caliper wake

I can’t wait until I have a son so that I can text him: “I am sorry but life will never ever get better and you are always going to be tired and sad and you will eventually die. All of this is in inevitable. See you for dinner.”

I saw a drake get smashed by a Grand Am
as its female mate flew off.

I was horrified at the pain the lady bird must feel,
but then realized it was just a duck.

I then cried out in my head,
“Oh my god, you have no idea how sad you should feel.”

Over here is where I fell asleep for the first time.

If you look closely you can see my insides spread out across the linoleum.

I THINK I DECIDED I WANT TO BE A WRITER. I WILL SIT ON THIS HARDWOOD FLOOR WITH A PEN AND A PIECE OF PAPER YOUR MOM GOT ME FOR CHRISTMAS. I WILL NOT BE HEMMINGWAY NOR MCCARTHY. I WILL NOT BE GOOD AT ALL. I WILL NOT BE GOOD BUT I PROMISE I WILL AT LEAST TRY AND WHEN I DIE THERE WILL MAYBE BE AT LEAST ONE PERSON WHO REMEMBERS ME AS SOMETHING OTHER THAN A GHOST.

I JUST REMEMBERED THAT WHEN I WAS TEN I MADE MY MOM CRY BECAUSE I WOULDN’T STOP POUTING AFTER WAL-MART SOLD OUT OF FURBYS AND I HATE MYSELF.

I am in the process of ‘revamping’ my website. I added a tab for my published work. Here’s to hoping it starts to grow.

I am also going to try and make my tumblr not as shitty. I feel it’s really shitty.

I am listening to Bloc Party. I feel like I am perpetually stuck in 2006.

I was rejected from Pangur Ban Party for the second time. I reread the story that got rejected and I feel that the rejection was warranted.

I am two pages into my e-book. It seems ok.

I wrote a piece about the Aurora and Milwaukee shootings and submitted it to Thought Catalog. It will get rejected by silence but that’s alright.

Ain’t nothin’ but a thang.

Also, New Wave Vomit opened submissions again. Awesome. 

How many mass shootings have to happen before Second Amendment supporters change their minds? We are human beings, modern people living in the most technologically advanced culture ever known to the world, and yet, we kill each other with weapons that are readily available and easy to obtain.

Gun supporters first claim is that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Part of this is true, people do kill people, with their bare hands, with swords, poisons, grenades and dubstep music(ba-dum-chi), but guns are very much part of this modern culture of violence. Humans kill each other, and have been since the beginning of our species, so why would we make guns, whose sole purpose is to kill(you can’t tell me handguns are for hunting), so easy to obtain?

Life is hard, people lose it, the gunmen in Wisconsin lost it and shot up a bunch of brown people along with a police officer. When an angry person who wants to kill people can buy a box of bullets, a six pack of beer, and some Kleenex to clean his gun at Wal-Mart(always low prices), it’s time to look at ourselves and revaluate who we want to be as a society.

The cowards in Wisconsin didn’t use knives or baseball bats or swords or cannons to kill people, they used quick, efficient guns to take innocent lives. “BUT THE POLICE OFFICER USED A GUN TO STOP IT!!!” the autistic gun control lobby says. Sure! Absolutely he did, because he is a police officer, trained to protect innocent people from the slime of society who are allowed their “freedom” of carrying a weapon(even concealed, thanks Gov. Walker). It is different.

We need to change, to renounce our violent, primitive ways. We need to become human beings.

It is 5:42AM and I have just decided that I am returning to blogging. I am returning to writing. I have been trying to be a regular person who plays video games and goes to bars and is sociable and likeable and makes friends. This is not what I want to do with my life so I am coming back to the internet. Things make sense here; they are safe.

I am writing an e-book. The working title of it is “Diablo 3.” I’m not sure what will happen in it. I don’t know how to make a PDF.

Noah Cicero is in South Korea. I want him to come back to America so we will be on Facebook at the same time and I can ask him things.

I will be applying to grad schools in the fall. I don’t know how to do this. I have to ask my professors for letters of recommendation. I feel this will be awkward and horrible.

I am working on finding a voice for my Twitter account. I don’t know what works and what doesn’t. I feel like Twitter is an “uncharted frontier” in ways, but irrelevant and overdone in others. I think I might just tweet in all capital letters, things seem funnier that way.

I remember when I was 12 years old at a Magic: The Gathering tournament, one guy made fun of a fat kid for having a Nirvana patch ironed onto his sweatshirt. He said, “Look out for that guy, he likes Nirvana.” 

I didn’t know who Nirvana was and laughed because I was 12 years old. 

I thought of a funny joke.

Q: How many scare quotes does it take to screw in a light bulb? 
A: ‘Fuck you’

I started writing a blogpost titled “Notes of a person who wants followers on Twitter and hits on his blog and to be recognized on the internet by strangers,” but the only thing I wrote was, “My name is Justin Drifka Ferguson and I am lonely.” 

I watched six episodes of Mad Men today. 

Had to use a plunger on my sink. 

Drain was full of old pasta salad that the cat knocked into the sink. 

Found some incense I bought five years ago at the import store downtown. 

I wanted to light some but they were all broken up into little pieces. 

I had to keep lighting another one every fifteen seconds but at least my house smells like a head shop now. 

2007 never seemed so far away. 

I feel so fucked all the time. 
My cat tore up paper towel all over the house.
I don’t even have the motivation to clean it up.
Something is wrong with me.
I can’t feel happy.
Israel is going to bomb Iran.
People are going to die.
I forgot to take the trashcan off the curb for three days.
I’m worried my neighbors will call the city.
People are tweeting about Facebook buying Instagram,
While Rick Santorum dropped out of the race.
There are no good feelings anymore.
Everyone is on the verge of killing themselves.
People are deleting their Facebooks.
That’s how fucked the world is,
people don’t even want to connect with each other anymore. 
I have no money, no one was any money. 
Everyone goes to Wal-Mart.
No one can pay for gas.
If Wal-Mart figured out a way to give people cheap gas,
they would rule the world.
What would it be like to own Wal-Mart?
How much money and prestige would you have?
Life must be incredible.
People who own Wal-Mart don’t need to buy lottery tickets.
Everyone morning they win the lottery by being alive.
I read something that said CEO’s of companies like Wal-Mart make like
$1,000 a minute.
It takes me weeks to make $1,000.
People are going to die soon,
I have this intense feeling of wanting to go home
but I’m already here.  

I saw God once outside of a liquor store. His head was huge, like a neanderthal’s but with a touch of down’s syndrome mixed with a hint of his mother drinking a bottle of whiskey nightly while he was in the womb.

He stood there, looking at me, his face contorted and horrific, his arms tired and mangled looking, his muscles weak and lame.

“I want you to kill yourself,” he told me.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because I think it would be fun for both of us.”

“How would it be fun for me? And why for you? I don’t want to die.”

“Don’t be a faggot,” he said, stepping off the curb into the liquor store parking lot. “You want to die, you’re a shitty person. Your writing is terrible, no one wants to read it. You aren’t any good. You stepped on ants when you were little, and your mom bought you a magnifying glass that you used to set them on fire. Remember? You liked to hear them pop.”

“Everyone did that when they were little,” I said back. 

“But they learned something when they did it. Their parents told them that all of God’s creatures, my creatures, deserve to live. You just got bored of it. You started masturbating and playing video games.” 

“I know that now, I mean, wait. How do you know all of this about me?” 

“I’m God, Justin,” he said taking a few steps further into the parking lot. 

I was confused and upset. 

“Where are you going, asshole?” I said. “You can’t just say this shit and walk away.” 

“Hey, fuck you, man,” he said back. “You aren’t listening. I think you should kill yourself. You aren’t going to live much longer anyway. I want you to go to Hell. I want you to be set on fire and drink gasoline and other terrible shit. Fuck you, Justin.” 

He took a few steps more. 

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get going. Do us all a favor. Seriously, Justin. End it.” 

An SUV started honking his horn in the parking lot while it sped down the aisle outside of the liquor store. It seemed to pick up speed right before it smashed into God, his gigantic, fucked head hitting the glass as his body flew into the air. 

I saw God once. 

I’ve been sending tweets to R.L. Stine in the hopes that he will notice me. For what, I have no idea. I just need validation. I need validation from R.L. Stine.

When my mother bore me from her womb, I’m not sure if this is what she had in mind for her son. Did she know that I would one day sit at my computer and type juvenile things to a middle-aged Jewish author searching for the answers to life? Did my mom know what Twitter was 22 years ago?

I think I had some Goosebumps books. Every twentysomething probably did. Their parents thought, “This is good for them, they will read these books and will be ‘into’ reading the rest of their lives.” I think I read a Goosebumps book but I don’t remember it. I think it had a green hand on the cover of it.

I feel like R.L. Stine and I have a shared past, a shared existence. My mother bought me his books and I never read them. This existence is unfinished, it is burdensome. There is knowledge and know-how that I’ve left untouched and I seek retribution.

One day, I see myself being successful and relevant. This might be a long ways away but I can feel it. I can feel myself sitting in a cafe or bookshop and having a girl come up to me with something I’ve written and asking, “Could you sign this J.D.? I love your work.”

I will smile, sit down my coffee and look up at her. “Absolutely little lady,” I’ll say.

I will scribble my name and feel good about myself. She will be excited. Maybe we will take a picture together. On her way out, she will turn around and ask me, “What was your biggest influence?” and I will say, “R.L. Fucking Stine.” And she will say, “That’s what got me into reading, that book with the green hand on the cover. My mom bought it for me. What was your favorite book by him?” And I will say, “I never read any of them sweetheart.” and feel depressed.

R.L. Stine and I have business to take care of.

It has consumed me.

There is madness in every direction, at every hour, and it all has to do with him.

I want a lot of shit.

I want a Macbook.

I want to lose 20 pounds.

I want to be funny and witty.

I want hits on my blog.

I want to be part of something.

I can only watch amateur porn. It’s more real(or something).

I want the girls to be a little overweight with big natural breasts and stretch marks. I want their vaginas to be a little hairy, like the sex wasn’t planned, like their boyfriends came over with a new video camera and they were like, “Ok, sure, just don’t put it on the internet.”

You better hope to God that I don’t see a professional cut while I’m jerking off or I will rip out your fucking lungs.

I want the lighting to be bad.

I want to see things from the second, or even third best possible angle.

I want all of this to mean something.

I want to be Don Draper.

I want to be published in every single lit blog.

I want people to read lit blogs.

I want people to think I’m overexposed.

I want to be overrated and diluted.

I want to find people who like the same things that I do but don’t really like the same things I do, they just like them because I’m somebody. They just like them because I am aggressive enough to make them like them.

I want to get drafted and go fight for my country. I want to kill brown people and really mean it. I want their deaths to mean that I am protecting my country.

I want us to bomb Iran and have Israeli flags fly next to American ones.

I want a Macbook.

I want a lot of innocent people to die.

I want to go to sleep with the TV on and watch CNN and be scared and switch to Fox News and be reassured.

I want to sleep knowing that America is the best and that despite it’s stretch marks and hairy pussy, I want to show the whole world that intolerance and hate are normal.

I want to vote for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich and be happy about it.

I want to feel like I’m waging a war against contraception and abortion.

I want those things to be the first things I think of when I wake up.

I want to carry a sign.

I want a Macbook.

I want to feel God watching me while I call in airstrikes and vote for anyone who isn’t President Obama.

I want to feel scared of the unknown.

I want to be reassured that Heaven is a place and that I am going to it.

I want to hate liberals.

I want to see good deeds and tolerance as disconcerting and stifling.

I want a Macbook.

I want to hate me.

Extreme rough draft of Part 1 of “Call me casket.”

Sitting by myself
Smoking cigarette
Feel alone
Want to find God
Read book about God
People are dying and coming back
Modern medical technology
Can save dead people
They come back
Stories of heaven
Finding God
Want to find God

I saw it happen. Watched it live on CNN. A flash then nothing, they cut the feed. Anderson Cooper offered condolences for a few seconds then everything went dead. I took a Xanax and tried to calm down. My prescription is low. I should have gotten a refill before the Apocalypse started.

Fuck.

Walgreens is probably closed too.

Fuck again.

I tried to read for a bit before bed. Mind still reeling from the news, making it hard to concentrate. Fuck it I’m going to bed. I sleep. Not well mind you, but eventually I succumb. A good Ambien induced dreamless sleep, just like nature intended.

The next day I turn on the television but find nothing. I wonder if Anderson Cooper is still in there offering condolences. I wonder what’s happening on Fox News. How long before the ‘Fox and Friends’ fucks resort to cannibalism? Or how long before O’Reilly’s smug cunt realizes this has nothing to do with the liberal elite? How long before he realizes this is exactly what he wanted?

I take another Xanax and calm down. I look out the window. No looters yet. Maybe Walgreens is open now. Maybe I can break in.

Read the rest at Caliper Wake.

A short story of mine called “Christmas Carols, Chrysanthemums, and the Callous Characteristics of Christopher Kringle” is being published in the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point annual literary magazine. 

I’m scared of Israel attacking Iran.

I am trying to sketch out a novel about ghost hunting.

Reading Noah Cicero’s The Human War. 

Cat’s are playing in the toilet water. 

Nearly all of the dishes are dirty.

I was going to write a short story about lottery winners but found that there was a 60 Minutes episode containing everything I was going to say. 

Thinking about writing it anyway. 

Feel like anyone who would watch 60 Minutes probably doesn’t own a computer. 

St. Patrick’s day was your favorite

I don’t even think Mom would have

let you drink

maybe your dad

I remember waking up

at like 6:00 AM

on March 16th one year

to you saying,

“Top of the morning to yah”

It was loud, you were wearing one of

those green hats

I told you, St. Patrick’s day isn’t

until tomorrow

You died like four years later

I would have let you figure it out

on your own

if I knew you were

going to die

sorry, brother

Tell me that I am valuable.

Tell me that I’ll one day be famous and break hearts and never even have mine touched.

Tell me that my life means something, that every word I’ve said has made an impact, and that I will do great things like fly an airplane or build walls of sandbags to keep out the water.

Tell me that God and Christ are watching me, that when I die they will be there, holding my lungs and heart in their hands like a child’s balloon. I want them to find me, I would give anything for them to show themselves, to make me calm, to give me peace.

Tell me that you love me with all your heart and that I am perfect and wonderful and mean the world to you. Tell me it’s ok I’ve fucked up so many times. Show me kindness and beauty.

Tell me that the world is a merciful place that will forgive me for turning my back on the needy and helpless. Let me know that it’s ok, that I’m one of them, that the universe will fight for me when I close my eyes for the last time.

Tell me that money doesn’t matter, that hope and the will to do good things is what makes a person human, is what makes them alive and full of grace.

Tell me you worry.

Tell me that forever isn’t long enough for us. Fight with me until the end, when terror and blight absorb us until we are plastic shells, a petroleum based ghost of misfortune and regret.

Tell me you’ll always hold my hand.

Tell me I’m worth your time.

Feel like the longer you keep mistakes around, the less apparent they become.

The longer you live with a stain on the carpet or a scratch on the hardwood floor, the more invisible it becomes.

I feel the same can probably be said for relationships. The more fucked up, the more inevitable the end seemingly is, the longer the relationship lasts.

There is a stain, a vomit pile that covers you when you sleep together, when you eat together, when you watch ~500 episodes of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix; but you can never see it.

You can’t smell it rotting, you can’t smell the vodka, cranberry-ashtray clusterfuck
covering your tongue and your dick when you put it in them.

The stain is invisible, transparent, odorless, colorless. The stain is carbon monoxide and it will absolutely kill you.

read the rest

Today I felt scared to open the door to get the mail.

I heard the mailman.

I didn’t shovel, felt scared of him, felt like he would be mad I didn’t shovel.

It’s March. I refuse to shovel in March.

Life is not supposed to include shoveling in March.

I put an obstacle in the mailman’s way.

My sidewalk is an obstacle and I’m scared he will scold me.

One time I got “didn’t shovel sidewalk” written on a piece of mail.

I’m pretty sure that is illegal, but it scared me.

I felt like the mailman cut off a horse’s head and put it in my bed.

I felt like screaming.

Coppola told me to do it again.

Felt like I wasn’t trying hard enough.

Felt like I wasn’t giving ‘it’ my all.

Felt like my sidewalk wasn’t shoveled.

I just deleted my Fantasy Football 2011 app off my iPhone. It is no longer 2011 and there is no more football. I also deleted the Wordfeud app. I downloaded it to play with my dad. We played four games over a period of two weeks. I won three and he won one. I cheated by using Google. I think he cheated for the game he won. I feel like iPhone apps were created to make people feel lonely. They were designed to give people false hope of connection, of companionship. I once bought an app for $2.99. It was the only app I ever purchased, a strategy game that I thought might help me pass the time. There was never anyone online to play the game with me and I deleted it after three weeks of thinking, “more people will pay $2.99 for this.” They never did.

It’s just chocolate, bros.

Gabby Gabby’s e-book, “Holly Go Lightly”, made me think about my relationships with girls, past and present. I feel like if anything I read makes me travel back to the time I was 13 and first trying to get girlfriends and understand my girlfriends and analyzing what let me get a girlfriend, it’s doing something integral, something that makes me question my actions, past and present.

Gabby’s story is written both confidently and self-consciously. Gabby makes me feel like she is completely uncomfortable with herself, while at the same time completely comfortable with that admission, that the clashing worlds of female and male is something she can never understand, that she is just as upset with past mistakes relating to the opposite gender as I am.

“I bike over to his apartment and
he’s standing in the doorway with lube.”

I once walked from my house to my ex-girlfriend’s house in the freezing cold. I didn’t wear a jacket. I could have driven my car. I didn’t, because I wanted to show her that I was sorry, that I was fucked up and didn’t understand what to do. I haven’t thought about this in five years until I read “Holly Go Lightly.” There is something inside of all of us, both male and female, something like these stories of absolute obliteration of ones ego in order to feel like everything is alright for just one moment. This story makes me feel like Gabby hasn’t had one of these moments in quite a long time.

Read the rest here. 

Felt thirsty, went to gas station.

Deb was working. ~60 years old. Big scabs on her arms. Greasy hair. Works the night shift. Has to use tongs to grab my cigarettes from the plastic case.

I like her. She asks me if I need ‘smokes’ and remembers which brand. She doesn’t care that I don’t look her in the eye.

She had hip surgery last summer. She is overweight and moves slowly. Coffee machine starts beeping at midnight, probably to remind who’s ever working to make new coffee. Sometimes I go in at bar close and the machine’s still beeping because Deb can’t change it fast enough before another customer comes in. The beeping is really loud and I feel bad for her but never offer to help.

I just want my cigarettes and Cherry Coke Zero.

I think when she dies I will go to her funeral by myself. I will remember all the one minute interactions we had together. There are probably ~100 of these one minute interactions. Her family will be there and remembering her for the Thanksgiving dinners she cooked. I will remember her for her tongs and scabs, the piercing coffee pot alarm and our lack of eye contact.

I wasn’t quite asleep, just clutching my iPhone in my hand, my eyes closed, my body squished completely against the wall.

I wanted to write a blog post the next day, was thinking about ideas.

I thought, “Mallory Whitten.”

Then I thought about us standing together in the prom scene from Napoleon Dynamite.

She is wearing a big dress and her hair looks nice.

We are standing by the bleachers, looking at everyone dancing on the gymnasium floor.

She turns and looks at me with a face that I can only describe as ‘horrifying.’

She shouts, staring right into my eyes, “GLAMOUR SHITZ,” in a way that draws out the ‘Z’ sound.

At that moment, with me laying on my bed, hand clutched around my iPhone, I was confused. I didn’t know what those words meant or why she would say them to me.

At that moment I hated Mallory Whitten. I had never met her before. Why would she call me that? But maybe she didn’t say ‘GLAMOUR SHITZ’ to me, maybe she was calling someone else that.

I didn’t hate her anymore, but felt bad for whoever she called that. I thought, “Mallory Whitten is kind of a bitch.”

But maybe it wasn’t an insult.

Maybe it meant something else, something I didn’t know, something I’ll never know.
Maybe it was my brain telling me something.
Maybe Mallory and I are psychic together.
Maybe we are twins, separated at birth.
Maybe GLAMOUR SHITZ is a sign from the universe.

www.caliperwake.com is now open to submissions.

With school and essays about Middle Eastern history, I don’t have enough time to contribute enough content by myself to make this web space worthwhile, so I am opening Caliper Wake to submissions.

Send me your poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays, tweets, blog posts, books, text messages, Facebook chats, Skype chats, Gmail chats, thoughts, screenplays, interviews, reviews, and  screen-shots of anything mentioned. If I can inject it into the world wide web through text, it will be considered.

E-mail submissions to justdferguson@gmail.com

E-mail me words as .doc, .odt, or .rtf. E-mail screen-shots of words as .jpeg, .png, or .gif.

Authors will retain all rights to their work.

What if Rick Santorum was Asian?

People wouldn’t make fun of his name except in an ironic, pseudo-racist way by people who vote Democrat and aren’t actually racist.

People would consider his propensity for really hating birth control and gay marriage as a ‘cultural thing,’ not as a privileged white man overstepping his boundaries.

A splinter group of the Tea Party would rename themselves the Green Tea Party.

There would be articles on Gawker about his hair style and love of Asian pop music describing him as “unique,” and a “breath of fresh air,” something that sets him apart from the rest of the Republican candidates.

About 20% of the audience watching his debates wouldn’t be able to understand what he is saying.

There would be political analysts on CNN who would call his mixed marriage “brave.”

Fox News would completely ignore his campaign at first but eventually devote 30% more airtime towards him after Asian-Americans boost ratings to all-time highs.

A MSNBC analyst would be suspended two weeks for saying, “His fortune must have read ‘Bring up Romneycare if you want to prosper,’” while describing a particularly strong showing by Santorum in a debate.

#SantorumSquid would trend on Twitter for three weeks after a particularly damning photo is released showing Santorum slurping down an endangered species of squid. For the next 300 years, political analysts would use the term ‘squid’ as a way to describe hard evidence of a political candidate doing something illegal.

Many literary blogs would feature fiction stories involving Santorum’s rich cultural history. 90% of them would include Santorum committing suicide with a samurai sword.

South Park would have a two part episode featuring Santorum as City Wok’s new manager.  It would be quoted by high school students for three weeks.

Santorum’s wife would write a Redbook article on how eating Asian cuisine allowed her to lose 30 pounds.

Barack Obama would win 60% of the popular vote. Political analysts would consider it a “landslide victory.” Santorum would give fiery concession speech and then commit suicide