Tag Archives: fun

Journal – Ghost Hunting

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Some of my siblings and I went ghost hunting! It’s tremendous fun, especially if you don’t find anything.

We stayed a night at the Lemp Mansion. It was beautiful and eerie. We had a great time exploring the place at night after the lights went out and everyone was gone. They really set you up for ghost hunting there. The staff lock you in and leave at nine. You get to be alone, and if you’re lucky enough to schedule a night without any other guests, you really will be alone. Unfortunately we had a couple of rooms with other guests that night, and they were loud and constant talkers! But they didn’t leave their rooms much.

We went exploring, it felt pretty dumb, because the stairs and doors were creaky… not just eerie creaky, but cringy LOUD creaky. We got to be the ghosts for the other guests once because the door was so loud, they heard it and called, “hello?” And we crept away. I actually didn’t get why my siblings did that to them…  maybe because it was nice to let them believe in Santa. Or maybe it was because we didn’t want them to find us four grown-ass idiots tiptoeing around the mansion in our socks and jammies. We did a lot of sneaking around those people, that was probably the silliest and most fun of everything. They never caught us! As far as we know. They were pretty drunk. At one point a guy walked by, and my sister and I stood still in a dark corner as our only defense, and he never saw us. It was crazy.

Our room was the Lavender Room, haunted by the Lavender Lady, and also by Billy Lemp who was a playboy in life and a nasty shower-peeper in death. My sisters and I tried to lure him out in the bathroom by flashing him but he didn’t manifest.

The bathroom was magnificent. It had a giant bay window, a marble bath, a shower with a built-in spot-free lateral rinse, and extra space enough to perform several backflips. It was excessive, but hey, excessive bathrooms are what money’s for, amirite?

My ghostiest moment: when I was alone in this bathroom pooping, the overhead light came on, then after about ten seconds it turned off again. Maybe Billy was a coprophiliac? They didn’t mention that in the brochure. I, er, finished up, then tried the light. It was one of those lights on a dimmer switch which shouldn’t be on a dimmer switch. If you turned the knob slowly through the low, medium, high settings, the light went: low, higher, lowest, bright, off. With much flickering in between. 

The whole building’s electricity was on the fritz. Lights flickered weakly all the time. It started to remind me of Stranger Things. Their wiring must have been SUPER old. Why pay for expensive rewiring when it’s spookier for the guests this way?

Also, there were some brutal cold spots from the overhead AC ducts in consistent places.

When we went down to the basement, we got our worst scare of the night: the ice machine. We could hear it from around the corner. It said, “whirrrr whumpity whumpity BANG!!” *dead silence* “whirrrrr, whirrrrrr, whir-whir-bumpity thumpity kkkk clack rattle whirrrrr” and so on. The poor machine was choking to death on the flickering electricity. Once we realized it didn’t want to eat us, I pitied it.

There were an inordinate number of mirrors hanging on the walls. I had to wonder if the owners decorated it that way on purpose, to increase the suspicious photos and reflections we might see, or even just to give us a good jumpscare around corners.

It was beautiful though, it has a scary atmosphere, and we had tons of fun. I highly recommend it. I hoped I would see something, but in my heart I knew I wouldn’t. Still, we ate a lot of brownies and stuck close to each other nervously and felt like kids again on a great big sleepover. Go check it out, unless you’re a sensitive, then maybe don’t, because it’ll probably end like The Shining for you. I’m still not discounting the possibility of ghosts, and I definitely don’t want anyone getting scarred for life because I told them this place was delightful and unhaunted!

I like ghost hunting, especially if I get to do it with good people. Next time I’ll apply what I’ve learned and catch me that big ten-point ghost I’ve heard about, and get him mounted on my wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal – How to be Cool at the Boba Tea Place

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I’m all out of (good) poems, so here’s a story from my day.

 

 

Cowdog Creatives and I went to our favorite boba tea place yesterday.

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I don’t think everyone has had boba tea before (please correct this ASAP), but when they give you the tea at this place, they give you a clear plastic cup, and they laminate a plastic film over the top instead of popping on a conventional lid. You are also handed an oversized, stabby-ended straw. Then you get to stab your beverage. This part alone worth the four dollars.

Being whatever the fuck I am, one day I decided to order an avocado flavored one. It came to me vivid green and unsettlingly viscous. I commenced the drink stabbing ritual. But the cup was flimsy, and I hadn’t supported it correctly. The film was only partially perforated by my action. Instead, all of the pressure I applied went into crumpling the cup, which in turn pressurized the contents, which ejaculated out of the hole I’d made and coated the counter and floor in neon green avocado flavored boba tea. As a final indignity, the cup fell over lamely, spilling more.

This was of course hilarious. Cowdog Creatives and I laughed ourselves weak. I grabbed a handful of napkins to mop up the mess, not noticing the little ceramic napkin weight on top of the stack. It got hefted and landed hard with a teeth-gritting clank, but did not, by some miracle, break. So that was just more awkward.

I realized, after we’d inexpertly wiped up the mess, that the nice Asian clerks, usually ineffably kind and patient, hadn’t lifted a finger to help us. They just sort of pretended we weren’t there.  Was this penance? Or perhaps this was the polite thing to do in their minds?

It turned out to be a stroke of luck that I spilled much of that blasted drink, because it turned out to be weird, rich, heavy, regrettable.

 

Yesterday we were in the same shop. There was a guy next to us with three friends, and he did the exact same thing. He failed to quickly and humanely execute his beverage. It bled out two-thirds of the contents all over the floor, an even bigger mess than my own epic one.

I told him not to feel bad, I’d done the same thing once. They asked the clerks for paper towels and a roll was passed over the counter to them. Once again, the guests ended up cleaning the majority of their own mess. The cashier actually did come out with a mop this time, but too late, the mess was already gone, along with the entire paper towel roll.

As we were leaving, we overheard the guy say, “why is everyone in here helping me clean this up, except my own girlfriend?”

She alone sat placidly sipping her drink, unconcerned by his public outing of her behavior.

 

The moral of this story is, go drink boba tea, but support the walls of your cup if you want to perform a clean execution. It tastes better without the shame, manual labor, or avocado.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ricky the Elephant

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Once upon a time there was an elephant named Ricky. Ricky had asthma and couldn’t go through the tall grass without sneezing and his throat seizing up. His mom got him an atomizer with a special elephant mask, and it helped, but he got bored missing out at the atomizer while the other elephants romped in the air pollution and irritants.

He decided to move to the city, where he could be an indoor elephant and breath only air that was conditioned, filtered, and purified. He called ahead and got himself an office job via phone interview.

When he got there for his first day, he was dismayed to find that the elevator wasn’t designed to capacitate his size.

Okay, he thought, I just have to take the stairs.

But when he opened the stairwell door, it was too narrow. He couldn’t even fit through it, and just looking up that skinny stairwell gave him claustrophobia.

Ricky decided to go outside the building and see if there were any alternatives. He saw a window washer’s lift. It was the best option he’d had yet.

Climbing in, Ricky felt a wave of vertigo, but he pushed it away with sheer willpower. He wanted this job. He found the remote and pushed the button. Up he went.

As he ascended, the engine started to make a strangled noise. Ricky looked at the sign and saw the weight capacity was thousands of pounds below his own weight. This made him dizzier than before, but he was nearly there, so he kept on.

When he got to the eighteenth floor, he found, to his horror, that the window was smooth glass,  unpunctuated by latch or hook. The vertigo was setting in strong. He couldn’t take it. He swayed into the glass and shattered the pane, tumbling into the room with a frightened trumpet.

“GAH! An elephant just broke in!” Someone yelled.

People screamed and scattered in all directions.

Ricky opened his mouth to explain that this was an accident, he was here for an interview but the building lacked sufficient accommodations, but his stress levels were too high from the vertigo and the social ostracism. He had an anxiety attack and an asthma attack, all at once, and all he could do was make wretched zombie noises. This only served to heighten the atmosphere for the humans.

A man in puffed sleeves had a harpoon hanging over his cubicle. The office man who wanted to be a sailor, at last his time had come. He pulled the harpoon from its fastenings, aimed, and launched it at the elephant.

The impact drove it into Ricky’s shoulder, where it didn’t do much damage, but stung quite a bit.

“Take that ye land whale!” the would-be sailor shouted proudly.

Ricky had had enough. The interview was not worth this. He took the stairs down. The less said about that the better; it was a whole new kind of nightmare, especially the corners.

Work sucks, Ricky thought. I’m moving back into mom’s savanna. At least there, I only have ONE thing wrong with me.

So he did, and lived happily ever after for the perspective.

 

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Having Fun Yet?

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I never realized how precious I was being about my writing
Until I started posting it.
I find myself thinking stupid stuff:
“If I post this, I can’t get it published.”
As if that’s something I’m likely to do
“If I post this, I can never use this idea again.”
Dear god, ideas are cheap
And recyclable.
“They won’t like this one.”
They’re free to react as they please
I’ll survive it.

They’re just excuses to be fearful.
Hiding your writing is no fun
Just like hiding your drawings is no fun.
And it should be fun
If it’s not fun
Then why the hell are you doing it?

Lately I’ve been working on finding the fun
In my art, in my writings
If I’m not having fun, I’m blocked.
The blog has also taught me that if I am having fun
I get better without even realizing it.
But I love saddling my fun carefree creations
With heavy responsibility
Like a disappointed parent
I crush them before they’re even formed
With the things that I hope they will do for me.