And Now We Have Discovered the Vampires' Lair
The two most interesting roadside anomalies of my life:
Freshman year at college. Jimmy and I are driving back to see Meagan and the Deutschlander, and we're taking my vehicle because I am the more obsessed of us both, the more diehard. This is unfortunate because the weather is terrible, insane, and also because my vehicle is my Dad's bigass van. The thing weighs about 10 pounds and rides on the size of wheels you'd normally find on a Matchbox racer.
There was a weather advisery—the sort where they tell you, over and over, stay the fuck off the road! Dumbass! We paid no heed to those panzyass weathermen! To hell with them! Crank up the Metallica and screw those bastards!
Then we started seeing the cars on the shoulder. Then we saw pickups on the shoulder. We saw—no lie, no exaggeration—an upside down pickup. And not a little pickup: the kind the farmboys drive around Albia. And then, finally, we saw a semi on its side. Still we pressed on, and finally got a bit scared when my Dad's van did a 45 mph 180 on the 2-way highway between Tama and Montezuma. We just started spinning and then we were going backward at highway speed, into oncoming traffic! Magically we reversed into the other shoulder, facing completely backward, without smashing into anything.
"Well," I said.
"Well," Jimmy said.
And then we continued for Albia.
Anyway, the second roadside anomaly: today on 35 South, coming from Ankeny, there is a car in the shoulder. But the amazing thing is this, my friend: this little white Grand Am somehow shot off the interstate, went down a maybe 10 foot hill, across a ditch at least three feet deep and three wide, back up another hill, and stopped. I mean, this car . . . is maybe 20 feet from the road, over shrubs and hills and a bigass ditch. And it couldn't come from the other way because there is thick brush and treeline.
. . .
This morning I walked up behind the other researcher. "Did you hear?" I whispered. "Our boss is dead!"
"No!"
"She's dead!"
This is a very satisfying thing to tell your coworkers. Not because you actually want your boss dead, or think she's dead. It's something about the sound of dead! exploding out of your mouth in a charged whisper. I suppose that, tomorrow, it might be even more fun to say "our boss is undead!" It just might be.
. . .
Andy, the name of that movie Nick liked was "From Dusk Till Dawn.Assuming that's the movie you meant.
And now we have discovered the vampire headquarters in Des Moines.
And now we have discovered the catacombs beneath the loft.
Let us compose timeless verse:
And now we have found your underground lair
And now we have found the empty hanging chains
in your basement. Fiends! The relentless bass
music pounds from the danceclub above, masks
the screams of innocents caught in your dungeon.
. . .
Yesterday I said that the mashed potatoes at the Mercy Café were as bland as a mummy's bituminous wrappings, but then realized: probably those would not taste so bland.
. . .
In my college poetry class, there was only one other person who knew what "bitumen" was. Everyone else looked at me like "is that some sort of sandwich spread?"
We had this guy in there who would type up the most obtuse poetry, painfully rhymed couples loaded with arcane vocabulary…stuff like
The eldritch stooped apothecary toils in his antechamber
Oh for our bodies to entwine in Eros's dance, a passionate
and ancient embrace, fluid and enchanting . . .
except even weirder, apparently weirder and more forced than even I can muster. And the wosrt part was that all the girls who had no idea how to manipulate words were enthralled, were held in thrall by the freshman English equation: Big Words + Tortured Syntax = Brilliant!
. . .
Discovery last week: my days pass much, much faster if I spend the first 45 minutes writing a blog post and bopping around in old projects. I think it rockets me forward through time, so that suddenly it's almost nine and thus almost breaktime. The other option is to crawl through the 8 o'clock hour, all those minutes, with nothing for footholds but new reports and mass emails from my higher-ups...
. . .
I have to write a report today on the occupational outlook for a munitions worker in Iowa. Anyone know if there are munition workers in Iowa? Places with lots of munitions? Outside of Melrose?
Freshman year at college. Jimmy and I are driving back to see Meagan and the Deutschlander, and we're taking my vehicle because I am the more obsessed of us both, the more diehard. This is unfortunate because the weather is terrible, insane, and also because my vehicle is my Dad's bigass van. The thing weighs about 10 pounds and rides on the size of wheels you'd normally find on a Matchbox racer.
There was a weather advisery—the sort where they tell you, over and over, stay the fuck off the road! Dumbass! We paid no heed to those panzyass weathermen! To hell with them! Crank up the Metallica and screw those bastards!
Then we started seeing the cars on the shoulder. Then we saw pickups on the shoulder. We saw—no lie, no exaggeration—an upside down pickup. And not a little pickup: the kind the farmboys drive around Albia. And then, finally, we saw a semi on its side. Still we pressed on, and finally got a bit scared when my Dad's van did a 45 mph 180 on the 2-way highway between Tama and Montezuma. We just started spinning and then we were going backward at highway speed, into oncoming traffic! Magically we reversed into the other shoulder, facing completely backward, without smashing into anything.
"Well," I said.
"Well," Jimmy said.
And then we continued for Albia.
Anyway, the second roadside anomaly: today on 35 South, coming from Ankeny, there is a car in the shoulder. But the amazing thing is this, my friend: this little white Grand Am somehow shot off the interstate, went down a maybe 10 foot hill, across a ditch at least three feet deep and three wide, back up another hill, and stopped. I mean, this car . . . is maybe 20 feet from the road, over shrubs and hills and a bigass ditch. And it couldn't come from the other way because there is thick brush and treeline.
. . .
This morning I walked up behind the other researcher. "Did you hear?" I whispered. "Our boss is dead!"
"No!"
"She's dead!"
This is a very satisfying thing to tell your coworkers. Not because you actually want your boss dead, or think she's dead. It's something about the sound of dead! exploding out of your mouth in a charged whisper. I suppose that, tomorrow, it might be even more fun to say "our boss is undead!" It just might be.
. . .
Andy, the name of that movie Nick liked was "From Dusk Till Dawn.Assuming that's the movie you meant.
And now we have discovered the vampire headquarters in Des Moines.
And now we have discovered the catacombs beneath the loft.
Let us compose timeless verse:
And now we have found your underground lair
And now we have found the empty hanging chains
in your basement. Fiends! The relentless bass
music pounds from the danceclub above, masks
the screams of innocents caught in your dungeon.
. . .
Yesterday I said that the mashed potatoes at the Mercy Café were as bland as a mummy's bituminous wrappings, but then realized: probably those would not taste so bland.
. . .
In my college poetry class, there was only one other person who knew what "bitumen" was. Everyone else looked at me like "is that some sort of sandwich spread?"
We had this guy in there who would type up the most obtuse poetry, painfully rhymed couples loaded with arcane vocabulary…stuff like
The eldritch stooped apothecary toils in his antechamber
Oh for our bodies to entwine in Eros's dance, a passionate
and ancient embrace, fluid and enchanting . . .
except even weirder, apparently weirder and more forced than even I can muster. And the wosrt part was that all the girls who had no idea how to manipulate words were enthralled, were held in thrall by the freshman English equation: Big Words + Tortured Syntax = Brilliant!
. . .
Discovery last week: my days pass much, much faster if I spend the first 45 minutes writing a blog post and bopping around in old projects. I think it rockets me forward through time, so that suddenly it's almost nine and thus almost breaktime. The other option is to crawl through the 8 o'clock hour, all those minutes, with nothing for footholds but new reports and mass emails from my higher-ups...
. . .
I have to write a report today on the occupational outlook for a munitions worker in Iowa. Anyone know if there are munition workers in Iowa? Places with lots of munitions? Outside of Melrose?
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