Sleeping isn't so easy when Andy "The Basher" Robinson and Thomas "Icicle" Simpson are screaming death threats at one another through Skype in your room. I'm not even sure why they were in my room. They each have their own rooms, the living room, and the entire kitchen/dining room area to scream at one another. It made me feel a thousand times worse when they started tearing my clothes to shreds for dramatic effect.
"I hope your arteries become corroded and your dead dog comes back to life to eat your remains!" The Basher shouted in a reserved, for him, fashion.
"Well I'm going to rip up this newly tailored suit just to emphasize my utter dislike for your showering habits!" Politely shouted Icicle.
It wasn't even the fact that they were strewn across the floor shouting obscenities that really irked my irk bone, it was when they started up the karaoke machine that I swear was not there just a second ago. The fact that they chose the nature sounds album was the final straw. Listening to Icicle mimic a rainstorm for an hour and a half really brought a damper to my REM sleep.
"GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" I screamed. Too bad I was still in my REM sleep and neither of them heard me.
"Whoooooooooosh-sh-sh-sh." Sang The Basher.
I woke up. Found out it was just a dream and went and told Andy and Tom of the weirdest dream I had last night. That was a horrible idea since they have the combined IQ of freshly poured cement. They thanked me for the idea and are now at Best Buy shopping for a karaoke machine with a rebate-able nature sounds CD.
Apprehensively,
Kyle
My bicycle decided to tell me, halfway up the mountain, that it had been a chain smoker it's whole life. It coughed and choked up the hill. Grease spittle going in all directions. We made it to the top of the hill. Once we did my phone rang with the good vibrations. I'm not entirely unconvinced that they knew about vibration patterns of cell phones long before cell phones came out; It was a good vibration. The sun, like every day of my life, was setting. I answered the phone and heard a bear on the other line. I'm not one to jump to conclusions, but I felt that the language barrier was going to end in some miscommunication. It did. He was talking about some sort of fish he caught in the mountains, while all I wanted to know was how to get to the party. Bears throw great parties, by the way. If you ever do get invited to a party by a bear, take him up on the offer, even when the game of the night is murder in the dark. I promise, always go. Unless, they are having tacos for dinner, then stay far, far away.
I reached the house just before the party was about to begin. A small dog greeting me at the door, followed by the large bear in my previous conversation. The next thing that happened can only be explained by the following equation: Bear + Dog - Dog = Bear + Indigestion.
The house was draped in beautiful things and the door was shut behind me. The bear was a great host. Especially once all the other animals started to show up. First entered another bear, greater and larger than the first. Followed by a small cub, trying to prove his independence from the older and stronger bears. Then came the beautiful lioness entrancing those that watched. The zebra trampled in later. Followed by the sloth who just had to have brought tacos. That never ended well in a party full of rare beasts of far off lands. Ending the parade was the stork couple carrying around their baby in a small white cloth. This group setting would provide much to talk about in the future.
The games started out wonderfully. We smurfed and we smurfed, until there was waaaay too much smurfing going on and three people were forced to leave, on stretchers, in an ambulance. Then we were all up for a rousing game of murder in the dark. If you are unfamiliar with this game: two people are randomly assigned to be murderers, just like real life. Then you turn off all of the lights and let the murderers run amok and kill people in the dark, also like real life. Only once someone screams and informatively states, "I'm dead," can the lights be turned on again. Then we make guesses as to who is running around killing all our friends. But, here's the catch, if you make a false accusation you die instead.
I took many things out from playing this game:
- Don't catch myself running around in a dark basement with a serial killer.
- Hide behind the couch if I am in the situation described in #1. Most times someone will die before they can find me.
- We need to make the legal system just like how it is in the game. If I accuse someone of being a murderer and they tell me that they aren't a murderer, I die instantly.
Before the end of the night, several crazy things had occurred. Four more people managed to be hospitalized which adds to a total of seven. However, we had no clue who six of them were; so it was okay. The sloth tried to make a move on me, but was heart-breakingly too slow, like sloths most usually are, not to be a speciesist. Someone had peed in the heating vent and the place reeked for a couple of weeks. And to top it all off, we got invited next week for another party. I hope they bring hamburgers this time, instead of tacos.
Criminally,
Kyle
For this Sumptuous Saturday, I am going to attempt to write a Thriller! I'll probably use Saturdays to explore many different genres which will in turn assist my growth in satire. Be warned, to step out of one's comfort zone is generally regarded as a "bad idea" in most Asian and African cultures (not based off substantiated facts or truths of any kind.) So if you want a Kyle's-Style-of-Comedy piece, might I suggest something over on my "favorite posts" section, or just going back a couple of days.
Thanks,
Kyle
Please Comment and critique.
Don't Forget to Wash Your Hands.
The bus broke down. My mom, Samantha, was out buying groceries at the time. I just walked seven miles to get home. Sweat is soaking my shoulders and sides and I am ready for a nap. School sucks. I have no friends. I have never kissed a boy! My life is like what adults call a "recession." I have absolutely no idea what that means, but life sucks just as much as they think the recession sucks. I grew up with just my mom, Samantha. But Samantha works seven days a week at two different jobs; she refuses to tell me what those two jobs are. I sometimes see her come home really late at night; on those nights I am awake because of the nightmares, unable to sleep. The only memories I have of my dad are from when I was just a little girl, still wearing diapers and enjoying just about everything. The nightmares about my dad are from when he would come home late; that usually meant a lot of screaming and hitting. Not just my mom, sometimes me too. I could show you the scars that are still there, but I don't see the point. What happened, happened. And my daddy's in prison. He'll be there for a long time. Samantha won't tell me why he's there. I sometimes guess why, but it doesn't help anything. He tried to call me a couple years back on my tenth birthday. I didn't know who he was. How could I? I didn't feel anything for him. No love. No compassion. I didn't want to talk to him, but he kept on apologizing and listing all the things we were going to do together once he got out.
"Honey?"
"In here, Samantha."
"How was your day at school? I bought you some after-school snacks!"
She obviously wasn't serious about the "How was school" question, so I'll drop it too.
"What kinds?" I tried to show mild curiosity, but it's hard when you don't have much motivation for anything, let alone after-school snacks.
The phone rang. And since Samantha has her own cell phone, it rarely rings. I strained to hear at least one end of the conversation. Samantha had gotten very good at muffling the calls. I could only pick out a few words and sentences like, "early" and "how come nobody told me?" She seemed upset. Real upset. The phone rocked as she hung it up on the wall mount. Anger creeped into her creased brow. I wondered if she scrunched her face enough if it would disappear. It didn't. Her face looked drained, almost lifeless.
"We're going to go on a long vacation, sweetie. Go pack your suitcases."
I knew exactly what that meant. We were moving and we weren't ever coming back. I also knew that every time we moved something bad was going to happen. Even though I would rather die than move again, I trusted Samantha.
"When are we going?"
"Tomorrow. Make sure you pack your toothbrush this time." She tried to smile, but I could see the grief and fear beneath her willing, but tired eyes.
After a night of deciding what to take and what to leave behind, I finally filled my suitcases. I was forced to leave behind almost all of my stuffed animals. It was about time I grew up. I'm going to be fourteen next month.
Sleeping was extremely hard. Impossible, actually. 2 am passed as if time didn't exist at all. It wasn't until about 3:30 or 4 that time really began to drag on. I was bored out of my mind. I got up to get another drink of lemonade from the kitchen. The light from the fridge blinded me for a second. It was hard to get around in the dark. Even harder after looking into a bright light. I decided to go sit on the couch in the front entryway to enjoy my lemonade and think about all the things I'd miss from this place. The trees. The mountains. The streams. The flowers. I wonder if they'll have all those things where we're going. I learned a long time ago that it's best not to ask Samantha questions like these. I hope she'll be o--CRASH! The breaking of glass echoed through the house. Before I could realize what had happened, I felt a cold, firm hand squeezing my neck. I couldn't breathe. The hand was so solid and so tight. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream. I couldn't think. I scraped and clawed. I even think I drew blood, but the hand kept holding. My chest, it hurt so bad! I want to breathe! Please, let me breathe! I could feel glass cuts stinging the back of my neck from when the window shattered. The blood almost felt soothing to the sharp incisions. Everything was going dark, well darker than it already was. Before I blacked out I saw Samantha running from her room with a bat. She looked so frightened, so scared. The last word I heard Samantha say was "Jake!" That's my dad's name.
I never did wake up again. I never did get to see if there were mountains in our new hometown. I never got to see what a first kiss felt like. I never did get to fall in love. I didn't even know what love was.
-Impressionistically,
Kyle
We drove for what seemed like 47 minutes, when in reality it was only 46. But time always does run a bit slower when you are about to initiate your own half voluntary, half involuntary execution. This all began two and a half months ago. There was a conversation that seems vaguely familiar, like the "what was that girls name that I made out with last night? Wait, did I even make out with anyone?" kind of vague. The conversation went something like this:
My dad burrowed into the room to apparently figure out how Facebook works, at least, that's the front he used.
"So...I just smash one of the clicker things on the rodent? Then I just go into my profile and this light blue, or maybe it's a bit darker than light blue.....what's the color in between light blue and dark blue?"
"Blue?"
"Yeah," he continued "the blue button here that says 'edit,' right?
I began to open my mouth, but couldn't let out an audible sound before my Dad began again, "so in two and a half months....do you want to die?"
"What? You kinda mumbled off there at the end."
"I said, *cough* *sneeze* *stomach grumble* in two and a half months do you want to die? *cough* *cough* * exfoliate* *cough*
"I'm not thoroughly convinced that you're not trying to sign me up for another half marathon. I remember last time you roped me in, you used the exact same tactics. The answer is No!"
My dad blinked a couple of times, shocked at rejection, even though rejection didn't do anything. It was me he should have been shocked at. "Okay..." he continued, "well do you want twenty bucks?"
This had to be a trick question, but just in case it was real and I could instantly inherit twenty bucks, I had to respond.
As I was summoning up the breath to blurt out the word Yes, my dad rapid fired the phrase, "doyouwantmetosignyouupforthehalfmarathoninaugust?"
By that time it was far too late. The "yes" was past the point of no return.
"Yes," I said.
"Okay, your wish is my command, you better start training."
"I'll get you next time, father. Next time!"
Any other possible petitions against this race were obliterated once the fifty dollar racing fee was paid.
The morning was stiff, the trees glared at me for being up so early, and my eyeballs tried several times to leave my head and run home where they felt more comfortable. The birds sang melodic tunes of various songs, such as:
All Nightmare Long- Metallica;
Black Curtains-Megadeth;
Endless Sleep-Jody Reynolds
We arrived at the park in just enough time to be really early. We waited for the buses for what impatient people would call an hour and what patient people would also call an hour, since it did, in fact, take an hour. The buses pulled up, like buses do. The organizers of this event assumed that anyone running such a grueling race would be skinny and fit, and so they put seven people per seat. It just so happened that they forgot to take into account Edith, who came in at a startling 643 lbs. Showing that did they not care that she was the size of six people, they put five more people in the same seat with me. Good news was that they were all fit. Bad news was they were fit, 300 lb Scottish body builders. The bus vomited us up the mountain, wishing it had never been assembled in the first place and silently questioning it's purpose in life as a rent-a-bus.
When we arrived at the starting line we met John. He was the regulation keeper of the race. He had made it his personal destiny to annoy every living creature before the race began. We loved John about as much as faces love rubbing up against asphalt.
Then began the race. If you could call it a race. It was more of a "fastest person to the finish gets to go home sooner," kind of competition.
Later, rather than sooner, mile one passed. Then mile two. Then before I knew it a man wearing an incredulous top hat was heard shouting, "Mile twelve!" What sweet, beautiful relief it was to hear such a number, mile twelve!
"Yay for mile twelve," I shouted.
"Oh crap!" shouted the man, "I'm sorry, I accidentally read the number twelve instead of the number three. Sorry everyone, Mile Three!" Two men and three women collapsed at the mere error of saying twelve instead of three. I kept going. Mile four, then five, tripping over bodies as I ran. The density of dead people grew less and less as the race continued on. Mile eight and nine passed like my algebra tests, barely.
"My legs, my adorable legs!" My shouting seemed to give me some odd sort of boost. The end had to be near. I turned a hard left, followed by another, and another, and another. "You've got to be kidding me! I just ran in a freaking circle! Good one race organizers!" They took my comment literally and are now planning on implementing twelve more next year. If I hadn't had wasted my breath on sarcasm, I would have definitely sworn an oath to never run again. But, since no air was left in my lungs to make such a protest, I am now signed up for a half marathon in January, in Alaska, barefoot, naked. I reached the real mile twelve and the same guy with the top hat was standing there, "Mile Thirteen! Sprint! Sprint!" One guy next to me pulled out his phone, "T Mobile, actually." The guy to my right was so sick of Mr. top hat that he pulled out a 12 gauge
shotgun and blew off Top Hat's arm. "Shut up!" He yelled stylishly and continued to run just slightly faster than me, which was really annoying. My legs were ten feet behind my torso, my arms were dragging on the ground, my eyes were leaking out of my nostrils, and my forehead sagged far below average. I was a mess. I remembered a wise running man once told me, once it gets to the point in which you don't think you can run any farther, count down from fifty. I tried. Nothing. I then decided to try counting colors, that seemed to work up until I got to the greens and couldn't keep counting. The thirteen mile marker danced on the horizon. "If I can just make it there," I thought. "I wonder if my entire body has to make it passed the finish line, or if my torso only will count?" I didn't have any energy to dwell on that thought. I kept running. 13 passed, blazing before my eyes. Only .1 miles left to go. Great idea: I'll run it! Bad idea: I ran it! I expected to see the finish line just around the corner. I passed the corner, and saw another corner. "It has to be behind that corner," I thought. There was another >^.^< (kitty LOL) corner! Just around this corner, there can only be one last corner, that's logical, right? Phew! No corner, but the finish line was on the other side of the field. I collapsed and died right in front of the finish line. Grass has since grown over my limbs, and my skull is a great hangout for insects. At least for me, the half marathon was over.
Ominously,
Kyle
Welcome to Mondays: Theories, Postulates, and other Life Threatening Illnesses. Today's program is brought to you by the color: Q and the letter: Sand.
Disclaimer: You may or may not find yourself eating various articles of clothing while imagining a fierce blizzard tearing through a trailer park.
Language. Language is the medium in which all thoughts are communicated. It may be a written language, facial language, body language, censored language, practical and/or impractical language. Whatever it is, it's a means to a goal. Now imagine removing those means. You're left with only the goal. I am going to make a related tangent to texting. Besides the Textually Transmitted Diseases that we may contract while participating in text messaging, there lies a greater threat: miscommunication. A slight miscommunication can start a war, can scare away a love interest, or it can even cause a horrendously dangerous volcano to erupt in an urban marketplace. Let's examine what life would be like if our mode of communication was simply ideas. If ideas could transfer from brain to brain within the time frame of nothing seconds. Boundaries would not be a problem, busy signals could pack up and move to Northern Canada where other unwanted things go to be alone and co-start hot chocolate shacks that end up not doing so well.
Imagine presenting instantaneously to a producer a screenplay that could revolutionize the world, while at the same time he is critiquing your work. This speed and accuracy of thought transfer would spin us into another age of unceasing technological advancement. The only problem that we could foresee in this circumstance would be that the human brain is small and 90% worthless. And if we were to try and use more than the allotted 10%, we would end up looking like this:
Euphorically,
Kyle
"It can't end like this?!"
"Like what?" Her crossed eyes really bugged the man strumming the homemade banjo, his discontent showed in his vocal fluctuation and the timbre in his pitch.
"Like, you know,
this." She thought constantly, so constantly that the constant became a variable.
The man's voice quivering, "Your clarification skills are like trying to put contacts into your ear drums in hopes of obtaining better hearing!"
"Well, I really don't appreciate your sense of analogical configuration, mind you!"
"Why?" The man said, whose name will shortly revealed.
"Why what?"
"Why the 'mind you' part?"
"Haven't you battered me enough today Pimples?"
Pimples had always found that pet name endearing.
In light of his prominent endearment he said, "alright, Scandy (short for Scandinavia, another pet name created while a nitrous oxide leak filled their basement.) I'll stop as long as you let me dust your cats off once in a while!"
"Have [censored] you gone insane!" Scandy screamed and later edited for our more illiterate readers.
"If I tell you whether I am insane or sane, that would prove or deny my current state of sanity, which I prefer that you do not know. I refuse to say anything at this time."
"Lick the floor!"
"Okayyyyyllrrr." Which means "okay", but sounds completely different while licking the floor, "tastes like cats and cigarettes!"
"Dang cats! They've been smoking again!"
"I thought you gave them the patch!" Pimples pandered for a moment,
"Well I tried, but they just started eating each other!"
"Scandy, I am going to be what most people call a mediator in a debate, now have we or have we not diagnosed the situation of my sanity?"
"I declare that we have not, but I have my theories."
"Such as...."
Pimples shook open another bottle of Pepsi to hydrate the six cats, Cogs, Wheels, Lever, Wedge, Pulley, Crank, and Shaft, were their names, Pimples was, obviously, an accountant.
Scandy just opened her mouth, "You did just lick the floor didn't you?"
"Yeah...." Pimples tried to escape through the wall, but it turned out that the wall was a wall and he ended up getting a bloody nose.
Scandy's fingernails stretched foreword. Her thighs keeping her from falling off of their microfiber couch. Her waist decided to abandon it's purpose as a waist and forcing Scandy to improvise in order to obtain her goal. She did a small barrel roll to the left side of the couch, leaned forcefully backwards and dislocated her shoulder. This should give her the precise angle and stretch length capability to click the small "plus sign" button on the remote. The illuminated display of the 27.3" x 6.
♥" television screen to switch from "Cops" to a re-run of "When Evil Babies Attack: Horror Stories from the Crib and Back."
"Meh," both Pimples and Scandinavia said cooperatively, and then they smiled.
Pimples and Scandy ended spending their Friday night watching low-budget television shows, while eating Nutella from a tub, and spraying Lysol on a thirty-second cycle in lieu of cleaning the year old pile of TV dinners. They had a deal that whoever's mother-in-law dies first, has to take it out. They loved each other, and loved themselves just a bit more. Also, despite Scandy's whining, it did in fact end like
this.
Observationally,
Kyle
My hair-color-changing-chameleon of a sister picked me up from a death-defying day at work. It was so death defying that death actually stopped by my apartment later and cried on my couch for an hour demanding an apology. I laughed at death in the face, turns out he doesn't like it much when people do that, he just sobbed harder.
And as my reptilian sister and I were escaping the co-racial confinement of a call-center, the time drew closer, like a very impolite trucker who gets as close as he possibly can to your bumper while you are waiting out an endless red light. Time came and it creeped.
We were driving terrifically while the counterproductive music projected so loudly that it reached into parts of the car that I didn't even know sound could reach into. The lyrics of such music describe nothing and sound like something even less. It would have been unbearable had I not been trained for such situations. That training all began at birth. My parents held rock concerts nightly in my room, the long haired musicians placing the bass in my crib. They would rock out to various Bon Jovi and Leonard Cohen songs. A kind father and mother looking out for their baby boy, protecting him from the noises of life.
The climax of this story concludes in the Provo city hospital. And begins when we ran around the hospital building. I thought about entering the building. I entered the building. This was vital. But wait! Oh no! Pregnant lady! Must.....Hold.....Door....For....Her.....Holding....Holding...... Holded! Running. Running. Running. Stop Running. I was greeted by none other than, you guessed it, no one. I was greeted by a MACHINE! "
I must prove my dominance!" I thought to myself. "
I could unplug him, but that would only stop him for a short time. He'd be back, and with friends. No, I must end this now!" The time was wearing thin, thin clothing that proved to be a nylon spandex biking outfit. Time was just preparing for it's daily bike ride, if you know what I mean, probably not. It could only end in one way, and one way only. If you were wondering if there was any other way, the answer is no way. None. Way? No. Are you sure? (spanish accent) Yes. It was a staring contest. My eyes began to bulge, my pacemaker started to pace, and my spine was beginning to crawl down my leg. The machine wasn't even straining or looking worried at all. How much longer? Then, my left eye shriveled up with lack of moisture and fell out of it's socket. I picked it up as it was dangling above my chin and held it towards the machine. It was soon followed by the right. I caught myself holding both of my eyeballs at a machine that, as the nurse described, just wanted my name. I finally gave up after my sister bribed me a milkshake, that I would just use later to moisturize my terribly dry eyes.
"Kyle, we're ready for you." That statement can unnerve a complete bio-dome with it's implications. Why don't they just say, "Kyle, we've been setting up your death catcher machine for twenty years and have been expecting you since before you were born. The tools are sharp and the monotone doctor is waiting."
The hospital smelled like a bunch of sick and injured people wishing to get better. It wasn't the odor of sickness that bothered me, more the smell of wishing and hope.
They then instructed me to put on pants and go into another room where I would be called into a conjoining room and shuffled into a nearby closet until the doctor came to retrieve me. I named the mop, his name is, of course, Benjamen Franklin.
"Kyle" gulped the doctor.
"Why did you just gulp?" I asked.
"I thought it would relax you."
"Hmmmm....okay, you seem like a man who play blackout, no-light, racquetball, I can trust you." I logically succumbed.
"Get in the machine, and don't move a muscle"
"K"
"it is of the utmost importance that you do not move or the pictures will come off blurry and, just so we don't have to take another MRI, we'll just document it as a serious form of cancer and instantly start you on chemotherapy."
"Okay....."
"You use far too many ellipses."
"Sorry, I didn't know you could tell."
The whirring sound began and grew and flourished into a BZZZZ BZZZ BZZZZZZZ sound. Then followed by a WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH sound and complimented with a BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP TICK TICK TICK noise. It wasn't but four minutes before I fell asleep and when I awoke, I jolted awake, like you do when you fall off a high rise building on a Tony Hawk signed skateboard in your dreams. Cancer was all I could think of, oh no.
I left the hospital too embarrassed to tell anyone that I had fallen asleep in the MRI machine since I went there to be tested for falling asleep at inappropriate times throughout the day. Irony might be one way to look at it, zombie revolution might be another. The tests come tomorrow, the end of the world comes on Thursday, making my prognosis completely pointless.
Radiologically,
Kyle
