"If I took this cigarette and put it out on you, would you love me?" Dax Riggs asks on the track named "Jezebel" from the "When the Kite String Pops" album. Sometimes I like to play dumb and find my antecedents unreckonable to my current reality but this has done little in the way of gaining me friends or the esteem of my loved ones or any sort of positive notoriety. Indeed, it is a great secret to be kept from anyone in tertiary circles in which I swim. Can one imagine being at work, as an elementary school janitor, blasting out lyrics like "Turn on all the lights, so I can watch you die," in swamp metal growling along which I accompany not as sung, but plainly stated, as if I'd given that order any number of times. Or, "You bleed so easy, let the blackness roll on." Haha, I'm trending ever higher on those watch lists I surely populate. Ooh, fun idea for an experiment, try to purchase a firearm and see if I can or if I'm blackballed. Haha.
It's officially the holiday season, even though we had our Thanksgiving early when Uly's grandma was here. I was so stressed making the dinner that not only did I have to puke, I couldn't eat any substantial quantity of the food once prepared. That's okay. I do that a lot, much to the chagrin of my special lady. I explained to her that one thing I learned from childhood was that if you burn the gravy, everything else is also, by default, ruined and you've wasted everyone's time and inflicted a wholly inedible meal upon them. Shit is definitely on the line when it comes to gravy and god help you if the fowl is dry. You'd best just pack your shit and leave forever because while your family might say it's okay, they certainly will resent you for the rest of time and nurse a deep, unshakable disgust at your very presence in the home. Oh, they'll say it's fine but you know how those closest to you lie straight to your face, every damn day.
Working at an elementary school is legit insane, especially when you're there when all the ghosts are awake. The one I'm at is PreK - 2nd grade and bizarre labels like this abound. There are all sorts - "door", "window", etc. etc. There are also wholly deranged tablets set out like some anachronistic slates dictating the order of the day. "Good morning, Today is {day and date}. We will have Mrs. {name} for {some specified activity and time of day}. The letter of the day is {letter in lower and uppercase}. Love, Ms. {name}" all laid out in a strange, epistolary style but with certain words underlined or differently colored. I think perhaps the most absurd is the closing as all the classrooms that do this exercise sign off with "Love". Plus, add in the grossly propagandizing school mascot, "Skip the squirrel", exhorting students to "kindness" and the respect of property. Insert wholly obvious and unsubtle critiques of the clanking abysmal chimera that is American education. I suppose it's better than child labor in a textile mill, but by how much one is unsure.
Sometimes, the students, when they're not trashing the classroom with cupcake frosting or sugary "juice" drinks provided at the teacher's, not the school's, expense, crank out found gems like this one above. As all art, this can be interpreted any number of ways but I like, given the disconnect with human anatomy, that this artist was imagining a scene played out on some alien world but with referents from their earthbound life. "Mom" is dressing down some other child, perhaps not her own as that individual is unnamed. Maybe they're on the playground and "Mom" has activated her Karen genes at some perceived affront from the anonymous, Yoda-like creature. Who can say? Maybe that's the allure? The ignorance of the scene's motives? I try to never throw away these treasures in the hope that whoever created this will be pleasantly surprised by its rediscovery the following day.
"The skyscrapers look like gravestones from out here."
