Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Tummy Thunder

There’s a rumbling outside and in my stomach; probably from the undercooked potatoes in the curry.

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Airsoft Kool-Aid

Matt P plunged the barrel of his sniper rifle into the olive green pool, and stirred.

Friday, May 23, 2025

Field Trip

Escorting children off the school bus at the Natural History museum,  Steve finds a roll of pennies.

Opening the roll, he finds a 1944 cent with the Lincoln Memorial reverse, and a 1924 Barber dime, both coins literal one of a kind unique impossibilities.

Thursday, May 22, 2025

E3 2049

The Electronic Expo revives in the old Towne East mall in Wichita, Kansas. Each former commercial store is a cavernous showroom dedicated to a single arcade game.

As one of the first attendees, Steve sprints down a second floor walkway, past a Spencer’s Gifts filled with dozens of Star Wars arcade machines.

Next door, a B. Dalton bookstore shows rows and rows of classic Asteroids cabinets.

The upper floor of JCPenneys displays nothing but Primal Rage machines: hallways filled with upright cabinets, bright white showcase 33” screens, and a converted Jurassic Park cockpit.

Spotlighted at the front of the store is a unique prototype machine seemingly carved out of a model volcano, with control panels placed close to the floor, forcing players to sit cross-legged or kneel in a sandy compartment to play. Somehow there are four of these compartments around the base of the volcano, with caves cut into the slope where 25” monitors are mounted. 

Dominating the peak and vent of the volcano is a rotating holographic projection cube that shows off the fighting game action. Monolithic Stonehenge pillars contain stacks of subwoofer and speakers, rattling spectators skulls with each prehistoric punch.

Monday, May 19, 2025

Stabbity Rainbow

Mom’s solar-powered multitool walking stick is color-coded:

RED: 3’ telescoping steel spear
ORANGE: 7” serrated steel jackknife
YELLOW: spare sewing needle
GREEN: tungsten rock bar tip
BLUE: wooden toothpick
PURPLE: 50,000 volt titanium cattle prod
PINK: barbed aluminum wire-guided crossbow bolt

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Spray Painting

Spray painting IRL.

Taking a nap.

Spray painting in my dreams.

Friday, May 16, 2025

Bling Bling Bling

Pearlescent, iridescent, translucent,

strawberry scratch n’ sniff,

rose gold Rolex.

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Own A Subway

Carpooling in to the office. We plan to leave at 5:45pm.

Breakfast smoothies are all gone but there are chocolate crullers. I have one with coffee.

Checking in on my arcade game cabinet under repair, the color scheme is white and orange. The game is a racing puzzle strategy like Mille Bournes, but with multiple vehicles.

Walking after lunch, I try to snap a picture to own a subway car.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Cool Beach Vacation

I wake up 15 minutes before my 6:45am alarm goes off.

Ride the bus to an empty beach parking lot but TD isn’t there.

Instead we meet them, ZR, MM, and HD downtown and rent Razor scooters, racing up concrete stairs, then climbing impossibly steep salt girder formations.

“We could’ve taken the elevators,” I gasp at the top.

Monday, May 12, 2025

Forgotten Memories

Whenever a song from the 80's plays on the radio, I get a feeling of a forgotten memory.

Maybe it's something to do with a familiar smell, like the almost-imperceptible aroma of slightly overheating electronic components.

Maybe it's the potpourri of disinfectant, sweat, and the metallic scent of tokens, mixed with the cacophony of arcade sounds.

Maybe it's the multisensory kinesthesia of Happy Days reruns on the TV, Bard's Tale on the C64, and a high school art project.

Each song is the soundtrack to a 3-minute time capsule of a forgotten memory.

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Intergame Transfer

I lassoed a Dark Red Hereford in Activision’s Stampede, and fixed a saddle on its back.

I mounted and rode the calf, leaping out of the CRT, IRL.

Then we jumped into my laptop and explored our new Minecraft world.

Thursday, May 8, 2025

Fall Harvest Decor

Eggs and sausage fry in oil in a concrete basin.

I pass by several times (with shoes and bare feet) through the food court, and up and down staircases, among the fall harvest decorations.

On the third time passing, I pick up someone’s discarded sandal and hang it on a hat rack.

Later, creeping slowly with headlights off as partygoers return home. 

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Paintball Tactics

Pinned down. No ammo. Enemies repositioning. Daring attack. Surprise victory. Weapon acquired. Flanking maneuver. Rocket launcher. Building interior. Hallway formation. Videogame defilade. Ceiling explosion. Prisoner surrender.

Sunday, May 4, 2025

The Great Spreadsheet War

Armies of Gray and Brick Red ceramic tiles clash in a war to win a construction bid.

Friday, May 2, 2025

Prototype Build Quote

"It's gonna take an hour at least to build each of the three configurations you want, and longer to test each one."

Thursday, May 1, 2025

Falling With Style

Playing with the reduced effects of gravity at the university’s new science research center construction site.

Leaping and soaring high above the steel beam structure. 

Floating softly and controllably back to the ground.

Heading to the showers where janitorial staff host an interview with a new pest control company.

There’s cake.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Underground Fried Rice

Carved into the foot of a mountain, this restaurant features 999 varieties of fried rice including: chicken fried rice, beef fried rice, pork fried rice, shrimp fried rice, vegetable fried rice, honey fried rice, miso fried rice, shoyu fried rice, duck fried rice, mushroom fried rice, pineapple fried rice, egg fried rice, lentil fried rice, birria fried rice, lamb fried rice, goat fried rice, fish fried rice, shadow fried rice, rainbow fried rice, potato fried rice, steak fried rice, tofu fried rice, peanut butter fried rice, butter fried rice, seaweed fried rice, cranberry fried rice, chickpea fried rice...

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Popper Parkour

Thousands of makeshift jumbo toilet paper poppers adorn the ceilings of a three story townhouse with furniture packed into every room.

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Egg Water

At the indoor community pool, a bucket of hard boiled eggs is dumped into the water.

AH grabs one and eats it while, with the shell on, while I stuff my sweatpants pockets.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Strawberry Bavarian

Some remember today as the day in 1806 when Bavaria declared itself a sovereign nation.

But I will remember it as the day my brother and I rode bikes and slurped strawberry ICEEs.


Saturday, April 19, 2025

Monster Truck Art Show

At Mr. S’s free annual “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” monster truck themed art gallery, several contestants are turned away for being too ‘pushy’ in the registration line.

Each of these contestants was unique, exhibiting some uncommon or rare physical disability: dwarfism, albinism, muscular dystrophy, ataxia, alopecia, and many with one or more missing limbs.

These contestants rejoined the registration line and were eventually admitted to join the parade of trucks roaring around the obstacle course while displaying a wide variety of art projects in oil and watercolor paint, ink and pencil, woodcut prints and etchings, charcoal and crayon resist.

Friday, April 18, 2025

It Swindy

Thought sand feeling smash together.

Nextdoor, the Netflix Airlines travel agency closes early.

Swinging Venetian blinds indicate an open window.

A yellow gumball gacha machine bursts open; its contents swirl around the empty office.

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Bonus! Free DS!

I forgot I left my laptop and backpack in an outdoor patio of a BBQ restaurant.

When I returned, everything had been neatly returned to my backpack, including someone’s Nintendo DS I didn’t recognize (mine is red).

I spent the rest of the dream searching for the owner of the DS - someone who named their Animal Crossing character, Kira.

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Using a dream

Missing a semicolon


Nightmare
Business trip to Europe 
Seedy dark downtown
Unfamiliar Coworker bros
Delieriant pills
Social gatherings in a church
Nighttime alley confrontation
Foot chase
Hop on moving subway train
Lost shoe
People on train concerned/praying
Acapella singing group
Headless singer interviewed
Calling dial tone
Wake up
Text wife
Text work
Meditate
Pet a dog
Jumping For Treats

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Scooter World Tour

It starts off as a basketball / dodge ball tournament with 8 teams of seemingly 100 players each.

I moved over to Team F with the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. We did center court drills with partially deflated basketballs until after dark, when the zombies started to emerge. Then we broke into groups of 4 to survive.

Unfortunately we forget to lock the five double front doors and two zombies shamble through around dawn, prompting the scooter leg of the game.

With reduced gravity settings it’s easy to clear 6-foot gaps, weave perpendicularly through street traffic, and jump over 5-foot hedgerows.

I leaned back after longer and longer jumps, landing gently into a manual on the rear wheel, and riding it for hundreds of feet down the sidewalk.

I began to lose consciousness after leaping into a multiplayer frozen river section. The graphics changed into 8-bit and the camera angle switched from 3rd person to top down. There were too many player to player collisions and not enough tricks.

Thursday, November 10, 2022

Elevator 7B

Nobody can tell me the location of this elevator.

Staff and I look at a map while teenagers roughhouse across a counter.

Sunday, October 30, 2022

Plane to Oklahoma

It’s really a small office with a bed in the back corner.

Two other passengers fall asleep before the flight.

I flip on the light to read and a giant cat slinks down the hallway.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

So Cute

tiny scorpion
snips the tympanic membrane
while you are sleeping

Saturday, February 23, 2019

Cable Crtitters

wasps stealing WiFi
don't kid yourself that they don't
change your passwords now

Friday, February 22, 2019

Silent Cicada

silent cicada
even the loudest insect
quieted by death

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Natural mezuzah

a sneaking gecko
hears a squeaky hinge and the
crunch of flattened bones

Monday, February 4, 2019

Round and round and round and round!

Play a round of Plane Around!
Circle high above the ground!
Every lap: a happy sound!

Play a round of Plane Around!
Best new game that I have found!
Yes it's free! Let me expound!

Play a round of Plane Around!
Soon it will be world renowned!
Beat my score before I'm downed!

Play a round of Plane Around!

Monday, November 5, 2018

English Beat Weekend

Piano in the bathroom
Fridge on the porch
This is the week
We get new floors

We’ll be going to a restaurant
That's got drive thru
Since our dishwasher
Is also in the bathroom

Friday, November 2, 2018

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams

If you want to be transported into a World of Pure Imagination, please play Wonka's World of Candy with the sound ON - even better with headphones! Listening to the vast myriad of instruments (accordion, electric bass, clarinet, harpsichord, even kalimba) coupled with the background remixes of the most memorable music from the 1971 movie (I've Got a Golden Ticket, The Candy Man) takes me back to those fond childhood memories, and at the same time, immerses me in a whole new World of Candy.

Do your brain a favor and start playing today.

You have so much time and so few levels to see! Wait a minute! Strike that. Reverse it.

- A proud Zynga employee

#WonkasWorldOfCandy

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Fatality

Riding in the Celica with no driver; figure I should move into driver seat. A high speed crash at a T-intersection on my right throws flying debris. I swerve into left lane to avoid it and falling palm tree. Double back to investigate crash and find the dead victim under a trash bin.  He was transversely bifurcated.

Friday, May 12, 2017

#NationalLimerickDay

Zynga created a game.
Boggle With Friends is its name.
Install it and play
A game every day.
Worthy of worldwide acclaim!


Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Seeking solitude? Solitaire is the solution.

Singular
One
Lonesome
Isolated
Troglodytic
Apart
Individual
Reclusive
Eremetic

– A Zynga Employee

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Ode to Boggle With Friends

By ghostly glow of iPhone’s ‘lectric light
On letter tiles my thumb swipes fiercely through
Going for high scores until late at night
Gladly defeating friends both old and new
Lexophiles rejoice with newfound zeal
Everlasting gameplay and appeal

(full disclosure: I am a Wordie, and a Zynga Employee)


Friday, May 24, 2013

Lepidoptera Survivor

I watched a butterfly slowly fluttering frosted wings until they detached. The wingless insect continued to forage, encountering and subduing an arachnid.

Confrontation

I beat up HJ when he entered through an automatic sliding door and executed a flying crane kick too early, missing my chin, my mirrored move caught his undercarriage and flipped him to the floor.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Double J

The 'Double J' is a racing venue featuring two courses whose start/finish lines face each other and immediately make a tight righthand turn.

On raceday, I forgot my glasses, and resigned myself to a day of fuzzy arms-length vision.

For some strange reason, TWO races were scheduled simultaneously that day - MotoX and Rallycross Trucks - and I had just put those two facts together when a motorcycle rider skidded across the finish line barrelling head-on towards a truck in the opposing race.

There were goggles littering the sidelines but thankfully nobody got hurt.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Refriending

Eager to celebrate their reunion, GH brings his friends to a store in a local mall that specializes in exotic alcoholic beverages.

SF is enamored more with the thick white fur carpeting (and the other shoeless patrons) than she is in perusing adult beverages.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

It Happened

Finally.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

30 Minutes or Less

BF left behind a red and black duffel bag in the men's locker room.

Juxtapositioning

There is a warehouse full of workers wheeling wagons loaded with stacks of white and dark chocolate candy bars next door to a tandem racing water slide without water.

Patrons ride down the slide on empty burlap potato sacks.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Fashion Update

JS and AM chat while wearing huge peacock-feather false eyelashes on their lower lids.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Swap Meet Search

In a swap meet parking lot next to a 50's-style diner are dozens of refurbished pink convertible Volkswagen Beetles on sale for $1,495. It's strange that they feature slim wheels and tires like those found on cars from the early 1900's.

At the swap meet, a young boy shops for a tomahawk.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Punk'd In Planes

Two female joggers (one pregnant) watch a single-engine aircraft with red pin striping buzz the park they're running through twice before it successfully flies between two narrowly-spaced high-tension power lines.

3-in-1 Show

Documentary on United States pennies mentions "zero-cent" blanks. One in our collection has a hole in the middle and is strung with fishing wire.

At a birthday party banquet, in a room with broken tiled-glass doors, there's a lenticular picture of me in a black sport coat, seated, and turning around from behind.

Attempt to distract Disney character enemies in order that the aggressor might kill the defender.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Morning Verse

Smoking,

car idling.

Spit in the air

lands on my forehead

in the fog before dawn.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

DTV

Happy Cube <80%

Forklift

Broken rain gutter

Clogged toilet

Monday, August 22, 2011

Amputee Survival Stories

As an exhibitionist Chinese bisento artist I was severely injured in a battle when my opponent chopped off my leg below the knee.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Whatever Happened To...

At the occultism store in the mall, Marylin Manson tries to fill a bottle to win a prize.

I perform an impromptu Greek weather ritual by playing percussion.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Color Theory

Green and orange.

KS visits us in the park.

I draw an orange 'JS' in the grass, on either side of a walkway, with a boogie board.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Backwards Memory

Suicidal depression.

Working backwards through the dream to the moment I lost consciousness.

Trying to compose the thoughts and feelings into a New York Times bestseller book's opening paragraph.

Spiralling blackness, then small figurines pressing against my face and solidifying impressions as my body unfolds from its fetal position.

Crawling backwards like a wounded animal through the shallow backwash of discarded anniversary gifts and a sandy market bazaar.

Two dollars to join the buskers' band.

Earlier remembering how TL had brandished the absurdly giant steel shuriken. Another middle school boy grabbed it. In the struggle it ended embedded in a girl's upper back, missing her spine by an inch, and grazing her shoulder blade. She was mostly unharmed (physically) but I still had to retell the story to her mother.

When I did, she suffered a heart attack.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Circuitous

Walk through an empty hotel lobby.

Walk through a sleepy IHOP.

Climb a puzzle stairway with purple and gray stones in shifting patterns.

A failure slide leads back to the hotel lobby.

Feats of Astonishment

Navigating a snow-covered mountain peak, SL and Steve bridge a 5-foot gap by riding a recumbent bike (sans tires) across three steel cables.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Hand-me-downs

An inherited TV stand from an elementary school comes with an old 70's television.

Old textbooks are crammed into the narrow space between the CRT and the side of the stand.

In addition to the books are several slide binders filled with photos of school activities including a visit from Big Bird of Sesame Street.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Line 490

A video game character puffs on a cigar.

Real smoke emanates from the game console.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

LA Traffic Jam Meetings

On northbound Interstate 405 just before the I-405 / I-5 merge there is a tunnel.

The frequency with which drivers passing through the tunnel will honk their horns is inversely proportional to the speed the cars are travelling.

DD hops out of his SUV to hand me a sipa sipa.