Todd Mauldin : Unlicensed Blues Philosopher

52 in 52 Spoken Word Project Story #4: “Service Writer”, a spoken word thingy about love and loss in the dealership’s service department.  Click above to listen.

Copyright Todd Mauldin 2010 all rights reserved. 

 I learned a lot of things this week.

I learned:

1.If you have a dying nerve in a molar, it’s important to not let it go for a year, or when you go to the dentist they’ll use less-alarming adjectives like “pretty big” when it’s clear they really want to use “huge” when describing your abscess and then they’ll talk about “bone loss” and then they’ll have to shoot you about ten times in the mouth to numb you up on account of the ph change in the tissues surrounding the dead and infected nerves, then they’ll drill it and clean it all out, then pack it full of stuff they say is “medication” and smoke will rise and so will a terrible taste in your mouth, and then send you home for to take antibiotics and not eat anything hard or sticky, and tell you to come back in a few weeks where they’ll drill that bastard tooth again and clean it out again and pack it full of packing which is permanent this time, and put on a temporary filling and tell you to go see your regular dentist for a permanent filling.  They’ll charge about $1200 for all this.  And if you do this exercise as a sober alcoholic like me you’ll know you can’t really make use of the pain pill prescription they want to give you.  And when the numb wears off you’ll regret every jawbreaker you ever ate, every fight you ever got in or every time you didn’t brush your teeth and just in general feel like hell.

2.If you have recently made an illegal right-turn-on-red and gotten a ticket that says you have to pay $200 for your crime, you can go to the court.  If you go to the court on the day they say you’re supposta, which was this week, you’ll stand in a line awhile and then get told you oughta stand in another line to see the judge.  If you stay in that line until you see the clerk at the front of it, she’ll ask you why you want to see the judge over an illegal-right-on-red ticket.  If you say it’s cause you’re hoping for traffic school, she’ll say “here fill out this paper and then stand in that line”, and the line you’re supposed to go stand in is the line you were standing in before you were told to change lines. Then when you get to the front of that line, the clerk will say sure, you can have traffic school and you have 30 days to complete it, which will cost about $25 or so, plus you still have to pay the $200 which is what you came to court to not have to do.  But she’ll tell you in the long run you’ll come out ahead because making an illegal-right-on-red is a 4 demerit offense and could affect your insurance.  And oh mercy no, we don’t want that insurance affected.

3.If your kids go to one of those liberal charter schools like you hear and make fun of sometimes, and you show up with them for an outdoor carnival fundraiser there, you’ll see things like a woman wearing a pagan necklace painting a heart on your daughter’s face, and you’ll hear people asking for “vegetarian options” in the buffet line when all there is to eat is hot dogs and hamburgers and then you’ll see red beans and rice and greens there too and so you’ll helpfully suggest them vegetarians get down on some of that soul food and you’ll get looked at like you’re suggesting they eat a poopcicle, and you’ll also be subjected to high winds and failing cotton-candy machines and some smart-ass middle-schoolers who think you’re taking cuts for the bounce house when you’re just standing there watching, and then your son will be helped out at the knock-over-the-bottles-with-a-softball game by a nice woman who has straight razors tattooed on her neck.  It’s not for everybody.

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apropos of nothing, a drawing of a guy in a suit.  from my old ipaq.

52 in 52 Spoken Word Project Story #3: “Church Creek” - it may be about the environment, it may be about something else.  I’m not sure.  Click above to listen.

copyright 2010 Todd Mauldin. All rights reserved blah bah blah.

“marg”, 2010.  ipod touch drawing.

Here’s some happy art I made.

You know, sometimes, it seems I can’t help but get mad at everything that makes my life great.  It’s a character flaw, I think.  I spend more time than I like to admit, cursing at all my blessings.  I mean, look: It’s great to have a challenging job that pays pretty well, even though it stresses me out and makes me crazy.  It’s great to have three great kids who are healthy and creative and have minds of their own, even though they often frustrate me or make me feel inadequate to the task of raising them.  It’s great to have a wife that has stuck with me for years and loves me like crazy, even though she drives me up a wall on a regular basis.  It’s great to have faith and a belief that God loves me and the community of believers I hang around with are challenging and active and take up a lot of time and energy.  It’s great to have hopes and dreams even though I get frustrated chasing after them.  It’s great to have a big pool of family and friends, even though it takes a lot of time and energy to keep in contact with them.  It’s great to have opposition and tension, even though I decry it as exhausting… without tension, there’s no creation.  It’s great to be loved, even though I always fear I don’t deserve it, and it could disappear at any moment.  And it’s great to have limits, even though some part of me believes I really don’t and shouldn’t, and that I should be perfect and independent at all times… instead of imperfect and requiring of help, love, friendship and guidance.

Know what I mean?  Blessings everywhere.  It’s just me that can’t always see them.

But I see them tonight, and I’m posting this here so that I can refer to it when I need to, which likely will be daily.  And maybe, if you’re like me, it’ll help you.

I’m a lucky person.  And I’m a lot happier than I think I am.

A self-portrait drawn on bad day, on my old ipaq.

I found it today while going through some old files here in the HWC (Hellbuster Worldwide Control) lab… I have no specific memory of drawing this, but found it accurately captured my mood today.  Which could be a coincidence, but I rather more suspect I feel like this frequently enough that pretty much I could grab a drawing like this at random every day and have it sum up the situation.  

52 in 52 Spoken Word Project Story #2: “Imperfect Crime” by Todd Mauldin copyright 2010 all rights reserved.  Click above to listen.

The almost-true story of the attempted destruction of a school house in Beowawe, NV with a tractor tire.  

52 in 52 Spoken Word Project Story #1: “Tapes” by Todd Mauldin copyright 2010 all rights reserved. Click to listen.

Wherein we explore one man’s obsession with buying cassette tapes at thrift stores.

Update: I’ve decided to do one of these a week, see how close to 52 in a row I can get.  

Another blast from the past… the mp3.com days… “Sex On The Streets” :)