Vent Post: Livin' the Dream - Er, the Purgatorial Nightmare

When I was a little boy, I always dreamed that I'd be 37, stuck in my hometown in a dead-end teaching job; biochemically handcuffed to methadone after years of carpet-bombing my receptor systems; physically and emotionally separated from my fiancé, who is geographically so far away right now that he couldn't be any more distant without leaving planet Earth (although, to be fair, I have become such a ghost of myself that it arguably wouldn't matter if we were sitting on the same couch at the moment).

But, hey, there's always confessional YouTube ;)

I am stop-motion stoned and waiting for better drugs to arrive in the form of my visit to the methadone clinic in T-minus 5 hours and 47 minutes - not that anyone's counting.

I seldom smoke weed; I go months and even years without it.

Marijuana is an old friend who I probably wouldn't hang out with if we hadn't grown up together.

He got weird on me, 10 or 15 years back - again, like that high school classmate who you occasionally run into at a bar downtown. Sometimes, it's great to reminisce; on other nights, he spouts conspiracy theories that leave me increasingly worried that even sitting at the same table as him will get me added to some kind of watch list.

My counselor is a big proponent of the theory that addiction is a failed self-soothing mechanism; she suggests making a list of YouTube videos that calm and center me.

I know just the video, which I have watched dozens of times because it has an unparalleled, mesmeric effect on me.

Seriously, though: I was darkly enraptured from the first time that I watched this video, as much by the sound - the roar of an angry God, so deep and powerful that you can almost feel it even through all of the intervening technology - as by stormy daylight suddenly being invaded by night - the farmhouse opposite imploding - the realization that there is a human being filming all of this, who in turn realizes that capital "I" It is coming for lower-case "h" him. I've always veered away from real gore, disaster videos, and the like, which I think are almost always in terrible taste and probably harmful to the human psyche, but this video made me understand the appeal for the first time.

The video is captioned "MAN FILMS MONSTER TORNADO HITTING HIS HOUSE." It is helpfully hashtagged #tornado.

If I have the lore correct, Clem Schultz, 84, took this video from his upstairs bedroom window. Clem survived, but his wife of nearly 25 years, Geri Schultz (67), who had hunkered down in the supposedly safer first floor, perished, as did her neighbor and best friend.

When I first read about the tornado, I wondered if Clem and Geri had been married for longer than Geri and their neighbor had been best friends. It's hard to explain why, but it seems relevant, in a way, no?

Certain accounts of the incident state that Schultz "rode a chimney" down to the first floor of his house, which conjures an image so unspeakably absurd that even I won't elaborate further.

Okay, if you insist: A salt-of-the Earth, geriatric man-witch astraddle a cheerfully red-brick chimney, which is mysteriously rendered fully horizontal in my imagination. Clem rides the smokestack like a cartoon witch on a broom as it shoots disintegrating bricks out of one end to propel itself forward. Clem clutches his phone in his left hand, shouts "Ooh-wee" as he checks to make sure it's recording.

Or maybe it was more like a fireman sliding down a fire pole that had suddenly appeared out of the ether. Who knows.

Clem's "Ooh-wee" is non-negotiable, though.

Clem and his dog, Missy, who I like to picture as a dachshund, were miraculously reunited two days later.

I've effortlessly retained this info since I first read about the tornado, which hit in 2015 (this coming from the man who once misremembered his age as 32 rather than 33 for five entire months).

"Brian, you've got to stop being so morbid," said my seventh-grade math teacher from the front of the classroom. She was beautiful but had excessive hair on her forearms, according to the bulging and burgeoning eighth grade straight boys, who claimed that it was from shaving her arms while working as a model when she was younger.

I now know this to be a lie.

Trenton*, New York - population 5K, so far upstate that to the rest of the world we simply do not exist - has never produced a model.

*Not the real name.

We are the Wildlings, a total Ewok village.

I say that lovingly.

Incidentally, there was another tornado that hit London, Kentucky, in 2025, during which a pastor and his wife clutched each other as God's monstrous fart passed over them.

Unlike many others, the couple survived.

I believe that they were dug out of the rubble by members of their congregation, which speaks to the practical power of membership in a faith community.

They lost opposite arms - which speaks, I suppose, to a sick and symmetrical sense of humor on the part of our Creator regarding "cherishing our loved ones; holding them closely..."

I am beginning to think that Mrs. M was correct.

p.s. In all seriousness, I'm doing pretty well these days, and I hope that you all are, too.

Love you all. Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay sane - or as close as any of us can manage in this Year of Our Lord 2026.