The Writer and the Worms

My mother gets ruffled when I post pictures like this to my Twitter, which I took of a note that was on our kitchen counter when I was home for Christmas:



It reads: "I went to get some worms. L, G"

It's a note from my step dad, Greg, who, at any given time, is involved in and/or embarking on a handful of household projects and repairs.* So, when I read this note I couldn't help but snicker at how funny it was because it was so matter of fact; like, there was no explanation needed. Mom walks into the kitchen, picks up the note: "Oh, Greg went to get some worms. Ok. I'm going to make a sandwich." In the microcosm of my parent's house going to get some worms is entirely normal.

Of course to them it was normal because it was within their context. As I said, I laughed at it and Tweeted it, which then posted to my Facebook where my mom saw it. She was all "They were for my compost! You didn't say they were for my compost! Greg doesn't just buy worms. They were for my compost!" Ok, mother, I now know they are for your compost. I guess she was worried that my friends were going to see the post and make some sort of judgment as to why we Arkansans might need worms. The assumption, I assume, would be for fishing, which, while relatively southern and possibly backwood to some people, seems harmless and even charming, no?

But, I see where the worry might come from. And if I'm being honest, I was counting on some raised eyebrows and maybe a few chuckles laced with the subtext of "Yeah, that's kind of weird." It wasn't to lambaste my family, though. I explained to my mother that, as a writer (one who especially fancies David Sedaris, though who doesn't?), your family has to understand that they are at your disposal. Their quirks, idiosyncrasies, and vulnerabilities are at your whim, but not in any sort of vindictive way. It's just that, for me, I come from a big, crazy, loud, emotional and totally awesome family. And there are so many tales worth telling from the 27 years I've been a part of it I can't even begin to try and chronicle all of it.* So, when I post a picture of a note from my step dad alerting my mother that he went to get worms, I take a small amount of creative liberty to illuminate a small and, yes, decontextualized example of the kinds of endearing crotchets you'll come across if you somehow get thrown into Plattner pandemonium. It could be worms; it could be a rousing and intense game of Scrabble; it could be an epic screaming match; it could be an impromptu dance party in the living room.

Nevertheless, because I love my mother and because she doesn't need any more distress in her life than she already has, I commented on my own picture noting that the worms were, in fact, for a compost pile. It seemed to diminish the luster of mystery surrounding Greg's Oligochaetal hunt, but then I started thinking about the fact that it was for a compost pile. A compost pile? Mom composts now? What's that all about? Who knows, but maybe I'll write about it one day.

Seth


*As my brothers and I were reared in such a DYI environment we were invariably tasked, much to our adolescent chagrin, with helping Greg with whatever whimsical chore he had on his ever growing list of things to do—picking up rocks, clearing brush, chopping limbs, repairing a birdhouse, planting flowers, picking up rocks, stacking wood, weed whacking, staining furniture, picking up rocks...building a deck. And while at the time it totally cramped our Fort-Smith-Arkansas cool, I'm grateful Greg staved off our attitude, because it's actually kind of prideful, especially as a gay man, to know that if I needed to build, say, a small shed in which to store, uh, tools (which I know how to use) I could totally do it.

*Though one day I will, and it's going to make an amazing book or short story collection or script or whatever.

Oscars! Reactions! Kunis!

I remember I had a blog today and decided to return to it. For what? The Oscars, naturally.

I obsess over the Oscars every year and, in true fan girl fashion, do my best to see at least every nominated movie, and also every nominated performance. I've done pretty well this year pre-nominations, with only 127 Hours and Winter's Bone left on my list. Thus, how eager I was to hear the nominations this morning.

For some reason I woke up with Mila Kunis in my head. Like, all I wanted to do was get to the office and see the nominations just to confirm whether she had or had not been nominated. It was startling, my care for Kunis, especially given the fact that all I've done throughout awards season is bemoan how much attention she's been getting for her supporting role in Black Swan. I mean, look, she's fine in the movie, but I just didn't see what all the hype was about. She basically played Mila Kunis—aloof, funny, sarcastic—albeit a version of herself who dances ballet, likes trashy back tattoos, and noms on ladies.

She didn't get nominated, and initially I felt victorious in her snub ("See, the academy agrees with me!") But then I felt sort of sad for The Kunis. Not generally regarded as a reputable dramatic thespian, she probably felt artistically vindicated, even though no one's slighted her comedy career thus far. Still, she was on That 70's Show. She voiced Meg on Family Guy. She was, er, ya know in other stuff. Then all of a sudden she has dramatic cred and just when she thinks she's got the last star, that gold star, on her progress chart she comes up short. She's probably still happy with how it's all played out, and God knows how many scripts have already come her way with juicy parts, but it probably stung a bit. Stung just enough.

As for the rest, there weren't too many surprises, though I would have liked to have seen Mark Wahlberg finally get nominated. Poor guy just seems to aaaaalmost get there, and then, in the year when he had a legitimate shot, he gets beat out by a Spanish Lothario and scrawny kid. I haven't seen Biutiful, so I guess I can't be too hard on Javier Bardem, but he just get's more annoying, for whatever reason. Maybe it's his connection to Julia Roberts, who never seems to shut up about him. And, GOD, her. Just, her. Stop smiling and laughing and thinking you are so hilaaaarious and just go away. (Leave Notting Hill, though. Thanks.)

As for Jesse Eisenberg, I won't shortchange him reining in a performance written by Aaron Sorkin and then directed by David Fincher, but he's a freshman in Hollywood and lacks pedigree. He might me smug too. I can't tell.

The winners won't be shocking: The Social Network, Firth, Portman, Bale and Leo. All of whom quite deserving but when are we going to get another Adrien Brody moment? If I were ever going to win an Oscar that's how I would want it to happen. I've dreamed about it. I even have the speech written already. Maybe one day you'll hear it.

Toods.

Seth

back in the habit

rededicating myself to the blog. stay tuned for, uh, stuff.

Great Paragraphs

My favorite moment in a book is when it starts to make sense to you. When you reach that point that something the speaker says or does or experiences unexpectedly moves you because, in that moment, it make sense in your life. I cherish such instances because even when that sense, that correlation, changes when your life changes, it will be forever tied to that moment in the story, and when you reread that book—which you should do if it meant something to you in some way—you'll always remember why, how, and what you felt, even if it may have sucked. From chapter 16 of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Even though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn't be there with her class or anything, and even though it was so damp and lousy out, I walked all the way through the park over to the Museum of Natural History. I knew that was the museum the kid with the skate key meant. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the same school I went to when I was a kid, and we used to go there all the time. We had this teacher, Miss Aigletinger, that took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we looked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in ancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I think about it. Even now. I remember after we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we went to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing
Columbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and Isabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had to go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you were only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You'd be two rows of kids, and you'd have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named Gertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky or sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your hand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a helluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell was going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you'd pass by this long, long Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about twenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking tough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in the back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps, but I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, "Don't touch anything, children," but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then you'd pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of bending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at it, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn't have any more bosom than we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing through it. He had about two fish right next to the hole, that he'd already caught. Boy, that museum was full of glass cases. There were even more upstairs, with deer inside them drinking at water holes, and birds flying south for the winter. The birds nearest you were all stuffed and hung up on wires, and the ones in back were just painted on the wall, but they all looked like they were really flying south, and if you bent your head down and sort of looked at them upside down, they looked in an even bigger hurry to fly south. The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.

get on the train!

A friend made a comment that he was interested in doing a movie double feature with, first, this:



And secondly, this:



And that seems appropriate, no? First, The Human Centipede involves people actually being sewn together, anus to mouth, in a line that forces them to share a digestive tract so, beyond victim number one, the only way to feed is to—excuse me while I gag—ingest the incoming, uh, load. (sorry).

So that's all literal and shit—with literal, ya know, shit—but, venture into the metaphorical with me in considering Sex and the City 2 as a story not far off from that of The Human Centipeded: Carrie leads the linked pack of flighty females who pretty much construct their own nightmares with their ridiculous antics and uninformed, emotionally-driven decisions, all the while ingesting that which she excretes—mostly-horrid fashion, bad relationship examples, and oh-my-God-shut-the-fuck-up-with-all-those-puns puns—only to have it pass through their own systems of pollution to become even more gunked up with nonsense and poor judgment to finally reach at the end, oh I don't know, Samantha, where it's crapped out on the floor in a pile of dumb fucking shit. So who's the evil doctor in the SATC 2 scenario? Sadly, peeps, we are.

Seth

eat. me. want. now.

via BuzzFeed

sad

One of these days I'm going to write a book about all the pets we've had in the Plattner family. It totals somewhere at 15 cats and 11 dogs, all of them having contributed to lifetime moments of laughter, tears, frustration, and, above all else, unconditional love. But a book like that will take time and reflection in order to do them all justice. So, for this post, I just want to emote.

Last night, the second in a pair of my hometown Schnauzers, Pepper (bottom), The Wee Pep, passed away. Last summer, her brother, Jack (top), or Hungry Jack (yes, like the pancake mix, because, not a moment after he was born, the first thing he did was eat) fell into my pool, most likely as a result of a seizure, and drowned. I know that's very morbid and tragic and sad, but I'd like not to focus on their deaths (to start at least). I was, of course, devastated after Jack's accident, and I'm pretty bummed out now after losing Pepper. But, she was an old girl -- her 13th birthday was on the 22nd -- and she fell victim to pancreatitis and kidney failure, which Schnauzers are apparently the poster child for. But, beyond the sadness, I'm just kind of reflective.

Before Jack and Pepper, we had another Schnauzer, Benny, who I loved just as much as any dog I've ever had. He was the fifth brother to four others: me, my triplet brothers and older brother. The day the triplets were brought home from the hospital Benny began a vigil, posting up underneath our cribs every night, ears perking every time one of us cooed or rolled or cried. As we went from crib to highchair to blanket on the floor, Benny was always there, ya know, just checking things out, making sure it was all OK like an older brother does. 12 years later in 1997, old age just caught up with Benny out of nowhere, as it seems prone to do with Schnauzers, who stay sprightly and competent to the end. He died on a vet’s table with his head in my mother’s hand, and he was buried under the big oak tree in Mulberry, AR with the rest of the Plattner pets wrapped in his favorite sheepskin rug.

We grieved for Benny for a while, not sure when anyone would be ready to get another dog. But, time passed and it came to that point where we were ready, and so rather than one dog, mom thought two would be better so they'd grow up companions. We kidded ourselves for a while thinking we get another breed, but I think we all knew in the end we'd just get Schnauzers, because we're Schanuzer people. They are, at any given time, protective, incredibly affectionate, temperamental, almost apathetically relaxed, and, like Hungry Jack especially, ornery. With all of that, they just fit in with my family.

So they were born, Jack and Pepper, the biggest and smallest of their litter, and thus we had two new kids in the house. And they were like new babies, younger siblings to myself, because they were sort of terrors. We loved them, but they tore up everything. Relentlessly teethed on everything from kitchen chairs, table feet, plunger handles and even the walls themselves, which they'd managed to dig a 3 inch hole in. But, despite all of that, I don't remember the anger or irritation. And maybe it was just because of who I was then. We got Jack and Pepper when I was 12 years old, on the brink of adolescence, which, it goes without saying, is inherently tumultuous. Compound that with being gay and frustrated and confused, and, well, yeah...not ideal.

So these dogs grew and matured as I did, changed when I did, lived and experienced as I did. We're talking about different levels here, obviously, but as I sit here now, contemplating their passing, they'll be forever linked to that period in my life when every day was about learning something new about yourself or the world or people or your friends or your family. And sometimes that was hard and really fucking shitty. And you hated yourself and you hated your friends and you hated your family because no one understood you, or you didn't understand them, and all you wanted to was to be settled. Settled like your dogs, who just played outside and ate their food and drank their water and wagged their tails when you walked in the door. And you could just sit down with them, they'd get in your lap, lick your face, and you would get a good solid ten minutes of love. No questions asked. And sometimes it was exactly what you needed in that moment. Just love.

But sometimes, most times, things were great. I had friends. Good friends. Great friends. And we'd always hang out at my house. Play video games. Make stupid movies that we still laugh at today. Form a band and record the dumbest songs you've ever heard. Watch movies and eat tons of food. My older brother would have parties and I'd get to be there, kicking it with all these college people, thinking I was so cool, even though I know I wasn't. But I'd just sit there on the kitchen floor with Nancy, my older brother's then girlfriend and now wife, with Jack or Pepper in my lap and me lapping up the experience, just like the dogs were.

Then all of a sudden we were all seniors, about to go to college, to part ways physically but not emotionally. And I was saying bye to my family and my friends and, of course, the dogs, my mom always joking she was going to send Pepper to New York with me so I'd have a friend from the start. And then nothing was the same, there were no constants. Without those constants the variables changed and thus so did the equation of my life, as least when I was in New York. That was until I would come home and there they'd be -- my friends, my family, Jack and Pepper. The constants were back, if only briefly, and all it took was Jack wrapping his front legs around my neck to give me a hug, or Pepper curling up in my lap begging me to rub her tummy and I was back, relieved, momentarily engulfed in the bubble of home that hadn't, thankfully, changed.

Now, at 26, I'm getting older, farther away from all of that, which is lamentable, but it's also life. Those constants that you rely on vanish, mostly for good, and you can do nothing but adapt. So the next time I go home, Jack will be gone, Pepper will be gone, and I'll have to struggle with the fact that the world that made me keeps losing its pieces and I'm not there to watch them go, to grieve the process, and then reconcile. I'm only left with memories. Really good memories. But that's a consequence of my choices, and, so, perhaps then I have my own process I have to begin to reconcile, that of watching my past fossilize while I begin to build a separate and very different future. Arkansas will always be home, or at least one home. And I'll never, absolutely never, absolve myself from the life and the people I have there. I guess it's just that...shit changes. People change. Dogs die and so does the past when that which made up that past is gone in the present. Or -- foregoing again morbidity -- let's just say the past changes. And, frankly, I hate change.

RIP my sweet little Pepper. At least your back with your Jack.

Seth

"I took a bite...and then I saw God."

I'm ganking this from my Facebook because a) something as monumental as The KFC Double Down needs all the overkill documentation it can get and b) the captions are really funny. I mean, like, so funny. Go ahead -- read them. See all the funny.

On April 12th, 2010, KFC released upon the world that which it needed most: a sandwich made entirely of meat. Cheesy bacon between two fried pieces of chicken, or, as Nojan described it, "modern America in a sandwich." Behold what happened when five intrigued, ravenous, bewildered and ultimately kind of sad individuals tried this feat of human determination for the first time.






The tomb.



The shroud.




And, behold, The Messiah.


Let he without shame take the first bite.



...and immediately regret it (but not really).



Wonder Hairtwin powers: activate!



Form of...


Rachel Rosenblit!


Things may seem relatively calm here, but two seconds later Rachel ate the chicken straight out of his jugular.


Note the Guy Fieri Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives “hunch” in this photo. Well done, Julie!



Like any good abused lover, I always go back for more when I know I shouldn't.



One bite left. Who should be so lucky to receive it?



Johanna. Always Johanna.


Who wants lunch?!

Great Paragraphs

It's been a while since I've posted a great paragraph, but, man, this one got me good. Better than just a paragraph, though, it's actually a singular sentence. And you know what a sucker I am for a good sentence. From One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcìa Marquez.

Aureliano Segundo was not aware of the singsong until the following day after breakfast when he felt himself being bothered by a buzzing that was by then more fluid and louder than the sound of the rain, and it was Fernanda, who was walking throughout the house complaining that they had raised her to be a queen only to have her end up as a servant in a madhouse, with a lazy, idolatrous, libertine husband who lay on his back waiting for bread to rain down from heaven while she was straining her kidneys trying to keep afloat a home held together with pins where there was so much to do, so much to bear up under and repair from the time God gave his morning sunlight until it was time to go to bed that when she got there her eyes were full of ground glass, and yet no one ever said to her, “Good morning, Fernanda, did you sleep well?,” nor had they asked her, even out of courtesy, why she was so pale or why she awoke with purple rings under her eyes in spite of the fact that she expected it, of course, from a family that had always considered her a nuisance, an old rag, a booby painted on the wall, and who were always going around saying things against her behind her back, calling her churchmouse, calling her Pharisee, calling her crafty, and even Amaranta, may she rest in peace, had said aloud that she was one of those people who could not tell their rectums from their ashes, God have mercy, such words, and she had tolerated everything with resignation because of the Holy Father, but she had not been able to tolerate it any more when that evil José Arcadio Segundo said that the damnation of the family had come when it opened its doors to a stuck-up highlander, just imagine, a bossy highlander, Lord save us, a highland daughter of evil spit of the same stripe as the highlanders the government sent to kill workers, you tell me, and he was referring to no one but her, the godchild of the Duke of Alba, a lady of such lineage that she made the liver or presidents’ wives quiver, a noble dame of fine blood like her, who had the right to sign eleven peninsular names and who was the only mortal creature in that town full of bastards who did not feel all confused at the sight of sixteen pieces of silverware, so that her adulterous husband could die of laughter afterward and say that so many knives and forks and spoons were not meant for a human being but for a centipede, and the only one who could tell with her eyes closed when the white wine was served and on what side and in which glass and when the red wine and on what side and in which glass and not like that peasant of an Amaranta, may she rest in peace, who thought that white wine was served in the daytime and red wine at night, and the only one on the whole coast who could take pride in the fact that she took care of her bodily needs only in golden chamberpots, so that Colonel Aureliano Buendía, may he rest in peace, could have the effrontery to ask her with his Masonic ill humor where she had received that privilege and whether she did not shit shit but shat sweet basil, just imagine, with those very words, and so that Renata, her own daughter, who through an oversight had seen her stool in the bedroom, had answered that even if the pot was all gold and with a coat of arms, what was inside was pure shit, physical shit, and worse even than any other kind because it was stuck-up highland shit, just imagine, her own daughter, so that she never had any illusions about the rest of the family, but in any case she had the right to expect a little more consideration from her husband because, for better or for worse, he was her consecrated spouse, her helpmate, her legal despoiler, who took upon himself of his own free and sovereign will the grave responsibility of taking her away from her paternal home, where she never wanted for or suffered from anything, where she wove funeral wreaths as a pastime, since her godfather had sent a letter with his signature and the stamp of his ring on the sealing wax simply to say that the hands of his goddaughter were not meant for tasks of this world except to play the clavichord, and, nevertheless, her insane husband had taken her from her home with all manner of admonitions and warnings and had brought her to that frying pan of hell where a person could not breathe because of the heat, and before she had completed her Pentecostal fast he had gone off with his wandering trunks and his wastrel’s accordion to loaf in adultery with a wretch of whom it was only enough to see her behind, well, that’s been said, to see her wiggle her mare’s behind in order to guess that she was a, that she was a, just the opposite of her, who was a lady in a palace or a pigsty, at the table or in bed, a lady of breeding, God-fearing, obeying His laws and submissive to His wishes, and with whom he could not perform, naturally, the acrobatics and trampish antics that he did with the other one, who, of course, was ready for anything, like the French matrons, and even worse, if one considers well, because they at least had the honesty to put a red light at their door, swinishness like that, just imagine, and that was all that was needed by the only and beloved daughter of Doña Renata Argote and Don Fernando del Carpio, and especially the latter, an upright man, a fine Christian, a Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, those who receive direct from God the privilege of remaining intact in their graves with their skin smooth like the cheeks of a bride and their eyes alive and clear like emeralds.

pump pump pump

No ranting. No raving.

No denying. No crying.

No waxing. No waning.

No defaulting. No assaulting.

No hating. No harping.

No sadness. No madness.


Just acceptance. Just accession.

Just repose. Just (hopefully) one rose?

Just friends. Just fun.

Just love.

Just love.