Monday, February 21, 2011

Armageddon of the mind.

Finally, I have done it. I have come up with a way that perfectly describes what the inside of my mind looks/feels like. And I will now unleash this long-time-coming information to you, the public. Try and stay with me.

So, I've got approximately 547830247872345784378645678680423430675925 mind gremlins boppin' around up there. They look similar to smurfs, but not blue. They are probably a salmon-type color, as that is the color my sources (ie. The Magic School Bus) have led me to believe the color of a brain is. They definitely have the little sock-like hats that smurfs wear, though. Anyway, obviously half of them get the left side of my brain and the other half get the right.

On the left, we have miles and miles and miles of filing cabinets. Billions and trillions of archives of the history of my life since birth, and all the things I've ever done, said, heard, experienced, etc., filed neatly away (yet accessible at any given time), and organized by all my systematic, analytical little lefty gremlins. They crave structure and balance. Most of them wear glasses and have their nose stuck up in the air. They are all major perfectionists and pay far too much attention to detail. That's why you can't even count the files they keep, because every single detail has to be recorded. Their home looks like the interior of an office building, but with no roof because the files are stacked higher than you can even see. They don't get along very well with each other over there, because every one of them thinks that they are right about everything and that their lists are more efficient than everyone else's and that their schedules are the most coordinated. They like to keep to themselves, just them and their files. The most they communicate is through an intercom system that announces when a specific record has been pulled. Each gremlin is in charge of their own filing cabinet, so when they hear that a certain archive has been uprooted for one reason or another, whichever gremlin possesses the file that comes after the one which was just announced, is to pull said file so it can be detected and the pattern can continue. See, it's up to them to keep an orderly thought process going at a manageable pace. However, sometimes they get ahead of themselves and pull too many records at once, creating a jam in the system because the intercom has too many things to announce all at the same time and doesn't know what to do so it shuts down in a fit of smoldering malfunction until the maintenance team can patch things up.

On the right, we have miles and miles and miles of wonderland. All of the right gremlins are artists. They're creative and messy and wear paint-splattered overalls and tie-dye bandanas. The rows of canvas' go on farther than what you can see, and all the gremlins are painting away, either mimicking images they've captured through my right eye or coming up with their own pictures to describe their view of things. That's the only way they process anything, though - through pictures. They would hang them up, but there are no walls because right side wonderland is endless - so they just float around in the air. The world, or at least the sky, looks a lot like the world in "The Labyrinth" ...which is this psycho 80s movie with David Bowie in it that no one I know has ever seen (though I will say that if anyone who reads this blog has seen it, it'll probably be Lauren Kilmartin [note: I was right. She owns it. I typed this before I knew for sure but decided to text her and ask just on the off chance that I was actually wrong about something and would have wanted to delete this parentheses if that had been the case. However, that is not the case, because as previously stated, I was right]). Some of the special gremlins can make their pictures come to life, like the Harry Potter portraits, except my right gremlins paint way better things to come to life than fat singing ladies like in HP. They paint awesome creatures on which they ride. And they have races, because though they're fun-loving creatures, they are highly competitive. Highly. And everyone knows that artists are temper-mental -- so when one of them loses, it isn't pretty. Not. At. All. That'll be when one of them goes rogue and paints a picture of some sort of panther/dragon/death machine beast that comes to life to wreak havoc and misery upon the poor soul that indirectly declared war by beating them in a competition.

Here is a picture of the world in The Labyrinth. There is probably a maze like that somewhere in my mind's right side world, but for the purpose of this illustration, erase all that crazy Labyrinth in the foreground there and replace it with lots of rolling meadows splattered with colorful paint, full of floating canvas's and playful, little, artsy gremlins trotting about along with their friendly creations ranging from furry creatures to flying contraptions and anything else exciting your mind can think of. I think there's a golden brick road in there, too. In the distance there is a deep jungle to where the rogue gremlins get banished to live out their days as battle-hardened, self-reliant, jungle maniacs with machetes and other dangerous weapons that they don't hesitate half a second before using on anything that moves. Those mountains in the background are there, too.

Now here's where it gets really chaotic. See, the Rights, they're the ones that crave adrenaline and love pranks and risks and pushing the envelope and think that rules only exist to be broken. And they know that nothing gets under the Lefts' skin like invading their space. They like to think they're really sneaky and as their own, personal challenge like to see how much they can get away with. So, they get all suited up in their camo (and of course this can only happen at nighttime, when they are best concealed by darkness) and approach the boundary between the left and right sides. The sides are separated by a raging river. On the right side of the river is crazy jungle, and on the left is a wall with a single, blue door. These are two worlds that were never meant to collide. See, it would be easy for the Lefts to invade the Rights, because you could enter their world anywhere at all, as they weren't organized enough to create one, single entrance like the Lefts did. But it doesn't matter, because the Lefts would never, ever, ever in a million years want to cross the river over into the Right's territory. It is WAY too chaotic and would give them a seizure before they even stepped foot across the river. The Rights, on the other hand, love to cause mischief and create as much trauma for the Lefts as possible. That is why they will occasionally swing across the river on their vines and sneak through that blue door, and once they're in, they know they don't have long before the Left's security is all over them, so they get in there and pull out as many records and knock over as many filing cabinets as they can. It's a game to them, you see. To see how much disorder they can cause before the Lefts get them out. Unfortunately, the Lefts contain such a repulsion towards disorder, that they can't focus on getting the Rights out of there because they are too busy scampering about, trying to put the files back in their rightful places. So, the Rights continue to spread disarray and the Lefts are just too compulsive to directly put a stop to their antics because they just have to clean up NOW. Remember how I talked about the system getting jammed when just a couple too many files get pulled at the same time? Can you possibly imagine what happens when hundreds are getting thrown about simultaneously? Close to a brain aneurysm is what happens. But before you know it, the Lefts are so exasperated that it doesn't take long before they engage in full-out war. Because the thing is, even though the Rights and Lefts have very, very, very different ways of going about things, they are equally stubborn, determined, and aggressive. These qualities make for a very long, very brutal war. Like, this type of battle puts Armageddon to shame. 
And with Armageddon on steroids happening in your head, how can anyone sleep?

Thursday, February 17, 2011

5.

I just typed and backspaced five different sentences in effort to find the most comfortable way to communicate the fact that I have a boyfriend (and his name is Shawn). That in itself might tell you a thing or two about me and relationships. I am not comfortable in them. However, I have been in one for five months as of today, and that might not sound like a super long time, but in Bri/boyfriend time, five months is basically the equivalent to fifteen years. What I'm trying to say is, today was a pretty groundbreaking day in the life of Bri Herter.
To celebrate, we went to see Gnomeo and Juliet (don't judge), got some Steak n Shake (as is tradition for any day that we might be on West Main), drove around trying to get lost (who knew Mattawan had a "Camp and Retreat Center"???), and ended up at the old softball field where Shawn used to creep on me during my games/practices/field clean ups back in the day when I was a freshmen and he was a super major creep (so much so that he was known as "biker boy" to my teammates, appropriately named after his extra creepy bicycle drive-bys, back before driver's licenses entered the scene).
Since Michigan is going through its most drastic heat wave out of like, every February ever (45 degrees!), I thought it would be a really good idea to go out onto the field under the moonlight (mentally plotting my secret snowball attack). I gleefully trotted around the half-snow half-mud field, taking in the smell of the near-spring air. That's when I saw the pitcher's mound - it was higher than the rest of the field and thus, that patch of earth was superior to the rest, and therefore that was the patch that I needed to occupy right that second. It was the perfect position from which to launch my attack. So, I scampered on over full of pent-up energy and anxious excitement (since it was night, and those are the things I usually become full to the rim with as soon as it becomes time to "settle down"), but apparently there was a giant moat hiding under the snow and ice surrounding my prized mound. It completely blindsided me, and before I knew it my right leg was sunk to the knee in frigid mud/ice water/sludge nasty. I instantly couldn't feel my foot, in fact I wasn't even sure if I still had one. But I didn't want to let my recent loss of feeling in a quarter of my body put a damper on our softball field adventure, so I pressed on.
You know that yellow plastic tubing stuff that gets put along the top of softball field fences so nobody gets shanked on the fence while diving for a fly ball or something? Well, back in my softball days, me and my friends, Alyssa and Audrey, always made it a game to flip over the fence like James Bond to collect the most stray balls. So I was all like, "WATCH THIS!!!" to Shawn, ready to demonstrate one of our cool, fence-flipping moves. Feeling really awesome, I sprinted up to the fence like a professional gymnast ready to ninja-jump one of those horse thingamajigs, and executed my skillful maneuver. Everything was going as planned, until my foot touched the ground... or rather, yet another sheet of ice blanketing yet another massive gorge swelling with arctic death. And let me tell you, 40 degrees doesn't feel quite so warm when you're soaked to the bone in arctic death.
But at least it caused a good laugh on Shawn's end.

Anyway, tonight I was enlightened on the fact that if I had lived during the Holocaust, I would have been hunted by Hitler. Apparently I'm 1/4 Jewish. Ya learn something new every day.

And just a fun fact: In five more months I will be packing up and moving to Colorado. Starting to freak me out a little. In a good way.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"Kids are horrible. They fail math and crash cars and get arrested."

Last night was just one of those nights. One of those nights where you just know that the world is going to collapse in a fit of catastrophic destruction... unless you can come by a box of Chicken in a Biskit. You know, those savory, chickeny crackers sent straight from above. (*runs upstairs to get box*) See, I can't even type about them without craving them.
I was watching a show on netflix with my sister when this unstoppable hankering hit. I jumped up and said, "WE NEED TO GO TO MEIJER RIGHT THIS SECOND." It was nearing midnight, so needless to say Alyssa was a bit reluctant to accept my command. By "reluctant," I mean she was physically digging her heels into the ground and clinging to the door frames as I attempted to pull her to my car by the arm. But with one last attempt to convince her to come peacefully, I shouted over her frantic "no no no no no"'s, "I'LL BLOG ABOUT IT!" Next thing I knew, we were jamming to The Lost Prophets on our way to Meijer.
The Plainwell Meijer is usually uninhabited, as most establishments in Plainwell tend to be at all times of the day, but at midnight I'm pretty sure someone is going to get stabbed there and no one will ever know because there will be no witnesses. Anyway, we had set out on the quest for only Chicken in a Biskit, but returned possessing not only those, but some donuts (or "Paczki"'s, which are apparently some sort of super donut on steroids sold only around Fat Tuesday), flaming hot cheetos, coffee creamer, and cookie crisp cereal. (Sidenote: my mom just walked in the door and was like, "Ohh you ended up getting your Chicken in a Biskit crackers!" ..Yes, Mom. Yes I did.) And after the venture, I will say I have come to one, solid conclusion: Shopping cart racing should be an official Olympic sport. I would win the gold. Several times.
We returned home and watched another episode of "Mercy," which is a hospital show - I usually hate hospital shows, but this one is okay because the main character, Veronica, is wonderfully cynical and oh so darkly witty. The title of this blog is a quote from her, and I found it fitting because I fully, 100% support that first sentence, and the second sentence totally applies to my life. Double whammy. Not that I have ever technically "crashed" a car or gotten arrested (however, there would have been a warrant out for my arrest if I hadn't paid a speeding ticket today... and I'm not going to lie, I did consider what a great blog it would be if that had happened), but I feel that I've failed math enough times to cover both of those.

In other news, last week I made a three-year-old cry, and next week I'll be in Colorado! Hallelujah!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

-_-

Hi I just spent two hours typing out a really great, colorfully worded post about what I think happens to your soul when you're cryogenically frozen like Walt Disney, and how my cannibalistic rat, Alvin, ate poor little Simon today and so Reina, who was in a cow costume, and I buried him under our Church sign by the road using soup ladles and had to return the deranged Alvin to the pet store and it was really sad, and about how I hit my head on a marble table yesterday and probably have like 5 1/2 concussions now, and about how Facebook has told me that the inside of my mind looks like a hurricane but I like to think of it as being more like the Amazon jungle inside a tornado during a blizzard/sand storm, the scene of which is all stuffed into a giant blender that's going through a meat grinder while being whipped about in a wind tunnel. Then my computer became possessed and magically backspaced the entire thing in one, horrific move.

I. Hate. Everything.