Sour Cream Bagel Bites

Writing below. Inside joke title. You had to be there.

Haiku of the Day:

There's too many cooks,
like in a silent movie
no one can hear you

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Prototype" from MW's word of the day. I think we all know what a prototype is.)

Today's "365" Project (Look at the morning sky and make something inspired by it. Could not have been a LESS inspiring sky this morning. So I decided to list things that are as boring as the sky was.)

"Dullard's Sky Association"

Gray on gray.

Porridge in a cubicle.

A milquetoast convention.

The cotton underbelly of military issue twin bed.

The contents of a yawn.

Rows of tumbling hotel linens
A request for more water
A sedan in light traffic
Freshly dried cement
An open bag of cat litter
Dentist office magazines
The way a mouth gapes while brushing teeth
The taste and texture of butterless mashed potatoes
Three nickels and paper clip
The occasional rustle of a newspaper
Talk about the weather
A muffled cough in a half full theater
Fake plants in bank lobbies
White gym socks
"Okay"
Luke-warm black coffee
Wednesday afternoon
Cesar salad
Corrugated cardboardOvercast Overeasy Overall.

*Guest suggestions by Emily*

"Businessmen on a business street"
"Poor speakers with monotone voices in a warm room"

Men of Ill Repute

The Ghost of Fellows ticks
a lighter in the stunning black of pre-dawn.
Molten orange flashes
cask stark on coal eyes
intent on the flame.
He shakes, curses and
whips the plastic torch into the pond
with a protesting plink.
Wisps of quickening breath rise
in vapor puffs to join
the purpling atmosphere.
He shivers, pops a lapel
in an attempt to turtle
into the wool of his trench.
A quick glance at a glowing wrist
shoots a itchy pang of rage
straight to the spine.
The Ghost flinches into a tremor
and bellows to the empty
above the pond
a great, frustrated snarl.

The ensuing silence
goads him like a freckled
child sticking out his tongue.

The Ghost of Fellows resigns
to the cold wood of a bench.
He caresses the mothy insides
of his pennyloafers
with gropey toes,
swishing and shifting
the soothing gravel underfoot.

Time passes behind closed eyes.

The Ghost dreams of grazing the shoulders
of swaying passengers on midday trains.
He hums a mournful fugue as the fires
burst through windows and mouths fill
with ash and sour, cottoned smoke.
In the blinding scald,
the Ghost feels the cradle
of his sister's arms for the first time
since he snuffed her out beneath
sopping terry cloth.

He wakes soft,
like breaking through a layer of cloud,
and squints at the searing crest of dawn.
Perhaps today? he muses,
lifting the dusty, layered
husk of a self off the bench.
And with a step, he fizzles out,
like butter in a pan,
leaving behind only
an oily streak and an orange lighter
bobbing among the green slime
and cigarette butts.

Haiku of the Day:

Biting rain and wind
saturates while I run blind
in the bleary night 

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Chouse" from MW's word of the day. It means to cheat or trick.)

Today's "365" Project (Make a life-size person out of your clothing. I made a man out of my soaking wet clothes from my night run.)
"The Sopping Man"

Rubs and Pokes

Watch Wednesday (Week 19)

Stats:
Running Mileage: 342.31/1,000
Push-ups: 3,225/10,000
Sit-ups: 3,100/10,000
Pages Read: 4,041/10,000
Books Completed: 12/25
Words Written: 34,769/100,000

Fasts (Days without)
Internet: 36/100
TV: 46/100
Gaming: COMPLETE 121/100
Meat: 50/100
Junk: 36/100
Booze: 23/100

Nearly 34 miles run this week in an attempt to close the gap. Enjoying the chase with time to beat back the baseless goals I have set out for myself. People typically ask if there's some program I'm adhering to, or if it's a group project. I must appear insane when I say no.

When I'm feeling less hopeful, it does seem fruitless, like I'm updating into nothing and after completion I will receive nothing. Perhaps I'm testing that age old saying, "It's not the destination, it's the journey," by making the destination nothing more than a bragging right. So far I am proud of what I've done, but I'm so focused on each passing day and the mounting pressure of the days to come that I don't have time to reflect. I'm sure this is how great things get done, when you've been forced to do so much that reflection can only happen in the doing. And all those thoughts and feelings that would get drawn out in the time of waiting end up jumbled and polished into what's being worked on in the now, without ones own knowledge even. This is why I've never been a long term writer. I lack the analytic mind and discipline to hone any of my reckless, raw, mewling, sloppy little babies into anything mature. I just toss them out in the cold and make new ones. Better ones. Weirder ones. I'm a creation addict and my numerous infant notions are left to die out in the cold. I would say I just never learned to parent right. But that's not true. I read the books. I took the classes. It just never stuck. I got into it for the feeling of making them, not taking care of them.

This is again why I'll have trouble ever being a writer of any weight or prowess. That's weird to admit in writing, and funny to recognize that becoming a GOOD writer is something I've always wanted. Just never bad enough to go past the mewling baby stage. I just want raw nerve all the time. No finesse. No pretense. Just all out in your messy, zitty, horrible-faced, gory, beautiful, typoed and misshapen creato-vomit. Maybe I'll get good at that at least. Who knows really...a phase perhaps? There's still light to see? I'll grow into it?

I just want to have a day where I feel like I've done SOMETHING with less criticism from the heckling box seats in my head.

Haiku of the Day:

Drifting limbs over
the tops of upholstered seats
to take in the pleats

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Trenchant" from MW's word of the day. It means keen or sharp and a bunch of other crap that pertains to keen/sharpness.)

Today's "365" Project (Make a rubbing of something! I took to the streets around the prudential and found a couple)

"Prohibition and Request"

Kid's Books

My 365 project for today is to "reinterpret a favorite childhood story," which I'm having difficulty interpreting. I'm even having trouble thinking of a good story I enjoyed as a kid. A few things come to mind:

I LOVED Micky Mouse when I was very little. He was my JAM. I even had this terrifying semi-animatronic reading Mickey that you put tapes into and he would read stories. Moving mouth and eyes and everything. This may have been how I learned to read, but I would need my mom or dad's confirmation on that one.


I had a ton of animal storybooks growing up:

Stellaluna was Will's favorite if I remember correctly and it told the story of a fruit bat that was raised by birds or something.

Cactus hotel was a wonderful residual from when by grandparents lived in Arizona. I loved how desert life blossomed at night. Something about that made it wonderful to walk around there, knowing that a secret world was just a sunset away.

Animalia was a combination I spy/alphabet/art smorgasbord. Each beautiful page contained a passage of alliteration specific to a letter of the alphabet with what seemed like hundreds of pictoral representations as well. L would have lions, lemons, lighthouses, lollipops, etc. some pages were truly horrifying too, which was fascinating to me.

But I think my personal favorite story was called the twelfth hour. It told the tale of an elephant throwing a costume party for himself and all his animal friends. Over the the course of the party you get a glimpse of all the awesome things the elephant put together, including a massive feast. Near the end, it's discovered that someone has eaten the entire feast! But don't worry, the elephant just whipped up finger sandwiches and everyone was happy at the end. What make this book amazing was that at the very back of the book there was a challenge to figure out who ate the feast and that the answer was hidden in riddles on each page. I spent HOURS pouring over that book, desperately trying to divine the culprit out if it's pages. I ended up cheating and looking in the secret packet in the back, but man that was one cool ass book.

Haiku of the Day:

Cigarette smells waft
out from lonely brick alcoves
waking vice longings

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "demagogue" from MW's word of the day. It means a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.)

Madcap

Monster Monday

Time Muncher

The Time Muncher is an omnipresent, intergalactic, Void-Being that latched itself to Earth some 200,000 years ago. Since we began surveying the astral plains is the mid-70's, there have only been 6 registered sightings of the Time Muncher so our knowledge is mostly theoretical. Even with this vast disadvantage, Astralbiologists have been able to agree on a few keys aspects of the creature:

-As it's name suggests, the muncher consumes time. It has an array of tentacles the span the planet that seek out people having fun and suck the time from them. There are many theories about what the muncher does with the time. Some believe it merely redistributes the time to people doing miserable things like standing in line or children on Christmas Eve. Other scientists postulate that the muncher is a ancient astral parasite, sapping the earth of time until it's engorged, at which point the monster will detach and seek out another time creating host. There are a few outliers that think the muncher was born in the earth and is a natural aspect of a life-supporting planet's development cycle.

-Benjamin Franklin was the earliest observer of the creature. Some historians believe he was capable of communicating with the beast and invented daylight savings time, not as a way to "save money on candles" as many believe, but to help feed to monster more regularly to free up more time for Americans during the early years of development. It's been said he created a pact with John Adams to have Ben buried with the letters he wrote to the muncher.

-The true size and shape of the Time Muncher fluctuates depending on who you ask. Between the 6 sightings, the muncher's spanned from "small dog" to "enveloping the entire sky." Most agree based on this information that the TM is capable of changing its appearance at will and presents itself to only specific individuals (hence the relationship with Ben Franklin.)

Haiku of the Day:

Sunshine pierces the

crisp, bleary chill of shimmering

pre-winter gustings  

Today's Drawing and "365" Project (Make something surreal/inspired by the word "Fusty" from MW's word of the day. It means old-fashioned or saturated with dust and stale odors.)
"Tabletop"

Squirrel Booty

Lobbed off from the goodies, the baddies fester, brood and plot.

Haiku of the Day:

Lone bag of Sun Chips

placed neatly on a park bench

during my dusk run.

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Malapropism" from MW's word of the day. It's when you mistake a word for a similar sounding one.)

Today's "365" Project (Make a word out of something in your environment)

"Halloween Booty! Complete with a homemade candy corn Y"

Crum(b/p)ling

Beginning the fifth month of this madness:

What flows from a life fraught with blanched fulfillment?

Whenever I roll my ankle I hear a crack,
a tiny bone-to-sinew snap that repeats
each complete circumference.
A flaw in the springs and gearwork
of my stunted ape protuberance.
Idly I click away
circle after circle,
feeling out the ticks
that lead step by step
to the end of my ankle,
the end of the leg and the end of
the conducting visage
that pleads on plodding
on and on.
To walk across splintering floorboards
creaking with weight and longing,
where the doorways proceed more doorways.
The ache in residence
groans wispy needlings
in the wrinkle space.
You see where the skin was rubbed?
The semi-translucent bulbs
blockading against a future uncertain forces
to protect all the little piggies.
Again, I wander off in mind
to the collapsing arches argument
and witness the demise
of all on which I stand.
The crumbling and crumpling
of laws and systems that
govern the solid.

Why is this not a bigger deal?

Haiku of the Day:

I dreamed of scaling
the cracked, weathered hull of the
Titanic last night

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Simplistic" from MW's word of the day.)

Today's "365" Project (Make a fake ID for something. I made an ID badge for some fictional planet.)
"From my first trip to Telion!"