A Veteran Answers Ten Questions

I live across the street from a veteran's hospital. Every so often a veteran is released from care with nowhere to go and no one to look after them, so they make their way over to Highland Lake. As I have mentioned in earlier writings, my apartment overlooks the front gate of the entire complex, with a view extending to the opposite side of Clairemont Road. When a veteran comes to visit Highland Lake I can see him coming from a mile away. Most of them appear to use the same routine, beginning with a full-out formal solute and addressing their harassee as "Sir." Then, as they stand there jittering, they sound off a not-too-clear sob story about their life with the intention of gaining your spare cash or a ride to somewhere strange, like Stone Mountain. My roommate Ross has had a few encounters with these unfortunate souls. He told me how a man ran up to him outside of the complex and said things like, "Call the police, sir! My legs are on fire!" These guys are harmless for the most part, but for whatever reason they never like to be told to go back to the hospital across the street. When they show up, you know they are truly out there on their own, with nowhere to stay, because they return four or fives days in a row, looking for help.

Two days ago I had a conversation with one of these vets. It was around midnight and by then I had witnessed him confront half a dozen people, pleading with them as he repeatedly showed them his ID. I felt bad because the night before I saw him outside and yelled “Ten hut!” This got a strong reaction from him, like he thought he had just been rescued, and part of me realized I shouldn't be making jokes. I met him outside and talked to him for a while. When I first confronted him, he ran up to me and said, "Don't worry I'm not dangerous. I have schizophrenia, but I take my medicine." Then he shoved his ID in my face, which looked fake. I'm pretty sure the picture was of a younger Japanese-American man. I gave him $3, but I wanted an interview in return. The following are personal statements from Timothy Brady, native of Stone Mountain, Georgia, born in 1960.

Q#1: How do you feel about President George Bush's performance? Approve/Disapprove.

A: Disapprove. My father is a veteran, and he told me Bush is not rotating the soldiers properly. I'm just giving you the opinion of an honest man.

Q#2: How do you feel the operation in Iraq is progressing? Well/ Fairly Well/ Not Well

A: Well. I say, kill all the bastards. Can't let any terrorists live.

Q#3: Which presidential candidate will you support?

A: McCain

Q#4: When our country votes for a President, what do you think the major issue will be?

A: For American people, I think the most important thing is to defend our country. Really, it could be anything though because all politicians are crooked.

Q#5: In your opinion, do you think America is ready to have a female/black president?

A: They killed Dr. K. They killed Malcolm X. If Obama is president they are gonna kill him. Really the government will do anything because they gotta make money. That reminds me of this old Bob Dylan song, "War pigs leave the fighting to the poor."

Q#6: Do you think the primaries go on for too long?

A: Way too long.

Q#7: Do you tend to be Pro Life or Pro Choice?

A: Pro Life. Everybody should have the chance to live. These ladies who throw their babies in a dumpster should just take them to a hospital.

Q#8: Do you feel the internet should have more censorship?

A: I don't know nothing about computers. A good hacker will get in there though. They can do anything on the internet. I don't even know how to turn a computer on. I tried using Yahoo once but it was going way too fast. I can't even spell Yahoo.

Q#9: How do you feel about the way Michael Vick was punished? Too Harsh/ Not Harsh Enough/ Just Right.

A: They took away most of his salary. I think that was enough. One thing is for sure: he gonna run. Though you know the name of my favorite QB? Tom Brady. He can really throw, though I'm no kin to him.

Q#10: Is there anything else you want to tell me?

A: I just want to say everybody has sins. The devil puts these sexual ideas in my head, but I pray for them to stop. Don't worry though. My niece's granddaddy died, but I won't tell her.

Fly Babies in the World of Sports

Get ready for filth. Yeah, this is supposed to be a sports blog, and it is, but you never know when and where Inspirado will hit you like a runaway train. To stay in good practice, I just wanna recap the events of the last twelve hours that led to something really disgusting. Wednesday nights have become the point in the week when I go out and party the hardest. This is due to my Monday-Wednesday-Friday afternoon class schedule and the fact that this cool dance club is free on Wednesdays after midnight. I hardcore busted out the best techo moves I could find on youtube for a few hours, drank tequila, red bull, whatever, left when the place shut down at 3, chilled at my buddy Naoki’s new crib for a while, and finally drove home after a 6 a.m. game of beer pong. I was pretty hungry at this point. After I tore through the last of my bag of Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch Doritos, I decided to pop my last Totino’s pizza in the oven, which takes ten minutes of preheat time and another 15 to cook. I was able to hold off passing out for the first ten minutes and managed to get the pizza in the oven, but, in a dangerous move, nodded off after that. I was jolted awake by the my shrieking smoke alarm about forty minutes later. The pie was smoking hot, totally burnt to charcoal. I threw open my balcony doors and tossed the entire cookie sheet outside, franticly pushed out the smoke and collapsed back in bed when the piercing siren stopped.

After a good eight hours of sleep, I woke up only to lie in bed and slowly recoup from the night before. I wanted some caffeine so I drove to McDonalds and ordered $10 worth of food, mostly in the pursuit of a large coke and iced coffee. I stuffed my face back in my liar and turned on the 2:20 p.m. Braves game, when I noticed all the flies I had let in. My cat was scurrying around the room and pouncing on three or four fat mother horseflies. More were coming in with the balcony doors still open and the main room still smelling like smoke. Though the Braves game wasn’t bad, these flies became the best entertainment in the room. I decided to team up with my cat as a Flybuster. I tried swatting them with a towel for a bit, but then I found the quality dark green lighter I had just bought the night before. I stalked these extra plump flies and managed to burn off their wings. Two of the fatties remained barely alive so I forked out a tweezer and dropped them into an old glass candle that I had refilled with wax. This served as the perfect fly specimen environment because they could walk around a little but they couldn’t get out.

I turned my attention to the Braves game for a bit because it looked like they were about to win with a 2-1 lead in the ninth. Unfortunately, Bobby Cox decided not to bring in one of the Braves two or three closers and the dude from the inning before gave up a homerun. I obviously didn’t like that so I turned to check in on my fly prisoners. One of them was upside down, looking like he was about to leave us, and the other appeared to be chilling exactly as I left it. Then my eye caught some squiggly movement and I was like "Guhhh?" There were tasty little white fly larva squirming around the wax! The fat one, on its deathbed, decided to give birth in its last moments of life. There were only two or three worm babies when I first caught them, but they continued pouring out of this bug’s ass, sometimes three or four at a time. SICCCKKKK. The mama fly kept on churning them out, and labored babies into the twenties until she finally kicked the bucket. The whole process looked very exhausting and excruciating. The fly looked a lot smaller after the babies were out. I thought this whole thing was kind of fun to watch, though it was very sickening. The larva banded together and moved like a single organism, each worm baby functioning as a piece of a limp. They built up enough momentum to move the mom’s body around, and I’m not totally sure but I think they started eating it. As you can tell, I got very excited and wanted to make sure to capture this in words, so when I set them all on fire in about two minutes the entire happening will be that much more entertaining. You live your life and do what you can. Sometimes you have to make your own fun. A lot of the time I think gross things are fun. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Ken Griffey Jr. hits 600th home run

It took me a while, but I finally figured out what I want to do with this web space. The multi-annual friendly updates and self-motivational posts normally found on here have been great, but I don't use it enough, and emo venting is not very cool, so instead of using wandyteeth as an open life-book similar to those found on facebook and myspace, I think I want to use it for something else. And then it hit me. I have always wanted my own sports blog. I am a diehard ESPN junkie. Huge sports fanatic. To quote Tim Kalishaw from Around the Horn yesterday, "Bring me the constant: variety in sports." I need to be writing about something and it just so happens I am really into sporting news. I listen to an average of ten ESPN podcasts a week, I have read and listened to everything the Sports Guy has produced in the last six months, and I am of the opinion that Sportscenter is the best television program of all time. Come on, it's really funny and entertaining, it shows the top 10 best plays of the day, and it's brand new every night. Also, as I learned in the baseball class I took last semester, the sole determining factor in the history of sports is the power of the imagination. And not just the power of one person's imagination, but the collective imagination of entire cities, enormous countries, and sometimes, the whole world.

My first post will be a baseball bit about something that happened yesterday to the man who has the sweetest swing anyone has ever seen. Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 600th career homerun to become the sixth figure in history to accomplish that feat, and only the fourth power hitter to get there without using steroids. He is currently 38 years old, but everyone remembers him as the unbelievably talented kid who came into the league twenty years ago. Junior embodied the perfection of the sport while wearing those cool green and white Mariner uniforms and playing in the Sky Dome in Seattle during the 1990s. If you remember, in the movie Little Big League, as the dorky teenage manager of the Twins' dream of victory was about to be realized, Griffey came out of nowhere and leaped over the outfield wall, slayed the hopes of the audience, and stole what would have been a game winner. The most dominant stretch of his career came during his last four years in Seattle, 1996-1999, when he hit 209 homeruns and drove in 567 runs. His love of the game is obvious in his highlight reel, which I think is best described as joyful baseball.

I have a personal connection to Junior in that he dawns the cover of my most valuable baseball card. My cousin got it in a pack at least 10 years ago and I traded him for two or three quality cards. It was once listed as valued at $50, though I just found out today you can buy one on ebay for $1. I'm still going to hold onto it though, because he continues to knock 'em out, and his legacy is still growing.

1995 Pinnacle KEN GRIFFEY JR. # 128 Yum Bubble Gum

I keep forgetting the smell of the warm summer air

Today I saw a grown black man drive around a remote control purple Ferrari in the parking lot of my apartment complex, giggling to himself. "Nice car," I said. His giggle grew to a cackle. And I thought, yes, it is summer.

I'm living in luxury in Atlanta for another month before I return to Omaha for an extended stay. I did the graduation walk with everybody last Monday morning, but due to the sinister ways of The Man and my own laziness I still have one more class to complete. Good news is I got an email this morning saying my first two class sessions will be canceled and, with Memorial Day next Monday, I am free as a bird for another week and a half. Bad news is my roommate Ross and other good buddy Farrell got all their stuff done and are taking a Euro trip starting tomorrow. So, I'll be living alone for a good month. If anyone ever wanted to come down here and see what Emory is like, this really is the perfect time. The apartment is fairly clean because my family just visited, the weather is unbelievable right now, and you can even sleep in Ross' bed and fart in his sheets. If anyone even hesitates for a moment thinking that sounds pretty cool and remotely possible, I think you should come down.

Something else I wanted to share was that I finally saw my favorite band live in concert. Eleven days ago RLF came down for a super-intense college graduation weekend, only he flew in a day before Mom, Mo and G-Ma so he could see Radiohead. I picked him up from the airport at 11:45 AM, went straight to a Braves game, stopped to eat some pizza, and then drove to the concert. It was kickass. Radiohead played two encores and 24 songs total. The crowd was soothed by a light rain for most of the night. Everybody pretty much found their own comfortable space in the amphitheatre, listened and sang along, except for my Jew archetype acquaintance Mr. Shenkel, who kept updating me on the Celtics game and wanted to talk over the music. The lightshow was striking, as a long sheet of crystals hung over the stage and generated cool colors. My favorite song was Everything in Its Right Place, but one of the more memorable moments came when the camera zoomed in on Thom's weirdo half-shut eye.

That is the update for now. I'm going to spend the rest of the week taking a lot of this, doing 100-200 pushups a day and playing Big Time on the courts.

Time to Settle the Score

I hit rock bottom some time between now and then, but I am on the rise, soaring like a humongous dove of peace and positivity. I had a problem setting a productive schedule for myself, given my teaching job has ended and I only have class 3 days a week, but, even though I still have only one pair of pants and new liquid stains appear around my apartment every day, the fighter inside me has flared up and I'm ready to cut stones. Adamant advent of abstract activity. Gas guzzling guns grabbing green groceries. Honoring human habits, harnessing hot hair. Working hard and taking it to the house. Bam bam jammy jam.

Ready for midterms? I have to write a screenplay. An original idea that has nothing to do with my own personal experience or physiological state is just out of reach. My spontaneous vision wants my movie to somehow combine the fabulous game of beer pong with the inhuman tension of cloning. I'm stuck figuring out how to coordinate inspiration from Radiohead's Kid A with the sensibilities of BaseKetball. I'm thinking I should go see Semi Pro and take notes.

Who is graduating and what are you gonna do this summer? They call me loyal Jo-el. Happy meals.

You can't rely on your gifts, Steve

I have two lawn seats to a Radiohead show in Atlanta on May 8th. I never thought I would get to see them live but hey whattaya know. I paid $100 for em including ticketmaster jerk charges. I will probably sell 1 on ebay in hope to make a profit, or better yet I could get another friend to go with.

I'm still really fat, yet I played really well in IM ball yesterday. Our team of debaters beat a frat team muhahah. I hadn't played in two weeks and ate about 3 overloaded chinese delivery meals and probably two wingnuts chicken meals in that time. Go fatties! I love eating all the time and never lifting a muscle. The only reason I complain about getting fat is because pretty soon I will have no pants that fit. I got three pairs of jeans for christmas and I have already ripped two of them and exploded a pen in the other one. Don't you hate pants?!

So I am considering coming home for spring break around March 10. I haven't bought the plane ticket yet but if I'm coming to Omaha I better decide soon or prices will rise. Who will be around?

I'm gonna go eat some cookie dough or something. Or maybe 5 mcdonalds double cheeseburgers for $5. I'm big and jolly ho ho ho.

Love these trades

It's sunny and 65 degrees.

Got real savage last night. I was at the bars and when it was time to peace my inner animal decided to run me on home. My midi-clorian count and need for activity has raised due to my current rigorous balling schedule. I was also fueled by the giant bowl of Jameson zapping my belly and an intense hunger for Wing Nuts chicken. I had about an hour before Wing Nuts delivery shut down. I figured a man in my state could easily bound the 5.2 miles home. I was cutting through jungle-like residentials most of the drive. Atlanta has a lot of trees and swarms of vines that connect the entire city into a single giant plant. I was jumping over logs, falling into ditches, climbing fences, tripping over myself, tearing off planks of wooden fence, and constantly wiping out in the mud. It was thrilling. Pure life ecstasy. I have cuts all over both of my hands, some whicked colored bruises and a tiny splinter. Awesome! I'm not sure but I think I made it about 1.6 miles before I ran out of juice and was picked up by a sweet muffin. Fun night.

Jayme, thanks for all the support and compliments. I always value your advice and I'm glad you have so much to give considering your experience. Samara says you are hot with two Hs.

Good luck to Obama, and his cousin Naimul whose school's bball team will win on TV tonight.

My first IM basketball game is TONIGHT! This is what you've been living for. Go Huskers!