Worm Hole

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 6:30. Am. It's by no means a record for me, but after the second early morning rousing to drive down to scenic Handford, CA . . . the body wasn't diggin' it. Despite the severe and legitimate protests by my circadian rhythms, I slouched down the hallway and mindlessly spooned a bowl of oatmeal into my mouth. I evidently got dressed somewhere in the intervening minutes, hastily collected an assortment of portfolios, gym shorts and computer bags and kissed my wife goodbye. Bemoaning the fact that I had woken up at 6h30 and was still running late, I wrenched open the front door and stepped unexpectedly into Houston, TX.

In the mid-80's and humid as a Gorilla's armpit at 7 in the morning, the electrical storms and intermittent pelting of precipitation reminded me fondly of my time at University in College Station, TX. I am one of the few who inexplicably love humidity. Partly because my hair can't get any worse, partly because I've vowed to align myself with the Powers of Heat over the Powers of Cold, yesterday was a free sauna and I loved every minute of it.

Enchanté

Chapter 3

Still absently blinking as his heart rate began to stabilize and the rest of the room came into focus, Liam’s hands fell momentarily to his knees and he stood silently bracing his body on locked elbows like a man who had just sprinted down a hallway and knocked an unexpected interloper to his hotel suite out cold with an oak book-end. As his brain began to warm up, executive functions beginning to catch up with the primal explosion, Liam soon realized that leaving the man unrestrained on the floor would soon prove to be a disastrous course of inaction. Stripping the man of his overcoat, Liam quickly ran through the man’s pockets and retrieved a small pile of booty. Both hands full, casting about the small sitting room in the tangerine glow of the serene ceiling lamp, Liam dumped his haul into the utilitarian wood grained laminate desk against the wall behind him. Next he grabbed the stunted table lamp from where it had been holding up a guide to local eateries and a Gideon’s Bible, and wrenching the cord from the back of the lamp with his left hand he set the pistol down next to the man’s possessions on the desk’s pocked surface got to work on the downed interloper. After awkwardly attempting to reassemble the scattered limbs, Liam hog-tied the stranger where he lay and eased him onto his side. Liam was almost overcome with the wave of stale marijuana smoke mingled with cheap booze and cheaper aftershave as the man’s face oscillated towards the ceiling. Wrinkling his nose in distaste, his still-heightened senses reeling from such a salient olfactory encounter, Liam left his ears in the sitting room and shot back down the hall towards the bedroom to retrieve his large black duffel. Ripping the zipper the length of the bag and unceremoniously dumping its contents in a shower of matted socks and rumpled t-shirts, Liam scooped up the roll of duct tape that had fallen heavily on top of the clothes and hurried back down the hall to find his charge unchanged.

Lugging the man’s body into the musty overstuffed sitting chair, cheek to cheek with the sallow visage of his assailant, Liam could feel his shallow breathing as the abrasive stubble grated into his own moderately scruffy skin. He haphazardly spun several dozen laps of the silvery webbing taut around the man’s body, the tape screeching as it pulled loose from the roll, securing him to the seat. Gaunt frame sagging against the restraint, Liam quickly assessed the man’s wounds. Not too bad. The man’s nose had nearly stopped bleeding, but the gash on his head looked angry and was still pushing a moderate amount of blood through the nascent clots. Wincing despite himself as he leaned in for a closer look, he took in the face’s features. They were craggy and grizzled, a face that could have been any age between 28 and 53, and seemed malicious even in their unconscious state. Scars festooned the man’s lips and cheeks, and lines of hard living were etched into deep folds around his eyes and mouth.

Liam quickly double checked the bonds on the man’s hands and feet and dashed off again down the hall to the bathroom, retrieving a spare roll of toilet paper and a plastic trash can with a brown flower on the front. Filling the trash can with a few inches of water from the faucet, Liam returned to crudely staunch the wound and clean some of the blood away with a sopping mass of cheap one-ply toilet paper. Once he had effected some semblance of repair, Liam dropped his bloody wad of tissue into the remaining water at the bottom of the trash can. As diluted blood continued to make its way down the eroded crags of the man’s cheek, Liam ripped off another four-inch swatch of duct tape and stretched it as tight as he could over a patch of fresh toilet paper before pressing it over the rend on the man’s oily forehead. Slapping it soundly once for good measure, he nearly tripped on his own feet as the man suddenly jerked and began to struggle against the layers of tape adhering him to the chair. The prisoner emitted a growling noise as he vainly thrashed in the grips of the tape, wild and low, but never cried out. Swiftly regaining his poise, Liam snatched the pistol from off the desk nearby and leveled it at the stranger, now glaring at him. One eye was nearly obscured with blood and duct tape. The other eye half squinted at Liam, who was unable to tell if the man was attempting to smile or glare at him.

“Oh, hello, Liam,” the man croaked. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Liam should respond:

A) "Yeah, long time no see."

B) "You've got about three seconds to start talking before I paint my nice pretty room here with the shit you call your brains."

C) "Who are you and what do you want with me?"

D) Say nothing, but stare coldly down the barrel of his new gun.

Who, Me?!

Today was a day of firsts for me. This morning I started my new work-out routine from Bill Pearl’s strength manual. Today was the first time in a long time that I’ve spent consecutive days in the Daily Book of Prayer. Today is the first time I can remember when I have been overtly propositioned.

Sitting at the intersection of Bullard and Villa at 11h45 this morning, listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR and (as Blake Shelton would say) minding my own, a setting which shall live . . . in infamy. I was making a bid for the right turn, sandwiched between the through traffic and the curb, when I noticed one of the girls in the car next to me casting furtive glances back in my direction. Catching her eye, I summoned by best head jerk and wan smile, expecting little if anything in return. To my utter shock and discombobulation, the girl mouthed something back to me. Puzzled, brows furrowing, I cocked my head shook it slowly from side to side, an electrocution in slow motion. I didn’t understand. Again, she mouthed her demand. Again I was nowhere close to deciphering the code, all blank stare and oscillating cranium. After three more failed attempts, the window crank was employed. I silenced Neal Conan with a careless flail at the radio face-plate.

“Hey, ma girl wants ta know, is you single?”

“Oh . . . uh,” I stammered, taken aback. I would have been better prepared to give the square root of 43 2/3. “Ah, no. I’m married,” I finished lamely, brandishing the ring of my left hand.

“Ah, aight,” and they pulled away at the light.

Thanks, random girls at the light on Bullard and Villa. I think.

Let's Try That Again . . .

Chapter 2b

Digging his knuckles into his eye sockets and straining his already extended senses beyond their limits, Liam could almost swear he could now hear the soft whistle of breathing intermittently trickle down the short dim hallway which lead to the rest of the suite he had been occupying for the last two weeks. His thoughts drifted to the past seven months of furtive habitation in suite after dingy suite in dive after dilapidated dive. He tried to remember the last time he had managed to string together more than six hours of restful sleep, but only managed to come up with a memory of his 7^th birthday party. Transformer theme. That had been fun.

Savagely shaking his head and rubbing his knuckles across his scalp, Liam froze as a he heard a soft suppressed cough ricochet down the hallway. His adrenal glands found a new gear he thought might actually cause him to vomit as the invisible spear of excitement exploded in his gut and effervesced through his scalp and toe-nails. Backing away from his perch directly behind the thin partition, Liam eased his head towards the hall-ward side of the door, catching a peek at the stark gray hallway and darker still room that lay beyond. Nothing could be seen stirring from that vantage, but all hope that he was alone in the suite had utterly evaporated. Tightening his gut and wiping his right hand on his boxers before re-gripping the cool hard bookend, Liam eased the door fully open and strained his eyes on the hallway’s aperture into the rest of the suite. ‘Fortune favors the bold,’ he thought to himself as he felt his feet begin to pump, grimacing mouth holding back his breath, a levy struggling against a flash flood. As the short hallway whizzed jarringly by, against the dim sitting room ahead an inky profile swung suddenly out from the left-hand wall.

“Oh, shit!” was all the gravelly voiced silhouette was able to blurt out before Liam hit him full tilt. Wrenching the body towards his own with his free left hand, Liam felt his forehead make contact with the bridge of the strangers nose, and as the intruder reeled back under the initial blow a vicious roundhouse swing with the bookend dropped the thin-framed figure to the floor with a perfunctory thud.

His shoulders heaving, blinking fiercely in the aftermath of the encounter, Liam spotted a wicked looking black Beretta Px4 on the floor near the body. Quickly stepping towards it and toeing it out of arms reach, Liam gingerly skirted the prone figure to be able to pick the pistol up himself. The body on the floor lay still, looking almost comical face down with limbs akimbo. “Squashed spider!” Liam wanted to guess, but there were no other contestants playing charades and the man on the floor didn’t seem able to either confirm or deny his postulation.

Keeping his eyes glued on the crumpled mass splayed on the floor, Liam backed up until his groping hand found the light switch, flooding the scene a warm light from the tattered orange light fixture hanging from the center of the room's ceiling. Taking a closer look, Liam could see that his interloper was beginning to ooze blood from his head and nose, slowly adding his own scarlet circlet to the already riotously stained carpet.

Liam should search the guy and then. . .

a) Jet, leaving the body there

b) Finish the job with his new gun

c) Tie the guy up in a chair and wait for him to come around

d) Take off immediately, forget even searching th guy

Long Shots

As jaded as I am with the current political process in this country, with its reward of duplicitous speech and exaggerated differences between facetious candidates impotently pandering to some vague middle ground which nobody at all seems to actually espouse, ‘Republican’ Ron Paul has recently piqued my interest in the 2008 Presidential Race. A ten year veteran of Texas’ 14^th district, Congressman Paul still stands on his Libertarian (and some would say, truly Republican) philosophy of reduced government spending, strong state’s rights and free trade. As a matter of principle he refuses his Congressional stipend, voted against what has now been exposed as the woefully under-planned Iraq War Resolution and in the process of saving several baby seals from being clubbed to death discovered a compound which makes teeth both whiter and stronger. Ok, so I made the last one up, but he is bringing a breath of fresh air to a party which by all other indications has become utterly moribund over the last eight hard years.

Sure his name sounds like an adult film star, but in a Republican race where John McCain is begging lunch money off the sound guy and Rudy Giuliani is scalping Yankees tickets to the debate moderator, something about the pugnacious Mr. Paul has caught my fancy. I know he’s not the prefect candidate. I don’t mesh well with several planks in his platform, he's at times ludicrously unrealistic and he would be a wildly impractical President, likely making Jimmy Carter look as efficacious as Josef Stalin moving legislation through Congress. Regardless, here’s hoping for the greatest American tradition: The Long Shot. Viva Ron!

The Little Things

Today is August 8th, 2007. The time: 13h26. The temperature? 84^oF (29^o C). This is a most convenient truth.

Liam's next chapter is coming soon . . .

Graceless

WARNING: Prolonged vent ahead! I try not to openly vent too often because I tend to be a tad juvenile about it, but this got me riled up last weekend and I couldn't help myself. What's a blog for if not for venting sometimes, right?! Anyway . . .

Some say that it’s best to expect the unexpected, but I’ve found that to be rather tiring endeavour; I prefer instead to just not assume too much. Even still, it’s refreshing to know that the Earth is a big enough place that no matter how unassuming I am there will still be contexts which leave me confused and disoriented. This weekend while I was relaxing in downtown Santa Cruz at a small café, on their sleek flat screen TV in between the woman with shorn hair openly breast feeding her young child, the French kids, the petite Asian student and the glazed thoroughly inked beach denizen was something that did not belong: Nancy Grace. I was nettled.

Nancy Grace, the brackish talk show host who eked out a living as a state prosecutor before becoming one of the most inane talking heads on a TV today, was staring out at me smugly in a Santa Cruz coffee shop. I can only assume that something more worthwhile had been on before her and that the channel just hasn’t gotten changed, but there she was none the less. She opined for several minutes about the recent tragedy in South Carolina involving the death of two small children found under a kitchen sink, and for the most part I couldn’t hear what she was saying so I was left unperturbed, except for occasionally catching her sneering visage from the corner of my eye. She eventually, however, stumbled her way on to the Michael Vick saga; while I still couldn’t clearly hear what vitriolic and uninformed diatribe she had embarked on, the footage for the spot was her and an assortment of talking heads in small boxes in the corner of the screen while they rolled stock footage of put bulls fighting in rings.

So let me get this strait . . . we’re indicting Michael Vick for fighting dogs, and in the process ejaculating every condemnation imaginable about the depravity and inhumanity of the practice. About how anyone who would stoop to even watching let alone organizing dog fights deserves time in Federal prison. About how the concept is so vile it should hardly be mentioned. In the meantime, though, while we talk about it ad nauseum, you might as well take in some footage of dogs ripping each other up. Perfect. Makes perfect sense. Thank you, CNN, for providing us with that well crafted piece of journalistic integrity.

I don’t know to what extent Vick was involved in the dog fighting ring being run out of his house in Virginia, but I do find dog fighting one of the more reprehensible practices around. Close behind, however, is watching Nancy Grace or any of the other difficult-to-respect-or-take-seriously reactionary thick-hearted and stiff-necked hacks running amok in the news media. Mercifully the channel was changed shortly after the Michael Vick spot began.

Yall Chose B

Chapter 2a

With anxiety dripping from his every pore, Liam inched his way around the listing bedroom door. His senses now almost fully divested of sleep’s dullness, every input was now being registered with laser precision. The cat yowling outside was out-clamored by a slamming dumpster while water dripped somewhere nearby and the toilet valve screamed at him as it clicked on momentarily to top of the perpetually leaking tank. The stale odor of years of tobacco imbibed by the walls around him combined with the delicate smell of the earliest morning, and both flirted with the slightest tinge of garlic. Trying not to think about the cute take-out girl from the Italian joint he’d ordered dinner from the night before, Liam began his stealthy descent towards the end of the short hallway. The suite he had been inhabiting for the last two weeks hung in a dull grey light, purgatory of the day, nearly familiar shapes indistinguishable in the small sitting room at the mouth of his vestibular avenue. Breaching the aperture of the hallway, still crouched and primed with the bookend at the ready, what had been at first a remnant of garlic odor swelled to an belligerent hurricane of olfactory sensation with overtones of cheap liquor and cheaper aftershave. Realizing too late the garlic scent had nothing to do with the leftover chicken parmesan in the sink, Liam turned to his left towards the impending onslaught. The last thing he saw as he wheeled around raising the bookend was the black steel dough nut of a silencer, followed by a Beretta Px4 both half obscuring a thin grizzled face sporting what would be the most and last unctuous sneer he ever saw.

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Well . . . that was quick. So, the question is now where we go from here. Suggestions?