Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

I think spelling should be the fourth R.

This Guy is Always Sending Out Newsletters, Volume 2 Number 2

Hey how are you? That's great/too bad. I hope things keep going the way they're going for you/get better soon.

The staff at This Guy would like to take this opportunity to say "scratch that" in reference to last week's newsletter. Since then, the staff has developed a similar yet slightly different (that is to say, similar) plan and has decided to "go ahead and go with that one."

Furthermore, that's all for now.

This Guy is Always Sending Out Newsletters, Volume 2 Number 1

Welcome to about 4:00 p.m. One hopes one is enjoying the day.

We at this guy are excited to announce that an all new, full-length short story will soon be published on The Coolest Address. Portions of this story have already appeared in our publication under the working title "A Lack of Color," which is a bad title for anything but a Death Cab for Cutie song. The full story will be published under a new title in several illustrated "chapters." The chapters will be published in ascending order within minutes of one another so that the entire story will appear on the site in the correct order from top to bottom.

We hope you will check back with us often for this exciting new publication.

Working Title: A Lack of Color, Part 2

He’d been staring at the sky the night before when Matthew walked onto the deck.

“Look’s like a big one coming,” he’d said, still looking up. “We’ll probably hit it tonight.”

Matthew had come up hoping for stars, but he couldn’t even find the moon behind all the clouds. Every day of this stupid voyage was worse than the last. He looked up again with practiced disinterest, then saw that Edmundo was absently peeling an orange.

“Hey Edmundo,” he said, “I’m hungry. Let me have that.”

Edmundo didn’t look down. “I’m hungry too.”

Matthew was too bored to be agreeable. “Give it to me!” he yelled. “Give it or I’ll tell my father you stole it!”

Edmundo still gripped the half-peeled orange but now looked at Matthew with disbelief, or was it fear? Matthew hoped it was fear. For nine years old, Edmundo looked unusually intimidating without a shirt on, and Matthew didn’t like the idea of fighting him with anything more than words, even if he was a year younger.

“I’ll tell my father you broke into one of the bins and stole it, and then we’ll see if your old man ever finds another lousy job on a ship again.”

He’d gone too far with that one and he knew it, Edmundo’s father was the most experienced captain in the whole company and a personal friend of the family, but Edmundo let go anyway. He was never one to make trouble for his father, a fact that Matthew used to his advantage as often as possible.

“Here,” said Edmundo. His right hand clutched at his stomach while his left hung limply at his side in defeat. “Can I at least have half?”

Matthew dropped the peel on the deck and sectioned off a piece of the orange, then looked his adversary in the eyes as he chewed the first bite. “Good night, Edmundo,” he said, tagging on his name at the end in an effort to make it sound stupid, then walked inside.

Edmundo was such a pushover, and so eager to please. “Call me Eddie,” he was probably saying.

A gut wrenching cry startled Matthew awake. A hoarse voice yelled frightened pleas from somewhere in the dark.

“Help, I can’t swim! Don’t let me go. I can’t…”

The voice trailed off into silence as Matthew realized it was his own. His body was stiff on the floor of the lifeboat. Blood and mucus clung thick in the corners of his mouth, chapped from screaming. Tears still rolled from his closed eyes down well-beaten paths that joined at one nostril and ran across his cheek. The sea rocked heavier than it had during the day, but much less than the night before. Much less. He listened to the ocean thump against the sides of the boat, then sunk back into sleep under the light of the watching moon.

Working Title: A Lack of Color, Part 1

From his towering perch a full three feet above an endless expanse of water, Matthew surveyed what remained of his father’s crop in the early morning light. The shifting blanket of color billowed gently over the now peaceful, perhaps tired Atlantic ocean. Here and there a pale yellow orb stood out starkly from what otherwise offered no challenge to the crop’s namesake—orange—surrounded above, below, and on all sides by a continuous expanse of dismal blue sea and sky. Orange, Matthew saw, and blue, and dots of yellow, and the drifting brown body of Edmundo Antunes dos Santos.

“Edmundo!” Matthew called.

He reached into the ocean and scooped up a bobbing orange, then chucked it at the body. It bounced off the naked chest with a calloused thud.

“Edmundo, Wake up!”

The body rose and fell along with the oranges—silent—a blotchy pale brown except for olive green cargo shorts and a bright orange life jacket, and close enough to see his dark eyes opened wide, staring into the blue above as if deep in thought. His right hand clutched a clear plastic carton of water, which sometimes bobbed out of sync with the rest of his body, causing his arm to gesture toward the rising sun as if something in that direction might interest the boy in the lifeboat.

Matthew’s face went from desperate to perplexed, then grave. He leaned over the bow and threw up, wiped his mouth, sat up, and passed out. The morning continued on without him, while Edmundo's eyes kept keen watch on the brightening sky.

Amazing Tattoo Idea #3

Shark being eaten by a Spanish 102 Workbook/Laboratory Manual

Breadsticks

"Are we going to Pat and Oscar's tonight?"
- self

"Yes. At some point."
- Anonymous

"Sick daddy."
- self

In celebration, I have written a poem about breadsticks. This is my poem:

Breadsticks (#1)

Breadsticks,
At Pat and Oscar's,
Are free.

And good.

And have butter on them.

Sentence of the Day from the Word of the Day

"His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons."

-Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain