Bible Stories

I lived in Virginia for close to two years, from ages six to seven. The church sermons were conducted by a ventriloquist dummy. Dude was in character for hours.

Throughout my childhood I had a variety of ticks, which is excellent news when you perform church songs in the children's choir. I would squeeze my eyes really, really tight, like long, painful blinks. If someone drew attention to it, I would do it in rapid succession, I couldn't stop.

Some teenage boys that I knew were in the audience one Sunday, mimicking my facial ticks, laughing, pointing it out to the Lutherans around them, who smiled.

I kept looking at them throughout the whole performance, studying their faces as my own swirled in circles and disfigured itself. It turns out I didn't look like a monkey, but a, fuckin', mentally retarded little girl.

Centipedes

Centipedes, and my coworker found a Skittle in the men's room covered in ants. I've seen an old man stride from the unisex bathroom snacking on a bag of pretzels.

We have a couple regulars in the business of disemboweling themselves at work. Whenever one of a few specific employees comes out of the bathroom, you pretend you were just strolling by, kicking off from the wall with your heel. You know they just wrecked that facility.

I love the break room, too; ants making hills out of the cinnamon sprinkled to deter them. I love it all.

On the wall during my visit to NYC.

Let's end on that happy note. New York, I knew you once, fleetingly. My best friend's roommate's rooftop was the best place on Earth for over a week. It's as much as I'll get for now.

Pyramid Scheme

I was intrigued by Onyx Wholesale when they first called me about an interview.
"We are closed Fridays," they said.
"It's the only day I can do it."
"Oh shit girl."

"I know. Sorry."

"Girl. Let's work this out."

Suite 204 is a hip hop video:

Several men in suits and cornrows disperse when I enter.

In reception sits a gigantic boombox like a computer. Rihanna wails and we all raise our voices.
Three dancers pirouette in and out again.
Pollock-esque triptychs hang on the walls. "The boss did those."
ELLA ELLA ELLA ELLA.

Everyone beautiful and loud and dancing down the hall.

The receptionist talked breathlessly to me. She left friends and family behind in Los Angeles to pursue the American Dream in Arvada, Colorado. She had no idea that an earthquake hit California. She kept the conversation going, boom boom boom, never allowing a lull.

Kyle wore a navy, pinstripe vest. He had the "Jack Sparrow sparrow" (his words) tattooed at sunset on his forearm, and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He took me and another young girl into a white room with a desk, no computer, and a framed Obama poster on the wall. Kyle said I was "challenging his English skills" with the word emphatic. He babbled about how perfectly wonderful my personality is. "I'm weird too," he offered out of nowhere, "I'm into weird stuff, too." He said entry-level assistant manager positions paid $30,000. He said the fragrance business was "recession-proof."

Kyle manipulated me and the other girl against one another.

Kyle: Would you need to give two weeks?

Girl: Well I'd like to, it's courtesy, there's one guy who's really mean and nobody seems to like me, people don't like me for some reason, I really hate Papa John's, it's a bad environment for me.

It was easy to act like he was blowing her off with the way she behaved. He gave her a time to call them later that night and dismissed her from the room. I was held back for further questioning. I told him our schedules were incompatible for a second interview. Kyle was getting frustrated.

"The second interview is about three hours long, but it's worth it."

I would have seen that other girl again, among a coliseum of weary-eyed degenerates with eating disorders. She wasn't blown off, she was pushed aside to bait my ego.

The Scam

This is an alleged pyramid scheme that has allegedly done hideous things to other girls. You can find my favorite report here at ripoffreport.com:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/Sales-People/Onyx-Wholesale/onyx-wholesale-fraudulent-perf-e2y7f.htm

The most ticklish moment of this report is the raw hot dogs. By ticklish, I mean horrifying.

"They paired us up for a contest. Whoever out of the two people sold more bottles didn't have to eat baby food and raw hot dogs when they came back. I thought great. They gave us our box again and sent us out with different leaders."

"When the day was finally over and we showed up at the office with no bottles dropped, i really didnt care.

That is until i found out that the girl i was in the contest with, didn't come back. So i was now competing with some girl who didn't drop any either. So i was happy that i didn't have to eat baby food. Then they made us have a dance contest. Well since i won, I didn't have to eat it first! What?! I still had to eat baby spinich? OH no!!! I refused and almost threw up from the smell alone! Chris dragged me out of the bathroom and forced it down my throat!!!"

I was suspicious from the first phone call when they seemed so clingy and accommodating.

And this poor, poor dummy made it to the hot dog suffocation stage.

I don't wish to discourage people from speaking out against disturbing and humiliating scams. I'm sure this report saved a lot of time and money for tens of people. Those that Google a prospective employer before it's too late.

But god damn dude. They sang songs calling you a "weak piece of shit." I bet nobody's ever gotten that far before. They were running out of ideas.

"We learned horrible songs that downed people and we told we were FNPs. Famously New People, or F***ing new People. We were also told if we quit we were WPS. Weak Piece of SH**."

Also, I love this moment of honesty. I tried to screw my friend over, but little did I know...

"Well Monday we were all to write down a list of people we knew and we were going to have a contest to where we could make $950 dollars. It was to go to our friends and family and sell these perfumes. They were rendition but we had to tell them they were the real thing.

I tried it. I sold two bottles to an old co-worker and she said it was out of sympathy because she used to work there. She also said she would let me find out on my own how the company was because she didn't 'want to kill my dream'."

Kaboom! Don't cheat.

The owner of Ripoff Report is being sued for extortion* and still I think this woman's story is real. Even if the owner is guilty, honest people can go on there and file grievances. I could go on there and click "file a report" if I felt like it. People should have a forum to speak out against mistreatment.

The description of the first interview is identical to my experience:

"I called the number and a girl named Ashley had answered and there was music playing so loud all I could understand was over 18 and come for an interview in 45 minutes. I had to call back 3 times to get clear directions.

When I arrived, there were 3 boys and another girl sitting in chairs, music playing pictures of parties all over the walls and a young girl telling cheesy jokes.
I gave her my name and she gave me questionnaire to fill out and told me that Iris would be with me shortly. I went into the "group interview" with a guy and another woman. It was very short, but the questions entailed of what my goals were, how much money I wanted to make and why I wanted a new job.

Iris asked us 3 all the same questions and gave us each a call back time to see if we made it to the second interview.

I called later that night and was told what time to be there for the 2nd interview."

Post-Interview

My interview was yesterday, and we had scheduled a second interview for the following week. I was just so fascinated by how far I could take this.

Now that I know how bad it can get, I'm amused but uneasy. It's creepy, knowing you've walked in and out of the spider's lair.

Some woman called me early this morning.

"Hi this is random calling from Ox!"

They always slur the company name. I didn't understand the first time they called me.

"Oh hi I've accepted a better job offer. But thanks."

The nasal mew, "Awwwah! I was really hoping to see you!"

That upset me. Her role is to fuck with the heads of desperate people. "I know!" I exclaimed, and then in a casual voice, "I actually found another pyramid scheme, so I'm going to go with them, but thanks and have a good one."

As I hung up, her disembodied voice droned in the balance, devoid of charm and humanity, "O..h. Okay..."

She may have actually been a man. Her voice dropped so low and metal like a robot.

If the attendance policy at my current job allotted more breathing room, I'd have gone to that second interview with a cameraman.

If you didn't visit the website like I probably wouldn't, this is the company video.

Part 1

Phoenix | MySpace Video

*http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=11587

A Character Study

In the apartment complex in Denver, all of the neighborhood kids stuck together. There were dozens of us and we had our favorite cliques, but we would also play epic games of hide and seek -- and late-night manhunts, all of us versus three other apartments in the area. I believe kids today know it as Halo.

There were fun moments. Some of the kids were sweet. Those ones moved away pretty swiftly, right through my fingers. Good kids were hard to come by.

The children who stuck around were out of their minds. For me and them, this wasn't a funny detour as we awaited a house. It wasn't that way for me in the first few years, anyway. My mom worked hard.

I was a gullible kid. I walked into the lion's den time and time again. I have no idea why I kept going back for more. I was recklessly social before AOL came around.

The least of my worries was the Jugglette. She was a teenager, which meant I was mature. I never told her that her velvet posters made me antsy, and I even found a song by Twiztid that didn't scare me to pieces. I was less awkward in those years, now that I think about it; I didn't share every crazy thought in my head and drive the ones I loved to bewilderment and blank stares. I recognized the things that made me uncool and I swallowed them like raw eggs.

The leader of the insane children was named Chad. I didn't know what it meant to be a Chad back then, but he sometimes exposed his dick to me when I entered a room and I figured it out. I would round a corner and BAM Chad's wailing penis, so ugly that I took off running.

Here is my case for why I don't care if Chad is alive or dead in 2010:

1. Chad trapped me in a storage cubby once with a damn combination lock. I thought we were playing hide and seek, and he told me to climb in, "we'll share it." He left me there for something like twenty minutes. Maybe it only felt like twenty, but it was way too long. My fear of the dark was beyond normal for my age; I don't remember if I went bananas or just rocked back and forth.

2. Chad framed me for vandalism in the laundry room. His mom was the cleaning lady. His own mother picked up the broken crumbles of the window blinds, and the wet leaves her son stuffed in the washers and dryers. He poured Mountain Dew all over the floor. I don't get it. That's your mom.

3. Chad held my head underwater in the outdoor pool; he was too young to know he was holding me under for so long that, when he finally released my hair, I would fall in the grass and dry-heave, and my vision would black in and out, and I think I was carried home by another friend's older brother. I do know that Chad just laughed and went swimming.

(To be fair, there was at least one other guy, in his late teens, that held my head underwater on a different day. It was all the rage.)

4. Chad was fourteen. I was eleven. I don't know why the teenagers hung out with me. I was his "girlfriend" for about a day in fifth grade. We broke up because I wouldn't kiss him in the laundry room. I didn't know that was part of the deal, I just thought he would never hold his girlfriend's head underwater. He had really crazy acne.

Chad's best friend was also a charmer. At the pool, he whipped my thigh with the wet chain of his necklace. Even though the welt looked like a massive blood-filled maggot pulsating across my thigh, all of our "friends" said it never happened when my mom went on a prowl of phone calls. He apologized on the school bus; even though he got away with it, he looked scared. All of those dumbasses had that Lenny strength.

My fondest memories of those days were three-hour summer bike rides by myself along the creek, and the last couple months before I moved to the suburbs, when I met a neighbor girl that I probably could have been friends with for life. Kids don't keep in touch.

Evermore fondly, I visited the dog shelter every weekend, usually alone, sometimes with a friend. The Denver Dumb Friends League was a sanctuary. I was there at least once every weekend, I attended religiously, for years. I got to know a lot of the dogs, and sometimes I cried when their shelter space was suddenly empty; but I also cried with ridiculous joy when I saw the "adopted" sign over their bios, and they'd wag their behinds and bark happily up at me like I was the one taking them home.

Dreamboat of Constellations

I had this thing published to a poetry anthology in fifth grade.

I'm from a small town in New Hampshire. I wore floral dresses to school every day. My teeth grew like arrows in all directions. We moved to Virginia and my head was spinning. I wrote that poem in Colorado.

The children from my elementary school years here in Denver were different from the quaker babies of my hometown. They smoked cigarettes in fourth grade. Most times, the apartment complex was a hell hole in terms of friendship. Excluding a random beautiful girl named Julie, the other kids were trashy and dysfunctional. I was a vulnerable small town kid. They chased me down the sidewalk with magnifying glasses.

They locked me alone in a room full of bibles and blared Korn and Rammstein because it made me cry. I clawed at the door and begged them to let me out like I was locked up with a killer. That music terrified me to my soul. I was still listening to cassettes of the Troll dolls singing "Pretty Woman" and "Kokomo."

I started expressing myself in third grade with drawings of dark castles. All this fear was welling inside me and I had to let it out. I realized my hands were inadequate. By the fifth grade I was half-atheist. I strongly doubted Jesus, and I was petrified of going to hell. I was really angry and I wrote a poem about a white light.

If one of my friends were to lock me in a room now and blare Tool on the other side of the door... I don't know what I would do. I was going to say "call for help" but that feels melodramatic. I guess I would just wait patiently and think about the Schism music video, and all the ways I would kill my friends with the pink lemonade can in my hand.

Chat Roulette

Piano Chat Improv guy is very, very... talented. Colorado represent.

I am obsessed with Chat Roulette. I've been on twice, about eight and three minutes respectively. I'm fascinated with the world's obsession, I guess.

Wait for the shitty release starring Jesse Bradford of Bring It On fame. He sees the murder on Chat Roulette. He and Ali Larter have to stop the killer (James Woods) before they're next!

By the way, iSight from MacBook generation 2006, you have helped little in the efforts to uplift my self-esteem. My lips are very very dark and red against my face, and my chin is The Overtaker. It is my lost twin stuck to my face, a fetus with a wrestler's arms. I'll grab Piano Chat by the scruff of his hoodie with my wrestling fetus arms. Sing about that.

The Second Great Flood

My kitchen flooded today. I was doing the dishes when I noticed a large puddle in the corner. I followed the trail back over to the sink, beneath which the trash can (empty, I never use it) overflowed with muggy water.

I lost my phone for about twenty minutes, and when I found it I called my building manager.
"Your what?"
"The pipe! Maybe it's missing a nut or something I don't know!"
"The pipe? Do you mean the drain?"
"Something broke."
"I'll be up in a few minutes."

I hid some wine glasses and bottles of cooking oil in the cupboard. I shoveled water from the trash can with a mug until it could be emptied into the bathtub. I cleaned the hell out of that tub later.

I only had two towels to mop up all the water. I didn't use a mop because a mop just kind've swirls around in the lake like a tentacled creature. I had to uhhh use a couple t-shirts.

Just now, I stood to close the window and realized my jacket and the lap of my pajama pants are damp, which is a feeling that makes my skin crawl, damp clothes.

The church bells are ringing in the distance at 9:21 pm.

The Madame Telling Time

After a two-minute tutorial on crimping in the middle of a bead shop, I decided I was a jewelrymaker. One word from now on.

The thing holding my pieces afloat is my imagination. There's a lobster clasp but you know what I'm saying. The stainless steel wire I use can hold up to ten pounds, which is knowledge I maybe never should have been privy to, because I'm challenging it.

I've been using a ruler on the internet to measure the wire for my jewelry; for the time being I have misplaced my tape measurer.

This is The Madame Telling Time.

She is a flower with a nest of pearls, green-gold leaves, one snail,

and I made her string so, so, so short. I had intended to make a choker with some left-over materials, and then I found this watch... It looks good attached to the flower, which was originally attached to this dreamcatcher that I had no inspiration to finish.

I'll be restringing her, because this is just ridiculous:

My tendons strrraaain against the bone-like white. Looks painful.