Merry F***in Christmas, or "I Bet SARS is Blog-Worthy, Too."

This is what I look like as of yesterday. This is Exhibit A ("The victim looked stable and content in a dashing crimson sweater only days before the incident!") for when I am in court testifying about the attempted assault that will take place on the Greyhound Bus in Cincinnati this upcoming Saturday. Also notice the beaming smile. I won't be smiling on Saturday. Don't let that boggle you. I know you've played PhotoHunt, and I know you've played it after four tequilla shots.

So.

Every holiday season, my brother and I make like Moses and leave the earnest burning oil of our Mother's Hannukah menorah in Michigan and head South. Unlike Moses and his Jewish friends, we usually do this in a car, and also unlike Moses we do not have to deal with false idols (though we've had some heated arguments about music, e.g., my desire for most of the late 90s to listen to either a sad emo boy or a lesbian folk singer at all times) or parting the red sea (though we once skidded on black ice outside of Bowling Green and almost died). Also we are not going to the promised land, we are just going to Gold Star Chili. I mean, to see the Christian side of our family, like our Grandparents, and have wholesome feelings in the deepest pits of our charred souls.

This year we face a challenge, and that challenge is that Lewis is driving up to Ohio from NOLA. I could call this a "betrayal of dire consequence" but I won't.

I am flying into Detroit on Friday morning, where my Moms live, and as I don't have a car (or, at this point, a drivers license, though I hope to acquire one at the Royal Oak DMV on Friday), I don't know how the fuck I am going to get to Ohio.

What I really want to talk about is how this relates to abuse of the semi-ironic term "blog-worthy," which I employ with the same (relatively) witty sarcasm that I use for terms like "omg" and "LOL really." I don't know if those are terms so much as paradigms.

Thus far, the "blog" hasn't caused me much harm, aside from time suckage: no, I haven't been "outed" at work or punished for things I've said or, even, had aforementioned Ohio family stumble upon this blog and wonder if I'm serious about the whole 'bi thing,' nor has anyone told me that I suck (not including my anonymous friend, who thinks I am a dirty whore, a dirty bitch, and a dirty slut, but I think he kinda likes me that way, so whatever rolls your dice, dude) BUT now my mother has co-opted my language for her own sinister desires.

Exhibit B (selections of e-mails exchanged on Dec. 18th)

From: Lewis
To: Me and Mom.

1. I'll be driving to Ohio from NOLA on the 23rd. Michigan 25th or 26th
2. May I suggest you "Go Greyhound" It could be "blogworthy" as the kids say.


From: Me
To: Lewis and Mom

Uh-oh,
Mom how I am going to get to Ohio, even if I do have a license? Can I borrow your car? I am not going Greyhound. I'll get killed.
also, the tickets are SIXTY BUCKS!! which is more than i will ever spend to be sexually harassed for.....um....SIX HOURS.


From: Mom
To: me and Lewis.

Marie ........
I agree with Lewis, a Greyhound trip would definetly be blog-worthy.

and for gosh sakes, you take the subway at all hours in a very crime-infested city and lived in Spanish Harlem. and you wait in lobbies of community mental and medical health ..... you've already dealt with and been exposed to more then any Greyhound trip could possibly provide.

Some things:

1. I bet that giving away all of my things for a life on the streets, and by "streets" I mean inside my largest fresh direct box or perhaps 2-3 taped together, which I will set on the corner of 180th and Somethin' Awful, injecting myself with needles i find on the "crime-infested' streets and paying for my Popeye's chicken habit by hooking (dressed in my Halloween costume and a warm scarf) would be pretty effin blog-worthy too, but you don't see my ass in a box on the street do you? No you don't.

Also, things like going to Iraq or going to a tornado are examples of things that people do for "news-worthy" stories. However those people get paid.

News=information someone pays you to share
Blog=information no-one pays you to share.

2. I do not take the subway at all hours. Only hours before midnight, or one a.m. Whatevs. Def. not shy of springing for a cab though.

3. While in East Harlem, I started dressing like a boy and walking like a boy so that I wouldn't get harassed and/or assaulted (the former happened constantly, especially in Snow Bunny Outfit '04, which involved pink yoga pants and a puffy white coat and was the last time I wore tight pants north of 110th), which worked pretty well. I also felt protected when I started spending almost 75% of my time-at-home-in-Sparlem with my dear friend the 6'4 slightly-crazy male model, house-builder and club bouncer who drove a monster truck disguised as a big-ass red jeep and knew everyone in the 'hood. Including the drug dealers. So where is that bouncer now? New Jersey.

4. New York City has the lowest crime rate of any major U.S City.

5. During the summer of 2005, Krista and I made a very poor choice to travel from Medford, Oregon to Denver, Colorado on a Greyhound. I've taken Greyhounds before from Ann Arbor to Interlochen (with friends, every time), but never had I truly felt the authentic Greyhound experience that we discovered in the Wild West. In fact, this trip was so pleasurable that, after subsisting on no sleep, eating only processed foods that come in plastic bags (e.g., Combos, M n'Ms, Twizzlers, Wheat Thins, Welch's fruit snacks) and living through a ten-hour layover in Salt Lake City (during which we had to sit on our suitcases and not move, just wait, while people had Jerry Springery fights and drank too much Sprite) and of course, spending time on the bus itself, which was completely full of people who probably collectively could not have mustered up an entire set of teeth, we actually got in a semi-physical squabble.

Because Krista is my heart, obviously you can imagine the kind of stress we were under for this to happen.

Phone conversation in Colorado, at some stop where we split up to go get supplies for the next few hours (including a small pillow we passed back and forth and more bags of junk to cram down our pie-holes):

Me: Krista, I can't hear you.
Krista: I can't hear anything you're saying.
Me: Can you hear me now?
Krista: Goddamit Marie, why don't you get a new phone service? I CAN NEVER HEAR YOU!
Me: Are you yelling at ME about Sprint PCS' failure to provide a suitable coverage within it's wireless network?!!!!
(Krista hangs up)

The passengers were a rowdy bunch, all looking to make friends, and somewhere between California and Colorado, a debate over the merits of The DaVinci Code resulted in several passengers rising from their seats to yell at one another (while drinking beer out of paper bags). I mention this because...

Despite the apparent plethora of Dan Brown fans on our trip, a passenger (who, being without a shirt of his own, was leasing shirts from fellow travelers for the duration of their journey and, when the shirt-donator got off, finding a new traveler to lend him a shirt) asked Krista and I if we were students.

"No," we said, looking confused.

"Ah," he nodded. "I thought you were."

(Krista attempts to deliver a genuine smile that comes off as a pained grimace)

He continued: "Cause you're both--you know--readin'."

(pause as we look at our books, and then at each other, and then up at him)

"Um," I responded. "We just uh, like reading."

(He looks at us with that look I used to get when I told strangers "I go to boarding school.")

This is the only surviving photograph from this expedition, and I got it from my camera phone. I don't know where we are, probably somewhere between nowhere and purgatory.

People kept staring at Krista and I, because we didn't look like the other people on the bus because we were wearing clean clothes. At first, at least. We replenished with the Hanes wifebeater 3-packs because that's how we roll. By the time I got to Chicago, I probably smelled like Kools with a dash of Wal-Mart.

UPDATE: Carl is taking me to Toledo, and my aunt will pick me up there. HOLLA.

Anyhow, so parents, you should know that making your kids miserable is not blogworthy, it's probably better for like, youtube, except that on greyhound someone would fo-sho steal your camera.