Candy Rant

"I killed a rat with a stick once."

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Silence!

At various bleak points in my life, when I have had the motivation of a mud clod, I've found myself watching 7 or 8 hours of TV a day. And I didn't even have cable. Which means I was force-feeding my helpless brain a steady diet of network shows. Several versions of Law & Order, CSI, and three late night talk shows, from opening monologue to closing credits. When I got basic cable to make the local channels come in more clearly, the cable connection accidentally included TV Land, enabling me to watch Mr. Ed at 1:30 a.m. Every weeknight. On especially late nights of sloth, I watched The Waltons at 5 a.m.

Although my life is no longer a pile of steaming dog poop, I've noticed during my time "off" between semesters that I rarely, very rarely, have my house quiet. I automatically turn the TV on when I come home, and there it is. My company. My constant noise. If I turn it off, I play a CD. Usually, even if music is playing, I leave the TV on, muted.

A couple nights ago, when I turned off the TV at the end of the night, my ears were ringing. It had been so long since I'd experienced silence that my poor bastard eardrums were resonating with it. Immediately, my brain stepped in to provide some noise. QUICK, Candy! Resist! Do not let the evil silence bring you to the dangerous abyss of having a thought that might be deeper than the candy layer of a Chiclet. But there was really no threat of having a useful thought. Because during that tiny slice of time when the noise has ceased, all the subjects in my mind that need to be thought over are stunned. They are bored, magazine-reading firemen who have not been called to a fire in months. By the time they rise from their La-Z-Boy recliners, the noise is on again, and they sit back down. False alarm. Pass the dip.

But it's not just audible noise that I surround myself with. When I get into bed at night, I must read. Even if I can only last 10 minutes, I have to force more words into my brain. I have already had enough words for the day. It's like I have a big bulbously fat man tied to a chair and am ramming cupcakes into his mouth as he gags. Picture Monty Python's "just one more wafer" scene.

WHY do I do this? My mind never gets a rest. As I turned out the light last night, I thought about this blog post. I was mentally editing it. Then I tried to turn all that off and go to sleep. I took deep breaths. But you can't suddenly calm down the overstuffed fat guy with a few deep breaths after you've pushed an entire turkey down his piehole, bones and all.

Almost everything that goes wrong in my life can be traced back to too much stress or not enough focus. Both of these things are exacerbated by noise. The end result is that I can't even access my own thoughts. When my poor brain gets a moment's peace, all the topics in dire need of my attention fly out of the dark recesses like frantic bats swirling in a cave. I try to look at them all, take inventory, and there are too many. The cave becomes a K-Tel Salad Shooter and the bats are centrifuged against the inside of the cave and the G-force makes them all look like they're grinning. Until, that is, they become a bat smoothie.

I don't want my thoughts to be a bat smoothie anymore.

My one resolution for 2007 is to make my surroundings more quiet. It will not be easy. For 3 weeks in November, my car stereo was in the shop getting a new laser. When I drove, the silence gnawed at me. I'd say out loud "Enjoy the silence. Relax." Then I'd say it again. Then I'd say "This is good for you." My nerves were unraveling like a Walmart sweater.

I need more focus. I need to think in something other than fragments. Even God must be weary of the way my prayers have turned into drive-by shootings. He would like, I think, a nice sonnet occasionally instead of the bumpy haikus I send upward. I am a spiritual skeet shooter. If I'm worried about something, "PULL!" I say. I shoot the quick bullet of a message heavenward and hope he gets it and intervenes even more quickly. And if not, I will of course make some noise.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Bah Humbuggery

Christmas.

I don't mind it. I don't do it up like crazy or get all freaked out. I just go into the sticky yule labyrinth like everybody else, trying to get things done.

Every year in mid-November I visit this sweet little fantasy in my head: Candy will get caught up on all non-Christmas things early. The goal being, come the second week of December, to have a nice clean house, final grades for the semester turned in, Christmas shopping done. That way, I can put on one of my many Christmas CDs, Johnnny Mathis, Carpenters, Dan Fogelberg, and my all-time favorite, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and sit on the living room floor to wrap all my gifts. Peacefully. Unhurriedly.

It is not happening this year. In fact, it has never once happened.

My house is still a mess, I still have presents to buy, and when I wrapped the ones I have, I generously included some cat hair under the scotch tape. I have a blow-zillion things to do before I do the holiday traveling, most of which will not get done.

But I don't care. I'm smack-dab in the middle of one of the best times of my life. My parents are still living, 88 and 84, (those are their ages, not their names) and I'm not dying of anything that I know of, and I get to spend my first Christmas with the best fiance in the free world. Last year he came here on the 26th. It's just not the same as Christmas Day.

Someone help Candy. She is mellowing. Temporarily.

Once the holidays are over, I'll despise everything again. More. So there.

I mean it.

Quit looking at me.

Merry Christmas.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Ah, But Aren't We All Searching?

Here is a list of recent internet searches that led to Candy Rant:



why students can't sell candy at school

palpitations waking me up

martha stewart strip search behind bars how will it be done

front butts (there were over 40 searches for this)

no-bake cat crap cookies

deep moments

"boa" and "puns"

clodhopper candy recipe

justin spitz freshman

paralyzed waist down and obese

Oregon dorm bloops

river phoenix coffin National Enquirer

never saw a wild thing sorry for itself

high butt crack

begin the benign, by Johnny Mathis

tallest guy ever

candy that starts with "I"

short candy poems

Bobby Sherman mustache

Saturday, December 09, 2006

The Slow Climb Back to Fitness

OK. Right away, that title is misleading. Because in order to get back to fitness, one would have had to have been fit in the first place, wouldn't one? And in Candy's case, that is not the truth. Oh, I've been in much better shape than I am now. But saying I'm going back to fitness would be less accurate than saying I'm about to climb back atop the throne of Queen of the Universe and All Infinity.

Let me run this down for you. I went crawling back to Gold's Gym today. Back among the meatnecks and the sorority hag-lets in their micro shorts who are heading closer and closer to that subtle Britney gynecological look. I was not exactly enthused. It was as though the guilt of my latest indiscretions radiated from me. The evidence of finishing off that box of ice cream last night was a shameful mocha halo around my head. The barbecue chicken indulgence from the night before appeared as several small headless chicken-ghosts floating next to my ankles as I walked into the locker room. It was difficult for them to speak, but as they held miniature ghostly torches in their insistent wings, I could hear the chant: murderessssssss.

If all that weren't enough to send me back to my car, the treadmill was. I knew it had been a long time since I'd darkened the Gold's doorstep, but after 10 minutes on the treadmill, the unforgiving, merciless, rabid she-wolf treadmill, everything I had hurt. Even my fancy 19-dollar Sony radio headphones hurt. I surrendered. I went to a mat and did some stretches. My muscles cackled at me like dark witches of the underworld. My fickle ponytail slithered out of the elastic to escape me and my foolishness. I hobbled back to the locker room, grabbed my unopened bottle of water and took off. On the way out, I asked the guy behind the counter to look up my account and tell me when my last visit to Gold's had been.

His face said it all. Then his mouth: "October 1st."

I'm trying to decide which of 2 paths to take:

1. Go buy some new cross trainers to invigorate the effort to become a better person.

2. Take to my bed and hire small woodland creatures to feed me all things Cadbury until I kack.

Flipping the coin now...