Reasons for Things

Let's get one thing straight:

Zombies are annoying.

Fucking annoying.  And if you think this is some "trying to be hip" shit, fuck off.  In the dawn of the craze I just laughed along with everyone when they were all zommed out.  I loved Shawn of the Dead.  I read The Zombie Survival Guide.  I watched the George Romero movies because it's what I do, I watch all the movies. It's pointless to have an opinion on something I know nothing about.

I used to allow music to fall into that trap - I would assume I didn't like a band without ever listening to them, due to some some convoluted and irrelevant connection I made.

But that stems from the insecurity I had when I was a freshman in college and I pretended to like things so people would like me (Dave Matthews Band, Pink Floyd, Jimmy Buffet).  Remember that episode of Full House where DJ pretends to like cars? It was like that.  Obviously I learned nothing from FH.  I also vehemently denied my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (before a rooster crows YOU WILL DENY ME THREE TIMES) and cheap fantasy.  I wanted to be cool very, very badly.

I didn't want to be that girl I was in high school, harassed in the hallways, never dated anyone, ate lunch alone in a bathroom stall (Mean Girls really hit home for me).  My closest friends didn't invite me to parties because I was so caustic and dorky.  Then I found out some of my male friends called me "the dyke" behind my back because I "talk like a dude" and "play softball" they treated me like a novelty instead of a real person with feelings (of course I had a crush on two of them even thought they treated me terribly, why? Because teenagers are dumb. Like zombies.).

It took me a long time to get over stuff like that.  I was shocked when someone wanted to spend time with me, terrified it was just to tease me.  When someone actually seemed to enjoy my company I grew distressed and confused, because I was a worthless loser and I didn't deserve it. 

I still have to re-convince myself every single day that my friends and co-workers aren't ashamed of me. So I repeat this: I am fucking awesome. If I say it enough, it will be true. Right?

How the fuck did I get here?  Shit. Scroll up.  What's the point?  Right.  Zombies.

So I tried really hard to squeeze myself into what I thought other people thought was cool, and then I realized: um, fuck those people.  I came out of the closet as a Pink Floyd hater first, which I knew would get me the most vitriol.  But I was educated.  "Roger Waters has the worst voice ever.  The only good songs are sung by David Gilmour, who is a dreamboat."   And so on.

I was so fucking proud of myself.  Became an authority.  Did research, deduced my technical and emotional reactions and told everyone my conclusions.  Absorbed myself in musical history and just basically ignored every song that came out from 2004-2010 unless someone literally shoved it down my throat.  Got really into John Cale and Harry Nilsson. Hipster, right?

Goddammit.  Zombies.

Zombies are annoying.

That whole digression illustrates three very important things:

1. This anti-zombie thing is not a conclusion I arrived at willy-nilly.  I watched a lot of shitty movies and one shitty TV show to make sure I was right. HOWEVER: I did it all under the assumption that I wouldn't like it.  Which, of course, affects the outcome considerably.
2. I really wanted to be a part of the zombie thing, because I love being a part of things, but...I couldn't feign interest. I've never been able to get into it.  
3. I now have a huge personal aversion to doing things just because other people do them, which is, of course, the nature of zombies.

So I like my apocalypses either (a) zombie-free or (b) clever to the point of insanity.

I like them slightly cheesy, gritty, and full of hopeful camaraderie.

I like rag-tag misfits, but the good kind, not the bitchy, whiny Glee kind (the thing about Glee is that NO ONE LIKES THOSE KIDS BECAUSE THEY'RE DICKS, not because they're singing homosexuals. This isn't 1997.)

I like my writing hyper self-aware or blissfully dismissive.

I like my heroes with defining characteristics other than "alive" and "outnumbered."  I mean, the thought of a world of undead going about their day looking for flesh to eat is not a pleasant one and is surely mighty creepifiying, and I get the damn metaphor, guys.

But the real reason...okay. Breathe.

I don't talk about this because even thinking about it is giving me skin flares and that thing, you know, that thing where it feels like someone is squeezing your heart but so they can make juice out of it?  That thing? What's it called? Fear. 

That's how I feel about this.  I can do this. This is me being vulnerable. Is admitting your fears showing vulnerability?  Fuck yeah it is. 

Cannibalism scares the piss out of me. The fucking piss.  Have you ever seen Ravenous? God, I'm grossed out just thinking about it. Or Cannibal Holocaust? I watched that alone - oh, god, when...four years ago? But I read it was the most controversial movie ever so I had to watch it, I had to, and I literally threw up.  Actual throw-upping.  It happened.  Kkkkaaahhhkkk.  Nguah. Ngaaaaaah.  Vom sounds.  Breathe.

So it's not the zombies that scare me.  It's what comes after them from a genre standpoint.

Zombies are just like, cannibal-lite.  They're just a step below.   Zombies + Human Centipede = SCARY HORROR CANNIBALISM HORROR GATEWAY OF FUCKING HORROR.  I want the zombie shit to stop so the cannibal shit never starts, because once we mainstream cannibal horror movies I AM GOING TO HAVE STEADY, CONSTANT NIGHTMARES FOREVER AND I LIVE ALONE.

Now you know.


...

It's Fine.

This is Part 9 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series, which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series, just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.

Part 1: Fashion Scarves in Fucking Charge

Part 2: Predictable

Part 3: Noishenvantengutencastlestein v. Hitler's Casino

Part 4: Beating Hitler at His Own Game

Part 5: Inhale

Part 6: After the Fox

Part 7: Like Mountain

Part 8: But You Know. Sweden.

Part 9: It's Fine

Part 10: Kiss Off

 Part 11: Red Man Says Nein

 
Anyway, back in Sweden...

The paw prints scatter down the castle stairs.

"Kitty!" MoLinder pounds after them and Katsisch and I follow, tracking the trail into a darkened room full of slithering shadows.  A series of decayed shuttered windows creep over the walls, each one opening with a scream or a scrape, lazily hiding pictures of Swedish children's nightmares.

Rat silhouettes scurry across the base of a wall.  In the distance, another room, I hear terrified shrieks, the slicing and meaty splat of a guillotine.

"What the fuck kind of children's museum is this?" I ask. To no one, really.  I'm just asking, you know.  The world.

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The paw prints lead to a series of backlit etchings, and the cat's words narrate each one in turn: beaked Plague Doctors roamed the streets of Malmo in 1710, administering crap hack treatments and usually contracting the plague themselves; dogs and cats were drowned and murdered unceremoniously, believed to be plague carriers; with no predators, the resulting surge of the rat population happily inflamed the festering outbreak for four years, eventually killing more than a third of the population of Malmo.

It never occurred to me, even in all of the places I've been - including twelve countries that barely survived the Black Death - it never occurred to me until this moment that there once was a plague upon a place I have stood.  Suddenly I feel very indulged and spoiled, but tragically so. 

I hear my sister scream.

Wuss, I think as her scream morphs into laughter, riddled with the guillotine slices and shrieks and MoLinder's low, gasping giggles.  MoLinder plans on fucking with me as well, I'm sure of it, and I'm startled anyway when she gets her chance.

The thundering shink of the guillotine is louder in the next room, probably because you can lay down on a bloody chopping block. I look up.  Hundreds of black paper skeletons dangle by the neck from the ceiling, fluttering around a glinting blade. 

"Are you fucking kidding me?' I say softly, staring. English translations of the exhibits are sporadic, and this room offered none at all.  A screen on the wall was playing some documentary in Swedish, which I obviously couldn't understand.  The modern castle star-wiped into photos and then drawings of the past, showing a layout of the dungeons and the Dalby Gallows Hill outside, where prisoners and vagrants were whipped, and I giggled.

 ...

Because one time I was wandering in Printer's Row and I found a risque little leather book called Flagellation and the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. It was a brilliant thing, published in like the 1870s.  I couldn't afford the $200 copy in my hand, but I sat in a corner and skimmed it for awhile, soaking in the subtle comedy, learning all I could about the medical, disciplinary, and erotic history of flogging. 

"The line between pain and pleasure is as thin as the tail of a whip."
...

I run my hands over the walls.  During the Renaissance this place was a fortress.  Eventually another wall was built around Malmo, and this building served as citadel.  After that it became a castle.  And after it was a castle, it was a prison. Now a museum.  So much history in here, I think, tracing a pattern onto the wall with my finger, yeah...so...this is not the original wall.  Stop touching it like you can feel its memories or something. Okay. 

"Ross.  Ross.  RASSLES.  Get over here.  Have you read these?"

Thankful to be distracted, I bolt to MoLinder, who's standing in front of a fake door of a jail cell and reading something from out of a drawer.

"Dude.  Read this.  It's so fucked up.  And dude...watch." She peers through the barred window, triggering motion sensors.  A recording launches of a man's maniacal laugh and thud of an axe, the sound of splattering blood - through the window, a shadow passes over a white wall streaked with dark, thick red.

Similar doors are spaced throughout the room, with their own drawerful of stories and freaky deaky sound effects of birds screaming and crying babies.  Next to each door is a hole in the wall filled with random questionable items.  Like mice.

We couldn't see inside some of the holes, and as I have a fear of sticking my hand in things, I was petrified. Is there a name for that?  The fear of sticking your hand into the unknown?

I stand in front of one of the crudely cut holes and shove my camera inside, taking picture after picture to create a panoramic view of everything that lives in the hidey-hole.

"Just stick your hand in there," Katsisch teases. 

I brace myself and stretch my fingers, reaching slowly into the hole, and snatch my hand back fast because something is totally going to grab me, and I don't know if it's MoLinder or if it's someone who is paid to grab people that are scared of putting their hands into dark holes or what, but I knew my shit would get grabbed and I would probably cry.  

But I was laughing, and trying to take pictures of the inside of the hole so I could assure myself that nothing was in there, that nothing was going to slip over my hand and pull or knaw or drill into my marrow, and as I was freaking out and Katsisch was laughing MoLinder stomped over and jammed her hand into the damn thing.

"There is nothing in there," she said, and I'd never seen a braver thing in my life.   "It's fine."

We kept wandering through the prison, and then the trail of paw prints ended with the silhouette of a cat. So we kept walking, and then we were in an art museum, and then we were in a clothing design exhibit, and then we were in an aquarium, and then we were in a historical Swedish furniture display (until Ikea), and then we were surrounded by taxidermied white reindeer doused in glitter, and then we were in an HIV room, and then there was a suit of armor dangling from the ceiling by its neck, and then we were in a modern art exhibit about how humans are pigs, and then we were in a room stocked with live bats and scorpions. 

But I will leave you with this, with one of the most fucked up things I've read in a children's museum.

Prisoner No. 14, 1896

Bength Nilsson, known as "The Chicken Man"

Born 7/1/1841, sentenced on 8/9/1876 to life imprisonment with hard labor, for incest and illicit sexual relations

Bengt Nilsson bought chickens from the farms and sold them in town.

There were also fine-looking women on the farms. He could bandy words with them and squeeze them when he got the chance, but they were always on their guard.  But there were lots of little girls around...

Bengt knew how to attract and deceive the small, shy blue-eyed creatures. A few of them began to blubber, of course, but when he threatened to give them a good thrashing, or boxed their ears once or twice, they kept quiet about what was going on.

And then of course, he always had his daughter, Nilla, at home.  She never denied him. A few times he had to threaten to take one of her sisters instead, and then she was more than happy to make herself available to him.  Four children were the unhappy result, though thank goodness two did not live long. 

Is he not fully within his rights to take possession of what is his?

...

Inhale

This is Part 5 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series, which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series, just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.

Part 1: Fashion Scarves in Fucking Charge

Part 2: Predictable

Part 3: Noishenvantengutencastlestein v. Hitler's Casino

Part 4: Beating Hitler at His Own Game

Part 5: Inhale

Part 6: After the Fox

Part 7: Like Mountain

Part 8: But You Know. Sweden.

Part 9: It's Fine

Part 10: Kiss Off

 Part 11: Red Man Says Nein

Obviously after Salzburg (soooo obv btw) we did more things, but I can't think of a way to turn them into something more interesting than a generic list of things.

But after Salzburg there was currywurst, and the next day Dachau.  To this very second I have no idea why I willingly went back to that godforsaken place--in 2003 it sent me into such a fucking emotional funk--

Oh, I just got it.

In fourth grade I read Number the Stars for Battle of the Books and after that I guzzled every age-appropriate World War II reading I could find.  I remember Snow Treasure and The Devil's Arithmetic and The Upstairs Room and Escape from Warsaw.  I needed to know that there were heroes that stood against real-life monsters.

My dad purchased the hardcover second volume of Maus while all this was going on and one night I glanced at the cover of the book in his hand and begged him to let me read it.  Dad was thrilled, and he immediately shot into a detailed description of the plot while my mom listened silently.  When he left to go find the first volume for me, Mom protested with stoic vehemence.  I was too young, it was too graphic.  So I had to steal it.  I just inhaled the whole damn thing.

In fifth grade we actually studied the war in class which was pretty much the most exciting thing that ever happened to me, and I knew all of the books and I was so fucking proud of myself. Fifth grade also marked the year I was allowed to ride my bike across the ultra-trafficky 75th Street, which meant, of course, the library.  And the library sans parents meant the second floor, and the second floor meant the adult section, and the adult section meant everything in the world ever.

I would plop down on the floor in an aisle with a stack from the bookshelf in front of me in a robotic-apology-loop where a fellow patron would step over me in a huff and I would give a mechanical "sorry," affixed on whatever book.  Sometimes I'd apologize to no one, which could only mean one of two things: ONE! I have supersonic hearing. TWO! Ghosts. 

(As an aside, I just learned that one of my ears is higher than the other and it's like, destroying me)

(Not because I have an aversion to asymmetry but because when you learn about your own ill-proportioned ears at the ripe age of 31 [oh my fucking god I am 31] it is a wee bit dscomforting)

(also my glasses are crooked)

But I was sitting in the library when I saw this:

It took me about two seconds to fall in love with a murdered Russian POW.  He was the saddest, most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  All of my previous loves - Fritz from Swiss Family Robinson, Wesley from Princess Bride, Matt who lived down the street but went to a private school so I only saw him in the summer - they all meant nothing.  None of them endured the savagery that he faced bravely.  Because in my head he was defiant and brave, and he refused to let the bastards get him down, even when they dangled him in a low-pressure chamber to see how much the healthy human body could stand.

I created fantasy backstories where he survived, where he gained immortality, where he became a god, where he volunteered for the experiment to save the life of his little brother or his father or his girlfriend (who was, of course, me).  He was a Dachau hero slaughtered for raising a rebellion against Sigmund Rascher's sadistic medical regime.  He was the greatest pilot in the world, he had successfully escaped from 32 other POW camps and was executed as an example of the price of revolution.  I imagined he's survived by a grandson who I will meet ten years after seeing this picture and we recognize each other from across a crowded room, and I am the only person who conceivably understands the image that haunts his family history and together we embark on adventures seeking retribution and then we move to Ireland and make so many babies.

Fifth-grade era me sat in the library and ran through all of these scenarios and cried.

Then going back to Dachau and seeing this picture all terrible and huge - I nearly lost it in 2003, and I nearly lost it again back in April. But we all know the Holocaust was horrific.  I don't need to prove that to you. 

Fifth-grade-era me knew so much.  Fifth-grade-era me knew about Nazi experimentation and the various historical Inquisitions of the church and sex and suicide and rape and apartheid and AIDS, but fifth-grade-era me still, deep-down, totally believed in Santa Claus.  No one could take that away from me no matter how hard they tried.  Kids teased me about it, my parents would say, "Now, don't tell your little sister that Santa doesn't exist" and I would be like, "of course" and then I would fantasize being a reindeer trainer in the North Pole.

And I still do shit like that.

...

My Hands are a Little Dirty.

The other night my brain did that thing where I have waking nightmares and sleep paralysis, and I hate that shit.

Right after I graduated from college, during my brief stint in grad school before I realized it was a waste of time and money, three very important things happened:  (1) I got really into The X-Files, (2) I saw The Notebook and realized Ryan Gosling was a crazy, crazy creepo, and (3) I taught myself how to control the action in my dreams. Lucid dreaming is almost automatic for me, but then again that's just the awareness of being in a dream, and not controlling the action.

But sometimes the dream fights back and won't let me take charge, and then it makes fun of me.  It's like my psyche is lashing back over having too much control and starts to fuck with me.  So I will dream about Ryan Gosling, for example, and then my dream will make him speak, and speaking completely defeats the purpose of people like Ryan Gosling, who is not a real person at all.  If he had a voice like, say, LA Confidential-era Russell Crowe or Fabulous Baker Boys-era Jeff Bridges or always-era Paul Newman, things would be different.  But he doesn't.  He speaks like Ryan Gosling, or an audible abusive relationship, which means he always sounds a little bit drunk and kinda pervy and sensitive to the point of serious violence. He's best in photographs with feminist thought bubbles and Drive. 

So Ryan Gosling and dream-Rassles are in an elevator boudoir, and I am like, "Oh, this dream is about to get ab-tastic" and then Ryan Gosling speaks, and dream-Rassles is all, "No good.  Talk like Bruce Willis" and he totally ignores me and smirks and then dream-me is all, "shut UP Ryan Gosling" and Ryan Gosling is all, "u wan me ta shoo urp n hid mer emoshins? Za wah u wan?" and I'm all "YES" and he takes off his shirt and starts to fucking cry, wiping his nose on the bedsheets, and I'm like "How about this - shut your mouth or I'll kick your teeth down your throat and I'll shut it for you" and he smashes a window and starts carving my name into his arm with a giant shard of glass and then he just looks at me.  Like a horny Labrador.  And I'm all "stop eyefucking me, Gosling" and then he gets stigmata and a bunch of Golden Globe nominations.

But that wasn't my nightmare.

For those who aren't familiar with it--during that stretch of time between wakefulness and legit sleep, if you can slide yourself in there...that's how you start actively influencing your dreams.  At least, that's how it works with me.  Usually I have to make the conscious decision before I sleep.

The problem is this: sometimes I don't make the decision and my brain gets switched around, so instead of me consciously controlling the dream, I have no idea I am dreaming and everything is fucking terrifying and more realistic than life.

So the other night I was laying in bed, waiting to fall asleep, when a severed head started throwing up on my stomach, and I was like, "WHAT THE FUCK" but I couldn't move or speak. But then I heard my dog and I strained to move my eyes and just out of the corner I saw a giant fucking Overlord gargoyle beating my dog, alternating between my Louisville Slugger and his rocky fists, and I could hear my dog screaming and I tried to cry and snarl, and then someone started smashing rocks through my bedroom window and the gargoyle like apparated over to me and raised the bat above my head, beating his wings and laughing like a small child, and I was struggling and trying to move because my dog was still alive and I knew I needed to kill him and put him out of his misery, he whimpered and sputtered to breathe, and I couldn't fight and fucking kill everything around me, I couldn't do that, and I couldn't cry and I was so, so, so scared, and the vomit was coagulating all around me and slipping down my sides and it smelled like roadkill and old milk and the severed head rolled between my legs.

And I woke up screaming and sweating and yelling, "WHAT THE FU--" and I felt the shadowed gargoyle whisp away, and I felt the bat land on my neck and bounce off my jugular and heard it thwack into my dog and clatter on the ground, and I heard my dog die, I felt my crushed windpipe and the warm vomit and at the "--UCK!" and I woke up, and all was well.  But I was sure it was there.  I was so sure.

I smashed my head into the wall behind me, and I started crying. 

I walked over to the corner and picked up my bat, which was resting nicely where it lives. And I carried it around my apartment and I looked in every single corner, because I was sure.  It was there.  I knew it.  But I was clean, and my dog lives with my parents.  I turned on all of the lights.  No one was there.  I took a shower.  I got dressed and walked around the block with the bat.  When I got home I watched Drive.  Twice.

Now, I know it's sleep paralysis.  I'm familiar with it.  But can't my brain come up with something less sinister? Some people just imagine a monkey sitting there at the foot of the bed, but no, with me it's all baffing severed heads and dog-murdering gargoyles. I wrote this letter:

Dear My Brain,
Please stop being so scary. You are not helping.
Regards, Me

I've been grinding my teeth for days.  It hurts my jaw and my head.  And it's like, why can't my paralyzing dreams be of Ryan Gosling?  I don't mind his voice that much.  I swear.

...

The Case of Randomly Appearing Things With Legs

There is a beautiful, fucking massively bulbous spider living outside my window.  I named her Sherlotte, because she is ginormous but friendly, and we have had many nervous chuckles together in our 127-hour rapport.  As long as she stays on her side of the window life is good.  But when I can't see her I get all fidgetty, thinking she decided to come inside and join me for hot chocolate.  We are not there yet, Sherlotte.  Slow the fuck down. 

She spun herself a six foot web that stretches across the whole window, but the bulk of it is only on the upper half.  I first saw her when I opened my blinds and I shrieked and tried to scramble up on top of the object closest to me for the protection of higher ground (which was definitely a book).

I texted Al the landlord and told him about her and made him promise not to squish her because that would be very messy, like those videos of draining abscesses, and then I thanked him for my new kitchen chandelier.

About two weeks ago I got a text message from him which read, "you are the proud owner of a golden chandelier" and I was all "baohwr?" and then when I got home from work there was a fancy magic chandelier in my kitchen, and I almost hoped Al the Landlord hadn't texted me because then I would have had a thaumaturgical (thaumaturlogical? thaumaturgenical?) mystery to solve ("The Case of the Appearing Chandelier") and that would have been a very exciting mystery indeed!  For the sake of this blog post I wish the chandelier had eight golden curly arms, but there are only six, and because of that this transitional sentence into the next paragraph functions with less than the rhetorical ease I would normally strive towards--

I'd put her at about an inch and a half without legs.  Sherlotte.  And she has eight of those, by the way, golden black, striped and curled shiny dagger legs.  She is easily the biggest spider I've ever seen in person that was not (a) in a terrarium or (b) nailed to a wall in a museum.  This is Chicago.  Not the outback.

You know how spiders are either plastic or furry (those are the legit biological terms, don't fight it) and sometimes they are just pretty jewels with terrifying knives for arms?  Sherlotte is a very pretty plastic spider.  We're friends, because I have to make friends with things that scare me.  It's a thing.

Still, plastic spiders are way less scary than the furry ones.  Furry things usually come with teeth, and teeth lead to bite marks, and I am a fucking ambrosial peach.  Everyone wants to bite me all the time.  

...

It's A Common Name

The FedEx man, it appears, has a crush on me, because whenever he comes in here he rambles on and on, and all I can think is, "Don't you have somewhere to be in the World? On time?" I could never work for FedEx because I do not believe in clocks and live in that radical state of cracked thumbtips and inculpable delays. Also, my finger is a little infected and it hurts. Ruin my life.

Using the space bar is dreadful.

The other day FedEx mumbled in front of my desk for a good 55 seconds, which is 35 seconds longer than I am comfortable affording him. Something about, "Oh, hey, I always for-get your last name. Oh, that's right, it's uh...Rossi, like the construction company or the furniture sellers in Oakbrook."

"Martini and," I add, handing him back the Electronic Signature Capturererer with my incomprehensible scribble, which is somewhere between "drunkwasted bar tab authorization" and "look my cat can hold a pen." Odd, because my regular handwriting is sexy as hell.

"Or the martini drink, you got it," he bounces nervously and jabs the inkless plastic pen towards me, "Yeah, and we could like go for one of those sometime, right, that is if your husband don't mind then again you're the kind who'd have one that wouldn't, amirite? Yeah unless you're not married and we don't need anyone's permission which would be nice, or we don't have to go get a drink at all we could just keep this professional, right, Rossi?" He grins and guy nods; his silver tooth gleans with all the fidgetting.

I just smile and raise my eyebrows. Now, if it was Troy The Eagle Messenger guy? I would jump on that. He's one of the only bike messengers I've seen that smells like he showers. He's ideal, all Elliot Gould with classically disheveled helmet hair and a crooked nose that's definitely been broken several times. He also lacks metal teeth, which are really a fucking dealbreaker. I think I would have no problem with the metal teeth if we were already dating and he lost a tooth saving a puppy from the mean old dogcatcher (apparently we live in the 1920's), because I would probably make a boyfriend get metal teeth ironically just to be an asshole and ensure that no bitches try to steal my motherfucking puppysaving man.

"Yeah, you know, you're right, we don't need to go for a drink, I mean hey, you don't know me or my name and I always forget your name, what do I know I'm just the guy that drops off the packages. We don't have to do anything, you know, right? Yeah." He grins again amidst all the bouncing.

"Right. See ya later, Jimmy."

"Oh, you do? You? Yeah, I got it, I get it. Nametag. Yeah. Have a good weekend."

"You too."

...

Impound

I left the auto pound on Saturday afternoon all dirty and sour and broke, but with my beautiful, battle-scarred car who loves me unconditionally, even when I leave him out in the cold. Poor thing was on a snow route between 3AM and 7AM on Friday night. Who has the patience to read the goddamn novels posted on street signs? Obviously not a single person in Chicago, because they were all at the fucking auto pound on Saturday picking up their cars.

There were about sixty people heeled into the double-wide that houses the Chicago Auto Pound's maze of a queue and it smelled like fucking bitter exhaustion. The guy behind me was wearing a fur-collared coat like it was a Hawaiian shirt, zipped open over his bare, red gut and a cartoonish, seven-inch silver cross hung perfectly between a pair of ruddy pecs. He hacked into grimy hands and kept on growling to his buddy about getting a "wrecker" in one of those voices that sounds like rock quarry. I wanted to tell him to wash his hands and put on a fucking shirt. It's ten degrees outside. This isn't fucking Kokomo.

The guy with him might not have been his buddy at all, I mean he could have just been a random dude standing in line that had to awkwardly half-chuckle at some boulder stranger's undecipherable jokes while trying to avoid eye contact with his gaping naval. I couldn't stop staring at it. Every time I turned, there it was being all belly-buttony and gross, like someone jammed a tulip bulb into a blowhole.

This one middle-aged woman in Juicy pants and Uggs took a good fucking half hour. She kept on sending her sixteen-year old son out to the car while she lovingly manhandled her adolescent daughter and argued with the worker in the window. And he would trudge outside and come back with some scrap of paper and hand it to her with loathing, and she would snap, "Whadaya doin? This expired in, like, foor yeers ago and it was fer the Acura. Go bayack and just bring mahmmy everything yoo find."

And he would stare at her with undead eyes fueled by sixteen years of scorn and belittlement, resigning back into the cold while his mom ran her manicure through her daughter's golden hair. "He doon't knoow where the glove compartment is at," she scoffed conversationally to the woman in the window, who snorted. "His dayad never teached him anything." I wanted to punch her. On behalf of grammar and justice.

Plus, the couple in front of me kept on making out and telling secrets in giggly, hushed Spanish and I was totally freaked out.

Nearly two hours later and I'm riding in a van with a wheezy old man around the pound trying to find my car in a lot the size of Siberia, and just as dirty, barren and cold. I hate it there.  But I've always wanted to go to Siberia...

...

I Would Throw A Good Search Party

I started making a list of tangible life goals, and so far they are limited to "puppy!" and "do not get hit by a train" and "who needs goals when Halloween is so close?" the second of which was inspired by the fact that on Sunday night I was on a train and we hit someone.

...

Last week, I decided to become a foodie. I figured, you know, I really like food. Like a lot. It is time for me to learn how to cook something delicious that isn't peanutbutter and jelly. Although, I fucking dare you out pb&j my ass, because I have chemical equations and shit to prove mine is more savory than yours.

I'm pretty sure that on my way home from the store I bounced through a fatty pothole.

You know when you're cooking something gutsy and lush, and it smells as good as the Food Network looks and words float behind your eyes, words you never use, like "sumptuous" and "resplendent" because really, this sauce? this spicy, harmonic sauce is sumptuously resplendent, and you're convinced pleasant accomplishment smells like this because even the stove is smiling, happy to simmer something so deliciously dreamy?

No?

Me neither.

The solution to cooking failures, of course, is cheap wine, sweatpants, and Battlestar Galactica. Which really made the night a success in the end, because you do not get much cooler than that, and if you dry yourself out with enough wine just about everything you eat after that tastes like Syrah anyway, so you know. Win.

Discovered my car with a flat, shreddy tire on Saturday, so that was peachy. I need to get it fixed by this weekend so I can drive for three hours to see Hot Mess Fraya.

And that is why I had to take the train out to the suburbs for the baby shower on Sunday, and why I was riding the train back into the city that night.

...


On Saturday night a couple of us went to a haunted house. I had to lead the pack through the fun, and Hanson clutched my arm the entire time, buried into my shoulder, while I reminded her to stone up as we approached every black corner. The best thing about haunted houses is watching people jump with raw, excited laughter. The corpses aren't real.

...

On the train, no one was excited, but we were all kinds of raw as we sat there locomotionless, pressing against the dark windows as cops with flashlights searched the tracks beneath us, looking for a body. A real body belonging to a real person who laid themselves across the tracks.

Every ten minutes or so the conductor would announce that it shouldn't be much longer, but they had yet to find a body so the search would continue. After an hour, the search expanded to included everything within a three-mile radius of our position. We waited some more.


...

In my brain, an impressive collective of passengers band together to scour the surrounding miles with torches. We are serious plainclothes investigators and heroes to boot. And in the shadows we find a deep, stalag-filled cave. Our numbers dwindle as the true spelunkers are whittled out of our troupe by a series of complicated puzzle traps, and eventually we slide into the drippy lair of a thin man in a top hat with an evil twirly mustache who hides a crooked sword in his spider-handled cane, and I defeat him in a battle of wits while my comrades liberate his prisoners from their cold, stone cells. And then our search party throws a Search-themed Party.

But we aren't allowed to leave the train. Stupid trainworkers. Ruining my fantasy.

...

I wanted them to find a mangled body. I wanted it to be someone I knew, but not well, so I could properly mourn and regret not taking the time to know them better. Those are the best people to die. Loved ones hurt, and strangers are eventually forgotten. Way it is.

I wanted them to find a living human being who jumped in the nick of it. I wanted them to find blood tracks leading into a forest, where the survivor lay panting with nonlethal wounds. I wanted it to be an elaborate prank, I wanted it to be a ghost, I wanted it to be a raccoon, I wanted it to be Ashley Judd because I can't stand her movies.

But they found nothing. We probably never hit anything at all.

But I was sure we did, because just before we suddenly slowed, while I was people watching and imagining Bradley Cooper taking pictures of a gruesome murder while Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper fight on the roof ("Yeah? But I'm taller."), and replaying that one episode of Homicide where Vincent D'Onofrio gets smashed between the subway and a platform and if they move him, he dies...

So all that is going through my head, and I wonder, If we were to hit someone on the tracks, would passengers feel the impact? and not fifteen seconds later the train comes to a surprise stop and I say out loud, to whoever, "Oh my god, I think we hit someone," and all these people look at me.

But they found nothing.

...

I Am a Sally

Saw Paranormal Activity on Tuesday night. It wasn't very scary. It was all, you know, "OMG that door just moved" and "did you hear that" and "I love you baby" and "get away from me."

I can't imagine why people let me into movie theaters. When the audience is silent and coiled, two hundred and ninety-nine people gasp and hold their breath as shock strokes the backs of their necks, and then out of the hush rumbles one hearty, long chuckle that totally ruins the buzz.

"You a-hole," Emi whispers, and punches me.

"Dude, this movie is hysterical."

(I just asked MoLinder what my laugh sounds like. She said, and I quote, "You sound like this booming, hilarious, drunken German man.")

Emi is jumpy as fuck, and keeps on trying to effing cuddle with me in fear, because when there is no big-armed strongman around, people turn to me for safety. Sometimes even those same big-armed strongmen turn to me for safety.

In college I would get scared phone calls from friends, and I'd have to slug up my baseball bat and head over to houses to investigate creepy closets and creaking doors. I'm not tough. I'm not very intimidating. I'm not very brave. I'm actually very, very gullible, and I tricked myself into thinking that people thought I was brave. Chances are they were humoring me, and man, I ate that shit up. Loved being the protector.

Unfortunately, that fucking movie made all of that false courage fucking worthless, even though I wasn't afraid during the movie. I wasn't afraid driving home, I wasn't afraid walking from my car across a darkened street to my building, I wasn't afraid of the gently groaning front gate, I wasn't afraid of entering a shadowy, cold apartment.

Emi was terrified and slept on our couch.

Then I tried to sleep, and the world summoned all of its subtle, sinister sounds in a eerily passive, static assault on my sanity. Goddamn terrified, is what I was.

What was that? Is that the gate? Who's there? Someone is here. Someone is walking up the stairs, holy fuck, someone is walking up the stairs. Calm down, Ross, people walk up the stairs all the time. You hear this every night. This is an apartment complex. But at two-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday? Paul is a bartender. He lives on the third floor. It must be Paul.

Watch a movie. Sleep with the light on. Wake up for work, hit the bathroom, shivering and avoiding the mirror. I do not want to shower, I want to go outside. Why are you so paranoid, Ross, chill the hell out. Slow down. Nothing is out to get you - what the fuck was that? Go outside. Go outside. It is here. It is here. Holy Fuck. Oh my god, go outside. Faster. Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit - is that the bus? Oh, thank fucking god.

Get on the bus. There are people there. Calm. Down. Breathe. Stop being such a sally, Sally.

My name is not Sally, but that would be wicked awesome.

...

Disgust

About twenty minutes ago, I'm standing outside. Needed to walk. Thinking about Poppy, how much this must suck for my dad. Whatever. I don't want to go to the funeral. I would rather go to the pie fight. But I'm going to the funeral, and I'm going to like it, because of Dad. I really just would rather ditch out on it. It's not like I hate Poppy - I just totally don't care about him. Who cares more about pie fights than their dead grandfather? Does this make me a horrible person? What kind of a--

"You disgust me. Disgusting," she says. This little old woman, pointing her long hook-handled umbrella at me. Looking me in the fucking eye. Snarling. She's not obviously dirty or street, but who knows? I look down at myself, thinking, well, I showered today, and my clothes fit...did she...?

"You disgust me."

And then she keeps on walking.

I turn to the suits standing behind me. "Did you guys see that?"

One of them nods, laughing awkwardly. "Uh, yeah."

I don't know what to do about that.

I'm actually quite used to having odd people approach me. Some of you know that. But this freaked me out.

...

Fun With Foreigners, But Not the Band

So yesterday at a late-night barbeque I had the pleasure of meeting a fifty year old drunk ass Polish man, who has nearly half of his teeth and a thick, heavily slurred accent. He was the only one of his kind, struggling through a slop of skinny drunken hipsters.

After we watched the landlady throw a giant wicker basket on the firepit (which I'm pretty sure was an old wheelbarrow full of flaming two-by-fours) and nearly set the tree on fire, Gyna and I started making friends with people we didn't know. Being me, I got to talk to a close-talking drunk twice my age. He loves me. Duh.

"I beeld house. For you. Yes?"

"You want to build me a house?" I turn to Gyna, who is next to me, talking to a guy that's our age, with a full set of teeth. "He wants to build me a house."

"Oh god," she shakes her head.

"I know."

The Polish Man interjects. "Yes, and we have sree chilren. All boys."

"Oh, really? Okay then."

"You are spayshel. Veree. You are streeling, yes? Streeling?"

"Stealing?"

"Yes! No, no. You are um, carree? You carree beeg theengs?"

"Strong?"

"YES! YES! I know. Eez no bullshit. Some say bullshit I say no bullshit. But my Eeenglish, is...meeeeeeh, you so-so, you okay, you Polish, you bullshit. No bullshit. I am Polish. I am talking to spayshel girl, who my son like."

"I am definitely special. Exactly."

"Yes. And you have dance?" He tries to dance with me.

"No, dude, I'm not gonna dance with you."

"You have dance, and we dance. And we do this? You have pen?"

"No, sorry, I don't have a pen."

"You have pen, and you write...name...and you write tellofone."

"Dude, I'm not giving you my phone number."

"You frend? We frend. Son frend."

"Your son?"

"Okay."

"How old is your son? Do I know him?"

"I have son and he is, um, he like...shport. He um," the guy starts thrusting his his hips and pumping his fists, and my eyes bulge, "he do zis, on snow...in mountain...in um...snow. He has hat, he has...shport, he has...no fear. NO fear!"

"He skiis?"

"He do that, yes. Skeeze? Skeeze. Yes. His is very big skeeze." He reaches over and squeezes my arm. "You make mossle."

"Um, okay." I flex.

"You are skeeze?" He starts the thrusting thing again.

"No, I don't ski. I would like to ski, but I have this problem, you see, it's called, severe uncoordination and subsequent falling all the time. Aaaaaand I like saying things that you won't understand."

Uncomfortable silence. I sip my beer. Gyna is chatting away. I look around for a way out, but then the Polish Man starts yammering again.

"You are baseball?"

"I am baseball? Yes. Yes, I am baseball. Are you baseball?"

"Me? I um...no. I am beerd, and I clean, and I no have beerd. I have...knife. I creem on face."

Oh, jesus. "You cream on face?"

"You see--" he grabs my hand and makes me feel his cheek "--is clean. Veree. I do that."

"Oh, you shave. Are you a barber?"

"Ohhh, no, yes. I like dark beer. You? You like?"

"Do I like dark beer? Sure. It's fine."

"My Eenglish is not good. Is focking bullshit."

"Exactly."

"Ackzaktillee? What is zis ackzaktillee? You say?"

"It means, um, you are right. You are correct."

"Oh, I am veree ackzaktillee. All ze time! Veree ackzaktillee!"

What fun the foreigners are.

...

The Adventures of Poppy and His Ridiculous Spawn: Part 1

Saturday afternoon, I had to visit Poppy with my Dad and sister. They've officially given him three to five weeks, and earlier that day my Dad and uncles went out and picked a cemetery plot. Nothing to cheer you up from pre-death cemetery trips like a nursing home.

"If he's just in there wearing a diaper, I'm walking right out the fucking door," Katsisch snaps as we step out of the elevator.

Dad laughs at her, and puts his arm around her shoulder. "He's not going to be wearing just a diaper. Well, no. He will be. And you're gonna like it."

"I hate it here. Old people smell funny."

"Like bad meat at Subway," I mutter and glance around the nursing home, where Poppy moved on Tuesday.

"He's probably just going to be watching the Cubs game," my dad changes the subject. "We aren't staying for long."

"An hour," Katsisch bargains. "Tops. You know we're only going to talk to each other. He doesn't give a crap."

"Of course he does." Dad is getting nervous and pissed. Probably because she's a little bit right, and he knows it.

I smack my sister's arm with the back of my hand, "Dude, just shut up and deal with it. The less you complain, the less awkward this is gonna be."

"You don't want to be here either," she hisses, "And no hitting."

"That's goddamn irrelevant."

"I give you permission to kill me if I live to be eighty five. I refuse to be diapered and gangrenous."

"Sister, I'm honored, but it might happen sooner 'cause I bought a gun like eight years ago and etched your name on a bullet now shut the hell up."

"Well, I'm murdering you back."

"No, because I'm gonna...ummm...live forever."

"Both of you shut the hell up," Dad whispered, pointing at Poppy's name on the door to our left.

"Hi, Poppy!" Katsisch cheers all falsely as she turns into the room, with that forced volume that so many people reserve for the elderly. I watch her hand snap to her mouth as she pivots towards the wall, shaking with giggles.

"Hey there, Domer," Poppy smiles and tries to pull up his bedsheet. Probably so he can cover up the fact that he's totally just laying there in his fucking diaper, with his pruny, saggy legs all splayed out and a half buttoned flannel shirt, exposing a pale, wrinkled belly. His foot is bandaged. Damn. I really wanted to see that gangrene.

Calmer, Katsisch and I say hello, settle in, and watch the Cubs game, while Poppy pulls his sheet up, kicks it off, rolls it in a ball, unrolls the ball...constant fidgeting. I know, it's common, and there's a medical reason for it that I don't give a shit about.

We try conversation, but it's just a half hour of old man sighs and one-word answers. Want to sit up on your bed? How's the Cubs game? What's the score? Man, that Milton Bradley is a bitch, huh?

Poppy's having none of it.

...

The Badness

It's occurred to me that this whole thing where the world gives me a big hug and plays Foreigner on repeat is just a distraction from the inevitable Badness teetering on the edge of the future.

I guess what I'm saying is, there is no way I'm running around provoking men with hard-ons and knives this weekend. Obviously that's not habitual behavior, but I'm really not known for caution, and bad shit happens around Valentines Day.

I don't want to end up in a hospital bed, like last year, even if it is for something as small as an abscess, or at a funeral like the year before. I don't want to hold anyone's hand after their abortion. If anyone is thinking of breaking up with one of my friends right now, male or female, I swear to fucking god I will shank you.

I can't ever feel it coming. It's like, you know, one day it's Tuesday, and I exist. I'm laughing, joking around with someone, and then my phone rings and someone says words that change the tint of everything. Life is dry and tiresome, and there's just too much salt. Where did all that salt come from? Why does everyone smell like copper? Put that thing away, it's wrinkling me, stop scraping with your eyes.

That's what the Badness feels like.

I had a dream where I carried around a Pomeranian in a purse. And everyone, like my sixty "closest friends," accompanied me to a theme park where the greatest carousel ever established was opening. Grandly. So we waited, excited, and watched the giant white blanket slip off the carousel, and gasped when we realized that it was full of live exotic beasts impaled on poles, and they were screaming. Everyone was so excited, and they ran up to the carousel and climbed on top of the animal of their choice, and me and my fucking Pomeranian sat on the pygmy elephant, and I cried.

It was scary as fuck.

The week surrounding Valentines Day is horrible. Always crying and pain, and it has nothing to do with romance whatsoever. It's hard on my friends, it's hard on me, and it's hard to watch all those fucking commercials with satin pillows and jewelry and bullshit, not because I want those things, but because they breathe for other people and who breathes for me?

I have decided, officially, that I have earned the right to be selfish and spiteful.

No positive connotations with this week. On any level.

Maybe a small level. Sometimes I like red things. Like apples. And Sharpies. And wine.

...

Sometimes It Skips a Generation

You know, I was so sure that the song of 2008 was going to be "Youth Gone Wild." I mean, I was positive that there would be this massive Skid Row revival, where Sebastian Bach rejoined for one last tour before spontaneously combusting from being so fucking bodacious and disorderly. Which makes sense, because since he was a kid, they couldn't hold him down.

Sometimes he wore gold pants.

And obviously, since I'm sure none of you knew that "Youth Gone Wild" was supposed to be the song of the year, I can add my exhausting one-woman campaign for song of the year to all of the other things I failed to do in 2008. But my failures really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, since I lead the kind of life and that either throws people into laugh fits or uncomfortably ends conversations.

Everything I do is either awkward or hilarious.

(Small aside: Earlier today I was trying to come up with the common denominator between all of my friends, since they're not all friends with each other and I think about things like that all the fucking time. I came up with nothing until I typed that sentence. Up there, just now. Before that sentence, the only thing they had in common was an undying love for me. Which is really the only prerequisite, so if anyone's interested, I'm pretty sure I've got my Posse Applications lying around here somewhere. I'll ask Slinger, he knows where they are.

But part of being in the Posse is you have to love what I love, and that means "Youth Gone Wild." It also means that when I name a topic, that's what we're goddamn talking about for the rest of the year.

But yes. That's what all of my friends have in common. Awkward hilarity. And I can identify them all by laugh and laugh alone.)

Anyway, so I've been thinking a lot lately about where 2009 should lead me, and I'm nearly 100% positive that this year, everything's coming up Teen Wolf.

Ever since I unleashed that love I have for Stiles, fucking Teen Wolf is everywhere I turn. I never knew what a cross-country devotion that movie inspired until like, three weeks ago. I mean, obviously, I know it's a classic. But I feel like the emotions are stronger than I ever realized.

And then Gyna made out with this guy, and he totally Boofed her up. Seriously. She's got all these crazy scratches across her side. And one of my co-workers was talking about Full House and the episode where Joey and Jesse do a cologne ad, and I realized: Joey and Jesse's boss is Dad Wolf.

THEN: I got in an argument today about Spiderman and the exact words of this: "With great power comes great responsibility," when I realized that I was all fucked up, because in Teen Wolf, they reel that quote in too, except it's "with great power comes greater responsibility."

And you know who's been directing It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which I half-realized when I watched it on Friday after recognizing "Jerry Levine" in the credits and trying to remember who it was?

Yeah. Mahfuckin' Stiles.

Superbowl party at my parents house. My cousins and I started reminiscing about Vegas, when David blurts out, "Never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city." I grabbed him and shook him as hard as I could and yelled, "ARE YOU SERIOUSLY QUOTING TEEN WOLF RIGHT NOW?"

Plus, Boomer likes it.

Let the Year of Teen Wolf commence.

...

The Turkey Man and the People of the Bus

Some of you may be unaware, but for some reason, I have a face that appeals to those with serious mental issues.

Yesterday I sat on the bus, as I have a tendency to do. Had the good fortune to sit next to a man whose surface appeared normal. General clothing, lacking garish colors and/or scents, middle-aged man. Hat and glasses.

I'm sitting for about thirty seconds, enough time to pull out a book that is slightly obscure, and not necessarily very well-written, but approachable. With a nice cover.

The man next to me slowly reaches forward and grabs the handle of the headrest of the seat in front of him and squeezes. I can feel him tense up next to me. Coiling.

I do that thing where you move your eyes as far to the side as possible without moving your head and watch his chest rise as he takes a dramatic breath.

"HELLO, BUS PEOPLE! I am the TURKEY MAN!" He sounds like the casually discarded spawn of Charles Nelson Reilly and Pat Carroll. "Everybody, raise up your hands. For I am the TURKEY MAN, and THANKSGIVING...is upon us. RAISE YOUR HANDS!"

His arms flare up and sweep my sleeve on the way. My head follows the path my eyes previously traveled. I stare at him. He smiles at me, and takes another deep breath, eyes wide and voice all harsh and flaming: "Tomorrow, I shall stretch out my wings. I will be going to OLD COUNTRY BUFFET! For I am the TURKEY MAN, and I am NEEDED!"

Obviously, this man is an oratory genius. I start laughing. I can't help it.

His eyes open wider (is that even possible?) "GIVE ME YOUR TURKEYS! Tell me where you will be next week, and I WILL STOP BY AND SHARE MY LEFTOVERS!"

I am furiously texting every single person in my phone:

Text To: fucking everyone
The guy next to me on the bus keeps on telling me he's the turkey man.
And that he's going to wear his wings to old country buffet tomorrow. GAHH.

"I will come over on MONDAY, People Of The Bus! For I...AM THE TURKEY MAN!"

Text From: Adam, Bald
Its all sorts of spring break up in this Thanksgiving! Hook a bratha up

"THE TURKEY MAN REQUESTS: The afternoon of Thanksgiving, what will you be..."

"Shut up." Uh oh. The People of the Bus are starting to get rowdy.

"TURKEY MAN! I AM THE TURKEY MAN! PEOPLE OF THE BUS! I AM THE TURKEY MAN! You will respect me. TURKEY!"

Text From: Eli
Ask him for a bite.

Text From: Kristen
Hahaha omg dont eat or drink anything he gives you

I glance over at the Turkey Man. He is crazy for bird flesh. Say something. Say something clever. Be clever, dammit. You have to do something clever so you can write about it on your blog. Dammit, have I started defining myself through the internet aga--

"The afternoon of Thanksgiving! It is of GREAT IMPORTANCE! REMEMBER THE TURKEY! Afternoons will now be measured in TURKEYS! They will be measured in...COFFEESPOONS!"

Text From: Schmee
God the crazys love you

Text From: Muffy
Dude. Ridic.

"Aaaaafternoo-oo-oons! Will be measured out, measured with...coo-o-o-ffeespoo-ooo-ooons!"

Is he singing Crash Test Dummies?

"I AM SINGING CRASH TEST DUMMIES!"

Yes he is.

"Because I am...THE TURKEY MAN!"

Text From: MoLinder
Haha. I'm drinking for free. Auxsome beer

The bus intercom crackles into play. "Sir. SIR. You are disrupting the bus."

The Turkey Man lifts his hand to his lips.

Text From: Xtine
You should have told him to stick a duck in it

Bus Driver continues,"Sir, please refrain from raising your voice."

The Turkey man slyly gazes at me and giggles, then whispers in rapid fire: "IamtheTurkeyMan." His eyes rotate down towards his hand.

Text To: A fuckload of people
HE IS LICKING THE BACK OF HIS HAND AND SLURPING

The crazies love me, man. I bring it out in them.

...

Seriously? Is Ben Folds the new Dave Matthews?

Because my friends are The People To Know, I got to go to another free concert last Friday. M.E. put us on the list to see Ben Folds, which was just amazing. Because NKOTB was kick ass, but Ben Folds? Love him. There's nothing like watching a spectacled skinny man smash out the frustrations of his soul with a noisy piano jam.

Some things I don't understand about Ben Folds concert patrons:

1. You are enjoying music. Why are you just sitting there? I'm no fucking dancer, probably because I have to like a song to wanna groove, but sometimes I just can't help breaking out the white girl shimmy, and poorly. But everyone was just sitting there. Unmoving. Maybe tapping their feet a little bit, and then they got this look of embarrassment when they made a little bit of a scene.

Because of this, Gyna and I felt it was necessary to leave the balcony seats full of Sitters and head down to the floor with the Jammers. And you know what? The Jammers still just stood there, nodding their heads, like these Ben Folds thralls who never dissent, who agree, unmoving.

Fucking idiots. Maybe you didn't feel like dancing? You prefered complete immobility? Ben deserves more. Shame on you.

You do not need to be too cool, here. You're watching a dorky guy play the piano, singing about brainwashing and bitches gone nuts. No one's judging.

But they are. And then Gyna made a good point: is this why musicians pass over Chicago, because of the intense public preoccupation with trying to appear cool? I wanna be cool too, but obviously my definition of cool differs completely from theirs.

2. Then again, I'm judgmental as fuck.

I say this: Go ahead and throw your inhibition into a vortex of guilt, but stop making out on the floor. You piss me off.

So now we know that I hate couples.

No, lies: not couples: people who act all coupley. You can be as makey outty as you want, but if you must eat each others brains, do it on the back of the floor, or off to the side. Because you're taller then me, and I came here to watch Ben Folds, not the intermingling of your salivary glands, as fascinating as that is.

Was it just one couple? Ye gods, no. There were hundreds. All over the place. They surrounded me like a Skull initiation and all I could see were these grossly obnocksh, pimply couples licking the sweat from each others faces, jamming hands in unseemly places.

Really? This song is about abortion. Does that make you randy?

They creeped in on me, feeling and licking and grabbing all ugly like, and I can hear their smacking over Ben Folds and I can't see shit, and I can't ignore them because I can feel them, like Dementors. They're creepy.

Sometimes when you see a coupley couple you watch them, their interaction. You see how they find excuses to touch each other, how they steal kisses when they think no one is looking. Their eyes lock and they instantly smile, and laugh because they're together. It's endearing, sometimes. And that's annoying too, but in a jealous rage kind of way.

These people just sucked at life. They have no right to breed, and no right to show off their breeding foreplay on the floor. Get ye away, hosebeasts.

Gyna thought it was funny.

I started getting pissed, and planted my feet on the ground. I did not want to fight during Ben Folds, but in me vs. The Couples, I was fucking determined to win. There were four surrounding me. So I stick out my finger like a gun. "If one of those bastards gets too close," I tell Gyna, "they're getting poked. By my finger glock."

And that's how you show the maker outters you mean biznass.

3. Oh, and seriously? Is Ben Folds the new Dave Matthews? I haven't seen Ben Folds since 1998. Where did all the douchebags come from? They're not even real douchebags, they're like douches in training, or D-List Douches. Douchiness doesn't come naturally enough for them. It's like, they all turned twenty two, realized they were sheep (who smelled like gravel) and decided to emulate the Douchebags, and failed miserably. Their personalities just aren't forceful enough to achieve true douche-osity, so they just settle with semi-douche, and they're unhappy about their failure to attain a full level of douchebaggery.

Who aspires to be a douchebag?

Those guys.

...

All Babies Speak Chinese

Fear, for me, is mostly completely irrational. My fears are never tangible, like spiders, or serial killer rapists lurking in alleyways. That kind of fear usually never crosses my mind. I'm afraid of living paycheck to paycheck, I'm afraid of being single forever, and sometimes I'm afraid of the guy from Lost Highway.

But I am terrified of babies.

And I strongly dislike that fear. Even moreso, I strongly dislike it when I find a good one and go, "Hey, puppy," and the mother's eyes go all freeze ray, like the one I just ran into outside.

"My child is not a dog," she growls. Well, that's surprising, 'cause you're a bitch. Why do shitty moms get all the good babies?

It's a consistent dilemma which I gripe about constantly, and you'd think I'd learn to stop calling those infants "puppies" but come on, puppies are fucking cute. How do you get cuter than puppies? I just paid you the highest compliment I am capable of.

The fear doesn't come from fear of children or motherhood. They're just all simultaneously soft and utterly breakable, and they all look like Precious Moments statues, and those are really creepy. Once they hit two or three, I love the childers. We're bestest friends.

But babies...I can't read them. I'm not their mother. I can't tell how they're feeling, what they're going to be like in a year, what their favorite color is, what kind of friends they have. I look at babies and they're all Chinese, and that's a language that I'm totally unfamiliar with, by sound and by the inspiration behind communication. How do you respond other than uncomfortably smiling?

That's not what makes those little bastards so scary.

They know I'm uncomfortable. I have no idea what they're thinking, get the willies, and they know exactly how I'm feeling, and then tell me so by wailing, and then I feel fucking worthless. They're smarter than I am, and I can't tell how, because they're speaking in goddamn Chinese.

Not that the Chinese are scary.

Maybe I should have used aliens.

...

I Know That Artax Lives

When I was little, I hated The Neverending Story. Fuckers killed Artax, like the gutless horse-butcher-ers they are, and I cried for days and swore to boycott for ten years. If Atreyu really cared he would have tried harder.

See, yesterday we were watching Troll on VHS with the asinine, optimistic mindset that it would be some fantastic horror movie instead of a weak ass fantasy with Sonny Bono and Julia Louis Dreyfuss. It was very upsetting.

Until we started to pay attention.

Troll is about Harry Potter Jr. (booyah), a young boy who must battle Turok the Evil Troll King to regain controll over his family's apartment complex in San Francisco, which has been turned into a magical pod forest by a tiny man shaped like his little sister. His father, Harry Potter Sr. (played groovily by Law and Order's first answer to Harvey Dent) enjoys dancing to 80's thrash metal versions of "Summertime Blues" in his pleated khakis, his mother has the hots for him, and his sister is a scary little troll.

We're happily watching a potted mushroom wail a little happy ditty when Phil, being an observant fuck, exclaims, "I know who that is. It's friggin' Atreyu."

"Atreyu? Hell fucking no. Harry Potter Jr. is the shit, and Atreyu is a whiny little wimp. He let Artax die in the Swamp of Sadness." My brain adds, and Harry Potter Jr. is totally going to grow up hot. I cross my arms, immediately bitter and no longer fascinated by anything on the screen.

Tokyo agrees with Phil. Figures. "No, it's totally fucking him."

"Fine." I stomp over to the computer and IMDB the crap outta Troll. Sho 'nuf, Harry Potter Jr. and Atreyu are one and the same. I am horrorstruck, but warm from drinking lots of wine.

After googling my way through Noah Hathaway pictures, I notice two very important things:

1. Current Atreyu looks like a cross between Seth Green and Keanu Reeves, and I think the three of them need to make a movie where they play brothers and don't goddamn kill any horses.

2. Next summer, a remake of Troll will be released, and Noah Hathaway will be playing Turok the Evil Troll King. I'm gunning for Daniel Radcliffe for Harry Potter Jr.

Anyway...

It's been sixteen years now, and I'm pretty sure I'm emotionally capable enough to manage the death of a fictional horse in a Jim Henson movie.

So wish me luck. Tonight, for the second time in my life, I will be watching The Neverending Story.

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The evils of Q-tippery.

So I'm sitting at my desk ransacking my ear with my pinky finger because I ran out of Q-tips four days ago.

Claire, the desk neighbor, quietly told me (she could have been yelling for all I know, because I can't hear a damn thing) that I should kick the habit. It's bad for your wealth, she says. I was like, no dude, Q-Tips are surprisingly inexpensive.

No, health. 

Ah. Claire-ification.

I was pretty sure she was full of crap, because I mean, Q-tips are extremely handy. And how else am I supposed to get this shit out of my ear? She mumbled something about "shoving it in deeper" and I glanced at her very wickedly and she rolled her eyes and said, "no, when you use that Q-tip you're just shoving the wax in deeper."

She has to be wrong. What if she's right? What if, for my whole life, I have been slowly layering wax over my ear drum with Q-tip masonry? What if it's a Q-tip conspiracy, and the Q-tip manufactering CEO's are wringing their hands in glory at the evil cotton-swabbed illusion they've conjured over the ears of the planet?

What if the absolute tip of each Q is implanted with a wispy microchip that latches onto our ear drum? And the further we push in that wax every morning, the further the chip travels into our sensorimotor cortex...oh my god. What if...what if...

What if the only reason I was able to uncover this truth was because I ran out of Q-tips and they no longer have control of my brain? 

Every other Q-tip user should be warned of the industry's efforts to control our thoughts and motions. Think: the microchips must have a life-limit, which is why they're replaced every day when Q-tip users clean their ears. And then their micropower runs out and they become a part of the ear gunk, and the vicious, evil evil evil cycle continues.

That can't be true. Q-tips are white and fluffy, like clouds and maltese puppies. They have to be good, because puppies are good. Besides, I need Q-tips. I need them. My ears demand it. But maybe, I mean, what if all of my actions are not my own because of the corporate giants of the Q-tip industry? What about yours? What if Tribe Called Quest is in on it? Time for some serious sleuthing. ...

ER.

So I had to go to the emergency room yesterday morning. Get a big abscess of puss removed from my armpit/boob area. Fucking lame. Spent the night at the hospital. Had about twelve doctors and nurses feeling me up. Antibiotics IV, the works. Apparently it was an infection that was most likely caused by an ingrown hair follicle. Which is scary. Fine now.

No drinking for ten days...probably a good thing.

Happy Valentine's Day.

...