This last week I found myself lending an ear to several strangers who were having their worst day.  I consider that to be the day when you 1) haven’t slept in awhile, 2) your sense of humor starts offending people, 3) you haven’t bathed or brushed your teeth, 4) and you start telling everyone you meet the innermost turmoil going on in your life.  Of course when you are having a crisis you justify vomiting up your problems because they just came up.  How does this conversation go?

Stranger:  Hope my phone call wasn’t too loud, I was just calling to wish my mother a happy birthday.

You:  My mother has a birthday, but I don’t know if I’ll want to celebrate this year because my ex boyfriend took my cat and I’m getting evicted and the only good thing in my life right now is this Snickers Bar, (insert crying, and one sniffle) so no you didn’t bother me one bit.

Recently I have been in random places this week and for once, I’m not the one forcing strange people to listen to me.  I was in the bathroom at school earlier and this girl said “Sorry I used the last paper towels.”  I told her that was okay and was about to walk out when she said “I’m always doing that.  I ruin everything.  Everyone hates me and they should because I’m a bad person.”  I was tempted to sneak away, but I got suckered in.  I assured her that using the last of the paper towels didn’t make her a bad person.  She said “True, but you don’t know what I’ve done.”  I thought oh please do not confess that you murdered someone…I know that’s coming…

Apparently, she withdrew all the money from her parent’s bank account and hasn’t been answering their calls.  I was like well, yeah that’s pretty terrible, but all I could say is well at least you didn’t take all their paper towels?  Then she just started sobbing and wailing.  It was the ugly cry, where the make up runs down your face.  Then after using me like a sounding board she said I have to go call them.  And that was that.

In class, I had a student tell me that he was sorry he was late and I said that’s okay you can sit down.  And he sat but he told me about how he finally believes in himself after he had to drop out of school the first time because his mother was dying.  All of his friends stopped talking to him when they found out he was going to community college (good friends) and then he realized that he was doing the wrong thing with his life anyway and he…

I won’t know the rest of this story because my eastern European student came in and said “My mother isn’t dying but I’m late because I was trying to steal a car but it didn’t work. So I thought I’d come learn about class.  I like hearing about the angry people.  You make them sound cool, like my grandpa.”  Um okay.   I don’t know if the car didn’t work or the cops foiled his plans but that hushed everyone up.  I’m also glad that learning about angry grandpas (or listening to stories about angry people told by grandpas?)  in my class ranks second on the to-do list after commit car theft.

Then today, someone stopped me and asked me how to get to the library and I pointed out the building and she just burst into tears and said “No one ever helps me, especially my dad.”  I think the world needs a hug.  And some brain pills.

I’m not sure why this is happening.  But if you are a stranger and you’ve got something to share, apparently, I’m open for listening to your ephinaniys and weirdest disasters.

The Pretender

I’m beginning to write a statement of purpose for PhD programs.  The first time I did this I crafted a pretty fine plea and wedged my foot in the door of a great program.  The second time I am pretty sure I typed something up in 20 minutes after consuming 3 red bulls that said something like “If I work at Hilton one more day I will die because it is stealing my soul.  I quit my job via text message and left about 7 half eaten bags of granola at my desk that someone now has to clean out.  I can’t go back there, so you should take me in here.”  And yes, it was really that dramatic because I am not good at pressing the censor button on my feelings.  Both times, grad schools decided I could come.  With Wisconsin, the foot in the door was about as far as I got.  It was intriguing, but too terrifying and foreign.  I quickly realized what strengths I needed to have to exist in grad school and so I went to tap into them and there wasn’t a whole lot there.  It was a little tricky to draw strength from experiences I didn’t have.  People kept saying “Hang in there!  You can do it!”  Do what now? Merry’s Mantra becomes:   Ahem… I am going to grad school to keep going to school because I like learning new things…to get a better degree…well okay maybe just another degree…and if I just stick it out I will….um…I will use it to….do history related things for money….hmm okay there is no money…I will use it to…

My actual paper degree is still in the trunk of my car.  I just realized that I should probably go get it…

I didn’t know and unfortunately, that isn’t the kind of thing anyone can help with.  What are your plans 23 year old girl?  Um, well, I know I have causes.  Hold on let me look at the napkin I wrote them on…whoops that is also in the trunk of my car.  Well just think ahead, what do you see in your future?  You can only blankly look at someone who asks this cruel question before you just start lying to them and in turn, to yourself.  At first, I talked about these pretend plans to make people stop asking me questions.  But the more I said it, the more I believed it.  Sure, rational Merry was in there reminding me that in the real world, I did not know what I wanted to do but I built it up and convinced myself that it was happening.  (Again, not sure what exactly was happening, but I knew it would happen).  I’m not sure if “it” has happened but grad school did teach me I have to make the world work for me or else I’m going to be its bitch.

Seriously, why do I like history at all?  More importantly, why does my brain like history enough to pay attention long enough to get a degree in it.  Why do I want to read history books more than any other books?  I’m starting to think it’s because I want to understand other people so I understand my own relationship to them and the world.  I probably think too much (not in a productive, building rockets way more of a I’ve spent 20 minutes convincing myself of something ridiculous that ends with everything randomly bursting into flames) and from grading student maps (New Hampsters…hehe) I know that most people don’t think at all.

But I think I’ve always wanted answers even as a little kid.  I remember asking questions and feeling unsettled when adults gave me answers that made absolutely no sense.  (Um, okay I will believe you that God is watching me while I watch rated R movies, but I don’t think he cares.  You people are giving me a lot of credit here to put me so far up on his agenda).  After awhile I realized I couldn’t expect people around me to solve the case of what do I mean in this world.  If I search for meaning surely I’ll find it and then I will have peace.  While I have a good life, deep down I’m not relaxed because I know I’m not done looking yet.

So somehow I need to put that into 600 words or less.  But I probably should sound more intelligent…and be more of a minority…(I did put I identify as “other” on my GRE info sheet).  And I will want to talk more about what I can accomplish and less about New Hampsters.

01 Nikola Tesla

Yesterday I had a migraine that I am pretty sure was a combination of working hard and living in Dante’s Inferno.  Seriously, I might as well go live in the inside of a volcano.   I have a student that is also hoping it will rain polar bears, but he is more concerned with his false eyelashes melting off.  It makes me appreciate not being a drag queen because it is hard enough for me to dress myself as it is.  This guy is steadily becoming my favorite person in the class.  Besides the stream of weird compliments he threw at me (ahem, if I was an Italian Filipino  I would look just like his smoking hot cousin?) he is more than willing to help teach the dual credit students about cooperative learning.  However, I do not think the dual credit students were told to expect 30 year old drag queens in their history course.  So who did I feel should be his partner the first day?  Why the overly shy and conservative 15 year old Muslim girl of course!  And start entertaining me….now…GO!  Turns out that state mandated lesson about diversity will be even easier than I thought.

I’ve taught both age groups of people, but mixed together is creating a very weird dynamic.  The drag queen is friends with this lady who brings her husband to class (I’m not sure what that is about yet) and who told us she was on America’s Got Talent for Karaoke.  I’m intrigued.  She told me “I’m on TV, but I don’t dare watch it.”  The only logical explanation for this is that if she watches TV she will turn to stone.  I’ll have to remember that when I show Youtube clips.  Her partner crept away from his original partner and I have no idea why?  Sure, partner 1 is an ex-military man from rural Arkansas who is missing an eye and has an arm full of tribal tattoos, who said you can’t trust cops, but I’m not sure what about that is intimidating?  He informed me he does watch TV, but nothing “too homo.”

I though it was best that I didn’t ask what exactly is too homo?  I’m sure probably all the shows I watch fall into that category somehow.  I’m just thankful I have TV.  I think it really does prevent me from becoming too much of a weirdo.  I remember the first night I got cable my TV got struck by lightning.  It was like someone had given me 500 ice cream cones and scoop had fallen off every single one of them.  Talking to Time Warner was even more disheartening.  ”Check the (insert name of TV cables here).  Is that working?”  Well, my TV was made in the early 90s and I am pretty sure it doesn’t have those cables. “Does your DVD player work?”  Again, this TV is too old for a DVD player.  ”Does your TV make you feel better about your dead grandma too?”  Um say what?  Until that night, I had no idea that elderly ghosts could, in fact, posses TVs (I’m assuming other appliances like blenders and can openers also channel the dead).

TV if you are listening, you should give me a reality show.  I know I’m weird enough and just as entertaining as a Karsdashian.  Think about it.  I’ll have my dead grandma call your dead grandma.

03 I Can’t Decide

I miss writing, and if I could find a way to write while speeding down the toll road, I think I would put way more down.  The only reason I really am writing now is because I’m hiding from the online nurses.  It really is disturbing that the last week of class they are asking me in large numbers how to take an online quiz (seriously, it’s been 8 weeks).  Maybe tapeworms laid eggs in their brains.

So in the spirit of random Faulkner and compulsive schedulers here is “A Day with Merry.”  I feel that this style is the most appropriate to get into my mind. (Be careful in there).

4AM push kitties off the bed and stumble towards the bathroom.  I avoid stepping on the kitties.  Insert Merry pills–drink water.–find glasses.  Where did I put them.  I look for my glasses about 15 minutes before finding them behind the toilet/in the fridge/in the couch/in my shoe?  Whip up some poptarts and drool while the TV tells me about toddlers in beauty pageants, New Jersey, violent killers, addicts–sometimes on a good day I get all of these things at once.

4:30AM–Dress myself and try to tie my shoe as Lion Kitty (known to some of you as Little Kitty) unties it for me.  Stumble down the stairs.  Try to drive to work without closing my eyes.  Down a 5-hour energy in the parking lot. Talk to Kiana at the front desk and get ready to be personable.  All the while thinking, do I really want to work out ever again?  Everyday I do, but one of these days I will rebel and run around the gym yelling and waving my arms around toddler style.

5:00AM–Client doesn’t show up…I viciously click the mouse and give them a big X, which assures me that I will be paid despite their crimes, although it may get me fired in the end.  How dare I not live inside other people’s bodies and drag them to the gym.

5:30AM–Usually someone shows up here and we work out.  Minimal talking is done during this session.

6:00AM-9:00AM–Clients come, sweat, and leave.  As it gets later and later, they get chattier and I play comedian/therapist.  Thermedian?  Do you want to leave your wife and have me measure your thighs?  Well that’s better than reading your poop chart and feeling your hernia.  Have you started a diet in the last month that includes/injections/parasites/cutting yourself/one food group/oxygen, tums and water?  Okay don’t do that.  Or that.  Really please don’t do that!  Please don’t lose control of your bowels while you talk to me.  I enjoy talking about it later, but it makes me worried about the future of the planet.

10:00AM–11:30AM–Drive an hour to North Dallas and hope that there is no traffic that causes me to be on the news.  I’m pretty sure road rage was invented in DFW.  I look out the window to read that I really should not be driving in the car because of the pollution or the drought.  During this process is one of the few times I have time to write back the gazillion nurses who can’t dress themselves without my permission.

11:50-1:50 I look forward to this time when I get to teach my face to face class.  I love you students.

2:00-3:00–Commute back while calling peeps back or again checking my email.

3:00-4:00–Feed the Merry monster.  Here I try to make good choices but I would eat the couch if it meant I did have to move at all.  Then it’s time for Job 1 phase 2

4:30-7:30–Time to visit with the crazy version of 6:00-9:00AM peeps.  Do you really like Socrates?  You probably should randomly tell me while you are doing leg extensions.  Do you think I can’t work you out hard because I’m a girl?  You should tell me that and continue to say that as you have to puke in the trash can.  Did a your mentally handcapped son accidently lock a midget magazine salesman in a kitchen cabinet because he thought the midget was a troll?  Please.  more stories like this.

7:30–Make contact with human life and try to figure out why the nurses are having a panic attack.

9:00–Merry you should be sleeping

10:00–Really Merry go to sleep

12:00–Aw nuts.  I grab the kitties, tuck them under the covers and lay there thinking about doing all this again.

I’ll be back blog.  I’m going to take someone’s helpful suggestion and hire a hobo to do my grading for $8 and a cookie.  But I have to find a cookie….

femme fatale

I’ve done plenty of stupid things.  I’ve fallen up the stairs, down the stairs, into the stairs, around the stairs (I should just stay away from stairs) and then nervously giggled or denied that yes, that was blood running down my leg.  At the gym I hit my crotch on the pointy corner of the desk on a regular basis.  In fact, right after that the other morning I walked into a machine while I was talking to a client.  I think I need a suit made of bubble wrap because I am hazard.

I also lose everything.  I like to pack my car to go on a trip and then throw my keys in the trunk and close it.  Every. time.  This is assuming I can find my keys.  I wish they would call out after me “Merry!  Don’t leave us!”  My keys are currently missing somewhere in my apartment.  I know they have to be here because the door didn’t just open magically, unless I left it unlocked….I really have checked everywhere.  So I’m down to all my spare keys and had to beg my apartment office to please not charge me for a new mail key.

I’ve also had clothing disasters.  My belt unzipped my favorite pair of jeans in 9th grade, but, I had grown 5 inches in a year, so while that was inconvenient, it wasn’t exactly a disaster.  Once I walked around my high school for an entire day with one layer of my skirt hitched up so that the world could see my underpants.  Why no one told me I have no idea.  But amazingly, no one openly mocked me like they do in movies.

I’d like to think skirt malfunctions were just a teenage problem, but at UTA, I wore this stiff plaid Dickies skirt that the wind blew up and it stayed vertical.  This girl was like !!!  I had an arm full of library books so I had to think for a minute, do I throw the books in that dirt puddle or do I just keep walking?  Unfortunately, I continued to walk while I thought about it this choice.

And a year ago at a conference I almost presented a paper with my dress tucked into my panty hose.  Thank you girl who told me before I showed a bunch of historians my naked bottom.

However, this morning at the gym I realized that there is something embarrassing that I have never done before.  At about 5:30am, I stumbled over to the water fountain to fill up my water bottle and as I looked up and saw SOMEONE’S THONG WAS ON THE TOP OF THE WATER FOUNTAIN.  Now how does this happen?  The most logical thing I could think of was someone rummaging in a gym bag for their water bottle and pulling stuff out and accidently leaving panties.  Sadly, that is the most reasonable thing I can think of.  Listening to stories about someone using the shower as their bathroom and weights just appearing in the men’s bathroom surprised me, but this is more mysterious.  Where are you thong dropper?  Are you the man in the ice dancing pants with fur cuffs?  Was it you onion smell guy?  Or was it the girl with the vajazzled crotch?  And in case you missed vajazzeling….

Vajazzeling

Break The Spell

Apparently you can get crabs in your eyes.  I naively assumed when I heard this today that it was actual crabs and I was envisioning someone innocently standing around and then BAM!  A giant crab leaps down from a nearby roof, pulls out his or her eyeball, and runs off cackling an evil crab laugh.  The real story is so much grosser.

I really love my job at the gym.  I like the men that wear spandex pants that give them a girl butt.  I like the veiny, muscle guys that make noise like lifting weights is ripping out their intestines.  I almost expect them to yell out FREEDDDOOOMMM.  At least they don’t wear a kilts, although that would make it more interesting.  I like that every night I can expect the same weird, foreign man in the sunglasses to walk past me smelling like he slept in a vat of onion rings.  And who doesn’t want some creepy dude to ask about measuring his upper thighs.  I’m waiting for the day when he asks me for penis exercises.  I know it’s coming.

But you know what I didn’t expect?  To see a woman chasing a giant lizard down the shoulder of I35.  A horrific wreck had traffic completely stopped and just when I was about to start punching myself, this lady rolls down her window to flick a cigarette and out jumps a lizard.  A giant lizard.  It creepily runs off and she gets out in a budweiser “dress” and chases after it barefoot. Sadly this is not the first time I have seen someone in a budweiser dress, but it is the first time I saw that owner of such a classy outfit chasing a lizard.  She caught it and then put it back in her car.   If only she dressed it in a matching outfit.  A girl can dream.

So how do I pursue a full time teaching job, when I work someplace where 1) I might actually meet other humans  and 2) I make my own hours.  So far I only manage to meet married men and/or men concerned with their bowel movements.  But I know amidst the onion ring smelling, tight pants wearing crowd there has to be some dude that isn’t a serial killer or a cult member or married….I realize married should probably go in a different category but if they have one wife it really doesn’t matter if they have more or if they killed one.  All deal breakers.  Well…

After finding this strange half trench coat at my parents house, I realize that I do have strange tastes.  I used to find it perfectly acceptable to wear orange vinyl pants and I still would if my booty hadn’t ripped through them like the hulk (It really did split those little size 1′s).  But after being around academics so much, I realize I missed out on the crab catching, rave vomiting, no underpants wearing crowd.  They are pretty cool.  I try to share stories back like pssh yeah I totally thew up on myself while contracting STD’s (pardon me STI’s) but I can honestly say, of all the weird/crazy/bizarre things I have done, I have nothing to compare to that.

But I did see a barefoot redneck woman chase an iguana.  That’s got to count for something.

Bad Dreams

I am not a peaceful sleeper.  I have to take enough sleeping pills to knock out a small pony and goodness knows what I do after that.  Usually I wake up in my bed with Big Kitty sleeping on the pillow next to me.  He can’t sleep next to me because I must kick him.  I have had some weird sleeping incidents.  When I was a little kid, I remember getting ready for school, putting on my backpack and barging into my parent’s room in the middle of the night declaring I was ready for school.  They sleepily walked me back to my room and told me it was not time for school yet.

When I was going through all the Andy drama, I tried taking melatonin to sleep because it came so highly recommended.  Unfortunately, it made me hear Satan voices talking to me out of my rain machine and I ran away into the kitchen and ate 20 string cheeses.  I decided that was not for me and so I laid off all the sleepytime medicine.  But then I started extreme sleepwalking.  And yes, I am calling it extreme, because the way I do it, it should be a sport.  I’ve woken up in weird parts of my apartment usually with a kitty curled up next to me.  However, the night after the melatonin adventure I woke up with my face on my keyboard…covered in chocolate (both the keyboard and my hands and face) and the keyboard was on.  I am pretty sure I was playing in my sleep, I’m sure not very well.  Kitty was the only wittness and I don’t think he would ever tell….unless he was offered treats.

For now, I stay in my bed, but I still have the most bizarre dreams.  Like sometimes people say “I had a dream my teeth are falling out,” or ,”I had dream I was sleeping with my teacher!”  That is just like my dream except it would be my teacher pulling out my teeth in a church parking lot and then slowly disemboweling me as I was forced to watch.  In my dreams, I’m trying to hurry up and pack a hotel room and I have Kitty in a carrier in the car but it takes me so long to pack that he roasts out in the car.  My family will drive away from serial killers in a rick-shaw as little melted demons jump out of a microwave and chase us down a pyramid.  I don’t lay around and read horror novels before bed or drink the blood of massacred voodoo chickens, but I dream these horrible things.

So the latest dream I had I was trying to cross these murkey waters in my bridesmaid’s dress with Ali’s family.   They easily walked through this water without getting wet and I told them no, I had to stay in the weird cardboard canoe her dad made because I could not get my dress ruined.  I finally had to get out of the canoe and the dress got wet and I drowned.  I told Ashley, and she said “Oooh let’s look up your dreams in the dream dictionary.”  I was skeptical of this.  ”Do they have a definition for dress wearer sits in a weird carboard canoe and slowly drowns and can feel her lungs burning?”  Ashley was like “Well…let’s just look up drowning.”  Here are some dream definations that we discovered thanks to the reliable source,

Drowing–

To dream that you are drowning, indicates that you are feeling overwhelmed by emotions. Repressed issues may be coming back to haunt you. You may be proceeding too quickly in trying to discover your unconscious thoughts. You should proceed more cautiously and slowly. If you drown to death, then is refers to an emotional rebirth. If your survive the drowning, then it means that a waking relationship or situation will ultimately survive the turmoil

Murdered (this is if someone is murdering you.  It is a whole different ball game if you are the murderer)

To dream that you are murdered, suggests that some important and significant relationship has been severed. You are trying to disconnect yourself from your emotions. The dream may also be about your unused talents

Unused Talents?  Hmm, that must be what it means when random murderers grab my intestines out and stab me a zillion times.  I just need to set my creative ability free!

I also find it amazing that people dream things like “Your ex-boyfriend wins you a stuffed animal”  ”rabbits” and “Cotton Candy.”  What nice dreams all about fertility and childhood (hopefully not in the same dream?!) I did have a dream about cotton candy, but it was a prison and I had to eat my way out of it.

It’s been suggested to think about happy thoughts when attempting to sleep so tonight I am going to think about an electric cotton candy rodeo.  Everyone is dressed in Christmas light western wear and wrangles bunnies with cotton candy lassos.

Before I head down this road of sweet fluffy goodness, I figured I had better check out the dream dictionary defintion of rodeos.

Ah hem.. Rodeo

To dream that you are at the rodeo, suggests that you need to take control of your animalistic forces and primal urges.

Rawr!  Look out!  I’m coming at your with a sexy mouthful of cotton candy.

Australia

A serious case of the sniffles is keeping me inside today and I took both my laptops (yes 2, thanks EPIC for refusing to run on a Mac) and tried to find a place in my apartment where I could be comfortable and grade.  I felt like goldilocks.  The kitchen chairs were too hard and I have to hold my feverish head up and that is just too much work.  The round plastic papasan chair is too soft (it is such a trooper but it is really worn out and my butt sinks to the floor.  But my bed is just right….except it makes me want to sleep.  This why people buy couches and I know I should get one.  Not that I don’t have deep affection for the ice-cream stained recliner in the center of my living room.  I have no idea how old it is but I do know it was Sandra Clark’s chair when she was Sandra Moshier.  It also withstood a move to Wisconsin, the trip back, and life in a storage locker.  Getting rid of it seems so harsh considering how reliable it has been.  But I need a couch.

I have had many opportunities to buy a couch.  I went with Ashley once on her quest for comfy furniture and could have purchased this gem that had a matching panther entertainment center (and a dinning room set out of a Dr. Seuss book).  She settled on a super comfy chocolate brown sofa from Rooms to Go.  I’ve wandered around thrift stores, but then I can’t help but wonder if used couches have a cocktail of MRSA, Staph and bed bugs…so I’ve let them pass me by.  This thought has also occurred to me when I drive by my dumpster.  There was a leopard chase lounge that was pretty awesome, but it had a sharp piece of metal sticking up through the bottom of it.  It’s the piece of furniture the bad guests have to sit on.  So I left it out by the trash avoiding any life threatening illnesses or furniture parasites.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.  The real reason I refuse to get a couch is because then I have to admit to myself that I live in Euless.  For some reason, to me, a couch is a pledge of commitment to Euless much like couples who get a puppy together.  Courtney refused to wear a coat in Ohio because that would mean she really lived there.  I’m guessing this is why wea are such close friends.

I’m not sure if Euless and I are ready to get a couch together.  I mean we have been together for almost 4 years, but does that really mean we are ready for the next step?  The two of us moving in together will change everything.  I’ll have to not sit around and eat ice cream at 4am because the new couch will judge me.  I’ll feel bad if my slumped, sleepy self drips Neapolitan on the arms on the couch.  I’ll have to worry that my cats chewing holes in it, or somehow manage to have a poop explosion on it.

The ice cream is a real danger, but I highly doubt the poop explosion.  Big kitty has a nervous breakdown if he has to pass gas.  In all honesty, I think it’s time for comfortable seating.  I do live in Euless, but it won’t be forever.  And I don’t need to flirt with with all the low end $20 target chairs because I am ready to invest in quality pieces where I can park my butt.  I’m ready for you couch.  Come join me and we will have adventures together.

Cook It Up (feat. P.F.A.C.)

These days I spend most of my time in the car.  Anywhere I go takes at least 20 minutes and 40 minutes in traffic.  I’ve learned how to really multi-task and hold the wheel while singing, peeling a banana and checking my email.  Sometimes I look over at other commuters while I’m pretending I can rap (I rocked out to this Aesop Rock song the other day when I was trapped on the 35N ramp for an hour and a half) and they give me this weird look while they are talking on the phone.  Sorry Texas, I know you made it illegal, but it is impossible to stay off the phone in DFW.   Most of the time other sad, parked drivers will smile at me or do a little head bounce back and forth.  Occasionally I see someone who I know is pondering rolling down their window, leaping out and running down the side of highway screaming.

I went home to Austin for Spring Break and I forgot what it is like to drive for 15 minutes or less.  Get in the car, blink and bam!  Out of the car.  Do I check my email while I’m driving there?  No.  Because I can see the end in sight and I don’t have to worry if it will be time for bed when I get home even though I got off work at 4pm.  I’m pondering moving and while I compared cities in my mind, I realized something funny.  We all know that Austin keeps it weird, but Euless might actually be weirder.  Sure, Austin has hipsters and bands that play barefoot in the street wearing speedos, but Euless has people that aren’t trying to be artistic/different.  Some of the Eulessites are “regular” people working a “regular” jobs and are more bizarre than anyone I have ever met in Austin.

So let’s play a game called Austin?  or Euless?

1.  Man gives me an excel spreadsheet of his bowel movements.  He pulls them out from under his baseball hat and asks me when, where, and how often he should “evacuate his bowels.”  He then goes on to burst into hysterical tears and tell me he is sad for all the sick people in the world because it is painful to be sick.  After he dries his eyes, he begins a racist rant about muslims that somehow ends with him impersonating an African American woman in a falsetto.  With his hands on his hips, he immitated a sassy black lady and said “I’m so lazy and all I want is free money from the government.  I’ll just have another kid.”

What do you think?  Austin or Euless?  If you guessed Austin, you are WRONG.  This delightful episode occurred in the sleepy suburbs.

2.  Guy taps me on the shoulder and asks me about my elephant tattoos.  ”Why elephants?”  I tell him why I like my tattoo and he tells me he is working on his 3rd bachelors degree. (Really?  Is that really necessary?  Can’t you just take leveling courses and get a MA?  And 3?  You are only in your 20′s”)  He then tells me “Elephant tramp stamp….niccceee.”  Then he tells me he spanked a nun on halloween and he thought it was a fake nun, but it was an actual nun.  What was an actual nun doing out at night?  (Apparently nuns are reverse vampires).  His final mating call is making a slew of priest molesting children jokes.

If you guessed Austin, you are RIGHT.  This charming fellow stood behind us at the free Aesop Rock show during SXSW

3.  In this city, I saw people who were not wearing shoes at the post office, at the gym, at TeXas Teachers, and at a community college.

Yep.  This one is Euless.  Apparently shoes are so last season.

4.  I saw this girl.

Totally Austin.

Is everyone just a giant werido everywhere?  Or do these two cities have something in common:  me.  I already knew I emit some kind of scent or high pitched sound that only lunatics can hear, but it seems like I am leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for crazies to follow me wherever I go.

Really, this is a good thing.  Crazies don’t make the world go round, but they surely make it a better place to live.  Where would we be without Andrew Jackson and his unpredictable duels?  Okay we would have had a national bank and possibly avoided the Panic of 1873, but it is far more entertaining to hear about how he refused to admit he had been hit in a duel and lived the rest of his life with a bullet in his lungs.

May the crazies of the world unite, summon captain planet (in this case some middle aged man with a hernia who insists on wearing an american flag wrestling outfit) and continue to pop at my feet like firecrackers.  You light up my life!  Please just don’t burn down my apartment.