I have Seen the Enemy and He is Mustard

I'd like you to know that there are no exaggerations in the following paragraphs.

I went to a restaurant with my Dad a few nights ago. It was an Asian bistro and it seemed very nice. We were seated and served, and we ordered our entrees. We also decided to get a few big egg rolls as appetizers. They arrived, along with two small ceramic bowls. One was filled with sweet and sour sauce, and the other had mustard.

The sweet and sour sauce was nothing special. A little bland, even. But it was not distasteful and it went well with the hot egg roll. I ate a half of it with the S and S sauce, and because it was a bigger egg roll (about four inches long, about 1.5 inches in diameter) I had the other half with mustard. I don't like mustard in normal circumstances, but I believed this would be better than your average from-the-bottle mustard, so I tried it.

I took my half and swirled it in the little mustard dish. I got a good covering on the end, and took a bite. All of the mustard I had on it was in that single bite.

My next thought was this: "I'm going to die." The mustard cleated my tongue and charged up my sinuses, boiling the blood in my face. My throat closed and I gasped for air, which only spread the evil around. After chugging my water I moped my face. I was sweating, my nose was running like a faucet, and I was crying shamelessly.

During the terrible pain, I -- and this is the truth -- thought that I had died, and I would soon meet God and the devil.


Now I know the truth. Mustard is evil. Pure and perfect evil. I believe I know how the world will end and it will be with fire and mustard.


Repent, for the end is yellow.

Of Skivvies and Feminists

You have heard of the cookie-cutter dream where you stand in front of people in your underwear, or forget your lines for a play or speech, always in front of a large group of people, possibly friends and loved ones. You are hamlet or Romeo, or Ophelia or Juliet, and you flub. You are at a total loss, and everyone knows.

I had a dream similar, yet different. It was at school, and many people were on stage. There was a clamor for each student as he or she went to the front to say a piece. The words they spoke had no sound and no meaning to me. I was in the audience, in the rightmost grouping of seats, but near the edge of the group, so my position was middle-right of the stage. I realized the next person that was stepping to the microphone on stage was me. I didn't see me, not any physical aspects, but I knew it was me. I began to speak and the audience listened without a peep.

Four sentences into my stage-self's speech, it stopped. It's mouth continued to move but no words came out. I knew and everybody else knew that there was no way any more would come out. I could feel the rush of blood to the face and the contraction of organs that come with this scope of public embarrassment. It was me, and I was it.

Worse yet, everybody knew that I, the person in the audience, was also the person on the stage. There was no laughing, but people shifted in their seats and coughed and looked around, trying not to meet my stage-self's eyes. At the same time, the audience and my friends avoided looking at me, the audience me.

Then I awoke and turned my alarm off. I didn't think about it anymore, but I still remember it. Who knows what it means, perhaps nothing, perhaps a release of emotion that I don't get while awake. We face this kind of thing on a minuscule scale daily, but why is such a dream so very common? Is it a fear of public humiliation, or being the center of attention?

Changing gears.

Just yesterday I submitted a story for review to a Literary Magazine. I'll keep the name to myself, but before submitting I read about the magazine, as I do. There were a couple of things that surprised or scared me.

First, instead of "Our goals" or "Mission Statement" they had "Manifesto." It talked about them as a magazine. Second, in the obligatory dos and don'ts of submitting a piece, a don't was "Address us as 'Dear Sirs' -- we know you don't mean to cause offense, but we are not male, and also we are feminists. We prefer 'Dear Fiction/Nonfiction/ Poetry/ Etc Editor.'" Hmmmmmmmmm.

Third, and this was the most off-putting, was another don't: "Tell us who your literary influences are. This can be a turn-off, which makes it harder to give your piece the fair reading it deserves. Remember, it may happen that your most venerated literary fore bearers typify all we loathe about the hetero patriarchal canon. Also, Burroughs and Hemingway influenced everyone."

Did you see that phrase? Hetero patriarchal canon. Talk about a turn-off, ladies. I don't know who Burroughs is and Hemingway is boring, by the way.

The entire article on cover letters didn't make a lot of sense, but I submitted my short story for publication review. I'm okay with it being published in the magazine, even if I won't be paid. But I guess dos and don'ts of writing are better when you can actually write.



And just because I think it's cool, I know how to play the first 16 notes of "Bridge Across Forever" on piano.

But I Digress.

I’ve found that one of the most useful things you could say while working at a help desk is: “What do you want me to do about it?” It is also something you are never supposed to say. There are a lot of weird things that happen at a help desk, especially when dealing with computers, as I am. There are calls where (Thing) doesn’t work. I have the caller try something rudimentary and now (Thing) is working perfectly. Never breaks again.

There was one just a little bit ago. It was a slow day, and only got one call the entire time. It was a technical call, but at the end I told the user to call Human Resources to get some things changed. She called back about thirty minutes later, saying she had tried to call Network Services, but had instead called the Nursing Department here in St. Paul. She works in San Diego.

It is Friday, and there are thirty minutes left in the week. I just finished a helping of graham crackers and guacamole, and have started on peanut butter and Pepsi. My shoes are off under the desk and nobody cares. I’m going to bike home, which can take me 45 minutes, 25 or 30 if the lights are good. It’s sunny, and I never get enough sun. I just finished reading Spoiled, Rotten America by Larry Miller and am now reading Cujo by Stephen King. Cujo is a dog.

The old SK has a lot of good books, and a lot of big books. His big books are normally very good. For example IT, or the Dark Tower series. His smaller books are good to, with some exceptions. Christine was duller than it should have been; The Talisman rambled. Christine is a car. The Talisman is Patrick Dempsey.

Handsome man. Naw, it’s a normal talisman.

There are 18 minutes left until I leave, and let’s hope Cujo can last me that long.

How Bored are you?

My co-worker and I walked down the steps. She was carrying an IBM R60 laptop and a yellow ethernet cable; I was holding a single pink post-it note with technical details. We hit the landing of the steps and rounded a corner. We were discussing the aspects of our mission (Top Secret!) and as we turned, we stopped. In between us and our destination was an impenetrable mass of children, each small enough for me to start hucking over my shoulder.

Though I have been asked to repress that particular urge.

After some deliberation with my associate, we decided that she should continue on and I should return to our base of operations. She quickly straightened her arms into a plow and charged forward. Those children in the back of the group were pushed aside like ice chunks on the prow of an arctic whaling ship. Those in the front heard the screams and moved, fearful.

What you see above was really just a distraction for myself. Now that school is out and summer is in, it takes a sharp mind not to go crazy with boredom working at the help desk. For eight hours a day I sit and look at a screen in front of me. Even now I almost wish for the phone on my desk to ring just so I could have something...anything...to occupy my time. I have become so bored - just in a single week - that I have actually started a list of words or phrases that people should use more often:

Sadly
Affront
Pomp
Frou-frou
Never you mind
Behest
Oh my goodness Justin Bieber grow a pair of testicles

Guess which one gave me the most pleasure to type? But I digress. One of the things I have been doing in earnest is research of a certain type. Some time ago I was listening to an album that features several songs on mental disturbances, such as PTSD, Schizophrenia, and Depression. While in the course of this, I began to get an idea for a story. It featured a boy who had personality disorder, and was capable of both shining good, and darkest evil. I sat down to write the beginning, and liked what was being put on the page. I was having trouble figuring out exactly what would happen, as well as how the boy would function, but I liked what was there.

While doing something completely unrelated, I was reading a story and was guided via hyperlink to Ted Bundy's Wikipedia page. I had never heard the name before, and decided that it was important enough in the context of the story for a look

It held me captured for over an hour. It wasn't that it was it was interesting, more so morbidly fascinating. It was a mild wake-up call that not only do people and actions of this kind truly exist, but more common in our age and more common in the U.S. than ever before. It was also a surprise to me the specific difference between serial killers, of which Ted Bundy is maybe the most infamous, and mass murderers.

Serial killers usually have a specific target. Woman with hair this long or boys this old. Their actions are also usually sexually driven, and they have mental inhibitions that cause them to act on this. One of the most common traits was that their childhood was mangled and twisted (exception). It was these facts and others that turned my story about a terrible boy into a book-length story about a terrible person. I was struck by different ideas even as I read Bundy's page, and wanted to incorporate them into the story. However, I decided against much of what I had developed because of the parallels between my ideas and true-life events, which might have caused families distress with just the wrong type of luck

Mass murderers, on the other hand, usually have an agenda or reason, no matter how evil that agenda is. The most famous mass murderer is Hitler, carried out by the Nazis and dubbed the horrifying Holocaust. There is also Mao Zedong and Stalin. It is defined as a systematic killing of many people over a short amount of time. In a way this could be carpet bombing, spree killers, and even the ultimate bombing of Japan by the U.S. in WWII.

After taking in the information about serial killers, I decided that I was lucky enough to be able to use what I already written as the start of my project. The most important part, I believe, will be the beginning. The reason for this is that as previously mentioned the childhood of these twisted minds are the critical time for development. There are also specific, linked details such as serial killers have a hard time holding down jobs or relationships, they are either above average intelligence or very below average, and, I noticed, tend to do anything they can to avoid death.

It's good to have a hobby, I suppose. But most people just build models.


5,900 pieces.