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Post by Frameous on May 20, 2016 19:53:18 GMT -5
I am strange.
I like strange things. Strange things make me laugh, because I have a strange sense of humor. All my life I've found things funny that other people just don't get. Or they understand, but they do not understand why I find it so much funnier than they do. When something like this happens, I am prone to uncontrollable laughing jags, cackling like The Joker, looking like a lunatic whose gone round the twist.
Strange things turn me on, because so much of life is banal and routine. I like movies that are out there, bucking conventional narrative and playing out more like waking dreams than straightforward stories. I like strange actors with unconventional faces, who have made a name for themselves on sheer talent despite not being beautiful. I am drawn to writers and artists who draw from their own personal struggle with mental health, trying to funnel their own bent world view into a song or a painting that will be relevant on its own.
I am fascinated with the strange, dark corners of society. The homeless, the criminal, the serial killers in captivity and the sociopaths who walk among us in plain sight. Much of this strange darkness lurks under the surface of a diverse collection of what you might call 'everyday people'. There are secret sufferers of child abuse, pornography addicts, substance abusers, and basket cases who muster the wherewithal to scrape together a normal, workaday life while the toys stay packed away in the attic. Much of the time, I don't enjoy these things, but am fascinated and compelled to understand them.
I like conspiracy theories, psychology, the creepy anonymity of the internet the makes some people feel like they can act like the true animals they are inside. I idly think about human atrocities and man's inhumanity to man, wondering what kind of world we really live in?
tl;dr : I wanna talk about weirdo stuff and have a morbid sense of humor.
So come on, let's get strange.
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Post by Bad Touch on May 20, 2016 19:54:06 GMT -5
.......... is it safe?
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Post by Frameous on May 20, 2016 20:01:09 GMT -5
Safe enough, for now. Who knows where things will take us.
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Post by Bad Touch on May 20, 2016 20:01:58 GMT -5
Well you've been bookmarked buddy. Congratulations.
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Post by Frameous on May 20, 2016 20:27:15 GMT -5
One time, years ago, I delivered a pizza to this house in the suburbs. As I approached the front door, these two kids in the front yard stood in my way. There was a boy and a younger girl. The girl just stared impassively at me, while the boy held up a picture. The picture was of a random woman, and it looked like it had been taken from a magazine. In his other hand he held a thin branch.
As I neared, the boy took the branch and began tapping the outstretched picture. He was tapping it rhythmically, and he began to smile. Soon the little girl smiled too, as he tapped away and they both stared daggers into me. I slipped past them, went to the front door and their mom emerged to pay for the pizza. During the transaction, the continued, perhaps a little more quietly since the adults were talking. Smiling, tapping, emanating otherworldly bizarro vibes.
Once finished, I slunk past the little creeps. The whole time their gaze followed me, in unison. As I got back into my car, mom called them in for dinner. After a beat they broke character and scampered inside the house. Either the kids were really bent for their age and they were having fun with me, or I saw something I still don't understand.
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Post by Bad Touch on May 20, 2016 20:36:03 GMT -5
Sounds like mom slipped them some benzos. Pizza night is exciting. Or maybe they too accidentally stumbled on to a late night viewing of Faces of Death! F*CK if that doesn't snap a young mind.
You cant go from She-Ra to autopsies. .....At least not that quickly.
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Post by Frameous on May 20, 2016 20:42:06 GMT -5
Do you remember which Faces of Death? I also accidentally saw a snippet of it, playing on the big console TV resting on the shag carpeting when I was young. In my memory all I remember is blood and viscera, so I'm not sure which one I saw. Years later, I would watch a few as a rite of passage and find out they were largely faked. But autopsy sounds pretty real...
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Post by Bad Touch on May 20, 2016 20:53:06 GMT -5
I'm not sure which one they were playing. My jaw was on the floor and I was pushed out of the room once they caught me. What I saw was a freshly buzz-sawed skull being lifted, and then the brain being extricated and placed in a large petri dish.
So here's another autopsy story for ya.
When I was on the waiting list for the Maricopa county nursing program, I was (posting here, and..) working at the Best Western corporate headquarters. Sick of the data entry, I listened to endless audio-books. Once I was knee deep in my Anatomy/Physiology coursework, I got this impression that in the nursing program, I'd probably have to come face to face with a corpse (for study.. not for kicks). So my super sweet, twisted yet bubbly gothy friend, Amanda and I pulled up google and found a few free UC Berkeley lectures, complete with autopsy. We sat in our corner of the office and watched an entire autopsy, and we kept laughing at how once the internal organs were removed, the amount of blood that splooshed around the body cavity looked like a kiddie pool. Once the rib cage was cut and seperated, they held up the woman's breast implants... and THEY laughed so I didn't feel so bad. .......................... sorry.
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Post by Frameous on May 20, 2016 21:22:11 GMT -5
Wow, impressive creepiness! The visuals alone are so vivid.
The only autopsy I ever witnessed looked really fake and was shot on video (Faces of Death II I believe), so it looked kind of fakey by virtue of that fact. It was also bloodless, which could be plausible, since I believe they try to drain the body first. Still, not sure if it was real or not. But it did bum me out (mostly because my friend wasn't helping me make jokes, he was just dead eyed on bong hits). That was a memorable Halloween.
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Post by Bad Touch on May 20, 2016 21:32:17 GMT -5
I made it half-way through the nursing program before I bowed out (with good marks too!) due to an upcoming death in the family. Hospice was brought into the home.. and it was too much to handle care taking and nursing together. But long story short...never got to see a corpse (in that program that is). Although I did work several shifts in the Alzheimer's unit of a long term care facility, and .. all joking aside, that's the closest you'll get.
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Post by Frameous on May 20, 2016 22:41:31 GMT -5
Although I did work several shifts in the Alzheimer's unit of a long term care facility, and .. all joking aside, that's the closest you'll get. Are you trying to make me tell all my pizza delivery stories? Years before the Children of the Damned accosted me, I was delivering to a local nursing home. Despite having older relatives, I had never set foot in one. When I walked through the doors I had to make my way down a gauntlet of horrors. I guess it's regular practice to just leave the demented elderly in the hallways and let them sit in their wheelchairs. Social time, ya know? They sat there like emaciated paper dolls, some zoning out, others staring at me like I was the chosen one. I had to make my way to the front desk to deliver the pizza to the staff, so I just tried to ignore the outstretched hands and incomprehensible mumbles. While I was waiting for the person who ordered to pay up, a nearby old woman touched my arm. She started calling me a name (Billy maybe, something), and asking me questions like I was a long lost relative. I was pretty young at the time, so I could only stare back in horror. Today I would have been nice and tried to humor her, but at the time I was like a deer in octogenarian headlights. When I tried to leave she continued talking, reaching after me. This was my first encounter with the demented elderly and it left a last impression on me. For years I was phobic of them, and as Alzheimer's started to make the news a new level of horror dawned on me. To this day, I don't know what to think. Is it a life of living horrors, or are you so clueless you have no idea what is happening moment to moment?
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Post by Bad Touch on May 20, 2016 23:06:52 GMT -5
"I had never set foot in one. When I walked through the doors I had to make my way down a gauntlet of horrors. I guess it's regular practice to just leave the demented elderly in the hallways and let them sit in their wheelchairs."
Okay. That's pretty damn accurate.
This hits close to home. I'm not happy to relive this memory but here goes.
That experience you had is very similar to my first day in clinicals at that nursing home. I spent an eight hour shift feeding, changing diapers, showering and giving insulin shots. In between those tasks, my partner Lynn and I wandered the halls "getting to know" the residents. When I got home, I collapsed in bed, sobbed and didn't get back out of bed for two days.... still in my scrubs. It was hands down the most depressing day of my life. Despite the tragedies that all families endure and heal from.. that first experience hit a place in my heart that I just couldn't deal to shed light on. I ended up going back and finishing up my semester there. Met a couple spunky old ladies that kept me laughing and I focused on them instead. I went back and visited them after clinicals because they were so instrumental in my sticking it out.
There's a brilliant book about a PHD who got early onset Alzheimer's called "Still Alice." .. it's on my wish list.
From what I understand, and looking at the progressive scans of these patients, the brain literally rots. It's starts with dementia, confusion, forgetfulness, aggravation, etc. and at the end stages, they are lifeless. In my sister's coursework for her Psychology degree, she did a lot of research about art therapy and the amazing effects it has on memory recall. While visiting museums, the caretakers who chaperoned saw noticeable differences in their patients. A certain image, color or general landscape would light them up and snippets of memories were recalled.
The mind is fractal.
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Post by Bad Touch on May 21, 2016 0:40:57 GMT -5
“You simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead and get with the program of a living world and the imagination.” - Terence McKenna (Interpret as you will)
Have a peaceful night, Frame!
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Post by Frameous on May 21, 2016 12:45:21 GMT -5
This hits close to home. I'm not happy to relive this memory but here goes. That experience you had is very similar to my first day in clinicals at that nursing home. I spent an eight hour shift feeding, changing diapers, showering and giving insulin shots. In between those tasks, my partner Lynn and I wandered the halls "getting to know" the residents. When I got home, I collapsed in bed, sobbed and didn't get back out of bed for two days.... still in my scrubs. It was hands down the most depressing day of my life. Despite the tragedies that all families endure and heal from.. that first experience hit a place in my heart that I just couldn't deal to shed light on. I ended up going back and finishing up my semester there. Met a couple spunky old ladies that kept me laughing and I focused on them instead. I went back and visited them after clinicals because they were so instrumental in my sticking it out. Thanks for sharing, and the uplifting advice. Truthfully, amid this subject matter, I need it. My grandfather's mind is starting to go, but nothing too terrifying. Another member of my extended family though, she is a different story. She's in her fifties and has been out of work for years, living with her parents. Years of letting her mind veg in unemployment and drinking heavily has rendered her with early onset Al's. The cops found her on the side of the highway, drunk, with no memory of leaving the bar and heading home. Soon she didn't recognize her own parents, and started thinking they were evil keepers who were out to poison her. They got her on meds and disability, but she's basically mentally incompetent. The last time I saw her she smelled terrible because she refuses to shower and was milling around from room to room during a family function, barely aware of what was going on. When my thoughts linger on this subject, I start to think about the quality of life and what I would do or want if it were me...well that's a quick way to ruin my day. Just as I love to dissect and ponder the darker side, I sometimes get consumed by it and get some kind of black mood tunnel vision that's hard for me to shake. Usually that only happens if the subject at hand effects mer personally. Thankfully there are no Holocaust or serial killer victims in my blood line (knock wood!).
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Post by Bad Touch on May 21, 2016 13:03:50 GMT -5
I'm sorry to hear about your afflicted family members. Dementia, in any stage is hard to witness. I think I have heard that they're linking severe alcoholism with early onset Alzheimer's, so this makes sense in her case. We're on page ONE still! Hope you're not regretting starting this. I feel bad. Want to shift gears?
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