July 28, 2009
October 6, 2008
September 27, 2007
Life Isn't Fair
WARNING: THIS STORY IS VERY GRUESOME AND SAD. If this doesn't sound like something you want to read, don't! I have many other posts that are entertaining and lighthearted. This one is not. It was an English assignment to write a story that messes with time, such as the flashback and slow motion. This story does both. And I got the idea from seeing some very gruesome pictures of an accident scene, which is similar to the one I describe. Since the pictures told me nothing of the victim's life, so I added plenty of details and and turned the victim into a person with a life. So read on if you aren't bothered by gruesome things. But don't say I didn't warn you!
Juan Carlos feels joy and excitement swell in his heart as he rubs the small black velvet box with his chubby fingers. This box is now empty. He’d had the honor of sliding the diamond ring he’d saved for on sweet Erica’s long, slender ebony finger just hours ago. She’d said yes and now he is a happier man.
Turning his brand new, bright blue Toyota Yaris onto Fred Wilson Avenue he makes the 1.5 liter, four cylinder engine give him 40 miles per hour. The tiny car that looks like a baby’s shoe and gets an excellent 29 city and 36 highway miles to the gallon. Its cute little liftback and backseat which wouldn’t be roomy enough for a two year old add to the fuel economy.
Sniffing and savoring the new car smell, he is glad that he had enough money to afford the car payments and still buy the ring that would make Erica’s heart long for him in his absence. Life is good.
As the tiny car’s four small speakers blare the best love song from his favorite Flaco Jimenez CD, Juan Carlos gladly wails along. His Spanish is flawless, though his voice is not. But it doesn’t matter, nobody is with him to hear. Plus, as long as his girlfriend of three years had agreed to be his wife, what does it matter that his voice is off-key and doesn’t blend with the vocals of Flaco, or even the bass, guitar, and accordion, for that matter? As he sings, his focus goes off the road.
Until he looks up to see the cab of a semi only 20 feet ahead of him, driving westbound on the eastbound side of Fred Wilson Avenue.
¡Dios! Is his first thought as he locks the brakes and tries to swerve out of the errant driver’s path.
Then his brain, saturated with the neurotransmitters of love, drowns in epinephrine flood from fear and shock which has the effect of stretching his last conscious second on Earth ad infinitum.
Juan Carlos was back in the club with his buddies. For the past couple years, he’d chosen to spend most of his Saturday nights at the El Dorado Lounge drinking and dancing away the stress of a week spent in a cubicle answering phones, telling silly people in English and Spanish that they need to first make sure that the computer was plugged in and that the tower and the monitor were turned on before he’d get to use his computer science degree to help them fix their machines.
These Saturday nights, before church in the morning, he’d sip a couple mixed drinks with tequila in them and baila until his ankles swelled and his feet were sore. Usually, his amigos were more interested in just sitting around, but he never could do that for very long. After his drinks, he had to start moving to the Tejano beats—whether he had a girl or not.
He jerks the steering wheel hard to the right, then his hands and arms lock up and in that second, he is able to get the wheels to turn to the right. But it doesn’t matter. The drowsy truck driver had noticed his wrong way error a second before and had slammed on his brakes, but he is still going 20 when they hit. A fully loaded semi, from Omaha’s Werner Enterprises, which weighs a little under 80,000 pounds, hits the subcompact car weighing 2,295 pounds, plus 220 pounds of Juan Carlos, and an additional 100 pounds of cargo. The airbags in the Toyota don’t much matter in a head on collision, even at relatively slow city speeds, when the truck outweighs the car by thirty times.
That Saturday night, a little over three years ago, was in the middle of February. He’d noticed the beautiful woman walk in, because at his club, black people were rare, and she’d come alone. She was dancing on the floor by herself, though there were plenty of other groups of people on the floor, none of them were accepting her. So Juan Carlos, single, had taken it upon himself to dance over to her. She’d flashed him a radiant smile in that moment.
He knew he needed to talk to her before she thanked him for the dance and left because he’d never seen her in here before and El Paso was a big city, so he couldn’t risk chickening out because if he did this time, she might not come back next Saturday and he might never see her again. Unsure of what to say, he quickly scanned her, and the most interesting thing he saw was her long, perfectly manicured and lavishly painted finger nails. Relying on his brave little buddy, Jose Cuervo, who swimming through his circulatory system and dancing his way through Juan Carlos’ blood-brain barrier, he used the loud, pulsing beats as an excuse to get much closer to her. Stepping in, the fact that she was about three inches taller than him became even more obvious. He placed his chubby arms around the fashionable grey sweater she wore and could feel how trim her stomach was.
She didn’t recoil at the touch, and he leaned further in and said, “Nice nails!”
Immediately sensing how awkward this compliment was, he blushed. But this woman he was with just flashed him another big smile and said, “Thank you.”
The song ended abruptly, and Juan Carlos asked her if she’d like to join him at a table. She did, and Juan Carlos ditched his buddies and took her to a small table where they could be alone. Those locos would definitely lower his chances with this woman.
They’d hit it off in a big way that night. They ended up talking for three hours until the bar closed. As he walked her to her car, Juan Carlos suddenly realized that he had forgotten to get Erica’s number. And he also realized that this was probably a good thing, because he usually just walked up to a woman he was attracted to and asked for her phone number, and usually got turned down immediately, which tended to result in a chronic lack of dates. But this time, he’d taken the time to impress her and be impressed by her in meaningful conversation before he asked for those vital digits. Of course Erica gave him her number. And he used it on that Monday.
His foot shoves the brake down as far as it will go as fast as he can. This locks the tires and leaves a thick strip of rubber on the road. He is only able to slow from 40 to about 30.
A woman whips her head around as she hears the screech of tires. Max, the German Sheppard she is walking down the sidewalk had sensed the danger an instant before her. Two toddlers are playing with a ball in their front yard. They see the semi driving the wrong way down their street, but don’t understand why this is a bad thing. But they do, however, understand the screech, the sickening crunch of rapidly collapsing metal, the shattering of glass, and the smells of gasoline, blood and rubber. Only a minute after the semi stops pushing the car the sirens begin wailing in the distance. The brothers start crying, and their mother comes and ushers them into the house so they can’t see any more of the horror.
After reliving his first meeting with his fiancé, then seeing the witnesses to his death, Juan Carlos looks up and sees the horrified look on the truck driver’s face, who is now hyper awake, his state of shock just as high as his future victim’s even though his cab would only have a small dent in its huge shiny chrome bumper.
The police, ambulance, and fire fighters show up quickly to the grizzly scene. There are no patients at this accident. The trucker, completely unhurt, is in a daze as he takes his citation and court date from one of the officers who investigated the crash. It will be days later that the stress and remorse of taking another human life, even though accidental, would hit him. He would later go meet and apologize to Erica and Juan Carlos’ father, both of whom forgave him unconditionally, even in the first few weeks of their grief.
It takes over an hour to pull the car out from under the truck and get the Jaws of Life to spread the metal enough to pry out first the head, trunk, and arms of Juan Carlos. His upper body is essentially jellied because the front of his car and the truck shatter every rib and most of the craniofacial bones. They place that in a body bag on the street then they do some more work with the Jaws of Life to pull his severed legs out. Technically, he isn’t completely cut in half, because there is still some intestine intact between the two parts, though the garden hose-sized artery called the aorta is completely severed, shooting the blood that hadn’t gone with the legs out in seconds.
When the semi and Yaris collide, the Yaris is smashed in to where it looks like a crushed soda can. The little liftback area is the only recognizable part. Juan Carlos had felt nothing, other than the unpleasant second where he realized he was going to die. Mercifully, the impact knocks him unconscious before the engine compartment, which his legs were under as part of the space-saving design, collides with his abdomen, leaving his legs and a third of his blood on the floor of the car and his torso in the trunk compartment.
Many of the responders and the witnesses chose to get therapy after seeing the most violent crash some of them would ever see. But Juan Carlos, though he had to leave what might have been a nice marriage to a great woman, and a sad father, was with Jesus now. Life isn’t fair, but Juan Carlos never suffered, unlike those who lie in a hospital bed for years, wilting away slowly.
Juan Carlos feels joy and excitement swell in his heart as he rubs the small black velvet box with his chubby fingers. This box is now empty. He’d had the honor of sliding the diamond ring he’d saved for on sweet Erica’s long, slender ebony finger just hours ago. She’d said yes and now he is a happier man.
Turning his brand new, bright blue Toyota Yaris onto Fred Wilson Avenue he makes the 1.5 liter, four cylinder engine give him 40 miles per hour. The tiny car that looks like a baby’s shoe and gets an excellent 29 city and 36 highway miles to the gallon. Its cute little liftback and backseat which wouldn’t be roomy enough for a two year old add to the fuel economy.Sniffing and savoring the new car smell, he is glad that he had enough money to afford the car payments and still buy the ring that would make Erica’s heart long for him in his absence. Life is good.
As the tiny car’s four small speakers blare the best love song from his favorite Flaco Jimenez CD, Juan Carlos gladly wails along. His Spanish is flawless, though his voice is not. But it doesn’t matter, nobody is with him to hear. Plus, as long as his girlfriend of three years had agreed to be his wife, what does it matter that his voice is off-key and doesn’t blend with the vocals of Flaco, or even the bass, guitar, and accordion, for that matter? As he sings, his focus goes off the road.
Until he looks up to see the cab of a semi only 20 feet ahead of him, driving westbound on the eastbound side of Fred Wilson Avenue.
¡Dios! Is his first thought as he locks the brakes and tries to swerve out of the errant driver’s path.
Then his brain, saturated with the neurotransmitters of love, drowns in epinephrine flood from fear and shock which has the effect of stretching his last conscious second on Earth ad infinitum.
Juan Carlos was back in the club with his buddies. For the past couple years, he’d chosen to spend most of his Saturday nights at the El Dorado Lounge drinking and dancing away the stress of a week spent in a cubicle answering phones, telling silly people in English and Spanish that they need to first make sure that the computer was plugged in and that the tower and the monitor were turned on before he’d get to use his computer science degree to help them fix their machines.
These Saturday nights, before church in the morning, he’d sip a couple mixed drinks with tequila in them and baila until his ankles swelled and his feet were sore. Usually, his amigos were more interested in just sitting around, but he never could do that for very long. After his drinks, he had to start moving to the Tejano beats—whether he had a girl or not.He jerks the steering wheel hard to the right, then his hands and arms lock up and in that second, he is able to get the wheels to turn to the right. But it doesn’t matter. The drowsy truck driver had noticed his wrong way error a second before and had slammed on his brakes, but he is still going 20 when they hit. A fully loaded semi, from Omaha’s Werner Enterprises, which weighs a little under 80,000 pounds, hits the subcompact car weighing 2,295 pounds, plus 220 pounds of Juan Carlos, and an additional 100 pounds of cargo. The airbags in the Toyota don’t much matter in a head on collision, even at relatively slow city speeds, when the truck outweighs the car by thirty times.
That Saturday night, a little over three years ago, was in the middle of February. He’d noticed the beautiful woman walk in, because at his club, black people were rare, and she’d come alone. She was dancing on the floor by herself, though there were plenty of other groups of people on the floor, none of them were accepting her. So Juan Carlos, single, had taken it upon himself to dance over to her. She’d flashed him a radiant smile in that moment.
He knew he needed to talk to her before she thanked him for the dance and left because he’d never seen her in here before and El Paso was a big city, so he couldn’t risk chickening out because if he did this time, she might not come back next Saturday and he might never see her again. Unsure of what to say, he quickly scanned her, and the most interesting thing he saw was her long, perfectly manicured and lavishly painted finger nails. Relying on his brave little buddy, Jose Cuervo, who swimming through his circulatory system and dancing his way through Juan Carlos’ blood-brain barrier, he used the loud, pulsing beats as an excuse to get much closer to her. Stepping in, the fact that she was about three inches taller than him became even more obvious. He placed his chubby arms around the fashionable grey sweater she wore and could feel how trim her stomach was.
She didn’t recoil at the touch, and he leaned further in and said, “Nice nails!”
Immediately sensing how awkward this compliment was, he blushed. But this woman he was with just flashed him another big smile and said, “Thank you.”
The song ended abruptly, and Juan Carlos asked her if she’d like to join him at a table. She did, and Juan Carlos ditched his buddies and took her to a small table where they could be alone. Those locos would definitely lower his chances with this woman.
They’d hit it off in a big way that night. They ended up talking for three hours until the bar closed. As he walked her to her car, Juan Carlos suddenly realized that he had forgotten to get Erica’s number. And he also realized that this was probably a good thing, because he usually just walked up to a woman he was attracted to and asked for her phone number, and usually got turned down immediately, which tended to result in a chronic lack of dates. But this time, he’d taken the time to impress her and be impressed by her in meaningful conversation before he asked for those vital digits. Of course Erica gave him her number. And he used it on that Monday.His foot shoves the brake down as far as it will go as fast as he can. This locks the tires and leaves a thick strip of rubber on the road. He is only able to slow from 40 to about 30.
A woman whips her head around as she hears the screech of tires. Max, the German Sheppard she is walking down the sidewalk had sensed the danger an instant before her. Two toddlers are playing with a ball in their front yard. They see the semi driving the wrong way down their street, but don’t understand why this is a bad thing. But they do, however, understand the screech, the sickening crunch of rapidly collapsing metal, the shattering of glass, and the smells of gasoline, blood and rubber. Only a minute after the semi stops pushing the car the sirens begin wailing in the distance. The brothers start crying, and their mother comes and ushers them into the house so they can’t see any more of the horror.
After reliving his first meeting with his fiancé, then seeing the witnesses to his death, Juan Carlos looks up and sees the horrified look on the truck driver’s face, who is now hyper awake, his state of shock just as high as his future victim’s even though his cab would only have a small dent in its huge shiny chrome bumper.
The police, ambulance, and fire fighters show up quickly to the grizzly scene. There are no patients at this accident. The trucker, completely unhurt, is in a daze as he takes his citation and court date from one of the officers who investigated the crash. It will be days later that the stress and remorse of taking another human life, even though accidental, would hit him. He would later go meet and apologize to Erica and Juan Carlos’ father, both of whom forgave him unconditionally, even in the first few weeks of their grief.
It takes over an hour to pull the car out from under the truck and get the Jaws of Life to spread the metal enough to pry out first the head, trunk, and arms of Juan Carlos. His upper body is essentially jellied because the front of his car and the truck shatter every rib and most of the craniofacial bones. They place that in a body bag on the street then they do some more work with the Jaws of Life to pull his severed legs out. Technically, he isn’t completely cut in half, because there is still some intestine intact between the two parts, though the garden hose-sized artery called the aorta is completely severed, shooting the blood that hadn’t gone with the legs out in seconds.When the semi and Yaris collide, the Yaris is smashed in to where it looks like a crushed soda can. The little liftback area is the only recognizable part. Juan Carlos had felt nothing, other than the unpleasant second where he realized he was going to die. Mercifully, the impact knocks him unconscious before the engine compartment, which his legs were under as part of the space-saving design, collides with his abdomen, leaving his legs and a third of his blood on the floor of the car and his torso in the trunk compartment.
Many of the responders and the witnesses chose to get therapy after seeing the most violent crash some of them would ever see. But Juan Carlos, though he had to leave what might have been a nice marriage to a great woman, and a sad father, was with Jesus now. Life isn’t fair, but Juan Carlos never suffered, unlike those who lie in a hospital bed for years, wilting away slowly.
August 12, 2007
Star Trek Convention Pictures
Not the best picture of the "Supreme Court" bar in the Adam's Mark Hotel.
The Vice President conducting business. Cardboard cutout is of the President of Starfleet international, who is currently on a boat in the Middle East serving with the U.S. Navy.
A salesman watching his hats in Denver's outdoor 16th Street Mall.
My favorite picture! Tim Russ, who played Voyager's "Tuvok" and I doing the Vulcan salute!
These women were part of the entertainment. A belly dancing group from Denver who perform as Trills and Orion Slave Girls.
The "World Trade Center" is in Denver? I didn't know there were more than one!
Taekwon-do demonstration. These guys are all from a Starfleet International ship that meets in a church and worships God and does TKD. A very cool combo!
This is all the stuff that I bought and/or was in my "swag bag" that I got just for registering.
This guy was across the street from the 4 bongoists you'll see in another picture, and he was smacking his pot to harmonize with their percussion.
The four bongoists. Some of the many street musicians, snake charmers, human robots, and street preachers who seek to entertain or scare people in downtown Denver and hope to be paid for their efforts. Doesn't the guy on the end look like Pauly Shore?
This poor guy was just about dead. A lifetime of street drugs and heavy liquor'll do that to ya!
Out in front of the Adam's Mark Hotel where the convention was. But we stayed in a hotel that was 1.5 miles away because it was much cheaper, even though it was nice.
I wonder what Mrs. Cluas would say about her beloved Santa dancing with a Trill? If you wonder who Santa is, he was a mythical figure who was said to bring toys to good children for Christmas. If you wonder what Christmas is, it is a holiday that we used to celebrate in America and worldwide that signified the birth of Jesus Christ. But the media took a liking to the idea that no special mention should be made of Jesus in our society, so they are doing a great job of eradicating all mention and memory of the holiday and Jesus from the public.
Rick. Soon to be the Executive Officer of the USS Devil's Tower when it is launched, and the guy who drove us to the con. Also Captain Montgomery's stepdad, once removed. Whatever that means!
Great reflection shot of the city off the Supreme Court's windows.
I love this shot! The beautiful organic delicate tree juxtaposed against the perfect steel angles of a World Trade Center skyscraper is quite interesting.
I kid you not. Santa was "makin' a list" and also "checkin' it twice" during the Starfleet business meeting. I had to get a shot of Santa in action! The guy's real name is Sal, and he's a Starfleet Admiral, and he's running for President of Starfleet. He likes to be called Santa, and in an effort to get voter support and recognition, he passes out Santa hats!
Some Klingons and me. Notice the REAL d'k tagh! These guys taught a class on the Klingon language. Very interesting!
Intersection. I like this shot.
Tim Russ onstage singing. I bought his CD. Pretty good jazz, although I can't shake the image that Tuvok would protest that music is illogical. I guess there is a real person underneath all of our favorite characters we see on TV and movies! This old woman had to be 90 and using a walker, but she was a hardcore Trekkie! Even had a uniform that she knitted!
Just a shop at the mall that sold stuff relating to Tibet and their weird religions. I went in the store hoping they'd have cool weapons, but I didn't see any. I love how I got the focus on the gold idol and all the craziness in the background is secondary.
Some Denver cops hanging out at the mall, and talking to Denver city transit guys who drive the buses up and down the streets of the mall.
The Starfleet Marines (more on this topic in a later post) had a color guard ceremony to post the flags. I'm not sure if I think it is cool or inappropriate that the two end "Marines" were carrying phaser compression rifles.
A cash bar was available to any Trekkie who was thirsty and had a lot of money.
Here is Captain Montgomery! This is the only picture I got of him, because he doesn't like to be photographed. You can see how tight our ride was--we were in a Chevy Tracker. TINY!
In the Supreme Court. This was completely independent of the convention, even though some of us were in there. I was the only one in uniform, though. Tuvok was there, dressed as Tim Russ, and he was dancing up a storm. I was just sitting back drinking and talking to people who approached me with questions about Star Trek. It was an interesting time that I will write more on later!
Belly dancing Trills, posterior view.
Belly dancing Trills, anterior view.
Captain Montgomery hooked us up with a nice place to stay, and this picture is how I chose to summarize our hotel. Which was an extended stay Marriot with kitchenette.I will write more later, but thought that pictures with captions was the best way to summarize the trip.
Also, it looks like Blogger glitches screwed me again with these pictures (like it did with all my pre op pictures), so that if you click on them, they won't enlarge. That annoys me to no end, but I don't know how to fix it. So if you like any of the pictures and want to see them much bigger, comment or email me, and I will send them to you.
May 7, 2007
Oh, Clock!
Note: The Reverse ("tails" side of a coin) half of this poem is for anybody out there who is down right now because their roll dogs flaked out on something that was really important to you. The Obverse ("heads" side of a coin) half of this poem is for all you flaky roll dogs. I don't seek to condemn; but to educate. We've all done it to people, but just remember that something that might seem insignificant to you might mean the world to someone else!
OBVERSE:
Oh, hey, look!
It's quarter to (insert hour here).
Wasn't (insert name of friend or family member here)'s little party today?
Ah, well, I'm tired, plus I have (insert lame, self-affirming excuse here).
Yeah, and I didn't really want to got to that (insert type of planned activity that you weren't really interested in doing here) anyway.
I'm sure lots of other people are already on their way to it!
I won't be missed . . .
REVERSE:
Whew! I've been cleaning my (circle one: house, dorm, apartment, yard, car) all day!
It is almost perfect!
I just have a few final touches in this last hour, and might need to run to the grocery store again!
Okay, I put the vacuum away and took out the last of the trash!
Ah, I might as well just flop down on the couch for a couple minutes before the people start showing up.
Wow, I forgot to dust my clock . . .
Great! Quarter til! Ha, those early birds'll be showing up any second now! . . .
Well, it won't hurt to eat a little of this tasty (insert snack food here) I made!
Okay, they'd rather be on time. That's cool. It's right on the hour. Any second now! . . .
I see! They're shooting for "fashionably late"! . . .
Quarter after. No knocks on my door yet . . .
My friends and family know how important this (insert type of party or gathering here) is to me. I guess they are all running late . . .
Tick, tock . . .
Thirty minutes past the hour? No knocks? No calls?!
NOBODY?
Of EVERYBODY I invited--my closest friends and family--nobody can even acknowledge me and my efforts to organize this?
Naw, it CAN'T be!
Tick . . . getting smaller . . .
A wave of sadness crashes down on me . . .
Tock . . . shrinking . . .
A wave of anger washes over me . . .
Tick . . . falling through the cracks . . .
A current of despair pulls me out to sea . . .
Where I am lost . . .
And none of my best friends will throw me a line!
Tock . . . disappear!
OBVERSE:
Oh, hey, look!
It's quarter to (insert hour here).
Wasn't (insert name of friend or family member here)'s little party today?
Ah, well, I'm tired, plus I have (insert lame, self-affirming excuse here).
Yeah, and I didn't really want to got to that (insert type of planned activity that you weren't really interested in doing here) anyway.
I'm sure lots of other people are already on their way to it!
I won't be missed . . .
REVERSE:
Whew! I've been cleaning my (circle one: house, dorm, apartment, yard, car) all day!
It is almost perfect!
I just have a few final touches in this last hour, and might need to run to the grocery store again!
Okay, I put the vacuum away and took out the last of the trash!
Ah, I might as well just flop down on the couch for a couple minutes before the people start showing up.
Wow, I forgot to dust my clock . . .
Great! Quarter til! Ha, those early birds'll be showing up any second now! . . .
Well, it won't hurt to eat a little of this tasty (insert snack food here) I made!
Okay, they'd rather be on time. That's cool. It's right on the hour. Any second now! . . .
I see! They're shooting for "fashionably late"! . . .
Quarter after. No knocks on my door yet . . .
My friends and family know how important this (insert type of party or gathering here) is to me. I guess they are all running late . . .
Tick, tock . . .
Thirty minutes past the hour? No knocks? No calls?!
NOBODY?
Of EVERYBODY I invited--my closest friends and family--nobody can even acknowledge me and my efforts to organize this?
Naw, it CAN'T be!
Tick . . . getting smaller . . .
A wave of sadness crashes down on me . . .
Tock . . . shrinking . . .
A wave of anger washes over me . . .
Tick . . . falling through the cracks . . .
A current of despair pulls me out to sea . . .
Where I am lost . . .
And none of my best friends will throw me a line!
Tock . . . disappear!
April 20, 2007
Insomnaeic Poemia
Here it is purdy danged close to 5 a.m. and I am not in the least bit sleepy. My thoughts have turned to my blog, and I was wondering what to write about. Then it hit me! One sleepless night in my Junior year of college I penned this poetic gem at a computer in the Hill Hall lobby and entered it in Poetry.com. So I just went back to the site, searched my name, and cut and pasted my Insomnia poem. Sorry, it isn't in any style nor is it in iambic pentameter. Happy sleeping!
Here I am
Insomnia
Here I am
What time is it?
Darkness pours in through the windows
Outside the sun mocks me from China
The Earth greedily eats the rays and dances slowly
Like the fat boy super-sizing his fat meal at the fat fast food shack
Incandescence thumbs its nose at the sun from my bulb
My brain pulses to the beat of the Earth
And space and time and distance
Oh, to stand on the surface of the sun
My feet would get hot
And I would jump and run and yell
I wouldn't even care about time or sleep or pillows
And blankets
All I want is ice water and
Less gravity
Copyright ©2007 Scott Phelan
Copyright ©2007 Scott Phelan
April 3, 2007
Pictures of Poems
This blog is long overdue for some poetry! So I've scanned some of the poems in that I wrote for my college poetry class, complete with teacher scribbles. I think when you click on them, they will be big enough to read. The teacher, Paisley Rekdal, was very cool, as evidenced by the title of her book, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee. One silly assignment we had was to write a poem to be displayed in a community location, and we were allowed to write as "Anonymous." So I wrote the Golden Rectangle poem about something in my next door neighbors' room (Eric and Ryan). She told us that if we didn't want to go post the poems in the public places, that she would do it for us. She was getting ready to post my poem until she asked where it was going. It turns out White Hall room 444
scared her away. First, she had a problem with the idea that Eric and Ryan's room was a public place, but I had to disagree because so many people liked to just go chop it up in there and there were always Bible studies and movie nights occurring. Then she had a problem with the fact that they were right next door to me (as in, "Why don't you just post it yourself?"), and that they were friends of mine. She said, "I don't want to go knock on their door! What if someone answers the door naked?" I can assure you that neither of them ever answered the door naked, and I am not lazy. I just thought it'd be cool to have my poetry teacher go hang out with my friends! Anyway, I had to tack th
e poem up to their bulletin board right beside the "TV stand" that was made out of empty cans of Dr Pepper. As for the lingo in the poem, I am going to have to draw a picture so it makes more sense. [Pauses to draw and scan picture . . .] Okay, Eric (Architectural Engineering) and Ryan (Mechanical Engineering) decided to build the coolest couch on campus--the double decker! The top layer had the enormous pillows from a long-dead mega couch sitting on the frame and that level seated three. The bottom had a love seat that seated two, and next to it was the Dr Pepper mini fridge. They had their beds bunked, and that would hold another good 7 or 8 students. Then there was room for a couple chairs and some people laid on the floor. During movie nights the person sitting on the love seat right next to the fridge was in charge of tossing anyone a Dr Pepper who called out "Yo!" or "Brew me!" or "Can you please get me a Dr Pepper?" I refer to that magical man in the poem as the "Main Distributor." Conversely, the "Main Contributor" was the person who emptied the most Dr Peppers. So that's the story on my poem with the cool rhyme scheme break (Hansen's Disease). Since Paisley didn't really think my poem should count as being in a community location, I wrote another one that was really silly about the Smith p
ress machines in Half Acre Gym. Since I didn't know if she was familiar with the gym (or if she knew what a Smith press machine was), I wrote her a little note and drew a picture so she could find it. Then I forgot about the silly poem and went about my business. About a year later, somehow it came up in conversation that Tony Archer, our IVCF staff worker, was in the gym doing some squats and he had seen a poem hanging on the wall by the machine written by "Anonymous." I thought that was hilarious! Paisley actually went and posted it! Ah, the poem "Apparently Apathetic to Apoptosis" is rather cool, I think. I wrote it for the poetry class (this was a re-printing) because I was pissed off at cancer, before I ever even knew I would get cancer. Oh, a lot of people who read it don't know what it is about; it's about cancer. Apoptosis is cellular suicide. In normal cells, when something goes wrong--say genetic mutations that would lead to cancer--the lysosome is an organelle that is supposed to kick in and initiate apoptosis by releasing acids into the cell that kill it. Cancer cells lose the ability to do this, and so my thinking was if we could find out why and how to stop it, we might eliminate some cancer.
Ah, "Turbulent Water Brain Swim" is a stupid poem that was just like 3-4 memories I had that I piled up on the page. It's not a very good poem because it is just so random but when I was re-reading all those poems today I noticed something that was shocking in that poem that I had completely forgotten about! This line now haunts my soul, "Then I felt pain, incapacitating pain, a repeating time bomb in my sinuses that killed my head every three minutes while I tried to listen to boring words of wisdom from the teacher. Lame. And the meds sucked. Tylenol this!" After reading that, I remembered the incident. It happened shortly before I wrote the poem, so before December 6, 2000. I was sitting in a sophomore level class--I think Nutrition--and out of nowhere the "lightning bolts" of pain started hitting my head. Although I didn't know it at the time, this was the first time I felt Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN). The Trigeminal Neuralgia Association describes TN as a pain that is "among the most acute known to mankind." No wonder the event so impressed me that I wrote
about it in a poem, and that the Tylenol I tried didn't work. But, the event was short lived--only that day. It would wait over 3 more years until it began attacking me again in 2004, and the pain was the only sign of the tumor growing in my head, although about a month before I got the diagnosis, I was waking up with extreme night sweats, constant head pain (not the lightning bolts), and clear and/or bloody liquid would gush out of my nose every morning! So now I know that the tumor was growing in my head for at least 6 years before they got it! Scary! Ah, now "Evolution is Silly" is my favorite and most controversial poem. The ONLY way to experience this poem is to have a gifted voice, say James Earl Jones, read it aloud and fast. In the reading, there should be no pauses. It just sounds better that way. But when you look at it, notice what I chose to caplock and bold. I ran the "begot" theme as parallel to the Bible's genealogical records. This is just such a good poem, I was happy it came to me. As for the controversy . . . The class met three hours every Monday night from 7-10. I loved that style. Only worry about the class once per week, and even though the 3 hours got really long, we'd have a Dr Pepper break in the middle of every class. The class was small--only about 15 of us, and most everybody was English not Science majors. Participation was fun and they were all really cool people. (That "Viggo" mentioned in the green note to Paisley was an old Russian man who moved to Wyoming to be a cowboy in the middle of his life, and did some crazy things like chopping it up with John Wayne.) Anyway, after I had the whole class read that poem, I had my buttocks handed to me for like an hour by English majors who don't know much about science (I know a decent amount) for the ideas I presented and the mocking tone of the poem. They especially had a problem with my use of the word "entropy." All I meant with the term is that, in our universe, things tend to break down and head towards randomness, rather than building up and becoming more complex, as evolution would require. If you dissect a radio and leave it on a table and come back in a million years, what happened? The radio didn't rebuild itself and start playing "the Macarena." No, the parts stayed where they were and rusted and broke down beyond repair. That's about all I have to say about that . . . (Name the movie!)
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