After months of searching, my fiancé (Lauren) and I recently moved into a new house. It’s in a cute neighborhood with cute neighbors and a cute yard and we love it. But something strange happened not long after we moved in. Something so strange that it won’t seem strange to you at all. You’ll read it and think “It’s actually strange that they think that’s strange.” Here it is. Here’s the strange thing:
We found a pair of Lauren’s shorts folded inside her dresser.
Take a moment to let that sink in.
We found her SHORTS in her DRESSER and…
We were sitting in a friend’s backyard (something we were envious of coming from an 800 square foot apartment with two energetic dogs) when we finally decided to take the plunge and start looking at houses. This was May 2020, a couple months into the pandemic, and we were feeling the stress of having to work from home and being cooped up together all day every day. At the time, we had been living in our apartment for a little over a year and had recently re-signed our lease in March to stay another 12 months. Had we known what…
Brian Bockelman
10/20/10
Zachery Gall
Interpretation of Literature
Alien abductions and time-travel have both been described by post-modern and modern scientists using many of the same words such as “improbable,” “crazy,” and “absurd.” A lot of these same words can also be used to describe war. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter-house Five, Vonnegut uses two dimensions, one of war and one of science-fiction, to illustrate the absurdity of war; how it’s inevitable, unstoppable, and unexplainable. The science-fictional planet of Tralfamadore is an outlet for Vonnegut to give his serious views about the unexplainable realities of war. …
by Brian Bockelman
Mark woke to a thud. He registered the noise but refused to open his eyes. If he opened his eyes, he knew he’d never get back to sleep.
Sleep was a hot commodity since he moved to the ground-floor loft in the city three months ago. But it wasn’t the city noise that kept him awake, it was the ever-present threat of an intruder. Mark’s loft mirrored the layout of all the others in the building, but his had a door in the living room, toward the back of the space, that opened straight out onto the…
“Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“The plane feels like it’s rocking back and forth.”
“It’s not.”
“Okay….that’s good.”
*30 seconds pass*
“Are you sure you don’t feel that?”
My girlfriend, Lauren, and I were flying home from Portland, Oregon, and our plane hadn’t even left the gate yet. It felt like the plane was see-sawing back and forth, as if a pair of sumo wrestlers were jumping up and down on each wing.
“Seriously, you don’t feel anything?”
“Babe. No. It’s fine. You’re fine.”
I was not fine.
Our plane taxied and took off. As the plane rose higher…
I woke up at 5:30 the morning of Monday, February 4th to go back to the worst place in the entire world: Neosho, MO. My elusive court date had been rescheduled so many times that I was bracing for a call telling me it had been moved for what would have been the eighth time. That call never came.
I had spoken with my lawyer on the phone for the first time ever the Thursday before. I’m disappointed to report that she was actually quite pleasant during our brief conversation despite my determination to hate her. She assured me my…
The Colts hold a 4–0 all time playoff record against the Chiefs in the playoffs, but the results of their last meeting make it feel much worse than that.
January 4th, 2014 was the worst day of my life. That may sound a bit dramatic, especially when you consider that since then I’ve been heartbroken, fired, haunted, lost loved ones, and found out I’m a felon, but nothing causes a pit in my stomach as deep and wide as the one that forms when I reflect on that day.
It was a typical winter weekend in Dubuque, Iowa: frigid, overcast…
It’s time for the NFL playoffs, which means it’s time for us to validate the countless hours we’ve spent watching football the past 17 weeks by predicting who we believe will hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February. There’s a lot to consider when predicting a champion: who’s hot, who’s stumbling, coaching matchups, scheme matchups, personnel matchups, overall roster talent, home-field advantage, history, legacy, karma, Nick Fole’s inability to lose a must-win game.
Fuck all that.
To determine who will win the Super Bowl, I’m drawing inspiration from the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale.
Some set up: following a major…
What started as a fun conversation starter has slowly devolved into a case of infuriating irrationality. Get caught up on parts one and two here.
It’s been fifty-four days since I last posted about my case, and a lot has happened since then. Phone calls have been made. Conversations had. Lies made. Emails exchanged. Hope had. Hope lost. Voices raised. Tears shed. Shit shat. But one thing has remained the same: I’m still a goddamn felon.
Let me walk you through how we got here. Which is nowhere.
Let’s pick up where we left off, which was with my previous…
This is part two of an I-don’t-know-how-many-part series anymore. To read part one, go here.
I got up before the sun on September 19th ready to make the nearly three hour trek down to Neosho and put this whole thing behind me. I had no idea what to expect when I got there, but I was prepared. As prepared as I could be, anyway. I had reprinted all my evidence for the judge and put it in a nice little packet. I even had my girlfriend, Lauren, by my side. …
Brian Bockelman
Hey.
