Part 2 - Like Father, Like Son

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch" - Lewis Carroll

T-minus 1 week until F-day.

It was the kind of morning in which it seemed like something should happen. And indeed, "happen" was exactly was something did. And that something was this:

The day broke.

And on this especial morning, the day broke with an excessive amount of noise and commotion. The Royal Guard of Those Individuals Who Possess a Certain Knack for Fixing Things Which Break was immediately summoned to the scene of the supposed accident.

"First the suicidal Dumpy fellow and now this," muttered the first guard, "I need a raise."

"Well, look at it this way, First Guard, we did get to sharpen our 3d puzzle skills" said the second cheerily.

"That's all well and good, Mr. Second, but look at this mess," said First while pointing at the ground where the wounded day lie, "This is isn't a normal daybreak. This day actually broke!"

Second quickly acknowledged First's point and phoned his counterpart: Corporal II of The Royal Guard of Those Individuals Who Possess a Certain Knack for Fixing Things Which Broke. By the time the corporals arrived, the day was quite dead and forever broken beyond repair.

First Guard was rather angry after wasting his morning on something so far out of his jurisdiction. He had missed his favorite morning routine of watching his elderly father balance eels on the end of his nose and had also forgotten to arrange for a ride to school for Sid, his son. It didn't much matter though. Sid played hooky with the wild abandon of someone playing Russian Roulette with an empty gun.

The rules of hooky are simple. It's a sort of hide and go seek with the exception that if you're found, you must lie your face off until the seeker goes away. This game is played as sort of a warm-up to Cops and Robbers, which is then followed by Let's See How Many Times I Can Bang My Head Against the Prison Bars or Batman and Robbers depending on skill level and the severity of one's crimes.

When First got back to his house, he found that Sid had gotten a head start in the endless, pointless game of Hooky. First headed straight to The Hummus House. There he found Sid.

"Sid! I knew you'd be here!" exclaimed the worried father.

"How'd you find me?" asked Sid calmly. "Was it the note I left that said: 'I'll be at the Hummus House.' that clued you off?

"Well, yes....partially that," First coughed nervously, "but it was mostly father's intuition."

"Anyways," he continued, "You should come home. It's dangerous to be out on a broken day. Anything can happen. There are bandersnatchs and Jubjub birds everywhere!"

Sid put all his effort into looking as bored as humanly possible.

"Keep quiet, father dearest. I've decided to go have some fun with this." Sid unsheathed an impossibly large sword with a thousand pointed rivets. It looked more like a chainsaw or cactus than a sword, yet Sid tossed it from hand to hand with ease.

First looked a little surprised, "When I was a boy, I asked permission before I bought some piece of vorpal junk on craigslist. Now put that thing away before you poke someone's face off."

"Please, Dad? What if I just go and kill some monsters real quick?" asked the innocent little boy armed with the weapon of mass destruction. "I promise I'll be back in time for dinner."

"I suppose that's fine...but try not to get into trouble."

"Bye! Thanks, pops!" And with that Sid left, and skipped bravely into the woods with his meat cleaver in hand.

First started to order some hummus to-go, but then remembered something. He rushed out the front door of the Hummus House and called into the distance: "And stay away from Esquire Wellkey!!!

But it was too late. He had already gone.

Up next, Part 3 - "The Thrill of the Hunt" or "Here Wocky, wocky, wocky..."

Episode 1 - Stuff and Nonsense

"Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe" - Jabberwocky

But who am I to judge? If I was a tove in the prime of my life reduced to living in a wabe, I'd probably be gyring and gimbling a fair amount too. There was one particularly pathetic little tove, (we'll call him Ishmael) living in the most dangerous part of the forest, who had to share a habitat with the likes of the Jubjub bird, a Bandersnatch, and a psychotic, wild-eyed teenager wielding a sword. But that was all after Frabjous Day. The real story begins long before the frabjoulity of F-day; it begins at a time in Ishmael's life that was almost as sad, desperate, and pointless as the aforementioned. It begins here.

Fast-rewind to T-minus 2 years before F-Day. Ishmael can't stand his job, but keeps forgetting to file a Midlife Crisis vacation request. He had once been prematurely gray, but he's now prematurely bald. And worst of all, Ishmael's wife just recently discovered that his "wiffle ball league" doesn't actually "exist" and is, in fact, just an cover for him to spend time at the neighborhood pub, The Tulgey Tarts.

Ishmael's only friend in the world is a dragon-like creature, J. Edward Wellkey, with whom he shares an unlikely friendship consisting mainly of bi-weekly seances held with the primary objective of getting stock tips from the world beyond. So far, the only person they'd been able to contact was an individual who wasn't taking the whole "dead" thing very well. The advice they received was incredibly obscene and had much more to do with self-inflicted pain and embarrassment than stock futures. When the two friends weren't lighting incense candles and holding hands in a very no-homo sort of way, Ishmael and Edward would spend the day walking along the beach. Sometimes they took bets on which celestial object would win control of the sky. Other times, they listened quietly in hopes of hearing the mysterious Walrus recite. But most often of all, the pair would sit on the beach for hours just smoking marijuana and writing limericks such as these:

Ishmael's limerick:
There was once found a platter of tarts
In care of the brave knave of hearts.
His own mouth he fed,
Then "Off with his head!"
He now rests in peace in two parts.

And Edward's:
There once was a man from a place,
Who existed as matter in space.
He lived during time,
And enjoyed a nice rhyme,
Although occasionally he wrote in free verse.

Coming soon: Episode 2 - "In One Auditory Canal..." or "When I Was Your Age"

"Yes sir, Mr. Eastwood"

Could it be caused by the bumper crop of four-leaf clovers this year? Does it have to do with global warming? Is it possibly because the Sacred Shrine of Bearded Women has been rebuilt in an undisclosed basement in southern Philly? Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, and whatever the weak electromagnetic forces that brought it about, luck is in the air.

This morning I called into the radio station of MIX 105.1 (known better to the Romans as 1009 CV.I) with the goal of being the fifteenth caller . I was caller numbers 3, 11, and magic number 15. I enlisted in the game of Battle of the Genders. My goal was simple: to answer multiple-choice questions from female pop culture whilst my female opponent answered questions concerning the chromosomally advantaged sex.

The questions asked were unrelated to the answers so I'll provide only the latter here: Gucci. Jessica Simpson. Domenica. I got the first two questions correct using a complicated Nash equilibrium strategy known as random guessing. I missed the third question when my opponent started using witchcraft and sorcery. Lastly, I stated my name and correctly identified gold's counterpart to win the tie-breaker and thus, the game.

Now on an unknown Thursday at 8 PM at the Bob Carr, my sweetheart and I are to watch Wicked as performed by a 1000 mile displaced Broadway cast. I hope to bring home a Munchkin. I think that they're free with admission. Or something like that.

Irish Drinking Blog

If I was more interested in spending the holiday behind bars, I would don a pair of snazzy gloves and practice fierce finger aerobics on the scores of students walking barefacedly around campus without any hint of green vesture. It seems that anyone you ask will claim to be half or one quarter Irish, German, or some equally impressive ethnicity such as Icelandic. However as soon as a holiday involving colorful commitment to tradition arises, most individuals cry about conformity and just grab the nearest clean shirt they can find. It's a shame. A shameful shame.

To make matters worse, if you confront one of these confirmed rebels and question them concerning shades of jade, emerald, and lime, they will do one of three appalling grotesque things. They may threaten physical harm in exchange for the violation of their personal space. They may grin coyly and ask you exactly how certain you are that they aren't wearing anything of the desired hue. Or lastly, they may be a hopeless, loveless, desperate fool who all too eagerly suggests that you apply the prescribed punishment as much as you desire.

Patriotism is a dying dream. Mel Gibson seems to be the last person to really espouse this holy purpose made famous by his last minute 360 turn and lunge. You know someone is cool when they can make a violent piercing of a fellow actor's stomach translate into love for country. Unfortunately Gibby was not wearing green at the time, so the event must be chalked up to another Hollywood distortion of a painfully disappointing reality.

Happy St. Patty's Day, to the lepers and leprechauns alike.
Drinks all around.

Where is the love...

Beauty permeates every fiber of every particle of nature. There is so much potential for happiness for every person in every place at every moment. So why is there no peace on a personal or global scale? Simply put: self-love. Life is one giant prisoner's dilemma. We could all obtain great happiness simultaneously had we sufficient respect for others, however a purely dominant strategy seems to be the only game theory inherent in human nature.

In a perfect world, everyone would skip along merrily, holding hands, cloning unicorns, and doing other unspeakably naive things. But soon after this utopia forms, the most intelligent (or greediest) person will notice that they could be ever so slightly happier by taking more than their fair amount of time at the unicorn-cloning machine. The rest of the less de-evolved individuals soon follow suit, until government, and therefore welfare, is invented to redistribute the unicorn supply. Unicorn unions are created and demand equal rights for the hornies (or as they like to be called: individuals with aesthetically gifted foreheads). The final blow to happiness comes when the uni-union lobbies for the nation to abandon the unicorn horn standard, and instead back paper money with fairy dust. This obviously creates problems as the world's wealthiest citizens develop a nasty habit of floating into space whilst muttering quietly to themselves about the second bar on the right and straight shots all morning.

I said all that to say this: if we become more interested in society than ourselves, something nice might happen. But perhaps not. It's hard to tell.

Free WiFi

Something that irks me: Substandard internet connections.

The internet is a cruel mistress. Sort of like fate, the sea, and the last 3 bowls of chili at a family reunion. There is always just enough of a connection to allow you to listen to the first 8 seconds of a song, read the first 4 status updates on facebook, or check your 2 most recent (and ironically, least important) e-mails.

It's enough to make you violently wring the neck of a small dingo, yet not quite enough to make you actually go out and find the dingo in question.

And so here we are in a sad period of time, known deceptively as the 21st century, spending our day alongside an unsanitary number of dingos, humming quietly to ourselves the first few words of the week's most popular song.

This being said, I am offering a reward of $0.05 US to anyone who will bring me the head of either Al Gore or his long-deceased female alter ego Maria Von Trapp.

PS. The reward will be doubled if the head of either individual is still connected to a body.

Writ yet unread

Too many times, too many people, too many blogs,

Have fallen prey to the strongest force this world has ever known.

It conquers all with no prejudice.

Eventually everything slows, settles, subsides.

Into a crushing calm. Motionless silence.

Death or disrepair claims all.

Author after author after author after author

Learn the terrible truth at some time or another.

No one cares about the sporadic spasms of foreign fingers.

Keyboards are comatose. The click-click of mice is heard faintly in the distance.

Young writers typing along one word at a time.

Toward an imminent doom of disillusionment.

These public diaries lack the intrigue of private journals.

And the thoughts that are chosen to be published are the most boring of all.

We all learn that our inner thoughts, feelings, and desires are of no significant value to anyone besides ourselves.

Digital wind leaves thousands of web addresses lost in an ocean of amateur talent.

Digital dust settles comfortably upon every unread word.

Every vainly typed paragraph is forgotten.

--Another Unregarded author of another unregarded blog.