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FNR #35—Help me. I’m mood-swinging! Where’s my Lithium?Aug 08 '03 Write an essay on this topic.
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A brief history of the FNR, otherwise known as Friday Night Ramblings. It all began with Chad, a familiar face known around Eps as lemon_lime. After posting 10 such ramblings, he grew weary of writing them. Well, Ken, (aka Sordid-1, my favorite Eps bully boy), wasn’t going to stand for that. Sordie resurrected the ramblings with FNR #11, passed the torch to cute, blonde Andy (panguitch), and the rest is history. For a complete list of those who have since carried the torch, check out Chad’s profile page. OOPS, it appears Chad has been sleeping or vacationing (or merely slacking off?) as he stopped his list with Gary, the delightful garym, who wrote FNR #32. So, singing with great bravado the Mighty Mouse tune "Here I come to save the day," allow me to step up and fill you in on the couple of writers between "Gary the King of Poop" and myself. Gary passed the torch to Robert (aka brotherman)—who in turn gave it to _haggis_, who handed over the torch to me for this week. (Whew! Dang it, Chad. You coulda made my life a lot easier if you’d just kept the list up-to-date on that profile page of yours! All this HTML and my old lady brain just don’t jive well together, ya know? I’m not screamin’ at ya, son. I still love ya. But get busy already!) Now I have no earthly idea what inspired Haggy to pass the torch to me, but apparently he likes my writing. He thinks I’m "funny"—can you believe that? Well, Hags, old buddy, I’ll make an attempt at humor, but I’m not sure I can pull this thing off. Not this time anyway. As those of you closest to me know, my ex has been causing me a lot of grief for the past several months. I won’t bore the rest of you with details, other than to tell you I’ve suffered much anxiety and depression lately. You’d think that a divorce would settle all matters and you could just get on with your new life, but when there are children involved, well, hey, that’s a whole ‘nother ball game. If you read my "20 Things" review, you already know what I’d like to do to people like my ex husband—I’d like to beat the crap out of him! I realize there are rules that the torchbearer must follow, first and foremost that we be drinking as we write. I currently have coffee. Does that count? OK, OK…so we’re supposed to be drinking alcohol. I poured some Dr. McGillicuddy’s Vanilla Liqueur in. Is that better? (Yeah, I know. A rule is a rule. You’re not gonna find me breaking one!) Now I’ll be honest here and tell you ahead of time that I’m not getting drunk. I’m one of those wussified little people who can’t take but so much alcohol. Nope, I don’t get silly, loud, aggressive, bold, or boisterous. I fall asleep. And we all know you can’t write if you’re sawing Z’s. On with the ramble. Hmmmm… What to talk about? What to talk about? God, I’m at a loss for words here. Help me, Haggy! My mind’s drawn a blank. I refuse to discuss religion or politics, so scratch those ideas. My 18-year-old daughter has accused me on more than one occasion of having A.D.D. She says she’s never seen a mind wander so much as mine. You’d think with that in my favor I could come up with something. EPINIONS Meet & Greet, Richmond, VA OK, I thought of something. Last Friday night, my friend Lori, better known as "Doc" around Epsville, organized a Meet & Greet at Mulligan’s in Richmond, Virginia. You can read about the shenanigans here. Richmond is the town I grew up in, and at present I live just over an hour away. Doc lives in Richmond, which turned out to be a fairly central meeting place for the ten of us in attendance. I won’t go into detail here since Doc’s done a dang good job of giving the scoop in her review, but I will mention that we had an Epinions celebrity in our presence. That’s right, folks—we had none other than the incredibly wonderful Granniemose with us! Grannie, whose real name is Virginia, and her lovely granddaughter Arinn traveled more than 3½ hours to join us. They braved the traffic on Interstate 95, coming all the way up from a small town in North Carolina—simply because Grannie loves Doc and me so much. (So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Hags!) Granniemose is everything one would anticipate and more. She’s spunky, funny, interesting, and flat-out adorable! At 80 years "young," she fit in just fine with our group of people ranging between the ages of 18 and 56. Unfortunately, the karaoke singing got so incredibly loud, we found it difficult to make conversation after a while. Despite all the racket, Grannie maintained her grace and sat there watching the crowd with a smile on her face, groovin’ to the music, and seemingly enjoying the night. There was talk of a future get-together at the Outer Banks in North Carolina in the not-too-distant future, and I’m hoping we can make it happen. What better way to enjoy each other’s company again than in the peace and solitude of the beach? (Jude, your mother is awesome! We totally loved getting to know her in person!) [brainfart] OK, here I go again, trying to think of something else to ramble about. What the hell are Pfeffernuesse cookies? "Pfeffer" in German means "pepper." But what's a "nuesse?" How about the WEATHER? When people run out of things to say, discussion often turns to the weather. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but the summer here on the east coast has sucked. Majorly! What’s with all these cloudy days? Week after week, 90% or more of the time there’s been nothing outside but gray, gloomy clouds. As one who has tendencies towards Seasonal Affective Disorder, these dark, dreary days are sucking the life out of me. Normally this time of year I feel so alive, deeply tanned in the richest of golden bronze hues—but this year? Ugh. Pasty white thighs I do not like. Self-tanning lotion just ain’t gonna cut it. No, sir. I need that vitamin D! I need to feel the warmth of the sun! Anyone got a ticket to the Bahamas they’d like to send me? Bad enough I live in the cesspool of our state, but for God’s sake can’t we have a little sunshine here? Ah, well. One less summer of tanning, one thousand less age spots on my body. Gotta look at the positive when your summer stinks this much. [brainfart] The WIZARD OF OZ In a recent comments thread, sleeper54 (Tom) and I were discussing that song the wicked witch’s guards were singing. Does anyone have a clue? I heard "Oreo," while Tom thought they were singing "Oleo." What the heck was that word anyway? Until someone comes up with the answer, it’s gonna bug the living daylights out of me for all eternity. Ack!!! I can’t stand it! "Or-ee-o, blee-oooh-ah!" Get that song out of my head! Please, please…make it go away!!! RECKLESS DRIVERS I need to bitch about something here. Reckless drivers. You know who they are. They’re the ones who drive up your ass, cut you off in traffic, change lanes constantly, and/or blaze by you in excess of 25 miles over the speed limit. As if they weren’t maddening enough, we then have to contend with the drunks on our highways. What is it with those people? Do they not have any respect for human life? Apparently not. Not for their own lives, and certainly not the lives of the other folks on the road. Let me tell you something. My boyfriend, Mr. Happy, is a cop. A state trooper who not only keeps an eye out for these lunkheads in our midst, but who also is part of the accident reconstruction team. One of his duties as a member of that team is to take pictures of accident scenes. Not just the cars, mind you, but the casualties as well. I’ve had the misfortune of seeing some of these photos, and believe me, they ain’t pretty. Some of the victims look as though they’re asleep. But look closer, and you’ll see bits and pieces of human brains scattered about the interior of their now-mangled car. Sometimes there’s a lot of blood—sometimes there’s none. You find it impossible to imagine what can happen to the human body? Just think of the worst looking road kill you’ve ever seen, then apply it to a person. WARNING—This next part gets gross. Skip it if you’re the least bit squeamish. By far, the most chilling picture I’ve seen was of a man I refer to as “Spoonhead.” I saw that photo just one time, but it’s forever etched in my mind. This driver slammed into the rear of a tractor-trailer, and the entire top of his car was ripped off. In the picture, the man is sitting upright. His body looks OK, but my God, just look at him from the neck up. There’s nothing left of his head but a spoon-shaped skull. It looks as if someone took a huge melon baller and just scooped out his entire face and everything behind it, right up to the back of his skull. What’s left of this man’s head looks like the bowl of a spoon. It’s absolutely horrifying. OK, squeamish people—you can read on from here. My point in bringing this up is simple. THINK before you get behind the wheel of your car. Any stupid, sudden move on your part could result in a lifetime of regret. Provided you live to see it. Don’t knock the cop who gives you a ticket. He’s out there just doing his job, trying to make sure people get to their destinations in one piece. 'Nuff said. [brainfart] SLING BLADE Karl Childers. Why, oh why, do I like this guy so much? It has never ceased to amaze me how Billy Bob Thornton pulled off that character so well. How did he screw up his face like that? I mean, the guy has an almost buck-toothed appearance in real life. So how did he squish up his looks and get his lower jaw to jut out like that? I could expect it from someone as rubber-faced as Jim Carrey. But Billy Bob? And that voice! Mmmm-hmmmm. That was something else. Just listening to him makes me wanna run right out and get me some French-fried pertaters. Coffee kinda makes me nervous when I drink it. Some folks call it a sling blade, I call it a keiser blade. I like the way you talk. Mmmm-hmmmm. [brainfart] "I’m just a rambler (ramblin’ man), I’m just a gambler (gamblin’ man)…" Thank you, Bob Seger, for writing the lyrics to a song that goes through my head every time I read one of these FNRs. Oh, and reader? You’ve gotta be a real oldie to appreciate it. "You can have your funky world (ramblin’ man…)" Dear God, make it stop! WEIRDNESS Do you ever just sit there and watch your hands move, suddenly and acutely aware that you exist? I mean, we move through life year after year, going about our daily routines, not giving a second thought to the fact that we're remarkable, complex, living creatures...and one day we're going to die. Like it or not, that's one thing we can’t run away from. I've done that watching-my-hands thing before. I'll notice the intricate movement of each finger performing whatever task it is I'm doing at the moment. Maybe it's typing, maybe it's nothing more than a simple motion like sweeping the hair off my face. Then I'll shift my body to another position, fully aware of the movement of my muscles and skeleton as I switch, for instance, from leaning frontward to leaning back. I might even become aware of my own breathing…or maybe the beat of my heart. Weird. I've done this with other people as well. I can be sitting across the room from someone and, as they talk or gaze at the TV or whatever, become aware of his or her existence, too. Quite often, it's the rhythmic blink of the eyes that I zero in on first. Then maybe I’ll notice the movement of their mouth as they speak. Or just the quirky way they screw up their face in reaction to something going on in the room. And I’ll sit there silently, in awe of the fact that this is a person who moves and speaks and feels, just like me—and one day they’re going to die, too. I’ve done the same thing when watching Mr. Happy sleep. Here’s this living, breathing man that I love so much—but he isn’t going to live forever, and chances are he’ll leave this earth before I do. Now it’s not like I have an obsession or something. This awareness doesn’t occur more than a few times a year. But when it happens, it makes me stop and take a few minutes to appreciate things. Appreciate the gift of life. Appreciate the person sitting before me. Appreciate the fact that I exist, even though I don’t understand why. What’s my purpose? Why is this other person next to me here? How did this happen? Where did we come from? Where are we going? It really doesn’t matter if the answer lies in religion or science. The fact is, we’re here today, we’re alive, and we’re human. Why do some people take that so callously? Why can’t they place value on life? Why are they so quick to kill and destroy? Why spend so much time hating a brother and sister? Why waste energy dreaming up something mean and cruel to do to another human being? And yeah, we’ve heard it a thousand times, but as Rodney King once said, “Can’t we all just get along?” I’m not afraid of dying. It’s more like, "What’s on the other side?" I just can’t conceive of the idea. [BIG brain fart] (OK, Haggy. I’ll try to get back to my more humorous side now. I promised I’d try to keep this thing light and simple, but I keep going off on serious tangents. Man, oh man, can I mood swing or what?) SPOOKY Tomatoes! I’m getting rather tired of my ramble now, and I’ll bet you are, too. But before I say _Auf Wiedersehen, I just have to tell you about my ‘maters! There’s something really strange going on with them this year. You see, I have this tomato bush growing in a container on my normally sunny balcony. Had one last year, too, and got plenty of pickin’s for sandwiches, salads, and whatever else one uses tomatoes for. Now this year, the plant is doing some wild ‘n crazy stuff. Don’t know if it’s due to the lack of sunshine our area’s been getting or something else, but these fruits are most definitely not the norm. And just what is it about those ‘maters that makes them so "different?" Well, to put it bluntly, about one out of every three tomatoes has a penis. That’s right, folks. A penis! You should see these mutants. They have these single, little appendages growing out from them near the stems. It’s downright spooky. Freaky, even! I can’t help but wonder what kind of orgies are going on out there on that tomato plant at night. But I’ll tell you one thing—this bush has produced the most abundant crop of ‘maters I’ve seen on one plant in my life. So I guess those weird tomatoes must be doing something right. In closing (and I can hear the applause already—not so much the applause of approval, but the clapping that my ramble is through!), I now must follow tradition and pass the torch on to the next person, the writer of what will become FNR #36. This was a tough decision, as there are so many wonderfully creative people here. If I could have, I’d have handed torches to each and every one of you, saying, "Here! Have a ball!" But that’s against rules, and I really didn’t embrace the thought of someone coming out to tar & feather me for breaking them. I was looking for a successor who writes with humor, creativity, and who’s had enough experience in life to perhaps come up with some terrific rambles. I finally made my decision and am passing the torch to a great lady we all love and adore, our one and only Granniemose! Haggy, I hope I didn’t disappoint ya, man. Hope I didn’t stink. And if I did stink, well, maybe you guys will quit trying to talk me into writing in hopes of getting a revealing photograph of my rack. Which, by the way, ain’t nearly as bouncy as your fantasies would have you believe. So there. Pooh on you! It’s your turn, Virginia. Have fun! And yes, dear, you have to drink. Them’s the rules.  |
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