Squalor

Ugh. I feel really nasty.

Responsibility is a stomach ache, pounding head ache, aching bones all over my body! I hate it! It's nice to slip off in my mind and be somebody else, with a different life, a better life. Run around and be fun and free. Draw celebrity portraits and talk to Mr. IB and Red Boy and Molly Cyd. Daydream. Write out strange stories about girls lost in the woods, older men, cats, and boy wood carpenters who want to sort out their psychotic friends.

And then the phone rings, I have summer reading, piano class, I have to eat dinner, and it all unhinges. Comes. Crashing. Down.

Scorching the Carpeting

When you're so washed up all you really want to do is sit around and draw celebrity portraits and talk to Mr. Ineffable Baritone about the subliminal messages in Charles Dickens (a peg leg? I think NOT!), you know there is a problem... because that's when you actually want school to start.

I dropped one of the socks from my closet on the floor in my bedroom and it left a big black burn hole there. Fever. Then I was all, "Damn. If you come out I'll get you some Tylenol." No response.

Oh, yeah. School. I guess it's different for me than for people who are going back to the same school. I am a fresh[wo]man arriving in a different place. It's all going to be new and weird for me and for 500 other kids getting thrown into a mix. It's like riding with your dog in the car for three months, and then letting your dog out somewhere its never been, and they get all psycho and hyped because they smell all these things they've never smelled before. At least, that's how I invision it. I've actually never owned a dog before. It's just me and Molly Cyd, and she's psycho and hyper pretty much all the time anyway.

I have a poster of a starved Indian boy with red dust on his face, which I tore out of an old National Geographic magazine a few years ago. I taped it to my wall. I talk to Red Boy when Mr. IB is sleeping or not feeling sociable. Red Boy is pretty cool, but I think he scares my friends. He can't help it, it's just the way his face works.

Pseudo Grammar

Rereading a memoir by Zoe Trope. I'm doing it to put Red Shirt Man past me. I'm not strong enough to type the name yet. The best I can do is his initials. Which I have already recorded in a separate entry so I'm doing it again.

Anyway. Zoe Trope. She's vulgar, in a respectable way. She's also totally lost. Crushing on your gay best friend? Wow. Nice going.

Other than that she's shrewd and intelligent and she's painfully self-serving, but that's what give the memoir its edge. It's not an account of high school written by a middle-aged Jewish guy. It's the account of high school written by a 14-year-old girl with some major confusion going on. And really weird grammar. In fact, reading her memoir sort of makes me write like her. Like a subliminal trace left in your mind. Stopping short in the middle of sentences so they're not really sentences, just thoughtful phrases that are like pseudo-poetry. I'm just like... Whatever floats your boat.

I slipped a sandwich and a water bottle into my closet for Alan. I hope he eats it. Much less for the sake of his nutrition, but so that sooner or later he'll have to come out to take a piss.
I think he sees through my plan, though. He keeps offering to read Shakespeare, which is probably to get me to give up.

Aziraphale Knows Best

Today I thought about calling in my personal SWAT guys to pry Mr. Ineffable Baritone out of my closet. It's not working. They all took one look at him, decided they were homosexuals, and then left without evening producing a warrant. Unfair. Maybe Tony will help me out. Tony is all man - and he's married so that helps a little. He would never be swayed by the Ineffable Baritone.

I listened to Mr. IB read Sonnet 130 last night, and I tell you, I think someday he's going to get gang-raped by a group of insane forty-year-old women who want to cheat on their husbands. With the same man? Well, yeah. Because that's just how it works.

Mr. IB refuses to get out of my closet. I tried tempting him with some two-day-old peach cobbler from my kitchen, because he hasn't eaten in days (no food in the closet). I did not succeed. He's more determined than I thought.

I refuse to do anything indecent, though, because then he'd get arrested and his wife would probably kick my ass. Mrs. Rickman must be made of iron, or something. It would take a lot to deal with all the rabid forty-somethings clawing at her husband. I am never going to marry a famous English sex god, because I'd probably be assassinated.

You can't question ineffability, though, that's what Aziraphale always says.

S(ever)us

Anyway, I, personally, hate spoilers, so I hate spoiling things for those of you who haven't read or gotten to this certain portion of Harry Potter, but seriously, who the hell is reading this random blog but me?

...So I feel it is safe to say that Severus Snape has seriously got to be the best character in the entire bloody series, ever. EVER!! I knew he was good all along. I could just feel it. Even after the whole Dumbledore calamity, I could sense that something weird was still missing from the equation. I knew that Dumbledore wouldn't just blindly trust Snape to be betrayed like that. I knew there had to be somthing more. That being said, Severus, you supposed dirty bastard you, WE'RE ALL BEHIND YOU!!

I mean, after all that, who wouldn't be?! He deserved Lily! Totally and utterly! It's so completely unfair what happened to him! Why did he have to sacrifice so much?! To be loathed by the boy he was sacrificing everything for, even until after his death? WHY?!?! *chucks something angrily out the window* ARGH!!!

Ahem.

Sorry about that. I've always been a Sev fan, so reading all that was like being trapped among explosives. I wasn't sure whether to be in a state of Euphoria and jumping for joy, or to be really pissed and throwing stuff.
...And I know, I take this entirely too seriously.

Sticker on Your Forehead?

Speaking of Harry Potter and Alan Rickman and all that, it reminds me of when I saw the fifth movie with my friend at the beginning of the month. She hasn't read any of the books, so naturally the plotline is totally befuddling her. I had to explain it all to her once the movie had ended and we were walking out of the theater.

"And what was with Snape?" she kept saying. "Why was Harry's dad dangling Snape upside down? I though Snape was supposed to be the bad one...?"

Now, my friend here is pretty intelligent, but she is also pretty simple-minded when in comes to the depth of characters and people and all that. I tried to tell her about it in a way that she would understand, but she refused to believe that James was the one being mean, and not Snape.

So the only way I could think to put it was like this:

"Okay," I said slowly, "Think of it like this. Let's say Hogwarts is an ordinary high school, and Severus Snape is an 'emo kid', right?"

At once she nodded in understanding. I continued.

"And let's say Harry's dad, James, is a 'rude jock' type."

Another knowing nod.

"And let's say they both have a crush on Harry's mom, Lily, who is a pretty and smart high school girl. Lily is friends with both Snape and with James, and therefore is caught in the middle of everything. Snape, in this situation, is going to be the one who gets abused the most, because jocks are stereotypically naturally more brawny than emo kids, right?"

"Yeah."

"Because Lily has been friends with Snape for a longer amount of time, she defends him while James is rude to him."

"Oh. Then why didn't she marry Snape?"

Answering this question was kind of tricky because it was weirdly emotional for me.

"Because, after time, Snape gets tired of dealing with James, and he begins to appeal to the dark magic in Slytherin. Lily becomes angry with him for it, and winds up spending more time with James because she's in Gryffindor with him, all that - it sort of snowballs from there."

"But James was an ass!" my friend cried defiantly. "They both liked Lily, but Snape was a better person and loved her!"

"Yeah," I sighed. "Life's unfair like that."


I just thought it was funny... the moment I involved contemporary teenage labels for my friend, such as "emo" and "jock", she understood the whole thing immediately. It's like we have to label everything to death before it can make sense.

It's Alan Rickman, Craig. Alan Rickman.

Okay, I'm usually not one for the whole Blog Quiz thing, but this I found to be highly amusing.
I've always had a sick fascination with Alan Rickman, and since finishing the seventh and final volume of Harry Potter, my steady love for the character Severus Snape has somewhat, shall we say, ballooned.
I found this "Which stage of Alan Rickman's career are you?" quiz, and my test results are quite amusing.
Yeahhhhhh....

Which of the illustrious Alan Rickman's characters are you?

You are Professor Severus Snape from the movie 'Harry Potter'. You're very bitter, very smart, and your past has been one long nightmare. You teach Potions at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Although you can act like a bitch sometimes, you've had a rough life, so its somewhat excusable. In the Harry Potter books, you are described as 'greasy-haired and hook-nosed'. yeah, right. Your hair is fucking gorgeous. and so are you. cheer up.
Take this quiz!








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Tatonka, III

(some time later)

An enormous, dark feline suddenly pounced upon the kitchen table - Elsa withdrew, slight shock etched upon her face at the size of the thing.

“Oh!” gasped Caitie, evidently very irritated. “Bad cat!”

She got to her feet as Elsa ogled; Caitie suspected that Elsa had never seen a cat so big before - he wasn’t even fat, just shockingly muscular, most definitely the alpha male of the pack in the cottage.

Caitie started swatting at him with a rolled-up magazine until he retired his post on top of the empty bread platter. He plopped onto the linoleum, giving them both a pompous look before he stalked away with his nose in the air.

“I’m so sorry about that,” she said weakly to Elsa, who looked rather mystified. “He’s always been so rude to humans he isn’t used to.”

“What have you named him?” Elsa asked vaguely.

“Tatonka,” Caitie answered with a little grin.

“Tatonka?” Elsa repeated. She suddenly looked perplexed.

“Yes. It seemed to fit him, since he’s so large, you know?”

“I don’t understand.”

Caitie blinked. Then she laughed, scratching her head comically, like it amused her.

“It means ‘buffalo’!” she said, as though she expected this to explain everything. When Elsa refused to act enlightened, she sighed exasperatedly.

“Haven’t you ever seen Dances with Wolves?”

“Dancing wolves?” Elsa repeated, sounding numbly unimpressed.

Caitie slapped her forehead and groaned. Elsa wondered what she has said that was so obviously incompetent. Whatever it was, she didn’t seem to like the way Caitie was acting.

“Never mind your cat,” she snapped, voice scathing.

“Um. Sure, of course,” Caitie said.

She walked awkwardly to the cabinets. Once her back was turned, she let her face, which so often held a jubilant smile, crumple bitterly.

This girl, this person… she’s so lost, she thought. It’s going to take a miracle to make things work.

Tatonka, II

“All right, come in through this way,” Caitie instructed dutifully, holding an opening in the beads for her.

Elsa stepped through, bobbing her head.

Then she sneezed.

The room they had entered was large, and obviously was supposed to be some form of living room. It was paneled entirely with hard wood. Every wall held a shelf, cabinet or bookcase, upon and within which was a sea of chaotically placed items. Trinkets, picture frames, cork screws, porcelain figures, jars, cups, papers, collections of any and all small objects, endless piles of books, and dish after dish of dusty, stacked-up china, amounting to an antiquated colossus of cluttered disarray.

A black cat, which had been perched precariously upon a 1950’s radio set, hopped unto the musty carpeting, approached Caitie with a welcoming meow, and started rubbing on her shins.

“Oh,” said Caitie, picking the cat up at once. “Elsa, allow me to introduce you to one of my cats, Grimm.”

Elsa merely stared at the creature, unable to think of a thing to say.

“I really hope you don’t mind animals,” continued Caitie, “I have a lot of them - it’s kind of inescapable around these parts, with all the strays roaming around. They come and go, you see. I just can’t bear to keep them inside all day, so most of the time they’re in the forest. And… ah!”

She pointed into a corner where a moth-eaten green armchair sat, and curled upon it was a casually snoozing tabby.

“That there is Hershel. He’s a dope, but nice all the same.”

Tatonka, I

“Well, it’s not like she has anything to pack, so I don’t see why - ”

“Ben.”

“ - And she’s not going to get anywhere if she just keeps sleeping in that goddamn tent every night, and you know that as well as anyone, so don’t - ”

“Ben.”

“ - I know you said it could have been a rape. You know what I think - but even if you’re right, she can’t deal with that properly here, can she? She needs to take it up in a court of law - ”

“Ben, would you listen to me, for a single fucking minute?”

Caitie rarely ever raised her voice, not like that. Whenever she did, it meant business. Ben stared, shocked.

“Okay,” he croaked.

“I’m going to tell you something important, and I don’t want you to get angry. At least, not until I’m done explaining. All right?”

“Okay,” he repeated, although sounding unsure.

“This morning Charlie talked to Jeff and I about it, and it took a while, but I agree with him now. It may take you some time, too, but I know you better than to stay mad for long. You’re too perceptive, anyway.”

She sat down with her iced tea, and patted the spot beside her. Ben took it.

“Elsa is not being cooperative. You are aware of this. We’ve been paying a lot of attention to her, Ben. Mannerisms, ticks, social behavior, the works. Charlie’s been taking note of everything she does. We want to be able to understand her.”

“And?”

Catie took a long gulp from her tea and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “She’s depressed.”

Ben squinted at her. “Oh. Well, yeah. Isn’t that sort of evident by now, though?”

“Hon,” Caitie sighed, “Let me finish. You’ve got to understand that there are many different levels of depression. Many. We’re not talking about the whole teenage phase where life treats you harsh so you go harm yourself in the corner, in hopes somebody will notice your ‘agony.’ No. It’s not the attention-grabbing sort of thing where all you want to do is dump your overly dramatic crap on somebody who will pity you.”

“I know that,” Ben said.

“Good. Keep listening. In Elsa’s case, Charlie and I have come to the conclusion that she needs some help.”

“And I agree completely, but -- ”

“Not listening,” Caitie said, her voice sing-songy, and continued without letting Ben have room to protest. “Elsa is very bizarre, Ben. Very. She won’t be affected by people who shrink at her all the time. There’s something else there that those types of people wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on.”

“And what would that be?”

“She’s homeless, Ben. She’s broke. No hospital in the world knows that language.”

“Did she tell you that she’s homeless?”

“No. But honestly, think about it. If she weren’t, wouldn’t she have something to get back to? And in the scenario that she’s running away from something, wouldn’t she at least have taken some belongings with her?”

“What about amnesia?”

“Same thing. Not being able to remember anything practically makes her homeless. She’s got no money, no insurance, no family to speak of. A walking time bomb.”

“I know where you’re going with this, and I don’t like it.”

“Do you? Tell me, what do you think?”

“Caitie, she can’t live here. She just can’t.”

“And why not? Why are you so dead-set against it?” She looked at him with curiosity.

“Because she’ll be out of place. She’ll be restless. I can feel something unsettling about her, and it’s worrying me. I don’t think she’s… I don’t think…”

He trailed away. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me. Tell me.”

“I don’t think she’s safe,” he blurted. Then he looked away.

“What makes you say that?” Caitie asked, sounding amused by him.

“Can’t you feel it, too?” Ben asked hopelessly. “She’s a creep. She’s dangerous. She’s planning something, I know it.”

“So cynical,” Caitie sighed sadly.