he drinks a blog

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spy baby!

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from autism, i moved to zoology and theology with "the life of pi" by yann martel. i'm not entirely sure what drew me to this book, as it certainly was not the author's photo on the back cover. ouch. however, according to amazon, i'm not incorrect in moving from haddon's novel to this one. apparently, others who bought "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" also purchased "the life of pi". i'll leave it at that.

tlop is a complicated story. it follows, well, the life of pi. from his childhood in india to his late adulthood in canada. mostly, though, the book deals with pi's adventures in faith and on the high seas. pi was a christian, a muslim, and a hindu. he forged his religion from the shared heritage of these faiths and the knowledge they have to share about our world. had they jews in india, he'd probably be one of those, too. regardless, pi's ideas about what religion truly is and how faith should operate in our ever imploding world were thought-provoking and steadfast.

pi's not-so-cookie cutter faith was put to the test when, upon a his family's move from inida to canada, their ship meets a tragic destination, putting pi in a lifeboat with an orangutan, an injured zebra, a hyena, and a tiger by the name of richard parker. the tale of pi's trek across the pacific accounts for the bulk of the book. martel details pi's days... how he caught food, how he acquired drinking water, how he maintained his sanity, and how he kept a hungry tiger at bay. pi's adventure is so vivid, so real, i often found myself looking to others on the l for compassion or understanding of what pi and i were going through... together. needless to say, pi makes it to canada in the long run, but how this book ends left me devastated and thirsty... begging pi for something more.

i hopped from a boy and his tiger in "the life of pi" to a tiger changing its stripes in "middlesex: a novel" by jeffrey eugenides, the author of "the virgin suicides" (one of my all-time favorite movies, though i've never read the book). in his latest, the winner of the pulitzer prize, eugenides follows several members of the stephanides family, a greek immigrant family based in detroit, but more closely he follows calliope, the third-generation "daughter" of many years of inbreeding. told from calliope's perspective as a middle-aged man, the reader is led along from her first birth as a baby girl to her rebirth into malehood as an early teenager, for calliope was not only the daughter of inbreeding but also the son... a hermaphrodite.

the story is epic... not only in length, but in structure. eugenides employs so much of the greek tradition in the creation of calliope's story. the sins of the father, well, parents, haunt their children. motifs play out again and again, forcing generation after generation to encounter the same decisions and choices. no great gain is not accompanied by great loss. and the ending is neither climactic nor unexpected but after such an emotional whirlwind, the solace was welcome no matter how unsatisfying. homer could not have written a better odyssey.

from the greek isles and detroit, i hopped over to the isle of great britain and hogwarts. why, i read "harry potter and the half-blood prince" next, of course. in less than 24 hours. on a weekend.

yes, i'm a geek... and i loved every minute of it. even those 15 minutes where i debated whether or not i hallucinated someone yelling "help me" from somewhere within or around our apartment.

what can i say, harry was in a tight spot at that point.

regardless, i'll trade childish flights of fancy for hermaphrodites and autism any day of the week.

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pride weekend in summation...


friday... it all began with sake bombing...

then dancing!

melinda and mols... the cleave competition commenced shortly after this photo.

current and former, straight (?) and gay, female and male (?): roommates get along at berlin.

bestie, me, hank... yes, i'm wearing pink and red... you should have seen the shoes.





in order from left to right: my boyfriend; hank; my phone; drew; me; that girl


i later found out it was a wig and was utterly heartbroken.



...going in for the kill.

i know i died.


*what you don't see from friday night*
me dancing on a box... both cardboard and club
an orgy in bucktown
me sitting on a birdhouse that doubled as a purse
melinda sitting for like 19 hours in the corner of berlin, talking to a gang of black power lesbians
me calling molly to tell her she's getting fucked
me walking down belmont in a pair of 4 inch spike heels, yelling "tyra and janice ain't got nothing on this bitch!"





saturday... continued with sleeping in...

then more drinking!


this picture was solely included to introduce ferdinand... the small asian boy that adam and i adopted and brought to america a few years back... very much in the fashion of angelina and brad... i'm so ange!



clearly, frank and i needed more entertainment... josh just wasn't enough.


josh fixes the situation by sticking his finger in my butt.



this makes everyone happy and the world go round.



ferdie shows the boys where penises go


*what you didn't see from saturday*
my birthday bbq attended by a small yet tight-knit group
the arrival of the aforementioned colony of ants off our back porch
my friend kat falling out our backdoor
good food, good friends, some music and lots of booze




sunday... is always better with a parade...

then parties and bars, oh my!



"ariel, tell me all about it while i eat this twinkie!"



bad, kirichiban, bad!



this picture was to be of our new parade friend beth... i stole the show, per usual



i'm pretty sure he's doing more than worshipping that golden idol, moses.



well, julie, i'm not sure who i know at this party. let me just check my phone here and... RUN!



yes, i did a keg stand at the party we crashed... yes, a lesbian held my legs all by herself.



though blurry like my vision at this point, this is me flirting with an extremely attractive straight man. i made him laugh. a lot. he broke my heart (and my fall at one point). a lot.



you always know you've worn out your welcome when they start pitching frisbees at you.

*insert a brief jaunt home to change clothes and brush teeth*


senior picture time at roscoe's... who isn't jealous?



adam and i expressing the combined exhiliration and shock at the end of pride weekend.



riding off into the sunset on another great weekend... i'll be hitting the dusty trails until next year... see you then!


*what you didn't see from sunday*
we actually crashed two parties that neighbored each other and were only separated by a wooden fence. there were many times that i was attempting to climb said fence with my rump in the air and one foot propped on the top of the fence... i succeeded in scaling the fence 0 times.
one of the parties was hosted by a man who claimed to live in the "world's smallest apartment" or wsa or something like that. he's a decorator and was using the party to showcase the mad-crazy skills he exhibited when refurbishing his 320 sq.ft. apartment. it had a walk-in closet with beige carpet. they were serving cranberry and vodkas. i'll leave it at that.
me walking into our apartment at 4 am and attempting to sleep in molly's bed with her. yes, i cracked out a butter knife to unlock her door.
me falling off the edge of the bathtub while washing my feet
a few of us lying in the front yard of one of the parties, and by front yard, i mean the patch of grass by the curb
me highjacking a table at nookie's because i didn't want to wait in line

posted by brett @ 4:18 PM 7 comments

it all started with earthworms. while i do not know if worms technically qualify as insects, i do know that, for all intents and purposes, i consider them bugs. wriggly, slimy, no-eyeballed bugs. "snakes!" i shrieked as a young boy of 3, running as fast as my galoshed feet could carry me, running for the safety of the house and chicken soup with saltines, running from the pink snakes climbing out of the ground to get me. "brett ryan, those aren't snakes... they're worms," my mother explained calmly, guarded from the summer misting beneath a red and white umbrella. "what's worms supposed to mean?" i asked her in a single, terse breath, then adding snidely, "little snakes?" she looked at me, hiding my fear of the snakey worms behind a brusque exterior. "they can't hurt you," she said. "they're blind." i believed her, jogging off to stomp in the awaiting puddles.

my rainy play-day coming to a close, i ran into our garage to remove my wet slicker and matching galoshes. my treaded boot hit the smooth concrete floor, and i was instantly on my back, cracking my head against the hard floor. beckoned by blood-curdling screams, my mother appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and garage. "what happened?" she inquired. "the little snakes made me fall," i said. "what?" she asked, intrigued. i pointed to the bottom of my boot. there, quite dead, was the mashed body of an earthworm - fat, juicy - strategically positioned on the ball of my foot. clearly, it had not been the wet boot, but rather the wet earthworm carcass that caused me to slip. this debacle, compounded with the numerous times throughout childhood that a fishhook went through a worm and into my thumb, spurned my longstanding ire for all species of bug.

building where the hated earthworms had begun to construct, june bugs contributed when they could. childhood memories of summer are dotted by the persistent thumping of june bugs against window screens. the bugs literally dying to get in; we dying slowly as if from chinese water torture. thump thump thump, their wings lightly buzzing behind the oh-so-discrete-yet-deafeningly-loud attempts at entrance. and on the off chance they'd somehow fight their way through the screen, they always found their way into the golden locks surrounding my tanned and freckled face of childhood. burrow, they would. burrow further and further into my hair, until properly positioned by the oracle of my ear, the buzzing of wings now seemingly an internal sound, as if the alarm of some biological clock had reached its hour.

mosquitos. need i say more? no.

for a year and a half in college, i lived with drew in an apartment that had seen better years. the entire 650 square foot box had one window, the bathroom ceiling was probably growing the cure for cancer, and several of the kitchen walls looked like california faultlines. here, our story continues, for what should one day appear from beneath the california crust that was our kitchen walls but ants - a large, productive, foraging colony of ants. we did not invite them. we were not terribly dirty boys. food was not left around to be taken by wild dogs or freakishly strong ants. yet they came in uninvited. they unabashedly explored the entire domicile. the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, both bedrooms, and yes, the cure for cancer bathroom, all were infested. oh, but brett, they're just ants. do you understand what it is like to find ants roaming the curved arc of your solid deodorant? how the hell did they get under the cap? maybe they sweat a lot. can you comprehend the emotions involved in discovering dead ant bodies on your remote? did i kill them or was this season of "the real world" really that bad? i'm blaming trishelle. is it possible for you to imagine the horror of encountering ants freely wandering the darkest crevices of your bedside goodie drawer? gives "catching the bug" a whole new meaning. i thought not.

much more recently, just off our back porch, a colony of ants moved in, and they're a rowdy bunch. constantly on the move and looking for prime real estate. i watch them from my bedroom window, waiting for the day they try to become our newest roommates.

i would have said new roommates, but that title has already been stolen. yep, silverfish has moved in, and i am so not thrilled. for starters, i thought silverfish were like waterphiles. now, i know i have a moistening effect on most people i meet, but i hardly change the atmosphere of a room. well, except for that whole lighting-up-a-room smile thing... regardless, what i think i know about silverfish does not explain their presence in our apartment. they like water (or so i think), yet i do not find them in the bathtub. i do not find them in or around the kitchen sink. no, i think they're stylephiles. i find them in my closet, sorting through all my last season goodness and scurrying for their lives when i approach for fear i'll hear them making fun of my wardrobe. they like to hang out in my window dressings, luxuriating in the velvety wonderfulness of my drapes. they tour paris, tokyo, and hong kong, wandering in and out of my small collection of antique postcards scattered across my dressers and bedside table. they love my room, and for that, i both love and hate them. these bugs and i - the silverfish and i - we could be friends... i mean clearly we have all the same interests and tastes, but... well... they're so ugly. they're like maggots with legs... and let's face it. faggots and maggots do not get along.

oh, and their name... such a lie. they don't look nothin' like silver fish.

our other tenants. my least favorite of them all. our spiders. now, i don't share the same dislike that most people do of spiders. i do not loathe spiders because of their creepy, slinky frame and multiple appendages; no, i loathe, abhor, despise spiders because they're so high-and-mighty. they just set up shop wherever the hell they feel like. they keep a clean house, but it's a repulsive one, nonetheless: stringy, sticky like cotton candy, practically invisible, and, oh, it tastes like hair. thus, i avoid spiders like the plague. i don't engage with people like that, much less creatures of the wilderness. however, the spiders will have nothing to do with that. they just forced themselves upon us. oh, you don't want us in your living room... well, yeah, about that, you see that's just not really going to work for us spiders. you see we really like your living room, so don't mind those boxes over there, that's just nancy setting up her web. oh, and could you two keep it down during the day, we're really more nighttime people. thaaaaanks. they just do whatever the hell they want. no regard or respect for others or their privacy. hell, they even ride the l. like what, they heard a rash of flies was ravaging north broadway, so they have to hop the redline from downtown to uptown. no, i don't believe that. but yes, it happens. it happened just the other day. i was riding along quietly (well, as quiet as i do) with the roommate, when these girls point to this guy and tell him he has a spider on his shoulder. i immediately flip out. go all twitchy and paranoid that this bossy, little piece of shit bug is going to try to come home with me. it'd totally use some cheesy line about stars in my eyes or an angel falling from heaven or something. anything to get a place to stay. freeloading sons of bitches. yeah, that's right, i called charlotte a bitch. and she is... do you think the farmer had her sign a lease for that corner of the barn doorway? i don't think so. she just up and took it.

now, i'm on the lookout for spiders on the cta, and if i see any, i'm totally asking to see their farecard.

cheapskates.

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