A scary story: belated answer to Monday Mini-Poll

Last week, as the part of the intro to her Monday Mini-Poll, rollick typed the words:

This all seems terribly silly as I type it out. The significance of it in particular seems like the significance you attach to random things in dreams — that "Oh my GOD, the couch is BLUE!" sensation that stops making sense the second you wake up. But that image is permanently burned into my mind, and so is the sensation of heart-stopping, "she's a witch and we've been caught" horror. I still feel a little twinge of that supernatural fear every time I think about that day.

Funny she should choose that example, because you know what still gives me a revolting feeling dread, even to this day?

Mr Yuck is mean, Mr Yuck is green!

Omigod, GREEN! Like, er, ah, Kermit. But it's not the words, it's the image they conjure up. Mr Yuck was part of a campaign by US Poison Control Centers during the 1970's. Stickers of a little green yuck face, like this one:



were made available for parents and guardians to affix to bottles and cans of hazardous and toxic substances. Then public service announcements were run on broadcast t.v. to make young children fear the stickers so they would never want to have anything to do with the objects they were on. The ads were mini-masterpieces of low-key horror. Mr Yuck's menacing face would appear on a white background with sickly green tendrils of smoke or liquid wavering over it. There was some harsh-sounding music I can't even remember and then an ugly voice would repeat the rhymed couplet above.

Okay, maybe "masterpiece" is an overstatement, but there's no arguing with effectiveness and, twenty-some years later, my response to anything that reminds of that t.v. spot is positively pavlovian. I feel ill as I write this. Maybe there were subliminals buried in the music? Split-second flashes of exhumed skulls alternating with Mr Yuck's face? Or is it just that everything on t.v. in the 70's looked so gross. Even watching movies from that era makes me feel a little bit sick, like when you've eaten something you weren't sure was spoiled or not and you're fighting a psychological battle to keep it down. The colours, the settings, the lighting--everything seems so wrong. The contrast with films from the 60's and 80's, where everything just seems cheesy, is startling.

"So you're tutoring a giant white rabbit?"

At lunch today, most tables were taken. I wandered around a bit before approaching a woman sitting alone at a four-top. "Mind if I sit here?" I asked. "Actually," she replied, "I'm waiting for someone I'm supposed to be tutoring." I noticed that someone at the next table was gathering his things and went up and asked him if he was leaving. He said yes, so I sat there instead.

Over half-an-hour later, I looked up from my magazine and saw that the woman was still sitting alone. As I stood to go, I said, "You know, I have some imaginary friends from my childhood. Maybe you could fit them into your tutoring schedule, too."

She was not amused.

In dreams, you're always dancing

Last night, I dreamt I was playing with my nephew in the living room. U2's "Out of Control" came on the radio, I started dancing like a maniac, and he joined me. My older brother joined in, too, during the bridge, just as I was leaving to check on my niece in the next room. She was waking up and I thought I could convince her to dance with us, too, but by the time she was ready, another song was playing that was a lot suckier. Some classic rock crap. We wandered into the hall and she had become so tiny that my nephew could lift her up and put her inside a container as small as a pickle jar.

Unlike many of my other dreams, this one has some very definite precedents. Christmas morning of 2002, my brothers, my nephew, and me danced around the living room like crazy men. The song, however, was BiGOD20's fantastic industrial cover of Madonna's "Like a Prayer", which bunj had just received from e. I don't have a niece, but I do have a newer nephew, though he's not old enough to stand on his own, let alone dance. The house--or at least the hall leading to the stair--was modeled on the historic yellow brick residence on Dale Avenue. The room where my "niece" was sleeping would've been the bedroom my older brother and I shared from when I was six until when I was ten.

Stupid geek scheduling tricks

So, the original plan for tonight was to visit Nuphy. Due to illness and excuses, I blew him off all last week and last weekend. In point of fact, I'm feeling run down and not at all like making the 1.5 hr. trip, but I consoled myself with the fact that, if I went, I'd be able to borrow his Gothic grammar.

I am such a geek.

As it turns out, even that wasn't lure enough and I just called him and asked if I could visit on Thursday, since that's the last good evening before I leave for STL for Chuck's christening. Of course, that's also the evening gopower asked me out to dinner, but I haven't said yes or no yet. I would've called him last night, but I spent the whole time talking to family instead. I would've e-mailed, but my e-mail has been misbehaving since yesterday. So I went into my bag to fetch his number--and realised I'd left it on the dining room table last night.

I don't know why I attempt to have a social life at all. If anyone needs me, I'll be spending some quality time with the Gothic grammar upstairs.