Dear Mr. Advice,

I recently purchased some jelly beans. These were not just any sort of jelly beans; they were the very special kind that taste like all sorts of assorted tastes like celery, tomato, coffee, and pudding. But I have lost them and looked everywhere for them and they are nowhere to be found. I’ve asked my wife about where they could be but she’s says I should keep track of my own snack foods. Can I trust her?

Lost Jellybeans

Dear Lost Jellybeans,

Okay, let’s get one things straight: pudding has to be, like, vanilla pudding or chocolate pudding—it doesn’t taste like anything on its own. On top of which, you’ve bought some shitty jelly beans here, it seems obvious to me. Tomato? Why tomato when you can have orange or frankly, anything that’s not tomato. Who makes tomato jelly beans? I seriously want to know because I’m shorting the stock in that company tomorrow. Finally, what kind of loveless marriage are you trapped in when you have to keep separate track of your snack food? Seriously, are there separate stock piles around the house? This is disturbing me. I think the clear answer to your question is: no. No, you cannot trust your wife because anyone who keeps stock piles of snack food from you is someone that cannot be trusted.

Read the whole story so far: A Field Guide to the Socially Inept

This guy walked by me on Brooks, carrying a gas can, looking beat up—like black-eye beat up. He looked beat as in tired, too. He stops me, I pull my headphones out—believe me, hot from walking to the bus and not at all happy about being held up in the heat. He proceeds to tell me a story that indicates about five words in that he needs help. And I think I might see what I could do. But he doesn’t let me get a word in edgewise and talks and talks and talks—he tells me about a crime, he tells me about injuries, he tells me about where he works, what he pulls in, and tells me the street corner where his bank is. And I know he’s trying to indicate that he’s reliable, but the more he talks, the less I want to help. After more talking he finally asks if I can help. I’m already thinking, like don’t waste my time. Let me save you the trouble. I tell him I don’t carry cash (I have some in my wallet), I tell him I only have my student ID for the bus and for food at the University. He says, “You have a debit card,” as if I’m already going to lie to him. I say no; I leave it home since I can buy food on the student ID. He looks incredulous and then picks up his gas can and nods and says “Thanks, bro,” at the same time that I say, “Sorry.”

Read the whole story so far: A Field Guide to the Socially Inept

Does it ever sound like the steady clack of steel wheels on rails that pass through a chasm or a city? And if the proof ever sounded like a freight train rumbling toward you, would you ready yourself for it or just try to get across the street before the intersection is blocked for another ten minutes? And why look for it when it’s nowhere to be found? His mind is somewhere near just that question (near but not in words) as he drags a widdled pencil across a page, the graphite tracing out a curve that cuts from the already present origin on the paper out and up a wobbly Cartesian plane. Same old logarithm, Gene thinks as he watches the curve pass through an inversion where the change in length will forever be greater than the change in height, and his mark drags off to the edge of the paper. He knows the line will keep going and going, long after the pencil has been worn down to a nub, and even long after he is gone. The line, like the train, like the approach to proof, never stops. It never ever stops, not even long enough to let you hop on. So he just draws the line as far as it will go and takes an abstract shortcut, labeling the x-axis “Life” and the y-axis, “Truth.”

Read the whole story so far: A Field Guide to the Socially Inept

Characters and Places: Gene Copeland, Louisville

On November 23, in the entire state of Georgia, only two people die. Just two.

Read the whole story so far: A Low Cloud Reflex, Incunabula

They greet each other and Gene launches into the whole sordid story; sick, by now, of the details that he shares with Jason.

They say goodbye and hang up as another gust from the sea kicks up and blows into the minivan, bringing along up from the shore a small white and gray gull that lands near the van and looks at Gene from the side of his head—maybe expectantly, but gulls are hard to decipher. Gene responds by digging through his lunch refuse again for a fry and tosses it to the bird who deftly jumps into the breeze and catches the morsel in mid-salty-air with maybe a thankful cry—maybe triumphant. It’s easier to be happy when you don’t want much, Gene thinks. Then he thinks, I hope I don’t get killed by ten million pounds of sludge from New Jersey, though. “You wouldn’t know what the hell hit you, buddy!” The gull looks on—maybe suspiciously—maybe like he would know what ten million pounds of sludge looked like. Then Gene wonders how long it will be before he’s ever happy again.

Read the whole story so far: Ing Speare Typ Chimpan Shakes Zees

It takes a long time before the lone red balloon is gone from sight. In the end the mystery of its demise is left to the inaccuracy of the resolution of human vision. And, in time with the rise of trapped inert gas, the rusted roller coaster tracks have fallen over by another 1/1,000,000 of an inch. The ocean waves pound on the gritty Long Island shore in a white hiss, penetrating the low-register of his eardrums, and Gene feels any urge to action like a blob of spilled jelly on a slightly inclined table. He sits in his caravan, a space with seven seats, that contains the same kinetic energy as the fast food packages and leftovers on the passenger seat across from him. He scrounges around through the trash there to find his phone and dials up Jason Gunn. As hr hopes, Jason answers

Read the whole story so far: Brain->Wash, Ing Speare Typ Chimpan Shakes Zees

I keep wincing just before I think I’ll knock it over, but then I don’t even move a muscle. I can see the whole affair in my head—whatever it was to go flying: glass, wrist, anything delicate— I just know I will knock it over; it doesn’t matter what it was. Maybe like a long time ago, I will look at my lap and start crying. Only I’m sure that this time there will be no parents to tell me not to cry about entropy. I will be six again, in a large green colonial four bedroom house, but all alone. I won’t have paid the electric bill in months and so the place will be still and dark for dinner.

Often when I believe this is about to happen, the colors of the strange awesome things I used to dream knock loudly on the front door of my apartment. They fill the peephole like out a submarine I’m peering and when I least expect it. That is, they always show up when I am about to knock something over, but I never know when that feeling will come over me. The colors are such a nuisance; I try to keep them from coming. But sometimes I can’t help but think about a small child alone in a large, dark house and then I think that the child will surely spill something and not know how to clean it up, or even know that it doesn’t matter.

Read the whole story so far: A Field Guide to the Socially Inept

She leans up on his shoulder and says, “Let’s do it. You want to do it?”

“Uh… right now?” Gene has just been listening to one of his favorite sounds gifted his apartment. When storms come in from the South, they inevitably cause the oversized lid on the art deco street lamp to clunk under its own loose weight. He liked to leave the door open as the winds kicked up. Hell, he liked to leave the door open to invite the storm inside; yes—for a cup of whoop-ass. That was the pleasure: open the door to the danger, let it come in. For him, the streetlamp had become a kind of novel bell; impending storm coming. She’d probably not even noticed it, he realized, her chin straining up to rest on his spine and shoulder.

“The thing is…”—how to put it—“I don’t want to fuck you while the storm is coming in…”

Read the whole story so far: A Field Guide to the Socially Inept

Characters and Places: Gene Copeland, head, passion, Shara Cashra, storm, weather

“You really want to drive down here.”

“Of course I do,” Allen said.

“Okay. It just seems like you do all the driving,” Jamie replied. She was keeping her voice down because she was at work and there was a customer looking around.

“The other day you got all pissed because I didn’t want to drive down.”

“I know.”

“Well, somebody has to drive.”

“Yeah…”

“Incidentally, you left some pictures at my place.”

Read the whole story so far: A Low Cloud Reflex

Characters and Places: Allen Lawson, Athens, Jamie Copeland

Allen trudges back to the bedroom to get his gym bag. Just beneath the bag, sitting at the foot of the bed, is an envelope of pictures. Without opening it, Allen sets the pictures of he and Jamie at the Atlanta botanical garden on top of his dresser. Official keeper of all-things-sentimental she must have left them behind last weekend. As an afterthought, Allen picks the envelope up off the dresser and sits on the edge of the bed to flip through them.

Read the whole story so far: A Low Cloud Reflex

Characters and Places: Allen Lawson, Georgia Botanical Gardens, Jodie Copeland, Nov 23 1993, photographs, The Copelands