The O.F.F.Sie Awards

About a year ago, when I was a baby radiohumper, when I was angry and bitter and overwhemlmed by the preciousness and privelege of the life of the typical blogger and their venal, gossipy consumatory lives.....whew, deep breath....

I envisioned an award called 'The O.F.F.sies.

Each week, whatever made me say Oh For Fuck's Sake out loud was a candidate.


Many things have changed since then.

I gave up being bitter. The blogging landscape has changed. I learned Blogging etiquette, i.e., don't ironically link other posts, etc.

There's something in the air today though.

I'm in a bad mood

While trolling through my sitemeter (one word- don't), I found three different sites that linked posts of mine for the purpose of ridicule and satire.

"Pot, meet kettle. You'd have a lot in common".

Other people are feeling overwhelmed too. People are feeling more free about critiquing the blogger and not the content.

I ankled on over to 'Blog Explosion' after Odd Child's exquisite rant, and found the majority of blogs are by people self-identified as 'depressed', 'manic', 'bi-polar', ad nauseum.

Oh For Fuck's Sake.

Maybe I just have the wrong kind of depression. The kind that is related to something fucked happening over and over until it alters your brain chemistry. I treat it by working out and writing here.
Perhaps I should try the doing-drugs-and-public-drama treatment.


This is my goddamn blog so I can say what I want here- Dig it, people, blogging is a way to participate in consensual reality in spite of your illness. It is not a literary convention like Post Modernism. It doesn't give you a pass.

No recovering depressive I know would willingly be part of anything that involved bloggers exploding over your rantings.

And in the 'I Could Almost Die of Not Surprise' department-

If Jimmy Hoffa staggered out of Hudson Bay with a laptop and got streaming video of Jesus tap-dancing with J.D. Salinger while they whistled the ending of the Unfinished Symphony and sent it as a nomination for the Annas, it would never have a chance against

this .

"You know what your problem is?"

Everyone wants to tell a wounded person what they need

If they don't tell you, does that mean they don't care?

Or maybe they see you as a person, and not the wound?

I give you props. I think of you often. And you. I do.


There is always someone to tell you what your problem is.

There is always someone telling me what I need.

I need to understand my 401K, and my son's chamber-music camp sked, and I need to wake up in time to jog five miles a day, and I need to call my mother and send four thank you notes and two birthday cards and I need to quit getting lost, and I need to read a strep diseases pamphlet.

No.

I need a weekend in that cabin in Corte Madera with a carafe of cocaine-spiked absinthe next to the Japanese-rope-bondage-themed bed, and a pile of Colette novelettes.


No, I need to see my guardian angel in the City next week.

That I really need.


"Colette is a kind of corsetiere of love. This most French of all French writers tells us how love sometimes binds and keeps a woman from breathing freely or how it may shape and support her and help her to be beautiful..."- Anatole Broyard

Radioladies on Love and Horror

This is one of those times it's easy to remember that I started blogging not to win contests or be well reviewed by other bloggers (fuck a link, it's all there), but to know my own thoughts.
I used to get depressed, really immobilized and unable to do more than function, about once a month.
When I write here, that seems to disappear. If you're out there reading this, you are tompeeping through the window of a metaphoric amputee.

"What was it like being sixteen and gorgeous?"

Oh man, it was another country. Walking to high school my sophomore year was a blasted moonscape the day after we a bomb was dropped, and I was a refugee, the bomb and the enemy.

Nothing was familiar anymore, not even my own body.
Strange men suddenly felt free to lurch towards my newly ripe tits and lips like monsters under a spell.
My hips and legs didn't respond to my brain's commands like they used to.

I could only see myself in parts.Seperate, and imperfect parts.


The men who stroked themselves over the idea of of a hot sixteen year old as their own personal toy,felt as proud as if I were their creation when I walked by. Not all men, just the ones who only look at the freshly born brides-for-monsters.
As if they were the geniuses, for yelling rude things at me in the street. They were scientists of impeccable taste, for copping cheap feels on the bus when my hands were full.


If I weren't depressed, I could make this poetic.
I would talk about the men who are romantics, who only loved that one perfect woman, while she was perfect.
Like Viktor Frankenstein with his first monster. They love their creation as long as it is pretty.
Like so many babymommies with their children.
Because, Frankenstein is the most hideous story of child abandonment ever written.

And like the dumb twats who think Romeo and Juliet is a beautiful love story, some fools think Viktor created the Bride out of love for his dead wife and not his own obsession.

"Um-MMM!, that's just what fools do. They dig up an old love out of all stitched-together parts that've been dead and buried. They just cut the parts they don't like".

Yes. And i just squandered my precious epiphany here. Take it.

Someone else with time and talent will dig it up. Maybe.

Stitch it together and make it dance.

Loyalty is for the working class

TRUE gave me my entree into the blogging world via MRTT.

I can no longer write about politics. I can't think about the world. I get around my fellow Americans and feel like slapping the back of everyone's head. I read the alternative news and want to cry, and the mainstream media makes me wretch.

(Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome/Secondhand Acute. Treatment- no news).
Does anyone else care? "Dumb fat and happy" as the VietVets call us.

My inspiration and hero, YankeeDoodle from Today In Iraq, just left his blog.
He wrote two open-thread posts in a row, then left a short comment that he could'nt take any more, and left like Cinncinnatus walking back to the plow.

No one is listening...no one cares....I can't do it.....this is not my whole life.

"There's a world out there/this I know cause I hear talk/in my sweetest dreams/i could go out for a walk/But I don't think I'm ready yet......" _ the Eels

BELANEY- please introduce yourself sometime. I am lonely.

More Resevoir Than Tarantino

Blogging in under ten minutes a day- a How-To

"Ah, my friend, what you could have said!"- Cyrano de Bergerac

First of all, fuck the news. Let somebody else worry about whether or not people continue to kill each other and steal each other's belongings.

There, see? When you have no new opinions, you can feel your own inspiration.

Not inspired? No problem. Read someone new for a change.

Two other quick facts- 1) Links are your friends- Let someone else say something on your page

("from Thanksgiving, a Native American Perspective" )-
"It was believed that by giving there would be enough for all -- the exact opposite of the system we live in now, which is based on selling, not giving."
Nice sentiments for Buy Nothing Day, and I back her.


"In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil.

"Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused."

Thanks cousin. I needed that.

More links- Some of my choices for the best blog posts of 2004- the Annas .


Quick fact 2)- It's okay to re-publish. Once in awhile.

My most heartless and honest critic has requested a re-run of a post from last summer.

"It's the last good thing you did", he said.

So that's up next.

And my ten minutes is up.

Thank you all for coming.

Random Personal Picture Finder

One love to Samoset and Squanto

They were the first Indians who spoke to the white men in their own language.


I am thankful today that I am linked by blood and in spirit to my Wampanoag cousins.

I think of all the people who got me here.

From my Native side I get that feeling that I am connected to everything. You shoot that Iraqi kid, I feel it. Your roses are twice as big this year? yep, I feel that too.
This is all in a day's work to some people, but Madonna and Woody Harrelson, for instance, spend thousands of dollars for this.

From my dad comes the gone-to-seed Californios, blue-eyed Spaniards in a South El Monte barrio. From them, I get my angel grandma and my humility and my lifelong habit of never, ever thinking I know who someone is by their surname and address.

From my mom I get more Native juice, (Paiute and Narragesett) and my Italian olive skin and
Valerie Golino hair and smile and a love for the holy trinity of olive oil, eggplant and garlic.

From my environment, I internalized my mother's Buddhism and her social conscience and proletariat pride.

Mostly, thoug, when I think of the times I've lived through, I think of the Native perspective on these times- the years between When Horses Came and White Buffalo Calf-
and the fact that it is called the Bloody Five-Hundred Year Detour.
And I think, for the first time, I am thankful to be who I am.
*************************************************************************************

I can't think of any other Thanksgiving prayer. Why do all the popular prayers sound like some lucky ticket-holder kissing an old white male god's ass?

Why do all the prayers of gratitude in the christian canon sound to my ears like a prisoner licking a guard's boots for getting a bigger plate of slops?

What prayer did you say tonight? Help me out here.

I notice the color purple whenever I see it in a field, so to speak. That doesn't seem good enough for Thanksgiving.

I remember once when I was eight,I ran out of Rev. "Praying Mantis" Billester's fire-and-brimstone anti-civil-rights sermon, his gorgeous gay teenage son ran after me.

"I won't go back in there", I told him. "How can God see the sparrow fall, and make me suffer when I see things die? Why did he make me feel so much when I can't do anything about anything?"

Stevie sat down and showed me the book he was reading. It had a picture of a slim blond hunk in a toga.

" "Why do you afflict my brothers? I hate you and you are my sworn enemy, you wretched god '".

I looked at the title "Dear and Glorious Physician".

Stevie pointed at the little chapel.
"St. Luke. His hatred was more blessed to god than the 'love' going on in that shithouse".

Bless you Steve Billester.
*************************************************************************************


I ended up going to the market again today after all.

There were signs over the deli - "Smoked Turkey Slices - 50% percent off"
And I thought of the pathetic karma of being a factory-farmed turkey cut up for your breast meat, knocked off the auction block the week of Turkey Day.

And my favorite thanksgiving quote, from Speak, after Melinda's drunk father and workaholic mother butcher and mishandle and finally trash the poor innocent turkey, she makes a sculpture of the bones.
'Never has such an innocent creature been so tortured for such a horrible meal'.
*************************************************************************************
I am thankful every day.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Radiomen

Heh.

This limited-Internet time thing may be something to be 'thankful' for after all.

I am back to channeling a real old-time radioman like my Uncle Rex, humping all my shit on my back. Limiting all outgoing communication to under-two-minute bursts.

Because if you go on too long, the enemy will trace you. Mess you up with your own big mouth. And I know how that goes.

She is prolific and funny and, like your hostess here, obsessed with certain things.

Like her, I am also grateful for my readers. I love you, and you, and you. Leave a comment, willya?

I used to think it was just the transmitting that was important. But that's what Signalmen say, and I'm a radio(man).

Then I started getting emails. And I realized one person's static may be another person's essential information.

So I added comments.

And I kept the channels open. It's okay to go off freq sometimes. Now is one of those times.

There! Under two minutes, and I said what I wanted to say.

Caption Contest -

Winner gets a gmail account, like you don't all have ten already.

another reason to be thankful

You Are Ani Difranco!

Honest, real, and well liked.
You're not limited by any boundaries.
"And you can call me crazy
But I think you're as lazy as white paint on the wall"





Who's Your Inner Rock Chick? Take This Quiz :-)



Find the Love of Your Life
(and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.







...it could have been Ashlee Simpson

thanks to Raspberry Sundae for the link

Diversity Club Alternative Prom

Bobby says that poetry readings etc. are methadone for the Internet addict.

Not me. When I get off my butt, I want to get all the way off.

I'm finding myself cooking like a sumbitch. Also, thinking of people to give parties for, a sure cure for self-absorption.

Also dancing and daydreaming, wow, couldn't even think of the word for it for a minute there. Yeah, daydreaming about things I'd love to do, what with all this newly free time.

I'm dreaming through my favorite cloudy-day day-off non-internet timewaster, the cookbook Party Fabulous by the founders of the Universal Grill in NYC.

After my post Sunday night, I was drawn back to their suggested mixtape for a good friend's "Coming Out of the Closet Debutante Ball'" -

"Maria" and "Climb Ever'y Mountain" from the Sound of Music soundtrack
"I'll Take You There" and "Respect Yourself" by the Staple Singers
"Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter Paul and Mary
"Stir it Up" by Johnny Nash
"Feelin' Groovy" by Paul Simon
"I Was Made to Love Her" by Stevie Wonder....

I wish the 'coming out' occasions that I witnessed had such a soundtrack. I may not have required as much therapy.

And speaking of therapy, I want to give a Winter Prom.

I want a photo-op backdrop (note to self; bring Artistic Friend in on this) and a pile of my old fetishwear, pre-school Dramatic Play clothes, boas, tuxes, and props.
I want a PoMo-genius D.J. who has the best of Vintage Odyssey AND early, Rodney-era KROQ.

And I want only misfits and losers who can laugh, and dance. NO whiny Goths or staged overdoses.

Your admission price will be the story of YOUR prom.

My date was a fragile blond who was being molested by his stepfather, and took me out because I knew and still 'made him feel like a man'. My boyfreind couldn't take me because he was ten years over the age limit, had a wife and baby and a criminal record.

Ah, those happy carefree teenage years. Best years of your life, me bollix.

Anyone want to join me?

At least in dreaming about it?


A light hits the gloom on the grey.

You should be so lucky

I think I'm losing my mind.

Two nights ago, I was having a PTSD episode, and I thought I would feel better if I could cry. I heard Rhapsody in Blue followed by Say You Love Me over my car radio while I was driving home from work in an area with usually fitful reception.

I took it as a Divine Sign. It dislodged something inside me, and I cried. It felt good. When I was done crying, I actually, spontaneously thanked god for giving Christine McVie that voice which I never liked before, and said thanks for all the musicians who spread joy and tears.

That night I dreamed Christine and I were the only guests at a Shabbat dinner with Benny Goodman's mother. This is a 'transcript' of that dream.

for Scott and 'other teenagers in love everywhere'....

Listen sweetie, it don't even hurt my feelings anymore that he don't come home Sundays. I want to talk to you about your young friends. Have some more borshch,it's hot. You look like you need more roughage.
You, blond dolly, I love your work. "You make me happy with the things you do, this feeling follows me wherever I go..", oh ain't that the truth.

You are so right, love ain't no miracle or magic. "You make lovin' fun", and honey, you can tell there aint' been a lot of fun in my life except for what I made up my mind to have. Are you listening, there missy? You with the ringlets?

Good, because I wanted to talk to you too. You didn't make this world as rotten as it is. Give yourself just one break, please. Look how long it took you to appreciate that nice and lovely song Blondie here wrote. Quit worrying about your son, oh yes, I know all about it. Don't he love you like my Benny loves me? I remember, I was watching like I always do on his birthday. Yepper, another clarinet genius with a poor family who love him too much. Lucky for me, I had eleven other little lambs to love. He'll remember you like you finally got around to hearing songs from twenty years ago. You'll make him cry like that too, don't you know.

And for all your young friends and their love problems, I got this to say- you think you are so special, losing a lover. It happens every day. You think there's only one girl for you and you have to have her or you'll die. I say, you should be so lucky.
There's meat all around. Don't bother to blush, you know it.
Your problem, kids, is when you say "I'm lonely", it's like this weird oyvsdorf neighbor I had telling me "I'm horny". He could only feel his, um, 'nature' after I put on high heels and my feather boa and said all the right things....ach, I almost fel asleep. Love isn't like those nasty chazerai drive-throughs, onetwothree you see something and you get the same thing you always get, just like you ordered.

Listen honey, I fall in love all day long. I love the way those boys help each other up off the floor in those Laker games. I love the poor old Mexicans selling oranges on the freeway with their sons next to them seeing this is what a man does.
Oh, and the back of a boychik's neck when he gets up from the barber chair and pays the man, maybe asking the score of the game on the radio. I love that concentration.

I love all my children. Don't tell me 'no one would care if I died but my mother' as if that's nothing. You think it's easy to love your children? It takes kiskes, let me tell you. It's the biggest love I ever had, and you just know if you do it right, they grow up and leave you. Ain't no maybes about it. No one grieves like a mother, just you wait till you get married. No, not you, that's what I would tell your little friend.

See, we have this new rabbi. He didn't like all this talk about a religious state in Palestine. When you mix God up with law, things get real ugly. "But Rebbe, don't you believe there's a Messiah coming?"

Well, what he said is kind of like what I think about love. There ain't just one person you have to have forever, just like you ordered from ebay. It's like the real Messiah. It's me a little bit, you a little bit. Wouldn't that be better than Zionists fighting Arabs? That could take years.

Love is in you, sweeties. I should know, for over a hundred years I've been here cooking in lonely people's dreams. But you kids don't listen. I tell you keep an open heart, and happiness is yours, but it's like you are all teenage boys in a kitchen. "I'm starving, I'm starving", and God forbid you should look in a cupboard.

Okay! Enough of the speech. Now be a sweet girl and go get us some more tea, if you can find it by yourself that is. I kid. Kiss.


Elvis In Paradise

Sexy Seder

It's so hard for me not to keep on loving life.

I cried last night. I remember how my brother used to sober up and cry for days after he would see a drunk Indian boy in public, passed out or just messed up.

I'm the same way about run-over animals. I passed a big fluffy-tailed raccoon and a squirrell onroute to work today. But it's okay, all circle-of-life stuff, because it got me crying. I'm good now. I'm over it.

But,yes, anyway the other thing about that brother was that when he was depressed or tripping really hard, the only thing that always brought him around was the sound of Christine McVie's singing voice.

Last night while I was swearing to myself for the tenth time that day no more news for at least a week, I heard "You Make Loving Fun". I kind of thanked Christine McVie for making music that made me glad I never killed myself or gave up. I heard all kinds of things in her voice. And I was never even a fan.
Some things just evoke a thanksgiving prayer.

I dreamed about sweet Christine last night. She and I were the only guests at a Sabbath dinner given by Benny Goodman's mother.
Like a good shoten-zenjii, she came back to thank me for my gratitude.

Dreams. Hmmm.
I really really hated Fleetwood Mac back in the day, too. Especially Gothy McCleavage and her half-assed version of reincarnation and her lousy falling-off-platform-heels, spinning choreography.

But last night cured me.
Got some real good material out of that, you know it. At least one story.

And no more tears.

Stay tuned- next up, Mrs. Goodman on Love.

Cover me

Another episode is creeping in on little cat feed.

My brother calls his lame, incontinent cat 'Ca-ca Paw'.

If I don't get some shelter I just may fade away.

The last few pages of the L.A.P.D. novel The Choirboys, the Juvenile officer investigates an 'unsafe home' with a cat walking through the overflowing sewage in the busted toilet, all over the dishes in the sink. Ca-ca paw.

My brother saw stuff like that too.

The description of the beautiful failed starlet who jumped from a 12-story building to her death was of yellow parts gooey with red blood, 'a raspberry sundae'.

A new reader linked me yesterday, named Raspberry Sundae Thank you.

Flashbacks don't flash but they take you back.


Some days I want to be away from all human eyes.

When a bad memory seems to go away, it doesn't fade, you do. It falls inside you. It keeps coming back.

Killing hurts.

I got no business reading the news.

I have to feel like writing soon.


Eminem revises ending to "MOSH"

Is it disgusted in here, or is it just me?

All day long I've been thinking of the old Robert Silverberg title I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

Never read it. Loved I, Robot though.


Everyone else is writing so well. It makes me happy. It makes me uncomfortable.

I'm a writer, and I can't write. I'm too heartsore and brain-tired.

I'm an American, and I don't feel automatically entitled to a righteous comfort level.
I cried in the grocery store again.

Maybe my problem is, I keep forgetting to cry.


Who will pray for all our souls?

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches - a How-To

Liz gave me the idea for this a long time ago with her grilled-cheese-lovin' self.

How-To Thursdays are back, only now, on Fridays.


How to Grill Cheese

When I got back from the gym today, I was starving and grumpy and couldn't find anything to eat, when I realized what I wanted was a damned grilled cheese sandwich.

I hadn't made one in so long that for a minute I couldn't remember how.

Which made me realize I was depressed, which is one time I really could use a perfectly grilled sandwich.

The basic grilled cheese sandwich - one slice of yellow cheese between two margarinized slices of spongy square white bread, cooked two minutes each side- has never crossed my lips.

(The only time that version is acceptable, and delicious, is when someone who loves you unconditionally, i.e., mother, or a new trick, preferably when you're still both a little high, has just made it for you.)

No, when I say grilled cheese, I mean business.

And when I have pulled myself out of anxiety before, often to minister to someone else's depression, it's amazing how often the grilled cheese cure works.

Now, since I'm in a hurry, not to mention on a diet, here are just a few-

For a friend who is still tripping,but wants to drive to Taco Bell-

He's hungry for sensation, not just food. Give him a taste of sharp cheddar while you let him watch the broiler heat up. Set some crisp buttery crackers out on a baking sheet and give him the job of setting little squares of cheese on each one.
Remember, if it looks too big, or too hard to eat, he'll leave and go get a burrito.Open a beer and let him watch you pour it into a cold mug. Describe what you are doing (the cheese makes little sunbursts! wow, what a perfect head on that mug!) and slice up a green apple to eat between bites until he comes down.

For an old friend who is visiting on a winter afternoon-
DOn't get too fancy, or they will think you want them to go home. Put on a pot of coffee, and let it fill the kitchen with good smells. Melt some butter in a heavy skillet, and throw in some diced onions (the pre-cut ones from the store) to add to the kitchen aromas. Cook the onions until they are transparent and the kitchen windows fog over. Distract her with a question about something funny she said ten years ago, so she forgets about leaving. Spoon out the onions and set down two thin buttered slices of wheat bread. Pile each slice with 1) a thin slice of Havarti, 2) the buttery onions,3) transparently-thin slices of a Granny Smith apple, 4) sliced avacado, 4) sprouts, and top with more havarti. Cover the skillet with a glass lid for one minute. Eat with a knife and fork on thin china. Follow with strong coffee to keep her alert for the drive home after all that butterfat.

For your first grilled cheese sandwich after sex - You already know what he likes ; let him see what else you like. Be assertive in your tastes. Butter some dark pumperknickel and toast it in the pan just enough to melt the butter. Shred some jack cheese and toss it with a can of sweet tender crab meat and a flick of grainy German mustard. Do the glass lid thing again - you want the cheese to melt before the bread browns. Cut the sandwiches into triangles and pile them together on one plate. Wrap one up in a checked napkin for him to take home. No one else but you will ever remind him of this sweet and salty smell again.

For your son who has returned home after visiting your bourgeoise relatives -
He will not accept anything. He will deny he is hungry. He will talk with nostalgia about white supermarket bread and CostCo cheesecake. Ignore him. Heat a can of tomato soup with a cupful of your fresh tomatoes diced into it. Give it to him to sip while you gather the odds and ends of your empty kitchen. Slice up a clove of garlic with a razor and brush it across that end of French bread you have left.Cut the heel into two slices. Drizzle a fruity olive oil over the surface. Now you have his attention. Put the cut bread in an oiled skillet over low fire.
Pile one slice with a mound of olivado (because he 's still part Italian), and spread the other with a slowly-melting medallion of sheep's milk peccorino (because he's still your little lambie-pie). Let him come up to you like a hungry stray tom as the flavors melt together. Shut both pieces up with a basil branch and leave the plate out like a dish of cat food to a stray. Don't be surprised when he asks for another.

Okay, I'm going to go make me a velveeta and weinie toastie dog.

Just kidding. : )

I prefer the term 'receptive'

I am NOT submissive.

Are you deliberately trying to make me feel like a tool for trusting you?

Don't you see you are squandering the gift I gave you of my attention? I'm not mad.
You just bore and disappoint me now.

You're okay, but I am no longer charmed by you.

Everyone does it. Once.

This is me-
Pisces via Clean Sheets Erotica online.

A very good place to waste a Friday afternoon.

Have a nice life.

edited to add- I won't forget any of this either.

We fight like cats and blogs

I have finally figured out the reason why I don't feel like writing.

It hurts to go back home.

Home was fucked up, and it hurts to see it again.

When I went back to SoCal last weekend, I was with people who I only saw outside of where we met. All new, all grown-up venues only.

Only when we went past the old Rez, and to my grandmother's old house (big, big mistake) did I feel weird.

Even then, I didn't realize that what I was feeling was unhappiness.

It's only now....on this five-minute break...that the only time in my life that I traveled away from home without anxiety...is when I deliberately and with premeditation, avoided 'home'.

And the only time I had a panic attack all weekend was outside my grandmother's abandoned house.

*************************************************************************************


I have been having nightmares involving my son everynight since I came home. He's a good boy, and we are getting along okay. But I keep thinking of his shrug, and that look he gets when I ask him about, say, his Electronic Music project, or when we should start looking at colleges.

"Don't worry about it", he says. I wanted to smack him until I heard his friends use the same expression to each other.

"You wouldn't be able to relate. It's nothing you know about. Don't worry about it."

Someday- I have already begun the process, here- someday, I will tell the story of exactly why I didn't grow up healthy and do normal things and never got near a college.

But today, I remember the first person whose education I launched.

Shit, only five minutes left.

When I was in first grade, I already knew how to read on a fifth-grade level. My teacher who hated and resented me because I refused to be collected (these personalities seem to be my fate), let me out at reading time to go 'help out' the other teachers.

One day when I walked into Miss Wixsom's second grade class, I saw everyone looking towards the corner. It was too late for the Pledge of Allegiance, and I didn't see anything else to look at.

Steve K____ was a little Okie kid with a shaved-looking home-made haircut and a checkedy flannel shirt, shaking under the flagpole like a lamb in a freezing wind.

Ms. Wixsom looked at me and said, "Oh, Miss L___, you're just in time. We are all going to give our attention to our laziest, slowest, most stubborn class member, who can't be bothered to try to learn to read". She blew on her pitch pipe (bizarre touch, that) and pointed at Steve.

Everyone laughed on cue. It was happy children's laughter. It was frighteningly sweet and normal sounding.

I couldn't move. I was the most scared, shy, bassackward child of the most unsocialized psychopaths in that school, but I grabbed Steve by his cold sweaty hand and pulled him out the door with me. No one stopped us.

For the next few months, until Christmas vacation, we spent every recess together at the parallel bars de-coding his "Hoppity Hooper" Golden Book that some relative bought him one Welfare Day in a generous mood.

Once we got through Hoppity, I snuck in some Spiderman and Fantastic Four. By Thanksgiving we were talking about how much better his dreams were since he started reading Classic's Illustrated, in this case the Prince and the Pauper.

This was before Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, or even video, before everyone felt entitled to a guaranteed, Wal-Mart-priced discount copy of a Disney-fied animated version of the Hero myth every Christmas.
We were each other's prince and pauper.

Miss Wixsom left us alone. Ms. Sivatoff gave up trying to get me to be more Hispanically correct.

When Christmas vacation came, I saw him in the back of his dad's pickup truck in the Thrify's parking lot. I remember because the paint job was the same color as the Thrity's pistachio ice cream in Steve's hand. He waved at me and smiled.

I don't remember talking to him after that.

Last week I got a surprise email from a high school pal who had hoped to see me last weekend.

She asked me how Steve was.

"He graduated the same year as your brother", she said.

My mind went blank. That guy? He was the same age as me.

"Yeah, he was Magna Cum Laude like your little brother, at Harvey Mudd College. I thought you knew him because he always talks about how much he admires you".

Break's over.

Life

The internet is wonderful. You can access a weather report or look outside the window and see your tomatoes are dying.

You can spend forty-five minutes downloading a calorie-expenditure chart, or you can finally go to that Mambo class.

You can kick your old computer when it crashes, as mine did last night, or you can write longhand with a pencil, like some people still do.

Actually, I did both.

And in ten minutes I'm going back to my second Latin Dance class. I used to be so jealous of my BFF whose club offered spinning everyday. But it just made me feel all amped and competitive afterward. I was still thinking about other things I needed to do while I was doing it.

Yesterday, following the tight waist and sashaying hips and swiveling thighs of the instructor ('very good! have you done this before?") I realized I need more than just sweat. BFF is Northern Eurpoean, with bicycles in her blood, and a calm yet competitive nature.

When I was one of the last four women doing boxing speed drills after our Mambo-walk portion of class yesterday, I felt some ancestor from Guanajuato or Puglia being soothed and strenghtened. I understood that big hips need a flat small waist and perfect posture and big high tits, and that's what I'm getting in this workout. Plus the music's cool.

So, anyway, my home computer is effed up. The traffic at work is too high to try and blog AND comment, so it'll be one or the other for a while.

My freinds and readers, don't hate me for ignoring you a little while longer. And try something like dancing and gardening. Life off line can be quite diverting.

Wet

from Green Catfish , whose permalinks don't work-

Who knows
The question was “How many people know who you truly are to your deepest depth?”

“Including myself? …None”

- and the comments that got me thinking...



No one sees me.

People either see through me, i.e., I'm invisible, or they find me incredibly beautiful.

Like the mirrored lenses of a cop who pulls you over then lets you go.

Sometimes I feel that all I do is reflect

to those who project.

I feel stupid

I am having one of those spells where I can't say anything nice.

Like that fairy tale of the princess who 'thinks' in stars and fairies, and when she opens her mouth, rats and spiders come out.

I think two days away from blogging shook up my habit-twitch blog reflex.

I'm going to go to the gym and pretend I'm beating someone up for an hour or two.

In the meantime, go see Unsomnambulist's new movie "Asstoids".

There may be an essay question.

Make me feel mighty real

What a weekend it was. I did some things I've never done before, that I've never admitted never having done before, especially not starting here. If you asked me, "Did you blow out a featured poetry reading to drink Green Apple mimosas and stagger around the Norton Simon with five hemannees?" I would have to say Yes. And if you asked me, what was the most memorable moment, I would have to choose between a whole Sephiroth Spread of face card images. Like when I go too long without doing a reading, I forget how you can get overwhelmed with stories, stories you have no intention or inclination into bringing into being. Too much talk. You know. I mean, non-bloggers know. This weekend, I was temporarily an honorary non-blogger.

"For this weekend, in my house," my host told me, "I know what your problem is, and I know what you need".

He's always telling me things like your problem is you are too hard on yourself. Your problem is you think of relating as some another job you have to study for and excel in. What you need is to be superficial and shallow.

He always knows. There is really no 'always' with us because we ignore each other for months at a time and then strike up our friendship as effortlessly as Fred and Barney at the Lodge.

I have loved him longer and more continuously than any other male in my life.
If you're reading this, you know it. Thanks.
So, yeah, one morning I was being led around the newly chichi and bourgeoise Temecula, which I last saw when it was being sawn off the Santa Rosa Rez to become an Orange County Yuppie Rez. I was having some bad moments, but, being me, I wasn't even sure what I was feeling.

The last wine-tasting we went to was at 'an unpretentious,neat little vinyard' which consisted of three opened bottles across three barells in a garage behind a dog run.

And as I watched my suave host and his shy-boy long-term lover reaching for the third Chardonnay of the day, I had a fit of melancholy giggles. I remembered that the exact spot where we were standing had once had a trading post where I would watch hungover Indin drunks using various strategies to keep a drinkin' hand steady enough to lift the first shot of the day.
That was Saturday.

I'm skipping around, I don't care.
Friday, I was the first one on the plane, and I was reading a Zoetrope All-Story with a story about three kids who go to reform school after they spy on their Orthodox Rabbi and his bald wife rhumba'ing naked and having sex. And then a young Orthodox Rabbi and a woman sat next to me. Yeah, with lots of other seats. Weird.
Oh, and today? Monday? A guy who once wanted to leave his wife for me, who wrote me songs and a novel and made a huge ass of himself until my husband told him to leave me alone or he'd cut off his cock and give it to our cat for a scratchpost, well, that guy, that I hadn't seen in over ten years, offered to buy me a drink at the bar in Burbank airport. At ten a.m. . Without recognizing me. Asshole.
(P.S., I still have your favorite video .

Back to this weekend, Sunday, I was the only female in a reunion of men of varying ages who had loved each other in varying degrees, and I had, and still loved them all. For the first time all weekend, I felt proud to look my age, felt we were all beautiful in our invisible coats-of-many-colors, felt proud to be in the company I was in, in the 'look-at-me-window' of a see-me-here trattoria.
An hour or so later, in the 19th century room of the Norton Simon, I was washed up near, so to speak, my brother. We were both mesmerized by the same blurred loveliness of Pisarro, a harbor scene of quiet harmony and riotous color. I was noticing how one perfect third of the canvas was blank and clear, and how the little sailboats made tiny triangles all over the other two thirds, and how the lighthouse in the clear space made a big triangle of the horizon, and how happy such perfection made me feel. But I couldn't get it out around the lump in my throat.
My brother looked at me, and traced the same triangle I had seen, and smiled.

He and I were both adrift in the same stormy chaos and neglect for all our childhood, and yet we both see the beauty of ordered balance, and can share it.

That was worth a million bucks.

OH, and your email ?

Two million.

Saturday posts= poetry and sex

(from August 11, 2004. I may read this one tomorrow, if I don't write something new by then)


You Got Nothing Coming

On my one day off, I will finish this poem,
After I clean off this table. It will come together
In one flow with my first cup of coffee, after some
thoughtful reflection.
Just as soon as I clean off this table.

Some orphan or prisoner in my chest erases my face till I
give them a voice-
An ache like a loosened tooth in the back of my head jabs my mind.
No reflection is possible . There is dust on the mirror
I need to work out

the computer's mocking monitor Online
banking, e-mails to family

The CNN screen I may see tanned
Marines or Iraqis with the eyes of my
brothers who I mean no harm with my silence.

That window, the window with ducks in the morning, the
moon at night.

And always, the table. Paperwork .Paper takes work.
Catalogs of garden supplies mulching to
futility. Flyers for vacations and hobbies that will never take
flight.

No muse can conquer the patriotism of the hearth. No
calling as sacred or as doomed as domestic order. No
altar as defiled as the modern kitchen table.

I love this table like literate psychopaths love ducks,
like prisoners love the moon.
Holden Caulfield and Tony Soprano and Gabriel Baca can't
defeat Betty Crocker..
My writing is tabled . I dream swept surfaces,
purposeful stirrings, the metronome of everyday
chopping. I dream a smooth blank heavenscape of polished fruitwood, a
sweet- scented journal whose new-blessed blank page
receives my effortless poem like a Narcissus
kiss.

What is a poem? It is the baby tooth under the orphans
pillow. The moon from the prison
window. It is learning to fly.

Look- a moon grown full with slow-hoarded gold rises
behind a clumsy mallard in flight. A
prisoner has to fuck two men before he can watch from his bloody
pillow.

These words are a mess in my head that I lay on the
table. The mess is a poem-

One day off from what you are.

So this old bitch on the plane looks up from a text message and says, "Clap your hands, Scott Peterson found guilty!" and everyone cheered but me

It's horrible, but far from unique.

It is one bad bullshitter with a psychotic lack of impulse control, not the crime of the century.

If she weren't, in AP slang, 'youngprettythinwhite' it would have been two lines on the back page of the Modesto Bee.

Leave him to his conscience, and to hell.

Laci and Conor didn't deserve that. They don't deserve all this .

For our own sense of perspective, and the sake of simple decency, can we finally let these two rest in peace?

I'm having a sweet vacation, by the way.
Tomorrow; road trip to the rez.

comment dit-on?

Comments.

The truest test that I shouldn't be hitting 'send' is when my comments get misunderstood.

A blog is someone's home. No, it's their clubhouse and hiding place.

So, WTF is up with comments that shout and insult and ignore the host to talk over his head to other gate crashers? Or am I the only one bothered by stuff like



this .

I think I should return to my original thought- my comments have come out rough lately, either shrill or murky when I only ever mean to be positive in response to a post that has made me think or feel.

Half the time, the best posts leave no room for comment. Yes, friends, you know who you are.

I apologize to anyone who has endured one of my unintentionally assholic comments recently.

Now I have to get ready to rage in L.A.! W00t!

I *heart* stick movies

"I hate it when straight bloggers get attention by talking all 'I'm bi-curious", she said.

I was taken aback. We never talk about anything personal. She is, in her own words, a 'butch dyke'.
Who was she talking about? Was she looking over my shoulder? I tried to think of what sites I had looked at so far tonight.

"What's wrong with blogging about sex, if that's what you feel like writing about that day?", I asked.

She reached over my cubicle and clicked the 'back' button until we got to this post and comments .

"You don't know those people like I do. I was stationed in a small town. You don't have to say you're queer to get your ass kicked in Kansas. Just say you're from California".

"Okay. I know. I've been getting emails about how naive I was about the rest of the country. That's sad. But what's your point?"

"Well, it all goes together, doesn't it? Those people, like my mama, say things like, 'only Bush is a strong enough Christian to protect us from immorality."
She jabbed her thumb towards the Rosie the Riveter on her t-shirt.
"She means me. I love who I want. I think for myself."

I didn't interrupt.
"And mama n''em know that if I'm mentally tough enough to figure out who I am....what I stand for, than I am a threat. I don't get news from O'Reilly or CBS like they do, and I don't watch television to be told what I want and what to buy next."

I just sat there thinking about how sooner or later, a Marine will work the phrase 'mental toughness' into a conversation.

"My point", 'Rosie' continued, "is that the bible-thumpers are right. All y'all straight gals want what Penthouse Forum and Maxim and that asshole Stern tell you to want. Just like my mama and her prayer group want to vote for a sorry cuss that says me and my girl aren't fit to walk the earth.".

She reduced her Girl's Sport's Blog template that I had been helping her with , and clicked on a google image search.

"It's really less like 'Showgirls', than it is like this" -

My sex education continues.

And, to humor my BFF who keeps telling me to have a birth-control talk with my son, I did a search for "STD resources", and found the Citizen Kane of stick movies-

The Twelve Days of STDs

One love to

ripe and sweet women, funny sexy and cool married ladies wistful pansexual romantics and loyal displaced little Liz and all us 'mentally tough' women with the courage to claim our sexual birthright.

My brother once dated some uber-feminist college radical who hoped to shock him by saying, "I sometimes masturbate four times a day".

To which he replied "Big deal, I can shit backwards."

That's the attitude I want for my son.

Veteran's Day Anniversary

Twenty one years.
We are veterans.
I call him Odysseus here because as he says, "I've been coming home to you for twenty years.".

That night we did coke and watched the moon rise from our room in the penthouse of the Tropicana. I was flush, loaded with tips I made at the hottest nouvelle cuisine restaurant in Pasadena in the go go Eighties. I was enjoying the first respite from hell of my adult life. He was my first real love. I had no intention of getting married.

"The only thing that would really make me happy is if I were married. Marry me".

He gave me a diamond ring. When I tried to put it on, I felt suffocating fear. I saw sweaty black hopeless faces. I thought it was strychnine in the coke.

"No, I was wondering about that", he said. "Diamond mining is a dirty business. See, we need to stay together, we'll always be this honest".

He took it back to the hotel jeweler, and we spent the cash on the blackjack tables.
It paid for our reception.

There was something between us that had to be one. We had to be together.
It's not romantic. I had no burning desire to be with him when we were apart.
But I smiled whenever I thought of him.
I was grateful he existed. He made me calm, not giddy.

Our sex was titanic, oceanic, otherworldy, and endless. It was (still is) our church and hearth.

The tighter we drew together, the more tolerant we became of the world. And, conversely, the less the world mattered. From the first, our marriage was a blend of the blissful and the practical.

We decided to marry on Veteran's Day for a typically practical reason- we wanted our anniversaries off.

On our honeymoon night, I had what I didn't know until later was a PTSD flashback. My beloved groom became my kidnaper, over and over again.
Odysseus had brought home enough travelers from bad acid trips to be upset about my panic.

"I'm here." That's love.

Our first anniversary, we had come through a bruising year. We were comrades as well as lovers, and our love had cast a shadow of itself that was chilling. I was still having panic attacks. We still had a divinely strong and sexual bond.

We cuddled together in our hotel bed while PBS ran first-person narratives of Veteran's stories.

"I was so full of pain, I asked my buddy in the foxhole to hit me and knock me out", one old Anzio Campaign vet was saying.
"He socked me in the jaw. Nothing. I told him, 'again, again!'. He hauled off and hit me with his fist upside my head. Nothing.I could see it was making him cry. We just had to be together in the mud until the fighting passed".
Odysseus and I turned to each other and 'went to the dark gods' with appreciation of our own fighting, our own luck in our moments of joy.

On our fifth anniversary, the old dictators were dying on CNN. We had a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. We took turns getting on top while Reagan croaked about taking down walls. Oh, the western decadence we reveled in while tearing a new asshole into fascism with the power of love.

I never got, or asked for, diamonds, furs, real estate, stocks, vacations, designer clothing, threesomes, or attention.

I never went without honesty, loyalty, practical support, monogamous fidelity and incredible sex.

This year, ironically, we both have to work. We can't take any time off because of the war.

And when I drive to work...past the freeway outlet stores full of manufactured substitutes for love.....through the chatter of females who compulsively report details of their last sad, forced drama, and their mates' reaction.....and plug into the circuit next to my friend and fellow veteran of twenty years of married love...
well,
like Odysseus in Ithaca,

I am glad to be where I belong.


I love you, King Odysseus. Thanks for twenty one great years.


(Edited for these Veteran's Day Links)
Abu Gonzales, Pass It On

Support Our Progressive Troops - SoldierForum

Thanks to Tony for linking me.

First to Fight

Today is the 229th Anniversary/Birthday of the United States Marine Corps.
The Navajo Code-Talkers ("Windtalkers") were Marines.

So is Veterans Against Invovement founder and Vietnam War Veteran Ron Kovic.

Astornaut John Glenn,Drew Carey, Dan Rather, Lou Anne (Dangerous Minds) Johnson, and
Harvey ("Respect for one's elders shows character") Keitel


Out of respect for my boss, a twenty-four-year Marine Veteran who is serving cake cut with his ceremonial sword as I write this, I will cut today's post short.

Semper Fi .

Tomorrow is my 21st wedding anniversary. I am having a morbid tantrum. I'll be back.

Prepartion (abridged) by Czeslaw Milosz

Still one more year of preparation
Tomorrow at the latest I'll start working on a great book
In which my century will appear as it really was.
The sun will rise over the righteous and the wicked.
Springs and autumns will unerringly return,
In a wet thicket a thrush will build his nest lined with clay
And foxes will learn their foxy natures.

...No, it won't happen tomoroow. In five or ten years.
I still think too much about the mothers
And ask, what is man born of woman.
He curls himself up and protects his head
While he is kicked by heavy boots;on fire and running,
He burns with bright flame;a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.
Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.


I haven't learned yet to speak as I should, calmly.

A fast sperm with survivor guilt

The ecstasy and gratitude of a cat waiting to be fed the same dry food by his owner who has been sleeping with the same person for ten years.


Phantom labor pains in the middle of the night while your teenaged baby sleeps, lost to you beginning now, forever.


The wholesome fulsome satisfaction, part night-before-Christmas, part day-after-a-family-wedding of having discovered a sweet blog.

Needing to spit out the thought that has been roiling your mind's guts since you looked at that Iraq news site.

Making love to food, god yes, the tender herbs and melting gamy cheese giving up their little lives on this stout dark cocktail rye in front of me...food porn, always,always.

A movie you tuck under your pillow like a mint that blows your head off while you sleep, sudden music that smears your daytime concentration with '70's-hued "eyeball jizz ", lovers who want to die for blond Kathy or sultry Kamala unlike any female they will ever meet again for the next seventy years, pictures with the wrong number of thousand words.

I can't do anything else with feelings like these than make poetry


I'll be here this Sunday.

I'll be staying with the guy who wrote this-


1. WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING?

Oh, I'm sorry. Is attire required for this questionaire? I AM at the
computer you know.
2. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?

Fine, and you?
3. FAVORITE SPORT?

Oh, I’ve met and loved so many “sports” in my day, I wouldn’t want to
hurt anyone’s feelings.

4. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

Two minutes ago when I got this questionnaire.

5. DO YOU EVER CRY AT MOVIES?

No, the management of the Tom Kat Adult Theater frowns on such displays.



...and you get the idea.

Can you study to raise your Fun Aptitude? I feel it changing.

I need a hug

I'm still planning on going on my solo trip to L.A. this weekend.

If I were there tonight, I could be at the AFI Film Festival.

This sounds like a dream in Italian, on an Italian silk couch, after some Barolo and a cloudy night outside.

Instead I'm here with everyone in the entire goddam radio room walking by and looking at what I'm doing and banging the back of my chair, and flights calling me every two seconds and the lady next to me hovering and wanting to chat even though I can't hear a fucking thing through my headphones and I'm trying to write.

Where was I ?

Hugs.

I am strongly affected when someone cyber-hugs me in my comments. The past few days I have felt rough, and some of those hugs have made me feel more human.

Then I spent a little time around my son this afternoon. Just a few minutes. But it was the first time I'd hugged him in weeks.

And I realized what he reminded me of.

My son hugs like Sylvester getting hugged by Pepe Le Pew.

If I thought about it too much, I'd feel sorry for myself and cry and give this old bitch next to me even more to notice.

So, I decided to try and re-live a few stellar hugs I've known or observed.

What the hell, I've got about five minutes here before my circuit is due to explode again.

Once when I was a baby blogger, I made the mistake of writing about a devastating and private memory. I forgot there are imitation versions of the same old story churning out of the blog-sewer every day by the dozens. I was hurt by some of the comments I read. A truly star-power blogger simply said, 'you have a massive hug coming from me'. Corny as it sounds, it really helped. Lesson learned, ego healed.

Oh, I might cry anyway remembering this. When I was about four, the boy next door from my grandma ran away from home after his dad made him get an awful haircut the first day of high school. His old Labrador followed him, and I guess eventually found him. The dog came home hungry and wet and matted and with his boy owner's Grateful Dead bandanna around his neck, with a note saying he was sorry and on his way. The mother fell to her knees and squeezed that bewildered dog while she hugged him and wet his fur even more with happy tears.

The first time I met my husband's nephew (yrsitesuxballs), I was standing in a group between his sister the Elite model-and-equine science honor student, and across from his sister-the Vassar-graduate-and-Hollywood-rock-star-partyer, and he gave each of them a peck on the check and then put his big arms around me and his youngest sister who looked like a young Rachel Ward only better, and we were all face to face and warm in the brace of his arms, and I felt like a sister too.

Once when I was lost in Canoga Park, I was waiting at a vomitous liquor store to buy a map when this guy with a broken arm in a dirty cast in line ahead of me bought a scratcher worth some big amount. He threw one arm around my shoulders and pulled me towards him, and then told the old guy behind the counter to buy me one on him, and said 'good luck' before he hugged me again.

My father-in-law, when I told him I was pregnant. That is all.

My Tourette's Syndrome student Jonathon was like an autistic in everything but the way he would pull an aide towards him with such gratitude and enjoyment.

I also have to remind myself that before he turned into a teenager, and thus a prick, my son used to give the most instinctual and sincere hugs.

I guess I've had more than my share of great hugs for a grouchy, undemonstrative hermit who hates public displays of emotion.

This was fun to write and I feel better.

<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A clothed nude portrait

(warning and disclaimer- this is being written at my position inbetween listening to crackly solar-flare transmissions from grouchy pilots, and nosy co workers who keep trying to talk. can't they see I'm busy?)

"90% of all animators and illustrators are foot and leg freaks."- "Mr. Greystoke"

Everyone has a September 11 story. I have one. I'm not going to ever tell it. I'm not a New Yorker anyway. And I don't know what happened, because I was at work, and later, on the phone.

This is someone else's September 11 story.

Our relationship took place exclusively on the phone.
I could give him hours of domination. Make him suck my heel while he stared up my stockinged legs at what he wasn't worthy to possess, then make him smack his own cock if it dared to rise. I could make him beg me to do it instead, and then listen while he sighed and moaned and blew his load.

Every time we created one of these miniature and temporary Utopias, I would feel the triumph and relief of two buddies resting in the high branches of a treehouse we had built together.

He always took a long long time, but he was paying all the message units, and I was enjoying it, so it was fair. If he started taking too long, I'd just have to let him hear the peckpeck of my pacing stilettos, crack my dogwhip on my tile floor while he quivered on the other end of the line. "Piss on" and "whip" were key-in-lock phrases that were the trapdoor escape if we ran short on time or got interrupted.

Just like the cliche'd cautionary tales, we both got scared of how far into our roles we were going. I mentioned once the impossibility of orgasm through oral, and he was off on a scenario where he could not rise from being trapped under my grinding hips until he pleased me. The only endgame my imagination offered was that, once he got clumsy with his teeth in his exhaustion, I would punish him by pulling them out one by one. That was a record orgasm time, his groan titanic and otherworldly in its delight in my cruelty.

The afternoon of September 11, I had given up the study of fetishism for a paying job in HF radio. I hadn't thought of him in years.

I still hadn't seen as much as a frame of news. I hadn't read a paper.
The minute I walked in the door, I answered the phone. It was him.

He was sitting in a strip club when the television over the bar creeped the headlines. He turned off the t.v.. Nobody stopped him.

Out of everyone he knew, he called me.

I don't remember everything we talked about that day. I know it wasn't the slightest bit desperate or awkward. I remember it ending with me forcing him into a little girl's pink ballet costume and breaking his fingers under my Micheal Salem heels when he took too long pulling up the tights.

"I bet this is the first time in the history of this place that a customer left the Ultra Room to jack off", he said.

A week later, I saw his newest painting on his website, "Strippers Hear the News of 9-11".

A week after that, he changed the title to the current, Love of Money.

Everytime I look at it, I feel as if everyone who sees it is watching me and my beloved slave holding each other, creating a Ground Zero in reverse of erotic energy with a crater of pity at its hollow center.

Love of Money

Only Optimists commit suicide

Pessimism is for panties 
The First Great Secret Law is - Life is Suffering.

As someone who has long understood, and accepted ,that life is cruel and absurd, I would be the last person who would commit suicide.

Doesn't mean I don't believe in god. Like Joseph Campbell said, 'no one could be an atheist who believes in as many gods as I do'.

I understand grief. I am, after all, clinically depressed. I was given up as incurable over twenty years ago, told to adjust to life in a 'home'.

Nope. I maintain negativity is a habit like scratching your balls, and about as attractive. Not depression, because I came by that honestly.

But you people who keep flinging your despair in my face are like Paris Hilton asking a Sudanese orphan 'how do you stay so thin?'.

Because I use my fucking willpower, that's why. Because I believe that the world needs my heart and brains and ability to absorb blows and keep going. Because eventually, courage and grace kick all hell out of attitude and luck.

Don't believe me? Let's look each other up in twenty years, shall we?

The two ladies in the picture have over thirty years of military service between them.They are daughters of the first Harley-Davidson dealer in West Texas. One is a radio operator and gun collector,one is a born-again Christian and Sierra Club chair, and they both voted for Kerry. Because of me. Don't know how I did it, but I do know how I didn't. I didn't treat them like a seperate inferior species who needed to be tamed and re-trained.

That's something to be optimistic about.

On days like this, when I can't write and don't want to fuck and can't get a comment , I think of how and why I started this.

PaxGitmo is taken from the Roman concept of Pax Romana, 'peace'(democracy?) imposed on a conquered territory by occupation.

The night I started my blog, three things had happened; I began a sharp fall into Post-Traumatic Stress , I worked an emergency flight that ended up a fatal ditched landing, and I recieved a reply from a Guantanamo detainee I found through Postcards from Prison.

I have to remind myself that I didn't start writing here to attract readers, or get attention, or share little online quizzes or compare tit self-portaraits.

I was going crazy. So was the world. And suicide is not a fucking option if you are raised beliving in reincarnation. Kill yourself over depression, and you'll come back as Jenna Bush's douchebag. Word.

Instead of going crazy, I found this little corner of Blogtopia. Radiohumper, it's what I did, not how I felt. I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted to be at the furthest end of the spectrum as possible from Melting Dolls, Raymi the Minx, or the Mad Pony girlies. They just are, perfect, normal happy girls.

I never got to be a girl. I'm bad at being happy or having fun.

I had a panic attack every single time I tried to read anyone's blog but N8's for months.

So, if you are less than amused or entertained by my writing here, forgive me.

I may make this a closed site if the depression doens't lift soon. You don't need to read this. I'll make a new shinyhappyfuntime site.

In the meantime, this- the best philosopher on the web .

Edited to add- Green Catfish (Tim, below) just made up my mind. I'm going to keep blogging.

I just stumbled upon this a few minutes after he commented. I can only hope this is what he feels like-

The life of a progressive is mostly one of suffering. The reason being that our minds are cursed with an unrelenting conflict between outer realities and our own inner ideals...In general, the blogosphere is a dark place; its catacombs are full of the mindless, insane, perverted, and cold hearted. Its walls are clad with pornography, death, and vanity. In otherwords, the blogosphere is as deluded, schizophrenic, and trashy as the real world.
Our alliance now finds itself in a cold and dark passage. However, we've brought our candles: let us keep them aflame; let us continue to give each other light and warmth, where there was once only frigid darkness. Let our collective light serve as a beacon of hope -- not just for each other -- but for those who are still wandering the dark catacombs cold and alone." - Nick Lewis, the Progressive Alliance of Blogs.

Un-Pee See

I just got home. I worked 12 hours.

It seems like everyone has those 'screw the election, I'll write about sex' entries today.

I wish I could. I tried. But, I jes' cain't lift a finger like delicate Southern women say. But..well, that's another post.

I got this email at work tonight. Two different people forwarded it to me. They are each a different race. And each one (wrongly) assumed me to be of their ethnic background.

Let me just appreciate that for tonight, willya?

Enjoy this. Feel free to add to the list, but be fair- every category gets an entry.

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Sent: 10/26/04 6:14 PM
Subject: FW: 10 Things People Won't Admit

Per DN's request......here tis.....pretty funny stuff FMTPO

Subject: 10 Things People Won't Admit

This one is controversial, but its too funny to keep from you. Hope you
laugh your @ss off and share it with S.



10 Things People Won't Admit

10 THINGS BLACK AND LATIN PEOPLE KNOW, BUT WHITE PEOPLE WON’T' ADMIT:

1. Elvis is dead.
2. Having your children curse you out in public is not normal.
3. Jesus was not White.
4. Skinny does not equal sexy.
5. A 5 year child is too big for a stroller.
6. N' SYNC will never hold a candle to the Jackson 5.
7. Thomas Jefferson had black children.
8. An occasional BUTT whooping helps a child stay in line.
9. Kissing your pet is not cute.
10. Rap music is here to stay.
(edited to add- Your 'chemical sensitivity' or 'low blood sugar' doesn't entitle you, and nobody wants to hear what your analyst thinks.)
=== ==============================================
10 THINGS WHITE AND LATIN PEOPLE KNOW, BUT BLACK PEOPLE WON'T ADMIT:

1. Tupac is dead.
2. Crown Royal bags are meant to be thrown away.
3. Having a ring on every finger is too much.
4. O.J. did it!
5. Teeth should not be decorated.
6. Breaks are usually only 15 minutes.
7. Jesse Jackson will never be President.
8. RED is not a kool-aid flavor (it's a color).
9. Your rims and sound system should not be worth more than your car.
10. Your pastor doesn't know everything.
(the Democrats squandered your vote, and don't think they aren't hating it)


10 THINGS WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE KNOW,BUT LATIN PEOPLE WON'T ADMIT:

1. Chicken is food, not a roommate.
2. "Jump out and run" is not in any insurance policies
3. Your country's flag is not a car decoration.
4. Hickey's are unattractive.
5. Mami and Papi can't possibly be the nickname of every person in your
family.
6. Buttoning just the top button of your shirt is a bad fashion
statement.
7. 10 people to a car or home is considered too many.
8. Jesus is not a name for your son.
9. Maria is a name but not for every other daughter.
10. Letting your children run wildly through the store can get your BUTT
whooped (or theirs).
(edited to add- Christmas and birthdays come on the same date every year! Start planning now!)

Also, to everyone who was in a line ahead of me today- cell phones are for brief, essential communication, not public performance art.

Operators are standing by.

This just in

I want to be all of their mamas.

I am proud to be an American.

87- student Sit-Down Strike in Colorado

Do it for the wolves.

No Rain

It's 1972 again. The Republican thug has won. The crying is over and the foolslapping starts.

Only now, I'm not in elementary school, my colleagues are.


Why does all well-tried, failed effort leave this sour aftermath?

I'm sick of hearing the bitch-fighting and finger-pointing and preppyhippieyuppie radical sheep, assholier-than-thou apocalyptic breast-beating.

I don't deserve the insults. Fuck it all.

If I say what I think, I'll be one of them.

I'm working on some fiction. That always helps me deal with the urge to tell an Internet puppet to fuck off.

Like Galileo watching the sun rise after his forced recantation, whispering to the prison walls,'and yet, it moves, I say here to myself,

"Anything is possible...sowing the seeds of love."

Shotgun wedding honeymoon

My BFF drove down from Nevada City yesterday to spend the day. We never do that anymore. Two co-dependent Type-A compulsives in a pod.

We didn't get around to watching election returns until after dinner.

J. came by after casting his first vote. He stayed through pie and coffee and more pie and fell asleep on our new couch.

I finally got it.

This kid who has run away from a high-security state home, and fought off three gangstas with knives with only his fists, was scared.

BFF left about nine, after Edward's rousing anti-concession.

J. kept drowsing against me, occasionally waking up startled and panicked.
Around midnight, when he finally got ready to leave, he asked me 'What are we going to do?'
I told him the best thing he could is what he'd been doing- sleep through it, then get back on with his life.

I woke up this morning just in time to hear the White House announce they recieved a concession call from John Kerry.

I don't believe it. I don't believe Bush got the most votes. I don't believe in anything right now.

There was a moment, when I was finally voting, when I felt a rush. It was relief mixed with dread, and a desire to get the whole thing over with.

I remembered a wedding I attended, where the manic bride 'got herself' pregnant to hook a Coast Guard ensign and get out of her nowhere life and the need to support herself. When she faced my cousin and said her corny self-written vows, I had the same rush of feelings- thank God it's over and we can all get back to normal.

Only it never is.

Seconds after I heard the announcement, I got online to check out the headlines on my favorited news sites.

I was, in effect asking them, "What are we going to do"?

No one had anything posted. I was the first.

That says something, doesn't it?

Just like Leila found out, you can force your way into a situation, but the Magic Groom can't carry you. A ceremony isn't everything.

And, being outnumbered by idiots is nothing new for me. Is it for you? I doubt it.

If you think you can't handle it, that's it's too depressing to contemplate how the world will look at us re-electing that murderous chimp, losing the benefit of the doubt of a stolen election, well, just think about what we have survived before.

Our forefathers and mothers in the Middle Passage probably felt outnumbered too. And they survived with values intact, and got us here.

And Obama won yesterday.

This fucker was forced us on like a pregnant shotgun bride. But we can't keep expecting Kerry to take over worrying about us. We have to be the First Responders to bad news.
Do what you need to do. We got out the vote, now take it up a notch. Join the War Resister's League. The Jane Collective has kicked into high gear, protecting the right to safe abortion irrespective of law. Freewayblogger is entering Phase Two.

Riots are always an option.

This is a long post. It doesn't make sense. But it makes my point-
You can write when you don't feel like writing. If I can, you can.

Who gives a shit if you feel bad- do something anyway.

Because, if you don't, who will?

And how will anyone know you are of a like mind?

Don't go away yet- we need you all.

Peeeeece

Tie-Breaker

Tony Pierce included some horoscopes for Dubya, Kerry and America yesterday.

This, and the Unsomnambulist's Halloween series pinged a memory for me of my last for-pay card reading.

I was born on the Ides of March. Friday the 13th, at 3:13 p.m., on my aunt's 13th birthday. My aunt was expelled from Catholic school (in the '60's!) for suspicion of practicing witchcraft.

Big whoop. I just can't ever remember not knowing what people were thinking about, or wishing for. Most of the time, it's just noise, but if I had to, like if someone were paying me, I could tune in or not.
Which is how I became such a good radio operator. : )

I can't tell you what each of the individual Tarot cards mean any more than that kid in Deliverance with the banjo could transpose his solo. But while I'm doing it, the meanings reveal themselves in a tesselated grid like a three-dimensional chessboard, transparent with the 'asker's motivations.

"There's the reason, and then there's the real reason," one of my Special Ed students with a flair for clairvoyance once said.
Yes, there's the question that the client asks you, carrying it aloft like a gift you should be grateful to recieve. Usually something to do with a career in Hollywood. And then, below the sunny surface of the question, is the real reason they are asking. The unappetizing insecurities and envies driving them to pay a stranger to lie to them. Only I didn't.

One day in the early '90's, my neighbor's mother offered me fifty bucks I really needed to give her a 'general reading'. I hadn't done readings for years, and didn't think I could both 1) fire up my 'third eye' again, and 2) simultaneously package a dull answer into a pretty story worth fifty bucks. So I refused.

She kept coming back. Eventually she just dropped in with one of her friends and put me on the spot.

"I need to know if my husband will make a profit on his stocks", she asked.

This was a totally assholic question. She was reeking musk like a bitch in heat, wearing makeup and a garter belt if I wasn't mistaken, for the first time ever, and giggling like a fifth grader.

Yep, the first card was the three of hearts. Alienation of affection. The Tower, more Wand cards, and it was obvious she was thinking about coppin' some strange and wondering if it was going to have a fairy-tale ending.

The only card that didn't fit was the Five of Swords.
I laid out another spread. Once again, everything made a narrative except for the Five of Swords.
My husband came through the room and turned on the telelvision to CNN.

Bombing had commenced over Bagdhad. Women in chadors were running into alleys with scared and excited children at their heels. Wonderful and sad to remember, you used to be able to see civilian targets on cable news.

This morning, after a fucked-up weekend of moderating my high-falutin' activists goals, I look back and see what I've accomplished this month.

There's a reason, and there's a real reason, for protest and free speech.

Unlike my neighbor, I don't need the edgiest modern art installation or most heart-rending blog entry to make me feel attractive and cool. I don't need attention. I listen, I don't yell.

But this morning, when I reached for my Volunteer Driver instructions, I shook loose my old Ryder deck.

And the Five of Swords grinned up at me, waiting to leap into a breach, to start shit between equal sides with a blade in his hand.


Soldiers with no radios

Somewhere, my Uncle Rex is crying.

You shouldn't blog in a mood like this.....

Today I did something I never do.

I deleted a post. That's right. It's gone.
It was stupid anyway. A rant.

Stupid Americans and their stupid addiction to a stupid fantasy world.


I thought I was angry. I thought I was righteously hating the right righteous things.
I'm really having - forgive the expression- an 'episode'.

Just my brain playing tricks on my parasympathetic nervous system.
Just my imagination runnin' away with me.

"Soldiers in the hospital often experienced unexpressable 'numbness'...on return to civilan life, this would take the form of rage or hatred towards,for instance, pregnant women, or young women absorbed in their appearance... from an old Corpsman's Field Manual

I have to remember that I have these sinkin' spells. Just like I used to have to remind... certain people, that the moon wasn't broadcasting a Phil vocal, but it was the acid you dropped, dumbass.

Hating isn't me, it's my soul struggling to remind itself it's still alive. It's not an emotion, it's something.

Guess I am getting better. Something is better than nothing.

Blogs and magazines are mocking in a space like this.

The problem is, I could never figure out who those people were buying those watches and that Scotch. Who cared so passionately about what they bought especially if the next guy didn't have it, or who they fucked.

I don't know those people who aren't numb. Who aren't ashamed to want to be real, and whole, and happy. Not just bought off and penned up safe.

And I don't know how to get into those pictures. Haircuts clothes plastic surgery attitude anti-aging, blech no.

Can't do it.

But I can usually find a book to get into.

Which is why I turned to blogging. : )

Have a good and gentle day, my fellow Americans.

I'll be better tomorrow.

A nice person can still get cranky