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.
“The ChairI’m writing to you, who made the archaic wooden chairlook like a throne while you sat on it.Amidst your absence, I choose to sit on the floor,which is dusty as a dry Kansas day.I am stoic as a statue of Buddha,not wanting to bother the old wooden chair,which has been silent now for months.In this sunlit moment I think of you.I can still picture you sitting there--your forehead wrinkled like an un-ironed shirt,the light splashed on your face,like holy water from St. Joseph’s.The chair, with rounded curveslike that of a full-figured woman,seems as mellow as a monk in prayer.The breeze blows from beyond the curtains,as if your spirit has come back to rest.Now a cloud passes overhead,and I hush, waiting to hear what restsso heavily on the chair’s lumbering mind.Do not interrupt, even if the wind offers to carryyour raspy voice like a wispy cloud.”
“I wanted “300” to be less about fighting, and more about bowling. At least they could have had the Spartans wear bowling shoes.”
“-The good guys are coming, boss. What do you want me to do?-Don’t just stand there, you idiot. Ram them with your erection!”
“Newt Gingrich, buddy, the people of the United States don’t like you. And the only reason the rest of the world doesn’t despise you is because they don’t know you. Thankfully you won’t have to experience that global derision, as you have reached the pinnacle of your career as a crook—I mean politician.”
“Today somebody asked me if I had to lose one of my senses, which would I choose? “Oh my God,” I said, “I’d choose smell.” But of course with that comes the loss of taste too. But who cares? I could eat cheap, flavorless gruel everyday with stinky people and be perfectly happy.”
“The moonlight filtered through the trees like water from a strainer. Agatha’s hair was the color and consistency of wet noodles. I said she might look sexy as a redhead, and she asserted she’d be staying a creamy alfredo. I touched her tight skin they way a drummer might strum a guitar. She called me Mozart, and I didn’t know how to reply so I simply belched. Before I had finished, her open mouth was on mine, and she was huffing my essence like David Hasselhoff hoofing it to the liquor store. I remember what color panties she wore. They were transparent with the texture of flesh. I rubbed her back while she purred. Her skin was as soft as a fur coat. We made love for what seemed like days, but was in fact 3:58.95—a personal best for me. I felt like Roger Bannister, and she felt like a cheetah. Literally. I told her she’d look good on my rug, as a rug, and she playfully pinched the folds on my stomach. She explored my naval cavity with her pinky, and what started out as foreplay turned into a scavenger hunt. While she might have expected to find lint, nobody could have ever suspected she’d find the lost Templar treasure.”
“It’s the same with cell phones. I never answer them up to my ear. I always put it on speakerphone and hold it six to eight inches away from my brain. Here’s an example of a phone call I recently received from an unknown number:-Hello?-Hi, Is Shehe there? -Yes. But S/he can’t talk right now, as it is very confused. But I’ll tell him or her that you called.”
“I’m tired of thinking about Agatha. Well, not about her, but about my loss of her. Today I went through some old boxes of mine and found some journal entries I wrote in the second grade. One was about the loss of a girl, the S name on my list, so I’ll copy and paste it for posterity:Today was a bad day. Stephany broke up with me for Tommy. I don’t like that slimy Tommy. Tommy is a turtle. I used to like turtles but now I like warm blooded creetures. Maybe Stephany is a reptile disguised as a human jerkface. I won’t cry because I am a soldier. Soldiers do not dispense tears. Soldiers kill their enemies. Tommy is my enemy. But the code of the moose says a warrior must eat what he kills. Does this mean I should have eaten my neighbors cat? I will not cry today or ever. I am fearless like my dad. My dad is a superhero. He is courageous and invisible. I haven’t seen him in four years. When I see him next he’ll probably tell me I am taller. Maybe I will tell him he is shorter. And fatter and balder. Maybe he will appear again and I can be normal. I would very much like to not wear wooden shoes anymore. Cats tongues are rough like sandpaper. Cats must never lick my shoes. Nobody licked my shoes the way Stephany did. I will miss her and her early-onset male pattern baldness.”
“Last night I snuck an orchestra into the elevator at my apartment. We made elevator music history until Marvin got his oboe caught in the door and Mrs. Hoffstead started singing "Yes We Have No Bananas Today" in the hall so loud the police were called in from Equador.”
“In the 48 hours following my discovery of her infidelity, I found out she’d been with three other guys—two of them being conjoined twins. The twins didn’t go to our school, and they weren’t homeschooled either. They were 57-years-old and homeless.”
“While I appear to be happy and giggling, rest assured that inside I am sad. And angry. Like that one time—Feb 14, 1997, at 1:47 pm to be exact—when John Beaverthief stole my girlfriend. He snatched her from the shelf of my life like she was a trophy wife. But she was no trophy; she was more of a maquette.”
“She asked for soup, and I served her cereal. Our love was in the breakfast stage.”
“Give yourself a hug, and while you are embracing yourself, use that time to hold yourself together.”
“I saw myself in a piece of glass that wasn’t a mirror. Was that my doppelganger or my clone? Who was that? Who am I? Maybe if I hadn’t been acting like a reverse Peeping Tom, trying to look out into the world, this existential dilemma wouldn’t have popped up.”
“What if leaves changed shape as well as color? You can teach a man to fish, or you can introduce him to a woman named Fish who happens to look like a trout.”
“If I could build my own neighbors, I’d have no need to build a fence. I would tell you, “I would tell you, but you wouldn’t understand,” but you wouldn’t understand what you wouldn’t understand.”
“I am a rebel! But I don’t want people to agree with my views, because if everyone agreed with me then I wouldn’t be rebellious anymore. Did you hear what I heard? Because I heard what I said. Hear what I mean, which is not necessarily what I say.”
“The final few weeks in a town before you move always feel like vacation, like you’re observing and taking it all in, seeing with fresh eyes. I’m moving back to Orafouraville. A college degree is so worthless that it is invaluable. When everybody has one, they are cheap—except if you don’t have one, and then they are priceless.”
“I want to grow a tan and an accent, then dig it out of my garden and staple it to my naked body. I like Salmon Rushdie like a bear would. Especially with a honey glaze.”
“After being videotaped, I found that I talk a lot with my hands. Especially if my hands are covered with socks. I guess I get really nervous on first dates.”
“I have extremely great aim when it comes to peeing. I can, for instance, manage to not splash a single drop on the rim of the toilet, even when standing five feet away and from behind the shower curtain.”
“If love smelled like cheese, as some people assume it does, then I'd rather be a goat and make love all day long.”
“If something earthly reminds you of something ethereal, then it must be love.”
“Sometimes I’ll be walking along, thinking, and I’ll kick up some dust and I’ll say, Whoa! That makes sense, and I’ll have just had an epiphany, and then forget all about it because I’ll get distracted by my dirty shoes.”
“Reading a book is like having the ability to dip a straw into the author’s soul and sip and slurp without lowering the water table of wisdom. ”
“Of all the things God created, from sunrises and rainbows, to black holes and humor, cats are the most fascinating to me. ”
“I want to type one of my books into a free online translation website, and convert it from English to German and then publish the results as an exercise in the absurd.”
“Poison Ivy tastes like an itch when you have it on your tongue, and I’d say that love tastes the same, only itchier.”
“The state of North Carolina, Daisy, and John Wayne walked into a bar, and I shouted, “Duke!” and the bartender threw me out, because he was a Chapel Hill fan, and I was drunk.”
“I’ll tell myself whatever I need to hear to stop listening.”
“My name is Hope Happy, and I am a pessimist.”
“-I have this friend—you don’t know him—but— -Is his name Molloway? -No. -Oh. I don’t know anybody named Molloway, so that’s why I was asking.”
“I’m a person, you’re a person, and we should make love. That is, if you’re a person who’s also roughly ½ of the population known as women.”
“I don’t like Mondays, especially if they occur on Fridays.”
“Don’t show me how I messed up, because I don’t need to be shown. Clearly if I’ve messed up once, I can do it again without any coaching from you.”
“Factor in the fact that factories should only hire people they make themselves, I believe, and you can see why I want to be self-employed and own a factory. This would mean I’d have thousands of clones of myself working for me. Think about it. I’ll increase my income thousands of times over, but I’ll only be paying tax for one person. ”
“We’re going to go in the back room as two singles, copulate back there, and come out a couple. Somebody go tell my clone where I am so he doesn’t go file a missing person’s report on himself.”
“Are you OK with pissing people off to succeed? Because that’s what will happen. Success pisses off the unsuccessful.”
“When a writer has deep thoughts, I expect him to also have a deep voice. And if he doesn’t, he should remain silent and let his writer’s voice do all the speaking for him.”
“For me, TV and broke go together. Not as in, The TV is broken, but more of noticing that most people who watch too much TV are broke.”
“I want to do something for a living that when it comes time to retire and I can stop doing it, I’ll want to continue doing it in my free time.”
“People say, How could God allow helpless children to die? While I look around the world and see corruption, pollution, filth, lies, deception, poverty, and heartache, and I say, Gee, how come I wasn’t lucky enough to have God snatch me out of the world? Those people don’t know what lies beyond death, so who are they to assume that children leaving the world early is necessarily a bad thing? For all they know heaven is full of candy and cartoons. ”
“I like to switch things up by keeping things the same. People never expect it.”
“I’d rather be me being me than me trying to be my own clone. I try to stay true to who I am as a person, not a genetically modified being.”
“The moveless man moves along like the mist. The mist doesn’t hide, but all things are hidden in it—including the fog. Love is the only thing that moves the moveless man, and he hasn't the foggiest clue why his eyes get misty when he thinks of her.”
“I'm a year older than 365 days ago, and I'm having trouble bending my knees and my lower back is killing me. Everything reminds me of death. Especially bending over all day to steal the flowers off all the graves in the cemetery.”
“What’s on my mind? I could say you, but we both know I'd be lying. Actually, I'm only pretending that you aren't on my mind. But I know that you don't mind.”
“I'm proud to be a Mick, even though I'm not Irish My middle name is Mickey, though. Actually, I’m lying.”
“If my name were Isaac Newton, would I be a famous no name? I’d have worldwide and historical name recognition, yet I’d be anonymous.”
“I asked if she wanted kids. She said her clock is ticking. I said, That’s because I set it five minutes ahead when you weren’t looking.”