Damn This Violence

I’m not really understanding the violence that is going on in Denver lately.  Just last week some jackass walked into Target and shot into the ceiling because he apparently wanted to score some drugs from the pharmacy. Fortunately no one was hurt but it could have been bad.  It happened on Black Friday from what I’ve read.  But this is just the latest act of crime in the past year that has been making me want to leave Denver.  I love this city and I honestly feel like it’s the best place to be in the whole world.  But I have to ask myself if it’s the right place to raise my kids and I really don’t think it is.  I’m not saying that smaller cities are any safer, okay I am saying that but it’s because they have smaller populations.  Smaller populations mean less crazies which means less chance of random violence. Some of the big ones that scare me are the kidnappings.  Just recently that moron kidnapped and murdered a ten year old girl.  The psycho dismembered her and it turns out that this freak is only 17 years old!  He was taking CSI courses and was acknowledged for being pretty good at it.  This happened close to where my sister lives.  Sure, this freak is off the streets, but there are more out there like him and that’s what scares me.

The biggest one that scares me is the movie theater shooting down the street from my house.  It scares me on multiple levels. At one point I’m feeling blessed that I wasn’t at that movie theater that night.  Just two days before it happened I was online looking up tickets to go.  I was supposed to go with my buddy Tom.  After I brought the tickets up and was ready to pay for them through Flixster, I decided to text Tom and ask him if he was still going.  I’d get the tickets and he could get the popcorn and soda.  Turns out he was stuck out of town and couldn’t make it.  Which was actually fine with me because that theater is the shittiest place ever and we both would have preferred going to the Movie Tavern.  That place is cool because it’s a restaurant and movie theater at the same time.  Instead of popcorn, Tom could pay back his ticket in beer.  The biggest thing that scares me about it, though, is the fact that all of these people went to a movie as dedicated Batman fans and were unjustly injured or killed.  How unfair is that?  The movies aren’t even a safe place anymore.

We did wind up going to see the movie the following night, but it was strange.  There were cops all over the place and the entire atmosphere felt wrong.  That was the last movie I saw in the theater until just recently my wife and I went and saw Lincoln.  I’m not saying I won’t go to a theater to watch a movie, I’m just scared of being in crowded places where I’m vulnerable. These crazies will take advantage of that and it’s what make them so powerful. It sucks that we have to feel like that in such a great country.  I don’t remember life being so scary when I was a kid and now I’m practically terrified.  I’m not afraid of dying, but I’m afraid of leaving my family behind to grow up without their father or her husband.  Life is so valuable and I want to be around for it.  Even more so, I’m afraid for my kids.  I don’t want my daughter going to the movies with this type of threat out there.  I won’t let them walk to school, ever.  I will be that parent who watches his kids like a hawk in order to protect them.  That’s just the way society has made me feel. I just want my kids to grow up with a normal life away from drugs and away from violence. Seriously, let’s just all get a long and love each other, you bunch of fuck tards. 

Random Stuff

So I know that it has been a little while since I’ve actually taken the time to sit down and write out a blog, other than my short story that is.  I’ve been really tied up with school and other busy stuff that makes up my life. My wife and I had some house guests and they took up a lot of our time…and space haha.  Having them live here wasn’t too bad I guess, but after a while I found myself getting terribly vexed at the sight of them. It was mostly her brother I suppose.  He’s a great guy and I won’t bash him, but I was mostly annoyed because he doesn’t have any real aspirations in life and never really made a valiant effort to find himself a job so that he could get his family back on track. However, the situation is over and they are happily living on their own.

I wanted to take the time to write out a lot of stuff that has been on my mind since I last jotted down my thoughts.  The first is my schooling. I’m so glad that I decided to pursue writing as a career because I have come to realize that I’m actually pretty good at it.  My teachers have pushed me to succeed and I have really been enjoying the results thus far.  If you haven’t already, please check out the flash story I wrote.  It’s called a flash story because it’s only a thousand words or so.  It’s basically a short, short story.  The one I wrote is called, “The Day I Died.”  It’s about the life of a lowly hospital janitor who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I won’t tell you the whole story here because it would really mean a lot if you read it for yourself.  It should take you about five or ten minutes to read it. I’m currently in the process of trying to find a place that would possibly publish it for me.  I think the real hard part about that is going to be the rejection I’m going to face.  I’m betting a lot of people will turn it down, but the thing I have to do is overcome rejection and keep pushing forward.  In the end I’m hoping to write novels and video game scripts. Although, as of late, I’ve decided that I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at screenplays as well.  People close to me know how much I love the TV show Scrubs. Well I just recently read a script for one of the episodes and then watched that very episode. It’s amazing how what the writer puts down on paper gets acted out on screen.  The actors do a great job making the story pop, but that story wouldn’t be there without the writer. I had to write a very short screenplay for one of my assignments and was actually pretty impressed with my work.  My writing style has been coming off as rather dark, but I think that will be okay.  Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare are a couple of people who inspire me and they are both experts in tragic storytelling.  Anyway, my school has a film department that preps people to be film directors and one of the perks of being a writer is that I can submit screenplays to them.  The film students will get to choose what scripts they like and then turn them into short films.  I’m really hoping to have a short film that I wrote on my profile because it’s proof of what I can do as a writer and it may land me a job in the future.

Another thing I wanted to chat about is the Epic Rap Battles of History series I have been watching on Youtube.  These guys are hilarious!  They take historical characters from history and fiction and put them into rap battles against each other.  For example, you can watch Adolf Hitler square off against Darth Vader, or Master Chief go toe to toe with King Leonidas.  It’s really great stuff and I’m sure my entire family is annoyed with me watching them all the time. Here are a couple of my favorites if you care to watch.

Also on Youtube, I’ve been keeping up with a game reviewer named Angry Joe.  I found out about this guy because of his videos on the Mass Effect 3 ending.  His style of reviewing is extremely unconventional and that is what makes it so great.  Sure he’s a bit extreme and can be overly opinionated at times, but what I’ve realized is that his reviews are what I’m really looking for. He gives fair reviews while at the same time showing off some pretty hilarious parodies of the game he’s reviewing.  They’re long and fun to watch and I enjoy hearing his thoughts because he has a no bullshit attitude towards the games in question.  If the game sucks, he is going to tell that it sucks and then he is going to show you why, all while making you laugh your freaking ass off.  He’s not for everyone though.  My wife can’t stand him, but such is life.

Finally I wanted to talk a little bit about G4tv’s Video Game Deathmatch.  I love that they pit games against each other but I honestly hate the fans that vote. You could pit two really great games next to each other and even if a person likes them both, they tend to bash one of them because they like the other one better. For example, the most recent deathmatch is asking gamers to vote for the best game of 2012 and it has become heated.  Guild Wars 2 is facing off against The Walking Dead in round three and people are verbally destroying both games.  One jackass even had the nerve to say that the only reason people are voting for The Walking Dead is because they like crappy games or they’ve never played Guild Wars 2 and don’t know what they’re talking about. I haven’t played either of them but I proceeded to tell him what a fucking idiot he was for saying that. First, the poll is OPINION based meaning that fans are going to stick to what they like. Fanboys of a series will fight to the death for their game and if you’ve ever gone to a video game forum you would agree.  Second, a crappy game is based on opinion. I may think Call of Duty sucks but the millions of fans who play it constantly will disagree without question.  It goes for all games. A guy in the Halo 4 vs Dishonored poll stated that he was going to kill everyone who posted a comment if Halo 4 doesn’t win. It honestly made me want to take back my vote for Halo and give it to Dishonored.  The results don’t matter! The poll is not legit at all, especially since it allows people to vote more than once. What’s keeping a crazed fan from voting ten thousand times?

Okay so that is all I have!  If you want me to rant or talk about anything just let me know.  Until next time, gang. 

The Day I Died (Final Draft)

    My small one bedroom apartment smells like dirty gym clothes that have been sitting in a locker room for weeks. The sink in the kitchen is overflowing with dirty dishes and the trash is so full that it’s contents have spilled over the edge. I’ve been meaning to clean this place but I’ve just been too lazy. I’m sitting on the couch watching my best friend, Nathan, play some type of zombie video game while I nurse my fifth glass of rum and coke. I suppose I could ask him to clean the place up since he’s unemployed and has been living here for over a year, but I doubt he’d do it.

     “I really think this shit could happen bro.” Nathan startled me for a second because we had been sitting in silence for so long. The only sound has been the gargled and mushy sounds of the flesh hungry zombies and the shotgun Nathan is using to put them to sleep.

     “What?” I asked.

     “Zombies dude. It could totally happen. It all starts out in a hospital. Some dude is going to eat a plate of year old meatloaf that was injected with rabies and will wind up at the doctor to figure out what made him sick. Next thing you know, everyone’s dead!” Nathan cried. I stared blankly at him as I swallowed what was left in my glass.

     “Did you hear me Xavier?” Asked Nathan.

     “I did.” I replied. Even though I heard him, I wasn’t really listening. Nathan is an alarmist and a conspiracy theorist. Needless to say his cheese slid off of his cracker a long time ago. He converted his parent’s basement into a survival shelter with stashes of dried food and water that could last him five years.

     “I’m off to bed.” I say to Nathan as I stand up and head towards my room. He’s too busy performing zombie genocide to even notice.   

Despite my body aching from my hangover, I get out of bed and prepare myself for another day. My head is throbbing so bad that I can feel it radiating throughout my body. My heartbeat is keeping cadence with the throbbing as if it were performing some sort of weird hangover ritual. I’m a janitor at the local hospital downtown in the most beautiful part of the city, Shadow Falls. I also work part time at a gas station in order to help pay for my school. I often wonder where my life went so wrong because I’m a thirty-eight year old man who scrubs toilets and sells cheap cigarettes for a living rather than chasing the American dream.

After taking a nice hot shower I put on the green monkey suit the hospital forces me to wear and tie my black boots before sitting down at my desk to finish up on some homework. After I am finished I walk out into the kitchen to grab a cup of warm piss that Nathan refers to as coffee. It tastes like he made it with his tears, regret, and broken dreams. Perhaps that’s why I don’t mind guzzling it down every morning because my coffee would taste exactly the same.

     The fresh crisp air and the smell of the morning dew give my body something fresh to soak in as I step out the front door. My stomach takes it as a compliment and slowly starts to settle. I sip on Nathan’s caffeinated sorrow as I stumble towards my 1985 Chevy Camaro and drive off to work. I’ve owned this car for twenty years and it unfortunately represents the monotony that is my life. I drive the same car I use to take my high school girlfriends on dates in. I’ve worked at the same two jobs for the past ten years before coming back to my place every night to get drunk and watch Nathan live his life through fictional characters. My life sucks. 

     The park across the street from the hospital catches my eye as I pull into the parking lot. This park epitomizes the beauty of this peaceful community. The beautiful flowers sprouting up everywhere, the golden colored leaves hanging from the trees, and the plush green grass makes this place feel like heaven on earth. Some of the best times of my life were spent walking over to this park and just sitting on the bench doing nothing. It was the most relaxed I’ve ever been in my life.

     My thoughts wander elsewhere as I enter the emergency room to see four doctors pinning a patient down into his bed. The man is snarling at everyone while he tries to break free from the grasp of the doctors. His skin tone is gray and his eyes are bloodshot with rage. His yellowish brown teeth protrude from his mouth as he lashes out and bites Dr. Stevens in the neck.

     I stand frozen for a few moments as other doctors and nurses rush to the aid of Dr. Stevens. I then watch in horror as the patient breaks free and sprints right towards me. The thudding in my heart is beating faster to the cadence of my throbbing headache, which is speeding up from all of this chaos. I only manage to get ten feet away from the rabid looking man before being tackled onto my face. I feel the flesh on my shoulder being torn into through my uniform and the warm trickle of blood flowing from the wound. I scream in agony until someone finally pushes this freak off me. I try to pick myself up but my body can’t move. Instead, darkness fills my vision.

     My eyes flutter open to the faint glow of the emergency exit lights. I’m still in the emergency room and it seems no one bothered to help me. I feel weak and the pulse of my heart radiating through my body has vanished. The sights around me are horrific. The dark emergency room is slathered in blood and pieces of what I can only assume are human flesh and guts. There are bodies lying all over the floor; the bodies of the doctors who tried to hold the rabid patient down as well as many others. It looks like a scene out one of Nathan’s games. I have to leave and find help, but as I step outside I realize that I have been unconscious for quite a while. The power is out in the city and the only available light is coming from the fire that is burning half of the park down. Melancholy drapes over the night sky and I notice that there are other injured people sulking along the streets and through the park. My vision isn’t so great in the dark but I am able to make out that these people look like the rabid man who bit me. I look at the burning park and see that it is littered with bodies. Ironically, the pond in the center is reflecting a beautiful orange glow from the same fire that is making this park look like hell on earth.

     My breath begins to get shallow and my body feels weaker. My legs feel like rubber as I limp over to the nearest bench in the park to sit down. Suddenly, despite the aching pain in my back, I feel relaxed. All my worries are fleeing my body like rats fleeing a sinking ship. It doesn’t matter that I am a thirty-eight-year-old janitor dying on a park bench or that I never accomplished the life that I wanted. It doesn’t matter that my apartment is a wreck or that my breath is getting shallow. It doesn’t matter that the dirty rabid people slowly creep towards me or that Nathan’s ludicrous prediction was insanely correct. The only thing that matters is how relaxed I am at last.

The Day I Died (Rough Draft)

     I woke up this morning with my heart pounding through my chest to the cadence of the throbbing in my head.  My stomach slowly tossed and turned, as if it weren’t entirely sure whether or not it was going to send back the alcohol it received the night before.  My symptoms, no doubt, are from a night full of drinking and listening to my roommate, Nathan, explain to me how and when the zombie apocalypse was going to happen.

     “Dude, it all starts out in a hospital because the infected guy tries to figure out why he’s sick.  And before you know it, everyone’s dead.  Did you hear me Xavier?”
     I did hear him, but I wasn’t listening.  Nathan’s cheese slid off his cracker a long time ago and he’s become somewhat of a conspiracy theorist as well as many other silly quirks.  I didn’t buy into any of that zombie hype nor did I believe it could ever be possible.  That stuff only happens in movies and books.

     Despite my body aching from my hangover, I got out of bed and prepared myself for another day at work.  I’m a janitor at the local hospital located downtown in what I consider to be the most beautiful part of this great city, Shadow Falls.  I also work part time at a gas station along with being a full time student.  At the age of thirty eight I decided to head back to school.  I just couldn’t figure out where my life went so wrong or why a grown man was scrubbing toilets and selling cheap cigarettes for a career instead of living his dream.

     The fresh crisp air and the smell of the morning dew gave my body something fresh to soak in as I stepped out the front door.  My stomach took it as a compliment and slowly started to settle.  I sipped my morning coffee as I stumbled towards my 1985 Chevy Camaro and got in for my daily routine.  My life has been so busy the past ten years that my routine never really changed.  Wake up at seven in the morning, skip breakfast, drink the warm piss Nathan calls coffee, get into the car I have owned for the last twenty years, work twelve hours cleaning up vomit and shit in the emergency room, head over to the gas station to sell cancer and gas to everyone, go home to get drunk and pass out.  I never have time for the little things anymore.

     The park across the street from the hospital caught my eye as I pulled into the parking lot.  This park epitomizes the beauty of this peaceful community.  The beautiful flowers sprouting up everywhere, the golden colored leaves hanging from the trees, and the plush green grass made this place feel like heaven on earth.  Some of the best times of my life were spent walking over to this park and just sitting on the bench doing nothing.  It was the most relaxed I’ve ever been in my life.

     My thoughts wandered off elsewhere as I entered the emergency room to see four doctors pinning a patient down into his bed.  The man was snarling at everyone while he tried to break free from the grasp of the doctors.  His skin tone was gray and his eyes were bloodshot with rage.  His yellowish brown teeth protruded from his mouth as he lashed out and bit Dr. Stevens in the neck.

     I stood frozen for a few moments as other doctors and nurses rushed to the aid of Dr. Stevens. I then watched in horror, as the patient broke free and sprinted right towards me.  The thudding in my heart was beating faster to the cadence in my head, which sped up, from all of this chaos.  I only managed to get ten feet away from the rabid looking man before I was tackled onto my face.  I felt the flesh on my shoulder being torn into through my uniform and the warm trickle of blood that flowed from the wound.  I wasn’t sure what was going on, but someone had finally removed this bastard off me.  Darkness filled my vision.

     My eyes fluttered open to the light glow of the emergency exit lights.  I was still in the emergency room and it seemed no one bothered to help me.  My body felt weak and I could no longer feel the pulse of my heart radiating through my body.  The sights around me were horrific.  The emergency room was slathered in blood and pieces of what I could only assume were human flesh and guts.  There were bodies lying all over the floor; the bodies of the doctors who tried to hold the rabid patient down as well as many others.  I stumbled back towards the door.  I had to leave and find help, but as I stepped outside I realized that I had been unconscious for quite awhile.  The power was out in the city and the only light was that from the fire that was burning half of the park down.  Melancholy was draped over the night sky and I witnessed other injured people sulking along the streets and through the park, but they looked rabid like the man who bit me.  The park literally looked like hell on earth. 

     My breath began to get shallow and my body felt weaker.  I marched over to the nearest bench in the park and sat down.  Suddenly, despite the aching pain in my back, I felt relaxed.  I didn’t care that I was a thirty-eight-year-old janitor dying on a park bench.  I didn’t care that my breath was getting shallow and that the dirty rabid people had started creeping towards me.  I didn’t care that Nathan’s ludicrous prediction was insanely correct.  The only thing I cared about was how relaxed I felt at last.