I haven't used this function in some time.  I haven't used your function in some time.  I'm running into functions without time and getting you some functions for your time. 

Yesterday I researched and wrote a seven page paper and towards the end my hands were shaking and  I couldn't type a damn word right.  I spent an hour on my conclusion.  I kept forgetting articles and pro-nouns. 

One time I left my article on her pro-noun and I'm sure she still has it, to this very day.  If you're reading this I want that back.  I want you back.  I want to put an apostrophy in the middle of the word "wan't"

I need articles.  Don't need pro-nouns.  I will come for them.  That's one thing I'll always do for articles and women: come for them.

Come away from that.  Here we go.  Onward.  Sentence.

I'm applying for a staff job at the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper here at the good ol' University.  I want to review schmoovs, tie newses, and serve the Publik Forum in order to facilitate sound and responsable decision making.  See, education is running.  Writing in the second person isn't effective unless, maybe, you're reading an instruction manual.

Don't you think?  You do think.  You think I'm not write, or maybe you think I'm wrong.  I'm wringing wrong.  Your cellphone's ringing.

In this case, "you" is plural.  I'm assuming that there are at least two of you.  Possibly more than that.   

On a seperate note, I'm giving up a few things, because it's healthy to abandon stuff.  I'm leaving behind some habits.  They include: being afraid, nose-picking, text-messeging, drinking a lot, and listing.

I will never list again for any reason.  These reasons may include things like: nothing.

Its true.  He finds them trite and embarrasing.  He also doesn't know how to spell embarrassing.  Embarasing.  Embarressing.  Embaressing.  Seriously.

Thanks to my addictions I'm always in a bad mood before 11:30 but I make it a point almost everyday to wait until then to have my first cigarette. Why do I wait? Well . . .

. . . One and a half years ago, on a bitter cold Halloween night before the first snowfall, a woman succesfully abducted me. She had captivated my attention at one party and invited me to the next, and who was I to deny her my presence. If she wanted it, she had it, and the same goes for any pretty girl. We left abruptly with one of her girlfriends, en route to the next party and maybe home afterwards . . .

. . . Okay, half way through the first paragraph I realized that I made two errors. First, I started way ahead of myself, and second, the girl I was with that night was only marginally easy on the eyes and I've mislead readers into thinking of her as being attractive. Truthfully, she was a nordic and homey woman, extremely pale skinned and slightly fat . . .

. . . You know what, it doesn't even matter, she came about way later and won't be an element in the rest of the story . . .

. . . which begins here . . .

. . . It was a stormy July when my first love left me for my best friend. "Love" is a word I use "tenuously," which itself is a word that means . . .

. . . um, okay. Let me "m-w" this one (Merrium Webster's Dictionary) . . .

. . . "with flexibility," because young love isn't love. Not to say that I was a youth or an adolescent when this happened. I was twenty, but I was young in romance. We sat in a small diner in Bloomington, Minnesota, in a small green booth that was cramped against a glass wall that divided the non-smoking section from the smoking. I had just ordered my favorite dish, a double order of hash browns smothered with melted cheddar cheese, and was ready to enjoy a simple and pleasing meal when she gives me this look. Now if you knew the girl, whose name was (and still is) Anna, you would know this look. I sure as hell knew what it meant, and with out thinking, almost unconciously, I grabbed the arm of the young waiter who had just taken my order.

I quietly told him that I had changed my mind on the hashbrowns, but would he please bring me a cup of the neverending coffee for a dollar and twenty nine cents (plus tax, plus tip)? I had never liked coffee, but it was the only thing on the menu that was cheap and ongoing, and for some reason seemed to fit pretty damn well into the situation. He only nodded and turned back to the family that he had been in progress helping, and I was left alone, in the center of this old diner, in a small green booth, with that awfull look.

She started complaining about me and us, and ten minutes later, she was still going. I had no idea how to counter, but I did anyway, and in that same sad way that millions of the heartbroken do as their hearts break. I countered the only way I knew how. I asked her why, and why, and why, and kept asking that same question, but for ten minutes got nothing but the battery of her utter lack of respect for who I was and her disregard for our relationship. The waiter approached and non-chalantly set my coffee and a thermus full of the stuff on the table as he moved on to help the family in the next booth. I looked at his back and wondered if he was really as unconcerned with our service as he seemed, or if he was just as afraid of this woman as I was.

"I'm in love with someone else," she said, and I looked back at her.

"Who?"

"You know. Seth. Your friend."

"Okay," I said, and I took my first drink of coffee. Ever. My body warmed and my brain buzzed, and I could feel my cheeks stiffining into a pleasant neutrality despite the storm of aggression that had just royaly sodomized me. A million things of unbelievably small unimportance rushed into my mind and out of it, all in one instant. Each moment had the comprisable heart-warming appeal of a Frank Capra black and white, and each was replaced by a new, completely seperate moment of simplistic granduer.

"Okay," I repeated. "Then it's done."

"I'm going," she said, and the look was still there, but looking at it again, I realized it had nothing to do with me any more. I nodded, and she left, and I finished the thermos . . .

. . . I don't have a coffeemaker at my house. I take the bus to school, and arrive there every day around 11:20. Of all of the pairings in the world, a hot cop of coffee and a cigarette rank at the top of the list. Make that a threeway if it's a cold snowy morning.

My whole life people

have been telling me

to keep it down.

So then I kept it down.

I'm not sure why I'm writing poetry now,

 but it could be because

we're learning about it in class, and

maybe that's all

Maybe.

Kurt Vonnegut

once wrote speculatively

that maybe all writers write what they do with a single person in mind

a muse, and his

was always his little sister,

who died just before he began writing Slapstick.

This made me think.

Who did I write for?

I figured mostly for this girl or that girl,

maybe the 17 year old co-worker,

headed for Big New York.

With her wide hips

and all her shitty innosence,

or the cocktail

waitress who served me

two jamesons on the rocks at the C.C. Club

and then winked past her dreads

and bought the second one for me

and left her phone number on

the reciept.

Or the pretty eyed girl who kept

stealing glances from me between sets

one night at First Avenue.

Smoky, and the mainroom smelling like a bowling alley

like it always does,

and then there they are, defiantly,

cats eyes. 

I had a girlfriend at the time

and I regretted this, it's true,

because I thought I might love

her, but

her name never crossed my mind.

Honestly I've always read my own poetry

with a supreme disgust,

asking myself

why the fuck I wrote it.

To escape the difficulty of prose,

no doubt, to wizz on paper

and feel big about it.

Jim Morrison began as a poet.

Jim Morrison is an idiot.

Whoops. Sorry. He

was

an idiot.

Run Rebels, from the

photo shop glass munchers

because there's an empty brown beer bottle

and a withered pack of cigarettes

and that's all god damn it.

Run you rebels.

and if you run from some

thing, run from me and my

big block speakers and the

sound that they're pushin'

Oh just run, please

Run into liquor stores and

art film festivals and max your

card on my ass at Muddy Water's

please.

God just fucking run.

Run into pints and dim scenes

 and run into drums beaten

with a soft palm and sharp finger tips.

Run to rusted car doors and hop in and

the motor will then crawl beneath you.

Rebels that run

and run and run up debts with man

who carries the sweet white girl in his pockets.

See, they just push off and go and don't stop

all night baby.  Next morning

we'll be at the same low.

But for old times sake

 why not

just try it out one more time.

And this time we can sit still and shut up

and maybe take it like a man.

She would have been so stunning

in just the bubbled forest of her cunning wit

eyes that watch me at all night

that haven't seen me in years

But anyways, her impact has been quelled

she traded in her book collection

for a new set of clothes

Leather that shocking shade of rose

Now she can be seen floating inland, from the dock

But nobody listens to her voice

which has become an idiotic babble of pop candy crap shit

That neon pink halter top that used to chafe

now fits so perfectly

She's traded in the pen and ink

for an outfit made of neon pink

And now I really want to bang her brains out

but I don't give a shit about her feelings.

Chapter 1 Rosalie

Yes sir, Leonard Bailey is in fact, a little goosy in the head, and he always has been and will most definatly remain as such until the day he finds his own oblivion. So it was a good thing that his great aunt Clementine had picked out Leonard as her favored heir, because finding a job with a few screws loose up there is a damn bitch, and that's why Leonard quickly stashed all of his money as safely as he knew best. He cashed the check at a local bank and when the teller asked if he wanted to open an account he just shook his head and walked away with the money and stuck the whole kittencaboudle right there in the big black plastic bag that hung, tied onto the handle of his Lund's shopping cart. And you better believe that old Leonard hasn't worked a day in his life since.

But how did his old aunty from Virginia come across such a vast sum of money? $500,000 is an extensible net worth for a poor southern daughter of two slave hands, and that fact is indisputable. Well, Leonard knows how, because Clementine's youngest brother Jacob was his grandfather. But he'd never share the story with you unless you were his close friend, or had gotten him red-faced on those brandy and cokes that he loves like curvy women.

"Too long and too personal, Jack," he'd reply if you dared to ask. But despite his wishes and with the risk of grand offense, I'll share the story with you now. It all begins with Leonard's great-grandmother Rosalie Bailey.

Rosalie's life was centered around the Baptist faith, and everyone in Appomattox County, where she lived, knew it. In fact, if you had been alive back then and asked a local townsmen about Rosalie, it would have been the first thing he said about her, whether in a praising or mocking tone of voice. Either that, or he'd of told you that she was Mac Bailey's favorite house slave. Mac Bailey was a true blue Virginia legend, the proprietor of the biggest tobacco plantation in southern portion of the state and according to his slaves, "a real sonofabitch cracker with lots of money."

Oh you, you bastard Mac, could you have prayed for a more loyal servant of God to be your favored slave? For every wicked turn Mac would take, Rosalie remained spiteless, graceful and trusting in the Lord, and did what she could to undo his evil while avoiding notice. And Mac loved his whip like a son, and was a "real sonofabitch" for sure. When Mac got perverse and lusty with his slaves, Rosalie would wipe tears until her rags were damp enough to wash floors. When Mac got violent, Rosalie cleaned the wounds of the working men, and told them jokes and stories to take their minds of the weeping pain. She would read stolen books to little children in the barracks during her lunch hour, and eventually, as they became young adults, would teach them caligraphy and simple mathmatics.

One day, Rosalie looked up from the yellowing china she was washing, and stared through the window above the sink. The kitchen window of the farm house faced the main driveway, and Rosalie looked out, over two lush green fields split by a dusty gravel road that stretched out onto the horizen and seemed to her like some sort of somber metaphor for the path to heaven.

Now Mac was a mean old cunt but Rosalie was his treasure. So when he noticed that she had paused in her work, his voice took on a polite tone.

"What are you doing, girl?"

"Nothing, master Bailey," she said carefully. "I just think there's something you might want to know."

And then she turned around, and looked straight into his ugly blue eyes and told him that she was in love with one of the farm hands, and was going to have a baby in "probably 'bout seven and a half months, Master."

And she did. And that baby was a beautiful girl, who Rosalie and her new husband, Jacob Sr. (wedlock courtesy of the bastard slave owner), decided to name Clementine

Did you see old Leonard Bailey pushing that empty shopping cart down Franklin Avenue this morning? He stole it from Lund's Grocery back in 1976. If you had seen him pushing that old cart down Franklin, with empty garbage bags tied on the handle, what would you have thought? You might have thought him a drifter. You might have thought him a pan-handler. Well, you'd be wrong for the most part.

See, if you'd been around in the late 70's you would have recognized Mr. Bailey, because back then, he was just another street vagrant, trying to make it alive through the bitter cold winters we see up here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I swear that every damn day back then, he'd be standing on the corners of Marquette and 10th Street downtown, hasseling the general public for a dime. But see, he only did that for around a year or so. Before that, he was a working man, and after that humilating year of living off the wellfare of strangers (because Mr. Bailey despised being the recipient of charity of any sort), he inhereted $500,000 from his great aunt Clementine, who died in her sleep of unspecified natural causes at the age of 96.

But what if you had been there, this morning as he passed down Franklin, pushing his cart along at a brisk pace down the hill towards Lyndale Avenue? Would you have stopped and talked to him? What exactly would you have asked old Mr. Bailey? You could have asked him how he lost his job back in winter of 1975. See, because, out of highschool he'd been working hard for a meat-packing company down on north Nicolette. He might have told you that he was always a little goosy in the head, and when that damn shift manager called him a "broke down fool of a nigger," he lost it. You could have asked him "Well, what did you do Mr. Bailey?" And he would have told you gladly.

"I punched in his white fucking face, lit a white fucking cigarette, and stabbed the lit end down between his white fucking teeth." And then he would have chuckled. "But don't worry, I ain't the violent sort. S'just havin' a bad day, I guess."

Introduction

Okay.  The short story you are about to read can be easily misinterpreted.  Upon a second read through, I realized that the fact that I placed the alien conclave at the southern half of the country, it might seem like this is a political stab at illegal immigrants.  You should know that I'm fully aware how ignorant that repulsive viewpoint is.  If it were up to me, the border between Mexico and the U.S. would be strapped with TNT and then I say push the fucking button.  We need immigrants, and I love the idea of joining both of our cultures together one day.  Fight for immigrant rights.  !Viva Mexico!  !Viva Los Estados Unidos, y todos abordo!

I'm not sure how to tell the story I'm writing in this journal. It begins with the exodus of an alien race and ends with the destruction of our planet. All I know is that when they first came down through the clouds in white and chrome ships and landed next to the capital, we had no idea of what was to come. Through illustration and arithmatic they translated to the President that they were interested in reaching a trade agreement. They were ambassadors from an ancient planet, far away and imploding from polution, wasted resources, and a saturated population.

That was how it began. Initially, of course, fear rippled through the global populace; that prejudiced fear of difference and change that grows like a parasite in the minds of all rational beings. But as their representatives learned our worlds languages and made promises of egalitarian comprimises, we as a race grew to accept them. Eventually, each major city had a board of six aliens, and all towns and suburbs with a population greater than 10,000 had one or two, for the sake of inter-government negotiations.

They would talk daily with national leaders, in the government and business sectors. They attended sporting events, administered public speeches, signed documents, cut ribbons, and intermingled with almost every working part of our society. But never once did any of them take it upon themselves to adorn our style of clothing. In fact, in terms of culture, they remained completely detached. And this was the only strange tick that these insiduous preditors exhibited that might have warned us about their true intentions, but we ourselves were xenophobic to begin with.  We never looked at this as being strange. They were who they were. Foriegners from another solar system; from another world.

Then, ten years ago, in the middle of winter, their leader begged the President to sanction off the bottom half of the country. A large portion of his race were still stranded in tiny cramped vessels that had been floating aimlessly through the blackness of outerspace for a decade or so. The president said no. He apologized and refused, and recounted the fact that our planet had already reached its own population crises; 7.5 billion people as of last year and still counting. And with that, they left. All of them. Our town's ambassador had even taken a wife, but by the day after our presidents refusal he was gone. His wife walked around town like a ghost the next day, weeping, her face pale with sadness and fear. Then later that night she killed herself with sleeping pills.

Days continued on, and each was spent in a confused anticipation for their eventual return. The newspapers predicted a disgruntled but pleasant return of the strangers from above. And then one day, they did come back. But only after an explosion hit the southern tip of the country, disintigrating 90.2 million of our people. By the next day another 24 million were dead from disease, extreme dehydration, and heat exposure. People continued to die over the course of the next two weeks, the toll slowly tapering out like an upside-down bell curve. And as we cleared out the remains, they moved in. 

They made a public apology at the capital. The same ambassador spoke calmly to the President, whose eyes were red rimmed with insomnia and depression. Half way through, the leader of the free-world choked and let one phrase wimper out through the mucas and saliva that covered his crumbling face.

"Fuck you, you god damn bastard," he said, and the rest of the time he sat slumped, inward and silent while their leader demanded a public apology for the verbal attack.

All of the southern states combined, now carried a population of around one and a half billion of the space creatures. They patroled their new borders with huge mobile weaponry unlike anything you could believe. A year later a great wall was built. Our president was a good leader. Smart, but brave and decicive, and years later, after strange skycrapers began to crop up like forests behind the wall, he corriagraphed an initiative to attack the invaders. 175 nuclear weapons were to be dropped on the aliens. Enough firepower to obliterate all of the bastard conquerers 6 times over. Towns that bordered the wall were called to evacuate, and the bombs were dropped. 25 bombs a day haled down on the new cities for 7 days straight. And all of that force failed to make a single dent in that great wall that they'd built.

This was when I was 22 years old. I was an aspiring print journalist and I have catalogues of photos of the drilling machines they sent north. Huge metal-armored tanks with 60 foot drills would pass through our town maybe once a week. Children would clamber onto the rooftops to watch them pass, and teenagers would throw old produce at their spikey crome hulls. One day I saw my friend Jeremy run out in a business suit and block their path. I wondered why he was dressed so formal. I wondered what the hell he thought he was doing. I found out minutes later exactly what, as the driver got out and Jeremy reached into his sport coat and pulled the rip cord on the plastic explosives he had taped to his chest. I cried that night.

The alien driller sat stranded in our town for a week, and by the time the next one came through town, the children had painted it all sorts of colors. One of them had painted "Fuck You" in bright yellow up and down the drill piece. I saw the same yellow "Fuck You" on the alien news channel later that night. The enraged invaders faces were creased into ulgliness with anger, and I sat and laughed the whole time. A week later they sent a bomb sailing directly at the capital. The President had escaped, but most of Congress died that day. Our government's structure disapated and they sent their own leaders to take charge. They sent leaders to all of the towns. Ours had three representatives alone, along with a troop of 60 militia armed to the gills. Jeremy's family disappeared, and the day after the aliens broadcast the execution on all of the major networks, our President came out of hiding to announce his nuclear attack.

After the attack, they seized our weapons from us. And since then we have been prisoners in our own country, sanctioned and monitered and enslaved. My sister was taken on a windy summer morning.  She had been a doctor, and I found out in later years from a friend that she had become a lued dancer for some sort of perverse circus that these heathens ran for entertaining their public. I still can't understand why. They're so different from us aesthetically.

They're tall and flat faced, and their skin is the color of dirty clay, but sometimes a pale as beach sand. Their eyes are small and white with circular brown irises, although some have irises our own shade of blue. I can only pray that by the time you read this, they will be gone. A distant part of our people's history and a grim reminder to take no freedom for granted. I can only hope for this to be true, because neither the President nor I can envision a method of liberation from these God-forsaken conquerers. Perhaps they will leave us be after they've finished consumption of our natural resources, but I doubt they will. Somewhere inside I know that it is our fate to be forever dominated by these irrational dictators. These violent, controling bastards. These cursed humans.