Happy Memorial Day, Kid

Way back when Christ was a corporal, I put in some time working for my Uncle Sam.  I was a ground pounder, a wind dummy, and a bullet catcher.  It was hard work, but it was also great fun, and I made some of the best friends of my life.  This is about a guy I barely knew.

Ramen Mush

Sunday afternoon and that vague empty feeling in my gut pushes me away from the keyboard and sends me down to kitchen to see what I can rustle up. Family is off shopping or something so I'm on my own. I poke around the pantry and the fridge, passing over various mysteriously fogged Tupperware containers, packages of "Real Food", and bags of pure junk. Nothing seems to catch my fancy. Then I see the box of Ramen Noodles that the sig-other keeps in stock solely because I insist upon it.

Cornbread

A lady at the office recently organized a “Southern Style” cook-off at the office and the outcome was surprisingly good. Along-side the usual artery clogging delicacies was the organizer's own cornbread. It was sweet and moist with pieces of real corn in it, not the gritty stuff you get at restaurants who think they know what cornbread is.

The taste of the cornbread was incredibly evocative for me, taking me instantly back to my grandmother's kitchen. It was cluttered and possibly unsanitary, but the concoctions crafted therein were culinary masterpieces, the like of which I have never again encountered. Her daughter, my mother, was also a good cook, but there was something about grandma's kitchen.

Photo Ops

Warning: Unfinished.

The pile of burning tires and other assorted trash in the middle of the street was exactly what we had been looking for. I shot Jimbo up against it as a backdrop, shrugging and grinning like he'd accidentally set it off, then he did the same for me. I like to think I was more dignified.

When he gave me back the camera, I looked around for something else to shoot. The streets were all lit up in Miami neon, like any normal Friday night, but the lights were directing non-existent traffic, like in some zombie movie. It was kind of eerie to see a big bonfire like this with no one around it. Either it was past their bedtime or the guads ran them off. Either way, we pretty much had downtown to ourselves.

Happy Hunting

A short story about a walk in the woods, a fall down a hill, and a four foot length of pipe. A tale of boyish enthusiasm and the immortality of certain moments.

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Books That Made Me

You can tell a lot about a man by the old books in his library. Here are some of mine:

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: This much-maligned masterpiece is flawed but powerful. This is where the philosophies of liberty and responsibility first made their imprint on me.
• The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov: This sweeping saga seems a little dated now, but it's message still resonates. Great men aren't so great. Time rolls on.

STFU

I behaved badly today.

As an all day meeting dragged to a long overdue close, the facilitator was going through some last minute Q&A. We'd gotten past the meaningful widely applicable questions and had moved onto the crap that mattered only to the person speaking. I was slipping into a coma when the facilitator asked, “Well, are there any more questions?”

The room waited in desperate hope for just a moment before it happened: One more question about something that no one cared about. Same person as last time.