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	<title>clusterlizard &#187; White Dwarf</title>
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	<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net</link>
	<description>I love how you go right to the very edge... and then just jump right over it</description>
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			<item>
		<title>1. Career Goals</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/i-career-goals</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/i-career-goals#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Aug 2006 01:37:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/i-career-goals</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I looked into the mirror and sighed at what stared back. I was 120 pounds at six feet tall. My thick dark hair was wild and bushy—I had decided to let it grow out and it responded by becoming sentient. I was pale and my almost-black eyes were sunken and bloodshot. A steady diet of Coca-Cola, cigarettes, pot and insomnia had taken its toll.

It was a common sight. At the age of sixteen, I had grown bored of tormenting my teachers in high school, I decided to do them a favor and obtain a GED. Not everyone was as happy about my decision as, say, Ms. Gillis or Mr. Perich. My father, for all intents and purposes, disowned me. Aunts and Uncles were less drastic but still made their disappointment clear. How could this kid, who was reading at a 6th grade level in kindergarten, have decayed into such a monstrous failure? My grandfather, a retired army captain, suggested I join the service. My stepfather, on the other hand, was elated. Finally, he had incontrovertible proof that I was the most horrific thing to taint the planet since Adolf Hitler—a fact he took immense pleasure in reminding me of at every possible opportunity.

Without job or car, my only recourse was to lock myself in my room and study the fine art of computer programming. I would stay up three days at a time with nothing but a case of Coke, a carton of Marlboro Lights and a bag of potent skunk weed, writing computer software until finally passing out on the cold, hardwood floor, usually covered with Atari memory maps and programming language references. I kept the Coke outside the window so it would stay cold—that way I wouldn’t have to leave my room and possibly face Shafto, as I affectionately called my stepfather. Using fancy words like "programming" didn't change the fact that all I was doing was “playing with that damned computer” and until I got a job, I wasn't a “Man.” Eventually, I managed to secure a car—it had been my late great-grandfather’s—and had a couple of jobs, neither of which lasted more than a few months before I was fired or decided to not bother showing up. The harassment at home would resume as soon as Shafto figured out I was no longer working. It had been almost a year since my last job—I was eighteen now, and the torment was endless.

]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/i-career-goals/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>24</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>2. The Aquarium</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/ii-the-aquarium</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/ii-the-aquarium#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Aug 2006 05:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/ii-the-aquarium</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Josh had grown tired of being exiled to Siberia. It wasn't like he really needed the extra money or anything; he was selling over a hundred-lot of acid a night at the station. This situation was advantageous to me, however, since I wanted to be out of the house as much as possible and so, I took over for Josh filling in on Sundays at our sister station. I thought it would be a breeze working there, as it wasn't a full service station like ours; all I had to do was sit in a locked cage all day watching television, getting high and collecting money.

The north station was run by Ted's wife, Jenny. She was almost a clone of Roseanne Barr but uglier. She had a single employee, Toad, who worked the night shifts. I had known Toad for a few years before being hired by Ted. He used to buy my cousin and me alcohol after he got off work. Toad had been a history teacher at the local high school but was fired when he was caught buying marijuana from a student.

]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/ii-the-aquarium/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>3. The Day Off</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/iii-the-day-off</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/iii-the-day-off#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Aug 2006 06:00:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/iii-the-day-off</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When I was 14, my dad gave me his Atari 400 as a Christmas gift. In those days, he would come to pick me up every other week to stay the weekend. Usually, we’d go see a movie—sometimes two—and eat pizza and watch old science fiction shows on the television. During the summers, I might even stay there until Tuesday or Wednesday. That was always fun, because I could look at his Playboys while he was at work, always being extremely careful to put them back in the exact location and orientation in which I found them. I was shocked when, one day, he came home and showed me an article in the newest Playboy about Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari. I remembered my face turning warm, as though I had just shot a hundred milligrams of morphine directly into my jugular.

“B-b-but that’s a Playboy,” I stammered.

“I don’t think it’s anything you haven’t seen before,” he grinned slyly. “Didn’t your mom tell you what you did when you were three?”

I just stared at him blankly. I was terrified of my dad. He and my mother were teenagers when I surprised the entire family by making a guest appearance. My grandparents convinced them they should do the right thing and marry. My mother was elated at the prospect of having a baby and even a family with my father. His reaction wasn’t quite as warm: “I don’t want this damn kid!, or you!” He spent the next five years reminding both us of that fact. I couldn’t imagine what I had done when I was three, but I was sure I paid dearly for it.

“When you were three years old, you took one of my Playboys out from under the sink in the bathroom, tore out the centerfold and took it to bed with you. You always have had a thing for blondes.” He laughed at the memory with a detectable note of pride. He had changed significantly since the divorce. For a couple of years after my parents split, I would refuse to see my dad, as terrified as I was of him. Since then, he did everything he could to make up for his past mistreatments—including giving me the Atari 400 computer he had bought for himself.

]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/iii-the-day-off/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>4. The Night the Retards Came</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/iv-the-night-the-retards-came</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/iv-the-night-the-retards-came#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Aug 2006 02:25:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/iv-the-night-the-retards-came</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There’s a reason it’s called a “trip.” Take a hit of acid and twelve hours later you slowly realize you didn’t “get stuck that way” and regain your sense of composure. You feel like you’ve been around the world in those twelve hours, each of which seems like a month. It ages you—not so much physically, but spiritually. You experience the universe in ways God never intended. One trip is one jog around the planet and twelve hours are one year. By that calculation, Josh was a thousand years old and had traveled across the galaxy—he’d seen it all. I guess that’s why I couldn’t understand his reaction. He stood there, his eyes white and unblinking, his mouth hanging open like his jaw was broken. I believe he was even shaking.
“Uhhh, Josh, this is my friend, Travis…”

Travis twitched and smiled dorkily, “Hey man!”

“Dude…”

I looked at Josh, wondering if he would ever finish his sentence.

“Do you play football?”

Travis laughed. He hated sports. “No.”

He reached out his hand, which I knew from experience was cold and clammy, and shook Josh’s hand. That seemed to put Josh at ease.

That was one of the things I always enjoyed about having Travis around—NOBODY would dare fuck with you. What Nature had taken from Travis in brains and a steady nervous system, she had replaced tenfold with pure brute strength. If some macho guy was stupid enough to try to prove himself to Travis, he would easily end up with his ego crumbling on the pavement along with a couple of his teeth. It hardly ever got to that point though. Having Travis around was like carrying a loaded pistol.


]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/iv-the-night-the-retards-came/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>5. Seniority</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/v-seniority</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/v-seniority#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Aug 2006 01:09:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/v-seniority</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I watched with bemusement as Josh customized "Ted's Aluminum Can Box." We had been instructed to deposit our empty soda cans there so Ted could take them to the recycling plant and wring whatever meager change he could from them. It occurred to me that if anyone had any reason to be stealing money from the station, it must be Ted himself—evidently, the man was destitute.

He had two daughters, the eldest of whom was betrothed to Daryl and Daryl. She also had the horrific misfortune of resembling her father to a repulsive degree. His younger daughter was treated equally unkindly by genetics, looking like her mother must have decades ago. She reminded me of Charles Laughton made up in the 1930's "Hunchback of Notre Dame," except her left eye didn't droop.

In addition to his two overweight daughters, his overweight wife and his overweight self, Ted had to feed Jenny's nephew as well, since her brother was in prison. It appeared Devin was getting the short end of the stick at the family table—he was scrawny, sallow, had dark circles under his eyes and he never smiled. I always imagined dinner at Ted's house resembling a typical episode of "Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom." Survival at that dinner table would be brutal and Devin was obviously not the fittest.

Keeping all those mouths—not to mention asses—fed would put a strain on any budget, I suspected. In addition to his prestigious management position at the station, Ted belonged to the Air National Guard. He also demanded that Tom and Lee pay him under the table so that he could collect unemployment.
]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/v-seniority/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>6. Access Denied</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/vi-access-denied</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/vi-access-denied#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Aug 2006 20:23:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/vi-access-denied</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shafto loved my younger cousin. She would be there any time we’d go over to her parents’ for a holiday meal and his eyes would light up the moment he saw her. Thanksgiving dinner had come and gone, and I found a picture Shafto had taken of my cousin’s butt while she was lying on the floor watching television. The sick fuck didn’t treat anyone with any dignity—not even people with whom he was infatuated. It was her dad, not Shafto, who I called when my car slid in the snow and hit the stone-covered exterior of the gas station one night. He drove all the way down to the city to pick me up, took me all the way out to my home in the country and then drove all the way back to his home on the icy roads. Not once did he complain about it.

Shafto, of course, tried to make up for that oversight on my Uncle’s part, “whut the hell happened?”

That was my pleasant greeting as I entered the back of the house, through the laundry room which doubled as Shafto’s “office.” He had an old yellow desk setup in the corner with an adding machine sitting on it. He used it to calculate the weekly cost of keeping me alive—he even included his estimate of the kilowatt hours of energy needed to sustain my computer habit. He saved the paper printouts of the meaningless numbers and would use that as evidence of my worthlessness.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/vi-access-denied/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>7. The Dog Lady</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/vii-the-dog-lady</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/vii-the-dog-lady#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:17:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/vii-the-dog-lady</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I sat on the safe soaking up the warm air blasting out of the vent above me. Daryl and Daryl violently shoved open the front door on his way out to tend to some maggots.


Ted watched him nostalgically, “He’s gonna make a great son-in-law. Damn good kid there.”

 

I nodded silently, realizing the responses erupting in my mind would be far too much for the sarcasm translator. I only hoped the long-term exposure to gasoline would sterilize Daryl and Daryl.

 

“So, anyhow, I gotta go for trainin’ all next week at the National Guard…”

 

I turned my attention to the mole, half-wondering if Ted had ever tried to communicate with it, “Oh yeah? What kind of training?”

 

“Special combat trainin’. They put us in an air-tight room and flood it with gas while we wear our gas masks so we know how to do that stuff. That kinda thing.”

 

I glanced down at Ted’s Aluminum Can Jew Box and chuckled. I wondered how well he got along with the people running this gas chamber.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/vii-the-dog-lady/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>8. Resolution</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/viii-resolution</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/viii-resolution#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Aug 2006 06:02:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/viii-resolution</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There was something unsettling about the evening. I stood nervously outside the old house with Bunt and Dee, blinded by the floodlights that had kicked on in response to our arrival. Never a big fan of drugs or booze, Travis stayed home to work on a model spaceship. Pitt Bulls, trained for fighting matches, barked viciously from a pen off in the distance. The house itself looked like it should have been condemned. The roof of the front porch was caving in and white paint peeled from all around the house. The precarious steps leading up to the porch were detached from the building and cobbled together with untreated wood. They looked as though they had been put there recently. Leafless, snow-covered trees surrounding the house were eerily silhouetted by the faint blue glow of night. Like skeletons, I thought and began to shake as the freezing winter air bit through my scrawny body.

Eventually, the front door creaked open to reveal a warm orange glow inside. A giant stood in the doorway–he was even bigger than Travis–grinning down at us with his round glasses and long black hair. Even with the goofy grin and glasses evoking fond images of John Lennon, Willie was intimidating.

]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/viii-resolution/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>25</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>9. Termination</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/ix-termination</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/ix-termination#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Aug 2006 06:38:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/ix-termination</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kansas City International Airport was a major employer in the Kansas City area. Not only was there a TWA headquarters here, but also the overhaul base. The airport itself needed employees for its various restaurants and gift shops, not to mention bus drivers, luggage handlers and security guards. There were also jobs at the several hotels that profited from their proximity to the airport.

I was a favorite among the airport employees during my brief stint at the gift shop. Anyone I recognized was free to come in and take whatever knick-knacks they wanted. The gift shop was also kind enough to supply me with complimentary cigarettes, candy and magazines. Sometimes, I made extra money by selling the outrageously overpriced gift shirts without ringing them up and then pocketing the money. My friends benefited from the gift shop’s generosity, as the extra cash paid for an endless flow of drugs, electronics and food.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>15</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>10. The Rabbit Hole</title>
		<link>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/x-the-rabbit-hole</link>
		<comments>http://www.clusterlizard.net/white-dwarf/x-the-rabbit-hole#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Aug 2006 03:35:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>clusterlizard</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[White Dwarf]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.clusterlizard.net/curiosities/x-the-rabbit-hole</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I sat in the dim living room, lit only by the glow of 2001: A Space Odyssey playing on the VCR. I had taken so much LSD in the past months that it now only had the barest of effects on me. I watched the red glowing eye of the sentient computer HAL-9000. It hypnotized me. I could see consciousness in that eye—consciousness without conscience—like Ted, like my first stepfather, like Shafto. I caressed Sung, who was lying on the couch next to me, then looked deep into her pure blue eyes, which were slightly crossed in typical Siamese fashion.

“What’s in there? What makes her alive? A random collection of synaptic connections? Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? Or is there really such a thing as a soul?”

My mother watched me, listening, no doubt wondering if I had slipped into madness. She knew I was on LSD, but she didn’t have any more of a clue what that meant than I knew what it was like to give birth. The expression on her face was one of confusion mixed with concern.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>21</slash:comments>
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