Re-spanking the Painting

I just wrote a nice, long, predictably silly and embarrassingly pretentious post about the local Oktoberfest here, but just as I was about to post it, our internet service went out…

(thank the mighty platypus!)

so, instead of blog-oligizing on a beautiful sunny afternoon, I turned to hanging with Mr. E who was painting outside on the corner, creating a well-degredated flying butt monkey piece, apparently very historically political and currently statement-making.

It was such a phenomenal piece of artistic ape ass rendering, that I felt, also, inclined to paint.

So, not wanting to utilize expensive supplies, I took scissors to cardboard box and savagely hacked myself a canvass. I began with the yellow and maroon: a brushy outline of a stein-guzzling frat boy here. A sketchy blocking of a meaning-searching, pussy-excavating dream there. A profoundly meaningful squiggle on top of that…

But then I realized that (though I had creative genius taking the mouth-guard in my corner), I didn’t have the acrylic motivation to complete such a profound work of art,

So I turned my embriotic masterpiece over to Mr. E, had him sign a few legal rights papers, and watched as it was painted, in a more aesthetically-pleasing and realistically impressive kind of way.

And, I have, hereby inaugurated this lazy blog with a picture…

Of syllabic sludge and samarai

Yes- it’s true. I’m a romantic sucker for words and language. Serve me up a linguistic mouthful of chopped syllables sautéed in assonance on a nice bed of irony-strained description, and…, well…, I’m one happy chick.

But, if you REALLY want to get me peckin-at-the-bit excited…, just mix up a nice wordy stir-fry of completely arbitrary ingredients, seasoned with a most obscure range of spices, chase it with a shot of indescribable sludge (with no Latin equivalent), and I guarantee I’ll be cock-a-doodlin’ with the hens by daybreak!

Now, I know…, there are some people out there who disagree…

There are some naïve souls out there who believe that true happiness is to be found only in love, damn-good orgasms, in family, or in a well-executed Thai body massage…

But, let me set ye lost souls straight…:

It just don’t get better than- yes, I’ll say it: “linguistic muck”.

And, that’s why, though I’m over-worked and far-under-paid, I love my current job so much.

Where else could I go at 8am, still waiting for my coffee to kick in, listen to intriguingly fantastical linguistic muck, and get PAID for it?!

And, just to show you how great my current employment is, I’ll share the inspiring and tragic tale that I got paid to listen to this morning:

“When I was a junior highschool,”
(Yes- apparently a great number of Japanese university graduates were once educational facilities themselves!)
“my mother regret very much my experience… In bed I was bunking top,”
(Well, who DOESN’T, these days?!)
“and – how can I say? – fire spirit samarai ghost strangled me from neck down with the French carrousel animals spinning at ceiling.”
(Oh yeah, the old, romantic spinning, French merry-go-round line…)
“I was very scary. But, now my mother she is very kindly. And, I am happy because of study English.”

In my opinion, tales of such profound sorrow, sadness, reconciliation and unintentionally-moving poetry just don't come around every day!

So, this morning I decided two things:

1) that I will hold off on looking for alternative jobs for a while and

2) that, as of today, all of my students (so that they can check their grammar, of course) will be recorded on tape, explaining some of their most influential experiences.

Prescription rugs for Atomic Readjustment

It’s not like dropping a couplet of rosy-cheeked, newborn twins into a blender, really, but…

Putting a few psychologically healthy, socially-skilled human beings into a light-absent, unadorned cell with a rhythmically syncopated faucet drip, a bored albino ferret and ten minutes of blared Chopin once every 9 hours…

Now…, that’s something I would love to observe!

(Aside from providing exceptionally entertaining dinner party discussions, it would be…, well…, philosophically-engaging and psychologically intriguing enough to keep me home on a Friday night…)

How many months would it take before our once-healthy individuals built their own perceptional Stonehenge around melancholically euphoric outcries, began associating enlightened thoughts with rodent-toe nibbles, and hypothetical sunlight with delayed water droplets?

How long before our once-productive members of society constructed a ferret-scat sculpture to the Darkness, began writing abstract articles about evil chlorophyll-converters with terroristic tendencies, and developed a sound-based, drip-powered irrigation system?

These are the kind of obscurely ordinary and stupid thoughts that often shoulder-jab me at the bus stop, making me wish I had gone into a field that allowed me to do otherwise unethical scientific research…

But…, alas…, though I enjoy contemplating the ideas behind atomic bar-hopping within our quantum physical world and can’t get enough of discussing the repercussions of uncertain electrons, I can’t bring myself to study and memorize any physiological or chemical equations that would educationally pertain to such experiments.

So.., I have decided I have to create my own studies…

And..., well…, I can think of no better, easily-diagnosable, experimental Subject than Myself…, so here goes my shot at scientific research…:

One simple, healthy rat thrown into a foreign yet healthy environment…

Rat = me, healthy environment = ESL School

Observations: It only took the Subject a few weeks to adjust to the new, shadowed, Platonian, dark world of rampant ferrets, leaky faucets, and oddly-timed obscure music…

Within two weeks, the Subject was still smiling, laughing and carrying on as if things were perfectly normal…, even when people around her were uttering such odd phrases as:

“I am a typewriter”

“Fine movie producers are worn by great editors.”

“I am China.”

And

“If I couldn’t have had had a wouldn’t great had experience, I would, had have fabulous great times kindly!”

Conclusions: The Subject (yes—me!) took everything in stride, treated every exchanged conversation as if it were perfectly normal and…,

Diagnosis: this Subject is only moderately aberrational in her thinking and behavior.

Recommended Prescription: only 76 more years of life for this Subject, a few months of therapeutic discussion from an equally-aberrational thinker, and two full-strength 120mg pills of reality (taken via expresso shot) per day.

*Editorial insert: TGPIF (Thank the Great Platypus It’s Friday!) I don’t get paid enough to lesson plan at home, lead extra-curricular ferry trips to neighboring islands and chat with outstandingly accommodating, English-language-practicing conversationalists with expected preferences and rehearsed arguments! Thank the winged mammal-like whatsit in the sky for Mr. E, blank sheets of paper, and random drum circles by the river!

*Cheesy editorial PS#2: And thank the world for so many smile-invoking pieces of confetti that come in the form of political flyers.

New Genes on the Industrial Block

If an evolutionary geneticist were studying the adaptation habits of Mister E. and myself right now, he might conclude that we are healthily carving our way into a sustainable niche here in Seattle. …And, that we might just have the survival techniques necessary to keep up with these dog-nibbles-dog North-westerners.

Or…, that we might just be harmless and artistically kooky enough to Olympic-style curl our way under the radars of potential predators looking to go Darwinian on our Southern Californian rumps…

After all, we’re not doing too poorly thus far in our new habitat.

As my previous deodorant-application post attests, we’ve managed to master the bus systems. (…though, I still aspire to one day hone the social grace and deftness necessary to shave my legs in between public transport transfers…)

Also, I’ve secured a nice little, hermit crab shell-earning position in the heart of the trendy homosexual district. No…, it’s not as glamorous as you might think; it doesn’t involve flaunting my stylish cargo pants-parading butchness or testing the durability of genetically-engorged cucumbers… Instead, I teach ex-pat adults to speak with the inarticulate fluency and grammatical apathy required for visa-holders to seamlessly sew their embroidered presence into the patchwork of this country.

And, as if all that weren’t enough to support our evolutionary muscle in this new place…:

we’ve also managed to finger paint our own flavorful prints on the local ecosystem’s pallet by wandering around town in pajama bottoms to the unexpected shock of native observers (one resident even went so far as to drop his jaw – though I thought a more flattering tribute would have been to drop his drawers - and compliment us on our “superb urban trendiness”)

But, perhaps, the thing that lends the most convincing evidentiary credence to our remarkable survival fitness claim, is that we finally have a hobbit hole to call our very own… or, at least…, to call our landlord’s very own loan…

It sits atop a little hill in the once-bohemian-art-center-turned-tourist-destination, overlooking the Washington ship canal, wind-bopping sailboats and a very large refinery of sorts.

To be honest, I’m not sure that it’s a refinery at all. It looks suspiciously like a cement factory. Or a whale blubber warehouse. Or a senior-citizen-exploiting knitting sweatshop…

The building reads “Marine Industries,” and I find myself just too imaginatively intrigued by its mystique to spoil the fun by looking its purpose up on the ww-web.

Something about the hideous rectangular monstrosity makes me want to sing the Tom Wait’s song: “What is he building in there?” and spend my three-day weekend coming up with possible mundane atrocities they might be committing inside its beige perimeter…

… a warehouse filled with kelp, rounded sea glass and three-eye-sporting, tentacled anemones with Nostradamic inclinations…?

… a hydroponic, chlorophyll-producing, thermal saline energy-converter manned by octopi with reading glasses and non-accredited PhD’s…?

… a post-it notes-manufacturing farmhouse built on the buried remains of a yet-unsponsored prophet’s scrolls…?

In any case…, I like to think of our industrial neighbor as playing an integral sushi roll in our success in this new city meal. A creative muse, if you will... A humble enforcer of the potency of our socially adaptive double helix health... An angled metaphorical ass-nudger with nucleotide chains of butt-kicking vigor…

And, if nothing else…, the mound of gravel in its parking lot is perfect for midnight pajama parties, deodorant-applying barbeques and bus schedule-swapping soirees…

Inventory of Justin Kayes

Some subversive criminal geniuses can last years in their chosen professions without ever being caught. Like Dommer, for instance. Or Frank Abagnale Jr. … Or, if you’re a fan of over-sized shoes and balloon-nose make-up: John Wayne Gacy.

But not me.

I got busted today.

And, no…, (before you start entertaining romantic thoughts of necrophilia under star-studded canopies… or cannibalism with sides of ketchup)…

I am NOT a psychopathically deviant criminal, practicing violent voodoo rituals under deity-blessed barbeques.
Nor, am I a cunning, computer-savvy embezzler, a fraudulent document-twister or even a clever advertising-abuser.

And I certainly would never wear a clown costume out for a good night of rape-ery!

Except, of course, if I could paint my own toe nails…

… preferably, autumn woodpecker orange with lightning bolts of pre-pubescent passion fruit yellow…

No, really, though…

I got caught today while committing the most juvenile of social crimes.

Yes, it was a publicly heinous act. Yes, it was second-glance deservingly disturbing. And, yes, it was the grandma-gossip-grabber your nosy neighbor wishes for:

I was crouched in one of the back seats of the 49 bus headed for work on Capitol Hill, doing the unthinkable at 8am:

I was applying deodorant.
(to its appropriate destinations, mind you.)

And, yes, it was my second offense. And, yes I should have been more candid. But, my winged platypus!, doesn’t everyone deserve to skip a step in their morning ablutions process 2 days in a row at least once every few years?!

In any case…, if you are wondering what criminal repercussions targeted me after being visually apprehended for 5 seconds in the bus driver’s rear view mirror: well.., none.

And, if you are wondering why I felt inclined to tell this asinine story after such a long blogging absence: well…, I’m not sure there is any of that either.

And why I happened to have an extra stick of shower-fresh, armpit massage oil in my backpack?: well…, it’s probably the same reason I have a headlamp, two (I counted them) breath-mints, 14 different black pens, a colony of crushed staples, an inoperable minidisk and two unreadable books in my backpack:

Just in case.

'Cuz, well, you never know...