Picking On the Emotionally Impaired, and I Wanna Be Sedated

November 4, 2013Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

But how do you keep them out? They’re like zombies- and they’re multiplying.

Every once in awhile I like the Ramones, even though their songs are to music as junk food is to real food- trite, and full of empty calories, but oddly satisfying while they are being consumed. I don’t think I could sit through hours and hours of “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “I Wanna Be Sedated,” but I like to just zone out and not have to think too much every now and then. The Ramones are good for that.

My penchant for rock, metal and the occasional grunge or punk fix would make my voice teachers cringe, but the line between classical music and orchestral metal is a very fine one. Even though I’ve not played bass or fronted a metal band in 20 years, I still find the musician in me analyzing what I’m listening to. I still have an appreciation for what is technically good and what is more or less musical junk food, for whatever that’s worth. I hate to say it, but that’s probably why most of my MP3 collection dates back to 1985 and earlier.

There is some good new music out there today, but it’s not mainstream. You have to know where to look. The unholy crud that is currently polluting the airwaves and the TV screens generally does suck. It sucks like sucking has never sucked before. We have fantastic, amazing, digital technology but we’re recording and distributing total crap on it. We traded Steve Perry for Katy Perry (really sucky trade there) and I don’t understand why. I mean in 1981 we had Steve Perry as the greatest singer ever and Ronald Reagan as president. Today we have Katy Perry and Obama. Go figure. The evidence for devolution is right before our eyes (and ears.) Blecch.

I’m just thankful that through the gift of technology I can bring the past up to date in some ways. I can get good music on MP3s and save good songs to my SD card so I can spare myself from the pollution of the airwaves.

When Jerry and I went on the train ride last week it was cold. The train was delayed because they had oversold and had to add cars to the train. A fat old lady took Jerry’s seat while he decided to go out and smoke because we had to wait, even when I told him that it was crowded, therefore, the “move your feet lose your seat” rule would come into play, so we had to find different seats to sit together. Even so, it was a good time and very interesting. The train car we rode in until the first stop was built in 1927, the second car we rode on for the rest of the trip was built in the mid 1950s and had two levels. We sat up top in the second car for a better view.

On the first car we sat behind a Japanese family. Mom and Dad were facing Jerry and I, while their teenage son and preteen daughter were sitting across from their parents. I could see over the boy’s shoulder that he was more interested in his i-phone and his animé cartoons that would be porn if they weren’t cartoons. My question is, since animé is just cartoons, is it really porn or is it just a porn substitute? His mother probably still would have been mortified if she had seen what I was getting an eyeful of, but either she didn’t know or didn’t care about what Junior was watching.

I remember Steve-o’s brief infatuation with animé “sort-of-porn” at the same age. I knew full well what he was gawking at online, but I figured if I made a big scene over it like my mother did over anything even remotely risqué that it would become an obsession for him. She was more wigged out about finding rubbers in his personal effects than about finding cigarettes, which struck me odd. Sex can potentially kill you, but wearing a rubber can help prevent STDs, so he’s mitigating that risk. Cigarettes are in no way safe. I was more upset about the smokes. But Mom’s Catholic, and as far as I know for Catholics, smoking is not considered a sin- you can be a priest and smoke- but sex (unless one is married and having sex for procreational reasons only) is a mortal sin. Doesn’t that suck?

I’m no paragon of moral virtue, so I have absolutely no room to talk.

So Easy to Play Up Your Breakdown, 80’s Wisdom, and Life on the Trains

July 12, 2013Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Who needs those excess phalanges?

Sometimes it’s fun to play Captain Obvious, but sometimes it bothers me that society is so dumbed down that we need warning labels on hot coffee, and detailed instructions on how not to put our hands in, on or near sharp things. If you are aware of what a chainsaw does to wood, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine what it might do to body parts, but if you need a visual, consider the following the instructional video for “chainsaws meet body parts:”

Though it was originally released in 1974, this was the granddaddy of all the 80’s slasher films I enjoyed so much.

Then again, with the word “massacre” in the title, you know it’s going to be good- if you dig slasher flicks, that is. I’m not as enamored of the horror genre as I used to be (though I admit I did enjoy the Saw movies) but I can still appreciate a slasher even though the plots are usually predictable and most of the special effects are computer generated. I’m more into funny movies, though I especially like dark humor. Shaun of the Dead and Weekend at Bernie’s- as well as Monty Python’s Meaning of Life and the Quest for the Holy Grail come to mind.

Two to a bed…I’d been the first to volunteer for the top bunk.

My grandfather served the last year of his service during WWII on the troop trains. I find it hard to imagine the things he saw- although there are pictures to be found of flatbed cars loaded down with tanks and jeeps as well as pictures of young soldiers boarding trains. I am sure that he realized that some of these guys would be coming back on the same trains- only they would be traveling in metal boxes in the freight cars instead of on the passenger seats and in the sleeping berths.

Efficient, but how would they be off-loaded?

Scratching for ten months? That would really suck.

If you weigh more than 500#, toileting would be an endeavor to begin with.

In fact, most land mammals that weigh 500# or more take care of their toileting either in the pasture, or in the barnyard.

Ghosts of the Machines, and Horse Meat in the Dog Food

March 26, 2013Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

The town where I grew up was doomed. It became a falling behemoth even before I understood that the world around me was crumbling beneath my feet, and a once prosperous town had faded into ignonimy, becoming known more as a haven for welfare slackers and a hotbed of heroin activity than as an industrial powerhouse.

I grew up amidst the towering smoke stacks, the perpetually clanging, moving factories, and with the constant sounds of the trains- the rhythmic clack-clack, the dull roar of the diesel engines, and the mournful braying of the whistles. The trains were the unwitting instruments playing the muted symphony of the night, coming from anywhere, going to nowhere- everywhere and nowhere all at the same time- as if in defiance of the laws of time and space.

When I was very young the air was dirty. On the rare days where there was no wind, a thick stagnant gray haze hung in the air like a pall. There was a pervasive slimy, smoky film that coated windows and adhered to curtains and windowsills should one dare to open the windows. Should the wind blow from the southwest, (which happens often in summer) one would get a foul whiff of the various odors of rendering and not-so-fresh flesh emanating from the Ken-L-Ration dog food factory (believe it or not, a subsidiary of Quaker Oats.)

This was an imposing, windowless facility where horses were once slaughtered, transformed into a pasty, meaty muck, (hooves, ears, and shall we say, all the “not fit for human consumption” bits included) and packed into tin cans with bright, colorful labels that reassured dog owners that this horse paste was 100% Balanced Nutrition for Your Dog!

Eh, so it’s canned dog food.

At least they were straight about what was in it. Unlike the UK lasagna.

You don’t want to know what a “by-product” is. Suffice to say that a “meat by-product” in the 1950s could be anything from roadkill, to dead livestock, to lips and assholes.

Then there was the Marion Power Shovel, whose last great hurrah was building the crawler that moved the space shuttle. In its heyday the Power Shovel complex cut a five-mile long stretch along the west end of town. Now most of the buildings have been demolished. A few have been repurposed as either warehouses or trucking depots. The skeletons of the massive outdoor cranes that once moved parts of power shovels and other large machines down the assembly line still stand as silent witnesses to a time when the survival of the free world hinged upon the industrial might of America. Now the existence of either the “free world” or the “might of America” is decaying and becoming more and more a distant memory, just like those abandoned factories.

By 1980, the industrial machine that had functioned so mightily- for a hundred years- collapsed upon itself.

I can name a plethora of reasons why half the population was gone in four years, with three-quarters of the factories either having gone out of business entirely, relocating to the southern right-to-work states, or relocating to foreign countries. I can say the fall was brought on by union greed, or excessive taxation and regulation, or the changes in the world economy, or the cost of energy, but to be honest it wasn’t any one factor that led to the fall, but the perfect storm that brewed when all of the above converged.

Now my home town is little more than a crumbling, dead monument to the industrial revolution, long since passed by, and the only constant is the sound of the trains, still everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

That, and it was once the home of President Harding. Harding is much maligned among many historians. He was a tomcat, he had shady friends, and for a time he was a card carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan. But, to his credit, he did keep the budget balanced, and he was well-liked during his term of office. He was so well-liked right after he died that school kids saved up their pennies and dimes and people raised money to build him a memorial that is only slightly less opulent than the Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson monuments.

The Harding Memorial is rather expansive, and very cool to visit- if you can find it. It’s on Ohio 423, on the south side of town, on the east side of the road.

Deus Ex Machina, Alternative Forms of Entertainment, and What Customer Service?

May 12, 2011Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I have seen some very screwy dealership and car lot names in my life, but who came up with Blue Knob? Are they trying to attract ED and/or frostbite sufferers? It just doesn’t invoke a feel-good message to me, and I’m a chick.

Maybe I’m just easily entertained. One of the things that I used to like to do as a kid was to watch the train cars as they would go by. One of the realities of my childhood, living in a town criss-crossed by several railroad lines, was that you had to wait on trains. Today, on the rare occasion one does have to wait on a train, there’s not much to see besides endless coal cars and tankers full of chemicals or vegetable oil, but back in the day a lot of interesting things were shipped by rail.

Cars are still shipped by rail, but today, because of vandals, the train cars are covered so you can’t see the cars inside. One used to be able to clearly view the cars as they went by. You could try to identify the models being transported which was always interesting, at least to me. Heavy equipment was also shipped by rail, and that was interesting to watch too- excavators, road graters, bulldozers and so forth, tied down to flat cars, going to who knows where.

If I didn’t have anything better to do and I lived in the vicinity, I would love to watch ships being unloaded, but the only port in Columbus is the airport. While it is interesting to watch the planes take off and land, the parking garage isn’t cheap, and I always worry that someone might think we are some kind of weird stalkers for just hanging out to watch the planes. I keep thinking about the incident the last time we went to Niagara Falls (2004.) Getting in to Canada was no problem (this is before passports were required) but getting back in to the States was not quite so easy. As we were going back to the States from Niagara Falls (in Jerry’s 99 Tacoma with Ohio plates…) the border crossing official asked me where we had been, how long we had been in Canada, and to where we were heading back. I gave her the applicable information and both of our drivers’ licenses. Then she looked over at Jerry with a serious case of stink-eye, and said, “I need to hear you talk.”

Fortunately the only language Jerry knows is English, complete with the Central Ohio Newscaster Accent. Therefore it wasn’t really possible for him to be a wise-ass like I know Steve-o would be. If Steve-o were asked his national origin, he would probably make it a point to cuss them out in German just to be arbitrary, but Jerry does not have that ability, thankfully. He informs her that yes, his name really is Jerry, and he really is going back to beautiful Central Ohio. Then she laughs a bit nervously, and tells us that she thought he may be of Middle Eastern descent, and that they were supposed to watch out for illegal immigrants from the Middle East trying to get into the States from Canada. Steve-o, with his rather pale complexion and mousy brown hair, probably would not have been questioned. Personally, I can understand the reasons behind racial profiling, even if I can tell the difference between someone from the Middle East and a Native American. After 9/11, better safe than sorry. If I were airport security, and I saw Jerry from a distance watching planes from the top of the parking garage, I would be pretty wary too. How am I supposed to know he’s not a Middle Eastern terrorist, but a redneck whose family are mostly Cherokees from West Virginia, and who has lived in Central Ohio his whole life?

I am still waiting on the Cougar Pool. I know, I just ordered it Monday, but it’s starting to get hot around here. The season of Stygian Heat is right around the corner, and I want to be floating about in the Cougar Pool, drinking iced tea and chilling in it soon. Jerry is going to Lancaster tomorrow night, so I have my fingers crossed that I might be lucky enough to get it today or tomorrow so I can set it up Saturday.

Last night I got my flowers and mulch for the front flower beds. I got a flat each of petunias and impatiens, and they look quite lovely around the rose bushes. I can’t say I was impressed with the experience of buying these items though. Now I know why I avoid home improvement stores, which I will be polite enough not to name. I found the flower flats I wanted, after wandering about a bit. That wasn’t so bad, but when I went to check out, first of all there was only one lane open and about four people ahead of me in line. Then that guy suddenly decides it’s time to go on break, so another guy comes up. I had not been able to find the mulch, so when it was finally my turn to check out, I ask the guy. He sells me (unbeknownst to me at the time) the absolutely most expensive black mulch they have, then tells me to pull around to the side of the building for another guy to load me up.

What he forgets to tell me is there are about nine people ahead of me waiting for this one guy to load them up first. I did not have time for that, and when I pulled around to the side I could see where the mulch was stacked, and how much it cost. Sooooo, I find the item number on my receipt, get my happy hiney out of the car, and load up the two very expensive bags of mulch that I just paid for. The saddest part about this is that nobody noticed. I could have loaded up fourteen bags, if they would have fit in the trunk of my Yaris, and I still bet no one would have noticed.

I have no problem with a couple of forty pound bags of mulch, but come on, people. I was honest about it. I got two of the exact item number I ordered and paid for, and if I’d been asked for my receipt they would have been able to see that- but how many people have ripped them off?

There comes a point in time when businesses are going to experience an economic fact, which is the law of diminishing returns. One person can only do so much, and you are going to lose business if you try to spread one person too thin. There is a point of balance where you have exactly the right number of people and resources to serve your customers and be profitable. It’s my sneaking suspicion that too many businesses are trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, and it’s affecting their bottom line.

Apparently, the ghost in the machine is supposed to do it somehow. Literally translated, deus ex machina, means “god in the machine,” and it refers to a literary mechanism in which the protagonist in a play is magically scooped up out of impossible circumstances to win the day. Film makers still use it today in action flicks. We all know in the world of the action flick, nothing is going to happen to the good guy that doesn’t work out in the end. The problem is, in real life it’s not so simple. The eleventh-hour save is not always a given, and not every old bitty is going to just go ahead and get her own mulch!

I Think I’m Afraid to Flush, Way Too Much Rain, and All Points Converge Here

April 4, 2011Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

A peculiar quirk here in Central Ohio during the Monsoon Season (the two months – give or take a week or two- between the seasons of Snowbooger Grey and Stygian Heat, usually from mid-March to late May) is that occasionally storm drains overflow into the sanitary sewers, making it possible for effluvia rinsed down sinks, flushed down commodes, etc. to go the opposite direction than the one intended. Low elevation, painfully flat landscapes, clay soil and torrential rains do not make for an optimum environment for natural drainage.

During the monsoon episodes, should one need to relieve oneself, in a good part of Central Ohio, you get to play a rousing game of “toilet roulette.”

Should I flush? If it’s yellow, let it mellow? If it’s brown, will it actually flush down? What are the odds of ending up with a floor full of unspeakable mess?

At home I am not too averse to waiting to flush until the storm subsides, and I can see that the storm sewer grate is clear outside, as I really don’t want a backflow situation in my own bathroom. But in public places it is extremely rude to leave your leavings without giving them their final send off, or at least making the attempt.

So far so good today. For now. Hopefully the deluge will take a break for an hour or two and let the storm sewers clear out some more.

I am glad it wasn’t raining like this yesterday when I was up in Marion. It actually was a pretty good day. Steve-o got his hair cut and got some shades he wanted.

Dad had mentioned something intriguing when I was up there that I had some peripheral background on, but had not really taken a whole lot of notice. I grew up not even really noticing the trains because trains went through town constantly and they still do. You don’t notice them until you leave, and it either seems oddly quiet, or the trains are replaced with another background noise, which in my case today is the airport. I live less than half a mile from Port Columbus. I don’t notice the planes unless I make it a point to pay attention to them, but I certainly did notice the silence on 9/11 and the days following. Passenger aircraft constantly taking off and landing, and F15s flying over have vastly different sounds.

In the early 20th century there were five different railroads that converged in Marion- from all points across the country. Only two of those rail lines remain- the trains still go through pretty much constantly, with their endless cargos of coal, but the trains haven’t actually stopped in Marion since the early 1970’s. If one looks close enough one can see where these rail lines once intersected which is sort of interesting.

At one time there were a lot of people going everywhere and nowhere. Of course people are still going everywhere and nowhere, but the ride is a lot less scenic and usually is taken up with either phone conversations, electronic gadgetry, and the endless monotone of flat, straight Interstate. I enjoy a road trip (and even more if I make it a point to take a less traveled road) but I think something might be lost in the autonomy one has when you drive. The train journey leaves your whereabouts at the mercy of another force, but paradoxically it also gives you the freedom to drift off into that void between everywhere and nowhere. Sleeping (or even that delightful realm of half-sleep) and driving don’t mix.

The ghosts are restless at those convergence points. It’s easy to imagine them at the train station even though trains don’t stop there anymore and only part of the train station remains. Someone waiting for the next train. Someone running down the platform. Someone looking for someone who will never return.

I’m haunted by those stories, especially those of the troop trains.

Everywhere and nowhere.

Eventually the rain will stop, and I will get beyond my little melancholy foray into a past I don’t really understand.

On a lighter note, there are seasons here in Central Ohio. We have five. That’s why the people who live here part of the year, but go to Florida part of the year, go down there for most of them.

Winter. Begins right after Halloween, lasts until mid-February or so. Best described as, “The Brass Balls Have Frozen off the Brass Monkey.” Lots of precipitation. Dark most of the time. Freezing rain, snow, ice, etc.

Snowbooger Grey. Mid-February or so until mid-late March. Like winter, but with temperatures hovering right around freezing, so the snow all melts and the landscape everywhere looks like those snowboogers that accumulate in the splash guards and wheel wells of cars. Since it’s slightly warmer than winter there’s more rain, and a bit more daylight, if you can notice through the overcast, grey haze that hangs over everything. Dismal.

Monsoon. Mid-late March-mid-late May. Or so. Just rain. Constantly.

Stygian Heat. 100% humidity. 100% bugs. Late May-mid-September. Plenty of rain.

Fall Monsoon. Mid-September-Halloween. Do you like rain? 🙂

ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL:

Because comedy is the flipside of tragedy

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