Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)

--The Arcade Fire--

I am waitin' 'til I don't know when,
cause I'm sure it's gonna happen then.
Time keeps creepin' through the neighborhood,
killing old folks, wakin' up babies
just like we knew it would.

All the neighbors are startin' up a fire,
burning all the old folks, the witches, and the liars.
My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kids,
but my heart keeps watchin'
through the skin of my eyelids.

They say a watched pot won't ever boil,
well I closed my eyes and nothin' changed,
just some water getting hotter in the flames.

It's not a lover I want no more,
and it's not heaven I'm pining for,
but there's some spirit I used to know,
that's been drowned out by the radio.

They say a watched pot won't ever boil,
you can't raise a baby on motor oil,
just like a seed down in the soil
you gotta give it time.

(Couldn't find an mp3, but you can watch/listen to it live HERE. Will break your damn heart with its loveliness.)

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And What Did YOU Do This Thanksgiving, Lindy Loo?

Watched a film where a boy masturbated with a large piece of raw meat.

Oh, and ate some food.

And was thankful.

THE END

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THINGS I DREAMT ABOUT THIS WEEKEND (OR "HOW I SUDDENLY TURNED INTO THE WORLD'S LARGEST NYMPHOMANIAC")

1. That Jimmy Kimmel showed me his wiener. I was trying to take a shower, he randomly opened the bathroom door while nekkid, and he laughed really hard when I shouted, "I don't wanna see that! Jesus!"

2. That I was surfing the internet on my (non-existent) laptop while in the shower and someone walked in on me as I was perusing a Playboy website. I was mostly just embarassed that it was lame-ass Playboy I was caught surfing and not something cooler.

3. That someone gave me a magical flotation device one day while I was swimming in someone's swimming pool. Jake Gyllenhaal was in the deep-end of the pool. The magical flotation device was, of course, magical and allowed you to do things that normally you wouldn't be able to do. In the dream I had the brilliant idea that if it could do this, then perhaps it could give me a super-orgasm. I promptly tracked down my fella and, with large flotation device in hand (it looked like a giant yellow frenchfry) commenced to shagging him up against the wall. The large flotation device was a mad success. Towards the end of the dream, I became aware that I was dreaming and thought to myself, "You must carry this info over into the waking world because a giant magical flotation device is something that no one's ever invented and if *YOU* were the one to invent it, you'd make millions upon millions."

I have not yet figured out the logistics of said giant magical flotation device, but give me time.

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This weekend I watched one of the darkest and ugliest movies I've seen in a long while--one of mutilation, murder, rape, despair. And it made me realize that, dammit, I *refuse* to believe these kinds of movies in which the world is an overridingly hopeless and ugly place where horrific things happen all the time with little to no redemption.

I am not naive--I do know that there is some fucked up horribly nasty shit going on now. And now. And now. Pretty much any second of every day, something terrible is happening somewhere or another. But I can't believe that the overriding force and theme of life is hopelessness and despair. And even if it is, I refuse to believe it. Because believing it means giving in to it.

I refuse to believe that the overriding force of every American family is some horrid dark underbelly of discontment, despair, indifference, sadness, and madness. Granted, there is always a vein of some or all of these things running through any family. And in some families, perhaps it is the prominent force behind it. But I refuse to believe that a short film in which [spoiler alert] a wife and mother tries to wrench herself out of her daily sadness and into her husband's awareness again by gruesomely cutting off her lips with scissors and then modeling the new look in front of her husband with tears in her eyes in desperate hope of lighting his eyes up again is a symbol of what American family life essentially has become. This image is a haunting and evocative one, in all its horrificness, and granted, there is room for it in the world. And yet, in so many ways, it rings of dishonesty.

I refuse to believe it in the same way that I refuse to believe the nauseating and squeakily happy bullshit Hollywood love stories in which everything works out perfectly in the end and the lovers run off into a distant sunset together, in which everyone's blond and white and model-thin and their only moments of despair come from the plight of trying to win the other's love.

Both are dishonest in that they refuse to acknowledge that life is never completely obnoxiously purely happy or completely horridly gut-wrenchingly horrific and despairing. Even in the darkest of moments, there is some spark of beauty, goodness, redemption, whether or not we notice it. Even in the cheeriest of moments, there is a slight shadow of sadness looming in the corner of our eyes.

And a failure to acknowledge that seems to be dishonest to me. It seems to be false and cliche and dishonest.

I never thought I'd quite understand those folks who refuse to see movies that are about horribly depressing topics, but I think I finally get it just a little bit.

Either that or I'm just getting old.

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Mmmmmmm, Yeah

The lead singer of Franz Ferdinand has officially been added to my list of "Fuckable Voices." I realized yesterday that this is probably partially because he sounds uncannily like Julian Casablancas of The Strokes at times, but with an accent.

Just thought you'd wanna know. =)

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I had to go to the doctor today, and I somehow managed to get a doctor-in-training that was so nervous that he kept shaking the whole time he was doing the doctorly things that doctors do. Like looking in my eyes (jittering, quickly-approaching pointy objects are not fun to have anywhere near your eyes). And stethoscoping. I could feel the poor little stethoscope jittering away against my shirt as he listened to my heart and nervously tried to maneuver gracefully around my breast and so I of course felt the sudden and terrible urge to shout, "OH MY GOD! YOU TOUCHED MY BOOB! MY BOOB! MY BOOB! OH MY GOD!" and watch him wet himself with horror. Oh, how I wanted to. But I was nice and did not.

In return for my self-control, I got sample eyedrops.

THE END

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Joy Lists

About 4+ years ago, I was bored at work one day, and I sent out emails requesting that people take a pause in their daily hecticness and make up a list of things that bring them joy. I then requested that they email the list back to me so that we could let the lists keep accumulating chain-letter-style and spread them around friends, as a way to brighten up each others' days just the tiniest bit and remind each other that the world doesn't always suck ass. I'd kind of forgotten about the lists until today, despite the fact that I've kept them tucked safely away.

So I started reading them this afternoon, just for the hell of it. What surprised me most, looking back at them, was how long everybody's list are, as though they started off just trying to humor me by responding but then it just started pouring out of them like a leaky sink that they just couldn't plug up.

Re-reading them put a big fucking gushy smile on my face... because they are quirky and cute and true and sincere and lovely, every damn one of them. And because they've reminded me of what I love(d) about the people who used to be in my life but have slipped through the cracks, the people who continue to scamper in and out of it, and the people who JUST WON'T F-ING LEAVE (and that's why I love them).

So I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you all. I hope that they make you smile as well.

{{And strangely (and I'm not sure why, as I saved all of them) some of you are conspicuously missing lists, presumably because I never got one from you or some sorta other random mishap (Ms. Dorklepork, for example), so if you feel inspired and want to send me your own, feel free and I'll add them on.}}

Christian

• Hoodies


• Throwing pots

Lisee

• The look of shitty, distressed buildings and cities in general


• Firescapes


• My constant compulsive habit to make everything not lonely, ie if there is just one slab of residual food left on a plate, I have to cut it into to pieces so its not "lonely"


• When everything looks green after a tremendous thunderstorm. Or the look of the aftermath of rain on the street at night when its accented by the streetlights


• The feeling of the concealed cold sand when you dig real far down into it, especially when they top layers are boiling from the sun

Allison

• Being called a feminist


• Warm towels out of the dryer


• Watching America's Funniest Videos stoned


• Roman History

Kristen

• Baby ducks when they are yellow and fuzzy and say,"Cheep, cheep"


• My mother's gentle voice


• Big fat mugs


• God

Holly

• Laughing at myself every time I say "that's fortitude" whenever I see a person running on a snowy sidewalk in the middle of winter when it is like 8 million degrees below zero


• The time I was in Union Station in St. Louis, feeling Thomas Wolfe's aura even after 80 years


• The times I drove home from concerts at 2 am, shirtless and bra-less


• Eating ketchup the morning of a hangover


• Women who aren't afraid to be physically strong


• Tim Curry--all vamped out

Adam

• girls


• being wrapped up in a blanket


• peanut butter


• trying your utmost to win, and then doing so.

Patrick

• 50's love songs


• Beating my wife at Scrabble


• Dancing to anything when nobody is looking


• Smelling the hair of someone I'm close to


• Televangelist women with huge pink hair


• The part in the 'Humpty Dance' where he makes the synth sounds with his voice.

Pavel

• Telling a joke for the 12th time and demanding that it is funnier with each telling even though it is not.


• A shot of good strong moonshine chased with a pickled tomato.


• Being told I look like a longshoreman.


• Using the word "transmogrify" as often as possible. (Hey buddy, can you spare some transmogrification?)


• Bird.

Marla

• Having my good friend give me spitting lessons after an evening of drinking


• Really hot baths on really cold days


• The sound of my youngest niece squealing when I pretend like I'm going to stuff her into the oven

Eric

• Someone adopting the runt of the litter


• Those three seconds in the middle of the night when things seem to make sense.


• Someone falling asleep on your lap.


• Thumbing through a book from the 18th century and thinking about how many hands it has passed through.

Linda

• Friday afternoons, when anything seems possible.


• The back of the neck of a man with short hair.


• Switzerland, just because.


• Tom Brokaw (don't ask).

Mike

• Seeing the Space Needle from far away on your way to Cedar Point


• Getting water in your ears on a hot summer day.


• Getting that damn water out of your ear on a hot summer day.


• Dancing while drunk

Jef

• Monkeys.


• Sex with love.


• When bad things happen to bad people.


• Staying in hotels & drinking in hotel lounges.

Maura

• my father's pot belly.


• lyndsey lantz art.


• doing anything naked.


• childhood pictures of the people we've known only as adults.


• red wine.


• a freshly showered body.


• having best friends live down the hall, or down the street, or a floor above you. (in the same state is good too.)


• mixed tapes, the making and receiving.


• reading lips under water.

Lesle

• running my fingers along the walls as i walk


• when streetlights go out just as you pass by them


• Roald Dahl books


• people who sit alone in restaurants


• wrestling with friends when you both end up accidentally hurting each other


• when people’s glasses get bent


• when you are walking straight towards someone and you go to walk around them and they move to the side that you move to and then you move to the other side just as they do then you both smile and stumble around each other


• sleeping naked with only socks on

Me

• Lying naked in bed on a hot summer night where just the lightest breeze is tiptoeing through the window and across your skin;


• Listening to old men whistle tunes;


• The smell of basements;


• Sharing a bed with friends;


• When songs suddenly become a soundtrack for a moment;


• Corn teeth;


• Chicken toeing;


• College tech prep commercial misspellings ("cirriculum");


• The mother and daughter arguing with each other in sign language at a red light;


• Crushes;


• Guys' hands;


• Reading in the tub;


• Flannel sheets on freshly-shaved legs;


• The overly-affectionateness of drunk people;


• The mysterious heart that someone drew in the snow on my car one morning;


• Finally peeing when you've been holding it in forever;


• How my brother occasionally gets the urge to pick me up and throw me over his shoulder despite my protests;


• Sucking something loud and metal up into the vacuum cleaner;


• birdie hair


• beating boys at pool,


• being caught off-guard with a kiss


• remembering how it felt to wiggle a loose tooth,


• how my cat Franny will only be lovey and affectionate and come up close to my face when I'm burrowed down beneath covers and nothing except my head is showing, and how any other time, all I have to do is stare at her for too long, and she gets scared and runs away,


• when my cat Zooey crawls up as high on my chest as possible to sleep so that she can cuddle up as close to my face as she can possibly get,


• rereading emails or letters you'd long forgotten about and having it make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

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My blogging here has suddenly and drastically become null and void as of late, and I haven't quite pin-pointed why, as it's been going strong for quite some time.

The past few weeks have been awhirl with bizarreness, and perhaps that is why.

Perhaps I don't feel quite like me, and so I don't feel like pretending to be.

Perhaps I'm just lazy.

Perhaps I'm just tired of blogging.

Any or all may be the case.

But today, in an effort to avoid reflecting on the bigger things, I offer you up the following useless tidbits in the hopes of making my life look wonderfully benign:

1. I've been sleeping with Big Fish from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish as of late.


2. I seem to have an endless supply of cookies issuing forth from my cupboards--I suspect inbreeding.


3. I realized the other day that I've started calling my cats "Stinker Bo-Peeps" for no reason.


4. I am sick of corn chowder and large spices.


5. I have been getting random crushes on people about every... 4 months or so, and it's starting to get annoying.


6. I had a dream this morning that Cleveland Happenstance was popping popcorn (because, yes, CH, despite the fact that you've lucked out and I can't hear your ceaseless shagging, I do often catch whiffs of your somewhat regularly-consumed popcorn).


7. Last week, I felt inexplicably happy after having filled up my somewhat-flat tires with air so that they were all at the same pressure, enough so that I wanted to volunteer the tire-info to people but thankfully didn't because I realized it would make for a really fucking uninteresting story.


8. A friend of mine sent me an email this morning that was so sweet and lovely that it almost made me cry.


9. I average about 5.5 hours of sleep every night (except for the weekend).


10. I drank Zima last night. I don't think I've ever had Zima before.


11. I chopped off most of my hair this past weekend.


12. I had a (sort of) erotic dream about a friend of mine this morning.


13. I don't think I've washed my current pajama pants in at least a month. (Ok. I lied. More likely two. Or maybe even three. I was trying to convince myself that I'm not gross.)


14. I have a fear of choking on large vitamins.


15. I just accidentally poured water all over my right nipple.

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