thestain

Palanca Numero Uno

Here is number one: vote in the comment box, yeah or nay.

Greetings and Happy Retreats, Good Katy

Is this experience as powerful as your mom and dad indicated that it had better be or they’re converting to LDS? You think Catholic abstinence is bad… wait till you are forced to save it for marrying Mitt Romney’s dad.

Anyway. I envy you this opportunity to explore your spirituality and find strength in the blah blah blah. Whatever.

Recently Aunt Katy was diagnosed with IBS.  Do you know what that is? Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Some people call it ‘spastic colon’…but I don’t mind.  I don’t have to wear a helmet or anything.  I just choose to.  Life can be so cruel, Good Katy, and sometimes we all feel like we’re alone.  Or wish we were. Sometimes we need to find an inner strength and often this strength comes from personal weakness; it appears when we need it most.  Remember that. You can use it.  When you are a Mormon and have to wear 2 sets of underwear.  For a woman especially, Mormonism isn’t a religion it’s a plight; like you’re period only more regular, and you sort of switch places with your maxipad.  Still, you will adjust. Our family THRIVES on adversity.

I know that I am used to the cruelty that my affliction brings.  Even the so-called Christians can be mean.  For instance, the woman I cut in front of in line today at Albertson’s was wearing a crucifix,

“Nice cross, He’s hot,” I nodded, pushing past her on my way to the front

“…’scuse me, Irritable Bowel….coming thru…pardon me…” I said, shoving her stack of too many items aside and plopping my 3 items on the belt in front, neatly. (Fifteen items or less the sign says, and I counted 17 in her pile, INCLUDING bananas, which one could argue as separate items.  What’s it going to take, another fucking Psalm to get it thru to these people!!!??? Fifteen ITEMS OR LESS!  I just had a brick of cheese, an apple, and some Metamucil™. I mean, for fucks sake, WWJD? Yeah. Praise Him.)

The nasty blasphemous  ‘Christian’ woman said,

“JESUS CHRIST, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

I know, you are thinking, 'Gosh, Aunt Evil Katy, that does sound blasphemous, and yet…since when do you care?'

I was really hungry, Good Katy. REALLY hungry.  It was late morning, I’d run 6 miles, and I was not just physically famished, but spiritually peckish as well.  BECAUSE, just as you find comfort and direction in your catholic faith, I was, blindly, placing some serious belief in that quart sized jar of Metamucil to cleanse away the sins, so to speak. It was the only reason I felt confident enough to buy the cheese.  Like knowing you can repent every Sunday.  (Guyere, if you must know.)   The apple was just a ruse.  Like your promise ring.

“No. Uh-uh.” The very bad Christian said, trying to push her stuff forward.  She was buying Canadian bacon.  Infidel.

“I have a condition,” I told the snappy woman, clutching my stomach and waving the cheese at her, then the Metamucil. I handed her a Woman’s Day magazine from the rack.

“My intestines look like that ham.  You should count your BLESSINGS and read about knitting yourself a Christmas tree. This will all be over soon.  My bowel is vexed and I have to get some cheese, er…medicine in it immediately!”

She looked at the checkout clerk who is mentally retarded, mildly, and was admiring my helmet,

“Are you going to let her do that?”

“What?” Donna asked, eyes swimming deep behind thick thick glasses covered in jelly finger prints.

“Nothing, Donna,” I assured her, “Its fine. Here’s my PREFERRED CARD.”

I carry my card.  I’m not like those douche bags who force the checker to punch in their numbers every time. I could see Donna appreciated this as it allowed one hand free to continue digging the underwear from her butt-crack.  My items were rang up and bagged faster than you could say three, “Our Chedders”

I ate my cheese. I spooned some Metamucil into my coffee.  I threw the apple out of the window as I drove from the parking lot, at a homeless person whose sign said, “Everything Helps.”

Indeed. It does.

Have a nice time reflecting and growing as a person. 

Yours way deep in Jesus, 

Aunt Katy

PS: Aunt Katy doesn't really have IBS. Sometimes its okay to lie to spare others a darker more hurtful truth

But Buddha is Fat

The problem is: Katy is a sweet kid.  She's actually fairly normal.  (Her mother's side). Her brother, Dylan, has a twisted sense of humor. Him, I could write a letter to and not worry about scarring or creeping him out.  But Katy....I just keep picturing a circle of concerned adults crowded around The Retreat Bonfire (heathen books? Planned Parenthood flyers? The metaphorical souls of unbaptized babies?) trying to decide whether to burn my letter or use it as evidence.  Katy, meanwhile, sentenced to 1000 Hail Mary's for having been exposed to chocolatey Jesus and his cream filled abs....

Is it so wrong to find Jesus more sexually than spiritually attractive?

How do people pick their dieties? It that the plural of diety? I mean, Krishna; I like what he teaches, but Krishna doesn't do ANYTHING for me physically.  We're not allowed to know what Allah looks like, but I picture a scribble, maybe with a turban, and that's confusing but...mysteriously hot.  Yahweh...yum. I'm sure underneath the flowing white robes He hasn't let Himself go ...much.  Unlike Buddha. 

Katy is 17.

Good VS Evil

My niece, and namesake, Katy, (Good Katy, as she is known in mixed Katy company) is going on a religious retreat.  That's right, part of my family love Jesus...hot hot Jesus with the rippling Christly abs, hanging all hotly from the cross....perfect hair....almost effeminant, but in a way that says, "I like everything except the missionary position and a hairy back. I'm hungry for God's love...set the table."

Needless to say, they love Him in a way different from me.  They love him all Catholic-like.  Yawn. 

So, anyway, my brother sends his 2 children - Katy and Dylan - to this very expensive Catholic Prep school, where they have retreats.  This particular one is a Christian Maturity Retreat --- or Search Retreat, I think they also call it...It's like a detention field trip, only without the perception of punishment, so much as preventative maintanence.  They'll do anything to avoid handing out condoms.  Although Our Lord, or mine anyway, loves the flavored ones.

My job, as Aunt Evil Katy, is to write a letter to my niece that she can read and "draw strength from" while on this retreat.  It's due by next friday.  I can't imagine why I'm being trusted with this.  BUT because I am, I'm trying to walk that line between sensitive to the experience and who I really am.  So far this is what I've got:

Dearest GK ...

Yo, C cups...

...Tell your brother to stay away from the 3-legged races with Father O'Pederast.

This is the hardest assignment yet.  I'm going to stay up late tonight, and with some input from my delinquent heathen boy, and a shot of Jesus Juice,  I'll hammer something auntly out.  I'll post my top 3 endeavors and maybe someone can help me decide which is the most appropriate to send? 

Yo Bitch

Neal/Cyn Dee Update:

Cyn Dee has spent more on this dog than most people's home remodeling projects. Infact, that is what having this dog is becoming, in many ways.  He's like therapy with a hammer.  She is obviously growing very fond of the pup, though.  Last night she put in a doggy door (and a cat flap. He's small) and today she's remodeling her dining room so that Neal has a sort of antechamber to the outdoors. 

I think part of Cyn Dees stress of dog ownership comes from expectations of what it means.  On one hand, she grew up on a farm, where dogs were like equipment.  They had a function. Her dad has 2 border collies now that have never and will never step foot in his house.  They herd goats, they guard the chickens and alert her father to predators, etc. They are happy dogs who are living the life they were bred to live. 

Then Cyn Dee has my example: I have 3 dogs who go everywhere with me, sleep with me, etc.  I drive 130 miles every week to make sure one of them gets to herd sheep FOR FUN.  Every day I walk my dogs for a minimum of 40 minutes, the youngest often twice, we have a pool that they swim in all summer, we never travel without our dogs. Zeke sits in a kitchen chair in the window and watches for me to come home every time I leave.  Sometimes its hard finding a place to sit in my house unless you don't mind a dog on your lap.  A big dog.  This is the way I was raised. By a crazy man who saved every spider and who hand fed the mice that infested our rural home.  Any dog that landed on our doorstep had a place at the table. Literally.

Now Cyn Dee is freaking out because she can't live my example and doesn't have the livestock to live her father's.  That's why I'm buying a truckload of rats off of ebay tonight and having them delivered in time for the weekend. 

Man's Best Friend and Cyn Dees

I know my good friend Cyn Dee is waiting for me to post on her/our crazy weekend, a manifestation of Cyn Dee's larger scale Ripley's Personality Syndrome.  (Someday I hope to see Cyn Dee's brain in a jar, sitting on a shelf in some Branson Missouri freak museum, next to the biggest tapeworm ever removed from a human intestine, beside the man with 2 anus's Anus Bookends and high fiber cookbooks)  I can laugh about politics and the end of the world. I can joke about death and destruction of our species.  I really only care in the abstract about so much... I guess because I can only DO SO MUCH for large scale issues.  I can vote, I can send money to the right organizations, if it didn't make me bilious I could hold hands with whats left of the Deadheads and chant Peace Now! infront of the Idaho Statehouse every friday...but, fuck that. Religion? Please.  Never had it, don't get it.  Dogs, however... are my weakness, my strength, my only consistancy. Dogs are my cause.

Friday,1:00pm - Call from Cyn Dee.  She had watched the AKC Dog Trials on television and decided that what she needed, more than a boyfriend or a therapist, another car off of ebay or a 14th kayak....was a dog.  A rat terrier.  This followed a barage of rat terrier related websites, rescue organizations, etc.  "I have taken a TEST," she said, "All signs point to me getting a Rat Terrier and Happiness!"

2:00pm - Because I believe EVERYONE needs a dog, except Cat People, who need homemade sweaters and stale hard candy by the cracked crystal dishful, I accepted my job as Pet Advocate and I, rather speedily, find Cyn Dee a rat terrier.   A five month old pup located approximately 60 miles northwest of Our Town, in the hinterlands of a place known to 'ole time fiddlers' as Weiser.  "Drive for an hour and turn left at the quansit hut...we're the yellow house on the left" are the instructions.

6:00pm - Turned left at quansit hut and find ourselves sitting in the prefab home of a really nice family of rat terriers and their people.  The pup they are selling is a calm soulful looking dog; not at all the yappy little dog whom I expected. I would call him small, infact, and only in stature.  He has lived, up to this point, outside, and is a little shy.  Tentative wags of a stubby little tale.  The man and woman keep taking turns saying that 'Roman' (the pups temporary name) is the 'smartest' dog they have ever had.  Normally this means 'destructive', or 'insane', but this dog seems far too calm for that to be the case.  Cyn Dee, on the other hand... is likewise uncharactoristically quiet and reserved but peels off $150 worth of bills.

Before leaving she asks if she can bring him back if it "didn't work out".  The couple very reluctantly agree that she has 7 days to return the merchandise.

She should never have left the driveway, probably.  I should have taken her to a nursury and bought her another goddamned orchid.  But no...

7:00pm - "GOD I NEED A DRINK." Cyn Dee decrees, before we are even fully out the door of these people's little home.  She hands the dog formerly known as Roman to me, "You hold him, I'm going to find us some alcohol."

The dog curls up on my lap and sleeps while Cyn Dee cruises the quiet streets of Weiser, face close to the steering wheel, looking for a quickie mart.  "What have I done?" she chants periodically, fiddling with her highbeams, turning indicator...pulling into the Maverick station.  I grow more and more fond of the little dog who quickly adjusts to being a beer coaster and the wrong answer.

Saturday: I go with Cyn Dee to buy dog supplies, along with the pup, whom she has named, "Neal."  Coming more and more out of his little shell, he prances up and down isles at Petsmart until he gets tired, then he sleeps in his new little bed in the shopping cart.  Cyn Dee purchases over $200 worth of matching dog accoutrement, including a fleece jacket.  "I can't believe I'm doing this,"she says,  holding the coat up to the small dog.  Cyn Dee was raised on a farm, where the only thing you coat an animal in, is gravy.

We take him for a walk in the foothills, we bring him to my house several times to interact with my dogs.  There is sniffing, peeing, playing...Everyone but Cyn Dee is very matter-of-fact about things.  Cyn Dee and her (former) cat, Sylvia, who cowers behind the laundry basket in our utility closet.

All I can say is this dog is one of the calmest, sweetest, easiest...and yes, INTELLIGENT dogs I have ever seen.  I'm a border collie, australian shepherd, cattle dog sort of person.  This breed is alien to me, but I am amazed by his all-round perfection.  AND he would fit in carry-on. Cyn Dee sees him as something, a responsibility? that she cannot live up to. It is transforming her into the opposite of where the Signs were Pointing, the raging crazed opposite.

Sunday: "I can't do this." Cyn Dee chitters, "It's too much. I don't have time for this.  He's taking too much of my time. I need more time for ME! I love him! He's perfect! He's draining the life from me!" 

I don't know whether to talk her into keeping this dog because I do believe they can be good for one another, or whether to talk her into giving him up because she might be better with a hermit crab or a screensaver.

She should have gotten a Rat Terrier Calender. That would have only taken a year of her time, one month at a time.  I should have known better. 

One thing is certain: AKC needs a better test.  There should be results for Orchid or More Sports Equipment.

Sand in My Virginia

Behold My Day, A Rant that Seems to Go Nowhere Unless You Study It Like I Am, and Like You Do with Those Fucked Up 3-D Drawing Books, Like I Never Do:

This morning, I slept late because I felt it was owed me by the bureacracy that placed me in Salt Lake last week; the only city over 10,000 without a coffee establishment every city block, or any city block, seemingly...just hotel room decaf and 3.2 beer, bought by membership, to start and end my days, respectively, although the reverse may have been more beneficial, come to think of it. I slept till 8:00 and rolled into work at 9:00.

At 9:15, my office phone rang. It was the asst principal of my son's High School. My son was in trouble for "pushing a student into some lockers."

"The student came into the office last week, when it happened, and told us, but he didn't know the name of the person who pushed him, just that he was 'a hispanic kid'" Mr.Dickweed informed me. "Now, we have 3 opions: One, suspend your son for 3 days, which I do not want to do because he is being very honest and forthright and seems to agree that he shouldn't have pushed this kid. Two, send him home for the rest of today and he gets inhouse suspension next monday and tuesday.
Now, we've spoken to the parents of the boy who was pushed and they do not want to press charges..."

This is where I INTERNALLY lost it. He didn't really have a third option, that douchebag.

Up until this point I was trying to process, chugging my first cup of morning coffee ----thick and black like my Diety, nameless, wants me to have it---but this "press charges" thing pushed me over.

"Press charges? Why did my son, the hispanic, push this kid, probably white based on the tattling?"
"Uhhhhh.... well... I'll let you talk to your son..."

My son, who is really so mild and laid back that I have only seen him lose his temper ONE TIME>>>EVER>>> and that was when he was 9 and with good reason.

The only other times he has been in trouble at school:
1) When they pulled him into the office in 8th grade and made him empty his pockets and drilled him about whether he was stoned because 'a teacher' had thought he 'looked stoned' when she passed him in the halls. He wasn't. They found nothing, because there was nothing. "But he does wear those baggie pants and we often have to give him a violation for them being too low...and his grades are way beneath what test scores indicate his potential" is what we were told later.
We, his parents, were not notified by the school at the time this happened. My son told his dad casually in conversation that night at dinner because he thought it was funny.

2) He pushed a kid in the hall in 9th grade for telling him to "Go back to Mexico."

3) He on two separate occassions, recently, that I know of, took the blame for something somone else had done because, "I was already in trouble. There was no reason to get anyone else in trouble." and, "I wouldn't tell [authority figure] who had [broken trivial rule] because it was a stupid rule and I don't rat my friends out."
It was. Trust me. And the first thing was laughing. In class. At something his friend was doing behind the teachers back. SO don't go picturing switch blade fight or tattoing the Virgin de Guadalupe on student's backs in the boy's room during class or anything.

My son is hispanic. Hispanic hillbilly, I tell him, because caucasion is all I have to offer otherwise and that is like driving a minivan, culturally. With Baby-on-Board signs sticking all over it, and I Support The Troop magnets, everywhere, Christian Fish...obscuring the view and making it oddly incongruously unsafe...

He has green eyes and a medium complexion. He dreams of one day soon owning a '64 Impala. He laughs easily and often. He is the most naturally kind person I know, besides my mom, though he hides it now that he's 15. He is tough, though.

This kid whom he pushed last week apparently had been 'talking trash' about my son and his friends for weeks. My son pushes him in the hall and instead of anyone sitting the 2 boys down and talking about why this happened, it's all about the hispanic kid lucky to not be charged with assault.

Cienna called around lunchtime distressed because the self-important 3rd rate writer who promised to write one of her recommendations for grad school is now saying that it's just "too hard" and he's just "so disorganized" and "oh! why can't it just go back to being all about ME!"
Like all those times she housesat for him and dogsat his hideous little one-eyed poodle, countless times, and NEVER GOT PAID.
He's waited, of course, until beyond the last minute to tell her to fuck off and go back to licking his own, and other handsome more important people's
testicals.
She's freaking out. I can DO NOTHING.
My yogurt is out of code. I scrape off the green stuff and eat it anyway.
Isn't the mold of good bacteria something special?

(UPDATE 12 Hrs later:  Turns out the 2nd rate writer (I'm generous that way) is going to help her. Yes, its in as minimal a way possible, but he is helping. So...I was a little histrionic. Plus Cienna did love his dog.)

In the afternoon a co-worker told me that the early Sesame Street shows are released with a For Mature Audiences only warning.

Where the FUCK are we headed?

Brad's Baby Will Eat His Entrails - Turns out, not a good toast

I am ill at ease tonight.  The day was shadowed with grubby fisted menace, in a coordinated little snap-crotched suit.  Yeah.  Read it again. I did and I typed it.

I'm being stalked.

By a baby. Not a cute baby; an Anthony Hopkins clone sporting sleeper jammies and a nipple fixation. (Silence of the Lambs, not Shadowlands, Hopkins. The Tooth Fairy....)

I am talking deadon lookalike. Right down to the open-mouthed sardonic grin and sparse, slicked back hair. Psychotic intense blue eyes.  Worse still, his little sweater has a small lamb on the front. Don't tell me that isn't deliberate. I saw this kid driving his mother through narrow alley Santa Fe streets this morning and later on, across town, he was BEHIND ME in line at a coffee place. Staring.  Grinning. I could almost hear him whisper "Tell me, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?"

THEN, I swear on a pile of kidneys, I was in the lobby of the hotel, sort of milling around the Sherry Social hour, wondering if it was worth the super sweet vomit taste later to suck up a free high....when I saw again the jam-smeared visage of Hannibal Lector, Jr, grinning at me from behind the pool glass.  Waving a water wing in my direction.  Menacingly.

It's not a case of all babies looking alike or that I have an issue equating children with cannibalism. Not on a full stomach, anyway, and not from the child's perspective. This kid is eerie, and the similarities CANNOT be accidental. That sparse hair combed back over the too-large cranium. The fava bean onesy... Even the kid's binkie looked sinister. Blood red and tan...It had the same effect as the mask Hannibal wore to keep him from biting features off of faces.  He sucked and sucked on that thing, looking in my direction, me pretending not to notice, trying not to...he kept watching me, though...until our eyes met... Slowly he grinned that evil sardonic grin at me, thru the double panes which separated us, over the "No Glass in Pool Area" Sign...he stared at me and let the rubber nipple fell to the ground.

"That kid is going to kill someone and eat his warm liver mashed up with yams tonight," I toasted the others gathered around the Sherry table.

The woman beside me said, "What? You mean Brad's baby? What are you saying about Brad's baby?"

No amount of careful explanation clarified my theory.  Brad denied having ever seen The Red Dragon, though he did admit to a familiarity with Sllence of the Lambs, and then only after I made his wife cry.  He sort of screamed it at me.  "FINE! I've seen the goddamned movie and our baby has nothing to do with it. GOD! Leave it alone already!"

The baby never wavered.  Never lost his eerie poise. Not even when everyone in the room could smell that he'd shit himself. 

God.  If I weren't so repulsed, I'd feel a begrudging dangerous attraction. 

Santa Fe'k

This feels so intimate...having 2 readers. I feel I can share things, you know? PERSONAL THINGS. 

I'm in Santa Fe, NM.  (For a CONFERENCE, Or Workshop, or Cosa Majoby IEEEIIEEEIIEEEE as they say here in Nuevo Mexico... )

I spent today wandering all over downtown wondering how the old new mexicans keep from killing the new new mexicans in their sleep.  Beating them to death with painted bull head skulls or antler art. Or better still killing them slowly while they are awake, and flexing plastic, by poisoning their cosas.  (I love the word 'cosa'...it means 'thing' in a generic sort of way.  And whitey loves his/her things) Turquoise jewelry the size of intestines...why not add a dallop of uranium? Howling coyotes figurines fashioned from silver and dead coyote and turquoise.  Ceramic jugs that cost more than my car, with inlaid turquoise, filled to the brim with fresh scabs and infected needles.

(Holy fuck, is some old Pueblo shaman squirreled away somewhere, shitting nougats of blue rock and the random kachina doll or what?)

I'm here with my son's grandma. She and my son's grandpa are from this place since back when it belonged to Spain.  She assures me that there is no such thing as a Chimichanga.  She did admit that if you stuck turquoise or an antler in one, it could then be legitimately called a cosa, and it would sell like a hotcake for twentyfold the Taco Johns standard asking price anywhere in this sad sold out town.

I do love the desert.