If I don't get into Grad school, I'm blaming it on brain damage.

I have always been a huge nerd. Being known as a nerd is popular these days and my nerdiness still seems a bit odd, so it might be better to call me a dweeb.

I loved school. I suppose I took to heart the public service announcements that "knowledge is power" and figured that school may turn me into a superhero. In high school, I felt lucky that I was allowed my education for free and attempted to take every advantage of it. Through AP courses and extracurricular activities, I only had four classes I needed to take my senior year, yet I filled my schedule with electives like botany and advanced Spanish grammar. Expensive college was around the corner but high school would teach me these things absolutely free. Perhaps I was simply thrifty.

Illness was a nuisance I ignored as much as possible. If my brain was at least somewhat functional and I wasn't throwing up, I would drag myself to school. This would often result in my sickness escalating into some sort of super bug and once, nearly killed me.

I went to school for nearly a week with a pretty severe case of strep throat. I couldn't talk and I felt like crap, but I was taking notes! Eventually the strep throat turned into something much worse (I remember the Doctor saying it turned into a type of scarlet fever but I was hallucinating by then so who could say?).

I was pretty sure I wouldn't be making it to school the next day when it took me three hours to crawl up stairs to the bathroom to take out my contacts. I didn't even make it to the bathroom. My sister noticed me when I finally reached the top step and after I pointed to my eyes she brought me my contact case. She even offered me a thermometer, but I was cognizant enough to know that the only thermometer we had in the house was a rectal one; I was far too fascinated with mercury during my childhood for thermometers to survive long. Descending the stairs didn't take much time, gravity did most of the work.

My brother alerted my parents to the fact that I was having a seizure in the middle of the night. I was hallucinating (more on that later) and woke him up by shouting that I had hit my head and my brains were leaking out. Dad came down and pinned me to the bed so I wouldn't damage myself or my room while Mom called the hospital to let them know I'd be coming in.

Dad dragged me to the front door and went to his room to put some clothes on. Everything was far too hot, so I crawled outside and laid down in a snowdrift in my underwear. When my parents were finally ready, they chided me for going outside. I think they were upset that I had left the door open. Mom wanted me to put clothes on to go to the hospital, but the snow had eased the heat in my brain enough to allow me to threaten that I would vomit all over her if she tried to put clothes on me. Even though I insisted that that was where the heat lived, she forced me to at least wear a hat which I threw under the car before we left.

It is a fifteen minute drive to the hospital from my house, and I decided that the trip would be best spent with my head outside the window. My parents didn't enjoy the refreshing winter breeze like I did, so they forced my window shut. The car was stifling, so I opened my door to get at the breeze until they allowed me to roll my window down again.

Even though I had spent some minutes in a snowbank and fifteen more with my head lolling in the ten degree winter air of a sixty miles-per-hour car ride, my temperature was 103.9 at the hospital. Looking back, I wish I had taken the offered thermometer when I had the chance, for the sake of science.

I find my hallucination fascinating because, though my shouting that I had hit my head and my brains were leaking out implies that it was violent or frightening, the hallucination was, in fact, quite peaceful.

I dreamed I was riding a bicycle along a winding, hilly, tree-shrouded road (I encountered this road again later in a nightmare where I watched my dream son get hit by a car and twitch and jump in paroxysms of death, reminding me of the time I was following Dad home from church and he hit two of Aunt Sherri's cats. That frighteningly violent death-dance illuminated by my headlights is still easy to recall. I would find this road in the waking world too, as that which runs by the Morris' driveway in Maple Valley, WA.). In the reality of this dream, human life had been seeded on earth by aliens and they had secreted some of their alien genes into human DNA. Only recently had these genes made themselves known and then, only in a small percentage of people. If a person had the alien gene, when they hit puberty, they would undergo a change wherein they would develop spots on their neck and the sides of their face and their brain would advance beyond that of a normal human. In my dream, puberty was right around the corner and I hoped that I would end up having the alien gene even though many people hated and feared the part alien people.

I was riding down a very steep hill when puberty hit. I started to spasm because my body was transforming into a partial alien and I crashed my bike. I continued to tumble down the hill with no control over my body, entwined with my bicycle as it jabbed and bruised and bent about my body as I fell. Parts were very hard and painful while others were warm and soft and then the light came on in my room.

I couldn't move or feel but watched as my leg went up and kicked the shelf above my bed. Several books were dislodged and I saw my hand rise and smack them across the room as they fell. My dad ran in and sat on my chest and pinned my arms down. I still couldn't feel anything except a slight pressure on my chest that made it hard to breathe. My head turned toward the hallway and I saw my mom (though she was, in fact, still upstairs) wringing her hands, a perfect caricature of worry. Next to her stood a giant, muscular angel in a white robe. The angel started counting down from five, and when he reached one, my seizure stopped.

I will always hate you.

Enough time has passed to allow me to believe I can talk about this. It started out so well before turning to shit. That is the nature of things though, if they started poorly to begin with, you wouldn't invest your dreams in them enough to taste the blatant nuances of the shit they inevitably turn into. Nevertheless, if I ever see that thundercunt of a year again, I am going to stab her in the face. Yes, I believe that 2010 was a woman and no, I did not enjoy her.

I have always noted my seventeenth year of life as one of the worst I have yet survived. It was my last year in high school and my first year of real depression. I can't name anything specific that happened anymore, but everything was tinged with awfulness. This year was somewhat similar with fantastic bouts of depression punctuated by the stress of things like getting fired and applying to Graduate programs. Now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't blame 2010 but 27 for this crap. Perhaps I have entered a ten year cycle of notably shitty years, perhaps my depression is triggered by the apprehension of transitions. Remind me of this theory in ten years and I'll let you know.

I'm going to leave the blame on 2010 for now seeing as this is my year-end recap because that would make more sense. I made a list last year. I forgot to do a bunch of it and some things I did accidentally. Anyway, here it is:

Finish Don Quixote sculpture
Finish Baby Chandalier
make at least 10 trees
do some other sculptures like the picture colage idea or give the sexiest lamp ever a lamp
Do 100 consecutive pushups
do 100 consecutive situps
Get to 1000 miles before lauren has her baby
ride to Jen's parent's house for easter
ride a century
(STP?)
lose 50 pounds
Give up smoking, drinking, and meat for lent
fix at least one moped
get rid of crap car
have a kick-ass garden
read your height in books
read a large portion of my to-read books (currently a little more than two shelves=60 books)
read through the bible again
Make whiskey
Make Gin
Brew 5 beers
finish "taste of redding" stories
finish the ballad of Taylor and Quiznos
learn to play the banjo
save $10k
gorilla suit (life goal)
apply to grad school

I did a good job with the sculpture goals, though I did not make the baby chandelier because I have nowhere to put it now that my sister has moved to a small apartment. And it's a good thing I didn't put a lamp on the sexiest lamp ever because I now use her for my "making friends" project. I completed all of my bicycling goals and ended up riding five centuries and succeeded at Lent but I did not do the sit-ups and push-ups. I lost about 40 pounds but ended up finding them again. No moped runs, but I ended up actually getting money for Obi-wan Carnobi and my garden was awesome. I did not keep good track of my reading habits after the first three months of the year, but the stack of books I can remember only measures about 32 inches and at least 10 of those inches were classics so I feel okay about that, though I neglected to read through the Bible again. I met all my brewing goals, and even though two of my beers were cosmic abortions, I feel that I made up for it by brewing about 5 batches of cider and a couple of gallons of honey mead.

I finished more of the Taste of Redding stories but I've come to the conclusion that I will not be able to be completely done with them until I have quit the town completely (Just the other day a man came up to me in a thrift store and quickly explained how he had mated with a praying mantis and begged her to abort the monstrosity their coupling would create but she refused, gave birth, and then ate the child. One of the employees came up at that time and asked if he was bothering me. "No" he replied "We are all just looking for Gameboy cartridges," he stated before running from the store. . . I don't think this is a Taste of Redding story though, this could have happened anywhere). I did not even remember that I was supposed to write the Ballad of Taylor and Quiznos until I looked at this list. I am sad because I don't know if I remember enough to tell the tale and of all my notes I could only find these two paragraphs:

"You are fucking retarded. You know, all I want is for you to apologize and admit that you are the biggest asshole I have ever known." It wasn't the first thing she shouted, but stories must begin somewhere, and it is nice to know the terms of surrender at the beginning of a conflict. If I was to start at the beginning it would have to be before I ever even saw her.

He was the setter of the scene like the director of a Shakespeare play placing Juliet on the balcony just so and ordering a pillar or a bush or something to be placed on the stage so that Romeo will have something to stand by as he confesses his love. Our director introduced the scene by stumbling out of the back door and, with a flourish and a bow, vomited in a wide arc. The contents of his stomach hit the ground in wet plops that were not unlike the smattering of awkward applause from an audience who isn't sure what it is they are watching or when to clap, so a few individuals have decided to clap at various points in the play because it is important to show support for the arts. He sipped his miraculously unspilt drink as he stumbled back inside, secure in the knowledge that he had fulfilled his duty by directing our attentions to the stage upon which drama was about to unfold.

I'm pretty sure I was reading Terry Pratchet when I wrote that. The rest of the list are all successes though, except the banjo, that is moving to my 2011 list. Speaking of which, here it is:

Learn to play the banjo
Loose 50 pounds
Read a fuckload of books
Learn to meditate
Get a Moped running
Fix up the bikes
Make Daphne
Sell some sculptures
Attempt to practice normal people hygiene
Get to 1000 miles sooner than last year
Bike to Paradise for Easter, Chico century, Redding century, STP
Get into Grad School
Leave Redding forever
Climb a tree and shit from the branches (at least 3x)

I've started on some of these, others are out of my hands completely, and at least one of these is nearly impossible. 2011 may still turn out to be a shit year, but I figure any year that trades the traditional kiss and champagne toasts for a slap and violently painful flu has some promise. At the very least, it's all uphill from there. Right?

A title? Whatever, nevermind.

According to my nephew's chalkboard and my math, between the three times I've taken the GRE and the 6 schools I applied to I've spent $992 applying to Graduate school. Couple that with the four months I've spent unemployed and this may very well be the single greatest monetary mistake I've made to date. Everything is in the mail or already received so it is all out of my hands.

I discovered a few things about myself in this process, the foremost thing being that I hate my wife's laptop (every time I go to hit backspace I get backslash and I keep moving everything thanks to the touchpad mouse). I learned that I don't get writer's block. I have plenty of things to write about and I am only stymied when I try to write in a manner that is untrue to my voice. I think there were a couple of other things but I forgot them so the other thing I learned is that applying to graduate school is the worst experience ever. It is very slightly similar to any job application but all your dreams about the future are tied up in the process. Very few of the schools do anything to help because they make their websites so poorly organized that it is much easier to make a mistake than apply correctly and they give you three different ways in which you are required to submit your materials. I'm sorry but I haven't yet sired any children so I don't have the blood of my innocent progeny to sign my name with (sure it dangles but that's how I likez my participles).

While I edited and re-read all my writing samples several dozen or thousand times, I have lost all confidence in my submissions. I have to fend off panick attacks twenty to fifty times a day as I rethink every word. I am not allowing myself to read any of the stories I submitted but luckily I have up to five months to wait to hear back about my dreams.

I think I had a point to all this but I guess I just better get back to learning the banjo so my street performance career can take off.

One week remains: A countdown to destiny

In the backyard for my morning piss and the urine shoots out in two distinct streams like my dick is a little girl running around the trailer park after her drunken stepmom has tied her golden hair into cockeyed pigtails and I think "Yeah, I could be a fucking writer."

"I AM NOT A NUMBER, I AM A FREE MAN!"

I don’t know what I am doing. I woke up this morning wearing a shirt when I went to sleep naked. Stranger still, it is an old high school football shirt I didn’t even know I still had. Was I dreaming about high school? Did I do anything football related? Did I wander outside? The shirt is not backwards or inside out but the correct application of shirt on body is a one in four chance and I had to have dug into the boxes in the back of my closet for this relic so far that I have no idea what the statistical probability is that I ended up dressed as I am. Sometimes I love the mystery of my nocturnal peregrinations.

Sleepwalking aside, I still don’t know what I’m doing. I write a bit here and there and end up with absurdist bullshit about prank calls and dreams. I’m working on short story samples for my applications to MFA programs in creative writing and this is all I am able to slur out? I want to be a better writer, I want to help other people become better writers too, but you have to be a pretty damn good writer already to get into a program and I don’t think an honest desire for betterment will supersede shitty writing samples.

When I scored in the ninety-seventh percentile for the GRE verbal section I was invincible. Well, 97% invincible. I called everybody to brag about my quantified brain skills and was sure that I had guaranteed my place in graduate school; my score would give me confidence to polish my writing samples and would easily land me an assistantship to boot. And then I received my essay scores. I did not improve at all and my previous score that put me in the sixty-seventh percentile would have to stand as my best effort.

Who has two thumbs and appears to be a bit of an idiot savant in that he knows tedious words to a fairly impressive extent but can’t seem to string together enough words to form a cogent pair of essays? This guy.

And so I doubt and delay, never quite finishing a story, opening three documents at once about obsessive counting, a petty creator of imagined universes, and a smoky conversation about pain. That is, when I am actually working. Most mornings I distract myself with the internet while I wake up, checking email, discovering the best sales on items I can’t purchase, watching videos of people hurting themselves. I then make myself some coffee or tea or whatever caffeinated beverage catches my fancy and sit in my backyard reading.

Today I read a whole book from start to finish. This is ridiculous excess. I glut myself every morning on caffeine, nicotine, and literature. As the chemicals seep in and the literature draws me out I am thankful that nobody sees me laugh maniacally (the GRE word for this is cachinnate) and dry sob from sentence to sentence till I can’t stand it anymore and have to go inside to write. By then my hands are too cold to type correctly so I check my email again.

I don’t know what I am doing. I write to exorcise the constant internal narration, writing because I want to (need to?), hoping that someday somebody will read and say “I’m glad he wrote that.” I feel like a polished writing sample is just my current excuse because I need some sort of goal when what I really need is a reason for why I’m writing.

I don’t know what I am doing but I seem to be doing something, and just like my nocturnal adventures in fashion, I hope it means something interesting and mysterious and is not simply the restless wanderings of an overactive subconscious.

Wake up dickhead, your phone's broken.

I’ve been busy in my sleep of late. Dreams and dreams and dreams. I’m often pursued or pursuing. Nothing ever comes of this.

There are snakes, always snakes. Red and copper fanged adders that threaten but never strike. Frightening me into stillness when I know I must be moving on.
I’m peeing on a hollowed stump. A monstrous viper is perturbed by my micturition. I jump back and turn to grab a stick to kill it. When I turn back around it has vanished. This might be a problem. . .
I am an officer walking the lines during a campaign of some sort of trench warfare. Or maybe I am a camp counselor walking between a dry ditch and a creek, I’m not sure. “Check this out. There’s snakes down here.”
“I know there are snakes down there, that’s why I’m not in the ditch. Don’t lean over it, can’t you see it’s poisonous? ‘Red to yellow, kill a fellow’ and all that.”
“Oh, it can’t strike us, it has to coil in on itself to be able to strike. Plus it’s too cold for it to be active.”
Somehow I find myself sitting right next to the snake. It is frightened by my presences and winds in on itself to be able to strike. It won’t strike, though; my body heat is all that is keeping it alive. If I attempt to leave it will bite me. I’m afraid of being bitten, but am sure that it will never strike if I stay still. I know that more snakes will be drawn to my body heat throughout the night and I will be surrounded when dawn comes. I’m not as scared as I should be, mostly annoyed because there was someplace I was supposed to be. . .

I watched an oafish man visit prison hoping to be raped. The clown smearing shit on the walls, the sheets, the hands of those he lied to. “See! I was raped. He forced me and I couldn’t escape.” The warden, his wife, nobody believed him; everyone leaving, shaking their heads at this man’s foolishness. The inmate rejecting this idiot’s pawing, wanting only to shower and be left alone. That moron made everyone feel dirty.

Immigrant workers rolled out paths of AstroTurf in my backyard. My neighbors were claiming it as their own. I was angry about this, but not the AstroTurf. That seemed like a good idea.

There was a young boy always looking to me for comfort. A man would hold him back until I approached within a couple of paces. The child would be released and he would jump into my embrace. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” I would repeat and after a time the tears or his fearful quaking would cease. He never explained, but would eventually begin laughing and run off to play. By morning he had grown heavy enough to necessitate my sitting while I comforted him.

Prank phone calls are simply opportunities to make new friends.

“Dayman, aaaaahhaaaaahaaaa fighter of the Nightman. . .”

Watching Dr. Who on the back patio at midnight when the wife is away for the weekend is a perfect idea. I recommend it to anybody.

A Seattle number eh? I get wrong numbers from time to time. Living in Redding and having a Seattle area number invites that sort of thing. I tend to assume that these mistaken calls will be more interesting than anything intentional so I pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

I hear a man’s voice. It sounds like he’s at a party.

“Hello, can I help you?” expounding on my initial contact.

Click.

Normally I would continue with my episode and ignore what has happened but today I am an asshole. Today I dial the number.

“Hello” I hear.

“Yeah, you just called me?” I respond.

Click.

Who was that? Why did he call me? It is officially the AM so I assume it is some sort of booty call or prank. I’ve got nothing better to do so I dial again.

The number rings, several times, but then is picked up and hung up within a second. I like to think I am fomenting paranoia.

I dial again. This time it only rings twice before it is hung up. I’ve got all the time in the world. Something about oysters or opportunity or something like that.

I could dial again but I don’t. Perhaps I will wait until I inevitably wake up in four hours’ time and leave a message then. I would hear his voice. I assume that by the message I would at least know his name. Nevertheless I create one for him. Jared David Burrows. Yeah, that sounds like the name of somebody who would call me at this time.

Hello Jared, I’m sorry I couldn’t get a hold of you last night. I look forward to speaking with you soon. I have lots of time on my hands these days. . . you know what I mean. I’m sure I’ll speak with you soon.

Yeah, that would be a perfect message. I would blow his mind. Confuse the shit out of some stranger and get him to start checking his shadow. I like the idea of forcibly entering one’s dreams, strangers don’t ask my permission so why should I?

Then again, I tend to shy from adversity. Sure I still wake before seven, the stranger’s number stored in my phone. I am sure he is asleep now. Even if he is not, he probably lives at least seven hundred miles away and who gives a fuck what he imagines he might be able to do to me, I’m the one with nothing to lose here.

Even though it is getting light, I roll over and fall back asleep. We all have regrets: opportunities missed, chances neglected, might have beens that never will be. I guess this is simply mine for this week. We all have crosses we must bear.

Welcome to the Life Major. You may call me Professor Kooy.

Hey buddy we need to talk about something. Make sure to take good notes, this is important.

You're pretty much a person now and it's time you've mastered a couple of skills, namely: being still and being quiet. You might think that I want you to learn these things for selfish reasons and, while I am excited about the day I can put you in the corner of the grocery store, between the radishes and lunch meat while, I go shopping and get a couple of rounds of free samples in peace, I also know that these are life skills that will aid you in many of the challenges ahead of you. You never know what life is going to throw at you. Just imagine if you were in a "Most Dangerous Game" situation; the ability to be still and quiet is more valuable than any type of woodcraft or self defensed you can think of. If you knew who Anne Frank was I would tell you that she is a pretty good example of what I am teaching you but. . .Actually, no more "Dirtiest Little Puppy" we are starting The Diary of Anne Frank at the next night night. And you better pay attention because I want you to be able to tell me what her greatest errors were by the end.

Now don't start thinking that these skills are only good when your life is at stake. If you are able to be still and quiet, untold fun awaits you. I've seen you play hide-and-go-seek and sometimes, I am ashamed to call you son. It's obvious that you put a lot of effort into hiding. You take your time and choose creative hiding places while half of your idiot friends try to crawl under the couch cushions. It's just that once you are safely in your hiding spot, you are so proud of your sneakiness that you start giggling and getting careless. That, son, is hubris, and hubris is unacceptable. If you master the ability to be perfectly still and quiet, you could stand in a a slight shadow and disappear. Just picture all the kids looking for you and getting worried because they can't find you. You let them get almost to the point of being frantic before you step out from right behind them and quietly say "I'm right here." They will shit their pants, and trust me, though that may seem normal now, eventually, you will be able to hold that over their heads and it will be awesome. Couple these skills with silent movement and you will be a ninja.

Don't tell mommy about this, ok. Sure she would be pissed at Daddy and say that I was filling your head with craziness and trying to make you weird or something, but if she knew about your lessons, she wouldn't be as easy to trick, and you've got to practice on somebody, right? Oh, and don't practice this on mommy when daddy and she are together, I'm not supposed to give you that talk for a couple more years yet.

Let me see your notes. . . Well, I guess this is my fault. The first lesson really should have been on note taking. Time to get your jammies on kiddo. Sure it's still light out but it's never too early to develop a nice healthy fear of Nazis.

Bikes: A fucked up love letter.

A couple of days after my most recent century I took the car out to get some groceries and I decided that a gas pedal, though very useful, is far from the most satisfactory means of acceleration. On a bike it is very rewarding when you've gotten yourself up to twenty or thirty miles an hour, in a car it's just what happens when you put forth the most minimal of efforts.

I felt really enlightened at that moment, like I was about to turn into a cycling enthusiast and I was going to start getting emotional boners (henceforth to be referred to as "heart-ons") over cycling, preaching about the evils of fossil fuel and danger of cars and bringing up my bicycle every time I open my mouth because I love it so much and how the only thing that gets me through each day of dream crushing work (yes I feel like my job is crushing my soul's dreams but crushing dreams is actually 65% of what I do at my job) is knowing I am going to hop on that bike and pedal, pedal, pedal.

The next morning, my enthusiasm was squashed more thoroughly than Lenny's puppies as shortly after Jen left for work I discovered that I had two flat tires. I carried my bike two miles to the nearest bike shop where I was informed that they were out of inner tubes (fucking silly) but was allowed to borrow a bike to go to the next nearest bike shop to buy some tubes. I hate bikes.

Anyway, the Redding century was the most enjoyable bike ride I've ever been on. I never once thought about the futility of riding in a big circle for no reason beyond bragging rights. In fact, I even enjoyed the scenery. I came very close to appreciating Redding. . .ewww.

Including rest stops and a flat tire, I finished in exactly eight hours. I figure that means I had about seven hours pedal time which, according to math, means I averaged over fourteen miles per hour. They gave me food at the end of the race and I felt pretty good and decided that it hadn't been absurd enough, so instead of calling Jen to pick me up, I decided to ride home with "Boombox" on repeat. I know I said that there are only two options when attempting a century: finishing it or not finishing it. I'm going to have to add a third and that is "fucking a century in the ass". Yeah, it sounds dirty. Yeah, I'm okay with it (ooh, I'm going to add a fourth category "being hit by a car" because it is better to have a category and not need it than need a category and not have it).

For years, heavy physical activity for the sake of exercise has brought forth interestingly twisted yet wonderfully cathartic thoughts to my brain: I would spend the entire time envisioning painful ways to die. Maybe a mugger would jump out of the bushes and stab me repeatedly in the gut. Perhaps I'd get hit by a car, the impact crushing my torso in a way that would allow me to feel my intestines being squeezed out of my body through my groin. Possibly I would trip on the sidewalk, hit my head on a parked car in a very specific manner that would cause me to be paralyzed but still able to feel my body. I would, of course, soil myself because I'm sure that is the natural reaction to this type of injury, which would anger a herd of feral cats who would begin to devour my incapacitated (but still feeling) body with their small mouths of very sharp teeth and I would not be found until the next morning when somebody would come out to get their paper and see my bloody mess of a body which will send them into a catatonic state of shock as they notice one of the sated beasts curled up and sleeping in what was once my ample belly as I mouth the words "Please kill me."

It would be easy to say that these fantasies are a coping mechanism as running any distance carrying two hundred and seventy pounds on bad knees is awful, but doesn't seem all that bad when compared to ridiculous evisceration. One could even argue that this is a very clever trick that my mind plays which forces adrenaline into my bloodstream allowing me to run faster. I think, however, that it would be somewhat more accurate to describe these thoughts as a sort of mental sweat, a sloughing off of ephemeral toxins, exorcising while exercising. I have forced myself to do physical exercise without allowing my mind to dwell on thoughts of a tortured death but I never feel as refreshed or euphoric when I am done. I never feel as clean. Something magic happens when I sweat death that allows me to end up feeling carefree and simply happy.

During the Redding century, I never thought about my own death, I thought about my wife's. I imagined that I would come home after triumphantly finishing my century only to find her brutally murdered. Around mile ninety-two I habitually smelled the air and checked for smoke as I was within a half mile of my house and kept thinking it was burning down as I rode. I don't know how similar sadness is to fear, but it seems to me that both can be pretty cathartic. The tricky brain/adrenaline theory may be appropriate here as I was able to average better than twenty miles an hour for seven of the last ten miles but I like to think of that ride's daydreams as more of a sign of maturity. Apparently personal torture no longer involves harm to my physical body, my inner demons no longer base my affliction on insularity but on a relational nature, and when my mind naturally envisions that which would cause me the most pain, it doesn't even involve myself anymore but my wife Jen. I don't care how much this disturbs most of you, but this gives me a bit of a heart-on.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus = Mega Fun and Giant er. . .Fun!

You know a movie is going to be a special gem when an explicit message to the audience is given within the first twenty minutes when one of the characters (I have to assume it was a cameo by the director) says "Just don't take all this too seriously and we'll all be fine." Sure it was hidden amidst an explanation that stated that Japanese oil rig workers like to pee on dolphins due to some sort of ancient superstition but I saw right through that shit. I'm like the MacGyver of knowing shit and the internet is my paperclip.

I love shitty movies. I'm not talking about Ryan Reynolds romantic comedies, Twilight films, or Nicholas Sparks adaptations. I love campy, ridiculous, stupid, gory films that push the boundaries of the absurd. There will always be a special place in my heart's soul for the hundreds of truly silly horror films I've watched and the thousands that have yet to be seen. VAGINA DENTATA!!!

MS v GO is awesome because it isn't even trying. Sure they bust out some poorly stated political commentary but I'll take a comparison of prehistoric aquatic behemoths to hurricane Katrina over pictures of oil covered birds any day.

As I watched MS v GO while drinking large gin and tonics (see I totally could have written "mammoth" instead of "large" right there but I didn't because I have integrity. . .no, it was probably so that I could have the opportunity to write this explanation. THIS IS A BANK ROBBERY!) I felt that it was important to jot down a few notes that I would now like to share with you.

Why you got to bring Tokyo into this? Seriously, a giant, prehistoric creature coming from the ocean to attack Japan. Now that's some fresh shit.

I love the science in this movie. It consists completely of mixing various colored fluids in various sized test tubes. Let's mix this here red liquid with that blue fluid and. . . AW SHIT PURPLE?!? FUCK!!! Well how about we take this green vial and add a couple of drops of light blue and GODDAMMIT STILL GREEN!?! What the fuck are we doing wrong? (tortured dream sequence) How about we use a big ass needle to inject glow stick fluid into a bucket of more glow stick fluid but this time call it pheromones. . . MOTHER FUCKING BINGO!!!

It seems logical for ancient sea creatures to envy the technological advancements in flight, but killing two planes does seem a bit excessive.

Do we really need a love story plot arc in here? Oh yeah, awkward scientist sex is probably the only way they could have brought pheromones into this story.

NO SHARK! NOT THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE!!! No wait, I'm totally fine with that one.

Why are there some Mexicans in the Japanese navy?

"Only a hate stronger than their combined survival instincts could force these results." And for some reason, two lines later they imply, nay demand that physics proves that success of this plan is inevitable. Now this really bothers me. WHAT THE FUCK DO PHYSICS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHI no wait I'm just out of G&T.

Oh Shit! Shakespeare Quote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

INTENSE SUB DRIVER FACE! Apparently subs have emergency turbos. Who knew?

Of course the pilot freaks out and pulls his gun on the captain forcing the Irish marine biology professor who happens to have once been a nuclear submarine operator to take the helm to keep the submarine from crashing into the ice shelf. I'm just surprised the heroine didn't get shot in the ensuing struggle to increase the scene's dramatic impetus.

Wait just a minute. Are they really going to end the movie that way!?! They totally forgot their blanket on the beach. This movie makes no sense at all.