Visions, the lit mag of NorthWest Arkansas Community College, will be publishing my short story entitled "Smokeless." Naturally, I will post a link when it goes up. For now, I'm just bragging about being published.
This informs everything
This last weekend some friends and I threw a massive party, by which I mean that my friends who own the house in which I rent a room did all the work, and I pretty much just drank a shit ton of booze. I also won an impromptu habanero pepper eating contest, which wasn't even actually a contest, just me eating habanero peppers alongside anyone else willing to do so.
This also means that I have been, shall we say, "passing" an entire GI tract full of habanero peppers, which has led me to the conclusion that the only way to really win a habanero eating contest is to not play.
I'm just really impressed that they made 10 of these
I've spent the last 2 days in varying stages of recovery. Sunday I slept until about 2:30 in the afternoon and then watched angry little misanthropes whine and trash talk on Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior for two hours.
I have a love-hate relationship with this show. It's got cool weapon demos and fun historical re-enactments, which are great, but it's also got the saddest collection of would-be tough guys this side of the internet. It's essentially an hour of hyperactive boy-men playing a game of "I shot you I shot you / No ya didn't no ya didn't" interrupted by pseudo-scientific weapons demos on ballistic gelatin and mannequins. It made for a very lazy Sunday, and resulted in me not getting a lick of work done - you'd almost think I wasn't wholly committed to my job...
Next Week on Deadliest Warrior - Cannibals versus Girl Scouts
So here we are on Monday and I am still basically a gelatinous pile of gooey ick. Despite 36 hours separating the events of Saturday's debauch and Monday's toil, I'm bleary-eyed, sore, and unable to focus. This may have something to do with the two perfectly beer-can sized rings on my head.
Mental note kids, there's a trick to smashing beer cans on your face, and by the time you get drunk enough to smash a beer can on your face, there's a chance that you will forget what that trick is and just wind up smacking yourself in the head with a hard piece of metal.
Which brings me to the point of this post: WOOOOOO!
This kid is doing it right
In the course of Saturday's events, I was referred to as "intense." It wasn't meant to be derogatory, and in fact I took it as a compliment, but it does have its own connotations which can be difficult to work around. Intensity is not always appropriate. It's hard to make small talk. It's hard to care about things that aren't super-awesome. It means that generally, you come across as boorish, ill-mannered, or poorly behaved, not to mention cripplingly self-centered.
And I was thinking yesterday that of all the insulting things someone can say about another person, "well behaved" very nearly tops the list. What a shitty, back-handed insult. Well behaved - that's a compliment for a dog. "He's so well behaved, he doesn't bark or anything!"*
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, however
Life is art - in particular, it's performance art, and like the best performance art it should have a ridiculous title like "Fruit Serenade Number 7 for Two (Prophet of Understanding - Malaysia)" and should involve copulating with raw meat in a diaper made from the American flag. There is only one go-round on this big blue marble, and it's going to end badly for you. When you're time on stage is over, you go into a cold pine box for the rest of forever, or at least until an archaeologist digs you up and laughs at your five primitive fingers and dense cranial mass.
So what do you want them to say about you? That you minded your P's and Q's? That you were obedient and polite? I just can't get behind it.
I think the appeal of warrior culture, and this directly informs The Deadliest Warrior is that nothing compares to the fleet-footed approach of death to let you know you're alive. But I'm here to tell you: you don't need swords and spears to know it's coming. You can see it in the lines on your face and the crook of your knuckles. You can feel it in the aches and pains of every day, and smell it on your own breath.
So what do you do under the oppressive weight of mortality? Punch a clock and wait for retirement? Take up golf so you can suck up to your boss?
No - you make noise. Be a pain in someones ass. Bring joy and torment in equal measure. Anyone can exist - it takes a little more effort to actually live.
Life - it's THAT kind of party
*Speaking of dogs, whoever let their dog "go" in my bedroom? I am displeased.
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