spyfoxguy's New Writeups

moths and stars (event)

2009-08-01T04:58:08Z

"Yes, Mark Apamea reporting here LIVE! Our age is truly a great time to be a moth. Not since Mothra took on Godzilla has the air buzzed with such incredible excitement.

Quote almost any philosopher you like - moths, by our very nature, desire to go toward bright lights...behind me is what happens when science promises to make our brightest dream of all come true.

"The Sun." The great light in the sky momma told us not to stare at. I don't know about you folks, but I still like to sneak my diurnal dose. In just T-minus sixty minutes, eight lucky astromoths will be the very first to investigate the surface of the celestial body. The next step on NASA's ambitious itinerary is Polaris. The star was once thought to be a hole in the canopy of our dark world, punctured by the gods themselves as an invitation to their very well-lit sacred realm. The ancient moths believed that we are destined to pass through one of these holes, but only in death. Today,…

July 23, 2009 (log)

2009-07-24T00:21:44Z

I hadn't been lifting for THAT long. The nausea was more a product of a Dark Chocolate Carnation Breakfast Milkshake that apparently had yet to be digested. As such, it was still capable of protest. The Meathead in me urged me to continue, shouting over an accumulating internal pool of bile.

The great thing about lifting for your own benefit (and not some team's) is that you take it just as seriously as you like. Gloriously spared any (self-interested) encouragements of a coach, I made for the bathroom.

And there I was, praying to the proverbial porcelain god. To date, I have gone my entire life (yes, that includes freshman year) without burning a drop of alcohol, and it had been a long time since I had hurled. Needless to say, I was a little nervous and a little excited.

Now I must fly in the face of the usual social norm of "sparing you the details." Said details are the reason I am writing this up. The puke, while meager in quantity, compelled me with its…

July 7, 2009 (log)

2009-07-07T05:11:52Z

Death makes angels of us all

And gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws.

Ryan and I were flipping and flopping back to the break room, discussing Jim Morrison and The Doors. "Jim was an amazing poet," he remarked with casual authority. I agreed out loud, yet held something back. If only he knew...it was right above our heads! At that very moment! My mind's eye looked with a twinkle to the high, vaulted ceiling.

Allow me to explain:

In that break room fifteen minutes earlier, we had been doing the very same thing. I had brought John Densmore's biography to work, and Ryan, an apparently huge fan, had taken notice. After a bit of erudite and "far-out" discussion, my long standing conviction that Ryan is a pothead was all but confirmed (for the record, I'm not) and it was once again time to go back to guarding the lives of some chronically boring swimmers. At least "Riders on the Storm" decided to come on the radio…

Get rich quick (idea)

2009-07-03T04:59:15Z

It was like any other musty relic at a musty garage sale in the musty garage, but something about it grabbed his attention. With a flash of his eye he read the cover - displaying just the title, printed so proudly that it left no room for the author's name: "Get Rich Quick Schemes." As a long-time adherent to his faith, consumerism, he had often longed for a book like this. Things weren't going the way they were supposed to, and he needed guidance.

Seeing this ancient self-help tome priced at a dollar made him self-conscious: he would have to purchase it nonchalantly. Act natural. He could not allow his excitement to draw attention to the true worth of his serendipitous find. The wrinkly, kind woman running the bazaar gave him a wise, knowing smile at the nearby checkout, and he handed her his tender. He was still fighting to contain himself, so Washington had to return the smile for him.

He walked out into the sun and opened the book with a squint. On page one it read:…

You Know That Kid... (thing)

2009-07-02T16:16:34Z

...who everybody bullied? In elementary school? It's nine years after we last made eye contact, and he friends me on Facebook. Chatting with him is a unique and novel experience, and a contrition opportunity as well. Actually, if memory serves me, I was the nicest to him among the 14 or so dudes in our class (but that memory might just be self-serving). I remember regretfully the secret in-group sign language us 14 or so dudes created, in which our bullied boy was the only proper noun and shared sentences with words like "butt." Hehe.

So naturally I feel sweeping waves of empathy and penitence, and most of me assumes Mr. Victim is just as I had left him so long ago. Perhaps the only thing that snapped me out of it was the replacement of immature words like "butt" with more mature curse words. Hehe.

The weighing process in my mind is a confused one, but he shows no indication of bad blood. In fact, he wants to hang out. I don't really, but subjected…

Guinea pig (idea)

2009-06-29T00:52:07Z

So I buried my guinea pig yesterday. I took it pretty hard, relatively - that is to say I was the only one in my family who shed tears over our diminutive departed critter (we'll call him "Furball" because that's his actual name). I had something of a disturbing experience during the short grief period. It had to do with the timing of my crying. At first, I was just like the rest of my family members, making a few comments about "life" or "it happens," filling the gaps with a few sighs (made obligatory by everyone else's). But then the memories welled up: his tiny, warm weight on my chest as I lay supine, his inquisitive nose checking me for the millionth time as if I were unfamiliar. He would then perch immutably there, claws and paws clutching my t-shirt, always somehow ambiguous between the two extremes of petrifaction and relaxation (this is the default state of a guinea pig). It was only then, picturing this, that I started to cry. I quickly realized that this was all wrong.

I…