wherein i write a poem for someone

so, as some of you may or may not know i practice a martial art called arnis.  i've been involved with it since i started college way back in 2006.  now, i have learned a lot of things; how to hit dudes with sticks, how to not get hit by sticks, things like that.  i've been able to help teach the class, been able to pass along some of my own knowledge.  it's been an absolutely wonderful experience that i would highly recommend to anyone who has even the slightest interest.  it helped me a lot with self-confidence among other things.  all in all, it was an excellent decision.

and as a kind of 'thank you' to our instructor for teaching us and passing along all kinds of knowledge, every year our club gets him a christmas present.  one year we got him some nice tea, along with a nice tea set.  another year we got him some nice training weapons.  this year we gave him a nice set of kendo armor and some associated gear.  but this year i wanted to do something else, something a little more personal.  now granted, i'm not skilled at making things, and i don't have a lot of money to spend on lavish gifts, so i wrote him a poem.  it's about things i've learned through the years, not techniques or drills, but more philosophical things i guess, more along the lines of life lessons.

lesson plan

face your life head on, straight
backed, controlled, and proud.
only raise fist in defense,
never hate nor rage.

remember that fear does not mean weak,
running in the face of it does.
courage and bravery are both decisions
and it's up to you to choose.

step not from your holy ground
let no foe profane
and when you finally leave this world,
leave behind good name.

wherein caolan and the author imagineer a burger

alright fans here we go.

my roommate caolan and i have imagineered another amazing burger.  let me break this down for you

one half-pound patty
half pound of bacon
table spoon of butter (not just any butter mind you, but a highly specialized butter made by caolan and i.  it was butter mixed with pure bacon grease.  and garlic salt because we're out of regular salt)
bun made out of four regular buns.

i have dubbed it the Triple B, which might be the only thing i have ever capitalized on this blog.  the Triple B of course stands for (bacon)buttery bacon burger.  caolan further specialized his by creating a bacon frisco sauce. how he did this i will never know, his sorcerer ways are too far beyond my mortal understanding.

the patties themselves were cooked in the oven at 350 degrees for somewhere around 15 minutes i think.  i lost track of the time because i was busy looking up bacon grease butter recipes, of which i found exactly zero.  i have created bacon grease butter, this is my legacy.  this is what i will be known for in history.

the main concern i had for this creation was whether or not the buns would hold up.  after all we basically took a four bun thing and cut it in half to create the bun for the Triple B.  it held up reasonably well, until i started dipping the Triple B into ketchup.  i think the stress caused by picking it up and turning it over and doing the tango with it and all sorts of other dance moves/sports plays.  it was then that the move called the Triple B division was created.  the Triple B division is done by flipping the burger in half, and then in half again, creating a monstrosity known as the Triple B tower.  caolan, using the unholy power that flows through his veins, was the first to master this technique.  my attempt only brought shame to my family.  i fully expect to be disowned for my transgressions.

pictures of the Triple B summoning process will be up tomorrow probably, i promise.

also also

TREY FACT OF THE DAY: whenever i talk to my grandmom or granddad my southern accent comes out like a guy on broadway (did you get the joke)

that wasn't the main point of making this blog post believe it or not. a little while ago i gave a friend some ideas for his comic and he decided to use one sort of! hurray for me! here's a link:

http://www.asandiford.com/2011/09/a-tragic-end-not-easily-avoided/

now granted i know you are all going to check that out to support me in my endeavors, because that's what a cavalcade of crazed fans is for. HOWEVER it would be awesome if you checked out the rest of his comics too, which are pretty neat even though his canadian i think

wherein i reveal a secret of my writing process

TREY FACT OF THE DAY(read: POST [read: MONTH OR SO]) i have been drinking hot chocolate like it was going out of style (if it goes out of style i will simply cease to exist).

okay so i guess something worth mentioning is i have a specific process for revising poetries. i do it as i go along, so really by the time i've finished writing a poem it's already been revised a bunch. granted it's mostly things like word choice and line breaks that get revised but i mean, that counts right? i do occasionally go back and add more to certain poetries, but for the most part nah. does that make me a bad writer? yeah probably. do i care? yeah a little. so i guess what you can take from this is that any poetries that show up on here are still definitely works in progress and i totally reserve the right to say they suck and take them down if they suck so bad i have to take them down.

that being said here is a poetries! it's about a sandwich i made one time

(untitled for now)

a loss of sight and sound means i have an excuse

to ignore the clicking clacking vorpal fangs that are said to lurk

always three feet nearby. Or an excuse to ignore

the high pitched whining nagging banshee scream that i get

from my smoke alarm when I go Dr. Frankenstein with the eggs

and the bacon that I exhume from the fridge. I call my frying pan Igor.

I slice and dice and splice together an abomination and grin wildly

when the grease pops bomb my bare flesh, melting the skin ever so slightly.

The Bacon Tomb is what this monster will be called when it terrorizes the villages

of my arteries. Six strips,

two eggs fried in bacon-born grease,

and untold amounts of peanut butter dripping through the cracks

and holes of buttered bread. The satisfying crunch echoes

in my mouth's cavern while the grease rises in revolt

and the bacon takes to arms

and the eggs boil tar and strip feathers

But I am too in love with my creature to notice my tower burning down.

dudes take some time out of your "busy" schedules

and look at this

http://maquettemouse.tumblr.com/

it has cool things on it

also it has boobs sometimes so maybe not the safest site to browse at work or in a church where god can see you always

So I haven't made a post since like last week or whenever, but that's not my problem. However here I am with a new post that will surely blow your minds! That's right, it's a couple of pictures of what my immediate surroundings look like when I sit down to write something. I figured you are just dying to see this, so here's what's up!

As you can see here, I am hard at work at a draft of a new thing. You can tell I am hard at work because there is a large beer within reach.

In this second picture we can tell I've made a good amount of progress from the first

picture. I not only opened the large bottle of beer, I also poured it into a glass. Also at some point I managed to capture a few wild hamburgers in the wild, one was eaten before I took this picture.

Yes, they were all very delicious.

Here, I have almost reached the end of my writing for today. I know this, because the beer is almost gone. There's a direct correlation there possibly. Also, note how the pen has not changed position. That's because I am so good at writing that I never need to actually write. It's true

Okay so there I was, needing to work on homework but of course that's just no fun, so I sat at my table flipping through twitter. I have a twitter, in case you didn't know. Anyway, I was flipping through twitter, when I noticed a trend. Not a trending topic, I never pay attention to those.

The trend is that my arty farty friends like to live stream things. And for those of you who are too cool for internet stuff, live streaming is where you stream a video of you doing a thing, live. Clever how they got that name right? Right. So I got to thinking, I've never watched one of these live streams. That thought of course led to another thought, a genius thought, a million dollar thought.

What if I live streamed me writing a poem?!

I know right? Genius idea, like I said. Then I took a look at myself and what I was doing and thought about how that would look to someone watching online. For the record, the picture was this: notebook open, one line jotted down, whiskey and coke next to the computer, poet leaning back flipping through twitter on his phone when the kitchen timer goes off, letting him know his Kroger brand macaroni and cheese is done. He then gets super excited and squeals like a teenage girl at a Backstreet Boys concert (don't tell me this reference is old I don't need to feel old). So I was thinking about this image, picturing myself eating Kroger mac and cheese right out of the pot with a bottle of cheap coke and cheaper whiskey next to me I realized my mistake. This wasn't a million dollar idea, it was a billion dollar idea. It could possibly change everything about literature, screw the trochee's heave or whatever, this is it. This, right here and right now. Finally the world could see how literature and poetry is written.

But then I thought about it again and realized how boring and depressing it would be. For both the writer and the person watching. Really, who would want to see that?

(my twitter is @troubadourtofu if you want to know. it might be offensive sometimes so uh)