Land of 35,000,000 Scarves

Duffy rides a Huffy through the Piggly Wiggly

2009-06-17T14:45:00.003-05:00

Controversy surrounds Welsh pop singer Duffy's new commercial for Diet Coke, in which she is filmed riding a bicycle through city streets—and a local supermarket. The spot received complaints by concerned citizens after it was first aired during the Brit Awards in the UK, claiming that it “broke health and safety rules and could be copied by children.”

Overzealous and unemployed parents continue to fret over observations that her bike was not properly locked, prompting flurries of children to neglect their Kryptonite chains in favor of the “honor system.”

“This is the second bike I've had to buy my daughter,” bemoaned one parent who declined to give her name. “Why can't she idolize a normal celebrity, like Lindsay Lohan?”

Due to the “fantasy context,” the Advertising Standards Authority of Great Britain did not pull the commercial, calling it “a scenario that depicted her escape from the pressures of stardom and far removed from the real world.” So far removed, in fact, that the superstar managed to pedal through the grocery store without slipping on a puddle of orange juice, tripping over a stock clerk, or getting caught in shopping cart gridlock near the cheese island.

In response to claims that her clothing and cycle were not sufficiently reflective, representatives assured the public that her black-and-white sequined blouse and blue tights-under-shorts ensemble was enough of an eyesore to guarantee visibility, and that her bouffant contained enough Aqua Net to deflect impacts up to 300 g's.

Security has been tightened at the venues for 2009 tour, as the backstage areas have been repeatedly mobbed not by fans wanting her autograph, but unscrupulous former Lehmann Brothers employees who hope to score a free bike and start making money again in the only field that's hiring--messengers.

Bicycles= Love

2009-02-22T18:26:00.004-06:00

The death of one website usually leads to the birth of another. I'd actually like to try keeping this one up to date too, now that I'm back in the habit of writing again.

Anyway, if it matters, here is my new one: http://www.examiner.com/x-3139-NY-Bicycle-Transportation-Examiner.

It's for examiner.com, and I've been referring to the project as a "website column," and not a "blog." I write about bicycle transportation in New York City, which I've found to be a ton of fun, and the writing of it to be a nice little outlet/daily dose of activism.

It talks about commuter issues, bicycle messengers, pedicab laws, bike safety, and other issues of import. If bicycles aren't your thing, well...that's what I'd thought a couple years ago too. You might learn something.

You...anonymous internet "yous," you.

Apollo's Creed, or: One ignorant egomaniac deserves another

2008-07-18T14:20:00.008-05:00

I'm not really much of a news junkie, but I read this article yesterday about a girl suing a man because she got attacked while wearing a t-shirt with a stupid slogan that he made. Only in my imagination and cheesy superhero movies did I think such greed and idiocy existed on such a common-day level. I shouldn't find this surprising by now.

First off, when I saw "Obama Slave Shirt Sparks Lawsuit Threat," I thought it was some lame hipster being dimwittedly "ironic," by putting the cover of the New Yorker or something on a t-shirt to show how retro-yet-handy he could be by using an iron-on transfer. When I read the slogan on the t-shirt, though, "Obama Is My Slave" interpreted immediately in my mind as "Obama Is My (Sex) Slave." Like something a young female collegiate liberal would display upon her bosom to flaunt her passion to the candidate and yet still remain edgy. Then a few girls saw "slave" and "Obama" in the same sentence, got pissed, overreacted, whatever.

Then I read that she reportedly "threatened to sue" for "all he's got." What, did she not have her contacts in when she purchased it? Did the shirt, possibly intended for pajama use only, fall in a convenient spot on Laundry Day? Was she a Hilary fan? Did she spot a future trend and think it was a secret DaVinci code when she couldn't read anything offensive on it when looking in the mirror? There's a good blonde joke floating somewhere in our midst. Or, when viewing it in conjunction with his other work in his one location, was there any doubt at all what point his designs were trying to make? Especially in light of his childish pretension?

Perhaps she honestly didn't realize how offensive it could be to others; maybe she herself was an edgy collegiate liberal who wanted to make a bold statement at that night's Young Democrat meeting by broadcasting her political lust for the dashing nominee. That being said, I doubt that any clear-thinking human being, after making any of the aforementioned excusable lapses in intelligence or judgment, would then return to the store and threaten to sue his ass for a purchse that she made of her own free will.

At least Apollo Braun is unabashed about what an egocentric prick he is. He's protected by the First Amendment, and hot damn, is he going to make the most of it. All sardonicism aside, this girl agreed with a controversial statement enough to buy it on a t-shirt and wear it in a massively public environment. But she wimps out when it receives the bad end of the controversy that it was, for all purposes, intended to garner--then has the audacity to retreat further into cowardice by saying that Moron McHack is now responsible and owes her money and ass-kissing. I'll give credit where credit's due, but I think she just maxxed out her victim card. You make your statement and you stand by it--or else the First Amendment isn't worth gravel.

I am not saying the other girls were right or even justified in attacking her. Nor am I discounting the shock and fear that she probably went through. It could have turned into a nasty, nasty situation very quickly. But you know what? She was "cursed at...for her shirt," "pushed," one girl "pull(ed) the earphones out of her ears, another spit in her face." No permanent injuries, no damage to property, nothing but an unfortunate confrontation. Every citydweller has one. Hell, I bet they have at least five or six.

Not so fast, Apollo Braun. You may not be at legal fault, but you're still guilty of being a douchebag. I couldn't care less which candidate he supports, but the least he could do is make his reasoning make sense. Braun is Jewish, and says the only thing he likes about Obama is that he is black, which "opens the door for other minorities," yet says Obama "reminds (him) of Adolf Hitler," a man who organized the systematic intentional extermination of everyone who did not fit into the Aryan status quo. And then, in the same breath as that argument, right when he's flashing his own Victim Card about being Jewish and subject to discrimination, BAM! He "does not like Obama because 'he is a Muslim.'" Go ahead, Apollo. Use it as an insult. Don't worry about it being completely incorrect. If it's in large enough font, that makes it true. It'll be ironic, right?

Oh, so the views expressed on your t-shirts aren't yours? Not even with BOTH of your names obnoxiously immortalized in the lower right corner? I'm sure your SoHo market demographic is full to the brim of "ordinary WASPs" who staunchly believe that America is not ready for a black president. It's ok, though. I have a few designs that I whipped up myself that I think would suit both you and them:

I realize that I'm giving him exactly what he wants when I pay this story the least bit heed, him being the attention-whoring cartoon of a person he is. The joke may be on him, since I doubt anyone reads this anymore after I stopped writing for two months, and any kind of traffic I could bring him is ghostly in comparison to this story being on the front page of Metro yesterday. But you know what, I'll take the high road. I hope that he gets a ton of myspace friends that he'd never even heard of before. I hope that people drop $69-$250 when they're desperately seeking to be edgy like everyone else. I hope people follow in his lead and puts everything that comes out their mouth, ear, or ass onto a t-shirt so that everyone who didn't get sprinkles on their ice cream when they were a kid can finally feel like they've contributed to society in some fashion while they're waiting for their lawsuit settlement checks to roll in.

A Cry For Help, Right Next To the Ice Cream

2008-06-04T14:07:00.004-05:00

I'm kind of worried about Seth, you guys.

He keeps putting stuff in the freezer.

I mean, it was fine at first, when it was just the tofu, alcohol, and coffee. Then a few weeks ago, I discovered his suit coat chilling with them during a routine snack check. He'd worn it out the night before, so I suspiciously dismissed it on grounds of drunken absentmindedness. I can't even count the amount of times I've woken up the next morning with star-shaped stickers on my face, bags of chips I didn't remember buying, only wearing one shoe, with vomit maybe not all in the toilet. Pretty tame, I know, but comparable to a frozen suit coat. He told me later that the night before, someone got gum on the sleeve and he knew that sticking it in the freezer would make the gum easier to remove. It was gone after a few days, and I forgot about the whole incident.

Until this morning, that is, when I found a stack of records snuggling next to each other by the icy wall. They were a bunch of old vinyl in their old original sleeves: Best of Sondheim, Xanadu, Sinatra in Pal Joey, Edwin Drood. He'd hung them up in his room two different ways in the two months we've lived here, and now they've been degraded to this. And the level in that Ketel One bottle hasn't gone down a millimeter.

Please, Seth. You know that you can always come to me, especially if you have a problem. I'm here for you, whatever it is. We'll figure out what to do. I just don't want to be the first to get there if we ever get a cat.

That's what she said

2008-04-21T12:58:00.003-05:00

Almost two weeks ago, Seth and I moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn. The bathroom doesn't have a sink and we don't have internet, but we have our own rooms, so we're pretty satisfied.

I went away to Kirksville for a week, which I plan to give its due attention later. When I got back, I found to my dismay that the gentleman who was supposed to have hooked up our internet was in fact not a gentleman at all, but a douche, who was surly to my roommate and gruffly remarked that there were X amount of things that he needed before he could connect us to the system of tubes that supplements our post-collegiate procrastination. He told Seth to make a date for the next week.

There is a smattering of wireless connections floating around our space. They are all password-protected and typically-labeled, save one: a saucy unsecured network dubbed Tompkins Is Pussy. It might as well be named Carmen Sandiego, for it is as elusive as it is alluring. In our desperation for convenient Facebook, Seth and I asked our English-speaking neighbors what internet services they used and how good the connection was.

A friend of ours knew someone on the first floor, and he said, "Yeah, Steve's been on Tompkins Is Pussy, but it doesn't last very long, and it's really hard to connect to."

Without even thinking.

No sleep 'till Brooklyn

2008-03-28T12:52:00.003-06:00

So I guess the reason I haven't written this week is because when I haven't been working, I've been travelling 140 blocks uptown to visit apartments that until yesterday I thought were in our price range. Since then we've had to lower the bar about $100. When I haven't been on the subway, I've been napping, since I usually average about 4-5 hours a night. When I haven't been napping, I've been either at the cold reading sessions for Ten Grand Productions (the reason why I am not reduced to a trembling mass at the bottom of the loony bin) or at the gym, burning off the copious amounts of reduced-fare Easter candy that I've felt compelled--nay, forced--to consume as a stress-management tactic.

And the reason that I'm sitting here clicking away in between rows of pink half-dollar Peeps and guilty snatches of Seth's Hershey Minis (except the Special Darks, lest I want my throat slit), is because I need five damn minutes to unwind after the news that Seth and I definitely need to be out by the 31st (which means in three days settle on an affordable apartment in God knows where, apply, get accepted, and move our stuff), because someone definitely dropped the ball when it came to communication, and this time you can't say we weren't doing our part.

It's like ten thousand spoons whan all you need are your hands and tongue back

2008-03-18T13:05:00.000-06:00

Usually I'm not very good at spotting these things, but nonetheless it seems ironic that I would move to a big city to find acting work, only for my first show to be directed by Truman alumni.

It seems similarly ironic that I would get to play Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, a play that I've never studied in any of my classes and had never read on my own. Not just I-was-supposed-to-read-it-for-class-but-I-had-to-label-every-song-in-my-iTunes-by-genre-and-scrub-the-toilet not studying; it wasn't even covered by the curriculum. I skimmed it when I was preparing, but I considered it as equally valuable to brush up the plays with which I was more familiar, and since there were more of those, that task vacuumed up more time.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Not a bit.

Small (Town) World

2008-03-16T07:36:00.002-06:00

The stage manager led me into the room where I was supposed to read for Katharina in Taming of the Shrew with two other people. There was a blond lady, a man in his late twenties, and a dark-haired lady whose name I knew was Sabrina. I got ready to begin the scene.

"Let's see, first of all, Meredith...." They pointed at me like I was the perpetrator in a police lineup. I gulped. "You went to Truman!" The man and Sabrina threw their arms up in celebration.

"Yeah, yeah! Who went to Truman?" I asked.

"We did!" they both responded. Joy surged through my every capillary.

"What year?"

"Two thousand one," the man replied. "It'd be right before you came, so I think Alan Altmansberger would be still around that you know."

"I totally know Alan! Do you know Randy Bame?" I exclaimed.

"Hell yeah I know Randy Bame!" he laughed.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Brian Waters," he said.

"Oh! I've heard of you!" It rang a heavenly choir of bells; this guy played a key role in many of Randy's tales of the olden days when he first started working in the auditorium.

Suddenly, I didn't feel quite so nervous anymore.

I say the darndest things

2008-03-03T22:59:00.002-06:00

(after Seth revealed to me that his favorite pair of jeans had torn in frightening vicinity to the crotch)

"I think that's a Freudian rip."

A Hermit Among Men

2008-03-02T23:45:00.003-06:00

When I was younger, I read a story in which the main character's family got a new refrigerator, and she and her younger brother took the box it came in and made it into a playhouse. They cut out holes for windows, decorated the outside with marker, and would have had sleepovers in it had their parents not forbade it.

My family was not extravagant enough to purchase a new refrigerator, so most of my special places were behind the furniture or under tables. I decorated a few of those with markers, too. One time, though, my mom brought home a box that was large enough for me to fit in. I was a tall kid, so this was a big deal. I sat in this box (while also under my desk) to read, write, and color, before it split up the sides from oversittage. Not even Scotch tape could fix it. When I first heard the term "anti-claustrophobic," I was quick to identify.

Tonight I saw a man pulling a cart down the street which was tightly piled with crap mounting taller than himself. He reminded me of a sort of hermit crab, though instead of pulling along his house, it was his possessions. This was nothing new to me, only this time inspiration struck. Now, I don't ever, ever wish to become homeless, and I don't see it happening at all, but in the unfortunate, unlikely event that it does, I decided what I would do. I'd stake out Ikea or a department store and find their largest refrigerator box, or at least a decently-sized washer/dryer box. I'd get a dolly or two, or at least a few skateboards or something, and hook them up to the bottom. I'd fill it with my pillows and blankets, decorate the inside and outside with markers and collage trinkets, and pull it with me wherever I went. When it broke, I would make another, and though the lack of showers would be a deterrent, the absence of rent payments would balance out a thing or two.

There Will Be Strawberry Jelly

2008-02-25T17:50:00.003-06:00

There was an Oscar party yesterday at Seth's friend's house. I think between he, I, her, and her roommate, we had seen about half the films that were up for consideration overall, but we'd each seen Juno at least once.

In the station on the way there, a saxophonist played "And I Love Her" for spare change. If he hadn't been on the opposite side of the tracks, I would have given him spare dollars. Among other things, this prompted Seth and I to spend most of the ride there singing "Bohemian Rhapsody."

This is the same friend that we spent both Christmas and the Superbowl holidays with, and so we inadvertently established a tradition of toting copious amounts of food on the train and stuffing ourselves silly upon arrival. We'd agreed that our dishes had to correspond to a nominated film. Her roommate got mini pecan pies and jelly to stand for the meat pies and blood in Sweeney Todd. Seth got french bread and baby brie for Michael Clayton, and pickles and peanut butter for Juno. I brought milkshake supplies for There Will Be Blood.

I watched a Barbara Walters interview with Harrison Ford in a segment before the ceremony. His first agent had told him that he'd never go anywhere in the business. She asked him if it bothered him that he never won an Oscar. He said no. I think I'd rather have his career than an Oscar, anyway. She asked what he would most like to be remembered for in his lifetime, and he said, "As a good collaborator."

The red carpet pre-show only made me feel contrary. The other three spent that half hour criticizing the hell out of the outfits and actors, and I spent it contradicting them out of spite, regardless of whether or not I agreed. Which usually I didn't.

I was already ripe with a food baby before Jon Stewart got warmed up, and my best friend didn't win his category, but mostly I didn't have any major beef with the decisions. I especially enjoyed the Tribute to Binoculars Montage, when the voice-over announcer stumbled over an actress's name, and when one of the winners for Best Original Song got to come back on and make her acceptance speech when she was cut off by the musicians.

Perambulance

2008-02-17T13:49:00.003-06:00

I was walking with Seth in the park this past unseasonably-sunny-yet-seasonably-chilly Thursday, when our ramble was interrupted first by the crescendoing squalls of an approaching baby and second by a man hurriedly pushing this angsty child in a stroller past us.

My initial annoyance was superseded by my impressed realization at how sly that trick was. I imagined him having a twenty-minute distance to cover in ten or less before the old lady came home and bitched at him for leaving his dirty socks on the floor again, or for potentially making them late for the six-month-old's play date. Instead of sighing in resignation, it would strike him to gently nudge the child awake or take away its Dora the Explorer until you could hear its wails in the East Village. All he'd need is a blue and red flashing light. Sidewalk traffic would clear to his advantage, and he would make it back to the apartment with minutes to spare. Crying baby! Very urgent! Stand back!

Or he could have been a pushy asshole. Whatever. Since I plan to keep this tactic in mind for future use, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

A 15-Minute Brush With Fame

2008-02-09T13:22:00.000-06:00

I served coffee to Phillip Seymour Hoffman this past Tuesday. I didn't freak out or gush or get his autograph, because that would not have been professional. And by professional, I don't mean barista-wise, I mean acting-wise. Maybe that's a little pretentious of me. But he did look really tired. He got a triple espresso (in case you wanted to know), so he must have been.

(But yes, I blushed like a Catholic hooker, and yes, my hands shook the whole time. And he smiled and thanked me and left a tip. What a gentleman. I want to buy all of his movies.)

I was really geeked out, and continue to be, but it also reminded me that I got to meet Danny Glover in Kirksville almost three years ago. And when I was younger, I met the guy who played the older brother on The Wonder Years when he was signing autographs at the Target store.

Somehow, this reminiscence merged Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with Andy Warhol's "Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, etc., etc." principle, which seemed ot me a stupid one anyway, because what did he mean by "fame"? Did he mean local fame, or national, or international fame, or somewhere in the middle? How many people would have to hear of them to constitute "fame"? Does posthumous fame count? Did he even bother to take into account that technology could get so wide-reaching and specialized that socitety might eventually fragment into as many individualized demographics as there are people themselves, each person choosing only what he or she wanted to see and hear and consume in their own private Idahos?

Therefore, I conceived a much more plausible, easy-to measure postulate. Each person in the world will have at least fifteen minutes of meeting someone famous. It counts if you are chatting in the grocery line with Bill Gates for five minutes, take a minute to get Scott Baio's autograph, and spend ten glorius minute sharing a cab with Danny Elfman on the luckiest night of your life. Maybe not the best one of his. My point is, it can conglomerate if needed. If you happen to be famous yourself, great. Not only will your work be taken care of, but then you can spread the joy of meeting someone famous to others.

Fifteen minutes at a time.

Good Job, Good Pay

2008-01-25T20:01:00.000-06:00

They're promoting me at work to "keyholder." I began training two days ago, and there's very little difference in the actual tasks assigned to me. It means that I get there at 5:30 AM instead of 6 for the three or four mornings out of the week that I open the store. I unlock the door, set out the muffins after checking in the deliveries, occasionally do a supply order, make a dollar more an hour that I used to, and my name is listed on the company circulars of "staff," right under the assistant manager's.

I couldn't help but feel a little filthy about moving up the ladder of corporate inconsequentiality; this is probably due to residual postadolescent distrust of authority and fear of somehow losing my underdog street cred to those I now "outranked." This is probably also why I ended up listening to four different Pink Floyd albums before noon. Five if you count The Wall as two, which I don't really.

One of my friends' creative writing professors told her that he used to work at Taco Bell for several summers as a teen, but when they started talking to him about moving into upper management, he knew it was time to find another job. I used to mock my boss at TB (the second boss I had, that is), because he was a cocky little shit about being the manager of a measly link in the fast food chain. Part of me scorns the apparent injustice of having authority over someone just because of a few extra responsibilities, or a month extra seniority, or a few more kisses on the ass. I can't shake my bitterness over how arbitrary some advantages in life are, and how some people can be comparable in intelligence and work ethic, but one is given the leg up because they were born into money or had better connections--and gets an overinflated ego about something of miniscule consequence.

Part of me likes the extra responsibility even more because it caters to my inner control nut who will savor the hell out of the half hour of solitude that I'll have to make sure everything is convenient, stocked, and perfect, and the full confidence that this will be done because I will have done it myself. I'm worried that these tendencies will reveal that I'm more suited for upper management than I ever thought, or wanted to be, possible.

"Too much Mrs. Dash! Add Nutmeg!"

2008-01-23T00:08:00.000-06:00

Enter Roommate #4,583,917.

Rachel sat me down and told me that she and Matt decided to also adopt Nutmeg, another cat from the same household. Apparently their owner was having a baby and didn't want to neglect the cats after she popped it out. Which was thoughtful, I suppose, but also probably hard on the cats, especially since Dazz had barely emerged from underneath Rachel's bed since she arrived. Maybe they wanted a more social cat, maybe they wanted to do the woman a favor, maybe they thought getting Dazz a sister would bring her closer to civilization, but she asked me if when Seth and I moved, if we were interested in taking Dazz "if she didn't work out."

I don't know what "not working out" means, but I told her I would if Seth agreed and our landlord would let us--or at least, if there were a place we could hide it.

I went to Rachel's room today and managed to tempt Dazz from Under the Bed, but when I tried to pick her up and carry her to my room for some love, the claws came out her paws and into my chest, and once more she disappeared.

I've not yet seen Nutmeg. I think they made her up.

Cat Power = Modest Mouse

2008-01-19T21:59:00.000-06:00

Today I gained yet another roommate in order to rid ourselves of a few others. Rachel came home with a lady cat named Dazz, who, according to Ben, dashed into her room and underneath her bed the second she got home. She pulled Dazz out in order to show her where the litterbox was, and I got to meet her briefly before she retreated to underneath the couch. It will not be long before she and I will be the best of friends.

So it goes

2008-01-13T19:49:00.000-06:00

When I was a junior in high school, I met a guy named Evan. I knew him through Speech and Debate and theatre activities, which by their time-consuming nature allowed us to become close enough to begin dating. He was my first serious-ish boyfriend, so naturally I'd spend a lot of time at his house, especially since he lived so near the school and we'd hang out there after the aforementioned extracurriculars. We were both smart kids and enjoyed reading (especially Kurt Vonnegut) and writing (mostly existential essays for class that attempted to imitate prestigous literature that I was too young and too academically overcommitted to understand).

I didn't meet his mother right away. She was always gone, or sleeping or something, when I happened to be over initially. He always seemed a little anxious whenever she came up in conversation. His dad was cordial and awkwardly polite, allowing Evan a surprising amount of freedom and space. They had five dogs and a number of cats that I was never allowed to reveal. At one point I was able to name them all. His dad couldn't stand them, and Evan tolerated them good-naturedly.

I'm not sure how I first met her, but from all the time I spent over there, it was inevitable. She was slight and kind, with eyes like Evan's: green and feline-sleek. Their noses were similar as well, and both their smiles were thin-lipped and came up higher on one side than the other. Hers was a quick surprise when it appeared. His was more ready and often; he shared a cautious, haunted expression with his dad.

She used to be a teacher, and liked to talk to us, even though she also was quick to give us our space when she felt that it was time for us to be alone. She'd taught both special-needs kids and gifted kids before she retired, and she told me stories of when Evan was small and she recognized his potential from his problem-solving skills, such as when he wanted to play at the sink with the water faucet ("I didn't get it, either," she'd giggled) and what he chose to stand on and how he got it to the sink without her help. She wanted to see how he did it on his own.

He was applying to colleges when we dated, and she would read his essays and critique them. Again, I'm not sure how she got on to reading the stories and essays I'd write for my AP Language class; maybe I asked for her opinion, I don't know. She always liked reading what I wrote, encouraged me earnestly, and once asked me to write a story for her. "OK, what about?" I asked.

She needed a day to think. I came by after school another day and she told me, "I want you to write me a story about God, the universe, and cats." So I did. I spent weeks on it, used profanity in a manuscript for the first time, and it may have stretched over twenty pages. When I finished, I came over not to see Evan but to see her (he was actually out of town at the time). She loved it, and after she read it we ended up talking for over four hours. We came close to ordering pizza for dinner except my mom called me home.

There was a reason for his reluctance to talk about her, perhaps even for the haunted look. Early in our relationship, we walked into his house, only to find it in shambles. There were few family photos because she destroyed them in a fire one day. All the pets were hers. Twice she had to go to treatment facilities for manic depression.

She also sent me funny emails during the school day, made sure we had plenty of snacks, gave us movie recommendations, and took roll after roll of pictures when Evan and I went to Prom. I'd just learned how to make gum-wrapper chains, so out of the blue one day she gave me a basket full of three diffrerent kinds of Wrigley's. Evan told me she'd been excited about that all day. Once I called, asking for him, and when he wasn't there we started talking about books, and she read to me a chapter from Me Talk Pretty One Day. When I found it just as comical, she ended up getting it for me for my birthday along with two cards. Hers were the best cards. I still have them all. She was always kind to me, and I never saw her in her bad moments.

Evan went away to school, and soon she ended up divorcing his dad and moving to California. I never really talked to her or heard from her after that, but when I'd meet up with Evan and ask about her, he told me that she would ask about me and that she still had a few of my old high school photos.

I heard from him today for the first time in about a year. He told me that she'd died in August. Right about the time I was bitching about moving and routinely drenching my liver in Captain Morgan. I remembered her from time to time, wondering how she was. If I knew how to get in touch with her, I doubt it would have been any bit awkward.

She still had a few old pictures of me among her things.

Gotta start somewhere

2008-01-11T21:15:00.000-06:00

I can honestly say that doing theatre in Kirksville has prepared me, in some extent, for auditioning in New York, because my first one was last night and it was one of the most amateurly-run ones I'd ever attended.

That was not really meant to be a slight to Kirksville or the people running the auditions, by the way. I'd had certain expectations of "doing theatre in the real world" and all it entails: directors dismissing you on the spot or twelve seconds into your monologue because you were too short/tall/blonde/old/plain/pale/etc, lines spilling out onto the sidewalk and stretching around the block.

I got there two hours early, anticipating a line. Not only was there none, but it turned out that the location was to be in the auditorium of a Catholic girls' school. My fear was replaced by a creeping arrogance. I came back about twenty minutes before sign-ups, and there were a few girls waiting.

It was for a "festival" of five one-acts, four of which had parts I could fill, and three of which were directed by the playwrights. The directors set up stations in five different areas in the auditorium where actors would rotate around and do cold readings, which I was prepared for.

I was first in line to read for the excerpt from Waiting For Lefty, with a twentysomething gentleman with a photocopied headshot that looked like he had peered facedown onto the copier and pressed "start." The director handed us the scripts, told us where to stop reading and gave us a minute to scan them. I asked if we could take them outside and read them over with each other first. "No, no, that's all right, you can just read them here," she said.

For the other three I wasn't so lucky; they handed me the script and told me to go when ready.

One of the director-written shows had a character that was so shy she didn't talk, but instead wrote down what she wanted to say on index cards, and was "somewhat of a clairvoyant," and at one point we had to gather around her and mime looking at what she was predicting with belief/disbelief while two other characters exchanged dialogue.

The ratio of females to males was about 12:1. That was about the odds, I found, of their ability matching their headshot quality. Except for that first guy, they all had lovely headshots.

I'm really, really not writing this to make fun of anyone. I enjoyed being involved in Kirksvillian theatre, and these people were very kind. Yes, they were amateurs in every sense of the word, in that they were doing it purely for the love of directing and sharing stories theatrically with others. And, yes, I was also hoping for something a little bigger and better; I came here to start acting professionally. I wanted a little challenge. But I suppose if there's anything I should have learned here, it is "just because it's New York, doesn't mean that it's always going to be bigger/better; it only means that there will be the full platter of extremes," from hollow extravagant Broadway to the greenest of newbies.

There is another next Tuesday. I'm really hoping for that other extreme.

Not a creature was stirring. Or so we thought.

2008-01-07T22:47:00.000-06:00

My other two housemates went home to California for the wintertime holidays, which left Seth and myself with a little over a week of having the place entirely to ourselves. After sharing a room for the past two months, we literally (but not really literally) exploded across the apartment, though reluctantly we had to pack it all back in when it came time for their return. Rachel moved back in on January first, and Matt on the third.

And in the meantime, so did Minnie and Fievel.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the ol' sleeping futon, yacking with Seth and getting ready for bed, when a small furry thing darts from the closet out the door and into the bathroom. I've stared down bulbous cockroaches and lurking subway creepsters without blanching, but at that moment I let out a shriek that would put Fay Wray to shame and leaped--nay, launched--backwards in your classic jumping-on-the-chair moment.

My mom trained me good and early to not be afriad of squishing bugs, as our ground-level apartment would attract the occasional creepy-crawly; though in my college years, I grew guilty when it came to spiders and let them free, and my dog would usually eat most of the insects before they came to my attention. This was the first time I've had to deal with vermin that are actually cute.

"What is it?" Rachel called from the other room.

"Ummmm...I think there might be a mouse."

"Aww, it's okay. Here, let me try to find him. Where did he go?" She got a strainer off of the dish shelf. "Here, Mickey....Come on out..." She peered into the bathroom and behind the suitcases in the hall, but found nothing. "Here, Fievel....Shit. I'll get the poison."

"Christ."

I felt awful. When I was a kid, I wanted a mouse for a pet. They were soft, kind of tame, didn't eat much, and the one in The Witches could do tricks. I'd even given myself the nickname "Mouse" for a grade or two in elementary school. Now, not only did I have to be responsible for their extermination, but there was also the liklihood that I'd witness one writhing to its poor little death after devouring seemingly innocent peanut butter-coated blue pellets.

During a Futurama marathon a day or two after Christmas, while we made as much noise as we wanted and took liberal cigarette breaks out on the fire escape which our roommates forbade us to go, Seth heard a rustling in the garbage bag by the door. He poked it, listened, and after a moment there was more rustling. "I think the mouse is in the trash bag," he said.

"I think we need to take out the trash," I replied.

We thought the coast was clear, especially since the poisoned peanut butter clumps were disappearing from the mouse dish outside the cracks in the wall borders. All was well until the day after Rachel returned. I walked into our room and Seth said, "I have bad news. The mouse is back."

"Oh no."

"And it's a baby."

"Oh shit."

Reasons Why I Feel Like Like A Legitimate City-Dweller

2007-12-19T00:33:00.000-06:00

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?

2007-11-24T19:35:00.000-06:00

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

2007-11-22T20:56:00.000-06:00

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

2007-11-13T22:47:00.000-06:00

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

2007-11-05T19:51:00.000-06:00

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

2007-11-03T20:43:00.000-06:00

"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

2007-10-30T22:06:00.000-06:00

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."

2007-10-23T21:14:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-14T00:31:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-13T20:09:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-26T23:36:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-18T22:43:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-15T16:26:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-12T23:34:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-11T21:45:00.000-05:00

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." *

2007-09-10T19:27:00.000-05:00

"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

2007-09-05T19:59:00.000-05:00

"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.

2007-09-01T14:41:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-08-25T22:29:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-18T15:25:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-14T21:07:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-08-12T21:17:00.000-05:00

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)

2007-08-03T21:43:00.000-05:00

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

2007-07-25T12:33:00.000-05:00

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

2007-07-11T10:55:00.000-05:00

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

2007-07-01T20:10:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-25T00:39:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-23T18:39:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-20T23:03:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-17T14:51:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-10T14:35:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

"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

2007-06-01T18:26:00.000-05:00

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

2007-05-28T23:54:00.000-05:00

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

2007-05-24T23:55:00.000-05:00

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

2007-05-21T22:41:00.000-05:00

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

2007-05-19T17:11:00.000-05:00

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.

The More You Know

2007-05-16T17:15:00.000-05:00

This is what I accomplished before going to work at noon:

-Went for a run

-Made a pair of earrings out of two quarters that were squished on the railroad tracks

-Began re-reading Macbeth

It may not look like much, but does anyone remember Sideways Stories From Wayside School? Mrs. Jewels reasoned that if her students learned three facts every day, they would eventually know everything there is to know. I figure at this rate, by the end of the summer I'll be ready to ship out with no stone left unturned, all my strings tied, and most of my metaphors thoroughly mixed.

For that matter:

1. Joan Baez dated Steve Jobs (of Macintosh fame) and her father was a physicist who refused to work on the Manhattan project.

2. Gooseberries are one of the best sources of vitamin C, were once banned by the U.S. Government for allegedly helping spread white pine blister rust (a tree disease), and grow in the Pini backyard.
3. This won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography this year:

In Which Meredith Meets Her Underwaterloo

2007-05-13T00:05:00.000-05:00

My first day of lifeguard training was today. I probably should have known what to expect, but I didn't--at the very least being that I should have been wearing a swimming suit, which I was not. I don't even own one. The last time I needed one was at 10:30 pm at Wal-Mart on an August weeknight last summer. They closed the fitting rooms at 10, and I'd be damned if I had to shuck out $10 for a tacky, picked-over, mismatched, clearance-rack bathing suit I'd only be using once, if I couldn't even try it on.

Heather let me borrow her spare suit.

We have to pass a number of tests in order to become a Certified Lifeguard. There is a written exam on rules, procedures, techniques, and judgement calls. There's also a skills test, where you have to demonstrate various rescues, holds, and necessary fundamentals. One of these requires us to swim to the twelve-foot deep end, retrieve a brick from the bottom, and swim it back to the other side.

I can run a 5k without stopping for breath, I can bicycle twenty miles without getting too fatigued, but for the life or death of me, as much as I tried, I wasn't able to touch the bottom of the deep end. I have until next Saturday. The worst-case scenario is that I'd only be able to guard the wading pools in the parks, which would throw a few kinks into my schedule and leave the aquatic center without another full lifeguard at their facilities. But I'm not going to let that happen. I may swallow water; but it will not swallow me.

Come Saturday, that brick is mine.

"This wine will complement all manner of game and other wild beasts, including sloth."

2007-05-12T05:02:00.000-05:00

I have just acquired a bottle of wine with a label designed by Ralph Steadman. You have no idea how cool that is.

I have to be at the pool in three hours.

Holding back the fool again

2007-05-09T20:28:00.000-05:00

Randi Perkins died and I wasn't sad.

"Hey, Meredith, you're trying out for poms, right?"

I finished tying my shoe and looked up. Randi and two of her friends stood before me in the middle school locker room. "Yeah," I replied.

"Can you do the dance for us right now? We want to see what it's like," Randi asked.

"Um. OK." I shuffled through it the best I could. They gave me wry smiles and left to get in their spots for attendance. After class, I was waiting for my friend to finish dressing out.

"Did Randi and Lindsay ask you to do the poms dance for them?" she asked. I nodded. "Because I heard them talking when they came out. They asked just so they could make fun of you."

Ouch. Not to mention shallow.

I wasn't teased in junior high as much as I was tolerated and ignored, so I naively coasted through under the impression that I was fairly well-liked. For the most part, I'm sure it was true. I never stuck my neck out much, preferring to get to class as early as possible to sneak in a few more pages of the book I was reading rather than socialize in the halls; I bathed regularly, was in the smart classes, had respectable friends, and was meek and nice to everyone, so I doubt anyone had any deep-seated vendetta. Maybe that's why the few times I was on the dumping end of queen-bee refuse, those instances always stuck out in my mind and made me prone to bitter grudges for years.

Randi's family was upper-middle class. She had two sisters--one graduated from high school, one still in. They all played softball, ran track, had sunkissed blonde hair, big brown eyes, and big smiles. Smart enough to earn the good graces of teachers, but not enough to be intimidating. The mother of another one of my friends was the school librarian, and therefore my friend was privy to all kinds of background gossip. Amidst news of silly teacher conflicts and administrator pranks, she told me one day that Randi had a malignant tumor removed from her leg a few years ago and that so far the cancer hadn't returned.

I sat in the cafeteria reading a book one evening, waiting for the school musical to start on the stage that connected that room with the gymnasium. The crowd slowly filled in around me.

"Are there enough seats for us all to sit together?"

"Yeah, right here." They say down behind me.

I heard her voice. "It's too far away. I can't see around." She snickered. "Hey, Meredith, move your big head. I can't see."

"I was here first," I murmured.

"Never mind. You're probably going to spend the whole time reading, anyway." She cackled along with a few others. I gritted my teeth. My first reaction was to cry, but I couldn't allow myself to in front of them. I'd read that the best way to deal with bullies was to ignore them. I hoped that actually worked in real life.

"Leave her alone, Randi," one of her friends spoke up. They weren't all bad people. They started talking about other things. I never gave up my seat.

Our paths seldom crossed once we got to high school, so I was shocked one day my sopomore year to see her in the hall after she'd obviously gone through a few bouts of chemotherapy. She kept playing sports and stayed just as popular. The teachers admired her moxie. She never took any time off from school until one day, I heard through the rumor mill that she was back in the hospital. A few days later, there was an announcement over the intercom that she'd passed away early that morning, surrounded by her parents and sisters. Several of her friends were in one of my classes, and they kept sobbing and hugging each other. There was a two-page spread in the yearbook dedicated to her.

I didn't feel a bit sad. At the time, I rolled my eyes at her weepy girlfriends. She was a bitch to me for no reason other than to make herself feel superior and was just as much to others as well.

I think what truly makes me sad about this is that I got so caught up in hating her back that I couldn't find it in myself to be the bigger person and forgive her. Forgiveness of stupid, insignificant past events is just as difficult as forgiveness of larger transgressions. You forget--which I suppose is half the battle, anyway--but sometimes you haven't yet been able to come to terms with them, and they fester and keep making you bitter. Everybody's a bitch in middle school. People change. Even if they don't, it still doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad person. Obviously she had some redeeming qualitites. I didn't see them, or she didn't allow me to see them, whatever. It doesn't mean they weren't there, and that she wasn't deserving of love or compassion.

Rest in peace, Randi Perkins.

Pomp and circumstance

2007-05-06T16:34:00.000-05:00

I woke up an hour before I had to be at graduation and remembered that I still hadn't bought my tassel. I tried looking for mine from high school but to no avail, so I made one out of leftover white embriodery thread and a heart-shaped pin. I liked it better.

The theatre majors lined up together and walked with the rest of the thousand across campus to the football field. Seth and I had a cigarette on the way. My hat blew off twice, the tassel fell off once, and I lost a flower on my purse. The commencement speaker's general message came across as "It's ok to have dreams, but you should have a backup plan when those don't work out, because you might die at a young age."

We were in the fourth row from the front and gave each other hearty cheers when our names were called. My hat blew away again and my cords slipped off as I walked away from the stage. When I got back to my seat, the excitement was electric. It wasn't as monumental for me as it was for the others, but right then I was glad that I'd let Rosemary and Seth talk me into walking. It was like fireworks, or the big bang theory--we'll go separate ways, and time and space will push us further and further apart, and maybe some of us weren't really that close to begin with, but for a brief point in time we all shared the same...well, spark.

It was shorter than I expected. I got to chat with my professors afterwards over cookies and punch. Ron found the flower to my purse and instinctively knew it was mine.

Balancing act

2007-05-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

I was awoken by a call from my mother:
"I was calling to see if you were walking at graduation so I would know if I should come up or not."
"No. I didn't want to waste money on a cap and gown for no reason."
"I would have paid for it."
"I just didn't think there was any point."

I have a cap and gown that I borrowed from my then-boyfriend two years ago and I fully intend to walk at graduation. It was the first time I'd talked to her since Easter.

I missed the last karaoke of the school year chasing a pipe dream up and down the streets of Kirksville and to the bottom of a bottle of Bacardi Razz. The memory of it faded as it happened and that was sobering enough, but it was something I had to find out anyway.

But I got hired as a lifeguard at the aquatic center, I was a model for one of the seven deadly sins, and my printmaking professor said that the t-shirt I made for my open project was one of the best he'd ever seen in his time at Truman. So somehow I feel that I've broke even.

These kids are so much younger than me

2007-04-30T08:04:00.000-05:00

The cast party was Friday, the Dance Commanders' final concert was on Saturday, and the Ron n' Randy Intern Picnic was tonight. On Tuesday is a cocktail extravaganza at Cousin Anna's and a potential sleepover towards the end of the week.

Next Monday, thirty percent of the town will be gone after graduation and finals are done.

Most of them can afford to prenostalgically cram all the fun they possibly can into a week before three months are over and they get up and do it again. It's a sick joke, though, to go through the motions when I know that this could be the last time I'll ever see them. Conversations with acquaintances are motivated by a desperate need to affirm meaningful friendship, but once the hangover is gone, the only confirmation is usually a shadowy memory of a moment of kindness. I've already said good-bye to two of my favorite co-workers. Relationships are limited, flirtations halted, but despite all that you still want...something.

Thank God for Facebook, I guess.

That which gums the ankle

2007-04-29T16:43:00.000-05:00

Those involved in speech and debate/forensics in high school--or college even--are aware of the complex relationship that can evolve between duo interpretaion partners, most especially when it's a male and female. You spend enough time in rehearsal that other people would spend dating; you're both committed to the common cause of analyzing a piece of literature and acting it out. You constantly are evaluating and judging each other and have to be as equally supportive and suggestive. There is almost always sexual tension, one-sided or reciprocal, regardless of preference or who may already be in a relationship.

The one-acts went up this past week, with Out the Window on Friday. Dan and I got nervous towards the end of the process, so we put in some extra hours and ended up with something beautiful. Or at least better than what we had originally. Or at least maybe a passing grade for Jessica.

Clocks

2007-04-24T02:33:00.000-05:00

Did you know that you can light dandelion fluff on fire? It sparkles, fades, and then dies. If you have a bundle, the flame spreads to each one, sharing the glints before collapsing in wisps of smoke.

I've never been given to pyromaniacal tendencies, and sometimes I'd rather cliche'dly run through fields of dead dandelions than ignite them. But I can see how the aforementioned could become addicting.

Futures are for dweebs.

2007-04-22T18:32:00.001-05:00

The 32nd Annual Theatre Banquet yesterday evening certainly surpassed all my expectations with flying unicorns. It was a rockin'-sockin' time complete with pre- and post- parties which I spent with my dearest friends here who shaped my life and shared my passions.

Rachel called me today and said that she's decided to drop out of the program at Catholic University in Washington DC and moving back to Missouri. She'll probably re-enroll with Nick at Truman to the MAE program, try to get a job as a RCP advisor and after two years teach community college. So this means that I won't be moving in with her in Washington, living there, working, trying to save money, or auditioning because it's closer to New York than Kirskville is, after all. My two most feasible options are either to stay here or move back home to St. Louis as well.

I'm not angry. Just kind of...blank.

But the theatre banquet really kicked ass.

Moral of the Story: Don't go barefoot.

2007-04-19T20:10:00.000-05:00

My dad had a lifetime supply of canned pineapple at his house.

I was talking about cereals with a friend today, and I remembered that we ate granola at my dad's house for breakfast almost every time we visited. When he cooked Ramen for lunch, he taught us to appreciate not only the finer points of the thrifty cuisine, but how fascinating it was when the crispy block of noodles metamorphosed into the curly mess. We baked the pepperoni pizzas we got at Aldi's and watched through the oven window as the edges of the pepperonis curled up and made a little bowl with residual grease in the center. In one of our monthly Charlie Brown Encyclopedias, we read about different kinds of holidays, so one winter we "celebrated" both Christmas and Passover. He made sure I got my Little Mermaid cake that I desperately wanted for my seventh birthday. And at every meal on the side was pineapple, my favorite fruit, in rings or bits or puree.

He lived with my grandmother, trying to get back on his feet after the divorce two years ago had financially and emotionally massacred him. My brother and I were allowed to see him every other weekend and he could share us on holidays. The drop-off/pick up point was the parking lot of a Lion's Choice halfway between the apartments.

My dad grew morning glories in the backyard area of my grandmother's townhouse. She grew strawberries and tomatoes, covering them in netting so the rabbits wouldn't get to them. Once while digging she unearthed a little brown porcelain bunny figurine, which she gave to me. Rabbits were my favorite animal.

I kept my favorite pair of shoes there: a psychedelic pair of Nickelodeon Keds. We had piles of books donated from relatives and a stack of newspaper comic strips to read. My dad bought workbooks from the education store and made us practice our handwriting, spelling, and math skills. He took us on nature walks around the complex. One winter, the temperatures dropped suddenly and the water in the fountain froze solid in midspurt. One spring, he crushed a cheerio on the sidewalk when we began a walk so when we returned there would be ants for us to look at. On clear nights, we would go out with our telescopes and pick out stars and constellations. When I lost a tooth, my grandmother made a star-shaped pillow with a pocket for me to put it in so it wouldn't get lost before the Tooth Fairy could get to it. But the crowning glory was that he had one of those slip and slide things--where you run, bellyflop onto the wet plastic landing strip, and slide through the crocodile's mouth. I forgot what it was called.

After awhile, visitation rights shifted and we weren't allowed to see him anymore, just visit my grandmother. My brother and I mostly stuck to ourselves, reading the comics and picking fights and skipping our Skip-It outside. One summer day we set up the crocodile slide and went a few rounds before I got a splinter in my foot. My grandmother tried to get it out but I wouldn't let her get close enough. She took us back to our mom's, since it would violate the restraining order if my dad had any contact with us.

My mom was laying out at the pool when we reached her. She took us back to the house and prodded the splinter out after lots of tears, protests, and hydrogen peroxide. We weren't able to go back to my grandmother's house that day. There were only a few times after that incident that we were still allowed to visit her at all. My mom got them deemed unsuitable to care for us and received full custody.

Needless to say, I consumed significantly less pineapple from that day forth.

My grandmother is well into her eighties and in a nursing home. She's slowly losing her marbles one by one, but it's a riot to hear her interact with my dad when he makes his obligatory visits and I'm with them. She grinds on his nerves so much. I've been seeing him secretly since I was fourteen; my brother visiting him for about three years before that. My mom found out about my brother, and though I know she suspects, hasn't been able to prove anything with me. I've lied to keep up the ruse. It would break her heart.

Getting a little rusty with that scythe there, aren't we?

2007-04-19T00:55:00.000-05:00

The closest thing I've had to a near-death experience was in a lesbian bar on Christian's birthday.

I'd had a beer at his house, a few at the Central West End Welsh pub that the group went to first, and a buttery nipple shot with Rachel at the gay bar that we went to second. It was the first gay bar I'd ever been to (or Welsh pub, for that matter). I wasn't anywhere near drunk when we headed across the street to the lesbian bar after they had last call. People were dancing, as opposed to trying to impress each other, and it was a more diverse group instead of Rachel and I being the only skirts. I headed straight to the floor with Micah and Shane for a blissful half hour of groove-thing-shaking.

The air was smoky and the sweat was stifling. The cigarettes I had a minute ago with the rest of the group at the table weren't helping either. I started recognizing the feeling I used to get in high school when I'd go running in July--lightheadedness, tunnel vision. Blackness. I tried to get one of their attention. The most important thing was to focus on the empty glass of vodka on the table and regain my sight. My thoughts were scattered in desperate blobs. I couldn't believe that this was how I'd go. I resigned myself to it. If it happened, it happened. I wondered what my mom would think. Goodbye, cruel world.

I woke up on the floor. Shane brought me a glass of water. A short-haired bulldozer of a gal--I'm assuming it was the bouncer--told me that I either had to sit in a chair or go. We went. My mom never found out.

I must lead a pretty charmed life if this is the closest I've gotten. I wonder if there are a few near-misses hidden away in the fabric of time. I don't know what's made me think of this, except for that I learned today that I won't be able to do the drag show at the PRISM dance after all. I've been learning a dance to "Luck Be A Lady." The Frank Sinatra version. It would have been excellent.

Hello, My Name is Clytemenestra Hermione Nebuchadnezzar

2007-04-18T01:15:00.000-05:00

I met a guy named Titus at work a few days ago. Seriously. It was on his credit card. I asked him if it was for real, and he said yes, then he asked me my name, and when I told him it was Meredith he sounded a little disappointed.

One is Pewter; the Other, Fool's Gold

2007-04-15T09:32:00.000-05:00

A week ago, a female pal of mine asked if I wanted to have lunch or dinner, seeing that it was Easter and we had mostly nothing else to do. Sounds like fun, sure, so we agreed that I would cook spaghetti in my apartment, she would pick me up, we'd go to her dorm and combine the noodles with her sauce and watch Animal Planet with her suitemate at 7. She suggested I bring Jared, but I asked and he had rehearsal. Later on in the day, I talked to another mutual friend of ours who was feeling a little neglected and decided to invite him instead. He felt awkward about going to the dorms, so figured, hell, I have cable, let's have it at my house. I told her that, and then she said that we probably wouldn't want to all sit around and watch TV, and her suitemate might feel awkward. And despite my insistence otherwise, she cancelled the whole thing. So I ate with my other friend instead.

I learned later that she was mad at me because she wanted it to be more of a girl's night, a one-on-one thing. Which doesn't make much sense, considering. And now my other friend is mad at me again because he thinks that I don't want to spend time with him as much as I used to.

Last night I tried to talk to and show concern for someone that I still care about and respect very deeply, and was subsequently snubbed and ignored. Granted, I was a little drunk so I suppose it could have come across as mildly creepy. Still.

OK, guys. I get it. I'm getting a lot of messages here, but the one that comes out the clearest is that next time, I shouldn't fucking bother.

Coffeehouses make you smart

2007-04-13T15:03:00.000-05:00

Customer: What's the Chai like? The one in the tea bag? Does it have honey or spices in it?

Patrick: Yeah, a little. And cinnamon, ginger...

Customer: Well, I don't want anything with honey. What about your green teas?

Patrick: We have a premium green here. (points to middle of shelf)

Customer: What about the one on the end?

Patrick: That's Honey Ginseng green tea.

Customer: I'll take some of that.

Hypersomniacs Anonymous

2007-04-09T23:44:00.000-05:00

I've recently gotten into the habit of using sleep as a coping mechanism.
Sometimes it's a by-product of trying to read in bed and suceeding only in dozing and paying off more towards a four-year sleep debt. Other times it's an effort to quell the cloudy mess in my conscious mind that makes it hard to be productive when I am awake.

My dog is asleep right now. It's the first time I've seen him in that state since he was a puppy. He doesn't let himself drift off when I'm around and awake. Even now his eyes aren't completely shut; whether it's a protective instinct or just the way he is, I don't know. His feet and snout twitch like he's chasing something in his dreams.

No Melanie Daniels

2007-04-07T19:16:00.000-05:00

Leah told me that the worm probably graced my windshield because a bird picked it up, then decided it didn't want it and dropped it. This makes sense because all the robins around here became morbidly obese the four or five days of rain last week and one more morsel was just too much.

Or the bird could have been launching its own neo-Hitchcockian attack against Kirksville mankind in retaliation for their air pollution, neverending hunting season, and poor food scrap quality, all while taking advantage of a weekend downpour's worm harvest.

Too bad for the worm, though--it died nonetheless.

Rolling back prices on natural phenomena

2007-04-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

Did you know that sunsets are mostly just dust particles interefering with wavelengths of light? Cool colors are scatterings by molecules in the air, whereas red, yellow, and orange are light reflecting off soot and smoke closer to the earth. When I railed against pollution as an idealistic elementary school environmentalist, one kid pointed out that without pollution, we wouldn't have changing leaves in autumn or sunsets. Ever since then I've watched what I've said about tailpipes, other than to poke fun at their ridiculous size on souped-up West County cars. Sunsets appear at diffrent times each night, and the latest sunset actually occurs a little after the summer solstice. The sun will go on rising and setting no matter what happens to anyone on this puny earth--save a nuclear cosmic disturbance.

When Ben and I broke up three years ago, we swore to remain friends and that there were no hard feelings, and to prove that we went to Wal-Mart, which is what friends do here. As we left, he ran into a friend of his and started chatting, where I stared outside at the pastel orange sunset outside. Four months later he met the girl he eventually got engaged to.

Statistically, coincidences are inevitable.

Yesterday, Jared and I left Wal-Mart with our Combos and Turtle Chex Mix, respectively, only to greet through the sliding doors a scarlet sunset crowding the horizon. It was stunning. He told me not to be emo and I chortled at the very thought. I'd seen this coming for quite some time, but I'd still thought it wasn't too late to change things, or if I waited a little longer it would get better. He looked happier and more relaxed than I've seen him in months. I suppose that counts for something.

I'm fighting the good fight against The Emo. It's too close to call.

Terror Watch, Level Red

2007-04-04T23:26:00.000-05:00

I took a trip to St. Louis yesterday for the duration of twenty hours, half of which were spent sleeping. It was not a wasted trip: I saw The Host, a Korean monster movie, and The Birds, a classic American thriller, and spent time with Christian and his mom. Before I even turned on the car, though, I got in and met face to face with a quandary: a worm on my windshield.

Maybe I am ignorant or of little faith, but this was enough to puzzle me off and on throughout the trip. True, it rained the day beforehand, but a downpour doesn't make a common earthworm strong enough to brave the metallic jungle of my car's exterior to wriggle onto my windshield for no apparent reason. I was left with no other explanation than someone put it there. Some vicious urchin placed this poor worm on my car in either mysterious retribution for a forgotten misdeed of mine, or else I was the victim of the first annelid terrorist attack in known history. Somehow I'd like to believe the latter.