Last night at around 5am, the cat was putting her paw into my mouth to demand food when we were both startled by a metal-on-metal crash that shook the building. I got out of bed and peeked out my front window, where I saw a man in the street running circles around his car. Smoke was pouring out of the hood and the man alternated between lifting the hood to examine the damage, collecting bottles of water from his passenger seat and pouring them on the engine block, hauling ass back to the driver’s seat, trying to start the car. Every time he tried, the car produced a nasty grinding noise and died. The smoke was getting worse and I had a vision of him blowing himself up on the spot, so I called 911 and told them that a guy had ran his car into some parked cars on my street. By then, the guy was starting to run halfway down the street, turn, and run back to the car. He seemed to be having trouble making decisions. I told the lady on the phone that the guy appeared to be about to abandon the vehicle. The lady on the phone asked me if I had seen the crash. I said I hadn’t, and she said that if I hadn’t seen it, I couldn’t confirm that it had happened. I said, okay. The lady asked me if I could see flames. I said that it was just smoke, and she said that if I couldn’t see flames, it wasn’t on fire. I said, good point. The lady asked if anyone on the scene needed a paramedic. The guy ran down the street and around the corner. I said no and went back to bed. Today, the car is gone and there is a long skid mark starting from a line of parked cars totally crushed on their left side panels. I didn’t see it happen so I have no idea what to think.
Archive for the 'Total Wreck' Category
though I should have been asleep for the past two hours because it is very late and I have an early appointment:
now just fix Teach for America and we'll be all set
1. Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of D.C. Schools, who just dismissed 241 teachers, including 165 who received poor appraisals and 76 who were not properly licensed to teach, in an attempt to turn around a district with one of the weakest academic records of any urban school system in the nation.
2. The Austin Women’s Shelter SafePets program, which asks for volunteers to foster animals when their owner needs to go to the shelter. “In recent surveys of survivors entering shelters across the country, half report that their partner threatened, hurt or killed their pets before they left.”
3. The crowded Pima County morgue as deaths in the desert around Tucson rise with immigration enforcement. “As we gain more control, the smugglers are taking people out to even more remote areas,” said Omar Candelaria, the special operations supervisor for the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector. “They have further to walk and they are less prepared for the journey, and they don’t make it.”
obviously this guy was going to be a huge threat
I’ve been staring at the same three hundred words for the past two hours. The coffee I made looks like an oil spill. I’m considering Top Kill. I’ve never liked running but lately I go out at the hottest part of the day, which is any part of the day in June here. It’s like bikram yoga but with running. The soundtrack alternates between Die Antwoord and DMX. I wonder how many people in the history of the world have had to run for their lives and what that would look like spliced back-to-back on YouTube. This should all be a list but I don’t believe in lists, paragraphs, or coffee. Once I ran because a homeless guy was chasing me, though I still think he was kidding around. Homeless guys in Phoenix have kind of a sun-addled sense of humor. I’d like to say more but that seems against the oink oink oink oink oink oink oink. Well anyway later.
You know you’re doing some high-brow writing when you have to right-click and add “turds” to the dictionary.
I hear that the last of the first-round Paper Egg cleanup might mean some-of-you get a second or third extra copy of AM/PM. Some kind folks are giving their spare copies to friends, which pleases me greatly. If you’ve read the book and liked it at any price, perhaps you could leave a review? I think that helps so let’s try it.
A wintry mix is coming down. My Texas self is pretty sure it’s about to turn into hail and my Arizona self ran downstairs in my socks to try and catch some of it in my hand. It appears to be some kind of not-beautiful clumped sleet-like substance. Turds of snow, if you will. My neighbor is taking a picture of it. I’ve got a real strong impulse to go to the store and buy hot dogs but I believe I will hold off: Texas drivers all simultaneously let go of their steering wheels and are currently letting God sort it out.
Today I feel like a surgeon in Novolazarevskaya. I was on monster deadline Monday and it seeped into Tuesday. Today is some threats writing and comparing newspapers to wet babies. My face itches.
I need to update my syllabus for class Sunday. My friend is doing a food writing semester, brilliant, but I might head towards current events reading regardless. Read some newspapers, think some thoughts. I’m still curious to know what my students think about The Facebook.
PRIVET
Cedar. The scientists wonder how one human being could produce so much mucus. I’ve been meaning to post this picture of a blood orange. The blood orange is the poet’s orange.
my face seriously itches
A power line exploded outside my house the other day. I don’t think there is a transformer on that line but to be fair I have no idea what a transformer is. I was on deadline and there was this explosion that sent a baby ball of fire past my window. I called the fire department and they said that nobody should stand under the wires, so I ran downstairs and yelled at a homeless dude who was stomping on the fire that had started by the pole, and he yelled back but in a playful way, and stomped the fire out and threw some branches around then stood by and made fun of all the bystanders, and rightly so, but I was worried about him under the live wires and everything. Nobody was killed and the city came and fixed the wires. (“The city came.” The taxpayer entity personified into this one guy with a hardhat and a cherry-picker truck.)
I spent a piece of this morning in a cotton gown. After my checkup I was standing by the nurses’ station and looking at the big framed display of baby pictures. One of the nurses came by and asked me if I was picking out one of my own. I didn’t understand, so she pointed at the photos and asked if I was picking out one of the babies for myself. I didn’t want to insult the photo collage so I said Yes. Then, so she wouldn’t doubt my sincerity, I added, “That would be great.” I went home and ate an avocado.
this is where avocados come from
I went to the mailbox in my robe to see if Sleepingfish had arrived. It had not. I am hopeful for tomorrow. My postal carrier is named Norman.
I’m looking sidelong at a story about a donut shop in Beaumont, TX. I knew when I wrote it that it didn’t have the real ending yet. Yesterday, I relocated the couple to a Days Inn.
all of them, in the world
Last week I ate a Texas-shaped waffle. The first ingredient on the syrup packet that accompanied it was corn syrup and the second was high fructose corn syrup.
There’s a ghost town in Arizona called Total Wreck. It is home to Total Wreck Mine, which made $500,000 in seven years and is casually a death trap to this day.
