::A Geek in Korea::

My friends and I were the cleanup crew for a giant flea market in the amusement park we worked in not far from my house. We would go around destroying anything left behind before throwing it in the dumpster. This was a semi-condoned practice, as it saved space in the dumpsters, but often lead to danger. It was a stress relief for teenagers who loved to break stuff.

Someone decided a box of old 45 records. They looked like a perfect frisbee to toss. We were smashing them against a wall that was behind the dumpster, dropping them inside if we hit it right. Fun AND Productive. We started tossing them around and one missed. It was a jagged, broken, dangerous record of death.

I happened to toss it in the direction of the dumpster without thinking. Maybe I was pissed off about something. I don’t recall. Someone had been facing me, between me and the dumpster. The record of death bounced once on the ground, continued spinning, jumped off the ground, and headed straight towards this person’s head. We weren’t far away from each other, and as soon as it left my hand I knew it was going to do significant damage if it hit anyone.

I’ll never forget watching it fly through the sky as I shouted “WATCH OUT!” helplessly. It looked like a table saw blade heading straight towards the bridge of this person’s nose. The decapitation trap in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? It was going to take off the top of his head in one clean slice.

He moved his head out of the way in a Matrix style back lean duck. The timing was incredible. It missed by millimeters. It was so close to being lodged in his brain that I had a cold few minutes of panic and shock set in. The record skipped and bounced down into a corn field.  He ran and picked it up to show me. He thought it was awesome, and wasn’t angry at all.

I started cursing and saying, “Holy shit, HOLY SHIT, I could have KILLED YOU!” I think this is the event that broke me out of that “random destruction” phase everyone goes through as a teenager. I just sometimes think about what would have happened if it had hit him.

My favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. I’m currently working my way through every novel he’s ever written. The things I’ve read are intend to read are listed below:

• Player Piano: Loved his take on what a society that no longer needs manual labor does with itself. It was a little slow to get going, which is uncharacteristic of most of his novels.
• The Sirens of Titan: This is a weird, weird book. There are a few themes here I like in the novel, but it’s not my favorite.
• Mother Night: The first book I ever read by him. Really good take on who you think you are versus how people around you think of you.
• Cat’s Cradle: Bokononism and Ice-9. A wonderfully strange bit of story.
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: I loved his “Just be KIND” message. This book ask a lot of questions that seem funny, then you sort of wonder why no one else is saying the same thing about the world we live in today.
• Slaughterhouse-Five: I’ve read this multiple times. I love this book so much. If there was ONE book you have to read by Vonnegut, this is it. Superb.
• Breakfast of Champions: This book is very strange. A must for Kilgore Trout fans. He’s a character in a novel that finds out he’s a character in a novel. His one request, “Make me younger!”
• Slapstick: Wow. This book is really strange in a good way. Very different. I’ll have to read it again. The stuff about inclusiveness seems to parallel the rise of blog-cliques very well.
• Jailbird: I haven’t read it yet. I will purchase this on first sight.
• Deadeye Dick: Currently reading this.
• Galápagos: The human race evolves to live on the Galapagos islands as told by a ghost. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
• Bluebeard: Meh. Abstract impressionism isn’t my bag I guess.
• Hocus Pocus: I didn’t care for this story much.
• Timequake: It’s an interesting twist on the idea of “fate”. Watching yourself make mistakes that you’ve already made in the past but are powerless to prevent seems like a special sort of hell.

A wonderful mind has passed away. He is one of my biggest influences as a writer, and I find his work a joy to read. Even at his strangest, his stories teach about mankind and morals that I thought were provoking and challenging. I’ll miss him dearly.