Hooker for a Day.

We weren’t even all the way done with July before the consumer arsenal of Halloween themed trash found its way into my Walmart. More than three months before the day, I find myself amidst an aisle of brightly packed and stacked chocolates and hard candies just waiting to be passed out to the hundreds of overweight kids, who for one fateful day in late October, will actually be walking the streets instead of playing WoW into the break of dawn. The same aisle that showcases all kinds of lays potatoes chips and dip in January and holds notebooks and pens in late July, turns, in late August, into something that almost resembles a mail order bride catalogue of fall flavored beer, gravy mixes and cavities waiting to happen.
It isn’t long after the candy appears that malls start converting their empty spaces into massive hallows eve themed superstores, all the scene kids refill their annual supply of electric colored tights, and stores begin to filling their racks with slutty costumes and cat masks.
Oh, fall, that time of year where the temperature drops low enough for sweaters to be pulled out of storage, the leaves turn brown and the air starts to, wait, what am I talking about? This is Florida, we don’t have that kind of change here. Fall in Florida happens quietly, and mostly in the background, dominated by consumerism. Instead of browning leaves, suddenly, you can find almost anything that tastes like pumpkin (including some things that probably shouldn’t) placed proudly on display at a checkout counter near you. Instead of temperature drops, we get another three months of the beach. We get lots of alcohol, oh, and boobs.
If there’s anything to be said for the fact that’s its 82˚ and humid year round, at the very least, we get to enjoy the best of any trending fashion that requires at least 80% of your body being completely uncovered. It almost seems as if the vast majority of the Floridian populace came to the mass consensus that it was going to use the Halloween season as an excuse to prove to their parents that sending them to church on Sundays was an absolute waste of everyone’s time. And so what if your parents took their time instilling in you the morals of a good girl, you only get this one night a year to go out dressed like the pornographic version of the little mermaid, so why not take advantage of it.
Any Halloween store you walk into will undoubtedly have a selection of costumes that give the skimpiest skivvies a run for their money (with a pricetag to match). It has somehow become okay to walk around dressed (or undressed) in the worlds tiniest sailor outfit, all in good fun.
Sadly though, the world isn’t populated with 5’9 cover models, and the beauty in all this is that, as soon as the air stinks of pumpkins and hurricanes, blossoming beauties of all shapes and sizes are going to squeeze themselves into outfits that no real pirate would ever be caught dead in and body suits so small that most strippers would reconsider, and all in the name of the dead? Who doesn’t want to be drunk for that?
And who would want it any different? That’s why fall brings us Halloween Horror Nights at Universal, why we have our very own Oktoberfest, and why people come from miles just to pass the season here.
At the store, I haul the unnecessarily large 5lb bag of mixed chocolate deliciousness into my shopping cart. I’m sure it’ll melt before I get home. But maybe I can shield it from the sun with my super sexy ‘Alice in Wonderland’ costume, which I’m sure will be a big hit this year, if I can only manage to lose these fifteen pounds.
But I still haul the unnecessarily large 5 lb bag of mixed chocolate deliciousness into my shopping and continue shopping. I’m sure it’ll melt before I get home. But maybe I can cover it with my sexy ‘Alice in Wonderland’ costume, which I’m sure will be a big hit this year.

Recently Read: Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

Snuff is Palahniuk’s 9th novel of his illustrious career as one of the nation’s best selling fiction writers. The man is a genius, most say, and most days, I would be completely in agreement with this statement. When some of my friends criticized Rant as being illogical, and poorly constructed, I stood by my man Chuck, and defended the clever narrative style, the interesting method in which he developed a character through journalistic style word of mouth profiling. I defended it because I truly believed it. I believed that Rant was a work worthy of praise and defense, one that was and would forever be meritorious of my attempts to illuminate others to my way of seeing it, regardless of their level of agreement.

Today, I find myself still thinking he is a genius, but I find myself disappointed in this 9th book.

Palahniuk’s work is usually rife with originality, in content as well as in narrative style. But in reading Snuff all I could think was that Chuck was rushed by some agent to meet some kind of deadline for a publisher. The book builds on the narrative style that was, to me, such a success in Rant, but drops the journalistic detachment present in the 8th book. The result is a first person account of one event as seen by 4 different people.

The book’s plot is interesting enough, and in true Palahniuk style, you can’t help but walk away feeling as if you know all the deep secrets of the adult entertainment industry, including secrets to obtaining a husky voice, a healthy glow and avoiding a face lift for years. But it all seems rehashed, contrived and forced, and for Chuck, that is just unacceptable.

I think the biggest problem with this novel is expectation. As a Palahniuk fan, I entered into it expecting something amazing, I mean, it’s Palahniuk, sex and death, which should be an almost effortless win. In the end, it was Palahniuk, sex and death that saved the book, kept me reading the end, and not the plot twists, linguistic quirks and gritty visuals that we have all come to expect from the author of Fight Club and Choke.

But then again, that’s just me. Thoughts?

Guest Post: Jasmine...A Short Story by Matthew Lynn

She called herself jasmine and she carried my folding money around in her
panties. She drank cherry dr pepper leaving wounded and dead soldiers
to litter my nightstands and countertops. we played games like hop
on pop, hungry hungry hippos, trivial pursuit, rock 'em sock 'em
robots, and operation. Translated that means we fucked, ate a shit ton
of narcotics, I chased her frivolously, eventually beat her up and she
removed my heart. She loved animals, I loved drugs. I wanted her to
love me.

We got drunk and got tattoos out on the beach one sunny april day,
mine was a tear drop on the inside of my index finger, it cost me
sixty dollars american, the shop minimum. She got something written in
greek, claimed it was some wise old phrase. I told her to think for
herself and she punched me in throat. I couldn't sing karaoke for a
month without collapsing, the rednecks and red-faced suits ate it up.
I was their hero.

The out of shape business world failure with the outgoing bottle
blonde bombshell. Being a hero is a lonely thing to be. Heroes don't
bleed or feel pain or have lives of their own aside from public
opinion which tends to state, "aww c'mon look at your life, it's not
that bad, man. You got it great! Look at everything you've got going
for you! Count your blessings, bro, be thankful."

Yeah, lets. A house in foreclosure, an estranged ex wife who took the
kids and now takes the money, while some square with glasses and a
website kicks his shoes off at the front door and lays his head in her
bed, a driver's license lost to unpaid speeeding tickets for doing 9
over, a father with Alzheimer's taken care of by a mother who believes
only in labels and how posh the name is, and a drug habit that has
claimed every guitar, bass, amp and surfboard that ever took me away
from all this hero.

But I can hold my liquor, I can sing karaoke, and I date a stripper
with great big cans. So to them. I am God.

I, on the other hand, am an atheist.

I believe in waves.
The up and the down in equal undulating perpetual motion. Crests and
valleys, mountains and pitfalls. Just like Jasmine's
unnaturally-oversized chest.

The thing is, these traits that the racing rats idolize me for are the
same things we abandon as we grow from boys into manhood. I have
regressed and anyone who would care enough to point this out and set
me back on the straight and narrow has since been slighted in some way
shape or form and walked away. Now all that's left is the dreck, the
shipwrecks of voyagers whose journeys met with violent storm, the
broken body of icarus who flew to near the sun, bald, blind sampsons'
shackled and humiliated publicly. Which of these has voice enough or
perception enough to rise and say "drop that fucking pipe, dickhead!"?

None.
they say tomorrow, tomorrow. we sing the song of tomorrow, glorious
and high. promises as heartfelt as they come, sworn to, oaths of
camaraderie taken to hold one another up come the rising sun. but it's
heat melts us back into the quagmire and we remember that there is no
crazy glue for our dusted hearts. So make an encore of the pipe, let
the bottles once again take center stage, and in the green room the
scent of artificial Jasmine lingers on yellowed fingers and a crowd of
jackals goes wild while the hero dies, then rises to the occasion.

Story by M. Lynn
Photo by Dylan Hartmann

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The Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook

I keep a copy of the Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook next to my bed, not because I think am in way qualified to heal my animals at home, but because you never know when you may have to. I live with three cats, my children, and, like children, they dislike each other at varying degrees depending on the day/time/or amount of food they have eaten in a given amount of time.

The three have lived together for going on 6 months now, co-habitating as indoor/outdoor cats in a fairly large house that stays always open, allowing them to come and go as they please from my fairly large, wondrously green neighborhood. You would think with the amount of space, coupled with the infrequency with which these animals see each other, that they would be able to spend a night, one single night, without bringing down hell, high water and the wrath of khan upon anyone who is unlucky enough to get in their way.

But that's not why I keep the Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook next to my bed. You see, they are unique, these animals, in that in their absolute hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-cat-with-an-attitude scorn, they never manage to hurt themselves, nor either of my family memebers, but only me.

The book therefor, serves as self defense, and often I find myself chuckling at the fact that one of my devils has run off yelping after the 300 page tome has been flung at this tail at maximum velocity, the irony too much to handle for even my half asleep brain. No worries, I never hurt the damn things, primarily because in my state of half sleep, I am much more likely to improperly aim and accurately smash the book directly into my own toe.

I'm pretty sure that my cats are going to one day figure it out, they are, especially Ninja, devilishly intelligent, and take the book away from me before attacking.

Until then, I will continued to be baffled by my cat's insatiable desire to eat my feet in my sleep.