Book Review: A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs

           I already had some background information about Augusten Burroughs life as I began to read his memoir A Wolf at the  Table. I had read Running With Scissors, which is his memoir about his childhood from about 12 and up, and also his memoir Dry, which is about his struggles with alcoholism in his early years of adulthood. Both of these books contain some pretty disturbing stories as Burroughs seems to lay himself bare to the bone in his memoirs, even when he is showing the darker side of himself. On top of this Burroughs has had a very troubling life, judging from the events that he described in previous memoirs, yet he always seems to write about these events in a wry, almost amusing sort of way. I expected something similar to this from A Wolf at the Table, and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

            A Wolf at the Table is a memoir that centers on Burroughs father, who he only lived with until he was 11. Burroughs’ remembered memories of his father paint a very dark, disturbing picture that shows his father as a terrible monstrosity living a double life. At the beginning of the memoir, when Burroughs is remembering his very early childhood around the age of five or six, he only wants to have his love returned by this ominous father who we don’t understand much about. However his love is never returned and all of the father’s actions are shown as hollow and without any care. Burroughs’ memories of his father become much more frightening and violent as the memoir progresses and he becomes older, as he begins to realize that his father is a violent drunk, who shows the outside world one personality while he terrorizes his family with another. Burroughs begins to hate his father with a burning rage, even though he still yearns for his father’s approval, and he even thinks about killing him. In fact the way young Augusten pronounces dad actually sounds more like “dead,” showing perhaps the morbidity of his thoughts. Several times throughout the book Burroughs says that he realized that there was something essentially “wrong” about his father. “That word, again, came to my head: wrong. Something inside me uncoiled. It was knowledge. It was the knowledge that my father was actively missing an essential human part” (Burroughs 118). Throughout the memoir Burroughs memories of his father only continue to grow more and more disturbing, even after he escapes from his father’s clutches.

            Asides from being riveted by the dark story that Burroughs had to tell, I was amazed at how much detail he had in his memoir. The majority of this story about his dysfunctional home life with his father took place when he was very young, yet he includes incredible amounts of detail, such as dialogue that occurred between his father, mother, brother, and himself, even when he was only five years old. I personally don’t think I can remember any conversations I had when I was five years old. I can remember some events, but only ones that were especially exciting when I was five years old. This leads me to wonder how much of these memories Burroughs truly remembers, and how much he has had to recreate in order to make them complete memories. Or, maybe, since so much of Burroughs childhood was traumatic it gave more meaning and memory to each and every event in his life. I, on the other hand, lead a pretty happy, easy going childhood so it mostly just blended together and was forgotten by my uncaring, five year old memory. Either way, even if Burroughs had a significantly better memory than I, I still doubt that he could’ve remembered all the precise details he used to create this memoir (unless he had a photographic memory). Yet I understand that there is some leeway when telling a memoir, as everyone remembers past events differently, and Burroughs seems to be harshly honest about everything in his memoirs, which leads me to believe that his story is as accurate as he could portray it according to his personal memory. All three memoirs that I have read of his seem to match up pretty well, despite being about three completely different times in his life. Each time he critiques himself, his life, and the people around him very honestly, even when this turns out to be very revealing on an intensely embarrassing level.

A Wolf at the Table is definitely a must read for anybody who wants to know how to write a good memoir, or is just looking for a good read, as Burroughs is a master story teller. By using his dark style of humor, Burroughs gave a riveting recounting of his traumatic childhood that kept me entertained and on the edge of my seat for the whole ride.

Works Cited

Burroughs, Augusten. A Wolf at the Table: a Memoir of My Father. New York: St. Martin's 2008. Print

My Thoughts On Religion

When people ask me what religion I follow I like to reply with "I'm not religious." I think that this describes how I feel more than the pre-described categories of the varying levels of religion. People like to classify everything though, and if I had to throw myself in one of the categories I would probably be agnostic, though I teeter on the edge of atheism. I don't believe in God, or gods, or any greater being that is all powerful and mighty. There is just no hard evidence (or that much logic) behind the majority of religious claims, especially when you look at all the contradictory elements of religion as it has spread out into different sects throughout the ages.

Yet, I also don't see any evidence that eliminates any possibility of a god-like figure, some being that isn't human and possess vast, unknown abilities that are incomprehensible to even our smartest scientists. I know that we simply just don't understand enough about the universe yet to know with any certainty how the whole thing came about.

It is theorized that the universe started from an explosion, the Big Bang, and all matter came from that one instantaneous moment. But what was before that? Nothing? That hardly seems possible either. Because what is "nothing?" There's another concept that I don't think the human race can comprehend. I certainly can't. Nothing is the absence of anything, which means it's impossible to picture it even because nothing would have no color, neither black, white, or anything in between. It's very confusing to think about.

But what I'm trying to get at is that the Big Bang theory is just that: a theory, which in effect is exactly what religion is: a bunch of different theories. The problem is that religions are very outdated, and unlike scientific theories of today, they were made with a limited understanding of the world and the universe at large.

Nobody knows exactly how the universe came about, or what reason there is for all of us to exist on this planet. There are many who say they know without a shadow of a doubt, but there really isn't any evidence to back up their claims. I won't tell you I have any idea, because I honestly have no idea, and I don't think anybody truly does. That's why I don't flat out reject anyone's ideas, even though I know that many are pretty ridiculous. Because who knows, any idea just might turn out to be the right one.

Tired

I'm tired.

Not just because I was up until 4 am last night. Life is making me tired. It just keeps rushing on and on.

Classes.
Homework.
Work.
Friends.
Relationships.
THE FUTURE.

There's never a moment when one of these isn't looming in the back of my mind. The older I get the larger the pile-up of worries grows in my mind, like a pile of dirty laundry growing in my closet. The laundry is easy to get rid of. I simply have to quit being lazy and carry it 50 feet to the laundry room. The worries aren't so easy to wash away.

I sometimes wish there was a pause button I could hit to stop the rush of life, if just for a moment. If I could stop the ebb of time I could stop the perpetual pile up of worries and stress. All I want is a few days without anything to think about, with nothing to plan for, no assignments due, and to be relied on by no one. A few days of solitary nothingness to just catch up on some much needed rest of my mental state. Because life is tiring.

I guess going to bed earlier could help too...

The Day I Drifted

Last week, as I began to rise from my chair at the end of a class, I was flooded with a sudden and startling head-rush, that feeling that occurs when you get up to quickly and feel like you're going to faint. The sensation was so swift and intense that I had to grasp the table in front of me to keep from toppling over. Instead of going black my vision simply disappeared in a fuzzy wave of non-existence. I felt as if my body no longer had any mass and I was aware only of the desire not to lose total consciousness. Thankfully, my clutch on the table in front of me kept me anchored as I weathered this storm.

The sensation quickly faded, but as I picked up my backpack and headed out the door, I felt oddly detached from everything around me. It seemed like I was drifting over the uneven sidewalk, instead of striding as usual in my lanky, sometimes awkward gait. I paid no attention to the people I passed. I wasn't ignoring them, but their presence simply didn't matter to me in my listless, drifting state of mind. Normally I observe the world and the people that pass by around me, but for a few eternal minutes I felt like I wasn't part of the world that I was passing through. All of my worries, joys, and cares no longer mattered. I just existed, and that's all there was to it.

When I made it back to my building this feeling started to fade just as the head-rush did. When it was gone entirely I felt a strange sense of loss. It had showed me an entirely different perspective of life, and though I had felt emotionless and detached, it had been oddly comforting. To be without feeling is to be without pain, and that is what I achieved for those few minutes as I drifted through the world.

All The Time In The World But No Time At All

It seem to me that I never have the right amount of time to do anything. I either have to much, or too little.

What's the problem with having too much time you ask? Well it may not be a problem for some people but when I find myself with nothing to do and lots of time on my hands, it's almost impossible for me to get any work done. Even if I have multiple long assignments due, I just simply can't bring myself to do them, unless they're due in less than 24 hours. It's not that I don't try though. I'll open Microsoft Word, write a heading, read over my assignment, sit and attempt to think about what I'm supposed to do... and then I find myself getting agitated. I start thinking about how much time I have, and how I can easily finish this work later. I might leave Microsoft open in hopes of feeling motivated while I surf Facebook or Stumble endlessly across random websites, but I always fail to return to my work until I start to feel the due date looming.

Even on the rare occasion that I am able to kick start myself into being productive before the pressure is on, it seems like  I'm always interrupted before I get too far. My roommates will start doing some fun activity that ends up drawing me away, or they'll convince me to join them in a round of video gaming which then turns into hours of gaming. Or, I might write a few really good sentences and then feel so good about starting early that I allow myself a break that ends up being more of a sabbatical.

If I'm not feeling the pressure of time beating down on me, it's just not time for me to do work. I turn the saying,  "work first, play later," on its head. I'm not always proud of this, but since it works for me, I'll just have to deal with having too much time, or none at all.

Writing Dreams (Workshop Essay)

What are dreams?

It's not such a simple question. Think about it for a second. During our waking moments we perceive all around us as reality. We know that the people, the buildings, the trees, the earth, and the sky are all tangible things. We accept gravity and the limitations it imposes on us and our lives. You drop a ball and it will fall to the ground. Birds can fly and we cannot. Fish can breathe underwater and we humans are stuck on land. Rarely if ever do we question whether the rules of our world make sense.

Yet, this is also the way it is when we’re in the dream world. There are no constant rules that ever apply, yet we almost always accept the events that occur there as reality, or at least we do while they are happening. I have met animal human hybrids, flown through the skies on an airplane that could fit through an open window, and fought in wars against an army of Alice in Wonderland card warriors. Any of these should’ve shocked me into questioning the reality of my world, but when I was dreaming about them I had no doubts about their authenticity. I only recognized how impossible they were when I awoke from my slumber. To me, those dreams were as real as any reality that I had experienced in my 20 years of life.

This brings me to the question: How real is reality, when we have trouble deciphering the difference between reality and fiction? That’s all dreams are after all aren’t they. Fictional events that we perceive as real. Our minds create these fictional situations and stories much as a writer would create the plot to a novel, albeit an extremely jumbled and scattered novel. Instead of reading about the events taking place we are placed into them, and are told (by our minds) that what we are experiencing is real. There is no protagonist to root for, as we are the main characters in every story. Sometimes our minds even decide to write our dream stories in the third person, and we witness ourselves living out the events from somewhere outside our bodies. (If this has never happened to you it’s so surreal that it’s hard to explain. It’s another experience that should certainly make us realize the impossibility of a dream, though it rarely does.) Our minds may decide to write a horror story one night, a comedy the next and then a sultry romance the night after that, and we are stuck in whatever role that we are thrown in. These stories created by our minds unfold in ways that sometimes leave us breathless, excited,  or relieved, just as a good book often will.

I started thinking about these similarities between a fiction story and a dream, and it made me wonder… would it be possible to take over control from my subconscious and compose my dreams the way I wanted them to be? It seemed like a ridiculous question when it first popped into my mind, but one day I found an article online on lucid dreaming. I had never heard of this phrase, but as I began to read I started to become excited. Lucid dreaming, it said, was the ability to recognize that you’re dreaming, and then control the events of your dream. The possibilities were limited only by the boundaries of the dreamer’s imagination, and the best part: it was possible to train yourself to develop this ability. I was ecstatic! I immediately decided that I would train myself to lucid dream, no matter what it took, and experiment with this whole new world of unlimited boundaries.

I started keeping a dream journal and wrote down every dream that I could remember. Whenever I woke up during the night or in the morning I would record everything that I retained in my memory. This was supposed to allow me to remember my dreams more vividly each night, and it began to have an effect. I began to remember three or four dreams a night, and I recorded each one in my notebook. Contrary to what one may think, everyone has several dreams a night, even when they can’t remember a single one. As I became more in touch with my night time world, I increased my chances for becoming lucid during a dream. I also tried to look for visual clues to show that I was dreaming. In the dream world letters and numbers never stay constant, so if you look at a book or a clock, look away for a moment, and then look back, the letters/numbers will have changed if you are dreaming. This should allow you to become aware that you are in a dream, and hopefully achieve lucidity. You have to truly believe that you are in a dream though, or it won’t work. For a month or two when I was first trying to become lucid, I would randomly glance at words or letters to see if I was dreaming, but unfortunately I was always in reality.

When I finally achieved my lucidity one night, it wasn’t through the use of any of the techniques that I had read about, though I do give credit to my dream journal for allowing me to become more comfortable with the dream world. I was in my bed in my room at home, and for some reason there was a river flowing across my floor that gushed out of my doorway in a waterfall. As I sat there in my bed, the simple idea occurred to me that I was dreaming, because there wasn’t a river in my room.

As soon as this thought crossed my mind I sprang to my feet and I realized that I was lucid. I was aware that I was dreaming. It was a shocking realization, because it meant that I had control over my body in the dream, while back in reality my physical body was asleep. Even more shocking was the fact that I could literally do anything that I wanted. Anything. No consequences. This possibility simply doesn’t exist in the real world. I had the power to write any story I wanted. I could be the hero, the villain, the observer. I could run my dreams in whatever setting I wanted, from blazing deserts to the bottom of the ocean. The world wasn’t the limit. My imagination was.  

Smiling from ear to ear, I jumped off my bed… and flew out the door.

Random Smells/Emotions/Memories Class Exercise

Last week was my turn (along with my partner) to run the class exercise. We decided to bring in a bunch of random items with distinct smells, put them in covered cups, and then pass them around. Everyone then wrote down a word or two that each cup smell reminded them of. Then, we gave them the task of picking the two smells that evoked the most emotion in them, and then asked them to write about these emotions.

Some of the most interesting stories of emotion were the ones that you would never have guessed could be connected back to the particular smell. For instance my favorite one was a short reminiscence of loneliness. The person smelled salt and vinegar potato chips, and it sparked in them a memory of a lonely time in their life. It is these unique moments like this that I was hoping to get out of this exercise.

After everyone wrote about their two emotions, we asked the class to then write a story that combined their previous two stories/emotions/memories in any way that they could. This ended up being a little more challenging. I think that for some people it was difficult because they're two pieces were too different from each other, and there just wasn't enough time to connect them. What I was hoping for was for the class to find new ways to connect different emotions and memories from their lives, or discover new insights into these emotions and memories. and in some instances I think this happened. One of my favorite combined memories/emotions story for this was a classmate who contemplated how much easier it would be to do his laundry if he could be hypnotized into thinking it smelled like donuts. This is such an interesting and unique thought, and it only came to be by attempting to associate two random smells/memories/emotions.

The exercise went pretty much as planned, and it resulted in some pretty interesting stories. It made me realize that something profound could be written by connecting even the most random and inconsequential instances in our lives.

20 Years of Halloween

Next weekend I will experience my 20th Halloween. I have some pretty fond memories of Halloweens past, as I love coming up with cool homemade costumes. Some people enjoy buying pre-made costumes, but I've never been a fan of those. They just always seem so fake to me, unless it's one of those insanely expensive hundred dollar outfits. Homemade is definitely the way to go. (Homemade might be a slightly inaccurate word as I still buy things here and there to complete my costumes.)

The earliest homemade Halloween costume I can remember wearing is a hand sewn and hand stuffed T-Rex outfit that my Mom made out of an old pair of red pj's. She made a tail out of red material and filled it with stuffing before sewing it onto my pajama bottoms. Then she used more red cloth to sew together a tyrannosaurus head that went over mine. I was able to peer out through the pointy, tooth filled mouth. I remember always bumping into things and people, (sometimes on purpose) my stuffed tail swinging behind me. I think it was that costume that started my love for creating homemade outfits every year. It's just exciting thinking about all of the different ways to create something unique out of items that can be found laying around the house. You can make a great outfit out of practically anything.

Don't believe me? Well here's a list of some of my favorite costumes from my past 20 years of Halloweening, thrown together mostly from things I found around my house (or from cheap items that are easy to buy).

1.) The Robot: This was one of my earliest costumes. I was a shiny metallic robot from the future. I think I even won first place at the school Halloween contest for it.
Materials needed: cardboard box (for the head), toilet paper rolls, flexible plastic tubing,  sweatpants (the shiny kind), rubber gloves, can of silver spray paint (cover everything with this it instantly makes you look futuristic).

2.) The Two Headed Monster: This might be my favorite costume ever. For this my best friend and I went to the Salvation Army and found an enormous shirt, two gigantic pairs of pants, and two pairs of large shoes. Then we cut the two pants up and sewed them together to make a three legged bottom. After this we enlarged the neck-hole of the shirt and sewed the middle together. This completed the construction of the costume. My friend and I struggled into the three legged pants, with my left leg and his right leg both stuck into the middle pant-hole. We also had to fit both our feet into one of the huge shoes. After this, we became the two headed, three legged monster.
Materials needed: large shirt, 2 large pairs of pants, 2 large pairs of shoes.

3.) Neo (from the Matrix): This costume is pretty self explanatory (as long as you've seen The Matrix). The Matrix is one of my favorite movies so I was in love with this costume, plus it was very easy to make.
Materials needed: black overcoat (my Mother's but it worked), black boots/shoes, black sweatpants, black shirt, cool looking sunglasses. You don't have to have one but a fake pistol will really tie the outfit together. Then you can have staged gun battles and show off your "Matrix moves."

4) Evil Hag carrying a baby: This is definitely one of my more interesting costumes. For this I had to dress my face up like a baby's, and then I took the head off one of my sister's old baby dolls (it was practically falling off anyways) and I attached the dolls body to my back. I had to make it appear as if my head was attached to the dolls body. Then I hung a creepy, witch mask around my neck so it rested on my chest. After covering the rest of my body in a black cloak (any black or witchy material will do) it appeared that  I was a humpbacked with carrying a baby on its back. It sounds a little confusing with out being able to see it, but it was a great costume. Everyone I saw that night did a double take when they first saw me out of confusion.
Materials needed: headless baby doll, some make up, witch mask, black witch-like clothes.

Well that's enough costumes for now, I wouldn't want everyone to take ALL my ideas just yet. If you hang around long enough maybe ill let you in on a few more next Halloween.

Blanket Forts Are the Best

When I was young I loved building forts in the basement of my house. There was never much planning involved, I would simply feel a sudden inspiration and then I'd start grabbing anything I could find that could be turned into fort building material. Card board boxes, blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, clothespins, couches, rubber bands. I'd spend hours figuring out how to attach all these objects to each other and to the ceiling and walls. Blankets and sleeping bags were the basic building blocks. They would form the walls and roof of fort. The clothespins and rubber bands were nails and screws. I would use them to attach the blankets to each other and to solid parts of the basement (ceiling, walls, bookcase, couches). Pillows would then become the doorways and beds and couches in my new home. If I was lucky enough to have a large cardboard box lying around (the best were the huge refrigerator and washing machine boxes) then I would create little side-tunnels and hallways to secret rooms of my fort.

I would continue adding and adding to my creation until I became too tired or hungry to build any further, which sometimes took hours and hours. Often the fort would cover a whole half of the basement, making it impossible to get from one side to the other without crawling and winding your way through the tangled maze of my cozy hideaway. I would then leave my fort standing for as long as possible (it depended on how long it took for my mother to become too annoyed with the mess), which could be anywhere from a day too a couple weeks. When I would finally have to take it down, it would only be a matter of time before I started the next one.

For some reason I started to think about my fort building days this past weekend. Maybe it was because I had a lot of excess time to do anything I wanted, like in my childish days, but I suddenly had an urge to relive the joy and adventure of tearing a room apart to make another room of your own design. Since my own college dorm room wasn't really adequate for fort building, I convinced my girlfriend that we should build one in her town-home room. She wasn't entirely thrilled by the idea at first but that was before she knew that I was a master fort builder. It was difficult at first since I had limited space and materials to work with, unlike my work-space back at home, but eventually I managed to throw together a workable blanket fort, complete with a mattress floor, a lamp (which doubled as a ceiling beam) and a mini table for snacks and drinks. Here's what it looked like from the outside:

Kinda shabby by my own blanket fort standards, but it reminded me of easier times, when the biggest issue on my brain was whether Mom was going to make me eat broccoli for dinner (if so I might as well just stay in my fort). The older I get the more responsibilities I take on, and the less time I have to devote to simple things like blanket forts. It may seem childish, but I wish that life could be as simple as it was in those days.

So every once in a while, if I'm feeling bogged down with too much work or stress or I'm just sick of being grown-up, I think I'll check back in on my childhood and throw together another blanket fort. Then I'll crawl inside and push aside responsibilities and worries for a while. Those things simply aren't allowed in blanket forts.

I Think I'm in Love With Clint Eastwood

Who doesn't love a good Western? Alright probably quite a few people. I think it's kind of an acquired taste. They aren't exactly mainstream these days. I love the genre though, with its gritty frontier setting and its courageous, rough around the edges, pistol wielding heroes. There's always a struggle taking place between good and evil, though the line between these two is often hard to see. The best part about Westerns though is the one liners. Epic quotes made by heroes and anti-heroes and villains that are as classic as the genre itself. One of my favorites is a line by Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (if you've never heard of this movie then you might as well just stop reading now). 


"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."


Classic! I mean it's not quite a ONE liner but still, Clint's a complete bad-ass.

Anyways if you are a fan of Westerns, and you know some of the great classics (Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, The Magnificent Seven, any John Wayne movie, and even  Blazing Saddles) then have I got a treat for you. I recently watched the film Rango, which came out earlier this year and at first glance appears to just be an animated children s movie. However, it's actually a film aimed more at an adult fan-base with knowledge of the Western genre and past Westerns classics. I admittedly was drawn into watching the movie because Johnny Depp plays the main character in the story, a lizard named Rango, however as I got further into the film I become more and more exuberant as Western references popped up as fast and furious as microwaveable popcorn. By the end of the film I was practically in tears because I was so happy with the amount of shout outs the film gave. (Does that make me a Western nerd or something along those lines? I might be a little too obsessed.)


I don't want to ruin too much of the movie for anyone so I'll just list out a few of my favorite Western references from Rango.


- When Rango is made sheriff he is given the same outfit that the main character in Blazing Saddles wears when he is made sheriff.
-Soundtrack music from Once Upon a Time in the West (also used in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) is used during climactic moments in the movie
-Rango wears Clint Eastwood's poncho outfit (worn in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) in the final battle of the film.
-There's a classic scene of a posse riding through Monument Valley, paying homage to John Ford's movies in which John Wayne starred.


These are just a few of the multitude of references hidden in the Rango. However I've saved the best one for last. I'll describe it as I saw it. 


Near the end of the film Rango goes on a spiritual journey and discovers "The Spirit of the West." At first all I could see from the shot was a golf cart full of Oscar awards and the wavering silhouette of a man in the dazzling whiteness of the desert. The "Spirit of the West" was facing away from the camera. Then, as Rango drew closer, I could see that the man was wearing a poncho and looked suspiciously like Clint Eastwood's character from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I started to feel a little bubble of excitement, but I managed to keep my cool. Then the man crouched down with his back to the camera, and spoke. I knew from the first two words that my suspicion was correct, and I immediately jumped out of my seat in pure joy, shouting, "Yes! Yes!" My favorite western hero, Clint Eastwood, was the "Spirit of the West." What a fucking bad-ass.

Hover Lover

When are we going to get our hover-cars? We're more than a decade into the 2000's and society is still stuck in a boring world of rubber to asphalt travel. Airplanes don't count. If technology is progressing so rapidly these days then how come I still can't hop into my own personal flying vehicle? 90% of all futuristic movies and stories depict worlds with crowded, noisy skies full of people cheerily zooming about in hunks of shiny metal.

Well I say the future is NOW. (Hmmmm... that sounds like a campaign add.) All we have to do is figure out how to create an anti-gravity field and Bam! Hover-cars. At least that's about as much as I understand from surfing the web for 5 minutes. So scientists, get on that. Or else. Seriously, I'm going to be real pissed if I die before I get my hover-car.

The Summer I Invaded Normandy workshop essay

I was there when the beach was taken.

Smoke blurred my vision and watered my eyes. I crouched behind a wooden barrier, sweat drenching my body as I tried to figure out a plan. The sun was at its zenith, glaring down viciously upon me and the teeming mass of people fighting for their lives. We were nearing the edge of the German’s defenses, and the firefight was becoming ever more dangerous. I could hear swearing and cries of distress coming from up ahead. I had to get back in the fight. It was kill or be killed. Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself to my knees and tried to peer over my bunker, sticking my head out like an overly paranoid prairie dog.

 Pop Pop Pop!

I flung myself flat just in time as my hideout was peppered with a barrage of angry projectiles. I lay there for a few seconds, letting my pounding heart slow before I forced myself to rise again. This time I peered through a hole in my wooden protector, and I could see several dark forms, well protected by the shadows and walls of their defenses. I slumped down against the wood and glanced behind me, thinking. That’s when I saw him. In the initial rush I had become separated from my unit, but now I saw one of them, crouched several yards back, using a metal barrel for protection. I could see he was in a bad spot, and besides being in my squad, he was a good of mine. So I yelled out to him,

“Chris! Over here! Make a run for it I’ll cover you!”

He gave me a quick nod, and tensed his body up like a runner waiting for the starter gun. Clenching my gun with my right hand, I held up my left and gave him the countdown.

“Three, Two, One… Go!”

I spun and rose at the same time popping my gun and head over the barrier, firing before I even had a target sighted. All I had to do was keep the German’s from firing at Chris until he slid into safety. Hopefully I could keep them off myself as well. I frantically pumped the trigger of my gun as I heard projectiles slam into my bunker, and when I felt a few graze my clothing, I dropped like a rock. As I lay on the ground, ammunition still zinging by overhead, I glanced over and saw Chris crouching next to me.

“Well that wasn’t so bad,” Chris said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Ha! Maybe for you,” I said, “I was the one they were all aiming for.”

“Eh whatever,” he said as he started to stick his head out, looking for the enemy.

“Chris be care-“ I stared to say, but before I could finish I heard him yell and a split second later fall back behind the bunker. He looked at me, his eyes wide and his jaw sagging in shock.

“A- Am I hit?” he stammered.

I slowly reached over and felt the oozing liquid staining his forehead. With a sinking feeling I realized that he’d been shot in the head. I wanted to lie to him but I couldn’t.

“I’m sorry buddy, but you’re dead.”

He groaned. “Aw shit.”

Then he stood up, waved his hands over his head, and shouted, “I’m dead! Don’t shoot!”

As I watched him walk off the field, I realized that I was once again alone behind my sad wooden bunker. I stared down at my fingers, squishing around the oozing white paint I had wiped from Chris’s forehead. I peeked out as I had several times before and saw that the Allied forces had pushed forward some more. I pondered for a moment whether I should wait for Chris to come back. But… I had to help the troops.

I decided. I wiped my fingers on my camo pants, hefted my paintball gun, and tensed myself. Taking a deep breath I leaped into open space. It was time to kill or be killed.

After all, this was war… wasn’t it?

One Rant, Hold the Cheese

I've noticed rants popping up on several other blogs, so I've decided to give one a go. Today I will be discussing  the pains of working in the field of food service. I am currently employed at the College sandwich shop,and though I normally find no fault with my job, some of the people I'm forced to serve are unimaginably frustrating. The type of frustrating that makes me wish that I had arsenic at hand to mix in with their mayonnaise.

Now there are typically three different categories of people who drive me crazy. The Ignorant Imbeciles, the Mean Mumblers, and the Phonies.

Let's start with the Ignorant Imbeciles. I know this seems like a rather harsh title but I find it to be pretty accurate.  These are the people who come up to the counter and ask me to make a sandwich, but they know absolutely nothing about the sandwich making process. They don't even know what basic ingredients are for making a sandwich. I've had people ask me what tuna salad is, what buffalo sauce tastes like, and there was even one girl who made me hold up a bottle of Italian dressing to see what it looked like. It's a sandwich shop people! If you don't know what simple sandwich making materials are then don't come to my shop.

Next, I'd like to berate the Mean Mumblers. These are the people who talk so softly, or quickly, or illegibly that I have to ask them again and again what in the world they want. I usually wouldn't mind that much, since I myself have a tendency to mumble sometimes, but these people will respond rudely, as if it's my fault that they couldn't form a clear, concise sentence. It's never a good idea to be mean to the people who make you're food, but Mean Mumblers obviously haven't figured this out.

The last group of sandwich shop customers that get under my skin are the Phonies. I don't call them that because they're fake, though they very well may be. I'm actually referring to the fact that throughout the entire sandwich making process, they keep a cell phone glued to their ear and blabber away. When you need to get their attention all you can do is stand there and stare at them until they snap out of their precious conversation. These people will often just stop long enough to quickly blurt out their desired sandwich composition and return to ignoring me. When this happens, I don't worry about making them a decent sandwich. If they aren't going to give me any respect, then they shouldn't respect any in return. If I can't remember everything they wanted when they blurted out their order, then I just leave the sandwich as is, throw it on a plate, and watch as the Phonie grabs it and walks away without so much as a thank you. At most I might get a quick head nod.

So just a warning to all, if you fall into any of these categories, be careful when eating your next sandwich.

To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question

Actually it's not really. The question I mean. I have to post on this blog if I want to do well in my Adv. Non-Fiction class, so I really didn't ponder over whether I would or would not blog, in fact I'm not really sure why I even titled it thus. The real question is what to blog, what to blog? Which I haven't really figured out yet. I guess I'm in the process since I have this much written already, but what is this blog about? I sort of want to delete whats written so far, but its 5 o-clock in the a.m. right now and I've procrastinated so dismally well so far, that I'm afraid if I delete these past few sentences that I might just give up and go to bed. Though then I guess the question posed by the title would indeed be valid... except the title would no longer be there, and none of what I've written would matter.

I guess this is what happens when you say "fuck it" and dive headlong into a post with no real plan or theme or even any idea where in the world you're going. Maybe this represents my life... Ah Ha! Here it is. I've come to a point of meaning in my ramblings. It's taken me all this nothing to come to realize that this is how I approach a lot of the things in my life.

Lets take college for instance. I'm in my third year here and I still don't have much of an idea of what I want to do with my life. Sure I'm doing well with my English major, but I have no real idea where I'm going with it. I just sort of dove headlong into it and now I'm almost done. I'll graduate at the end of this year since I came in with too many credits from high school dual credit classes. And then where will I be? I'll be like where I am now, at the end of this post, not sure if the path I just took was the right one, and not sure where to go, realizing that I probably should have planned ahead.

Yet... despite having just written that rather depressing sounding sentence about my so far listless life, I can't find it in me to be overly concerned about my future. As my class adviser once said to me, "You have a very positive outlook on life, and as long as you don't get cancer or  become maimed in a terrible accident, you'll be just fine." Yes he actually said that, or something along those lines. I hope that he's right.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Have you ever had a movie that you could watch over and over again? One that never got old and never ceased to entertain you? I've had movies that I thought I could watch over and over again every day until the day i died. The funny thing is that the only movies I can watch very repetitively are comedies. They're never incredibly complicated or dark , they're just movies that make me laugh. None of the movies I've ever been hooked on have been movies I would put at the top of my best movies list, and now that I'm thinking about it I realize that it's because the movies that are the most re-watchable are simple, undemanding movies. Sure I love a great, complicated thriller, like "Silence of the Lambs" or a mind blowing film like "Donnie Darko," but I can only watch those maybe once or twice a year. I love them and recognize their greatness but they just weigh too heavily on me. However give me a simple, funny movie, like "Hot Tub Time Machine" for instance, and I can watch it whenever there's a TV and a DVD player available. That's just the way it is.
  Now I've talked about how there have been movies I can watch over and over again, but I've gotten to the real topic I wanted to discuss: "Hot Tub Time Machine" (or HTTM for short). Though I have indeed watched certain movies over and over in my life, I don't think I've ever been addicted to one as much as HTTM. I'm watching it right now actually if you must know. It was the inspiration for this entire post. I'm not sure how I became so addicted to this movie, but every time I watch it I just feel content. I can sit down and watch it intently or leave it on as background noise when doing other things (such as blog for my English class). My roommate is also addicted to HTTM along with me, in fact he was the one who introduced the movie to me. We plan on watching it at least once a week this semester, and this is already the second showing since I've arrived at Brockport. It's hard to say what exactly about this movie draws me in so much again and again, but I just can't stop watching it. Try watching it yourself if you haven't already and see if you become addicted as well. It's not a movie take seriously or over analyze, but if you just watch and let the movie entertain you, you might understand the joy I get from it. Or you might hate it. Doesn't matter to me though. I'm going to get back to my movie now.