Sasquatch Crossing

On a hike today, I stopped by a shelter covered in graffiti from eras past. It was mostly the usual tripe, but a couple of entries caught my eye because they had apparently been altered in the time since they were set down. They were, as follows (additions are bolded):

• Steven + Deanna = RONNY!
• Kelsey ♥s Giselle 06 Stumpy 09 (bonus points for what I can only assume is a lesbian named “Stumpy”)
• DS + KS + JM + LR + MJ…
• Smith Family 1706
• Get out while you still can! ham!! (I could repeat this over and over again. “Get out while you still ham.” Genius.)

…writing a paper about storytellers in pre-industrial cultures, and stopping myself after every sentence from making “oral transmission” jokes.

thesaurus-rex:

omgskybears:

Doesn’t really have the same ring, does it?

I feel like that would be a fabulous name for a band leader: Johnny Fiercely and the Mass Executions or something like that.

• Johnny Fiercely and the Gulag Girls?
• Johnny Fiercely and the Glorious Future?
• Johnny Fiercely and the Poisoned Boyars?
• Johnny Fiercely and the Streltsy Rebellion?

Doesn’t really have the same ring, does it?

 So one time, there was this guy named Jim. Jim had a sister named Jenny. Their parents died in a horrible cliché so Jim was responsible for taking care of Jenny. One day, Jenny was out taking a walk. She should have been doing her homework, but she decided that she would rather be an obvious symbol for the carefree days of youth. Problem is, she wasn’t watching where she was going and she tripped and fell into a well. A passing bicyclist told Jim what had happened, and Jim was pretty surprised because you don’t see a lot of wells these days.

Jim tried to help his sister. He lowered down his video game controller, but Jenny’s fingers slipped right off it. Next he lowered down his Pokémon DVDs, but she slipped again. Same with his manga collection. “Try using an object that better represents maturity and a relinquishing of childhood pursuits,” suggested Jenny. A Sasquatch overheard the conversation and told Jim that only a magic piece of paper could rescue the girl from the well. Jim asked the Sasquatch how he could get the paper, and the Sasquatch told him to catch a bus downtown.. “Downtown?” asked Jim. “That’s so distant and unknown, it might as well be a stand-in for the underworld.” But Jim wanted to get Jenny out of that well so he caught the 113 to Lynnwood, then transferred to the 511.

           When he got downtown, Jim met another Sasquatch who was the brother of the first one. Jim asked the Sasquatch where he could find the piece of paper he was looking for, and the Sasquatch told him he would have to sit in a classroom for four long years. It sounded really boring to Jim. The second Sasquatch gave Jim a letter of recommendation and told him to give it to his brother who guarded the classroom, keeping out slackers. Jim kept going and until he saw the third Sasquatch. Jim said that he wanted a magic piece of paper. Then he gave the Sasquatch the letter of recommendation. “Okay,” said the Sasquatch. “But you’ll have to sit in a classroom for four years. You can’t go outside or anything. Even if the weather is really nice.” Jim said he understood.

            Sitting down in the classroom, Jim waited. It wasn’t easy. There were evil imps which pestered him constantly. Outside the window, he could see kids playing Frisbee, taunting him to come outside and join them, but he knew that if got up from his chair, he would never get his piece of paper. When four years had passed, Jim knew that the end was in sight. He grew tired then, and fell asleep at his desk. Just then, a six-headed Sasquatch burst into the classroom. Jim battled it and it was extremely epic and would be described in greater detail were this some other narrative form. “That was an obvious metaphor for academic challenge,” said Jim. Finally, the oldest Sasquatch brother gave Jim the magic paper as well as a pair of hip new glasses. “You look older in glasses,” said the Sasquatch. “Almost as if they represented your acceptance into the culture of adulthood. Also, I’m going to stop infantilizing your name, James.”

James returned home, where his sister was waiting for him in the mysterious well. “I thought that by now you’d have drowned already,” James thought. “After all, I was gone a really long time. Whatever.” James lowered the paper into the well, and Jenny tried to grab onto it. However, the ink from the paper got all over Jenny’s skin, and because it was magic ink, it made her smaller and smaller until she looked just like a little kid. “I think I’m supposed to represent new life and opportunities,” said Jenny. “Quit your yapping and get out of this well,” said James. “You’re still pretty heavy.”

As soon as Jenny set foot on solid ground, she started reminding James that investing in a new generation is a common alternative to trying to reclaim one’s lost youth. “It’s a good thing we’re brother and sister,” laughed Jenny. “Yeah,” James replied. “Otherwise, I’d probably try and marry you or something, even though you look like a little kid. That’d be creepy.” James married the youngest Sasquatch brother instead, because heteronormativity is so 17^th century.

I was invited to the wedding, and I made a toast. They applauded for me, but I didn’t hear it because I was wearing earplugs.

In no particular order:

• Fundamentals of Phonetics
• The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson
• The Rain Forests of Home, edited by Peter K. Schoonmaker
• Don’t Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
• The Myth of Monogamy by David Barash and Judith Lipton
• Jack Staff: Everything Used To Be Black and White by Paul Grist
• Verses and Versions, translated by Vladimir Nabokov
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• Society and Culture in Early Modern France by Natalie Zemon Davis
• The Eisenstein Reader by Sergei Eisenstein, edited by Richard Taylor
• The Cavalry Maiden by Nadezhda Durova
• The Odyssey
• The Ancient Maya by Sylvanus G. Morley
• The Boy Scout Handbook
• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
• Whelks to Whales by Rick Harbo
• The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
• Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
• A Rhyming History of Britain by James Muirden

Okay. You now know everything about me there is to know.

…but ‘74’ is such an ugly number of posts to have.