tittytangents.com

I don’t think I’ve ever been a person to have the most healthy or normal reactions to significant changes in my life. I shied from the responsibility of being 4 years old by requesting to have an un-birthday, I vandalized bits of my new house after moving out of the apartment my family had lived in for a few years, I’ve repeatedly punched the tile floor in my bedroom when I was angry, pawned or destroyed items that were given to me by an ex-boyfriend when things went really sour between us, and just been harmful to myself in general on several occasions.

My uncle just called my dad about 10 minutes ago, and after he hung up he told us “Mom’s dead.” My grandmother, Mimi, maybe the only person in my family I was ever truly honest with, just passed away. And the first thing I did after we all gave each other hugs was log into WordPress and start writing this. It’s a vast improvement considering what I sometimes do, but it’s unusual nonetheless. And even more unusual, I feel totally unaffected by it. And don’t start with the psychobabble about expressing grief and stuff, cuz I know it all and also know it’s wrong.

But I saw her today and she was all dehydrated and unresponsive and hopped up on morphine and all I could do was talk to her. I know that she’s been ready to go for a long time, so today, after everyone that was visiting had left, she went too. My dad left our house to pick up our uncle that lives the next neighborhood over and they’re going to be with the body until hospice does its thing. And I’m here, writin’ for The Tit.

She was a deeply religious woman since I’ve known her, so I know what she was waiting to happen and I have no worry for her. And I know the family knows she’s been waiting outside the gates of heaven and St. Peter’s just been like “I’m sorry, but you’re not on the list” for several months now. So she’s in the club gettin’ jiggy with Jesus and I’m pretty happy for her. And I know this sounds weird, but I was thinking–not 10 seconds before my dad got the call (no exaggeration whatsoever, I was in the kitchen making tea and walking back with it at the time)–that I hope she goes soon. We had all said our goodbyes, so why not? And sure enough… I don’t want to sound all insensitive or anything, but I’m glad it’s over. Waiting is the worst part of that sort of stuff, and I think that everyone was ready to let her go. I’m not sure where she is, but she’s not lingering in her earthly husk of a body any more.

I’m both sad and glad for my brother who opted to not see her today, because instead of seeing her all limp and doped up, he saw her all happy and smiling last Tuesday when we scraped together a flag ceremony to celebrate her time in the Army.

I doubt I’ll cry much or at all, and that if I do cry it’ll be during the services we have for her since there will be other criers around. She was a wonderful woman who served me as a fountain of advice and knowledge, who treated me and talked to me as an independant person and never as a child, and without whom I might possibly be a vastly different individual.

Nobody lives forever, so it doesn’t make sense for me to mourn the loss of someone who was ready and prepared to go. I know I’ll mourn more for the survivors, since not all of them will be as capable of rationalizing and coping as I believe I am. The burden of death is borne by the living, and when each of us dies it’s finally our turn to be free from the obligations. We just gotta buck up and keep plodding along.

I think I’m going to get back to playing WoW and not watching the rest of Ocean’s Eleven since neither of the others up here feel much like laughing at the moment. I don’t think there’s ever a time where it wouldn’t be advantageous to be in a good mood, so I’ll probably occupy myself with something cheery while I wait for them to cope. Grieving is a marathon, not a sprint.

I promise to write again soon. I’ve felt woefully bereft of my muse, so writing isn’t as easy as it was last semester. Maybe I ought to start taking weekly bus rides to get a periodic dose of crazy so I can start being productive again.

Until next time, folks.

As promised, here is a legitimate update of recent events.

The plan for last night was for me and my friend to drive to Boston, find the theater where the concert would be, park nearby, walk to the theater, enjoy the show, walk back, drive home.

What actually happened was we were a late getting on the road, I missed one bloody sign (or did I just fall victim to a recent sign-stealing crime and miss it because there was not one there?), and pulled over to get directions. The woman was very helpful and wrote stuff out for me. What she could not help me with was the utter lack of signs that would make me feel like I was even remotely in the right area. So I pulled over again and headed back in the exact direction I had come from to get to where I needed to go. So then the haphazard directions which I was then cursing caused me to wind all the way around crazy streets to that this landmark would be on the correct side of us. To make what will be a long story a little shorter, the road we needed to be on magically appeared, I turned around to find parking, we found it, and celebrated. Smoke if you got ‘em. We left at about 6 and it was 8:30 when we left the car.

Then we started walking. We assumed getting directions on foot would be easier than while driving, but we were incorrect. We walked down blocks, doubled back, looped around, asked for directions, went back the way we came, asked again, turned corners, searched for our street signs, asked for directions twice more, and finally found where we needed to be (which was going to be on our right according to the last guy we asked, but it was really on the left). The concert started at 8 and it was 9:30 when we walked in.

The show, at least what we saw of it, was good. Dir en Grey are good performers, so that was a treat. Some ornery skeez with boots that her calves were trying to escape from kept standing in the middle of the aisle with her scraggly-haired boyfriend and appeared to be ready to fight with one of the show staff. I wanted to see that happen. It’s not fucking hard to move back into where you were, you whore. Stop acting like the universe is wronging you. Ps you look like a wad of hamburger balanced on two toothpicks.

The show ended and we left without merch. I said I’d give my brother and his friend (my friend’s ex– kind of awkward) a ride home. Given that we had gone through so much shit to just finally arrive at the theater, it was perfectly understandable that we had a hard time getting to the car. Cut to us finding the car in a location I never would have even guessed to check almost two hours later. I couldn’t have gotten back to the theater from there if I tried.

Luckily, my brother has come into his own as a navigator and we managed to finagle a viable route onto the highway. I cannot drive and work a map at the same time, so I was glad to have him in the backseat soothing me with his confidence and optimism. The drive home was easy enough. I was exhausted and kept driving just to keep us going. I was planning on driving to the video game store and pick up the World of Warcraft expansion, but I missed the exit and even taking the next possible ones every time threw us out way far away. So I said “Fuck you!” and angrily drove back into town to drop off our friends. We got home around 3 and I promptly passed out like an alkie on St. Paddy’s day.

Oh, and you wanna know one of the worst parts of last night? The part that really made me feel like extracting my brain through my anus with a rusty fishing hook?

I had a Katy Perry song stuck in my head almost the whole night.

I’m taking this creative writing class at the moment. It’s a pretty neat class, especially given my interest in writing and all that. So far, it’s been a great springboard to help me with techniques that would have otherwise stayed un-honed and I’m enjoying the experience overall.

For next Tuesday, I have due a five to seven page fiction piece on pretty much anything I choose. I’ve got my topic, and after much metamorphosis, things are pretty well-cemented down. It’s going to be filled with regret and a feeling of hopelessness, but in the end –SPOILER ALERT!– the protagonist will ultimately be thinking “Hey, I can turn my life around tomorrow. It’s never too late.”

You know, that sappy shit.

But more than a touching tale of new beginnings, this break-out short story is about riding the bus. I’m happy to report that my misfortune is now doubling as a new way to get around and my muse these days. I’m also excited that this blog is now safe from becoming one of those sitcoms where every episode is complete on its own and is never referred to in later seasons (How do those writers think we’re just going to ignore the fact that there is a totally new actor playing that character or that last week that person was on his/her deathbed only to be back in action this week with no explanation as to how the situation was resolved?)

So, faithful readers, I’m bringing back the topic of my car having shit the bed on me. I’m still carless, and I’m not even really searching that hard right now. I’m kind of resignedly dependent on the family VW and the bus for the time being. The bus isn’t that bad, though. There’s so much weird stuff going on if you just look for it. Great details to be written down for future use in a story or something.

For example, the VERY FIRST DAY I took the bus I had one of those conversations where I learned all about one person by only asking the “…and you?” questions and giving curt answers to ones directed at me. Her name is Amy. She doesn’t go to school because she can’t afford it, but she would love to go back to school. She thinks that it would be great to go back to school because on top of learning lots of stuff, she would have access to the school cafeteria and she could eat there every day. Do they serve pizza? she asked. I could eat pizza every day if I had the chance. And do they have vending machines? What do they have in them? Snacks and stuff, cool. Do they have soda machines? Do they have Mountain Dew? Man, I love Mountain Dew. I drink Mountain Dew every day (She was, at the time, holding a bottle of Mountain Dew, so I wasn’t about to doubt her).

What spurred this intimate conversation, you are wondering? I moved my backpack and asked if she wanted to sit down. I know– that will be the last time I do that.

And I saw winos! They were huddled together in the bus stop booth thing and passing around a bottle in a paper bag! Their conversation was mumbled and rambling at best (and downright incoherent and loud at worst) and they were chain-smoking Swisher Sweets. Cherry, I think.

And there was this old lady with her grey hair pulled back tight in a bun, with this black coat that covered her like some deflated parachute. She was rocking back and forth and muttering to herself. I think she was just moving her lips, because I tried very hard to hear what she was saying. Her arthritic hands looked like claws protruding from the cuffs of her oversized jacket.

And most recently, this very loud woman was talking at this man and she was telling him how she stood by her boyfriend while he was in prison and how now he’s got a new girlfriend but she’s not mad. She likes her. And she doesn’t want the new girlfriend to be afraid of her because she doesn’t want to hurt her ex, so she’d never try to get her to run. In fact, if anything ever happens to Current Girlfriend, Ex Girlfriend will call her cousins to lay the smack down on the offender because her cousins were crazy fighters and were brought up on charges for assault at one point. But they got off. But if anything happens to Current Girlfriend…

This is spun gold, people! You’re never as exciting as those unusual folks you’ll meet on the bus! Two bucks a day, two or three times a week, and I can fill up a notebook with all the awesome stuff I see and hear. And since you never really find out who these people are (except the Amys you meet), you can use and twist their stories to fit your purposes freely!

Bus stops are the Parisian cafes of the twenty-first century.

I’m pregnant.

As much as this is always a pleasure for me, it is also quite a burden at times. I’m frequently pregnant, in fact. It’s almost a constant state for me.

But how, Beth? you may ask. I thought you hated children and had an aversion to male reproductive parts in general? you might wonder. It’s time for a vocab lesson, guys. Get your mind out of the uterus and into… a dictionary. Or something.

The interesting thing about pregnancy (the kind involving storks and babies) is that everything has a different gestation period. Humans take nine months of simmering in placental goo, while elephants take 22 long months to crawl out of their warm womb. And little bitty things like hamsters have less than 30 days before they pop on out (and risk being eaten by their hungry mamas). Not unlike bio-preggers, different ways of being mentally knocked-up require different gestation periods.

For instance, I am seldom without a to-do list. Some of the stuff on my list involves important stuff like calling the IRS about free money, sorting out a mess with the Veterans Affairs office to get free money, and doing precalculus homework. These things take way too long to incubate for their priority level. I procrastinated months on my IRS free money, as long as I could afford on my VA free money, and I’ve all but quit doing my important precalc work. That’s like human pregnancy there.

Now less objectively important things I wanted to do, like email this girl from Basic Military Training I hadn’t talked to in a while, sending a care package full of acorns and leaves for a friend who got stationed in SC away from pretty Maine foliage, and updating this site also take longer than I’d like. There’s absolutely no reason to not do that stuff, but I just keep putting it off like I’ll suddenly say “I’ve got 10 free minutes, so why not do that thing I’ve been meaning to do?”. Except I don’t. This can go on in a very elephant incubation-like manner for god knows how long. I keep feeling bad, but I also keep not doing anything about it. I’d be a horrible elephant cuz I’m always forgetting to remember how much I want to do stuff.

And then I have things that are pretty low-priority, like leveling up my characters in World of Warcraft, watching five episodes of Degrassi in a row, and using this week’s Border’s coupon for 30% off when I spend $10 or more. I do this shit faster than Spiderman can shoot web to grab the remote control because he’s too lazy to stand up and get it the old-fashioned way. Hamster baby mania. I get that warm feeling, know something important is a-brewin’, and race out to get it done. Before I know it I’ve got three new books, I’m leveling and gearing up, and all my Degrassi episodes are gone. And I still don’t know the status of my free money or how my old friends are doing. At that point it’s less like giving birth and more like holding off on pooping even though you really gotta and going pee instead, just hoping that it all goes like planned and you don’t get caught up with big stuff interspersed with your little stuff.

I’m going to try to do my precalc now. I think. No I probably won’t. Baby steps. I leveled up my character yesterday, I emailed my friend two days ago, called about the IRS stuff last week, and updated just now. That’s, like, stuff from each category in one week. I’ll be fine for at least… a while.

Until next time, my little hamster babies!

I have always prided myself on being a musically open person. I’ve got a pretty wide variety of artists on my MP3 player, spanning multiple genres with classic Ella Fitzgerald, guilty pleasure Christina Aguilera, thrashing and screaming System of a Down, the mandolin-driven Ditty Bops, the afrocentric Tribe Called Quest, jazz flutist Dave Valentin, rambling Phish, and so on. I’ll try anything and will probably find at least one thing I like in every sub-sub category there is except Spanish death-metal. I couldn’t get into Brujeria.

That being said, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to like post-rock.

For those of you unfamiliar with this genre, post-rock can sometimes be described as ambient, droning, emotional, aimless, and/or deeply stirring. I have long since found the concept of post-rock to be quite interesting. However, my many experiences in sampling this category have left me feeling extremely bored. I once tried to listen to post-rock to help lull me to sleep and instead found– much to my surprise– that I was boring myself awake. I wanted so bad for post-rock to occupy some small niche in my life, yet I couldn’t possibly do it. I think the idea of it is awesome and hip, yet for all my respect I have not one bit of interest in it.

–To digress for a moment, I would like to set the scene to introduce someone–

The web affords each of us as much or little anonymity as we want. In the spirit of keeping identities private, I hereby declare that my good friend– who shall be making future appearances, I’m sure– will be known as Pudding from this day forward. This decision was made partly because of my desire to hold back on personal details, and also because the idea of giving my friend a Bill Cosby-endorsed product as a moniker amused me greatly. I reserve the right to mention Pudding’s family either by real name, by using a derivation of Pudding (for instance Br’er Pudding, Mrs. Br’er Pudding, Mama and Papa Pudding, etc), or by another desert name. Names are subject to change with little notice. Pseudonyms will be issued as needed or for humor’s sake.

–End digression–

To speak on behalf of post-rock, I have asked Pudding what he likes about the genre. Even though I razz him a good bit for being pro-something that I am emphatically con, I definitely respect his opinion and even envy it a little. For him, post-rock has the ability to “convey feelings so powerfully and intensely”, but it’s subtle enough that each listen can get you to notice something completely different. He likes how the typical lack of lyrics forces the artist to show you rather than just tell you what he or she is feeling using musical elements alone. I totally get what he’s saying, and I only wish I could find a song that could show you how out of the loop I feel on this matter.

There was one time, though. One time where post-rock was it for me, where I was so into it I could hardly stand it. The song was building, and the tension was increasing, and everything was crescendoing… It was insane. I wanted the song to just resolve, climax, end, ANYTHING! Every beat in every measure was every emotion for me. For one afternoon I loved post-rock and everything it did for and to me. And then I realized I couldn’t spend the rest of my life high. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

But for those of you who yearn for more depth in your music and take musical exploration seriously, I recommend giving post-rock a shot. I don’t know anything about it, but Pudding’s got a decent arsenal of artists and albums from what he tells me. I wish I liked it, I really do. I think it’s sooooooophisticated (I can never remember what song that’s from, but I always think of it when I’m about to say “sophisticated”). And cool.

But I don’t like it and that’s kind of a bummer.