Here be giants

I was walking home from the Moon late at night when I spotted a hulking shape moving rapidly down the road towards me. It was too big to be human and too small to be a car. I stopped in the middle of the road to see if I could figure out what it was in the darkness.

Turns out, it was a human -- a giant human riding along in one of those little electric wheel chairs or scooters or whatever you call them. He was so big, his body dwarfed the actual machine that was moving him, so at first glance it looked like he was just kind of levitating down the street in a sitting position, belly first.

Satisfied with my discovery, I continued to cross the street.

"Hey, man!" he called out.

Normally in these situations I would pretend to be deaf and run home to hide. But, I had just had a very good time at the Moon, so I was in a good mood.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Do you smoke?" he asked.

I held up my empty hands. "Sorry, I don't have any," I said.

"No," the guy said, continuing to roll towards me. "I didn't ask if you have any cigarettes. I asked if you smoke."

"Oh, no, sorry, I don't smoke," I said.

"Aw man," the guy said, sighing heavily, "I've got these two packs I was hoping to trade for a beer."

"Sorry," I said again, shrugging.

"Oh well," the guy said. "I've already had enough beer tonight, anyway."

"Me too," I said.

Then I went home and drank a beer.

I wonder what I was doing 9 years ago today?

Sometimes I think to myself, "I wonder what I was doing 9 years ago today?"

And, when I think that, I get out my old college journal and find out.

So, here's the entry from 7/20/2001. It's about me and Rob at the coffee shop. To the left, you'll see a picture of me and Rob at the coffee shop. Though, in the interest of full disclosure, you should know that it's from 2002 and therefore not 100% authentic. The beard gives it away.

I used to name the entries as a way of keeping myself interested in writing them. For some reason I named this one, "Skeleton Song." I think I was being pretentious. Me being pretentious also explains the rest of it.

Okay, here goes:

Skeleton Song -- 7/20/2001

So, here I am bankrupt on the inside again.

I went to Powell's today, the biggest book store in the country or maybe even the world. Not sure about the status. Just know it is famous and happens to be in Portland and is about the size of a city block and something like four or five stories worth of books.

I got "Crime and Punishment" because it is about time I read it, and I got a book of poetry by one of my professors. I've been meaning to buy it for a long time, but never had the money.

Today my dad was buying. I was afraid he invited me to Powell's merely as an excuse to get me alone and then talk to me about something important, but it didn't happen. Just a nice little trip.

There's this bakery a couple blocks from Powell's and they have these really good pistolets, which I guess are just rolls, but they taste all European. They remind me of Europe. Such a nice little bakery.

I went down town and read earlier today with Rob. We like to sit there at the coffee shop and read. Something happened to me that's never happened before. Someone literally made fun of us for reading. It's not often these days, being out of junior high and all, that a complete stranger will just up and make fun of me out of nowhere. And for reading?

I looked over at Rob today and said, "I think I'll just up and leave for school tomorrow."

"You hate it here?" he asked.

I thought for a moment.

"Yeah," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

I thought for another moment and this is what I came up with:

"Everyone here is mad all the time."

He thought for a moment.

"True," he said.

And for a little while I felt all right because someone else had noticed the same thing I did.

I'm a genius

Really good ideas I've had lately:

1.) They should have made KICK-ASS in 1989 and it should have starred Fred Savage as Kick-Ass, Danica McKellar as Hit Girl, Josh Saviano as Red Mist and Dan Lauria as Big Daddy. Daniel Stern could have narrated it.

2.) They should cancel the Olympics for all eternity and just have the World Cup be the Olympics instead.

3.) Me and Levi should start a band called "2 At Wolfe's Door."

4.) If Luke wants to join it can be "3 At Wolfe's Door."

5.) Now that they fired Megan Fox, they should hire Sasha Grey for "Transformers 3."

6.) They should make a series of movies about the Ice Cube character from "Ghosts of Mars," Desolation Williams. They'd be like "Desolation Williams and the Vortex of Eternity" or "Desolation Williams vs. the Vampires of Andromeda," or "Desolation Williams' Big Score."

7.) George Lucas' next "Star Wars" TV series should be about all the "Star Wars" characters falling into an interdimensional time portal and arriving in 1980s Los Angeles where they're forced to work at a high powered law firm.

8.) In a daring move, Oliver Stone should make the main character of WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS the robot waiter from the first WALL STREET. The robot waiter should dutifully (yet misguidedly) bust Gordon Gekko out of prison. Then they should go on a road trip. At first Gekko will hate the Robot because it will take everything he says super literally, like he'll be all, "Go fuck yourself!" and the Robot will be like, "Negative. Does not computer. Cannot calculate 'fuck yourself.'" But then they'll grow to love each other. Gekko will nickname the Robot after his other love, Money, and since he's a robot, he'll never sleep. So, the title will be like a play on words, see?

Thank you for your time.

The Curious Case of Mini-Skirt Girl

My freshman year of college in Southern California, I spent a lot of time adjusting to the differences between my new home and my old one, Oregon.

In California they had stuff like styrofoam cups and buildings with many rooms that could only be accessed from the outside. Everyone owned an umbrella and would carry it with them at the slightest hint of clouds. Convenience stores were called Liquor Stores and anyone of any age could just walk right in. Grocery stores also sold liquor and clerks only carded the person actually making the purchase, as opposed to everyone else in line with them.

Oh, and there were lots of hot chicks.

There was one hot chick in particular I kept seeing around campus who was notable for the fact that she always wore a mini-skirt. No matter what. And, it wasn't like the approved 1999 fashionably correct version of a mini-skirt. It was like a music video from 1985 mini-skirt. It always looked like the same skirt, so I was never sure if she just wore the same mini-skirt every day or if she had a closet full of identical mini-skirts. Even among the sea of hot chicks who were often not wearing very much at all, mini-skirt girl stood out. Her skirt was shorter than the rest and her legs were longer. It was hard not to stare when she walked by, or, if you were lucky, sat opposite you and crossed her legs.

Now, Southern California is a magical land where the natives will gladly sit in below room temperature air conditioning in shorts and a t-shirt but then bundle up if they have to step out into a 75 degree evening. So, as the summer turned to fall and fall turned to winter, everyone on campus stopped showing so much skin. Eventually, since we were in the middle of the desert, we got evenings that were actually chilly and not just fake Southern California chilly. I thought to myself, even Mini-Skirt Girl, as I had named her, couldn't put up with this change in climate and it would only be a matter of time before I saw her in jeans, like a normal person.

One evening I walked to the computer lab to do some work, since our campus must have been one of the last ones on the planet to embrace the Internet. As I worked at my computer, I looked across the room and saw Mini-Skirt Girl sitting across from me. Finally, I had my answer: even she, who had worn her mini-skirt every day I had ever seen her, was now bundled up in a big, fluffy white furry jacket. I didn't know whether to be happy or sad. On one hand, it proved she was human. On the other, there would be a certain kind of victory if she had proudly stuck to her mini-skirt ways in the face of adversity.

Then, something amazing happened. She finished her work and stood up to leave the lab, and as she walked by I realized I hadn't been able to see the bottom half of her body in her sitting position. Sure, she had on a big fluffy white fur coat, but below that there was nothing but her bare, tanned, statuesque, legs. I caught a glimpse of her mini-skirt, but the fluffy coat was long enough that if you just glanced in her direction it looked like she was wearing the coat and nothing else, except a pair of boots.

So, it was a victory, after all. Mini-Skirt Girl had earned her name. I don't know if she was from Southern California or not. If not, she had out Southern California'd the Southern Californians. If so, she was the ultimate native.

I only spoke to Mini-Skirt Girl once or twice. Once, a friend of mine was being all boastful at dinner in the cafeteria as we admired her from afar.

"Pff," he said. "She's not all that. I'd totally ask her out."

"Yeah right," I said. "You'd be too scared to talk to her."

"No way, she's just a chick like anyone else," he said.

"Well, then go talk to her," I said.

"Oh," he said. "Uh, not right now. I'm eating."

"Convenient," I said.

"Well, you wouldn't ask her out either," he said.

It was beside the point, but my need to be right about everything outweighed my fear of women, so I said, "I'll do it right now."

"Yeah, right," he said.

That was all I needed. I got up and walked right over to her.

"Hey," I said, while she dumped her tray in the trash.

"Oh, hey," she said.

"What are you up to this weekend?" I asked.

"Oh, hanging out with some friends, why?" she asked.

"I was wondering if you wanted to do something," I said.

"Oh, sorry, I can't," she said. "What's your name?"

"Paul," I said.

"Oh, I'm -- ," and then she told me, but I forgot. All I know is it wasn't Mini-Skirt Girl.

Anyway, she was surprisingly nice and smiled a lot, which is more than I would have done if a stranger would have come up to me and asked if I wanted to hang out. It wasn't one of those rejections that was terrible and embarrassing. It was more like meeting a celebrity and being surprised that they gave you the time of day at all.

I returned to the table, romantically defeated but personally victorious for having proven my balls to my boastful friend.

"Yeah, right," my friend said. "You probably asked her what time it was, or something."

But, I knew the truth.

After that, she always made sure to smile and say "hi" to me every time I happened to walk by her, which I thought was nice. Eventually, she disappeared, before the year was over -- either dropping out, or transferring to another school, or who knows what.

I wonder if she looks back on her mini-skirt days and laughs at herself for obsessively wearing them. I prefer to picture the rest of her life going by, mini-skirt always present. Getting married in a tiny white mini-skirt version of a wedding dress, giving birth in a mini-hospital gown, risking frost-bite in Antarctica where she's moved to study seismic activity with a group of equally eccentric scientists. Eventually she'll die, and she'll have an open casket funeral, only it'll be the bottom half of the casket that'll be open instead of the top half.

To prove to everyone she's still got it.