Merry Christmas Mofos - The Bitch is Back!

Ahhh....all I can say is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I abandoned you in your time of need. I know many of you (and by many, I mean 3) were anxiously anticipating the last two Flashback Fridays, squirming in your seats, wide-eyed, waiting for the lights to dim, the movie to start, but it never did... I led you on. I toyed with your emotions. I blasphemously could not live up to your expectations. Fucking expectations, they'll screw you every time.

I was locked away in an ivory tower of extreme conformism, reading 4000 pages and writing almost that amount on topics about which I care not, then taking days upon days to recover... you know you're old when you can still pull all-nighters like you used to, but it takes something like three times as long to recover. Yeah, so all I can say is, this conformist bitch sucks.

As some form of appeasement, I felt the need to write you something, to show you all that I am still alive, and what better time than early the day after Christmas to do so. Um, mostly because I am again stuck in NJ (decaf...) and for the life of me I'm not sure what else to do. My body is on full out revolt against this place...my skin is breaking out, my hair looks terrible, think I gained a few pounds...am starting to blend with the natives...

So, despite the fact that I spent the last hour crying... about what, you ask? Well, let me attempt to renumerate for you the many sands that spawned that black pearl of pain - the pointlessness of school, looming shadow of work, arbitrariness of life, my mother, my myriad skin problems, my lackluster appearance (of which I am reminded frequently by #4 on this list), the fact that I am bleeding money, the dull, incessant throbbing of unrequited affection - you know, the usual suspects. And I did my usual, I cried in the shower so it would be easy to clean up, to wash away, with the hope that I would emerge emotionally purged. And as usual, the tears continued, onto my towel, onto my chest, onto the blasted pink tile... it wasn't until I was dried and dressed that I started to calm down and regain some semblance of normalcy. And I asked myself the same questions - What the hell spurs these episodes? Why the fuck must I have them so often?

And so, I decided, I would remind myself, on this Christmas, that things could be worse.

I read "The Year in Pictures" on the New York Times. War. Famine. Pestilence. And just plain damned bad luck. Soldiers younger than me getting shot in Iraq. Lebanese dying during Israeli airstrikes. Civil war in Chad and Sudan. Kids losing their houses to Katrina. Some guy getting shot by Dick Cheney.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I, meanwhile, spent the year at a highly prestigious institution (it says so in the brochure) getting a degree that, though pointless, will look sexy on my resume; securing myself an enviable job (even though it was the same one I had before) with people I like (for real!); and making a couple of new friends while still bonding with the old ones. I spent today chasing the dog, who was sporting his swank new camo fleece coat (funded by yours truly, thank you very much), around my cousins' house while they played Nintendo Wii, then gorged myself at dinner that I didn't have to pay for with relatives I genuinely like. Except for a few minor blips - "your hair looks bad," "why would you buy that for them that's a stupid gift," "the smell of this candle you bought me is like knives in my nose" - it's been an alright holiday. And all in all, I can't say that it was a bad year. I've had worse.

So enough! Enough with the tears and the pain and the woe-is-me, at least for now. There are six fucking days left in 2006 and I have better things to do than cry. Like go to the zoo. Go shopping. Go ice skating (for the love of God, will someone PLEASE go ice skating with me?? Have been itching to do this since the night before Thanksgiving, when during a bout of loneliness and cabin fever I walked up to Rockefeller and saw everyone skating...with other people... in fact, I was the only one by myself there... but let's not dwell on this).

So I guess that's all you'll hear about tears for this year. At least until New Year's Eve, when I find myself all alone in my apartment, watching the ball drop, with nary a soul to face at midnight and wish "Happy New Year," and possibly hear it echoed back...

But at least I have my tree. And my tree makes me smile.



You know what also makes me smile? Swedish Christmas Goats.

For good clean Christmas fun, check out these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavle_goat
http://www.merjuligavle.se/merjuligavle/mjig_Bocken.aspx?id=52

Silly Scandinavians.

Merry Christmas to All Ye Conformists out there.

ScHoOl SuCkS aSs

Um, did I mention that grad school is pointless? Parents, don't let your kids grow up to be grad students.

I apologize to all my fans (all 3 of you) for so inconsiderately and abruptly going on hiatus this soon after sweeping you up in the whirlwind overhyped sensationalized publicity blitz that unveiled this mirror to my deep dark conformist soul.

Anyway, I hope to have a belated abbreviated flashback Friday up sometime Monday night. And regular blogging is scheduled to resume after the hellspawn scourge that is final exams.

Darkness sooooo surrounds me, it's not even funny.


For you are no ordinary gerbil, Lemmiwinks...

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays.

Happy birthday to me,
I live in a tree,
I look like a monkey,
And I drink my own pee.

Today I am one year closer to death. Rock on.

Flashback Fridays - Jesus Beads

Cue the music.

Welcome to Flashback Fridays, a new weekly feature on this cyber-trailer pad I call my home. Some of you, in your obsequieous letters of adulation to me, have, in unruly rococo-ed language, shamelessly prostrated yourselves in my path, quite literally begging me to enlighten you on how the forces of darkness and evil molded me into the conformist bitch I am today. To reveal my gothic influences. To show you CB at 13, CB at 20, CB at...over 20...

So, I figured, what better way to end every normal non-banker workweek than with a bad recurring dream in which I cough up hairbrain memories from my positronic neural-net, my personal true hollywood stories? Some of you may have heard some of them before, and some of you like some of them so much that you have booked me to perform at your commitment ceremonies, flag burnings, root canals, bar mitzvahs, etc. But I know that some of you would love to have them at your fingertips, at your every whirlwind whim, bottled as perfume and spritzed violently into the darkness that surrounds you. So here they are, distilled, concentrated, and immortalized in ether. Lean forward and take a good whiff.

And for the inaugural Flashback Friday, it had to be...

Jesus Beads, or
Why Religion is Fake and Chinese People are Fucked Up

Look, my peeps tried to bootleg Jesus too.

Picture it. Middle school, cowtown NJ. A 12-year old conformist bitch is looking forward to spring break. Then she feels a stake through her heart, as she's told she's going on a Chinese Christian weekend retreat, full of "nice young people" and Psalms and other ludicrous shit.

The horror…the horror…

To remedy my "attitude problem," my mother turned to a colleague who testified that church made her daughter an empty little automaton who wears big glasses and pink Velcro sneakers and factors equations for fun. Conformist fucking bitch! The epitome of the most heinous stereotype I singlehandedly set out to shatter by being profane, angsty, and all-around maladjusted! So, next thing I know I am delivered into evil in a non-descript parking lot at the asscrack of dawn and herded with the rest of the flock onto a bus marked "girls." Gender separation! Hey where's my chastity belt and burqa, or did I miss the distribution for those?

Day 1: The Fellowship of the Beads

The retreat is in the Poconos. We wake at 5am everyday for bible study. Um...what is that screeching in my ears…I do not have a bible nor have I ever touched one, and beyond that I abhor early mornings to the depths of my deep dark soul. Moreover, on the bus I say "what the hell" and am immediately reprimanded, by a fellow camper no less. I mention Amy Grant (popular for crossing from gospel into mainstream pop at the time, for you youngins or cave-dwellers), which spurs accusations of Satanic influence (A witch! Burn her!). I mean, what the hell is Christianity anyway? The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much…

There are maybe 40 campers in all, ranging in age from about 10 to 16, evenly split between genders. The camp is run by a fairly docile Chinese couple, wife P and husband K (all names abbreviated to protect the guilty). Girls stay in the girl cabin with P and boys stay in the boy cabin with K, and there will be no intermingling of the sexes post-curfew (10pm). After settling into the cabins, we gather in the common house for a meal and what I expect to be some cursory introductions.

But luckily for me I get a fairly personal and expeditious primer on the essence of Christianity. The "newbies," maybe 9 or 10 of us who had no Christian background, are taken aside into private rooms, of course separated by gender. P smiles at us 6 girls or so and begins expounding on the bottomless pit that is Jesus's love. She distributes little business cards, on which are printed something like this:

"I, ________________, on this day, __________ ___, 19__, have accepted Jesus Christ into my heart and pledge to follow him forever and ever and into salvation.

Signed,
______________________"

Also, there were little angels and hearts and clouds guarding the perimeter. I have spared you the inhumanity in this plain text representation.

P explains that the only way to salvation is through acceptance of Jesus Christ, and once you accept him you become Christian and saved. Think I've mentioned that I'm a skeptic...

Me: So what happens if you don't accept Jesus?
P: Then you can't be saved.
Me: That means you can't go to heaven…?
P: No, you can only get to heaven through Jesus Christ.
Me: So if you don't accept Jesus and don't become Christian you go to hell…
P: Well, only Jesus can lead you to heaven.
Me: Um, so if I don't sign this card that means I don't accept Jesus and I don't become Christian and then I go to hell…right?
P: (smiles, and addresses the broader audience) Let me reassure everyone that I am not trying to force any of you to do anything. I am just telling you that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation.
Me: Okay…say I didn't want to go to hell, how would I go about accepting Jesus?
P: If you close you eyes, and you invite Jesus into your heart, he will come into your heart and you will feel his warmth and love.
Me: And then I sign this card and I can go to heaven?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…though this be madness, is there method in it? What about Buddhists and Hindus and Jews, who never accepted Jesus, are they all going to burn in hell? That hardly seems fair. Fucking arbitrary if you ask me. Religion…a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. But what the fuck would I know right? Just a fucking conformist like the rest of them. P tells us that when we're ready we should close our eyes and invite Jesus into our hearts, then sign the card and leave.

Okay sooo….perhaps I'm not trying hard enough? Hello? Jesus? Where the fuck are you?! I'm inviting you into my heart! Don't leave me hanging Jesus…goddamnit...

I hear shuffling. I open my eyes and look around, and girls are signing their cards and leaving! What! Bullshit! Fucking conformist liars, all of them. Whatever. I sign the card and leave.

For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Jesus was the only son for you…

Day 2: …My Preciousss…

And now for something completely different...communal showers with no hot water at 5AM are NOT COOL. Akin to fucking dropping your viscerals in liquid nitrogen, perhaps even marginally worse. I gimp out of the showers like a cold, wet, abandoned puppy who'd just been kicked in the balls by its mother of all people, only to be confronted by a fellow camper who exclaims, "Isn't the cold water so refreshing?"

No bitch, it's not. Go fuck yourself.

As we file into the common house for breakfast, we are handed leather cord necklaces with our name tags on them. Then as we take our seats (blasphemy! I sat next to a boy! I'm pretty sure he had a penis!), we are introduced to the thing that for me will forever define/taint religion.

Ah, the bead system. We do good deeds, we get wooden beads - Jesus beads, if you will - which we then string on our necklaces. Phat. Bring it on.

What? 2 beads for clearing the table? Sweep the floor, 3 beads? Blowjob, 5 beads? Oh wait...

Pretty soon we are swept into a crazed materialistic frenzy of bead-collecting. As a glint of the keen business acumen that marks my later years, I start trading to make a necklace of only green beads. Because green is good...

Me: Hey, I'll trade you a red bead for a green bead.
Girl: I don't think we're supposed to trade, these are symbolic of the good deeds we've done…
Me: Would you have done them if you didn't get beads? They're just beads anyway.
Girl: I don't know…
Me: Okay, I'll trade you TWO red beads for a green bead.
Girl: Well, okay.

This quickly devolves into:

Me: Hey, I'll give you a bead if you run back to the cabin and get my walkman.
Random girl: Okay.

Fiat Commerce! Unfortunately P and K are not amused by this advancement in our little microsociety and quash the burgeoning market system. They trace the initial system shock back to me, and P takes me aside and suggests I cease and desist. Just trying to be me, doing what I gotta do… See, when the market gets fucked by external forces, such as, say, a restrictive despotic regime, you end up with distorted shit prices and non-Pareto efficient resource allocation. Whatever. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Tangent: In the afternoon, we are joined by some gangly bearded bespectacled white guy and his GI-NOR-MOUS black wife, and told that the guy did hard time after being convicted of armed robbery and assault, and that he found Jesus in prison...and his wife too, when she came to preach. Applause, applause. He commends us on our collection of beads.

After dinner, bible study, hymn-singing, and rationing of beads, we are treated to an evening feature - Starfighter. In which every other word is fuck. Um, okay.

We retire to our cabins to discuss love, warmth, tolerance, and similar garbage. Look at this tangle of thorns…

Day 3: The Return of the King

And now, for something completely the same...after the spine-chilling ritual that is the morning shower, I drag myself to breakfast. Ummm…

Why is K walking around in a bedsheet asking for everyone's beads?

"I am Jesus Christ, the Lord your savior, give me your beads, forsake material pleasures, and I will show you to salvation."

DUUUUDE…this is TOO FUCKING MUCH! Is this guy for real?! You're not Jesus, you're K, I'm not giving you shit, and you ain't leading me NOWHERE. Even the most brainwashed of the flock look skeptical. We worked hard for our beads, traded them, polished them, talked to them and rocked them to sleep at night... K starts coming to each table asking us to follow Him to salvation. Most campers just kind of look down and avert eye contact. I guess that's how we fight for our right to party here.

So this continues throughout the ENTIRE DAY. We go to bible study, K's begging for beads. We do our "physical activity" (read: walk through the woods), K trails us like a bad stalker. Who's at dinner? Jesus Christ! Fuck yeah! Jesus is the only way yeah!

This is fucking chaos. If I have to endure this shit to get into heaven, then I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.

And then, AND THEN... one of the older male campers stands up, announces that he is giving Jesus his beads, and will follow Him to salvation. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a disciple!

Jesus and His new disciple amble meekly through the common house asking for beads and disciples and such. Before the meal is done, JC has collected 5 more sets of beads and 2 more disciples. Now we have four nutcases walking through the mess hall asking us to follow them to salvation. So can I ask a question here? Where was I when you were getting high?

Evening of Day 3: Attack of the Armies of Mordor (i.e. The Shit Hits the Fan)

Dinner done, tables cleared, beads collected. It's bible time. I've still not gotten the hang of it by this point, I'm frustrated that there's no table of contents and so when someone says turn to Corinthians One chapter something verse whatever, I have to furiously flip through the entire freaking volume of holiness as only a heathen can, until someone finally opens to it for me. Excuse me, after like nearly two thousand years of this no one has thought of putting a table of contents or maybe even an index in this thing?

Of course, we are interrupted by JC the Lord our savior, or in His previous incarnation, K. Blah blah blah beads blah blah blah eye of camel and needles blah blah blah salvation. This act gets old real quick, and do not think you can add a few new disciples and suddenly make the show watchable.

But it must be sweeps month…

One disciple rebels. No JC, you're full of shit, we don't need you to get to heaven, gimme my beads back you quack!

Finally, a voice of reason! But then things get weird – the rebel disciple starts roughing up JC! This is almost too much for my prepubescent brain to handle. Even I didn't expect the lights to start flicking on and off while rebel disciple and JC battle in fake streetfighter slo-mo to the death. Of course, JC dies. We are all sinners, after all.

Did I mention that during the mock-fight some campers were running up and throwing their beads around JC's neck? Salvation or bust.

When the lights turn back on, JC/K is lying motionless on the floor. Kids start crying. Imagine it - you're 10 years old, you've been brainwashed for all of your 10 tender years, and you see this? You might think it's fucking real. What else would you know? What else can you believe?

But then…THEN…the lights start flashing on and off again (I'm guessing P is getting tired now, because it was not as rhythmic as before), and JC slowly resurrects Himself off the floor…only to damn us for eternity:

"NONE OF YOU FOLLOWED ME AND NONE OF YOU HAD FAITH, NONE OF YOU WILL ENTER HEAVEN, ALL OF YOU ARE DAMNED TO ETERNAL PAIN AND TORTURE…SERPENTS WILL EAT YOUR INTESTINES WITH FORKED TONGUES AND SATAN WILL ROAST YOU FOREVER IN THE FIRES OF HELL!!"

Exterminate all the brutes!

NOT. FUCKING. COOL. Nonetheless, some misguided campers scamper up to the newly resurrected fundamentalist JC and desperately try to throw their beads around His badass neck. He violently pushes them off, with more force than probably necessary for a grown man to push off an 11 year old girl. At this point, most campers are crying. Some are hysterical. They truly believe they will burn in hell for eternity because they didn't give a Chinese guy parading around in a bedsheet/toga their wooden bead necklaces.

Surreal, yes? It seems I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that comingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams...

The lights flash quickly, then turn off. I hear some shuffling and a lot of sobbing. When the lights turn on again, K has exorcised himself of JC and is standing in the front of the room with the disciples and the Chinese Judas. He begins a discussion about having faith and following Jesus and identifying false messiahs (not sure how that little charade helped his point here). As everyone is crying, we are instructed to sit in circles on the floor and hold hands for comfort. One older male camper tells me I am holding up remarkably well.

That's because I'm too shocked to think.

Morning of Day 4: Journey Back to Middle Earth

On the bus the "Christian" kids asked if I enjoyed the retreat, if I learned about Jesus's love, and will I oh will I come to the Friday night bible studies regularly. P says I should get my mother to come to church on Sundays. Look at them, like freaking Chinese children of the corn. I am completely fucking terrified.

We are full circle, back to the parking lot from whence started this debacle. I gather my bags and silently, deliberately climb into my mother's car.

How was it, she asks. I start to recount the story. She doesn't believe me. You can't make up shit like this... But when P starts calling her office and showing up at our house unannounced trying to convert her, she starts to believe...

And as for me? Someone will say what is lost can never be saved...