I was writing up a budget report at work this afternoon when the friendly facilities worker popped her head into my cubicle to ask me if I had any garbage to throw out. I handed her my trash can and thanked her. “You’re welcome, kiddo,” she called over her shoulder as she moved on to…
Category: Human Condition
KZ Gets Physical
I caught a terrible cold over the Thanksgiving weekend. My shoulders and back muscles are suffering through a familiar soreness, the kind of pain you would normally feel the day after a hard workout at the gym. Sometimes I’ll feel cold, and sometimes I’ll need to open all of the windows in the apartment in…
“For a Saint” – Part IV
Their machinery was too much for you, oh fallen saint oh living Dream, oh healing life a love denied through faceless, insidious plague Yet in lack of limbs and human warmth in lack of breath and mortal sense though rooms may stand in lonesome depth and though sin may stand to dwell again in absence…
Sarcasm and Sincerity Preceding Halloween
Here we have it, friends. This is my Halloween tribute to my dearly departed grandfather. I call it, “The Most Sarcastic Jack-O-Lantern of 2010”. “But KZ,” some of you are probably thinking, “that pumpkin doesn’t look very sarcastic to me.” For those of you not in the know, the name of my pumpkin is a…
Messages from the Dark
Inexplicably, I woke up this morning with a large scratch running lengthwise down my chest and stomach. It wasn’t there before I went to bed last night. My friends, if you didn’t believe me before about the authenticity of my previous ghost wound, then get a load of this. Yeah, yeah, I know — I’m…
Fear of the Dark and Subsequent Scars
For a good while during my early childhood, it never occurred to me that the darkness of night was something to be afraid of. Back then, I had no idea that malevolent spirits lingered in the shadows, or that vampires and demons flourished under the cover of night. How could I have known that spectral…
The Stranger Inside
One of my favorite stand-up comedians, Emo Philips, tells a relatively benign joke that kind of creeps me out whenever I think about it: “I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.” The connection between the brain, consciousness, and human…
Crude Physicality
The mysteries of life and existence reveal their truths to us in many ways. I suppose that’s the appeal of staying alive — the romance belying the promise of unraveled complexities. Yet while the answers tantalize us from eternities of near horizons, the mysteries of life have a way of disappearing when you deconstruct…
Survival, Boredom, and Other Incomplete Thoughts
Just beneath the banality of our boring and domestic daily experiences, our lives are predicated on a primal war for survival. If you have a hard time reconciling that fact to your own life, then try giving up food and water for a full day, and then reevaluating your worldview afterwards over a turkey sandwich…
Retroactive Self-Loathing
Sorry for the silence, friends. I haven’t been in the proper state of mind lately to post something worth reading up here. After this kind of dry spell lasts for more than two weeks, I start to get nervous. I feel like a desperate rent-a-clown at a children’s party scrambling to put on a show…