FLOG

My bad pages

FLOGette's in Portland for the weekend, and it's my declared intention to spend the duration honing myself for Monday's Con Law II final.

But tonight at about 10:30 I got fed up with equal protection law. Rather than doing the rational thing -- going out for a cocktail -- I decided to thumb through my "creative" notebooks from high school and college. This, combined with unnecessary guilt over my dearth of posts here over the last few, er, months, means you get a few rather embarrassing glimpses into the mind of me six to seven years ago. Complete, & unedited, exactly as they were scrawled, minus beer spills.

Without further ado,

He took a furtive peek through the blinds before stepping out the back door. Walking hunched, hands in pockets, eyes on the ground, he made his way down his street and turned the corner. He walked several blocks before doubling back, going in a large circle. Finally satisfied, he stepped into the Albertson's by his house and bought a honey jar, some flour, a candy bar, and some Nyquil. Leaving the store, he scurried home, anxious to get well. He stepped in, tossed the food on the kitchen counter, and took the Nyquil to the bathroom.

He put it in the medicine cabinet and rushed out to the kitchen. With frenzied fingers, he tore open the bag of flour, tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and poured. As the flour tumbled out of the bag, some reaching his mouth, some going up his nose, ans most going everywhere else, he collapsed on the floor. He was now well. For a few hours.

A semi-clever conceit clumsily executed! Oh well.

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My uncle took one look and told me it was dangerous. Unstable. You'd be better off with a pony.

But I knew he was being ridiculous. Typical.

Aye chi wa wa this just aint working. Big Pooh Bear heavy.

I opened the sofa and climbed in. Not as nice as before. That pony made an awful mess in here. That's the last time I have Timothy over. What a douchebag. Now that's what I call some hoopla.

"Yeah, you are full os shit. Tastes like saeukraut. FUKOFF.

Everybody blew up. That's when the troubles started.

Can't get enough. That's what I said. Can't even eat that shit anymore, but I have to.

Now that was interesting!

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This next one at least has a title. Tradeoffs, though: no ending.

Blue Lou, Walter & The Wood Chipper

Blue Lou kept yodeling and the barkeep would be damned if he was going to stop him. The yodeling, inaudible at first, had gradually crescendoed until it gripped the barroom in a temporal stranglehold. Blue Lou yodeled about a lot of things that day -- sex, cars, metaphysics, the finer points of a quality marmalade ---- but wool was not one of them.

It wasn't for a lack on Blue Lou's part of things to say about wool. Nay, trends in qualitative analysis of Bulgarian wool exports had been the subject of his doctoral dissertation in economics at the University of West Texas. He had dealt with wool in various respects throughout his educational and professional careers. If anyone so much as made a passing insinuation in conversation of their presumed wealth of wool knowledge, Blue Lou would pounce at them much like a sheep hound might pounce at a lone ewe bent on escape. He wore wool underwear, wool socks, wool pants, wool shirts, and a snug wool hat. Every day. If he sweat like a dog in the summer, he would be quick to point out that the same property of wool that gave him his daily heat stroke like clockwork -- its ability to maintain insulative integrity even when sopping wet -- would keep him snug as a bug in the worst winter rainstorm. His life in the summer months was one of quiet patience, tireless determination, and boundless resistance to suffering.

So he was crazy about wool. But it had nothing to do with yodeling. For wool was his business, and

And there it ends, before it could begin.

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Eugene is a place where streets are called "High" and "Friendly."
Eugene is a place where the weather generally stays uninvolved.
Eugene smells funny.
Eugene is pallid and pale, and definitely has a pallor. It is damp, dank and drippy. It often gets dreary and dark.
Eugene sometimes is drenched by the rain, sometimes dried by the sun. Each event is a mellow one -- perfect for dank nugs.
Eugene is a backwater, no culture exists here that wasn't somewhere else at five years ago. We were even late to join the schoolyard shooting trend.
Eugene is in slow-motion.
Eugene is an ugly anomaly in a beautiful state; drive two hours in any direction and you'll see what I mean.

Heh. I've been saying it since I got here, apparently. I hope the repetition of "Eugene" in that passage helps it show up high on Google searches.

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Here's one I actually remember writing, while I was sitting in the basement of my dorm.

Was Dylan living in a dorm when he wrote Subterranean Homesick Blues? {Er, no -- ed.} What is this place? What respect could they possibly have for us, to stick us in these barren boxes? The floor -- bare concrete, polished to imitate some strange vision of decency. The walls, with their welcoming 3-tone paint spread thinly over cement, climbing to the black-ribbed ceiling, criss-crossed by black pipes hanging below, six large utilitarian flourescent lights tacked up as an afterthought. Worn sofas, browned with use, sit up against the walls as if mistakenly left behind in an abandoned Goodwill warehouse. A table and chairs back in a corner. One on its back on the floor, staring up at the underside of the table. In the center of this . . . room is a tired, chipped up ping-pong table. It's a submarine.

What, the ping-pong table?

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Now, a song of some sort:

Shredded holly and cube steaks
Frying in the pan
Lightbulbs started crashing down
I paniced and I ran

Struggling through the horseradish
I had an awful thought
Everybody's dyin' now
And the worcestershire's been caught

(Chorus)
And though the clowns are in the basement
And Roger's on the cake
I've never found a single use
For the moss dolls that I make

Cabbage concrete leaks on through
The pores within my brain
Whether or not you give a damn
Don't matter, I forgot your name

How much for the bicycles?
She asked me with a grin
I shrugged and grabbed a Kleenex
And wiped it off her chin

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I shouldn't do this more often.

Posted by FLOG at December 3, 2004 11:03 PM