Is there anybody out there that wants to pay me? For anything? If you have a job, I'll do it. I would prefer a job that allows me to write . . . stuff. But, honestly, I'll do anything. I work in a kitchen right now; I'm not above working a crappy job. All I need is enough to live on and pay off all my debts. Well, I graduate in May, so that will give you some time to think about it.
At age 32 Alex found himself single, independently wealthy, wanting nothing, bored, and lonely. And, like other young men in his particular predicament, he decided to find a hobby. However, instead of turning to drinking, drugs, or womanizing, he decided to pick up crime-fighting as his pass-time.
Naming himself Paladin and dressing in several shades of dark blue, Alex hit the streets at night, looking to right wrongs and defend the defenseless. Masked and covered in body armor, Alex felt invincible.
He spent his first few nights riding his motorcycle, listening to the garbled police blotter through his headphones, arriving at crimes already stopped, and generally looking ridiculous.
He decided to ditch the bike and creep to and fro in the shadows of alleys and rooftops in what was considered by most to be "the worst part of town." This is when things got exciting for him.
Alex peered out from the alley between The Busty Boutique and Garvey's Liquor and Tobacco. Even at three in the morning there was still much activity in the street. He'd been jumping from rooftop to rooftop and sneaking about for hours without seeing so much as a mugging. He needed a break.
He casually walked deep into the recesses of the alley, where shadow and the odd scent of decaying garbage concealed him. He removed his gloves, gauntlets, spandex shirt, and elbow and shoulder pads. He undid his flak jacket and threw it into the pile. His body was dripping with sweat. I'll have to bring some water next time, he thought. He removed his mask and ran his hands through his wet hair, sitting down on a stack of several old tires. He sighed and reflected on the practicality of his new-found hobby.
Behind him, a side door to Garvey's Liquor flew open. Alex stood up and spun around to see a scared middle-aged man being pushed through the doorway. "Get on your knees, chink!" said a skinny man in a hooded sweatshirt behind him. Alex watched as the man he assumed was the store clerk slowly bent down, hands behind his head. The hooded man pointed a pistol at the back of the clerk's head. Alex's heart raced. He knew what he had to do, but could he?
The man with the gun leaned down to talk into the clerks ear. "I'm only gonna ask you one more Goddamned time! What's the combination to the safe?" The clerk replied that he didn't know between sobs. "Wrong answer, chink." The man cocked the gun.
Alex took a step forward and shouted, "Stop!" It was just like out of a movie. Alex stood bare-chested barely visible in the scant light cast from the open door, his face still concealed. The clerk's assailant looked up and made an exclamation of confusion. There was a moment of silence. Alex began, "I'm Paladin, defender of light, and you, sir, are committing...." The man with the gun turned it on Alex and pulled the trigger three times quickly. Alex stood for a moment, then crumpled to the ground.
My new boss called me Josh the other day out of no where. He didn't even know he'd done it, and I didn't correct him.
I don't technically live anywhere. I have most of my stuff in the basement of an apartment that my friends live in. I had some clothes at the Magster's place, but I've since taken that out and deposited it into my car. When I'm not sleeping over at Magster, I sleep on people's couches or in my fraternity's party barn. I ask people to take showers at their place. Sometimes I go to the library just to hang out.
I want my house to hurry up and get finished. It's still supposed to be two weeks.
I haven't been dealing with this very well: Yesterday, I just didn't go to work. I could have, I just didn't. I knew the consequences of not going to work. I could probably get fired. I just didn't care.
When faced with adversity, I tend to curl up like a caterpillar that's been poked. Take, for instance, the time my car's battery died this past summer. I went and cried to my mommy. And then there's the time at the end of last semester where I just didn't go to classes for a couple week because I was "too stressed." If my father were around he would say something like, "Stand up straight; show some backbone." But it's not that I'm invertebrate. My spine is just so used to curling up that every time I have a little bit of stress, I ball up into the fetal position.
I'm such a pussy.
While driving through town to find some fast food, as I'm often apt to doing, I came upon the vehicle containing some of my friends. As is the custom of rude, young ruffians such as myself, I flipped my friends the bird. In return they flipped me off. Flipping the middle finger is the friendly wave of my generation.
The driver pulled over into a nearby parking lot and I followed suit. He threw a book at me that I had left with him, and we exchanged pleasantries.
From nowhere a minivan pulled up next to me; it was piloted by an upset middle-aged woman. "Did we do something to upset you?" she asked me. I was confused not only by her non sequitur question, but also by her use of "we" as there appeared to be no one else in the van with her. She could see the confusion on my face and added, "Why did you flip me off back there?"
embarrassed I confessed, "Oh, sorry. I was actually flipping them off," pointing to the carful of my companions parked next to mine.
"Why would you do that? I have children with me." I saw shadows moving through the tinted windows in the back of the minivan.
I apologized again. My comrades in the other car began to giggle.
"Are you in college?" she inquired.
"Yes," I replied. I could sense a talking-to was coming.
"Don't you think that's a little immature?" she said more as a statement. "Don't you think you're too old for that?" I had not heard about an age-limit on flipping people off or a general rule regarding ribbing of friends.
I did, however, think that I was a little too old to be talked down to thusly. But in order to avoid a confrontation, I figured that I would take my lumps and apologize. "Yeah, probably. I'm sorry." There. I had apologized three times. I had been satisfactorily sincere, and the woman and I could part ways. I turned to talk to my friends in the other car, but apparently the conversation was not over.
"I mean, c'mon!" she said passionately. I turned back to look at her. "When I saw that, it made me want to cry."
I am not a rude person. Sometimes I am gruff and I don't always smile at strangers. I don't particularly care for every random person that I come across, but I try to treat everyone with the respect that I would expect from them.
I was rude to this woman. "Well, you can go ahead and cry, ma'am," I said as I shooed her away with my hand. I didn't particularly feel like being scolded and belittle or given a morality lesson by some woman who obviously thought that my mother had done an insufficient job in raising me. I had politely apologized, and if that wasn't enough, well, that's too bad. I wanted to be done with this conversation.
flabbergasted. That's what her face was. She didn't look flabbergasted; her face was the actual word "flabbergasted." It was Plato's perfect Form of Flabbergastation. Her face was the epitome of confusion, disgust, disbelief, anger, and bewilderment: flabbergasted. Undaunted by my audacity, she continued, wild-eyed, to shake her proverbial finger at me. "Why would you do that? Why would you flip someone off?! It's ... it's ..."
I didn't let her finish, "Because I think it's funny."
She repeated her questions. I repeated my answer. She could see that she was not making her point. She changed tactics: "That is not part of home-town Kirksville values. I live in Kirksville. I have a family here."
"I live here, too, ma'am. I've lived here for five years." A little exaggeration. I've only had a permanent residence in this town for two years. But I have slept and eaten and breathed and shopped and et cetera in Kirksville for going on five years now.
"I live here," she repeated as if to say that her state of "living here" was somehow superior to mine. "Those are not part of Kirksville's home-town values." She liked to repeat herself.
I wanted to tell her that I came from a town smaller and more "home-town values" that Kirksville, and that I had flipped off plenty of people in that town, some not so playfully. I couldn't think of a way to say it very succinctly.
"People live here," she continued on with her point that somehow the fact that this is my town, too, it did not belong to me. As if I dropped from the sky every evening, driving around in my car, flipping off random families, only to return to the sky without apologies or explanation. "You can go back to where ever you come from and do that all you want, but don't do it in Kirksville." I repeated the fact that I live in Kirksville. I don't like repeating myself.
The novelty of this confrontation had worn off, and my friends in the other car took off.
Seeing a fraternity sticker on the back of my friend's car she asked, "Are you in a fraternity?"
I could see where this was going. In Kirksville, as in other small college towns I'm sure, despite the fact that college students support the economy of the town (making up nearly a third of it's population when school is in session) by bringing in their parents' money from out of town and spending it here, there is an anti-college-student sentiment among the aborigines of the town. This goes doubly for the Greek system (generally the students with enough extra cash to spend that they can pay dues). They view us as a nuisance, a pest, a weed that has infested their fair town (when in fact, we're more like a cash crop, a ripe fruit dripping with nectar, just waiting to be plucked). The university is probably the only thing that keeps Adair county from being the poorest county in the state (right now it's ranked 3rd poorest). The residents of this area should get down on their knees and praise their various gods that we exist. Instead, they look down their noses and scoff in disgust.
And this royally pisses me off.
"No," I replied to her question. The answer wasn't relevant to our discussion. "Look, ma'am, I'm don't want to discuss this with you anymore."
"Do you even know what that means, giving the middle finger?"
"Yes, it means 'fuck you,'" I almost smiled devilishly because I had just said "fuck you" to a middle-aged woman with kids.
"It means a special union between a man and a woman. And you're cheapening it."
I wasn't really following her line of logic so I said again, "I don't want to discuss this with you."
"I want you to say that you'll never do that in home-town Kirksville again." She really liked the phrase "home-town Kirksville." I refused. She asked this time, "Can you tell me that you'll never do that again in Kirksville?"
"I could but it would be a lie." We danced around this for a few more exchanges. I was getting tired and hungry, so I gave in, and I gave her an obviously, and horribly insincere "I'll never do that again in Kirksville."
She suddenly seemed satisfied with that. I've never understood people who accept insincere concessions and apologies and such. For some reason just saying the words without meaning is worth something to them. Anyway, the conflict had apparently been solved. And that's when the wierdest thing happened. She apologized to me. She said, "I'm sorry for being so pushy."
What. The. Fuck. ?.
I still don't understand it.
I couldn't help but laugh. At you. At me. At every beautifully ugly thing in this world. I laughed with snot dripping out of my nose and pain running down my face. I laughed from somewhere deeper than my lungs, from my soul. I laughed from beyond the selfish, cynical, down-trodden, whiney, pseudo-intellectual organs in the center of me, from below my aching diaphram, from between my wheezing liver and churning stomach, from without my knotted intestines. The laughter grew like a tumor, and I could see the pain from this unfamiliar feeling in me reflecting in your confused eyes.
You weren't alone in not understanding this experience. Maybe it was a moment of clarity. Or maybe it was a moment of absolute insanity. But I laughed like I finally got the joke that I've been mulling over for the past twenty-two years. Of course, I probably didn't get it, or all of it. And even if I did, I've forgotten the punchline.
But that doesn't matter now. I still have the memory of holding when you said, "Let me go; I hate you." I still remember tackling you in the grass, cars passing by. I remember laughing and laughing and laughing and crying and not knowing why and not caring, and only caring about you for that moment, and not even caring if you didn't care about me, and just being thankful that I got laugh insanely with / at / next to / for / because of you.
I just stole and read your book of poems My Life as a Minor Character which I have been eyeing for two days now. Someone carelessly abandoned a copy in the faculty workroom next to the copy machine and I have no qualms with stealing things that don't belong to me. The reason it caught my eye is because I've been trying to write a poem about being a minor character in my own autobiography, but now I don't want to write it because I'd feel unoriginal, like I was stealing your idea. So, I guess I lied about not having any problems with stealing. Anyway, while I was reading, I found that I had already written all your poems. In fact, I'm pretty sure that they were my poems because they were all my ideas in the first place. You had apparently been taking dictation for me without my knowledge. I appreciate your enthusiasm; I'm sure you were just trying to help, but next time let me know before publishing a book of my poems under your name.
Take the excitement of finally having friends back in town, peal off the responsibility of classes, and stir in the nuisance of several bills and two minimum-wage jobs that never seem to pay enough. Sprinkle in feelings of awkwardness and discomfort from living with a girlfriend and her roommate for a few weeks. Then slowly pour cheap beer and even cheaper whiskey. Blend ingredients until the mixture turns into a blurry haze. Let cool before serving. Serves one.
Someone just called my cell phone (wrong number) and asked for Josh. I almost said, "Speaking."
"So, you can disappear and turn things invisible and stuff?" Miranda walked alongside Thomas, nearly trotting to keep up with Thomas' long, quick gate. She looked up at him, and he watched the ground as he walked. She didn't know where they were going, but Thomas seemed to. Actually, she wasn't sure if they were going anywhere. She had a feeling that if she slowed down or stopped Thomas would not wait up for her. He seemed uncomfortable to say the least. "I mean if you don't mind me asking." She shot him her best smile, but he didn't notice.
"Uh, I don't mind, I guess," he replied shyly. Thomas was still unsure of this girl's motives. Why does she want to know about me? Is she just curious, or is it something else? "It's not as cool as turning invisible, though," he said.
"How do you do it?" Miranda pressed.
Thomas had never talked about his ability with anyone before, not even his friends. He had always imagined telling someone, not anyone in particular, just someone. But he'd never really gotten the opportunity, until now. "Well, I kinda just suggest an idea to a person."
Miranda was confused. "What do mean?"
Thomas had had this conversation one thousand times in his head. He was always eloquent as he explained in detail the minutiae of his ability to some eager listener. They would listened wide-eyed and laugh as he told anecdotes about his experiences with his ability: The time he had scared a bully so much that the bully had pissed his pants on the playground; the time he used his ability to hide in his sister's room when she was having a slumber party and watched the girls change; the time he stole an entire couch from a furniture store. The listener would marvel at his power and be in awe of Thomas, and Thomas would smile and shrug. "It's just something I can do," he would say in humble summary. But now Thomas was hardly eloquent. "I kinda just put an idea into someone's mind, and they, like, make up the rest." This sounded much better in my head, he thought.
"I don't follow."
"It's like this," he began before pulling his head off his neck. He held is detached head out in front of the two of them, facing back, looking at Miranda.
She was stupefied. "That's awesome!"
"See, all I did was suggest to you that you see me pull my head off and hold it in my hand. It's up to you if you see blood dripping from my neck, or if my eyes glaze over, or if you hear the voice coming from my head's mouth or the stump of my neck."
She looked up at his neck. She knew his head was on top of it. It had to be. But she just couldn't see it. "Even though I know this is just a trick, I still can't see your head where it really is. Why?"
"I don't know," Thomas said as he replaced his head. "Your mind had already taken my suggestion and decided on what it was seeing. Even if it's wrong, why would your mind want change it's mind now?" He chuckled at what he had just said, and looked at Miranda. She was still staring at him.
"What happens if someone doesn't take the suggestion?"
"It happens every so often. People are easy to manipulate when they're distracted or emotional, but when they're calm or centered or zen or whatever you want to call it, they're harder to convince. Also, the more detailed one of my suggestions is, the less likely it is that they'll believe it. And the simpler my suggestion, the more the person can use their own imagination to expound upon it." Miranda was smiling and nodding her head. She was indeed a wide-eyed listener. "So, why do you want to know about this?" Thomas slowed his pace and looked into Miranda face. who is this girl? What does she want?
Miranda leaned in to tell a secret. Her face was serious, but somehow still smiling. She spoke in a hushed voice, "I have a super power, too."
Plaid Shirt was fifty paces ahead of Miranda, walking lazily with long strides. He was tapping his pack of cigarettes against the butt of his hand. He ripped off the packaging and threw it into an alley as he passed. Miranda shook her head in disappointment. Without warning Plaid Shirt stopped and began to turn. Caught off guard and suddenly ashamed for stalking this man, Miranda conspicuously turned and inspected the stoop of the building next to her. Miranda's indiscreet action caught the eye of Plaid Shirt, and he inspected her for a few seconds before lifting a lighter to the cigarette dangling out of his mouth, shielding the flame from the breeze. His gaze stayed on Miranda for a few more seconds as he took the first drag off his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. He turned back and continued on his way. Miranda sighed and shook her head again. What am I doing? she thought. Nevertheless, she continued her pursuit.
Over the next block, Miranda slowly closed the gap, all the time trying to come up with a rational reason for following this guy. She kept thinking about what Alex had told her about their kind of people and the energy that bound them all together. It had sounded a little crazy to her then, but it she thought that it might be starting to make sense. Miranda was so close behind the man in the plaid shirt now that she could smell his cigarette smoke.
Plaid Shirt flicked his cigarette butt into the street and gave a sly look over his shoulder. As he expected, Miranda was still following him, only closer than expected. Miranda noticed his backward glance and thought, I'd better come up with something to say before he gets anxious about be following him. But what do you say to in a situation like this? 'Hey, I know you've got powers; I saw you use them on people. That's pretty cool.'
Miranda blinked and he was gone. She stopped. Her eyes were wide in disbelief. The man in the plaid shirt, who had been not more than five feet in front of her, had vanished. Miranda looked around to see if she had just missed him duck into a doorway or cross the street. But that's impossible, she thought, I was staring at his back one second, and the next second he just wasn't there. What's going on?
A voice from behind her spoke, “Quit following me.” Miranda spun around but no one was there except for an elderly man twenty feet away, inching his way up the sidewalk.
Miranda knew the voice belonged to the man in the plaid shirt. She wanted to see him, to talk to him. She wanted to tell him that she knew had a secret, that she did, too, and that he shouldn't be ashamed of it or scared of other people. She wanted to tell him something reassuring and eloquent. All she managed to squeeze out was a frightened “Hello?”
“Quit following me,” repeated the disembodied voice, a little more stern this time, and from the other direction. Miranda spun again. There was no one near her.
“I . . . I . . . saw what you did,” stuttered Miranda. There was no response. “Hello?” Still nothing. Miranda stood for a while listening while people walked by. Miranda sighed. I messed this one up. I should have just said something. “Sorry I creeped you out,” she said mostly to herself. She turned to walk back. Where was I even going before all this? she wondered.
“What do you want?” asked the man in the plaid shirt, suddenly standng next to Miranda. His face was serious, and his eyes were fixed on hers.
She yelped, stumbled sideways, and fell on her backside. “Holy shit! You scared me.” Even this reaction was somehow fairly nonchalant, given the circumstances.
A charmingly devilish grin spread across Plaid Shirt's face at Miranda's startled but calm composure, then it disappeared as quickly as he had. He returned to wearing a scowl. “No one will believe you if you told them. I didn't rob him anyway,” he stated.
“What?” Miranda tried to calm her fluttering heart.
“I didn't rob that guy in the store, he gave me the money. I didn't use a gun or even threaten him.”
“I didn't mean that.” Miranda looked up. “Can you help me up?” she asked, still shaken by the disappearing/reappearing act.
Plaid Shirt cautiously offered his hand to Miranda. She grabbed it, and he began to hoist her up. She weighed a lot more than he had expected. She held on to his hand even after she was up and the began to shake it, “My name's Miranda, by the way.”
“My name's, uh, Thomas,” he said suddenly looking much less angry and much more nervous. Thomas couldn't tell whether this girl was a threat or not. Her politeness and amazingly relative calm about his invisibilty stunt made him want ot lower his defences. But doubtful thoughts entered his mind, Why was she folling me? What does she want? He looked at her face and suddenly realized how pretty she was. His eyes couldn't hold her gaze, and he looked down at her shoes. She has cute shoes. Miranda smiled in her eyes and let go of his hand.
I thought that I would just let my faithful readers (if there are any) know that I haven't been completely neglecting to post, I've been working on a couple posts, but they are still in draft form. I'll try getting one, if not both, of them polished and ready to post by tonight.
I held you as close as the heavens hold the earth, but I was envious of the sky, blushing with anticipation, as it caressed the hills with cloud-soft strokes, until finally sliding the sun slowly down into the waiting ground. Beauty imbued the horizon in hues of darkened orange and reddened blues, unseen before, but somehow so familiar. The earth whispered through the wind and gasped, while the sun delved deeper still into crimsons and purples until it pushed, finally, far beyond our view. And there was in the atmosphere an incredible energy growing with panting breezes, the leaves shivering with excitement on the trees. Unable to sustain itself, the sky collapsed into black. We were left with wonder on our faces as the view was made more beautiful by it's passing. We got up to pass the time until another evening faded.
I guess I had it pretty easy. Not quite as easy as my baby sister, but easier than my older brother at least. He was old enough to know what was going on. I was only three years old when my parents divorced and four when my mom got remarried. I wasn't too conscience of what was going on; the only thing I can recall about it is a fleeting memory of standing in the bed of what I assume was my step-dad's truck "helping" to move our stuff out of my father's condo.
In our new house I remember playing in the dirt with my dog Boober and getting up early in the morning to watch "Gilligan's Island" reruns with my brother, completely unaffected by the radical change that was just made in my family. I knew that we didn't live with our father anymore, and that a new guy with a funny mustache had moved in, but I never really gave it a second thought. For the most part, this new guy didn't bother me, so I didn't bother him (or so I thought). For all I knew, this was how all families worked. All kids spent the week with their moms and the weekends with their dads, didn't they? I continued on, naive, not knowing that anything was amiss. I never really had any complaints, until she came along.
I can recall one weekend visit, riding in the back seat with my brother and sister. My father said that we were going to pick someone up. I'm sure my eight-year-old mind wished that we were going to pick up Donatello the Ninja Turtle, or maybe Teddy Ruxpin. We didn't.
"Guys," my father said, "this is Deborah," talking about the woman who had just gotten in the car. She turned to look at the three of us. At that instant I saw beyond her large glasses and saccharine smile, and I knew that for some reason I was not going to like her. I couldn't put my finger on it then, but soon she would give me several very tangible reasons not to like her. Where I was used to being trusted and smiled upon, she was used to skepticism and a raised eyebrow. And where I was used to patience and positive reinforcement, she was used to reproach and invective. My father married her a year or two later. I cried at the wedding, because I was pissed. How could my father marry someone like her?
She had three daughters who I tried to like, but ultimately grew to loathe. They were simply extensions of Deborah, slimy tentacles reaching places that they didn't belong. Their omnipresence and periodic reports to their mother about the actions and whereabouts of my brother, sister, and I made us all feel uncomfortable visiting my father. It was like living in the novel 1984, constantly being watched and fearing the wrath of Big Brother. Our only safe haven was our father. No one dare fuck with us when he was in the room, not even his wife. Unfortunately, he was rarely home, and when he was, he was usually resting in his bedroom or holed up in his den organizing his card collection. He was seldom there to save us, and I slowly began to resent him.
About the time my father remarried, my mom and step-dad moved us hours away. Weekend visits to my father's became holidays and summer stays with his new family. This is when the strain of divorce began to affect me. As time passed I watched my father change from a goofy, smiling superhero into a bitter, petty man. I watched my step-mother turn as fat and ugly as she was on the inside. I watched my mother hate those two, and I was confused as I tried to emulate her while staying loyal to both parents. I watched my step-dad's seemingly infinite patience with me, and I was annoyed at him for being a better dad than my biological one.
My step-sisters and -mother I tolerated, but my faith in my father was waning. When we did visit, we saw less and less of my father, and visiting step-relatives that you don't care for, isn't a very pleasant way to spend a summer. Over the years the summer stays got shorter, and we visited my father fewer holidays. I'm not sure why. And the child support checks arrived later and later, and sometimes not at all. Again, I'm not sure why.
His wife openly complained about how expensive we were, but I didn't realize how much they viewed us as a financial burden, a monetary nuisance, until my freshman year of high school. My brother, a senior, was looking to go to college, and my mom asked my father if he would help pay. He didn't want to. She hired a lawyer to make him pay the state-set "minimum" of child support. He hired a better lawyer that said he didn't have to. At his lawyer's request, his interest in us kids was suddenly renewed. He wanted to see us for every available holiday and all through the summer -- I'm assuming so it wouldn't look so bad that he had thusfar financed very little of our lives. I don't think my brother and sister were, but for a while I was fooled into actually believing that he cared. Then I went to visit him for one last summer, and nothing had changed. None of us went back to him again after that.
Well, that's not entirely true. I think my sister saw him once when she went to visit our grandparents. My brother visited him once or twice, maybe because he felt sorry for our father. But I think for the most part, none of us really cared for him too much anymore. I haven't been back at all. The realization that this / we / family was all just a matter of dollar signs to him hit me pretty hard. Someone putting a pricetag on their love for you makes you feel pretty worthless.
I haven't seen my father in a long time, about seven years, almost a third of my life. And except for a few hastily written emails that I received on my 19th birthday, I haven't heard from him either. Sometimes I feel bad that I miss that asshole. But then again, maybe I shouldn't feel bad. After all, he wasn't a bad man, just bad at loving me.
Who would win in a fight between Optimus Prime and Voltron? I guess we'll find out in a couple years when they both hit theaters. It'll be "Robots in Disguise" versus "The Defenders of the Universe." Personally, my money's on the Transformers!
I got a new project to keep me busy at work yesterday afternoon. I'm supposed to revamp part of the Language & Literature website (the Language Learning Center pages). For me, this is exciting. Not just because I actually have something to do, but because I love tinkering with websites. I'm not so good with the graphics and design, but I love all the inner-workings.
Luckily, I get to recycle most of the old graphics, so I don't have to worry about that. Tomorrow I'll have to work on updating the content, which will be kinda boring. But today I redesigned the whole back end of the website -- cleaning up the HTML and JavaScript, and adding a splash of PHP (I *heart* PHP!). I just wish that the server the website was on had MySQL. I want to fiddle around with a database using PHP so that I can become better acquainted with how to do all that stuff.
On a side note, Microsoft FrontPage kinda sucks. I'm using it to help with editing the site. It adds a LOT of unnecessary and dirty HTML. I'd rather do it all by hand and have it look nice than use the stupid WYSIWYG editor. The only good thing FrontPage does is help to keep all the files organized.
This appalled me, both the fact that the website exists, and that it has enough demand to keep it in business.
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