The Dharma Bum

by Jaysen Buterin

"Vacation, All I ever wanted, Vacation, Had to get away" - Vacation, The Go-Go's Oh, hello boys and girls, long time no see. Did you miss us? I know I certainly missed you, Cape Girardeau, and most assuredly, to my throngs of zealously devoted fans, admirers and stalkers, I missed you most of all. So I say with my usual acrimonious temerity to all three of you out there...

"We're backkkkk" (to be said in the voice of Carol Anne - you know, the creepy daughter that got sucked into the television on Poltergeist.) Being no strangers to shameless self-promotion, in an effort to further espouse our own "Generation X, Saturday morning cartoon-inundated, eat a whole box of Peeps for dinner" rhetoric, we have all sorts of goodies for you. Get ready for a brand new season of action-packed arse kicking epistolary exaltations and pontifications - with more lip-smacking, sugar-coated, mmm-mmm goodness than a lifetime supply of greens M&Ms and more rock-em sock-em, thought provoking literary hijinks than if Jay and Silent Bob and the cast of Blazing Saddles had been the original cast for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden OFF! It has a nice ring to it don't you think? Yet rather than spend minutes and minutes thinking about Chad and Jason K. busting out those Matrix-move kung-fu kicks, I've got something even better for you...my breathtaking (well, maybe not breathtaking, at least not like that scary little troll in Stephen King's "Cat's Eye" breathtaking, maybe more like a nice breath-borrowing...) summer vacation adventure story.

So take a break from fretting over the impending arrival of the fall semester of academentia. Put away your oversized jumbo pencils and your safety scissors, set aside your circles of paper and stop eating the paste. Lay that pretty head of yours down on your nap mat and listen to a tale of the most ebullient nature, entitled ...

"What I Did On My Summer Vacation" by Jaysen Buterin

I work full-time at two different jobs; of course I don't get a bloody summer vacation. That's what I miss most of all about the capricious days of my youth as a wee lad - once school stopped you had the WHOLE summer to do whatever you damn well pleased. Yes, that's what I miss most of all...that, and the tri-colored bands around full-length tube socks (do they still make those?)...And I miss Underoos (how I wish they made them for big boys - my Masters of the Universe underoos cut off the circulation when I stretch them around one leg - although one has to muse on the thought of how having "Master of the Universe" printed on a diaphanous piece of fabric near your crotch could do anything but inspire a whole deluge of idiocy in all the lads out there who know exactly what I'm talking about and are now entertaining the thought of writing it again on their current skivvies - who says we don't grow up?)...I also miss staying up 'til all hours of the night anesthetized by mind-numbing rot on the television while gorging myself on my one meal of the day of chips, soda, popcorn, maybe some candy and quite possibly a pizza ... no wait, that was last week.

So needless to say while I was robbed of the luxury of six fortnights to traipse, gallivant and run amok with, I did however spend a lovely amount of time with my beloved Kindal. As you may remember, when last we bantered, she and I were preparing for cohabitation and the ever-thrilling "Apartment Hunt." Well you can rest easy true believers because we found the perfect abode for the two of us, with billions and billions of millimeters of space, and yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and yes Virginia, he was nice enough to give me my cherished man room. But that, as well as the moving adventure and my own carefully guarded thoughts on living with my girlfriend, will provide unlimited fodder for future columns, diatribes and didactic paradigms of useless knowledge.

We did, however, manage to sneak off for a lovely little mini-vacation get-together, just the two of us...sort of. Yes indeed, she and I spent a lovely little week in a little place called Phoenix, Arizona - or as I so fondly like to refer it, (and I'm positively convinced the locals do as well) Dante's Fourth Circle of Hell! This lovely mercurial environment decorated by a beatific landscape of sand was where we spent our time melting into the dry inferno where it would appear that the seemingly insignificant wish, nay, prayer, of just enough humidity to be able to sweat so as you don't reach your biological boiling point and burst into flames, is cruelly denied by the gods on a seasonal basis. I swear that I saw at least four adults, three children, two dogs and a cat spontaneously combust and instantly turn into ash, much like Tom's bat would instantly immolate, then dissipate whenever he would hit the bomb that Jerry had so cleverly painted like a baseball.

Was it really that hot? YES! Although Kindal consistently reassured me that it was a dry heat as the rubber souls on my shoes melted to the parking lot.

Was it really that bad? Of course not. I got to spend time with her, she got to spend time with her revered kith and kin, and I wouldn't trade anything for the memories...well, maybe I'd move it to Chicago in December, but that's all.

Now to answer that nagging question that's been reeling and pining away at the back of your minds during all this babbling - did I get, no wait, how many tattoos did I get over the summer? Now come on kids, do you really think that I'm that addicted to body art and that weak-willed that I could not abstain for a mere three months and escape the summer unscathed by the tattoo gun? You know me better than that...

So I got two tattoos over the summer - one in Phoenix because I find that tattoos serve as lovely mementos of vacations and foreign cities visited - the other I got because it was a Friday, because my bass player asked me to go with her, because it was a pretty day outside and because it sounded like a good idea. I had intentions of getting another one in August with a dear friend of mine who was coming to visit but her trip was postponed until September. Seeing absolutely nothing wrong with getting one tattoo in August (even if I had to go by myself), another tattoo in September, and of course one in October when we return to Missouri for a trip, I told Kindal of my great plan and of course, immediately received the look...so I'm taking August off. Compromise is a beautiful thing.

Of course there were countless other adventures and traipses and gallivants I partook of these three months past, but I've got to save the good stuff for later, right? Tune in next month, same bat time, same bat channel, for a whole new explicative lecture series on why Barbie is bad. So boys and girls, as the sun sets slowly in the West, I bid you a fond farewell from my humble, yet beatific abode, where I'll be shaking my money maker all night long for Kindal in my form-fitting Master of the Universe underoos as she howls in sheer delight and shoves dollar bills into my waistband, all to the tune of "Lady Marmalade." Good night kids.