A Riot of Our Own

Yesterday I participated in a travel writing workshop.  We did a few timed writing exercises and brainstorming activities focusing on specific travel experiences.  My first two writing exercises ended up being excrement-themed because, hi, have we met? 

For our first prompt, the instructor asked us to write about the first trip we remember taking.  I busted out a little something about my family's trip to Atlantic Beach, NC, where fart jokes served as an overarching bonding experience for the whole family.  Even Grandmom got in on the good times.  The second prompt turned the focus to souvenirs.  I chose to interpret that loosely and wrote about the lessons I learned about travel vs. tourism vis a vis explosive diarrhea.

We also did a brainstorming activity where we each chose a travel experience and as a group, talked through the salient details.  I realized I should branch out from the scatological for this one, so I brought up an experience we had in Peru that I don't think I've ever written about.  After taking some time to research the events in question and unearth some of my own photos from that day, here is a recounting of the first time I felt like an adventurous traveler rather than a coddled tourist.

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Lima, Peru - September 18, 2012

¡Gracias!  We handed over a few soles to the driver and spilled out of the back of his taxi onto the Plaza de Armas, blinking and breathing heavily.  It was the first time we had seen evidence of the sun in days, and we had been nearly asphyxiated by diesel exhaust during the interminable, erratic cab ride from our hotel in foggy, seaside Miraflores further inland to Lima's historic center.

This was Latin America.

The palm trees, the Spanish colonial architecture, the antiquated vehicles.  It was everything we pictured yet nothing we expected.

Andy and I are chronic early risers, and we arrived in the historic district before many of the sights were open to tourists for the day.  We wandered around the Plaza taking photos, and meandered across the street to the gated Palacio de Gobierno, where a few military guards stood watch on the steps.  As we peeked through the bars of the gate and snapped photos, a policia holding an assault rifle strode over to us.

Shit.  Were we not allowed to take pictures?  My three years of high school Spanish a decade earlier, and brief foray into Duolingo in the month prior to our trip, didn't prepare me to talk my way out of a Peruvian jail cell.  I hoped a simple lo siento, no comprendo would suffice in this situation.

To our great relief, the guy only wanted to say hello and practice his already excellent English by chatting with tourists.  He tipped us off that if we returned to the Plaza in about two hours, we could watch a changing of the guard ceremony that was set to take place to honor the occasion of a visit from some foreign dignitaries.

By this time, some of the cathedrals and museums were welcoming visitors, so we set off to explore for a bit.  We visited the Catedral de Lima to see Pizarro's tomb and toured a catacomb.

 
At the appointed time, we returned to the Plaza de Armas, eager to witness some Latin American military pomp and circumstance.  We attempted to install ourselves at the edge of the Plaza directly across from the gates of the Palacio for the clearest view.  Moments after we found a good vantage point, policias bearing riot shields herded us out of the way.  We allowed ourselves to be shuffled along and scouted out a new spot overlooking the Plaza from the steps of the Catedral.

Before long, a procession of sleek black limousines flanked by voluptuous female soldiers on motorcycles sailed past us and disappeared inside the Palacio gates.  It was all perfectly exotic and sexy.  Then a squadron of policias with riot shields fanned out from the center of the Plaza and forced all the civilians out of the square.  Unaccustomed to this type of display of force, Andy and I speculated on what they were doing.  Were they clearing the Plaza to prepare for some kind show military exercise?  Will there be a marching band?  Oh please, let there be a marching band!

 

Rather than a festive brass band, the first notes of the day's true spectacle came from a man in the crowd who raised a bullhorn and shouted, "¡La revuelta continua!"  With that, the policias snapped into action, rushing towards the crowd with their riot shields at the ready.  The crowd began surging towards the swarming policias, chanting along with the apparent ringleader.  Emboldened, he continued chanting into his bullhorn as he descended into the street from the steps of the Catedral, but immediately several policias on horseback forced him to retreat or be trampled. 

Andy may tell you otherwise, but at no point did I feel that I was in danger.  I know that's terribly naive and entitled, but I recall only exhilaration.  This was a true travel experience; the price of admission free but also priceless.  I was leaping over the threshold from tourist to traveler, or rather, I was being shoved by the blunt force of a riot shield. 

Upon the arrival of a few ominous tanks, the crowd, still chanting, scrabbled across the platform atop the Catedral steps, away from the Palacio towards the southern end of the Plaza.  We had no choice but to follow, and had to leap down from a wall at the top of the stairs and run down a side street.  The tanks lurked right behind us, hosing down stragglers and anyone who dared to turn back towards the Plaza.  The putrid liquid emanating from the water cannons was all the encouragement we needed to keep running.

We broke from the crowd at last, and resumed our plans for the day, almost as if nothing had happened.  Hours later, we sat at an outdoor cafe overlooking a smaller, quieter plaza, drinking pisco sours.  The tranquility was interrupted when a procession of at least 100 people marched through the plaza, bearing a banner with acronym SUTEP, led by who else but the man with the bullhorn.

That evening, we turned on the TV in our tiny hotel room.  A local news channel was covering the riot that disrupted the morning's changing of the guard ceremony.  There again was the man with the bullhorn, a leader of SUTEP.  A quick Google search revealed that SUTEP stood for Sindicato Unitario de Trabajadores en la Educación de Perú. United Syndicate of Education Workers.  

We had accidentally participated in a potentially dangerous protest that resulted in clashes with the police and the use of water cannons.  Elsewhere in the city that same day, protesters were injured after acts of property damage caused tensions to escalate, according to an article published on September 27th the World Socialist Web Site:

On Tuesday September 18, hundreds of teachers marched towards the Ministry of Education in Lima’s upper class district of San Borja. When they got there, skirmishes began between the teachers and policemen on horseback. Teachers tried to break into the ministry, and some of them threw rocks that broke 17 windows. Two people were hurt. Immediately, the government seized on the event to indict the strike as “unacceptable and violent” and outlaw it. Another march, this one in downtown Lima, managed to reach the main square of the capital, in front of the Palace of Government—where the president resides—but it was quickly broken up by police using water cannon.

We survived a near-riot following a protest.  A near-riot following the protest of a teachers union.

This was Latin America.

Syllabus #24

Full story at 11

How has this week treated you thus far?  I spent all of Tuesday fully believing it was Wednesday until I was crushed by the truth in late afternoon.  I had a four year old tell me he is a very old man and his back hurts.  I think I was speaking for both of us when I told him it's all downhill from here.

Here's an assortment of stuff that seemed interesting at the time.  Perhaps you will agree, or maybe you are a Russian bot, repeatedly pinging this tiny slice of internet real estate for no reason at all?


What do we make of Justin Trudeau's gift for bumbling into racially insensitive but not obviously malicious costumes?  I remember my high school musical making overly liberal use of orange stage makeup in an all-caucasian production of Once on This Island in 2001 or 2002.  It was problematic, all right, but it's difficult to articulate exactly how.  I mean, they were certainly (and anachronistically) culturally appropriating Tan Mom, but she would have only relished her time in the spotlight (and then been pissed that the lights weren't emitting UV radiation). 

This brilliant piece by Jenny Slate cuts right to the pointless absurdity of it all.

Did you watch Hannah Gadsby's Nanette?  I loved it, I love this, and she sounds like a swell human being.

I think *my* version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar would be a better fit for this story hour, but I love everything about this and want it in my life.

Reading:

Inland by Tea Obreht - This Western is somewhat unique for its subject matter (involving camels in the American Southwest) and the author's perspective (a 30-something female who came to the US as a child from the former Yugoslavia).  There's something about the prose that takes a bit of getting used to, and the vast difference in pacing between the two different story arcs that will ultimately intersect is a bit jarring at first, but ~275 pages in and I'm enthralled.  I'm rushing to finish this post so I can get back to reading it, and will certainly be tired tomorrow from staying up too late reading just one more page.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino - Scathing, incisive, yet almost nihilistic essays of cultural criticism about the internet, feminism, etc.  I'm on board.

I'm currently trying to ramp up my own writing efforts outside of this space.  This weekend, I'm going to a one-day travel writing course just for shits and giggles and a nudge in some kind of direction.  I have two sets coming up in mid-October in a local comedy festival, so I need to get cracking on those.  I also just committed an outrageous act of hubris and submitted a piece of writing to McSweeney's and the New Yorker.  I expect to be slapped by the sting of rejection from both publications in the very near future.  I had a dream last night that McSweeney's sent the meanest rejection email that ended with the barb, "...but it was funny.  Sort of."  The "sort of" qualifier was so unnecessarily bitchy.  I anticipate that the actual rejection will be much more tactful but no less disappointing.

May your weekend be free of rejection or cultural insensitivity (but full of Large Cox, if you're into that sort of thing).

Docket of Shit to Do, Revisited (Docket of Shit I Did)

The sun sets on a blistering Nashville summer

Now that the season of Autumn has descended upon us like an unseasonably warm and insipid gourd-flavored coffee drink, let us revisit the esteemed Summer 2019 Docket of Shit to Do.

Below is a representation of my fulfilled and unfulfilled intentions and desires for Summer 2019. 

So how did we do? 

I'd rate it an A-.  I dropped the ball on one chore, and I didn't make time for Drag Brunch, and I failed to get around to visiting the zoo or going on a photo walk day, but only because it was so goddamn hot.  I don't know about you, but the prospect of paying $20 to mill around outside in the mingled aroma of animal feces and my own sweat is underwhelming.  I can do that for free if I just take the litter box out onto the balcony.  Hard pass.

My plan for a photo walk day was to load up a backpack with camera, water, snack, and book, then leave the apartment on foot right after breakfast and return before dinner.  Just walk in the direction of downtown and notice things on the way.  Scenic vistas, ruin porn, weird people doing weird things, zoom in real good on some shit (to Andy's chagrin - he is not a fan of macro photography).  But that's a little hard to do when your hands are too sweaty to even grip your camera.  Also, my hands smell like pennies when I sweat.  Should I see a doctor?  Is that normal?  Maybe my photo walk and my zoo trip will have to wait until Fall Break, unless I'm dying and the metallic odor is a harbinger of my impending mortality.

In other areas of the docket, I took my intentions and blew them right out of the damn water.  I volunteered not once but thrice, but maybe I only did that because I realized that I am so self-indulgent that I spent actual money to pet cats even though I have two perfectly pet-able cats in my apartment, one of whom is glued to my leg at this very moment.  But you know what, the cat cafe is a type of animal welfare charity, so maybe I'm just genetically predisposed to altruism.  Does altruism smell like pennies when you sweat it out?  I'm very concerned about this.

Best cat

I also went to 10 comedy open mics, which means that I did in fact also "write stuff" which was a goal I purposely kept vague because I didn't want to box myself in creatively or set myself up for failure.  I wrote numerous blog essays and five different stand up sets.  One of those sets was a full length parody of Goodnight Moon entitled Goodnight Poon (that scratching sound you hear is Margaret Wise Brown trying to break out of her coffin and gouge my eyes out with her skeleton fingers), and honey there's more where that came from.  ALSO, let us not forget that I pissed off 80% of the city of Nashville by winning the Nashville Scene's 2019 You Are So Nashville If contest with this zinger:  "You are So Nashville If...you think 'light rail' means doing just a little bit of coke."

What other trivial things can I brag about so I can pretend I have self esteem?  Are you ready to be impressed by the power of setting low expectations and then wildly exceeding them?  I set out to read just 5 books this summer.  I love reading obviously, but I had a lot of other shit on that docket and I didn't want to fall short of a lofty goal and feel like a failure.  But I read like, 18 books, dudes.  Once I hit double digits I started to lose track of which ones I read during my actual summer vacation and which ones bled into the school year, but that's also the magic of the docket.  It didn't have any hard date criteria.  It was a Summer docket, not a Summer Vacation docket, and by my count, summer technically ended yesterday.  Now my new goal is to read 52 books in 2019.  I'm hovering around 40 at the moment so I think it's totally achievable. 

Last but not least, we can't forget the painting.  Ajax asked me to paint him like one of my French girls, but I don't have any French girls and also I didn't think a painting of him, spread eagle and licking his balloon knot, would be a very tasteful thing to display in my home.  This portrait does solidly capture his essence, though:

I embarked on this Docket of Shit to Do journey because 2019 was the first summer of my education career that I didn't have a litany of professional obligations/trainings/required coursework nor was I packing up all my earthly possessions and schlepping them from one dwelling to another.  I knew I could squander my free time if I didn't set priorities, and I was determined to maximize my enjoyment without being a complete and utter hedonist about it.  Overall, I'm pleased with the outcome.  It was a casual outline of desires, so I didn't feel intense pressure to cross everything off, but I did feel a perverse sense of accomplishment with each item I completed. 

I rate this experiment 5 out of 5 stars, will definitely Docket again.

Syllabus #23

I got a better one for ya:  Sit down to pee, kneel for fellatio.  Also, clean my windshield.  That's not part of the joke, but how have I not gotten in an accident?

Well well well.  Look who's back up on her regularly scheduled bullshit.  None of it is serious this week, because frankly, I'm not in the mood for it.  Compartmentalizing will serve me well when I'm pushing a shopping cart full of human meat down an ash covered highway in our impending apocalypse.

This idea for a dick pick filter is genius and long overdue.  Kudos to all the guys covering their dongs in glitter to try to fool the algorithm, you're all real mensches contributing to our body of collective knowledge like that.

Ok, I lied, this topic isn't exactly a laugh a minute, but it's not life or death.  As a librarian and avid library patron, I'm highly sympathetic to the consumer side of this battle.  However, as someone who fantasizes about being a published writer someday, Shakespeare got to get paid, son.  So I dunno.

"Disney's Hitler Movie Mocks Nazis Without Making Light of Them" is not a sequence of words I ever expected to read.  Another movie I'll express interest in seeing and probably never actually watch.

Lucy in the sky, with diiiiaaapers, is how the rest of that headline should have been worded.

Speaking of vessels for urine and feces, I personally would have gone for the solid gold bed pan, or the solid gold catheter.  Either would have been a much easier target.

Have we reached peak comedy?  How will cancel culture continue to impact comedians' craft?  It's not surprising when an open mic-er goes up and says horrendous things with no discernable purpose other than shock value or outright malice.  When established comics do it, though, you have to wonder how they got as far as they did and how much longer their career stands to last. 

Clear my calendar for all of 2021.  I watched so much Seinfeld in my formative years that its characters are deeply embedded in my psyche.  I'm probably actually a terrible person as a result.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Long time listener, first time caller, and I just want to know, why am I just learning about this, and why am I not part of it?  I'll take my answer off the air.  Ok, the answer to your first question is because you barely watch any TV as it is and are only vaguely accepting of the existence of YouTube shows as a thing.  The answer to the second part is that you don't eat meat and nobody cares about you (except your mom, who will surely have some commentary about this slice of self-deprecation pie).

May your weekend be as spicy as you can handle, friends.

Body Dysmorphia, or, Sometimes a Cat Is Just a Cat

Minutes before the clock struck midnight to ring in the year 2019, I discovered that I was a terrible person.  I did an awful thing.  

I almost killed both my cats.  Or, to shift the blame a little, I almost let one cat kill herself and take the other one down with her.  And if we're being fully transparent in this judgment free zone, I already knew I was trouble, but this put my failings as a caregiver specifically and a moral human in general into stark relief.

What had happened was, whenever we go out of town, we leave the cats by themselves.  They have proven themselves to be responsible latch-key cats over the years, so we figured we could leave them some emergency money for pizza and call it good.  Charlie, on the other hand, is needy and has to stay at a farm or with his human aunt and uncle, who love him more than we do but only in small doses.   

Anyway, when we travel, we put out an extra litter box, top off the robo-feeder and the gravity-fed water bowl, and those dudes are solid for about two weeks.  It’s never been a problem and they kind of hate us, so leaving them alone for a week is a gift to them.  The bathroom smells like a porta-potty at Bonnaroo when we get back, but otherwise everything is fine.  

But not this last time.  

We went to Spain and spent nine blissful days pretending we were Canadian when anyone asked, "¿de donde eres?"  After such a lengthy absence, we fully expected to be hit in the face with the hot breath of cat anus.  Instead, we found a suspiciously clean, quiet apartment. 

No cat hair tumbleweeds rolling through the ghost town.  Little evidence that the litter box had been used.  No Hadley chirping and trotting out to greet us like a puppy starved for attention.

Had the cats been raptured on Christmas?  We always thought they were non-practicing Jews but you never know.

We began cautiously inspecting their usual hiding places, peeking under the couch and inspecting the comforter on the bed for lumps.  No sign of the cats.  That's when I turned around and looked through the bathroom to the closed closet door. The closet door that we habitually left open because Ajax liked to nap in Andy's laundry basket during the day.

That instant of realization was sickening.  Fuck Schrodinger, ok?  Fuck that guy because he left something out of his thought experiment.  He left out the possibility that if the cat was still alive in that box, the box was undoubtedly ruined forever with unspeakable amounts of urine and feces.

When I opened the closet door, the cats just blinked at us in astonishment, like the Chilean miners experiencing daylight for the first time in 69 days.  I couldn't believe they were alive and for a moment I felt a warm wave of relief wash over me as both cats staggered past me in search of food and water.

Then I was hit with a gut punch of ammonia and destruction.  The lower portion of the closet was destroyed.  The carpet in front of the door was shredded, fur everywhere.  Shoes and laundry baskets were peed in and peed on.  It took at least 72 hours, 2 bottles of cleaning chemicals, an entire box of baking soda, a whole bottle of white vinegar, and roughly 30 puppy pee pads to restore some semblance of order and odor control.   

We will never be able to reconstruct with total accuracy the events that led to the cats' R. Kelly-style entrapment.  However, given Hadley's history fucking with doors, she is the prime suspect.  We also don't know precisely how long they spent languishing in darkness, casually starving to death while Andy and I ate and drank our way through Madrid, blissfully unaware of their suffering.  We assume, based on a fecal census of the litter box, that they spent no more than the first 4 days of our trip liberated, and spent at least the last 5 days trapped.   

Both cats lost an alarming amount of weight.  Ajax was always a husky guy, tipping the scales around 18 pounds.  He looked like a pitiful husk of his former self, but we were glad he had the extra poundage to spare and hoped he would maybe remain somewhat svelte.  Surprisingly, his starvation diet seemed to inspire a lifestyle change.  He's a biggest loser success story.

Hadley was always petite.  She was a mere 9 pounds before the incident, and weighed only 7 the day she was liberated.  At first, I was a little jealous.  Girl, what's your secret?  Intermittent fasting?  I don't think you can call 5 days an interval, but you do you.  However, there's a curious thing that happens to some survivors of famine.  They start gorging themselves on food whenever it's available.  They go full Scarlett O'Hara at the end of Gone With the Wind and declare, "As God is my witness, I will never go hungry again!"  

Hadley has ballooned from 7 up to a garish 14 pounds.  I honestly think she carries it well, but she does look rather spherical from certain angles.  Andy, however, likes to body shame her.  I wince each time he calls her a fat whale.  I feel like he's calling me a fat whale.  That's irrational, right?  

I thought I was alone in this misguided feline transference of emotion.  I thought maybe my empathy for Hadley was stemming from guilt about not doing a better job of keeping the cats safe from harm.  Why didn't I just arrange for someone to check on them a time or two?  I blamed myself for the whole mishap, and by extension, for her subsequent weight gain.  

Then, yesterday, I was listening to Marc Maron's WTF podcast, episode 1053 with Danny Huston.  In the intro, he talks about his concern for his oldest cat's recent weight loss, even though it's always been a source of pride for him to have relatively thin cats.  He posits that he is projecting his own body dysmorphia and obsession with thinness onto his cats.

THAT'S IT!

That's.  It.  The only other time I feel so deeply seen by a stranger is when I pass through the full body scanner at the airport.

I'm not actually an empathetic person.  I'm not actually that wracked with guilt.  This is complete and utter self-absorption (see also: this entire blog).  It's all about me and my own insecurities.  I'm afraid of being unlovable.  I'm afraid of being the object of mockery.  I'm the one who is jealous of the cat that gleefully lumbers off to stuff her face every time the robot feeder lets down a bowl full of nuggets (honestly I'm jealous of anyone who has food placed in front of them at predictable intervals without any effort on their part).

I'm not one to write gushing fan mail to my favorite celebrities (not after I wrote to JTT in 1994 and that SOB never wrote back).  This was just too much, though.  I had to at least let Marc know how much I appreciated the free psychoanalysis.  He's a busy dude who surely receives more emails than he can possibly read or respond to, but I hope that one gets through.

Syllabus #22

I'm late! 

Ew, guys, not that kind of late.  I'm a lady, and that would be uncouth of me to speak openly about my monthly visitor.  I'm referring to the lateness of this weekly reading roundup, which I have customarily posted anywhere between Wednesday and Sunday, and now here we are on Tuesday night and I'm just getting my act together. 

The world is a very strange place.  Sometimes an 8 year old dead ass asks you what an email address is like she's never heard of it before, and sometimes you watch a 5 year old pull a ringing cellphone out of his Minecraft backpack, glance at it, say "I don't know nobody at that number" and put it back in his backpack like an ice cold killer.

I'm gonna be honest, I've been spending a lot more time reading actual books and a lot less time sucking down internet exhaust fumes the past couple weeks.  Saturday I went on a 25 mile bike ride, but I also had ice cream on Friday and pizza and beer and ice cream on Saturday.  It's a balancing act, and by that I mean trying to hold your pizza, beer, and ice cream with only two hands and consume it all before your beer gets warm and your ice cream melts requires intense concentration and coordination.

Here is my humble submission for the past week-ish:

Speaking of balancing acts, if you have a free hand when walking in the unforgiving blaze of our asshole sun, why not try a parasol?


I hate-read this article the other night and woke up with a couple burst capillaries under my eye the next morning.  The extent to which Clemson in general but especially its football team is exalted and worshipped in that part of the world is disturbing.  It goes so far beyond fandom and pride.  Living there and not drinking the Kool-Aid going "All-In" was very alienating, and felt like I would imagine one feels after leaving a cult and becoming completely estranged from your community.  Also Clemson's HR did fuck-all when I filed a sexual harassment claim after a coworker made numerous unwanted comments of a sexual nature, left porn visible on his computer in a shared workspace, and then smeared lube all over my pen, but if HR didn't wanna hear about I should probably just shut my delicate little lady mouth because why on earth would anyone else want to hear that story.


Andy, you're not allowed to ever die or leave me. 


Reading:

Where We Come From by Oscar Casares  I devoured this in about 2 days.  It's a story about a Mexican American family in Brownsville, Texas, and the different paths the generations have followed based on both circumstances beyond their control and choices they have made.  The book interweaves a bit of Spanish dialogue and explores issues of class, prejudice, family loyalty, gender roles, and immigration. 

Brain on Fire: My month of madness by Susannah Cahalan I remember hearing about this book when it came out in 2012 and I'm so glad I've finally gotten around to reading it.  The idea of suddenly  plunging into insanity, or really succumbing to any kind of mysterious and unidentifiable illness is one of my top 5 irrational fears.  The others are clowns, adult acne, being attacked by a mountain lion or bear, and accidentally eating bacon, salami, pepperoni, or scrapple while drunk and having to admit that the last 18 years of my vegetarian life have been a lie. 

Watching:

The Righteous Gemstones on HBO.  Everything Danny McBride touches turns to solid gold, but like, solid gold that has been eaten by a large and badly behaved dog and then excreted, much to everyone's relief so that the vet doesn't have to slice up the dog's intestines.  Show after show after show of horrible people doing horrible things, yet facing only minor consequences and occasionally realizing a modicum of personal growth.  For fans of It's Always Sunny and Seinfeld - if you enjoy a show with a lot of yelling and people acting on their baser impulses, this is for you.  Five out of five stars, would gleefully watch again.