my favorite theory about anything ever is that the titanic sank because too many people time traveled to that place to try to stop the titanic from sinking
1: Women should be more like badass rockstars.
2: Yeah.
1: We should encourage them to be badass rockstars.
2: Yeah!
1: 'cuz, you know, we fuck women.
2: Yeah?
1: And then we'd be fucking badass rockstars!
2: YEAH!
...
...
1: Turns out badass rockstars fuck scumbags and models.
2: Well, fuck that.
Since I headed back to Philly on Monday I have overheard 4 different people casually use the word “schlonging” as if they’d been saying it their whole lives.
Coca-Cola commissioned a 30-minute animated film with a jazz soundtrack based off the breakthrough comic strip repackaging depressive cynicism for kids. The plot is that the protagonist is depressed and so his psychiatrist tells him to conduct religious rituals to gain a sense of purpose but no one’s even taking the rituals seriously so they don’t work and the climax is literally straight-up King James Bible verses about our savior Jesus Christ reminding them to take the Christmas rituals seriously, at which point everyone is happy.
And America was like “yes, correct, this is so correct that we want to incorporate it itself into our national-popular Christmas rituals every year”, like the Swedes and their Donald Duck thing.
so i immigrated to the US at age 9, right, and one of the first things my family did was join the local Chinese church. as far as the whole “figuring out how to do things so we no longer have to live in the back shed of Uncle Joe’s* Magic Emporium” thing goes, it’s a pretty sound strategy! now we had people to teach my dad how to drive and give us old furniture and say “hey, Seattle is pretty rainy maybe you should rent an apartment-like space before either a) the shed roof caves in b) your daughter with the famously delicate constitution falls dramatically ill from a strain of black mold or possibly herpes”
*is not my uncle, that’s what his store was called. he sold magic gadgets and my dad knew him because???? possibly in a past life they ran a meth empire in Albuquerque, who knows
ANYWAY. thanks to the church i did not fall dramatically ill from black mold or possibly herpes, but there was an unforeseen factor in joining a Christian church, which was that they? were pretty hardcore? about Jesus?**
**in a nice “we build houses for the homeless” way, not in…the other way
given that we’d just immigrated and that China’s religious policy is worshiping Mao’s preserved corpse ehhhhh…let’s call it “freedom of atheism,” my family was decidedly not hardcore about Jesus. my parents mostly took the bemused “i guess Jesus is okay since he indirectly led to us living in a place suited for human habitation” route, but i
was
DISGUSTED.
i was the first kid in my class to get her red scarf, okay, and when we sang the national anthem and saluted the flag every morning i fucking meant what i was singing. we almost didn’t come to America; my dad had more lucrative job offers in Germany and Belgium, but i put my foot down because everyone knows Europe is full of gross imperialists Dad, GOSH, and the Americans helped us fight off the Japanese.
so seeing all these fellow Chinese believing in THE CAPITALIST GOD was basically the worst thing to ever happen to my delicate psyche. my parents’ tacit approval was even worse: DID PATRIOTISM AND COMMUNISM MEAN NOTHING TO THEM? DIDN’T THEY KNOW THAT DOING NOTHING AGAINST OPPRESSION MADE THEM OPPRESSORS THEMSELVES??
clearly something needed to be done.
so because the church was pretty hardcore about Jesus, it was understandably also hardcore about Christmas. big party, massive intricately decorated REAL TREE, sleepover for the kids with presents in the morning—you name it. everyone was going to be there.
WHAT A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO PROVE TO EVERYONE HOW WRONG THEY ARE ABOUT JESUS.
my plan:
sleep UNDER the giant real Christmas tree: y’know, the one with real pointy needles reaching all the way down to the base? that sheds? with lots of pokey tinsel?
catch Jesus in the act of depositing presents***: look. i’d seen like, ALL of Scooby Doo by this point. i knew Jesus was probably a real person, just not the Son of God.
subdue Jesus so he’s still around when everyone else wakes up: CLEARLY VERY FEASIBLE, given that Jesus was a heavyset white dude who used superhuman agility and strength to deliver presents around the world overnight and possibly had reindeer minions and i weighed 70 pounds at most while sopping wet.
(who is Santa Claus?? who cares)
????
EVERYONE MAGICALLY BECOMES AN ATHEIST AGAIN, AMERICA BECOMES A COMMUNIST STATE
***even if i didn’t believe in him, why was i slavishly devoted stopping a highly altruistic man who gave? people? presents? did i hate joy????
sure enough, at around 3 in the morning i heard soft boots approaching the tree. i reached out and snatched one of the Ankles of Jesus
—whereupon Youth Pastor Liao screamed “OH MY LORD” and kicked me in the face.
and THAT, dear friends, is how i spent my first Christmas in America with a concussion.
From/for the renn faire. The carrot was a prop (in character, I was a farmer) the knife vendor would clear his inventory at 90% off at the end of the summer, and all us kids carried throwing weapons we’d start dicking around with if we were left alone for 30 seconds.
(The older ones would start hitting on each other instead. The transition period must’ve been weird.)
((Now that I think of it I was 15 and 16 when I did this, which was the transition period, and looking back I was getting hit on, I was just oblivious.))
A VHS tape of Garbage’s performance at Rockpalast (’98, I think, though it could be ’96), obtained by sending a blank tape to someone from the trash-talk listserv.
CCG cards:
Magic, Legend of the Five Rings? Of course!
Battletech, Netrunner, Illuminati, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle(/Jyhad)? Yeah, I remember playing those.
Legend of the Burning Sands, 7th Sea, Deadlands, Rage, Spellfire, Wyvern, well, I… at least remembered those existed. Now that you remind me.
Star Wars CCG? Star Trek TNG? Well, I guess they were licensing everything they could get their… okay, yeah, Middle Earth too, that makes sense, and Harry Potter, and original Star Trek. Like I said, they were licensing everything they–
The X-Files? I didn’t remember that was a game. Or Dune. Babylon 5? I didn’t remember that was a SHOW. Like I said, they were– Killer Instinct? REALLY?
On the Edge? What the fuck is this and how do I have at least 3 starter packs worth of it?
Redemption, Wildstorms… Clive Barker’s fucking Imajica? Are you shitting me? Everway? THAT’S NOT EVEN A GAME.
A collection of handsome, frame-ready prints of major bodies of the solar system, courtesy of The Planetary Society
A surprising amount of makeup
A newspaper from 1997. Highlights:
The debut of the B-2 Stealth Bomber (front page, above the fold)
An account of a local murder trial involving newfangled “DNA testing”
Long article, starting on the front and continuing to half a page inside, in which the downward spiral of a former local fire chief’s life into crime and despair is attributed, at extreme length, to his tragic affliction with the exotic “bipolar disorder”. (“Also known as manic-depressive illness, bipolar disorder takes its victims on an emotional tornado, raising them to godlike highs and dropping them into abysmal pits of depression.”)
An absurdly long account of a zoning suit involving the construction of an unpermitted garage.
3 pages worth of printed sheet music for the Cruel Angel’s Thesis vocals. (I can read musical notation at a “drummer” level - I theoretically understand why a half note and a half rest is different from a whole note, and that notes further up are higher, but how much, why that much, and what the hell the clefs and sharps and flats mean is a mystery. Also, I can’t carry a tune in my natural register.)
