When Wednesday is Monday, and John Wayne Gacy

Since yesterday was Independence Day, today, which is actually Wednesday feels so much more like a Monday. Wait a second -- didn't I already do Monday this week? Independence Day was a lot of fun. A huge parade down Main Street, large amounts of candy thrown from floats (so much so that some of it was still laying in the street afterward -- a sure sign of candy saturation), a neighborhood block party where we barricade the streets so the kids can ride their bikes up and down the street at the speed of light without fear of being taken out by an SUV and finally, fireworks with Jeff which we don't even have to get in the car to go see. They're a little bit far away, but it beats having to take a 4 year old into a port-a-potty, pluse she enjoys them even though they're so far away.

And based on this picture, do we really think it's wise to let kids play with incendiary devices such as sparklers? Yowza!

So yeah, it feels like Monday this morning and I had a brief reprieve because I got called to change my shift from 8 to 10, which is good and bad, but overall good for this morning as I'm still trying to shake off the Ativan hangover -- last night I was so tired, but couldn't shut my brain off, so I ended up using my little sleep friends -- a prescription of 30 lasts me probably 18-24 months. However, I didn't get enough sleep, so I still woke up in the middle of a benzodiazepine induced haze. But fear not, I'm emerging from it pretty well.

I've been listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens these days -- I picked up his Come On Feel The Illinoise! CD from the library. It was one of those CDs I'd resisted for a while because it was all over the blogosphere as THE BEST CD OF 2005!!!!! which immediately makes me skeptical. But I came across some free mp3s of his and while it didn't blow me out of the water or anything, I decided to check out the CD from the library. It's quite good, I mean, thematically, it works for me (all songs about Illinois.) The songs have a tendency to run into each other such that I'm not able to tell one song from another, plus they have these amazingly unwieldy titles like "A Short Reprise For Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But For Very Good Reasons" and "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!" But musically, it is interesting and I do enjoy some of the songs a great deal.

One that particularly appeals to me is "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." The reason for this, I think, is primarily because what a freaking weird subject for a song! For those who may not know, John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer who lived in the Chicago suburb of Norwood Park in the 70s. During that time, he killed some 33 young boys, burying the majority of them in a crawl space underneath his house, disposing the rest in the Des Plaines River. They called him the Killer Clown because he frequented neighborhood parties dressed up in full clown regalia to entertain kids.

I think the only reason I even know about John Wayne Gacy is because he was the "favorite serial killer" of a pharmacist that I worked with when I was in college. Not that Jerry was a serial killer or anything, but I think it must have been around the time that Ted Bundy was executed and we were talking about serial killers.

John Wayne Gacy is pretty much an unredeemable figure in my mind and the mind of most people, but Sufjan Stevens throws you a curve ball at the end of the song with the lyrics:

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid

I highly doubt he's buried teenage boys under the floorboards of his house, but I think he speaks more abstractly -- about feelings or emotions. I know I've certainly hidden things beneath floorboards, I think we all have if we're honest with ourselves.

The odd morbid pop-culture connection, plus the unexpected dose of human honesty makes "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." my favorite song on the CD.

Listen to: Sufjan Stevens "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."