5:47am, about to fly to DC to commence fun, or so the itinerary goes... DC then Boston then Acadia National Park then NYC then Hershey, PA, then Shenandoah N.P. then Blue Ridge Parkway down to North Carolina, through Tennessee, and back home to lovely Louisiana. I'm going to miss my cat. We'll see if Kathryn and I are still talking to each other by the end.
...there comes a reminder that some people are still determined to ensure that all of our celebrations are short-lived. Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has said that he supports a proposed constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage. Why? Because butt sex is a matter for the states to decide and marriage is a holy sacrament that everybody except the sodomites themselves knows should be between a man and a woman. In regards to the Supreme Court decision, Frist said, "I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually—or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned."
As Jon Stewart would say, "Whaaaaaaaa?!"
He's worried that a ruling protecting private actions within the home will encroach upon our privacy? What can you say to these people? What can you possibly say when your opponent selectively interprets parts of an ancient text as divine truth that therefore must be imposed upon a secular state?
This kind of stuff generally reduces me to incoherent exclamations of disgust—hence my lack of counterarguments... though that's also because all legislation of this sort is just patently ridiculous and will almost certainly one day be viewed as segregation laws are today—the products of irrational prejudice and faulty "traditional Western values."
I don't really need too much stuff for three weeks on the road, right? . . . I think I might still need to employ the "pack then leave half of it at home" strategy.
There's now some hot fish action on the webspace ; )
Here's a friendster bulletin board post from John, marking the occassion:
You might know that Thomas Jefferson died on July 4th -- exactly 50 years after his Declaration of Independence was signed. I think the Universe was trying to say, "This guy kicked ass." But what, you ask, happens when your karma is not so good? Well, kids, now we have our answer.
You might remember a certain senator for decades of moralism, militarism and big-business-blowjobs. He kept getting elected, and never shut up until he was 100 years old. In fact, he set the record for the longest filibuster in U.S. history -- i.e., he forced all of Congress to sit and do nothing but listen as he ranted about Satan for, like, a week. Good job man. I'm talking about Strom Thurmond, everybody's favorite segregationist. That's right, kiddos, that wrinkly relic has finally kicked the bucket -- ON THE EXACT SAME DAY THAT THE SUPREME COURT LEGALIZED SODOMY!
Even better, he died /after/ the ruling, so it's entirely possible that this news actually KILLED the old fart. Now, y'all now I'm normally bi, but this news is just so fabulous that my inner fag is bursting forth in glitter shades of pink and mauve. My voice has gone up two octaves in five minutes, and I have an uncontrollable urge to watch reruns of Ellen! This just can't get any better -- unless -- shhh, dare I say it -- unless it starts RAINING LUBE!
I still can't decide if it's real or a spoof. Landover Baptist is one of the best mock Christian websites ever, but this site here, OBJECTIVE, has an entire campaign devoted to eradicating Landover Baptist from God's internet. Is this just another layer of gloriously blasphemous irony, or are these people for real?!
Ok, ok—so the link (courtesy Andrew) that started my foray into this twisted little world: the Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair 2001. Held to educate the younger generation and "break the cycle of Evolutionism dogma that is paralyzing scientific development and making higher education a dumping ground for the excesses of materialistic philosophies," at first it sounds believable. But then you get to projects which "won" and it's just way too good to be true. It starts out fairly realistic-sounding—the 2nd place winner in the elementary school category was "Pine Cones are Complicated":
David Block and Trevor Murry (grades 4) showed how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God's design in nature.
Sure, fine, whatever.
But then you get to 2nd place at the middle school level... "Women Were Designed for Homemaking":
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences shows that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.
It was at this point that my hand flew to cover my mouth so that no small Christian bugs would find their way in as my jaw hung open, and I went back over the page reading the Honorable Mentions: "God Made Kitty" - Sally Reister (grade 3); "Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire" - Tom Williamson (grade 12); and—my personal favorite—"Rocks Can't Evolve, Where Did They Come From Mr. Darwin?" - Anna Reed (grade 6) were just a few of those listed.
The true mark of either extreme brilliance or stupefying dogma (I'm leaning more and more towards brilliance) was a sidenote in the explanatory section, noting that "This is also the first year that Muslim students from the Al-Jannah Islamic school have been invited to participate; two of their students presented a project on human anatomy entitled "Allah (SWT) Created Me" which, while it was found ineligible for a prize due to a number of Biblical inconsistencies, did win a special Interfaith Outreach ribbon."
And then there's this: the "Ruby Matrimony Thong," from the OBJECTIVE Ministries Online Store:
This uncomfortable undergarment will be a daily reminder to unmarried women to find a husband and a emergency moral reminder to her would-be-suitor. (For use under traditional underwear only.)
It's got a cartoon cat in an apron on it, asking "Will You Be My HUSBAND?" ... What can I say, but DEAR GOD I MUST HAVE ONE!!!
So what do you guys think? Can this possibly be for real? Is it wrong to derive such glee from the thought that it just might be the product of some truly deranged hyper-Christian motherfuckers? Help!
I would apologize for my recent dearth of bloggage, but it seems that comments multiply exponentially like little bunny rabbits when y'all are left to stew on the same dozen or so posts, so no harm done.
However, Blogger migrated me to the new shiny interface, and there are a few posts that I've been mentally sitting on for a while now. So I'll try to get in some quality before I leave for my and Kathryn's road trip, when internet access might get sketchy.
The last three movies I rented, all of which I'd recommend: About Schmidt, Kissing Jessica Stein, and Talk to Her.
The book I'm currently finishing up: The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays, by Albert Camus (Vintage International). The section entitled "Absurd Freedom" is one of those underline-every-single-sentence deals that manages to put into words the despair and joy of living every day faced with the unavoidable conclusion to life.
It's not depressing in the least, if you can accept that everything about being alive is depressing in one way or another... The part on "Ephemeral Creation" made me think of the writers and artists I know:
Art can never be so well served as by a negative thought. Its dark and humiliated proceedings are as necessary to the understanding of a great work as black is to white. To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors...
Thus, I ask of absurd creation what I required from thought—revolt, freedom, and diversity. Later on it will manifest its utter futility. In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths...
Let me repeat. None of all this has any real meaning. On the way to that liberty, there is still a progress to be made... A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world. The outcome of his thought, ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers in images. It frolics—in myths, to be sure, but myths with no other depth than that of human suffering and, like it, inexhaustible. Not the divine fable that amuses and blinds, but the terrestrial face, gesture, and drama in which are summed up a difficult wisdom and an ephemeral passion.
Some people find this depressing. I find it indescribably beautiful and liberating. The problem is in living it.
(In other news, I finally got around to learning the code for em dashes. No more double hyphens for me—wahoo!)
I caught the end of This American Life on public radio today -- it's often a very interesting show, if you can get past Ira Glass' obnoxious voice -- and the final segment was about Iraq. It's not online yet, but I recommend listening to it when it is -- the reporter talked both with people on the street and American soldiers, as well as attending a U.S. meeting with Iraqi tribal sheiks. All the Iraqis expressed frustration with the U.S., saying things were exactly the same as they were under Saddam Hussein -- slowed down by a distant, inefficient bureaucracy that is unable to help with their problems or improve their daily lives. The sheiks talked about declaring war against occupying U.S. forces if there were no signs of change within a month (I don't know when it was recorded). More exciting news about how Bush & Co. have gotten us (and, ideally, their political futures) into one big ol' fat mess.
Oh, sometimes I am a mad girl,
When I go away.
I'm glad I can't remember
The way you look, the things you say (Jen Hamel, "Just Enough for Me")
A bit loopy on rubber cement fumes after an afternoon of scrapbooking -- made it from August through September of sophomore year... about to start on the political protests and election hooplah.
Mostly-rhetorical questions: Why is it so hard to stop being affected by people who we no longer want to be able to touch us emotionally? Do we keep reacting just for the melodramatic value, because it's such a familiar conflict? Why does anger remain sticky and deep in every crevice when all other emotions can so easily evaporate?
Who would've thought that googling "mother superior wants to kick your ass" could have led to such fantastic things as this and this? Here's a tempting excerpt from one of this guy's many stories:
"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
That was their cover story, anyway. In truth, they had been manufacturing
crystal meth in their basement, and the well at the top of the hill served
as a good selling point."
What an unbelievable waste of time and money -- not to mention an unnecessary source of air and water pollution. I realize that green, manicured lawns have been institutionalized as part of the suburban American dream, but we'd all be a lot better off with native plant yards. Put in a little more initial investment -- planning, landscaping, etc. -- and then benefit both your wallet and your local environment by skipping on the fertilizers, hours upon hours of watering, tons of lawn implement pollution, early Saturday morning noise, etc., etc.
"Won't it look trashy, like it's full of overgrown weeds? What if my neighbors hate me?"
Fuck your neighbors.
Ha ha, only kidding, do that on your own time. You can put up a yard sign explaining what you're doing and why, or make use of gravel paths and flowerbeds.
"Yes, but where will my demonspawn have room to play catch and set the neighbor's dog on fire?"
May I suggest to you the glory of public parks -- or a backyard lawn and an electric mower?
Granted, vast expanses of healthy grass can be appealing. My parents have beautiful, lush St. Augustine that -- when you allow it to go for two weeks of rainy Baton Rouge summer like I did -- grows so thick that it can choke the lawnmower to a stop. And, yes, lawn mowing provides various segments of the population -- teenagers, non-English speakers, guys in bands -- with necessary income. But plant wildflowers instead. Pay someone to weed out invasive/pest plants. Most people who read this blog will likely be responsible for a patch of dirt one day -- really, what sounds better?
They announce the Radiohead U.S. dates and the Texas concert is when? I'll tell you when -- ON A WEDNESDAY FUCKING NIGHT. That's right, the one night of the week this coming semester when I absolutely can't skip class. So unless the Trimble kids mutiny and decide to hold class at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, I'm fucked. Jesus Christ. Why me? What have I done to offend the gods so much that they conspire to keep me from seeing Radiohead for years and years? Ok, don't answer that, there's a long list. But still. Sweet mother of god.
Now the decision is about where to fly to. Son of a bitch.
A few of us got together at Sarah Guthrie's last night to drink and be merry. The two who would probably have been the last to touch alcohol in high school, Maryann and Kathryn, led us in a game of Kings and then were appalled at how lightweight all the rest of us were. The rules we made were that no proper names could be used, that every sentence had to end with "bitch," and then that every sentence had to begin with "fucking hell." I think the fourth one was something about saluting the little green man on your shoulder, but I don't think that one lasted long. Anyhow, hilarity ensued -- some quotes:
"Alright, Spic, whatcha got?" - Lori to Sarah D. "Sarah, you're such a cocktease." - Sarah G. "Bitches n' ho's, bitch!" - Sarah D. to Megan "Ten. What the fuck is that, bitch?" - Lori to Megan and Kathryn "Shit, what the fucking hell fuck bitch. Whatever." - Megan "Fucking hell, my bad, bitch." - Maryann "Hey does that mushroom and cheese pizza taste like semen? Cause Megan Byrd thinks mushroom tastes like semen... I tasted it, and it really does -- I really love mushrooms, so I must really love semen." - Sarah D.
For any SJA people still looking for some nostalgia, how about this little kick in the ass? That was my first boyfriend, dammit... these things aren't supposed to happen for years and years to come. Apparently they're happy, and their daughter is truly beautiful, but when I think of Will I still picture him trying to maintain order during a game of roleplaying sophomore year while Drew made totally nonsensical jokes and Evan stacked coke cans at one end of the table.
Through the Die Puny Humans blog, I came across this link to pictures of the Japanese Penis Festival. (Doug! Are you getting in on this action?!) Talk about spectacularly weird... Once again, I feel culturally deprived -- I mean, we get Flag Day and the Japanese get a Penis Festival? What the fuck?
I found the link to Die Puny Humans on My So-Called Lesbian Life, which also had the graphic below, which I'm rather fond of...
It didn't link to anything, so I'm not sure where it comes from.
Yesterday I went to the mall because really what else was there to do. I spent a few hours playing in the Dillard's juniors department, where the prom dresses were 75% off. I really wish I had some excuse to wear silky, beaded dresses with three layers of poofy skirts or trains of gauzy fabric -- I know I've never been known for being a girly girl, but damn I loved dressing up for high school dances. I tried a few on and swooshed around in the fitting room feeling like a princess.
I was helped by a woman named Zena who had a Jamaican accent and called everyone "Precious." She escorted everyone into their fitting rooms saying (imagine the accent), "You can take all of those in, Precious -- take as long as you want, Precious -- here you go, Precious." She helped me go in and out with armloads of stuff, kept things on hold for me, and then when I came back gave me 50% off the only item that wasn't already on sale and told me to come back and see her, thanks for shopping at Dillard's, Precious.
Bar-hopping
I had settled into Perks for another night of closing out the coffeehouse with iced chai and my laptop and then heading home at 11pm to commiserate with my cat when who walks in but Jon and Trae. They were out in the preliminary stages of birthday celebration (Trae, 23) -- getting coffee post-weed and pre-beer, so naturally I joined in the fun. We went to the Spanish Moon, where Adam got us in through the back door and we played increasingly intoxicated games of pool. Trae declared the bar dead after a while and so we set off to Chelsea's, which turned out to be equally dead except for a disturbing number of loud girls at the table next to us. I wasn't showing enough skin to have any hope of fitting in with them, so it was off in the giant-ass, pimped-out white Cadillac rental car to Port Royal, where Trae had visions of hooking it up with an ex-girlfriend now bartender who I went to high school with.
That didn't quite pan out for him (but provided plenty of entertainment for the rest of us) so we closed out the Port Royal (right next to the Waffle House on College Drive -- looks like it should be full of shady locals but is really just packed with little white kids) and headed to Jon's house for some nighttime swimming in his neighbor's pool. Adam dropped off a case of Bud Light and we sat around soaking, Trae telling stories that eventually morphed into him arguing with me and Jon just for the sake of argument. Any night that ends with everyone in their underwear, sitting in a pool at 4am arguing about American capitalism, is a good night in my book. It at the very least temporarily revived my will to live while here in Baton Rouge.
From the comments in response to Matt's post about roach terror:
louiS 6:06PM • June 13th 2003
the best and most gratifying way of disposing of jesus's favorite bug. you will need the following:
1. newspaper
2. fly swatter or some kind of swatting mechanism
3. scissors
4. lighter
5. binaca (you know, the old breath spray that was the coolest fad in middle school since snap braclets)
first, you have to lure the roach onto the newspaper to save your carpet/floor from the green/brown shit that these bastards call blood but i call satan's pimp juice. once on the paper, you have to stun the roach with the swatter. stun, not kill. if stunned right, the roach should be on its back thinking what the hell have i done to deserve this, i'm just a nice cockaroach that should eat shit and die. that's when you get in his face and tell him to take a good fucking look at his maker. really get your finger in his face cause roaches are known for their terrible myopia. then you take the scissors and go to town. cut off anything that is flailing. legs, antennae, whatever. if it scares you, snip the shit out of it, just make sure he's still semi-living, enough to feel more pain. that's when you spray him with the binaca a few times and let him think "this is how i will die. an amputee drowning in a minty pool of freshness that kind of stings after a while." then you prove him wrong by blazing him with the binaca and lighter. if all goes well, he should yelp like a minature banshee in heat, and you will laugh like oprah at old country buffet. did i say laugh? i meant eat until your black fat and rich.
It made me laugh out loud in public, which is always good.
Alright, guys -- time to join Generation whY in the worldwide wacky web of online personals. Or, well, kinda pseudo-personals... Ok, personals that masquerade as "meeting friends' friends."
So if you want to officially be known as my "friend," sign up and I'll tell you what email address you can reach me at (yay junk yahoo accounts!). Then we can all broaden our incestuous friendship circles.
driving back from Abbeville tonight -- i hate night driving -- passing over the Atchafalaya basin, the most stunningly beautiful scene of moonlight streaming across the blueblack water, dark shapes of cypress stumps breaking the white light sparkling across the surface... it was transcendent.
Canada seems like a more civilized, attractive place by the day. Now, not only does the Canadian Senate want to legalize marijuana, but gay partners can now be legally defined as spouses. Why are both of those simple, reasonable things so unthinkable in the U.S. of A.? Greatest country on earth my ass.
Tony Horwitz
I recommended Confederates in the Attic to Amy today as a happy book to read. Granted, the subject matter isn't always the most joyous -- how the Civil War lingers on in Southern culture and life -- but Tony Horwitz's writing is great. This was a book that was assigned for a class that I not only actually finished but also thought about compulsively while doing other things -- in that "whatever I'm doing, I'd rather be reading that book right now" kind of way. I bought two other "travelogues" of his to read on the road trip in July -- Baghdad Without a Map: and other misadventures in Arabia and One for the Road: an Outback adventure.
Apparently he has a new one out, about Captain Cook's explorations, called Blue Latitudes: boldly going where Captain Cook has gone before -- raved about by a reviewer on Amazon.com as follows:
"One can teach it to high school students. Beautiful women can read it while laying out sipping Daquiris [sic] on the beach this summer. Grad students can use it in their dissertations, and even idiots can enjoy it. We were flipping through our phone book and didn't find a person therein who wouldn't dig it all the way to Tahiti and back in a pea-green boat, even those who care little or nothing for books on travel or history."
Radiohead: Just got Hail to the Thief... succumbed to pretty packaging and got the "Special edition." Naturally, it's amazing so far... though I joined thousands of other kids across the country in running to the dictionary to look up "gloaming."
I won't spoil it for you.
Also looked for the soundtrack to Moonlight Mile, which I watched last night. It was an excellent movie -- sad but not sappy, which is an accomplishment when it starts with a funeral -- and I highly recommend it to any and all.
Dumb Revelation for the Day: Somebody needs to market swingsets to adults. We only physically outgrew them and were briefly distracted by puberty... if I had a swingset in my backyard right now, there would be none of this check-people's-blogs-four-times-a-day nonsense: I'd be outside swinging. Or sliding. Or going back and forth across the monkey bars.
Looking back, I realize I've been a bit presumptuously harsh to some in the comments section who have posted under pseudonyms. Let me explain. Anyone posting under a pseudonym that isn't clearly identifiable as someone I know is assumed to be the stalker, particularly if there are misspellings. As such, that person is then mocked for lacking the dignity and pride to live his own life and stop harassing people he used to know. My apologies to any non-stalkers I've insulted, and may I recommend posting your URL in addition to any witty aliases you use. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would have been followed by official news or instructions. Thank you.
A) When walking through your neighborhood you count no fewer than 20 strands or remnants of Mardi Gras beads.
B) The only intact strands are hanging in trees, out of reach.
C) You know that this is because people came through the morning after the parade collecting all the ones they could get to.
Ah, Mardi Gras... If only it didn't repeatedly get spoiled outside of Louisiana by people who think it's comprised solely of beads, beer, and boobs.
I would say that my most frequent state since the 2000 election has been one of utter disbelief. (Naturally, this is only because blinding rage is hard to sustain for very long without mental and physical collapse.) One source of temporary consolation, other than group liberal rants, has always been The Daily Show. (Yet another reason Baton Rouge is sucking my will to live... parents don't have cable...) Here's one example of why these people are not only brilliant and hilarious but also produce some of the best political criticism out there:
"Just a few years ago, the federal budget actually had a surplus, which is now gone, and with these cuts the national debt stands to grow even bigger. However, the President's team has projected that the federal debt will disappear, just as soon as the earth is consumed by the sun." (TAXING SERVICE, 5/29/2003)
Ok, so that may not be the most insightful example, but it made me laugh out loud. I've had to settle for the website videos lately... Even Stevphen and Bush vs Bush among the more memorable.
Dude. I was just the recipient of one of those hold-up-a-cellphone-at-a-concert things... Kathryn's at the motherfucking Radiohead concert up in fucking New York and I'm fucking at motherfucking Perks in motherfucking Baton Rouge... and the reception cut out after like 43 seconds. Dammit!
At least there's two Pearl Jam concerts to look forward to... it's just not the same, though... Radiohead's got an unconfirmed date in Denver on August 26th... school starts on the 27th... who's up for some plane travel?
Just in case anyone still had any doubts that Texas produces more than its fair share of political evil, Representative Debbie Riddle was quoted as saying,
"Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell."
Riddle is a member of the House Border and International Affairs Committee, which apparently doesn't translate into a knowledge of other countries, much less our own. Fuckin' commies and their ideals of healthy, literate citizens.
Just returned from some more extraneous spending which, tragically enough, included bathing suit shopping. All you women blessed with small chests, don't ever ever wish for them to be larger -- it makes clothes shopping a royal pain in the ass. You know it's bad when finding bikini tops that come in cup sizes rather than just small medium and large is the most exciting thing you've seen in ages. I realize this is probably like people with curly hair wishing for straight hair and vice versa -- speaking of which, my hair has gone from perky to straight up Shirley Temple, and I haven't quite decided how I feel about it yet...
My grandmother called to check and see how I'm doing, I'm not really sure why. Maybe just because she's lonely and now has someone else who should theoretically be lonely too. I wish I could think of more to say to her, wish I could make a real connection of some sort -- I talked to my mom's dad for a while when we visited last week... Despite being in pain and barely able to eat anything because of the radiation therapy, he was still his good-natured self and I think I heard him talk more than I have in a while, though I don't really remember about what. I don't quite know how to explain the context appropriately, but there's one image of him from this most recent visit that is burned into my memory. He's always loved gadgets of various sorts -- tools, camping things -- and always had a pen and a calculator in his front shirt pocket (he had a pen in the shirt pocket of his pajamas). He was sitting with us and leaned down to show me the leg brace that he had specially fitted to fit inside of his shoes -- one side effect of the medication/treatment has been a loss of motion and strength in his ankles and feet. He explained how it worked and then sat for a while just turning the molded plastic brace over and over in his hands, studying it with what seemed like a mix of curiousity and puzzlement -- the same curiousity that he has always had for gadgets and fossils and anything else he might find but tinged with what seemed like a sense of disbelief that it was made for him because he's sick, because he can't walk easily on his own.
i've got a pint of shiner in me and nowhere to go but barnes and noble to read books without buying them. and look at high school ass. GAH! damn you, Baton Rouge, and your sexually frustrating ways!
So I don't know if it's a hormone cycle or lack of contact with people I can lust after or what, but I read the word "sensual" in a magazine advertisement today and had the sudden urge to hump something, an impulse very indicative of my general state lately.
After reading one of the glorious venues of communication that are blogs, I'd just like to take a moment to once again appreciate the fact that certain people are no longer a part of my life or my friends' lives. Ok, one person in particular. Can I getta "amen"?!
Before going to college, I had lived in the same house for my entire life. Not counting my crib days, I was even in the same bed in the same room in the same house for my entire life. I repainted my room once (not much of an improvement – it went from my mother’s choice of peach to my early-90s choice of teal) and rearranged it countless times, but there was never any of this packing nonsense. Never any evaluation of how much crap I have brought on by the necessity of making it all fit into cardboard boxes. No longer. I have now come to a complete, loathsome realization of just how much shit I own:
a veritable assload.
And all of this had to be boxed/bagged/crated and then hauled to storage, to friends’ houses, or home to Baton Rouge. I haven’t been that disgusted with myself in a while – what kind of person am I that I find it necessary to surround myself with so many things? Well, I got part of the answer when my parents showed up to help me move. I had finally reached the point where I was more likely to put something in the garbage or Goodwill pile than to think “oh gosh, I could theoretically use this at some unknown point in the future… I better hold onto it.” Then my parents arrive and start making helpful packing suggestions like “oh, you aren’t going to leave these boxed-up mini-blinds, are you?” My father proved to be the true genetic packrat link, however, trying to adopt the hideous sun/alligator thing (my mom got George to take it) and making off with the sprinkler we bought two years ago and used maybe once, as well as all the fire extinguishers. I even had to covertly drop my dumb wavy CD towers off at Goodwill after he kept insisting I’d have no place to keep my CDs (new shelves? boxes? the floor?!).
Sorting through two years’ accumulation of stuff was an adventure – reading through class notes and random papers from as long ago as freshman year, finding that final P2 Physics homework that, sadly, was never turned in (remember the shiny silver paint pen we used?) and, as Leslie will be happy to hear, the discovery of all her sVHS tapes – including Nasty Lesbians III – by none other than my mother. Hell, I found boxes that I’d packed in the dorms at the end of sophomore year and never bothered to unpack at the house.
All in all, it took three trips to the storage unit, one trip to Jennie’s house, two Goodwill drops, two highly illegal apartment complex dumpster stops, a few loads in Amy’s car, and multiple trips to George’s to get rid of it all. A good bit of stuff was abandoned at the house, as well – mostly cleaning products for the poor bastards who move in next. By the time I was closing the door for the last time, it was such a relief to be the fuck out of there that I didn't have any desire to be sad about leaving.
