Zombies in Print

Last week or so, for the first time, the existence of zombie novels became apparent. What the author didn’t exploit was just how much more fun could’ve been had with this subject; he seemed to have otherwise fully exploited synonyms for gray matter, decay, flesh, and fluids - much as romance novels labor to devise new language for basic things. Some of the terminology was the same in both, fittingly.

High brow. Totally.

Time to get a piece of this action:

The body that used to be the perpetually shush-ing school librarian lurched forward. Often a target of Ms. Simon’s focus, Moose jumped at the chance to get a little payback.
“Ms. Simon, are you feeling okay?”
Her head continued to hang, frizzy hair shielding her face from view. When Moose was around, this usually was accompanied by muffled mutterings of exasperation or blatant mockery, but now she was silent.
“Can I have a Hall Pass?”
Wobble, wobble. An arm reached forward.
“I can get it myself, if that helps.” Oh yes! A Hall Pass! And she was clearly too weak to keep him from grabbing it and running. His plump arm went for the drawer.
“Snsnssnsnnnn! Gaaaaaahhhhrr!”
“Ahhhhhh!”
“Rraaaaaaaaaahhhg!...Gugh, gugh,” Saliva and blood mixed together as she greedily gobbled his plump forearm, having snapped his neck at the calm barkings of ‘gugh.’ In the few moments remaining before her brain fully became sludge, she looked skyward, tapping her chin, contented she finally profited from the un-observant and imprudent nature of Moose – although with her mind liquefying, she couldn’t quite think of these exact descriptors, so her internal dialogue was something more like ‘Unnng, aah ah ah, blaththththththth, ah ah…lluuuuuu.’ The spirits of the Guardian Librarians appreciated the sense of satisfaction but bemoaned that Ms. Simon would, clearly, never shush again.

Having all been turned to zombies, the School Board meetings were a bit less verbose than usual that night. Chairman McSoren pointed to the pie chart on its easel. He wasn’t quite sure anymore what it meant or was even for, but he knew he’d spent a good deal of time on it, and the bright colors were engaging.
“Buuuut, yooo gaah,” and the chairman turned to look at the committee, annoyed by their glazed-over expressions. He struck his favorite part of the chart, the neon green, to emphasize its importance. It’s green, but it’s really bright – completely captivating. He’d make sure they saw this color, or wanted to, though he kept becoming entranced by it, drooling down his face as he stared shamelessly, somewhat aroused.
“Muhnnnnnnn thth ta ta taaaah,” from the crowd, snapping him back to relative attention.
“Dlah, dleck. Mennnnggh bok bok.” McSoren had always been quick to anger. Being a zombie did little to improve his disposition.
“Naa na’ah. [Heavy breathing.] Gluul faaahta.” The stare-down with Coach Bagger began, ending moments later when his left eye lazily fell from its socket. Ashamed, Bagger hung his head. Things like this always happened to him, like the time he tried to kiss Ms. Simon but he was so nervous he puked a little instead, and yesterday when he tried to kiss her again but half his lower lip fell off. Then there was what happened last night, just when she’d finally succumbed to his rotting-flesh-or-no animal prowess, which fortunately she could never coherently describe to anyone else. Sure he felt less a man, but at this point the same fate had likely befallen many of the other males. Protruding cartilage was bound to be some of the first to go.
McSoren, however, still laughed at the sagging eyeball, hanging flaccidly from its socket. Ms. Simon took a break from devouring Moose to gesture how to reinsert his eyeball. At least this time the faulty part could be reattached. Still, McSoren’s amusement was irksome. McSoren mocking the moment of eyeball loss, though, was just uncalled for.
“Nn’guhg!”
“Baaaaaa leeeee, ree ree.”
“Baaaa leeee ree ree OOOO. Tleh tleh nnn gho!”
“Vah la, kaa vah vvvee,” which really was just asking for it. He knew very well that Bagger couldn’t make ‘v’ sounds, what with his lower lip missing.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!” and the coach lunged straight for his throat. Someone else might’ve been able to move out of the way, but zombie-on-zombie action is a great equalizer. “Blahg!”
The committee still just stared around the room, Ms. Simon sucked on Moose’s femur – rather rudely not offering to share - and collectively they all were thinking ‘uuuuuhhh’ in a low B minor. Blissful. Then entered President Bush, but no one could tell if he was one of them or not. Their collective thought became ‘hhhhhuuhhhnn?’ Only one way to find out.
The long tables were pushed over, zombie committee climbing over the furniture, golem-style but slower. Bush stared. They paused.
“Glaggle snarf,” he stated, quizzicly.
Ever the leader, McSoren asked, “Bliggle dawk? Waaaaaa?”
Bush snickered.
The battle call sounded, “Waaaaaaaa!”
Bush stared blankly, unreacting and seemingly unafraid. There was a moment of impasse. No one could tell if, like them, his brain had been liquefied - food and foe or friend? They could’ve had him try to blow his nose and check for bit of gray matter, but who had the patience for that? As one, the zombies shrugged.
“Nug.”
“Nug.”
“Nug!” he mimicked enthusiastically. And was eaten.

Whatever small seeds remained in the School Board members of humanity rejoiced.

Ron Howard’s Boy-crush on Tom Hanks

For the love of GOD, man, stop casting Tom Hanks. It’s not that The Da Vinci Code is so deserving of greatness, or that it isn’t really fairly fitting that Forrest Gump is the lead in such shoddily written mainstream-ness; it’s only that the character is supposed to be sexy. An old Harrison Ford would’ve been better. No, we really can’t get enough of him in Indiana Jones-esque roles.

Why do you insist on Tom Hanks? You have other friends. What’s Potsy been up to? Or just go for a totally hot stranger. An unknown. An-nee-one. I hear there are a few other actors out there. Spread it around a little, you know? Give us some eye candy already, us female types. It’s a horrible thing to put dear Audrey Tautou with him…an unbelievable – nay – visually disturbing action to do so, that makes my inner muscles wince.

And that’s not the good kind of muscle contraction they’re capable of. Don’t make them do the bad kind.

Please.

Angie's Text Message Speaks To My Heart

Pregnant Ang texted the other day in her typically unique way of updating me in the progress of their Belgium/Germany/France tour, but this one was my favorite. She’s still enjoying the travails of morning sickness, and knowing my history with the airport at Frankfurt-am-Main, she wrote:

“I’m getting to vomit on Germany. A lot.”

Pity? No. Not first anyway. Envy. I never got to vomit on it. From now on, whenever I do vomit, I sense I’ll be thinking of exactly what I would be – in an ideal situation – vomiting on.

I know she was giggling with self-delight as she sent that, knowing I would want to hug her out of sheer love. How could I not appreciate antagonism, sentiment, and biology all rolled into one deadpan sentence?

Background:

My first trip to Europe was to stay with Ang just outside Venice for the spring, or forever, depending. (It was not forever. Le sigh, or…il sigho.) My layover was in Germany, specifically at Frankfurt-am-Main – the German city so fond of sending letter bombs to America at the millennium. That was apparently for a reason, and one quite heart-felt. Without going into the eyeball-squeezing details, this layover was drawn out eventually over 18 hours, with the promise of exit being renewed roughly every two hours. At some point I sat down on the floor next to my luggage and cried, more a cry of an American having to fake an Eastern European accent in order to not be lied to than of, say, someone in hiding behind the wall of a secret room, so I guess I have that to be grateful for. It’s all about perspective afterall, isn’t it? At another point, I got into a minor altercation with some Schweinhund who seemed to have felt verbally flogging all those in line with perfectly lame jokes would wear us down, much like POWs, and he could jump in front of me in line, aber nein. Luckily, growling is an effective universal communication. Growling in German…just feels f-ing liberating, too, when you’re really pissed. Speaking of, after a time, I’d taken to mentally shouting when going to the bathroom, “I piss you on Germany! Uh! I piss on you!”

Hence Angie’s text. Only she’s outdone herself. I’ll have to create a human being in order to match this one. (Another time, thanks.)

To Germany? It’s sure to push me over the edge. Let’s do it!

No, someday I will, and just avoid that city. Munich has an airport and that’s where some of the cousins are anyway, so someday. And Berlin sounds truly fascinating in the best sense of art and militant efficiency uniting. Someday Germany, someday we’ll meet again.

And Angie, you are beautiful, bella mia!

Boydown at the Billiburg Corral

Sometimes we get roped into pseudo-dates. Sometimes, despite a severe allergic reaction to soy the night before, we agree to join our friends to send off a Spanish opera critic on his last night in NYC for an indefinite period. Sometimes everyone else cancels by midnight so the opera critic winds up doing the thing closest to begging which still allows him to maintain a wee bit of pride. Almost always, I cave when a milestone of some level is turning sour. And so began this particular pseudo-date, which only really entered that state once the guy I’d actually been seeing joined us.

Conclusion: further affirmation that people are silly.

The evening was fine enough. We roofed at Bar 13 until it shut down, then opted to return to the Burg for my convenience and bars in which we could still have actual discussion. Opera Critic of Spain (OCS) complained of the texts he was getting from ‘one of [his] New York lovers’ who is good but loves him too much. Woe, oh woe, to be loved too much. Meanwhile, TMS’s Spidey Senses were apparently tingling the moment I’d stepped out the door to go out with OCS as his texting began pre-OCS meet-up, then only escalated the longer I was out. Meanwhile, OCS and I were having conversation that was lovely in the way of similar experiences and views, though not dazzling or revolutionary, not that I have the energy for revolution. Or discussing revolution. Hasn’t that been done to death? Aren’t we living in the world’s most complacent nation of modern times? Come now. No, come. Now. Do it. Mach snell!

OCS repeated his fondness for the dress I’d been wearing when we first met, one he dubbed my Sunday MoMA Dress. The dress and I deliberated, then accepted this title. We spoke a bit of design and artists, and of course Netrebko (because she really is a treat and a half), before he titled me the Swedish Aesthetic. Yes, he knows I am not solely Swedish, but we agree that it sounds better than Nordic Aesthetic or Scandinavian (too long), or Pablo’s title for his next portrait of me – A Nun Named D: The Japanese Jew of the North.* OCS likes titling things it seems. And the texts kept on a-comin’.

“Geez, is this guy an imbecile?”
“I don’t think so. No, he’s actually at least fairly bright, though I don’t know him well enough to more precisely gauge that. We’ve been dating just about two weeks. You’d like him well enough though.”
[text: in the burg? Where are you?][S's. You’re welcome to join.]
“So what else should we say for the story of how we first met when I am your fake boyfriend going to meet your family when I return?”
“Where’d we leave off?”
[text: Pants. Pants now. I’m putting on PANTS, for you.][return text: Never let me hear you say those words again. Hurry up.]
“We were leaving the performance.” (Bit centered on the ‘leaving’ action, weren’t we?)
“Oh yes, then…we walked out to a full moon and a string quartet playing waltzes by the fountain.”
“Strauss?”
“Shostakovich.”
“Very nice. I like Shostakovich very much. And so I waltzed you around in the moonlight, your head tilting back so your face was beaming up at me and your eyes filled with the lights of the square and the stars.”
“But not square stars.”
“Never those. Not for you. You should have…fireworks of stars.”
“Agreed. Then what?”
“Yes, then what?”
[text: on s 6^th, right?][the volley continues: Yes. It hasn’t moved. It tried to but I clubbed it like a baby seal.]
“Another mojito?”
--Lock eyes, clear the space. Sound of ‘shoomp, shoooomp.’ Let it resound…--
“Mmm.”

Minutes later, TMS arrived. Quick moment of ‘oh, you’re here alone with a guy’ but obviously nothing’s up so whatevski. I am not evil. He knows this, or should, or will, or won’t. And here’s the point where Maleness took over.

“I am going with D to meet her family.”
“As my fake boyfriend.”
“We’re getting married.”
“Fake married.” Look across table of ‘Did you get a lobotomy while I was in the bathroom?’ He smiles back. This may or may not have been an answer in the affirmative. TMS does well though with challenges and I’d noticed he seems to even enjoy asserting himself in the gentlest way possible at all times as the alpha male. By the time he stepped back to the bathroom, OCS said he really liked him.

We all went to another bar together after that, TMS citing OCS needed to visit a truly dive bar before leaving America. They’re male. They agreed. A place 2 blocks from my home was the winner, though we left within an hour. Here’s where it got especially odd, and – I admit - enjoyable in a psychological study kind of way.

“Do you want me to call a car for you?”
“Yeah, man, where are you staying?”
“At D’s.” WHAT?! Would be nice to ask first, don’t you think? But, okay, he’d drank a lot, maybe he didn’t want to deal with a long cab ride at 4am and wasted in a foreign land.
“Well, we do have a couch you can sleep on.” We enter. TMS goes to bathroom. OCS walks into my bedroom and starts looking around, assessing the space and its contents.
“This is your room, no? I like it very much. Somehow it’s existential.” Whatever. I’m tired, but stand in the doorway because I don’t want any funny business (yes, I just wrote that, hush). TMS returns and OCS goes to the bathroom.
“What’s going on? Your room-mates are sleeping, right; we have to be quiet?”
“Yes. They’re sound out and have to get up early. Now quick, flop out in the bed and don’t leave it.”

OCS goes to the couch, I wash my face and emerge. He asks if TMS is staying in my room all night. [Pause for baffled moment of Things I Could Say.] I nod, he says he’ll go and won’t let me call him a car. And there ended that particular strange exercise in male competitiveness with TMS the victor, though I don’t think he really was relishing it and instead questioning what was up. Ah well. He left two hours later in the midst of a panic attack, work blamed. Likely true, in the immediate sense. Still, I felt rather badly. Not at all the situation I had anticipated. Keep in mind, OCS wasn’t even interested until TMS was involved, or if he was then he’s just not too swift about the effect of essentially admitting to being a male slut who faults women for caring for him.

It’s not judgment. It’s just another one to cross off.

*(Disclaimer: though so frequently confused for one, I am not a nun. He speaks of setting this portrait’s scene in a bordello, though, so you see the bite. Neither am I Japanese, specifically, nor Jewish except maybe a pinch on the Polish line. Pablo, his mother one of the mystical Jews of Andalusian Spain, just calls things as he feels they should be. And he can do that, after all. I give extra wiggle-room to people who’ve been imprisoned for Premature Anti-fascism. How fabulous is that?)

Ice Cream Truck Drivers = High Level of Creeposity

Today is beautiful. The sun is out!

Which means the ice cream trucks are out!

Which means there's a veritable army of mobilized pedophiles!

Yeah!

(No, no yeah.)

I'm pretty sure that insidious song the trucks play isn't there as much as an alert to the kiddies as it is insurance that adults will cringe and flee. Would it really be so difficult to change up the music a bit? Is it really appropriate to have "Mr. Softee" painted on the side in scrolling cursive, or any kind of lettering that doesn't also include his inmate number? Oh, who am I kidding; they so rarely actually are caught. I just wasn't thinking when I made that comment. I am ashamed. Forgive me.

But really, it just depends on how sportsman-like the pedophiles are. The ones with a sense of honor probably feel it's bad form to 'cheat' and use bait (ice cream), use electrically-powered kiddie-calls (song via speakers, more's the pity), and not even have to stalk the prey but lazily drive about in air-conditioned comfort. If they get hungry, then even have ice cream right there. Where's the challenge in that? The Elder Molesters probably sit around the camp fires together, talking about, well, kids these days - in a slightly different context than other discussions old people usually have about kids these days - but then also how there used to be a sense of honor and pride in a job well had - blow or otherwise.

"I used to have to sit for hours in those confessionals. Hell, I had to complete seminary! We really had to work for it. You had to really want it."
"I know, Father, I know. I can't tell you how many God da--, excuse me, 'goll dang' badge projects and camping trips I had to plan. John Jacob Jingleheimer this [grabs crotch], I tell ya. Things just ain't what they used to be. Don't know what the world's coming to."
"Did you say 'taint'?"
"No, but speaking of..."
"Don't go off day dreamin' again. We're going to miss recess if you don't pick up the pace."

There ends that bit.

And now, off to the dollar stores to find dolls for an art project. Really. I'm not putting them on fishing lines and going trolling or anything...though I love the mental images that come to mind when I re-think the term 'going trolling.'

Self-proclaimed Talented Playwright Verbalizes Further False Beliefs

After exiting The Lieutenant of Inishmore with an unsubstantiated-claimed playwright, he promptly tells me he's upset they 'stole' his torture scene from the play he's been working on, involving one actor hanging upside down from a rope.

"You do know this play is a few years old, right?"
"Still."
"So what does the scene accomplish in your play? Just devise another that achieves the same thing."
"But it HAS to be this way. It's when the ice demon [internal scream #1] is being tortured by the goddess named Betty." He pauses to wait for what he's sure will bring at least a look of 'Oh stop! You are TOO clever,' or the action of 'I must, I repeat MUST, bed thee.' Fortunately, I do not mind disappointing when faulty expectations are in play (no pun intended).
"There's an ice demon?"
"You'd like it. You like my writing." [Verbalized False Belief #1]
"Um, okay, so the fact remains - there's no reason it cannot be redone. Maybe it will even be better." Read as: please internalize the look of disgust on my face at the sheer, glaring stupidity you've just described. Save yourself. There may still be time.
"But they have to be like this. They wind up 69ing." [internal scream #2; physical wretching held in]
"That is just CHEAP* and BAD."
"No, no. Trust me, you'd like it. You like my writing." [Verbalized False Belief #1, again]
Does he think he's a Jedi Master? [He may.] Does repetition make it more true? Has he had earlier success in this limp brainwashing technique? "No. Really. That is just CHEAP ___ and ___ BAD. And I haven't seen anything near enough of your writing to formulate any sort of opinion of it, but this doesn't, I have to say, bode well."

More sad face. He clearly overestimates both the power of his Sad Face and my general compassion for annoying pseudo-artists. Someone with no more social intelligence than him couldn't possibly write plays well. He appears to operate entirely outside obvious social conventions. I imagine he'd write plays like this:

AN IMAGINARY SCENE FROM THE CHEAP-MOVE PLAYWRIGHT'S COMPLETE WORKS
[Cast: one female, one male; same early-adult age.]

Scene -
She reads his letter, wherein he expresses devotion in the form of whining. At Stage Left, he stands, self-assured and proud. She reads: 'I can take a hint, but the fact that you don't answer my calls or emails only endears you to me. I know what you mean. I know this is your way of saying I need to try harder. Well, I am and will.'

S: He is so bright and understands me so well. Others would've thought I was disinterested. Nay, put off and leary even. Instead, he has seen through my silly games, and won my heart.

H: I call to you. I call again. Do not answer. I don't want you to.

S: I cannot answer. I live to hear his voicemails.

H, leaving voicemail: I don't know where you are or what you're doing. I don't know if we are still going out. I feel sometimes like the fact the only contact we've had was when I forced you to hold my hand, which is the only contact we have had, means you don't want to touch me. But someday I hope to force you to do more. Please love me. I am all alone. No one cares for me, and when you wrote to me to say that there has to BE something in order for it to end, well, it made me cry a little inside. When you put quotation marks around the word relationship and then compared ours to not an aborted or miscarried one, but one that was never conceived, it made me want to take you out and make sad faces at you all night. You need to see how sad I can be. It makes me feel so badly to think of this, that I might repulse you or not be enough 'something' for you, though I don't know what. [Click.]

[Immediately redials.]

S: Hello? Oh, it's you again.
H: Yes, I just left you a really sad message.
S: Okay. Really? Wait, you're serious? [Throws phone onto couch, then herself onto the phone. She cries.]
H, muffled: Are you okay? I love you. Yes, two dates, but you will be my wife. I like your last name hyphenated with mine. [Click.][To audience: I will seduce her with sadness. Oh. I. Will.]

She has turned on the speakerphone and listens to his message. The whining tone grates across the stage. She calls him back, telling him to just keep calling her, over and over again. She does not tell him she's turned her phone to vibrate. Again, she throws the phone onto the couch and mounts it. It rings and vibrates and she climaxes.

Our playwright sits in the audience and finds himself satisfied, assured of his own brilliance. It is remarkable to him that such obviousness as merely recounting reality can actually gain him such applause.

If only life could be so clear.


(*Words appearing after this point in dialogue were said with eyes widened to point of bulging, for the sake of emphasis. The head jutted forward a bit at their pronouncement. Statements were closed with the circular out-and-down hand gestures. Emotions ran high, where 'emotions' are singular and named 'disgust.')

The thread tying in multiple realities pulls tight. The thread hangs by a thread.

This makes only for ease of mental imagery, and easy things are, afterall, generally not that strong. Example: one group of friends may not care much to hear of another group of friends' creation of breakdancing names, even if your general Brooklyn immediately inexplicable moniker of Burrito is changed to Breakito, or if your flatmate rejoiced in making one in tribute to her goddess+somethingforgottenstartingwithF in - F'Ellen. Increasing the spacial invasions of your hand-gesturing will not improve the situation, however whole-heartedly done.

Still, there are at least a few kindred spirits...

Upon running into Z on the way to the train, then at the unavoidable cessation of hello with goodbye, a dramatic hugging sequence ensued. Z, as it turns out, is a respectable Spontaneous Dramatic Hugger. Add one-legged interpretative dance moment, and you have a real winner. What pushes it over the top though was the sorrow expressed when I told him how dangerously near he'd come to me humping his leg, yet not having done so. "I stopped myself because I realized that you don't know the Gummy Bear Incident - the story...joke...behind it - so I'd just be suddenly humping your leg without any context." Clearly, unacceptable. I must confine any vertical leg humping to those 'in the know.'

Z, I appreciate your good sportsmanship though. It does my heart good. (And it also does my 'heat' good, as I just initially typed, thanks to my nail slipping - appropriately - on the keyboard.)

As our home internet is Acting Up, and someone's fingers were screaming, this is from May 5th's mornin':

Today I want: 1) Luka, 2) hardboiled eggs.

The eggs are in the fridge, boiled – cold and ready. Instead of salting one though and skarfing it down like usual, I’m going to revisit its eggness, more the white than the yolk though. Yolks remain a bit unsettling. Not in the mood for anything not-settling.

I’ll peel the egg and slide it over my lips, back and forth, and run it over the upper part of my right cheek bone, then down the slope to the right corner of my mouth. That’s the Appreciation Slope. Nothing’s been run down it in too long.

And that’s where missing Luka came in today. I miss his sensuality. I miss that he would’ve seen me holding the peeled hardboiled egg and known that I wanted to run it over my face but that I wasn’t doing it because I wasn’t alone, but then come over and moved my hand con egg to my skin for me, and we would’ve laughed softly, and his eyes would say ‘I love that you’re my crazy girl’ and my eyes would say ‘except that I’m not yours, only strange, and when the day would come that you’d complain over some of the strangeness then it would hurt me and the freedom would be over because I am a coward in this way.’ But he always shakes that look off. He’d just reassure me with coming into aloneness with me, and move the egg down my neck and then trade it out for his lips, hold the egg for me to bite half of, him swallowing the rest with his usual devouring way but from my fingers or lips quickly, to make me laugh. In this way, we are lovers as infants would be – before words, before outside-ness, before loss. And we never lose each other. This may be the true beauty of our times together: we know there is no end, only spaces in-between.

Eggs are perfect for this. Lovers should give each other eggs in place of rings; nothing binding, no unfilled holes, metal-hardness. They are strong when standing but can be smashed, and real ones rot if just left out. They’re messy but where life begins. Seamless until struck. Good thing to keep in mind.

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