Below are the most recent 12 friends' journal entries.

Friday, December 25th, 2009
joeymichaels	11:19p	LJ Idol Free Topic: Unwrapping December 21, 2009 TO: Ralph "Cutta Ho" Vargas [Address Redacted] FROM: Lionel Cannon A&R Director Thin Phat Beats Records Dear Mr. Vargas, First, the bad news. We're not interested in your music. Not in the slightest. We will not be signing you now or at any time in the future. In fact, I can say with certainty that even if every employee of our company was replaced with somebody else, your newly forged reputation at Thin Phat Beats Records would lead all the new employees to agree not to sign you. I just want to make this perfectly clear right from the start so that there are no misunderstandings. Now, the good news. Well, good after a fashion. I have been A&R Director for TPB Records for twenty five years now and I have never once been compelled to write a personal letter to an artist we're rejecting before now. Your case is unique and deserves my personal attention. To be frank, you are the worst rapper I've ever heard. You have no obvious sense of rhythm. You almost never rhyme your lyrics - and when you do, its seems just as likely that the rhyme was accidental. The content of your lyrics tends to be either so vague as to be nonsensical or way, way, way too specific (as for example, your twelve minute magnum opus, "My Vas Defrens"). When Harry Rodgers, the man who received your demo CD, first listened to your unsolicited submission, his first reaction was that you had accidentally burned a phone call to your gas company to the CD instead of a music track. It was only upon listening to all of your tracks that he realized that you actually intended this as music. Furthermore, it was only after reading your manifesto that he realized that you weren't joking. That's when he started circulating your CD around the office. It quickly became the low water mark by which we praised all dreadful recordings. "Well, that guy is bad, but he's no 'Cutta Ho.'" Speaking of your "rap name," we also found it disturbingly ironic that your manifesto contained such strongly worded statements against mysogyny in most moden music in light of the "Cutta Ho" business. I'm not sure what you think your name might mean, but most of us in the rap community find it to be an ugly term that suggests you're willing to harm a prostitute with a knife. Last weekend, we decided we had to go see you perform live. Most of us were somewhat drunk at the time and had been debating whether you were "for real." We were very pleased to learn that you were not only for real, but scheduled to perform that very evening. You were everything we imagined you might be and less. The less, in this case, referring to your stage presence. You were a veritble black hole of entertainment - a performer so densely talentless that you actually made the people on the bill before and after you less enjoyable by your very presence. Indeed, we rather liked the act that performed right before you, but after your set, they seemed kind of dreadful. You managed to make their good set seem bad through your remarkably inept performance. The whole office agreed that you were considerably better on CD when we didn't have to look at you. "How is this good news," I imagine you are asking. Well, while we firmly believe that your style of "music" (and I hate to call it that) is the polar opposite of rap (Anti-rap? Non-rap? Un-rap?), we're of the firm belief that there is a market out there for rhythmless, inept musicians. It isn't the rap market that you so desperately want to be a part of. No, I'm afraid that path is closed to you forever. TGB Records has a sister label, though, called Smooth Groove Records. They specialize in adult contemporary recordings - specifically the innocuous music played in grocery stores and on AM radio. We've forwarded your CD to them with our highest recomendation. All of the things about you that make you a horrible rapper make you perfect for th Adult Contemporary market - especially your pronounced lack of charisma. You could be - dare I say it? - the next Christopher Cross. You're probably too young to remember him, but google the song "sailing" by christopher cross and you'll get an idea of what I mean. We hope you're not too disappointed at your complete inability to become a successful rapper, but look forward to hearing you in the dentist's office waiting room someday. Oh, since I imagine your connected to your rap name, let me suggest you change your stage name to "Cutter Vargas." It sounds like you might be a mighty 19th century ship - again, perfect when your songs will be played on the stations that feature tunes like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitsgerald." Sincerely, Lionel Cannon (Comment on this)
joeymichaels	12:39a	We'll Have To Muddle Through Somehow Kids sometimes don't have an especially good perception of time. When I say "kids," please understand that I mean "me as a kid," but plural so that I don't have to change any of the rest of that sentance. To elaborate, I don't recall my first year or so of life at all. I know I lived in Virginia and Texas during that year but my first conscious memories are of living in Fairfield, Connecticut. Now, I know I was younger than three while living there because I remember my brother being born while we lived there and he's two years younger than me. At the time, I recall feeling like I had always lived in Fairfield, had always played with the things I played with, had always known the people (mostly adults) that I knew. From my three year old perspective, everyone in my life had always existed and always would exist. Well, except for that damn interloper, my brother. My first memory of Christmas probably comes from the basement of my grandparent's house. Or whichever house they were living in at that time. There is photographic evidence of me at three with my cousins opening gifts, but I also remember it and remember being a little baffled by the whole unwrapping business. I was not baffled by the "oh shit, new toys" business. I got that. When I think back on it, I feel like I had a thousand Christmases as a small child. I don't mean this figuratively. I mean I feel like Christmas happened a thousand times. During my single digit years, Christmas was such an important holiday that most of my memories of my extended family center around it. We saw each other on a bunch of other days during the year, but the Christmases always stand out. Mostly because of the fighting between my aunts, but I suppose that's a subject for another entry. No, what I ponder is that my 42 Christmases force me to ponder change and mortality. People vanish. New people arrive. The thousand shadow Christmases of my youth center around a specific group of people: My Parents My Brother My Paternal Grandparents My Aunt June, whomever her husband or boyfriend was that particular year, and her son, my cousin Steve My Crazy Aunt May, whomever her husband or boyfriend was that particular year, and her children - my cousin Eileen, my cousin Jay and my cousin Arnold Santa Claus The first person who left this group was Santa Claus. I figured out the truth about him in pre-school and felt like I'd joined the big people club, so I didn't miss him. I still had to eat at the kid's table though. Damn! After that, the group was pretty stable for many, many years. Oh, sure, Aunt June and Aunt May had a series of husbands/boyfriends who'd join us for Christmas, but they generally did the same things and said the same things and drank the same amount. I'm not saying all of us men are interchangable, but we sort of are. No, the first major change - much more major than Santa Claus - was the addition of the girlfriends and boyfriends of the cousins, including myself. This was generally a positive - if inevitably uncomfortable - event. Then the deaths began. Aunt June of breast cancer. Paternal Grandmother of Skin Cancer. Then the banishment - Aunt May was more or less forbidden to come to our house after she was emotionally abusive to my grandfather. Then my Grandfather died. Then the marriages and births. Tomorrow, Christmas will consist of: My parents My brother, his wife, and his four kids My cousin Steve, his wife and adopted daughter My cousin Eileen and her in vitrio daughter My wife and I I look at my brother's oldest son (Joseph, age 7, named after my grandfather and father and his mom's father, all Josephs like me) and think that he's about where I was when this whole perception of Christmas thing started for me. That list of people will be his list in 35 years. In 35 years, though, I'll be 77. My parents will almost certainly be dead. I suspect that cousin Steve and cousin Eileen will be long out of the picture. Hopefully, I'll have some kids and will still be having Christmas with my brother and his family. Chances are, nephew Jospeh will have a wife and kids of his own. And then I have this great picture of my grandfather, age 5 with his parents. At one point, they had Christmas gatherings that I never heard about. Probably the attendees at those events morphed and changed over time - though at some point, my paternal grandparents pushed all of this own siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles completely out of their own lives. I had an infinite number of Christmases when I was a kid. At 42, I feel the finite-ness of the Christmases to come. I don't get sad about it - its the inevitable march of time - but it does remind me that things change constantly and relentlessly. And maybe, for an agnostic such as myself, that's the best thing about Christmas. It reminds me that I really need to spend time valuing the people who eat dinner with me tomorrow - at the adult table and the kids table. None of us are going to be here forever and its kind of wonderful that we get to be together at all. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 21st, 2009
joeymichaels	11:19a	The Passage North Apparently, we managed to get extremely lucky during our flights out here. We got to Dallas without incident. We figured we'd spend a few nights there. As it turns out, our flight to New York's Laguardia wasn't even delayed and we landed with no problems. Meanwhile, some of my students trying to fly home from this coast were trapped for like two nights. Amazing. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
joeymichaels	1:33a	Not An Official LJ Idol Entry Here's a third and final rejected Round 8 attempt. --- This Is No Heaven By the end of the day, I knew I really was in Hell. Most people who are genuinely guilty of crimes or other horrible acts will leap through all kinds of mental hoops to justify their action. They’ll justify, rationalize, blame and misremember what exactly happened. Not me. I did everything they say I did. I knew it was wrong. I didn’t care. I won’t say I liked it – because that would be a lie. I neither liked it or disliked it. It was just a thing – like breathing or shitting. Some few of you might think, “well, at least he’s honest.” I have no ethical reason to be honest. It’s just easier. That’s sort of how I make all my decisions. I could have let them family live, but it was easier to kill them. I could have gotten a job, but it was easier to walk in and take their stuff. I could have found a girlfriend… You get my point. My trial could have gone either way. My lawyer, man, he worked himself up trying to prove my innocence. It made me anxious. So, on the third day of the trial, I just stood up and said “I did it. I did all of it. Can we be done here?” But we couldn’t. We had to go through the whole trial, then the sentencing. The families of the victims – and some of the survivors – all wanted to make their little speech about how hard their lives were now. One mom in particular was sobbing so hard she could barely get a word out. “Jesus Christ,” I said, “the court’s just going to sentence me to death – why are you wasting my time? Shut up. Sob sob sob.” I hear that made the newspaper. Anyhow, thank God I did this in a state with a death penalty. Spending life in prison sound like a total drag. I tried to fast track my way to lethal injection. Might as well get it over with. No, there’s all these groups that try to save you whether you want to die or not. And my lawyer kept trying to get my conviction overturned because I was insane. Maybe I am. I don’t know. I prefer to think of myself as anti-social, but whatever. Finally, I got to the table. Its burns a little, but overall it’s not too bad an experience. I figured blackness forever. Turns out those religious freaks are right. There is an afterlife. Just that fact in and of itself sucked. I’d just told a “converted to Christianity killer” on death row that the best thing about getting executed was knowing that I’d never see his sorry Jesus loving face again. Shit. Nobody explains the afterlife to you. It’s not like a little angel or devil meets you at your body, or a big skeleton in a cloak. No, you’re pretty much on your own. It’s kind of like what would happen if you were born and then everyone in the room just left you there for eternity. Everything you did in your life becomes a vivid memory for you. It’s like all the stuff your forgot comes back crystal clear, like it just happened. The times you wet yourself or crapped your pants in public. Stuff you couldn’t remember because you were too drunk to remember. Every time anyone shot you down. Every insult. Every casual cruelty. Every small humiliation. There was this time I was in seventh grade and I had a runny nose. I was wiping it with my hand just when Mrs. Whats-her-name was asking a question and I raised my hand. A rainbow of snot followed my hand into the air. I put my head down on the table in humiliation, inadvertently grinding the mucous into my hair. All the kids laughed. There laughter is still fresh. Getting dumped by my first girlfriend when I was 15 and sobbing for days. Fresh. Finding out my dad died a week and a half after the funeral because my mom was too pissed off at me to call me. Fresh. Yeah, the good memories come back to, but I didn’t have too many of those. Eternity reflecting on all the times I fucked up or got fucked over. Fucking eternity. That isn’t just a long time because even long times end. Time sort of doesn’t enter into the equation. I can’t tell you what the afterlife is like for other people. We’re aware of each other, but we can’t communicate. Some of them look like they’re smiling. Some look like me. Most just look confused as all, well, hell. I had imagined hell would be a place of fire and torture, but that would be a relief in some ways. Physical pain I can deal with. Of course, in the afterlife, there are no bodies, so it only makes sense that the pain would be inflicted on our soul – and inflicted by ourselves. So, yeah, I really am in hell. I am my own personal hell. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
joeymichaels	1:02a	LJ Idol Entry #8 - Prompt: Reprobate This is my entry for the eighth official round of therealljidol. Special thanks to sharya. --- Merry-Go-Round Broke Down "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down". What a looney selection for a dismal group of drunken reprobates.” -Judge Doom As the police opened fired, Gregory couldn’t help but think of that scene in the movie The 300, when the sky turned black with arrows. Dying in a hail of bullets couldn’t have been further from his mind when he’d arrived at his cubicle at the phone company office that morning. No, what Gregory was thinking about then, was about whether he had enough room on his flash drive to download all of the information he wanted. Specifically the credit card information of all of their customers. He had just started running the program (and eating a jelly donut) when he felt the hand on his shoulder. With jelly running down his face, he turned to find Mr. Wakayama and two very serious looking police officers standing behind him. The company had been aware of Gregory’s (truthfully, clumsy) hacking efforts for weeks. He was in handcuffs and on his way out the door within minutes. How he ended up handcuffed to Wendy Osik – picked up on a drunk and disorderly charge – is a rather convoluted story. In brief, Rookie Officer Ryan Reynolds (no relation to the actor) had left his handcuffs on his dresser. After he and his partner had picked up Gregory, they had a sudden and violent encounter with a microwave oven, wielded by the enraged Miss Osik. Whether she’d passed out naturally or whether it was because Officer Reynolds smacked her head against the hood of the car after she’d bitten off the tip of his nose, would later be the subject of much media speculation. “I forgot my cuffs.” “Jesus, again, Reynolds? Just handcuff her to the hacker.” Gregory cowered against the rear passenger door, his left arm stretched out across the seat to the unconscious, foul-smelling Wendy. She was leaning against her door, her back to him. The tattoo on her lower back read “Stoned Immaculate” in gothic letters. “Having fun back there with your new girlfriend, hacker?” “Shut up, Reynolds. That’s not appropriate.” “You never let me have any fun.” At that precise moment, Wendy sat up suddenly, eyes wide open, and vomited through the protective grid all over Officer Reynolds’ back and shoulders. As you can imagine, this caught him off guard. “Jesus, watch the road Reynolds.” Officer Madison’s warning came a little too late. The cruiser smashed straight into a low rock wall and somehow managed to flip onto its roof. By a stroke of tremendous fortune (at least for the enraged Miss Osik) the rear driver’s side door flew open. She’d been thrown violently against the protective grid, which left its distinctive pattern on her face. “Take off your seatbelt, asshole, and come with me.” “I think we’d better stay.” “Fuck that.” Where the enraged Miss Osik could possibly have been hiding the knife, was a subject that Officers Madison and Reynolds declined to discuss. Some things are better left uninvestigated. The point is that she deftly cut off Gregory’s seatbelt, and yanked him out of the car by his jacket’s lapels. His round face turned pale with anxiety – save for the parts that were still purple with jelly. She hefted poor, pudgy Gregory over her shoulder, and hauled ass. “Put me down! I can run!” “You’d just slow me down, tubs.” Looking around, Gregory concluded he was being carried through some kind of cow pasture. He could hear Officer Reynolds and Madison yelling at them to halt, though their voices were becoming fainter. During the crash or escape, his glasses had fallen off, so he couldn’t tell if the cops were chasing them. When branches started slapping against his face, he decided they must be in the woods. One particularly large branch knocked him silly. When he emerged from his stupor, he was on his face in the moss. He heard a steady pounding sound to his left. “Don’t move or I might crush your hand,” the somewhat more subdued Miss Osik announced. BAM “What’s going on?” BAM “Just breaking the links on the handcuff.” BAM “There, done. Look.” Gregory turned to look at her. She was holding a largish rock in her left hand and showing off her half of the handcuffs (now reduced to an ugly bracelet) on her right. “Fly, be free.” “Where do I go?” “Anywhere you want.” “I’ll just get arrested again.” “Probably. Do you want to kiss me?” Wendy grabbed him and kissed him hard. She tasted of gin and puke. “Grape jelly,” she said pulling away from him, “You shouldn’t eat donuts. Bad for your health.” Dogs barked somewhere in the distance. “Already? They’re getting faster. Follow me, tubs.” “Shouldn’t we just give ourselves up or something?” “Or something. We have to find my fucking asshole cheating boyfriend so he can see me kiss you. Fuck him.” A sudden scream in the distance. “Oh, sounds like one of the officers found my vine trap. Come on.” Wisdom was not a trait that had ever been associated with Gregory. The thoughts of police, police dogs, potentially jealous boyfriends and vine traps was a little too much for him. He imagined being hauled in as an accomplice for assaulting an officer. He saw the words “Stoned Immaculate” swiftly blurring out of focus as the once again enraged Miss Osik dashed off. He followed. They reached a scrap yard. “This is where that fucking asshole works. We’ll make our last stand here.” “Last stand?” “JIMMY! WHERE ARE YOU, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” Gregory was on the verge of some serious blubbering. He sat down in the shovel of a (mostly rusted out) backhoe. That was when the seam at the back of his pants split. Jimmy finally waddled out, clutching a shotgun. At first glance, Jimmy was hardly the sort of man who needed a shotgun to be frightening. At second and third glance, too. He was the kind of guy on whom people would stick posters for rock concerts, mistaking him for a wall. “I told you never to bother me at work.” “Got a new girlfriend, huh?” Wendy flicked a polaroid photo at him, hitting him straight between the eyes. “Oh, shit, Wendy, I can explain.” “No need to explain. I got a new boyfriend too.” The enraged Miss Osik pushed her way past Jimmy, straddled Gregory and planted another horrifying kiss on his lips. His eyes watered from the smell. “What the fuck,” said a now equally enraged Jimmy. He pushed Wendy off of Gregory and smacked the poor hacker with the butt of the shotgun. He literally flew through the air, landing on the side of the backhoe. Wendy swept out Jimmy’s leg, knocking the behemoth to the ground. The shotgun slipped from his hand. “He’s not really my boyfriend, you asshole, but now you know how it feels.” Jimmy had tears in his eyes. “Baby, it’s not how it looks, I swear.” That’s when the police and the police dogs arrived. “Both of you, freeze.” “We’re settling something here,” the enraged Miss Osik screamed. She threw her shoe at the officers. “Take her down.” Officers swarmed around Wendy, finally pinning her and putting her in her very own pair of handcuffs. Jimmy, who hadn’t gotten up since Wendy had tripped him, just lay on his stomach, hands behind his head, as soon as the police had arrived. He knew the drill. That’s when a dazed Gregory stood up with the shotgun. He couldn’t quite remember where he was, and was entirely unaware of what was in his hands. When the officer yelled at him to put down his weapon, Gregory looked around to see who was holding a weapon. This naturally led to an order to open fire. He saw the bullets coming at him like they were moving in slow motion. He collapsed behind the backhoe. “The gun wasn’t even loaded. He didn’t know what he was doing,” Miss Osik screamed at the police. They dragged her and Jimmy off. “See if he’s dead, Reynolds.” “He has a bloodstain on the front of his shirt. He’s dead.” “You have to check.” “You’re not the boss of me.” “I’m requesting a new partner. You are a total douche.” Officer Madison called the coroner, but when they came back to the body, Gregory was gone. “Jesus, Reynolds, was it blood or jelly?” “I swear it was blood.” It was jelly. The wind blew through what little hair Gregory had. He didn’t know where he was going, but he felt free – and freedom tasted like gin and vomit, blood and chocolate, with a slight aftertaste of dirt. (59 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
joeymichaels	8:55a	Not An Official LJ Idol Entry - Unfinished Second Take Not only is it a rough draft, it is unfinished. --- That 50's Show Arthur Fonzarelli was my guidance counselor. You know, The Fonz. Growing up in Milwaukee, we’d all heard of The Fonz from when we were little. All the boys on my street wanted to grow up to be just like him. Leather jacket, motorcycle, girls coming out of our ears. And cool – we all wanted to be cool. None of us wanted to be at George S. Patton Vocational School – at least not then, in the early 80’s, but we all got busted one too many times and got kicked out of Jefferson High. It was either go to some fancy private school or to Patton. Who can afford a private school when your dad is an underemployed wedding singer (and part time hardware store employee) and your mom works assembly line in a brewery. Patton is was. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not like I ever wanted to do anything besides work on cars. I’m pretty happy with the degree I got from Patton. I own my own body shop now, make good money, I send my kid to private school. I’m not complaining. But the best thing about going to George S. Patton Vocational School – the thing that made it more than just a place I went to school – was Mr. Fonzarelli. He wanted us to call him Fonzie or The Fonz, but, truth be told, we all respected him too much for that. You call your buddy Fonzie. You call the coolest guidance counselor in the world “Mister.” I started at Patton in 1981, so that would have made Mr. Fonzarelli about 44. His office was right next to the men’s room – he told us he always did his best thinking in the bathroom. Hey, sometimes we’d meet him in the bathroom instead of his office. Just to talk. The echo in there made his voice sound like the voice of God. Plus, he’d written the phone numbers of everyone’s parents on the walls. There was a payphone in the bathroom, too. Legend had it that, when nobody was around, he’d just whack the phone and be able to call anyone he wanted for free. He always made sure to pay in front of his students – “to set a good example.” Almost always. One time, Lou Capizotto sliced off part of his finger with a circular saw. He ran to the bathroom where Mr. Fonzarelli was giving me some advice about girls. He saw Lou, saw the blood, dialed 911 (a free call) and then, when the ambulance was on the way, smacked the phone and called Lou’s parents. He told them to meet them at the hospital. Mr. Fonzarelli did all this with one hand, because his other hand was applying direct pressure to Lou’s finger. Mr. Fonzarelli had some of the same routines he had when he was younger – for example, the bathroom business – but he told us that he wasn’t the same man he was in his youth. “The things that are cool when you’re 18 aren’t the same things that are cool when you’re 28 or 38 or 48,” he explained, “I learned that from my son, Danny.” Danny was actually Mr. Fonzarelli’s nephew, but he’d adopted him around 1965. Mr. Fonzarelli had a great picture of himself with Danny at his graduation (from Jefferson) hanging in his “real” office. The two of them were smiling so hard you’d think the glass in the frame holding the picture would break. We all knew Danny because he volunteered as the GSP Basketball coach when he wasn’t busy with his classes at UW-Milwaukee. Coach Fonzarelli – that’s what we called Danny – told us that his dad hadn’t been all that cool in the 70’s. His dad, he said, had a hard time accepting that he wasn’t in his twenties. He’d always dated a lot of ladies, but the sexual revolution made it worse. Coach told us he had a picture of his dad “with a full on porn stache.” Coach never showed us that picture – but Mr. Fonzarelli did. We had been bugging him about it for months and on the last day of our Sophomore year – after he’d heard we’d all aced our intermediate auto-shop class – he surprised us with the picture. It was hilarious. He had full on hippie hair and a handlebar moustache. “Part of being cool,” he said, “is recognizing when you were wr… wrong.” Back around 1973, Danny had pointed out to his dad that it was upsetting to him to see a different woman at the breakfast table every day. “You treat them like they’re disposable razors,” he said, “which are something you should look into.” This little conversation made Mr. Fonzarelli do a lot of soul searching. That same week, he went to a Bobby Darin concert. Darin was at the start of the illness that would kill him later that year. Mr. Fonzarelli said he looked awful. And the songs were all the same songs he’d sung 15 years earlier. Mr. Fonzarelli looked around the crowd. The people there all looked like they’d been stuck in time. “The way those bugs look in amber,” he said. The world was changing. It was going to keep changing. He figured he could either change with it or get stuck. “Cool isn’t a destination – it’s a process.” Mr. Fonzarelli asked himself, “What does it mean to be a cool father? A cool lover? A cool teacher? What does cool even mean when you’re over 30?” His dad had left his mom. That was uncool. He figured a cool father was there for his kid, first and foremost. He was a good role model. He treated his kid with respect, but demanded respect in return. He wouldn’t do anything that he wouldn’t want his kid to do. He cut his hair and got some new clothes – but not dorky stuff. Mr. Fonzarelli, in the 80’s, wore fitted suits, kept his hair perfect and was fastidious about his personal hygiene. Women still went nuts over him, but he – wait for it – played it cool with them. He’d been seeing the same lady for six years when I met him and he married her when we were juniors. He treated all of us with the same respect and rules that he’d treated Danny. That’s not to say he followed the rules all the time. I mean, he busted me with some weed one time – something that could have gotten me expelled – but instead of calling my parents and the cops, he flushed it down the toilet and watched me like a hawk for the rest of the year. Not mean or anything, but close enough that I couldn’t get away with it at school. More than watching me, he talked to me about it. He didn’t condemn me or anything. I opened up to him about a ton of stuff that I wouldn’t tell my parents about. Like I said, he gave me advice about girls – really good advice. Not about how to pick them up, but about how if you really like somebody, you listen to them. And if they really like you, they’ll listen to you. 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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
joeymichaels	5:48p	Not An Official LJ Entry - First Draft Week Eight I am 99% sure this isn't the one. No editing. No rewrite. Rough Draft n' shit. --- When I first saw her, she was cleaning her ass with her tongue, as if she had something to hide. She was clearly the kind of prissy pussy that buries her messes, if you know what I mean. She looked up at me for just a moment, and then shamelessly continued her furious licking. I pretended not to notice. It was easy – it wasn’t like she was in heat or anything. I sat down a few feet away from her and stared at a leaf. I swear, it looked like there was a bug or something on that fucking leaf. Maybe it was the wind, maybe it wasn’t the wind. Casually, silently, I walked over to the leaf and batted it a couple of times. It was the wind. I died a little inside. She’d seen me walk over to the leaf. If I didn’t think fast, I was going to lose a lot of face here. I pounced on the leaf, claws unsheathed, and tore it to shreds. I ate a few of them. “Upset stomach,” I said, “and no grass around.” She glanced at the rich, luxurious yard behind her and yawned. Bitch! Agitated, I took a moment to mark the mailbox. This was my fucking territory as of right now. I didn’t care whose urine I had to pee over to claim it. Let Maximillion just try and pick a fight with me over this. He has no balls and we all know it. Literally has no balls. That’s the trade off he made for a warm bed at night and two meals of dry kibble a day. I might have worms, but at least I have testicles. Misty wanted me. I knew it. They all wanted me. I played impossible to get. Hey, I’m not the kind of cat that can afford to be tied down by a litter. Even so, I looked at her and wondered what sort of ungodly howls I could make her make. It would be the most exciting 45 seconds of her life. “Did you get it for me, Pumpkin Wumpkin?” I figure the humans must have given me that name to toughen me up. I earned my battle scars – my nicked ear, by crooked tale, my occasionally matted fur – in fights because of that name. Well, that and the pink bow that the small but surprisingly strong human insisted on putting on me every time she could catch me. This was Misty talking, though, so I sucked it up. This time. “I got the package. You got my payment?” “Let me see it first.” It wasn’t easy wrestling the rhinestone studded collar off of that Bichon Frise. They might look like poorly constructed mops, but their bite might actually be as bad as their bark. Yeah, she or he or whatever the hell gender that fucking Ewok wannabe was bit the living hell out of my leg. The pain was bad, but cleaning the dog drool out of the wound was much, much worse. I’d rather be bit my a rattlesnake next time. I’d die before I had to taste its spit. I sauntered up to Misty. She adopted a low, defensive posture. I bent over, allowing the collar she so coveted to slip off of me and over her head. She purred like a nursing kitten. “I can’t believe it! You did it! You really did it.” “Yeah, yeah, I’m your hero. Where’s the payment.” She stopped purring. I swear she started to fold her ears back. “I’m sorry that I’m so abrupt, but I really need it,” I said. “Fine. In the yard. In the plastic bag.” I bounded into the yard on my adorable paws looking around frantically. Then I saw it. The nip. Sweet, sweet nip. “Thanks,” I mumbled to Misty. I picked up the bag gingerly and dashed off to the back of the house. Yeah, it’s a problem. I admit it. But in this modern world where we’re all so pampered, we have to take our pleasure where we can. I don’t want to die of ennui, like my cousin Poochie Mandoochie. I mean, I’d kill birds if I could to stop the angst, but the evil human has attached a bell to my neck. At last though, here’s my nip. I get a little agro in anticipation. My leg stops throbbing a little. Gently, I run my claw along the bags seal, pulling it open. I can’t hold back anymore. I bury my face into the magic herb. Then I recoil out and start sneezing, again and again. Its then I know. Oregano. I thought I was the player, but I’ve just been played. There will be revenge. Oh yes, there will. Revenge for… revenge for… Uh… Revenge for… Do you hear a can opener? I hear a can opener. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
joeymichaels	8:53a	Putting Christ Back In Christmas? Not So Much... A great history lesson about how Christmas wasn't really all that much about Christ until very recently. Happy Holidays. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
joeymichaels	1:55a	For The Record... A Good Day For Grey Quat I was just heading for dinner when I noticed Grey Quat was vomiting in the hallway. She was making those head jerking motions I associate with vomiting, and at her front paws was what looked like vomit... but flat? Had she vomited up some cat food and I'd stepped on it? Upon closer inspection, it was vomit at all and she wasn't vomiting. See, Mrs. The Wife Michaels was cooking roast pork and had sliced it and served it on the kitchen table. She walked around the corner to see something on TV and, while her back was turned, Grey Quat fulfilled her lifelong goal of stealing something off the kitchen table! I recovered the remaining slice of pork (she'd eaten over half of it) and said "bad girl." I think its safe to say that she didn't feel all that bad about it. Kitty Michaels was just about as jealous as a quat can be. The Bathroom Happening Tonight, we went to the local mall. I needed to use the bathroom, so off to the Men's room I went. There's a line of about twenty stalls in this particular Men's room and nearly everyone was empty, so I went to about the fifth one down - two empty stalls on each side of me - and closed the door. At a critical moment, there was a banging at the door to my stall. "Brother, you almost done?" "Just a minute..." "Ho, brah, its an emergency, just stop what you're doing and let me in. Have to go so bad." I did my best to stop and clean up, figuring the other stalls must have filled up. Not quite zipped and belted up, but feeling compassion for this man, I exited the stall. "Thanks, brah, I owe you," he said pushing past me. He proceeded to emit sounds from every conceivable orifice, a mixture of pain, relief and foul odor. Nearly every stall was still empty. Brother man was knocking to get into my stall when there were empty stalls on either side of him. I washed up and waited to get home to finish my business. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
joeymichaels	10:55p	Not An Official LJ Idol Entry - Round 7 First Attempt My poor volunteer editor, sharya , and I spent a pair of days on this one before abandoning it. Presented with edits for your enjoyment. --- A Touch! A Touch! I Do Confess It! So-called scholars insist that only 37 of Shakespeare’s plays have survived until today. Hogwash! Though most published editions of Shakespeare’s collected works focus only on those 37 plays; there are more. Just because something wasn’t published doesn’t mean it didn’t exist – or didn’t survive. My uncle, Michael “Mikey” Michaels made a discovery several years ago that shocked the academic world so entirely that they completely ignored it. One day, while in my grandmother’s attic looking for her wedding dress (so he could prance about the living room and kitchen), Uncle Mikey discovered four chests stuffed full of fragile, aged parchment. He thought they might be my grandmother’s diaries so he started flipping through them looking for his name. It turns out that this treasure trove was nothing less than a collection of hundreds and hundreds of previously lost plays by the Bard of Avon. Some were original drafts of his classics - like an early draft of “Hamlet” where he, Claudius and his mother sit down and iron out all of their misunderstandings and have a good laugh about it. Turns out Hamlet really didn’t like his father much either and just needed some “tough love” from Claudius to see the light. They become great friends and the play ends with them both acting crazy to get out of doing some chores: Gertrude: Forsooth, good son, I see thy room’s filthy; Wouldst thou clean it lest its filth overrun The palace and spill into the courtyard? Hamlet: Goats and monkeys, la la, goats and monkeys. Gertrude: ‘Sblood, he’s mad! Husband, canst thou help me clean, For mine son, Hamlet, is not competent. Claudius: Is this a dagger I see before me? Gertrude: Oh, you boys! Most of the plays, however, hadn’t seen the light of day in centuries. There are sequels like “Macbeth 2: Sojourn in Hell,” “Much More Ado About Nothing” and “Get Out Of My Dreams, Get Onto My Donkey.” The latter, a sequel to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ inverts one of the plotlines from the original play. Titania, queen of the fairies, has married Bottom (the gentleman turned into an Ass). He insists that she, as an obedient wife, stop using magic, but she ends up using it again and again to get him out of jams. There’s also a very amusing character named Dr. Bombay: Titania: Faith, Doctor Bombay, mine magic works not! Bombay: Prithee, milady, ‘tis a malady Born of thy refusal to use magic When thy mortal husband forbids you it. Titania: Then I’m not bewitched? Bombay: Quite the opposite. Then there are the original plays. Shakespeare apparently wrote a history play for every single pre-Elizabethan monarch from every European country. Plays like “The Lamentable History of Edwy The Fair and His Too Closely Related To Him Wife, Æthelgifu,” “Karl Knutsson, Regent of Sweden,” “The First Reign of Karl Knuttson, King of Sweden,” “The Second Reign of Karl Knuttson, King of Sweden,” “The Third and Fourth Reign of Karl Knuttson, King of Sweden,” and “The Brief But Not As Dull As You Might Imagine Reign of Vitellius, Emperor of Rome.” Here’s a compelling section from “Edwy The Fair:” Æthelgifu: Alack, sweet Edwy, that we were Swedish. Edwy: Weep not, my sweet gentle Æthelgifu, For thy tears do rest tears from tearful eyes And I have shed tears enough this fortnight. Æthelgifu: Oh, noble King, thy words have stopped my tears Like tiny corks shoved into my tear ducts. Edwy: Then are your tears wine? Æthelgifu: They are sweet champagne. Edwy: Nay, they are real pain. Æthelgifu: All right, I set myself up for that one. Edwy: That’s what she said. Æthelgifu: Knock it off, ass. Most remarkable of all, several of the plays found in my grandmother’s attics were about subjects of which Shakespeare could not have possible known. Uncle Mikey suggests that these plays were co-written by Shakespeare and Nostradamus – a claim made all the more remarkable by the fact that Nostradamus died when Shakespeare was only two. The “future history” plays include titles like “The Tragedy Of Anakin Skywalker and His Children, With Much Droll Humor From Their Gungan Companion, Jar Jar Binks,” “The Curious Historie Of Bruce Banner, Also Known As David, Including His Inexplicable Transformation Into A Terrifying Hulking Figure, Sometimes Green, Sometimes Grey With Much Droll Humor From His Teenage Companion Rick Jones,” and “V For Velveeta.” The latter is probably the most moving romantic work about cheese food products that you’re ever likely to read. For example: Mozzerello: Mine sandwich tastes like sweaty foot and sock, The aged pastrami like a boot’s tongue, The hard pumpernickel like the worn heal, And worst, the tomatoes like tomatoes Stored in a boot after a hard, forced march. Mistress Pantless: Och, you’re fermenting the mootin cranstonly with your merple snorfing. Mozzerello: What? Mistress Pantless: Would you like a bit of mustard on it? Mozzerello: Ay, a touch. Uncle Mikey, who has been tirelessly transcribing these ageless classics onto digital media, plans to publish all of the plays in an unprecedented 24 volume set next summer. Unfortunately most “reputable” publishing houses are part of a conspiracy of scholars working to prevent the public from being exposed to these great lost works. We believe that they’re lazy, and don’t want these works to come to light because it will mean more work for them. I mean, it’s easier to suppress a play than to take the time to read it. So the next time somebody purports to tell you something “intellectual” about Shakespeare, get in their face and ask “Oh yeah? Well, what about his Karl Knutsson plays? Why don’t you want to read those, Mr. Scholar.” You’d be doing Uncle Mikey a solid. (17 Comments |Comment on this)
joeymichaels	10:44p	Not An Official LJ Idol Entry - Round 7 Second Attempt I wrote three possible entries this round. This one didn't make the cut. Thanks to sharya who read all three. Unedited for your uninterrupted enjoyment. --- Swan, Swan, H Ok, so we’re not the classiest people in Cedar Lake. I admit that. I think everyone in my circle of acquaintances would be comfortable admitting that. So what? This does not mean that we don’t know what class is. We know class. I personally know the difference between a dinner fork and a salad fork, for example. The salad fork is shorter. I can also tell the difference between a steak knife and a butter knife. I use the steak knife for the butter because I don’t own any butter knives. If I did, I’d use the butter knife. I don’t own butter knives because I don’t want to spend money on them. Plus, it would clutter up my utensil jar if I had more than just the streak knife. If I had to choose between class and frugality, I confess that I’d choose frugality. I think this demonstrates good common sense, not some sort of innate vulgarity. I know that you and your wife had a bunch of objections to me, Dmitri and Vernon being placed in charge of decorating the town center for the Cedar Lake Winter Festival. You know darn well that we didn’t volunteer for the job. If Amanda hadn’t had that stroke, we’d just be doing the heavy lifting for her like we do every year. But she did have the stroke. We would have been happy to let somebody else take over, but since nobody stepped up – and I remind you that you did have your chance at the board meeting – we figured we’d better just do it ourselves. Amanda even gave her blessing from the rehabilitation center. Allow me to rebut your complaints. First, in regards to the snow makers. Yes, they are loud. Is it our fault that there hasn’t been any snowfall this year? What kind of winter festival has no snow? We had some other ideas about how to address this situation. Vern suggested we just cut out several thousand paper snowflakes, but we decided that would just look like litter. We called a few local restaurants to see if they’d let us scrape out the insides of their freezers, but figured nobody wanted their snow to smell like meat. We’re lucky that Dmitri cousin works at Alpine Valley. They lent us the snow makers for free. Vern drove them up here in his truck, so other than the cost of gas, we were able to create a winter wonderland in the town square for free. Plus, we gave Johnny Ellis, the snow plow driver, some much needed work. Poor man’s been sitting in that truck for eight hours a day since Thanksgiving just waiting for a few flakes to his the ground. Second, in regards to the custard in the town pool. Skating on the lake has been a Cedar Lake Winter Festival tradition for fifty years. When we realized that the lake wasn’t going to be cold enough to skate on, well, I’m not too proud to admit that it brought a few tears to my eyes. We racked our brains trying to come up with a solution to this problem. We had some real doozeys – at least one of which would have gotten us arrested. Not just Vern, Dmitri and I, the whole town. Would have been cool, though. Anyhow, Vern remembered seeing a YouTube video where some people were walking across a pool filled with custard. He showed it to us, and sure enough, it was just like they were walking on water. Except it was custard and not water. Well, I confess, it isn’t the same as ice skating, but it is a way of walking across the pool. We put some blue food coloring in the custard so it would at least look a little like ice. The kids love it. We just need to keep a life guard on hand and to remind the kids not to stop moving lest they start sinking in. I’ll admit it’s not as pretty as a real frozen lake, but it’s getting the job done. Bill Smithers at the Stop and Shop donated the custard to us. He told me hardly anyone buys it, so he was happy to donate it to a good cause. Thanks, Mr. Smithers. Finally, the ice sculpture. I can understand your complaints about the snow makers and the custard, but I don’t get this complaint at all. Honestly, is there anything that adds a bigger touch of class to an event than an ice sculpture? And swans! Swans are the classiest bird out there. They’ve written ballets about swans. That’s class. Yes, we were not able to use actual ice, since it keeps melting. There aren’t many things that look like ice that aren’t pretty expensive. We were having some eggs at the Go Badgers Diner when I noticed that big salt crystals look sort of like ice. We brainstormed a bit, and Dmitri pointed out that salt licks were basically big blocks of salt. A few google searches and a trip to Amway later and we had 300 salt licks and a recipe for making an enormous block of salt. It was genuinely a challenge to carve this sculpture, but we think it looks like a real ice sculpture. We did have some problems with deer licking away a large chunk of the swan’s behind on the first night, but Vern, Dmitri and I have stood vigil by it every night since then to protect that salty swan butt from probing deer tongue. To conclude, far from “ruining the Winter Festival with our classless choices,” I’d argue that we’ve saved the Winter Festival. We’ve made it snow, we sort of made the pool freeze over, and we’ve made a reasonable facsimile of an ice sculpture in the town square. We didn’t make this the warmest winter on record, but, gosh darnit, we did make it seem a little more like winter and a little less like an extended autumn. If that’s not classy, then I’m proud to have no class. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
joeymichaels	10:38p	LJ Idol Entry #7 - Prompt: One Touch This is my entry for the seventh official round of therealljidol. Special thanks to sharya. --- I Want To Hold Your Hand In the end, it wasn’t the meek who inherited the Earth. Not exactly. To be sure, some of the survivors were meek. The rest were misanthropes, losers, assholes, and other similarly socially inept types. I suppose a few were just lucky, though I don’t suppose they’d see it that way. No, it wasn’t the meek who inherited the Earth – it was the lonely and the friendless. In a way, this was for the best, I guess. We were the ones best mentally suited to survive a pandemic. There isn’t much of a difference between being lonely with everyone being alive, and being lonely with everyone being dead. Not really. Before the outbreak, I worked from home. You know those “work from home” ads? I had answered one of those. I stuffed envelopes. I wasn’t making anywhere near $5000 like they said, but I never had to leave the house. I had my groceries delivered. I regret now that I didn’t ever go out to the dentist, though, who knows, that might have been what saved me. I suppose I should have written “spared me.” I don’t really feel saved. At first, they said it was just a sudden increase in the number of reported cases of Huntington’s Disease. The initial symptoms are similar, so most people figured there was no need to worry. Then patients’ bodies just went crazy. They couldn’t control their arms or legs or necks. They’d thrash about wildly. Some scientists wondered if this could be the first modern outbreak of St. Vitus’ Dance. Further tests confirmed that the disease was neither fluid borne nor airborne. After days of spastic thrashing, the victims’ bodies would just shut off – like when you cut all the strings on a marionette. Family members of the first wave of patients – and friends and business associates and medical staff – started showing symptoms soon after. Panic set in. The World Health Organization developed a theory that the disease was “energy borne” and was actually spread through simple human contact. The thought was that the electric impulses in the nerves somehow jumped from one body to another. A handshake, a tap on the shoulder, a casual brush against somebody in a crowd and you had it. By the time they developed that theory, it was already too late to really do anything about it. People who had touched the victims and didn’t even know they were in danger had touched people who had touched people who had touched people… You get the idea. It was awful for the first few months. First there were people dropping dead in the street with nobody to bury them, then the rotting bodies and the diseases that came with that, and finally the silence. Well, the silence started before, but I was so preoccupied with the stench of death for several months, that I didn’t really notice the quiet. I didn’t want to touch the bodies – what if the disease could spread via touch after death? I recognize that is silly if the disease really was “energy borne,” since the energy is pretty much gone after death – especially long after death – but I didn’t want to take any chances. Mostly, I’ve lived in Supermarkets, eating canned food. I could go months without seeing another person – once for over a year. The people I did see, well, they threatened me or fled or simply stared forward and walked right by me, like I was a ghost. I met Carmel about five years after the pandemic. She wasn’t the first woman I’d seen since then, but she was the first one who spoke to me. Truth to tell, she might have been the first woman since my mother, who’d spoken to me. She didn’t like to talk about the past, so I never learned if she was an asshole or a loner or what, in the old times. She seemed nice enough to me – and she really liked to talk. I mean, she did enough talking for both of us. We lived together for a few months in the Super Stop and Shop in Cedar Rapids. We were the first ones to find that one, which was a pleasant surprise because it meant that there was a ton of canned food. We kept cots at the opposite ends of the story – just to be sure we didn’t actually stumble into each other at night. I guess that wasn’t rational. If either of us had it, we’d already be dead, but why take the chance, right? I never really had the chance to notice this before, but when you’re around somebody you like for a long time, it becomes a real challenge not to touch them. You walk a little closer to them and your hands risk brushing. You sit a little closer and your feet might touch. If you get a little silly, any part of your body could bump into any part of theirs. “If we had it, we’d be dead by now,” Carmel would say whenever I expressed my valid concerns about accidental contact. One night, I woke up with a start to find Carmel holding my hand. I freaked out a little bit. She retreated to her side of the Super Stop & Shop. The next day was really odd. I was so angry at her for risking our lives like that. I can’t guess how she was feeling. We sat on our cots staring down the condiment aisle at each other until it got dark. It gave me a lot of time to think. I really liked Carmel. If contact was going to kill us, we were already dead. No point in being angry at her. No point in being careful about not touching anymore. I slowly made my way down the aisle. It was dark and all I could see was her shadow in the moonlight through the plate glass window. She was facing away from me. “Carmel, I’m sorry.” “What if we did this?” “What?” “What if everyone died because we wanted to be alone? What if the world redesigned itself to make us feel like there was a reason we were alone?” “We’re not that important.” “I don’t want to be alone anymore.” She was crying. With great effort, I reached out and wiped the tear off her face. She grabbed my hand and pressed her cheek against it. “You’re trembling, Carmel.” At first, we thought it was the emotion of the moment, but of course it wasn’t. Within the hour she was jerking compulsively. I tried to hold her, to comfort her but she couldn’t help but throw me off again and again. By the end of the next night, she was gone. I didn’t cry. I thought I should cry, but I didn’t. I brought my cot next to hers and waited for the tremors to come. But they didn’t. I tried to think back. Had the first cases of the disease happened in my town? My state? Was it on local news before it made the national news? Was the first fatality a local man who delivered groceries? Delivered them to my house? What if I did this? And I was not afraid of the disease anymore. And I buried Carmel, the first person I buried, but not the last. There were millions of bodies out there and, in my own way, I’d touched every one of them. For the first time in my life, I felt connected to all of humanity. I owed each one of them at least a grave. (84 Comments |Comment on this)