At the very back of the cave, glowing in a beam of sunlight lies an overflowing treasure chest. Diamonds, sapphires, and rubies the size of a man’s fist along with piles of gold are spilling onto the ground. This is what Captain Brickbeard was seeking. His very own hidden treasure. The only problem is the raft they brought with them will never carry this many jewels and gold.

Deciding that the treasure is fairly safe where it is, Brickbeard and Janey Blackheart decide to bury most of it so that even if others come to this island all they will find is the ancient temple and nothing else. The gems and gold they kept out is more than the average king’s ransom.

The three make their way to the beach and take the raft back out to sea. Reaching the ship in the dark of night. Captain Brickbeard and Janey Blackheart climb up the hidden ladder into the Captian’s cabin window while Simon rows the raft to the side of the ship calling for aide.

Brickbeard emerges from the cabin. Seeing the castaway, he orders his men to bring the man aboard. “Introducing” himself Simon explains that he was abandoned on an island many years ago and only now has escaped. Much to the surprise of his men, Brickbeard invites Simon aboard and offers to return him to his home.

The Brick Pearl sails away, leaving the island and its secrets far behind.

Back on the island Captain Brickbeard, Janey Blackheart, and Simon the castaway have made their way up the mountain and into the cave. Carved from the living stone, they find an ancient temple of steps and columns.

They also find the remains of an unlucky visitor to the cave. Nothing but bones remain of this traveler which have now become the home of a venomous snake.

Hopefully they will not meet the same fate.

Finally figured out the opening for my novel. Only took three years.  Happened while I was watching Tom Hanks go through the spin cycle in the crash scene of “Cast Away”, if anyone’s interested.  And to think, I’ve been sitting next to the Kenmore all these years…

Everybody is busy talking how to make things better.  Nobody is listening to the last gasp of our castaway countrymen. The government count has some 7 million without a job before Christmas.  My parents were out of work in a recession right before Christmas, and got a few bucks to buy gifts on Christmas Eve when dad got called back to the factory.  Not too many people are getting called back to work right now.

If a hobo has to hop a freight to get travel for work, they hustle to it.  Right now, Senators and Congress folk are talking about redesigning everything you can think of?  If your boat is sinking, do you save the boat or get everybody on new blueprints for the next cruise ship?  Somehow it appears we are working on the next century technology.  You folks out of work can wait 81 years, can’t you?

Oh yeah, and don’t worry about the money we don’t have for this fantastic future!  The senators and congress folk won’t be around to solve that mess for us, anyway.  We got about 7 million messages being ignored from families afraid of getting through this winter.

We don’t need 7 million hobo trainees right now.  Every senator and congress member should formally sponsor job fairs for the unemployed in their voting area.  They can explain why they are too busy to help the small companies get ahead to hire a few folks. They can explain why they like picking on big companies, while squeezing them for more money.  People in business are trying to get ahead, and we shouldn’t let them kill people or make deadly products.  But we can understand that this country needs business to hire folks.  Government jobs pay more, and cost us all a lot more.

Glad the recession is over, and things are improving.  Washington is spending money like it’s going out of style to save.

To those who’ve read my last post (available below to those others who had better things to do yesterday), it might surprise them to know that I’ve had a job for the past three weeks. Yes, another temp job – all the benefits of a monotonous 40 hour work week with, well, no health benefits or salary to speak of. It’s shocking when the realization hits that you commanded a higher pay grade lifeguarding in high school than you make eight years later with a college degree. And the view was a hell of a lot nicer too – bikini-clad college co-eds vs. stacks of applications from college hopefuls, probably filled out while fully clothed. Ok, I guarded at Dartmouth in the winter so they were one-pieces at best, but still.

Without revealing too much, I’m working at a local university’s admissions department. You’ll never guess which one. I have absolutely no bearing on student selection itself. I’m merely one step removed from a monkey in a mail room; I open, sort, and scan for the benefit of the czars upstairs. But in the process of classifying documents I do have to read a bit to make a positive I.D.

It’s a weird feeling breaking an official seal on a college recommendation letter, like I’m not supposed to look, indeed was warned never to look and had to sign a form attesting to the fact that I could never look even if I wanted to years later. Now it’s my job to look. I read these recommendations and wish I knew what Ms. Bognolo wrote about me. She was the teacher who seemed to have liked me the most. We had common ties to Eastern Long Island and that was enough to put me in her good graces from 10th to 12th grade. Although asking for her good graces in print had its risks. When I first came to her she told me flat-out that I wasn’t ready for college because I wasn’t serious enough. I assured her that I was more than ready and after a little pleading, the letter was sent; but gotta give credit where credit’s due. She had me pegged.

It couldn’t have been too damaging because I got in, and after looking at kids’ applications today, it must have been a masterpiece. My achievements pale in comparison to these wunderkinden. The extent of my extracurriculars were some JV sports; my only accolade was acceptance of the Greek Mythology award engineered by none other than Ms. Bognolo herself – the icing on that cake was that I’d failed a Greek Myth class the year before because of my lifelong aversion to turning in papers on time. I wasn’t running inner-city hospitals, discovering new fuel alternatives in an Oxford lab, or toppling corrupt African governments during my summer break. Just who the hell are these people?

As you can imagine, opening these letters began to make me feel a teensy bit inferior. Thankfully, coinciding with my first weekend off from the new job, I found myself in a kitschy store on the Downtown Mall flipping through a small book while my wonderful girlfriend shopped with friends. The title was A Slacker’s Handguide or The Underachiever’s Bible or something like that. I really have to write this stuff down. I used to carry a small notebook in my back pocket for just such an occasion but they only last so many runs through the washer before all those vitally important notes devolve into a feathery, wrinkled lump. Anyway, back to the book.

There was a worthwhile message in there that I’m not sure was entirely intended, but, once gained, has made me feel a bit better about trudging into work each morning: true happiness results from non-comparison with others.

But this is non-competitive, you say. This is un-American, you scream. Well, quiet down and hear me out. I’m not condoning slackerdom or under achievement; just the opposite. Go ahead and achieve. Figure out what you want to accomplish and work your ass off to get there, but do it for yourself. Think of Tom Hanks in Castaway. This guy builds fire; on the island its a monumental achievement ensuring his survival and forging a connection at his basest level to the epic of mankind. But next to his neighbor lighting up the grill in a New Jersey backyard, Tom looks like a pyro in a torrid love affair with a volleyball. If you constantly compare your success with other people’s, eventually it won’t look like success.

In all likelihood my grass is just as green as the grass on the other side, maybe even greener. Who knows?

I’m not looking anymore.

Första singeln från kommande albumet The Golden Archipelago har nu släppts. Det är dramatiskt som vanligt men jag tycker att de, som de nästan alltid gör, landar på rätt sida av vad som är sunt.

Castaway

Jag har bloggat om Shearwater tidigare, här.

Matador bjussar på gratis nedladdning i antingen 256kbps eller FLAC format samt omslag etc här.

During the past few days I’ve slept and then slept some more. Thank God it’s Sunday, and I can tell myself to calm down, that tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of my life. Sleeping is nice, but it is basically the same as fast forwarding through your life. You’ll never get those hours and days back. During the last years I’v put on a few, to say the least, pounds that is. I promised myself that if I survive the whole blood clot thing, that eventually turned out to be nothing more than a cramp, that I would start to exercise a little more. Yesterday I went jogging and took a long walk. The jog was actually a jog only for the first few blocks before it transformed into a brisk walk. Walking is, believe it or not, better than jogging, unless of course you’re Lance Armstrong or someone with a similar tolerance for physical strain. When we normal, out-of-shape, couch potatoes go jogging, our heart rate jumps too high. What this means is that we don’t burn fat. A good measuring system is, if you’re out of breath, -you’re doing too much. When the heart rate is too high you only build more muscles, meaning basically that you’re putting on weight. This is one of the hardest things for me. I am very competitive, and I like to push myself to the edge, whether it be cycling or jogging or anything else. I always measure my distance with GPS and try to break my records. I am a man of steel. I have six-pack abs. The only problem is that they are covered by a layer of fat. Quite a layer actually. So what I need to do, and this is something I’ve researched, so you can take this to the bank, is to just burn the fat of without adding any muscle.

"I lost so much weight that my head is too big for my body..."

Tom Hanks lost 50 lb. for Castaway. He did it by basically walking on a treadmill all day and having some All-Bran cereal. Christian Bale dropped his weight for The Machinist by eating a can of tuna and an apple a day. He avoided any exercise. When David Bowie was at his thinnest, he only ate bell peppers and milk. So what I have to do is to do some sort of light exercise. Walking is the best, but it is really boring unless you do it while shopping. I decided to get some kind of aerobic step board, and pop in a season of some TV-show on DVD and just step for twelve hours a day. I have researched online and those step boards can be quite expensive, so unless I find one tomorrow that fits my budget, I’ll make one out of a stack of shelves or some bricks or a yoga mat wrapped around some bricks. It’s not rocket science. The important thing to remember is that it shouldn’t slide from under you or scratch your hardwood floor. I have in my basement a bookshelf. If I take only the removable shelves, which are about an inch thick and about 2.5 feet long, I can easily stack them on top of each other and voilà! -a step board. I still have to make sure that the thing will be stable, so I might have to tape them together. In order for me not to completely ruin the shelves, I first have to cover them with something before I apply the tape. Maybe wrap some newspapers around the stack before the tape, or an old towel. Then I’ll tape the thing with vinyl or duct tape. I want to make it a tight package. After this you should test the thing. If you’re lucky, the duct tape will work by itself and this makeshift step board wont slide from under you. It all depends on the type of floor you have. Move it around the floor with your foot. If it slides, we have to think of a solution. I have some anti-slide rubber mats under my carpets that’ll work for me. If you don’t care about your floors that much, you could duct tape the whole thing down to the floor. Wow, this was my first how-to article…

Anyway, my plan, a MISSION you might call it, is to step up and down on this thing for the next 25 days, and buy myself a nice navy blue suit a few sizes smaller. I have some festivities coming up, including christmas duh, where a suit is needed. I have some suits, don’t get me wrong. I even have a tuxedo, but there’s nothing like a new suit that fits you perfectly.

Don't think he'll be getting a message in a bottle any time soon

Why is it that everytime I travel from one place to another, the weather freaks out?
Musn’t be able to handle the expansive changes of the location of the WeatherFist, or something like that.
I might have to do a post about that…
Thank You For Your Thyme

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Finally, after at least 10years of huge pain, I can see my favourite screen saver of all times again..

I’m so happy! ♥ Really, You cannot image how much I loved this screen saver when I was a child..

I used to spend hours and hours just to look at the adventures of Johnny on the screen of my beloved 486

Thanks to VMware Fusion and to metalcolicfreak (who gave me win 3.1) for giving me the chance to relive this awesome experience.. XD

Povero Tarzan tutto solo in mezzo alle scimmie! Comunque, procediamo velocemente e passiamo alla prossima canzone. E’ tratta dall’album Warning, del 2000 (in effetti lo stile di quell’album lì si discosta abbastanza dai precedenti).
Warning ha ricevuto molte critiche, molti pensano che sia l’album che ha segnato il declino della band californiana, (cosa che non condivido affatto), comunque, gli ha fruttato ben 7 California Music Award!
Sono i mitici Green Day, qui con Castaway!

Los Angeles, CA.- ¡Hasta que por fin llegó el día! Domingo 11 de Octubre, 2009. Después de largos meses de espera y preparaciones llegó el día en que la cultura peruana unió lazos con la cultura armenia en un boda inolvidable, tanto para los novios como para los que fuimos testigos de este singular evento.

La cultura de Arsineh (la novia), es rica en tradiciones. El simbolismo de cada detalle, la alegría de sus bailes, su música… Todo formó parte de un ritual, al que nosotros, los peruanos,  nos estamos acostumbrados, pero a la vez  nos enriqueció y nos ha dejado recuerdos imborrables. Como la memoria es frágil decidí escribir sobre aquél día, ahora que aún tengo los recuerdos frescos sobre todo lo que pasó.

Domingo 11 de Octubre. Mamá, papá y yo despertamos temprano (7:00 a.m), y empezamos alistarnos para la boda: que el vestido, que los zapatos, que los aretes, que el peinado, que las uñas, que el maquillaje…mamá y yo éramos las más afanosas, y como siempre le digo a ella: “la belleza cuesta”, así que todo esfuerzo por quedar regias para ese día, fue bienvenido.

Nito (el novio): Llegó por  nosotros alrededor del medio día (por supuesto, que ya estábamos listos desde las 10:00 a.m). Fuimos a su apartamento desde donde nos recogió la limosina 1:30 p.m en punto. La limosina: preciosa, elegante (no me pregunten que marca, ni que modelo, porque yo no se nada de autos, para mi es igual un toyota que un BMW .

También nos acompañó un amigo del cole de Nito, Wilmer, quien vino desde Virginia a compartir este gran día con su cómplice de la infancia y la adolescencia.

Ya un poco más relajados dentro de la limosina, nos servimos whisky. Puro para mi mamá, en las rocas para mí, y el novio, aún ansioso, sólo probó unos sorbos para apaciguar los nervios.

Nito, Calixto, Cesarina y yo, rumbo a la casa de Arcy

Primera Tradición: El novio lleva el vestido de la novia a la casa para pedir permiso al padre de que la novia se vista. Teníamos que llegar 2:00 pm a la casa de la novia en Glendale. Nito invitó a sus amigos más cercanos a esta ceremonia previa: César Quijano (“Casito Quijano”) y  familia,  y Julio Ríos y su esposa Patty. César se atrasó, llegó 2:15…Nito es obsesivo con la puntualidad, así que sus nervios iban en aumento, esperamos impacientes dentro de la limo. Por fin llegó César. Nito se comunicó con Arcy por el celular: “baby it ’s Show Time” , le dijo. La limosina se estacionó  frente al edicifio donde vivía Arcy. Nito fue el primero en salir de la limosina.

Segunda Tradición: Nos recibieron en la calle con música y baile

Apenas Nito salió de la limosina un trío de típica música armenia empezó a tocar. Las primas, tías y amigas de la novia ” vinieron a recibirnos bailando al ritmo de la música, mi mamá y yo nos unimos al baile…eso fue súper emocionante. Los vecinos salieron a ver el espectáculo y aplaudían y nos miraban con alegría. Entramos bailando a la casa de Arsineh, ella lucía un vestido rojo deslumbrante, la familia que estaba dentro de la casa se unió al baile: el  papá de la novia, mamá, amigos, y nuestros amigos peruanos tambien…fue un momento de celebración y mucha alegría. Después del baile, se hizo un espacio de silencio en medio de tanta algarabía, y mi padre pidió el permiso oficial para que la novia reciba el vestido y se vista para dirigirnos a la ceremonia. Mi papá habló en español, Wilmer (el amigo de infancia de Nito), lo tradució al inglés, una tía de Arcy tradució lo que mi papá dijo a Armenio. El brindis se hizo con shots de cognac y chocolates en forma de corazón. Dicen que la forma en que ellos  lo toman es mordiendo un trozo de chocolate y luego con el chocolate aún en la boca toman el congnac, yo lo hice a lo peruano…seco y voletado y cerrando los ojos… no estuvo mal, no había probado cognac antes.

Tercer Tradición: Impiden que el Novio salga de la casa con la novia

A la salida de la casa de Arcy, su cuñado detiene a mi hermano para impedir que se vayan juntos, mi hermano como parte de la tradición lo convence entregándole un regalo: un reloj. Por fin los novios salen juntos y se dirigen rumbo a los jardines del Castaway (Burbank), donde se realizaría la ceremonia religiosa.

Ceremonia Religiosa, Llegamos todos (padres de los novios y yo) en la limosina, la cual tuvo un poco de problemas al subir a los jardines del Castaway, ya que la cuesta era inclinada. Todos los invitados ya nos estaban esperando. La ceremonia fue al aire libre, tenía como fondo una linda casacada de agua. Sobre el césped pusieron una alfombra de tela blanca, por allí pasamos caminando los protagonistas del evento: Primero entraron las niñas con las flores, Agape (Sobrina de Arcy) y Emily (Hija de César), luego el niño con los anillos. Después entró la mamá de Arcy, seguidos de mis padres y yo… unos minutos despues aparecio radiante la novia del brazo de su padre Israel. La ceremonia religiosa fue linda, nos acompaño un trío de música clásica (Violin, flauta y arpa), y así bajos los acordes de “O mio Babino Caro” y el “Condor Pasa“, Arsineh y Nito sellaron su amor ante los ojos de Dios y de todos los presentes. No faltó la lectura del Corintios 13, la cual estuvo a cargo de mi ahijada Verónika.  Al final, hubo un detalle muy lindo: Abrieron un caja que contenía dos palomas blancas, las palomas salieron volando y se perdieron en el cielo. Luego se abre una segunda caja, y una bandada de palomas sale volando, dan un giro sobre  los novios y luego se pierden en el firmamento…seguro el video lo captó todo.

Cuarta Tradición: Los invitados regalan sobres con dinero

Esto no es típico en nuestra cultura, en cambio para los armenios lo más común es que el día de la boda llevan un sobre sellado con dinero, el cual se deposita en un cofre finamente decorado. Para nuestros invitados  había un mesa donde poner los regalos.

Quinta Tradición: Entrada de los nuevos esposos bailando

Nada de danubio azul, ni de baile con cada uno de los miembros de la familia, al estilo peruano. Los ahora esposos entraron al salon de la fiesta (Starlight room), bailando musica armenia, inmediantamente el resto de los invitados se unio al baile formando una rueda, con aplausos, saltos y mucha alegría.

Sexta Tradición: Los hombres bailan con hombres

…Y empezó la fiesta! Mi padre, que no es muy hábil para el baile, había tomado unas clases aceleradas vía “youtube”, al momento del baile fue un bailarin consagrado de música armenia e irani. Y ni que decir del novio “Nito”  quien tiene una habilidad natural para el baile, el si que sorprendio a los familiares de la novia con sus destrezas para el baile armenio. Mi papá bailó con su consuegro, con mi hermano, asi mismo Nito bailó con su suegro, primos y familiares de la novia. Hacíamos rondas de hombres y mujeres, y se lanzaban parejas al centro del ruedo…Esa noche TODOS, bailamos hasta más no poder, viejos, jovenes, niños, armenios, peruanos, mexicanos, guatemaltecos…Todos disfrutamos de la noche. El momento más divretido de la fiesta fue cuando un grupo de amigos subieron al novio en hombros (mismo Procesión del Señor de los Milagros), y los familiares y amigos de la novia hacen lo mismo…ya el en el aire, los novios empiezan a bailar por un momento, hasta que los hombros cansados de los amigos los regresaron al piso.

No falto nuestra contagiante música negra, de la cual uno de nuestro invitados, el señor “Pele”, hizo un aunténtica demostración, tampoco falto “la tere-cumbia” y el popular “Se ha muerto el abuelo”.

Fue una noche inolvidable, estoy segura que este corto relato no hace el mérito a los bellos momentos que pasamos ese día. Todas las felicidades para los esposos Rojas Avasapian…

Gracias: César, Teresa, Emily, Veronika, Brian, Paulo, Julio Rios, Patty y Katia Ríos, Alex Tuesta, Wilmer Lovaton, Milvia, Familia Ramal, Sra. Maria Nelson, la flaca Ines y su familia, La prima Lidia, Vicky y Miguelito Olivera “El paparazzi de la boda“, Eliana y Gabriel Pacheco, Pedro Cáceres “Pelé” y su esposa”…y a todos los que nos acompañaron en ese día tan inolvidable les decimos: Mercy vor ekak!, ¡Muchas gracias por venir!

Amy Foster

TYPE: Can’t Say

RATING: 4/10

REVIEW:

I have no idea why the book is named Amy Foster, when the book carries a description not of her, but of another person who became her husband in the later part of the story. I suppose, I’ll never get the gist of these philosophical stories, if there was any involved in this one.

The story begins with someone visiting an old doctor in the countryside and he relates to him the sad story of Amy Foster. The story has a social castaway, a ship-wrecked man who was taken up by the Swaffers and offered food, clothing and a roof over his head. The stranger soon learns to read, write and speak in the common dialect and then falls in love with Amy Foster and decided to marry him.

She does marry him, and she bears his child but then after that I lose the idea of the story because she starts hating him for talking to the child in his own tongue and keeps thinking that he wants to harm the child and then finally abandons him. That about sums up the story which doesn’t look like much to me.

It’s been almost a week since I created Wilson and I’ve been having quite a bit of fun.  It’s mostly me talking at this point, like I said before, but I do find myself murmuring things to him and looking at him for approval or insight.  I don’t really mind carrying him around, but he does tend to roll away on flat surfaces.  I should work on giving him hair, shouldn’t I?

Prior to starting this blog, I did a great deal of searching the Tubes for anything I could find about Wilson.  Anything analytical was hard to find, but I was able to dig up a few things.  This article, “Science Explains Wilson the Volleyball“  in The New York Times, for example, is the kind of intelligent approach to this ball that I’m looking for.

John Tierney, Science Times section columnist dips deeply, though briefly, into a study of loneliness and anthropomorphism that the University of Chicago had conducted a few years ago.

“Castaway depicts a deep truth about the irrepressibly social nature of Homo sapiens,” says John Cacioppo, one of the researchers at the University of Chicago and Harvard who studied people’s tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects. The results of their experiments are to be published in the February issue of Psychological Science.

There it is: “the irrepressibly social nature of Homo sapiens.”  That’s what Wilson is all about.  If we are trapped in a situation where we are separated from our normal social networks, we will form new ones in whatever ways possible.

John Cacioppe’s blog is pretty interesting.  He discusses many of the effects of loneliness that I am interested in exploring with this blog.  Not to say that I’m lonely or anything…
I recommend following it.

Also, Allison Holzer wrote a related article about the importance of pets.

Another nice analysis of Wilson comes up on Slate’s website.  “Wilson the Volleyball: Reconsidered“, by James Surowiecki, addresses the human need to be needed.  It was something that I hadn’t thought of before.  Talking to myself and occasionally to objects has always risen out of the need for discourse.  The article is short, but precious given the amount of serious discussion of Wilson present on the Tubes.  The first comment on Surowiecki’s article mentions two other comments (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Volleyball,” and “Paint or Blood?”) but I have no idea where (or if) they exist.

Oh well.

Apparently there’s a short documentary titled, “Wilson: The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra” somewhere on the special edition of Castaway (DVD).  I don’t have that version, but I was able to find what appears to be the first half of the film on Youtube.  Watch it here.  I should make the effort to get the entire documentary, but without buying the DVD, I’m not sure where or how.  Suggestions?

References

Tierney, John. (January 2002)
Science Explains Wilson the Volleyball.  Retrieved from http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com

Cacioppe, John.  (July 2009)
Loneliness. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/loneliness

Surowiecki, James. (March 2001)
Wilson the Volleyball, Reconsidered.  Retrieved from http://www.slate.com

When I smell coconuts, I think of Hawaiian Tropic and summers at the public pool in my hometown.

When I see coconuts, I think of Tom Hanks in “Castaway” and Pepperidge Farms white cake.

Nothing about coconuts makes me think ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ or ‘trendy.’

But apparently drinking milk out of freshly peeled coconuts is all the rage now in Brooklyn.  Sidewalk bodegas display them on ice, and tourists buy them.

In a recent New York Times feature, purchasers said the coconut drinks made them feel ‘beachy.’  Others liked the unusual shape and appearance.  Most just wanted to be a part of the latest trend.  But no one said they were super psyched about the taste of coconut milk, which seems like the reason to drink it…right?

Open your eyes, people.  It’s not a martini glass.  It’s a coconut. It’s actually kinda pale and bulbous, and the milk is thin and watery and sicky sweet. Just because you see a few people walking down the street with them, and you happen to be in New York City, doesn’t mean you automatically have to buy one to be cool.

It’s okay to be different.

Perhaps I’ve been an outlier for too much of my life.  Or maybe I just think coconut milk tastes too icky to ’suck it up’ for trendiness.

If only Diet Sunkist were hip — I’d be the next Carrie Bradshaw.

“Like using bricks to open windows.”

Known for his quotable quotes and colorful aphorisms, my friend Steve Loy delivered this little beauty while surveying the damage.

Let me start from the beginning.

Five holly bushes grew in front of the large, yellow American Four-Square house in which I live. My landlord and friend, Patrick, thought that “Big Bird”—as his wife has dubbed the house—would look better without the misshapened holly bushes crowding the steps up the front and left side porches.

Pretty soon after moving in, Patrick and I were able to yank two of the bushes out of the ground, using my 4Runner and a ski rope borrowed from Patrick’s father-in-law. The rope broke on the third holly bush—dry rot.

Worse things can happen.

Ten months later, the three remaining holly bushes were a constant reproach. Still intact, still ugly, they taunted me ever time I walked up the steps—“We’re still here.”

Big Bird was built in 1899, and 110 years later, he’s a little worse for the wear. He sometimes collects water in his basement, he has cracks in his ceilings, and his porches are—how should I say it?—sagging. Patrick is a pastor, and his pastor’s income stands before these major and minor renovations like David before Goliath. Patrick sometimes feels the burden of responsibility that comes with faithful stewardship of a historic building. He’ll sometimes say things like, “Why did I buy this crappy house?” We laugh as though he doesn’t mean it, but we both know better.

I thought the absence of the three remaining holly bushes might cheer him up. We’re trying to “live in community,” and to me, that sometimes means taking care of an undesirable task for a close friend, especially if he is dreading it. If you’ve ever painted a room, or even an entire house, you know that volunteering to do something for somebody else for free is a lot more enjoyable than doing it for yourself or getting paid.

On a Monday morning, I decided to “eat the frog” and rip up the holly bushes, meaning cross it off my list first thing so that I could focus on other tasks.

Steve loaned me his $300 rope with carabiners, the Arnold Schwarzeneggar of ropes, 5800 pounds of tensile strength! The rope was actually growing chest hair.

Steve offered two words of caution:

1) Use the carabiners attached to the rope, and you won’t have knots to untie.

2) An objects in motion will travel toward its anchor point.

Apparently, he had earned this wisdom the old-fashioned way: time wasted on loosening knots and a huge dent in the tail gate of an otherwise new truck.

Glad to have friends with more life experience than I have, I nodded and did what any full-grown man would do: I ignored his advice.

Neither of these outcomes could possibly happen to me. I was, after all, invincible. I didn’t have my master’s in English for nothing. Too bad about the dent though.

The first and smallest bush came out easily. This boded well.

For the second, I backed the 4Runner into the yard and wound the rope a few times around the trunk of the largest bush then passed it through the carabiner.

Tying the other end to the towing package on my truck, I had too much rope to spare, so I doubled it over and used three cinch knots to make it fast.

Here comes the fun part.

I dropped the truck into low gear and gave it some gas. The engine roared, the tires tore up the grass, the rope creaked, and the bush…

stayed.

Crappers. I thought I might get lucky, have to dig around the roots first.

When I went back around to the back of the truck, I saw the error of my ways. I should have listened better to Steve: a fist-sized rock of rope had replaced my knot.

My fingers came nowhere close to budging any of the pieces of rope. Who would have thought that the force of a V6 engine and the grip of new Michelin tires could do that?

Idiot.

How was I going to pay for that rope if I had to cut it? A master’s in English doesn’t go as far as you might think. Or as far as I thought, I should say.

Over the next forty-five minutes, I used the following items in an attempt to loosen it: two hammers, a flathead screwdriver, a wood chisel, the arm to a car jack, a pick ax, WD-40, a crow bar, and a spattering of bad language.

Much more was on the line than having to pay for a new rope if I cut off the old one.

Knowing how to use tools is a kind of credibility with men, like winning an arm wrestling contest or charming women. None of these is something you could put on a resume, but “I can crush this can on my forehead” is certainly more impressive than “I can do your accounting” on your average Saturday night.

Though I suppose you can get paid for a operating a backhoe is worth something, the lack marketability of using many tools doesn’t discourage us from placing weight on the ability.

My friend Bear can get just about any machine started. He’ll tinker with it, adjusting the choke and throttle, checking the oil and gas, making sure the sparks plugs and wires are clean and tight, and then he’ll yank a cord or flip a switch and the engine will come to life. I, on the other hand, might need fifteen or twenty minutes. I’ll succeed eventually, but he just has the knack. I respect that.

The bottom line is that men love to exude an aura of competence, confident control, inexhaustible resourcefulness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not haunted by feelings of inadequacy. The question, “Do I have what it takes?” doesn’t plague me. I know my worth isn’t tied up in changing a flat tire in five minutes or less. However, I’d still rather my hands be skillful allies than a source of embarrassment. I think most men would agree, and I challenge you to find a man who doesn’t care whether or not he can build a good fire. If he really doesn’t care, I guarantee that he owns a pair of high heels.

Remember in cartoons how when one of the characters was facing an ethical dilemma, a six-inch-tall blue angel and a red devil of similar height would materialize on either shoulder and give their arguments for right or wrong. Instead of the angel and devil, my peanut gallery is a group of older men who stand in the corner of my mind and evaluate my performance.

If I excecute well, they say nice things:

“That boy can swing an ax!”

“That man can certainly use a hammer.”

“That guy knows how to back up a trailer.”

If I screw up, they shake their heads and glance knowingly at one another.

None of us can possibly be good at everything, but even though the ability to code a website is much more lucrative these days than building a deck, there’s some mysterious authority in sweat, brawn and deftness with tools. Being called incompetent is close to being called a coward.

A scene from Castaway speaks to the heart of this seeminly innate desire to be capable, physically strong, dextrous. Tom Hanks’ character finally succeeds in building a fire, and then dancing around it, he cries, “Ah, look what I have created!”

I’d like to believe that if the world to revert to the Stone Age, or Bronze Age, or feudal Europe, I wouldn’t end up with my skull staved in and my woman somebody else’s concubine. I’d like to believe I could survive in the wilderness. I’d like to believe I’d survive a war.

Why is “expertise” such an attractive word?

I don’t think I’m alone in this. If you don’t know how to hunt, fish, cook over a fire, land a punch, and romance a beautiful damsel, then what have you got going for you? A high-definition television? Leather upholstery in your luxury sedan? Perhaps these measures of our substance are the residue of gender roles reinforced by centuries of patriarchy.

Women have another type of inheritance altogether. How is a woman made to feel about herself if she can’t have children? Can’t cook? While men are off winning bread with the sweat of their brows, women run the household. One woman receives a compliment on her dress, and she responds by confiding what an incredible deal she found at T.J. Maxx. Of course, she doesn’t want the other woman to go buy the dress, she merely wanted her to know that she knows how to shop, how to stretch the cents. This expertise is a kind of credibility. Women sniff out sales while their men build the Tower of Babel.

“Take one small bite and be as a god? What a ridiculous bargain! I mean, why wouldn’t I taste the forbidden fruit…for free! It would be a sin not to.”

So you see why I had to undo that blasted knot even if it made my fingers bleed. We’re talking about the difference between respect and being denied entrance into the fraternity of men. Getting that rope off my truck was a guarantee that I would never need Viagra.

After much self-deprecatory interior monologue, I finally freed the rope.

I said thank you to Jesus and meant it.

I’m not proud of what happened soon afterwards.

I dug around the roots of the holly bush, reattached the rope, and climbed back into my 4Runner.

Nothing happened.

I went inside and changed into my Mountain Khaki shorts and tennis shoes. I took off my glasses and put in my contacts. Business time.

Round 3.

Nothing happened.

Round 4.

Nothing happened.

Now I was getting a wee bit irritated.

I hacked at the roots of the holly bush as though they were responsible for my broken leg in eighth grade. My broken heart at 16. Not getting into Columbia for grad school. (I didn’t want to pay that much for a writing degree, but it would have been a nice gesture on their part.)

In my truck, I put it in the lowest gear and slammed on the gas.

Tires screeching, back end fishtailing, then…

WHAM!

Cussword.

I put it into park, got out, and walked around to see what had happened.

The rear door was dented in two places: on the right side of the fender and on the left side of the door itself above the license plate, below the window.

Idiot.

I sat down in the middle of the road.

Steve Loy: 2.

Austin Church: 0.

The peanut gallery of tool-proficient men didn’t even shake their heads. They just walked away.

About ten seconds later, Patrick and Jason emerged through the hedge that separates our side yard from the alley.

“What happened?” they asked.

“I’m an idiot,” I said.

“At least you didn’t break the window or one of your tail lights,” Jason said.

True enough.

Everyone had some commentary to offer.

Caroline observed, “Your morning of manly endeavor didn’t go so well,” to which I replied, “When does manly endeavor ever go well? This is how wars get started.”

Our neighbor, Ty, told Caroline later in the day, “That man just needs to get laid.”

Maybe so. I don’t really know much about that sort of thing. I never got the sex talk.

Rather than rip out the final bush, I took my new ax and hacked it up. Don’t ask me why I didn’t do that to the other two and save the body damage to my truck, not to mention two hours of my time. You may as well ask why people are violent.

Before you get depressed, I want to reassure you that this story does have some redemption in it.

When I backed into an old red Pontiac Grand Am in the Walgreen’s parking lot, my fender was already dented, so you couldn’t even see the new damage. Great.

Good news!  My short story The Castaway can be found in this month’s edition of MediaVirus Magazine, an online collection of poetry, fiction, and original music.  Written during one of the lonelier times of my life, The Castaway tells the story of a forgotten astronaut whose left for dead after war makes returning home impossible.  The Castaway was the first short story I had ever written so to see it published online and available to everyone is incredible.  I’m really happy with how the story turned out.  It’s as engaging and disturbing as I hoped it would be.  Sci-fi is a genre I need to return to soon but, in the meantime, enjoy The Castaway and let me know what you think…

http://mediavirusmagazine.wordpress.com/editors-pick/

Robert, I miss you.

Yet another very short post on RR.  Looks like I’ll be in the Gobi Desert for the next 10 days photographing the three regions and the Oyu Tolgoi mining site.  I’ll most likely be back next Saturday, but it could run a little longer.  Expect many-a-photo and hopefully just as many stories.  There won’t be any English-speaking people traveling with me, so one of two things will happen:

1.) I will become fluent in Mongolian.

2.) I will go crazier than Tom Hanks in Castaway.

I’m already selecting my Wilson.

Wish me luck!

-Rove Reporter

They wash up along the whole island. What is really fascinating is birds have come along and picked these things up. They put them in their nests and use them like a sexual attractant. I mean, most bird nests have one army man and maybe even a brontosaurus … . Brown booby are used to building things with drab-looking feathers and sticks … and now they’ve found this color. Maybe it attracts the opposite sex? … Where did all of these things come from? Who lost them? Why did they end up at Clipperton? It’s like the island of lost toys … . So I have some treasures from the “Island of Lost Toys.” This guy [Milbrand holds up a toy] looks really old: 1950s Hornet Man. What brings this old horse 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) from shore? There were … thousands of pairs of … women’s high-heeled shoes. A lot of monofilament line. These toys tell a story. It is like a moment lost in time. They are just treasures … . I have about 100 pounds [45 kilograms] of strange artifacts that I collected. Big dolls. Chess pieces. I think that the most common toy that I found were plastic jeeps. Big jeeps. Lots of kids leave those on the beach.

Read the story

Read the Castaway’s island journal

Kensuke’s Kingdom

Author: Michael Morpurgo

Page Length: 164

Reading Level: 5

Genre: Fiction

PLOT SUMMARY: When Michael’s parents receive the news that they are both being laid off, his family decides to sell everything they own, buy a boat, and sail around the world. Michael and his dog, Stella Artois, set out on a grand sailing adventure. Only sailing has its downside too. Tossed overboard, no one hears Michael’s cries for help. Will he make it to land? Will he be able to survive on his own? Will he ever see his family again?

REVIEW: This story was entertaining and perhaps most teachable because of the humanization of the characters within it. The reader is able to learn and grow with Michael while also learning to see another side of the typical historical perspective of war. Kensuke is a native of Nagasaki who ended up on this island during the war and has survived there alone for many years. He fears returning to the world he knew just as he has feared for many years that his family was destroyed in the bombing of Nagasaki. This book would work well in conjunction with the World War II part of US History class. The reader also experiences the fear of change and the unknown with both characters – which makes for a great discussion topic. The story is entertaining and lends itself well to the historical connections and many other excellent and thought provoking discussion points – I would recommend this novel as a classroom read for juniors (US History students).

AREAS FOR TEACHING: comparing text to self, compare and contrast, sequence of events, setting, conflict, resolution, historical connections, theme

RELATED BOOKS: Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, Dolphin Boy, Why the Whales Came, Private Peaceful, My Friend Walter

MOVIE & ART CONNECTIONS:

Lifting the Fog: The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1992)

Sailing artwork – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/nyregion/21artct.html?_r=1

Castaway (2000 movie starring Tom Hanks)

RELATED WEBSITES:

http://www.michaelmorpurgo.org/

http://www.war-letters.com/

http://www.private-art.com/

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/bombing_of_nagasaki.htm

REVIEWED BY:  Dayna Taylor