Human Bingo

Just the idea of walking around a crowded room being forced into interacting with 200 people at once to obtain answers to questions as profound as "Do you have a pet?" and "Have you ever traveled outside the US?" in an effort to acquaint myself with my fellow students made me verily nauseated, never mind that I left the anxiety drugs at home. (I'm on my 2nd Zofran of the day.)

With a typical colleague base in their early 20's, as most of them are fresh out of undergrad school, I was a rare "I am a parent" target in the "Human Bingo" game. Most of these kids, as I told Guy Friend, are kids without kids yet. (My tattoo also came in very handy.) Half the reason I chose a small, private graduate institution is because I like my social environment and academia, well, small and private. (Knox College, where I infamously managed to nearly flunk almost everything, which didn't seem to trouble Adler, only had 1,000 students at the time, my high school twice that size.) Had I chosen a large state university, while cheaper, I'd be one in a lecture hall of 250 students, with little attention and personal interaction with the professors. Quite satisfied, as is typical, with the 10 other students at my own table during orientation today, we were fed like cows all day and listened to the drones of representative after representative of the school community, introducing themselves, all receiving an odd round of applause. "You're in charge of financial aid, WOOT WOOT WOOT!" They gave us a "free breakfast and lunch," "free" pens, "free" messenger bags bearing their logo, a "free" book..."free" t-shirts in the Human Bingo raffle...until I coldly told my table, "You do realize, we DO have to pay for all this stuff eventually, right?" which served to dampen the enthusiasm of the young adults, who all started to complain about how we were all hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and class hadn't even started yet. I guess I'm nothing if not a buzzkill.

No, really. Look at it critically. In the last 2 days, I've not only been a collegiate buzzkill. I've also been deemed a zygote-murder-endorser by radical right wing Christian conservatives, and a "self-aggrandizing, boring housewife who's a shitty writer" and, evidently, am, get this: "obsessed" with my ex-husband, if I'm to believe what's being said about me on the, again, unofficial, unsanctioned Flaming Lips fan forum.  Slow-Nerve-Action must be awfully slow yet no less nervy this week. They're more "knee deep in the hoopla" than Starship circa 1986. They kicked me out and are still talking about me. 

Pause for just a moment, shall we? Let's dissect these accusations. 

Collegiate buzzkill: Hey, just trying to interject a little realism into the young minds of my colleagues who erroneously believe that our educational institution is giving us anything for free, which was further cemented today as I electronically signed my life away & finalized my student loans, so math-inept and challenged that I needed a calculator to figure out and was pissed that Luke wasn't home to help me with the mandatory student loan government tutorial online, with all its percentages and dollar amounts and factoring how much I spend on things like "entertainment" and "other" every month in determining my resources vs. my projected future earning potential. I put a lot into the "other" category, actually, because raising a young man costs a lot of money, and furthermore, there was no option in which to lump your child's private education, food, clothing, streaming Netflix, and growing playing card collection when Dad's child support is about enough to feed the kid and not much else. 

I think it's kind of silly to have to perform a work-study job as part of my financial aid package, when I'm loaning out enough money precisely so that I wouldn't *have* to work. There was a great job as a writing tutor 2 days a week posted for which I'd certainly qualify, but I am unavailable on Tuesdays, one of the required days. What I loved most about substitute teaching at my old high school was the extensive time I spent tutoring in the writing lab, naturally encouraging the students to un-learn everything their instructors were trying to teach them because, by the time college rolls around, you want to nurture writing in creative minds and let them fearlessly pen, no-holds-barred, and while a few rules are meant to be adhered, most of them are secondary education's required doses of useless bullshit. (The English department chair hated my guts and my rogue teaching methods and wanted the kids to stick to the agenda the district and its instructors had carefully laid out. My attitude, naturally, was "Yeah, fuck that. I'll teach you how to WRITE-WRITE." I helped a lot of kids. Then I was relegated to supervising classes on sewing, when I can't even thread a needle, or the vocational classes where all the misbehaving boys liked to torture the substitute, or to simply proctor exams in a given teacher's absence for the day. I still can't really complain, though, seeing as I cleared $100 for less than 5 hours of work a few days a week for 5 years.)

Wait. I forgot. I'm a "pretty shitty writer," according to the online persona "Big in Japan" on slow-nerve-action.com. All this hindsight. While I'm SO self-aggrandizing as to write and publish an autobiographical blog, I can't claim to be holy but still feel a little bit like Jesus riding the donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He was praised and revered, palms waving to fan and celebrate His arrival, only to be crucified by the same people a week later. In other words, don't compliment my blog and post links to other entries that were likewise witty and amusing, encouraging others to read my work, then banish me from your microcosm of--face it, you're ALL creepy  "superfans"--rumors and hypotheses, in your nerdy, unofficial little Flaming Lips fan forum. My bachelor's isn't in Shitty Writing, you twats. 

As for being a boring housewife who's life *isn't* fascinating? Go ahead and color me egotistical, but my life is seldom "boring," which my regular readers would probably agree upon. What I write keeps enough people reading and engaged, even people who frankly can't stand me, because it's seldom a yawn-fest. I don't lead the mundane life of a "boring housewife," for certain. It's worthy of mention that, throughout my 11-year marriage, I was never a "housewife." I never stayed at home being a frau while my husband worked. I continued to teach after I had my son, Craig and I trading work shifts and parental duty so that one of us was always home with Luke, and I followed that up by running my own very successful eBay home business. What we grown-ups call that is being a "stay-at-home mom." I generated enough income on my own that when my ex-husband was unemployed, I was making enough for all of us to live a good life. I'll be the first to tell you that I fucked that up terribly due to mental illness and addiction, but why that should concern Big in Japan, I'm not sure. Now I'm divorced and still not a housewife. I'm a new graduate student in psychology, I play drums in a band, and am still raising a young man, and am presently romantically entangled with two men at the same time. If my life is honestly *that* boring, and I'm such a "shitty writer," why have hundreds of blog hits generated from slow-nerve-action in the last week and still persist? Why are the forum members still talking about me and my "drama?"  If you're indeed happy you banned me, move the fuck on. 

According to my personal blog tracker and Blogger's statistics, over 80 visits came from your site today alone, via some anonymous proxies, through my locked Twitter account, from Google and slow-nerve-action. But I'm so boring....

Forum member "The Amazing Invisible Man" sarcastically said that he "liked" my blog's play-by-play of the event that was the Rolling Stone article, "instead of me just saying that Steven was fine and Rolling Stone was wrong." What a bland piece of music criticism and interview reviewing THAT would've been. Had I said simply that, I doubt my blog ever would've landed on slow-nerve-action's radar and I was going to defend my friend, while your forum hung on my every word and piece of information, until The Mighty Kliph's feathers were ruffled and the forum (who are claiming "the band" wanted me booted, which is an out and out lie, because they didn't take a vote as a group. It was Kliph's idea, not Steven or Wayne's) banned my privileges and deleted all my posts.  

Yes, I pointed the members of the forum to my ex-husband's extensive 2-part interview with Steven from last year, because I thought the superfans would find it really interesting. If that makes me "obsessed" with my ex-husband, why don't you base your statements on wrote fact as opposed to mere speculation? Listen, Big in Japan, I could frankly give 2 shits what my ex-husband does with his life unless it affects our kid. He and I are still friends and involved in one another's life. But we've both moved on, and I see no further point in defending my relationship with the father of my child. That's Douchebag Point #2 for you. Please, Lord, if you read my blog, it's blatantly evident with whom, if anyone, I may or may not be "obsessed", which is a really harsh accusation in the first place. And it's not Steven. 

Quite honestly, your little online world, slow-nerve? It's laden with Flaming Lips masturbation and all you've managed to exhibit is overt, petty jealousy that I have access to someone you all wish you had access to. If you want your forum to be a friendly, lively place of discussion, and instead of sitting around jacking off to either prove or debunk Wayne's non-contextual remarks, you should fucking allow people who actually care about the people in the band to have a voice. Why ANYONE thinks I would just sit idle and let anyone, even Wayne, perpetuate negative, untrue rumors about the Steven is a mystery. 

I firmly believe this, and I know I used it with reference to my former co-workers, but it bears a repeat, as I believe Kliph would fall into Category 3, and The Slow Nerve Superfans fall into Category 1:

Unfortunately, the slow-nerve-action nimrods will never get to be me. That's both a good and a bad thing. Not everyone can say they survived narcotics abuse and alcoholism, grave mental illness, divorce, multiple surgeries and hospitalizations, domestic abuse at the hands of a crazy ex-boyfriend, non-suicidal self-injury, romances with more than one married man, recovery, a job that drove me into anorexia due to stress, moving back in with my mother and trying to parent a 12-year old, playing drums in a band, & being blessed with the greatest friends a woman could ask for, including one of the Flaming Lips. If that makes me stupid and boring, y'all need something more than the Lips in your life. I'm totally cool with being totally cool. Don't forget: I love the Flaming Lips too. I'm just not "obsessed" with them enough to dissect their every move in an online forum. If I want to know something, I have "insider information..."