Underwear and Kryptonite, Part the Second

Ambien is the work of the devil.

Well, or that's what I would say if I believed in the devil. There's too much evidence of actual, tangible villains and criminal masterminds for me to spend time worrying about some demon-y thing in a red jumpsuit and horns poking at people with a pitchfork. While red jumpsuits are far more popular than one would initially think, the only one I know running around with a pitchfork is the SuperVillain known as American Gothic, and he just lives the next town over, so I've got my eye on him already. Rather, let's say Ambien is the work of a criminal of the highest order, one who slaved away for years to come up with the exact chemical combination to render a SuperHero defenseless under the guise of what they call in the medical community "good sleep hygiene". Then this evil genius retained the services of the sleaziest of fixers to push the stuff onto pharmacy shelves as a miracle cure to finally put suffering insomniacs to rest. When the stuff then makes its way into the hands of Jane Q. Public, fine, she gets a great night's sleep. But the whole point of the conspiracy is to get the stuff into the hands--and into the systems--of SuperHeroes in order to watch them fall.

Underwear and Kryptonite, Part the First

I bought some new undies today.

No, no, just wait...it will all make sense.

On the trip I discovered that my magical underwear was all too big, rendering it significantly less magical. Well, completely un-magical, to be honest. So today I just couldn't stand it anymore, and I went out to purchase some ladies' unmentionables.

I'll be upfront and say that the new ones are not magical. Magical undies cannot be ordered up on demand like a Big Mac at a drive-thru. Like Wonder Woman's bracelets, they have to be procured via otherworldy means--passed down from the gods or discovered like the Holy Grail. You never just walk into a store and purchase the magic. However, today I was more than happy to settle for some delicates that fit properly. The magic can wait.

So I'm at the store, and I'm sorting through all of the polka dots and stripes and little ribbons and ruffles and whatnot--you know, pretty much any cute little thing that a cartoon character might wear--and I started thinking about the moment that the dainties became magic, the period when they actually became powerful enough to turn me into a SuperHero.

On The Road

Goddamn.

So I just got back from a road trip halfway across the country in service of that little side-hustle called Art. Me and Trudie and The Cowboy had a gig at a contemporary art museum down south, so we took a couple of days to drive down, hung out in Athens for a couple of days, then curved up to our week-long residency before booking it back to Rust City in a straight 17-hour shot. With the three of us plus the whole show packed inside Sugar Magnolia, we were on the road for a while there.

When we crammed ourselves back in for the return trip, I realized I wanted to stay on the road.

For the Record

I haven't gotten any better. I've just gotten better at faking it.

I'm not like this. Folks who really know me know that I'm not like this. But to all the rest--and really, that's most of the folks out there--I could be like this. I may not be like this, but someone is like this. For all they know, I could very well be a regular person going through her regular day the way she regularly does. I could be a regular person.

As long as they're not peeping into the Gingerbread Cottage, that is. As long as they don't see that the place is trashed, just one big pile of unopened mail and dirty laundry and dirty dishes from mid-November. As long as they can't look in to see me curled up in the bed all day (or all two days or all three days or four days), only getting out of bed to pee or feed the cats or get a new box of tissues once I've run out. As long as they can't hear me talking to myself, trying to find some loophole in the logic of the universe and some how make things different, make things better. For Mr. Badger. For me.

Not Eloquent At All

After it happened, I sat in the hospital lobby for about two hours, mainly because I had forgotten how to walk. Then I sat in my car in the parking lot of a strip mall for another two.

After that, I got a hotel room, and I sat in a warm bath as long as I could. Then I curled up naked on top of the bedcovers, thinking that maybe if I closed my eyes and stayed there long enough, he'd show up and crawl into bed behind me. I waited until my whole body was shaking from the cold. And then I waited some more.

He never showed up.

This Is Wonderful

The world has a nemesis.

Well, if not the world, then at least the country. And I don't mean my own personal nemesis. While I have been mentioned on their website, I know that I'm not awesome enough to be, you know, a personal adversary. No, no, this is a nemesis all of us need to keep an eye on.

They're called Kansas Kountry Khurch.

Shaking the Family Tree

So I have this thing. It's called pleurisy. Basically, pleurisy is when you have an infection in the lining of your lungs, so that when you breathe, the pleura kind of pulls away from the rest of the lung. It results in a stabbing feeling every time you inhale. For reals. It's like getting stabbed with a knife, in your lung, every time you inhale. You can try to keep your breaths really shallow to avoid it, but you also can't sustain that for a long time, so sooner or later, you know, you're going to get stabbed.

It ain't so fun.