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May 31, 2002

sexy is as sexy does

sexy is as sexy does

sexybryan.jpg v. sexyken.jpg

bryan v. wKen: Battle of the Bloggers. Who is the sexiest blogger between the two? Ken thinks he is, Bryan doesn't even know he's been set up for battle yet.

I didn't mean to start this, but now that I did, I'm gonna run with it. Cast votes, write-in ballots and peanut gallery comments below.

help wanted

help wanted

position: coder/designer for Raising Hell

salary: none

benefits: working for a site that gets over 500 hits a day, working with four fabulous if egocentric and not totally sane people, our undying gratitude, satisfaction of a job well done, free sex.

qualifications: coding and designing skills, obviously. Knowledge of Moveable Type. sense of humor. ability to work with four people who can't come to a cohesive decision between them. ability to withstand the pressure of mig's unrelenting whip. (able to leap tall buildings in a single bound preferred but not necessary)

If interested, please forward resume and/or nude photos to: michele@rhzine.com

somebody's watching me

somebody's watching me

Behind every politician is a motive. And inside of every public official is a tiger waiting to pounce on an opportunity.

Our current administration, fighting off accusations of incompetence regarding the knowledge beforehand of the plans leading up to September 11, have indeed pounced. They have taken their own mishandling of the situation and turned it into an opportunity to take one more step towards turning this country into a police state.


impetus to get pissed via laura

hitler's weenie

hitler's weenie

We used to sing little rhymes when I was young, commercial parodies and rip-offs of popular songs with naughty words inserted and silly little poems that would get us a mouthful of soap if overheard by an adult.

Now that I am older and (ahem) more mature, I see the error of my ways in repeating most of those words. But I plead ignorance. Those were polictically incorrect times. We didn't know a racial slur from an ethnic slur from a potentially offensive to the entire planet slur. Our parents never taught us to differentiate between humor that makes you laugh and humor that makes some people cringe. Hell, we got most of our little rhymes from them. Insensitive songs passed from generation to generation like the crowned jewels of the family.

Not all of the poems were insensitive to certain groups of people. They were just stupid. Especially the bodily function rhymes.

Milk, milk lemonade
Around the corner fudge is made

During this beautifully written poem, you would point to various body parts at the proper time. And then, if you were 7 or 8 or 9 years old, you would fall on the floor laughing. And then repeat ad naseum for the next week or so, until the newest ditty came around. And I can see why the kids still love it. Anything that references poop is timeless.

There was one we used to sing back in 3rd grade:
whistle while you work
hitler is a jerk
mussolini bit his weenie
that's why it won't work

Now, at that age Hitler was just a vague notion to me and I had no clue who Mussolini was or why he had his teeth on Hitler's weenie. I certainly didn't get the connotation that Hitler had some problems in his nether regions. I just knew it rhymed, it used the word weenie, and it was funny.

So imagine my surprise when DJ came home singing that very song the other day. How the hell does something like that make it all the through the years? Considering the two subjects of the song, it must have been around long before I was singing it, back in the early 60's. So here we are in 2002 and 3rd graders are still whistling about Hitler's weenie.

I asked DJ if he knew who Hitler or Mussolini was. He knew all about Hitler. He thought Mussolini was an Italian soccer player. "But," he said, "the word weenie is really funny. We don't care who the song is about, we just like to make people laugh when we sing it. WEENIE!"

It occurred to me that a parent had to tell their own kid that joke in order for it to survive through the ages. I can see passing on the parody standards like jingle bells, batman smells, or deck the halls with buddy holly and god bless my underwear, but I'll skip anything that involves me getting into a detailed history lesson. Sort of takes away from the humor.

I wonder which ones my kids will pass on to their own kids. I see less and less of the insensitive rhymes going around, but in return we get things like cut my wife into pieces, this is my last divorce. Somehow I can't see my grandkids coming home from school singing made up words to Papa Roach songs.

Got any good parodies or bodily function rhymes to pass along?

May 30, 2002

10:29

10:29

They originally said it would take two years to clean up, but here we are not even eight months later and the cleanup phase is over.

There are still 1,700 or so bodies that have not been recovered. That's 1,700 families that will not get any kind of closure.

I know it is impossible to find the remains of every last one of them. But eight months seems like such a short time to be looking, considering the huge pile of debris that lies where the towers once stood.

For the families, it means an end to any hope they had of finding something of their loved ones. If not their bodies, then maybe a wallet or a shoe or anything that will represent the person they lost.

For the firemen who have been working there, it means leaving the recovery site and going back to their firematic duties. It means that eight months later, their hopes are being quashed, and the only thing that was giving them a sense of meaning at the moment is gone.

For the city, it means clearing the land for more business, more money, more taxes.

It had to happen eventually. But not yet. Not now. Not when the grief is still fresh and the hope was still there for some and the wounds hadn't even scabbed over yet.

At 10:29 a.m., as the last beam is taken from the site and a flag draped stretcher representing the unaccounted for victims is marched out of the rubble, millions will watch as we are symbolicaly told to close this chapter and move on to the next.

Maybe it's just me. See, I'm stuck on this chapter. I can't get to the end because I keep putting the damn book down.

I no longer read news stories about it. I don't watch tv specials reliving the horror. I close my eyes as I walk past that section in the bookstore that displays the hundreds of books already printed in rememberance of September 11, 2001.

Everything is still fresh. People are still adjusting to this new world, the one where the New York City skyline has changed forever, the world where the sight of a plane overhead brings chills, where the sound of sirens brings fear, where you dread to turn on the news in the morning, the world where the sun visor of my car holds the funeral card for Pete Ganci.

I'm sure there are many people who are ready to move on and welcome today's symbolic pageantry. I think I'm just not ready to start living in this new world because I have yet to let go of the old one. The sense of safety and peace and freedom has been taken from us, and to watch the ceremony and accept the end of the cleanup is to accept the new way of life.

I'm just not ready. Go on without me, I'll catch up.

May 29, 2002

you know you have a problem when....

you know you have a problem when....

A good indication that you look at way too much porn: You see a sign in front of a salon that says "FACIALS" and the first thought that comes to your mind has nothing to do with beauty products.

sex, vacuum cleaners and crack

sex, vacuum cleaners and crack

My creativity and desire to think of something to write about today are non-existent. I was just going to take the day off from this site today, but who am I to keep you from being entertained at my expense? Mig of Feral Living provides us with this edition of Sleep-Deprived Instant Messenger Converstations

feralmig: who's piazza?
feralmig: he invented the popular italian dish?
feralmig: this is his royalty check?
Propagandhist: baseball player, fool.
Propagandhist: i forget you dont know shit about american stuff anymore
feralmig: baseball schmaseball.
feralmig: i didn't know shit even when i lived there.
Propagandhist: it's just the point
Propagandhist: that someone gets that check EVERY WEEK
feralmig: yeah.
feralmig: i'd buy shoes, first off.
feralmig: then musical instruments.
feralmig: then a bunch of whores.
feralmig: to play the musical instruments
feralmig: while i polished the shoes.
feralmig: oh, yes.
feralmig: main thing, get on gord's case today.
Propagandhist: yah
feralmig: a big helping
feralmig: thing is, designers are a dime a dozen
feralmig: but competent coders can make you wait
Propagandhist: thats the thing
feralmig: sniffing aorund the threshhold of their door
Propagandhist: a million people would desing RH for us
feralmig: "What are they doing in there? Smoking pot?"
Propagandhist: but coders are .............whoa
Propagandhist: i just got totally dizzy
Propagandhist: room shifted
feralmig: no freaky stuff, please.
feralmig: you okay?
Propagandhist: yea just totally dizzy. light headed even
Propagandhist: i think i dreamed to much last night
Propagandhist: and i went to sleep without the cough medicine!
Propagandhist: im not addicted after all
feralmig: oh, i was thinking about your thing about getting speedy from antihistamines -
feralmig: some contain caffeine.
feralmig: others probably contain crack, good for repeat business.
Propagandhist: yea and im not really supposed to mix anything with the paxil
Propagandhist: except for crack
Propagandhist: doc said "crack good"
feralmig: crack goes witih just about everything.
feralmig: i prefer it around the rim of my margueritas.
feralmig: Marguerita con crack.
feralmig: mmm.
Propagandhist: now that's a good lunch
feralmig: plus you're really productive when you get back to work.
feralmig: depending on the task.
Propagandhist: yea but then theres that crash
feralmig: presentations go twice as fast.
Propagandhist: at like 4:00
Propagandhist: and your boss finds you naked under the desk
feralmig: with the mail boy.
feralmig: and the man from the sandwich stand.
feralmig: and a porcupine.
Propagandhist: and a permanent marker
feralmig: and the yellow pages.
feralmig: and a translucent automobile vacuum.
Propagandhist: and that sucking sound
feralmig: tips them off every time.
Propagandhist: which is what made the boss find you in the first place
feralmig: "Not to be used as a sex toy. Beware of rotor blades."
Propagandhist: who reads warning labels, though?
feralmig: I actually read an article in amedical journal.
Propagandhist: I'm sorry the mail guy only has one testicle now, but....
feralmig: about a series of penis injuries in england
feralmig: from that practice.
Propagandhist: vacuuming the penis?
feralmig: apparently so.
Propagandhist: standard practice for adolescents
feralmig: "Here, mom, let me do the housework again."
feralmig: "Why thank you, son."
feralmig: I wouldn't want to change the bag, man.
Propagandhist: gives dust bunnies a new meaning
Propagandhist: dust bunnies a la shredded penis
feralmig: "My name is Pamela, i'll be your dust bunny this evening"
Propagandhist: She's got "dirty girl" written all over her
feralmig: Knows a lot of dirty jokes too.
Propagandhist: I thought her name was Dusty.
feralmig: If RH ever makes us rich, we'll have to open a chain of Dust Clubs.
Propagandhist: On your tenth visit, get free vacuum service
feralmig: I'm envisioning a Glory Hole room.
feralmig: Sorry, a Suction Room.
Propagandhist: Electrolux or Hoover, Sir?
Propagandhist: That will be 5 dollars extra for the clean air filter usage.
feralmig: Eh, depends on the blade distance from the orifice.
feralmig: With or without variable wattage switch, sir?
Propagandhist: Please take the bag with you when you exit the room.
feralmig: I'm very sorry, sir, someone appears to have abruptly reversed the air flow.
feralmig: It happens sometimes.
feralmig: Send us your dry cleaner bill.
feralmig: We had an electrolux, but it never occurred to me to, like, you know.
feralmig: I preferred Mormons.
Propagandhist: You practiced oral sex with mormons?
feralmig: Didn't just practice it.
feralmig: Perfected it, man.
feralmig: At the Portland zoo, even.
Propagandhist: Mig, mormons and the portland zoo
Propagandhist: You blew a mormon by the lion's cage?
feralmig: Well, a female mormon, yeah.
feralmig: Reminds me of Clue.
feralmig: Mig,
feralmig: with a Mormon
Propagandhist: in the lions cage
Propagandhist: Sex Clue
Propagandhist: New game
Propagandhist: Michele
Propagandhist: in the kitchen
Propagandhist: with a strap on
feralmig: great party game

And then it digressed into unprintable scenarios.

If you actually read that whole conversation I'll give you a dollar next time I see you. Just for suffering through it.

May 28, 2002

i am ninja, hear me roar

new QOD

i am ninja, hear me roar

I dreamed last night that my house was on fire and people were looting my bedroom while dodging smoke and flames, looking for my CDs and DVDs. I ran after them with a plastic stick, shouting out "I AM NINJA!"

And now, today, thoroughly exhausted beyond any description, mentally wilted, sleep deprived and full of caffeine, I am running around shouting out "I AM NINJA!"

I totally forgot how tiring it is to work and take care of 19 month old hyperactive monster (my sister's). Honestly, I don't know how my brother-in-law is still standing after this past week.

I feel bad for him, and worse for my sister, who is not getting better and seems to be getting worse, and she has not seen her son in a week now. I have 10,001 things on my plate (well, the kids' plates) this week and I still have to find time to get to the hospital and back and pick up the baby from the sitter on my way home from work and my desk here is overflowing with work and I'm just about ready to cry.

I'm not trying to be a martyr or anything. Some people have lives like this all the time, not just in emergencies. I'm just saying. Right now life is kicking my ass and the asses of everyone in my family and maybe it's kicking your ass too, so if anyone wants to join me in kicking it right back, preferbably in its balls, then stand up and yell I AM NINJA!!

Sigh.

this is the sound of time being sucked down a vortex of anxiety

this is the sound of time being sucked down a vortex of anxiety

Some days you wake up ready to take on the world.

This is not one of them.

We have suddenly shifted from spring mode to summer mode and the air has taken on a different texture. I went to bed and it was May and everything was going smoothly and I woke up and yes, it's still May, but it's more like June, more like summer and everything moves fast from now on.

Plans. We must make plans. Baseball camp and basketball camp and several different trips and it must be coordinated and arranged with the summer babysitter and the work schedule and the bosses. And there is a wedding to plan and don't forget the spring concerts, both on the same day, recorder and drums playing over and over in my head, beating out a rythmn that says June 6, June 6, June 6, so I don't forget even though the dry erase board has a big 6/6 in bold, blue letters staring back at me.

Father's Day and several birthdays and June means my sister's wedding is only a year away and my own wedding is only a few months away. School ends, dread the start of 7th grade (is she really going to be a 7th grader?), and suddenly it's July and the big holiday and a the small vacation and one step closer to my 40th birthday and before you know it July has come and gone, leaving in its wake a humid, heavy heat that pervades every ounce of your skin until you start making plans to move to Saskatchewan.

Then August is here (wan't it just June?) and you start back to school shopping, stocking up on clean white socks and clean white paper and pens and pencils and this year make up and appropriate clothing that doesn't show a belly button, doesn't have any misleading sayings printed on the front, and DJ's shorts must be below his knees, his pants can't be jeans and you wonder how your kids got so damn picky and why can't everyone just wear sweat pants and t-shirts every day? And the school supplies start making piles in your kitchen, red folder for math, green folder for science, number 2 pencils for the endless standardized tests that is the world of the 4th grader, and its hot and sweltering, the air conditioner runs all day and then it's here.

Your 40th birthday and you just knew they were planning a surprise party for you, knew it all along and at first you are pissed but the a few shots of tequila later, and everyone is toasting to the end of summer even though it's only the 25th of August, but you feel it, too, summer is winding away and you could swear that school just let out, but no, everyone is getting ready to put the white shoes and white clothes away and Halloween decorations are already popping up in store windows. You take another shot of tequila and suck down the lime and skip right past Labor Day and Halloween and Thanksgiving and start thinking about perfect Christmas gifts.

Woosh.

That was the sound of another year passing by.

Does anyone know how to slow this thing down?

May 27, 2002

Memorial

Memorial

A fitting photo for Memorial Day: My cousin Stan's new tattoo, in honor of his fellow firemen who died on Septmber 11th.

tat2.jpg
stan's tattoo (click here for full picture)

photo taken by Justin

qod, the return

qod, the return

Question of the day is back, with an informal music poll. Help me prove that good taste is not dead.

And, I am experimenting with some gallery making device. See the results, and DJ in baseball action, here. Still in progress. Just so you know. Although I am trying to make my own gallery on what used to be the journal page.

over the hill, gladly

over the hill, gladly

Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer here. This is the summer of 40 for me. Yes, I am once again expounding on the number 4-0. I can't help it.

The people who manufacture party goods seem to think that 40 is significant in the fact that it marks your descent of the other side of the mythical hill. Over the Hill!, says every cardboard cut-out and banner and sign and balloon made to mark someone's 40th birthday.

Does that mean 39 was the top of the hill? Was I supposed to spend this past year standing at the peak of my lifelong climb, maybe planting a flag in the ground that says I MADE IT? I mean, if 40 is marked by napkins and matching paper plates all decorated with coffins and gag gifts like rubber canes, then shouldn't 39 have been marked with something equally brazen? Perhaps a big gold certificate saying that you made it to the top, or at least a warning that this was supposed to be the pinnacle year of your life and maybe you could go out and enjoy it rather than spend it anxious and depressed?

I am a bit nervous to see what's on the other side of this so-called hill. Do you step over the top and then tumble down haphazardly, landing in a craggy, corpse-strewn pit? Do you get to walk down the hill at leisure, picking flowers and getting tan along the way? Or do you step over that line and there's a sled and a steep slope made of ice waiting for you?

Now that I am approaching the downward spiral of my life (according to greeting card authors, at least), I bring to mind that saying that says something to the effect of being nice to the people you meet on the way up, for you may pass them on the way down.

So I'd like to take this Memorial Day to pay homage to the people that made that upward climb towards the big 4-0 such a struggle, because they are the ones who really helped shape how the second half of my trip is going to be.

To L., my friend who lived across the street for most of my childhood, for teaching me what backstabbing means, for being an opportunistic bitch and for setting the bar as far as crushing my self-esteem goes.

To my second grade teacher, who made sure we lined up in size order all the time, and always pointed out that I was last in line and oh so small. Also, for never putting an end to the teasing and name calling that took place in the classroom.

To S. and J., the neighborhood boys who threw bricks at my head, left filthy, disgusting notes in my door, physically attacked me on many an occasion, and made me afraid to leave my own house.

To J.H., for using and abusing me in a million different ways, for not owning up to the things you did, and for just being a huge asshole. Your brothers, too.

To G., for playing people against each other, forming sides and drawing lines. For starting battles and hiding while everyone else fought them out.

To C., for making me think I was worthless and useless and in your command. For totally dominating my life to the point where I had none.

To V., for a myriad of things for which I will always harbor bitterness and resentment and deep, festering hatred for that part of you that sucks.

To myself, for allowing these people to treat me that way, for never standing up for myself, for being a doormat, a willing victim and a pushover.

So as I stand here at the top of this hill, ready to take the plunge to the other side, I do so with the confidence and strength that only overcoming a life full of assholes can give you. Once I step over to the other side, I will no longer see the road I took up here. It will be obscured by the top of this hill and if I look back over my shoulder while I'm headed down, I will only see the past few years, the only years I want to see.

This is a good-bye to all of those people, to all of the baggage I lugged up here with me, to the person I was before I made it here.

40 never sounded so good.

May 26, 2002

hello kitty

hello kitty

As you can see I made a new logo today. I have totally scrapped the idea of a new design, because I scrap any ideas I have while I am pms. Completely ignore everything I say around the 24th of the month, please.

So I love the new logo (which is part of the poem tag project), but Melly thought I should have done something using a vagina. I don't know why, but I don't question what Melly says sometimes. I just listen and nod my head. I made one anyhow,just to please her. Cute, huh?

Thank you to Gord for fixing my missing perl module. He says I could have done it myself with no problem, but apparently he doesn't know my penchant for fucking up even the smallest technical things. Thank you, Gord. I shall now commence with the kitty pictures.

have you seen my perl module?

have you seen my perl module?

Missing: one perl module. Looks like this:
Perl module Image::Size is required to determine width and height of uploaded images.

I would like to install the new version of MT (well Christine is doing it for me) but I don't think I can do it without this perl module and honestly, I don't know a perl module from a lunar module. Also, it's really a pain in the ass when I want to upload pictures and can't make them a pop-up, etc. So any help you could give me here would be more than appreciated.

Please note that I am now using, and enjoying, blogrolling.com to maintain my links. Entering over 100 URLs is both tedious and mind-numbing, so if you used to be in the sidebar and now you're not, please let me know. It was just an error of a short-circuited brain, not any deliberate dropping of names.

stream of unconsciousness

stream of unconsciousness

Dreams about a tiny baby that latched itself onto my leg like a spiny sea creature, begging me not to leave it but I had to because I was searching for my sister who was strung out on drugs and trying to walk water. Woke groggy and crampy, hungover from too much Clear Cough last night, the dreams probably a remnant of mixing meds and watching Salton Sea. My head is pounding right now, a beat not unlike that of a recent Moby song, and I am fighting the urge to dance to the beat of a different headache. I am bloated and crabby and need some space and ironic that right now on the Spinner, Pantera is singing Five Minutes Alone, and though normally I would nod my head and say yea, five minutes alone, instead my Moby headache makes me want to smash Phil Anselmo's face with an ice pick. I try to calm myself down by looking out the window, maybe catch a few rays of the sunrise or a bird on a wire chirping at the moon that won't go away, but I just find myself looking out for planes and scuba divers and subway bombers and the image of Dick Cheney appears in the clouds, laughing at my paranoia, chortling at my fear. Excellent, he says, and he sounds like Mr. Burns and I think that at least he doesn't laugh like Nelson. Ha Ha! I drink another cup of coffee, washing the Paxil down, washing the Excedrin Migraine down with it and my stomach is probably saying what the fuck? that's not the breakfast of champions, but hey, I'm not much of a champion, am I? I'm not even Sam Champion, but I think that I might like to maybe win the war on idiocy if there ever was one, and then my teammates and I could stand on the steps of City Hall and sing We are the Champions, backed by Slayer and maybe Snoop Dogg will hang with us and sing a few verses and they give us the key to the city and we open the doors with it and let everyone in and kick some people out and we have a big party and make the city ours.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. As if there were a right side.

May 25, 2002

time standing still

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTIN!

Yes, today is Justin's birthday. Be a good reader and leave him a birthday message in the comments. And he knows what the above picture means. That's all that matters.

note: any posts today will go below this one

backstepping

backstepping

My sister is not, in fact, doing better. She has been spiking a fever of 103.5 for 4 days now, and they have no idea why. She has already 3 different IV antiobiotics and none of them worked. They have called in an infectious disease doctor who is running every test imaginable on her.

I'm headed up there now to keep her company until DJ's game starts. Again, thanks for the concerned emails and I will keep you posted.

update: apparently she has lymph nodes that are right next to the area where the Crohn's Disease is, and the nodes are infected, which is causing the fever. So again, better news than was expected, though it still sucks for her.

May 24, 2002

Blow up dolls

Blow up dolls

Got another package in the mail from the delicious Jonno today. He said it was calling out to me when he saw it in the mall and he just had to get it.

I always wanted a blow-up friend. The fact that's it's Spongebob makes it even better.

Here's Sponge at the computer.


No, he's not looking at porn, you freaks!!

Or....is he?

poking holes in the soul

poking holes in the soul

It started in fifth grade. I was sitting at my desk, hunched over a grammar worksheet, when the feeling seized me. It started in the very pit of my stomach and worked its way upwards a few inches. It was undefinable. Just a...feeling. It was familiar to the small pangs of homesickness I would feel whenever I slept at my cousin's house and woke in the dark of night to the realization that I wasn't safe at home. I asked to go to the nurse's office, where I cried and upset the stoic nurse. She sent me home. By the time I got snuggled into my bed, the feeling was gone.

I still get it now, a feeling that takes over everything I am doing at the moment. It's hard to describe; it's not a real physical pain. It's more like a combination of emotional and physical turmoil. Like something is wrong, but you don't know what. Like you want to cry, but don't know why. Like guilt, but you can't figure out what you are feeling guilty about.

When I was in high school I wrote a poem about it and likened the feeling to the devil poking holes in my soul. Because it reaches into the depths of you. It takes everything that is inside you and twists it and turns it until it soaks every last ounce of bad feelings that exist inside your heart and it shoots them up into your veins so your whole body can feel bad at once.

It may last seconds, it may last a few minutes. It may happen at work, at play, in the middle of a pleasant dream. I don't know what it is. And the only other person I know who has experienced the same thing is Geoff, who just told me about it yesterday, and we were able to share our experiences of the feeling with just a few words.

I wonder how many other people know what I'm talking about. Evil butterflies in your stomach. Devil poking holes in your soul. Purgatory swimming around in your veins. Repressed memories trying to make their way through the dungeon they live in. Does anyone else ever experience this? Is there a word for it, a reason?

Sometimes I wish it would just go away and never come back. But yet I still want it, because I want to figure it out. Maybe once I know what causes it, I can make it go away for good.

Or, like a friend said to me when I tried to describe the feeling, "Don't worry, it's just gas."

May 23, 2002

will trade sex for new design

will trade sex for new design

I need a new design. Something completely different from anything I've ever had here before. I need color. I need graphics. I need change. Something besides this wide open space (which is exactly what I wanted last time I redesigned. How things change).

I'll give a $50.00 Amazon gift certificate to anyone who can make a nifty design for me. Maybe a blow job. If you're a girl I'll....nevermind.

No. Just kidding. But I will call out your name next time I have sex.

And seriously. Someone let me buy your mad design skillz for fifty freaking dollars!

And if Scott Stapp appears in my dream again tonight, I'm going to hunt him down and castrate him.

Medicine has kicked in. Good night.

sigh of relief

sigh of relief

Good news from the hospital. They finally got my sister into a room (more than 24 hours later) and the test results are all coming back good so far. I never thought I would say that I'm thankful it's the Crohn's...well I'm thankful it's just the Crohn's. We were all pretty scared for a while there. Thanks to everyone who sent good wishes.

We're headed up to the hospital now to take over for my bro-in-law and then everyone is meeting up at a restaurant later for a surprise birthday get together for Justin. I hear some hard-earned tequila calling me.

Back to your regularly scheduled blogging program tomorrow.

the nephew

the nephew

Say hi to David.


In this photo he is saying "If you take one more shot of me while I'm trying to eat these french fries I will piss on you next time you change me."

it's morning already?

it's morning already?

There has got to be a better way. My sister arrived at the hospital at 1pm yesterday afternoon and as of this morning, is still in a bed in the emergency room. At least she's in a bed and not writhing around in pain on the floor or anything.

My allergies have been keeping me (and everyone else) up all night with this hacking cough. I feel like ass. I probably look like ass, too. I have a cough medicine hangover. Obviously it didn't keep me from hacking up a lung in my sleep, but it sure did give me some freaky dreams and a nasty headache.

Regular post later. For now, please check out the spiffy new design at Feral Living as well as the most romantic/unromantic anniversary poem ever.

And put on your sunglasses before you check out the new digs at East/West.

Off to get the nephew.

May 22, 2002

notice

notice

My sister is in the hospital with complications resulting from Crohn's Disease.

Updates may be sporadic while I help out with my nephew and stuff.

breaking news

breaking news

This just in: Mike Piazza is not gay.

I always question the sincerity of the people who feel the need to announce that they are not gay (see also, Tom Cruise). It's like the "whoever smelled it, dealt it" rule of farting.

Anyhow, according to my search requests, Piazza better watch out the next time Chuck Knoblauch brushes up against him.

what's pissing you off today?

what's pissing you off today?

I'll start.

-The girl who temporarily blinded me today with the cd hanging from her rear view mirror.

-Grinds in my coffee.

-The guy in the deli who spoke to my breasts insead of me.

-Pollen.

--Ignorant people.

Your turn.

the boys who cried terror

the boys who cried terror

It's interesting to note that the current administration is defending themselves for not giving out warnings pre-9/11 when they had them, stating that the warnings they received were vague and unsubstantiated.

And what have they been doing since 9/11? That's right. Giving out vague and unsubstantiated warnings.

At first they were just trying to keep everyone on their toes, making sure your flags were waving and your ire was up. That whole be vigilant thing. Ashcroft or one of the other four horsemen of doom would stand in front of a microphone and tell you that it could be anytime, anywhere, any method. Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe. So ummm...just watch out.

It got to be a little like Santa Claus. Remember when you were a kid, always wondering if the big fat guy was spying on you? Or god. I always thought god was watching me, too. So at any moment, lightning would rain down from the sky and coal would appear in my Christmas stockings. The life of a paranoid child.

So now the life of a paranoid adult isn't much different. Because your all-powerful, all-knowing leaders have conjured up all kinds of mythical figures and scary monsters to make you look over your shoulder at every turn.

And it's great that it's so vague. Because that means he could be talking to you. Or you. Or you. It means it could be your city. Or your town. Or your apartment building.

At least they are getting a bit more specific. They have probably scared off a million would-be tourists from New York City on Memorial Day weekend with their latest announcment. First of all, who didn't already figure out that major landmarks would be targets? Secondly, what the hell is the point in announcing this? Do they think people are going to flee New York like some sci-fi movie where everyone is crowding the bridges and tunnels, leaning on their horns and waiting for Wil Smith to save them? I mean, if you can't say Evacuate now! The Brooklyn Bridge will blow up on Saturday morning! then there's really no point in terrorizing your citizens.

Oh. I get it. They want to cover their asses. This way, when something finally does happen - say a small explosion in some Iowa farmland or a major landmark going down - they can say they told you so. They warned you.

"Anytime. Anywhere. We don't know who. We don't know when. We don't know how. But they will come. "

See, that covers all the bases. So when Cheney is snug in his underground bunker and Ashcroft is high above the carnage in Air Force One and Bush is left standing on the White House lawn screaming "what about meeeeee??" then they can go on FoxNews the next day and say Don't look at us. We warned you as best we could.

So just to prove that I have tuned out the warnings (what color stage are we in now? fuschia?) of the boys who cried terror, I'm going to the city this weekend. I'll climb the Statue of Liberty and give Osama the finger while I'm up there, just to bait him, and then I will run naked across the Brooklyn Bridge shouting "Come get me, you rotten terrorists!"

Ok, maybe not. But you get my point, don't you? Point being, I wish they would just shut up. We know their damn words. We realize that there are more terrorists out there. Putting out vague, unsubstantiated warnings is not going to do anything but drive up the prescription rate of anti-anxiety drugs.

Unless....does anyone know if Ashcroft has stock in.....

nevermind.

May 21, 2002

word sex

word sex

ed note: This was all Melly's idea. I take no credit for it whatsover. Even if she speaks to my tits when she talks to me, she still deserves the credit and I deserve a spork up my ass.

My blogger insider pal this week is amy the tart. We have decided to do something different, though. Instead of trading questions, we traded sentence fragments. Or like I explained to Amy:
we could call it word sex. it would be like oursentences intermingling like bodies lathered in sweat...

Amy has not finished hers yet, but here are mine. What Amy wrote is in bold, the rest of the sentence is mine.

Orange Fanta soda makes my mouth recoil in absolute disgust.

The girl in the dirty sweater probably listens to Dashboard Confessional.

Animals that make big poops will not find a home in my house.

Sometimes when I'm walking I randomly strip off pieces of my clothing
until I find myself naked outside of the miniature golf course and the police come. Again.

Yesterday when I was brushing my teeth I discovered that Harry Potter
toothpaste tastes like ass.

Yuck....that tongue running up and down my back sure is hairy.

Balloons make excellent fake boobs.

Teachers can be the cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems. Wait, that's alcohol.

Hotpants are NOT a right. They are a privilege.

And there you have it. Wasn't that fun?

overload

overload

This is what my desk looks like today. It will probably be what my desk looks like at the end of the day. It's a Tuesday that's shaping up like a Monday and I am pretty sure that by the time I get to bed tonight, after work and baseball and basketball, I will breathe a sigh of relief that I did not murder anyone.

And if I do decide to spork someone to death today, at least I can catch it all on the digital, make a flash movie of it, and sell it to Fox.

Boy, are you guys gonna be sorry I bought this camera.

last chaper

last chaper

Ok, I lied. One last journal entry, so as not to end on a down note. This one was written in August of 1998, a few months before I met Justin. It was the last entry I wrote in third person, and also one of the last entries I wrote on paper.

It is early evening in late summer. It's that moment between dusk and darkness, when the world is bathed in serious shades of blue, and the shadows seem to be debating about whether to come out or not. The stars are poking through the sky and the last remnants of the sunset have disappeared over the horizon, leaving one last streak of magenta trailing behind. She is chasing fireflies on the front lawn, her kids squealing and giggling as they catch one and then throw it back into the air and watch it take flight.

She is running with them, and giggling with them and it finally feels good. She spots a firefly on the far side of the garden and runs after it. It lands on the lilac bush. And she remembers. She remembers how she hates lilacs and the way they smell and how she attaches every bad memory about him to that particular lilac bush.

And then she moves away from the bush, leaving the firefly sitting there, blinking at her, and she runs back towards her children. She has cleared a hurdle. She did not let those memories weigh her down. She goes back to chasing fireflies until the ice cream man comes jingling down the block and they run after him, meeting up with the kids next door, everyone screaming for ice cream.

She sits down on her neighbor's steps and they watch their kids become stained various shades of strawberry and grape and orange, melting ices shaped like cartoon characters bleeding onto their smiling faces. She talks with her neighbor about the little things; school starting soon and summer ending, plans for Labor Day weekend. She feels a sudden surge in heart and almost doesn't recognize the feeling. Then she remembers. It's happiness. Contentment. Finally.

She knows she has passed some imaginary line. She has conquered the demons behind her and slain the dragons and landed her house upon the wicked witch of the west. She's not naive. She knows there are hurdles ahead, but she feels the trail of dead dragons behind her has given her strength and courage to take on whatever faces her.

Maybe she will meet someone who will want to face her challenges with her, someone who will stand by her side and hold her hand when the past tries to snatch her away. And maybe she won't meet someone. That's ok, too.

And just to prove something to herself, later that night she goes outside and cuts some lilacs from the bush. She puts them in a vase and sets them out on the counter. They have lost their spell. They can do no harm.

Now, on with the cat pictures.

Just kidding.

May 20, 2002

here they come

here they come

Just fooling around with the camera now and getting used to the different settings.

moon over long island

not a cat picture

sepia statue

I'm having fun.

impulsive

impulsive

Talk about impulse buying. I took Natalie to Target to get a pencil case. A tiny, 5 dollar pencil case.

I bought a digital camera. A Sony Mavica FD75. I have never in my life spent 400 dollars on myself for no reason at all.

I'm sure the guilt will wear off once I start taking pictures. Which you'll be seeing a lot of here.

Don't worry, I don't own a cat.

Oh, anyone want to install Moveable Type 2 for me?

fine.

fine.

Ok, relax, stop bitching at me.

I'm done with the long-ass journal entries. I'll go back to bitching at Ashcroft or something as soon as my allergies decide to let me breathe normally again.

flying

flying

this is another old journal entry, written almost 2 years to the day after the one below. I used to write in my journal in third person, as if I was talking about someone else's life, not mine

They are leaving for Disneyworld in the morning. Not him. He didn't want to go. She is going with the kids and her mother and now the washing machine is broken, filled with dirty clothes and murky water. She leaves the machine like that and he promises to have it fixed when they get back.

She wonders what he will do while they are gone. No, she doesn't wonder. She knows. He will not miss them, he will not think of them, he will not be home when the kids call from the hotel room to shriek about the rides and the shows that filled their day. He will be doing his thing, like he always does, even when they are home.

Disney is crowded with families. Men and women holding hands, carrying babies, smiling as if the sun was shining just for them. They wear matching t-shirts and the men push the strollers and the kids have ice cream running down their chins and no one yells at them.

Everyone is happy in Disneyworld. Her own kids are beaming, bursting with energy from sunrise until way past nighttime, when she carries the little one onto the monorail that runs through their hotel, and he sleeps in her lap unaware that his mommy is plotting to throw his daddy out of the house.

They are on the Star Wars ride for the third time, bumping and jiggling and holding on for dear life and her mother leans over and whispers in her ear. You seem preoccupied, she tells her. I am, she whispers back. She gives her mother a knowing glance and just the way her eyes shift and her shoulder slump and her mouth quivers, her mother knows. She doesn't say anything else but nods. It's a nod of approval.

And then a sunbeam breaks through the cloud hanging over her and makes everything bright and yellow and warm. She has said it without saying it, just acknowledged that it was on her mind and that broke the spell of silence that had been hanging over her for two years, as she plotted and planned her breakout.

For the rest of the trip, she avoids looking at happy, complete families, the ones that come in sets like some Fisher-Price Happy Handsome Family collection; Mom, Dad, smiling kid, smiling baby, matching t-shirts, never an angry word or a tear shed. She has stopped living in the dream where she is part of that collection. She has now become one of the discarded sets found at garage sales; the mom and kid and baby, smiles and daddy missing.

They come home and he picks them up at the airport. He doesn't ask how the trip was, if they had fun, how was breakfast with Winnie the Pooh. He doesn't say a word. Her mother sits in the back of the mini-van with the kids and now she is embarrassed that her mother has to see the silence of their lives. She breaks the ice and asks him how his past week has been. He mutters something about it being nice and pleasant, spitting the words out as if their arrival home had destroyed the balance of his world. She doesn't cry, doesn't get upset, because she has that beam of sunshine slicing through her anger. It's coming, she says to herself. It's coming.

There's that phrase the straw that broke the camel's back. It's always a little thing, something as light as a plastic straw that can bring your house made of glass tumbling down, shattering at your feet. For them, it was the washing machine. It was ten days that the machine sat there, full of soiled clothes and gray water that was starting to smell. She asks him about it, wonders out loud why he didn't have it fixed. He shrugs his shoulders and goes in the bedroom and closes the door, and she goes back out the van and brings the suitcases in. She tucks the kids in bed and then proceeds to empty the water out of the washing machine, a bucket at a time, going from laundry room to the bathtub for each bucket, wanting only to lay down in her own bed and sleep.

And when she is done, she curls up on the couch and smiles to herself. Because this is the last night this fake collection of a family will present itself as whole. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would tell him.

She remembers the dream she had about the wings. It's time to fly.

written in October 1997

May 19, 2002

learning to fly

learning to fly

found in a journal at the bottom of the closet

He brought her lilacs when she was in the hospital, lilacs from their own garden. If they were someone else, some other couple, it would have been a sweet, romantic gesture. But they were who they were, and the gesture spoke more of selfishness than anything else. She knew that as he was leaving, reluctantly, to come see her their neighbor probably leaned over the fence and asked if he wasn't bringing anything to cheer his wife up. And that's when he scowled and stomped and tore the lilacs from the bushes. He wrapped the stems in some tissues that were in the car. The tissues were probably used.

That was the time when she had some strange disease that made her hands swell up so she couldn't even tie her own shoes. And he still wanted to know where dinner was. She ended up in the emergency room, watching all her joints rise in slow motion. Her mother drove her. He wasn't home.

There was the other time in the hospital when she had a miscarriage - a slow, agonizing miscarriage that took a week to happen - and she had to go for a D&C and he was too busy to take her, couldn't her mother do it? His business involved not work, but things for himself. Her mother drove her to the hospital, never saying a word, never asking why. Her mother stood there next to her the whole time and when she came out of the anesthesia, instead of her husband standing over her, wiping the sweat from her brow and kissing her forehead, it was her sister and her husband. They took her home and she never cried again about the miscarriage because it wasn't that big a deal, he said.

There was the one other time in the hospital, where she gave birth to their first child, alone and scared and having difficulties. But he wasn't there because he wasn't all that into the childbirth stuff, and he would just wait out in the hallway and they could come out and tell him when he was a father. And as she pushed and cried and heard the heart monitor shudder and stop and emit a monotone beep, and as she had oxygen put over her face and vaguely heard nurses and doctors gasping and yelling, he was not in the hospital at all, but down the corner, doing something for himself. And when she was rolled out of the delivery room, finally, with a red faced, screaming child, he was just coming up the stairs, breathless and a little ashamed, and her sisters were there already, holding her hand and wiping the sweat from her brow.

She sat alone at weddings and funerals and birthday parties because he was busy. Too busy for family, too busy for her. She slept alone in bed on the nights he went out to do stuff for himself, and she slept alone on the couch on the nights he locked himself in the bedroom, shouting at horses and screaming into the phone.

She dreamed of a funeral, of the pretense of mourning and of the guilty glee that came when the coffin was shoved into the ground. She fantasized about accidents occurring in the dead of night on the New Jersey Turnpike, car overturned, wheels spinning, broken glass piercing his eyes.

She dreamed of her own death but then shook the thought from her head and replaced it with dreams of flying. Sprouting wings and flying high above everything, the taste of freedom on her tongue. She landed in places that were not so dark, not so bleak and when she woke up it was always with the sinking feeling that her wings had been clipped. There were times, in the silvery light of the early morning, that she clung to the idea that the past few years were all a dream and she would wipe the sleep from her eyes and find herself in her parent's house, unwed, umothered, lifted from her bitterness. But it never happened that way and she woke every morning in the same house, the same life, the same bitter bed she made for herself.

But last night she had a dream. Again, she was given wings. This time the wings did not just sprout off the muscles in her back. They were handed to her. She looked carefully through the fog that was circling around them and saw the person who had handed her those wings. It was herself. And she knew. She knew what she had to do to fly.

written in October of 1995

May 18, 2002

George Lucas must be stopped

George Lucas must be stopped

Saw Episode 2 today. My review:

Star Wars - Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. **2 STARS
I am working on inventing a time machine. I will use it to go back in time and kill George Lucas before he ever had the chance to make Episodes 1 and 2.

There was better acting in Showgirls.
The dialogue between Anakin and Padme must have been written by a 14 year old girl in the throes of romantic anguish.
Tofu has more substance than this plot did.

This movie has single handedly accomplished what my friends and family have tried to do for years: It cured me of my Star Wars obsession.

Anyone want to buy my toy collection?

added later: Ok, so the more I thought about the movie, the more things I found about it to be adequate enough to get one more star. But that's IT. It certainly wasn't as bad as Ep1, but it wasn't all that and a bag of chips, either. also: seeing a movie while you are suffering from sinus/allergy problems that have left you cranky and tired is probably not a good idea.

Other bloggers reviews of AOTC, meticulously compiled by Mat Honan

action figures caught on tape!

action figures caught on tape!

I've been noticing strange things in the morning. Like someone has been having a a grand time in the house while everyone is sleeping. It happens every couple of nights so I left my video camera on last night to see if I could capture the culprits in action. And it's just as I suspected: My action figures have been throwing wild parties in the wee hours of the morning.

Action figures caught on tape, the transcript:

Boba Fett: I cannot believe that you guys invited my father. How am I supposed to have a good time now?
Zorak: Your father is piss drunk. I don't think he even knows you're here.
Tri-Klops: Hey, look at all the goth kids standing in the corner. Freaks!

(At the goth corner)
Morpheus: Did you guys know I have a weblog?
Crow: Yea, I saw your little blog. You should really be careful who you talk about, you know. Edward Scissorhands came across that piece you wrote about his horrible fashion sense. He was really hurt.
Alice: Anyone have any ecstacy?
Jack Skellington: This party blows. There's no chicks here.
Eddie: Oh, there's chicks here. But those bitches only want the superhero guys.

(over where the superheros are hanging out, drinking from a keg)
Luke Skywalker: Man, I keep trying to hit on Harley Quinn, but she's dissing me big time.
Spiderman: Maybe you'd have better luck with, say....Buttercup!
everyone laughs
Luke: Oh yea? You should talk, Spidey! Who the hell is going to want you? You have a bobbing head!
Green Goblin: Ohhh bobbin' head? I think Aquaman may want to date you, Spidey. Hehehe.

A fight breaks out. Everyone jumps in. Rob Zombie and Evil Ash, who appear to be the bouncers, settle things down.

Wolverine: Didn't Vader say he was bringing the dip? I don't see any dip here.
Filler Bunny: I ate it all. Washed it down with a bottle of Tequila.
(Filler Bunny throws up all over the place)
Mr. Blonde: These are my good fucking shoes you idiot rabbit!
(He shoots Filler Bunny)

Snowman: Wow, we really made a mess tonight. There's no way we'll get this cleaned up before she gets in here.

Comic book guy: Dude, she is SO going to blog about this.

May 17, 2002

you are about to enter another dimension..

you are about to enter another dimension..

And you though Florida was a strange place to live...

Last week I picked Natalie up from after-school Builder's Club. When I arrived at the school there were four cop cars there. No one knew what was going on. I finally heard today what happened.

Seems a 15 year old girl was in the bathroom sticking other girls with a needle. Nice, huh? Even better, she is the sister of the guy who rammed my father's car the other day.

Even better: They are the grandchildren of a rather famous mob boss whose last name rhymes with potty. Didn't know they live around the corner from me.

Never a dull moment around here.

Just call me 13

Just call me 13

Today so far:

*Woke up at 3:53 a.m. by falling out of bed.
*Spilled a nearly full 5 lb. can of coffee all over the kitchen counter and floor.
*Fell asleep in the shower.
*Hit my head on the corner of the bathroom cabinet door.
*Went to check on site only to see it is not there.
*Natalie misses bus and needs to be driven to school, thus eliminating my stop at the deli for milk, so I get to work and make coffee and realize there is no milk and I now have to walk to the store.

The rest of my day will go thusly:

Stare at pile of work.
Pile of work will stare back with evil eyes.
Refuse to get up from desk for fear that something else will go wrong.
Continue staring contest with work.

Bad luck wind been blowing at my back I was born to bring trouble to wherever I'm at. Got the number thirteen tattooed on my neck. When the ink starts to itch, then the black will turn to red. I was born in the soul of misery, never had me a name. They just gave me the number when I was young

Ok, it's not that bad. Just need some coffee and donuts and everything will be ok.

May 16, 2002

way to go, Nat

way to go, Nat

I have written extensively in this place about Natalie and her travels through the special education system, and the naysayers who predicted a life of poor academic performance for my daughter.

So with that in mind, I am pleased to say we received a letter from school today that Natalie has made the Principal's Scholastic Roll for the 3rd quarter with an B+ average.

If you know me, and you know about Natalie, then you know how damn proud I am of her.

self linking

self linking

shameless self promotion of the day: If babies could talk.

the dreaming life

the dreaming life

I just woke up from another one of those dreams which is nothing more than a conglomeration of all my other recurring dreams.

It's not so much that the dreams repeat themselves. It's the scenarios. Or the particular settings.

When I was very young, I used to dream of plane crashes frequently. It was always the same - a 747 or some other jumbo type jet would crash into our street, crushing homes and killing almost everyone I knew.

When I was in junior high school, the water dreams started. Often, the dream would take place at my aunt's house. I would be walking through a hallway and suddenly the water would come rushing in. I would swim the murky water, trying to find my way to fresh air. I would eventually surface, but always in the same place. As my head came up out of the water, I would find myself in the middle of a wide, angry ocean. Alone.

There were other water dreams that came more frequently and still persist today. I am either on a roller coaster or a highway. I realize, too late, that part of the track or the road is submerged underwater. Most of the dream is a slow motion nightmare as I approach the water. Sucking in my breath, trying not to cry, trying not to let my fear show to whoever is with me. There are always people with me, and they are always oblivious to the fact that we are about to drown.

Then there are the school dreams. Almost everyone has them. You have forgotten that you have a test today. You can't find your schedule, your classroom, your locker. Or it's the end of the semester and you realize you haven't gone to class yet. For me, these dreams always take place in the same school. It's not a school I ever attended in waking life, nor is any part of it familar in any way. But I have memorized the building. So now, when I have a school dream, I am able to use my past dreams to remember where things are. I know teachers names and locker combinations and room numbers. I even know where the bathrooms are. The scenery never changes from dream to dream. The only thing that changes is the plot.

I have a lot of dreams that take place in a huge hotel. Again, the basis of the dream is different each time, but the hotel itself never changes. Sometimes, in one of the hotel dreams, I will greet the desk clerk by name and ask how he has been since the last time I dreamed him.

There is a stairwell in this hotel, and in many of these dreams I am running away from someone or something. I find myself crawling up the stairs, trying to find the right door to escape out of. After all the years of having this place show up in my dreams, I know. I know that the door on the first floor leads to a fire and the door on the seventh floor leads to water and the door on the tenth floor leads to a bar not unlike the one in The Shining.

Sometimes in my dreams I will come across the same people from other dreams. These aren't people I know in real life. I have no name for them. But they are there often enough so that I recognize the one guy by his hunting coat and the other guy by his oversized head and the little girl by her party dress. There's that one guy - with the green, slimy hair - that's always trying to give me advice. And there's the motherly type figure who tries to offer me cookies as I pass her on the road.

Oh, the road. There's this dirt road that is in almost every dream I have. The road passes through some woods, at the end of which there is a beautiful farmhouse. I've never gone in the house. Never even approached it. I just stare at it and wait for someone to come out and invite me in. After a few minutes, when no such person materializes, I head back out for the road, on my way to another dream.

Sometimes, when I do have the same exact dream twice, I feel as if I've been given another chance to fix whatever went wrong the last time. I can manipulate what happens, take different roads, say different things, avoid certain pitfalls. Sometimes, the man with the big head will come out and congratulate me if I avoid a previous nightmare by changing the dream.

I wonder what makes these strange characters appear again and again. I wonder what the farmhouse means and if I ever will open up every door on that stairwell.

I wonder what dreams really are. Sometimes I think they are another existence, another life of ours. And then sometimes the practical side of me says that dreams are just our brain dumping out excess thoughts from the day.

I'd like to believe there is something mystical about the life I lead in the middle of the night.

May 15, 2002

stuff

stuff to say while i have an internet connection for five minutes

Unless you count waking up with the theme to Silver Spoons in your head, then nothing terrible ever did happen.

Krispy Kreme has a donut called Vanilla Ice. As expected, it looked really cool but tasted like crap.

And in other news, I have a flesh eating zit.

ed. note: I'm totally work-stressed this week. Please pardon the less than stellar posts that have taken over this space this week. I will resume my normal coherence by the weekend. Hopefully.

tick tick tick

tick tick tick

Bouts of insomnia will bring on interesting thoughts. There is nothing like the dark of night and a mind that won't shut down to make you think the most absurd things.

So I spent over an hour last night staring at my clock and listening to it tick, tick tick, and thinking, what makes us tick?

Not in that physiological way of ticking, like how does our heart and liver and kidneys work, but the ticking that goes on in our brain. How some of our brains seem to be wired so differently, so randomly, that it makes you wonder if you are even in the same species as some people.

For instance, take you sense of humor. How did you come to have that humor? What portion of your brain decides that Pauly Shore is funny but Adam Sandler is not? I think about this because I don't get some things that other people do. And they don't get things that I do.

My sister says that Saving Silverman is a really funny movie. I watch it, or at least try to, and I realize that it's probably one of the worst movies ever made. Now, we are born of the same parents, were brought up in the same home, so why does she think that movie was hysterical while I thought it was crap? I suppose it's the same reason why she can listen to hair metal for hours on end and if I hear even one note of Skid Row my mind will shut down for the day.

So I don't get the 3 Stooges. I see it on tv sometimes and I try to find the humor in it, but I can't. I wonder what makes people think it's funny. And then I wonder if maybe it's not that their brains are miswired so that they find slapstick laughable, but that my brain is miswired so that I don't find slapstick laughable. I mean, it's not like I have this refined sense of humor or anything. I still love a good fart joke.

I don't get Adam Sandler or Tom Green or Jay Leno. Their humor does not appeal to me. Obviously, they appeal to a whole lot of people because they are stars. But why? Why does one person find Little Nicky funny while I wanted to kill myself for watching it?

It's the same with music. I can barely tell the difference between White Stripes and The Hives and The Strokes. It all sounds like minimialist retro crap to me. Same with the whole pop punk thing. But people obviously like it. So am I missing something or are they?

I don't get Andrew W.K. or Jimmy Eat World or the whole rapcore thing. Just as I'm sure people don't get why I like death metal or Radiohead.

It all just makes me wonder about how the human brain works. Why people hear things differently and react to things differently. What makes one person laugh at a dead baby joke and another person laugh at elephant jokes? Why can I laugh uncontrollably at fart jokes but find Freddy got Fingered to be repulsive?

I think I need to sleep more. Even nightmares are better than thinking of things like this at 3am.

May 14, 2002

i've got a bad feeling about this

i've got a bad feeling about this

Sitting in my bedroom, I had this overwhelming sense that something terrible was going to happen. Not at that instant, but soon. It was a spine-tingling, bone-chilling moment, and I could not explain where it came from or why, but it was very, very real.

I went outside to get some air and it had just started raining. There was a fierce wind causing the trees to bend this way and that, and the sky was a mess of grays and blacks, with one small area that was the blue of a tropical ocean. I felt some kind of electricity in the air, electricity that was loaded with bad karma.

Back inside, I still couldn't shake the feeling. I took a long, hot shower and tried to convince myself that it was all in my head.

But here I sit now, still feeling like the wicked witch of the west just rode into town and she's carrying a load of evil potions.

I'm going to go watch Elmo in Grouchland.

math test

math test

Apparently everyone in this building (self included) is math illiterate. So please answer:

A phone call cost 45 cents per minute. You buy a card that allows you to have $50.00 worth of calls. How many minutes is that?

Show your work please.

i still hate george lucas

i still hate george lucas

A plot point of Attack of the Clones has been told to me and it changed the way I view life.

Well, not really. But it really did mess with my head. I'm a little shook up about the whole thing and I need to go lie down and recover. The core of my very existence has been shaken.

Yes, it's very sad that realizing the origin of one of my favorite characters from my all time favorite movie series is enough to shake my psyche. I am a sad, sad geek. I admit it.

I need a life.

playground politics (revisited)

playground politics (revisited)

*note - this is something I posted a few weeks back on Raising Hell. It's still getting comments and I'm finding some of them interesting, to say the least.

Rather than reprint the long post here, I've just linked to the original. The debate is getting just a bit heated and you may want to read through the comments, especially towards the bottom. I'd like your opinion on not only the issue at hand, but whether or not you think I am out of line with my thinking. It's about bullies and victims and the role school plays in producing children of each kind.

playground politics

May 13, 2002

question of the evening:

question of the evening:

If you were having a small, intimate wedding for 40 or so of your closest friends and relatives and you wanted it to be not an real wedding type affair but a celebratory party would you have it

a) in a restaurant
b) on a boat
c) in a park, followed by a picnic and games
d) in your sister's backyard
e) other (please explain)

dear monday, again

Dear Monday,

Fuck you.

Michele

Dear Monday

Dear Monday,

It's been a while since I wrote to you last.

We made a deal once that I would stop badmouthing you if you would stop sucking so damn much. Neither one of us held up our end but honestly, Monday, if you didn't suck so damn much I wouldn't have to talk shit about you.

So I'm asking you again, especially today. Your friends Thursday and Friday really messed me up last week, and I think I am owed some weekday karma. As it is, I have to go in at 7am today to give myself extra time to get through my backlog of work. I know at some point today I have to deal with some issues with my ex and to top it all off, its dreary and gray and drizzly outside.

The last thing I need is the usual Monday madness of traffic, lost keys, sick children, black eyes, toaster mishaps, gum on my shoe, cds skipping, lighting the cigarette from the wrong end, stapling my sweater to a document, getting toothpaste on my shirt...well you get the picture. I don't need your typical Monday antics thrown in my face today.

I know you find it amusing when all these things happen one day. I mean, that's your job, basically. To make my day suck. But I'll tell you something, if you make today suck I swear I will run a smear campaign against you right here on this very blog and we will lobby Capitol Hill for your arch nemesis Sunday to get two days instead of one, eliminating the need for you at all. Hah!

Anyhow, if you could find it somewhere in your dark, twisted soul to make this day ok for me, to just lay off a little bit so I can get some work done without having to drop 55 Excedrin migraines within the course of one day, I would really appreciate it. And I will call off my plans to have you eliminated. And maybe talk nice about you. Deal?

Thanks,
Michele

May 12, 2002

end of the day

end of the day

This was the greatest Mother's Day ever. Nothing spectacular happened. It was just very pleasant, very stress-free, very nice. Hope yours was as good.

If you were here earlier today, you might have noticed things going wrong with the site here and there, such as the comments. (By the way, everything is fixed so feel free to go back and make comments on the previous post if you will).

Dreamhost physicallly moved their servers last night and I guess there were some hiccups in the system. I emailed them (more than once, I am a pain in the ass), they replied quickly every time with a personal email and got right on the problems.

If you are ever looking for a host with fantastic customer service, Dreamhost is it.

And thus ends the commercial portion of our daily blog.

word to your mother

word to your mother

please head over to Raising Hell for the some wonderful Mother's Day sentiments as well as the winners of the Mother's Day contest.

Hey guys, if you're wondering what to do with your wife/mother of your child for Mother's Day, I'll let you in on a secret.

She doesn't want to do anything that involves her cooking or cleaning. She doesn't want to get dressed up. She doesn't want to go somewhere to eat where she has to listen to 10,000 screaming children.

What she wants is an empty house. She wants you to take the kid(s) out so she can sit around in her pajamas watching Lifetime movies and eating ice cream out of the container. And then she wants to take a long, hot shower without being interuppted by shouts of I have to pee! or Where's my rollerblades? or That guy from Columbia House is on the phone again. And then she wants to fall asleep on the couch with a bag of Doritos in one hand and the remote in the other with a baseball game playing on the tv. And then she wants to eat cold chili out of the can and maybe fart a couple of times. Loudly. And then at about 6:00 she wants you to come home and tell her how beautiful she is even though she is wearing baggy sweats and an old band t-shirt and has hot fudge dripping down her chin.

That's what she wants. Well, maybe that's just me.

Now, here is my real Mother's Day sentimental post.

Happy Mother's Day to every mother/step-mother/godmother/grandmother/person who has been like a mother/father who is also a mother....really everyone. Because even if you aren't a mother, your existence has made someone a mother. So yea, Happy Mother's Day.

Oh, and today's site of the day is the decidely unmotherly-like art is for losers

May 11, 2002

what a card, redux

what a card, redux

Below, the Mother's Day card I got in the mail to day from the divine miss b. (Photo by miss b. also)

what exactly is miss b saying about me here?

Captions, please.

Insider, Part 5

Insider, Part 5

I've been lax with my Blogger Insider duties.

Thanks to the patiend and kind Anita for answering my questions. My answer so her questions can be found here.

1. Are you a person who lives by routine or do you just let the moments happen as they may?
A: I live for the spontaneous moments and savour them when they happen, but otherwise I like some amount of planning in my life. I don’t like being caught by surprise, especially if it’s something not so nice in store!

2. Is there a song that can make you cry every time you hear it?
A: Not really. I cry quite easily though. Especially when I watch sad, soppy movies :)

3. What were you doing ten years ago from today? Five years ago? Last
year? WHat do you expect to be doing ten years from right now?

A: Ten years ago I was studying journalism. Five years ago I came back to India from Australia after studying (again!).

Last year I was working. Ten years from now I hope I will be travelling around the world, writing for pleasure and not be working for anyone!

4. Do you believe you were anything/anyone in a past life? If so, who/
what?

I don’t dwell too much on the past, so - no!

5. Describe yourself in haiku form.
Bright flower…
playing with the sky
summer dream!

See? I’m not a poet, though I did have aspirations a long time ago!

6. What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?
I think I live a rather mundane life, where the most dangerous thing I do is travel by local trains, which in this city, is a rather dangerous activity, especially during peak hours!

7. Do we control our destiny or is it all planned out for us already?
I would like to believe that it’s the former.

8. What's your earliest childhood memory?
I have this vivid memory of my mother putting on her lisptick while she put me in my crib. I was trying to get her attention by screaming and wailing and she ignored me completely. She then left the room without even turning around. I must have been about five or so. That is my earliest memory, which I now think was a bad dream. I have no memories of my life before that.

9. What was the last book you read? Was it good?
A book called ‘Personality Plus’ by Florence Littauer. It helps you determine which temperaments are your dominating ones - Popular Sanguine, Powerful Choleric, Perfect Melancholy or Peaceful Phlegmatic. And then helps you nderstand weakenesses and strengths accompanying each. I found it rather interesting (and enlightening!).

10. What's the first thing you thought of as you woke up this morning?
Oh, God, do I have to go to work today?!

Thanks, Anita!

what a card

what a card

I spent a good portion of yesterday trying to figure out what I would write on Raising Hell for our Mother's Day posts. Sometimes I feel like I fucked up with my kids, especially DJ. I don't know what goes through his head sometimes. He is a confused little boy, fluctuating between supressed anger and this unbound love he wants to share, but is afraid to. He gets different views of how to present his feelings. Here, in my home, we are open and affectionate and treat each other with care and respect. But in his "weekend" home, things are different. They treat each other with no respect at all. They aren't open or honest and feelings are always supressed. So I was surprised and moved to tears yesterday when he came home from school with a Mother's Day card for me. Every word was written by him, and he beamed with excitment when he handed me the card. It was 4 pages long and he wrote:

My mom is caring.
She likes to play with me.
She always is there for me.
Sometimes she gets angry with me,
But the best thing about my mom is she loves me.

My mom is as nice as God.
My mom is like a butterfly.
My mom is as helpful as a doctor.
My mom is like a silver diamond.
My mom is as loveable as God.
My mom is like a golden charm.
My mom is as great as a million dollars.

Ten things I love about my mom:
She buys me clothes.
She is always there.
She teaches me manners.
She thinks about me.
She buys me lunch.
She loves me.
She helps me with my homework.
She buys me toys.
She cares about me.

She makes me feel special because she stays home when I'm sick when she will get in trouble. She spends $1,000 dollars on me for a brithday party.

My mom is a star.

He wondered why I was crying. We talked about good tears. He hugged me harder than he ever did before. I felt like his words were honest and real and not Hallmark type sentiments. This should keep me going until the next time he ties my shoelaces together or draws rotten teeth on a picture of his sister.

May 10, 2002

backtracking

backtracking

So I caught a lot of flak for the previous post about dotpaul.

Listen, I have no problem with people having opinions different than mine. And I have no problem with people shouting their opinions from the highest rooftop. But I take offense to the manner in which chose to state his opinion. The darwinism, the idea of what is normal and what is not, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

So I apologize for the way in which I lambasted him here on this site, but I do not apologize for 1) stating my opinion about his opinion and 2) commenting on his site, because when you state your opinion in a public forum that has the space to leave comments, you just open yourself up to responses.

That's that.

Anyhow, I redeemed my week from hell. When they updated our OS at work they sort of left a big gaping hole in the security on the system. By using my mad haxor skillz I was able to hook myself up with internet access. Yea, I know, they'll catch me some day. But it's not like I'm looking at porn. Much.

And can I say, Thank Fuck It's Friday. Mas Tequila!

burmese, anyone?

burmese, anyone?

If anyone can translate something from English into Burmese for me, I would be eternally grateful.

I am making something for my sister for Mother's Day (my adopted nephew is Burmese) and I would like to translate his name into that language.

Thanks.

repeat after me

repeat after me

Today will be a better day than yesertday.
I will not yell and scream.
I will not get frantic over things I cannot control.
I will not murder anyone.
I will resign myself to the fact that 4 years worth of work have vanished.
I will not point out anyone's stupidity.
I will smile.
I will eat Krispy Kremes for breakfast and I will drink my lunch.
I will not kick anyone in the balls.
I will not set anyone on fire.
I will resign myself to the fact that no one will accept resonsibility for their actions.
I will smile.
I will drink coffee and eat sugar and grin like a deranged bastard.
Today will be a better day than yesterday.

Now, being that I have vowed not to kill anyone today, will my dear, open-minded readers please go take this guy to task? I quote from him: If it were normal for same sex couples to have kids then God would have made it so they could procreate. As it stands they can't and it's not normal. It's not normal from a theological standpoint and it's not normal from a Darwinian standpoint either." Dotpaul, I unleash the dogs of hell on you.

Happy Birthday, Mig

Happy Birthday, Mig

Happy Birthday to one of my partners in crime, my morning companion, my taskmaster, my fellow coffee drinker, and all around fantastic friend, confidante and best of all, a person who is older than me. Mig, may this year bring you fame, fortune, happiness and crazy family stories. Happy Birthday, bug.

Please go over to Feral Living and leave Mig birthday wishes (or spankings, or punches or farts or kisses) in his comments.

And so, today's site of the day is Mig's Shoe Project.

May 09, 2002

when it rains it pours

when it rains it pours

crash!boom!bang!hey dick, maybe if you stopped at the stop sign you would still be driving along like normal and your daddy's insurance wouldn't be going up. and that's what you get for playing rave music while you're driving

First, the day at hell in the office.

Then, 6:00. My aunt next door slips while standing on her dresser. Don't ask. She breaks her leg. Ambulance comes, etc.

6:40. Here comes the ambulance again. Asswipe (second car) blows the stop sign on our corner (like most people do, even though there's a gazillion kids running around). He's doing about 50. On a residential street. He rounds the corner, screeching all the way, not slowing down until my dad's BMW convertible, parked on the street, stops him. Ahh nothing like the sound of metal on metal and screeching breaks and breaking glass to interrupt your dinner.

So this day pretty much sucked ass. I don't even have any tequila in the house. I would even settle for a pint of Miller Lite right now. Well, no. Not really.

Bed. That's the ticket.

added later on:
and you know, I think a lot can be said about my new found inner peace because I didn't murder anyone today. I didn't even pick up any sharp objects and threaten bodily harm. But I guess a lot can be said about the old me, because when I went into the administration office and asked if anyone had matches, they wanted to know who I was going to set on fire.

now you see it, now you don't

now you see it, now you don't

In the interest of keeping my job, the previous post that was here has been sent to the recycle bin, lest I end up like less fortunate bloggers.

Suffice it to say that today was a really bad day and I am in a foul mood.

fuzzy bunnies, fuzzy bunnies, fuzzy bunnies...

drugs are bad mmmkay

drugs are bad mmmkay

The kids keep bringing home pamphlets from school about drug abuse. DJ usually just leaves his in his backpack until I find it a few days later, but Natalie always hands hers to me and wants to "discuss" drugs. She points out that this particular pamphlet she is holding lists caffeine and nicotine as drugs. So in essence, her mother is a drug addict. I tell her that while they are not really drugs in the sense she is talking about, the combined pleasures of coffee and cigarettes can sometimes be like crack. Well no, I didn't say it. But I thought it.

So I know the inevitable question is coming. She is going to ask me, probably at the prodding of one of those pamphlets, if I ever used drugs. All the "experts" say to be completely honest with your children with this issue in order to form an open forum for communication. So, if she were to ask me and I were to follow that advice the converstation would go something like this:

"Mom, did you ever use drugs?"
"Well, when I was 13 I tried pot for the first time. By the time I was 15 I was drinking pints of Miller Lite behind 7-11. By the time I was 18, I smoked more pot than Cheech and Chong combined. Oh, and let's not forget the acid and the mescaline and the speed. Did you know that mom was addicted to those little black beauties at one point?" Here, my eyes would glaze over as I flash backed to the summer I spent putting little purple microdot tabs of mescaline in my mouth, waiting for that hallucinatory high.

Natalie would run screaming from the room, and probably call the authorities to see if she could be placed in foster care.

Now, if I follow the advice of people who say "you don't owe your kids an explanation for your past" then the conversation would go like this:

"Mom, did you ever use drugs?"
"Drugs are bad, mmmkay?"

So what do I say to her? Do I find an even ground somewhere between lying and withholding? Do I tell her that I tried drugs but they were horrible and evil and then make her watch The Osbournes and use Ozzy as an example of what drugs can do to you?

Face it, if I were to be completely totally honest with her I would have to say that I quite enjoyed being high. And then we would end up like some Jerry Springer family and I would be teaching Natalie how to roll her own joints while we drink 40oz beers in our dilapidated trailer.

So I figure I could say "I tried drugs but didn't like them" and that would be good because it's not specific enough to say which drugs I tried and it wouldn't be an outright lie because I did have some really bad trips in my day. But knowing Natalie and her overactive imagination, I would get a call from the guidance counseler at school wanting to know if I was really an ex crack dealer and heroin addict.

Anyone have advice? Suggestions? A joint?

May 08, 2002

gothic martyr poetry by natalie, age 12

gothic martyr poetry by natalie, age 12

(found scrawled on a napkin and taped to the fridge)

i am an ocean without fish
i am a forest without trees
i am new york without cars
i am a garden without flowers
i am spongebob without a pineapple
i am a blank cd

my life is empty

because....

i am a girl without a cell phone.

love, marriage and someone else's american dream

love, marriage and someone else's american dream

"You marry for money. Love comes later."

My grandmother said this to me when I was 21 and breaking off an engagement with a guy who was financially stable but mentally one fry short of a happy meal.

Grandma was old school. In her world, women married out of necessity, not love. They reached a certain age and it was expected they would marry, have children, tend to the every need of their husband and live a life of quiet servitude. Women depended on men the way you depend on air to exist. As long as he put food on the table and went to work every day you could overlook the drinking, the womanizing, the occasional name calling.

The first time I married, I thought it was for love. It certainly wasn't for money. It wasn't until 7 years and two kids later that I realized I was confusing love with need. As in you need to marry me because it's your only chance. You need to stay with me because you will never find anyone else. You need to get married at 25 because all your friends and cousins are getting married and it's just what's expected of you.

My father, subjected to my grandmother's ideas of stations and standards and gender roles for most of his life, expected certain things of his daughters. Marrying was one of them. Marrying well was another. He meant well. All he wanted for us was the American Dream. The problem is, his American Dream is not mine. He wanted me to live his life. He wanted me to meet the standards he set for himself. Own your own home. Have two cars. Pay off your credit on time. Look good in the public eye. Keep your lawn trimmed and put your garbage out on Tuesdays and join the PTA bowling league and make sure your kids never have snotty noses. And always, always depend on your man. He will make the money and put the meat on the table and he will negotiate with all car salesmen while you nod your head politely and he will provide.

Well, I tried. I tried for seven years to give dad what he wanted. Two problems with that, though. My husband would not oblige dad's dream and it wasn't really what I wanted anyhow.

I wanted to hold hands. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to take walks on the beach and go to DisneyWorld with the kids and smile for the camera and be happy. I wanted dinner conversation and cuddling in front of the fireplace and I wanted to go to bed at night with a content heart and arms wrapped around me. That was my dream. Not the house, not the car, not the Ivy League education for my kids. Happiness. Contentment.

Of course, I got none of that. I didn't get my own dream or my dad's. So when the marriage bit the proverbial dust, no one batted an eye. No one was surprised. Life went on. And I would get another chance at the dream.

Forward to now. When I tell my father I'm getting married again this summer, I know by the look in his eyes that he is happy for me, yet not. This is not his dream for me. This is not his standards. He wants me to save money. He wants me to put away for a rainy day. He wants me to buy a house and another car and he wants my future husband to have more of a station in life. An accountant would have been nice. A lawyer. A fireman. Someone who joins the Kiwanis club and golfs on weekends and provides for his daughter.

I tell my father, finally. That is not my life. That's his. And for once I am living my own life. I am setting my own standards. This is my rainy day. He wants me to save for my future but my future is now. I am almost 40. I deserve a life. I may never own my own home and we will probably always drive shitty cars and I will never, ever again depend on someone else to provide for me. I have my own career, my own bank account, my own things. This isn't going to be a marriage about status or money or white picket fences. This is a marriage about love. We may never join the Chamber of Commerce or have a family golf outing, but we will always be happy. After putting the most miserable years of my life behind me, I am finally happy.

I tell my father, this is the most content I have ever been in my life. That maybe he finds contentment in a manicured lawn and zero balance on the Visa, but I find contentment in holding hands and cuddling by the fireplace and dinner conversation. I find contentment in the warmth of my home, even though I don't own the particular home. I find happiness in the life I have chosen for myself. And I know that, although he won't come right out and say it, at least not yet, my father finds happiness in that.

I'm sure grandma is looking at me from whatever world she is now, shaking her head and silently cursing my decisions. But times change, grandma. This time I'm marrying for love. Maybe the money will come later. Maybe not. All I know is I go to bed at night with a content heart and arms wrapped around me. I am living my dream.

May 07, 2002

welcome

welcome

I just want to say welcome to the visitors coming here from my.msn.com.

They say company always comes when the house is a mess and well, the past few days have been mainly filler. Please feel free to stroll through my archives, or just check the past few weeks for a more personal glimpse of this site.

Thanks for stopping by.

p.s. will the guardian angel who made raising hell last weeks highlighted site on msn.com and this site the link of the day today please come forward?

analyze this

analyze this

I dreamed last night that a large tractor trailer truck carrying a huge load of bricks jacknifed on a main street in my town. I watched an arial view of it happening, saw the back end of the trailer crash into itself, forcing the cab of the truck up in the air. I saw the bricks flying everywhere, landing on cars and homes and children. One woman was thrown from her car in the ensuing crash and she hung on to the side of a landscaping truck, screaming for her life. Bricks rained down on her and silenced her screams.

I watched this helplessly, not really sure where I was or why I was seeing it. I just kept seeing person after person crushed by bricks, cars piling up on top of one another, the sound of metal on metal burning my ears.

The dream stopped suddenly and changed scenes; a nightmare with bad editing. I was wading through a river of barley water. My father had taken us to Colorado, which somehow ended up next to Pennsylvania. He was making us swim because we had all forgotten how but the river was filled with barley and sugar that left a bitter taste in your mouth when you swallowed it. I tried to tell everyone about the truck accident. No one could understand me because my mouth was full of barley.

Bad editing sequence again, and I'm getting into my car. But I'm getting in the back seat, even though I'm supposed to be driving. The car starts pulling away without anyone in the driver's seat and I jump up front. Next to me is a neighbor, and I tell her that someone her size should not be wearing short shorts. She snorts at me, a pig-like sound that makes me think she is answering me with sarcasm. I tried to tell her that I didn't mean she was fat, it's just that her legs are too long to wear those shorts, but my mouth is still full of barley and sugar water.

We try to drive to the scene of the accident. My sister is in the back seat of my car talking about my wedding. There are sparks falling from the sky and I have a sense of dread, like something big and dark is coming. Aliens, I think. Terrorism, my neighbor says. Roses for the bouquet? my sister says.

We stop at a supermarket so I can buy cigarettes and toilet paper. Everyone I went to high school with is there. They won't let me on line. These guys with Power Ranger swords chase me down the hallway and I make myself tiny and hide inside a package of cheap plastic soldiers. Someone puts a dish towel over me. I can't breathe inside the package. It's dark and the soldiers are asking me too many questions. I try to light a cigarette, but they are soaked with barley water and won't light.

Bad editing sequence. We make it to the scene of the accident, and we start going through briefcases that have fallen out of crushed cars. A helicopter drones overhead. Lights flicker and fade in the houses around us and then it is dark. Darker than midnight, darker than a child's room with the lights out and curtains closed. I feel liquid rising up above my ankles and I think there's a flood, this is it, the end of the world. And then the liquid is warm and sticky and I realize it's the blood of all the people around me, the ones killed by bricks and pieces of metal torn from crushed cars. I scream at myself to wake up.

I wake with a pounding headache and a realization that this dream is going to be with me all day.

___________________________
Site of the day: Jack's Corner

And, DJ and the disappearing penis at Raising Hell.

May 06, 2002

perfect

perfect

In my perfect world....

I could eat dessert for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and not gain an ounce.

There would be a 3 strikes rule in Hollywood: You make 3 box office flops in a row, you can never make another movie.

Joel Shumacher and Jerry Bruckhemier would never be allowed to work together.

Ashcroft would be the poop scoop guy at the zoo.

Cigarettes would be 50 cents a pack and not cause all kinds of disease.

It would be illegal to own a Creed cd.

Everyone would be required to take a nap at 1pm.

There would be fashionable clothes for people above a size 7.

Futurama and Family Guy would not be cancelled, but every reality show on Fox would.

Metallica would have broken up before they recorded Load.

Every day would be free comic book day.

The Mets would never win a world series.

There would be 6 months of spring and 6 months of fall, and Halloween would come twice a year.

Every driver would use their turn signals and make full stops at stop signs.

Really nice shoes wouldn't be so damn uncomfortable.

Mondays would be optional.

What's your perfect world like?

stuff 5.6

stuff 5.6

When I want your opinion I'll ask for it.

And Candi's back, married and sassy as ever.

I saw a trailer yesterday for a movie called 8 Legged Freaks and for some reason it made me think of Aaron. In a good way, of course. The movie, however, has David Arquette. Meaning I won't see it.

May 05, 2002

my spidey sense is tingling

my spidey sense is tingling

Be still my heart. Finally, a movie that lived up to the anticipatory hype I bestowed on it.

Yes, it's cheesy. Yes, the dialogue is horrific. It's as if they took every cliche out of every bad film, stuck them in a mixer and used the results to write Spiderman.

However, the bad writing is redeemed by Sam Raimi's direction, turning the clunky screenplay into a great thrill ride of a picture. The web-slinging and the dizzying scenes from the heights of New York City plus William Defoe's amazing ability to overact to the point of absurdity all made this movie great fun. Toby Maguire is perfect as the understated Peter Parker. Kirsten Dunst is sort of blah as Mary Jane, but I never thought of her as anything but blah. J.K. Simmons totally chewed the scenery up as J. Jonah Jameson. I wanted to see more of him. But this movie was all about the action. A comic I read every day as a teen has come to life, and gloriously so. What more could you want?

It was well worth the 9 bucks admission (plus 3 dollars for a bottle of water). And I will see it again. And again.

Two more things: For those who asked, the names of the songs I listed on the "sample this" post are now included in the post.

For the person who emailed me saying that I spend too much time talking about the minute details of my day to day life: DJ puked his guts out when he came home from his dad's today. All over the house. And then he had diarreah for about an hour. Now don't come back, ok?

stuff 5.6

stuff 5.5

Did you get your free comic books yesterday? I did. Of course, I didn't stop there. After two comic book stores and a trip to Hot Topic, yesterday's take included:

Stuffed Gir
Gir shoelaces
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac collected
Squee collected
Marvel's Heroes
9-11 Emergecy Relief

A pleasant day, indeed.

Rannie is coming to New York for the Blogger Calendar shoot. No matter what Choire and Baz plan on doing, I am not getting naked, ok? Well, maybe I'll just flash you. Just a little boob action. Maybe. Let me work on my tan. Meanwhile, (and speaking of boobs) check out Rannie's 50K contest.

I've been getting plenty of inquiries about the wedding. We are just having a small, intimate, family only type thing. Courthouse, Taco Bell. However, I am planning on some kind of party in September; a friend's only thing. So I will let everyone who asked know about that when plans become clearer. Also, we are not registered anywhere but if you are reallyl insisting on buying us a wedding present, our combined Amazon wishlist will work nicely. Because what else does a newly married couple need besides comic books and DVDs?

And our wedding song has been decided upon, though there really was never any doubt: Nick Cave's Are You The One That I've Been Waiting For. When Justin and I were having one of those new-fangled long distance relationships that take place mostly on the phone, he played this song for me one night when I was feeling particularly lonely. I cried like a baby. So yea, that's our song.

Guest poster over at Raising Hell today. Emily says: what do you want, a kid or a lifestyle? Great stuff. And there's only 3 more days to enter the Mother's Day contest.

I'm so happy that Leslie is back online, after her debacle with Verisign. Welcome back, Leslie (the site of the day).

And..according to Rolling Stone, I own/have owned 5 of the 50 coolest albums ever, but 8 of the 50 uncoolest albums ever recorded. I have to say, that I'm kind of happy to be considered uncool by Rolling Stone. Because when your idea of cool is The Strokes, I'm not on the same page as you. (thanks to the fab Jerwin for the link)

Enough stuff. I need coffee. It's Sunday, isn't it? Damn.

May 04, 2002

sample this

sample this

Because I went to bed at 8pm last night and so nothing interesting happened to me as a result, and because I woke up with yet another cold and my head is clogged and because it's Saturday morning and I have to be at the little league field in an hour (where I will try not to get beaned by a line drive again) and because Bill did this post the other day sampling her winamp selection, I will do the same, until later, when ten thousand and one blogging ideas will surface in my brain as I wait in line to see Spiderman.

So, sample a half hour of winamp shuffled selections of music with me as I go through my daily blogging reading:

A man with a sombrero who was four feet high
not to intervene when it came to you
you make me hard, when i'm all soft inside
and tongues of brothers turning a child into an enemy
I even tried to get arrested today
smell the warm summer air
Rebuke, don’t choke on this twisted dream
My posse's always ready, and they're waitin' in my zone
and they smell like rotting beef carcasses
black on black gives me a heart attack
I didn’t know she had that GI Joe kung-fu grip
They're all on welfare, kill babies, pass bad laws, start all the wars
Take all these strings they call my veins
There's a man sitting in a motel waiting for a hooker that he never applied for
I'm not a slogan or a badge or a cross in the ballot box
3 billion people that's 3 billion snotty fuck you's fuck you, fuck all of you.
And Jesus drives to Mexico toget her prescription filled
I know you can walk on the water but can you walk on this much beer
in the stillness of the night my eyes are closed, my mouth is wide
but if I were married to a movie star, that'd be my arm around her waist
she pulls the covers tighter, I press against the door

Ok, that was probably more than a half hour, but it was fun. And yea, it's just the lyrics sampled. Recognize any of them?

click below for the names of the songs

A Tribe Called Quest - I Left My Wallet in El Segundo
Nick Cave - Into My Arms
Nine Inch Nails - Perfect Drug
Zao - Lies Of Serpents, A River Of Tears
Faith No More - Helpless
Radiohead - Subterranean Homesick Alien
Chevelle - Point No. 1
Public Enemy - Louder Than A Bomb
Ren and Stimpy - Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen
Corrosion of Conformity - Clean My Wounds
Sublime - Caress Me Down
Far - Waiting For Sunday
Cold - Bleed
Glassjaw - Ry Ry's Song
Killing Joke - Democracy
Propagandhi - Middle Finger Response
Butthole Surfers - I Had A Dream Last Night
Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon - Are You Drinking With Me Jesus
Life of Agony - Let's Pretend
Self - Meg Ryan
Toadies - Tyler

May 03, 2002

Nick Cave, the god

Nick Cave, the god

A review of the entire evening:

We met Michael at Zen Palate on Broadway (we went vegetarian because Michael is a vegetarian and last time we got together I did not know that and took him to the Outback, which is a steakhouse). Chris hadn't arrived yet, but as we sat down we saw someone who appeared at first glance to be a skinhead walking past the restaurant and upon further inspection realized it was just Chris dressed like a "butch lesbian" in his words.

It was interesting to sit across the table from Michael and Chris, who are polar opposites of each other. Michael is quiet, demure and soft spoken. Chris is, well....Chris is manic. I don't think he stopped moving the entire time we were there. But he is funny and entertaining. A one man show, really. I would pay to see him.

So, the show. Nick Cave is a god among men. I have been to over 300 concerts in my lifetime, from crappy local bands in venues that looked like a barn to huge extravaganzas of U2 proportions, and this show was far and away the best I have ever seen.

Cave seizured his way around the stage, bumping and grinding and looking at times like a man in the throes of an convulsive nightmare. Every song was a story, every note a masterpiece, every word full of passion. He went through a great mix of slow and fast, ballads and crazed stories woven together in an incredible tapestry of talent. The words "stage presence" do not do justice to the ego this man brings onto the stage with him. He commands your attention and mesmerizes you into believing you are living the song with him. If you ever have the opportunity to see Nick Cave live, do not hesitate. Go.

(Chris has the setlist up, and I totally agree with his take on which numbers were more extraordinary than the others)

So, the chick. You know Macy Gray, and that hair she has? Imagine that hair exponentially increased to the 100th power. Imagine Buckwheat sticking his finger in an electric socket. Imagine this on a 5 foot tall, 90 lb. white girl. I think her hair was bigger than her entire body. So who does she sit in front of? Justin. Now, the seats at the Beacon theater are inclined. So this chick was about a foot below us and still her hair was in Justin's way. Then her posse came. 3 guys who all spoke a language I have never heard in my life, at decibels louder than a Jamie Lee Curtis scream. So the girl is sitting there, making out with her boyfriend, when another girl comes running up to her and smothers her in kisses. And I mean kisses. Tongues down throat, hands through hair, the whole bit. Between the hair, the girl-on-girl action and the boyfriend slipping his hand up the girl's shirt occasionally, I had plenty of entertainment in between songs. And the second girl chain smoked cigarettes that smelled like dog shit, and she was wearing a tank top and every time she raised her arms in the air I got a view, and a whiff, of someone who doesn't shave nor use deodorant.

So besides the posse from hell in front of us, the girl with the three month old baby strapped to her and the guy who puked all over the train on the way home, it was the best night I've had in a while. We did miss Baz terribly (she had to work late) but I vowed to go back into the city next week to hook up with her and for Christ to take us comic book shopping. No tofu cheese this time, Michael.

Tonight, it's Spiderman. I love my life.

Oh, today at Raising Hell I talk bullies: playground politics

preview

preview

Tired. Oh so very tired. I will write in detail later about the show, for now read Chris's review. Suffice it to say that the show was amazing, Nick Cave is not of this world and Chris, well he's another story entirely. Oh, and the girl with the huge hair that sat in front of us, I must tell you about her. And her friends. And Michael. And the guy on the train. And how watching Nick Cave is like sex with earth shattering orgasms.

Now, I need to drink lots of coffee and get to work on time.

May 01, 2002

just so you know..

just so you know..

There will be no post here tomorrow. I have to be out of the house extremely early in the morning, and then we are headed out to see Nick Cave straight from work. Oh, and we will be dining with Chris, Baz and MG before the show. They finally get to meet my man.

See you Friday morning, with a review of Mr. Cave.

quitters, inc.

quitters, inc.

I'm a quitter. I've always been, probably will always be.

I smoked a few cigarettes over the weekend after not smoking for three months. So in essence, I have quit quitting smoking. And now I am quitting not quitting again.

It's written all over my history. Quitter. I'm sure it's on my permanent record that they are always talking about, the one that follows you through your whole life. Big bold letters stamped across the folder containing my life's deeds. QUITTER.

I started ballet in kindergarten. It lasted all of 5 days (excuse: dancing gave me a stomach ache). Hell, if I could have quit kindergarten I would have. Later on I quit chorus (excuse: I don't like the music teacher, she's mean to me). Then I quit girl scouts (ok, I intentionally got kicked out). I joined clubs and stopped going after two or three meetings. I joined softball but never made it as far as going to a game. In high school it was the same thing. Join club, never go to a meeting. Join activity, quit activity. Date guy, quit dating guy week later.

I have quit more jobs than most people have had in a lifetime. Some, like the one in the library, lasted years. Others, like the job selling the Daily News lasted 15 minutes.

I got engaged when I was 20 and broke up with him (rightfully so) three months before the wedding. Then I quit my job. I got married later on and quit that too after 7 years.

I have the beginning chapters of at least 100 books tucked away in my closet. I have manuscripts that are 5 pages from being finished. I have poems that trail off in the middle and screenplays with no endings.

I have started collections only to have my interest in what I was collecting die out before the set became complete. I have made schedules and lists and demands on myself and then forgot about them days later. I start an antibiotic and quit taking it two days in.

I left college with 12 credits to go for my degree in English (due to life circumstances) but never went back. 12 credits away from a degree and I just couldn't finish it off.

I get interested in a weekly tv show and then stop watching it 3 weeks into the season. I obsess over things and then discard them like worthless garbage. I read a story in the news that interests me, and I am suddenly at the library, taking out 100 books on the subject and researching magazine articles. And ten days later, the urge is gone. I've quit. Again.

I never did finish building my Sims house or get to the end of Metal Gear Solid 2. And I never got that last Preacher collected.

This weblog is the longest I have ever stuck with something. A little over a year. Don't blink or I might be gone soon.

I don't know what this all says about me except I'm a quitter. And maybe I should quit quitting.

stuff 5/1

stuff 5/1

Happy May Day.

*Today marks the relaunch of my aortal pick for the next few days - Banshee Studios, a quarterly e-zine for fiction and essay writers. They have a beautiful new design with which to show off their sudden fiction, poetry, contests and so much more. I may even submit something myself. Please, go check them out, not just for the redesign but for the beautiful words that lie within.

*If any of you are planning to take a trip by airplane soon, please remember that while you are now allowed to pack nail files, tweezer and razors, axes and your Transformer toys are not allowed.

And remember also that you cannot wear a thong to a school dance.

*Dave? Anyone home? Dave?

If anyone out there plays the drums, Natalie would like to interview you (via email) for a school project. Please contact me if interested.

And lastly, in the Things that Should not be Department, Papa Roach has covered a Faith No More song on their new cd. If anyone ever dares to play that song in front of me, they will die a horrible, spork-related death.

And that's the news. Now for coffee.