Text (bottom): This is a very beautiful area. I wish you were here! This is a very beautiful area.
Text (upper right): I’m so happy, I feel like I could fly.
(Apologies for the bad quality. Hamsters refuse to be captured in all their glory on film.)
Text: We are hungry hussies.
Other pre-teens liked Corey Haim. Sure, I had the Corey Haim posters.
Even if Corey Haim suddenly appeared in the bathtub with ten-year-old me, all I could fantasize was that he would - Good God! I am wrong. I was thirteen at the height of my Corey Haim craze - ten or thirteen, Corey Haim would not have been as compliant as I’d hoped.
Corey Haim was a movie star. Unattainable. He dated other movie stars.
I had to be realistic in my lovin’.
I needed someone my imagination could conjure up in my elementary school fantasies.
So I turned to someone I could seduce in my fantasies. (I am certain I was ten when this happened. Well, ok, eleven. Not twelve.)
But he had to have a bad boy streak. In my seduction fantasies he seduced me. I was a Catholic schoolgirl, after all.
He was Starscream.
Starscream was too wily even for the mean Decepticons. He turned even on the boss of the Decepticons, that old fogey Megatron.
Plus, he was cute*.
I did what all pre-teens do when they have a crush.
I wrote stories about Starscream.
At the height of my Starscream infatuation, I typed up lots of stories about the Transformers, shyly focusing the spotlight on Starscream. My best friend at the time read my stories. I think she had the hots for Soundwave or even that oh-too paternal Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime, he reminded me of the father in the Little House on the Prairie show.
Because my friend read my stories, I couldn’t come out and admit that I had a crush for Starscream. Things are just not done that way in elementary school.
The one indicative story is the one where Starscream was humiliated. Because Catholic schoolgirls like to punish their men. In this story, Starscream, after another rival spat with Megatron, goes to sleep with vultures in a tree. The next morning, the vultures discover he’s peed the bed. The vultures tattle on him to the other Decepticons. The Decepticons laugh so hard, they don’t mind sharing the joke with their enemies, the Autobots. The story ends with all the Transformers laughing at a presumably nude Starscream.
After all these years, which of my teen men do I still fancy?
Consider these quotes about Starscream:
“He is ruthless, cold-blooded and cruel.” (Yes!)
“But he has a vain side that clearly distinguishes him [from Megatron]. He considers himself the most sophisticated and handsome of the Decepticons. He exudes a high-class, urbane air that provides a certain irony to his murderous tendencies.” (Yum! Yum!)
“He can shoot cluster bombs a distance of 40 miles, each of which can level an area 10,000 feet square.” (You go, baby!)
“His nose-dives often overload his gyro-circuitry leaving him disoriented briefly.” (Oooo!)
“But, overall, he is a very tough nut to crack.” (Oooo, Starscream!)
*The boots and the helmet stay put.
I am still not even 25% feeling better. My hamster is brain-damaged. Her bites puncture skin.
But I found my collection of Japanese hamster postcards a few days ago. I must put these on my blog, I thought. Then I remembered that I quit the world of blogging. So I hid the postcards away in a box in a dark corner of the basement.
Now that I have work to do, I find the tantalizing pull of procrastination too much. So I dug them up, scanned the first one, played around with the colours and the sizes, struggled to get it online and effectively wasted over an hour.
I am going away for a long time but suddenly I found something happy. There is a small sliver of light at the end of this slimy, dark tunnel.
I dreamt that my coworker was my brother and that my parents took us on a bus tour of Jordan. We stopped at a cave; inside there was a giant room. Coarse desert sand on the ground, with patches of forlorn plants. There were dim lights, perhaps flowing in from the outside. I sank into the sand.
In the far end of the cave, there were shelves. On the shelves were jars of dark amber with seaweed floating in them.
“Cave honey,” the attendant told me. “Made by cave-dwelling bees.”
I needed to buy some cave honey. For souvenirs. I asked if I could perform a taste test. The first few jars were salty, the sweetness overwhelmed by the seaweed. Not sweet enough. Moving to the next shelf, I was certain that I would find sweet honey.
Just then, the tour guide called us all back to the bus. I hadn’t even bought one jar. I think I hastily bought a jar that was lighter in colour - it had to be sweet - and then I woke up.
The Dream Dictionary says this:
Cave: to be in a cave foreshadows change. You will probably be estranged from those who are very dear to you. For a young woman to walk in a cave with her lover or friend, denotes she will fall in love with a villain and will suffer the loss of true friends.
I’ve fallen in love with plenty o’ villains. Next.
Honey: to dream that you see honey, you will be possessed of considerable wealth. (Yes! Money = Happiness.) To dream of eating honey, foretells that you will attain wealth and love. (Yes! Yes! I’ll find a use for those toys yet!)
So does life ever get better? Will my luck ever improve? Seems unlikely and no one is making me feel better by saying it will. They can’t lie to me. Life will only get suckier.
There’s just too much nastiness for me to continue. I feel like writing about what a crappy day I’ve been having but I know you don’t come here for that. So I will be leaving Maktaaq. I don’t know when I’ll be back. When my luck improves, perhaps?
Like Charles, I might experience a huge influx of amusing ideas to share with you and come back sooner.
I am still writing my novel and if anyone cares, just let me know if you want the next chapter sent to you.
Otherwise, goodbye. It’s been nice.
I haven’t had computer access for four days. I can’t write by hand for reasons that are explained here.
Plus, I fell down the stairs. I had the date from hell on Friday. My bathroom is in shambles. I keep raking the lawn but leaves keep reappearing. I lost one of my best friends. So my problems have multiplied.
That’s why I couldn’t write. Not to mention, what happened to Chriselda after the chapter I am working on now? I have vague ideas but nothing definite. Chriselda, baby, help me here! You’re supposed to jump off the page but you’re Pinocchio’s half-sister, damn you!
I shouldn’t give anything away but any plot twists I could bum off of you?
One thing is for sure. There aren’t any geoducks in this story. That will change very, very soon.
And now that I’ve written it, I am committed to geoducks.
Stupid geoducks. Now look what you’ve done!
“If there is someone on your friends list who you would either like to tie down and have your way with, teasing them mercilessly and making them beg for release, or have them tie YOU down, post this exact same sentence in your journal.”
You didn’t ask for this but you get it anyway.
We don’t know the story behind the beaver but he’s evil. He tortures museum staff at night.* We find dismembered legs all over the place in the morning.
(I don’t work night shift any more.)
In this photograph, the Evil Beaver is poised for the kill. I have no idea who took this photo but we can safely assume he or she is dead.
I think museum employees need their own reality tv show.
*Hence the high turnover in museum employees.