Walla Walla, Sometimes You're Too Much

or ~My Transcendental Soapin'~

I took a shower this afternoon. I don’t normally listen to the radio while I scrub, but I put it on today. This song came on mid-chorus (I’ve abbreviated it for effect):

Grabs him a girl and he holds on tight
He’s chasing everything in sight
[…]
Life looks good, good, good
with his beer goggles on

Well that was slightly bemusing. I chuckled because drunken hookups are a dime-a-dozen at college and a great opportunity to chastise your friends. I even know someone whose nickname is “beer goggles” for his lengthy laundry list of hookups. So why not put it in a song catered towards an average working class stiff or someone who wishes they were (read: college student). But the commercial that followed pushed me a little further into Walla Walla’s surreality. It went something like this:

Hey rodeo fans! Meet your favorite bareback horse riders Cleetus and Mud at the ole Pick n’ Spit! They’ll be signing belt buckles and trucker hats until 2 p.m.!

Just another radio commercial about rodeos, nothing to start freaking out about, except…

AM/PM, so much good stuff, come in today and try our new Dorito slurpee! In trouble with the wife, a bouquet of twinkees should do the trick! And remember, we don’t buy oil from Iraq or Sudan, only American oil!!

I started sputtering and spitting and making Aaron noises after I heard this doozy. Then I went blind. I’m attending a highly esteemed academic institution in the middle of a twilight episode. Prisoners (2) from a state penitentiary, barely a block away, write letters to me requesting my help as a Brahmin to further their Hindu studies. There’s a dude outside, I think he’s a motivational speaker, because he lives in a van DOWN by the MONSTRO and when he’s not making out with his girlfriend in a lawn chair, he’s smoking pot, an eerie green light effusing from his van.

I’m about to be granted a 4-year liberal arts degree, but I swear to God, I’m speaking a different language when I ask the K-Mart guy where to find tent spikes and a mallet. “Vampire wards, oh yeah, those’re on the gun aisle. Can’t help you with a mallet,” was his reply. People yell at me in tongues from their cars. I’ve seen more mullets than the hockey fan that saw every game the Penguins played in ’83. And now, in the shower, I can’t see a damn thing; I’m fucking blind.

…

It’s been a few days between when I wrote this (blind) and when I posted it (sight returned). Thankfully, Drew happens to be a laser eye surgeon and his work is amazing. I see much clearer now, besides a newly earned sight into several unnamed dimensions of space-time. It’s going to be a long year.