On another excursion to Wikipedia

So I was once again spending some quality time on Wikipedia, as is my wont to do, and I found myself at the page for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain Shredder.

Holy mother of god. The entry is almost 10,000 words. For a little perspective, the story I posted over the last week was only about 5,000. Imagine if that story was twice as long, and contained nothing but biographical information for a moderately popular children's cartoon character.

Here's an excerpt from the Utrom Shredder section:

Hundreds of years later, during the Sengoku Period of feudal Japanese history, a spacecraft belonging to the alien race known as the Utroms was passing through Earth’s solar system. The craft was a prison ship, transporting the murderous criminal, Ch’rell, but the villain managed to escape and sabotage the craft, sending it plummeting towards the nearby Earth. The Utroms, Ch’rell included, managed to survive the crash, but were left with no option on the underdeveloped planet but to wait for humankind’s level of technology to improve to the point that they could use it to return to home.

What in the hell is it talking about? Feudal Japan? Murderous space criminals? And it goes on like this! This section alone is 2,000 words! Who in the world is so devoted to Shredder that they are willing to lovingly transcribe entire baffling plotlines that only tangentially involve the character?

This picture is on the Shredder page with the caption Ch'rell, the Utrom Shredder. What???

Honestly, I've never seen a Wikipedia page with so much unnecessary detail. I'm half-tempted to just delete the entire page and re-write it:

Shredder is the bad guy in Ninja Turtles. He's called Shredder because he has knives on his gloves.

Seriously, that's all that needs to be said about him. I'm really flabbergasted that anyone would spend the time and energy to say anything more.

Also, for a little more context, Barack Obama's Wikipedia page is about 5,200 words. That's right, there is apparently twice as much biographical information for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character than there is for our current president.

On Astrology

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. I hope you enjoyed my story. I realize that many of you have things that you would like to ask me, so I will now take this time to field questions from the press.

Yes, you in the old-timey fedora with a press badge stuck in the band.

Bert Bridges of the Kentucky Star. So did you write this story just for your blog, or was this a story you had already written and you just put it up here because you are lazy and didn't want to do any original writing?

First of all, Bert, I don't think I like your tone. But you are right, this is a story that I wrote last year for an advanced fiction writing class. I put it up here because I thought people might be interested in the other sorts of things that I write.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that it was very confusing to read.

That wasn't a question, Bert. But yeah, I know it was pretty confusing. That's the criticism I get the most on this story, and I completely understand. It does work a lot better when it's on a page and not serialized for a blog, but it's a confusing story nonetheless.

So why did you write it in the second person? Don't you realize that the weird point of view is the entire reason the story is confusing?

I wrote it in second person mostly as a challenge to myself. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I realized afterward that I liked what the perspective did for the story thematically, and so I kept it in at the expense of some clarity.

Thematically, huh? So what's the theme then?

Well I suppose there are a few. It's mostly about how personal struggles can outweigh everything, even cataclysmic global-scale disasters. The second person POV forces you to identify with the characters by putting you in their shoes and making you experience what they experience. And by occupying the shoes of three entirely different characters, you realize that these struggles are a part of the common human experience and it doesn't even matter if you get them confused because we're all the same really.

That's pretty deep. Or maybe it's just a load of crap you came up with in class in order to defend your sloppy, jumbled mess of a story. Which is it?

Okay Bert, that's it, you're done asking questions.

How about you, with the phony looking and hastily applied mustache and goatee.

Uh, Kurt Kridges of the Kentucky, uh, Herald. So why call it Astrology?

Well, because it's broadly about how people's lives are affected by an astral body. But once you realize that the characters are ignoring everything but their own troubles and not letting the moon's disappearance affect them, the title becomes somewhat ironic.

I happened to think that the ending felt rather abrupt. Was there a reason for this?

Yes. The ending was originally much longer, but as I was getting ready to post it, I realized how little I cared for it. It was really corny. I decided that I had to do something about it, so I completely gutted it and rewrote it into what you read. I guess I'm still working on that part.

So where did the moon go?

Who cares? It's an allegory.

What's stopping me from taking this story, maybe even printing it out with your custom font so it looks handwritten, and submitting it to a publisher?

My new creative commons license at the bottom of the blog, and your conscience! And the fact that it's an alright story, but probably would need to be a lot better to get published.

Okay, one last question.

I have it from a reliable source that when you were in first grade you liked to eat construction paper, and to this day you sometimes eat the paper sticks when you get a lollipop?

This press conference is over!

Astrology, part V

On the eighth day of August, your parents picked you up from Linsly. On the drive home you got into an argument with your father. He told you that you were going to keep going to Linsly until you either went to college or were drafted. You let slip that you were planning on moving to Chicago. He pounded the steering wheel with his fist, then went quiet. Fine, he said after a long while, he would buy the ticket himself. Good, you said, you would leave that night.

***

On the eighth day of August, you drew pictures with Maurice while Mama argued with Aunt Janice. You couldn’t hear what they were saying, just the shouts and the punctuation of someone whacking something against something else. The shouting came closer, down the hall from the living room to Maurice’s bedroom, and you stopped coloring and looked up at the door. Mama pushed it open so hard that it banged against the door. We’re leaving tomorrow, she said, pack your things. She closed the door, and went back to yelling at Aunt Janice.

***

On the eighth day of August, Greta watched as you packed, making sure you didn’t forget anything. She said she was sorry. You said you knew she was sorry and that it was okay. It was nothing personal, she said, it was the landlord. You said you understood, you knew it wasn’t personal, it was for the best. She said again that she was sorry. You finished packing, told her which belongings she could keep, and hefted your duffel bag on your shoulder. You told her you were ready. At least let me give you a ride to the bus station, she said. You said thank you.

***

The moon came back, of course, on that eighth night of August. You think back on it often as you sit in your favorite rocking chair, now an old man, watching your grandkids as they play on the floor.

***

Remember when you got out of the car after the long ride home from Linsly, when you took a swing at your father and missed. When he put you down, and as he helped you back up from the ground you put your head against his chest and sobbed into his flannel shirt.

***

Remember the last day at Janice's, when you worked on a picture puzzle with Maurice. You came out of your room once, when you heard Mama's sick-cat moan for the first time since the funeral. She was on the couch with Janice in a tight hug, shuddering from the tears.

***

Remember when you finally arrived at your parents' doorstep, only to decide not to go in. It was a mistake. Some things were just too difficult to do. The door opened before your cement feet could turn away. Oh my baby, your mother said softly as she embraced you there in the doorway, oh my sweet child.

***

There were fireworks, there were people dancing in the streets, there were countless children conceived that night. For you there was only that small moment when you stepped outside with your family, when you saw the whole world by the light of that sly little smile. You knew then, and still know to this day, as the sun sets and the moon rises and you sit and you rock and rock and rock and rock, that the universe was everything it could possibly be, and nothing more.

***

Astrology, part IV

Dangerous and unpredictable tides caused extensive flooding on the eastern seaboard throughout July, and all of the Linsly cadets were called into action to help build dikes in various locations along the Maryland coast. Most of the school was sent to Ocean City, the one interesting place in the area, but you, along with Peterson, Reggie, and the rest of your barracks, were sent to Madison. Madison was a tiny postscript of a town on the edge of Chesapeake Bay. A company of Army Reserves, only a few months removed from the jungles of South Vietnam, worked alongside you to build levees and pile up sandbags. You had heard the stories of the unbalanced zombies that returned from Vietnam, corrupted by memories of the pitch black nights spent shooting at ghosts without even moonlight to guide their fire.
“Nobody cares about us,” you heard one say to your barracks counselor. “Not even the fucking moon.”
Even Peterson was unsettled in their presence.
You worked tirelessly, fueled only by the knowledge that the semester was over in a couple weeks and there was a month-long break before the fall semester started. You hadn’t been home since you first arrived at Linsly, and had barely even spoken with your parents. You exchanged niceties with your mom when she called each Sunday, but you had hardly spoken a dozen words with your father. You decided that the two of you had nothing to say to each other. At least, nothing that could be put into words. If anything, your time at Linsly had toughened you up. You weren’t going to be the same tepid pushover that had cowered before your father for seventeen years. You made plans as you humped forty pound sacks from one spot to another.
You could hitchhike to Richmond easily enough, even though it was in the wrong direction, and then use the savings you had to buy a Greyhound ticket to Chicago where your mom’s side of the family lived. You didn’t have any plans beyond that, but you knew that you had to escape somewhere.
“Hey, look at Nancy,” you heard Peterson call as you hefted a sandbag into place, “a dyke building a dike!”
Reggie guffawed. You picked up another sandbag.

***

When Mama lost her job at the hospital in the middle of July you moved in with your aunt Janice in her house in West Philadelphia. You shared a room with your cousin Maurice, a spindly little boy who slept with a nightlight and was even softer spoken than yourself. You spent your days playing quietly with Maurice while Mama and Aunt Janice smoked cigarettes and drank wine and talked about your uncle.
You began going to church with Aunt Janice and Maurice. The preacher talked about the moon, about Jesus, about Armageddon, and about our duties as the Lord’s children to do His work until the day we are called up to His side. He said the day was going to be coming soon, and that we needed to do all we could in the meantime. Janice nodded and said amen, fanning herself with the church bulletin. It was abnormally hot, and you itched at the starched collar of your dress shirt. Outside the church, stiff winds pelted the windows with dust and debris. On the way home you asked Aunt Janice why Mama didn’t come to church.
“Your mama ain’t interested in savin’ herself,” she snorted, then chuckled. “Your mama ain’t interested in nothin’ anymore,” she said quietly, more to herself than to you.
You rolled down the window, but quickly rolled it back up when the wind blasted you so strong in the face that your eyes began to water.

***

Instead of waiting to be evicted, you moved out of your apartment on the first of August after it became clear you would not be paying any more rent. You said goodbye to Coyote, promising to stay in contact. He offered once more to let you stay with him, but other than his bed his apartment was practically devoid of furniture. You thanked him and shook your head. He gave you a long hug and told you not to worry about all the moon shit, the universe has something planned for everyone. You thanked him and closed your door for the last time.
“Hey, man, don’t worry about this law school shit either,” he said as you started down the stairs. “You’ll be alright. Don’t let nothing get you down, man.”
You walked back to where he stood in the hall and grabbed his hand, squeezing it as you gave it a firm shake. He gave you another hug, and made a big spectacle of blowing you a kiss as you turned to walk away.
You slept that night on the couch in your friend Greta’s apartment on the other side of Golden Gate Park. She was one of the few good friends you had made at Golden Gate, and was sympathetic to your situation. When Greta left for work in the morning you tried to plan a strategy for the inevitable phone call to your parents, but couldn’t come up with anything convincing. You gave up on the phone idea and attempted composing a letter, desperate to come up with a reason more tangible than the feeling you got in stuffy classrooms, buried under shelves of books in a cramped office, meeting with car crash victims in hospital rooms. You didn’t leave Greta’s apartment. Even though it was in a better part of town, in those days the city wasn’t safe even in daylight. When Greta returned home from work, you were sitting at the table staring at a blank page of paper. You knew in your heart that you had to see them face to face. You told Greta you would be leaving soon.

Astrology, part III

You sat in your bunk on a Tuesday night in mid-June in a communal barracks shared by you and nine other cadets. Most of the nicer military schools had shifted from communal barracks to dormitory style rooms, but Linsly was not one of the nicer military schools. You gripped the edge of the bed as you waited for the rest of the cadets to return from the mess hall.
The bruises you received from the repeated hazings had faded, but were unforgettable nonetheless. Linsly cadets were notoriously hard on newbies for the summer semester. Your left index finger still wouldn’t bend all the way after Peterson ground his boot into your hand while you did pushups on the muddy parade grounds.
The door opened and a group of crew cuts walked in, Peterson leading the way.
“Hey, Nancy,” Peterson said. He had given you the nickname one of your first nights as he watched you struggle to lift your body from the mud. He said your weak muscles reminded him of his little sister. Peterson was a sandy haired athlete from Clarksburg, and the undisputed leader of Barracks 3. His cruelty was borne from familial military tradition and rigidly applied physical discipline. Only, while you wilted under your father’s authority, Peterson thrived under his father’s. You had learned early on that it was better to accept a demeaning nickname than to challenge a long established hierarchy.
“Listen, Nancy, the boys and me were thinking we might have been wrong about you,” Peterson said.
You knew better than to get your hopes up. He had used this trope many times before.
“Yeah, see we’ve been talking,” Peterson continued, maintaining his composure while a few cronies began to laugh prematurely, already anticipating the punch line.
“We used to think you acted weird because you were some kind of homo. But now we realized that the moon being missing must be fuckin’ with your menstrual cycle.”
The laughter burst from the cadets, Reggie with his signature good ol’ boy guffaw rising above the rest of the snickers and chuckles. Reggie was from nowhere-West Virginia, and hung on Peterson’s every word. His back was covered in scars, the type of scars that might be caused by a father forgetting to use the end of the belt without the buckle. You lay on your back and closed your eyes, ignoring the sounds of disciplined youth shuffling around and Peterson’s patronizing call for you to lighten up.
“I was just kidding, Nancy,” he said. “You really do need to quit being such a homo.”
You tried to fall asleep, even though it was only a few minutes after eight. You knew that your barracks counselor would wake you up at midnight for another long run through a dark, sweaty, moonless night.

***

Uncle Shaun’s funeral was delayed until late June, several weeks after he was fatally stabbed by another inmate in a cafeteria altercation. Mama did all she could to get the body released earlier, but the bureaucratic molasses of the Pennsylvania prison system didn’t melt for one hysterical black woman. You had been seeing less and less of Mama in those hot weeks in June, and more and more of Mrs. Williams. When she did come home from work, she was too tired to tuck you in. She would curl up on the couch and fall asleep to Johnny Carson. Sometimes you would sneak out of bed and curl up next to her. She would put her arm around you and draw you in close, close enough for you to smell the wine on her breath. It was hot on the day of the funeral, sunny, and your relatives all praised you for your politeness and handsome tie and blazer. Mama didn’t exactly cry, but let out a continuous low moaning sound that frightened you. She sounded like one of the stray cats you sometimes saw hiding in the alleys near your apartment.
After the funeral, Mrs. Williams gave you a ride home and spent the whole day with you. Mama went to Aunt Janice’s house, and didn’t come home. After Mrs. Williams dozed off while the two of you watched a Phillies game, you walked over to the open window where the sounds of the city sifted through the lace curtains. The sun had set, and the sky was a dark black sheet. You sat by the window, waiting for the first star to pierce the blackness, or for the moon to pop out of nowhere like when you and Mama played peek-a-boo when you were little. You waited, and waited and waited, and fell asleep with your head rested against the windowsill.

***

“Hey, man, come look at this,” Coyote said as he sat on your couch on the last Wednesday of June. You were in the kitchen, staring at the blank space in your refrigerator, and walked the short path to the living room to join Coyote in front of the TV. You had quit your internship at the Law Offices of James and Holcomb. Franklin James and Montgomery Holcomb, besides having two of the worst names you had ever heard, were ambulance chasers. You had no interest in being a personal injury attorney, and, as you told your mother over the phone the night before, no interest in being a lawyer at all.
“Well what do you want to be,” she asked.
“I don’t know,” you said.
“You’re killing me. You’re actually killing me.”
“That’s what every Jewish mother says to every Jewish son.”
“You think this is a joke. You think your life is a joke. It’s bad enough that the moon is gone and my menstrual cycle is haywire, now I have to deal with my son the joke teller.”
“Oh, God, mom, please. I really don’t want to hear about that.”
“More jokes,” she sighed. “Well, I didn’t raise my son be a comedian. If you don’t want to go to law school, you can support yourself from now on.”
She handed the phone to your dad and the two of you chit-chatted for a bit, but your conversation with your mother had left you feeling hollow and you had little to talk about.
You sat down on the couch and saw a burning building on the TV screen. A graphic on the bottom of the screen said it was live footage from Houston, TX. An hour or so after the sun set, someone had set fire to the city hall. The screen shifted back to the local Channel 4 newsroom, where talking heads discussed the astronomical increase in crime since the Great Lunar Eclipse began.
“Some crazy shit, man,” Coyote said. “The world is really going to shit now.”
You didn’t pay much attention to the world, but you knew that you had no job prospects and probably couldn’t float the rent for August. Coyote asked if he could have a beer. You ran your hands over your face, up through your hair.
“I don’t have any beer,” you said, “I don’t have any food.”
“Hey, that’s ok, man,” he said, “I think I got some beer at my place.”
He got up and walked out down the hall, leaving you alone with Karen Jennings and the News 4 Weather Team. Gale force winds were pounding western Mexico, and were expected to increase worldwide as a result of some Antarctic scientific shit that explained why the climate was changing but did nothing to explain why you lost all your motivation after college. You heard the windows in your bedroom rattle, as if in response to the foreboding news report, but you couldn’t get your mother’s words out of your head and ignored the noise. You got up and walked after Coyote, not even bothering to turn off the TV.

Astrology, part II

It was an eight hour bus ride to Linsly from your house in Bridgewater, Virginia. Your mom cried so much when you left on that dim rainy morning, running her hands over the cuts on your face as she embraced you at the Greyhound station. Your father stood behind her, stoic, fists and jaw clenched, shaking your hand and passing your duffel bag to you so that you could load it onto the bus yourself. You didn’t look out the window at your parents as the bus pulled away, just down at your hands and the red marks where tiny bits of broken windshield had cut through the skin. There weren’t many other passengers on the bus, but a group in the front was engaged in a dramatic discussion of various scientific explanations for the moon's three day absense. As the bus moved through flat farmland and gray rain, you rested your head on the window and slept.

***

You were sitting in the kitchen one night in the middle of May, reading your Richfield Publishing Company Third Grade English Reader and swinging your legs underneath the chair. Mama had a late shift at the hospital and wouldn’t be home until ten, but she had told you that Mrs. Williams would be stopping by with a nice hot dinner for you. She would even stay with you while you ate if you wanted. You had just gotten to the bottom of page thirty three in the reader, the part where Rick and his brother Tim are opening the locked barn to see what was making all the noise, when you heard voices coming from outside the door.
“Evening, Mrs. Williams,” said a man’s voice, husky and muffled through the wood of the door.
“Oh, good evening Harold,” said a female voice you recognized as belonging to Mrs. Williams.
“What’s that in the pan there?” said Harold, your neighbor from across the hall. “Anything I might like to try?”
“You keep your hands off,” Mrs. Williams said joyfully. “This casserole is for Jamie.” You took a sharp breath at the mention of your name.
“Who’s Jamie?”
“You know, the little colored boy that lives in four oh seven. Don’t you know your own neighbors?”
“Well I’m out on business a lot, you know.”
“Oh, well, his mother is a very nice woman. Very polite. But she just got the most awful news about her brother. He’s been in trouble for years, and I guess it all finally caught up to him. She’s over at her sister Janice’s house right now, probably howling like a banshee. Such a heartbreak.”
There was a pause before Harold spoke.
“Well Mrs. Williams, I’m really not one for much gossip.”
“Well alright, then. Good night, Harold.”
There was a soft knock on the door and you opened it to find a grandmotherly woman in her late sixties holding a steaming pan between two oven mitts.
“Hello, Jamie,” Mrs. Williams said, “I brought you some supper!”
You sat down at the kitchen table while she rummaged around in the cupboards for a plate. She turned to look at you every few moments, flashing quick smiles as if she were surprised to see you still sitting quietly at the table.
“Have you heard about this funny moon business?” she said. You didn’t look up from your food, which you nibbled at, but nodded your head yes.
“It’s been gone for five whole nights!” she said, “Isn’t that silly?” You nodded again.
“What do you suppose the wolves are gonna howl at now?” she asked, flashing her bright false teeth in a wide open grin. You shrugged your shoulders and poked at a tomato with your fork. When it was obvious that you were done eating, Mrs. Williams cleared and washed your plate. She wrapped the casserole pan in tinfoil and placed it in your fridge.
“Well, goodnight, Jamie,” she said as she left, her old sad eyes and warm smile going unnoticed as you kept your eyes trained on your All-Star sneakers.
“Goodnight, ma’am,” you whispered before the door closed.

***

It was noon on a Saturday in early June. The moon had been gone for several weeks, and you were just waking up after a hard drunken night to commemorate failing the last test of your first year at Golden Gate University. Everyone at the bar had been talking about a rocket built by the Soviets that was due to be launched that night, so you went home early and drank gin and tonics alone until Coyote stumbled his way down the hall. The two of you shared a generic toast before you went to your room to pass out.
Coyote was still asleep on your couch as you made your way into the kitchen to make coffee. The phone rang, and, without even answering, you knew it was your mother. She called you almost non-stop those days, gave you updates on what her rabbi had said about the moon, what the Christians were saying about it being a sign of the rapture, how useless the scientists were. You let the phone ring and ring, taking a seat on the easy chair next to the sofa, hoping the shrill tone would wake Coyote from his coma. It didn’t, so you got up from the chair and pushed your friend awake. He sat up and rubbed his eyes with both hands. He reached for his eyeglasses that had fallen to the floor.
“Hey, what’s it say in the paper about the moon?” he asked after a few moments. You glanced over to the door. The paper sat outside on the floor in the hall.
“Well shit, man, I wanna see if the rocket they sent found anything,” he said, standing up. Coyote, like much of the world, had become obsessed with the Lunar Eclipse. His hippie friends all believed that the moon disappearing meant that mother earth was keeping it in her shadow as a sign that people needed to be more peaceful to each other, or something. You didn’t pay much attention to the things they said when you passed them loitering outside the building smoking grass and selling beaded jewelry. Coyote, to your surprise, was interested from a scientific standpoint. You had never known him to be interested in anything other than peace and love.
“I don’t think I’m going to stay in law school,” you said as Coyote sat down again and devoured the headlines. You sat with your chin resting on your hands, frowning as you tried to read along with Coyote. ‘Communists Tight-Lipped About Rocket Launch’ it said on the front page. Coyote kept reading, then looked up at you and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, man, what did you say?” he asked.
“I said I failed that last exam. I don’t think I’m going to stay in law school,” you repeated, louder this time. You had been thinking about it for a long time, but this was the first time you ever said it out loud.
“Oh,” said Coyote, returning to the paper. “I guess nobody knows what happened with the Russian thing. But look, it says that all the animals are, like, freaking out. A herd of whales got totally lost in the Caribbean.”
“Pod of whales,” you mumbled. Coyote looked up quizzically, then shook his head and looked back at the paper.
“It’s just crazy, man. All the nocturnal ones are doing weird shit too.”
You rubbed your eyes and took a deep breath and looked out the window. The sun was out, shining brighter than ever, taunting and daring the moon to return.

Astrology

The Great Lunar Eclipse, as it came to be known, began on the night of Sunday, May eleventh, 1975, the same night you wrapped your father’s 1968 Pontiac GTO around the telephone pole down the street from your girlfriend’s house. You don’t remember looking at the sky that night, you were drunk and spent too much time sneaking glances down Veronica’s blouse as she bent over the cooler to grab the beer she had stolen from her father’s refrigerator in her garage. She told you she loved you that night, as you sped bleary eyed down County Road 13.
At the moment you didn’t care that your father would be furious when he discovered that you borrowed his car, or that your guidance counselor said the chances of you getting into college were slim, or even that you didn’t really like Veronica all that much. You looked over at her next to you as you eased through a familiar curve in the road, when the clutch grabbed and you lost control. Veronica was unharmed, miraculously it seemed, and somehow you escaped with only a few minor cuts and bruises. But you came home from the hospital later that night to find your bags already packed for Linsly Military Institute in West Virginia, your father’s prestigious alma mater. You were going to make the family proud, one way or another.

***

Scientifically speaking it wasn’t an actual eclipse, but when a Colorado newspaper coined the phrase Great Lunar Eclipse the name stuck. That night in May the moon passed between the earth and the sun as part of its monthly cycle of waxing and waning, the New Moon invisible in the dark as the lunar calendar turned over. Your mama took you up to the roof of your apartment building that night with a pair of lawn chairs, a bucket of vanilla ice cream, and a full bottle of red wine. It was a Sunday night, and you had school the next morning, but Mama had come home from work to learn that Uncle Shaun’s parole had been denied again and she desperately needed a distraction. She told you that the two of you would stay up all night and then play hooky in the morning.
You giggled as she squeezed you up on the roof. It was usually impossible to see more than a few stars in the big city, but a record heat wave had been causing rolling blackouts throughout Philadelphia since the end of April. The power was out in Philly from 9-11:30 pm, and the darkness of the city combined with a New Moon gave the two of you quite a spectacular show. Mama fell asleep at 11, but you stayed up for another two hours watching shooting stars even after the electricity came back on and drowned the sky with the urban glow of thousands of other people.

***

After a New Moon, Luna reappears in the sky as a thin sliver, like the sly beginnings of a smile from the universe itself. In May of 1975, however, and for the duration of the Great Lunar Eclipse, the moon did not reappear. Your neighbor, Coyote, was the first one to inform you that the moon was missing. Coyote’s real name was Theodore, a shameful secret that only came to light when a piece of mail was mistakenly delivered to your box. When you asked him about it, he launched into a drug induced speech about an individual’s right to answer to whatever name he chooses. He added that ladies loved to call him Coyote, especially when they were in what he called “the boo-dwah.” He said it worked every time. You didn’t press for any further details.
“Hey, dude,” Coyote said that Monday evening, coming through the door and sitting on your couch, “you know the moon is gone?”
You looked up at him from the used copy of Legal Ethics and the Morality of Defense you had been struggling to read.
“Seriously, man, the fuckin’ moon is gone,” he said, his long blonde hair bobbing along as he wobbled his head with the magnitude of his statement. Coyote had endured his teenage years during the sixties, and had matured into a full blown hippie. In your neighborhood, the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, hippies were a fact of life.
You closed your book, squishing your yellow highlighter between the pages, and looked out the window. The sun was just setting, lighting the roofs across the street a bright fiery orange in front of dramatic lavender clouds.
“No, man, you can’t see it now,” Coyote told you, “It’s still light out, man. But I mean it. The scientists are all going nuts. The moon is, like, gone for real.”
You sighed, setting Legal Ethics on the coffee table in front of you. Law school was hard enough without living in a world populated by hippies with no concept of private space.
“Hey, man, by the way, do you have any grass on you?” Coyote asked, removing his thick eyeglasses and polishing them with his shirtsleeve, showing off his watery pink eyes.
You looked back out the window. The sun had already passed behind the buildings across the street, but the sky remained a vibrant purple.

On hot new jams

I haven't been a huge fan of the whole dance-punk revival that has dominated the music scene for the past few years. I mean I really like TV On The Radio, and I guess I thought the first Killers CD was okay, but the rest of it just doesn't appeal to me. I generally prefer guitars to synthesizers, and the whole dancing thing is not really my bag. I was therefore a little disappointed when I heard that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (one of my very favorite bands) were going full on dance mode for their next album. You're about four years too late on this one, guys. Stick to the weird garage sound.

But nevertheless, this is the first single and I actually like it a lot. It may not be enough to get me dancing, but I can't wait for the album.

*UPDATE*
Well, it would seem that the song is gone now. Shucks.

On the summer years

My friend Joel is getting married in May.

I just got a call from my friend Ben, who proposed to his girlfriend last night.

What happened to our youth? Has the whole world gone crazy???

On the other hand, I spent Valentine's Day alone nursing a beastly hangover, playing MLB: The Show, and watching Battlestar Galactica.

Maybe those two know something I don't.

On the doldrums, my shoes

Hoo boy, I'm really scraping the bottom of the ol' inspiration barrel here. In the past I have tried up with what I thought would be simple stand-by topics for times like this when I had nothing else to write about. As it turns out, they were terrible uninteresting ideas that I never want to visit ever again. Lists of random Wikipedia facts? Talking about random crap that I find? Ugh. Nobody wants to read that crap, and I certainly don't want to write it.

I still wish I could figure out some sort of structure for this blog, maybe better categorize my posts and schedule them so that I write about certain things on certain days each week. Figure out a good list of regular topics, and stick to a regimen instead of just posting randomly whenever an idea comes to me. Unfortunately, until I come up with some better ideas, I just can't see that happening. The only thing you will likely see with any regularity is the Spebector Files, and that's something that just can't be forced.

So really, I hope you excuse the increasingly menial topics up in this piece. Understand that creative inspiration can be a slippery fish, and sometimes, just when you think you caught the big one, it turns out that on the end of that line is nothing but an old boot. Get it LOL because today I'm writing about my shoes!

Yesterday I found myself being described, by my own mother no less, as an 'edgy metrosexual.' I was quite flabbergasted by the remark, as I would never in a million years use either of those terms to describe myself. I personally haven't considered myself edgy since the 10th grade, back when I listened to corny punk rock and pretended to know how to skateboard. And metrosexual makes even less sense. When she said it, I was wearing an unwashed Target sweatshirt and I hadn't shaved in about four days. Unless the definition of metrosexual has been expanded to mean 'someone who takes showers,' then I don't think it fits me at all. I asked my mom to clarify what about me was edgy and/or metrosexual. She vaguely suggested that it was my shoes.

Yeah, I lace them up backwards. It's the latest craze, all your favorite celebrities are doing it!

I dunno, I don't really get it. I mean, they're pretty ugly. Like a cross between a pair of Chuck's and bowling shoes. I bought them in Portland while I was visiting my friend Aika. We were walking around downtown PDX and it was raining, and all I had were a pair of flip flops that got slimy in the rain and kept slip slopping off my feet. We ducked into a weird outlet store so I could get a cheap pair of shoes for the rest of the day. Amidst the weird loafers and factory reject K-Swiss sneakers, I found these ones. They're made by a company I never heard of called Børn. I bought them because I thought they looked like the kind of shoes that one would wear on a boat, and I thought that was funny for some reason. My good ol' pair of boating shoes. You might also notice that they are filthy and poorly maintained, because I'm the type of person who will wear out a pair of shoes until they disintegrate. I'm quite sure that they are the least remarkable shoes that I have ever owned. Or at least I was, until they were used as evidence in my character trial.

I'm thinking that maybe when my mom said 'edgy metrosexual' she actually meant 'hipster,' but she didn't know the right term. But please, I'm no hipster either. I'm not nearly skinny enough for skinny jeans.

Okay, good grief, I'm really writing about my shoes now? This is so lame. I'm so sorry. Here, enjoy this music video. I watched it while writing this to get inspiration. Nelly's crew is perhaps the wackest bunch of dudes ever assembled. A Phantom of the Opera mask? Are you kidding me?

On the lull

I promise I will write something tomorrow.

On the weekend

In case you were wondering why I haven't written any exciting posts in the past few days, it's because I haven't done any interesting things in the past few days. But what did I do?

On Friday, I...

• had a prospective meeting with a bunch of lawyers and psychologists about a writing gig I might take on in the near future
• went to Broders' Cucina Italiana, where about half of my friends work, and ate a delicious sandwich and some free pizza
• went to Cheapo and got some new CDs, The Mountain by The Heartless Bastards and Never Better by P.O.S. (both of which are excellent, by the way)

On Saturday, I...

• played MLB The Show 2008 for like 6 hours. I played a rivalry series in which the Minnesota Twins repeatedly dominated the Chicago White Sox. Delmon Young is completely bonkers in that game.
• made this faux dog-in-a-shell for my friend Lauren's HIJOLE's birthday:
• tequila tequila tequila tequila and then a going away party for my friend Darian who is moving up to the boundary waters to teach children about environmental issues

On Sunday, I...

• woke up with a bit of a headache
• purchased some weird valentine things from the dollar store, which I will write about once I retrieve them from my friend's apartment
  
• ordered some Chinese food and watched Jurassic Park: The Lost World
• met with my friend Jake to try and fail to do a crossword puzzle and then discuss our big TOP SECRET PROJECT, on which I believe we made significant progress

Hopefully I'll have more to write about this week. Also, I don't know if anyone actually downloaded and installed that font I made, but I got sick of it so I'm not using it anymore.

On my handwriting

So I found (via Lifehacker) this website called YourFonts that lets you create a font out of your own handwriting. It sounded pretty neat so I gave it a whirl. I figured maybe I could use it here and turn the whole blog into a showcase of my immaculate penmanship. It would look just like a page from my journal!

This is what my chicken scratch looks like as a font

If I had known how long it would take, I probably wouldn't have bothered. It was just an endless period of trial and error trying to get it to work and to look okay, and then it took even longer to figure out how to get Blogger to recognize the lousy thing. I don't understand html stuff at all, and even with a tutorial I was in way over my head.

But I finally figured it out, and now the entire blog is in my handwriting sort of! Unfortunately, even though my handwriting is fairly legible, it's not nearly as easy to read as whatever font was there before. Also, I was extremely disappointed to learn that in order for anybody to actually see the font, they have to manually install it on their computer. Again, if I had known, I probably wouldn't have bothered.

But if you're one of those people that really wants to get the full Knowledge Dropped experience, for a limited time I'm making the font available for download! And it's free free free!

Download it here. I promise it's not a virus.
Instructions on how to install it here.

But wait, there's more! Other uses for this valuable font include:

1. Use it to hide your identity when writing ransom demands and kidnapping letters
   
2. Use it to write confessions to the police and frame me for crimes
   
3. Take it to a handwriting analyst to discover dark secrets about my personality
4. Use it to forge permission slips and report cards (note: only do this if your parents have the exact same handwriting)
5. Use it to write love letters to yourself and pretend like I sent them

Also, no more bandana and mustache.

On Tagman

Despite recent trends, there will be nothing about dogs today. If, however, you really need some sort of dog fix, I suggest you visit dog-in-a-shell.com. It's full of extremely useful products. Who knows when you might need a dog? In a shell?

Anyway, if you direct your eyeballs directly above this post, you might notice that I changed the header. You might recognize it from this post a few months ago. I guess I just got tired of the old one, which was just something I chose arbitrarily when I started this deal. In fact, you may have wondered what the flip it even was. Today, the secret shall be revealed!


When I was in Buenos Aires a couple years ago, I took the subway B line every day from the Medrano stop by my homestay apartment to the Callao stop where my classes were. This bizarre superhero graffiti was on the stairs going down to the Medrano stop, and I walked past it at least twice a day for three months. It became one of my favorite parts of my daily routine. I just love the vacant expression and the slightly open mouth, the windswept cape and the Superman pose, the complete lack of legs. I bet it took the artist about five seconds to draw, but I think it's a masterpiece. Many times as I walked down the stairs I would make up a story about the character. He was called Tagman, and he would fly around the walls of the city, maybe doing battle with other graffiti. Something sort of like this*, but more superheroic. If I ever go back to Argentina, I will make sure to take the subway and see if he's still there. I really hope he is.

One thing I never figured out though, is what exactly is the thing on the far right by his left hand? Is it a paintbrush? A lampshade? What is it?

*When you have the time, I strongly recommend that you watch this video. It's absolutely amazing.