Once bitten...

The subject of vampires has come up a coupla times this week so, even though I don't believe in vampires except in the month of October, this seems a good time to remind everyone of the facts about vampires.

First, vampires don't show up in mirrors or photos. If you take a photo of someone and they don't show up, you should likely avoid being alone with them.

Second, vampires can suck blood from anything, except perhaps a turnip. But (and this is big) they prefer human blood. Cow, pig, chicken blood - these are like them eating vegetarian - there isn't enough protein in other animals to satisfy a vampire's dietary needs and they will look anemic. Also, it makes them cranky and no one likes a cranky vampire.

Now, if you DO believe in vampires, you should keep some things in mind. For instance, if (as I was telling monkeyboy the other day while trying to determine if the left side of his neck or the right was more desirable), if you sleep on the second floor or higher and you hear a little tap-tap-tap on your window, and you go to the window and open the curtains, and there is what appears to be an anemic looking individual standing on nothing but air, do not open the window. Vampires cannot come in unless invited, but they are tricky and you may implicitly be inviting them in simply by opening the window if your smile is congenial enough.

"But what," you say, "if the person outside is legit, a friend or perhaps a close relative?" Let's just agree, ok, that if they are floating in air, they are not your friend anymore.

Also, even if they understand your opening the window was not intended to convey an invitation to enter, vampires have hypnotic eyes and they are quite adept at mesmerizing their victim into a state of vertigo causing the hapless chap/chick to fall forward across the threshold, in which case no invitation to enter is necessary, a vampire is quite strong and can easily hold his/her "meal" with one hand while maintaining a levitational state, a vampire's way of walking and chewing gum at the same time so to speak.

Keep in mind, though, that you are under no obligation whatsoever to look outside when hearing tapping sounds on your window pane. If the sound is coming from something outside, it isn't inside because it's clearly unable to get inside, hence the tapping. My strong advice to you here is to leave the curtains closed and add one extra layer of protection by burrowing deep under your covers - covers have magical powers, all covers, even the thinnest sheet.

A bite from a vampire does not kill you; it doesn't even make you a vampire. In fact, it's only when they backwash that you run the risk of becoming a vampire yourself. And modern day bloodsuckers aren't really all that interested in turning folks into vampires themselves anymore; population explosion, resource depletion, blah, blah, blah. What they would prefer is to suck your blood and leave you alive for perhaps another meal another day.

If you didn't know, your blood - specifically, red blood cells, which is what the vampire is after (white just leaves them feeling nauseous and unsated) - breaks down when it gets old, and parts like the iron are reused while other parts are expelled through your bile. Vampires are not interested in the old blood that is being eliminated from your body; they need the iron and oxygen contained in new, healthy red blood cells, which is why they need to suck blood from living organisms and not from dead ones. So, if you are dead, you can stop reading this, you have nothing to fear except perhaps necrophiliacs and graverobbers.

Re: Blood types, the ultimate blood to a vampire is O-neg. It is like the Filet Mignon, the center cut, the Prime Rib of blood. Some vampires prefer A, some B, some pos., some neg., but all vampires like O negative, and most like O+ nearly as well. This is because we Os have no antigens. Antigens are anathema to a vampire.

Wearing garlic around your neck is just stupid. No vampire is afraid of a bulb of garlic or even a garland of the pungent parsnip. Garlic is only beneficial in these instances if it is in your bloodstream. If you are using this method to repel vampires, you need to ingest it...in huge quantities. Monkeyboy is quite heavy-handed when cooking with garlic, he takes our safety seriously.

The reason vampires don't like garlic-infused blood is because garlic is a naturopathic antibiotic. In fact, taking 3 to 5 cloves a day (you can cut the cloves into tablet-sized pieces if you are averse to swallowing them whole) will ensure a vampire thinks twice about sucking your blood, thus reducing the chance of backwash. Garlic can also be mixed with honey for an effective cough syrup and, steeped, it helps with earaches and other cochleal sorts of infections.

Basically, when a vampire sucks too much garlicy blood, he/she loses his/her keen sense of hearing as well as the well-honed sense of taste/smell; these are essential to a vampire's survival, so clearly not a good thing. Also, vampires are extremely insecure and, if they eat too much garlic, their friends will refuse to party with them due to the effluvient nature of the beast.

Now, a couple extra bits for free. Vampires are not up during the day. It isn't just that they cannot touch sunlight; they are nocturnal creatures. They are asleep, hybernation-style during the day; they are not in a (day)club with heavily shrouded windows dancing and drinking and having sex on counters and tables and couches as commonly depicted in modern day film. They sleep like the proverbial dead during the day, and they rise when the last ray of sunshine disappears over the horizon (which totally sucks for people who live where the sun is down for six months at a time, and which also explains why the human population in those places is low, eatin's good up there for six straight months).

Also, IF you hear a tapping and IF you open the curtains and IF the cause of the tapping is the long, tapered-but-grossly-chipped-and-dirty fingernail of a person dressed in black and balancing upon a broomstick, you're up shit creek without a paddle - witches are not bound by the same rules of propriety as vampires; witches can come in without asking and can actually just cast their spell straight through the glass pane while sitting in comfort on their broom. Spells can even penetrate magic covers, so no help there either.

And lastly, no worries about zombies if you live on the second floor or higher - zombies cannot levitate. So, unless they are already inside your house, you don't have to worry about them tapping to be let in. On the downside, they can actually smash through doors and walls and they don't mind a bit o' garlic taste, it actually tickles their undead tastebuds...

I love Jesus, too...

Oh, god, I can't wait until I'm 88 and am excused for anything I say...

My ha ha power

anarchy: absence of government, a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority; a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government

So, there I was taking a shower and, just as I lathered up my hands to smooth bodywash down my belly, I start thinking about the book A Clockwork Orange. Now I'm a voracious reader and it irks me to start a book and not finish it, talking of course about real books and not self-help or history books or the bible - these are quite often not stomachable in one sitting. But A Clockwork Orange is touted as being one of the best novels of our generation and, for the life of me, I cannot read it; it's too confusing.

"I had to have a smeck, though, thinking of what ... I'd viddied once in one of these like articles on Modern Youth, about how Modern Youth would be better off if A Lively Appreciation Of The Arts could be like encouraged. Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieted Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles. Music always sort of sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me feel like old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and blitzen and have vecks and ptitsas creeching away in my ha ha power."

Huh?

So, I was thinking about this book and I determined that perhaps it was time I gave it another try; the same thing happened with Great Expectations which I tried unsuccessfully to read like fifteen times, and the sixteenth time I was completely entranced from beginning to end and may I just say, "WELL DONE CHARLES DICKENS!"

I bent over to soap up my legs and thighs, and the thought occurred to me that I don't understand how such a negative word as anarchy can have such a positive component to it, that being utopia, and why this component is so consistently overlooked. Either I don't fully understand anarchy or I don't fully understand utopia which is understandable because it doesn't really exist.

utopia: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place; a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions; an impractical scheme for social improvement

So with thoughts of social improvement in my head and shampoo in my hair (I like to shampoo my hair, bodywash my bum and apply antiperspirant soap to those parts of my body that might, under steamy conditions, perhaps glisten a bit - women don't actually sweat, mind you - I like to do all that before actually rinsing from top to bottom and all places in between...), I think to myself that perhaps the flaw in thinking anarchy is bad lies at the foot of history where the implementation has not turned out so well and has resulted in the malignment of what is actually a fairly decent concept. If one could live at peace with their neighbor in a society that had no need for law, what's wrong with that?

The problem is we have a hard time saying the word "law" without tacking on "order." We think one cannot exist without the other, and it can't - we're human and flawed.

But I want utopia in my brain, it is becoming increasingly apparent that I am currently governed by a set of rules and standards that are far too uncompromising, rigid and restrictive for me to live in any sort of utopia unless utopia is a state of complete isolation, fear and denial, which I guess is ok if you're one of those people who think resting on a bed of nails is relaxing and peaceful...

I thought to myself at this juncture that perhaps I would look into this issue more thoroughly when I was no longer naked and wet, so I stepped out of the shower and proceeded to dry off with the incredibly luxurious bath towel monkeyboy provides for just exactly that (I have a ritual every bit as entertaining as his bath-drying technique, although he has never seen mine and I've seen his multiple times, funny since I'm the exhibitionist and he is not).

Completely clean and very nearly but not entirely dry, I proceeded to search my overnight bag for a pair of clean panties (note, I do not wear underpants; I wear panties or underpanties or nothing, this is similar to the difference between men sweating and women glistening; women also don't fart, by the way - they fluff), all the while still pondering how to attain utopia in my fear-riddled brain.

And I started thinking about the time in my past where I would take apart broken watches because they were broken so there wasn't a whole lot of harm I could do them at that point, and I just might have managed to fix them, and I did, actually, a numer of times, you see? And I went from there to thinking that perhaps a bit of psychological anarchization might be beneficial as I clearly cannot live under the regime of a government whose primary tool of motivation is fear, and at that moment, I think to myself, "Wow, this is as confusing as A Clockwork Orange!"

So I go to work having determined two things - 1) That I will give A Clockwork Orange another chance and 2) that I am on the right track in focusing my synergies on getting rid of thoughts that reinforce unfounded fears.

Clearly the first is a tad easier than the second and no time like the present to start, so I look up A Clockwork Orange on the internet and, I do not lie, the first line of the description in Wikipedia says, "A Clockwork Orange (1962) is a dystopian novel by Anthony Burgess."

dystopia: an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives.

Well shut my mouth.

Here we go down the Brain Drain

Me: What the hell is wrong with Sable?
I: What do you mean, she seems fine to me.
Me: Did you not see her this morning? She was pushing against me so hard I nearly fell into the tub!
Myself: Here's a thought; quit drinking before 9.
Me: Fuck off.
I: Guys, knock it off. It's too early for kibbitzing.
Myself: I agree. Make her go away.
Me: Kibbitz? What are you two, jewish? Anyway, now I've forgotten what I was saying!
Myself: Again, drink...9 a.m. Just a thought...
I: Sable. You were talking about Sable.
Me: Yeah! She was shaking like a leaf!
I: It's raining. She always shakes when it rains.
Me: I know, but why? We don't put her out in the rain.
I: Why the heck does this bug you so much?
Me: I don't know! I guess because I don't understand it and it makes me feel bad that she's scared. Doesn't she know we're good providers and we won't let anything bad happen to her?
I: I'm a good provider, but you're always scared I'm not gonna take care of you well enough.
Myself: Maybe that's cuz you forgot her Wednesday night.
I: I didn't forget her. She wasn't where she was supposed to be!
Me: I was too! You just weren't looking.
I: I WAS looking. I even called your name.
Myself: Did you call her "Vics?" Apparently, she doesn't answer to "Vics."
Me: Well, I was standing right next to you and you didn't call my name and you weren't paying attention and you drove right off without me!
I: Did not.
Myself: Actually, you did. You were texting monkeyboy and forgot her.
Me: Yeah, you were texting him when you shoulda been paying attention to me!
Myself: Guffaw!
I: Did you really just say "Guffaw?"
Myself: Yes, yes I did. Wanna make something of it, Ms. Kibbitz? Nice sidetrack, by the way...
Me: Yeah, seriously. You freak out about the smallest things.
I: I do not!
Myself: Your hair's got a crimple.
I: It does not!
Me: Yes, actually, it does.
I: WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?? I went to the therapist with crimpled hair?? FUCK!
Myself: Gu-freakin-FFAW! What, are you afraid she might think you have issues?
I: Oh, she knows I have issues - I've told her all about the two of you.
Me: Really?
Myself: (Uh-oh. That can't be good.)
I: Yep.
Me: What did you tell her? Did you tell her about ghe-ghe?
I: Yep.
Me: What did she say? Did she think it was weird?
I: Well, actually, what we discuss is strictly confidential. I can't really talk about it.
Myself: Oh really? So, you didn't tell Jody?
I: Well, of course I told Jody. Jody's like my better half!
Me: I'M your better half, you moron!
Myself: Now, that's scary.
I: Technically, you are only 1/3 of me. And I'm not quite sure you can call it the good 1/3.
Me: You know, I could end you anytime. I'm good with only being 2/3 whole.
Myself: No fuckin' way...you end her, you end me too. I'm not living with you alone.
Me: Fine. I don't need either of you. I've got Sable.
Myself: Sable-I'm-afraid-of-the-rain-Sable? Good luck with that.

One down, twenty gazillion to go...

Where No Man Has Gone Before

It's Spring and time to clean. I spent the weekend cleaning out gutters and putting up guards (thank you, lassie!), then I "power-washed" the siding, windows and front door. There are no more spiderwebs dangling from the eaves. Strangely, the key also no longer works in the lock; I'm pretty sure someone tried to jimmy it that very night.

Jody says I'm being unreasonable and that it's likely due to the powerwashing. Playing the Three Possibilities game, I've come up with alternate thoughts on the topic:

(1. Someone tried to jimmy the lock)
2. Locks don't like having water and all manner of foreign debris power-shot up their keyhole.
3. It never worked, I was only imagining it.

The rules of this game are simple - when coming to a conclusion that causes you a degree of dismay or anxiety, come up with two other possibilities that are equally as likely and less anxiety-ridden. Then determine the probability of each and go with the one that has the highest probability. In this case, #3 - it never worked, I was only imagining it.

(Jody is going to WD40 it this weekend. This may be the wrong thing to do to a keyhole, but clearly so was shooting it full of hosewater.)

I am spring cleaning my brain, too - Please Excuse The Mess. I started by taking a mental inventory and quickly discovered I have a lot of junk. I've taken at least three loads to the curb already, and I expect to take another 8 or 10 before the process is complete and my mental house is back in order.

I even discovered some rooms I didn't know I had. I found a few that were completely empty, one that is octagonal-shaped with a lovely bay window overlooking a well-tended rose garden. I've never been in this room before. When I entered the room, it was filled with sunshine and the window seat had a plaque that read "Vicky," and for a moment I forgot I was supposed to be cleaning house and I nearly sat down to enjoy the sun streaming in the window. I will be returning to that room a lot.

More startling than that, though, was a room I found down a long, dark corridor. The room was smallish and had a sign above the door that, when lit, read "Test in Progress; DO NOT ENTER."

Ok, first, it's MY brain; I enter where I wish, although some rooms I have absolutely no desire to ever be in again. But a test room? How could I have a test room and not know it?

Since there appeared to be no test in progress, I entered the room. It was smallish, maybe 10x15 with a wall sectioning off a portion of the room, like an observation booth with a glass window. In the larger section, a table was set squarely in the middle of the room and on the table was the mousetrap game I played with for hours as a child.

I know it was the same game because the game came with two parts that did not work, key parts mind you, and my dad built wooden replacements that I loved more than the game itself. (My dad can build anything...anything. The parts of me that are whole and right, my dad built those to replace the defective parts that came with me when I was born or those that broke shortly thereafter.)

On the wall hung a sign that had four rules:
1. Please maintain complete silence when test in progress.
2. No jumping at any time.
3. No food or drink allowed.
4. No peeing on the carpet.

The first rule made perfect sense, mice do scare easily.

The second as well, the game is an intricate contraption and the final two pieces are a pole with a cage balanced precariously at the top. When played correctly, it is a well-timed jiggle that causes the cage to become unbalanced and begin its ratcheted fall to trap the mouse below.

The third is a no-brainer; what mouse would want a piece of plastic cheese if there was a vending machine in the corner that dispensed Laura Scudders potato chips?

The fourth was odd, though, cuz there was no carpet.

I wondered, as you might, what on earth took place in this room and how could I not know about it in my own brain! There were no clues in the main portion of this test environment, so I decided to check out the observation room. It had this soundboard sort of thing with lots of switches and dials and I thought it might provide a clue or two to the type of test being conducted.

So I walked through the wall (yeah, apparently I am able to noclip in my brain, although passing through the glass made my hair a little static-y), and I sat down at the console and studied the dials and switches and immediately became intrigued with a number of instruments on the board.

There was a dial labeled "The Staircase," a radial that could be turned to one of two stations, UP or DOWN. A series of colorful switches were outlined and catagorized as "Dimmer Switches," and they were labeled from left to right Brick Red, Burnt Sienna, Canary Yellow, Sea Green, Midnight Blue, Indigo and Red Violet.

Another dial read "Notions" and I clicked through its various settings, "half-baked," "silly," "foolish," "radical" and, my personal favorite, "confounded."

There was a gauge labeled "Load Balancing" where the needle appeared stuck at "overload;" I tapped the glass, but the needle did not move. And there was a volume control labeled "Voice" with two settings - "inside" and "out loud." It was set to "inside," and seriously wrapped in duct-taped to prevent it from being switched over to the other.

And lastly, there was a single button that simply said "To push."

Now, while this was all very entertaining and my curiosity was definitely piqued (I really must touch and fiddle with everything, dontcha know?), I was on a mission that day, Spring Cleaning was not getting done while I was twiddling dials. So I stood to leave having determined I would use the door that had suddenly appeared in the wall behind me (previously, there had appeared no way out except the aforementioned noclipping), when I noticed a dusty cardboard box in the corner, one of the kind used to store files and sooper-secret stuff in a government warehouse. And, even though the box was clearly labeled CONFIDENTIAL, I opened it anyway cuz it is MY BRAIN. The box was crammed full of files, and I pulled out the file at the front and it was labeled Test Subject 2408937 - Male - FAIL.

Bingo. The results of the tests performed in the adjoining room with it's mousetrap game, set of rules and no carpet.

I gotta tell you, I was a little scared. First, I wasn't quite sure I wanted to know what sort of bizarre testing had occurred, plus I was getting this strange sort of prickly sensation like I was looking at something I shouldn't and also, I felt like I was being watched. So I slid the file back into the box without opening it, but I lingered just long enough to finger the second file which read Test Subject 2408936 - Male - FAIL, and the one after that which read Test Subject 2408935 - Male - FAIL, and one a ways back that read Test Subject 2289346 - Male - FAIL, and I realized that every file in that box had two things in common...all indicated MALE test subjects, and all were marked FAIL.

And suddenly, I no longer cared about being watched and, while I still had a bit of a bone-chill thing goin' on, I became possessed with an overwhelming need to know; I pulled out the file at the very back, the last file, marked Test Subject 002 - Male - FAIL and I opened the folder and there inside was a picture of my dad.

I stared down at the picture of my father, the man who could build anything, then I tucked the file under my arm, closed the box and carried it from the room to the curb where I left it to be hauled away as refuse. I've already contracted a builder to repurpose the room as a nursery where I will grow hydroponic tomatoes. There will be no more testing without my full knowledge and consent, and I will employ an expert in constructing healthy test environments with adaptable controls and a human interface to help interpret the data.

The folder under my arm? I took it back to the sunny room with the picture window overlooking the well-tended rose garden and I set it on the floor next to the window seat with my name on it, then I curled up on the seat with the sunlight shining on my face, and I took a nap.

What can I say? Spring Cleaning is exhausting.

I am. Therefore, I think.

"Pooh," said Rabbit kindly, "you haven't any brain."
"I know," said Pooh humbly.

I've been accused more than once of spending too much time in my own head; one person even suggested it was a "scary place." I don't know about that - I just took another look, and it's really quite fascinating!

There is a jumbled order to things, a bit of a whimsical theme, and a few scattered items than have a look of obsessive compulsive about them. There's also the wisteria which may seem out of place in a brain but I take it wherever I go including on mindtrips; it shades me from sunstroke.

Main Entry: cat·a·clysm
Pronunciation: \ˈka-tə-ˌkli-zəm\
Function: noun
1 : flood, deluge
2 : catastrophe 3a
3 : a momentous and violent event marked by overwhelming upheaval and demolition; broadly : an event that brings great changes

There was a moment in the ocean in Mexico where I recognized that panic can be harmful to not only the individual who is feeling it, but also to those around them. It happened in a split second, when I couldn't feel the sandy bottom and I could feel the current pulling me out.

In that moment, I recognized that if I was pulled even ten feet further, I would not be able to get back to shore on my own. I knew my strength was spent and the current too strong, and I looked at Zap and gasped, "Too deep, too deep, too deep!"

And I saw the look on his face, trying to determine what I was saying, and was I in trouble, then yes, I was in trouble, and I knew with a certainty that he would try to come help me, and that I was in too much of a panic for him to be able to do that safely.

In that split second, I determined that his life was NOT going to be endangered by my inability to take command of my emotions, and I reached for inner strength to calm myself, and physical strength to swim against the tide, and I made it safely to shore.

This is something I need to do in the rest of my life. For the past couple years, I've been letting panic over unseen, non-existent currents choke off reason and prevent me from being able to swim to safe waters.

I was viewing the past through a narrow lens and allowing it to color the present in such a way that I panicked about the future. And I pulled someone under, someone who was trying to help me regardless of how difficult I was making it for him to do so. I will never do that again, to him or anyone else.

While the event was violent, and the full effects of the upheavel unknown, this is an opportunity for great change and I don't intend to waste it because of panic.