Jarod Kintz
This is it, this is my biography. The story of Jarod Kintz begins now.
Let’s knock out the trivial first. I was born in Salt Lake City on March 5th. Now that you know my birthday, please feel free to get me birthday presents. Notice how I used the plural, presents? More than one gift would be greatly appreciated. Appropriate gifts include gold coins, bars of silver, and large tracts of land (preferably beachfront property). Or you could just buy me a drink—soda, natural, because I don’t drink either alcohol or high fructose corn syrup.
Skipping ahead a few years, and a few hundred miles, we come to Denver, Colorado. For a few years I attended Mackintosh Academy. In the second grade, along with English, I studied French, Spanish, and Japanese. Out of all those language classes, I remember one word: Andrea. That was my girlfriend at the time, the one who left me for my best friend. I guess I remember two words, as I remember his name too, but his name is almost sacred, as a name that shall never be uttered.
Right after second grade ended my family moved to Jacksonville, Florida. It was Jacksonville that I would come to know as home, and would attend the rest of my schooling until college.
At this point I was a mediocre student. I believe I had a perfect 2.0 grade point average from third grade until I graduated from high school. My favorite classes were art, P.E., and lunch. Oh, is one of those not a class? No way—I believe art is still considered a class.
When not cracking jokes in class, I would be doing one of three things: drawing, passing notes, or sleeping. In high school I started to not only be mentally absent from class, but physically gone too. I’d skip class like a flat rock skips across a pond.
After high school, it was on to college. In all I have attended six colleges. I bounced around like a dodgeball on a trampoline. If you count the college classes I took starting my junior year of high school, then I got my four-year degree in nine years. And if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it at least twice as well as everybody else—or at least at least twice as long.
I graduated with an English degree from the University of Florida, but I took creative writing classes from both UF and Florida State University. All though college I fancied myself a fancy man, because I was an aspiring writer. Mostly I wrote t-shirt slogans and other pithy things. In the spring of 2005 I did manage to sell a line of t-shirts to Urban Outfitters.
That is my lone success in life. Seriously. Well, so far anyway. But my story is just beginning. I plan on failing my way to success. I have been rejected by literary agents, publishers, MFA programs, all sorts of women. But still I keep writing.
I have written many “books,” and I use the term books loosely. Mostly they are just compilations of my random thoughts and one-liners. But I like writing them, and people seem to like reading them. and that’s what it’s all about, right?
All my books are self-published, either through iUniverse or the wonderful Amazon Kindle program. I encourage everybody to write. Share yourself with the world. If there is one thing I like to impress upon people, it’s that you can do it, even if you can’t. Just keep can’ting until eventually you can. And you can quote me on that.
“Drink my Distraction Juice (not from concentrate). It tastes like love, only not so focused on just one ingredient.”
“I had to quit my taxi cab driving job because I had no way to get to work. The problem was I kept calling myself to come pick me up.”
“Sometimes I get depressed about my age. In March I’ll be 26. If man weren’t measured in numbers, but rather letters, I’d be turning Z. And then I’d be dead.”
“I gave her a broken watch, to symbolize that my love for her is forever and timeless. And as an excuse to why I’m always late.”
“If you only had 48 hours left to live, would you spend it like you normally spend your weekends? If not, why spend 2/7th of your life wasting your free time? After all, free time isn’t free. Free time is the most expensive time you have, because nobody pays for it but you. But that also makes it the most valuable time you have, as you alone stand to reap the profits from spending it wisely.”
“I often wear camouflaged pants so when I walk I look like a floating torso. I love with the same air of mystery.”
“In a bookstore you can find me in the romance section, because I’m not a lover, I’m a reader.”
“Making benches is no walk in the park. It takes one a lot of love to make a bench, and then it takes two to make love on that bench.”
“Because even among contrarians, I’m a contrarian. But all of this is just words of bronze, third place rhetoric. What do I really mean when I say we want to shock society into awareness? Do we mean we want more originality and individuality? Less TV, more reading, writing, actual thinking? Less sheep, more shepherd pie? Yes, yes, and a little more pie, please. Oh, and some more sweet tea, too”
“To Do Today, 1/17/081. Sit and think2. Reach enlightenment3. Feed the cats”
“Here's a haiku/palindrome I wrote called, "Obsession."Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob”
“I’d love to create a personal profile on a dating site with a headline that reads, “Great Listener Seeks Mute Woman.”
“I never got to call myself a door-to-door salesman, because, regrettably, I only ever went to one door. But one day I just might knock on another door, to be able to proudly say that I was once a door-to-door salesman.”
“In high school I barely made the rodeo team. But I wasn’t good enough to start, so I just rode the bench.”
“Everything I’ve ever done, ever thought, ever experienced, and ever felt, has led me up to this moment in my life. And after accumulating and culminating it, all I can say is, “Ahhhhh!”
“My birthday is on a holiday. I just have to wait until I die and they commemorate me.”
“A one dollar bill, though it weighs less than 99 pennies, is psychologically heavier.”
“Whether you live to be 50 or 100 makes no difference, if you made no difference in the world.”
“Not only am I thinking about getting a nose job, but I’m also trying to get employment for the rest of my face.”
“Even a fool recognizes that there is great sadness in a bucket of tears. But only a wise man thinks to conserve water and use that bucket to wash his car.”
“The easiest way to get from point A to point B is with a vehicle that runs on alphabet soup.”
“I don’t think anybody’s ever written a song called, “There’s urine on the couch, and the remote control is in the shower.” I would write it myself, but I’ve never been very good at writing love ballads.”
“If I ever go to China, I’m going to find a piano and play “Chopsticks”--only not with my fingers, but rather I’ll be using two forks.”
“I think the two greatest inventions in the history of mankind are the remote control and the fingernail clipper. Now, if someone could just combine those two, I’d be very eager to clip my nails from across the room.”
“Nothing in this world feels quite like freedom, except for freedom. And nothing in the world tastes quite like freedom, except for fried bald eagles.”
“If my name were Mememem, and I had just ran into someone who should have known my name but couldn’t recall it, I’d probably say, “I can’t believe you don’t remememember my name.”
“As we were walking home the other night, Orafoura turned to me and said, “Were you aware that there are places in the universe where time doesn’t exist?”“I know,” I replied. “That’s where I went to buy my last watch.”
“I don’t think that taking off my eye patch would increase my night vision by 100%, but it would go a long way towards relieving my wedgie.”
“Sometimes I sit for hours just thinking, wondering what the man upstairs is trying to tell me. Yesterday I reached the conclusion that he was saying, “Get me a slinky.”
“I want to end global hunger by feeding half the world’s starving people to the other half.”
“I want my time to be taken up by chores, errands, appointments, and arguments. In other words, I want to get married.”
“I want to keep a human mouth on my coffee table. It’ll be a great conversation starter.”
“I want my words to illuminate like the sun, as I give my daily lecture on photosynthesis to my houseplants.”
“I want to be strapped to a table, while a family of chickens argues over who gets to eat my legs.”
“I want to write a book called, "Bonfires and Bras," which follows around a young, braless feminist who struggles to adopt in air conditioned rooms, as her hardened nipples cause her excess embarrassment.”
“I want to write a book so long that it will take the average person their whole life to read. It will be exactly the same length as the Bible.”
“I want to make pants out of tuna fish, to accompany my cottage cheese thighs.”
“I want to be more like James Bond, and less like Ian Fleming.”
“I want to be a cowboy, but only long enough to barge into a saloon and bellow, "Who's the yellowbelly that stole my happy trail?”
“I want to get the words "Courage" and "Bravery" tattooed across my back, so people could associate me with those things as they read them while they chase me.”
“I want to see an elephant hunt down a man for the sole purpose of collecting his teeth, while a chorus of typewriters sings songs that praises the bananas for their wisdom, leadership, and their high levels of potassium.”
“I want to get the huge wart that looks like a nose removed from my back, but first I'm going to try to grow a mustache underneath it, to make it less noticeable.”
“I want my relationship with my girlfriend to be built on trust, not toothpicks, rubber bands, and lentil beans.”
“A banker is a man who will lend you the short sleeve shirt off his back and demand a long sleeve one in return.”
“I always keep a Ziploc bag in my pocket, and wherever I go I fill up my bag with dirt, because my goal is to be the largest land holder in the world by the time I'm 42.”
“I'm so excited. I just bought a new file cabinet, some manila folders, some sticky note pads, and a few highlighters, and I think I'm finally ready to enter into organized crime.”
“I could tell by their audible gasps that the people on the beach were jealous of me when I found five shark's teeth. Locating them wasn't really the problem, but pulling them out of my leg was.”
“To me, beer tastes like piss. Maybe that's why I only enjoy it in the shower with my uncle.”
“Yesterday I memorized Shakespeare, and tomorrow I'm also going to memorize his first name.”
“I will never buy a fish tank, because I don't believe in supporting the funding of aquatic war machines.”