Vox’s posts tagged ninjas

Ninja Love

nobody@vox.com(lǝɥɔɐɹ) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:02:47 +0000

The big project at work right now is our corporate website which is a vintage theme with ninjas jumping about and causing chaos. Serious. That's the kinda work place I have. Beautiful! LOL. So, this made the rounds today, a bit older I think, but new to me...

Ninja Love

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The Sink at Sunset

nobody@vox.com(torrymas) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:12:59 +0000

The Sink at Sunset

http://bollocker.vox.com/library/post...

Okay, so I haven't written anything substantial here in awhile. Boo hoo. I was assigned to write a piece of fiction for a class I am taking, and honestly, I don't much like it. I use Mark Twain's philosophy of writing uncontrollable characters into wells. Except, this time, with no desire or time...

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The Sink at Sunset

nobody@vox.com(Bollocker) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:52:32 +0000

The Sink at Sunset

Hunter Caldwell

Tonight is the end. Tonight I am drinking 151, stumbling around into girls telling them I am emotionally vacant, swigging and instructing people to keep lit cigarettes outside a two foot radius of me—I am a gas pump.

After pulling out of the one girl who actually does burn me with a cigarette, I stumble through my room looking for clothes. My brain rattles in its cage. The room is dimly lit by a draped door of light. A light rope hung on pre-existing nails from the guys before us. I spot my dad’s boxers and shamble toward them. I have them because of a mix up in laundry. Mix-ups never happen anymore. Not now. Not with my mobile home of a heart.

The girl in my bed, Tamra, sleeps heavily now. Whistling with her “Siva lent s,” she tosses, undisturbed by my steps. Through the darkness, I see a faint mark on her face. Earlier, I describe her boyfriend as Voldemorte and her, Harry Potter. This cheers her up and she sleeps with me.

One line, one phrase can disarm someone. People think of themselves as separate from the equations, the numbers and variables that envelope them, but it just takes the right words. An abstract input for a specific output. Tamra’s red lace panties dangle from my bed-post and I begin to think highly of myself: how many girls have I disarmed with one single phrase or action?

There is this girl who always speaks of her dead brother, who laughs at all her own jokes, who strives for loud. Who irritates the shit out of me. Who, if you listen to for long enough and pretend is funny, she will like you. Oh, and a reluctant sympathy for her family’s loss—the golden key to her heart. But to get her to stop talking, there is only one key that fits. The only strategy I have for shutting her up becomes sex.

There is this girl who rides bikes everywhere. I make the mistake of letting her ride me one night. I wake up the next day, groggy and unable to see clearly. I look at my hands. Red viscous gunk covers both the palms and backs of my hands. Is this blood? Did she fucking bleed all over me? It is more applied to me and less bled on me. I notice black on my arms. I think for a moment of chain-grease. Perhaps it is make-up, and perhaps this is her way of marking me. Claiming me. This disturbs me. I scramble for my clothes and, not seeing her anywhere make my exit as quickly as possible.

Second thought mentality settles. These are not proud memories. Especially not with Nel. I know Nel for six years before she gives me this check to cover my rent. I figure I deserve some help, all those nights I sat next to her crumpled body of tears. A repetition of, “Everything is plastic, the world is plastic.” The world is plastic.

I walk down my stairs, guided by my railing, my wall. I am exhausted, dehydrated from a night of excess in all faculties. My preference: burn out rather than rust out. Parched, I know I must reach liquid-refreshment. The refrigerated Thirst-Rockers, flavor blue that my roommate Tom purchases, seems a good solution. That childish corn-syrup. I swing the paned-window-door to the kitchen wide open and flip the switch. On the refrigerator door, there are two of four checks needed for an electricity bill due three days ago. Raiford’s check is absent. My check—absent. We can do it tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

Before I reach the syrupy blue nectar, I hear someone yelling. The yelling continues for a moment and ceases. The voices come from the street next to my yard. My shitty yard, surrounded by flimsy chicken wire and filled with a series of empty paint cans, a slouching bench, and a broken skateboard.

I insert my index and middle fingers through a crack in the blinds and separate them. Three figures stand staggered, yelling at the window. Or the person behind it—me. I step outside, half naked with people yelling, “GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE!”

I open the door and struggle with an orange alley cat. Raiford is constantly badgering us about adopting it. I sweep the cat with the side of my foot and hiss at it.

Hsss!

“Meeeow,” it pleas.

“No, goddamnit.”

I close the door behind me and look to the street.

“What’s the deal?” I ask. One of the guys is especially pissed. The other two stand and shake their heads.

“You called us fags, man.”

“No I didn’t, what are you talking about?”

“We saw your eyes!” he spits, feeling he has me nailed me with a reference to my peering through blinds. Now I take offense.

“Did you see my eyes call you a fag? Because it wasn’t me, so calm down. Why would I do that? I’m with a girl and I’m getting booze, I don’t care about you. I don’t even know you.” I feel entitled to boast half truths and show them some blunt sincerity. After all, an imposing chicken-wire fence stands between the street and my yard, protecting me from the stupid things my drunk, sex driven mind conjures. The group’s majority turns to the alleged “fag” and convinces him to leave.

I suddenly hear my name. I look around for the caller. And once again, someone loudly whispers my name. I look up and my roommate’s head pops out of the window above me. It is Raiford.

“Hey man, I called those guys fags!” flashing a Cheshire grin.

I shake my head and enter the house.

I drink the rest of the blue swill and crawl into bed next to Tamra. I look at her sleeping face, its scarred eye-brow, and think I am a decent person. Even Raiford will not hit a girl, much less break a guitar over her face. I drift with thoughts of fidelity and begin a descent into ethereal.

The corporeal behind me, affecting me, my mind turns to Raiford’s girls- Tina and Heather. Tina and Heather have never met, though they share the same man. Raiford wanders from one to the other, taking advantage of free meals, cheap love, and cigarettes. Without trying to hide his behind-the-back, under-the-table, stab-you-between-the-eyes-and-leave-you-to-bleed-all-so-I-can-prosper attitude, he manages to avoid detection. “Monogamy isn’t in my genes,” he tells me. Raiford, that prairie vole. Prairie voles are monogamous—sort of. When other vole people aren't looking, they're fucking whoever they want. Only in a social setting are those little vole fathers raising their kids with their lovely stay at home vole mothers.

For caste when eyes present.

For pleasure when eyes absent.

And here I am, doing the opposite, wanting that private life back. I remember Raiford screaming at his phone one night, telling a mutual friend that we are at some huge party. I arrogantly shake my head, lay an open palm on his shoulder and say, "Stick with me, and this is every night,” so proud of my provincial party planet. My ears pulse, pressure building. My cracked rib from another drunken night, it's there, wrapped tightly and bound with a bourbon/Budweiser cocktail. Muted from notice, like my connection to Nel. What she could say now. She could scoff at me for getting sick, for being this thin, this unhealthy.

A trip to Patient-First really nails this sentiment. Hacking up hard chunks of mucus with red streaks, throwing up bile or coagulated blood in the sink at sunset. The summer sound-- the cicada--crescendos with the dimming. I decide I should go to the doctor. His office is closed, so I must endure Patient-First. I do the insurance bullshit and step onto a scale. Beep, beep, beep. Three digital lines do 'the wave' where I expect numbers. One final beep. Electronic scales don't lie. A year ago, I weighed 185. Now, with my current lifestyle, I weigh a mere one-hundred sixty-three pounds.

The sun stains my bay windows. My eyes squint and filter the distant blaze. A jackhammer goes off somewhere in my brain and I rise.

I walk downstairs to the living room. It is a mess. “I’m sorry, dude,” a voice sags from the couch. Tom leans with his head floating somewhere between his neck and his lap, swaying. The broken LCD on his phone illuminates his crotch. He stares downward into its splintered lightning bolt. Little dots of light like stars scatter across his screen, his little galaxy. A red dot, maybe Betelgeuse, blinks in the northern hemisphere of Tom’s hand-held constellation. This informs him of a missed call.

“I tried calling you last night after you ran off with the bottle,” I tell him.

“Man, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No. No it’s not,” he gargles.

Last night, Tom pummels the right side of my head with his fist, screaming,

“You can’t just go through everything like a fucking bowling ball, you cock!”

As I carry Tamra’s beach cruiser up the stoop in the front of our corner house, I plow Tom’s face with the front wheel as he sits sipping his beer. His hand drops his phone in pursuit of becoming a weapon to use against my face. This is why he is sorry.

“It’s not a big deal, it just hurts when I yawn. Or move my head too fast. Or when I cough, or speak too loudly. I guess it’s kind of a big deal.”

“I just had a really bad weak, a lot of things happened at work to piss me off the other day. My brother got suspended from high school. Those things aren’t your fault. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I breathe. “You didn’t hit my face. My beautiful face.”

He laughs and stands, saunters over, and hugs me.

All things broken, mend. Though shaky for a few hours last night, our friendship remains, not ruined by tire treads or slight abrasions. It stands above the matted living room carpet and piles of cheap beer. It stands above the broken glass and the cardboard boxes in the corner from when we moved in and shattered a lamp. The corner of the room that promises to, even after four months of mess, one day become a dining room. The compacted, inch-thick dog hair from previous owners sticks in the cracks against the walls. This wasted house still stands, undivided. Undestroyed.

“Do you smell that?” I ask Tom, looking over my shoulder to the front door. I see droves of people pass through grimy windows, drawn by magnificent force. I head to the door and exit. I pass an impassioned phone-bound neighbor down the brick stoop. Several cop cars swerve down the street to my left, squealing. I walk, staged in front of several dozen, shirtless. Though a player in the act, I am no main attraction. Two groups of younger adults pass without notice or mention of my no shoes, no shirt policy.

Cinders and ruin swim through the air. I fall in line with everyone else, bunched and huddled, seeking excitement. Seeking something beyond the monitor, the speaker, and the image. Distractions like a bottle or a bong.

My pilgrimage ends halfway down the block. Police swarm. Little spiders spinning yellow silk. “Caution,” they warn, is advised in this area. Beyond the heap of timber and puddles of shattered glass, the alley leads to an abandoned warehouse. Where all eyes lie, an inferno lords over the towering trees. The fucking warehouse is on fire three houses from mine.

“EVERYONE GET BACK,” a cop yelp-yelp-yelp, yelp, yelps. His hands, open and forward, grasp at an invisible wall which hobbles us backward. Backward against brick, the encroaching flame in front of us.

Minutes pass and my house is inaccessible, taped off by the yellow ward. I hop the single-beamed “fence” and bolt inside. I need clothes if I am about to lose everything else.

In a rush, I yell and scream for everyone to get out, to leave, to hustle. To hurry up and make their peace. Abandon all objects and vain pursuits of material happiness. Save yourselves! I grab a shirt and sandals from the living room floor. These sandals I once lost in the river. Somehow they wash up on shore and I find them.

I run outside and a cop yells at me. My roommates scream my name. I am escorted over the yellow line like a wrestler out of a ring.

“Is everyone out of the building,” a cop inquires.

Yes, I say, everyone is out. Everything that matters is right here.

Hours later, our house remains skeletal. Wooden doors to ash, glass windows to solid goo. The news interviews Tom and edits the profanity. The news speculates. It is arson they say. Maybe. It is a group of teenagers, drunk and wily. Maybe. We call our friends, establishing new places to stay. I call Nel, the solitary person I can rely on. She lets me stay at her apartment the first night. This first night away from my new home I get a call from Raiford.

“Dude,” he stops before I say hello. “Dude, the cops just called. They found a body in our apartment.”

They find Tamra’s charred corpse trapped underneath roof beams. And I am responsible. No annoying dead brother, viscous red gunk on my hands, no debt. No reason to deserve this. I am a Barcadi 151 gas pump. Tom’s bowling ball. Tamra is dead, and, I, responsible. An object in my bed, a toy for my penis. Yesterday, nothing more. Yesterday’s today, nothing more. Today’s now, I tremble.

“Are you there?”

No.

“Hello? Dude, did you hear me? You left that fucking girl in your bed.”

The phone slides from my hand and crashes to the floor. It bounces, lays down. An uneasy voice trails to the floor with the phone.

Above, the merciless moon scans our dirty earth surface. Beyond reach, it spins its face across the heavens, irreverent.

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You'll Never Believe What Happened!

nobody@vox.com(hellojapan) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:25:37 +0000

So yesterday, since we weren't meeting up with our friends until 7, we decided to go down to Shinagawa because Cinnamon was in a running mood. She thought it would be a good day to try to race the shinkansen! We got down there pretty early so there wouldn't be too big a crowd, and she jumped down onto the train tracks when the next train pulled up. Naturally, I jumped down there too, to try to talk her out of it, because seriously, those trains go 180mph! There's no way she could outrun one of those!

Unfortunately, the train conductor saw us and pushed the "Emergency Ninja" button that all shinkansen trains in Japan are equipped with. And suddenly, a ninja appeared out of nowhere (because ninjas can do that - they're ninjas) and we engaged in combat. Too bad for us we had left our shurikens and our nunchaku at home that day. It was a pretty unfair fight, and the ninja captured us and handed us over to the station police.

Apparently, the police don't look too kindly on foreigners who jump onto the train tracks, so they booked us into the jail. While we were there, we had tea with a very nice man in the cell next to us who looked like Buddha. He gave us his business card so we can keep in touch with him. After a few hours, a guard came by and told us we had two options. Either we could pay a hefty bail or we could take our chances in a one on one sumo match with the emperor.

Naturally, since we aren't the millionaire foreigners the old guy at the palace assumed we were, we decided it would be best to fight. We played "rock paper scissors" to see who would get to be the lucky sumo wrestler, and Cinnamon won, so I was the unlucky loser and they took me to an arena to prepare for my impending fight. It was quite an ordeal there. First they made me bathe, so I wouldn't bring any dirt into the arena, then I had to change into a loincloth (because it's tradition, after all), and some guy who I guess was supposed to be my coach came and yelled at me for about half an hour. I didn't catch much of what he said, but I'm pretty sure he called me foreign scum and told me not to disgrace the emperor.

Then I was brought out to the arena and lo and behold, Cinnamon and Mr. Buddha were in the audience! Everybody was booing me, but I had a lot of fighting spirit after that yelling session earlier. The emperor was a surprisingly tiny guy, so I figured I could beat him pretty easily, especially since after eating all that fast food since I've been here, I've really bulked up (I'm a good 250lbs now).

The match was over surprisingly quickly, with me easily overtaking Emperor Scrawny McWimpPants. Afterward, he came over and congratulated me on a job well done. He said he was so impressed with my fighting style that he would allow both me and Cinnamon to go free. I thanked him for his generosity and once I had changed back into my street clothes, we were set free.

Later, we met up with the girls and had delicious meat for dinner.

Today, we called up Mr. Buddha and he said that he would be working in Shibuya in the evening, giving out free hugs near the Hachiko Exit of the station, so we should drop by. So we did. It turns out that he's actually a pretty important guy in the San-X corporation and he offered the both of us jobs at the Hello Kitty factory in Yokohama. Naturally, we both jumped on the chance to work for such a wonderful company. Needless to say, we won't be coming back to America or Barnes & Noble. Sorry, guys. You're just no match for a cute, white cat with no mouth.

Catch you all on the flipside.

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REAL Ultimate Power

nobody@vox.com(Tristan Seligmann) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:23:52 +0000

School locked down after 'ninja' sighted in woods

Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school.

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Ninja by night

nobody@vox.com(cyndi) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:34:29 +0000

As some of you have heard, I cut my left thumb a while ago while slicing a bell pepper (ouch). My nail has a huge gash in it (I'm sure it will fall off) so I've been wearing a series of band-aids.

By day I've been using the standard beige band-aids. Boring but certainly useful. After a day of typing, hand washing, showering, etc. it needs replacing, so I switch to these awesome red, ninja-covered band-aids (ahem, "adhesive bandages") that Jess sent Kenji from Texas quite a while ago. Usually they don't last through my morning shower so I switch back to the regular ones.

Sadly, I just put on the last ninja bandage. I better take a photo for posterity!

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Where wayfarers and cell phones go to die.

nobody@vox.com(Rommel Wood) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:08:02 +0000

I don't know if you heard but Central Park got 2 inches of rain this past weekend. More notably it got that much rain during the SummerStage concert I was at. Rendering both my best friend and my cell phones completely water logged and useless. (She has informed me that when I arrive home tonight I will find my phone submerged in a 5 lb. bag of rice as to draw the moisture out).

Was it worth it? Most definitely. The Born Ruffians were pretty awesome. Any band whose lead singer is actively trying to enter a Bob Dylan look-a-like contest is A-Ok with me. What of it if the drummer has a hipster dirt stash and the bassist has some man boobs? They sounded good and are from Canada, 'nuff said.

Born Ruffians

Kid Sister was next annnnd I had mixed feeling about her.

Pro: she ran on stage with a can of Coors Light in her hand.
Con: She drinks Coors Light. Gross. A 40 would have been way cooler.

Pro: She actually rapped like someones little sister begging you to play with her. Her insatiable energy could not be denied.
Con: Her DJ/BF DJ A-Trak was kind of a goober. He knows "Ye" as in Kanye...

Pro: She had hilllllarious backup dancers dressed like ninjas/pokemon characters.

Hillllarious

Kid Sister

And if this wasn't reason enough to get drenched, bust a phone, and stand shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of pimple-y, bracefaced 14 year olds...I'm sorry but I don't know what is....

Mmmm Vampire Weekend mmmmmm

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