"Put this in your earholes!"

Cribbed from my voice actor friend, Jacob Burgess, "Put this in your ears" is exactly the sentiment I want to put across to you.

See, Jacob is doing a project where he reads a new story every week. This week, he did a fun (and funny) Scifi short story of mine entitled "Housekeeping".

You can find Jacob here on Twitter, here on Facebook, and he even actually has his own website, Make Words Happen. Give it a listen, and check out other great things he's done. Like his page, share stuff far and wide, etc. etc.

I hope you enjoy!

Post by Jacob Burgess.

(You can also just listen to it here on Sound Cloud, but Sound Cloud doesn't appear to link to anything else, profile wise or anything, and that's frustrating to me. If I find somebody I like, where are the breadcrumbs to lead me to them? Maybe I'm just missing it.)

Steve was bitten by a zombie. Chelsea is coming down with cholera.

Me: I can't say I regretted going to Awakening, though.
Fiancè: I can. I wasn't even there, but I can regret it for the both of us. I'm Regretta Garbo.



Me: Wait, "The Girl From Ipanema" has words?
Male Coworker: Yes.
Other Coworker: Yes. Wait, why are you talking about "The Girl from Ipanema?"
Male Coworker: You're missing the point here. We both knew something that she didn't.



Me: So I was playing Organ Trail and live Facebooking it.  Like, my station wagon kept catching on fire---
Fiancè: Wait, you had fires in your station wagon?
Me: Yeah. Well, that would happen in Oregon Trail too, remember? But anyway, I blame that bitch Rolanda, who keeps getting typhoid and shit. And Larry got measles so I killed him. That shit's infectious.
Fiancè: Rolanda?
Me: Yeah. I was like "Rolanda, stop lighting up in here." And Larry got measles so I killed him. That shit's infectious.
Fiancè: What is wrong with you?

 

Bryan: and then you reach a point where you say "fuck this shit" and flip your goat. But you have to reach that point on your own. Nobody can teach it to you.



Fiancè: All right, but remember to share your flan
Me: After all, if you've got it, flan-t it!
Fiancè: .....it is so hard not to stab you right now.

I Remember

I remember September 11. Of course I do.

Have I commemorated September 11? No, I don't think I have.

Or maybe I have. I didn't post, repost, or share any memes on Facebook. I'm not sure that's the way to go. I read articles about the Search and Rescue teams that were there. I looked at pictures of the dogs from those teams who are still alive. I read a book by one of the forensic anthropologists who worked there, for weeks, to identify the dead.

September 11 was not a personal tragedy for me. I was very lucky; I didn't know anybody who died. As an American, it unsettled me, it scared me, it made me wonder how the world would be. It's made air travel horrible. Through war, it's killed a lot more people than those who died on that date. It polarized a presidency, and it was such an affront, such an unspeakable thing, that even now people have a very visceral reaction to its mention. You can still buy the t-shirt, though.

September 11 (which I never call 9/11, by the by. I'm not morally against it; it's just the way my brain settled) is something like my generation's Pearl Harbor, JFK. I can still remember the surreal footage of my life, how I found out, when I first saw those smoking towers against a blue sky, on a small television atop somebody's dorm fridge. It's impossible to forget.

I'm not really sure what factors have to come together to instantly crystallize an imagine in your mind, full sensory, to be played and paused like a film of your life. Some memories are more vivid than others; frequently the bad ones, I think? Is it the adrenaline dump? Is it the certainty of inexorable change?