New Zealand Travelogue
Part 3: The North Island (follow the link for photos)

DAY 1:
August 2 (Thursday) Mark and I had to wake up at 354 to catch our 5am flight to Auckland. Auckland is hyped up in the south island as being a proper city—skyscrapers, a cool artistic district, tons of places to see shows and to shop, warm and sunny weather. So imagine our disappointment when we get off the plane and see that winter rains have followed us all the way to Auckland. Exciting.

I had to rent AND drive the car as Mark hadn’t bothered going in to the NZ DMV and getting a new driver’s license. It was a good exercise in terror for me as I had not done either of those things before, and Mark was very considerate and patient with my inept driving skills, so the whole thing went rather well. We tried going into Auckland’s “artistic” district (“K” Street) only to find it filled with a dismal array of sex shops, used instrument exchanges, and anemic cafes. Disappointed, we bought the most obnoxiously American thing we could find (Dunkin’ Donuts, boyakasha) and began our tour of the North Island.

Though the NZ cities are dismal, once you get out into the country, everything is the most pristine, the most perfect, and the most beautiful land you’ve ever seen. We drove south to Hamilton, parked (thank heavens I remembered how to parallel park), and had some Indian food. Our car didn’t have a CD player so we looked for some sort of store to buy a cassette, but Hamilton didn’t produce any record stores, so we drove on with nothing but fuzzy radio and conversation to keep us company.

We stopped early in Lake Taupo, a cute city by a lake which seemed to be filled with every hippie in New Zealand. We consulted our Lonely Planet guide on a place to eat, and the restaurant they recommended had been closed for some time, thus reinforcing my suspicion from Sicily that travel book companies rarely update their “newly updated” guides. Instead of something classy and sophisticated like the Italian spot Mark had picked out, I ended up getting my way (Pizza Hut) which was just the level of fat and cheese I needed to keep from despairing of the cold.

DAY 2:
Mark and I get up around 8 and have our Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast. Our first stop of the day is Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland, because I am a geology nerd and nothing gets me quite as hard as a good geothermal area. There is no way on earth I cold possibly post all of the amazing photos I took in the Thermal Wonderland, but I highly recommend you peruse the photobucket album and see the extent to which I geeked out. The park was divided into several hikes—red, orange, and yellow, each of which took you by different areas. The first area was mainly champagne pools—bubbling hot springs with orange crusts that steam and hiss like cooking pots. The runoff from these pools created a mineral-tier down to the Frying Pan plateau.

Before exploring trails yellow and orange Mark and I drove over to another part of the wonderland to watch the Lady Knox Geyser erupt. We were, I think, a bit disappointed that the geyser was triggered by adding a sliver of soap. We were sitting in the middle of a very excitable group of Ukrainians, however, and their excitement was infectious.

After the geyser we drove over to the mud pots, which was a gurgling pit of grey goo that splattered and chortle. It was very much like going back I time, and I half expected some sort of dinosaur to rise out of the muck and eat me. What made the mudpots so awesome wasn’t so much the exploding mud-bubbles (though that was really cool), but the noise. The smacks, pops, hiccups, and general cacaphony was so fantastically bizarre that Mark and I spent a good 10 minutes walking slowly around, just listening to the noises.

On our way to the yellow trail Mark and I passed some more marvels—a lake dyed neon green with sulfur, sulfur crystals which formed around the underground steam vents, charred wood that had been roasted on hot ground, steaming and hissing water that looked like chocolate milk bubbles, and various other strange sounds and smells. The whole area positively reeked of sulfur, which I didn’t mind but which made mark slightly nauseated.

After walking around the thermal valley, we joined the orange trail that took us up into the pine trees and gave us a panorama of the whole area. Bits of the forest were smoking where the thermal vents hid among tree trunks. The day was finally hot enough to take off our jackets, so Mark and I stood quietly in a primeval forest with skin exposed to the sun and simply looked at each other for a while. It was a bit ridiculously romantic, but i really don't have enough ridiculously romantic moments in my life.

We drove up to Rotorua, the town where we were going to spend the night. In an effort to find the most ridiculous hostel in town, Mark booked us a roof at Cactus Jack, a hideous backpackers who’s idea of central hating was to expose pipes filled with hot volcanic gas jut above the bed. Could have done with less donkey-cactus-and-toilet murals, I’ll tell you that.

Having dropped off our stuff, our nect adventure was a gondola up the largest mountain in the area which—as it turns out, only took us to the middle of the mountain. Upset at the rip-off, Mark and I decided to at least make the most of the area by luging. The “luge” experience is a bit like go carts but infinitely dorkier. You drive down the mountain in what are essentially sleds with wheels, then take a ski-lift up again. Rinse, repeat. It was actually surprisingly fun, and I think Mark had a good time doing it despite the fact that we were the oldest non-parents there. Oh, and we felt retarded in the helmets.

By the time we had come down the gondola, it was barely 5, so we drove around Lake Rotorua and explored some of the rainforest-like national parks around it. One area in particularly was a big valley surrounded by palm trees while a thick, grassy moss grew in the middle like some sort of Cretaceous swamp. Don’t get the impression that all o this outdoorsy stuff was caused by our deep love for the environment or anything. We had wanted to go to LeisureWorld, a sweet-looking dinosaur minigolf park, but it was closed. That sucked. We ended the night doing Soduku puzzles in an Irish pub, hen walked over next door to see “The Simpsons Movie.” Funnier than I would have expected.

DAY 3: Friday having been our “do” day, Saturday was our “drive” day. The plan was to drive up the NE Pacific highway, stopping at whatever village or beach caught our fancy. Well, it turns out the Pacific Coast of northern New Zealand isn't very populated. In fact, it's practically abandoned. The only "cities" we ran across were places like Tauranga or Taheatua, places carved into rocks and tucked behind waterfalls, places that we drove past only to realize Oh wait hey, yeah, that WAS the city we were looking for. En plus, it rained the WHOLE DAY. It started when we left Rotorua and continued during our brunch in Tauranga, poured down on the drive to Opotiki and overcame us outside of Te Kaha. It rained so much we could barely see any of the scenery we had driven all that way to see, we could barely see the ocean, and I had to drive extra-slowly to make sure we didn't careen off the serpentine roads. No towns meant no radio, and no record stores in which to buy tapes, so we had to talk the whoooooooole way. And talk we did for the 12 hours we were on the road--politics, mostly, and some old reminiscences about college and our years apart. Mark is the most wonderful person to talk politics with--well, now at least. He wasn't always so reasonable, nor so tactful in his challenges to ideas or opinions. Either that or I'm growing less sensitive.

It's a good thing that Mark and I are obsessive about things such as "coffee breaks" and "full tanks of gas" (my mother, for example, will not stop driving a car to fill it up until the "E" light comes on. Mark and I tend to stop when the tank is 3/4 empty and refill, as we hate the stress of seeing a needle creep to empty. Yes, it is a weakness), because there was not a single gas station--or really a cafe--between Tauranga and Te Araroa. Thus by the time we rolled into a cold, dark, and soaking Te Aroroa around 4pm, we were definitly in a state of near-panic. Te Aroroa was, I thought, the site of this ancient native tree I had been dying to climb on. I asked the store clerk where the old tree was and she was absolutely thrilled to DEATH I had heard of their little tree, so she gave me directions and directed me and "my partner" next door to a "restaurant" to eat and rest up a bit. The town was--and certainly felt like--the last place on earth. It was right on the edge of an ocean, surrounded by cliffs, and almost entirely without any color, noise, or motion. The restaurants didn't have bathrooms--everyone was ushered to some public monstrosity by the beach. I almost took pictures for my "Toilets of Europe" campaign, but seeing as NZ isnt geographically European, I didn't. Truely horrible stuff. The food was medicore, but it was hot at least.

The tree, by the way, ended up being some lame 500 year-old spider of a plant that grew out instead of up. Apparently the tree I wanted was back in Opotiki--over 4 hours back the way we came. So disappointing.

The goal was to get to Gisbourne by nightfall. Mark drove down while I slept off my motion sickness. When I woke up there were no lights anywhere around us except for Mark's headlights on the road, and a red tinge to the sky. I felt safe and hidden and protected between those hills.

Gisbourne is the town where Captain Cook first landed in New Zealand, and consequently, the town is filled with more Cap'n Cook statues than you could shake a finger at. It was dead night by the time we rolled into town and we weer exhausted. The first hostel we stopped at (convent-turned-backpackers) was full, and we probably called another 10, but nearly all were booked. We finally found some converted Victorian mansion and shared a room with a Thai surfer. We tried driving around the city looking for a bar, pub, club, or cafe, but everything (naturellement) was closed, so we ended up going to an upscale restaurant by the wharf and ordered drinks and a cheese plates. We had an excellent conversation about "us," a topic I often dread, but some how really enjoyed anyway. I'm really proud of the two of us for staying together despite our romantic relationship ending--he's such an amazing man, I'm not sure what I would do if I hadn't found him.

DAY 4:

Every city i've been to claims the phrase "if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes" as their own--Kansas City, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Chicago. It's hilarious, and almost always untrue. The only place I've ever visited that has the right to adopt that phrase (and I believe has) is New Zealand. Before going to bed we saw a weather forcast, and the entire country was covered in one huge stormclowd. Wake up on Sunday, and low and behold, the sky is completely and utterly blue, and the weather is quite warm, as if we haven't just endured the worst day of weather known to man. Sadly, I couldn't really enjoy it, as we had to start the looooooooong drive through the mountains to Napier. We did find time to stop at some random cafe in the middle of the mountains though for bacon and egg tarts and tea.

We made a small detour around the Mahia Peninsula,a little jetty off Hawke's Bay with dark brown beaches, white drift wood, and some of the largest, most spectacular conic seashells I've ever found. The rock formations on the north side were particularly interesting--carved out of something that looked like clay or limestone. There were also pockets where smaller shells and sea urchins had washed up on shore, and I spent a few minutes picking through those, extracting all the cute little shells I could.

Our drive through the mountains was slower than we wanted, but at least the weather was gorgeous and we could see all the white beech(ish) trees. Mark taught me about the wonderful world of downshifting, which had previously been a mystery to me (I live in a flat state, lay off).

Napier was the first town I visited which had something of a recognizable local culture. The whole town was destroyed in the 1920's (avalanche? tidal wave? fire?) and rebuilt entirely in the art noveau/deco styles, making it a nice contrast to all of the metal-box buildings we had seen thus far. We got their early--around 2ish--and checked into our hostel right away. Mark had booked us in a Backpackers that was--I kid you not--a lunatic asylum turned Victorian prison turned hostel. The prison was converted in the early 90's and a few of the original wardens ran the place. Mark and I were sent to the "Conjugal Unit" cell: we had to chain ourselves in, and lock the deadbolt when we went out. There was a sink and a toilet in the room, and outside we could see into the excercise yard from the bars in our windows.

Leaving the barb-wire compund, we walked around Napier for a bit and found that desptie a few cool cafes and a better than average architectural sense, Napier was no better than the rest of New Zealand at providing arts or entertainment. We did manage to find one hidden gem--a place called "TrainWorld!" which was a gigantic replica of the English countryside made entirely by a model-train fanatic. Mark and I rode around the little train that chugged around the whole exhibit, then we went about pressing little buttons that turned signs on and off and caused oil rigs to move up and down. The man that ran it was so passionate--he was describing a young apprentice he had who helped arrange the model after a nasty roof-collapse a few years, and was describing his inventiveness with breathless admiration. "Now I know what it must have been like to see Mozart perfom at age 8!" he said breathlessly.

We went back to our hostel, took a shower in the communal shower room (one of the weirdest experiences of my life--each stall has a door that leaves little privacy, it's coed, and there is only hot water--you can't regulate your temperature), and then went back into town to hit up the movie theatre and look for more codeine-aspirin (like crack for migraine sufferers!). Then Mark decides that the only thing to cure our driving hangover is a Michael Bay movie, so we have a go at "Transformers." I loved the cartoon, don't get me wrong, and the movie was entertaining enough, but was it too much to ask for one female lead that I didn't want to strangle? My gosh, they were all so abhorent!

Had a nice sleep in the conjugal room (surprisingly warm) while falling asleep to the sound of clanking dead bolts and squeaking feet.

DAY 5:

Our last day, we got up early for the drive into Wellington, and walked about the prison, checking out the hanging yard and the un-restored prison cells. The drive to Wellington wasn't the most awesome--the day progressivly got worse and worse, the countryside got less and less interesting, and the traffic got worse and worse. At one point I was surrounded by cows for no reason--they were in front of me and on both sides, in the middle of the highway.

In general, Wellington was much better than Auckland, but my first impression was ruined when I took a wrong turn in the city and found myself back on the highway with no place to turn around for 15 minutes. Nice urban planning, there, Wellington. We parked, then decided to walk around a bit before we had to drop the rental car off around 7.

Wellington is supposed to be more cosmopolitan and urbane than Auckland, and I guess it is. I was hoping we would get a part of town with some weird clothing shops or strange shoe stores or something, but all I saw was chains. I'm beginning to feel like that is the future of the world (though i'm sure this is hardly a surprise to anyone): a collection of the same 20 or 30 stores that are simply inescapable; the same 2 or 3 countries owning them, the same articles in every magazine. It's funny that as our generation pushes for individual needs on demand (pay per view, song downloading, tivo, internet), the society around us becomes more and more homogenized.

The first thing on our list was the Te Papa Tongarewa, the "Museum of New Zealand." Apparently there was a lot of controversy when this museum opened--a lot of north-vs-south island politics, mostly, but according to various sources, it was a complete waste of money, over the top in it's political correctness, and don't get anyone started on that art collection--do you know how much space Maori art takes up?

It turns out, various sources are retarded. The museum was amazing--it was a bit of everything--natural history musuem, art museum, history museum, and planetarium, all of which were NZ-centric. The architecture was very avant-guarde, considering the mainstream audience it was going for, and the whole place was clean, neat, well staffed, well organized, and free. We saw a room full of shark skeletons, a brief history of European/Maori relationships (PC, but not unbareably so), and the art collection was well rounded and generally quite stunning. The Maori art was impeccably chosen and took up a few rooms, not the entire floor, as was told to us. We could have easily spent the day there, and it was hard to pull away.

But pull away we did. mark has to live in New Zealand, you see, long after I am gone, and in his desperation for culture and cool, he wanted to make absolutely sure that there was something worth doing in Wellington, whether it be shopping for records, books, clothing, or getting a drink. So after about half an hour of walking we finally found it: one street, 3 blocks long, that had "indie stuff." We checked out the venues, record shops, looked around. Cool, but I don't think worth a trip up to Wellington to visit. Still, When Mark goes touring up there he'll have some places to go, so it wasn't an entire waste.

Dropped off the rental car in traffic by the wharf on the other side of town. Scary. Caught a cab to the airport, Mark and I talked about high def technology in the airport, read trashy magazines about Britney's latest melt down on the plane, and almost fell asleep in a tangle in the cab ride back to his house.

NZTL
Part 2: The Sound of Settling

The physical journey to New Zealand was so hellish it made me want to give up travel for the next 15 years. The Quantas flight out of LAX was delayed 6 hours, causing me to miss my connecting flight in Auckland, meaning I had to hang around the Auckland airport for 3 hours while this weirdo from Mensa kept talking to me about Bush and his Evil Empire, then the flight from Auckland to Christchurch was delayed another hour. And my phone doesn't work overseas--apparently international bandwidth is just way, way too much for it. So by the time I finally arrived, I collapsed into Mark and begged to be taken home. No "hi! haven't seen you in two years!" no "gosh, great to see you!" just "take me home." And he offered me some nice juice, collected my bags, and proceeded to do just that.

It's kind of hard to explain the Mark+Mary phenomenon (or "Marky" as Anne House christened us) if you haven't witnessed it first hand. Mark+Mary are nauseatingly happy together. Mark+Mary are in a constant state of doing, whether they are doing things outside (museums, operas, concerts, shopping, aquariums) or inside (movies, interior decorating, cooking). Mark+Mary are perfect companions, having the same internal schedule for rest and activity, travel and stasis, highbrow and lowbrow, eating and drinking, staying out and staying in. Mark+Mary finish each other's stories, compliment each other's clothes, and always discuss messy or complex things in very neat and rational ways. Mark+Mary tend not to spend much time with other people when they are together, as they are almost perfect compliments and require no other form of stimuli. Mark+Mary hold hands everywhere they go, give hugs on every street corner, and in general occupy a sort of perpetual honeymoon state to the general annoyance of everyone.

But interestingly enough, Mark+Mary also rarely communicate with each other when they're apart, so having not seen Mark in 2 years, I knew absolutely nothing about him. Well, that's not entirely true, but considering the level of intimacy we had in college, it seemed next to nothing. Thus the first week or two I was there were generally a bit awkward (in terms of M+M, which is, of course, not very awkward at all) as we tried to feel each other out, catch up, and remember who the other person was. We had grown up a lot, having both had some very scarring emotional experiences, and as a result were much more calm, warm, and understanding with each other's weaknesses than before. However, the general chasm between us (at least for the first week) left (me at least with) a feeling of vague depression, as if I were visiting a spirit rather than a real person.

Part of the melancholia was the result of the town itself. Christchurch was in the middle of winter and it was cold. Not like snowy cold, but that sort of damp, sticky cold you find in port towns where salt water air sticks in between the fibers of your clothes an

d never dries. Since New Zealand has "mild" winters they don't tend to have central heating ANYWHERE which means you live in a drafty house with a space heater (which you can't crank up because of the price of electricity), you walk outside into wet and windy weather, you walk over to a poorly heated cafe, then have dinner in lukewarm restaurant. The entire feeling is one of perpetual dinginess, which, when coupled by the always-grey skies and the small town creates a profound sense of isolation. And what's funny is of course as soon as the sun comes out the entire place sparkles and becomes absolutely wonderful--I would say the change from "dark town" to "light town" is the most profound of any city I've been to. You're either tripping with joy or plunged into despair. Not a lot of middle ground.



Most of our first two weeks were occupied with 2 major events: The release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and the capture of a severe flu, which knocked Mark and me down for the better part of the week. "Harry Potter" was devoured by me tearfully in cafes while Mark stirred his tea and looked at me with contemplative pity, while Mark was devoured by a cold-turned-flu-turned sinus infection that resulted in some of the worst coughing fits that side of the Pacific. The day he got better (which was the day we were supposed to leave for our weekend trip to Dunedin) I got the tail end of the cold, and was put up for the weekend. I did

manage to pull it together for church on Sunday however, which was awesome. I'll go into it in the MMM if I have time.

But when we weren't crying or coughing, we were talking, going to shows, and meeting people. The first night or so I was there Mark took me to see some local bands play at this bar. Unfortunately I was too tired to see the main act "So So Modern," which was a shame, because I hear they dress in matching hoodies and have a very performance-art style of show. I did buy one of their pins, however, because it was a piece of a smashed motherboard and well, so, so modern. Mark also introduced me to his best friends, Tristan and Sarah. Here's a photo of Tristan--I haven't gotten around to editing Sarah's photos yet. Both of them were in a band (Break Mission Kills) together and are now working on adorable (and quite good) solo projects.

The first day I was there Mark took me to the Canterbury Museum, which was sort of a hodge podge of everything: diaramas of ancient Maoris and extinct moas, Maori artifacts (dog skin cloaks, see right), colonial clothing, an Olde Tyme-y town, a hall full of cars and wagons, a room full of ceramic dishes, an Antarctic station, a geology wing, an Egyptian exhibit, and a large hall on Asian art. It was completely insane and very informative. Who knew New Zealand was once populated by nothing but birds, or that reckless geologists were harming the native Antarctic penguins with their meddlesome "science"?

When not wandering through cases of jade carvings, I managed to sit in on an Enright House practice. It was in an old storage locker on the other side of town. They share the space with some other bands, and it's super sketchy, super cold, and SUPER loud. It was funny to watch them practice, because unlike most bands, which seem rather organic in their simple guitar+bass+drums sound, TEH had so many tubes, wires, bottles, delays, pedals, sticks, bows, picks, keyboards, amps, and wires criss-crossing the floor it looked like a group of computer hackers rather than a band.

Mark's bandmates are all kind of nerdy/geeky in an incredibly endearing way. There's Evan, the classicly-trained-pianist-turned-keyboarder who looks eerily like a caucasian Salman Rushdie. He plays every show and practice with the keyboard on his lap, looking peaceable and serene as he taps away. Also a member of the "stoic performers with glasses" group is Simon, the drummer, who plays in the band when he isn't working as an elementary school teacher. Simon and Evan are rounded our by Mark and his guitarist Thomas make up the opposing team: "stoic guitarists with beards." Thomas, by the way, is probably the quietest, sweetest, genuinely adorable individuals you will ever meet. He played the whole practice very unassuming, his hood pulled up over his head, and would give me broken instruments like a barbie tamborine to play so I would feel included.

Most of the stuff Mark and I did wasn't really noteworthy enough to blog about. We rented a lot of amazing movies, had a lot of conversations over drinks, a lot of conversations huddled up on the bed, spent a lot of time playing pool, and were practically on a first-name basis with our local pharmacist and 24-hour convience store manager. After the whirlwind that was Sicily, I didn't mind that one bit.

The New Zealand Travelogue
Part 1: I'm in Los Angeles Today, It Smells Like an Airport Runway.

So on July 16 I leave Dallas to go visit the lovely Mark Roberts in New Zealand. Since I have to stop in LA I booked my ticket so that I could have a one day delay each way to spend some time with the South, who happens to be living there. 24 hours is not a lot of time, but the South knows nothing if not efficiancy with company, and we made great use of our time.

I arrived Monday night, which we spent on the couch talking. Taking Tuesday off, Mary South took me to brunch at a cafe (the 101 or 111 or something binary) where Swingers (among other movies) was filmed and which had a waffle brownie sundae. I want you to take a moment to look at that Sunday. Seriously, look at it. They take brownie mix and they put it in a waffle iron so it's crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. it is GENIUS. Remind me why I have never thought of this?

The cafe was right around the corner from the Scientology Celebrity Center. A bunch of young, fresh-faced kids were all wandering about outside of it wearing white and navy, vaguely sailorish outfits. Inspired, the South asked me if I had ever been to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (aka the Scientology) Museum of Psychiatry. Never missing the opportunity for a good museum run, I gladly agreed and we drove right over.

I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity of going to the CCHR museum, but their agenda is nothing if not subtle. Observe the banner hanging outside:

Oh yes, you are reading that correctly. PSYCHIATRY: AN INDUSTRY OF DEATH. Museum. An entire museum dedicated not to Psychiatry but psychiatry AS an institute of death museum. I knew I was in for something special.

The museum did not disappoint. Walking into the lobby is not unlike i imagine walking into the CIA would be like--white everywhere, navy blue, and then in the white formica floor a giant crest bearing the emblem of the CCHR. In the center is a large desk where a thin, clean woman in her mid-50s (who, I must say, had a remarkably calming presence) greets us, asks us to sign in, and begs us to please take a seat and wait for the school trip to finish before we enter. I sit on the plus bench near the wall and ask Mary S., "Dude! What kind of a school lets their kids come here?" to which she leans over and whispers back, "Dude! They have Scientology schools. I kid you not." To our right was a giant rusted metal door with a padlock, over which was written a quote from Dante (the lines that were supposidly written over the gates of hell). We perused the gift shop a while (lots of books on the evil of medications, some bumper stickers, and some shirts I was tempted to buy with slogans like "our psychiatrists are killing our kids." Or something awesome. I couldn't take pictures for you because there were signs everywhere asking you to please not take pictures. And people kept watching us, so i wasn't given two seconds alone.

Finally The South and I were given audio guides and ushered into the first room. It was decorated all in white with hard metal benches, and it took us only seconds to realize the walls were padded to look like those of an insane asylum. We sat down and the Museum's Introduction started.

The amazing thing about the introduction was that it made a degree of sense. It mentioned the rising cost of psychotropic medicines, the increasing rate of pyschiatric medication among children and young adults, and made the point that there were no cures made. It accused pyschiatry of being a pseudoscience in the pocket of Big Pharma, and that we were all being manipulated into thinking we were sick when we weren't. This museum, dangit, was going to show us that we were in mortal danger at the hands of psychiatrists.

Now before I go any further, I should mention this fact. I am going to be biased on this issue. I take adderall, an ADD medication. I spent my formative years in the basement of two Freudian Psychiatrists, my aunt and my uncle. In fact, my aunt specializes in CHILD pyschiatry. My family comes from a history of depression, and almost all of us have gone on antidepressants at some point or another. While I realize that Americans tend to overmedicate and abuse the drug system, I also realize that abuse doesn't invalidate a system which has real merit and real success. So I went into the museum completely skeptical. So if objective reporting is what you're looking for, i'm going to do my best, but I will most likely fail.

The first room we entered was on the ugly history of psychiatry, starting with Benjamin Rush, Bethleham Hospital, and other 18th and 19th century horrors. Yes, it's a pretty ugly history, but then the history of modern medicine is pretty ugly too. I guess we shouldn't get chemo if we have cancer then, huh? The best part was when they mentioned how Benjamin Rush was George Washington's doctor, and prescribed a round of bleeding to cure Washington's infection, inadvertantly bleeding him to death. "The father of our country was killed by the father of Pschiatry" the plaque read. That's the funny thing about manipulation. Just by placing two unrelated facts together, all sorts of lovely conclusions could be drawn. They never say "Benjamin Rush's Pyschciatric practices killed washington." they simply say: Benjamin Rush was a pyschiatrist. Benjamin rush bled pyschiatric patients. Benjamin Rush was George Washington's surgeon. George Washington died when Benjamin Rush bled him. Then they let you draw the conclusion pyschiatry did it. Brilliant.

The musem was full of that sort of sleight of hand. The next room you see, was the behavioral therapy room (Skinner box, Pavlov, etc) which "reduced man to the level of soulless animal" which led to the nature-verses-nurture schools of psychiatry which led to the theories of genetic perfection. And after we read that, we turn the corner and find ourselves facing a lifesize picture of Auschwitz prisoners. There are ovens along the ground, barbed wire and shower heads above us, and a timeline on the wall explaining how psychiatry begat the holocaust. It was an effective if completely illogical argument, compounded by the next room, which continued the argument along the vein of "eugenics is responsible for the KKK." In all of these rooms there were TVs where we could watch video clips explaining anythign we couldn't gather from the plaques and walls. Though we were promised seats, we had to stand for the first two DVD portions, and the third and forth stations provided only narrow, hard fold down seats with metal bars that dug into your back.

After Racism Hall, we went to the (inevitable) electroshock room, and were told how electroshock was used on innocent, wild, artistic nonconformists causing them to lose their memories and all creative spark. ARE YOU AWARE THIS BARBARIC TREATMENT IS STILL BEING USED TODAY WITH ABSOLUTELY NO MEDICAL BENEFIT? IT'S TRUE! Of course the 40% success rate in cases of intense, sucicidal depression is completely irrelevant! Did you see that movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?" THAT'S THE REALITY.

The argument was hilarious. It's like: Are you also aware that in the olden days when people had pains in their head caveman would cut holes in the skull? Are you aware people still do that today? Those people are called surgeons, and their so-called "brain surgery" kills thousands of people every year! Oh, and the scientologists also showed old videos of ECT testing on cats and dogs just to drive the message home.

After the Electroshock Room came the "Big Pharma" part of the museum, which focused on the "invention" of the idea of chemical imbalance in order to sell billions of dollars worth of worthless and downright dangerous medication to our women and our children. They especially emphasized that--women and children. As one of those horribly drug-addicted teenagers who saw my grades jump suddenly from C's to A's upon the prescription of a worthless and dangerous placebo when I was 15, I can attest to the failure of these drugs.

Let's see, what else? After that was the room on Institutionalization and restraints, how pchizophrenia is a made-up disorder, and some random segue on Russian prisons and mental health facilities. Then there's the celebrity room, where dozens of photographs from John Belushi to Kurt Cobain hung along the walls. Underneath each name was a description of their fake disorder, how they died, and what pschiatric medications they had been taking. I love that logic--are you aware that 90% of people that commit suicide were at one time on anti-depressants! If only they hadn't been medicated, they might still be alive today! After this room, I started to lose patience with the museum--i'd been in their for an hour already and I was tired of sitting on hard little benches and listening to these illogical arguments. We breezed through the "Pyschiatry causes terrorism and 9-11" exhibit as well as the "DSM-IV is full of Big Pharma lies" room (though we paused long enough to take Mary's picture as a skeptical, money hungry pyschiatrist). We did enjoy however the room on "Ritalin and Adderall caused Columbine."

Sorry we didn't have more pictures, but every 10 minutes or so we would turn around and see a young 20something all in black hanging in the shadows watching us. There were also security cameras everywhere, so every picture was a danger.

Finally we arrived outside the black pit into a large white room. In front of us was a large TV and a red, plush couch. We sat down, finally warm and comfortable, and the final DVD clip came on, detailing of the CCHR and the church of scientology were working to combat the evils I had just witnessed. Over the TV was a sign: You are safe so long as we are here." It was a nice trick--isolating us with headsets, making us cold, keeping us in the black room, and sitting us on narrow, hard chairs in the "pyschiatry" area, then bringing us into a warm, bright, soft enviroment for the "scientology" area. After the DVD was over some man in black with a potato head gave us clipboards and asked us how we found the museum. Mary S actually tried to challenge him, to which he kept responding to everything like a broken record "we just want people to know the facts. we aren't trying to change anyone's mind. I bet you don't even know [insert some statistic we know]. We just want people to find out the truth for themselves." We filled out the clipboards leaving false names/addresses and left, terrified at being followed.

Overwhelmed and exhausted, the South took me to The Grove, an outdoor mall area, where we wandered around anthropologie like the living dead, then ate a huge meal at the cheesecake factory before Mary S drove me to the airport, the both of us newly aware of the evils that await us outside of the warm bosom of Scientology.

AlexiaIscariot: i'm overwhelmed. i turn off. though the new daniel craig movie looks awesome
markrokosmos: ha
markrokosmos: what's the new daniel craig movie? did he write or direct the new RAMBO???? because THAT looked awesome!
AlexiaIscariot: it's a remake of an old scifi movie i love. and i am NOT EVEN going to dignify that last comment with a response
markrokosmos: ha! it's like exploding TESTOSTERONE THAT SPILLS OFF THE SCREEN
markrokosmos: male audiences will float on it like old viking boats sailing into valhalla
AlexiaIscariot: COULD STALLONE BE ANY MORE EXTREME?
markrokosmos: NO WAY!

I'm back from new zealand. mark is well, the country is pretty, and I am exhausted

I am pretending that my spine is a steel i-beam. I just have to remember -- it's only nine more months. In nine short months, I will be done. I'm going to get super wicked crunk. you will all be invited.

Today is my last day at the magazine. Next week, I will log into a Citrix server and Outlook rather than fire up Suitcase and InDesign. I am uncertain how to feel about this.

This morning, I drove to work down Lakshore Drive with my windows opened, listening to "He War" and singing along to the "hey hey hey" parts. It was nice.

This article has appeared in my inbox twice in the past two days. I hope the cosmos are not trying to tell me something.

My stuff is up on Chicago Magazine's web site! Yay! Check these links!

the fanny packs of Lolla.

My behind-the-scenes day.

I feel like I've been on Mars for the past three days. Lollapalooza was dirty, exhausting, overstimulating and fun. I gotta say, rocking the media wristband and dropping the name of a fairly famous publication all weekend was pretty sweet. I don't think I'm cut out to be a rock journalist though -- I'm too much of a fan. I'm going to stare and say something stupid when Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley are walking straight towards me. That's just how it is. I don't think I could ever get jaded enough to act casual when I'm rubbing elbows with indie rock stars.

Anyway, my byline(s) will be on Chicagomag.com sometime soon. You should check that out.

Here's a recap of some of the things I saw this weekend:

Friday

Blonde Redhead
The members of Blonde Redhead are so good looking that they could just stand there and it'd be a pretty good show. But they're a great live band too.

Mickey Avalon
This heroin skinny ex-prostitute from L.A. was an unexpected treat. The majority of his (fey, nasally) rhymes were dedicated to hyping the living hell out of himself. The garish neon video loops (often flashing MICKEY AVALON in pink) definitely added to the experience.

LCD Soundsystem
This sounded OK. Mark and I sat on the hill and cooled out during this set.

Daft Punk
I don't get it. This makes me less of a person, I know.

Saturday

Sam Roberts Band
Mark and I caught the last song or two of these guitar thrashin' Canadians. Not bad.

Lady GaGa
No. I could not get down with this.

Rhymefest
The Chicagoan MC was a total charmer. I loved when he jumped into the crowd and told the kids to watch out for his boots. He also had a live band and a bunch of local kids break dancing during his set.

Cold War Kids
Eh. What's the hype about here?

Matt & Kim
Cute! Glad I caught part of this. CSS didn't make it so these two filled in.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The sound was kinda bad during their set. This was OK.

Regina Spektor
Regina was very good. She has a lovely voice, good songs and a very sweet stage demeanor. Roky Erikson was bleeding through while she played though, which was annoying.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Dug it. We found our way to a part of the crowd that was dancing. I'm into that.

Patti Smith
Watching Patti sing "Gloria" in the pouring rain was surreal. People old and young around me sang along and thrashed appreciatively. She played a lot of stuff from her new covers album. I thought it was pretty good. Her hands are mesmerizing.

Muse
No. Flashing lights and too much keyboard.

Interpol
Their new single is really bad. We did get to hear them play Obstacle 1, though. I am into that.


Sunday
I was "working" most of this day, so I didn't catch too much.

Smoosh
I loved this so much I almost cried. Inspiring.

Bound Stems
Rad! I danced a lot.

Modest Mouse
Again, the sound kind of sucked on this massive stage, and I was not jazzed on most of the new songs. Tiny Cities Made of Ashes was pretty cool. Kids were jostlin'.

TV On the Radio
I'm only vaguely familiar with their music outside of Staring At the Sun. Hearing that was pretty cool, though. Liked the little bit that we saw.

Pearl Jam
Was too physically and mentally trashed to form an opinion. I was happy to sit on the ground, watch happy people dancing, and beat most of the (massive) crowd back to the train.

Mark and I have a pet betta fish named Chutes. We love Chutes with an intensity usually reserved for furry pets that are at least capable of remembering who fed them yesterday. Despite his tiny fish brain, Chutes communicates with me. I stare at him, and he flaps his fins like he wants to kill me. He is a member of our little Ravenswood family.

On Sunday, I cleaned his bowl and gave him fresh water. While I was attempting to transfer him from his summer home (tupperware) back into his bowl, he flopped out of the net and landed on my desk. I tried desperately to pick him up and get him back into the water. He was so slippery and he was flopping everywhere! I immediately burst in to tears and started screaming for help. Mark came running in from the kitchen. Miraculously, Chutes flipped into Mark's hand and Mark dropped him back into the bowl. The whole episode lasted less than 15 seconds, and Chutes started swimming around as if nothing had happened. But still, my heart didn't stop thudding for hours.

Yesterday morning when I went over to Chutes' bowl to feed him, I noticed a dead bug floating in his tank. I got a spoon to fish (har!) it out of there, but before I could, Chutes swam up to the surface and ate the bug, which was as large as his head, in one gulp. It was kind of funny, but I was kind of mad at him too. I know that in the wild, Chutes would eat bugs all the time. But Chutes is not a fish out in the wild. Chutes is a fish that lives in a clean and sterile glass bowl, eats fish food pellets and gets fish antibiotics if he starts looking funny. I hope he will be OK.

Now at this point in the story, you may have a few questions. One being, what kind of name for a pet is Chutes? And two, where are you finding all this time to blog about a fish? (A third might be, are you responsible enough to even own a fish? but we'll leave that aside for the moment.) The answers to these questions segue this entry nicely into some issues of great personal significance to me.

flashback time!

Way back in January 2003, I went to work as an intern for a little trade magazine with a very imposing name. I blogged about it here.

One of the first things on which I was put to work was a column called "Chutes and Ladders" -- a monthly listing of career moves, promotions, hirings and firings in the in-house bar. Although the name of the column changed several times over the years (first to "comings and goings" and later to "career talk") the editorial staff of the little trade mag still affectionately refers to the column in our internal dealings as "chutes."

While I was an intern, I became friends with an assistant editor named Mark. Mark was well-dressed, cerebral, cultured and listened to Belle & Sebastian in his cube. He led the editorial team on expeditions to the West Loop's finest divey diners and bars. When I joined the magazine on a full time basis in March 2004, Mark and I shared a double-wide cube for a few months. Soon he departed for the greener pastures of educational publishing. But of course, we kept in touch.

Flash forward three years. I'm a big-shot managing editor at the magazine, and Mark and I have made a little home together in Ravenswood with a tree, artwork, and a fish named Chutes. After all, that's where it all began.

WHEW. So that's the back story of the fish named Chutes. However, it doesn't give much insight into how, exactly, I'm finding the time to write this post, now does it?

We're getting there.

The first issue of CLT I worked on was the February 2003 edition. At the time, the magazine was owned by a small private equity group that had acquired it under its infamous "loan to own" strategy. The book was an 11" by 14" saddle stitched tabloid printed on cheap, yellowish paper. The editorial was wrapped awkwardly around irregularly shaped advertisements. The image on the cover of the first issue I worked on was a stock photo of a model wearing a suit holding his head in his hands and making an exaggerated "I'm worried" face. I think the mag paid $200 for non-exclusive use of the photo. The headline was "High Anxiety." We had no art budget, so we spent a lot of time begging for free handouts. I'll long remember the following exchange:

Boss: Hey, we need a free hi-res picture of a cow.
Me: Any idea where I should look for it?
Boss: I don't know, call the cow association.

(Boss walks out)

(five minutes later)

Boss: Did you get the picture of the cow?


Still, I thought it was pretty exciting to be an integral part of the team that took this publication from start to finish. There was something quite fulfilling about seeing a tangible finished product at the end of each month. You could point to the magazine, ugly as it was, and say, "I did this. This is what I do for work." That felt great. For the first time since I'd started my long slog through the hallowed halls of Medill, I could actually envision myself as a practicing journalist.

I landed at CLT because Medill required a three-month full-time internship and I didn't want to leave Chicago. I had no interest in journalism and even less in corporate law. I was also pretty well convinced that no one would ever take me seriously as an adult capable of handling responsibility. But working at CLT changed all of those things.

My boss played a huge role in that. He entrusted me with interesting assignments, encouraged me to not be intimidated by our readers and sources, thanked me for doing a good job, was brutally tough on me when I screwed up (and sometimes when I didn't), and promoted me into positions of increasing responsibility over the years. For whatever career success I find in the future, he will deserve some of the credit.

Today, the magazine is an attractive, slightly outsize book with a new, slick name, printed on stylish matte-finish paper. I've written some major feature stories of which I'm quite proud; I manage a staff of freelancers; I edit every last word for the print and web products; I report on this industry with confidence; I attend events and have friends in the industry who hug me when I see them. I have flourished here.

I can say unequivocally that getting the internship at CLT when I was 20 years old is the luckiest thing that has ever happened in my life. Every good thing that has happened to me in the past four years has sprung in one way or another from that happy accident.

Which brings me, finally, to my point: I am doing something completely crazy. I am leaving the magazine. I'm taking a job at a small labor and employment law firm to essentially be a secretary. When people ask me what I do, instead of saying, "I work at a magazine during the day and go to law school at night" (which sounds badass) I will say, "I work at a law firm during the day and go to law school at night" (which sounds boring, although I suspect it will be anything but). That aside, I am leaving behind a job I'm good at, where I'm respected and well liked, to become a little fish (if you will allow me to continue this silly ongoing motif) in a new industry -- albeit one where the starting salaries are a heck of a lot better.

There are a lot of unknowns as I take this dive -- I hope I know how to swim.

hearts are not made to operate at this speed.