Chaos Attraction

Include Animal Antagonists and Screaming

2019-04-27, 5:19 p.m.

I had a dream that I went to some storytelling conference with my parents and was getting sexually harassed and pinched by some guy who was there with his wife and son (maybe around 10) and doing that shit openly in front of everybody. I reported it to a bored lady at a table who didn’t seem like she’d do anything, but the guy and his family (presumably) were kicked out of the con. Of course, the guy came by my table and then gave us all a bunch of money.

Dreams do not make sense.

On a coincidentally related note, Jenny Crusie posted a “tell a story” post today.

I went to the Scottish Games with Mom today, who drove into town for that. They had a new competition of “haggis hurling,” which was not at all what I expected because they were basically throwing around what looked like a foil wrapped burrito. Whoopetydoo to that, I was expecting stomach carnage to be strewn across the field. We watched the birds of prey show and the parade, and I did two different free dance lessons in Highland and Irish step dancing. The Highland dance was taught by a bunch of young girls who were very enthusiastic but also very fast. It was pretty hot and I downed a whole bottle of water afterwards. The Irish step was done in the shade and slower and broken down (by a professional instructor, I’m guessing) so that went easier.

I also wandered by the historical area and saw the biggest spinning wheel I ever saw (she didn’t even keep spinning it the whole time), followed by a lady with her kid on a leash.

I bought more patches to put on a jacket, Mom bought a bunch of jewelry. I also found a flask for Loretta in the play--it was $10 and beat up and black and the leather came off with the price tag. I declared it perfect. I ran into Cameron right after that and immediately showed her the flask and she definitely liked the idea because lord knows I’d need it with Vinnie. She’s been in a play with him before.

Mom left around 3:45-ish to go be with Roger or uh...supposedly work on work stuff. I hung out watching the guys throw hay bales and cabers around, which was fun. I saw some recurring guys from Dixon, we had a record holder there, and some guys had fun with kilts, ahem.

Then I went to the storytelling event in Woodland. I was debating whether or not I’d say anything to Laurie about how she never got back to me about the event being full (not that I actually thought she would, you can just tell), but she never went to the event because she was sick. I did talk to the emcee afterwards, though. I hung out with the girl next to me, who is kind of new to all of this, and with some other storytelling folks I know. One of them remembered my poem from March and still remembered it.

The featured teller was Jeff Gere of Hawaii, who puts on the Hawaiian storytelling festival (of course it’s called “Talk Story,” I wish I could go), telling supernatural stories he heard at the nursing home, the first one being a story of a Japanese boy and Hawaiian girl being broken up because of their families.

The second one in was a guy named Brandon Spars, who has won some Moth slams. He told a rather tall tale involving prehistoric fish, a flooded house in Missouri and his wife sleeping through it all.

Joyce Ormond--who told this one at Sacramento and I guess was co-teaching at Mary’s class--told the crazy turkey’s revenge story again. I got invited to a party at her house this Friday (don’t know if I can go because it’s half a day of work) but if I could go, I’d love to meet her “opinionated house rabbit.”

Dr. Andy, otherwise known as “my mom’s boyfriend’s son’s bestie,” got invited to do a poem and talked about a celebrity encounter, which he recounts over here. He talked about the lessons that he’d learned tonight from hearing other people’s stories, such as “include animal antagonists in your story,” and “include some screaming.”

Brandon was up again and in Andy’s honor, “it’s about an adversarial animal, with screaming, and it takes place at my own wedding.” His wife is from Indonesia, who he met while working there, and her dad had converted to Catholicism and was very against the idea of doing anything more traditional, such as hog sacrifice. Which happened anyway against his wishes, with blood splattering all over the priest. “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” says...someone, I forget who, the mother?

The lady who runs the organization this is fundraising for was also ill tonight, but her husband (who she’s mentioned before) read a story aloud. He’s an...obstetrician, I think, IRL, and he wrote a story about a midwife who got kidnapped to deliver a baby for...someone with a penis. How this birth situation came about is never really explained.

The next one up was a guy who told at the Celebration Arts event, about him tracking down people from Schindler’s List.

Ed finished up with another tall tale/fish story involving pulling frogs out of snake mouths and the line, “I’m not going to let a poisonous cottonmouth snake stop me!”


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