Joel F

Late August Apathy

My air mattress is now barely a bed. As it deflates, it slowly casts my body to the floor like a sleepy headed cloud transport. After I have ridden my mattress from full capacity down to an empty tube, I squirm over the slightly firmed edges, switch on my air pump and plump my area of rest. This never used to happen, but the multiple super glue patches that fill the holes made by my cat's penetrating scratches have started leaking uncontrollably. I have to fill it up every time an hour's worth of body pressure is applied. If I ever needed to apply the pressure of two bodies, I would have to rig it so my pump would be on at all times. In a world without drugs I would begin searching for something else to sleep on at night.

In an unrelated crisis, my shoes are now a year old. They are my favorite shoes of all time, but now they are only cool in a vintage way. They mesmerized people for a while, but this girl showed up to my last day of film class and was wearing them in green. If another person has the same pair of shoes as me doesn't that mean I should immediately stop considering them as exceptional or extraordinary, accept that the world has caught up with me, and that the time has come for these shoes to cede their identity as usual and ordinary. Last weekend Naimul said to me he saw shoes exactly like mine in New York. I need a new pair of shoes.

Listen to Hot Chip and Muse's new cd. Sass Malass

Towering Above the Rest

After I spent my last dollar at the grocery store on a box of sugar cubes I told myself I would put them to good use. I had just watched Johnny Depp in the Jack the Ripper movie From Hell. He plays a junkie detective who solves cases by following up on the visions he has while on drugs. There is a scene where he crafts himself up a tall glass of absinthe, throws it down and passes out in a bathtub. My roommate Ross had just received a bottle of the real green fairy stuff from his old lady overseas. We wanted to prep the drink proper like so maybe, like that old Mitch Hedberg joke, we wouldn't have to force the trip. The sugar cubes were key. We poured a shot into a cup and dropped a cube in, letting it absorb the green liquid. With a fork we lifted the cube over the cup and set it on fire, creating a blue flame. The entire drink flared when we dropped the cube in, which we extinguished with three shots of ice cold water. After we knocked back a few of these creations the wormwood started kicking us around, and eventually set us down on the couch.

The next day I decided to construct a sugar cube tower.

At this point, the days were floating by slowly. I was jobless and school work only distracted me for about ten hours a week. We hadn't seen any neighbors to speak of so I determined more life energy was necessary in our particular vicinity. I had seen a frenzy of ants munch on a toasted cockroach just outside our front door. I appreciated their activity. I knew the ants would come for my tower.

Only six days later the ants had arrived in full force. They would begin founding their own civilization, using the sugar cube tower as the central life source. The tower drew a complex system of miniaturized life. They would eventually tunnel to the center of the tower's base and work their way up from the inside. The tower's fortified structure and surplus of chow guaranteed the ants a promise of paradise. Unfortunately for them, new neighbors moved in next door yesterday. They were massacred.

The clumps of lifeless bodies still clinging to the cubes demonstrate they never saw it coming. I was rooting for those guys. I'm still hurt by their slaughter, but we will rebuild, on a larger scale. More sugar cubes. No more senseless slayings.

Moxie is growing