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On July 8, 2004, USA Today reported that 47% of American adults read "literature" (poems, plays, narrative fiction) in 2002, a drop of 7 points from a decade earlier. Those reading any book at all in 2002 fell to 57%, down from 61%.

Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers Association, an organization representing an industry which sold 23 million fewer books last year than the year before, was quoted in this same article as saying that, "we need to look into what kinds of partnerships we can get into to encourage literacy and the immediacy of the literary experience."

"Bursts" are literal immediacy. Like life, they are short and imperfect. First lift, then read, and wash your sweet potatoes.

Copyright 2005 A Wet Team Publication

Career Choices in Ornithology

Five hundred volts is what I'm told it takes to kill an average human being. That is why the Nebraska state prison system surrounds each of their high security lock-ups with a five thousand-volt electric fence. The state leaves nothing to chance when it comes to making guests feel welcome. Still, any lover of freedom would have to work to get this far, up here to the juice that is. The fifteen humming live wires are sandwiched between two 15-foot chain link fences, the top two feet of which are razor wire. If one gets over the innermost fence, they've got the electricity to contend with. If one gets past the electric fence, then it is another fifty feet to the next chain link fence and the last obstacle between them and liberty, which is a two mile span of cornfields up to the highway.

But nobody is getting past the electric fence.

It comes with a guarantee that the warden has framed and hung in his office. He showed me once. It looks just like a warranty you would find at the bottom of a box for a new camera or TV. He apologized to me saying that perhaps the fence was too effective. Some deaths had not been anticipated. Here is what I do about these deaths. In my logbook I first make a notation of the date and time of the discovery and the location of the subject using a GPS locator. I log how far away from the fence the body was discovered, and I take a photo of the victim. I note any damage to the fence such as appendages still connected to the wires. I then place

the victim into a cooler for the trip back to the UNL lab. Each departed soul is awarded a plastic shell coffin with the word "Budweiser" across the sliding lid. This is my job. Most of the birds I find are common varieties of crow, but occasionally I'll come across something unusual, and that's what makes my job interesting. I discover a crispy Prairie Chicken at least twice a week. Just last week I came across a Redheaded Woodpecker, not to be confused with the more common Redbellied variety. Its wing had been sheered off from the initial shock. I found the bird long dead a quarter mile away from its wing still dangling on the wire. This morning I have found four crows, one barn owl, and what I know is a Mountain Plover. I came across it fifteen minutes ago, logged the location, took a few pictures, and now I am just looking at it here. It’s a Plover all right, not the common Killdeer with which it is often confused. It does not have the telltale chest stripes of the Killdeer. True, it is not a remarkably spectacular bird to gaze upon; its sandy plumage and black cap allow it to melt into the prairie unmolested, but it is rare, endangered, a value beyond just what the eye would initially gather. I am writing my grad thesis on the migration patterns of the Mountain Plover, but the funny thing is, this is the first one I have ever seen in the wild. It shouldn't be here this far away from water. It must have been confused, smelled something in the air, lost its bearings, made a mistake, and ended up here along the periphery of the prison. I'm still looking at it because for all I know it is the last Mountain Plover in the state of Nebraska. I kind of feel like what I imagine the apostles felt when they found the rock turned away from the tomb, but then I no longer believe in that stuff. Perhaps a better example is like reading Normal Mailer all your life and then turning the corner and

finding the old shriveled guy walking down the alley and checking his pockets for loose change. Some things don't initially make sense even though they are flat out spread in front of you for you to see, taste, smell, and deny. I put on a pair of latex gloves, pick up the Plover, and place her in the cooler next to a stiff crow with a beak soldered shut. I move on as the air shimmers with escaping waves of heat. The wires continue to hum and beckon like a flatland dirge.

A Latin Samurai Dreams

In 1942 America was in the kidnaping and ransom business. This fact is not common knowledge, but because of this fact, Antonio Takahashi did not like people very much. Antonio's loathing might have had something to do with his family losing their banana plantation in Peru, or his father's lonely death in a prison in Crystal City, Texas. Since that time, Antonio kept his father's ring on a necklace around his throat. I must be serious about my hate he said to himself. In 1950 the war had been over for five years, and everything was looking up. Since 1944, Antonio had hated just about everybody. So far that was six years of hate in response to everything that had been done to him that he hadn't asked for. He took a summer job to pay the bills. He was now living for a six-month stint in a fourteen by fourteen lookout shack atop a rocky peak in the Desolation Wilderness. His job was to watch the horizon for any signs of fire. If he saw a wisp of smoke or a flickering flame, he spotted it through his sights, took a reading, and phoned it down to the ranger station. This job just suits me fine he said to himself. The job was tedious though. To get through it, he packed a suitcase with paperbacks he had been meaning to read. He read them and wrote down all the words he didn't know. Although he had been in the states for eight years, his English still wasn't very good. Maybe it had something to do with him not talking to people that much. He believed that if he learned all of these new words, someday he would write a book about what had happened in Crystal City. I have to learn a lot more words he said to himself. He also read Life Magazine. One day, the grocery girl brought it up the two hundred and twenty-two steps to the lookout. She said that she thought he would want to

know what was going on in the rest of the world. He really didn't want to know, but he said thank you anyway as he unpacked the groceries into his pantry footlocker. He was quite surprised to see the girl, the grocer's daughter. She was quite pretty he said to himself. The June issue of Life Magazine had a photo spread on "Beach Life." In one picture, one Charles Atlas type was throwing some giggling girl up in the air. In another, two buxom ladies were tossing a beach ball to each other while rollicking white caps lapped around their ankles. Everyone looked healthy, fit, and strong. I should also be healthy, fit, and strong he said to himself. So he did sit-ups, push-ups and chin-ups. Each day he did a few more than the day before. He felt his chest broaden, his back fill out, and his arms become more tone. He felt stronger and more solid by the day, a real man to be reckoned with, a Latin samurai. His mind grew stronger as he learned more words from the books he read. It was as if his body and mind were becoming cold hard steel. I have never been so strong he said to himself. The grocer's daughter returned to the lookout every other Saturday with groceries and a new magazine. This time it was Popular Science. She said it had something about futuristic flying cars and she was looking forward to flying one out of the local dealership in Tahoe. She could then use it to drop off groceries at the lookout instead of taking the stairs all the time. Antonio said he was just fine with cars of the non-flying variety. If cars flew, he might get more visitors. With grocery girl, he even smiled and, for a moment, forgot that he hated people. But I have to continue hating people for a little while longer he said to himself.

That night a storm came. It was a real thunder king. He took all the necessary precautions. He sat in the center of his lookout on a stool with legs encased in insulating glass. Antonio's hair stood up on end, and the corrugated shutters buzzed with static. Hot blue filaments rained down on the forest. Sometimes, he thought he saw the lightning fly up from the ground into the coal sack of sky. He was sure though that lightning flew down from the clouds. It was quite a spectacular show he said to himself. Antonio reached to pick up his pen. He wanted to write down what lightning looked like from a lookout high in the Sierras. He thought that maybe he could use that in his book. A spark, not your outlet variety spark, but a real tongue of flame, burst from Antonio's chest. It burst from his father's ring like a roman candle and reached through the window and out into the void. He became a living circuit of cold hard steel. He forgot to say something to himself. Antonio woke up the next morning very sore with a scorched ring around his neck and a red spot the size of a half-dollar on his chest. He had the strangest dream while knocked out. He dreamt that a girl was dropping groceries off at the lookout from a flying car. He packed the groceries into the footlocker and then got into the car. He asked if he could drive. As he drove away, he said that it felt good to drive a car with four hundred geese under the hood. That's kind of funny he said to himself. He wasn't so serious anymore.

Elise, Slightly Out of Focus

Her building is opposite mine and it's called Hibiya Candyland. That's right, like the board game, except when the locals say it, the "l" sounds like an "r." Candyrand. She lives somewhere in Candyrand, and on sunny days, she sunbathes on top of the roof, between two sheet metal ventilation shafts. When I first saw her, I was looking down from my local rooftop beer garden six floors above her roof. She religiously wears a tangerine two piece on Mondays and Wednesdays. A pink one on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She is so beautiful I tell you, although from where I always sit in the beer garden, she looks like a stained clothespin around which two orange rubber bands are wound. I go sit at a table, bring my binoculars, drink a mug of draft Kirin Ichiban, one every half-hour, and I watch her bathe. The whole affair I have elevated to a ritual. After two hours I am fairly drunk, and I watch her through the two circles get up and tippy-toe over the black asphalt. If I'm nimble enough with the focus as she runs over the heat, I can see the black tar stained balls of her feat. I can see the collar around her neck. That's why she is mine. In a way, she's been mine ever since I was a kid. Reading the June 1979 issue of National Geographic set it all in motion, the prime mover of all to come after. My brother had a habit of keeping them under the bed, not all of them, just the ones where some camera crew went to the Amazon, or the Congo, and the women wouldn't wear much of any clothes. Maybe you remember that one about the tribe in Burma (now Myanmar) where the women are so beautiful. I mean drop dead and take me to hell if there aren't any women like this in heaven beautiful. They wear clothes, and they wear these brass rings

around their neck. Some of them wear as many as twenty of these rings. The more rings worn the more beauty implied, but I don't really remember the women for the sheer number of rings circling their necks. I remember them for their smiles. Very shy and selfconscious smiles. My brother would look at the same pictures and say, "Man, that looks like it hurts." The he would thumb over to another picture of some bare-breasted girl bathing in an Amazon tributary. Some nights now while lying in bed I think that those pictures had a profound impact on who I am, not all crazy but not completely sane either. Just a unique sense of the beautiful. Watching her through my binoculars from my rooftop beer garden was just like opening one of those National Geographics and getting a deep paper cut between the knuckles. A bleeder from the knifelike corner of page 258. I even remember the page numbers. I wonder what is her story. Did she fall down a set of stairs? A car accident? A nexus of disastrous events beyond even my imagination? I have narrowed it down to a handful of scenarios. I've even given her a name. I know it's probably something like Keiko, or Ayako, but I like to imagine it's something else. I call her Elise after the Elysium Fields. I wonder upon what sword I must fall upon to reach her. The funny thing also is I met her, well about as close to meeting someone as you can get without actually talking to them. I was walking one morning to work in front of Candyrand, and there she was standing. The collar forced her to stick her nose out in a way that someone confused or judgmental might think she was a snob. Her posture was straight, almost rigid as if she had a pole of steel grafted to her spine. She walked as if floating on a bed of air. Her head would stay perfectly straight and rigid, ears perfectly perpendicular to the sidewalk, while the rest of her body below the collar flowed across

the cement landscape. She "graced" down the sidewalk like a dancer. "Grace" seems like the proper word for it. She was and is beautiful, and I sometimes imagine things that we can do together. It's easy for the mind to go dirty here. Mine does all the time, but I'm not talking about that. You know what I really imagine? I imagine lying in bed with her late at night, watching TV, and the station signs off like they used to do before the age of perpetual infomercials. She is sleeping, and I have an arm around her. I take the collar off ever so slowly, so as to not wake her, and she smiles, not a full grin, just a little upward turn of her lip at the sensation of freedom and nakedness and the cool night air flowing over something free that once was bound. I feel a bit embarrassed for Elise because she is naked now. The brilliance of her nape clashes with the earthy brown of the rest of her. But then I remember that I am imagining her, and her name, and the fact that I am just her observer, a man in the landscape, a man with a mental camera.

Starfish

My scar attracts many eyes. No one comes up to talk to me about it, no one has that variety of mettle, but I notice they, both the locals and the foreign tourists, the farangs, will look at it in passing, leer at it if they think I am asleep on my towel, wonder if I had been impaled in a grisly accident or had my torso surgically opened up like a dissected frog in a junior high biology class. It has the look of a fresh wound, and true, it was not made that long ago. It doesn't help that I have typical pasty farang skin from hours of working and living in manufactured environments. I haven't been here long enough to earn a tan. The scar is purple and slightly raised above the angelic white of my solar plexus, starting an inch below my sternum, running down my belly about four inches, and then splitting into two "legs" that run off toward my left and right hip bones. The doctors call my mark a Mercedes scar because if you draw a circle connecting the ends, it looks something like the hood ornament of the famous car. It looks something like that. I have often caught myself running a finger down the ridges of my scar and daydreaming about reaching inside myself and feeling the edges of the space where the right lobe of my liver used to be. Much of it must have grown back by now. The liver is a funny organ really. Cut a piece off and it will grow back. A healthy liver is sort of like a starfish or an octopus. The brain, the heart, the kidneys, they are not nearly as capable a survivor as the liver. That liver is going to come back. Thing is I saw a starfish in the shallows while snorkeling the other day. I felt a sort of communion with the stellar bottom feeder. We're growing back into our full selves.

I'm feeling better each day though it doesn't help that to me the Thai spring feels like the dead of summer back home. I'm still severely lagged so that I don't sleep through the stifling nights. I end up sleeping on the beach during the day. My slumber is punctuated with random periods of swimming to cool off. The water is warm like a bath here. It is crystalline too, though in my mask, I can't see more than twenty or thirty feet. The sea is full of tiny fish of a whole universe of colors that swarm around me and nip at my ankles. Occasionally a triggerfish will come into view at the shadowy edge of visibility, then drift back out into the void. I am sure I have seen a small reef shark darting through the green. The wet world here is like a cloudy bottle of Heineken. Just this morning I was swimming in the shallows when I felt something touch me from below. Looking down through the water I saw a kid, couldn't have been more than ten, swimming below me and tentatively nudging the incision as if he were delicately prodding a cobra to see if it were still alive. His dark pupils were huge and magnified under a pair of oversized swimming goggles. The whole incident scared me because I had this strange sensation he was reaching inside of me. Of course that's ridiculous, but I felt as if he was trying to reach up inside and pull out my heart. I'd dreamt of fucked up things like that for weeks before the surgery. I reached down and pulled at the elastic strap around the kid's head. Immediately, his goggles came up in my hand. The kid shot away and swam underwater toward shore, and, as I treaded water, I began to feel bad for maybe hurting him. He hadn't come up to the surface yet. I imagined him lying on the bottom with a set of waterlogged sponges in place of pink airy lungs. I dove under to search for any dead or dying boy, but there was nothing except hazy green and sand and a few tiny crimson fish fleeing my feet along the bottom.

Coming up for air, I saw the kid run out of the water and toward the foliage beyond the palm trees, his swift footfalls leaving little dents in the sand. Two other boys with darkened skin and luminous smiles were running a few strides behind. I pulled myself out of the surf and toweled off, occasionally looking back into the dense green behind my bungalow where the boys had disappeared. I then lay out under an umbrella to give my reddening skin some relief. I thought that there was a chance they were still watching me from a point of safety, so in a well-meditated act of American arrogance, I slipped on my trophy, the goggles, and looked out at the world. Through the goggles the sea was blue, not green, the sky was brown, not blue, and my scar was red as freshly drawn blood.

Moist Frontier

"Please have a seat," he said.

David Bacchus backed his wool-clad ass into the chair. In his suit and yellow power-tie, he looked severely out of place among the fiberglass picnic tables and plastic patio chairs. "Do you go by David or Dave?" the interviewer asked. The interviewer, clad in shorts and a polo shirt festooned with the omnipresent "WW" logo, had yet to introduce himself. "Dave is fine." Today was the first day of the year that the park had turned on the wave-making machine. Gentle surf washed up upon the beach then lapped past the pink cement into a synthetic riptide. At no place was the sea deeper than twelve feet. This wasn't a beach so much as a pool overfed on performance enhancing chemicals. "Okay Dave," the interviewer said overly artificially whitened teeth and skin that appeared much too dark to be natural this early in the year. "So why do you want to work at Wild Waves Water Park?" A whiff of what Bacchus took to be chlorine could be divined in the air, though he knew from a case he had litigated three years ago that chlorine was an odorless gas. He had settled a five million-dollar lawsuit with the families of five children who had been sent to the hospital after a chemical company leaked chlorine gas into a schoolyard. He told his client they were lucky to be getting off the hook with only a million per kid. The client was pleased.

"I enjoy most being around people who are enjoying themselves. It gives me a charge, something a little extra, when I see people smiling and having fun. What better job could there be than being a part of other peoples' fun and keeping them safe at the same time?" "I see," the interviewer said scanning down the Bacchanalian resume. He chewed the eraser of his pencil, stopping occasionally to circle something here, check something there. Bacchus's palms began to perspire and the silence shredded his self-confidence as if it were an incriminating ledger for an offshore tax shelter. Against his better judgement and contrary to his knowledge of interview etiquette, Bacchus made a preemptive strike. "Looking at my resume, you might come to the conclusion I'm over-qualified," blurted Bacchus sweating behind his buttoned-up collar. "Hmmmm?" "My J.D. from Stanford . . . . my experience as a corporate attorney," Bacchus said lowering his eyes to the porous cement. "Yeah, this is the first summer we're getting all you guys wearing ties. Mostly we hire high school kids. Most can't even fill out the application. Today, I've had a guy with a degree in electrical engineering, one woman with an MBA, a lot of software engineers and somebody with a Ph.D." Maybe Bacchus's plight was not as dire as he had feared. Many of the others in the waiting area were clad in suits and ties also, some of the women in prim professional attire. They looked to be older and many had gray hairs. The teenagers came in khakis and buttoned-up short sleeve shirts and some in shorts and T-shirts with tattoos and piercings of lips, navels, and eyebrows. Bacchus guessed that at thirty he was sort of average for this crowd.

"What's a J.D?" "Juris Doctor - it's a law degree." "Did you ever meet anyone who murdered anyone?" "Yes." "We have openings in food service, facility maintenance, admissions and attraction staffing. Do you have any preferences?" "Either admissions or attraction staffing would be fine." "Do you want to be full-time or part-time?" The bronzed interviewer watched Bacchus mull over the question. "Being full-time you can qualify in two weeks for our 401K and our profit-sharing program, plus you have full medical and dental." "That's quite generous and progressive of your park. That's definitely a better package than my last position at Nalem, Touda, Wall and Associates." "We pride ourselves on treating our employees above industry standards for water-oriented theme parks," the interviewer replied as if it was something he had practiced and said several times too often. "Then I want to go full-time," Bacchus answered after five seconds of consideration. "Do you have any idea what my job will be?" "Right now we are looking for customer service assistants to man the bottom of the Tube of Terror," he said, pointing up to the dizzying top of Wild Waves's most novel attraction. "It's ten floors of total terror, the largest water slide of its kind in the world. We're expecting it to double our visitors this summer. We need assistants to help customers out of the pool, retrieve lost bathing suits, limbs or other personal items, administer first aid if necessary and keep traffic moving along." "Sounds intriguing."

"Yes," the interviewer said with weariness. "We'll give you a call Mr. Bacchus after we've done a background check to make sure you don't have any history of pedophilia, selling drugs, that sort of thing. You did sign the release?"

Happy Haseem Fights the Jihad

It occurred to me just last night what my brother was planning to do and I am still unable to fathom that he could actually do it, that we could actually do this now. I've known my brother all my twenty-two years since our days in the dusty alleys playing football behind the pungent homes of our neighborhood. When I think of those days I smell supper cumin, coriander, paprika, cinnamon. Those are good memories made with my brother, which makes it all the more difficult to believe that he can do this now.

We must believe in the one true God, and we must believe in his prophet Muhammad and his trustworthy but clumsy servant Haseem.

We were watching a Jim Carrey movie on HBO in our hotel room right across from Disney World. He had shown me some maps of airports and some schematics of cockpits and flight instruments. "Will we demand the release of Palestinian prisoners? Will we demand the Jews draw back from the Occupied Territories?" I asked him excitedly. His response was, "There will be no demand, only a statement I am told." "You will do this alone, Mohammed?" "I will have the assistance of three to four others while I fly the plane." He paused to laugh as Ace Ventura, struggled with a shark in a huge fish tank. "The timetable is set and I am waiting for instructions." I was understandably nervous. Proud, yet still nervous. No one wants to die, or even be cruel for that matter. I did what I usually do when I am nervous. I draw. Perhaps

you have seen my stuff. Well, no you probably haven't unless you were educated in Saudi Arabia. I am a cartoonist by trade, and I am the creator of Happy Haseem. He is a cartoon character I created to help teach all the pillars and vital lessons of Islam to children aged three through nine. My comics are a big hit back home. Happy Haseem is the happy go lucky sidekick to the prophet Muhammad. He is not mentioned at all in the Koran of course; he is fictional yet most kids are happy to embrace a little fun in their religious studies. Happy Haseem reminds everyone that Jihad, the struggle, can be won by having a sense of fun and adventure.

Everyone, even children, must pray five times throughout the day. Haseem knows what happens to children who don't pray five times a day!

Even though we are planning to die in a week, that's no reason to not enjoy Disney World. I am a big fan of Disney because I have a real appreciation for the art of animation. Even Mohammed, who has always been a bit too serious, is willing to let down his guard once and awhile and enjoy the simpler pleasures in life. I'm talking about my brother, not the prophet. Praise Allah for western distractions. My brother and I are walking down Main Street U.S.A. with Omar and Mohammed, another Mohammed, eating caramel apples and watching tourists. Omar refuses to look at any of the teenage girls running around in their tight shorts and shrunken T-shirts. I tell Omar to relax, that we are not back home, and it is okay to take on a few habits of the Americans. It is better if we fit in so that we do not attract unwanted attention I say.

While Omar is visibly perspiring and spying one nearly naked girl fellate a Popsicle around the corner, I see two absurdly dressed characters walking out from behind a bush. One is dressed like a robot with a globular Plexiglas helmet. Written on his outer shell is the name "Buzz Lightyear." Another character is a potato with a mustache, protruding nose, glasses, and a top hat. I recognize him as a toy I used to play with in childhood. I elbow my brother in the ribs and tell him to meet me by the teacups in fifteen minutes. He looks at me suspiciously as if it would be suspect to split up. Breakfast is not agreeing with me I say. They nod and saunter off back onto Main Street.

You all must give what you can to people in need. That is called giving alms. If you can't do that because your parents are poor or your sister is sick, just remember to do no evil.

I follow Buzz and Potato Head for two minutes. Both of them are popular with kids, though I notice Buzz gets more recognition from the children, while Potato Head seems to get more attention from the grown-ups. Must be the power of nostalgia and all those years of playing with toys like Army Men and Slinkies. I did that stuff too! Except the Army Men in my country always had sticks of dynamite tied around their midriffs. I tap Mr. Potato Head on the elbow at an opportune moment. "Hey, I've got a proposition for you, there's $200 in it for you," I whisper into his oversized ear.

Mr. Potato Head doesn't automatically accept. Instead, he shakes a few more hands, takes a few more photos with people the shade of sunburnt crisp. He then walks back and whispers through his oversized nose, "So what do you want?" "Let me borrow your costume for fifteen minutes," I answer. "I just want to surprise my friends." Mr. Potato Head begins to skip off. I interpret his reaction as rejection. I run back up behind him and raise my bid, "Okay, $300!" The Potato stops skipping.

You must not eat during the day during Ramadan. That's called fasting. If you are sick, okay you can eat a little, but being young is not an excuse no matter what your friends might tell you.

The smell inside is overcoming me. It smells faintly like vomit. It is stifling in here though outside it is a pleasant temperature. My wallet is $400 lighter now. The guy in the suit said not to worry about returning it, that he would be long gone by the time the suit became an issue, and he said something about making a score behind the Swiss Family Robinson's Treehouse. I can see Omar and Mohammed twirling around in a teacup and smiling. My brother is standing outside taking a photo of two smiling sisters wearing mouse ear hats. I want to leave, but not without committing one more act of brotherly love. I tap him on the shoulder. He turns around. I don't say anything. I see his face erupt in a very wide and innocent smile. He yells, "Mr. Potato Head, I remember you! I miss you from the old days!" We give each other high-fives just like triumphant heroes celebrating victory over

the infidel. My brother has someone take a picture of us together, the martyr and the potato.

You must make the pilgrimage to Mecca if you are able. That's called the Hajj. Doing the Hajj is fun, and you can make many friends.

A minute later and I am skipping away looking for an exit. I know I am better serving the Jihad by drawing cartoon characters than flying airplanes into amusement parks or nuclear reactors. I want nothing of that business. Such things would be the opposite of all that Happy Haseem taught.