Gremlins, Nazis and Bunnies: In That Order

I've been reading "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls over the last week or so. It's a memoir of her insane upbringing under her parents' lax rules and various artistically motivated escapades. They appear to have been creative geniuses, although the author was wary of this even at a young age, but they were not strong role models or good parents. Reading the book has me feeling youthful nostalgia because I can identify with a number of feelings the author expresses, although I was raised in a far more structured, traditional home environment. Eccentricity is very relate-able, even if my glimpses of it are not as powerful as Walls'. Also, working on a history of my grandmother's childhood has me thinking of my own.

One of my favorite movies was "Gremlins." I used to watch it on VHS when I visited my cousins. Without giving too much away about the design just yet, thinking about that movie inspired a T-shirt that I want to make. I've drawn some preliminary sketches, so now I need to find a screen printing workshop to get this thing done. It's going to be clean, minimalistic and nostalgic for the Eighties, all of which appeal to people around my neighborhood of BK (and hopefully the rest of the country). I sold T-shirts only once before from a drawing of mine, and made some decent cash from the deal. All told, in two days worth of work selling them on campus at UGA, I made something like $800. At the time, $800 made me rich.

I read listened to the audiobook of "The 4 Hour Workweek" recently. Tim Ferris seems like kind of a weird guy and I don't agree with or see things from his point of view all the time, but the biggest gem I gleaned from the book was in regards to revenue automation. If I had to change Ferris's subtitle, I would change it to "How to Sit on Your Ass and Still Make Money." I want to have more sources of revenue than I do now, and a tangible product available online would earn me money with minimal effort, because drawing and creating things is fun to me. My dad thinks that it is an outdated business model to claim that in order to make money, you need a product. I don't disagree with that, but creation and production are satisfying to me. They feel like work well done; I can't feel proud of myself without something to show for my efforts. That need for creation has driven me throughout my life. ("Alright already, we get it, you like to make stuff. Wrap this paragraph up and talk about Nazis already; I got to your stupid blog through a link from a white supremacy page!") I may have been reading too many books about art / artists / schizophrenics lately...

Speaking of books, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about my grandmother and her displacement from Ukraine during WWII. My grandmother and great-grandmother (her father was sent to Stalingrad and they never heard from him again) had to walk west across Europe and were once caught between the Russian and the German armies for two days as shells flew overhead between the lines. She had a very difficult life. That life is the subject of a book I am writing as a keepsake for our family after she is gone, a kind of heirloom.

But in this conversation, my friend drops a bombshell of her own: When her grandmother died, she left her home to her and her sister, and in the course of going through the house and cleaning out many of her grandmother's and grandfather's personal belongings they stumbled across some Nazi paraphernalia. Let that sink in. Did grandma ever goosestep her way over to the window ledge to cool an apple pie? Did grandpa prefer sieg heils to hugs? I know I'd have some questions, too. They found a soldier's uniform and a Nazi propaganda book for kids. She said they were taken aback and considered the idea of burning what they had found.

I'm glad they didn't. For one reason, right now, to my left, sits a book called "Kampf um's Dritte Reich" with a subtitle of "Historiche Bilderfolde." It means "Struggle for the Third Reich" with historical pictures. It is essentially a sticker book for children, like this one for Disney's "Finding Nemo", except that instead of children placing stickers of animated sea creatures into a cute story about a fish adjusting to ocean life, this one has stickers of Hitler, Goebbels, and some other of the worst human beings in history for licking and sticking in a propagandized history of the Nazi party. Now I don't speak German, but I can read some of what is in here. Everything is represented: Hitler's early years and the Beer Hall Putsch; a chapter on Dr. Geobbels; Hitler on vacation in Bavaria; and more, culminating in the current events of Nazi Germany in 1933, which is when this book was published. This thing is creepy. There are sections on the different branches of the military and the government, including the SS and the Hitler Youth. The children are probably the part of the book that disturbs me the most. (Well, those kids and a couple of fruity poses from Hitler.) In one photo, a mother holds a boy wearing a full Nazi uniform (with armband) as Hitler walks by. That kid could still be alive today. He'd be maybe 85 years old, but he could be alive. Here are some shots: Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics, I am going to scan some of this eventually.

So insane. Look at the little boy in his mother's arms wearing full Nazi uniform and waving a flag. He has no idea what he is so proudly representing. Also note the DJ swastika insignia; that's the Hitler Youth branch of the Nazi party. Not all DJs are Nazis, but next time you hear 99 Luftballoons, go ahead and wonder.

The girls in flower headbands and saluting the Nazi salute are just barely creepier than the number of propaganda songs that are found throughout the book.

Walt would be der Fuhrious with me.

I feel lucky in a way that has nothing to do with fascism or supremacy, but simply because I am better than you. I'm holding a piece of history that belongs in a museum. It shows the early indoctrination of children through what basically amounts to a toy, an activity, a game. A Nazi game. This was published in 1933, so by 1942, the child who read it, learned the songs and placed stickers throughout its pages as a 9-year-old could have been old enough to enlist in the army. Insane.

My friend says she wants to donate this stuff to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., but that she's been too embarrassed by the fact that this was found in the house that she grew up in. I hope she does so eventually. It isn't her fault; she doesn't know much about her German ancestry. 

To lighten the mood of this post a little, which seems to have gotten a little dark, I will say that I decided to buy a dwarf lion head rabbit today. My friend called and told me I had to come over to the pet store near my apartment because they had just gotten the best lion head rabbit ever. She has a bunny, too, and she knows how much I love him. Her lion head bunny's personality is like some strange mix of dog and cat, and he is hilarious, mischievous and sweet. One time, we were lying on her bed and eating a chocolate bar, and the bunny kept trying to snatch it out of her hand. I kept grabbing the bunny and putting him on my chest to pet him, but he'd just get up and go back over to the chocolate bar. This little sequence took place three times, and on the third time he didn't go for the bar. Instead, he hopped right over, squatted down and peed right in the center of her chest. The bunny golden shower was totally intentional! So bad! So funny! So gross... Anyway, once I got there and saw her beard, I knew she had to be mine. Here I am holding her at the shop.

It's like a cross-breed of a squirrel and Martin Van Buren.

I haven't had a pet of my own since I had fish in high school. In college, my brother and I found a kitten in our apartment complex parking lot and chased her out from under cars for nearly two hours before finally catching her. We brought her to my brother's apartment and fed her milk and tuna fish, the two most obvious cat food items we knew. We had dogs growing up, and even though my grandmother had a cat that I really liked, we knew nothing about caring for cats. She lapped up the milk, downed the tuna fish and fell asleep on my shoulder. We thought we had done the best thing ever. That cat let out probably the most horrible funk to ever find my nostrils. She farted without prejudice, without care, without consciousness, without conscience. She stunk up the entire apartment. We took her to the vet the next day: Cats are lactose intolerant. But she's cool now, and lives with my brother, so I figure if he can take care of a cat then I'll be fine with the new bunny, the Nazi book and my Gremlins T-shirt. The things I must do to get through the month of January...

(P.S. How could anybody get through reading all this nonsense??? How have I become so prolific and simultaneously so boring???)