Below Hero

I have really enjoyed your compliments in conjunction with my White Trash Man post below. Thanks for reading my mini-novel there and actually having enough energy and patience to leave a comment when you were done.
I want you pause for a moment and notice the complete lack of profanity in that whole thing. Yes, stop what you are doing, big or small, and give it a re-read. Can you see how many times I struggled, having to substitute a Sunday school approved word or phrase over the easy out of foul language? It was rough. If this blog were a mind stream as opposed to a semi-premeditated flow from brain to finger, with my knuckles and eyes acting as mediating sensors, you might not have been able to read this. You may have had to go to confession or have a visit with your local ecclesiastical leader. You may have realized how many profane words there are in the English language that you had forgotten or simply did not know existed all together.
Well thank you knuckles and thank you eyes. Thank you for helping me retain my dignity. Although this story might have been successfully more humorous with less sugar and more spice, I think it turned out all right. Better still, my family is still speaking to me and I am still welcome at church.

Dear White Trash Man

Dear White Trash Man,

You are crazy. Thank you for trying to kill me and my family last night. I meant you no harm when I tried to pass you at the end of the 2 lane zone by Albertsons. I was just frustrated that you drifted into my lane with no blinker, going about 10mph slower than the 40mph I was going as I shot through the intersection. Maybe I upset you with the high beam flash and horn honk. I'm sorry, I was trying to warn you that you are a stupid piece of white trash who doesn't know how to drive. Maybe I shouldn't pass judgment so quickly. Maybe the 2 Alaskan Huskies squeezed into your extended cab, 1980's Nissan pickup obstructed your view. Or maybe you are just a bad person. Actually I know you are a bad person. You confirmed it to me when you hit your breaks after I high beamed you and tried to pass you in the right lane. You confirmed it to me because you swerved into my lane and I had to slam on my breaks, nearly skidding into you. Luckily I play lots of driving games on my XBOX 360 because when we both skidded to a stop, you halfway sideways from trying to cut me off, I had to launch around you when you lept from the cab of your truck to scream at me and throw your hands up like a WCW wrestler. You are white trash. Your cut off sleeved red t-shirt was really cute though. It made you look even more white trash than you even probably are. I sincerely apologize for missing you as I put all 230hp of my Buick Regal Custom to the pavement trying to get away from your crazy white trashedness. No really, I wish I had hit you. I wish I had clipped your door and knocked you down. Then maybe you would have chased me as I hit 60mph in a 35 trying to get away from you. People think you're crazy. Not just me. Who gets out of their car in the middle of 1600 N. and throws their arms up while traffic wizzes by? You are a very bad man. You're lucky I was in a good mood because rather than being pissed, I was as scared as my wife. We were going to call the police on you, but we figured looking like and idiot and being white trash was punishment enough. It must be hard to be made fun of and judged at every turn for being a stupid, ugly piece of white trash that no one respects.
But let's let be bygones be bygones. The only thing I wish for you is that you stumble and fall all the way to the bottom most part of hell, but the fall doesn't quite kill you. You lay there at Satan's feet, wriggling and squirming and whining in excruciating pain begging for one of the many people pointing and laughing to come help you. You have compound fractures in every major bone and the sharp ends of your fractured femurs are poking in your spleen every time you breath. Satan looks at you and smiles as he turns up the thermostat, burning you slowly, slowly as you lay on the ground. Its a slow, dry burn that makes you flesh dry out before it starts to melt or catch fire.
And just in case that isn't enough, I hope all of your children's teeth rot out because you don't know what toothbrush is. I hope their teeth ache with rotten, needle-piercing pain every time they drink the orange soda that your ugly, dirty, white trash wife serves with your microwaved dinners and Manwich sloppy-joe lunches. I also hope you are all the victims of a train crash as you probably live inches from the tracks. I hope a fuel tanker gets stuck on the rail road crossing next to your house and when the Union Pacific comes through town, it doesn't slow down. Instead it speeds up and hunkers down for the most important train accident in history. This accident sends a flaming fuel tanker into your 3 bedroom shack that thankfully houses every generation of your family, including blood relatives and otherwise. Yes, even those "illegitimate" children you love to yell at. When the flaming tanker hits, your entire home explodes, ending the pain that your neighborhood has to endure because you live there and bring their housing prices down. The pain that we all feel having to watch you on Jerry Springer and Maury ends. The pain of having to stand behind your cellulite pocked, white trash wife's butt in the line at the grocery store goes away. The pain of smelling your B.O. in the elevator on the rare times you make it into civilization ends. The pain of having to drive behind you and watch you bust out World Wrestling moves in the middle of the street as I squeal my tires around you ends. It all ends. You end.
Burn in hell my friend. Thanks for almost killing my family last night.

with belated affection,
Logan Tanner

As If You Thought You'd Had Enough

Just when you think you've had your fill of blog posts, I reach in and rip the stitches out of your blog stuffed, gastric-bypassed stomach and feed you more. (That was a strangely disturbing analogy.)

My foot/feet have been in the news a little lately and apparently they are trying to keep the PR ball rolling. All press is good press right?

This weekend, I got fed up with one of those bi-fold, slatted, accordian closet doors that people use when they dont have room for a full swing out, normal door. I had pulled it off for Kristen to paint last weekend and got fed up with it just sitting around. So I says to myself, I says, "I watch Flip This House, I think I can fix this." So I pull the door out of the corner and start "handymanning" away at getting it reinstalled. Well if you've ever taken anything apart that you couldn't get back together, you'll know how I felt. It just wasn't going to remount. Apparently the floor had raised up a 1/4 in or so over the past week because the door was just too tall all of a sudden to fit vertially. So I did the only thing a sane and rational person would do in an unfixable situation like this....

...I kicked it. Really hard. And just to be sure it knew how upset I was, I punched it and threw it to the floor, ultimately breaking it. Not once, or twice, but three times broke it. When I threw it to the ground it kinda just poo-pooed like a little school girl and tapped out. When I punched it, I knocked about 4 slats out of the...er, slatted front of it, breaking it quite badly and when I kicked it, well I just really hurt myself more than anything. Pretty painfully in fact. That was probably the only part of it I regret. It still hurts. Oh, I guess I regret screaming profanities and slamming it into the floor moments before our landlord knocked on our door to give us the power bill. But he's about 80 years old and as cute as a kitten, so I doubt his hearing is as sharp as the pain piercing through my foot right now.

Why You Might Love Me...Or Why Not

If you don't know why I am posting this piece of poetry, or poetry in general, then you need to learn how to read blogs. You have to read them in reverse order to understand them chronologically you block head. Nonetheless, here we go.

Why You Little
Context-Write a poem as if speaking to someone.
by Logan Tanner

You pooped again. No, not you are pooped, I mean you actually pooped.
Why?
Why again is the better question.
You love that spot. It’s like your Mecca of pooping.
You poop, I scoop. You pee, I dab. You run, I chase.
Don’t you ever get tired? How do you not realize that Ikea rugs are not for pooping.
I toss you into the kitchen like a fluffy granite curling stone and you turn to me and smile.
You are, I have concluded, stupid. You probably don’t even know the obvious difference,
between bowling and curling you silly dog.
I said curling, just for your information, because a curling stone slides across the surface…
Kinda like you sliding into the kitchen and onto the rug (which you pee on too)
narrowly missing the dishwasher.
Then, like I said, you look back at me and I melt.
I hate you.
I hate you for that.
I can’t even see your eyes because your bear claw-bangs and cheek-beard,
Both curl up in unison over your eyes from above and below like the jaws of a Venus fly trap.
You…you adorable piece of crap you.
Now if only we could get your brother to behave even half as good as you.

Near-Severed Foot Update

Thought I'd fill you in on the satus of my recovery. If you remember correctly, and of course you do, I recently almost had my foot chopped off by a rouge screen door that swung shut at nearly 2mph. So here is the updated photo. I DO NOT reccommend you open it to full screen resolution as it is pretty fetching disgusting when blown up that big.

Creativity Flowing

Honestly, I was just feeling kinda bad that I 1) Left those nasty heel photos up for so long and 2) Hadn't posted something of greater interest since then. So, in lieu of the fact that I am now in a creative writing class for my English minor, I figured I'd toss up some of my more monumental pieces as of late. They suck, but just be glad I'm not making you look at those bloody heels anymore.

The Man and The Bench
Context- Write a poem about someone you are watching.
by Logan Tanner


If only he knew.
If only he knew I was watching.
If only he knew the pain I was enduring to watch him feed himself.
If only this bench was designed for my butt and not generically engineered.
With formed, black, curly iron and planks of faded, splintery wood, it sat.
I sat.
We sat and watched this man.
Greasy napkin in hand, encapsulating a microwaved mess of caloric goodness.
His contentment was evident, as was his oblivion of his audience.
Has he no shame?
Have I no shame?
Neither of us has shame as he stuffs his face and I stare on in transfixed awe.
I love it.
He loves it.
And when he realizes how much I am loving it, his canvas of smiles and food filled pleasure goes blank.
He checks his watch.
I check my watch.
Mine is broken, but his is not.
Neither of us really has any need to go as both of us rise and leave.
Opposite directions.
Equal embarrassment.
If only he knew how embarrassed I was.
If only I knew how embarrassed he was.
If only we knew.
If only that bench had been more comfortable.

On The Threshhold of Death's Screen Door

You know how I am always "almost" dying? Well the trend continues. I nearly had my right foot lopped off a couple nights ago when our screen door careened out of control and sliced into my right ankle on the back of my foot.

I screamed. Holy lleh did I scream. It was one of those things that hurts REALLY, really bad at first and then you expect it to subside quickly (some choose to continue the drama for effect) and you calm down. Well I was expecting that...but it kept hurting and hurting and hurting and then stinging and stinging. Not stinging like the way a dragon bite feels but in a different way...kinda like, "hey, there is a chunk of skin hanging off my foot," kind of way.

Well, have a look for yourself and see what you would call it.

What Does Sucksess Look Like?

It looks like this. This is what I looked like after approx. 10 hours of working on our 1986 Toyota Camry. You remember the one right? The one we paid $600 for that ran for 6 months straight without any major issue. Anyway, it konked out 100% about a month ago on campus and after having my dad tow me to the house and then waiting for my buddy to get home from Philly to help me out, it was time for open heart surgery.

We tore at it, thinking/knowing there was something wrong with the timing belt. After finally ripping her open, we discovered that the impeller blade on the water pump had seized and when it did, it ripped a bunch of teeth off the timing belt.

Long story short, we finished up around 2am and then grilled some burgers and had ice cream til 3am. It was fun.

So thanks to Adam Deibert for doing all the work while I pretty much looked busy. And thanks to Amber for helping Kristen paint the whole front room in one evening. We love you guys. (Cheesy but requisite.)

100th Post! Prepare to be let down.

This is a big one. This would be huge if anyone cared but me. 

The 100th Blog Post!

We've had joy, we've had fun, we've had seasons in the sun, but the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time...

I didnt write that. It's from Terry Jacks and boy did he have it right. 

I wanted to post up something rediculously stellar and positive, but life has delt me two, deftly landed blows to the proverbial crotch. First, I discovered that I have a cowlick (?) on the back of my head that causes my hair to stand straight out from my head when my hear is cut short.

"Well just let your hair grow out a bit then Logan so it will lay itself flat," you say?

Well aren't you a clever one...you idiot. Don't you remember from my other pathetic and self degrading post that I am thinning/balding on top?! Do you really want me to walk around like a Franciscan Monk? Like Friar Tuck? Thank you but I'll pass and keep the whole crop up there of the shorter sort. 

Second...well I've gone and forgotten the second. I got so wound up in the first, I completely forgot what else I wanted to complain about. How can this be? I never run out of things to complain about. Well whatever, you feel my pain. I better get back inside. I'm blogging on my front porch (god bless peaceful Springville) and the bugs are starting to get to me. The irony of that situation is I came out here to escape the bugs in my house. I found a baby cricket sitting on my ankle not a moment ago in the office which I promptly tried to destroy in a fit of spooked rage. Then I opened up 2 drawers of my Rubbermaid...er, drawers and found 2 more dead bugs, one in each drawer. It's weird, but I kinda don't mind it. I like the company. 

Negligence...it ain't so bad.

Yeah, I've only had 3 days of school and I'm already in a state of epileptic shock. I have gas and cramps all day and have no time to eat. Weird combo. I feel like I need Pamprin or something. Isn't that an anti-cramp, PMS thing? Whatever. Bottom line is, I'm not doing so well. I got really familiar with the idea of summer livin' and now I am facing the harsh realities of a school driven life requiring responsibility and attentiveness.
So, therein and thusly lies the problem; when do I have time to work on the blog? How could I neglect it, you and by association, my favorite creative outlet? This is my commitement to you: I will not let you down. I just won't. I might let my grades, my heath and my marriage suffer, but I want let you (the blog and its attendees) down.
Amen.
Goodbye.