I just found out over the weekend that one of my favorite defunct bands has reunited and a new album is due out this November on Trustkill. You know how I found out? I tweeted this  last December:

15:38 all i want for xmas is for armsbendback to reunite. get on that, fat man.

In my heart, I always knew that posting my tweets to my blog would benefit me someday (on top of the fact that 75% of my tweets were vaporized during the Great Twitter/Facbook Outage of Summer ’09), and this was finally validated over the weekend when SANTA HIMSELF found the entry containing that tweet and left this comment:

well merry fuckin christmas

http://rockassdick.blogspot.com/2009/09/armsbendback-new-album.html

odd how i was trying to find out more about this fantastic news and this blog is the first thing that came up in the search

I listened to their album “The Waiting Room” a lot back when it came out in 2003. It got me through some tense and frustrating days at Weiss Meats, where I was the office manager and spent most of my four years there plotting suicide and homocide. And even to this day it remains one of the few albums that I can listen to start to finish, no skipping required.

This song in particular, “Arms of Automation,” STILL makes my eyes sting with tears when I hear it.

Thank you, Santa. I will never refer to you as “Fat Man” ever again.

(I hope they tour. Get on that one next, Santa.)

Two things about me:

• I like taking photos of people
• I’m socially anxious at times

I do this weird thing where, even though I have a bit of social anxiety, I like to put myself in situations where I’m pushed out of my comfort level. I guess it’s a mild degree of self-torture or something. So a year ago, I decided to combine this with my love of photographing people and I placed an ad on Craigslist offering free publicity photos to local musicians. I guess I thought it would be interesting to have someone other than my poor guinea pig Blake to pose for me, but at the same wasn’t really expecting anyone to answer my ad since I’m not a professional photographer and only do this for kicks.

However, one-third of a local Pittsburgh hip hop group replied and said they were game. There were lots of texts exchanged, and even one meeting with one of the members, Mose, but no dates and times for a shoot were ever cemented. Nearly a year later, Mose contacted me and was all, “Hey let’s try this again,” and even though he still couldn’t get the rest of the group to commit, I finally met up with him yesterday at Arsenal Park and helped him out with some publicity shots for his solo work.

Mose made the experience very pleasant because he’s extremely easy to talk with and I wasn’t all, “OMG I’m going to have a panic attack.”

I’m a secret smoker, and Mose shared his cigarettes with me. Seriously, I refuse to smoke in front of Henry even though I was a smoker for the entire first half of our relationship. I quit when I got pregnant. I didn’t become a “recreational” smoker until I started working full time 6 months after Chooch was born, and then became embroiled in the suicidal underbelly of a creative non-fiction class at Pitt. It seriously pissed Henry off, but it kept my fingers from finding the handle of a hatchet. Blake will blatantly smoke right in front of Henry, but I always try and hide it behind my back. It’s pathetic, really. Like he’s my fucking father.

There’s more to come! He was a great sport, and his music is fantastic so you should all check it out!

AudibleSilence
RaKanMusik

Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 15:39 Henry, revealing his relationship secrets: “I know that if I tell you not to do it, you’ll do it. You’re like a child. You’re like Chooch.” #
• 17:12 Well. Craigslist ad for washed-up stripper has been placed. Now the wait begins. #
• 21:14 Henry: “you’re what we in the hair industry call a cunt.” #
• ***
• 12:34 Wishy washy fucking bitches. #
• 20:42 Bloodshed. Trial. Jailtime. #3thingsthisrelationshipwontendwithout. #
• 20:43 Water tower. #sceneofthecrime #
• 21:32 Sometimes I really feel like I could stab a bitch over pie. In 99.9% cases, “Henry” can be substituted for “bitch.” #
• 22:21 Who needs to go out when True Life: I’m Bi-Sexual is on? #
• ***
• 11:18 I could do without Henry’s True Life commentary. #
• 11:22 @awoodhick you’re so predictable. Do you know what means, or do I need to explain it, like “contrad iction”? #
• 12:35 Surprised my mom hasn’t turned her house into a hostel for protesters in preparation for the G20. Unless she has. Yeah, she probably has. #
• 12:53 Henry washed the dishes for the 1st time in 8 mths & is acting like a paladin. He’s going to ride that train all weekend, I guarantee it. #
• 16:03 Never again will I buy any type of device with a track ball. #
• ***
• 00:10 Happening now: Intellectual discourse with @awoodhick. Topic: porn. Surprising? No. #
• 18:35 Somehow, Henry’s mom is convinced I want the As Seen On TV purse w/ 50000 compartments. If only to hold my collection of sperm specimen. #
• 19:03 I wonder if, to join the American Pie Council, you have to excel at baking, or if being a champion pie eater will suffice. #
• 19:06 If I could tone down the sex/murder/STD analogies, maybe I could have a future in food writing? #
• ***
• 11:45 I desperately need to know the best place to get pie in Cleveland. #
• 18:27 It’s Albert Fish, ya’ll. bit.ly/TnxFN #
• 19:33 Chooch may look like Henry, but he has my attitude. Not sure which is worse. #
• ***
• 00:03 My name is not Martha Stewart and I did not just bake delicious corn bread muffins. #
• 00:04 I mean, I baked SOMETHING, but it’s not delicious by any stretch of the imagination. I even followed directions. #
• 13:23 The commercial for Heel Tastic came on. I made a quick exit from the room. #
• 17:21 @writeswithaleft a lotion to make human heels un-gnarly. #heelnasty #
• 19:12 Almost barfed at Alisha’s. Now convinced that she poisoned me. #
• ***
• 11:56 I can’t love the environment enough to dangle from a bridge for it. Picking up a stray candybar wrapper off the street is as far as I go. #
• 12:22 My asshole son learned the words to a Fresh Beat Band song just so he can smugly sing it in my horrified face. #
• 12:29 At least the Pittsburgh media is spelling “protester” correctly on their websites now. Somebody remembered Spellcheck! #
• 17:39 Need to find a way to get over my hatred of baking so that I can become the best baker in the world & have my own line of erotic spatulas. #
• 22:12 Hay look @ the dumb! Lakemont revisited: You know that game, Roller Coaster Tycoon? The gam.. bit.ly/1SuMTv #
• 23:05 Hates being taken literally. The only time that should happen is when I say I’m going to eat your face. Duh. #
• ***
• 10:47 Had the TV on mute and swore I saw a commercial for some religious mountain cult. Turns out it was just a spot for Snuggie For Kids. #
• 10:49 Snuggies: Druid attire for the Millennium. #
• 12:27 My son is going apeshit to Devil Wears Prada right now (the band, not the book/movie). Mommy proud. #
• 12:42 Oh hold me back, Janna finally noticed my hair. #
• 14:18 twitpic.com/iyqbm – munchkin revival. #
• 16:30 I keep looking for my mom, gas-masked and clad in black, in all the protest footage. #g20 #getthefuckoutofmycity #
• 18:13 About to explain to my child that if it weren’t for Michael Myers, he wouldn’t be here today. #
• 20:18 I threw away the circulars before Henry read them and he’s pissed. Circulars are the closest thing to a newspaper he’ll read. #

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Chooch is obsessed with Halloween stores. After they all closed last year, I thought we were going to have to hook him up with methadone. In his upper case voice, he’d wail, “I want to go to the ‘WEEN STORE!” and try explaining to a then-two-year old boy that ‘Ween stores are like traveling carnivals – they stink like sweat, have employees with bad attitudes (hello, I used to work at one), have at least one bearded lady,  and are gone faster than you can go back to tell that one stock boy you’re having his baby. Nothing left but some fake blood on the linoleum, tumbleweed of glittered costume lashes, and the memory of overpriced graveyard sets.

But hooray, now they’re back open and we’ve delivered Chooch to at least three different chains and five different locations. Spirit seems to remain his favorite, although there’s one that has a giant jack o’lantern on its sign and that one really impressed him. I think it’s Halloween Connection. I don’t fucking know. They’re all the same to me after you go eighteen times a week.

We just let him run wild in there. He knows not to touch any of the life-sized mechanical displays and it’s really the only store we don’t have to worry about him breaking anything, since he’s mostly enamored with the table of rubber cats, rodents and reptiles. Have you ever tried to break a fake rat?

Somewhere along the way, he has learned of Jason Voorhees. Yes, I let my son watch scary movies. But we usually stick to the overly fake zombie flicks and supernatural ones. I’m saving slasher films for when he’s a LITTLE BIT older, like four. I don’t know. Maybe I’m kidding.

Now, some of the Spirit stores have a life-sized Jason in the back, machete at the ready, dead eyes that roll back and forth. It’s actually pretty frightening and I know it’s lame, but I don’t like getting too close because it feels like a set-up to a super bad movie. But Chooch LOVES THIS THING. He makes the employees laugh because he acts all brave, getting so close, but then he runs back and pulls me by the hand, telling me to come with him and that, “It’s OK, Jason’s not going to ‘killed’  us.”

So we’re at another Spirit store last night, which is actually the one I worked at three years ago and in the same shopping center as that disturbing LA Fitness shooting last month. Chooch dons a hockey mask and, I’m not joking, goes, “Ch-ch-ch, ha-ha-ha.” It sent a chill up my spine, but a good chill, like a “I’m so proud of my son” chill. Fuck the alphabet and state capitals, my boy knows his horror flicks, ya’ll. So I go to Henry, “Uh, how does he know to do that?” because I couldn’t remember if his life-sized Jason friend does that or not, and Henry goes, “All serial killers know each other.” What a douchey statement! Though, I laughed. I think it might also be time to explain the significance of Michael Myers and how Chooch might never have come to be if not for him.

Meanwhile, there’s this man walking around the store. He’s in his thirties, athletic-build, with two scary-blue super villain eyeballs, blond buzz cut. He’s wearing this tight navy blue t-shirt and walking too fast. I mean, if you’re in a store, unless you know exactly what you want and where it’s at, typically you move at a slower pace and you know, LOOK at things. There was something off about this man, like I felt he wasn’t really there for the Halloween apparel. It was like he was on a mission and not doing a very good job concealing that.

After the third time he walked past us (we hadn’t moved from the spot we were in), I noticed another man too, and they looked like they could have been brothers. He was doing the same thing, zig-zagging from one side of the store to the other, half-assedly handling masks and carelessly dropping them back down. Pretending to shop, is how it looked to me.

I”m not sure if you know this about me, but I am a super paranoid person. There are times when I won’t even leave the house because I feel weird. Just last month, Janna and I went to a late movie and as we sat in the balcony before the movie started, all I could think of was some black-masked killer bursting through the doors and spraying us with bullets. Like, I honestly could not stop thinking about that. It ruined most of the movie for me because I just wanted the lights to come on, like the fluorescents were going to cocoon me in some protective wattage that no bullet could penetrate. It just feels safer in the light, somehow.

So this is how I felt last night, next door to a scene where a bunch of women were slain by some psychopath. I started to not be able to breathe properly and my fingers were quaking. I whispered hoarsely to Henry, “I’d like to leave now.” I think he knew what was freaking me because he didn’t argue or question. Chooch of course was all, “OMG why are we leaaaavvvving” but when we told him we going to Pat Catan’s, he got happy again because what three-year-old doesn’t like a craft store? No seriously, please tell me, because when I was a child I hated being dragged to the craft store and even now as a person who has plenty of reasons to shop there, I still hate it. I hate dodging past all the scrapbookers and the crocheters and the old women who work there are so incredibly unpleasant and always look at me like I don’t belong because I’m not wearing homemade sweaters with decorative dangling balls of yarn.

Walking through the parking lot, I still felt tense. It wasn’t until we safely pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road that I started to feel better. Henry admitted that he noticed the weird behavior too and thought it was odd.

“It was probably plain-clothed security hired by the company, they just weren’t doing a very good job,” he postulated in his “I was in the Service, so I know these things” tone.

“Oh. That was completely not what I was thinking at all, and in fact, I was waiting for one of them to work up enough psychosis to pull out a gun and start spraying,” I shared.

But then I realized that if I were to walk into a store and reenact some bloodbath of a Tarantino scene, I’d wait until after the G20 Summit leaves Pittsburgh because I’ll be damned my work is going to be eclipsed by a pack of angry rioters, oh I mean “protesters.”

I understand that everyone has a right to protest and that this could have been so much worse, but can you please get the fuck out of my city now?

You know that game, Roller Coaster Tycoon? The game where you build your own theme park and it’s supposed to be totally fantastical? Imagine you’re  me, playing that game and getting frustrated after ten minutes, leaving half the park unpaved with rides (the cheapest ones because you’re on a budget) plunked down intermittently with little to no planning and at some point you notice that there’s a giant, gaping vacant lot between the bluegrass band playing on a shoddy stage and the cinder block arcade that smells like b.o. and cabbage and what better way to get people to form a human-worm than by dropping down a Monster Truck and offering rides, and then you start to get out of control and before you know it, you’ve built a stand shilling $7 gyros and a pavilion pawning Christian-inspired wreaths. And please make sure half of your rides aren’t running.

Now imagine this is a real life park and you know exactly what Lakemont Park in Altoona, PA is like.

And for some reason, we decided to go back. Well, the $5 admission might be a good reason.

Blake opted out this year, maybe because last year he was the equivalent of tossing Dennis Rodman into a camp of albino midgets. In Pittsburgh, he mostly doesn’t stand out. But in Altoona? A town where the inhabitants still bust out their Desert Storm sweatshirts? A town like that, someone like Blake gets more than his fair share of stares. So Alisha filled in for him, and Corey, who goes to school somewhat nearby at Pitt-Johnstown, met us out there. When he called me upon arrival at the park, I helpfully told him that I was wearing a pink hoodie.

“Because your brother hasn’t met you before?” Alisha asked snidely.

Alisha wouldn’t ride the old cars with me, choosing instead to wait for her own car. Now that I think about it, this might have been the only time all day where I wasn’t called “stupid” on a ride. Perhaps riding alone has its perks.

Oh, the Toboggan! How I missed thee. Alisha actually rode with me on this one. She bit her tongue when the car got to the top of the tunnel and I didn’t find out until later, but that didn’t make me laugh any less.

I had a crush on pretty much every boy working there, except for the yokel who was manning the Scrambler, who had Alisha and me get on first, causing us to nearly squash the shit out of my three-year-old. My right bicep was on fire afterward from all the bracing I did. And then you would think he would stick around after unlatching our car to ensure Chooch’s feet safely met the ground but NO. He walked away, leaving me to hold Chooch’s hand as he jumped off the ride, bending my arm in a way that only Gumby should be familiar with. I couldn’t hold on to his hand any longer, so he ended up FALLING OFF THE RIDE AND LANDING ON HIS BACK UNDER THE CAR.

Mother of the Motherfucking Year, right here.

Thankfully he didn’t get hurt, but I know it must have been jolting for him. He stood up and brushed himself off while I was all, “OMGOMGOMG” and Henry was standing on the other side of the fence, watching this whole spectacle, rolling his eyes at my incompetence. It was an awesome moment for the scrapbook.

He apparently wasn’t too traumatized by my Spears-ism, because he rode it again later with Corey.

Corey out-mothered me by assuring that Chooch’s feet were firmly planted on the gravel before letting go.

Leap the Dips is the oldest working roller coaster in the country or solar system or some shit. I forced Chooch to ride it, because even though he was dragging his feet, I knew he’d be ok and I really want to infuse him with coaster-lust as soon as possible so that I’ll have a ready-made riding partner at some point. I mean, this coaster is so ridiculously tame, there aren’t even any seat belts. It goes, like, 5mph. Chooch was still insisting that he didn’t want to ride it as Henry got him situated in the backseat, but I whittled away at his masculinity like any good parent would do in a situation like this, pointing out all the little GIRLS who had ridden it before him and come off enthusing and expounding the merits of this coaster granddaddy, and before he knew it, we were at the top of the hill and coasting languidly over shallow dips. I stole a few glances behind me and Chooch’s face was in a paralytic state of shock, but by the time the ride was over, he was all “Woo hoo, that was awesome.”

Chooch pulled it off with more aplomb than Corey, at least.

This photo was taken moments after Corey confessed that he made up the “life changing moment” speech he had to give in his public speaking class. Apparently, we had an Uncle John who never married and therefore treated us as his own children, so when he ended up dying of brain cancer, Corey took it tremendously hard and still wears the deathbed cross that good old unkie bestowed upon him shortly before giving up the ghost. This was the moment I realized that for sure, with no doubt, Corey is my brother.

I’m trying to get Henry to funnelcake-house our living room. It’s not going very well, but I have some secret weapons I’ve yet to unleash. And by that I mean hedge clippers and a taser.

We spent some time in the stinky, humid locker room of an arcade for some reason.

I tried to give that son of a bitchin’ lion a high-five afterward and he completely snubbed me.

People kept staring me down, giving me blatant once-overs. And I didn’t even have pink hair yet. That’s Lakemont for you.

Alisha, Corey and I rode the Monster with a mother who insisted on bringing aboard her 2-year-old daughter. I was frightened for her. And for my safety because I’ll be damned I’m getting clocked in the head by a toddler upchucked by a ride whose height restrictions she wouldn’t meet at any other respectable amusement park. Right as the ride started, Corey hollered, “Remind me to tell you something funny about September 11th!”, a statement which is #8 in the “How To Silence a Crowd” handbook. He also belted out “Vagina!” at one point and at first I was like, “Dude, there’s a small child on this ride with us!” but a quick once-over of her mother gave me gruesome sepia-toned visions of belligerent battles with a drunk husband/boyfriend over top a dinner table set with greasy buckets of fried chicken and cans of Pabst and a bathroom laden with hyperdermic needles so at that point I felt free to verbally masturbate with every cuss-combo I could think of as Alisha made our little monster tentacle pendulate so fast that I couldn’t breathe through the laughter, forcing her to yell, “You’re stupid” for the 678th time that day.

Remember last year when Blake and I rode a metal monstrosity called the Skydiver because it looked like a harmless yet fun take on a ferris wheel? And I vowed to never ride it again? And I said shit like this about it?

See this ride? This is a fucking ride built by the cooperative genius of Hitler, Satan and Mr. Burns and camouflaged behind the cute and fuzzy appearance of a ferris wheel. LOOK CLOSELY. LOOK AT THOSE CARS, JUST DANGLING THERE HARRY CAREY. LOOK AT HOW SOME OF THEM ARE UPSIDE DOWN AND POINTED TOWARD THE HARD, GRITTY SURFACE OF THE EARTH.

Of course, Blake and I simultaneously salivated at the sight of a metal contraption that could potentially send us spiraling to a grisly demise, after which I would hope our mangled, mashed, and possibly vivisected corpses would be studied laboriously and recreated for the next “Final Destination.”

No one was in line when we approached, but a trio of teenaged girls stood near by, ogling its height with craned necks. We assumed that the ramp they were standing near was the entrance, but it turned out to be the exit so we were sent away by the two greasy beer-bellied attendants. As we passed the girls on our way to the real entrance, one of them said, “Oops, we made them think this is the entrance by standing here,” and I called out, “I know! Now we look dumb!”

NO, WE LOOKED DUMB FOR WILLINGLY PUTTING OUR LIVES INTO THE FATE OF THIS FUCKING RIDE THAT THEY CALL THE SKYDIVER. First, the padded bar was slammed down onto legs and applied so much pressure that I went numb below the knees. It created a beautiful illusion of amputation, so much that I began complaining of phantom limb pain before the ride even started.

Did I mention we were the only ones riding it?

We hadn’t even made a full revolution before my body was wedged against the side of the cage, leaving a very fashionable waffle print against the side of my face, and I’m not sure but I think my bowels were capsizing. Our cage was spinning and revolving and flipping in so many different directions, and combined with revolutions of the actual wheel itself, I had no fucking idea what direction we were facing. Except when our cage was pointing straight down to the ground, giving us the delightful sensation of plummeting toward Hell.

I knew we were at the bottom when I would catch blurred glimpses of the neon green shirts of the attendants, so I would scream – NAY, bellow – “PLEASE LET US OFF THIS FUCKING RIDE. OMG FUCK YOU PLZ.” I began wondering if it would count if I quickly typed up a Living Will on my Blackberry. I think Blake was crying. Every time it would fling us upside down, my arms would shoot out to brace myself, even though the lap bar was ensuring that nary a penny could escape.

Just then, the spinning began to slow, gears cranked and ground, and eventually we slowed to a stop near the attendants.

My hand flung to my heart and I started to thank them, but my words slurred AS THE RIDE EMBARKED ON A BRAND NEW CYCLE, BACKWARD.

My body gave up fighting and resumed its former position, smashed against the grated window of our torture cell. I began clenching, to prevent any accidental pants-poopage. “Please God, don’t let me poop my pants in front of Blake. He’ll tell all of MySpace” I prayed to the giant pink plastic heart pendant that became my makeshift Skydiver rosary. That’s what fifteen-year-olds do, you know. Send out bulletins, outing adults who poop their pants. That’s what’s I’d do too, if the opportunity ever presented itself.

The first round was obnoxious, but tolerable, like watching an anal fisting. You grimace, you laugh at the enlarged asshole, you cry a little. But then the Skydiver decided it had to go backward too, and that was about as unnecessary and gratuitous as the part where the girl shits on a glass table.

And that is how the Skydiver is quite like a Japanese porn.

Well, because I’ve clearly been fucked with the Downs dildo somewhere along the cobblestone road to the whorehouse, I rode it again this time. TWICE. IN A ROW. There’s no single riders, probably because without that extra slab of flesh in the cage with you, you’re more likely to oscillate the cage right off its hinges and soar into orbit. Or crash in a heap of mangled metal and annhilated anatomy.

The first time, I rode with Alisha. After ensuring our ovaries were sufficiently dessicated under the pressure of a large padded saftey bar, the real life before picture of a Proactive Ad slammed our cage shut and sent us off into oblivion where flashbacks of last year’s crucifixion inside a life-sized cheese grater came crashing back to me like a meteor into earth. There’s one point of this ride where it stops. Just fucking STOPS while you’re at its pinnacle, vignettes of Christmas past zooming by your eyes like a crudely drawn flip-book, and once you get around the dizzying sensation of being a trillion feet from cement you realize that you’re suspended in some sort of doggy-style position thanks to the padded bar that’s keeping your lower half melded into the seat, and then you can’t help but think that Elizabeth Bathory surely had something similar to this in her dungeon to give her prisoners a good, proper anal skewering.

And then you start thinking of horror porn and what? Doesn’t everyone think fondly of porn when they’re on the edge of the cliff, ready to plummet to death?

While it was an intense ride, it wasn’t as physically painful as I had remembered it to be last year, so I felt confident getting back on the saddle immediately with Corey.

But this time, the ride operator smashed down the bar in such a way that it gripped a bunch of skin on my upper thigh and pinched it tight. I tried to scream at him to get it off me but I’m sure all he heard was “Hey waaaaaaiiiiiiii————-” as our cage whirred away from the station. And every revolution heard me shouting, “You fucccccccckkkkker!!!” and “PLEASE STOPPPPPPPP!” and “I’M PREGGGGGGGGGGnant!!!!!”

The physical pain of Round 2 was so overwhelming that I was unable to notice anything else going on. Bolts could have been popping out. A unicorn could have flown past and crop-dusted me with rainbow piss. All I knew was that the skin on my legs was accordianed underneath that FUCKING bar and my 6-foot-giant brother was slamming into my left side and I could have gone all Hellraiser and melted through the grated side of that cage and I’ll tell you what, that would have been a welcomed relief.

They need to renovate that bitchin’ ride, make it more comfortable. Maybe thrown in some purple velvet seat cushions and instead of that bar, they might want to dig up some mermaids to kneel on the floor and hold the riders’ legs with massaging hands. And I’m talking about the good kind of massaging hands.

I swear to god, for real this time, I’m done with that ride. But like any good abusive relationship, I’ll probably take it back next year, when it bats those beautiful blinking carnival lights at me.

Last year’s Lakemont Park account can be found here.

More photos here.

It was 11:30 PM. I knew it was a bad idea. Henry REALLY knew it was a bad idea. But there was a box of corn bread mix in the kitchen and I really wanted corn bread. Of course Henry was all, “Pendants or muffins, I can’t do both.” So I had the bright idea of baking that shit on my own while Henry toiled over resin at the dining room table.

The thing with Henry is that he acts like he’s whatever.

Like, “Yeah go ahead, you do that; see if I care” but I KNOW that it KILLS him to hear me smashing shit around in the kitchen when there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. And then I had to ask him if vegetable oil and canola were the same and I could tell he wanted to march in, reclaim his kitchen, and whip up his own batch of delicate muffins from one of the yellowed index cards he keeps in a prized recipe box. But instead, he maintained a calm facade and continued making pendants while I raped and foraged the kitchen cabinets, scraped the top of my hand on a blender blade, and tried with little success to defend my eyeballs from imminent recipe-induced crossing. Recipes are only word problems in disguise, those fuckers.

After a lot of groaning, grunting, and “motherfuck”ing, I finally had all of my shitty batter (which unlike cake batter, does NOT taste good raw) doled out in what I hoped to be even allotments.

I was wrong.

Oh but don’t worry, the nasty taste of the muffins completely overrode the size discrepancies. Not even the hearty fistfuls of sugar I dumped on top, pre-baking, could mask the bland dryness of these assholes. Henry even slid his plate away with more than half a muffin remaining. And he opted for the runt of the batch to begin with.

This morning, I decided to mix up some honey butter to help combat the dryness and add some sweetness.

I mean, I fucking DRENCHED these bastards in the shit and they were still nothing more than glorified Southern saliva-suckers. Chooch, bless his heart, he tried to eat half of one, but in the end he decided to be honest and said, “I can’t like these. They’re not delicious.”

Fuck baking. Though I am still determined to bake a pie this weekend. And I think I have just the recipe.

We spent the afternoon at Henry’s sister Kelly’s house yesterday.

It was a nice time, for sure, but when Kelly pulled out some old photo albums, it was ON. Typically, I can go hogwild making fun of a gawky teen Henry wearing bitchin’ shades, high-waisted pants, and steepling his fingers. (Seriously, he steeples his fingers more than sinister cartoon crime lords.)

But then Kelly slipped me a strip of photobooth pics taken at Kennywood in 1974.

(For those of you who are bad at math, that is FIVE YEARS before I was born.

To spell that out: HENRY IS WAY OLDER THAN ME.

)

And aside from the idiotic gaping maw pose he’s got going in the last photo (he claims this was back when an actual person was in there taking the pictures and telling you how to pose), there wasn’t much I could say other than “OMG aw” and “SWOON.”

I also want to add that I’m thankful he doesn’t still have the pervy beer-drinkin’ molester look he had going on in his twenties.

And Henry pretends that he might actually have the will to kick a ball.

I asked Chooch to stop throwing dirt around, because he kept getting it in his eye, but mostly because I didn’t want it getting all over me.

Of course he’s going to say no. So when I ask him why, he very matter-of-factly mumbled, “I have to.

” I guess it’s kind of like when Henry asks me to stop punching him in the nads and I just can’t stop because there’s just something instilled in me saying that I have to do it.

Maybe I might die if I stop, who knows, but I do know that it feels good when my fist connects with that doughy sack of balls.

Taking your kid to the park is less about letting him embrace the great outdoors and more about letting him burn off energy so that maybe he might go to bed early and let mommy and daddy remember what it was like back before their home was infiltrated by Noggin and loud screams. Well, the Noggin part, anyway.

Smiling for the camera has taken on new meanings.

Little boy hands are so fucking cute! I want to eat them between slices of whole wheat! Ok, they’re practically an incubator for swine flu and e.coli, so maybe I’ll just admire from afar.

Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 13:02 Alert the media: I’m walking in a shoe. A SHOE. Not a flipflop. A SHOE. Praise the motherfucking LORD. #
• 14:07 I haven’t hit anyone with my car in awhile. #
• 14:23 On my way to have lunch with a friend I haven’t seen since high school. Nervously excited! Hope I don’t puke on her. #
• 18:31 At Halloween store, some dude was all DONT TOUCH to his kid. Damn right – that’s MY job, as I knock shit off the wall. #
• 18:38 Any bitches come to my house this Halloween dressed as Hannah Montana, they’re getting egged. No – punched. Parents beware, Erin don’t play. #
• 19:41 Imagining Henry playing volleyball back in his “younger days” & I keep cracking up. He loves when I make a mockery of his past life. #
• 20:45 Fuck, this weather is so good. It makes me want to set my porch ablaze with jack o’lanterns. #
• ***
• 10:31 On our way to Lakemont, trying to fix Henry’s hair while he’s driving. A hobo was dancing on the side of the road. #
• 10:33 We just passed Mistakes Motel, where Henry was conceived. #
• 10:39 I’m being kicked out of the front seat!? #
• 11:58 Just got A Look while dancing to Mayday Parade. I’m in the meanest car. #
• 12:47 Made a pit stop at the Mallocup factory outlet. It was anticlimatic and Alisha wouldn’t ask for a restroom, choosing instead to whine. #
• 12:56 Upon stating I want to walk down the aisle to “Easy Lover,” Henry goes, “and I hope I’m sitting in a pew watching.” #
• 14:00 Yes that’s me, the mom that dropped her kid out of the Scrambler. #
• 14:37 Just rode the Skydiver twice in a row because I enjoy torture porn simulation. It feels like Bathory just did a number on my thighs. #
• 14:39 I think Corey just spit out a tooth. #
• 15:01 People are judging me based on my socks. #
• 15:10 twitpic.com/hh4ga – WHAT?! #
• 15:14 Riding something called the Twister right after eating a wine slushie is about as genius as it sounds. I spit on @saucalisha. #
• 15:27 Corey made up his life-changing personal narrative in public speaking about his &qu ot;Uncle John” who “died of brain cancer.” HE’S SO MY BRO. #
• 15:54 Alisha: “Why do we always end up on our backs together?” #
• 16:13 Corey, regarding Lakemont’s mascot: “he kinda sticks out.” #
• 16:20 twitpic.com/hhh3d – Uh, I just got snubbed by a guy in a lion suit. #
• 16:26 Henry just likened me to a big doll on a stick. I don’t know what that means but it can’t be good. #
• 17:54 Glad I found a new boyfriend at Lakemont because I’m pretty much not speaking to Henry for like, the rest of fore ver. #
• 18:20 At dinner. Apparently only Corey and I are conversing with each other. Not tense at all. #
• 19:55 Trying to convince my son that a hug is my hands around his neck. #
• 20:41 I don’t want to go to the drive-in strip club for fear of it defecating on my image of hot naked girls going all Tawny Kitaen on my car. #
• 23:58 America, can we stop allowing homogenous bands like Theory of a Dead Man top the charts? Next, Miley Cyrus will have her own show! Oh, wait. #
• ***
• 13:37 Why did I just KICK A BALL with my gimp foot? Oh, because I’m mentally challenged. I deserve the pain. #
• 13:49 Whaled a ball at Henry. It ricocheted off his elbow and slammed me in the face. Lady Luck is not spreading her legs for me today. #
• **
• 00:24 Hopefully I have the foresight of wearing lavender on the day I’m murdered. Something about the purple/red color combo is pleasing to me. #
• 00:48 My hair is now the color of black cherries. I’m afraid Chooch will freak out in the morning since I was blond when he went to bed. #
• 10:27 do y ou love Mozart? do you love monsters? bit.ly/4fcuIL via @addthis #
• 10:39 Lady Gaga succeeded in bringing me nightmares. Which only makes me love her more. #
• 13:20 Chooch just sculpted a cemetery out of clay. It made me so proud I cried, wtf. #
• 18:44 I AM NOT CHILDISH, HENRY!!! #
• 23:07 Henry’s eating Frosted Flakes and watching Gossip Girl with wide eyes. #
• ***
• 00:44 All I want for Christmas is for Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson to have a child together. Set that shit up, Santa. #
• 10:14 Hay look @ the dumb! Bloglovin’ & Mozart: Do you use Bloglovin’? Well, now you c.. bit.ly/3TzhGn #
• 12:21 Had a very unsettling pregnancy flashback. I’m surprised pregnancy isn’t the plot of more horror movies. #
• 13:52 Trying to figure out if my latest compliment via Etsy was back-handed. #
• 16:12 Henry is one motherfucking mouthy hair colorist. #
• 21:02 Henry, getting pissed off while dyeing my hair: “I’m just going to dump this whole bottle on your head & Alisha will have to come fix it!” #
• ***
• 14:28 twitpic.com/hyffg – New hair. So tired of blond blond blond. #
• 15:52 Some ppl have astounding ways of showing me how “important” I am to them. #
• 18:48 Henry won’t buy me heart sunglasses. He srsly holds me back. I’m going to start e-dating again. #
• 20:57 Earlier this evening, I shared a cigarette with two 16 year olds in a parking lot. Henry was not amused. #
• 00:28 Best Real World reunion show ever. Emilee was worthless on the show, but she fucked this reunion up the ass with a fat drama dong. #

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Do you use Bloglovin’? Well, now you can follow my blog with bloglovin.

Also, here’s my new bestie Mozart.

Thinking of taxidermy, I immediately draw to mind flannel-jacketed Uncle Bruce watching the fishing channel in his wood-paneled den decorated with protruding buck heads and a coffee table otter.

But out in Tempe, Arizona, 21-year-old Morgan of SlightlyCurious puts her own sideshow-spin on the animal stuffing game. But wait! Before you get all up-in-arms about animal cruelty, here is the disclaimer she has on her MySpace page:

“While I’m no activist, I do not kill animals to create my work. They are roadside splatters, casualties of the seafood industry, or simply weren’t meant to survive. I merely take what isn’t stiff yet.”

I’ll admit, as a vegetarian I was a little “OMG” when I first saw Morgan’s shop. But that initial shock quickly turned into intrigue; there is an innate creativity flowing there that I can’t deny and I was excited to find out  about the inner-workings of taxidermy and to learn more about the artist herself.  

1. Taxidermists have always intrigued me, because how common is it for someone to realize one day that hey, they have a genuine need to sew up some dead carcasses, right? What’s your taxidermy story?

Honestly, I wish I had a more captivating story to relate. When anyone asks (and, invariably, everyone eventually does), I tell them the short truth – I woke up one day with a silly idea bouncing around in my head, and went with it.

But here are the details I usually leave out:

Having grown up in the Midwest, taxidermy was vaguely in the background of my childhood. We had a shoulder mount of a buck, a couple of stuffed bass, and that was the extent of it. Several of my relatives were hunters. When it was time to clean a deer, this was commonly done by hanging it upside down in the garage, splay-legged, glassy-eyed, and dripping blood into a kiddie pool. My kiddie pool, that I occasionally liked to fill with water and splash around in. But I digress. Without fail, I always wanted a turn hanging onto the hide of the deer to help pull it off the carcass. I spent a good deal of time running around barefoot, poking at anything that looked alive, or like it may have once been alive. Typical kid stuff.

Okay, I still do that. But I wear shoes, because my neighborhood is full of crackheads who don’t care where their syringes land.

At the time taxidermy piqued my interested, I was begrudgingly in college, kind of flapping around like a drugged fish and looking for any excuse to quit. Again. I kept going to classes, though, to use the campus computers to check out taxidermy schools. Then I remembered what a cheap bastard I am. The following Monday, I withdrew from classes, picked out a taxidermy shop from the phone book, and showed up there. The first person I came in contact with happened to be deaf. We spent the next twenty minutes trying to communicate via hand signals and his chicken scratch hand writing while the owner was in the bathroom taking a shit. That last part is important, because it pretty much sums up my experience there – unorthodox methods of communication, and watching the shop while the owner took a shit.

I lucked out, and the guy ended up being one of the most generous people I’ve ever met. I spend the next year and a half hanging around his shop, eager to learn anything I could. Unfortunately, he’s in the early stages of selling his shop and filing bankruptcy. Not many people these days have a few hundred extra dollars for that trophy mount.

2. What were you like in high school? Did you ever wear animal bone necklaces to freak out the preppy bitches?

Don’t we all just love to reminisce upon our teenage years? I pretty much kept to myself aside from a very small group of people who were mostly the “skater” kids. I got called “goth” a lot, even though aIl I wore was t-shirts and jeans and didn’t have any angst to speak of. Go figure. I was mainly unconscious of my appearance – I don’t think I owned a skirt or dress until I was at least 18, I never wore makeup, and was frequently mistaken for a boy. So no, I didn’t get up in the morning with the intention of freaking anyone out – that just happened on its own. It was probably a fairly typical high school experience.

Believe it or not I was actually interested in learning something, but everything was so dumbed down for the gangster kids that not many of the teachers gave a shit. At one point, I was going straight from AP Lit to regular ol’ retard English. Since then I’ve never had brain function come to such a dramatic, screeching halt. By my sophomore year, I was spending the lunch period as a teacher’s aide. I started going to school for only half a day my junior year and still managed to graduate early in order to save my nine remaining brain cells. So yeah – lots of words to basically say “nothing special.”

3. What I love about you is that you take something ordinary like Grandpa’s prized bass and give it a creepy, Burton-esque twist by sticking its head on the body of a squirrel. Pretend you were just granted permission to do this same procedure on two of your favorite celebrities, what would you do?

That’s a tough one, I’m guilty of being entirely out of touch with pop culture. But I would love to do something horrible to Criss Angel. While I’m doing charity work, I’d probably give Gordon Ramsey (Hell’s Kitchen) lobster claws. Sometimes it really seems like he could use them, even if it’s just to emphasize a point.

4. Is your work area anything like the grandpa’s work area on “Lost Boys”?

It’s probably more like the father’s shed in “Pervert!” If you haven’t seen that movie, it’s worth a look. The guy’s penis escapes and becomes a serial killer.

5. You’re driving down the road and see a beaver flattened against the asphalt. Do you literally scrape it up, dust it off, and take it home to work on, or is there some sort of dead animal store you go to purchase your supplies?

Living where I do, I would be fairly skeptical of the origins of said beaver. I have, in fact, made someone stop on the freeway so I could collect (what I could find of) a dead rabbit. Usually, if any scraping is required, the animal is just about useless to me. The more fresh and intact, the better. A lot of things I use are intercepted on their way to the dumpster from the taxidermy shop, or have been discarded by hunters. Because it gets so hot here, birds will occasionally drop from the sky, and I usually snatch those up whenever I see them. The neighbors are a little wary of me.

A lot of people tell me that they think of me whenever they see a dead animal. I’m not sure what to make of that association, but at least people are thinking of me. I had a couple friends bring me a “present” from a short road trip. It was a garbage bag of raccoon. He came back the next day and gave me a box of latex gloves.

6. I’m inherently nosy about the  music people like. What were the last 10 songs you listened to on your play list:

Afro Man – Colt 45
Murs – Bad Man
Of Montreal – Oslo in the Summertime
Oingo Boingo – Little Girls
Atmosphere – Say Hey There
The Doors – People are Strange
The Tiger Lillies – Banging in the Nails
Robbie Williams – Rock DJ (That video, oh my god. Go watch it. Go! I’ll wait.)
Mac Lethal – Mermaid Pornography
Looking Glass – Brandy

7. When you’re not stitching up animals, what are your favorite things to do in Tempe?

Go somewhere else. Ha! Really, I spend a bit of time practicing sideshow acts, some time cooking delicious food, lots of time fighting with my cat, some time sewing. Yeah, it’s exciting around here. If I’m feeling really adventurous, I may even take a walk to the liquor store. Or do some aggressive cuddling.

Lately I’ve been keeping busy helping out with the filming/production of our (by “our” I mean myself and the Cut Throat Freak Show) DVD. You can watch the preview here:

 About 2/3 of the way through is a bit of documentary about my taxidermy. /shameless self promotion

8. Any guilty pleasures?

Feeling guilty would imply I was doing something wrong, wouldn’t it?  Sometimes I like to drink too much and smash electronics in my back yard. If we’re neighbors, you should grab your microwave and head over. It’s probably the most entertaining thing happening in Tempe right now.

Other potentially incriminating activities include playing Minesweeper and Bejeweled, eating raw meet, patronizing Chinese buffets, public intoxication, and finding new old furniture in the dumpster.

9. I do have a Blackberry I’d like to smash.  I imagine you must get the occasional bizarre request, like “Please fashion my dead Betta into a bow-tie.” What’s the weirdest request you’ve ever got?

A stranger came up to me in a bar and told me his cat “has the FIV,” would probably die soon, and wanted me to stuff her. I gave him my card, but I haven’t heard from him. Either his cat is doing okay, or he was too drunk to remember having talked to me.

10. Your Etsy shop is a contestant on Jeopardy and Alec Trebek needs a synopsis for when he does the introductions. What do you want him to say?

Oh geez. Let me put on my game show voice.

“Our third and final contestant, with a freezer full of squirrels and a slight odor of formaldehyde… Slightly Curious!

And now, the host of Jeo-

What’s that?

I’ve just received word from our producers that the studio must be evacuated due to a health code violation. Thank you, and good evening.”

*****

Find out more about SlightlyCurious here:

• Etsy
• MySpace

I’ve been around the past week or so, but not in blogging mode. I hate when that happens, because blogging is like, my favorite thing to do.  Here is a succint (hahahahaha) breakdown of what I’ve done the last 8 days.

• Went to Rogers, Ohio for some flea market that has enthusiasts all over jerking off in porta johns over its large expanse. I believe my immediate thought on this shit hole was, “Yeah, it’s huge, but that just means it’s more room for people to dump their shit.” It was like “Crap, shit, junk…oh that’s sort of cool…shit, trash, tetanus-hazard.” There were also pens upon pens of puppies and Henry said NO to each one. Fucker. And then every time I would see something I wanted (which wasn’t often), he’d be all, “THEN WE HAVE TO CARRY IT ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE CAR.” Well, excuse me, geriatric. And I love how he slapped down $3.50 for a fucking jar of horseradish with no hesitation. It was a decidedly non-fun outing.
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• Last Saturday, we went to Living Treasures, which is a glorified petting zoo. But they also have tigers and shit like that there too, and it’s better than the zoo in that you can actually get up close without having to peer through snot-streaked glass. Chooch rushed us through, and then we went on a really lame “safari” ride, which cost an extra $4 per person to essentially see everything we had already seen, but from a different angle, while two huge horses pulled us in a wagon. Basically, I paid $4 to have a baby sit next to me and pull my hair the whole time.
• One of my old high school friends was in town for her bridal shower (which I couldn’t attend, oops), and stopped by Monday night to visit. She’s one of those crazy cats who decided to save herself for marriage (no seriously, I actually do respect her for that), so she is positively GIDDY that her wedding is coming up in less than a month. She was talking to me about birth control and was all, “Oh my god, you don’t use birth control??” and I’m all, “No and I never have.” She looked absolutely appalled and asked, “But you guys use condoms, right?” Now look, Henry and I have been together for what – eight years now? But the look on her face, that innocent, sexually naive look, it made me say, “Oh, of course! Sometimes, three at a time, with a rubber band for good measure.” It was an awkward convo that I wanted to end ASAP. Luckily, Chooch farted, and said friend is secretly a nine-year-old boy so her laughter distracted her for a good ten minutes.
• Painted. Painted painted painted painted. I have some family portraits I’m trying to knock out and I’m also trying to get some new pieces together for a shop that’s slated to open in October. I met with the owner last week and she’s interested in not only selling some of my things in the shop, but she also offered me a showing in the gallery that will be in the back of the shop. She was like, “Think it over and let me know” and I was like, “OK. I have my answer. It’s yes.” Because seriously, it’s not like anyone is beating down my door with opportunities like that. And the shop is in a trendy/arty part of Pittsburgh so I can pretend I’m way cooler than I actually am (which is not at all.)  Unfortunately the only chance I get to really paint without distraction is after hours when the males of the house have gone to bed. I seriously need my own apartment somewhere far away from civilization. My productivity would sky-rocket.
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• Friday, one of my old friends from school – Liz – was back in town, visiting from Philly. We were tight in middle school, and were friends through high school but admittedly I had gone down a dark path, so she and I didn’t really hang out that much. I hadn’t seen her since 1997, so when I met her in the lobby of her hotel, it was super surreal. We went to Panera and basically shared pieces of info on old classmates we had collected over the years and reminisced about when my family housed a foreign exchange student from France during the summer of ’92.
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  It’s funny how there are vignettes from childhood that stick with you as an adult. I remember being at her house in 7th or 8th grade and her mother sternly saying, “Elizabeth, stop making unilateral decisions!” That was the first time I had heard that word, and I know, I just KNOW the wordwhore in me orgasmed. I still think of that moment whenever I use or hear that word. I told her about that and she didn’t remember it, but thought it was hilarious. Anyway, it was a good way to spend the afternoon and I hope that, now that Facebook has reunited us, we can get together again in the future.

• I went to Lakemont Park yesterday with Henry, Chooch and Alisha. My brother Corey met us out there because it’s near where he goes to school. Expect a post about that sometime this week.
• Tomorrow I’ll be posting a new Freaky Feature so you should look for that. It’s an interesting one!
• Henry did yardwork all on his own today. If I still had a reward chart for him, I’d have put a gold star in the column for “One Uninterrupted Hour to Watch One of Your Stupid CSI Shows.” I’d give him two if he would stop blowing the roof off the house every time he sneezed, Jesus fuck.

Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 12:34 It’s only a little concerning to me that my three year old knows the words to Pitbull’s “Hotel.” #
• 13: 46 Pretty sure Henry just tried to seductively eat a piece of bacon. The porn industry is not calling. #
• 18:36 Guess who just booked her first gallery show?!?! #
• 18:54 I can’t stop laughing like Pee Wee Herman. #
• 18:57 @awoodhick you mean I shouldn’t do that in the front yard anymore? #
• 19:00 @awoodhick give him a beer and send him down to Robin’s? #
• 22:09 Hay look @ the dumb! tweeting is the new queefing: Earth-shattering updates throughout the d.. bit.ly/1VefFC #
• **
• 11:21 On our way to the carnival of flea markets in Ohio, remembering how much I used to love Brand New’s “Deja Entendu.” #
• 11:23 Except Henry keeps not only pausing it but turning it down too (wtf?) so he can play boss on his cell phone. #
• 13:47 Oh holy shit, Henry, what did you bring me to? #
• 13:47 WHY ARE THERE PUPPIES HERE? I’ve been chanting “plz? Plz? Plz?” Henry is ignoring me. #
• 13:56 WAH I want a puppy!! Henry: “get rid of the cats.” Me: “No.” #
• 15:21 One of these days I’ll learn that flea markets and me just don’t get along. #
• 18:19 Henry just walked in on me mixing mashed potatoes & said, “who ever taught you how to hold a spoon??” before grabbing it from me. #
• **
• 12:04 On our way to Living Treasures. Hopefully my hand doesn’t become camel lunch again. #
• 13:23 Wish I had come here sans Chooch so that I could spend more than 10 seconds at each exhibit. And that’s when Chooch is being generous. #
• 13:24 Wtf is a collared peccary? #
• 13:30 I want a baby buffalo. Even if it means moving to some shitty prairie and wearing a bonnet. #
• 14:36 I feel uncomfortable when babies stare at me. #
• 15:08 I wish Henry was Russian. This sucks. #
• 15:35 2 hrs after leaving Living Treasures, Chooch goes, “I wanted to pet the rabbits. SHIT.” He just swigged my Life Cocktail: regret & disgust. #
• 16:11 I wonder what part of me Henry will break tonight. #
• 16:17 Me, disgustedly: “What’s THIS broad looking at?” Henry: “Well, 1st of all, she’s about nine.” #
• 19:26 Anyone want some smug insincerity? I’m putting it back on the market. #
• 21:56 Hay look @ the dumb! Westmoreland County Fair, Alright? Part 3 (shoot it dead): If you ever.. bit.ly/1p7b8z #
• **
• 00:34 Henry was just learning himself how to make me homemade skin care shit via some stupid show called She’s Crafty. He’s a good girlfriend. #
• 14:14 My son just told me I’m not fat, but I’m a bitch. #
• 21:47 Chooch is threatening to get me a Fresh Beat Band shirt. I birthed a cruel one. #
• 21:59 Hay look @ the dumb! Waiting.: The bus was late that day. Something about major roadways be.. bit.ly/1znrXU #
• **
• 10:47 I’m 99.9% sure Henry saved yardwork for today knowing it would rain. #
• 15:28 Please. Can someone make sure Miley Cyrus stops missing the shuttle to obscurity? #
• 15:57 Looking through picture frames at Goodwill and trying to not slice tendons. #
• 16:29 I wonder how long it took @awoodhick’s eyes to acclimate to the glare of my halo. #
• 23:06 I always feel better after a visit from Lisa. But then she leaves again and I’m like “wah.” #
• 23:09 @scottheisel I complete ly agree with this statement. #
• **
• 12:13 I can make ice cubes; I want the Perfect Brownie Pan!! #
• 16:16 Walking on a broken toe to post office because I’m too stubborn to drive. #
• 16:29 I hate my town. And that sour pussed bitch who just skulked past without returning my salutations is reason #325. Should move south. #
• 16:33 Though, maybe the way I drag my right foot deters passers-by. #
• **
• 08:37 Abraham Lincoln is haunting me. #
• 22:19 Hay look @ the dumb! Prudence Goosterjuice: If you ask her teachers, they will set their li.. bit.ly/13ZXDw #
• **
• 12:03 Fucking Real World finales kill me every time. #
• 15:47 Chooch is watching The Karate Kid but is fixated on Daniel’s bike. “Where the bike go? Where he taking his bike?” Frustrating questions. #
• 16:02 “Those damn bitch ass bullies jackass bad kids! I hate them!” Hopefully this means Chooch doesn’t have the bully gene. #
• 17:22 I never quite understood what “tousled bird mad girl” meant, but I think that’s how I feel right now. #
• 17:26 The Aviary pendant: bit.ly/2tqKds. #
• **
• 00:29 Henry’s ranting bc he’s already seen the “She’s Crafty” episode that’s on. “She talks to everyone like sh e wants to have sex with them!” #
• 00:30 Why can’t my boyfriend just watch porn after hrs like a normal dude? No, he has to learn how to fruit-up cigar boxes w/ polka dots & ribbon. #
• 09:07 Never had a cuddle addiction until Chooch came around. #

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If you ask her teachers, they will turn taciturn, set their lips in a firm, well-practiced smile and gargle the nerves congesting their throats before feeding you one of the templates they’ve memorized from their Teachers Handbook.

“Prudence never disrupted the class.”
“Prudence always turned in her dittos in a timely fashion.”
“Prudence excelled in cursive and time tables.”

Because you wouldn’t expect them to tell you that Prudence killed frogs on the playground, ate flies between heels of moldy potato bread, and sat in the darkened cubby speaking softly in what was originally thought to be Latin but turned out to be some variant of Appalachian tongues.

Still, Prudence managed to maintain a small clique of friends. Most townsfolk say that these girls only fraternized with the Goosterjuice girl because she had a fancy doll collection and an older brother who mowed the grass without a shirt on and had a predilection for younger tarts who would let him do another kind of mowing, though most of the girls weren’t yet tainted enough by accidental exposure to pornography to know quite what that meant until they were already pinned down on sharp blades of grass, the kinds that cut right through flesh if you try to stroke them, crying as the buttons on their homemade blouses pop off like some kind of Japanese firecrackers.

But they all inevitably walked away from that soiled sex patch behind the water tower feeling as though they were in love with that Goosterjuice boy.

Prudence knew what her friends were doing when they excused themselves from her bedroom, saying they had to attend to matters concerning their bowels, and it disgusted her. Intercourse in general disgusted her, ever since she found out her real daddy was the ringmaster of a traveling carnival who tricked her mother into sleeping with him by promising her the coveted spot atop a sequined elephant, but when she woke up the next morning, the caravan was gone and she was left on the side of the road with her virginity and $34 stolen from her fanny pack. Her mother never told her this story, but she knew it to be true because she heard the man previously thought to be her father speaking about it in slurred and abasing tones during one of his midnight poker games.

Most people who lived in that town would tell you that she was only disgusted about sex because no one ever wanted to have it with her, that she was a hemaphrodite.

Gradually, Prudence’s after-school social hours petered out and she was resigned to spend her evenings sitting cross-legged on her embroidered bedspread, reading dusty tomes about interior decorating which she found the year before at an estate sale at the home of the town’s first gay man who was driven away by the Church.

Her parents, too caught up in the intricate art of slave trading, didn’t seem to notice that their daughter wasn’t getting invited to keggers and seances.

Until the smell happened.

Prudence’s mother was the one to discover it. The acrid aroma trailed from Prudence’s room and wafted down into the sitting room, where it raped her mother’s nasal cavity with the powerful punch of rot.

Following the stench to Prudence’s room, she was quickly distracted by a visual assault.

Using crude strokes, Prudence had colored over the floral wallpaper her mother had spent weeks choosing, splashed right over it with a carmine hue that seemed to have chunks of gelatin suspended in some of the heavier streaks. The smell of death emanated.

“Do you like it, Momma? It’s like they’re menstruating. My walls, that is. Don’t touch, Momma. It’s fresh. Doesn’t it smell lovely?”

Her mother stood with one clammy hand on the doorknob, the other covered her mouth and pinched her nostrils, in tandem. Speechless. Agog. Some say she probably didn’t know what was coming until it was too late, that all Prudence had to do was utter a few indecipherable syllables that would make snakes hiss from fifteen miles away. But most people call bullshit on that and believe that the only tongue-lashing going on in that room, on that night, was by the hand of a cleaver-wielding twelve-year-old who was tired of hearing her mother making bank by seducing the milkman and the postman and the dogcatcher in her bedroom with the tapestry-covered windows and the locked door, but the sounds her mother made right before stuffing the wads of bills into her garter belt echoed through the vents and were delivered right behind Prudence’s bed, like a smutty package of wet moans and testicular slappings tied with a bow formed of lecherous grunts and infidelity.

And once it was all said and done, a trunk containing her art supplies was discovered under her bed. Brushes fashioned from the hair of her classmates, the ones who spread their legs, whose parents had reported them missing in the last week. Mason jars sloshed to the brim with hemoglobin. Her mother’s hair, still attached to her scalp, twisted and tangled into hematic ropes. It was determined that these grisly Type O locks helped finish the paint job on the west wall.

The rest of the pieces, the body parts? They were stuffed in garment bags and hung heavily from a brass rod in the closet. A rogue eyeball was found in Prudence’s jewelry box, speared onto the twirling ballerina, who no longer twirled so much now under the weight of the optical orb, but more so staggered along in an arching path to the tune of Greensleeves. It was determined to be the eyeball of Cadie Caldwell, Prudence’s classmate who was obsessed with becoming a flapper and gave Father McNeilly a handjob after confession last summer.

Prudence’s daddy, the one who wasn’t really her daddy, all he said to the police was, “I never knew Prudence had any interest in painting. And she’s not my real daughter, by the way.”

The only person who knew what truly happened was Prudence, but in all the seventy years she sat in prison, all she’d ever do was flash those butter-brick teeth of hers and say, “Ain’t see a damn thing wrong with wantin’ a little rouge to my walls.”

The bus was late that day. Something about major roadways being cordoned off due to a parade for amputees. There would later be a riot, instigated by the albinos who were tired of being the least celebrated minority in the city of Fuglyfoot.

But that’s a story that cannot be easily told without the use of obscenities and slurs that would make Satan himself shrink back into the shadows.

But the issue of the bus tardiness, this was no good for Maureen Hucklecrack, who had to be at court in fifteen minutes, else her philandering ex-husband would turn over evidence that would prove she moonlighted as a sort of Heidi Fleiss with midget clientele. And who knows what Maureen would have to resort to without that coitus-derived income. Probably would have to sell her Dolly Parton TV tray collection and stop getting Botex in the back of the corner fish market.

On the next wire, George Stockingcock’s anxiety level rose as he glanced at his watch and realized that he was already twenty-two minutes late for his prostrate exam.

This made him feel a nervous diarrhea-burn in his lower stomach for a split second, until he created a Plan B, in which the mulatto phlebotomist he was seeing on the sly could maybe pull on her latex dominatrix gloves (to camouflage her liver spots) and conduct her own posterior prod-fest.

Clutching rigidly on an upper wire, Amy Slityourthroat was livid. The night before, she had caught her boyfriend of THREE MONTHS listening to the Used with some other girl. Some other girl who didn’t even paint her nails black and had the audacity to wear clothes from Hollister. Hollister, for Christ’s sake! She should go date a surfer and stay the hell away from my stuffed-in-dirty-skinny-jeans boyfriend, Amy thought erratically. And now the bus she takes every Wednesday to her anger management class was LATE. But she was too busy drawing a blueprint for murder to notice.

And then there was Lester Copafeel. Lester had been perched on the same wire for fifteen months, ever since his mother abandoned him for being mute. No one was sure if he was waiting for a bus, or for anything at all, really.