theology&geometry

Okay, I feel slightly better. Took a shower and ran some errands. Got groceries. Picked up some sparkling wine so I can have mimosas during Futurama‘s Comedy Central premiere. How festive.

I don’t know what I’m all worked up over. I mean, I finally did something I should have done a long time ago and now everything is just really, really off. I crave distractions, and the ultimate resolution to this ongoing ordeal. I look forward to the day when I can look back on this as a learning experience, as something that made me stronger. Part of the story. Not the defining element.

It will get better. It has to.

I finally made it out to some haunted houses this weekend, starting with Nightshade Manor Sunday night and the two Nightmarez Haunts in Cordova last night.

Nightshade Manor was decent last year, but it seems like it improved this year. They added a hallway lit by strobes where heads and chains and (plastic) barbed wire hang from the ceiling so that you bump into nasty stuff as you make your way through. There was no dude who chased us out with a chainsaw, though. But I guess seeing my friend Shane walk through the entire house in a French maid outfit (complete with ghost-deflecting duster!) made the lack of chainsaw-wielding maniacs worth it.

(Also, as Shane and his girlfriend are vegetarians, I had to wonder how they felt about the room featuring the writhing, headless pig hung from the ceiling, and the fat man walking past us with that pig’s head on his dinner plate. I mean, human gore is one thing, but animals?)

Patrick, who runs the Nightmarez Haunt, was awesome and kind enough to invite me to go through the haunts (there are two of them: a creepy 3-D clown haunt and an insane asylum) and then come backstage to see how everything works behind the scenes. I have to tell you, being behind the heavy black curtain for half an hour seriously made me reconsider my career trajectory. Because those people have so much fun. I know it takes a lot of money and a lot of time, but I imagine it’s got to be worth it when you can scare the crap out of suburban teenagers who think they’re invincible.

The clown haunt is exceedingly weird. It’s blacklit, and there’s neon paint splattered everywhere, including the floor, so that everything you look at looks three-dimensional. I saw some seriously demented clown artwork and masks. And I lumbered my way through one of those revolving mirrored funhouse tunnels without falling down. Score!

The asylum haunt was my favorite of the two (I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of clowns, but I have a low tolerance for them). You walk in and a crazy doctor is operating on a patient, and the doctor starts talking to the group about the patient’s problem (dagger through the skull) and how he’s going to fix it. The patient, of course, is the fellow in the wheelchair in this photo, and he doesn’t have too much to say about his ordeal. So the doctor tells you you’re about to take a tour of his facility or whatever (I don’t remember the exact speech, but you get the idea) and that YOU’LL NEVER MAKE IT OUT ALIVE, BWAHAHAHA! He ushers you into some kind of elevator/transporter, and he closes the door, and it’s pitch black. I was in there with two girls I didn’t know and Patrick, who was hamming it up to make it even scarier. People start beating on the box, and it starts moving all around and it’s quite creepy.

I won’t give away everything, but I will give serious, serious props for two rooms in the haunt: The meatlocker room (elbow your way through bodies hanging in plastic, some of which are twitching) and the open, barely lit room leading to the kitchen.

That was the absolute scariest moment of the whole thing for me. Most of the haunted houses keep people moving along through narrow corridors with occasional wider rooms that display scary things. This held to that convention mostly, but suddenly you’re exiting a hallway into a very dark, very large room with low-hanging moss and vines above you, and absolutely no idea where in the room to go. You can see shadowy movements in the distance, in the corner. And light coming from somewhere. But it’s up to you how you make your way across that room.

Me? I ran. Okay, fast-walked.

It was awesome.

From what I can tell, the big difference between Nightshade and Nightmarez is the acting of the volunteers. Nightshade seems to have more actors (they’re paid), but for the most part, they follow you around, staring at you menacingly from beneath their makeup or masks. It’s creepy. Very much so. But it’s not scary in a jump-out-and-make-you-scream way. Nightmarez relies on actors (volunteers) who will ham it up based on the story. There was the doctor, of course, who was kind of silly and not too threatening, but then there are other demented doctors and nurses running around, interacting with people and asking if they’re next for their appointments. Then you’ve got patients who are up and running and scaring the bejesus out of you when possible.

All the haunts put their proceeds to good causes, which is excellent, but even if they didn’t, I’d recommend everyone go and check them out.

Nightshade Manor: 1301 Heistan Place
Nightmarez Haunt: North Germantown Parkway at Trinity Lane

This time last year, I was sitting at my desk at work, thinking about how gross I felt, and as I slurped down the last sugary mouthful of a canned Coke, I realized — as the clouds parted and the angels sang and God stroked his honky bearded chin in approval — that soda was going to have to go.

So that very moment I resolved to make that Coke my last. Ever. And to transform my soda-drinking habit (I probably averaged three or fours cans a day, minimum) into a water-drinking habit.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy; I’d actually tried to cut back before and failed miserably thanks to my aversion to water and my addiction to caffeine and sugar.

See, I was a hardcore soda devotee. I’d grown up in a household where soda wasn’t kept or offered to the kids. My parents kept a cache of Diet Coke, which we wouldn’t drink even if we were lying in a dust bowl dying of thirst. The kids were expected to drink Kool-Aid the juice, for the most part. We got soda on special occasions and holidays. It goes without saying that soda wasn’t available at school.

When I got to middle school, though, all that changed. There was a single Coke machine in the entire building, and students earned Coke passes for getting good grades and basically making teachers’ lives easier. We’d stockpile passes and then send classmates out on Coke runs when the teachers gave us the go-ahead, usually on Friday afternoons. My friends and I developed an intense addiction to the bright-yellow allure of Mello Yello. It became our official drink. We sought it out in all situations. And when its luster began to fade, we looked for the rare and elusive Surge at gas stations and Sam’s Clubs. Surge was like Mello Yello, only it tasted like shit and claimed to have a hundred times the caffeine. Surge helped usher in the era of the crap-tasting energy drink. I thank the fate monkeys in the sky that I never hopped on that bandwagon, even when I worked with someone in college who was a campus Red Bull rep and could have had that nasty shit piped directly into my mouth at all times.

In high school, I awarded joint custody of my soda allegiance to Mello Yello and Coke. It was more sophisticated that way, having two favorite drinks. Through college, my habits continued and my teeth dissolved into the sugary concoctions I poured down my throat at and between mealtimes. I further refined my preference to Coke when I moved to Memphis and Mello Yello became hard to come by.

Water, for all of my life, has been a necessary evil. I only drank it as part of something else — tea, lemonade, Kool-Aid, a concoction meant to dissolve a hangover. I hated the (non-)taste. I hated the smell. I don’t know how a person goes her entire life hating that which comprises 75 percent of her own body. But I did.

Until last year. And I’ll never forget the first few days after the Coke ban. It wasn’t a minefield of caffeine headaches and grumpiness … at first. No, the headaches came slow and steady about three weeks later (actually, it was one headache that lasted for three weeks; I thought I had brain cancer). Instead, what sticks with me is the memory of literally having to choke down water and feeling repulsed by it until I got used to it. I forced myself to drink eight cups — that’s 64 ounces — every day. And by the end of week two or so, the revulsion melted away and in its place there was a weird craving to have water constantly.

This past year I’ve had a few sips of soda here and there, just to see how it tasted, and each sip has been gross and metallic and reminiscent of mid-century medicine. I slipped and drank an entire can of Pepsi once several months ago. It was extremely disgusting. I felt like shit afterward.

I will not make that mistake again.

The other day I finally finished The Game, that supposed bastion of seduction secrets. By the end of the book, I was ready for all of the major players to plan a suicide pact and just end their disgusting, miserable lives once and for all, allowing the rest of L.A. and the world a little breathing room. And dignity.

But, sadly, not even Mystery — who threatened repeatedly — had the proverbial balls to do something so sexy and bold as take a flying leap off a cliff. So to this day, these sultans of sociopathic sexing live and move among us, practicing their creepy craft and bedding drunk women with alarming regularity. Ick.

Thankfully, the bulk of douchebaggery seems to be concentrated in Southern California, where many PUAs congregated several years ago to populate a Real World-esque house together to hone their craft and conduct intensely homosocial bonding experiments (aka “workshops”). According to the book, the exact opposite happened, and most of these Casanovas sat around playing video games and never meeting women, because women were too creeped out to come back to their filthy house that was crawling with creepy little sex-starved trolls.

So, from my perspective, the story is equal parts amusing (Mystery is a fucking nutbag! with daddy issues! and an intense love of Pearl Jam and Tool and Live!) and disgusting (because of the aforementioned douchebaggery and straight-up misogyny), but I have to say that by the middle part of the book — regardless of my feelings regarding the content — I wanted to dunk the author’s bald head in a vat of lye because his writing got so goddamned hackneyed and lazy. I briefly considered starting a chart of clichés, and ticking off each one as I encountered it in the book. From cliché phrases to cliché sentiments, to the recognition of said sentiments as cliché, I felt like Strauss was just yawning his way through most of the book (even the part where he was getting a blowjob while writing — so edgy!!!!! but if he was able to write during it, doesn’t that mean it wasn’t very good? just saying). Sure, he had an interesting story to tell, even if it did make me want to vomit approximately eleven times. But just because the story itself is interesting doesn’t mean you can just phone it in. “Dude, you had to be there” isn’t really a good motto for a writer.

But maybe I’m being too harsh. This book wasn’t written for me. It was written for pimply losers who are socially inept. Okay, maybe it was written for me. I’ll revise: Pimply men who are socially inept. They want the nuts and bolts of the story, not the theory behind how those nuts and bolts feel about about working together. They want something quick and easy so they can figure out how to find someone quick and easy. I get that. Whatevs. It was a best seller.

But honestly, I don’t see how anyone could glean any sort of helpful information from this book, or why anyone would want to after seeing just how awful all the PUAs (who stay in the game) actually are as real human beings. Please, PUAs, stay in SoCal and absorb the shallow women there so none of us here occupying the rest of reality have to deal with you.

Reading this book also got me to thinking about my own style of interacting with people. I was all hot and bothered over the concept of negging — because of its function as an automatic means to gut someone’s self-esteem — and then I realized that I neg people all the time! It’s pretty much my preferred way of communicating with people I like. It hasn’t always been, but some time during college (I figure when I met and had to match wits with The Kids) I became a champion ball-buster. And now my favorite way to show affection (well … my second favorite way) is to lob a well-timed playful insult. I definitely don’t do it to fuck with people’s sense of self-worth, though. But I’m afraid that may be an unintended result.

Holy crap, did this book teach me something after all?

Cue the violins!

I go to Hawaii in two weeks.

I have but one swimsuit.

I have but one battery for my camera, and a mere pair of one-gig memory cards (that will probably last me three hours).

I don’t have a big ol’ bundle of cash saved up like I ought to.

But am I worried?

Hell no.

[for Friday, Sept. 7]

There’s a lot I want to say, but I don’t know where to start. There’s a lot I need to say, to get it written down, because writing it down helps make it real, helps it dissolve into the ether that is life.

For a long time, I have wanted my life to change. And now everything has changed. Everything. This is a situation of my making. And I’m having a hard time handling it. Predictable. But just because I knew badness was coming doesn’t make it any easier to digest. I understand that the badness is necessary. It’s part of the process. But I hate how it takes hold of my core and makes it hard for me to breathe sometimes.

There’s hope, too. But it plays hide-and-seek with me.

I’m trying to be a grown-up about all this. But I am such a fucking child.

Project 365

Yeah, I made that joke. Sue me.

I just bought tickets to Hawaii. I’m all giddy and shit because I’ve never skipped the pond before. Hell, I’ve barely skipped the Mississippi, so this is a big deal for me. I consider the seven-hour layover in Seattle to be part of the adventure. Anyone want to recommend something fun and quick to do at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday in that city? While you’re waiting on your next flight? Yeah, I bet it’ll involve coffee.

I can’t wait. We‘re going to have such a great time. Surfing lessons, mai tais, roasted pigs, credit-card debt. Fan-effing-tastic.

Photo by jhounshell

Let me tell you something about my life, internet.

It’s fucked.

I mean, my life is great in a lot of ways, blah blah obligatory qualifications hooey. I have my health, my freedom, my family, and some truly amazing people in my life. But my life is — and I am — fucked up in ways that are just stupid and frustrating and constant and epic.

I have had the kind of week — okay, past few weeks, months, years, etc. — that I wish I could vomit up. Like a tequila-soaked worm. Just get it out of my gut and flush it and pretend it didn’t exist.

I am ready to move past this phase of my life. The ennui, the uncertainty, the guilt, the fear, the loneliness, all of it. I need a rebirth. A renaissance. A lobotomy. Something.

There is so much work to be done in me but I feel like time is wasting, sand grains are dropping and still I sit, immobile, unable to figure out what steps to take to make myself happy, much less actually take them. And with each day that passes, I see more and more of the parts of myself that I don’t like growing. (Is there a better way to phrase that? Probably. Eh.)

And I am so fucking tired of worrying about how things are going to end up that I can’t stop fantasizing about moving to a city with cliffs so I can go take a flying leap off of one.

I always get bummed out when Bonnaroo rolls around and I’m not there. Why can’t I ever seem to pony up the $200 in time to get my ass to Manchester?

Luckily there are local eyes and ears there for me (and I’m constantly checking the wire at work to see what the latest is; there’s been a death already).

EJ over at Loudersoft is blogging and taking pictures, and the CA has a reporter there blogging at M3mphis. Plus there’s an AP photo slideshow here.

My grandmother, my aunt Cindy, my sister Krissie, and my mom.

Today we sat around a table outside in the absolutely gorgeous mid-May weather, just up a bank from the river in Parsons, and I listened to each of them describe their lives as wives and mothers. It’s a tale of cooking and cleaning and confusion and unconditional love. My grandmother likes to tell the story of her persnickety children and late husband, who were so dead-set against eating instant potatoes that they’d demand to see the potato skins before they’d chow down on the fluffy mound of potatoes in front of them. My sister jokes about her husband calling her at 8 a.m. and asking her what’s for supper that night. My aunt describes the time when she first married my uncle, how his parents would still call every morning to wake him up to go to work. My mom laughs about when she and my dad first married, how, if she’d be away for the weekend, she’d leave carefully prepared dinners in Tupperware containers in the fridge, and how she’d come home and see them untouched, only to find out that my dad had gone to my grandmother’s to eat instead.

This wife/mother thing, it’s a constant comedic (and, to me, infinitely frustrating and mind-boggling) struggle against the enigmatic force of nature that is Man. My cousin Keri is in the on-deck circle, slated to get married next summer, even though, chronologically, I’m the next up. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little uneasy about how my life is panning out. There’s something about sitting around with your family on Mother’s Day that will certainly make you think twice about your deliberately childless, romance-less life. I enjoy being the spinster aunt, the one in the family with no major obligations beyond work. But I can’t help but romanticize what it might be like to join my aunts and grandmother and sister and mother in their sacred status as life-givers and providers. That’s not to say I’d join them in their quest to have dinner on the table every night (or any of the accompanying spoils that metaphor entails). We all have a good laugh at the thought of such nonsense (the women in my family all work their asses off and, quite often, don’t have dinner on the table, and don’t feel guilty about it), but our laughing doesn’t stop the men from asking and expecting that dinner to be prepared. Some traditions die hard. Insert patriarchy-blaming here (or anywhere! everywhere!).

But, life it is what it is. And, for now, it’s mostly good for us. And for that I am grateful and proud. And hopeful.