My Cardboard Balcony

Tonight's introspection is being typed up a little earlier than most Fridays. Hell, usually I'm scraping close to midnight with these things. But tonight is different - mostly because I need to be in bed by, at the latest, 10:00. I will be driving up to Windsor in order to take all four English subtests of the CSET. Obviously, the mistake here was taking them all in the same day. This was clearly done two months back because I thought I would be rushing to get teaching credential applications in. This ultimately did not end up happening, but I kept the CSET on the date I got it for because, honestly, the next time scheduled was pretty far off. So, instead of taking maybe two subtests for one day, I'm taking all four. I'm obviously privy to making mistakes. Dropping the ball, stepping in it, and, to put it more bluntly, fucking up are fairly common in my life. In this case, I waited until a week before the test before actually looking at what I had to study. I guess,...

How Jimmy the Driver Became Jimmy the Rat by Belinda Roddie It was midnight outside the tiny Italian restaurant, and Jimmy decided to light a cigarette as he parked the fancy black Mercedes comfortably in three parking spaces. Rolling the windows down, he belched out smoke in dark gray plumes in the foggy air, the cold of San Francisco creeping into the seats and chilling his shoulders hidden beneath his jacket. At this rate, Madison wouldn't be out for another half hour, but that was to be expected. Jimmy prided himself on his ability to puff out smoke rings, but if there was one thing that he was particularly bad at, it was driving. Therefore, it was amazing that he had a job as a driver to begin with. He failed at all the rudimentary steps of proper road etiquette:   He screamed at passerby, refused to use his blinkers, and oftentimes ran lights because he claimed the system was just trying to fuck with him.   On occasion he would be pulled over, but he managed to avo...

I like the way you smile with your upper lip curled slightly. Also, I like ice cream. But I especially like the way you smile with your upper lip curled slightly, even as you're eating ice cream. You get mint chip all the time, a staple in that little corner shop between the gas station and the thrift store. And the green dairy just stains your teeth, and the chocolate speckles your gums perfectly, as you grin with a mouthful of sugar cone.

The Scantron Is Your Enemy by Belinda Roddie The scantron is your enemy - a strange draconian form of artificial search for knowledge through the faulty process of elimination for some pseudo-self- evaluation. We learn through the art of self-discovery, of building new ideas to improve the people and the world in which they live. Don't tell me that wisdom has benchmarks or only one cheap answer out of five guesses (A or E?). If brains all worked like number two pencils darkening dots, we all would fall apart. I'll stuff these tests through the shredder. I still won't degrade brilliance. I never will.

"I have returned!" howled Spinelli triumphantly, waving a wine bottle around in her left hand. "Finally," breathed Cowell. "What did you get? Riesling? Pinot Grigio? White Zinfandel?" "Better," Spinelli beamed. She nestled down right between Dominic and the dog. "I got a brand new type of wine."

Chevalier by Belinda Roddie Behind the seeded castle, you will find Chevalier, sucking on the scales of a scalped king cobra. He uses the venom as a sweet sauce to stain his teeth purple, and then prove he's a nobleman by color and color alone, my friend.

"I don't understand. I sent all the right signals." "Oh, really," scoffed Sylvia. "Like the way you winked at her?" "Oh, c'mon, it was endearing." "And the way you heckled her so you could buy her a drink? Not the other way around, might I add?" "She was being stuffy!" "And," Sylvia pressed on, "how much of an asshole you were for trying to touch her when she clearly said no?" "...You're acting like these are all bad things."