Caustically Optimistic

Relentless

Yesterday, after a brief audience with Colonel Sanders, Emperor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky I gained a dispensation to leave before the end of the Derby Festival and upon receiving it fled to Colorado. I've been in Denver and the surrounding environs and will get about forty-eight solid hours in. I always enjoy traveling in Colorado in general and Denver specifically. Approaching Denver is like approaching the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz. It rises out of no where and presents it's impressive skyline to the traveler and seems to welcome them in from the austere loneliness of the surrounding farms and ranches.

So far, this trip has been a brilliant success. My boss insisted that I take some time off and relax but I think I should introduce him to Emily or let I'm spend the day with her. I enjoy visiting Emily because you'll have a full day, everyday. I think she has Carpe Diem tattooed on the back of her eyelids.

Today we went to the Furry Scurry which benefits the Dumb Friends Society which I was surprised to find out had to do with animals. I spent the entire ride over wondering why - if the friends were dumb - you'd want to or would be able to help a friend who was stupid. We walked around a park for an hour with a herd of corgis and helped raise (I think) over a million dollars for homeless pets the Denver area.

Emily's corgi needs companionship during the day and there was a co-jack (Corgi, Jack Russell mixed) in need of adoption. We headed put to the shelter and Emily and Ginny made their introductions with the yet to be named Co-Jack.

Ginny is a very spirited and relentless corgi. She is a furry creamsicle of energy. She's also an only canine and one can never really know how they'll react to someone being introduced into their pack. Ginny was initially cool to the puppy and perhaps a wee bit annoyed at his Russell-tactic-ness (if that wasn't an all out assault on our language, what is?). The-puppy-who-must-not-be-named is currently being tolerated by Ginny and she'd like me to note that its the puppy who should not be petted, played with, held, talked to, noticed, fed, watered or walked. She's currently occupying her old bed so that her little brother cannot use it (live with it, Ginny, he's staying).

After the trip to the shelter we went through the foothills because it is too cold for us to willingly wander into the mountains. We went to Morrison, Idledale, and Evergreen. If there is am ugly part of Colorado I've not been there. We were able to walk Ginny and Puppy-who-hasn't-yet-been-named around and it didn't wear them out at all. Corgis are relentless, even Co-Jacks. We were able to see sights, buy candy, and do the "trip to Colorado isn't complete without a" wine tasting. Normally, I like all the winds and tumble down the mountain but this time I noticed some of the subtle differences and what I don't like in a wine. Emily noted that she was noticing the different notes in they wine herself - I lack her vocabulary (and refinement).

The fun after returning Emily's home wasn't the Ginny & Ginny show, where the delightful and jovial corgi runs circles around the world and makes watching a goofy movie with a bottle of wine an event all its own. Instead, we had a sociology lesson from the dejected and jealous corgi as she responded with all the aplomb of an eighth grade girl who's just announced that she hates her parents and the whole world is against her. She looked ten times more hurt than when I leave my Molly in the morning to go to work. She was cool with the puppy when they were hanging out but was horrified when she realized he was staying. It was cute, funny and very sad. If you're reading this Molly, I'll never do that to you.

Tomorrow I return to the Commonwealth, my only instructions being from the Colonel that I shouldn't have anyone else's chicken on my breath. Most of the time when you leave a place after a vacation you'll note that it was a nice place but you wouldn't want to live there. Colorado isn't that place. I hope to grow up, get a real job, and move to Colorado.

Bland is Optional

Bland is Optional If you make airline reservations you can pick which type of meal you’d like, Kosher, Vegetarian, Hindu, or bland? Personally, I’m concerned that the food I ordered would be Sephardic and not my preference for Ashkenazi; it’s very difficult for a Lutheran to keep Kosher while flying from Louisville to Denver. I’m pretty sure that there is a food out there that everyone can agree upon and eat without offending their religious predilections because I’m pretty sure they don’t have a kosher galley on the plane anyway. I wasn’t aware that they had a name for the food served to the rest of the world had a name since the food I’ve eaten has always been bland. What in God’s name does your food taste like? 

It’s amazing what we’ll put up with on airplanes. In any other circumstances I’d have ripped the headphones off the person in the next seat who’s cuddling with/drooling on me and yelled, “If I wanted to hear the “n” word over and over again and graphic embellishments of sex acts that never happened I’d go back to teaching sixth grade!” I cannot imagine a circumstance where a complete stranger would use me as a pillow and drool on me and I hope there isn’t another one. 

I do enjoy the fact that people cannot use their mobile phones on the plane. During my lay-over I was at a charging station refueling my iPhone so I could play, “We Rule,” (I almost lost an onion crop) and a woman was on her yellular phone chortling on alternately to her son and husband about an accident the son had been involved in driving home from college where no one was deemed at fault and all were okay. Normally, I’d have moved away from her conversation but I decided that since I was tethered to the same small table she was that politeness dictated she move or pipe down. I did my best impression of my Aunt Stella, leveling the evil eye at her while adding in my own signature “this is going on the Internet” eavesdropping. 

The woman behind me is ignoring her kids as it is but I am sure I’d have eaten one of those children in retribution for hearing her prattling on into her yellular phone and the wee bag of peanuts we’re given before the bland kosher vegetarian tour de force coming from the galley. This I believe is one of the greatest insults or gags of our time. In a world where we’re so minutely sensitive to the feelings of others are presented with a tiny bag of peanuts while riding on airplanes, which could kill one in three American children. I find it hard to believe that the same airlines that make sure I have my kosher vegetarian Hindu breakfast wrap overlooked this. I also believe that, at thirty-two years old, I should not only care about greater problems in the world but also be allowed to have an entire can of Diet Coke. Apparently, that’s just asking too much and had I not gotten two traffic tickets this week I’d have referred this to my attorney. 

I’d have made my own big deal about this but I didn’t bring Chaos Bean with me – and to own the truth, she raises a ruckus better than anyone I know so I prefer to let her settle accounts – and I am flying to Texas and the last thing I need to do is to put on my Max hat and start the Wild Rumpus or incite a riot. My attorney is good, very good, but I don’t think he’s “started a imbroglio/brouhaha on an international flight,” good. 

Besides, I promised I would behave while in and en route to the only place on Earth and surrounding planets where guns more popular than the Beatles and Jesus Christ. I bet when she flies they take one look at Chaos Bean and think, “give her an entire Diet Coke, it’s not worth it.” I knew I should have brought her. I am sun-burnt, have an uncanny command of the English language with a distinct northern accent; they’d confuse me for a foreigner in a heartbeat and as soon as we cross over Louisiana I will be – at best I’d have been shoved in an overhead bin until we landed. 

Indeed, I tell you the truth, until Joe Biden gives us high-speed rail service across the Republic we’re at the mercy of the airlines. I would love nothing more than to take an adventure across America with Madame de Suburban Island drinking entire cans of Diet Coke and taking in the sights of our beautiful country. It would be like a black and white movie, as all adventures with the Madame de Suburban Island are; there might even be a murder for us to solve. Instead, if I am lucky, I get to peek out a tiny window at the tops of clouds at a world built for ants. I’d almost take that over our health care reforms but in my imagination I see myself dying of cancer and Madame leaning across the table in the café car telling me, “You’re an ass. You should have gone with Obamacare” 

I’m sure no politician but Joe Biden could save us because I’m sure that the flight attendants are so star-struck by anyone important or remotely powerful that they might encounter in first or business class that they’d give them an entire Diet Coke and perhaps a snack that wouldn’t rage through a fourth grade classroom like bubonic plague. I’m pretty sure that my friends who don’t agree with me on politics would agree on the point that an entire Diet Coke is a change we could all believe in. I’m in that tax bracket that sees a third of their income disappear and if I work really hard I can see more of it go away as well so even if you don’t get a whole Diet Coke I think I should my class should be as full as my tax bracket. If I’m in that forty-seven percent of Americans paying taxes I should get fifty-three percent of a can of Diet Coke. Don’t call that cockamamie; call it a start. My ideas are no less ridiculous than George W. Bush’s designs on invading the planet Mars. 

They’ve seen what we’ve done to our own planet, George, they’re not going to welcome us a liberators. 

Stay home. Instead, I remain here – faithfully yours – in mind-your-own-business class, cuddled up with someone who drools facing the ire of the guy with the lazy eye from the layover whispering to the woman with the yellular phone about what a jerk I am. I should just take a nap to dream of film noir cross-country trips with full glasses of Diet Coke.

[1] Valerie, see Madame Librarian for more information on the distinction between the Sephardim and Ashkenazi.  

Kianauts

I am happy to report that the United States Government is not the only one wasting tax money.  I heard on NPR (I know, a new-source of ill repute!) that the Government of South Korea had spent money to find a way to make kimchi fit for space-travel.  Apparently, gamma rays in space will mix with the bacteria in the kimchi and making it do something we’d hear from Melody about from a Science Fiction entertainment and kill the cosmonauts and astronauts in the space station.  Either that or it’d do something to the bacteria and it would come back to Earth and kill us all or mutate the humans. 

According to NPR the Koreans cannot live without kimchi.  I think the Koreans need to toughen up but I don’t pay taxes in Korea so who I am to judge?  I just hope they have Hyundai making their spaceship and not Kia; the poor bastard won’t make it to the stratosphere in a Kia and they would have wasted all that money on irradiated cabbages.   Yes that is what they did: they irradiated the kimchi so it wouldn’t have the bacteria that make kimchi, kimchi.  Essentially, they put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and everything was fine.  One of my art professors at the University once said that some of the best things in Art happened on accident and perhaps this is true as well about science – I think he was wrong but he has a classroom and I do not so I’ll keep my opinions to myself.  No, no I won’t. 

I have no idea what you’d call a Korean astronaut or cosmonaut.  I’d call them a Kianaut since that is what I am alleging they’ll be strapped to.  I will delete all the comments that will come flooding in about how people have a Kia and love it or that they’re reliable or safe.  I know that some of them have high safety ratings but those come from the government – the same geniuses that brought us our economic situation, the Iraq war, unmitigated climate change, and a world-class public transportation network.  Okay, we don’t have the last one but I think you’re getting my point: they’re not exactly good what they do, or don’t do. 

Also, you do not love that Kia: you love what you paid for it.  I can’t wait to see you try and trade that bucket in.  I had a Saturn once and I would have told you that I loved it.  I would have sworn up and down that I loved that Saturn, but I am a liar and I was lying then.  I was very happy with the Saturn.  I was very happy that I wasn’t walking. I did not love it.  I wouldn’t want to be strapped to it and ride all the way to Connecticut again or from Connecticut to Arizona and I wouldn’t want to be strapped to it and shot into space.  I am sure the trade-in value of the Saturn directly correlates to the amount of change stuffed in the cushions and their ability to take the tires off the car and put them on another vehicle. 

And I wouldn’t want to go to space anyway, not if there is radiation that could somehow make kimchi worse.  Methinks the Korean government is actually using kimchi to control its people – both in the north and the south, around the world, and if they let it go into space it might lose its opiate qualities and allow the Korean Kianauts to see the truth.  They’d come back to earth and they’d free their enslaved brethren that have hitherto been drugged into believing that their government was good and kimchi was edible.  Don’t laugh, Australia, I know what you’re up to with the vegemite.  I’m very hard to fool.

 I just don’t see the point in going into space: we already have Tang and Velcro.  What else are we going to find in space?  They’re always telling us that we find a lot of inventions in getting ready to go to space and in going to space.  Considering our current situation the time of having so much money to waste on earth meant needing to waste it in space as well are long gone.  Why do we need to go into space?  Do we need to go to Mars?  We don’t need to bring back Martians for day labor or to outsource our jobs to Mars; going to Jupiter would be stupider.  Going to space to say we did it is stupid.  I’ve done a lot of things to do them and to say that I’ve done them and, ‘for science.’ 

Anyone who reads this knows that I do a lot of stupid things and if I am any example to anyone, if I’ve brought anything to the world through the work of my writing it should be this:  I am an idiot.  I do dumb, dumb things.  I am not an example to follow.  So please, lets not send the Kianauts into space, it seems foolhardy at best.  I’m also pretty confident, as confident as I am about anything, that kimchi and Tang being separately disgusting will not mix together very well at all. 

 

a good day to die

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you-Nobody-too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they'd banish us-you know!

How dreary-to be-Somebody!
How public-like a Frog-
To tell your name-the livelong June
To an admiring Bog!

Emily Dickinson

Sarah had a delightfully moderate response to my shock at Emily Dickinson’s complicity in her brother’s extramarital affair, “We don’t know their circumstances so we can’t judge.” As you are all well aware: Sarah and I are not here to help; we are here to observe and pass judgment.

I learned this while participating in the Emily Dickinson Death Day Toast at her grave in Amherst, Massachusetts while joining a troupe of traveling literary scholars led by my undergraduate advisor (and good friend) from my university.

It was the perfect day for such an outing – the weather was dreary and it rained all day. CNN reports that Senator Kennedy was struck by lightening while flying over us – he is safe but it would have been more fitting if he had crashed into our van or had caused our van to go careening into a lake, “We forgot Tiffany was in the back! Was she pregnant?”

It was not a bad day, despite the fact that in the Berkshires the only song on the radio all day was Daniel Powter’s Bad Day. There was a moment where we were sure we were lost or had taken a wrong turn on our way to a Shaker Village when Melissa Potter appeared to us in a vision and told us that we were not lost as long as we were still in Massachusetts. We arrived at the Shaker Village after taking the scenic tour of the greater Pittsfield area.

The Shakers were strange industrious folk. Their whole religion was based on hard work and no sex. This is what many people are doing right now – working all the time and not dating – but that does not mean that people are going to sign up for a lifetime of assiduous celibacy. This austere lifestyle would not go very far when the cults of today’s selling points are sex, cool aide, and free tennis shoes.

I accidentally stepped into a “Discovery Center” which had the draw of newborn chickens – we call them nuggets in the profession – when it was a craft and coloring room for children where I was waylaid by John Kerry’s grandfather with an undergraduate as he told us about the ceramic cow and how they had it harnessed in a much more humane setting then when it was in the barn. I learned a lot about cows – the butter content of their milk and the coloring of their flesh – but the big draw was a glass beehive. I am daft enough to have watched that beehive all day long, but we were on a schedule.

We traveled to Amherst to see the home of Emily Dickinson, her brother’s home and participate in the Death Day March around Amherst after we were finished with the Shakers. The march around Amherst in honor of Emily Dickinson was punctuated with readings and recitations of her poems by her ardent followers. Poetry was read in a parking lot and to a recycling dumpster as well as the train station and her home.

There were unintentionally funny moments, but for the participants this was a very serious occasion like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. I appreciated their religious fervor for Miss Dickinson so I did not point out that we were briefly joined on this cold and blustery day by a man wearing tiny orange shorts or that the man who seemed to be leading the march kept picking his nose.

This whole process culminated at Emily Dickinson’s grave where people recited their favorite poems, tears in the eyes and Miss Dickinson was toasted with ginger ale and mineral water. I hope years after my death that people notice me gone and miss me, too. I am not sure that I want excerpts from my short stories read to garbage receptacles – who am I kidding. If my death is celebrated, I want it done in a very absurd way. Also, if it is on a miserably cold, wet day that people be invited into my historic home and offered something hot to drink.

We had dinner at Wendy’s and parted ways. I was sure, however, that I was going to die on the way home. I had no directions but had no trouble finding my way back to the Interstate and then home, having familiarized myself with the area for an hour and a half earlier in the day. However, with our without directions I find myself lost and finding myself home without incident can only mean that I have entered an alternate dimension.

In the next installment
Sarah and I prepare for our documentary – the Seven Wonders of Nebraska.