The 35th Precinct

A first and final pimp for Sprache XX.

Roomie and I culled fifteen horror movies from my collection the other day, and I'm considering putting them on offer to anyone who wants them. Then again, I'm not sure I should inflict them on anyone else, because most of them were truly terrible. However, if I do list them here and you see something you want from my pile of Walmart horrors, let me know.

My sudden organizational fervor did not stop me from buying Steve Niles' Remains yesterday. Sure, get rid of five terrible zombie movies, buy another to take their place. Why not? My love for horror is constant and undying, and while I mourn the wads of money I have foolishly tossed after it in search of the dark thrills I felt so easily as a child watching Dr. Paul Bearer on the Saturday morning creature feature, I cannot begrudge myself the pursuit. The bogies might be less convincing now, but when you stumble upon one unawares, it stays with you. I haven't watched either film in years, but the final scene in The Blair Witch Project and Samara's awful, inexorable exeunt from the television in the American version of The Ring still send a finger of unease up my spine when I think of them, and the latter's lethal video montage is profoundly disturbing, too.

So while I might trim my collection of spooks and zombies and critters from another dimension, I don't think I'll ever stop prospecting in the darkest part of the mythpool.

So, last notes from the Rammstein odyssey.

-Richard started circle-marching six bars into "Sonne" in Tampa. New record? It was adorable.

-As we were roaming the line in search of the proper door in Atlanta I heard, "Oh, thank God I'm not the only one!" from behind me. I turned to see a woman in a wheelchair with a broken leg. She was a short-timer, but the cry of relieved solidarity tickled me. There were very few disabled folks in the Atlanta crowd compared to Tampa, which looked like A limper pilgrimage to the Willy Wonka Handicap Placard factory, but the guy next to me was a double-amputee with a sweet flame job on his prostheses.

-I really wanted to sample the steak wedge sandwich at the arena in Atlanta because it smelled so damn good, but grease has a profound effect on my innards, and I didn't want to miss a third of the show in a toilet that reeked of bong and beer farts. I suppose I could have spared myself Joe Letz(and made better music while I was at it), but why risk it?

And that's it, the sum total of my Rammstein adventure. It seems so insignificant when written down, but it was wonderful while I lived it, transformative. It gave me more memories for my hope chest, and for that, I will be forever grateful. Thank you, Rammstein, and Godspeed.



A first and final pimp for On the Practical Application of Rhythm, my Christoph-centric Sprache interstitial.

As Roomie and I were walking toward our favorite local grub haunt this afternoon, a woman leaving the restaurant said to me, "The things people won't do to get a free ride," and laughed.

Now, it was clear to me that there was no malice behind the comment, and so I just smiled and said, "Oh, yes, ma'am," because I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want to be an asshole because it was clear she was clumsily trying to interact with that oh-so-exotic cripple, but inside, I was howling. What makes people think it's a good idea to say things like that to anyone, let alone a complete stranger? That's like me looking at an old, wheezing, leather-headed emphysema sufferer and saying, "Looks like you really went all out to earn that pure air and senior discount, LOL!" It's inappropriate and rude and rage-inducing.

Look, able folks, I know that it can be scary to interact with a disabled person, but a good rule of thumb is to treat them as you'd treat any able person you meet on the street. Say hello if that's your wont, walk on by if it isn't. Treat them like just another person because that's who they are. Odds are you're not as witty as you think you are, and attempting to connect with disabled folks through their disability usually ends in painful embarrassment for everyone.

After she left, I thought about that anonymous German poster who waded in here a few months back to tell me that I should consider rude strangers' feelings and circumstances when they said or did something offensive, selfish, or ignorant that made my day harder. I wondered how they would have responded if that woman had heard them speaking German and chirped, "Oh, I bet you drink a lot of beer," or "Oh, you don't look like a kraut." I wondered if they would have smiled or joked and been gracious about it, or if they would have circled their thumb and forefinger and told the gormless twit to get roundly fucked by a pinecone. I wondered how they would have reacted if that had been the third time or the tenth time or the three hundredth time. How long it would have taken before that forced smile turned into a moue of distaste and then a snarl of frustration. Not long, I suspect.

Remarks like that, even when made without malice, wear on you. They're like grains of sand dropped onto the same patch of skin; one is negligible and easily ignored, but then there's ten, and one hundred and one thousand, and soon, you're raw and irritated and desperate to soothe the constant, smarting burn. Even the most sanguine people reach a tipping point where one more grain is one too many, and then they snap. And when they do, they're met with wet-eyed incredulity and accusation of ingratitude and assholery because they didn't take the joke in the spirit in which it was intended.

And then you feel like a douche because the last thing you wanted to do when you left the house was hurt someone, and because you have the sinking feeling that in responding as anyone would to the repeated prodding of a wound, you have just perpetuated the bitter cripple stereotype. Whee and fuck and nobody wins. But if you grin and bear it like a good little gimp, you can't seem to get the taste of bootblack off your tongue. Whee and fuck and nobody wins


A first pimp for A Little Night Magic. I might pimp it again once LJ stabilizes completely to make sure folks who are interested don't miss it, but other than that, it's back to the mythpool.


And because I wanted some Rammstein loveliness today:

( Hello, Hot Stuff )

A first and final pimp for Sprache XVI. As usual, the link leads to the second half, but links to previous sections and chapters are provided.

Later tonight, I'll rummage through my embarrassingly-overflowing scrap bin of half-formed story ideas and pull out my next project, but for now, I'm just getting on with getting on, watching Oomph! videos on Youtube and waiting for every woman's favorite biological function to commence. Curse you, hot-clawed gremlins who torment my uterus. Curse you for the ache and the fatigue and the gummy-eyed, overheated morning spent in the bathroom. Grar.

And here comes the rain.

Ssssh, Richard is thinking:

( Richard Is Thinking )

Richard is a smart cookie from what I've heard and read of his interviews, but his face is just priceless. Why do cameras so often catch you at your least-flattering? Every picture I have ever taken makes me look like a tranquilized chimpanzee trying to sing Jefferson Airplane.

A second and final pimp for Secret Keeper, my Flack/Stanhope cracknum opus. The link is to the last section, but links to previous sections are provided.

Creatively, I'm dividing time between my NYC odyssey and part IV of "Detail Man", which has two or three days of writing left. It would have been finished this week but for the terrifying weather that kept me offline for two days. I suppose I could've unplugged my laptop and worked offline, but it's rather hard to focus on diabolical hair when you're waiting for the sky to devour you whole or for a falling tree to stave in your school. I'm hoping to put paid to it by the end of the week, just before the skies promise to darken again.

For those who read my CSI:NY fic, my latest Flack/Stanhope cracknum opus, Secret Keeper, is now available. The link is to the fourth and final sections, but as always, links to previous sections can be found beneath the customary headers.

The weathermen are calling for more dangerous weather tomorrow, and so I might be offline while more lightning, hail, and tornadoes cut a swath through the area. I'm hopeful that nothing terrible will happen, but the weather shamans are salivating at the prospect of more death, anguish, and wanton destruction. The articles on Weather.com possess a slickly gleeful tone as they recount the record number of violent storms and deadly tornadoes and predict more of the same with the starry-eyed, rhapsodic joy of an Amish teenager on their Rumspringa. As someone who lives in a modular home and has no homeowner's insurance because this is my mother's property and she is too "poor" to pay for it(never mind that she just closed on her fifth property last week), I cannot share their ghoulish anticipation.* I can only hope that Mother Nature looks upon my corner of her great and glorious quilt with mercy.

There was a spot of excitement in the neighborhood a few days ago when a gaggle of drunken teenagers on spring break crashed into a road sign just beyond our street and ran their car into the adjacent ditch. They immediately emerged from the car and fled the scene on foot, but oh, unlucky children, the residents of my neighborhood are all bored veterans with nothing better to do than sit on their front porches all day and watch the neighborhood comings and goings. No sooner had they crashed the hapless sedan than the red-necked angel and his compatriot, Junior Claus, made a beeline to investigate. And oh, even unluckier children, they crashed in front of a volunteer for the police department and a utility worker. So, even though they fled the scene, there were numerous witnesses.

The police found them trying to hide behind a nearby store. They had bought chewing gum and strongly-flavored chips in an attempt to mask the odor of alcohol, but alas for them, they were unsuccessful. The good-old-boy cops, many of whom enjoy the tipple themselves, know booze when they smell it. The teenagers tried to claim that the brakes had failed, but given that they'd been seen roaring through the same stretch of road three minutes before the crash, laughing and waving and screaming out the windows while leaving rubber on the road and screaming into a curve, no one believed them. Their credibility was further demolished by the PD volunteer, who revealed that he'd seen them split the difference between two cars at a dangerous rate of speed a few minutes before the crash. So, off to the hoosegow they went. Some fun, huh, kids?

*I wonder if I could at least get renter's insurance to cover my computers and wheelchairs.

A first and final pimp for Part XIV of Sprache for those who missed it, and then it's back to the creative workshop with me.

I paid the bills yesterday, including the gargantuan tribute to my mechanical sun. If it weren't for the fact that my mother is going to have her hand out for the per annum taxes on this prefab chalet the second she returns from Florida, I would be looking at quite the surplus, but she will, and so I'm either going to have to cough up the precious cash or fight her on moral grounds.

What moral grounds? Well, when I moved in here, the agreement was the she was the landlord, and as such, she would be responsible for any repairs or accessibility modifications. I would be responsible for utilities, routine upkeep like cleaning the floors and keeping the house in order, and for payment of the homeowner's insurance. She also made some vague noises about paying the property taxes, but she paid them last year, so I thought that was off the table.

Since I moved in here, the roof needed replacement. She paid for that as promised, but when it became apparent that the bathroom was inadequate and needed modification, she dragged her feet, and then, when she finally cottoned on that having her daughter going about town smelling like old gym socks and brie because she hadn't been able to bathe anywhere but the sink reflected poorly on her, she charged me for the labor and materials even though a remodel like that fell under the purview of our agreement that she would pay for all modifications. She charged me $5,000.

Then she decided that our aging refrigerator wasn't good enough and needed replacement, but once again, I was on the hook for her decision. There went another $600 from my supposedly sacrosanct trust that I was never, ever to touch because that was my nest egg for when I needed nursing home care, and wouldn't it be nice if Roomie, who has cared for me all these years, was rewarded when I popped my clogs?

I had been faithfully paying the homeowner's insurance dues for nearly a year before she casually informed me that she'd canceled the policy several months previously because she thought it too expensive. So...where had my money been going? She'd been pocketing it as a fee for various "favors" she'd done me. What favors? No idea. She refused to specify.

When we got into a huge fight a few months later, she retaliated by announcing that there would be no more freebies, and that I was now expected to pay rent, with her as the landlord. When I told her that was agreeable to me as long as she drew up a written contract that delineated our rights and responsibilities as tenants and her rights and responsibilities as landlord and had it notarized, she immediately played the pity card.

"You don't trust your old mother?"

No, frankly, I don't.

The subject was immediately dropped.

Then this year with the heater debacle, when I nearly froze to death for want of a sixty-dollar service call that she was unwilling to authorize until I shamed her into it by having Roomie call up the heating technicians and tell them that a disabled woman with circulation problems was freezing to death in her home because the heater was malfunctioning. Then she was only too eager to authorize the service call, lest word get around that some soulless cretin was allowing her disabled daughter freeze and risk pneumonia rather than swallowing sixty dollars for the service call. Stories like that would be a big scandal here in endstage Mayberry, where families routinely care for their elderly relatives and churches pay utility bills for the desperately poor.

And then there is this: Since the day I turned eighteen and got my own bills, I have been responsible for them. If I couldn't pay because I was foolish and overspent, then I sucked it up and dealt with the consequences. I never asked my mother for a dime because it was my job to pay my bills and my problem if I couldn't.

I asked my mother for help twice. The first time was because the trustees in charge of paying my rent had gone on vacation and forgotten to pay the balance of the rent before they left. The university was going to drop me from my courses if the rent wasn't paid by the start of term. So, I asked her to loan me the money.

Her response wasn't, "No," which I would have accepted as her right, but "I could help you, but I would rather you asked your grandfather because him giving you the money would help heal old wounds between us."

Excuse me? Your issues with your father are your business. You refused to let me see him for years because you were pissed at him, and now you want me to help you mend fences by begging him for money? Fuck you. I'm not going to ask my grandfather to bail me out so you can stroke your ego. I refused and called my grandmother. She'd paid it within the hour, and my mother, perhaps shamed that her aging mother on a fixed income acted more quickly than she, repaid her in full. My trust repaid my mother a week later.

The second time I asked for help was when my teeth were rotting inside my skull because I hadn't seen a dentist in years. I called and asked for help since it had been drummed into my head that touching my deathbed money was verboten. and back then, I was unaware of how the trust worked and what my rights were. Since my original trustee's death, I've learned, and quickly.

My mother's response when I asked if she would help me work out a payment arrangement with a dentist? "Call the health department." I did. Dental care was only for children. What now? "Oh, well." Cunt. If it were her teeth softening inside her mouth and causing pain, and I were the one with the purse strings and the case of Asshole Syndrome, she would flay me alive with accusations and recriminations, not unfounded if I were allowing her to suffer, I might add, but since it's me and thirty-three years ago, she didn't drown me in a bucket, I should be grateful and never point out the hypocrisy.

So now she wants me to pay property taxes on a home she owns--her bill, in other words--with no guarantee that she won't sell it out from under me if the mood takes her. She's already tried once, shortly after I moved in. I thwarted that by plying the potential buyer with the "but this is my home and where would I go?" gambit. Yes, I felt guilty and skeevy, but I didn't want to be homeless so that my mother, who owns five houses and three cars and never lets me forget it, could line her pockets with more.

I don't want to pay her bills. She's never paid mine, even when I was sick and desperate and in pain. I might feel differently if I had a written guarantee that she wouldn't try to evict me for the next yuppie with a fat wallet, but as it is, I've put $6,000 of my money into a home that isn't mine and have narrowly fended off her schemes to charge me to replace the windows($10,000) and install central air($8,400). If she ever succeeds, that will mean I've sunk $25,000 into a house I don't own. $25,000 worth of investments and improvements that will only benefit her if she ever finds a less compassionate buyer.

So, I'm grumpy about being asked to pony up money to my mother, who wouldn't give me water if I were dying. But I'm not sure I can refuse, either. If it goes to court, a judge might look at me, buy my mother's assertions that I'm just a poor handicapped child who doesn't know her own mind, let alone the law, and grant her complete control over everything.

The best part? She hollered long and loudly about me squandering my money on Rammstein when I drew from it to see them at MSG. It seems I should only spend my money when it benefits her.

A first and final pimp for Sprache, Part XII. It's a link to the second half, but the first half can be found in the list of links to previous chapters.

I wish there were more on my brain today, but that's about it.

A first and final pimp for Sprache XI. The link is to Part B, but the first part is provided in the list of links to previous chapters, and that's all I'm going to say on the matter because the Red Bloat put in a belated appearance today, and when it arrives on the scene, I have an alarming propensity for jamming my crazy pants on my head and flailing melodramatically about how no one appreciates my genius and screaming that they can all jolly well go fuck themselves, the ungrateful shits. Then, once the hormonal fugue has lifted, I realize what an ass I've been and am overcome with embarrassment. I still think I'm a genius, however. Shut up; it's the only arrogance, indeed, the only confidence, that remains to me, so let me have it.

If you're interested, there it is. If you're not, then don't read it, but for God's sake, don't leave a promise to read and comment. It's well-intentioned, I know, but when you promise and the comment never appears, I spend several days anxiously awaiting my nugget of joy, and several more days feeling pathetic and deflated. If you want to read it, but are too busy or lazy to comment, then read it and don't tell me. You'll be happy, and I'll be none the wiser. Everybody wins, or at least no one loses.


Dear Bank,

Did you really have to murder a tree and waste a sheet of high-gloss paper to tell me to use my bank card for back-to-school savings? Really? You're struggling because one of your biggest debtors defaulted on their loan, but you can afford to mass-mail flyers for back-to-school deals? Kiss my dented ass, you screaming, frothing jackwagons.


Now I'm going to be moody and hormonal out of public view.

A first and final pimp for Part VII of Sprache. The link leads to Part 7b, but 7a is listed in the links to previous chapters.

I went to the grocery store this morning with the intention of buying ground beef for tacos, but the butcher hadn't bothered to stock the freezer, and so I drove aimlessly around town for a few minutes, listening to Live aus Berlin, and now I'm home and cooking pot pies and trying to convince my body that I don't need a nap. And I wouldn't, if I hadn't awakened at ass o'clock in the morning with the urgent need to skip to the loo, my darling. I'll probably bow to the inevitable after lunch, as I want to be coherent for CSI:NY tonight. Yes, it's a steaming dungheap of self-righteous nonsense and lack of give a damn at this point, but it's MY steaming dungheap, and besides, I'm one of those people who just has to see how it all turns out.