In Another Life....When We Are Both Cats

The cats were going at it again. I was making breakfast when I heard the wretched sounds of cat-agony coming from the bushes. Admitting my non-existent knowledge of cat brands, it appeared to be a fatass orange one and a white one with black spots. They were caught in a square-off out by the shrubs, with neither of them appearing to stand down at all; the hair on their backs stood stiff and so did the thin upper lips, exposing mouthfuls of eager teeth. I watched them for a while. They were out there when I started eating and they were out there when I was finished, still squared off, hissing and staring. Waiting for concession. The whole incident reminded me of how we deal with confrontation, albeit this in a primal and oversimplified way. I imagined us in a similar (more sophisticated) situation, coating it instead with fancy words and complicated intentions and selfish emotions. Maybe even some words designed specifically to hurt one another. 

We go to great lengths to separate ourselves from the fact that we are fancy animals, but any one of us is really just another cat in the backyard. And cats can’t even forgive.

small world

I saw a woman today asking about the wireless network. The light hair on her cheeks and chin was a little too light and a little too long and I wondered when the light hair on my neck was going to grow to overcome my face as to be the first thing anyone noticed about me save the fact that I can't connect.

I walked outside and I was touching my face opposite grain to the light dusting of hair that had always been growing on it, thinking about when and what it might mean when I might start trading in the cute buckles on my shoes for rubber soles and ordering out of catalogs because deep down I might just want the safe chance to actually interact with somebody new and be needed (my signature is unique), and the moment when I might start lusting for backward and not forward anymore, and I felt a little fleeting helplessness. About then, I passed another woman who I happen to know has seen the Earth from the sky, in space, outside of the Earth and possibly even the moon. I wanted to point at her in recognition and say, "You've been in outer space!" and I wonder what the first thing she might say if she were to point at me and yell the first thing she comfortably thought out loud: "You work in that building!"

It's Still Pollution

the way the hallway is set up, I can hear people talking intimately at either end of the building; their cell phone conversations and idle chatter haunt and brighten the the third floor. the basement is a burden upon the second floor the same way we hear them up here: a child psychologist, a dentist, a pharmacy, and three non-descript doors that are always shut, the people that go in and out of them. we get all kinds. trying to fix their conflicts.

"no sir, the family practice moved across the street; no I don't know the new address."
"no ma'am, we didn't run the other attorney out of business; he's actually dead."
"no; no one needs a phone book anymore."

a mother was at the south end today with her two young children, just leaving the dentist. the dentist gives the kids balloons when they get their teeth cleaned. I've seen them; they don't even have to be good to get the balloon. hardly any of the kids are good. mostly because they don't have to be. they still get the balloons either way. 

one of the children carelessly let the balloon from his grasp and it slowly drifted up toward the third floor ceiling, beyond anyone's safe reach. i saw it lingering there while he was crying to get it back. the other kid held onto her balloon with a firmer grasp than before. they all had matching outfits in and of themselves. all a bit different, but still from the same collection. the mom looked like she might collect something unusual. the balloon-less kid was still going on about losing his balloon.

"you can't get it back," the mother told him. she paused, anticipating the child's curious 'why'. "it's gone to heaven."

the kid put his balloon-less hand into his mother's and the other child did as well and when they walked through the door, the other balloon was released not into an office building but into the sky. where the 'real heaven' is.

i think i just saw a bird choking on it.

Predictable.

One time I offered a complete stranger a ride, from in front of a Wal-mart.

She sat there on that bench in front of the store intended for sitting, clad in clothes that regular people wear when they aren't trying to impress anyone but are just feeling all right with themselves, and maybe thinking about yardwork later if the weather stays nice. Her shopping bags were strewn about her feet in varying positions, some of them upright with the plastic handles teasing each other in the wind and yet others lazily on their side exposing her vulnerable choices in consumer goods. She sat there comfortably with all of those uncomfortable bags and I heard her call a cab. 

I offered her a ride instead. I took her home, and she was thankful and nothing bad happened just like it's not supposed to.

TiptOes

I now believe in God.

It didn't take a miracle, or intimidation, or seeing any sort of light for the love of the Higher Power to blossom within me. Sometimes we go through something so terrible that we can only in hindsight see which forces were working with or against us. Sometimes the Higher Powers cast a protective shroud upon us not to shelter us from opening our eyes to new experience, but to protect us against unnecessary pain, suffering, and strife. The conceptual grasp on the tried-and-true realization that some things do, in fact, trump curiosity is something of which we mortals need to be reminded-- by stern reprimand of others who have gone before us, or through patterns of intended synchronicity or "omens". Only then are our eyes truly opened to the sheer fact that there is no retroactive transgression of what we have already seen. Thus, we can not "un-see" anything. There is no real-life equivalent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. No Vanilla Sky. No Men in Black.

This is why I never saw Two Girls, One Cup. Normally, I can stay a step above curiosity by employing measures to represent my best interests long-term. When someone excitedly runs over with a picture of a woman fucking a donkey, I don't look at it. I don't ever want to look at it, for I don't ever have a need for that imagery -- on purpose or on accident. At no point will seeing a real image of said woman fucking said donkey ever have more of a meaningful purpose to me than how I can imagine a woman might look fucking an imaginary donkey. No, sir, I can learn from my past mistakes; I realize the irreversibility of taking that leap.

This is why I am ashamed, horrified, and saddened that I missed the obvious clues trying to keep me away from a little thing called Tiptoes. I'm usually better than this. When a woman who is deemed by every social code ever enacted as "off-limits" spends all night flirting with you and careening over your lap like a drunken flag in the wind, let it end there-- as a memory. Likewise, when you see the trailerfor Tiptoes, do not pursue the movie. For the love of the God that tried to protect me, do not see the movie.

It all started when Tony brought over a DVD, which he took out of the sleeve and put in my face. It had a homemade label on it that appeared to be a headline and newspaper clipping detailing the "Dwarf Tossing Championships".

"Does your DVD player play AVIs?" He asked, spacing out the last few words as he glanced at my DVD player and realized that it was not even from this milennium. Strike one.

The DVD player did not play AVIs. We decided to run to Micro Center and get some adapter cables to make it possible for my laptop to play the AVI through my HDMI port. I picked up a mini-display to DVI adapter, and a DVI to HDMI cable. When we returned home to find that the laptop did not have a mini-display port we were left with way more acronyms than solutions. Strike two.

We decided to just watch it on the 13" laptop screen. Everything was going smoothly until the sound of the dog gnawing on rawhide drowned out any dialogue. If we could only have seen the end at the beginning. Strike three.

"We're going to have to watch this at my house." Tony said, staring blankly at the screen.

This is when Tiptoes turned from a movie into a god-damned mission. New couch, new TV, new acronyms. It's go time. So both of us merely blinked when the movie began and the sound was nearly seven seconds off from the actors' mouths moving. Strike 4. We got the sound back on.........inEspanol. Strike 5. Yet we still forged on. It looked as though we were going to have to watch the movie from his laptop, routed to the TV screen. It took about ten minutes to find the cable and another ten minutes to get sound and video to play nice with each other. Nearing Strike SIX, Tiptoeswas happening.

There are no words or clever metaphors that could begin to explain what it is like to sit uncomfortably through this movie. By the time it was over, I felt as though I had been drafted for the war, fought it, lost a leg, lost my buddies, returned home to find my wife cheating on me with my brother, pregnant with his baby, endured a three-year long bout with post-traumatic stress disorder, got on the wagon, got back off the wagon, and spent the night cold and naked in an alley puddle for no good reason. It's almost like the equivalent of going out to eat at Applebee's, and instead of being there for 45 minutes, you end up being there for so long that you feel not only that you should, but that it is your obligationto write a letter to corporate demanding a part of your life back and a $50 gift card just won't cover it.

There is absolutely no explanation for this movie, and there are no reparations for it. It is Two Girls, One Cup-esque in nature, in that I would actually prefer watching people's reactions to this video moreso than I could ever enjoy the video itself. However, it's not just another bad movie. It's an overwhelmingly bad movie that is packed full of A-list actors, some of whom fuck midgets repeatedly throughout, and some of whom are normal sized actors that were cast as midgets. The only explanation that I can muster is that there is one person in the world, a person with a picture of an orgy depicting Kate Beckinsale giving Gary Oldham a Blumpkin while Matthew Mcconaughey, David Alan Grier and a French midget literally form a French Sandwich while Patricia Arquette does blow in the corner by the toilet, and they all agreed they were willing to do whatever it took to keep that picture buried forever. The first ten minutes could be renamed "Matthew McConaughey's Package" and the rest of it could be renamed "What the Fuck".

You might want to -- but don't.

9 Realistic Ways to Save Money in a Recession

Dude, times are hard. Even Japanese companies are laying off workers, and as I learned from NPR this morning, Japanese companies don't lay people off. I learned from someecards that keeping your job was the new promotion, and I learned by the overwhelming positive undertones that are scaring their way into the local and national news that shit must be getting really, really bad. 

Here are a couple things I have been doing to save money, and I thought that I would share them with you as well, in case you find yourself feeling the crunch.

1. Condoms are expensive. Fear not! You can make your own out of leftover plastic wrap from deli meats and cheeses and a rubber band or hair tie, both of which can be found in your neighbors' trash. Make sure to leave enough room at the end for the 'reservoir tip' or things are going to get pretty messy pretty fast.

2. Cats eat tuna. People eat tuna. Canned cat food tuna costs $.79, canned people food tuna costs $1.99. Two words: Casserole.

3. Petty theft. Think about it; if it were SO bad, it wouldn't be called petty.

4. Start answering Craigslist ads from strange gentlemen traveling here on business that just claim to want to take a nice lady to dinner. They get: attention. You get: free dinner, and the fuck out of there before they notice.

5. Find alternate uses for common household objects. For example, did you know that a cast iron waffle maker can double as an assault weapon? Additionally, a chair can also be used for those high and hard-to-reach areas. Wave goodbye to your bills for bats, guns, 'Beware of Dog' signs, and stepstools.

6. Explain to your friends that your license has been suspended and pressure them into giving you rides to and, most importantly, home from the bar. Not only will this save you money, you will find out who your true friends are.

7. Why give up beer AND food, when beer IS food? Studies show that replacing two meals a day with beer not only works quicker than traditional diets, but if you hit up strictly happy hours and you aren't that picky, you can save up to $200 a month. Combine this tip with the one listed above, and the money-saving potential doubles.

8. Break up with your significant other. In a rough economy, something's gotta give. The emotional trauma that ensues from breaking off a healthy and relatively stress-free relationship will make your appetite virtually disappear. No appetite = no grocery bill.

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting. Hey; it's only temporary.

Dead Baby Kristine

It's not so much that I have a clock ticking by which I feel as though I need to pump out a baby, it's just that as each day passes, people are ruining names I could pick for my future children. I have to hurry up and get someone to get me pregnant or the only decent names that don't have any painful or uncomfortable memories attached to them are going to be ones I'm going to have to bring back from the 1940s. Like Harold, or Eugene or Gail. Or, I'm going to have to get creative and throw an apostrophe in there someplace. I'm torn though because I want my kid to be able to find his or her name on pencils and stickers and shit at the flea market. I know the disappointment that is attached to hopefully searching the rack of personalized mugs or cards or pencil toppers from your knees and never being able to find your name spelled correctly, or even at all. 

Sometimes I sit and consider names that I would like to name a future spawn, only to get waited on by a 'Trent' or a 'Brendan' a week later that is a total dick. Thus, all fleeting experiences are potential spoilers for my unnamed baby. So, you have to think, that at some point when a couple of people are dreaming up what they're going to call their kid for the rest of its life, YOU might actually come up in conversation as a reason to not name the baby with your name. 

"Oh, man, we can't name this baby Kristine."
"Why not?"
"I knew this girl once that told me this really disgusting story about tampons and dead babies or something."
"Oh my God, that's terrible!"
"I know."
"Well, what about Katie?"
"I actually like that name, but we can't name her that, either."
"Because?"
"That was the dead baby girl's sister."
"Oh." 

See how many names you can come up with that have absolutely no accompanying issues relating to famous people, friends, family, friends of friends, waiters, high school classmates, baristas, etc. I am beginning to get a better understanding of how people end up named Lashawnda and Moonflower.

We Didn't Start the Fire

Some people read books, some changes are inspired by poetry, and some rely on the wisdom from friends or fortune cookies or quotes underneath bottle caps to lead their life in its next new direction. But - there is a lot to be learned from the cyclical nature of things that happen around us every day. As people, we come and go, and spend the process of our lives trying to get better by what we learn and how it applies to making situations better for ourselves and those we love. A lot of these lessons can be learned by just paying attention to the subtleties by which the trees still stand, the birds still sing, and rocks become perfectly smooth just by looking up from a modest river. And not. doing. a. damn. thing. These are things that have lasted much longer than I ever will and with so much less control. I don't read a lot of books that encourage me to relinquish control and encourage taking no action whatsoever. 

The other day was a cold day, inside and out, and I decided to start a fire to bring some warmth to my situation. An event that was mostly reserved for the man of the house, I realized that I had relied on that for so long I did not even know how to build fire -- one of the most basic needs of survival. I struggled with the flue, got soot all over my hands, and set up the wood how I picture campfires in my mind. I wadded and lit the paper, put it into my perfect arrangement, yet it merely teased me until it just dissipated into ashes once again. As my frustration grew, my sense of failure also grew, and I began to correlate all sorts the disappointments in my life with the fizzling fire. I was doing everything right that I knew how to do, and it lay there, crackling and cold. In a final attempt I got down on my knees, through tears, to cup my hands and blow my wavering breath to the still-burning embers only to see glimpses of hope and inevitable failure. Again.

I walked away, dejected and bruised, to focus my efforts onto other things that needed done and served to take my mind off of the smoke lingering in the fireplace. I turned on the space heater, put on some socks, and eventually I did forget about my earlier efforts because I was productive elsewhere. About an hour later, while bringing some clothes out into the living room, I heard a crackling from the hallway. Slowly, I approached the hearth to see that the wood and ashes - which had been gray and dull - were now fully engulfed into healthy sized flames, with each log afire. Outside, I heard the wind whistling through the trees and realized it was nature's own hand that started my fire. Perhaps I did have everything perfectly placed, but the conditions were just not conducive for the flourishing fire when I wanted it. 

The best thing I actually did was to walk away.

Things Disney Did to Complicate My Life

Everything I need to know, I learned from believing the complete opposite of every animated Disney movie I have ever seen. Sure they seem as innocuous as a wide-eyed virgins within them, but there are some dangerous lessons we are learning from these cheerful cartoons. I feel it is harmful to feed these fairy tales to our impressionable youth, setting them them up to spend a lifetime getting crushed by the realities of life instead of the oversimplified idealism they were expecting. Ok, so maybe that's just me. But, there are just some things that you can't un-learn: our sense of mortality, the concept of failure, and of course that some prince is out there waiting for us.

I watched Little Mermaid again this week, and such is not the best thing to do when you are feeling sorry for yourself, heartbroken, or otherwise pining for times past or a better future. 

So here it is, oversimplified, just as Disney would have wanted it.

Things Disney Did to Complicate My Life:

1. Everything has meaning. No it doesn't. Some things just don't make any sense. They're possibly never going to make any sense and the only thing worse than not knowing, is beating yourself up about it. 

2. I am never going to have hair like that. EVER. See also: I am never going to have boobs like that, I am never going to have a waist like that, I am never going to have eyes like that, etc.

3. Animals can talk. Perhaps this is the most difficult one for me to overcome. I want them to talk SO. BAD. And, even though I am an animal-lover, I think that this kind of thing leads us to humanize animals, which isn't the best thing for domesticated pets (or for children's charities).

4. Three words: Peter Pan Syndrome. RUN FROM IT AS FAST AS YOU CAN, WENDY!

5. Things will fall into place for us if we just have faith. As much as I want to believe this one (religious overtones omitted purposely) I don't realistically think that the best path to meet our goals is passivity, or faith in the universe to make our lives better for us. I think you have to get off your ass and make shit happen for yourself, and I think having control of your OWN life is actually the ideal I should have learned.

6. I need a hero. Women are constantly being put in a position in these movies where a major obstacle cannot be overcome until a prince saves them and sweeps them off their feet. In conjunction with the afore-mentioned 'faith' complex, I don't think that submissivity and parlaying to outdated ideas of the weaker gender is really gonna land us a great man. You know, the one that's out there searching for us this very minute. Conversely, this puts men in a position where they feel as though they have to take on a woman's problems in order to feel useful in her life.

7. You can trust anyone that isn't blatantly scary, or who is a witch. Everyone else's intentions are as good as gold. Right?

8. Good always triumphs over evil. Uh, does anyone else watch the news?

9. You don't need a mother. How many of the Disney characters were orphaned, or had no mother figure? Cue abandonment issues...

10. There is one person out there for all of us; our true love. Some people actually NEVER get over this one. I hate to piss on this idealism when it's still so culturally sound, but I don't believe in the concept of true love. I believe in working hard, compromise, and learning how to relate to people to make the best of your relationship.