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EleCivil

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  1. EleCivil

    Odometer +1

    By EleCivil,

    Yesterday was my birthday. I'm 22, now. Only a few more years until social security kicks in, right?
    I skipped class, half because it was my birthday and I wanted some time off and half because the class was going on a field trip to the zoo and I got lost on the way, and ended up spending 3+ hours driving around until I realized I had crossed state lines and was nowhere near the correct city, let alone the zoo. Yeah, my navigation skills are...non...good. On the plus side, though, I got a new music stand and some new (nylon) guitar strings for my birthday. Just in time for a show next Monday. New nylon strings = like the sangin' o' the angels themsalves.
    The summer semester ends in a couple weeks, so I'm preparing to go into final exam/project insanity mode. You'd think after the previous 8 semesters, I'd've learned to NOT put everything off until the last minute, but...nope. I'm resilient in my procrastinatin' ways.
    I had to read Nineteen Minutes for a lit class. UGH. Avoid like the plague. It reads like a Lifetime Original Movie ™.
    Little Brother was awesome, though (thanks for the suggestion, WriteByThySelf).
    Anyway, once I'm out of school, I should be able to find some time to write, again. My next semester's going to be easy - It's my last semester of on-campus classes, so it consists of all the random classes that I never got around to taking. I should have plenty of time to get creative with myself (that's not innuendo).
    "Now I know what I was born to do -
    I was born to hang out with you!"


    "Birthday Song" by Captain Chaos


  2. EleCivil
    Titles don't work when you make as little sense as this.
    As an arachnophobic agoraphobe, my two biggest fears in the world are spiders and humans, but not necessarily in that order. If I had to choose between being locked in a room full of spiders or a room full of people, though, I'd probably take the spiders. After all, not only is it more socially acceptable to kill spiders rather than people, but it's also a lot easier. I suppose it would be possible to kill a person with nothing but my shoe or a rolled-up newspaper, but it would take a lot longer, and the other people in the room would probably stop me before I got even halfway there.
    Which brings me to my job. My company has people working all kinds of places in all kinds of states, ranging from lumber yards in Virginia to skyscrapers full of lawyers in Michigan. After trying out a few different kinds of sites (a convent, a warehouse, a parking lot, an apartment building, etc.) I finally settled on a small trucking company. No people - completely deserted - but tons of spiders. I could deal with that - I just always brought along a copy of Steven King's book "The Tommyknockers". Whenever a spider came close, I'd introduce them to the mainstream horror genre with a mighty King Swing ™. Splattering spiders, I might add, it the best possible use for a copy of "The Tommyknockers" - beats the hell out of reading it.
    I just found out that my small, independent trucking company is being bought out by FedEx National. This means a lot more money for the owners, more work and less money for the drivers, and an end to my "Tons of spiders, but at least there's no people" compromise. Now, there's going to be spiders AND people. Which is almost as bad as working next to Spiderman. Sure, he's good at stopping runaway trains, but come on - a spider, AND a man? Screw you, Stan Lee. It's like you were specifically trying to get to me.
    ---
    The above was just an experiment to see what would happen if I typed for ten minutes without hitting backspace.
    Only two more days until TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY. The greatest holiday in the history of holidays. I've got my pirate suit ready to go.
    Just the other day, my friend's little sister came over, because she wanted to play with my cat. She asked me "Why do you have so many skulls in your room?", referring to all the Jolly Roger flags that I've got hanging. I replied, "I'm a pirate." She gave me this awestruck look and said "Really? You were born a pirate?" I nodded. "Aye. I was flying the black flag way before Johnny Depp made it cool." Then, I switched to a gravely pirate accent and added "I also download music without the consent of the recording industry and completely disregard end-user license agreements, m'lass." She didn't get that part, so I gave her a stick of gum. Arrrrr.

    "We have no nation but the sea, no creed but that we will live free!
    We'll loot and burn all that we can that's run by a dishonest man.
    Their end is near, and there is no denying...when they see the black flag flying!"


    -"Black Flag Flying" by David Rovics


  3. EleCivil

    Oh yeah!

    By EleCivil,

    If you'll excuse me for a second, I've gotta gloat just a little...
    Studies in Modern World Literature - A
    World Geographical Politics - A
    Philosophy - A
    Science for Educators - A
    Educational Psychology - A
    ...BOOYAH! In your face, last semester! Thought ya had me there at the end, but Civie don't go down that easy! *Pelvic thrust x3*
    All right, done now. Sorry about that, but it's been a while since I've last had reason to shout "Booyah" while thrusting at anything.
    On an unrelated note, Jest told me that he's getting his little sister a CD player for Christmas, and showed me her Christmas list of CDs that she wants. He's trying to nudge her in a good direction as far as taste in music goes, so he had already crossed Nick LaChay and Young Joc off of the list. But the coolest thing was that at the top of her list, her number one choice, was the very first CD I ever bought, back when I was her age - "Black Sails in the Sunset" by AFI. Note, this was back when AFI was still a pretty decent punk band, before they signed to a major label and went all boring and goth-rock-ish. Apparently, she kind of liked their new corporate blood-rock singles, but then she came over and listened to some of my old CDs and said "This is so much better! I can't believe it's the same band!" I don't know why I get such a kick out of knowing that she wants the exact same CD that I did when I was her age, but I know exactly what I'm getting her for Christmas.
    "I may be ten years old but I still know what's up.
    I wear my Cramps shirt almost every single day.
    I want to sag my pants,
    I want to pogo dance,
    but Mom won't let me so I might just run away!"


    -"I Wanna Get a Mohawk (but Mom Won't Let Me Get One)" by AFI


  4. EleCivil
    I'm home for Easter. Today, my mom showed me two pictures: one that she'd taken this morning, when she found me asleep in the computer chair, and my school picture from sixth grade - age ten, exactly ten years ago. Interesting.
    It got me thinking about how different I am, now. It's easy to forget about how much you change, since you see it from the inside, as a slow progression. When you look at it in terms of a big gap, like ten years, though...
    Ten years ago, I had long hair. Now it's really short.
    Ten years ago, I pretended to like football because all the kids at school did. Now, I'm fine letting everyone know that I'm weird.
    Ten years ago, I was a fundamentalist Southern Baptist. Now, I'm a non-theist.
    Ten years ago, I knew that I was straight. Now, I know that I'm not.
    Ten years ago, I hated middle school more than anything. Now, I can't wait to get my degree so I can go teach in a middle school.
    Ten years ago, I only listened to the Oldies channel on the radio (everything else was "devil music"). Now, I listen to punk, hardcore, hip-hop, folk, indie, and all kinds of "devil music".
    Ten years ago, I was afraid of the dark. Now, I'm a night person.
    Ten years ago, I had not yet touched a computer, and had no idea what the internet was. Now, I'm a tech geek working in a computer lab.
    Ten years ago, I was rarely allowed to leave my house. Now, I'm barely at home except to sleep.
    Ten years ago, I liked to write stories in my free time. Now...well, not everything changes.
    Ten years ago:

    This morning:

    And now, I wonder - ten years from today, will there be nearly as many changes? Any that are as big as some of these? I think I'm pretty secure as to who I am, right now, but ten years ago, I thought the same thing. Ah well.
    "Of course, tomorrow morning if our whole system collapsed,
    We?d divide ourselves again on lines of gender, race, and class.
    But tonight I don?t care if we win a million hearts,
    Unless we rip them out their chests and start throwing them at cars!"


    -"Johnny" by Tom Frampton


  5. EleCivil

    One Week

    By EleCivil,

    Things I learned from one week of student teaching in a 5th grade classroom:
    1 - Very few guys are involved in schools at the lower-middle level.
    There wasn't even a men's restroom in the building - the only other males in the building were the gym teacher and the principal. This means that for the students who have been in that building for the whole of their schooling, I was the first male classroom teacher they ever had.
    2 - While some schools are under-funded, others have way more money than they know what to do with.
    I ended up teaching in a rich suburban school district, quite different from my own. There were SmartBoards, really nice computers, scanners, and printers in every room. They had better technology than my college's computer lab.
    3 - Elementary school teachers are the most stereotypically wholesome people in the world.
    Eating lunch in the teacher's lounge means that I got to hear all about their home lives. Talk of little league games and marching bands and homecoming and church youth groups and cheerleading and all of those non-threatening school-and-church-sanctioned events that I avoided like the plague when I was in school. So not only am I completely alone in being (1) male, (2) single, and (3) childless, but I come from a radically different subculture. Don't get me wrong, they're nice, but it's just...tough to talk to them when we have no common interests outside of teaching.
    4 - Teaching is exhausting.
    This surprised me. A day of teaching leaves me more tired than a day at the gym. Now I know why all the other people in the teachers' lounge seem to be addicted to coffee. Of course, a lot of this probably has to do with waking up early combined with staying up late to write lesson plans (that, and I tend to go into high-energy, adrenaline-rush mode when teaching)
    5 - Teaching changes the way you think about things.
    Just a week, and I'm already looking at things differently. I see an empty egg carton and think "Hey, I bet could make something out of one of these." I listen to a new song and think "I could use this to teach about figurative language." I see a kid causing trouble in a store and actually start putting on my "Teacherly Disapproval Face" before I remember where I am, and that I've got no authority there.
    6 - You can tell a lot more from grading papers than whether or not they're getting the answers right.
    One kid would get all of his answers wrong, but have huge paragraphs of text - complex, perfect sentences - completely unrelated to the homework written on the back. One had horrible handwriting and was in special classes for help with reading, but if you flipped his papers over, you could see the big, detailed drawings that he'd done. He would get in trouble for "wasting staples" by using fifteen or twenty of them just to fasten his homework pages together...but if you flipped the paper over, you could see that the bent-over sides of the staples formed an intricate pattern on the back of the page. One girl never turns in her individual homework assignments, but if she's in a group with others, that group always finishes first and turns in the best work, because she knows how to organize a team.
    This is stuff that I learned on the first day, just by grading a few different papers. Later, I talked to these kids and confirmed it. The writer loved Eragon, and wanted to be the next Christopher Po-whats-his-name. The artist took me into the hall and showed me some of his work that was on display - sculptures and a near-perfect colored pencil reproduction of a Van Gogh painting. Apparently, he likes to sneak into the art teacher's room during recess to see if she has any extra projects for him. The leader? She was in charge of the student government, crossing guards, and a half-dozen other team activities after school that took up all of her time for homework.
    The back of the page is worth a lot more than the front.
    7 - Make sure you're wearing an ID around your neck when doing a restroom escort.
    One of the other teachers walks by and sees me - a guy, who is definitely not one of the two guys who work in the building - standing outside of the restrooms. She pauses, says "...Waiting for the girls to come out of the restroom?" I shrug and say "A couple girls, a couple guys. Just going to take 'em back with me." Words cannot describe the look she gave me. That's when I remembered that I left my ID in my pocket, and quickly pulled it out and dropped it around my neck. She exhales deeply and walks away, muttering to herself. Awwwwkward.
  6. EleCivil

    Orange Assassin

    By EleCivil,

    Some shady dude offered me a job a few days ago. Okay, not shady, but extremely polished and corporate-looking, which always comes off as shady to me (he was wearing a TIE). I'm pretty sure it was some kind of scam. He walks up to me in a store and starts chatting me up - what do I do for a living, am I "keeping my options open", etc., and tells me that he's in charge of expansion for his company and that they're looking for some employees. "Not worried about the knowledge part," he says, "We can teach you that. What we can't teach is honesty and integrity." And, obviously, I'm full of honesty and integrity, because he's known me for all of four seconds and can see that I'm...purchasing an orange (oranges - the fruit of integrity!). Anyway, he says he'll call me and fill me in on the details later, so I give him my number.
    He calls me later, and says that they'll only give out the details in person at some meeting that they're having on Thursday. Those details? Pesky little things like "Job title", "Job description", "Compensation", and "The name of the company that you'll be working for". In other words, EVERYTHING.
    Now, I'm going in for training at another job on Thursday, so I'm pretty sure I'm not interested, so I decide to mess with him a bit...because, hey, these are my phone minutes, and if I'm going to use them, I want something I can laugh at later. And, after all, I never gave him my full name.
    I ask him what kind of job he's looking to give me. He says they're not going to give out the details over the phone, that I need to come to the meeting.
    I lower my voice and say "Is it a hit?"
    "What?"
    "A hit. An assassination."
    He laughs. "No!"
    "Oh. I just figured that that's why you won't give me details over the phone. You know, because of the Patriot Act, and the domestic wiretapping and such."
    He gave me a nervous laugh and neither of us said anything for a while. Then he hung up on me without even saying goodbye. What a dick. I bet he WAS looking for a hit man.
    "The only silver bullet they use is that TV in your living room,
    And all we've gotta do is pull the plug.
    Don't go to the store today, no, don't you dare buy anything,
    Instead go out and try to fall in love."


    -"The Moon Will Rise" by Ghost Mice


  7. EleCivil

    Periodicals.

    By EleCivil,

    There's a big Periodic Table of Elements in the science wing of my school. Having not pranked anything recently, I decided that it looked like a good target. I printed up a fake element square, using all the accurate information for Aluminum, but changed the name to Al-Bundium. I made the switch a few days ago, taping the fake square over the real one, and it's still up there. I'm thinking of replacing an element with a sitcom character every couple days, and seeing how long it takes before someone takes them down.
    My school made it on the news because of our new GBLT club, Prism. It's getting protested, even though its faculty adviser is a nun and it's being backed by the Diversity Awareness and Action Committee. Here's hoping it causes some kind of ruckus. I love ruckuses.
    Also, I got a cheap used car to replace that one that I smashed. Hopefully I'll get the hang of driving a standard transmission again, because right now I suck at it. My last stick shift was in my Ford Ranger, which I referred to as my "Pick-up Full of Sweet, Sweet Love" (+10 cool points if you catch the reference) that I drove years ago.
    Finally, I've signed on for NaNoWriMo again this year. Last year I dropped out around the 10,000 word mark, so let's see how far I can get this time. I'm placing my bets at around 20,000.
    "Everyone tells me they're crazy.
    Crazy people aren't so fucking boring.
    Wake me when you're through being cool,
    'Cause I'm snoring."


    -"Unlisted Track" by Jawbreaker


  8. EleCivil

    Praxis of Evil

    By EleCivil,

    The sun was hot, the breeze was cool, the music was loud, and my sleeves were short. Yes, that's right...a perfect day to have to go and take a three hour written test.
    I took the Praxis I test, yesterday. That's the first of three tests that you need to pass to get a teaching certification.
    Praxis I tests you in reading, writing, and math.
    Praxis II tests you in your specialized content areas (English and science, for me) and pedagogy.
    Praxis III is an in-class evaluation, where they come and watch you teach.
    I got back my scores on the reading and math sections, but the writing will take longer, because they have to grade an essay in addition to the multiple choice questions.
    Here's the shocker: I scored higher on math than I did on reading. I passed both, but it's still weird. Weirder still, I thought writing was the hardest part. I swear, if I pass math, but fail writing, I'm going to be double-plus-pissed.
    "Sandro came back from world travel stupider than left,
    Even good guys fight each other, even bad songs are theft.
    We walked stupied, he talked stupid, he could not comprehend,
    So everyone called him...a stupid man."
    "


    -"Harem in Tuscany (Tartana!)" by Gogol Bordello


  9. EleCivil
    This might be a long one. I'm going to preface this by saying that this is all the opinion of EleCivil, the eccentric weirdo whose advice you probably should not heed for any reason. It in no way represents the views of the site admins, etc. etc. legal stuff.
    I recently got an email from someone telling me that they enjoyed my short story, Fistfights with Flashlights - this was a short story that I wrote while in the middle of Leaves and Lunatics, when I was about 18 years old. To be honest, I remember almost nothing about it. It's about 90% autobiography, 10% fictionalized. I wrote it in one quick burst and then submitted it without going back to edit or even re-read it once. I then deleted the file and have never gone back to look at it again. As such, I can't speak for the quality - it was pretty much just an hour of catharsis. I haven't thought about the story in a LONG time, but this email brought it to mind, and I wanted to reflect a bit.
    One of the major themes of this short was religion, and how it can mess with one's perceptions of the world. Specifically, it was about how, when I was a kid, I believed in things like demons, possession, and the apocalypse, and how that screwed with my head to the point where I was deathly afraid of the dark, carrying a flashlight with me at all times to scare away any demons that might try to possess me. I used to read the book of Revelations and compare it to current events, searching for signs of the coming rapture and subsequent end of the world, which I was eagerly looking forward to. Yes, I was six years old and my main hobbies were Eschatology and awaiting the end of the world.
    But the part that I wouldn't - couldn't - admit to anyone was that I was a skeptic when it came to the existence of God. I felt it, but couldn't even admit it to myself. I didn't think God was real. I didn't think that he sent his son to die for me, and in fact I found the idea of parents sending their children to die for them to be terrifying - if God, the source of all morality, sent his son to be tortured and killed by the bad guys, would my parents do the same to me?
    Now, there's some cognitive dissonance there - I fully believed that Satan and his demons existed and were out to get me, but I was skeptical about the existence of a God that wanted to save me - but come on, I was six. And let's face it - it's easier to believe in perfect evil than perfect good. You can SEE perfect evil every day. Perfect good is something far rarer, and there wasn't a lot of it going on around me.
    So to summarize my childhood beliefs:
    There is a devil who wants to get me.
    There are demons who work for him who are roaming the Earth looking for me.
    The world is going to end any day now.
    God can save me, as long as I believe in him.
    I believe in God a little less every day.
    Therefore, my only hope is that the world ends or that I die soon, while I still sort of believe in God, so that he won't condemn me to an eternity of torture for not believing in him all the way.
    This is what was running through my brain every day, every night. I couldn't turn it off - everything reminded me of it. And keep in mind, this is all before I started thinking that maybe I was gay, and even MORE of an abomination in the eyes of the only entity that could save me. Holy shit, no wonder I attempted suicide as a child.
    I still called myself a Christian and told myself that I believed until I was about 17. I wrote Fistfights with Flashlights when I was just starting to admit to myself that I was really an atheist, and that WANTING to believe in something can't make you start believing in it. Making that admission - giving myself permission to admit that I didn't believe in the religion of my parents - was the biggest relief I have ever felt in my life. Why? Because if I didn't believe in God, I didn't need to believe in any of the things that scared me - the devil, demons, hell, and the apocalypse - I didn't have to spend my life waiting for death. I didn't have to seek to end myself to please a God that could never be pleased with me. (This is a theme I revisited in the later chapters of Laika.)
    Back to the reader response - the writer of this email wrote that he assumed I was a non-believer, and identified himself as an atheist. This gave me pause - I haven't sat down to really consider my religious beliefs in quite some time. I try to make it a habit to "re-draw my map" - attack my own philosophical and intellectual views with logic to see if they hold up, or if they need to be reconsidered...but I haven't done that with religion in a long time. So, what's the best way to sort out one's beliefs? Stream-of-consciousness writing! Hence, this blog post.
    I suppose I am an atheist, in the dictionary definition - I do not believe in any gods, and do not follow any religions. But at the same time, I don't fit in with the "New Atheist" movement that's been gaining traction, lately. I've read the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins, but I don't really agree with their view that, as Hitchens wrote, "Religion poisons everything." If you read my above experience of being driven to self-hatred and suicide by religion, you might be thinking "What the hell, EleCivil?" but hold on.
    I don't think religion makes a big difference one way or another in day-to-day life. I tend to see human goodness on a whole as a bell-curve distribution - about 5% of us are completely evil psychopaths, 5% of us are completely good-natured saints, and the other 90% are somewhere in between. And I believe that there are religious people and non-religious people in every segment of that progression.
    The religious guy who gives half his income to charity and goes on "missions" to distribute medical supplies in disaster zones? If he wasn't religious, he'd probably be doing the same thing, but in the name of "humanism" or "personal conscience." The atheist who is found with a pile of torsos in his basement, who claims he went on a killing spree "just for kicks"? If he were religious, he'd be doing the same thing, but instead claiming that he killed them in "a glorious cleansing for the Lord!" The religious guy who hates gays because "the bible says it's wrong"? If he were an atheist, he'd still hate gays; he'd just say he hates them "'cause it's gross!"
    I don't think religion (or lack thereof) can turn people "good" or "evil" or "open-minded" or "bigoted". I don't think it has that much power. I think we are drawn to our beliefs and come to define them by our innate qualities, not the other way around. There's a saying that if you ask ten preachers to interpret the bible, you'll get twenty different interpretations. Thanks to a blend of archaic language and confirmation bias, we will always see what we want to see in religion. If you read the holy text of your religion and see a call to help your fellow man and live a life of service, then you were probably going to live such a life even if you had never seen the text. Likewise, if you read the holy texts and see a list of people you should dislike, you were already looking for a reason to dislike them.
    Or, to put it more simply - Douchebags are gonna be douchebags. Amen.
  10. EleCivil

    Regarding Jackassery

    By EleCivil,

    My roommate and I went to see Jackass 2 the other day. That meant going to The Mall. Now, both of us were trailer park kids, so to us, the mall is pretty much the opposite of everything we grew up knowing. For instance, we KNEW that there was no way a clay pot could cost more than what our parents made in a month. We KNEW that t-shirts were 3 for $5 and came in bags. We KNEW that people don't actually act like they do on TV. The Mall, however, proves wrong every one of those beliefs. That's why we generally try to avoid it. Sadly, it has the only movie theater in town.
    We got there early, so we had to walk around for a while. My roommate (who's straight, by the way) heads for the bathroom. On the way in, he turns to me and jokingly asks "Do you want to help me?" I shake my head and tell him that I think he's got this one under control. About two seconds later, he walks back out.
    He looks around and says "Uh...some guys heard me say that."
    "Yeah?"
    "Yeah. One of 'em said 'fag', so I told him that that's not what his Dad said last night."
    I groan. "For fuck's sake...again?"
    He shrugs. "Can't help it. We should...uh, run."
    We start walking away, and two guys strut out of the restroom behind us. One calls out "Hey, faggot!"
    I take off my jacket and hand it to my roommate, then turn around, sighing heavilly. They kind of size us up, looking us up and down and then glancing between themselves. I get a good look at them - high school kids, dressed in "I think I'm a rebel but I paid two hundred dollars for these pants" clothes. I give them this look - just kind of cocking my head to one side, in a "did I hear you correctly?" kind of way. They shrug and walk the other way.
    I take my jacket back from my roommate. "How come I'm the one that has to protect you from gay bashers?"
    "'Cause you're intimidating, and I insult strangers."
    "Oh yeah."
    Then we saw Jackass 2, and laughed for the durration. It was better than the first one.
    "We say things we don't mean, but friends understand. Strength and humor don't always go hand-in-hand. A joke to you might not be so funny, so take the time and think it out before you open up your mouth."


    -"Things We Say" by Gorilla Biscuits


  11. EleCivil

    Rivalry

    By EleCivil,

    Santa came to my school the other day to eat lunch with the kindergarten class. They borrowed one of my bases-of-operation (I don't have my own classroom, so my materials are hidden in various caches in three or four different buildings around campus) for this event without telling me. I walk in, looking to pick up some books I need for my next class and see Santa. I say hi. The kindergarten kids look over at me, gasp, and shout "HI, MR. CIVIL!!" then run over to hug me and ask me to do magic tricks/juggle for them.
    That's right. Surreal as it sounds, in one small corner of the world, a simple reading teacher can rival Santa Claus.
    Of course, now I'm paranoid that the man himself has a hit out on me. I keep turning around, expecting to see tinsel-covered piano wire stretched taught between two fur-lined gloves.
    ---
    I think it's been right around a year, now, since I've written anything outside of school work. I don't know if that's going to change any time soon. I'm starting to feel the muses jabbing at me, again, but I'm not there yet. I don't know.
    It's Christmas break, and I'm sitting around in my coat, gloves, and hat because I'm too damn broke to turn on the heat. I can see my breath in my apartment. I swiped a few bags of mint tea from the teacher's lounge before leaving, and I'm sipping that to stay warm, too. Just four more months 'till Spring.
  12. EleCivil

    Sergio the Pope

    By EleCivil,

    I was digging through some stuff the other day and I came across a notebook from my sophomore year in high school. It contained a play that I wrote for Drama class, which was banned from being performed because...well, it's excessively violent, sacrilegious, and it didn't have enough parts for the whole class. But, hey, if you're interested in seeing some of my earliest recorded work, read on. Reproduced for the first time since 10th grade...

    Sergio the Pope


    ::The Pope's office. The Pope is getting ready to give a speech. Bill, the Pope's assistant, is assisting.::
    Pope: Is my hat on straight, Bill? I've got to look my best for this. Today is the day that I finally announce the big news: that I am, in fact, Catholic.
    Bill: Thereby making that sarcastic expression about the topic much more valid.
    Pope: Exactly. Now, I-
    ::The Pope gasps for air, clutches his chest, and falls over.::
    Bill: Good Lord! He's dead! No...this can't happen. If people found out, the ensuing power struggle would lead to a bloodbath!
    ::Bill conceals the Pope's body under a pile of leaves.::
    Bill: There. Now that he's camouflaged, all we need is a replacement Pope.
    ::Enter Serio, sneaking by with a loot bag over his shoulder, his back to Bill. Bill taps him on the shoulder, causing him to jump and drop the bag. Expensive looking things spill out.::
    Bill: Who the hell are you? What are you doing in the Vatican?
    Sergio: Blast! Captured! How could I, Sergio, King of all Pirates, get spotted by a lowly assistant! My reputation is ruined!
    Bill: Hmm...pirate king, you say? So you're used to giving speeches to the other pirates, right?
    Sergio: Well, I do perform some stand-up comedy at the annual pirate convention in Texas.
    Bill: Good enough. I've got a proposition for you...your holiness.
    Sergio: My...holiness?
    Bill: I want you to take the place of the Pope. In return, I won't turn you in, and you'll get to maintain your reputation as pirate king.
    Sergio: But I can't be the Pope! I slept through Latin!
    Bill: Just fake it!
    Sergio: Isn't lying a sin?
    Bill: What's it matter to you? You're going to hell, anyway.
    Sergio: Fair enough. I'll do it!
    ::Curtain closes - opens on The Pope waking up in his office and turning on the TV.::
    Reporter: On the lighter side of the news, The Pope will be performing his now famous stand-up routine a this years Pirate Convention in Texas. The Pope, seen here swinging in on a chandalier with a cutlass between his teeth, is said to have some all new material in addition to his crowd favorite "What's the deal with Archbishops?" set.
    ::The Pope turns off the TV::
    Pope: An impostor! I'd recognized that Pope anywhere. My old nemesis from my days in the Spanish Fleet...Sergio! 'What's the deal with archbishops,' indeed. I'll show him what the deal is!
    ::Bill and Sergio enter. The Pope hides behind a chair.::
    Bill: So, after the "You might be a Catholic if..." bit, you should probably throw in something like "And by the way, I really am the Pope. I'm definitely not some sort of pirate royalty."
    Sergio: But, I am pirate royal- Ohhh...right. To give me some more credibility. I get it.
    Bill: Exactly. Ah, here it is.
    ::Bill picks up the Pope cane and hands it to Sergio. They walk offstage.::
    ::Curtain closes - opens backstage at PirateCon.::
    Bill: Okay, your holiness. This is your time to shine. Show everyone that you're not only the Pope, but that you're the funniest Pope since Pope Cosby the 14th.
    ::The Pope bursts in::
    Pope: Sergio!
    Sergio: ::gasps:: Captain Victor Raftsbane, pirate of the Blackest Flag!
    Pope: Um, no. I'm Pope Mathew Mark Luke the 4th. Or as you may remember me, Admiral Mathew Mark Luke of the Spanish Fleet!
    Sergio: Doesn't ring a bell.
    Bill: It's the Pope, you idiot! The real Pope!
    ::Bill shoves Sergio out of the way.::
    Bill: Your Holiness! Thank the Lord, you've come back! Now you can replace this fake Pope and things will be set right!
    Sergio: Hold it! I have no intention of being replaced! I'll have you know that I enjoy being Pope. I get my dry cleaning done for free, people kneel when I enter rooms, and I can have any woman I desire!
    Bill: Um...about that...
    Pope: Forget it, Sergio! Now that I'm back, it's simply a matter of exposing you to the public.
    Sergio: You can't expose me if you're dead! The truth shall never leave this room!
    ::Sergio draws his cutlass::
    Pope: We both knew it would come to this! On your guard!
    ::The Pope draws a sword, previously concealed under his robes. Bill hides under a chair.::
    Pope: Come on, big man! Pirate King!
    Sergio: Arrr! You'll be adorning me blade by the end of the night!
    ::The two begin sword fight - choreograph fight based on actor's physical abilities::
    Pope: Who's your holy father? Who's your holy father?
    Sergio: I am Sergio...THE POPE!
    ::Sergio charges, but the Pope parries and runs him through.::
    Pope: HAHA! I did it! I beat the Pirate King! I am the greatest Pope of all time!
    ::The Pope clutches his chest and falls to his knees, gasping for air.::
    Pope: ...I suppose I should have gone to see a doctor after that first heart attack...instead of...swashbuckling...
    ::The Pope falls over, dead. Bill stands up.::
    Bill: Oh no! Now we don't have ANY Popes! And he's supposed to go on any minute! Where am I going to find another Pope on such short notice!
    ::A 70's-era pimp struts by, spinning his cane::
    Bill: Good enough. Excuse me, sir! What's your name?
    Pimp: Why, I'm Pimp Daddy McGoose, greatest pimp in all of Texas!
    Bill: How would you like to be the Pope?
    ::Bill offers the pimp the pope hat and cane. The pimp drops his own hat and cane and accepts them, then struts in front of a mirror to admire his new gear.::
    Pimp: I can dig it.
    ::Curtain closes::

    The End


  13. EleCivil

    Shazzam.

    By EleCivil,

    First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone who replied, IM'd, or emailed me after my last post. I really appreciate it.
    Don't worry about me. I'd been spending the last year or so in denial about it, but I've known it was coming. It was just that Saturday was the day that my Dad actually asked me if I would quit school and go to work, and that made things kind of boil over. BUT, when I boil over, it's usually only for a day or two, then I get distracted by something else and bounce back, being the bouncing soul that I am.
    So, back to normal (or as close as I ever get to it). Hi-ho.
  14. EleCivil
    Heist
    A friend of mine lives in his car, in a parking lot that's about five minutes from my place. Well, a couple days ago, his car was stolen. Which means that, when it comes down to it, his house was stolen. So he's been living here for the last day or two, claiming the floor in my room.
    Well, yesterday, we found out the location of his car. It turns out his parents had stolen it, using some spare keys that he had given them years earlier. It was parked in front of his mom's house a couple of cities to the south. Apparently, they stole the car in order to take away his options for independent living and force him to live with his dad.
    Now, if he was younger, I would probably side with his parents...but he's twenty. He has a job, and could be living in an apartment if he wanted to, but he just prefers his car. Since he's a legal adult, that's his choice to make.
    So, my roommate and I found ourselves driving him a couple hours south, under cover of darkness, to steal back his car. This made me think about my uncle.
    My uncle only gave me two pieces of advice: Never play cards with a man whose name ends in "y", and never take an intellectual along on a heist.
    I questioned both of these at the time, asking what was so bad about smart guys and guys with "-y" names. The first, he said, was because guys with a "y" at the end of their name are more likely to go by epithets like "Slick" or "Big" or the like, and that the last thing you want to find out when you're down five hundred bucks is that you've been slappin' jacks with "Smooth Jimmy Two-Shakes" or "Little Willy One-Thumb". That made sense. The intellectual business was a bit confusing to me. After all, I asked, isn't it better to have a smart guy with you to think of a way out of a jam?
    "Absolutely not," He said. "When you're doing something as stupid as robbing a bank, the last thing you need is someone smart around to let you know how stupid it is."
    I always kind of doubted his authority on that matter, though. He wasn't in trouble for robbing a bank; he was in trouble for having about two thousand parking tickets and for ramming his '93 Taurus through a lot barricade when the attendant refused to let him out without paying. He was no big-shot criminal, just a motorist with a penchant for parallel parking four feet from the curb and a reckless disregard for handicap-only signs. I never had the guts to tell him that much, of course.
    So I looked around the car - no one with a "-y" name, no "big" or "slick" nicknames. So far, so good. Then, I realized - out of this group, I was "the intellectual one". I was the only one in the car who hadn't dropped out of college, the only one who read books and had a philosophy on life that didn?t revolve around pot and Doritos. Yes, if asked to pick an "intellectual one" out of our group, most people would point at me. And that was no good at all.
    So, I thought, how do I remove any hint of intellectualism from myself in order to make this mission a success? It hit me: The Three Stooges.
    I pulled over at the next grocery store and purchased a pie tin and a bottle of generic canned whipped cream. I handed these to my currently car-less friend.
    ?What are these for??
    ?Obviously,? I said, ?If we get spotted, we?ll have to distract them while you get your car back. And nothing?s more distracting than a face full of dairy and aluminum.?
    ?Dude, I?m not going to hit my mom with a pie. This is the dumbest idea ever.?
    Mission accomplished.
    "Tonight, these streets belong to us, and we've been doing this for years, but soon that will be different. Tonight, we'll liberate them. Tonight, we'll liberate ourselves!"


    -"Parking Lot Punks Rule" by the Gainsville Liberation Orchestra


  15. EleCivil

    Six Months

    By EleCivil,

    The oncologist says that my dad has six months (maximum) to live.
    People have been coming over to visit. My grandma, my cousin, old family friends who we haven't seen in years. It's weird - the last time I saw my cousin was about ten years ago, when HER dad (my uncle) died of lung disease. And before that? A funeral for another distant relative. It's like we only see each other when someone is dead or dying. She's cool, though. She's from this tiny town, so she's amazed by the "big city" things like traffic lights (they only have a couple stop signs where she's from) and people who don't match their shoes (okay, so that was just me) and the fact that she can't find a country music station on the radio (ah, Lawd). At one point, she asks what we city people do for fun. My mom and I look at each other, shrug, turn back to her and say "We read books." She looks disappointed, like she was expecting us to say "Wild meth-fueled orgies."
    Anyway, it's finals week. I just got done taking my Bio final - no sweat, there. Just four more days 'til freedom.
  16. EleCivil
    My dad's funeral was on Saturday.
    Our relationship was...unusual. If you've read Fistfights With Flashlights, you know what I mean. Beyond that, we just didn't "get" each other. Over the last few years, the longest conversations we had were arguments. We could go at it like you wouldn't believe, for hours at a time. It was really our main mode of communication. But...that worked for us. Most people didn't get that, but that's how it was - we'd always come out of those arguments with more respect for each other. I never did end up converting him to a raging radical leftist, and he never converted me to a conservative biblical literalist, but we did manage to somewhat mellow each other.
    For the last six months, he'd been sick - using oxygen machines and taking a pharmacy worth of pills every day - but he was still able to walk around, talk, do stuff. He was still himself. Then, all of a sudden, last Monday...he just wasn't. He couldn't walk under his own power. He would fall asleep at random times - in the middle of a sentence, while taking a drink, whenever - then he lost his voice, then lost control of his bodily functions. By Thursday, he was no longer conscious. Two Hospice nurses were here. Around two pm, one of them turned to my mom and I and said that we should come and sit by him.
    My mom whispered things into his ear and held his hand. I stood off to the side, silent. I counted the seconds between his breaths - one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand. At two thirty, he stopped breathing. I had counted up to fourteen one-thousand before I realized that that was it. It was over. My mom was crying. I wasn't. I still haven't. I don't know why that is. Maybe the six months of advance warning prepared me. Maybe I'm a bit of a heartless bastard. Maybe it's a bit of both.
    Today I took my mom in for surgery.
    I skipped class the last few days. My grades are going to hell. Whatever. I'll figure something out, later.
  17. EleCivil
    I was walking through a parking lot today, just a few hours after a heavy rain storm. The rain had driven the worms out of the soil and on to the pavement. I see that a lot of them are stranded out in the middle of the lot, stuck on the spots where the puddles had dried out. These worms were a good 30 feet away from the grass, and the clouds were clearing up. I knew that if they didn't get off of the pavement pretty soon, they were going to be fried and dehydrated - I've seen it happen before.
    So, I started picking them up. It was really the least I could do - I'd feel like a prick for the rest of the day if I just left them there to die. After all, if I was crawling naked at the rate of two inches an hour across hot, jagged gravel and blacktop, I'd sure appreciate some help.
    So, there I am, with two big handfuls of worms, when I run into somebody I kind of know. We've never really spoken, but we've seen each other around a few times. He stops, cocks his head at me, and just gives me this weird look. I say hi, and he nods back, and says "What the hell are you doing with all those worms?"
    I shrug and say "Just taking them over there", and nod toward the grass.
    "Why?"
    "'Cause they'll probably like it better over there."
    He gives me a "what the hell?" kind of expression and just walks away, shaking his head. I'm thinking to myself, "Wow, what a weird guy." I told the story to some friends, and they sided with that guy, saying that transporting worms was a pretty weird thing to do.
    Ever have a situation like that? Where you feel like you're doing the most normal thing in the world, but then find out that everyone else thinks you're crazy? Doesn't happen to me very often - usually, I'm well aware that what I'm doing is pretty strange, but this time I was honestly shocked. I was going that way, they were going that way, I had gloves on...so, why wouldn't I? Man, humans are weird sometimes.
    "Listen up, I gotta ask - how can we be so cruel?
    You say you care? That's a lie.
    My true compassion is for all living things, and not just the ones who are cute, so I do what I can.
    I wanna save lives and I've got a plan."


    -"Cats and Dogs" by Gorilla Biscuits


  18. EleCivil

    Some stuff.

    By EleCivil,

    So, a few posts ago, I mentioned how I wasn't looking forward to dressing professionally to student-teach next week. After thinking about it a bit more, I realized that I've never dressed professionally for anything in my life. Like, I don't even know how it's done. I understand the basics - pants + shirt + shoes + socks - but that's it. I don't know how to match stuff or co-ordinate colors (only that, maybe, by doing the exact opposite of what I've been doing, I might accidentally do it). And, above all else, I didn't OWN any professional clothes.
    As a kid, my clothing consisted of hand-me-downs from cousins, charity-box donations, and free event t-shirts (Fifth-Third Bank Presents...4th of July Cash-Stravaganza!). From high school on, my wardrobe has consisted of a couple pairs of jeans, one hoodie, and about ten plain, black t-shirts.
    So, today, for the first time in my life, I went to an actual clothing store. I felt a bit sick at first - selling out tends to do that (To quote The Simpsons, "I feel like punching myself.") - but then I noticed something. The guys kept hitting on me. That's why I've never seen that many gay dudes in Ohio - they were all hanging out in the clothing stores! I guess I missed a memo or something. But thanks to their help, I learned how to throw together a few cheap, decent-looking clothes that'll get me through a week of pretending to be one of those...what-do-you-call-'em...mature adults.
    Also, a friend of mine offered to give me ten thousand dollars if I agreed to get a Tupac-style "Thug Life" tattoo. I turned him down, and he changed the offer - five thousand to get a decidedly non-Tupac-style "Teacher Life" tattoo in the same place. Once again, turned down (though it killed me to do so, because I find the idea quite amusing). I made a deal with myself long ago that I'd never get a tattoo, because I know I'm waaaay too impulsive to be doing anything that has permanent effects.
    "And if you're slow on the uptake, I'll lay it out:
    Hipsterism is a religion to which you gotta be devout.
    You must be seen as in between unpopular and hated
    Or else get excommunicated."


    -"Indier than Thou" by MC Front-a-lot


  19. EleCivil

    Special Edition

    By EleCivil,

    A friend of mine came over late last night to borrow an Xbox controller. He comes into my room and says, in a conspiratorial voice, "You ready to deal?"
    Now, I know that he's referencing the fact that everyone tends to assume that we're drug dealers. This is because we act fairly strangely and both grew up in a neighborhood in which all of our peers became drug dealers/burned out meth-heads/suicides.
    Playing along, I say "Oh, would you like to purchase some drugs? I'm accepting PayPal, now!" That's when I notice that his new girlfriend, who I had yet to meet, was standing in the doorway behind him. Awesome. Now she definitely thinks I'm a dealer.
    He says, "How about a trade? I'll give you this." He hands me a DVD case, while holding back laughter. It takes me a few seconds to recognize that the DVD case has a picture of a rather underdressed woman with a rather oversized penis in her mouth. The title? "Dick Lickers: Blowjob Edition".
    Now, the natural reaction would probably be to either laugh it off or hand it back to him. I did neither. I just stared at the title in wonder.
    "Blowjob Edition", to emphasize the fact that THIS edition of "Dick Lickers" contains oral sex.
    And all I could think was "What's on the NON-'Blowjob Edition' of 'Dick Lickers'? What other editions are there? 'Dick Lickers: Do-It-Yourself Drywall Repair Edition'? Dick Lickers: Global Warming Awareness Edition'? Is it like 'Law and Order', where there's a bunch of different spin-offs all with different characters, or is it a Three Stooges-esque series, in which those wacky Dick Lickers find themselves in zany (sticky?) situations every week?"
    And then I remembered that his girlfriend was standing there, watching me stare, transfixed, at the cover of a porno, no doubt thinking that I'm a sexually repressed drug dealer. I make the best first impressions.
    "You say you don't like the Ramones, but I think we're a lot like the Ramones
    Because we look good together but we can't get along - we're a lot like the Ramones."


    -"...Everything You Hate" by Delay


  20. EleCivil
    I just got back from the Spring Ska Show, which was awesome.
    It's interesting how many different types of people will come out for a ska show. There were skinheads, skate-punks, sXe kids, hXc kids, emo kids, hippies, goths, rudies...it was great seeing all the followers of sub-subcultures gathering together. However, that was only on the second floor of the building - the first floor was being used as a hip-hop/electronica club, and there was absolutely no interaction between the two floors.
    The crowd was great. It was big enough to get a good number of people in the pit, but small enough so that you felt like you knew everybody, even if you never said a word to them all night. Everyone stood out from everyone else, so you remembered them all - the dude with the giant mohawk, the dude who kept taking his shirt off, the creepy old guy who only stood on the side taking pictures of the young girls...yeah, the whole gang was there.
    Me? I was dressed like a sXe kid, with X's on the backs of my hands and a plain black shirt covered in one-inch pins (including pins for some sXe bands like Gorilla Biscuits and Minor Threat, as well as one that just said "Kiss me, I'm straight-edge"). This was intentional, because it made everyone do a double-take when I started to skank. Yes, within the straight-edger shell beats the heart of a (gasp) rudie! You don't need checkerboard suspenders and a three-piece suit to do it!
    There were a couple people there who were just cool, made the show better just by being in the crowd. There was a girl in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform with checkerboard socks and two-tone shoes, and an adorable short, stocky guy with a giant blonde afro, and neither of them stopped skanking once. The whole night, even if no one else was moving, they were going. It was inspiring, in an energizer-bunny kind of way.
    Like I said before, I'm not a big fan of skacore, but the vocalist/guitarist for one of the bands (I forget their name, or I'd tell you) earned a spot as best performer of the night, in my book. Their whole set, people were spitting at him and tossing bottles at him, and at one point, the kids in the pit actually grabbed him by his ankles and dragged him off the stage, beating on him, kicking him, spitting on him...but the whole time, he kept singing. That's some dedication, man. I was impressed.
    In the end, I got a copy of Money$hot's CD (only three bucks!) and a checkerboard "ska" one-inch pin to add to the collection.
    My school semester starts next week, as well as my second job and student-teaching. This was likely the last show I'll get to go to until summer...but it was a good one, so I guess I'll make it.
    "Intolerant society rears it's ugly face.
    You're turning your hardcore music into a homophobic disgrace!
    The gay ones, the straight ones, the white, tan, yellow, and black...
    Gay rude boys and girls, we're gonna take that dancehall back,
    We'll take it back!!
    Because without respect, there's gonna be nothing left"


    -"Gay Rude Boys Unite" by Leftover Crack


  21. EleCivil

    Stages of Development

    By EleCivil,

    So, the other week, I called off work to take a six hour long standardized test. Three hours of Science, three hours of Pedagogical Theory. Fun. And I get to do it again for Language Arts in November.
    Here's the part that really sucks: I've been asked to play some classical guitar for my college's annual Arts Festival. However, since I'm taking all this time off of work to take these tests, I can't get off of work to go perform. Sonuvawench, right? Well, whatever. They told me I could come play next year as an alumnus.
    Oh, speaking of performances, I got to play the part of "Handsome Young Lover" in a one-act adaptation of "The Lady or the Tiger" performed for some middle school kids. That's right - I had to pretend to be lusting after not just one, but TWO girls. Heh. It was fun. I don't get into the drama stuff that often, but I don't mind hammin' it up on stage every now and then.
    In other news, I'm writing again. This time, however, I'm going to wait until I've got a fairly large chunk written before I start releasing chapters. My goal is to have a regular release schedule with this next one, rather than my old "Two chapters in a row, then four months of nothing, then another chapter, then two months of nothing, etc." schedule.
    SO! It'll be a while, but it's coming.
    "And as the spotlights fade away,
    And you're escorted through the foyer,
    You will resume your callow ways,
    But I was meant for the stage."


    "I Was Meant for the Stage" by The Decemberists


  22. EleCivil
    It's been a while since I've posted here, so I've got a few stories.
    More relatives have been coming to visit my dad. Second cousins and great-uncles from the hills and mountain towns who I've never met before. I've never fit in with my dad's side of the family - they're from the mountains of Pennsylvania, really small-town, rural places. Their main interests and talking points are sports, intra-family gossip, and God, in that order. Three topics that I can't really say anything about, since I don't follow sports, I don't know any gossip, and I don't believe in God. As such, I usually just stay quiet when they're around and shrug off their criticisms-disguised-as-questions ("You're such a handsome young man - why do you go and shave your head like that?" "Why don't your socks match?" "Why do you have that pirate flag flying from your window? What, you think you're tough?" "Why don't you play football? What do you mean, your college doesn't have any sports teams? What kind of a school is that?" "You want to be a teacher? Isn't it mostly women who do that?").
    Some relatives from my Mom's side have been visiting, too. That's the side of the family I've always fit in with. One of my uncles is a systems-admin and a juggler/unicyclist. One works for NASA and writes poetry. My Grandpa on that side died before I was old enough to get to know him, but I understand he was some kind of working class hero who marched with the unions and read Shakespeare to his fellow migrant rail-workers, teaching them English as they sat around the campfires. I only got to hang out with them for a couple minutes, though, because I had to go to work on the day they came.
    ---
    Something weird happened the other day. My mom tells me that she was outside when one of the local girls came up and started grilling her about me - "Is that your son? How old is he? He likes punk music, right? And he juggles, right?" And then, this girl who I've never met tells my mom - MY MOM, the preacher's wife - that she thinks I'd look pretty hot in chains and leather. GOOD. LORD. So now my parents are laughing about me being some kind of secret bondage freak going around corrupting the local high school girls. Eh...heh.
    ---
    I was out walking during a thunderstorm earlier tonight. I like walking in the rain. It kicks all your senses into overdrive - listening to the static of the raindrops, feeling the little wet explosions all over your skin, smelling and tasting the water on the air, watching the bubbles erupting from the gasoline rainbows on the pavement - it's the best. But today, it was raining so heavily that the storm drains started to back up, and before I knew it, I was knee-deep in water. Now, as soon as I felt the cold water sloshing over my shoes, I started up a nicely flowing stream of profanities that only intensified as it deepened, while I slogged through in search of higher ground.
    Somewhere in the midst of my soaked swear-storm, I changed gears. I shouted to the trees that there was now enough water in my shoes to form at least two new Great Lakes - Lake Shoe-perior and Lake On-toe-rio. I then looked around, and told the streetlights that I hoped that the swearing had scared off any listeners, because I'd hate to think that someone had just heard that terrible, terrible pun.
  23. EleCivil

    Standard Opening Post

    By EleCivil,

    Putting a Title Here Might Look Good
    A friend of mine describes personal blogging as, elegantly enough, "the text equivalent of peeing on the internet itself". This, of course, made me want to give it a try.
    This post is basically here for me to get more familiar with the system and see what happens when I play around with the settings.
    Images work like this:

    Aye...that was easy enough. Looks like it's just bbcode.
    Anyway, I'll be back to post something more interesting later. Well, I can't guarantee it'll be interesting...but it'll be longer.
  24. EleCivil
    First, I've got running water. That may not sound like much, but I've been without running water for the last week. No toilets, no sinks, no showers. It smelled like a locker room, since nobody could bathe or shave or do laundry. I showered at the gym, and eventually I got sick of my half-assed beard and shaved in a nearby creek in the woods (I never felt more like Thoreau). But now I can shower at home again! And drink water! God, I missed drinking water!
    Second, I'm back in school. Turns out my adviser scheduled me for two classes at the same time, and didn't even think to give me a time-turner. Plus, on my schedule, it says that one of those classes takes place in a building that does not yet exist. I guess I'll go stand in the big field that's marked off for the construction of said building and see if anyone else shows up. It is an ecology class, after all - maybe it's outside.
    Third, I got into another Educational Methods class, which means more student-teaching. A full month, this time. You know what that means? More "professional attire". Ugh. I hate clothes shopping, because there's no section for me. I'm too old for the "Boys" section, too immature for the "Mens" section. They need to put in a "Dudes" section. Clothes for dudes. Dudes like me. Because for now, I have to buy regular professional clothes and just stick in a few safety pins for added flavor.
    Fourth, a friend of mine got into a really bad car accident. Like, his car was in two halves. Everybody was okay, for the most part. He looked really bad - he had a cut on his ear, which dripped all the way down his throat, making it look like his throat was slit. He decided to not wash it off and sleep on the kitchen floor that night to scare the hell out of his roommate. Heh. It happened just before midnight, on the night before his 21st birthday. So, much like his 1st birthday, he spent the first few minutes of it screaming and covered in blood. He didn't appreciate it when I pointed that out - not because he'd just been through a bad accident, but because it reminded him that he was celebrating the anniversary of sliding from his mother's gooey birth canal, and he didn't really want that image in his head before he fell asleep. Luckily for him, he had just turned twenty-one - old enough to drink, and thus wipe it from his memory.
    Last...the other day, there was a huge thunderstorm right when I got off work. As I'm leaving, my boss walks up and tells me to be careful on the drive home. I nod to her and say that I will, and she grabs my hands, looks into my eyes, and in the most serious voice I've heard, whispers "You come back to me, Civil. You come back to me." Now, she's always talking about how much she loves her employees, but I'm pretty sure that I've now seen my boss's pre-makeout face. And that's just weird.
    "He's at the show, talkin' feminism to get inside your pants,
    Oh yeah, he'll quote Emma Goldman, but he'll never get up to dance!"


    -"Stop Being So Cool and Get Silly" by Wingnut Dishwashers' Union


  25. EleCivil
    The other day at work, my favorite customer came in. She's incredibly sarcastic and candid. Most people who work there get offended by her, but myself and a couple others think she's the best. She was arguing with my supervisor and one of the other work-studies. I was hanging around reading poetry (Maya Angelou, specifically) when she looks over at me and says "Why do you guys even keep him around? What good is he?"
    The other work study says, "Well...he doesn't do much, but he's fun to look at."
    My supervisor nods. "Yeah. Eye candy."
    At this point, I'm blushing like crazy, so I'm glad when I notice one of the students is looking for assistance, beckoning me over with her finger. I get up, and our favorite customer says (loudly enough for almost everybody to hear) "Oh, look, she's making him come with just one finger. That's impressive." Heh...best customer ever.
    I called off sick from work to go to a show last night. David Dondero, Matt & Kim, and Against Me! were playing five minutes from my house - I would have felt horrible sitting at work while that was going on. It was great.
    Dondero opened. He plays bluesy folk, but he always seems to open for punk shows. I used one of his songs while student-teaching to teach kids about figurative language, so it was cool to see him live. He played a cover of Jawbreaker's classic song, "Boxcar".
    Matt & Kim were a lot better than I thought they would be. They play dancey, cuddlecore-ish music with a keyboard and drums. I didn't like them very much when I heard their CD, but their live show is MUCH better. I was expecting it to be pretty tame, but they actually got a pretty good mosh pit going. I got a busted lip during "Yea Yeah" and a cut across an eyebrow during "Lightspeed", which was cool, because I got to show off my battlescars and blood trails for the rest of the night.
    Matt mentioned that it was their first time in our city, and that we made a good impression on him because of what he described as a "Strip-fooseball game" going on in the back of the club. He said something along the lines of "There's this totally ripped guy back there playing fooseball with his clothes off. Maybe you get really sweaty playing fooseball. I don't know, I'm not a pro. I'd get in on that, but you don't want to see any of this. Kim's been trying to get me to do some push-ups, so that I can...look like a man." Later on, he and some random dude from the audience had a stripping contest on stage.
    Against Me! was great. They played six or seven songs from their new CD, and a bunch from their older ones. They came back for two encores, playing "Impact" and, on request from the audience, "Baby, I'm an Anarchist" (which is one of their best songs, ever).
    About halfway through Matt and Kim's set, it started raining. There was a leak in the roof right above the pit, so there were a couple streams of water falling right on us. The boring people were fighting to get away, while the fun people were fighting to get under there and splash the boring people. I was in the pit all night (~4 hours), so I came out soaked in sweat (not all of it mine) and rainwater.
    If this show comes to your town, you should go. It's incredible.
    "'Cause baby, I'm an anarchist, you're a spineless liberal.
    We marched together for the eight-hour day and held hands in the streets of Seattle,
    But when it came time to throw bricks through that Starbucks window,
    You left me all alone..."


    -"Baby, I'm an Anarchist" by Against Me!


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