when i remember my cousin, i think of all those times he tried to almost kill me

Let me just first say that I spent all week long and five hours tonight - five hours - procrastinating (via other blogs and AIM and torturing myself by rereading and rereading all the stuff I'm having workshopped tomorrow) writing a paper that took me under an hour to write once I finally sat down and did it. I am retarded. I'm so mad, I could have had this done. I could be in bed. Except now that I've finished the paper, I'm not like - hey, let's go to sleep! I'm like - well, let's waste some more time being awake when I'm tired, but if I'm going to waste time I ought to at least do something productive. And so here I am. Welcome home, blog.

I really do want to write about all the stuff I said I'd write about last time, but today I was thinking about how I have this cousin who really is quite entertaining. I've only seen him once in the last four or so years, but I used to see him all the time when we were younger.

First, his name is Chris Tucker. Which is pretty dang funny to me. Chris, if you ever find this, I'm sorry, but I'm about to exploit you.

Now, I could tell stories about him all day long. He was always an entertaining fellow. Picture this: he is a skateboarder (church of skatin', fool), he is a chef at a four or five star restaurant, he is missing a front tooth, and he is fluent in Russian. And I swear he's almost killed me about eight times. These include pushing me down a hill on a skateboard and I knocked my head against metal bar-gate, convincing me to swim in the waterway in February with all my clothes on, and teaching me how to wield a machete at age seven.

However, the best of these is the time he tried to get me sucked out to sea. In one of my workshops today someone wrote a story about Figure Eight Island, which - for those of you who don't know - is a very exclusive, private island (they have their own privately operated draw-bridge) that is nearly impossible to get onto unless you own one of the 400-some multi-million dollar houses or you're friends with someone who is. John Travolta's got a house out there and I'm pretty sure Sandra Bullock does too, along with a handful of presidents, ex-presidents, and tried-to-be-presidents.

WELL, when I was ten and he was thirteen, Chris wanted to see Sandra Bullock. Cause she's hott, he said. And it just so happen that, like for Tom Hanks in Castaway, the winds had blown in our way off shore. A hurricane had hit a few days or a week before and washed up the floaty underside of one of the docks. So he decided to nail some wood to it and call it a raft. I still remember, to this day, after he somehow coerced me into crossing the Intracoastal Waterway with him, the both of us standing up on our little makeshift floaty raft thing, him with a long piece of bamboo pushing us along through the water. I wish I had a picture. We were like Robinson Crusoe.

But then my uncle - his dad - for the only time in the memory of my life, decided to walk down to the waterway that day. And he caught us and yelled at us and told us how we would have been sucked out to sea had we gotten out in the current, which is totally true, because where we were at on the waterway was right across from a small channel or whatever you'd call it between two of the islands. Which actually would have been kind of exciting, apart from the terrifying adrift at sea part. Although this was back in the day when there were no cell phones except those huge bulky grey things that were bigger than a size thirteen men's shoe with the long black solid antenna like a sharpie. You guys remember what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I should say I stole the Robinson Crusoe line from my professor, Tim.

And that, also, I am dreading tomorrow. I've got two workshops, the second of which I think will go well. Which is good, because I'm going to need it to make up for the first. Honestly, I would actually rather fling myself out of a very tall tree than go to that workshop. I am terrified. They are going to tear my story to pieces, and then they are going to tear me to pieces. And consequently, all my cousin's efforts back in 1997 will not have been in vain.

cheers.