I'm The Jerk Who Goes To William Faulkner's Rowan Oak And Gives It A Thumbs Up On Video After Saying "It Kinda Depresses The Holy #?@! Outta Me"

As many of you know, I recently took a trip down into the heart of Mississippi with Jett Superior, Deb Rox, and Laurie White. What we were doing down there nobody knows, but it was a hell of a good time.



I wrote a little about the trip here and here, but I really don't know what else to say about it. We road-tripped through Alabama and Mississippi, we ate barbecue, we met the Bottle Tree Man, we visited Robert Johnson's grave, we ate burgers at Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero Blues Club, we entertained ourselves in the parking lot of Wesley's Boobie Trap, and we ate more junk food than is advisable if you value your internal organs and understand that actions have consequences. Molten hot wing ripple chips and licorice and onion dip and pizza and chocolate cake are only good before you swallow it all down together into your digestive tract.

There is some unintended sexual innuendo in that paragraph that I'm just going to back away from right now.



Anyway, the whole point of this post is that, while I have very little of substance to say at the moment about my trip to Mississippi — there was so much laughter and tears and talking and doing things that it will take a while for me to put it all together — I do have two three-minute videos that I shot down there.

The first video was shot at about 7:30 on the first morning, and it gives a short little view into the shack we called home for a few days. My brilliant commentary? "It's like an effing museum" and "It's like this fantastic... I don't know." I really need a script writer.



I want to live there forever and ever amen while I listen to the delta rain patter on its tin roof. That was a little slice of earthly heaven right there.

This second video was shot while I walked around the grounds of Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner. Who goes to Rowan Oak, a site of pilgrimage for writers all over the world, mind you, and says "it kinda depresses the holy fuck outta me", apologizes to their mother, declares their video a "yawn fest", and then gives Rowan Oak a cheezy thumbs up? Me, apparently.

I told my mother I had shot video of Rowan Oak. "Really? I'd love to see it," she said. "No, you wouldn't," I said, "unless you want to hear me swearing loudly on the grounds of American literature's royalty." She didn't.



I REALLY DO NEED TO HIRE A SCRIPT WRITER THE NEXT TIME I DECIDE TO SHOOT VIDEO. I doubt anyone is going to be hammering down my door to ask me to shoot their travel videos anytime soon, unless you like my meandering, foul-mouthed, completely uninformative style. Call me.

So, I stayed in a place that was like an effing museum and had Rowan Oak depress the holy fuck out of me. Stellar travel account, Schmutzie. Stellar.

It's Good To Break Open

I've been in Mississippi for a few days with a small band of merry bloggers: Deb, Laurie, and Jett.



I left my Saskatchewan city, dull and grey, filmed over in lumpy ice, and I was glad to go. It's an ugly place made uglier with each new development. It forces human detachment as a survival technique.



I'm not going to lie. I came to Mississippi with an agenda. I was looking to come clean a bit, scrub myself up. I felt an anxiety ground in deep like a fevered sweat.



Did you know that I'm funny? I'm funny. And these ladies I'm with? They're funny, and we've spent this entire weekend laughing our damn heads off. We laughed even when we thought the bumper was falling off the van and when we couldn't find where we were going and after the tears about the sad shit we can't always change.



And, as is my usual thing after connecting with my people, I have the urge to burn all my world down, commit a drastic general cleansing, and wander like a nomad, dragging my yurt behind me.



Last night I dreamt that I called some men to load up all of my furniture into the back of a truck. They took it all away, and I swept all my bare floors and sat down on the hardwood and revelled in how uncomfortable it was, because it meant that I didn't have to carry all that ugly stuff on my shoulders anymore.



It feels good to have these thoughts. It feels good to want to kick everything down. It feels good to be a scratched seed.



It's good to break open. It's good to want to empty everything out. It's good to write it on the walls.



It's good, it's good, it's good.



I'm going to miss these ladies in our Mississippi shack.

Good Morning, Mississippi!

So, I've flown down to the southern United States. Don't ask me why, because, frankly, I don't know. It seemed like the right thing to do.



I'm hanging out with some delicious ladies of the internet — Deb, Jett, and eventually Laurie, whenever she gets here — enjoying Secret Location, Mississippi. The first three of us just arrived in the middle of the night last night, so mostly my trip has consisted of flight delays and cancellations, finding a new friend in my airport buddy, Helen, and eating at this Canadian's first IHOP.

First lesson of this trip: don't look at the napkin you use to wipe up spilled water on a United Airlines airplane seat, because, before you know it, you will be wondering just how much fecal matter is coating the entire inside of the little metal tube you're presently trapped inside.



If you're lucky, though, you'll have a Helen, the nicest 85-year-old with which to spend hours weathering sitting on the runway, flight cancellation, and giant deli sandwiches.



Tittie bar!



They're hiring, FYI.

I'll have to leave off at the tittie bar, though, because I have to shower 18 hours of travel grunge off myself. The inside of my mouth tasted like the wrong end of this thing:



Good morning!