Oppenheimer Etc.

him:
what do we fucking know about the universe ok? we don't even understand our own homes! and we fucking make em!!!!!!!!! they die, lol, no no no no...

me:
oppenheimer......who……built the bomb……he sat in a room and made calculations……then the bomb manifested……

him:
no no no you don’t even understand, HAHA, no no no sell your soul!? i know i know, what i'm doing is nobler......do you wanna talk about the universe!? HAHAHAHA! no no NO let’s talk about nuclear energy 
(more insane laughter)
do you know about a 10x10x10 box of coal and a 3x3x3 box of nuclear energy? you could power 2 cities no problem with a 3x3x3 box of nuclear energy for fucking 2000 years! no no HAHAHAHAH no, yucantan mountain is salt ok, fuckin’ salt is the safest most stable place to mine......HAHAHA AND SALT FUCKIN’ ABSORBS ALL NUCLEAR ENEGERGY!!! can you believe that shit! no no no!
(insane laughter)
! i can power cities i can improve the lives of children and families! SOMEONE FIGURED OUT WHO TO BURN NUCLEARS ENERGY!!!

me:
hahahahahahahaha
(covers face in laughter)
that sounds so bizarre burning radiation……we can burn radiation!? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

him:
bizarre!? let’s talk about bizarre. guess how many accidents and what kind occur at nuclear plants!? people falling in the fucking parking lot……how are nuclear facilites loaded!? Non on non oh HAA!? BY HAND!!! no no no HAHAHA!
(both laughing uncontrollably at this point)
i held that shit !? held my hand wanna hold my HAND?

me:
what is something there?

him:
IM JUST FUCKIN WITH YA!!! yeah i dropped that fuel i throw it outta da planes and trains and it doesn't explode!!! no no no its 99 percent recyclable people THINK OF THE GLOWING BAR in homer simpson’s shirt!!! it’s right there IN his shirt, no no no!
Oh and the new James Bond movie sux.

me:
Burning radiation is so bizarre no I believe ya…

NOTE: I found this... dialogue, more or less... on the net sometime between November 1 and February 1. It's so offbeat that I finally decided to put it back on the net, after some editing.

one man's life in a peanut shell

nothing to say. many things to do.

i’ll start now…

time passes...things done...

well, i'm rich!

and i have a family!

Septober

... wasn't a month or time of year but more like a style of weather.

Because it was after Labor Day, the temperatures were warm enough but not hot and humid. And because it was before Halloween, the temperatures were not cool to chilly.

Also, the skies were bright and sunny but not blinding enough for sunglasses. And often, a few clouds were in the sky.

A couple of Saturdays earlier this month -- one was yesterday, the other I forgot offhand now -- were like that: The perfect weather for a great day of college football.

The Story of Oh ... My God ...

One Saturday afternoon, Charles was browsing through his favorite used book store. 

He had come to its erotic books section, looked at a shelf just below his eye level, and saw a copy of The Story of O.

He picked up it and was going to browse through it because he thought he might buy it.

But on the inside of the front cover he saw the name of his aunt ... his mother's sister ... the one who was ... as his family put it ... "adventurous."

He found that disturbing.

Then he inhaled deeply.

The book had a faint smell of pussy.

He found that VERY disturbing, put the book back in the shelves, and immediately left the bookstore.

He was one of those people who thought knowledge about the sex lives of his family was like knowledge about how sausages are made: There was NO good reason to know the specifics.

The 'Edgy' Kid

Ah yes. The "edgy" kid.

Is he the one who rides motorcycles and often gets into fights?

Is he the one who makes the girls go "ooooohhh...?"

Or is he the one who stays to himself and captures/tortures small rodents?

Is he the one who makes the girls go "ewwwww...?"

Both wear black, often brood, smoke cigarettes, and have problems with authority.

Say Cheese

i'm browsing through thousands of single slices of cheese.

to be exact, 2350 of them.

of that number, 560 are swiss. the rest are american.

i'm putting them in chronological order: which ones to eat first tomorrow afternoon and which ones to eat every day after that until two months from next thursday.

thanks for your offer to help me but i don't want it now. counting the cheese slices and putting them in order relieves my mind of my sorrow at the mediocrity and mendacity of everyday life.

Jumping

Jumping from bridges into rivers or lakes or bays or other bodies of water ...

Jumping to conclusions, often wrong, when you don't have all the information you need to make the correct decision, or much of that information is wrong.

Jumping out of a plane? Make sure you're wearing a parachute.

Jumping for joy? What a cliche. Celebrate like an adult. Please.

Jumping jack? The exercise? The picture above is poor form for it.

Jumping beans? From Mexico. And they do exist. Please clink the link here if you want more information.

The Transmission

When the radio astro-physicists of the world heard the transmission, they were surprised and puzzled.

It went like this:

P'ssssss-up ... if tee ... so thirty ... then thirtythree ... so eighty ... then eightyeight ... nnnnn ... mmmmm ...

Then it changed into static for about 35 seconds when it repeated itself.

This went on for about three days ... more exactly, 68 hours, 48 minutes and 12 seconds ... before it stopped.

His Father's Hat

He got up from the chair and looked for his father's old hat.

He found it in the closet in the same room. He took it and sat back down in the chair.

His uncle, his mother's brother, had kept it and had given it to him a month ago.

He held it in his hands and thought:

I've never known my father in all my years. But thanks to the Internet, I've found him now. And I'll be meeting him in a few days.

Thank you, Internet, for finally accomplishing something for me.

Pi/e Time

Locke woke up three nights in a row.

Every time, he looked at the digital clock next to his bed and saw these numerals, big and glowing red:

3:14

On the third night, he thought:

It's pi time...wonder why i didn't notice that before...I was gonna go to the kitchen and get a piece of pie...but i remembered i don't have any here...

Semper Fi Suicide

Dave wanted to kill myself in the worst way. And that was in more ways than one.

Once, he shot himself in the chest. When he survived that, the medical people called it a miracle.

He also stabbed himself several times. He lost a dangerous amount of blood but lived.

He also slit his throat and was declared dead. But when he was in the morgue he woke up.

Then Dave decided to join the U.S. Marine Corps. He had an idea on how to make a successful suicide attempt.

He would wait until he was deployed overseas. There, in either Iraq or Afghanistan, he would be killed by a car bomb while he was trying to save some of his fellow Marines.

If things happened that way, his family would get benefits and his younger brother could get a scholarship to college. He's also be called a hero for his actions, which would make everyone happy.

Lack Of Education

He was a business major in college. He received a bachelor's degree in science in the field of marketing -- that is, sales.

Because of the requirements for his major, he never took many humanities classes, like art and literature. Therefore, he didn't know that profit was a sure sign of quality.

Worse, because of the requirements for his major, he never took any philosophy. Therefore, he didn't know that profit was a sure sign of morality.

Some Takes On Ayn Rand

I wrote of libertarians in a post last Wednesday. If you'd like to read it, please click here or feel free to scroll down to it.

The post caused me to think about Ayn Rand, their unholy combination of patron saint and blessed mother. Then I also remembered I had a few things about her that I had collected from the internet.

I post here for your entertainment or enlightenment.

The first is a graphic:

(Please click to increase size)

Then there are these three vignettes:

How He Reads Ayn Rand
I read half a page of one of her books and think:

HOLY FUCK! I HATE YOU AYN RAND! RAAAAAAAAAGE! RAGE! RAGE! RAGE! RAAAAAAAAAGE!

I throw the book across the room.

I pick up the book about a half hour later. I read another half a page and think:

THIS BITCH HAS TO BE BULLSHITTING EVERYBODY! FFFFFUUUUUHKK YOOOOO BITCH!

I throw the book across the room.

I repeat this until the book is completely read.

The exception is Anthem, because it's easy enough to enjoy as a decent story and you can look past the screamingly blatant hurr-durr-dumb-commies undertones in it.
(From the infamous forum/chat board 4chan.)

Ayn Rand Back In The Day
Her diaries from that time (the 1920s), when she worked as a receptionist and an extra in Hollywood movies, lay out the Nietzschian mentality that underlies all her later writings. The local newspapers were filled for months with stories about William Hickman, a serial killer who kidnapped Marian Parker, a 12-year-old girl, from her junior high school. He raped and killed her, then dismembered her body. He sent parts of it along with letters of mockery to the police. Rand wrote long stretches of prose in praise of him; she said he represented 'the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. (He is) a man who really stands alone in action and in soul. Other people do not exist for him and he does not see why they should.' She called him 'a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy,' shimmering with 'immense, explicit egotism.' Rand had only one regret: 'A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy was not strong enough.'
(From Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/)

Two Novels
There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year old's life. They are The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes. That often leads to an emotionally stunted and socially crippled adulthood where the readers of the novel are unable to deal with the real world.

The other novel, of course, involves orcs.
(Site of origin not noted. My error.)

Fall Was Passing

With one month down and two more to go for the fall season, I present this to you. It's an excerpt of a novel I wrote 15-20 years ago. Most of its pages have been recycled, but this one I kept.

"He" is the protagonist of the novel. It was based somewhat on my life:

Fall was passing through time and was about to leave. The leaves turned brown, orange, red, or any combination of those colors before they fell. The cornstalks turned bone white before the farmers plowed them back into the ground. Coolness came with the evening and stayed until the morning, often leaving a dust of frost for the sunlight to brush away.

Some days, the sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky, illuminating everything without the harshness and heat of the summer. 'Then, usually between 5:30 and 6 p.m., it was gone.

As the weather got colder, the world prepared for winter's rest. Drowsiness came with Thanksgiving and sleep came with the first snow that stuck to the ground more than two days.

Although it already was November, he wasn't ready to admit until then, when he thought of it, that fall's reign was over and it was near the start of winter's reign, which wouldn't be dethroned until St. Patrick's Day at the earliest.

He sighed when he remembered that he always hated to remind himself of that.

The Biggest

Dallas Hughes remembered, with a lot a pleasure, the old saw based on a verse in Psalm 23:

Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no Evil, because I am the biggest Son of a Bitch in the Valley.

By the time he was a teenager, he stood somewhere between 6 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 5 inches. He weighed between 240 to 260 pounds. So he truly was the biggest son of a bitch in the high school, if not the valley.

Third And Long, Fear And Money

Nicks was born at Third and Long-- literally.

His family's house was at the corner of Third and Long streets on the east side of town. It used to be called "the other side of the tracks" when the railroads ran through town.

He was not born among the poorest of the poor, but he knew his family didn't have a lot of money. So he decided to get rich.

Nicks became rich not because he desired or loved the carrot of wealth, but because he was afraid of the stick of poverty.

After he became rich, his outlook was the same. He feared different things: Thieves, con artists, and taxation.

No Freshness

To some, the world seemed brand new as they woke every day.

It wasn't so for Jonn. He suffered from insomnia. He would wake up in the middle of the night and stay away for at least two hours, if not more, before he went back to sleep.

He never got a solid block of sleep that lasted, at the least, for six hours.

Harold In The Crevice

Harold looked out from the crevice and thought:

What I need to do is get out of this crevice -- no light, too damp, no room to move -- and get out into the world. But I gotta watch out for the sunlight. It might be too bright for my eyes. They might've become too adjusted to this dark.

He moved outward but suddenly stopped. The light was too bright.

He closed his eyes in a wincing expression, as if he had been hit.

Then he lowered his head and opened his eyes to let his sight adjust to the brightness.

He went from there.

Two Types Of Boys

I once dreamed this.

I saw a young man straddling the roof of a house. His legs swung back and forth as he sang at the top of his voice, "I am the world's forgotten boy ... " over and over.

Even though it was a lament, I thought the young man must've felt some sort of satisfaction as he sang it.

Then I looked closer. The forgotten boy me at one time in his past -- too many times to count and too many times that I'd like to remember.

Back then, the contents of my mind and soul were under extreme pressure and might have exploded strongly if I hadn't kept them to himself. Now, I was releasing them.

After I woke up, I could not remember anything else.

While The World's Forgotten Boy role is attractive, so is The Little Boy Lost. He's passive and inactive because any action won't help him; more likely, it'll hurt him.

It's a part of me, but I don't know the best way to use it, if I use it at all, instead of letting it dominate me or totally repressing it. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

ADDENUM: The phrase "the world's forgotten boy" comes from a Stooges song. The line after it is: The one who searches and destroy.

But right after that, the world's forgotten boy sings: Honey gotta help me please/Somebody's gotta save my soul.

So, I must be aware of that.

Something About The Bookish Ladies

There was something about the bookish ladies; they weren't comfortable with their bodies. They were definitely not alive below the waist.

But X knew of some skinny women who had a certain sexual style that they emitted like perfume. They weren't juicily sexy, with breasts and hips that any straight man would notice. Their style came from a true comfort with the flesh and its desires in general and their bodies specifically.