The Steelworker's Promise

Convict Science: Episode 4,281

2011-06-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

PART ONE

Ace Carver sits alone in his cell, cross-legged, in a slender rectangle of indirect sunlight. The window above him is shaped like a coin-slot, tall and thin, cut through the wall eight feet from the concrete floor. Near Ace’s right knee is a drain through which hosed-down material can sluice.

"Coming at you from Varner Supermax penitentiary in lovely Lincoln County, Arkansas, solitary cell #27…You may think all science is the same, but all science is not the same…some science is CONVICT SCIENCE!

BUDDA da BUDDA da BUDDA da BUM! BIDDLEY BIDDLEY BUM!

Thank you! Thank you.

Please.

Please. You're too kind.

Best fans in the world. Right here.

Thank you.

Please.

Welcome to the show, I’m Ace Carver, Inmate #76359. Wonderful to be here. Great show for you today. Bitey the Rat's going to stop by, give us some anti-rabies tips for swimsuit season. But first, I got to tell you…my wife came for a visit this week.

I know. Women.

Put the Missus behind a Plexiglas partition under the gaze of armed guards for twenty minutes twice a month and HERE COME THE WATERWORKS…and the divorce papers! Am I right? The fellas know what I’m talking about.

But it got me thinking. Marriage is like a plant. Neglect it, say, by working too much, or serving seven consecutive life sentences, it gets stunted and weak. And eventually, it’ll die.

So, because death is a gift that nourishes the Faithful, today’s Convict Science is about…PHOTOSYNTHESIS!

Don’t touch that dial or I’ll turn your face into a lampshade!”

==================

PART TWO

As The Announcer, Ace Carver affects a deeper voice.

“Today’s show is brought to you by Ace-Carv-Co: a local, family-owned maker of Day-Counting Wall Notches. Can’t see a clock? Girls Gone Tea Party calendar confiscated? Lean on the precision of Ace-Carv-Co Day-Counting Wall Notches.”

“Welcome back to Convict Science, friends, I’m Ace Carver. Today’s topic is particularly dear to me.

Powerful beings are nourished by light...specifically, the light that leaves the eyes of the weak as they die by your hand, igniting the spree of narcotic euphoria that lights The Correct Path.

Plants are also nourished by light through a process called PHOTOSYNTHESIS.

To execute today’s experiment at home, you’ll need 0.5 ft.³ dirt from your exercise yard (thirty-two pockets full), one apple seed squirreled away from lunch, and twenty minutes of indirect sunlight a day. Finally, you must be willing to allocate half your daily water allowance to the study of PHOTOSYNTHESIS, a cornerstone of all the pitiful life on Earth.

Need a few minutes to round up some supplies? Sounds good. We’ll be right back.”

Inmate #76359 motors through a stack of handwritten pages. Finding the correct sheet, he holds it up to his imaginary camera:

PRO-TIP: Anal Storage v. Intestinal - Extracting an item from the stomach usually requires a special tool, like a very thin hook or binder clip descending from a very thin wire or rod. But you can get most things out of your butt with just your hands!

===============

PART THREE

“Welcome back. Today we’re studying PHOTOSYNTHESIS by growing an apple tree, just like the ones lining the sidewalks in my favorite pornographic movies.

We have our materials here. First, scoop the dirt into your cupped hands…spit the seed into the dirt…(ptew)…bury it with your nose…there we go.

Now give it sun, water and sixty uninterrupted years to grow.”

“Singing to your tree helps. Try something pretty, like an excerpt from The Turner Diaries:

‘If the White nations of the world

had not allowed themselves to become

subject to Jews,

this war…

would…

not…

be…

necessary!’”

Three sharp knocks on the cell door: “Shaddup, 76359, before I knock yer racist teeth out yer intolerant jaw!”

Three sharp knocks on the cell door: “Shaddup, 76359, before I knock yer racist teeth out yer intolerant jaw!”

“Viewers, it’s friend of the show, Guard Percy “Dicktits” O’Connell! I bet he can help us! Hey Dicktits, can I interpret your threat as an admission you would give anything to touch a submissive, prison-buff male body?”

“Oooo, #76359! Open the door, Smitty, I’m gonna learn this Ruffle-Feathers a lesson!”

Percy is barely inside before Ace claps his dirt-filled hands over the guard’s mouth and nose.
“You see, Science Friends, every time Dicktits here exhales into the soil, he’s feeding our tree vital CO2. And now he’s sweating - which is a nice drink for a thirsty tree – and getting chills at intervals, which is fun to watch. Go to sleep, Dicktits…stretch out on the couch of eternity. That’s right. Goodnight. Goodnight, Dicktits.”

As Ace lowers Percy to the floor, guards stream into the cell like tenants of an upset hive. Ace raises his dirt-filled hands to the sky: “Sorry to Bitey the Rat, who got bumped today. Friends, I’ll see you tomorrow, same Convict time, same Science channel!”

The beating is severe, obviously.

===============
===============

PART FOUR

The day Percy O’Connell is killed, the Warden of Varner Supermax, a perpetually exhausted-looking man named Michael Donahue, fast-tracks Ace Carver’s execution. The Warden justifies his subversion of the penal system’s standard bureaucratic machinations on grounds of: “Come on. The guy’s kind of an asshole.”

That night, a priest, a coroner, a convict and a Warden walk into a lethal injection theater. The priest says to the convict, “Have you any final words?” The convict says, “Convict Science is filmed before a live studio audience.”

“What? What is he talking about?” asks the Warden.

“He does a show…of sorts.” says the Priest, “About science?”

“Directed by: Ace ‘Kubrick-Dwarfer’ Carver. Executive Producer: Ace ‘Forger of History’ Carver.”

“This is ridiculous. Ace, your wife is here.” Donahue gestures to the viewing area beyond the glass to a crying woman clutching a handbag.
“Executive Titty-Pincher: Michael ‘When I’m Finally Able to Think, I Have the Wrong Thought’ Donahue.”

“Fine. Who cares. Do the thing.” The coroner flicks the syringe’s tip.

“Sound Design: Ace “Round Mound of Sound” Carver.” In goes the needle.

“Catering by the U.S. Food and ‘What Should We Do With Baloney Containing Unacceptable Levels of Feces?’ Drug Administration.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Xerox Technician: Ace ‘Emulator’ Carver. Wardrobe provided by the Day-Glo Prison Jumpsuit Emporium… a subsidiary…of…Smith…and…Wesson.”

As his voice fails, Ace’s eyes widen at something above and beyond the room. He summons the Priest, who bends low to hear Ace’s final whispers. Then, the EKG sings a steady note.

“Inmate #76359, T.O.D., 8:24 pm.” The coroner writes this down.

“What’d he say, Father?” Donahue asks.

The stricken Priest dabs his brow. “He said, ‘Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog.’”

From the Mouths of Babes, Vol. 1

2011-05-25T01:15:00.000-07:00

"Can I have a small Playboy Bunny sticker to put below my hipbone before I get in this tanning bed, please?"

THE END...................................................................................................................................?

Pretty Dope, Right?

2011-05-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

House of Titans

2011-04-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

Written for Mel Favara's wonderful 1000 Words PDX.

=====

HOUSE OF TITANS

Part One.

Former CEO Donald Einhorn had decided there was nothing about his crumbling empire twelve or thirteen scotches couldn't fix. Over the third, he castigated his visionless board of directors. He toasted number five to greasy VP Skip Chestersonberryfield, which good look filling old Donald's Farragamos, kid. He celebrated his tenth by writing a check to himself in the amount of "Golden Parachute", including the phrase "cunning linguist" in the memo line. By the time he took his final swallow, Donald had achieved military-grade intoxication. He lurched through his spinning home, shoulder-checking walls and fumbling with doorknobs, unable to locate any of the estate's reputed fourteen bedrooms. With his last conscious thought, Donald cursed the general practice of architecture and passed out in a hallway.

He woke to the discovery that the seed of a giant redwood tree had taken root between the lobes of his brain and erupted overnight to towering maturity. A truly majestic headache. A survey of further damage included: icepick pain in back and shoulders; a split in his trouser's crotch; and, he realized, unease with his surroundings. On rare visits to a room that wasn't his study, Donald sometimes registered a manner of faint surprise, a "who put this here?" kind of feeling. But the vaulted ceilings, artwork, even paint color in this particular hallway seemed totally unfamiliar. Maybe he was somewhere in the northeast wing. Lined with doors, the hallway seemed to stretch for miles, even to have a perceptible bend along the curvature of the earth.

=======

Part Two.

Donald's money had always been a faithful friend. Always told him how valuable he was, always complimented his skill prognosticating the markets that made other men jump out of high windows. And, despite Donald's portly frame and face that looked like an exit wound, his money had always brought beautiful companions to his side. But it also bought this house, where each door opened into a room with three more doors, or into another interminable hallway. Donald wandered through anonymous bedrooms, libraries, four different kitchens, but couldn't find so much as a throw pillow he recognized. He passed the same Victorian fainting couch three times in an hour, and started leaving a Hansel and Gretel trail behind him of the items in his pockets: cash, keys, coins and cards.

The final nail in the coffin of Donald's composure was his discovery of the trophy room. The son and stepson of two veterans, Donald had never hunted in his life, in fact had always been fearful of nature's ability, with a frightened animal or slight tectonic shift, to swiftly and permanently erase all a man's achievements. Yet here was a room, in his own home, filled with glass-eyed animals frozen in various stages of roaring or flight. Eagles, cheetahs, gorillas, groundhogs. Mounted on the farthest wall was a handsome flintlock rifle with a solid silver butt into which was engraved in swirling, ostentatious typeface: "To Richard- Keep showing 'em who's boss. Love, Charlton Heston."

======

Part Three.

In being forcibly unburdened of the weight of his (and his shareholder's) expectations, Richard Halifax had found freedom. In the decade since being bounced from the corporate garden, he'd built a comfortable routine of untied bathrobes and lunchtime scotch. On the occasions when he needed to feel strong and useful again, he put on one of his fraying Savile Row suits, propped his feet up on the desk, and dictated letters to the obediently silent animals mounted in his trophy room. Any nagging psychospiritual stuff about loneliness or personal value to society he'd learned to smother or drink away. Or else he filled the hole inside with a white truffle and mayonnaise sandwich, which was the method he'd chosen today. Richard cut it into 16 bite-sized cubelets, arranging them into a smiling face.

He gathered his happy plate and happy glass of Bushmills and tottered off toward the study, singing "Peter and the Wolf" and marching in time, when something small and green registered at the edge of his vision. A crisp ten, right there on the floor. And ten steps later, a dollar. Ten more, an AMEX card. Richard had a wispy memory of a cartoon rabbit being lured into a trap by a trail of carrots. The trail ended at Richard's trophy room where, inside, he found a disheveled man admiring the antique monkey rifle Chuck Heston had given him in Botswana. Richard set his smiling plate on the oak cabinet by the door. The disheveled man turned. "What are you doing in my house?" they asked each other.

======

Part Four.

EPILOGUE

Donald and Richard greeted the discovery that they'd lived in the same mansion for thirteen years with trademark bottom-line clarity. They determined the fiscally responsible thing was to keep living together as mansion-mates, and the arrangement pleased them far more than either could have predicted. It wasn't like living with a family to which they felt no real connection; unbridgeable division was replaced by mutual empathy of the struggles of rich white men. The drone of Donald's snores proved a comfort Richard hadn't known he'd needed.

They started a business. Based on the truth that everyone loves puppies but far fewer people like dogs, they conceived a subscription service by which customers could purchase a puppy, return it when it got too old to love, and receive a new one. Donald convinced an overseas vendor to sell bulk-rate puppies for pennies on the dollar. As co-CEOs of PuppyLease, LLC, they became like paternal twins, finishing each other's sentences, sensing when the other was in danger.

Hundreds of billions in revenue later, Richard Halifax developed Alzheimer's. Richard's acumen drained until he became a well-tailored husk of undefinable antiquity. He started believing Donald was his ex-wife, forcing Donald to make the most heart-wrenching power-grab of his life.

"Richard, the board has decided to buy you out."

"But Sally, no, why?"

"They just… I just believe you're no longer mentally capable of the job. I'm sorry."

"Whether my head is good or bad, Sally, only it can save us now."

Richard Halifax leaned in to kiss the old billionaire he believed was his ex-wife, and Donald Einhorn, his friend, couldn't bring himself to pull away.

The Man Responsible for Taco Bell's Advertising Tends His Roses.

2010-06-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

The man responsible for Taco Bell's advertising puttered among his rose bushes, carefully pulling back branches to clip the dead heads and scoop them into a plastic bucket. One of those white utility buckets like house painters use. It was light, repetitive work which occupied just enough of his brain to induce a kind of walking meditation. Pull, reach, snip, drop; pull, reach, snip, drop. And the idea that by the end of the day, by his hands, the roses would look virile again added another layer of mental pleasure to the chore.

Pull, reach, snip, drop. He felt like a hunter, the dead buds his prey. The sun was high. He felt fed by the sun, as these roses were fed by it, except to reach his full potential, the man responsible for Taco Bell's advertising did not need these roses at all, but these roses depended upon him to reach their full potential. He fed them as much as the sun did, as much as the rain.

He watched the muscles in his forearm as he clipped. The tension as he squeezed, the kinetic crest of the snip, the tendon's release as the hungry mouth of the blades sprung back open, dropping the dead roses' heads. Beheading the few for the good of the many.

The man responsible for Taco Bell's advertising found a clump of four, five wilted buds near the center of one bush, near its heart, and his breath got shallow and quick as he opened the blades of his clippers to their widest point, slid the steel around all five of the dying roses' necks, perfect domes of sweat rising in the thicket of his forearm's hair, he closed his eyes and initiated the first molecular step of millions that, strung together, built the four-act biological ballet he had directed, danced and watched a hundred times already that afternoon; Act I: Pull, Act II: Reach, Act III: Sni-

Beep beep.

Clippers falling to the hot dirt. Left eye twitching, he looked out over his yard to the street, to his neighbor driving past, waving. The man responsible for Taco Bell's advertising, behind his smile, through gritted teeth: "You are so fucking stupid." And out the rear window of his neighbor's car, his neighbor's small son waved at him too. "Filth. FILTH." He picked up the clippers and wiped the blades on his shirt.

The Boy Who Ate the Internet.

2010-05-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Boy Who Ate the Internet.

You could see he was sorry. Genuine remorse on a ten-year-old is not hard to see. The boy had been, in fact, hiding under his own bed, genuinely remorseful and ashamed under there, when the CEO turned up on the doorstep asking his mother (the boy's, not the CEO's) just what in the sam heck had happened to all his e-commerce. And the mother called up the stairs and when the boy didn't come down, she went up, found him there, under the bed with his snow boots, hiding. She saw his genuine remorse and shame plain as day, and with 100% pure motherly concern and tenderness asked the boy to please come downstairs and tell the nice CEO what happened to the Internet. She told him no matter what, they would take care of it together.

Wiping his runny nose with the back of his hand and looking down at his shoes, the boy who ate the Internet (who was not an overweight boy by any means, or even prone to snacking) told the CEO that he had seen the Internet cooling on a windowsill and it just smelled so good and looked so fresh and it was past his lunchtime and all these things were just too many things for the boy to resist. The boy explained further he only intended to eat a little of the Internet, just a nibble from the edge, but it had been so rich and warm that before he knew it he was standing under the windowsill holding an empty plate, and became so overwhelmed with genuine remorse he dropped the plate in the bushes and ran straight home to hide under the bed.

The CEO had kids of his own, and with fatherly understanding told the boy it was OK, that he forgave the boy, but the fact the remained that the CEO's big company was sitting there crippled, with no e-commerce or social networking or even simple email. Was there anything, the CEO asked, the boy could think of to get them both out of this little pickle?

The boy, little brow furrowed, thinking hard, considered this. After a moment, the boy told the CEO that he would come to the CEO's company every day after school and fill orders and relay messages until his debt had been fairly repaid. And the CEO bent down and extended a big hand to the boy, and said that it was a deal.

The mother, so proud of her son she was radiant, clapped her hands and led them all to the kitchen, along the way joking the Internet was like Chinese food, you could eat all you want and still be hungry, and fixed her son and the CEO grilled cheese sandwiches. Around a gooey bite, the CEO told the mother of the boy who ate the Internet that such a good and forthright boy could only have come from the world's finest mother, and the compliment warmed her like sunshine. They looked at each other then, shyly smiling.

Lebanon, Kansas

2010-03-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

LEBANON, KANSAS

Part One

It took time and careful planning, but this buff South Beach club kid had tanned himself the color of a third-place medal. He pushed his green H2 northwest through a stalemate on I-75, and over his "Greatest of DJ AM" playlist, yelled his half of a dialogue into a Blackberry:

"Dude, I can't believe we'll never go to Skybar again."

...

"Glass, Tantra, Snatch. All underwater."

...

"Yeah, dude. Even Gucci."

Tears filled the bronze kid's tastefully mascaraed eyes.

"I know. All those beautiful shirts. Just floating away."

Few are the born worshippers in a noontime Midwest bar. On this day, the regulars were joined by a congregation of coastal refugees: pepper-haired Hamptonites who kept going outside to dust off their classic Aston Martins; a few Bostonians who elected not to sit in Fenway Park screaming "Fuck the Yankees" as the tide took the upper deck; classmates from Vassar who'd abandoned their pursuits of advanced degrees in The History of Loose Leaf Tea.

Together they hunched over glasses of Bud, watching what CNN had titled "Earth on Ice: The Great Crumbling."

Wolf Blitzer paused his narration of hillocks of ice tumbling into the sea to wave his hands at a rug-sized touch screen and summon an infographic.

"CNN's Internet Operatives tell us that since the Great Crumbling began, the most commonly searched term has been "exact geographical center of the United States." The results of which give us..."

Wolf did a wax-on, wax-off thing at the touch screen.

"39°48′38″North, 98°33′22″ West. A town of 303. A town named Lebanon, Kansas."

The richest man in the bar dropped his beer and ran out the door.

Part Two

In the wake of Wolf Blitzer's proclamation, the town of Lebanon, Kansas, whose economy was completely dependent on a roadside gas station, came to represent the promise of gold that ignited this country's last great rush: a scuttling inward of citizens who left their homes to huddle on the last spot the water would swallow.

One of the more pleasant revelations of this movement was an historically unprecedented influx of corporate cash. CEOs in private jets were the first to arrive, and they threw open every coffer they had in exchange for topographically favorable plots of land. Standard issue for Lebanonites were DVR boxes from Comcast, iPhones from AT&T, cost-free sessions with cognitive behavior therapists from Kaiser Permanente, and season tickets to the Lebanon Cowboys, whose stadium Jerry Jones ripped from its foundation in Texas and flew north attached to a fleet of V-22 Ospreys.

Lebanon's formerly stark skyline was now spiky with modular buildings in which boards of directors slept. To accommodate the needs of a more affluent clientele, the longtime owner of the gas station had expanded, surrounding the station with a steadily rising number of double wide trailers filled with rare single malts and sets of Ferrari luggage.

It was this one-story metropolis the kid from South Beach now saw in front of the H2's cowpusher. He thumped into the gas station, popped the collar of his imitation Versace, and hopped out of the truck.

"You know where can I buy some boardshorts and a flat iron?"

The gas station attendant looked up from a page in the Robb Report devoted to luxury submersibles.

"Nice shirt. We got real ones on aisle 9."

Part Three

The H2 rolled through the cattle guard at Lebanon's border spitting smoke and sputtering, a zombie version of the thing that once lived, once roared and chewed highway like something starved. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk over the metal grate. What sprawled in front of the kid from South Beach was the wealth of the world's richest nation squeezed into an area less than a square mile by the fuzziest guess. Hand stitched calfskin loafers painted in mud, lace trains of couture gowns clotted with waste dripping from plastic tubes that poked like snorkels from each shanty's bottom. But no homeless, no cadging. The finest makeup, the worst face.

Everyone was walking toward a squat building at Lebanon's North end. The kid fell in, spent his first tour of this new home with a head like a hyperactive periscope, inventorying the hand painted signs: Little Texas, Little West Virginia, Little New Mexico. Stepping carefully over the chalk lines that jig-sawed the town. A different smell from each, a different set of colors flown. And yes, finally, here it was, Little Miami. The kid absently touched the H2's key in his pocket. There was Dwayne Wade, a dance club. Everything smelled like Cuervo. Everything smelled like home.

And at the North end, the Lebanon town hall. A little building with thin, high windows and stucco veneer. People pushing inside, then a gavel.

"Alright, everybody, let's just calm the fuck down. The Lebanon City Council doesn't condone folks speaking out of turn."

Part Four

The chairman of the Lebanon City Council waved an agenda.

"We need to figure out how to slice this pie so everyone gets a piece. If you got ideas, you'll get a turn to talk. Ok, let's see who's up first."

"Excuse me." A voice like cream being poured into a glass. "My name is Oprah Winfrey." The stacked mounds of her body wrapped like a gift in tailored Chanel, her shirt printed with an Escherish pattern of tiny orange owls.

"This place. Given the opportunity to build a new nation, you made the same one again, dirtier, smaller and meaner. I know it's easy to cling to the familiar when you're in a crisis. But I can bring you peace. Look under your chairs."

Under each was a square-topped metal key.

"That key starts a jetski, one for each of you. And tomorrow, we will break ground on a factory I've designed to convert waste into non-perishable astronaut food. How's that sound, Mr. Chairman?" Oprah turned to the dais, palms up.

"Shit, I think I might faint."

The kid from South Beach looked out Oprah's bedroom window at the town gridded by new roads, at the laughing kids shooting down tall slides into the sea.

"Come over here."

The gills she'd grown made Oprah's words sound like she was speaking from behind the door of an empty room. Changed, unrecognizable, yet calling, always calling for her chosen bronze-colored boy.

"Get back in this bed. And bring me some astronaut ice cream."

The tide rose four inches that day.

Two Fail-Proof Methods for Getting Famous as Shit

2010-01-26T17:15:00.000-08:00

1.) Be a midget. Or dwarf, I guess. I think the important thing here is to be a tiny person who

people can see on the teevee and be all like "Oh God, so cute! He/she almost looks like a real person

and he/she navigates through this enormous world with such admirable tiny dignity!" Just be a

receptacle for pity and a foil for self-acceptance.

If you are a midget or dwarf, you basically have a 70% chance of getting a reality show on TLC.

The odds increase if you are employed, and the odds increase again if you have an unusual job

or a job that your stature makes especially difficult. Chimney sweep, firefighter, horse breaker.

But if you really want to be a special midget with a truly special reality show, find a job at which your

tiny legs and fingers give you an advantage: thimblesmith, doll house furniture tester, in-cake stripper

that pops out of cakes people consider too small to actually conceal a stripper. Very surprising!

2.) Go to the Fucking Moon. All the records on Earth have been broken and broken and broken again.

Unless you are willing to never cut your hair or fingernails from the day you are born, your name will never

appear in Guinness' book.

But you know what book is so not full of records that it doesn't even exist? The Guinness Book of MOON

Records. What has anyone ever done on the moon? Hit a golf ball? Map craters? Even the most untalented

person could go up there and be better than John Glenn and Neil Armstrong (in terms of hot-dog eating

and most blowjobs given in 24 [moon] hours). Moon records are plump, juicy and ripe for picking.

If you are not a midget or do not have access to the moon, just go on living your life and doing your

best to be happy in a world that's been willfully designed to make you feel downtrodden and unspecial.

Either way, you win! Yay!

Nine girls on a diamond.

2009-10-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

Nine girls on a diamond, milling around in the sunshine. Waiting for a tenth girl, the one

in the helmet, to get situated.

The girl between second and third is punching her mitt, bobbing like a cocky boxer. Punch,

bob, punch, bob in perfect time. She is tall and fast and has a haircut like David Bowie.

This girl between second and third knows something about herself no one else on or near

this diamond is gifted enough to know about their own personal selves. But they all know it

about her. Her grace is easy to see.

This is what she knows. Zero of the infinite things that might happen in the next few seconds

can beat her. She knows it as surely as she knows the chopped up dirt between her bases, or

gravity. She will know it forever. And though the knowledge is helpful now, its best gifts

will come long after she stops running around on diamonds.

All the girls behind her know it. Their collective confidence erupts, a little fire made ravenous

by the wind.

Her mom, sneaking a smoke behind the stands, knows it. She is amazed by it. Maybe she

has some of it too, somewhere inside. Maybe she'll find it someday.

Her dad, watching a ball game on TV at home, knows it in the misty way of people who

don't have the right words to give shape to their thoughts.

The girl on the hill with the ball knows it. She glances back at the girl between second

and third, and turns to stare at the girl in the helmet.

The girl in the helmet knows it. She steps into the box anyway. What else can she do?

These are the rules.

The girl between second and third isn't bobbing anymore, but bent low, legs wide,

glove in the dirt, eyes on the bat.

Ten girls on a diamond, not milling anymore, but waiting, still and ready, here together in

the instant before something happens. Everyone knows. The sun's still out.

Done for A., to keep one promise, at least.

Puzzle Time

2009-08-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

Below are two nearly identical images. How many differences can you find?

IMAGE ONE:

IMAGE TWO:

Variations on a Theme: Inverted Idioms

2009-08-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

ORIGINAL IDIOM:

Let sleeping dogs lie.

INVERTED:

Never permit a conscious cat to stand.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And a few more. ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO CRACK THE CODE?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.) I am feeling as wrong as rainlessness.

2.) When one is mentally ill, one goes to the serious metropolis.

3.) You don't know the ridges in your skull from a mountain range.

4.) Hey buddy! Take a low 1/5 from me!

5.) Frantic feet are God's impediments.

6.) You'll take my land under my living soul!

7.) I can't work today. I am as a hardy as a cat.

8.) This taco pizza is the worst of neither world.

9.) The smaller they are, the softer they stand.

10.) You aren't what you throw up.

11.) How do I know? An enormous fish told me.

12.) I can't dance because I have 1/2 of a right hand.

13.) I am slovenly dressed, with many appointments to keep.

Time to Unpack the Adidas.

2009-07-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

My name is Nick Carter. I am 6 feet and 3 inches tall and weigh something like 170

pounds. I was a writer at Wieden and Kennedy for a little over fourteen months, and

held that position until about 2:30p this afternoon. If you are most of the people who

work at Wieden, I did not say one word to you during any of those 624,970 minutes.

Please don't feel like this is your fault. It takes me between 14 and 16 months to feel

un-shy enough around a new person to talk to that person, so the math just didn't

work out in our favor.

And now I'm about to walk out those silly huge metal doors one last time (I'm sitting

at my cleaned-out desk right now, about to post this and leave), and I'm deeply

regretting that I wasn't brave enough to meet and know more of you. You are all

exceptional people. People worth knowing.

Maybe my guilt- and regret- twinges will stop if I tell you some things about myself

I might have eventually told you in person, had we become friends. Maybe then I

can feel like you knew me a little, so you aren't just all "Why in the world did someone

hire Backstreet Boy and former Paris Hilton infatuate Nick Carter to write advertisements

for the best advertisement agency in the world? This place thinks so far outside of the

proverbial box in terms of hiring that they can't even see the box anymore, not even as

a distant point on the horizon, because they have thought themselves so far away from

and outside of it (the box)!"

No, I am not that Nick Carter, and no, you are not the first person to notice that my name

is the same as a formerly famous person's. Let's just say it was difficult for me to

comfortably buy CDs ("Wow, you don't look ANYTHING like Nick Carter. Just how thick

are your glasses, by the way?") in the mid- to late-90's, and move on to more fertile

conversational ground.

1.) This is me (I am not nearly this cute anymore) riding my first bike down a

street in Saudi Arabia, where I lived for a year while my dad installed and

repaired A/C systems in the Riyadh Airport. One afternoon, my dad took me

to a white tent out in the desert and we watched a cobra fight a mongoose.

I think this is the Saudi Arabian equivalent of a cock-fight. A cobra and a

mongoose are pretty evenly matched (what a mongoose lacks in venom and

general scariness it makes up for with speed and teeth), and they're probably

about tied in the cosmic series of un- and organized fights since evolution made

them hate each other, but that afternoon, I watched at thigh-level in a crowd of

yelling, dusty men as the cobra won with stunning authority.

2.) In high school, I played the tuba and defensive tackle. Yes, I was as fat

as that makes me sound: 270 pounds! The other thing I played in high school

was professional paintball. That is not a lie.

"Wait a dadgum minute here Nick, you weighed 270 pounds, played the tuba

at an all-district level, played defensive tackle for a terrible football team at a

second-string level, and you were on a professional paintball team, and you

were on the school Math Team, AND you spent most of freshman year carrying

around a protective plexiglass box of Magic: The Gathering cards? You must

have been quite popular, especially with ladies!"

Yes, I was like Clark Gable, if Clark Gable had been way overweight with a

penchant for deeply uncool hobbies and interests which penchant led to Clark

Gable being not at all popular or attractive to anyone, particularly ladies.

This is what professional tournament paintball looks like, for those of you

who've never watched Versus (The network for dicks! ©) at 3:30a. PLEASE

PLEASE PLEASE mute the terrible music:

3.) My middle name is Wade. I cannot give you any insight into why my parents

selected that name as opposed to the literally millions of more un-stupid middle names.

Nicholas Wade Carter.

4.) Right after I went to college, my dad died. He was big too, bigger than me. After

that, I decided it was a better idea to not be that big, and so I ran every day and ate

like a slowly shrinking bird until I was roughly the size I am now. One day at the gym,

after I'd shrunk, my friend Charlie handed me two 50-pound dumbbells and said

"That's what you used to weigh. Can you believe it?" Meaning my current weight plus

the dumbbells. I could barely carry them, the dumbbells, basically had to Heave-Ho

and swing them back on the rack one at a time, the impacts of which made the whole

wall-length iron rack shudder and ring.

5.) I didn't realize I wanted to seriously write until I read this book by David Foster Wallace

called Infinite Jest.

I know it's almost a cliche for people my age to point to this specific book as the one

that opened their literary eyes, but cliches are usually true, so deal with it. Who are you,

Commissioner of the Cliche Police, running for re-election on a platform of Harshing

My Buzz? I found this book by accident in a Sam Goody of all places, just sitting there

on the bottom shelf, taking up most of it (1079 pages long and like four inches thick).

Reading this book, it occurred to me how incredible and unlikely it is, when you think

of all the words that make up our language, and consider the literally infinite number of

ways to arrange those words, what staggeringly long odds a person who wants to arrange

them in ways that are pretty, sad, funny, or true (or all those) truly faces. And how brave

it is when they go ahead and face them anyway. Since I read this book, read for the first

time writing that spins beauty from air as if magic was easy, makes you forget it's writing

at all, really, and not something that's happening in front of you, right now, for real, I've

wanted to try and write like that too.

I tried to do it WK, but never felt like I was doing it particularly well. In my opinion. I just

don't have the mental cajones to handle the Chaos and general hair-on-fireness. I admire the

people who do. So I'm going to go try and write somewhere else for a while, somewhere more

peaceful, and see if that works better.

And maybe someday I'll come back here with my hat in my hand and ask for another shot.

And if the folks in charge give me one, I can almost guarantee I will not talk to you then

either. But it won't be your fault. That's just how I am out there in the world, as opposed to

here, typed out.

-nick

*********

Post Script:

*********

Some of those things up there I have not told anyone but my closest friends. And even

though you didn't ask me to tell you those things, you now officially owe me some dirt on

your own personal self. This isn't just about you guys knowing dumb shit about me, it's about

me using a medium where I feel comfortable to make a lame attempt at 11th hour bonding

with people around whom I was too timid to bond in real life. So play along, if you can

temporarily shrug off the feeling that everything earnest is lame and uncool. I know this is

hard for people in advertising to do.

In the comments, tell me/everyone something I/we don't know. Just one thing. Use your name.

Sexy Mumbles

2009-07-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

Many laypeople believe that R+B (Rhythm plus Blues) music is made by the simple addition of Blues

to Rhythm. But connoisseurs of the genre know that Rhythm and Blues are only 2/3 of the necessary

ingredients of a traditional R+B song. The unaccounted for ingredient is Sexy Mumbles.

Sexy Mumbles are what the R+B artist or group of R+B artists engage in at the beginning of a R+B song,

pre-harmony, just before the beat "drops." Standard topics for Sexy Mumbles include:

1. Asking the DJ to please start playing ("drop") the beat as soon as possible

2. Reminding us that this is how we (the R+B artist[s]) do

3. Reminding us of the name of the R+B artist(s) who will sing the song you are about to hear

4. A Beautiful Lady (the Subject of the R+B song about to be sung, generally)

Renowned Rhythm Plus Blues Artist Bobby Valentino is like the Cadillac of Sexy Mumbles

(you only need to listen to like the first 20 seconds of each of these, if you are too busy to HEAR ART):

And of course a short but stellar example of Sexy Mumbles from R+B titans Boyz II Men:

Wonderful.

Now. As an innovator, a pioneer, an asker of difficult questions, and a fervent believer in the

vitalness of Sexy Mumbles as an art form, The Steelworkers Promise is sitting here wondering

why not write a whole Rhythm Plus Blues song comprised entirely of Sexy Mumbles? I mean if

you love chocolate ice cream, you don't buy Neapolitan ice cream, you buy a whole thing of

chocolate. (That is called a "pitch-perfect metaphor.")

The Steelworkers Promise believes that this sort of questioning of the fundamental construction

of Rhythm Plus Blues music is precisely what our troubled world needs right now.

Why?

BECAUSE THAT'S HOW PROGRESS GETS DID.

So buckle your Brain Belt, reader, so you don't get whiplash from this PARADIGM SHIFT.

===================================

***********************************

===================================

PRESENTING: The World's First All-Sexy-Mumbles R+B Song

TITLE: (Oh my God girl) You're so Beautiful

soft violin/piano intro

LYRICS (mumbled sexily):

Oh my God, girl.

You're so beautiful.

Standing there,

shimmering in the noonday sun.

Like a diamond-studded art work

by an ancient art master.

A statuette

representing the faint hope of real human connection and love

in this cold digital age.

And boners.

That's probably the most important thing you represent.

My boner.

Oh my God girl.

I can't believe my incredible luck.

Of all the places in the world

that a lovely lady could choose to stand

you picked this one,

this lonely bus stop outside the Big-Lots.

What do you have in those shopping bags, girl?

Is it my heart?

Oh my God girl.

Look at that tasty singlet you got on.

You know some people say a large and floppy bosom

like the one you got girl

is an accurate indicator

of future success in life.

Girl I am one of those people who say that.

I believe in you.

Oh my God girl.

Are you really getting on the same bus as me?

How in Heavens have I never seen you on my bus before?

I ride this shit every day.

Are you new in town?

Are you stranger in this big city?

Did you come from a faraway place to pursue your dreams?

Or did your alternator go out or something,

so you have to ride the bus today

to get your errands did?

Either way, girl.

Fate has descended upon us.

Like a fucking comet from space.

Destiny's comet crushed us girl,

and left a smoking crater of serendipity.

Oh my god, girl.

Where you gonna sit?

You need to decide fast, because the bus is about to start rolling again.

Girl, come on.

Sit the fuck down.

I need to know where you're sitting

so I can sit near but not next to you

in the optimum position

to admire your beauty.

Two rows back and on the opposite side.

Is the standard position for that sort of thing.

The bus has started moving.

THE BUS IS MOVING GIRL.

SIT THE FUCK DOWN GIRL.

Well God damn it.

I just slopped Gatorade G down the front of my shirt.

I lost my balance for you, girl.

See how I sacrifice for our love?

Oh my god, girl.

What could you be thinking as you stare out that bus window?

What are your dreams, girl?

Could you be dreaming of me?

Is that even a possibility,

considering that you and I have never formally met?

Is it even within the realm of reason, girl

that despite the fact that you are unaware of my presence on this planet,

with the exception of that lusty glance you threw at me

when I fell into the bus aisle a second ago,

is it possible that you are staring out that dusty bus window

dreaming of me,

dreaming of making love to me?

I believe it is possible, girl.

I believe in dreams.

The beat "drops," and the song ends immediately.

===================================

***********************************

===================================

And we leave the world a better place than we found it.

Cialis: Prologue

2009-06-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

CIALIS: PROLOGUE

It is the fate of each of Nature's pristine dawns to be spoiled by the first groggy human to wake up and

begin his noisy human errands. And so it was a kind of a fulfillment of destiny when, just as the horizon's

axis eased below the peach-colored morning sun, Dan Brown missed the unpaved turnoff from the main

road he was looking for, jerked the wheel hard right, and sent the tail end of his 1993 Ford Flareside pickup

spinning and squealing through the roadside gravel. In his oversteer's wake, Dan's wife's pretty sleeping head

thonked against the passenger side window. One hard sharp thonk, and a second smaller rebound thonk.

She woke up cursing.

"-ucking (THONK) son of a (thonk) FUCK."

The truck rocked to a stop perpendicular to the main road, facing it, gravel dust settling on the hood.

The radio, which Dan had turned way down in respect of his wife's nap, was playing an oldie very softly,

it sounded like The Hollies maybe, and the beat of it (the oldie) very nearly but did not quite sync with

the beating wings of the startled birds retreating eastward.

"I'm sorry. I missed the turn."

"Fuck."

"It was a mistake."

"Most people's mistakes don't concuss other, sleeping people. Generally."

"I'm sorry. People make mistakes. You do. Make mistakes sometimes."

"The very fucking definition of innocence, a sleeping person is."

Dan pulled a U through the shallow trench by the road, and the heavy old claw foot tub he had tension

strapped to the bed of the truck that very early morning slid surprisingly gently into the little bump in

the bed's surface that accommodated the back right wheelwell.

"Very nearly literally the last people on earth who deserve to have their heads slammed into a piece of glass."

"We're almost there."

"Well keep on going then."

But Dan and his wife, pickup and antique bathtub were already gently bumping down the little unpaved road.

Parked lakeside, Dan with one boot up on the lip of the tub. He flipped open the steel clasps on the

straps, releasing each with a quick zip of retreating nylon. His wife stood at the tailgate's open mouth

with her arms crossed and the ends of her sleeves pulled over her hands. She watched the lake's easy

movement, the grace with which water can accommodate anything it touches.

"Don't scuff it."

"Just stand right where you're standing, and I'll push it down to you."

Dan wedged himself into the narrow tubless space at the back of the truck's bed and unfolded his little

body against the tub, pushing with everything he had. It moved haltingly for three inches or so, the tub's

claws turning up brittle curls of the bed's paint. He stopped to pull off his sweatshirt.

"They don't make bathtubs this sturdy, this uh, solid, anymore."

"That's true of almost everything, I imagine." She looked at him directly for the first time that morning.

"Maybe you should come up here and help me push, and when we get it kind of tilted over the tailgate,

I'll jump down and grab the other end."

She ignored his offered hand and pulled herself up. They took positions and pushed, Dan's wife's side of the

tub moving a little faster and veering off to Dan's slightly slower moving side. After a few heave-ho stops and

starts, they got it seesawed over the tailgate and stopped, hands over their heads holding the lofted end of the

tub. Dan's wife looked at him.

"Maybe I better go down and grab it instead."

And of course as soon as she turned the tub loose, the heavy old thing lifted Dan up off his kicking feet and

slid down the lip of the tailgate and slammed into the ground so solidly it barely made a sound and Dan,

doubled over the airborne end of the tub, had just enough time to wheeze some air back into himself before

his own relatively insubstantial body weight tilted the tub clockwise and sliding across the tailgate's edge,

lengthwise toward the earth. And from his perch he watched his own slow fall, the inevitable advancement

of the ground, and clung to the tub as if it might save him, somehow.

When he opened his eyes, he learned he had landed or rolled far enough from his truck to see from the ground

back up into the empty bed, where the tub's claws had left desperate jagged trails, like it had been trying to

prevent its own abduction.

Together, they rolled the tub upright and pointed it at the lake.

"Thank Christ that's done."

"Well, halfway done." Dan a gave a kind of mock-bemused 1/4 smile.

"What does that mean, halfway done?"

"I mean we have to go get the other tub, back at home."

"The other tub?"

"His and Hers. Yours and mine."

"HIs and Hers antique claw foot tubs at the lake."

"I thought that part was evident, from the two tubs tubs sitting there in the the garage."

Dan's wife closed her eyes.

"I mean the truck's not big enough to hold them both." He gestured at his truck to her shut eyelids.

"I can't do this anymore."

"We can get back and set up by sundown, if we leave now. It'll be perfect."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her disappointment always capsized his stomach, rolled it right over,

it made him hate himself and everything he'd seen and touched in the world in his lifetime that his best

effort to finally stop disappointing her, his last, best plan, had caused more disappointment, for her.

"If we can just get through this, things will get better."

"Where are you going to get water to fill the tubs, Dan?"

He touched the bottle of pills in his pocket.

"If we just do this, things will start getting better."

"Were you going to use lake water, Dan?"

Shrewd Investments for The Post Global Warming Era

2009-06-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing in the world the Steelworker's Promise loves doing, it is MAKING YOU RICH. Here at the Steelworker's Promise Internet-Based Salon of Increasingly and Ridiculously Infrequent Dumb Jokes and Longwinded Nonsense, your bottom line is our ONLY LINE.

So when you wake up next week and look out the salvaged wood-framed windows of your loft that used to be a printer's building and see the sad A-frame homes of the poor people who used to live in your neighborhood floating down your trendy art-district streets past the one-word named design stores and bottle shops, iPhone up your preferred broker and pull the trigger on these HOT STOCKS (literally [fart]):

Consolidated Stilt (CST)

Union of Himalayan Mountain-Based Seersucker Tailors (UHMBST)

The Pontoonary (PNY)

Thompson's Water Seal for People (TWSP)

Things Less Dense Than Water Store (TLDW)

Upside-Down Umbrellas, LLC (UDU)

Whichever Rich Eccentric is Financing the Production of Amphicars These Days (WREFPATD)

It's always Happy Sailing on the Profit Sea!

My lawnmower needs to learn some accountability.

2008-07-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

ME: Ok, so just for the record, what is your full name and title?

TASK FORCE: I'm a Task Force© manual lawnmower with 20-inch blades. My title would I guess be: Nick's Lawn Mower, but I'm not sure since I was never furnished with a written job description.

ME: Ok. Easy. There's no need to get defensive. We're just talking, here. Just two dudes being friendly.

TASK FORCE: Sorry, it's just the title of the post makes it seem like you've got it in for me a little bit.

ME: Oh, you know. It's just to compel people to read further. Give it a little sizzle. What do you expect, I'm in advertising!

So would you way that you're a good lawnmower?

TASK FORCE: For the price, yeah. I mean I only cost $40, whereas even a bottom of the line gas-powered mower would set you back like $300. So, value-wise, yeah, I'd say I'm a pretty good mower.

ME: Thanks. Now I'm going to show you a couple of pictures, and I want you tell me what you see. Here's picture one:

TASK FORCE: That's an area of your backyard.

ME: Anything else?

TASK FORCE: No. I mean. It's just some grass.

ME: Ok. I understand it's probably not the best picture ever, but I'm no Annie Liebowitz! Let's try this one. Same angle basically, just a little closer.

TASK FORCE: Oh.

ME: What do you see?

TASK FORCE: I see some tufts of grass.

ME: Well, I think "tufts" is a bit of an understatement, don't you? "Clumps," maybe, or "chlorophiliac monuments to mediocrity," or "things that if you had a Lawn Mower Father, and he saw these chlorophiliac monuments to mediocrity, would cause your Lawn Mower Father to throw his whiskey glass into the fireplace and scream, "I HAVE NO LAWN MOWER SON!""

All of those are more appropriate terms, I think.

TASK FORCE: ...

ME: Was I right to assume that you have no Lawn Mower Father?

TASK FORCE: I was assembled by a series of machines at a plant in New Jersey.

ME: Ok, orphan. So why exactly are there still huge tall clumps of grass all over the yard after you mow it?

TASK FORCE: Like I said before, I AM A MANUAL MOWER. I don't have an engine to help turn my bl...

ME: Oh sure, blame everything on the lack of a gas-burning engine. You're like the opposite of Al Gore.

TASK FORCE: It's simple sci...

ME: Greenpeace is going have a field day with that one. Now I'm going to have pontoon boats full of lunatics blocking my path every time I try to mow the lawn. Thanks.

TASK FORCE: I just think you need to temper your expectations a little bit.

ME: I should temper my expectation that a lawn mower should mow the lawn?

TASK FORCE: It's just that the grass gets pretty thick in some places.

ME: THE GRASS GETS PRETTY THICK. So what's the cutoff point exactly? You won't cut anything that's thicker than what, a cherub's kiss? A single dandelion seed floating on the breeze?

TASK FORCE: You know, if you mowed more often, the grass wouldn't get that thick, and I could cut it better.

ME: Yeah, maybe you're right. And maybe the car wash would work better if my car was already clean. Maybe my physics teacher's job would have been easier if taught myself a unified field theory.

TASK FORCE: You have a real talent for self-serving exaggeration, you know that?

ME: Hey, you want a glass of water?

TESK FORCE: No, I just finished a big thing of Aquafi-

ME: THEN IT'S THE PERFECT TIME FOR MORE WATER! You should always drink water when you're not thirsty! Just constantly drinking water preemptively, glass after glass, until your insides adopt their own ecosystem, supporting all manner of deep sea life, kelp and dungeoness crab, WE COULD OPEN OUR OWN AQUARIUM INSIDE OF YOU, we could sell little stuffed kelp in the gift shop, and charge extra to see the dolphin show, and we'd make so much money, all thanks to your foresight regarding hydration!

TASK FORCE: I knew it was a mistake to trust you. I'm leaving.

(TASK FORCE removes mic, exits studio)

ME: Hey, come back! We can name the aquarium after you if you want! The Task Force Manual Lawn Mower with Useless 20-inch Little Girl Blades Memorial Aquarium!

TASK FORCE: ...

ME: Get your ass back here! Where are you going to go? Who's going to love you?

TASK FORCE: ...

ME: YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A DAD!

I need you to move your car, please.

2008-04-21T09:41:00.001-07:00

Your car was parked out in front of my house this morning:

I know it's difficult to find parking on the street sometimes, but your car is scaring my cats (my cats are afraid of rims that tight).

I need you to move it, please.

I understand this request will be met with little to no mercy.

Here's Some Good Gardening Advice:

2008-04-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Moondancer!

More Gardening Tips for the Modern Earth Goddess:

1) On the eve of the solstice, over a fire of birch twigs and juniper, cut off and burn a single dreadlock in honor of Resplendor, the Spirit of Resplendent Blossoming.

2) Use short strips of cloth, cut from a midwife's apron, to tie an amethyst to each of your spring bulbs. This will protect your bulbs from evil spirits that want to eat their tiny bulb souls.

3) If your plants become sick, treat them as you would your own sick child: sprinkle them with lilac-infused goat's milk while reciting your favorite Wellness Poem.

4) You don't need capitalist blood money to buy garden tools. You can fashion your own from geodes and hemp!

5) Fertilize your perennials with menses.

6) In late June, the seven Ovarian Moons will align harmoniously in the western sky, producing an "O'Keefian Flare." At midnight on this day, cover yourself in mud and loose leaves and howl into the night. Howl for Gaia's spirit, alive in everything. Howl for armpit hair, and the 1991 Jetta. Howl for the fairies, whose haunting, endless dance among the Gardens of Life brings vibrancy to the tulips, perfume to the rose.

7) If you ever feel a doubt (creeping into your mind like a venture capitalist in the night) that fairies aren't real, that our lives are not guided by the whims of spirits, that we are just people, wandering through life alone and without a net to catch us, just rub your talisman three times and turn up the Bob Marley.

I am not, nor will I ever be, Ernest Hemingway.

2008-04-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wish I was one of those Hemingwayian writers who use whiskey to spur their brains to produce resonant novels about terrifying wars, or voyages at sea, and how those things move men to strength and fragility in equal measure. It's a romantic idea.

But there is an insurmountable barrier between me and that vision of the rye-soaked writer. Every time I drink and try to write, this is what happens, without fail:

These are some "ideas" for Brooks running shoes, written at a bar, on the back of a Taco Bell receipt.

I have not been to a Taco Bell in 3-5 years.

It's nearly illegible, but here's a few choice bits:

"Stargate shoe heads.

laser dog / robot legs"

"lazy uprising --> COUCHES"

"emperor shoe head

headdress of smaller shoes"

"Shoe-burning furnace

lights dim - back to work"

"Aushwitz soap on a rope"

Apparently, I thought enough of these ideas to TAPE THIS RECEIPT INTO MY SKETCHBOOK FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

In other Hemingway news, my very first produced ad was for Northern Marine Yachtbuilders, and directly referenced Hemingway in the headline and the (typically long-winded) body copy. Basically chastised him for making the ocean seem so scary in the Old Man and the Sea, when clearly, in a Northern Marine Yacht, the ocean is a wonderful majestic blah blah wonder land of fart fart splendor, etc. It also contained slyish references to Hemingway's drinking problem and subsequent suicide. I regret ever writing the thing, honestly, and I'd take it back if I could, but it did teach me that my idea of clever isn't necessarily everyone else's:

(Girl I'm Gonna) Fight for Your Love Tonight

2008-04-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

Lyrics by Nick Carter

(piano intro)

The sun is settin'

Goin' to bed for the night.

Another day is gone,

Gotta wait eleven more hours

just to see the light.

And I'm sitting here alone,

waiting for darkness to come.

And there you are,

wherever you are,

waiting for your shiny-armored knight.

Well, wait no longer, girl, because:

(chorus)

I'm gonna fight for your love tonight.

Girl you know I'm gonna fight for your love tonight.

I'm gonna put on my Armor of Kisses, baby

and then I'm gonna show you the sights.

(end chorus)

(spoken)

Like the St. Louis Arch, baby.

You ever seen that?

I didn't think so.

(guitar solo)

(end guitar solo)

(sexily spoken)

Knock, knock, knock.

Well, who's that at your door, baby.

Oh no one special,

no one special at all.

Just your SOULMATE.

(chorus)

Just the man who's gonna

fight for your love tonight.

You know I'm gonna fight for your love tonight.

I'm gonna sharpen my Sword of Promises

and then I'll bet you'll see the light.

(end chorus)

(spoken)

Bask in that light, baby.

Absorb it like a hothouse flower.

Yes.

Photosexthesis.

On Love's pockmarked battlefield,

I will face your Love.

My shield gleams in the moonlight.

I can see the fear in Love's eyes.

But girl don't be afraid.

This battle won't last long.

I'll overwhelm you with my loveweapons

AND WE'LL RIDE OFF INTO THE SUN...

(chorus)

Because girl, I'm gonna fight for your love tonight.

You know I'm gonna fight for your love tonight.

I'm gonna polish my Shield of Marriage

And we'll both go home happy tonight.

(spoken)

'Til death do us part, girl.

And you know what?

I don't plan on dyin'.

(repeat chorus)

Flashbacks

2008-04-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

GARRETT

Garrett Brown, 35, wakes up clenching the lapels of a clown's crushed velvet suit. Blood turns the yellow wig brown. Garrett looks up, around the room. He sees a big top full of witnesses.

Garrett Brown, 11, is playing Gameboy in the front seat of his mother's car. He does not see his mother cut off and nearly collide with the small car in her blind spot as she merges onto the freeway. But he certainly hears the ensuing honks, sees the car (not just small, but impossibly tiny) swerve around and pull even with his mother's, sees the driver, hugely-coiffed with a garish painted face, roll down his window and scream, "Fucking whore, fucking dumb bitch," a horrible grin painted around his real angry mouth. He swerves into their lane, over and over, slamming into their car and screaming, until Garrett's mother is forced to pull over and stop on the shoulder. As the tiny car speeds away, Garrett imagines an enormous shoe stomping on a miniature peddle. With quickly beating hearts, Garrett and his mother cry together.

----------

DAVE

The actions of Dave Corning, 54, have sent his fellow tour-takers scrambling for cover, and the employees of the Mrs. Baird's Bread Company searching for implements of self-defense. There's a folding chair lodged in the gears of the dough-puller, the head baker, Eli "Shark" Harris, has been smothered with a bread bag.

Dave Corning, 9, breaks his tibia sliding into home. When Dave and his parents get home from Laurent Hospital, Dave's dad screams through the phone at the coach who's teaching nine-year-olds to slide. Incorrectly. The cast has two upsides: signatures (26 and counting, Dave never leaves home without a Sharpie) and he only has to take a bath every other day. Bath time itself, however, quickly comes to represent in Dave's mind something foreboding and permanent. He has to seal his cast in a Mrs. Baird's bread bag, and the bag prompts in Dave, the boy who for two months after seeing Jaws couldn't close his eyes in the bathtub with thinking he was about to be eaten by a shark, a terrible fantasy: Dave's entire body sealed in a huge bread bag, being lowered into a shark-filled ocean, sinking deeper, weighed down and rendered immobile by casts on his arms and legs, Dave can't do anything but gulp down his short supply of air and watch the sharks come. The cast stays on six months, ninety bath times.

----------

JULIA

Julia Newton, 25, has apparently beaten Charles Barkley to death with a card table. The crowd assembled at the book signing heaves a final stunned, silent breath before screaming into chaos.

Julia Newton, 8, practices hard for the Dr. Pepper Free-Throw Contest at half-time of the March 23, 1993 Phoenix Suns game. Practices in the driveway with her dad until it gets dark. But when the day comes, in front of the big crowd, she doesn't shoot well. She has fun anyway. She meets another contestant, Sheila, who shares her affinity for Pogs. She gets a voucher for a year's worth of Dr. Pepper. On the way back to her seat, hand-in-hand with an usher, Julia overhears Charles Barkley say to reporter, "Man, little white girls shouldn't try to shoot free throws. They're so bad at shooting free throws, I should write a book about how bad they are. Call it Little White Girls Can't Jump. There is definitely enough evidence to fill a book, just here in this room right now." Julia and Charles make eye contact.

The Omega Contingency

2008-04-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

THE OMEGA CONTINGENCY

by Nicholas Carter

"General, this is the global effect of the virus 12 hours from now. In 36 hours. And in 72 hours."

General Alfred Smilek and an underground bunker full of soldiers watched the map bloom red.

"I see that the thing spreads fast, Patterson. What I don't see is why it's so awful. I mean, the virus

just makes the babies smart, right? Geniuses, you said?"

"Not just geniuses, General. Evil Geniuses," Patterson said.

"Evil Genius Babies?"

"Sir, the first case was reported just shy of eight hours ago, and our intel is already reporting plans

of a death ray, and a diamond-tipped MegaDrill capable of tapping the Earth's core. The babies are

using their superior intellect to influence menial laborers to carry out the physical tasks that their

tiny baby bodies can't perform."

"But it's just babies that can be infected right? There's a lot more big people, I mean, adults than babies, yes?"

"Sir, 245 babies are born every minute. 200,000 every day. Every one of them will be infected.

Every one of them will be smarter than Einstein. And every one of them will be hell bent on

destroying the world."

"Sweet Christ."

Among the bank of monitors, General Smilek saw a CNN feed. A tiny baby was piloting a

giant robot suit, laying waste to Hokido. On MSNBC, a toddler had hijacked a high-speed

train and was demanding a $1,000,000,000 ransom.

General Smilek thought of his son. Edward. His tiny hands reaching for the barnyard mobile

above his crib. The General thought of the pride he felt when, in his arms, his son's cries finally

gave way to sleep. He remembered just that morning, when he caught his son scattering classified

documents all over the floor of his office. What was that look in Edward's green eyes?

Was it...was it fury?

"We need an order, General."

He glanced at the monitors again. Now, each news station had been pirated by a different Baby

Evil Genius, or collective of Baby Evil Geniuses. They were demanding money, weapons, respect.

He noted that they all had green eyes. The security cameras outside the bunker showed an approaching

convoy of mini-vans kicking up a storm of desert dust.

"Initiate the Omega Contingency," said General Alfred Smilek, husband, father.

Well-trained soldiers offer no outward glimpse of hesitation, regardless of the gravity of the order. The

activation of the Omega Contingency required the simultaneous turning of four keys, held by the highest

ranking officer in each of the armed services, as well as the recitation a series of codes. This was done.

"People, if you have loved ones to call, you have T-minus 12 minutes to do so." One of the soldiers

dropped his phone. "I need to call my wife."

All around them, the machinations had begun: satellites aligned, underground reactors came alive.

"Honey? It's Alfred. What are you up to? No, no. I don't need anything. I just wanted to tell you I love you."

In the final minute, the countdown lights threw the bunker into an intense red strobe. The soldiers ended

their calls, hung up, and were quiet.

"No, I don't want to talk to Edward."

Breaking the Fourth eWall

2008-04-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

AN ANNOUNCEMENT, AS A COURTESY TO MY 11 READERS:

I have been trying my best to post something brand new, written just for the blog, every day. As I look back over it, though, I feel like I want to polish things a little more. So I've decided to pull up on the reins a little; post less frequently, but hopefully post better.

Here are the titles of some of the things I'm working on:

----o0o----

Gardening Tips for the Modern Earth Goddess

A Day in the Life of a Homeless Person's Dog

The Glee Club Code of Honor

The Omega Strain

songs: (I'm Gonna) Fight for your Love Tonight, (Oh My God, Girl) You're So Beautiful

An Asshole on Ellis Island

Lebanon, Kansas

Only in Calcutta

The Heartbreak of Psoriasis

----o0o----

I'll leave you with this, a line from something called "Flashbacks" which should be up soon:

"Julia Newton, 25, has apparently beaten Charles Barkley to death with a card table."

Thank you for listening.

(He's the) Star King

2008-04-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

Before this goes down, let me set the mood a little bit right here...

Ok here we go:

(HE'S THE) STAR KING

BY NICK C

My name is Nick C,

and I'm here to say:

I'm about to rap

in a whole new way.

I said a whooooole new way.

That's right

Now all the ladies out there,

just clap your hands.

And all the fellas

just stomp your feet.

I'm

about

to blow your mind

to the sound of the biggity beat.

Say what

I gotta face that the ladies all want to kiss,

I gotta ride that the fellas think's fly.

But the thing I don't got,

and the thing I want most,

is my very own star in the sky.

You heard it

So I went on down

to the telescope man.

I said:

"You got you star up there for me?"

He said "Hell no, son.

who you think you is,

some foreign dignitary?"

(chorus)

He's the Star King

Look at them stars,

He's the king of them stars,

He's the Star King.

...

He's the Star King.

(end chorus)

So I drove on up

to that Ivy League school,

Blastin' Coolout all the way.

Parked my Chevelle

on the Dean's front lawn,

I said, "Dean baby, what do you say?

I got rolled dimes,

I got studio time,

I got a high fade for days.

Come on Dean, son

just name your price,

and I'll pay whatever you say."

Dean said "look Nick C,

you got it all wrong.

you can't buy no star from me.

Those stars in the sky,

they free as birds.

They ain't no one's property."

I said "Dean, baby,

I guess you ain't heard.

Nick C gets what Nick C wants."

Hopped back in the Chevelle

and steered that old beast

to where inno-cence is lost.

Florida, Son.

(chorus)

He's the Star King

Look at them stars,

He's the king of them stars

He's the Star King.

....

He's the Star King.

(end chorus)

Pulled up to Cape Canaveral

threw a 20 to the valet,

flashed my piece to the fat ass guard,

Grabbed the flyest helmet,

put on the dopest flysuit,

and got my ass on Challenger 4.

Now I'm telling you kid,

if you got the means

Get your ass on up to space.

It's beautiful as fuck

and best of all

there's stars all over the place.

That's right

So I'm staying up here,

I'm staking my claim.

Yo, all this shit is mine.

And if your girl ever asks

"What happened to Nick C?"

Just point up at the sky.

(chorus)

He's the Star King

Look at them stars,

He's the king of them stars

He's the Star King.

...

He's the Star King.

(repeat chorus)

My Favorite Ad of All Time

2008-03-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

A lot of people (soda jerks at the ice cream parlor, salesmen at my favorite Jaguar dealership) ask me, "Hey, so uh, Nick, whatsa your favorite ad of all time, there, uh?" Most of the people I meet speak with a Bronx/Italian accent, and the tenets of journalistic integrity require me to reproduce it faithfully here, with my keyboard.

Well, here it is, tender and lovely as a newborn fawn on the first day of an Indian summer:

Shhh. Don't speak. LISTEN.

NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

It's got each of Nick's Patented Three C's Of Advertising "C"uccess:

Crafted headline,

Compelling visual,

Call to action.

The light bulb represents the light of knowledge one gains when his ads are placed contextually.

Contextual advertising is when some machine somewhere scans the content of a webpage and places a banner ad that relates to that content.

So read an article about what types of cool vodka kids are sippin' on, see an ad for some vodka. Read an article about health code violations in a slaughterhouse, see an ad for Wendy's new Spicy Baconator. Read an article about contextual advertising, get folded into another dimension.

I found this ad for a contextual advertising service on A COLLEGE FOOTBALL BLOG, so maybe this ad should have read itself, taken its own advice, and subscribed to its own service with the hope of better placement.

Other than that, the ad is pitch perfect.

Plus, it's an internet banner ad, so it's new media.

HAVEN'T YOU GUYS HEARD THAT THE INTERNET IS THE FUTURRRRRRRRRRE(gurgle)

From the Scrap Heap

2008-03-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

Here are some ads I wrote for Kallista, a maker of very high end bathroom fixtures. Most of the ads in this category are just huge, beautiful product shots and a short line about how this sink in the greatest sink in the history of sinks. In an effort to stand out among those ads, I wanted mine to instead emphasize the process and pleasure of making an inspired fixture selection. Of finding just the perfect sconce lighting or bathtub.

These were never art directed or shown to the client. I was told they were "too dense."

------o0o------

PART NUMBER 21476-00

The Vir Stil Minimal Ceiling Shower Dome

it attaches to the ceiling and the water rains

down from above you, as it would if you one

afternoon found yourself in a forest, a remote

forest that's not on a map yet, and it started to

rain, and you twirled around in the rain until

your clothes were soaked through, realizing

the whole time that

twirling around in the rain is usually not acceptable

in an anti-twirling world like ours.

But no one can stop you because no one is

here to stop you, but just to be sure, step over

to the ledge and yell (into the void, if possible),

"STAY AWAY, CARTOGRAPHERS. Keep your

compasses and distressed parchment and visions

of colonization away from me. Don't look at those

stars. THOSE STARS ARE MINE NOW."

------

PART NUMBER P30921-00

The Tuxedo Wall Sconce designed by Barbara Berry.

Attached to the wall, it cups its light like a candle in

the hands of a guide. "This way, please," the guide

says in whatever voice you imagine your bathroom

to possess, maybe something cultured, maybe British

(tinged with the tropical lilt of St. Barthes), and pulls

back a fern frond to reveal a white sandy beach, empty

and unspoiled: "Follow me and I will flatter you endlessly,

I'll fawn over you,

I will show you a rainbow

on the skin of a bubble."

And you do, because the proposition is pleasing,

and because an accent like that is difficult to refuse.

------

PART NUMBER P22683-CR

The Barbara Barry Wall Diverter Trim, Cross Handle.

Its shape recalls the wheels of a 1954 Gullwing Mercedes

in some grainy old film with washed-out color. Perfectly

imperfect. We'll switch camera angles now, and watch our

driver and our passenger share some witty banter as a

mountain road uncurls too quickly behind them. It's still

new, this romance, yes very new, and there's something

illicit about it, you can tell by the thickness of the meaning

in their glances, maybe there's an overbearing steel maven

father who wants her to marry someone more like

the up-and-coming VP with the talent

for selecting the most dominant necktie.

Not this joker in the fancy car. People will talk. They will talk

their heads off about it, but these two will drive, and laugh at

their own jokes, and leave miles of winding mountain roads

behind them.

------o0o------