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.
“There’s truth in only having a bicycle seat. I used to skip class and just hold it out in the hallway. When teachers would ask me what I was doing, I’d hold it up and say, “Sorry I’m late.”
“I bought an empty safe, and I keep it empty, because safety doesn’t exist, so my safes are full of their potential.”
“If I could die saving two lives, I would, provided each of those two people were the kind of people who would die to save two more like them.”
“Just got done giving my cat a haircut and eating dinner. The two events are unrelated, though I might cough up a hairball later on.”
“I’m an only child, so logically I gave birth to my parents, because if it weren’t for me they wouldn’t be parents at all, they’d simply be a married couple. (Or maybe without me they wouldn’t even have been married!) ”
“I’m a four-time Pulitzer Prize winning admirer. I’m also a 16-time Olympic medalist observer (I saw Michael Phelps on TV).”
“I want to drum up interest for instruments that are played by beating them with sticks.”
“My stomach is my locker. Let me store your lunch for you. You’ll get it back, it’ll just be squishy, brown, and smelly.”
“I want a house with a garage, so someone from the government won’t try to park a tank in my living room.”
“I don’t get the phrase, “Cut to the chase.” When I’m exasperated with all the verbal running around and skirting the issue, the last thing I want is more chasing. Let’s cut to the caught.”
“Instead of burning the midnight oil, you should try selling it.”
“I’m now solidly in my mid-thirties. I turned thirty, three days ago.”
“I wrote a coded love note in my report for work. All the letters you need to read what I wrote are there—you just have to find them and rearrange the order until you’ve arrived at something romantic, and then you’ll have discovered what I wrote.”
“-I’m looking for a man— -There are several suspects in Topeka, Ks. that match that description. Why don’t you try there first?”
“Is your bed big enough? Because if it is, I can always join you and crowd it up a bit.”
“I’ll name my town “Unwelcome,” and the sign will say, “Welcome to Unwelcome.”
“I always wear gloves when I wash my hands. That’s also how I make love, and if you buy now I’ll throw in an extra bar of soap for FREE.”
“I saw her standing across the room, and I thought, “Wow! Who is that sexy woman she’s standing next to?”
“I added five shots to my coffee, because that’s all the bullets my magazine can hold.”
“College has given me the confidence I need to fail. ”
“Unless I’m at a wedding, I don’t like veiled threats.”
“She had a picture of a llama, so under it I wrote, “I didn’t know you knew my brother.”
“I prefer to let my voice do all the talking for me.”
“In my laboratory, I use science to measure love. Whatever you do, don’t drink out of beaker number two.”
“I wear a helmet when I write, because if you’re doing it right, writing is dangerous.”
“She said “I love you,” and I said the only thing I could say: “How about every other Tuesday?”
“With six pieces of wood, I’m building a life, and my coffin.”
“I’m a 33rd degree mason, which is one degree above freezing.”
“Before I make you boss, I want to tattoo “Assistant” around your asshole.”
“Scars are proof man isn’t perfect, though constantly getting closer.”
“Are you an Is there? or a There isn’t! kind of person? I’m more of an Is there isn’t? kind of guy.”
“I have a rating system I apply to all people. Mao Zedong might have a Meow Factor of four, but I like to keep my Meow Factor as close to zero as I can. This system is not to be confused with my HV methodology, where I assign myself a Hooray Value of five.”
“I am who I pretend to be, and right now I’m pretending to be my own clone.”
“They should make blindfolds with circles cut out where the eyes are, so kidnappers would be able to tell when their victims‘ eyes are closed, so their secret locations aren’t revealed.”
“The radio signal was scrambled, and so were my eggs. I got tired of eating commercial breaks for breakfast.”
“Don’t expect my hand to extend out of her vagina and accept the charity of strangers.”
“Nonstop sunny days would be boring. We need the gloom to highlight the highs.”
“I threw out my sausage, and replaced it with a healthier penis metaphor, like a cucumber.”
“I could tell I loved her from the moment I saw her, right after she opened the trunk, untied me, and took off my blindfold.”
“I ate a Danish. Better than eating someone from Finland.”
“The boxer had two black eyes. But that’s to be expected, since he was from Africa.”
“I talk about talking like I listen to listening—in a room with mirrored walls that makes me appreciate the infinity that is God.”
“Grow a garden. When there’s a food shortage in the future, you’ll need it. And when people try to steal your food and you shoot them, you’ll also need a good place to hide the bodies.”
“I kiss like a skyscraper meets the sky, only with less scraping and more vertigo.”
“At the end of the universe you’ll find a door labeled “Do Not Enter.” No great mysteries are hidden there—it’s just a supplies closet.”
“I want a driveway so long you couldn’t see the end of it even if you were 26.1 miles into running a marathon on it. But why would you run? That’s why my clone will have invented teleportation.”
“I have a stalker, a beautiful one: the sunset. Every day she’s there, watching me, whether I watch her or not.”
“Do I look like someone you know? Well you don’t know me, so why don’t you go bother my clone? And if you do see my clone, tell him I should have made an omelet out of him when I had the chance.”
“I broke down when we broke up, but I didn’t break in to her house just to break out of my routine.”
“I just stepped in shit, and now I’ve got political rhetoric all over my shoes.”