Look! I bought this today!!

It cost me fifteen dollars, which I considered a fair price.

Notice this book is by Kilgore Trout. 

Kilgore Trout is not a real person. But he left us this book. Amazing.

When I am in Lafayette, I become something like Mr. Trout.

sports are not a reflection of anything (except for swimming because you can see yourself in the water)

when people say things happen for a reason

it's because they don't understand it.

you don't hear the announcer at a baseball game

lean closer into the microphone after

a routine grounder to the shortstop and say

"that happened for a reason, everyone.

it's okay. baseball has a reason! please

rise for the seventh inning stretch, where

john leguizamo will sing a song. john leguizamo

is here for a reason, too."

the announcer does not say this because

it would ruin the game for everyone.

especially the shortstop who has 

played baseball for his entire life

only to be marginalized by a single

phrase that means nothing to anyone

who has ever been to a baseball game.

to anyone who has ever seen that ball

get so close the green ivy brick wall only

to be caught by the left fielder.

and everyone sighs

and everyone sits down

and everyone drinks their sodas or beer

and everyone eats a hot dog

because it tastes good. and that's it.

I am a normal person on some nights

This was one of those nights.

I saw Iron Man for the second time. Normal people will often see movies two times if they enjoy them enough. Also, they will see them a second time if they are taking someone new. In this case, that person was Walter, my father.

Walter liked the movie. That's good, because he has a normal palate for films. For example, he would hate There Will Be Blood. But that's okay, because that movie was not a life-altering masterpiece. Many normal people do not like life-altering movies, most likely because they are imposing and do not just do their job, which is to be entertaining.

We talked about superheroes and movies for a while afterwards. Earlier in the day we talked about non-super humans, like my friends. There are fissures in my group of friends, the group that I have known for the longest time and the group I am/was most comfortable with. I told Walter that I accepted that as part of growing up, that my teenage life was bound to fade and I should take advantage of it. The most difficult part of this is that taking 'advantage' of the situation means being somewhat of an asshole to old friends.

If you live in Muncie, Indiana, expect me to be more interested in your life this year. I will try to be more interesting, wacky, zany, drunk, sober, or enlightening depending on who you think I am. I want to return the favor of Funcie friendships.

Another normal thing I did is talk about the house I'll be moving into, and the Mastiff that will be our house dog, and the work we will do on the house to make it look nicer and to get rent breaks. These are normal things that people do.

Normal people will also end things fairly abruptly.

forecast

partly cloudy

humid sweaty forearms

lacking enthusiasm

not enough sugar

cautious movement

sunburnt shoulders

just enough caffeine

seventy five channels

too many advertisements

twenty five newspapers

nothing of interest

fourteen killed in helicopter crash

rising oil prices

your favorite song

nothing to lose

zero visibility

avoiding fistfights

action-packed romance

chance of rain

limited risk

percentages

calculated movements

birds

no turn on red

car accidents

funeral procession

backed-up traffic

a full ashtray

credit limits

bald tires

slick roads

scattered thunderstorms

scattered republicans

delayed flights

flash floods

unwarranted aggression

poor judgment

heavy burden

white lies

filing cabinets

temporary insanity mixed with a notion

of permanence

The History of Heavy Metal

A tank crashes through Paris like a 

pinch harmonic at the end of a pentatonic scale.

Twenty years later, in Italy,

Clint Eastwood shoots a man in the face

without exhaling any cigar smoke. On the other

side of the world a Nebraskan child learns

that one human soul is worth ten guitar lessons

from Satan. This took place after he read 

the book of Revelations which everyone knows

is the story of the apocalypse set to AC/DC.

Fourteen years later someone confuses punk for

metal and everyone punches each other. This is why

Metallica will never be as good as they used to be.