The Tale of Aurigarius Falco

I want to exercise in front of you.

This will be an exercise in speculation. If you were thinking I meant a different kind and were pleased by the thought, we’ll have to arrange something else.

What I would like to speculate involves something that happened within recency. I was walking with a friend towards the entrance of a store. As we approached the door, we ended up in one of those weird situations where there’s a crosswalk at the front of the store but there’s also like a constant stream of cars and mostly they stop but sometimes they don’t so you don’t just want to assume they’re going to stop because c’mon it’s your life and body that’re at stake and those are important things even if you don’t necessarily feel that way all the time because in reality you’re inherently important but I get feeling differently here and there so you like stutter step and stop at the edge of the crosswalk and they inch forward and you smile at each other awkwardly and both tell the other to go and then both cede and start to go and then stop and signal for the other to go and

I’m sure you’ve experienced it before. Anyway. Friend and I reached the edge of the crosswalk and there was a man in a car that was approaching where we were. We hesitated as we stepped onto the crosswalk and made eye contact with the driver, who slowed his car and nodded to us reassuringly that he wasn’t going to kill us. At least that’s what I think he was communicating. Now that I think about it, there are literally millions of other things he could’ve been trying to communicate. Either way, we seemingly had reached some sort of unspoken agreement with the driver, and I put my head down and sauntered across the street. Friend, however, —maybe more quickly coming to a realization of the ambiguity and possible danger associated with the man’s head nod— looked more closely at the car as we walked/crossed the walk.

“That dude has a falcon!”

Thrown off a bit, partially as a result of having my important focus interrupted and partially by what was said, I looked up.

“Wait what?” I half glanced over at my friend and half twirled my head around to get a look inside the car.

“That guy has a falcon in the car with him.”

My eyes finally settled on the man again. By this point, we had crossed the crosswalk and were safely on the sidewalk, on the side but not walking, and the man had slowly continued motoring through. I saw the man, and recognized him as a human man. I checked the front seat—nothing there. My eyes drifted back towards the middle of the car and I finally noticed that the man had his arm casually extended, bent at the elbow, palm down and hand in a fist, and a falcon perched on the back of his hand. A solemn and majestic sight. As the man slowly pulled away, friend and I stood there and watched. After he was out of sight, we laughed and talked about how odd and cool it was.

However. I have started to think about it again, and MORE, and I have questions. Mostly: what was that man doing with a falcon in his car? What purpose could that falcon possibly serve? I speculate:

company - maybe the falcon is a good conversationalist. It would probably have to be body language, as I don’t imagine falcons speak words much. Although maybe this one was part parrot and he taught it to talk or something. But even then, parrots just speak words, but don’t really engage. Maybe that’s just the ones I’ve spent time around and maybe that says more about me than it does about them.

hunting - it was cold out and I was in a fairly rural area. I don’t think there were a lot of animals about. But what do I know? I’m not a falcon. Falcons eat all the time and they catch little animals that I’m never even aware of. Maybe there’s something good. Although that would then imply that the dude would be getting some        benefit from said hunting because otherwise, falcon could hunt at home. Maybe dude’s into consuming vermin. I don’t judge.

perspective/a second opinion - maybe he was getting a precious gift for a precious friend and didn’t really know which of a few options to pick. The falcon offered another opinion to help him make a decision.

quick/remote shopping - maybe he gave the falcon the scent of what he needed in the store and his credit card and just had the falcon fly in and get it. Would probably save some time and I can’t imagine the falcon minds the opportunity to get out and stretch its wings from time to time.

traffic help - you know when you pull up to a traffic light and it doesn’t change? I think most of them have sensors, and it seems like sometimes they don’t sense very well. A trick I have found to work is that, if you have the time, you can get out of your car and go hit the crosswalk button for the direction you need. Then you run back to your car. It will usually trigger the light. However! If you had a trained falcon in your car, guess what. You don’t need to actually leave your car. The falcon can do it for you and make you look so cool.

road rage/vengeance - you know when people cut you off or otherwise fill you with rage while on the road? Usually all you can do is honk or flash them obscene gestures or criticize their back-of-the-head aesthetic or curse their mother or swear to the gods you will bathe in their blood. Not when you have a falcon. You could have the falcon do any number of things. Crash through their windshield, peck their eyes out, needlessly honk their horn at someone else to make that person mad and totally and irreversibly embarrassing the driver, disconnect their fuel line, lick the inside of their ear, bring you viles of their blood that you can bathe in… the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

Anyway. I guess there were a lot of reasons that man could’ve had that falcon, and it’s not even limited to one! Maybe that man had that falcon for all of these reasons and more. Luckily, I’ve found a means by which I might equip my very self with a feathered, falconly companion so that all of these options will also be available to me. The future looks bright and menacing, swooping down on my enemies from above.

Wanted

I’m a simple man. I have simple pleasures. I have a simple life. You might say I’m a simpleton.

On any given night, you might find me doing… stuff? Sometimes I stare at my computer box. Sometimes I stare at a book. Sometimes I strategically place my fingers on a guitar. By all means, I’m a man of simple pleasures. Not a lot to cause a ruckus. Or so I thought…

So I have some friends (Surprise!). The other day, my friends were going somewhere far away from here and me, and needed an airplane to do so. They asked me to drive them to the airplane center to catch their flight. Nothing weird here. UNTIL

I was driving on the way up to the airport. At one point, I wanted to switch lanes, so I flipped on my blinker. I let it go for a little bit and then started the switch. When I was halfway into the new lane, a car two lanes over also decided that this was indeed a prime piece of driving real estate and started to come on over as well. However, little friend did not use their blinker and did not wait a little bit. They just came on over. Which, —hey! yeah!— being assertive is good! But, well —hey! Wait! No!—maybe not when you’re hurtling across the earth in a giant metal box in a crowd full of other metal boxes full of fragile tiny humans. Having spent countless hours thinking about people and metal boxes and knowing that I would not like to be struck by someone’s metal box while inside a fast metal box helped me realize that I did not want to be in the place that their metal box was attempting to be. So like a ninny, I retreated to my former lane. And then I HONKED HARD. What the royal heck. Anyway. Thanks to my muther for teaching me to be a paranoid freak while driving. The emotional scarring and years stressed off of my life will be worth the years potentially tacked onto my life, even though they’ll be filled with emotional scarring and stress. *stares off into the void*

But! No harm done. I chatted with my friends, we arrived to the airport safely, and I dropped them off. I put in my fancy new awesome CD, turned it up to a brain bursting volume, and started the trek home. Driving driving driving leaving the airport driving when all of a sudden I’m going and wanting to switch lanes and I signal and start to go and ANOTHER driver friend also wants that lane at that exact same time and starts to come on over without signalling or waiting. What the royal heck? I make my way back into my lane, flattered that so many people want to be close to me and enraged that what the heck. Whatever. My brain was bursting from the music anyway, so I sent passive aggressive thoughts their way and passed them aggressively (but safely!).

I went back to my normal, awesome, AWESOME life and things were fine. Friends did their far-away thing and came back to me. And I went to pick them up again. Fun story: I was driving on up to get them and I wanted to switch lanes and I signalled and waited a bit and moved over a lane and after I’d already gotten into the new lane and was enjoying my lovely new view a truck with an enormous trailer that was right next to me puts on their signal in my direction and I’m like ‘oh hi thanks for using your signal but I’m right here’ and they keep it on and I’m like ‘good driving skills but just give me a sec’ and it keeps blinking and they start moving and I’m like ‘ha no wait but’ and they keep coming and I’m like ‘THANKS FOR USING YOUR SIGNAL’ and I turn on my signal and move back into my previous lane. I gave up on the honking because it seemed like a shrill robotic yelp into the gaping maw of the universe. I just rolled my eyes aggressively over and over in case they looked at me at any point after bullying me into the other lane. That’d teach ‘em. I picked up friends and we made it home with no traffic issues (cool).

And! This very morning, I was driving to work! At one point of my drive, I end up on this skinny little road out in the countryside. There are lots of little farm cars and trucks and stuff that also drive along these roads. The one I drive on is effectively a little highway with corresponding speed limits. Because there are also residences, there are plenty of crossroads and places for people to enter the highway thing. As I drove this morning, I drove at highway speeds. As some other dude drove this morning, he also wanted to drive highway speeds. But he was coming from a residential area so he needed to turn onto the highway. Which is not an issue, unless it becomes one. It became one when he decided to turn onto the highway thing right as I was approaching his stop. He approached his stop as well, but passed it without ever stopping and kind of drifted out into the road where I was hurtling in my metal box. Luckily, he drifted out slowly enough that I was able to hurtle on by before he got into my lane. I cruised on into work, pretending like I hadn’t almost just died pretty badly.

Another narrow miss, but hey what the heck? Seriously! I don’t feel like I have things like this happen super often. But then all of a sudden, things like this happened super often. A string of them, if you will, all in a row. It almost…

...doesn’t…seem like a coincidence...

I’ve never wanted any trouble. I wouldn’t even think that I do anything that’s worth any trouble. But apparently there are those that think differently.

The only way I can make sense of this is that someone’s out to get me. Someone is setting up all of these encounters to make it seem like an accident when they off me. But why? What could be the reason? What is so threatening about my continued existence that someone feels the need to snuff it out?

Well. I’ve… uh. I’m… uh… Recently, I… ...hm.

I don’t know if I’ve done anything consequential of late. At least not to the point of getting me killed. But! That’s only as far as my understanding goes. Let me recap some of the things I’ve done recently and get to the bottom of this.

1. Staring at my computer box - Maybe I stumbled across some important classified information that wasn’t meant to be read by me and now the only solution is to make me sleep with some fishes.
2. Work - I don’t know. Maybe I’m not good at my job and I’m close with my direct supervisor so maybe it’s easier for him to kill me than fire me (hi Logan lol <3).
3. DI - I thrift shop a lot (waaaay too much). Maybe one of the things I unnecessarily purchased is worth a megafortune and it’s easier to kill me and then steal it than to break into my impenetrable fortress of a room.
4. Jealous heir - I am a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, once king of Scotland, so maybe someone found out and wants to off all the rightful heirs so they can take over Scottish rule?
5. Maybe I do something cool in the future and someone in the future didn’t want me to so they sent some people back in time to stop me before my prime.

Yeah. If you have any info, let me know, I guess. But make it quick, because I don’t know how many more of these attempts I’ll evade.

Beginning Gardener's Handblog

When people ask me what season it is, I tell them it is spring because it is! Spring has sprung, and lying is bad! People don’t often ask me what season it is because they usually know or they have access to that information themselves. But were they to ask me, I would be ready. Believe you me.

One of the things of spring™ is that plants start to blossom and bloom. What a cool thing to have happen! Mother Nature is a sultry minx. Because the weather is warmer, people also begin to plant gardens. This year, I wanted to be one of these strategically mentioned people. So I decided to plant something! Let me tell you about it!!

(end intro)

The first step, of course, was to have something to plant. Planting things doesn’t work well otherwise. Now, most people like to go buy seeds and grow things from the very beginning—they heard that it was a very good place to start. As I thought about what I could buy in its infant state and for whose preservation I would be responsible from that point on and on forever, I started to feel the existential dread of the fickleness and mystery of life. What would happen if… if I’m not good enough? What would happen if... I’m super scatterbrained (I am) and forget to put water on little dudes (I might [would])? I don’t know if I could live with myself if they couldn’t live with me. I’m very suggestible that way.

After a lot of deliberation, I decided to go with a plant that I couldn’t possibly kill. The type of plant I couldn’t possibly kill? One that was never alive.

My roommates and I bought a fake tree when we first moved into our current place to spice up the downstairs a little bit (wink wink). But when first downstairs roommate moved out and second downstairs roommate moved in, some of the spiciness left, and we also did some rearranging and there was no room for spicy fake tree (unwink). Spicy tree then needed a new home. And this fit my situation like sweet, sweet leather pants.

Now that I had something to plant, I needed something to plant it in. The fake tree came in a basket and fake soil, and I guess was kind of planted already in that sense. But to simplify things, I figured I should remove it. Turns out I couldn’t find a way to get it out of the basket simply, so of course I gave up and it was just going to stay there. I would just have to plant it in something bigger. Luckily, out front, we have something called the ground—right outside of our door, in fact. Hey and it's big. There's a little garden area that appeared to be in need of some spicing up and I had just the thing (winkles).

After clearing the spot, I borrowed a shovel from a homie and dug a holie big enough for a basket with a fake tree stuck forever inside of it. 

I then inserted the basket into the hole that had been prepared therefore. 

Once in to the right depth, I filled in the hole with ground powder, trying to cover most of the basket so as to look less like a ninny. I don't know. I'm sure the fake roots appreciate the privacy. 

Hey now, look here—

here we have ourselves a lovely ‘tree’ that’s going to look good 'n' dapper year round. Whilst everyone else’s gardens are dying painful deaths in the cold unyielding grasp of winter, this one will still be alive and vibrant–figuratively speaking. Check it out.

Envy of the neighbros, to be sure. A gleaming beacon of hope, shining bright in the bleakest of night. And one of the best things is that I very probably can't kill it, even with my fiercest, most concentrated negligence. And even as the neighbors’ real plants start to come back, they still have to live in constant fear of being responsible for the death of another living thing. They’ll spend countless hours outside caring for their plants while I’m sitting inside laughing at animal mashups, without a care in the world except what time I actually have to put pants on. Awesome. Man, gardening is great.

Ra Ra Fish-Boom-Bah

I recently had a friend go out of town for the week. Said friend had some weird fishes that she needed taken care of whilst away. Said said friend asked me to take care of said fishes whilst she was away. Why? Because. I’m obviously super nurturing and maybe the fish requested me personally. Maybe we have a lot in common besides coloring and short term memory loss and gaping, vacant expressions and scaly complexions and she figured we’d get along. Either way, they’re here and we’re getting along just swimmingly.

The other morning, I arose early as is required of me for work. Because of that blessed, blessed recent event of Daylight Saving, it is still dark when I arise. Generally, I like to go as long as possible without turning on the light because I like my eyes. As I stumbled around that morning, I noticed that the fish were already up as well, floating around casually inside their bowl. Early risers. Go figure, I chuckled to myself. After I did what I could in the dark, I finally reached over and flipped on the light. It burst forth into the room and I shielded my eyes. They slowly adjusted, and I groggily looked around the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of small orange-ish shapes darting around in a frenzy. I glanced over, and, to my surprise, my fishy friends were thrashing about like madmen. Madmen.

What the? I took a moment to try and figure out what it was that had startled them so. I suppose it could have been that they were chilling hard in their fishy bowl in the cool of night and all of a sudden it was bright. Reasonable, I suppose. I'm not a big fan of that myself. But that's not a huge deal. Could something as whatevs as that have caused such utter madness? I say, nay. Something else must’ve been the culprit. Hmm. So you’re lying there in the dark of night, and then all of a sudden the blinding light of day appears and there’s a man standing there… Maybe it was me? A frazzled man appears. That presumably controlled the light… Or caused it to appear… ? A man that controls the cycles of the light...

No. Could it be? Do the fishes think I'm...

god of the sun?

It does make sense. There is no light, and then there is, and there's a man that controls it—a bearded man with the features of an Olympian. Also, when I had finished my morning necessities, I left the room and vanquished the light, thereby demonstrating my power once more. I made the light appear, and then made it go back to night with the literal flick of a finger. Furthermore, I recently bought a light bulb that is supposed to simulate sunlight, making the light that I brought forth indistinguishable from the light of the sun itself. Therefore, to fishies, I caused the sun to rise and set and rise and set again, all within the course of a few minutes. And! In the evening when it’s dark again, I flick on the light. Instant sun. Whenever it is dark, I come in and cause the light to shine at a moment’s notice, and then extinguish it just the same. The sun is at my beck and call.

This realization has been a bit jarring. Imagine… me... A god! At first it was invigorating. I tried to get the fish to bow once, but fish don’t really bend that way. More recently, however, I’ve started to look at it objectively. It has caused me to re-examine a few things: First, I’m trying to keep my room a bit tidier. Imagine: someone who can control the sun but can’t keep his clothes off the floor. Embarrassing, right? I’ve also been trying to drop a few pounds. If at any point the fish decide to erect a statue or likeness of me, I’d like for it to be all svelte and majestic, like all of those Greek statues. I’d rather not my eternal legacy include prolific (nor monolithic) love handles.

I don’t know. It's very flattering and all, but, when it comes down to it, being a god is kind of exhausting; there are lots of expectations. The other day I tried to come clean to the fishes, but they just sat there with their mouths agape in what I could only interpret as awe and disbelief. After fumbling with my words for a bit, I realized I didn’t have the heart to break theirs and went on providing them with life and support. Criticize me if you will, but it’s only for a few more days. Plus it’ll be something fun for them to look back on for the remainder of their lives: “Hey remember that time we were transported to the presence of the sun god?”   “Uuuuh what?”   “...wh… hmm. Is this water?”  Who am I to take that away from them?

Sock it to Me

Puppets have a history of being creepy. I don’t know what it was they did to deserve that. Maybe it’s their knack for being creepy. I guess some puppets are fine, but they move all unnaturally so uncanny valley and there’s maybe a weird eccentric person behind ‘bringing them to life’ and they might smell or murder or something.

Whatever it is, puppets aren’t generally a highly sought after thing. Unless!

• you’re going for something creepy
• you’re kind of a creepy homie
• you’re celebrating something creepy

Turns out, recently, we celebrated a holiday that!

• celebrates creepy crap
• encourages creepy peep(ie)s
• makes people… go for? creepy things!

It’s called the ‘Ween. Maybe you’ve heard of it. You may have even Hallowed it. I know I did. And how did I? By becoming a puppet, of course.

Cue more Arts & Crafts!

Perhaps you know a thing or two, and either that thing or one of those things is about my blog or personal history. If this is the case, please learn more things or use your allotted things on more important things to know! In the past, I have made Halloween costumes. In the same past, I have written about them on this blog. In the present, I am doing the same. In the near near (SO NEAR) future, you will read about it, unless you decide to go somewhere else on the internet, or in real life, and don’t take this blog with you. Otherwise, come on a journey with me.

Ideum

The first step in all of this was to come up with an idea worth sharing--you know, something Upworthy could get behind. To do this, I thought and eventually had things enter my brain. One of the things to enter my brain was this:

Another thing was this:

Odd. Amusing. Relatively simple. Let's give it a whirl.

Plans or something

The next step was coming up with a plan for making it. I listed the materials that I would need, and then obtained said materials. What I ended up needing:

• sock-looking fabric
• really big buttons
• something hairy
• I think that's it

Not a lot of things! I went to Hobby Lobby (which isn’t even just a lobby lol) and looked at a million things. Then I bought like 4 of them.

Creationism

Now that I had all of the things for making, it was time to make. First I took the fabric, folded it in half, and sewed 3 of the sides to make a giant pocket. I trimmed the corners to get rid of excess fabric and flipped it inside-out. And thus the fabric became like a giant sock.

Attachments

Now to attach things to it. I took some of the stringy goodness I got at HL and basically just used it like giant string. I sewed on the buttons (that I had previously painted) without the benefit a giant needle, which makes sewing much more difficult. Once the buttons were on, it was time to coif. I sewed a string down the middle of the puppet’s head and then tied one side of a bunch more strings around that string. I dangled the untied sides in every conceivable direction. Just like I do with my own hair. I applied the finishing touch by painting a couple of lines on the bottom to complete the illusion of tube sock.

Curvaceous

Once I had crafted everything, I tried it on. Turns out human bodies are not really shaped like human hands. When putting on the sock, it draped over my body in such a way that… it didn’t resemble a sock puppet. It was more like a cactus with no arms, or a delicious creamsicle, or cauliflower.

To replicate the flat top of a sock puppet, I stuffed a pillow inside the sock and balanced it on my head. That gave the sock the necessary shape to create the illusion of puppetry. Then I punched a hole in the mouth area for seeing, and I was set.

And voila!

A giant

creepy

socky

puppet.

This ended up being a very uncomplicated costume, except for the getting everything situated. The inexactness of the pillow placement and having to balance it made it kind of an endeavor to get everything in its right place. But once it was all aligned, it looked as good as I had hoped. One downside to the costume was HEAT. The material I ended up getting for the sock was fleece. I wore a pillow on my head. I give off HEAT. All that heat just stayed inside the sock with me. Stewing in my own funk. Mercy me it got so hot.

On the contrary, a cool thing about the costume was: anonymity! I went to a friend’s Halloween gathering. At said gathering, I maybe knew 3 or 4 people. Everyone else met me as a giant sock puppet. I got to have conversations with several people that had no idea what I looked like. There was something fun and liberating about that. Be anonymous. It’s good for your self esteem.

Turn Down For This

I’m always up-to-date on pop culture trends. Always. Recently, a song that has made some waves/hit some waves has been the smash hit of Lil John, “Turn Down for What?”

The song is a crazy rappy beaty mix song with effects and lyrics. The chorus of the song features Lil John in his signature gravel throat glarbling, shouting angrily at everyone a question for the ages, “Turn Down for What?”

You know what, that’s not fair. I say shouting angrily, but I don’t necessarily know that. As a man who has been misunderstood for decades, of a race that has been misunderstood for millennia, I can’t stand by and misrepresent. Lil John is probably a really decent guy. A quick internet scour teaches us that his name is actually Jonathan Smith! That’s the name of a hard-working American man! He was born in January! Lots of people are! He went to Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, which is famous for…! ...something, probably! The man has at least a partial college education and is therefore intelligent and respectful and courteous. Clearly he is a normal guy.

After having learned so much about the man behind the glarbles, I’ve come to suspect that Lil Jon’s seemingly crunk and abrasive “Turn Down for What?” is a genuine inquiry—a social commentary of crunk proportions. So I’ve created a list of things that a normal guy like Lil Jon and his friends could/should/would obviously turn down for, presented the necessity or opportunity.

Things that Lil Jon would probably turn down for:

his neighbors maybe trying to fall asleep

AIDS

kony 2012

little kids who made a lemonade stand

an old lady crossing the street

baby birds chirping in a nearby tree

the sound of children’s laughter

encouraging words from a loved one

reruns of Gilmore Girls

a proposition for means by which to rid ourselves of social injustice

peaceful sit-ins

the new Daughtry album

Lectures on speculative capital

ways to end impoverishment in inner cities

Youth hospitals

Tea time

Fundraisers

Patriotism

Mutual respect and understanding

Hugs not drugs

A game of Yahtzee

the Industrial revolution

Maritime poetry

Love at first sight

PSAs

the silence of the xi

Girl Scout Cookies

hopefully a funeral

A twilight promenade

Sea slugs

Philosophical quandaries
Mr. Holland's Opus

diplomatic discourse

public transportation

a Shake Weight

The secret menu at Jamba Juice

smart financial planning

childhood dreams

a round of Bop-It

The Fault in our Stars

His mother

And this is just to name a few. Lil Jon’s a reasonable guy, albeit a bit crunk. But crunkness doth not beget bunkness. So let’s not jump to conclusions when presented things in even the crunkliest of packages. Lil Jon realizes exactly what’s most important in life because he’s not afraid to ask the hard-hitting questions.

We know what we would turn down for. Do you?