Tag: Backpack

Big Whoop

A man named Garvey sedated me once, though the whole outcome could have been avoided. We’d begun feuding the week prior, a trivial dispute over the price of corn muffin mix. Stupid, right? Well, this Garvey feller sure didn’t think so. And it just so happened that his friendly neighborhood drug dealer unloaded a ton of vicodin on him that week, so he was bound to sedate me whether or not we disagreed on anything. I may live to regret having anything to do with that man, but life is a rich tapestry that deserves its fair share of intrigue.

His sister, Nancy, had her own agenda when it came to handling the G-Man. Having lived with him a majority of her life, she’d developed an ingenious coping mechanism for dealing with his ridiculous foibles. Any time he began ranting about the military industrial complex, the go-to strategy would be to bring up the time he’d run into Steve Harvey while jogging on the riverfront–near the Wrigley Building. That would immediately stop his conspiratorial theorizing and send him spiraling through all five stages of the celebrity run-in phenomenon. Turns out Garvey is this joker’s last name. First name: Steve.

Originally, Nancy had only been prepared to shift her brother’s mania away from excessive government spending, but she eventually developed a secondary strategy out of necessity. After letting Steve go on about the Garvey/Harvey thing for a couple minutes, she’s gotten quite skilled at channeling his enthusiasm into a creative jag. Now–since Garvey prefers to make ink drawings, Nancy has set up a corner in her apartment designed solely for her brother to zen out after he gets a little too worked up about the 10-second exchange that he and Steve Harvey’d had. The passion lends itself to the page as he jots up a storm. He doesn’t want to burden himself with any extra material possessions, so he leaves all his creations at Nancy’s place. Nancy has turned a tidy profit from his efforts, since Steve-o gets worked up quite often. It’s reached the point where Nancy could take a year-long hiatus from waitressing and not feel pinched for a minute of it.

So yeah, I let Garvey sedate me. Big whoop. I was hoping he’d feel bad about it and draw me a nice picture that could finance a backpacking trip through the Black Forest.

Bully for Them

The very first horse-drawn carriage must have come as a shock to the ants taking their time crossing the land that at one point had never been designated specifically for human travel–and subsequent travails.

Now the unattached heel of a wayward boot has come across my plane of vision, and all of a sudden, horse-drawn carriages and ant opinions have no bearing over my perception as a red-blooded artist keen on taking over the world several well-placed poems at a time.

A long-suffering server has come to understand–a solid number of years ago, mind you–that people have no rhyme or reason when it comes to leaving their shit behind at a bar (even if they haven’t imbibed enough to lose their conception of personal property and the detriment of ignoring the objects directly surrounding them). Perhaps that very basic principle just isn’t present in their conscious minds in the same way as the long-suffering server–we’ll call him Frank.

Perhaps, just perhaps, they’ve transcended the idea of personal property entirely, to the point where everything is everything and nothing, and a backpack or purse or boot heel are inconsequential in the grand scheme of their lives. And bully for them.