Culture Shock and Thanatophobia

"When you come back to Tifton, you'll be in for a culture shock."

This is what my father said to me earlier today. Dodging the visit of his crazy Popeye-like father-in-law (or the grandfather i've only seen five times in my life), he decided to drive to Atlanta. I love my dad and was happy to see him. In order to spend some quality time together, I invited him to come with me to a free screening of "Napoleon Dynamite" (fabulous, by the way). As we left the theater be began to talk to me about other free screenings I've gone to. Knowing that if I am still jobless in a week, I have to go home to Po'dunk, USA, he said the culture shock thing.

No shit, dad. Truth is, I am absolutely DREADING going back to Tifton. The thought of it almost makes me fall to the floor, a whiny, sniveling lump. How fucking depressing. I'd kill myself if I wasn't so totally paralyzed by the mere whisper of death.

And the truly shitty part is that I can't do anything about it. When they get back from their trip, my grandparents will practically be tossing me out the door. I've been doing resume overtime hoping someone, anyone will hire me. Or even give me a courtesy call to say that they're not interested. Seriously, who do you have to blow to get a damn job in this town? Cause I'll do it. I'll get on my knees right now, mouth wide open if it will help (I want to blow to get a job, not blow for a job... so prostitution is out).

Everybody I know is here. All my friends, I mean. I was one of those people who left town after high school graduation and tried to keep in touch with my hometown friends in a very half-assed way. Those people were ones I knew for years and years (one since I was three, one since I was five and the rest from fifth grade). I still feel bad for leaving them behind. I love them all. And of course, I always am meaning to write, but never quite get to it. When my mind wanders to them , it never stays there long enough to pick up a pencil or turn on the computer. Then there's my best friend from back then. Unlike all the others, I fought to keep her in my life. I put paper to pen and typed long e-mails every chance I could. And we still fell out of touch. Hell, I don't even know if she still exists. She just disappeared after the summer of my sophomore year. A beautiful letter, sweet gift and poof. We knew each other longer than we knew our sisters.

I suppose this is the reason I dread going back to South Georgia. The hotel vacancy was filled. This one, we are sisters (from different mothers and fathers). She knows me the way my grandfather plays blackjack. So well. It will suck to that kind of a friend again vanish from my life. Especially since this one is closer than the others. It worries me that I might be lost in the growing shuffle of her life. Or that she will be lost in my laziness, good intentions never fulfilled. I'm quite sure that I will lose my other friends (one is already leaving disappearing), like I lost all those other friends from high school.

Of course, if God smiles upon me and decides to bless me with a job, all this worrying will, thankfully, be for nothing.

More likely, in a little more than a week I will disappear. There will be no more independent movie theaters, midnight Krispy Kreme runs, late night overly-dramatic discussions, no anything mildly interesting (interesting is against the city rules). At least I'll have satellite tv.

Hello HBO, goodbye humanity.

Donkey Kong vs Shakespeare

**Warning: completely random post with no real point. Only the brave and patient should read on.**

I was at Game Stop yesterday (for those of you who think yourself too mature to mess around with video games, it's a store where you can buy and sell used/new games and other accessories) buying an extra controller for my Gamecube. No PS2 for me, thank you very much. I love my Mario and Luigi and Link, everything else I can pretty much take or leave. Anyway, back to the story, I was in this store waiting in line behind a guy trying to sell all of his classic NES games (Super Mario Brothers 1-3, DK, etc.), highly irritated, mind you, because I was in a hurry and he was arguing at great length with the cashier. It seems that he wasn't getting top dollar amount for his used games and this made him angry. "They are classics! This was one of the first Super Mario Brothers on the market, man! It's worth more than four bucks!" Of course, the cashier explained he could do nothing about the prices and the man reluctantly took the cash because he "needed it more than they game," but nor without a long, nostalgic look back towards his newly liberated friends. This reminded me of a conversation my high school friends Josh and Shep had about videogames and classic literature.

We were in the first few months of tenth grade (if memory serves) and the two of them were sitting in Bio arguing with each other. This wasn't a new pastime and since our teacher was off at some karate tournament, they were a little bit freer with their conversation than they would have been if he were there. When we finished our work we were permitted to speak softly to those around me. Josh and Shep sat behind me. Mario 64 had been released a couple of months earlier and Shep, after beating the game, had loaned to to Josh. Which was probably a bad idea since Shep had never returned Josh's favorite book, Slaughterhouse 5, which he reminded Shep of every second of every day in the hopes of forcing him to return the book (this never worked, as far as I know, Shep still has the book). Josh had lent the game to one of our other friends, Ronnie, who was notorious for never returning anything. Shep was pissed, it was his (relatively) new game and Josh didn't ask him if it was okay to lend to Ronnie. Josh, thinking of his precious hardback, said "It's only a stupid video game. It's not like it's Vonnegut." And the flood games opened. Shep took serious offense with the comment and the two began arguing about if there could be a comparison between videogames and literature.

Most people would side with Josh's argument about how a great piece of writing would always be worth more than a videogame. How crazy do you have to be to compare Mario with Achilles, a Musketeer, Hawkeye or any other literary hero? Shep made the point that the only reason a first-edition of Joyce is worth more than the original Atari version of Donkey Kong is because it's been around longer and it's widely acceptable to be a book freak and not that acceptable to be a gaming freak. If reading is your hobby, you're considered to be educating yourself; if you play videogames most people automatically see you as someone who is a little less intelligent as they are. Shep said that Super Mario Brothers should be worth just as much as Shakespeare since both are equally as imaginative and impressive. I don't know if I would go that far. And I don't even like Shakespeare that much.

But you have to wonder if that guy's first edition, classic Legend of Zelda game was worth as much as one of the first copies of Slaughterhouse Five, would it be socially acceptable to be an over-forty X-Box owner? Or would you still be the lame-o next door who would rather stare at the tv and play Halo than enlighten himself by reading War and Peace?