Nightmare

Is it a dream?

Frank fought against the big headed demon.

His sharp sword was ready to cut his enemy apart.

His enemy was no slouch, ready to dispatch frank in one fell swoop. With a force from the cosmos to fuel the demon, it was near invulnerable.

Frank had confidence in his ability on his side. A trained ninja and nfl star quarterback, was cat like in his movements. If he could, somehow, whack this demon, the demon would be destroyed.

When the time came, Frank dodged the demon's assaults, and when he saw his opening he slammed his sword across the demons skull. Everything slowed down in that moment and in the aftermath the demon was unscathed. Frank reared his sword back and slashed the demon in its throat. Nothing. The demon laughed. Frank dropped his sword in disbelief. Realizing he was about to die, he pleaded for his life. 'this demon does not follow the same rules as we (mortals) do.'

The demon spared his life, but made Frank his slave...minion as you will. Frank eager to save his own life said nothing.

Then the demon wanted to tag his ear as a rancher would to cattle, Frank said no... and begged and pleaded...

meanwhile


Mike Mitchell, star pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers chose death. And thus defeated the demon.

fiction----Ricardo's Apartment.

Coughing violently, Ricardo Sanchez awoke in a panic. A disconcerting sound filled the room with a threatening ambience . After a short while, he recognized the sound as the sound coming from his own smoke alarm. His eyes burned as he peered into the darkness that had engulfed his once tastefully designed bedroom. He could see nothing, and still disoriented from the disrupted sleep., Ricardo instinctively rolled out onto the wooden floor where the smoke was less concentrated. He pulled his shirt off of his body and covered his mouth and nose.

'Where's the door?', Ricardo thought, crawling about and colliding with the furniture in his studio apartment.

"Calm down hombre or you are going to die in this motherfucker.'

With the adrenaline pumping, it was hard for him to remember the layout of his room. The noises from the fire alarm did not help either, it was adding fuel to the pounding of his heart. Ricardo crawled back to the side of his bed and closed his eyes. Collecting his thoughts, he pictured his location and where it was in relation to the door. In his mind’s eye, is where he finally saw it.

He crawled over to the far left side of the room until he reached the door. His free hand slowly crept up the face of the door and began to unlatch the first of several locks. When all the locks were undone he stood back up into the smoke and pulled the door open with a giant heft and immediately slammed it shut, all within the same motion. In that moment of opening the door, a wall of unbearable heat had hit him and his reflexes did the rest Unsure of his next move, Ricardo slumped down to the floor in a defeated posture.

----------------

Ricardo, estranged father of seven, wept quietly to himself.

'I don't want to die like this man...I am too young to die.'

As he sobbed, he came to a terrifying conclusion.

'The window, its the only way out.'

Ricardo lives on the fifth floor of an aging apartment building in Brooklyn, New Yok. His side of the building lacked a fire escape, a feature Ricardo actually liked because it provided, 'better security.' He knew a jump from the fifth floor would be suicide, but to him it was either; do that or burn, and burning was not an option.

He made his way over to the window in a roundabout way. Bumping into his pool table and then a lamp that he knocked over. When reaching the window, he dropped his rolled up t shirt, and began to pull up with both hands. After a few well placed pulls, the window slid open in a herky-jerky pattern. The smoke in the room poured out through the opening, finding its path of least resistance. As he leaned out, he looked up into the sky at the smoke rising.

Out in the cool night's air. RIcardo made deep breathes to replensih his oxygen reserves. Feeling the comfort that the night provided, all in the world seemed well at the momen. He escaped into the delusion, and in the process, ignored the growing threat that was behind him. Behind a fire grew unrelentlessly.

'I could wait here until a ladder truck rescues me. that sounds like a good plan.' he thought as his assessing eyes opened and peered onto the street below.. To his dismay, there wasn’t any fire trucks sight. Only a medium sized crowd of onlookers.

'Shit', he thought to himself.

Exhausted with his energy reserves depleted, he flopped his head into his arms. 'I'll just have to wait here. That's all I can do.' In the distance the sound of sirens grew.

---------------------------------

The situation did not change much when the fire trucks finally pulled up to the burning building. They sprang instantly into action. Pulling hoses and connecting them to hydrants. Pushing the crowd back into what they deemed a safe distance. They also started to raise a ladder towards the trapped man. Looking down, Ricardo could see a news crew filming the whole thing.

'Shit, now everyone is going to see this.', he thought, embarrassed at the possibility of being on the news. He reached back inside and grabbed his shirt to cover up his gut. He also smoothed his hair down.

All the while, fire seeped up through the wood behind him. Camouflaged by the smoke, the fire began to take control of the bachelor’s pad. Ricardo did not notice, until there was an increase in the amount of heat hitting his backside. He glanced back and saw the light from the flames peaking out through moving holes in the smoke.

‘Shit!’. he cursed to himself.

He pulled one leg out and sat on the window sill as he would if riding a horse. When the heat on the inner leg became unbearable, he pulled that one out too. The position that resulted in him sitting on the very edge of the window. To him and the laws od physics, the position was awkward. He began to slip forward some.

He could see a ladder rising from fown below. A fire man was on it, ready to rescue.

'Lord, if you are there, now would be the time. Now would be the time.'....a silent prayer from the devout catholic. He heard some shouts from the street.

"Don't jump!" "Be calm, we are coming to get you!"

------------------------------------

Down below, the crowds saw a desperate man leaning from the edge of his window. A solitary figure, surrounded by a billowing cloud of smoke. They told themselves, they did not want this man to fall, yet they kept watching with an unconscious morbid hope they he would. And then they saw the flames burst forth from behind him like something only witnessed in movies, bright and horrific. The man’s arms coming behind his head as if to protect himself. And then, he fell. Past a rising ladder in the foreground and behind the tops of some sidewalk lined trees. Many looked away and many did not. ‘Where did the man go?’ they thought. “He’s over there!”, exclaimed an over-exuberant child. And they all looked and saw the crumpled body of what was once a man.

---------------------------------

"Shit, that hurt like a motherfucker!", exclaimed the body.

The crowd, fell back a few steps. The body slowly arose from the grassy patch, where it had fallen. A rescue worker rushed to his side and told him to remain still.

"Get the fuck off me!" Ricardo said pulling away. And wincing in pain as he slowly brushed the dirt from his clothes.

He slowly craned his neck to look up at his apartment. Pain shot through his neck, but he managed to get a glimpse of his window as fire shot out of it. Without a thought in his head, no opinion of what had just occurred. Unable to grasp, the fact that it was near impossible feat that was done. He looked away, easing the pain in his neck. He limped over to the rescue worker he had shunned earlier and let her work on the burns on his back. Sitting in the back of an ambulance he leaned up against the wall and fell into a deep sleep.

His last thoughts were, "All my shit is gone."

Don't fall for email scams...like me.

I received several emails from 'paypal' recently. I deleted them as normal. Usually, it is some form of unsolicited advertisement. However, one of them caught my eye before I had the chance to delete it...If only I could relive that moment because that proved to be a mistake. The email said that my account security was in jeopardy. Some unauthorized "third" party was accessing my account. I have to investigate this right? Logical, right? I checked the email address to make sure it was from paypal. And yes indeed, it seemed to be. I then clicked on the link it provided.

Little did I know about the twisted universe I had just entered..

Got to the page and entered my log-in and password. After that, I was brought to another page, which said that for security purposes, they needed me to re-enter my credit card information. I was a little leery of doing this, but remember this site looked alot like the real paypal website. So like a fool, I filled out the form until i got to "enter your ATM PIN for our review services"

...thats when I froze

I thought, "hey, that is not right'. at the time it did not hit me, that what i was actually looking at, was one of those fraud sites. remember, at the time, i just gotten back from work, at 2am, and I was super tired. The next mistake I made was that i clicked on the cancel button...which probably sent all of my card information over. Plus I included that 3 digit number from the back of the credit card...not the pin, but just as bad.

After I clicked on cancel the website just refreshed. I thought that was weird. So I clicked on all of the links it had there and they all took me to the same spot. then i looked up at the domain name, it was not paypal at all. Then I knew. I have become a vicitm of the internet fraud machine.

you can see these assholes in action (link may not work anymore)

if you want to go there yourself. i do not know if a gremlin or virus or something else jumps from their servers to your computer, but check it out.

http://www1.phda.org/p/update.html

I went and took care of everything with the bank and paypal and several other sites. i actually closed my paypal account, considering the fact that i never used it much. overall, the whole scenario was a fucking pain and if somehow i could find out who this asshole or these assholes were, i feel as if though i could beat them with a baseball bat or something worse...you see, i am not an angry person normally, but... well, I guess I am always angry.

When did nickels start to look different?

There is no trying in commitment. So I am going to commit to posting as frequently as possible. Shit, that last sentence sounds a lot like trying doesn't it. I am horrible at writing and want to get better and the only way to do that, is to write and rewrite often (write that down kiddies). So if you (the reader) have some constructive criticism, by all means submit a comment. I'm mature enough to quit. Usually I suffer from severe writer's block or whatever, but not now, now I actually have something to write about. or at least I think I do. I had an experience the other day, and I thought 'hey that's weird', and 'hey! I could write about this.' Albeit poorly. But come on. This is the internet...there is a lot of shit.

So let me start my story, after a few years spent living in a debit card delirium, I, for once, had some real money in my possession. And all was well, until I arrived at this fancy restaurant called Chicken Fillet or chic something, that was when I reached into my pocket to give the cashier lady some change. I rummaged through my pockets and found some coins that would suffice. I glanced down at them and started to hand them over, and then I paused. Thinking to myself: 'What are these things?' In my hand were these little, but not too little, shiny foreign objects. I had no idea what they were initially,... they felt like nickels when i got them. and, they were the size of nickels. But were they nickels? On close inspection, they were revealed to be indeed nickels. The cashier must have thought I was a little slowheaded with my indecisive curiosity, and the line behind me thought I was just an asshole. Somebody barely uttered, but just enough for me to hear "hurry up and pay, asshole."

If you have not seen these new nickels yet here is a illustrated example from the mint website:

OLD


and NEW



But before you think that I am one of those, 'I hate all new things' kind of guy, I am going to go ahead and declare myself not against them. I am going to have to say that I like them. Yes I was caught off guard by the sudden appearance of a different design and aesthetic, and yes I also felt a little bit like Rip Van Winkle. Thinking, 'Where was I when these things took over?' But on the contrary, I am all for the design change. Actually, I think these new coins look cool ...as shit (of course). And I'd like to say Kudos to the US Mint department or bureau. one or the other. or is there a third?

Congratulations, You've done it again.

All Americans have you to thank for their enjoyment of the terrific 50 State Coin series, already. The quarters were spactackular. But you all have been holding back, the Nickels outshine even the state quarters.

But briefly, back to the Quarters, Wow, I still can't believe how you all managed to pack all of that 50 state goodness into a series of coins. And that lack of belief is why I am not a coin designer and employed by y'all. You. You had that belief and you got people believing. A little history lesson is needed here, unless we forget. The old quarter at the time was believed to be, by some, a dead coin. In fact, circulation was down, at an all time low. People were opting out of using the old quarters and used two dimes and five pennies instead. But not anymore, the new state coin series made people proud to be Americans once again. The quarters were dual purpose too, beauty and education. People got to learn about the 50 states that we, as americans, live in. ALL 50 of them! Virginia, New York, California, and Massachusetts, and North Carolina, and South Carolina, North Dakota and South Dakota, Wyoming, Hawaii, Nebraska, Idaho, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Oregon, Maine, and Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Alaska, Montana, and Kentucky, and West Virginia......the list goes on and on. And we all have you, the US Mint of the United States of America, to thank. For, of course, having brought that coin back from the f**king dead! Like that other dude. Its not far fetched to call that short of miraculous. or just plain miraculous. And thank you for that.

And now, the f**king nickle too?!?!?

Just like the rest of America, I too was bored out of my fucking mind with that old building and that dead dude's head. Who really needs to see a whole head? Not I. All you really need is the face. In fact, when those old nickels were still around, I stopped looking at them wretched things, any longer than I had to, to dispose of them (quickly). I'd hand them to my grandpa, and say, "take that old man". Now , thanks to you, the US Mint, and your terrific new designs, I am no longer ashamed to say I collect coins. It is hip once again. America can rejoice.

My first entry.

I registered this thing more than a year ago, but forgot about it. Just now did I rediscover it. And I am now willing to see if I could make anything of it. I will try to post updates as frequently as possible. when content comes to mind, I will make note of it. Right now, however nothing is coming to mind. And I am not quite sure the type of writing or the direction I want to put on this.

I guess one thing I can do is to introduce myself to those strangers who do not know me. It really is as creepy as I've just made it sound. But it is all cool, that is the nature of the internet. Here are a few tidbits. I think I have a drinking problem, and I smoke way too much, and I am pathetically out of shape. I went to "Art' school and I think of myself as an artist, although really, I make no art. That notion has, in all reality, faded now since I am a working stiff. News Photog. One day, I will retire and look back at a boring life. Then, off course death. boring, I know.

I have a website that I've painstakingly put together, but never finished. And never will.
www.herbhurni.com

I also have a photo hosting website too.
www.herbhurni.smugmug.com

till next time... folks.