the house i'm living in is the house that i more-or-less grew up in and growing up, for whatever reason, we had two fridges. so, the house has two fridges but it's only me here and i finally got around to cleaning one of them out so that i could unplug it. basically it turned into a storage unit for my dad's overflow of expired food. anyway, deep in the freezer i found some old hamburger and i thought that rather than just throwing it away, the cats might like it (especially since i've been told more than once (including by a guy who has a degree in environmental science) that city dumps are designed in such a way as to not allow things to decompose). ANYway, it was frozen so i put it in a frying pan with some water to unfreeze it. that was a big mistake. it stunk up the house SO bad. it basically smelled like a dumpster. so i tried to think of a way to deal with it. i'm sure that febreeze or something would have been alright, but it seems like if one can smell rotting meat then there's probably rotting meat in the air. i figured that if i had dropped some meat on the counter or something, i'd probably clean up the spot with bleach. so i thought that cleaning the air with bleach might be a possibility. so i boiled some bleach and water, thinking that the steam would go into the air (just like it did with the rotting meat). i'm not sure if it made the place smell any less bad. i certainly noticed a bleachy smell, but i may have also just gotten used to the nasty meat smell. eventually i went into the kitchen to make sure that there was still liquid in the pot that was on the stove and there was, but the bleach water had turned red. i thought "hmmm." for whatever reason, i didn't throw it away last night and found it again this morning except for that it was kind of popping and stuff -- the same sort of sound as when you put your ear up to a can of pop. i was going to take a pic of it. i had it in the camera's screen with the proper lighting selection or whatever and then the camera died right when i pushed the button. hopefully b/c of bad batteries and not some crazy weird fumes that the mutant bleach water's puttin' off. lol. i'm sure it's the batteries.
one of my dad's most frequently used phrases when my brother and i (and my sis) were groing up was, "don't be an idiot." he would rarely tell us directly what constituted idiocy or WHY doing something would signify that you were an idiot -- only that it did and so don't do it. don't be an idiot. i think my dad is a structuralist -- one who believes in absolutes -- unfortunately i also think that his notions of absolutes are disconected with reality. anyway. this, as it turns out, was also the only piece of advice that Dwite Shrewt from the Office got from his dad. my brother pointed this out to me and thinks it's quite humorous. it is. this whole "don't be an idiot" thing has apparantly had quite an affect on my brother. he's told me a couple of times that there have been many times when he's been just at the cusp of doing something when, suddenly, the image of Dad will come into his mind and like a Faustian angel or devil, will say, "don't be an idiot." and then Kyle will often decide against doing what he was about to do. it didn't have the same effect on me.
i told dad this morning about my experience with cooking rotten meat and boiling bleach to cover up the smell. first he said, "oh is that what that smell was? i thought it was the carpets." whatever that means. the second thing he told me was, "yea, when i clean i mix bleach and amonia together. i figure if it might kill me it's got to kill the germs." i've pointed out to him before that this is, essentially, mustard gas but, like i said, his absolutes aren't in sync with the rest of the world's and i didn't feel like arguing with him. so instead i said, "yea, but you're insane." he laughed but this got me thinking.
over the last year or so i've noticed that i've begun to see certain traits of my dad's come out in me. like a desire to go into buying and selling various collectibles b/c if you do it right it pays much higher than the stock market on average and plus i could avoid wearing a suit. but then i don't go into it b/c, in part, i see what it's done to my dad. also, i've done some other slightly off things especially recently. for example. at Domino's, we have to keep the "scruff" of hair shaved below about half way up our neck. I HATE THIS! i HATE shaving -- especially there. i can't do it more than twice a week without getting all bloody and razor burned, almost regardless of the razor/cream/etc. that i use. also i think it's a stupid cultural norm. so i figured, "hey, i can just pluck out all of the hair with tweezers under that line and i won't have to shave for weeks. i did and it's true. it's been really great not having to shave, but the day after i did it i noticed that the inside of my neck hurt pretty bad. almost like i cut myself with a rusty piece of metal.
see, these things that i catch myself doing from time to time are, basically, what i think a crazy person would do. pluck out your beard with tweezers one hair at a time? if i was some sort of prolific writer or something and after i died this came out, then people would probably be tempted to say something like, "well there's a fine line between genius and crazy" or something like that. but when you get right down to it, it sounds like crazy-man stuff.
so, given that i think my dad is pretty well disconnected from reality, and given that his whole side of the family is kind of like that, and all of this other stuff, i think i'm at the point where i'm going to try to start asking myself a pretty straight forward question when i come up with creative solutions to problems. much like "What Would Jesus Do," i'm going to try to start asking myself, "is this something that a crazy person would do?". if it is, then it still might be worth a shot. firstly, i think (though i don't know) that much of what constitutes "crazy" is socially constructed and i don't have much respect for social constructs. secondly, every invention came out of a context where it first didn't exist, so just b/c society didn't yet have automobiles didn't mean that it was a waste of time for men to play with fuel combustion engines. it may have been crazy but not bad crazy for Edison to spend so much time on his light bulbs. but there is bad crazy -- the kind that takes over your life and leaves you worse off. if it takes over your life and leaves you or others better off or at least no worse off, then fine. but if it takes over and screws you up somehow in the process -- if the cost outweighs the benefit -- then this is bad and i know that this is what happened with my dad. also, i think crazy kind of runs in my family anyway. everyone in my immediate family has been diagnosed with either OCD or depression; suicide runs in the family; and so on.
so, like i said, i think i'm going to try to make a concious effort to not be bad crazy and ask myself from time to time, "is this something a crazy person would do." for example, when i thought that it would be a reasonable idea to fry some trash (rotten meat) and boil some bleach, this would have been a good time to ask, "is this something that a crazy person would do?". it doesn't seem like the line that seperates that on the one hand and mixing bleach with amonia on the other is extremely wide.
as for now, though, i'm going to lunch with Anna and her family, which doesn't sound crazy at all. just like a lot of fun :)
