I was at the annual meeting of the Secular Student Alliance o’er in Columbus, OH. It was Saturday night, turn Sunday morning. We just finished up having a neat-o party at the Buffalo Wild Wings, where I chatted with a number of very groovy people and enjoyed Labatt Blue responsibly. A group of us were walking back to the dorms where we were holed up for the weekend, when someone with a couple of ranks in Knowledge(Local) pointed out that there was an Insomnia Cookies a few blocks away.

“Oooo… Insomnia! We have to get some!” said Jen (who is not to be confused with Jenny), because she always gets nostalgic after a few drinks.

So we walk down the street, and as we approached the UDF o’er on the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk, this blue beater sedan slows down — CRACK — then speeds off.

I grab the side of my left leg.

“Uph. I’ve been shot.” I said. “Pretty sure it was just a BB gun though.”

Jen looks back and smiles, thinking that I was recounting one of my wild stories to someone else,  unaware that one was happening right then, and that she was a character in it.

It felt like being cracked with a giant rubber band, like in high school we tied rubber bands to other rubber bands repeated the process again and again then tied knots in the end until we had some 30 foot rubber band to crack jokers with. The shot didn’t hurt that bad, and that terrified me. Long ago, I learned that the more horrific the injury, the less it hurts. A shoulder dislocation feels several orders better than a Charlie horse.

I’ve been shot at from cars before. Once was by Stewart Center about a year earlier, when some punks in a beater station wagon hit me on the inside of my right thigh. I was pretty pissed, as the shot was danger-close to hitting me in my bathing-suit place. Still, it wasn’t that bad, only like two-pumps or so, and I just kind of went about my day, because I was really busy that day for some reason. I also was in another drive-by late one Sunday night while walking around Purdue, but that doesn’t count because they just had Super Soakers. Had to take a knee, I was laughin’ so hard. So were they! Those wacky guys!

Anywho, since my friends had no real intention of stopping, I hobbled on for another two blocks or to Insomnia Cookies, but it was closed, just like how it’s not supposed to be. We were all pretty depressed. Then whoever had Knowledge(Local) pointed out there was this stomp-ass donut shop a few blocks away. I look at my leg and don’t see a giant blood stain, so I hobble along.

We get to the donut shop. I buy peanut-coated donut for $0.95. It was totally clutch. I ask if they have a bathroom, they send me to one in the back of the kitchen. I drop trou to get the lay of the land.

Sho’nuff, there was a hole in my leg, right where the hole in my pants was. It seemed bigger than a BB; in fact, it looked to be the right size as a .22, and that’s bad. There was bleeding from the surface, but it was a slow creep, like a scraped knee, or a road rash. There was blood on my underpants, but interestingly enough, the only holes were the ones placed there by the manufacturer intended for my legs. Since the shot went through my pants, but not my underpants, it became clear to me that it had to be a BB, because they don’t sell any bulletproof shit at K-Mart.

Still, the hole was atop a lump. Maybe I missed the hole in my underpants — the lighting was kind of off. Maybe the swelling was the bullet or BB was lodged in my leg, acting like a bloodcork. Knives and other things impaling-things act like bloodcork. Maybe it was just swelling. How to tell? I needed an x-ray.

I’ve always maintained that when living properly, snippets of your life could serve as the basis for text-based adventure games for the VIC-20. This could be one of them.

“YOU are in a small BATHROOM. It is 3 AM. YOU have been shot by the people in a BLUE CAR. YOU don’t know where they went. YOU have had four beers. There may be a BULLET lodged in your LEG. YOU should GOTO a HOSPITAL. YOUR PANTS and UNDERPANTS are pulled down. YOU are holding a CAMERA-PHONE and eating a DONUT. There is a DOOR facing WEST. COMMAND?”

All I knew was that I wasn’t in any real danger, because I was among friends.

I also knew that I’d need some evidence that didn’t involve indecent exposure. So, I whipped out my cameraphone to take a picture of the wound, and then couldn’t because my phone’s memory was full.  So, that time I was eating peanuts at Five Guys and got a peanut with three peanuts inside and I was all like “Yay!” — is now lost for all time. That’s okay, that was a lame story. The lighting was kind of off in the bathroom, but I managed to get a basic, useable photo.

I walk out, and talk to Mark.

“Hey do you have a car around here?” I ask.

“Yeah, I drove some people [from Indiana to Ohio],” he said.

“Could you drive me somewhere?” I ask.

“No!” said Mark, with hysterical drunken laughter. “What kind of question is that?”

My face grew long.

“What’s going on?”

“I need to go to the hospital for an x-ray,” I tell him, as I show him the photo. “I was shot.”

Mark says nothing, but he goes to explain the situation to Jen, because she’s our perennial de facto leader.

“Wha?” said Jen.

“Yeah! He got shot!” said Mark.

“Yes, I was shot.” I tell her.

“Oh my God! When?” said Jen.

“Remember when I said: ‘Uph. I’ve been shot?’ Yeah, someone actually shot me.”

“Where’d this happen?” asked Jen.

“When we were over by the UDF on the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk — when I was all like ‘Uph. I’ve been shot?’ Yeah…” I said.

“Why didn’t you stop?” pleaded Jen.

“I wanted a donut!” I shouted, as I ate the last of my tasty treat.

“You need an ambulance,” said Chana, who I met just then.

“I just need an X-ray to see if there’s anything stuck in there,” I say.

“You need an ambulance,” said Chana.

“I just need a ride…” I said.

“You need an ambulance,” said Chana.

“It was probably just a BB gun, and I need to see if anything is lodged in there. I can’t afford the ambulance fee.” I said.

“You have been shot. You’re not capable of making medical decisions. You’re getting an ambulance,” said Chana.

I conceded because I found her reasoning to be sound. She was the voice of reason in this group. It’s nice to have a day off. She was a mensch, and I made sure I informed her of the fact.

A few minutes later the ambulance came, at about 10 MPH, I waved my arms to flag it down. Then the ambulance pulled over to the side of the road, and then slowly oozed away from me — at 10 MPH — never to be seen again.

“This is the saddest photo I’ve ever seen,” said Hemant, as he took it with his camera phone.

“Yeah, you need to send me that.” I said.

He did.

I was tired, buzzed, shot, angry, slightly disillusioned — in that order. I was starting to worry, and to keep myself together I knew I’d have to turn it up to eleven. Sanity time was over, and the results were eerily reminiscent of a latter-day Tom Thompson*.

Chana recalled 911 to get a more-different ambulance, while everyone else was just like “LOL, Facebook and Twitter,” in order to fuel all kinds of wild-ass rumors.

Anyway, two guys in police uniforms with “CCP” emblazoned on the back of their jackets walked right past us. Ben ran to flag them down, explained the situation, and dragged them back.

“So you were shot with a BB gun up the street?” asked Johnny Law.

“No, down the street,” I tell him.

“Oh. Someone was shot up the street with a BB gun, too. There’s been a couple of them tonight.” said Johnny Law.

“Oh really? So it’s for sure a BB gun?” I ask.

“Yes.” said Johhny Law.

“I was shot, and I have an ambulance on the way, but I think I’m fine, so I can help you file your report.” I said.

“Oh no. We’re not cops,” said Johnny Law.

“Wha?” I say.

“No sir, we’re the Columbus Community Patrol.”

“…and you’re not police.” I said, coldly.

“Nope.” said Johnny Law. “Have a good evening.”

“Yeah, you too.” I said to Johnny Law, shaking his hand before he and his pal turn away and walk off to oblivion.

“So what did the cops say?” asked Mark, while blinking eighty times, like he does.

“Those weren’t the cops.” I tell him.

“Who were they then?” said Mark.

“Not-cops.” I said.

My leg was starting to cramp up. I shifted into sleeping crane stance to keep the weight off it. This was getting old. Another ambulance oozed about the streets, and turned near us, and drove half a block down the side street.

“Fuck it! We’ll do it live!” I shouted, to cheers as I hobbled half a block to the ambulance.

The EMT’s came out. There was a pair of them; there was an older gentlemen and a younger one following him, like just like Jedi, or plumbers. I walk up to the older gentleman, shake his hand, and introduce myself.

“Hey, I’m Ryan Coons. I was shot, probably with a BB gun.”

They tell me to step inside the ambulance, and to lay down. It was quite roomy.

“Should I come in there too?” asked Jen.

“Uhh, probably not,” I told her, while entering an advanced state of pantslessness.

In the improved lighting of the ambulance, it was clear that the projectile did not penetrate my underpants.

“It’s just some broken skin. Just put some Neosoporin on it.” said the EMT.

I slid my pants back on and thanked the gentlemen for their time. I strut of the ambulance and shout “It’s a flesh wound guys! Let’s go buy some band-aids!”

“Horray!” shouts everyone, as we walk xor hobble xor stumble to the drugstore.

“Ooooo! Let’s get Spongebob Band-aids!” said Jen.

“Yeah!” said everyone, everywhere.

“Hey, eat this donut. It’s German Chocolate,” said Ben.

“Hell yeah! Thanks!” I told him.

It was a magical donut. Chocolate cake, chocolate glaze, moist and rich with flavor, sweet, but not overpowering. It was like a ‘Mr. Donut’ donut. It’ll be a while before I find something that good again. Man!

Eventually we get the CVS, near to the Buffalo Wild Wings, and the door was locked, so we went around to the other door. It took me a few minutes to find the first aid supplies.

“Oooo! They have Dora the Explorer band-aids!” said Jen. “You should get them.”

“Yes, but the Spongebob ones are thirty cents cheaper,” I explain.

…that and I have to look myself in the mirror tomorrow, and each subsequent day thereafter. I also picked up some of the 91% isopropylnol to clean my wound, with the intent of using it to light myself on fire — an old party favorite from back in the day — but I never got around to it. Some other time, I guess. Ben picked up the tab; he’s legit.

Jessica bought me a chinsy mylar helium balloon in the drugstore, because she thought it would cheer me up.

.

.

.

She thought right.

It’s the little things, guys.

Around this time Mike and Shawn turned up, and we all walked back to our building, where people yay-ed and wanted details. I cleaned my wound. Everyone hung out and chatted and relayed snippets of the epic tale that was the pre-event meet up party on Thursday, in a desperate and futile attempt to make sense of events.

The next day the bruise set in:

It’s not enough to make the top 10 bruises list.

At the conference the next day, all kinds of people came up to me for news and to see how I was. I could say that getting shot is an excellent networking tool, but that’s probably not the best moral for this story.

“Hey, you’re alive!” people said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “…and my album sales have tripled!” Chuckles from all. Good times, good times.

So what do we have to take away from this? Having friends, be they new or old, will turn fail into win, and can turn a terrifying situation into a funny story. Even a friend you’ve only had for ten minutes can be a good as a friend you’ve had for ten years, if they are the right ten minutes. I knew that I’d be fine, because of what I like the best about being a godless heathen. When you don’t have to serve a God, the only thing you have to live for is other people; and that’s pretty great, actually.

____________________________

*This is a pseudonym used for legal reasons, although we’re pretty sure his warrants have reached their statute of limitations.

Well, life happened. For starters,  Joe and Darren became fathers. I don’t know when Joe will be back. Someday, I suppose. Until then, we have room for one more on the SuperFunAdventureTeam.

I didn’t spawn, but did I become a nuclear engineer, and that’s pretty neat.

But the reason why I wasn’t able to keep writing is because I’d lost will to write. It was my mistake, I was trying to write in a style that wasn’t mine. Rather than being detailed and dawn out, I found that I’m my best when I’m pithy and Spadowskian.

So what does the future hold for this site? More than you can imagine — because we’re going to start again. And by that, I mean daily updates. It’s going to be awesome, from now on; like Dokken-video awesome. (For our younger readers, once upon a time there lived a man named Donn Dokken. He was, and is, better than you; see figure 1.)

Fig. 1. The 80′s hair metal band Dokken, kicking asses and dampening panties.

See you tomorrow!

About three hours into our training, Mr. Capella was having us work on harai goshi. I was going pretty well. I was a judo player when I was studying at Oxford*, and harai goshi was one of my signature moves. I was kind of leery when people were practicing on me, because four years and nine days earlier, I had dislocated my left shoulder in a harai goshi accident.

I was practicing with August for a while, then I went to work with Joe for a bit. He was throwing me, but it wasn’t harai goshi. He was having problems with working the swinging leg into the equation, as Joe throws are typically of the “pick them up and drop them” variety. They work, but tits not compatible with the sweeping part, which makes harai goshi a faster and more brutal throw.

In order to help Joe get the feel of rolling the opponent over the hip,  Mr. Capella was showing him how to do seoi otoshi, which is basically the standard body drop (tai otoshi) executed from a front stance rather than a side-facing stance.

Seoi otoshi is a good move to have.  Seoi nage, the standard judo throw, can be easily countered if your opponent places the palm his hand on your hip when you comes in to throw him. This way, you never get close enough to have good leverage, and your opponent retains his balance, making him impossible to throw. If this counter is used you on,  the setup for seoi nage can quickly be changed to a seoi otoshi setup, allowing you to counter the counter.

Rather than pulling me straight forward, Joe pulled at an angle, so rather than fall forward, I fell at and angle. On my way down, my arm hit his knee.

I laid face down on the mat motionless.

“Ahhhh,” I said lackadaisically. I didn’t feel a thing, but I knew something was wrong. My arm was numb and paralyzed. I couldn’t feel my arm, but if I could have felt my arm,  it would’ve hurt.

That’s when my day got weird.

___________________________

This is Chapter I of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapter II.

It took me considerable time finding the place, because “Easy Street” is apparently not an actual street, though it was clearly specified as such in Joe’s directions.

I introduced myself to Ted Thompson, and from what I was later told, though a convoluted chain of events which I do not fully understand, he was thoroughly convinced that I was an undercover cop, and was plotting my murder for most of the night.

Joe, Ken, and I spent the afternoon in the pool, flinging Joe’s teeming legions of cousins around in the pool, and into each other.  When we got out the pool, the cousins kept on coming, and in greater numbers. Ken and I were immobilized, as we had children latched onto our backs, chests, legs, and arms. We tried to walk away, but were encumbered by the 300 lbs. of people we were wearing. Eventually, Ken and I mustered every ounce of strength into having a fist fight, using the horde of Joe’s leech-like cousins as a form of ablative body armor.

Once freed, Ken and I were surrounded, but we were able to hold our ground by throwing Joe’s cousins into Joe’s other cousins. By “throw,” I don’t mean “push,” “knock over,” or “shove,” I mean “lift over our heads, and in a shoulder-press like motion, launch into two other people like goddamn Lou Ferrigno,” as shown in Fig 1.

FIG 1: The Incredible Hulk finds a grizzly bear, and proceeds to completely ruin its shit.

This went on for about twenty minutes. There was simply no reason — including divine intervention — why anyone survived, let alone escaped uninjured. I later learned that this was a re-occurring theme at these parties. Eventually adults who the children feared and respected stepped in, and told them to leave us be. Ken and I were relieved. The powers that be then told Joe, Ken, and I to play with a near-infinite supply of fire and explosives for the amusement of the children, to tide them over until dark, and the real insanity began.

Joe made an immediate B-line for the Roman Candles, and gave me one, because no one ever gave me Roman Candle before. And that was pretty neat. When my dad would smuggle fireworks across state lines, he only bought ladyfingers and Moon Travelers, because that is where dFun/d$ is a maxima. I set off a Roman Candle, Joe sets off a Roman Candle. We both set off a Roman Candle.

See, the thing about explosives is that showmanship is a huge component — each feat must be more and more spectacular than the last. Thus, Ken had to dual-wield Roman Candles, while spinning them around. However, unbeknownst to all of us, Ken, through no fault of his own, had damned us all.

He didn’t pick up Roman Candles, he picked up Happy Bees, which look like Roman Candles in every shape, way, and form, except they have a different name and behave in no way like a Roman Candle would.

See, a Roman Candle is a stick, about 1 foot long that when lit, periodically shoots 1 cm fireballs of various colors.  But these weren’t Roman Candles, these were Happy Bees.

Happy Bees are like Roman Candles, but they shoot their fireballs in random directions, with a distinctive “Vvvvwwwooo! Vvvvwwwooo! Vvvvwwwooo!” noise. It would’ve been great if we knew that. Live and learn.

So, we light the Happy Bees in Ken’s hands, and run back.

Multicolored sparking death spews forth towards all of the defenseless women and children, who threw themselves to the ground and hid under blankets. Ken went into shock and screamed maniacally. Eventually he gained enough composure to turn away from the general direction of the innocents, towards the safer path of directly at me and Joe.

This story takes place shortly after The Matrix was released to DVD, so the bullet-dodging scene was a popular meme at the time, which everyone mimed for comedic effect, and in our case, as a survival mechanism. That shit is real, I know.

After this, it became sufficiently dark to set off the real fireworks, and all the males spent the next two to three hours setting off approximately $1,800 worth of Wile E. Coyote rockets and amusement park grade mortars.

The rest of the night passed without incident, and we all left happy, and with a healthy fear of Happy Bees.
____________________________________________________
* Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

He called me the other day, and told me to get the movie JCVD from Netflix. He went off for about three minutes about how great of a movie it was. In Darren‘s defense, JCVD really is a good movie, and you really ought to check it out. It’s a well-written, well-executed movie, and easily the best thing that Van Damme has put out since Universal Soldier. However, this isn’t a blog about the movie. I can’t do that — that’s Joe’s job. This is a blog about Darren‘s reaction to the movie, which led me to conclude that August has no penis.

When he was telling me about the movie, he told me “I cried. Tears were flowing down my face. It’s…ooogh…”

At this point I felt a terrible pain eating at me. My friend was in dire need of help, and I was hundreds of miles away.

“I only have one request Coons,” he tells me.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Watch it alone.”

“Okaaaaaaay…” I tell him with hesitation.

So I added it to my queue, and watched it. It made Darren cry. I invite the reader to take a bite of sherbet, like a pretentious rich person, to cleanse their pallet and swish that last sentence around in their mouths to savor its many flavors.

Darren cried during a Van Damme movie.

I haven’t cried since 1996, when Rob Liefeld was granted complete creative control of Captain America. I’ve had a lump in my throat a few times since then, like during my dad’s funeral, when I used to tell this one story you haven’t earned yet, and at the end of A.I. However, the next morning, I woke up, looked out the window and said “Space aliens? Really?” and never thought of that movie again.

Holy shit, Darren cried during a Van Damme movie. He has no penis. He must have a Lee Press-On Schlong that he bought at the Halloween store, which he affixes to his nether-region with spirit gum in order to service his wife.

I’m trying to assemble the events of the night in question in my head.

After having a good long cry, he must have went to the bathroom and meticulously lit three hundred candles, making the place look like some lame adult contemporary music video, and used $60 worth of scented soaps and oils to take a four hour-long bubble bath. In this time, he then consumed a bottle of red wine, and masturbated with the detachable shower head.

After his bath, Darren then put on flannel pajamas, sat in front of the mirror in his bedroom, and brushed what precious little remains of his natural, living, breathing hair one hundred times with a stiff-bristled brush. Then, Darren climbed under his 186,000 blankets and fell fast asleep.

This had to have been what happened.

Crying during a Van Damme movie! Fuck! This is a serious misstep — he must atone, and I can’t help him because I don’t know any Level 5 Clerics.

I’ve been in college for the better part of ten years, with no end in sight. I’ve stayed up all night with the artists in the small state schools, partied with the hedonists in the Public Ivys, and watched the corn grow at the Big Ten.

I’ve been a pizza delivery man, adjunct professor, autoworker, bartender, tutor, casino barback, experimental physicist, and karate instructor. Currently, I find myself as a Ph.D. student at Purdue University, studying nuclear engineering. I work in a million dollar laser laboratory trying to invent new light sources for lithography processes, the end result of which will make your computer faster by a factor of ten.

In my leisure, I read philosophy treatises and Marvel comics, study Japanese swordsmanship, and work on two major writing projects. One is a critical look at religion and the role it plays in American society, and the other can only be described as a post-modernist re-imagining of “Babes in Toyland.”

But this isn’t about me, it’s about our friends, the damned.

The damned are not those who are not awesome, I cannot say that enough. The damned are those who consciously choose not to be awesome. Allow me to show you:

Not awesome:  SUV’s.

Awesome:  Barbie Power Wheels.  No, seriously.

Not Awesome:  Bibleman.

Awesome:  Old-school Spider-Man.

It’s absurd to want to go through life being anything other than absurd. The status quo exists only to allow the mediocre not to feel bad out of the charitable notions of an outdated morality. Only those who are awesome, those who defy conventional wisdom, those who make waves, who disrupt the status quo are memorable. Only they contribute and advance out society. It’s called the Peter Principle people! It’s not rocket science! It’s not even a real science — its social science!

But I, in my bodhisattva compassion, devote my differential amounts of leisure time to you, the reader, in an attempt to help you know what awesome is so you can live while you’re alive. I would know, I was like you, but I stopped. I’m not drudging my way through life, I’m having a good time — no, strike that — I’m having a super-fun-adventure time, and there’s plenty of room on my Super Fun Adventure Bus for each and every one of you. It’s only a matter of hitching a ride.