Cranberry Nonsense

Short Story - Cow Pie

2006-06-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

It was called Cow Pie, a hideous name for something people buy in confection shops, put in their mouths, chew, swallow, and enjoy. It floated in the breeze behind the department store filled with more meaningful Cow Pies, Cow Pies with purpose, Cow Pies with Cow Pies in them.

This Cow Pie wandered off, alone, empty, and pieless.

It glistened in the sun before drifting into the shadows, its silver insides smelling ironically rich and sweet, orange outsides bright and attractive like a prep school student at graduation, waving, smiling, floating among the commoners.

The Cow Pie faltered in its solemn path down the weary alley. It shook and shivered against the concrete, unable to raise, to fly in the breeze like the lucky Safeway bag that spun in circles up ahead, boasting its impossible ariel cartwheels.

It started to sink. The fun was over. The Cow Pie sighed, merely bristling in the wind.

Then it heard barking.

It didn't take long for Cow Pie to gain its motivation. It struggled to catch some air, paining itself to be as a robin in the sky, or a Safeway bag, or an autumn leaf, but nothing could push him higher.

George Bush IS Homer Simpson

2006-04-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

I don't get politics. At all. Can't stand it. Democrats and republicans are the same to me. I don't know which one's the donkey and which one's the elephant. I liken George Bush to Homer Simpson. They're both basically the same. I'm not an avid Simpsons watcher, but if ever they met I'm sure they'd have a lot to talk about. They're ever so similar in their choices of activities. Homer drinks a lot, therefore he pukes a lot. Bush pukes a lot. Homer has had some wacky automobile accidents in his time. Bush can top that. He's crashed into a London police officer on his bicycle while waving to an audience.

Though a sad incident for the officer, I'd say it's a decisive occurrance for the state of America. Animated American comedies have a formula that our government, apparently, has taken a liking to. One day a big-name company has a radical idea which calls for the hire of the stupidest, most incompetent man they could possibly find. They put him in the seat, and watch the company thrive under his nose. I dunno, democracy. I don't think it's working. But as I said, I don't get politics.

I also don't get this: the National Debt Clock. I mean, damn. What a number. I doubt I'll ever see that much in the entire duration of my life, unless they make me a financial manager for Wal-Mart, or Starbucks. Or Halliburton. If Myspace were a company for profit, I'd buy stock in it, or something, regardless of the fact that I know close to nothing about stock.

But I'm only sixteen; I don't need to buy stock in an anti-Constitutional government monopoly. All I need is a pen, a pencil, Panda Express, this laptop, and an occasional relationship (one-night stand).

I also learned today that adoption is bad. Don't adopt. It's evil. Ignore the fact that my mom was adopted and without her I wouldn't exist. It's wrong to go to China and adopt adandoned girls and take them back to America. And as I am writing this admonition with complete sarcasm I'm starting to wonder if I'm really being sarcastic. Are abandoned children from outside of America really better off if you take them back with you?

Well, only if you're smart. And most of us just aren't smart. We don't think about where our new child is from. We're shopping for children, kind of like searching for that perfect kitty-cat to take home. We just want to assimilate her into our burger-grubbing lives and make her into an odd Asian-American girl who looks nothing like her white parents. I dunno. We like to play into stereotypes. All Chinese kids are geniuses, you know. Rich, quiet, wonderful geniuses with pretty slanted eyes. It must really hurt when you care for a child for a whole sixteen years and discover he's letting you down with mediocre looks and ungodly straight B's on his report card.

I feel for you, you rich bastards.

Can I Be Crazy, Too?

2006-03-31T20:41:00.000-08:00

25.2 percent of America's population has at least one mental disorder, and one in ten children have severe symptoms. So in a class of thirty students, three of them could be suffereing from attention deficit disorder, autism, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anorexia, bulimia, or borderline personality disorder.

But you knew that already. You've seen these illnesses in action. After all, everyone who favors dark clothes is depressed, every excessively organized person is OCD, and every skinny girl is anorexic. Fact, fact, and fact. Right?

My point here is obvious. I'm here to tell you--and everyone else I can possible reach--this one simple fact: mental disorders do not double as synonyms, labels, or personal birthrights.

Some people think mental disorders such as depression and bipolarity are cool, and so they take the liberty to diagnose themselves, ignoring just how serious mental disorders can really be. Neat freaks frequently refer to themselves as OCD. People who have issues with authority and want to be able to get away with it? They call themselves bipolar and blame it on their "mood swings." And if you really want to get away with murder, just tell your teacher you've got ADD and you'll breeze right through AP History, easy like Sunday morning.

Rather than accept our own personal quirks, we silly teens find one more way to stick labels on ourselves. Maybe if we all know exactly what these terms mean, we won't feel inclined to cling to them and claim them as something exotic to call ourselves.

The National Institute of Mental Health states that teens suffer from depression the most among any other age group in the United States. Unfortunately, many of us, though suspecting a quivering rift in our fragile minds, do not have cars, or licenses. And those who do have a dependable means of transportation just don't have the time to visit a credible psychiatrist and get themselves checked out. I mean, I sure as hell don't have that kind of time. I've got school until 5:30, and then I have homework (which I never do, but I plan on starting soon), and I have to eat, and don't forget extracurricular activities.

Besides, what would that psychiatrist say? Most teens brave enough to venture into that room lined with bookshelves and sit on the stereotypical chaise fear the psychiatrist's verdict like I fear the rain after wasting $65 to get my hair done. They're so afraid of suddenly becoming undesirable social outcasts. They wonder if they're broken and need to be fixed. Then they wonder how the doctors would go about "fixing" them. (With a wrench, maybe? Suppositories? Gammaradiation?)

But it's all gravy, folks. Nothing's wrong with you until someone else sees it, so just relax. It's all good. We're Americans. We can roll like that.

This has nothing to do with the fact that some teens (not you, of course) have a tendency to label themselves with all kinds of mental disorders, just because they can, and then move on to something else, like the next "How Normal Are You?" quiz. So before you take another lame quiz, please take a moment to enlighten yourself with these quick facts (compiled in less than twenty minutes by a sixteen-year-old girl with chow-chow hair.) I'll break dwow society's views of mental illnesses in the best way I know how: sarcastically.

People diagnosed with ADHD typically have difficulty paying attention. This is due to a low amount of neurotransmitters, the brain's communicative devices. Neurotransmitters send messages to other parts of the brain which stimulate the brain's attention centers. A lack of these chemicals make it difficult for ADHD-diagnosed people to pay attention, whether they're in algebra class or playing a quick game of cards.

People with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, also known as OCD, also have difficulty paying attention, but for a completely different reason. OCD doesn't just relate to cleanliness. I can't stand when people call themselves OCD after offering a handwipe or asking someone to pick up after themselves. This disorder bars people from thinking about more than one thing; their minds are staid on a certain thought. For example, you wake up in the morning from a nightmare. During the nightmare, your dad is killed in a car accident. (Oh no!) The thought sticks to you for a second, but it passes, and you go to take your shower and leave for school.

Elsewhere in your city, some other guy wakes up from the same sort of nightmare. (Oh no?) He gets a bad feeling. It haunts him all morning. You notice him in history class. He can't focus at all; he's busy trying to ignore the fear of his father getting killed. He doesn't each lunch because he's occupied. He calls his father five times during class, to make sure he's okay. The teacher confiscates his phone. He borrows your cell and calls again. The final bell rings and you're heading home (after wrenching your cell phone away from him), while he hops on the bus to his dad's work to meet him at the office. His father's getting exasperated, but the boy is still hardly satisfied. The thought doesn't go away. Certain thoughts--more than just the hand-washing thing--can stick for hours, days, weeks, or even months. It applys to actions and/or thoughts.

Depression. Oh, how we undermine it. Let me just state the obvious beforehand: taking Zoloft or Prozac is not means for bragging. You can't put that on a resume. You don't want that on a resume. Depression and antisocial, brooding behavior is not adequate foundation for an entire Gothic culture. Go ahead and plow me over with hatemail, I don't care. That said, let's move on.

Being depressed is simply being sad and, usually, forlorn. Something got you so out of whack that you just want to curl up under the covers, put on the most emo CD you own, and cry your eyes out for the remainder of the night. When morning comes, you're still a little upset, but you can manage. Reluctantly, you toss your homework in your bag. At school, a friend reminds you of the weird kid that slipped on a banana peel the other day and accidentally grabbed the principal's ass. You laugh. All is well with the world.

A few miles away, before you drop your depressed head on your pillow, another person is settling down for bed as well. She cries herself to sleep, just as you did.

When Dames Turn to Ducks

2006-03-31T15:13:00.000-08:00

Fair play goes foul
When dames turn to ducks,
But only if you see it that way.
I see it that way.
I respond always in the literal,
Never check for the symbol
Until my mind is clear
And not a ray of sun escapes the day.
And by that time my mind's
So set against rhyme and reason
My mind makes up the world's
And the o-zone stays solid in my stead.

Sated civilization, that's the code
For the fowl-to-fellow concept.
After being grounded for so long
Don't we all wish to fly?
If you wanna go then go ahead
If birds can't fly, they sing,
Its cell swings
With the weight of confined dreams
And the steady beat
Of warbling octaves, heartbeats
In her throat.

It's lonely at the top.

2006-03-31T10:25:00.000-08:00

The hills have eyes, but they can't see much. They can't hear too well these days, either. In fact, we hill dwellers ought to pool our funds so MetroPCS users can buy the hills some hearing aids. Gee, that'd be swell.

Other than watch crows fight each other in midair the amount of stuff available to do way up here is just about nil. No phones, no food. Well, no good food. Let's see, what do we have here: organic ginger snaps, Wheat Thins, month-old Fuji apples, and a microwavable frozen enchilada. I've looked at that enchilada several times and questioned its existence. Fighting a losing battle against boredom I unwrapped it, set it on the counter, and pondered it. It just doesn't look like food to me. When I get hungry enough I head down to Mission and find a decent restaurant to blow money on. Anything to avoid eating that frigtening contraption of beef and what may be government cheese.

Other than talk to cats and stare and strange "food" products, sitting is a choice thing to do up here. There's all kinds of things to sit on up here: chairs, carpets, those weird recliner thingies that aren't recliners (what's plural for "chez?"), tables, etc. Out of all of these things I prefer to sit on the kitchen counter. Oh what fun it is to look at empty cabinets all around you.

It's a nice day, though. No point in moping. I'm sure there's someone, somewhere, that I can be bothering right now, but unfortunately I only have two phone numbers from Cali people. If I bug them any more than I do now I might have them filing restraining orders, but what the hell! It's lonely here!

Maybe I'll just catch a flick, or something.

Sixty Minutes

2006-03-31T08:08:00.000-08:00

Sketches of a perfect world
Defined by stride and everyone's
Paid by the line on which they walk, I'm
Not really sure what I'm talking about
But still I'm content to talk,
I've got another thing to write,
It's due tonight,
I don't know if I'll go to the show 'cause I know
If I go I'll miss the golden hour
That clusters an eighth of a day into sixty minutes
Just for me, a moment in time
When nobody's gone, everyone's here
And soundwaves bounce along for my
Security.
That paper and show gotta go 'cause dammit,
I want my sixty minutes.

Three hundred sixty seconds between
Freedom and home.
Sixty minutes to make history!
After that it's assembly.
I'm just trying to turn this mess they gave me
To a decent working life machine,
Just trying to find the words
Just right to say goodbye
To fourteen thousand memories left behind--
How long'll that take? An hour a day
For fourteen thousand days...

I wish I had more time on my hands.

Poetry Rox My Sox

2006-03-30T23:24:00.000-08:00

I decided to start a new blog, so here it is. The question of why I wanted a new blog is still somewhat of a mystery, though. Maybe I got tired of that old, tired name. Gijinka. Ew. Say it. Gijinka. Maybe I wanted to be like todaysrandomluckywinner. You know: start a new blog and suddenly reap the fruits of absolute awesomeness, attract a ton of fans who cling to your every daily word, totter on a tightrope hovering over celebrity status. Yeah, that's what I wanted!

But seeing as I don't have that Lucky Winner material, I'm content to settle for the funky new blog name.

As of lately I seem to have developed an odd attraction to the BART stations. No matter where I go, by whatever means, I always end up at an effing BART station. Either that or the plaza off of Mission where I tend to eat at. I ended up going there at 9 PM out of nowhere. Yesterday I took a nap at City Hall. You'd think I'd go home eventually, but I don't wanna 'cause the phones don't work and it's lonely up there in the hills.

In other news, I think I've fallen in love. (I also think I've said that before, only to realize three months later that my "love" was a confused and ravenous fight against lust. Woo boy.) Good thing I'm not in love with a boy. Hallelujah. But it's not a girl, either, and not a transexual. (By the way, I'm starting to wonder if I'm asexual, excluding a brief lapse of time between the full moon in my period, at which point I become wildly straight.) I am in fact in love with spoken word poetry.

It's so mysterious and underground and somehow flagrantly sexy. Go to a poetry slam. The energy will grab at your limbs and lift your chin so you can't ignore the speaker. (And that energy makes even the lamest nobody on a stage look irresistable!) The winner of the Youth Speaks Poetry Slam finals? George Watsky. Plain as hell, isn't he? Wrote a poem about being a virgin and proud of it. STANDING EFFING OVATION. (EDIT: Google is frightening me. It actually found a picture of Mista Watsky. I'm scared.)

Spoken word poets pour their hearts out on that stage. I'm in love with the fact that these people have such a passion for what they do, it's really pretty cool to watch. Even the most soft-spoken person can speak and shake people's hearts, if their own hearts are really in it. As I said, I'm in love with what they do.

So what'll I do about it? I dunno. Ask me tomorrow.

(This guy's cool too.)