ECro Has Moved!

Folks, we all gotta grow up sometime.  And by this, I mean I went ahead and made an actual Wordpress site for ECro rants since I believe in the power of dirty words and inane ramblings.  So instead of my weird crap being displayed here, please transfer your affections to my new site.  Thank you, gentle, fickle, probably hairy readers. 


www.ecrodoeswrong.com

Butterflies Are Angels...of Poops

Time to make a completely generalized statement about all of humanity.  Okay, here goes.  People LOVE butterflies.  Not so much moths, or other bugs that fly around, but butterflies?  Fuck yeah to butterflies!  Those gossamer wings, those cute antennae, the delightful patterns of color that shine in the sun as they silently float about.  I'm not saying that butterflies make folks hard, but it's almost to that point.  And if you just happened to get hard over it, just admit that you'd probably try to get the precious little thing to land on your dick.  Because what's better than a winged, beauteous entity alighting on your finger?  A butterfly on your dick.  That's what's better. 

So, I'm effectively here to bust humanity's collective boner for butterflies with a sharp thwap.  Here it is, butterfly lovers...

I was in the mountains of Idaho recently (not every mountain in Idaho.  That's ludicrous since there are at least fifty of them and I can't bi-locate or even fifty-locate) and the day was hot and there was a fire nearby and really, I don't want to paint you a fucking picture of the day or why I was up there or use imagery of any kind because frankly it's completely irrelevant to my story and you should stop being so ass-lazy and just make something up that suits you.  Really.  Do it.  Pretend I was up there tracking Sasquatch or panning gold or finding unripe huckleberries and picking them JUST SO NO ONE CAN PICK THEM WHEN THEY ARE RIPE AND READY TO EAT.*

*Note: One of these things I've asked you to envision me doing is really what I was doing.**

**Double note: I didn't want to put the footnote at the bottom of the page because that would take time for me to figure out so you get it here, bitch.  And you like it.  And I know it. 

Back to my story, then.  I was passengering along (because I wasn't driving.  So passengering is now a verb.  Coined!) and my friend Jason slowed down his truck after we'd been driving on a dirt road for one millions miles and said to me, "there are so many butterflies I don't want to hit them with my truck."  And at the exact same time I had these two thoughts: "Oh no!  Let's not hurt the butterflies" AND "Jason, you are a giant pussy."  And I reconciled these varying thoughts by melding them into one thought which happened to be, "Jason intentionally hurts butterflies and is a fucking horrible human being."

Then he asked me if I wanted to get out and take pictures of the butterflies and I thought, "Why?  So I can provide crime scene photos to the sheriff of the massacre your Dodge Ram's grill leaves in its wake?"  But instead I said, "Yes, I like butterflies."  Because who the hell doesn't like butterflies?? Right?  Remember the boner?  Huh, huh? AND I didn't want him to know I was documenting his genocidal tendencies (oh, I like that.  I think that takes the tres leche cake over homicidal tendencies.  So-and-so seems like they want to kill someone?  Is that all?  Yawn.  Let me know when they're gunning for an entire species.  Then I'll perk up.).

I slid out of the truck and pulled out my iPhone and I tried to creep up on the butterflies and they all flitted away cute-like when they saw my shadow so I angled myself right and came at them like I was all business and they were MY business.  I bet I saw ten different types of butterflies.  Miniscule ones that had heather-gray wings until they opened them wide to revel a shock of periwinkle.  Some had wings laced in black with dabs of orange and red in the webbing.  Then there were the swallowtails and monarchs and even the dull white ones (they're the last ones to get invited to land on the boner). It was fucking magical.  I felt like I'd stepped into Butterfly Kingdom with them gliding around my ears and over my cheekbones and offering me yarrow tea out of indescribably tiny porcelain cups. 

Here, look, it's one of the landed gentry (holy shit that's funny.  Get it?  Because they're like, in a kingdom, so they're all noble, but instead of owning land they just LAND from flying...and now I know I'm a genius)!

Ah, a flutterby on something hard.

At this point I'd turned into the same butterfly junkie anyone would have turned into.  So pretty!  So delicate!  So pure and gentle and innocent and untainted by meth or premarital sex or scrotum acne!

Eventually I got back in the truck and resumed passengering, until a little ways up the road.  There, on a glistening piece of white granite, was a veritable butterfly-moot of black and white-winged lovelies.  Jason asked again if I'd like to take a picture and I was like, "If I don't get a picture of this I will slash your tires and run off into the woods with my shoes on my hands." 

I'd gone butterfly nuts.

I got out, crept up on those heavenly creatures, all the while wondering what they were clustered around.  Was it a crevice of dew on the rock, left untouched and unsullied by giardia?  Was it a bit of stardust or the thumb-print of God?

I had a great picture lined up, all nice and close.  I got this one: 

So very bad...

But then, they all fluttered away.  And I saw what they were standing on.

Shit.  They were standing around on shit.

Now, I know that butterflies absorb moisture through their feet, so maybe they were just looking for moisture?  There was a stream not ten feet from them, but hey, fecal water...because the shit was fresh alright.  Some animal had placed a nice swirly of brown on the middle of that rock and fucked off.  Even if it'd been Bambi, a cute little speckled fawn, the shit of the innocent being eaten by the innocent butterflies of Butterfly Kingdom just makes it epically coprophagic and hurts my tenders.

And thus concludes my cautionary tale.  Butterflies are dirty, dirty little insects that are drawn to shit just as flies are, except they're more douchey than flies because they come off as pretty and delicate and pure, luring you into wishing they would land on your fingers (or better yet, your boner) so that you can feel special and blessed and maybe even whisper into their antennae,"God really does love me most, doesn't he?".  Well, keep in mind, now and forever, that those feetsies are covered with feces.  They have feces feetsies.  Say it out loud.  FECES FEETSIES.  Now look at the picture of the scat-eating butter-traitors and say it over and over until you NEVER TOUCH ONE AGAIN!    

And that's how I've saved you all from getting dysentery and dying.

Sirens Equal Fun Happening Without Me

When my husband and I moved into our house nearly six years ago, I was not aware that I was moving into a ghetto.  And when I say a ghetto, I don't mean an actual ghetto with street urchins asking for tuppence or rats running on all visible ledges made of brick.  I just mean a neighborhood where emergency response vehicle sirens are common place.  I hear a lot of sirens.  All the time.  And initially I wasn't too bothered by that fact until I realized that whenever I heard sirens, the sound would always stop in my aural vicinity (who the hell uses a phrase like "aural vicinity"?  I think I should coin it.  It's coined.  Pay me if you want to use it).  The whirring of the ambulances and fire trucks horn blasts and cop car cries would all settle down and stop somewhere near or on my street.  

At first, years ago, I'd be alarmed.  I'd be worried that someone had choked on a chicken bone (because I see lots of people gnaw on bones regularly in the year 2012) or an old woman had fallen in the shower and had to push one of those emergency medallion thingies she wears around her neck to seek out help because she's all alone and all of her friends are dead or in rest homes and her one daughter, Maggie, is a heartless bitch that only sends a card on her mother's birthday and never on Easter even though Maggie is aware that her mother is extremely and fatally Catholic (if you die believing in something, does that belief contribute to your death?).  Anyway, I'd be worried for people.  Rarely did I think, "Oh shit, someone's getting shived in the thigh" or "Why can't we get this domestic violence issue under control" because I like to think well of people and envision them passively coming to horrific ends instead of actively coming to horrific ends.

Now, not so much alarm with the sirens.  Firstly, because everyone can't be dying.  Every street in a half-mile radius would be fully lined with houses empty of humans.  And if that were the case I'd already have a blanket fort spanning seven streets.  So not a lot of death.  Then what is it?  Drugs?  Whore beat-downs? Stolen dreams (I'm literally laughing right now at my own joke...)?

I've come to the conclusion that most of the sirens indicate that Meth is lurking around the neighborhood.  Meth is, in fact, so powerful it gets capitalized.  There is nothing to indicate that Meth is the reason for sirens, but I think that life is just easier when we blame all things on Meth.  There isn't a person out there that is going to defend Meth and its rights and feelings.  Didn't get into college?  It's probably all the fault of Meth.  Gained fifteen pounds over Christmas?  Well, if Meth wasn't so damn useful for weight-loss AND evil it would cure you of your fatness.  Fucking inconsiderate Meth.

So I heard sirens today and I thought of Meth.  Good old Meth.

Except then I considered that perhaps the sirens weren't always Meth alarms.  What if, instead, rescue teams were constantly responding to really fucking cool things that I WAS NOT INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN (I ended that with a preposition in CAPS.  I flaunt grammar rules, even in the face of overwhelming Meth).  This really bothers me.   There might be a moonshine still a few houses down and I haven't been asked to chew up spoiled fruit and spit it in the oil drum to help make the liquor because that is obviously how a still works.  Maybe illegal fireworks are being made by Nepalese refugees who then sell those illegal fireworks to Mexican immigrants so they can shoot them off at quinceneras and probably have Roman Candles they could sell me if I only knew they were for sale to Mexican immigrants and me but no on has told me that I can buy them.  Or there could be a porn set somewhere.  Filming any kind of porn.  I wouldn't know what kind because I'm not a key grip on the set because obviously my neighborhood is cold and impersonal and has lost all sense of what it means to be a community.  Fuckers.    

There is one house specifically that seems to have a lot of fun.  Well, the house doesn't have fun.  But the people in it do.  And I won't list the address here because I don't want the people that live in that house to axe to me pieces but if you really want to know the address just message me and I'll tell you and you can drive by it really slowly and take pictures after church on Sunday.  Now that I think of it, maybe it is the house that has a lot of fun because approximately six to eight different families/tribes/groups of random derelict motorcyclists have lived in that one house.  It attracts fun people that do fun things like Meth.  It's Boise's own Hell Mouth a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  But instead of attracting vampires it attracts people that put Barcaloungers in the front lawn. 

Most of the time when sirens stop in my neighborhood, they are stopping outside this house.  Last Saturday night my husband and I were both making our way home in separate cars when I got a lively text from him:

Husband: Well I can't turn into our fucking street cause of those goddamn degenerate fuckholes that live in that crackhouse!!!  FUCK!!!

Me: What?  I'm coming.

Husband: FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(I'm aware that these last two bits of dialogue are a little naughty when taken out of context.  Now you are aware of it as well).

When I got to the entrance to our street and saw three cop cars surrounding the House o' Fun, my heart sank.  It was three a.m., I was tired after a night of dancing and socializing, and my dress was mysteriously damp with something that a friend pronounced as "smelling of egg" and yet, my heart did its sinking.  For I was not invited to the debauchery.  Yet again.

I bet gramps drank too much Orange Crush avec rubbing alcohol and whipped his junk out, decorated it with pom-pom balls and waved it around to people out walking their dogs because that's what I would do if I ever wanted the sirens to stop outside my door.

Or Meth.

Basically I fucking love my ghetto that's not a real ghetto because I'm thankful for things in my life.  It's called optimism, bitches.

Avoir les Anglaises

People really like to blame others for their problems. "You didn't tell me it was your birthday, so I couldn't remember to get you a gift" or "How was I supposed to know that when your hand was in the blender I wasn't supposed to turn it on." One of the best finger-pointing blame games to play is the old, who gave who the venereal disease game. Sure, this happens on a personal level. And really, at the couple level, who ever had the scabs first is the culprit. Plain and simple and itchy, if not downright burny.

Things get interesting when countries start blaming one another for syphilis and gonorrhea and crabs (dudes, the ocean takes the blame for that one). It's a big whiny whine fest about who to blame when you've been dipping that sugar stick into more than one Lik-m-aid flavor pack. You'd think people could pick a flavor and stick to it, BUT NO. You'd think wrong. Humans like fake cherry and purple and sour (the technical flavors of both Lik-m-aid and genitals) in equal abandon. Pick one? Hah. Why not dump them all in a bowl, add a little water and down the sucker? Wait, maybe that's an orgy...

So anyway, par example, the Europeans get to the New World and kill the shit out of the indigenous people with small pox, a very Continental malady. And then they go home and bitch that because of all their raping, their dicks itch and their anuses (the plural should really be anii) are weeping fluid. But the blame isn't reserved for those damn infidels in their loincloths and feather necklaces. Oh no.

Germans called venereal disease Spanish scabies. The Spanish called it French disease. The French called it Italian Malady. And we wonder why these countries beat the ever-loving shit out of one another for centuries. No one likes to be blamed for a weeping anus. Not even the Native Americans. It's just that they couldn't really protest when they were trying to not get slaughtered on a daily basis.

And the Brits. Oh, those Brits. They, of course, joined in behind the last dude in the French-hating congo line, describing losing one's nose due to syphilis as being hit over the snout with a French faggot-stick.

So the French retaliated. Actually, they probably retaliated by pissing in jugs of wine before exporting them to Britain, but it's my blog and I've determined that they likely got their revenge for such slander with coining their own term. Avoir les anglaises or "to have the Englishes/Brits"means to menstruate.

Now hold it. It's okay to blame your crabs and your deformed penises and your hairless balls on one another, but why the hell do we need to drag the beauty and majesty and natural event that is bleeding out your vagina into the war? Huh??

All healthy women have to menstruate, even if they keep their boxes to themselves and don't go sharing with the entire EU. How come women now need to contend with menstruating out British people thanks to the French? It sucks enough with the cramps and the irritability and now we have to deal with people coming out of our vaginas? Oh, wait, that's where people come from. Okay, but adult people? Each month?

I'm planting my own flag in the ground on this one. If I have to avoir les anglaises until I'm in my forties, I might as well bleed out some hot ones.
Always remember, your junk is your own responsibility. Treat it well, don't go to war over it and always keep in mind that venereal disease is transnational. It knows no borders. It knows no ethnicity. It just likes to make it burn when you go pee.

Fire In My Pants

I wear underwear. I know that doesn't make me special. I suppose it could make me special if you consider that there are millions of starving children in the world and frail, dehydrated adults that don't wear underwear and if they could just get that whole "not starving/dehydrating to death" thing under control they'd probably be pretty peeved that they have to wear pants and dresses without something cradling their junk. So I feel lucky that I have underwear to keep my bits warm and secure. I'm looking at the bright side of my life, motherfuckers.

So, even though I'm one of the lucky, oh, let's say fifty percent of the world that have undies (completely accurate stat), is it too much to ask that they don't be the death of me? Because I'm afraid my new, pink underwear are controlling at best and deadly at worst.

Now, don't get too worried yet. I haven't heard my panties plotting my demise. I mean, perhaps they are, but I'm not delusion enough to think that they can talk. Okay, I've actually entertained the idea that they can talk, but just in a frequency inaudible to human ears. They seem to be warning me of their dangerous nature, luring me in but repulsing me at the same time, sort of like a man sporting a popped collar.

My new pair of underwear, just like that dude, seem to be a bit douchey. Apparently both want to control what goes on in a lady's junk. Uh uh. Take a look:


I mean, I appreciate the suggestion: KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE. But I don't feel the friendly, "Hey, Erica, let's not flick matches at your crotch" advice is for me. No way. Either the underwear just want to save themselves, letting me know that tossing them on an antiquated radiator is a bad idea or they want to make sure they just don't burn up while on me, like, hey, don't be eating Bananas Foster in bed while wearing ME. These underwear are just looking out for numero uno. I'm numero dos, for sure. My underwear are intent on not going up in some conflagration and my vagina not catching on fire is just a passing concern, a happy cherry on top of things, so to speak.

So there go my plans for the evening to coat my foot-long, bright yellow dildo with Sterno and light it on fire before introducing it to my labia. Fuck. I never get to do anything fun anymore.

Maybe I should just cut off the tag and be happy I get underwear, no matter how disturbed they, or I, may be.

Meditate On This!

Oh yeah. Get this. So I'm out enjoying the Boise weather today, taking a walk after a dharma meditation meeting. It's a balmy forty-seven degrees outside, which is ridiculous for February, but hey, that global warming thing will only be an issue until December when the world goes tits up and the Pocky Lips claims us all. Already digressing, which is just fun to write and makes me think that when one digresses it sounds like something they should be apologetic about and probably hide from their parents and vaguely makes me think of the Kama Sutra move Congress of the Cow just because digress and congress end in the same five letters...

God damn it! Focus, E. Really, that's WHY you were on a walk, taking in the sun and the sounds of, well, nobody, since Boise is fucking desolate downtown on a Sunday at noon.

Right.

I was downtown for a group meditation that left me feeling stellar in my mind bits in the sense that I wasn't feeling any of my mind bits at all. I walked around and stayed as present as possible. In the moment. No projecting into the future to think of cars that can fly and cars that have lasers that can shear through other cars and cars that have been altered to look like steam-powered locomotives that can fly and have lasers. No thinking of the past, especially no thinking about jelly donuts I've eaten and whether or not lemon-filled donuts or raspberry-filled donuts are best (lemon wins because raspberry takes demerits for the seeds).

Here's how it goes, sort of. I walk and focus on my breath. I think of what it means to meditate, to gain that transcendent state of full awareness. To meditate is to practice enlightenment, but to move past the thoughts to see the transitory nature of thought in our relativistic state one must...SHUT THE FUCK UP, BRAIN. THINKING ABOUT MEDITATION IS EXACTLY WHAT MEDITATION SHOULD BE CURTAILING! DON'T USE THE WORD CURTAILING IN YOU MIND. WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO IMPRESS? THAT'S A WORD MEANT FOR ADULT CONVERSATIONS AND THERE ARE NO ADULTS IN HERE!

Okay, fine. I walk and focus on my breath. I see things. I don't really remember what, probably downtown shit, because my eyes were open, but I don't think about the shit or the future of the shit or the past of the shit. I'm doing pretty good. Air goes in. Air goes out. My feet keep moving.

My feet move me behind the library, taking me towards the Greenbelt and Sunday joggers and other people I hate. I'm looking around, not really focusing on anything until I'm fully present and aware and zen about this:
What the fuck is this? I think this immediately. So that counts as being in the moment, at least when you're looking at the remains of what must have been a sodding bald eagle. Look at that giant, bloody bone! It's like the size of my tibia, (if the tibia is one of the forearm bones...because I'm not doing A&P research for this blog post) if it had been removed and put next to some feathers collected from downed bird nests and left in the middle of the sidewalk behind the area of the library where kids go to read books about animals that never die and leave their messy parts in the middle of polite society.

Stay in the present, E. Focus on your breath.

But there's gory crap on the ground.

Focus.

I want to look at it closer. But I don't want to focus on my breath when I bend over it. Probably smells as dead as it really is.

Then look, but stay detached, outside of the sorrow.

Okay, I'm outside of the sorrow. But how did it die? Something has been gnawing on it. It looks like some homeless dude got himself a weapon and went dinner hunting and dealt with the eagle with his weapon and then dealt with it again with his mega-hunger, the kind of hunger only a homeless man probably has and then he left some black feathers around it in a weird, voodoo sort of offering to all birds that are tasty or maybe just because he's a crazy. Weird, I'm stuck on this bone being decorated with feathers by someone. Like they don't come together, that bone and feathers. Was the bone there and then the feathers came later? Yeah, probably. Feathers are definitely classified as accessories to bones.

Would you shut the fuck up and live in the moment?

I AM living in the moment. With this gargantuan-boned dead bird-thing. Oh shit, it must have really suffered before it died. Maybe it put up a good fight. Eagle versus Wombat, which would be like any really good Kung Fu movie, except set in Tasmania where wombats actually live, not in Boise, and instead of people that employ the fighting styles of Eagle and Wombat there would be actual animals fighting to the death. Of course a wombat could never win against an eagle, not with the eagle's talons and sharp beak. Oh, how silly would that fight be? Completely absurd and unfair to the wombat! But, okay, back to the moment. I wonder what it felt like for the bird, trying to fly away with that one giant-ass bone in it's body. I mean, it surely had many giant-ass bones, but I only see one so I'll focus on that. I'm trying to live in the moment.

No, you aren't. Meditation teaches that freedom from suffering comes from detachment.

I'm not too suffer-y right now. And the bird most definitely isn't. When its head detached, I'm sure it became free from suffering.

You're not even trying...

Buddha would have laughed, right? Huh?

E, what would Buddha have really done in this situation?

I don't know. He probably wouldn't have eaten the bird. Not like the homeless man.

You made up the idea of a homeless man eating the bird.

Point?

...

Okay, well, I'm going to take a picture of it.

Why the hell do you need a picture of it?

Because I want to remember the time I saw the dead bird and its one big bone outside the library in Boise.

If you lived in transcendence, you wouldn't need to reflect on it at all.

I can transcend later. This is really fucking interesting.

(and then the part of me that wants to try to become self-aware is throttled to death by the part of me that has an iPhone and wants to take pictures of bloody feathers on the sidewalk and think of an eagle and a wombat engaged in a battle only one can leave alive while the homeless man referees...)

To my credit, I spend the rest of my walk completely in the moment since I have the picture to look at later and write a weird-ass blog post about.

Moral of the story, kids, is to watch where you walk so you don't get death on your Keds. Oh, and another moral to keep in mind is that you can always brow-beat parts of yourself into going back from whence they annoyingly came. And, lastly, that trying to improve on oneself is always an admirable goal. Unless you get distracted. By gnarly dead things.

Om.

ECro: The Evolution of a Woman to a Four-Letter Word

I like funny stuff. And I like funny writing. And I like writing funny stuff. But I'm also trying my hand at writing some things that I would like to sell someday. I'm writing stories that I want someone to at least nod over and hmm about and think something of. But I also like to say stupid shit. So I'm starting this blog. It's for all the stupid shit that churns about my mind-bits and comes out my mouth or my tippy-tappy fingertips.

But it's not like I want my name associated with all my crazy. Fuck no. I have platforming to think of: meaning how my internet persona that no one gives a shit about affects my unfinished work that potentially no one will give another shit about. I'm thinking ahead.

So I'm taking what most might call a pen name or a pseudonym. But those terms are boring and too scholarly. Nope. I'm not most. I'm going to call it something different.

I'm taking a gang name.

Let me explain my reasoning here because I clearly need to do that (don't ask me why this is clear, I just think it is and it's my fucking blog). I've found that when I explain why I'm crazy people typically snort or smile and then I feel good about being a little off and they feel good about placating a crazy person. So let me explain.

First, gang names are inherently cooler than non-gang names. T-Roc will always beat Sally in a moniker competition. I don't think such competitions exist, but we'd all know the winner in that bout. Sally would get curb-stomped. Literally.

Second, I just want a fucking gang name without being in a gang. Do you have a problem with that? I mean, who decided that gang names could only be used by people in actual gangs. It's a type of bigotry. And if it isn't a type of bigotry, I'm going to pretend it is so I can have a gang name.

So here is what I did to get my gang name. I didn't pull a Glock on another marginalized, blond-haired, privileged white woman like myself to gain street cred. And I didn't get a tattoo across my sternum, forever branding myself with some lame-ass sad clown or phallic pillar that is supposed to represent what I represent.

Are you ready for it? Are you? You'll be shocked. For realz.

I took the first initial of my first name, and then I added it to the first three letters in my last name. And then, to make things really raw and street, I capitalized the C after the E. Oh yes I did. And I'd do it again. I'm fucking fearless.

Anyway, presto chango, waving hands about and shit and now here it is: ECro. Gang Name. Shit yeah.

Welcome to my blog.