Tonight: Side of the highway in Arkansas coming back from my last class this semester. Water (from the flooding riv’) everywhere!
The other night/morning: Los Angeles at 2am. Lights (from the flooding people) everywhere!
I’ll be back after I finish grading some papes.
Round here, we have been doing a dress rehearsal for the storms and whatnot mentioned in the book of Revelations.
I was supposed to be in San Francisco by now but my flight has been pushed back because apparently pilots and ground crew need to rest between lifting up and landing in funnel clouds and hail.
It’s ok. Let them rest. I have obviously been resting from this blog. Would you believe it if I said I too have been landing in funnel clouds? Well funnel cakes are more like it, nevertheless very distracting.
Check my tumblr often while I am out west. I hope to report more soon.
Happy trails to me and to the storm chasers.
Overheard at my work:
(conversation about unfit mother or something)
"...it's like if you didn't want your baby, you shoulda taken her to the fire department."
Overheard at Shell gas station in Forrest City:
“Yeah mang, I got all my sh*t taken care of. I know how to get in their heads. I get on Facebook and mess with their emotions. Yeah mang, I know how to do.”
Overheard at hair salon:
“I just saw Country Strong”
“Yeah? How was it”
“I looooved it. It was really good.”
“Oh was it? You probably saw yourself…you were just wishing that was your life.”
“I just liked watching it cuz I wish I could wear my hair that big all the time. Haha. Oh but Gwyenth is so good in it.”
“God she is good. She’s just so…belieeeeevable.”
One time when I was just a young college gal, I had to borrow my parents SUV to move something large and I stopped to get gas and smokes or something and when we (I never traveled in SUVs alone – I had a BF with me) got out of the car, some crunchy touch-of-gray-deadheads/trustafarians started to “baaaaaah, baaaaah” like we were sheep because we were in an SUV. It was the 90s – the economy was good so people focused their hatred on SUVs and third world banking. Remember when the ecoterrorists used to blow up SUVs? I probably escaped a crazy hippy bomb homicide that day. I wonder where they are now. Babylon?
But I confess – this week I got caught up in the herd. I let work take up all my time and I didn’t have a chance to blog about the following fascinating topics:
(bottom map not guaranteed for accuracy)
I’ve been collecting state postcard maps for some time and I gotta say, this recent trip through Alabama produced some of my favorite examples of designy-y egogeography.
My postcard map collection continues to grow. The bottom one is inaccurate, I found no sand dollars. Tomorrow: Alabama. The day after that: Maybe a proper update.
Saw these dudes the other day. Easy zoo living is making them soft!
My ol Los Angeles chum, Heidi sent me a postcard from Thailand! I feel that the photo represents the kickassness of a good adventure.
Speaking of adventures – as of 4:45pm today I am officially on vacation (from the land of florescent lights, not so much from this blog). Destination : the grand strand, the low country, and the Atlanta Cyclorama.
In Arkansas, I learned that nothing sticks to diamonds. Nothing. Not dirt or water or mud or feathers or nickelodeon slime. Diamonds have no static electric charge. So when you see one in the dirt, you’ll see one. YaknowwhatImean?
To find a diamond you have to be dedicated. I read on a tourist website that the average visitor to Crater of Diamonds State Park only looks for about twenty minutes before giving up. We made a pact that we wouldn’t give up for twenty hours! Twenty weeks!!
We’d been watching a few episodes of “Gold Rush Alaska” the night before and were pretty sure these guys were working on finding their glory hole. Our technique was as ambitious but not as showy.
Aside from the people that brought diamond sniffing beagles, everyone else was all willy-nilly – grabbing at dirt and dumping buckets of water everywhere. I heard more than a few people say “I’d probably find something if I knew what I was looking fer!” (to which I would silently say, did you not read the sign?! We are looking for diamonds sir!) I also heard more than a few mothers yell at their kids while dragging them over the 30 acre field of turned-over earth; “I told y’all to NOT get dirty!” (to which I would silently say, this is the metaphor for how things are gonna be with her the rest of your life, kiddos)
The upside of everyone else giving up is that there is some kind of mine etiquette that says the people walking out have to stop and see how you are doing and wish you well. It’s pretty cute when some six year-old girls carrying pink buckets tell you, “Good luck!!”
We called it a day after several hours of meditative sifting. No diamonds, but I burnt the three-inch section of the tops of ankles because I had my pants rolled up just so. I vowed to purchase a healing quartz crystal at another local mine as soon as possible.
No drowning our sorrows in beer though, Murfreesboro is a dry, dry county. Our consolation prize:
Now a mainstream phrase, the term Tiger Blood has been around the snow ball world forever.
Turns out these really were New Orleans Style Snow Balls – the lady told us that she and her husband had moved up from Louisiana after all the hurricanes. It was just too much to always live in a state of impending evacuation. She said they had always come up there to vacation so why not?
I kind of feel like a hurricane brought me to Arkansas too. A different kind of hurricane though - a kind of hurricane inside my soul that is feeling destructive for raw gemstones. We may have left the mine empty handed that day, but I’ve extended my search dedication time limit from twenty hours to twenty weeks to twenty years.
I will find you!!!
*the snow ball lady also has cute plants for sale.
I might have a travel story or two to tell if my arms ever unstiffen from the crispy sunburn I got while out digging for treasures in the middle of Arkansas. Check out these postcards I got at Coleman’s Crystal Mine. We picked up some awesome rocky treasures in their shop to make up for the stuff we didn’t find on our own. They wrapped them in the local paper for safe traveling and when I was unpacking everything I couldn’t help but notice how interesting things are out near the Ouachita Forest:
(real headlines, as published)
I lived in a Motel 6 in a working class suburb of St. Louis, MO for a few months when I was just nineteen. That’s a fact stored deep in my bag of “check-out-this-sh*t”-facts that I carry in case someone in a group is getting more attention than me. It’s not like I am that annoying – I use the Motel 6 story way before, “I can tie a cherry stem in knot with my tongue…”
When I was living in the motel with my BF, I got one of my favorite jobs ever, working at a cosmetics counter in a mall. Loved the job, loved putting eye-shadow on older ladies – you would not believe how much the human eyelid varies from person to person – and I loved getting free make-up and selling really expensive face cream. However, I was pretty lonely and didn’t like going to mall bars with my department store coworkers and my BF was always busy working so I was on my own most of the time.
Like many others suffering from social issues who eventually turn to animals, I filled the hole in my existence by visiting a great dane puppy at the mall pet store every day I worked. He was kind of blue-ish grey with dark spots and from what I remember, very hyper. I named him Sisco (pre-thong song) and I never knew if he found a good home because I quit to go to Mardi Gras with a friend. Those were the 90s, you could just quit jobs on Friday and get another one on Monday.
I thought those days were long gone, however, I find myself turning back to animals for guidance and companionship, but I’ve moved up from pet stores and on to the zoo. Behold my new part-time friends:
*The cheetah kind of reminds me of Sisco.
The zoo is walking distance from our place and ever since I got a membership I’ve been going so much I figure I should get a good khaki outfit and a walking stick and start giving animal talks. I might wait for my hair to go a little gray first (and for my mascara to fall off my eyelashes). For now, I am pretty sure I will start a separate blog called “Overheard Parental Disinformation at the Zoo” but it will have to be anonymous because I fear retaliation for outing grown people that don’t know the difference between a zebra and a goat, so you will have to forget you ever read about it here.
They got rid of the last of the men on Friday. On Monday I will return to an all female office. I am thinking about bringing in some donuts. I can hear the I shouldn’ts and the I’m on the south beach’s now…
It is not good to generalize, but sometimes it is helpful. I am debating on going on the business talk circuit to tell the world to fire any and all female executives. I saw that there is a big motivational conference coming to town and I’m thinking of hopping on the wagon. Like joining the circus. You won’t hear from me again unless you buy a ticket.
I will be the last person to come on stage because my message will be so powerful and controversial. The first thing I will say is “Have you done a thorough psychological analysis on the people managing your people?” the crowd will go silent. I will ask “A REAL background check? Do you know if she has unresolved daddy issues? Was she teased in high school?” Everyone will shift in their seats. “When you hired that regional director, did you call her old employees to see if she was an a**hole?” And when they all hang their heads I will scream “PEOPLE THIS ISN’T ABOT MOTIVATION – THIS IS ABOUT PREPARATION!” and I will have a huge power point slide projected behind me that says “Success is 2% Motivation and 98% Preparation” and Curtis Mayfield will come out at this point.
“You are wasting your money at these things as long as you aren’t taking care of the real problem. You can’t expect people to be motivated when they have an unproductive fire-breathing b*tch busy with personal vendettas up in their business!” Cue the horns.
Then we will have a little horn and funk dance participation thing (because people remember things better when they get physical).
Then the horns will break down and I will tell everyone if they only remember one other thing, to remember my drama rule:
When a person declares they “don’t want any drama” it is clearly a no-mean-yes kind of situation. This is always true. Without exception. The music will repeat this: always true, without exception…no-mean-yes-sit-ua-tioooon… “And it is always true” I will say. “It may only indicate that the person may genuinely not know that they are the cause of everyone’s grief…but we know they are addicted to drama…” At this point some people will be getting some sideways glances and I will know my job is done. I will say “Curtis!! Take em’ out” and he will play an instrumental medley of Pusherman and People get Ready.
Backstage on the circuit Rudy Giuliani and Lou Holtz will be discussing how to get rid of Laura Bush and make room for me, because we all know there’s only room for one women in charge! Act accordingly!!
PS – I am a good third-wave feminist but it is a known fact that none of that applies when you are slugging along in the bowels of capitalism with women suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Like Ignatious J. Reilly and Greenburg (no need to see the movie – I’m referring the only interesting characteristic of the whole film), I have a compulsion to write letters (emails too) of complaint to businesses (and sometimes people) that deserve a good talking-to. I’m not all piss and vinegar though, I will also write letters commending excellent service like the email I sent to McDonalds for a certain employee’s outstanding attitude and impressive ability to remember my own personal sugar-to-cream ratio preferences for my iced coffee.
I have many, many things to complain about lately – including, but not limited to: the Emperor’s-New-Clothes-Style-Celebration of the movie “The Social Network” and the horrific labor politics being hashed out in Wisconsin. However, when one is powerless one must focus on small changes, so the issue I am focusing on this month is starting a campaign to force Amazon to create a mandated rating system for their Used Marketplace. In the new system it would be grounds for account termination if a seller listed a book that actually has writing on the pages, in any condition other than “acceptable” or below.
Aren’t you tired of buying used books on Amazon that have been marked “Good” or “Like New” and then when you get them there is yellow or pink highlighting all over the place – or worse - ink-pen underlining and sloppy freshman-lit notes like “sense of place” and “METAPHOR” written near, or sometimes even OVER the actual words on the page? It reminds me of being at the movies with a row of teenagers right up in my ear with their stupid comments and hormonally quavering giggles. God. Shut up. I can’t hear the elderly couple repeating everything to each other over here.
Unless signed by the author, no book that has been marked up by the hands of another should be rated in “good” condition. It is an outrage. Who underlines or highlights in a perfectly good book anyway? I cringe when people fold back the front cover of a paperback or put their drinks on top of a book just because it happens to be resting flat on a table. Coaster? NO. Notepad for your bullsh*t thoughts about the text? Definitely NOT.
The only time I ever marked up a book was when I was forced to by an English prof who told me marking the life out of the page was the proper way to read – “highlight or underline the key phrases as you go” – I was like, “for what?” Still, he stood right over me and made me highlight a sentence and then make a note in the margins. I wrote, the words “key phrases” and then he finally left me alone. If I was forced to highlight again, I would highlight every sentence I read as I went along and just use the place where the highlighting ends as my bookmark. That makes about as much sense as highlighting in the first place.
I make all of my notes for reading off-line, on colorful post-it notes or a notepad that I have nearby. Am I alone in this? What do y’all do? I mean, tell me about a time when defacing a book in the name of “engaged reading” ie: highlighting and underlining, has ever helped you. Do you go back, open up a book and say “I know I highlighted something verrrrrry important somewhere here….” or do you ever go back at all?
FYI: Amazon’s artificial intelligence customer service got back to me and made no acknowledgement of the Used-Buyer Manifesto I sent them (too powerful?). They just said to report unethical sellers to their investigation team. They want me to turn nark.
My bohemian friend Bethany keeps a blog of quotes and since she is a bohemian I feel that it is my duty to always be on the lookout for good quotes from the grind side (aka: the nine-to-five side). The best place to harvest inspirational quotes has to be, hands-down, the work conference. When team building is the goal, you can count on some pep talks, power points, and tree metaphors - and always a motivational presentation.
The conference I attended last week was non-profit so the motivational speaker demonstrated a kind of inspiration-economics that a lower budget would demand. She could not risk NOT inspiring us. We did not have a lot of time.
She came in, lit some candles while reading a poem about hope with the help of some lackluster audience participation and then she proceeded to recite all the hits of every heartwarming email forward about human kindness she had ever received. There was a story about being a carrot or an egg or coffee, and one about being a voice not an echo and another about tugging a dead elephant and another about a growing tree and still more about kindness of strangers and the serendipitiousness of serendipity and the thrill of giving and the wonder of cats. At one point she was throwing out so many inspirational quotes – I thought I heard one Bethany would dig and wanted to write it down, but they were coming at us so fast I couldn’t remember if we should be like the eggs or the coffee. I looked over at the woman next to me and saw that she had made a note to herself that said:
“You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. ~ Ghandi”
I became very concerned that the woman might repeat this error somewhere important, like in her email signature or an office newsletter. However, even after all the inspirational bullets being shot at me for the previous hour, I did not have the nerve, the confidence, the ethics, or the kindness to mention anything to her - even when she offered me a piece of gum later. What is the big deal anyway? Everybody loves Ghandi. He probably said something close when he was going through his individualistic phase.
The moral of the story? It doesn’t really matter what your hear, only what you write.
They don’t let you take pictures inside the Eudora Welty House so I bought a postcard of one of the rooms. The house is lovely and you should move in immediately. I couldn’t get over the stacks and stacks of books (the tour guide said 9,000 books were found in her house) and what I really couldn’t get over was how it didn’t look that “Hoarder”-ish. I don’t know if it was the light from the generous windows or the lack of other knicknacks, but in there it made sense to stack books on the sofa, the dining room table, the countertops, and the bed, and wherever. They say this is how she lived. They also said she had a ton of friends and wrote a bizzzllion letters.
They give you a driving tour map if you are a good house tour participant – I took the road to see where she was born (and where, supposedly, Richard Ford grew up) there is a huge bronze statue of her in a courtyard near a bookstore and coffee shop. I stopped in to get a peek and felt obliged to order a coffee, the guy in the shop was kind enough to give me a short tour of the area, but when I asked him about her burial site he said he had never been there. I was a bit confused because it was right across the street – you could see Greenwood Cemetery from the quaint bookstore balcony, I know this for a fact because I had just spilled some coffee up there.
“Well I don’t go there. There’s packs of wild dogs and bums.”
“Packs of wild dogs?”
“Yeah – they are always running around.”
Yikes.
By the time I left the coffee shop I was so close to being dissuaded from my gravesite visit because I am deathly afraid of wild dogs and packs of them are just far too wild and people don’t visit cemeteries enough and if I was maimed my body parts would not be found for weeks if ever, and because my boyfriend has already made me feel like a creep for wanting to visit the gravesites of other dead people (I suppose they would have to be dead), but my curiosity got the best of me and the proximity of the cemetery was encouraging me… so I turned in.
I didn’t see any wild dogs and the only bum around was me and I suppose you could count some Europeans (who find it quite chic to tour in cemeteries by the way) wearing backpacks who were visiting another big grave. I didn’t think anything of it until I was wandering into the place – realized I was alone, it was windy, and I was standing on dead people, but I found her just in time. Buried across from a Magnolia and near a cedar. I bowed my head and whispered my short prayer I always offer to dead people I find interesting;“Way to go!” and I left.
Someone should really come and stack some books up on that plot.
On the left is a movie prop painting of Ashley Judd painted by an artist from Canton, MS and used in the film “A Time To Kill”.
Key phrases and thoughts from this Mississippi trip thus far: Lima beans in every dish, slinky flounce tops on home shopping network, networking in a conference room next to a giant bowl of mayonnaise, one-on-one historical & film tours with Jana, hotel billing f-ups, and O brother where art thou.
I asked the hotel clerk/concierge if there was a grocery store nearby and he said “oh yes – there is a Kroger right there” and he pointed to the corner of the lobby. I assumed he meant it was out-of-doors across the parking lot.
“Great,” I said, “Do they sell wine? I need to get a bottle for an important business gift [to myself]”
“Oh no, but they sell beer. You can get beer there.”
“I’d like to purchase some wine.”
“There’s no place around here that sells wine. No.”
“No place – ANYWHERE?”
“No, but the restaurants serve liquor.”
“Well great then, I will have them put liquor in this large plastic McDonalds cup sitting on top of the tall ashtray near the door here and I’ll tell myself it’s wine. What a great hospitable solution you have offered. How does it feel to excel at your job to such a degree that it is confusing me?”
“This actually used to be a dry county.”
“Wha?” Technically, the whole country used to be dry for a good while back in the day – I’ve seen Boardwalk Empire…I don’t see what that has to do with anything, “So there is NO PLACE to go – even if I get in my car, head out on the road and drive back toward Memphis – I won’t see a single place that sells wine?”
“Oh well down the street a few miles…you can buy wine.”
“Is this your first time to Logan’s Road House?”
“Yes.”
“Well you can just throw the peanut shells on the floor.”
I shoulda brought some mayonnaise. Here …can you fill this giant plastic cup up….
No matter how hard I stared at the radar screen, the snow would not scooch over to our office! Note: The pencil is pointing out where our office is located – the very tiny white area where sad workers in nearly-abandoned office parks were still inside working.
I say “were working” because I eventually got my wish and we all went home around noon in the name of snow safety. We are now all tucked safely in our homes eating milk sandwiches.
I strongly believe if were not for my impatience it would have taken the snow an additional fifteen minutes to get to us.
However, only my impatience has power, everybody else's impatience is just an annoying exhibition of selfishness and intolerance.
Sometimes when I get out of my class, depending on how many things have to get re-checked and locked down and radio-ed in, the chapel volunteers will walk out with me. Most nights these are just gentle old southern folk wearing sweaters-over-button-ups looking to share their kindness and love of the gospel to convicts, last night there were two new ones and it really seemed as if they considered themselves some kind of privileged clients of the federal spa and retreat with the way they were carrying on and sighing and saying “i wish theyall would hurry up already” and “they need to get to this gate up in here” under their not-so-quiet breaths.
It takes forever (in regular outside-time time) to get out of the compound. There are practical security issues, not to mention a decent fifty-yard walk, and even more important- there is no real incentive to rush you out of there, so sometimes the dudes in the control room will wait until they are done eating their sandwiches or maybe finishing a chapter of Infinite Jest or quilting that last square for the company craft show or who knows what in thesamhell , to open the gate.
Whatever the case was last night, I was extremely uncomfortable to be around some bible volunteers that were verbally impatient. I had never once thought to complain to the dudes controlling the big gates, keys, cuffs, and electric fences and I was quite sure the guards were fixing to retaliate in some kind of secret way that only people who work in dark, locked, unceasingly surveyed rooms know about. So I did my best to distance myself from them by acting like I wasn’t even interested in whether or not the gate ever opened. The full act included acting surprised when it was my turn to walk in. I think it worked, although I didn’t get any nice small talk from the chapel volunteers on the way out to the parking lot like I usually do, but I can’t help it - there are rules ‘round here.
It is best to keep your impatience to yourself and (if not) to use it only for good.
Sometimes if you mistype the web address to this blog you get this site.
The past couple days have been rough for me, so I am extremely vulnerable to cult recruitment and religious conversions and binge drinking and posting irrational and insulting anonymous reader comments on human interest stories and Urban Outfitter clothing reviews. It is fitting that I should fall upon that bible studies site today because it has a link near the top that says “Life is a test to see if you believe & obey the gospel.” So simple! I am totally going to cram for that one later.
What helped me is when you click on that link it brings you to another page that says “Spiritual Warfare” which is totally up my alley. “Warfare” sounds urgent and active. Belief is only going to get you out of bed, but warfare will fill your days.
Since you stumbled on my spiritual warfare site, I will do you the favor of giving you the secrets to the meaning of life (based on my experiences):
The best way to absorb this heavy information is to meditate on one a day. Maybe even one a week. Pick one truth from above and hold it in your head as the answer to all things, and I mean ALL things, for the next week and see what kind of opportunities open up for you, see what questions of yours are answered.
I hope this clears things up. I do not require obeisance as proof of belief - even in the case of a leprechaun sighting.
