"If I Had a Laser Gun"
By Patrick James van Slee

I wish I had a laser gun. Laser guns would be so fun. If I had a laser gun I would shoot things with it all the time. The best thing about having a laser gun would be that no one would believe how cool I was, having a laser gun. If there was a problem, and I couldn't reach the problem, I could shoot it with my laser gun. My laser gun would have tons of ammo and adjustable settings, so I could shoot things and not hurt them if I wanted to, like birds or my friends. My friends would not get mad at me if I shot them with my laser gun.

This was a question on my science test last week:

"The earth orbits the _____ once a year."

Today is St. Patrick's day, when Irish people commemorate the day that St. Patrick got rid of all of the snakes that were plaguing the country by wearing lots of green and getting incredibly drunk as early as possible. I have some friends in Ireland. They tell me St. Patrick's day is not very pleasant in Dublin. My friend Niamh says "St. Patrick's Day is bloody knackers day out." A knacker is kind of a cross between a drunken fratboy and a violent soccer fan. I saw lots of them when I was visiting Niamh in Dublin, actually. Any given weekend resembles downtown Chicago when the Bulls won their "3-peat" - Very drunk assholes spitting and vomiting all over themselves, roughing up their girlfriends, beating the shit out of each other, setting garbage on fire... And there is plenty of garbage all over the streets, mostly junk food containers and beer cans and water bottles. And I mean every weekend. St. Patrick's day must be pretty amazing to behold.
I have a four-leaf clover. It was a gift from one of my old flames many moons ago. I keep it in a really nice hard bound copy of "The Hobbit." I forget what is significant about four-leaf clovers. Do I get to have a wish, or is it just good luck? Maybe I should write to the Lucky Charms cereal manufacturer. They seem to think that red balloons and rainbows are lucky. I never knew that. Does a whoopy cushion count as a ballon? Most of them are red. Maybe they mean only marshmallow balloons are lucky.
Anyway, if a four-leaf clover is supposed to give me a wish I used it up a long, long time ago, many times over, and it sure as hell didn't come true.
I once read a story about a boy who idly wishes on a unicorn horn that everything his parents are gossiping about downstairs while he is drifting off to sleep would become the literal truth. The whole town gets pretty confusing the next day- for instance, one woman called "Minerva" ends up with a tongue that is literally hinged in the middle and flaps on both sides. Every time she says something, a wierd, other-worldly voice chimes in with a cynical follow up.
So there's this redneck guy in the town who apparently annoys the boy's parents by always saying things like "Golly, ah shore wish ah had me some bacon right about now" or "Boy, ah wish it weren't so darn hot" or "Ah wish m'daddy'd give me some cows." The boy's parents say something like "If wishes were horses..." So the redneck ends up getting a whole bunch of horses that run wild all over the town until he eventually gets them into a corrall and decides to sell them and stop saying "I wish" this and that all the time.

My left eye is swollen today. Well, not the whole eyeball- just the eyelid. It looks like I have a disease and now no one will talk to me. They are all afraid of becoming diseased like me, I guess. I can't really blame them.
I was late for work today because I had to microwave my socks. They were still wet from washing them last night. I actually just took them in the shower with me to wring out the stink. I did that to my pants, too, but they dry pretty quickly because they are made out of polyester. Polyester doesn't really breathe very well, though, which is why it's important to clean them at least a little bit every once in awhile. They smell awful if you don't. Like farts and rotten garbage. Anyway, it took about ten minutes all told to get my socks dry enough to wear out. I had to take them out every two minutes to release the steam- it gets stuck in the microwave and keeps the socks damp if you don't do that.
I was afraid the fuse was going to blow. Lately the all the power has been shutting off when I turn on the microwave or the toaster.

I'm at my new job right now, or actually one third of my new job. I got in trouble today because I didn't put all the labels on straight and sometimes I was stamping the books in the wrong places. Oh, well. I guess I'm not a genius after all.
I can't make up my stupid mind about how much time I need to think. In my other job I had to talk on the phone all day to people, and my biggest bitch was that I never got to think about the things I needed to, like I didn't have time to process shit. But now I have this job where everything is nice and quiet, and I don't have enough shit to think about. What the hell is wrong with me?
This place is like crazy quiet, though, which is super nice. They are almost afraid of noise in there. I'm not even supposed to talk while I'm stamping books. In fact, there is another girl working here, whose name I forget, sitting about six feet away doing the exact same thing, but we completely ignore each other. My boss talks so quietly that I have to ask him to repeat himself sometimes. And he takes a hundred years to say anything. He rolls his eyes behind twitching eyelids, wriggles his lips to fish for the right words, and then whispers them as quietly as possible. I end up staring out a window while I'm waiting for him to tell me something. I also find myself talking extra loudly and acting a little more crass just to balance things out.

Here is another one:

pvsleembira: have you ever had dumbo gumbo?

proreverb: is that elephant droppings?

pvsleembira: no
pvsleembira: it's gumbo with elephant meat instead of seafood

proreverb: sounds good
proreverb: prob illegal

pvsleembira: no, actually. a loophole

proreverb: cool

I get to instant message people at work all day. I can talk about anything I want. Here is an example (I am pvsleembira).


pvsleembira: do you like garbage?

horickzzounds: i've met butch vig

pvsleembira: who?

horickzzounds: of garbage
horickzzounds: ?

pvsleembira: that's a band?

horickzzounds: yeah

pvsleembira: OH.

horickzzounds: what were you talkin about

pvsleembira: you know, garbage. do you like it
pvsleembira: I hate garbage

horickzzounds: garbage sucks
horickzzounds: why do you ask

Wow. I think this was the coldest its been ever, like in the history of the earth. I rode to work this morning, listening to the Ruins, basically pumping my legs for dear life, just trying to generate enough heat to keep from freezing to death and falling off my bike. I got to work in record time, I think like 17 minutes, and just sat at my desk for fifteen minutes without moving at all. I didn't even take my helmet off.
It was even worse on the way home, because it was much, much windier and there was no sun for me to pretend I was being warmed up a little. My legs were on fire both from the exertion of riding so hard and from winburn. When I got home I burrowed under eight blankets and passed out.
When I woke up, my legs were still cold, but I felt like a hundred bucks!

Geez, I guess I kind of let this thing go. I didn't realize it had already been ten days since my last blog entry. I had to type up so many papers for school that the skin under my thumb gradually tore away from the thumbnail. It really hurt, even when I wasn't typing. Oh yeah, and it doesn't help that I have to do stupid data entry at work. I hate data entry.
Last night I got kicked out of the Bottom Lounge. I'm really not much of a dancer, but when I drink a whole lot there is no stopping me- I was flailing all over the bar like a maniac, and I ended up knocking over a table and breaking it. It was the bartender's fault for making such good Tom Collinses. Oh, well. I had some agression to work out. It was a good thing anyway because I was out of money.
I decided to go visit Anna in D.C. at the end of the month. It should be fun. I can't wait to do something illegal in our nation's capitol. She says that just about all of the businesses use the fact that they are in our nation's capitol as a selling point- Like, "The best hotdogs in our nation's capitol" and "Larry Van Pickett's used car dealership has fourteen different locations in our nation's capitol."

I can see my breath right now, even though I have the space heater on at full blast. I've got my orange scarf wrapped around my neck and I'm wearing this wool overcoat that I forgot I even had. I think I'm going to sleep in them.
My friend Matt Streets said that I could have his space heater too, because he lives in a basement apartment that has a wonderfully toasty metal pipe running along the ceiling in every room.
Last night I went to sleep at midnight, but I woke up exactly two hours later because I ate some bad leftover Christmas lasagna for dinner, and it didn't want to be in my belly anymore. Holy Jesus, I really thought I was DYING. I mean it. All I could think about was a pack of slimy yellow gremlins hacking at my stomach with little shovels.
I couldn't get to sleep for another two hours after I killed all of the gremlins, no matter what I tried to do. I tried counting popsicles- first green, then yellow, then blue... But that just made me bored. I tried doing some calistenics to burn off some energy, but after about three minutes I felt ridiculous so I stopped. Eventually I just wrapped myself up in my blankets again and planted my head about an inch away from my space heater, and the next thing I knew I was knocking everything off of my desk, blindly scrambling to find my alarm clock.

Guess what I'm doing right now. I'm smoking a cigarrette. Yes, that's right! I am smoking a cigarrette after wasting about an hour and a half playing video games. And later, when I feel like it, I think I might drink a beer. And while I'm drinking a beer I'm going to eat some nachos and say some swear words.

For about another half an hour it is going to be the first day of the year, of 2004, so...
Well, today I had to say goodbye to Anna for awhile. She will be in D.C. for three months, completing her final stretch toward becoming journalist. I gave her about fifty kisses and said some clever stuff, but when someone you love leaves for awhile you have to say goodbye to them every day that they're not with you. I like to think that it's noble to understand that two people will be separated by great distance from time to time, but I know such stoicism won't make the blankets rise and fall with her breath, nor will it play strip poker with me.
We took some pictures of ourselves this morning with her new camera. In one of them she is strikingly serene and beautiful. Maybe it is the gentle smile just behind a quieted expression she wears, as if just then coming to terms with a profound understanding of the clockwork of the universe. It’s a look I've never caught on her before. I wonder that the expressions on our faces are a way to differentiate between consecutive moments- that they are directed nigh imperceptibly to reflect an undulating soup that is our character by our hearts so multi-faceted such moments can be as different from one another as the people on a subway car, and sometimes only the shrewd, quick eye of the camera can capture a state of being that may wash over us like waves from a rare wind.
But anyway, by the time I see her again, which I think will be at the end of March, hopefully I will have huge muscles and a beard like a christmas wreath, and she will have gained two hundred pounds and gotten some religious tattoos. Man, that would be nuts.

Piece 2.1

"The Misters Butt"

Mister Butt, Mister Butt. Welcome. Good to finally meet the Butts. Or should I say, the Misters Butt.

If someone had told me upon waking this morning "Sir, today you are going to meet the brothers Butt," I would have simply discarded that statement as fanciful monkeyshining. But here you are! Here you are, and here I am in the presence of the the Misters Butt.

Please, sit. Would the Butts care for a refreshment? Perhaps some burritos supreme from the freezer? I am told they are quite delicious. No? No? How about a drink, then. Surely the Misters Butt could not refuse gins and tonic...Fine, fine. Two gins and tonic, coming right up, one each for the Butts.

Thank you dear, yes, one each please. And tell your mother thank you from myself and the Misters Butt. No, no, just water for me. My wilder days are behind me, I'm afraid. We Justices of the Peace had our fun when we were upholding the law alongside the likes of you Butts...ah, those halcyon days, fresh out of Harvard, eager to- Ah, well, you must not let an old man meander through creaky memories. But tell me, when your father, God rest his soul, started Butt, Butt and Butt, had you any idea the family Butt would grow to be so influential? Already, you must know, there is talk of putting a Butt on the ballott. Well, we can't have a joint presidency, of course! But one Butt in the whitehouse is better than no Butts at all!

Here are some interesting things about Santa I remember from this most wonderful time of the year:
Santa made the front page of my favorite newspaper, the Chicago Sun Times. He was getting his boots shined and reading the sports section.
Anna's brother teaches english to children in a small town in Japan. When he asked them "Who's birthday is on Christmas?" they all said "Santa!" in unison.
My parents have cable, and we were watching one of those crazy news stations that try to cram as much information as will fit on the screen, complete with updates scrolling along the bottom. There was a shiny, red pulsating icon that said "Terror Alert: HIGH" hovering over the FOX NEWS logo, and behind it they were tracking Santa, probably via GPS or something, as he made his way through the winter night sky on a sleigh drawn by eight CG reindeer.
My grampa gave me a ride to the train station on Christmas, and while we were waiting in the car for the train to arrive there was an old man with a gray beard and a sports jacket also waiting on the platform. My grampa said something like "Who's that, Santa?", and even though he said it quietly and we had the windows rolled all the way up, the man turned around right then and gave us the googley-eyes and then a big smile before turning his back to us again.

Right now I am sitting on a stuffed turtle. The thing is, my bed is really close to the ground, so I have to sit on my stuffed turtle in order to be able to type comfortably. A long time ago I gave it the name Gamera, after the big monster, but I only just remembered that now. Who needs to name their stuffed animals?
Here is what is on my desk: a desk lamp; two chopsticks that were presents from Anna; a sharpie; a little bottle of Clerz Plus lens drops; two dirty, mismatched ear plugs for when my roommates are being noisy; a laser pointer (the best cat toy around); a contact lens container containing contact lenses; another sharpie; a plastic toy Kappa, which is this Japanese gremlin with a lily pad head that hides just below the surface of a pond and molests children when they go swimming; a teeny-weeny alarm clock; some trash; some scotch tape; a mint; my cd wallet that I got for free at the Fireside Bowl which came with four packs of Winstons; a stone bear from Arizona that was a present from my mom; a Marks-A-Lot permanent marker; two and a half WIP manuscripts; and a whole bunch of change. It's actually a pretty small desk, too. Oh, and I missed one of the sharpies and a pen. I have no idea how I got so many sharpies. I don't even use them, really.

Today I threw a cookie into the Chicago river. It was an oatmeal raisin cookie, I think, but I had a whole pocket full of them so I'm not sure. I ate the rest.
But when I threw it in a seagull swooped down on it from nowhere and snatched it out of the water, and then flew it over to locations unknown. It's so funny that seagulls eat cookies, I think. People don't eat seagull food, whatever that is. We don't even eat seagulls. At least, I don't.
The cookies came from Subway, but I didn't buy them. Someone at my school bought a whole bunch of sandwiches and gave them to us for free. The cookies came with the package. I think Subway is sick, but I ate it anyway. I used to work there, and even though it was clean and well organized and so on, it was still artificial and prefab and nasty, all except for the lettuce. You can't really fuck up lettuce.

So I guess I don't get to whine about sleeping in a cold basement anymore because when my parents read my blog they went out and bought me a space heater. Isn't that spectacular? I am lucky to have parents that would care if I were to freeze to death in my sleep. It was really starting to get bad, too. I was sleeping in a sweater with a bright orange wool scarf wrapped around my neck, and I was trying to train Obake to sleep on my feet all night. He wasn't going for it-- he prefers my belly, as I have previously indicated.
I get to pretend that I'm really busy again at work today because... It's The Busiest Shopping Day Of The Year! Man oh man, people just can't wait to spend their money on whatever the prime time news tells them is HOT this Christmas! Remember those wiggly jiggly Tickle Me Elmo dolls? They were these little epileptic muppets that someone decided to pay the news to advertise a few years ago, even though NOBODY cared about that wretched, annoying Sesame Street character anymore. But, predictably, because the news said everybody's kid was asking about them, every kid had to have an Elmo now, and people actually started to kill each other over the last one left on the shelves! Over a doll! An ELMO doll! It was awesome.
Oh yeah, by the way, speaking of Sesame Street-- My girlfriend Anna is in the doghouse for this one, but I have a game for you: La La LA LA... One of these com-ments is legitimate, oh na na na, and the rest of them are total bullshit... Can you guess which com-ment is real and which isn't? Now it's time to play our game...It's time to play our ga-ay-ame.

You know what's grosser than gross? When you see a bum spill glistening, rusty orange vomit all over the place.
Sure, people puke, right? All the time! No big deal- but right in the middle of the afternoon on the side of a busy street, even though there is a perfectly good, urine stenched alley ten feet away? And he was STANDING UP! Knees locked, arms hanging at his sides, he just leaned forward a bit and casually horked, like his body was so used to this kind of business that it didn't need to bother with any spastic histrionics. AHHH! I can't believe I watched it! I am not going to eat for a week.
I used to see this guy around alot when I lived near there, actually. He would be in the currency exchange when I would go there to cash my paychecks, which I thought was interesting. What the heck was he doing at the currency exchange, buying stamps? It seemed pretty ridiculous at first. I mean, when you think bum, you think crazy weirdo with no friends or family or anything- like a decaying, ambling mound of hair from the floor of a barbershop. But maybe this guy was buying stamps, and he was going to go and write a letter on the back of a box of doughnuts to his daughter who's in college in Miami or something. Makes you wonder about bums, right? Everybody's got a story, but I bet it doesn't get much more interesting than what somebody's gone through to make them just give up on everything.

I discovered banana chips today. They are so tasty. Kind of smokey, like beef jerky, actually, which is kind of weird, but I like them anyway. But then I like beef jerky, too. If you have to make a choice between potato chips and banana chips, take the banana chips. Yum Yum Yum.
You want to know this crazy thing? There is a 'smoked flavoring' factory in Chicago. I'm serious. I walk by it when I am on my way over to meet with my friend Matt after work so we can work on this video thing we've been trying to finish for 100 years. I can smell it from eight blocks away- it's like salty dust in the air. You would think that would be gross, but I actually kind of like it, I think because it's better than car and bus and truck exhaust fumes. But there is a humungous vent on the wall where I guess the smoked flavoring fumes are pumped outside so the factory workers can breathe, and the whole wall just underneath it is stained black.
Right. I had to ride the stupid red line again. It's so slow and clunky that it sounds like somebody stole a whole bunch of garbage cans from Oscar the Grouch and chained them all together, and then put seats in them and dragged them through the subway.
Did you know that the word 'weirdo' is in the dictionary?

Who writes about a snow globe? Nobody, that's who.