Maryland Captivity - Beautiful Swimmers

dear world,

I am not dead. Please stop asking “Are you alive?” I just looked my text messages and at least 80% of all the messages I receive are some variation on this theme. I understand that there is some justification for this, but can we find some new phrase to use? Thanks.

Yours Truly,

Austen

fmylife:

Today, I was at a pond taking pictures with my new camera. I saw a mama duck leading her babies around and decided to get in closer to take a picture. Mama duck got spooked and led her babies too close to a waterfall escaping. One fell off. It never surfaced. FML

What literary figure would you take to the beach?

Best answer so far:

Seymour Glass from Perfect day for bananafish

Ritz Camera

I have pneumonia. While this has some drawbacks, like coughing up blood and sweating like Val Kilmer in “Tombstone,” it also has its share of benefits. Since I can’t really work, I now have all the time in the world to sit around, sleep and eat watermelon. [Insert racist joke here]. I fell asleep a little bit earlier, and immediately had an incredibly vivid dream that I was eaten by a bear. I don’t know if it was the fever or what, but it could not have been any more real if I had woken up with a bear’s jaws clamped around my head. Fortunately, since I have pneumonia, I now have the time to spend the next hour googling Timothy Treadwell, the star of Warner Herzog’s amazing comedy “Grizzly Man.”

I ran out of warren zevon lyrics

I work now. At a boat shop. I’m a blue collar employee of corporate america. My dad told me that if I got a job he’d stop giving me shit. To prove it, tonight he refused to give me dinner after work because I declined to drive my step mother to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (She’s just getting home now, so thats a good 6 hour investment i avoided by going hungry).

At work, I spend most of my time avoiding customers while trying to look busy. Sometimes, I am actually cornered into speaking to these people. They ask, “Do you work here.” I want to say, “No, I just wear a shirt with a nametag while carrying boxes full of shit for fun.” But they wouldn’t get the joke.

At least I can enjoy my fellow, underpaid, colleagues. Following the rule of male blue collar jobs, we can discuss only 3 things:

1. Girls
2. Drugs/Alcohol
3. How much we hate this job

We do this during our copious cigarette breaks. Also, regarding movies: Just watch Brazil. Michael Palin and Deniro, directed by Terry Gilliam. Great sets, a good adaptation of 1984, zip lining, etc…

Semi-Anonymous Chat Today

M—ly:  ♥ I dont have to TRY 2 be happy anymore, it just happens. ♥

me:  are you drunk and stoned at work?

Sent at 3:37 PM on Wednesday

M—ly:  I luv 2 just have fun w/ my friends. I had a nose job and I love it.

M—ly:  I dream of bigger things and feel Im meant for more. I think I care to much.

me:  this is all going on tumblr whatever it is

Hit Somebody

Yesterday was easter. I celebrated the rebirth of my savior diligently. Too diligently, actually, since I feel like hell today. I have 8 cousins, all except one between the ages of 13 and 16. This meant that easter dinner was dominated by fart jokes, “That’s what she said” rejoinders, and talk about anything but Jesus. One of my cousins brought his girlfriend and proceeded, as far as I can tell, to take her out back into the garage and bang her. I overheard snatches of their passion as I smoked a cigarette and tried to figure out why my grandparents’ next door neighbor is keeping roughly 30 squirrels in individual cages scattered about his backyard.

After dinner, we did what any completely areligious, alcoholic family would do: We clustered around the piano and sang Auld Lang Syne, God Bless America and, as a concession to Jesus, Dredle Dredle Dredle. One of my 13 year old cousins came up to me and asked “Why do we live in a family of drunks?” Before I could answer, my uncle (who hates my father and, by proxy, me) approached me, leaning in so I could smell his whiskey sodden breath, and simply said, “You disgust me.” Then he walked away, and with him went most of my hopes that things are, in fact, getting better in my life….

Favorite films

Remember, favorite, not best. You can’t argue with my favorite movies:

1) Empire Strikes Back
2) English Patient
3) Children of Men
4) Braveheart
5) Fearless
6) Lebowski
7) Withnail and I
8) Royal Tbaums
9) Last Waltz
10) Heat

Honorable mentions will come later.

benny

Meet my friend, Ben. He is one of my closest friends, despite, as I have mentioned earlier, his semblance to an STD. Basically, everyone likes Ben. For no reason. In fact, those of us that have known him for years realize that we like him despite his many flaws. At the same time, ben has several positive attributes, which wind up actually making him a worse person.

Ben is good with girls. I have learned this personally, as every girl I have ever fallen in love with has wound up sleeping with… Ben. He has some kind of charisma, mixed with the kind of sociopathy necessary to listen to his best friend describe his crush while thinking “Hmmm… I should totally do this girl.”

Ben will always make plans to hang out with you. The problem is, he never follows through. This is because he quadruple books himself on any given night. This ends with ben sitting at his house, since he is too anxious to go out, and me sitting at mine. Then I call him. Which leads me to…

Ben always answers his phone. Not really, but he is fairly easy to get in touch with. The problem is, if you call him you have to be willing to discuss AIDS, feces, and Ben. Not necessarily in that order. But still, if you have a genuine complaint, then something like the following conversation ensues:

me: Oh man, I broke my leg today because I fell off a roof.

ben: I’m shitting.

Basically, ben has all the positive attributes of a human crap maggot. At the same time, I can’t help but love him. I hate him for this a little, just like his parents. Anyways, that’s ben, my best friend.

As if you could quantify my tastes in a list… (you can)

I hate lists. To do lists make me think of the ruptured colon my sister suffered yesterday, and the way that blood bubbled out of her mouth, and her stomach bulged with partially digested food filling her thoracic cavity. Grocery lists simply remind me of when my dog, Edward, sneezed blood, fell over and died in our dining room. We still don’t have all the stains up. Anyways without further ado, here are my top 10 favorite songs. Please note, favorite does not mean I consider these the best songs of all time. There is a distinction.

In no real order:

1. Lawyers Guns and Money - Warren Zevon
2. Lets Get Ready to Crumble - Russian Futurists
3. Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley, NOT Leonard Cohen
4. The New Year - Death Cab for Cutie (sorry)
5. Graceland - Paul Simon
6. Astral Weeks - Van the man
7. Da Funk - Daft Punk
8. This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) - Talking Heads
9. Why Can’t I Forget About You - Subdudes
10. Solsbury Hill - Peter “Moses” Gabriel

Honorable Mentions Include: Hold On - Tom Waits, Anything else by Warren Zevon, With or Without You - U2, Hey Ma - Camron (feat. Juelz Santana), Thirty Three - Smashing Pumpkins, Long December - Counting Crows, Digital Love - Daft Punk, Seventeen Years - Ratatat, Caravan - Van the Man and the Band (The Last Waltz), Untitled #4 - Sigur Ros from (), Safe From Harm - Massive Attack, Cecilia - Simon and that other jew

They say love conquers all, you can’t start it like a car, you can’t stop it with a gun

Several nights ago, I was feeling romantic. Perhaps it was the incipient harbingers of spring floating through the house (other people call them allergens). Or maybe I just hadn’t heard my dad say anything too terrible recently, and I subconsciously wanted to remedy that. Anyways, as usual, dinner was a tortuous affair, a series of painful silences broken by occasional discussions of depression and attempted explanations for why my sister can’t seem to read well. I decided to inject a little bit of love and tenderness, finally asking the question I had wondered about intermittently since I was a small boy. Here is the secret tape recording of our conversation, which captured truly the most romantic answer to a question every young man asks his father:

Silence permeates the room. Patricia is seated across from my father, Jaina sits facing me. No one makes eye contact, instead focusing entirely on rearranging their servings of corned beef into even less appetizing piles of pinkish fat and congealed juices.

Me: Dad, can I ask you a question?

Dad:

Me: Thanks. When did you know that my mom was the person that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with?

The rest of the table, composed entirely of people my father has collected around him after he decided, in fact, that my mother was not the person that he wanted to spend ANY more time with, looks up and regards my father intently. My father pauses as he considers the question, stalling for time by swilling wine out of his coffee mug.

Dad: Well, it wasn’t really a feeling, an intuitive feeling. It was a decision that I made after we went ahead and cancelled our appointment at the abortion clinic. You know, after she got pregnant with you.

The rest of the family looks back down at their corned beef, which suddenly begins to bear a disturbing resemblance to dead baby-flesh. I interject, appalled and completely non-plussed.

Me: Please stop. Thats enough. Please stop.

Dad: Austen, don’t talk to me like that. If you keep talking like that, you can walk right out the front door, keep on walking and never come back.

In sum, I was told that I was nearly aborted over dinner. This came in response to a question about true love. When I expressed my disgust at this, I was threatened with getting kicked out of the house. I can’t believe that I haven’t turned into Charles Manson, given the situations that surround me…