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This didn't help

I have felt on the edge of crying for forty-eight hours, so I suppose I am depressed. It feels too pathological to allow it to be permanent, so I will again consider it the equivalent of an emotional cold. I am aware my feelings are more or less situational, that the right phone call and my signature on an employment contract would ameliorate my condition almost instantly. This uncertainty about the future, these dwindling time limits for outside saving graces, weighs on me like a pocket full of rocks in the river of life.

It began when both Melanie and I had bad days and, in our conversation, entered into a negative feedback cycle, including her shouting that I should just abandon this area and have a ...

Trudging through three feet of snow that used to be my driveway, loaded down with a sleeping bag, backpack, and air mattress, some woman I have never met yells her accusation to me, "Are you Mark?!" She, it will soon become apparent, means, "Are you my mark?"

Mark, I know from recent experience, is the rental agent for my apartment complex. He is the one my landlord, living in Japan, sent to photograph the tree limb that shot through my living room last night, when the blizzard was reaching a crescendo, so he could file an insurance claim. Mark is not someone who I would wish to be right now, beholden to thirty irritated and cold people, and I tell her as much.

"Are you gonna help us dig out this car?" she then shouts. She, along with six other people, use their hands alone to free a car, though escaping out of the driveway will be next to impossible. I motion at the burdens around my neck and shoulders and assure her I am headed toward my brother's van, twenty feet away, so he can rescue me from having to deal with this for the remains of the weekend. Perhaps, when I ...

There have only been a few times where I have felt close to death, most notably when I caught mono from drinking out of a friend's glass in high school. Most teens just shrug mono off, sleeping for a few days and then restoring to vitality. My throat nearly closed up and was filled with white sores, rendering me incapable of eating and nearly from drinking. I don't recall how long I was sick, as I was busy talking to my hallucinations and groaning like a dying dog for most of it. Less than a month, certainly, but I am not sure by how much.

I am suffering from a similar condition now, a combination of strep and tonsillitis. At least mono let me sleep. I went to a saw bone at a local Urgent Care, the McDonald's equivalent of an emergency room, because there was no other way to get the antibiotics that would clear up my condition. (I consider it more than annoying that antibiotics are fed to cattle en masse but I have to beg to get six pills. Am I not as worthy as a future hamburger?) While I am fairly sure the white bumps are obliterated, the healing occurred at the expense of kicking my whole immune ...

We all - by which I mean, I - have these couples we place our faith in. They aren't always best friends or even those we know nearly as well as we would like to, but we are aware enough of them to let them unwittingly shoulder the burden of our unmentioned devotion. I do not doubt that this paragraph alone has brought to mind couples in your own life who have filled this role for however little time, couples on whom you hung your hope.

After Emily dumped me, Dan Kessler informed me that we were this couple for him, the ones who seemed idyllic from the outside, who made him believe that coupledom was something feasible in the long term. I told him that there were internal issues I thought better than to share with even my closest friends, and that there was much I only let myself consciously acknowledge after she had left. There is a novelty in having others admire your relationship, and I wasn't about to spoil that, even ...

I arrive too late to join the beginners' swing lesson, assuming that I received it last week anyway. I watch patiently until the lesson turns to more complex turns and swings and I am envious. But there is nothing to be done, the male-to-female ratio is all wrong and I don't think I can drag one of the arriving strangers out to the floor to even things up without a proper introduction or bribe. It serves me right for coming without female companionship (Jacki is in the city this week).

"I'm not very good," I tell a short woman in her sixties after she asks me for a dance.

"Don't say that! Never say that or I won't want to dance with you!" she admonishes with a smile. I don't think I can properly explain that I mean that I am not very good yet and simply want her to know that the reason I am stilted is not owing to her but my awareness of the vast sea of my ignorance. She, at least, seems to want to be helpful, a condition I find rarer than ...

Good sorts

I arrive at Bard hours early, because I am done working and want to be elsewhere with haste. All day, I have been in distrait. In Plato's The Republic, he said a just man who is thought unjust is ultimately happier than an unjust man who is thought just. The unemployment board on New York does not agree with Plato, deciding shenanigans must be afoot given that I substitute taught often prior to December 23rd and then didn't again until after January 3rd. The fact that undoubtedly occurs to you - that this is winter recess for most every school in the United States - does not occur to the bureaucrats, who have opted to believe that my industry is tantamount to deception and thus have kept my ...

This needs to get nipped in the bud before it happens. Seriously, guys, I know you are getting tired of my crazy political ramblings and at some point the three people in the Internet who still read this will go outside and look at the sun or something, but for the record: Ron Paul has lost his fucking mind. There's no gleeful smile across my face, no usual sense of sarcasm, just an odd feeling that allowing this man to continue at the helm of the Internet will only lead to the tragic end of the human race.

The medical doctor who thinks global warming is a conspiracy between volcanoes, Xenology: Swing Vote 02/03/2010

She really is a very good dance partner.

The nameless hipster woman tells us that it doesn't matter if Jacki and I are any good so long as we are having fun. "For all we care, you can just do this the whole time." Then she launches into a finger waggle, limb flailing mockery that manages to be coordinated and skillful. One would have no trouble putting her on a crash diet, ditching her facial jewelry, and turning her into a convincing flapper.

"If I could dance like that," I assure her, "I wouldn't need you to explain how to do the basic step again. Could you, please?"

Jacki and I focus on our footwork for the first few ...

Writer's Block is like a shark on the head

I have been struggling to write (and the irony is not lost on me that I am writing about difficulties writing). It is not because I have Melanie for my houseguest this week, as it extends weeks prior to her presence, since I finished my final revision of We Shadows. In fact, our affection tends to begin to shake loose my inspiration, but even these divine nudges aren't enough to return my literary fluidity.

Last night, I dreamt of three of my characters, something that has never happened before. They weren't close to my favorite characters (Ash, Seth, and Dryden), nor was my dream of them helpful in fleshing out their book ...

You're not from around here, are you, boy? Okay, well, maybe no one has said this to me yet. Still I get the looks and, believe it or not, I respect the passion. Maybe it is the hatred I show for the word "wicked" or my ability to pronounce words correctly. I stick out like a sore thumb, a sore thumb with a grasp on the English fucking language that eludes these people like the letter "R". I was trying to be respectful of this area, I was willing to allow myself a gentle transition ...

Suitable nineties

It isn't that I am not enjoying their company, but that I would rather be dancing. The sole reason I am out on this frozen night, wearing little more than a black t-shirt and jeans, is that I am giving solo dancing another chance. When last I visited Cabaloosa, I was rewarded with a cougar trying to pounce on be because I had dared to let her dance in my proximity for the duration of an unromantic eighties pop song. Nineties Night with Jacki and crew had to be safer.

I couldn't know just how safe until I made my excuses and leave Jacki, John, and crew at Bacchus to finish up their second ...

She is just lucky she has a cute pout

"I have something that you aren't going to like," Melanie says. I hate conversations that start this way. She goes on to explain that, while the plan had always been that she would be returning to me Saturday, she has opted to prolong her stay with her parents for another four days, so her mother won't have to be alone once her father leaves on a trip.

This leaves me no reasonable response. I am disappointed to have this long weekend snatched away from me so she can spend more time in a town she has done little more than bitch about with parents to whom she had made me feel she was overfull (as any adult might be ...

Sweet Jesus, what sort of mad man would make an exhibit that shoots mace in your eyes?

This isn't helping. Christ, the water is making it worse.

Okay, if everyone has recovered, we're going to be moving on now.

Excuse me, it appears that my wife and I have gotten a bit turned around in your wonderful museum. Which way to the door, young man?

Oh no, I don't think so, Mr. Wilson. It's back to the euthanasia exhibit for the both of you.

Do you have something you want to tell the kids, Mr. Biggles?

BWHAAAAAA

Mr. Biggles?

BWHAAAAAA

It appears that Mr. Biggles has forgotten how to communicate, which means one of you has been thinking dirty thoughts again. Assume the position of revelation!

I think we can all agree that this would not be a good look for me now.

I scour my closets for fodder for the biannual Recycling Party, where we try to pawn off those articles of clothing and appliance that we may have outgrown, but which have life in them. My mistake may be in asking Melanie for her input, as she has certain hesitations about my wardrobe.

"Oh god, the bird shirt," she immediately gasps, referring to a somewhat stiff green shirt with a white bird embroidered below the breast.

"Already in the pile."

"You're so good. And anything made of velour. The nineties are over."

Why are we even out here?

You will see. I was up here before with Billy and came across these things. It is hard to explain. You want to get quiet now.

Tick tick tick tick tick

Reek reek reek

What the fuck are those things?

There are four of them now?

You know when you sound surprised, it is not exactly reassuring.

Look, when I was up here before, it was just the two, which means...

They are breeding.

Tick tick tick

Reek reek reek

Try not to not to make any noise, they do not seem to like it.

The one in front keeps looking at me; it feels like it is burning a hole in my soul.

REEEKKKKK

MOVE!

Get it off of me.

Christ, I loved you. I have to go. I have to go.

They are raping my eyes. Their hook shaped penises are pushing into my brain.

Tick tick tick

Reek reek reek