Fish Tacos of Death: June 2012

Randomosity #2

I was delighted to find a "royal berry punch" starburst sitting in the file cabinet next to me at work. But I can't eat it. Because in the midst of chewing and savoring its "royal berry punch" goodness, I could get throwninto a wild phone call which would require all the energies of my tongue movements, and now, how could that happen if I was throwing a "royal berry punch" starburst around in my mouth? It could not.

Since I have no camera to capture the starburst sitting in front me,

look at this picture I stole off of the internet, featuring dozens of "royal
berry punch" flavored starbursts, and just like my predicament now, I can't eat them.

Actually, in about five minutes, I can eat it. But right now, I can't. I just have to sit there and look at it. I even opened it up and smelled it. How can we relate this to life? Well, I'm not going to tell you. The lesson is veiled in mystery and grand symbolism, but if you think about it long enough, you will see the eternal splendor that lies within.

Old People

This post is departing from my usual randomness and slapstick shenanigans.

I work at a job where I hear a lot of phone calls between old people. It used to be funny at first, with all of the enemas and depositories and pills and commodes and early bird specials and bridge club and senior centers, and...I could go on and on. Then it became boring. Now, I've learned something about senior citizens. They have a world that is all their own, their own culture, their own little quirky things they say and do.

Also, a great many of them are depressed. The stats show depression is extremely common in seniors, and suicide is most prevalent in that age group. But I really figured out the depression part just by working here at my job. Think about it. Health rapidly declining. The end of your life approaching. Maybe your spouse has recently died. Maybe your kids and grandkids think you're a burden. Maybe they threw you in an old folks home so they didn't have to worry about you anymore. Maybe they never visit, maybe they never call you. Maybe your only friend is Nurse Betty, and she doesn't understand you or what you're going through.

It's easy to see why there is such sadness and despair among the elderly. Also, I am not saying that every person who gets put in an old folks home was put there by an uncaring family. I am also not saying that every single person in a senior home is unhappy. However, depression and loneliness are quite common in the elderly, and I'm sure that it could really be prevented, either on their part or on the part of their children.

I've had a desire lately to make some sort of positive impact on the world, and supposedly through my potential future career in physical therapy. Maybe I should work in geriatrics? I don't know. It would be fulfilling to help people feel better and be able to move around, instead of them sitting all day and becoming more and more immobilized, and probably more and more sad as their health plummeted.

Anybody who reads this know of any elderly people, or had grandparents who have suffered depression, or some sort of severe sadness and loneliness? Expound, via comments, if you would. I would like to hear.

Randomosity

So I was driving to work from Arby's, and the opening piano part from "In The End" by Linkin Park came on the radio, and it reminded me of my percussion class in middle school. I guess that song was really popular back back when I was in 8th or 9th grade, and kids in that class were always playing that piano part on their glockenspiels and xylophones. Somebody suggested to Mr. Bateman that we take that part and make a "new drumline cadence" out of it. It's pretty humorous that that was a suggestion, but what was even funnier was that we actually tried it (as in, we tried it right there in the bandroom, not, we actually performed it in a parade). It was bad. Maybe we were just a bad drumline. The end.

THE ENTRANCE TO DEATH

I spent the whole morning at work watching parrot videos on youtube. EXCITING HUH?! I decided I want a parrot. This bird obsession thing started when I went outside on my 15 minute break and listened to the various sounds of a mockingbird that was perched on a telephone line. I think it was a mockingbird. Are any of you people birdwatchers? Any of you, like, 3 people that read this? Excellent!

By the way, there's a funny youtube video of a parrot saying all manner of random things and then singing the spongebob squarepants song. Then I decided I want a parrot. The end.

Holden Never Meant to Cause You Trouble

I dreamed that all my upper teeth fell out. And also all my toenails fell off. Which was weird, because the pain of no toenails was actually in my fingernails. Or maybe all my fingernails fell off too. In any case, the creepiest thing was my teeth coming out. Also, there were a bunch of ladies sitting there in the room, and I had my toenails in my hand, and they were infected and smelled way bad, and one of the old ladies was like, "Ewww! That smells awful!" and I was like, "Sorry!" The end.

The Phone Booth

Another prompt, followed by an intense story.

You're waiting at the bus stop for your bus to arrive when suddenly the phone in the phone booth next to you starts to ring. At first you ignore it but the ringing just doesn't stop. Unable to ignore it any longer, you scurry over into the booth and pick up the receiver. "Hello?"

What happens next?

"IS THIS CLANCY?!" screams an old man voice on the other end.
"Uh, no, this is Steve," I reply.
"SAY THAT AGAIN?!" he screams again. "I DON'T HEAR TOO WELL."
"I said this is Steve!" I say a bit louder.
"CLANCY, I NEED MY PILLS REFILLED!"
"I'm sorry old man, I don't have your pills!"
"DON'T HAVE WHAT NOW?"
I hang up the phone. But just as I'm about to step out of the phone booth, it rings again. I know I shouldn't but...I pick it up.
"I'm pointing a gun at your head," comes a grim raspy voice on the other end.
"Whoa man, whoa," I say. "For real?"
"Yes. Now do you have the money?"
"What money?" I ask, confused.
"Wait," he says. "Is this Bill Gowers?"
"No, I'm Steve," I reply.
"Wait, what? Where are you at? Aren't you at the corner of Jefferson and Sunset?"
"Um, no, I'm at a bus stop on 15th..."
"Then who am I pointing a gun at?" he asks.
"I don't know buddy," I respond. "But, hey, listen, my bus is here, so I gotta run." And I hang up. I don't want to miss my bus.
On the bus is my girlfriend Stacy. We smooch. She's so hot. You wish you had a girlfriend as hot as her.

The end?

The Cemetery

I joined a site called Writers Network. This was a prompt for my next story. It got creative juices flowing.

On your way home from a friend's house, you decide to take a short cut and end up in the cemetery. You've never seen this place before and wonder if it has always been there. You get a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach and while every bone in your body is telling you to turn around, you can't help but move forward.

What happens next?

"Gee, that looks like a haunting cemetery," I say to myself as I come upon a cemetery I've never seen before. It has a typical haunted cemetery swinging gate. Above the gate, it says, in letters that look like they're dripping blood, "CEMETERY. STAY OUT."

"Uh oh!" I say. "Sounds like a pretty crazy cemetery! I better go check it out!"

I park the car, and jump out. It's raining. Lightning is flashing, obviously. The wind is howling through the treetops. This is probably a dangerous idea, but I'm the adventurous type. How can I pass up a haunted cemetery? How?

The headstones are all ancient looking. Some are tilted, like they're going to pop out of the ground. Others, the engravings are so worn I can't make out a thing. "Those engravings sure are worn!" I say to myself.

But one headstone catches my attention.

"Oh no," I say, dread filling the pit of my stomach.

I wipe off the front, filthy with grime and dirt.

My mouth drops open in shock. Nothing could have ever prepared me for this moment, this one pivotal defining moment in my entire existence. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was staring at, with that stupid look on my face.

"SAMUEL GOMPERS, 1850-1924. MAY HE REST IN PEACE."

"No way!" I say, still reeling from the shock of it all. "The leader of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1924 who united many labor groups in a federation of trade unions? I learned about him in school! Awesome!"

I leave the cemetery, just feeling happy about myself. Man, my friends are not gonna believe this.

The Breakup

I joined a writers network site. This story is a result of a prompt that basically asked for a breakup dialogue.

It was a cold rainy night.

Cold and rainy...like her heart.

"Your heart is cold and rainy," I told her. How I hated her.

"But...but..." she stammered.

"No buts Amy," I replied.

"Does this mean you're breaking up with me?" she asked, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

"Don't cry, Amy," I said, wiping her tears with my hair. "You just met me five minutes ago. Don't let it get to you."

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I loved you! I loved the way you kissed me. I loved the way you chewed your tomatoes. I loved the way you stroked my face with your nose. I loved how you got so angry and started breaking things every time I beat you in poker!"

"Yeah," I said, a smile forming across my weathered face as I remembered all those good times we had in the past five minutes, kissing, eating tomatoes, playing poker, and being intimate with our noses.

"Doesn't that mean anything to you?" she cried. "I gave up everything to be with you!" Her long brown hair danced in the wind. It was kind of strange, kind of creepy actually, but it made for a nice poetic touch to our breakup.

"Tell me this," I said to her, posing a clever question. "If I was not a handsome brute, if my pectorals did not dance, if my beautiful toned thighs were not as big as the cedars of lebanon, would you still have taken a chance on me?"

"Well, no," she responded.

I had my answer. With that in mind, I turned my back on her, kicked her cat, smashed the windshield of her car with my face, and stormed off.

Intentional Foul

Here's what I want to know. If a high amount of sodium is bad for you, can't you just drink a large amount of water to dilute the sodium in your system, thus negating any bad effects? TELL ME. TELL ME NOW.

Waffle Crisp. Nom. Some skeptics claim that Waffle Crisp never disappeared. I am here to tell you that that is false. It was gone. And now it's back. LET THE FESTIVITIES BEGIN.

I'm scraping my brain with a grapefruit spoon, trying to think of something clever to say, but I'm having a hard time. Also, I am suffering from severe cerebral hemmoraging from the afore-mentioned grapefruit spoon scraping. It's bleeding, squirting out actually, all over my computer, my keyboard, all over the girl in the next cubicle. What a mess.

Ahmad-Rashad, the bloodthirsty dictator of Syria,
responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent lives.

I went through my list of followers and did some purging. If you privatize your blog and don't invite me to read it, but still think you have the right to lurk through my blog, mark my words...you will be purged. And then I will hunt you down and bite your face off, like Hannibal Lecter. And then place your face upon my face. And then everyone will think I'm you. But then they'll say, "Hey, where's Holden?" And then I'll rip your face off my face, and go, "Here I am!" and we'll have a good laugh. And then I'll put your face back on, and they'll be like, "Man, that Holden sure is a jerk. Who does he think he is?" and then I'll rip your face off my face again and be like, "No you don't! No you don't! You don't talk about me like that!" And then they'll feel ashamed that they spoke so poorly of me. And I feed on your shame. And your face.

Any opinions on what's going on in Syria man? Geez. Sucks. I don't know what to do. That Ahmad Rashad guy should die. Is that his name? I'm trying to remember...Bashad Rashad, Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz, crap...I guess I could google it. Nah, that takes too long. Heh! I should be president. And we should also send in Hannibal Lecter to eat Rashad's face.

Does anybody else think Emily has great looking ankles? I think so. Frikkin HOT.

Holden waiting for Emily to get home
so he can jump out and frighten her.

By the way, Emily and I watched "Silence of the Lambs" the other night on TV. There was some face-eating going on. The movie was basically the story of my life, with all of that face eating. You'd think I would've mentioned the "Silence of the Lambs" thing at the beginning, as sort of a preface to all of my Hannibal Lecter references, but that's not the way I roll. And why is this blog entitled "Intentional Foul" you might be asking? In your Holden mocking voice, you say, "Because it's a good band name. Dur dur dur!" and then hit yourself in the forehead like I always do. No. Not even what I was thinking. Way off. It's a good name for an album, preferably a death metal album, where that phrase is an understatement about how mercilessly I beat you and eat your face during an NBA basketball game. "Enough with the face eating!" you're saying. Wait, are you? That's what the ref would be saying, as he slaps me with a "flagrant face-eating foul." And his hand.

Are you afraid, blog reader? Do I make you uncomfortable? Is this blog too distasteful for your...taste? Because if it was distasteful for any of your other senses, I would be worried. And I don't worry about a lot of things. But that...that right there is something I would worry about.

Baboon?

Yes, you read it right. Baboons. There were lots of them. And that guy from "River Monsters." This was all in a dream. Along with some weird family guy episode involving Peter and Quagmire in a house which is apparently surrounded by Jason Schwartzman, and they need to sell their guns to him. It's weird how I really have no idea who Jason Schwartzman is, other than, I know he's an actor of some sort. But apparently my subconscious coughed his name up. Stupid subconscious. Probably got all sorts of crazy crap down there.

BABOON!

I started watching 24 a couple weeks ago. It was just incredible. That's all I can say. A couple of plotholes aside, the first season was just awesome, and the season finale spectacular. I don't know why. Something about Jack Bauer getting really really mad and going on a killing spree is extremely triumphant.

JASON SCHWARTZMAN!

Did I just spoil it? Are you going to watch it? No, you're not, because nobody ever watches what I watch. Forget you, forget all of you.

JACK BAUER ABOUT TO KILL YOU!

By the way, that season finale was #10 in TV guide's top 100 TV episodes of all time, so um...eat that. I'm sure people will disagree, but I liked it. As is usually the case with things.

Hike of Utter Doom

I destroyed my body hiking a mountain.

Zealous to do a hike this week, I voted on the Red Mountain in Ivins, which I did a couple times back in high school. It was a bad idea. Or maybe it was the fact that I wore a black shirt. Or the fact that I only brought one bottle of water. Or the fact that I led the three of us (Beau, Isaac, me) up a strenous trail that none of us had done before. Or the fact that it was June 1st and that it was probably over 100 degrees outside.

I learned some valuable things from this expedition.

1) Fierce Strawberry flavored Gatorade tastes absolutely delicious after you have suffered from heat exhaustion bordering on a full-on heat stroke.

2) It hurts when you bash a toenail on a rock and it bleeds everywhere.

3) Apparently when your body temperature rises to dangerous levels, it messes with your brain, which is kind of a bad thing to have messed with.

4) Beau is always willing to drive your car in the event that the afore-mentioned heat exhaustion/ heat stroke has made you incapable of thinking straight and driving safely.

5) Nature is beautiful, just lovely, but when you're about to die, it doesn't really matter.

6) The Dos Equis guy who says, "Stay thirsty my friends" ? No. I'm warning you. "Stay hydrated."- Me.

The Red Mountain, so named because it resembles a mountain.

That's a pretty face right there.

A horny toad trying to blend in with its surroundings, but Beau spotted it. Good eye Beau.

Gunsight Canyon, where the trail began. GUNSIGHT.

The desert area north of the summit.

Angry as usual.

Having a feast atop the mount.

Lichens.

Aliens? The Giant Turtle of Wisdom?

This guy can hike, wow. I'm pretty sure he never broke a sweat during the whole disaster. He kind of reminds me of a mountain goat, just scampering up the mountain with ease, clicking his hooves.