Friday, September 30, 2016
Spreadable Toes
Notice that when I get bored or annoyed with writing something specific out, I'll just start another blog.
This has nothing to do with anything in this blog. My tuxedo cat (he works the night shift) can spread his toes out to bite out any straw or dirt in them. It reminds me of the stupidest idea from my brain in a long time. I've got toe envy. I can't spread them out that far. So, because I'm my toughest critic, I thought (as a college student...that's where Uncle Sam's $$$ went); well I thought that only highly advanced people could spread their feet apart. So one day I met Mike. Don't know his last name. Don't care.
He was an only child from Fredericksburg, Maryland. My own family took the 3 hour, one way, ride so my mother could see her children slip and slide down a rock waterfall like lima beans.
He was confused. Mike was the man responsible for the quote, "You like to swim in the deep end. I love the baby pool." How poetic. Mike towered over me, and I'm not short. He drove a Lexus, which was his identity, or he seemed to feel that way in a good light. One day when we were having sex, I turned around to see him flexing his biceps in the closet mirror window. I dumped him like heavy chair being carried up a flight of stair with no thank you attacked. That's how I spent half of my yesterday anyway.
But his toes! It was not his car that got me. Or that he lived in a safe heaven that my family loved to visit. Those were the happiest times of our lives. But Mike had no place in that life other then be the guy who could....throw tennis balls with his toes! I kid you not. The man is a circus freak show.
So my one week fling with this Mike from Maryland character ended quickly, but he had one funny story that was worth writing down. He was the joke of a funny story that is also worth writing down.
Order of Operations:
The second story hurts me too, so I'll save it for now. The first story is of Mike's first acid trip. I may have peed myself when he told me this story because he never once told it with a laugh. See, I don't care. I'll run behind a tree and laugh until I can compose myself, which takes a while.
So Mike and two of his friends drop acid for the first time...in Mike's parents house. They ate a plate of spaghetti before the acid kicked in. Spaghetti with meatballs. They must have been famished or nervous because the meatballs went down too quickly.
Mike went to the bathroom to wash his hands, and as he was leaving, one of his two friends spewed meatballs everywhere. Mike yelled, "Help us. He's coughing up his stomach!" The three men ran in three different directions leaving Mike's parents at home to wonder about their cooking skills. And damn if Mike could do that story more justice.
Why does this 6 day affair get a blog? Well, Mike came over one day with a flower in a flower pot- a black plastic flower pot- that definitely was found doing a plastic tumble roll in Arcata. Its the thought that counted, so I was very happy (didn't we break up the following day though???) He had a somewhat scripted ramble that accompanied his makeshift flower pot. He said, "Since your name is Rose [the flower was a purple larkspur], I saw the most beautiful flower on the side of the road and said, "Gotta get my girl that." (Again, it did not last a week.)
So the story that makes us both look funny came from my vicious Boston transplant neighbors. I consider one (out of the three) still one solid dear friend, even though he is punching his was through Massachusetts as I write. The other two were knee deep in imaginary pussy. I hung out with them often (which makes me an authority fearing weed-loving Boston natives.....no it doesn't.) The day before Mike brought that long, purple, highway flower over, these Boston neighbors were watching him through their window. In Humboldt it gets boring because you literally watch plants grow. These boys hated my blonde Fresno, Californian roommate, and probably still hate me for picking her over the Japanese violinist.
Side Note: My favorite therapist told me that as long as I don't visit, nor settle in Fresno, I did well by her.
"You're roommate has a steady stream of men. And they all look them same; like a bunch of fuckin monkeys. This one came by in a Lexus yesterday with a dead plant.....He kept banging and waiting. I almost felt bad for him. What was he afraid of? She was back in her bedroom replacing him? Fucking monkeys."
I never spoke up because-wowch!- I did not know that he was that frantic to get me that flower. It did die a few days later. curses to those black plastic pots. This is the blog that does not fit. If I were to snap a photo of someone like this (Meatball Mike) in more blogs, no to even comprehend!!!No sir.
Climb those Appalachian mountains until you touch the sky. And of course, keep that Wade the Duck life persevere on at all times. I'm not alone in the world.
This has nothing to do with anything in this blog. My tuxedo cat (he works the night shift) can spread his toes out to bite out any straw or dirt in them. It reminds me of the stupidest idea from my brain in a long time. I've got toe envy. I can't spread them out that far. So, because I'm my toughest critic, I thought (as a college student...that's where Uncle Sam's $$$ went); well I thought that only highly advanced people could spread their feet apart. So one day I met Mike. Don't know his last name. Don't care.
He was an only child from Fredericksburg, Maryland. My own family took the 3 hour, one way, ride so my mother could see her children slip and slide down a rock waterfall like lima beans.
He was confused. Mike was the man responsible for the quote, "You like to swim in the deep end. I love the baby pool." How poetic. Mike towered over me, and I'm not short. He drove a Lexus, which was his identity, or he seemed to feel that way in a good light. One day when we were having sex, I turned around to see him flexing his biceps in the closet mirror window. I dumped him like heavy chair being carried up a flight of stair with no thank you attacked. That's how I spent half of my yesterday anyway.
But his toes! It was not his car that got me. Or that he lived in a safe heaven that my family loved to visit. Those were the happiest times of our lives. But Mike had no place in that life other then be the guy who could....throw tennis balls with his toes! I kid you not. The man is a circus freak show.
So my one week fling with this Mike from Maryland character ended quickly, but he had one funny story that was worth writing down. He was the joke of a funny story that is also worth writing down.
Order of Operations:
The second story hurts me too, so I'll save it for now. The first story is of Mike's first acid trip. I may have peed myself when he told me this story because he never once told it with a laugh. See, I don't care. I'll run behind a tree and laugh until I can compose myself, which takes a while.
So Mike and two of his friends drop acid for the first time...in Mike's parents house. They ate a plate of spaghetti before the acid kicked in. Spaghetti with meatballs. They must have been famished or nervous because the meatballs went down too quickly.
Mike went to the bathroom to wash his hands, and as he was leaving, one of his two friends spewed meatballs everywhere. Mike yelled, "Help us. He's coughing up his stomach!" The three men ran in three different directions leaving Mike's parents at home to wonder about their cooking skills. And damn if Mike could do that story more justice.
Why does this 6 day affair get a blog? Well, Mike came over one day with a flower in a flower pot- a black plastic flower pot- that definitely was found doing a plastic tumble roll in Arcata. Its the thought that counted, so I was very happy (didn't we break up the following day though???) He had a somewhat scripted ramble that accompanied his makeshift flower pot. He said, "Since your name is Rose [the flower was a purple larkspur], I saw the most beautiful flower on the side of the road and said, "Gotta get my girl that." (Again, it did not last a week.)
So the story that makes us both look funny came from my vicious Boston transplant neighbors. I consider one (out of the three) still one solid dear friend, even though he is punching his was through Massachusetts as I write. The other two were knee deep in imaginary pussy. I hung out with them often (which makes me an authority fearing weed-loving Boston natives.....no it doesn't.) The day before Mike brought that long, purple, highway flower over, these Boston neighbors were watching him through their window. In Humboldt it gets boring because you literally watch plants grow. These boys hated my blonde Fresno, Californian roommate, and probably still hate me for picking her over the Japanese violinist.
Side Note: My favorite therapist told me that as long as I don't visit, nor settle in Fresno, I did well by her.
So my neighbors, The Massholes, were joking about Mike banging on the kitchen window, the front door, then coming down to honk his horn, then back up again. One of them even demonstrated his defeated posture when he realized he was not getting on the opposite side of that front door.
"You're roommate has a steady stream of men. And they all look them same; like a bunch of fuckin monkeys. This one came by in a Lexus yesterday with a dead plant.....He kept banging and waiting. I almost felt bad for him. What was he afraid of? She was back in her bedroom replacing him? Fucking monkeys."
I never spoke up because-wowch!- I did not know that he was that frantic to get me that flower. It did die a few days later. curses to those black plastic pots. This is the blog that does not fit. If I were to snap a photo of someone like this (Meatball Mike) in more blogs, no to even comprehend!!!No sir.
Climb those Appalachian mountains until you touch the sky. And of course, keep that Wade the Duck life persevere on at all times. I'm not alone in the world.
Friday, August 12, 2016
Who Invented The Back-Scratcher?
The Back-Scratcher is not a household name enough to pass my spell check. I did not realize I owned one until yesterday, when I realized I was walking around with Ambien in my bedside tin. That is how it works. I don't remember how I came to own a back-scratcher, but here...backscratcher...I'll start the trend of making it a compound word. Someone probably hates me enough to have replaced the fruitcake for a Christmas gift. Or realized that I was a fruitcake and needed a backscratcher to complete the set. What else would be fitting for that Dollarstore (compound word, I summit) shopping cart? Wall-Dry (its generic for Benadryl.)
Side Note: I know someone who checked into rehab for that particular addiction. I laughed until I was buying my Wall-Dry in bulk at the Dollarstore.
I'll cut to the chase. I was up with God knows how much Ambien in my system last night, stuck on a 20/20 called 'Rehab Mogul'. My goodness. My will to wrap that around my head was very weak because that is the world I live in. That easily Youtubed episode (Rehab Mogul),
Which I had to laugh had the most watched hits on it after I did the research that this meth-addled felon rehab Mogul (he likes the term enough to make t-shirts with the name, which is just as scary as the fast sales of these t-shirts, probably by the addict residents.)
Where was I? This guy is being sued by a man named Cliff Brodsky, who had the most hits on his 20/20 uploaded episode that he put on-line. I got a laugh that the guy who was a forerunner in suing him for the most money led the initial campaign against him publicly.
I know he is suing him but I did not read his reasoning behind his lawsuit. One thing I can assume...it was not for his long hind legs (also the name of a good band.) But this bad guy that this episode is about deserves to be taken down (and replaced with the same personality.)
The Lex Luthor of this episode has a name: Chris Bathum. He owns 70% of a popular rehab chain in Southern California (I wonder how many Benadryl addicts are there.) This guy is a villain. A meth-addled womanizer who targeted the most beautiful vulnerable women trying to get out of the drug world in one piece. He molested beautiful women, putting meth in orifices that are unorthodox for getting high. He sucks. But..
I'll be the villain by stringing in my lawsuit for getting knocked onto the Mopac (Austin's popular highway) by a woman who refused to apologize to me. There is a connection to my lawsuit for the license plate tattooed on my thigh with these rehab-molestation lawsuits. These women are rightfully suing this drug rehab owning drug addict. They are, and I hope they bleed this leach dry. But women who have high cheekbones ten years after they claim that the drugs left them with nothing but a overpass for their rooftops, believe me, these women know all the rules people break to exploit them. Its a sad fact that apparently does not apply to me. Somewhere in my three day Ambien binge I tried to get a job by applying at the local 7-11 (never turned in that application but I'm surprised I used a pen to fill it out!) and also an escort service. Yes, in a semi-conscious state I applied for a job as an escort via phone. I vaguely remember doing that. I am not quite sure what a real escort does, but I am good company while watching a movie in public view. Anyway, the guy on the phone of the escort service I called seemed like a pimp. He probably was a pimp. When I added a decade to what he thought I said my age was, his interest dropped as he saw my confidence rise. So the stories that I know of escorts (involve crime shows like, "The Craigslist Killer") will never be fleshed out. Damn. My high school reunion is next year too.
My lawyer was awesome for my lawsuit. He loved my father, who did most of the talking. When my father listed a string of reasons why this woman (an Asian driver...like my stepmother) should pay me lots of money, I would only inject, "Its not that bad now." The lawyer's answer was always, "No! You are hurt. Remember you are hurt. Say that you are hurt. She did permanent damage..."
Well the same with these beautiful women. When you have a decade under your belt of hard drug addiction, you have been through every sick exploitative manipulative man, and you have the power to beat most of them. This is not their first rodeo. But after telling their stories, which I am certain are true, they add, "I still have nightmares that I hear his voice..." Okay, okay. That's implied.
And this guy is so smug and arrogant that he really believes his intelligence will be enough to outwit all of these women and their lawyers. He is going down swinging, but he is definitely going down. Oh, and my point! I do have a point. He's a felon, like me. To me in my rookie first year as a felon, there are two types of felons. So far. Kind of.
1.) The kind that are working at 7-11. Or have an application filled out in their bedrooms while they tell their hairdresser, manicurist, inept Sephora make-over artists that they are indignant for being labeled as such. And...
2.) The one's that adjust and make something of themselves. They make backscratchers and drug rehabilitation facilities. They are kind of like pimps. I'd like to think that the creator of the Backscratcher has thumbed his (or her) nose at the system and is, at this very moment, wearing a lime green leisure suit and five pound gold chain necklaces.
I fit into the first of course. Chris Bathum fits into the second. I think his felony came from pretending to sell expensive exercise gear on Ebay. He is a pimp selling a clarity he seeks as well, but in the thighs of six foot blondes. He would have been better off inventing the backscratcher.
Side Note: I know someone who checked into rehab for that particular addiction. I laughed until I was buying my Wall-Dry in bulk at the Dollarstore.
I'll cut to the chase. I was up with God knows how much Ambien in my system last night, stuck on a 20/20 called 'Rehab Mogul'. My goodness. My will to wrap that around my head was very weak because that is the world I live in. That easily Youtubed episode (Rehab Mogul),
Which I had to laugh had the most watched hits on it after I did the research that this meth-addled felon rehab Mogul (he likes the term enough to make t-shirts with the name, which is just as scary as the fast sales of these t-shirts, probably by the addict residents.)
Where was I? This guy is being sued by a man named Cliff Brodsky, who had the most hits on his 20/20 uploaded episode that he put on-line. I got a laugh that the guy who was a forerunner in suing him for the most money led the initial campaign against him publicly.
I know he is suing him but I did not read his reasoning behind his lawsuit. One thing I can assume...it was not for his long hind legs (also the name of a good band.) But this bad guy that this episode is about deserves to be taken down (and replaced with the same personality.)
The Lex Luthor of this episode has a name: Chris Bathum. He owns 70% of a popular rehab chain in Southern California (I wonder how many Benadryl addicts are there.) This guy is a villain. A meth-addled womanizer who targeted the most beautiful vulnerable women trying to get out of the drug world in one piece. He molested beautiful women, putting meth in orifices that are unorthodox for getting high. He sucks. But..
I'll be the villain by stringing in my lawsuit for getting knocked onto the Mopac (Austin's popular highway) by a woman who refused to apologize to me. There is a connection to my lawsuit for the license plate tattooed on my thigh with these rehab-molestation lawsuits. These women are rightfully suing this drug rehab owning drug addict. They are, and I hope they bleed this leach dry. But women who have high cheekbones ten years after they claim that the drugs left them with nothing but a overpass for their rooftops, believe me, these women know all the rules people break to exploit them. Its a sad fact that apparently does not apply to me. Somewhere in my three day Ambien binge I tried to get a job by applying at the local 7-11 (never turned in that application but I'm surprised I used a pen to fill it out!) and also an escort service. Yes, in a semi-conscious state I applied for a job as an escort via phone. I vaguely remember doing that. I am not quite sure what a real escort does, but I am good company while watching a movie in public view. Anyway, the guy on the phone of the escort service I called seemed like a pimp. He probably was a pimp. When I added a decade to what he thought I said my age was, his interest dropped as he saw my confidence rise. So the stories that I know of escorts (involve crime shows like, "The Craigslist Killer") will never be fleshed out. Damn. My high school reunion is next year too.
My lawyer was awesome for my lawsuit. He loved my father, who did most of the talking. When my father listed a string of reasons why this woman (an Asian driver...like my stepmother) should pay me lots of money, I would only inject, "Its not that bad now." The lawyer's answer was always, "No! You are hurt. Remember you are hurt. Say that you are hurt. She did permanent damage..."
Well the same with these beautiful women. When you have a decade under your belt of hard drug addiction, you have been through every sick exploitative manipulative man, and you have the power to beat most of them. This is not their first rodeo. But after telling their stories, which I am certain are true, they add, "I still have nightmares that I hear his voice..." Okay, okay. That's implied.
And this guy is so smug and arrogant that he really believes his intelligence will be enough to outwit all of these women and their lawyers. He is going down swinging, but he is definitely going down. Oh, and my point! I do have a point. He's a felon, like me. To me in my rookie first year as a felon, there are two types of felons. So far. Kind of.
1.) The kind that are working at 7-11. Or have an application filled out in their bedrooms while they tell their hairdresser, manicurist, inept Sephora make-over artists that they are indignant for being labeled as such. And...
2.) The one's that adjust and make something of themselves. They make backscratchers and drug rehabilitation facilities. They are kind of like pimps. I'd like to think that the creator of the Backscratcher has thumbed his (or her) nose at the system and is, at this very moment, wearing a lime green leisure suit and five pound gold chain necklaces.
I fit into the first of course. Chris Bathum fits into the second. I think his felony came from pretending to sell expensive exercise gear on Ebay. He is a pimp selling a clarity he seeks as well, but in the thighs of six foot blondes. He would have been better off inventing the backscratcher.
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Mongoloid w/ Bruce Conner.
Even though he is dead, a friend of mine swears if you say the name, "Bruce Conner" you'll get a free Master's Degree. My friend is alive and well, if that statement is ambiguous.
Friday, August 5, 2016
Fluffy and the Bearded Lady
Originally, Ned Flanders freak out was meant for this blog, but I suppose the emotions had to fester before they were spelled out. Fester like the massive owie that the bearded woman's cat bite did to my arm. Now no one likes the word puss, but if you delete the last 's' in that word, it means: cat. My next door neighbor's cat, Fluffy, left a welt of dead white blood cells inside my forearm. Fluffy has unchecked aggression. Fluffy is a gorgeous Persian cat who masquerades as an adoring love bug, but at night he stalks my overweight...He stalks him:
Lucian can not handle himself in a cat fight. Fluffy has cornered my cat twice now, bit the hell out of me when I try to stand between them, and a few days ago that bite led me to get emergency care. I'm a cat fanatic and I had no idea that any cat could fight like that.
I'd describe Fluffy as having the soul of a condemned death row inmate who tortured and killed for kicks, got sloppy and was caught, convicted, and was condemned to the electric chair. But before his execution, he vowed to come back through reincarnation as the most inconspicuous life form possible and continue to wreak havoc on the world.
Fluffy would have a decorated biker's jean jacket on with a cigarette dangling from his lips if he were human. Fluffy can fight like Muhammad Ali. At 37, I've never seen such a bass-ass in fur form.
So this condemned inmate came back with a guardian of course that was also inconspicuous. That would be my mildly mentally handicapped neighbor. I knew it; I knew that no one could be THAT sweet. I reach my threshold for kindness after a certain amount of time with an ear to ear smile. I have to retriet from public and regroup. I knew she would be that way too because she is human.
Yes, I have yet another neighbor that I'm at odds with again. This time this was not my fault.
I am about 115 pounds of bouncing anger in the form of both dance moves and a game of charades when I am really revved up, and wanting to explain myself to the closest poor soul walking my way.
Side Note: That song, "Blinded by the Light" I thought the lyrics were, "Wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night." It makes no sense, but no one knew the lyrics when that song popped up while we were at a poker table. The winning hand did not chime in.
This morning it was a maintenance man that innocently crossed my path. He was trapped in his golf cart and I was blinded by the light of anger. 115 pounds of awkward tits and a nasally east coast voice. That Seinfeld episode where George Costanza looks like an angry gorilla when people observed him without hearing him because of a wall of glass? That's me. Except a woman with hair and knobby knees and elbows.
Side Note: My previous neighbor began too early in the morning with a rant of his own; gliding, yelling, dancing- and he was not asking me anything. He was just blowing off steam. He was like Tom Cruise's Oscar Nominated (did he win?) role of Jerry McGuire, angrily dancing his way into a solid gold performance. I never told anyone, but as that neighbor, Jason was his name, was moving about and dancing his anger out and yelling- especially since it was a rant and he was not allowing me to talk- I distinctly remember thinking, "I am in love! This is my soul mate. I found my other half. My heart is floating up to heaven..." Then he ended his rant with, "Today your cat is dead! I'm calling animal control today. Your cat will be dead." And those comments snapped me back into reality and my heart dropped back into my chest, but sunk even lower.
*Big Bend National Park. At Jo Mama's RV Park. I bet a day at a real trailer park would be fun. I bet there are many bearded ladies. The right talent scout could make money raiding a big trailer park. The one closest to a home of mine had the best liquor store. Not that I would know (Who me? couldn't be! No possibility.)
I told the maintenance man about my blossoming feud with my next door neighbor. Her cat, Fluffy that Badass, bit me so hard that I had to go to the emergency care section of the doctor's office. It cost a down payment of $50, and they gave me one shot. They wanted to give me the dreaded rabies shots
Side Note: I've had them once before, but for one probably fatal (if not immediately caught) case of anaphylactic shock. I had no choice about having those needles put into my stomach. That is one hell of a way to die. You die from suffocation, but the pain of severe inching and panic make lucid thoughts nearly impossible. Then I'd have the stigma of a peanut as the murderer weapon on my death certificate.
I kept texting my neighbor, begging her to tell me if Fluffy had his rabies shots yet. Her responses were things like, "He likes to jump on the table!" If you think I'm being mean about my neighbor, wait until I explain my issues with her. Also, she has three rather successful grown children and a nicer apartment then my own. Plus a surplus of government money. She is no drooling victim when she talks (because the beard catches any wayward saliva.) I have not explained why I was angry with her yet.
The doctor wanted me to call animal control because it was the second bite from Fluffy, and the doctor assured me that he would not be harmed. I refused. The doctor told me that in four days (that is today) if the welt does not go down, I have to pay for the rabies needles. Plus in all seriousness, it was a huge welt that really did hurt. I could not sleep after the second night because the bump swelled so much. I also could not initially afford the antibiotic, so the bruise could, in theory, get a lot worse. The antibiotic prescribed is called Amox-Clav 875-125, and at my corporate pharmacy, twenty capsules of these little healers in pill form are slightly over seventy dollars.
That second night, I texted my next door neighbor of a few months about the bite being serious enough to need antibiotics. I asked her if she would pay for them. This was a very reasonable request because the bite was not my fault in any light. No response. She usually did respond by text, even very late at night. I then got nervous thinking she could make my life hell, so I followed the initial text up with, "Just forget about it. I am your friend and I am on your side." Then I sent her two more texts, telling her that I was sorry for asking for any money for the antibiotics. If I had provoked her cat, I would never ask for money. Or if her cat were trapped, scared, was being picked up, or groped, I never would have asked for the required antibiotics. But her cat followed mine, cornered him, and I never touched her not-so-innocent Fluffy to expect the flying squirrel blitz attack to my right arm. That came out of no where. She's responsible for what her cat does when the act is aggressive and unprovoked.
The following day, the maintenance man who I just went ape shit to about the situation (this morning) showed up at her door as I was simultaneously walking into my adjacent door. This was a few days ago. I said to him, "Check out this cat bite." It was gross. There was, um, dead white blood cells in one of the two fang marks. Five minutes later, there was a knock on my door. My neighbor (usually abnormally kind hearted and friendly to creep-type levels) said, "Let me see your arm!" I gave her that arm. She starts pulling my arm with phoniness to her inspection like a rotating sausage on a stick, all while coyly mumbling, "Where is it?" It was in the center of my forearm and very obvious. She said, "Stay away from my cat. You obviously swell easily. Never touch my cat again." Then she went inside and a text popped up from her saying, "You are after my money. I don't have any." So this was the fifth or sixth time I apologized to her and said it was fine. But she would not stop texting. Finally, I went aggro-Ned Flanders and said, "Enough! Stop texting me!"
The next morning I had 5 texts from her. Each one was crazier then the next. So that sucked. I said, "I apologized for asking for money. I'm keeping my cat inside. Stop writing me." "You stop writing me." So that is our stale mate for now. I hope it remains a stale mate until I am called to leave this apartment.
That's it about this subject? Did I rant out? That's a first. My rant has never had an end before.
And it won't because I have something to add. Today I checked my account balance. I have $19 in my account. I walked in the merciless Austin summer sun to the closest mini-mart with my brain calming down after my skinny girl dance of anger about paying for my neighbor's cat bite. That was a much needed release. Then I got to the little corner store, pulled out my tall sugar free Redbull and real Mango sorbet (Mangoes are good!), wished them a good afternoon, and my visual mind thought back to my red Visa Card on top of the covers of my bed. Its my higher power's way of saying, "Take a second lap to calm yourself down." It worked.
As far as the "Calm Down Diddly" blog, let me leave nothing to the imagination. My host in L.A., who is my brother's brother-in-law, first walked me in my guest room to talk about our mutual issues with not abiding by the law and having a wicked attraction to alcohol. But after my father came in to say, "We are good in here" (leave us alone); they both went back to get more blankets or something. The host came back, morphed into Pepe Le Pew-
Side Note: Dave Chappelle was right in calling Pepe Le Pew a rapist.
-And he jumped on top of me as I was laying down. He was drooling on my face and asking me to kiss him. That's not cool. My father saved the day but was none the wiser, and I whispered to my dad as our non-consensual host left, "Please don't leave me. I'm scared of that guy." My dad put zero thought into it, and we went to sleep.
The next morning I told my older brother that I was scared of him. The brother that supports me financially. I said, "That guy attacked me last night." The word, "Attack" was a bit dramatic. But when I'm laying down and this guy- with my family in the house- is asking me from above, "Kiss me." Multiple times...I'm not tough. I was scared.
I am very good at being mellow in situations like that.
The issue with me is that, first, my older brother was furious that I was saying these things about our host. In no way did he stay close to me like I begged him to do. Second, when my older brother finally heard from others [his sister] that he would and could do something like that when he was drinking, my oldest brother told me that I should be ashamed of myself for not understanding that he is an alcoholic like me.
That was the straw the broke my back. If he did not understand sexual assault, fine. But don't blame me for missing compassion when I was the one the was jumped on. I was angry enough to take it out on myself, because that is what I do when I am angry: I hurt myself.
Hurting one self is a common problem that many people act upon. Especially people with a suicide (or two) in one's immediate family. After all, you are 50% more likely to follow your parent's example. If your father ran away from responsibility, you are 50% more prone to that exact same behavior. Divorce, suicides, all make the parent's children have a coin toss's luck or ill fate in their future. Of course this was told to me by Professor Michael Zimmerman at San Francisco State. He teaches James Joyce mostly. But I believe him. I also believe that intelligence can alter that 50% chance with better positive odds.
I was furious that not only did the subject become one that I was told to, "Drop," but my own brother scolled me after initially admitting that he did not believe me. Then he had the nerve to yell as a passenger in a packed car about my "drug use" (insomnia medication) being an issue that is, "Literally killing him";
How about how I feel? How do I feel to be too weak to defend myself and blamed and sentenced like the gypsy from The Hunchback of Notre Dame? No, it is not normal to jump on people just because you are, "A Friend of Bill's." No, I am not going to say its my fault this happened. I'm sick of it. For my own older brother to have hate in his voice about my accusation, then the hate morphs into some abstract but negative emotion when he asked me where my sympathy is for this poor soul? I think my sympathy is placed where ever that man's apology to me is laying around.
Finally, I am in serious financial trouble. I am thoroughly fucked about money and medication. I can not afford my medication. I can not afford food. I can't keep this up. I wrote a small (two person) list of people who had the ability to help me financially. People who were capable of contributing to just one nice outfit that I can wear while I apply for a job. That was my simple request; to have one power outfit that makes me look employable when I make my, "Are you hiring?" rounds. The first was my brother. The one who said, "Where is your compassion....?" So that did not surprise me terribly when he said, "NO." The second was my Uncle's partner, off and on, for over a decade. Our conversation via phone was less then two minutes. I told her my medication is just too expensive and I needed help.I pointed out that I had not asked for money (except what was in my grand mother's Will) in years. Her reply when my uncle asked what I wanted was, "She spent her money on drug therapy..." The words 'drug' and 'therapy' never came up in this one minute forty six second conversation. I clocked it and retaliated in the only way I know how: In a letter via a social media site. I've lashed out in Yelp reviews. I've demanded humane treatment via Facebook. So I politely apologized for calling and tried to smash my phone like a little kid. I internalize my anger.
I had a friend who told me, "I [as in 'she'] would commit suicide to prove her point." I can understand that. I get so frustrated that there are people rooting for me to lose. In that same vein of logic: I was watching a Youtube on the Ghostbuster women talking about how their co-star, Chris Hemsworth was, "Annoyingly Perfect." I got a kick out of them saying that they were rooting for him to be an asshole, or not such a creative threat, because he is so sweet, beautiful and talented. He's also married to a gorgeous Spanish (I think?) Goddess that is 40 years old (and is annoyingly gorgeous herself) and the couple have three children. Well, I have a few more years to be okay in a crowd. Thank you Spirit in the Sky!
I do the exact same thing too with talented people. I have seen perfect-looking people who I scan repeatedly in search of a visible defect before I can confidently approach them. I once knew a tall, shapely, gorgeous young woman who was so perfect, even a full year later I was looking for non-existent flaws. Yes, I'm human.
Jared Leto's beat down in Flight Club was understood without any more then the line, "I wanted to destroy something beautiful." I doubt post theater conversations included,"What the hell was that about?" Maybe a ''Grass is always greener"envy. Maybe a lawn growing with a deep green jealousy. A lawn filled with super-nutrients and plush vigorous grass adjacent to my brittle sun stained yard. Just like I've thought every blonde woman (including my slender and sweet mother) gained the upper hand because they are exotic, ironically so, to my dark features.
Side Note: Pepe Le Pew's sister (my sister-in-law) is a natural beauty that happens to be blonde. When she met me at the airport and I said that I was thirsty, she did not need to stand in line to ask an employee at the airport Starbucks if she could have a cup of ice water. They oblige her request with a smile. She handed the cup of water to me and I said out-loud: Oh to be blonde. What else do you secretly get without lines or payment?" Her response, "Well, I asked them to get that cup of water ready for me while I was waiting. They told me they would. It took long enough." Oh. I thought it was a secret wink to Nordic features. Glad I asked!
Having the genetically gifted as friends is a major benefit. I'd like to build an army of super Uber friends that make my days like dreams.
Side Note: I've been saying this for seventeen years. Everyone has a flaw, or a vulnerability when caught on a subject that (can be used against them) can make them more endearing actually. Marilyn Monroe may have been beautiful, but that soft voice and inviting smile in "Some Like It Hot" (even though she was pregnant, if I read that correctly) make her accessible. Flawless beauty without accessibility can be a problem.
Whatever one's personal definition of beauty is, most beautiful people can generate envy that can in turn change their personality to suit their counterparts. Envy in large numbers can insidiously push kind people to apologize. Too many apologizes will erode the soul's natural grace. I like Peter Bogdanovich's term, "Unicorns" for rare beauty.
Side Note: That's about the only thing I like about Peter Bogdanovich. His taste in Dorothy Stratten was obvious good taste. I did read (and actually own) a copy of, "The Killing of a Unicorn." I love the metaphor of a unicorn and its rare, unrepeatable beauty. But in that book its amazing how Mr. Bogdanovich does not comprehend that some of the things he openly hopes Paul Snider's private detective saw the two doing are things that probably added to why Dorothy Stratten was murdered before she was old enough to legally drink alcohol.
Yes, good people are very often mistreated. Or forced to alter their beauty to adapt to their environment. I've shaken off my shy nature in the twenty plus years since my high school graduation, but I'm pleased to know the shyness was a chameleon trait of necessity in an outer city high school, but the kindness came from my mother's blessed genes. This subject stays dormant in me always, but at night and especially with the pain of insomnia, these thoughts surface in waves. Humanity can be ugly to good people because of how they look; they adjust to avoid what seem to be countless apologies in different forms. I suppose parents are suppose to teach their children to apologize to no one if they are living their dreams out. Not all of us have parents that teach. Some just supply the genes and pop in to do damage now and then because they are bitter about their lack of parenting. This cycle can stop with anyone at any time.
Side Note: My father is obsessed with a painting by Goya called,"Saturn Devouring His Son." I'm not the 'Thought Police' so he can like what he wants, but being absent was not my father's biggest (fatal) flaw. He is excellent at using words to bring people down. Specifically his own children. My oldest brother...only wears green. I'll leave it at that. I am a felon and have had multiple failed engagements. My 1% brother (I joke, because he lives in San Diego) has two Master's Degrees from Cornell University. He married the most beautiful woman that Redding, California was graced with having as a mismatched resident. Next is my brother Ambrose. The brightest light burns twice as bright but half as long. We lost Ambrose at the age of 24. Death tends to freeze those who passed that gate in purity and a often artificial holiness. He had the most potential, but he was beat down the most. Far more then any one of us.The memories of these events that were unfair to him are too many to single out. He was tossed from home to home by my father. I was an unfit and selfish guardian. Ambrose never received the constant love of a mother because my mother passed away herself when he was only seven years old. A good memory of Ambrose is that he had these wild blondish red curls. My mother smoothed down and massaged those curls as a meditative act for her; as he laid half asleep on her belly when she was pregnant with her final child; my sister. I'd describe my sister as a Perfect 10 in body, mind and spirit. She's a survivor and a nurturer.
Ambrose had a very sophisticated sense of humor, and humor was the most important quality in his everyday life. He was a beautiful man. He had better lips then me, and big brown soft eyes. I once asked some random jerk who knew both of us what he expected would happen to Amby when he became an adult. His answer was, "I don't know? Supernova."
One of Amby's talents was his excellent eye for gems: for people and clothes, and in his version of art. His creativity was best put to use in finding exciting things to do with little money. Even if he had to be the one to take the hit; he would do what he could to make sure that other people were having fun. When my former roommate married him at my gentle urging (ironically) to help her pay for the bills she was rapidly generating with her famous quote,"Put it on my tab," it was my brother who made sure she received half of his military money for her travels, even though she left me with a ton of bills.
Side Note: Bills that I pay off every month, and will be paying off every month, for the rest of my days! Their marriage was a sham for military money, and Ambrose, being compassionate and caring, dived the bonus money in half. He also got into severe trouble when the sham was discovered. My roommate left my apartment as I was busy working back east for extra rent (at $850/month in San Francisco); to travel by jumping freight trains. He only once gave me $50 at her request (yep) for me to buy groceries. Even though it generated arguments with my brother and me over the money I was left to pay, I understood his heart. He gave her half of his bonus money for marriage, yet my own sister is legitimately married to a military man and she does not see shit of their 'bonus marriage money'. What did his extra money go to on her travels? To a fortune teller, alcohol, heroin at one point, and Heaven Only Knows what else because I never mended my relationship with that person, even though I forgave her immediately. I'm compassionate too. I cared for her safety. I started to flesh out this topic and my Internet froze. I'll take the hint that I should move on with this blog and with my life.
Amby liked to drink hot sake in a sauna. He owned the best velvet comforters to combat the insomnia both of us had/have. With a murder, you have one person to blame. With a suicide, I read that the average suicide causes an extreme impact of guilt and blame in at least 16 people. I feel as if he was murdered before he took his life, because his life was full of abuse, misunderstanding and injustice. Whether those things made him fight back with compassion or he was forged with a heart of gold, I only know the finished product. I am here instead of him, so when people root for me to fail, I have learned to fight back with everything I have. What more do they want to happen to me? After a while, wishing my failure seems sadistic, especially given the loss of my mother and brother before I turned 30. I collect friends and extend the term family to many of these friends and lovers. I want a wealth of people in my life because my life began with grief and loss.
Last Side Note: A drawback to losing two immediate family members way too early is that I don't hold my friends to a high standard of conduct. I'm learning, especially now that I started off fresh in Austin. Man, let me just say, Stay the hell out of Redding, California! Their brochure for that town was probably shot by Annie Leibovitz and assembled by a bevy of motivational voices that convince smart men that water can become wine. I'd like the same ensemble to create a brochure on a notorious jail like, "The Tombs" in New York. People would line up to commit crimes.
It's hard for me to articulate how my brother's unique humor presented itself (that sounds like I'm talking about Shingles!) Here is one quick joke. I was in Nebraska watching my 24 year old cat (maybe younger because she died at 24) and I was complaining on the phone to Ambrose about my new live-in fiance. He said to me, "Rose, I'm going to send you a video. Watch the entire thing, okay? Its about five minutes. Just watch it."
Yes, my name is in his name.
It was an R. Kelly song called, "Real Talk" and right at the point where he is singing his opera that,"Bitch I wish you wouuuld burn my Mother Fucking clothes...with your trifling ass...Milton!" Ambrose called back laughing so hard it became contagious. He said, "You don't want to sound like the woman on the other end of that phone."
I remember his frustration that his humor was misunderstood. Even in creating a simple joke at work; telling his peers at the restaurant he worked at that he finally bought a nice sofa. He was saying to co-workers that his new sofa would be delivered to his apartment that day. When some of them asked what it looked like, he laughed and said, "Maybe we can test drive it out together." They branded him as, "Gay." Or as, "Insincere." I remember him telling me that he could not even make a careless joke without mean comments about his sexuality. He was vulnerable because he was in San Diego alone. He was disliked by some because he had a certain outgoing social persona at parties, but in reality he was a quiet man who wanted to be loved. He was a genuine man.This is him in Annapolis.
I have a video in my apartment that was made into a DVD with Ambrose on it that has some hilarious antics. I have only seen it once, within a week of the news of his passing, and I have not had the courage to watch it again. But there is one part of that DVD that I'd like to upload. It should go between these two
lines
one
day, when I heal more and gather the courage to praise the time we spent together. Okay, I'll give the gist of part of an antic on this DVD now. Amby is at Bethel Church in Redding, California interviewing...I kid you not...a 'Former Satan Worshiper." I guess the Dark Lord gets capitalized too. This guy is cloaked from head to toe in black, including his eyes which are dilated because he is freaking high on some extremely funny stimulate. Funny? Well, it made him tell my brother, on tape, that he knows that Jesus is real because he [The Ex-Satan Guy] can... control the minds of squirrels. Yes, I seriously think it would go viral because it nearly made me pee my pants. The stoned-outa-his-freakin-holly-rollin-mind guy explains: "See that tree over there? [He points to a patch of grass with no trees anywhere in site.] Well, I can tell that squirrel over there [no squirrel in site], to, well, brother, pick up that acorn over there. Now go climb that tree. Climb on the left branch, throw the acorn to the right not the left. Praise Jesus."
I really need to upload that lightening rod of The Word of God. I'd become a Christian if I could control squirrels too. I'd have an army of squirrels to carry out...Okay, no sense in imagining where that would lead.
Unfortunately Amby laughed his way out of Bethel Church, which is the only way to leave if you have a brain.
About an hour after I got that phone call that he was gone- which I can only guess because I had no concept of time-I almost laughed. Some weird noise came out of me and I said to myself out loud, 'I did not know that I would die today.' Nothing was ever the same without him. You can see my personality change in this blog after I lost him. My very last blog with him in calling distance was called, "Joy to The World Baby" and the subject was a 'Best of Craigslist." The change is very obvious. Even our family reunion was strange without him. I kept a locket on me through the entire reunion of Amby as part of the necklace and my D on the other end.
*Look at Ambrose's eyes and face, then look at mine. We had the same voice. He was sick growing up and after he left us, I got those lethal allergies. The killer peanut being one. Corn being a lesser bother. Most hard liquor is distilled with corn. I quit drinking almost two years ago, except maybe a half dozen drunk occasions.
I drank on the last plane, after a transfer, on my way from San Diego, then a transfer in Arizona, finally ending in a connecting flight back to Austin. I got stuck by the window seat (usually a plus) with a well liquored salesman who could not stop talking to me. At first I played the exhausted card. Then I tried to make small talk. But when the drink tray went by, I snapped and said, "Here is a $20 bill. Give me two white wines, then keep the change." I was cornered! I had to drink my way out.
Finally, today marks my first full year as a felon. Here is the one year photograph before I was fingerprinted and sincerely apologized to the substitute judge (which my lawyer capitalized on; the judge that was sick that day was, from what he said, the most feared judge in all of Texas.) I apologized for my embarrassing behavior. I told the judge that this felony destroyed the value of my Bachelor's degree though, so we are even. I gave my speech shaking honestly, and was thanked by the judge. I got to turn myself in, just like the Dave Chappelle skit where the white man is damned to prison to,"convert to Islam" and the black man sings, "The 5th!" and turns himself in when he deems it convenient. It was convenient for me to go in the first day of October.
I'd describe Fluffy as having the soul of a condemned death row inmate who tortured and killed for kicks, got sloppy and was caught, convicted, and was condemned to the electric chair. But before his execution, he vowed to come back through reincarnation as the most inconspicuous life form possible and continue to wreak havoc on the world.
Fluffy would have a decorated biker's jean jacket on with a cigarette dangling from his lips if he were human. Fluffy can fight like Muhammad Ali. At 37, I've never seen such a bass-ass in fur form.
So this condemned inmate came back with a guardian of course that was also inconspicuous. That would be my mildly mentally handicapped neighbor. I knew it; I knew that no one could be THAT sweet. I reach my threshold for kindness after a certain amount of time with an ear to ear smile. I have to retriet from public and regroup. I knew she would be that way too because she is human.
Yes, I have yet another neighbor that I'm at odds with again. This time this was not my fault.
I am about 115 pounds of bouncing anger in the form of both dance moves and a game of charades when I am really revved up, and wanting to explain myself to the closest poor soul walking my way.
Side Note: That song, "Blinded by the Light" I thought the lyrics were, "Wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night." It makes no sense, but no one knew the lyrics when that song popped up while we were at a poker table. The winning hand did not chime in.
This morning it was a maintenance man that innocently crossed my path. He was trapped in his golf cart and I was blinded by the light of anger. 115 pounds of awkward tits and a nasally east coast voice. That Seinfeld episode where George Costanza looks like an angry gorilla when people observed him without hearing him because of a wall of glass? That's me. Except a woman with hair and knobby knees and elbows.
Side Note: My previous neighbor began too early in the morning with a rant of his own; gliding, yelling, dancing- and he was not asking me anything. He was just blowing off steam. He was like Tom Cruise's Oscar Nominated (did he win?) role of Jerry McGuire, angrily dancing his way into a solid gold performance. I never told anyone, but as that neighbor, Jason was his name, was moving about and dancing his anger out and yelling- especially since it was a rant and he was not allowing me to talk- I distinctly remember thinking, "I am in love! This is my soul mate. I found my other half. My heart is floating up to heaven..." Then he ended his rant with, "Today your cat is dead! I'm calling animal control today. Your cat will be dead." And those comments snapped me back into reality and my heart dropped back into my chest, but sunk even lower.
*Big Bend National Park. At Jo Mama's RV Park. I bet a day at a real trailer park would be fun. I bet there are many bearded ladies. The right talent scout could make money raiding a big trailer park. The one closest to a home of mine had the best liquor store. Not that I would know (Who me? couldn't be! No possibility.)
I told the maintenance man about my blossoming feud with my next door neighbor. Her cat, Fluffy that Badass, bit me so hard that I had to go to the emergency care section of the doctor's office. It cost a down payment of $50, and they gave me one shot. They wanted to give me the dreaded rabies shots
Side Note: I've had them once before, but for one probably fatal (if not immediately caught) case of anaphylactic shock. I had no choice about having those needles put into my stomach. That is one hell of a way to die. You die from suffocation, but the pain of severe inching and panic make lucid thoughts nearly impossible. Then I'd have the stigma of a peanut as the murderer weapon on my death certificate.
I kept texting my neighbor, begging her to tell me if Fluffy had his rabies shots yet. Her responses were things like, "He likes to jump on the table!" If you think I'm being mean about my neighbor, wait until I explain my issues with her. Also, she has three rather successful grown children and a nicer apartment then my own. Plus a surplus of government money. She is no drooling victim when she talks (because the beard catches any wayward saliva.) I have not explained why I was angry with her yet.
The doctor wanted me to call animal control because it was the second bite from Fluffy, and the doctor assured me that he would not be harmed. I refused. The doctor told me that in four days (that is today) if the welt does not go down, I have to pay for the rabies needles. Plus in all seriousness, it was a huge welt that really did hurt. I could not sleep after the second night because the bump swelled so much. I also could not initially afford the antibiotic, so the bruise could, in theory, get a lot worse. The antibiotic prescribed is called Amox-Clav 875-125, and at my corporate pharmacy, twenty capsules of these little healers in pill form are slightly over seventy dollars.
That second night, I texted my next door neighbor of a few months about the bite being serious enough to need antibiotics. I asked her if she would pay for them. This was a very reasonable request because the bite was not my fault in any light. No response. She usually did respond by text, even very late at night. I then got nervous thinking she could make my life hell, so I followed the initial text up with, "Just forget about it. I am your friend and I am on your side." Then I sent her two more texts, telling her that I was sorry for asking for any money for the antibiotics. If I had provoked her cat, I would never ask for money. Or if her cat were trapped, scared, was being picked up, or groped, I never would have asked for the required antibiotics. But her cat followed mine, cornered him, and I never touched her not-so-innocent Fluffy to expect the flying squirrel blitz attack to my right arm. That came out of no where. She's responsible for what her cat does when the act is aggressive and unprovoked.
The following day, the maintenance man who I just went ape shit to about the situation (this morning) showed up at her door as I was simultaneously walking into my adjacent door. This was a few days ago. I said to him, "Check out this cat bite." It was gross. There was, um, dead white blood cells in one of the two fang marks. Five minutes later, there was a knock on my door. My neighbor (usually abnormally kind hearted and friendly to creep-type levels) said, "Let me see your arm!" I gave her that arm. She starts pulling my arm with phoniness to her inspection like a rotating sausage on a stick, all while coyly mumbling, "Where is it?" It was in the center of my forearm and very obvious. She said, "Stay away from my cat. You obviously swell easily. Never touch my cat again." Then she went inside and a text popped up from her saying, "You are after my money. I don't have any." So this was the fifth or sixth time I apologized to her and said it was fine. But she would not stop texting. Finally, I went aggro-Ned Flanders and said, "Enough! Stop texting me!"
The next morning I had 5 texts from her. Each one was crazier then the next. So that sucked. I said, "I apologized for asking for money. I'm keeping my cat inside. Stop writing me." "You stop writing me." So that is our stale mate for now. I hope it remains a stale mate until I am called to leave this apartment.
That's it about this subject? Did I rant out? That's a first. My rant has never had an end before.
And it won't because I have something to add. Today I checked my account balance. I have $19 in my account. I walked in the merciless Austin summer sun to the closest mini-mart with my brain calming down after my skinny girl dance of anger about paying for my neighbor's cat bite. That was a much needed release. Then I got to the little corner store, pulled out my tall sugar free Redbull and real Mango sorbet (Mangoes are good!), wished them a good afternoon, and my visual mind thought back to my red Visa Card on top of the covers of my bed. Its my higher power's way of saying, "Take a second lap to calm yourself down." It worked.
As far as the "Calm Down Diddly" blog, let me leave nothing to the imagination. My host in L.A., who is my brother's brother-in-law, first walked me in my guest room to talk about our mutual issues with not abiding by the law and having a wicked attraction to alcohol. But after my father came in to say, "We are good in here" (leave us alone); they both went back to get more blankets or something. The host came back, morphed into Pepe Le Pew-
Side Note: Dave Chappelle was right in calling Pepe Le Pew a rapist.
-And he jumped on top of me as I was laying down. He was drooling on my face and asking me to kiss him. That's not cool. My father saved the day but was none the wiser, and I whispered to my dad as our non-consensual host left, "Please don't leave me. I'm scared of that guy." My dad put zero thought into it, and we went to sleep.
The next morning I told my older brother that I was scared of him. The brother that supports me financially. I said, "That guy attacked me last night." The word, "Attack" was a bit dramatic. But when I'm laying down and this guy- with my family in the house- is asking me from above, "Kiss me." Multiple times...I'm not tough. I was scared.
I am very good at being mellow in situations like that.
The issue with me is that, first, my older brother was furious that I was saying these things about our host. In no way did he stay close to me like I begged him to do. Second, when my older brother finally heard from others [his sister] that he would and could do something like that when he was drinking, my oldest brother told me that I should be ashamed of myself for not understanding that he is an alcoholic like me.
That was the straw the broke my back. If he did not understand sexual assault, fine. But don't blame me for missing compassion when I was the one the was jumped on. I was angry enough to take it out on myself, because that is what I do when I am angry: I hurt myself.
Hurting one self is a common problem that many people act upon. Especially people with a suicide (or two) in one's immediate family. After all, you are 50% more likely to follow your parent's example. If your father ran away from responsibility, you are 50% more prone to that exact same behavior. Divorce, suicides, all make the parent's children have a coin toss's luck or ill fate in their future. Of course this was told to me by Professor Michael Zimmerman at San Francisco State. He teaches James Joyce mostly. But I believe him. I also believe that intelligence can alter that 50% chance with better positive odds.
I was furious that not only did the subject become one that I was told to, "Drop," but my own brother scolled me after initially admitting that he did not believe me. Then he had the nerve to yell as a passenger in a packed car about my "drug use" (insomnia medication) being an issue that is, "Literally killing him";
Finally, I am in serious financial trouble. I am thoroughly fucked about money and medication. I can not afford my medication. I can not afford food. I can't keep this up. I wrote a small (two person) list of people who had the ability to help me financially. People who were capable of contributing to just one nice outfit that I can wear while I apply for a job. That was my simple request; to have one power outfit that makes me look employable when I make my, "Are you hiring?" rounds. The first was my brother. The one who said, "Where is your compassion....?" So that did not surprise me terribly when he said, "NO." The second was my Uncle's partner, off and on, for over a decade. Our conversation via phone was less then two minutes. I told her my medication is just too expensive and I needed help.I pointed out that I had not asked for money (except what was in my grand mother's Will) in years. Her reply when my uncle asked what I wanted was, "She spent her money on drug therapy..." The words 'drug' and 'therapy' never came up in this one minute forty six second conversation. I clocked it and retaliated in the only way I know how: In a letter via a social media site. I've lashed out in Yelp reviews. I've demanded humane treatment via Facebook. So I politely apologized for calling and tried to smash my phone like a little kid. I internalize my anger.
I had a friend who told me, "I [as in 'she'] would commit suicide to prove her point." I can understand that. I get so frustrated that there are people rooting for me to lose. In that same vein of logic: I was watching a Youtube on the Ghostbuster women talking about how their co-star, Chris Hemsworth was, "Annoyingly Perfect." I got a kick out of them saying that they were rooting for him to be an asshole, or not such a creative threat, because he is so sweet, beautiful and talented. He's also married to a gorgeous Spanish (I think?) Goddess that is 40 years old (and is annoyingly gorgeous herself) and the couple have three children. Well, I have a few more years to be okay in a crowd. Thank you Spirit in the Sky!
I do the exact same thing too with talented people. I have seen perfect-looking people who I scan repeatedly in search of a visible defect before I can confidently approach them. I once knew a tall, shapely, gorgeous young woman who was so perfect, even a full year later I was looking for non-existent flaws. Yes, I'm human.
Jared Leto's beat down in Flight Club was understood without any more then the line, "I wanted to destroy something beautiful." I doubt post theater conversations included,"What the hell was that about?" Maybe a ''Grass is always greener"envy. Maybe a lawn growing with a deep green jealousy. A lawn filled with super-nutrients and plush vigorous grass adjacent to my brittle sun stained yard. Just like I've thought every blonde woman (including my slender and sweet mother) gained the upper hand because they are exotic, ironically so, to my dark features.
Side Note: Pepe Le Pew's sister (my sister-in-law) is a natural beauty that happens to be blonde. When she met me at the airport and I said that I was thirsty, she did not need to stand in line to ask an employee at the airport Starbucks if she could have a cup of ice water. They oblige her request with a smile. She handed the cup of water to me and I said out-loud: Oh to be blonde. What else do you secretly get without lines or payment?" Her response, "Well, I asked them to get that cup of water ready for me while I was waiting. They told me they would. It took long enough." Oh. I thought it was a secret wink to Nordic features. Glad I asked!
Having the genetically gifted as friends is a major benefit. I'd like to build an army of super Uber friends that make my days like dreams.
Side Note: I've been saying this for seventeen years. Everyone has a flaw, or a vulnerability when caught on a subject that (can be used against them) can make them more endearing actually. Marilyn Monroe may have been beautiful, but that soft voice and inviting smile in "Some Like It Hot" (even though she was pregnant, if I read that correctly) make her accessible. Flawless beauty without accessibility can be a problem.
Whatever one's personal definition of beauty is, most beautiful people can generate envy that can in turn change their personality to suit their counterparts. Envy in large numbers can insidiously push kind people to apologize. Too many apologizes will erode the soul's natural grace. I like Peter Bogdanovich's term, "Unicorns" for rare beauty.
Side Note: That's about the only thing I like about Peter Bogdanovich. His taste in Dorothy Stratten was obvious good taste. I did read (and actually own) a copy of, "The Killing of a Unicorn." I love the metaphor of a unicorn and its rare, unrepeatable beauty. But in that book its amazing how Mr. Bogdanovich does not comprehend that some of the things he openly hopes Paul Snider's private detective saw the two doing are things that probably added to why Dorothy Stratten was murdered before she was old enough to legally drink alcohol.
Yes, good people are very often mistreated. Or forced to alter their beauty to adapt to their environment. I've shaken off my shy nature in the twenty plus years since my high school graduation, but I'm pleased to know the shyness was a chameleon trait of necessity in an outer city high school, but the kindness came from my mother's blessed genes. This subject stays dormant in me always, but at night and especially with the pain of insomnia, these thoughts surface in waves. Humanity can be ugly to good people because of how they look; they adjust to avoid what seem to be countless apologies in different forms. I suppose parents are suppose to teach their children to apologize to no one if they are living their dreams out. Not all of us have parents that teach. Some just supply the genes and pop in to do damage now and then because they are bitter about their lack of parenting. This cycle can stop with anyone at any time.
Side Note: My father is obsessed with a painting by Goya called,"Saturn Devouring His Son." I'm not the 'Thought Police' so he can like what he wants, but being absent was not my father's biggest (fatal) flaw. He is excellent at using words to bring people down. Specifically his own children. My oldest brother...only wears green. I'll leave it at that. I am a felon and have had multiple failed engagements. My 1% brother (I joke, because he lives in San Diego) has two Master's Degrees from Cornell University. He married the most beautiful woman that Redding, California was graced with having as a mismatched resident. Next is my brother Ambrose. The brightest light burns twice as bright but half as long. We lost Ambrose at the age of 24. Death tends to freeze those who passed that gate in purity and a often artificial holiness. He had the most potential, but he was beat down the most. Far more then any one of us.The memories of these events that were unfair to him are too many to single out. He was tossed from home to home by my father. I was an unfit and selfish guardian. Ambrose never received the constant love of a mother because my mother passed away herself when he was only seven years old. A good memory of Ambrose is that he had these wild blondish red curls. My mother smoothed down and massaged those curls as a meditative act for her; as he laid half asleep on her belly when she was pregnant with her final child; my sister. I'd describe my sister as a Perfect 10 in body, mind and spirit. She's a survivor and a nurturer.
Ambrose had a very sophisticated sense of humor, and humor was the most important quality in his everyday life. He was a beautiful man. He had better lips then me, and big brown soft eyes. I once asked some random jerk who knew both of us what he expected would happen to Amby when he became an adult. His answer was, "I don't know? Supernova."
One of Amby's talents was his excellent eye for gems: for people and clothes, and in his version of art. His creativity was best put to use in finding exciting things to do with little money. Even if he had to be the one to take the hit; he would do what he could to make sure that other people were having fun. When my former roommate married him at my gentle urging (ironically) to help her pay for the bills she was rapidly generating with her famous quote,"Put it on my tab," it was my brother who made sure she received half of his military money for her travels, even though she left me with a ton of bills.
Side Note: Bills that I pay off every month, and will be paying off every month, for the rest of my days! Their marriage was a sham for military money, and Ambrose, being compassionate and caring, dived the bonus money in half. He also got into severe trouble when the sham was discovered. My roommate left my apartment as I was busy working back east for extra rent (at $850/month in San Francisco); to travel by jumping freight trains. He only once gave me $50 at her request (yep) for me to buy groceries. Even though it generated arguments with my brother and me over the money I was left to pay, I understood his heart. He gave her half of his bonus money for marriage, yet my own sister is legitimately married to a military man and she does not see shit of their 'bonus marriage money'. What did his extra money go to on her travels? To a fortune teller, alcohol, heroin at one point, and Heaven Only Knows what else because I never mended my relationship with that person, even though I forgave her immediately. I'm compassionate too. I cared for her safety. I started to flesh out this topic and my Internet froze. I'll take the hint that I should move on with this blog and with my life.
Amby liked to drink hot sake in a sauna. He owned the best velvet comforters to combat the insomnia both of us had/have. With a murder, you have one person to blame. With a suicide, I read that the average suicide causes an extreme impact of guilt and blame in at least 16 people. I feel as if he was murdered before he took his life, because his life was full of abuse, misunderstanding and injustice. Whether those things made him fight back with compassion or he was forged with a heart of gold, I only know the finished product. I am here instead of him, so when people root for me to fail, I have learned to fight back with everything I have. What more do they want to happen to me? After a while, wishing my failure seems sadistic, especially given the loss of my mother and brother before I turned 30. I collect friends and extend the term family to many of these friends and lovers. I want a wealth of people in my life because my life began with grief and loss.
Last Side Note: A drawback to losing two immediate family members way too early is that I don't hold my friends to a high standard of conduct. I'm learning, especially now that I started off fresh in Austin. Man, let me just say, Stay the hell out of Redding, California! Their brochure for that town was probably shot by Annie Leibovitz and assembled by a bevy of motivational voices that convince smart men that water can become wine. I'd like the same ensemble to create a brochure on a notorious jail like, "The Tombs" in New York. People would line up to commit crimes.
It's hard for me to articulate how my brother's unique humor presented itself (that sounds like I'm talking about Shingles!) Here is one quick joke. I was in Nebraska watching my 24 year old cat (maybe younger because she died at 24) and I was complaining on the phone to Ambrose about my new live-in fiance. He said to me, "Rose, I'm going to send you a video. Watch the entire thing, okay? Its about five minutes. Just watch it."
Yes, my name is in his name.
It was an R. Kelly song called, "Real Talk" and right at the point where he is singing his opera that,"Bitch I wish you wouuuld burn my Mother Fucking clothes...with your trifling ass...Milton!" Ambrose called back laughing so hard it became contagious. He said, "You don't want to sound like the woman on the other end of that phone."
I remember his frustration that his humor was misunderstood. Even in creating a simple joke at work; telling his peers at the restaurant he worked at that he finally bought a nice sofa. He was saying to co-workers that his new sofa would be delivered to his apartment that day. When some of them asked what it looked like, he laughed and said, "Maybe we can test drive it out together." They branded him as, "Gay." Or as, "Insincere." I remember him telling me that he could not even make a careless joke without mean comments about his sexuality. He was vulnerable because he was in San Diego alone. He was disliked by some because he had a certain outgoing social persona at parties, but in reality he was a quiet man who wanted to be loved. He was a genuine man.This is him in Annapolis.
I have a video in my apartment that was made into a DVD with Ambrose on it that has some hilarious antics. I have only seen it once, within a week of the news of his passing, and I have not had the courage to watch it again. But there is one part of that DVD that I'd like to upload. It should go between these two
lines
one
day, when I heal more and gather the courage to praise the time we spent together. Okay, I'll give the gist of part of an antic on this DVD now. Amby is at Bethel Church in Redding, California interviewing...I kid you not...a 'Former Satan Worshiper." I guess the Dark Lord gets capitalized too. This guy is cloaked from head to toe in black, including his eyes which are dilated because he is freaking high on some extremely funny stimulate. Funny? Well, it made him tell my brother, on tape, that he knows that Jesus is real because he [The Ex-Satan Guy] can... control the minds of squirrels. Yes, I seriously think it would go viral because it nearly made me pee my pants. The stoned-outa-his-freakin-holly-rollin-mind guy explains: "See that tree over there? [He points to a patch of grass with no trees anywhere in site.] Well, I can tell that squirrel over there [no squirrel in site], to, well, brother, pick up that acorn over there. Now go climb that tree. Climb on the left branch, throw the acorn to the right not the left. Praise Jesus."
I really need to upload that lightening rod of The Word of God. I'd become a Christian if I could control squirrels too. I'd have an army of squirrels to carry out...Okay, no sense in imagining where that would lead.
Unfortunately Amby laughed his way out of Bethel Church, which is the only way to leave if you have a brain.
About an hour after I got that phone call that he was gone- which I can only guess because I had no concept of time-I almost laughed. Some weird noise came out of me and I said to myself out loud, 'I did not know that I would die today.' Nothing was ever the same without him. You can see my personality change in this blog after I lost him. My very last blog with him in calling distance was called, "Joy to The World Baby" and the subject was a 'Best of Craigslist." The change is very obvious. Even our family reunion was strange without him. I kept a locket on me through the entire reunion of Amby as part of the necklace and my D on the other end.
*Look at Ambrose's eyes and face, then look at mine. We had the same voice. He was sick growing up and after he left us, I got those lethal allergies. The killer peanut being one. Corn being a lesser bother. Most hard liquor is distilled with corn. I quit drinking almost two years ago, except maybe a half dozen drunk occasions.
I drank on the last plane, after a transfer, on my way from San Diego, then a transfer in Arizona, finally ending in a connecting flight back to Austin. I got stuck by the window seat (usually a plus) with a well liquored salesman who could not stop talking to me. At first I played the exhausted card. Then I tried to make small talk. But when the drink tray went by, I snapped and said, "Here is a $20 bill. Give me two white wines, then keep the change." I was cornered! I had to drink my way out.
Finally, today marks my first full year as a felon. Here is the one year photograph before I was fingerprinted and sincerely apologized to the substitute judge (which my lawyer capitalized on; the judge that was sick that day was, from what he said, the most feared judge in all of Texas.) I apologized for my embarrassing behavior. I told the judge that this felony destroyed the value of my Bachelor's degree though, so we are even. I gave my speech shaking honestly, and was thanked by the judge. I got to turn myself in, just like the Dave Chappelle skit where the white man is damned to prison to,"convert to Islam" and the black man sings, "The 5th!" and turns himself in when he deems it convenient. It was convenient for me to go in the first day of October.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
Monday, July 25, 2016
Lucian-Myer on the Kickdrum
This is my esteemed colleague and sidekick Lucian Price.
I keep him supplied with organic catnip all day long.
Both planted and canned catnip. After all he was born in Humboldt County.
I should keep the catnip in a martini glass.
This is him passed out on his green binki.
His mother was a feral cat, killed by a stoned driver while she was pregnant with him and his two sisters. He obviously survived, so I assumed he would be a runt, and I spoiled him.
The world was waiting for this guy to come around. He also goes the aliases: Hinee Shines, The Mayor, McDoogs, Doogle-esqe, Doctor Poopinton, Professor Scootington, and the convicted mathematical murderer: Hans Reiser (I never got that name, but a guest labeled him with the name [probably because he is also a genius] and it stuck. My favorite is simply Lucian-Myer Price.
His deadbeat dad has his last name, not his mom.
Yes I still own my Alf doll from the 80's.
He is my favorite playmate.
He brought the sun with him when my cat of twenty four years died of a stroke. My live-in fiancé brought Lucian home shortly after we cremated her (D was her name), and I promised him that I would never love another cat again. That did not last more then five minutes. He use to sleep in my hand because he was so tiny. Love is the answer to any tragedy. However you label it, love saved me.
Those are my Groucho Marx glasses. I keep them in my purse. Airport security will love that today, on my evening flight to Los Angeles. It's going to be a Gold Star Day!
I always thought it was Woody Allen that said, "I would never join a club that would have me as a member." It was actually Groucho Marx.
I am pretty sure that it was Woody Allen who responded to the comment from one of his movies: ['.After 200 years of being frozen and then revived, he was immediately told that all his friends were dead.'] His response was, "Dead? But they all ate organic rice."
I keep him supplied with organic catnip all day long.
Both planted and canned catnip. After all he was born in Humboldt County.
I should keep the catnip in a martini glass.
He has his 'business in front, party in the back' socks to fit his personality; White high tops in the back, white gloves in the front (very professional.)
The world was waiting for this guy to come around. He also goes the aliases: Hinee Shines, The Mayor, McDoogs, Doogle-esqe, Doctor Poopinton, Professor Scootington, and the convicted mathematical murderer: Hans Reiser (I never got that name, but a guest labeled him with the name [probably because he is also a genius] and it stuck. My favorite is simply Lucian-Myer Price.
His deadbeat dad has his last name, not his mom.
Yes I still own my Alf doll from the 80's.
Those are my Groucho Marx glasses. I keep them in my purse. Airport security will love that today, on my evening flight to Los Angeles. It's going to be a Gold Star Day!
I am pretty sure that it was Woody Allen who responded to the comment from one of his movies: ['.After 200 years of being frozen and then revived, he was immediately told that all his friends were dead.'] His response was, "Dead? But they all ate organic rice."
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Jeff Ross Has A Beautiful Heart
Thank you so much! I found this today, and it made me very happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VluVrHDv_8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VluVrHDv_8w
Thursday, June 9, 2016
I Am As God Made Me Sir
Job 23:10
Here, I'm listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2LQdh42neg
This blog's function is to focus my thoughts on anything other then my inevitable move from this apartment in South Austin, and I have to leave in just three days. I'd rather write, deflect, and day dream. Procrastination, masturbation, education, procreation, illumination.
One of my favorite movies is 'Enter The Dragon'; yeah, it's that story. When I was 26, I started to cultivate my manipulation skills thinking that people would not see that sucker punch coming. But I have rules and tact. Don't hurt the good people; the gentle souls. They do exist always.
I have a blog called, "One Answer To Cynicism" that is a true story about coming into work one morning while in the mist of a difficult time. A secret hard time. I took my ripped up jeans and my backpack and drove the scooter my family forced me to learn to drive to work. Crazy Lithuanians. It took 45 minutes just to get to work, which was for my friends at a French cafe-
Side Note: I forgot about the French band: Air. Or the Italian band Blonde Redhead. I had a bunch of mixed tapes from a comic book control freak that I dated in San Francisco. He'd make the tape cases into works of art. I still have the actual tapes with black ink, stars, and layers of construction paper taped and deliberately pulled off in a perfectly ripped effect. His CD cases were better. I still have a few propped up around my little apartment.
-That's such a random side note I forgot what I'm saying. I walked into work one day and found a guitar with a note taped to it with my name written in black marker. There were no people cool enough in my life then to surprise me that way. The note was a typed history of the guitar, what music store its previous owner thought were best to patron, and a request to leave this guitar outside of the cafe when I am finished and have, "upgraded to a bigger ax."
It was signed, "Anonymous." After a little thought I deduced it was...the musician who comes into the store with his wife. The guy I almost cried to about wanting a guitar on a particularly busy day at work. That guy. His name was Tracey. His wife and him had a baby girl they took into the cafe. My point is...
If Tracey had ever come back into the store, I would have thought he had a motive. If his wife ever came back, I would have thought the same. But he never did. At least not in the five months following this gift. Maybe people try more often to be cool, but the gesture is lost in search of a motive. This musician and his wife had no motive but kindness. Being on the receiving end of such a gracious gesture during a painful time was one of the best feelings I have ever felt. This story is my life's thesis. There are genuine people in the world that put time into making others happy just for the sake of the process of making someone happy.
I suppose you can say that it makes them feel better to be cool. That is the extent to their 'selfish' act.
If I did this random act of coolness to someone having a hard time (which he knew nothing about by the way), I'd have done my part to turn the world with a purity that rises above human nature. The condition of selfishness that I believe is inherent in the human core. We can rise above our instincts.
After saying all of that, I can go the opposite way just as easily. 'Enter the Dragon' has always been on of my favorite movies for some of its quotes. I love the discipline of martial arts. My older brother studied Aikido when we lived together after school. He accidentally kicked me in the nose once. It hurt.
In 'Enter The Dragon' fashion, I broke yesterday when I received an e-mail in response to needing help in finding a place to live. So far I have been interviewed by a goat owner (he owned goats) on a commune in Austin. Then a Fulbright Scholar I nearly gave $480 to for a scam. The last was a Chinese poker player who wrote the e-mail that sparked this blog. He is not in the drug world. I am not in the drug world. It is far away in the distance and I am not looking back. The poker player told me he would help me...if I slept with him. I know that talk well. I never sold my soul in that manner.
I woke up in tears again today because I have a few days to make a serious decision and the weight is crushing. Where the hell am I going to live? Felons need to network. Everyone needs to network. My family has a farm in Maryland. That farm is just ruins of a better time when I was very young. I never got a single phone call in high school. I played soccer after school with my brothers.
I don't like what I'm trying to sell in this blog.
The premise to 'Enter The Dragon' is as old as the idea of a brothel. Get women addicted to drugs to control them. To trap them. Now that I am a felon (I feel bad for felons) I have to summon all of my skills cultivated from when I had an $80 a day addiction to feed and no job. I hustled for two years before I admitted that I'm not a good poker player. Or that I am an excellent one. In the end all I had was bravado.
Example of later stages of hustling: Taking my former fiance's birthday gift of lesbian porn in DVD format (which included my favorite director Micheal Ninn's Fem Dolce with Sophie Moone, [Yowzers!]) to Arcata's Mom & Pop record shops to ask if anyone would buy them at a discount price from me right on the spot for cash. I remember the waiting time with such focus and hope. By then I had lost any iota of embarrassment, which returned naturally as I sobered up (in spades.)
A decade later, I still remember the ordeal of standing around in an elegant black trench coat that hid an unattractive waif figure; waiting for what seemed like a half an hour for the employees in the back of the store to return with their answer. Those were the final days of my addiction. I sobered up cold turkey in the corn fields of Nebraska, where I decided to write my thoughts down in a blog I titled: "The Maladjusted Rants." Well I'll be. That is a graphic overshare. Moving on...
The stain of what I saw in people will never leave me. When I have panic attacks, like this morning (nothing coffee can't fix) it's about that type of ugliness in people. When the world falls apart I want everyone to follow the rules. I'm a lot like The Big Lebowski's Walter Sobchak. Every day I'd love to take a crowbar to a car just for the release. We live in a society. I take Valium instead.
Side Note: I still have a petition with over 300 signatures to replace the statue of Mckinley in Arcata, California with a big ass statue of The Dude with a bowling ball in hand. If someone wants to champion that cause, I've got that petition still. In fact now that I think of it, the reason I moved to Austin, Texas was because I followed the advice of the Professor that I had an affair with (got an "A" baby!...affair started after the class of course) who allowed me to give a speech in his class about replacing Mckinley's shaking hand with The Dude. It's Humboldt County. The Dude should be our mascot.
Another thing about that Mckinley statue: The drugged out bums that line the bars there cut off the thumb of that statue and sent a ransom note to the City of Arcata board of directors asking for a million dollars in exchange for his thumb. I do not believe their demands were met. The pigpen cloud of weed above their heads made them bad candidates for proper negotiation.
I am going down swinging. My brother staged a perfect exist when he could not escape the hell he put himself in. I'm not going to kill myself over too many choices. I'm still fighting to stay here in Austin. Every day I make a phone call to get a plane ticket to the BWI airport; then I straighten my posture, dress to the 9's, and make two phone calls to stay in Austin. I carved a life out here in cowboy territory; all mapped out by Cormic Mccarthy in Blood Meridian, the only book my cat's dead beat dad claims to have read. What the fuck was I thinking? Oh, I was drinking! Drinking, not thinkin.
My priorities are to keep my cat happy and free. I want to remain free. I'm no different from anyone else.
By the way, my favorite quote from Enter The Dragon is from Williams (Jim Kelly.) He says, "Defeat? I don't waste my time with it. When it comes, I won't even notice; I will be too busy looking good." I'm going to stand up before I get knocked out.
I have to add something that makes me laugh. I have a stalker who I can't quite file paperwork against because of something he wrote me that makes me smile every time I remember it. I told him that my grave stone will read, "It's all good." His was better. It would read, "My Mother Told Me This Would Happen."
Here, I'm listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2LQdh42neg
This blog's function is to focus my thoughts on anything other then my inevitable move from this apartment in South Austin, and I have to leave in just three days. I'd rather write, deflect, and day dream. Procrastination, masturbation, education, procreation, illumination.
One of my favorite movies is 'Enter The Dragon'; yeah, it's that story. When I was 26, I started to cultivate my manipulation skills thinking that people would not see that sucker punch coming. But I have rules and tact. Don't hurt the good people; the gentle souls. They do exist always.
I have a blog called, "One Answer To Cynicism" that is a true story about coming into work one morning while in the mist of a difficult time. A secret hard time. I took my ripped up jeans and my backpack and drove the scooter my family forced me to learn to drive to work. Crazy Lithuanians. It took 45 minutes just to get to work, which was for my friends at a French cafe-
Side Note: I forgot about the French band: Air. Or the Italian band Blonde Redhead. I had a bunch of mixed tapes from a comic book control freak that I dated in San Francisco. He'd make the tape cases into works of art. I still have the actual tapes with black ink, stars, and layers of construction paper taped and deliberately pulled off in a perfectly ripped effect. His CD cases were better. I still have a few propped up around my little apartment.
-That's such a random side note I forgot what I'm saying. I walked into work one day and found a guitar with a note taped to it with my name written in black marker. There were no people cool enough in my life then to surprise me that way. The note was a typed history of the guitar, what music store its previous owner thought were best to patron, and a request to leave this guitar outside of the cafe when I am finished and have, "upgraded to a bigger ax."
It was signed, "Anonymous." After a little thought I deduced it was...the musician who comes into the store with his wife. The guy I almost cried to about wanting a guitar on a particularly busy day at work. That guy. His name was Tracey. His wife and him had a baby girl they took into the cafe. My point is...
If Tracey had ever come back into the store, I would have thought he had a motive. If his wife ever came back, I would have thought the same. But he never did. At least not in the five months following this gift. Maybe people try more often to be cool, but the gesture is lost in search of a motive. This musician and his wife had no motive but kindness. Being on the receiving end of such a gracious gesture during a painful time was one of the best feelings I have ever felt. This story is my life's thesis. There are genuine people in the world that put time into making others happy just for the sake of the process of making someone happy.
I suppose you can say that it makes them feel better to be cool. That is the extent to their 'selfish' act.
If I did this random act of coolness to someone having a hard time (which he knew nothing about by the way), I'd have done my part to turn the world with a purity that rises above human nature. The condition of selfishness that I believe is inherent in the human core. We can rise above our instincts.
After saying all of that, I can go the opposite way just as easily. 'Enter the Dragon' has always been on of my favorite movies for some of its quotes. I love the discipline of martial arts. My older brother studied Aikido when we lived together after school. He accidentally kicked me in the nose once. It hurt.
In 'Enter The Dragon' fashion, I broke yesterday when I received an e-mail in response to needing help in finding a place to live. So far I have been interviewed by a goat owner (he owned goats) on a commune in Austin. Then a Fulbright Scholar I nearly gave $480 to for a scam. The last was a Chinese poker player who wrote the e-mail that sparked this blog. He is not in the drug world. I am not in the drug world. It is far away in the distance and I am not looking back. The poker player told me he would help me...if I slept with him. I know that talk well. I never sold my soul in that manner.
I woke up in tears again today because I have a few days to make a serious decision and the weight is crushing. Where the hell am I going to live? Felons need to network. Everyone needs to network. My family has a farm in Maryland. That farm is just ruins of a better time when I was very young. I never got a single phone call in high school. I played soccer after school with my brothers.
I don't like what I'm trying to sell in this blog.
The premise to 'Enter The Dragon' is as old as the idea of a brothel. Get women addicted to drugs to control them. To trap them. Now that I am a felon (I feel bad for felons) I have to summon all of my skills cultivated from when I had an $80 a day addiction to feed and no job. I hustled for two years before I admitted that I'm not a good poker player. Or that I am an excellent one. In the end all I had was bravado.
Example of later stages of hustling: Taking my former fiance's birthday gift of lesbian porn in DVD format (which included my favorite director Micheal Ninn's Fem Dolce with Sophie Moone, [Yowzers!]) to Arcata's Mom & Pop record shops to ask if anyone would buy them at a discount price from me right on the spot for cash. I remember the waiting time with such focus and hope. By then I had lost any iota of embarrassment, which returned naturally as I sobered up (in spades.)
A decade later, I still remember the ordeal of standing around in an elegant black trench coat that hid an unattractive waif figure; waiting for what seemed like a half an hour for the employees in the back of the store to return with their answer. Those were the final days of my addiction. I sobered up cold turkey in the corn fields of Nebraska, where I decided to write my thoughts down in a blog I titled: "The Maladjusted Rants." Well I'll be. That is a graphic overshare. Moving on...
The stain of what I saw in people will never leave me. When I have panic attacks, like this morning (nothing coffee can't fix) it's about that type of ugliness in people. When the world falls apart I want everyone to follow the rules. I'm a lot like The Big Lebowski's Walter Sobchak. Every day I'd love to take a crowbar to a car just for the release. We live in a society. I take Valium instead.
Side Note: I still have a petition with over 300 signatures to replace the statue of Mckinley in Arcata, California with a big ass statue of The Dude with a bowling ball in hand. If someone wants to champion that cause, I've got that petition still. In fact now that I think of it, the reason I moved to Austin, Texas was because I followed the advice of the Professor that I had an affair with (got an "A" baby!...affair started after the class of course) who allowed me to give a speech in his class about replacing Mckinley's shaking hand with The Dude. It's Humboldt County. The Dude should be our mascot.
Another thing about that Mckinley statue: The drugged out bums that line the bars there cut off the thumb of that statue and sent a ransom note to the City of Arcata board of directors asking for a million dollars in exchange for his thumb. I do not believe their demands were met. The pigpen cloud of weed above their heads made them bad candidates for proper negotiation.
I am going down swinging. My brother staged a perfect exist when he could not escape the hell he put himself in. I'm not going to kill myself over too many choices. I'm still fighting to stay here in Austin. Every day I make a phone call to get a plane ticket to the BWI airport; then I straighten my posture, dress to the 9's, and make two phone calls to stay in Austin. I carved a life out here in cowboy territory; all mapped out by Cormic Mccarthy in Blood Meridian, the only book my cat's dead beat dad claims to have read. What the fuck was I thinking? Oh, I was drinking! Drinking, not thinkin.
My priorities are to keep my cat happy and free. I want to remain free. I'm no different from anyone else.
By the way, my favorite quote from Enter The Dragon is from Williams (Jim Kelly.) He says, "Defeat? I don't waste my time with it. When it comes, I won't even notice; I will be too busy looking good." I'm going to stand up before I get knocked out.
I have to add something that makes me laugh. I have a stalker who I can't quite file paperwork against because of something he wrote me that makes me smile every time I remember it. I told him that my grave stone will read, "It's all good." His was better. It would read, "My Mother Told Me This Would Happen."
Thursday, June 2, 2016
A Yes Man For Pussy
Please Consider My Request To Add This Term To The English Urban Dictionary-
Noun. Yes Man For Pussy.
The term used for a man (or woman) who has morals, integrity and strong values that remain mute when asked to speak up against their partner in a third party argument for fear of not getting any pussy that night or for their foreseeable future.
Side Note: Actually my sister told me that her child, in kindergarten now, corrected her when she used the word: 'Snowman.' It's actually "Snow person."
(My auto-corrector has not caught up on this political correction.)
Example: "I believe to my core that your husband does not agree with your justification, so ask my partner. He's more reliable because he is not a yes man for pussy."
A worm, whose need for pussy prevents them from asserting their beliefs for fear of jeopardizing their chances of getting laid.
Political Correctness would alter the word from Man to Person.
Try: "He's not a Yes Person For Pussy."
Ah, it sounds better as: Yes Man For Pussy.
I'm living in the Ice Age.
Noun. Yes Man For Pussy.
The term used for a man (or woman) who has morals, integrity and strong values that remain mute when asked to speak up against their partner in a third party argument for fear of not getting any pussy that night or for their foreseeable future.
Side Note: Actually my sister told me that her child, in kindergarten now, corrected her when she used the word: 'Snowman.' It's actually "Snow person."
(My auto-corrector has not caught up on this political correction.)
Example: "I believe to my core that your husband does not agree with your justification, so ask my partner. He's more reliable because he is not a yes man for pussy."
A worm, whose need for pussy prevents them from asserting their beliefs for fear of jeopardizing their chances of getting laid.
Political Correctness would alter the word from Man to Person.
Try: "He's not a Yes Person For Pussy."
Ah, it sounds better as: Yes Man For Pussy.
I'm living in the Ice Age.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
The Banana Peel Serial Killer
Since I received that cease and desist letter taped to my front door by my neighbor, I have had one very awkward encounter. I put his note on here under "The Banana Peel Incident." Shortly after that happened, I bought a new smartphone with text message ability. Recently my texting abilities were revoked.
I sound like a kid. I can't text anymore. It's a bad function for someone with no current job and too much time on her hands. I always feel like I should be drunk when I'm texting. It's just too easy to reach people. When a thought pops up, I grab my phone and share it. Not always clear and concise information. There is more then an electronic pong game going on in my head I'm sure. Insanity has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence makes insanity worth sharing for entertainment purposes only.
Before I got my text messaging revoked because of misuse, I wrote the author of the banana peel letter a lot of text messages. He was a good friend of mine for over a year and I was trying to reconnect with him. At the very least, I wanted to suppress any irrational fears on either of our parts so throwing the trash away would be hassle-free.
Long story short, I was taking out the trash a few days ago and I ran into him while he was standing next to the only community trash can while talking to a middle aged woman. They both ran like chickens without heads in separate directions and left me scratching my head.
The power of avoidance moves me to accomplish great things. I stopped drinking and started attending alcoholic's anonymous because this banana peel fearing neighbor (Ian) was an outspoken recruit and he chain smokes next to the only community trash compactor. Its annoying. I started piling up my trash to avoid him. Then I tried to get brave by mentally mapping out times he smoked and correlate when I could safely be out and about. I hid behind a parked car once to avoid him. He eventually ambushed me. Now I'm sober.
He is a lawyer by training, and he's also a modern day Rain Man. He can memorize numbers; he knew my whopping four digit apartment number for a good six months before taping a note to the door. I know he has some form of autism. I really liked the guy a lot. Which is why I kept texting him (with no reply) to please talk this out; at least for the sake of my trash pile-up depression. I warned him by text message just days before this happened; that one day I might run into him and it would be awkward.
I had a thirty pound bag of used cat litter in one hand and a little shopping bag with lint (for all I know, one neurotic tick of mine is picking up cigarette butts, and type of trash; I like the woods to be free of litter.) I saw him talking to a woman and I started to turn around. But I noticed he could see me, and I did not want him to feel like he could bully me and I had to be fearful. So my gait switched from causal stroller to angry power walk and I went for it! I walked right up to him and this woman with my trash in hand (smelly urine soaked cat litter...oh man...I'm already called the crazy cat woman by many) and I yelled, "This is what I mean by an awkward meeting!"
Now, I can only assume what he said to that woman when my ears were ringing as I touched the trash can as if it was my safe home base, but after the trash went in, I calmed myself down and slowly turned around to see them running helter skelter in separate directions. He is at least six feet tall. I'm a puny little nerd; the type of person that was the last to be picked in every grade school sports event. When by default I was put on someone's volley ball team, the ball would bounce right in front of me, or hit my head as I was looking at the clock on the wall to see how much more gym class I'd have to take. I peed my pants in gym class once because I could not stop laughing. My shorts never fit my hips and the elastic was not tight enough to keep them from falling down. I'm not a butt crack girl. I'm a pancake no-butt girl who gets hit in the side of the head by soccer-volley-kick all types of balls. That makes classmates double over in laughter that I analyze for the next four grades with a secret deep seeded resentment that one day comes out in a $200 therapy session as the root cause for why I did in fact inhale.
There goes my political career.
To find a person from the same culture who fears me is...awesome! But definitely a mistaken emotion that is completely wasted on someone like me. I am far more fearful of him. I don't have the nerve to tape a note on anyone's door accusing them of harboring a murderous intent via banana peel. That's fucking crazy.
And it is refreshing for me to label a duck a duck and a crazy note just that when the subject is about random banana peels causing intentional pain for my, 'entertainment and giggles'. No one in any of our mutual circles has laughed about this entire thing. They are actually trying to understand him. Not me. The man is afraid of a banana peel and a 120 pound woman whose arm has never bent a tiny amount when I had to attempt a chin-up in school. Throughout my entire painfully mandatory gym class career my arm has never moved a minuscule amount when forced to try for a chin-up. My arm has never slightly bent.
He is afraid of me?
The woman ran one way, he ran the opposite way and hid behind his truck. My heart sank when I saw that. I'm human and that hurt my feelings. I composed myself and aimed my walk intentionally at him to confront him and tell him to stop this craziness. But when I took that first step in his direction from the trash compactor to him, he took off with more running, and this time a fast sprint out of sight.
About an hour after that, I received a text message from someone whose apartment window faced the parking lot this took place in. The cryptic message implied that I am a bully. I have been throwing away my trash at 3am for the past two weeks. I got brave...and threw away the trash in broad daylight. I am in my isolated apartment (with insomnia and blankets tacked to the windows) so often lately, when I come out and people scatter like that, I am left to try to make sense out of nonsense. Which is why I am writing this down. Now it's down and its out of my mind. There is no sense to be made of it.
I should buy a large banana costume and wear it to take out the trash. Things could not get more bizarre then they already have over nothing.
That's all I have for today.
I sound like a kid. I can't text anymore. It's a bad function for someone with no current job and too much time on her hands. I always feel like I should be drunk when I'm texting. It's just too easy to reach people. When a thought pops up, I grab my phone and share it. Not always clear and concise information. There is more then an electronic pong game going on in my head I'm sure. Insanity has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence makes insanity worth sharing for entertainment purposes only.
Before I got my text messaging revoked because of misuse, I wrote the author of the banana peel letter a lot of text messages. He was a good friend of mine for over a year and I was trying to reconnect with him. At the very least, I wanted to suppress any irrational fears on either of our parts so throwing the trash away would be hassle-free.
Long story short, I was taking out the trash a few days ago and I ran into him while he was standing next to the only community trash can while talking to a middle aged woman. They both ran like chickens without heads in separate directions and left me scratching my head.
The power of avoidance moves me to accomplish great things. I stopped drinking and started attending alcoholic's anonymous because this banana peel fearing neighbor (Ian) was an outspoken recruit and he chain smokes next to the only community trash compactor. Its annoying. I started piling up my trash to avoid him. Then I tried to get brave by mentally mapping out times he smoked and correlate when I could safely be out and about. I hid behind a parked car once to avoid him. He eventually ambushed me. Now I'm sober.
He is a lawyer by training, and he's also a modern day Rain Man. He can memorize numbers; he knew my whopping four digit apartment number for a good six months before taping a note to the door. I know he has some form of autism. I really liked the guy a lot. Which is why I kept texting him (with no reply) to please talk this out; at least for the sake of my trash pile-up depression. I warned him by text message just days before this happened; that one day I might run into him and it would be awkward.
I had a thirty pound bag of used cat litter in one hand and a little shopping bag with lint (for all I know, one neurotic tick of mine is picking up cigarette butts, and type of trash; I like the woods to be free of litter.) I saw him talking to a woman and I started to turn around. But I noticed he could see me, and I did not want him to feel like he could bully me and I had to be fearful. So my gait switched from causal stroller to angry power walk and I went for it! I walked right up to him and this woman with my trash in hand (smelly urine soaked cat litter...oh man...I'm already called the crazy cat woman by many) and I yelled, "This is what I mean by an awkward meeting!"
Now, I can only assume what he said to that woman when my ears were ringing as I touched the trash can as if it was my safe home base, but after the trash went in, I calmed myself down and slowly turned around to see them running helter skelter in separate directions. He is at least six feet tall. I'm a puny little nerd; the type of person that was the last to be picked in every grade school sports event. When by default I was put on someone's volley ball team, the ball would bounce right in front of me, or hit my head as I was looking at the clock on the wall to see how much more gym class I'd have to take. I peed my pants in gym class once because I could not stop laughing. My shorts never fit my hips and the elastic was not tight enough to keep them from falling down. I'm not a butt crack girl. I'm a pancake no-butt girl who gets hit in the side of the head by soccer-volley-kick all types of balls. That makes classmates double over in laughter that I analyze for the next four grades with a secret deep seeded resentment that one day comes out in a $200 therapy session as the root cause for why I did in fact inhale.
There goes my political career.
To find a person from the same culture who fears me is...awesome! But definitely a mistaken emotion that is completely wasted on someone like me. I am far more fearful of him. I don't have the nerve to tape a note on anyone's door accusing them of harboring a murderous intent via banana peel. That's fucking crazy.
And it is refreshing for me to label a duck a duck and a crazy note just that when the subject is about random banana peels causing intentional pain for my, 'entertainment and giggles'. No one in any of our mutual circles has laughed about this entire thing. They are actually trying to understand him. Not me. The man is afraid of a banana peel and a 120 pound woman whose arm has never bent a tiny amount when I had to attempt a chin-up in school. Throughout my entire painfully mandatory gym class career my arm has never moved a minuscule amount when forced to try for a chin-up. My arm has never slightly bent.
He is afraid of me?
The woman ran one way, he ran the opposite way and hid behind his truck. My heart sank when I saw that. I'm human and that hurt my feelings. I composed myself and aimed my walk intentionally at him to confront him and tell him to stop this craziness. But when I took that first step in his direction from the trash compactor to him, he took off with more running, and this time a fast sprint out of sight.
About an hour after that, I received a text message from someone whose apartment window faced the parking lot this took place in. The cryptic message implied that I am a bully. I have been throwing away my trash at 3am for the past two weeks. I got brave...and threw away the trash in broad daylight. I am in my isolated apartment (with insomnia and blankets tacked to the windows) so often lately, when I come out and people scatter like that, I am left to try to make sense out of nonsense. Which is why I am writing this down. Now it's down and its out of my mind. There is no sense to be made of it.
I should buy a large banana costume and wear it to take out the trash. Things could not get more bizarre then they already have over nothing.
That's all I have for today.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
The Murder of Maud Edgell
I'll start this by saying that my writing talents have diminished to the point of being a moral hypocrite just to get something written down. That blog on Ron Launius is ideally how I feel about exploiting a death by murder. There is no way I can write about Ms. Edgell without exploiting her death. I acknowledge that my mother raised me with morals, and at least I can redeem myself by starting off with an apology to my mom's side of the family.
When I lived with my grand mother, who was a perfect person, I found a manila (why not settle on the word vanilla?) folder in my bedroom that contained close to two hundred poems typed on an old fashioned type writer. They were on the bottom of a bookshelf in my bedroom for who knows how long, completely tucked away. I grew up with the story of Ms. Edgell in my mind, so my thought went to depression about her life. Her life was depressing, she was violently murdered, and all her poems were on the bottom of a dusty bookshelf with a ton of Catholic propaganda that kept me away from shuffling through that mess to read what was in her mind before she became a reclusive alcoholic who lived in the woods on my family's property.
I remember thinking that I wanted my life to be more then a folder of poems found by a twenty year old woman who only knew about the worst of me.
I can wait forever to become a good writer to honor her, or I can just write about this and bring up a few issues that her murder raised and pretend that I'm not exploiting her death, I'm explaining how factors like guns and police can not help in every circumstance. Ms. Edgell's death could have been prevented by her loaded guns. Ms. Edgell's death could have been prevented by the three 911 calls and three police trips out to check on her while she was in fear the night she died. Ms. Edgell's death could have been prevented by the many guard dogs she had for protection (who instead delimed her after her murder due to hunger.) Finally if the Crownsville mental hospital kept a lock on violent patients, none of this would have happened.
Separate from the thought years after finding her poems that I wanted to celebrate her life (this is not a celebration,) I've been watching these scary Youtube videos that claim to be true stories about scary events in the woods. I'm waiting for someone to bring up my family. Superficially, they can give off a abandoned cabin in the woods-type vibe. We happen to have an abandoned cabin in our woods too.
I grew up in a loving home on a colorful organic blueberry farm. The walk to the bus stop was about a quarter of a mile, and when I was young I remember passing my grandparent's colorful garden that lined the driveway. The flowers that bloomed in the Spring attracted butterflies. I wish I had known then how lucky I was to have that view for so long. The last stretch of woods before the bus stop had honeysuckles lining the edge of the road, and the smell was intoxicating. We were taught how to pull apart a honeysuckle flower to get that little bead of dew, which, in retrospect (and a lot of therapy) was meditative. My grand mother grew peppermint and spearmint to add to her flower bouquets for the farmer's market. The grass before our granite rock driveway always had dew that made my shoes muddy by the time I got to school. I was once teased about that dirt on my shoes. Then it was embarrassing, now I know about D.H. Lawrence, class wars, and the money ladder that manners should instill in others.
The nightmare of this story should be that the woods outside our 48 acre farm were cut down by yuppies lacking any creativity. Now instead of woods, we have cookie cutter McMansions. All our childhood trails are gone. The ponds have drained. A walk in the woods usually includes a hunter on our property now, even though its not quite fair to the deer when the trees have thinned out. I've never consciously cried about the yuppie invasion. It's a bummer though.
Before the yuppies invaded and upped the stock of The Gap and J.Crew in Annapolis (Google Epping Forest get an idea of a community next to ours), there were acres and acres of thick woods between our isolated home on the edge of our family commune (it basically is a commune) and the states biggest mental hospital. Also, the country's first nudest colony. The mental hospital, Crownsville mental hospital, closed down about ten years ago. But in the 1970's, my goodness did I hear some terrifying stories. And yes, the mental patients did get to go to the nudest colony years ago. My mother once threw a bag of clothes over the gate.
The mental patients were allowed to roam free. As a child I did not understand mental illness. Children don't need adult problems. Children have no need for religion. As an adult now I know that there was the worst type of mental illness very close to home. One of my aunts is a paranoid schizophrenic. She never asked for that illness. I am not a religious person, but do believe in a great light in the world. The idea of compassion being paramount to the designer of mankind can be severely questioned with the words: Paranoid Schizophrenic. Despite having that degenerative illness, my aunt is one of the most fascinating and loving people I have ever met. She built all the rope swings in the woods that we had so much fun on as children. She built a two story house made of the rock around her (I have a blog about The Rock House) and used it to give troubled teens an escape from their homes. She and my mother volunteered at the mental hospital (yes, my aunt eventually became a patient) and they gave out cigarettes and candy.
Some random stories from the Crownsville woods when my mom was a kid herself include:
-A mental patient who somehow found sets of women's clothing. He dug deep graves and put the woman's clothing in the graves. Then he buried the clothes. He probably got the clothing from stealing it when he was in the Crownsville hospital (or nudist colony) and his burial ritual was observed by my aunt, uncle and their friends, from a distance. No one was missing, so his ritual was allowed. Like I said, in the 1970's-early 80's patients roamed freely through the woods.
-Three patients at separate times were killed by a pack of wild dogs. My mother and her sister were expert climbers. In fact before my aunt (the paranoid schizophrenic) was beaten in her own home with a metal chair that shattered and permanently deformed her arm, she could do over 15 pull-ups. She has the body of Linda Hamilton from Terminator 2.
Side Note: That attack on my aunt, which nearly killed her, was the catalyst that caused me to try the heroin my next door neighbor in Arcata was just getting into. Her attackers were people my uncle took in from a bad neighborhood. One spent less then a year in prison, and in his trial his lawyers tried to use her paranoid schizophrenia as an excuse for violence to that extreme. What happened to her attacker when he got out of jail? He lives with my uncle still. The damage one person did was like Hiroshima to our lives. That's why I don't live there now. Ironically I wasted two years of my life addicted to heroin because my aunt was attacked by a heroin addict. Yep, that irony is not lost on me.
Anyway, the wild dogs were killed when a pack of police officers took machine guns into the woods. That ended that problem. I was told that wild pigs were in the woods, and my dad was almost attacked by one in a story that always makes my aunt laugh. She laughs because the woods are her home and she adapted extremely well to climb trees with no branches like an inch worm. She had to distract the pig because my dad could not climb trees like her or my mother.
Mr. Amous was another death, but I don't know much about him. He was an alcoholic, like Ms. Edgell, and like Ms. Edgell he lived for free on our property. He had a feud with the teens on the other side of those woods who had dirt bikes, so the only strange thing about his death was that when he was found face first in a five foot well he dug himself, there were fresh dirt bike tracks near him. Growing up I was always fearful of dirt bikes (even though I rode them often...other dirt bikers) and guns. So before I forget the subject of this blog, on how guns, dogs and police did not save Ms. Edgell from a preventable murder at the age of 92.
It's worth noting that I am extremely superstitious and have a great deal of respect for the dead.
My older brother was there when they found her body, although he was only two years old and remembers nothing. The story has been told to me many times, but as I get older I don't ask questions. Maud Edgell was a dear friend of my mother's and my aunt. She lived in a little home on our property in the woods (or off but near our property...an important issue because of an alternate theory about her murder.) She was once the head of the Annapolis Poetry Society. She was religious. She drank a lot of alcohol and she was kind enough to have a patient from the Crownsville mental hospital (who had a pass to walk around) do work on her garden for money. The patient was a man named Sunny. I know very little about him. He was in and out of the mental hospital. He was described to me as,"sex crazy" according to a relative who knew him. Also, he was an alcoholic.
The day he got his government paycheck, he bought some hard alcohol and tried to break into Ms. Edgell's house. She called the police, who came by and looked around. That was her first of three calls to the police that night. Sunny went into the house of another woman because people like us kept our doors unlocked. That woman was not home, so Sunny went back to Ms. Edgell a second time. The second time she fired a shot into the air and called the police. They came by and did nothing. They told her to keep her door locked. She had a glass sliding door. I know that the police told her to do this because the same police were annoyed that my mom and her sister reported her missing. Initially the police assumed Ms. Edgell left her home due to fear and they did not want to look for her. The third time Sunny came by, the police gave one last look and stopped believing she was in danger.
The lesson with Ms. Edgell is that she had a loaded gun, but she was so scared the bullet holes were noticeable in a circle that penetrated walls and the glass door. I've always imagined her with a gun in the dark yelling for this man to leave because she has a gun. Her own attempt at scaring him shattered the sliding glass door which allowed him inside access. She had three big dogs whose purpose was for protection because she was a 93 year old woman living alone in the woods next to the county mental hospital. I do not know how she was murdered. She was delimbed, but later the coroner said that her own dogs delimbed her out of hunger. So they did not help her. Her gun was found empty on the floor. My mother and her sister were worried when a routine trip to bring her food reviled the shattered glass and empty gun, but no Ms. Edgell. They refused to allow the police to leave until they found Ms. Edgell, Her arms were the first body part to be found some 200 yards away from her home. She was chewed in pieces by her own guard dogs, which were missing. This was not the same year as the wild dogs though.
Maud Edgell was a distant relative of Francis Scott Key. When I was younger I would get him confused with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her poems are in the spare bedroom of my grand mother's house in Maryland, collecting dust. I wish I knew more about her to honor her life. To me, this story cemented the futility of owning a gun, having dogs as protection (my cat would step on me to get away first!) and the police failing to protect an isolated old woman who called them three separate times. The police were also called to the house of the woman who was not home when Sunny came by. She was lucky. Ms. Edgell knew very well who her murderer was, and she told the police she was terrified. This story has always made me feel vulnerable.
One (ridiculous) theory is that a real estate developer (Perry? I think that's his name) hired Sunny to kill Ms. Edgell so he could demolish her house for more McMansions. Or more homes; this was way before the age of cookie cutter brick homes. My dad buys into the theory that Perry had some involvement because he was known as a shrewd and abrasive business man who had quarreled with Ms. Edgell before. I don't believe he would hire a known violent offender to kill a 92 year old woman. She only had half a decade left at most before a natural death claimed her, if the alcohol did not get her first. However, Perry did build almost immediately after her death, and their quarrel was about land.
These horror stories did effect me growing up. I still hate guns. I had the best dog on planet Earth when I was growing up. Best dog ever. Best cat ever too. I know that my mother was scared to be in our home at night when my father went to work. The woods were scary when we went too far. Now when I go home to visit, I'm more worried of a stray bullet from a hunter then I am of something happening to me.
One more sad thing about these woods are the unmarked graves of the mental patients who died without a proper family burial. There is only one wooden cross to let anyone know that they are standing on a grave site. The mental patients kept horses in large stables next to this graveyard, and the colorful graffiti on the walls to this day interested me. I was raised to fear these woods because of what happened to Ms. Edgell, so seeing normal peace signs in bright colors in this abandoned horse stable made me wonder what these patients were thinking. The idea of them burying woman's clothing was such a contrast from engraving the word 'Love' into these stalls.
These patients were always different from anything going on in my world. We were children and did not understand why anyone would hurt anyone else. Of course not all patients are dangerous; and the stigma is heartbreaking to realize when applied to my own aunt. The notion that someone could see her as someone like Sunny breaks my heart. When I was in the 9th grade, a classmate asked me if I had heard of a crazy person in the woods that carries a shotgun and walks with a black dog. Shadow, the coolest dog on planet Earth was black. And when he said my aunt's name with the word, "crazy" in front of it, with laughter...that was the first time I realized people misunderstand mental illness.
The last thing I'll write down is a memory I have from before kindergarten. My mother would drink two cups of coffee with my aunt in the morning. My aunt would come over for this ritual. I remember spying on them while in my Rainbow Bright pajamas. I clearly remember my mother pleading with my aunt, and my aunt yelling before slamming the door. That was the onset of her schizophrenia. It is convenient for God to always have our back; my God is Creation, void of human prayers. To hear my aunt talk about a summer night with such detail, just to get my lazy butt out of bed to sit on the steps and talk, humbles me greatly. I'll never understand why she has to suffer every day, and to be misunderstood by the very people she loves.
She had long blonde hair and a sincere smile. To love someone so much, who looks like my mother, and know that her disease ruined her in every way is painful. I don't understand why she got that disease and others can go about their lives never knowing the weight of her thoughts. In my 20's, shortly after finding Ms. Edgell's poetry, my aunt picked me up from college because I was in tears over a grade in some forgettable class. She told me to let it all out and feel blessed that I can still cry, because she had no more tears left.
When I lived with my grand mother, who was a perfect person, I found a manila (why not settle on the word vanilla?) folder in my bedroom that contained close to two hundred poems typed on an old fashioned type writer. They were on the bottom of a bookshelf in my bedroom for who knows how long, completely tucked away. I grew up with the story of Ms. Edgell in my mind, so my thought went to depression about her life. Her life was depressing, she was violently murdered, and all her poems were on the bottom of a dusty bookshelf with a ton of Catholic propaganda that kept me away from shuffling through that mess to read what was in her mind before she became a reclusive alcoholic who lived in the woods on my family's property.
I remember thinking that I wanted my life to be more then a folder of poems found by a twenty year old woman who only knew about the worst of me.
I can wait forever to become a good writer to honor her, or I can just write about this and bring up a few issues that her murder raised and pretend that I'm not exploiting her death, I'm explaining how factors like guns and police can not help in every circumstance. Ms. Edgell's death could have been prevented by her loaded guns. Ms. Edgell's death could have been prevented by the three 911 calls and three police trips out to check on her while she was in fear the night she died. Ms. Edgell's death could have been prevented by the many guard dogs she had for protection (who instead delimed her after her murder due to hunger.) Finally if the Crownsville mental hospital kept a lock on violent patients, none of this would have happened.
Separate from the thought years after finding her poems that I wanted to celebrate her life (this is not a celebration,) I've been watching these scary Youtube videos that claim to be true stories about scary events in the woods. I'm waiting for someone to bring up my family. Superficially, they can give off a abandoned cabin in the woods-type vibe. We happen to have an abandoned cabin in our woods too.
I grew up in a loving home on a colorful organic blueberry farm. The walk to the bus stop was about a quarter of a mile, and when I was young I remember passing my grandparent's colorful garden that lined the driveway. The flowers that bloomed in the Spring attracted butterflies. I wish I had known then how lucky I was to have that view for so long. The last stretch of woods before the bus stop had honeysuckles lining the edge of the road, and the smell was intoxicating. We were taught how to pull apart a honeysuckle flower to get that little bead of dew, which, in retrospect (and a lot of therapy) was meditative. My grand mother grew peppermint and spearmint to add to her flower bouquets for the farmer's market. The grass before our granite rock driveway always had dew that made my shoes muddy by the time I got to school. I was once teased about that dirt on my shoes. Then it was embarrassing, now I know about D.H. Lawrence, class wars, and the money ladder that manners should instill in others.
The nightmare of this story should be that the woods outside our 48 acre farm were cut down by yuppies lacking any creativity. Now instead of woods, we have cookie cutter McMansions. All our childhood trails are gone. The ponds have drained. A walk in the woods usually includes a hunter on our property now, even though its not quite fair to the deer when the trees have thinned out. I've never consciously cried about the yuppie invasion. It's a bummer though.
Before the yuppies invaded and upped the stock of The Gap and J.Crew in Annapolis (Google Epping Forest get an idea of a community next to ours), there were acres and acres of thick woods between our isolated home on the edge of our family commune (it basically is a commune) and the states biggest mental hospital. Also, the country's first nudest colony. The mental hospital, Crownsville mental hospital, closed down about ten years ago. But in the 1970's, my goodness did I hear some terrifying stories. And yes, the mental patients did get to go to the nudest colony years ago. My mother once threw a bag of clothes over the gate.
The mental patients were allowed to roam free. As a child I did not understand mental illness. Children don't need adult problems. Children have no need for religion. As an adult now I know that there was the worst type of mental illness very close to home. One of my aunts is a paranoid schizophrenic. She never asked for that illness. I am not a religious person, but do believe in a great light in the world. The idea of compassion being paramount to the designer of mankind can be severely questioned with the words: Paranoid Schizophrenic. Despite having that degenerative illness, my aunt is one of the most fascinating and loving people I have ever met. She built all the rope swings in the woods that we had so much fun on as children. She built a two story house made of the rock around her (I have a blog about The Rock House) and used it to give troubled teens an escape from their homes. She and my mother volunteered at the mental hospital (yes, my aunt eventually became a patient) and they gave out cigarettes and candy.
Some random stories from the Crownsville woods when my mom was a kid herself include:
-A mental patient who somehow found sets of women's clothing. He dug deep graves and put the woman's clothing in the graves. Then he buried the clothes. He probably got the clothing from stealing it when he was in the Crownsville hospital (or nudist colony) and his burial ritual was observed by my aunt, uncle and their friends, from a distance. No one was missing, so his ritual was allowed. Like I said, in the 1970's-early 80's patients roamed freely through the woods.
-Three patients at separate times were killed by a pack of wild dogs. My mother and her sister were expert climbers. In fact before my aunt (the paranoid schizophrenic) was beaten in her own home with a metal chair that shattered and permanently deformed her arm, she could do over 15 pull-ups. She has the body of Linda Hamilton from Terminator 2.
Side Note: That attack on my aunt, which nearly killed her, was the catalyst that caused me to try the heroin my next door neighbor in Arcata was just getting into. Her attackers were people my uncle took in from a bad neighborhood. One spent less then a year in prison, and in his trial his lawyers tried to use her paranoid schizophrenia as an excuse for violence to that extreme. What happened to her attacker when he got out of jail? He lives with my uncle still. The damage one person did was like Hiroshima to our lives. That's why I don't live there now. Ironically I wasted two years of my life addicted to heroin because my aunt was attacked by a heroin addict. Yep, that irony is not lost on me.
Anyway, the wild dogs were killed when a pack of police officers took machine guns into the woods. That ended that problem. I was told that wild pigs were in the woods, and my dad was almost attacked by one in a story that always makes my aunt laugh. She laughs because the woods are her home and she adapted extremely well to climb trees with no branches like an inch worm. She had to distract the pig because my dad could not climb trees like her or my mother.
Mr. Amous was another death, but I don't know much about him. He was an alcoholic, like Ms. Edgell, and like Ms. Edgell he lived for free on our property. He had a feud with the teens on the other side of those woods who had dirt bikes, so the only strange thing about his death was that when he was found face first in a five foot well he dug himself, there were fresh dirt bike tracks near him. Growing up I was always fearful of dirt bikes (even though I rode them often...other dirt bikers) and guns. So before I forget the subject of this blog, on how guns, dogs and police did not save Ms. Edgell from a preventable murder at the age of 92.
It's worth noting that I am extremely superstitious and have a great deal of respect for the dead.
My older brother was there when they found her body, although he was only two years old and remembers nothing. The story has been told to me many times, but as I get older I don't ask questions. Maud Edgell was a dear friend of my mother's and my aunt. She lived in a little home on our property in the woods (or off but near our property...an important issue because of an alternate theory about her murder.) She was once the head of the Annapolis Poetry Society. She was religious. She drank a lot of alcohol and she was kind enough to have a patient from the Crownsville mental hospital (who had a pass to walk around) do work on her garden for money. The patient was a man named Sunny. I know very little about him. He was in and out of the mental hospital. He was described to me as,"sex crazy" according to a relative who knew him. Also, he was an alcoholic.
The day he got his government paycheck, he bought some hard alcohol and tried to break into Ms. Edgell's house. She called the police, who came by and looked around. That was her first of three calls to the police that night. Sunny went into the house of another woman because people like us kept our doors unlocked. That woman was not home, so Sunny went back to Ms. Edgell a second time. The second time she fired a shot into the air and called the police. They came by and did nothing. They told her to keep her door locked. She had a glass sliding door. I know that the police told her to do this because the same police were annoyed that my mom and her sister reported her missing. Initially the police assumed Ms. Edgell left her home due to fear and they did not want to look for her. The third time Sunny came by, the police gave one last look and stopped believing she was in danger.
The lesson with Ms. Edgell is that she had a loaded gun, but she was so scared the bullet holes were noticeable in a circle that penetrated walls and the glass door. I've always imagined her with a gun in the dark yelling for this man to leave because she has a gun. Her own attempt at scaring him shattered the sliding glass door which allowed him inside access. She had three big dogs whose purpose was for protection because she was a 93 year old woman living alone in the woods next to the county mental hospital. I do not know how she was murdered. She was delimbed, but later the coroner said that her own dogs delimbed her out of hunger. So they did not help her. Her gun was found empty on the floor. My mother and her sister were worried when a routine trip to bring her food reviled the shattered glass and empty gun, but no Ms. Edgell. They refused to allow the police to leave until they found Ms. Edgell, Her arms were the first body part to be found some 200 yards away from her home. She was chewed in pieces by her own guard dogs, which were missing. This was not the same year as the wild dogs though.
Maud Edgell was a distant relative of Francis Scott Key. When I was younger I would get him confused with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her poems are in the spare bedroom of my grand mother's house in Maryland, collecting dust. I wish I knew more about her to honor her life. To me, this story cemented the futility of owning a gun, having dogs as protection (my cat would step on me to get away first!) and the police failing to protect an isolated old woman who called them three separate times. The police were also called to the house of the woman who was not home when Sunny came by. She was lucky. Ms. Edgell knew very well who her murderer was, and she told the police she was terrified. This story has always made me feel vulnerable.
One (ridiculous) theory is that a real estate developer (Perry? I think that's his name) hired Sunny to kill Ms. Edgell so he could demolish her house for more McMansions. Or more homes; this was way before the age of cookie cutter brick homes. My dad buys into the theory that Perry had some involvement because he was known as a shrewd and abrasive business man who had quarreled with Ms. Edgell before. I don't believe he would hire a known violent offender to kill a 92 year old woman. She only had half a decade left at most before a natural death claimed her, if the alcohol did not get her first. However, Perry did build almost immediately after her death, and their quarrel was about land.
These horror stories did effect me growing up. I still hate guns. I had the best dog on planet Earth when I was growing up. Best dog ever. Best cat ever too. I know that my mother was scared to be in our home at night when my father went to work. The woods were scary when we went too far. Now when I go home to visit, I'm more worried of a stray bullet from a hunter then I am of something happening to me.
One more sad thing about these woods are the unmarked graves of the mental patients who died without a proper family burial. There is only one wooden cross to let anyone know that they are standing on a grave site. The mental patients kept horses in large stables next to this graveyard, and the colorful graffiti on the walls to this day interested me. I was raised to fear these woods because of what happened to Ms. Edgell, so seeing normal peace signs in bright colors in this abandoned horse stable made me wonder what these patients were thinking. The idea of them burying woman's clothing was such a contrast from engraving the word 'Love' into these stalls.
These patients were always different from anything going on in my world. We were children and did not understand why anyone would hurt anyone else. Of course not all patients are dangerous; and the stigma is heartbreaking to realize when applied to my own aunt. The notion that someone could see her as someone like Sunny breaks my heart. When I was in the 9th grade, a classmate asked me if I had heard of a crazy person in the woods that carries a shotgun and walks with a black dog. Shadow, the coolest dog on planet Earth was black. And when he said my aunt's name with the word, "crazy" in front of it, with laughter...that was the first time I realized people misunderstand mental illness.
The last thing I'll write down is a memory I have from before kindergarten. My mother would drink two cups of coffee with my aunt in the morning. My aunt would come over for this ritual. I remember spying on them while in my Rainbow Bright pajamas. I clearly remember my mother pleading with my aunt, and my aunt yelling before slamming the door. That was the onset of her schizophrenia. It is convenient for God to always have our back; my God is Creation, void of human prayers. To hear my aunt talk about a summer night with such detail, just to get my lazy butt out of bed to sit on the steps and talk, humbles me greatly. I'll never understand why she has to suffer every day, and to be misunderstood by the very people she loves.
She had long blonde hair and a sincere smile. To love someone so much, who looks like my mother, and know that her disease ruined her in every way is painful. I don't understand why she got that disease and others can go about their lives never knowing the weight of her thoughts. In my 20's, shortly after finding Ms. Edgell's poetry, my aunt picked me up from college because I was in tears over a grade in some forgettable class. She told me to let it all out and feel blessed that I can still cry, because she had no more tears left.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
My Jesus Christ Heart
"Sometimes I think the only reason why I have not murdered anyone yet is because you can only kill someone once. Unless you keep reviving them."
That comment slipped out after calling the police over a stalking incident. Obviously, I was upset.
I save all the paperwork I receive from police over incidents when I go the non-cowboy route, and I have started framing their responses. With that particular stalking case, they sent me a letter saying the stalker was not, "annoying enough," among other things. He sent me a death threat, but the officer, God bless his broken heart, spent a good hour and a half going over all my texts to distinguish my threatening comments from said stalker. I was just fucking with that guy. I sent him off with a compliment that he was a good looking man and to be safe out there.
My problem is not with authorities. We have to have police in this world.
Charles Bronson was Lithuanian. One quarter of me does not want to read people their rights.
That comment slipped out after calling the police over a stalking incident. Obviously, I was upset.
I save all the paperwork I receive from police over incidents when I go the non-cowboy route, and I have started framing their responses. With that particular stalking case, they sent me a letter saying the stalker was not, "annoying enough," among other things. He sent me a death threat, but the officer, God bless his broken heart, spent a good hour and a half going over all my texts to distinguish my threatening comments from said stalker. I was just fucking with that guy. I sent him off with a compliment that he was a good looking man and to be safe out there.
My problem is not with authorities. We have to have police in this world.
Charles Bronson was Lithuanian. One quarter of me does not want to read people their rights.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
A Long Rant with No Photos
First off, every ad on the Internet, Nordstrom purchase, personality disorder found surfing the web can be uploaded to my Facebook with the click of that button. The maladjusted in me is actual adult oppositional defiant disorder, which I stupidly put up there on Facebook because people's personal lives are not sacred anymore. That scares me. I use Facebook just enough to report that I'm still alive and like videos like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5PSKYR39sA
Time to empty out my head. I bought a Slip Silk Sleep Mask (in Caramel, from Nordstrom) which came in a few days ago. I was in the apartment office throwing other people's boxes around as if someone sent me crack cocaine. It was better then crack cocaine. A must for insomniacs.
I also use small amounts of Vicks vapor rub when I'm particularly wired, to focus on my breathing. After a hot shower, I weave my hair up in a bun so my pillow can be smooth as silk. I use earplugs if I'm nervous about sleeping in a bed that is not my own. Oh and BioFreeze. That goes on my neck. If I'm with my partner, we are switching turns giving back rubs.
After three sugar-free Redbulls, a news program about El Chapo, Sean Penn (being shady) and a beautiful and fascinating Mexican actress named Kate del Castillo, plus a hot walk in the warm Texas woods, a talk with a double Masters Degree holding, former Manhattan and discontent Connecticut resident, and... what else happened in my run on sentence-type day? The Box. I'll get to the box later.
First, let me get out what little I feel is worth writing about Donald Trump and political correctness. I don't like to label my political beliefs. In fact I try to avoid labels in general because they are restrictive and often come with a stigma. My underlying thoughts always are based on a foundation of compassion and the belief in a unifying beauty to every living entity that is always there even if we are clouded from whatever crap and static make that glowing beauty difficult to see without some catalyst, like a runner's high (run on sentence day again).
There are other catalyst to clear the vision of course, but some have negative side effects that may not be worth the beauty they reveal. I wish my word alone would be enough; to live by faith in my word of this beauty; I swear beauty is always there, whether you see it clearly, beauty is permanent. But if I can circle this rant around The Box, I'll explain clearly how the need to see that beauty without putting in the work, by drugs (LSD in particular) can cause damage that is the equivalent of a high speed car crash to the brain. A half of tab of acid, once, around the right age and with a safe friend is all one ever needs. Ken Kesey never wrote a novel after his LSD experiments, although The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test focused on Ken Kesey as an motivation force. Like Quinn the Eskimo, The Hurdy Gurdy Man or Gilda combined. I would never advocate anyone do hard drugs. The Box I opened today is a concrete example of the negative effects of any drug on the brain. I'll get to that later.
Political correctness can be dangerous. Correcting people who are genuinely innocent in a harsh way, done over and over (from hanging around a certain for example, or a certain environment) can make a person listen to what someone whose platform is, "Down with Political Correctness" like Donald Trump. If one gets caught up in that emotion without using their critical thinking skills and a foundation of compassion, the next genocide is not such a far off slippery slope. I'll explain.
Side Note: Trump is exploiting a annoyance that comes with a vulnerable age that we are all navigating through today. After our first black President (and he did not unify the world, what the fuck?) and blame from a morally pretentious class of people (not morally superior, morally ridged and hyper correcting fuck-tards) Trump has simply taken that annoyance, shook it up like ants in a farm, and converted that annoyance to hate. He gave hate a name too. The OTHER.
When I was 21 to 23, I was very sweet but naive and the crowd that I knew would scold me when I did not know proper names to new concepts, art, and cultures. Actually, just recently, someone from that crowd said that I was racist because I did not know that my friend, who I thought was Chinese (because I could have swore she told me she was) turned out to be from South Korea. Or when I was 21 and discovered anime, I mistakenly called it, "Japanimation" and was again called a racist. Those examples don't seem drastic enough to say Hell Yeah! to water boarding. Here is one that might:
Very quickly, since I gladly erased five paragraphs on this bummer of a subject, let me simplify. In a domestic violence situation I was personally involved in, every police officer called to help me and my bruised body was appropriately on my side. Except the last of seven police on the scene, who happened to be the only black police officer in that county. His name was Bobby Lucas. The mood change from allowing me to have the house for 16 days by myself yelling for me to quickly run in the house to grab my contacts and a change of clothes. I was told by Bobby Lucas that if I talked at all, I'd go to jail where, "No one will be around to hear [my] drama." He was a vicious man with no heart. He and his partner put my older brother, my cat, and me in the back of his police car and dropped us off in an alley two blocks away from my brother's home.
I Googled his name with the county I lived at during this attack. Let's call it for what it was. A physical attack by my ex and a verbal abusive attack by Bobby Lucas. There was a comment that where weed is involved, Bobby Lucas is the man to call. The comment was (I believe) an innocent one. "Sick Bobby Lucas on these potheads!" This is Humboldt County. So many comments followed about this cop being black, therefor everyone supporting that comment was openly labeled a racist.
It takes strength to go past the skin color regardless and say, "This is not right." It also takes strength to understand that we are still in deeply racist times, and we need to create a dialogue again. Dave Chappelle bridged the gap brilliantly, and the man had a beautiful solid gold heart.
It's very hard to believe that I would care more about being labeled a racist then to protect future abused women, but I am ashamed to say that being falsely labeled a racist terrified me to that extent. One rouge cop who happened to be black made me question the concept of political correctness a lot. But not at all in the way Donald Trump has capitalized on switching that term with a free for all on racial stereotypes. Some of this political dialogue has the potential recipe for disaster. We have the books to guide us. The answers are in any good bookstore. People are bouncing off of different wavelengths. Different channels.
Random thoughts: I always thought if a woman could pull off a classic, simple white t-shirt and look beautiful in that white t-shirt, that is one naturally beautiful woman. The t-shirt test I called it. Just plain white, tasteful and relaxed look. Tyra Banks has worn a plain white t-shirt as if it was a two thousand dollar idea hand selected by her personal stylist. To me beauty is what is in other people. What other people have that I don't, that combined would make us fit together perfectly. The colors and patterns of a puzzle piece that ends where I begin.
When I was in jail a woman's perfume was intoxicating. Their pinned up hair and colored nails did something to my motivation. Something not sexual but in that area of arousing emotions. Maybe just motivation for movement. Perfumed skin was sophisticated freedom.
The white t-shirt on Uma Thurman in Kill Bill part one, with her hair back in a ponytail. That's just as attractive as her lavender Prada gown in 1994. I watched the Oscars with my step sister. She exposed me to sewing my own clothes. To the power of images. Someone who I respected as a painter once told me that graphic artists don't care about art. My step sister was a graphic artist. She cared about surface beauty and the ideas were meant for someone else to interpret. I would rather have her talent then the critics. But I have always been a top notch critic with a talent for talented people.
One line from The Ticket that Exploded, read over a decade ago, has stuck with me. The line about boys running mad in the hot sun, trying to burn their sex skins off before their brains morphed forever into perpetual hunger. Hah, I think I made the second half up, but from his idea. When I started to understand that writer, William S Burroughs, I knew my innocent mind was replaced with a sex fever. Pain killers were the answer to that thirst.
A box came from my older brother today. In this box are love letters, extreme insecurity in pages of journal entries in tiny, meticulously written clear thoughts. I saved unopened 1994 FIFA World Cup Soccer Cards hoping that in these few packets I was lucky enough to have Claudio Canniga's card. I even saved the bar of soap from my favorite day, which was the day I saw my first World Cup game (Argentina versus Nigeria) because I had never seen two cultures come together in the sport that united my own Catholic family every Sunday. Soccer is pure. I saved palm leaves from Palm Sunday in the Catholic Church.
Finally, the start of the end was found in this big box. Photos of a girl that I took off the street in an act of kindness. Once that girl pushed her way into my life, the handwriting started to slip. My ability to reason with logic started to slip. Drug experimentation gave way to a new era of dependency. The ideals that were in my childhood upbringing slipped away, like a boat that is no longer tied to its dock. I've used that analogy for alcoholism. A boat with only me inside, seeing the dock that led to the port and the stores and the town and the lights and colors and ducks and birds and shops, like the city of Annapolis that I knew so well; all of that is in its early stages of sinking back from view. I do not advocate any drug use. Meditation, clear air, the seasons, Sunday walks and stress shake off runs are what I consider a must. My love for one person whose sad story made me fiercely defend her cost me years of isolation and a shaky trust in others. My intentions were to help her because no one deserves to live without love. Her love was selfish, and almost two decades later she has not once thanked me. In fact I have never been the focus of such hate for someone whose life I tried to improve. She knows what is in Vogue, and she knows who pays. She knows the hierarchy of the socially graceful, and she was always just an empty shell that mirrors what she covets in others. In the end I can not say that I regret helping this person. I should have put my health and happiness first though, because a trip and fall while helping for love does not mean you'll be helped up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5PSKYR39sA
Time to empty out my head. I bought a Slip Silk Sleep Mask (in Caramel, from Nordstrom) which came in a few days ago. I was in the apartment office throwing other people's boxes around as if someone sent me crack cocaine. It was better then crack cocaine. A must for insomniacs.
I also use small amounts of Vicks vapor rub when I'm particularly wired, to focus on my breathing. After a hot shower, I weave my hair up in a bun so my pillow can be smooth as silk. I use earplugs if I'm nervous about sleeping in a bed that is not my own. Oh and BioFreeze. That goes on my neck. If I'm with my partner, we are switching turns giving back rubs.
After three sugar-free Redbulls, a news program about El Chapo, Sean Penn (being shady) and a beautiful and fascinating Mexican actress named Kate del Castillo, plus a hot walk in the warm Texas woods, a talk with a double Masters Degree holding, former Manhattan and discontent Connecticut resident, and... what else happened in my run on sentence-type day? The Box. I'll get to the box later.
First, let me get out what little I feel is worth writing about Donald Trump and political correctness. I don't like to label my political beliefs. In fact I try to avoid labels in general because they are restrictive and often come with a stigma. My underlying thoughts always are based on a foundation of compassion and the belief in a unifying beauty to every living entity that is always there even if we are clouded from whatever crap and static make that glowing beauty difficult to see without some catalyst, like a runner's high (run on sentence day again).
There are other catalyst to clear the vision of course, but some have negative side effects that may not be worth the beauty they reveal. I wish my word alone would be enough; to live by faith in my word of this beauty; I swear beauty is always there, whether you see it clearly, beauty is permanent. But if I can circle this rant around The Box, I'll explain clearly how the need to see that beauty without putting in the work, by drugs (LSD in particular) can cause damage that is the equivalent of a high speed car crash to the brain. A half of tab of acid, once, around the right age and with a safe friend is all one ever needs. Ken Kesey never wrote a novel after his LSD experiments, although The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test focused on Ken Kesey as an motivation force. Like Quinn the Eskimo, The Hurdy Gurdy Man or Gilda combined. I would never advocate anyone do hard drugs. The Box I opened today is a concrete example of the negative effects of any drug on the brain. I'll get to that later.
Political correctness can be dangerous. Correcting people who are genuinely innocent in a harsh way, done over and over (from hanging around a certain for example, or a certain environment) can make a person listen to what someone whose platform is, "Down with Political Correctness" like Donald Trump. If one gets caught up in that emotion without using their critical thinking skills and a foundation of compassion, the next genocide is not such a far off slippery slope. I'll explain.
Side Note: Trump is exploiting a annoyance that comes with a vulnerable age that we are all navigating through today. After our first black President (and he did not unify the world, what the fuck?) and blame from a morally pretentious class of people (not morally superior, morally ridged and hyper correcting fuck-tards) Trump has simply taken that annoyance, shook it up like ants in a farm, and converted that annoyance to hate. He gave hate a name too. The OTHER.
When I was 21 to 23, I was very sweet but naive and the crowd that I knew would scold me when I did not know proper names to new concepts, art, and cultures. Actually, just recently, someone from that crowd said that I was racist because I did not know that my friend, who I thought was Chinese (because I could have swore she told me she was) turned out to be from South Korea. Or when I was 21 and discovered anime, I mistakenly called it, "Japanimation" and was again called a racist. Those examples don't seem drastic enough to say Hell Yeah! to water boarding. Here is one that might:
Very quickly, since I gladly erased five paragraphs on this bummer of a subject, let me simplify. In a domestic violence situation I was personally involved in, every police officer called to help me and my bruised body was appropriately on my side. Except the last of seven police on the scene, who happened to be the only black police officer in that county. His name was Bobby Lucas. The mood change from allowing me to have the house for 16 days by myself yelling for me to quickly run in the house to grab my contacts and a change of clothes. I was told by Bobby Lucas that if I talked at all, I'd go to jail where, "No one will be around to hear [my] drama." He was a vicious man with no heart. He and his partner put my older brother, my cat, and me in the back of his police car and dropped us off in an alley two blocks away from my brother's home.
I Googled his name with the county I lived at during this attack. Let's call it for what it was. A physical attack by my ex and a verbal abusive attack by Bobby Lucas. There was a comment that where weed is involved, Bobby Lucas is the man to call. The comment was (I believe) an innocent one. "Sick Bobby Lucas on these potheads!" This is Humboldt County. So many comments followed about this cop being black, therefor everyone supporting that comment was openly labeled a racist.
It takes strength to go past the skin color regardless and say, "This is not right." It also takes strength to understand that we are still in deeply racist times, and we need to create a dialogue again. Dave Chappelle bridged the gap brilliantly, and the man had a beautiful solid gold heart.
It's very hard to believe that I would care more about being labeled a racist then to protect future abused women, but I am ashamed to say that being falsely labeled a racist terrified me to that extent. One rouge cop who happened to be black made me question the concept of political correctness a lot. But not at all in the way Donald Trump has capitalized on switching that term with a free for all on racial stereotypes. Some of this political dialogue has the potential recipe for disaster. We have the books to guide us. The answers are in any good bookstore. People are bouncing off of different wavelengths. Different channels.
Random thoughts: I always thought if a woman could pull off a classic, simple white t-shirt and look beautiful in that white t-shirt, that is one naturally beautiful woman. The t-shirt test I called it. Just plain white, tasteful and relaxed look. Tyra Banks has worn a plain white t-shirt as if it was a two thousand dollar idea hand selected by her personal stylist. To me beauty is what is in other people. What other people have that I don't, that combined would make us fit together perfectly. The colors and patterns of a puzzle piece that ends where I begin.
When I was in jail a woman's perfume was intoxicating. Their pinned up hair and colored nails did something to my motivation. Something not sexual but in that area of arousing emotions. Maybe just motivation for movement. Perfumed skin was sophisticated freedom.
The white t-shirt on Uma Thurman in Kill Bill part one, with her hair back in a ponytail. That's just as attractive as her lavender Prada gown in 1994. I watched the Oscars with my step sister. She exposed me to sewing my own clothes. To the power of images. Someone who I respected as a painter once told me that graphic artists don't care about art. My step sister was a graphic artist. She cared about surface beauty and the ideas were meant for someone else to interpret. I would rather have her talent then the critics. But I have always been a top notch critic with a talent for talented people.
One line from The Ticket that Exploded, read over a decade ago, has stuck with me. The line about boys running mad in the hot sun, trying to burn their sex skins off before their brains morphed forever into perpetual hunger. Hah, I think I made the second half up, but from his idea. When I started to understand that writer, William S Burroughs, I knew my innocent mind was replaced with a sex fever. Pain killers were the answer to that thirst.
A box came from my older brother today. In this box are love letters, extreme insecurity in pages of journal entries in tiny, meticulously written clear thoughts. I saved unopened 1994 FIFA World Cup Soccer Cards hoping that in these few packets I was lucky enough to have Claudio Canniga's card. I even saved the bar of soap from my favorite day, which was the day I saw my first World Cup game (Argentina versus Nigeria) because I had never seen two cultures come together in the sport that united my own Catholic family every Sunday. Soccer is pure. I saved palm leaves from Palm Sunday in the Catholic Church.
Finally, the start of the end was found in this big box. Photos of a girl that I took off the street in an act of kindness. Once that girl pushed her way into my life, the handwriting started to slip. My ability to reason with logic started to slip. Drug experimentation gave way to a new era of dependency. The ideals that were in my childhood upbringing slipped away, like a boat that is no longer tied to its dock. I've used that analogy for alcoholism. A boat with only me inside, seeing the dock that led to the port and the stores and the town and the lights and colors and ducks and birds and shops, like the city of Annapolis that I knew so well; all of that is in its early stages of sinking back from view. I do not advocate any drug use. Meditation, clear air, the seasons, Sunday walks and stress shake off runs are what I consider a must. My love for one person whose sad story made me fiercely defend her cost me years of isolation and a shaky trust in others. My intentions were to help her because no one deserves to live without love. Her love was selfish, and almost two decades later she has not once thanked me. In fact I have never been the focus of such hate for someone whose life I tried to improve. She knows what is in Vogue, and she knows who pays. She knows the hierarchy of the socially graceful, and she was always just an empty shell that mirrors what she covets in others. In the end I can not say that I regret helping this person. I should have put my health and happiness first though, because a trip and fall while helping for love does not mean you'll be helped up.
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