Cookies for the Damned Village (a satire)

{ December 6, 2009 @ 12:03 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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In 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a book called “It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Could Teach Us.” In 1960, Wolf Rilla directed a film about blonde-haired killer kids called “Village of the Damned.”

A Village of Damned Girl Scouts

Dreaded children in uniforms. Elementary school-aged effigies of army soldiers. Don’t Americans have to be 18 to go to war? They are disguised not by camo paint, but by pigtails and smiles. They fight each other like cannibals; their fleshy intestinal gratification is outselling and winning the battle. They trick their victims with boxes of crack cookies, exploding innocent hearts with fat grenades.

They pretend to work together to gather money for their cause, a whole troop of them. But in reality they are a nation of  scheming employees fighting for the same promotion.

And you ask why, why are these children evil little clones? Because we, as a village of course, raised them to be that way. This annual capitalist drug ring has been supported by generations. The children cannot be blamed completely, their silly putty brains have been sculpted by the villages. The village parents coach the sell, sell, sell behavior. They pass around local schools’ holiday wreath catalogs at the workplace. They go door-to-door. They call.

They counsel their young ladies that the best girl scout is the one who sells the most cookies. The tops get prizes. The worn-out moms know they wouldn’t be able to sell that many cookies with their crows feet and prying ways. So they send their girls with angel faces and eyes that well up with disappointed tears when you say you don’t want their cookies.

Don’t try to make excuses when they approach you like, “I’m on a diet.” Guess what, they now have a reduced fat version for all the weight watchers out there. Another go-to excuse, “I’m diabetic.” Poof, magic cloud, we have sugar-free cookies made just for you! Keep brainstorming.

The little dolls compete for patches to sew on their sashes. Would you get cutthroat for patches? I have patches on my jeans, does that make me better than everybody else? No, it just means I shouldn’t wear those on casual Friday.

But aye, they win prizes for their sales. Sell stuff, so you get stuff in return. Good old America. Call me a Marxist, but every kid who puts in effort should be rewarded, or none should. If the group is meant to profit as a whole, why do they work against each other? And if they’re rewarded, why in patches? Why can’t their reward be a gift given to a local charity in their name?

What have they learned from us? These ladies are going to be sorely disappointed when joining the workforce and discovering how thankless the world can really be. After a childhood of being given awards and presents for doing well, they’ll think what’s the point of trying when you receive no recognition, no bonuses in adulthood. And this is what 80 year olds call laziness.

Why don’t we see our young gentlemen out there selling cookies with their sisters? I guess they’re too busy being stuck in the 1950s bringing home the bacon after getting manly in the woods and making knots out of shrubbery. No worries, the girls are staying busy at home gossiping and baking Tagalongs. It’s a lesson they’ll need to know later in life.

I’ve even seen the little lasses out on weekdays pimping their cookies. Cookies must be more important than education. That’s why the Cookie Monster is the most eloquent character on Sesame Street. If only all of us could abandon our responsibilities and sell baked goods. Older generations will hate what we have become. The Dr. Frankensteins of this world.

Sleazy cookie dealers, why can’t you just get along and quit fighting for material things. Might as well be sentenced  to eternal prison.

I was a girl scout once. See what I have become. Money, that’s what I want.

Copyright by Liana Merlo. All Rights Reserved.

***This is meant to be read and interpreted on a deeper level. It is not really about girl scouts, so please do not send angry comments. I have nothing against scouts and I happily admit that I buy their cookies on a yearly basis. I love to eat them.***

Crowded Solidarity

{ November 22, 2009 @ 1:57 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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Alone:

With a stale pint in a smoke-filled, sweaty bar

In a foreign country of smooching and Vespas

On an ugly hand-me-down sofa watching screen people living it up

At a dive restaurant pretending to watch a sports game

With a bad hangover and smudged lipstick

In a movie theater of popcorn and sticky floors and hidden hands

Solitary Thoughts

Does this make her a loner?

Worst place to be by yourself?

I guess alone in love

Your Naked Body According to a Chef

{ November 10, 2009 @ 10:39 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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Nude One

Faceless Woman with Large Bum

As I watch Iron Chef America, I feel the urge to describe this charcoal drawing I did a couple years back with a culinary mindset.

This is a full-bodied, succulent dish marinated in a creamy red glaze and served on a bed of crisp linen-like filo dough. It is accompanied by a small arugula salad with balsamic vinaigrette and two scoops of garlic mashed potatoes topped with parika. Head has been tastefully removed. Best with a rich merlot.

When amore is parasitic

{ November 8, 2009 @ 10:42 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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Saint Augustine wrote:

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is… Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”

Parasitic Love
Blissful union or tapeworm romance?

While Auggie may have experienced the real deal, some people just get fooled. I was at a party and an acquaintance of mine was telling me about how she broke off her engagement recently. My brain thought, “I always thought she was a lesbian”.  My mouth said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” I wondered what did it in the end. Maybe she realized his roots and her roots were growing in opposite directions. She told me all the cruel things he did after she called it off, all the psycho moves he pulled. The crazy emails, late night drunken phone calls, car vandalism, and break-ins. All the ways he tried to cripple and devour her after the breakup. How he stole her journal and threatened to photocopy the pages for public distribution. She doesn’t seem like the type to be with a guy who would be capable of this kind of behavior. She doesn’t seem like the type to be with a guy. And she didn’t seem like the type to keep a journal.

I used to keep a diary. Once someone pulls the “I’m reading your secret thoughts,” you can never be the same when it comes to writing. It changes you. I know I’m not the same. I tend to censor myself now because of an unfortunate incident in my childhood.

I was staying with my relatives one summer and had just gotten into writing, so I brought my brand spankin new diary. It was a white canvas cover with “Diary” written in cursive and little pastel flowers painted below. It was equipped with a lock. In retrospect, it was a dinky little thing you could pick open with a paper clip. Anyway, I thought it was Fort Knox at the time. And even if it wasn’t, I thought ahead and wrote “CONFIDENTIAL” on the first page in obnoxiously large letters thinking this would surely stop the intruder. Give me a break, I was a kid.

I wrote about everything in that diary. Even wrote about how I was angry with my aunt because she made me go to church with her on days that weren’t even Sunday. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I wrote “I hate her”. Sure, “she doesn’t understand my suffering” would have been better, but I wasn’t quite an angsty teen yet, I was only about 10. You know family, they love getting into your business. She read it without my knowledge and then came up to me holding the diary and booming about how words can really hurt people. She made me erase any instance of the word “hate” and replace it with “love”. So now my childhood diary eternally reads, “…She makes me go to church all the time and she makes me eat all the food on my plate even when I don’t like it. I cried last night. I love her.” Replacing hate with love is a funny thing.

A Guide to Passing Time at the Airport: A Milk Dud Addict

{ November 8, 2009 @ 1:43 AM } · { Uncategorized }
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You’re waiting at the airport terminal for your plane. You’re sitting down. What do you do? Think of this as a choose your own adventure book, remember those?

  1. Listen to your iPod and hope a traveling musician compliments you on your indie look
  2. Read a book about existentialism that you don’t understand, but carry around to appear cultured to anyone who is attractive AND smart, but dumb enough to fall for the old trick
  3. Fall asleep and take up four seats and a germ-riddled armrest all to your snoring self
  4. Pig out on greasy airport food that costs twice as much as it does outside of the airport
  5. Nibble at the quartered peanut butter and jelly sandwich your mother packed in a ziploc bag
  6. Check your work email on your laptop and worry about your designer suit wrinkling during the flight

None of those? That’s probably because most people waiting at the airport end up looking at everyone else waiting at the airport. At least that’s what I do, and I’m taking the liberty of speaking for everyone else. Now I know guys have an airplane game. The “About to Die Sex Game”. Haven’t heard about it? They look around the gate (or when they get on the plane) and pick out the “lucky” girl they would have sex with if the plane goes down. Why guys think women would have sex with them in a matter of seconds before their sudden death is a mystery to me. But I can’t judge; I’m guilty of playing a little game myself.

It’s “Who do I NOT want to sit next to”. For example, would you like to sit next to a woman with big hair and a severe dandruff problem? Or an anti-bather who loves Aqua Di Gio? Or what about a guy who has a torture chamber in his house? By picking someone unfavorable, I usually find that I’m more likely to enjoy my flight because typically I don’t get stuck with that person. But there’s always the chance for disappointment.

Slow and Painful

You could be sitting next to a guy who has a handcuff collection in his basement.

I have my eyes glued on one person. I watch his every move. I’ve singled him out as the repulsive person I do not want to sit next to. He’s wearing a Nascar baseball cap and toting around a rum and coke in a plastic cup. The cup gets refilled once, twice,  six times. And his eyes are glassy cubes directed at women’s rear ends. He has a smirk like he’s trying to be approachable, but to me it comes off as OJ Simpson’s sociopath mugshot. I can’t help but feel bad for this guy because he seems lonely, but at the same time I don’t want to be the one to keep him company.

He gets less appealing by the minute. Pulling out a movie theater style box of Milk Duds, he opens the lid, tilts the box over his gaping mouth, and barely chews them before gulping them down. It’s like a circus act. Pause for a drink, pound Milk Duds, chug, slam, gulp them down like multivitamins. He suddenly disrupts his routine. He wants to savor the few remaining Duds. He squishes and molds them between his fingers, then throws them in the air and catches them in his caramel and chocolate coated mouth. It’s almost childlike in a way. But then he gets not so innocent. He licks and sucks his fingertips with loud smacking noises as he checks out more asses strut by. Who knew a Milk Dud addiction could be so filthy?

You saw it coming, it’s the most predictable outcome. I’m the window seat. He’s the aisle. As people are continuing to get seated, he tries to start a conversation. I answer but then coincidentally become interested in what movies will be shown on the flight and flip through Hemispheres. He mimics and flips through the duty-free magazine. Then he makes a phone call. He’s telling the person on the line, a wife, a girlfriend, a daughter, that he just found a necklace with a flip flop charm that she would love.  He says he wishes he could buy it for her. I actually liked him in that moment. He was a thoughtful tease who knew someone with juvenile taste. The fact that there was a female willing to talk to him made him seem normal and realistic.  And the fact that a rhinestone flip flop conjured up thoughts of someone important to him was really “awww” worthy.

Plane takes off and he’s getting very chatty with me again, especially after his first hard drink on the plane. No wonder why he couldn’t afford the damn flip flop necklace. It goes to little plastic bottles of alcohol. I instantly go back to detesting him. [This must be why my boyfriend says I'm moody]. I take a couple of Dramamines (never travel without them), and Milk Dud asks if I feel sick. I reply, “Yes, I get very vomitey. So I hope these help.” He piped down. And the miracles started kicking in and I was feeling drowsy, happy and free. Free from the rum breath directed my way. As I drift off I pray I don’t wake up to find an extra hand under my blanket.

In short, we all survive these temporary unfortunate neighbor situations. Some “no-no’s” are worse than others. The one I’ve told you about was pretty mild. I’ve picked out worse people at airports. It’s rare to actually get stuck with them though. So next time you’re at the airport, don’t pick out the person you wish to sit next to. You’ll only be disappointed. Pick who you don’t want to sit next to, and it (typically) can only go up from there.

Do you like scary stories?

{ October 29, 2009 @ 6:32 PM } · { Halloween, Uncategorized }
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I was watching Role Models the other day, and there’s a camping scene– the group is sitting around a fire telling scary stories. As much as I hate generalizing, there really is always one person who is Enthusiasm on Prozac. This guy tells a very G-rated story with a lame ending. He’s so wholesome (and annoying) he makes Casper the friendly ghost look like Satan himself. You know the type.

I swear I have a point to this. Bear with me.

One of the movie’s main characters tells the next story. He prepares the audience by saying something like, “I have a really scary one for you. And it’s a true story.” He proceeds to talk about children being sold into sex slavery. He’s right, this is horrific. So now here comes my point. Halloween can be “terrifying” for it’s zombies, witches, cemeteries, and pop star costumes. But it’s things like the picture below that make me shiver in my sleep and keep a baseball bat under my bed. The real stories. I took this two years ago and it still makes me feel like an eight-year-old watching The Exorcist.

I spent the night here once

Copyright by Liana Merlo. All Rights Reserved.

I suppose I should give some background as you’re probably wondering what the hell is so scary about this. Imagine you and a friend from college are on a road trip. Exciting, huh? No major plans, just an idea of which cities you’re going to, for how long, and cheap places to stay. Let’s delve into the last point, cheap places to stay. Poor college kids don’t stay at Hiltons. They stay at Supers and Reds and miscellaneous Inns. Think Detroit. Don’t think rock city. Think murder capital of the US. Don’t think Egyptian cotton. Think prostitutes and drug lords and bullet holes in your motel door (reference photo above).

We made it into Detroit maybe around 11 PM, and pulled into the place we found online. We had passed some dives before reaching our own and had said, “Glad we’re not staying there tonight!” Chuckle. And suddenly sitting in the parked car, we were considering turning back around. Silence. To put it kindly, it was a shithole. After asking the nightly rate, we told the guy behind the bulletproof glass at the dive that we didn’t have enough cash and would try the competition across the street; so he cut us a deal. Naive him. Then we got to our room, 222. Naive us. But a few bullet marks weren’t going to stop us, not at that bargain. Immediately entering the room, we tilt a chair against the door and turn on the TV. That’s when the yelling started, and the paranoia kicked in. A bunch of guys outside yelling at each other about “where’s my money.” The usual guy banter. There was an iHop or Denny’s across the street, I forget which one, one of those breakfast all night places. While our stomachs growled, we pulled out the alcohol from our luggage since it seemed safer to stay put in our bullet-riddled shack closet. We got to boozing and suddenly things were looking up. It wasn’t so bad, we were in rock city listening to the radio and dancing around the room. The police sirens were muffled by our off-key singing and our twisted “what ifs”. But talking about “what ifs” is the worst possible thing to do when you’re scared. What if someone was murdered in our room. What if an adult bdsm film was shot in our room. What if it’s like the movie Psycho and there’s some guy wearing a wig and his mother’s house dress standing outside the bathroom window waiting for us to take a shower. What if the pillows are stuffed with human hair. What if we’re being videotaped.

Then the morning came. I moved our “chair lock” and opened the door to make sure the car was still there. And what do I see, hot dog condiments all over the place. Ketchup, mustard, relish splattered everywhere like a baseball crime scene. It wasn’t in front of our door specifically, just in the general area. What the hell was going on around us while we were playing Crazy Eights and blasting music? We gathered our things and before leaving Detroit stopped at a  White Castle. It looked like a beam of sunshine sitting there between angry clouds of strip clubs and liquor stores. Full and sick of Detroit, we continued on.

This is a story of what could have been. And those are often the most terrifying. Not even realizing how closely you’ve grazed trouble. Not knowing you sat next to a serial killer on the Metro. Mowing the lawn while a murder-suicide is going on in the house nextdoor. Sleeping in a crappy motel where… Who knows.

Do you ever wish you were somewhere else?

{ October 19, 2009 @ 7:58 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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Copyright by Liana Merlo. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright by Liana Merlo. All Rights Reserved.

Some enjoy landscapes and idyllic nature scenes. Some enjoy random lines and blotches that signify the utter meaninglessness and chaos of life. A swarm of cubism, pointillism, impressionism, surrealism, and all the other -isms found in museums.

And still others enjoy people. I fall into the people category. They make the most interesting subjects in my opinion. Sure you can experience overwhelming emotion by looking at a beautiful sunset, but there’s nothing like absorbing emotion from another human being, whether it’s on canvas or not. It takes you out of your body and puts you someplace else. That blushy smile of love. That desperate, fearful sweat during battle. The gaunt cheeks and protruding eyes of hunger. The ecstatic eyes of a child in a candy shop. The rotting apricot face of someone who has lost a loved one. These are the images that really leave an impact. Not the green hills or the happy family of trees bending over a tranquil cerulean lake.

I definitely don’t fall under the realist category. I would have been crummy at painting portraits of royalty. I would have been the type to accentuate their inbred features. I have no doubt they would not have liked themselves through my eyes.  I think it was Picasso who said “Everytime I paint a portrait, I lose a friend.” This sounds about right. I’ve never really been one to aspire to perfection. But on the other hand, I don’t go out of my way to make things ugly. What some would consider unattractive or different, I might think is wonderful, or at least interesting.

The model sketched here was beautiful, not in the Vogue kind of way, but really great for drawing. While a lack of clothes doesn’t leave much to the imagination physically, it was obvious that she had a million thoughts running through her head. Instead of focusing on her figure, I was more drawn to the distant emotion she was exuding. She seemed in her own world and the trailing ink symbolizes this energy. I sketched her from the back to further show this division. This is a sketch of a woman who wishes she was somewhere else, and we can all relate to that.

Geni-what?

{ October 12, 2009 @ 7:54 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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That’s right, Mom. We’re going to see The Genitorturers. The what?? The who?? Don’t do that in church.

This is a band you KNOW is going to give a wild performance simply by their name.  Of course you have bands who try to shock, but this one has succeeded every time I’ve seen them. And I like to think it takes a lot to shock me. I don’t advise bringing any elderly people to a show like this, that is, unless you’re looking to test out their pacemakers. But don’t do that, old folks are my favorite kind of folks. And they carry candy and quarters, which kind of makes them Halloween year-round. Dentures, wigs… Let it all sink in.

Anyway, imagine Gwar with sexier costumes, less fluids, and a female vocalist who used to be a dominatrix. Yup, this is a great band to see around Halloween with some of your close mad ones.

As The Misfits Say, I Remember Halloween

{ October 6, 2009 @ 10:05 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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I know I said you would learn about me through my photographs and artwork. Nothing better to kick off a first impression than with photographs of a Halloween-themed slaughterhouse oozing with Rob Zombie lyrics. The gentleman who used to religiously decorate his family’s home every year allowed me to invade his horror museum for art’s sake.

Were you misled?

{ October 5, 2009 @ 10:58 PM } · { Uncategorized }
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I suppose I was misleading in my first post. Imagine you are the teacher who assigned the “tell me about yourself” essay. This blog is my submission. I do intend to let you into my world, but it will not necessarily be through writing about other people in my life. That’s what their blogs are for.

I plan to introduce myself through the lens of a camera, through greasy paints and sooty charcoal. Anything that gets me motivated has obviously made an impression on me. I relate to it and I hope in some way people can get a glimpse into my life by looking at what catches my eye in this bizarre world.

Like everyone, I fear rejection, but I can take criticism because that means you cared enough to leave a comment. I got your attention somehow. While I’m not an exhibitionist, when it comes to art, I will accept feelings of disgust as well as of lust.

Pictures soon to come. Be patient.

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