The World According To Anne Arky

That I am demented is definitely no shock to those who know me and little surprise to those who only know me here. Just how demented I can be, especially at silly o'clock in the morning, is evidenced below. When I was driving to work this morning, Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" came on the radio, and when he started singing, "Kodachro-o-ome, give us the nice bright colors...etc.", for some strange reason I started singing, "Coca-co-o-la" and then made up some more lyrics to go along with what I was singing, but with his tune. After I got to work, I set about putting it down on paper and creating a whole parody that is completely autobiographical. Mr. Yankovic, look out!

Dieter’s Diatribe or Ode To Coke – The Real Thing
(sung to the tune of Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome”
– with apologies to Paul Simon)

If you took all the snacks I’ve had for food addiction,
Put ‘em all together on my thighs,
You know it’d never match my sick imagination,
Because I never thought I’d reach this size.

When I think back on all the pounds I’ve gained since high school
When Mama started sayin’ I was fat,
You know I only weighed at most a hundred thirty,
Now my weight is almost three times that.

Coca Co-o-o-la, give me some nice bright comfort,
Give me the high-igh-ighs of sugar
Make me think all the world is a happy place, oh yeah.
I've got a diet cola I’d love to flush in the toilet
“Isn’t it a shame she has such a pretty face?”

Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola,
Switch it for lo-cal granola,
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away.

If you took all the food I’ve had in search of comfort,
Put it all together in the road,
It would be small surprise to those who’ve never seen me
That I’ve applied to get my own zip code.

If I had all the money I’ve spent joining programs
And buying all those diet scams and books,
I could afford to get myself one of those mirrors
That tells me my butt is not as large as it looks.

Coca Co-o-o-la, give me some nice bright comfort,
Give me the high-igh-ighs of sugar
Make me think all the world is a happy place, oh yeah.
I've got a diet cola I’d love to flush in the toilet
“Isn’t it a shame she has such a pretty face?”

Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola,
Switch it for lo-cal granola,
Mama don’t take my Coca-Cola away.

I’ve just been to visit my mother, and it was, as always, a mixture of enjoyment and teeth gnashing. I spent a week with Mother and the first two days home trying to unclench my teeth. First, let me say that I love my mother very much. But like everyone who is still lucky enough to enjoy it, my mother makes me crazy. On “Providence”, the younger one of Mike Farrell’s character’s two “daughters” asked the older one (before the mother died and was only a recurring phantom), “Why is it that Mom always knows just how to push my buttons?” The older one replied with the obvious answer, “She’s the one who installed them.” Correct.

I’ve heard that when you “go home” or go around your family (those who don’t live near their families, anyway), you revert to a certain age and remain there for the duration. Just what age you revert to is unclear, and who decides what age is the one for reverting to is also unclear. In any case, I seem to revert to age 8, and I’m not sure what is significant about age 8 that that’s the chosen age of reversion, but there it is. My mother certainly goes along with it in a big kind of way. She’s all too happy to treat me like I’m eight years old, including “shushing” me in front of my friends when I swear (like that ever stopped me, even when I was eight years old!) or speak louder than she thinks I should. (What will people THINK???) [Who the hell CARES???] {And that is the crux of our on-going lifelong argument.} The third and final time she did this while I was home this time, I returned the favor and told her -- right there in front of God and everybody -- not to do that any more, because I really hate it. She turned away and pouted the whole rest of that visit with my friend. Should we ever have it out over this issue (and we will, I’m sure), the argument will go, “Mother, please don’t shush me. It embarrasses me.” “Well, you’re embarrassing me.” “Maybe so, but I’m embarrassing you in front of people you are likely never going to see again, and you are embarrassing me in front of my friends, so shut up.” *sigh*

I’ll be the first to admit, “shut up” is not my best thing, but Mom’s not best thing is “back off” or “take no for an answer”. She has no clue how to do either. She figures if she just pushes and pushes, the pushee (usually me) will eventually be worn down and give in and acquiesce to her wishes, and she seems terribly shocked on those occasions when the pushee (usually me) blows up in frustration. Her favorite “don’t take no for an answer” occasion is when she is trying to give me something that I just plain don’t want. Two years ago, after Daddy died, I asked her if I could have a few of his V-neck undershirts – great to sleep in, and kind of like sleeping in a hug from my dad – and she happily obliged, following up by offering me some of his pajamas as well. I couldn’t really think of a good reason to say “no”, so I accepted with a “thanks, Mom”. She then offered me a whole drawer full of his socks, to which I hastily replied, “No, thanks, Mom.” This was met with, “But there’s nothing wrong with them.” “No, thanks, Mom,” I repeated. “They’re perfectly clean,” she insisted. I thanked her again and explained that I just don’t prefer men’s socks or black, brown or blue socks of anybody’s. “But there aren’t any holes in them or anything – they’ve hardly even been worn.” “Mother,” I stated emphatically through clenched, “I do not want the socks. Thank you anyway. Give them to someone else.” I suppose a more reasonable argument might have been, “Mother, I am morally opposed to blue, brown and black socks and refuse to allow them in my house or on my feet.” But since we are of the same religion, she probably wouldn’t have bought off on it.

In recounting this incident to friends, they all hastened to suggest, “Well, you should have just taken them and then given them away or thrown them away later.” Well, I tried that during this trip as a last resort, and now I remember why it doesn’t work.

Mother’s cat recently died, and she told me before I left home that she was going to give me all the cat stuff she had left over – a couple of litter boxes (they’re perfectly clean, she hurriedly assured me), some food dishes, some food, some cat litter, etc. I thanked her and said that I could use some of the stuff, but that my poor cat, O’Malley, has a very weak stomach and is limited to only two or three different foods (one type of dry food and two flavors of the same brand of canned food) that he might not hurl, if I’m lucky. Anything else I give him is almost guaranteed to give him the carpet-ruining happy, hairy, hunky hurls. Mind you, O’Malley is not a finicky eater – he would eat anything I put in front of him that didn’t gobble him down first – but then I get to see it again, and if there’s anything I hate more than recycled cat food, I don’t know what it is. (I only have to clean it up if I get to it before he does, which grosses me out worse than having to clean it up myself.) So Mother, kindly understand when I say this – thanks, but no thanks.

By the time I got up there and got treated to a whole week’s worth of “But it’s perfectly good/clean/sanctified” arguments, with her reacting as if I had accused her offerings (lipstick she can’t use any more, generic greeting cards, etc.) of having three kinds of venereal diseases and cheating on their spouses, I decided that whatever cat stuff she was sending me home with would be received with as much “shut up” as I could muster. I could always give the cat food and litter (hers isn’t the kind I like to use) to someone in my circle of friends or coworkers. So on “going home” day, she loaded up my car with all manner of cat stuff, and I drove home secure in the knowledge that the stuff would go to good use and my mother would be none the wiser. This way, she could save her “But it’s perfectly whatever” argument to use on someone else (although I personally feel she saves them all up for me) to be named later.

Last weekend, the weekend after I got back from Mother’s, she and I were on the phone and she asked conversationally, “What are you going to do this weekend?” I mentioned needing to go to the grocery store sometime, but I wasn’t sure when – I needed to pick up some garbage bags, frozen foods, cat food and cat litter. (Like I said, “shut up” isn’t my best thing, and I’m a lousy liar.) She said, “What about all that cat food and stuff I sent you home with?” Ah, shit – busted! With a long-suffering sigh, I reiterated, “Well, you know O’Malley has a weak stomach and can’t eat any of it, or he’ll throw it up all over hell and half of Georgia.” She then demanded, “Then why did you take it home with you?” Like I mugged her cat food stash, for God’s sake! Shit, I can’t win for losing sometimes! Insert longer-suffering sigh and throwing up of hands. (At least that’s a throwing-up I don’t have to clean up after.)

Labels: Family

I have just recently solved a long-held mystery in my life. When I was 11 years old, I was in the hospital for some tests. On the last day of my two-week stay, I was watching the local Saturday morning television fare, which included some old black-and-white mystery and horror movies. I didn’t much care about either one of them and paid no mind to their titles or anything else about their credits (actors, etc.). The first one was kind of cheesy, with all the guests at a hotel getting systematically killed off one by one in an Agatha Christie sort of way, and ended with some creepy guy hanging out at the basement stairs saying to the audience, “They think they have the killer, but it was really I who killed them all, and you’d better not tell, or I’ll come and kill you, too” or some silly-assed thing. I had no reason to believe the second movie would be any more frightening than that one, but it was.

I was never afraid of anything as a child – not ghosts, goblins, monsters under the bed or in the closet. In fact, I was never afraid of anything tangible until I was 17 years old, and still yet, the things I am apt to fear are intangible – abandonment, rejection, speaking in front of a group, things like that. The boogie man and monsters under the bed are the least of my worries, both then and now. However, on this day in July of 1968, I saw the one movie – the only movie – that ever scared me, and it scared the flibberty-gibbets out of me in a big kind of way. It scared me so much, I even had to change the channel before the end, so I watched about 1 hour and 45 minutes of it instead of the whole 2 hours. I had no idea what the name of the movie was, when it was made, who was in it or anything other than it scared the living shit out of me. Over the years I have watched out for it in the TV Guide (which I subscribed to and read religiously until a couple of years ago), but I never saw anything that remotely made me think I had found my personal font of filmation fear. I had never really pursued it with the same vengeance as some of my other pursuits, but I had also never heard anyone else mention having seen it, so it pretty much faded from memory, surfacing only occasionally as a reminder that I was not totally fearless after all.

A few months ago, a friend and I were discussing things that scared us as children, and as stated above, I had limited contributions to the conversation (easier to list all the things that didn’t scare me), and I mentioned this movie, still without a name or list of players. She knows that I have great good fortune finding things on the Internet, so she suggested I google it. I had actually already looked on the internet for it at some point in a fit of boredom, but after we talked, I went back and looked again – again, to no avail. So back into the “occasional” file it went.

I am working on retyping a collection of quotes I have been amassing since I was in junior high, and because I enjoy putting creative graphics with certain things (see recipe cards, March 29, 2006 post), I am chasing down interesting graphics on the internet to use with the quotations. One quote came from A&E’s “Cold Case Files” in reference to remembering someone as they used to be, not how they ended up, and I started searching for an appropriate graphic of a cadaver. Of course, there never really is an appropriate graphic of a cadaver, and I quickly realized this, so I started looking instead for a graphic of a skull. Unfortunately, all I found were smiling happy skulls that had grins that looked like Whoopee Goldberg’s smile, and while I have always wanted a smile like Whoopee Goldberg’s (you know – the kind that looks as if you have 208 teeth), I wasn’t at this point looking for a happy skull, so I thought, maybe I should look for one that’s screaming.

I typed in “screaming skull”, and one of the things that came up was a movie poster for a movie of the same name. I clicked on it, and it took me to a description of a movie called “The Screaming Skull”, and it sounded exactly like (and turned out to be) the movie from long ago that had terrorized me. Once again, I felt like I’d found the holy grail, for no real legitimate reason, because finding this movie, and even perhaps buying it (which I will be doing), will in no way change or impact my life, but it was just the fact that its identity had eluded me for so long that made it such a great find. The movie was made in 1958, and even now I don’t recognize any of the players, so it probably ranks as a C or even D movie, since I tend to recognize B movie players from that era. Amazon-dot-com gives it three stars, although a lot of reviewers pan it dreadfully. A friend is planning on buying it for me as a belated birthday present, and I’m really looking forward to it in a weird sort of way. It will be interesting to see if the 11-year-old me is still in there, capable of being terrified beyond words by this movie, or if I will just laugh my head off over it at this late date. In any case, it’s a blast from the past that I’m sure I’ll enjoy, either way.

NOTE: Yes, this is a rerun from Anne Arky Ology. It seemed a festive way to launch my new blog.