2500+ Words and Too Many Bummers

I completed two out of three planned pieces the other day for a total of something like 2514 words. An old friend came over to visit, which stopped short the last, uplifting piece. What was left was two rather downer pieces, one about a tough day I had and the other about the revolutionary talk, actions, and plans of the black portion of this country in the sixties and seventies.

I wrote both of those pieces always in mind that the third would follow, and not necessarily leave the day with a sour feeling in the brain of the few readers of these longer things. The third piece wasn't exactly "turning your farts into rainbows" kind of cheeriness, but it wasn't about me getting screwed over by my day or about the (ultimately financial) subjugation of an entire ethnic group.

It was a little more, well, like I mentioned before, a moreover uplifting discussion about odd observations about...well I don't want to ruin it. I'll get to it soon.

One funny thing for me, though, is that those two pieces that I consider "downers" were written before I learned that my bike was stolen.

Oh yeah, my fucking bike was stolen. The savages. There are only a few people who have access to the area were it was kept. I'm pretty sure it was my idiot neighbor's idiot drug addict son who jacked it. I've never met him, but I've heard her lecture him many times about how the reasons he's struggling in life is because he doesn't know god. She plays the 700 Club radio shows on her radio so loud every day that I stopped reading out on my balcony last summer just to avoid having to block it out.

She told me once, "Oh, be careful, somebody stole my bike from out here just last month." Yeah...it was your sumbitch kid, dumbass.

I had a lock on my bike, but it wasn't such a huge chain-wire. The faith I had in the few people who had access to the area was stronger than the lock.

Oh well. I'm going to plaster pictures of it all around Long Beach with a notice of a $1000 reward, and then kick the ass of the first person who brings it back to me. I'll put it like "$1000* REWARD", then at the bottom have something like "*Not a real reward" in really small print, just to keep me legal.

I'm kidding, I won't be beating anybody up. But I may word the missing poster just like that though.

Shout out and special thanks to Norm for recognizing my entire Against the Day theme on the "Off Day" piece. It was only intentional for the random people who could possibly make the connection. I briefly thought about that as the title for the piece, 'Against the Day', but it didn't have the double entendre factor, and, seeing as how much I love the novel itself, it seemed...I don't know, almost insulting.

So, keep an eye out for the next post. If all goes as planned, it should be the lost third piece, the bummer-counter-punch.

You be the judge.