me a mere two years ago, I would have laughed in your stoned face and told you to go buy a fucking CD player if you were that upset that Phish doesn't get any airplay. But, after having willfully immersed myself into the belly of this easy money beast, I have come to the conclusion that, while superficially, it is a blow-off job with many perks likely only attractive to those with such a devil-may-care attitude as the one that I possess(or, shall I say, possesses me?), there are certain elements that you, the delivery pizza consumer, are not privvy to. I shall regale you with a tale that happened to me, not but a week ago.. Your ears, sirs:
It happened that I, whilst still quite unfamiliar with the territory covered by my new job's delivery area, found myself in a quite hilly, near mountainous!, area of Ft. Worth, TX, that I freely admit I was wholly unaware of. The houses in this particular neighborhood are not at all like the plebeian dwellings that surround my house, but indeed, those of modern magistrates, powerful witches, and deadly knights! These, of course, are the very places a pieman wants to be, as more often than not, the residents here are quite generous and giving with their tips. They are known, truly, to throw their money around as liberally as they throw their dicks around secretaries, or their wives down stairs. Beware, however! These same people do not run their lives on the same time that you and I, the sufferers, do. No, theirs is a life of leisure, and while you must grant them extra time to get to the front door of their imposing abodes, you must also know that waiting five minutes at the door of one of these gas-lit-front-porch-light residences is never out of the question.
And this, friends, is the position I found myself in that very night. Holding the pizzas in hand, I marvelled at the intricate wood and metal work on the expansive redwood door. I glanced behind me, shielding my vision from the softening sunset, occassionally searing my eyes as the weeping willows across the street swayed ever so gently in the warm, southwesterly breeze, allowing the sun brief moments of sadistic pleasure. I momentarily watched the illegal immigrants in white painter's uniforms sweep paint chips, rake leaves, and cut blades of grass. I think one of them smiled at me. 'Brothers in arms,' I thought aloud. I turned again to face the door, beginning now to tap my foot impatiently to the rhythm of the song that was stuck in my head, progressively louder, and louder still, as though my tappings might call to attention the gluttons inside my presence outside, as a beaver's tail to impending danger.
At that moment, had I been a comic strip, there would have been a panel of silence, me simply standing there, growing older, followed by the same panel- only this time, an asterisk would have been placed directly above my head. A brief thought alit in my wandering mind. I heard a sound behind me. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a sound. What if...?
I turned around. I am not deceiving you, good people, when I tell you, in truth, that the very thought that raced for but a mere second through my head was exactly the scenario that I now found my very self in! Alas! My car was rolling away, driverless, down a hill, towards a sports car, towards a jail sentence! Truthfully, at first, I did not believe my eyes. Verily, I thought, 'This isn't happening. I'm just imagining this. I just had this thought. I'm just seeing things. It'll stop on its' own. It's not stopping on its' own. It's actually gaining speed. Fuck. Should I throw down the pizzas to make this situation more dramatic, or should I just set 'em down, 'cause it won't take that much extra time to just, kinda, gently set 'em down than it would to raise them up over my head and slam 'em down or throw them dramatically over my shoulder into the door as I run down the driveway? I should throw 'em. Nah. Well...' I bent down, compromisingly dropped the pizzas from about knee height and raced down the driveway to my aberrant vehicle. As I reached the street, I noticed hundreds of small, yellow leaves that lined the edge of the street by the curb. I noticed them because just as I reached my ever-accelerating car, I slipped on this demon foliage and was nearly pulled right under my car, leaving my legs and torso open to a tire thrashing I was not, am not, ready to receive! Luckily, my catlike reflexes saved me yet again from a severe accident involving moving vehicles and tires with my blood on them (see Oahu Excursion: The Standard Issue Chronicles. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1999 pp. 129- 146)), as I deftly grabbed the top of my open door, and effortlessly slung my adrenaline infused body into the driver's seat, and yanked up the emergency brake that, while engaged, was not in full enough activation to contend with the grades of the land in this particular neighborhood.
The car was stopped. I jumped out of the miscreant scourge of technology a mere thirty feet from where the adventure had begun, though it felt like thirty miles. I ran back up the driveway to the house, making note to jump over the river of greased leaves, and filing a snapshot of the arbor-spawned would-be-murderers into my memory banks for future cautionary warnings to loved ones, and hopeful non-warnings to people I despise. As I arrived back to the steps of the front door, I heard children and man fumbling with the lock of the wooden gate to wealth. I bounded up the three faux-cottage cobblestone steps and picked up the pizzas just as the door opened, and just before their eyes took in any information that might make them think that anything might be awry in the perfect world, made moreso now by the delivery of gourmet food, served by a bearded master of cunning, that they have surrounded themselves with. I collected payment for the products I delivered, as well as a somewhat frugal three dollar tip, and made my way back down to my vehicle, smiling. Just as I opened the door to get in, I slipped on those goddamn leaves and smashed my shin right into the doorjamb of my car.

Myths debunked.

It may not work on humans, but I determined tonight that you can, in fact, scare beings out of having the hiccups. I performed this miracle on my dog, Story. She, while being angry that I frightened her from her apneatic slumber, appreciated the fact that she could resume, nay, begin peaceful rest without the overwhelming, burdensome task of attempting reprise from the taxing chores of caninedom while presenting herself as an open target to any passing, I don't know, starving mountain lion or drunken narcissist. She ignores me now, but I think she'll love me again tomorrow. When I hold her food above her face in a plastic baggie and make her beg for it. For, like, three hours.
However, upon further thought, I must say that I have indeed scared a human out of the hiccups as well. When the usual BOO!'s and loud noises failed to work on my boss Chris one day, at some point I calmly turned to him, looked directly into his eyes, and said, "You will always be in debt, and you will die alone." It worked. He committed suicide later that evening.