Two things

First thing: not a lot is going on here. I've moved "permanently" (ahahahahaha, yeah, like that will ever be true) back to college town, which is thankfully only an hour away from grad school town. Yes, that's right -- ALB is again pursuing higher education at the expense of The Man. Stay tuned this August to see how bad I can eff up classes and my promised job as a graduate assistant.

But til then, it's pretty much reading, hanging out, and scouring Craigslist for job postings. Fortunately I've been able to see some friends who have either stayed here or are passing through. While I do love catching up with recent news in my friends' lives, I have to admit my favorite part of almost any reunion is remembering old times. Particularly terrible times. As someone once said, "Comedy is tragedy plus time," and at no time is this more apparent than when I find myself sipping overpriced tea in a hipster coffeehouse while reminiscing how I once lived on peanut butter for three months.

This experience made me realize a few important things. One, that no matter what terrible things happen to me, if I can make it into a story that makes people laugh/cry/recoil in horror (or see the potential for such a story), it never seems as bad. And two, that I have a huge backlog of these occurrences that have never made it into blogs, letters, or even conversation. In other words...

I have a lot of horrible stories that I've never told you.

...

That suddenly strikes me as a terrible phrase to drop on someone. For example, please imagine this in the context of my wedding night.  I'm standing on a moonlit balcony overlooking the ocean when my new husband (you may know him as Mark Knopfler) emerges from our suite and embraces me passionately under the stars. "Oh, darling," he whispers, "I can't wait to start our new life together. Loving one another, sharing everything..."

I lift my face from the embroidered placket of his cowboy shirt to gaze deeply into his eyes.

"Speaking of sharing... I have a lot of horrible stories that I've never told you."

...

Yes, even in my secret dreams of rock star matrimony, I can't picture myself not creeping someone out.

Regardless, I'm planning on digging deep into the convoluted, poorly ventilated archives of my mind to dredge out stories that will further illustrate why this blog is named what it is. Maybe a series: Awesomely Bad Story of the Week. Or Day. I really don't have a lot going on here. We'll see.

Anyway, on to thing two. In the process of moving, I came to the realization that I have a lot of books, probably way more than other people with the exception of Talmudic scholars and professors.  And in the process of packing, something else hit me: this stuff weighs a ton. I suddenly  needed to justify to myself (and others) the time and headache incurred by dragging these things cross-country.

How did anyone think I could get along without my books? Didn't they know writers need tons of books? In short, no. No one thinks I'm a writer, and after .5 seconds of introspection I had to come to that conclusion as well. If I were a published writer, people would know I'd rather lose a limb than my books. Or, as is more likely, I'd never be faced with this dilemma because I'd be a wealthy and respected member of the literati, amirite? Not even a little.

I also had to justify the contents of my book collection: I'm not hoarding the works of Shakespeare here. To be honest, at least ten pounds of my book collection is Babysitters Club, which they can have when they pry the regular series, Mysteries, and Super Specials from my cold, dead fingers. A LOT of it is '90s era young adult books (Beverly Cleary, Jerry Spinelli, etc.). And a substantial portion is books that I keep because I know they're terrible and dated -- '80s kids' books with lots of rad slang and bitchin' fashion, as well as old textbooks with no sense of shame or being P.C.

To sum up, I need to justify owning tons of books with little literary merit ("Trust me, I'm a writer!"), and I need to do it through writing ("No, really, look at this thing I wrote!"). You know what that means, right?

New blog.

a short but terrible story

On I-40 between Nashville and Johnson City, there is a town called Monterey where I stopped recently. It's a town of less than three thousand, whose per capita income is about $12,000. So there's that.

Anyway, by the gas station is a hotel, and in the hotel parking lot is a little covered area with a bench. I assumed it was a historical marker, or even a memorial for someone who died on the highway. Oh no. It is a giant engraved rock with the 10 Commandments. This strikes me as a little weird, and I start to walk away. I came here to buy gas, not be preached to beside the dumpster of the Super 8.

But wait -- there's more.

Upon closer inspection,  discover there are two giant rocks, each with ten commandments. Sitting on the bench, all you can see is ten commandment rocks on either side. I just...

Why two, you ask? They're engraved in different fonts, but surely that doesn't justify it. Oh, now I see: one of them is wrong. Yes, wrong. The one on the left has the same phrase repeated for commandments two and three. Whoever was entrusted with engraving this rock (or, more likely, keying the words into a computer that would then do it with a laser) was clearly taking a brain holiday.

Of course, my favorite part is not just that it's wrong; it's that I don't think anyone noticed for awhile. This isn't like accidentally writing something down twice. No, this is literally carved in stone and then cemented into a parking lot in middle TN. And then, instead of fixing it or taking it out, the town's solution is just to put another one beside it. Problem solved.

I wanted to laugh, but then I saw the hotel was flying an unknown flag with a cross on it, which I could only assume to be the Klan's. It's not (it's the Methodists'), but I still left this town in a hurry. This is almost as good as the huge rebel flag on I-40 W... almost.