I Dare You To Try And Make Sense Of This
And then you take a moment to reflect. How was it, in fact, that a five minute break to enjoy a pudding snack escalated into the largest fire disaster in the Los Angeles area?
You sit there in the charred remains of a chair and wipe the soot from your goggles (in hindsight, protective eye wear had been a good idea) as you smoulder in the remains of your studio apartment. You can place the blame definitively on one thing. Anime, or perhaps that isn't fair. Let's say, it's the fans on anime that's the problem. Yes, that's the truth. All this "it's time for my super tengaku attack" and "Aw, kawaiidesune" nonsense. It's unhygienic, poison to impressionable young minds. That's the problem with the Japanese they never think of the children.
You probe the floor with your toe and feel the melted plastic of your pudding cup. You reflect on that dream you always have where you are going to the park to kiss that new girl in town. But of course, dreams wouldn't be dreams unless they operated by certain conventional rules, so you never actually got to kiss her, though you can imagine what it might be like. Sticky. Probably a bit salty, and then you'd wonder why you had anticipated it for so long. That's how it would be if your dream ever actually played itself out. You wake up instead. The only logical explanation is that your mind doesn't want you to realize it. After all the anticipation of something is always better than attaining it.
You have a friend Zakaa who, to be sensitive, we shall say is a bit off. It is his concensus that the dream is real and that reality is being interrupted by the dream- that which you perceive as real, which if you actually bothered to think about it is absolutely daft. That reasoning is exactly why the Germans lost the war. By that logic, Zakaa is a character in someone else's dream, nonexistant. What does that say about his self esteem. Your school councilor used to be concerned with that. Your father actually remembers the days when self esteem had not manifested itself into words. No one was worried about it then.
-I'm sorry sir but you were illegally parked in a red zone.
Still, Zakaa may have been onto something. After all, that girl did look different every single time you had the dream, whereas life seemed painfully redundant. But why would he actually tell you?
You step out onto the street and look at all the wreckage. Across the way you see several neighbors gathering on the street.
"What was that?" One exclaims.
There is a child bouncing a ball in the street. No need to worry about him being hit by traffic when traffic doesn't exist. Maybe that fire wasn't such a bad idea. Not that you had intended to do it, of course. An accident. A beautiful, heaven sent accident.
There is a commotion to your right. There are six cats. Five of them have large patches of hair missing. Clumps gone here, a bit there, and a lot there, though there is not point in pointing out the obvious. Mangy, like those diseased cats you see dying in the gutters. Next to it you see one of those freakish naturally hairless cats, and you would swear to some higher power (or a lower one for that matter) that it was laughing at the other five.
-You have insulted my honor and i demand that we duel to the death!
-Fool! You cannot defeat me. My power is unlimited. You haven't the strength.
-Yeah, well you have a tiny cock.
-What? Impossible! How could i have lost to you?
-You are blinded by arrogance.
You wake up every time and your hand reaches out, trying to snatch the image before it disappears. You stop half way, because, well, you're used to it by now. You fold your hands on your stomach and listen to your pulse. Steady. Maybe it's just a need to be certain, to remove the doubt. And maybe if she hadn't liked you, you wouldn't have liked her in the first place. And maybe if the girlfriend you had when you were seven hadn't broken your heart, it wouldn't have been a big deal.
Zakaa wants to talk, but you tell him not now. That guy always wants to talk. In fact, all he ever wants to do is talk. It's gotten to that point that he calls and you don't answer the phone. He tries again the next day. You ask him if it's important and he says no, he just had this really weird idea that he wanted to share. You tell him no because weird isn't interesting if it's the only stuff he can come up with. You don't need to hear again about how he saw a girl on the bus who looked exactly like the girl you describled in your dream. The last time you asked how that was possible when she looked different every single time, and he replied, "she didn't have a face."
Maybe you should talk to him.
The last few days has been spent with the entire city cleaning up after the destruction. The LA area looks even more like an asshole that it ever has. While you are scrubbing a sidewalk, you watch as a teenager does his part by throwing rocks at building that is flirting with collapse. It might as well come down. It will make a satisfying crunch and rumble when it does. It's funny how disasters bring people together. Actually there isn't anything funny about it at all, but earlier you saw a dog peeing on a passed out homeless man, and that was pretty funny.
- Your car has been impounded by the Overlord of Inconveniences and other things that make you go, Damn it!
- Nani?
-To get it back you must pay with, YOUR SOUL.
- E! Zannendesuyo.
You wake up. It's the same story over and over. You'd like to watch something else but that isn't up to you. You want them all to just shut the hell up and leave you be. Can't blame them. That isn't fair. While it's so easy to pin everything else on them, the fact is that you can't blame your inability get over her on the Japanese.
You sit there in the charred remains of a chair and wipe the soot from your goggles (in hindsight, protective eye wear had been a good idea) as you smoulder in the remains of your studio apartment. You can place the blame definitively on one thing. Anime, or perhaps that isn't fair. Let's say, it's the fans on anime that's the problem. Yes, that's the truth. All this "it's time for my super tengaku attack" and "Aw, kawaiidesune" nonsense. It's unhygienic, poison to impressionable young minds. That's the problem with the Japanese they never think of the children.
You probe the floor with your toe and feel the melted plastic of your pudding cup. You reflect on that dream you always have where you are going to the park to kiss that new girl in town. But of course, dreams wouldn't be dreams unless they operated by certain conventional rules, so you never actually got to kiss her, though you can imagine what it might be like. Sticky. Probably a bit salty, and then you'd wonder why you had anticipated it for so long. That's how it would be if your dream ever actually played itself out. You wake up instead. The only logical explanation is that your mind doesn't want you to realize it. After all the anticipation of something is always better than attaining it.
You have a friend Zakaa who, to be sensitive, we shall say is a bit off. It is his concensus that the dream is real and that reality is being interrupted by the dream- that which you perceive as real, which if you actually bothered to think about it is absolutely daft. That reasoning is exactly why the Germans lost the war. By that logic, Zakaa is a character in someone else's dream, nonexistant. What does that say about his self esteem. Your school councilor used to be concerned with that. Your father actually remembers the days when self esteem had not manifested itself into words. No one was worried about it then.
-I'm sorry sir but you were illegally parked in a red zone.
Still, Zakaa may have been onto something. After all, that girl did look different every single time you had the dream, whereas life seemed painfully redundant. But why would he actually tell you?
You step out onto the street and look at all the wreckage. Across the way you see several neighbors gathering on the street.
"What was that?" One exclaims.
There is a child bouncing a ball in the street. No need to worry about him being hit by traffic when traffic doesn't exist. Maybe that fire wasn't such a bad idea. Not that you had intended to do it, of course. An accident. A beautiful, heaven sent accident.
There is a commotion to your right. There are six cats. Five of them have large patches of hair missing. Clumps gone here, a bit there, and a lot there, though there is not point in pointing out the obvious. Mangy, like those diseased cats you see dying in the gutters. Next to it you see one of those freakish naturally hairless cats, and you would swear to some higher power (or a lower one for that matter) that it was laughing at the other five.
-You have insulted my honor and i demand that we duel to the death!
-Fool! You cannot defeat me. My power is unlimited. You haven't the strength.
-Yeah, well you have a tiny cock.
-What? Impossible! How could i have lost to you?
-You are blinded by arrogance.
You wake up every time and your hand reaches out, trying to snatch the image before it disappears. You stop half way, because, well, you're used to it by now. You fold your hands on your stomach and listen to your pulse. Steady. Maybe it's just a need to be certain, to remove the doubt. And maybe if she hadn't liked you, you wouldn't have liked her in the first place. And maybe if the girlfriend you had when you were seven hadn't broken your heart, it wouldn't have been a big deal.
Zakaa wants to talk, but you tell him not now. That guy always wants to talk. In fact, all he ever wants to do is talk. It's gotten to that point that he calls and you don't answer the phone. He tries again the next day. You ask him if it's important and he says no, he just had this really weird idea that he wanted to share. You tell him no because weird isn't interesting if it's the only stuff he can come up with. You don't need to hear again about how he saw a girl on the bus who looked exactly like the girl you describled in your dream. The last time you asked how that was possible when she looked different every single time, and he replied, "she didn't have a face."
Maybe you should talk to him.
The last few days has been spent with the entire city cleaning up after the destruction. The LA area looks even more like an asshole that it ever has. While you are scrubbing a sidewalk, you watch as a teenager does his part by throwing rocks at building that is flirting with collapse. It might as well come down. It will make a satisfying crunch and rumble when it does. It's funny how disasters bring people together. Actually there isn't anything funny about it at all, but earlier you saw a dog peeing on a passed out homeless man, and that was pretty funny.
- Your car has been impounded by the Overlord of Inconveniences and other things that make you go, Damn it!
- Nani?
-To get it back you must pay with, YOUR SOUL.
- E! Zannendesuyo.
You wake up. It's the same story over and over. You'd like to watch something else but that isn't up to you. You want them all to just shut the hell up and leave you be. Can't blame them. That isn't fair. While it's so easy to pin everything else on them, the fact is that you can't blame your inability get over her on the Japanese.