Who needs a drink

He reached in, clenched my few creative thoughts, and yanked them from my head. He proceeded to carry out said thoughts as his own. I didn't even know. He must've taken that too.

Hockey

Great post by thepensblog today.
it involved this quote:

An 82-game season is what is used to weed out jobber hockey fans;
hockey fans who don't realize why the Pens were in a slump,
hockey fans who don't care about the minor-league system,
hockey fans who like hockey 'cause some girl does.

Eat it, new wave crosby lovers.

Slow motion...

The Velvet Underground

Sitting on a rickety wooden folding chair in an empty room with a wooden floor painted thirty years prior a lovely shagbark brown, I stare out into the fields. Nothing is happening but I stare. Tiny veins of ice creep along the corners of the glass, trying desperately to recreate the beauty of a snowflake but instead reminding one of the unfinished web of a house spider. But even so, I stare beyond. I stare at snow covered plains and skeletons of trees which shed their leaves in exchange for blankets of white on their arms. Oddly, the stillness of the scene reminds me of a song by The Velvet Underground and I decide it would make a good soundtrack. In the distance, a few cars attempt to navigate the windswept roads. The entire scenario fades in and out of focus mostly from the steam of my breath hitting the window and maybe a bit from my lack of sleep of late. Days of silence pays off. As the deer grazed unknowingly, a mere 85 yards from my post, I eased open the pane of glass, spilling cold air into the already not-so-warm arena I had been sitting. I lowered my M1903A4 Springfield rifle, my companion, my friend, the only thing I trusted anymore, and peered through the Weaver Model 330C 2.2x telescopic sight and followed the crosshairs directly behind the shoulder of the beast. My lungs stopped filling with air and my finger started to squeeze lightly. I held both my eyes open and soon a crack filled the air. My target dropped instantly. Its two companions began shouting in a language I would never understand and quickly hid behind blockades. I quickly backed away from the frozen window and realized what had actually taken place. I shuffled to relocate to two windows over, taking aim with the nose of my rifle a full yard behind the window frame. I knew I would have to drop the remaining animals before I could collect dogtags.

Today's color, yet again, brought by randominity^TM

Not Quite

Thirty-five miles per hour. Headlights reflected off wet asphalt so I accelerated. Forty-five miles per hour and more headlights reflected off melted snow on the windshield. So I accelerated again. Sixty-five miles per hour, still no one in front of me so I accelerate. "Lights in the Sky" and everything slows down. The road blurs but the car continues. One speaker blown but the music resonates in both ears. Through my body. I notice things along the side of the road I've never noticed before. Seeing everything but the road. Headlights fade out and life reflects on me. I probably still accelerate. Nothing else matters but this. A life beyond the road, beside the road, besides the road. But soon, somehow, I'm in a driveway. I blink some, then quiet the engine and step out of the car.

Another color sponsored by randominity. Is that a word? My word?

reality

way overdue to be...real

nine inch nails
rules.
nuff said.
trent reznor makes me feel good inside.
by-album basis.
not
by-song basis.
there's a difference.
otros ejemplos:
where blood and fire bring rest
dark side of the moon
wish you were here
animals
liberate te ex inferis
in rainbows
etcetcetcetcetcetceteraetceteraetcetera
find the evolution

la mer. the fragile(left). unreal. legend.


today's color brought to you by randominity.

My, my

The general gave the order and almost immediately the brightest of brights filled the horizon. Even behind my opaque glasses I felt sick from the blinding flash of death followed by a deafening boom, seconds later. A horrible cloud rose into the air and a wave of disaster swept across the deserted land. Even several miles away I felt the Evil rise into the sky with pillars of vile fumes and heartless flame. I envisioned the untold terrors that would become reality as a direct result of this detonation. I saw innocent lives consumed and countless other lives ruined. I saw the annihilation of God's given land and the infection of radiation. Nothing would survive. No good can come of this.

---

The general gave the order and almost immediately the brightest of brights filled the horizon. Even behind my opaque glasses I felt fulfillment from the glorious flash of life followed by a victorious boom, seconds later. A beautiful cloud rose into the air and a wave of redemption swept across the empty field. Even several miles away I felt the Greater Good rise into the sky with an obelisk of mist and glowing embers. I envisioned the parades of success that would become reality as a direct result of this detonation. I saw innocent lives saved and countless others relieved. I saw the recovery of God's given land and the triumphant return of order. We will survive. Only good can come of this.

in the in the in the hole

Often people ask me what I'm feeling.
Then they have trouble understanding why I have trouble understanding what they want from me.
I think. I think its because feelings aren't words.
They're Intangibles. Colors.
I can see them in my mind, but they're indescribable.
Constantly shifting within their state of being.
Never changing, ever changing.
An indescribable mess of not-words, color and raw emotion.
Maybe that's why I can't describe it.
Or maybe I'm crazy. Maybe feelings are words.
Often people ask me what I'm feeling.
Then they have trouble understanding why I have trouble understanding what they want from me.
I think. I think its because feelings aren't words.
They're Intangibles. Colors.
I can see them in my mind, but they're indescribable.
Constantly shifting within their state of being.
Never changing, ever changing.
An indescribable mess of not-words, color and raw emotion.
Maybe that's why I can't describe it.
Or maybe I'm crazy. Maybe feelings are words.

I wonder if footnotes ever need socks...

It started as a hole in the wall, one quarter of a centimeter wide. The problem was, it was directly in my line of vision.¹ I took the tip of a mechanical pencil² and penetrated the plaster, using the pencil as a lever,³ forcing more plaster from the wall. To my surprise, making the [w]hole bigger simply put more absence⁴ in my view. My only solution was to remove more plaster. I found a small claw hammer⁵ and it clawed itself between plaster and frame.⁶ It wasn't long before I had removed all plaster between my desk⁸ and my dresser⁷. Feeling quite content with my (anti)decorations, I sat down to enjoy a nice cup of absence. It was then that I saw a shadow.⁹ I grabbed my dresser¹⁰ and tossed it to the floor. I gripped the edges of the hole-in-the-wall and peeked my head around the tattered drywall¹¹ corner. Inside, I saw something intriguing, so I stepped in to take a closer look.¹²

---

1. Not directly, but peripherally.
2. (Blue BiC MatiC grip, 0.7mm #2)
3. F₁D₁ = F₂D₂
4. absinthe
5. tucked betwixt a Bible and box of Kleenex^TM
6. Funny story about a frame, once I was at a friend's house, one that I had known for years, and I noticed none of the people in the pictures on his mantle resembled him or any of his family. I'd seen this before, but I decided to ask anyway. "Who are these people? Did you forget to take the display photos out?" He replied suspiciously, "No. That is my family." Closer examination revealed he was right.
7. Desk should be listed first.
8. Dresser should be listed first.
9. A [w]hole.
10. My desk.
11. plaster
12. What I hadn't counted on was the landlord¹³ arriving to repair a hole some idiot apparently punched into the wall.
13. A carpenter by trade.

From The Valley You Can Only Go Up.

but you may stay awhile...

From Wikipedia:

A drabble is an extremely short work of fiction exactly one hundred words in length, although the term is often misused to indicate a short story of fewer than 1000 words. The purpose of the drabble is brevity and to test the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.

The Time Traveller: Unbelievably a Drabble, By Chance

I woke up one friday morning at 7:30am and hit snooze, fully expecting to wake 9 minutes later. I, instead, woke one hour and 45 minutes earlier. Doing the math in my head as I stared at a clock reading 5:45am, I quickly realized what I had done. I leapt from my bed, anxious to tell my friends that I had gained the ability to travel backwards through time. I imagined the press, the fame, the glory, the possibilities. I just needed to harness this new found power. Soon, however, I came to understand that it was now Saturday morning.

Street Lamp

When the sun began to rise, I realized with a terribly alert mind that tomorrow is today and yesterday's tomorrow will have to be postponed until later this evening.

MSNBC

I was watching television one day and I flipped to the channel where the war was being broadcast. I watched in serenity, commenting on the deaths of individual soldiers driving forward across trench and barbed wire. I booed the theatrics of dramatic deaths and cheered the marksmanship of those who hit their targets with accuracy and precision. When bombs went off I became impatient waiting for the smoke to settle. I applauded the arrival of reinforcements for both sides because it meant pushing back the scheduled programming in favor of viewing the conclusion of the battle. Then I realized that the television was a window, and the battlefield, my front yard.

Shut Up, I'm Tired

My home is set up so that directly across the short hallway outside my door which leads down the stairs, an open door peeks into an empty room, perpetually dark and used primarily for storage. Ordinarily, I'll exit my bedroom, glance into the oversized storage closet and upon seeing the normal stillness, turn my attention to the stairs and make my descent. This day was different. My timely glance caught a flash of movement, ducking from view just as my eyes focused in the dark. Curiosity perked, I cautiously crossed the hall to the cracked door at the rarely traversed far side. I nudged my hand against the door, intending on a slow and stealthy breach but instead sounding the telling trumpets of creaking hinges. Wincing at the sudden noise, I peeked around the door frame into the abysmal room. The room was the largest in the house, why hadn't I used this as my bedroom and the other for storage? In any case, the room was still. Turning to leave, I heard the crash of an overturned packing crate filled with old Rolling Stone magazines. Jerking my head back into the room I saw the culprit. Rather, I saw the back end of the culprit. Rushing over, I grabbed the perpetrator by the ankle, lifting it high into the air, in front of my face. What I held was a short creature, who stood no more than knee high, with skinny appendages and knobby knees and elbows. His (and I reluctantly admit that I do in fact know for certain it was a he) ribs shown clearly and his belly was indented greatly. His faced resembled that of a reptile but with a more pronounced beak with sharp features. His skin was a burnt crimson shade and almost crisp to the touch. Two tiny horns protruded from his cranium and small beady eyes stared at me in contempt. As I held the demon upside down by the ankle, he crossed his arms and turned his head away in disgust.
Not being a man explicitly trained in the exorcism of demons, I resorted to a good old-fashioned tongue lashing.
"What are you doing here demon?!" I shouted.
-I came here-
"And don't you give me that shifty language I know you use," I interrupted.
-I'm here for your soul.
"MY SOUL?! Demon you are in the wrong place for soul searching."
-My name is-
"I don't care for your name demon, I'll call you as I please. As I was saying. My soul is not for sale."
-My business is not in trade, sir, but in collection. Your soul has already been purchased.
"Impossible, demon, a soul can only be purchased from its owner and as I had never sold it in the first place, I can assure you, the ownership is still my own."
-If you would just free me, I can present you with the contract to be carried out.
Now being a man of law, the demon's proposition rang with an idea in my own mind. I began speaking more softly to the creature of Hell.
"Show me the contract now, demon, and I'll ensure it of its authenticity, for as you may know, I am an authorized notary."
-If you free me-
"Show me the contract, demon, and I will release you to carry out your duty."
The demon pointed to the wall behind me and I turned, and in a flash of fire and smoke, a written contract appeared pinned to the wall. Holding the demon behind my back, I drew a pen and scribbled across the bottom of the smoldering paper.
"Uh huh, yep, indeed," I mumbled to myself, though mostly in theatrics for the benefit of the demon. "Alright, I suppose you are correct, demon. I apologize for my reluctance."
Dropping the demon to the floor, he scurried in front of me, quickly snatching the parchment from the wall.
-Now then, if you'll kindly-
"Just one moment demon, I just realized a flaw in your protocol," I snapped back, "if you'll please refer to Part III of the very contract in your hand under Clause IV, part ii, paragraph one, you'll see that this contract is nullified in the oddly specific event that the collectee is apprehended by the left ankle in an act of clumsiness on his own part. According to paragraph two, upon release of said collectee, the collected is pronounced free and the collectee and all associated are barred from further contact with the party freed without question."
The demon uttered a few sounds of disbelief and traced the contract with his finger several times over. As he did so, thin lines of smoke began rising from his joints.
-Impossible he said. As he read on, dust and ash began falling from his body. The ash collected in a pile on the floor as the demon disintegrated in front of my eyes. Soon, the contract caught fire and burned into ash, along with the demon.
Pleased, I collected a broom and dustpan, swept up the remaining ash, and tossed it from my window. I went back to my room, shut the door, and went to sleep.

A Review? Not Yet

Only Revolutions.

Also:
House of Leaves.

Stairs 2 then? Idk

My feet never had a firm grip with the time dirtied floor of the Landing. My second foot never left the top step, in fact. As soon as that first foot hit the tiles and my heart was squeezed and adrenaline shot through my veins, I was gone. But I wasn't. In the time it took for me to lift my foot from that Landing, the mere milliseconds between sole contacting ceramic and lifting in gut-wrenching fear, days had passed. Immediately, my vision tunneled and I witnessed the death of a thousand deaths. Not just witnessed. Experienced. I felt my own death. I felt my soul being wrenched from my body and I promise you, it isn't the vision you see in cartoons. There is no soft ascension of the spirit from a still body. No, death is much more violent. At least a dozen demons tore my spirit from me, reaching into my chest and clawing open my mouth, holding my body to the ground, motionless. My soul wasn't motionless. It grasped and begged for life, tears streaming from my ghastly cheeks. As I was pulled from my body, I looked upon my own lifeless face, one not of comfort and peace, but the face of someone in the middle of a horrible nightmare yet unable to wake up. I felt as if I was the one being pulled from my body, yet I could feel it. I felt my very essence being sliced apart from my physical being. Spirit, torn from tendons; everything in my ethereal being trying desperately to hold on to what is real, but unable. The demons ripped me from the world I knew, pulling me through tile and concrete, thirty floors below and thousands of floors below that. Every foot I was pulled, I experienced more. I felt the deaths of my family, of my friends. I felt the deaths of people I hadn't known, but had seen, on streets, in buildings. At work, in school, on television or heard on radios. I didn't just witness their deaths, though I did. I watched them die, each of them horrible, HORRIBLE deaths, but I also felt it. I felt it in body, as if their deaths had happened to me, and I felt it as I would as someone close. I felt their separation and the knowledge of the impossibility of their return. Even those I hadn't known I felt as if I had known them all my life, as if they were family. I felt all these deaths at once, including my own. The death of a thousand deaths means. Just. That. Each foot I was dragged below, I fell victim to another death. Each inch. Each millimeter. Tortures were bestowed upon me in terms of witness and victim. All at once. Omnipresence inflicted solely on presences of torture and failure to exist. And, oh, how I felt the failure to exist. Common knowledge presents the fact that the failure to exist is the failure to feel, but I assure you otherwise. The failure to exist is without a doubt beyond anything you have ever experienced and I promise you it is not something you wish to. I felt each death separately and on its own and I felt them all together as well. Time stood no resistance. If one thing in life will rule over time, it is death and it is this single fact that I learned of my experience. I felt Hell. I felt feelings beyond Hell. In Hell you can only experience the pain of your own existence. I, on the other hand, felt the Hellish experiences of thousands. All at once. One at a time. Time stood idly by as I was born witness to and fell victim to the tortures of the most anti-divine creatures ever birthed into mankind. I watched as people undeserving were swallowed in darkness. I heard the screams of the innocents. Terrible screams. Helpless, godless, unanswered screams of banshees. What had I done to deserve this? I wondered.
With less detail, my foot peeled itself from cold clay and fled from that awful place. I fell down two flights of steel fire escape stairs on my way down, cracking a rib and catching my left ring finger on a rail, twisting it until it touched the back of my wrist. Still I fled. I reached the third floor and failed to swing the swingaway ladder, opting to jump instead. This is how I fractured my jaw, as the impact of thirty feet of gravity brought my knees to my chin. The doctors called me lucky. I call myself damned. Now I only lie awake at night, wide eyed in the black, heart pounding and hands gripping sheets, wondering when the darkness will be hiding the tortures promised me. Contemplating the day when those dozen demons grasp my motionless body and tear me from myself with the most horrific pain that I can only long for because it is pleasurable when compared to the terrible sensations I will feel mere moments later. As I said, my family feels it too. This evil, this physical black, this contagious cancer, infected me, the volunteer, and has spread its vicious tentacles to those around me. They don't know why. Their shrinks can't explain the conditions but I can. But I can't. How do I tell them that they experience dread in every moment because of me? Their paranoia and depression, phobias and illness. How can one experience be so utterly horrific that it affects my closest? I pray you heed this warning. Do NOT be curious. Do NOT seek The Hotel. Do NOT seek the Landing. I admit my lack of ability to accurately portray the horror of horrors. DO NOT take my inability in vocabulary and literacy as an invitation to a makeshift thrill ride. I ask you for your own safety and sanity. Mine is forfeited. I sacrifice my own for you. For your sake, forget this ever happened. Martyrdom is my future. My today.

Stairs, I Guess

You haven't truly seen horror until you've seen the Landing. And not many people have seen it. Well...not many people discuss it in open forum. The only cases of which I've ever seen haven't resulted in public discussion but upon mention, result in a horrified expression and a quick whisper 'Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Don't.' or something along the lines. Actually...quite often that exact expression. Not many have written on the subject either, but I assure you, there's a reason I'm not writing aloud.
The place is an ordinary place, though oddly enormous for its location, placed conspicuously around the faded borders of the midwest and the northeast. The Hotel is thirty-two stories high in a town with a population of less than three thousand. It finds its business though. Granted, the top twenty-two stories have been closed off. All stairwells are sealed with steel bars and the elevator buttons above floor ten are riveted from view with a brass plate over them. Luckily, for lore's sake, there is an alternative method for thrill seekers and dares. The fire escape which has a swingaway ladder on a platform at the third floor can be reached by laddering yourself to the platform and then walking the rest of the way. Although the top floors are banished quite efficiently from wandering eye, state mandates a healthy fire escape from every floor. God forbid a lone soul be trapped on the 31st floor of a building that posts very clearly that anything above floor 10 is considered trespassing and subject to the full extent of the law supposing they aren't shot on site as a suspected vandal or robber. All for the sake of the thrill.
After hearing the stories, very few people, even thrill seekers dare to live it themselves. That may give you a measure to the horror elicited by the Landing. Even the greatest ghost stories or horror tales give throngs of macabre fans and self-glorifying nobodies the desire to say they've "been there." But there is a significant amount of nobody that even says the words "I want to go," in any form of the phrase after listening to the tales behind the Landing. There are an incredibly select few, of course, who refuse to heed warnings, and I mean incredibly select. Nine times out of ten, (and I have not met even nine people who have been to the Landing, in nearly three years of research) the Horrified admit to not having been explained the terror thoroughly enough, plagued by vague images and ghost stories of a small patch of tile sitting between the thirtieth and thirty-first floor of a large Pennsylvania hotel in a small Pennsylvania town.
That's how I was explained it. That's how I decided to attend. That's how I never slept again. This is not a ghost story. If only the Landing could be explained by spirits of the dead. That would settle in my stomach. In my mind. In my eyes every night as I lie awake in terror of the sole possibility of returning to the Landing. Or of the possibility of its cancer spreading to other parts of The Hotel. Or beyond.
No, ghosts can not explain it. Nor demons or goblins or Halloween props. No, the Landing is explained only by an unmatched evil, concentrated onto a twenty or so square foot patch of concrete and tile, forever sealed from the world, forgotten. An evil which can not be contained, no matter how many steel bolts you lock on doors and brass plates you put on elevators. And that is what scares me the most. I only remember climbing up the fire escape, reaching the thirtieth floor at around 12:15. Noonish, not midnight. I was sliding back down the escape at roughly 12:16. My watch told me it was seconds but God, I felt like it had been days. As my rubber sole hit the decorated tile floor of the Landing I felt an awful squeeze on my heart. I could feel my adrenal glands pump an unreal amount of adrenaline into my blood stream telling my body "Don't you dare fight. This is flight." I obeyed. But not before experiencing the absolute horror that haunts me today. A horror so vile, it even haunts my family, though they can't explain their dread, and I can't bring myself to tell them. It permeates my life and I can't rid myself of it. I can't imagine myself without it. Normality doesn't equate tolerance, however. And nothing in my life fails to remind me of the evil I saw that day.

Noscents

-Sorry, no more headphones.

-Can't I wait for more?

-Might be awhile.

-I got nothing to do.

-You're funeral...

-Why's that?

-No se.

-Sabes lo que si?

-Now you're just muttering nonsense.

-If only you knew.

-I do know. It's you who only knew if.

-What's that I don't know?

-How much time you've wasted here.

-Who's wastin?

-Standing.

-Landing.

-On what?

-You're business is mine.

-You're mine is my business.

-I'll lend you mine mind for two.

-What'll I do with that?

-Land a mine or two.

-Been there, done that.

-Been who?

-I don't know you.
I told you nothing to see here, hear here.
Go away.

-Nothin to do, go or stay.

-That makes one of you.

-Make my day.

-Don't need to.

-Then I'll be here...

-I'll be away.

-Safe trip, Godspeed.

-Thick skull, eh?

-Now wait here.

-No, you need to wait over there.

-Hearmuffs yet?

-Never again. Leave.

-NUhno.

-I think the corner store just got a shipment.

-You mean the RadioShak?

-At Fifth and Center, yes.

-Don't they run along?

-Good luck. Au revoir. Adios. Ciao.
Sayonara, veiche, auf wiedersehen,
-Aren't you forgetting something?
-Told you once, nothing available.

-I'll be back for more

The man they called The Professional was just that. Though they pronounced it prohf-yess-ion-ahl. To be precise, it was pronounced проф-есс-ион-ал. No one in the business had ever seen him. No one knew him. No one knew his face. No one knew where he lived. No one knew what his voice sounded like. No one had even. Seen. His shadow. But they had all heard of him. And they all feared him.

81 Words

"You have forgotten what is important in life. You have neglected your family, focusing instead on your work and your money. You have chosen a life of greed and power rather than of love and friendship. It is thereby your fate to wander alone for eternity, forever separated by those people whom you took for granted and forever longing for them, without any possession and with hunger and thirst which will never be satisfied. The decision had been yours all along."

Unintended Direction...Again

In the stillness of a thousand books, the printer fires up. I know now why libraries are so quiet. The books consume the sound, the acoustics of the room hopelessly muffled by the bindings and hundreds of thousands of porous pages of pulped timber. The same effect is applied to moisture.
Thus, for every book dropped, every page turned, every chair slid, every key typed, every in-flu-enced cough or sneeze, every rustle of coats and backpacks, every whisper, every too-loud iPod, every barcode beep; for every beverage gulped and every cookie chewed, for every zipper undone, for every zipper redone, every scrap paper crumpled and every pencil thrown; I watch as soundwaves accost the endless shelves, efforting to tip the walls. Dreams of falling towers of flammable brick, ceasing years of silence and chokingly dry air, of ending a tyranny of technique and tuition, favoring instead an empire of euphony, of echo; such dreams are defeated as the rows stand fast against the assault, deadening the attackants and soaking up vibration. I watch constantly as the would-be sounds of seconds become the melody of mere moments in a dictatorship of diction while freequencies dance just outside through countless concrete corridors, uninhibited.

A work in without progress.

People Hurt

I'm realizing more and more
that they always will...

A Study

the rain was small, but frequent. it pattered on the windshield with tiny footprints of splashes, but they were everywhere. bombardment. attack. ambush. no. the assault wasn't hostile. it was calm. it made no sound; the only sound heard was that of the tires wisping across pavement. and the cars buzzing past. on account of our [lack of] speed. mostly due to the tractor trailer in our lead. but the rain isn't letting up. it picks up frequency at the expense of volume. smaller footprints landed across the windshield with even more minuscule spaces between. windshield wipers can't keep up. they are too busy keeping their 4/4 time, though it isn't quite the same tempo as the music blasting. Dogs. by Pink Floyd. the wipers are keeping a good meter, but their tempo is terrible...probably around 10 beats per minute too slow. it makes for terrible synchronicity. and they cant keep up with the footprints. expelled droplets ripple out from beyond the reach of the wiper arms. waltzing gracefully along the constant forty-five mile per hour winds scraping across the glass. dancing in waves. a ballroom of footprints, racing each other to the end of time. taking their time. tires cross yellow. more yellow. such a soft ballet of carelessness, of freedom. so much in fact, i neglect my own duties. the droplets expand in bright white. their dances lit up in the night sky with such radiance, a spotlight. a headlight. this isn't a dance. this is an assault. i close my eyes and rest my head on the pavement.