Late For Your Disappointment Appointment

tinytangerines:

rubywhiterabbit:

My little brother got into outer space and stuff so my step-mom bought him a place mat with all the planets on it. When I first saw it, I was upset, because it was newer and so Pluto wasn’t labeled. I was about to say something when I noticed something…

Pluto is there.

The artist remembered Pluto.

Guys…

The artist drew Pluto crying.

;n;

(via pearlsnapbutton)

Read all of the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and write short essays about each one.

I’m particularly attached to the Alice books because when I was a young girl, Alice McKinley was the only girl I encountered in any of the books geared towards preteens and adolescents who I ever felt could be a real live actual girl somewhere that I would possibly be friends and/or pen pals with.

Plus, all of the books are being release for Kindle on the 15th and as much as I feel like I need the Alice books, my bookcase says “Please no, Amanda.  Do you know how many cubes of just Alice that would be?  Yes, she’s wonderful, but if you put paperback copies of Alice up here, where will you put your comics and the next Wet Moon book when it comes out?”

I kind of went through something of a General Sherman phase a couple years ago/he is forever haunting me.  In my poetry for prose writers class two years ago, we did translations where we took an original piece from someone else and rewrote it three different ways.  I went with a section of Sherman’s memoirs about catching soldiers taking way more than they needed and like walking around with huge hams on their bayonets and stuff.  This was the third rewrite which was kind of a free reign sort of thing. 

We can build all the temporary shelters we need outside of all of the small towns of our hearts. We can talk for hours about unions and freedom and slavery. Of becoming a slave to unionizing and searching for freedom. It’s sad to think that even freedom can enslave us, on a metaphysical level at the very least. We can erase all injustices we want and have them still lingering in the form of prejudices a sesquicentennial later in even the most “proper” of people. We can steep ourselves in history and still never learn our lessons.

And what of group survival mentality? Are we to forage for and shelter all or keep our bivouacs and biscuits to ourselves? Whatever orders of decency that we may hand down to ourselves and others will surely be misinterpreted, misappropriated, and spit and spun back upon themselves, sometimes maliciously. Damn the South, save the Union could read like Damn the Whales, Save the Planet to the wrong set of eyes. There is a chance, maybe, that man is to forever be vexed by the impossible to understand poltergeist of the idea of the greater good. Uncle Billy wasn’t bad or crazy, just a little haunted. We will steep ourselves in history and we may never learn our lessons. We can miss meals for all the reasons in the world. Perhaps traveling light has its downfalls, sometimes serving as a physical antithetical to the Boy Scout Motto. Shoulders less stiffened by weight but feet dragging more and more with each provisionless step. How does one prepare oneself to travel with nothing, with the chance of gaining nothing, anyway? Will the pack’s skills make up for your lack of a pack? Will you put your faith in fellow pack members or will you want to pack it up and pack it in and pack your sorry self straight back home? Will you pack your head with history? And then, will you learn your lesson?

We declare a war on everything these days. Drugs, guns, terror. We declare them upon ourselves and wonder why everyday is a march that may or may not have a sea in sight. Every sleep a campsite, every challenge a battle or a city to burn so that things may start over in a “better” way, forever attempting to make Georgia howl. We leave behind others in the wake of our own destruction and go about things double-handed. We walk into our battles armed with our own forms of muskets and honey, employing the sweeter option first, attempting to win a side of flies while keeping our own unions intact. We wrap ourselves in history and take what we will from the lessons.

In my workshop this semester, we’re doing a short essay a week called hypoxic essays which are designed to keep us writing even if we feel like we don’t have any material.  This is the second one of the quarter.  It’s kind of a mess.  If I ever finish it, it’s hopefully going in the superhero/comics themed collection I’m slowly working on.

            “I wouldn’t need this shitty job if I were a mutant.”  I say this to myself almost daily as I sit at my desk trying to avoid my boss for fear that she’ll ask me more invasive personal questions about my health and family and infer that she will fire me if I don’t answer in great detail.  While I know that’s technically illegal, I haven’t been employed long enough to draw unemployment if I were to be fired for “insubordination” or mysteriously “laid off” shortly after filing a complaint and we’d be about four hundred bucks short of making it each month on what my partner makes alone.  As a result, I am left applying for different jobs and daydreaming about mutanthood.

I spent a few weeks contemplating the X-men and trying to decide whose powers  would be most favorable in terms of aiding in the quitting of my day job.

Rogue’s powers would be pretty useless considering I don’t know any mutants whose powers I could absorb.  Plus the whole no touching thing seems like a mega drag.  Rob and I ditched condoms the minute I could afford to go back on the Pill and had taken it to the point of it being effective.  So I don’t feel like I would want to spend my entire life in what is essentially a full body condom for the protection of my loved ones and innocent bystanders I may encounter or accidentally touch.

Jubilee’s firework hands would only be beneficial for working at the circus, working as a fairy princess at children’s birthday parties or while tending bar at a very flamboyant gay bar.

Wolverine’s claws hurt when they come out.  While his healing abilities would be great for counteracting my rampant clumsiness, the whole bones coated in adamantium , wiped memory thing is definitely a deal breaker.  Nor would any of this help me quit my job and not starve.

Jean Grey and Professor Xavier’s telepathic powers seemed appealing at first.    I could easily get a new job that isn’t a lousy telephone interviewing gig at which my boss makes me very personally uncomfortable by reading the interviewer’s minds and responding correctly at interviews or even telepathically put the idea for them to hire me in their head.  I bet I could also score plenty of free drinks and food this way.  The biggest downside would be hearing other people’s thoughts.  When I am getting skeeved on by creepy menfolk on the train, I don’t want to hear their lecherous thoughts.  Plus, my own thoughts are loud enough that I would probably go completely bonkers if I had to deal with everyone else’s thoughts all the time too.

I was eventually able to decide on which power I would want while at the Laundromat one night.  Magneto.  His ability to manipulate metal suit my lifestyle best and be most likely to allow me to quit my job.

It hit me as I was getting change for the dryer and the change machine gave me five quarters for my dollar.  It did it for the next two dollars and then stopped at the fourth.  I had made a seventy-five cent profit simply for getting change.  Which got me thinking.

If I could manipulate metal, I could make your average Laundromat change machine give me twenty dollars worth of quarters for every dollar that I put in.  At a five dollar investment and roughly five dollars for one load of laundry as not to appear suspicious, I would be clearing a ninety dollar profit.  With a ten dollar investment, I could make one hundred eighty-five dollars.  Four times a week, with a five dollar investment at a different Laundromat each time and I would make slightly more than what I do a week right now.

Now, I wouldn’t grift change machines forever.  I would only do it for a few weeks to get capital.  And to get the money for my next machine to conquer so long as technological advancements have not ruined every slot machine in the world by making them all digital.  After a couple of weeks of laundry scheming, I would go to one of the gambling cities, probably Atlantic City to make Bruce Springsteen references, and manipulate a decently sized slot machine jackpot.  Then, I would return home and funnel the money into a high capacity color copier and a really nice printer with which to start a zine printing and distribution business.  I would also maybe make a few investments and take some sort of further initiative to try to make our future a little more financially secure.  I would probably also maybe even considering paying off my credit card.  Maybe.

When I was out of work for a year, I was able to buy a few groceries and sock some money on a utility bill here and there by making various crafts and selling them on the internet and picking up the occasional freelance editing gig.  Without the panic of impending homelessness in the mutant scenario, I could focus more on freelancing and crafting and hopefully make a much more successful go at it.  Especially since I would be able to sew 15 things at once by controlling the needles which would greatly increase my productivity.   And if my dreams fell through I could always make a trip back to Atlantic City and just make my own luck.

The more I think about this whole thing, the more I wonder if my blind hatred of my job is making me delusional or if I’m just spending too many of my bathroom breaks hiding in the stall, reading comics on my phone.

Sometimes I worried about each and every one of us as I fell down the stairs from the third floor into a cab anywhere from one to five times a week for nearly six months.  In hindsight, we all seemed to be trying to destroy ourselves just as quickly as we’d destroy a thirty rack of PBR or large containers of cheap wine.  But we covered up the fact that we were drinking until we cried or puked by laughing  (or pretending to laugh) until we cried or puked because it’s easier to laugh when you’re so drunk you can’t see straight.  We played young and dumb and kept the fact that we were all disintegrating on some level or another a secret.  Every love seemed to fall into the category of either unwanted or triangular.  Sometimes there were more sides to it than three and sometimes we never knew that we’d ventured outside of parallel lines.  We were always barefoot and singing along long after we’d stopped believing in the things we were singing about.  Come August we were all disenchanted and drunk lying under a tree talking  about how we can’t believe we ever bought into any of this while everyone inside seemed to be sober versions of ourselves six months earlier.  We sat sweating out our drunks, rolling cigarettes, and sighing, not knowing how to feel about everyone inside.  We sipped nostalgia, envy, and minor disgust with our covert public alcohol.  We used to be untouchable and, those people inside, they were still untouchable.  We had been untouchable because we’d told ourselves that we were and we’d been surprised to learn otherwise.  The people inside were untouchable because we’d told them they were too.  We’d set some sort of example and now I wonder how many of them are falling down stairs just to remember that they’re alive.

It seems like no matter where you are in this state, if you’re sad with the windows open at this time of night, it sounds exactly the same.  Cars seem to hover as they barely make a dent in what can only be described as the sound equivalent of that feeling you get when you sit down on the shower floor and stay there long after you run out of hot water because you don’t really know what else to do.  It’s that kind of sound that won’t really let you actually get out of bed, one of those things that inspires you to keep your cigarettes on the night stand so when sleep abandons you at a time when you can’t really stand yourself, you’ll have some sort of buffer between you and your loathsome self. 

That melancholy Illinois night sound might as well just be the pure auditory embodiment of self-loathing echoing through your head and heart and projecting out into the atmosphere given the chain of thoughts it always sets into motion.  It quickly evolves into one of those nights when you’re left hugging and biting your knees and wondering what the fuck you’re doing anymore as you chain smoke with that song about how you were just a fuck stuck in your head thinking about how time is supposed to heal all wounds but no one ever tells you what’s supposed heal all parasites.  What you’re particularly interested in is the cure for parasites that live in old wounds and refuse to let time get to them. 

The blue television glow washes over real life as you’re held down, nose plugged to have the confirmation of your present status force fed to you. Left upset and confused, you sit rubbing your sore cheeks where the fingers dug in to pry your jaws apart so that you could ingest (but certainly not willingly accept) this all.

Though you can’t seem to comprehend why anyone would waste their time standing for hours on a southern California sidewalk in a stupid t-shirt waiting for the chance to wear a nametag and jump up and down like an idiot, the glare of stage lights seems all too familiar as does the embrace of the washed up former improv show host now in the gameshow business as the successor of a man so old he likely reeked of formaldehyde as others are being called down to talk of wristwatches and picnic baskets. They rattle off numbers not sure whether to trust the screaming crowd or to follow their guts. And if they follow their guts, the slightly rotund bespectacled host finds them quite maverick for some unknown reason.

Once they get this wristwatch and picnic basket right (and will you look at these awkward first prizes) their next task is to make sure a little plastic guy doesn’t step off a cliff or to drop a hockey puck down a maze for what they hope is a new car but is usually just fiber tablets and some ugly plates or something. This accumulation of junk is all in anticipation for what these people hope will be the big one. Though first they must spin the wheel that is the biggest game of chance in all of this. Sure it’s possible to be brilliant at guessing games but nothing short of telekinesis will guarantee that this wheel will spin and stop in the spinner’s favor.

Now for the successful spinners. What is this next stage, the big show? Can you call it that? It’s just more guessing games and potentially shitty prizes.

This, my dear friend, is where you come in. Showcase number one. You’re a big deal because it feels like the person bidding went through a lot to get to you. But let’s face it, there’s nothing too outrageously special about you in comparison to showcase number two over there. You’re a brown velour couch in such an unattractive model that you should likely be called “the davenport” should you ever actually reside in one’s home and a blue tandem bike. Congratulations, you probably have the words Eagle Twin Cruiser tattooed on you somewhere or perhaps Stanley Fine Furniture.

As this couch and bike, you don’t feel like so much of a prize next to showcase number two, it’s a motherfucking trip to Hawaii. It’s all sunshine and gorgeous scenery while you are the textbook definition of awkward, especially if you happen to come with a lifetime supply of laundry detergent this week.

So of course you’re going to be passed upon by the one with the best wheel luck. This act will be much to their competitor’s dismay. And this competitor will feign enthusiasm as he bids upon you because you’re still better than walking away from this supposedly climactic moment empty handed.

There is a chance that both your bidder or his competitor will win both you and that trip to Hawaii. Should that happen, you’ll likely be shoved into the basement and forgotten until those couple days of paradise are over and then you’ll occasionally be a comfy place to rest one’s head.

Otherwise, it’s a 50/50 shot you’ll walk away the victorious showcase with the less than triumphant television quasi gambler. You’re still comfortable and quirky in your composition yet you’ll never quite be that once in a lifetime opportunity he was hoping for.

So you sit and ponder values and the tragicomic that this system of them seems to create and you can’t help but wonder if we can all be more than four days on the beach or a shitty couch and impractical bike if this system is reevaluated