The bizarre contrast of cultures in the club was so extreme, I feared it could disturb the Earth's magnetic field or create a quantum particle storm, which might cause time to flow backwards or boil into a whirlpool and suck us all into oblivion.

Let me explain.

When I got invited to Goth Night, I agreed to go before I learned that the event took place inside a topless club. To prepare for the evening I put on a black dress, combat boots, and some heavy black eye makeup.

I was confused when Byron, my date (was this a date? I never figured that out) pulled into the parking lot of said topless club, but didn't ask questions. We walked inside and a large black man behind a cash box got a look on his face as if he were thinking, are they going to figure out they're in the wrong place on their own or am I going to have to tell them?

Right then a fat, pasty white guy dressed in black came out from a side door and said, "You guys are over here."

This was when I learned that topless bars are just like churches - some are for whites, others are for African Americans, and pretty much all are segregated by choice. But this African-American club was making some extra income by renting half its space to Goths for a few hours once a month. On one side of the club, Brothers dressed in jeans and t-shirts drank beer and watched Sisters in spangly thongs and high heels dance. On the other side, (very) white folks dressed in their finest makeup and S&M gear sat around tables and drank from bottles in paper bags (Goth Night was a BYOB event). The novelty of this situation was exhilerating.

All the same, I felt too old to be there. I hadn’t brought any of my own alcohol, and I'd quit smoking, so I didn't have anything to do. Byron ran off to talk to friends, so I sat and looked around. Hmm. Folks in very studied costumes, looking like they walked out of The Matrix. I was surprised to see a couple of African Americans among them. They were both quite striking - he had Hollywood cheekbones and was dressed sort of Sci-Fi Victorian in a top hat and long coat. She was wearing a short kilt and making out with another girl near the door, where they could both seductively eye all the men as they walked in. It was the most heavy-handed flirt tactic I'd ever seen, kind of like mowing down bunny rabbits with an anti-aircraft gun.

Eventually I got bored and went looking for Byron. I went through a door and walked past some bathrooms, just as one of the dancers walked out of the Ladies'. We exchanged hellos. She was fascinating. I thought, how does she balance such a generous bust and derriere on those high-assed heels? How can she be so well endowed and so skinny at the same time? It's not fair.

I found Byron in what must have been a lap dance room. It reminded me of a submarine. There was a large plastic bubble on one wall, which created a sort of artificial window. Chunks of artificial reef like you see in aquariums was stacked in the back if this window, and they glowed eerily thanks to a black light tube which shone from the ceiling. The white bootstrings in somebody's Dr. Martens glowed purple, and Byron's teeth shone green.

So Byron introduced me to his friends, some of who sat on the lap dance couch (luuuuuuv seat, ha ha), others of whom started to leave when dance music started up in the outer room. I left with them. They were nice kids from Guilford College.

"I really like your pants," I shouted to one of them over the music. "What are the made of?"

"PLEATHERRRRR!" he shouted back with relish.

Every now and then you could see guys from the other side of the club come and look over a set of wooden swinging doors to check out the crowd. I wanted to know what they thought of it all, but never asked.

Finally a really crummy band from Atlanta arrived. I wondered if it was the first time they'd performed on a stage with a runway and pole. The bass player looked like a lumpy Hell's Angel, but the rest of them appeared to have eating disorders or parasites or both. The singer was too wasted to be out of bed. Their music sucked, but they'd brought a very large and very geeky contingent with them. The singer flailed about and knocked the mike stand off the stage periodically, and a member of the contingent soberly picked it up and put it back as if she felt honored to drive five hours just to do that. One of their songs was about having raucus sex with one's mother, if I remember correctly. I thought, holy shit, dumbass, Jim Morrison did a much better job with that topic almost 30 years ago and people actually cared.

The show ended and somebody put on some Sisters of Mercy and I got my dance on. Byron took his shirt off and whirled it around his head.

When he said Goth Night was over at 1 a.m., he wasn't kidding. At 1:01 a.m. the dancer who'd spoken to me before came out and started gyrating around the pole, and all the goths cleared out.

That was my last outing with Byron, and it was about five years ago. I've often wondered if Goth Night is still going on somewhere. There were Goth refugees from darkest Davidson County there. As far as I know, it was the only social outlet for non-golf-shirt wearers in this town, so I hope it's survived in some form. Greensboro used to be an oasis for people of various counter-cultures, but not any more. I think the diversity fairy has turned her back on us. Though I hope to be proven wrong about that.

Well if Danny over at Spudkat is going to wax nostalgic with music videos, I will too. Love me the hell out of some Sisters of Mercy. They would have inspired me to go goth in the late 80s, had I been capable of adherence to a single fashion code. Still love the entire Floodland recording this song came from. Back in the day I consumed many a cigarette in my car listening to it.

Last year I heard this song on one of the college stations here in town, and I swore it must be the Sisters. I was wrong, but you must admit there are some similarities.

Siouxsie and the Banshees is another of my goth era favorites. If only the goth look weren't so labor intensive. And personally I like singing along with people like Patti Smith (who is punk, not goth) better, but I  love listening to Siouxsie, especially this song.

Sure would be great if someone could discover/create a new kind of popular music which could unifiy the masses and bring tweens, boomers, gangstas and goths into the club at once. Dance music to please vampires and hippies alike. This music should be so much fun, you shouldn't have to get shitfaced to dance to it.

Being white like I am, I've mostly attended live shows that white people go to, and it's a whole lot of no fun unless you drink a lot to assuage the boredom. Bunch of people standing around with their arms folded, nodding their heads and maybe bouncing a knee to the beat. Where's the ecstasy? And what's the point if there's no ecstasy? And I do mean the freely available ecstasy that music and dance can inspire, not the Schedule I drug.

Back in the days when Southern Culture on the Skids still came to this town, I could experience my ideal of how a night in the club is supposed to go. People were there to enjoy themselves. You might even get a chance to join the band onstage at a SCOTS show.

If I were a psychic I would predict that the next New Big Fun Thing in music would involve this instrument, and that there will be a backlash against image obsession, because people will become preoccupied with feeling comfortable and having fun, not showing off. And that clubs would open and shows would start at 2 pm on weekend days so people can enjoy themselves and still go home to tuck the kids in and get to bed at a reasonable hour. But I'm not, so I'll just admit it's wishful thinking.

Lyle, my 16-year-old gray tabby, went on to his great reward last Friday. You may know him from posts here, here, and here.

I was blessed to live with such an aggressively affectionate personality. Let me be clear: he was loving in a very stylish and cool way, not in a needy and smothering way. I swear James Brown recorded this song because he had a premonition of Lyle's arrival on this planet, for surely it is his theme song. We called him "The Kittyman" around here. Lyle believed that time spent reading and writing was ill-used, and better spent rubbing his ears. Sometimes his overwhelming love was downright uncomfortable - when you wake up at two a.m. because a cat is licking your armpit, it's hard to be appreciative sometimes. I miss him and will for a long, long time.

Anyway, I hope James Brown and Lyle salute each other when they meet in the afterlife.

Piles, truckloads, and barrels of thanks to Lake Brandt Veterinary House Calls. Those folks are veterinary champs.

This here is a link to a rant by Harlan Ellison, surely one of the most pugnacious writers ever to have lived. Nobody can spew ire like this man.

It's almost better to hear/watch him carry on than it is to read one of his stories. He writes "speculative fiction," what most of us call science fiction, but he'll shit in his hands and sling it at you if you use that term. I could label it "Upside Your Head Fiction" because his best stories hit you with a thud.

Sometime this spring or summer a documentary about him is supposed to be released. I'm looking forward to that. In high school my devotion to Harlan's writing equaled my love of The Doors. Alas, what can a teen girl do when a bitter, obnoxious author and a dead, asshole rock star are her role models? It was a difficult time.

Harlan's not one of those introverted, quiet, geeky writer types. Oh hell no. Man's done some hard living, though not in the drug and alcohol sense. His best stories are the true ones he's written about his life, like "When I Was A Hired Gun" from Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled and a preface to one of his stories in Stalking The Nightmare, where he tells of a time he saw somebody murdered in a movie theater for talking during the show.

Now I'm feeling down because I just checked and both of those books appear to be out of print, though they can be purchased used.

Though he's famous for being a dickhead, I have to say Harlan was nice to me when I met him before a reading at UNCG's Aycock auditorium in 1987. I can't remember what we talked about in our brief chat as he signed my program, but it was pleasant. I was thrilled to meet him, but I remember being stunned by how short he was. Somebody that takes up that much of your respect and admiration should be bigger than you are at least. I was really pleased that we had both worn the same outfit to his reading: tan pants, cream colored shirt, black jacket. I hoped it looked like we'd gotten together on the phone beforehand to coordinate our outfits.

If anybody out there knows more about when/where this documentary, "Dreams of Sharp Teeth," is going to be released and wants to do a road trip to go see it, let me know.

Yesterday I explained to two family members the reasons why I don't think it's a good idea to replace dental fixtures at home with glue from Home Depot, and they both looked at me like I'm an uptight pain in the ass.

We were in my uncle's living room. My grandmother had her crown, which fell out a few weeks ago, wrapped in a Kleenex in the palm of her hand. My uncle walked in with the tube of glue. I was getting ready to give my grandmother a foot massage. I guess they wanted to take care of this dental issue at the same time, but that is not my idea of a relaxing spa treatment.

"Let me look at the label," I said. "Hmm. The first thing it says here is that you need adequate ventilation to use this product. That doesn't sound good. And it says avoid contact with skin and eyes. I think that means this shouldn't go in your mouth."

My uncle looked at my grandmother and said "We'll wait 'til she leaves."

This shit is driving me crazy. What makes the care-taking role so difficult is that as people age and/or get sick, they often become erratic in decision-making and harder to reason with.

I've been going to medical appointments with my uncle. During these appointments, he runs his mouth about U.S. immigration policy, the state of my parents' marriage, and the ways he has been wronged by the medical establishment, but he relays almost no information helpful to medical professionals in the room. Plenty of (irrelevant) information comes out of him, but almost none goes in. Large, relevant facts which might enable him to make better decisions about his health care bounce right off his head.

It's becoming more and more clear to me that years of illness and medical intervention have taken a toll on the uncle's judgment. Okay. So what do I do? He sure as hell doesn't listen to me. I've argued against his using epoxy glue on my grandmother for weeks, and the only thing that's stopped him so far is that he's been under the weather. I thought about tipping my dad off about the situation, but then I'll be labeled a tattletale. My dad will go over there and make a fuss, make them mad, and they won't listen to him anyway.

The uncle said initially the grandmother called him up and asked him to bring over some Elmer's glue to put the tooth back in with. "Oh mamma," he said. "That won't work." I laughed at the quaintness of that little story, but then he finished with "I told her I might have some epoxy we could use." Alas. Elmer's, though water-soluble and thus not appropriate for a mouth, is so much less toxic than epoxy.

The issue is that my grandmother, a child of the depression, doesn't want to pay $1,700 to have a dentist fix her mouth. "Whatever she wants to do," says my uncle. But we're talking about a woman who is, to some degree, lost in this culture because of her age. They didn't have Elmer's glue in her school classroom or she'd know it washes out of clothes and peels off your fingers when dry, and is therefore not appropriate for dental work. Clearly she came of age in an era before kids learned to huff the harder kinds of glue, or she'd worry about catching a buzz from her tooth. Shouldn't the uncle offer some guidance instead of go with "Whatever she wants to do?" Why can't we just take up a family collection and pay for the goddamn dental work? Why can't we do anything that makes sense?

Well. Before I left them I carried on about the dangers of epoxy some more and told my grandmother to please, please not do dental work at home. "Yes ma'am," she said, and I thought, wait a minute, did saintly Good Grandma just give me a wiseass response? I asked my uncle to call some more dentists, and he kept repeating - "I have, I will. I have, I will. I have, I will." If you have, why did I just stop you from committing vigilante dentistry? And obviously you don't plan to involve a dentist in the future unless you just want to gloat about how you avoided giving him $1,700.

When I get like that I'm not going to like being told what to do either, but those two are a bad influence on each other.

I just returned from an 11-day stay at an ashram. Loved this place, loved everybody I met there. Much respect for what they've done and what they're doing, but it reminded me of Baptist church camp.

I went for a bodywork training seminar, which the ashram hosted. It was a lovely but unusual place for professional training, I thought, because the religious overtones of the setting were so pervasive. The food was fantastic, but no coffee or meat were served in the dining hall because of the organization's moral code. There was a lights out at 10 o'clock rule. Men and women were forbidden to sit in the sauna together, even if everybody was wearing bathing suits. At lunch in the dining hall, we all were expected to be silent for several minutes while somebody read religious teachings out loud. There was lots of devotional chanting in Sanskrit.

What I'm going to talk about next is going to seem like a digression, but I promise to tie it in: Nothing has had a bigger effect on my feelings about organized religion than the Jonestown Massacre and the extended media hysteria which followed. I was in fourth grade, and the first long magazine article I read on my own was a Time magazine piece about Jim Jones' brainwashed colony in Guyana. The term "brainwashing" and discussions about it became ultra-trendy. We were all on guard against those who might turn us into cult zombies.

A summer or two later I went with my church youth group to my first camp experience. I was terrified, because to me it appeared to be a very obvious brainwash operation. Get people (insecure teens) away from home, away from their comfort zone, put them in intense situations of singing and getting preached at by somebody who's emotional and appeals to their fears, make them cry and they'll accept Jesus. God knows, you can't get "saved" without a big old scene if you're Baptist, and if you don't get saved you're going to HELL.

I think everybody on that trip got saved but me. I liked the people at church, enjoyed some church-related events, but came to completely distrust it because as an organization, it seemed to have an ulterior motive. Give your mind up to me, it seemed to be saying. Belong to me. You have no worth until you become one of us and do what we expect.

I don't think the ashram folks are as heavy-handed in the brainwashing tactics as the Baptists, but since I didn't participate in any core ashram operations, I can't say for sure that they aren't as controlling. One thing I do feel certain of is that we face brainwashing tactics on a day-to-day basis in secular life. In politics, peer groups, families, and at work. Think about advertising's wiles and the last guilt trip you got from a relative, and maybe you'll see what I mean. Because it's in most cases illegal to physically force others to do things they don't want to, everyone has learned a fine set of coercion tactics to use on others. We brainwash each other to get what we want, and organizations do it to us so they can use us more efficiently and to make themselves stronger. The most successful people in life are often the most manipulative. Whistleblowers and truthsayers are frequently lonely and poor.

One thing I loved about the ashram was the social support for yoga practice and meditation. It's a lot easier to maintain your good habits if you can do them with other people. After about five days of yoga in the morning and meditation once or twice daily, I felt an increased capacity to think clearly and with generosity. So belonging to a group does have its benefits, and can help you become stronger as an individual.

But: one afternoon as I sat in meditation, I felt somebody step up and stand behind me - right behind me and too close for comfort. I looked back and no one was there, but I couldn't shake the sense that someone was standing over me with a severe, disapproving on his/her invisible face. I'd never had an experience like that before and it made me anxious.

Finally I realized this sense of disapproval felt familiar. It was the one I'd gotten from my grandmother in our last conversation before she died, as if she was picking up where she left off. You'd think that people newly arrived on the other side would have bigger issues to worry about than individual beefs with family members like you don't visit enough, you don't go to church, you don't do enough for your mother and in general you don't live up to my expectations. Or maybe she was pissed that my religious activity did not directly involve Jesus. But oh well. I said a prayer for her, though it probably wasn't the kind she wanted.

During my stay at the ashram, I had an unpleasant conversation with my mother. I believe she was angry because I didn't call to wish her a happy birthday the day before, and I was angry because she wasn't thankful for the books I'd sent her for her birthday. I was ratcheting up for a classic annoyed brood about this, but realization kicked in. She's angry with me because I'm not living up to her expectations. I'm angry with her because she's not living up to my expectations. We've both suffered much because we couldn't live up to my grandmother's expectations, and we're suffering now because all that's left unresolved. Expectations are hell.

I resolved to stop the expectation buck, to give myself permission not to let my mom make me feel bad, and I felt more room for compassion for her. It made me feel like a grown woman. I hope I can keep doing that.

"Well, you'll be sorry one day. I might not be around too much longer. You'll feel bad when they put me in the ground and throw dirt in my face."

I was nine or ten years old when she first started warning me that I'd be sorry after she died. Those warnings would come when I failed to kowtow in some shape or form. For example: At one point she decided MeeMaw was a much cuter handle than Grandma, and she wanted me to start calling her that instead. She offered bribes, which I refused, because the whole thing made me feel weird. I don't think I'd have been capable of consistently remembering to call her a new name if I tried anyway.

Every day after school, she treated me to fresh, hot, fried cornbread. Good, good stuff. But the way she carried on about it in front of other people, telling everybody how she went out of her busy way every day to make me fried cornbread, forcing me to acknowledge in front of whoever it was that yes, I was spoiled - Well, it made the cornbread less tasty, like I was paying a dear price for it in lost dignity.

Every year at Christmas she grilled me about what the other set of grandparents had given me in gifts. Pretty soon I figured out this wasn't just a friendly question - it was a way to put down the other side of the family, because she'd say things like "Is that all?" and remind me of what I'd gotten at her house. That made for hard feelings, because I naturally felt some loyalty to my other grandmother, who wasn't participating in this competition.

What she wanted was to be told she was the best grandmother. But she was so fierce and manipulative in her PR campaign, she earned herself the category exactly opposite the one she wanted. One time I was talking to a friend who knows my family, and I mentioned my grandmother. "Which one?" He asked, looking for a quick way to clarify. "Good grandma, or bad grandma?" The names stuck.

Bad grandma did not like house cats. She couldn't understand that other people might. "How old is that cat now?" She'd ask occasionally. "Well, he can't live too much longer, can he? When that one dies, you're not going to get another one, are you?"

So last week when my Mom called to tell me the grandmother was dead, one of the first stunned thoughts I had was "Holy Shit, the cat outlived her."

Even though she was within shouting distance of 90, it was still a surprise. All that stuff about "One day I'll be dead and you'll be sorry" was like crying wolf. She said it the last time I talked to her. I'd heard so much about it over the years I never really thought it would happen.

It's hard when you lose someone you had a troubled relationship with, because you're confused about your sense of loss. You think back over your years of memories and don't know what to feel. I stood next to the casket and waited to feel, like she warned, awful. But I found that since I was no longer under her watchful, appraising eye, a well of gratitude opened up in me. Thank you, I thought. Thank you for all of that cornbread, and those rides to places, and for picking me up at school when I was sick.

Now that's she's not here to try to manipulate and pry appreciation out of me, it's free to come out. It felt good to finally meet it.

But the thing I'm most grateful for, and it brings me to tears to think about it, is that she lived out her life in her home. She had lots of friends and acquaintances. She had all her wits about her. She'd been shopping and to church just days before. And my mother was with her when she died.

I don't think it gets any better than that, and I'm endlessly thankful she got to have it that way.

to the Grande theater at Friendly to see In Bruges. Don't worry - you won't have to read subtitles. Though the story is set in Belgium, it involves English gangsters. I'm a big fan of offbeat gangster movies, and this one rates in my list of top three favorites. In Bruges has been compared to Pulp Fiction. I guess I can't argue that there are some parallels, but there's no man-raping in this movie and the violence is a little more sparsely applied. I'd rather compare In Bruges to Ghost Dog, a martial-arts/gangster combo starring Forrest Whitaker. They're alike in that they examine the moral code of contract killers, and how adherence to this code sometimes requires a large capacity for selfless behavior.

This film is a fascinating weave of intricate plot elements, surprising turns, and characters who are a tasty combination of obnoxious and endearing. In Bruges stars Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes and Peter Dinklage, who some may remember as the star of The Station Agent, another movie I respect much, though it's not about gangsters.

English gangsters haven't gotten the cinematic exposure that Italian Americans have, so that in itself is refreshing. If you find you like In Bruges, you should rent The Krays. The Kray brothers were total badasses in the English organized crime world back in the 60s, and this movie gives a fascinating look at the East End (London) culture that gave rise to them. The slang is really catchy, though hard to understand at times.

WARNING: ONCOMING DIGRESSION - I worked in an East End pub for a brief stint after college. The father of my boss, it was rumored, had to leave the country for a while in his youth because he'd beaten up one of the younger, less well-known Kray brothers. And the DJ who hosted karaoke every week was a former champion boxer who had a bit part in The Krays. One night there was a major scene when a drunk, skanky biker chick tried to initiate a fistfight with this man. She was screaming something about a "Mars Bar." I thought, damn, you are hardcore when you're a skinny girl willing to try to beat up a former male boxing champion because he ate your chocolate. But later I found out "Mars Bar" is cockney rhyming slang for "scar," and either she was threatening to give him one or expressing her displeasure because she thought he'd offered to give her one. I didn't think it was possible for people to be so urban and so redneck at the same time.

If In Bruges and The Krays whet your appetite for international gangster movies, you definitely need to check out those of Takeshi (Beat) Kitano. They're in Japanese, so chances are you'll require subtitles. Kitano, who started out as a comedian, makes unbelievably violent, heartbreaking and funny gangster films, many of which he stars in. Sorry to disappoint those of you who are into martial arts, but Kitano's gangsters mostly just shoot each other. Now, if you're into manual violence, you might enjoy Violent Cop. This is the man-slappingest movie I've ever seen. Here Kitano raises the slap, which most people think of as an assault tactic specific to teen girls, to the level of martial art. It has to be seen to be believed.

But I have to recommend Sonatine as a better example of his work.

Recently my blogging partner over at Spudkat.com posted an entry about how products don't last any more, and how they're really more complicated than they need to be. I'd like to comment by posting a link to this video that does a lot of explaining about the reasons why.

Billy the Blogging Poet made some great points about my last post, and I'd like to expand on them. I've studied this subject some, but I don't know everything there is to know about it, so I'd welcome comments from others who might shed additional light.

Straw bale houses and other kinds of alternative houses are a great idea, but they're too hard for most people to build. There are no straw bale, cobb, or rammed earth home floor plans you can choose from when you have most contractors build your home. Next, it's just about impossible to get financing to build alternative housing. Most people build it themselves and pay as they go, so it can take years. I've seen a straw bale house in progress being done that way, and the bales were moldy because they'd been exposed to weather and humidity for too long. In this climate, they might get moldy like that anyway. Who wants an energy-efficient, sneeze-producing house?

There are some great alternative prefab house packages out there, but they're for rich people. It'd be great if I could live in a palace made from shipping containers, but not if it's going to cost me more that it would to build a conventional house.

Billy made a great point about using trash in bales to create housing, but I fear there's danger there in creating a new market for housing materials. In other words, manufacturers might start choosing to manufacture "trash" specifically for the house-building market instead of recovering trash that's already out there, and we'd be increasing instead of decreasing what we consume.

Finally, inspections departments won't know what to do with alternative houses because they're so unusual, so it can be difficult to get the necessary permits you need.

The other thing that bothers me about alternative housing is that it's got to somewhere out in the 'burbs or the boonies. It seems like all new house construction goes on in places where you're guaranteed a 20-30 minute drive to town, with nothing (coffee shops or bars) within walking distance. For those wanting to live in alternative housing because they want to reduce their carbon footprints, all that driving defeats the purpose.

All the alternative/energy efficient housing developments I've looked are out of my price range or located in places where it would be hard to make a living or both.

I'd truly love to live in a bermed-in, passive solar home. But if it's more affordable to live in Fisher Park, where I can walk to Maya's or Fisher's if I get hungry and have money to spend, I'll do that instead.