It’s Monday! Which means a Morning Commute. How did mine go? Well — I was rear ended for the third time in two years as I drove on I-93 South towards UMass Boston. People! Look up from your fucking phones. I beg you. My spaghetti-brain begs you. My consistently whiplash’d neck begs you. I hope, I pray to the Old Ones, that your commute was better than mine. The only perk? The Immediate Migraine and Sore Neck meant I got to go home. Though after thinking about it, a day of lost wages and suffering doesn’t seem like fair trade for a Monday on the couch. Eh. Whatever!

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Roberta knew falling in love with Clauius, the thick-poled Cyborg was a mistake. He could see Infinity, perceive The All. His pistons would (practically) never age. His psyche could only expand. But still. Those eyes. That class. And don’t get me wrong. Clauius knew that falling in love with Roberta was a gamble only a foolish Flesh-Sack would make. She would age. Certainly, he was not immune to Entropy. But by the Circuitry Above, he could practically watch her decay happen in real-time. And when he sped up his relativistic perceptions, he did. But those eyes. And that brain. And so fell they love. Her programming and his programming (programmed by her programming) too much to overcome. For a moment, they will Find a Way. And for a moment we all Find a Way. There be romance, and mundanity, and hurt, and humping, and a cadre of other experiences. Most of them banal, some of them transcendent.

This is Monday Morning Commute | The arts, farts, blips, and blops that I look forward to during a given week. Share what you’re looking toward to. Join the community. Share your highlights, your misery.

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Fucking crap day, here. Just busy. Really fucking busy, and ineffective. My class smells blood, knowing the end of the semester is upon them next week. Today this led to a case of The Mondays in class writ large. A disaffection that was equalled in enormity only by the disruptiveness with which it manifested itself. In other words, no one gave a fuck, and everyone was talking. So class was going shit, and then during our mid-class break it became known to me through a squabble of error messages and beeping that the copier was. In fact. Fucking broken. In other words, I wasn’t able to make a copy of (what should have been) tonight’s reading. So what am I doing tomorrow? Fuck if I know. Today was the first day (and this is probably actually a good sign) in my 3+ years of teaching where I openly asked myself, “What the fuck am I doing wasting my time with this?” A shuddering, unrelenting tidal wave of bile-duct refuse and existential despair washed over me. And for it I have no answers, other than to hope it ebbs as well as flows. I’m sure it does.

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Welcome to Monday Morning Commute Tuesday Evening Commute! Bit of a hectic week. The house I thought Sam-OMEGA and I weren’t buying we are now buying. Which means stripping our bank accounts down to the bone to sacrifice at the altar of the Debt Gods. On top of that there is the summer class I’m teaching. On top of the students I’m tutoring. On top of the hours upon hours of placement essays my co-workers and I are reading to decide which English class incoming freshmen will be enrolled into (yes, someone has made the mistake of placing me on a committee with that sort of authority). So yes.

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Welcome to Monday Morning Commute, friends. It’s pretty much the end of the day here on the Eastern Coast of the Empire, but hey. I’m but one FictionMan, attempting to cobble together the disparate entities of the Space-Ship into one meandering husk. So forgive me! And I have to cop to you. A variety of Really Privileged Problems have me a bit worn down, today. Oh, I got married. Boohoo. Oh, I was lucky enough to come back and have to start my job I have immediately. Wah wah. Oh, I’m buying a house and all that financial expenditure is sort of terrifying. Cry more. I get it.

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This is my third week of marriage. It feels very much the similar to the life I was living  prior to marriage – namely a maelstrom of responsibilities and too few nights spent actually enjoying the company of my Wife. We spent the weekend house shopping, and now she’s away on business. When…when does life calm down? And in the midst of all that bullshit — we are submitting an offer sheet on a house tomorrow. So there’s that. Either we get a house tomorrow, or we have to hit the house hunting grind again this weekend. Which, admittedly, is a privilege. I get that. But it’s stressful as fuck, and at a certain point having more space for shit you probably doesn’t need must feel irrelevant in the Frowning Face of Not Enjoying Time with a loved one. Right?

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Welcome back to Monday Morning Commute! Missed it last week. Was away. Being on a “honeymoon” with the “love of my life” doing “cool things.” Naw — I’m just fucking around. It was pretty fantastic. But here I am. A year-and-a-half journey has come to its end and now SAM-OMEGA and I “on to the next chapter of our life”, which hopefully doesn’t “cost thousands upon thousands of dollars” to live out like the previous one.

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They soar! Fuck limitations, man. Kick the hinges off the Impossible Door, and run into the Halls of Improbability dropping stone-cold stunners and rock bottoms! This is Monday Morning Commute. And together we shall brave the perpetual irradiation that is Life, uniting in some sort of Existential Voltron. Or! Or at the very least. With fingers with nails with caked-on Dominos pizza crust, we shall what we’re up to this week.

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Happy Memorial Day to ya’ll living within the Empire! As a child, most of my worldview was shaped by the World Wrestling Federation. And to be honest, I’m almost positive I’m better for it. And one thing I learned is that those who turn their back on their country are thick-jawed, dastardly pieces of shit. (Like Sgt. Slaughter.) Don’t be a Sgt. Slaughter. Give big ups to those who have served in a moment of fleeting, momentary clarity. And then go about your proper Imperial means of celebration. Charred animal flesh. Excessive drinking. Maybe a jingoistic, statistically inaccurate proclamation about Whatever You Really Like In America.

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Welcome friends, to the weekly Commute. It’s early Monday evening as I type this. WWE’s finest thespians babbling incoherently on my Tele-Visor. Mrs. CaffPow preoccupied, whipping up some cupcakes for some sort of party at work. The sky is dark, the heart is light. My semester is over for a couple of weeks.

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