Size Matters

I seem to be noticing size – specifically differences in it – a lot lately. So and so is getting fatter. This person is getting shorter. A tall person's height is permanently felt and the difference between him and a shorter person has this powerful significance, like all of a star's mass blasting outwards from a supernova.

It's to the point where I'm noticing this rift between others and myself in the most tangible fashion, like how two magnetic objects tremble when next to each other. But this trembling speaks to some larger idea within me, which ends up producing my own trembling (which I hope isn't visible).

Though this is not to say this happens to me and only me; obviously, physical presence makes a difference: you expect certain personalities from certain kinds of builds, shapes, and sizes. But what I mean to say is that these tremblings occur not just because I stand six-foot-two and I'm dating a girl at five-foot-five. The tremblings instead usually arise from something that stands out, attracting me towards a new direction I hadn't seen before for one reason or another.

It's hard to go into specifics when so many people will read this and immediately know what I'm talking about. But what I can say is that these differences aren't obvious: the height difference doesn't mean that I'm a giant pillar of stability or that the shorter person is looking up to me or is an underdog of sorts. That would be stereotypical and, well, boring and not worth writing about at all.

Furthermore, it speaks to how different this year is for me. I'm a senior. 21 years old. Practically an adult. I noticed how foreign my face looks to me. Anyone on Facebook can attest to that change, but it's especially scary when you fear maturity, because with maturity comes aging, responsibility, bill payments, and dying. Sarah Vowell once recalled realizing that, while for the first time in her life preparing the family Thanksgiving meal, that that was it – she was going to die.

And it does feel like I'm on the precipice of some major dip in my optimism. Things are changing. Friends have graduated or just left school, the exes I loved but were rejected by now all have boyfriends, and somehow, I have a girlfriend. I feel like I'm living a memory from twenty years in the future. It doesn't help that I look at people and wonder how stupid we'll think we dressed back at the turn of the millenium.

But I've experienced change before. What's really striking, though, is the feeling I get from things. The school is under heavy construction. Everything will be gone in a few years, and it'll all be replaced by eerie doppelganger buildings, instead. Turn around, and a building with the same exact design from the same exact architect's catalogue will be right there, staring at you with its big, round glass eyes staring blankly at you. It wants to frighten you, as if you've landed on a movie set, but you just feel emptiness, like nothing's changed, nothing is changing, and nothing will ever change. And you might ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?"

Rare, then, is it to actually feel something within your gut tell you that things are changing, and that things are different now, and will forever be different in the future. Though while everything is changing for me, this change is really something that has happened to countless people before in every time period, in every country, in every town, in every home, and it is happening to countless people, and forever will it happen – though in a slightly different manner to each of us – for the rest of time.

How weird it is, then, to physically feel a change that isn't changing, to feel myself be forced into one direction while others reposition themselves in the universe. To truly feel that someone is becoming bigger, not just physically but in his or her relation to me personally. To feel weak in the stomach, like I'm yearning for something to be different, when I have no control over it at all. Yeah, size does matter.

Twitter Novels

About a month ago, Richmond's alt-weekly, Style Weekly, asked readers to submit novels that were the length of a Twitter message – 140 characters or less – and published three of them in last week's issue, which can be read online here. My first story (which was published) was this:

His sweaty palms slid his last token into the machine and he pulled the lever. On the 2nd reel, he blanched. By the 3rd, he bled.

Here are the ones that didn't make the cut:

"Mom," shouted Timmy, "there's a ghost in my closet!" His mother opened the door and narrowed her eyes. "You're adopted."

"Let's go on an adventure," beamed the teen. "But we live in the West End and have no money," the other said. They silently wept.

"We hope LA doesn't change you, Conan," they all said. What they all secretly hoped, though, is that LA would change Andy Richter.

Man wants promotion, makes dubious claim to boss and invites him to his home for dinner. In covering up his lie, hilarity ensues.

He pressed return. "My God... I've done it! I've done it! I've made Twitter useful!"

Each candy wrapper has the chance for Charlie to win a tour of the chocolate factory. He unwraps it. It reads, "Sorry, try again."

And, after writing these, I summed up writing a Twitter novel thusly: The key to writing a Twitter novel: crush your character's dreams before they can even arise.

Lines that made me tingle.

I apologize for not writing recently; my time has been completely absorbed by classes and the newspaper. Thankfully, though, Meris convinced me to transfer to Prose Writing and it's been truly electrifying. Our first essay is due tomorrow and mine is more or less complete. I won't post the story in its entirety, but here are two lines that made me glow inside with satisfaction as I wrote them:

We wore the masks of our younger selves. We were the king and queen of the playground and upon our jungle gym throne, we could look across our dominion.

~

When I saw her again, she told me about the tape that we had found in the gymnasium. "Just some marching band songs. Nothing special." She smiled.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #9

I - ICELAND

There is a saying mostly used by smug nerds about Iceland. It goes thusly: "Iceland is green and Greenland is icy! I am such a clever motherfucker to come up with that all by myself!" Okay, so the last part was made up, but that's what they're all thinking. But what is obvious is that most of these social degenerates have never actually been to Iceland, while I have, and I can report that Iceland is actually a gigantic ice fortress that is home to all sorts of unique wildlife, social customs, and 114-foot tall, natural ice sculptures depicting the end of civilization. Also, the ice is green.

To most outsiders, the music of Björk and Sigur Rós symbolize what Iceland is, and I am here to tell that, in fact, THESE ARE SIMPLY PROPAGANDA DESIGNED TO LURE YOU INTO ICELANDIC FIRE FIELDS. The covers of both artists' latest albums actually provide clues to reality. Björk's magical suit is actually the armor of the Icelandic imperial guard. With Sigur Rós (translation: sugar rows, a street name for cocaine), it shows a group of people, naked, running across a street. They are actually crossing the vast fire rivers to go vote for the ruling party.

Fig. 1: An Icelandic Imperial Army Uniform

Now, you may be wondering, "How in the world can Iceland be both a gigantic ICE FORTRESS and also strewn with FIRE PITS AND RIVERS?" And as you ask this question, I reply that you in fact have answered it yourself! Iceland is in fact NOT OF THIS WORLD, but instead in a parallel dimension, accessible by actually traveling to what the Earth defines as "Iceland."

I know that you have many questions left, such as "Why is the ice green," "How long has the real Iceland existed," "Who are you," and "What are you doing with my baby?" Trust me, all will be answered in due time, though I need your child for an experiment involving anteaters and a gigantic electromagnet. I apologize in advance, however, for Iceland is not what you would typically consider as one of the Areas of My Expertise (har har).

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #8

H - HELIUM

Psssssssssshoomp.

"Here ya go, kid. A big, red balloon." Justin smiled. Giving away balloons was his favorite part of being a balloon vendor, especially red ones, which turned everything on the other side of the sun the color of sweet cherries.

"Red?" asked the kid. "But... I want blue, Mister J." Mister J was what Justin wanted all of his regular customers to call him. It made him feel like he could be a role model for them while maintaining a certain degree of coolness.

He handed the kid a blue balloon, which shone purple on his face as the sun set. Justin closed up his balloon cart and wheeled it to his car.

Justin has always liked balloons as a kid, ever since he asked for a butterfly at his fourth birthday party and got a net filled with a hundred of the little things seemingly suspended in the air until their eventual capture. However, when he swung the balloon net, it only caught one, small, red butterfly among the many. It had shriveled up long ago, but Justin had tried to replicate it ever since. He was getting close, but when he swung his nets, they would sometimes catch five or ten or two or none at all. He did, however, create a host of other wonderful balloon inventions, such as a frying pan with a pancake that you could flip into the air, a full-size Great White Shark, and the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," all of which were made with (mostly) red balloons.

The obsession with the color red was probably a personal preference thing. Some people tend to buy clothes of one color, others paint their home's walls another, and some people only make balloon animals with the color red.

The next day, Justin arrived at the park and a sneer shot across his face. It was her, that blue balloon bending bitch, Catherine (They were both aware that it would've been a lot more poetic had her name started with a "B." But seriously, what's a good "B" name, anyway? Beth is short for Elizabeth and Bethany and Belinda are just kind of witchy. Catherine's parents certainly weren't expecting that.)

"Ah, I'm glad that you're here," she cackled. "You can have a front row seat to the unveiling of the greatest balloon sculpture ever created!"

Justin's face sagged. "Do what now?" To be honest, he was curious, but he was also nervous, as he hadn't created anything new to provide a witty enough retort to her – the "Sgt. Pepper" collection was entered into last year's nationwide competition. He had won third place.

At noon, Catherine threw up a loudspeaker in front of her face and her voice crackled across the park. "So you've seen the hundreds of squirrels around the park? Well, have you seen one that's 200-feet tall and can breathe fire?" And so, parkgoers came to see her giant, blue, fire-breathing balloon squirrel. Justin was there, too, off to the side. He was smiling.

Catherine screamed. "Let's fire this baby up!" She pressed a single blue button on a remote control and the giant, rubbery squirrel shot a 50-foot-long flame from its mouth. Catherine laughed triumphantly as the crowd ooh-ed and ah-ed, that is, until simple science made its presence known. The latex melted away and the animal quickly deflated into a depressing lump over the mouth of the flamethrower.

An astute man exclaimed, "It's gonna blow!" and the crowd panicked and fled the park. Justin grabbed Catherine and ran her behind one of the brick restrooms before the flamethrower melted itself and ignited its fuel. It resembled a small bomb as the entire park resembled a war-torn city in Palestine as the dust cleared. The two balloon artists emerged unscathed from behind the ripped restroom. Justin's cart had be blown next to them and everything that was inside had been ripped out.

"Hey, what's this?"
Justin sighed. "Another broken dream." He kicked the broken door off of the cart.
"No, I mean, this net-thing. Isn't this what that old guy Tantione made, that butterfly net?"
"Yeah, it's what made me get into balloons in the first place. I never got to figure it out, and now I never will."
"Here, lemme stick some of my blue butterflies onto it. Since red light has a long wavelength, amongst colors, anyway, the net won't work the way that you want it to. You have to balance it out, man. Just because you like red doesn't mean that you exclusively use it."

Catherine finished adding on some of her butterflies to the net. He took it in his hand, and swung at the swarm of red and blue bugs in the air. He smiled. He had caught a blue one.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #7

G - GOD

In searching for what to write, I was distracted by looking up interesting animals in response to the trailer for the upcoming film "Earth." As the Space Traveler (aka Unk, aka Malachi Constant) says in Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan," "I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all," and that is why (I believe) everything is here as it is today. It's kind of amazing that I'm here, right now, able to type this out on a USB-connected keyboard (as my laptop's fried due to some water), which transmits – as a series of electrical pulses translated to mean one letter or a space or whatnot – to the computer, which inputs it into this textbox, which is here due to HTML, which is a handy shortcut for Firefox to read the page's information and display it visually. When I click "publish post," all of this is sent across the country to a server, where it can be accessed by any other computer in the world. Amazing.

Anyway, that same series of electronic signals landed me on the Wikipedia page for the Rhynchosaur, an extinct little reptile that kind of looks like a naked mole rat. The article says that it disappeared from the earth at the end of Carnian period (somewhere near the middle of the Triasic – when the first dinosaurs were coming into existence) possibly because their food source had gone extinct at some earlier point. At least we still have their cousins today – crocodiles and birds.

I just turned on Cut Copy's "In Ghost Colours" (which I think I'll claim as 2008's best album when I write my feature for the newspaper) as I wrote that. If you haven't picked it up, I wholly suggest it. I bring this up because... it's really good. How can we have good music? Why are some sounds good and some bad? Why is it that what one person considers a good song could be regarded as garbage by another? Why do pop songs all start to sound the same once a new, successful pattern has been established (boy bands, vaguely dancey songs about being dancefloor sluts, the millions of bands trying to recreate the Beatles)?

Well, besides having an easy shot at a spot on MTV and lots of money, it's all about patterns and finding the best ones that manipulate emotions or build the best bridges. I'm talking about fractal geometry. Think of a tree or a river, branching off into different directions and sometimes forking. The reason that they aren't perfect, exponentially growing forks is that they are the victims of a series of accidents, as we all are. Fractal geometry (which I encourage everybody to read up on) applies to bubble formation, cancer cell growth, broccoli, mountains, a microwaved CD, and so much more. I mean, modern movies and video games rely on this technology to create realistic worlds for the individual to escape into.

So how does this all relate to God or gods or a flying spaghetti monster or the all-powerful Atheismo? Either that bastard has been the tried and true method for everything and has left it for us to figure out as some sort of signature or specific marking or, through a series of accidents, nature has stumbled on something that works and has, thus far, gotten us to the point of humanity as it is today – space exploration, morning routines that no other animal could dream of doing (flossing? come on.), different modes of governing ourselves (and the resulting political and military fallout associated with that), the Internet, and so, so much more.

I've already joked to a friend tonight that my view of birth and death and the future is a bit robotic and stale, so I'll get that joke out of the way. BEEP BOOP. GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS, MR. ROBINSON. I WOULD LIKE TO PROCREATE AND PROLONG THE SPECIES WITH YOUR DAUGHTER BY INFUSING MY SPERM INTO HER FALLOPIAN TUBES, THEREBY ACCESSING HER EGG AND THEREFORE CREATING A FETUS, WHICH IS COMPRISED OF ALLELES FROM BOTH MINE AND YOUR DAUGHTER'S DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID STRUCTURES. I BELIEVE THAT, AS I AM STILL ALIVE AND HAVE NO MAJOR DISEASES AND HAVE REACHED THIS POINT OF INTERACTION, I AM QUALIFIED TO MATE WITH YOUR DAUGHTER DUE TO MY SUCCESSFUL GENES THAT HAVE SURVIVED THE TRIALS OF REMOVAL FROM THE GENE POOL. BOOP.

It all just makes sense to me and that's what so marvelous about life and all of the extras that come along with the package. Allow me to close with another line from "The Sirens of Titan:"

"The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody."

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #6

F - FIRE

The fire grew amongst the wildfire. It spread across the forest and it climbed the trees until it kissed the sky. And while the forest lit up and glowed brighter than the sun, there was no smoke. It still acted like a normal fire, in that its flames flickered and sparked, it spread from limb to limb, and it consumed the homes of every animal. But that vile, choking black, that poisonous disease of destruction was nowhere to be seen in the violet sky. By morning, the forest was gone and the sun shone down on the plains, which was soon overtaken, hours later, by a hard rain. The lightning crackled and spat across the storm's canvas as the water painted a battlefield. When the regiments went home, the defeated sun returned to survey the damage and found only seeds and mud. But oh! did those seeds find a home amongst the muck. Despite being surrounded by sludge, the seeds germinated and began taking root before, one perfectly sprightly day, the white threads of life poked towards their life-bringer. The plains began to resemble a brand-new baby's head and, before long, the long, luscious locks burst forth. It wasn't long before insects found new food where there had been none and birds and mammals found homes in the new lofts and dens. When the forest was destroyed next, however, the fire was nowhere to be found, but it was smoke that now permeated the air.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #5

E - ELEPHANT

The man rode atop the elephant, in a fancy, wooden box that resembled a castle tower. Rapunzel let down her golden ladder and he climbed out of his box and into the castle window. They talked about elephants and castles and the like, so much so, that whenever he came to her room, he was filled with the warmest glow that made his face shine brighter than the sun. Eventually, the sunlight made his heart grow flowers, which he picked and gave to Rapunzel whenever they were in full bloom. They made love, but the man had never experienced anything so intense, so wild. Her hair seemed more brilliant each day.

A number of months later, however, he noticed that her once-brilliant locks were dulling. When they made love, all of those feelings returned and her hair once again shone, illuminating the entire castle. But Rapunzel was concerned with how far apart their worlds were – her in her castle, and the man on top of his elephant. The man was bewildered. She was just a short climb away, this was nonsense! But Rapunzel truly did love him, so she continued to let down her hair, but told him that each day, it would be just a little bit shorter.

The man continued to enjoy each day that he was her as if he was the richest man in the world, but he was still aware of what was to come. When her hair was just out of reach, he would jump from his box, despite the fact that he couldn't jump very high at all. One day, however, he climbed into Rapunzel's room to find another man, who didn't own an elephant. In fact, he merely walked on the ground and Rapunzel hair had, in fact, been getting longer each day. The man stared in disbelief. Rapunzel's hair shined brighter than the sun. The man's garden had not been tended to and a final, devastating thundercloud appeared in his chest.

Rapunzel offered to continue talking to him, but the man would have to yell at her while she stood by the castle's window. Many times, he considered destroying, burning, and throwing the castle off of the elephant's back, but the sun was always behind the thundercloud, just waiting for its chance to seize control of the sky. The man decided that this chance was one worth taking and continued talking to Rapunzel as he rode his elephant across the desert.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #4

D - DRUNK

It was Clay and Sienna's first time. No, they weren't close like that, but they had grown up together in the same neighborhood – three doors down, across the street, to be exact. On the coffee table sat a bottle of Rainbeau Melt.

"Hmph," said Clay, begrudgingly. "Let's just do it."

"The whole thing? Isn't that dangerous?"

"We won't know until we try it."

Clay uncorked the bottle and, with a loud SCWHOP!, it was open and emitting a light blue mist. He poured it into the first two glasses that he found, which were etched with the names of two different restaurants. "Bottoms up," Clay said, and they clinked their glasses together. They drank deep. It was sweet. They drank another glass. The taste was even sweeter. "Pretty good, huh?" asked Clay. Sienna shrieked. "Clay! Your tongue! It's... got every color on it!"

It was true, or at to her eyes. Almost like stripes on a rugby shirt, his tongue had been painted with vertical lines of white, red, black, yellow, orange, blue, green, and purple, from left to right. Clay saw everything only in the colors of the most beautiful sunset ever. Sienna was a brilliant vermilion.

The colors began to become more intense, as if their tint dials on their eyes were turned to their maximum. Clay's eyes filled with color in his eyes, still nicely organized, until they gushed out of his sockets. The paint flooded the room, until it seemed impossible that any more could fit. Then, everything went white.

A splot of red. Bright blue slightly to the right of it. Green dripped. Slowly. Then, a torrential downpour of every color that one could think of (there might have been some sort of ultraviolet color in there, as well) drenched the white world until it tilted, and the colors slid down the slope.

Toucan Sam started singing in a rainforest filled with tall trees with orange leaves. Blue orangutans swung amongst them. Thousands of ants streamed out of a series of mountains, each one a different color, before being eaten by three hungry anteaters.

The paint fell out of the sterile, white room and drenched the rainforest. The anteaters sported polka dots. The blue orangutans were orange. Toucan Sam tripled the number of colors on his beak. The paint rain got heavier, until the sky was black.

Sienna woke up first, and she shook Clay awake. He had been dreaming of soldiers storming Omaha Beach, but instead of bullets, their guns shot globs of color. Once they had realized that they couldn't kill each other with color, the soldiers painted faces on each other and drew vast landscapes in the sand.

Clay and Sienna both stood up, grabbed the bottle, and put it back in the cabinet that they found it in. Sitting down at the kitchen table, they stared at the off-white wall, trying to make sense of what they had just dreamed.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #3

C - CHINCHILLA

Rocky crawled out of his cage and into Karen's hands. His platinum fur was especially fluffy today – that hard work was worth something! Her hand ran over the chinchilla's back, and he responded with a chirp, which was followed by her cell phone's ring. She set Rocky down on the floor and answered it.

Aww... hey, what's that? He wandered over and nibbled. Mmm. Leftover carrot. Sweet. Is that more? Rocky shuffled past the door and came upon the air vent, which Karen had taken off to clean. What's that delicious smell? It's coming from down here...

And Rocky tumbled down the air vent. Thankfully, he managed to fall straight down instead of bumping into the sides. He must have been one lucky chinchilla, as he landed in a big pile of clean laundry. Crawling out, he heard a voice shout to him. Peering out of an undershirt's collar, he spotted a gray mouse. "Hi there," the chinchilla chirped.

"You must be Rocky," the mouse said, scratching his stomach. "We hear a lot about you down here, y'know... mostly about how 'fluffy wuffy' you are. It must be nice."

"Oh, you have no idea. I get awesome food and all the water I want, but the best part is the petting and scratches. It's like all of your troubles go away and you kind of fall asleep." Rocky thought about it and giggled.

"C'mere, lemme show you around the place." Rocky obliged and met the mouse on eye-level, who introduced himself as Takk. "Right through this hole is the place where everybody chills after a day with her."

"Her?"

"The neighborhood cat, Vera. What, do you not know that cats eat guys like us?"

"They do what? Eat us? Like... eating a carrot?"

"Do your carrots bleed and cry for their mother as their limbs are ripped off?"

"Oh god. No, that's... oh god. Horrifying. No. That's... oh god."

"Hey hey hey, buddy. Calm down, come get a drink."

The two rodents walked over to where the refrigerator had leaked into the basement. Rocky opened his mouth and let some of the yellow liquid drip into his mouth due to Takk's insistence. A tear came down Rocky's face. "It's... beautiful... it almost tastes like... morning dew on the fresh grass on the side of a mountain." It felt like a hundred Karens were petting his entire body at once.

Takk, however, thought that the stuff tasted like urine, but it at least got his mind off of the cat and let him focus on his new friend. He also briefly forgot the 46 kids that were either currently with his wife or off scavenging for food in the kitchen. He forgot about Suð, who was the dumbest mouse in all of existence. Takk couldn't understand how he was still alive. He forgot almost everything else. But he also got an idea.

"Hey Rocky. Do you like it down here?"

"Yeah... I love it! It's so... different. So real. So wonderful. Everyone seems to know everyone, too."

"What if... you and I... switched places? You know, you can stay down here for a while and meet everyone and really get the whole mouse experience and I go up and see what the easy life is like. It wouldn't be forever. I'd find a way to make it back at some point."

"Oh, but Karen could easy tell us apart! Let's see. First, let's fluff you all up." Takk did this, and Rocky tilted his head to the left. "Mm. Not perfect, but it should be close enough. Now hurry back into the laundry! Karen's probably looking for me and she might have realized that the air duct cover was off."

Takk climbed into the pile of clothes, after Rocky reminded him to look "extra helpless." And five minutes later, Karen threw open the basement door and ran about the room, searching every nook and cranny. She stopped when she heard something moving and chirping, and she chirped, herself. "Rocky! Oh, I'm so sorry, I was on the phone! I should have never let you run around. Come on, let's go sit down and you can eat a big bag of carrots. I bet you're all worked up, too."

As Karen picked up the laundry basket, Takk shuffled to the side. He saw Rocky standing at the hole in the wall, and he waved. "Thanks for everything!" Rocky smiled and waved back. "No, thank you."

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #2

B - BUTTER

On a glass plate on a long dinner table draped with a crimson table cloth sits a block of butter. Taking a seat, Edward wraps his head around the chair's arms, which are carved with snarling griffins. The butter sits 25 feet away, and Edward stares at it. He leans down onto the table, twists his head to the side, and stares at it, as if at any moment, it will show signs of life. He grabs a butter knife, holding it like a machete. He stands up slowly, careful to not arouse suspicion. He freezes. The butter's watching. Ducking behind the black curtains, Edward peeks out the side for his chance. No good, it seems to have eyes on all five sides. He has one last chance.

In two solid motions, he cocks his arm backs and heaves his mighty weapon at the beast's heart. Just nicked him, he snarled. But at least he's wounded. This may be my chance!

Edward ran like a madman, howling a war cry with both his hands in the air. He leaped onto the table and grabbed the butter with both his hands and wrestled with the foul beast. Gaining the upper hand, he smashed it into a slice of bread, vanquishing the malevolent being.

Edward carried his spoils back to his large chair with the griffins engraved into the arms and sat and placed it next to the five forks, two knives, three spoons, and a cloth napkin, folded in a way that resembled a swan. Unfolding the napkin into his lap, he sank his teeth into the bread, spotting his luxurious mustache with yellow entrails. There was a knock on the door, and a man in a crimson suit (adorned with a brilliant yellow ascot) emerged from the other side of the tall, heavy, wooden doors.

"Prime Minister? I come to discuss a possible treaty for peace."

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #1

Essentially, you get a word, one for each letter, and write a story. Words were randomly chosen by Ryan. See the first one ever here.

A - ASPIRIN

One more, Brian thought to himself. This was the worst headache he'd ever had, and he'd had a migraine before. It feels like my brain is trying to escape. I wish I could open my skull and let it air out.

Closing the medicine cabinet, Brian looked up at the mirror, staring into his blood-shot eyes. The pain had been there for six days and he was on his third bottle of aspirin. The thought of going to the doctor hadn't seemed necessary, but he was beginning to change his mind. His eyes moved to his forehead and then to his hair, which was thinned out. Dad didn't go bald until his 40s, he complained. But then Brian noticed that his hair wasn't thinning out. It was spread out.

He stepped back. His head must have been twice the size it normally should be. Brian clutched at his head and he felt like a conehead. He called for his wife, but his pained shout was drowned out by a shrill shriek. The pain was unbearable. The ceiling crashed around him. He felt something grab into his shoulders and he was now in the air. His legs flailed. He went higher. His house was now smaller than his head, even when it was normal-sized. He managed to look up, despite the pain in his head and the daggers in his shoulders. Brian screamed.

Brian finally landed in a nest, one at least the size of a football field, except that it was perfectly round, like a cereal bowl. The milk came next – some sort of purple, mucous-like substance filled the bowl and Brian fell under and he choked for air. The pain was gone. Brian stood up. The sky was a brilliant blue, not a cloud in the sky. He was naked.

His hair was all gone or, rather, his head was so massive that it didn't matter how much hair he had. His head was perfectly ovular, but he didn't care. He couldn't feel it, nor could he feel what was gestating inside. A great, big thing landed on his head, but Brian didn't care. The sky was blue. He was going up there. He was going to be the only cloud.

Dispatches from an office desk, just beyond the bathroom

I need a creative outlet, to be honest. I'm a journalist, and yet I haven't been able to freely write by my own accord, even though I was in the features department at a fairly large newspaper. Of course, I was only an intern there and as soon as my university-owned apartment lease ended, I was out of the best job I've ever had, work, money, food, you get the idea.

Fast-forward a week later or so, when I'm walking my dog in the twilight hours when my mom calls me and says that I can't say "no" to a job that just opened up at the place that she works. So now, I get to do press release materials for an education center. Let me tell you about my short time in PR - it's bullshit. First of all, it's news writing, which can be fun, but I get a lot more out of features writing, simply because I can use colorful, expressive language and am able to do all sorts of amazing, fun things (go on roller coasters, be an archaeologist for a day, see my favorite radio show AND talk to the host while I wet my pants).

Second, PR is biased. PR benefits the place that you work for. You are not allowed to provide your reader (a newspaper editor, not an actual reader) a full view of everything that happened at the event. The place that you work for can do no wrong in its beautiful march towards improving the lives of everyone in the entire world.

I was optimistic at first, even though I had no clue as to what I was working on. The actual work that I've done here is quite minimal and most of my days are spent online and with an iPod (currently listening to "The Wheel and the Maypole" by XTC).

But what horrified me was when the director, an already creepy lady that smiles randomly during conversation (and I do mean randomly) and reminds me a bit too much of Professor Umbridge, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the Center's vision. While it seemed ambitious, the whole speech, and her demeanor, reeked of a power-hungry attitude that frightened me a bit. Professing your desire for America to once again be #1 is okay, but the way she described the need for the Center to influence and have a hand in education curriculum seemed a bit extreme.

Enough about that, though. Let's talk about my office. The room that I'm in is shared by mom and a coworker. If you walk past them, you come to a small hallway within the room itself. This leads to a bathroom with a yellow light and a toilet built for midgets. Past that door is my desk, which I stole from someone that I think still works here. Sticky notes extol various motivational sayings:

- "2 wrongs don't make a right, but 2 Wrights make an airplane!"

- A "Pluggers" comic, and under that is written: "It's time to start Round 2 of our Health Club!"

- A worm looking at a cow's tail and professing his desire for its consumption

- A rather sad-looking drawing of a young great horned owl

Thankfully, I have a dentist appointment today, so I get to leave about two hours early! Hurray!