So I am updating again! Hooray! Right now I'm in the process of finishing the lyrics on a couple of songs. I'm also working a song parody project, and I'm trying to finish up a fan-fiction serial I've been writing since earlier this year. (Yes, I do write fan-fiction. At the risk of sounding like an even bigger nerd, it's World of Warcraft fan-fiction. Most of it belongs squarely in the humor section.)
Anyway, I've started to link to blogs and Twitter feeds that I read fairly often. Some of them are written by people I know, some are not.
Should I mention now that I have acquired a boyfriend? Perhaps so--this is a personal blog after all. He's amazing, and you can read his random thoughts about life and musings on chess at http://www.liquideggproduct.com/.
And now, I have an old story for you that I wrote a few years back. It was published in one journal or another. It's to tide you over until I have new writing for you. Or recordings. Something!
Jack's Giant Trip
OK, OK, I said you wouldn’t believe me and you totally won’t but here it is anyway: you know I’m a laidback sort of guy, you know, like I watch TV and I get a little high and I don’t sweat nothing but my Ma, you know, she is kinda what they call high-strung. Anyway, one day last month she got all bent out of shape about me not working and how I ain’t 18 no more and she can’t collect as much in food stamps as she used to ‘cause of it so she tells me to go pawn the car title so we can get like some bread and milk or something. So I don’t want to because like, who drives that car anyway, her or me? because it’s hard to pick up fine ladies on the bus—shut up, I do pick up fine ladies sometimes--but she gets all bitchy so I say Fine! I’ll take the stupid car! and then I’m driving to the title place but before I get there I see this dude and he totally looks like he is dealing if you know what I mean, gold teeth and chains and all that. So I stop to see what he’s selling and he asks me where am I going and I tell him. He says, Naw man, don’t pawn it, I got something I’ll trade for it and I say What? and he says Magic beans.
Now at first I thought he was talking about some new way of packaging coke and I say Naw dude, I don’t do the hard shit but he says It’s not ‘hard shit’ son, and he hands me this bottle with what I consider to be usual-looking beans. I don’t know why but I said It’s a deal and I walked all the way back to my apartment in a damn fine mood.
Anyway, Ma got real pissed about the car and basically woulda kicked me out except I didn’t have no place to go so she just said she was going out which like basically means ‘I’m going to go get stinking drunk and come back in at dawn singing and crying so loud it wakes you up.’ So I had to get my own dinner (Mac-and-cheese in the hi-youse!) and then I just looked and looked at those bean things like they’d do tricks or something but they didn’t. I couldn’t remember if the dude had said to like, take a few at a time or plant them, and to be honest I don’t remember which I did either but what happened, and this is killer, man, was that I looked out the window and there was this totally enormous vine and I got all excited and decided to climb it (like remember that time on shrooms when we put on our pants backward and walked into McDonald’s? good times—and no, these weren’t shrooms they were beans were you even listening?!)
So I’m climbing this plant or vine or whatever and I’m starting to realize that I’m totally higher than my building in more ways than one and before I know it, I’m looking down at my roof like whoooooaaaaa…
I don’t know how long I climbed, it could’ve been minutes or even days but eventually the vine poked through some clouds and let me tell you, clouds aren’t all fluffy they’re hard like peanut brittle and crunch when you walk on them. You do too know what peanut brittle is, quit being an ass. Anyway, I go walking along these clouds and then I come to this ginormous I mean like REALLY BIG house, like probably bigger than the President’s, and I knock on it and this lady answers it and she’s like, What are you doing here? but I can’t say nothing because she is so huge like twenty feet tall or something so then she’s like, Come in and get some food and won’t even try to tell you how good it was because it was just that good, and plus I totally had the munchies, man. And then she let me look around the place and let me tell you, they had some cool shit—they had this like, early model Les Paul, and this huge pile of money, and a really sweet ’68 Camaro out the back and I asked the huge lady about them but she said they were her husband’s and that’s all. She didn’t really talk a whole lot or anything but man when her husband came home she got quick and put me in a cupboard and I was like, Why? and she was like, Because my husband eats people and I was like, Whoa, she’s totally a crackhead but you know, she was telling the truth because this guy even bigger than her (and scary I nearly wet my pants) with this beard that looked like birds built their houses in it or something came in and said, Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Then I got really scared, because my last name is British you know but how did he know?! but his wife managed to convince him it was the deer she was cooking that he smelled and I personally think it is totally gross that people eat Bambi. And then he said something about grinding my bones to make bread and I was really trippin’ out because oh my God I am totally stuck in like an oversized Hannibal Lecter’s cupboard and I cannot get out and what am I going to do? but his wife—who totally deserves someone better because she really wasn’t all that bad-looking for a giant lady—finally got him to calm down and stop talking about whole-human bread.
Anyway, the big dude ate his dinner and then he told the guitar to play for him and it played all by itself—no, I am totally telling the truth—and this golden girl, like a fairy or some shit, came down out of nowhere and sang to him, and it sounded kinda like Led Zeppelin when they did that song about the Battle of Evermore or whatever—yeah, Frodo lives!—but anyway, the golden girl was kinda hot ‘cause she looked like that gold chick from the Bond movie. I kept wanting them to do ‘Stairway’ but they never did and eventually the giant guy got tired and went off to bed and I snuck out of the cupboard and started sweet-talking the chick, and she told me her name, which was weird but it was pretty when she said it, and she was willing to help me. So there was no way I could take everything I wanted but I took the bags of money even though they were like the heaviest things I’ve ever picked up and she helped me carry them all the way to the vine. I didn’t know how much money there was in there and I figured I was going to have to do something like launder it even though I’m not really sure why you’d put money through a washing machine but anyways I asked her to kiss me and she smiled but wouldn’t do it. I hate it when girls are teases like that, it’s not like I asked her to play doctor with me or something—you know, playing doctor, like little kids do so they can look at each other’s…I don’t care if you think that’s gross! Shut up and lemme tell my story!
Anyway, I climbed down the vine real slowly with these huge bags of money and it was tough going because I’m afraid of heights, because remember when we went out to the lake that time I wouldn’t dive off the cliff, even after a joint to calm me down and everyone was laughing at me? well I managed this time but it was like totally scary and I felt really brave and shit when I got back to the bottom. I stowed the bags of money under my bed so Ma wouldn’t be able to see them because I wasn’t sure yet if I wanted to spend them on the good shit or give some of them to her. I just shoved them back as far as they would go and covered them up with pizza boxes and stuff. I noticed by the clock that hardly like an hour had passed, even though it felt like I’d spent the whole night in that giant’s place, so I just went to bed and fell asleep but of course Ma woke me up at friggin’ five-thirty-in-the-damn-morning with her damn singing—that woman needs like, lessons—so I decided I would give her some of the money to at least get her to quit doing that but of course she had to totally ruin it at first because she accused me of stealing it! and I guess technically I did but I wasn’t really sure that taking shit from a mean giant that eats people was necessarily a sin or whatever but after awhile since I kept denying it and stuff, she accepted that I had actually been repaid by all those stoner friends and see that was the cool thing—in the giant’s house the bag had been full of silver and gold that looked like pirate’s treasure on the Saturday morning cartoons or something, but when I got it back to my house it was like our money—bills and coins and shit. Anyway, there was several thousand dollars in there, and come to think of it you still owe me probably about 500 and that’s not counting interest—so we were able to buy food for awhile but I didn’t really want to get a job still, so the money ran out and Mom started going out all night again.
So I decided I would take—or plant, whatever I did—some more beans, and go back up to the giant’s house because godDAMN I was tired of hearing “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” at the crack of dawn so about two months after my first adventure I found myself on top of peanut-brittle clouds again but it didn’t occur to me that the giants might be mad about my stealing and stuff because when the giant lady came to the front door after I knocked she was like, The last time I took in a hungry little boy my husband’s money went missing the very same night, and I go, But I’m really starving and I couldn’t have been that boy, so she let me in, which goes to show you that giants are really totally stupid and she asked me what I wanted to eat and I go Salad, because the last time I was there and stole the money I had beef stew and she might remember that. Plus remembering that night I was not totally sure what was in that beef stew and the idea of eating it again when it might contain like babies or something made me wanna hurl—and yeah, Soylent Green is totally people man, and it’s a real government conspiracy for if the U.S. ever gets overpopulated. But anyway even though she muttered about a growing boy needing meat, she made a salad for me and gave me a loaf of bread to help fill me up, and let me tell you it was just as good as it had been the last time but then we heard her husband coming along, boom-boom, boom-boom, and she stuck me in the cupboard again and I peeked out and I swear to God the giant really did know I was there, because he went like this again, Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman—but the giant lady cut him off and was like, remember the last time you thought you smelled a human in here you were actually smelling a deer? Your sense of smell is not what it used to be, dear, and the giant scratched his head and looked totally confused but she’s like, It’s probably the beef roast, and the giant goes, I wish it were a man roast, and he sounded so pitiful that she patted him on the head. And then he ate his dinner and I thought he’d never get up because the beef roast was a whole cow and doesn’t he know children are starving in Ethiopia?! but finally he was done and like before he got the golden girl and the guitar to play him some music and the more I listened, the more I kinda felt something for that girl because she was so pretty and after the giant had gone to bed, I charmed her again—you know me, I’m a ladies’ man, no time to talk—but she was so helpful and I asked her how come she was in the giant’s house and he didn’t eat her but she told me she wasn’t all human, she was a fairy or something and I go, Where are your wings? and she smiled and said not all fairies have wings and that totally blew my mind because you KNOW everyone says fairies all have wings.
I told her I wanted the guitar because I figured I could pawn it and she got upset because she knew the giant would be really mean to everyone if someone stole his guitar but she agreed to help me if and only if I would come back and rescue her as soon as I could but if I didn’t promise she was going to go wake the giant up right then. So what could I do? I promised her and she and I carried the guitar to where the vine broke through the clouds and I strapped it on my back and told her bye and came back down the vine. I put the guitar under my bed and fell asleep, and I swear I could hear it playing Led Zeppelin all through the night and in my dreams and shit and even though I know Ma came in drunk that time too she never even woke me up. But when I looked at the guitar the next day and realized I had a genuine 60s Les Paul I didn’t really wanna pawn it off because you know they only give you like one-fourth of what the thing is worth and while I sat there looking at it I remembered that I’d promised the golden girl to rescue her and like I said I didn’t know if it was real or not like maybe these beans were really PCP, I dunno, but it all felt so real at the time—yeah I know you know what I mean, man—so after Ma went out that night I planted—or took, whatever it was—the last of the beans.
The climb seemed totally more difficult this time and it was like hard to hang on and I was sure I was going to fall when all of a sudden I reached the top and made my way to the giant’s house. It seemed darker that it had ever been up there, like the whole world was angry about something, and the giant lady wasn’t terribly friendly when she first opened the door, but I made my voice sound different and put on that silly Dick Van Dyke accent from Mary Poppins because it’s the only one I can do, and she even laughed and was like, I once knew a few boys with accent, and I go, Well what happened to them? and she was like, My husband ate them, all absent-minded like. And this time I asked if I could just have ice cream for dinner, because I remembered that the giant said he grinded bones for bread and the thought made me feel really nauseated and I nearly ralphed right there but the giant lady gave me ice cream though she fussed the entire time like she was my Ma or something and she put me away in the cupboard when her husband came in, and he started up with that Fe fi fo fum stuff and she was like Dear, I’m starting to worry about you since you keep smelling humans that aren’t here but he was really mad and went, Like hell there aren’t! Someone took my money and my instrument and if you’re so incompetent that you can’t catch a human thief maybe I should take you to divorce court! and the giant lady started to cry and I felt so bad for her especially when he smacked her hard in the face to make her shut up, because really she was never anything but totally nice to me but I had only promised to rescue the golden girl. And of course the giant ate his meal (mutton whatever the hell that is) like a giant fuckin’ pig, worse than anyone with the munchies ever, and then he made the golden girl sing all alone since he didn’t have the guitar no more, and she was obviously terrified and I got angrier and angrier so when the giant and his wife went to bed, I didn’t waste no time talking, I just took the golden girl with me and told her to be absolutely totally quiet until we got back to my apartment but then I thought of the Camaro and how it would make our escape quicker because the walk from the giant’s house back to the vine was a pretty good distance so I hot-wired the car (you can too hotwire a Camaro, I’ve done it lots!) but anyway I got it going but we didn’t count on it giving us away though I don’t know why it would want to stay with someone that looked like he never bathed—I mean I don’t bathe like every day but I do it more often than that asshole—well the Camaro started screaming and carrying on and several times I had to wrench the wheel to keep it from turning around and then I saw the giant coming after me and I gunned the thing but he just kept coming like that damn battery bunny or something and then I saw the hole where the vine was and I screamed and the girl screamed and he roared and I plunged down and it felt like Back to the Future, only really scary and I think I may have actually wet my pants this time (I know, it’s totally gross) but I thought I was gonna die but I landed soft but the giant was climbing down the vine. So I ran inside and found a boxcutter—please, my old lady is hardly a terrorist except like at 8 am on Saturday when I would rather be sleeping--and managed to saw through the vine with the giant on it and it crashed with him.
Anyway, that’s how come me and my mom moved out to the suburbs and how I got a totally sweet guitar and that bitchin’ Camaro and I woke up the next morning with this girl in my bed but it couldn’t have been the same chick because she ain’t golden no more. She says that I am probably remembering wrong about that night but I see a glint in her eye that says she might even believe me a little but anyway bro, I’m sorry about not catching up with you guys earlier but I’ve been so busy and stuff. Anyway Ma’s happy for the first time since Dad died because the band Faye (that’s my girl bro) and I started (since I don’t have to actually learn that guitar or anything) just got signed by Columbia Records and it just proves that drugs aren’t bad for you like they say they are.
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