Dear John,
My favorite memory is of your tears. I know it’s probably horrible to feel that way, to have your favorite memory be one drowned in pain and choked on loss. I know it’s even worse to have that memory twined around a someone you love.
But, try as I may, I can’t help it. Continue reading
I’ve been working with the concept of doing a series for a while now and I’ve decided to just go ahead and jump into the thick of it. I’m really excited about this and I hope you are too.
It’s heavily influenced by Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman and there’s a sneak peek of a character illustration on the facebook page. I wanted to add an element of noir as well so hopefully, that comes through in the writing. I don’t want to give away too much but it’s got everything from demons to presidents of home owner associations, which from my understanding, are fairly similar.
I’m working on the first issue and will be posting it hopefully by the end of this week.
Dear Atlas,
I thought knew how much I loved you.
I thought I knew the way you made me feel but the distance between us has taught me that I knew nothing.
That I know nothing. Continue reading
I’m sitting on my bed, fingers fumbling about on the decrepit keyboard of my ancient laptop, prepping to answer the following questions:
Where have I been?
How do I begin again?
Nation of Change
In the novel Ender’s Game, children are selected to train for an interstellar war using simulations in the form of games. The idea of the game allows players to make riskier decisions because of disconnection from reality. Casualties do not matter as long as the ultimate goal of decimating a pixelated enemy is met. Little do the characters know, the simulation is real, and they successfully drive an entire race to extinction. Orson Scott Card wrote this novel in 1985, but in 2002 his idea of dehumanized conflict became real as the CIA launched the first modern Predator drone strike near Khost, Afghanistan (Sifton, 2012). Like Ender’s Game, drones objectify the target. Human beings become voiceless, neon monsters on a motion-tracking camera to an aerial sniper behind a computer screen. This is the reality of drone warfare. Drones are a silent killer that causes unrest in communities and tarnishes the American presence in the Middle East. They are said to be safer for troops because an unmanned aircraft saves lives from combat fatalities, but their use increases distrust and hostility to those serving on the ground. With every unintentional casualty, terrorist organizations such as ISIL gain fuel to lure traumatized populations into joining their cause. By using drones, the U.S. also opens the gate for further violations of international humanitarian law by countries like Russia, creating a new arms race (Boyle, 2013, p. 22). By using armed drone technology, the military willingly adopts terrorist tactics. The U.S. government has crossed the line from War on Terror to War of Terror. Continue reading
Ah, December. What a magical time. Frost in the air, cookies in the oven, stockings hung on the mantle with care. It’s a time when families gather all around and set out as a pack to choose one tree that will serve as a reminder to the other trees not to get too cocky as we parade it through the streets atop our four-door, family vehicles before dragging it inside and decorating it’s withering body with sparkles and various other whimsical baubles. We prefer to put them in front of large windows so that its slow and drawn-out, but none the less beautiful, death tells passerby’s “Hey, hey look at all this shit we can pile on this thing. I know right? Keep it moving, plebeians”.
O Christmas Tree
O Christmas Tree
How much better does your slowly rotting carcass look in our house that it does from that
tacky whore, Debra’s?
Walking into work after class felt like slowly scraping away at a chalkboard locked inside my skull. Mentally, I had just about had it with remembering to open each eye after blinking and the fact that my feet somehow continued to 
shuffle one after another is a miracle. Between analyzing every minuscule detail of Richard the III and decoding whether or not toddlers can be racist based on their Teletubbie preferences, I was a lobotomized mess. The lack of sleep combined with mental anguish was beginning to drive me insane. For some reason my mouth constantly tasted like cotton balls and those weird off brand gummy bears and my hands were always covered in hives. My legs essentially felt like I was saving up for a broomstick harvest at a contemporary crafts festival. It was leggings day, every day for fall was gonna come early this year regardless if it was 93 degrees outside. Wild animals scurried away from me when I went outside. Hordes of vultures circled my house. Murders of crows haunted my ears as I aimlessly plucked out an out of tune rendition of “Banana Pancakes” on my sad little ukelele. There would be no banana pancakes here. Nay, I say! Nay! For they are too happy a thing to reside in the darkness that was my heart in the depths of despair that were these times. Continue reading
Hello wonderful followers, facebookers, and the seven to nine friends of my mother that she insists read what ever this may be. It’s wonderful to be back on MySuddenlyOkayLife! I had to take a bit of a break to get a bunch of college stuff all adjusted and ready to make important adult decisions that could affect the entire outcome of my life with the simple choice of to take Shakespeare or Minority Literature first.
I ended up taking them both at the same time. It seemed like a good idea but it ended up providing an impressive mountain of reading. I’ve learned the general idea of how to survive being a character in any form of literature seems to be universal regardless of genre.
Rule 1. Be white.
Rule 2. Be a man.
Rule 3. Don’t not be white.
Rule 4. If your uncle has one weird, shriveled hand, he’s probably an asshole and you shouldn’t invite him to family functions.
But really.
It was the darkest of days. The sky looked like the bath water of a chimney sweep and the air was pungent with decay from the surrounding forest and gardens. This was the third day of heavy rain and I had just about had enough of it. By some divine coincidence I had managed to leave class and make it to my car in between the brief pauses in the storms but today my luck had run out.
It was a wonderful thing to attend a university surrounded by a nature reserve but it also meant that thousands of tiny black Lovebugs had an endless amount of space to reproduce into black swarms that drunkenly
bumbled about the air like Football fans the day after Superbowl. It was infuriatingly amazing how they were able to dodge the constant sheets of rain. It was like a force field was protecting them from the rain just long enough to get tangled up in my hair.
I stood there under the awning of the front building, remembering where I had parked.
All the way at the back of the lot. My car locator app said .984 miles away.
What was that? Some kind of death sentence? This backpack was weighing on my back with the stacks of textbooks crammed into every possible nook and cranny of its interior. I used a backpack made for hunting purposes so I could get a nice refreshment straw attached but I had to remove it to make room for an analysis of Richard the III. As if he couldn’t get any more foul, his very presence in the curriculum had robbed me of convenient hydration.
It was the last day of class. Finally I would be free from the toils of the mountains of essays and the relentless onslaught of writing page after page of dull, lifeless prose that sucked out my soul and left dark rings under my eyes. No longer would I have to sit in the classroom that smelled of wet cardboard and stale kitty litter and listen to Professor Hammond’s twin prattle on about Iambic Pentameter while making a makeshift beat on his podium, losing it about five seconds in and restarting the lesson from the top.
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On a side note here, it honestly scared me how much he looks like my professor. Down to the hat and cane.
I was positive that I had begun to develop a brain tumor out of stress, not due to difficulty, but out of frustration that he insisted on using the space bar when the tab key would indent the correct amount already. I was mentally exhausted from holding back audible screams of rage when ever he would look into my eyes and proceed to center his words using his fast little clicks.
Tiptiptiptiptiptiptiptip “Oh darn, too far” Tack Tack Tack Tack Tiptiptiptiptip Continue reading
My Suddenly Okay Life 