The Tragedy of the Soup: Part II

Recap: I hate vegetables and mushrooms.

The smell, the taste, the texture, the sound they make against my teeth when I accidentally bite into one... There is nothing about mushrooms that I don't despise with every fiber of my mediocre English major being. If there was a food product that embodied all the vagaries of despair, it would be the mushroom.

But that is only the origin story to our the tale. The climactic plot point in the Tragedy of the Soup was a moment when I realized the lack of fulfillment and ambition in my life. When I realized that there was no possible way $3.80 was going to feed me for six days.

So, taking into consideration my hatred for vegetables, my exceptional hatred of mushrooms, and my status as an extremely poor college student facing the end of a term and a dwindling meal plan, I got my hands on some strategically placed pity and gained possession of some canned soup.

Now, for me I have been spoiled for any soup that is not made by my mother, or other members of my family that I trust in the kitchen (which is almost all of them, as cooking is kinda of a huge deal in my family—all except my sister, she of the thrice-burnt rice). We make soup like champs, with none of this canned nonsense. But when one gets down to the state of near-starvation that awaits any student foolish enough not to budget his or her meal plan, canned soup is just dandy. Delicious, even.

Wandering back into my room after an evening of studying and friends, feeling the hungry again, I perused my food shelf and lighted upon the cans of soup. The cans looked good, or at least the labels appealed to my sense of aesthetic if not to my taste buds. One of them looked especially enticing, called “Steak & Potato.” Seriously, what is more delicious to finely chopped, beef and potatoes, smothered in a gravy-like broth? I like steak. I like potatoes. I like gravy. I had high hopes for it. But I suppose a loss of hope and the destruction of dreams is what growing up is all about.

So, after a long and arduous journey to the dining hall, I acquired a spoon and dumped my soup into a leftovers contained to eat. For those of you are of a literary inclination, this is what might be referred to as the exposition and rising action. For after I acquired my spoon and opened the can, I noticed that the soup was.... not the color I expected it to be. And it didn't smell right either.

But I was foolish, and let my stomach dictate my choices. I began to eat. It didn't taste great. In fact, it tasted kinda like crap. The potatoes were rubbery and the steak felt grainy. I thought to myself, This is disappointing, but I am hungry, and I won't let the goodwill and hard work of getting this can of soup be in vain. I took a few more bites and soon wished I hadn't.

On my fifth bite, I bit into the potato I had scooped up in my spoon and swallowed down the odd-tasting gravy-broth, when something unexpected appeared amidst the bite of soup. After a shocked pause, I delicately probed at the mysterious object in my mouth with my tongue, thinking that it was perhaps a congealed chunk of grease or something. It felt slick, slimy, with a vaguely familiar unpleasant something about it that tickled at my memory. The object slipped over the side of my tongue and the moment it settled in the bottom of my mouth against my teeth, I recognized the texture of the unexpected object.

There was a mushroom in my mouth.

I won't lie. I do this thing when I accidentally eat things I don't like. I sort of screw my face up and.... Well, no. I don't suppose it really could be qualified as a “thing.” It can't even be qualified as simply “spitting it out.” I just open my mouth and rely on gravity to remove the offending substance.

This has a rather checkered history of success for me. For example, when I was small and some cruel relation of mine would trick me into drinking coffee, I ended up walking around with a large brown splotch on my shirt and in bad need of a face wash. When I forget that there are pickles or onions or tomato on a burger, I end up getting yelled at or laughed at (depending on the depth of our personal bond) by whoever I am eating with. However, what this practice lacks in grace it makes up for in speed. It is the fastest way to get rid of something—one doesn't need to waste time performing a spitting motion.

When I discovered the espionage mushroom that had tricked it's way into my mouth, this is the technique I resorted to to get rid of it.

I ended up with reddish-brown soup broth dripping down my chin like some maddened, blood-drinking, axe-murdering psychopath as I gazed down, aghast, at the spit-bathed mushroom floating sloppily in the bowl of soup.

All the suspicious elements I had previously noted were explained—the color, the smell, the not-delicious taste.

It was no longer a bowl of soup.

It was a bowl of despair.   

The Tragedy of the Soup Part I: Vegetables

I hate vegetables.

I hate them so much. If I had to be a vegetarian I would die of starvation because there would be nothing I would eat. I would be so skinny, it would only be attractive for the few weeks it takes before my body to run through my stores of fat and start ingesting my own internal tissues for sustenance. Then I wouldn't be attractive, I would just be sad and kinda gross to look at, starving to death and all. Anyways, I hate them.

As a child, I refused to eat them. My poor mother gave up a long time ago. I remember she only ever punished me once for not eating them by making me sit at the dinner table alone until I ate them, and I just sat at there staring in sullen, silent, noble martyrdom at whatever travesty she had demanded I eat, until she got so frustrated that she just let me leave instead of trying to bargain with me into being healthy. I only remember this happening once. Now, at the age of twenty, my body just doesn't know how to process them. If I eat a veggie that is inadequately camouflaged, my body seems to go into the process of breakdown.

It goes like this:

1. What is this? This texture is unfamiliar to us.

2. Do we like this? Should we try it? Is it bad, or is it so bad it's good?
3. No. We do not like this. This is not good.
4. Stop. Now.
5. Stop chewing, dammit!
6. If you don't spit this out right now....
7. STOP IT!
8. No. You aren't swallowing it. You are not.
9. She is. She's doing it.
10. REJECT! Abort action, trigger gag reflex.
    
    
    Below is a graphic representation of how this process feels made with Microsoft Paint. In explanation, it feels so bad that my hair curls and I start bleeding from my ears, eyes, and mouth, while also crying.

And then I end up doing this awful, choking-gag thing and any further attempt to ingest vegetables is immediately met with the discovery that I am actually physically incapable of swallowing them. 

Given my hatred of vegetables and resulting inability to eat them, it figures that I don't eat them when given a choice. Unfortunately, I don't always have a choice. Polite niceties and all that. Maybe I'm at a dinner (I leave my room?) and someone gives me some salad. It would be rude to not touch it. Or maybe someone made dinner for me, and put vegetables in it, not fully understanding the depth of my disdain. Maybe my mom just didn't feel like catering to my perverse anti-vegetable wants. Whatever. That's okay. I have developed a coping mechanism for when I absolutely have to eat vegetables.

It goes like this:

1. Check to see if anyone if watching.
2. If they are play, and move around vegetables until it looks like not as much if left.
3. Slowly cut up veggies into pieces small enough to swallow without chewing, and that are too small to maintain disgusting vegetable texture.
4. Involve self in dinner conversation so I have an excuse to eat slowly.
5. Eat a small bite every three to four minutes, chewing as little as possible, and pray that different food or a socially acceptable excuse not to eat arrives soon.*
6. Continue until body realizes your deceptions and begins the above process of breakdown.

This method works about 80% of the time I am in a situation where I have to employ it. When it doesn't I usually just put on an expression of noble sacrifice and try not to ruin everyone else good time with my choking.

I used to refuse to touch them, but after maturing to adulthood I have come to terms with the fact that I have to eat vegetables sometimes. I mean, they're likes 40% of what we should eat or whatever, right? They are everywhere. It would be impossible to avoid ever eating them, no matter how revolting and unnatural they are to me, even if I end up eating them only to be nice.

Now, I've trained myself over the past two years to begin to include small dosages of vegetables in foods that I eat frequently, because I had a very scary doctors visit once. Essentially, the doctor made me believe that I would die slowly and miserably from, like, vitamin deficiencies if I continued to ignore vegetables. With muscle spasms and mouth foaming and internal bleeding and stuff. So, to avoid such a graphic and undignified demise, I started putting lettuce on my burgers. I eat a celery stick or two, maybe even a baby carrot if it happened to be in front of me.

Granted there are exceptions to every rule, and even I like green beans. There are a few foods I like, including the vegetables in them. Soup, for example, or lasagna. I can usually eat whatever vegetables come in these food, if they are cook adequately.

However, there is one vegetable-type food that I cannot stomach, no matter the disguise, no matter what it is included in: Mushrooms.

*Perhaps pretend to receive an emergency phone call from a friend that a beloved relative is in the hospital with mad cow disease or swine flu?  

A month and a half later, all I have to offer you is a hopeful little piece of despair...

I think we are all born with a hole inside of us. A gaping emptiness that we feel acutely before we can speak the words to express it to others. Babies cry for the touch of their parents, toddlers weep when they find themselves unexpectedly alone. Small children are driven utterly distraught at the possibility they won't have a friend to sit with at lunch, or to play with at recess.

They feel it before they fully understand it. And even though they don't understand it, they are looking to fill it. The thing they dread is not the dark, it's not clowns, sharks, monsters under the bed—it's being alone, and knowing it.

We feel this tremendous emptiness as we enter this world, and to the day we exit it the only thing that drives us to do anything, is to find some way to fill that void.

But as we grow, we begin to notice things about the void. We notice that no matter how old we are, a hug from a mother can make the world a little less scary. We notice that when in the company of a good friend, all the issues and problems fade a little bit into something we can manage. That a success can makes you feel so big that that the hole seems smaller. We notice love—love is the one thing the everyone around us seems to think will fill up the hold and fix the loneliness. Love is the ideal that society chases, an elusive prey that one can never quite get cornered. And as we grow, we realize that the only thing we can do if we ever hope to not feel the pain of being utterly alone forever is to run, though the prize is unsure.

And inevitably, at one point or another, we all stop running. We come to a stop and look around and realize that we don't really know what we're chasing anymore.

For those more hip to the urban life style, this is where we “settle.” Where we take an evaluation of our lives, of the current things around us, and make a decision—to keep it, or to toss it all away. If you're lucky, the person sleeping next to you makes the same decision you do.

Some of us pretend that they made a decision they didn't. They look ahead and think that a family with Mister or Miss Right Now is better than wondering lonely until they stumble into the Forever person.

Some people work, divine a meaning from their careers, and comfort themselves with that.

Some people seek out others, fill the emptiness with the animal comfort of physical contact. Something to make the nights a little less cold.

Still others fool themselves with their eyes, surround themselves with inanimate things, look at something full to feel less empty.

And sometimes, we open our eyes, face the future, and accept the loneliness. And in this become a little less frightened, a little less insecure. And realize that the way to fill the void is from within, not without.

If you're very lucky, you realize this before you become an angry bitter creature, who's forgotten about the hope in the world.

Welp. I hope you've enjoyed the melodramatic and obnoxiously rom-com introspection.

Toodles!

Comics, Thoughts on the Reading of

When I sit down, and evaluate where I stand on a lot of things comic, I have clearly defined limits and requirements for what I do and don’t like.

This is not so much because I don’t to try anything new. Quite the contrary, I need these guidelines in order to try new things. When I walk into a comic shop (which is rare as I am a poor student) I look for the familiar. I go for the new Invincible Iron Man trade, or to see if Daredevil has a new issue out that looks good. I go to see if the Hellboy on the shelf is the one I need to read next. I go to see if a used copy of Scott Pilgrim is available (because 12 bucks is a lot to pay for something you just “liked” and want to get for the symbolic value it has to you personally). Then, I look at what’s sitting next to them. 

But that’s besides the point here. What I was trying to say, was that all those pretty guidelines that stop me from just gazing around a comic shop in slack-jawed awe, looking like a complete idiot, as soon as I actually have a book in my hand, they go away. 

I’ll be looking for the next good X-men to try out, and say to myself “I don’t like Havok. I find him not to interesting, Scott is by far the better brother.” So, appropriately I look for something without Havok. I stumble upon a used copy of Chuck Austen’s run on Uncanny X-Men, think it has a quite knarly Wolverine cover, and pick it up for some lousy amount like $8. I read this book. This book features Havok. However, the story is just compelling enough that I think the next ones would be a good idea to get (please don’t judge me, I get now that it is kinda a terrible thing, these books by Austen).  

I read the sequels. Guess what? I love Havok. I love him almost as much as I love Scott. I do the same thing with Daredevil a few months later. I buy and re-watch the Fox movie, for competitive edge, and determine that Matt is not my most favorite character ever. I watch it again. And again. Marvel decides to publish a gorgeous new book for the man, and guess what? I love Daredevil.

In the words of a friend ” Is there anyone in the Marvel Universe you don’t like?”

“Why, yes, there is. Don’t be rediculous. I don’t like— Uh. Um. Er. Um… Well, I don’t like DC!”

“You liked 52.”

“52 is an anomaly. Are you determined to drive me into an existential crisis, here?”

Six months, Batman: The Killing Joke and a trade of Secret Six later, and maybe I don’t hate DC as much as I thought.

I fear that soon I will no longer be able to identify myself as Marvel, when asked that crucial question “Marvel or DC?” 

But…. that also matter less to me now. I love comics. I someday want to write them, but failing that I just want to work in the industry, so I can always be around them, and share the love with others. Comics are everything that is good in this world. And no, I’m not biased at all. 

Happy 2012! Please to Enjoy the Comet.

Be joyous, people. You were almost subjected to a piece of my original fiction as a blog post this time around...

To bring in the new year, or perhaps close out the old, I went to a party at a friend's place recently.

At this party, I read a fantastic comic, DC's Secret Six-- a trade from Gail Simone's run, to bring myself good comic karma for the new year (or it might have been a gift from my more open-minded comic friend, but hey, who's keeping track of my lack of flexibility or whatever).

I also made this thing with my friend called an “Affirmation Board.” It is the perfect expression and reaffirmation to our friendship. It is sealed to the board with glue, which I am afraid I rather waxed poetic about the metaphorical possibilities in this set-up. So sue me, I'm an English major.

Here enjoy a picture of it!

My contributions were the half-naked man and the sarcasm.

I'm still thinking up some resolutions. But I have a few ideas. What do you think of them?

1. Take up smoking and/or drinking, and therefore experience “accurate” college life.
2. Read less, do more hookah. I'll make more friends this way.
3. Bad mouth my government, but take on the mindset that I am fashionably apathetic and so have no support for my criticisms, or positive suggestions for alternatives when questioned.
4. Cease to recycle. The world's gone to hell any how.
5. Become even more hip, and adopt a cynical view on GPAs and how they don't mean anything at all.
6. Follow feminist trends as presented in modern American comics and dress promiscuously, possibly take up stripping to show that I am empowered and comfortable with my body and sexuality.

I can't even keep a straight face anymore.... My God.

Moving on. I don't actually have any resolutions I intend to keep.

And thus according to the prophecies of the great Nostradamus and also the Mayan calendar, we usher in the final year of civilization. Stockpile canned foods and TP, people, welcome to the End of Days.

Geek Cards in Hipstertown

I'm moving up in the world.

Recently I journeyed up to Portland to attend my first ever convention, OryCon33. Yup, you can now officially hand me my geek card, and I'll be on my way to assert my new status in the world, thank you, sir. It was altogether a thoroughly enjoyable, experience. I tagged along with a friend and his family, and mostly wondered around the hotel aimlessly, gawking as all the cool stuff, and thanking God I was there with friends.

I attended several interesting panels, about horror, magic and fantasy, schmoozed the Dark Horse booth for free stuff (who's a B.P.R.D. agent, with badge and everything? Oh, yeah) and admired all the nice costumes. I even played some boardgames.

Apart from a burgeoning obsession for working for Dark Horse someday, a healthy respect for the social skills my parents insisted I learn, lingering surprise at the popularity of Doctor Who, and admiration for the sheer awesome that are conventions, I seemed to have developed a new fascination with buttons. Pins. The things seedy politicians hand out to easily impressed campaign volunteers. Whatever you want to call them. I fear my friend was correct in attempting to dissuade me from buying them. I see them everywhere, now, and want them all.

Welp, lets just add this to my list of things I compulsively and obsessively collect:

• Quarter Machine knick-knacks
• Scarves
• Action figures
• Fun, or bright-colored socks
• Pens and Pencils

And now—

• Buttons

I don't even wear socks. On the bright side, though, I avoided all sex gods, and most of my collectables can be displayed on the shelf over my desk. This helps me feel less like my life is a colossal disappointment to any and all who had any realistic expectations of a successful life for me. I mean whenever I see that my mom's on facebook, or when I realize I haven't talked to my father in almost three months I just look up at my first-appearance Wolverine action figure and my Vulcan salute button and take comfort in the fact that anyone who  has already been woefully disillusioned with me won't actually be all that surprised when I announce that I've decided to take Klingon as my second language.

More helpful guides to college life to come.  

Pizza Rolls, Eyebrow, Shirking: A Sequence of Events Detailing the Questionable Balance of My Mental Faculty

Despite all the ways in which I am different from the majority of my peers (yes, I am unique,just  like everyoneelse) I am also incredibly normal, in that I suffer from a near constant sense of anxiety, usually sprouting from stress related to school, existential crises, social activity or moral dilemma. 

I find myself to have a tolerable level of anxiety, but sometimes, I spiral down from reasonably neurotic to completely and utterly and unstably deranged. These fits of uncertainty and depression usually last 1-2  weeks, ending when I one morning magically wake up feeling like I a capable adult person again.

It starts small. I become preoccupied with minor details; the wash of my jeans, how bright my desk light is, my bellybutton. My mind seems to revolve around these tiny details of my life until the higher functioning part of my brain seems to short circuit and I am left distracted. 

This leads to frustration at my lack of focus and resulting decrease in productivity. I become irritable, wrought with self-loathing over the fact that all the things I need to be doing aren't being done. I react over-emotionally to things that really don't require great levels of emotion. 

While walking to class: Why the hell is the sun out?! This is fucking Oregon in the fucking fall, there should not be sun here!

While eating some food: WHY IS THIS ONLY LUKEWARM????

Alone in my room: Why doesn't anyone like me? Oh, God.

While talking with classmates: Stop looking at my eyebrows. You're judging me, aren't you? STOP JUDGING MY UNIBROW! 

While doing homework: You know what math professor? The Quadratic formula is for snobby douches who think they're better than the rest of us. You're teaching us it, do you think you're better than us? You do, don't you?  Die in a fire.

My out of control emotions make me feel self-conscious and so to comfort myself I shun responsibility and instead do something that I'm “good” at, such as knitting a hat, or crafting a paper mache katana. I become so immersed in my project that I being to want to to be the absolute best thing I have ever made ever, thus causing me undue disappointment when it turns out that my hat or paper-starch weapon is not actually at all worth mention. In fact, my project is likely the worse thing I have ever made. I start to hate myself for even trying to cheer myself up. 

Trying to learn from my failure at house crafts, I simply give up. 

I lie in my bed, reading a book, refusing to acknowledge my huge list of mounting responsibilities.

Unfortunately this leads me to subconsciously angst about all the things that I need to be doing that I am very pointedly not doing, usually manifesting as an upsetting dream. Usually a variation of the typical spider infested room/zombie apocalypse/complete abandonment by my friends/stuck in high school situation.

 
Emotionally scarred from the nightmare, I arise insecure and distressed, and wonder about for 2-3 days in a state of inconsolable hopelessness. 

The end result of all this inner turmoil is me locking myself in a dark room, shutting out all forms of social contact, wrapped up in a blanket on a couch, watching cartoons and eating pizza rolls in my underwear.