Reviews of Meats Based On Things My Friends Say, Smells, And Their Names

I have been a vegan (on-again) for more than a decade. But I've been vegetarian since I was three, and I asked my mother where chicken nuggets came from and she told me. So there are very few meats that I have ever tried in my life. For example, a hamburger is a completely foreign concept to me (and not just because Hamburg is apparently in Germany. Although, apparently it is, and that lends a lot to what I think hamburgers taste like). Here is what I think all the Major Meats taste like, based on absolutely no real world experience of what these things taste like. Also, these are what I think the Major Meats are. I clearly don't know. I thought quail was a Major Meat until I realized that I haven't seen anyone eat quail except in Robin Hood: Men In Tights. Even then... was that quail?

Hamburger: This meat is German, and Nazis are German, so via the transitive property, I can tell that this is a very oppressive meat. I don't know a lot of oppressive foods (beets tend to be a little oppressive, actually, but otherwise I've got nothing to measure hamburgers against). They smell kind of like vaguely rotting gasoline. They also look like what I think of when people say, "That guy that died several months ago has come back to life and is oozing a rotting brain."* I can't understand why people eat hamburgers. This is a mystery.

GRADE: F

Bacon: People who eat bacon say that bacon is amazing. It smells amazing, and it looks like all the good fried stuff that crusts off of healthy foods that have been fried (such as eggplant) -- just all the way through. It's pink and has stripes. Kevin Bacon is a terrific actor. Therefore, bacon must be like a maple doughnut made just for Barbie. Bacon is obviously the greatest of the meats.

GRADE: B+

Chicken: The namers of the meats didn't even bother to rename chicken! People long ago clearly didn't think very highly of chickens, or they would have at least come up with a euphemism for them when they are being eaten. Chicken looks like it tastes like chalk that's been left out in the rain. It doesn't smell like anything. Chicken is even less easy for me to understand than hamburgers, although apparently it can be healthy for you. Or healthier. So maybe that's one point for chicken. One point AGAINST chicken is that chickens are SO CUTE AND NICE AND HOW CAN YOU EAT THEM?

GRADE: D- (GRADE FOR ANIMAL VERSION: A)

We have now exhuasted all the meats I know offhand. I am turning to a Google search I did called "Types of Meat."

Pot Roast: Fun fact: I have also never consumed pot. The drug, I mean. Roast, though, sounds like "toast," so this one is probably good.

GRADE: C

Tripe: I have no idea what tripe is. It sounds like a fairy character in A Midsummer Nights' Dream. It also sounds a little like "Skype." Based on the tiny image that appeared when I Googled Tripe, it is a tan-colored fungus-type of food. I'm a terrible vegan, I think, because I don't like any type of fungus, really. I'll force it down if I have to. Tripe tastes bad, and hurts the fairy population.

GRADE: F

Venison: This must be some kind of penis. Right?

COULD NOT GRADE, NEED MORE INFORMATION

Blood Sausage: This is what comes out when you let a boy have sex with you while you are on your period.** Why would you eat that?

GRADE: F

In conclusion, I don't understand meat at all. Except bacon.

* A common turn-of-phrase

** A common practice

Two Mosquitoes Discuss Day of the Dead, Which Is Coming Up Soon: A Short Play

TAMARA: It is practically time for Dia de los Muertos!!

DIANE: I have been preparing for weeks. Look at this sugar skull I made.

TAMARA: Nice sugar skull.

DIANE: Thanks. 

TAMARA: I am so grateful to celebrate all the friends we've lost.

DIANE: Right. This year there are a BUNCH.

TAMARA: I know. A BUNCH.

DIANE: Hundreds of thousands.

TAMARA: Definitely. In our immediate friend group 342 at least. I counted last night while I was sucking on a gosling.

DIANE: 342? Really? Wow. I didn't realize. Who do you miss the most?

TAMARA: Do I have to say it out loud?

DIANE: Let's say it in unison.

TAMARA and DIANE: (in unison) DEB!!!!!!

TAMARA: (Enthusiastically, wistfully) Deb was so fun!

DIANE: Yes. And daring!

TAMARA: Did you ever hear how she died?

DIANE: It was something about... what was it?

TAMARA: Oh man. She was at a sadomasochist cult gathering.

DIANE: A what?

TAMARA: Whatever. It's one of those weird things that humans do. They treat each other like abused pets. There's lots of blood, but it's incredibly dangerous. 

DIANE: Amazing. What happened?

TAMARA: She was whipped to death by a man dressed up like a leopard!!!!!

DIANE: Wow!!!!

TAMARA: I know. I heard from Leslie who heard from Kate who saw it firsthand because she was headed that way out of curiosity.

DIANE: R.I.P. Leslie and Kate!

TAMARA: The trickiest thing about this time of year is that these altars are so tempting.

DIANE: Tell me about it. Collecting the droplets of blood to put out next to the marigold petals takes more will power than anything else I've ever done in my life.

TAMARA: Honestly, Diane, you seem to have a TON of will power.

DIANE: You think?

TAMARA: You're looking thin lately. Are you on a diet?

DIANE: Yes! (Blushing) You noticed!

TAMARA: Honestly, you don't need it.

DIANA: Thank you. The truth is that I fear for my life every time I go to dine! (Laughs). Ha! Ha! Seriously.

TAMARA: I hear you. I hear you. It's difficult.

(Long pause)

DIANE: Things were so much more fun when Deb was around.

TAMARA: She would love this. Early fall. Swampy air. Hundreds of miniature altars to celebrate the passing of the dead.

DIANE: It's her thing.

TAMARA: Was.

DIANE: What?

TAMARA: Was her thing.

DIANE: Right. (Sigh.) Do you think they really come back to life on this one sacred day?

TAMARA: Sure!

DIANE: Deb always gave such great advice about guys.

TAMARA: Yeah.

DIANE: This is nuts, but I just want to get bit once in a while in bed.

TAMARA: Huh. Have you thought about being a lesbian?

DIANE: Only once, but...

TAMARA: ... but it was with Deb?
DIANE: Yeah.

TAMARA: Me too. 

DIANE: You too?

TAMARA: (Pause.) Should we be lesbians?

DIANE: No.

TAMARA: You're right. That's a no. All the men around here just seem to be so spineless.

DIANE: Well... I mean...

TAMARA: Right.

DIANE: Our friend group has just been really boring ever since Deb passed. And there are no men around. It's Dullsville in the swamp.

TAMARA: Can I tell you a secret?

DIANE: Anything.

TAMARA: Sometimes I think about committing suicide.

DIANE: What?!

TAMARA: Well... Day of the Dead is such fun! But it's just for dead mosquitoes.

DIANE: WHAT?!?!?!?!

TAMARA: I can't help it! Just look at these altars. And marigolds are so lovely! It's starting to get cold, and humans are further and farther between outside.

DIANE: Is "further and farther between" grammatically correct?

TAMARA: DIANE, this is important. No time to remind me who finished college and who didn't.

DIANE: Sorry. I'm a dick!

TAMARA: Yes.

DIANE: Don't kill yourself Tamara.

TAMARA: (Hysterical) WHY NOT!?!?!? 

DIANE: Because I love you. And not in a trivial way, either. I love you like a friend loves a friend. It's deep and true. Aristotle said, "Love is composed of a single soul occupying two bodies." And I think that's you and I.

TAMARA: You say that because we're the only two left.

DIANE: Maybe so. 

TAMARA: And at least YOU laid, like a zillion eggs last night.

DIANE: Well...

TAMARA: (still hysterical) IT'S OVER! IT'S NOT WORTH IT!

(A giant hand comes in a swats at Tamara and Diane. Diane is killed instantly. Tamara moves around with adeptness and escapes. She goes into the following monologue in the kind of crazed fervor that possesses villains in movies who are going over their evil plans out loud.)

TAMARA: My plan of distraction worked. (Begins eating the blood from the altars.) Dia de los Muertos is stupid. I'm not religious. I'm hungry.

Fin.

Un-Full Moon

Little note: this entry references "P" and "T" -- two of my students who I will keep anonymous here lest they grow up and don't want their life stories chronicled on the Internet.

Today we were trying to pull a part of a display off a bulletin board so we could make a new one. I was trying to pull the staples out with my fingers and I kept getting cut, again and again. P said  we needed an unstapler. She didn't know what that was. Just... the opposite of what we had.

Last week it was a full moon. And also:

Everything was falling apart. To be really honest, things have been falling apart since the hurricane, but I don't care to back up that far. Last week there were some explosions.

I teach kids who have violent impulses and emotional disturbances (more at a later time, in another meditation). I do this because I feel like I relate: sometimes I don't have control over my emotions, either, and I make risky choices. And when I was seven (yes, I very distinctly remember being seven), I did not feel like a single person in the universe understood me.

So anyway, this is all to say that I should have known what I was getting myself into in taking a job like this. But after the hurricane, the honeymoon ended, and it was not enough to be friendly and understanding anymore. T started throwing these very intense, very violent fits, every day. Desks were flipped, posters were cut up, and my shins got kicked to the kind of pulp that is usually reserved for SVU-type television shows. One day -- it was last Tuesday -- the adults at school decided to tell me that, through no fault of my own, I simply could not handle this all by myself. It felt like someone saying, "Good try, but you failed. And we are not surprised."

That was the day I cried in front of T; like, really, balls-out, panic attack CRIED, a LOT. I cried and said, "I just don't feel like I'm helping you right now. I don't feel like you're helping me. I feel like we're hurting each other." It was not the appropriate thing to say to a child in crisis. She comforted me while I cried like that, in a way that was mortifying and simultaneously self-destroying, because there is nothing I wanted less than to make this child feel like she had to be an adult. She's had enough of that. But I did it anyway, and I cried all day long, until the night, when I fell  sobbing like a nine-year-old while watching Boy Meets World  on YouTube -- only because I was too miserable and lazy to be bothered to pull a Gimore Girls DVD out of the DVD binder.

Things didn't get better. The week wore on, and there were lots of conversations about whether I was fit to be around children. At that point, I argued that no, I wasn't. And how could I possibly be so bad at something I'd been doing for so long?

When you are sad, you can't remember the things you love.

And the thing is, anyone could have told me, "Sophie, you love comedy and art supplies and making birthday cards and singing at your creaky old piano and counting birds and the wind chime tree and most of the vegetables in season this time of year and your sister and watching swing dances." Anyone could have said that. It would have made no difference, because when you are deep in it like that, there's no listening to anyone. I was grumpy and inconsolable. My co-worker said, "These bad things seem to always happens all at once. Chalk it up to the full moon."

T gets mad, and you could suggest anything to her; anything in the world. You could shower her with presents or distractions; tell her it's all ok; try to bow to her every whim. Or you could shout at her; scare her; threaten her. It makes no difference. When she is deep in it like that, everyone -- including T -- wants things to be just the opposite, but no one can figure out exactly how to get them there.

You need an unstapler. Or in this case, an un-full moon.

Now, an unstapler is not so mysterious. It's shaped like a metal alligator and you can buy one at Office Depot. An un-full moon, on the other hand, is tricky.

I spent night after night at work, going late (8:30... 9... "Is it 9:30 already?"), reading, writing to people, trying to figure out what I needed to do differently, wondering if I should just walk away from the whole project of working with kids who are angry all the time. I felt like the harder I worked on it, the worse it got. Really. 

So one day last week, probably in an effort to avoid getting some kind of medical condition from overthinking things, I just let go. I stopped trying so hard. And the moon started to wane.

Today, T was not so mad. There was a brief spell wherein she was disappointed about what she had to have for lunch (creamed corn is gross). But then she was distracted by a butterfly, and maybe she started to think that she didn't want to scream and kick and throw a fit after all,  and, as if by magic, she calmed down. For the first time in a month, we got through the day. No tricky techniques, no revelations. 

The bottom line is that the way to get an un-full moon is to wait. You cannot force the moon to change. The moon will change on its own. But when it did change, I was still there, and T was still there, and our respect for each other had deepened, because somewhere inside ourselves, we must have trusted that it would. Moons do that.

I like people who are solution-oriented and gung-ho about change. I like action steps and theory-to-practice stuff just as much as the next guy. But sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and wait. Change takes time. 

Everything Changes

I can tell that it is going to feel like fall soon. I can feel it in the mornings, the snap. I'm the kind of person who always likes the season it's about to be. I'm always just outside of feeling wonderful. That's one way to look at it. The other is to say that I'm a fan of change.

This is my first journal entry on a new blog, on a new website... and indication that I have a new idea of the person I want to be.

It's like moving to a new house.

Here are the places I've lived:

1. Burlingame Avenue, in Portland. My parents always said we were going to REALLY move, but we didn't. At various stages of their lives, they built additions to the house so it would feel like we were moving. The fireplace that used to be on the deck is now in a whole new marble dining room. There's a new deck. That's how they hatched a new place without having to go to one.
2. Soft stays in New Jersey, Washington, D.C., San Diego. I remember lots of tan in the houses and apartments we lived in, because we just took up the furniture someone left there for us. It was all very clinical. Those places never felt like home, because my parents are not interested in tan at all.
3. Anderson dorm at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I loved living in a dorm and I would do it again. There were all these under-utilized spaces in the dorm, like study rooms and basement couches. There was even a ping pong table. It smelled like hot chocolate all the time. I slept in a bunk bed with my boyfriend and my roommate and my roommate's boyfriend. That's the only time in life when that kind of sleeping arrangement is really acceptable, isn't it.
4. Then I moved to The Writing House and The Global Awareness House. Those were separate places, but it was one year. That was exactly the same as living in a dorm in every way. Except at The Writing House our ceiling was very low, and the windows were small and bright, and I thought I might try to live in a house like that again someday. 
5. The GLASS House on Otis Street stood for "Grant, Leah, Ari, Sado, Sophie." We were the original occupants of that house. People didn't get the acronym and they thought we had sex there. Grant and I broke up at some point and I moved into the closet-sun room upstairs that wasn't really a room at all, but more a bowling alley with doors. That's where I adopted Satchmo, the cat. Man, did he ever hate that narrow little room. He would get in the vinyl trash can and meow for hours.
6. 1230 Louisiana Avenue in New Orleans. A southern mansion. I lived in the attic and watched mice go in and out of the bookshelf. I had a tiny fridge up there with me and I always kept beer, celery, and biscuit dough in there. Those are three things, for the record, that I don't think I have bought since I lived at 1230 Louisiana Avenue.
7. Gayoso Street. You could hear the rain so bright and clear from that house. Three porches, and a dead eggplant tree in the middle of the back yard.
8. It's my second year at this house on Toulouse Street. It floods when the rains are bad, and the wood always smells wet. Last year, when I was going through a break-up, I burned endless "pumpkin pie" candles near my desk, and now you get a strong flavor of that every time you sit down in here. Even with all the cracks in the windows (for the cockroaches to come in through), it feels like the perfect house. But I still know I won't live here forever. And that's good, because change is good.

I look forward to living here, at CRAYON DANCES. By the way, I'm keeping The New Storyville live for the foreseeable future. 

Take a deep breath while you look back. And then look forward.