West Australian Chards and Bong Wii

Since childhood that word “chard” has had me transfixed, and its a spiral eyed hallucination fascination that continues to this day. When I was in grade school I was heavy into collecting crystals, the kind that occur naturally in rocks not the kind known on the street as rock. You feel me? Also, I had a thing for trolls. I remember one day in 4th grade the entire class was to bring in a collection of their own to share and tell for the whole school.

The morning of that day I arrived at school so freaking early, with several large black trashbags bursting full of hundreds upon hundreds of trolls, some dating back to pre-World War II, some new human sized ones, etcetera. It was early because my mom, a middle school substitute at the time, had to be at her school to teach about forty minutes before I was even picked up by a bus. Into my classroom I hauled in the trashbags of trolls, and I was fat in 4th grade so I trucked, along with an extra trip back to Mom’s car for some of the heavy crystals. For good measure.

Then there was the Jim Henson movie, “The Dark Crystal” which featured the oracle troll in the space observatory (who resembled my sister, I shit you not) (and one more set of parantheses about word usuage… planetorium?), compulsively removing and replacing her detachable eyeball and shouting to the Gelflin about his chard questions. There’s a lot of my child self’s pent-up anxiety contained in the following quoted passage:

“JEN: Augura, what do I do with the shard? AUGURA: Heal the Dark Crystal. JEN: But how?! AUGURA: Questions, questions, too many questions! You want a shard? Here! (Dumps a boxful of them on the floor) JEN: Which one is it? AUGURA: Don’t know. (Sits) DON’T KNOW! Listen, Gelfling, there is much to be learned, and you have no time!”

Sounds like words my sister might speak. DON’T KNOW! There is much to be learned and no time silly gelfling. Except that the species in question was down to just one male and one female and so of course what needed to be done was done by Lucas and his gaggle of Gelfling fluffers behind the scenes. Survival of the species, baby, don’t have no time for stops off at the Reststop for Best Friend Loving Bitches. Wave your arms if you feel me. In any case, whether or not the reader understands the coded language and is/is not waving arms right now, the Dark Crystal and that best friendship in particular had pull over me, like a full moon, not something I noticed at the time.

But now in my adult professional life this bedeviling “chard” rears again its mysterious head. For my job as a young waiter expecting El Dinero and scrilla majilla I must know a lot about chardonnay wines by the glass and bottles, and swiss chards in the kitchen, so that the lighting fixtures above my employed head have many chards (those be chandeliers) and not flourescent soul-sucking vacuum beams. Food and wine knowledge luckily dovetail beautifully with my new workout plan: weed and wine. No beer, no liquor, no crack with the dobermeins and the pinchers and the bad dogs.

If I am going to be drinking something then I might as well be learning something, you feel me. And the bong police haven’t been notified, so my spider senses tell me I’m onto something good. Look at it all this way… I deposited thousands of dollars in my offshore accounts, got a new TV, learned all about West Australian Chards and Shirazs, changed up my animated GIFs, bought a blackmarket Nintendo Wii from “New England’s Sceeviest Video Game Dealer” (my title for them) in New Hampshire. Oh yes, they had illegal Chinese machines… I promised I’d be back again soon.

Things are on the up.