Reasons Why I Feel Like Like A Legitimate City-Dweller

I got splashed by a taxi in the rain.

A pidgeon flew into my head.

I almost got hit by a taxi.

There is a mouse in our apartment.

Where did the term "meme" come from anyway?

1. The age you will be on your next birthday:

Only ten months left! You're running out of time!

2. A place to which you'd like to travel:

I'll be all right as long as the conversation is confined to hats and claws like needles.

3. Your favorite place:

A beautiful place, a beautiful time.

4. Your favorite object:

There is nothing snarky to say about this.

5. Your favorite food:

Only because there is no Cheesy Garlic Bread Monster.

6. Your favorite animal:
Best of both worlds.

7. Your favorite color:

I don't discriminate.

8. The town in which you were born:

Meet me in Knightonahorseville, just north of Pedestal.

9. The town in which you live:

Until it falls into the ocean, from the looks of it.

10. First name of a past love:

Nothing spoils the taste of straight-up cheap whiskey like unrequited love.

11. Name of a past pet:
I named a stuffed animal Leo once, too.

12. Best friends nickname/screen name:

When Pez Attacks.

13. Your nickname/screen name:

Translation: Dith beer is the best beer.

14. Your first name:

Protector of the motherfucking sea. Yeah.

15. Your middle name:

Hello, Clarisse.

16. Your surname:

Maps maps maps.

17. A bad habit of yours:

No matter how hard I try, I just can't stop chaining myself up in dungeons.

18. Your first jobI hated it too much to be any more creative than that.

19. Your grandmothers name:

When we weren't calling her Granny, we affectionately dubbed her "Turkey."

20. Your major in college:

If you look carefully, you can spot them both.

I wanted to be the all-American kid from New York City

Seth and I went up Broadway this morning to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's true that television adds ten pounds, or in this case, about an hour and a half, because it was shorter and smaller than I had anticipated. It also made me hate large crowds of people a little more, especially if those people were pushing baby carriages, and especially especially if those baby-pushers had a knack for running over my toes. It also didn't help that every third balloon had "MACY'S" stamped all over it, as if we could forget that This Parade Was Sponsored By Macy's; Shop Macy's, For All Your Christmas Needs. But it was worth a visit if you want to see a Pikachu the size of your house chasing a Poké Ball the size of your car, which I most certainly did.

My favorite float was filled with Muppets. Actual-size.

We ate lunch-dinner at Marissa and Jesse's in Brooklyn, where they are renting a room on the top floor of a townhouse owned by Bela Fleck's brother. We ended up splitting four bottles of wine between the five of us there and feeding turkey bits to Louie's twenty-one year-old cat Iddy. We'd all made the food ourselves, most of it for the first time. Marissa remarked as she was spooning out the mashed potatoes that it made her feel like such a grown-up. Then she proceeded to knock the spoon out of the bowl and get potatoes all over the table and floor.

I'm sure Iddy got most of them for us.

True Class

Currently I live a block away from a homeless shelter, which at first I thought was an old folks' home until I was informed otherwise, and also explained the abundance of homeless people that hung around my block. Every so often I get hit up for cigarettes or spare change, always politely, though usually I have nothing to give them.

Today I left my apartment and was walking to the street corner when I passed a man wearing thick layers of clothes and a dirty cap. "Miss? Miss, excuse me, miss?" he called to me gently. I stopped and turned, anticipating a request for a dime or a smoke.

With soft brown eyes that belonged on a month-old kitten, he beseeched, "Will you do a hit of crack with me?"

"No thanks," I refused genially, and continued walking.

He called out after me, his voice filled with delicate longing. "I'll suck your pussy!" he pleaded.

At which point I snickered, and walked a little faster. Oh, well in THAT case, sure, why didn't you say so?

First runner-up attempt to lure me into the bedchamber with dulcet tones and winsome charm:

"I'm gonna fuck you tonight!"
~Sketchy guy around 7th and 50thish

I Could Have Maybe Possibly Seen Paul McCartney Yesterday, In Theory, Like Hypothetically

I was having dinner with Lindsay at a Mexican restaurant, and she started telling me about the show that her roommate was in, which we were going to see afterwards.

"It's a performance piece--it's called 18/6, like eighteen-slash-six. There are projections, and people painting circles onto a canvas, and other stuff. It was done in 1959, and they're doing it again because of some anniversary thing with it. The playwright was really, really specific on how he wanted everything to be done, like he wrote out the exact movements, and dimensions of the set, and timing and audience instructions, and how many years after his death it would have to be before he would authorize it being re-released. It was this really underground thing back then, and for some reason it got really popular. They were hoping it would stay more underground, but the mainstream got word of it, and all the nights are sold out. It's kind of a really big deal." She looked a little sheepish. "Oh, yeah, and also, the guy who's painting circles on the canvas, it's going to be Paul McCartney--"

I choked on my tamale.

"--but not tonight, it's just a dress rehearsal, he'll be there another night. I guess that's how important an event this is supposed to be."

We took the subway to Queens and walked about six blocks, when we came upon a gaggle of warehouse spaces at a dead end overlooking the East River. Lindsay said to "look for one with the garage door half open," which made the event sound more eerily "underground." We entered and saw what looked like the skeleton of a really small house, with transparent plastic stapled to the frame to make walls, red and white and sometimes blue light bulbs lining the top beams, and divided with the transparent plastic into three rooms. They gave us brightly colored cards with handwritten instructions on which rooms to go for parts 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. I was in room 2 for the first two parts.

Imagine your typical performance piece. Stereotypical, even. This was it. The actors entered, walking slowly to a beat. There was atonal music. They moved linearly and robotically, turning at right angles. They did some poses. One guy said monosyllabic words at irregular intervals. They left as they entered. Two minutes later, two actors re-entered, stood on opposite ends, and read two different speeches--on "art" and "time/perspective" that occasionally overlapped.

I switched rooms. The actors entered again. One girl stopped in front of me, grinned grotesquely, and began mechanically, rhythmically bouncing a small rubber ball. At one point she fumbled and it rolled by my feet. She held out her hand simply, her eyes imploring. I gave it back, and she resumed the bouncing. I wondered if it was part of the show. The actors came back, lined up, and screeched a few notes on some instruments--a small banjo, a kazoo, a recorder, and a violin. I switched rooms.

They re-entered. Some posed again, one stood by a projector while slides shuffled, one marched back and forth in front of a mirror, stopping every so often to brush his teeth or straighten his tie, and one squeezed oranges into juice and drank it. They exited. They re-entered. They pulled down scrolls of paper from a bar, read the different monosyllabic words on them all at once, and then marched off. It was over.

Lindsay and I left. She looked at me quizzically. "There were so many metaphors," I said wearily. We laughed. One of the girls afterwards made a remark about how it was "obviously" social commentary. I didn't get the obvious part, but I can go back in places and see where it could have been.

What I got from it was that performance art is not really my cup of tea. But I understand where it fits in the spectrum of theatre. I once visited a boyfriend when he was working at a theater in rural Indiana, where they essentially did choreographed musical revues for old people. The one I saw had a circus theme, and took 90 minutes worth of songs out of context in order to loosely wrangle them around elephants and trapeze artists. Thay even threw in "Send in the Clowns" because it had "clown" in the title. My boyfriend at the time complained about working there, saying that it wasn't what he wanted to be doing, that this wasn't art, he wasn't "creating" anything or making people think. Which was true; it was theatrical Cheez Whiz, icing, full-fat mayonnaise, purely for pleasure and stress-free entertainment, requiring no mental commitment.

Last night was the exact opposite. It forced you to not only forge connections for yourself, but decide where they would be forged, and when, and what the metaphors stood for, and if there was even any meaning at all. It was like they gave you a glass, a cow, some spices, pasturizing instructions, and then a hollow book of Les Miserables with a soggy Fig Newton inside. What I saw could have been very, very deep and over my head, or it could have been some playwright laughing his ass off at the thought of five actors walking around like robots and bleating nonsense. It reminded me of a story Rachel once told me, of a guy who one a poetry contest with a poem that consisted of one word: apple. The sponsors justified this because they said his poem made you question what a poem was, and what it meant that this was being classified as "good" or "winning" poetry, etc, etc. Or it could have been some frat guy who did it on a drunken whim.
Regardless, it suceeded in facilitating discussion and brainstorming between the two of us, even if it was only on the nature of what constitutes art and legitmacy and how we both preferred the middle ground, like Shakespeare, which I guess would be like fine Cheddar. Or Moliere, which could be Brie. Neil Simon would be American. Andrew Lloyd Webber--maybe Kraft singles.

The show is sold out for its entire run. Tickets ran around $250. I can't exactly call them suckers, though, because some of those lucky shits will actually get to see Paul McCartney.

Gnosis

"The Origin of Love" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch started playing from my iPod over the sound system at Oren's. I was toiling over various milks and shots when my boss, doing the same, remarked casually, "You know, when Hedwig was off-Broadway, his drummer, Dave, was a manager over at the Waverly store."

"Yeah?" I said, intrigued.

"Mm-hmm. Actually, the bassist, Chris, was also an assistant manager at the store on 79th. And John Cameron Mitchell's boyfriend at the time, I don't remember his name, was a keymaster at the store on 3rd. He ended up overdosing, though, so he's no longer around. It was really very sad."

"Wow!"

"Yes, and actually, the guitarist also worked on 3rd with John Cameron Mitchell's boyfriend. And Chris's girlfriend Kara also worked at the 79th store, but she wasn't a manager. And, Stephen, the guy who wrote the words to the songs--"

"The lyricist?"

"Right, his name was Stephen Schwartz then, but he took his boyfriend's last name, so now he's only known as Stephen Trask. Stephen worked part-time here, on 58th. Pretty much everyone in the band except for John Cameron Mitchell. But he was the only one who stayed with it when the movie was made."

There was little left to do but marvel. And finish the drinks.

Tit for Tat; or, The Mermaid Used to be Topless

I had the day off today, and all I managed to do was shuffle from Starbucks to Starbucks, buying iced coffees in near-November.

I was doing a crossword from last week's New York Times at one of them when a thirty-something man with shoulder-length dreadlocks tapped my shoulder and gave me a Sharpie sketch he did of me while I was at my little table, on a vocabulary-induced high from my orthographic binge. I was confused at first, not only because I didn't know what "Craps Natural" (five letters, ends in VEH) was supposed to be, but also that I wasn't sure if it was one of those things where he expected a donation for his gift. He left a minute later, so I guess not.

It was so nice a gesture that I bought today's New York Times from the front counter and left it behind on my table for the next person when I went home.

Even though I kept today's crossword.

And Goldidith said, "This job is too odious. And this job is too boring. But this job is just right."

Finding work here is easy.

My first inclination was otherwise, given that in Kirksville or St. Louis it's usually fast food or the highway, but it's amazing what a college degree and some customer service experience can give you. Or in the case of Ricky's, a pulse and some faint brain waves.

Ricky's is a health/beauty/Halloween store that hires every warm body with an inactive criminal record and active green card in October to handle their huddled masses yearning to be Dracula. At first I was excited because I worked in SoHo, I could put together a cool costume, and they had Ben Nye makeup. The work itself wasn't bad the first day, a Tuesday, but the manager was a condescending ass, and it didn't help that I could barely understand what he said. I also heard more remixed versions of "Umbrella" than I could stomach. On my way back home, I stopped by Gizzi's, a coffeeshop/cafe I'd applied at through Craigslist, and talked with the manager, who said she might be able to start me on Thursday.

The first task they gave me at Ricky's the next day was to run the money from the day before to headquarters. I went, not sure if I resented this or not, but made full certain to stop by Starbucks on my way back. The next four hours were spent on their smallish second floor-- walking around, putting costumes back in their packages, and helping people. All the real work I did could be condensed into maybe seven minutes. This was not for me.

On my way home, I met with the district manager of Oren's Daily Roast, a Manhattan-centered coffeeshop chain which just sold coffee and beans, as opposed to every food under the sun that one could eat with coffee. They essentially made me an offer I couldn't refuse--larger starting wage, a raise after a month, benefits after three months, in a high-traffic store. I agreed to check out the location I'd potentially be working at. This was right before Allison, the manager of Gizzi's, called me back, confirming that I'd be able to work on Thursday.

I opened at Gizzi's at 6:30 AM with Louise. She was nice, the store was cute. We got to play our own CDs over the sound system, which was cool. It had only been in operation six months, so they were still a little inconsistent in some things. It also meant that they were slower than JavaCo in wintertime, which worried me that I wouldn't be able to pay the bills. But the final sign came towards the end of the day.

"I'm going to go upstairs and put on the radio," Louise said. "Allison's about to come in, and she hates the Beatles. And I think that CD is next."

This was not going to work.

I had an hour between when I was off there and when I was supposed to work at Ricky's that evening, so I went to 58th and Park to meet with an Oren's store manager. She agreed to hire me and I'd start training on Sunday. As I rode the subway back to SoHo to work at Ricky's another seven hours that day, it occurred to me that I was technically employed at three different jobs. It also occurred to me that I'd probably be late to work anyway, so I ended up just quitting and going home. I quit Gizzi's the next day after my shift ended.

My boss at Oren's sings along when I plug in my iPod to the speakers. So far, so good.

This Is Shorter, I Promise: Reflections Upon Leaving St. Louis

The first night I went to dinner with my brother, my mom, her douchebag boyfriend, and Joey and Rosie Pini. Almost all of us had margaritas. It was the first time my mom had consciously drank in front of me. I was both surprised and not surprised that I could recognize the behavior.

I got to see everyone I wanted except two: my aunt and Kellie. I haven't seen my aunt for over a year and a half, and I didn't get to give Kellie the picture I drew of her. Such is life.

I tried to visit Chekhov at Rachel's parents' house. They weren't home, so I didn't really get to. He had on a chain collar and growled at Christian and me when we approached the door.

I spent the most time with Christian, which I think was appropriate.

I haven't considered St. Louis "home" in quite some time.

Dry Land and Dry Wit: Reflections Upon Leaving Kirksville

The summer before I was a sophomore was when I really started living in Kirksville, beginning the Truman Week that two freshman dropped out due to heat-related dissatisfaction. That summer I spent a week in Scotland, three months at Taco Bell flirting with a manager two years older than I was, and one humbling night drunk off my ass for the first time. I moved in my off-campus apartment on one of the more sweltering days, watching the highway evolve into town as I drove in along 63, the convenience stores and billboards springing from the cement like ruins from the desert. I referred to that stretch of road as the Path of Despair because I'd frequently returned home to St. Louis every few weeks and every Sunday I would inevitably take my place in a long line of cars savoring every last second that they were not in Kirksville. I had less than twenty dollars in my bank account and spent most of it that afternoon on a fan and Pop-Ice from Wal-Mart.

Come December, I was typing my papers in gloves, a sweatshirt, my robe, socks and slippers, with a blanket around my shoulders because the cold was so fierce and I had no thermostat, only a musty heating grate that ran for five minutes and shut off for thirty. I left my window open over winter break to air out my apartment and made $400 working at Taco Bell that month. At the end of the break, my landlady informed me in broken English that my pipes had frozen and created $400 worth of damage.

The memory of Kirksville is shaped by two forces: the weather and the dust. They are the constants, and everyone and everything I have experienced since that first sweaty day have been variables victim to their command. The dust on the side of the road, the dust that makes up the unpaved roads, the dust unearthed by ceaseless construction and costly attempts at improvement, the dust that forms a fine film on the windowsill and bookshelf, the dust that forms soft gray balls; so soft it made me gag to have to touch them and throw them away. The dust that clung to my sweat when I walked along the uneven and potholed sidewalks in July and formed a different fine film on my flesh: a glutinous one I tried to wipe away but only suceeded in redistributing, one that traps in the heat and reappeared an hour after showering. One I shared with others, through contact of arms, legs, hands, and lips. It's salty. It makes you thirsty. It makes you weary. It makes you lonely and lascivious; and come the cooler blue-gray twilight, this intoxicating sultry dust-paste is a double-edged aprodisiac, gluing you drunkenly to another as stickily passionate.

The population of Kirksville, a town touched by farms on all four sides, is less than the sudent body of Mizzou, a college campus in Columbia, the nearest legitimate metropolis. It's a town that consists of Townies, who have been and will be in Kirksville forever, and Students, whose two largest fears are running out of money and getting stuck in Kirksville, the first of which inevitably exacerbate the chances of the second. Its motto is "Where the People Make the Difference," and the unintentional truth of that is in order to achieve anything, whether it be goals, creature comforts, basic human need, or even fun, you had to be intelligent and ingenious enough to make it happen yourself. You got by with a little help from your friends. I've met and spent time with some of the greatest people in the world in Kirksville, MO, whether they were born there or just passing through for four-plus years. I've learned as much from them as I have from my college education and loved them as only a twentysomething girl with few responsibilities can love. Every once in awhile a townie would give you a huge break or help you out. I got a job at JavaCo and hundreds of dollars worth of painting sold when Jan Collins found out I was a nice girl with an artsy streak. The lady at For the Fun of It conducted last-minute business with me for green hair dye without even meeting me face-to-face, leaving the products I needed by the back door when we discovered our schedules didn't match up for me to peruse the store. The lady at Hidden Treasures offered me her house to stay at when she learned that I'd be staying at friends' houses a month before leaving town. And then there were the rat bastards who made your life miserable. My first boss at Travelers Inn was a drunk who regularly passed out in various places around the building and who was recently indicted on multiple drug felony charges. The schizophrenic lady on the first floor of my apartment tried to beg change off me when she was sober, and when she was drunk she would gibber at the walls, blast her music, and call me a whore. The human experience was what made your life unique, because you sure as hell weren't going to get your kicks from clubs or museums. There weren't any.

Such a microcosm doesn't teem with activity or have regular bursts of energy. Rather, it breathes. It sighs with the seasons shifting, pants during party weekends, gasps during finals week, and occasionally holds its breath and lets it out in a whoosh like a mischievous child who is learning the meaning of tension and release. The dust shifts with the flow to other places and other forms. It stays in the air with the October gusts just enough to keep it warm and remind you of summer's irresponsible rascalous freedom. Kirksville exhales, the weather changes; it inhales, the weather changes back. It's the most dynamic time of the year. Ambition is still fresh, I could comfortably walk everywhere I needed, I could wear a jacket if I wanted but could get away without it, and I had all the time in the world. My birthday was in September. October was the most fun. I started dating almost all of my boyfriends in early November. My best semesters were the firsts.

With time, the dying summer breezes rest, the dust settles. The dust on the windowsill grows thicker before the dropping temperature forces you to close the window for the next several months, and the dust outside freezes with the ground or mixes with the snow when it falls, forming an insufferable sludge. With the arrival of January came also the realization that Hell was not fire and brimstone; Hell was a Kirksville winter. When we got hit with snow it was more like an artillery assault, and when there was no precipitation the north windchill made it unbearable to leave my apartment for any reason. It made any sort of movement desperate, and only as much as necessary. Winter is isolating. It is claustrophobic. Instead of bringing people together to salvage warmth, it drove us apart; almost any interaction chipped away at sacred personal space of which they had already been so robbed. My seasonal depression reached its zenith around mid-February. Most of my romances deteriorated around March.

I've often wondered if it is beacuse of, or in spite of the size of the town that its residents have the relationship with it that they do. The citizens are obsessed with themselves as a part of the town; there are endless Kirksville-pride events, homages to a near-nonexistant history, and activities designed for the betterment and enjoyment of "the community." It's also a town with an income gap larger than I think anyone could fathom. In the span of a few miles, I've walked from the two-story houses along Halliburton that most likely belong to the professors, dentists, doctors, and small business owners, to the housing projects by PC Mills park in the southwest corner of town where every child has a parent either in jail, dead, on welfare, or on drugs. There are self-supporting farmers who sell their apples and brownies on the square on Saturday mornings, Amish famillies with cell phones at Wal-Mart, and supposed meth labs in the woods. I think they all talk about "community" without really knowing or considering at the time what all that community consists of.

The townies love it, and the students hate it; they hate it for its lack of entertainment when the unforgiving winter locks them quickly inside; they hate it when the dependence on human interaction affects them negatively; they hate the noisy frat across the street and how the community theatre only does cheap-laugh comedies, and fucking Wal-Mart; and they hate the fear of being stuck there. And yet sometimes they grow to love the town too, when the warm breeze makes the rainbowed leaves tornado in the fall, or when the silly child finally lets his breath out and spring blows in with tepid, overdue gusts and warm spittle drizzling the yellowed grass to life.

Kirksville casts a strange spell over some. Once I lived there year-round, I realized the small things I found lacking in St. Louis, such as walking to work, or biking on dirt roads with Randy, or old bridges and railroad tracks and how fun it was to climb up to them and have a cigarette with Rachel, Christian, and Eric, or how the sky was so thick with stars on clear nights that I could finally understand why and how the Greeks invented constellations, and how beautiful those constellations looked when walking in the dark with Jared. I began to breathe with the town, inhaling the same dust as the grizzled barbers and groomed businessmen. The same dust that Kirksvillians have been breathing for decades, the dust that settled in the lungs of the Beards and Floyds and McClains and Goulds, rooting them inexorably to the ground that they were eventually buried beneath, and the dust they became part of themselves. The dust grounded me as well, weighing me down as I consumed and washed off years of deteriorated particles of iron ore, failed crops, and generations of corpses, and I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay in Kirksville because I lived there year-round; I'd known it in all its capricious seasons; I'd tasted its bitter monotonous savor mixed with my own sweat; I had a steady job and a role in the community theatre and all my friends still went to school there. Highway 63 had long since ceased being "the Path of Despair" because I rarely left town and I couldn't wait to get back when I did. I was happy, and my greatest fears were running out of money and not being happy.

I think the fact that my plans to leave superseded that contentment was due to understanding that the greatest portion of my happiness was tied to a facet of the town that did not wish to be a permanent part of it. My friends would eventually leave, and with every passing year I would be more entrenched within the town, both hating and adoring my cramped, repetitive universe in 365-day cycles until I was no more than another common name on another headstone.

So I left, right before the leaves started turning, before the temperatures plunged into oblivion, but after I had one more summer of sweat and dust and heady squalor. I miss my friends, and what they're doing that I'm not able to be a part of. I dream about them, and the stupid, fucking, self-obsessed town that I learned to love. I'm still coughing up dust from all the bike rides and bridge climbs, brushing it off myself after being yanked up from the ground but unable to find another place to set root. Though I know that years out of the Midwest, in sundry times and diverse places, I will still be shaking it out of my hair and clothes, and I'll remember those breathless October days in Northeast Missouri.

Goodbye, Dukum Tuesday

Last night was my last Tuesday Night Karaoke With Wendy.

It passed quickly, which is either indicative of how much fun I had (the amount of which surpassed the weight of a herd of T-Rexes on Jupiter) or Wendy's reluctance to start karaoke without Ron and Randy being there right at the beginning. Both are probably true.

Clint came with two CDs full of downloaded karaoke songs, most of which I would have loved to sing. I chose "Octopus's Garden" by the Beatles because it made me the happiest. I made requests for Clint to sing "Born to Run," Jared to sing "The Lady is a Tramp," and Aaron to sing "Come to Papa." Due to the enormous volume of patrons, however, the only one that happened was the first.

I sipped two Bloody Marys full of vegetables while Randy sang "The One," Jason sang "New York State of Mind," and Max sang "Your Song."

I bought Justin a drink in exchange for him singing "Other Side," convinced Liz put in a song, and hated myself for perpetuating all that "You just have to sing!" crap which I despise.

I never had time to step outside. I never got to talk to Gina, Ron's wife, and tell her I was leaving in a week.

Jared, Aaron, and Clint collaborated on "Hey Jude." It's one of my favorite memories.

I put down "New York, New York" to be my second song despite the potential cheese factor, but due to a special request from Dereck, Wendy changed it to "Don't Stop Believing."

Karaoke in Kirksville is strange. It becomes a cultish habit. I feel particularly queasy at the moment for even devoting a post to a topic so shallow as this, even more so for actually listing the songs. I don't know why it's such a big deal other than that it's an excuse to socialize on a weekday and this condition is recognized among my immediate aquaintances; I don't know why I've gone almost every week for the past two and a half years and it's become a ritual steadfast enough to make plans around, other than that for every night that is gratingly lame, there is one that becomes a warm beery haze or laughing stumbles to my apartment afterwards. But like everything else, for better or worse, I'll miss it when it's gone.

Come Fly With Me

I was walking towards the square tonight and saw a small brown lump on the sidewalk under a streetlamp. At first it looked like a frog, but when I approached it closer, it turned out to be a bat. I don't know how bats are supposed to move, so I'm not sure if he was hurt or just learning to fly, but this one couldn't get very far off the ground. I saw him hop, scuddle, and occasionally flap up a few inches into the air in the grass.

Once, he stopped moving for a several uncomfortable moments, and I was shocked at the thought that I might have just seen him die.

He moved his head around, though, and continued scurrying to the steps of the nearest building, crawled up the wall and across the stoop. I let him be after that point. I'd never seen anything like that up close, or at least, up close and not in a cage.

The Last Unicorn: Brought to you by IceBreakers

When I was in the checkout line and couldn't find the type of mint I usually get, my eyes settled on this robin's-egg blue tin with a chipper stick-figure man raising his arms triumphantly, surrounded by fresh, moist mint leaves. "IceBreakers Energy," it read. "Peppermint Mints with caffeine."

Now, if there are two things that are A-OK in my book, they are mints and caffeine. As a matter of fact, if I were to make a fairly comprehensive list of things I like, mints and caffeine would be on there somewhere. Not at the top, which would be reserved for stuff like Chekhov, Gonzo journalism, Taco Bell, drawing time, acting, and stories about Beatles songs, but nestled in the middle among Ric Flair, vitamins, and Papers I Wrote in High School But I Still Think They're Pretty Good, At Least For High School.

And "Peppermint Mints"! Repetition is way cute, guys. Not since "The Chippiest Chips Around" has there been a hotter slogan. Those pictures of kittens with those poorly-spelled Net-speak captions don't stand a chance with a market like this. Needless to say, I bought a tin immediately, as delighted as the minty stick man with my daydreams of the even later nights I can stay up reading or drinking with a palate more pleasing to the nose and tongue.

I checked the side after downing a few, to see how long I'd have to wait before maybe tossing on my shoes and going for a run. "One serving (3 mints) contains about as much caffeine (30 mg) as one half-cup of coffee," it read.

One half-cup. When I worked at the hotel, I once put away an entire press pot of coffee. I like toting quadruple-shot espresso drinks before important rehearsals or performances. This half-cup equivalent in breath-freshener form wasn't going to do the trick. The stick man smirked. I sighed in defeat. The only thing they could probably do is keep my heart beating if I were inches away from death.

The thought made my heart jump, as if these were really the mints I'd believed them to be, but in fact it was brought on a more shocking revelation. The only other item that can do that is none other than unicorn's blood.* My stomach twisted. Without even realizing it, I'd condemned myself to a cursed life. It didn't stop me from eating the rest of them, but I sure wasn't going running anytime that day.

No wonder they were so expensive.




*Well, maybe also an AED machine, but you don't see anyone packing those into any peppermint pellets. Think of the lawsuits.

Confusion and Contradiction in the Rec Center

I had to get a special guest card at the gym because they won't let you use the facilities after you graduate, and even with it, I can't work out there after 2 PM without paying two dollars. However, the girl swiping my card either didn't notice or ignored that fact, so I got in for free.

The second thing I noticed when walking towards the locker room were the three huge sheet cakes sitting on a table, "provided by the Student Senate" for the tenth anniversary of the Rec Center or something. I was pleasedly puzzled, because considering it's kind of supposed to be an establishment promoting healthy lifestyles, I'd think they'd at least have fruit plates or something, but the counterproductivity of the fact was far outweighed by my desire to have cake. I sat down to eat a slice after running, saw Jared's brother, and talked to him for a few minutes about how he should write his German essay on him not paying attention in class because he was distracted by the frisbee players outside.

Finally, when walking out, I noticed a list of activities scheduled in weekly segments for the first semester. One of the first was "Fantasy Football."

The BBC Would Like to Issue a Clarification to the Previous Post

When I wrote the line "...Neither one of us went to the extreme of dying our hair pink, slathering on eyeliner, wearing spikes, or filling in the bubbles on Scan-Trons in class to make pictures of Nixon with a knife through his eye," my immediate thought was "Holy cats! Nixon?! What fucking generation did we belong to, anyhow?" Because, of course, if anyone it would most likely be Bush. Rachel and I were also two of the five-odd Libertarians in our high school, but while outspoken on social and economic issues, neither one of us were rampantly into Bush-bashing.

Then the literal truth of the line sidled up to the anachronistic humor, since we did not, in fact, make Scan-Tron pointilist masterpieces at all, with any political figure, past or present.

Then I realized how cool and hip and so punk it would have been if we really had turned our backs on criticism of the current administration and retrograded to picking apart the Nixon era. And then I figured, why stop there? What history teacher wouldn't kill to see a well-rendered grayscale of Benedict Arnold hanging from a mighty oak, or perhaps Rasputin's icy corpse by the frozen Neva riverbed? I'd give them an A just for that, regardless of what the test results were.


Another clarification: Unfortunately, regardless of how delightful a phrase it is, I did not actually think "Holy cats!" before pondering why on earth Nixon would be our rendering of choice.

Superbfairywren.blogspot.com regrets these errors in communication.

"Be excellent. Don't be average." *

"But you see, it's not REALLY a Snickers, because it has no nougat! It's an imposter. ImpostiSnickers."

Rachel punctuated her disdain by smacking her fist on the lunch table in our high school cafeteria. She purchased an Ice Cream Snickers, not for the first time, but had only then discovered why they'd not achieved post-lunch taste bud satisfaction. The so-called Snickers bars had the requisite chocolate, caramel, and peanuts, true, but made a costly error in the decision to substitute the ice cream for nougat.

"So?" another friend of ours asked.

"It's not a Snickers without the nougat! To be a Snickers, the nougat is inherent! Just like the chocolate, peanuts, and caramel! To exclude one of those makes the claim of being a Snickers null and void!" She defiantly tossed her hair over her shoulder.

"Wait, but if the components of "Ice Cream Snickers" in and of itself are ice cream, chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and no nougat, that makes it its own separate entity!" our other friend countered.

The table was silent for a minute. "No!" Rachel laughed.

"It doesn't matter," I added. "For all the big deal they make out of copyrights and trademarks, the Snickers name brings a certain expectation to the product. The Snickers label should bring, at the very least, the chocolate, caramel, peanuts, AND the nougat. Ice cream is the modifier, and should be added on top of everything else. Or, I guess, inside."

Rachel nodded approvingly, flattened out the wrapper of the misnomed frozen bar, and wrote IMPOSTER! on it in menacing black Sharpie. I bought one too, ate it, wrote the same, and we stapled them to our backpacks in solidarity against The Man. When they frayed and fell off, we bought new Ice Cream "Snickers" and again with the ebony letters sharply branded them IMPOSTER!, hanging them by staples to the gallows on our backs. We realized later that we'd only fed The Man by buying more, but we wrote it off as a necessary expense as a means for providing greater damage.

Sticking it to The Man was kind of our thing back in high school, when we became friends during her senior and my junior years. It manifested into a mutual decision to "become" punk on the way back from the first speech tournament of the year, chalupas in hand and Green Day on the tape player. She threw away her Blink-182 cds ("They say they're real punk, but they're pop, and it's because they cater to the mainstream instead of defy it. When they traded their drummers for someone who was more appealing, that was the end of their real punk days") and we made rainbow bead rave bracelets that read "Fuck Authority," without having been to an actual rave.

Neither one of us went to the extreme of dying our hair pink, slathering on eyeliner, wearing spikes, or filling in the bubbles on Scan-Trons in class to make pictures of Nixon with a knife through his eye. But we listened to plenty of NoFX and Green Day and Janis Joplin, used obscenities freely, shopped at thrift stores, and small-scale rallied against the district's ban on teaching the Communist Manifesto in class.

Yes, we knew that clothes didn't make the punk, and sometimes it was hard to say exactly what we were rebelling against, but going to school in the middle of Chesterfield while growing up on the outskirts, it was hard not to say "everything" and be pretty much on the mark. The Facebook group isn't so far off the mark when they say West St. Louis County is like the Orange County of Missouri. So even the acts of reading literature, not dropping triple digits at Abercrombie and Hollister, not attending Mizzou, and having parents that worked at jobs instead of the school store was in opposition to a large chunk of what the rest of the school stood for. We were against assimiliation, against the desperate clinging addictive desire to conform that reeked from so many of our peers like too much Hugo for Men cologne. We wanted to be original, and if we could achieve that, maybe we'd finally make some sort of impact. Damn it, The Man would not get away with denying us our nougat.



*-Mr. Bekemeyer, who taught AP Euro, and with it, the Communist Manifesto.

Nomadism is the New Pink

"Rachel and I discussed it, and you're the best roommate ever. We see you for five or ten minutes at a time, then you disappear for a few days, and it's anyone's guess as to when we'll see you again." -Nick

At least fifteen people have asked me when I'm leaving. The answer is shrug, with doubts about having the will or the way to go at all. About the same number, give or take a few, have generously offered me their couches to sleep on while I'm still here. I'd be like a portable slumber party, but gone for work before everyone wakes up, with none of the awkward bleary-eyed good-byes. If I brought the Strip Twister board and had kitchen and bath privileges, I would be called something else.

Randy: Why don't you want to go anymore?
ME: I don't think I can afford it.
Randy: I don't really think you can, either. What's another reason?
ME: I'll miss my friends.
Randy: That's not a good reason.

Saturday is my last day at the coffeeshop. They hired someone new to replace me, so the only hours I would get would be last-minute desperation replacement shifts.

"There's nothing like being alone in a city when you're young and shit-broke." --Katie

Truer words.

I can only write when that madman is staring down at me.

I was going to write something funny about how I moved all my stuff out of my apartment but I'm still in Kirksville, and now I'm a homeless bum living off the charity of friends, and I'm going to try and see if I can sleep in a different place every night. Then, as I was carrying my computer monitor to my car on the third carful of boxes I took to Rachel and Nick's, I saw a lady dumpster diving in the garbage bin behind the apartment, filling a baby carriage with salvageable rubbish, and I didn't really feel like it anymore.

You can't take it with you.

I'm in the process of either selling, giving away, or throwing out all of my posessions that are too expensive or cumbersome to transport to New York when I move in a couple of weeks. My progress feels a little counterproductive at times; my Stuff Ratio of Purged to Gained is about 2:1.

Case in point: I need enormous suitcases to house my massive apparel collection, since I might as well make my two bags that I am allowed to check on the flight as large as possible. After weeding out my closet for a painful second and third time, I managed to produce another garbage bag or two for the Salvation Army. This past Tuesday, Liz Vanderhoof came into town with a suitcase full of beautiful clothes to sell at the now-nonexistent The 'Ville, which she didn't know had closed down. I offered to buy some if she threw in the suitcase, which she agreed to. So now I have a suitcase, which won't hold as much as it could because now I have more clothes. Not as many as I threw out, but more nonetheless. I was able to throw out all my plastic CD jewel cases, but doing so required me to buy a CD binder. There are socks and books and trinkets that I need to return to friends, and other items I'll be shipping, but to do so I have to stock up on boxes.

I had to sell all of my Anne of Green Gables books. I haven't been able to let go of any stuffed animals yet. Sarah, Carley, and Jessica are getting my microwave, Nick might be buying my car, and I'm selling the furniture back to Hidden Treasures. This all feels a little morbid. "I want you to have my colored pencils. And to you, I leave my plastic storage bins and empty tubs." Like I know that I'm dying and I'm writing my will about who's getting what when I'm not around anymore.

Doggaroo

Chekhov is probably approaching Columbia right now, in the backseat of Rachel's car on the way to her parents' house. I had to give him away because not only would it be more difficult to find a place in New York or elsewhere if I had a dog, it would make the moving process more difficult as well. Her parents have a bigger house, a yard, another dog to play with, and empty nest syndrome, making them the perfect adoptive parents, especially since I've been friends with her for years and I'd be able to visit him whenever I'm in St. Louis.

I've had him for over two years. I got him from a frat that was having a puppy-a-thon when one of their dogs had her litter, and bought him for twenty dollars on the most uncharacteristic impulse of my life. Not only was I not a dog person, but I had to ask one of my friends to hold him in my car on the way to Wal-Mart that afternoon when I went in to puzzle out exactly what the hell a puppy needed. I had to go back to the store twice.

I'm glad I got him when he was that young. I like starting things from the beginning.

During his rearing, I lost over seven pairs of shoes, tens of CDs (some of which belonged to other people), at least five books (two of which were library books, and one of which was entitled "How to Train Your Dog"), countless waterbottles, my couch, three or four stuffed animals, a stick of deodorant, and piles of paper--among other forgotten items--to his developing jaws. I learned to let go of things. I also learned to put them in places he couldn't reach. Sometimes that didn't work.

Chekhov took after me in odd, uncanny ways, perhaps because I found myself resembling my mother in other, humbling ways. He enjoys eating apples, vegetables, bread, and grass. One time I came home and found he had eaten half a can of icing, his snout still in the container and his paws and fur all sticky. He hid under the bed for several hours after that. He doesn't slobber or lick excessively, but I trained him to give kisses: two small licks on the hand, more if I have something he wants. He only does it to me. He howls when fire engine sirens are sounding and when I'm playing opera music. He has more nicknames than I can count, consisting mostly of combinations of Chekhov, Bear, Stinky, Chunky, Muppet, and Roo. He is the most extreme balance of happy, goofy, protective, loving, and tolerant that ever kicked its leg when you scratched its stomach. I don't think I'd be the person today if I hadn't gotten him, and I don't know what life will be like without. Less happy, I imagine.

It's too fucking quiet in here.

Kirksville Nursing Homes: Helping the Elderly Die Quicker for Thirty-Five Years

My first real class in months and I'm almost late.

My boss at JavaCo offered to pay for a class in food safety at the Vocational Tech school for all that were interested in being certified. It was the five of us, some kids that worked at a concession stand, some ladies that worked at a nursing home, one of the owners of the Wooden Nickel, and a few other women that I wasn't sure where they worked but they said they made Sloppy Joes.

We watched an informational video that claimed to have "Real People! Real Situations!" but in fact featured worse acting than I've seen in the entire library of the Taco Bell instructional tapes and enough flashing font and synthesized techno beats to make the 80's blush. Most of the facts they presented were common sense bits I'd already known. Our instructor gave us a packet and a lecture, which covered word-for-word everything that was in the packet, and then a test, for which we got to use the packet. She tried to scare us with personal eyewitness accounts of times she's been out eating and witnessed unsanitary food preparation, but confessed that she was always reluctant to say something because she was afraid they would spit in her food. The other middle-aged women nodded and shared some tales of their own, and the two ladies who worked at the nursing home candidly spilled the beans about how there are some things they should be doing "in theory," but they don't get done.

I aced the test, which was ridiculously easy.

I realize food safety is important, and that e.coli, botulism, and salmonella are significant and possible threats, but I think that if I spent as much time paranoid about it as some are, I would lose my mind, never get any orders made on time, and develop the weakest immune system known to man. That, and I think the amount of instances that they recommended I wash my hands would cause me to either develop OCD or at the very least remove several layers of dermis.

At least I don't live in a nursing home. A reassurance on many levels not even having to do with food safety.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

I threw a dinner party last Wednesday, partially to find homes for some zucchini and eggs, but mostly in honor of Amber leaving Kirksville to make something of her life back home near Chicago. We all drank three bottles of wine, used three dishcloths for sweat-rags when my lack of an air-conditioner grew too much to handle, and burned a million leftover sparklers before it began raining. She visited JavaCo a few hours before she left on Friday, to say hello and get a bagel before resuming packing. When she was gone I was left with a strange desperate emptiness, like when you're a little kid and you accidentally drop a toy into the ocean or let your helium balloon slip from your hand, and all you can do is helplessly watch it float away, and the only thing you can think of is all the fun you won't be having with it now that it's gone.

I've made plans for new living arrangements in Kirksville if I need them--ones I'm actually a little excited about. My dog is leaving for Rachel's parents in St. Louis next week--which I'm not looking forward to at all. I auditioned for No Sex Please, We're British and received a sassy bit part that I can duck out of easily if I need to skip town. My two employers have assured me I can work there as long as I want. Meanwhile, all the college kids are coming back in droves, and each one has probably heard a slightly different version of what I'm doing. I don't know how to budget my time because I don't know how much there is to spend. It could be two weeks. It could be two months. It's difficult to feel a proper good-bye if I have no clue when I'm going, and I don't know if it makes it any easier if the ones around me are leaving or staying as well.

Vegetus, Patron Saint of Homeless Edible Greenery (and other items of interest)

I gave away my shift at JavaCo on Thursday because I was sick of working. I would rather have dropped my pool shift, but it's more difficult to weasel out of those because there are only two other girls who work the early mornings, and one of then was already scheduled. I know I have to work for the rest of my life, and for the most part I enjoy my jobs, but enough was enough. Work sucks. I planned on being productive but spent the time sleeping instead.

My car needed to be inspected at least two weeks ago, and still does. Also, my mom found out I walked at gradutation after all and that I didn't tell her. She wasn't happy.

I'm doing makeup for LuAnn Hampton Laverty Oberlander. I get to make one guy look sixty, fashion a mustache on another, and put Heather's wig on. It's pretty fun.

I got an ominous voicemail from my friend with whom I'm moving to New York, saying that he's having trouble finding a place. Which might mean that I may not be moving to New York. I don't really want to think about that or its alternatives right now.

I dropped the Theatre Practice course I was enrolled in because I was graduated, poor, and Ron said it was OK to work onthe show and not be enrolled. I found out later that I still had to pay seventy-five percent of the fees. I appealed and learned today that it was granted, so that's two hundred dollars that I don't have to pay for gluing hair to Jeremy's upper lip and putting Heather's wig on.

In a week's time, I've accumulated two more zucchini, two tomatoes, and two ears of corn. Now I'm debating founding a shelter in my house for wayward herbage. Either that, or having a dinner party.

Give me your turnips, your corn, your bundled asparagus yearning to be eaten; send these, the homeless salad-tossed, to me; I lift my fork beside the golden refrigerator door.

Absolut Zukini

I've been commissioned by one of the bakers at JavaCo to paint flowers on the walls of her chicken coop. It's a bigger ordeal than I had originally thought--it took me over six hours to finish one side. In addition to monetary payment, though, she gave me four zucchini, a mess of green beans, and invited me to raid her garden whenever I visited to paint. I had no knowledge of how to prepare zucchini, outside of my usual dip-it-in-honey-mustard-sauce-and-consume-raw routine, but one of the ladies at the pool was kind enough to offer a recipe basic enough to remember offhand and not require any ingredients that I wouldn't be able to use in anything else.

Today, also at said pool, I was talking to the kid who wears Forrest Gump-style braces on his legs. After showing me his "trick" (a tidal wave splash, then going underwater, holding his breath, and wiggling around), he announced, "I have a really, really, really big zucchini."

"That's cool. Did you grow it?"

"Yeah."

"Are you going to eat it?"

"No. It's too much for us to eat. We might give it away. Maybe to you." He laughed, then splashed, went underwater, held his breath, and wiggled around.

He was probably joking, but I couldn't help imagine what I would do with this bounty of zucchini that has been bestowed upon me, and why I was chosen to receive its glorious healthful plentitude. I pictured my refrigerator overflowing with vegetation as I'd attempt zucchini cakes, zucchini smoothies, chicken-fried zucchini, zucchini chips, zucchini-stuffed zucchini, zucchini dog food, zucchini vodka. I'd shake my fist at Providence with every well-intentioned gift while simultaneously offering a weary thanks, because at the moment I'm out of honey mustard sauce and I could really use a drink that began with Z.

Static From the Underground

I can't talk long. The spyware is listening in.

Oh Computer, how I've missed you. It's been seven cruel days since our parting, when you were poisoned with doggedly malevolent files and I thusly became hotly pursued by Smitfraud Corporation's relentless bots disguised as benign virus alerts.

What have I done around this godforsaken wasteland without you? I've read quite a bit. It's not the same--you have to use both hands to turn the pages, instead of scrolling down. I've been sleeping a great deal, recovering from two weeks of long hours and late nights. I've spent over $125 on alcohol since the beginning of June. I will never forgive my carelessness in neglecting to firewall you from the threat of invasion.

Someday we can be together again, like we used to. Remember? Those golden summer days, crimson twilights, and star-dotted midnights that we ignored while we sat inside together, giggling and sobbing as we instant messaged for hours. YouTube. TvLinks. Your glow brightened my eyes as I stroked your keys, and you sang softly to me through muted speakers.

Every day I am away from you, my weakness mounts with my frustration. And consequently, with my shame. I must confess it: I've been on other computers, my love. I know, I know, but it's excruciating without you and your sweet internet to cushion the hardships of everyday existence. Facebook beckons, what with its sensuous mini-feed and alluring new applications to investigate. With every transgression I grow guiltier; nightly I come home and find you crashed, watching as you struggle so valiantly against this plague inflicted upon you, the pop-ups covering your screen like a pox.

The spyware is all around me. I can't shake it. They say they're here to protect me, protect you, but I'm not buying it. Every five seconds there's a malaware alert, flashing false yellow propaganda. I've longed to return to you, dear Computer. I will count the minutes until you are cured of this affliction. Then, when it is safe to roam the untamed online wilderness once more, we will ride off into a sunset even more vibrant than our firewall, hand-in-mouse.

My Iron Lung

I wanted to go to a bar yesterday evening before the smoking ban went into effect in Kirksville and no one would be able to have a cigarette within ten feet of any public property. Unfortunately, I forgot what day it was and missed out.

Before the resolution passed, I got conned into being in a political ad for it when I actually was opposed to it. I smoke when I feel like it, which is very seldom, and one of the reasons I don't do it oftener is because it's hell on your health. I wasn't against banning cigarettes in public at all, but I thought the decision should be left up to the individual property owners, who pay the taxes on their buildings and businesses, not the whole of the town dictating to the few. If the owners cared about public health, then it'd be on their conscience whether or not to allow smoking in their building.

My boss knew I acted, so she asked if I wanted to be in a commercial. I said yes, and she told me that all I had to do was hand a cup of coffee to my co-worker, who was pretending to be a customer, while she read a five-second pitch from the script. The crew set up the lights and camera and she practiced reading. When I overheard her rehearse, "We became a smoke-free restaurant five years ago," I balked.

"Umm. I think I might have to decline being in this after all," I told her.

"You don't have to decline," she smiled most diplomatically, with a resolve that would have reinforced the Berlin Wall. I sighed, and when the cameras were rolling, handed the cup of coffee uncomfortably over and over and over the counter to Patrick, an equally unwilling participant, until the KTVO crew called one a winner.

I never saw it, but I'm sure it did wonders because the resolution passed. I figured I'd salvage my wounded activism by sticking it to the man anyway and putting the commercial on my acting résumé.

Come All Ye There

I auditioned for the "Broadway in the Park" musical revue today and got in. I'll be doing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from Gypsy and "Missing You" from The Civil War. Karaoke and other auditions aside, this is going to be my first time singing by myself in public, unless you count the four-word solo I had in Brigadoon in high school, which even I'd forgotten about until just now.

And Rachael Ray Shot JFK

I've never been particularly worried about things like Mad Cow Disease or e. coli outbreaks--probably because I'm no longer a carnivore--and at one time I had no qualms about eating an M&M off the ground under a loosely timed five-second rule. When I say that I've recently become paranoid about food and started calling conspiracy theory, it's a cause for serious concern.

*Adolescent vanity trained me to stringently track down the nutritional contents of everything that slides down my gullet. So naturally, when I became hooked on iced coffees at McDonalds, I went to their website and looked it up. A 32-ounce coffee has 250 calories. I didn't believe it for a second. Those things are sweeter than a debutante and have enough cream to make a heifer blush. Therefore, I believe the core of McDonalds' new nutrition-consciousness consists of lying about how bad the products are for the customers by falsifying the caloric and fat content. If I had a way of finding out the truth, I would sue them for millions of dollars, which would allow me to buy millions of delicious iced coffees.

*One of my friends got tricked into buying a pack of Limited Edition Retro Starburst. The kid at the Kum and Go counter said that he'd give my friend his more expensive coffee for free if he bought the candy because his boss said he "wasn't selling enough." Taking advantage of the deal, my friend agreed, only to find out later that there was a nationwide contest among Kum and Go employees to see who could sell the most Retro Starburst. Upon closer examination, I found the bite-sized taffy to come in four flavors: Psychedli-Melon (representing the sixties, I'm assuming), Disco Berry, Hey Mango-Rena (I shudder to think that's what the 1990's will be remembered for), and Optimus Lime. This "inadvertent" promotion coincides remarkably with the release of Transformers: The Movie --a little too well, I believe. Either the guy who gets paid to name the Starburst got geeked out on Mountain Dew and pop rocks when he received the project that he'd waited twenty years for, or the Transformers producers slipped him some bills under the table for some low-cost-yet-high-exposure promotion. I'm positive the film features Los Del Rio's acting debut as the Bee Gees, who operate a yellow submarine that morphs into a three-headed bone-crushing rainbow-bot. The prize package will be two tickets, a pair of platform shoes, and two tabs of acid.

*Water is supposed to make you not thirsty. It's also supposed to alleviate dehydration-related symptoms of a hangover such as nausea. In the past few weeks, I've found Kirksville water to do neither of these things. I believe the water "purification" plant is distilling our faucets with chemically fine-tuned crap to make the drinkers sluggish and sick, not only so they will want to consume more and turn a profit for water-related utilities and services, but to also sap the desire to emigrate from this Surrogate-Motherland and allow them to raise the aggregate I.Q. so we may finally have the cultural capacity to necessitate a Target store being built.

The Big Sister Tax

I inherited my mother's smile and her father's curly hair, but not her prowess for bargaining. My brother got that, and as a result my family would regularly try to out-scam each other.

She and I went shopping for a desk and bookshelf for my college apartment, and was able to effectively argue $40 off the price of both. She shows me her garage sale treasure trove when I visit, entertaining herself more than me with a rundown of what her trinkets had cost and what she actually paid for them. When I was younger, she would ask me to do random tasks for her. "I'll give you a dollar," she'd say. Tempted by pocket change in a time when I was too old for an allowance but too young for a summer job, I'd do it and report for pay. She'd dig through her purse, cock her head, search some more, and say, "Here's sixty cents. Seventy-five. It's all I can find."

"There's a roll of quarters in the side pocket."

"I need those for laundry. Most kids do these things without getting paid, you know."

I really couldn't argue with that. Clearly, I also inherited a gullible naivete that was unprecedented in either side of my parentage--as well as a strong, indignant sense of justice. Later, when I had a permit and she'd make me go on Taco Bell or McDonalds dinner runs for "driving practice," I'd keep a portion of the change and tell her the order was more expensive than it really was.

Where my mom uses charm, chatter, and pathos to get less than her money's worth on possessions, my brother is wily, hard-nosed, and underhandedly businesslike. He was able to buy a $1400 computer for less than half the price because he took advantage of the rebate, a friend's Best Buy discount, and my dad. He'd have "penny auctions" or sell his toys to me, and take them back later when he wanted to use them again. When we were older, he'd ask to borrow money, vowing to pay me back the next Tuesday. We'd write out an I.O.U., which I'd either lose, forget about, or remind him about it a few days later to a stream of more promises. I returned the favor by picking up all the loose change on his bedroom floor and keeping it.

On an overnight visit to my grandmother's house, I awoke to she and my mother talking about money. It was boring until I heard my name come up.

"I don't know what I should do. It's gotten so bad that I've had to take money out of Meredith's savings account again. I already had to take out two hundred dollars last month to pay the bills. I don't want it to get so far that I won't be able to pay it back without her noticing."

I was fifteen. I pretended to still be asleep. My grandmother offered her some sage, motherly, understanding musing that I didn't pay a speck of attention to because I couldn't get past the fact that our family was in financial trouble (though it was a fairly regualr occurrence) and my mom was stealing my money that I earned working thirty-nine hours a week at a job I despised. After we returned home, I mentioned that I wanted sole control of my savings account, but I chickened out when she asked why and got defensive. To her credit, she paid it back in full and I never noticed any missing at any other time. I wonder how desperate she really was.

When my brother was fifteen and going through a rough time with her, he accidentally ruined two towels with cheap hair dye. She told him she was going to take money out of his account to replace them, and he promptly closed it down and opened up a new one at another bank. My brother was never one to take injustice lying down either.

An Open Letter to People Who Leave Their Shopping Carts in Parking Spaces

Dear People Who Leave Their Shopping Carts in Parking Spaces,

Congratulations! Your tenacity and ingenuity have proven key in keeping the fight alive against major retail stores such as K-Mart, Kohls, and Garden Plus. When most of our other tactics have died out, you have continued to reinforce this decades-old battle with consistency and success, thus weakening their power and transferring it back to the hands of the people.

It sends thrills of unadulterated joy down my spine every time I enter the parking lot and see a stallwart metal buggy glimmering proudly between the yellow lines. The clever rebels choose their spaces carefully: near the front, to publicize the cause to the maximum amount of patrons entering and exiting the facility; in bold clusters occupying multiple spaces in a more open area, as strength lies in numbers; and concealed within a seemingly open space camouflaged on either side by a truck or SUV. The more carts that are sacrificed to the cause, the more resources and employers they will have to divert to free their lot of aluminum cholesterol. This will drain their funds, bankrupt their patience, and deprive the consumer of the friendly, down-home experience they want and deserve.

Every time another patron is driven to nervous prostration (please excuse the pun) from umpteen figure eights throughout the concrete labyrinth, it is one more customer that will utter, "Fuck it!" and illegally occupy a handicapped spot, earning a ticket and vendetta against that capitalist emporium. One more customer that will develop road rage so severe that they will feel the overwhelming desire to plow down shoppers more fortunate than they, involving the corporate cesspool in a potentially crippling lawsuit and deathly PR. One more customer that may say, "You know what? I don't really need to purchase my small-ticket goods at this establishment! Let's go to Mom and Pop's, where the slightly overinflated prices will offset the cost of gas we're wasting driving around this monolith!"

Now is the time to stand strong! Do not let naysayers, busybodies, and the overzealous rule-enforcers deter you; they are but blind puppets of the larger institution! When confronted with one of these conservative tools, employ one or more of the following excuses to throw them off the trail and keep the dream alive:

It is essential that we must all hang together in our cause. Together, we can stick it to those bastards who sell toothpaste cheaper than any of our proud local stores and who give our red-blooded Christian jobs to those bums overseas.

Red Bull for the Cure

The first thing I'd noticed about my dad's apartment when I got into St. Louis on Friday night was how clean it had gotten since my brother moved out. I remembered him telling me about it a few weeks before.

"Hey, remember all the grime and stuff that was on the faucet in the bathroom, and all the coffee stains that were on the kitchen walls? I cleaned it. I got back from the Race for the Sight at Union Station, and I was like, 'Ew, this has gotten really bad,' so I started cleaning the bathroom sink, and then the rest of the bathroom, and then the kitchen, and then four hours later I was done with it."

My mom cleans regularly to entertain herself. My dad does it on a whim after a charity race.

I sat in a chair while he continued pumping up the air mattress for me. He wore a t-shirt from a run for Polycystic Kidney Disorder. A decorative rug with dogs playing poker hung on the wall, partially covering the door to the garden in his closet. The Eco-Gro light was on and the fan on the closet floor made the reflective sheets of plastic that lined it flicker, creating my dad's version of the crackling hearth underneath the stately heirloom tapestry. There were trays and rollers on the newly-uncarpeted hardwood floor, left over from when he was experimenting with what to paint on the walls. At the time, he had a yellow branch with fuzzy black leaves springing from the twigs. It was a third attempt.

We pinned the numbers on the backs of our T-shirts for the Komen Race for the Cure so we wouldn't have to mess with them the next morning. With the shirts and numbers were pink pieces of paper saying, "I Run in Memory of______." Neither one of us knew anyone who had died of cancer. Dad said that he'd always done it for the chicks.

The next morning, we got a Red Bull for me at a gas station before heading downtown. He didn't want one, though last year he did because he'd given blood two days before the race. We munched on pieces of Mad Croc Energy Gum before I spit mine out after five minutes because it began tasting like crocodile-flavored vomit. Most of the time, we were next to an older man who was constantly coaching and encouraging his wife---or it could have been daughter. "You're doing great, keep it up. We can stop anytime you want. You're doing just fine, keep on running. Only a mile more; you can do this."

Our time was three minutes slower than last year, which I attributed to the lack of Red Bull in my dad's system. It gives you wings, you know.

We ate at St. Louis Bread Company after cleaning up, where my dad told me about his idea for a mint-chocolate cereal, then remembered a mint-flavored water he wanted me to try. We got bottles of that before getting my car tuned up, washed, and full of gas. I left St. Louis with two more cans of Red Bull and the air mattress that I slept on. The race is always around Father's Day. I want to be able to run it with him every year.

I wish I were Paris Hilton's lawyer

When I'm bombarded with enough repetitive, Captain-Obvious annoyance, I can be driven to play devil's advocate to almost any issue. With that in mind, let me be the first to say that I really, really don't mind Paris Hilton. I think she's amusing. No, she's not the brightest shirt on the rack, but sometimes one's entertainment value lies in asinine comments and not the ability to save a power plant from a meltdown. This, I'm sure, is why The Simpsons was so popular.

Or you could say that she is a waste of space/resources/oxygen/time and she does nothing but talk on her cell phone and shop. First of all, I can't begin to name all the perfectly nice people I know who spend hours at a time every day sitting on their asses to watch television or play video games. Secondly, if I could figure out how to market my name and image in such a way to profit from a ghostwritten book, poorly-acted bit parts in forgettable movies, and an overly-engineered self-titled CD (and, come to think of it, a fragrance as well), I would. That takes smarts and strategy. Sure, I'd rather be famous for curing cancer, but you work with what you have and what you want to do with your time. And say what you want about her behavior; whether she's a spoiled brat or sweet and friendly, the opinions are split down the middle, but if you grew up in that environment with that amount of money, you would act the exact same way. Yes, you would. Don't kid yourself.

Concerning her trying to weasel out of her jail sentence, I have but this to say: Do you want to go to jail? No, I didn't think so. How about for 45 days? Didn't think so. Or 23--would you like to spend three weeks away from your family, friends, home, privacy, freedom, and Internet in a bare room with a bed and toilet? Yeah--didn't think so. And you don't have to feel shallow or ignoble, because no one actually wants to go to jail. It's boring and the food sucks. Honestly, you can't blame a girl for trying.

This is not, by the way, condoing what she did. Driving under the influence is a horrible, dangerous, stupid thing to do and is never excusable under any circumstances. Especially when you're on probation from doing it once already, and most especially when you're loaded enough (in more ways than one) to have access to a chauffer. I also applaud the judge for sticking to his guns and making her go back to jail instead of letting her stay on house arrest. The law is the law, even when the law is something as ridiculous as giving inmates time off for every day they serve.

To her credit, she's not going to appeal the case any further, and yes, she probably should have just done the time and kept her mouth shut. Lil' Kim was sentenced ten months for perjury last year, took it like a woman, and recorded a successful album when she got out. I think we can all learn a little something from Lil' Kim.

Instead of being angry over Paris getting off easier, people should divert their ire to the flaws in the California jail and legal system for allowing her to do so, because the next time they get nailed for a stupid mistake, they're going to try to get away from it with the smallest amount of punishment or ramification. Even if they suck it up and take it, they may feel bad for having done it, but there's still the part of them that's going to wish they'd gotten away with it. I can say with some confidence that Paris doesn't want to go to jail any more than anyone else, so she's trying to evade responsibility just as much as every other red-blooded American would, too.

Hypochlorus Acid and Old Ladies

"So, Meredith, how's lifeguarding at the pool?"

It's easy. It's really, really easy, almost embarassingly so, and despite that I enjoy it. I think the hardest parts are getting up to be there at 5:45 AM and working the paleozoic cash register, which prints in purple ink and requires a key to turn on.

Every half hour I trade off guarding the indoor pool with Paul, a man in his sixties who reminds me of Hoo-Lan from My Teacher Glows in the Dark--in that he's about ear-level with me, not that he has blue skin. He is disarmingly friendly and drives a white scooter with "Roberta" on the license plate. The only people that come in that early are the swim team members that are training in the off-season and a gaggle of old women who slowly bob from one end of the pool to the other and talk about their gardens, recipes, and rashes. When I'm not guarding, I push a button on the register when people come in with their passes.

Open swim ends at 9, at which time the sixteen-year-old girl from La Plata who I work with, and myself, do "chores." I would have called it "pool maintenance" or something official-sounding like that, but she called it "chores" the first day and I thought it was cute, so "chores" it will remain. Today, I can say with pride that I have officially swabbed a deck--i.e, I sprayed a bleach mix on the deck of the pool, scrubbed with a broom, and then she hosed it off. I water plants. I wash windows. I also get to operate Carl, who is a remote-control robot that vacuums the bottoms of the pools. It's just as cool as it sounds--like driving a toy car, only for a purpose. They should market these things for kids to clean house with.

Chores end at 10:00 when the Arthritic Old Lady Class comes in. They stand in a circle in the pool and rotate their joints while talking about their gardens, recipes, and rashes. I trade off every half hour with the other girl and read in the first aid room when I'm not guarding. Knocking wood, no one in there will probably ever need rescuing. I'm officially done at 12, but they usually let me go about twenty minutes beforehand.

That's pretty much it. Even if I'm requested to do an awkward task, such as playing games at the Hunger Awareness Day Weiner Roast with children that had no interest in games, it only ends up in getting paid for standing around uncertainly for two hours while drinking free soda, getting my face painted, and talking to Amber and Jared, who were also recruited for the same purpose. On the flip side, this is probably the extent of any interesting stories.

Chill-ism Out-ism

Two days ago, I did something I wasn't too proud of.

I was looking for a parking spot next to my apartment. There's no lot, just a concrete strip next to the complex. The white lines dividing the spaces are nearly invisible, so no one pays attention to them, often rendering it difficult to find a spot. Especially when a sassy red car parks with their front bumper three feet from the curb, with enough space on either side to be obnoxious, but not enough to actually squeeze in a car. So I parked, wrote "Quit parking like an asshole" on a piece of paper, tucked it under their windshield wiper, brought my bags inside, and felt like a grade-A bitch.

I know it's important to stand up for yourself, and it's perfectly healthy to get frustrated or angry from time to time. A friend of mine and I even had a good cathartic laugh over a similar note he left on an SUV in St. Louis that was parked so closely we could barely breathe. But when I thought about it, even though it was a little thing, what I did seemed rude and unecessary. It's not like I wasn't able to find a place---I ended up parking about five spaces away. It didn't hurt me, it's not my place to cut people down if they're not following the rules, and I know I'd feel terrible if someone left something like that on my car.

A lady came into JavaCo a couple months ago and got a drink and a cookie. She said, "I'd get a latte, but I'm from Seattle, and they don't make them as good anywhere else."

"Well, our lattes are pretty good--" I started.

"No, you really can't get a good latte outside of Seattle, I know this." She smiled and thanked me when I handed her the coffee, and left. I walked back to the food area where Patrick was cutting carrots and started ranting about what a pretentious bitch she was, and how could the lattes possibly be that different anywhere else? He listened thoughtfully, then said, "Well, I'm sure she'd be really hurt if she heard you call her a bitch, but yeah, that sounds a little close-minded."

He had a very good, true, and humbling point. You're not a bitch for having an opinion, and for all I know, it could be true; I've never been to Seattle or tasted their liquid gold lattes. And even I will always firmly believe that fish and chips are far inferior outside of Scotland.

The next time I get mildly offended, I'll probably shrug, ignore it, and try to be the bigger person. Maybe laugh a little, and not harbor a grudge or talk behind their back. It wasn't worth it. Not to say I won't defend myself when it's personal or directly affects me--but to not go out of my way when it doesn't.

So I'm sorry, Owner of Sassy Red Car. What I did was uncalled for.

Just don't make it personal.

Sex drive

When ordinary guys want to pimp out their vehicles, high school and pop culture observation leads me to believe they usually do it along the lines of black lights under the car, trunks full of subwoofers, decals, spoilers, or tailpipes the size of garbage cans. I've only seen the "after" part of one episode of Pimp My Ride, but I assume that if you have MTV's budget, they also throw in televisions, barbeque grills, diamond-encrusted hubcaps molded in the shape of your face, leopard-print vibrating hot tubs, and your own personal Playboy Bunny. But the car I saw today had them beat.

It was a red Pontiac Firebird with a set of bulls' horns on the roof, white mudflaps on the back tires, and side view mirrors like a motorcycle's. The pièce de résistance, though, was a red, rubber replica of a ball sack dangling from the rear bumper. It was the most masculine car I've ever seen. I don't know whether to be disgusted or impressed.

Lucy in the Hamptons with Lavendar Overlord

For anyone who doesn't know yet, the summer show at Truman is going to be Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander by Preston Jones. I read it today, and in concurrence with the suspicions of my friends and myself, it's a lot like a West Texas Heidi Chronicles. Except there's no feminism or art, or five-page long monologues, and very little deeper meaning other than "Get the hell out of this small town while you still can, and while you're at it, stop being so naive."

I think Ron is trying to inspire us.

It's also a lot funnier, and in a much less pretentious way. I think the only name dropped was when Lu Ann told the man who inspected the dirt that went on highways before the cement was doing a piss-poor job because the roads around Bradleyville were "more holey than Billy Graham's mother-in-law."

I can't wait to audition.

Army of Geriatrics

I was walking my dog yesterday when an old black lab started following us. He ran ahead, behind, and around us, marking every bush in sight and reach. I was surprised that he had it in him. He kept up almost the entire way, right until the final stretch home. He had a collar on, so I wasn't as concerned with his health as much as his safety, as he clearly had no concept of the moving vehicle or how fast it could go.

I rode my bicycle down Potter Street today when I kept crossing paths with (and ending up behind) a sixty-something man on his own bike. I wasn't as concerned with passing him as I was with trying to lose him by taking side streets, as it's pretty awkward to be stuck behind a stranger who knows full well you're there.

As neutral as I feel towards old people, I'm worried that this is going to become a trend. There's already an older man who comes into the coffeeshop all day Sunday, orders refill after refill while working on his screenplay, and has offered to pay me $10 an hour licking envelopes for him when it comes time to send it out. I can picture driving home on Memorial Day, sandwiched between sedan after station wagon after beige Camry, right as Highway 63 turns into one lane. Even worse, I'm sure some elderly dame will feel the strongest need to cross the road right as I'm at cruising speed but within stopping distance.

Nevertheless, I was tempted to keep tailing the guy on the bike all the way home, just to see if the dog might be there too.

The Opposite of Dust Bowl Blues

Oh the chlorine turned my hair green
But it can't kill me, Lord, no it can't kill me.

I did it. I touched the bottom of the twelve foot. No magic fix, no "wake-up-and suddenly-I-could; I went in yesterday and practiced over and over until, after swallowing a wading pool's worth of water, I got it. Today were the CPR, written, and skills tests. They mail me my certification in a month, even though orientation is on Monday. I actually get paid for being there.

Earrings and Shakespeare aside, I haven't felt this accomplished since I fixed JavaCo's toilet myself without having to call anyone. It gives me hope that work and effort really do make a difference, not just "raw talent" or "natural aptitude."

Next step: make it through Free Bird on Guitar Hero.