Letters to the Internet Concerning Everything

A Letter to My Foes Concerning Their Standing

2011-05-25T11:12:00.000-05:00

Dear those that would wrong me,

I have come to a conclusion. The most useless thing a man can possess is an enemy. Deciding to have an enemy is like volunteering for cancer. Opting into the idea of having a constant, terrible drain on all of your mental and emotional resources. An Enemy steals everything from you. They take your peace of mind, your finite time, your comfort, and your very important pursuit of happiness. And the worst part is that all of this theft is with your own permission. Because when you enter into that pointless death spiral with someone, you have no one to blame for your misery but yourself.

Deciding to hate someone is the same as taking the first swing. Hate is an act of active aggression as a response to some kind of affront to your person. So, what else can we call someone’s reaction to hate, whether deserved or not, but self defense? People can always create adversity that’s out of your control. Something you have to deal with that may not be fair to you. That’s just life, and there’s no shame in protesting how you are being mistreated. But, no one in existence can elicit your malcontent, experience your venom, or become you nemesis without your explicit consent. Vowing hatred on someone, regardless of how secret or concealed, is the first voluntary step to conflict. You’re “starting it,” if you want another way of saying it. You might as well swing a glove against their face.

Of the three or four things I’ve come to learn in my “feels like an eternity but is actually barely a blip” lifetime, none have come into so stark a view so abruptly as that one over the last six months. It’s an idea that I’ve thought a lot about for years but never had the, I don’t know, maybe courage or confidence to put into real practice. It was too laid back, too naïve, too laissez-faire for me to really take it seriously. The boy in me always won the internal argument that there must be better, manlier ways to deal with the dirty, ass-faced transgressors in my life. But, as that boy in me was ground, meticulously, to a thick, gooey pulp by living real life objective observation and rational reasoning were allowed back in the captain’s chair again. And that same observation and reason kept leading me to the idea of an enemy free existence.

Before I continue I want to be clear that when I say “enemy free” I don’t mean conflict free. People are going to fuck with me. Whether the mean to or not, it’s going to happen, and happen often. So, I don’t expect to just get along famously with everyone at all times. On top of that, aspiring towards a life of harmony with all thins sounds incredibly boring to me. Boring and frustrating. I think people, myself included, need conflict and contradiction and complication. It makes us solve problems. It makes us think and question and work things out. A life without conflict, a passive life, sounds like a life without purpose or innovation. Stagnant. My point isn’t that we shouldn’t have problems, but that it isn’t necessary to assign a personal villain to them. Even if the problem IS a person, it can be solved without hatred getting involved.

Maybe I was right the first time. Maybe I am being naïve in thinking that the world can be thought of in terms of problems and solution. But, it just feels like the only guaranteed result of having sworn enemies, whether on the playground, work, or the world stage, is endless, petty bullshit. Frankly, I’ve had all the bullshit I can take. In a way I’m not surprised it took me so long to work my way around to that simple conclusion. I grew up in the same vindictive, resource hungry society as the rest of us. Sure, on the surface it feels like I hate Mark because he called me an asshole behind my back, but on some deep level, buried back behind the prefrontal cortex, I’m probably just worried that he’s going to steal my mate or find my hollowed out tree full of corn.

For the record, Mark is a shithead, but that’s really beside the greater point I’m trying to make.

Enemies are wholly and completely useless. Not only useless, but actively counter productive to getting anything of any substance accomplished. Enemies take our focus from meaningful pursuits and redirect our energy at a single, arbitrary purpose that in a best case scenario only puts us back at the same state we were before we started.

About a year or so ago my wife and I were going through a rough time. Rough on top of our already daily kick between the cheeks that was arriving promptly each morning for the last few years. But these particular few weeks were especially craptastic because of a few people deciding, for whatever reason, that I and my wife were their enemies. Simply because we wanted to do what was right, try to do it that way every time, and asked that they make a little effort to do their part. I guess that’s what passes for an unforgivable sin these days.

At first I was delighted. Someone declaring enemiship on me used to ring my dinner bell. You want to actively hate me? Well, hey. Fuck yeah. Let’s hate each other. I can’t wait. I’m super good at hating people. And thing. And ideas. And systems. And just about anything, really. At that point in my life my hate was like a fine scotch, aged to perfection in filled fill oak barrels. It was an exquisite statue of down trodden hellfire, cut and chiseled for years by the leers and jeers of my peers. I was a master of hate. A master hater if you will. I master hated all the time. Mostly when I was alone, but sometimes with a partner. You know, if they were cool about it. The point is that in the past I’ve been so eager to battle with someone that them deciding to hate me first was like a gift. A free pass to act against them without any moral fallout. Hatred and revenge were leisure activities and I loved them.

But now, not so much. Now I just can’t get exited like I used to. The fire in my belly has dimmed to a bed of warm ash. It’s been too long since I’ve climbed for the high fruit, and it has grown bitter and rotten on the vine. I don’t want to hate anyone anymore. I just want to try and focus on the things that matter to me.

So, I’m saying goodbye to all of the old enemies of my past. Goodbye ghosts of horrible bosses. Goodbye shitty teachers. Goodbye heartless bitches with your humiliating public displays of rejection. Goodbye lazy co-workers. And even goodbye to one specific person. On “man” that I’ve hated for years even though I never even see him anymore. You’ve probably noticed him around town if you live near me. He looks kind of like a cross between a Jim Henson puppet and a baboon shitting rotten blood. Can’t picture him? Ok, you’ve seen him. He’s like my height, brown eyes, white teeth, kind of walks like he’s a circus clown forcefully fucking a small child. Or, maybe not a circus clown, per se. But SOME kind of entertainer/pedophile/rapist. He’s a real piece of work. It’s like he is a machine sent from the future to turn any fun thing into pure horseshit. Also I heard he fucked a cow once. Not on a dare or anything; he just wanted to. Anyway, I think I got a little off topic again. Back to not hating people.

One thing that is eye opening to me, even as I write this, is that most of those vague examples I just listed about people I hate are over ten years old. The fighting that rages between them and me is a perpetual inner struggle that now only exists in my head, scratching and scarring the inside of my skull. Most of the people I have hated don’t even exist in that form anymore. Not as they existed when I despised them. I’m left with just the biased memories of our encounters. Their ghosts living inside my psyche, twisted by time, and boiled together into a dark soup to really just cover up the things I hate about myself. At one time I knew them as people, but now they exist to me as the avatars of my own failures.

So, like I said, these people from a few months ago decided that my wife and I were their enemies, and we were getting ready for the chore of getting back at them, and then we just didn’t. We decided that moving on was more important than entrenched revenge. We just didn’t feel up to it. I mean in the course of my day when can I pencil in “fuck with asshole?” I’ve got work, sleep, quality time with my wife (sex or tv or both if I’m lucky), dinner, exercise, reading, friends, maybe a game or two in there, writing egotistically asinine letters. Hell, I can’t squeeze it all in as it is. I can no longer justify the time and energy it takes to declare war on someone anymore. Even mentally.

Especially mentally.

The stress of just trying to maintain a good life may have turned me peaceful at long last. Or, if not completely peaceful, perhaps just introduced the idea of peace as a preferred option.

Sincerely,
Couldn't give a shit about what you think of me

A Letter to Those Just Out of the Nest Concerning the Iron Age

2010-09-21T07:18:00.004-05:00

Dear fresh, unscarred faces of youth,

Ironing is a very unique experience. Of all the things in my life I've learned to do, nothing else really has held the dual nature of being so simple a concept, yet, so complicated a practice. It's all fine and good on paper. Just apply hot surface to wrinkled clothing. But, what those directions should stress is that you should apply the hot surface ONLY to wrinkled clothing. It's a subtle yet important variation of the standard ironing instructions, but, could have saved me some grief in the long run. I found that the mystical properties of dispelling wrinkles with this "magic handle" were so profound to me in the beginning, that I would forget that there are many objects and surfaces on Earth, and specifically in my home, that react quite adversely to having searing hot metal applied to them. Things like the door the ironing board is attached to, or the seat of an exercise bike, or my arm.

For some reason cotton, the result of a sharp and brittle PLANT, seemed to take the surface-of-Mercury heat in stride with no problem. But, the side of my nylon duffel bag? Shit. You'd think a tiny dragon had been held captive in it and decided its only means of escape was to make a hole in the side with its magical sulfur breath. I'm talking seconds and I'm holding the bag up, looking confusedly through a smoldering gash to the wall across the room, like I'm in a scene from Home Alone.

All I wanted to do was to iron on a patch over a part of the bag that had become frayed and weak. It wasn't until the smell hit my nostrils that I noticed the comical iron shaped hole that had been flame broiled right through the side of my favorite bag. I had a thought that was probably something like, "Christ, I've vaporized my poor yellow sack." Oh, if only the nylon had vaporized.

Deciding that the yellow plastic that had melted off my bag had, I don't know, teleported to another dimension, I guess, I tossed the bag aside and decided to iron something else. Luckily, before I pressed the iron down to my pants, I noticed where the nylon had actually got to. A golden brown film was hardening to the still hot surface of my little white bag murderer. Peeling it off was not unlike scraping the burnt cheese from a plate of nachos fresh from the microwave. That brought up a very good question that had never occurred to me in my entire life up to that point. How in the fuck to you clean an iron?

I was 22 years old. Up until a regular American male is 20, it never even really registers to him that he is going to USE an iron in his lifetime. So, with only a month or two into the journey of learning the mysteries of this strange device, now I had to figure out how to clean it up like new. I considered just buying a new one, but, I decided that the nylon bag incident was my typical M.O. when it came to being domestic, so, learning how to service and care for the tiny nuclear reactor was probably best.

I went and got a wet rag from the kitchen (the "only damp with tap water kitchen rag" being the grand champion of "cleaning shit" when you're just out of your teens) but when I got back to the iron I paused. I had just brought slightly warm water contained in cloth to clean a thing that injects "hell steam" straight through other kinds of cloth. It kind of felt like using a lead bar to clean a gun. So, I stood there, tilting my head in contemplation like my, then, young dog would tilt it's head and stare at the tree frogs on the other side of our sliding door. Probably wondering why a frog's ass feels exactly like smooth glass.

My mother was eventually called on the telephone.

"Mom, how does a mortal human clean an 'I Yurn'." I spoke as if reading "iron" off the side of the box in an attempt to subconsciously communicate to her that I was in way over my head. She politely responded that a human being can clean an iron with something called iron cleaner.

"Well, Christ," I said. "Why don't they name it something obvious?" Iron cleaner was purchased.

When I got home and opened it, I was greeted by a substance that I thought was what maybe toothpaste used to be like. In other words, it was just a beige paste. I don't know WHY I thought that it being beige meant that it was what olden times toothpaste looked like. Maybe, I just thought that everything used before I was born was sepia toned. I'm not proud of the way thoughts used to form in my brain.

So, now I had paste. But, do I slather it on the iron? Should the iron be cold? Surely, it should be cold. Although, heat is often an ingredient in cleaning things, and this thing sure gets pretty fucking hot. Maybe, I'm supposed to mix it with water first, or vinegar. Vinegar does stuff right? But, we didn't have any vinegar. Maybe, I spread it on the plate and let it set, then peel it off. Like it traps all the dirt in a crust.

Now, at this point, some of you might be thinking, "what did it say to do on the side of the tube?" Those people haven't been a 22 year old guy. Let's just say that this, what's happening above me, the process I went through years ago, if Jane Goodall had studied guys that had just gotten their first grown up job instead of chimps, there would be a chapter in her book called "Adult Males Disregard for Assistance in Simple Tasks". Some guy is standing in front of an ironing board right now, in his boxers, burnt tie in the garbage can, squirting iron cleaner out into his hands and forgetting that he hasn't unplugged it as his palm moves towards the sole plate.

Eventually, I came up with an idea that I thought was pure genius. I wouldn't put the cleaner ON the iron and scrub it with a cloth. I'd put the cleaner on a cloth, and scrub the cloth WITH the iron. I'd IRON the fucking thing clean! I squished out a heap of paste on an old towel and spread it around with my fingers a little bit. Then, I got the iron hot enough to go back in fucking time. It was full of water because I wanted lots of steam. The light went off letting me know that I had successfully preheated the device, and I pressed it into the goo on the towel.

Oh, what hissing! I jammed the button over and over again and steam filled the room as a metallic taste filled my mouth. I leaned into the iron and really scrubbed it against the towel, causing the ironing board to creak in disappointment. When I finally lifted it up, the towel was a horrid black smear, with a twinge of yellow and green to it. But, the bottom of the iron was pretty damn near cleaned. More paste squished, more hissing, more worry that I can taste pennies, but after a few rounds of that, I had a clean iron. All it cost me was one whole towel. Success!

Incidentally, this is STILL the method I use to clean irons.

Of course, all these trials an tribulations are just the natural process of young people learning how to get along in life as adults. Unfamiliarity with common household devices is going to cause some learning experiments with anyone. Especially when that device is a molten hot skillet they need to learn how to use in order to fit in with an adult world and workplace. Up until that point I had been relying on the dryer to get my clothes to a state where I might fool people into thinking I belonged in the office with them. All of those first mistakes where just that. Innocent, harmless mistakes.

It's not until that awkward period of domestication puberty passes that one really starts to realize that irons aren't just unwieldy, they're fucking evil little bastards. Tiny imps that live in your closet, waiting for you to become complacent with they're usefulness. Waiting. Until the perfect time to shatter the very fabric of your mind.

The first time I realized I had been double crossed by my little eggshell-white sadist was when I tried ironing a pair of jeans with fashionable rivets embedded in the corners of the pockets. All was five by five with the legs, as I had been ridding pant legs of wrinkles for a while by then, and I chose to go all out and iron the top as well. This is a move I would have never tried as a mere ironing beginner, but, that day I was feeling lucky and decided that my wife had been good to me over the years and she deserved crisp, flat pockets like everyone else.

There's something important to note about being burned by an iron. Half the time it isn't the iron itself doing the burning, but, the heat being transferred vicariously through an intermediary. The iron acts as a tiny godfather getting some out of luck and desperate stooge, like say a metal rivet, to do his dirty work for him so he's not directly culpable. So then when you get burned, and you WILL get burned, the surprise you experience from both the unlikely source, and the sudden intensity of the attack, will hot wire your brain so that your id and speech center, for a brief moment, are one in the same.

The usual patterns of speech that have gotten you through life as a social animal will revert into a state that will make you sound like a preschool teacher suffering from Tourette's. As soon as that freshly ironed denim decoration touched my skin the only thing I could force out of my mouth was, "son of a jelly donut cockbitchmotherfucker!"

When I looked down at my throbbing forearm I expected to see half of it missing, but instead, there was just a single, tiny, red dot. A Scarlett Letter for idiots. It felt so bad that I would have sworn the rivet was still against my flesh, branding me as property of the Levi Strauss corporation. Never did I think in a million years that the technology existed to condition a grown man to fear pants, but by golly, the iron is just that versatile. For weeks after the incident when wearing jeans I would physically cringe when I felt the metal from the pockets or buckle touch my bare skin. I was convinced that the slightest contact would cause my entire body to burst into flame, not unlike the fear a mouse holds that one of the feeder bars will give him a painful shock.

A month or so passed and I became complacent again. Convinced that the "roasting on a stick under the 30 foot flames of a thousand burning corpses in hell" style pain I experienced would subconsciously keep me from ever casually brushing a hot rivet again. I began to resume my friendly relationship with the iron. After all, he didn't burn me, the pants did. Just as he planned me to think all along. And, I wasn't that far off the mark when I thought that I'd never brush against hot metal again. That turned out to be mostly true. What I didn't take into account is that solid objects weren't the only thing these little shithead appliances can super heat.

The chosen battlefield for our next altercation was a pair of khaki cargo pants whose pockets had the tendency to get bent out of shape in the dryer. I laid the pants down on the board, delicately flattening them with the palm of my hand, and then proceeded to iron the flaps down against the pockets, like I had done a hundred times. That time one of the flaps was particularly mangled, no doubt paid to do so by little mister iron as a key element to my assassination attempt, and I had to use my index finger and thumb to hold the flap down while I ran the edge of the five thousand degree plate against it.

What the biggest bitch about this whole thing ended up being was that when I held that pocket down and started to push my Black and Decker killamajig towards my fingers, I was just SURE that I was going to be ironing a substantial part of my flesh into my pants. I just knew I was about to fuck up. But, I didn't. That part of the operation went perfect. The metal never made it to my fingers. But, the steam that built up between the folds of the pocket and then exited into my fingertips, THAT sure as hell hit its mark.

At first, I didn't even register the sensation of my hand being pressurized into vapor. I probably came around when the stump that was left of my arm thudded against the ironing board, I really can't remember. But, after a few seconds I was waving my hand like a beauty pageant winner with a head full of cocaine screaming such gems as, "Thomas Jefferson ditryhorseballhairs!" and "how to get to Sesame Street on icemothercockingdickbeards!"

If my wife hadn't been in the shower for the grand performance, I'm sure she would have thought that I was being possessed by a being of pure psychotic heat. As it worked out all she noticed was my trembling red fingers as I handed her a towel after her shower. She looked up at me and I nodded and managed to quietly whimper out the words, "god damn iron." Then she gave me a look like a park ranger gives a camper that has been feeding the bears. A look that says, "I'm sorry you got maimed, but, at the same time I'm not surprised."

Only having two major attacks on my person by the iron doesn't mean that those are the only times that that crazy bitch has made a play for my life. There have been plenty of attempted manslaughters that just weren't planned through enough by the arrow shaped fucker to be successful. There have been countless tip overs, more than a few cords wrapped around my legs, and a few times when the steam would just shut off forcing me to try different, dangerous methods of checking to make sure the fucking thing was still on.

This level of pure evil might be puzzling until you realize just what an iron is. They are devices filled with unholy incantations that some how mix elements that would normally be fatal together and make them useful. They mix water, metal, and electricity, and end up with something that's a tool instead of a trick used by someone to cause you to instantly explode when you touch it. They remove all the death part of the transaction on only leave moist heat and, on occasion, unimaginable pain.

The only reason I don't toss its sorry ass out in the garbage is that from my experiences in other homes and countless hotel rooms I've learned that all irons are the same or worse than mine. They are just spiteful, mean objects. They should sell them with a tiny riding crop and handcuffs, because, they don't only iron the pants, they make it abundantly clear that when you are using them, they are wearing the pants too.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen

P.S.
"This is a place where eternally
Fire is applied to the body
Teeth are extruded and bones are ground
Then baked into cakes which are passed around."
-Hell, Squirrel Nut Zippers

A Letter for Gamers Concerning the Other Letter for Gamers

2010-09-06T07:18:00.001-05:00

Dear fellow gamers, uh, again,

I've actually written a letter about this before, about a year and a half ago, when I was having a crisis of self. It was possibly as polar opposite to the intention of this one as possible. Considering I'm actually thinking about collecting all of these together in a single volume in the future, the juxtaposition of these two within pages of each other will be particularly interesting, to me anyway. Since then, I've written other letters and thought about myself, a lot, and I think I've gained some perspective, and also realized that there are things about me that are too set in my DNA at this point to ignore or reject.

I just recently finished reading a book called Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. It was a book about successful people and how they got that way through environmental factors, good timing, family upbringing, etc. There's a lot to the book but one thing that jumped out at me while reading it was when he started talking about what makes a person a master at something, like a master pianist or professional pitcher and that kind of thing. He says that statistically there's a magic number of hours spent practicing their trade before they have truly begun to master their art. That number, apparently, is 10,000 hours. That's 10,000 hours spent trying to get better at something. That's a lot of hours.

Now, this book has caused me to think a lot about a bunch of things while I was reading it, but, this one idea really made me pause and think back on my life. What had I ever done for ten THOUSAND hours? I have dabbled with different instruments, but never enough to even remember the basics now. I've built things with my hands, worked on electronics, sewn, drawn, mixed music, but again, never for prolonged periods of time. I'm a person that kind of drifts in and out of projects as they are interesting to me, and gives up when they're not. Except for one activity. There is ONE thing that I'll do, and have done, pretty much every day, for hours a day, whether I particularly feel like it or not, whether I feel like I'm progressing or not, sometimes just to force myself to get better at it so when I do come back later I will have a better time because I've put a lot of blood and sweat into being just overall better at it: Gaming. I've easily put over ten thousand hours into gaming. At this point it would be an almost literal statement to say I've been playing video games my entire life. Gaming, fucking GAMING, is what I could be considered a master of.

At first you might think something like, damn dude, that's pretty pathetic, and you'd be right there along with my own feelings when I deduced this out on my own, with this book still on my lap talking about the Bill Gates' and Rockefellers of the world. Is this really what I've amounted to through a life's endeavor? Am I staring down the barrel of my 27th year on this Earth only to have the medal of "Master Gamer" pinned to my otherwise blank chest? Well, yes and no.

I mean, yes. Just yes. I don't have anything for the "no" part of that.

What I've decided is, yes, I'm getting the master gamer medal, but, that maybe this isn't such a ridiculous thing to have earned. No, I'm not a master guitarist, and I could have been at this point, in the way that I could have been anything with enough work. I'm not a master chef or a master carpenter or blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying I couldn't have been other things that are, socially, viewed as more accomplished. What I am saying is, I'm statistically considered a master at SOMETHING. And, something I love, at that. I can't turn back time and stop myself from becoming obsessed with Wolf 3D and Super Mario and TMNT (for the NES) so, what the hell, let's get my awards party started! Look at me, everybody, I'm a MASTER! Where's my fucking medal! Pin it on me! Pin it on and gaze in envy all you NON-masters out there!

I figure that what's done is done, and what I'm doing I'll probably keep doing for a while. So, feeling shame over a life time of achievement, just because it doesn't achieve something that people, or maybe even I, find important, is just unneeded stress on top of everything else that life crams up my ass and lights on the 4th of July. It would be, and has been, counter productive, nay, destructive to my own psyche and self esteem to regret the gaming lifestyle I've had at this point. It's too deeply ingrained, too woven into almost every major moment.

I grew up in a house miles away from the nearest kid. I couldn't ride my bike to my buddies' houses or down to a movie theater. Outside I could run around by myself or make the 2 or 3 mile hike down to a convenience store for a coke, which always involved a lot of thinking on the way there and back. It's not really surprising that video games would become a huge part of the way I spent my free time. That and a tech savvy dad that showed up less and less as I got older and older meant that gifts of the computer entertainment nature were plentiful. A 386 when I was 5, and Atari around the same time. Later an NES, then SNES, then Playstation, then N64, then XBOX, then 360. Not to mention an ever upgrading computer, Gameboy advance, GBASP, and DS. Those last eight things I mentioned being things that I actually had to work and earn money to buy myself. On top of that lets not forget the runners up. The Tiger Handhelds, the electronic pocket black jack and poker, the Lights Out, the Simon, and probably another 50 objects that want you to push buttons when lights and sound happen.

I can almost carbon date myself by the gaming accomplishments I've had. In fact, a lot of times I can't remember dates or years when I knew a certain person or was in a certain grade of school, but, I can remember what I was playing when I was doing those things.

I remember the first time I had a crush on a girl and couldn't ever find the courage to tell her. 1989? 1991? 1992? Hell, I don't know. It was Wolfenstein 3D. I honestly couldn't tell you the year unless I had a year book. But, I can tell you, for sure, that when I had a crush on her, it was Wolfenstein 3D.

Last time I hung out with my grade school friends before we all went off to middle school? Nineteen ninety-I have no fucking idea. It was Donkey Kong Country, I remember it vividly.

The first time I was beaten savagely by a bully. Outrun, arcade with moving seat.

Meeting one of my best friends, still to this day, in middle school. Virtua Fighter.

The first time I visited England since I lived there as a child. Area 51, the light gun arcade version. That one is especially vivid because I BEAT the arcade while I was there, on vacation, while my dad sat in a pub wondering what the hell the big deal was, AND, I did it using both the first and second player light guns at the same time, one in each hand, can I get a hell yes!

My first internet girlfriend that broke up with me because I wasn't religious. Quake 1.

The first time I had sex while playing a game at the same time with a much, much better girlfriend. Goldeneye 64.

Posting a front page article, on a prestigious gaming website, about that time I was savagely beaten by a bully in a skating rink. Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

In high school, while I was practicing my own take on Buddhism (otherwise known as NOT Buddhism. It was more like 3 parts sleep deprivation, 2 parts Buddhism, and 1 part watching Fight Club all the time) I got closest to feelings of pure Zen during our 2-3 day Quake 3 tournaments. The zoning out required to sustain your skill and sanity in a 5 hour long Instagib match is probably the closest I've ever felt to enlightened.

When I went to college and my friends had all moved, I met a guy there through a social club, and my mom. I was going to leave the mom part out because it makes the rest of this sound like we started dating, but, I want to be accurate so there it is. We hit it off and started hanging out, but what I think really clinched the friendship was when I asked him to come over to my house and help me beat Halo on legendary. I just needed him to stand there and follow me around, but, after I saw the secret ending we actually started playing the game together from the beginning. Fast forward to a cold November night and we're standing in front of a Gamestop together, near the apartment we shared with my girlfriend, waiting to get our midnight release copies of Halo 2. Fast forward again and it's a warmer night at a Gamestop across town, near the house he shared with me and my wife, and now we're waiting for Halo 3. Fast forward yet again and he pre-orders Halo ODST from his laptop in his apartment and I pick it up after launch from a Walmart on my lunch break because it's stupid to stand outside a store in the middle of the night. I play games with that guy pretty much every single fucking day. We've played almost every major release together since he bought and XBOX and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. He's my best friend. And, I can't help but give Halo a lot of the credit for that.

And it's not just the gift of friendship that gaming has given me over the years. There are some real moments of pride in there too. I remember things about gaming in my life that, to me, were defining moments. I remember sitting on the easy chair I used to keep in my room in high school. This chair was for watching TV, playing games, sleeping, eating, writing, listening to music, and if I had had my way with the plumbing, other things as well. So, I'm sitting in my chair, and all my friends are gathered around shooting the shit and I'm playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. I loved this game. It was a sordid affair that I will always keep near to my heart. One of my friends even commented about how I spend a, probably, unhealthy amount of time playing a skateboarding game while my actual skateboard sits gathering dust against the wall with me barely still able to stay up right on it, on a good day.

The conversation rolls around the room among the teenage boys as those conversations do. Lots of colorful metaphors about my penis size and whether I like to use my tiny penis on men or animals. This somehow leads to one of the girls in the room (my girlfriend's best friend) jumping up and sitting down hard on my left arm, pinning it to the chair so that my fingers couldn't reach the controller. I smiled and looked up at her and put the controller on my knee, stretched my free hand out like a spider and just kept playing.

Suddenly, it wasn't about how I wouldn't be able to sexually satisfy the family dog. It was more like, "holy shit you can play that with one hand?" It took about ten seconds for them to start shouting out things like, "grind across that fence" and "do a benihana!" We weren't thinking about how this was an utterly ridiculous skill to have cultivated, we were caught up in the "mighty ducks comeback" moment that was me continuing my amazing run in the face of disability. Even I, for some reason, wasn't all that focused on how my left arm was being pinned down under the warm, young ass of a teenage girl. And, really this is just me hoping here, I don't think my girlfriend was even thinking about that whole ass firmly against my body thing either.

The point I'm trying to make is that when somebody is good at something, it's attractive to other people. We like to watch people do things that we didn't think were possible, even if the only reason it should be impossible is because no one should ever spend time getting good at it. It's that universal attraction to skill that makes me feel like this wasn't a lifetime worth of wasted energy. Gaming isn't something I chose from a list of reputable careers. Gaming was something that I fell into, and loved, and wanted to be better at. I felt good, and I still feel good, when I overcame obstacles in hard games. I feel better than other people who can't do it, and I don't have tell those of us that have been lucky enough to beat someone at something, that feeling superior than your peers is one of the best things in the world. Frankly, at this point, I've put so much time and energy into it, that if I WASN'T good at video games, THAT would be pathetic.

Reacting to artificial stimuli has been the one constant throughout my entire life. I built skills around it, created fantasies about it, built friendships based on mutual love for it, published stories about it, and all around just came to make room for it, no matter what, no matter where I ended up in my life.

I can't say it's always made sense to me, my obsession with gaming, and sometimes I get just outright depressed because I think I've wasted my life on useless frivolity. But, I don't stop. And, not like a "just one more hit man", or "I'll quit tomorrow" kind of don't stop. It's just that I never lose interest. New games always seem so fun and exciting. I find myself, over and over again, eager to be engrossed in the new puzzles and environments that other like minded people have created for me. When you boil it down, I'm just excited to explore the worlds created by others. Just the same as when someone looks forward to a new book by a favorite author, or a new movie by a favorite director.

Those being two things I ALSO do. Gaming isn't my entire life. I don't want you to get that impression. But without gaming, there wouldn't be a me, as he is now, in all his glory and studliness. I love movies, I love comics, I love books, I love TV, and I LOVE music. I used to think that the sum of those loves outweighed my love for gaming and that made me a well rounded person, but, that's a stupid way to quantify an existence. It's making justifications and excuses because I felt guilty about the video games. At the same time finding in those same games the only real sense of triumph and accomplishment I might have ever felt in my lifetime.

There's been some great times in my life. I got paid for some short stories. I got married to my high school sweetheart. I put a car in a controlled slide before I got my license. I've done unspeakable things in movie theaters. I went to Paris with my wife (ah, Paris). But things like that are few and far between in life. In real life. But, in the virtual worlds, with the buttons under my thumbs, Brothers and Sisters I can feel a small part of that excitement and pure joy every day of my waking life. I don't have to get high, I don't have to get arrested, I don't have to get a disease, I just have to play. We just have to play, and everything will be alright.

I've gone back and forth about that idea before, and I might go back and forth about it again, but I can't imagine ending up anywhere other than right back here, eventually, every time, because, as much as I want to be the kind of person that has done some really great non-gaming things, it's just not going to happen. I can't change the past. So, I might as well stick with trying to be happy with me: a person that has done some really great gaming things. I mean just an awesome guy. He really is the best.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen

P.S.
"It'll all click when the mortgage clears.
All our fears will disappear.
Now you got to bed, I'm staying here.
I've got another level that I want to clear."
--Cells, The Servant

A Letter to the BSA Concerning a Life Changing Outhouse

2010-05-24T07:40:00.000-05:00

Dear army recruiters, hippies, and everyone in between,

The other night I was lifting a bag of groceries out of the car, and screamed in pain. This was unusual, because I don't make a habit of screaming in pain. I cuss in pain. I growl in pain. I'll even snarl and punch a door jam in pain, but, screaming from the mixture of surprise sensation mixed with the sorrow of my body failing me at the same time, doesn't really happen. I screamed at that moment because the plastic handle of a bag with a gallon of milk in it had slipped to rest its full weight on the side of the middle finger of my left hand, right next to the nail. The one, tiny piece of my body that, at that moment, was infected.

Now, I don't know how many of you reading this have ever had an infection on a sensitive part of your body before, but, it is pure hell on earth. Through multiple toenails, ears, a cut on the knee, and a few finger nails (like the one the bag caught) I feel like I've suffered three life times of infection pain in what, if you added up all the times between those incidents, would probably amount to maybe two months. So, when this bag slid down to my infected fingernail and stopped on it, I thought I might collapse to the ground. I held my breath (after the scream) and managed to make it inside on my feet. Then, I dropped the bags on the kitchen floor and told my wife I'd be right back.

I went into the bathroom and started producing things from under the sink. Hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol. I tore a wad of toilet paper from the roll. And then, I unclipped my folding knife from the inside of my right jean pocket and flicked it open. The blade, as well as my middle finger, were soaked in the alcohol, and I turned the water on, mostly just as a little distraction. Then, I leaned against the sink, used my thumb to pull the skin tight on my finger, and, well, I'll spare you the other details. I relieved the pressure.

When I came back into the kitchen a minute later with a band-aid my wife asked me what I had done. I got about ten seconds into the explanation before she had had enough. She didn't think I was crazy, but, she certainly wouldn't have ever recommended that course of action to anyone she cared about. I can see where she's coming from, but, to me, what I did was not that odd at all. In fact, I know a few people, my dad included, that would have chastised me for letting it get as bad as I did before I went into the bathroom and used my pocket knife to perform surgery on myself. It's one of the few common traits between my father's and my mother's sides of my family. That quality that someone possesses that allows them to disconnect from things that are distasteful in order to accomplish a more important goal. We're not survivalists or "tough guys". We just don't like the idea of being helpless or dependent.

But, I wasn't always like that.

I'll just come out and say it. I was a pretty wimpy kid. That's how I remember it, anyway. I remember getting beat up and picked on. I remember being scared all the time and never wanting to try new things. I tattled, I ran, and I hid. The word "p*ssy" was used on more than one occasion.

Now, not so much. Now, I seem to have a pretty good handle on my fear and pressure. If something looks dangerous, and I know I have to deal with it, I tend to just start dealing with it before my mind has a chance to overstate the risk, and if I'm lucky, I'm finished before I realize how dangerous or icky or nasty that task just was. My brain is screaming to stop, but I just keep walking or climbing or doing what I'm doing, slowly, carefully, letting my mind freak out while I remain calm.

And, when I try to trace the root of it down to the source of this change in myself, I keep coming back to the same idea. The same core concept that might have had the kind of long lasting effect that helps me every single day. I think it was because I was a boyscout.

I've always had a love affair with the military. When I was a kid I played soldier, when I was older I played Rainbow Six, when I was a little older I played paint ball, and then back to Rainbow Six, because I started smoking and didn't have any money. A lot of my free time is spent learning about, or simulating military actions. My grandfather was career Air Force; a good man and an actual hero (has the crazy stories and the purple heart to prove it). So, as a child getting to go on base and climb around in bombers was definitely fuel on the armed forces fire. I had made up my mind to join the Air Force early on, right up until the point where I met the girl that would become my wife, and even though love put a stop to the idea of enlisting, my obsession still remained.

But, believe me when I tell you that this interest and enjoyment for the armed forces has been troubling to me for a while now, because I find the idea of war distasteful to a very high degree. Since I was old enough to have a real opinion it's bothered the living shit out of me how much I love everything military, but hate everything war. Born to Kill written on my helmet with a peace button on my jacket. The duality of man, sir.

I think my brain has been working on this contradiction for a while in the background to try and understand how those two sides are linked in me. You see, I don't believe in personal internal conflict. I think outside forces can put you in a conflicting position, but when it comes to two ideas that were both born in your head, I don't believe they can be opposed to one another. I think there has to be a connection that explains everything that you just haven't found yet. I think the most important part of a person learning about themselves is figuring out all those hidden reconciliations. I'm a Reconciliationist (you just wait, that will catch on).

So, the other night I'm alone, playing a video game where I shoot people in the head, and something dawns on me. I was groomed into that lifestyle. Uniforms, order, medals, advancement, survival training, team building, chain of command. For a quarter of my current lifetime I was in the little army known as the Boy Scouts of America. Well, actually most of that was Cub Scouts, but it's the same root organization, and the same playbook. I was enrolled early, I think the first grade, and once a week or so was brought to a club house with a group of kids (a few who would become my then best friends) and taught how to prepare myself for life. Not only taught interesting things but trusted by adults to handle myself around knives and fire and axes and bows and pellet rifles and rope (if you don't think rope belongs in the dangerous category you've never been in the scouts and pissed off your friends). It was like boot camp for tots. That is my reconciliation for my hard-on for the military. I had just never really put it together before.

Probably because when I was actually in the Scouts, half the time I absolutely hated it. I didn't know why I had to give up some nights and weekends when other kids didn't to essentially go to another kind of school. I hated the school I went to that was required by law and my parents went ahead and signed me up for double duty. That teaches a kid the word "bullshit" real early in his life. I didn't know why I had to learn how to stake down a tent or build a fire or practice whittling. I lived in a house that had air conditioning. For heat we had these things called stoves and "out of control gasoline experiments".

The only thing I really loved about the Scouts was being with my friends and collecting donated canned food for the homeless. I should clear that up real quick; if you were never a scout, collecting cans was the best thing ever. You sprinted from a moving van to a house, grabbed a sack of carrots and ravioli and sprinted back, full speed, throwing them in the van and running to the next house. It was like you were robbing all the houses on the block in a single morning, we all loved the shit out of it. So, Scouts was miserable for me some of the time, and the rest of the time it was just kind of OK, until a single moment during an important time in my life.

What would become one of the happiest memories of my life was near the end of my tenure as a Boy Scout when we went up to a big hunk of woods and mountains called Camp Orr Adventure Base in Arkansas right on the Buffalo River. I had a pretty rough start, being a p*ssy and all. I had gotten to the point as a kid where I liked the idea of camping and cutting firewood and generally living outdoors. Over the years I had slowly drunk all the kool-aid and was now pretty much on board with what we were doing and that being prepared and helping my fellow man was exactly what I should be doing all the time. That is, until I realized that we were going to have to crap in a hole in the ground. A hole with a seat built on it and walls around it, but a hole nonetheless, and all that whimpering, lip-quivering, "I hate this and want to go home" bullshit came back like a flash flood. This time accompanied by some serious intestinal cramping.

Nevertheless, I refused to use the latrine.

Let me tell you about refusing to use the bathroom for two days straight even though you had to in the car even before you got up to the camp but thought your royal butt cheeks were too good for the McDonald's 4 miles back. Don't do that. Just don't ever do that. I was sick as a dog. I felt like I was going to die, and even then, I decided my dignity and privacy were more important than not having poop in me. So, in my tent I lay, my heart almost as heavy as the lower half of my body. And then nature took over. My brain, deciding that I was not fit for duty, relieved me of my command and I found myself, totally against my better judgment, sprinting through the woods in a race with the devil. 1.5 seconds later ass was on ply wood and I was feeling ten pounds lighter.

Snap.

That was the last part of me left that thought it deserved the air conditioning. That was the last part of me that wanted to call my mom and tell her to talk to someone and get me out of this place. That was the last part of me that thought it was bullshit that I had to be a scout when other kids didn't. Some people describe defining moments in their life as a weight being lifted or a part of themselves shedding off. Well, that particular life changing moment of mine was crapped into a six foot hole in the woods near Jasper, Arkansas.

I wouldn't be in the Scouts for much longer after that, maybe a year, and I left for personal reasons having to do with an overbearing, abusive mother of one of the other guys that refused NOT to come to meetings. I decided that I didn't sign up to listen to her bitch for a few hours a week, so, seeing that the Troop leaders weren't going to do anything about her, I left. But, I was sad about it. Or, at least I'm sad now. Sometimes it's hard to remember what you felt then versus how you think you should have felt about it now.

Later in life, as a "rebellious" teenager, I would brag that I had been kicked out of the Boy Scouts, but that was mostly just to make people laugh. It was part of an image, the irony of which was while I was telling them how the Scouts just didn't want me, I would still never leave the house without a pocket knife, change for a pay phone, something to eat, and some band-aids. I had already been programmed and no amount of saying "fuck you narcs" after the fact would wash the lessons out of me.

And now, as an adult, I find myself always drawn back, over and over, to the lives of military personal and survivalists. I love learning all about life as a soldier or life out in the wilderness. I'm attracted to those lifestyles with a magnetic force. And now I think it's because I was trained as a child to be that kind of person. It's not that the Scouts took a soft week boy and made a man out of him. It's just that they laid all the ground work and training that an adult can fall back on when things get bad later on in life. That's what you hear all the time from soldiers and police and rescue personnel. Things get fucked up and their training takes over. I think the same thing happens to me, but I think there's something inside of my that feels incomplete, because I walked away from it. I think I am so seduced by the military or law enforcement because they feel like the continuation of that life style that, in hindsight, really helped me become the kind of person I am.

I know the BSA has its bad sides. Overly religious and homophobic leaders have taken a dump on what is, at its core, a wonderful way for children to learn very important lessons about life and the world. Yes, we were part of an organization that was made up almost entirely of white, heterosexual males. Yes, if I was to look at a group photo of us now it might look like a Nazi Youth Rally. But, we didn't know that. We were just spending time with our friends and camping. The military doesn't exactly have a bright and shining record either, and like I said, I hate the idea of war as a concept. But, I'm not signing a petition or running for office over this stuff.

I just miss the pureness of those experiences. I miss how everything we did had a purpose, and everything we were taught had a distinct and immediate point. We were taught to handle ourselves and to help each other. We were taught when to rely on others, and when to rely on only ourselves. We were taught how to keep living and help others do the same.

That's why I live out fantasies on the TV of being in the special forces or Top Gun. That's why I am so fascinated with the military while loathing the point of their existence. That's why I love the tools but hate the job. That's also why I cut my finger open in my bathroom sink a few days ago. It's all healed now and feels better than new. All thanks to me, which is all thanks to them.

Born to kill with a peace button. Nicely tied together by the Boy Scouts of America. Ah, sweet reconciliation, the world makes a little bit more sense than it did yesterday.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
If the chance remains to see those better days, I'd cut those cannons down
My ears are blown to bits from all the rifle hits, but still I crave that sound

A Letter to a Past Experiment Concerning the Failure of its Success

2010-04-27T07:40:00.000-05:00

Dear psychotic bastard,

I was in my bedroom the other day. I had gone in there as an escape from something unpleasant happening in the living room. In the course of a civil conversation, where disagreements had been made, something arose in me. Something old and reliably horrid, boiling up from my gut like a crock pot recipe out of Macbeth (they're printed in the back). I walked into the dim room and I stood in front of my door-less closet and I started to take a deep breath. Then I reached in and picked up an empty hanger, tore it in half, threw one half against the wall, shattering it, and then stormed into the kitchen, and disintegrated the rest of it with pure rage. Something, anything, had to die at that moment. It had to die, be destroyed, rendered into the past, to give the poison in my veins, soaked into my muscles, satisfaction. Sacrifice had to make the world right with me again.

The rage drank deep from the preciousness of the poisonous exodus of that moment of my life. Something inside me squealed in delight as the plastic pieces clattered and shattered and battered the walls. And, as my heart slowed, and the light of the fire dimmed so that I could see again, it cackled and ran down the long hall of my mind before slamming the tall, tall door shut with a lingering thunder. After that there was silence. The silence of the dark hall is the awkward situation that always follows the fire. The only thing that hangs in the air is the dust of the impending mending of that tear in time.

I've always been kind of an angry person of sorts. One of those "sleeping giant" kind of angry people that is described by most he knows as "level headed" and "easy going". I'm sure you've met at least one person like me in your life. Someone who seems almost at peace most of the time only to seemingly fly off the handle when certain things come up. A person who can smile in the face of someone screaming at them at the top of their lungs, but, when they drop a fork on the floor while trying to load the dishwasher they start a 30 minute rant about how the entire world is against them.

This phenomenon is most evident if you look back through some of these letters. The early ones were explosions of anger, but, if you look at the subject matter it was always outright asinine. People that don't make more coffee after drinking the last of it. People that can't order off of menus. Poorly manufactured pants. All subjects worthy of my vitriol, apparently. The meaningful things in my life I've always been able to approach calmly and objectively. Debt, unemployment, conflict, loss. These are things that I process on a mental level, rather then an emotional one, and I had always thought that that was a fair trade. Being a drama queen about people getting my order wrong at McDonald's always seemed like a small price to pay for the ability to be cool in the face of real life.

That's not meant to excuse my anger at McDonald's. I mean, I get REALLY angry at them. I scream and rant and toss dishes and slam doors. I curse god and the devil and everything in between, and over what? Mustard? Yeah, pretty much. But, even this anger, this emotional overload that was almost an everyday occurrence, was, in a way, controlled.

Ever since I can remember there's been a point in every mundane frustration of mine where I, inevitably, become enraged, but it was controlled; directed. The rage was extreme, but, I was always aware of how bad it was getting, and where it was pointed. It was like being the pilot of a craft where the accelerator was stuck wide open, but the steering mechanisms still worked. I couldn't control the intensity of the flight, but I could control the trajectory of it. I could avoid deadly obstacles and angle myself away from impact with the things I cared about. I could put the craft on a course towards open space and just let the engines burn on afterburner until I ran out of fuel. In other words, I could feel the rage hit, and rant about how there aren't any right angles in our house, or how they only have strawberry yogurt at the cafeteria at work. I mean, seriously, is this a business or a concentration camp? Americans want banana in their strawberry yogurt, Heir Bossman. The point is that I could keep the rage, for the most part, from burning out of control in areas of my life where it could do some real damage.

Lately, though, this has not been the case. The anger has gotten worse, and even though I think I've been slightly successful in decreasing the amount of times I get angry, the intensity of the anger has increased with each outburst on an ever increasing scale. It starts out familiar. I can feel the heat, I can feel the pressure, I know the engines are stuck on, and I try to ride it out, like I always have. I accept that, at worst, I'm probably about to have to replace a glass or do some minor sheet rock repair in the near future. I'm going to have to buy my wife some chocolate and be on good behavior for a little while. It's not fun to admit that I have to have these cycles in my life, but, I'm realistic, so I know it's coming. But, half way through these routine angry fits lately, something has been kicking in, hard.

I'm in the cockpit, I'm trying to steer with the engines wide open, and suddenly there's a loud crack, and I'm pressed against the seat. First back, then to the side. My vision starts to black, then red out. I reach for the stick, but it's too far, and I can't move. I can't breath. Outside the world is in a dizzying swirl as I roll and spin out of control. I can hear the metal bending with the heat of the engine. I can see the steam in the cockpit from my own sweat. I can smell the flesh on my back cooking as the firewall behind me gives way. Mentally, I over load and fly apart.

In reality, I completely lose my fucking shit. I actually lose all control of what I'm saying. I can't control the speed or volume or content of my speech. It's full of wild and accusatory declarations. It's cynical and suspicious. It's unreasonable and hurtful. Most of all, it's scary. It's scary for everyone involved, including me. When I come down off of these rages, I almost collapse to the ground. I'm exhausted and bewildered. I used to get panic attacks sometimes which, in my case, made me feel like the stress and tension in my muscles were curling my body into a tight death ball. The aftermath of these rages is the opposite. I feel like I'm made of soft rubber afterwards. I feel empty and weak. Not to mention I've just scared the living shit out of my wife and made an already bad situation ten times worse.

With the normal rages I can censure myself. I get angry and I yell, but so does she, so WE yell. It kind of levels the playing field. And, with the regular rages, even though I'm angry, I'm still thinking about what I'm saying. There might be a "bitch" or a "tart" thrown in there for flavor, but like I said, I've gotten good at apologizing. I never used to just unleash this crazed exorcist-style torrent at her. I'm not yelling about which way the hangers are facing, I'm spewing out some real heinous shit about her as a person. Things I would never say if I could help it. And, I used to be able to help it. Something changed.

I think I've been extremely sleep deprived lately. I had a schedule for about a month that caused me to work for three days in the afternoon, over the weekend, and then switch to working nights on Monday and Tuesday. This caused me to have to switch my sleep schedule from days to nights and back again each week. This wreaked havoc on my mind. I never new what time it was or what day it was. I was staying up from Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday night just to squeeze a little bit more time out of a week where I only had one day off.

I recently "negotiated" a slightly better schedule (meaning I told my manager I was officially burnt out), but sometimes I think the damage is already done. I still have a week where I have to work during the day some days and at night others. But, so far, I'm holding the mental dam in place. Feeling the cold, dead weight of the water behind it. I never imagined I would be like this, mentally. Making conscious efforts everyday to keep my sanity together, instead of just letting the dam break, like I thought I had been doing my whole life up to this point.

When I was younger, a teenager, I wanted to become insane. The idea of it was one that seemed to fit me just fine. I was different, smart, creative, so insanity seemed like the next logical step. So, I started trying to break myself. I would stay up for days (my record was 72 hours with a one hour nap each day) so that I could bring about auditory and visual hallucinations. I would go into the bathroom and turn the lights off at night, and submerse myself in the tub, my head underwater with just a straw to breath through, to try and deprive myself of stimuli. I would just listen to my breathing. I would put myself into painful scenarios, like, ice water on my hot skin or put the end of a knife in a lighter and then touch it to my arm, and try to convince myself that it didn't hurt. In other words I tried a cocktail of exhaustion, sensory deprivation, and pain to try and irrevocably crack the foundation of my conscious mind.

I thought of my mind as a wall that needed to be torn down so I could have all the precious, pure, unfiltered thought behind it. I wanted the good stuff. I wanted the world that lived and breathed behind the one that I perceived as real. I thought if I could get there, and bring it back with me, I would have something new and wonderful that not many people get to experience. A life without false, self imposed limits.

Needless to say, my attempts failed. I ended up completing a grocery list of crazy shit, but without actually being crazy, which, I guess just makes me an idiot. And, to extend that ignorance even further, I determined through my reckless experimenting that I could not, in fact, go insane. I decided that I was too smart, but also too practical, to lose my mind, so I stopped trying.

Fast forward ten years. I'm standing on my front porch, taking a long, long time trying to decide why I was out there. I remember I was going to get the mail, then I forget again, so I stand some more and try to remember. At some point I take a step, which stirs up some of the pollen that has coated everything in the entire city. The pollen makes a cloud at my feet and starts to drift up, and from the cloud, I see (I SEE) the wisps of yellow powder twist into little flying bugs. They rise in the direction the cloud was going, and spread across my vision. There must have been hundreds. Swarming up from my foot.

I know the bugs were real. And, I know that they were in the grass of my yard, and the same step that caused the cloud of pollen disturbed them and they took off. I know that, now. But, at the time, there was a moment, when, I don't know. The cause and the effect seemed perfectly logical to me. I had kicked some dust and it had turned into bugs and they had flown away. It didn't seem strange to me, just like the logical conclusion I came to later doesn't seem strange to me. There was no shock, no wonder, no question, that the pollen had turned into bugs. I had seen it so I just accepted it. I didn't even watch them that long. I just stood there, trying to remember why I had come outside.

This is after, more than once, on those days where I'd try to stay up for sometimes 30+ hours on a stretch to get personal things done, even if those things were having lunch with my wife or watching my little sister go horseback riding, saying wild things to my wife at night. Things like telling her it wasn't right that she was breaking into people's houses to administer polio vaccines with bent paper clips, or something a little more vague like asking her if she had gotten everyone on her list, because it was important that people be on her list. You know what I mean? That's what crazy is right? Believing something that was fabricated by your mind and acting accordingly. The fact that these quick episodes were temporary doesn't make it any less worrisome.

To make a bad joke, I've slept since then. But, the memories of how I've been lately are still fresh. I was acting like a crazy person, and I'm not so sure that it's totally in the past. Something is different inside me. It's like something has been torn and I can't sew it back up. I just have to try and move carefully so that I don't end up tearing it more. I had always thought of my sane state of mind as a wall made of rock and cement, and maybe that's how it used to be. Maybe, the act of trying to break through it strengthened it to be that wall. That the more I hammered the harder it became to break. And, so, maybe now, after so much time has passed without hammering, maybe now it's just a thin sheet. Maybe all it took was one bad storm too many to tear it open, and now I can't figure out how to mend it.

Ten years ago I would have welcomed the tear. I would have ripped the sheet to the ground and jumped, head first, into whatever the hell it was holding back. But now, now I need the sheet. I need to keep my head together. I need to get a hold of my shit. But, the only point of reference I have for complete mental stability, was the very time in my life that I was trying to become insane.

Is that what I have to do, again? Do I have to start testing the boundaries; rattling the cage I'm in? What if I'm wrong, and it does the opposite? What if I'm right and just staying the course takes me right off the edge of the world? Either way I have to make a decision. Or, I guess I had to, I should say. I've already made it. I've become too accustomed to my own mental health. I need to start questioning it again. Questioning everything, again.

I'll start small, but I'll still start. I'll take all that rage and fear and confusion that has been building up inside of me, and I throw it all into whatever is still keeping me rooted in reality. If I'm right, I'll reflexively fortify myself against losing my mind. If I'm wrong, well, shit, I've always wanted to be insane anyway, right?

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Walking down the street shooting people that I meet with my rubber tommy water gun

A Letter to The Child in My Head Concerning the Origin of Art

2010-04-07T08:24:00.000-05:00

Dear tiny voice,

I was sitting at home, on a day off, watching American Splendor, and suddenly all I wanted to do was write about toast. I had warmed up some jambalaya my mother made a few days ago and brought to me, and I decided to have the only other food in the house to go with it. I went into my kitchen, directly connected to my TV room (as is dictated by American law), and I grabbed what was left of our loaf of wheat bread. Then, I pressed two slices into the toaster my wife and I have had since we were in college.

So, I'm waiting for the bread to transmogrify into toast, the whole time kind of standing next to my fridge so I can see the TV and the toaster at the same time. And, all of a sudden in my head, I just start to rave at the tiny white appliance.

How the fuck long could it possibly take to make bread hot in the 21st century? I mean, this is essentially duplicating a technology that was the key to man's supremacy on the Earth. You'd think we'd have it down by now, but no. This little Target-bought piece of shit seems to need to spend two or three hours getting itself ready for one single act, like an aging porn star stressed out about a money shot. At this point I should just invest in a solar powered toaster, meaning, I should just leave the bread on a plate in front of a window until it gets stale.

Come on you fucking asshole! Toast! You have ONE job! One! I would kill for your work day. Oh hello, sir, would you like something hot? Very good! Would you like that really hot, or kind of hot? Fuck. At this point, it would be faster to wait for God to knock my wife up and hope one of the wise men brings a slightly singed baggette. I should just smash you with a hammer and use the oven, instead. At least he oh, there it goes. Thanks toaster.

All in all it took about 45 seconds to make my toast, but, I mean, we all know that 45 seconds in front of a toaster is basically what purgatory is going to be like.

So, my tiny diatribe over with, I started to wonder about WHY I felt compelled to write it down. It was like it was imperative that I get that ridiculous outburst on paper. People NEEDED to know about my impatience over my, in all honesty, adequate toaster. I wondered what makes something like the toaster word worthy to me, but not other little things in my day. It got me thinking about how bizarre the nature of art and creation and expression is.

My little rant was about my life, and my habits, but, in a way it was kind of inspired by American Splendor. It being a movie, made from a comic, based on the mundane details of a man's life. Being entertained by that kind of justified the idea of being entertained by the toaster.

Of course, American Splendor, or the basis of it, was inspired be a burgeoning underground comic movement at the time that was making real life more of a focus of expression. That, of course was inspired by, you know, something else before it (what am I, a history, uh, guy?), which was inspired by something else, and so on, and so on.

It feel like all of art is like a giant, human imagination driven, fission reactor. Particles of expression slamming into a person, shattering them into knew high energy particles of expression of their own. Then those hurl off into the void until they collide with others the same way.

Life, inspires art, inspires life, inspires art. If that's even the order that's supposed to go. I'm not really sure what is supposed to come first, or even what came first for me. It makes me wish I had an infallible memory. Maybe, if I could remember the first time I ever created something in the hopes of expressing an internal idea, I could try to figure out what inspired it. Try to trace the origin of my own alpha expression. Find out what it was, where it came from, what inspired it, and it, and it, and it.

I want to trace my creative heritage. Find my expressive roots. Was it a Golden Book? Was it a stencil on a wall? Was it, Beethoven, Sesame Street, Richard Scary, The Who? It might not mean too much to you whether your life of the mind began with Elmo or Townshend, but for me, it's kind of important, and I think I've worked out why.

Lately, I've developed a passing fascination with the children in my family. I don't have kids, and odds are pretty high I never will, and I'm fine with that. But, my cousins, all female, have bowed to their biological imperatives to go forth and multiply. Nothing ridiculous, just average sized families all around.

These kids, as babies, didn't hold a whole lot of my attention. It was kind of like having tiny monkeys around, which wasn't unpleasant, but wasn't huge news either. But now, as the oldest is getting to the point of being a tiny person, I find myself worrying about their education. Not school and standardized, state mandated, testing, but the good stuff. I wonder what kind of life she's going to fall into, and what kind of experiences that's going to force through her personality and psyche, like scalding hot water through a coffee filter.

I wonder if she's going to discover cigarettes before she discovers boys. Or, if in this new century, she'd discover cigarettes at all. I wonder if she's going to raid her mother's liquor cabinet, or not so much if, but when. I wonder if she's going to be a nerd, or if she'll give up the path of learning to follow something more superficial. But most of all, I wonder if she's going to have a healthy obsession with music. And, if she does, if it's going to be with another Justin Timberlake, or if her generation will have a Kurt Cobain, or a Dave Grohl, or that other guy. And, if she doesn't, and I see her getting to that age, will I be able to sneak her a used copy of In Utero? Will her mom scold her for listening to it? Will she have to find a hiding place for it? Will she wait until everyone has gone to sleep, and sneak the headphones on to absorb the odd words and rhythms into her skin? Will she have a secret?

I get excited about all the potential futures she has before her, and I worry if that excitement opens me up for a horrific let down. The possibility that the wonders of tobacco, alcohol, and her choice of progressive, garage, or punk rock won't be something that she is being deprived of, but, something she actively avoids. That, in the future, she'd be presented with the riches of personal and mental growth, and that she'd turn her head away and close her eyes. Resistant to my pleas and declarations. Am I destined to build up a version of her in my head, only to have her let me down in every way without her even knowing it? Will I try to fight it? I think I would.

First, I think I would be practical. The Rolling Stones, maybe. No? Fine.

Then, I would be creative. Beck, perhaps, start with Loser and go from there. No? Fine.

Then, I would be stern. Pearl Jam, there has to be something here that...No? Fine.

Perhaps, then, I would be compassionate. Bob Dylan. Raspy poetry to timeless melodies. NO? NO?

I would be angry. White Zombie! I'll burn it into your skin, you little shit! NO?! OK. Fine.

I would breath. I would be reasonable. Queens of the Stone Age. They're new. Well, new-ER anyway. I would sigh.

I would be desperate. Led Zeppelin. My shoulders would slump. And then she would let me die, in front of her, unimpressed with my offerings.

In the end it wouldn't be about whether she grew up musical, or artistic, or even creative. There are people who can change their entire persona like the wind changes direction, just from the influence of a good lyric or a hue of paint or a movement of a well trained figure. There are those of us that only feel truly awake and alive when we are being acted upon by the creations of others, and when we are creating ourselves. And, there are others who don't. Not worse people, just OTHER people. "Squares", you could say, but not necessarily bad people. I just don't want her to be one of them.

I guess, in a way, I'm lonely, but, it's a new loneliness so it stings more. The loneliness one gets after something new excites them, and then the reality of it's flaws sinks in. It had never occurred to me before that there'd be another person in my family that could be like me. In a family you always think of yourself as the youngest because that's the way you perceive it. You're born, and you meet your family, and you're the baby. You grow up with everyone already there, or, only a little younger than you, so they are on the same level as you.

Then my cousin, someone from my generation, has a kid. Not an earth shattering event. Women make little humans, that's just biology. But, then that kid learned to speak, and read, and write, and process, and learn. Then the thought started to creep in. The thought that she's the age I was when it all started really snowballing out of control for me. When all I wanted to do was sketch and write and listen and watch. When I wanted my days filled with absorption and recitation. The first time I memorized the words to a Pink Floyd song.

She's right there on the cusp. She's smart enough; smarter than she should be. The potential is there, but it feels like something is missing. It feels like there needs to be some kind of push. It could be small. A song or a book or a picture. Something that connects two wires in her brain and causes a spark that starts a chain reaction of creativity that sustains itself the entirety of her life from that point forward. A life long explosion that rages over the dissenting opinions and judgmental laughter. A fire that consumes everything in front of her and turns it into piles of ash inside her mind that she can rake into any shape she desires.

But, I'm not talking about her anymore at this point. I can't be. She goes to school, goes to church, reads books on occasion, and likes Shrek. To tell the truth I barely interact with her. She's become a voice in my head. An idea that I can imprint my values on as maybe a way of filtering out what's important to me. I want her to be with me, with all the others like me, huddling in the dark and making our own fires outside of the barbarian city walls. But, more than that, maybe I just want some justification for being the way I am. For being different.

Not so much different from society, mind you. There are tons of people like me. Artistically inclined, music loving, slackers? The only thing we're lacking as far as public recognition is government subsidies. But, as far as my family goes, there's me, in some ways my mother, and that's it.

So, it's not that I think my way is better, but it's a way, and one that I feel has been fulfilling, even when it's been a curse. And, it'd be nice to have someone there with me for the long walk. Someone that would look to me for guidance. Someone I'd have answers for in the trivialities of becoming a fan of the world. So, I keep searching, inside, for the spark that ignited me, in hopes that it will work again on her.

I know, deep down, that this idea is both arrogant and selfish. I've never been that influential a force on anyone I can think of. So, to think that some small push by the Great Me would change the direction of her life is probably ultimately foolish. Not to mention reckless. Even if it does work, and something does start rolling in her mind, there's no way to really tell where it's going to go. Our potential might be very similar, but our lives surely are not. At least not her compared to me at that age. I had an empty house and space alien sister to deal with. I had to be creative so that I could keep sane. She, on the other hand, seems to have her sanity well in hand without having to tend it like a dying garden.

So, what would the spark do? Inspire? Harm? Nothing whatsoever? Who knows? So, it seems almost irresponsible to do anything at all. But, I still feel like I should. Maybe something small, just as a test, and if she's not interested, back off. Or, if her mother protests, don't push it. Let it be more natural. Something that won't shock the system in unintended ways. For fuck's sake, she might want to aspire to be a writer. I'd never forgive myself. I want her to ask me how Keith Moon died, not condemn her to my own personal piece of hell. And, following that thought, I have to admit that my love for music and film and everything around and in between hasn't exactly catapulted me into success. I have a little bit I can be proud of in the realm of expression, but as far as making it as a person, I don't think it had a huge part to do with it, other than making the bad times more tolerable so I could keep going. Now that I think about it, maybe that is a big part. Either way, I can't get passed the thought that she, and everyone really, needs those pieces in their make up as a person.

It all boils down to a very important question about what I can get away with exposing her to. What kind of magic spell to use. And, if you got that reference and cringed a little, I apologize. I'm thinking maybe The Cranberries as her gateway drug. Zombie, Ode to my Family, Dreams. That seems like a good way to introduce a good foundation of music, but have a deeper meaning that can soak in over time. Also, it has that strong, but very feminine, lead singer, which seems good for a young girl to identify with. Yeah, that seems just right. For now.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware

A Letter to My Uncle Concerning His Death

2010-03-16T06:47:00.001-05:00

Dear Nathan,

I spend so much time trying to parse the phenomenon of death. I research, analyze, ponder, and philosophize about it constantly. I look at pictures, watch movies, even listen to recordings of the event to try and desensitize myself to the idea; to boil it down to the pure logical truth of it.

The result of all this work? When you died last April, I felt nothing. Nothing that I would associate with any kind of appropriate feelings anyway. I did feel incredibly sad, but, that was really just for everyone else that was so upset because they DO feel loss.

Frankly, for me, the funeral was mostly just surreal. To be surrounded in so much pain, and not to be able to be a part of it was bewildering to me. Even my wife teared up. You could count the number of times you two spoke to one another on one hand, but she made the connection. She felt that sense of loss. I just felt like a horse's ass through the whole ceremony.

And that's the feeling that stays with me. That feeling of complete guilt and inhumanity. Feelings of being a statue, or a troll. All of them completely internal, and unbelievably selfish.

Everything about your death just frightened me, terribly. The suddenness of it was almost comical. After all of my own self preparations, all that flinching for the inevitable. After I've braced myself for impact, you're the one who dies. You who, although wasn't oblivious to the idea of oblivion, couldn't have been putting the same time and effort into obsessing over it, as I was. I flinched, but you got hit. Like when Elmer Fudd points his gun at Bugs Bunny, but Daffy Duck is the one who gets shot.

I try to go back mentally. Back before the funeral. Back to some memory of you before I started my long, slow attempt to purge myself of my preoccupation with death. Some time when I might have felt something for that final, bitter end of a member of my blood family. The best I can do right now is just examine it.

I remember you being the one that taught me to take a step and lean into swinging a baseball bat, almost the same as when I pitched, to get the distance I was looking for with our wiffle ball set. I remember one Christmas, after I had already recoiled my personality from my family, that you bought me a Star Wars Xbox game, and I was blown away with how spot on appropriate it was. I remember you showing me how to carve a turkey. I remember how I always felt a weird connection with you because you grew up with three sisters, and I grew up with a sister and four female cousins. And now Luke, your grandson, is growing up with a sister and four female cousins. You made it seem OK to enjoy being surrounded by women. To keep it from being emasculating. Sometimes even turning it into the exact opposite.

I think about how you died. I replay the few details I got from my mother over and over again in my head. Contract handyman. Bad economy. Foreclosure. Moving furniture all day. Heart attack from the stress. I repeat them in my head like a mantra. Good man. Bad luck. Severe consequence. Attempt to move on. Final, undeserved cost. Everything, all the facts, are completely understood, but, the sorrow, the important part, is completely absent.

I tell myself the regular things, like, it hasn't sunk in yet (even though it's been, what, a year now?). Or, I tell myself that I just hadn't kept up with you as I became an adult. You didn't live near me, so, I hadn't seen you a lot for the last few years. But, I saw you more than some other people in my family. My dad being an example. But that logic leads to even worse lines of thinking.

Late at night these excuses for a lack of basic human empathy just spawn more thoughts that prove that lack, and deepen my shame. Things like, "why SHOULD I even feel anything? It's not like my mom died, or someone that was real close." Thoughts like that don't exactly bring up the sorrow I crave to feel, but they do shock and depress me, and make me nauseated at myself. And, that's the closest I can get to grief, so I hold onto them. Deciding that SOME kind of horror, even as a result of my own cruel nature, should be attached to this event that should evoke horror in me. I decide that I need to keep that horror. I use it as a perverse place holder made up of some generic, bargain brand "sad" until I can save up enough to get the real thing.

You can't imagine the frustration of sitting in bed, staring at my dresser for, some nights, hours trying to identify ANY kind of grief and sorrow as I contemplate your passing. I sit there, and eventually just realize that the only thing that bubbles to the surface is that you DID die. That someone, anyone, died. That we all die, and that means me too. In the dark, alone, I try to feel sorry for you, and I only end up feeling sorry for myself.

Well, I take that back. There is another thing that bubbles up. An odd feeling of dread and responsibility for what happened to you. You see, I like to come up with stories that hover around death. Stories you never got to read or even knew I wrote, but, they're there. The only problem is I always felt like kind of a fraud, writing about something that I essentially didn't know about. The stories were just big coping mechanisms for an unknown fear. I always wished I knew more about what I was talking about; be more experienced so it would feel more genuine. It was hard to sit at the funeral, surrounded by so much hurt, and not think that I had had a part in your demise.

I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in karma, as a supernatural force. I don't believe in granted wishes. But when you think something, something specific, and awful, and then it happens, it's hard not to feel like you hit the cue ball on that one. I leaned back in a pew, my arm around whoever happened to be crying at the time, and thought, "good job, asshole."

So, sorry for that, if it turns out all that magic shit exists. But, if it does, then you might be fine anyway. Either way, it's probably not worth giving it any more thought than I already have. Of course that won't really stop me.

No, the only thing that will stop the irrational guilt, or rational, depending, is time and just forgetting about it. Just letting the bad feelings get diluted with the passage of the seasons and the years piling up between your funeral and where I am at that moment. But, of course that means letting the good memories dilute too. The baseballs, the turkeys, the Christmases, the home improvement advice, the debates about military aircraft. It will all go away, because there's nothing I can do about it. Even if I tried hard to solidify them, eventually they'll all be shut off by the same end as yours.

So, guilty or not, shit head or not, cosmically responsible or not, it's still a shitty situation, but not for the reasons I wished it was. It's just my inability to care, again. My philosophy designed to lessen the pains of the world worked too well, and now I'm just standing here, kind of a shell. The worst part is I didn't even learn anything. I didn't even get the jolt of experience I had wished for. It's like my horse came in but I lost my betting slip.

Jesus, maybe I should just start putting change in a jar when I think of shit like that.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

A Letter to Greasers Concerning Growing Up

2010-03-02T08:49:00.001-06:00

Dear past and future rebels with or without various causes,

When I was a kid, a child, I used to get bullied, which isn't exactly an uncommon experience for a lot of children, but when it's happening to you, you tend not to care so much about how statistically likely it is. It wasn't all the time, and it wasn't always a worst case scenario, but it could be at times. Sometimes it was just teasing, sometimes a shove or a snatched bag or eaten food. Later it was tripping and slamming into lockers. The worst it ever got was being outright kicked and beaten while I lay on the ground in a fetal position at a local skating rink.

It wasn't the same bully throughout the years, either. Nothing like a nemesis. It just seemed like I attracted excitable, jealous, and sometimes, violent people. It wasn't that surprising to me. I was a smart kid; I was creative, and most things, including school, just came very easily to me. Worksheets and tests were filled out in a couple minutes and then pushed aside to allow me to get back to making little paper people or spinning my ruler on my pencil while others were still struggling through the first page.

That natural aptitude for learning, coupled with the fact that my mom raised me a pacifist, created a perfect storm for getting picked on. I was a kid that daydreamed through life, and who was guaranteed not to fight back, just run crying and stuttering to the nearest adult to tattle, which, although got the current bully in some trouble, ultimately just escalated the frequency and severity of future attacks. So, eventually I didn't even tattle. I just cried and took it. Took the insults, and punches, and thefts. For some reason the thefts made me cry the most.

The worst time for it all was grade school, but it did follow me, in a form, into junior high. Junior high wasn't so much filled with school yard bullies, as it was filled with assholes and shit heads. Kids that seemed twice as greedy, twice as violent, and half as smart. Suddenly the bullying wasn't just upsetting, it was getting dangerous. Real bodily harm was now a threat, and I became even more reclusive than I already was.

Not to say I didn't have friends, I wasn't a loner. I just didn't go out a lot, to parties or gatherings. I didn't talk back to loud, angry people. I didn't push issues against violent idiots. I kind of just lived scared and frustrated. I guess I convinced myself that if I just laid low, just kept off the radar, in my room making sketches and writing in notebooks, that eventually I would make it to a place where I wouldn't be hassled.

And, I might have even been right, but, my patience for getting pushed around and fucked with eventually hit a point where a lifetime of being taught to turn the other cheek and tell on people just collapsed under the weight of all that hatred and anger. My personality snapped back like a rubber band, having been pulled way past the point of being treated decent, it recoiled way passed the point of standing up for myself, and stretched out from the force to the point that I just turned mean, and preemptive, and with absolutely zero tolerance.

It started with a few uncontrolled outbursts. Yelling in a kid's face in the middle of the courtyard to "fuck off." Taking a swing at another kid trying to intentionally annoy the piss out of me and catching him in the neck with my fist. Lunging at a short little asshole in the gym locker room and having to have the entire gym class pry us apart, for what insult, I don't even remember. The anger was overflowing, unfocused, and unleashed with a force that almost turned my vision into tunnels of red.

It wasn't until toward the end of middle school that I realized that despite my new found mental sword of vengeance, I still wasn't inflicting the kind of pain on assholes that they once inflicted on me. Punches would connect and barely rattle opponents, I was still getting thrown back by shoves, and I couldn't even catch the ones who fled. My personality had turn 180, but my body was the same, soft, uncoordinated, powerless vessel of a comic nerd it had always been.

Our junior high was near a YMCA, and my mom always had to work late. So, my friends and I all started making daily pilgrimages to the gym; sneaking into the free weight room and pushing ourselves dangerously beyond our still growing body's limits. I was 13 when we started.

The workouts started taking affect, and the release of exercise cooled my temper. I went every day, starting on nautilus to warm up, and moving to free weights. Rotating the workouts to try and even out my build and not over strain any part of my body. I had to sneak in everyday, which wasn't too hard really, because the minimum age for the weights was 18. The sore knees and shaky elbows I have today are a direct result of that disregard of the rules in my adolescence, but, I figure it was all worth it in the long run. When I was 14 going on 15 I weighed 165 and could bench over that. For the first time in my life I had impressive biceps and definition to my chest. My shoulders felt like rocks, and, frankly, so did my ass. (I miss my ass)

But, I wasn't satisfied. I had been tied too long to the whipping post, and I didn't want to leave a vulnerable spot, anywhere. I decided that image was the Yin to my new muscle's Yang. I had made myself tough, and so I needed to make myself LOOK tough as well. I started allowing myself to indulge in the style that I had always found appealing. Black jeans, long hair, the beginnings of a goatee. Later, around 16, when I really started to sink into the lifestyle of acting like a bad ass, I grew out a decent beard (I started shaving when I was 11 or 12), started donning a bandanna, and wearing chrome buckled Harley boots. I started smoking and would light the matches off the buckle. Later, when the inconvenience of carrying strike anywhere matches became too much, I started carrying a Zippo and learned the white trash art form of opening and lighting it in every way I could conceive.

I was smoking like a chimney, and drinking all the time. My pockets, outside of school, became a walking arsenal of blades, and rolls of quarters sealed up with electrical tape. I was never without a knife, which was actually an old habit from the Boy Scouts. Growing up going from tiger cub to webelos to boy scout, especially in the south, hammers the idea of knife ownership into you like religious mantra. But what I was carrying in high school wasn't my old Swiss made multi-tool. They were concealed and quick opening, and usually I had more like 3 or 4 of them on me, around my jeans and in my boots, at a time. The most outrageous being a five inch tanto bladed knuckle knife that I kept in a shoulder holster that looked like the ones you see in old detective movies for their guns.

I got away with the holster because it was hidden under a black denim vest I wore every single day, even to bed. A vest usually with a pack of Lucky Strikes tucked into a pocket, and that became increasingly covered with different patches and a few holes.

What had started out as a way to repel grown up bullies and thieves, was starting to evolve into what eventually became my personality. Acting tough became being tough, and it wasn't something I could just turn off and forget about. At first, I figured I could act like a bad ass, have some fun, live a fantasy for a few years and then go back to the apathy and the pacifism after I graduated. Eventually, I fell in love with it, and the act WAS me. An accidental life altering experiment.

I had always idolized the dime store hood characters in movies and books. I admired Ace Merrill and Two-Bit Mathews and Rusty James. Even John Bender was a big influence. Characters my age. Characters that refused to be fucked with, even if that meant being fuckers themselves. Characters whose attitudes and style could be very easily and cheaply adopted. I started to live that American Graffiti era rebel lifestyle, and it was everything I had hoped and dreamed it could be.

I was living a cliche', several at once actually, but it was a cliche' that was fun, and more importantly, kept me safe. I learned that the same things that made me afraid of people when I was a child, I could use to make people stay away from me as a teenager. The kind of people I didn't want around, anyway. But, it was behavior that also attracted new friends. People like a guy who is confident and carefree and a little unpredictable.

I fell in love with that life, and I never wanted to change.

The problem is that that life is the life of a punk teenager. That life isn't self sustaining. That life isn't even legal at times. But, trying to change a life romanticized by the one living it is like trying to pry a walnut out of the middle of your skull. Before college started I tried to slough off the no longer relevant lifestyle I had become accustomed to. I had been doing some warehouse work, driving a fork lift, and spent most of my free time talking to my girlfriend on the phone or having a couple beers with dinner and falling asleep in front of the Braves. Usually in the 6th or 7th inning.

I started college with new, comfortable, practical clothes, a Braves cap, and my notebooks. Notebooks that had been mostly neglected during my real life reenactment of "Rebel Without a Cause." I was ready to just mellow out, and enjoy myself. And for a little while it worked.

But, the changes had been made. The protocols had been laid into place. The reflexive habits were dug in deep. My smoking habit flickered on and off like a light bulb that wouldn't quite burn out. I tried quitting nine times before I got it right. The boots got put away, and the vest was closeted. I tried just not being that guy anymore. I thought I could just kill the me that belonged in "The Body", and start something new.

I was convinced it could be that way, until one night I found myself pointing a substantial combat folder (an Applegate-Fairbairn knock off if you're interested) in the face of a man, no, a boy really, I had known for a day, because I thought he had made too many jokes at the expense of my girlfriend. You don't fuck with a man's Cherry Valance, you know? This one sided, knife point argument took place in an IHOP in a busy part of town at dinner, with more than a few people I knew in there at the time.

I looked around quickly, then packed it up and got the hell out of there. I stood outside waiting for my girl, afraid to see her cold, completely justified, stare as she walked out. It was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life. One that still haunts me to this day. But, it served an important function. It let me know that once you set something in motion in your own mental make up, you're responsible for it. You can't just decide you don't want certain parts of your personality on a whim and hope that they just never come up again.

These were parts of myself designed specifically to handle high stress, high emotion, high fear situations. They were SUPPOSED to kick in on reflex. They can't just be ignored because I don't have anything to replace them with. Not all of them anyway. Not yet. So, for now I almost try to indulge that part of me that still wants to be tough and brave like the heroes and anti-heroes, and outright bastards, I idolized. I try to be aware of those odd reflexes a scared and fed up kid built into himself to keep the assholes at bay.

It's kind of a monkey on my back. I never leave the house unarmed. I just can't make myself do it. Usually something clipped to a pocket and one in my boot. I'd like to think it's just my inner Boy Scout being practical, but I know better in my heart. It's not the ridiculous arsenal of the past, I only carry legal length, one hand opening pocket knives now. And, even though I'm extremely comfortable and very handy with a knife (again, go BSA) at best I know that carrying them is only going to be good for getting out of non-confrontational jams, like if I'm caught in a net or something. But, they're still on me, still very accessible, for peace of mind, mostly.

The other side of the coin, the part that makes the monkey tolerable, is that I have found that if you are the kind of person that WOULD use a knife on an attacker, whether it's body language or something in the eye contact, you just DON'T get approached by most fuck-nut punkasses roaming around. Shreveport is a plenty rough place in parts, and everyone under the age of 21 wants to think they're some hot shit thug that has to get in your face, but, I really just don't get bothered. Ever. So, in a way, I guess it's really mission accomplished.

I'm the result of a targeted effort, by a frightened boy that felt like he was out of passive options, to turn fantasy into reality. To write my way out of a shitty rut I was in. Not really realizing at the time that I was trading one rut for another.

I don't completely regret the change I edited into my own personality. Obviously it saved me beating and humiliation in a time in my life when that kind of thing can really fuck with my head. It gave me more confidence in myself, made me more extroverted, and allowed me to not second guess myself into a stationary position. At least, more than I was when I was 12.

I still have a fondness for tough things. My adult fashion sense is driven by practicality and durability. Denim work jackets, steel toed boots, that kind of thing. But, it still feels like I'm the preteen wuss that's looking for protection. Like I said, practical and durable: safe.

It didn't really hit me full on until the other night when I was out with my wife (the same Cherry Valance from the IHOP). We were in a shoe store and I looked over and saw some sneakers I liked. I've kind of had sneakers on the brain the last couple months. Steal toed boots, good ones, are plenty comfortable for your feet, but, they have drawbacks. Leather and metal and rubber are heavy. Boots like that start to work on your knees and weaken your ankles. When I stopped wearing boots after high school and switched to some New Balance walking shoes, I felt like I had fucking springs in my heels. I'd just like to feel that again.

So, I go over and start looking through them. I was over there for all of ten minutes when I looked down and saw the scuffed and scarred leather on my own footwear, and, decided that sneakers would be a mistake. I put them down and just banished the thought of them from my mind. They were forbidden.

Do you see what I'm talking about? This wasn't some wild extravagance. This was a 40 dollar pair of Converses. It's not like I'd have to throw my boots away or anything. I only have one pair of shoes right now, but that's not a government mandate, that's just a personal choice. I just wanted a light pair of shoes for walking around the city. But, I couldn't do it.

Well, to hell with that. I started this ridiculous act, and I'm going to stop it. Balance is what's missing from this situation, and there's no one but me keeping it that way. I'm going back to that fucking store, or some store, and I'm buying those sneakers. A single step to start a new thousand mile journey.

I like to hang at home and listen to Bowie albums. I like to watch TV with my wife and eat pizza. I like to get drunk and play video games with my friends. I work in IT. I'm not a bad ass. I just play one in real life. And, frankly, I'm over it. I'm not the same kid taking a kick to the back at the skating rink. I can be firm, I can talk over an asshole, I can make myself heard. Yes, the charade-turned-personality was greatly responsible for that, but, it's time to take the training wheels off. Right? Because the puffed up chest act isn't going to help me in a real pinch anyway. For that, I just have to trust what I've got on the inside. The stuff that's real. Sloughing the tough stuff isn't going to make me weak. It will just make me stronger where it counts. And, that's what we all ultimately want to accomplish isn't it?

I'm still going to carry a knife, though.

I'm not stupid.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
...the film is a saddening bore, cause I've wrote it ten times or more.
It's about to be writ again...

A Letter to My Home Concerning My Home

2010-02-24T09:10:00.000-06:00

Dear Little Forgotten Anna,

I was conceived on a hot, star filled night in the grass and the dirt on the edge of some backwoods bayou in the steam cooker of a state I would later learn to call my home. I was born out of the murky sludge that rages beneath our bridges and bends around our toe. I learned to crawl in the sand that wandered up my way every here and there. I was raised on a diet that was stalked, caught, fried, and fried. And, even though at times I want no part of the part of me that would never depart, I always come back, with my jeans tucked in my boots and my sleeves rolled down against the hawk’s prey.

Although I never pray. Even though most do down here, or up here for them that are down further than what would appear, to you, to be the bottom.

I always come back, where the rain back slides and slides down, and causes slides. Where the cups runneth over, over and over again. Where there is plenty for plenty and plenty come for it. Where there are rich and there are poor, but everybody sweats on a hot day. Because there is heat, my friends and travelers. Oh, how there is heat. Heat that boils the air you breath and smears the skin on your face when you fight the trees. Or fight the vines. Or fight the grass. Or fight all between, above, and below.

And you will fight, brothers and sisters. When you decide that you’re here, and that you will be here, you will fight. Because everybody fights from calf to heel. You don’t clear, you fight. You don’t plant, you fight. You don’t dig, you fight. Our home defends itself well. And when the red clay runs in your sweat down the splintered handle of your shovel, you’ll know what it is to bleed from battle.

But, I always come back, even though I never leave. My mind leaves. Not that the leaves mind, on the days when the wind coaxes the trees out to sing. My mind leaves to where I’ve been before and after this. Going where the water sparkles in sterile virginity. Where the fields don’t devour you as you break their stalks. Where mother nature accepts us for who we are. Where we aren't driven from the place we love by the place we love.

But that’s not here is it? I don’t know where that is. Maybe I don’t want to know. This womb is hot, and wet, and when the levee breaks, I cry, just to breath. Knee deep in a constant, pointless baptism that washes away my sin with mud and filth. Surrounded by wood sprouted up from the knee deep, grown into a confessional, forgotten when time for forgiveness. Cold from a lack of compassion, and judgment.

Oh, and it does also get cold. Cold in the morning, cold in the night. Cold that freezes that life giving vapor right in our breath, only to have it carried back through our shirts, and into our bones. 'Cause the time don't pass here as it should, and when it's not froze, it's just frozen. Frozen solid over everything that wasn't here before, and then everything that was. Frozen into a wall so bitter and rigid as if to keep him by name The Devil at bay, while we try to keep the children warm under Her cotton.

But, the Devil eventually gives up, or maybe just hides, and the bitter clear wall around us subsides. And, we all venture out into the sun, or the moon. Poke out through our tiny holes by the river and start to croak at the still air. Croak for croak, to see who survived the hibernum. To see who gets to go fishing again, and who gets to go drinking instead.

Oh and there is drinking. Drinking 'till the faces match the mudbugs in the pot on a day when the wind visits from up north or down south, and brings us the gift of fulfilled dreams. The dreams aren't big down here much, 'cause the dreamers know better, and no better. They just want the breeze to blow the grill smoke their way to taste, and then blow it away again, so they can remember it.

She's in my blood. I've been with others, but nothing compared to the amount I've stepped on her feet. Kissed her neck. Or, left her crying on the steps, but always shuffled back the next morning. I can't ever leave, you see. She's got a piece of my soul. Up canned in a mason jar, lost in her attic, cause she can't lose it in her cellar. And, she doesn't look for it, 'cause she don't want it found. She just wants me turned, and homeward bound.

She doesn't talk much. Sleeps during the day, and at night, when there's a wake, she's just rowdy. But I can't blame her. Nowadays she's too lonely to hate. Abused and forgotten not just yesterday, and now the man comes crawling back. Brings her flowers, tells her how pretty she is. Ain't no ring but she guess's it will do. I see her for what she is. The sad eyed lady of the lowlife. And, the lowlands too, if you prefer. She can be both. At times she is.

And, frankly, some of us aren't impressed by his flowers. We don't want him in our kitchen. We'd rather see the house an inferno before he decides to leave his boots outside the door. This is my home. It's old, and it's bad, and it's rotten with crawling and gnawing. But, that never made no matter did it?

Come on, Mama. Forget this man. Let's go steal some gasoline.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
we'll build a fire an' light a match and watch the whole thing burn

A Letter to Achievers Concerning Carrots and Brass Rings

2010-02-16T11:14:00.001-06:00

Dear Type A hardons,

I have something in me that my dad never could find in himself: compassion. HA! No, I'm just fucking around, that’s a whole other thing I’ll get into at another time. No, what I think I have that my dad always wished he had more of is ambition. That drive to achieve something greater than a nine to five and a 401K. I want fame and notoriety and respect, where he just does what’s available and wishes he knew how to wish for more. But, the older I get, the more I realize that the joke is kind of on me on this one, because I’m lacking something important that my dad has in abundance: the ability to work on something for more than 15 minutes without getting bored and spending the rest of my free time doing jack shit. The man is an achiever, and I am really not.

When life was just about school and grades and first jobs and making rent, it didn’t matter that I wasn’t an achiever. I could revel in my slacker lifestyle and…

(hang on, the Demetri Martin special is back on)

(ok, I’m going to mute it or I’m not going to finish this)

…So, anyway, I could revel in my slacker lifestyle without any care or worry that I wasn’t making any kind of forward progress with my goals. It also helped that I didn't have goals. I could do fun things like declare that next weekend we’re going to watch the entire first season of 24, only breaking to eat and play Splinter Cell. I could lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling, completely for the hell of it, for an hour straight, if I felt so inclined. After I dropped out of college I lived a life of lazy gratification, having decided that I should turn my life into a vacation for a few years, even though I hadn’t really been working all that hard up to that point anyway.

Now, later, even though there’s nothing physically keeping me from doing that, it's a little tougher. I can still lay on the couch or watch four episodes of House back to back while I eat cookies from the Dollar General (in the back left they have this row of boxes that are generic brands of ALL the different kinds of Girl Scout Cookies. Can I get a hell yeah?). All of my old activities are still available to me in theory, but, where I used to be able to spend an evening celebrating the 10th time I’ve watched Pirates of the Caribbean by drinking wine right from the bottle, now when I engage in a similar act there’s this nagging guilt latched onto it the entire time.

And, when I say nagging guilt I don’t mean a funny little feeling in my subconscious or a little reflective pause as I notice an unfinished manuscript. No, it’s more like I sit down to start goofing off and in my head it’s like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! And, then as I keep going through with the goofing off it’s more of a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! It’s fucking annoying and…

(hold up, Demetri Martin is back on)

(no, I didn’t mute it, shut up)

(Jesus the wind just opened my back door. This happened last night too, and I briefly had the thought that a ghost had wandered into my house. Let me explain. I’ve had mice in my house for a little while now, and I had been drinking, and I was playing a driving game, so a lot of my concentration was going into thinking about what a great drunk driver I would be. So, in the middle of this, the wind opens the door, which startles me, and then I think I hear footsteps in the kitchen, which was actually a mouse trying to get into the dog food. But, I didn’t know that, so I kind of pulled myself off the couch and shakily walked over to the door that connects my kitchen and living room, a little terrified because all the times I’ve run through how to handle a ghost in my head, I had never assumed I’d be pretty buzzed at the time, which was really just an unforgivable oversight on my part when I think about it. Anyway, what?)

…Oh, so the guilt is fucking annoying, and the worst part is that it doesn’t even help me. It’s not like I have this constant compass in my head that always gets me back on track. It’s just that I have this screaming guilt that doesn’t want me to goof around, but I goof around anyway, because that’s kind of my thing. I spend a lot of time just fucking around the house. I always have. At first I think it was out of necessity, to keep sane with no parents and an alien visitor as a sister, and then the habits were already formed so I just kept being a slacker. A term that I never understood the negative connotations of until later in life.

When I was young I associated the word slacker with Marty McFly from Back to the Future. That bald guy from Top Gun was in his face all the time about being a slacker, but Marty got to ride in a time machine and played the guitar. So, fuck yeah, I’m a slacker. Let me do some of that shit.

Later on I realized that slacker really meant that I cut class whenever I could, and liked to run half way down the track in high school until I was out of site and then cut hard right to go behind the supply building and smoke. I learned that being a slacker meant that when the teacher said that we had to write our names on the tops of our research projects, because that was five points right there, I would write my name on a blank sheet of paper and demand my five points, to see if she thought that was as funny as I did. I actually got a laugh once, which surprised me.

So, no time machines, and no guitar playing. Although, I did actually try to teach myself the guitar for a couple weeks. I even started to make progress, but, then I quit. I keep telling myself that I’ll pick it up again, but I won’t. No, the only thing I can guarantee WILL happen, is that I will find new and interesting ways to NOT do what I think I should be doing.

(I’m going to work on this later. I think Danny’s online and I want to play Test Drive.)

(Never mind he’s not.)

(God it's been hours. I've even been working on another letter. I have to admit I'm a bit drunk at the moment. Let's just keep it going.)

So as I sit here, convinced that I can both watch House AND write a letter at the same time, while pretty buzzed on Bacardi Gold, I am still thinking about how the only good thing I could manage to do with myself this week is clean our kitchen and bathroom top to bottom. What a spectacular achievement! Next stop, White House! No, that's just a joke, I don't want to be the president. I just want to do what I want to do and make a substantial living at it. But that's what we all want isn't it?

(Writing this drunk and distracted probably isn't the best, but, that's kind of the point of the whole letter so I'm going to just run with it.)

I'm starting to wonder just how useful ambition really is. I have plenty, I think. I know pretty much exactly what I want. I know it so well that when and if I ever reach that point, I'll be able to look around and say, yep, this is it. But, where has that got me? I basically just work long night shifts to keep my house and my life intact. I work, and my wife works her ass off, and that's just to keep our heads above water.

My dad, on the other hand, with his admitted lack of ambition has done some pretty amazing things. Being part of a yacht racing team around Africa, working on a drilling platform in the rough arctic sea, getting promoted to the point where he is building drilling platforms in Singapore, India, now Australia, abandoning his family, starting a new one half way across the world that we never get told about. The man has had a busy life.

But, me, nah, none of that. Most of my adventures exist in my own head. All part of this amazing imagination engine that I use about once a month to inch towards some kind of career that hasn't even happened. Go me. Yeah, this is MUCH better. I'm so glad I was born with creativity instead of all that other shit my dad got to do.

(Ha! House put a possum in Wilson's tub! What an asshole!)

(I think in the spirit of this letter, I'm going to stick with just drinking and watching House, and work on this later...again.)

(Ok, it's been like a fucking week and I haven't touched this. But, I started watching Californication and there's something about watching washed up writers that makes me want to write, go figure.)

I've made the comment before that it was hard for me to rebel as a kid, because my parents never seemed to react in a significant way regardless of the circumstances I got myself into. Maybe this, this jagoff attitude I have, is the big rebellion against the old man. Committing myself to as little as possible while he works himself into an early grave.

The alternative is to try and be different, work in the system, be a "go getter", but, I just know that's not going to happen. I have bursts of productivity. I've always been like that. I truly have to be in the mood to do something, or be struck by some kind of subconscious urge to really get down and get anything done. Better just to accept that that's the kind of pattern I'm on, because every time I try to force myself out of it, I just end up frustrated and angry and STILL unable to produce anything.

I've never thought of myself as a "company man." I'm the guy that mocks the over achievers. Not always to their face, and not always with a clear conscience, but I still do it. I make cracks about hamsters on wheels and brown nosing and empty suits. The only time I go above and beyond is to build up a buffer of good will that I can use as a cushion if and definitely when I really fuck up later. I can be a hard worker, and consistently, but mostly it's just a con. I'm a con man, and what I'm swindling you out of is forgiveness for something I'm going to do in the future. My wife figured this out a while back, and it makes things difficult, you know because I can be a real piece of shit.

I blame being raised by TV, partly. I grew up with onscreen dads that discovered artifacts by shooting Nazis, and saved the day in universal wars by coming in at the last minute to do ONE awesome thing, and getting paid handsomely. Hmm. Maybe I just blame Harrison Ford. Either way, I grew up learning that having superior natural abilities and intelligence was the way to get ahead, and the coolest thing to be in life was a smart ass scoundrel. With his own ship. And a dog. That part, actually, I still think is true. But, overall, running on the Han Solo play book into your adult life only gets you so far; I guess this far.

I don't really ever retain good habits from anything that could actually probably help me out overall. Now, I might have a change of ideas, and my habits will shift according to new philosophy, but that's big picture stuff. Things like: don't be late, ever, or people deserve second chances or spend more time with your loved ones. Those are qualities I'd like to have so making the change is easy. As far as things like, put the dish in the dishwasher after you use it or change the oil in the car when it starts to rattle and smell funny, those are things that I KNOW make sense, but, for some reason just can't ever seem to give a shit about. And those two things I mentioned do make me a hypocrite as I have chastised multiple people about them on multiple occasions.

For whatever reason, that latter category, the one with the dish washing and the oil changes, is where all my personal projects have been filed. Guaranteeing that, even though I love to do it, and want to do it, it's going to be pulling teeth from start to finish for me to produce anything, which is just stupid.

I think what it boils down to is that I just have to stop worrying so much if something is going to happen or not before I'm food for worms. Like I said, my dad has that drive, that eye for the future and the coulda-shoulda-wouldas, but he also has one of the worst cases of miserable bastard syndrome I've ever seen. And, that is exactly what worrying about making something of myself does to me. It makes me fucking miserable.

So, is that the trick? I gotta want more, but not plan to have more? Maybe. Fly with all thrust and no rudder, the way GOD intended. Just fucking do my thing and not worry about what the hell it means or where the hell it fits, or pushing it into a direction. Just buy some shit that looks good from a tent on the side of the road, light away from face, and point at neighbor's house. Let chance and physics take care of the results.

Is the key to dealing with ambition just not giving a shit? That doesn't sound right. But, fuck it, I'm running with it for now. I honestly don't feel like coming up with anything else.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
...if you try sometimes, you just might find...

A Letter to Jupiter Concernin My Future as a Starchild

2010-01-25T11:18:00.000-06:00

Dear monkeys way beyond using tools,

I think I can confidently say that I've spent the majority of my life alone. I don't mean to say that I have never had family or friends or a wife. What I mean is that I have spent most of my life in a room where there were, physically, no other people. That if you laid out all the moments of my entire life as pictures on a table and closed your eyes and picked one at random, odds are it would be a picture of just me.

I've gone through steep social peeks, don't get me wrong. Half the time in high school I was around people all the time, because they used my house as a drunk tank. After I dropped out of college, and had an apartment with my wife and best friend, there was always someone around when I was home. But that's just what those points are: peeks. They are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Even a lot of my jobs have been me, in a room, with no one else. Evening shift computer lab technician at LSUS. Evening to close tech support at an internet provider down town. At my last job there was a lot of office work where I was with one or two other people, but when I traveled I was by myself. And, now this job, where on my regular shifts I only pass the guy I'm relieving, and have about a half hour with the woman that comes in the morning. That's maybe 1 hour out of a 10 hour shift.

Me working graves also means most of my time off is a night at home filled with old movies and video games and rum and coke. Wife is asleep, no one's up to talk to, nothing's open to go to, so I pull on all that old experience I amassed as a child in an empty house, and I just learn how to sit and be with myself all night. It sounds lonely, and it is, but it gives me time to think. And I really love to think.

A byproduct of this solitary lifestyle is a deep connection I make with books or films about total isolation. Books like The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, which is basically a sci-fi twist on the real life act of a lifestyle pulling you slowly away from those who matter. Or, another Matheson book, I Am Legend. I'd love to meet Matheson, really. I want to know what happened to him that allowed him to capture that feeling of being completely cut off so well.

The movies hit home even harder. Movies like Castaway, The Pianist, the more recent Moon. And, the all time pinnacle of isolationism: 2001. 2001 sinks into my skin like a humid breeze. It rings almost every bell on the subject I have, most of all, the quiet. It's so accurate it's almost haunting to watch that movie. At night, alone, when I can think, it's so, so quiet. The only things that make noise are things that imitate the hum of the silence. An air conditioner, a server fan, the compressor on a refrigerator. It's all so quiet. Even when it's deafening, it's quiet. And when something breaks the silence, you can almost see the ripple in the air.

When it's that quiet, and you have that time to think, you'll try anything to pass the time mentally. Most of the time you can distract yourself. It's not uncommon for me to watch one or two movies a night. Play games for hours. Write when the inspiration hits me(although the effort given to writing and the effort given to gaming really should be switched). But that only lasts so long. Weeks, maybe, or a month before one night you sit down and all of my entertainment options just seem so unappealing. It's those times that I start to walk around inside my own head. It's those times that innerspace, the life of the mind, becomes my own personal rec room. And, once a person goes down that path, I think it starts to change their reality a little bit.

One morning, a few months ago, I got a terrible headache. Not quite a migraine, but close. One of those bigguns, that just presses on the inside of your skull and makes you realize why people used to think that there were demons in your head trying to get out. Worse yet, it came just as I was laying my head down on a pillow to sleep, about two hours after the sun had come up. I can ignore the daylight when I'm tired and comfortable, but this throbbing pain was promising a day of guaranteed insomnia.

I got up and briefly hunted for Tylenol, knowing that even if I found it, I'd have to take 6 and then, maybe, an hour later it would work enough that I could sleep. I briefly considered the rum, but passed on it since I would have to be up in 5 hours, alert, and ready to get things done. I didn't want to risk the haze left over from the amount of alcohol my substantial frame would need to pass out. So, having run out of practical options, I opted for something less pharmaceutical. I decided to try something I'd been reading about in some of the Buddhism crap I have lying around the house.

I'll be the first to admit that I am about the most half-assed Buddhist that ever walked the Earth. A few months ago I even tried to argue that buying a giant tub of cheese balls from the Dollar General was very Zen. Granted, I was just trying to defend my decision to pay money in exchange for horrible diarrhea, but, I still think my argument was valid at the time. The point I'm trying to make is that I use Buddhism as more of a guide line, and usually bypass the practices and just focus on the moral lessons.

But, it felt like a "scanner" was trying to kill me that morning, so, I decided to just try something new. Something totally of the mind. I mean, pain is just electrical impulses to the brain anyway. It's all just a machine. So, there's not really anything supernatural about it. My first adult attempt at serious meditation followed that rationalization.

I pictured a black oblivion. In that oblivion there was a hand, my hand, and in my hand was a small pebble. I started to mentally gather the pain in my head. The pain was a grey smoke filling my skull. I gathered it in a spinning mass and I pulled it down into my hand. And the more the smoke filled my hand, the larger the pebble grew. It grew to stone, and then to rock as the last of the smoke was absorbed. I focused on the rock. Smooth and grey with flecks of white and black. Like a heavy robin's egg. I pictured it lighter, almost weightless. I told myself that this rock is my pain, but this rock isn't really here. This rock is empty like I am empty, just like everything is empty. And I closed my hand around the rock, and it crumbled into a thin dust that blew away. My headache was completely gone.

The next thing I thought was, HOLY SHIT! This, of course not being the most Zen of thoughts, caused all the pain to rush back into my head, but, the point was that I did it once, and when I tried again, I was pain free again. The only thing I had to concentrate on was holding that state, and that distraction alone was enough to put me to sleep. Kind of like counting sheep, but way more awesome.

Since that day I have had many successful "mind over matter" experiences. I've pictured a system of hooks and ropes to silence the hiccups. I've pictured a hard leathery skin to let the cold wind blow right over me without effect. And, of course, I still use the rock for pain.

All of this combines in my brain to one end alone. Somewhere near my house there is a monolith that is changing my thought patterns to get me ready for the next step in evolution. There is some serious Tycho Magnetic Anomaly shit going down in Greenwood. I am truly better at being human now. But, for real this time, not just like how I tell people I'm better than them when I meet them for the first time.

It's all so clear now. I'm being prepared for something. Something wonderful. I've been improved so that I can handle the violent and traumatic journey that awaits me when I finally locate the monolith. It's probably down at the Loves truck stop. Everything else is.

I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. Me armed with my new way of thinking, dipping my foot into the rectangular abyss, and getting whisked away on that crazy ass Space Mountain ride through reality. A journey completely separate, in every way needed to be legally, than going into the VGER cloud from Star Trek: The Movie. Moving beyond the speed of light in my 1999 Buick Century, until both car and I suddenly arrive in a beautifully furnished apartment, complete with pork chop dinner and awesome Michael Jackson Billy Jean floor lights.

There I will both witness and experience every stage of the future of my life. Current Me, bewildered and still sitting, shaking in my Buick. Thirty something Me that's written two unpublished books. Middle Aged Me that has 5,000 extra copies of an unsuccessful, self-published book that I give away as Christmas gifts, every single year. Me in my sixties that has decided to master something easier than being a novelist and decides to take up painting. Decrepit Me on my death bed, surrounded by unopened art supplies still in their Hobby Lobby bags. I reach out to a monolith. Starchild.

Trumpets will play, I'll be surrounded in this wicked glowing shit, and later I'll get to meet Roy Scheider. It's going to be freakin' bad ass.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Ooooohhhhhh...IIIIIIII...AAAAAAAMMMMMM...BATMAAAAAAAAAN!!!! BUM BOM BUM BOM BUM BOM

A Letter to the Machinehead Concerning That Night

2010-01-12T10:34:00.000-06:00

Dear Jessica,

Technically this is a letter for you, but, because I know it wouldn't really register properly due to you being you, it turned into a letter about you instead. But, it still belongs to you. It belongs to both of us. I just want to tell the story. Maybe someday you'll be able to read this and talk about it.

It was the mid nineties. It was the time of Clinton, of middle school, and the first, and last, serious girlfriend I would ever have. More importantly, though, it was the time I made a name for myself in my small circle of gaming friends as the deadliest opponent any one of them could face in our new favorite past time: Goldeneye 64.

Of the six or seven of us that ever partook in this exciting new religion, this true sport of kings, only one of my friends ever even gave me a challenge. For a boy not good at much, my championship status awakened my inner gladiator, and to some extent, my inner douche bag. But, even that feeling was exciting. I gloated often, finally knowing what that even felt like. My hubris was palpable in the air around me, and I found myself feeding off of the huge ego I produced every time I played, like some disgusting egg loving chicken.

I knew the caves and the library better than my own house. I circle strafed in my sleep. When the house was silent and I had only my own beating heart to keep me company, I would hear the soft, intoxicating rhythm of that slow espionage melody, tinkling through my veins like a light rain. Never had I felt such total confidence and control in my whole life. Never was there a time and place so ripe for a person's own personal fall from grace. And, never, was there a more pathetic way for a boy to become a man than to have his ass handed to him, in his own place of worship, by his little sister.

It was late on a weeknight and my mother was out, which wasn't that uncommon back then. My sister and I got along well enough that I was appointed babysitter. It wasn't a huge responsibility, really. Autistic people, especially my sister, tend to have extreme obsessive compulsiveness, and basically take care of themselves. You just have to keep things stocked to facilitate their needs like cereal and soap and electricity.

I didn't have to tell my sister to eat up, wash her ears, go to bed. Her obsessive nature took care of all of that for me. I just had to make sure nothing caught on fire, fell over, or brought the cops to our door. A trifecta that I, the babysitter, had achieved on probably more than one occasion. Being her babysitter meant I just had to be there, so, most of the time I was "watching" Jessica, I was really just watching myself, be awesome at Goldeneye.

Apparently I wasn't the only one.

I had grown tired of shooting the computer driven bad guys and was about to call it a night when I caught my sister staring intently at me from beneath the covers of my bed. This might sound startling or unsettling, but, living with my sister was a life of being watched from corners and from under covers. I pulled my hand away from the power switch and leaned back, our eyes never breaking their lock.

As always, I was the one to break the silence. "What is it Jess? Is something wrong?" She just shook her head at me and kept staring. It had taken me a while to be able to pick out her actual body language from the constant noise of her idiosyncrasies, but I knew she wasn't upset when she shook her head. It wasn't despair in her gaze, it was desire.

The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop myself. "Do you want to play, Sis?"

"Oh yes, Brother, dear." Jessica's is a speech pattern made up of a million other patterns she's heard over the course of her life. It sounded almost comically Dickensian, but I knew what she meant. What she said didn't matter, what she meant was, "I want to play this game more than anything in the world, right now." So for the first time since the "Great Street Fighter 2 across-the-house Free for All of 1992," she got extended a controller from my hand.

Before we got started I found myself, compulsively, giving a speech. In retrospect it was a speech that she couldn't possibly have understood, and probably wouldn't even today. I don't think so, anyway. So, I guess it was more for myself'; to justify what I was planning to do to her on that virtual plain. "Ok," I started. "We're doing this. But, you need to know something first. You get a lot of leeway around here, and I don't. You don't get yelled at for grades. You don't have to go out into the real world and get jumped. Mom still takes care of you, and Dad still loves you. And, while I don't really blame you for all of that, I want you to know that this, this game, it's mine. And, I'm not going to take it easy on you. Not for one damn second."

I got a glare back that still makes me laugh. Jessica has this hilarious way of giving someone a dirty look. Think of a cartoon squirrel, scrunching her face and sticking her neck way out to scrutinize a suspicious acorn with a stick of dynamite stuck in it, and you'd start to get close to my sister's technique, because that's exactly where she learned how to glare at someone. Loony Tunes taught me to love classical music, and it taught my sister how to say, "bring it on, bitch" with just a glance.

I turned around, set the options for the match, and loaded the library; my favorite level. I could already feel the victory swelling in my chest. The game camera spun around our characters and I couldn't hold back the big, satisfied grin. The match started standard enough for me. I knew where all the secrets were, all the weapons, the armor, everything. My sister barely knew how to move forward and pull the trigger at the same time, which put her on par with half of my friends. I was humming along, arming myself to the teeth, and stalking her on the radar like a hungry leopard. Enjoying every succulent second of her impending doom.

I rounded a corner, saw her standing there, and took a second to chuckle. This was out of character for me. No seconds of chuckling were ever enjoyed with my friends as opponents. It was all search and destroy with them, and the chuckling came after. But, this was my sister. What harm would a little moment of gloating do? Well, it does about the equivalent of forty high powered , full metal jacket assault rifle rounds ripping through my body armor, and then my chest, splattering my proud ass all over the concrete walls of the library offices.

There's something I didn't mention about my sister. I don't know about all people like her, but, my sister doesn't really learn how to do things. She watches and then just does it. Now, one might exclaim, "it's like she can see the matrix." For me, I watched Neo and Trinity look at, and then know how to use a helicopter and thought, "Jesus, all these people are autistic."

I had found the armor, my favorite pistols, and tracked her with a detailed knowledge of the building's layout. She remembered and repeated me acquiring two, dual wielded M16's, and deducted what the trigger on the controller was for. She then continued to run a series of subroutines in her head that came at me like a white hot purifying flame. Her shrill giggle piercing the air the whole time I was being slaughtered. Each laugh shoveling out more and more of my once plentiful confidence and certainty. She was schooling me, teaching me about how momentum wasn't everything, and that all the wins in the world under my belt counted for absolute dick.

My "disabled" sister hunted me with a Terminator-like tenacity that I had never experienced in my whole life. She wouldn't be caught in traps, she wouldn't flinch in direct gunfire, and she displayed no pattern or weakness to exploit. She was focused, consistent, and had absolutely no concept of fear. In the real world, sure, she was an easy target, but here, in this one, her world not mine, the rules limited all of our actions to basic mental input. She walked, shot, and killed, like she was on a mission from God, and God had told her to kick my sorry ass all the way from Hell to breakfast. It was judgment day in our house that night.

When the smoke cleared and the game revealed the winner, I believe the score was something like 20 to 3, Jessica. Of course, a humiliated boy's memory is unreliable at best, so if the Ghost of Christmas Asswhoopings came down and told me I hadn't gotten a single kill, I wouldn't argue. I had been beaten, worse than I ever had, or will be, in my entire career with that game. Worse still, it was the only time it ever happened, because after that night Jessica lost all interest in Goldeneye.

It seems like a trivial place and time for a boy to have two substantial epiphanies at once, but that's exactly what happened. After she left and I was still sitting there, staring at the screen in my dark room. I thought about the lessons I had just had burned into my skin. Tattooed onto my forehead. She taught me that disability is only defined by environment, and she taught me that cockiness, like steroids, will boost your performance all the way to the point that it destroys you.

Of course, I forget these lessons in adulthood, often actually, but something always snaps me back to that night. Someone exposing a trivial achievement of mine for how frivolous and meaningless it really is. Or, effortlessly negating my existence in a field that I consider myself an expert. Or, usually when I get a progress report about Jessica. When I hear about her horseback riding, or her swimming medals, or her fiddling with her computer in ways even I can't back track. Or, how she's always happy to see me. How she doesn't hate me for being different from her. How despite all the small stuff that brings her to tears, the big stuff just washes over her like a warm ocean wave.

All of that reminds me of that feeling I got that night. That if her wires weren't crossed for whatever reason, that she would have surpassed me in every measurable way. That i was the prototype, and she was supposed to be the production model, and a cruel twist of genetic chance permanently knocked us all off course. Flinging my sister into a cold abyss, and allowing me to retain some sliver of validity that I could later build some kind of personality around. So that even my small successes are really her doing. Adjusted and corrected via radio signal from outer space.

I think about her a lot when I'm alone, and a lot when I'm playing a game. I think of her, and that night, and how she pulled back the curtain for me for those brief, bloody minutes. I think about her, then sounds of artillery and impact tremors are tuned back into focus, and I race into a hail of gunfire, laugh into my headset, and take out as many sonsabitches as I can with pure reflex before I get crushed under and avalanche of hot, screaming hell. That's how Jessica would do it, and those moments are for her.

Those moments are your moments, little sister.

You glorious, never tiring, Machinehead.

I promise I will always love you more for what you taught me, than I hate you for having to live through the lesson.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball...

A Letter to the Fat Lady Concerning the Freedom of Redefinition

2009-12-28T22:39:00.000-06:00

Dear gigantic, life changing, gas station asteroid,

My day (which is your night) started off pretty typical today. I was at my local gas station getting my customary "enough gas to get me to work and back" fill up, and blaring music through my headphones loud enough to drown out the roar of putrid failure that rolls around this place like a frightening motorcycle gang. I was bored, so to pass the time I was watching an impossibly fat woman demand her children stop running away from her when she was talking to them, threatening, "iffen you t'aint quit haulin' ass 'cross this Loves station, you ain't gettin' Twix bars the rest of the trip!"

I absorbed this in, this Dr. Seuss created human, this obnoxious, tub-bellied hornwaddler, and I wrote her a little letter in my head. It went like this:

Dear horrible fat woman,

A) Your kids aren't running, they're walking at a normal speed. A speed that you've long forgotten as myth and only have psychotic nightmares about. Waking up screaming; rambling wild eyed about a past life where you could go up steps and bought pants with zippers and buttons. And the speed, children! Oh what speed! Like a Cheetah in the jungle you was.

B) Neither you NOR your kids need Twix bars, ever again. Stop by a Country Market instead next time. The last thing those children need is you exposing them to some kind of second hand fat-ass. As if you'd ever let chocolate pass by your face without your jaws snapping down like an Arklatex gator anyway.

C) You might actually look LESS ridiculous if you got one of those scooters designed for people who can't fucking control themselves, instead of attempting to travel under your own natural energy. At this point there is so much ground for your veins to cover I don't even know if blood is MAKING it to your legs so just sit down before you create a giant dead obstruction for traffic to have to get around.

Sincerely,
Go Fuck Yourself

A caught myself laughing out loud as I signed the mental signature to this undelivered correspondence in my head. A good clean laugh that seemed to knock loose some of the gloom that's been collecting in my blood over the past year. Like a big cough after a fever, delivering brown phlegm from your bronchial passages and allowing that sweet deep intake of breath. Something started to stir inside my head. Thoughts that have been simmering on low heat for a long time now started to separate and clarify.

You see, I've still been trying to focus on a more Buddhist path in life, and Buddhism says that I shouldn't feel superior to my fellow man. But, frankly, I've had suspicions for a while now that I'm too good for this hillbilly folk magic crap anyway, so, discounting it's teachings at the drop of a hat isn't a big problem for me. And, laughing at that idiot woman felt good. And feeling good, feels pretty good.

My mother says that happiness is something that comes from inside people. That you just have to relax and dial into the right frame of mind and you'll find it. I have been fighting her on it for a while now, telling her that the only thing that comes from inside a person is hate and anger, and happiness is the result of them either ignoring or learning how to deal with that darkness inside all of us.

In these discussions of philosophy and psychology we do tend to agree on one idea, which is the benefit of walking a middle path. The idea that answers lie between extremes. But, it hadn't occurred to me until this night at the gas station that I hadn't been applying that path to the very argument we'd been having. Maybe that's the key to this feeling of split personality. Maybe that's the clouded truth separating the sorrowful thought from the fierce rage. Maybe we're both right, and the darkness inside of me IS my happiness.

Maybe all I do have to do is dial into that channel of churning, molten, despising indignation, AND also learn how to handle the flow when it's on full blast, and then I'll be carried up into heaven on a powerful stream of concentrated rage. I'd finally have that last piece of the puzzle. Pack my bags tonight. Pre-flight.

Of course that all sounds very fine and dramatic, but the practical solution is really just to reassess how I look at my daily life. To start updating definitions until the world makes sense to ME, instead of me making sense to the world. So, I think that's what I'm going to do here, now. Let's redefine some shit up in this bitch.

We'll start with the obvious. From now on, mentally at least (because we still LIVE IN A SOCIETY and saying words out of popular context will just confuse these apes) I will think of Hatred as Happiness. I know I'll still slip up. Say things like, "man, I hate that bitch," and NOT mean that said bitch has just filled me up with joy. But, I'll know, deep down, that the active ongoing hate of anyone will keep the gears oiled and moving. That in the end I'll build up the anger and cast it out onto a page like a cleansing fire and at that point the hatred will make me feel alive. So it WILL be my joy, like grapes turn into my wine.

Next, I have to come up with a way to express pure happiness without associating it with hate, so that things don't get confusing. I'm going to go with Erection for this one. Partly because it's funny to think about how it means "joy that comes from within" and partly because this will have the least impact on my current way of speaking. It's really the perfect word. I didn't come to this decision lightly. It took long, hard thought. I really had to bang away at it, because I didn't want to look like a jerk. Eventually it just came. So, erection for joy.

Of course, now I have to do something with erection, and just the general idea of sexual desire. I've thought about this and I'm going to reallocate Vengeance to this duty. It seems the closest one on the list without being a sexual word in the first place. If you think about it I think most of you will agree. Think of other slang sex words: beat, hit, slam, pound, choke, stab, bury, pissed. They're practically interchangeable with the idea of Vengeance, so that seems like the logical successor. I haven't quite perfected working the Inigo Montoya speech into our foreplay yet, but, I still have pretty big biceps and a deep, sexy voice, so I think all I have to do is nail the "Hello," and I'm In Like Flynn.

The next one is tricky. If Hatred really eventually brings me joy, then it has to be re-categorized into a preferred state of mind, which brings a lot of friends along. A big one of these being humiliation. Humiliation is something we all have to deal with, and the way I've been dealing with it for years is oversaturation. I basically just replay every extremely humiliating event in my life I can remember, in my head, whenever I have some free time. This causes a certain, but not complete, numbness to 90% of future embarrassing moments. It's what allows me to take responsibility for fuck ups at work, it's what allows me to blow a chore off to get more sleep or rest, it's even what allows me to write. But it's not full proof. Well, maybe this little exercise can change that. Instead of numbing myself through overexposure, maybe just redefining wear it fits in the scheme will just erase the negativity. So for humiliation, I'm reallocating it to mean Teaching. Again, like vengeance and sex, vernacularly, they are almost identical. "Teaching" someone a lesson almost ALWAYS involves some sort of humiliation. The embarrassment is what makes it stick, and that's what you have to associate it with. You don't get red faced and want to "just crawl into a hole and die" when you're watching the History channel, right? So, what's the difference?

Love is going to share some of its meaning between hate, erection, and vengeance now, but true love will still remain in a reserved area for spouse, family, and close friends.

That's what I've got so far, and I don't know if I want to force any more out at the moment. I feel like I've gotten the big ones anyway. Now, in classic 5th grade review sheet fashion, I will apply what I've learned to the end of the letter. A little send off courtesy of my new burgeoning philosophy.

I just wanted to say, that, I hate you all, SO much. You have no idea. I give and I give, and for what? For what? Just so you can hate me too? Well if that's all there is then I'm fine with that. Yeah, I'm fine with it. Don't worry about me. You just keep on living your fucking lives, and if you can find some time in the day to pay attention to little old me than that's great. Yeah, because I know, and don't you dare deny it, because I KNOW that when a handful of you read my letters, you get erections. Oh that's right you get HUGE erections from these letters, and you know what? Knowing that I give YOU erections, well that just gives ME erections too. Because that's what it's all about in the end; giving each other as many erections as we can, in the short time we're on this earth. And my time spent here, doing this thing that I HATE on this site, well that just gives me the biggest erection of all. Honestly, it's all been really humiliating.

I'll write back when I can, assholes. It's getting hard to concentrate. I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to get revenge against my wife tonight.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Space Cowboy/Gangster of Love/Maurice

A Letter to my Past Self Concerning His Future

2009-12-10T00:59:00.000-06:00

I wanted to say a few things before this one gets going. It might seem a little weird halfway through, but, keep in mind I never stopped writing these letters, I just stopped posting them for a little while because I really wasn't happy with any of them, which just goes against the whole idea in the first place. I'm trying to get the habit back of putting them out when I write them, before I can think about them, to get that rhythm back and get them doing their job again.

I was worried that this might be a little too "woe is me." I played with the idea of making it funny or angry, or splitting it into two different letters, but, in the end I thought it had a decent flow so I'm just throwing it up as is.

It's a long one, and it's more thoughtful than outrageous, so, if you make it to the end I hope you get something out of it. I'd love to know if you did.

Dear hopeful, dedicated, focused version of myself that probably never even existed half my lifetime ago,

When I was younger, I wanted to be today’s Tom Sawyer. Now, more and more, it feels like I ended up today’s Holden Caufield. So fearful, for so long, of all the phonies after me in my day to day life, that I’ve inevitably turned that McCarthy brand magnifying glass permanently on myself. Inviting all who cross my path to gaze into it so they can see how good I am at being the genuine article. I’m Year One, I’m first print, come all ye and be amazed. But, I’m not, so they don’t.

In reality I’m a fair weather rebel. An HST wannabe with either too much sense or not enough balls to try and follow in that exciting, albeit bizarre, legacy of total freedom in the face of true American Fear. Instead I sit on my couch and drink alone, reading of his adventures. And, even that I don’t do that often anymore. I can’t, you see. I have to retain my energy, and more importantly my sobriety, so that I can face the maddening monotony of the modern economy, and workplace.

Ugh, the workplace. MY workplace, like working inside of a giant florescent bee hive. Constantly buzzing with the background drone of its many server fans, and many employees. A drone so deafening and ever-present that I couldn’t have even imagined it in younger times. Better times, when the biggest thing in my life was my own ego, and that’s exactly the way I thought it should be. Even now, as I write this, there’s the droning. To my left a human voice slurs and mumbles, never ending in its need to be expressed, keeping me from doing the same, quietly, and on paper.

A voice weaving a web of tales and ignorant opinion about honor and integrity, all in a desperate attempt to bullshit me so I won’t pay attention to the TONE of the voice speaking. The tone used when making an excuse. The tone of voice that both tries to justify actions while at the same time begging forgiveness. A tone that has come out of my lips so much in the past that I never want to hear it again. I can’t stand how thick the air is getting and now all I want to do is take a piss. I just want a quiet place to urinate and get away for a time out. But this, like most things lately, will be denied.

When I walk into the bathroom I’m greeted by the always smiling, barely-speaks-English Asian security guard that has recently come on the night shift. I walk past him to the urinal and I hear the quick and pleasant, “hello sir. Have a nice day, sir. Very good, sir.” Goddamnit, man! This is America. You don’t have to “yessuh” me when I’m standing dick in hand in front of porcelain. Where you used to live did you address your fellow pissers as “sir”? You’re free now. Run!

He looks nearly twice my age and, as he nods and salutes his way back to his post, I wonder what he did a lifetime ago. I wonder if he lived in a village. I wonder if he lived near the ocean, and rowed out to fish in that ocean every day. I wonder if he, fit and bare-chested, cast his nets out into the water and drew his family’s livelihood right out of the dark surf with his bare hands by the light of a rising sun; hand delivering the birth of each new day.

I wonder if he hated it. I wonder if he dreaded gathering his nets and going out to the boat. I wonder if he thought that was a phony way to live. I bet he did. Because he’s a god damn idiot.

I’m getting too far inside my own head so I decide to go out onto the floor of the boat. I pass him as he waves the swollen glutton of zombies though the ID check stand. “Hello, sir. Very good, sir. Good luck, sir.” I look away from him as I pass and tell myself he deserves this for abandoning what must have been a good life, over greed. Then I am swallowed by the Twin Peaks ambience that is the place I work.

A casino river boat is what airplanes would be today if the in-flight trends of airlines in the sixties had been carried on into the 21st century: a three level orgy of bad carpet patterns, lights, stale smoke, and booze. Tiny, beautiful women, stuffed into tight corsets carrying trays of cigarettes and offering drinks to dull the bright glare and loud sirens of the slot machines. A room full of drunks settling into bent chairs with old cushions, ignoring the ghosts of Christmas past and future on either side of them, pulling the levers that power this blasphemous engine, this floating house of worship, demanding constant sacrifice to every shiny calf on the face of every one armed bandit.

And of course there’s black jack on the lower decks.

My fellow employees roam the decks having private conversations that they have to shout at each other in order to be heard over the chaos. I notice the customers’ faces as they catch halves of sentences that ought to be whispered in closed offices. Things like, “I’ll come up here and shove my shotgun up his ass,” or “sometimes I like to crawl on top of the dresser while she whips me with my own belt,” or “if only I wasn’t married to her mom, you know what I mean?” Yeah, man, we all know what you mean. You said it at the top of your lungs.

But, the customers are the lucky ones. They can pretend they didn’t hear what was just yelled practically in their face and move on to the next glittering distraction. For the rest of us, meaning me, I’m left to continue these conversations. Asked to participate in these diatribes that swing so wildly between Fox News headlines, pop psychology, episodes of Heroes I’ve never seen, and then on to what borders on brutal rape fantasies, that I almost feel physically exhausted. The pent up violence and secret carnal desires hidden from the daylight are almost palpable among the workers of the night shift.

The night shift. The grave shift. The dead shift.

Where sometimes the only thing to do is talk about who you want to kill or who you want to fuck. And, the only way to escape it is to change the subject to a bad joke, or some office gossip, or the speaker’s family. The amount of times I’ve heard conversations turn on a dime from beatings and rape to daughters’ birthdays is mind boggling. And, if that fails there’s always locking myself in my office. Cleanly separating myself from ALL contact is an absolute solution, but to do it all night is sometimes frowned upon. They say it makes IT look like weirdo loners. Well, Jesus Christ! That’s like saying you shouldn’t stay on your side of the bars at the zoo because the fucking lions will think you’re antisocial.

The bizarreness isn’t necessarily all bad. There can be a fascinating intrigue in walking around a spiritual relic of the 1970’s, the smoking being chief among the adopted traditions. And, I don’t mean a few outcasts shivering and puffing by the dumpsters. No, walking around this property is like strolling through an old ad from a Life magazine. Sinewy streamers of smoke rising from every occupied seat at a poker table, like tiny, green felt industrial districts all around the floor. An octogenarian, oxygen tank turned up as high as it will go, leaning over in his scooter to accept a lit match from a pair of breasts stuffed in a black and gold one piece with a security badge clipped to the front. His eyes hungrily staring into the cleavage of someone who could be his granddaughter.

The other day at breakfast in the cafeteria I nosily looked over at the tray of a fellow employee, an older thin woman, and saw only a plate of bacon, a pack of Dorals, and a V-8. Later I went down to the floor and noticed another woman unwittingly flicking her long ash into her own open purse. I see this and wonder if this is what it used to be like everywhere, when smoking was more common than chewing Trident. A vice taken to the extreme point of complete, abandoned ridiculousness. The picture in my head strains to recreate a time before I was born, and I wish I had been there to see it in person.

After I lose interest in the wild life there are a few things I can do to pass the time, but not many. Read, write, draw, solitaire, and, sometimes when it rains I go out on the top deck and huddle under an awning to watch the rain turn the Red River into a wide, soft band of silk being dragged across the ground. It’s surface warmly lit by the adjacent Bass Pro Shop and Hooters on the Bossier side of the river. But, even that gets old pretty fast and with my distractions exhausted, I eventually succumb to the crushing anxiety that comes with any job where you, for the most part, do nothing.

If you had told me eight years ago that I would be working here, I would have solemnly considered it, and then completely agreed with you, and for one reason. Everything about this place is the epitome of the path of least resistance, which, anyone who knows me could tell you, is my Dharma of choice. Proven, even now, with the writing of this letter.

When I was unemployed at the beginning of this year, I got it in my head that I could write a book by the time I was 26. The magnitude of that set in pretty quick so I settled on writing a book of short stories instead, as I have at least finished short stories in the past. For the time I was at home after making that decision, I endeavored with a feverish passion. Every day was writing. I’d write in the morning, write at lunch time, or even write in the parking lot of a Sonic if I felt the urge, as I often did back then.

Now, with 5 days to go until my birthday (as of the time I posted this) I have five unfinished short stories, two poems, and a big rambling screenplay, all filed away in a black box with a handle on it. And, what am I working on instead? Another letter. A self indulgent, stream of consciousness essay, thinly veiled as some kind of correspondence. Because, you see, letters are fast, and essays are easy. They are bolts of thought that leap from the mind without need for plot or spin or continuity. They are the literary path of least resistance, and the only things this pathetic Bodhisattva of “get the easy stuff done first” can bring himself to pen down anymore.

I tell myself it’s this place. This job where the false hope and too-little-too-late desperation spreads onto me so thick that sometimes I just have to walk outside and shake it out of my hair, like a dog shaking off a heavy rain. I’ll tell myself that it’s the stress, when a day comes a long where everything goes wrong at once. Or, I’ll tell myself it’s the monotony when it’s so quiet at night for ten hours straight that the job feels like one big detention hall. But it’s not. “It’s my job,” was the excuse I used to use at the last place I worked when I couldn’t get anything done, but that was the most productive I had been since college, and the most successful I’d been, well, ever. As far as writing was concerned, that is. I WAS eventually let go from the actual, you know, JOB part of it.

No, more than the job, it feels like my mind is starting to cave in on itself. Whatever that means. And, that these letters, although nor “real” writing, are the only motivated expression I can produce anymore. Scratched wildly into Moleskins between all the ridiculous drama and unprecedented tragedy and extraneous for hyperbole. They are the squeaks of a bat in a dark cave, sent out in hopes of a return echo to let me know I’m still going in the right direction.

They’ve become an odd chronicle of an ongoing quarter-life crisis. And I feel like I have to keep writing them, even if more make it into the trash than the public like lately, because if I stop then I’m agreeing to be completely swallowed up by the rushing rapids of responsible life. I’d be deciding to stop hovering above the boat, stop peering into the windows and recording my observations of the natives, and admitting that I’ve become just as much a part of the machinery as they have. As much a part of this place as the light and the air conditioning, and worth about as much attention.

The letters are expression, but they are also a stall. With each one completed I feel like I’ve reset a death clock. But more and more it feels like time’s running out. I’ve got my ankles locked around the cot in my cell, licking the plate my last meal came on, protesting that there’s still a little gravy left as they drag me down the hall to the gas chamber. Fuck you, pigs! What do you have against gravy? Call the governor! Tell him about the gravy! Listen to me you GOD damn Gestapo meat heads!

The flagrant arrogance of what I’m doing isn’t lost on me either. Posting two thousand word essays in the forums of a site that already has a full writing staff is the equivalent of standing next to a newsstand and handing out free multi-colored, Kinko-copied newsletters to the passersby. Shoving the single canary yellow or salmon pink sheet into their hands and making sure they hear the rattle of my cup before they walk off.

Maniacal Monthly! (Now in print!!! Donations welcome!!!)

It’s, at best, juvenile, and, at worst, delusional, but right now I think it’s the best I can do. After I got my new job everything inside just seemed to shut down, except this. This, right here, right now, seems to be the only thing that made it through with all the moving parts. For better or worse.

Maybe this still works because in some way writing what I want, when I want, for free, still feels rebellious. Maybe it still feels like art. Or, maybe, it just doesn’t carry that flash of a car payment or mortgage note going out the window when an editor frowns at my print. Or, that WOULD happen if I sent anything to anyone anymore. The last time I was even rejected for something I was cursing the obnoxious summer heat.

It’s probably simpler than all of that. It’s probably just easier to say “fuck you, forum guy,” than it is to say “fuck you, Tin House.” And, in a time in my life when easy is a rare, precious commodity, I can see the appeal.

If you’ve made it this far and are reaching for a point to all this rambling, I’ll bring it home for you. Think of this letter as an apology. An apology to a thirteen year old version of me that expected to be working for Image comics when he was my age. A note sent back in time, to apologize in advance, after it’s already way too late.

I’m sorry, Stephen. Maybe in another 13 years we’ll be better at this. But, we’re probably just fucked.

But, of course.

You always suspected anyway, right?

Oh, and happy birthday, shit for brains. Kiss your girlfriend for me next year.

Sincerely,
Chiggie von Richthofen
The sun is the same in a relative way, but I’m older

A Letter to Fellows Concerning The Restroom

2009-10-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's been a while. Yes, this is one big dick and fart rant. Yes, it felt SO good to write it.

Dear whoever the hell was just in here,

Ok, everybody, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but, we have to talk about the bathroom situation. Seriously, everyone, pull up a folding chair, get some cold coffee and stale donuts, and let’s hash this out. Let’s start with a question, ok? Ok. What the fuck is up with you people and the bathrooms?

What choices upon choices have played out in your individual lives to lead up to this unnatural horror I step into on a nigh weekly basis? What feral beings have been hired to work here are coming in here at some seemingly anonymous, but surely previously agreed upon, time to wreak havoc on these facilities that are so important to every living human in the building?

I’ll give you a few examples of what I’m talking about. If you could form your response in the order that these are presented it would do a lot to stave of the insanity that is growing nightly as a result of viewing this crazy ass nonsense.

Number 1, a simple one to start with: Why do you insist on pissing all over everything that your powerful bladder can reach? Honestly, I walked in the other night and gagged a little. I had to stop walking to gag. And, when I say “walked in”, I of course mean I walked in to the FLOOR that the bathrooms are on.

I caught a hint of it in the stairwell. Not such an uncommon area to detect the faint odor of urine. But, this was the stairwell inside the building. The one you have to pass another outdoor stairwell to get to. And, we all know that outdoor stairwells are the next best thing to a urinal, so why would someone bypass it for this one? Oh but they didn’t.

No, this whiff was only an impish foreshadowing of the horrible stench, a stenchible if you will, that was to punch me full force in the forehead as soon as I swung the door open to my desired floor. A force that was unavoidable as I have to pass by these bathrooms on my way to my office each night.

Then, an added horror came from the realization that the smell was most potent, like the venom of a king cobra, next to the ladies room. Color me old-fashioned but I was still shocked at the mental image of a group of women, cackling like witches, free from their gender bound timidity, freely showering everything in the room with their tinkle makers.

So, ok, there’s that. Now number 2. A more specific inquiry: What in the fuck did you eat? This bathroom is the closest thing I have to going to church, because just about every time I walk in, I scream out Jesus Christ’s name, and, usually follow that with a little prayer.

This is too much. When confronted by this kind of thick haze in the air I wish I had the ability to call some kind of “timeout” for life. That or call the fire department, since some kind of walking shit zombie has obviously just been defeated by burning it to death.

Do we have a CSI in this city? I know Grissom retired but he needs to get down here right now and give us some input. Measure the age of some bugs or something because we have to know what did this, and we have to know now. Honestly, if I walked past a hospital that smelled like this, I would burn it to the ground immediately so the rest of us wouldn’t get infected. Think “And The Band Played On” but all based around someone’s horrible dump.

Number 3: Do you not understand what the things in the bathroom are for? I know it can be confusing but let’s go over a few of them as a refresher. A little, “do’s and dont’s” action so you can be prepared next time.

Ok, toilet paper. Toilet paper is for cleaning your body after you do your restroom business. And by restroom business I mean urinating and defecating. Not describing what kind of universal remote to buy off Ebay to your wife over your cell phone while you’re taking a shit. Toilet paper has nothing to do with online auctions. It has everything to do with making sure that the parts of your body that things come out of are free of the stuff that just came out of them. And, after you use it to clean yourself, you put it in the toilet, per the name of the fucking item. It’s toilet paper; it goes in the toilet. It’s in the family of products referred to as TOILETRIES. So, unless society is ok with the idea of changing the name to the restroom to Toilet Place, and the building to Toilet Box, I don’t really know how to make it any clearer for you.

Next are paper towels. These are for drying your hands after you wash them, which you should always do. They can be used for other things but we’re going to stick to basics right now. Ok? Drying your hands. They are for drying your hands. What they are NOT for is flushing in the toilet. What they are especially NOT for is flushing 33 of them in the toilet at the same time. You see you can make that distinction with the name again. Paper TOWELS. Towels dry things. So, maybe you were trying to dry the toilet bowl, I don’t know. If that was the case, a noble effort, but a little misplaced.

Oh, they are also NOT for making paper machete wasp’s nests with the entire roll from the thing, so that none of us can have any clean ones for when we use the facility correctly. You fucking assholes.

This next item might surprise you. Are you ready for it? Ok, it’s water. Yeah, that’s right, water. Water is a very universally useful material, but, in the bathroom it is really only for one thing, and that is cleaning yourself. Put it on your hands, put it on your face, put it wherever you just got shit all over you from your bizarre pooping rituals. What you do NOT do with it, if flip the holy hell out and fling it all over the goddamn bathroom. I get that you are de-evolving Star Trek: TNG style into some kind of amphibious creature and want to make every surface available to you wet and slippery, but chill out. The urinators have already been here. Everything is already wet and slippery. Ok?

Ok, the last product I want to talk about is the preformed paper seat covers. I call them PPSC’s, or “pipsqueaks”, for short. These are what we in the bathroom community call an “advanced toiletry.” Probably something you haven’t seen in your own home before, but they really are quite extraordinary. See, what they do, is they keep your bare ass from making direct contact with the “used junky’s needle” like surface that is the toilet seat. They are quick, easy to use, and degrade in water much like toilet paper, so there’s no clean up. They even go down when you flush.

But, what they are NOT for, ok, is pulling out five in a row and tearing them different ways because you can’t figure out that your shit is supposed to go through the GIANT HOLE in them, only to give up, defeated, leaving the tattered remains on the floor like you’ve just torn up an old treasure map. Or you left your huge rolling papers lying around. Or you just “Wolverined” your way through an entire fresh deli sandwich.

Or course, going back to number 2 on this list (wait for that to hit), these covers aren’t going to really serve a purpose if you feel that you’re about to completely disintegrate from the waste down. So, if that’s the case just leave them tidy in their box for the rest of us please.

Well, I thought I might add some more, but, we’ve covered a lot of ground here for a first time, so, let me just let that soak in. Maybe give you an opportunity to send me some follow up questions if you are confused about any thing.

I’ll just leave you with some quick parting tips for bathroom etiquette. A little crib sheet you can feel free to print out and carry with you the next time you decide to rape the closest bathroom to my office.

1: I kind of covered this, but, don’t talk on the phone in the bathroom.
2: If you do talk on the phone, don’t fart, and then laugh, and say “yeah, I just farted.” It makes me cry.
3: If you’re on the toilet and you hear someone burst into the bathroom, screech to a stop, and then politely wash their hands for three seconds then leave, that’s probably an indicator that you’ve broken one of the cardinal rules of bathroom etiquette. And also that person has just willingly fled the scene of a murder suicide. (Come on, like you’ve never walked into a bathroom about to pee on yourself and decided to use the old “I’m washing my hands” routine to cover the sound of you fleeing at top speed.)
4: Don’t eat things that kill your internal organs and then violently expel them out of you with the force of a tsunami.
5: Stop. Pissing. On. EVERYTHING!

Alright, that’s as much as I can say for now. Happy shitting, you disgusting dogmen.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
As Wichita Falls, So Falls Wichita Falls

A Letter to the Nation Concerning Belonging

2009-03-31T08:57:00.000-05:00

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this will be my third letter having to do with my unemployment. What can I say? It’s on my mind. If it’s any consolation, I’m trying to keep it varied within the subject.

Dear America,

It’s been a while since I’ve considered myself to be a patriotic American. We’ll ignore, for the time being, the reasons for this that include my heritage. Let’s just say that as bloodlines go, I’ve got enough in me to be pissed that this country both marched my people off their land into Oklahoma, and, declared its independence from the empire. Add to that being raised in Louisiana, a state so rich with customs and traditions wholly separate from any other passed down and celebrated in the other 49 states, it still wouldn’t be that weird if we seceded. I tried to include those things in more detail into an early draft, and it just took over the letter.

So, I’m just going to focus on the political reasons I don’t considered myself patriotic.

For the last, oh I don’t know, eight years, I’ve tried to shy away from attaching blind allegiance to any group that has the possibility of labeling me with descriptors that I don’t think apply to me. Descriptors like hate or greed or ignorance. I’ve tried to itemize my politics as much as possible so if and when someone asks me if I’m pro or anti-American, I can throw a list of yay or nays back at them without ever actually answering the initial question. Douse their accusatory flame, if you will.

I was comfortable with that responsibility. The responsibility of educating myself on the important issues and how my views differ from the decisions of my government. It was the only logical course of action to take in anticipation of having to defend myself against a generalizing international community. I needed arrows so I became a fletcher.

So, I separated myself, mentally, from the club house of the Americas and instead decided that I was a “citizen of the world” who happened to have a blue passport and paid taxed to the United States. Technicalities that I couldn’t overcome due to certain legal obligations outside of my control.

And then something happened. I got fired. Not exactly an Earth shattering shock to anyone familiar with my previous place of employment and my disdain for everything that they encompassed, but, still something bad at the worst possible time for something bad to happen. Anyway, I was laid off, but that’s not what got me thinking about America. It’s what happened after I got laid off: absolutely nothing.

I still haven’t found a job. I look every day. I apply every day. I seek out a new role in my community every day, and still, I am unemployed. I am unemployed.

Well, I don’t need to explain what an American thing that is becoming. And I think it’s me being unemployed that has gotten me thinking about America again. I think it’s what’s gotten me feeling better about being an American again.

I don’t mean to make a ridiculous statement like Americans are the first ever to be unemployed, or that we’re the first ever to have a large number of our citizens be unemployed. What I mean is that this is the first time our, my, your generation of Americans has experienced a drop in our worth as a nation to this extent.

The unemployed American population is a group that has collectively, and metaphorically, been kicked in the balls and is now rolling around on the ground waiting for the stars in their vision to go away. And it’s a group I am now a part of.

The President, our President, whom I voted for, has a way with words. He has a calming and informed manner of speaking that before, for me, always felt relevant, but now feels critical. He’s the man that is going to make the decisions that determine maybe not how easy it is to get my next job, but how easy it will be to get a better one after that. The real one. He’s the one that is going to be the face of the push to help me run again after I’ve pulled myself back onto my feet.

So, how does that translate into me suddenly feeling that unmistakable, and previously avoided, feeling of pride swell ever so slightly in my chest?

Well, I’ll tell you.

The reason I chose to think of myself as a citizen of the world, as I stated before, was one of protection. I was protecting myself from the association with our nation and its attitudes and policies. Because they were not my attitudes and policies. They weren’t a lot of people’s. The government in the recent years has been the obnoxious drunken uncle at the wedding, toasting these “done up sumbitches” on this, their special day. And I, we, are the red faced nephews slouching in our chairs wishing we could will ourselves invisible.

But unemployment is different. The economy is different. It’s not a brown bearded foe we can attempt to bomb back into the stone age or a tiny slant-eye we can tariff into poverty. It’s not something we can drill into at the cost of our Mother Gaia or a phone conversation we can subpoena at the cost of our humanity. It’s a situation where the problem makes us suffer and the solution allows us to use our minds creatively, instead of our government creatively coming up with ways to make us suffer due to a problem situation.

It’s a problem America is going to have to think her way through. Oh, I get chills just typing it. A puzzle to solve. Imagine that. We are the midnight IT man whose computer has gotten a virus. We are the mechanic whose truck has broken down. We are the Iron Chef whose secret ingredient is chocolate.

We are all in an amazing position to finally kick ass in the most internationally accepted way possible. We get to figure our way out of a problem that we are supposed to be the experts on.

You know who figures their way out of problems? Macguyver does. You know the one thing that MacGuyver never felt like to me? An insufferable fucktard.

Lame? Maybe. Hokey? Sure. Cheesy? Absolutely. Complete, foaming at the mouth, guns-blazing, beer guzzling ass hat? No, never.

And that’s why I’m feeling this little bit of pride. We might actually solve a problem here, ladies and gentlemen. And we actually might do it without coming off like complete ass hats. Two firsts at once after almost a decade of neither. It’s like there’s electricity in the air.

And for right now, ring side to the big event, for as long as I can afford it, an unemployed American is something I’ll wear as proud as I used to wear the American Flag on my Boy Scout uniform, before I started making a list of yays and nays, and before I decided that America was something to be denounced as quickly as possible, before I could be counted among them.

I am a cynic, and I am a realist, and I always plan for rain on a sunny day. But for right now, now in this time when the statistics on CNN directly include me and my family and my friends, let me hang on to this small glimmer of hope and pride for the government that is in charge of the land I have come to love and belong to. Let my pride in becoming one of the millions of Americans that are being threatened by a national problem make sense. Let me hold on to the hope that being born an American citizen when I was just means that I had an opportunity to be onboard at the ground floor for this nation’s next rise to greatness through intelligent and peaceful socioeconomic success.

Let me quietly consider having an American flag hanging off of my home for the first time in 12 years, if only because I’m going through the worst low I’ve ever gone through, professionally, in my young adult life. Because it feels like the most appropriate time to feel good about your country is when it’s in the toilet.

Thanks for indulging the soapbox,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Canada's still up there, don't fuck this up

A Letter to Gamers Concerning Gaming

2009-03-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

Dear fellow gamers,

Since I lost my job nearly a month ago, I’ve noticed a few changes in my life. Specifically, what I’ve chosen to do with all the new free time during the day, alone. Had you asked me a week before I was laid off what I would do with my day if it was all up to me, I probably would have said, sleep, watch TV, and play videogames. And for a little while that was the case. Along with the chores I had set out for myself, there were pockets of the day devoted to laziness and gaming in that order. But that changed.

The longer I went without work, the less and less I even thought about playing something. The last few days I have only turned my XBOX on to watch movies from my laptop on the TV and talk to my friends. I just don’t want it anymore. The very idea of playing a game, a modern game actually, just kind of makes me wrinkle my nose.

Maybe it’s a phase, maybe it will pass, but there is a big part of me that hopes it won’t. A part of me that is whispering in the back of my head, “Finally, now we can really get something done.”

I wrote an article for Gamers With Jobs a little while back called “A Fundamentals Flaw.” In it I played devil’s advocate a little bit and compared gaming to alcoholism and substance abuse. Trying to point out that the line between those categories is so thin it’s practically transparent. Now, as my day is laid before me and I am the one who chooses the agenda, I think of gaming, and I can’t help coming back to the comparison.

I’m not sure exactly when I started using gaming as distraction and escape from reality. Maybe from the very start. But, that is what I’ve been using it for. Yes, it’s fun. Yes, it’s challenging. Yes, it’s satisfying. But so are a thousand other things I could be doing. A thousand other things that wouldn’t allow me to so easily and totally forget where the hell I am or what the hell I have to go through on a daily basis.

I was literally living a lie. Purposely, with full understanding, and for pure pleasure. Letting myself become so immersed and hoping that when my brain records the experience it would forget the HUD and the controller and the subtitles and it would be a real life memory. I wanted the experiences from the box to be real for me, so I just kept pushing in deeper and deeper hoping to wedge myself into the rabbit hole permanently.

The first sign that I might be coming out of a decade’s long haze was the guilt. The horrendous nagging in the back of my throat when I’d look at the box plugged into my TV and think, “I really should be gaming.” It’s not the first time I’ve had thoughts like that, but, it was the first time I’d ever had a repulsive reaction to them. I SHOULD be gaming? No, no I shouldn’t. I SHOULD be doing something I want to do. If that’s gaming, so be it, but right now it’s not. And I shouldn’t make myself feel guilty about that.

It’s stupid. It makes me feel like a stupid person, and that directly flies in the face of all the things I do on a daily basis specifically done to trick myself into thinking I’m NOT a stupid person.

This idea that I was somehow falling down on the job infuriated me like it never had before, and it forced and ultimatum into my brain. I can either have one real life that I live, or, hundreds of fake ones that I play. Dramatic, yes, but I’m a dramatic person, and that’s the way it has to be.

I’m not completely oblivious to the correlation between my lack of gaming going along with my new lack of a hell hole job, but, if I don’t feel like playing because I don’t have to go back to that place again, that just seems all the more damning for gaming as a past time. Forgive the replacement, but, if I had just written a letter about how I had finally quit drinking after losing my shitty job you’d be congratulating me.

“That’s fantastic! I’m so happy for you! Your wife must be thrilled! Keep it up!” Hoping the entire time that a new job won’t see the relapse of my dirty old habit. And I’m right there with you.

Of course, I can only speak for myself on this one. People are different, so they can handle things in different ways, but, speaking for myself, I have had other vices. One I can control and another I’ve had to quit. And as far as the results of quitting go, gaming has had almost an identical result as when I cut down on drinking and quit smoking. I feel better, there’s less strain on relationships, more time for my own projects. Life just gets a little easier.

There is one big difference between those vices and gaming, though, and I think it’s very important to point out, because it could be the distinction that disqualifies games from this entire argument. I quit smoking, but I didn’t quit gaming. It just became unappealing to me. Suddenly and for perfectly reasonable reasons. Anyone reading this who has ever quit cigarettes knows that the act of becoming a non-smoker is anything BUT sudden and perfectly reasonable. They would also know that there isn’t ONE day you quit smoking. You quit smoking every day of your life after the first day you succeed. Each sunrise is a new opportunity and refusal. It gets routine after a while, but, it’s still there. Always. Tugging at your shirt tale.

The lack of gaming hasn’t been anything like that. I just had a change of heart. I don’t want to do it anymore. It just seems silly to me lately. Like someone handing me a hula hoop and thinking I will be perfectly entertained for hours with this device.

Another difference is that I haven’t had to find something to take the place of gaming. I chew gum like a spokesman for Wrigley’s when I want a cigarette. But when the gaming stopped my other interests rushed in like the Red Sea collapsing around Yul Brynner.

I’m watching TV shows that I’ve wanted to catch up on or start. I’m watching movies from 2007 and 8 that I missed. I’m reading again, like actual books, with paper and everything. And I’m writing all the time.

I made this goal for myself a couple years back that I was to try and write at least 500 words a day of anything I felt like jotting down. Absolutely anything. 500 words. Less than half a page most of the time. And it was lucky if I hit that in a week sometimes. I would have bursts of inspiration and take down a big chunk of something. But my graph of work was one of great peaks and valleys.

Lately, it’s been an ever rising plateau of carpel tunnel inducing compulsion. Multiple projects at once, writing for no person or entity in particular, entertaining the slightest brainstorm with at least a full page of notes. I’m writing like I did back in middle school only now it’s a little less kindling and a little more passable as human speech.

But, of course, I’ve had these kinds of epiphanies before, about lots of different things. And in the end I just end up doing whatever feels right. A feeling that WILL change constantly through my lifetime. So hopefully in a week or a month when I have a new job and a new set of ridiculous responsibilities, I won’t have a new set of games to play. But I probably will. Actually I fully expect to be right back into it by the time I put this letter out on the internet.

I understand that right now I’m in a transitory period, and that state of being usually creates new perceptions of life. I also know that “new” perceptions aren’t the same thing as “correct” perceptions.

I guess I just want this on record for the period of time I still feel like this. To state that since I’ve stopped playing videogames, the feeling that I’m wasting my potentially short life isn’t gone, but it’s substantially lessened. I want you all to know, especially myself when I read this in the future, that while I don’t demand that you throw out your games and start laying out venison on the highway while wearing leather clothes, I do implore that you examine how they fit into your life. They are fun, and sometimes they take away the pain, but so does Oxycodone. And you wouldn’t make time each night for that, would you?

Just food for thought intended for a group of people that pride themselves on their obsession with removing themselves from reality, posed to them by a card carrying member of their group. It’s not enough for me anymore to just like something. I need to know WHY I like it, and if I don’t know those reasons, or don’t like those reasons, then change should be a priority. Whether it will be, whether I even still want it to be now that I’ve written all these words down, hell I don’t even know.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Can’t ever remember if it’s better to be on a wagon or off of it.

A Letter to My Former Employer Concerning My Unemployment

2009-02-20T09:27:00.000-06:00

This one probably won't come across too funny or very angry. But, it hopefully won't come across too serious either. I just wanted to talk through some stuff and get it out there where I could see it. More of a casual, introspective observation that I wanted to share.

It surprised me to no end that I wrote this letter, concerning this subject, to this person, and wasn't igniting with pure rage the entire time. Maybe I'm starting to deal with things a little better. Or maybe I've already killed three people and buried them in my sleep.

Dear former boss,

I have to admit that hearing the words “we have to let you go” come out of your mouth almost sounded comical at first. They were so confident and decisive. It sounded like you were concisely expressing a decision you had made, you know like a big boy, so obviously, I was skeptical. But then I remembered that it was the day before Valentine’s Day, and knowing you and the depths of your compassion, that’s what really drove it home for me that you were serious. So I set my bag down in my chair and had a two minute conversation with you which consisted of me truthfully telling you that I absolutely hated working here anyway. You asked me if I would like to bow out gracefully and “resign” and I reminded you that prideful “resigned” employees don’t collect unemployment. You flustered a little, I picked up my bag, and I left.

Chiggie Von Richthofen. Hired 2005. Fired 2009. He leaves behind two bowls and a coffee cup.

Shit! My coffee cup! That’s on the to-do list to get back. I love that cup. Completely forgot about that damn thing.

I’ll just briefly skim over what happened next. My wife’s tearful face, my mother-in-law’s vengeful attitude towards you, my own mother’s reassuring shrug (not a jab at her, I actually to like it when she shrugs off problems; it gives perspective). I’ll also leave out the bit where I spent most of that afternoon cleaning my kitchen and dancing with myself to Harry Belafonte in a subconscious attempt to recreate multiple scenes from the movie Beetlejuice .

Rock your body, child.

But the giddiness wore off and the reality and responsibility set in. And so began the searching and the waiting.

Something else as well. Something unexpected. Suddenly being put into a situation where I have to make decisions about how I will make a living really reveals just how NOT an option my current outlets of artistic expression are for that role. If I were to choose how to spend an eight hour day, it would be creative philosophical and entertainment works. Expression, hands down. Winnah and still Champeen. But, as an employment option expression ranks right above “hobo who can’t afford pen and paper.”

So I have to go into the job placement agency and tell them all about how I can use Excel, and how I can answer a telephone, and in a desperate attempt to mix it up, I then tell them I don’t mind doing physical labor. I mean, I can take boxes off of shelves, I can put boxes ONTO shelves. I’ve really got it all. But, of course, this almost guarantees that I’ll get a job just like my last one, which was pretty much like the one before it, because that’s what the skill sets on my resume fit.

And I know there will be some that roll out the “follow your dream speech” which at this point, in this economy, is like telling a seven year old that they can fly if they jump off the roof. And they want it enough. You gotta WANT IT kid! Do you WANT it? You want it?! Then go, kid, go! Fly! Fly boy!

Woops. Aw.

He didn’t want it.

It’s not that I don’t think that writing is a valid vocation. I’d love to create for a living. But, the fact is that right now it’s not a stable enough option to fully commit to. Our situation requires guaranteed stability, and right now I just don’t think I’m consistent enough, or proficient enough, or comfortable enough to make it work. Frankly, I’m just not good enough at this, all of this, to succeed at it. And I have to face the reality that I may never be good enough. The only thing losing one job only to immediately start looking for that same job does is shine a great big spotlight on how NOT ready I am to do what I really want to do with my life. And for making me realize that, I won’t lie, I do hate you.

But it hasn’t been all bad. I do have a little bit of severance so I have let myself relax a little while I spend the majority of my days at home. Of course, I don’t want to feel like a complete waste of space after I drop my still employed wife off at her work every day so I have found a new passion for house chores.

That’s not a joke. I’m just as surprised as anyone. I really, genuinely love being a housewife. It’s amazing. The laundry, the dishes, the vacuuming, the sweeping, the cooking, the shopping. My world has been transformed into a giant Zen garden for me to rake all day. The chores have given me an everyday routine that has real palpable, positive results. I love putting on some music and getting my arms in some soapy water or filling empty hangars with clean folded clothes. Getting fired has turned my house into my own personal Andy Durfresne library.

Huh, you know after the last four years feeling like I’ve been swimming down a pipe full of shit, it’s not until I get canned that I make a Shawshank reference. Weird.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that this week, again, the first week of my unemployment (allow me to add an aside that this is the first time in my entire life I’ve ever BEEN unemployed since I was 17), I’ve noticed that this week has felt longer than any week I can remember in my recent years. And not in a “when will this week ever end, Lord??” kind of way. It just seems that when the day is filled with a combination of importance and genuine interest, I’m not as apt to consciously break down my own sense of time. There’s no zoning out or clock games or activities solely based around distraction. No plea that daylight has come and how, because of that daylight, me “wan” go home. There’s just the normal passage of time and what I feel like using it for. A true internal clock that I’m sure will be immediately destroyed my first day of whatever new job I’ll get.

It makes me sad. A week devoid of purposely wasting my time is something I’m really going to miss.

So, as you can see, first week past me and there have been ups and downs. I’ve had about as much depression as I’ve had elation, but, so far I’m staying positive. Mostly because I can’t imagine a reason not to.

Yeah, I’ll probably end up at another desk with another phone and another set of problems, but, that’s life. Big dreams aren’t enough to risk my wife’s future, and I’m ok with being the kind of person that would make that decision.

And as far as the writing career, I’ll just have to stick to plan B. Write into my will that I am to be buried in the deepest and most remote place I can find with a selection of my notes and manuscripts hermetically sealed in with me. That way, after the “Great Human War” results in the destruction of all art and literature, future archeologists will find me and my collection intact sparking another renaissance. They will call it a “Chiggiesance.” Or, no, that’s weird. Maybe a “Von Richthenstance.”

Or maybe future scribes will be able to name their own age of reason without making it sound like a dessert at the Waffle House.

Of course now that I’ve written that into the letter that pretty much disqualifies this letter from being part of the collection. I can’t let the future know I planned this. It will make me look like a douche.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
I drink gin, Monkey drink gin too

A Letter to Tostitos Concerning Condiments

2009-01-27T09:57:00.000-06:00

Dear Frito-Lay North America, Inc.,

Recently I’ve been trying to watch what I eat. Not so much sugar, not so much salt, not so much red meat, not so much bread and pasta. You know how that goes. And as a result of this change I’ve been looking for ways to keep my diet from becoming boring. That’s where you come in.

Salsa has fast become a favorite of mine and your chips are the tiny makeshift rafts that bring that zesty Latin flavor to my unprotected borders. Your chips are a good thickness, a good taste. Nothing about them has been done to excess because you know that they are at best an edible delivery service. And for that I thank you.

So, being that I'm so delighted with your chips I decided to take a cue from the front of the chip bag and try out some of your salsa too. The “All Natural Tostitos Chunky Salsa” to be exact. Medium. And, I’ve got to say that, where I enjoy the light, flakey, and salty taste of your delicious tortilla chips, I’m not so sold on your prescribed salsa counterpart.

Mostly because it tastes like crap.

Now before you say anything, let me expand a little on the subject. Tell you why I think your salsa might underperform against the local flavor. Or dirt.

There’s a local Mexican diner just 2 or 3 miles down the road from me that makes a pretty great salsa. Now, I’ll admit it can be a little runny at times, but the flavor is always intact. I think this might be because they use a base consisting of tomatoes and peppers and maybe a little jalapeño. They buy fresh vegetables, maybe a lemon or a lime, and take all that back to the restaurant. Then they cook these ingredients together according to a recipe, in a pot, probably on a low heat to let that flavor soak in. After that I imagine they refrigerate it so it can be as fresh as possible for their customers.

Now, I’m guessing that you’ve already picked up on some slight differences between that scenario and the way that you’re probably used to making salsa. Because when I taste yours I’m thinking that it’s less the market and kitchen and fridge kinds of steps, and more that you captured one of the last remaining goblins from folklore, tied him upside down, cut his throat, and then caught all of his putrid, rotting blood in an ancient and evil black cauldron, and then stoked the fires of Hell under that cursed pot to boil his life force away. Then more than likely just decided to throw the goblin’s corpse in there for thickness.

Maybe the Fires of Hell aren’t involved, I don’t know, I’m not an expert. But I’m not sure what else would give you that, “baby shit and dead grandmothers” flavor you seem to be going for. A flavor, I am sorry to tell you, is not as popular as your research team had led you to believe.

Regular people tend to like spice and texture, but not so much spices that taste shitty and have the texture of shit. I think getting away from shit and shit based cooking, and moving towards actual food, would be a good first step on the road to not poisoning people.

Because that’s kind of what it feels like you’re doing. You’re delicious chips proudly told me to go purchase this salsa because they would be “perfect” together. So either your chips are a bunch of goddamn liars, or they were purposely misinformed by you to trick me into buying an inferior and possibly dangerous product.

I mean, god knows what’s in this crap. Strychnine and batwings as far as the fucking taste test goes, right? It's kind of hard to pin down. So many things come to mind when I consume your salsa: dirty dish water, the inside of a small animal, starving children in India and how they wouldn’t eat this.

How can you fuck salsa up? I bet I could take random cans of things from my cupboard without looking at them, some pepper and taco seasoning, and make something that would get closer to salsa than this. Actually, when I think about YOUR shit, I bet I could take random cans and bottles from under the sinks in my house and get something closer to salsa than this.

And it’s not just compared to the local illegals. You are the worst of the STORE BOUGHT salsas. You came in last at the Special Olympics. What gives?

The chips are good, your queso isn’t horrible, what happened with the salsa? It almost feels intentional. I look at the bag now and see that suggestion of perfect companionship between chip and dip and it seems like a big “fuck you” printed right there in yellow, red, and green.

I’ll forgive the subterfuge for the chips’ sake. No sense in having to go through some kind of baked tortilla layoff just because some corporate fat cat wants to put a pretty label on a mason jar full of things he found around the office and sell it as dip. It's really more my fault from listening to an ad on a label. It never works out how you hoped it would.

Well, that's the last time I let a bag of food tell ME what to do, I’ll tell you that much.

Ok, that was a lie.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Hates your goddamned salsa.
Really? Yeah, really.

A Letter to my Neighbor Concerning his Hobby

2009-01-12T08:42:00.001-06:00

So I was trying to think of another meaningful letter to write. Something that really dug down at the core of what I wanted to express to the world. Or maybe to dig out some lost part of myself to revive into my personality.

Then my neighbor started some shit up and all that went out the window.

Happy New Year everybody!

Dear fucking Spike TV reject that lives next door,

Why, oh God, why must I live next to these fucking people? People who think working on their cars means revving the engine over and over and over again after the sun has gone down. People who are spending all their time "fixing up" real classics like a four cylinder 1987 Mustang hatchback or 199-generic year model Camaro. You know those Camaros right? The ones that look like someone started to design a new sports car, made a Corvette on accident, and then decided to change it just enough not to get sued?

Well, you got my attention, asshole. Let’s have a little walk outside and see why this teenager’s parents haven’t gotten annoyed by all the racket.

Oh, I see! It’s because you’re a forty year old man! Yeah, you got that cool shaved head but that grey goatee really kind of blows your cover. But at least now I see the reason for the car. What with that pot belly, Harley Davidson t-shirt, and looping Rush mix tape not getting you quite as much ass as you’d hoped for. Well good thing all these ladies are around to watch you get your "man on" by fixing your car up.

Oh yeah. That’s right. They’re not!

It’s just you, fucktard. You’re the only one in your back yard! So, why do you keep revving that goddamn engine over and over and over again? I’ll tell you why, it’s because you’re a moron. You’re a fucking moron. I’ve helped people fix cars. Big word there, fixed. And all we had to do was turn it on, rev it up slowly, and see if something gave out.

We didn’t push the pedal to the beat of “Highway to Hell” at 10 o clock at night. “Highway to Hell”, by the way, being the most overplayed and overrated AC/DC song EVER heard on a classic rock station! Get a fucking stereo with a CD player in it and play "Satellite Blues" before I jump over the fence, grab your ridiculous chin hair, and use it to pull your face into the cooling fan.

I mean, honestly. Do you have nothing else you could amuse yourself with?

You do? Oh, so, you will actually do something else that you wouldn’t mind doing while some of us are trying to lead lives that don’t make loud buzzing noises in other people’s houses? Well, ok, cool. I wasn’t expecting that. Thank you.

So, what is it exactly you’ll be—a four wheeler? A four wheeler.

A.

Four wheeler.

I’m going to murder you. I’m going to murder you so the stupid doesn’t decide to cast you off as a dead shell one day and possess my house like some Special Olympics version of Poltergeist.

Old Redneck skeletons trying to get their GED for that fry cook position, all floating up through the ground when we try to put our new pool in.

Fucking oak tree crashing through the window because his haunted ass is too drunk to stay up after a night of beating his saplings in his big mud doublewide.

I won’t have it. I have to kill you.

I’m going to string a steel cable across the road to clothesline you in half. I’m even going to hang bacon off of it, so, even in the event that you see it in time to stop; you will have already smelled the grease and won’t be able to keep yourself from driving towards it at full speed.

Just to be safe I'll probably also have to poison the ham. By the looks of you, you've probably taken a few beatings in your life. Wouldn't want the cable to fail and not have a back up.

Or you could just save me the trouble by turning off that ball of chipped paint you have in that adorable tin lean to you made back there, and go watch TV. Wait until the Sun, and your neighbors, are up before you start back into your failed American Chopper audition tape.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
MRRRR MRRRR MRRRR!!!! That's what you sound like, you piece of shit! I will set your babies on fire!

A Letter to Fear and Ego Concerning My Once and Future Death

2008-11-21T10:55:00.000-06:00

Dear taskmasters,

Sometimes, more often lately, I think I'm supposed to have already died by now. I get this feeling that maybe I survived a car wreck in my past or avoided some tainted food when I shouldn't have. And now, fate not having planned me being around this long, I'm just wandering. Like legs fallen off a centipede; still twitching out of habit but no longer with any greater purpose.

Of course, then I realize I don't really believe in fate, so the feeling of aimlessness becomes something that needs to be quantified another way. Rationalization is always a good treatment for inner turmoil. And what is the feeling that you shouldn’t be alive, if not inner turmoil?

One explanation for the feeling could be the wait. I hate to wait on inevitable events. I'd rather just get something over with. This death business looms over every action of ever death like a cosmic midterm I forgot to study for. Maybe if I convince myself that I should already be dead, that would mean I'm not waiting anymore. The big moment came and went and forgot to pick me up. At that point death would be a simple technicality.

But, that doesn't make any sense does it? You can't have the even be the technicality. You can't assume death missed you, because then you're just waiting all over again. The clever metaphor hasn't changed anything. No, I think the feeling originated from a much simpler and selfish source.

I don't want to feel cheated.

You're watching the news one night and you see that some where an eight year old boy has been killed in a car accident or from some maniac psycho. The immediate reaction is usually some small degree of sorrow, presumably for the loss of someone so young, because youth is such a precious thing. But, really we're not sad because he was young. We're sad because his youth means that he never got to do anything. He never got to experience or express or contribute. His life, although precious and unique, from a logistical stand point was pointless. When thinking about what that life added to the world, a child dying at eight years old is almost the same as a child dying at one day old.

And there it is. There's the feeling.

If I died today, I'd be no farther in my life as a contributor then someone born tomorrow. I'm essentially a giant infant that likes to drink Merlot and scribble in his journal. And, not wanting to be an infant, I decided to look for something to accomplish. Something meaningful on legitimate scale, but, attainable as quickly as possible so I can get it in before some unexpected accident ends my expression before it's even really begun. And, barring that accident, I also wanted to work on something that I could enjoy the benefits of after its completion. Something that could afford me some attention before I die. Something that I could look back on for a brief moment, if I'm allowed one after a fatal event, and feel like I made it in on deadline.

It's a train of thought I explore often; the idea of significance before death. It monopolizes so much of my inner thoughts at times I become afraid that my entire life up to this point has been driven solely by a mixture of fear and ego. Then I try to assure myself I'm much to amazing for that to be the case.

So, if the pressing issue in my mind is to achieve before death, maybe thinking I should already be dead is a way to bypass the accomplishment. I don't trust the existence of some invisible Shangri-La to supply me with happiness after a life of hard work. I know I have to attain the happiness myself. If I'm supposed to achieve something before I die to be able to enjoy my life, and then convince myself I should have already died, it's like I've found a loop hole that allows me to relax. I can skip the contribution and go right to the good life, right? I can just wake up and go to work and let myself be soaked up into the millions of kilowatt hours powering the nation's entertainment demagogue and become euthanized in blissful peace, right?

Apparently not.

Until I've made some sort of meaningful, lasting contribution, in my own eyes, it feels any play time I manage to snatch from the day has been acquired illegitimately. It feels like I've defrauded those fleeting moments of happiness from the time in my life that I should be creating. The original idea that since I've already passed my end point and can now just relax has actually caused and anxiety to erupt out of my mind that reminds me that if I'm already supposed to be dead, then, I'm on borrowed time every minute of every day, and have a responsibility to use that time to create the things I didn't get a chance to in my real life.

On top of that is the fact that accomplishment isn't guaranteed to anybody. So that must mean that happiness isn't guaranteed to anybody. It means that we all just have to keep climbing in the fog without any promise that we will crest the peek and get to ride our red Radio Flyer down the other side.

Of course, this is just what it means to me. I can't tell you if life for others is filled with days of foggy climbing and nights full of dreams of red wagons. I just know that when I sit down to write it's not out of love. I don't think it is anyway. I think it's out of a mixture of fear and ego, because that might be the only thing that can motivate me anymore. Maybe it was the only thing that ever did.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Cheerful to a fault

A Letter to Mariam Concerning My Accident

2008-10-31T08:33:00.000-05:00

Second, this letter was written about a year ago before I even started the Letters to the Internet, but I updated it and fleshed it out a little the other day. It's totally made up, for entertainment purposes only. I figured a spooky letter for Halloween would be a good a thing as any to take a break on.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I still can't believe any of these ever get read.

Dear Mariam,

How are you? You and Max? Doing well, I hope. Is he still getting you where you need to go? For the training you both went through I hope he can at least get you to the market and back in one piece.

I miss you both so much. Yes, even Max. Even fleabag Max. Out here any familiar face would be welcome. Even a long furry one. Hospitals always have so many people, but it never really helps the loneliness. But, you didn't know I was in a hospital. I'm rambling. Let me back up.

I saw Robert last night. Again. Out on highway 83 this time. My meeting ended early so I decided to get a head start on the next leg of my trip. 10 PM, middle of nowhere, looking just like the day he left. Just like last time.

I hit him, Mariam. I was going at least 87. That's always where I set the cruise. Odd number, huh, 87? Might as well be going 90 but those 3 less miles per hour just make me feel safer. I mean, the cops have never appreciated the difference. I guess people put so much stock in multiples of five and ten that anything in between just doesn't seem real. 87 might as well by the speed of blue or hot dogs.

So, anyway, I hit him.

Dear God, honey, the man came apart like 150 pounds of loose hamburger meat. He split apart in the middle at his waste. The lower half was still exploding when it was pulled under and masticated by the under carriage of the Buick. The top half came flying over the hood and his face flattened against the windshield. Like a goddamned cartoon. His arms were spread wide and flailing in the wind. Like when he was a kid and would pretend he was an airplane.

I tried to keep going, baby. I didn't even slow down. I shifted in my seat to look over what was left of his shoulder and just kept going down the highway. I thought I could make it. To a town, a gas station, a house, anything. I swerved a little to throw him off, but he wouldn't budge, so I decided to floor it.

Then he started talking. Jesus, Mariam, why did he have to talk? He never used to talk. Not with you.

At first I didn't notice. Then, the windshield splashed red. I looked at his face and it was blood, pouring out of his mouth and nose. The impact had busted out some of his teeth and the gaps had become valleys for rivers of blood to rush through. It flowed out in a thick stream and then sprayed spatter across the glass as the air burst out of him to speak. Or, actually, to scream. It was mostly screaming. My name, your name, your sister in law. What was her name? Sheena?

I couldn't take it, hon. The sight I can take. I mean, I don't LIKE to see Robert all torn to pieces like that but I can take it. And, I'm not saying I'm a stronger or a better person than you because you COULDN'T take it. I'm just saying he's not, or you know, wasn't, my brother. Not blood brother. So, I can take it. But, the screaming. That fucking screaming. It was like a mother screaming while watching her baby burn to death. Part anger, part pain, mostly pure hell.

I slammed on the brakes and, I guess, fish tailed into a ditch. A state trooper happened to be a few miles up the road so he found me before I bled to death. I didn't tell him about Robert, who was gone by the time the patrol car pulled up. And I didn't tell the doctors about you.

I'd already ruptured my right ear drum when they pulled me out of the crushed Buick. The doctors here say the hearing loss for that on is permanent, but without much sympathy. I imagine it must have been a lot like how they found you. Only, I was trying to push a ball point pen into my left ear instead of using a letter opener to take out my eyes in the middle of a crowded daycare.

If I had told them about what happened to you they would have used words like "hallucination" and "toxins" and told us to move to a new apartment and see a shrink. When, what we need is a goddamned priest.

Oh well. For now I still have one ear to hear your sweet voice with.

So, Im about to go to bed. As with the others, I'm not mailing this. Wouldn't be much point in giving you a letter now, anyway. I'm just going to toss it in the trash and let the nurses try and read my hen scratch if they care to try.

I'll call you later to let you know where I am and how work is going. I think I'll leave Robert and my ear out. No sense in upsetting you. Pet fleabag for me. Don't let him lead you to any more liquor stores. I know you haven't gotten used to the brail books or your cane yet, but, a bottle of Johnny Walker isn't going to help any of that. Besides, Robert hates it when you drink. And, if he's decided not to come back for me tonight, my blood chills to think where he'll end up.

For God's sake, Robert. I know you're reading over my shoulder.

It was an accident. It was an accident and we're sorry. You know we're sorry. You aren't scorned or completing unfinished business. This state you're in, this place, it's freed you to be the psychopath you always wished you were. A goddamn monster with all the trimmings. Fuck you, Robert. Fuck you until the hounds find you and drag your crazy ass down to the bowels of Hell.

If I had it all to do over again, I would have shot you instead. I would have shot you in cold blood you mother, fucking, freak.

Sincerely,
C.v.R.

A Letter to My Mother Concerning Parenting

2008-10-28T12:41:00.001-05:00

This is a substantially large sized letter that contains no real outrage, no hippy explanation of the world, and not a lot of humor. It's just a public display of something I feel like talking about. And, will probably be extremely unpopular, to boot, as it deals with my opinions on what a lot of people do wrong.

It's also an attempt to write a letter that actually means something to me, rather than one that is just making fun of something petty, or airing a justified grievance. I know you guys got used to the format of 'funny rant' and I apologize ahead of time for not making with the chuckles. I really, sincerely, am sorry for that.

Maybe I just need to work some of this crap out before I can feel like making jokes again. Maybe I never will and I'm just wasting your time.

Dear Mom,

Parenthood is a funny thing. An oddity to me. A series of exhaustive exercises designed to constantly program and then deprogram another human being in their formative years. Only to then stop abruptly and assume that the constant rebooting has resulted in a perfectly normal human, ready to start and stop his own child's brain after finding an appropriately rebooted mate.

It can't possibly make sense to you, can it? I mean, I know that you tend to adopt the lifestyles and habits of the people around you, and you decided to leave your Christmas decorations up year around even though you don't believe in Christ, and you have this interesting knack for hanging out with exactly the kind of people you shouldn't for that given situation, every single time you go out. But, I also know that underneath the epidermis of your random life there is a woman who is travelled, educated, cynical, and maniacally enraged at the drop of a hat. Because, I'm that way, and I knew you before it was cool to know you.

So, given that we share the same base code, I know that parenting can't possibly make sense to you, and maybe never did.

It's hard to tell, though, because there is an aberration. Your daughter, my sister, is someone who does, and will always, require constant supervision. So, it looks like you are doing the parenting thing full steam. But, supervision isn't the same thing is it? It's not. I supervise hot pockets in the microwave; it doesn't mean I ground them if they don't do their homework. I don't mean to say that you don't provide for my sister, or that you don't try to make her life as comfortable and fun as possible. I just mean there's not really a way to separate the parenting from the care giving in a situation like that. So, for now, let's forget the Autistic variable and focus on your normal kid.

I won't go into details but for a long time now you and I have been on equal footing when it comes to our places in the world. I have always thought that was very fair, but, recognized that it wasn't very common. You haven't told me what to do with the expectation of it actually being done since I was about 11.

You're not a dumb woman, so I think that means you realized at some point, you were a colleague in our relationship; someone to consult on decisions but with no real veto power.

Oh, you got pissed. Let's not pretend it was all head nods and hand shakes. But all that did was teach me how to lie to you just enough to get you to go away so I could continue to do exactly what it was I was doing before you knocked on my locked bedroom door. Just like you used lie to me just enough to get me to stop asking questions.

But as time went we didn't lie to each other so much. What would be the point? We liked hearing the lies but it didn't cover up all the accumulated evidence against our cases did it? So, we became more honest, but less interested.

As more and more time went by where you were pretty much only responsible for stocking food and supplying clothing, and, the longer that went on without me becoming a crack head or a serial rapist, the more you decided that your time card had been punched at the Mom factory and you focused that little left over attention on your work as a teacher (irony is so awesome) and my sister.

And now, this is where we are. You are the mother of a happily married, college dropout, with aspirations of notoriety, and nobody's been in jail or had to move back in with their parents or even fathered an illegitimate child.

So, why the recap? Why the letter dragging all this stuff you already know out into the open?

It's an apology.

It's an apology for putting you through all that guilt you may be feeling for thinking you were a bad mother. For thinking that maybe you didn't pay a lot of attention to me because you went back to school to get a career when I was 8. Or, for not realizing I hadn't been home for 3 days once in high school. Or, because we lived in a house 6 miles away from my nearest friend when I had a Dad that lived most of his life in Singapore, a sister that couldn't have a conversation with me without screaming gibberish, and a Mom that left cold pizza in the fridge for breakfast because she needed to student teach on Saturdays.

It's an apology for bringing that up and thinking that I'm owed something. It's an apology for the sense of entitlement I wear around me like a dark tattered cloak whenever we're around each other. For forgetting that there was just as much attention as neglect.

Remember you used to check me out of school so we could go see the early matinee movies at the theater? We wouldn't have to deal with crowds and you knew I hated that goddamn school anyway. And we used to spend weekends watching old black and white comedies before you went back to school, remember? You taught me about Steppenwolf and Led Zeppelin. You didn't mind it when I would monopolize the house for whatever kind of experiment or building project that had struck me that day. You thought it was awesome that your 9 year old understood and loved the movie Doc Hollywood when it came out.

They fished with dynamite! That's always going to be hilarious!

And for all the pissing and moaning and fighting and awkward silences, I just can't decide what I think would be better if you had been there for me my entire life. I don't know what I think I would have achieved at this point. I get into moods where I think I'm sad that you weren't around, or that I thought you just didn't care about me, but I know that I could really give a crap.

I don't mean for that to sound harsh, but it's the truth. I could give a crap whether you cared or not, and, that seems like the way it should be, you know?

I mean, what do parents teach? They teach babies that there will always be someone there to protect them and to nourish them, but that's a lie. Later they teach that there will always be someone to help with homework and drive them to events and to take them trick or treating. That's a lie too. Then they even go so far as to teach them that someone will always be there to pick them up from a car crash, or bail them out of jail, or pay off their debt. Big lie. Huge.

Every stage of the learning process from "loving" parents is just another set of truths that are later revealed to be total bullsh*t. Is that something you do to someone you supposedly love? Set them up for a big nasty reveal every 6 or 7 years?

You taught me what things were and why they were that way to the best of your understanding and then you let me handle it on my own. You didn't go so far as to kick me out and you also didn't tighten down and set some kind of invisible arbitrary boundaries. At first you tried punishment. No TV, bed at 8, no phone, but it was too late. You'd taught me how to deal with pain and so every time you took something away I just dealt with the loss and moved on to something I could still have. Something that couldn't be taken away.

I wrote stories and painted pictures and (tried) to compose music, and, when the TV got put back, I watched TV. Not all the time. Just when I wanted to. And to keep me company.

You know. Like someone is supposed to.

It must have been frustrating, but, I hope at the same time it was a little comforting. If I had a child I'd like to know that something like a television wasn't so important to his very existence that he couldn't conceive of a life without it.

You taught me that a lot of life's changes are bad ones, because if you're happy, a change almost by definition has to interrupt that happiness. You taught me that if I don't do something, it doesn't get done, and then on top of that, you taught me that if I don't care it doesn't get done, then it didn't matter in the first place.

You taught me a lot, almost exclusively through inaction.

I got rebooted once from infant to child, and then rebooted again from child to adult, and that's it. None of those pussy baby steps that other people go through. You let me stay in a state long enough to evolve it instead of just throwing up a checkered flag and saying, "CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU ARE NOW A TEENAGER! YOU WILL RECEIVE AN OLD CAR, A LATER CURFEW, AND THAT'S NOT ALL. YOU'LL ALSO GET A CREEPY SEX TALK, A MORE RELAXED DRESS CODE, AND, A LAPTOP FOR SCHOOL!!"

You know what I got? Left the hell alone. Thank the Big Cheesy, Jeesy Creesy, for blissful, uninterrupted silence.

I was raised in this wonderful sweet spot between provision and neglect. I got good food and a warm house and presents at Christmas, but wasn't expected to live up to any kind of preset expectation as payment for these items. That is probably why I'm not a crack addict, or a serial rapist.

What can a kid rebel against when his parents don't really give a sh*t about how he spends his time? I tried achieving, but that just got the same cardboard smiles and nods, and was really hard. I also tried drinking, destroying public property, and running from the police. No response, except a warning that any consequence earned by my actions would not be shared by my parents.

So, how did I turn out? Well, I'm travelled, slightly educated, cynical, and maniacally enraged at the drop of a hat. But, I'm not bitter. Anymore.

I never was. I just thought I should have been, so I acted that way to fit in with the way other people act. That was a mistake. My mother raised me better than that.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the holier than though crap I've been giving you the last few years. You know there's more to it than what's in this letter, but the core of my attitude towards you is the subject of the letter so that's what the apology is for. You never interfered with me, so, you just do what you want to do, please be careful, and call me sometime if you want to catch a movie in the middle of the day.

Sincerely,
Your Son,
Stephen

A Letter to Obligators Concerning Obligation

2008-10-20T09:29:00.001-05:00

Dear shit filled, shit-eating, shit heads from shitsville,

Stop.

Fucking.

With.

Me.

You know who you are, and you know what you did. What you do. What you always do to those who try to make their way in this world the way their randomly appointed, mandatory public guardians at their geographically specific, government funded, learning institutions always wanted them to. Mrs. Whats-her-face from 3rd period English would be spinning in her "took her whole pension to pay for it and her grandkids still had to shell out for the flowers" coffin if she saw such efforts by her students rewarded with nothing but spit in their faces.

She would spin because she was naive. Because she believed we were all individuals, capable of making individual decisions and contributing individual achievement to the world. She saw each child's face and thought she was looking into a microcosm of the American people. She saw what she needed to see to do her job. To make her individual contribution to the world.

But that's not how it works. The people that lift the rocks are eventually crushed to death, and the people that dig the holes eventually trip and break their neck after falling 20 feet. What we do to pay the bills eventually punches our ticket. No contribution. No individuality. One day you clock out and you don't clock back in and they erase your employee number off the ledger.

I know this because lately, for years now, I've noticed a pattern. I keep getting fucked over, and, I didn't use to get fucked over. I didn't really use to do anything. I didn't get crushed until I started lifting rocks, you see?

At least, that's what I thought. As it turns out I don't really believe I'm being crushed by the rocks I lift. I think it's a lot more sinister than that. I think all that crushing weight is the mile high stack of the collective fat asses that want to benefit from my lifting.

Asses belonging to guys that say things like "zero sum game" or that their in the "people business." You know who else was in the people business? Pharaohs.

Those giant geometric tombs aren't going to build themselves, right?

And it's not just asses. It's also the stomachs of these lazy bastards. Stomachs filled with the remains of every decent person they chewed into a paste out of pure gluttony, and those people, already crushed and eaten, are rotting away inside the belly of the beast. Only adding stress to my shoulders.

You can see these poor chewed up bastards everywhere you go. Their diners have given them cute little names like "chief sandwich artist" or "dry clean specialist manager" or "head of topping technology", and they've been put in slight positions of authority, maybe to give them some glimmer of hope that one day they could eat someone of their very own. They sit and they push their zombied existence forward in hopes of success, like a dog sitting at the dinner table, thinking it's people, and waiting for the pot roast that everyone else got.

Well, I don't think I'm people.

I mean, if were a dog I wouldn't … it's not that I think I'm a dog it's just that, for the metaphor, I needed a bold-you know what? Fuck you, you know what I mean.

Look, I'm just tired of getting shit on. I show up to work on time, I feign as much interest as I can in what I'm doing. What else do you want from me? What else do you really expect you'll get, would be a better question.

People don't like to work. People like to eat and be warm and watch movies, so they work. In the beginning if people had the option of eating and staying warm and getting some joy from day to day that required absolutely no effort on their part, they'd do that.

They'd all do that.

But not now. Now you, that fat asses with the full stomachs, have gotten everyone so trained to blindly toil away at nothing, that it is socially unacceptable to WANT to loaf. I'm not even talking about loafers. I'm talking people that honestly wish they could just lay around all day and get taken care of like a child.

You've created this delightful grinder of self loathing where I am embarrassed to tell some people about the job I have to earn money, because it's dead end and pointless and makes me miserable. But at the same time, I'm embarrassed to tell other people about my dreams and wishes because those dreams are lazy and self indulgent and beg for attention.

We don't have to be worker bees. We don't have to spend all day gathering all that fucking pollen to bring it back to our shit-hole hive and make all this goddamn honey every miserable bitch of a day.

We can give up our lives in the hive, and join the monkeys in the trees; at least, mentally. Have you ever seen a monkey that didn't have a problem with arbitrary authority? I haven't. But, do you see monkeys totally on board with being given tasks that are fun first and productive as a by product? Fuck yeah, they love that shit.

I've watched a monkey drive a car. He wasn't going to a job interview or racing to a big meeting with his investors, he just thought it was awesome. To him, the fact that he can go from point A to point B is secondary to "awesome." Do you see where I'm going?

This philosophy of the "working man" is all in our heads. There's nothing inherently noble about wasting away at a lever for 40 years. Nobility comes from community creation, and sharing ideas, and working together on the things that we find interesting and fulfilling. I don't find answering the phone fulfilling. I do find blurting out all my opinions to anyone that will listen fulfilling.

Guess which one I can buy food with.

Don't you think that's just a little bit fucked up?

My dad is a working man, and he's miserable. He might not say he's miserable, and he might not even know he's miserable, but the few times I've actually been able to spend time with him it's been obvious. The joy has been sucked out of his body and replaced with some hollow sense of responsibility.

And I can feel the same thing happening to me. I'm being cored out like a Thanksgiving turkey and stuffed back full with a bunch of crap about pulling my weight and being part of a team, like I owe it to somebody to reach for the glass ceiling.

Well fuck the team. Fuck the responsibility and fuck you. I'm doing what I'm contractually obligated to do so I can get money so I can pay bills, and, if you fire me, I'm just going to go somewhere else to do what I'm contractually obligated to do, to get money, to pay bills. If you have a problem with me thinking that everything I work for is useless shit then hire yourself a robot because guess what, I don't care what happens to your product. I don't care what happens to your business reputation. I don't give a damn about you or anyone else up here, and if anyone says they do, they are brainwashed and a moron, and they get what they deserve.

You say you're going to pay me, so I show up and I do stuff you'd like me to do, but I'm not wasting my good feelings on this place. I'm saving them for all those hopes and dreams you've made me too afraid to even voice out loud for fear of retribution from the "workin' folk."

I can't change where I live and I can't change where I work right now, but, that doesn't mean I have to keep changing myself to fit in where I am just because my mentality doesn't mesh with what I'm doing. I'm done with pretending to give a crap.

I don't give a crap, and neither should anybody else if their day to day has no meaning to the whatsoever. It's OK to not care about things you don't care about, everybody.

I only hope that the parts of me that have already been scooped out, haven't been dead too long to put back in.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Wishing he was a free loading mooch, because, who doesn't?

A Letter to The Fog Concerning The Fog

2008-10-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

Dear people I can only guess are still there,

I want you to know that we can all still see, and I being part of we, can also still see. But, I can't still see you. I can't see you because I can't know you because I don't understand you. And since we see to know and knowing is the beginning of understanding, I can't see you.

You are sight unseen and I am seer unsighted and that is something that I cannot stand to stand.

And, that is why I want to give you a gift. You and all the people I have trouble seeing. I wish to make my own world clearer to me by letting those not seen see what I see, and know that trying to know them is like knowing an unknowable.

Like knowing a flame.

You can remember a flame. You can recognize a flame. You can detect a flame. But you can no more know a flame than you can know the past or a god. Just as it is with them whose actions make them detectable in my life and nothing more. And, it is the unknown to what I wish to give the gift of my clarity.

But, how do you give a gift to something that you're not even sure is there? You can't. Giving is from one to another and since I am just one I have to leave, instead of give.

I will take my clarity, a piece of it that I can spare, and I will leave it hear for you. When you find it, I hope you know what to do with it, for as I cannot see you, I have no instructions with how to use it. But here I will leave it; the boundaries of my own sight. The things I cannot see. I hope in these boundaries you can find yourself, and know why you are obscured.

*

I cannot see the blind hatred of innocent sadness.

I think I might have started to glimpse it one day, briefly in a lit hall. A traveler faced a piece of a journey that few find welcome. A bend in the road that lead back up a hill. A bend that would make anyone question the path, regardless of the age of the asker.

I saw the traveler clearly, and I saw his question, and then I saw anger. Not from the traveler but from the guide. Anger at the traveler for doubting the path. Anger at the question. Anger at the resistance. And, finally, anger at the innocent sadness of a traveler. A sadness only traveler's can know, but since we are all traveler's, a sadness that should relate to all of us.

That's when I lost them both in the haze of my own blindness.

The anger had become to alien for my eyes, and I could only hear the traveler, wail his begs for forgiveness. Pleading to an angry God. Promising humility in exchange for calm waves and safe return home.

*

I cannot see revenge for perceived future.

Sometimes arrows come from the fog. Found in the air by my senses. Heard and felt. The fog twists and clouds into soft silhouettes, and then the arrows come. The arrows come from the past of an untold future. They come from the plan of someone's mind. A plan built upon a past or present transgression that one wouldn't think has foundation enough to support another's structure. But that structure stands, and is the home of the archers. An unstable and dangerous domicile, yes, but archers being archers, they need not a steady building to fulfill their obligations. Only a platform to lift them to the medium of their art. Over the tree line. Overlooking the glade.

Being unable to catch sight of the towering barracks, the source of malcontent, I simply wait. I wait for the arrows to come from the fog from archers hired, and highered, by the sheriffs of some similar village. And when the arrows strike my body with no armor, I pull them out for a brief fond moment, as I recognize the wood of the shaft, as being from my own forest.

*

I cannot see relinquishment over assumption.

There was a carriage traveling past and I could see the driver. The driver was urgent on the horses, as an escapee would be. But the traveler was alone on the road. There was no other carriage or soul, save what could have passed for a passenger. I say this because I could not see the passenger. Covered by the cloak of the carriage curtains the passenger remained only a possibility, but a probable one.

So, I road up next to the driver and asked why the need. My answer was an increase in speed. And a look. Towards the cabin of this carriage. A cabin that could be concealing a cacogenic cargo. I asked again why the speed and looked ahead of myself to make sure I was still keeping my own way.

When I looked back I could no longer see the driver.

The cloak that so cleverly concealed the cargo was now curiously covering the current captain.

But the driver I could still see. Clearly visible as there was no cloak, no cabin, no where at all for her to lie as the carriage sped along its path.

The driver was being dragged. Caught, by the caballine cabriolet, careening into a canyon of carnificial cacotopia. Claimed at the clambake of her own cataclysmic catachresis.

She was being shredded under wheel for having the assumption that she could simply escape her cargo. Torn to pieces by the dirt and stone sander she, herself, had brought to this fatal speed. Not fully realizing that her speed in no way separated the driver from the passenger, but only made it that much easier for the loss of control the passenger ultimately, and so desperately, yearned for.

*

So, here I have left my clarity, defined by its limits, for those that don't understand why I squint in their direction. My gift to those I truly can't know. Given selfishly so that I may gain more vision for myself, but, intended selflessly so that the collective sight will gain in the big picture.

Maybe after taking my gift, you could give me one of your own. Something given to me selfishly, but, intended to be given selflessly. So, that I can be seen better; perhaps only by myself.

Because if we all understand that we need to see, and we all understand that we need to be seen, and to be seen is to be known and to be known helps us know, maybe, we would try a little harder to be a little clearer. Maybe then those things that are so hard to see will no longer need to be defined, because they won't exist to require definition.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Remembered. Recognized. Detected. But hardly seen.

A Letter To An Animal Concerning Its Greater Role In My Universe

2008-10-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

Hey, everybody. How are you doing? Good?

Lately, I've had the bug for letter writing, and, on a regular day that would mean that I have been getting my last nerved stomped on by an army of country line dancers. But, today, I just want to write about something.

I just want to take a thought, a conviction, and send it to someone or something just for the sake of expression. I'm not really angry. I'm not feeling vindictive or persecuted. I'm in a rare form today. One that I usually try to hold on to with both hands and keep tight to my chest until the sun punches out and the moon takes up the sentry.

I'm in a good calm mood. The kind of mood a snow bordered brook brings in the stillness of a winter wood. The kind of calm the clouds bring when they fill every inch of your peripheral vision as you stare up from the reclining position on your front lawn after wrestling the mower under that last thorn bush.

I'm just happy, and I want to record it for posterity. Because, just like the rare beasts of the world we call Earth, happiness is not something to be captured and bread in captivity. It's better to just set up your cameras, wait, and record, for the shared experience of everyone to come later and see what you saw.

So, without further ado, I bring you, my first earnest, honest, and benign Letter to The Internet.

Dear spirit animal of my road to work,

I noticed you again today, walking along Buncombe Road with your sleek black fur still shiny as the day you were born. How old could you maybe be now? 2? 3? You look my dog's age, so I think it's a pretty safe approximation.

As always you were walking towards my oncoming car. Not directly at me, but off to the side, in the grass, casually trotting the opposite direction I was heading so determinedly. You noticed me, but not like I notice you. You glanced and sniffed and meandered off further down the incline of the ditch to make sure our paths wouldn't intersect.

And then I was gone from your day. As you so often aren't gone from mine.

I wonder about you, animal. I wonder how someone so stray could stay so fit and comfortable with their day to day.

I suppose there are no mortgages in the spirit kingdom. There are no 99 cent menus or fine print on contacts. Your day is the day that I would be having thousands of years in the past. Your day is the day we shared before my kind decided there were better things. You kept your appointment, and still do, as your kind is the kind that keeps their promises.

I've noticed you many places around my home and wondered where it is that you live. I didn't realize that I had already answered my own question.

You live where I see you. You live where I don't see you. My home is your home, but your home is not mine.

You've seen me many places, around my home, but still in yours, and maybe you've wondered why I go so fast, when in your eyes my origination and destination are one in the same. You watch my car whoosh by, traveling from your train tracks to your field like I watch the bees that fly from my flowers into my trees.

I think about how they live their lives in my back yard, as I live my life in yours.

I'm glad you were there this morning, animal. It always makes me question my actions when I see you. It makes that part of me that is sure die, and lets the uncertain offspring grow fat on its body.

So, animal, I'm always glad to see you.

But, I dare not do more than see. I dare not name, or feed, or attempt capture. Because names and food and fences mean that you are not a spirit animal. They mean that you are a dog, like my dog now, and my dog before. And you can't be a dog. Dogs are mortal and dogs are seekers of guidance.

And you are neither.

You are the spirit animal of my road to work. And, if one morning I see that a car has struck you from my road to work, I will know that is because you kept your appointment, and I wasn't there.

I will know that your body's death will be an ultimate reflection of my failure, as your life has been an ultimate reflection of my desire to turn around and casually walk the other way.

But you will not die from the blow. Your body will remain in your old home, but you will not die. And when I move, I will look for you on my new road to work. I will try to subvert my ignorance and my impatience and I will try to find you, spirit animal, so that I may see you again.

But dare not do anything more than see.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Your faithful follower, always traveling in the opposite direction

A Letter to Millenigenarians Concerning Sports Cars

2008-09-25T09:30:00.000-05:00

Dear ancient, ancient elder monkeys of the road,

Specifically the road I'm on, directly in front of me, going 20 miles per hour, on a major interstate.

I write to you today out of confusion. I've noticed lately that you, and many others like you, have had a sudden onset of affection for a class of automobile usually reserved for bald spots and shrunken penises. Of course I mean clichéd, mid-life crisis sports cars.

You know the ones I mean. Factory stock Corvettes and Porches that come with customized key fobs and license plates that say "TOP GUN". Painted bright hues of Yellow and Red and Orange like beautiful road flowers using their spectrum to attract bees to their pedals. Bees, or in this case, vagina to take back to their rented condo.

But, I digress. I am describing the usual owners of these particular automobiles. Owners that, even though are usually disgusting and annoying, I don't have a problem with. Why? Because a balding former high school quarter back with a large alimony payment and tiny, tiny balls has everything in the world to prove. They get in their BMW Z3 and they hit the road like a banshee escaping the fires of hell.

So what if they have the sense and coordination of a fetus? At least they are away from me.

But you. You people with your hip replacements and your Lasik on both eyes. You don't need to be in these cars. These cars aren't for you. I know they're not for you, because I'm behind you while you drive them. Stopped. In an intersection.

Oh God. Did it happen? Are you dead? Maybe I should get out and che …

Nope! You're awake! There you go. Fucking asshole.

Why did you even get that car? What are you? 60? 65? Get a goddamn Camry and just accept that you are no longer the sex symbol you were during the Spanish American War. You can't just pull up to a Luby's and have any woman you want. Or, at least any woman that is allowed to leave her assisted living bus as long as she signs out.

So what is this car? A way to reclaim your youth? The youth you can't remember along with where you left your shoes or who your grandchildren are? Or is it really a way to get the old wrinkled sex ball rolling again?

I don't think your sporty two seater is going to be the lube machine you're hoping for. Have you ever seen what honey does to a bag of sand? Let me give you a hint. Afterwards, you still have a bag of sand, and you're out a bottle of honey.

You see, sports cars are a symbol that mixes danger with wealth. They are a way to make regular, stupid, ugly men to feel like James Bond. The idea being the speed and the price will excite the young ladies into carnal acts of expression. Young being the operative word.

When you take speed and high dollar and introduce them to the stable of ladies you are eligible for, all you get are strokes and hour long piss and moan sessions about how much milk has gone up. So you get the car to spice up your 85 year marriage and the first time you take it for a spin, the wife is gripping the arm rest and squeezing her eyes shut because she knows you're legally blind in 5 states and it's only a matter of time before you plow right into a telephone pole going, what is that, 28 miles an hour.

But, you don't want to take the car back, because then that would be admitting that your ratio of hair to skin tipped a long time ago and you are, in fact, old. So guess who pays the price.

That's right, me.

A young man in a moderately priced mid-size CAR. Cursing your fragile bones as I realize it's going to take me twice as long to get dog food because the advanced state of atrophy in the driver in front of me is actually causing him to go slower and slower as the muscles that allow him to press the gas pedal deteriorate to goo inside his own leg.

I'm not asking you to floor it, I'm not even asking you to speed, I'm just asking you to stop wasting that vehicle on yourself. Trade it in for a gigantic SUV for your wife that she can use to wipe out a school bus while she's trying to answer her cellular telephone. Give that car to someone who will use it for what it's built for, statutory rape.

You know, someone like a high school track coach or a recently divorced dermatologist.

Just not you, dude. Just not you.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Trying to choose the lesser of two completely fucked groups of people.

A Letter to Helpers Concerning Helping

2008-09-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

Dear thickheaded, obnoxious people who think they are helping,

You're not.

I feel like there has been some kind of line crossed in your head where you think you can contribute to what I'm doing. Well, let me assure you, that line is still very much there, and will continue to be there until I have some sort of brain trauma or you reveal to me that your stupidity has been a large practical joke on your part this whole time.

Well, if it was, you got me. Because I was just sure that you were a complete fucking moron.

So here's the deal. I'm going to do the thing you asked me to do, and you aren't going to be involved. You're not going to be involved because you can't fix it, which, and follow me here, is why you asked me to be here in the first place. And, yes, I know I'm wasting my time with just coming out with the point of the letter like that right off the bat, but don't worry. I know you have trouble understand sentences that don't have words like "hamburger" and "Deal or No Deal" in them, so I'm going to walk you through this.

I get that you want to be part of the process that makes things that are broken, into things that are working. I get it. But, you have to understand the situation from the point of view of a fixer. I get there, shit is fucked up, and the only thing I see is you standing there kind of shrugging with your arms out.

So, you broke it, and now what? You want to help? What could you possibly bring to the table besides the skill of seeing if something CAN be broken?

Let's imagine this situation in a different setting. Pretend I'm not in your store fixing your computers. Pretend we're in a kitchen and I just found out you ate all the cupcakes for the big bake sale, which is in just two hours. And, with your mouth still stuffed full of chocolate icing and yellow cake, you mumble that you need me to make another batch of 40 and to hurry because I'm going to make us late.

Then you look at me funny when I threaten to jam a soft rubber spatula into your abdomen.

So, now that I've established that I'm mad because you did something you weren't supposed to, let me get on to what you can do to help me fix your situation. It's very easy to remember. Try chanting it, as a little mantra, to help solidify it into memory.

Get the fuck away from me.

Get the fuck away from me.

Got it?

Get. The mother fuck. Away. From. Me.

And while we're at it, here's a heap of things that you can print out and read before I show up to the call in the first place.

1. Don't watch what I'm doing at a distance that allows me to feel the heat of your testicles against the back of my neck as I crouch down to pick up a cable.
2. Don't sigh at the Windows errors EVERY FUCKING TIME THEY POP UP.
3. Don't stand in front of the thing I'm trying to fix. Just writing that one down makes me wish you were dead.
4. Don't ask me what I'm going to try next and expect an explanation you can understand.
5. Don't offer me tools like a hammer and saw and think you're being funny.
6. Don't talk to me about your grandchildren while I'm trying to read through a database.
7. Just don't talk to me at all.
8. Oh really? Your daughter recently decided to become a bail bondsman? That is so interesting. No, I mean it. I'm really thrilled.
9. I lied. I would react to this conversation the same way whether you told me you had just won your weight in gold or if you just told me that the previously mentioned daughter was killed in a car accident. And you were the murderer. Because you had gotten her pregnant. I don't want to talk to you THAT much.
10. Get the fuck away from me.

You have to understand that I have a stressful job. I come in, look down, see the aftermath of your wrath, and am just expected to know which one of these eight atrocities is the problem. It's going to take an investigative team weeks to sift through this wreckage.

If we had robot equality rights, what you just did to this pc would be considered aggravated rape of a minor, and you would go to robot jail. Where they would robot beat your shit and robot pound you in the butt all day while they robot sell your pink ass for robot cigarettes.

But as it is, there won't be any Enforcers bursting through the windows any time soon, so I just have to piece together the poor girl knowing that as soon as I leave, you're going to have your way with her again.

I also have the added bonus to this line of work that after I leave, and you break this thing again, then it will be my fault. Because when dealing with technologies that knuckle dragging dipshits won't take the time to learn, responsibility lies with those who last laid hands on said technology.

It's like a cursed statue to you people.

What? The screen is making beeping noises? Call Chiggie, he touched it last.

But I fixed your printer. I didn't touch your monitor. What? The cables connect everything?

Well, the roads connect the nation. I was going to blame that big turd in my front yard on the neighborhood dogs, but, seeing as there are roadways that would allow you to make it to my house, I'm going to go ahead and blame it on you.

So I'll come fix your screen, if you promise not to shit all over my driveway. You know, like you have been lately.

It all comes down to this. You broke something and need it fixed, and I would be happy to do so. Without you there. Think about other people that fix things. Mechanics tell you to come back later. Doctors make you sit in a little room. Dentists, contractors, electricians, plumbers, all don't interact with you unless absolutely unavoidable.

I'm no different. And you're being a jackass.

Get the fuck away from me.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Did you pour antifreeze all over the cooling fan? No, it doesn't work like that.

A Letter to Living Zombies Concerning Actual Reality

2008-08-07T11:44:00.000-05:00

Dear inconsiderate walking slobs, so caught up in your own little universe that you can't even hear me right now can you? Hello? This letter is for you, you ass.

Fuck it.

I write to you today to try to pierce the diamond palace you've built for yourself and educate you on the world outside. That, while uncultivated and dangerous, is full of adventure and fortune.

At least, this is what I would say to someone with a legitimate reason for becoming detached from the world, like, a plane crash victim or a soldier back from war. But, for you, the average modern human, I would put it a little different.

Something like, "please take your eyes off of your iPhone long enough to see that you are pressing against the chair rail on the wall instead of the handle on the exit door. Your outstanding idiocy has reached a level that is actually frightening the other people at the Pizza Hut. You fucking moron."

Now, of course, along with that phrasing I'd also have to scream at the top of my lungs, as well as physically shove and shake you to get your attention. Since in your world of instant-low cost-Bluetooth enabled-wireless internet-phone-plans, complete with mp3 recognition, video camera, and high tensile steel grappling lines, if a person isn't acting like he's afraid of a mummy in an old black and white film reel, well he just isn't even there is he?

At first, I was actually surprised that you even bothered me, being bit of an escapist myself. Ever since I first owned an mp3 player I have rarely left my house without one. I just find that music is such a pleasant contrast to what real life actually sounds like, that it has pretty much become a requirement to me. But, in my defense that's mostly because real life is full of stupid ass people like you. I'm an after effect. A symptom of the illness.

It's the all encompassing entertainment boxes that you carry around that make me cringe when I see them. Because I don't see a GPS that is going to help a lost family find a Holiday Inn Express, or an mp3 player that saves a beach party after someone forgets the CDs, or a video phone so that grandmothers don't ever have to miss their granddaughters' recitals. No, I see a 16 year old girl with a tramp stamp and huge bug eyed sunglasses, moving in slow zigzags in front of me in a Fossil outlet barring my passage to the door.

And what are you wearing? An animal print skirt and cowboy boots? A denim jacket over your t-shirt when it's a hundred and four fucking degrees outside? Dear lord, child, you look like a basket of clothes my mother once gave to Goodwill. Did the [b]phone[/b] tell you to dress like that? I would avert my eyes but that would just sweep my vision to three or four other carbon copies of this girl, all looking at their feet, all slowly wobbling to find their footing as they attempt to walk. If this was a movie and violin music was playing, I would be allowed to shoot you while trying not to be covered in your infected blood.

Of course, the walking dead of Teen Magazine are nothing compared to the bewildering road behavior of those taken over by the thin digital siren call. It's like I've been sucked though the hole from Sliders and shot out in a universe where everyone makes driving decisions like they were the Captain of the Titanic. Just briefly looking up to see a turn coming, rotating the wheel, and expecting everything to go to plan as they glance back down at a clip from the Daily Show. Content that their massive vehicle and slim to none chance of there being anything in front of them make up for acting like a complete retard.

I bet the designers of these devices never even thought this breed of people would come about from their creations. They were thinking Tricorders from Star Trek, Ziggy from Quantum Leap, Rimmer from Red Dwarf. Thinking that the faster Man could receive information the faster he could use it to better his life and his enjoyment of that life.

What they probably didn't count on was you. And by "you" I mean complete idiots. A population of stumbling mouth breathers that have turned Steve Jobs into Herbert West.

I don't mean to attack all internet phone users. There are lots of people I see use them the way I would expect a balanced person to. Getting the phone number to the theater or passing a joke back and forth between friends while they wait on a bench outside a restaurant. The ones I can't stand are the people that can't seem to stop playing portable Bejeweled long enough to keep themselves from rubbing their genitals all over me as they stumble onto my seated form while I wait for a take out order at the deli.

Yeah, that has happened to me, more than once.

Is the draw of entertainment just that powerful? Are you so devoid of any substance whatsoever that you have to fill your every waking moment with nonsensical input from a little portable oracle? You make me scared for the future of our planet. I see you frantically texting your girlfriends while your children sit across from you at the Applebee's doing the exact same thing and all I can think about is how Futurama warned us all not to start making out with robots.

Electro Gonorrhea, people.

Or maybe it's not the pleasure of it. Maybe you just can't stand to be inside your own heads for more than 15 minutes anymore. Is that it? I'm just asking, because without knowing, I just have to assume you are buried in your phone all day because you hate being with yourself.

To me a life full of entertainment is a life devoid of introspection and experience. I picture you on the deck of the Santa Maria as the sailors point to the beautiful naked Indians and you are thumbing through your Yahoo news. I picture Dave texting Frank about how his "round ass" space pod is "so lame" and not noticing the corridor of flickering light opening up before him. I picture Leonardo snapping a quick pic of a pretty brunette with a subtle smile with his 5 mega pixel camera phone and calling it a day.

I don't know. My phone is circa 2002 so I can only report on what I've seen other people doing. Maybe your life, that of a lump of shit staring into a one and quarter inch screen, is a life of pure happiness. Maybe it's like modern meditation and you are one iTune download away from true enlightenment.

I doubt it, but maybe.

For now I will be content with having a Zune for mp3's and podcasts, a cellphone for calls, a computer for the internet, and a GBASP for the occasional traveling game of Metroid. Because, frankly, iPhones and the phones like them, are starting to look like evil goddamn Skynet brain slugs to me.

For now I'll continue to keep my technology separate, so that I may remain separate from my technology.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
He probably wrote this letter with a pen, how quaint

A Letter to Movie Goers Concerning Theaters

2008-07-01T15:03:00.000-05:00

Dear loud, annoying, sacks of, you know what? You don't deserve an intro.

Dear fuckers,

Yeah, fuckers. You know who you are.

This building we're in, that's called a movie theater. This is a place where people go to see films. Films are like pictures except they move and have sound. They are like really big and really long Youtube clips, and, instead of imbedded in your Myspace page, they play on that big white sheet in the front of the room.

We know where the front is because that's the direction all these chairs are turned, so that people can relax in a position that allows them to see the screen. The screen the movie plays on. Because they, and I, paid to be here and watch it. And when I say watch, I mean see, hear, absorb, understand, and interpret.

I don't mean look at the picture long enough to commit that ironic one liner to memory and repeat it to your friends immediately after hearing it like you're that first ant that finds food and rushes back to the hill to inform everyone that food does, in fact, exist.

Now, I don't expect you to understand that some people watch movies like other people listen to music or read books. And by music and books I don't mean Hannah Montanna, and Hannah Montanna's biography.

No, I don't know if she actually has a biography. I was just using an asinine example to illustrate, oh fuck this!

Here is a list of things that aren't acceptable in movie theaters. Don't worry about why. You're too stupid to understand, I promise.

Number 1: Don't buy more food than you can handle when you are sitting down. You're going to be in that chair for, what, 2 hours? Maybe. Do you really need a large bucket of popcorn, a box of nachos with the cheese in a little cup right in the box, 2 hotdogs, a box of bunch'a'crunch, and three 92 oz. Diet Cokes? If I laid all that out for my dog he wouldn't be able to finish it in two hours. Because his body would violently force it back out of him before he was half-way through.

This is one of the only times during the day that it's critical that you not get out of your fucking chair for a period of time, and you decide to begin your movie by wolfing down a large sack of junk that your body can't even begin to process as nourishment.

Now you've got to hurry down a flight of stairs in the dark while trying to hold in a good 7 pounds of waste that your body just basically refused to acknowledge as food.

Honestly, I don't know why I don't see more people in movie theaters tripping and crapping their pants during their tumble down the stairs.

Number 2: When it says "Silence your Cellphones" it's supposed to be a general statement about not USING cellphones. Not something that you can side step on a grammatical technicality.

I know that it doesn't seem like a big deal to send a "quick text", as I've heard it called, but, when you open your fucking cellphone in the middle of a dark theater and I'm in the seat behind you, that 9 million candle watt beam you call a backlight shines out of your phone, ricochets off your fake lopsided tits and shoots right into my goddamn eyes.

Honestly, Dollywood, what fucking world do you live in where something can be both urgent enough to interrupt everyone else and not important enough to take yourself outside at the same time? It's a movie. A MOVIE. Get your shit handled enough that you can go a couple hours without checking in with your dog's hair stylist every 5 minutes.

I remember going to movies and after I got out having to push quarters into a payphone to tell my mom to come pick me up. I'm guessing you're so far up your own butthole that you didn't even understand half the words in that last sentence.

Number 3: Stop laughing out loud when people are being attacked and/or tortured on screen. No Country For Old Men is not a comedy. If you can't handle the subject matter then leave. Don't chuckle and act all casual like what you saw didn't almost make you pee on yourself. Be a man and deal with the message, or get the fuck out of the theater.

Number 4: If your foot touches the back of my head I will keep it.

Number 5: Don't take your fucking kid to see fucking Wanted at fucking 11 PM. What is the matter with you?

What is the matter with you?

Are you really surprised that they are pitching a fit? It's nothing but gunfire and blood and shouting. Your kid isn't being a "dick." She's crying because she doesn't understand why she has to stay up and watch people being killed over and over and over again when all she wants is to go home and lay in her tiny princess bed and dream about being Dora the Explorer.

You are a fucking psychopath, you know that? What you're doing is unbelievable to me, and I don't even like kids. This goes beyond kids. You are torturing another human being.

Yes, that's really what I believe you're doing. You're a shitty parent, and a shitty person, and I hate you. I hate YOU, for what you're doing, when it is so avoidable and unnecessary.

You can't go see the grown up movies because you had a baby? Tough shit. End of story. You had a kid, things change, get a DVD player and some headphones you worthless sack of crap.

Number 6: Don't wear your hat cocked to the side. You look like a walking turd.

Oh, I'm sorry that's a different letter.

Real Number 6: Go do something else. You shouldn't need a list. The theater isn't a diner or a fucking 4H building. It's like a library, but one where everyone can enjoy the story at the same time and take the journey together. If you don't want to take a journey, or don't even know what that means, just walk away and never look back. This place isn't for you, and it never will be for you.

The only exception I will accept from this rule is teenagers trying to get it on.

It's dark and your parents aren't around, I get it. People got needs, I feel you. Just go in the back, please.

Don't fuck so close to me that you rock my chair.

For the people that like my list, enough said. We are all on the same page. No instructions necessary.

For the people that might respectfully disagree with the ideals I was going for, go fuck yourself. I hate you, and if you sit in front of me, I will kick you in the head hard enough to kill you.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Film Enthusiast

A Letter to Insects Concerning Trespassing

2008-06-24T09:43:00.000-05:00

Dear Nature's Hobos,

So, I was at the coffee shop the other day and I saw this huge guy who had, uh, what is that on my back? It feels like someone taped a OHMYMOTHERFUCKINGMONKEYRACECAR that's a wasp!

Get off me you little piece of shit. I'm not a big meaty perch. Nor am I a giant snack for you to take your aggression out on. Just go about your business and get the hell away from me.

That's right. Fly away you tiny bastard. Just keep on flying. But, not into my house.

No! No, you are not allowed in there! That is not for you, don't you dare AWWWWW damnit! Asshole!

I hate it when you fly into the house. You don't fly in like a bird does. A missile of terror that knows not where it goes but surely it is to freedom. You don't even fly in like a bat. A Tasmanian devil blur of fury and confusion, squeeking as if do gently say, "WHERE THE FUCK AM I WHERE THE FUCK AM I WHERE THE FUCK AM I!"

No, when you fly in, you stop right inside the door way and, for lack of a better term, case the joint. I can almost hear Curly's voice from the Three Stooges attached to your every action.

Aw, nice digs professor.

I'm not a professor, get out of my house.

Hey, brownies!

Get away from those!

Wooopwoopwoopwoop!

Asshole!

Look, this isn't your house. You can't live here, it makes people uncomfortable. The buzzing and your enormous stinger are kind of off putting and, get off the chair, and I just don't think it's going to work out. Do you see where I'm coming from? I'm just trying to make it so that everybody is, don't touch my headphones just get the fuck off of them, just so that everybody is happy.

Why can't you be like your cousin out there building his own little home under the carport? I mean, granted, he is probably slightly retarded, what with building his home in on of the small wind chimes. I mean his house literally vibrates every time the wind blows. But, at least he is attempting to have a place of his own. He's trying. He's putting himself out there.

You, you just think you can move back in and that every thing is going to be handed to you on a silver GETTHEFUCKOUTOFMYHAIR! AAAHHHHH! SHIT!

ASS! HOLE!

OK. That's it. It's go time.

That's right; I got the squeegee on a stick. No soft broomstick straw for you, my friend. This is nice sturdy rubber coming right at you. They will speak of this battle in the tomes of your people, for you will be the quickest one of your kind ever to be dispatched by the hand of the mighty giant. Prepare to meet your tiny asshole maker, you tiny asshole.

What the? Get off the ceiling! That's some bullshit! Come back down here so I can smoosh you against the easily cleanable wall!

No, sir! No! We do NOT try to crawl into the heater vent! No, we do not! Time out you little shit! Time out! Fuck me! Fuck!

Oh, you may be cunning, but I'm big enough to turn the thermostat. Let's see how much crawling you do with a torrent of hell fire blasted against your crimson carapace! Ah HA HA! That's right! Feel the burn you flying mini-satan!

That's right, fly back down here so I can get a good major league swing at you! AGH! That's ok. I missed but that's ok. You're not going anywhere.

Damn, it's a little hot in here. No, matter, you will perish nonetheless.

After I throw up.

Jesus, is it like 300 hundred degrees in here. How come you're ok with that? Don't you feel that? I think I might need a ten minute break is that cool? I think we both deserve a little sit down and DOOOOONTTOUCHME DONTTOUCHME! GET OFF OF MY FACE OHBABYJESUS DON’T STING ME IN THE FACE!

Oh you bastard. Your legs feel like a tiny witch's bones! I won't be able to sleep for days.

Look, I don't want you in here; you probably want to leave too. I'll just stand back and open the doors, and you just head out whenever you're comfortable, OK? That's civil. A mutual agreement that we are both formidable opponents and that living in harmony is better than all this senseless violence and bloodshAAAAAHHHH STACY! STACY THERE'S A WASP IN MY SHIRT! I CAN FEEL HIM BUZZING AGAINST MY NIPPLE! STACY! STACY, HE'S GOING TO STAB MY TUMMY WITH HIS HUGE INSECT BUTT-KNIFE! CALL THE POLICE! STACY!

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
SONOFABUTTNUGGETMONKEYFUCKINGDONKEYBALLSOFARABIA!

A Letter to Managers, All Managers, Concerning Threats

2008-05-28T15:25:00.000-05:00

Dear Fat Idiot That Has Wasted His Life And Now Thinks I'm Going To Let Him Waste Mine,

I've noticed lately in our meetings and our phone calls, and just in general conversation, that, well, you don't seem to know what the fuck you're talking about. Ever. It took me a while to pick up on this because, when you first arrived here as our Director, we didn't really talk much. Therefore, it wasn't until our first conversation that I realized that you were a big ol' useless sack stuffed with about as much bullshit that I've ever seen in one place at one time. Still, you were a manager with absolutely no background in what our department does, and then were put in charge of it, so I wasn't really expecting more than you. You meaning a dumb sack of shit.

Anyway, I've notice that you and I haven't really been seeing eye-to-eye lately so I decided to make you a list of "No-No's" for you. Just things to avoid in our professional discourse.

1) Don't ever think I owe you a fucking thing in this lifetime or the next you arrogant, numb-nuts, asshole. Did you save me from a rushing river? Did you help me with my rent one month? Did you lie to the principal to keep me out of trouble when I was 12? No.

You are just my manager. And, what does that mean to me? Fuck. All.

2) Don't condescendingly describe parts of my job I've been doing for three and a half years when you've only been here nine months. "Do you know what the after hours number is for? It's so people can get in touch with us after hours." Really? Do you know what keeping you goddamned mouth shut is for? Because you're about to find out.

Don't come over to me when you see me busting my ass for hours and then ask some asinine rhetorical question. You don't have to prove to me that you're a total douche bag. I figured that out a while ago so let's just cut out this wooing shit you seem to be doing and get down to what the fuck you want or get the fuck out of my face.

3) Don't send errand boys to threaten my job. If you want to tell me to clean out my desk you do it to my face or I'm going to assume that every single threat that comes out of their mouths is void. In fact. Don't threaten me period. If you have a problem with the way I do things then tell me or give me a pink slip.

I know why you don't do that. It's because you can't figure out half the shit we do without me, because everyone else quit when YOU showed up. So how's about you just back the hell off and admit you wouldn't even know what questions to ask if you were trying to figure out what it is that I do for a living.

4) And while we're on the subject, don't act like you are part of some happy family when you won't even take the time to familiarize yourself with our work. You're supposed to be the one selling this shit out on the open market and you don't even know what it does.

You have a little booklet we made for you and if the question isn't answered in your book, then you pretty much just stand there like a jackass caught in headlights. So don't come down to me and try to tell me why we're losing money. I'm looking at the reason, and it smells like Wild Turkey, Marlboro Lights, and sweat.

5) This one is important, because this one is the reason I almost dump hot coffee in your face on a daily basis. Don't say our CTO's name like it means anything. My name doesn't mean anything. I can't say my name downstairs and expect people to work harder. So why should his?

What you're telling me is that this guy; this beady eyed, greedy, leech that pretends to run this company is more important than I am. I'm sorry but he's not. I'm not a fucking indentured servant. I'm not a serf on some inbred lord's plot of land. I work because I want to feed my family and because I want them to be as comfortable as possible, which means, I work for money. If that evil bastard is hit by a truck tomorrow my paycheck still gets here on time so don't drop his name and expect me to jump. It makes me sick with hate when I see in your eyes that you think his, or your name means a damn thing, to anyone.

That's all I've got for right now, but I think this will be a good base for future conversations.

One thing I feel I should clarify, though, is that I don't hate you just because you're my boss. Everyone "hates" their boss. No one likes being told what to do. But, with you it's different, you see, because I don't hate you just because you're my boss.

I hate you, because of you. I just hate you. I hate the way you smile when you know you are swindling people who work hard and don't know any better. I hate the way you act all offended when you think something bad has happened but you aren't smart enough to understand if it did or not. I hate your bullshit excuses for not doing your job right before you accuse me of not doing mine. I hate how you brought in an old employee so you could force me out because you thought he knew more than me, and he didn't. I hate how you try to convince me that comp days are more valuable than overtime because you assume I can't multiply even though my job requires it.

I could go on but what's the point? Listing your faults is like trying to describe each blade of grass in my front lawn. After a while you just write "Green, Long, Ants" and move on to something else.

I do want to plant this little seed of thought in your head, though. You like to throw your weight around and snap of threats like it's no big deal, but when you threaten my job, you aren't threatening my job. You're threatening me. You're threatening my wife and my dog and my house and my car and my entire livelihood.

Pretend you are in my house, and it's dark, and you threaten my wife. What happens?

They say a better man turns the other cheek, let's bygones be bygones, and has the integrity to walk away. Well it takes two men for that to work. That better man has to walk away from someone. Someone who has a temper, who holds a grudge, who makes quick judgments and jumps to rash conclusions. Someone who doesn't like it when he's shoved and sure as hell doesn't like taking shit off some middle aged walking heart attack.

Look at me. Do I look like someone who loves the idea of turning either of my cheeks anywhere?

Maybe the next time you feel like threatening someone because it makes you feel big, think about who you're talking to. Think about whether that person is the new girl, or someone who knows how every fucking piece of our product works and exactly which pins to pull out to watch it disintegrate.

Maybe that someone doesn't just quit when he's finally had it. Maybe he takes something with him. Something from you. Compensation for stresses rendered.

After that, I guarantee my name will mean something to you. Asshole.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Not available between the hours of 5 P.M. and 8 A.M.

A Letter to "People" Concerning Decisions

2008-02-22T11:39:00.000-06:00

Dear confused, sleepy, nervous, prosimian, space-wasting jackasses,

I want you to ask yourself a question. And, don't just take it for granted. I want you to really search your soul, you're very being, for the truth. For what you think is your one true answer.

Are you ready? Ok, good, because here it comes.

What do you want to eat?

Did that question catch you off guard a little bit? Weren't expecting something quite like that to be the question I wanted you to ask yourself? Well, it fucking should be! Because we're in a fucking burrito place and you're first in MOTHER FUCKING LINE!

What did you think was going to happen once you got to that sad-faced minimum wage teenager with surgical gloves on inside out? Did you think he wasn't going to ask what you wanted to eat? Just like you thought I wasn't going to get so pissed I wanted to punch you in the neck while you just stand there like a fucking moron?

Don't look at me!

Don't you fucking look at me, Hoss. You look at that goddamned menu! It's go time! It's time to be a big boy and tell the nice man what you want for snackies. Instead you're standing there frozen in fear. Like your back in that harsh spotlight at the '82 regionals all over again, forgetting the words to Over The Rainbow right before tinkling your panties in front of everybody. Just pick something!

Look, this is a fast food restaurant, OK? Let me give you a bit of advice. Odds are any place where you order your food before you sit down isn't going to have too much variation on the menu. So just close your eyes, raise your arm, point at anything and say, "that one." You know, like a pressured witness at a police line-up.

OK. Hard part is over.

What are you doing? Pay the lady. Why did you just put your credit card back in your wallet? You want to pay with cash? What the fuck does it matter? It's 7 dollars, just give it to her!

Ok, that didn't work. It didn't work because you only have 4 dollars. That means that as far as your cash goes, you can't afford to eat here. Give her your credit card! What are you doing? Why are you looking in your wallet again? I can see from here there is no more money in there! It's not going to suddenly appear! Just give her your goddamned cred …don't count your change!

Son of a bitch, Ernest, if you don't pay that lady for your food right now and let me get out of here I swear to god I'm going to slam your head against the counter until your dead. Then, me and the other guy you've been holding up for the past half hour are going to walk you around, Weekend at Bernie's style. All making you wave at ladies and getting into crazy adventures. The only difference being, that instead of trying to convince everyone in town that you're alive, we'll probably just leave you face down in that dumpster behind Courtyard Coffee.

All fantasizing aside, it really seizes the gears in my clockwork brain to see a grown person staring slack jawed and rubber necked up at a glowing menu, like it's a UFO in the back forty, not able to decide if they want a hamburger, or a hamburger. I mean, really, how worse is your life going to be if you mess this one up, Chief? Do you think the ten minutes it takes you to wolf down that half ounce of beef and 3 pounds of grease are even going to register in 2 hours? You know, besides the painful explosive diarrhea?

And while we're on that subject, let's be honest, there's nothing on the menu that's going to change the consequences of this meal, as it is the establishment itself that promotes the full scale evacuation of your internal organs. So just by walking in here you've signed the contract absolving the restaurant of any and all accidental anal demolition for the next 12 hours.

What I'm getting at is this. No matter what you pick from this menu, you're going to need at least five dollars, it's going to be ready in about 10 minutes, and you're going to need a can to shit in later at work in case you can't get out of your cubicle fast enough.

Maybe you already have a can to shit in. I don't know. But you just don't strike me as a prepared individual so I went ahead and threw that in there.

All I ask is that when you walk up to that counter and it's time for you to place your order, just place it. Decide first, then order. Decide first, then order.

Try not to be such a fucking loser all the time. Try not to be such a fucking loser all the time.

At the rate you're going, it's going to be tomorrow before I'm able to piss and moan about how this place got my fucking order wrong while some crack head trucker tries to kill me on the way home.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von RichthGODAMNIT STOP ASKING FOR HASHBROWNS, IT'S 6 IN THE EVENING!

JESUS CHRIST!

A Letter to Bookstore Patrons Concerning Courtesy

2007-12-18T10:01:00.000-06:00

Originally written on Dec. 18, 2007 on Gamerswithjobs.com, http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/36472. That post included pictures that have been removed from this version to keep in style with a strictly text format.

Dear Stupid, Cheap, Small-Handed, Chimp-Faced, Simpletons,

I write you today to discuss one of the last few places that I actually enjoy shopping, the bookstore. Any multimillion dollar, built-in-a-day, same-across-America bookstore, where everything is brown, piano music is playing, and coffee shop is included.

Picture yours now for me. Is your local text peddler dancing vividly in your mind?

Good. Let's take a little mental tour, now, to a special little spot in the store. Through the front door, past the podiums of latest editions and tired old rehashes, beyond the middle of the store info-desk, nestled sweetly between the teen dramas and the Sci-fi section.

The graphic novel stand. So glorious. So beautiful.

But, wait. Oh no, something is amiss. Now that my tears of joy have run from my eyes I can see a little more clearly. It's, oh it's not perfect at all.

Covers are creased. Nay, torn! The alphabetical order is that of a madman. DC and Marvel are mixed! Why on Earth is thy symmetry so disheveled? Who would do such a thing as to disturb our sacred tomes?

Oh, that's right! It's YOU, you @#$% half-wit, sticky fingered, excuse for an adult!

Don't act so surprised &%#face!

I was on to you as soon as you walked in the store. A slouched, wheezing carapace, with a barely noticeable 6 weeks beard growth sporadically battling the macaroni and cheese on your face from lunch. Your globe-like form adorned with a cracked brown leather jacket, vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Jones and some sort of adult 4X OshKosh B'Gosh number that you've decided to leave unbuttoned so that we may gaze upon your supple, hairy teats.

You go right for them, snatching them up with all the class of a registered sex offender. Drooling cinnamon frappuccino from your gaping maw as you mouth-breathe huskily over a two page spread of Black Canary. Fumbling at the edges of the paper like you once fumbled over your sister's bra strap. Gripping the spine in your sweaty palms as you concentrate hard on not making a premature before you get to the public restroom.

Put it the %@$# down! Just put it down Stay Puft! This is a rack where people pick things up, to buy them. They haven't been put here so it's convenient for you to lock yourself in a stall with that dog-eared volume of Birds of Prey, dragging your completely bare testicles ever, ever, ever so slowly down the glossy print of each and every page.

It's supposed to work like this: I go to my local comic shop and look through his stuff. Then, if he doesn't have what I want, I whore myself down to the box store and look through their larger collection. But, the bookstore doesn't have a bigger collection, because after you've come in and smeared your bodily fluids and beverage of choice among every issue displayed, I would never decide to add these to my collection at home. Mostly because when I do eventually decide to kill you, your DNA would be all over my house.

Now, I'm not telling you to stop doing what you're doing. To put a cork in that bottle would only result in a rash of dead prostitutes. No, I'm saying that if you want to continue fornicating with the collected volumes in the comic section, then buy them first.

Or after. I really don't care. I just don't want them to be there after you leave.

I don't want to have to wonder if the white flakes on the edges of The Dark Knight Returns are more than just the remnants of your doughy breakfast.

I just want to know that if I walk up to the rack and see a graphic novel that I'd like to have, I can buy it without having to worry about the pages being creased. Or covered in powdered sugar. Or that they will give me chlamydia. Or, I mean, God knows what I could catch that I haven't even thought of, because with you, any atrocity is possible.

You see, you're disgusting. You're the big, fat, smelly stereotype that fuels a Simpsons character and, frankly, I hate you. You're not reading these to live a fantasy of a more dangerous, exciting life because you have responsibilities or bills or a wife. You're living these fantasies because you've decided to be a load that has absolutely no regard for even his fellow comic enthusiasts. You're the worst kind of fan. You're a cancer from the inside. A festering clot that disrupts the flow of the system. You see, and you want, and you take. Sitting there in dire need of a hair cut with phlegm running down your chin and gummy bears stuck all over your chubby digits.

God I hate you so much. I don't know what I would do to you if I had the power.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Able to go wee in the potty

A Letter to an Apparel Distributor Concerning Durability

2007-10-03T15:12:00.000-05:00

Dear Old Navy,

Er, you dumb, fat, chimp-like, uh. I don't know. Crack-head, idiot.

Anyway.

I recently bought two pairs of pants from one of your local stores here in town. I chose brown and browner trousers to replace my cargo pants that got a good healthy dose of rust from the last load in our aging washing machine. The pants purchase was a two fold act of acquiring attire that wasn't stained and trying once again to buy clothes that actually fit me. I tend to buy clothes under the pretense that I am super-gigantic and end up with legs that appear to just stop at the ground with no discernable taper or knee, like my freakishly long thighs are waiting for my real legs to attach to form some sort of Voltron robot/pro basketball player.

All was well as far as selecting and sampling your apparel in the store, so a purchase was made along with some shirts to commemorate the first time I had gone out exclusively to buy clothes for myself in about two years. Up until about 3 days ago I was pretty satisfied with my decision. Then I had a malfunction.

I say malfunction, but it was really the inevitable thread failure due to poor seam design by some overly ambitious clothing engineer. You see, these pants have a couple of superfluous pockets, as is the signature affliction of all Old Navy brand clothing, and usually I welcome the new and interesting operation of finding just what will and wont fit in my new cloth receptacles. But, my fun was cut short when your three-times-too-long change pocket, which is located inside my front right pocket, had a low level fashion hull breach and left half of said pouch free to flap around inside my pocket.

Oh dear, this won't do.

Let me give you a little background about me and clothing. Actually, cloth in general. You see, cloth has to lay flat against things. It can be curved and turned and folded as long as it isn't wrinkled against the surface it inhabits, wrinkled meaning that the fabric has unintentionally folded over on top of my skin.

Wrinkling or unintentional seaming is not to be taken lightly. Joe Haldeman even made wrinkles a cause of death in his book [b]The Forever War[/b]. So, to avoid being crushed by inertial pressure in my sleep, my towels are hung flat or laid on counter tops, bedding is properly laid out and stacked on the bed before I lay down to sleep, and pants pockets are stretched out to fall exactly as intended.

When your foolishly arrogant change pocket unraveled when I tried taking money out of it, imagine the same kind of reaction that Winnie the Pooh had when he tore the seam in his butt. Except, in place of the gentle, "Oh bother," out of a cute little bear, imagine a more appropriate, "Mother Fucker!" bursting out of a sleep deprived troll in the middle of Data Processing.

It would be an understatement to say that this ruined my day. These are damaged pants. I think the only thing that would take my mind off of them is if the damage had come from a bullet flying into my hip. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if I would be peeling the oxygen mask off of my face as I was lifted into the ambulance pleading, "no, no save them. New pants."

And do you know why I can't stand having slightly damaged clothing? It's because it means that I have to try and fix them.

Growing up with a father that could be gone for 6 months at a time means I know how to sew. With no one around to question my burgeoning manhood I didn't think twice about spending my young evenings cross-stitching with my mom while we watched Murphy Brown. I once even made a passable batman with no template to follow, but, as I got older I realized that I couldn't work cross-stitching into being "cool" along with all my smoking and listening to the Doors.

So, the dilemma arises that I know enough about sewing to repair my clothing, but am so out of practice that everything I mend is like some sort of fabricated Rorschach test. It's like a witch cursed Woody Allen to become a spider by night and half-ass together all of my trousers and polo shirts. To look at my handy work you would ask me if one of the elf cobblers was fired and had to get work in jeans and khakis to feed his family in today's inflating fantasy elf market.

Well, it was either that or the cookie tree but they're always striking over health insurance. Magical elf fathers need more stability than that.

I know that it is only a matter of days, perhaps hours, before I sit at my kitchen table with a tiny clear box of needles and thread and start the confusing task of repairing a pocket located inside of another pocket. I will have big plans for exactly how to make my stitches small and professional; confident it will look like it was sewn that way on purpose.

But, undoubtedly, I will end up making a couple of big, different colored "X's" which will effectively seal the breach, but, ascetically, make my right hip look cartoonishly deceased. That's if I'm lucky. In all honesty I'll probably spend most of the night delicately re-opening the pocket I've just sewn completely shut.

All of this adds up to make me thoroughly disgusted with the "sewmanship" work on my pants. My wife tells me that these things happen. I wear pants everyday and am rough on my clothes so I should expect rips and tears and unravelings. That's fair enough, but after only two or three weeks? Come on, I work tech support, I'm not [i]that[/i] hard on my clothes on a day to day basis. If I'm doing home repairs or yard work I wear jeans, and [i]they[/i] don't rip. Why can't your pants hold up to office work? What demographic were you going for when you stress tested these garments? Paraplegic? Coma patient? Burial clothes?

I'm not asking that they withstand an explosion but they should be able to withstand a dollar seventy-five in change. Most of that was quarters. You have to understand that some of your customers are going to be paranoid and neurotic; that a small failure in one quadrant of my attire means to me that another is not far behind. So, I'm not only worried about the pockets, but now I'm questioning every seamed surface there is.

How long before I bend too hard to sit at a restaurant and tear the inseam right up the middle? My exposed scrotum hitting the cold pleather of the booth seat at the Macaroni Grill sending me reflexively jumping into our table. The impact would send our pitcher of iced tea hurtling towards my wife who would instinctively duck, letting the heavy glass container strike the back of the head of the man in the booth next to us. The impact would send his head down toward his plate with enough velocity to completely impale the tines of his fork deep into his face, pinning the crab stuffed mushroom he was trying to enjoy between the table and his fucking forehead.

Is that what you want? You want that man's blood on your hands? I didn't think so!

So let's make a deal Old Navy. You want me to get my Fash' On? Why don't you get your Quality Merchandise On first, you fucking dingleberries.

Sincerely,

Chiggie Von Richthofen

Dreading the day he kills someone with his bare testicles

A Letter to Fast Food Window Attendants Concerning Service

2007-07-31T08:55:00.000-05:00

Dear vacuum filled, customer ignoring, vocational rejects,

Hi.

I'm fine, thank you.

No, I don't want a chicken poppler, thanks. I would like a chicken Caesar salad with a …

What? No. Chicken Sal-- SALAD! CHICKEN CEASAR SALAD!

With a coke.

No, a coke! A coca-cola, you – yes!

What? What do you mean what kind of drink would I like? A coke you goddamned idiot!

Ok, you know what? No more stupid questions from you. My turn to talk.

You know what pisses me off? You make me jump through all these hoops when we both know that after I'm done trying to speak English to you, you're just going to give me whatever the hell you happen to find laying around anyway.

I mean seriously. It's like you all aren't even humans. You're some race of sub-sapien troglodytes that have been trained to parrot human speech phonetically to fool me into thinking that you have heard and understood my food order.

Like some sort of "invasion of the body snatchers" scene you've descended onto our blue planet completely undetected, but, instead of world domination, you've been sent here to give me curly fries. Curly fries; every damn time, in every damn Arby's, in every damn parish and county from here to Memphis.

I don't want curly fries, you fucking imposters, because curly fries are just regular French fries that were supposed to be delicious and satisfying but somewhere along the way from their harvest to this window they got fucked up so bad that their very existence is a blatant insult to my face.

Think of them as a dramatic, potato, reenactment of your own life.

You know, actually, I want to think you are a failed alien invasion because I don't want to admit to myself that humanity is capable of the lows exhibited in select drive thru windows everyday across America. That idea chills my blood, so, I sit in my care and I think of all the things you might be other than a complete waste of air and water.

Maybe you're some sort of government program to discourage our country from consuming so much fast food. Or, maybe you're some sort of malfunctioning holographic A.I. Maybe you're a spy who has just murdered the real window person and has to wing it on what little English the KGB taught you to keep from blowing your cover.

"Hi."

"Hallo."

"Sooooo, you got my food?"

"Hallo. Walcome to Amareecan place of foods."

"Hey, they must be training you guys. You're much better than last week."

"Da. Are you likingk, sauces?"

"Yeah, sure. Why not?"

You get the idea, and really, I don't care what the reason is. I just want there to be some reason other than someone being that bad at their job.

I mean, I go up to the window and it's the same damn routine every time.

What is this, a duffle bag? Why is this bag big enough for me to use as a fucking Barney Rubble costume? I'm just getting one hamburger. Is this where all the big bags have gone when I actually do get a lot of food? Because it seems like when I actually get enough food for two people you just duct tape a plastic bag around the pile and dump the whole package in my lap like a kilo of blow.

And, why is there more coke on the outside of my drinks than in them? Are you stupid or are you trying to send me a message? Look, if you don't like my face, just go in the back and piss in my drink like a normal person. Don't hand me this Dr. Pepper bukkake nightmare with a big smile on your face sputtering, "here's your ant bait sir, please pull forward and we'll bring your food out to you."

No! I will not pull forward! Why don't you pull forward, so you can go fuck yourself!

Other drive-thru services have figured this out. It's only the fast food that is lagging behind. The rest have got it under control. They never give me someone else's booze at the liquor store drive-thru. I don't ever get half a shirt from the dry cleaners. And, it's not like I drive away from the pharmacy and ever find a handful of loose vicodin at the bottom of the bag.

Believe me, I check, every time.

And, I know that you all are paid less than the money it takes for a bus ticket home but there comes a point where the abuse and neglect just pushes me right into "I don't give half a rat shit" territory. It gets to the point where I'm sure that even with your paltry wages it would be more cost effective for the store to just install a machine at the window that, when detecting a customer has pulled up, just sprays mace right in their damn eyes and then plays a recording of laughter. At least then I'd know what kind of shit I was about to get myself into every time I had the munchies for some nuggets.

At the end of the day all I can do is thank God that you people haven't wandered into any other aspect of the food industry.

I swear if one of you ever found work at a local Pizza Hut, you'd spend all of your time delivering a turd in a shoe box to the wrong house a week late.

At least then I'd start getting my cold turds for free.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
I -aid c—ke –ou f—k—ng id—t!

A Letter to Commercial Drivers Concerning the Road

2007-07-26T08:52:00.000-05:00

Dear stupid and/or psychotic CDL carrying chimpanzee CRACK HEADS,

Where are you going?

WHERE are you going?

WHERE are YOU GOING?

I shout only because I want my question to be heard over the roar of blood in your ears as you suddenly wake up in the cab of your 18 wheeler only to find yourself actually mother fucking driving said vehicle down I-30 at three in the afternoon when you were sure that you were still at the Petro station snoring on top of an open Easy Rider with half a bottle of Jack next to your smoke stained face!

10 minutes ago I was looking at the back of a USA Truck trailer and now I could swear that I was watching some drunken circus bear on a unicycle attempt to balance a ten foot high stack of pancakes on top of his head.

Seriously. What is so urgent inside that tiny cockpit that you think it appropriate to sashay 20 tons of steel across the world's largest catwalk, a.k.a., my goddamned lane? Did some wires in the engine get crossed causing the inside of the cab to become immediately electrified? Or perhaps, maybe, that colony of lice that has been living, nay, thriving on your furry ass has decided to stage a coup against the fleas on your back and a violent skirmish has ensued? Maybe you just got the funk and all you want to do is shake what the good lord gave you.

Regardless of the reason you have got to make a decision. Pull the hell off the road, or learn how to control your disco fever ass because there are people around you trying not to get crushed like a coke can by a truck full of official Bratz merchandise bound for the nearest Super Target, and you've got to cut that swerving shit out! You look like the pirate ship ride at Six Flags. I don't know whether I'm supposed to pass you or just wait in line until it's my turn to ride.

I mean, you have got to feel that right? That double load of wood that is swaying back and forth so hard the sawdust is spraying across my windshield? You know what a windshield is right? That is the object that normal, mortal, people use to protect their face and bodies from wind and whatever else might try to enter through the front of their vehicle. But, when I get into the territory of hoping the windshield will stop things from your truck bed, well, it would be like me hoping a condom would stop a bullet.

You make me wish I had two different horns. One that makes a normal honk noise and one that makes a noise like a crowd of women screaming. The kind of hysterical group scream that would occur if someone was shot outside of a deli in some late 50s gangster flick. That way you could get the full emotional effect of my warning. Honk would mean that you need to go at a green light. Screaming women would mean that you are about to roundhouse kick my van with an oversized pallet of steel girders.

Would that work? Would screaming women be enough? Do I need to get more basic than that to get your attention? Maybe I could get a horn that sounds like a large explosion, or maybe a dinosaur. Perhaps an air raid horn complete with dive bomber and anti-aircraft fire sound effects might make a bigger impression.

Maybe I should just build I giant plywood costume around my work van so that I look like a bigger vehicle. Use some animal kingdom psychology on the road and just fool the trucks into thinking that I am one of you.

Then again this might just be taken as a sign of aggression and dominance and the next thing I know I'd be rammed off the road by some jealous psychopathic Optimus Prime in his attempt to keep me from fucking his hot truck wife.

Really, my only recourse is to avoid you Mad Max motherfuckers at all costs. I have to keep my driving loose and adaptive so that I can take evasive maneuvers against you giant deranged land asteroids at a moment's notice, all the time John Williams urging me to get closer to one of the big ones.

All I'm asking is that you guys try to be a little more aware of the world outside of your cab interior. Try to realize that when you are bending over to reach that SlimJim under your break pedal that the swerving that ensues is a little disturbing to some of the other drivers. Some of the other drivers meaning all of the other drivers, and swerving meaning destructive homicidal rampage.

If you're tired, pull over.

If you're drunk, pull over.

If you are swerving violently to knock off the gremlin tearing out pieces of your engine in the middle of a thunderstorm, for fuck's sake, pull over! He's small, you could probably take him in a fist fight.

Thanks and Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
The man you just ran into a XXX Super Store billboard

A Letter to Shoppers Concerning Personal Boundaries

2007-06-04T08:51:00.000-05:00

Dear Stupid shaved orangutans trained to buy things,

Get the hell back from me in line before I pick up my entire buggy and start clubbing you with it until it shatters into pieces and I use the pieces to kill you!

What is your problem with the line at the supermarket? Why do you think it's necessary that I feel your meaty, ho-ho breath on the back of my neck? Can you not see that we are, in fact, lined up in front of the cash register? We are adults, we should all understand that everyone will be served in the order that we individually concluded the "gathering" phase of our trip and lined up for the "paying" phase. Believe me, if I could cut in line I would. I don't, so that means that it's not allowed, hence taboo, hence back the fuck off. Your Cheetos aren't going to spoil during your wait.

I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to personal space: If you are close enough behind me for me to elbow you in the throat, then you are too close. I am always flabbergasted when people don't show the same natural aversion to being that close to someone. I don't want to be elbowed in the throat, so, I practice the preventative measure of placing myself out of elbow range. The same goes for children but it's not my throat I want to protect. For them it's preventing the "Shaolin Palm Strike" to my man tackle. Either way I figure 3 or 4 feet will place me out of their "no-fly" zone and keep me from having to clutch my windpipe or bend over to gather my nuts and berries after they've kicked over my basket.

Apparently I'm in the minority since I went to the supermarket twice this last weekend and once I felt a wet cough on the back of my neck and the other time, well, I'm pretty sure some old guy touched my ass. Hey, Walmart! Want people to like shopping at your store? Don't move the shoes closer to the sporting goods, I don't mind walking, just try to keep the molestation to a minimum if you can, thanks. That shower rape vibe is probably hurting sales a little bit.

Another thing that churns my butter (wait, is that an angry euphemism or a sexy one?).

Fine, another thing that really pisses me off is the fucking kids all over the place. When did the grocery store become a goddamned ball pit? Why do I have to swerve and dodge to avoid these random "Superstore Orphans" all the time? If you want to take your kid to the store, fine, whatever, but don't take them there just to dump them off. A chain store is not a nanny. I know that you got pregnant young and that you wanted to be a make-up girl at Dillard's and now instead you actually have to work to feed your kid, but guess what? It didn't work out the way you had planned it in your 90210 Trapper Keeper! If you want to be a negligent parent do it away from me. Just leave your kid in the bathtub at home with the door locked or something. Don't bring him here and tell him to go "look around."

Now, I'm not talking about a good parent whose kid got away from them. I was a kid, I understand that they are faster than adults, and sneaky, and mean. I don't even care if the kid goes apeshit and runs into me, just as long as I know you are going to beat him within an inch of his life once you catch him. Hell, that's entertaining.

No, I'm talking about those parents that let their kids wander around until they are dry humping my leg and all I here is, "Jimmy. Jimmy, no honey. No, Jimmy. No. No, we don't do that. We don't do that to people. Jimmy, no. Jimmy. Jimmy. Jimmy. Jimmy." Jimmy is about to get his little ass shoved into this prefabricated armoire display! Get. Your. Fucking. Kid.

On second thought, I probably wouldn't hurt that kid, it's not his fault that he thinks his middle name is "Don't Touch." I think I'd rather hurl his androgynous, 90 lb. father into the Budweiser display that looks like a football goal. Or maybe throw him up that hanging inflatable Shrek's ass.

It's people like that, the people that think the market is an extension of their house, that make it hard to acquire the most basic needs. Things like milk and bread and popcorn and beef jerky. They just make me crazy! I want to run up to the two ladies fighting over the last box of cake mix and kick in between their heads, knocking them both out, like Neo on the rooftop fighting the SWAT guys.

It's getting ridiculous and I just don't understand. All you have to do is back off. Give me and everyone else room to move and room to breath. Just because we are in a corporate machine doesn't mean we have to meander around like sheep. You're a human being, or a reasonable attempt at one, and you should respect yourself and others enough to know when you've crossed the line, literally.

And get your damn hand off of my ass!

Oh, no that's ok, I understand. I looked like your grandson from the back. That's ok people make mis…Wait! WHAT?

God I hate this place!

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
The Man Rocking Back and Forth in Line Mumbling Something About This Being a Bad Dream

A Letter to the Office Concerning Beverages

2007-04-09T08:32:00.000-05:00

Dear Stupid Co-Workers,

What in the figgety fuck is your problem with the coffee pot lately? Why have I gotten to the point of making two to three pots of coffee a day when I'm still only drinking two to three cups of coffee a day? You obviously have no problem in drinking all of that dark liquid, but when it comes time to anty up and make some more OH NO! Not your job is it buddy boy? No, that's for someone else to do; someone, you know, less important that hasn't proven themselves a necessary addition to our team here.

I guess that's what you're thinking, I don't know. I don't know why you won't take 30 seconds out of your day to put a fresh packet of Community into a filter and push a button. It's hooked up to the hot water in the building; it takes more steps for me to make toast than it takes to use our coffee machines.

That's right, machines. Plural. I have to do this in different rooms on a daily basis, all the time feeling your beady scavenger eyes on my back. The shadows play across the battleship grey carpet as you circle over head so you can swoop down and take advantage of a larger animal's initiative.

I might have just kept going like this, disgruntled but silent, if I hadn't been following a fellow employee into the break room today and seen this "Joe Killer" attitude live in front of my face. We both walk in, both see the empty coffee pot, and he turns to me and shrugs, "well, I guess it's all gone," and walks off. What? Gone? It's not gone, you idiot, it's empty. This isn't a magical fucking spring! The break room isn't some enchanted glade in a forgotten wood! Coffee is the product of a deliberate action performed by a human being.

Obviously, you have some problems with the idea of where things come from, so, let me break down how some things are made in nature so you can see our place in the cosmic balance. Tiny elves in trees make cookies, old cartoon women make paper towels, grown men that dress up like the Sun make Jimmy Dean Sausage, and people that work in an office are supposed to make motherfucking coffee.

So, here's the skinny on the procedure. If you see that there isn't any more coffee, especially if you are the reason for that, make some more. Shhh! Don't talk, you'll ruin the moment. Just turn your happy ass back around, walk over to the big bad coffee pot, and perform the monkeys-can-do-it-better-than-you task of refilling the pot for the other people in the office.

Why?

No, it's not because you want to show everybody you're such a nice guy. That would only happen if you came early in the morning and made it first, like I do. No, this is because you owe it to the people that made it before you. It's because you need to get this "pay it forward" bullshit mentality out of your head when you are doing something that you are expected to do. You aren't going out of your way when you make more Joe, you're paying back the person that made it first. You're giving back to the work community, pitching in, pulling your weight. There should be a clamorous riot to get to the pot to be the next person that refills it.

That's the biggest reason Coffee Killers make me so mad. You have absolutely no drive to help out the group. You pride yourself on being part of a business team but you can't even get the little stuff right. I'm not known for my immaculate work ethic, but that doesn't mean I can't spot a bunch of Joe stealing sonsab*tches when I see them, and you bunch need to get your act together.

You all are the reason that the world hates America. I mean that.

Sincerely,
Chiggie Von Richthofen
Not a despicable, Coffee-Killing, pencil-neck, bastard