Questions with No Answers

What I'm Doing: Looking forward to the final Mad Skillz Update. Can’t wait Law.

212:

You may have yet to notice, but none of my posts repeat the initial letter in their titles. This is the fifth full month, and if you add my blog-birthing post from February, that puts me at 21 posts. By the end of August I will hit 25 posts- which will leave me with one final letter for the 26^th blog title. In these last two posts, I’ve barely managed “X”, struggled just slightly with “Q”- both infamous for their conniving trickery. However, I am still left with “Z”, “Y”, “U”, “T”, and “S”. Which one will claim the 26^th title slot, I am not so sure yet.

For some reason, I thought it would take forever to reach 26 posts. I’ll have to start coming up with new ideas and schemes for my blog titles. Maybe the 26^th post (as I’m sure my good friend Law will surely say) will be the end, and finally of 212’s Season 1. We’ll see Law, we’ll see.

Matter over Mind

The oven is on. It’s been on and still is on and has been on since yesterday morning when you made your eggs over easy because you like them better that way. The oven is on and it is making your gas bill higher and your expenses rise and it is taking money from your bank. Gradually. Every second you spend sitting in your car letting the air conditioning fume out of the vents and hit the cool beads of sweat gathering right above your upper lip causes the gasoline in your tank to decrease just slightly enough that you ponder if it is better to put the windows down even though it is summertime. But you don’t dwell on it. There is a truck next to your car and it is towering above your car. It has giant tires and wheels that sparkle in the sunshine and you get a good hard look at them because it is rush hour traffic and you might as well open your car door and get out and lick them. You question why they shine so much because it just rained yesterday and in order for them to shine the man next to you must have cleaned his car during the workday. A car honks its horn behind you and you realize the car in front of you moved approximately thirteen feet and seven inches while you were thinking about the truck’s wheels. You tap the gas slightly and roll forward the exact thirteen feet and seven inches to appease the God’s of the compact and packed freeway that isn’t exactly free. It’s free to ride on but yet you still have to pay gas to ride in your car and those gas prices have been rising lately. But it isn’t free because you are prisoned in your Ford and all you have for comfort is the air conditioning that is tickling the prickles of hair on your cheeks. By the time you sweat through your white button up and undo your tie you realize that the oven is still on. And you’re still not home. And it’s been on since yesterday morning when you made your eggs over easy because you like them better that way. And that the gas that is keeping your oven warm and toasty in the summertime is still taking money out of your bank. Gradually. The workday has made you tired and slightly depressed and you don’t want to think about work so you grapple with the knob on the car stereo and twist it with a slight and imaginary flick of the wrist. Bon Jovi yells through your speakers and you really don’t like Bon Jovi. You scream in the glass case of your car to whatever plush arm chair that Bon Jovi is currently sitting on in front of a fire that you are currently not “halfway there” and that you are still quite a long, long ways from home. And that in the past hour you have moved approximately thirteen feet and seven inches and that the temperature outside has moved further than that because it is much hotter than earlier and you know this because you have already rolled down your windows twice to properly examine the wheel’s on the truck that is stationed in limbo next to you. You press the knob in on your radio and decide that is better to sit in silence in your Ford than to listen to Bon Jovi telling you to take his hand. You saw an infomercial on meditation the other day and you remember it through the stench of exhaust as the semi-truck that is three cars ahead of you accelerates slightly to move another twenty-two feet and six inches forward. But then you think of what you just remembered and are slightly upset by the absurdity of the infomercial. Isn’t meditation supposed to be something that is free and for everyone to enjoy and that is supposed to relax you- at least that is what you thought. But some company somewhere is probably making lots of money somewhere for using it is their great new weight-loss campaign. Maybe the executive of that company is sipping on a margarita with Bon Jovi somewhere in the Caribbean right now. For a second you wish you were there too- but then you remember you don’t really like Bon Jovi and that your oven is still on and if you were in the Caribbean it would take you a long time to get home and that may cause problems at the house. You’re not positive the oven is on, but you think it is- you think you’re sure of it because you just have that feeling that you left it on like the ghost hand that turns the radio. Not exactly the same as when a commercial on the radio comes on and the volume is suddenly higher than when a song was on, because that’s just the sound on the commercial. But as if you actually turned the knob when the commercial came on and then suddenly remembered you turned the knob. That kind of feeling. So you are pretty sure the oven is on and you want to be able to get home fast not only to turn it off but more importantly to make sure if you are right and that the oven is actually on. You debate picking up your iPhone and calling your home phone and begging for your cat to pick up as the phone rings and rings and rings. The cat could possibly become so annoyed that it picks up the phone and will understand your command to turn off the oven. But even if that happens, you still wouldn’t know if the cat actually turned off the oven. It could become lazy and decide to take a nap before turning off the oven and when you get home the oven could still be on. Or the oven could be off and the cat may have turned it off and then your cat could be incredibly smart and you would think so at first too but then you would realize there was the option that maybe the oven was never on in the first place and money was not being taken out in incredibly small increments from your bank account in the form of gas.

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It’s August now, even though this post says July 31^st. Time for things to get moving. Time to get out of that chained-freeway state of mind and progress into purposeful thought.

-TWO-12

Xerotolerant

What I'm Doing: Final day of the weekly volleyball gig.

212:

Finding a word that begins with “X” is just as hard as it sounds. Even after submitting to Google’s almighty searching powers, it was still difficult to find the right word. Many of them are scientific and foreign; others are just strange and obtuse. I found myself strained like the stretching dude from Fantastic Four. That is, stretched between a Firefox tab filled with alien “X” words and ten other Firefox tabs with their definitions (presented by Google). I think that in the future, I will have to buff up my personal “X” word dictionary and astonish some folks with fluent use of xylyl, xysters, and xanthopsia.

Xerotolerent, as I am newly informed by Wikipedia and Google, is meant to mean tolerant of extremely dry conditions. After growing up in Arizona, I can say that I’m xerotolerent. However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to use it in my next greeting.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Sam. I’m from Arizona- and you might just say that I’m… xerotolerent.”

It’s been harder than I expected to keep up with writing throughout the remainder of June. As I mentioned in my previous post on the 29^th, this month has slipped through my fingers. Strangely enough, I’ve spent that past three or four days with my first ear infection.  But I’m not trying to make excuses here. I realize I’m behind schedule. Cheers to August for a fresh start and hopefully a better track record for those ever elusive Wednesdays.

The Adventures of Captain Ralf (Part Three)

Age of Sam McGuffin: 9-10

All writing copied, including spelling/grammatical errors

(This is the final portion of Captain Ralf. Parts Two and One are in previous posts.)

When all eight of them got to the scene it was a distruction. It looked as if it was a construction sight after it was deserted. “We better get back quick.” One said. But the boy wasn’t listening. Instead he was looking in the direction of the two other boys, who looked as if they battled Dr. Reeeally Evil, the mad onster in a trashcan.

Later in the town of Conodac, in a bright early morn, the boy who’s name was Josh was watching the found boys. Felix and Ralf yelled with pain as the doctor egnighted a shot in each of their legs. The pain from the shot was probably just as painful as when they were struck by lightning. “Easy now, we don’t want this antidote to hurt more than it does now, do we boys?” The doctor told them nicely.

“When are they going to be up and about?” Josh asked worriedly.

“Oh in about 2-3 days for them.” The doctor told him.

“Gee, that quick!” Josh said in surprise.

“Well it only will take them so short of time because they survived that bolt of lightning. No origanol man could survive that, so they should only take that long to recover from such a strike.” The doctor said putting his large hand on Josh’s shoulder.

Three days later. The sky was a redish brown as the sun was setting three days after the accident. The two boys, Ralf and Felix, had been up and about like summer wild flowers.

“Gosh, that doctor did the trick!” Ralf told Felix in a happy mannor.

“You know what, I Don’t think the doctor did much.” Felix questioned.

Ralf changed the subject, “How ‘bout we go get some brunch?”

“Alright.” Felix sighed as if he just had the wind jump out of him.

The marketplace was as loud as huge rain drops pelting the dusty ground. There were men and women selling all sorts of goods- food, weaponry, sheilds, and herbs. As you might have guessed Ralf had yanked Felix over to the food cart. “Ahh, so, what would you like you little scamps? Eh?” The shop keeper asked them in an unfriendly voice. “Uhh…” said Ralf, “We’d like sixteen apples, twenty oranges, six pears…”

Three minutes later.

“… and finally three peaches.” Ralf told the shop keeper nicely. “So you want sixteen apples…”

Five minutes later.

“Is that all?” The shopkeeper asked, changing his tone.

“Uhh… ummm.” Ralf murmured, but Felix cut in and said, “Yes sir, that is all. Thanks.”

Once Ralf and Felix packed up their things….

Pages 15-18/18 of Captain Ralf

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Captain Ralf was written when I was around 9-10 in a Harry Potter Platform 9 stationary book. It filled the first 18 pages of the hard covered journal, and ended abruptly. Recently, I’ve found many other stories and drawings that are similar to Captain Ralf. One’s about a talking weapon called “Monkey Spear”- which was also written around the same time as Captain Ralf. It’s fun to look back and see my writing style when I was younger. I pick out those wild metaphors of my youth- and laugh- because I still do the same thing today. Captain Ralf was a pleasure for me to reread, despite getting lost in all the abrupt changes and misspelled words.

That’s the end of Captain Ralf. Thanks for reading!

-TWO-12

Onward to August

What I'm Doing: Sitting on the couch with swimmer’s ear, legs sore from a triathlon.

212:

Somehow, I have to chunk out three more posts in the next three or so days. July has sped by faster than Pre-June. I can’t seem to figure out where July has disappeared to. Some obscure crevice in the middle of the Atlantic, perhaps- hiding with forty-foot eels and cowering from the monstrosities of the great oceanic darkness? Or maybe July decided to take a short vacation halfway through its scheduled work week, and took the nearest rocket ship to Jupiter? Or maybe, a mad scientist somewhere on this planet (or relatively close to this planet) created a time warping device. It may have malfunctioned, causing minutes to turn into hours and hours into days.

Whatever happened to the normal mass of July will most-likely remain a mystery. It will go down in the books as an event such as Atlantis or the Bermuda Triangle.

Or maybe, I’m just having a fun time in the summer of 2010.

Clouds and Drywall

Outside.

People relax. They lie down on their plump grassy lawns and let their shoulders decompose into the earth. Sniffing the rich soil, they exhale- then direct their vision receptors toward the expanse of blue atmosphere. One by one, the people point at the large masses of whiteness. They claim them as theirs, and then define them to be prehistoric beasts, bipedal creatures, and exothermic monstrosities. Once a mass of whiteness is dictated to be a specific device by one of the population, all other members of the population would chime in. The people glorify over the ideal wonders and detail of the obtuse whiteness.

Inside.

People stress. They lie down at their beds at night or on the toilet in the afternoon. The population’s mental capacity is peaked and is strumming and humming and struggling to keep up with the pace of the required thought process to decode the average crossword puzzle. Images and words blur into foreign artifacts and symbols turn into everyday language. No shoulders slump into the gentle embrace of the brittle ground. Instead, the artificial gathers its claws and tendrils and marinates the bodies in gruesome poison. Vision receptor shields twitch and shiver- as does the skin. Sight wavers, and concentration is a struggle. The walls. The white walls are the only escape. The drywall. Its uneven curves and non-uniformity are turn-ons to the creative enclave within the cranium. People devise nostalgic shapes and genius out of it. An ex-wife, a WWII bomber, a toy… lost long ago.

Outside.

In sheltered harmony, a boy and a girl gaze at the wonders of space. The clouds fascinate them with their opportunity and brevity of solid shape. Their imagination whirs like a stirring rod in a beaker, spinning around the brain mass into a mixture of beautiful insight and intellectual fact. The mind is at ease.

Inside.

In solitary confinement, the wild man of the population wonders about the details of the walls. Usually, his mind is framed and slaughtered by the details of his past and the confusion of his present. The nurses and doctors tell him he is sick, very sick. But the walls tell him otherwise. The walls tell him stories and cure his curiosity of the world. If it wasn’t for the walls, he would be long lost. They would’ve sent him far away by now, if it wasn’t for the walls.

The Adventures of Captain Ralf (Part Two)

Age of Sam McGuffin: 9-10

All writing copied, including spelling/grammatical errors

(Part One of Captain Ralf is on the previous blog post.)

The officer opened the drawbridge. “Here you are,” he told him, “the King’s castle!”

In the throne room Ralf looked at his surrondings. There was stone walls with the same brown tint as the outside wall was. There were stone pillers and a stain glass window that look as if a rainbow won the lottery. But the center of attraction was the red carpet in the center of the room, and at the end of the carpet, were two people were sitting.

One was the king the other was the boy that saved Ralf from the monstor. “Hello, I’m the King and this is Felix.” The King was an old wize man with a white beard. Felix was a young boy with a blue tunic. Ralf said to the King, “There is something very important that I must tell you, don’t tell anyone cept your mum. Now this is what I want you to do, I need you to stop a person, his name, Dr. Reeeally Evil, and his lab assistant, Dr. Steeeal. They have just left from our town. They made 15 guards fly in the air. If they could do that they can reach their goal, which I believe is to set the Eternal Dragon free. It is up to you to save the world from the dragon. Felix will be joining you on your quest.”

**

Ralf’s house was a small two story with a hay room.

“Ralf, you’re back!” His mom shouted excitedly. “Hello Felix.”

After all the good nights, Ralf and Felix went to bed. Ralf had a very bad dream that night it was about those two people he knew and two others and they were freeing the dragon.

In the morning, Ralf had gone up to the kithcne. The kitchen was farly small, there where cupbords and conters and a stove. “It breakfast ready yet?” Ralf asked. “Yes.” His mom said. After breakfast where the goodbyes.

“Bye, see ya! Have a nice trip!” After everyone had said their goodbyes, a familiar voice shouted very loudly- “I thought I told you to leave!!!”

**

Later in the early spring morning, where the sun shined in colorful rays upon Ralf and Felix. Ralf scaned the hazy mountains that wer in a bluish gray like the ocean tide in a warm morning at a early time. Felix was gazing in the other direction where a wagon was going around a bend that was a dirt pass of which Felix never knew, threw his many experienced years, eight to be exact. Felix started to walk toward the pass. “Hey wait for me!” Ralf said, just getting up from looking at the mountins. “O.K,” said Felix.

Once Ralf caught up they dashed around the bend at the monstrous wagon. All of a sudden an evil looking thing popped from nowhere. “What on earth is that!” Ralf yelped in dismay. “We should be able to take that piece of junk!” Felix shouted. The piece of junk was a trashcan with one eyeball, and had two robotic arms. One had a rounded thing, gold was the color. “I shall dominate!”

At that, the thing flew into the area with a bluish red flash that was like a rocket lifting up. ZZAAAP! A lightning bolt struck the scene in a gold flash!

In the wagon, a boy that had a green tunic and had gold hair was observing. “Over here sir. Argh! What is this!” Above the hubbub the lightning flash was heard, a man dressed in a formal coat who was obviously the driver, had something to say. “All in favor of going back to check that strike, say aye!” Everyone  in the wagon said “I.” The sound of it was a great noise as if Thor himself came down to earth.

**

Seven people plus a streacher went to look at the blown away scene. “Wait, wait up!

It was the boy from the wagon. “You’re just a kid, Dr. Reeeally Evil might be out! He’s been roaming around this area.” Said one of the men. “I don’t care if a metior hits, I’m still comin’!” The boy shouted back.

Pages 7-14/18 of Captain Ralf

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The final portion of Captain Ralf will be posted tomorrow.

-TWO-12

New Days

What I'm Doing: Listening to Oldspice's responses to YouTube users.

212:

So I've been back in Gilbert, Arizona for a while now. Much longer than the breaks I took throughout City Year, and I feel like I'm finally beginning to regain a rhythm. But now that City Year is over, I've been taking time to really focus and think about what I want to write about.

I could choose to retell the occasional events and stories that I experience on a day to day basis. For example, when I drove down to Tucson a week and a half ago in my family's truck. My radiator exploded 30 miles from my destination, leaving me stranded on the side of the road for two hours in the Arizona summer inferno.

I could discuss my life. But then again, that isn't exactly the goal of this Blog. Sure it's great for me to share bits and pieces, but in the long run this is a journal of my thoughts and opinions, not my actions.

Since I'm not designing a Blog that is an autobiography as well, I feel like TWO-12 needs to capture one of my interests. In a sense, it already does during the beginning of each post or article. Those scant little poems. Those quirky short stories.

Writing creatively is one of my larger interests. So, why wouldn't I use this Blog throughout the summer (and other times occasionally) to express that?

Over the course of my remaining leisurely time, TWO-12 will host a series of fictional posts. Each post will contain whatever I've written creatively throughout the previous week, and may or may not appear on every given Wednesday. But just because they're not thrown out on the same day every week for the months of July and August doesn't mean there isn't going to be four posts still for each month. You can bet there will still be four posts!

I'll end this post with a story I wrote a long, long time ago. As I've searched through my room to get ready for the University, I've uncovered several hidden gems. This is one of them.

The Adventures of Captain Ralf (Part One)

Age of Sam McGuffin: 9-10

All writing copied, including spelling/grammatical errors

One wide morning where the sun had just appered in a glowing red flash, in a town called Dingioka a strange, determined boy named Ralf was whizzing through a corn field with a mean farmer, whos name was Jon, hot on his heals. Ralf was a boy at the age of seventeen was telling the farmer that it was only an accident that the chickens and roosters got loose. “Please” begged Ralf, “It was only an accident.”

“Yah really!” The farmer shouted back in a way you could barly tell he was being sarcastic. Ralf begged on “Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

“Don’t you try to sweet mouth me you no good scum eaten, corn stealin’, piece of dirt!” the farmer yelled back in a way you could hear his voice raising like an avalanche rushing through the snow. Ralf sped up feeling a icy hand of fear gripping his heart as he went faster, faster on, while the farmer was still hot on his heals. Ralf thought if he told the farmer a little nicer that the farmer might let him go. “Here goes nothin’.” Said Ralf. “I swear to who knows where, it was only an accident!”

But yet again the farmer shouted, now his voice was like a metior going through the atmosphere at 100 million miles per hour, “You better get runnin’,” said the farmer, “cause if I catch you I am going to make you dance!”

So Ralf went as fast as his bare feet would take him. Till he reached the plains Tonorso and Mount Vast. There a police officer dressed in a navy blue coat and a yellow tiped hat, addressed Ralf in a important manner “Come here bo, what is your name? Where do you live?” Ralf answered quickly “My name is Ralf, and I live two miles down Tonorso.”

“I see, so, why are you close to the King’s castle now?” asked the officer. Ralf went a little closer then answered, “I was chased by a farmer over yonder- in the corn field, all the way to here.”

“So you live in the Sinka section?” the officer asked knowingly. Ralf answered as quick as lighting, “How’d y’know?”

“Oh, I have my ways, now will you come to the castle? Thank you! Follow me and stay close.” The officer said. Ralf knew he was fast, but this officer was like lightning! Ralf had to jog to keep up with the officer’s strides. The walk was as long as a never-ending cloud, the walk was also hard on Ralf’s feet, which were bare.

Once they got to the castle, what he saelped the monstor. Thud! Then the monstor droped to the ground, senseless. “Nice o…” said Ralf. Noticing the boy had left. “Whoa, aahh… close wasn’t it?” the officer said in a worried voice.

“Why did you cower?” Ralf said. “Didn’t you see those…”

“Oh… yeah. I’m sorry.” Apologized the officer. “You know what, let’s go see the King of Dingoka.

Pages 1-6/18 of Captain Ralf. 

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The rest of Captain Ralf will be continued throughout the rest of July.

-TWO-12