One step in the wrong direction is one step away from the right one. One more day working pizza was one more day I wasn't taking steps to ensure a future away from fast food and other mediocre jobs. I was recently in a discussion with an old friend. We equally voiced concerns about prospective employment opportunities. Everyone is looking for someone with experience in the given field, yet no one is willing to give it. The only things I am qualified in are call centers and the food industry, neither of which I want to be doing. The only way I could get a position in the English world is to have experience, and the only way to get experience is to have a job in that field, which I can't get unless I have previous experience. I am at a crossroads with a morbidly obese plumber with four arms. I ask this man which way I should go. He
responds after a short coughing fit by pointing twice upwards and three times down, leaving me worse than when I started, and hating plumbers to a degree only understood by carpenters.
Abashedly,
Kyle
The child was born without sight. He entered into the world without a single image of mother or father and no hope for recovery. His parents were originally frightened for the difficulties that lay ahead, until they saw a billboard with the words, "Yes you can," written in a font that by itself could motivate a river to become a slightly larger river. They took this billboard as a sign, to help their son become anything he wanted to become. Tears filled their eyes as "yes you can" filled their minds. For the first time in this young boy's life, he heard the words "yes you can."
"So, what do you want to do with your life? You could do anything!" His parents were falling off their seats in anticipation. The blind child couldn't see why they kept falling down, but continued to think nonetheless.
"I want to be-"
*Thud* "Sorry." The mom said as she pulled herself back onto the couch. The anticipation was at its peak. Her various organs got black eyes for how hard her heart was beating.
"I want to be a cartographer." Said the blind boy.
"..." The parents shared glances of sadness and several other glances that usually don't get invited to those types of parties.
"I can feel those looks," said the blind boy, "I am going to be a cartographer, because 'Yes I can'.
The mother was sad because she was anticipating a more "exclusive" career path.
The father was sad because he thought "cartographer" was another word for "homosexual."
*Twenty Years Later*
I was walking into the university looking for the philosophy section in order to write down names and quote things they never said, to people that never read. I walked up to the fifth floor and located the map. I looked for philosophy....Ah ha! Philosophy, section B-BJ Alpha 3.443 x Annual rainfall sideways Blue. Okay...so...maybe I can just find it on the map. I stared at it for long enough to know that I did not speak korean. I looked around and saw a group of students with t-shirts that said "Korea is for Leavers" on it. I decided they would be able to assist.
"Could you come help me read this map, it's completely in korean."
The small group stared at the map in horror. One of them grabbed a cup of water and poured it over his head, lit his shirt on fire, and ran in circles until he passed out. Two of them jumped out the fifth floor window. The fourth sat reading his textbook casually. He looked up for just enough time to say "I'm from Cambodia."
A small library assistant walked past.
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"Hey! Can you help me? I'm looking for the philosophy section and this map is completely illegible."
She let out the loudest scream she could get away with in a library, and then vanished into a very quiet puff of smoke. I sat and stared at the smoke for a while and then back at the map. My only option was to try and decipher it. Could it be the picture of the half-horse, half-banana peel, or maybe somewhere near it? It most definitely isn't the cereal box top or the section marked with four dots and one square, unless that's what it wants me to think. After four hours, I began to lose hope. Then, not knowing what to do, I sat down on the floor, in a matter of seconds the world went dark. After the odd phenomenon I woke up in the philosophy section wearing a large sticker on my chest with an arrow pointing down that said, "You are here."
Opportunistically,
Kyle
Disclaimer: No punctuation was harmed in the making of the post, except for the ampersand. We beat the crap out of him, and ate his dog.
I'm was going to measure my room each morning solely to prove that it really does get smaller the more time I spend inside it, but since I eat in my sleep and my yardstick looked like a churro, I didn't. My room gives me a feeling similar to how mickey mouse would feel endorsing rodenticide; which would only happen if an underground organization of communistic midgets suddenly inherited Disneyland.
"You must be this short to ride." The power-hungry grin of the small man compensating for his size, and then some.
"Darn," said the tall man, "I'm six-five."
Rev. Revvvv Revvvv Rev Revvvvv.
"Hey! Hey! What are you doi- AHHHHHH!!!"
"Look," the midget said, "now you're three-foot-four and three-foot-one. You'll have to buy two seats. Next!"
Tip of advice for the world, and a few of its inhabitants. If you are trying to accurately define the word "boring" and the only thing that comes to mind is a sketch of yourself followed by a period, you have an incomplete sentence as well as a personality problem, and I have something to tide you over until those get worked out. What you need is a creative new idea to boost your juices and get you feeling sixty eight again.
Sometimes we have a lot of ideas that we share externally
. These thoughts are the kind that often question their existence, never pay rent, and end up only being used for reality tv shows aired from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.*
The smarter thoughts might figure out what's going on and destroy themselves before they get a chance to be thrown out into the universe. It's a scary place out there, especially for ideas. These thoughts are usually thought right before you wake up and are gone right after giving you the feeling that it was an amazing idea. That day you feel frustrated, telling everyone what a brilliant idea it was if you could only just remember it.
And lastly, there is the brilliant thought, the hardest to find, and worth a fortune to whoever has tripped over one or two in their day. This type of thought, more often than not, requires a damp, dark area, often a basement of a parent's home, or maybe an abandoned meat cellar. They are prone to feel more comfortable in an environment with half eaten hot pockets, a roommate named Ryan, and the stench of unused potential. This way, the thoughts can remove all possibility of being turned into an action. When they come out in a non-cellar-like environment, they instantly feel awkward, like one does when they find out they are the smartest one at the party, by a lot. The idea feels a bit queasy at first, throws up into a plastic fern, gets a phone number, and then makes a quick exit, only to realize that the phone number was given to him by a pyramid scheme with soft black hair and a $350 dollar deposit.
Those relationships always leave him with an empty feeling in his stomach and a large manual containing 350 different ways of explaining the phrase "go for it."He has his thoughts on the meaning of "go for it", they usually go bowling together.
Activity for creative juice pumping: start with the phrase "what if..." This will take your mind instantly from thinking one dimensionally to thinking in however many dimensions you have the time to imagine. So rekindle that imagination and welcome the absurdities that are sure to follow. And always go for it! (unless "it" represents stabbing a coworker in the face with an icicle). What if... a hypothetical question changed the world?
What if...it was your question?
Impersonally (from a safe distance),
Kyle
*Such as: Mediocre Moms: A very personal and extensive look at moms that aren't special in any way.
Who's Wearing the Pants Now: Will a new pant suit tear this family apart?
Dog Wedding Planner: When one happy couple puts their wedding in the hands, or paws, of their cocker spaniel.
Frankly I was nervous. The door opened with the momentum of my hand and the men stared at me. My eyes began to size-up my future coworkers. One was large, one was medium sized, one was constantly oscillating in size. I wasn't sure what that meant or how it could happen. Or maybe it was just mine own eyes playing tricks on me. The large man stared at me. I could only guess that his brain had spontaneously imploded and all that was left were the basic motor skills to make a pizza. He clearly had nothing upstairs, in the attic, and plainly nothing in the guest bedroom. His anatomical house could be described as abandoned.
I began counting my options at this moment, I ended on three. Which is strangely the maximum number that these men could count to. The blank stares were passed around like bottles of beer on the wall. The third man decided to take this opportunity to drink the metaphorical beers and get metaphorically drunk. We didn't get too worried until he began to metaphorically take his shirt off. Once we got him some metaphorical coffee, he calmed down.
"I guess we'll begin your training now."
"Alright" I responded.
The second man returned to his pizzas and got lost in his own little sauced up world.
"Now sit in this chair and watch two hours of still frame animation showing you the pizza making process. Each frame should be no more than thirty five seconds a piece. If it ever takes longer than that, just call it some impolite names and hit it with this large brick."
"Does that ever work?"
"No one has ever tried it, they usually hit themselves with the brick first."
"Haha, worker's comp then, eh?"
"Don't you ever, ever say that again! You hear me?"
My body shrunk down into the chair and gave my brain authorization to ponder what that could have possibly alluded to besides the direct meaning of worker's compensation."
The first man stormed out of the room and I was left alone with my still frame animation, that I preferred to label as simply 'still frame'. Watching two hours of pizza can slowly bring the viewer to do strange acts. Mine involved a brick, a few broken teeth, and an almost satisfied hunger.
And that, was my first day at Papa Johns.
Personifiably,
Kyle
"Hello....?"
"There was no answer." Said a voice, a very manly voice.
"Who said that?"
"Still no answer." Said the voice a second time.
"Dang it! It's that stupid narrator again! Gets me every time!"
The narrator felt bad for interrupting the story and decided, at this point, to come back later and edit in his voice overs after the conclusion of the story. The narrator then went off to do whatever it is that narrators do when they're not narrating.
I searched inside the post office for any signs of life, all I could find were some half eaten tacos, a phone that was on hold, and a small sign that said "ring the bell for attendant." I searched for the better half of twenty minutes, being the second half. Nothing clued me in whether anyone was operating the store. I eventually became frustrated with looking and analyzing, and decided to flip over chairs until a better idea came to mind.
"Hey what are you doing?!"
"Oh my! I'm so sorry, I didn't know chairs had any opinions on being flipped over! I didn't even know they had a sense of location at all!"
"I'm over here. And I'm most definitely not a chair."
A poem: the only way to describe the lady inside.
The attendant's eyes tripled in size, and her face was deep in surprise.
A casual glance, gave shivers like ants, until I noticed her nose.
It was humongous, and a little bit spongeous, and gravity was not on her side.
I thought I could look past it, until it started to grow.
I'm grateful when she took my sendvelope and charged me $3.75.
"So.....how long will that take?" I asked as though my house was on fire and I could only take one thing with me.
"The package?"
"Yes."
"Well, that depends. Where did you order it?"
"... I just gave it to you?"
"Oh, this one? You should really be more specific."
"Can I buy a few stamps too?"
"Sure, which kinds?" She almost politely asked.
Be specific. Be specific. "You see. I'm getting them for my girlfriend. So, I want one that says, 'I love you', without saying 'I hope you die in a grease fire so I can finally give a eulogy.' I want it to have a deeper meaning than 'kiss me, I'm a stamp collector' and an undertone of 'baby, you're worth more than a 'forever' stamp.'' I want it to take her breath away and then replace it before she gets an asthma attack. I want that kind of stamp."
"Alright. I have exactly what you need. Two sets of commemorative stamps from our 1981 collection with an inverted dual-color print illustrating what Scottie Pippin would look like as head coach for a 19th century international cricket tournament."
"Perfect."
"That will be 23 gold doubloons, sir."
"..."
Post-Commercially,
Kyle
The small insignificant creature popped his head above the slightly-harder-than-earth, earth. The skin of the planets surface still smoking after four days. Black rock held like a blanket over the wasteland that used to be a metropolis. The small creature continued to look around, wondering what happened. The creature blinked. He had just gone to sleep a few months ago with the preconceived notion that he was going to wake up and maybe go steal a hot dog or something. Now the only hot dog he could see was literal and that spoiled his appetite. The small insignificant creature blinked again. He then returned to his hole.
The earth was not so calm as the creature. He said, "AHHHHHH!!!! MY SKIN!!!!" The earth kept spinning in frustrated pain. He could not wrap his mind around the fact that there was no planetary emergency room. Not that he'd be able to fit into a room. It was the principle of the thing. Be it documented that the earth in that moment became very blue. He also wondered where his brain was located, and why no one had bothered to teach him anatomy, or in his case geography. He had no idea what happened. One moment he was fine, sending a slight breeze over the tropics, changing tides, and growing mountains. The next moment there was a large flash and pain that was not planning to remove itself for some time. No one bothered to tell the earth about residual heat either. It was another thing he could add to his list of things that annoyed him. He began to reflect on his life. He knew it would take a very long time to reflect on everything, since he had reached a form of self-actualization at this point. Well, as self-actualized as a planet could feel.
I am, as the narrator, obligated to apologize for this story. It appears to be the preface of a post-apocalyptic adventure of survival and re-growth. However, no one from this explosion had survived, except for one small insignificant creature, and the earth.
The small insignificant creature continued to blink, and the earth continued to spin.
The End.
Globally,
Kyle
I am in the middle of a custody battle for my brain. My body claims rights to access the information that lie within, while my job requests my brain in order to work long, draining hours, in a cubicle the size of a shoebox, since brains "don't take up that much space". I have no idea why they would want just my brain, but it's up to the courts to determine if they do receive any sort of settlement. The hearing went as follows:
"Judge, sidebar."
"Ummm... the bailiff can't call a sidebar."
"Oh, right. Sorry." Said the bailiff, disheveled.
"Moving on... Let's start with opening arguments. Apple Rebate Center, you may begin."
"It was a night, just like today, except for at night. This sad excuse for a boy (points to me; I flex) began to think. He thought such a thought, it could revolutionize the thinking industry. Do you know how much money is in the thinking industry?" Said the prosecutor, his feet facing the exit, his eyes facing the judge, and the rest of his body, were directed toward the jury and a small nun. The jury broke into arbitrary laughter as they contemplated what exactly was going on.
One man held up six of his fingers. The corners of his mouth tried to touch his eyebrows in excitement. He felt good/proud. He didn't know what it all meant, but he did know that the man was fishing for a number. And that's exactly what he gave him.
"Six what?" asked the prosecutor.
"Pence, none the richer." Said the same man, now successfully touching the corners of his mouth to his eyebrows.
"What? No. Anybody else?"
"Million?" Said a balding man. This bald man found it unnecessary for the narrator to point out his baldness. He prefers the term "anti-growing".
"Wrong," the prosecutor complained, wincing in frustration.
The judge grew tired of this nonsense, and said, "Prosecutor, stop wincing, you'll get wrinkles. Also, for your information, the thinking industry makes as much money as they want, all they have to do is imagine it, and it satisfies them for the time being. They usually avoid paying their bills or house payments and go to bi-weekly meetings to imagine more money to last them the next few days. They usually die of starvation before they reach the third meeting."
"Correct!" Screamed the Prosecutor ecstatically. "Now, try telling me that it's not important to have such a marvelous brain as Kyle's, working to boost the economy! If the thinking industry goes bankrupt, what's next? The housing market? Fish stores? Mom and Pop onion shops? A domino effect will take out the economy and plague our lives forever. The thinking industry is vital for our survival." The last words spoken by the prosecutor were completely false. The thinking industry holds no shares, no market value, and no taxable income. It is completely and incompletely non-profit to anyone looking from the outside in. A third party once said, "I don't understand, they just sit there and think up money, that will never actually exist." However implausible the argument, the jury grew teary eyed. Maybe because they were thinking about onions.
"That is all." Concluded the prosecutor. Giving a hi-five to no one in particular.
"The defense may now try and follow a very moving opening statement with a not-very-well-thought-through statement if they wish." Said the judge.
"We would, your honor." Said the defense frantically.
 |
In memory of this man, who
is probably still alive. |
In a matter of minutes, we were expected, by the judge, to remove all parts of our argument that were well thought through. By the time we finished, we had a bit left over on the subject of belly button rings, and a small piece having to do with fertilizers being from distant planet. All of our well-thought-out arguments were quickly removed by the bailiff, who began using them to draw pictures of himself with wings and a bailiff outfit made entirely of macraméd sequins. The bailiff quietly chuckled, and then slowly lulled himself, and three others, to sleep. We were going to have to change our strategy. We all arose, walked to the front, and put on our best puppy dog faces. We were additionally charged with animal cruelty. I knew we shouldn't have used real puppy dog faces. I just assumed since they were already dead...
According to the judge, they "let me off easy" with a mere seventy five years in solitary confinement, three hundred fifty hours of watching humane society commercials, twenty five hours arm wrestling with Martha Stewart, and a seven dollar and fifty cent fine (the judge had forgotten her lunch that day).
Also, my job ended up winning custody of my brain. In all the excitement of their victory, they ended up burning my brain at a horribly planned party. They left the party feeling oddly as though they had lost the lawsuit altogether. Several of the men additionally felt embarrassed for confusing my brain for the makings of a small fire. They got over this feeling of discomposure with ten pints of chocolate syrup and a marathon of Full House. As they say, "A brain is a terrible thing to light on fire."
This claim is valid. Moved to a 3,
Panoramically,
Kyle
The child was born without sight. He entered into the world without a single image of mother or father and no hope for recovery. His parents were originally frightened for the difficulties that lay ahead, until they saw a billboard with the words, "Yes you can," written in a font that by itself could motivate a river to become a slightly larger river. They took this billboard as a sign, to help their son become anything he wanted to become. Tears filled their eyes as "yes you can" filled their minds. For the first time in this young boy's life, he heard the words "yes you can."
I am in the middle of a custody battle for my brain. My body claims rights to access the information that lie within, while my job requests my brain in order to work long, draining hours, in a cubicle the size of a shoebox, since brains "don't take up that much space". I have no idea why they would want just my brain, but it's up to the courts to determine if they do receive any sort of settlement. The hearing went as follows:
