A Butterburger Blindside!
6 years ago
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
kind of sweet, mostly weird
C: did i ever tell u how i used to get really emotionally attached to balloons?
L: WHAT?! BALLOOONS???
L: WHAT?!?!
C: yeah hahahahha. like as a kid, i would get really attached when i was given a balloon. and i would tote it around with me everywher ein the house and tie it to my bed post and pet it
L: oh i was alwasy soooo sad when they died or flew away. it was painful!
C: I would get really upset when it deflated and died
L: i actually hated getting balloons b/c i knew they didn't last
C: i remember waking up in the middle of the night and see it dancing around and it would make me so happy
L: they'd hang around my room for MONTHS b/c i couldn't bear to get rid of them
L: WHAT?! BALLOOONS???
L: WHAT?!?!
C: yeah hahahahha. like as a kid, i would get really attached when i was given a balloon. and i would tote it around with me everywher ein the house and tie it to my bed post and pet it
L: oh i was alwasy soooo sad when they died or flew away. it was painful!
C: I would get really upset when it deflated and died
L: i actually hated getting balloons b/c i knew they didn't last
C: i remember waking up in the middle of the night and see it dancing around and it would make me so happy
L: they'd hang around my room for MONTHS b/c i couldn't bear to get rid of them
Monday, May 4, 2009
Boat Shoes and Renal Failure
Fun Dad Time:
Called the house, and my Dad immediately asks me if I've ever had renal failure because there's a great kidney failure lawyer in NYC that I could go to. I tell him that while i've never suffered from renal failure, it is common in cats. To which he responds, "Like anal sacks! Dogs are to anal sacks, as Cats are to renal failure." He then proceeded to try to sell me his old pair of Sperry Topsiders, slightly used, said that if I put them up to my ear I can hear the ocean. He called it "Mike's Sperry seashell shack." I'm so glad were share the same genes.
Called the house, and my Dad immediately asks me if I've ever had renal failure because there's a great kidney failure lawyer in NYC that I could go to. I tell him that while i've never suffered from renal failure, it is common in cats. To which he responds, "Like anal sacks! Dogs are to anal sacks, as Cats are to renal failure." He then proceeded to try to sell me his old pair of Sperry Topsiders, slightly used, said that if I put them up to my ear I can hear the ocean. He called it "Mike's Sperry seashell shack." I'm so glad were share the same genes.
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Story of Pinky
Throughout my childhood, my parents always begrudgingly acquiesced me and my brother's pleas for pets. Though they were openly disgusted by our menagerie, I caught them more than once cooing to our pigmy goats asleep in their dog house, or giving our cocker spaniel chicken and rice after spewing diarrhea throughout the living room. And though we've all exhibited some degree of affection toward most of our animals, more than one of our beloved pets has met a bizarre, untimely death. Though these stories were tragic, they've been told at countless parties, family gatherings, school functions and meetings. One of the crowd favorites is the story of Pinky. Pinky was an overactive orange hamster acquired from our neighbors who, for reasons unbeknownst to us decided to give up the hamster. We had him for an epic 4 years before he died, clawing desperately across his wood chip enclosure, expiring in a position generally saved for zombie movies. That evening my dad placed Pinky in a shoe box filled with a bed of woodchips, placed the box in a white trash bag, and marked the bag with “Pinky” and a cross, as to not confuse the box with something edible or disposable. He placed Pinky in the garage, which would later become affectionately known as the Animal Mausoleum. As it was January in Massachusetts, and the ground long since frozen, burying Pinky would have to wait until the spring.
Winter came and went, as did the Spring, Summer and Fall, until we found ourselves, a year later, with Pinky still in the garage. After realizing our mistake, my dad assured us, Pinky would be buried in the Spring. And again, the seasons came and went, and again, we were housing a dead animal for yet another winter. This pattern continued until, when I was 12, Pinky rose from the woodchips. It was the fall of that year, and we were holding an end-of-the-season soccer party for my team, complete with screaming 12-year-old girls and pizza. At this point, Pinky had become something of an urban legend, and my best friend Gina suggested that we have a celebratory resurrection of Pinky. My Dad agreed and a pack of girls followed him down to the garage, trailed by my mother, camera ready to capture any Kodak moment that could potentially arise from such a grotesque occasion. Dad put on his work gloves, and began to remove the marked, white trash bag, now a little musty and dusty, and revealed the shoebox. The girls shuddered and a few squealed at the decaying corner of the box, leaking woodchips, and my Dad slowly pealed away the lid of the box. He rustled in the woodchips a few tense moments, until revealing Pinky, dangling from his stubby tail between my Dad’s thumb and forefinger, perfectly preserved in his riga mortis state. Only he had deflated to no wider than a book of matches, and I can’t help but to compare his condition to that of those vacuum-sealed plastic bags you use to store your favorite Christmas sweaters from Grandma. Gina stepped forward and pet Pinky’s head which, yes, thanks to my mother, we still have photographic evidence of.
Fast forward now to the summer I was 16, and my brother 13. My Dad’s brother Bobby and his wife were visiting from Ohio for the weekend. Of course this led to a few too many Gin and Tonics and suddenly, Dad and Bobby had hatched a brilliant plan. Using the leftover rocket firework from the fourth of July, they planned to give Pinky the respectable send off he so deserved. Using the sandbox as a launching pad, my dad and uncle prepared to strap Pinky to the rocket and launch him into the woods behind the house. Suddenly, my aunt, feeling a wave of guilt, or sobriety, became seriously concerned that launching our dead pet on a rocket might “scar” us, as if the use of his flattened corpse for dinner party spectacle hadn’t scarred us already? Despite giving our blessing to give Pinky his rightful send off, the project lost momentum, and Pinky returned to the animal mausoleum.
Years later, Pinky’s saga continued, during my sophomore year at the Rhode Island School of Design. I had been struggling all semester with an illustration professor with whom I constantly butted heads. There was just no way he and I were going to see eye to eye on anything, and I made it my personal mission to use my assignments as ways to piss him off, even at the expense of actually following the assignment. One of our assignments was to present an object to the class that evoked, fear, disgust or feelings of love to the viewer. I of course took it upon myself to come up with the most foul object possible. After discarding a few ideas that ended in my potential imprisonment, I gave my parents a call and asked if Pinky could come on a field trip. The next morning, my Dad dropped off the dusty white bag and a pair of work gloves on his way to a meeting. That afternoon in studio, everyone placed their objects on a table in the front of the room. Fearing my amorphous blob of trash bag and rotting shoe box might give away it’s contents, I opted to place a hamster ball on the table as the decoy object. The professor quickly chose the hamster ball in order to ridicule it, to which I quickly came to the front of the room to announce my REAL object. Dressed in a vomitously saccharin outfit, complete with polka dot rain boots and a pink tulle skirt, I placed the bag on the table and put on the work gloves. I slowly untied the knot in the trash bag and removed the box. A sense of general discomfort overtook the class as I revealed the rotting box, but I gave no cause for real fear or disgust, as my demeanor spoke only of sweetness. I removed the lid and, just as my father had years before, rustled around the woodchips until revealing Pinky, his tail held between my thumb and forefinger. Most people gasped, a few left the room all together, my good friend Jenn howled with laughter, and my professor, still holding the hamster ball, turned an unhealthy shade of grey. Though I explained that the hamster was my object, he continued to babble on nervously about the hamster ball and how it was a clever way of evoking both fear and love. I didn’t follow his logic, but then again, I doubt he did either. He quickly moved on to the next object on the table, though Pinky became infamous throughout campus. Later that year, in a rush to move out of the campus dorms, Pinky was sadly left behind in the apartment. It’s interesting, that after realizing my mistake, and knowing he was gone for good, I ironically felt a greater sense of loss then, than I did after he died, as did my parents who were subsequently charged $250 for “trash removal” from the residence life office.
Winter came and went, as did the Spring, Summer and Fall, until we found ourselves, a year later, with Pinky still in the garage. After realizing our mistake, my dad assured us, Pinky would be buried in the Spring. And again, the seasons came and went, and again, we were housing a dead animal for yet another winter. This pattern continued until, when I was 12, Pinky rose from the woodchips. It was the fall of that year, and we were holding an end-of-the-season soccer party for my team, complete with screaming 12-year-old girls and pizza. At this point, Pinky had become something of an urban legend, and my best friend Gina suggested that we have a celebratory resurrection of Pinky. My Dad agreed and a pack of girls followed him down to the garage, trailed by my mother, camera ready to capture any Kodak moment that could potentially arise from such a grotesque occasion. Dad put on his work gloves, and began to remove the marked, white trash bag, now a little musty and dusty, and revealed the shoebox. The girls shuddered and a few squealed at the decaying corner of the box, leaking woodchips, and my Dad slowly pealed away the lid of the box. He rustled in the woodchips a few tense moments, until revealing Pinky, dangling from his stubby tail between my Dad’s thumb and forefinger, perfectly preserved in his riga mortis state. Only he had deflated to no wider than a book of matches, and I can’t help but to compare his condition to that of those vacuum-sealed plastic bags you use to store your favorite Christmas sweaters from Grandma. Gina stepped forward and pet Pinky’s head which, yes, thanks to my mother, we still have photographic evidence of.
Fast forward now to the summer I was 16, and my brother 13. My Dad’s brother Bobby and his wife were visiting from Ohio for the weekend. Of course this led to a few too many Gin and Tonics and suddenly, Dad and Bobby had hatched a brilliant plan. Using the leftover rocket firework from the fourth of July, they planned to give Pinky the respectable send off he so deserved. Using the sandbox as a launching pad, my dad and uncle prepared to strap Pinky to the rocket and launch him into the woods behind the house. Suddenly, my aunt, feeling a wave of guilt, or sobriety, became seriously concerned that launching our dead pet on a rocket might “scar” us, as if the use of his flattened corpse for dinner party spectacle hadn’t scarred us already? Despite giving our blessing to give Pinky his rightful send off, the project lost momentum, and Pinky returned to the animal mausoleum.
Years later, Pinky’s saga continued, during my sophomore year at the Rhode Island School of Design. I had been struggling all semester with an illustration professor with whom I constantly butted heads. There was just no way he and I were going to see eye to eye on anything, and I made it my personal mission to use my assignments as ways to piss him off, even at the expense of actually following the assignment. One of our assignments was to present an object to the class that evoked, fear, disgust or feelings of love to the viewer. I of course took it upon myself to come up with the most foul object possible. After discarding a few ideas that ended in my potential imprisonment, I gave my parents a call and asked if Pinky could come on a field trip. The next morning, my Dad dropped off the dusty white bag and a pair of work gloves on his way to a meeting. That afternoon in studio, everyone placed their objects on a table in the front of the room. Fearing my amorphous blob of trash bag and rotting shoe box might give away it’s contents, I opted to place a hamster ball on the table as the decoy object. The professor quickly chose the hamster ball in order to ridicule it, to which I quickly came to the front of the room to announce my REAL object. Dressed in a vomitously saccharin outfit, complete with polka dot rain boots and a pink tulle skirt, I placed the bag on the table and put on the work gloves. I slowly untied the knot in the trash bag and removed the box. A sense of general discomfort overtook the class as I revealed the rotting box, but I gave no cause for real fear or disgust, as my demeanor spoke only of sweetness. I removed the lid and, just as my father had years before, rustled around the woodchips until revealing Pinky, his tail held between my thumb and forefinger. Most people gasped, a few left the room all together, my good friend Jenn howled with laughter, and my professor, still holding the hamster ball, turned an unhealthy shade of grey. Though I explained that the hamster was my object, he continued to babble on nervously about the hamster ball and how it was a clever way of evoking both fear and love. I didn’t follow his logic, but then again, I doubt he did either. He quickly moved on to the next object on the table, though Pinky became infamous throughout campus. Later that year, in a rush to move out of the campus dorms, Pinky was sadly left behind in the apartment. It’s interesting, that after realizing my mistake, and knowing he was gone for good, I ironically felt a greater sense of loss then, than I did after he died, as did my parents who were subsequently charged $250 for “trash removal” from the residence life office.
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