Boredom Diaries
It Never Felt So Good To Lose.
Fuck off! I screamed. My voice penetrating the “boos” that rained down upon me. A ticker tape parade of trash, half eaten hot dogs, tin foil, burger patties. Hoarse I was, from belching obscenities all afternoon, across the field at the opposing team’s parents. We’d just got our asses kicked. Last hit, extra innings, a… Read more
Peddling Snake Oil.
Under the unkept canopy of oaks and the winding maze of scrub palm, my grandmother would step up to pay the couple dollars for zoo entry. We’d walk by the cement pens inlaid into the Florida sugar sand, where lizards bask in the dirt, where alligators were separated from the rare Florida crocodile, and the… Read more
Fear And Loathing In Paradise.
I sit here in St. Petersburg. Two miles from the beach. Two miles from what some deem paradise. I sit at a desk, behind warehouse walls, in a factory manufacturing bike parts. Behind our building, a couple meters from my desk, sits a marina. One that specializes in the capturing of blue crabs. Cages stack… Read more
Lake Ness.
“There’s Loch Lochy. There’s Loch Oich…like a pig. There’s Linnhy. The biggest, due southwest. And then this, here, Loch Ness.” ‘Loch,’ I would learn from our bus driver, was Scottish Gaelic for lake. For years I thought the name connoted the magical. That mysterious void dropping to a depth of seven hundred and fifty five… Read more
Skeleton Church.
Some of the kids we met spoke six languages. Mainly while criss crossing Scandinavia, where education is lauded above most other things. English was on their communicatory laundry list. English, for the most part, the universal default. And for that, we were lucky. Until we dove deep into central Europe. Our white van enveloped by… Read more
Incompetent Thievery.
There were seven of us. Seven whiney ass Americans travelling across Central Europe. Whiney we were, compared to the punk kids, from lower income families spread across Slovenia, Czech Republic, Italy, and here, now, in Spain. Most of the kids we played to lived in squats, dumpster diving to feed themselves. Diving to conjure up… Read more
Collapsing Into The Whatever.
How in the hell did this happen? The placement exam, eighty multiple choice, covering everything I knew nothing about. In it being so wide open on material, I could never make a decision. Erasing answers, frantically bubbling in other options. Ticking away at the exam, I tried my hardest to prove that I wasn’t an… Read more
Vocal Shrapnel.
“Fuck” Was the word that started all this. I used it to express exasperation. Driving while on the phone, my wife in the passenger seat, “Fuck, what a mess?” were my exact words. I over use it, yes. Like most of my friends. To “cuss like a sailor” couldn’t be more accurate amongst us. I… Read more
Resurrecting a Corpse.
The Law of Conservation of Energy. One of few ideas I retained from a year’s worth of high school physics. Its main premise: energy cannot be created nor destroyed. My teacher, Mr. Dove, was a stereotypic science instructor. Heavy beard. A muted, bland daily dress code. And a monotone deliverance of information that, when it… Read more
Till Death Do Us Part.
We had spent the entire Fall building our jumps. Four total at that point. The main lip dug about six feet under sea level, we’d hit the water table often. You’d dip down into the ditch, fire off the lip and land six feet above. Reminiscing, I can’t believe they lasted long. For starters, the… Read more
Cyclone Barbiturate.
It was a shotgun home. Narrow and rectangular. An old cigar worker’s abode from the early twentieth century. Up front, facing the street, two absolutely tiny, closet sized rooms. In the rear, a half assed addition served as a master bedroom. Added as a lower level, it laid on the ground having sunk into a… Read more
