Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Online Onslaught III

Come witness the carnage at Online Onslaught III. Vote off your least favorite bloggers until only one remains. I already got kicked off for unsportsmanlike conduct, but it should still be a good time.

It's a Lie

Found while perusing my cell phone's notepad function:

"It's A Lie Until I Believe It ...joe"

I'm assuming "...joe" is Pancake Wrangler, because that sounds like something he would say.

Monday, June 27, 2005

God Hates Fags

This makes my heart scowl. But this makes my heart giggle.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

something

Sometimes i dont want o be me ,and sometimes i want to be normal, but i wonder if norml is better than an emotionless, drunken bastard. At least i've got character.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Easy 'A'

I found a picture from my senior year of high school, taken during my "independent study" in Mrs. Meneely's art class. This picture is of us trying to look like we're actually doing something, but I'm pretty sure we're not. Basically, Brian (left), Justin (back turned) and I just jacked off the entire hour, completing approximately 5 crappy projects each over the course of an entire school year. Ah, the good ol' days!

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Flowers

The delivery man knocked on the door and looked down at the slip of paper to confirm the address. Yup, Room 425. As he waited for an answer, he eyed the two policemen standing one door down, at 423. They knocked on the door and it opened within seconds. "Ma'am, we're here about a noise complaint," said the taller officer.

"Thank god you're here, officers," said the old woman from inside 423. "It's the man next door. He was screaming and making such a ruckus.

"Thank you, we'll check it out," the shorter officer assured her. "Please, stay in your apartment, ma'am." The old woman kept her head poked out of her doorway while the two officers turned towards the delivery man. Suddenly feeling uncomfortable, the delivery man looked away and knocked on 425's door again.

The two policemen approached and the taller one said, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm just delivering these flowers for a...," he looked at the slip again, "...a Brandon Collins." He offered his slip from the flower shop as proof.

The shorter officer gave it a cursory inspection and then handed it back. "Please, stand aside."

The taller officer pounded on the door and shouted, "Mr. Collins, this is the police. We've had a report of screams coming from your apartment. Please, open the door." There was no response.

The delivery guy asked the shorter cop somewhat excited, "Is this dude in trouble?"

"Please, stand back sir."

"Mr. Collins, this is the police. If you do not let us in, we will be forced to enter your apartment."

Smiling at the prospect of some excitement in his otherwise boring day, the delivery man said, "Sweet, this is going to be awesome!"

The old woman from 423 piped up, "Officers, I think he might be hurt, he was screaming bloody murder."

The door from 428 opened and a balding man with a mustache stepped out into the hall and inquired, "'Ey, what's goin' on out here?"

The delivery man turned and said with enthusiasm, "The cops are gonna break down this dude's door!"

The shorter officer, annoyed at the growing audience, spoke, "Everyone stay inside your apartments." Turning to the flower delivery man, he said, "I'm going to need you to take a few steps back." As if he hadn't spoken at all, no one moved.

"Mr. Collins, this is your last warning. If you do not open the door in five seconds, I will be forced to kick it in!"

"What'd this guy do?" asked the mustachioed man.

"Fuck if I know," replied the delivery man.

"Mr. Collins, we're entering your apartment now." The taller officer tried the door. It was locked. He took a step back and kicked in the door. He looked back at his partner and said, "I'll look around, you take care of these guys." His partner nodded. The taller officer removed unbuttoned his holster, placed his hand on the handle, and cautiously walked through the door.

The delivery man tried to look over the shorter officer's shoulder into the apartment, "Do you think he's still in there?" The shorter officer didn't say a word, but listened for his partner.

Ten seconds later he heard a gasp. "Holy shit!"

"How's it going in there?" the shorter officer said over his shoulder.

"Carl, keep everyone out. I'll call an ambulance. My God, there's so much blood!"

Friday, June 17, 2005

Pictures of Shorelines

If you insist on pictures of shorelines
then I insist on pages of your lines
meant for me,
to be sent to me.
Remember watching the storms from the lifeguard stand.
Remember feeling the tingling in my fingertips
when I touched your lips.
And I recall how you sat on the same side of me,
it always seemed that you'd always be on my side.
You're my best side.

And it's early June, so the sand's still dry,
and you have got the boldest eyes,
and I can't help but think it's right,
that inside you it's me I'm finding.
And I'm still waiting.
And it's early June, so the sand's still dry,
and the storm off shore is not far behind.
And I'm still waiting.

And sometimes you don't say a thing for a long while.
And the ships off shore hold stories that we'd make.
And sometimes we are held at bay by these miles.
But less of you is more than I can take.

And the moments that we've shared could last a lifetime.
And the faith I have in us will keep you near.
And several of these miles placed in between us
mean several of these words being sent by mail.
I hope this letter finds you well.

--Further Seems Forever

Regret Later

I'll have later in life to regret not regretting right now.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Gospel of Thomas

I ran across The Gospel of Thomas the other day. And here's a little info. on what it actually is. It's a pretty interesting / confusing read, but here are my favorite verses:

28 Jesus said, "I took my stand in the midst of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. My soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their hearts and do not see, for they came into the world empty, and they also seek to depart from the world empty.

But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, then they will change their ways."

113 His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"

"It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."

Visual Aid

I finally scanned my favorite picture of Stellar. She's the one getting kissed by Sean, sticking her tongue out. I'm in the background looking like a tool.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Force 52

My friend Luke is starting a web comic. Check it out . . .

. . . OR ELSE!

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Run While You Still Can

Mr. McBastard: I never thought that I'd be excited about office supplies.

Marie: He's turning into us, Joyce.

Joyce: You're too young!

Taste in Friends

I have good taste in friends. But my friends obviously don't have good taste in friends, because they're friends with me.

Friday, June 10, 2005

I Hate Stairs

I haven't lifted weights (or done any physically taxing activity, for that matter) for about two years.

For the past two days after work, Pfaff and I have been going to the Rec Center. I did squats the first day. My legs were a little sore the next day. Yesterday I did dead lifts. Today my legs are indeed dead. I can't run, it hurts to sit down / stand up, and it takes me about half-an-hour to walk down a flight of stairs.

The rest of me is sore, but my legs are fucking killing me.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Crappy Photos of Paradise (and Asses)

I made a slideshow of pictures from my awesome trip to Florida. It only has about a fourth of the pictures taken. Check back in a week or so, and I should have all the rest up and ready to gaze upon in wonder (at why there are only two pictures of the beach and the rest of us putting our asses on each other in the hotel room).

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Bloodletting

The phone rang. Brandon lay stretched out on his bed. His entire body was swollen. His skin was flushed, bright red. He was so uncomfortably hot that he lay naked on top of the sheets.

The phone rang. It had been a week since he had been to the doctor, two weeks since his first visit. After a week of still pissing blood, he had gone back to get a different perscription. This one wasn't working either.

The phone rang. He did not have a urinary tract infection. He didn't know what he had, but he knew that something much worse was wrong with his body. He woke up every morning with blood stains on his pillow. And a few days ago he had started to shit blood. Just blood. He hadn't been eating much; he didn't have the energy. His muscles ached. His joints were stiff. His whole body was puffy and burning. Even his penis was erect and swollen, even though sex was the furthest thing from his mind. His head throbbed.

The phone rang. He had had a headache for a week and a half. His head pounded. Brandon felt like his brain was going to crack through his skull and leak out onto his bed. Every miniscule movement he made, every tilt of the head, made him feel like his head was being bludgeoned, and tears would well up in his eyes. He wished the pounding would stop, or that he would die.

The phone rang. The answering machine picked it up. A voice flooded into his apartment.

"Hey, Brandon, Bran-done! It's Tom. Where ya been, man? You've missed almost two weeks of work. Everybody's asking about you. Are you still down and out with that UTI bullshit? C'mon, man, who are you trying to fool? Anyway, the boss said that he's been trying to get ahold of you, but you haven't been returning his calls. You need to call him back, man. I think he's getting pissed." With much effort, Brandon lifted himself up and sat at the edge of his bed. He panted and moaned. A sledgehammer firmly tapped his head like a metronome.

"You missed a hell of a time at the bars last weekend! We saw Kelly out at Swashbucklers. She was looking as skanky as ever. Oh, and Lindsey, Lindsey from Payroll, she was out that night, too. I hope you don't mind, but I gave her your address. I think she's going to send you flowers or some shit. Man, as soon as you are feeling even a little bit better, I would not hesitate to call her up and tap that shit! She wants your rod, man. Anyway, call me sometime and let me know what's going on. See ya."

Brandon slowly made his way to the bathroom. Every step was a train wreck in his head. He stepped through the doorway and looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot. They were almost completely red. And tears of blood trickled down his rosy cheeks.

Brandon looked at his face. The pain had to stop. It was puffy and red, as if the blood was just sloshing beneath the surface, searching for a leak to spring forth from. The pain had to stop. Brandon wanted to let it out. The pain had to stop. He opened the medicine cabinet and searched for something sharp. The pain had to stop. His eyes fell on a small pair of cuticle scissors.

The pain had to stop. It had to stop. It had to stop. It had to. It had to stop. The pain had to stop. The pain would not stop.

With all the skill of a drunken surgeon, Brandon plunged the scissors into his temple. He screamed and closed his eyes. He forced the scissors shut, making a half-inch incision in the skin. Brandon dropped the scissors and fell to his knees. He screamed again, and vomited. Blood.

Blood flooded down the side of his head. It came in waves matching his heartbeat and coated his right shoulder.

The pain that was in his head, the pain that was his head did not go away.

Brandon picked up the blood-covered scissors and made a mirror-image incision, accompanied by more screams. He wearily stood up. In the mirror it looked like he was wearing a vest of blood. He calmly stood gazing at himself, at his wounds. The cuts on either side of his head bubbled like geysers with every beat of his heart. They showed no signs of stopping. As he looked, he noticed that his face was becoming less swollen.

Maybe I just have too much blood. His grip on the scissors tightened.

Screaming, he cut himself down each wrist and watched the blood spring out in small, unicolor rainbows. Screaming, he watched the blood spread down his legs and run between his toes. Soon his screaming turned into a sickening, pain-wracked laughter.

Suddenly he noticed that the pain in his head was gone. He looked in the mirror and blinked. There was nothing. His mind was empty. His head was numb. He smiled. And then he wretched at the sight of himself, covered almost completely in his own blood. He looked like something from a horror movie. He threw up in the sink. Blood.

Brandon looked around his bathroom. Almost every inch of his white tile floor was now red. How can one person bleed this much? His wounds showed no sign of stopping. Brandon felt the numbness in his head turn into a faintness. He finally began to panic.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

Text Message from Stellar

I took more i tried. I'm not with him when when go home now.

12:53A Sun Jun05

Friday, June 03, 2005

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Pissing Blood

Brandon stepped up to the urinal, unzipped his pants, and gently tugged his penis out of his underwear. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed as he felt urine coursing through his urethra.

As the flow decreased, he looked down into the urinal, only to notice his piss was oddly colored, swirling down the drain like pink lemonade. "What the fuck?" he mumbled. The man several urinals down gave him a curious sideways glance. Brandon's stream wound down and got darker, until a few drops of blood trickled from his penis. "Shit," said a little louder. The other man zipped up and quickly shuffled out of the restroom.

"There's blood in my urine," he said in hushed tones over the phone. He stood up and looked over the walls of his cubicle. His doctor asked him if he felt any pain, any discomfort or stinging when it happened. "No. Is that a good sign?" His doctor reassured him and told him to come in the following morning. Brandon gently set the phone in its cradle and sat back in his office chair. It was a bit hard for him to concentrate the rest of the day.

Brandon impatiently sat in the waiting room at his doctor's office. He looked up as the receptionist came into the room. She looked over at him, then at a mother and small boy in the opposite corner. "Conner, Dr. Tyler is ready to see you now." The mother stood up with her son and led him into the back. As she was leaving, the receptionist said to Brandon, "It will only be a minute, and Dr. Tyler will be with you." Brandon nodded OK but thought to himself, This kid better have fucking stigmata and not the sniffles; I'm fucking bleeding internally here. He was sweating and wiped his forehead with his palm. When he removed his hand it was a bit pink.

"So, Brandon, how have you been?" Dr. Taylor idly chatted as he took Brandon's pulse.

"I've been pissing blood. How do you think I've been?"

"And you said there was no pain or discomfort?" the doctor continued.

"No. It just feels like regular pee," he explained.

Dr. Taylor stopped and look Brandon in the eye as if this was significant, but only replied, "Hmm," before opening Brandon's file.

Like an uncomfortable first date the two sat in silence. The doctor read Brandon's medical history, and Brandon waited anxiously for the doctor to say something, anything. Finally, Dr. Taylor stood up and walked to the door. As he was about to step out he turned to Brandon and, almost as an afterthought, said, "It's probably just a urinary tract infection, Brandon. We'll take a urine sample and draw some blood, just in case. More than likely some amoxicillin will clear that right up in a couple of days. The nurse will be right with you."

Brandon took the rest of the day off work. He ate some cereal, drank some cranberry juice, watched cartoons, and pissed more blood.

Brandon awoke early the next morning, coughing. He tried to open his eyes, but they were sealed shut. He felt them with his fingers and found a thin layer encrusting them closed. He scraped at them frantically, until he could see. Through a haze of confusion and discomfort, Brandon stumbled to the bathroom, wheezing and choking. At the sink, he coughed up a throat-full of phlegm. It was dark red, almost black. He looked in the mirror and saw his eyes ringed in dried blood.

Some Quiz

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence
You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well.
An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly.
You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view.
A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary.
You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

At Work

Sometimes I get bored at work -- my cushy sinecure at the Language & Literature Division Office on campus -- because usually by the time my bosses go to lunch I've finished all of the mini-projects that they had planned for me that day. So, after lunch I mull around the office looking for something to organize or label.

Is it weird that I'm waiting for the day when my bosses tell me to reorganize the files in the back room? I've already done it once before, last summer, and it was a long and dull task, but it kept me busy for a week. And this past winter break I organized the supply closet, but I really wouldn't mind doing that again. Anything to keep me from sitting at a desk, staring at the wall.

Or maybe I should just take longer on the tasks that my bosses give to me. They're always amazed at the speed at which I complete them. The next time they ask me to type something up, it should take me all day.

There was really not point to any of this. It was just something to do to pass the time. This is going to be a long summer.

Circa Now