Sarah Rodhouse - who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

"I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope." Red

So if it wasn't for the sub-arctic weather, I would have stood out in the parking lot of my Colditz community college, and let the rain wash away all the Freshman year that was worth scrubbing off, all Shawshank Redemption/Tim Robbins like. Instead, I was in the parking lot dealing with the young 18 year old who hit my car right before my psych final. Yay. That has no effect on your test prep psyche. Good thing the exam primarily covered mental illness, as this first year of college really seem to surround me with quite a bit of it, and probably contributed to my own. We're all crazy, just some of us get caught, I guess.
I guess this is my last post for this semester. Gonna head out for a crazy California Christmas, and come back with a new blog for my sophomoric sophomore year. Thanks for reading my shenanigans. I can't wait to see what rolls around the corner, next year.

They're serving fish in the jailhouse tonight

"Peoria Johnson told Dudlow Joe/I can break out of any old jail you know/The bars are iron, the walls are stone/All I need me is an old fish bone/...I'm gonna fashion me/ a fishbone skeleton key/Tell Skullion Childs/I won't be late/You can bet your freedom/I'm gonna clean my plate/" ~Tom Waits

     Nothing like a community college/prison breakout to make you feel right with the world. I should have worn an eyepatch to the pokey today as I feel a little like Snake Plissken from Escape From New York. Maybe even a little Stevie McQueenie from Papillon. Just that whole "Me they can kill, you they own!" mentality. (God, I love that movie!) As this was my last day of being lectured... in class... for this semester, at least... I hope. Not quite ready for the full on Shawshank Redemption from the final exam hazing, but I'll be crawling through that sewer tube next week. Honestly, could Tim Robbins really not find an air vent in that whole entire prison in that flick?! Seriously, ga-ross.
     I'm almost sad to go, especially since I heard Wesley Snipes would be joinin' the yard soon. Not necessarily my yard, but an institutional one, all the same. Hope he still has that girlie wiggle
from that Julie Newmar movie he was in. He may need it!

Happy Alice's Restaurant Day!

     This is my only tradition I keep on Thanks-for-raping-an-entire-culture-giving. Only now I cry when I hear Arlo's song, as it has become yet another entry on my list of nutty widow behaviors. That and a nap. Apparently, even Tofurkey contains some sort of faux tryptophan that will make you pass out and drool down the front of your sweater in front of a blaring televised football game. Luscious, I hate that I've become so elderly at the age of thirty-six.
     Alice's Restaurant really synchs with how I feel about community college, now that it is research paper season. My "green movement hypocrisy" paper has now become my Officer Obie. Writing a seventeen page research paper is similar to the litterbug being confined to the Group W bench with all the mother-rapers, father-stabbers, and father-rapers mentioned in the song. Funny how the topic of the song and the paper are both litter based that have turned into their own special movements. One to research if one is moral enough to join the army, and slaughter people, and one to research these religious zealots, who refuse to accept hard science, and are moral enough to save their own planet.    
     The Anti-Green Massacree Movement is a rehabilitation process that is currently underway. Just need to look for Arlo's envelope under the half ton of trash. I'm thankful for that, at least.

Here's a link to the song if you haven't heard it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRFIzyh0q2A&NR=1&feature=fvwp

And the award...

...for longest glued hair weave to a city street in St. Louis goes to... the weave on Kingshighway between Mcree and Manchester, that I have passed every day since I started this semester in August. Seriously, why won't it go away? I mean, I see these all over the city, so much that my husband and I invented a slug-bug punching game a long time ago, called "Weave in the Street." I'm getting tired of my son nailing me in the arm. It's been there for a couple months now and a seasonal change even. The wind has been a blowin', and the rain has been a fallin', and it's still a-clingin'. It's admirable, and sadly, one of the few things in my little world that I've come to rely on. Won't someone please adopt it and find it a good home? Faces may fade in and out, but that clump of nasty, cruddy, artificial hair will eternally be there. That weave is more resilient than a lot people I know. I guess, here's to finding stability, where ever it may show up.
     My Pysch professor may be the hippest man walking the planet. We were discussing intelligence, and an example he used was how dancing is generally not viewed as intelligent. He then went on to disprove this statement, by giving an example of what was suppose to be Gene Kelly's "Singin' In The Rain." However, he called it Gene Simmon's "Dancing In the Rain." This is a disturbingly hilarious thought and vision. Wouldn't his kabuki-style make-up run and stream down his face in a torrential downpour? Would it rain blood in the KISS version of this musical? Poor Debbie Reynolds trying to dance around giant boots like that without getting her feet pulverized. Maybe there is something to what he said, as Gene Kelly was known far and wide for being quite a tyrant. Perhaps that is his inner Gene, after all?
     History brought on an almost unspeakable, disturbing vision, that I will probably never be able to shake. Our professor played a video about Henry Ford, a fascinating, yet prudish, anti-Semite. The fun facts I took away from this was that he purposely designed the back seat of the Model T to be uncomfortably small to discourage "Lovers Laning." However, the Model T was a full seven feet tall, and it became a joke that it was the kind of car you make love standing up in. Pretty progressive for the 1920s! I will say from my own experience, there is not much progess in the past 90-diggity years to improve this catastrophic design flaw. Car sex is no easy undertaking, at least the ones I've been in. I think when Detroit, or Chengdu now rather, rectifies this, Fords will go rocketing off the line once again.
     Anyhow, back to the unspeakable horror I witnessed in class. My fellow classmate, who weighs EVERY ounce of 280 lbs.+, arrived late as usual while the movie was playing. She sa-lllooowwwly sauntered in, listening to her cell phone messages, carrying her nine noisy bags, three of which were loaded with pork rinds and the like, and stopped at the desk to pick up a study guide, right in the line of fire of the projection screen. This filibuster of her 150 lbs of butt in 130 lbs butt-capacity pants, briefly became our new movie screen, as she wrestled with her bags and phone to retrieve a paper. The timing really could not have been better, as a line of a dozen or so Model T's headed west around the immense circumference of her gelatinous hindquarters, briefly disappearing and then reappearing once they made it through the continental divide of her "double bubble." Man, that certainly gives PILES of new meaning to the title of "The Grapes of Wrath." Oh my, what those poor people must have lived through...        

Ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long...

He sure did today. I got Max off to the school bus at 615, sat on my couch for a moment to "rest my eyes," and woke up at 830 with my Psychology class half over. I hate the way falling threw that little wrinkle in time feels. Stupid shocking moments of clarity, getting in the way of my blurry reality. The whole day feels off, like really off, like that Flannery O'Conner story, Wise Blood, off. So I threw a Ministry song on  that has some quotes from that film to get me pumped up, and drove at breakneck speed down Kingshighway through the piles of hair weaves and traffic. "No man with a good car needs to be justified," just like Hazel Motes says. I got to my Bastille in time to turn in my Comp 2 paper, and learn about War World One, at least. Not sure how much edu-macaction really sunk in. Something about Modius research, something about German U-boats, some hot air from the red headed chatty patty who is in dire need of a soccer ball sized cork shoved in her yammerin' sass-hole. At least, it got over with pretty quick, but it certainly sets a tone for the rest of your day. Reminds me of another quote from Wise Blood. "Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to, weren't never there, and where you are, ain't no good unless you can get away from it!"
Man, Flannery O'Conner was such a stupendous bad ass, and really, so are Ministry. Jesus Built My HotRod must be one of the most romantic songs ever penned. 

Mid-term Malaise

Something about mid terms really takes it out of me when it comes to writing. That's where I ended last semester's blog and just couldn't get inspired for it anymore. However, this semester appears to be a little bit different, as I experienced a comp class that really hurt my chin, as it slammed against the bottom of my desk. Currently, we are workshopping our speculative cause and effect essays. One of my fellow jailbird's paper is on teenage pregnancy. There was an interesting speculation brought up that some "parents" push their young daughters into having babies, so they will experience some sort of love in their lives. Really, that's a very bare bones definition of child sex trafficking. What was astounding, and frankly chin bruising, was the amount of my fellow inmates who seemed quite all right with that idea, and could rationalize it. Wow, just blew my mind to bits. How are you ever okay with that in any demographic, or culture, or class, or caste? This was such an eyeopener to how uneducated, one can be in America. We should change our nation's motto to, "Welcome to America. You can be as stupid as you want to be here."

Yellow journalism is just urinalism, right?

     So, we covered the Spanish-American war in History today. Our professor was really on the edge over having to repeat autonomy so many times, that he gave up, threw his hands straight to any god listening, and said, "Just write self-government! Man, college kids!" He spent the rest of the class holding his forehead. Boyo, I felt that man's pain, and I hope he has a good bottle of something to go home to today.
      It was a little strange how much of St. Louis was part of that war, and is part of my daily life, i.e., , Pulitzer was established here, my son goes to McKinley Academy, I often try to avoid hitting the oafish louts that attend Roosevelt High, as they heedlessly stampede the traffic on Gravois. You can strut and saunter all you want, cock of the walk. We'll see just how much of a Roosevelt "roughrider" you can be clinging to ChillableRed's front end. I'm a HUGE fan of Jackson Pollock, and would appreciate the way your droplets of blood catch the dancing light on my windshield. I'm seriously considering attaching a cow catcher to my front end.

Gun Play on Free Taco Party Day

Tuesday, our History professor was nice enough to pardon us 30 minutes early from class to attend our penal institution-wide free taco party, AND armed robbery, in the cafeteria.
Finally, gun play. Finally, I'm in my element. Finally, I feel at home. You know, for the first time in my reformation, I.just.feel.right. Our institution was sponsoring a Latin American Festival, with free tacos, and salsa lessons with the faculty. Which conceivably, happens in prisons all the time... with a 400 lb. man named Molly, and not Profesor Martinez. I chose not to be anyones dance partner/prison bia***, and darn the luck if I didn't miss out on an armed robbery, as a result of skipping out early. The word on the street is, one thing led to another, and by the end of the enforced fun and shenanigans, two armed gunman equipped with rocketing below average IQ, decided to rob the cafeteria register. Of all the registers to knock over, why a community college cafeteria one? All the students/malefactors use ONEcards or debit cards there, so I'm sure that made off with a stellar $12. Wow, half of a bus ticket out of the pokey. Who knows, maybe we'll have our first murder by mid-terms?
     Today, our Psychology professor just about had a meltdown trying to educate the uneducable. You could hear his voice crack a little more with pain, every time he repeated the same statement to her. Flossie, the opened-mouth gum popping bovine, was just not able to comprehend the words coming out of his mouth. Perhaps, it is due to her four stomachs going full throttle trying to process her pork rinds at 8 in the friggin' morning. Little hard to focus.There are dim bulbs, and sometimes there is just no filament at all, and this lite-brite peg better look forward to her career as a port-a-john cleaner.
    

Off with their bobble-heads!

     I am a horrible excuse for a human being. Today, I maniacally laughed at a car accident. We are talking almost to the point of vomit, too. Admittedly, I tried hard not to laugh, which then only brought on the more unhinged and repressive laughter. Tears were rolling down my face, and I almost self-asphyxiated on my saliva. It was just that frenzied.
     This morning, while driving on Kingshighway to reform school, I ended up behind a sslllooowww moving Buick. The fifty-something-year-old lady was turtling up the overpass, and I was just about to self-detonate trying to pass around her.  I finally got on the right side of her, just in time to watch her get rear-ended by a Jeep as we descended to the stop light at the bottom of the hill. She herself, managed to only bounce forward a little in her seat. However, her fifteen toy bobble-head chihuahuas were violently thrown against the back seat, and the windshield of her car. These are the same little devil dogs that were earlier taunting and jeering at me, when I was getting steaming mad stuck behind her snail of a Buick. Now they were all dead on the floorboards of the car.
     I guess it's one of those things you really have to witness for yourself to understand the rocket like distance these dogs were launched, bobbly heads and all. Compound this with the shock and awe of hearing the cars collide, and the realization that I sort of dodged a bullet, or plastic canine at least, on that one. Once I got to the campus parking lot, the absurdity of it all really set it on me. I sat in my car, and try to explain to my step-mom over the phone, that I was not in any physical or mental suffering, but merely just cracking up at a car accident.
     So the whole point of this, is that I'm really learning from my Psychology course. My sympathetic nervous system was in full swing and shock by the impact of the cars, and my parasympathetic nervous system was quick with a chaser of laughter to calm me down. I do regret now laughing and carrying on, and especially not stopping to help, but I didn't want to miss my 8am Psych test. I know I did not miss any questions pertaining to the Peripheral Nervous System today. Take that Taco Dogs!

Reflective Essay/The Garcon Disconnection

There is something quite wrong with me. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always been completely infatuated with Gene Hackman. I gather it is because he starred in several movies that my father found appealing. The movie ratings system meant nothing to the man, as we would often sit side-by-side in theaters for viewings of very hard R-rated films such as “The Road Warrior” and “Sudden Impact.” Keep in mind; I was way under the age of ten, when these movies first premiered. The topic of movies is one of the few acceptable discussion points within my family. Movies are a common ground that all generations can equally participate in. My family has spent many a holiday discussing them, and frankly, avoiding all other poignant issues. This may not be the best way to relate and connect as a family, but it is how we have managed to function as a unit.  As a result, my movie knowledge is a very strong tool that I have always relied on to meld with others.   

    A few Saturdays ago, I was at a couple's house in Belleville, Illinois for dinner. Tammy and Travis have an adorable six-year-old son, named Andon. He is a blond, blue eyed, little boy who is very aware of his cuteness. Andon really chews up the scenery with his combined utilization of his always innocent, yet menacing, rascal-like persona. While praising Tammy by calling her, "my sweet, angewic mommy, who I wuv so beary much"; he will simultaneously antagonize his teenage sister, Cam-Marie, with his ability to sing a song in one note, knowing full well it annoys her. Andon is cute and lovable dressed in Superman jammies with his suave and cunning brainpower of Lex Luthor (overlooked and brilliantly performed by Gene Hackman in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies).

     Our little dinner party of nine had just finished eating, when Andon wanted to show me his new trains. He was very proud of assembling it all by himself, and explained in great detail all the intricate construction that went into his Thundering Rails train set. We sat down on the carpet together and played with the controls for a while, when I noticed he had several little red and blue plastic policemen in his little toy corner of the living room. My eleven year old son, Max, had brought over a plastic frog he had constructed out of plastic pieces. With the train, frog, and policemen, this inspired me to reenact possibly the world's best cinematic car/train chase, out of a spectacular film from the 1970's, "The French Connection". I handed Andon one of his blue policeman and suggested to him to portray the Gene Hackman character, Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, a short tempered, alcoholic, narcotics cop. I would then portray the Roy Scheider character, his police partner, Buddy "Cloudy" Russo. Our goal as plastic blue policemen would be to get the Alain Charnier/FROG 1 "bad guy" character; superbly performed by Fernando Rey, or in our case, my son's plastic frog. If all went well, six-year-old Andon and I would be responsible for stopping a $32 million French drug smuggling ring of heroin, or "white horses" as I referred to it for Andon's sake. I won't ruin the film for you by revealing the ending of the movie, or our playtime; but I feel I kept our plastic toy reenactment of this gritty police drama true to the story. Max merely rolled his eyes at us, and went back to playing his Wii game.

     The next morning, Max had asked why I don’t play with him anymore like I was playing with Andon last night. He’s right, I don’t, and honestly haven’t for a while. He’s eleven years old, and has been officially indoctrinated into that full throttle phase of pre-adolescence known as “the awkward age.” This made me realize how quickly he has grown up and grown away. He used to be that clingy little boy of which I almost needed a human sized spatula to remove him from my hip. Now, I have grown quite accustomed to proclaiming, “Rawhide!” every time his eyes start rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ in response to something I tell him. I am officially uncool now in his sinewy oculus, and am sometimes just as awkward around him, as well.

     Within our current digital world, it makes you wonder how do parents even have fun with an eleven year old nowadays. Social networking sites and video games are tools that have added a new dimension to how we experience life. However, these new technology’s can also contribute to several degrees of isolation. It is astounding when we are standing right next to one another and sending each other text messages.

     Also, tweens barely seem to exist in a department store. Sandwiched in between the colossal baby and juniors sections are usually a few racks of clothing devoted to the broad size range of Boys 8-20. There is not much choice for fostering identity when you have only five polo shirts to select from for the next several years. There appears to be a huge oversight in the untapped market of the ‘tweeners. This age range has every right to feel lost and awkward, as there is not much in the stores for them in the first place.

     As for my reply to Max’s question on why we no longer play like we used to, I told him he didn’t want to play with boring old Mom anymore. My offerings of playing UNO or Sorry together, were continually vetoed, in favor of more exciting things, once he discovered technology. It’s really okay to outgrow toys and stages of play; however, I feel it’s harder on the parents, than it is on the children.

      Even though we don’t reenact Star Wars scenes like we used to, we still do have fun together, like go on nature walks, read the same books together, and see concerts and of course, movies. I’m certainly trying to keep at bay as much of the disconnected dysfunction that I’m well acquainted with. Later that night, I popped some corn, and cuddled up with my preteen son in one of our oversized blue chairs, and let him choose between “Young Frankenstein” and “The Poseidon Adventure”. And yes, Gene Hackman has prominent roles in both films.

The gene pool is winning, and the herd is thinning.

     Today, I noticed our psychology class was a couple of quarts low. In fact, all of my classroom were more on the half-full cell side. Maybe overcrowded institutions eventually correct themselves? Or you just switch from one institution to another? I do wonder what the biscuits and gravy would be like in the St. Louis County Jail... hmmm? All the same, it's a little easier to maneuver through the usual suspects in the hallways.
     Our Comp II class had to turn in our reflective essays today. Our professor read several, and halfway through reading mine, managed to flip out on student for screwing around with her cell phone. I mean fa-lipped out all Strother Martin (the Captain character from Cool Hand Luke) style, by marking her absent, calling her rude, and made her spend a night the box. Man, I liked my professor before, but I love her now. No way I want to piss her off though. I've seen what happens when we have failure to communicate.

Marilyn Chambers is NOT my former algebra teacher.

    Today, I pulled the mother of all "Rickyisms." If you are not familiar with "Rickyisms" then your reform school assignment is watch the following clip and fall madly in love with a Canadian television show, called Trailer Park Boys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3QHoqfhX8 There is not much more in the world that I dearly love than this show. However, for those who have hang ups on swear words, it may not be for you.
     Anyhow, while discussing graphing in my Algebra class today, my professor had asked who my instructor was last semester. Now, I don't know if it was because I left all my between class snacks at home, and hadn't eaten anything all day aside from a squeezy tube of cherry yogurt. I don't know if I was just "excited" by all the "hot and lusty" terminology that is associated with algebraic graphing; i.e., x and y intercepts, slopes, rise over run, etc. Rawr! All I do know is that I will be in Reform School for a very long time, as my reply was not Marilyn Hewes, but Marilyn Chambers. Yes, that would be 1970's porn queen Marilyn Chambers of "Behind the Green Door" fame. I said this, out loud, in a classroom, of thirty people, and then immediately turned eighty-five shades of scarlet. My professor and a handful of the older students clearly knew who she was, judging by the reactions. I'm sure the youngin's of the class have at least googled her by now, and I'm sure I will go down in the annals as "that porno lady," or some other sophomoric label... and I'm still just a freshman. 

Weekend furlough affects your school daze

Tuesday was, by far, the hardest day of my reform school process. My "church" buddies and I had a weekend "tent revival" with Iggy Pop in Chicago. He was fantastic preachin' to the choir about us Passengers experiencing Some Weird Sin Until Wrong Feels Right. I think we collectively clocked in about ten hours of sleep over a 72 hour period. Got in around 'round midnight on Monday, and had to be up for stateville at 530, still hearing, and thinking, the White Noise of it all.  Physically being there was the best I could do. I achieved absolutely no higher learning with the audiological and neurological damage from this previous weekend's Airborne Toxic Event. Boyo, where is that Murray Siskind when I need him? That's the kind of lecturer I should seek out for education after a long weekend. I wandered the halls, and I sat at desks, and prayed to Fortuna that she would spin me through The Confederacy of Dunces that are currently discussing the Civil War in my History class. She was gracious, and wheeled me through my Algebra quiz with absolutely no alpha, theta, or or beta brainwaves to speak of.  Perhaps, I should celebrate that Ball's Bluff victory battle on my brain, and make an occasional cheese dip? Ignatius would be ever so proud.
     Due to that matted right eye of my son, school was not attended by either of us, today. My continual reformation awaits me on next Tuesday.
   

Did not pass go, did not get $200, just went to jail today

I was late to my Psychology class this morning, and ended up seated next to the worst Fred Durst impression, that I have ever seen. Kids, he was even wearing the red ball cap backwards. We were discussing nurture vs. nature, and whether two 17 year boys were wrongfully or rightfully convicted of the death penalty for murdering an elderly couple. "Limp Bizkit" kept whispering that they just needed to burn the bodies, or sink 'em with bricks. I told him that he probably should have told them that. He said, "Yeah, probably." If this one doesn't have a record yet, he will soon. RAWK ON! You really meet the craziest people in a Psych class.
My American History class had me seated next to a one woman baptist choir. We are discussing the Civil War, and she was "testifying" with every sentence our professor was speaking. Like she was a first hand witness to the 1860's, lived to be over 150 years, and ended up at St Louis Community College @ Forest Park to account for, and verify it all for our classroom. She clearly knew them all on a first hand account basis; Lincoln, Dred Scott, and the drafters of the Wade-Davis bill. I can't stand that type of behavior, and will manage to elude a personality as such within five minutes of the party illustrating that style of cartoon crazy. But there was no escape. No one ever escapes Alcatraz... and no one ever will... unless you're Clint Eastwood.   

First day back in the pokey

I started back to community college/reform school today. My second semester tally mark is officially on the cell block walls of Fo Pa. I thought I knew the score from my exposure from my first semester, but I was wrong, dead, wrong. The hallways were crammed with people, with most of them appearing to be recently paroled. I felt like a new fish in all over again. I swear I saw a guy walk by me in a Missouri State issue orange jumpsuit. Dragline? Luke? Is that you? Where are you going with them fifty eggs? Then another guy red eyein' pretty hard gave me a prison kiss in my general direction, while I was on my way to my American History class.
For the first time since my "sentencing", I have three male Hogs/Pigs/Snouts/Screws/Cops/Bulls (professors) to answer to this semester. I find them VERY.ODD.INDEED. The Hogs/Pigs/Snouts/Screws/Cops/Bulls are, indefensibly, a possessive and dominant bunch, who asserted themselves as Alphas in every way possible. I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, if one of them started micturating around their desk in an attempt to define their territory. Astonishing. My Comp II professor is the only female I have to answer to around the big yard. I managed to hold my mud pretty good, and didn't get put in the hole... yet.  It's what you gotta do to earn your bee and honey around these parts. I'm considering paying a visit to Trader Bob's tattoo parlor for some left eye prison tears and start up a batch of pruno.