Author: Miles Rausch

Many people, like employers, nag about how when you go to college you need a major to get a “job” or to earn “respect.” I am what the person on the street, who knows what decisive means, calls indecisive. When I go to rent a movie, it takes at least an hour and when nature calls I can’t decide which bathroom to use. Decisions are not my thing.

I know everyone (including my parents) is saying: how do you live? How can you even eat a bowl of cereal happily without a major? My parents’ rule is you can only eat a bowl of cereal if you are happy, hence the question. Well, I eat my Fruit Loops humming a happy song and skip down the hallway quite merrily, thank you. (By the way, I do not suggest humming while eating anything. Two words: President Bush.)

So what are the benefits to not having a major? Well, random student, there are a plethora of benefits. There’s no pressure for grades. Though I have no direction in life, it doesn’t matter because I can sleep, write a new hit song called “Alone in my Principles” or pay attention and take advantage of the knowledge I am acquiring which may and/or will never come in handy, depending on what I choose for a career. I doubt while bagging groceries at some corporate Hy-Vee chain store a customer will scratch his head and ask, “Hey bagger, two questions, what’s the date and how the heck do you cite a magazine source in a Works Cited page?”

Other benefits include, but are not limited to the following: not being restricted to certain classes because you have no goal to reach, being able to go to both Chemistry and Accounting Club meetings without a shred of guilt and applying for jobs and being able to say you are “considering” whatever major they request. And, best of all, you can make plans to be in college for five years rather than it being a surprise when you fail calculus for the second time.

South Dakota is a curse. To bring up a young child in this state, with no means of self-entertainment, is to sentence them to substance abuse. What is the number one reason kids drink in the lower Dakota? There is nothing else to do. What is the solution to this problem?

Movies. That’s right; movies rock! There are few ways for a deliciously sober couple to pass the time together. Sure, there’s public nudity, vandalism, using grade-school kids and puppies for target practice, teaching old ladies to drive incorrectly, and (the worst) loitering, but these don’t do it for us anymore.

To keep us out of jail, we watch movies. That’s what we did this weekend. After a rousing and interesting time spent in Sioux Falls (sarcasm – don’t ask), we attended “Our Lady of Guadalupe” parish for Mass. This was interesting since the mass was Bilingual. That means, Tony, that it was in two different languages. In this case, it was Spanish and English. After the mass, the priest and deacon stood at the back, greeting us, calling us gringos, and pushing us out the front door. What a refreshing mass.

Then we made for the movie. The theatre of choice in Sioux Falls is the Century. There are other theatres in the area. There are almost other theatres on that street (for gosh’s sake). You are guaranteed quite the selection of movie goings if you love pop-driven, crap-filled, suck-flicks. I am more of a discerning movie goer, hence my choice.

Once inside, I stroll with confidence up to the teller. The prepubescent crowds part as I make my way forward. I walk up to a slightly large, slightly sweaty, squeaky-voiced man named “Justin.”

“Two for ‘The Butterfly Effect‘, please.”

“Alright, cash only and I’ll need to see some i.d.”

Do I look 17 or something? I know the movie is ‘R’ rated, but I have three days of stubble on my face and a bottle of gin in my hand and this guys says, “i.d., please.” Well, ok. I can do that, I guess. I’ve never had to deal with i.d. before at the movies, but I can do this. I pull out my wallet.

“Is credit card okay?”

“Cash only, sir.”

It takes a minute for it to click. I stop short of asking if he takes check book. Oh. He doesn’t take anything but cash. I have no cash on me. He needs cash, and I don’t have it. If only there was some sort of machine that would just give me money, maybe from my account, and put it into my hand. If only someone would give me the name of such a machine, and its location within the movie theatre, then I would be able to buy my ticket. If only someone with a squeaky voice would tell me over and over where to find my answer.

“ATM is across the room, sir.”

After a lot of swearing and knocking over some preteen boys who were trying to find “sk8r” in the dictionary, I got my money and, making sure to use a different teller, bought the two tickets. The total was $14.30. That is not TOO bad, but lord knows I’m cheap enough to complain all the way to the candy counter.

Since neither Megan nor I had eaten, we thought it was a good idea to get some food. Bad idea. They charge for looking at the candy. Then they charge you for how long it takes to fill your bag up. Then they charge you by how much you got. The charge is per atom. After getting a large soda and some candy, the total for the food was $14.30. My jaw dropped. I could not believe it. The candy was just as expensive as the movie. Either that, or all the registers are broken and all they do is output “$14.30”. I hope, for their sake, that that is not true.

Movies today are not like movies of yesterday. I mean, sure, a lot of things are similar. It still takes a small city of greedy, art-school dropouts to produce a fine motion picture. One thing that is different is the pYou used to go to a movie and enjoy one or two movie trailors. Now you can enjoy a movie’s worth of movie trailors. It’s like going to be entertained for 2 1/2 hours and getting entertained for 5 instead.

Trailors themselves are different. They all follow the same formula. There must be a repository (not suppository) somewhere that has a folder for each genre/sub-genre: the horror / based-on-a-true-story / period movie, the cop-being-chased-by-a-mysterious-killer / whodunit / supernatural movie, the time-travel / science-gone-wrong / super-killing-virus / monster movie, etc. Each folder has a sheet of paper with cut-and-paste dialogue, ideas for shots to include, and the number of times that clich�d old formula has been used.

What I hate more than that is when a movie has a priview that features an actor or actress from that movie in it. We didn’t have that happen with Butterfly but we did in Return of the King. It really messes with your when you go to a movie, knowing that Aragorn will become the new king of Gondor, and then you see him with a southern accent in a movie called Hidalgo. What is Hidalgo? Some stupid flick about racing a horse across the desert. *yawn* Thank you for ruining my movie experience, Viggo.

Typically, after showing these two categories of trailors, they go on to service announcements. These are not the same as those service announcements they put on before the movie. No no no, these aren’t as interesting as “Please turn off your cellphone” or “Please chain dogs up outside of the theater”. These are tolerable service announcements. Usually they put something up on screen that looks like a PowerPoint slide with a cellphone clip art, or a doggy, and the text in big letters.

The trend for major movie producers is to put in “Don’t Pirate Movies” ads after all the cool, fun trailors. If you haven’t heard of this, then you are missing out.

They always start with a person. This person starts to wax intellectually about movies. Then that person tells you that they are involved in the movie business. The first one I saw featured a stunt man. The second one I saw featured a set painter. After this person tells you about the greatness of what they have to do, etc., they go to black. Upon the black background are written white letters that say, “Don’t Pirate Movies.”

This is the dumbest ad campaign ever. Do you think movie pirates give a damn about a stunt guy who thinks “pirating movies hurts” him? I’m not the only one to rant about this horrible, waste-of-eyesight movie pre-addendum.

If I could make one, I would be standing in front of a TV holding some choice (I’ve never used that adjective) DVDs in my hand. I would maybe be wearing a t-shirt that says Sith vs. Jedi or Hogwarts Quidditch. Then, my eyes welling up in tears, I would say:

I am Miles Rausch. I am a movie watcher. When a movie is really good, and all the stuff is happening on the screen, then I feel good. I like when there is action or drama or comedy or artististry or movism in a film. When a person pirates movies, they don’t hurt the producers. I think the producers don’t care, but you hurt me. I don’t like to get hurt.

Then I would let you watch The Butterfly Effect as I cry myself to black.

Did you ever notice how weird that word is? It’s so packed of odd, soft sounds. I think about this as I write my post. I like to start with titles. Well, actually, I start with an idea. Then I make a title. Then I actually write the post.

I really love those old cartoons where they had puns for titles. The jokes were all lame, the kind of pun that makes you groan, but I relish in that kind of rudimentary linguistic slapstick.

I, however, am not so good at puns for titles. I agonize for sometimes minutes over what to title my next work of genius. I languish in throws of literate torture. I lament the ease with which some people have come up with titles that were catchy. Even, on my own site, my cousin Brenna upstaged me in the pun department with her guest post, I Can Post for Miles. Not to say I haven’t tried my best:

• A Minor Problem
• Oh Deer
• My So-Called Wife
• Spictacular
• Pizza What ?

Today’s title is just as bad as any of these. I knew I was writing about thrift, but I don’t know anything that rhymes with “thrift”, so I decided to use the word “store” next to “thrift”. So, you are supposed to think “Thrift Store”. Ok, with that, I decided to rhyme “store” instead. An easy task? No.

I jogged my little browser legs on over to RhymeZone, hippest rhyme place on the internet. I put in “store” and patiently waited for the MC behind the site to figure out his list. I could just picture this little half-Chinese, half-black, sunglasses-wearing, hair-braided, techno-rap-hip-hop Coolio-Neo wannabe saying “store, sore, floor, more, roar…” In any case, they gave me this list.

There are 318 ways to rhyme “store” according to this site. There are only 42 ways to rhyme “thrift”. My choice was clear – take on “store.” The misleading thing about the number they give you is that most of the words are grayed. This means that they are archaic, obsolete, or last names. Like I’d want some random last name in my post title, hit song, or poem.

They arrange them in groups of syllables. The largest syllable word that they have listed is 8 syllables. I considered it. A large rhyme is a good score. It makes people respect you, in a way. I thought that “Thrift Reserve Officers Training Corps” was too long to be considered witty. Also, I don’t know what that is, so I ran the risk of being asked to explain my title, in which case I really would have to be witty.

“War” seemed to be a good rhyme, but with times as they are, it seemed iffy. There is so much war in the world right now, and using that word to make a light, airy post might not have the desired effect that I want. What if people think I’m making fun of war? Then I have the gun-wavers against me. What if people think that I’m making a statement about war? Then I have the pot-head hippies trying to hug me.

No pot-head hippy gets hugs from me.

No large syllable word, no war. I scrolled to the top of the list. There were too many choices. The title sets a tone for the piece. It also creates expectations of what I’m going to write about. If I were to use “Thrift Sore”, the reader would assume that I got my thrift groove on bit too much, and that they would expect hot hand-me-down on hand-me-down action. The same idea are brought to mind if I were to use “Thrift Whore”, but this term also conjures lucid images of late-night drug use, crazy schemes, and scoring less than well on school tests. For some, it also conjures up images that would get my site blocked at private schools.

I was planning on talking about my awesome finds at the St. Thomas church in Madison. In the basement of the church, they have a “Free to Take” thrift clothing section. I mean, come on. I know that girls love sales, but I love free.
They had quite the selection, actually. I almost felt guilty in taking so much relish in what I was taking in. I got a “look at me I’m a lawyer or banker” trench coat and a “look at me I’m actually colour blind” suit coat, much like the one I got at Savers to long ago (that I thought I wrote about but can’t find in my archives right now).

What words described this post? How can I set the tone of getting horrible crap for free at the church? There was so much that that one word had to say, and to have said to it. I needed the right diplomat de plume.

I was relentless. I searched and searched for the word, until it hit me.

The word?

No, a bird; it hit my windshield. And when that happened I got depressed.

Not you, Miles!

Yes, but as soon as I got depressed, I got undepressed. You know why?

Why?

Because I thought of a word for the post.

Was it “bore”? Was it “chore”? Was it “door” or “lore” or “pour”? Do I start it with a consonant, or with a ‘y’ like “yore”? I’ve explored the list for some I’ve missed but nothing was ignored. And it looks as though you, too, must know, it’s “gore” that I adore.

Remember the moon? That scary planet that’s both made of cheese and has a man’s face in it? Well, as I recall, some people are still shocked that we ever decided to send people there in the first place. They could’ve been eaten. But as long as we beat them Russians, who cares! Well, we’re all lucky to have President Bush in the white house; he’s bringing us back and oh so much more.

Here’s President Sparky’s plan: he wants to send people to the moon no later than 2020, and then once we research just how humans react to such strenuous space travel we’ll shoot people to Mars. Yes folks, we are going to send people to “The Red Planet.” Why would people willingly want to go there? Just the sound of it seems painful. Mars seems like the universe’s “Time-Out Chair.”

Among the plethora of reasons people should be saying, “Whoa, George, you’re having a whack attack,” a great one is that one of the purposes of putting humans on Mars is to check for life. This reeks of disaster; can we say “Alien”, “Independence Day”, “Alf” or “Alien: Part Gazillion?”

Aliens are vicious creatures that have no sense of right or wrong or the Geneva Convention. Why would we want to risk the lives of astronauts just to see if we can get a leash around them and bring them to Earth?

I realize many people believe this announcement by Bush to be an attempt to win a few more votes. It may convince a few voters that the president is interested with enhancing our nation’s knowledge of one of the greatest mysteries of all time. Others believe he is finishing his father’s space campaign that was halted once Congress found out how much it would cost. Either way, I think Bush could be spending the money on something a little more important then going to a planet named after a candy bar.

Apparently, Hepatitis B is bad. From what the CDC says about it, it “can cause lifelong infection, cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and death.”

Basically, it’s the viral equivalent of drinking way too much. This virus, coupled with drinking way too much, is why nurses around the country are urging college students to get vaccinated against this tiny, itsy-bitsy fiend. So, what exactly are the nurses of America doing to protect the collegiate fold they are sworn to protect?

Making comic books. Nothing speaks to knowledge-hungry college students like an over-dramatic, poorly drawn, comic book. I feel it is the obligation of Awayken.com to help the proliferation of this literature. That is what follows below.

Click the thumbnails to see the full version.

Cover:

Pages 1 & 2:

Pages 3 & 4:

Pages 5 & 6:

Frosted in golden
    auras and left,
        eternally to fade
        reluctant to go,
    in dying halos
ebb your trails.
Ta’en so slightly
    remaining so softly
        apparitions to praise,
        in such sweetness.
    Light in dark
suddenly wonderfully fails.

Download it at deviantART.

Two thousand and five years ago, a tiny little Jew-boy was born and changed everything. His name was Jesus. At first no one gave a damn, save three Eastern men (go figure), but time would tell. This little boy would shine.

Nowadays, we celebrate his birthday. There aren’t many people who are now passed on where we celebrate their birthday. Holidays like July 4th (birth of America), New Year’s Day (birth of a new year), and Valentine’s Day (birth of cheesy arrow-shooting angels and retarded candy-related puns). It just so happens that Jesus got so bloody popular, being the Son of God and all, that he made the list.

Unlike Thanksgiving, where you exchange over-cooked turkey chunks and needles with your burned-out uncle, Christmas is celebrated by exchanging presents. It’s common to give a present to anyone you “love” or people you want to have power over. If you just “love” someone, you get them a $4 calendar 18 days after Christmas under the guise that ‘it was in your room back in Madison the whole time.’ If you want power over someone, you buy them the sweetest, most expensive present you can imagine them wanting or using. To be most effective at this, it helps to stalk the person first to garner enough information about them to be good at this.

I’ve never been good at Christmas. I “love” more people than I want power over, so I usually get people crappy, after-thought gifts. This is not to say that my coloring book pictures were crappy after-thoughts. I love my grandma and Aunt Sue. It’s just that it seems that I’m cheap. This year, however, was a banner year for me and giving. As far as getting presents is concerned, this year was a drought.

Every year, after mass, we head over to my Grandma Rausch’s for a meal and present exchange. This year was no different. My Aunt Sue usually has a very carefully constructed and orchestrated series of riddles, puzzles, poetry, or games to taunt us, her nieces and nephews, before giving us our presents. This year was no different, except that Sue gave Dan and I (being the eldest) our presents first, with no pomp or circumstance. That was our reward for the game this year, Charades.

The rules were complicated, and no one really understood them. You had to first act out the person whose name you had drawn and then you had to act out the location of their present. Simple enough except when none of your cousins is really outrageous enough to pantomime about. I drew Stephanie’s name. Stephanie is quite the little girl. Stephanie and I have never gotten along much, as our maturity levels are almost identical. You’d think a five year old would be more mature.

Alas, this game lasted for a good deal of time. The only major wrinkles were that Stephanie seemed to think that every present after hers was hers, too, and my Grandma’s charade. Grandma didn’t pay much attention to Sue’s instructions, and we had no idea what she was acting out.

Then we went home. All of us, but Bryce, were present. The presents I gave were stellar. I gave my mother a VHS of “Princess Bride”, my father a gold calendar (when they were expensive), my brother an “Unseen Archives” book on John Lennon, and my sisters a Beatles’ calendar for them to share. What a great guy I am.

Bryce really cashed in. He got a baritone, a guitar, the book from me, a new car, an elephant, and two trips to Disneyland. Molly got a candy machine, a Beatles’ cd, a new puppy, and $1,000. Brenna got a used Kleenex and half a Barbie. What did I get?

Well, the first thing I got was from Molly. She got me a cheap pen with multi-coloured feathers on the top and bobble eyes. Can we say “crappy after-thought�? From my brother I got a “Happy Tree Friends” DVD. The bad part about this was that it was not wrapped, and he gave it to me days early. Where’s the cheer in that? I got nothing from Brenna (go figure). The rest of my presents I got from my parents collectively.

For Christmas I asked for two things. I asked for (1) a new guitar (or money for said guitar) and (2) the special edition of “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” DVD. My first gift was a compass. This was a gag gift that my mother told me she was going to buy. Then I opened my next package. It was heavy, it was Lord of the Rings, it was wrong. She got me the “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” deluxe special edition set. I didn’t want bookends and I already had the DVD. I also got raw horse meat, a pretty nice camera I guess, and the Asian flu.

I was severely let down. God himself got gold, scented candles, and baby oil on the first Christmas. Even Brenna got that half a Barbie she wanted. I guess, for a little bit, I felt sorry for her, and I felt a bit of an affinity with her. We both got the raw end of the Yule-tide deal.

I’m still thankful, though.

He didn’t like prison. People normally don’t like prison, but Casio was softer than most and sensistive. It wasn’t just that they had wrongly accused and then wrongly convicted him. It was also that the kind of person Casio is isn’t the kind of person prison is good for.

The most painful thing he knew outside of those bars was the knowledge that his family, friends, and lover were all on the same side as the law. The courthouse had been packed with people crying for blood. It had been hot, made hotter by the amount of people moving and talking. Some were crying, but no one cried for him.

It was an old country-type courtroom. It was so backwoods that there was dirt on the floor and the judge wore his hunting clothes beneath his robes. Casio was never sure if this custom was on account of the inbred, South Dakotan style of law or the dirty 1920s style of life.

As the judge made his decision, and the gavel met the wooden surface of the desk, he turned to his wife, his bestfriend, his lover, and saw that she was wearing the same guarded expression that everyone else was. She believed them over him. After that he was ready to be locked up, ready to die away from her.

Inside the prison, the most painful thing he knew was the humiliation of being branded a pedophile. He told anyone who would listen that he was innocent, but that same cry was a common mantra of every other inmate. No one listened to him; they broke him in so many ways.

It got to be common practice. After a while, he took neither the care nor energy to resist the things they did to him. He remembered it, though. In his mind he replayed the scene from the courtroom when he realized that his wife didn’t even believe him. It made him bitter; it made him cold.

He paid his debt, as they say, in due time. Being on good behavior and convincing the board that he was cured of a social ailment he was not aware of having, Casio was let back out into the real world.

It was a dark, summer afternoon when he got home. He stood on the beach of Stardust Lake and stared forward. You couldn’t see the other shore from where you stood. It was a flat pane of water, of glass. All that was visible in the Stardust was the front that was rising at the horizon.

He pondered. He was no longer a victim, a horse. He was a free man, but he still felt shackled to what they had done to him. He was trapped by hurt and anger. He looked calm; he looked silent.

The wind picked up. The claw-like hands grabbed at his pant legs. They pulled on his hair and shirt. The storm was coming. It urged him on. It mocked his outward coldness and stoicism. It clutched at the rage that was growing inside him.

He watched the front across the waterway pickup. It reared its head in the water. It rose high above the ground, towering with raindrops clinging to tiny dust particles. He heard it on the wind as he saw it with his eyes. “The storm in the sea.”

Download it at deviantART.

I fancy myself a software guy. I’ve kinda fallen out of love with a lot of aspects of computing. Hardware gets so confusing. Different types of RAM, CPUs, hard drives, video cards all plague the market. How is the average person supposed to be able to build their own screaming, dream machine? Whether for gaming or porn, the average joe or joelie should be able to purchase random pieces of hardware from any site with the words “computer” and “discount” in the web address. Sometimes I buy from a page with the word “sexy” in the address, too. Just don’t tell Megan.

I had little problem in building my computer. I had the kind words and advice of a host of computer genii, but I still found myself a little overwhelmed. All in all, the process went well. Building a computer found a soft spot in my heart.

I cannot say the same for networking. Networking has that hard, plague-crusted, artery-clogged part of my heart. That part of your heart where the blood is black and smells like soy sauce and rum. Collin, you know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t then you’re not the lead – guitarist – hair – band – wannabe – washup – x – ray – picture – taker – computer – science – ex – programmer that I think you are.

I thought that Christmas Break would be easy. I was all ready to sit back, read a little, plot my funeral, and write some posts. Boy was I wrong. Almost as soon as I got into the house, my mother was talking to me.

“Your father has all the wiring done. When are you going to get the internet working for your computers?”

“Hello, mother. I love you. Do you love me?”

“Get those computers wired. Then you guys can play games.”

Sigh. So, I got to work. After bringing my computer downstairs (to see three other computers sitting in waiting) my dad, Bryce, Ryan, and I started the process of wiring everyone.

“Kathy Tyler says that you need to use two routers, not the switch.” Oh, yeah. My mom tried to help, too.

Step one was to deal with the router. BEFORE YOU PLUG IT IN, you have to configure it. How do you configure something when it’s not hooked up? “Kathy Tyler says to put this CD in first, before you hook up the router.” I put the CD in. It spins up; it autoruns. I click through the menus, again it tells me to make sure the router is not hooked up. Then I click “auto configure”. While I’m watching the little hourglass go tumbling end over end, I bring up a browser and navigate to “http://awayken.com”. As I’m browsing the comments of my page, a dialog box from the install pops up. “Internet connection not detected. Please manually configure the router.”

This is just one example of many to show just how this was going to go. I go to the website to manually configure. Linksys has a page of ISPs and the settings that you should set your router to. I scroll through the list to find that there is NO Midcontinent Internet listed.

Great grand. The next day, went even better. We yanked all the wires down through the ceiling and put them all in the former laundry room, which is now the cat poop and pop place. We brought down the router. We hooked a bunch of computers up to it, but there weren’t enough ports. So, we tried to hook the two routers together. It was no good. The computers couldn’t see each other. I tried thousands of things. We wanted, one, the computers to all see each other, and, two, all the computers to see the internet.

I tried messing with router configs, hooking up different cables to different ports, and crying. They were all no good, but crying was the most satisfactory. We called Kathy Tyler several times. Pretty soon she was saying to use the switch instead of the router. No good. Now use both routers and the switch. No good. Sacrifice second born. No good.

We moved the main computer and switched the router/modem/computer/cable configuration. Then the home computer didn’t have internet for a while. Then I got it back. Then I moved some stuff, and it lost internet again. Then I got it working again. Back and forth we tumbled until I was about to give up.

I switched out the switch with the routers again. I tried to get them to talk to each other, and then my aunt Sue came over. She’s the network administrator and fourth grade teacher at Big Stone School. “Did you make a crossover cable?” Oh, lord. How can little things like that escape me. I made a crossover cable after that, but it didn’t go. I didn’t know if it was crossover for sure. I made it again. Nothing. I made it again. Nothing. When I had about 3 inches left to work with, I gave up. The computers could all see each other, so we gamed.

Day three, the final day. I got up and gave Midco a call. He set me straight on a lot of things.

“Did it work that way before?”

“No; it’s never worked.”

“Oh, okay. I’ve never heard of that working, so that’s why I asked. It probably won’t work that way.”

It’s good to have such helpful tech support people. I reconfigured the setup once again. Then the internet didn’t work again. I messed around and finally got it working again. So, I now knew what I had to do. I had to get the LAN jack to send little tiny network packets downstairs to that switch. So, the internet comes through the cable. It goes to the router. Then it goes to the main computer upstairs, and then through the LAN jack downstairs to the switch. Then it splits out and goes to every computer plugged into that switch. Some of it goes to the other LAN jack up stairs, and some of it goes to my dad’s garage.

The problem was that it didn’t work. The switch all worked. The router all worked. What was the deal. We called Kathy Tyler again. I got to talk to her way longer than I cared to. The nice part was that she couldn’t figure it out either. I sighed. I was close to giving up. I redid an end in the basement. I rewired the jack in the wall. Then I redid the end in the basement one more time. I was fed up. It was dark out now, and I was sick of it. I finally announced it to everyone.

“I’m done. I hate networking. I’m going to play Max Payne 2 downstairs, and then I’m going to go write the hit song, ‘Alone in my Principles’.”

I was in the midst of killing a herd of villians in sepia-tainted slow-mo when my aunt Sue came back over. My mother had called her. Over the gunshots, I told her what I had done. She sat for a bit and talked to my dad. I continued to be a good cop gone bad. Then she came over and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Restart your computer, and you’ll have internet. You had one wire loose in the wall jack.”

The internet has never been more bittersweet. For all the work it was, all I can say is, never again.

The sun did come up that day, but a guy couldn’t make out the outline from our house. You could see a haze, sure enough, but that golden ball was just a dull circle in the blackened sky. The oblong yellow, dampened by dust, was something like a symbol of everything that had happened.

They didn’t tell you these things when you moved out here. They tell you a bit about the winters, but that’s all. Then the winters hit, and you can’t think of anything worse. The cold moves like a ghost. It runs with the wind; it pushes into your bones. You can’t imagine a cold like the kinds you get out here.

Then the winter fades away. The sun, like a savior, would rise every day to push the bluster farther and farther away. Then comes the wind again, this time with dust in its hands. It tosses the sand and dirt about like a kid in a sandbox.

It got everywhere. It would find its ways into the most unforseen cracks. Our house was identical to the out of doors, except that there were still four quaint walls around us. We were breathing ground everyday.

We couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe. We just waited to die.

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I’m agitated. I’ve been distraught lately. You would think that, coming home for Christmas Break, it would be all bubbles and stubbles, but it’s not. It’s been hell.

See, there’s been something weighing on my mind. It has to deal with my brother, Bryce. Bryce is a great guy. He’s funny, intelligent, and a great kisser. I mean… has black hair. (ahem) Anyway, that is why this is such a hard post to write, and I’ve put if off for as long as I could.

Let me set it up. Last weekend Megan and I came to Big Stone to help my father move stuff into our new upstairs. My mother has had this dream addition for years. I had never pictured it ever happening, because my mom has grandiose dreams and little motivation to realize them. My brother literally pictured himself married, with children, before coming home to enjoy the addition.

Well, ladies and gents, the dream is realized. This itself poses fundamental problems of happiness, but I won’t get into them here. The majority of the work is done. It’s quite a livable space now. Soon Bryce can move into my parent’s old bedroom and I’ll have the bunk beds all to myself. That’s right; I said “bunk beds”.

So, in between moving the largest most complex entertainment center ever and listening to my mother say, “Well, it didn’t look that yellow in the can,” we managed to escape the house with Tony. We were looking for a copy of Amadeus because if Megan watched it and wrote some things about it, she would get extra credit in her Music class. The movie was nowhere to be found. The most helpful comment we got from the different movie rental establishments that we visited was, “Why do you want a stupid movie about Beethoven?”

Stoners are so funny.

Driving back in failure, Tony says, “Hey, Miles. Remember when I said that Bryce and I have had a bad semester?”

Yes.

“Well, … let me put it this way. Bryce doesn’t have a major yet, but he has a minor.”

What? You heard right. My brother got a minor. As in “a Minor in possession of alcohol”. As in a fine, a ticket, jail time, execution. This was quite the shock. My brother… sure he was the black sheep, but I had no idea how dark his coat was.

The best part was yet to come. We finally found a copy of the bloody movie. My mom knew someone whose son loved the movie and they lent us their copy. So, we were sitting there, about to start watching the movie, eating food, when the phone rings.

Tony answers the phone, and I can hear his side of things. “Hello Rausches. … Hey, how did you know it was me? … Like, now? … Okay, here’s your brother.” And Tony hands me the phone. My conversation with my brother confirmed that he was planning on telling them right now. He asks to speak to mom.

I hand the phone to mom. I can hear her side of things. “Hello? … Hi. … What do you mean ‘bad news’? … What?! … Ha, ha, very funny. Lindsey better not be pregnant. … You know what? I don’t want to know. Here’s your father.” Mom, unable to bear the news that was soon to come, passes the phone off on my dad, who actually was in the bathroom at the time.

She comes back asking me and Tony what the phone call is about because Bryce couldn’t tell her. She tells us, “He said, ‘Bad news. Lindsey is pregnant. No, I’m just kidding.’ What a shithead.”

We decided to watch the movie as Bryce tells my dad in the bathroom the whole story. We hear some yelling, but just a little, and then a lot of talking. We watch the movie and things go on. They are both a bit disappointed in my brother, and my mom turns a wary eye towards me, as if to say, “Well, if Bryce got caught once, how many times have you not gotten caught?”

It’s true. I’m better at getting away with things then Bryce is.

This whole thing, though, is not what I’m angry about. It’s about what happened when I wasn’t home. Bryce came back to Big Stone a couple days before I did because of how his test situation turned out.

I get here to realize that Bryce has already turned the Minor into a joke. A whole joke concept that I was left out of the loop on. He does this, he slips the word “minor” into a sentence.

It’s a minor setback.
That’s quite a minor chord.
A man who digs in the ground is a minor.

Think of all the “minor” puns I could have used? Think of all the funniness that there could have been! I feel slighted. I should have known from Tony’s introductory joke, those days ago, that this sort of thing would happen.

So, to make up for things, here is my minor list.

• Make a minor change.
• That’s a minor problem.
• It’s a minor setback.
• That’s quite a minor chord.
• If you throw a piano down a mine shaft, I’ll show you A-flat Minor.
• A psychic was involved in a minor collision downtown. She had an auto-body experience.

Ok, those last two weren’t mine especially. I realized that, in the heat and anger of my typing, I had forgotten all the good ones that I had come up with or heard. But the rest were minor. Hehehe. I crack me up.

I don’t post during Finals Week. I have my studies to consider.

Sorry, Bryce. Bug me Monday.

Well, it’s that time again, when life gets a little weird. It is the time of year that mothers will gladly run you over with their Toys-R-Us shopping cart to grab that last stupid $20 piece of plastic kids call a toy. I am personally not a fan of the Christmas season.

“But Bryce,” you say, “there are a plethora of reasons to love the holiday season, how can you not be a fan?”

Well, random student, my feelings started when I got the flu every Christmas Eve for three years in a row. What can I say? God hates me.

Second, this holiday season tears people apart, sometimes literally. I mean, you never see people dog piling over a stupid “Furby” on Earth Day, do you? And how can you ever forget the disappointed look on the young ones’ faces when they saw you bought them a stapler instead of that stupid doll they wanted so bad. Whiny brats don’t realize how some kid from Canada would kill for a good stapler.

Third, I hate the television programming on Christmas. It’s as if the TV networks got together and have played the ultimate Holiday prank:

“Hey, let’s ALL play “A Christmas Story”!”

So that is why I have been less than pleased with my holiday seasons. What’s better than fighting over that last “A Very *NSync Christmas” CD, watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” 12 times in the same day, and seeing your friends holding back tears when they see the crappy gift you bought them while asking you if you kept the receipt? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe lighting myself on fire.