Me.
I began yesterday morning drinking coffee out of what to most would appear to be a terracotta human head whilst conversing with one of my dear coworkers who had a) just returned from her first trip to New England and b) had just met up with her new boyfriend. Her easy grin and the nearly visible perfume of roses exuding from her skin a la Teresa de Avila could have meant one thing alone: she had it, and she had it bad. As I and my coworkers grilled her like the Khmer Rouge for information about the lad, she pulled a picture of him from his website. As we smashed into a knot to gaze upon his countenance, muffled "ooohs" and "ahhhs" heedlessly emanated from our throats from the place that can't help but talk to a kitten in that voice that makes you seem developmentally delayed. She turned to the jury of her peers and asked what we thought of his picture. We all agreed that he was, indeed, a strapping young thing and very easy on the eyes. "Are you just saying that because you are my friends?" she asked. We assured her that, no, we weren't sparing her feelings because she was dear to us and that we would always be honest with her.
It was at this point that I deigned to open my trap and let this escape:
"Oh, man, like when people bring you their babies and the thing looks like a cabbage in a kilt and you have to coo over it? No, we wouldn't do that to you."
A cabbage in a kilt? As soon as I said it I realized that it came from a place - a dank, cold place that smells of river plants and mothballs - where my inner old man lives. He's not one of those cute old men who sits out in front of the drug store and waves at all of the passing traffic. There are no twinkly eyes, no Werther's Original butterscotches for the neighborhood children, no clumsily-palmed five-dollar-bills for the grandkids. No, my inner old man drinks bourbon out of a sack and breaks wind intentionally when teenagers pass his park bench. He gums corn off the cob at the Elks Lodge annual Fourth of July picnic shamelessly and makes up stories about wars he was never in while pointing to scars procured in tragic gardening mishaps.
And he's getting out and about a whole hell of a lot more.
I shall return to thee with reports of how my birthday went shortly, but until then, I remain,
Domonic
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
You all know what I am talking about here.
You're just about to transition completely from your day - replete as it was with moments that make that small, pearly-blue vein in your forehead pulse like house music at an East European gay discothèque - into the Land Where You Can Ride Unicorns and Eat Snicker Bars Off Trees. Then, unwarranted and heedless, you manage to dredge up a moment in your past so profoundly embarrassing that you beg the intercession of the deity to whom you cleave in base supplication so that you may actually, at some point in the night, goddamn fall the feck asleep. Something like this:
"Baby Jesus in Thy Oddly Bluish Swaddling Garments", you might begin, "allow me to sleep on this, a Thursday evening at eleven fifty-six, having taken from me the memory of urinating upon myself verily in front of eighty to one hundred amassed parents who were watching the ill-fated soccer game". *
Last night, just as I was preparing to weave a shimmering bridle out of the golden tresses of a lovely and conveniently long-locked maiden for my unicorn stallion, I managed to bring forth a "delightful" memory of my time in North Carolina from what is, apparently, the place in my mind where the Things That Make Me Want to Die Really Really Hard loiter about in slavering anticipation of acute vulnerability.
*wavy, indistinct lines and hellish harp muzak*
Many weekends when I lived in North Carolina I would drive forty minutes southeast through the aromatic bouquet of hog and turkey farms to the unfettered enchantment that is Jacksonville, where my childhood best friend Mary had become ensconsed while performing her service in the US Marine Corps. To actually visit her on base required that I procure a day permit from several heavily-armed, beetling high-and-tight-crowned young men just inside the gates to the camp itself.
I would like to take this moment to remind all of you that I am, in fact, not a girl.
The first few times I had to procure my permit Mary had driven to the gate to smooth things out - patting the shit down, as it were - but, after several trips Mary and I agreed that I knew enough about the way it was going to work to not get myself rifle-butted in the face. The process itself was startlingly simple.
1) You park your car.
2) You get out of your car, open all of the doors, the trunk, the hood and the glove compartment. Two men then proceed to seach your vehicle.
3) You proceed to a cement hut where a gentleman frowns at your driver's license and proof of registration and insurance, scrawls something unintelligible on a piece of paper the size of a postcard and asks you to put this on your dash.
The complicating factor: these were large, heavily muscled, very deadly serious men with gigantic, scary guns. The logical part of me knew that they wouldn't hose me down in a tempest of molten lead unless I did something profoundly special. The part of me that writes this 'blog, though, has watched too many Vietnam War movies.
The first time I attempted to procure my day pass alone was a sultry, mid-spring afternoon with the imminent threat of the tropical monsoons they like to call "thunderbumpers" redolent on the westward zephyrs. I passed the first guardsman who was hefting what appeared to be a Soviet-ilk surface-to-air missile, and he waved me into secondary inspection. I reached behind me and unlocked the passenger and driver side backseats, popped my trunk and hood and undid the latch to my glove box. At this point two men, each carrying an Israeli bazooka, began walking towards my car.
You will NOT evacuate onto yourself, you hear me?, I hissed to myself.
One lock remained. The passenger side front seat. I reached my tender arms towards it, taut with the mounting anxiety of being vaporized before my time {I've never been to China I'd weep as the salvos slammed into my porcine form}, and managed to
slam my elbow into the car's horn.
I did what any twentysomething male would. Namely, I shrieked like a five-year-old girl. Loud.
And the best part? Since the window was down, there is no way in hell that they hadn't heard it; this, and since the actual blast from the horn was less than a second and my shriek was about one second of utter hysteria, I couldn't hope that the horn had drowned out the sound of it.
I went to the cement hut without meeting their gaze. Yes, gentleman, I, possessed of a college degree, am intimidated enough by two twentysomethings with semi-automatic weaponry that I shrieked like a pre-pubescent girl when I accidentally startled myself with my own car horn. Nothing more to see here. Move on down the road; there's a rainforest green Ford Focus that needs tossing.
{mist}
***
Whilst browsing through the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites for recent updates (among them, the historic Turkish city of Safranbolu, comprised as it is entirely of 17th and 18th century Ottoman architecture), I became aware that my favorite archaeological site of all time had managed to make the list in the recent past.
Now, when I talk about UNESCO World Heritage Sites, think the Athenian Acropolis. Think Angkor Wat. Think the Hagia Sofia. The Great Wall of China. And, among these iconic structures of classical civilizations whose works have shaped our human experience, is the
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump of Alberta, Canada.
Scoffers can go here after they go straight to Hell.
What is the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, one queries? Well, children, the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a natural formation - basically, a really big cliff at the edge of some vast prairie real estate - wherein Plains Native Americans (Canadians?) drove frantic herds of buffalo to their deaths by frightening them into plummeting to their collective dooms. Osteological remains at the bottom of the cliff are dozens of meters deep and bespeak of a massive encampment based at the cliff bottom, where the deceased ungulates would be butchered long into the night. You have to give the Native Americans credit: that was, quite simply, one of the most ingenious methods of dispatching these critters, who frequently were the size of a small SUV. I concur most wholeheartedly with this site being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The most amusing thing about this, then, is the name of the site itself. There is a Friends of Head-Smashed-In Society. There is merchandise that says, um, Head-Smashed-In. And, best of all, when one calls the interpretive center, a relentlessly cheerful young woman answers thusly in her lovely Canadienne accent:
Head-Smashed-In, how may I help you?
That is poetry, sheer poetry.
***
As I near my one year anniversary as a foreign student advisor in July - yes, asses, that's four months away - I sometimes find myself watching my own interactions with students and the Indiana University community with profound amazement. I find myself saying things to internationals with a firmness that can only come with the seasoning of battle and the comprehension of regulation and practice that comes only with the splendor of getting screamed at long-distance from the Asian continent. And, slowly but surely, I am making a name for myself and building a reasonable amount of credibility within the sphere of IU.
Enter the phone call I fielded yesterday.
A foreign student advisor from a nearby school called to discuss the status of a former IU student. With the weight of regulatory knowledge and with deft maneuvering of my fork-ed tongue, I had a long, professional-to-professional conversation with the gentleman. Then, moments before we bid our see-ya-laters, my iTunes media player (which had been set at the lowest possible volume without being muted) changed track from a lovely instrumental Enya track to
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I’m a woman’s man: no time to talk.
It was really, really loud; apparently, that track had been burned at a higher volume than the others.
Thank you, Bee Gees. Thank you for hosing down all of my hopes for peer chitchat with this man with your disco urea.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic
* This actually happened. To me.
"Baby Jesus in Thy Oddly Bluish Swaddling Garments", you might begin, "allow me to sleep on this, a Thursday evening at eleven fifty-six, having taken from me the memory of urinating upon myself verily in front of eighty to one hundred amassed parents who were watching the ill-fated soccer game". *
Last night, just as I was preparing to weave a shimmering bridle out of the golden tresses of a lovely and conveniently long-locked maiden for my unicorn stallion, I managed to bring forth a "delightful" memory of my time in North Carolina from what is, apparently, the place in my mind where the Things That Make Me Want to Die Really Really Hard loiter about in slavering anticipation of acute vulnerability.
*wavy, indistinct lines and hellish harp muzak*
Many weekends when I lived in North Carolina I would drive forty minutes southeast through the aromatic bouquet of hog and turkey farms to the unfettered enchantment that is Jacksonville, where my childhood best friend Mary had become ensconsed while performing her service in the US Marine Corps. To actually visit her on base required that I procure a day permit from several heavily-armed, beetling high-and-tight-crowned young men just inside the gates to the camp itself.
I would like to take this moment to remind all of you that I am, in fact, not a girl.
The first few times I had to procure my permit Mary had driven to the gate to smooth things out - patting the shit down, as it were - but, after several trips Mary and I agreed that I knew enough about the way it was going to work to not get myself rifle-butted in the face. The process itself was startlingly simple.
1) You park your car.
2) You get out of your car, open all of the doors, the trunk, the hood and the glove compartment. Two men then proceed to seach your vehicle.
3) You proceed to a cement hut where a gentleman frowns at your driver's license and proof of registration and insurance, scrawls something unintelligible on a piece of paper the size of a postcard and asks you to put this on your dash.
The complicating factor: these were large, heavily muscled, very deadly serious men with gigantic, scary guns. The logical part of me knew that they wouldn't hose me down in a tempest of molten lead unless I did something profoundly special. The part of me that writes this 'blog, though, has watched too many Vietnam War movies.
The first time I attempted to procure my day pass alone was a sultry, mid-spring afternoon with the imminent threat of the tropical monsoons they like to call "thunderbumpers" redolent on the westward zephyrs. I passed the first guardsman who was hefting what appeared to be a Soviet-ilk surface-to-air missile, and he waved me into secondary inspection. I reached behind me and unlocked the passenger and driver side backseats, popped my trunk and hood and undid the latch to my glove box. At this point two men, each carrying an Israeli bazooka, began walking towards my car.
You will NOT evacuate onto yourself, you hear me?, I hissed to myself.
One lock remained. The passenger side front seat. I reached my tender arms towards it, taut with the mounting anxiety of being vaporized before my time {I've never been to China I'd weep as the salvos slammed into my porcine form}, and managed to
slam my elbow into the car's horn.
I did what any twentysomething male would. Namely, I shrieked like a five-year-old girl. Loud.
And the best part? Since the window was down, there is no way in hell that they hadn't heard it; this, and since the actual blast from the horn was less than a second and my shriek was about one second of utter hysteria, I couldn't hope that the horn had drowned out the sound of it.
I went to the cement hut without meeting their gaze. Yes, gentleman, I, possessed of a college degree, am intimidated enough by two twentysomethings with semi-automatic weaponry that I shrieked like a pre-pubescent girl when I accidentally startled myself with my own car horn. Nothing more to see here. Move on down the road; there's a rainforest green Ford Focus that needs tossing.
{mist}
***
Whilst browsing through the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites for recent updates (among them, the historic Turkish city of Safranbolu, comprised as it is entirely of 17th and 18th century Ottoman architecture), I became aware that my favorite archaeological site of all time had managed to make the list in the recent past.
Now, when I talk about UNESCO World Heritage Sites, think the Athenian Acropolis. Think Angkor Wat. Think the Hagia Sofia. The Great Wall of China. And, among these iconic structures of classical civilizations whose works have shaped our human experience, is the
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump of Alberta, Canada.
Scoffers can go here after they go straight to Hell.
What is the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, one queries? Well, children, the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a natural formation - basically, a really big cliff at the edge of some vast prairie real estate - wherein Plains Native Americans (Canadians?) drove frantic herds of buffalo to their deaths by frightening them into plummeting to their collective dooms. Osteological remains at the bottom of the cliff are dozens of meters deep and bespeak of a massive encampment based at the cliff bottom, where the deceased ungulates would be butchered long into the night. You have to give the Native Americans credit: that was, quite simply, one of the most ingenious methods of dispatching these critters, who frequently were the size of a small SUV. I concur most wholeheartedly with this site being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The most amusing thing about this, then, is the name of the site itself. There is a Friends of Head-Smashed-In Society. There is merchandise that says, um, Head-Smashed-In. And, best of all, when one calls the interpretive center, a relentlessly cheerful young woman answers thusly in her lovely Canadienne accent:
Head-Smashed-In, how may I help you?
That is poetry, sheer poetry.
***
As I near my one year anniversary as a foreign student advisor in July - yes, asses, that's four months away - I sometimes find myself watching my own interactions with students and the Indiana University community with profound amazement. I find myself saying things to internationals with a firmness that can only come with the seasoning of battle and the comprehension of regulation and practice that comes only with the splendor of getting screamed at long-distance from the Asian continent. And, slowly but surely, I am making a name for myself and building a reasonable amount of credibility within the sphere of IU.
Enter the phone call I fielded yesterday.
A foreign student advisor from a nearby school called to discuss the status of a former IU student. With the weight of regulatory knowledge and with deft maneuvering of my fork-ed tongue, I had a long, professional-to-professional conversation with the gentleman. Then, moments before we bid our see-ya-laters, my iTunes media player (which had been set at the lowest possible volume without being muted) changed track from a lovely instrumental Enya track to
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I’m a woman’s man: no time to talk.
It was really, really loud; apparently, that track had been burned at a higher volume than the others.
Thank you, Bee Gees. Thank you for hosing down all of my hopes for peer chitchat with this man with your disco urea.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic
* This actually happened. To me.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Hunks of porous, veiny chicken skin-fat and lawn clippings in a piquant clotted cigar-butt saliva sauce.
~ my lunch today
In the past few weeks I've begun a slow but relentless transition into one of those people when I am browsing through the flash-frozen dinner-thing section at the market for my healthy lunch selections. What often happens is that a decidedly one-way conversation ensues which causes the nearby soccer-mom hefting a twenty pound burlap sack of tater tots into her second pushcart to hasten on her way a tad more expediently. It usually goes something like this:
No, not that one - remember? The "beef" tasted like unlaundered road-crew jockstraps and the rubbery string beans needed to be sawed into tiny hunks to be swallowed whole. This one gave you gas that could strip the rust off a lug-nut and curled the linoleum in the bathroom - not to mention the melting of the shower curtain. This one, once cooked, reminded you of that time you found that unidentifiable dead thing washed up on the beach - a mass of protein, hair and a savory brown ooze. Mmm, but that one over there was my-t-fine!
I've begun to communicate with others nearby who, foraging for their meager yet healthy sustenance like me, ask for friendly, peer-based counsel on their selection. "Uh, no", I will say shaking my head and tutting softly, "that one - the chicken in Pinot Grigio sauce? Yeah, that smells like an infected wound and tastes like burned-up Cell-O sponges soaked in gasoline." Soundlessly the product is lowered back into the freezer to await the wretch who, unable to heed my sage recommendation, will purhase it and find themselves in the presence of Satan in the form of "tender chicken medallions" in a "creamy butter and white wine sauce."
{An aside: when did it become fashionable to use the word "medallion" to describe lumps of flesh? And, if it is just that - a smaller-than-a-fist piece of something - I am going to rapidly incorporate it into my everyday speech patterns. "Oh wow", I might say to a fellow travel companion, "did you see that roadkill? There were *insert animal name* medallions all over the highway!" How utterly sublime. }
In stark opposition to other attempts I've made to slim down - effectively circumventing the grim necessity to go shopping in one of those specialty stores that proudly display an 18X pair of slacks resembling a Bedouin tent as their "Big Boy" size - I may actually be able to stay on this one. Fruit and juice for breakfast, a ghastly slurry of flesh and grain products/flaccid vegetables for lunch and a sensible dinner with bruising bananas as snacks in between. It should be bracingly delightful.
Like a slow-sheet enema filled with nearly frozen chunky garden-style Ragu pasta sauce.
***
In the Greenwood Mall there exists a midway stall in which is ensconsed a gentleman who, for a merry little fee, will airbrush any damn thing you want onto "hi-quality" preshrunken t-shirts and other blank items. While not unique in his trade (show me a boardwalk or carnival/circus/county fair where there isn't one of these mutants and I will gladly consume a knuckle of my left pinkie), this particular gentleman seems to delight in showcasing some rather - and here's a surprise! - tasteless license plates. Indiana is a "back plate only" state, so one is able to move as the spirit commands in terms of what one drills into the front bumper's holes. As my eyes alighted on several of his masterfully crafted pieces (Git 'Er Done among them), I managed to behold one that looked like the skyline of Indianapolis - crowned as it is with the uniqueness of the Giant Electrical Outlet Plug Building - but underneath, instead of "I [heart] Indy" or "Speedway City" it said, uh,
Naptown.
Naptown? It took me about five minutes to figure it out; this is because I have apparently lost control of several key chromosomes during my twenty-five years.
India - NAP - olis.
My first thought was, uh, what the motherfeck is this happy horseshit? I have lived in this state for about three years now and I can say with clarion certainty that I have never once heard someone refer to the Crossroads State's capital as Naptown and, had I, I would have punched that person in the neck and run away as fast as my stocky little legs would carry me.
These must be the same people who, I assume, make Bloomington into B-Town (ignoring utterly that the last syllable is -ton, not -town), Orlando into O-Town (the name of an ill-fated boy band whose members, if there is a God, have all had their bowels torn out by timber wolves), and - perhaps most alarmingly - Sacramento into Sac-Town.
Sac-Town. Because that's dignified.
***
Alert Life in the Corn Devotee Gwyneth and I have, as of late, been caught up in the "umm, what the feck?" drama of having bizarre, Blair Witch-esque objects carefully placed in our offices by parties unknown.
Fact #1: Gwyneth, after returning from a weekend to the drudgery of a Monday morning, was greeted by a small, sausage-shaped ball of hair and lint (but not dust!) and a rusty nail in the middle of her office floor as well as other, nearly unidentifiable objects on her desk.
Fact #2: Under my desk there have been placed - for the past three weeks in a row - dead leaves. These are clearly brought into this space as they show no signs of having been tramped upon.
Both of us agree: should a bundle containing a bloody tooth appear, we're resigning and moving to Guam.
Is it the cleaning crew? Is it a disgruntled international who wishes to inject icy fear into our veins? Or is it, as I suspect, Markie Post's nefarious work?
As always, I remain,
Domonic
In the past few weeks I've begun a slow but relentless transition into one of those people when I am browsing through the flash-frozen dinner-thing section at the market for my healthy lunch selections. What often happens is that a decidedly one-way conversation ensues which causes the nearby soccer-mom hefting a twenty pound burlap sack of tater tots into her second pushcart to hasten on her way a tad more expediently. It usually goes something like this:
No, not that one - remember? The "beef" tasted like unlaundered road-crew jockstraps and the rubbery string beans needed to be sawed into tiny hunks to be swallowed whole. This one gave you gas that could strip the rust off a lug-nut and curled the linoleum in the bathroom - not to mention the melting of the shower curtain. This one, once cooked, reminded you of that time you found that unidentifiable dead thing washed up on the beach - a mass of protein, hair and a savory brown ooze. Mmm, but that one over there was my-t-fine!
I've begun to communicate with others nearby who, foraging for their meager yet healthy sustenance like me, ask for friendly, peer-based counsel on their selection. "Uh, no", I will say shaking my head and tutting softly, "that one - the chicken in Pinot Grigio sauce? Yeah, that smells like an infected wound and tastes like burned-up Cell-O sponges soaked in gasoline." Soundlessly the product is lowered back into the freezer to await the wretch who, unable to heed my sage recommendation, will purhase it and find themselves in the presence of Satan in the form of "tender chicken medallions" in a "creamy butter and white wine sauce."
{An aside: when did it become fashionable to use the word "medallion" to describe lumps of flesh? And, if it is just that - a smaller-than-a-fist piece of something - I am going to rapidly incorporate it into my everyday speech patterns. "Oh wow", I might say to a fellow travel companion, "did you see that roadkill? There were *insert animal name* medallions all over the highway!" How utterly sublime. }
In stark opposition to other attempts I've made to slim down - effectively circumventing the grim necessity to go shopping in one of those specialty stores that proudly display an 18X pair of slacks resembling a Bedouin tent as their "Big Boy" size - I may actually be able to stay on this one. Fruit and juice for breakfast, a ghastly slurry of flesh and grain products/flaccid vegetables for lunch and a sensible dinner with bruising bananas as snacks in between. It should be bracingly delightful.
Like a slow-sheet enema filled with nearly frozen chunky garden-style Ragu pasta sauce.
***
In the Greenwood Mall there exists a midway stall in which is ensconsed a gentleman who, for a merry little fee, will airbrush any damn thing you want onto "hi-quality" preshrunken t-shirts and other blank items. While not unique in his trade (show me a boardwalk or carnival/circus/county fair where there isn't one of these mutants and I will gladly consume a knuckle of my left pinkie), this particular gentleman seems to delight in showcasing some rather - and here's a surprise! - tasteless license plates. Indiana is a "back plate only" state, so one is able to move as the spirit commands in terms of what one drills into the front bumper's holes. As my eyes alighted on several of his masterfully crafted pieces (Git 'Er Done among them), I managed to behold one that looked like the skyline of Indianapolis - crowned as it is with the uniqueness of the Giant Electrical Outlet Plug Building - but underneath, instead of "I [heart] Indy" or "Speedway City" it said, uh,
Naptown.
Naptown? It took me about five minutes to figure it out; this is because I have apparently lost control of several key chromosomes during my twenty-five years.
India - NAP - olis.
My first thought was, uh, what the motherfeck is this happy horseshit? I have lived in this state for about three years now and I can say with clarion certainty that I have never once heard someone refer to the Crossroads State's capital as Naptown and, had I, I would have punched that person in the neck and run away as fast as my stocky little legs would carry me.
These must be the same people who, I assume, make Bloomington into B-Town (ignoring utterly that the last syllable is -ton, not -town), Orlando into O-Town (the name of an ill-fated boy band whose members, if there is a God, have all had their bowels torn out by timber wolves), and - perhaps most alarmingly - Sacramento into Sac-Town.
Sac-Town. Because that's dignified.
***
Alert Life in the Corn Devotee Gwyneth and I have, as of late, been caught up in the "umm, what the feck?" drama of having bizarre, Blair Witch-esque objects carefully placed in our offices by parties unknown.
Fact #1: Gwyneth, after returning from a weekend to the drudgery of a Monday morning, was greeted by a small, sausage-shaped ball of hair and lint (but not dust!) and a rusty nail in the middle of her office floor as well as other, nearly unidentifiable objects on her desk.
Fact #2: Under my desk there have been placed - for the past three weeks in a row - dead leaves. These are clearly brought into this space as they show no signs of having been tramped upon.
Both of us agree: should a bundle containing a bloody tooth appear, we're resigning and moving to Guam.
Is it the cleaning crew? Is it a disgruntled international who wishes to inject icy fear into our veins? Or is it, as I suspect, Markie Post's nefarious work?
As always, I remain,
Domonic
Friday, March 10, 2006
Put your makeup on, fix your hair all pretty/ And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
~The Boss, Bruce Springsteen
An international student swept into my office this morning in a fog of Drakkar Noir that was tasted rather than smelled and threw himself clumsily onto one of my fancy, day-glo green office chairs and sighed dismissively. OK, douche, I thought, bring it. As I'd anticipated, he was about as prepared for the meeting as one might be for an extraterrestrial anal probe, and as my mouse pointer lingered for a sweet moment on the "Transfer Out [To a New School]" button while he hastily filled out his forms, I noticed that he had listed as his place of birth Bhopal, India.
Now, should you not remember the significance of Bhopal, go here. I, in my apparently infinite ability to retain minutia about dreadful things, knew it instantaneously.
In an attempt to chat it up with the chap, I asked him if Bhopal was, indeed, his place of birth. "Yeah", he responded with a heavy sigh. "It's a nasty place, but at least it's better than New Jersey, right?"
{!!!!!!!!}
My first knee-jerk instinct was to close my door and gut him like a trout, but since I relish my job and seem to be getting better at it as the days go by, I thought that I might like to keep it and not finish my days under heavy surveilance without even a conjugal visit to which I could look forward. As he lowered his head with a filthy smirk still pasted on his face, I had to evaluate the two reasons I envisioned why he'd say a thing like that.
1) Above my desk there are large, metal storage bins, and I have taken to purchasing magnets for them so they don't look so... uh... post-soviet. A particular series of these magnets are state magnets, and I'd taken care to purchase magnets of states where I'd spent more than a month of my life. Among them are Utah, where I soundlessly, and to my mother's attestation, painlessly entered the world to the sound of trumpets from the heavens, West Virginia, North Carolina, California, Nevada, Indiana, Maine, and New Jersey. Had he seen the magnet? Did he know that I spent fourteen years growing up in the most mocked state in the Union, a state whose honor I protect even though I haven't lived there in more than eleven years? He couldn't have known, and I moved hastily to Reason Two.
2) The student is a barf-bag.
The above transaction took less than twenty seconds by my calculation, and allowed me to utilize the element of surprise. "Uh, I grew up in New Jersey", I said deliberately, making full eye contact with him. By "full eye contact" I mean "my eyes were open so wide that they resembled ping-pong balls cut in half over each socket" and by "deliberately" I mean "with an edge implying dire consequences for a wrong move at this point." He stopped scribbling and looked up at me.
"Oh", he said.
"Oh", I thought. OH? I decided that it was best at that point to drop it and move on with the appointment; it was the better part of me that commanded me to do this. Part of it was because of personal inquiry into why I felt the need to be so defensive in the first place. If he had been to New Jersey, chances are that - like most people's - his experience was only of the heavily industrialized portion that abuts New York City. He hadn't see the lush fecundity of my hometown - the broad, tree-lined streets, the verdant mountains - nor had he experienced growing up in a small New Jersey town where kids were safe to walk home from school and where most people knew your name. It wasn't perfection, but I'm glad to have grown up there. It's the memory of that - a reflection of the past, and not necessarily the present - that I defend.
I have a feeling, though, that if he'd ventured to slander Maine I would have been washing his effluent off my clothes for weeks.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic
An international student swept into my office this morning in a fog of Drakkar Noir that was tasted rather than smelled and threw himself clumsily onto one of my fancy, day-glo green office chairs and sighed dismissively. OK, douche, I thought, bring it. As I'd anticipated, he was about as prepared for the meeting as one might be for an extraterrestrial anal probe, and as my mouse pointer lingered for a sweet moment on the "Transfer Out [To a New School]" button while he hastily filled out his forms, I noticed that he had listed as his place of birth Bhopal, India.
Now, should you not remember the significance of Bhopal, go here. I, in my apparently infinite ability to retain minutia about dreadful things, knew it instantaneously.
In an attempt to chat it up with the chap, I asked him if Bhopal was, indeed, his place of birth. "Yeah", he responded with a heavy sigh. "It's a nasty place, but at least it's better than New Jersey, right?"
{!!!!!!!!}
My first knee-jerk instinct was to close my door and gut him like a trout, but since I relish my job and seem to be getting better at it as the days go by, I thought that I might like to keep it and not finish my days under heavy surveilance without even a conjugal visit to which I could look forward. As he lowered his head with a filthy smirk still pasted on his face, I had to evaluate the two reasons I envisioned why he'd say a thing like that.
1) Above my desk there are large, metal storage bins, and I have taken to purchasing magnets for them so they don't look so... uh... post-soviet. A particular series of these magnets are state magnets, and I'd taken care to purchase magnets of states where I'd spent more than a month of my life. Among them are Utah, where I soundlessly, and to my mother's attestation, painlessly entered the world to the sound of trumpets from the heavens, West Virginia, North Carolina, California, Nevada, Indiana, Maine, and New Jersey. Had he seen the magnet? Did he know that I spent fourteen years growing up in the most mocked state in the Union, a state whose honor I protect even though I haven't lived there in more than eleven years? He couldn't have known, and I moved hastily to Reason Two.
2) The student is a barf-bag.
The above transaction took less than twenty seconds by my calculation, and allowed me to utilize the element of surprise. "Uh, I grew up in New Jersey", I said deliberately, making full eye contact with him. By "full eye contact" I mean "my eyes were open so wide that they resembled ping-pong balls cut in half over each socket" and by "deliberately" I mean "with an edge implying dire consequences for a wrong move at this point." He stopped scribbling and looked up at me.
"Oh", he said.
"Oh", I thought. OH? I decided that it was best at that point to drop it and move on with the appointment; it was the better part of me that commanded me to do this. Part of it was because of personal inquiry into why I felt the need to be so defensive in the first place. If he had been to New Jersey, chances are that - like most people's - his experience was only of the heavily industrialized portion that abuts New York City. He hadn't see the lush fecundity of my hometown - the broad, tree-lined streets, the verdant mountains - nor had he experienced growing up in a small New Jersey town where kids were safe to walk home from school and where most people knew your name. It wasn't perfection, but I'm glad to have grown up there. It's the memory of that - a reflection of the past, and not necessarily the present - that I defend.
I have a feeling, though, that if he'd ventured to slander Maine I would have been washing his effluent off my clothes for weeks.
Until next time, I remain,
Domonic
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
The clingy transparent plastic-wrap of incessant despair.
A few days ago I found myself in my office mouse-clicking my way through the production of a non-immigrant certificate of eligibility when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something flying about my person. Thinking that it was a putrid, disease-ridden be-winged arthropod that had been tricked into leaping forth from its vile chrysalis by a few days of 50+ degree weather, I gathered my wits about me and prepared to hunt it down and ruthlessly exterminate it with the grim efficiency of a Latin American death squad. As it wheeled through the air and began to careen towards my face, I did two things:
1) Uttered a small, rather high-pitched shriek which, if there is a sweet infant Jesus, was not heard by any of my coworkers or the random Asians collected in the front lobby awaiting their aforementioned non-immigrant certificates of eligibility.
2) Noticed that it was not, indeed, an insect bent on inserting its hellish probiscus under my eyelid to drink of my brine but was a smallish ball of dust which appears to have pressed itself into a spheroid (for better aerodynamics?).
Clearly this could have been only one thing: a collection of dust, hair and - presumably - dead skin cells had been collected by my gravitational pull and had formed into what I can only describe as my very own moon. As I began to amuse myself in my attempts to name my moon - this, from someone who named a cat Balthazar Anatole Romulus - I was poleaxed by a paralyzing thought: only really, really big things have moons. I looked down over my coffee-dribbled work shirt to my "are you in a family way?" belly and sighed. Goddamnit.
I'd noticed that in the past few months that I'd been filling out a little more, but I'd initally ascribed it to me actually having, oh, I dunno, the money to purchase sustenance again. In the months after He Who Hopefully Has A Chancre left, I had begun a regimen of habitually stealing ketchup packets from the McDonalds after making a pitiful purchase, like the Vagrant Special (a lukewarm hamburger patty that is too deformed to sell to the general public, wrapped up) and eating them as a meal. In the dark. After I ascended to my position, though, I began getting - *gasp* - regular paychecks. This meant that I could scuttle over to the Dirtbaby Kroger to purchase pasta that wasn't replete with Shrimp-flavored seasoning packets or procure an already-prepared meal at a fecking restaurant when the mood set me right. And with the checks lining my bank account came a greater sense of comfort and contentment from a number of other sources - friends, family, my work and, of course, cüceyim.
In the meantime, though, I'd begun to notice that my underwear had begun to cut off my circulation if I sat in awkward positions. Shirts I used to swim in now would eject buttons at seventy miles an hour off my chest if I sneezed. And perhaps most telling, a Norwegian internation student with an unnatural gleam in his freakishly Aryan eyes had brought a flensing implement from the 'old country' into the office, asking if he could meet "the big, white one" for an appointment. Ostensibly, this "appointment" was to be about off-campus work authorization, but I became convinced that within two hours the high stench of my rendered blubber would carry out over the lubeless sodomy of Gomorrah Avenue. I began to cast my eyes over my shoulders as I walked from my car to Franklin Hall, firmly convinced that I would behold a rusty Japanese trawler leveling a grenade-tipped spear at the tender area behind my blowhole.
So, as I sat in my office, watching my very own moon circuit around my porcine form, I weighed (*ahem*...) my options. After deliberation - and a guiltily-consumed HoHo - I determined that there are, essentially, three of them.
1) Ritualized starvation: I would only allow myself to consume iceberg lettuce, vegetable broth and white rice. If I managed to live through the experience without "accidentally" allowing my hand to enter the garbage disposal, I'd have skin hanging like freshly-laundered linens from my skeleton. Hot, no?
2) Some fecked-up diet that actually kills you. You know what? I'm sorry, but putting a pound of pepperoni on a plate and covering that with shredded cheese and microwaving it - that's not a snack. That's angioplasty cleverly disguised as food. Nor does the idea of gnawing the flesh off a cold rotisserie chicken like a wild animal sound viable. I have to give the Atkins diet credit where credit is due: it makes cannibalism sound appetizing.
3) Eating sensibly. Duh.
As I stood in the freezer section at the Meijer attempting to select healthy frozen meals for work (thus killing two birds with one stone: saving me money AND making me want to die really, really hard), I was overwhelmed by the selection of entrees. Would I select Country Roasted Turkey in Aspic? Wild Salmon Surprise? Chicken and Rice Plate? Oh, um, those are cat foods.
Instead I became drawn to the "Flavor Adventures" Healthy Choice entrees because Flavor Adventure sounded like a 1980s Marlboro campaign ("Light One Up for a Flavor Adventure"). So far I've had two: Beef Merlot and Chicken in Garlic Parmesan Sauce. I can honestly say that they weren't that bad - but this comes from a man who picks the tentacles out of the calamari first so he can feel the little sucker-cups slide down his throat just so.
So, we'll see how it goes. My bathroom scale is broken - no doubt having committed suicide rather than service the rorqual in residence at 402 North Peterman - but my goal is to not have to
oh - it can't be!
JESUS GOD IT'S AN INUIT
PUT DOWN THAT GODDAMN SPEAR AND
*gack*
1) Uttered a small, rather high-pitched shriek which, if there is a sweet infant Jesus, was not heard by any of my coworkers or the random Asians collected in the front lobby awaiting their aforementioned non-immigrant certificates of eligibility.
2) Noticed that it was not, indeed, an insect bent on inserting its hellish probiscus under my eyelid to drink of my brine but was a smallish ball of dust which appears to have pressed itself into a spheroid (for better aerodynamics?).
Clearly this could have been only one thing: a collection of dust, hair and - presumably - dead skin cells had been collected by my gravitational pull and had formed into what I can only describe as my very own moon. As I began to amuse myself in my attempts to name my moon - this, from someone who named a cat Balthazar Anatole Romulus - I was poleaxed by a paralyzing thought: only really, really big things have moons. I looked down over my coffee-dribbled work shirt to my "are you in a family way?" belly and sighed. Goddamnit.
I'd noticed that in the past few months that I'd been filling out a little more, but I'd initally ascribed it to me actually having, oh, I dunno, the money to purchase sustenance again. In the months after He Who Hopefully Has A Chancre left, I had begun a regimen of habitually stealing ketchup packets from the McDonalds after making a pitiful purchase, like the Vagrant Special (a lukewarm hamburger patty that is too deformed to sell to the general public, wrapped up) and eating them as a meal. In the dark. After I ascended to my position, though, I began getting - *gasp* - regular paychecks. This meant that I could scuttle over to the Dirtbaby Kroger to purchase pasta that wasn't replete with Shrimp-flavored seasoning packets or procure an already-prepared meal at a fecking restaurant when the mood set me right. And with the checks lining my bank account came a greater sense of comfort and contentment from a number of other sources - friends, family, my work and, of course, cüceyim.
In the meantime, though, I'd begun to notice that my underwear had begun to cut off my circulation if I sat in awkward positions. Shirts I used to swim in now would eject buttons at seventy miles an hour off my chest if I sneezed. And perhaps most telling, a Norwegian internation student with an unnatural gleam in his freakishly Aryan eyes had brought a flensing implement from the 'old country' into the office, asking if he could meet "the big, white one" for an appointment. Ostensibly, this "appointment" was to be about off-campus work authorization, but I became convinced that within two hours the high stench of my rendered blubber would carry out over the lubeless sodomy of Gomorrah Avenue. I began to cast my eyes over my shoulders as I walked from my car to Franklin Hall, firmly convinced that I would behold a rusty Japanese trawler leveling a grenade-tipped spear at the tender area behind my blowhole.
So, as I sat in my office, watching my very own moon circuit around my porcine form, I weighed (*ahem*...) my options. After deliberation - and a guiltily-consumed HoHo - I determined that there are, essentially, three of them.
1) Ritualized starvation: I would only allow myself to consume iceberg lettuce, vegetable broth and white rice. If I managed to live through the experience without "accidentally" allowing my hand to enter the garbage disposal, I'd have skin hanging like freshly-laundered linens from my skeleton. Hot, no?
2) Some fecked-up diet that actually kills you. You know what? I'm sorry, but putting a pound of pepperoni on a plate and covering that with shredded cheese and microwaving it - that's not a snack. That's angioplasty cleverly disguised as food. Nor does the idea of gnawing the flesh off a cold rotisserie chicken like a wild animal sound viable. I have to give the Atkins diet credit where credit is due: it makes cannibalism sound appetizing.
3) Eating sensibly. Duh.
As I stood in the freezer section at the Meijer attempting to select healthy frozen meals for work (thus killing two birds with one stone: saving me money AND making me want to die really, really hard), I was overwhelmed by the selection of entrees. Would I select Country Roasted Turkey in Aspic? Wild Salmon Surprise? Chicken and Rice Plate? Oh, um, those are cat foods.
Instead I became drawn to the "Flavor Adventures" Healthy Choice entrees because Flavor Adventure sounded like a 1980s Marlboro campaign ("Light One Up for a Flavor Adventure"). So far I've had two: Beef Merlot and Chicken in Garlic Parmesan Sauce. I can honestly say that they weren't that bad - but this comes from a man who picks the tentacles out of the calamari first so he can feel the little sucker-cups slide down his throat just so.
So, we'll see how it goes. My bathroom scale is broken - no doubt having committed suicide rather than service the rorqual in residence at 402 North Peterman - but my goal is to not have to
oh - it can't be!
JESUS GOD IT'S AN INUIT
PUT DOWN THAT GODDAMN SPEAR AND
*gack*
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