The Dork Knight Rises

I awoke from my slumber this morning and breakfasted upon a delicious banana.

I had no way of knowing that this banana, as it endured the unimaginable pain of death by mastication, in its death throes called out to the universe.

“Remember me!” it cried. “Remember that I was. And avenge me…avenge me…”

I did not hear this, as the language of bananas is even more alien and foreign to me than the babblings and gigglings of girls gibbering about the merits of Justin Beiber.

To me, the only sound was “squersh, mersh, smack” and the other sounds of chewing one normally associates with the destruction of banana by tooth.

I can only imagine what occurred as a result of this banana’s final words…

Miles away, in the parking lot of a Goodwill store and donation station, someone…I have no way of knowing who…was eating a banana. As they finished off their snack, something…some strange compulsion, caused them to drop the peel on the concrete rather than discard of it in a convenient rubbish receptacle. They departed, leaving the peel to moulder in the Texas sun.

There…It waited.

Later…After much procrastination, I willed myself to go to the Goodwill in a desperate search for an essential costume piece for the play in which I will be appearing beginning this Friday.

I enjoyed a pleasant drive to the Goodwill, enjoying the music of Empire of the Sun and sipping on a Grande Skinny Mocha beverage from Starbucks.

As I exited my vehicle, I looked down and took note of a banana peel, browning and slightly rippled from the hot sun.

I thought nothing of it, except perhaps to remember the delicious flavor of the banana I had consumed this morning…the banana that unbeknownst to me, had cursed me.

My visit to the Goodwill store went quickly and without incident. I located a jacket I found acceptable and it fit me well enough. I purchased it and left the store in excellent spirits.

I approached my vehicle, looking at the surrounding buildings and hills, noting the increasingly heavy traffic. Then my left foot, instead of finding the usual purchase one would expect to find on parking lot concrete, continued moving forward as I stepped, rapidly increasing its speed.

My mind became of jumble of confused, disjointed thoughts.

“Oh shit! I’m fucking slipping!”

“What am I slipping on?!”

“Still slipping!”

“Banana!”

I attempted to go down on my right knee, thinking that I could gracefully come to a stop in that way. But my right leg was repugnant to command. Instead, it spasmed and shot out wildly in the opposite direction I had intended.

I was falling…falling down and to the side. The plastic bag I carried flew in front of me as my arms flailed, desperately trying to catch upon something…anything to save myself. But it was not meant to be.

I impacted the ground arse-first. My head flopped to the side, thudding loudly against the side of my car, causing the anti-theft system to begin its incessant honking. I slid to my back, my right leg twisted beneath me.

I took stock of my situation for a moment before realizing that my car was, in its attempt to frighten away thieves, drawing the attention of everyone within earshot to my prone, pathetic form upon the ground. I fumbled with my keys and disabled the alarm. I stood, dusted myself off, feeling the flush of embarrassment in my face.

The silence was broken by a tiny tittering sound. I looked up and saw a child leaning on the railings near the Goodwill. She was round faced and wearing a pink shirt. She was pointing at me.

“He fell down!” she said to someone behind her. “He fell! Hee hee hee!”

I smiled awkwardly at her, picked up my shopping bag (and what was left of my dignity) and retreated to the safety of my vehicle.

Now…as I eat a leisurely lunch at Chilis, I look back upon these events and share them with you…dear Reader…while the sound of mad circus music floats through my mind.

There’s a tiny scar on my forehead that wouldn’t be there were it not for my four-year-old self’s love of Superman.

I remember it pretty clearly.  Sadly, most of the memories we retain from our early childhoods are the traumas, aren’t they?  I asked my grandmother to tie a towel around my neck so that I could have a “Superman cape.”  I then began romping around her house, pretending to be Superman.  I imagine I was battling Lex Luthor or some other imagined foe, when it came time for me to fly!

I admit that these days I find myself much more weight and health conscious than I have been in previous years.  I am currently in the best shape of my adult life and have been trying to at least maintain the fitness level I attained over the summer.

Valentine’s Day!  Humbug!  Why the hell should we arbitrarily decide to “be romantic” on February 14th?!  If it’s EXPECTED then it doesn’t MEAN anything, right?  Why do I need society to tell me when to acknowledge the person I love?  What about all the poor single people?!  And it’s so totally like, 1950s.  The guy does all the planning and all the paying.  That’s unfair to guys and unfair to women too!  Valentine’s Day was created by the greeting card industry and florist conglorporations to make money!  You people are all sheep!  You’re sheeple if you fall into the Valentine’s Day hole!  Sheeple!  Sheeeeeeple!  Baaaah!  Baaaaah!  Huh huh!  Isn’t that clever?!  I took the word “sheep” and I combined it with the word, “people”.  Huh huh.  It makes sheeple. ….Cuz…y’know…it’s like…because you get herded….you know…like sheep…but you’re people…so like…uh…you’re sheeple!  Huh huh…huh…

(Note:  Sorry this is much more serious than my usual fare.  But it’s what I felt like expressing.  And since I think we all fight a similar struggle…perhaps it might be of interest.  If you don’t like it, go check out cracked.com afterwards.  That always cheers me right up.)

For the past year I have been trying to kill myself…figuratively (kind of).

To clarify, I have been trying to kill the version of myself that existed for years as an unhappy, weak-minded, self-deluding, obese, harmfully self-deprecating fool.

He does not die easy.

Can a year be the best and worst year of your life simultaneously?  I guess, when seen as a whole, it was.  Though looking back on it in detail, the first half was hell and the second was the most transformative and uplifting time of my life.

Happy New Year!

As a way of procrastinating my remarks on the whirligig of events in my life in the year 2012, I have decided that I am arrogant and egotistical enough to step up there with the ranks of bloggers and film critics and make my Top 10 Best Movies of the Year list!

I had an urge to write.  But unfortunately I had no strong topic and I’m not ready to make another BOSS post yet.  SO I decided that I’d just do a sort of random smattering of various thoughts or observations or little stories or whatever.  Sort of like a blog brainstorm of unconnected bits of things not large enough to blog about, but that pop into my head.  Anyway…I called this “Part 1” because I’m certain it will happen again someday.  So here goes…

Since I was sure you were all (all five or six of you) waiting with bated breath for me to just bite the damn bullet and see Beasts of the Southern Wild, I finally faced my fears and went to see it.

You may have seen this already, but in case you missed it, my Facebook post, upon leaving the theater after the movie was, “So…I feel like I’ve just been kicked in the abdomen by a steroid-enhanced rhinoceros.”

Obviously the movie had some effect.

I go to a lot of movies these days.

Everyone has their vices.  Some people smoke.  Some people drink.  Some people watch horrible TV shows.  Some people smoke, drink, and watch horrible TV shows simultaneously.

It seems my vice is to go to the movies…a LOT.

I have seen all but two of the movies playing at the Alamo Drafthouse right now.  One of them—The Expendables 2—I will probably be going to see tonight.  The other one—The Odd Life of Timothy Green—I have no desire to see because it seems extremely schmaltzy and I think I can predict its plot with a depressing certainty.  BUT…there is a high probability I will go see it anyway…just because.

Clearly I have a problem.