A Royal Feast

Alright, I know what you’ve all been thinking; “I bet all that Runaway Typewriter has been doing is sitting around eating chimichangas and watching Daily Show re-runs.” Well you my friends, are wrong. You’re even wrong if you’ve been thinking, “I bet he’s been slacking, lying on the couch for at least 4 hours every night, letting the dishes pile up, and eating bags of chips, while a bushel of apples rots on top of his fridge.” And those of you who thought all I’ve been doing is eating family packs of meat and watching Avril Lavigne videos while I play with myself… well you’re actually not that far off. But I have not been totally unproductive in my literary hiatus. My experimentations with food have transcended the dairy section of the Nutrition Pyramid. The latest concoction mixes meat with sweet in a puddle of grease. It’s the dessert breakfast for dinner. Akin to most of my ideas, I’m not sure exactly where this one came from. Like the Minotaur, my best ideas often come charging from deep within the catacombs of my ethereal mind, tearing convention limb from limb. On the menu tonight:

Chocolate Eggs

Ingredients:

- One loaf of Honey Oat bread

- Spicy chorizo (that’s a six pack of sausages, for those of you who don’t speak Spanish)

- One dozen Jumbo Free Run eggs

- One 9.5 litre jug of glacier water

- One tin of powdered Gatorade

And the most important ingredient:

- One Hershey Milk Chocolate bar (no nuts, just pure milk chocolate)

Preparation:

-Cook chorizo in butter, on low heat so all the grease doesn’t splash about your kitchen. You’re going to need that grease.

-The chorizo will take some time, so while you wait, grate the chocolate. A standard cheese grater will do just fine. Make sure you grate a lot, like a whole bowl, because you’re going to pick at it. Trust me.

- When the chorizo is done (make sure it’s done. I’ve seen the way chorizo is just left out on a table in the sun in markets. It’s E-coli in fly fodder format), put them in the oven (again on low heat) to keep them warm while you…

-Cook the eggs in all that grease (this is a fried egg recipe. Scrambled eggs are for cooks with two left hands. Left handed people need not read on). Really let the egg whites crackle in there, but flip them quite early, because the other side needs to cook long enough to…

- Melt the chocolate all over the eggs. Melt it all over. Sprinkle so much chocolate on the eggs that it looks like you’re deep frying doody. This is important, because you’re going to want enough chocolate on the eggs to dip the chorizo in it. The spicy and the sweet waging war on your taste buds really ties the meal together.

- Now, just as you’re ready to take the eggs off the pan, before they’re over-cooked, remember that you never put any bread in the toaster. Panic. Pick the pan up off the element to stop the eggs from cooking, burn your hand, and slam it back down. Grab a wet dish towel and push it onto a cool element.

- Get some bread in the friggin toaster!!

- Pace around the kitchen cursing at the bread to toast faster.

- Butter the toast. Be sure to use enough butter that it won’t all soak in. There should be a wet sheen of butter on top of the toast, like an oil slick near a nature preserve.

- Angrily scoop your eggs onto the toast. Notice that the yolks are hard. Curse again.

- Scoop the chorizo on top. Do this all recklessly. An aesthetic breakfast is a mess, like my table desk. There should be oil splashed all around the outside of your plate, like fruit sauce on a French dessert.

- Find your biggest juice jug and fill it with Gatorade, mixed to taste. Drink from the jug. That’s fewer dishes to leave on the counter.

Now sit down and enjoy your dinner. If your heart hurts at any point, as if trying to say that you should eat a fruit or vegetable, it’s ok to grab a handful of raisins from the bag of trail mix on your table desk. A small handful. You’re going to need room for the rest of that chorizo.

If you’ve followed these directions carefully you’ve had yourself a hell of a meal. Lay down, put your feet up, and try not to think too much. All the grease in your system is going to make it difficult to grasp any complex concepts for a while. Just veg right out, watch a Daily Show re-run, or if you’re feeling ambitious, look up some Avril Lavigne videos on the internet. You deserve it.

Ode to a Phone (an iPoem)

Metallic pink, silver, bejeweled,
Like a spoiled young girl’s tutu.
Try to get me on the horn,
It would belt out White Unicorn.
Text messaging was a breeze,
Fingers and thumbs flying on the keys.
Brain Challenge and Centipede,
My workplace drive did they impede,
But now it’s gone without a trace,
It could have gotten anyplace.
Between seats of a yellow cab,
Or spirited away by Queen Mab.
I won’t though, let this chance be blown,
This excuse to upgrade to iPhone.

To Did List

Things I did on my 30^th birthday:

- Not go to work

- Go for a long walk

- Open the half carton of milk that’s been in my fridge for over a year

- Shoot fireworks at said milk

- Buy a lottery ticket

- Wipe out trying to do bike tricks at the skate park in the rain

- Ride my bike down a hill standing up, with no hands

- Sit on the couch alone, drinking beer, and eating sausage

- Have dinner with The Momma

- Turn in early

The Chasm II - The Will to Live

Travel weary I rest for a while. My blood runs cold, like too thick a milkshake being sucked through a straw. I can barely discern a half-hearted beating in my chest. There is a mere flicker of warmth, like a candle in the breeze, barely able to stay alight. I reach into my coat, to the inside pocket. Numb fingers fondle around until they find their prize. In the palm of my hand is a weather beaten photo. Faded as it is I can still make out her face. When I look upon it it re-ignites the flame in my heart, and a surge of warmth rushes through my veins. My cracked lips turn up in a smile, and my resolve grows strong again. With a twinkle in my eye I gaze at the picture for some time. I have long memorized every feature, when I close my eyes it is there, but each time I look upon it I am stunned anew by its perfect symmetry. I am emboldened. I cry out, “You will not take me, cursed chasm! I will not succumb!” One last look, then I carefully put the picture away. I am ready to continue my crossing. I will make the other side.

I plod on.

The Chasm - A Bridge Too Far

I’m on a bridge. It’s a suspension bridge of sorts. It’s narrow, with room for only one to pass. It’s rickety, dangerous, every step a calculated risk. And this might be the longest bridge ever built. I can’t see either end. Sometimes I fear I never will. I tread wearily along with downcast eyes, trying to make headway, but looking down is a bad idea. It’s a long way down, a very long way down. Beneath the bridge is a never-ending chasm. The mere sight of it chills my blood and weakens my resolve with every beat of my frigid heart. This is the Loneliness Chasm. Upon this bridge there is no hope. Most men go mad before reaching the other side, hurling themselves into the very chasm that drives them to such despair. There are a few legends, of men returning from the bridge, but they were never the same. They lived the rest of their years with frostbitten hearts, blackened by the icy tendrils of solitude reaching up from the depths of that chasm of the damned. The Loneliness Chasm.

I plod on.

Do you question Socratic Method?

That's all I have actually. Just a sweet title.

Genometry is a book title I inadvertently stole

A few years ago Man mapped the human genome, opening a world of possibilities, one of which being genetic perfection. Imagine a superhuman race, with hay fever a thing of the past. Genetic enhancement has a romantic chime to it, but I didn’t always think so. There was a time I would have denounced genetic engineering outright. I would have said, “Nay, genetically engineer not, for we are created by God, in his own image”, but I have noticed over the years that Science can give us what Religion as yet cannot; tangible results, and my tune has changed (ok, I never believed in God, but shall we pretend for a while that I did?). The topic of morality in the world of gene research has always been a hot one, so I’m going to poke the coals a little and see if I can get a fire going.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that there is a God, and that we are created in his or her image (his from now on for simplicity’s sake). Does that not make Adam the original clone? This theory alone legitimizes cloning. God himself invented cloning, and by giving us the intelligence to do so ourselves, God condones it. How then can we argue that cloning is morally reprehensible and contrary to God’s plan? It seems to me like that was the plan all along.

To be fair, I don’t want God to be my whipping boy, for lack of a better term, the whole essay through, so I’m going to require a certain argumentative ambiguity to keep this up. Instead of taking the side of either Science or Religion, I’ll compromise, like everybody else who believes in it, with Intelligent Design. God becomes Creator, and I get to use a term without so much pomp attached.

Intelligent Design. Is it Religion? Is it Science? Is it a peanut butter and jam sandwich? We may never know. My best guess is that it’s an amalgamation of the two, concocted for the Science v/ Religion fence sitters who need a non-threatening Faith to cling to when Science lets them down. It is my intention to get to the point. If Intelligent Design states that there is a Creator, which it does, and that there was a grand plan, which it also does, does it not stand to reason that said Creator purposely created us with the ability to create for ourselves? I think the Science side has proven that to be so, and the frosted side says if this is the case, does it not also stand to reason that we were designed with enough intelligence to re-create ourselves in any image we might like? The door to designer genes opens thusly.

Let’s take a different tack. A cheetah can run fast, right? And it has sharp claws and teeth? And am I correct in saying that the cheetah uses these bounties to the best of its abilities? Not knowing a cheetah personally we can’t say so with certainty, but for argument’s sake let’s suppose that it does. Now, if the cheetah was given its abilities by the Creator, can we also suppose that it was meant to use them for its own good? Again, let’s assume so. By that standard then, could we say that if Man was given the intellectual capacity to discover the human genome, map it, and then begin genetically modifying ourselves for the better, or merely to our liking, were we not meant to do just that?

In conclusion, if we are crediting Intelligent Design with any kind of legitimacy, and if we're still following, we’re saying God (because let’s be honest, that’s what that means), if there is one, gave us the ability to improve on ourselves, and it would be an affront to God himself if we squandered that gift. God gave us diseases, defects, and really ugly people, as well as enough Intelligence to eventually figure out how to get rid of those things. Let’s show God his faith in us is warranted and take everything apart like a little kid with an old radio, except this time we’ll use the parts to build a rocket ship. A sexy ass rocket ship. That would do him proud.

Backseat Driver

Last night I dreamed that I was driving. I didn’t know where I was driving to, I might have been lost, but it was more like I was just driving around aimlessly, without a destination. I do know that there was a person in the backseat that kept telling me I was going the wrong way. It was driving me crazy.

“Turn right here. Change lanes. This is a dead end street.”

I wanted to kill the son of a b, but the farther I drove, the more it became clear that almost every choice I made that was purely in spite of my backseat driver was wrong. I consistently found bumper to bumper traffic, dead ends, one ways, obstacles, and construction zones. I drove on in denial for what must have been hours, becoming more and more frustrated because it never seemed like I was getting anywhere, until I finally gave up. On the verge of a mental breakdown I lost all hope, and listened. The backseat driver told me to turn left, and I did. I found myself on a beautiful stretch of road, with orchards and gardens on both sides, stretching as far as I could see. There were no other cars, no construction, no potholes. It was the idyllic street. I kept listening to the person in the back after that, and witnessed many wonderful things. I was never harried, never forced to slow down, everywhere I went was at my own pace. Eventually my backseat driver directed me down a short dirt road that led to a beach. I decided to stop and rest for a while, and listen to the surf. I munched on grapes I had bought at a farm stand and watched albatross soar upon the wind. As I was sitting there I realized that I was in swimming trunks, and had a beach towel on the seat next to me. “This is where I always wanted to be” I thought. It occurred to me then that I should apologize to the backseat driver, and thank him for his navigational advice. I turned around to offer grapes, as a dove would an olive branch, but was astonished to find the back seat empty. It didn’t make any sense. He was there, I had heard him only moments before, guiding me down to the beach. I knew he hadn’t gotten out, I would have heard that, but where could he have gone?

Puzzled, I turned back around to gaze at the surf and contemplate the events that had led me to that spot. I thought back to the beginning, when I was ignoring the voice in the back seat, and making all the wrong decisions. I realized that I’d known in every instance that I was choosing the wrong direction, but stubbornly plodded on because I didn’t like being told what to do. It was only in losing hope, in desperation, that I gave in to the voice and finally found my way. It was only when I asked for help, however reluctantly, that I was able to help myself. I awoke before my alarm with a rare awareness. I felt like I had stumbled upon something profound, but what? What was my subconscious mind trying to tell me? What, if anything, could I learn from this dream?

Freud might say I have an Oedipus complex, and Jung might claim it symbolizes the path of my psyche, a shy animal running equal parts fascinated and frightened around the central truth, drawing ever nearer, but never fully understanding what the hell it is. What is the centre? I may never know, asymbolically. I think the dream is far simpler than all of that. I think it was merely trying to tell me to smarten up, listen up, but most importantly open up, and stop ignoring whatever it is that’s been trying to guide me throughout my life. I think it was trying to tell me to stop making the same choices, and start listening to those inner voices. Of course another important lesson learned from this particular dream is that if you ever hear a backseat driver say, “Let’s stop at this farm stand,” your only response should be, “That is a damn good idea.”

Thought Colander

The problem with trying to live a spiritual, care-free lifestyle is that there are far too many people around who are not. I guess that’s why so many people struggle to find that peace of mind. There is just precious little peace out there. There’s far too much noise. I often find it hard to sleep with all that noise zooming around on the Collective Consciousness. It keeps me tossing and turning, trying to shut my mind off to it, but what I really want is open up and access it. I just don't want all of it. I want to tap into the psychic Trade Winds of knowledge, but I need some kind of filter to keep out all the useless, distracting information. Could there be such a thing? How do people meditate in the city? They must have devised some kind of filter for the subconscious that only allows what they need to pervade their minds. Where can I find something like that? My waking mind is bad enough, but at night it’s as if everybody is thinking at once, and my antenna is picking up all of it. I once dreamed of a silence tape that would drown out all sound. Now I dream of a thought colander, a butterfly net for mind, so I can frolic through the Meadows of Dreams catching only the most fascinating things, allowing the rest to fly on and bother somebody else.