Notes from the Petting Zoo

…Is that we equate sex with intimacy.

Then we equate intimacy with privacy.

Then we equate privacy with secrets.

Then we equate secrets with “bad stuff”.

So, we end up with sex = “bad stuff”.

This is fine if you subscribe to a restrictive sexuality, but if you don’t, then you run into this unfortunate equation on occasion. An example of the manifestation of it is: “If you’re having sex with someone, it’s bad (unless there’s a good reason that overcomes the badness).”

It would be nice to deprogram that equivalency.

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I did not learn to cook until I was quite definitely an adult. I took one Home-Ec class in grade school, but, having a penis, was mostly ignored, or asked to make pillows in the shape of footballs.

So learning how to cook was a bit of trial and error, but if I can do it, anyone can.

This was the first trial.

Realize that it all made sense at the time.

I was having someone over. It was a sort of date thing. I was completely flabbergasted, because prior to this, I don’t think I’d actually had a real “date” before (obviously, this was many years ago). I had been living in the same apartment for several months, and hadn’t bothered to unpack a lot of stuff because, well, boxes are like shelves, but portable.

So, it suddenly strikes me — I’m having a GUEST! I should clean up!

In a frenzy, I straighten stuff up, clean, and put things away. One of the things I “put away” was a stray speaker. One of those big bastards made of wood that can actually kill you if they fall on you? Somehow I had acquired ONE. During my cleaning frenzy, I somehow realized that having ONE speaker was too strange and I needed to put it away. So, I put it in the only place I could think of to keep it out of sight — the small cabinet under the stove.

After my tiny apartment was cleaned up, another series of neurons fired: Guests need FOOD! Riiiiiight, food! Fancy food. Date-kind of food.

I immediately started raiding my fridge to figure out what I had. Very little, as it turned out (surely you’ve seen the contents of a bachelor fridge before — that was me, sans beer). Nevertheless, this was a problem I could solve, because I also had… A Cookbook! So, I started browsing through recipes and dinner suggestions. My eventual realization was that — aside from a few spices (or “species” to be wholly accurate) — I had NOTHING with which to make any reasonable sort of dinner.

Everyone knows the Chinese glyph for “empty fridge” is the same as the glyph for “opportunity”, so I ran across the street to the local Safeway to buy the makings for dinner. For a neat dinner – an actual romantic-flavored dinner that would wow her!

Naturally, I chose based on “coolness” which in this case referred to how “cool” I thought the lobster display was.

The next half hour of shopping is a bit of a blur, so I’ll skip ahead. I do recall, however, that I had planned and purchased for something on the order of sixty-eight different side dishes.

I end up at home with several grocery bags filled with the makings of what is certainly going to be a fantastic dinner. At some point in time, I had been convinced by either a Kindly Shopkeeper or my Still-Embryonic Cooking Sense that I could not tangle with live lobsters, so I had settled on already-prepared lobsters that just needed baking.

Figured out which controls were the oven, set it to preheat, and started in on making the side dishes.

Another twenty or thirty minutes later, I am locked in a morass of cooking-prep the likes of which would make a grown man cry. The phrase “in over my head” doesn’t even come close. Seriously – those of you who understand the least bit about cooking just KNEW this story wasn’t gonna end well, didn’t you? Nothing is happening the way it says in the cookbook. A couple of burners are doing their things, and I think a pot of salted water is boiling. Or maybe it’s some sort of gravy.

Those of you who understand kitchen cabinetry have probably already figured out why I am smelling the pleasant odor of wood smoke.

In addition to being monumentally incompetent in my preparations for dinner, apparently, I failed to attend the briefing wherein it was explained to me that the small cabinet under my stove was not any ordinary small cabinet, but in fact, an “oven.”

Well. Who could POSSIBLY have known…? (To be fair — my mother often stored cookie sheets and such in the oven — I just never happened to be present when they were removed for oven purposes.)

This one is worth enjoying for a moment — nothing says “restaurant date” like realizing that you have achieved a kitcheny situation the likes of which you’ve only seen in major motion pictures with significantly larger pyrotechnic budgets.

Apparently, the proper indication the oven has achieved the expected temperature is NOT the quiet ticking of the pre-heater turning off, but the billowing smoke as a single stereo speaker grill cover smolders, mere moments from open flame.

This is when I discovered that someone had an appalling lack of insight and neglected to outfit my one-bedroom apartment with “potholders.”

I also discovered that my smoke detectors did not, in fact, work, but that was a blessing, actually.

In a blinding panicky flash that lasted several blinding panicky minutes, I was able to wrap both my hands in bath towels (yes, both!), making me resemble nothing more than a Tragic Burn Victim, pull the smoking stereo speaker from the oven, dance across the living room, desperately balance the single smoldering stereo speaker (these, in case you remember this technology, were not “light”) on one hand while my other hand deftly unlocked the sliding glass door and slid it open.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

Evidently, some idiot had tightly wrapped a bath towel around my entire hand. I had no hand, per se, but an arm that ended in what looked like a tightly-wrapped Q-Tip. Or a turban. A miniature terrycloth turban.

Every tried to unlock a sliding glass door and open it using only your turbaned hand? While your other turbaned hand balances a smoking 250-degree stereo speaker next to your head?

It’s moments like these that you suddenly realize “Oh yeah — there’s a bar in the track, too.”

But that’s okay — I’m a problem-solver!

With my free foot, I start kicking at the bar in the sliding glass door track. Certainly I can’t use an extra hand turban, and the other foot is currently doing double-duty in the Balance Smoldering Shit Shift, so one spare foot, kicking at the bar, hoping to dislodge it through sheer impact, or “boinginess.”

Meanwhile, I have been desperately unwrapping my free hand turban using the only possible manipulative tool remaining — my mouth. Gnawing at the terrycloth, I try to unspin it from my hand.

The speaker, still smoldering heavily, and maybe still on the verge of bursting into flame, recognizes the opportunity. “Oh!” it realizes. “He’s turning his head around a lot to gnaw off his hand turban. This means his vestibular system is too preoccupied to keep ME upright. Freedom!” and it begins to topple.

Then, for no reason other than to add complexity to my already challenging task, my brain chose that exact moment to cry out “Don’t let it touch the wall or you won’t get your deposit back!”

There was some overcompensation, I admit that.

Naturally, my non-speaker-supporting hand flew to the rescue. With the towel mostly still wrapped around it. Except for the part my teeth had clenched.

I’m not entirely sure how to describe this, because there was a sort of bright flashy moment when my head, connected firmly to my hand, came into contact with the very hard side of a smoldering stereo speaker, but trust me when I say that to do this all while standing on one foot took real talent.

In the cognitive aftermath, while my left arm is going crazy from the strain of holding the weight of this heavy speaker and my brain is trying like gangbusters to regain enough equilibrium that my head is not part of the support system for a huge heavy chunk of burning wood and electronics, somehow, my spare foot managed to dislodge the bar from the slider groove.

My partially turbaned hand snagged a loop of towel over the door handle, and a single yank pulled the door open.

The speaker, still smoldering, tumbled from my grasp at last, and landed on the deck where, if this were a FICTIONAL narrative, it would crash through to the floors below me, but because this was a Harrowing Tale of Real Urban Survival, and because I lived on the first floor apartment, it merely rolled and bounced along my porch, off the porch, across the path, and eventually came to rest cattywhumpus in the soft mud of my neighbor’s flower garden. Still smoking.

That evening, we had a nice date out at a pleasant nearby restaurant. If I recall correctly, it was a Mexican restaurant, where I knew the waiter and made sure to tip heavily. The more cynical among you might think I tipped heavily to impress my date, but this was not, in fact, the case. The waiter was my neighbor and it was my sincerest hope that by the time I returned home from this date, the speaker would have sufficiently cooled such that I could extract it from her flower garden, leaving only a mysterious series of marks that would otherwise be unexplained.

So.

I think the lesson we can all take away from this is that lobsters belong in the ocean.

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Week seven. Missed last week because of a Cosmic Bejiggerment.

If I hit the nail on the head, please do post a testimonial! That would be cool!

• MONDAY, February 16, 2009: The yelling bugs you (and rightfully so), but it’ll be okay.
• TUESDAY, February 17, 2009: Wait the extra five minutes.
• WEDNESDAY, February 18, 2009: There’s a strategy. If you’re not getting that, ask someone who’s been around longer.
• THURSDAY, February 19, 2009: It’s an innocent mistake.
• FRIDAY, February 20, 2008: Be sweet.

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Why can’t we OFFICIALLY learn about sex the same way we officially learn about everything else?

I know what repair manuals are, and I know what cookbooks are, so I can fix things and cook things. I don’t pretend I was born with that knowledge. That would be stupid in a daytime-soap-opera kind of stupid. So, if I learn some sort of fantastic sex technique from a magazine, or an informative public-access cable show, or even an ex, why is it verboten to say so?

Speaking as a guy, if a gal did something Really Fantastic to me and told me she learned it in a magazine, I’d be asking her if she wants a all-expense-paid subscription to that magazine. Or if she said “Well, my ex and I used to do that and he really dug it,” I’d be thinking “Whew — his loss!” In fact, it’s probably a bit creepy to imagine partners born with this knowledge. Imagine a fantastic blowjob, topped off by “Oh, I’ve known how to do THAT since I was four!”

There’s something you can’t unthink!

Why is it so hard to accept and even embrace experience and research as far as sex goes?

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What is it with “namaste”?

I looked it up. Basically, it’s supposed to be an expression that shows mutual respect — each person honoring the divine spark in the other person — and I have a lot of respect for that idea. It’s cool. It meshes well with my sense that we’re all bits and pieces of a really nifty cool thing. And I don’t have to subscribe to any particular Imaginary Friend to think this way, either — we all do have a great many things in common, and it is in these commonalities that we will ultimately find peace.

And I’ve even used it, in the proper context, with good friends in powerful emotional intimate moments, and it completely seemed to be the right kind of usage.

But…

But someone’s misusing it, I think. I think outside of that extremely narrow context, every other time I’ve seen it used, it’s been used as completely something else. When I’ve seen it used in the more common vernacular, it appears to be a synonym for “Whatever, asshole — I’m sure SOMEONE gives a rat’s ass.” It’s used as an epitaph.

This is not a new event, either. I recall seeing this in use years ago, before “namaste” was hip. People would do basically the same thing by signing “Jesus loves you” (which spawned the always-popular meme: “Jesus loves you, but I think you’re full of shit.”).

Took me a while to figure out what all that was about, but I finally nailed it when I saw two little kids playing. They would take turns insulting each other, followed by a quickly-shouted “Not!” As in “You’re a poopyhead — not!” I’ve seen adults do the same thing, both with “not” and “just kidding.” “Dude, I think you oughta divorce that bitch and hook up with some 18-year old who doesn’t know how to complain — just kidding!”

I’m starting to see a lot of parallels between that and the use of “namaste,” but there’s some other piece of it, some other thing that adds a thread or particular nastiness to it. There’s a sense of righteousness. Right up there with “Jesus loves you” at the end of a letter, “namaste” seems to be a way of establishing a sort of spiritual dominance, a way of saying “well, maybe you have a point, but you’re still a poopyhead — namaste!”

Like I said — I have a lot of respect for the idea. It personally wiggles right with my philosophy of the world and how I prefer dealing with people, but someone’s got to stand up for the misuse of an otherwise fantastic word, and I guess if it has to be me, well then so be it.

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I’m not entirely sure it’s cricket for it to be okay for women to write articles in women’s magazines about how other women can pick up, hook, snag, or otherwise catch a man, yet there’s supposed to be something wrong with men writing articles for other men about how to attract and keep women around.

This is not to say women can’t laugh at some of the articles as much as men laugh at Cosmo, of course.

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I was at a campfire, and I briefly Turned Evil. I took out a dollar bill and contemplated it out loud, how it seemed to have lost all its value. The others around the campfire all agreed, a dollar wasn’t worth shit, all shook their heads, and wrung their hands at the loss of the power of the Mighty Dollar. I went on for a couple minutes, encouraging progressive devaluation of this venerable greenback.

Then, when the conversation lulled, I pitched it into the fire.

The group consternation was quite amazing. I was jumped from all sides about how much I wasted by burning that bill, by how much good it could have done, and so forth.

I saw it as a lesson in situational ethics and the effects of groupthink that only cost me a buck. Which, all told, was pretty inexpensive.

Plus, now I know what real money looks like when it burns — and how FAST it burns.

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Whoops!

“I lied.”

I’ve heard this a few times. Admitting a lie is a powerful act, and I have a lot of respect for someone who can do that and accept the consequences.

But it wasn’t a lie. It was a mistake.

There are three very specific — simple — criteria that define a lie. It’s not a complicated thing at all.

1. It must be deliberate. You can’t “accidentally” lie. An accidental lie would be a “mistake” or a “misunderstanding” and everybody makes mistakes or misunderstands. Neither of these are nearly the equal of a deliberate act.
2. There must be an attempt. I can truly want to deceive someone, satisfying two of the conditions, but it’s only when I actually engage in an act that I have lied. This can be speaking the lie, or not speaking when there is opportunity. It’s about exerting the effort to manufacture a false reality.
3. The purpose must be to deceive. Intentions matter. Communication is a deliberate act, but when the purpose of that act is to convince someone that reality is different than it is, then the intent criterion of a lie has been satisfied.

A lie is a deliberate attempt to deceive.

This is not to necessarily lay judgment on lies per se. Surely there are places where a lie might be useful or even desired, such as setting up a surprise party, although a smart person doesn’t HAVE to lie for such a thing — distraction works quite well.

And there are many things that might seem like lies, but aren’t. Here are two examples:

Consider a magician telling you about his trip to the exotic Middle East where he learned to make rabbits appear from nowhere. He shows you an empty hat, extolling the plainness of the hat and underscoring for his audience that this is a perfectly normal hat. On the surface, this would all seem like lies, but they’re not. They fail the third criteria, because you know better. The audience knows that this is patter, and this is entertainment. The audience knows that somewhere near the magician is a rabbit, waiting to “appear” and that almost certainly the hat is very much not a normal hat. There isn’t deception — we are there to see clever tricks and sleight-of-hand.

Consider two people sitting in a bar, listening to a horrible cover band consisting mostly of piles of hair over repeated F chords. Even the bartender, who is financially predisposed towards geniality, is repulsed by the sheer lack of talent flailing about on stage. One of the people leans toward the other and comments “I can’t decide which I find more attractive — their drop-dead sense of the fashion, or their impeccable instrumental artistry.” Again, on the surface, this would appear to be a lie, and again, this example fails the third criteria, because no one other than the drummer has any illusions that this band’s hideous squalling is only matched in atrocity by the horrible wigs covering their leopard-print pot-bellies. “Freebird!”

Anyone can make mistakes, anyone can misunderstand, anyone can forget important information, or be sarcastic (oh, but it would be nice if fewer people thought of sarcasm as a way of life — one of the many windmills against which I’ll grimly tilt), but none of these is lying. Lying is a very specific sort of act with very specific sort of consequences. It seems somehow wrong to whip out “lie” unless it’s time for heavy artillery.

There’s no need to make it any more complicated than that.

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Week six! I hope the Great Mystery of your weekend went well!

If I hit the nail on the head, please do post a testimonial! That would be cool!

• MONDAY, February 2, 2009: It’s really okay — do it again if you like.
• TUESDAY, February 3, 2009: Play an album you haven’t heard in a long time. Listen.
• WEDNESDAY, February 4, 2009: Stay focused.
• THURSDAY, February 5, 2009: Check your alarm clock — just to make sure.
• FRIDAY, February 6, 2008: Yes, he’s game, but dim the lights.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, you can find copies of our movie The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath online at Amazon.com, as well as the Dream-Quest Collector’s Pack, which includes an autographed copy of the movie, an autographed poster, and two original pages from the storyboards (covered in handwritten notes), also autographed. You can find our full catalog, as well as trailers, writeups, tutorials and other fun movie-related things online at Guerrilla Productions. I’ve mentioned we make movies, right? Neat ones, no less!

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