Slackjaw's Forum

We sat on the train near the back by the caboose, where they have a ramp to load Ike’s chair on and off. It was just to get out of the sun for a little while and rest our weary feet. We’d been on it before, a day or two earlier but hadn’t yet gone all the way around, so that’s what we did – that and chatted up the nice people who’s daughter had nodded off and who were looking for the same break in the day that we were having. It’s a quiet ride, mostly in the shade or through the various tunnels depicting the Grand Canyon, the age of the dinosaurs and a strangely warbled Zip-a-de-do-da’d Song of the South paddleboat scene. It was the afternoon of day five and by this time we had pretty much had our fill of the Happiest Place On Earth™. We’d done the Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan, Dumbo, that “Small World” place, Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Autopia, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, Indiana Jones, that safari ride boat thing, some other no...

Sometimes people prefer to run whatever race their running by starting with everyone else at the starting line. This allows them to believe that the moment is a fresh unspoiled beginning and that given whatever task is at hand, what ever challenges they face, at least the playing field is even -- that all have exactly the same chance for success, at least in that short second before the gun sounds. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s better for wheels to fall off, or for the car split in two -- to be pushed off the side of the road and driven through a barn full of hay and chickens. Sometimes it’s better to stumble at the starting blocks, to fall and scrape ones knee before gathering it together and finishing the race -- to be pushed off a bike and have to tape ones feet to the peddles. At least in Hollywood, at least in the movies. Sometimes. And sometimes people fall off porches and rupture a tendon in their ankle, finding their leg in a walking cast two days before they lea...

Well I just finished the biography, The life and Near Death of Steve Earl and decided that I can like his music as much as I want, but from here on out it has to be prefaced with “I know the man is a huge asshole, but…” That’s always the risk one takes when trying to get a little deeper into the life of someone who’s art you enjoy. Last night was laundry-folding night around the singlewide. The way we tend to decide when it’s laundry folding night, is after the laundry goes through the cycle for the second time without the first unfolded baskets ever getting put away, Sweetie gets a bee in her bonnet and we spend a romantic evening sipping wine and matching socks. Somehow I wound up folding it all myself last night as Sweetie never made it, due to falling asleep while putting the older boy to bed. As I sat in the middle of this growing semi-circle of laundry, folding yet another pair of tiny corduroys, I was struck by the fact that perhaps we’re doing this all wrong. T...

Well I said I was gonna do it and low and behold I did. For some reason this year, some 17 years after I left school for good, I went back and finished up my Bachelor of Arts degree from the Evergreen State College. I know this, not because I actually received anything in the mail saying as much, as one might think, nor do I know this because someone phoned me to say “Congratulations!” or “It’s about time!” or “Who put a bug up your butt after all this time? Way to GO!” but because I went and looked it up on line, and the Evergreen State College website said so. What prompted me to look is that I received a nice evaluation from Steve, my professor (no last names at Evergreen, you call all professors by their first names, dude) which said among other niceties, that I had “written the best piece he had read this quarter”. Now I’m not so sure how much of that speaks to my writing ability and how much it speaks to the quality of an Evergreen undergraduate education. Regardles...