Literary Wasteland

“You have no respect for me you little shit!”

“I’m going to kick the living shit out of you!”

“How dare you make me wait, I’m going to beat the respect into you!”

Stop. Fast Forward.

These words echoed in my head, repeating themselves over and over again like a broken record. No matter how much I drank, they simply would not go away. Neither would the sounds of my sisters crying, my mother shrieking, or the dogs barking from all the commotion. I found myself envying families that got divorced; at least those kids didn’t have to deal with the constant yelling and screaming that perpetuated my life. I knew my parents would never separate though; it was against the crutch they called their religion.

I wasn’t even part of the fight; I had walked down stairs right into it. My brother had done something that apparently infuriated my dad, and then walked out. I assumed he went to his girlfriends, because he had no where else to go. After the display of warm caring and love that my father had put on, I met my friends at a local pub. I didn’t tell them what happened, they would just make fun of me and call me a pussy. The universal word that all males avoid, the word that means you display emotion. No one wanted to show any of that.

The bar we were in had a nautical theme. Everything in South Florida has a nautical theme. Fishing nets and pictures of prize catches lined the walls. License plates from various states on display to show how famous the bar was. The windows were portholes to give the illusion you were on a boat. Sometimes I would play a game. How much liquor must I consume to actually think I was on a boat? It was a fun game. The lights were dimmed so that it was hard to see the people next to you. This coupled with alcohol made it very suspect who you brought home. It was always exciting, first turning the lights on in your place. The anticipation of what she really looked like building every step you took towards your door. Sometime I would laugh and ask them to leave. They don’t like that too much.

John orders a round of tequila for everyone. I like John. We toast to our friends in Iraq and slam them down, the warmth spreading throughout my entire body. The voices get a little softer. I order another round and we slam them down again. Again the voices get softer. Brian orders the round this time, acknowledging we are all on a mission of inebriation. Liquor and Drugs are the emergency emotional life vests of our society. In case of emergency, crack open bottle, light up roach, pop the pill. Put your seats in their upright position and make sure your tray tables are locked, enjoy the ride. Dull the sense, dull the pain. Temporary relief from any emotional problems you might have. I tell myself I’m weak, that this won’t solve anything. Fuck it. Strap myself in, get ready for launch.

My father’s voice gets louder now, the tequila turning up the volume. I feel myself getting angrier every drink, the rage building up in me. How could he treat his family like that? How can he turn a simple and happy thing like getting ice-cream into a Jerry Springer nightmare? It’s two a.m. and time to go. I tell myself I can drive, that I am sotally tober.

The road begins to bend, or was that me thinking it was bending? Only one way to find out. Thank god it’s a real bend. My car is swerving, why won’t it stop doing that? I’m trying to drive here. I make it back to my house and my father is still awake watching television. He starts yelling at me for driving drunk. I start yelling at him for everything. Everything that had been building up came out, the belittling, yelling, demeaning, everything. He stood there shocked, not knowing what to say. Then he came running at me, fists raised to strike me down. Everything happened in slow motion, I silently laughed to myself that I felt like I was in the matrix. I sidestepped the first punch and he went into the wall. This only made him angrier, and he came out me even faster and harder this time. He connected with my nose; I felt the cartilage tear, my bones crack, and the blood stream out. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I held them back.

I felt a fury that I had never experienced before. A fire burned in me, something that couldn’t be controlled. I tackled him to the ground and begin hitting him as hard as I could. His face became a bloody mess. I didn’t stop though. I yelled at him, screamed until my throat was raw. Why did you do this? Why? Everyone was awake now and looking at me, their eyes wide and full of fear. I know it is time to go. I grab my keys, and walk to the front door, turn around and look at them one final time. I tell them I’m sorry but I don’t mean it. I close the door and walk away. That was the last time I saw my family.

Posted by Sean at 6:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

[This is my first attempt at fiction, and something I hope to pursue in the future. Leave me some feedback and let me now what im doing wrong.]

It was another cookie cutter Friday night, sitting inside a scummy bar with poor lighting, wafts of smoke twirling above our heads. The stench of stale beer permeated the air, and the incoherent ramblings of bums filled our ears. We chose this particular bar because they served us, and no one had fake I.D.’s.

I was well on my way to inebriation, sucking down whiskey and coke as fast as the bartender could make them. My friends sitting next to me were talking about the conflict in Lebanon and Israel, stating their opinions on the matter as if they were the authority on the subject and everyone else knew nothing. I had heard the statements on Bill O’Reily or Chris Mathews earlier in the day, and I wondered out loud if it was hard to memorize other people’s opinions verbatim every day.

My comment was ignored by everyone; I was just an unfortunate presence in the group. I’m a default friend because I had been around for years, nothing more than an afterthought. They tolerated me because they had to, no one wanted to tell me to stop coming around, and I had no where else to be. I decide that whiskey and cokes is no longer necessary and just start drinking it straight.

I stumble away from the table because the conversation was becoming intolerable, more memorized opinions from other news shows and periodicals. Across the bar Mike is hitting on some underage girl, trying to score for the night. She looks like she is seventeen and I imagine the cops hauling him off to jail for statutory rape. This makes me smile. The bartender gives me another drink, and then tells me to take it easy. I decide drinking myself into a coma sounds like a good idea, the thought of my friends having to carry me into my house amuses me, so I take another swig of whiskey.

It’s starting to rain outside when I go for a smoke. The rain was always something I found comforting; it washed away the dirt and made the world clean again. Maybe if I stay in the rain long enough, it will clean me too. As the water droplets hit the asphalt steam slowly rises into the night. The break from the stifling heat is welcome, so I smoke my cigarette while slowly getting wet. People start to stare at me from inside the bar; I don’t really blame them because I’m sitting in a chair smoking in the rain. I probably look pretty crazy. Fuck them, I like the rain.

My vision is starting to blur from the whiskey, colors begin to melt together and the world becomes my kaleidoscope. The rain is coming down harder now and I’m soaking wet. My shoes slosh and squeak every time I take a step, and the cold is chilling me to the bone. It’s approaching two a.m. and the bartender yells last call. Instead of paying my tab I just get up and start walking home, hopefully my friends will pick it up. I head north into the night, barely able to walk a straight line and wet through. My apartment is nearly seven miles away, and all I can do is hope I fade into the night.

Posted by Sean at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

I am so fucking sick of reading articles like this. Why can't people just do shit the way they want without having some asshole try to cram it into a package and label it.

Metrosexual, Fratire, Retrosexual, it's all a load of shit. All it does is give Madison Avenue more crap ideas for commercials. And when they make those commercials, we have these impressionable idiots embrace these ideas and make it the new fashion of some sort.

These are the same vapid morons, who five years ago, were calling themselves metrosexuals. And now that ad agencies tell them differently, they change their entire persona. With this recent "Fratire" label floating around, we will have these jackasses trying to act like tough guys, and I can only hope a real tough guy stabs them in the abdomen with a rusty knife or broken bottle. While this is going on, the tough guy is also required to use his free hand to repeatedly punch the former metrosexual in the balls, this will hopefully ensure that the mental defect can never have kids.

Just to illustrate how retarded the jerks writing about this "movement back to manliness" are, they used the word "Fratire" to describe it. What. The. Fuck. Almost all of the authors and people referred as leaders of this "Fratire" movement WERE NOT EVEN IN A GOD DAMNED FRATERNITY. The only things I see coming from this fratire label are more assholes popping their collars and Animal House II. Don't worry, they won't fuck it up so bad that John Belushi rolls over in his grave or anything.

Now don't get me wrong, I think Tucker Max and Maddox are hilarious and completely agree with what they are doing. But does it have to be labeled? All this will accomplish is the corruption and twisting of something they've created into a fashion trend. Why can't people like Tucker and Maddox just do their shit, be recognized for their work, and leave it at that. Being their own person is what got them to where they are, not by being generalized by some academic twit so that people can pretend to understand what they stand for or why they do it.

I just am. I don't need to label myself. There are activities I participate in, and things I enjoy doing that define who I am. But I am my own person and cannot nor will not be lumped into some general category by some asshat.

To all you sociologists trying to explain why one person wears something or acts a certain way, stop it. All you are accomplishing is pissing me off. If you really have that much free time, go back to school and get a real degree, or die in a fire. Either is acceptable.

Posted by Sean at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments

I found myself at the movies today, mainly because I didn't feel like being very productive, and decided to see Clerks II. I have always been a huge fan of Kevin Smith and his movies, I find his sense of humor very funny, and I like the themes that he goes after.

Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy were amazing and I still watch them all the time today. The characters all being around my age and confronting what they want to do with their lives. Battling the pressures that society puts on them to do a certain job or pursue a certain way of life, and also dealing with dysfunctional relationships and friendships. It all appealed to me very much because I often asked myself the same questions about my life and dealt with the same kind of friendships/relationships.

The other great thing about Kevin Smith's movies were the recurring jokes that tied into all the movies. I always found the story about the girl that died swimming laps at the pool because she was going on a game show funny, and it was some how tied into all the movies. That being said, I felt this movie was not his style at all.

I'm not saying the movie wasn't very funny, because it was hilarious. The movie just felt different, and didn't have the same thing that the original had that made it a great movie. I was talking about this with my good friend Charlie, and he pointed out that Clerks was a great movie, while Clerks II was just made to be funny and for a little closure. I felt that statement pretty much summed it up and identified what I didn't like about the movie.

The problem seems to be the same thing that made his movies so great. People grew to expect the trademark jokes and stories that recurred throughout all the movies and then started to get a bit tired of the jokes. He needs to take a step back from all the media and create something new and different. In order to do this he needs to get back in touch with the culture of the youth and how they are feeling right now. That was what made his original movies so great, and what his new movies lack. He was writing relevant stories that many people identified with, but now it's just the same jokes in stories that don't get the viewer involved. If Mr. Smith can recapture that magic he once possessed, people will embrace his movies with the same fervor that they once did.

Posted by Sean at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

To start off my first post on my new blog, I thought I would comment on the temperatures across the country right now. I don't know what we did to piss off whatever god there is in charge of the heat, but we need to start sacrificing goats and virgins or something to make it end. With 29 people dead in the East, and as many as 164 deaths in California, these temperatures are out of control. Luckily, the heat is starting to back off today as a cold front is starting to move down from the north, and all I can say is thank you Buddy Christ.

Moving on to the Middle East, I thought I would touch upon Iraq and the shit show going on over there. The sectarian violence going on in Baghdad is growing at a rapid rate as death squads from both Shiite and Sunni groups execute pretty much anyone who is of the opposite faction, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Bodies are often found days after being abducted with signs of abuse, torture, and rape. I pretty much see this as a mini civil war already, so I found it pretty amusing when General Abizaid said that there is a possibility of a civil war forming in Iraq. A possibility? When you have two different factions inside one country with fucking death squads roaming the streets and randomly killing civilians, I'm going to go ahead and call that a civil war. Too add insult to injury, British Ambassador William Patey sent a private memo to Blair saying that the position was not hopeless, but it would be messy for five to ten years.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also claims that Iraq will be in charge of its own security in one year. I find that interesting since the White House just extended 3000 troops tours in Iraq by four months and is also deploying more troops to the region. Granted this Prime Minister has a very tough job and is trying to please the Iraqi people, he doesn't need to blatantly lie to his people and treat them like idiots.

I'm going to go ahead and say something that a lot of people are thinking, but no one wants to say. I am proposing that we abandon the current reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and take a whole new approach. It is painfully obvious that the Shiites and Sunnis cannot live together. They have been at war with each other for hundreds of years, so how can we be so arrogant to think we can just make them coexist together. The only reason there wasn't this violence in Iraq under Saddam is because he killed anyone that caused any unrest, that or he tested his chemical and biological weapons on their villages. What we need to do is just create two separate states out of Iraq, one for the Sunnis and one for the Shiites. I know a lot of you will say that they will just go to war with each other, but I don't think that will be the case. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are predominately Sunni, while Iran are mostly Shiite. And while there are some tensions between the countries, there aren't any wars breaking out in the region between those countries.

Posted by Sean at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments