Dear God:

Please let my car finally be fixed, please let the heat go away so my cats can stop suffering in my sweltering apartment, and please let blogger allow me to finally upload the pics I took at E's vegan wine-tasting on Saturday night.

And PS. Please let all the hungry people in the world have food.

And PPSS. Please let my mum's surgery go well.

Oh, and Triple-PPSS. Also, please keep the rain from pouring in my skylight because I am dumb and left it open again and now it is stormy-looking.

Amen and all that.

Lindy Loo

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DAMNED RUINERS!

Someone once told me that if you have a brain tumor, sometimes you'll just randomly smell oranges.

So now I can't enjoy the sweet juicy scent of someone somewhere eating an orange without first feeling a brief moment of panic.

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Sleep = time travel.

Think about it.

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I just used the phrase "a grand quantity of thrift stores" in a passing conversation.

What the fuck does that even mean?

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Music sounds particularly beautiful to me today.

Kinda like when you've been thick with thirst all day and finally get to drink a nice icy-cool glass of water and it tastes just like heaven, like every profession of love you've wanted to share with another person trembling there, exposed on the tip of your tongue, like everything good in the world has converged with glory right then and there on the inside of your lips.

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Yes, My Socks are Red Despite the Fact that the Rest of My Outfit is Black

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I have a bit of a social anxiety disorder. Which explains why I'll tentatively plan on going to something but then not show up. (I can hear the quiet ping of a million lightbulbs going off in people's heads right now.) If you haven't figured this out yet, it's either because you are very very thick, or because I AM THE MASTER OF ILLUSION! *clicking both sets of fingers and vanishing into a cloud of smoke*

In this regard, I am a glorious paradox--I am retardedly self-assured in opinion and presentation, I will confront people when I think what they're doing is not right, I tend to not be aware of the fact that my clothes produce an unusual effect until someone points it out (I met my first boyfriend because he was strangely attracted to my complete incongruity in sock-color in relation to the rest of my outfit), I have hairy pits, I am opinionated and happy to share said opinions, I am a bit of a spectacle, and yet I have social anxiety disorder. Go figure.

It's like being a speed-reader but then finding out you're dyslexic.

I like to think it's because I am brilliant and of genius-level intelligence, which makes my ability to interact with "normal" human beings on their level an impossibility (*doing a little soft-shoe while waiting for the snickers to subside*) but in reality, I think it mainly stems from a discomfort with and fear of finding myself at the center of attention, a fact which never ceases to amaze people who apparently think that I dress and speak and think the way I do solely because I want to be the center of attention. People: There are people in the world who are just weird and/or different and (for the most part) don't even realize that they are until someone points it out to them.

Welcome to me, myself, and I.

Anyways, the fun part of the social anxiety disorder is that I will usually have a beer or something before going somewhere, which usually eases up some of those nervous feelings. But it also always results in me announcing to some person or another: "I am anti-social." Sometimes completely out of the blue. I don't know why I feel the need to point this out--maybe to explain away my complete lack of social abilities and my ineptitude in making small talk (which I detest). (I am the type of person who is so socially awkward that when (s)he makes a lame attempt at joking about something/somebody, what (s)he is joking about suddenly appears on the scene, to his/her complete dismay--historically it's been "priests," I kid you not, but the deaf and the mentally-challenged also have made surprise guest-appearances as well.) All this of course, shock of shocks, serves only to confuse them and further anti-socialize myself from the people around me (yes, that is a verb). I end up feeling even more socially awkward than I did while trying to psych myself up to go in the first place, and this just feeds into my anxiety the next time round. This is why sometimes I just decide last minute that, fuck it, I'm just gonna stay home and watch a bad horror movie and drink shitty beer instead.

(Thankfully, not since my grad school poetry reading, though, have I found myself whispering loudly to the people I know at a social event that "I'm so drunk--teehee!")

But, ladies and gents, I think I've figured out a solution (one that seems like it'd have a much higher success-rate than just telling myself over and over before going somewhere that "It's ok if I go and people think me the most socially disturbing repellent person they've ever met. They may very well think this, but WHAT DOES IT MATTER?"):

I think maybe if I start going around making out with folks at said gatherings, it'll distract me (and them) from the social awkwardness of the situation. Whether it will end up being a good distraction or a bad distraction is debateable and will also lend both fun and mystery to this solution, which makes it all the more brilliant. And either way, it will distract!

So problem solved.

I would make the best therapist ever.

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"i wish i had all the money
that we used to spend on dope
i'd buy me a used car lot
and i wouldn't sell any of em
i'd just drive a different car
every day, dependin on how
i feel"
--Tom Waits, "Christmas Card from a Hooker"

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It is Saturday night. I am drunk. And South Side was out of vegan burgers tonight. Fuck them, I say. They did give us free beer though due to the irritating lack of alleged vegan options. Hence the drunkenness... And my absolutely potent and nauseating garlic breath.

[Lame and exaggerated pseudo-drunkenness has been omitted.]

[Edited for content.]

There was a cat outside that I pet for a while at South Side. Strays break my heart as I want to take each and everyone of them home. But I can't. Proof positive that there is no god.

I am feeling a bit inexplicably mushy and sad tonight. I miss people. And yet, I'm happy tonight. And yet I also wanna kick them in the nuts and shout, YOU BROKE MY HEART, AND YOU SUCK FOR IT. But instead, I will feign like I don't care. *Feigning*

I have never drunken-dialed in my life. Nor have I drunken-blogged. What a fucking waste of time, I tell you. Both are lame. But what can I say--I just wanna fit in. *Snort*

This is almost as bad as drunkenly hooking-up with someone you hate. I'm sure that I will regret it and hate myself come Monday.

Ah yes, the self-disgust has already begun.

Happy Saturday.

I am off to do something or another that's actually worthwhile.

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Random Rant

Pet Peeve #33091

If you're white and middle-class and have moved into the city in recent years (I'm mostly talking Cleveland, here), YOU ARE PART OF THE GENTRICATION GAME whether you like it or not. And the more you complain about *other* folks moving into the neighborhood and gentrifying it without recognizing that, whether you mean to or not, you're contributing to the gentrification as well, the more of a problem you're making it. And if you brag about the homeless folks and crack dealers in your neighborhood as if they're a little URBAN gold-metal you can pin to your chest, the more you need to start wondering whether YOU VERY WELL MAY BE MORE OF AN INSIDIOUS LITTLE PROBLEM THAN THE YUPPIES IN THEIR PERFECT LITTLE TOWNHOUSES.

But that's just my two cents. (And one of the two is really dirty and kinda green and a little kid was sucking on it about 20 minutes ago until his mom smacked it out of his hand.)

/end rant

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Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

I rarely nerd out about on-line shops, but OH MY GOD you must check this one out, simply because of the writing. Most of you who read this will have absolutely no interest in actually purchasing something from it, since it's mostly dark and gothic type perfume-oils, but the little descriptive blurbs about each scent are, hands down, the most enticing product-blurbs I've ever read. I find myself wanting to immediately buy each one of these oils after reading their sensual and dark descriptions.



They make me wanna run through a rain-soaked garden, draped in velvet, only to find myself in the hypnotic grips of a vampire, my neck exposed, my life-blood ravished, as I spill gently to the ground, my veins throbbing with a fieriness like sex, the heat from my body rippling through the air like a stone through water...

To be blunt, they make me want to fuck.

So hell yeh to that!

Example scents:

BLOOD KISS
Lush, creamy vanilla and the honey of the sweetest kiss smeared with the vital throb of husky clove, swollen red cherries, but darkened with the vampiric sensuality of vetiver, soporific poppy and blood red wine, and a skin-light pulse of feral musk

LIGHTNING
Lightning slashing the midnight skies over the endless reaches of the ocean. The electric tang of ozone, marine notes, and a drop of sharp rain.

DEPRAVED
A salacious, lecherous, leering scent - dirty and dark, slapped with a wet sweetness. Earthy black patchouli swelling with apricot.

Get thee to the
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab!!!

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Why Must People Be Morons?

Overheard regarding the sudden lack of burgers at a cookout:

"I bet you some of the vegetarians out there REALLY took a real burger."

Because yes. We vegetarians are sneaky like that. And we also really really really love to eat meat. I mean, that *is* why we're vegetarian. Vegetarianism is not a well thought-out ethical position by which we guide our daily dietary habits in the hopes of making a difference. It's just a front for our secret, voracious animal-consuming habits.

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"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"

Ok. So yesterday I claimed that I was so excited about the Tom Waits concert that I couldn't even tell you.

I lied.

Here's how and why I'm as excited as I am...

I first was introduced to Tom Waits by my mom in either middle school or early high school when I watched Big Time with her.



My favorite part in Big Time, which I still vividly remember, is where the camera very slowly pans back to reveal that he is standing on a roof singing, holding an umbrella that is on fire.

Back then, we managed to wrangle a copy from the library to watch. Now, it is near impossible to get your hands on a copy.

In high school, Bone Machine was one of my absolute favorite cds. It still is.

For a while, I was trying to get my hands on several watches so that I could wear more than one on my wrist at a time, just like he used to.

I've seen most of his major movies simply because he was in them.

At one point in high school, I had either bought or copied onto blank cassettes every one of his albums for myself.

I brought in the song "Murder in the Red Barn" for my high school english class when we were assigned to bring in a ballad of some sort so we could explore the idea of ballads in poetry. I photocopied the lyrics for all my classmates, and I played the song in class. A fellow student became absolutely enamored with him upon hearing the song, and even once years later in high school remarked upon how he fell in love with Tom Waits when I introduced him to that song.

In college, I ripped off many of his images for some not-so-good earlier poems I wrote, particularly those from the song "9th & Hennepin." Example:


Untitled

All the hearts in this city are breaking,
Catching fire as the
Smoke billows from beneath the
Cement grates
Like the cremation of some
Sad, interwoven nightmare
That mingles at the bottom of a
Cigarette-scarred ashtray.
The streets are a portrait of some
Dead, gray woman who
Smoked too many packs a day and
Cried herself to sleep each night,
Remembering all the men she hadn't loved and
All the good times she never had.
And the girls with the black fingernails
Sits on the corner,
Weeping
And her dead-tulip eyes won't look you in the face.
And Charlie perches on the bench
With a bottle of vodka in a paper bag
And he screams whenever he hits rock bottom.
And the broken-boned umbrellas paint the
City's horizons and when it rains,
Each teardrop melts into the
Wrinkles and cracks of the darkening ashpalt.
And momma used to say,
Ain't no one ever gonna amount to nothing
In this city of rainspouts and
Spare parts.

I have painted many pictures of him and his beautifully craggly face.

I have sketched many pictures of him and his beautifully craggly face.

I used to collect random quotes of his in a notebook.

In grad school, I used the lyrics to "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" in the freshman comp class I taught to discuss a) how we say things in the spaces between our actual words and sentences and b) how we gear our conversations and arguments towards those to which we are speaking in order to influence them in the way we think most effective. I played a bootlegged version of the song in class that could literally make your heart break.

He is currently (and has been since it started) on my harem list and will continue to be there henceforth and forevermore.

And I have accrued many a bootleg of him, singing live, thinking that I would probably never ever ever get the chance to actually see him myself since he tours so rarely.

And now he's gonna be playing in Akron. And I'm gonna be there.

I'm so excited I think I could puke a little. Tee hee.

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Curiouser and curiouser

Saturday night was strangely surrealistic--or if not surrealistic, at least Monty-Python-meets-Benny-Hill-esque--and involved

• perpetual marathon runners (most of whom weren't running at all) blocking me wherever I went in my car,


• a 350+ lb. man in a belly-shirt blocking my view so that I couldn't see Karl Marx when he a) spoke or b) winced due to his boils,


• a pet baby-skunk, and


• a fire-alarm that someone pulled and which refused to be silenced, lending to our momentary inability to purchase alcohol.

Oh, but I am going to see Tom Waits on Aug. 13, which is unrelated but wonderfully surreal in its own respect.

I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am.

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Two Things

• Once, the chick who lived downstairs from me (prior to Clevelandhappenstance) knocked on my door while I was in the middle of an afternoon shag-session. I felt bad because I'm sure she had heard us walking around prior and probably was thinking "I know they're up there!" and thought we were avoiding her. We tiptoed around for a good 30 minutes afterward and then I think I might've fake-slammed the door or something. This probably sounds like a warning to CH, but really it's not.



• I wish I was one of those people who is talented enough to be able to open up multiple ketchup packets in one tear.
  I envy them.

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All in the Name of Nail-Cutting

So my littlest cat Franny does not like to be touched or picked up. I suspect that in the course of living as a neighborhood stray (and a fricking cute one at that), she must've had a few run-ins with not-so-nice people that made her a bit skittish. She also has a big big fear of the garbage truck (she runs and hides all the way upstairs, as far as possible from the front of the house whenever it comes) and I suspect it's due to the same. She's warming up though--she's less skittish around visitors, and she lets me and E pet her, though she's still jumpy if we make too quick of moves around her. Will she let me pick her up though? Hell the fuck no.

And unfortunately, the problem with this is that I am consequently unable to trim her nails. Sunday, I spent a good hot and sweaty 15 minutes chasing her around my apartment in the hopes that maybe, just maybe she'd let me pick her up and E could cut the damn things. But she is a slippery sneaky little devil, and I finally gave up.

So last night I decided that I was just gonna drag her ass around the corner to the vet and let them trim her nails instead.

Oh holy mother of all things traumatic.

I first tried luring her into the hallway with the carrier at the bottom. She remembered from ye ol' spaying that this was evil trickery and so she refused to go in. Then I tried with the bathroom. As this was new trickery, she was unsuspecting, so I lured her in with treats and then promptly slammed the door shut with Zooey outside so that she wouldn't interfere. Immediate panic seeped into her eyes and she tried to sneak into the corners. I had the carrier wedged next to the toilet and tried to usher her in with a towel BUT SHE WOULD NOT BUDGE. Then she managed to escape and jumped into the bathtub, her eyes wheeling around the room hysterically in an attempt to figure out how to escape.

And then the plaintive kitty wails began. Break my fucking heart, lemme tell you. She started crying and crying and crying. And this made Zooey, who was trapped on the other side of the door and unsure of what was going on, begin to meow loudly as well. I finally caught her up in a towel while she cowered in the corner, trembling, and managed to pick her up and hold her for a second. Intense fear was in her eyes while she stared at my face just inches away, but I finally managed to get her in the carrier.

I was out of breath. She was out of breath. Everyone was semi-hysterical. I was sweaty, my bangs plastered to my forehead, all because I JUST WAS TRYING TO BE NICE AND GET HER NAILS TRIMMED SO THAT THEY DIDN'T GROW INTO HER FEET.

Yes, I am a sadistic prick.

She was mad at me and overheated when we returned home--she spent about 1/2 an hour out on the roof panting and cleaning herself. I sat and watched her and tried to calm my jangly nerves with a beer.

Thankfully, despite all the trauma, she forgave me and let me play laser with her last night.

End result of said trauma (and karmic kitty retaliation in the realms of the subconscious?): a night full of elaborate dreams about my house catching fire and me trying to save Franny from the flames by whisking her off in my arms.


Franny keeping herself cool in the 90° heat

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THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO START INCORPORATING INTO MY DAILY LIFE

1. One-liners the likes of David Caruso on CSI Miami, delivered with pursed lips, contemplative eyes, and a cocked head:

• When you have everything, sometimes it feels like nothing.


• Tomorrow's what you make of it.


• The next time you want to take a swing at someone, start with me.


• You're evil, you enjoy death, and I hope you enjoy your own.

2. A soundtrack when I walk from place to place (think "Little Green Bag" from Reservoir Dogs)--must figure out the logistics to this... Pocket-sized speakers?


3. The use of antiquated words and phrases, ala Dane Cook:

• Hurrah!


• Jaunty


• Good day


• By George!


• Rapscallions


• Hooligans


• Shenanigans


• Nary

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The Stewardess is Flying the Plane!

So I've realized recently that I have a big-time affinity for 1970s movies. And not just for the camp zeal of some of them. After having seen A Decade Under the Influence, I realized what appeals to me about them is the very stark and gritty realism of most of them, a strange transition between the movies from decades prior and movies nowadays. I also find the realism to be... um... a lot more realistic than the realism of current movies. Don't ask me why as I've not quite pinpointed them yet--perhaps because even independent movies nowadays seem a lot more slick and seamlessly put together, whereas movies of the 70s had a bit more of a rough edge, including acting, dialogue, cinematography, etc.

But I ramble.

Reason being, yesterday I stumbled across a book in the Recent Acquisitions part of the library called The Stewardess is Flying the Plane!: American Films of the 1970s and got geeked up spending some of my evening flipping through it.


It's arranged by genre, so you have all your disaster movies, all your westerns, and (be still my heart) all your horror flicks in their own chapters. There's flashy pictures to gawk at, and although the text isn't anything fantastic (it tries to be so all-inclusive that sometimes nothing more than a sentence will be devoted to explaining a movie), it does offer up some entertaining tidbits about the movies listed (i.e. the little boy who plays Damien in The Omen got the part after punching someone in the balls at the casting call). Definitely an entertaining book for anyone remotely interested in films from the 70s.

My only point of contention: A Clockwork Orange, a horror movie? REALLY?!?!

List of 1970s flicks that I now want to see:

• Badlands


• Network


• Klute


• The Towering Inferno


• Chinatown


• Three Days of the Condor


• All the President's Men


• Marathon Man


• The Fury


• The Missouri Breaks


• The Sting


• Sleuth


• Caged Heat (tee hee)


• Thieves Like Us


• Midnight Express


• The Panic in Needle Park


• Lenny


• The Devils


• Carnal Knowledge


• Kramer vs. Kramer


• Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore


• Shampoo


• Last Tango in Paris


• The Last Picture Show


• American Graffiti


• Pink Flamingos


• Manhattan

Obligatory 1970s Horror Flicks:

• The Brood


• Rabid


• Shivers


• Eaten Alive


• Mephisto Waltz


• Amityville Horror


• Martin


• Magic


• Damien: Omen II


• Coma


• Legend of Hell House


• Burnt Offerings


• Eraserhead


• The Sentinel


• Black Christmas


• When a Stranger Calls


• It's Alive


• Blood Sucking Freaks

Personal Favs:

• Jaws


• Taxi Driver


• Apocalypse Now


• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest


• A Clockwork Orange


• Annie Hall


• The Conversation


• Dog Day Afternoon


• Serpico


• The Exorcist


• Halloween


• The Omen


• The Muppet Movie

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Things I Did This Weekend

1. Bounced around drunkenly inside a big huge inflatable Nascar Racing Car right after having a shot of something that tasted like grape cough syrup.

2. Listened to a little boy sing a Zeppelin-lengthed ten-minute song about Batman whose only verse consisted of the following lyrics repeated over and over:

"Batman! Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah. Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah. Batman!"

and which was accompanied by him playing a very death-metalesque acoustic guitar.

3. Played Cornhole.

4. Found out that eating too many spicy peppers will literally make your anus burn.

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Apparently, every boy who hits on me is in the middle of reading Chuck Palahniuk.

If this says something about me, I suspect I should probably be a bit worried.

Then again, maybe not. *Pressing anus firmly against the pool intake-hole*

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The Worm's Waking

This is how a human being can change:

there's a worm addicted to grape leaves.
Suddenly, he wakes up,
call it grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he's no longer
a worm.
He's the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that doesn't need
to devour.

--Rumi

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