Literally.

Hey, I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be weird if – when your band chooses a name – you all suddenly adopt the physical traits implied by the name? That would be strange, right?

All the members of Radiohead instantly develop radios for heads! And then conversations like this one might ensue:

INT. Two women are waiting in an airport security line.

WOMAN 1: Hey look over there! See those guys getting felt up by the TSA? Those are the members of Radiohead!

WOMAN 2: Are you sure? How do you know?

WOMAN 1: Because they have fricken’ radios for heads … come on, keep up. Seriously.


Just think of all the fun and chaos!

The Shins? Just giant man-sized shins with mouths. The Rolling Stones? You guessed it … giant stones, which roll (though now days they don’t roll so much as get rolled around by their live-in nurse maids). The Pixies? Yep, they turn into pixies (How funny would it be to watch Frank Black sing “Wave of Mutilation” when he’s four inches tall and leaking magical dust on everything?).

Although, the obvious and inevitable result of living in a world where such transformations are possible based on the name of the band you’re in would be that every single group of high school dudes who form a band will call their band “Really Big Dicks”.

Although it would always be possible that the Universe might slake a terrible vengeance down upon them and instead of increasing the size of their genitals it might just choose to turn them into BMW-driving Republicans (Hahahahahahaha! Sometimes I find myself hilarious … somebody has to.)

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Abe Lincoln.

A charming and delightful friend of mine introduced me to this video and it is probably one of the funniest things that I – or anyone – has ever seen.



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Robots! Ham! Moving!

So, big exciting news! For me, I guess, not so much for you.

I have moved! Not far or anything. But still!

My roommates and I have moved into a new little place across town. It is a nicer complex and a nicer part of town and I like it!

But it is not all upside, no sir. I used to have a GIANT room, but my new room is much smaller. And having a smaller closet is forcing me to confront my clothes and backpack buying problems.

However I’m still coming out ahead in this deal because the new apartment is literally across the street from this nice big shopping center (how yuppie do I sound?) and so I can finally WALK to places! Which is something I like a lot. It has a grocery store and a really good local burger joint and a Mexican place with (slightly too) awesome margaritas! And there’s a place to get my hair cut (yes, even bald people get their hair cut ... because it makes them feel pretty, okay?!) and there’s a bank and a dry cleaners AND there’s even a Honey Baked Ham Store! Who wouldn’t be willing to go through the hassle of moving just to be closer to a Honey Baked Ham store?!

Also, this part of town has a system of “paseos” (which are basically just pedestrian walkways and bridges and stuff) that wind through the surrounding neighborhoods. This is super cool for when I go running because now there are all kinds of new and interesting places where I can trip and fall down! I went for a run last night and didn’t even get too super lost. Although I did see a skunk. He was not out for a jog, he seemed to be on some very important errand so I gave him a wide berth.

I’m very pleased with myself right now and I think I’ll be very happy in this new place. Not just because it has a Honey Baked Ham store next door, but mostly because it allows me some more walking-to-stuff. For some reason I can never quite figure out I almost always end up living in suburban situations even though what I would really like is to live someplace like Manhattan or San Francisco where it is more possible to live your life on foot (or mass transit). The truth is that I don’t really enjoy driving that much and would much rather take a nice stroll when I need to go run errands or got buy some ham, you know? So this new apartment offers about as much of that as I can find in the upscale, suburban, LA-adjacent wonderland in which I have found myself living (I’m not making fun of the burbs or anything. There’s a reason I moved up here and it is because living in Los Angeles can make for a very frustrating go of it; the traffic everywhere! The absolute lack of parking anywhere! The parking tickets!)

Well … that’s it I guess. I have moved! And now I can walk to get ham!

Oh, here is a picture of a robot I built out of moving boxes (because I'm a fricken' wizard!):



Jealous?
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Green.

And here is a poem about ham:

Green
by james bezerra

Hey Sam!
What the hell is wrong with those eggs?
I do not think you should eat them.
Not even a little bit.

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Terribly Sad.

Sorry, that was a terrible poem and not really even about ham. Here, this one is much better … well, it is better … well, at the very least it is more on-topic:

Terribly Sad
by james bezerra

I bought a ham and it was haunted
by the ghost of a pig who only wanted
to be reunited with his pig family.
It was my sad task then, quite unfortunately,
to tell him his family had been similarly converted (into ham!).

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Cheese.

You know, maybe I should just give up on writing poems about ham. There was a very funny quote once that went, “Why have all of the great philosophers been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese?”

Perhaps ham is to poetry what cheese is to philosophy.

Hey! That rhymed! I wasn’t even trying to do that! Well … you know what that means! Please see below …

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Mystery.

Mystery
by james bezerra

It would quite appear me
that what cheese is to Philosophy,
ham is such to Poetry.
If only bread turns out to be
some sort of similarly impenetrable quandary,
then we will have a metaphoric sandwich of mystery.

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Plagiarism!

Okay. I think that was all of the ham-related things I had to say …

You know, I was having a conversation about Pinterest recently and apparently there are some bloggers complaining that Pinterest is hurting blogs because Pinterest users are essentially “stealing” content. To which I say, “poppycock”.

But it presents an interesting dilemma.

My roommate Sparkle Fairy said that it would be similar to some college student somewhere copying one of my short stories off of this here blog and turning it in as his/her own work. Well that doesn’t really bother me that much, but – I’m just thinking about this now – as long as I stick to writing poetry about ham, I don’t think I will ever have that problem anyway.

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In Praise of Alcohol.

Now here is a something which has nothing to do with ham …


Please enjoy this story from NPR about the lifesaving properties of alcohol (if you’re a fruit fly)!


Cheers! Fruit Flies Drink To Their Health, Literally


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Key.

Key
by james bezerra

I gave you a shiny small key
to wear around your neck
and every time that I would see
it dangling against your chest,
I’d know that you were wearing it for me.
And though the words never passed your lips
I know you knew that it was the key to me.

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Cost of Delivery.

Cost of Delivery
by james bezerra

I do so enjoy getting mail,
especially the bills which I consistently fail
to send back with a payment,
because even though I may be delinquent,
at least I know it cost them suckers some postage money
to mail these bills to harass me.
Eventually they will see
it would be cheaper for them to ignore me.
That’s how I’m gonna win this game of mail
and how my creditors are totally gonna fail!

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Flower

Flower
by james bezerra

The thing I like about a flower
is that it has the patient power
to simply hang out;
it doesn’t yell or shout,
it doesn’t want a twelve round bout;
it doesn’t fight
or threaten to bite;
because all flowers know
that the best behavior is to just grow
and turn its pretty face to the sky
and lazily watch the sun fly
and enjoy the day as it rolls by.

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Flashbacks.

Hey, remember how you would come home after school when you were a kid and watch Magnum P.I. with your mom because she just loved that moustache? And remember how he used to have Vietnam flashbacks about being a VC prisoner in one of those hanging bamboo cages and how he was tortured and how he had to watch his friends (like the helicopter pilot T.C.) get all tortured and stuff? Well my question is, I guess, why was your mom letting you watch shit like that? And why in the hell was it on in the afternoon? And the guy had a moustache and lived in Hawaii and drove a fricken’ Ferrari, did people NOT think that kids were gonna watch that show?

That is all.



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Thirty-Six Hours of Moonlight.

Thirty-Six Hours of Moonlight
by james bezerra

If we had thirty-six straight hours of moonlight,
I wonder wonder wonder what me might
choose to use all of that nighttime for.

Perhaps we would choose to sweetly waste away
that day-and-a-half of moonlit day
wrapped in our body-warmed sheets, and kicking off the comforter.

That is something I would just adore;
I’d just adore exploring all of your
hips and curves and lips; never letting your feet touch the floor.

And after our thirty-six hours of moonlight,
I just might ask for more.

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A Report about My Weight/Ongoing Mental Problems.

If you have known me a little while then it is possible that you know I have (more than once) been diagnosed (by non-medical-professionals) as having something called body dysmorphia.

It is a terrible thing! Not as bad as starving or freezing to death or going to prison or anything, but just utterly wretched on all other accounts.

Basically it means that my brain thinks that my body does not look the way that it actually looks. My brain thinks my body looks way worse than it does. This is at the heart of most eating disorders and (I think) has a lot to do with why people get into extreme body modifications (like those weird tribal loops people put in their earlobes).

Thankfully I know that I’m not as fat as I think I am, but there is still a part of my brain that is all like, “How did you get to be like this you fat, disgusting jabba?”

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I TOTAL jelly-rolled-out when I was younger. By like 23 or 24 I weighted nearly 250 pounds, which simply does not look good on a guy who is 5 foot 6. Here is a god-awful picture from back then (I'm the fat one on the right, not the strappingly handsome one on the left). Feel free to laugh and laugh and laugh …



Okay, are you done laughing? Thanks … jerk.

Anyway, it has been a concerted effort to get and stay skinny over the last six or seven years. I don’t drink soda (unless it’s a mixer!) and I don’t eat potato chips (much at all, unless I’m like at a Superbowl party or birthday or something). Every day I eat Slimfast bars for lunch and have long since given up on eating breakfast (who needs the calories when you can just drink coffee?!).

I’m sure you find all of this fascinating.

Well last year I started running and I have seen some benefits from it, though not nearly as many as I would like (given how fricken’ hard it is to run!). I’m not yet lean like a runner, but it has helped me lose some more weight and actually start to feel kind of like I am in shape. But then, recently, … disaster!

In late November I was handed a whole lot more responsibility at work, which has translated into longer, more exhausting days and so I just haven’t been able to run as much recently. Well the inconsistency is killing me, because now if I don’t get to run for five or six days, I start to FEEL all loose and pudgy and disgusting and like no one will ever love me again. And because of the dysmorphia thing, I look in the mirror and go, “OH MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENED!?” See, because in my head being even somewhat heavier than I was a week or two ago is tantamount to turning into one of those bed-ridden people that the fire department has to rescue by cutting a Volkswagen-sized whole in the side of a house.

The reality is that my weight tends to fluctuate by only five pounds or so if I don’t run for a week. So this week I have been running and running! Even if I stay late at work, I still go out. Even if it is all dark and scary! (What? It is totally safe; I have a red blinking wristband and everything!) Even if I am still sore from running yesterday!

This is a commitment I have made to myself and which I am trying very hard to keep. What I really want is to be able to say, “I am in the best shape of my life,” and I’ve gotten to the point where I could actually say that, but don’t because I still have this issue when I look in the mirror; my brain says, “Really? This is the best shape of your life?”

Some people live their lives subconsciously trying to please a mother or a father or some childhood sweetheart, well I go through life trying to please that little part of my brain that simply doesn’t ever seem to like me very much. I’m luckier than most though, because most of the rest of my brain thinks I’m awesome. So I have that going for me. I just have to avoid mirrors.

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Blame It on Your Hair (Or Lack of Functioning Personality).

Blame It on Your Hair (Or Lack of Functioning Personality)
by james bezerra

Hey Mitt Romney!
It seems to me
that no matter what you do
Republicans just don’t like you!

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Eye-Patch.

Recently I caught part of the classically awful but somehow still ironically cool “Escape from New York” on TV the other day and had quite a fun time watching the part when Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken – who wears an eye-patch) lands a glider on the roof of a decrepit Manhattan skyscraper.

Let me say that again: guy wearing eye-patch lands glider on top of skyscraper.
Let me say it one more time: dude with no depth perception lands engineless aircraft in a space smaller than a football field.

Oh! And he did it at night.

How classically awful and yet still somehow ironically cool, right?
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Investment Tips for Vampires.

Investment Tips for Vampires
by james bezerra

If I were a vampire
I would probably aim higher
than staring in a move franchise.
For me the prize
would be making low yield, long-term investments
because I’m basically gonna live forever
and I’d prefer not to spent that forever being poor.

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What’s a Guy to Do?

What’s a Guy to Do?
by james bezerra

Sometimes when I have too much work to do
I just want to yell,
“Hey work! Screw you!”
But then I’d be stuck in unemployment hell,
which is also not very swell.

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Escape Hole.

Escape Hole
by james bezerra

When my workload
becomes more than my shoulders can hold
sometimes I am so bold
as to dig an escape hole
down below my desk,
and away I go
to have a quick rest.

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