Dolphin Flash

Robert Quincy was an expert marine biologist. He specialized in marine mammals, and worked often with dolphins, porpoises, whales, seals, and otters.

One day, while he was out in the Pacific Ocean doing some research, North Korea's Kim Jong-Il set off a test nuclear explosion near Quincy's research site. The detonation rocked his boat as he was hanging off the deck trying to set up some equipment, and he fell in with a splash.

Quincy was not the kind of man to panic. However, the bits and pieces of neon green glowing particles floating around in the water were a bit worrisome. Must be some kind of nuclear residue, thought Quincy. Vaguely, he wondered if floating in such a radioactive body of water was good for his health, but before he could reflect any further, he saw a dolphin swimming nearby. It circled and circled for a while, then suddenly opened its mouth and swallowed one of the glowing green pieces of debris.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Quincy.

The dolphin suddenly began to shake uncontrollably in the water, splashing its tail up and down. It looked like it was in terrible pain. And then suddenly, with one final massive shudder, it glowed extremely bright green for two seconds and then disappeared from the water.

Quincy was shocked. How could this have happened? Knowing that he would probably be in some serious trouble if he stayed in the water any longer, he quickly clambered out and plopped himself down onto the deck, the physical exhuastion of having treaded water for so long just now hitting him.

Except he didn't land on the deck. He landed on the dolphin. The dolphin had somehow reappeared onto the boat. Quincy figured it had teleported instantaneously. He wished to God that he was back at his lab, where he could analyze this dolphin and figure out exactly what had happened to it after it had eaten that piece of nuclear waste. As suddenly as he thought of this idea, he felt a warm green glow on his skin. His vision disappeared, replaced by a bright white light. I'm dying, thought Quincy. As soon as it had started however, it was over. When he opened his eyes again, he was back at the lab, and so was the dolphin, on his examining table, ready to be studied.

Quincy wasn't one to ponder too excessively about things of supernatural import. When something like this happens to most people, they usually need to spend about a week getting used to the idea that they are superhuman. Quincy was much more mentally prepared for this event, having grown up on comic books. He realized right then and there that he had a super power that he could use to fight evil in the name of good. He named himself Dolphin Flash, protector of aqua marine mammals and their families. So long as there is even one otter who is being hunted for his hide, so long as there is even one dolphin with his nose stuck in those six-ring plastic soda thingies, so long as there is even one person who continues to think incorrectly that whales are fish and not mammals, I'LL BE THERE, he swore to himself. After making a costume, fit with cape and mask, he set to work on saving the dolphin on his lab table. And from then on, Robert Quincy the marine biologist expert was no more.

The oceans and seas of the world were about to come face to face with the era of Dolphin Flash.

[This story is dedicated to Chandan Misra, for his inspiring two words.]

Boredom/Stream Of Consciousness

Steppenwolf was biker rock. She has beautiful eyes. Pink when I turn out the lights. Aerosmith. Dude looks like a lady with big lips and squinty eyes and wild long hair. The elephant man plays the bongo drums like there's no tomorrow. The tribe sings and dances, claps their hands and stomps their feet, uses parallel construction and a rhythmic cadence. You can feel the rhythm in your hips, rocking me baby all night long. The 60's were lovely, weren't they? Does it do natural log? Shut the fuck up, she said. Don't tell me the fuck, he said. What a bitch. This shit has gotta stop. Way to not be a man, buddy. You're going nowhere. I'll live alone, out of a shitty van, selling my heart and my songs for gasoline and alcohol. Sleeping on the flight so you don't have to chat with the guy next to you. It's always some old guy. It's never that hot chick. Always a couple rows up. I hate US Airways. They killed Lucy. Jazz. Stream of consciousness is the jazz music of all writing. Writing is like music. Operatic writing. Rock 'n' roll writing (man). Jazz, cat. You dig? That's all it is. I'm a musician with words. It's all coming out like the flow of air through brass, just toot-toot-tooting it. All night long. Haze of smoke. Just going at it. Punks fought the law. The law won. This is too hard to read. She's the best girl I've never had, and the law won. English, Cinema Studies, Engineering. Six guns. I want to know, even if I don't need to know. Or maybe it's the other way around. When you're just waiting? Waiting for the sun to rise, the bell to ring, the alarm to go off, the door to slam, the window to open, the car to stop, life to end, love to begin, the applause to start, the lights to dim, the curtain to unveil, and the world to start spinning backwards. I'm waiting for my star to shine in the sky, the signal telling me that it's OK for me to go back home--an asteroid, B-12. I belong with my volcanoes. I hate roses. This world is too fake and too much. Cut the EMI. Here is a really long sentence that says nothing, does nothing, communicates nothing, but just goes on and on without end, without purpose, charged by its author to simply continue as long as it can go, to use whatever force is necessary, to insist on its continued unraveling, letter after letter, word after word, line after line, in order to, more or less, take up a whole bunch of space without actually saying a single thing, but to instead masquerade as an actual idea borne from actual thoughts from an intelligent mind created equally under God without discrimination, because discrimination is inherently wrong, since all men are created equal, whether or not you believe in God, which I certainly don't, since God would never allow such a sentence as this to exist, this wholly long, unnecessarily obnoxious sentence full of sound and fury, saying nothing, like a poem empty of words, like a blank page, or a lexicographer's mistake, or a virus that prints gibberish on all the paper you had stored in the paper tray, which is a terrible virus to create since it wastes paper and kills trees, which are beautiful and give the human race oxygen while taking away our carbon dioxide, so that really, when you think about it, how many of your friends would do something so selfless, so beneficial, so essential, and so unrequested without any complaints or dirty looks, but rather with inexplicable and dutiful happiness to just be part of the whole team, which is the kind of attitude the Lakers should have had last year when they were trying to beat that scrappy Detroit Pistons team, although this season ought to be exciting if I only had time to watch all the games, except school is just so busy and I'm always busy, and if this sentence gets so long that I'll still be writing it when the season starts, I'll never be able to do anything, because that's a very distinct possibility, as this sentence continues to just plow through this page unrelentingly, mercilessly, as if the fate of the universe depended on its continued development, as if, if the sentence stopped, so would the world, but in a way, that is a metaphorical truth, because when you read something, you do enter the world of those words, and all of you out there now are trapped in this unending world that is threatening at every minute to end with a small little black dot, a period, the punctuation that would spell the end-all to everything you know about this world, the Armageddon that would mark the finite and absolute end of all life, all death, all love, all hate, all existence, ever, in the history of history, unless this universe of which I am God and Creator were to end up as an existential quandary, like all things truly are, unless everything ended the way they do in this silly contraption we know as reality, indeed, unless everything all came to a sudden, unexpected, abrupt end without the forceful definitive decisiveness of a black little period, but, with complete intentions of grammatical correctness in tow, for it is no good to violate the laws of the very universe you've built in order to destroy it, suggesting that perfection is in what is self-contained and self-perfect, unless indeed it all ended with that eternal enigma, the unsolvable mystery, the real nature of all things, the essence of what we call reality, a question mark? Wow, I'm never doing that again. That was just way too hard. But you see what I mean by jazz, cat? That was a crazy trumpet player just going off on a crazy 10 minute solo in the heat of the song, feeling it, digging it out, sweating it out, as the room sits entranced at their coffee tables, cigarettes held between their fingers, frozen, because good God, the man is going off. How odd that sentences can just continue, to seem to wish to say so much without revealing anything significant, meaningful, worthwhile, or relevant. But let's just forget about it and watch TV. Irony.

Chewing Gum Reports For Duty

Chewing Gum: hey guys, what's up?

Coffee: *sigh* Pondering weighty issues in high-brow culture today, such as the state of modern opera, the medium shift happening in contemporary art, and whether or not neo-impressionism can revitalize the floundering oil-on-canvas genre. *deeper sigh*

Slim Jims: 'Sup, Chew. I'm just tired as shit right now. Long ass day, didn't sleep much. Fuck...

Chewing Gum: well i wore a tie today! it had smiley faces on it! it was fun!

Coffee: *sigh*

Slim Jims: Fuck...

Chapter 3

If the reader was hoping to find out what happened next, too bad. Enough of the episode has been conveyed to fulfill its purpose, which was to provide an illustrative, graphic example of Mr. Thomas Woerth's penchant for completely misreading people and/or situations. Now, the critic might say here that Little Thomas made a mistake that any five-year-old child could have made, but the problem is, when Little Thomas started becoming Big Thomas, these kinds of "mistakes" did not disappear. In fact, they began to occur with increasing regularity, as he came into contact with more and more people. It is this first misunderstanding, however, that proved to be a somewhat pivotal moment in Mr. Thomas Woerth's characterization, because it was from that point forward that he developed the most oddly peculiar speech impediment to ever befall a human being. He could not help speaking with extreme pompousness and verbosity, while at the same time, he completely lacked the requisite eloquence and articulation for his speech to actually make sense. This may not sound like much of a speech impediment at first, but let it be clear that this trait severely impaired Mr. Woerth.

Think of Mr. Woerth's deficiency as the exact opposite of the much more common form of social impairment, especially on college campuses all around the nation: being drunk. Mr. Woerth never consumed a single drop of alcohol in his entire life, and really, his biggest problem was his complete and total self-consciousness and self-awareness. The opposite social impairment, of course, would be being drunk, i.e., being completely self-oblivious/self-indifferent/self-Fuggit-I-don't-give-a-shit-anymore-because-I-am-so-fucking-confused-right-now-bro. This happened almost every other day to Thomas Woerth's very best friend in the entire world, Jim Cluffe.

[WARNING: TONE & STYLE SHIFTS APPROACHING]

As the author, I made Jim Cluffe Thomas Woerth's best friend to act as a foil, creating a dichotomy that more emphatically highlights Woerth's peculiar qualities as a human being, because there's really no other rational reason why they ended up best friends. I controlled their worlds after all, and could make them do whatever I wanted them to do. As Creator, I decided to bring opposites together, because that's just how I was told it works.

Look: Jim Cluffe vomited on Thomas Woerth's shirt one night at a party. Thomas didn't know what to do. He tried apologizing for being in the way of the vomit. Jim vomited again. That was how they became the best of friends. That should be good enough for you.

Influences: Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

It's about youth, but it's also about its disappearance. It's about war, but it's also about how there really is no war. It's about death, but it's also about the innocence of death, or was it the death of innocence? Frankly, I think this book tries to be about too many things all at once in too short a time. It is no A Catcher in the Rye. It's more poignant than that, filled with more genuine emotion. But it's also less focused, and ultimately as a result, becomes less meaningful.

Then again, maybe I only say all this because I went to a public school... bitch.

The Paul Disconnection, cont'd 2

Paul froze. He strained his ears as hard as he could, feeling each little audio sensor in his brain perk up. And then he heard it again, unmistakably. He took one cautious step forward. The sound was coming from an extremely large animal that sounded rather angry.

He kept walking. He passed plants that were 20 feet high. He saw strange flowers he had never seen in his entire life before. They looked tropical. This was supposed to be New Jersey.

Suddenly, the entire forest darkened... except it didn't. Paul thought it was darkened, but in fact it was simply an extremely large shadow that fell over him. He lifted his head straight up into the air and stared right at the angry jowels of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

As he turned to run, the world began to swirl around him again, and turned into flying streaks of paint. All he could think about was getting the hell out of the way of that dinosaur. He ran and ran as hard as he could; he could feel his heart slowly climbing up his chest, constricting his breathing. There was a pain in his knee from the hard thuds he took with his feet on the tightly packed ground. Sweat flew. He tried his best to dodge low-hanging tree branches and leap over toppled trees. After several minutes of adrenaline-fueled flight in the direction he presumed was away from the T-Rex, his brain did a double-take. Something was wrong. It took him a while to realize he wasn't actually moving at all. In fact, he was lying down on his back in what appeared to be a maternity ward.

To be continued...

Congratulations Boston

Congratulations are in order:

- To the Boston Red Sox, for defeating evil--I mean, the Yankees.
- To Derek Jeter and A-Rod, for just being huge douchebags.
- And finally, to the Fans, with a capital F.

In other news, here are some of my favorite searches that have resulted in visits to this blog:

- Quaker Porn
- Gay Gum Sex
- Love Song For Slim Jims
- Foods That Don't Cause Flatulence
- Effect Of Chewing Gum On Your Brain

So yeah... y'all're weird.

Random Thermal Energy

There is a land full of dust,
Swirling and shifting in the air,
Drifting along its random path,
Following the light home.

There is a mind full of thought,
Full of store-bought memories,
Yellowing mental photographs,
Of moments that are gone.

There is a page of words,
It's so absurd, it doesn't say a thing,
They just came together,
But they don't really belong.

There is a song full of life,
Made of made up words,
Full of sound and fury,
Singing about nothing.

There is a heart full of tatters,
Shattered and huddling in the wind,
Uncaring and oblivious to food, love,
It's all a bunch of bullshit, he says.

Moments that are gone,
Don't really belong.
It's all a bunch of bullshit,
Singing about nothing,
Trying to follow the light home.

Dig?

Holy Shit

Holy shit...

Just...

Holy shit...

Quaker Porn

Apparently, searching for "Quaker porn" can somehow lead you to this blog. Three things:

1) How?! I've never written about "Quaker porn" in my entire life.

2) Who the FUCK searches for Quaker porn???!!! And,

3) WHAT THE FUCK IS QUAKER PORN???!!!

Sometimes having a Site Meter tells you about things you never wanted to know...

Two Thoughts Twain

Before I disappear off of this planet temporarily due to a swirling vortex of 4 ungodly midterms this week, let me indulge myself with these thoughts twain:

1) There is an unhappy person deep inside of me, and he has surfaced to the top. I am unhappy. There are many things I'd like to have erased from my memory, from my history. I need a complete change of identity. I'd like to start a plot twist in the novel of my life right about now.

But I can't. Why? Because I will always be constrained by the way all the people around me have already pegged me. I will always be the person people think I am because what is reality but the simple perception of it? What is reality but what people think it is (The Matrix)? I am not a concept (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), but I am something worse: I have become a preconception. I am no longer a person with my particular set of interests. I am my interests. This is death. And this is the source of my unhappiness--my death.

I am no more and no less than what you think of me. Yes, you. All of you. All of you reading right now. Including myself.

I know my unhappiness is serious because not even my music is working to cheer me up anymore. Mmmbop.

2) And now for a moment of complete wisdom and clarity, which struck me in the middle of Materials Science class, no less: Do not waste time with jealousy or envy. Your time is better spent going out, seeking and doing what it is you want and desire--for even if you fail, you will gain much, and you will have lived as full a life as any man.

Gibberish

The night awakens to the cacaphony of silence. A girl postulates alone in her room. Galaxies shatter like glass. The creativity of Man is murdered down a narrow New York City alley. A boy breathes air into a red balloon. Mortality throws a party, and Death shows up late. The lexicographer drops his "H." A branch from a tree hangs low over the water. The sun lies dormant in shadow until righteous bondsmen submit queries. The Queen lies in bed with a naked broomstick in the rain. Everything you know is wrong. A gypsy runs up a tree because the mountains grow too low. Let's go dancing in the moonlight under the cherry blossom trees. Drink this vial of absinthe or sip my blood. A woman bites her toes down the drain. Odysseus jumps in the way of a Greyhound bus. The knight on a horse eats his sushi with a fork. Consume your own light. Conserve your own karma. Life is beautiful. There is justice in the world. There is justice in God. I am. Love. Laughter. Antibiotics.

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

When I first watched Adaptation, I was inspired by its originality, its creative implementation of self-awareness and self-reference. More and more I've been discovering, however, that Charlie Kaufman's incredible screenplay was not exactly that revolutionary or original. It is, however the most well-done film of the self-referencing kind. In the back of my mind, I had dreamed of writing a novel like Adaptation, something that was about writing the novel itself, a story that somehow embroiled its own writer, me, into the action and the misadventure. I thought it would be a novel idea for a novel.

Too late. Kurt Vonnegut did it already in the 70's with his incredible book Breakfast of Champions. I had always believed that the self-referencing work was a mark of the 21st century, but clearly Vonnegut was breaking the same ground three decades ago. It's a book that skewers, satirizes, explains, elucidates, and criticizes almost all the little foibles of modern American society you can think of, tackling everything from racism to coffee tables. Vonnegut decides from the beginning to remove all that has been implanted into his head by his interactions with society, becoming an unbiased, objective viewer of American life. His tone, consequently, is at times child-like and even extra-terrestrial. This allows him to reveal the irrationalities of mankind with the freshness of an innocent youth or a bewildered alien. The ending is a crescendo of pure noise, a moment here, a flash there, collapsing under the weight of all this observation until even the author can not resist being sucked in to the vortex which finally ends in the assurance that the universe is cyclical, and what once was has always been, and what is now will always be.

And so on.

The Story Of Lazarus

A wizard from a far away land known as San Francisco, working for an entity that calls itself "Apple," has resurrected my beloved iPod and sent her back to me today.

In addition, I contacted a mighty sorcerer through the nebulous force known as the "Internet" and purchased from him a new acoustic guitar for $99.99 USD. She arrived a couple days ago. Her name is Michelle Washburn. She is not as pretty as Lucy was, but she is a bit easier to get along with. Lucy had her stiff moments at times, but Michelle's action is much softer on the fingers. I can't really compare the two, though. They are from two completely different worlds. Lucy was born in the stars, one of a kind. Michelle is more of a down-home girl; she has a twin. They're both beautiful in their own way, though.

So I suppose my life before the Long Journey and the Great Flood has been mostly restored, except for the loss of my longtime friend and mentor, my TI-83 Plus graphing calculator. I will cherish Michelle and my iPod with a fervor bordering manic paranoia from now on, though. I will not let anything happen to them ever again. It is constant vigilance for me from here on out.

I am Jack's maniacally sensitive obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The Paul Disconnection, cont'd

He stepped out the door and onto an extremely busy street corner. Lights flashed around and around. People's faces popped in and out of view. He was having a hard time concentrating on what he was doing. He walked straight down the street. Finally, the chaos seemed to die down a bit. The street was narrower, with less cars. There were some trees casting sinister looking shadows on the ground. Paul was lost, but at least he was safe. Going outside had been a bad idea. There were too many things trying to go on at once. As the world around him began to settle back into place, he even had the feeling that he was completely normal again, that he had reattached somehow to the time train. But the moment he got up, everything swirled again and he was once again free to move around a little within his five second time frame. He could make himself begin to do something, but then force himself to stop before he had even begun to think about it again. Time was a five-second-long banner he could whip around this way and that. As he was practicing trying to make himself scratch his crotch and then changing his mind before he knew what he had changed his mind from, however, Paul began to realize that he was completely lost now. The city lights were all but gone now. There wasn't even a paved road anymore. The cars and streets had all disappeared. He had walked into a forest so dense that there weren't even footpaths in the dirt. He heard a deep, resonating roar in the distance...

To be continued...

The Paul Disconnection

Paul Roberts woke up in the middle of the night about five seconds before he was actually awake.

He looked down at himself with a perplexed look; there he was sleeping, ignorant and peaceful. Before he had any time to really react to the fact that he was watching himself sleep, however, the Paul that was sleeping suddenly woke up and looked down at his bed, with a slightly confused expression. It registered somewhere in the back of Paul's mind that that had been him about five seconds ago. Was the Paul he was watching now seeing himself sleeping too on the bed, as he himself had just seen about ten seconds ago? Paul didn't know.

Somehow, Paul Roberts had become ever so slightly unstuck in time. Somehow, the steady, taut rope that was time had given him about five inches of slack to move freely around in. Paul Roberts was finally given a little extra room into the fourth dimension, instead of being flattened against the 3-D world like the rest of us.

He got up to look around at this new world. Five seconds later, Paul followed him out the door...

To be continued...