Overthunk

Unvarnish It

2012-01-08T19:34:00.001-06:00

Can we all make a pact to stop telling little white lies that everyone can see through as well as a freshly Windexed pane of newly minted window glass, and on the flip side of that, to stop getting angry when people tell the unvarnished truth?

Don't say, "I can't do that because I emailed my boss (on a Sunday) and I heard back (within moments) and they won't let me miss that day OR have someone else take over for me OR ask someone else to do my work temporarily, AND I may get fired if I miss even five minutes of work (not true because I know the company you work for and its policies)."

Do say, "When I realized that the thing I volunteered to help with would require greater than zero effort on my part, I felt oppressed by an ever-increasing sense of the mandatory. Therefore, I'd like to not do it, please."

Don't say, "I don't care. Where do you want to eat?"

Do say, "While I realize that my saying so may not create infinite harmony, I, for my part, would like Chinese. Make of that what you will, but please, consider that I am, and have been for three weeks, rather eggroll deficient."

Don't say, "I'm sorry, I'm ill."

Do say, "I regret that my personal tolerance for a family gathering has reached its monthly limit. I'll see you at some future time, but don't expect me in the next 30 days, at least."

Don't say, "Oh, I forgot my wallet."

Do say, well in advance, "Regrettably, I need to borrow $20 to make this happen. Your donation, should you choose to make it, would be much appreciated, and I will neither rest peacefully nor sleep dreamlessly until it is repaid."

Don't say, "There's loads of traffic. I shall be late."

Do say, "Hormonal and/or digestive human bodily functions and/or their cleanup have delayed me. If you haven't met with troublesome versions of these, you one day will. Cut me some slack, my good woman/man."

Don't say, " "

Do say, "Even though you are the only you in the universe, and clearly quite acceptable and even wondrous, something about the bubbling of the evolutionarily and/or deitically ordered cocktail in my brainpan doesn't quite heat to my liking when you and I interact in specific gobs of spacetime. Let's seek others."

We don't have to be cruel, or overly blunt. We just have to be honest, and realize that we all want out of things or have unpleasant needs from time to time. Though we may, for a time, feel a bit dizzy from the fumes of truthfulness, what will ultimately result is cleaner, more aesthetically, morally, and emotionally pleasing future, free of the underlying stink of bullshit. Let's open the windows and get to scrubbing.

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"You ask 'em, 'Where's my motor?'

'Well, it was eaten by snakes.' "

-- Frank Zappa

Found

2011-12-21T00:30:00.000-06:00

     It would never have happened if I had an American Express card. Because Neiman’s only takes checks, cash, their own card, and Amex. It never would’ve happened if I hadn’t decided to go to the top floor in search of some form of house slippers for my hard to buy for grandma. But I did go to the top floor, riding the elevator among bouncing squares of reflected light from strings of plastic butterflies and mirrors, suspended emblems of spring hung in winter because snowflakes were oh so gauche. (I figured out their “use something springy in winter” trick because last year, they suspended strands of white feathers, causing me to glance about for Foghorn Leghorn, checking to see if they were numbered for just such an occasion. I suppose I’ve never noticed, but in high summer perhaps they have strands of icicles or Christmas ornaments in encomium of the cattywompus way high fashion operates.)

     Gliding along the white marble floors (hustling quickly to get something in the way of exercise today) and sweating, I spotted something my friend’s daughter would adore (a kind of paint by number, only with sparkly stickers you had to attach by number to pictures of fancy toy dogs), took it to the register and tried to pay. I was largely disregarded for some minutes, then my purchase was rung up and I was told of the inferiority of my dead common debit card (“We could try to get you a Neiman’s card,” she offered, arousing my ire – why do you doubt my ability to qualify for a department store credit card that doubtless charges 33% interest?). I was informed that there was an ATM at the bottom of the (3 flights of) escalators, and would I like to come back? “Let me think about it,” was my response as I leaned toward not returning just due to the inconvenience of it. I descended amongst the sparkly squares that mocked me, if I’d only had an Amex like any truly successful individual, I’d be walking away with a boxful of sparkly squares and Christmas joy, and perhaps I never should’ve walked in there below a certain cutoff of income level (and, might I add, above a certain weight limit – I’ve had occasion to walk among the rich, and rich women tend to be thin, their parsimony extending from pennies to their plates alike). I walked to the exit.

     Happening to look down as I was leaving, my eyes lit on the middle section of a bill on the ground, folded in at both ends. Was it? I stooped over, picking it up, and looked around, seeing only a hazed-over oblivion and not any panicked seeking in the faces that scurried past. Sorting of my moral dilemma went quickly – I had no way of knowing whose this was, and my only option was to turn it in to mall security, who would probably pocket it as I walked away. I looked around again and unfolded the bill – sure enough, $20.00, not a lottery win, but enough to add to the change I had in my purse to buy the toy for my friend’s kid, who, I justified, deserved it, having lost her dad at age 3 and whose mom was just getting back on her feet from a layoff… yes, oh, yes this was merely a donation to a needy kid. I turned on my heel and walked back into the store, up the escalators again (ha, ha, sparkly squares, who’s sparkling now?) and to the counter, where, I noted, the item hadn’t even had time to be put back on the shelf.

     “Change your mind?” the marginally helpful saleslady asked. I’d considered on the way, whether to say, “I found a $20,” “I located a $20,” or just say that I’d gone to the ATM. In the end, I merely nodded as she went through the carnal motions of commerce. As I turned away, that’s when it happened, the thing that wouldn’t have happened, if not for all these things leading up.

     I turned from the counter, happily swinging the silver, crocodile-printed shopping bag, when I saw him. Was it? Yes. It was him. He glanced one way, glanced another, saw out of the corner of my eye who I was in tandem with my recognition of who he was, and we both acquiesced to an unspoken rule of proximity and politeness that we’d have to speak, societal propriety billowing bigger and bigger between us until we were engulfed. He looked up and into my eyes. I don’t know why, or who began it, but my arms went up to hug him as we drew nearer, and I found something in myself looking forward to it, even though I’d deleted him from various electronic carrier pigeon platforms because he was too busy with work and not able to connect, and in my way, I moved on, rather than tarrying and hoping. (I don’t waste time with such naïve and youthful pursuits anymore: show interest consistently and soon, or I’ll flit my attentions elsewhere like a plastic butterfly or a sparkly square, always twirling to reflect different rays of sun that fall on it, and ignoring the shadowy absences of light.)

     He smiled, like he always did, his beautiful green eyes and silver hair still the same as they’d been when we’d dallied last summer in the back of a wine bistro, since my house wasn’t tidy enough to go there after an hour of drinking wine and having my foot stroked even though my shoe was on, while he looked burningly at me and I enjoyed frustrating him (despite not having the curriculum vitae of beauty to be able to do this… perhaps my cleverness sufficed). Something about a man getting impatient with me while touching me only with two fingers on the instep of my foot and looking at me like he wants to throw me on the floor and do me, right there in front of the sommelier, is wicked fun.

     He was in shorts and red plaid Ralph Lauren button down, apropos for the 75 degree Christmas weather we were having. I smiled big the whole time we talked. How’ve you been? What’ve you been up to? Just trying to get my Xmas shopping done, I’m behind, I pushed my sweaty hair back with one hand, today, today – observant as always, looks like you’ve been to 2 places already (he named them) hefting his big caramel and nut encrusted Christmas apple – apple, apple - a family tradition for 10 yrs or so, he said, aloft.

     The apple: what was done, what was given and taken and how I hugged, but then began to move away, bit by bit, quicker and quicker, as if he’d grab me or slap me, even though I knew he wouldn’t. And on to the escalator and bye and maybe that’s it, I’ll never see him again and then I began to think of things, like why he didn’t like me enough or maybe he did, and we did have a good time together even though it was incredibly stupid and then I had to go and text someone immediately and she said it was Fate but I think Fate has my phone number and email address and I haven’t heard from Fate. And even though he’s so successful and makes 3 times the money I do he’s unsatisfied in some respects and this isn’t a time for mistresses it’s a time for family but I was the one running, running away, even fearing maybe he followed me after I left but there was nothing to suggest that except maybe I wanted him to in some way, wanted him to express a desire, even though that was his particular struggle, his heart was on fire but other parts of him weren’t. But maybe it was me. Or him. Or it. I dunno. And wondering, will he think about me tonight? Will there be any dilemma, or will the eating of the apple erase all thoughts of before and after?

Modern Proverbs

2011-12-17T10:08:00.000-06:00

If you would destroy the evidence, Twittercide, posthaste.

Hell hath no fury like the deluded Tumblr posts of a woman being willingly lied to.

That awkward moment when you post 1,000 Tumblr pics of airbrushed models doing all the sex acts you and I have done in real life, to impress someone who is too far away to touch you on a regular basis.

Love? You're just an actor. He's writing the script. The paycheck? Hoping you'll provide the confidence and worth he hasn't provided for himself. For you? Pro bono, baby. Wisdom is a long time in coming (at least six months, hundreds of texts, hours on the phone and together in person).

Note to self: Fun is not love. Fun is just fun, even if it is pretty intense, and repeated, and other people seem to think it is love, and you do. It is just fun, even if the other participant in the fun says, "I love you" while looking you right in the eyes, in your own bed, after hours of touching, kissing, and laughing together, and you say it back, and mean it.

Creating is always better than copying, quoting, repeating some internet meme, or reblogging.

Often, when someone pointedly states that they don't care about something, they secretly, silently, do.

Half of love is chemistry, laughter, connection. The other half, as in life, is showing up.

When someone tells you they're an asshole, believe them.

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"If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him." -- Liza Hempstock, The Graveyard Book (by Neil Gaiman)

I Am At Walmart

2011-12-09T23:06:00.001-06:00

Appropos of the ubiquitous holiday of the prevailing belief system at the current temporal moment, here is a not-awaited, hardly polished, non-genius parody of The Beatles' "I Am the Walrus" -- I AM AT WALMART.

Lyrics:

I Am At Walmart
Begun July 24, 2011, finished Decemberish 2011.

Daddy, mama, cousins, auntie, me and you and grandma shop together.
See how they whine for everything that shines, see how they whine.
Kids crying.

Sitting by the cornflakes, waiting for the man to come.
Exploded jar of pickles, don’t go in ‘til Tuesday.
Otherwise you want to kill and lines are much too long.
I just want eggs, man, but I’ll spend a hundred.
I am at Walmart. Stuffed kangaroos.

Rent A Cop Policeman sitting
Driving his golf cart past the cars in rows.
See carts fly, dinging cars, then guy in orange vest runs.
Kids crying, kids cryyyyyying. Kids crying. Kids cryyyy.

Yellow squishy filling, glistening in apple pie.
Cheap crab legs, hey fish man, gimme 13 ounces
Before man behind me says, Girl, you just skipped in line.
I just want eggs, man, but I’ll spend a hundred.
I am at Walmart. two three skidoo.

Strolling past the aisles of cookies, trying not to buy
Damn fig newtons, or the chocolate chip ones
Winking elves catch my eye.
I just want eggs, man, but I’ll spend a hundred.
I am at Walmart. Mylar balloons, my mylar balloons.

Outdoor breakroom, choking smokers
Don’t you think the cashier laughs at you?
‘Cross the laser window beeps your Astroglide
See how it slides.
Kids crying.

Semolina noodles, nine pound bag of flour
Cheap box wine, tortillas and of course Velveeta
Rush around but when ya go to pay, time, it slows.
I just want eggs, man, but I’ll spend a hundred.
I am at Walmart.
Checkoutcheckoutcheckout checkout

Listen to my vocal cord crafted version here:
http://soundcloud.com/violetpetalum/i-am-at-walmart

Fair Weather Fan

2011-10-02T21:12:00.006-05:00

I'll turn the TV on, but I'll walk away.
I might seem to be doing other things, but from afar, nonchalant, refresh the page.
With a pessimistic twinge, I'll listen to the cheering and the roars of the crowd.
A drink of water summons me if they get too loud.

If they ask me who I like, I might say, "I dunno, really."
I won't wear the colors, nor at parties drink beer from pails
But in my heart, my hope for you never fails
You turn bad vibes to good, to fuel the cheer of a whole city.

Real fans sit close and watch the carnage when you stumble, trip, and fall.
They'd disparage me, say I don't care at all.
But if I watch, powerless, as you falter
Your missteps turn to mine, face hot with shame, my whole perception altered
To watch you fail dumps poison in my veins.
I keep in sun; I can't abide the rain.

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"I'm not unfaithful, but I'll stray." - Tegan and Sara

At First

2011-09-17T00:16:00.003-05:00

In the first stages,
One thousand iterations:
This is who I am.
This is who I am.
This is who I really am.

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Who, who? Who, who? - Townshend, et. al.

Reminisce Like This

2011-09-05T17:03:00.011-05:00

Well, kids, there used to be a thing called AOR, and Album Oriented Rock radio stations would play entire albums from beginning to end, particularly in the late evening, and I used to stay at my grandparents' house as a teenager when my mother and I weren't getting along. This combination of factors led to my hiding between the window and the bed to muffle the sound and taping the entirety of Candy-O from the radio, after discovering that my grandparents' ancient, half-broken boom box would miraculously do so.

The year was probably 1983 or 4. There I huddled, on the floor, right against the knotty pine window ledge, trying to turn the music up as loud as I thought I could manage without waking my early to bed, early to rise grandfather, or alerting my night owl grandmother. The doing involved some sacrifice, too, as I had to tape over something else I'd captured on the used-and-reused thirty-three cent cassette. How did I know about The Cars? My brother (nine years older than me) had a 45 of "Let's Go." I'd seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High and witnessed "Moving In Stereo's" precisely prudent placement in that. Maybe I'd seen them on the Midnight Special or something. My sense of "this is something I don't understand but I sense that it rules" had kicked in. So I lay there, listening, being astonished, lying on the floor and just absorbing the record into my consciousness, though there wasn't even a cover to stare at, just the capstans moving the tiny white teeth round and round and round. It was new wave, but it was rock. It was spare but melodic. It was futuristic, even, as Double Life segued into Shoo Be Doo, crashed into Candy-O. It enchanted my young, stupid heart, and it hasn't ever stopped.

Fast forward to the present day: I still have Candy-O on my iTunes. I buy Ric Ocasek-inspired sunglasses. I tear up when I watch the video for "Drive" and see Benjamin Orr singing. I am still awed by the quiet style and substance of this collective from Boston. I even know a guy who claims to have mowed their drummer's lawn as a youth. So I knew they'd put out a new album, and I feared to listen. I feared any descent from the glossy black pedestal upon which they sat. But I ran across an article in Rolling Stone, and I read it, and I got curious, so I fired it up. With trepidation, I searched for Move Like This on Grooveshark. With trembling I pressed "Play All." By the second track, "Too Late," I developed a curious lump in my throat, made of collected realization that even though Benjamin Orr was gone, they'd done it. They'd made another Cars record, and by the last track, I knew that again they'd distilled again, in new iteration, the optimistic longing.

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"Lift me from the wondermaze, alienation is the craze." -- R. Ocasek

1982 Ocasek interview

A Barf in Church

2011-08-14T11:23:00.016-05:00

Once there was a Maenad, clever and dull at the same time, walking barefoot along the road, singing her little songs to herself, dancing tiny jigs, chasing fireflies when it got dark.

By and by along the long road, she passed a beautiful temple being built, to Aphrodite, perhaps, with strong pillars being erected and rose gardens planted. Sometimes, a knight came by, a Templar perhaps, in black armor battered. He sat with her on the temple steps and watched her, her dirty feet cavorting, her jiggly form and face saucy, her green eyes flashing. He told her stories and secrets, fascinating her, making her listen and wriggle and lust.

All around, the temple, slowly, continued to be built. And the stories and the eyes of the Templar were fine, beyond any she had yet heard or seen.

But one night, being oftentimes a foolish, greedy, impatient, and oblivious girl, she became hungry, and went out back of the temple and began digging in the dirt, for milk, or honey, or pecans, or whatever the earth, however uninterested in her rantings, would give.

Disregarding the temple and the Templar, she dug and dug with her thyrsus stick, on and on, and by and by she found a slightly glittering lump in the sand, something her eyes, her wanting belly and wanton heart, deemed nutritious.

Though this lump she’d found was not hers, she took it, turned it over in the hazy light of the moon and her own silly mind, put it in her mouth and bit down. It hurt the maenad’s teeth, being a pebble, and not food, and not something she should consume. Trying to cough it out, she, instead, swallowed it.

Anything that shouldn’t be eaten must soon be passed from the body, and she did, ralphing it upon the temple floor at the unfortunate Templar’s feet.

Being a kind and compassionate Templar, he expressed his sorrow at what she had done, ignoring the stink of sick that wafted and curled nauseatingly between them. Being who he was, he stroked her hair and comforted her, and though thoughts of ravishing her exposed neck with his teeth might have arisen, he did not act upon them.

Still, the emesis’ ugly stink spread throughout the temple. The dust of building settled. The songs of worship fell silent.

In the quiet, she stopped and considered. It became clear to the clever yet dull maenad that stories and secrets can better nourish one’s soul than pebbles. She had been digging when instead, she should’ve been singing to the universe, or bantering with the Templar, and remembered that there are places made specially to disgorge the contents of one’s innards, and the middle of a temple isn’t one of them.

So the maenad, with bucket and mop, returns to the temple. The mess has been washed away, but she continues to polish the floor, trying to lull her delirious soul into patience. In the meantime, she thinks on stories, and secrets, and smiles.

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Strut on a line, it's discord and rhyme. -- LeBon, Rhodes, Taylors

Tweet to Armageddon

2011-08-09T15:51:00.008-05:00

On the occasion of 10,000 tweets, August 8, 2011:
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As Vladimir said to Estragon, “Is Godot gonna show, or are we waitin’ for the bomb?”
Estragon replied, “Vlad, I don’t know, didn’t the wall fall down many years ago?”
“And what can we do, in this globe-warmed typhoon,
To pass the time while we wait for our doom?”
Vlad, thumbs a-flying on touchscreen sweet
Fired up his wit and answered in tweets:
“Swap hats, eat carrots, affirm through the day
Anything to hold the terrible silence at bay.”
“Not this evening, but surely tomorrow
Prayer meetings and teabags will trouble borrow.”
“From your bank accounts downturns continue to suck,
Clutch your Cold War Certificate and cover and duck.”
“I know as a toddler you learned to berate
‘Cause on your mama’s lap you watched Watergate.”
“Against all manner of toil, death, and woe,
We still keep waiting for our personal Godot!”
“But Est: No matter what is comin’ to destroy ya,
Let the gypsies sing out HOYA PARANOIA.
Until the cure arrives for whatever befalls
Come on, Gogo, and return the ball.”

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Special thanks to Samuel Beckett, the Cold War, @BradJHudson, @wigwam and @mitdasein of Twitter fame for their inspiration and brain fermentation.

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"No ti dura." - Hutz, et. al.

Baby in the Gun Store

2011-07-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

Last night*, I went to the gun store. It's newish, having appeared in the local shopping center next to the Target about six months ago. I'd been curious about it, but didn't have a reason to go, really. I own an inherited firearm, a cheap, crappy, tiny .22 with a pink plastic-inlaid handle that my mama passed on to me when she passed onto the next plane.

I wasn't raised with guns, really, unless you count the fact that about the time I was 10 or 11 years old, my mother must've visited one of the pawn shops that weren't too far from my childhood home, and purchased a gun. Then another. And a third.

I'm not sure why she felt she needed this diminutive arsenal, except that she was rather paranoid. (That's what comes of reading forests' worth of true crime pulp.) She drove around, for probably the last 25 years of her life, with a very likely loaded gun under the seat of her taupe Toyota Camry. Any attempt by me to convince her that this was dangerous folly resulted in a rant, with an irrefutable point at its center: "I can't fight anybody off!" 'Cause it was true. She couldn't. I don't know if she could shoot them accurately, either, but packing heat under the seat soothed her mind, and anything that could do that was probably worth the risk.

I've never shot this gun that I own, or any other, and my experience with shooting amounts to the time I went out to the backyard of our downtrodden suburban crackerbox house and watched my 5'2, right-wing conservative hairdresser mama fire it once into the sod, "to test it." I was both incredulous at her disregard for proper gun safety, or hell, even just not killing herself or me, and kind of amazed and amused at the same time, but the experiment worked, no one came to harm, and satisfied, she hung the gun up on the back of her closet door, in a purse she never carried.

So the idea of guns is not, to me, a completely foreign one, yet I was apprehensive about going into the gun store. To my recollection, it was my first time setting foot in one. It was Friday, so I inopportunely had my elementary school teacher shirt on, with the name of where I teach emblazoned boldly on the front, so I opted to put on a jacket from the car and zip it way up even though the spring air didn't really require it. (My diligently mischievous imagination had already supplied me with a newsroom, where the familiar voice of the local anchor was articulating "AREA TEACHER ENTERS GUN STORE IN SCHOOL ATTIRE.")

With me were my best friend and her husband, whose birthday provided us with the reason to visit the shop - he coveted a .22 rifle for fun shootin' purposes, and maybe home defense. (Any fool who enters his home was already a goner, probably; the man's a lifetime gamer and weapons collector with huge sword collection displayed a few steps from the front door.) The place looks locked up tight from the outside. It has glass doors but no other windows, so I didn't quite know what to expect on the inside. The place was well-lit, though, and still had the smell of new construction as we walked in. Up to the ceilings, the walls were paneled with corrugated steel on which neat rows of weapons were mounted: rifles, bolt action, semi-automatic, carbine, Winchester, Beretta, Bushmaster, Colt, black, gunmetal, woodgrain. Some looked familiar, something Marshal Matt Dillon might've toted, and some were chunky, unwieldy looking, rendering me unable to fathom how they would be held or used.

In my confusion, I wandered up and down the aisles, looking at other stuff they had for sale - boxes of ammo, flak jackets, 1965 military issue survival manuals - when I noted a lady coming down the other side of the aisle with a shopping cart (yep, they had those, too). Sitting at the top, secure, quiet, rosy-cheeked and happy was a smiling baby boy. Dad was browsing alongside, but keeping an eye on the baby and chatting to Mom as well.

My friend and I of course stopped, cooed, talked with the baby's mom, as we would if it were Walmart or the grocery store or the park or anyplace, but after we did, I kind of mentally stepped back. A baby in a gun store? What would the rest of the world think? But in my Texan, suburban on the edge of rural neighborhood, it's just normal. Moms and dads can have babies, then shop for guns. It's not incongruous. We wonder why the rest of the world feels safe walking around unarmed when Anders Breiviks are roaming freely.

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"Love and a .45 are all you need to get through the night. One'll kill ya, one'll keep you alive, love and a .45." -- Chris Knight

(* - some night around March 11, I just got around to finishing this thing...)

OkCupid and Twitter Users: Sabotaaaaage?

2011-07-12T19:37:00.004-05:00

Alright, I know primarily entertainment-oriented, free internet dating sites don't stand alongside Harvard and Yale as strongholds of hard-hitting, accurate, valid research, but a few weeks back OkCupid, that fun repository of all sorts of personal information that I hope they aren't selling to The Man for parts, had an ad running: "Don't Date a Tweeter!"

Being a member of this much-maligned collective, I found my short-lived attention piqued. Why, pray tell? Well, as it happens, according to this article:

"Just as with their 140-character musings, Twitter users seem to end up in relationships that are bite-size. 'Twitter users have shorter relationships,' says Christian Rudder, the site's cofounder and editorial director. 'How much shorter? Maybe not a lot... but the difference is measurable and consistent.' "

So, let's take a quick look at this with a sampling of nice, round ages. Approximating as close to exactly as possible with this line graph, if you're 20, your relationship lasts 10 months if you tweet, 10.5 if you don't. If you're 30, it lasts 13.5 months if you tweet, 14 if you don't. If you're 40, it lasts 15.8 months if you tweet, 15.9 if you don't. At 50, it's 15.5 Tweeters, to about 16.3 non-Tweeter months. "People who used Twitter frequently, as you'll see, consistently had relationships that were 5-10 percent shorter than those who didn't use the social-networking site," the article continues.

Not to get all hardcore, but if you know anything about statistics, p-values of .05 are typically not considered significant (not that any were given, besides the "percent shorter" info above). Even ignoring that, is two to four weeks a common-sensically significant amount of time over a relationship that lasts 10 to 16 months? Would you call a year-long relationship "bite size?" Do Tweeters have short attention spans, or do they just not like to drag unsuccessful endeavors out? I think the latter is arguable.

Oh, and if you're on Twitter, you can lodge a 140-character complaint to @OkCupid. On Twitter.

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"Scheming on a thing that's a mirage..." -- Mike D, MCA, Ad-Rock

Was it just me?

2011-04-28T22:35:00.005-05:00

It's rare I run across dweebuses of this magnitude, even online, as I avoid forums, bridges, and billy goats, in order to avoid annoyance at meeting trolls.

Caspar: Hello there, Violet. I saw you on the "brains and curves" group. Nice to see someone literate.
[19:44] Caspar: although I can't abide music, to be honest.
[19:44] Violet: hoo me?
[19:44] Violet: You can't abide it?
[19:45] Caspar: Nor can I abide people who repeat what I very clearly just said, or part thereof, and add a question mark to the end, expecting some sort of response.
[19:45] Caspar: Thanks for your time, and I wish you all the best, truly.
[19:46] Violet: Well, telling me you hate something I clearly love isn't a good way to make introductions...
[19:47] Violet: I am literate, but I have my biases as anyone else.
[19:47] Violet: Also, a rather overdeveloped sense of humor.
[19:47] Caspar: No, honesty is a terrible policy, clearly.
[19:47] Caspar: You'd rather I bullshitted about how much I adore music. Fair enough.
[19:47] Violet: You are a ray of sunshine, clearly.
[19:47] Violet: I didn't say I adore bullshit.
[19:48] Caspar: I happen to know a great deal about music, and many other things, but I can't stand the sort of pointless arguments where everyone turns purple and nobody changes their mind, which is the way you people tend to go with your endless "which is the best album ever made?" nonsense
[19:48] Caspar: and I tend to avoid conflict, if I can.
[19:48] Caspar: Which is odd, since I actually like ladies who can kick ass.
[19:48] Violet: You people? I am not a people. I am a person.
[19:49] Violet: There's no way to tell which is the best album, book, painting, or otherwise, as it's completely subjective.
[19:49] Caspar: NO?? ?
[19:49] Caspar makes note
[19:49] Violet: Did you start this conversation because you were feeling crotchety?
[19:49] Caspar: I'm never "crotchety" if I am online. If I get "crotchety", I log off. I don't understand people
[19:49] Caspar: ..who don't
[19:50] Violet: Why are you putting a perfectly good word into quotation marks?
[19:50] Violet thinks to herself how this is getting more amusing all the time.
[19:50] Caspar: I'm glad you're "amused".
[19:51] Violet sighs.
[19:51] Caspar also emotes, equally vapidly
[19:52] Violet makes a list of her new classifications: you people, bullshit lover, vapid
[19:53] Caspar: ..if the cap fits...
[19:54] Violet: I think I understand. It must be your aim to be offensive and arrogant. If so, objective attained. A few books have been written about hubris. Perhaps you should delve into those, o literate one.
[19:55] Caspar: Not at all. I am not offensive. You are the one who whined at me for being honest.
[19:55] Caspar: As for "arrogant", only arrogant people call other people "arrogant"
[19:55] Violet: I didn't whine. I too was honest.
[19:55] Caspar: that's an actual fact.
[19:55] Caspar: Hubris means "pride". I don't see how that applies to me.
[19:56] Violet: Well, you wouldn't, would you?
[19:56] Caspar: wouldn't, would you?
[19:56] Caspar: See how pointless and retarded that is?
[19:57] Violet: If you are prideful, by nature you wouldn't understand how prideful you are. If you think that's retarded, you lack the ability to see your own faults, further proving my point.
[19:57] Caspar: It's like you've known me all my life! It's uncanny!
[19:58] Caspar: can you give me this week's winning lottery numbers?
[19:58] Violet: If you truly believe that announcing to someone that you "can't abide" something they adore within 30 seconds of sending a random IM is the way to make friends, well... you need to attend charm school or something.
[20:00] Caspar: No, I am not interested in making "friends" on second life. I am just here to chat and have fun.
[20:02] Violet: Amended: If you truly believe that announcing to someone that you "can't abide" something they adore within 30 seconds of sending a random IM is the way to chat successfully, well... you need to attend charm school or something.
[20:02] Caspar: Okay, I fucking love music. It's the greatest ever. You heard that great song "Friday"? It's wonderful. You love it, because you "love music", and I love it too, cos it's great!
[20:03] Caspar: Now let's be best buddies, you utterly broadminded sweetheart, you.
[20:03] Violet: Wow.
[20:03] Violet: You're a teeny tiny little soul, huh?
[20:03] Caspar : Why? Because I love music?
[20:04] Violet : No, because you think someone who loves music is broadminded, and assume that their greatest love would be some foolish internet ditty written by a mere girl.
[20:04] Caspar : No, you think everyone should "love music", just because you do.
[20:05] Violet : Did I say that?
[20:05] Violet : What's something you love?
[20:05] Caspar : I like strong ladies.
[20:05] Caspar : How old are you?
[20:06] Violet : Very old. Ancient, even.
[20:06] Caspar : Oh, older women are pretty cool. I'm 35. Well, according to my mother.
[20:06] Violet : Seriously?
[20:06] Violet : I would've guessed like 19. You tilt at windmills pretty good.
[20:07] Caspar : "like 19"
[20:07] Caspar : and you mean "pretty well".
[20:07] Caspar : How old are you?
[20:07] Violet : Old. Way old.
[20:08] Violet : And I'm from Texas. I choose to speak culturally.
[20:08] Caspar : How old is "way old" ?
[20:09] Violet : Carbon dating would be required.
[20:09] Caspar : Ah, but ashamed to say the number
[20:09] Caspar : understood.
[20:09] Caspar : No need to be. it's just an age.
[20:11] Violet : Why do you want to know?
[20:12] Caspar : I'm just curious
[20:12] Violet : That's a good thing, except when it isn't.
[20:12] Caspar : You're always witty, except when you're not.
[20:14] Caspar : So, very old, can't kick ass, loves music...hmmmm
[20:15] Violet : Ray of sunshine gets brighter and more sparkly!
[20:15] Violet : How do you know I can't kick ass?
[20:16] Caspar : If you could, you would have proudly said how old you are. Odd, how those two things go together. I've been around a while, and i can tell these things.
[20:16] Caspar : Some things are utterly consistent, always.
[20:16] Violet : Your negativity within the confines of this conversation, for instance.
[20:17] Caspar : One of the reasons I ask for age is because I find the confident, unrestrained, fun people have no problem at all saying how old they are. I don't actually care WHAT age someone is, as long as they are 18+, but the fact that someone is too embarrassed or ashamed to say so tells me...a lot about them
[20:17] Caspar : and one thing it tells me is that they are naturally very shy.
[20:17] Caspar : and self-conscious
[20:17] Caspar : and undisciplined
[20:19] Violet : Let's see: wrong, sometimes, and yes.
[20:19] Caspar : Indeed. And no arse-kicker, eh? :P
[20:21] Violet : Again: how do you know?
[20:21] Violet : By what criteria do you judge my ability to ass kick?
[20:21] Caspar : I already explained.
[20:21] Caspar : and I've invited you to contradict me. And you have not done so.
[20:22] Violet : By willingness to admit one's age?
[20:22] Caspar : circumstantial evidence.
[20:22] Violet : I'll just say this. It's a good thing you're out of arm's reach, because Violet and violent are but one letter apart.
[20:23] Caspar : well, Dash and dash are no letters apart
[20:23] Caspar smirks
[20:23] Caspar : Ya gotta admit, that's a good one ;-)
[20:23] Violet : I admit nothing.
[20:24] Caspar : violent, eh? A fighter, or just a bitchslapper?
[20:26] Violet : No slapping here.
[20:26] Caspar : Listen, do you want a conversation, or not?
[20:26] Caspar : if so, please try and have one
[20:26] Caspar : if not, I shall move on.
[20:27] Caspar: it's entirely up to you and I am not particularly bothered either way.
[20:28] Violet: What do you define as a conversation? Not saying anything of which you disapprove?
[20:28] Caspar: It means cutting out the passive aggression, the meaningless responses, the bad attitude.
[20:28] Caspar: Again, it's up to you, but I feel I am wasting my time here.
[20:28] Caspar: I'll try one more time: what do you mean when you claim to be a fighter?
[20:29] Violet: I don't give in easily.
[20:30] Caspar : it's not about "giving in", it's about having a conversation like two adult human beings.
[20:30] Caspar : Clearly that is something you are incapable of doing.
[20:30] Caspar : No wonder you "love music" so much. You sure don't think much of people.
[20:30] Violet : That's probably true.

Sitting in the Past

2011-04-20T22:05:00.007-05:00

In the new place
Decorated like the old place
Another world, another distinction, distillation
A birthday party
Formal gowns swirling, pixelated tuxes, faces

You and I
We knew the secret.
"Those days will never return," I said.
"I would say we didn't know how awesome it was. But I think we did. We stood outside the bullshit and we looked in and we knew. Sorry, don't know why I got in a sentimental mood all of a sudden. It's like we're sitting in the past."
"It'll pass," you said, "if you hold real still.

------------------------------------------------

This is, for me, the essence of true romance. - Becker, Fagen

Circles and Providence

2011-01-27T19:44:00.009-06:00

On a field trip with the youth of America today, a couple of weird things happened that are common themes in my life: circles and providence.

For many years, I've experienced an odd phenomenon: I see people from past jobs, loves, classes, schools when I'm out and about and anywhere, despite not having any recent contact or connection with them for months or even years. This happened today, as I saw two people I used to teach with at my old school. Last year we were on another field trip, totally different setting. I saw yet another teacher, that I'd taught with at the same school, though she'd gone on to teach in a totally different district. A man from Peru that I'd taught in an English as a Second Language writing class also ended up being hired there as a teacher assistant. A couple of years later, he and I won teacher assistant and teacher of the year simultaneously in a single year.

I go on a date or to a restaurant, and the waiter is someone I worked at my first job with back in the 90's (that's happened twice). And that's without mentioning the times I see people that I know I know around town, and when we don't have occasion to speak, but I know. I haven't lived in the same town all my life, although I have stayed in the general area. But still, it happens, even half a country away from Texas. Once I went to a wedding in California, on a whim, with a friend who had no connection to anyone I went to high school with. At the wedding, which was held in the bride's mother's back yard, I realized that I saw a familiar face: the bride's brother went to high school with me. Circles open, they close, they shimmer beyond one another, they start anew.

Today whilst I was downtown in charge of a score of precious lives, there was a suspicious package scare in one of the buildings. While we were busy learning about the heritage of our city, even about the man for whom our school is named, news vans and police helicopters were broadcasting and investigating about 4 blocks away. It turned out to be files, not bombs, in the box, but still odd to have been so close to potential disaster. Such things have repeated in my life as well: I had a plane ticket out of the Washington, D.C. airport on September 11, 2001, I survived a van rolling over and over off an Arkansas backroad.

After a while, you wonder: what's the universe trying to tell me with this? That I'm always being watched? That I'm never alone? That nothing will be hidden? That no one is ever gone forever? That, for some reason, I'm being watched over, protected?

Make of it what you will. I do.

------------------------------

"Life, so they say, is but a game and we let it slip away." -- Seals, Crofts

Retail Flummery

2010-08-27T21:28:00.007-05:00

"How many do you have?" the my-age, appropriately "thick" Avenue salesclerk inquired as I strode toward the precious dressing room, bundle of possible vestments held close to my bosom. Sure, it was late and the store was quiet and they were doing their closing activities, but they didn't actually close for an hour.

"Six," I replied.

"The limit is four," she said. ("Hmph. Industry standard is six. Y'all can't count higher than that?" I thought to myself.) I tried to just put 2 on the back of the door so I could swap them and not go looking for her again. She seized them away and put them on an unrelated rack an inconvenient distance away.

I finished the trying ons, the selectings and rejectings, and had to go hunt her down again to find where the other two garments were. She was none too eager or swift to assist me.

In the passing between however, a bait and switch occurred. She gave me the two shirts I still needed to try on, taking three rejected items as I took the three items I wanted back into the dressing room with me. I closed the door, looked down at the clothings clutched in my hand, and did a little jiggling dance while mouthing in the mirror, "That's five! I got five in here!"

Why tiny victories such as these make me joyous I don't know.

-------------

"It's all mixed up." -- Ocasek, et al.

Blogtimidation

2010-07-17T11:14:00.006-05:00

As I'm yet aboard the dating train (Weird. A snippet from Billy Joel's "Piano Man" -- "and probably will be for life" -- just came into my head. Tsk, tsk, that's not positive thinking!), I'm still conducting and being observed through a series of bizarre interviews (a.k.a. online profiles, messaging, phone conversations, and meetups).

Recently, I've given some of my prospective partner candidates the address of my blog, and even, horror of horrors, my Twitta. Some seemed to enjoy it, but in some, it produced intimidation. When I whined about this to some friends, they claimed similar experiences. Do men need a woman who's not quite as smart or less independent than they are to feel good about themselves? Maybe some do. If that's so, this blog serves as a double-edged sword, slicing some out of the equation.

It just underscores what I've said before: writing both validates and betrays me. It allows me to show crystalline facets of who I am, but those facets slice into people and their feelings sometimes. I'll keep doing it though, and truly, I don't do enough. If no one tells the truth, how will we ever know more than we do now?

-----------------------

"And they sit at the bar, and put bread in my jar, and say, 'Man, what are you doing here?'" -- B. Joel

Do You Have 11 Minutes?

2010-06-22T00:40:00.002-05:00

If you do, FORGET ABOUT "SMOKE ON THE WATER" and soak THIS up.

Stairway to Snow Cones

2010-06-17T11:02:00.011-05:00

The dream realm, which I sometimes refer to as The Marches, has produced some interesting storylines lately. Last night, I returned (Yes, returned.... do you ever go back to particular worlds, scenarios or lands in your nightly travels? 'Cause I do.) to some kind of a building with a staircase that went up probably nine or ten floors. The interesting thing about the staircase though, was that it had branches that went in different directions, dead ends, and switchbacks of a sort, so you never really knew, even if you traipsed up and down, exactly where you would end up.

Unlike most stairways - lonely, drafty, and used only as a last resort when the elevator's broken or calories grudgingly need to be burned - this stairway was packed with people. If you took a random sampling of hundreds of people at some kind of huge celebratory event, like a St. Patrick's Day parade in Boston, or Mardi Gras, and put them on this stairway, that's what it would be: mostly young hipster types, but a mix of older people, adventurers, travelers, costumed folk, musicians, and lots of others.

The thing was, this stairway was more or less a hangout, like a nightclub in a way. The point was to go up and down and around and up and down, sometimes getting caught in a corner and having to turn around and go down against the flow, and seeing who you'd be able to meet or talk to or poke fun at or brush against as you went. I was there alone, but for some reason wearing a jaunty $6.00 cowboy hat that I bought at K-Mart on a recent trip to the beach - somewhat like this, only brown and with colorful beads on the front:

So up and down I trudged, elegantly hatted, seeing all sorts of different people, getting trapped, and wandering up and down. Of course you got tired, but that was sort of the point - keep trudging through the protest of your aching quads, because there was something more to see and a new flight that you hadn't gone up or down yet.

When I went to this place before, I discovered that if you wandered long enough, and lucked into taking the right turns, you discovered an oasis in the form of a tiny snack bar, run by two bearded guys who appeared to be post-college but pre-thirty, which sold only cherry flavored snow cones in styrofoam cups. They weren't alcoholic, and there didn't seem to be any other flavor available.

On this trudge, I reached the stand, and went to pay for my much-needed cone. Digging in my wallet hurriedly, I accidentally gave the guy two $1.00 bills and two $5.00 bills to pay the $3.71 charge for four ounces of snowy cherry goodness (expensive! I know!) He laughed, flirted with me, and then did some sleight of hand to return the bills, but when he did, he gave back two $1.00 bills and two $20.00 bills, just to mess with me. Of course I laughed, returned them, paid, and went on my way back to the madness, and that was the end of the dream. I woke up with that feeling of enjoyment at interacting with people like that, and of being chosen as the person to be messed with out of all the hundreds of people.

Pleasant dreams like that are rare, but stick in your mind. If you opened a building like that and touted it as a nightclub, maybe making stop-off rooms so it wasn't just only a stairway, would it get off the ground? I wonder. And I copyright this nutty idea, so if you use it, I get a cut. And free snow cones.

Digital Immigrants? I Beg Your Pardon, Ma'am.

2010-06-07T12:40:00.009-05:00

Recently I was at a technological staff development session, which is a fancy name for teachers being taught. In our day, teachers were sage repositories into which we inserted a coin marked with our name, grade and age and received a preformulated serving of knowledge, encapsulated in a cylindrical package. We were to drink of this can, forged of the strong steel of tradition, stamped with dates and vitamins and things that were surely good for us. Some of us drank this draught deeply and wanted more, some played with the can so it got dented, some spilled it entirely, and if you did, you were out of luck. It was your fault you flunked, even if you were allergic to the contents of the can, even if it was spoiled, even if you couldn’t bear the taste.

Nowadays, teaching isn’t about what the teacher is presenting, but about what the students learn. It doesn’t matter if your lesson is phenomenal, if no one you’re teaching understands it. Instead of a processed beverage of knowledge, today’s teacher must know the specific nutritional needs of each of her students, and prepare a meal that will be appealing and nourishing for each and every consumer of her wisdom. This weaves in new threads of motivation, choice and interest levels.

In an effort to address these, a few other teachers and I were taking a class on how to introduce technology more effectively. Our instructor told us that the students in our classrooms were “digital natives,” having been born into a world that had always had the benefit of highly technological devices, and because they were proficient, usually before entering formal schooling, with the use of computers, technological toys, and even cellphones. We teacher learners under her tutelage, however, were deemed “digital immigrants.” My geek cred responded with indignance. Au contraire. I had a Commodore 64, which I programmed in BASIC, by the time I was 15. Sure, this programming primarily repeated the name of my favorite band in an infinite stream, or made asterisk snowflakes stream down, but it was something. These “digital natives” not only were not in the womb, but some of their parents were not even yet gestated at that time.

Feh. Ask a nine-year-old what a BBS is. They’ve got no idea. They never played “Forbidden Forest” as run off of a tape drive. They don’t know what the screech of a dialup modem sounds like, and they have no concept of pay-by-the-hour internet. If you asked them to pick “computer beige” from a color chart, they’d be without even a pixel of a clue.

So I don’t think that I qualify as a digital immigrant. First generation, maybe. But not even that. That’s Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Case. We built upon our forebears’ foundations, forging the technological frontier of now: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the blogosphere. It is up to us, the digital Gen-Xers, the second generation, to bridge the natives and the immigrants. We can translate, able to relate to both ways of life, that of the Old World (before tech), and the new (where life without tech is unthinkable).

R.I.P. Peter Steele

2010-04-15T20:08:00.002-05:00

A paragon of goth is lost. R.I.P Peter. :(

And That's It.

2010-04-15T18:44:00.000-05:00

Whyyyy?

2010-04-13T21:39:00.012-05:00

Time was, we used to game* for days. There was a flophouse apartment, of near the lowest ilk, with a blue mix of shag mess on the floor. It had two floors, and there were beds strewn about. We all worked at crap jobs, and made things like Magic Cookie Bars to share whilst running down kobolds or evil shadow dragons or the like.

Concomitant with this gaming and flopping were the presence of many an oddball. My GM** is the bestest in the world, so she attracted itinerant gamer types. One such fellow traveler was a guy named George, a portly, blonde and bearded soul who clearly was operating a few notches below fourth gear in the old brain box department. He wasn't mentally disabled, so much as just slower than most.

So one day we're sitting around between battles and such, and he whips out an acoustic guitar. "Oh," I think. "Maybe we're going to see where his genius lies." So he starts strumming, saying he's going to play a song he wrote. I agree to listen. After all, my own character was and is a bard herself, so bringing a little music into real never hurt, I thought.

George starts his song, a melancholy yarn, and goes on through several chord changes before singing, "Whyyy.... oh whyyyy" and then going on for many, many more bars before piping up again in song, "Whyyyyy" and then going on for many, many more measures, then "Oh whyyyy" -- more song styling, and finally, the other shoe drops,

"do the birds have to die?"

That was the whole entire song, even though it went on for a few more minutes.

Tonight I was listening to singer/songwriter/guy with guitar vids, and that gentle, avian-loving simpleton came to mind. Bless him, wherever he may be today.

---------------

* - play roleplaying games such as D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, and such
** - Game Master

----------------------------------

"I see myself in you. I know you don't want me to."
-- John Daly (not a George but a decent singer/songwriter -- check him out!)

You Can't Tell Anyone Anything

2010-04-12T21:44:00.005-05:00

You just can't. And if you do, they will hate you for it.

--------------------

p.s. Blogposts that are less than 140 characters should've been a tweet.

Hell (of a) Week

2010-03-13T17:33:00.007-06:00

pretty shitty this week
but I'm alive
Oh dear
What happened?
omg do you really want to know the whole string of events? haha
it's nuts
one of my student's mom passed away
my heating and a/c broke, was fixed, broke again and is now fixed again
(yay for that one)
I got sick
went to the dr for that
oh yuch
had to take my dog to the vet, the vet got sick, so had to reschedule, go in today to find out my pug has lost his sight completely, no idea why,doing blood work, probably not going to regain
anddddd i had a huge filling pop out while I was flossing in the car and spent all day yesterday getting a root canal
you can't make this shit up
Nope
Never rains but it pours
Are you still sick?
getting better
today I was taking vicodin for tooth pain but it made me so nauseous I actually barfed so off that
but tooth isnt that bad hurting
so that's good!
all this mess has cost like $1000 so far
nods
thankfully, next week is spring break
you'll need that to recover
right on

------------------------

"I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one." -- Jay Z

Seven.

2010-03-09T20:16:00.002-06:00

Your result for The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test...

7 - the Adventurer

Thanks for taking the test !

you chose AX - your Enneagram type is SEVEN (aka "The Enthusiast").

"I am happy and open to new things"

Adventurers are energetic, lively, and optimistic. They want to contribute to the world.

How to Get Along with Me

• Give me companionship, affection, and freedom.

• Engage with me in stimulating conversation and laughter.

• Appreciate my grand visions and listen to my stories.

• Don't try to change my style. Accept me the way I am.

• Be responsible for youself. I dislike clingy or needy people.

• Don't tell me what to do.

What I Like About Being a SEVEN

• being optimistic and not letting life's troubles get me down

• being spontaneous and free-spirited

• being outspoken and outrageous. It's part of the fun.

• being generous and trying to make the world a better place

• having the guts to take risks and to try exciting adventures

• having such varied interests and abilities

What's hard about being a SEVEN

• not having enough time to do all the things I want

• not completing things I start

• not being able to profit from the benefits that come from specializing; not making a commitment to a career

• having a tendency to be ungrounded; getting lost in plans or fantasies

• feeling confined when I'm in a one-to-one relationship

SEVENs as Children Often

• are action oriented and adventuresome

• drum up excitement

• prefer being with other children to being alone

• finesse their way around adults

• dream of the freedom they'll have when they grow up

SEVENs as Parents

• are often enthusiastic and generous

• want their children to be exposed to many adventures in life

• may be too busy with their own activities to be attentive

Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele, The Enneagram Made Easy. Discover the 9 Types of People.

Harper: San Francisco, 1994, 161 pages

You liked the test? so S P R E A D I T ! tell everyone!!!

(copypaste the HTML-code from below to your profile or blog!)

please, leave a comment HERE

you wanna know MORE? so check out, what Wikipedia says about your type... ...even more you'll find in Google

_____________________

You are not completely happy with the result?!

You chose AX. Use the BACK-button of your browser to see the other options!

Take The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test at OkCupid

The Wit

2010-03-07T20:54:00.000-06:00

Your result for The 3 Variable Funny Test...

the Wit

(52% dark, 15% spontaneous, 26% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK

You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat.

I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer.

Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion.

You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm
talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

The 3-Variable Funny Test!
- it rules -

Take The 3 Variable Funny Test at OkCupid

The Sisterhood?

2010-03-07T12:19:00.005-06:00

I was reading this morning in a newly arrived issue of Glamour, which I never ordered but which replaced the dear departed Domino, where Wendy Williams (a member of the growing number of People Who I Don't Know Who They Are, as opposed to Wendy O. Williams, who I do know who was) advises us to, "Believe in the sisterhood," i.e. not all other women want your man, job, etc.

I very much enjoy being a girl, do not mistake me, but I've never been a joiner or a sorority member. Nor do I believe that all other women want what I have. I'm capable of being catty and snarky, but not so much that I have to urge myself to stop doing so and subscribe to some credo of togetherness. So the only slogan I can offer is this:

The sisterhood: blood and holes unite us.

----------------

"I got all my sisters and me." -- Sister Sledge (but ironically composed by TWO DUDES, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers!!)

Word.

2010-01-30T23:49:00.000-06:00

Eyebrow Shaper Loyalty: Does it exist? Is it important?

2010-01-18T21:51:00.005-06:00

I get them done all over town. I don't just have one person I rely on. I traverse the entire city every work day, so when I need my eyebrows waxed, I just stop whereever I'm closest.

So today I go to my local place and the lady who works there, after shoving the remainder of some cabbage-based delicacy (I know because I could smell it on her hands) (and the weird thing is, I ate a cabbage-based delicacy for dinner later on) into her mouth, came out from the back. "Just eyebrows," I cheerfully informed her.

She looked me over, made some conversation, asked me if I was off today, and doing errands, and then I found out why her eyes were narrowed a bit as she spoke to me.

"It's been a long time," she said.

"Yes, it has," I said.

Was I cheating on my local eyebrow waxing lady? Because I think she thought I was.

If nothing else, it explains why her cleanup tweezing is so damn painful.

----------------------

"Sorry, Ms. Jackson." -- Outkast

Not A Name Person

2009-10-03T12:45:00.010-05:00

With any foray into a new work environment comes the gentle unraveling of the convoluted idiosyncrasies of every child of God with whom you interact. This year, I've moved to a new school, and it is so much more wonderful than I could've imagined in my old beat-dog place (as long as you don't mind slaving like an oarsman on a Viking longboat... but I guess if I did, I wouldn't have taken this job). With the exception of a few moments of stickiness with the assemblage of custodians over pencil shavings left by the 29, yes TWENTY-NINE, children I'm educating, everyone's been completely cordial. So much so, that it caused me to have to confront one of my own quirks: I'm not a name person.

After about week two, I had met most everyone and remembered virtually no names. In an effort to help me, a charismatic teacher down the hall, by way of showing me how to better learn people's names, used mine every time she saw me:

"Hello, Ari!"
"I know what you mean, Ari!"
"So, Ari, are you settling in?"
"See you at the meeting, Ari."
"How are you today, Ari?"
"Wow, Ari, your classroom looks great!"
"Bye, Ari!"

It was after a few days of this that my perversion revealed itself: I had previously joked with her about being great with faces, but less good with names, and I actually DID remember her name. I picked up on the fact that she was trying to help me out, probably trying to make sure she knew my name, and was hoping I would greet her in the same way, by using her name (Melissa) that I did know.

However, I'm not a person who uses people's names. I dislike mine being used, and I don't tend to say others', unless I'm speaking to a child for a corrective purpose. I'm not sure why this is, it just grates a tiny bit, kind of like people calling me "hon" or "sweetie" used to. My family never did it, I guess, I wasn't ever around it, so I don't do it.

Yet every day, I knew what she was about and why she WAS doing it, and still I refused, and even delighted a tiny measure in NOT doing it, knowing it rankled her a little that I didn't go along with her understated wish to find out if I actually knew her name, not knowing if I was clueless or stubborn.

These are the wrinkles and uglinesses of my being in this world. I delight in messing with people's heads, creating ambiguity for no purpose, and not even I can stop me.

-------------

"Millions of mind guerrillas, puttin' their soul power to the karmic wheel."
- J. Lennon

Men who eat gross things are great!

2009-09-17T18:19:00.003-05:00

::tap, tap:: Is this thing on? Ahem.

Men who eat gross things are great!
Watch them lap it off the plate!
Time for oral? Don't be late, 'cause
Men who eat gross things are GREAT!

Though I can't do it myself, I do so appreciate a guy who will wolf down anything set in front of him. It's masculine and sexy, eating any lower lifeform you can get your hands on: raw oysters, sashimi, rare steak... and what not.

The Problem With Organics

2009-09-14T20:26:00.001-05:00

toothpastefordinner.com

Preaching the Gospel

2009-08-20T08:07:00.007-05:00

"Well, I've lost 2 pounds," the still fat woman said.

"Yeah, but the booze doesn't help," the smoker said.

In recent days, I have come to realize in vivid detail that we, each and every one of us, is preaching our own version of the gospel. Though we never want to listen to anyone else's truth, as they are not us and "don't understand," this doesn't stop us from slathering and blathering our own revealed prophecies to anyone who will listen.

Over and over again it happens - one lady stops another in the grocery store to tout the virtues of St. Ives hand lotion, I overhear someone thinking aloud about their next auto purchase and jump in, shouting emphatically, "Don't buy a Kia. I mean, do what you want, but I have a friend who has one and they're replacing the engine to the tune of $3700.00 less than a year later. Toyota, good. Honda, good." Stepping back later, I was slightly aghast: why did I launch into a diatribe that no one had asked for?

Some of us,

Dennises and otherwise, are revered for our ability to rant, just another word for emphatically shoving our beliefs onto others.

Not to get all preachy on ya, but it all reminds me of that story about the speck and beam.

Obama Scales It Back After Denny's Visit

2009-06-11T16:52:00.002-05:00

Before you watch this, know two things: 1) I go to Denny's on a semiregular basis (although I like Waffle House more), and 2) I fit many of these descriptions. I still LOL'ed. Hope you do too!

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's

Soulent Green is made from...

2009-05-19T19:29:00.006-05:00

Here green, there green, everywhere a green green.

I have nothing against environmentalism; in fact, I was a tie dye shirt making proponent of Earth Day way back in the early '90's.

But if we want to be truly green, to go beyond the continual lip service of everything and everyone from the presidents of nations to the label on the last shampoo bottle or pack of chocolate pudding you purchased, we must become devotees of the ultimate, Supreme Being-sponsored form of recycling: reincarnation.

After all, if a toilet paper tube can be reformed from what's left and made into the parchment upon which the next great American novel is penned or upon which the photographic second coming of eighties fashion is printed, how much more can the gossamer silk of your immortal soul be carefully placed into the reincarnation bin by some cosmically conscious creator, and spun anew into something superficially more or less than it is now, and yet still with a purpose and a place?

--------------------

"We all feed the worms and trees, so don't be shy." -- Homme, et. al.

Cool Hand Easter (from funnyordie.com)

2009-04-12T17:08:00.004-05:00

Can a man eat 50 Cadbury eggs? This video answers that question, Old West Style.

Oh, and hope y'all had a fun one!

Cool Hand Easter - watch more funny videos

WRESTLING MATCH, FLEA MARKET USA

2009-03-21T14:40:00.002-05:00

He wants this match started!

Ram Man Johnny Evans standing guard on the outside of the ring, TJ the Bull hasAND THEN THEY GO! AND THEN THEY GO!

They're goin' right back at it! They're all hitting the ring again! They're all in the ring once more! Everybody's in the ring; it's mayhem, once more! Oh my God I can't believe this; this is incredible!

Soul Man Alex G! Beating on Prime Time Daryl D! Samurai Kid getting the worst... of the situation from the Miser! Bobby Wales getting beat on by TJ the Bull Jackson! Biiiiig Baack Body Drop! Unbelievable! Big Back Body Drop!

The Soul Man sending Prime Time Daryl D for a ride! And they’re takin’ it to the outside! Ram Man working over the Miser! Power Press Slam!

OHHH LORRRD! OH MY GOD!

TJ The Bull Jackson with the bull rope! And Ram Man, they’re goin’ at it! OHHH! He takes that bull-k… that cowbell right across the head! OHHHHHHH he takes that cowbell right across the head once more!

Samurai Kid gets a cowbell! Bobby Wales with a two by four! BATTER UP! BATTER UP!
Prime Time Daryl D and the Soul Man going at it! Unbelievable!

Soul Man Alex G! Standing guard! Here he comes in! OHHH two by four! Home run! He smacks him on the fanny! Bobby Wales gets him with the cowbell! Bobby Wales trying to fight back! OHHH! Bobby Wales got the two by four! OHHH! He got it right across the head! Unbelievable! OHHH! He gets that two by four right across the back once more! Bobby Wales! Withering in pain!

Samurai Kid, in the crowd! Beating on Miser! I can’t believe this action! This is incredible!

Unbelievable! Bobby Wales swinging that cowbell! TJ The Bull Jackson with the two by four! Referee Lou Daniels and Mike Hunt on the outside of the ring trying to gain control! I can’t believe what’s going on! Everything and anything that can happen is HAPPENING! Body slammed by the Miser! Soul Man getting revenge for his brother! Ram Man holding the legs! Miser in trouble! OHHHH! What a SPLASH off the top!

Unbelievable! I can’t believe this action! Unbelievable!

Samurai Kid sitting in the ring, Ram Man Johnny Evans telling TJ The Bull Jackson, bring it on! Soul Man Alex G Not! Quite! Done yet! He still has his brother to avenge; Referee Mike Hunt in the red shirt trying to keep them separated; Bobby Wales on the outside of the ring with a cowbell,

and the Miser! Is! Out of it! Miser has no more idea where he is and TJ The Bull Jackson is leading him around! Miser stumbling like a fool! Oh, Miser, don't get in the ring; that's the wrong part of town, amigo!

Miser being led to the back of the ring by TJ The Bull Jackson, Ram Man Johnny Evans, Soul Man Alex G, Samurai Kid, and Bobby Wales all standing in the middle

----------------

"Andy, did you hear about this one?" -- Stipe, Buck, Mills, Berry

Crap Products Review: Ray O Vac Batteries

2009-03-17T21:48:00.002-05:00

This week, I had the week off, so I decided to visit a nearby state for a couple of days, namely Arkansas, to spend some time in nature. Mais oui, I took off complete with a half-eaten sack of bridge mix in my purse, but without any new batteries for the camera.

Well, since we were in the cradle of American capitalism - the home state of Wal-Mart - we had no problem finding a local Supercenter at which to purchase $1.00 green pants and sweaters as well as the needed batteries. Well, what do I do? I at first find a $6.58 pack of Duracells, which I spurn for a 94 cent, yes, 94 cent, package of Ray O Vac HEAVY DUTY, yes, HEAVY DUTY, double As.

It turns out that Arkansas, besides being the home state of Sam Walton's deviltry and razorbacks, is pretty damn beautiful in its mountainous regions, with quaint creeks flowing down into tiny valleys around every bend. Athough we were using the GPS, we manage to still get ourselves lost en route to a mountain town in which we were traveling to in order to dig quartz crystals from the earth (fun! by the way). At this detour, however, there was a beautiful lake... a perfect opportunity, I thought, to snap some photos with my freshly powered visual image capturing device. I take it out, snap one photo, and the lens retreats back into its cylindrical home like a mechanized turtle. It says, "Change the batteries." I get angry. After reading the back of the package, I discover that these cheapos are "Not suitable for high-drain devices" like cameras, toys, or possibly marital aids.

If I could return to that Wal-Mart, I'd go back to that battery display, and put a series of sticky notes next to the $ .94 price sign

$ .94 For A Reason
$ .94 Not Suitable For, Well, Anything
$ .94 Means Heavy Duty Suckage
$ .94 And Delicate Like A Flower
$ .94 Possibly Crafted In A Country Not In Full Possession of Battery Technology

Crap Product Verdict: Don't buy them.

---------------------------

"Everybody makes mistakes, but it's always mine that seem to keep on stickin'." -- J. Murphy

A taste of my own medicine...

2009-01-18T23:14:00.006-06:00

In my chosen field, I'm usually the one doling out the vocabulary lessons, but this time I'm getting one. "From where?" you may ask, and I would respond, "From the unlikeliest of places -- a fantasy novel!"

You see, I have just begun a series new to me, that of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson (that's him over there). It's a 32-year-old series, from the first volume at least, and rather good so far! Covenant is a leper who finds himself the unlikely messiah in a magical land... that's about all I can tell you, as I've only made it to chapter six. Below is a list of the new words I've had to look up. I discovered as a result of Thomas that I don't think I own a paper dictionary anymore, and I kind of wish I did, so I wouldn't have to keep getting up from my comfy chair to look things up on dictionary.com. Anyway, the list:

1) picar - weapon (Spanish) -- This wasn't even in the damn dictionary. I had to Google it.
2) preterite - past or bygone
3) chiaroscuro - a sketch in light and shade
4) attar - perfume or essential oil
5) anile - foolish, or dottering
6) monody - tragic ode sung by a single voice
7) vertiginous - spinning or dizzy
8) atavism - a throwback

I think I've even missed a few, but I don't have time to go back and find them. I've got to go buy a dictionary.

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-24T22:38:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas Comment Graphics

Thanks for reading! Hope you're all enjoying this holiday season to the fullest!

Hugs,
Ari

Obsession of the Month! December

2008-12-08T22:36:00.005-06:00

My obsession of the month is Queens of the Stone Age. I have owned their record "Songs for the Deaf" for some time, but I just recently put it on during a long drive alone, which gave me the time to process it in depth. Now I cannot stop listening to it.

In particular is the dusky jewel, "Mosquito Song." It's the last and hidden track. So lovely, full of acoustic guitar, strings, horns, accordion, and an epic finish. Take a listen here.

I tried to embed the Youtube video (linked above), which by the way is just from some random game, without success. The images are unimportant. Close your eyes, open your mind, and listen. Read the deliciously dark lyrics below.

Cheers!
-----------------------
I know, I know the sun is hot

Mosquitos come, and suck your blood

Leave you there all alone

Just skin and bone

When you walk among the trees

Listening to the leaves

The further I go the less I know

The less I know

Where will you run?

Where will you hide?

Lullabies to paralyze

Fat and soft, pink and weak

Foot and thigh, tongue and cheek

You know I'm told they swallow you whole

Skin and bone

Cutting boards and hanging hooks

Bloody knives, cooking books

Promising you won't feel a thing

At all

Swallow and chew

Eat you alive

All of us food that hasn't died

And the light (life?) says

Somehow they pick and pluck

Tenderize bone to dust

The sweetest grease, finest meat you'll ever taste

Taste, taste

So you scream, whine, and yell

Supple sounds of dinner bell

We all will feed the worms and trees

So don't be shy

Swallow and chew

Eat you alive

All of us food that hasn't died

Garnier Lisa

2008-11-22T15:32:00.004-06:00

O Garnier Lisa

Thy slightly bemused face shines out

From under gently cocooning flatironed tresses

Of Macadamia # 90

Without thy cornflower blue eyes

And thy Nearly Nude lips apainted

How would I find the searing chemicals I require

To make my own locks this Light Natural Blonde

Not too light yet not too dark

Among the myriad types at Walgreen's

Or at CVS?

Truly, I pray,

N'er shall come the day

When Garnier finds you too 2006

And updates yours

To some other visage, strange and unfamiliar

Causing me to hunt and scrabble, dark roots overlong,

Perhaps finding nothing.

-------------------------------

p.s. I have so missed you all. I have been sucked into the dark, yet delicious underworld of the MMORPG, job changes, and finishing up a master's degree. They have sapped me, yet I hope to restore my blogging work to its former glory soon (probably not much of a stretch....). Kisses!

In Remembrance

2008-09-11T06:05:00.003-05:00

I don't know what the best way to commemorate this day is, other than to retell the way it affected our lives, which I did here. I was blessed to stay here in the best place on earth on that day. Some were not. I honor them today.

Does the Muse Still Exist?

2008-09-08T22:36:00.002-05:00

And, more importantly, is she a dominatrix? What do y'all think?

-----------------------------------

Mistress Muse

Whenever I fail to revise or begin
The tang of her leather falls across my skin
Whenever I succumb to procrastination
She provides me with vexing inspiration

Repeated lessons in being humble
Smart yet again as I continue to bumble
Shuffling my way across this earth
She delights in the torture of excessive girth

As dogs eat dogs and barracudas shred
Creative thoughts flow through my head
To gain new power the antiquated hag
Shoves down my throat introversion’s gag

An abyss of deep feeling imprisons me
Chained among careless society
My heart’s lifeblood flowing down to the floor
She ties my feet in my mouth and slams the door

If of seeing the sun I begin to dream
She lassos round my self-esteem
She won’t permit a lick of pride
Preferring my tongue on her heeled boot’s stride

Though I might be gifted on one side of the score
There’s a downside that amuses that sadistic whore
‘Til the day I die, from the day I was born
Has dug nonconformity’s spiky thorns

For my own good, she will declare
Down through the ages’ dusty air
“Let infinite punishment on her rain!
Eternal beauty is born of pain.”

-----------------------

"My plug-in baby /crucifies my enemies / when I'm tired of giving."
-- Bellamy, Wolstenholme, Howard

Walgreens Cashier Turns Into Commercial

2008-09-02T19:06:00.004-05:00

SCENE: Standing in line at Walgreen's with a Take Five candy bar and a box of Garnier Nutrisse Hair Color, Macadamia #90, in my hands, behind a lady who had only a magazine.

PLAYERS: Cashier, The Lady In Front of Me, Me

(As the scene opens, Cashier rings up the magazine...)

CASHIER: Ok, one magazine (patronizingly)... Can I interest you in a Snickers bar today?

TLIFOM: Umm, well ok, I guess. I'm going to the hospital. (She takes 3 Snickers bars from the Cashier.)

CASHIER: Great, because when you're hungry, why wait?

ME: (stifled, unbelieving snickers) (not the candy bar, the giggles)

CASHIER: (eyes me with slightly slitted eyes, addresses TLIFOM) Thank you, come back.

CASHIER: (to me) Hi, how's it going? (rings up candy bar and hair color) Can I interest you in a Snickers bar today?

ME: No.

--------------------------

"We are now accepting callers for these beautiful pendant keychains."
-- J. McCrea, et. al.

The Essentials of Life

2008-08-28T23:58:00.003-05:00

The Decline of Devil Worship

2008-08-25T19:20:00.014-05:00

The year was probably 1983. I, a 13-year-old rocker (or "freak" as we were known at my place of schooling), with frosted hair combed and sprayed into wings and a quarter inch of black liner beneath each eye, shuffled through the Target checkout line after my mom, who was likely slightly blitzed at the time. She paid for her stuff and I somewhat boldly but with no small amount of trepidation placed Ozzy Osbourne's "Diary of a Madman" LP (shown) onto the familiar red counter, fully prepared to pay all my week's babysitting wages for the thing. The checkout girl, who was probably only a few years older than me but considerably more mainstream in her level of conformity gawked at the tattered, blood-spattered Englishman on the cover, then at me, then at my mom, all in disgust. A sense of delicious rebellion flooded through me, multiplying with every second she disliked the album, and myself for buying it.

A short time later, my father (who may well have been on the doob that fine day) offered to get me something I wanted at the mall. Passing up the clothes and makeup, I went right for Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil" album, which sported a simple matte black cover, undecorated except for the red lettering of the band's name and an inverted pentagram, done in a shiny clear coat so that it was invisible unless you tilted the cover just right. My father noticed that, but didn't stop me from buying it. It may not have been good parenting, but it certainly fueled my young musical fire.

Both of these albums had, at least as a theatrical ingredient, the presence and possibility of devil worship behind and within them. Count the sinister elements on that DoaM cover: inverted cross, insane kid, dead ravens, black cats, red candles, some evil spell in a runic hand posted on the wall, spiderwebs, bloodstained Englishmen... and the list goes on. Now, we look at this and find it ridiculous, but back then, particularly in the Bible Belt burbs, there was a suspicion that it might actually be real. These musicians might actually be in league with the devil, and if you listened, you might be too. It was something akin to the creeping suspicion you feel on Halloween night as a kid. That's probably a shadow, but if I linger here, it will turn into a vampire.

Of course, I took a typically teenage position of justifying this possible alliance with dark forces as not really all that bad. Motley Crue were saying, "Shout AT the Devil" not shout WITH him, and Ozzy's upside-down crosses were, um, well.... ok, I didn't have a good justification for that. I did attend an Ozzy show where a church group demonstrated with a giant cross outside and picketed the place. Can't say as it made me change my evil rock 'n' roll listening ways, though. I seem to recall shouting back at them as we passed.

Though there's even more insidious music and stage shows going on now (i.e. Marilyn Manson parading in tits and creepy contacts, and bands like Cradle of Filth making videos for their atonal wailings that leave a taste like dead flies in your mouth and Cookie Monster-like vocals ringing in your ears), no one thinks twice about accusing them of actual worship of Satan. Hell, Tenacious D have even made a career out of demon nostalgia.

The question is, were we paranoid then, or oblivious now? Satan could still be walking amongst us, propping up Justin Timberlake's career with no one being the wiser. Why? Just because we've stopped paying attention to him.

---------------------------
"Clap your fuckin' hands!!!" -- O. Osbourne

Courtesy of Experiments in Mediocrity

2008-08-14T10:00:00.005-05:00

The Official Song of the 2008 Olympics: Welcome to Beijing -- Please Ignore the Communism.

My apologies for reposting, Bride of Porkins, but it's just too perfect.

Be on the lookout for Jackie Chan.

Find Out Who Ya Are!!!

2008-08-14T09:54:00.002-05:00

Your Personality Is

Idealist (NF)

You are a passionate, caring, and unique person.

You are good at expressing yourself and sharing your ideals.

You are the most compassionate of all types and connect with others easily.

Your heart tends to rule you. You can't make decisions without considering feelings.

You seek out other empathetic people to befriend.

Truth and authenticity matters in your friendships.

In love, you give everything you have to relationships. You fall in love easily.

At work, you crave personal expression and meaning in your career.

With others, you communicate well. You can spend all night talking with someone.

As far as your looks go, you've likely taken the time to develop your own personal style.

On weekends, you like to be with others. Charity work is also a favorite pastime of yours.

The Three Question Personality Test

("Compassionate" may occasionally equal "whiny.")

Thanks. I never noticed.

2008-08-10T18:04:00.007-05:00

Yesterday I was attending a women's expo. I was dressed nicely, in a fuschia Lane Bryant work top, ruched at strategic points, with cute, short black skirt. I even had my dollar store hair clip updo rocking, and was hustling and bustling around in a couple of different capacities, professional and personal.

As I re-enter the exhibit hall, an Asian lady at the acupuncture booth forces the pictured flyer into my hand, though I was walking at a speed calculated to deter flyers being given to me.

A bit later, I was looking around at a jewelry booth, and saw some bracelets that I thought my (thin) sister would like. The saleslady quickly pointed out the extended size bracelets to me, though, in case the regular sized ones didn't fit (which generally, they do).

People who aren't fat do not have any clue how persistent, how pervasive, the consciousness of your own size is in the life of people who are. I suppose I should forgive them for that, as well as their bold attempts to help me solve my problem. At least my most deep-seated failing is visible, however, and that is in some measure honest.

What's yours, thin people?

p.s. I later went roller skating for two hours at my niece's birthday party, far beyond many people who were half my size. So that's gotta count for something.

------------------------

"Nobody's fault but mine." - Page, Plant, et. al.

The Texas Way

2008-08-01T22:44:00.004-05:00

Snapped outside Wal-Mart as I hopped out of my hippie-ass Prius...

State Review: Arizona

2008-07-15T00:11:00.013-05:00

Greetings, blogpals. I hope your summer's going as swimmingly (read: drinkingly, online gamingly) as mine is. I have just returned (again) from the desert, my second summer in a row to visit the Sonoran Desert, possibly the Largest Desert in North America and home to seventeen aboriginal American cultures (yep, I wiki'ed it), among them the Anasazi, who apparently ran around mostly nekkid (according to the film I saw).

Anyway, it was my first foray into this hot, dry state, so I present you with a review. It's not balanced nor fair, since I didn't visit every square mile, but I did hit some of the high points and it is written in the hit and run style that we love so much today.

**NOTE: Some "pissy" things are not the fault of the state of Arizona, but they were pissy nonetheless.

THE GRAND CANYON

Happy!
-Frickin awesome big hole in the ground
-Majestic
-Watching an IMAX movie before you get there so you know what you're actually looking at
-Breathtaking

Pissy!
-Totally inspired my somewhat fear of heights whilst hiking along the sidewalk at the parts where there is no fencing
-My dumbass camera decided to break on the way.
-It's hot
-I didn't get to actually go down inside the canyon and go river rafting. Apparently that is far more complicated than I thought, and involves mules.
-People throw coins in, which probably chokes gila monsters.
-Not actually seeing any gila monsters.

PHOENIX

Happy!
-A fairly navigable, not too huge airport
-Swimmin' pools and hot tubs
-Watching Andrea Bocelli for an hour on the super HDTV in the model homes of a gated community
-Fake grass that looked real, and no one has real grass
-Everything, EVERYTHING, is in "desert colors"

Pissy!
-Target had a Canon camera on sale, but it was out of stock.
-Plowing over a maverick goat on the way back to the airport (Ok, that was sad, not pissy, but thankfully I wasn't driving. I would've stopped at least. Jeez.)
-My relatives are getting on in years and do not enjoy eating as much as I do; therefore it was kind of like cold turkey fat loss week for me.
-It's hot.
-Not having my own vehicle, much internet access, or privacy, and therefore feeling like I was 13 years old again.

ROUTE 66

Happy!
-Well, I saw it.

Pissy!
-It's a road. The ghost of Jack Kerouac did not speak to me or anything, and I wouldn't have enjoyed it if he had.

SEDONA

Happy!
-Nestled in a circular arrangement of beautiful red mountains, set off by green ponderosa pines
-Churches built into mountainsides
-Spectacular drives on the way there, whereupon the hidden dwellings of the very rich could be seen on winding mountain paths
-Dazzling art galleries and quaint shops all over
-Tasty local beer

Pissy!
-Of course, it's touristy and pretentious
-Overpriced
-Not being as rich as those people I saw sitting on their wooded back decks
-Not going to said art galleries or quaint shops because I was trapped by relatives on fixed incomes with less sense of adventure than I
-Lots of walking on steep mountain grades, in the heat, at high altitudes
-Only drinking one glass of tasty local beer

JEROME (A former mining town way up in the mountains)

Happy!
-Deadwood-esque, and more interesting than I suspected
-Lots of the town parts from the 1800s are still there (such as a hotel with no walls)
-Some Arizonan asking me if Texas looked like it looks up there (for the record, only in some places... Dallas? No.)
-Getting caught in a thunderstorm in the middle of the desert, in the summertime

Pissy!
-Lots of walking, in the heat, on steep grades
-Rude waitresses and fajitas containing no grilled onions whatsoever

SAGUARO NATIONAL PARK

Happy!
-Giant, 20 foot tall cartoon ass cactuses! All over the damn place!
-You expect Wiley E. Coyote to drop in at any time
-The tour guide was actually friendly and the tram tour was cheap
-Not losing a shoe off the edge of the tram

Pissy!
-They rushed me out of the bathroom when, fuck, it's the desert in July and there isn't going to be a run on tours this time of year.
-Some kid got attacked and bitten by a roving wild javelina. The local news reported that "it is suspected that the javelina has left the area," leaving me to wonder how exactly they would identify said javelina, and why they thought it might return to the scene of the crime.
-Almost losing a shoe (and perhaps my life in trying to retrieve it with my toes) off the edge of the tram
-It's hot.

BIOSPHERE

Happy!
-It was somewhat hidden and creepily empty at midday
-Walking about unquestioned
-Felt like walking into a Choose Your Own Adventure book

Pissy!
-Pauly Shore doesn't actually reside there
-Not finding evidence of vast government or corporate conspiracy
-It was hot.

THE INTERNATIONAL WILDLIFE MUSEUM

Happy!
-Got some great pictures of animal skulls for later student study

Pissy!
-It's full of way dead animals.

MISSION SAN XAVIER DEL BAC

Happy!
-It's the "Sistine Chapel of the New World" -- and it did remind me of the European cathedrals I saw
-Friendly mission dogs who let me pet them a bunch of times
-Native American fry bread stalls
-Cheap souvenirs

Pissy!
-Not actually eating any fry bread
-It's hot

So there you go, folks. Now you may or may not want to visit.

-------------------------

"Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona..." -- Frey, Henley, et. al.

"And now, a message from the National Apple Institute..."

2008-06-23T13:52:00.006-05:00

"...Fuck Pears."

George Carlin is gone. I trained my comedic chops at the heels of this record (which was actually my brother's, but I played when he wasn't there to pound me). Some of its sweetly bitter sarcasm and incisive wit will remain lodged in my consciousness until I follow along into the great beyond.

May cynical cherubs fly thee to thy rest, sir.

The Urge to Destroy Goes Fizzzzzzzzz

2008-06-22T21:16:00.006-05:00

So, yeah -- baths? Not for me, really. I bought the $8.00 confection you see at left back in the winter months at Lush in that old bastion of Dallas snobbery, Northpark Center.

It is a nearly baseball-sized bath fizzy deemed the "Champagne Supernova." Did I mention it was $8.00? I thought when I bought it that perhaps I would be able to use it twice. Let me tell you here and now, dear readers: I did not, and will not, have the strength. For when I embarked on the unraveling, the foaming away, of what seems a tiny, pink world clutched within my dragon's hand, I could not stop. (Hey, they started it, mentioning the superdestructive concept "supernova" in the thing's very name.) I could not put it aside and stop watching the particles of bicarbonate and scented oil dissolve into nothingness, staining the bathwater pink with its collective blood. I could not halt the staring as each folded fleck of what was sold as herbal additives but may just have been torn up bits of paper packaging from the bath fizz assembly line floor, floated into the steaming primordial soup in which it dwelled.

For all that, though, the bathwater got me overheated within about 15 minutes and I had to get out. Be glad I am not one of the gods. The universe might be endlessly remade on a swifter schedule than it is currently following.

p.s. I also have the same problem with floral foam. Must.... kill........

--------------------------------------------

Someday you will find me...Caught beneath the landslide... -- L. Gallagher

Another Perspective on the Election...

2008-06-17T15:19:00.004-05:00

This is just a tiny sample of the hours of guffawing you will experience if you visit its origin, www.nataliedee.com.

I was told that it was suspected by some that I had done it. I don't believe that, because Natalie is much funnier than me. Personally, I can't wait for the store to open, open, open. Check her out!!

Slurpee Science

2008-06-13T19:32:00.003-05:00

(I should change the name of this blog to "Confessions and Obsessions of a Food-Obsessed Fat Chick".... really I should.)

Ok never mind that people, it's summatime, summatime, sum, sum, summatime and I have got to lay on you the science of finding, dispensing, and drinking the purrfect Slurpee!

HUNTING -- In Search of Slurp

First off, if you are trying to get real Slurpee goodness at anywhere other than a 7-11 store, please.... see your way out of that sham distributing establishment posthaste. I say this in all seriousness. Drive to another state or board an airplane if needed, friend. Icee? Too airy. Chilly Willee? Too gritty. Slush Puppie? Too syrupy. No, if you really want to experience the cola-fueled tongue trip that IS Slurpee, you have to go for the real thing. Oh, and the flavor you want is COKE. Not Mountain Sweat Mop Water or Blueberry Bison Backwash. None of that.

JERKING -- Tougher than at the Junior Prom

You may think that, having found a 7-11 and made the decision to stick with COKE flavor, that the rest is easy. Not so, padawan. You still have miles to go before you drink.

When you get inside the 7-11, you must slip past the entry door, tossing a quick "hi" to the furriner who is probably jockeying the register and who in all likelihood is gawking at your pale, corn-fed American cleavage, forgetting this uncouthness so that you may adhere to the objective: frosty, sinus-freezing nirvana. You must brush past the paint-spattered construction man and the tobacco-stained midday hipster and the gruff, flannel-clad bearded guy and the upwardly mobile suburban yuptype ever so lightly, your gaze finally falling upon that row of churning cylinders. If no "out of order" sign or flashing red button (indicating an "unSlurpified" mixture) is seen, check "Obstacle 1" successfully off of your mental list.

The second step is to do a physical jerk check for Slurpee readiness yourself. Yes. It can happen. There can be premature Slurpage without any sign, without any flashing red indicator. It is horrifying, but fail to do the physical jerk check and end up with a glossy plastic cup filled with brown liquid and unmelded snowy stuff in the middle. This is Slurpee in its larval form -- not yet ready for consumption. Should you do the physical jerk check and find this disappointing mix spewing from the nozzle, walk away. Go a few blocks to another 7-11 ONLY if you have the spiritual endurance to face the possibility that, in the high summer, it might happen twice or thrice in the same day.

What is the physical jerk check? It is the act of stepping up to the machine, gripping the black-handled lever and slowly dispensing a dollop of Slurpee mixture before getting a cup. Watch the puddle -- if it turns from dark to the delicious caramel hue of a Coke-flavored snowball, then you may proceed. Grab a cup (bitch please, not the small or medium -- large or above!), slap on a domed top so that you can dispense an extra ounce or so of snowy perfection, line up the hole and jerk again, slowly, steadily, watching the -- how can it be! Coke that is snow! -- thick liquid fill the cup to the top, changing color as it goes. Fill almost to the top, leaving about a 1-inch gap (or no gap if you're willing to be seen standing in front of the Slurpee machine lapping up what gushes out). Stick in a long spoonstraw and you're ready to saddle up.

CONSUMING -- Kids, do not jar.

So after hustling to the counter, swiping your dirty lil' debit card as quickly as you can and pushing through the exit door, you are free to enjoy your Slurpee unfettered within the confines of your car, Weezer up at full force as you speed back to the main thoroughfare. But careful, son! Take small sips or experience what freezing to death feels like, only confined to the insides of your skull cavity. Once you get down to the midpoint, remove the cupola (ha,ha!) so that you can stir as you suck the liquid part out to reblend as you go. Alternatively, you can use the spoon end of the straw to scrape the tiny snowpeaks off and eat them free of cola flavor, or stir and stick it down into the Slurpee, placing your finger at the other open end so that you can raise up a column of snowy Coke into the air and drop it onto your tongue.

Yes, only a lifetime of Slurpee consumption can provide you with the ultimate experience. I have saved you that research. You're welcome.

THE PHYSICS -- How does Slurpee work?

Well, I don't know. It could be spun from dark forces. (If it is, I don't wanna know, because I'd be hard pressed to stop consuming them.)

TRICKING YOUR SLURP (only for advanced fans)

You will find that the addition of some impossibly salty or hot chip item will delight your brain with its incongruous flipping between frozen Coke and salty tongue rasping or frozen Coke and fiery, crispy, potato crunches. I recommend a nice '08 bag of Munchos or Cheetos Flamin' Hot Fries. In a pinch, Al Capp's Hot Fries can stand in, but they aren't nearly as lovely.

Follow my advice and icy goodness shall be seen upon your refreshed, hydrated visage.

Happy Slurpee Summer!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Out of gas

Out of road

Out of car, I don't know how I'm going to go

and I had a drink the other day

Opinions were like kittens I was giving them away -- Modest Mouse

A Trip to Big Lots

2008-06-09T12:41:00.020-05:00

Recently, I visited Big Lots, the shoddier, seedier cousin of the sadly departed K-Mart and elephant graveyard where discontinued merchandise goes to die. There I found freakish goods hailing from a variety of lands, and each revoltingly unappetizing in its own diverse fashion. Here's a sampling:

Oysters in Cottonseed Oil -- because nothing piques one's culinary delight quite like grayish fish flesh tinned in industrial lubricant.

Lemon Extract -- With 20% Vaseline added to reduce viscosity

Del Monte DILL -- Far too pale and estranged from their state of origin to serve such a function, at least these DILLS know the value of education and plan to attend jr. college.

Nutrisystem Nourish -- Eat oxymoron dogs, on the cheap!

Maggi Delicias de Pollo -- Or as I affectionately call it, bagga chickin maggit stuff.

Arkona Herring Fillets - As Opus knows, a little paprika sauce makes herring "pop."

Jelly Mints -- Hated at Grandma's house since 1853.

Conclusion? Big Lots -- Repository of vomitously inedible foodstuffs.

Wattamelon Part 1

2008-06-07T11:15:00.004-05:00

School let out this past week, and thus the summer has truly begun. (FUUUCK YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.)

As a celebration of that, the first watermelon for personal use was purchased a few days ago, and I spent a chunk of the morning helping it slip its mortal coil so that I could devour it.

Despite its anemic appearance, it has the requisite hollow sound when tapped and tasted appropriately sweet (although it will likely not be a contender for Best Watermelon of the Summer). While shoveling it into my waiting cakehole, I thought it might be amusing to start writing about Crazy Summer Thingstm -- aka, things I only do because it's summertime. One of those things is eating watermelon after watermelon, just because I can.

Resolved, I shall begin tracking summer watermelon consumption in the following ways:

TNW - Total number of watermelons consumed alone
DN - Days Needed to consume each melon completely
WDR - Watermelon Deliciousness Rating (to include color, texture and sweetness)

In just a few days, I'll get back with the most current watermelon data available.

It bores me.

2008-06-02T18:11:00.006-05:00

Left the drinkable yogurt on the sink today,
Came back from work and found bacilli astray.

ça m'ennuie.

Twista-haler sprayed powder 2 days later,
Lucky, pharma-girl was a considerate trader.

ça m'ennuie.

Check engine lite came on cuz the gas cap was loose,
Service open 'til 7 but only 5 for Prius.
Only 2 trained techs for that rarified bird,
Come back Saturday you hybrid drivin' nerd.

ça m'ennuie

Mind's all confuddled with the brand new pills,
My high blood pressure never gave me these ills.

ça m'ennuie

--------------------------

"Last night what we talked about
It made so much sense
But now the haze has ascended
It don't make no sense anymore." -- Arctic Monkeys

Seeds of Rebellion

2008-05-18T23:19:00.005-05:00

I live near the police station of my town.

This evening, a beautiful evening with the sun slanting its golden rays through my open car windows, I was driving around, long hair flying, lipstick on, sunglasses on, listening to Sublime's song, "Crazy Fools."

Interestingly, the way I timed it, it took just the perfect amount of time to leave the gas station, cross the parking lots and be passing right in front of the police station as Bradley is wailing,

"Load up the bong!

Crank up the song!

Let the informer call 911!

Load up the bong!

Crank up the song!

Let the informer call 911!"

Why I do these things, I don't know.

Deadwood Gem

2008-05-15T10:17:00.003-05:00

(One of apparently several in the "Cleaning Out the Office" Series -- found scribbled on a scrap again)

Swearingen: "You ever been beaten, Merrick?"

Merrick: "Once, when I thought I had the smallpox, Doc Cochran..."

Swearingen: "Are you dead? Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fuckin' beatin's. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back."

Reduce, Reuse...

2008-05-14T11:10:00.007-05:00

Tally ho, blogketeers! I hope you are all well. I know I am clinging to a quartered potato in my own personal home remodeling/end of school year stew right now, but as I was cleaning up my office in preparation for putting new laminate floors in just five short months after the toilet flood incident, I found an old piece of titleless lovesick screed (a poem) scribbled on a yellow legal pad. I offer its debut here for your perusal. Enjoy!

------------------

3/1/05

So quickly, and yet an eternity
Before something new began.
Sadness lingers like Chopin's fingers
Ghostly upon the keys
Playing notes I cherish
But which echo impossibilities.

And now a newish melody
Distantly enters my heart
At this distance I can't be sure,
But it sounds more like Mozart.

Though I have broken with the past
And want to begin anew
My wittily pirouetting soul still fears
Being messily sawn in two.

--------------------------------------

"I couldn't sleep at all last night..." Bobby Lewis (1961)

Terminal Busyness

2008-04-13T21:26:00.002-05:00

The dreaded terminal busyness has eclipsed the effort of this blog, of late.

Apologies.

I am thinking good thoughts and drawing and writing and (drinking) and I haven't, haven't given this up.

Summer she's a-comin'.

The Latest

2008-03-20T22:41:00.005-05:00

Being the latest is capital when you're on television or vinyl, but being befuddled
and all a-muddled, so entrenched in a puddle of your own morning stupor that you go three miles east when half a mile west was the required span,

And in east Dallas, down in the grove you drove and drove
Turning and turning to find your way back to the hackensack street
That you somehow went past in your lack of directional aptitude.
Finally back on track, not intending to slack
but time keeps on slippin', your lid is flippin' thinkin' of how an H street
Can turn into a B avenue in your mind's eye and in your eye's mind, even though you checked it time and another time, thinking it fine.

You can't turn left on the one way H so you make your way
down to another rue name of C, now you really gotta pee
but soldier on you must for in work we trust, even if only to pay the wage.
Cursing advancing age, you go past the churches and carnicerias, old ladies and all the taquerias down rue C until you can go back to the northness of H that you require, thankful not to burst a tire in all this poorly maintained pavement down here in the down part of town.

Finally pulling the waspmobile hybrid riceburner into the pothole pocked spot, you schlep your bulk along at a moderate hustle toward the hunk of metal and glass offering rent on the cheap to schooling institutions, shuffling on the cracked sidewalk where crabgrass grows jungle lush like untrimmed brush through the three inch gaps in grey, past the poorer folk than you on the other side of the street.

Finally you ease yourself through the glass and metal portal, slightly ajar, sign on the line, wave at the receptionist who used to work with you but doesn't anymore onto the elevator, surrounded in brown, taking a deep elevator air breath to brace for saving face when you are the latest, latest, latest one at the meeting.

--------------------------------------

"Turn it around, baby." -- 4 Strings

Mystical Lineage

2008-03-10T23:44:00.000-05:00

Sure, you know and I know that astrology is dumb. I know that I am risking being labeled as a DBB* for even posting this. But I still go here and check compatibility with people I'm interested in, just for fun alright??? I'm not saying I run my life by it, or that I read the daily newspaper horoscopes (I think those are made up and shite, incidentally -- oh, the irony). It's just fun, kind of like people watching. Predicting what will and won't be true. So I'm nosy and interested in people's characteristics.

It's not my fault really. My mom kept a stack of books of all sorts, but namely Linda Goodman's Sun Signs and a whole bunch of cheaper offshoots lying around. She read them, analyzed everyone we knew according to them, from my youth to my middle age, and passed her knowledge on to me. I studied with the diligence of an acolyte.

As for my dad, not only had he listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon countless times and taken my sister and I on a "spiritual journey" in the car on the way to Six Flags (clouds of fragrant smoke were involved.... musta been incense), but he became deeply involved in other consciousness-raising activities later on. He was also a devotee of Edgar Cayce and advised me in his last letter on earth that we are all on a journey to pay karmic debt (which I sometimes think is true).

How could they help it, though? My mother was a Cancer and my father a Scorpio, and everyone knows water signs are mystical.

* -- Dumb Bitch Blogger

(You can get those magnets at allposters.com by the way.)

------------------------------------------

"I've seen the needle and the damage done/A little part of it in everyone/But every junkie's like a setting sun..."
-- N. Young

Chicken Rice-a-Roni Dish

2008-03-02T18:42:00.007-06:00

Hello and welcome to our mostly affiliated with a holiday except this time recipe feature.

Today's recipe is the creatively titled CHICKEN RICE-A-RONI DISH! It was one of the few surviving recipes that my mom made consistently over time. I have no idea where she got this recipe, but she did not make it in my childhood. She began making it in my teens I think.

Before she passed away, I had started to collect her recipes as she made them. Traditional Southern staples such as fried chicken or roast (she never called it pot roast -- it was just roast) were all cooked from her culinary knowledge and never written down. Foolishly, I thought that there was a treasure trove of eating goodness in her rooster-emblazoned recipe box, but I never checked and discovered later to my deep chagrin that it was mostly full of stuff I'd never eaten. This one, though less significant, managed to survive -- rather like a pair of fossilized chopsticks found on a hunt for Ming vases -- useful, but not the creme de la creme. Still, here it is.

CHICKEN RICE-A-RONI DISH!

You will need:
1 box chicken flavor Rice-a-Roni (use real butter in preparation)
4 chicken breasts
1 cup celery, chopped fine
6 green onions, chopped fine
1 jar marinated artichokes (tender parts only -- reserve 2 tbsp marinade)
1 small jar Hellmann's mayonnaise

Note: Best made a day ahead

Cook Rice-a-Roni according to package directions. After cooking, set aside to cool completely. When cool, transfer to a large mixing bowl. At the same time, cook chicken breasts (cover with water and 2 tsp salt -- water should be about 2 inches over chicken). Bring breasts to boil, then lower heat to avoid them getting tough. Large breasts can be cut into smaller pieces to reduce cooking time. When chicken is done, set aside to cool completely and cube.

Peel celery and chop fine, chop onions fine, cut up artichoke hearts. Add chopped chicken and all chopped vegetables to the Rice-a-Roni in the large bowl. Add mayonnaise and 2 tbsp of reserved artichoke marinade, stir together and season to taste with lemon pepper. Refrigerate an hour or more before serving. Delicious with sliced tomatoes and fresh French bread.

This is a great summer dish, but I made it in winter and it tasted just as good. Due to the high mayonnaise content, a serving size is probably 1/4 cup but that didn't stop me from eating a whole cereal bowl full just now. If you do have tomatoes on the side, sprinkle some lemon pepper on the top for an extra taste sensation. Enjoy!

Unintentionally Arty Photo

2008-02-26T20:24:00.007-06:00

While I was thinking about making a post about people who plaster their faces on billboards, I snapped this photo near downtown with my new camera phone.

Though many might be pissed at the poor quality of the photo, it was taken at some distance, and I rather liked how it turned out.

You can still make out the Big Brother-like face of the realTOR (yet another irritant -- those commercials touting realTORs) on the sign. He works them there M streets. He isn't all that attractive. So why plaster your face 25 feet high for all to recoil at? Is it gaining or losing you customers? I'd bet on the latter.

There's another one of this guy, ESPN radio host Randy Galloway, around the corner from my house. I get a shock every time I round the bend and see it. Geeg.

It's got to be ego-driven. There's no other good reason.

And if I can't paint my garage door magenta, why in blazes is this allowed?

Subnormals

2008-02-24T14:01:00.006-06:00

for Charles Bukowski

At a "professional" "development" day
of exceeding boredom
I had a few moments of blessed solitude

I walked much farther away than required to relieve myself
Alone in the stall I huddled
Away from lines
In blessed quiet, I sat
Meditatively on the black enamel seat.

"HEY ROY!" some entering professional female cried
Her braying bouncing off the tile.

"IF YOU HEAR ME GO 'PHHHBBBFFPHHHTTT!!!' YOU'LL KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!!
IF YOU DON'T, YOU'LL KNOW I'M JUST PEEING!!!" she hollered to the "empty" bathroom.

At the same time as this, I, of necessity, blew my nose.

"OH MY GOD, ROY!" she went on. "THERE'S SOMEONE IN HERE AND THEY HEARD ME SAY THAT! I'M GOING IN ANYWAY!" she uttered, proceeding to the seat to make the aforementioned noises.

Outside, Roy, a forty-eight-something man clad in t-shirt and trucker hat, cornered me.

"How's it going?" he said, pushing against me with his subnormal energy field.

"All right," I said, and kept walking.

"Is your class as boring as ours?" he continued, extending a cloud of creepy, low-grade intimidation my way.

I continued walking, out of the cloud and into some rays of sunshine down the hall. "Just a few more hours," I reassured him, hustling out of this especially dense field of time/space.

I guess we're all subnormal sometimes.

Still.

--- Written June 22, 2006

HOW Old Am I???

2008-02-11T19:02:00.000-06:00

I have spent all weekend listening to

The Killers

and

Hot Hot Heat,

with a light dusting of Rihanna (featuring Jay-Z).

Wow. I am closer to 40 than any of the ages of any of these people in these bands. I couldn't give less of a shit about being hip, I just think I was emo when emo wasn't cool.

That doesn't explain my affection for the hook in that "Umbrella" song, however.

Also, go Amy Winehouse. Regardless of her plethora of problems, she is deserving of recognition just for having the guts to do what she has done musically. And with eyeliner.

-----------------------------

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier. -- B. Flowers

The Prosperity Continuum

2008-02-10T22:36:00.000-06:00

I don't know if everyone's family is like this, but when I go and continue to go to family gatherings over a period of years, there is an expected level of prosperity that one is expected to attain and exhibit. After any given holiday, the judgment of the family may change depending upon the success or failure of attaining certain life goals.

A representative slice of my own family-judged prosperity can be seen above. While I clearly excel at some areas, others are deeply in need of improvement.

All I can do is continue to try to meet these family prosperity goals, I suppose. Or not. After all, my own graph would look something like this:

So I reckon I'm doing alright.

------------------------------------------

I've been tripping from sipping the dripping dirty water tap
I've been thinking of drinking too many drinks all by myself
-- Hot Hot Heat ("Bandages")

Five Reasons to Quit Fast Food

2008-01-14T22:14:00.000-06:00

1. Getting first angry, and then mocked, for not understanding the elegantly engineered system of numeration (in complete opposition to that of the standard Arabic/customer-centered system) present at a McDonald's in Irving, Texas when I was told to pull through to the second window. Starting from the ordering menu and intercom, I counted windows.... 1.... 2... A paper-hatted teenager then waved me down while I was at (by my reckoning) window TWO. "Hey! HeLLO!!!" he shouted, indicating that I should have paid at WINDOW ONE, which in this trans-fat-dealing bizarro world was apparently window two. I tried in vain to explain why that numbering system made no sense and they were all rank fools. From the way they looked at me while I was conveying this seemingly universal wisdom, I might has well have been dancing the Chiquita Banana dance with a big ol' turban full of hot-glued fruit on my head. I drove away, mystified as to how none of them had yet reached into the fryer barehanded when fries were "up."

2. Driving up to the box, perusing the menu (as if you're going to order something besides the usual 900 fat gram selection) and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And getting more and more pissed off. And waiting. Finally driving up to the window and stating one's order as the employees, freshly hired from the Job Fairs for the Apathetictm look wanly on. ("Don't give a SHIZNIT?!?! Come work with the best!") At Taco Cabana, while trying to obtain the most delicious fresh tortillas in the Dallas metroplex, I have waited so long that I began to worry that the staff had actually been gunned down.

3. Going inside, thinking that will help, while a woman with flour-caked arms and (disgustingly) long fingernails walks around aimlessly from grill to pan o' raw chicken in flour to counter to drive thru window to grill to fryer to pan o' raw chicken in flour to the register (which she attempts to work with arms so entombed, then fails) to the counter to the register, then, and ONLY then stating, "I'll be with you in a minute" to fryer to counter to grill to chicken pan, slowly bouncing and turning like a piece of frying fowl in grease herself, to towel, where she wipes a half-inch of crusted raw chicken dripping/flour off said arms to register, where finally, unheeding of the customers' fury at her inefficiency, she drawls, "Can I help you?"

4. In Paris, I saw no fat people. In the world headquarters of the tres chic, there are no drive-throughs, and no tennis shoes either. Perhaps if we forego one, we can forego the other.

5. Having elevated triglycerides and overall fattishness so that avoiding fat is mandated by a health professional in the hopes that some of your own high fat content will melt away.

Not that I know anything about that.

Carpet, Honor, Europe

2007-12-25T16:25:00.000-06:00

That title, in a nutshell, is why I've been absent from these hallowed halls the past 14 days -- the inherent duality of the universe has been completely and utterly evident in that space of breathing and blood flow that I occupy, trapping me inside an existential yin-yang constructed of both ouchy mountains and comfy clouds.

Carpet

A fortnight ago, my bathroom toilet decided to plot its revenge for my continual assaults and quietly overflow while I was at work. Of course I didn't discover it until several hours later, so I returned home not only to my usual floor-full of already-stained, beige, tract housing carpet, but with the added bonus of squishy sound effects, and after a few days, unbearable stank. All the carpet in the house had to be pulled up and industrial fans had to run for about a week to dry the place out. I suppose it's not so bad. I wanted laminate anyway.

Honor

Though nominated last year, this year, I was elected Teacher of the Year for my particular school by my peers. I will now have to write an essay and move on to the district-wide competition (which reminds me of winning the 4th grade spelling bee). The prize at this level? Unparallelled daily congratulation at work, and free lunch with my boss. Woot.

Europe

Some money came in. The last few times that happened, I just paid off credit card debt. This time, I decided to go to Europe with it, and to go alone. I leave tomorrow for London and will also ride the Eurostar (Chunnel) train to Paris (under the ocean!!) and spend a day there. Let's hope my high school language skillz don't fail me: "Ou est le salle de bain, s'il vous plait?"

Other than my 2 hour jaunt into Mexico this past summer, this will be my only time to have left the warm, comforting shores of Mother America. I'm scared and somewhat anxious, but excited to realize something I've been dreaming of for the past 25 years or so. I have already been instructed not to involve myself in any international political affairs while I'm there.

I have a plethora of mixed feelings: guilt because I'm going and everyone else I know wants to go but can't afford it, fear that I'll be hated as a typical fat American or forget all the French I know or someone will look askance at me on the plane (for 7 hours) because I might take up an extra inch or two in the seat, that I'll accidentally lapse into my "really good" British accent... But beyond all that, I know it will be smashing. I idolize the British for their steadfastness and snobbery and wit and class, and I respect the French for being the existential, intellectual, artistic folk they are, even in the face of hatred from the most good-looking, popular nation on Earth. I expect to get a better view of who we are by walking among those who aren't us.

Every time I leave Texas and visit other places, I enjoy it, but I appreciate Dallas all the more. So I know I'll be glad while I'm gone, and gladder when I get home. Pray I don't exceed TSA suitcase limits for Mr. Kipling's and tea.
-----------------------------------------

“I'm from a little place called England ... We used to run the world before you.” -- Ricky Gervais

Forty Minutes to GF

2007-12-11T22:38:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, I entertain random messaging on the interwebs. Sure, I know it's foolish but I sometimes do. I think it has something to do with ongoing research about what percentage of the human race has anything interesting to say. By current estimates, data approaches approximately 1.2%. And you, of course.

The other night I was bantering boringly with some random jackass. The conversation wasn't moving along very swimmingly at all. He kept quizzing me about general life info: what do I do, kids, family, hobbies, sorry your parents are dead, blah, blah, etc.

Then after about 40 drawn out moments, in which I was giving halfass answers and chatting with two other (interesting) people, reading Wikipedia or some such at the same time, he says, "So do you want to be my gf?"

Hmm. GF. Garden Funder? Grappling Fondue? Gargoyle Foot?

He also refused to send any pics at first, asking, "Is my appearance all that important to you?" and then when he did, it looked like he'd haphazardly clipped 3 different shots from the Abercrombie catalog.

I am now befuddled. Should I be this man's Gesso Furnace?

---------------------------------

There's always something to write about. If there's not then you need to live life more aggressively.
-- Min Kim, Better Blogging Brainstorming, SXSW 2006

Thought Amblings

2007-12-06T22:12:00.000-06:00

Do you ever just come home from toil and go and lie down, not sleeping nor waking?

"Who has time?" you may ask.

I don't have time either, but I do it anyway. Always have. It's a need, sort of.

When I do this, odd stuff floats to the surface of my consciousness.

Just now, this thought emerged slowly from the unformed ether:

"If I die tomorrow, I will at least know this about myself:"

A few seconds later, a rough-edged, unvarnished truth emerged:

"I live more in the world of ideas than in the real world."

It's true, I say.

-----------------------

"Say hello." -- Deep Dish (Angello & Ingrosso remix)

Quick Music Geekly Note for a Sunday Night

2007-12-02T22:16:00.001-06:00

I don't get Lou Reed.

By "don't get" I mean I don't understand what the big deal is about him and why he's considered so influential when the majority of folk have only ever heard one song. With a lot of crusty, bleak, grim artists (see Pink Floyd), maybe I don't like their stuff but I get it, I fathom their influence; however, with Reed, no. Just no.

I'd rather listen to Skid Row's "I Remember You" and be called a musical cretin than sit through just one more time of "Walk on the Wild Side." Ugh. Sebastian Bach up.

If you do get him, please explain.

Threesome

2007-12-01T23:32:00.000-06:00

When at Starbucks, I have a moral, jingoistic, and/or Texan instinctual thing going in which I refuse to order in Italian, as posted on and imposed by their menu. I also don't order a latte, or half-caff anything. I just say "a large coffee with cream and Equal." The other day when I did this, I actually had to explain what I meant by large:

Baristo: "You mean venti?"
Me: "Uhmm, yes. ::thinking to self:: "We're still speaking English. You are officially brainwashed, you clueless cog in the international corporate machine, you."

--------------------------

Being part of a huge, lumbering, mammoth, inefficient school district, I occasionally have to attend trainings which seem virtually pointless. I had to do this recently. While there, someone corrected my drawing of a multiplication array.

I drew this:
3 X 5

. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .

Her contention was that I should've drawn this:

3 X 5
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .

My assertion is that, due to multiplication's commutative property, IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. So she pointed it out, and I kind of just went, "Yeah." Immediately afterward, I had a sinking sensation that because this training will have other sessions and I will most certainly encounter this woman later on, that this will become a Larry David-like moment, and that a second of rudeness will punish me on and on in the not-so-distant future. Which is why I love Curb Your Enthusiasm so damn much -- I feel a certain solidarity with Larry David's fictional? self.

--------------------------------

Physical bodies are gross... everyone has a thoracic duct, an alimentary canal. We are compelled to eat the dead flesh of other formerly living things to survive. It just gets gross if I think too much about it. Hence the nature of this blog -- overthinking things that are unchangeable and pointless to think of even in the first place.

--------------------------------

[Apologies to LBB for jumping his train a bit; however, none of these merited a full posting, I didn't think.]

Crying Fowl

2007-11-21T13:07:00.000-06:00

Man, isn't that idyllic.

I like this picture for its mixture of turkeyscat pseudo-history

and potential for inventive captioning.

Pilgrim Matron: Well, that makes sense! Dark meat for thee!

Pilgrim Padre: (thinking to self) O, when shall the festivities make way for the after-feasting footy?

King Lear (beruffed): I scent a treason and turning against upon the winds.

Earl of Kent: I shall eat no fish. The venison smells sweet, however.

Miles: Priscilla, I lay awake last eve with thoughts of thy sweet corn pudding!

Priscilla: Mind your countenance, Miles!

I mayn't stand closer than two feet to thee -- our elders

condemn the wicked thoughts of handholding such proximity shall produce!

Etc... Please! Add thy own!

But most importantly, know that I am thankful for each of thee, dear blogpals,

and PLEASE,

enjoy thy feasting and football, and have a

--------------------------------------

"You ever notice you never seem to get laid much on Thanksgiving? I think it's because all the coats are on the bed." -- George Carlin

The real Thanksgiving story?

On Target (part 3): Requiem for the Red and Khaki

2007-11-19T22:32:00.000-06:00

During my tenure of nearly a decade spent in the Crimson Limbo above Walmart and K-Mart and below, say, Macy's, I worked most of my time at the customer service desk. Working every single holiday of my life was de rigeur during that time, as was donning the horrid color combo of red shirt and khaki pants -- there's nothing like a pair of khaki pants to make me run (slowly) screaming, even now -- only black pants can camouflage flab effectively, which is why it is now de mon rigeur to wear black pants 99.4% of the time. To this day, you will never catch me, even if all my other clothes have been burned up in a fire, wearing red and khaki together. Ugh.

At Tar-zhay in the 90's, there was a "no-hassle" return policy -- we accepted virtually any item we had ever sold at any time in the past as a return, as long as we could string a few numbers together to make that identifying number and some semblance of a selling price. I have personally refunded money on leaking car batteries, stolen Monistat, and once, a Nintendo box that was still shrink wrapped, but cleverly filled with juice boxes (oops). Generally I was perfectly happy giving away the store's money, as I was trained to do, and tried my best to assist the thirty and forty and fiftysomethings who came to me with desperate shopping emergencies, imploring me to do such things as call all dozen stores in the greater Metroplex area to find that last fucking cabbage rose chintz sham that was on clearance.

Sometimes, however, it got to be a bit much, as with the lady who returned a paper sack full of white $4.00 canvas deck shoes that were severely worn on the soles, split down the sides, and impregnated with so much red dirt, they looked like they had been worn through a full game by every player in major league baseball throughout the 1992 season. We took them back. Another time, someone dug about three stiff pairs of indigo blue jeans out of their closet. They had tags pinned on with straight pins (a practice I remembered from my visits to Target as a wee babe, in the SEVENTIES). We took them back. It was a magic time. Some of that ill-gotten "no-hassle return" cash doubtless went to substances that would eliminate the awareness of ANY of the hassles of existence, and might just end them altogether.

Working at the service desk beat cashiering, though, just because it was more interesting. It was later deemed "Guest Service" after Target began copying Disneyworld's idea that the customer was a "guest" to be treated as such (a silly notion since guests typically aren't charged for the hospitality you show them). In the particular store that I worked at (now closed -- a SuperTarget opened down the road), Guest Service was located right next to the front door, which meant you could watch as shoplifters were physically apprehended by store security. If things got too serious, the call went out for all male store employees to proceed to the front to assist. A few redshirts could claim that they had run some shoplifter down out in the parking lot. The best fight was put up by a man in a trenchcoat, who had long, lanky hair and was probably in his fifties. He struggled against two or three employees, thrashing wildly in the glass enclosure between the in and out doors like a caged animal. If you've seen Blade Runner, it was somewhat reminiscent of Deckard shooting Zora in the clear plastic trenchcoat, without the shots or blood.

Over time, I even worked my way up to being operator, which means I sat in the fitting room and folded clothes while monitoring the passage of tryers-on and also answering the phone. I liked that position because I got to make announcements over the intercom. Give me a mic and I'm happy, I suppose. This post also allowed for considerable multitasking, and I enjoyed the challenge of juggling the daily onslaught of calls that the store would get. Chief among the perks of this job was that I didn't have to close. Closing meant staying until everything was neat and tidy to the assistant manager's satisfaction (zoning). Even today, I will "zone" behind myself, pulling up cans to fill in the spaces I create if it's close to closing time, no matter what store I'm at.

So as you can see, muchachos, when I walk into a Target store, I know the ins and outs. I have done virtually every job there -- even stocking the shelves. Target is where I learned that soylent green is made from people (as one night manager queried me about my movie watching habits). Target is where I learned to get price adjustments by "returning" items on sale and repurchasing them. Target is where I learned to foil confidence tricksters who would ask for change in a repeated fashion until they ended up with more bills than they should have. Target is where I got a whopping 10% discount for so many years. Target is where most of my paychecks from 1988 - 1996 went.

Was the time I spent there pissed away, or a valuable learning experience?

Yes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Breathing in the fumes from so many idling cars,
Right beneath the sign with the dusty yellow stars,
Watching the sun go,
Watching the sun go down."

-- Cake, "Alpha Beta Parking Lot"

On Target, Part 2: Ask me. I like to help.

2007-11-11T22:32:00.000-06:00

Back in 1988, "Ask me. I like to help." was printed on a white plastic card in large Arial script on a ground of thin red-lined grid. This card was fused in some fashion to the large, uncomfortably identifying name tag which is the universal badge of shame of the retail store employee. I would have preferred, as at the telemarketing job that I held for one day when I tried in desperation to quit the red-walled retailer, to have been able to use an alias emblazoned above the lofty plastic claim of undaunted helpfulness, but it was not to be. From the first time I pinned on that promise of unqualified assistance with ANYthing the customer might need, it galled me daily.

I started my training far earlier than that first week of employment. As a kid, we took weekly trips to Target, complete with the obligatory two-foot tall bag of popcorn. Once, when I wouldn't obey my mom, I got my ass flat-out busted in front of the shopping carts, to the amusement of the whole store, it seemed. This was only to be the beginning of Target-fueled punishment, however.

In September of 1988, I was 17, and really only cared about two things: going to as many rock shows as humanly possible and my serious boyfriend. I was taking a fluff Marketing class during my senior year of high school, for which I was 20-30 minutes late almost daily. I hated high school with a passion, almost enough to quit, because, except for English class, it was nothing more than passing time doing things I had little interest in on the way to a murky future for which no one had really helped me prepare. To stay in this class, one had to find a job at some sort of retail establishment. I had been given 2 or 3 weeks to do so, and in my teenaged efficiency had halfassedly applied at 1 or 2 places. Apparently Sears didn't like the Peter Frampton-haired look of me, so some guy in the class grudgingly referred me at his place of employment and off I went. Little did I know that that successful interview would spell retail imprisonment for the next eight years.

It was a sad time, my time of toil at Target between 1988 and 1996, but a time that has nonetheless shaped my being permanently. I have come to recognize with laser sharpness, the lack of training in giving a shit for the customer's wants of most stuff-vending places today. For back in that day, when I jockeyed the register, valiantly staffed the complaint desk throughout all seasons of the year, flipped burgers at the snack bar for an additional $0.10 per hour!, or sometimes filled in at the jewelry counter, we were instructed that the customer's word was as a magical bush aflame, to be heeded as we fell prostrate before its echoing sound. (Though I know that is, even at Target itself now, a foolish dream, I still on some level want the same level of service that I was trained to provide.)

I started working there BEFORE the appearance of laser scanners by probably about a year or two. Even now, all Target's merchandise is identified by means of a six-digit number: department, class and item. At that time, you had to punch in EVERY SINGLE NUMBER for EVERY item you rang up through the use of what they termed "ten-key", as well as sliding items into the bag immediately after ringing them, and properly, too. You were periodically tested and made to run cashiering gauntlets of more and more difficult items. Not only did I learn how to cashier correctly in those crimson lanes, my awareness of and opposition to the workplace as "The Man" began there, too. I would frequently remark how Target cared nothing for developing marketable skills in its wage earners: over time, I became the fastest cashiering gun in the store; however all the number punching I did was not in traditional, office transferable ten-key, but REVERSE ten-key. Now of course, I accept as given that companies do not necessarily wish to train their employees to better themselves out from under their serfdom. Then, my idealism had not yet faltered...

Next time: Fun with Complaints! (unless I bore myself any further with this)

On Target (part 1)

2007-11-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

Cashiering would seem to be the province of the swift, friendly, and accurate.

Yet today, I was checked out at my town's new Super Target by a mostly silent older woman, name of Nadine, who likely lived a previous life as a good and moral sloth, and thus earned reincarnation into a higher, yet not any speedier, form.

I felt like my blood itself might have turned to vinegar between the time that she asked me for my ID because I had dared to purchase a bottleful of Yellowtail Shiraz (pedestrian, I know, but it has a nice bite and does the trick besides of fuzzing and furring the sharp edges of consciousness) and the time when she finally, with a lethargic stuffing of bananas into concentric-circle-dotted plastic, completed my purchase.

As she sloooooooooooooooooooowly scanned and dragged my merchandise across a filthy rectangle of glass, I had time to rate and rank every male person within a 50 yard radius according to level of attractiveness to my peculiar likings. I also had time to admire one guy's yellow Heavy Metal Karaoke shirt, as well as consider and choose a song, "Still Lovin' You" by the Scorpions, that I would perform should I ever get the chance to enter such an event. I might well take the $150 prize, I mused.

It probably didn't help that my g-damn underwear was too loose and was falling off my ass, held on only by the gentle caress of my thighs in twain. Apparently, the constraints of money and time allowed me to lose a pound or two, but not to purchase correctly-fitting underwear.

I did not foresee that a simple trip to Syooper Tarzhay for olives, wine, and mushroom "purse" appetizers would be such an opportunity to deal with repressed anger. Though I wanted to shout out, "STEP OUT FROM BEHIND THERE, SLOVENLY SLATTERN, AND LET ME PLY MY HANDS TO THE TASK!" a few dozen times, I did not, even once, utter it.

{Here at Overthunk we only blog about the issues within a hair's breadth of your blood-filled heart, so this shall be the first in a Targeted series. And yes, the Yellowtail Shiraz is quite nice, thank you.}

------------

Done, done, and I'm onto the next one.

-- D. Grohl

Shopping OCD in its Various Forms

2007-10-28T22:43:00.000-05:00

I've been paring down the amount of makeup I carry around with me at all times.

Currently, I am at the following purse totals:

Three eyeliners -- brown-black, purple and blue
One mascara -- brown-black
Three lipsticks (including one that doesn't come off unless scrubbed)
One clear lip gloss
Concealer (although the one I have is old and I've already bought a new one)

AND, this is only what I carry around... I have two makeup cases full of brushes, nail polish, eye shadow, glittery dust and other stuff, not to mention the dozens of tubes and packets I have shoved away in drawers.

It's foolishness, I know. How much makeup can one person wear at a time?
(Well, woman I mean, as I'm sure drag queens can wear significantly more.)

I cannot really explain this other than feeling that I have to have a CHOICE.

I do the same thing with shoes. I have probably 30 pairs. And oddly, I have noted that $6.00 Chinese-made shoes from Dollar General can smell like gasoline (making me wonder if I should avoid lit matches or flung cigarette butts).

The span between me and a small furry forest animal squirrelling away its precious for the winter is immeasurably small at times.

Weirdass Recipe the Third

2007-10-05T23:12:00.000-05:00

The origins of this unholy, calorie-laden concoction go back twenty years or more, to the kitchen of my aunt, where my cousin was inspired by the ghost of William Howard Taft or somebody to mix two incredibly rich substances: peanut butter and syrup. Whether anyone else does this, I don't know.

Today's version was somewhat halfass in it's pantry-product indulgence, because rather than Skippy peanut butter and Griffin's Waffle Syrup,

I had to use Simply Jif (reduced fat) and Karo, hardcore corn fructose confection of our grandmothers and a pillar of all true Texan pecan pies (which I didn't even like until this past year). Anyway, here's the recipe, if you and your pancreas can handle the deliciousness:

1. Purchase, then slam a can of cheapass white biscuits across the kitchen counter a few times until it pops, remove and bake according to the directions on the package (spend no more than 40 cents per can).

2. Put about 2 tablespoons of peanut butter into a bowl.

3. Drizzle syrup over the top of the blob of peanut butter until it runs down the sides of the blob and pools slightly in the bottom of the bowl.

4. Stir, stir, stir!

5. Taste, adding more syrup if needed. Ideally, the finished dressing? hors d'oeuvre? dipping sauce? will possess a glossy sheen.

6. For added culinary delight, pour yourself a frosty glass of milk. I prefer mine over ice.

7. Dip biscuits and eat, one delicious, supersweet bite at a time, as death draws nigh.

Thus have I relayed these instructions from antiquity as I witnessed them.

Go thou, and experience the white trashy goodness.

----------------------

dootdootdootdootdootdootdootdootdootdootdoot

dootdootdootdootdootdootdootdootdootdoot

-- "Cristalle", Paul Van Dyk

Driving Barefoot

2007-09-22T13:01:00.000-05:00

Some habits persist, and some come and go.

Although my driving instructor bud tells me it's terribly dangerous, I must confess that I've been creating a new habit over the past few months: driving unshod. I can't seem to get home through the all-too-long afternoon commute with my shoes still on.

Really, this is just an extension of my lifelong practice of eschewing shoes as often as I can. As a kid, I would refuse shoes to ridiculous levels: Hey! Let's see which barefoot kid can stand on the oven-hot Texas summer baked concrete the longest! Hey! Let's walk barefoot across Grandaddy's cow pasture full of torturous stickers to get to the pony that lives next door! How about over and over, for years!? I'm not quite that ridiculous about it anymore, but even now, the callouses on my feet are probably at least 1/4 inch thick (which was my handy excuse to the adult remedial involuntary driving lesson -- "my feet are like shoes").

Fifteen or twenty seconds after I plop down in the Prius, I pop on Sportsradio 1310 The Ticket because it amuses me, and pop off mis zapatos, nestling them to the left, well away from the gas and brake. In Dallas, one's car is such a second home that you might hang curtains or art, and I think that's why I do this, reveling in the comfort and airy deliciousness of having nothing on my feet. I speed or plod along with the shiny, unending flow of all the other machines, trying to maintain my space cushion fore and aft. Because my feet are broad and strong, I often brake with only my right big toe. A ton or so of glass, plastic and steel, gradually halted by one capable digit. (Come to think of it, maybe that part is dangerous.)

Is it illegal? I don't know. What I do know is that while I am entrapped in traffic, my feet are unfettered and free, and in that way, I am a little bit closer to being home.

Aunt Flo Helps Schools

2007-09-08T23:57:00.000-05:00

Just by bleeding, you can contribute 10 cents per box of flow stanchers to your chosen neighborhood school.

Well, at least it's good for something other than letting you know you're not expecting a new lil' scholar.

Learn more at: http://www.boxtops4education.com/

New Crush Notification

2007-08-31T21:58:00.001-05:00

If all you know of Chuck Palahniuk is Fight Club, then I envy your chance to experience his other intoxicating, filthy, meaningful wallowings in the depths of humanity anew.

I started with Fight Club, following the logic that if the movie was disturbingly delightful, the book MUST be even better. Of course, it was. I have gone on to read Invisible Monsters, Choke, and most recently, Diary.

Right now, today, this minute, I am obsessed not only with his work but with his eyes. If you plan on diving into those mesmerizing green pools, make sure you've got something to help you keep breathing.

Sure, he's gay and committed to boot, but just look at them. That's a big soul in there.

(More cool and hotness here.)

-------------------------------------------

What you don't understand you can make mean anything. -- C. Palahniuk, Diary

(It's pal-uh-nick.)

School has begun...

2007-08-27T22:14:00.001-05:00

and I have been recruited to assist with the business of running it, as well as teach my regular class.

That is all for now, though I can hardly stand the necessity of sleep over blogging....

See your stuff soon, peeps!

How Hot Is It?

2007-08-13T22:28:00.000-05:00

I've lived in Texas all my life, and I've made it through some damned hot summers. Yet only today, and never before, have I witnessed this: cows going for a dip in the afternoon sun.*

Of about a dozen cows standing around in the pasture as I sped past, two seemed a little bit smarter than the others. They were skinny dipping, even, and seemed to be smiling, and perhaps snorting the bovine version of the following playlet:

Black and White Cow: "Vaya Con Dios, bitches!! We're swimming!! In your and our water hole, even! We are one step closer to taking down our human oppressors!"

Black Cow: "Word! I'm sick of just standing here absorbing the sun's rays!"

'Course, what cows actually say to one another as they graze in the blazing sun will perhaps never be known. Any scientists fool enough to try to trek all the way out to the water hole on a 104-degree day like today while lugging heavy data recording instruments and wearing white lab coats would no doubt shrivel from heat exhaustion just as easily as a spinach leaf sauteed in butter in a pan.

Though cows are generally thought of as dumb animals that are better off eaten, they are in fact, stoic denizens of the Texas prairie.

(* Artist/Witness Rendering - actual photo unavailable due to high speeds and choking laughter)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes it's better not to stick bits of each other in each other for each other. -- Hot Club de Paris

To Write

2007-08-10T21:36:00.000-05:00

To cleave into one’s innards, like a sharp steel blade slicing into a paper-bag-ripened nectarine: eventually, you’ll get to the mazing, shriveled core, but when you do, it’ll be messy, juice will be spilled, and the prospect of the truth of new life and renewal inside that crinkly brown pit is completely unenvisionable.

Everything comes before it: cleaning that long-dead Junebug out of the corner of the kitchen counter, flipping from song to song to song to song on Internet radio, flinging washed clothes into the dryer, pretending to perform an Everclear song to a sellout stadium crowd while the roommate’s off buying cigarettes, watching some exhibitionist on a webcam.

Guilt: The feeling that if you do it, if you REALLY do it, you’ve outed some dirty secret about everyone you know in some fashion or other, including, and perhaps most importantly, yourself.

Bugger Off!!

2007-08-02T21:45:00.001-05:00

Though I like owning my house, I wish from time to time that instead of in a middle-class neighborhood, that it was in the middle of a hundred-acre wood or something.

I have a crappy little bench, that needs either a coat of paint, or just to be thrown out, sitting in my front yard, fairly close to the door. You can sit on it, but it rather lists to one side. I don't sit on it for fear of causing its last day on earth in a sudden collapse, but it looks somewhat fetching sitting alongside the flowers that I usually remember to water in the bed that needs weeding.

I pull up to the homestead today, after a day of toil in which every moment was begrudged (seeing as how I AM a teacher and it IS still summer, but today there was a pesky training day that could be finished in 3 hours but took 7 just to fill up the state-required time), a bank trip that shouldn't have taken 45 minutes in the 100 degree heat, and a lengthy stint at Walmart shopping. All of this was done while wanting nothing more than to run home and fling off every sweaty article of clothing I had on. Finally, I arrive and what do I see before me but some errant youth, probably 20 or so, in a Terminix polo shirt, clutching a clipboard, SITTING on MY fucking BENCH.

I don't even get out of the car. I roll down my window like I'm at the Squatter Shooing Drive-in and shout out, "Sir? You can take a walk now!"

"I was just taking a rest; it's hot," he replies, standing up.

"Not on my property you don't!" I say, visibly agitated and wishing I had something sawn-off to go with my hillbilly-type utterances.

He then APPROACHES THE CAR AS IF TO BEGIN HIS SPIEL.

I just stare, incredulous, for a second.

I then wave my hand, dismissing him. "GOODBYE!!" I say with a nasty faux sweetness.

"Bye," he replies, and ambles on.

Oh, did I mention that I live across the street from a public park, that's full of benches, has a picnic pavillion and even a water fountain! Shade, seating, and water, all in one convenient location that I don't own.

I swear I'd build a moat, infested with a clutch of monster Louisiana swamp gators trained to scent soliciting at twenty paces, around this place if I could.

Let's see them exterminate THAT.

What's Learnt in the Cradle

2007-07-29T17:07:00.000-05:00

Release date: August 15th, 1984.

My purchase date: 1985, probably.

I still know all the lyrics.

p.s. I'm waiting to get all the desert pix to post along with my desert tales. When those are all available, I'll reveal the secrets of the Texas mountains.

Into the Desert

2007-07-14T12:35:00.000-05:00

It's road trip time.
Tomorrow I embark on a 500 mile journey towards Big Bend National Park, in southwest Texas, into the Chihuahuan Desert -- the largest in North America.

It will be my first excursion into such a place, though for unknown reasons, deserts have always fascinated me. Perhaps, on this trip, I'll find out why.

In any case, hasta luego! See y'all on the flip side!

Maybe is Baby

2007-07-14T11:05:00.000-05:00

So, upon entering the local Chinese food buffet, I determined that I had to GO.

As I rushed into the restroom, a horrid stench wafted out.

Against all olfactory sense, I still had to GO, so unto the breach I proceeded, holding a piece of shirt over mouth and nose to enable me to survive.

Someone else entered as I did, but apparently didn't have to GO like I did, and I said casually, "Wow, we should tell them at the front desk about this." As I was checking each stall, I noted that in one, someone had... missed the shot they'd attempted to take, let's say. It had bounced off the rim. Then they'd tried to clean it up... they just didn't do a very good job.

Slightly horrified, I recoiled, and chose another stall. When I gotta GO, I gotta GO.

Anyway, in the meantime, the management had been notified. A tiny, older Asian woman dressed in business attire appeared in the restroom door, exclaiming, "Oh my GAAAAWD!!" as she opened it, then shouting in Chinese to her unluckiest employee to get the mop and bucket. She wouldn't come inside, but stood there continuing to make little noises about the stink. About the same time, I came out and as rapidly as possible, washed my hands, and prepared to push past her without a thought of even drying them.

I kind of laughed, suggesting, "Maybe it was from a baby or a kid or something..." but as I looked at her in the mirror, her words said, "Yeah. Maybe is baby."

Her eyes, however, stated clearly that she rather suspected it was me.

Posterior Emblazonment

2007-07-02T17:34:00.000-05:00

I know, this trend is old news now, but its ridiculosity has not lessened.

Do you want to say that this part of you is juicy?

That may be a possibly serious medical problem, possibly related to ingestion of bad enchiladas.

Why don't they get more descriptive with it? Like "Gassy" or "Pimply"?

And hell, why doesn't the rest of the world besides fashionistas join in?

These could appear in all parts of a department store:

Menswear

"Hairy"

"Stanky"

"Betta than Brad Pitt's"

"Not an Entrance"

"Bubble" (for our gay patrons)

Infants/Toddlers

"Change This"

"Caution: May Be Poopy"

"Despite what I say, I should actually go potty"

Plus Sizes

"Got Back"

"May Be Hot, May Not Depending on your Proclivities"

The list is endless.

I mean, if you're going to do a thing, don't do it half-assed!

p.s. Go on, add your own!

Weaponry Accessory

2007-06-29T00:59:00.000-05:00

This isn't exactly it but today in Spencer's Gifts I saw this hobo purse with a large, uhh, bead? attached to the front that was actually brass (well, aluminum) knuckles.

This one is far more fashionable and expensive and made by James Piatt, who dubs it the "Peacekeeper." Hmm. I'm not sure that peace is what you're gearing up for when you carry this. Nonetheless, it is rather cool and kind of brings up a subject near and dear to me, which is, carrying some form of weaponry on one's person at all times.

As a teenager, I had a double-edged dagger with a blade of about three inches, a brass crosspiece, and a hilt of stacked wood in rainbow hues. It was illegal due to having a double edge, but it looked cool. (Hey, tell the dollar store guy I got it from. Yes, dollar store.)

I carried it with me everywhere, either in my purse or in my pocket, to school, to Ozzy Osbourne concerts, everywhere. I don't know why, but having it made me feel better. It was the kind of weapon, according to someone's dad I knew back then, who in the 50's had been a bona fide leather-jacket-wearing hoodlum, that one didn't mind leaving behind in a pinch, because it didn't cost much! I never envisioned using it, nor did I want to, but I wish I still had it today. It was just an insurance policy that I hoped I'd never need.

Well, post 9/11, I stopped carrying a knife with me at all times, until recently I was at Home Depot and purchased a nice, sharp $10 pocket knife. So nice and sharp, in fact, that I sliced a tiny cut into my own finger about 12 seconds after opening its packaging -- a packaging from which I was reading a caution about not slicing oneself.

Why did I choose now to reinstate the policy of carrying a weapon, however small, with me everywhere? There are lots of reasons, but not the least of which is that shooters come to my place of employment specifically because they know no one at a school is likely to be armed. I've been thinking that maybe it's a better idea to put a tranquilizer gun in the hallway of every school. Maybe every classroom even, as long as they're carefully labeled NOT FOR QUIETING STUDENTS.

Why fall to the Harrises and the Klebolds and the Chos?
Tranq them like the animals they are, then throw them to litigious lions of justice.

How hickass is too hickass?

2007-06-21T23:52:00.000-05:00

We've been having a lot of rain here in Dallas lately. Not as much as in Gainesville, 70 miles north (see photo), but still, enough to turn a few pastures into sort-of rice paddies, or fishing grounds for egrets.

So the other day I was lazing about and realized that yet again, it was going to pour down. It was going to pour down cats and dogs, and my particular dogs had a blanket they had soiled and needed washin'. So I threw it outside in the backyard, into said rain.

It got washed by the good waters of God, purged of its doggy-stink sins.

Later, I washed it in the washing machine, but still, it wasn't AS dirty as it COULD have been, due to quick advantage taken of natural resources .

Assertion: I am hickass.
Question: Too hickass?

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Well, it's floodin' down in Texas
All the telephone lines are down
I've been tryin' to call my baby
And I can't get a single sound
-- S. Ray Vaughan

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Country folk can survive.
-- H. Williams Jr.

On the Edge

2007-06-10T17:51:00.001-05:00

I await.

I try to do other things, but I am continually distracted.

Will Tony get whacked, commit suicide, lose his family, turn to the feds?

Will A.J. flip out?

Why the shovel?

I just can't stop thinking about it... the alternate endings, the end of an era, almost everyone else is already gone.

Soon, we'll know.... but not soon enough!

Ugh... cool blogthing jacked things up

2007-06-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

I did have a scrolling blogthing here that showed the lyrics to my latest enamorment in song: Mika's "Grace Kelly" (specifically, the trance remix version), but somehow posts got disabled by copying the script here and when I enabled them, things got even more wonky and a new song I'd never even heard of replaced it.

So, for the safety of all concerned, it has been deleted.

This is no fault of the song, however; it's melodic, anxious, just a snip (ok, a lot) gay, and fun, as Violet of The Lemonade Stand can attest!

Check it out!

Bagged 'N' Tagged

2007-05-31T21:42:00.000-05:00

Today I've been, amongst other things, trying to tag as many past posts as possible with keywords, like poetry, contradiction, pig races, sock monkey.... stuff like that.

At the end of this lengthy and laborious process, I shall make a bar graph depicting the frequency upon which I expound on variant topics, evidencing the intervals at which they sashay and mosey through my neurons.

Or not.

Really I just wanted a reason to post the following song snippet, a 17-word microcosm of a perfect love experience. See below.

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"It'll be you and me,
Up in the trees,
And the forests will give us the answers..."
- M. Casey and Lovehammers

I've Been Called Worse...

2007-05-30T23:13:00.000-05:00

You Are a Centaur

In general, you are a very cautious and reserved person.

However, you are also warm hearted, and you enjoy helping others in practical ways.

You are a great teacher, and you are really good at helping people get their lives in order.

You are very intuitive, and you go with your gut. You make good decisions easily.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Another weirdass recipe

2007-05-23T22:16:00.000-05:00

Some of you may remember this gift from the gods of Foods That Should Not Be.

Well, here's another.

Sweet 'N' Sour Cupcakes

1. Prepare white cake mix, pour into cupcake cups (preferably of the rockin' stars variety, but I've only seen those at Christmas and have been saving them ever since), and bake.

2. Mix one packet of tropical punch flavored Kool Aid and about 1/4 cup sugar.

3. Sprinkle mixture over warm cupcakes and watch in amazement as it turns from a greyish powder to bright red, even though you know that's what's going to happen.

4. Serve to kids you know and await their accolades, which, I assure you, will be forthcoming.

5. Eat one yourself, with visible doubt. Like it and eat another.

Amazing what a lack of icing can do to stimulate the imagination. I made these once before for the class just due to lack of materials, but this time they were clamoring for the oddness again.

Try it!

WARNING: Yes, of course it stains everything in sight.

p.s. Yes, that is a cool camera effect, but like the cakes themselves, it was unplanned. Camera fall down (months ago) go boom (now). :(

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You need a whole lot more than money, you need more than to survive.
You gotta keep your love, now, keep your love alive.

--- A. and N. Wilson