Background:
Another one of those futile conversations with my parents.
My mother is a hooker, and with nothing else to do, I was thinking I might as well learn the trade. So about two weeks ago, I called her up and ask her to send me a starter set of gear plus manuals and supplies. She says okay.
The reason I had asked her to send me a starter set is that I simply don't know all that is required to hook - I wouldn't know where to start - although I've watched her do it for years so I have a decent idea of the manual skills required.
A week ago, a package arrives. It contains about half a pound of matzos coated in chocolate, walnuts and caramel. Not what I wanted, and I refuse to eat anything this woman touches. She knows this.
I call her up again, say I threw away the matzos she sent, and ask where the gear is. She says she didn't send it. I ask why, she said she would.
"Because I want the hooking frame back, Ethan."
"How can I use it if I send it back to you? Why would I send it back to you if I intend to use it?"
"I'm very attached to it, Ethan."
"Why can't you just buy me a frame for myself?"
"They're expensive, Ethan."
"How much?"
"They can run as high as $200."
"You just bought a trip to Paris."
"Alright, Ethan."
"Why did you agree to send the frame but then not raise your concerns?"
"Alright, Ethan."
I had asked her nicely, she said she'd do it, she didn't. So this time, I descended into name-calling and verbal abuse. That got her to go to the post office and send the thing, and also stop at the bank and put $200 in my account. I didn't ask for it, and didn't need it. I'm a very frugal person, and money has little utility to me. On both counts - make a reasonable request nicely, it doesn't get done, yell and scream and call names and it gets done; after an acrimonious conversation she sends money that isn't needed - this is very characteristic of this woman's behavior.
Some might say she did this because she felt bad or guilty, or to make me shut up, or that it's proof of my parents' love and good intentions they send me crap like chocolate matzos and money I don't need. This is a superficial interpretation. They send me this vanity crap I don't need, but refuse to aid me in any constructive way, whether it's coming to bat for me or sending me my own possessions. When pushed, they make spiteful remarks that make no sense. I have come to understand it is just their way of trying to make the argument to themselves that they are good and supportive parents.
So the other day, two things arrived in the mail.
One was a postage slip from the USPS saying two boxes had arrived. I called up my "mother" again and ask her how many boxes she had put the things in, wondering if the other item might be an acceptance package from Northeastern University. She says two.
At some point during the conversation she says, "Ethan, we know you're very enterprenurial". I get very angry when people praise me in large part because my parents do it constantly but in bad faith - whenever the praise is tested, it comes up hollow.
"Ok, so if I came up with a business plan, and it were plausible and sound, you'd fund it?"
"I don't know, Ethan! I'd have to see it!"
"So, if you saw it, and it made sense, would you be willing to put down $10k to fund it?"
"I don't know how much money you want, Ethan!"
"I just said..."
"You're very enterprenurial, Ethan, but I'm not just going to put money down a hole!"
"So do you think I'm capable of being successful or not?"
"You are!"
"Yet you won't do anything to help, even things that won't cost you a red cent."
Actually, I didn't have a business plan. But I had a series of good ideas in my head I could turn into one. I knew she'd say no, I was just driving the point home because I get irked when she or anyone else praises me, for the very reason that I have come to see praise as self-serving.
Anyway, the other was a copy of Elle Magazine, addressed to one Odontsetseg Bat-Eredene. The latter, at first, I thought must be some sort of joke. But whatever, I punch the name into Facebook. A yuppie girl of Mongolian descent. I add her to friends to give her magazine back. I don't expect her to take the friend invite and clearly as an Elle magazine reader we have absolutely no common ground and I'll probably hate this person, but whatever. I am bored and willing to be a bit adventurous. I tab through her friends. I know some of them, from when I lived in California - most of them are in SF/LA. I remember hating them with a passion.
So then I made some soup. The soup contained, amongst other things, fresh shiitake mushrooms, six ounces of spinach, two ounces of peas, rice vermicelli, and some bean curd. The bean curd was from a Chinese distributor based in New York that sells their products through our local China store. Apparently, some of the containers aren't sufficiently refrigerated because sometimes I notice mold on the items. I used half the bean curd in the package, and as I was putting the other half away, I noticed some mold. I decided to cook the half I'd already cut up and thrown in the pot - it won't kill me, and if it does, so much the better - and threw the rest away. I eat very little, and being a vegetarian, my diet contains uneven amounts of protein and glucose. Eating rich food puts me on a sort of trip.
As I drank the soup, I sat down and played Guild Wars, struggling through the last mission of EotN with this aggravating mostly guild group. The GM drew confusing lines etc on the minimap, apparently using the same signals for conflicting intentions - circling mobs sometimes meaning pull this, avoid that, sometimes drawing a line down a hallway then running the other way, other times running down it - whatever. At one point we sit at a four-way intersection for five minutes, waiting for someone to say something or decide which way we should go. I had never done the mission before, but I finally take the initiative to get the pulls going. The GM tells me to slow down, despite the fact we're only going one group at a time and the pauses between pulls don't ever get broken by his own guildies - they just stand around like LFD pugs.
Due to a miscommunication in one particularly touchy part of the instance, we pull two groups, wiping out our NPC allies and causing the two groups of mobs to sit stationary next to each other, so we can't pull them individually. The GM is convinced he has the answer, so for the next 45 minutes, he keeps trying to pull them individually rather than just restarting the mission we were barely 10 minutes into so we can get a clean pull, insisting he has work in the morning, so he'd rather dick around with this borked pull for 45m rather than take 10m to retrace our steps. Again, he vacillates, doing nothing for long periods. I play a ranger, and so does one of his guildies, yet he keeps telling me to pull this or that. I would presume the guild ranger is his gf and way too stupid to learn to play the game properly. Whatever. After 45m, we give up.
So when I finally went to bed, I was very very tired, tripping on this stuff I just ate, and angry about a lot of things. I've also been very obsessed with people, incidents, forfeited opportunities, from my past. I have serious difficulty letting go of things. I live with a lot of pain day-to-day.
In my dream, I was aware that I was in a really bad book-to-movie, but I wasn't aware it was a dream. Like every really bad book-to-movie, it began with a corny sex scene. I came in her. This girl blames me for getting her pregnant, so I skip town.
I actually was involved with this person in real life - the nursing student whom I hired for a night at Simone's suggestion, it was fun and friendly, and I think ironically enough she wanted more (both sexually and relationship-wise), but instead got pregnant by another man, whom she expressed vague disdain for, which struck me as a fine irony. I wasn't miffed at all - we weren't in a relationship, it's just her being dumb, I saw it mostly as unfortunate since it meant I couldn't use her in the future. In the real-life version of events, I had put an abundance on her and then she hastened to the bathroom right after. She really did like me personally - one can't help but wonder.
As I skip town, the world ends. I don't believe it was a nuclear war like in
Fallout, but anyway, there's some sort of disaster that decimates the population and makes it unsafe to remain above ground for long periods.
Being in the right place at the right time, I wind up in the basement of a museum/university with a bunch of university intellectuals - stock characters from the 70s.
The scenery is a pastiche of places I've been in my life, the interiors of CSUS and CSUSF, both of which were built in the 50s-70s out of concrete and include fallout bunkers in the design that have since been converted for other purposes. I've always liked concrete bunkers, I like their simple, solid, reliable design - I hate buildings made of plastic or plywood, it looks dinky.
I had a lot of fun there and I deeply miss the people and places. I was expelled from CSUSF after having a nervous breakdown, and I refuse to return to Sacramento until I can ride through the streets in a chariot and rename the city after myself. Losing forever people and places I didn't realize how much I cared about - it causes me a lot of sadness. A lot.
The action in the "really bad book-to-movie" is that it eventually becomes apparent that the bunker where everyone spends most of their time is compromised. There were multiple issues, one of them was undetectable gas leaks. Because everyone had been in the bunker so long, we had become desensitized to the gas, so it was uncertain how much or even whether gas had leaked, and no one dared light a match to find out. There were also power failures and flooding. However, the bunker has certain strengths, amongst them proximity to natural resources, security, and a good heating system.
Most important of all, apparently, is that the bunker is itself considered important as it was converted from a library/museum, and it is felt those intellectual resources will be needed in the future. Some people, however, get ends and means confused, and regard the library/museum as not merely functional but almost sacred.
The meeting gets chaotic, and true to my personal character, I speak up and try to bring some structure to the meeting, calling on people and making rhetorical remarks. It's known there's another suitable facility some distance away, and some people want to make the move. However, there are problems - the inhabitants, like I said, are educated intellectuals, and quite a few are old and weak and cannot move easily. The new structure is not as well known and we aren't entirely sure if will meet our needs. Natural resources may be more scarce in that area. It doesn't appear to have central heating, but its basement floor is dirt, apparently we could dig in for more warmth and to make fire pits.
So I make suggestions. The scenery is drawn from my experiences on the West Coast, but the setting and locations are in Massachusetts, which is not well known to me. Several times I have to ask people, "How far away is that?" or "What's that area like?" In real life, the locations in question are places I hear of now and then (e.g., Northhampton) but still have to refer to my wall map to find out where they are.
At one point I suggest simply temporarily evacuating the bunker and igniting all the gas, but that would compromise the museum/library contents as well as the heating system, and it might not even work.
The climax of the really bad book-to-movie is this Star Trek-like moralistic argument between several people at the community meeting. Someone says something like, "This is...a monument to our greatness! How can we abandon this to be lost forever?" I then read my lines, saying, "Were the Greek ruins any less great that others found them?" I rolled my eyes. So trite.
There's this cult classic card game I still follow - Star Trek CCG. A fan club, which I follow but don't participate in, still produces new "virtual expansions". Over time this has degenerated into nerds making fantasy cards that are ludicrously unbalanced and inconsistent with the dynamics of the game. This reached a height recently with a card called
You Are A Monument which sets unequal win conditions for different affiliations and made me decide to stop following the game.
I argued about it, I was pleased with how the discussion went - my position and I were stronger after the thread than before it, I didn't get dirty. For all my painful regrets, I think I've learned a few things about how to discuss issues over the years.
Anyway - in the end, the group decides to split the difference - half go to the new bunker, half stay where they are. I then pick up the book I'm in and skip the epilogue, going right to the last page of the book. Apparently the author made some sort of cheesy allegory about race relations and hundreds of years down the line, the bunkers become civilizations and the descendants of the new bunker eradicate the old. Whatever.
After reading this, I woke up.
So, uh, yeah. Trippy.
TLDR. I know. I just felt like I had to get it in print.
