Sunday, July 06, 2008 11:10 AM
The Big Change
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I think I've contacted everyone I needed to contact, but if I didn't then someone's probably asking themself: "What the hell happened to this guy's blog? What's the deal? Is it a tech problem, or did he decide to stop blogging?"

What I did was voluntarily strip my blog down to 2 entries (out of the 69 posted between December 2007 and June 2008) to make way for a new approach to my blog here at Arson Entertainment. From this point on, this blog will contain short stories, as well as other works of fiction written by me, and anything of relevance involving Arson Entertainment. 

No more entries about my job. No more entries about my cash-eating dog who, since the last time I posted here, died of who-the-hell-knows-what. (Hey, don't look at me. She was found limp and lifeless after I came home from work. So get off the phone with the PETA representative you just called, and keep reading.) No more entries about this ex or that ex. No more entries about the Corps. There will be no more entries about my personal life, period (except if it's relevant to the creative process of a project that I'll be posting here). 

The good news? Well, the good news as it pertains to entries solely about me? I created a new blog strictly for my personal life. All of my adventures, embarassing moments, and the usual blunt honesty can be found there. If you're a reader of my Arson Entertainment blog who I have yet to contact about my new blog, then email me at arsonr@gmail.com.

Thanks to everyone who read my Arson Entertainment blog. Give me some time and I'll turn this spot into a land of fiction.  






R. Farmer | No comments available
Monday, January 07, 2008 5:54 PM
Moving forward, but not before looking back
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2007 hit me hard, non-stop from the start.

December was no exception.



Two days after seeing my cousin's corpse put into the ground, I came home from work and immediately opened a letter from my bank. The letter expressed (to put it mildly) the bank's intent to repossess my car - immediately. In the end, I avoided repossession. How I did that is another story entirely. Twenty-four hours later I was in the emergency room, waiting for the "professionals" to tell me why my head had been pounding for over a week straight. 

I told the doctor it wasn't a migraine. There's no way in hell I'd be in the hospital on a Friday night if it was just a migraine. Besides. . . I've never had a migraine in my life. This headache had something to do with the nerve problem I've been living with for over a year now. I waited about fifteen to twenty minutes before the doc came back. He told me he couldn't do anything for me. He said he didn't know what the problem was, and when I asked him if they could run a CAT Scan anyway, he said it'd be pointless. He told me the scan wouldn't reveal anything and that I should get a MRI for my brain scheduled as soon as possible.

I went back to the hospital the following Tuesday for my MRI. A short ederly woman guided me to a locker and told me to take everything out of my pockets - especially anything metal. I immediately removed my dog tags. She asked me if I ever had surgery before. I told her, "Nah, not recently. I had my jaw wired shut back around '99 though; I don't know if that counts." She replied, "Of course. Everything counts." Then she walked off, and before I knew it I was laying down, about to go inside the MRI machine. The doc said that the radio was broke and it only had one station. She explained my options: "You've got this r&b station. . . or ear plugs." I had to do one or the other because, she explained, "the machine is too loud." I chose the ear plugs without hesitation.

The doctor pulled me out around the six minute mark. She injected me with magnesium and put me right back in the machine. The magnesium felt awkward. Being inside the machine did too. (It reminded me of the military; something about the constant humming of machinery. . .) I was done the second wave in no time. The next day I received a phone call from my doctor while at work.

She told me the MRI results were negative. It was probably the best news I had received the entire year. I look back on last year and realize it couldn't have been that bad if I'm still here hoping for better times in 2008.

"Still here." That never gets old.




R. Farmer | No comments available
Monday, December 10, 2007 9:34 PM
Who's Paying Attention?
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It's barely four in the morning. The phone rings and I'm told that my cousin has been killed; shot to death. . . making him another statistic of the increasingly growing number of Philadelphia homicides.

But this is my cousin. My cousin. Age twenty-seven. Father of twins still in their toddler years. My cousin. Mine. Not the cousin of weeping strangers on the local news broadcast. My cousin: a flesh and blood person who shook my hand, gave me a hug, and asked me how I was doing everytime he saw me. He had just hugged my mother twice the evening prior. (Sometimes I wonder about life's hints, and whether people can sense things on an internal level.)



The future of our family, at one table.

People in this city have been getting killed at enormous rates for years now, but still it seems nobody's really paying attention. "Killadelphia"? That's the best the national media has? A catchphrase that will eventually be turned into a badge of honor? And somehow with all of these dead bodies -- a good number of them slain by bullets -- some writer decided to use his position as a journalist to write an article about the ugliest cities in America, ranking Philly at the top of that list. I understand that the city's real problems are hardly considered print-worthy to a man who works for a magazine titled Travel and Leisure, but given our outstanding number of murders in 2007, I guess I expected a bit more class from a journalist, regardless of professional affiliation.

There are no romantic tragedies here; no hurricanes, no planes crashing into our skyscrapers. Our citizens are gunned down, and that's it; nothing special. All we have here is dead body after dead body after dead body. Caskets and bodybags, weeping family members, and fatherless children visiting gravesites before they're old enough to understand what death really is. That's what we have here: a concern for our lives everytime we walk out the door to do nothing more than buy a loaf of bread from the corner deli.

This environment is not a fantasy for those of us who live here. We can't deny it, mute it, or turn it off with a remote control. This is our reality whether anyone on the outside is paying attention or not.





Of the table, only four of us remain.

R. Farmer | No comments available

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