Swing State Syndrome and Why This Writer Guy can Piss Off

For those of you just catching up, I recently moved from Cleveland, Ohio to Wilmington, North Carolina to go back to school for creative writing. This has, therefore, been an extremely painful yet cynically entertaining  election cycle for me. One swing state to another, not much changes. I registered to vote here in NC as soon as the campus drives started, and since then I've been bombarded with fliers, phone calls, Hulu ads. I've had an Obama volunteer knocking on my door looking for me every day for the past two weeks. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood, so the Romney volunteers have been noticeably absent.

The only people who cared more about early voting than Ohio were North Carolinians. I'm one of those perverts who enjoys going to the community center on Election Day and making a whole ritual of it, and it got to the point where I was lying to the volunteers and telling them I had already voted, just so they would stop trying to give me directions to the library.

This morning I was laying in bed, contemplating my very non-political thoughts, and as I hopped on Twitter to post my deep musings about the correlation between my vibrator and my teddy bear, I saw THIS ESSAY linked to by my friend Angie. I have a lot to say about this, so you'd better go read it first, even though I absolutely hate to give this guy the page views.

First of all, fuck you. Just had to get that out there.
Alright. Let's try this again.

First of all, Ohio didn't choose to be the lynch pin of the electoral process. It's not like years ago, we somehow bid on it, somehow lobbied to be the place where every four years campaign strategists cum on our faces with 300 political ads a day and tie up our cellphones with blocked numbers just because one time we decided to sign that Move On petition. Oh yes, Ohio has email, can you believe it? No wait, actually some parts of Ohio DON'T have DSL, because not a single one of these candidates blowing their coffer loads here comes back in between elections to help us out with real issues - like accessibility of internet services, alternative energy sources, or a governor that's trying to frack us all into a giant hell pit. We are not rubes, we are very well aware of the disparity and the abuse we suffer at the hands of these invaders. There are not a bunch of Ohioans walking around going "Oh man, I'm so special and important, I'm the future of America." No, instead we're sitting in our finished basements, being pissed off that we can't watch our Black Key's youtube video without first having to sit through our 17th Romney ad of the hour.

Second, let's address this idea you posit that all human beings of vitality and vision leave Ohio as soon as they are able to crawl. It's painfully obvious that you consider yourself one of these visionaries. Let me assure you, your style is mediocre David Foster Wallace rip off at best, so tone it down a bit Chump. I mean, I sympathize, because I am obviously one of these glowing talents as well, and yes, I too ran far away from Ohio. To an even smaller town, in the Bible Belt, where grown men regularly call me honey and the job market is so slow I've been considering selling "used" underwear on Craiglist just to make rent. Look, I grew up in Revitalized Cleveland, so I'm well aware of the concept of "Ohio good", and I am not a fan of the legions of cheerleaders whose sole mission in life seems to be to convince me that Ohio is the very best place to live in the entire world because we have a restaurant with weird grilled cheese sandwiches.

But, and I'm going to go ahead and siphon off some of your ego here, I'm a good writer. The reason I am a good writer is not because I somehow had the far reaching vision to escape Ohio, but because I stayed there. I lived there for my entire formative twenties. That means I had to find jobs in Ohio, entertainment in Ohio, love in Ohio, and confidence in Ohio. In order to accomplish any of that, I was required to learn perspective.  You dismissively call Ohio "our republic in a can", and that's right. A lot of rednecks, some lone outposts of urban minorities, a thin icing of college educated professionals. That's absolutely correct, that's our country. Growing up in that microcosm, I am now able to live wherever I want in the country, even this weird little coastal town full of Republicans, and get along with people. I can even genuinely like them. I am capable of having an opinion about people with opposing viewpoints that doesn't involve degrading or vilifying  them. Those famous writers you cite, Anderson and Thurber and Crane, you know what they had that you don't have? They LIKED people. They were INTERESTED in people. They didn't just immediately dismiss anyone who didn't go to Princeton as intellectually inferior to them, or maybe if they did, they understood that intellect isn't necessarily the mark of a good man.

I was going to write a snarky little paragraph here about how you must have come from some beige little suburb town, and how the deeper subject of your essay is obviously your own unresolved bitterness towards your hometown. But then I tried googling your biography, and there wasn't much to find, except maybe you converted to Mormonism as a teenager once? Here's what being an Ohioan has done for me - I read that and immediately felt this pang of sympathy for your childhood. In my head those sugars converted to "oh, he probably just doesn't know any better" and now I've completely lost steam to make fun of you because I just feel bad that you think of your country as someplace to escape from, instead of the unending weird and interesting place it actually is. I mean, if you've made a career out of non-fiction writing, you must know this too, at least intellectually if not viscerally.

Here's what you did in this essay. You saw a week of the country crowing about the Impressive Mediocrity of Ohio, the Breadbasket of the Boring Modern Man, and you somehow felt compelled to scream against it. Nevermind that it only happens once every four years, and it isn't fooling anyone. You said to yourself "Stupid Ohio thinks it's so fucking special, it's time I remind the rest of this high school who the real cool kids are" and then you tried to pants us. So good for you, you reminded your peers that Ohio is fat and unemployed and stupid, that's awesome. We totally deserved that right? Cause god forbid, anyone pay attention to an entire section of the country that needs jobs and education and love. That isn't what politics is about at all, right? No, politics is about proving you're smarter than everyone else. Way to be a visionary there. And I hope, when Ohio goes blue tomorrow, you have a follow up essay prepared about how that doesn't really matter, because being a normal mediocre person still sucks. That will for sure help the effort to convince the "rednecks" here that they should vote with compassion towards their fellow man.

Sunday Road Trip Part 2: The Rock Garden in Springfield OH

This was my first thought, as we walked timidly behind the very normal looking bungalow house in the very normal looking neighborhood of bungalow houses and into...this. It hit me immediately, like a shock I thought, "I am never going to create anything like this, I am never going to care that much about just one thing to do something like this." And maybe that's cause I don't ever want to stay in one spot that long. Like, this guy lived here forever. 60 years. I can't even begin to conceive of that span of time, I'm practically a baby compared to that. But also maybe it's because that's a lot of little rocks.

I get it. Creation is hard. There's so many things just like this rock garden, built up by tiny little detailed pieces, a novel, a relationship, a body of work, a life. If I can't imagine creating something like this, then how can I even begin to think about those other things? At least this work of art is simply explained, it's one rock after another, it's a simple long process, rote. Those other things? You can't even draw blueprints for them. You just have to keep plugging away in the darkness, not knowing where it's going, try to create a lighted path just by visualizing it ethereal brick by brick. Year after year, over and over. Where the fuck am I going to be when I'm 40? Imagining that is like trying to conceptualize the entertainment industry in 100 years, insane and fictional and inherently wrong. The entire universe's timeline seems contained in my lifetime, and it's moving just as slow. It's an abyss I'm standing on, looking over, 40. I like abysses, a lot, they are super cool, but like, I'm not ready to just fall in. I want a rope or something. This guy, he made this rock garden his rope.

This day was a good brick though. I guess I feel that way about most days, so I guess something's being built whether or not I know what exactly it's shaping up to be. There was a point this day where we stopped at a bar to get food, and it was a pub in Urbana, OH on a Sunday, meaning no liquor and cash only, and the waitress got the chicken fingers from the back freezer in ziploc bags to throw them in the fryer. We drank beers and ate chicken fingers, watched Nascar and listened to Roy Orbison. Then we got back on the road and drove through Ohio listening to Drake.

 The problem is instead of seeing myself working on building other things, instead I'm just always working on building myself. Don't tell me that's okay. That's not okay. I want to be focused on something else, something permanent and inorganic and real in a way I can actually handle and give to someone. Instead I'm traipsing around in cars, doing and seeing weird things anywhere I can, and I'm a pretty solid product but also I'm a human being and it's sort of illegal to try and get someone to buy me. I guess metaphorically, it's okay. But I want actual cash.

(Has the term Laser Punk been used yet? As the next steampunk? I need more of an education in labels. Like, are we just using Modernist across the board now, or is there a secret new term for the art scene now that only art students and I guess people who actually read criticism know? And Dystopian, that terms been spittled to death. I don't want to be steampunk or dystopian, I want to be Laser Punk. Since we totally have lasers already, and we've had punk for way too long, in my head Laser Punk looks like a kid who works at his dad's used tire store and listens to dance music, only he's about 2 years behind Europe. He has a haircut that looks like a domesticated Yu-gi-oh. He likes painting on super large canvasses. He and his friends used to have a Queen cover band in high school, and he played bass. He has opinions about copywright and internet law.

 He probably lives somewhere in Marysville. He should move to Baltimore with me. Laser Punk Boyfriend.)

I wanted to write something beautiful and fun about this place, maybe about villagers shrunk by the evil church,  or avenging soldiers that came to life after dark. While we were there, I said I should write a children's book about a mouse living in this place. These are things I should do. But instead it turns out this place just makes me aware of how old I am. So very very old. And young. Both at the same time - the fear of old and the ineffectiveness of young. It's like I'm a top someone just set off spinning. Seriously though, how do I build something like this?

February Made Me Shiver

So they came upon a field of empty trees, stark and witchlike against the country winter sky. The ground was dirty, muddy, the patches of frozen ( then thawed then frozen then thawed still tenaciously clinging to it's green) grass, now petrified in a permanent taxidermy of an orchard. The gnarled and burned branches lay broken haphazardly underneath the victims. He pulled over, and she got out to take pictures, but the farm dog tied up to the distant barn heard them and sounded the alarm. So they drove further down the empty road, and found a more inconspicuous spot for her to pretend to be a photographer. He stayed in the car.

 "What do you think they are?"

"I think they are monsters."
 "I think they are trees. Probably apple trees."
"I think you are wrong. They are monsters."
 "Well if they are not apple trees, they are too sad to be monsters."
 "Don't you think monsters are sad? I think monsters must be the saddest of all animals. They are all alone. There are very few of any one kind, they are all different and alone and have no one to relate to their own particular monstrosity."
 "But all these trees, they aren't alone. They are just dead together. They must have been alive together at some point too."
 "What if it's not just lots of monsters, but only one monster, buried under the ground, with lots of arms sticking up and out, all connected by tentacle roots, and they all look dead together because only one huge massive thing underneath our feet is dead?"
 "You are a weird funny girl"
 "It's not weird or funny. It's tragic and sad. You only think I'm funny cause you feel like somewhere deep in your chest I might be right. And that's why you put up with me."
"I put up with you because you are brilliant and beautiful."
"That isn't the point. The point is I am right. In some world, these are not trees, this is the brittle rotting skeleton of a creature we might only see in our dreams, something low and long and buried and slow like a glacier or like that giant fungus that is basically the whole state of Washington. That makes much more sense than individual lifeforms that grow up uniformly despite being separate creatures, then die every winter and come back every Spring and just magically give us stuff to eat."
"So that would make sap blood."
 "Yes, and apples would be..."
"...fingernails..."
 "...or warts...."
"something that falls off."
 "right, falls off a living creature, and then we eat it."
 "gross."

Suppose that each black and wizened broken trunk was broken open, that you drove your car straight into the field and mowed them down like kindling. Then as you get out of your Cadillac in the middle of the orchard, looking at the path of dead tree devastion behind you, your radiator starting to smoke, the ground around you starts to sparkle. Slight at first, then stronger, building momentum and light. Gathering like fireflies, only it's daytime though a dark daytime, and yet you can see them clearer and clearer. A thousand pricks of light, little diamonds rising out of the organic wreckage and war, floating hovering through their own pulsing a few feet above their former prisons.

 And every single one is a wish someone made before winter began, something that grew shimmering from a bit of dirt or bark or glass that got lodged one day in your chest, that was coated layer by layer over time with hopes you had for what might happen next year. Then the new year came and went, and February's winds stole all these pearls while we were sleeping, sucked them out of our mouths like cats sucking souls, blew them out of the houses and apartments and into the outlying forests and farms and jesus we're all hidden out there, our real selves and the prettiest part of ourselves, stuck cursed little summer souls in cold dark lifeless magic trees.

 So obviously, you have to knock them all down and free them.

 "But wait, what if our wishes need to hibernate and sleep through the winter like the trees, or they won't bloom when it gets warmers? What if I let them all out and then a frost kills them?"

 You're right, of course. But she doesn't like that conclusion, because it smacks of sentimentality, and spirituality, and purpose. And she'd rather have everything made of conflict.

 The little sparks from the crunching wreckage are now milling about, gusts of wind making them eddy and flow like Northern Lights. They haven't got anywhere to go, and so they blend and bleed with each other until it's a shimmering indistinct fog, diluting with the mud and asphalt of the road as it drifts up and over and into other fields.

The Various and Important Dangers of Ohio Beaches

The Various and Important Dangers of Ohio Beaches

1) They will not let you stay on the beach at night. First a man will make an announcement, the very minute slash second that the sun goes down he will say "The beach is now closing." If you do not leave the water immediately, first they send a patrol in a sand buggy with headlights careening down the coast towards you. If you refuse to come in from the water, the frogmen are deployed from the base underneath the lighthouse. If you positioned yourself correctly at the far end, you have ten minutes to hide. The frogmen have underwater propulsion packs. If you manage to get out of the water undetected and into the treeline, your best bet is to head for a high tree. See #2.

2) Night monkeys. All Ohio beaches are infected with night monkeys, a particularly hostile and territorial type of squirrel monkey. During the day they are benign and dormant, but at night they are vicious defenders of their nest, and have no aversion to eating meat. Once they start to swarm, you are out of luck. Even if you drop out of the tree, they will continue to pursue you, dozens at a time. Your only mercy is that these vermin are slower on the sand than up above in the foliage, so make for clear sand. But then of course, frogmen. Enslavement in the salt mines has to be better than being eaten by monkeys though. I think.
3) Death by rocks. Swallowed up by the rocks. Cut and poisoned by rocks. Beat to death under the water by rocks. Seduced into the rocks' worldview, which includes suicide as a viable way to get out of paying taxes. Tripped by rocks and hurled face first into the wooden picket fence. Accidentally eat a rock and have really good digestion for a few years, but then die because you ate a rock. Accidentally eat a rock and don't die, but then go on a talk show and later get your own TLC show as the girl who eats rocks, be unable to live with your fans constantly sending you baskets of gravel, die on a cocaine molly binge drowning in a kiddie pool in your backyard naked.

4) Pirates. Vagabonds. Marauders. Dogs. All things that travel in packs and want to eat your intestines. Pretty easily avoidable though.

5) Kidnapped by shadow people and forced to breed with them, in their attempt to make their species take corporeal form. Shadow people have barbed genitals, like cats. Also they only drink lake water for sustenance. When a shadow person is born, it chews it's way out from utero. To protect yourself from being taken, never engage a shadow person in funny little dances or miming for your friends. Always carry a torch with you. Don't let them get behind you. Travel in groups.

6) Yeast and Algae monsters. Banished most of the year to the deeper parts of the lake, these terrifying blooms of filthy nasty toxic teeming bacteria are sentient and naturally mean. On very hot days, they like to swim inland to bask in the radioactivity of our dying sun, and this is when you must watch out for them the most. Have you ever had a yeast infection? Now imagine a fully body yeast infection. Or bleeding from your eyes. Or developing alien strength, speed and gills. Never eating solid food again because your body produces energy by photosynthesis. Their tentacles reach deep under the water, to grab at your ankles, and all it takes it one open hole in your body, a cut or your mouth or the inside of your eyes, and you're infected. Done for.


7) Sand Sharks. Sharks that live under the sand and eat your spare change, flip flops, blankets, wallets, tshirts, bikini bottoms, also your piggly wiggly little toes and your feeling of well being. Their teeth are rounded like herbivores, but their jaws have the force of giant construction machines, and you can hear them coming by the grinding of their molars and the shaking of the dunes.

8) The Illusion. The thing that happens when your mind refuses to accept that you are not at the beach all the time, and will not function in any other mode. You may be at the office, but you are at the beach. You are in bed, but you are at the beach. You are standing in line at the DMV but you are at the beach. The flashes of disassociated sun will get more and more frequent, until the afflicted slips into a permanent beach coma, where they are unable to stand upright, and may actually sunburn without exposure. Sometimes you will hear them humming in their dreams, a back and forth tide sound. When you stand in the ward surrounded by them, it becomes an actual wave, sshhing and swooshing on their tongues.

It's All In Code at the Apple Farm

Please Press Play First. Do It. I'll be mad at you if you don't because you have no idea how long it took me to figure out how to embed this.



Looks Like: a picture of pumpkins for sale
Hidden Message: You are a jerk for not carving pumpkins with your parents still, even though you are over 30 and your parents may say that they are glad to not have all the mess anymore, or the danger of Daddy cutting himself, or having to clean up the porch after the neighborhood kids smash the damn thing, because really they are longing for you to sit at their counter drinking cider and bitching about how hard it is to cut the teeth. Also, you're not even carving pumpkins with your friends? What kind of person are you? (answer, the type of person who doesn't like cleaning up squash)


Looks Like: weird gourds
Hidden Message: Playing with Barbie brainwashed you into thinking everything thin and white is pretty. No, not really. Actually, there's a lesson about how every gourd is pretty even if they don't fit in with the other warty gourds. Or its about how ugly misshapen things are all beautiful when you ask money for them. Or it's about Mandelbrot's infinite coastline. No, I'm sticking with the first one.

Looks Like: a kid climbing on some hay
Hidden Message: God, do you know how hard it is to take pictures at something like an apple farm, without it looking like you are taking pictures of other people's kids, especially with a point and click? Thank god I am a woman, cause this would be ten times creepier if I was a man.

PS I totally just noticed that cloud looks like a skull. Which means that kid is probably a Death Eater, right?

Looks Like: an orchard in the sun
Hidden Message: There is no such thing as a bad picture of an orchard in the Fall, or frankly, any other time of the year. Trees in rows are awesome. There is however something known as the Orchard Money Shot. If you are riding on a tractor, it is a little hard to get, but just like the brave polar bear will wait on the ice for days to get that damn seal when it comes up to breathe, you can get the money shot. You just need to take about 100 pictures of trees. I would like to see an olive grove some day. There is a girl somewhere out there who lives by olive groves and is thinking the same thing about an apple orchard. There should be an exchange program for this. We could get the Orange girls and Banana girls in on it too.

Looks Like: a cornfield
Hidden Message: We don't get enough chances in our life to jump out and scare someone. I need to work on that.

Looks Like: more corn
Hidden Message: Get a box of cornflakes, and take out a few flakes in the palm of your hand. Look at them. Then look at the picture. Then the flakes again. THIS IS HOW THE WORLD WORKS.

Looks Like: A field of dying sunflowers
Hidden Message: Did you know dead sunflower paddles can be used to kill a man? Or at least knock him unconscious, those motherfuckers are solid. Also, you should really learn to go to the apple farm earlier in the year, so you can see them when they are pretty, instead of dead and looking very much like a field of people up for execution. I mean, it's still pretty, but in a way that requires you to feel mean for taking pictures of them.

Looks Like: fall foliage
Hidden Message: Dude, trees are like the most honest things ever.

Looks Like: a guy on a tractor
Hidden Message: use this as a litmus test. Anyone you meet who doesn't want to be this guy for at least five minutes is an asshole.

The Quietest Place

Is up in the sky.

Is in between the canyons.

Is in a place out of time.

Like how you use to imagine the neighborhood houses talked to each other, only now you understand that they are not actually talking, but communicating on the level that only rocks understand. Flighty chatter from the fast moving glass. Low infrequent murmurs from the concrete. Superiority complexes from the quarried quarters.

Downtown was empty when I took these, their cars sitting like dead weight on the streets while they stuffed themselves in the stadium for a football game. I had to pay to park, which made it even more apocalyptic. But I wandered around alone and perfectly happy for an hour, looking at all the pretty colors and shiny windows.

I was taking this shot when the game started to let out, and like lake monsters, they crawled onto dry land and invaded the city. All oranges and brown gimmicks. I thought it was kinda cute as I saw them swarming towards me, very, you know, game day. I can't get into crowd sports. But I can understand the appeal, the festivity and military brotherhood of it. Getting drunk and cheering for stuff is good! But then the wave hit, and I became a barrier to them. It started with sullen petulant looks, distaste that I would just be standing there on the sidewalk taking pictures, of what? Buildings? Some guy, as I was trying to frame this, actually said to me "there's no point in taking a picture of that, they should just knock it down." Are you fucking serious?

Every time I stopped, I could hear people in the crowd talking about me. "What is she doing?" "Why would anyone do that?" "No, stay away from her, I don't know what she's doing." I was floored. Fine, so you don't wander around Cleveland thinking how pretty it is. But are you so barren that you can't even comprehend why someone else might take a picture of it? You just come down here for games, complain about the walk, stare at the sidewalks and girls' tits at packed bars, then clog up the highways with your fucking Hummers and Lexus (oh my god, when I left, every goddamn car I got stuck behind was a Lexus crossover, and none of them knew how to merge) and at not a single point do you look up or around and have any ghost of appreciation for the monuments around you? I cannot even comprehend how someone like that functions on a day to day basis, and frankly, it's so ugly a thought I don't even want to. That's not a person. That's a thing. That's a cog.

Maybe people only exist to build things and then they should disappear into the ground, and let the rocks talk to themselves. But it doesn't matter. A couple of asshole Browns fans can't stop things from being beautiful and scary. Did you know the BP building is a tiger shark? It's true.



more photos here.

"On the Lake" can mean so many different things

I've always had this idea in my head that Geneva on the Lake was some sort of cookie cutter Quaintsville place, with little wineries and restaurants and campgrounds. I mean, it sort of is that. But it's way more "Let's get smashed and eat hot dogs." We ended up there instead of the Cleveland Wine Festival, because while driving to Nautica, I saw the river cruise boat pass by, with the hordes of overly tan stringy women in Ann Taylor, and I knew I just couldn't take it. So I'll go there today after work, now that my spirit has been fortified with the true spirit of Ohio Lake People, which is "Let's get smashed and eat hot dogs."

Ohio wines tend to be sweet, too sweet for me, lacking that pampas bite I like. So I was okay with running from the Jimmy Buffet cover band at the ferris wheel winery to the conflicting dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra inside/Afroman outside on the patio at the skank bar across the street. Business in front, party in the back, right? We were there before it got super skanked, when it was mostly just harmless looking older gentlemen in cut off tees, and young girls going on 40 in halter tops. But as we left, several gorillas shoved right past us in the doorway, without even glancing, beelining for the cornhole and the baby's mamas. So we left there right in time. Afroman got replaced by Tik Tok, like over and over again. In fact, it felt like every bar we passed was playing Tik Tok. Tik Tok all the time, to shake your little white shorts to. My friend said every girl there smelled the same, which I told him was a creepy observation.

Liquored up, we hit up one of several arcades, and blew all the quarters on skeeball.

Then the requisite Slovenian sausages, with onions and sweet pepper relish, with summer job kids in paper hats grilling under greasy green lights.

Finally a few drinks at a place called "Vegas on the Lake" where the band introduced themselves as "I'm Mr. Covert and behind me is the King Sausage" but the older Asian lady who owned the place had fresh squeezed pineapple juice in the fridge. The bartender actually warned me about it, said lots of girls didn't like it because it was fresh, instead of from a can and diluted with sugar, made me try it in front of her to make sure I liked it. The skank bar behind us started playing Pitbull as we walked back to the car.

The Prehistoric Forest Wants Your Childhood, To Fuel Its Spacecraft

Q: Why did the dinosaur cross the road?

A: To rip your fucking head off, duh. With cunning.

Q: What is a dinosaur's favorite thing to eat?

A: Laser Beams.

Q: Why are lady dinosaurs afraid of mirrors?

A: Because they are afraid the sweetness and light reflecting back at them will blind their magic-sensitive eyes.

Q: Where there really giant prehistoric snakes?

A: No. That's an actual snake.

Q: Did the hunter, lost in the monsoon, ever find his sloth village again, and bring food back to his starving sloth children?

A: There are no more giant sloths for a reason.

Q: Am I safe?

A: I am not sure.

Q: No really, should I run?

A: I mean, it's not the worst idea. If you are wrong, the park attendants will just assume you are shrooming, and if you are right, you will still be alive with a generally intact soul. Though it will never be as shiny as it once was.

Q: Shit, is that a giant bug?

A: That is the Prophet of the Praying Mantis, the founder and saint of the grass green hordes, who taught all daughters the techniques of the blood sacrifice, and protects young girls from cowardice.

Q: Don't you totally get the same feeling from this *triceratops* that you get when you read about talking badgers in young adult novels?

A: I've often thought that reading talking animal adventure novels is as addicting as porn. And dangerous. Badgers are nasty little creatures really, and very unlikely to offer you a cup of tea and a ham sandwich. Though I wouldn't put it past them to slaughter pigs and cure their meat.

Q: Wait, isn't that me?

A: Yes, that's you.

Q: Why did mother dinosaurs guard their nests so well, when they knew they were going extinct, when they felt it in the ashy winds and blood soaked sunsets?

A: ...

Q: Is it going to ask me a question?

A: Since giant cobras obviously never existed, I can only believe that one of the sculptors was a secret worshipper of the Cult of the Cobra, a group of women in Lamia who transformed into the deadly snakes and devoured men. Can a woman's beauty be changed into a thing of terror? There's your question.

Q: Is the mammoth really there?

A: The mammoth is always there.

More photos here.