who who whose there

The library system, to me, is a great lake that spans across the world touching each continent, each country, and each miniscule villager that wishes to traverse its waters. Yet even in its over reaching arms it is not the ocean for it is calm in its soul and soothing in the stored melancholy words it provides to its users. But to often now when I go to the library in search of something appetizing, I glide across the gentle waters in a shroud of fog. I see the shelves. I can read the words. And yet the thrill of discovering the mysterious kingdoms laid before me has been plucked from my brain and dulled from my senses. Not that I don’t feel a burning desire to read the lyrical composition of artists not worthy of our time, but rather I feel diluted in my ability to find those composers amongst the riff raff of hacks and wannabes. I hear the names of authors that are mainstreamed into popularity, and when I see the excitement in the eyes of those who have cuddle their stories the possibility of satisfaction renews my desire to read; though my will breaks when I read the mainstream words and see what little the writing has to say. I then wonder if it was a mistake to believe that the fog will ever lift. I still wonder if it shall.


I was first led to the library as a child. It was my mother who took me through its cracked and splintered doors. There are two memories I have of that day. The first is of the bulling stank of B.O. and the roaming presents of ancient mildew, both strangely human in their scent, and yet different in there origins. The second memory is of the cabinet that contained the long streams of numbers that could have and should have connected me to imaginary worlds, this was and is the numbering system known as the Dewey Decimal System. For as long as manners would allow me, I fingered through the papers lined one after the other like plague corpses left for disposal. Sadly to say I revived none of them. At the beckoning of an older woman I pushed shut the drawer and left to manually search for the title that begged me to read more. As chance would have it, that is still my method.

a place

I once had a secret place that no one but me knew of. With all my heart I loved this place; loved it enough to name it with a name that I never once spoke out loud to another living soul. It wasn’t a place of refuge, or a place that meditation happened. It was merely a place that I dreamt of when it was cold out, and one that I searched for treasures in when the sun blazed with adored heat. But all that aside, it was only a place that I could go to that no one else knew of, and that was enough for me.

I often thought that if I were to every need to run from the law, hide from a villain, or even just needed a place to out live the radiation of a Taliban nuke I could go to my secret place and all would be well. For when someone has a secret place, the belief is that nothing on this earth can hurt it. Others may defile it with crude jokes and mocking words if they know its name and that it in fact exists, if anyone has ever had a secret friend they would know what I speak of, but to destroy it is impossible; or so the belief goes.
I thought today would be a good day to show my secret place to my sons. As we walked to it, I contemplated whether or not I should tell them of its secret nature. As a good keeper of a secret should do, I weighed the pros and cons in my mind, determining the risks, and figuring how much their young souls would comprehend of what would be said and seen. And then as I thought and as we walked a new fear touched upon me, due to the fact of not going to my secret place in such a long time, would I know it if I saw it? That question was answered though through my recognition of its sound, its distinct and beautiful sound, long before I could ever have seen it. And then as I turned the bend, joy swelling in my bosom for the moment that my life would rejoin with my secret, horror struck me as there was nothing left of my secret except a hole in the side of the earth. With my courage, I took my boys to the side of the cliff and showed them where peace once stood. I have lost my little part of the world and I do not know where it has gone.

what comes to mind

Do you ever feel like this sometimes when your sitting around minding your own business, looking at the stars, eating pizza, or just contemplating your own existence, and then for no explainable reason, your bowels, dressed in green fatigues, begin running away from the mine they just set in your intestinal track. Even if I am the only one, I will admit that it happens to me, and when it does I refer to the experience as an delicate persuasion; no offense intended; it is the atomic bombs I am referring to. Just today, I was having a very peaceful morning getting ready for work, leaving early and wearing a new shirt and clean pants, and as I drove to my respective building of employment I felt the strangeness of tingling that alarmed me that something was awry. And as the three fates would have it, just as I was about to approach a four-way-stop behind an elderly driver the trigger was pulled, leaving me with nothing but time and the strength of my internal might to hold back the rush of fleeing civilians.

Run little friends. Run for your freedom.

something seems shady

I don't know for sure; I could be wrong, but did I miss the world ending? From what I could gather from all the talk going round, at four o’clock on May 21, 2011, all the righteous should have been taken up to heaven leaving the heathens on earth to fight it out. I suppose that would make sense in light of the survival of the fittest, I always figured Charles Darwin to be fairly bright, but since I am still here and so are you does that mean we are among the savages? Does that mean we are supposed to square off to see who is that last one standing, taking the role for who has the right to breed? I sure hope not because that is a lot of responsibility, and I already have a wife. Besides which, according to my calculations, in the right situation I could beat up most of the people I know, and the ones I can't, I can at least out-run. So, here I come ladies, not.

Oh, how I was counting on being lifted to my divine destiny. No such luck though. Which is too bad because I had said goodbye to my wife in advance, wishing her the best of luck. I had put on clean underwear, combed my hair, took a jog around my living room, and then jotted down a note containing all the wisdom I had learned. I have been disappointed though, or perhaps I have just been left behind as an example to the rest of humanity as to what they could have been. Either way I am here, and where have all the cowboys gone?

dream land train

Dream Land Train. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one of those. And wouldn’t it be nice if that Dream Land Train was as easy to board as jumping off a platform into a darkened box car below. Far too often dreams and sleep are the mistresses that I can never seem quite able to seduce. Take last night for instance, I fell asleep at 8:30 while rocking my son, he has inherited my poor sleeping gene, I woke up at around 9:30 to put him in his crib, and as I crawled into my own bed Miss Lady Sleep had all but vanished. At about 10:30 I considered doing such things as making out with my pillow, showing the bird to the darkness, or just giving Lady Sleep a little redeye action. The reason I didn't end up doing any of that was the probability of my wife waking up. Besides a laugh and a giggle, I really don't know how I would have explained myself. So instead I continued to sing the song lyrics that had been rattling through my brain for that hour. “Camma camma camma chameleon. Don't you know don't you know.” Yes, that is my late night version of “Karma Chameleon” by the quirky Boy George. This morning when I woke up still singing my adapted version, I thought that I should watch his music video. 30 seconds in I realized my mistake and typed this instead.

Dream Land Train where have you been
Dream Land Train won't you come and take me in
It has been a long day
It has been a long night
Dreaming of the mistress that won't speak my name
Dream Land Train come and save me now
Wisk me away on the rhythm of your tracks
Wisk me away onto the mystery of your ride
Dream Land Train I wish to feel your churning, burning deep with in
Dream Land Train come and take me home.
Show me the world through your tantalizing eyes
Show me the rise, the fall, the euphoria
Dream Land Train take me away


The above is my own lyrical composition, soon-to-be viral mega hit. You’re welcome world.

lover's crush

There are few things in life that make me giggle with excitement. And there is only a small portion of those things that make me jubilant enough that even my bowels can't help but to wiggle and send me to the little boys room that they may scream out their joy. Explorations are one of those things. I have often thought that I should have been born in the time when half the world was still undiscovered. I like to think that if given the chance, I would have sailed into the horizon to dangle my ship on the edge of the flat world. And in my dreams I have pondered a mournful love for never being able to have traveled the Mississippi when true natives roamed its shores. And in the farthest reaches of my mind I think that if the timing was right, I would have been the one to declare, “What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that he is walking where none others have walked; that he is beholding.” But alas, I am not the one to coin these words, and in truth all that is left to me is to stare at pictures such as these wondering what could have been and to dream of seeing what others have left behind.

When I look at this picture and feel the turnings of excitement that were never mine, another borrowed statement comes to my mind, “I wonder if I could live in there,” as spoken by my brother. And now that I have written his thought aloud I would like to change just one thing. It isn't a wonder for me to live in this sunken ship. It is a wish. Yes, I really do wish that I could sing the songs of mermaids while living in the hull of a ship just bellow the oceans surface. In fact just typing this desire reminds me of all the childhood love crushes I had on many of the Disney animated characters, and of all those many secret lover’s whims none of them were truer than the crush I had on Ariel the undersea princess. I suppose there is just something to be said about shells and undersea places.

what not to do when you have had one to many

It is official, I'm not the only one alive who has dreamed of sticking my bare bottom in the face of a fully armed riot squad. The only difference between me and the dude in the pictures is that he has now done it. And not to be gross, but I believe the whitish cloud hovering in the center of the screen is a little suspicious.

And now for just a moment let me pull your attention to the two unmasked officers standing their ground behind this guy. I find it interesting that one officer is staring at the hind-quarters of the gentleman on all fours as if she is contemplating whether or not she has seen those cheeks before, while the guy next to her is grimacing with the realization that he knows those cheeks and wishes with all of his might that his brother would have just stayed home.

ahoy matie

I know what you are think, and by you I mean my innumerable number of readers, you are thinking that I am going to be sensitive to the tragedy that has struck Japan. Like anyone who has been near a computer in the last several weeks, I have watch the tsunami videos being posted across the internet, and each time I have seen a new one I have thought to myself, “I'm glad I'm not that guy, girl, or house floating down the rising tide of the ocean. And just so you know I have sworn to my conscience that if I had money to spare I would send some to the poor chumps who have lost everything to the cruelty of mother nature.

But as you may guess, I am not making this post for the sake of being sensitive. I'm not even looking to pay tribute to the victims. My objective is to make the simple observation of how the people who own the house in the picture above have by dumb luck just increased the value of their property, not to mention the coolness of their home. Speaking of myself alone, in all my thirty-three years of life I have never rolled out of bed to find a boat atop my dwelling place. More than likely though, the people that own this home didn't roll out of bed; chances are they floated, and if that be the case it is fortunate that they had a boat sitting near ready to be used. So I suppose the morale of the story is, “if someone leaves their boat sitting on your house, it’s ok to check their mini fridge for your type of beverage.”

it seems to be

What is humor for, if not to make fun of the dumb. And it seems to be that every town has a guy like this, someone whose level of intelligence is just a little lower than everyone else's. As a result the smart people enjoy putting this individual in situations that, while funny, are a little demeaning, but hey, it’s okay because it really isn't making fun of a someone when the person who is the butt of the joke has no idea that they are the butt. Take this guy for instance: with that cool beer in his hand and the unlit cigarette dangling from his chops, he is oblivious to everything, while the person behind the camera is giggling with the anticipation of posting this picture on the community blog where everyone can see what ridiculous thing the doof had again allowed to be done to him.

Admittedly, I have once been that doof. It was a cool winter’s morning and I was sitting in English class. The boy next to me told me that I would look cool with a beard and mustache. Not being able to grow one of my own I consented to drawing one with my industrial strength Bic pen. Of course there was the original promise that was bound to be broken: that the other kid would draw a beard and mustache on himself. In the end I was the only one with a mustache, and if there had been a camera handy I would have looked like this guy only minus the beer and the worldwide social networks that would have allowed everyone I know to share in the joke. I am glad that my childhood was not spent in a technologically advanced society.

and the tenth prize goes to...

All of my readers might be saying to themselves, “Jimmy Wannabe Dean promised that as soon as the tenth comment was made on his blog that he would give a prize to the diligent person who made that comment. Why hasn’t he done that yet?” Well to you I answer and award that highly sought-after prize. And as you will recall, I said that the prize would be better and far more enticing than the first prize grand prize awarded to my own mother.
Well, here you are: the person who won the great tenth comment prize is awarded with having the first initial of their first name formed from buttons that I have made with my own hands. I then scanned this image into my computer and then posted it as a prize. Isn't technology and prizing-winning wonderful? So, bless your heart Mrs. B, and enjoy your prize.

hello sleepy head

Believe it or not, I woke up in the middle of the night to find this guy looking in my window. I was a little surprised when he let me take his picture and then ask him a few questions such as: what are you doing? Why are you looking in my window? And where did you get that ladder? Just kidding, that didn't happen, but I thought that it would be funny to say that it did, and then tell you that it didn't.

On an irritating note rather than a funny one, the students that I referenced in an earlier post felt the need to educate me on what stalking is. In my mind the dude in this picture is a stalker: the robust nature, the mask, the smoke, the chest hair, and, yes, the incredibly sexy glasses. My students, on the other hand, see stalking as something small and meaningless as making eye contact for more than half a second.

Trying to be intellectual, I quoted one of my brothers saying, “the only thing that separates stalkers from a love interest is whether or not you like them back. If you love the guy or girl that hides in the bushes just outside your window then it is romantic, but if you don't love them then it is creepy and you call the fuzz.” Not so in the mind my students. Anything that goes beyond one text message and a simple hello is stalking.

So in other words, if this guy in this picture can keep himself bound to one text message everything else about him is perfectly legit. I still say, “cover up the curly hair on the chest. I don't want to see them.”

i am a man

This is one of those examples of a male who never has to wonder if he is a man or not. He can go home and confidently say to the mirror, “I am a man.” Whereas the rest of us slightly moot males have to look into our own mirrors and seriously consider if we are men or girls. I have never ridden a horse through a burning swathe of flame. Just seeing the picture of someone else doing it causes me to wonder how much that must hurt. I have also never chased down a criminal, shot a six shooter, or had lasers come out of my eyes. If those things are required for manhood I need to get my game on along with my leotards.

The unfortunate thing about this whole situation is that I am a dad. I love my kids, but to them I must pretend to be a man. One day, I imagine that I will have to do manly things in order to save myself in the eyes of my children. I will have to tear a weapon out of the hands of a criminal; I will have to eat fire, walk over coals, take three rounds of a .358 to the chest and still live; I will need to walk into a room and somehow or other make every woman present along with a few of the men faint with passion. Sadly all of these manly things are very daunting tasks if you stop to think about it.

My first impulse when faced with manliness is to say, “well, I have a job,” but women have those, too. I also like to eat greasy cheeseburgers from America's finest fast food chains, but even children can tackle those. So really what is left for me to do that is manly enough to impress my children and to encourage them to be men? I think that perhaps wearing flower-patterned shirts in public is the only real option left to me.