Aunt and girl are moving things to clean up for the season, that’s what was discussed, but really they are moving the planters because the squid had been allowed to grow too big.
It eats the greens, which are scattered around the pond platform in any number of planters and boxes, creating the illusion of an oasis in the south-Georgian heat. When nobody dares to swim in its pond, as grandmother regretfully did two weeks past, the squid must eat greens.
Their fronds grew long, and fell into the water, as minds were on other matters. Grandmother had been suckled.
The pond squid is a secret.
The pond squid is important.
The pond squid is as dangerous as it is coveted.
As aunt and niece work, careful to keep back from the ledge between water creatures and life, a girl appears. She looks like she’s been-a ramblin’, all dust-coated and pack-toting, but perhaps she’s just been walking the back roads of Rockford Township all day. She is of ambiguous age, probably between 17 and 20, and has long, flowing, dirty-blond hair, curls, but so long and snarled that it hangs heavy, leaving only swirls at the temples and the tips.
She has a tangled spangle, as grandmother was wont to say. Tangled spangle like a mop.
They meet as aunt and niece are carrying planters from the pond out to the decrepit barn. There is something important in the barn. It, too, is a secret.
"How's your ma n' em?" Girl explains that she hitched here for the party on the lawn next door, a farmhouse ¼ mile down the dirt road.
“What kind of party is it?”
“Dykes,” she responds, disgusted, but not by he thought of the lesbian camp out. Something else disgusts her. She was looking for one thing over there, but found another. Or perhaps she found nothing at all.
Later, intrigued, niece walks past the door yard and down the road. At first, she sees only a mess of tents and people on the lawn. “Dykes,” she says hesitantly, for she sees men in the mix. Soon, though, she realizes all the men are simply women with short hair.
“Dykes.” Yes.
May she have a glass of water? The girl is polite, not at all what niece expects of a hitcher, and she wears a gold chain around her left wrist.
“We’ll do you one better.” Aunt smiles nervously, as she always does when a stranger comes knocking.
Peach tea, which aunt reserves only for special company because the season is low and the crop was disappointing, and niece knows aunt must pity the teenage wanderer and wants to be a good Christian, show her charity.
Peaches are the work of The Lord, her grandmother always insisted, and thus aunt uses them as such.
While waiting for tea, girl asks, and niece shows girl the barn. Aunt asks that they finish taking the planters to the barn - with a sharp glance at her niece to be sure she understands the secret must stand.
They know it is safe because it is day light, like it’s safe to drink peaches, and girl doesn’t see the squid because it’s hiding in the depths.
When everything has been finished, girl says she may take a dip. It’s late-summer hot. Niece, torn between the secret and her fear of the squid, says she girl shouldn’t swim in the pond. It’s not safe. It’s too deep.
Girl looks as if niece has confirmed something she suspects and stays dry. She does smile, however. She smiles, and it’s not a nice smile.
They return to the farmhouse, and girl helps aunt serve the tea, although aunt protests that company shouldn’t be working.
“Nonsense, you’re too kind,” and so girl brings tray with glasses. Niece watches girl closely – suspiciously – because that smile had been wrong somehow. Girl notes the suspicion, and manages to slip something into niece’s glass, and hands to niece. Other glasses go to uncle, brother of aunt, and those have also been doctored, but with a different sort of thing.
A mesmerizing thing.
Aunt returns to sitting room with a small platter of bread and apple butter, and idle chit chat ensues. Tea is guzzled, the novelty of such a rare treat briefly replacing niece’s suspicion.
Niece awakens later, surprised to find herself in bedclothes, in her bed, and hears music downstairs. She pads down and finds girl playing a fiddle, to the delight of aunt and uncle. There is something wild in the sound, and niece feels ice in her veins.
Aunt and uncle are raucous, dancing and clapping, oblivious to niece’s return, but girl – still playing madly – glares at niece. A warning glare.
I will have what is mine, the glare says. I will have it, and you won’t tell.
***
Niece sees girl with male companion in town, although girl is dressed to disguise her hair, and niece ducks into a shop filled with 1950’s memorabilia. But not before her recognition of girl and companion is noted. She is followed, one through the back door of the shop and one the front.
There is a door – and old, wooden door – she has hoped to purchase for her aunt and uncle. It’s in the shop, and it perfectly matches the missing linen closet door of their farmhouse on the second floor. Niece glances at the door, but only fleetingly.
She feels the ice again, and is on guard. Male companion appears and tries something violent, but shop keeper somehow intervenes, and girl is asked to leave the farmhouse immediately. That the girl has found The Jackpot, there is no question.
Precautions are taken.
The secret in the barn is employed.
***
Church, two weeks hence: Niece sits with aunt, uncle and elderly grandmother in a pew near the front because grandmother’s vision is gone, but she insists she feels closer to The Lord when sitting closer to the minister.
Girl and male companion set off a series of explosions in church.
They will have The Jackpot.
They will have the dangerous spoil.
Get Boned.
Showing posts with label You Know You Love It. Show all posts
Showing posts with label You Know You Love It. Show all posts
Monday, December 26, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Summer
The grass, high as your waist and as flexible, so bright that you had to squint against the explosion of lime, like citrus in your eye, and the way that it pulsed, one blade against the next, so that its movement almost had you believing that it was inching up and over the hill, looking for the icy creek, just as you were.
The grass pushed you away, but only slightly, trying to gain an advantage and cannonball first into the water.
The water, once you got there, was waiting only for you. The grass pulsed back away in defeat and it sighed a hot breath in your direction that stank of manure. But the water was like fire to your toes and suddenly you decided you weren't so hot after all, nothing that a little nap in the grass couldn't fix.
The citrus growth held you tightly, only lashing a little in contempt of your victory, and you laid there until you felt the bugs marching their way up your shorts.
Then the water, you realized, was your only hope.
You only hoped it wouldn't sting your grass burns.
The grass pushed you away, but only slightly, trying to gain an advantage and cannonball first into the water.
The water, once you got there, was waiting only for you. The grass pulsed back away in defeat and it sighed a hot breath in your direction that stank of manure. But the water was like fire to your toes and suddenly you decided you weren't so hot after all, nothing that a little nap in the grass couldn't fix.
The citrus growth held you tightly, only lashing a little in contempt of your victory, and you laid there until you felt the bugs marching their way up your shorts.
Then the water, you realized, was your only hope.
You only hoped it wouldn't sting your grass burns.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The trouble with public transportation...
...is that it leads to really bad writing.
***
The man was heading to the library because he'd heard Thompson might be there. In his hand, he carried a small book. He boarded the bus at Franklin and Nye, three blocks from the parking garage where he'd spent the night in the bed of a pickup truck with Wisconsin plates. He'd known the owner of the truck would be gone until Sunday because of the stub on the dashboard.
The man always stood holding the over head rails. He thought sitting was for pussies. Today he was in Chicago, however, and Chicago city buses do not endorse standing passengers, so the man was forced to sit by the window with his long legs tucked up and bundled in the space provided. They did not fit at a forty-five degree angle and he had to dip his knees low and turn to the side. He fumed and swore under his breath, and he clenched and unclenched his fists as the felt each leg become first tingly, then numb.
At the library bus stop, the man pulled the cord and advanced down the aisle to the exit. Still weak, his legs betrayed him, causing him to stumble from the last step of the bus down onto the pavement below. He looked around sheepishly and saw a woman smiling at him.
She was holding an infant up in the air and producing an assortment of obnoxiously-endearing babble for his benefit. She lowered the child then quickly raised him into the air again, which elicited giggles from the suspended boy and chuckles from the small crowd gathered around them. The woman's eyes remained on the fallen man.
The man was frozen, staring up at the woman and the baby boy, wondering why he hadn't chosen to walk the twenty-seven blocks and avoid this whole mess. He was distracted enough that he didn't immediately hear the voice that spoke to him.
"You gonna move out of the way or what, buddy?"
***
The man stiffened, stood tall and puffed up his chest. Then he turned his face in my direction and locked eyes with me and just...stared. I stared back. He seemed dazed. Then he turned purposefully and stalked away.
Saturdays are when I take Levi down to the corner with a pack of Parliaments and sit on the bench on the east side of Boulder Park. I sit and smoke and make faces at my son from the time the dew is just shaking itself off the grass until the time it begins to trickle back with the return of evening.
On Saturdays, I watch people.
Sometimes I get lucky and witness one of those events that make life worth living: a skirt caught in the breeze; a child grabbed tightly around the arm and yanked; and old man rear-ending a station wagon full of kids and driven by an angry man.
Today, the event was the man who fell when getting off the buss. He noticed me watching. He dropped his book and left it there.
And if he thinks I was smiling because I enjoyed his pain and humiliation?
He was right.
***
The man was heading to the library because he'd heard Thompson might be there. In his hand, he carried a small book. He boarded the bus at Franklin and Nye, three blocks from the parking garage where he'd spent the night in the bed of a pickup truck with Wisconsin plates. He'd known the owner of the truck would be gone until Sunday because of the stub on the dashboard.
The man always stood holding the over head rails. He thought sitting was for pussies. Today he was in Chicago, however, and Chicago city buses do not endorse standing passengers, so the man was forced to sit by the window with his long legs tucked up and bundled in the space provided. They did not fit at a forty-five degree angle and he had to dip his knees low and turn to the side. He fumed and swore under his breath, and he clenched and unclenched his fists as the felt each leg become first tingly, then numb.
At the library bus stop, the man pulled the cord and advanced down the aisle to the exit. Still weak, his legs betrayed him, causing him to stumble from the last step of the bus down onto the pavement below. He looked around sheepishly and saw a woman smiling at him.
She was holding an infant up in the air and producing an assortment of obnoxiously-endearing babble for his benefit. She lowered the child then quickly raised him into the air again, which elicited giggles from the suspended boy and chuckles from the small crowd gathered around them. The woman's eyes remained on the fallen man.
The man was frozen, staring up at the woman and the baby boy, wondering why he hadn't chosen to walk the twenty-seven blocks and avoid this whole mess. He was distracted enough that he didn't immediately hear the voice that spoke to him.
"You gonna move out of the way or what, buddy?"
***
The man stiffened, stood tall and puffed up his chest. Then he turned his face in my direction and locked eyes with me and just...stared. I stared back. He seemed dazed. Then he turned purposefully and stalked away.
Saturdays are when I take Levi down to the corner with a pack of Parliaments and sit on the bench on the east side of Boulder Park. I sit and smoke and make faces at my son from the time the dew is just shaking itself off the grass until the time it begins to trickle back with the return of evening.
On Saturdays, I watch people.
Sometimes I get lucky and witness one of those events that make life worth living: a skirt caught in the breeze; a child grabbed tightly around the arm and yanked; and old man rear-ending a station wagon full of kids and driven by an angry man.
Today, the event was the man who fell when getting off the buss. He noticed me watching. He dropped his book and left it there.
And if he thinks I was smiling because I enjoyed his pain and humiliation?
He was right.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Sisters
Entwined legs on the coarse, gray-weathered deck boards.
It is summer, and we are joyful. The air is oppressive: each breath feels like a swimmer forced to sustain life by growing gills and breathing under water.
She sweats against my chest, but I hold her tightly for the camera as mommy demanded, and this makes her giggle. All around, the sound of cicadas scream. They are the loon of the south, all crazy and mournful, and their screams make us happy. It is summer.
We'd long since grown accustomed to the drone of the summer sounds. Tree frogs bellowed shrilly, so loud, so tiny. Later, we'd go searching for these little brown prizes. We'd hold them tightly in our sweaty palms and feel their fear escape them in a rush. Tree frog pee pee doesn't cause warts, mommy says.
As the sun falls out of the sky, we sit together on the deck, still twined together like broom straws, now arguing over the headphones, which are not attached to a cassette player, but we like to pretend.
Bugs scream past our ears every moment, it seems, some circling (sweat bees), some hovering like ghostly apparitions before our faces, blocking our views (gnats), some landing and landing, never choosing an adequate spot, able to lift straight up like tiny helicopters (flies).
The boards are rough in places, smoothed by time and tread in others. To walk barefoot on this deck is to temp fate. Many splinters are pulled from our tiny, soft kicks.
It is summer, and we are joyful. The air is oppressive: each breath feels like a swimmer forced to sustain life by growing gills and breathing under water.
She sweats against my chest, but I hold her tightly for the camera as mommy demanded, and this makes her giggle. All around, the sound of cicadas scream. They are the loon of the south, all crazy and mournful, and their screams make us happy. It is summer.
We'd long since grown accustomed to the drone of the summer sounds. Tree frogs bellowed shrilly, so loud, so tiny. Later, we'd go searching for these little brown prizes. We'd hold them tightly in our sweaty palms and feel their fear escape them in a rush. Tree frog pee pee doesn't cause warts, mommy says.
As the sun falls out of the sky, we sit together on the deck, still twined together like broom straws, now arguing over the headphones, which are not attached to a cassette player, but we like to pretend.
Bugs scream past our ears every moment, it seems, some circling (sweat bees), some hovering like ghostly apparitions before our faces, blocking our views (gnats), some landing and landing, never choosing an adequate spot, able to lift straight up like tiny helicopters (flies).
The boards are rough in places, smoothed by time and tread in others. To walk barefoot on this deck is to temp fate. Many splinters are pulled from our tiny, soft kicks.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Hydrant flush
This isn't the first time Mr. Heiney has bailed me out of a funk, and here he is again - giving me an irresistable prompt with which to play. I guess I owe him a blow job.
***
Jim: "Candace simply adored her new shoes. They sat prettily on her shelf where she had been admiring them for the past few days. Now that she had the perfect outfit to go with them, she supposed she should remove the previous owner's feet from them so she could wear them."
***
It was too soon, though. The woman hanging from a hook in the closet hadn't lost enough weight.
There were rules Candace knew, and that the previous owner had to die via starvation was the foremost of them. Without strict adherence to her rules, the world she'd carefully constructed would devolve into complete chaos, and Candace was far too peaceful a creature to cope with that. Her shoes would have to wait until the woman died.
They rules didn't forbid Candace from turning up the thermostat to ninety degrees, however. She did so with a satisfied smile, and then she shed her new dress and instead, donned an pair of blue slacks and a white, frothy shirt and paired them with the former Mr. Clein's comically small loafers.
Her feet throbbed in anticipation of the new shoes, however, so she made sure to bring along some bandages in case of a lust-blister.
She was meeting friends for lunch, and so she had only a small window of time to deliver Eva's lunch box to school. Her daughter had forgotten it on the counter and Candace had been notified by the school that Eva needed to purchase a lunch on her mother's credit. Appalled at the idea of her own child ingesting the dangerously ill-prepared hot lunch of a public school, Candace managed to squeeze in a trip to the elementary.
It gave her a chance to check out the receptionists Keds.
***
Jim: "Candace simply adored her new shoes. They sat prettily on her shelf where she had been admiring them for the past few days. Now that she had the perfect outfit to go with them, she supposed she should remove the previous owner's feet from them so she could wear them."
***
It was too soon, though. The woman hanging from a hook in the closet hadn't lost enough weight.
There were rules Candace knew, and that the previous owner had to die via starvation was the foremost of them. Without strict adherence to her rules, the world she'd carefully constructed would devolve into complete chaos, and Candace was far too peaceful a creature to cope with that. Her shoes would have to wait until the woman died.
They rules didn't forbid Candace from turning up the thermostat to ninety degrees, however. She did so with a satisfied smile, and then she shed her new dress and instead, donned an pair of blue slacks and a white, frothy shirt and paired them with the former Mr. Clein's comically small loafers.
Her feet throbbed in anticipation of the new shoes, however, so she made sure to bring along some bandages in case of a lust-blister.
She was meeting friends for lunch, and so she had only a small window of time to deliver Eva's lunch box to school. Her daughter had forgotten it on the counter and Candace had been notified by the school that Eva needed to purchase a lunch on her mother's credit. Appalled at the idea of her own child ingesting the dangerously ill-prepared hot lunch of a public school, Candace managed to squeeze in a trip to the elementary.
It gave her a chance to check out the receptionists Keds.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Well now.
So I have this friend who's an actor and a playwright (both in reality and in aspirations) and he's been giving me a lot of shit because I haven't been writing myself lately.
Technically, I HAVE been writing, here on this blog and over at The Metropolitan News, but in the grander scheme of literary ambitions (I can't deny my English major and creative writing minor without confronting a large stack of thereby-pointless student loans), I know that this blog is bullshit. It's all fluff and shock and awe without much content, especially since my brain pain.
In years past, I was featured many times on the really kick ass blog Five Star Friday for posts that one of my readers connected with in some way, and none of those posts were particularly blog-centric. Instead they were creative non-fiction or fiction itself, like this and this.
I haven't been nominated in a long time and I realize that's because I haven't written anything worth a damn.
Funny? Fuck yeah.
Therapeutic? Sometimes. More than not, really.
Disgusting? Always.
But literary? No. Not even a little bit. In fact, my writers group is probably getting a little sick of my lame excuses for why when they show up for a meeting, they have pages for us to review and all I have is a bowl of popcorn and a compulsion to bum a cigarette from them. But they're too consumed by their own creative drive and their awesome works in progress to really spend any time kicking my ass over..how lazy I am.
I could blame not having a laptop, but my actor friend vetoed that excuse. Something about a pen and paper. What the hell are those? I didn't really understand, either.
I could blame my lack of being in school, but that's kind of, oh, one hundred percent my fault, and anyway I don't want to be in school for the rest of my life, so at some point I'll have to man up and make myself write even if I don't have an assignment deadline. Hell, if I get what I REALLY want, all I WILL have is deadlines, and I hear publishers are even less forgiving than college professors in that regard.
I could blame my wedding last summer, but...that was last summer.
I could blame my head injury, but that was only a valid excuse for the amount of time it took me to be able to shower without vomiting or using a shower chair. I'm lucky as fuck that my brain wasn't permanently damaged so that I was no longer able to write creatively - or at all. I should be taking advantage of my second chance at creativity.
When I break down all the excuses, I find that I'm just tired. And scared (hey writers, feel me?). And out of practice. And lazy. And I watch too much television and I drink too many beers and I adopt too many dogs.
I'm giving myself every reason in the world not to write.
And so I guess I'm going to do what any self-respecting woman would and just fucking write already.
All of this to say that some of the things I post here might not be my standard blog fodder. I may not tell as many awesome poop stories for a while, and I probably won't discuss cervical mucus (unless I have a really awesome chunk of it myself someday). I'm going to make myself post shit that came from somewhere a little further in my head than a bad penis joke.
And I'm exhausted just from finding a pencil.
Technically, I HAVE been writing, here on this blog and over at The Metropolitan News, but in the grander scheme of literary ambitions (I can't deny my English major and creative writing minor without confronting a large stack of thereby-pointless student loans), I know that this blog is bullshit. It's all fluff and shock and awe without much content, especially since my brain pain.
In years past, I was featured many times on the really kick ass blog Five Star Friday for posts that one of my readers connected with in some way, and none of those posts were particularly blog-centric. Instead they were creative non-fiction or fiction itself, like this and this.
I haven't been nominated in a long time and I realize that's because I haven't written anything worth a damn.
Funny? Fuck yeah.
Therapeutic? Sometimes. More than not, really.
Disgusting? Always.
But literary? No. Not even a little bit. In fact, my writers group is probably getting a little sick of my lame excuses for why when they show up for a meeting, they have pages for us to review and all I have is a bowl of popcorn and a compulsion to bum a cigarette from them. But they're too consumed by their own creative drive and their awesome works in progress to really spend any time kicking my ass over..how lazy I am.
I could blame not having a laptop, but my actor friend vetoed that excuse. Something about a pen and paper. What the hell are those? I didn't really understand, either.
I could blame my lack of being in school, but that's kind of, oh, one hundred percent my fault, and anyway I don't want to be in school for the rest of my life, so at some point I'll have to man up and make myself write even if I don't have an assignment deadline. Hell, if I get what I REALLY want, all I WILL have is deadlines, and I hear publishers are even less forgiving than college professors in that regard.
I could blame my wedding last summer, but...that was last summer.
I could blame my head injury, but that was only a valid excuse for the amount of time it took me to be able to shower without vomiting or using a shower chair. I'm lucky as fuck that my brain wasn't permanently damaged so that I was no longer able to write creatively - or at all. I should be taking advantage of my second chance at creativity.
When I break down all the excuses, I find that I'm just tired. And scared (hey writers, feel me?). And out of practice. And lazy. And I watch too much television and I drink too many beers and I adopt too many dogs.
I'm giving myself every reason in the world not to write.
And so I guess I'm going to do what any self-respecting woman would and just fucking write already.
All of this to say that some of the things I post here might not be my standard blog fodder. I may not tell as many awesome poop stories for a while, and I probably won't discuss cervical mucus (unless I have a really awesome chunk of it myself someday). I'm going to make myself post shit that came from somewhere a little further in my head than a bad penis joke.
And I'm exhausted just from finding a pencil.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Confession time
Okay, so the weirdest thing happened back in December 2009, but I've been super confused about it so it's taken this long to write about.
I was with three friends at a swanky hotel bar, and *somebody* got so hammered that the security and emergency medical staff became somehow involved and we were asked to leave. The security guard was apologetic until I flipped him off.
I was with three friends at a swanky hotel bar, and *somebody* got so hammered that the security and emergency medical staff became somehow involved and we were asked to leave. The security guard was apologetic until I flipped him off.
When we left, we took this back road home and came across a property that was a pile of boulders and clay and dirt, about five miles off the interstate and up a spiraling dirt road. It was dry and hot, and we were on dilapidated road and property, and it was probably closed - a sign lay on the ground by the gate that said "North Pole". There were random cheap Christmas decorations laying here and there, plastic snowmen knocked over, reindeer hanging from a tree, and a three foot barber shop/north pole marker at the very top of the hill, clearly meant as a photo op for tourists.
When we got to the top of the driveway, we were met by a balding guy with a maroon and white Hawaiian shirt over an undershirt over his gut that was hanging out. He told us he was Santa, insisted we were at the North Pole.
Behind him was a crumbling ranch-style house just at the top of the hill. It looked dark and hot, the window coverings were drawn. There were some kind of outbuildings behind and to the right, 200 yards back and sitting perpendicular to the house - maybe barns or something big like that. The ground was dusty and dirty, patchy weeds and grass growing wherever they could find a hold.
Behind him was a crumbling ranch-style house just at the top of the hill. It looked dark and hot, the window coverings were drawn. There were some kind of outbuildings behind and to the right, 200 yards back and sitting perpendicular to the house - maybe barns or something big like that. The ground was dusty and dirty, patchy weeds and grass growing wherever they could find a hold.
We decided to get the fuck out of there, but then we saw Santa and (a woman who appeared to be) his wife hurrying out of the house with suitcases and loading up an old beater in the driveway in front of us.
I blacked out for a while and found myself in the living room where I was confronted by several Hispanics who explained that they were slaves who had just "overthrown" the owners (as those owners had done to their predecessors) and they'd just taken control of the property by force. The old owners were fleeing for their lives.
I blacked out for a while and found myself in the living room where I was confronted by several Hispanics who explained that they were slaves who had just "overthrown" the owners (as those owners had done to their predecessors) and they'd just taken control of the property by force. The old owners were fleeing for their lives.
Down a hallway in a back room, we came across a crazy young mother and twin baby girls (identical, pale-skinned, bald, big round heads, wearing pale pink pants, and barefooted), roughly a year old. The mother was babbling, worried about being killed by the servants. She was apparently the victim of some sort of incest or rape by the owner, Santa, her male relative, because when we explained that we'd come from the hotel to rescue her and her babies, she shot one of the twins and said something like, "That one was his, I'm taking mine with me," which made a kind of convoluted sense at the time.
Just as we began our retreat down the hallway with the crazy mother mumbling and cowering, the injured baby we left for dead began wailing and trying to crawl after us. I picked her up but I don't remember if I end up taking her with us.
Just as we began our retreat down the hallway with the crazy mother mumbling and cowering, the injured baby we left for dead began wailing and trying to crawl after us. I picked her up but I don't remember if I end up taking her with us.
A a psychotic grandmother-age woman came wheeling down the hall at full speed, trying to stop us from leaving. We ran into the living room where we grabbed things to throw at her in defense, like picture frames and paperback books.
Everyone ended up in the living room, slaves, Santa and his woman, wacko grandma, crazy young mother and baby, myself and my friends who came with me, I'm not clear on which friends they were. We seemed to be "choosing sides" and the slaves and mom/baby stood on our side while the old owners and grandma faced us, and we began kind of...squaring off, but just via conversation at that point. Negotiations.
I remember I threw some things at the grandma's head and missed her every time.
When I woke up in a ditch three days later, I was sorry to find I'd mislaid my chapstick in the confusion.
I remember I threw some things at the grandma's head and missed her every time.
When I woke up in a ditch three days later, I was sorry to find I'd mislaid my chapstick in the confusion.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Columnar
I know, I know. I'm still missing.
But I'm inching closer, so be very afraid and also, stock up on hand sanitizer.
In the meantime, you can read my column over at The Metropolitan News.
But I'm inching closer, so be very afraid and also, stock up on hand sanitizer.
In the meantime, you can read my column over at The Metropolitan News.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Typically they're good with money, too.
I was so fucking bored earlier to day that I started googling shit like "free samples" and "how do I ripen peaches" and "Valspar LA609".
Then I googled "Jessica Bern" because of all the bloggers I've met, she's the only one who has spent her career doing stand up comedy and commercial acting, hence there's a better shot I'll turn up a mug shot of her. Or a porn flick. Or, I don't know...a commercial for margarine.
You know what I found? That bitch has 733,000 hits on Google. SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND HITS. On google.
I only had the attention span to page through the first 3 of those search returns, so the final 732,997 pages may have been about some other famous Jewish chick named Jessica Bern, but I'm guessing she's responsible for at least half of the Interweb chuckles that I unearthed. Jews aren't that funny, as a rule.
But she's an exception. You have to watch this:
She's funny, sure (COTTAGE CHEESE ASS!) but her outfit...I'll try to excuse her outfit by explaining that the footage is from 1993, but I don't think it matters much. The blousy shirt is trying to eat her alive and there's no excuse for that kind of fashion.
Then I googled "Jessica Bern" because of all the bloggers I've met, she's the only one who has spent her career doing stand up comedy and commercial acting, hence there's a better shot I'll turn up a mug shot of her. Or a porn flick. Or, I don't know...a commercial for margarine.
You know what I found? That bitch has 733,000 hits on Google. SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND HITS. On google.
I only had the attention span to page through the first 3 of those search returns, so the final 732,997 pages may have been about some other famous Jewish chick named Jessica Bern, but I'm guessing she's responsible for at least half of the Interweb chuckles that I unearthed. Jews aren't that funny, as a rule.
But she's an exception. You have to watch this:
| Jokes.com | ||||
| Jessica Bern - Summer Jobs | ||||
| ||||
She's funny, sure (COTTAGE CHEESE ASS!) but her outfit...I'll try to excuse her outfit by explaining that the footage is from 1993, but I don't think it matters much. The blousy shirt is trying to eat her alive and there's no excuse for that kind of fashion.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
You Know It's Good Journalism When It Makes Me Sound Important.
My friend Randi (you'll remember her as the wedding flutist)((or as my doppelganger, although the more I get to know her, the more I realize she's WAY more stable than I am)) wrote this really awesome and deceptively intriguing article about me in the university newspaper. You should go read it and then come straight back here so that any illusion of writer-ly-ness I may have pulled over your eyeballs can be removed when I inevitably say the word "shart".
Speaking of which, I totally sharted all over myself last week, and I'm talking throw-your-underwears-in-the-garbage, walk-around-all-day-going-commando, belatedly-realize-your-cooter-hair-is-protruding-directly-through-the-front-of-your-pants. AT WORK. Kind of shart. It was awesome.
I also realized that I had a very similar incident almost exactly one year ago, which leads me to believe that I eat too much Mexican food in August, and also that September is extra scary.
That's right, I forgot. It totally IS scarier. Thanks Gray.
PS - Welcome, Metro State Metropolitan newspaper readers! I'm so glad you're here for me to horrify!
PPS - Try AJAX. It seems to be the most effective at removing this blog from your mind. And poop from underwear, now that I think about it.
Speaking of which, I totally sharted all over myself last week, and I'm talking throw-your-underwears-in-the-garbage, walk-around-all-day-going-commando, belatedly-realize-your-cooter-hair-is-protruding-directly-through-the-front-of-your-pants. AT WORK. Kind of shart. It was awesome.
I also realized that I had a very similar incident almost exactly one year ago, which leads me to believe that I eat too much Mexican food in August, and also that September is extra scary.
That's right, I forgot. It totally IS scarier. Thanks Gray.
PS - Welcome, Metro State Metropolitan newspaper readers! I'm so glad you're here for me to horrify!
PPS - Try AJAX. It seems to be the most effective at removing this blog from your mind. And poop from underwear, now that I think about it.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Stab II
One stamp, the kind you had to lick, and he had the crazy thought that the adhesive might have turned bad, might be poison, and he shuddered when he realized he wished that were true. Three half-sticks of gum, each hard enough to use as a file. Chewing half a stick of gum at a time was a habit he learned from his grandmother, to whom sweets were a luxury, and who rationed them as if the country were at war. She never quite got used to the idea that when she ran out of gum, there would be more where it came from. Thirteen business cards, only four of which he remembered acquiring, the others were an odd assortment of real estate agents, mystics, and Avon representatives. Mary Kay, he realized. His cousin sells Mary Kay. She'd kill him if she found these here. Or was it Avon? One condom, a five dollar bill and eight one dollar bills. A picture of his ex-girlfriend's daughter he'd forgotten to remove. and whose face startled him now because she looked eerily like his sister as a child: brown eyes but light hair, very light, and odd combination that made him think of marionettes, their eyes painted brightly below eyebrow-less foreheads.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
A Stab
All these pieces of garbage. Microscopic waste. Stuck in the industrial carpet, ground into it until they're inseparable, forgotten until now. These things: fingernails, crumbs, hairs, flakes of skin, an assortment of ash, clumps of dirt, tiny pieces of string, even a length of tooth floss (which he identified by tasting). All of these things fell from a person as they stood in this space, and in so little time. It was amazing how many pieces of ourselves we lose in such a short span of time. How long? The building is one hundred and thirty-four stories tall, so maybe four minutes? Thirty seconds? Not long enough to remember in hindsight, but plenty of time to shed and drop. To leave bits and pieces of our DNA and our diet and our habits.
Bits and pieces overlooked by vacuums and carpet cleaners and janitors. By security guards and lawyers. Graphic designers and medical device sales people. Hell, even he overlooked them, day after day, elevator ride after elevator ride, until now.
Now, with his cheek pressed to the floor, the pattern of the carpet already marking his torso through his shirt, now he saw the droppings of human life, and he was afraid.
Bits and pieces overlooked by vacuums and carpet cleaners and janitors. By security guards and lawyers. Graphic designers and medical device sales people. Hell, even he overlooked them, day after day, elevator ride after elevator ride, until now.
Now, with his cheek pressed to the floor, the pattern of the carpet already marking his torso through his shirt, now he saw the droppings of human life, and he was afraid.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Trouble With Studying Creative Writing...
...are the writers themselves. They say you're supposed to write every day and they tell you to write about anything at all, just so long as you're putting words on the screen, and Anne Lamott gets even more specific, saying you should write 300 words every day, even if all you can write about is how much you hate writing. Just write. Every day. It's like weight training for your imagination or, at the very least, your typing skills.
Lamott also says you should accept the fact that you may be in a "dry spell" creatively, and instead of beating your head against the keyboard in frustration, you should write your 300 words and get out, because "Your Unconscious can't work when you're sitting there breathing down it's neck." True, but also not true, because in the case of my unconscious mind, I have to stand over its desk and monitor its progress if there is any hope of getting anything done. As far as creative dry spells, also known (horribly) as writer's block - a term that always reminds me of a public decapitation in medieval times - I seem to have more of these than the Mojave desert.
It would seem that in order to have a proper dry spell, I must first have a wet spell, a period of time when I'm leaking creativity from every orifice, just squirting it at everything I see, but I don't seem to have these wet spells, and I'm starting to think that may be because I only ever write things down when I have all the basics of a piece worked out in my head, at least to the extent that I feel like my ideas are going somewhere, as if the destination is what's important when I know really it's the interstate and the truck stops and the road construction and the flat tires and the fart wars and the battle for the CD player that matter. The problem with waiting to write until I have well-formed ideas is that I can't ever fucking remember anything unless I write it down, and now you should be picturing a snake eating its own tail because HELLO DYSFUNCTION and WELCOME SELF-DEFEATING HABITS. Catch-22 on a stick - the newest Minnesota State Fair food.
But I'm buuuuuuusy, I whine. Or, I'm sleeeeepy. Or huuuuungry. But the wedding! And what about the laundry? THERE MUST BE CLEAN UNDERWEAR, I declare, ignoring the obvious, that there are 30 to 50 minutes between times when I am actually needed to do anything to the laundry, it's not like I'm out there by the river beating my thong against a rock or anything, so how do I justify the not writing then, huh? The truth is that I don't justify it at all, I simply tell myself that I write for fun and fun alone, that I shouldn't force myself to do anything that isn't fun, don't push myself because maybe it will stop being fun, and that wouldn't be any fun at all.
There is also the small matter of me being drunk all the time, and there is something about being tipsy that somehow reinforces the FUN ONLY policy, and then I wake up and it's morning and I forgot the idea I had meant to write down, can only remember that it had something to do with octopus taxidermy, and now not only have I not written anything, but with the flight of my brilliant idea goes my inspiration followed closely by my discipline, and lastly my brain, and I'm left with the stale vodka sloshing around in my otherwise empty skull. And I need to pee.
And then something comes along which reaffirms why I write in the first place - something like a great comment on my blog or an attagirl from a classmate or an award from the university - and suddenly I'm propelled (almost against my will), limbs flailing helplessly, back into the make-believe world in my head, and when I arrive in my personal Wonderland, I'm greeted by the shadowy people who live there and the pre-possibilities which sometimes become real in that place, and I remember the ideas that I'd lost to late nights and reality television. I remember why I came here in the first place, to this strange and incredible home.
Goddamn 300 words.
Lamott also says you should accept the fact that you may be in a "dry spell" creatively, and instead of beating your head against the keyboard in frustration, you should write your 300 words and get out, because "Your Unconscious can't work when you're sitting there breathing down it's neck." True, but also not true, because in the case of my unconscious mind, I have to stand over its desk and monitor its progress if there is any hope of getting anything done. As far as creative dry spells, also known (horribly) as writer's block - a term that always reminds me of a public decapitation in medieval times - I seem to have more of these than the Mojave desert.
It would seem that in order to have a proper dry spell, I must first have a wet spell, a period of time when I'm leaking creativity from every orifice, just squirting it at everything I see, but I don't seem to have these wet spells, and I'm starting to think that may be because I only ever write things down when I have all the basics of a piece worked out in my head, at least to the extent that I feel like my ideas are going somewhere, as if the destination is what's important when I know really it's the interstate and the truck stops and the road construction and the flat tires and the fart wars and the battle for the CD player that matter. The problem with waiting to write until I have well-formed ideas is that I can't ever fucking remember anything unless I write it down, and now you should be picturing a snake eating its own tail because HELLO DYSFUNCTION and WELCOME SELF-DEFEATING HABITS. Catch-22 on a stick - the newest Minnesota State Fair food.
But I'm buuuuuuusy, I whine. Or, I'm sleeeeepy. Or huuuuungry. But the wedding! And what about the laundry? THERE MUST BE CLEAN UNDERWEAR, I declare, ignoring the obvious, that there are 30 to 50 minutes between times when I am actually needed to do anything to the laundry, it's not like I'm out there by the river beating my thong against a rock or anything, so how do I justify the not writing then, huh? The truth is that I don't justify it at all, I simply tell myself that I write for fun and fun alone, that I shouldn't force myself to do anything that isn't fun, don't push myself because maybe it will stop being fun, and that wouldn't be any fun at all.
There is also the small matter of me being drunk all the time, and there is something about being tipsy that somehow reinforces the FUN ONLY policy, and then I wake up and it's morning and I forgot the idea I had meant to write down, can only remember that it had something to do with octopus taxidermy, and now not only have I not written anything, but with the flight of my brilliant idea goes my inspiration followed closely by my discipline, and lastly my brain, and I'm left with the stale vodka sloshing around in my otherwise empty skull. And I need to pee.
And then something comes along which reaffirms why I write in the first place - something like a great comment on my blog or an attagirl from a classmate or an award from the university - and suddenly I'm propelled (almost against my will), limbs flailing helplessly, back into the make-believe world in my head, and when I arrive in my personal Wonderland, I'm greeted by the shadowy people who live there and the pre-possibilities which sometimes become real in that place, and I remember the ideas that I'd lost to late nights and reality television. I remember why I came here in the first place, to this strange and incredible home.
Goddamn 300 words.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
I, We
I met her around the time I learned to use contractions instead of formal negations, which is to say I was young, but still old enough to know that cutting corners was my thing. She was mousey, the stereotypical new girl, and tentative, and I loathed her for those qualities under the guise of my own confidence. I loathed her because she was me. It wasn’t her, but myself I despised.
She helped me with some spelling words one day in class(I wanted to spell “distinct” with a “k”), and I thanked her. She must have taken that as a sign that I wanted her to tag along, and from that moment on, I couldn’t shake her. Not on the playground, not in the cafeteria, not even at home. She called me there, and my mom remarked that my new friend “seems very good”.
She is, I told my mom. She’s good, but I’m good, too.
I brought her home on the bus one day, and some of the high school kids grabbed her – pulled her into the seats at the back of the aisle and teased her. I yelled for them to give her back. The diver threatened to kick us off. One kid brought her back to my seat and said she was very good, my new friend, if a little worse for wear. I know she is, I told the kid.
My little sister said she was going to tell on me for bringing home a friend, but I told her to shut up. Our teacher sent a note, I said, and I could tell that really, my sister just wanted to play with us, so we let her.
I made the new girl do my English homework. She didn’t want to, but I told her she had to. I wouldn’t be her friend. So she wrote my essay and I got an A. From then on, I used her every day. Sometimes she liked it – she went along easily where I led her. Other times she was stubborn, wanted me to do the work by myself, she was tired of writing. Mostly she did what I said, and all of the adults began telling me how good I was at English, that I was going to grow up to be a writer some day.
I’m good because of her, I thought. I felt like a phony because it wasn’t me who wrote: it was her. I liked the attention she brought, but I didn’t give her credit for anything. She only did what she wanted to do, I told myself.
There was this boy in my class that I chased at recess. I wanted to write him a love note so he would be my boyfriend, but I knew it wouldn’t be any good, so I made her write it instead. She liked this job, got really excited and drew lots of hearts in the margins. When she was finished, she passed the note to him.
He snickered. Said he was going to throw up. He asked who wrote the note.
She did, I told him. I pointed at the new girl. I told everyone in class that she wrote the note because she liked him. She just watched me with big eyes and didn’t say anything. I blamed her. And later, she forgave me.
She kept doing my homework and following me around. Eventually I got used to her and I started to miss her when she didn’t show up to class. Mostly she was there, though. We were always in the same class, every year, and then we’d spend all summer curled up together in the woods on a blanket, reading, or sometimes playing Haunted Horse Barn with my sister, who always had to get trampled (because she was littler) by the horse ghost that only appeared when the moon was full.
Once, I found a stack of Playboys hidden in the bottom drawer of my mom’s dresser, and I showed them to the new girl and made her look at the pictures, made her look at them together. She didn’t want to, but she always did what I told her to do. I made her touch me like in the pictures, and I touched her back. We never told anyone because we knew that what we had done was Bad. We just didn’t know why.
As we got older, she consoled me, nursed me through heartaches, kept me company during the nights when I couldn’t sleep. She told me stories that she made up just for me. As my conscious, she saved my life (or at least parts of my life) on many occasions, but neither of us knew it at the time. She was adopted into my family. She sent newsletters to my grandparents.
She was what people liked about me.
I decided to take a year off after high school. We applied to all of the same colleges, but I told her I wanted to leave without her. I wanted to know if people liked me without her. She didn’t cry, just packed and left and sometimes she sent me letters. After a year, I enrolled in a college where I experimented with other women: technical writing, history, small business management, psychology. I wanted to know all of my options. I wanted to pretend I didn’t want her because there was something better. She isn’t good enough for me, I told myself.
Later, when I realized my mistake, she came to me and we picked up right where we’d left off, as if the flow of time had never widened the banks between us. She is the kind of friend that everyone deserves to recognize inside of themselves. She is not good. I am not good. Instead, she is what I am good at.
I am learning how to respect her, how to work along side her, how to pull an equal load of the weight and sharing the credit for what we make together. This class has been like couples counseling for us: We are learning to communicate more openly with each other, more freely expressing what we want from each other, spending more time together. I am learning how to give her the respect she deserves and she is learning to give me the space that I need when life is pressing against my eyelids and I am tired. Just as we labor together, we rest.
We are two halves of a pear, juices flowing between us. We surround the pit, one on either side, and together, we chip away the bitter core and fill the void with sweetness.
She helped me with some spelling words one day in class(I wanted to spell “distinct” with a “k”), and I thanked her. She must have taken that as a sign that I wanted her to tag along, and from that moment on, I couldn’t shake her. Not on the playground, not in the cafeteria, not even at home. She called me there, and my mom remarked that my new friend “seems very good”.
She is, I told my mom. She’s good, but I’m good, too.
I brought her home on the bus one day, and some of the high school kids grabbed her – pulled her into the seats at the back of the aisle and teased her. I yelled for them to give her back. The diver threatened to kick us off. One kid brought her back to my seat and said she was very good, my new friend, if a little worse for wear. I know she is, I told the kid.
My little sister said she was going to tell on me for bringing home a friend, but I told her to shut up. Our teacher sent a note, I said, and I could tell that really, my sister just wanted to play with us, so we let her.
I made the new girl do my English homework. She didn’t want to, but I told her she had to. I wouldn’t be her friend. So she wrote my essay and I got an A. From then on, I used her every day. Sometimes she liked it – she went along easily where I led her. Other times she was stubborn, wanted me to do the work by myself, she was tired of writing. Mostly she did what I said, and all of the adults began telling me how good I was at English, that I was going to grow up to be a writer some day.
I’m good because of her, I thought. I felt like a phony because it wasn’t me who wrote: it was her. I liked the attention she brought, but I didn’t give her credit for anything. She only did what she wanted to do, I told myself.
There was this boy in my class that I chased at recess. I wanted to write him a love note so he would be my boyfriend, but I knew it wouldn’t be any good, so I made her write it instead. She liked this job, got really excited and drew lots of hearts in the margins. When she was finished, she passed the note to him.
He snickered. Said he was going to throw up. He asked who wrote the note.
She did, I told him. I pointed at the new girl. I told everyone in class that she wrote the note because she liked him. She just watched me with big eyes and didn’t say anything. I blamed her. And later, she forgave me.
She kept doing my homework and following me around. Eventually I got used to her and I started to miss her when she didn’t show up to class. Mostly she was there, though. We were always in the same class, every year, and then we’d spend all summer curled up together in the woods on a blanket, reading, or sometimes playing Haunted Horse Barn with my sister, who always had to get trampled (because she was littler) by the horse ghost that only appeared when the moon was full.
Once, I found a stack of Playboys hidden in the bottom drawer of my mom’s dresser, and I showed them to the new girl and made her look at the pictures, made her look at them together. She didn’t want to, but she always did what I told her to do. I made her touch me like in the pictures, and I touched her back. We never told anyone because we knew that what we had done was Bad. We just didn’t know why.
As we got older, she consoled me, nursed me through heartaches, kept me company during the nights when I couldn’t sleep. She told me stories that she made up just for me. As my conscious, she saved my life (or at least parts of my life) on many occasions, but neither of us knew it at the time. She was adopted into my family. She sent newsletters to my grandparents.
She was what people liked about me.
I decided to take a year off after high school. We applied to all of the same colleges, but I told her I wanted to leave without her. I wanted to know if people liked me without her. She didn’t cry, just packed and left and sometimes she sent me letters. After a year, I enrolled in a college where I experimented with other women: technical writing, history, small business management, psychology. I wanted to know all of my options. I wanted to pretend I didn’t want her because there was something better. She isn’t good enough for me, I told myself.
Later, when I realized my mistake, she came to me and we picked up right where we’d left off, as if the flow of time had never widened the banks between us. She is the kind of friend that everyone deserves to recognize inside of themselves. She is not good. I am not good. Instead, she is what I am good at.
I am learning how to respect her, how to work along side her, how to pull an equal load of the weight and sharing the credit for what we make together. This class has been like couples counseling for us: We are learning to communicate more openly with each other, more freely expressing what we want from each other, spending more time together. I am learning how to give her the respect she deserves and she is learning to give me the space that I need when life is pressing against my eyelids and I am tired. Just as we labor together, we rest.
We are two halves of a pear, juices flowing between us. We surround the pit, one on either side, and together, we chip away the bitter core and fill the void with sweetness.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
I Am the One Who...
...is never wrong except when it comes to what is always right, like the tone of my voice when I correct your grammar, again, for the love of god why can't I stop saying, "You mean 'aren't,'" because who the hell cares that you are the one who will notice if I change the channel, but never if your plurality is incorrect, which it often is when it comes to what is always my job, like staying on top of the laundry so you don't end up wearing those awful Simpsons' boxers, again, even though you will never notice if your socks are full of holes, but I will always point out when your verb tenses don't agree with the color of your belt and you will always be the guy who tries to get me to be the girl who can leave the laundry until later because it ain't that important, are they?
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Well, Those Things and In-grown Cooter Hairs...
Have you ever sat peacefully beside a window in the early evening hours and watched as little bunnies hop through your yard and the neighbor children blow bubbles and sing songs and mow your lawn and then a rainbow explodes in the sky overhead and you know that all is right with the world and all you need is love and give peace a chance?
And as the sun sinks lower in the sky, the fading light falls through the glass of your window in such a way that you can see thousands of spinning dust particles dancing on the air?
And then you think to yourself, "What the fuck?"
Because those spinning dust particles GO IN OUR LUNGS, people. We suck them in like we're living vacuum cleaners, and I feel that this is unacceptable. Not at all acceptable. Not even the tiniest bit.
As a kid, when I happened to catch a glimpse of the dust particles I would suddenly feel like I was suffocating because I figured that though they looked like they were suspended in air, they weren't actually suspended in air, they were slowly being sucked nearer and nearer to my face and then they were being inhaled into my lungs where they were beginning the slow and deadly process of congealing into a lung-putty made up of ashes and crumbled moth wings and cat dander which would mix with my lung...oozings, and that combination of liquid and solid would become a giant mud pie and which would eventually squeeze all the air from my lungs and then the death certificate would read: Dust Motes.
As I've grown older, I've come to terms with the fact that I breathe in microscopic particles into myself 24 hours a day. I've come to terms with that fact despite those commercials where the giant pile of flea dung gets smeared all over an innocent baby because those terrible commercial parents didn't use a specific type of allergen-reducing air filter (AHEM, 3M, I'm looking at you) to keep the innocent baby safe from lung mud pies.
Because apparently just because something is called a "filter" does not mean that it will actually FILT anything. The cheap ones are just paper towels stapled to the cardboard out of some dude's microwave box. I'm pretty sure that the fancy ones use two sheets of paper towels and a beer carton.
All of this is to say that I think you should go check out The Women's Colony and read my piece about frog murder, which is relevant to this post because both dust motes and frog murder tend to put a damper on your day.
And as the sun sinks lower in the sky, the fading light falls through the glass of your window in such a way that you can see thousands of spinning dust particles dancing on the air?
And then you think to yourself, "What the fuck?"
Because those spinning dust particles GO IN OUR LUNGS, people. We suck them in like we're living vacuum cleaners, and I feel that this is unacceptable. Not at all acceptable. Not even the tiniest bit.
As a kid, when I happened to catch a glimpse of the dust particles I would suddenly feel like I was suffocating because I figured that though they looked like they were suspended in air, they weren't actually suspended in air, they were slowly being sucked nearer and nearer to my face and then they were being inhaled into my lungs where they were beginning the slow and deadly process of congealing into a lung-putty made up of ashes and crumbled moth wings and cat dander which would mix with my lung...oozings, and that combination of liquid and solid would become a giant mud pie and which would eventually squeeze all the air from my lungs and then the death certificate would read: Dust Motes.
As I've grown older, I've come to terms with the fact that I breathe in microscopic particles into myself 24 hours a day. I've come to terms with that fact despite those commercials where the giant pile of flea dung gets smeared all over an innocent baby because those terrible commercial parents didn't use a specific type of allergen-reducing air filter (AHEM, 3M, I'm looking at you) to keep the innocent baby safe from lung mud pies.
Because apparently just because something is called a "filter" does not mean that it will actually FILT anything. The cheap ones are just paper towels stapled to the cardboard out of some dude's microwave box. I'm pretty sure that the fancy ones use two sheets of paper towels and a beer carton.
All of this is to say that I think you should go check out The Women's Colony and read my piece about frog murder, which is relevant to this post because both dust motes and frog murder tend to put a damper on your day.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Here
I have shit to do, ya'll, and I am not even joking when I say that I'm so wound up with anticipation and twisted tight with anxiety about an ever-growing List Of Shit To Do, Or Else that I feel as if I'm crawling all over the walls and hanging from the chandelier, and I don't mean that in the good way. Actually, so far as the chandeliers go, I mean that literally because Gray and I began to try to install a new, sparkly, pimp-smacking, daddy-mackin' light fixture that Veronica purchased for our dining room.
And then early twentieth-century electrical work happened.
So now I need to stop and try to explain to the good people in the aprons at the hardware store that I need this adapter thingy that I know exists, if only by the sheer force of my will that it shall turn out to exist, because otherwise we're looking at needing a new ceiling box, which will require a saw (it's plastered in place, thanks to early twentieth-century plaster work) and I'm pretty sure I'm not down with sawing a hole in somebody else's ceiling, even if that someone knows me well enough to poop in front of me. By accident. In her pants.
I'm also finishing up two weeks of homework before we leave on Friday (did I mention we're flying to motherfucking CALIFORNIA, bitches? Because if not, then consider yourself foresworn. Wait, is it foresworn or foretold? Foreskin? Foreplay? I think I mean forewarned, although now the prefix of "fore" has totally lost its meaning and looks like a made up word, kind of like the word "here" did after I finished writing the essay below.)
Which brings me to the essay below. I'm so busy that you losers are stuck with reading recycled posts. I guess technically it's not recycled so much as it's reworked. Renown? Rehashed? Re-FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
I (re)worked this piece for an assignment in my creative writing class. The original piece (wow, aren't those bulleted numbers fucking FANCY?) can be found here. Enjoy.
I started in the corner house in Bellflower. That was where we had citrus and plum trees and where my dad built the playhouse in the back and he bounced us on the eucalyptus limb in the front and I found a dead sparrow and we buried it after mommy told me about God. There our neighbors had an avocado tree and my parents were happy together and I felt the earthquake as I sat watching robot cartoons in the den and the walls started shaking and the white figurines on the shelf fell and shattered on the floor, like lovely plaster bombs detonating around me.
Then came the condo, where I called 911 just to see what would happen and hung up when the woman answered and I pretended to be lost in sleep when daddy came upstairs but really I was wondering how he knew what I’d done. I was there in my bedroom when another earthquake sloshed the fish bowl so hard that Teabag and Fleabag nearly spilled onto the carpet and I imagined their demise would be blamed on me and so I was relieved when the shaking stopped and the fish stayed put. It was where I tried to pee standing up just to see what it would be like and where I played doctor for the first time, with Shane, under his bed, because he had a skate board and hair so blond that it hurt to look at it.
Then we drove a long ways from the beach and all four of us squished in the front seat of the moving truck and I realized you could get so hot that it actually hurts and I lost my best friend, the stuffed cheetah, left him at a gas station in the desert. We came to the house on Cannock Lane which was my grandparent’s house and my daddy paid cash so we could live there, and that was where my sister and I raised ourselves after daddy went back to California and mommy’s new boyfriend was younger than I am now. There we walked to the lake and jumped off the docks, the last one down was the best, but we always watched the water for moccasins that glided on the surface like S-shaped Jesuses. That was where I believed my playmate, the woods, was alive and magical and once I saw a thick snake, midnight on top, cotton on the bottom, wrapped around the phone pole like a slick pile of licorice whips and it reminded me of French braids, in the yard where Jingle fell out of a very high tree and had to wear a neon pink cast on her paw.
Then, sadly, we lived with a friend so my mother (no longer mommy) could go back to college after she was let go, and that was the house where all shared one bedroom for years in the neighborhood where I fell in love with the boy down the street who is now married happily to someone else and living somewhere distant from our block where he liked to push my face into the snow. That was the unhappy house where I read an article in Seventeen about cutting and I got inspired and where I walked three blocks to middle school every morning and saw the cat in the road with its eyes bulging upward in total defiance of gravity.
Next came the new husband's house where I had my own room, so I tried out the new school for three months and decided that home schooling was for me, a bad decision, because of which I showered three times a day and still never felt clean. That was where I lived when I got my first job at Kisor's Grill & Bakery and went to the church where I learned to hate God. That was the house where my baby brother was conceived and then everywhere we went, people assumed I was a teenage mother and it made me proud in a way I never understood. That was where I fell in love with his big forehead and bigger smile, where I left at seventeen (because they couldn’t stop me) and never wanted to return.
I moved in with my boyfriend and his parents and I cranked the heat up to ninety degrees once when I was hung over and shaking and sitting in the bathtub with my clothes on. I’ll always remember that I had sex in the backyard beside their bedroom window and liked that it was risky but hated that the night could see us. That was the house where I was left in charge of ironing his father's shirts and Dockers and ties while his mother was at the Mayo and where I felt like a part of a real family for once, useful, but also like I was being tested.
Then we left for Stanley, where we lived in a heated yard shack for two months while I worked first as a housekeeper and then as a prep cook at the lodge and I talked to the does on my walk to the kitchen each morning where they stood along the narrow road, ears at attention. That was where I jumped off a boulder into the glacial lake and finally understood what “glacial lake” meant, where I got sun poisoning in the paddle boat and where I thought I was free for the very first time and I sailed on a rope swing out over a two-hundred-foot ravine and wasn't afraid on the same day that I drank a liter of vodka and wasn't hung over, which is how I knew that we had to leave.
Then we lived in a basement which is where I hosed his vomit off the driveway and gave him a bath without waking the family, where my nephews were born and where I broke down and cried at the dinner table because I missed a spot with the lawn mower and they thought it was funny. That is where I lived when I watched Teletubbies and learned to drive stick and I we could hear them making love through the ceiling.
At the apartment I paid all the bills by myself which set the precedent for paying all the bills by myself and I once I called the cops because I was drunk and somehow it made sense at the time and it was there where my boyfriend accused me of being a lesbian because I finally made a girl friend whom I met where I went to college for the first time. I worked as a waitress at the Mall of America and after my shift I rode the bus to the apartment, which is where I helped an old lady get up off the floor where I found her laying where she'd fallen by the laundry room on the third floor which overlooked the pool where the ducks lived.
I bought my first house three weeks after I turned twenty-one and it happened to be that I loved my neighbors as much as I loved to guess what type of crops would grow in the field behind us each spring. There, I took pride in my lawn, at least up until I got "the call,” then I lived alone with the dog for long months which is probably why I called the escort service, but only to talk. Then my sister came to live with me so that I wouldn’t be alone and it was later that I met my Jill who was there when my niece was born and came home wearing pink for the first time to that house where I fell in love for a third time and I told my husband I wanted a divorce. I never wanted to leave but couldn't afford to stay.
Then was the apartment where he and I moved in together, alone for the first time, and where it was tiny but we didn’t really notice because it had a dishwasher and we had each other. That was where we smoked, then quit, then started again until I got pregnant and we moved across the hall in pursuit of a second bedroom, which is where I lost the baby before we’d even turned in our key to the one bedroom place. But there I learned to bake wheat bread when I wanted to forget we were paying for an empty room and we hung the curtains from IKEA without any yelling at all.
And now we are in the new house where I can garden in the warm months and where we grill our dinner almost every night, even in the winter, dinners which we eat in a real a dining room that I can paint if I want to. Now he can mow the lawn with his IPod cranked to Pantera while I wash the windows and laugh at his sorry excuse for a voice, and we are one block from the Mississippi and I can step out the front door and run as far as the elementary school and then back, moving the air all around, until I get home.
And then early twentieth-century electrical work happened.
So now I need to stop and try to explain to the good people in the aprons at the hardware store that I need this adapter thingy that I know exists, if only by the sheer force of my will that it shall turn out to exist, because otherwise we're looking at needing a new ceiling box, which will require a saw (it's plastered in place, thanks to early twentieth-century plaster work) and I'm pretty sure I'm not down with sawing a hole in somebody else's ceiling, even if that someone knows me well enough to poop in front of me. By accident. In her pants.
I'm also finishing up two weeks of homework before we leave on Friday (did I mention we're flying to motherfucking CALIFORNIA, bitches? Because if not, then consider yourself foresworn. Wait, is it foresworn or foretold? Foreskin? Foreplay? I think I mean forewarned, although now the prefix of "fore" has totally lost its meaning and looks like a made up word, kind of like the word "here" did after I finished writing the essay below.)
Which brings me to the essay below. I'm so busy that you losers are stuck with reading recycled posts. I guess technically it's not recycled so much as it's reworked. Renown? Rehashed? Re-FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
I (re)worked this piece for an assignment in my creative writing class. The original piece (wow, aren't those bulleted numbers fucking FANCY?) can be found here. Enjoy.
I started in the corner house in Bellflower. That was where we had citrus and plum trees and where my dad built the playhouse in the back and he bounced us on the eucalyptus limb in the front and I found a dead sparrow and we buried it after mommy told me about God. There our neighbors had an avocado tree and my parents were happy together and I felt the earthquake as I sat watching robot cartoons in the den and the walls started shaking and the white figurines on the shelf fell and shattered on the floor, like lovely plaster bombs detonating around me.
Then came the condo, where I called 911 just to see what would happen and hung up when the woman answered and I pretended to be lost in sleep when daddy came upstairs but really I was wondering how he knew what I’d done. I was there in my bedroom when another earthquake sloshed the fish bowl so hard that Teabag and Fleabag nearly spilled onto the carpet and I imagined their demise would be blamed on me and so I was relieved when the shaking stopped and the fish stayed put. It was where I tried to pee standing up just to see what it would be like and where I played doctor for the first time, with Shane, under his bed, because he had a skate board and hair so blond that it hurt to look at it.
Then we drove a long ways from the beach and all four of us squished in the front seat of the moving truck and I realized you could get so hot that it actually hurts and I lost my best friend, the stuffed cheetah, left him at a gas station in the desert. We came to the house on Cannock Lane which was my grandparent’s house and my daddy paid cash so we could live there, and that was where my sister and I raised ourselves after daddy went back to California and mommy’s new boyfriend was younger than I am now. There we walked to the lake and jumped off the docks, the last one down was the best, but we always watched the water for moccasins that glided on the surface like S-shaped Jesuses. That was where I believed my playmate, the woods, was alive and magical and once I saw a thick snake, midnight on top, cotton on the bottom, wrapped around the phone pole like a slick pile of licorice whips and it reminded me of French braids, in the yard where Jingle fell out of a very high tree and had to wear a neon pink cast on her paw.
Then, sadly, we lived with a friend so my mother (no longer mommy) could go back to college after she was let go, and that was the house where all shared one bedroom for years in the neighborhood where I fell in love with the boy down the street who is now married happily to someone else and living somewhere distant from our block where he liked to push my face into the snow. That was the unhappy house where I read an article in Seventeen about cutting and I got inspired and where I walked three blocks to middle school every morning and saw the cat in the road with its eyes bulging upward in total defiance of gravity.
Next came the new husband's house where I had my own room, so I tried out the new school for three months and decided that home schooling was for me, a bad decision, because of which I showered three times a day and still never felt clean. That was where I lived when I got my first job at Kisor's Grill & Bakery and went to the church where I learned to hate God. That was the house where my baby brother was conceived and then everywhere we went, people assumed I was a teenage mother and it made me proud in a way I never understood. That was where I fell in love with his big forehead and bigger smile, where I left at seventeen (because they couldn’t stop me) and never wanted to return.
I moved in with my boyfriend and his parents and I cranked the heat up to ninety degrees once when I was hung over and shaking and sitting in the bathtub with my clothes on. I’ll always remember that I had sex in the backyard beside their bedroom window and liked that it was risky but hated that the night could see us. That was the house where I was left in charge of ironing his father's shirts and Dockers and ties while his mother was at the Mayo and where I felt like a part of a real family for once, useful, but also like I was being tested.
Then we left for Stanley, where we lived in a heated yard shack for two months while I worked first as a housekeeper and then as a prep cook at the lodge and I talked to the does on my walk to the kitchen each morning where they stood along the narrow road, ears at attention. That was where I jumped off a boulder into the glacial lake and finally understood what “glacial lake” meant, where I got sun poisoning in the paddle boat and where I thought I was free for the very first time and I sailed on a rope swing out over a two-hundred-foot ravine and wasn't afraid on the same day that I drank a liter of vodka and wasn't hung over, which is how I knew that we had to leave.
Then we lived in a basement which is where I hosed his vomit off the driveway and gave him a bath without waking the family, where my nephews were born and where I broke down and cried at the dinner table because I missed a spot with the lawn mower and they thought it was funny. That is where I lived when I watched Teletubbies and learned to drive stick and I we could hear them making love through the ceiling.
At the apartment I paid all the bills by myself which set the precedent for paying all the bills by myself and I once I called the cops because I was drunk and somehow it made sense at the time and it was there where my boyfriend accused me of being a lesbian because I finally made a girl friend whom I met where I went to college for the first time. I worked as a waitress at the Mall of America and after my shift I rode the bus to the apartment, which is where I helped an old lady get up off the floor where I found her laying where she'd fallen by the laundry room on the third floor which overlooked the pool where the ducks lived.
I bought my first house three weeks after I turned twenty-one and it happened to be that I loved my neighbors as much as I loved to guess what type of crops would grow in the field behind us each spring. There, I took pride in my lawn, at least up until I got "the call,” then I lived alone with the dog for long months which is probably why I called the escort service, but only to talk. Then my sister came to live with me so that I wouldn’t be alone and it was later that I met my Jill who was there when my niece was born and came home wearing pink for the first time to that house where I fell in love for a third time and I told my husband I wanted a divorce. I never wanted to leave but couldn't afford to stay.
Then was the apartment where he and I moved in together, alone for the first time, and where it was tiny but we didn’t really notice because it had a dishwasher and we had each other. That was where we smoked, then quit, then started again until I got pregnant and we moved across the hall in pursuit of a second bedroom, which is where I lost the baby before we’d even turned in our key to the one bedroom place. But there I learned to bake wheat bread when I wanted to forget we were paying for an empty room and we hung the curtains from IKEA without any yelling at all.
And now we are in the new house where I can garden in the warm months and where we grill our dinner almost every night, even in the winter, dinners which we eat in a real a dining room that I can paint if I want to. Now he can mow the lawn with his IPod cranked to Pantera while I wash the windows and laugh at his sorry excuse for a voice, and we are one block from the Mississippi and I can step out the front door and run as far as the elementary school and then back, moving the air all around, until I get home.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Kanye West Issues Apology After Interrupting Barbara Walters On The Toilet
AP - 1 hour ago
Hollywood, CA - Taylor Swift isn't the only young lady that rapper, Kanye West, embarrassed this week.
According to a police report filed Wednesday, West was scheduled to appear on the Wednesday episode of The View. While he was waiting backstage, West was overheard as saying, "Yo, I done drank too many crystal goblets of strawberry Kool-Aid and gotsta to piss like a motha."
He then used a pistol to shoot open the lock on Barbara Walter's dressing room before entering her private bathroom, knocking her to the floor, and proceeding to "urinate all over the seat", according to witnesses.
Walters suffered minor injuries as a result of the incident but was not taken to the hospital, and with the help of her crew members, she was able to locate her dentures behind the toilet tank and insert them before the show began.
"I hab neber been so insuwted in aww my wife," said an angry Walters to her audience. She said that she wanted her side of the story to be told, so it was important to "get the word owt dere befowe the stowy hits the tabwoids".
"Barbara looked fantastic," said Vanessa Jean King (Long Island) who was in the audience. "I would never have guessed she'd just been assaulted and peed on. Her hair was perfect, and her suit jacket was only a little wet. I couldn't even smell her from my seat."
West, who later apologized for his actions, was taken into custody on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and reckless bladder relieving.
In an unprecedented strategic move, President Barack Obama posted Wests' $5,000 bail. White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs later clarified the President's involvement in the incident. "Mr. Obama's goal is to reach the young people of this country with his message of reform. Kanye West agreed to write and produce an album for the President which will involve a series of customized political rap beats, spoken jazz, and techno brain washing pulses.
Plus, Mr. Obama owed West a 'solid' after calling him a 'jackass' last weekend."
In a statement issued by West's PR firm, the rapper says, "YO PATRICK SWAYZE I KNOW YOU JUST DIED AND ALL ... BUT MICHAEL JACKSON'S DEATH WAS THE BEST ONE THIS YEAR."
Hollywood, CA - Taylor Swift isn't the only young lady that rapper, Kanye West, embarrassed this week.
According to a police report filed Wednesday, West was scheduled to appear on the Wednesday episode of The View. While he was waiting backstage, West was overheard as saying, "Yo, I done drank too many crystal goblets of strawberry Kool-Aid and gotsta to piss like a motha."
He then used a pistol to shoot open the lock on Barbara Walter's dressing room before entering her private bathroom, knocking her to the floor, and proceeding to "urinate all over the seat", according to witnesses.
Walters suffered minor injuries as a result of the incident but was not taken to the hospital, and with the help of her crew members, she was able to locate her dentures behind the toilet tank and insert them before the show began.
"I hab neber been so insuwted in aww my wife," said an angry Walters to her audience. She said that she wanted her side of the story to be told, so it was important to "get the word owt dere befowe the stowy hits the tabwoids".
"Barbara looked fantastic," said Vanessa Jean King (Long Island) who was in the audience. "I would never have guessed she'd just been assaulted and peed on. Her hair was perfect, and her suit jacket was only a little wet. I couldn't even smell her from my seat."
West, who later apologized for his actions, was taken into custody on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and reckless bladder relieving.
In an unprecedented strategic move, President Barack Obama posted Wests' $5,000 bail. White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs later clarified the President's involvement in the incident. "Mr. Obama's goal is to reach the young people of this country with his message of reform. Kanye West agreed to write and produce an album for the President which will involve a series of customized political rap beats, spoken jazz, and techno brain washing pulses.
Plus, Mr. Obama owed West a 'solid' after calling him a 'jackass' last weekend."
In a statement issued by West's PR firm, the rapper says, "YO PATRICK SWAYZE I KNOW YOU JUST DIED AND ALL ... BUT MICHAEL JACKSON'S DEATH WAS THE BEST ONE THIS YEAR."
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Concern Over Comrade Obama's Speech Mounts
Washington D.C. - As President Barack Obama Prepared to tape his back-to-school speech for America's school children, members of his cabinet began noticing marked changes in the President's demeanor.
Says Florida's GOP party Chairman Jim Greer, "The President started talking like Boris Godunov. I'm not even joking, his accent morphed into a combination of Russian and Muslim. TERRORIST Muslim. Clearly, he intends to begin indoctinating our nation's children into his left-wing teachings and underhanded socialist values. I am urging parents to protect their children from this attack by the President. Keep your kids home from school. Do not let them watch the President's address. Fashion double-layer tin foil hats for their tiny heads. It's the only way to keep the socialism out."
Other sources inside the White House confirm that Obama has begun insisting that everyone call him "Comrade Obama" and has also ordered the kitchen staff to undergo hours of grueling goose stepping drills on the White House lawn.
Roy Patterson has three children in the D.C. public schools: "Yeah, I read a copy of the President's speech on the Internet, and I am OUTRAGED by his blatant use of the words "talent" and "responsibility". Nobody tells my kid he's smart, you got that? NOBODY."
Other critics of Obama's speech call him a "political pedophile", insisting that he's "going after the young ones" because they cannot protect themselves against his "socialist mind rays".
Despite all the controversy, Obama insists his speech is about telling kids to stay in school and study hard. "No matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it," the President says.
"Plus, this way I can brainwash them all at once with my hypnotic eye swirls."
The address is scheduled to air at noon eastern time on the White House website and on the C-SPAN cable network.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Kate Gosselin's Hair Files Custody Suit
AP - 1 hour ago
Wernersville, Pa - In a press release Wednesday, Kate Gosselin's hair announced its intent pursue custody of the eight Gosselin children. Sources confirm that It has obtained legal counsel and has filed a petition with the Berks County courthouse.
Says her hair, "After speaking with my attorneys, I believe it is in the best interest of Gosselin children that I be granted full legal custody. It's all about the kids, and it always has been, and I feel that I am the best equipped to care for them. I will do everything in my power to make sure they are happy and healthy."
Until today, a shared custody arrangement had been agreed upon between mother, Kate Gosselin and father, Jon Gosselin, who star in TLC's reality series Jon & Kate Plus 8 with their twin daughters and five year old sextuplets. The estranged pair originally agreed to alternate living in the family's million-dollar home in Wernersville, PA so that the children, Mady, Cara, Hannah, Aaden, Collin, Alexis, Leah and Joel, could continue to live in the home.
All of that may change now that Kate Gosselin's hair is seeking a permanent role in the children's lives.
"Kate has a history behaving irrationally," says hair. "I truly believe that she's been blinded by her bangs, and I take full responsibility for my role in that. In the early years of our relationship, I was long and blond, and that's part of what attracted Jon to Kate. We had some good times, the three of us together. But over the years, we drifted apart, and Kate began cutting me out of her life immediately following the births of Mady and Cara. When Jon decided to get plugs, I knew it was the beginning of the end."
Wernersville, Pa - In a press release Wednesday, Kate Gosselin's hair announced its intent pursue custody of the eight Gosselin children. Sources confirm that It has obtained legal counsel and has filed a petition with the Berks County courthouse.Says her hair, "After speaking with my attorneys, I believe it is in the best interest of Gosselin children that I be granted full legal custody. It's all about the kids, and it always has been, and I feel that I am the best equipped to care for them. I will do everything in my power to make sure they are happy and healthy."
Until today, a shared custody arrangement had been agreed upon between mother, Kate Gosselin and father, Jon Gosselin, who star in TLC's reality series Jon & Kate Plus 8 with their twin daughters and five year old sextuplets. The estranged pair originally agreed to alternate living in the family's million-dollar home in Wernersville, PA so that the children, Mady, Cara, Hannah, Aaden, Collin, Alexis, Leah and Joel, could continue to live in the home.
All of that may change now that Kate Gosselin's hair is seeking a permanent role in the children's lives.
"Kate has a history behaving irrationally," says hair. "I truly believe that she's been blinded by her bangs, and I take full responsibility for my role in that. In the early years of our relationship, I was long and blond, and that's part of what attracted Jon to Kate. We had some good times, the three of us together. But over the years, we drifted apart, and Kate began cutting me out of her life immediately following the births of Mady and Cara. When Jon decided to get plugs, I knew it was the beginning of the end."
Gosselin's hair, known for it's "reverse mullet" style, has enjoyed the media's attention for years.
"At first I was uncomfortable with the lack of privacy," it says. "But I was able to realize that hey, this is my job and this is how I've chosen to provide for those kids. The kids are happy, that's all that matters."
Since the divorce rumors were confirmed on the the show's season premier June 22nd, Kate's hair has been thrust into the paparazzi's lense with renewed gusto. It recently usurped Sarah Palin's hair for the title of Halloween Costume Craze of the Year. Online costume sales at BuyCostumes.com have rocketed in recent months, thanks to the unveiling of the Eight Is Too Much wig.
When asked how she feels about the attention, Kate's hair said, "It's hard. I love the Kate I used to know, but now I'm not sure that I want to be a part of her head anymore. But there we are: splashed all over the news every day. I look forward to a time when I can just be me again. But the kids come first."
Kate Gosselin's hair will not be featured in the newest episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8 which airs Monday August 31st on TLC.
Kate, citing a "falling out", wears a pink cowboy hat for much of the show.
Onion Breath is my newest brain spew, conceived with the evil intent of conning someone into giving me an internship at The Onion. Because that? Is where dreams come true. I'm not above sleeping my way to the top if that's what I have to do, but this route seems like the lesser of two evils. Although now that I'm a serious journalist, perhaps I should clarify that this is the lesser of two evils for me, not for you, obviously. I'm sorry.
Onion Breath is my newest brain spew, conceived with the evil intent of conning someone into giving me an internship at The Onion. Because that? Is where dreams come true. I'm not above sleeping my way to the top if that's what I have to do, but this route seems like the lesser of two evils. Although now that I'm a serious journalist, perhaps I should clarify that this is the lesser of two evils for me, not for you, obviously. I'm sorry.
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