Words

Independence Day

2007-02-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

Family gatherings
with gaggles of enthusiastic cousins
drunk on jacuzzi water
and the summer pollens
flop around on the deck
and sit in white plastic chairs
burying their faces in juicy watermelon slices.

Fruit popsicles drip
down skinny arms.
Sodas spill
in careless laps.
Barbeque sauce smothers
tiny fingers.

Mosquitoes feast
on available flesh.

Dads in Hawaiian print button-up shirts
flip hamburgers and chicken all day
while mothers gossip
and sip their margaritas,
head bobbing every few seconds
to locate their children at play.

Gravel crumbles under quick feet,
games of kick-the-can
in the driveway.

Occasional shouts and screams of delight
interrupt the buzz of the cicadas
and the hum of friendly conversations.

On Independence Day
anxious cousins crowded each other
for front row seats
to our own pyrotechnic firework show.

As the sun sank even further behind the trees
the eagerness caused a silence over everyone
as they waited on fold out chairs
for uncles to prepare the brightly wrapped boxes
and sticks of July 4th delight and Piccolo Pete’s
on fence posts.

Rough and rowdy men
were now subdued
by toxins pumping
through their blood.

I was hoisted onto pebble laden shingles
along with a selected few
left there to dangle my legs over the carport’s edge,
my legs swaying in the evening air,
my heart pounding, waiting.

Mothers murmur somewhere
far below us
while we gazed beyond our bare feet,
anticipating the show of sparks.

Hypnic Jerk Lyrics

2007-01-21T14:09:00.000-08:00

The average person spends 22 years of their life asleep. One third of your life will be wasted. You’ll lie in an unconscious, catatonic state and sleep your life away. What if you could take those years back?

The desire to dream is primordial. Some evolutionary process has instilled life on this planet with the ability to dream. It is essential to survival. Even dogs dream. The exploration of dreams in search of answers we cannot otherwise obtain is a tempting solution to things we’d rather not deal with.

Sometimes, this desire transforms dreaming into a vehicle that attempts to displace the mediocre existence of our ordinary world. At first, it is a plunge into hyperreality - a world more real than the real itself. One so entrancing it can become an addiction with confusing side effects, such as finding evidence of things you don’t remember doing, looking at the world through a fog, or experiencing false awakenings - dreams that are so real it seems as if you have already woken up.

Yet as you sit on the verge of the illusory twilight, the view is so alluring you can’t help but fall into its grasp and be swept away into the dream world.

By now, the dream state has become your primary mode of existence and the reality you left behind is only a hazy memory. You have escaped, you have salvaged the time you’d otherwise have lost in sleep, you are leading a life by proxy.

Just as this form of escapism appears to be working, your sleep patterns collapse and parasomnia invades your life - you cannot sleep, you’re kept awake at night by unseen forces and the addiction to dream sinks its teeth into your mind, the mind split asunder by insomnia and insanity. I’ll tell you what dying is. Dying is what happens when you can no longer dream.

As you lie awake and alone with the sheets stuck to the cold sweat dripping from your body, you can’t help but form a skeptic’s hypothesis - it becomes impossible to tell when you are dreaming and when you are awake. Why even try to differentiate?

Suddenly, there is a great elucidation and the answer becomes clear. An equilibrium must be reached and balance much be brought to these two worlds. Only in moderation will sanity be achieved - overly embracing mundane reality and extreme escapism with both lead to ruin.

And as you once again drift peacefully to sleep, free of your former dissociation and confusion, you are reminded of the bizarre world that stretches away from your consciousness with one last hypnic jerk.

It is a dreamer’s paradox - by seeking escape, a surrogate world is created as a replacement. The lines between fantasy and reality are blurred, fact and fiction become identical. The dream is real, and reality is as meaningless as a passing dream.

2006 Has Been A Long Year

2007-01-17T02:44:00.000-08:00

2006 has been a long year.

In June, I was walking home from a party a few houses down from mine with half of a cup of beer in my hand. A cop pulls me over, and since I'm not 21, he gives me a Minor in Posession of Alcohol. The penalty for this was a few hundred dollars and a suspended drivers license. So for having half a cup of beer, I can't drive for one year.

In November, I went camping with my roommates and we set a campfire outside of the designated ring. The ranger came and game me (ONLY me, out of my entire group) a misdemeanor for setting a "hazardous fire". The penalty for this was $550 and 3 years of probation. So for having a campfire outside of the ring, I'm broke and I can't break any laws for 3 years without serious consequences. Theoretically, I could go to jail if I get another misdemeanor.

On the day after Christmas, I was visiting my step-grandparents at their retirement community. I decided to take our moped around the block for a test-drive. A cop pulls me over and cites me for driving on a suspended license, not wearing a helmet, and driving without proof of registration. In addition, him and his partner frisk me, then threaten to arrest my dad for allowing me to drive, knowing I had a suspended license. I'm not sure what the penalty for this will be, because my court date is on the 29th, but I'm sure it will be very bad. In a community where 10-year-olds drive golf carts around all day, I get a misdemeanor for taking a moped around the block.

Famous celebrities get off on weapons and drug charges every day, but I have a half-cup of beer, light a campfire, and drive a moped, and I get maximum penalties. If this doesn't tell you the justice system is fucked up, I honestly don't know what does.

Wish List

2006-12-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

1. I wish my skin was made of vinyl.

2. I wish mosquitoes, flies, bees, and any other annoying flying insects would lose their wings. Then maybe they'll realize how fucking annoying they once were.

3. I wish that in place of gold being the ultimate prize for pirates, they would instead covet fresh produce. If that was the case, they may have better fought scurvey and be more prevalent in today's world.

4. I wish that threats made to strangers, such as "I am going to shoot you in your sleep," could be laughed-off easier.

5. I wish that coutries had to switch languages every 10 years.

- Adam Hudson

Plants Suck

2006-11-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

Plants are so boring. Seriously, like what do they do all day? They just sit around chilling in the sunlight, sipping on Mai tais and blowing tons of cash on hookers and weed. I know all you botanists out there are probably like “Dude, what the hell? Plants are awesome! They run photosynthesis with their gills, produce oxygen in their organs and pump pollen through their veins.” I am not impressed.

Let me first explain where my hatred of plants stems. I can’t believe I just said “stems.” A few summers ago I was meandering through a field of poppies, minding my own business, when I heard a little ruckus. I do not like ruckuses. I was not quite sure what this ruckus was, but it sounded as if it were coming from the poppies! I turned my view groundwards to observe an entire field of poppies just chilling, sipping Mai tais and graphically pollinating each other like the sex fiends they are.

“Hey, what are you looking at, human?” A vibrant, pink poppy demanded in a raspy scowl.

Was this poppy really talking to me? I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

“Yes I’m really talking to you, Dumbass. Quit trampling all over my buddies with your bipedal locomotion, get the hell out of our poppy field and meander elsewhere.” The poppy shook a menacing fist in my direction, growled, and spit a loogie on my shoe. Another mischievous poppy grabbed the shoelaces of my two shoes and vigorously knotted them together while I was talking to the pink poppy. He probably thought he was so funny.

I was surely not in the mood for a conflict with poppies, so I turned and left their turf shriveled and defeated. Unfortunately, my first step was connected to my second by a shoelace, which caused me to tumble down the poppy-covered-hill. Some of the poppies laughed at me, but others were dead because I rolled over them. Suckers. Anyways, I could not believe how rude and impolite the poppies were and I have hated plants ever since.

There are, however, several exceptions to my hatred of the Kingdom Plantae.

Exception 1: The cactus. The cactus has sharp spikes for self-defense against herbivores, to prevent people desperately wandering through the desert in search of an oasis from sucking the water out of cactus stems when they become desperate, dehydrated and delirious, and for various sentimental reasons. Sharp, violent spikes have got to be the most badass morphological adaptation that plants could invent. The spikes of the cactus are actually the leaves of the plant. This is an interesting adaptation to ponder because in most plants, the leaves run the majority of photosynthetic processes. However, in the case of the cactus, the leaves are the sharp, spiny structures and function primarily for defensive purposes while the stems are enlarged, thick, green and rich in photosynthetic chlorophyll. My English teacher during my senior year of high school once told us a story about how a waiter at Chili’s accidentally knocked a cactus plant off of a ledge with his elbow, causing the cactus and its sharp spines to fall and lodge itself into my teacher’s head. What other type of plant could do something like that?

Exception 2: Plants with Mind-Altering effects: This exception is obvious and needs no further explanation.

Exception 3: The Venus Fly Trap. Have you guys ever seen Little Shop of Horrors? It’s this musical about this florist dude (Who I am pretty sure is played by Rick Moranis,) who creates this carnivorous plant that sings and dances and feasts upon the flesh of humans. What the hell ever happened to Rick Moranis? He was one of my favorite childhood actors. Anyways, the plant ate human flesh! Now, I read in a book that Mother Nature watched Little Shop of Horrors and attempted to create a carnivorous plant that dined upon human flesh, but was unsuccessful. However, she was successful in creating a carnivorous plant that dined upon insect flesh. The Venus Fly trap uses its gravitational tractor beam to suck in flies and other little bugs to suck the living nitrogen out of them, digest them and then poop them out. Oh, what? A meat-eating plant isn’t impressive enough for you? In my book it is. And, if that isn’t cool enough, the Venus Fly Trap is from fucking the planet Venus.

- Matt Hirakawa