I just had to post this dream that Once-Upon-a-Part-Time-Buddha had about me last night because a) nobody EVER fricking dreams about me, despite me having weird dreams about others all the time (stupid bastards), and b) it is the most delightfully strange and specific dream EVER...

THE DREAM:

"i had a dream about you. you had four kids: Lena, Davis, Margot, and Kidder. You called Margot Escar-Margot. Lena had very straight, very long black hair that was very pretty and very shiny. Davis, though only 11, showed every sign of being gay in a Rufus Wainwright manner. Kidder was maybe 3 and was easily the cutest three-year-old i've ever dreamed into existence.

You walked around with string attaching each to the other. they were all very, very cute. we lived in some small town and the fact that you hadn't named the father of any of them was rather scandalous. but then, as we were eating breakfast together in a diner that served vegan food as we did every morning before work (we were really good friends despite that we had been high-school sweethearts and you had crushed me by dumping me for Damian Roark III in our senior year) you hinted, strongly, that the father of each child was, indeed, Plastic Man.

then the dream turned into sort of another dream. we walked out of the diner and got in my delorean and went back to 1985. then there was a lot of time traveling going on, with the joke being that we had to get back because I was going to be late for work."

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Ain't no better way to start the day than listening to Marvin Gaye singing about getting it on at 9 in the morning. Oh hell no.

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David Caruso, I Will Miss You, But It's Time

So yeah, despite my fiendish ramble about television the other day, I am, in fact, trying to boycott it for the week. Mostly out of a sense of curiosity.

And strangely, so far, it's been making me aware of how much of an addiction it really is. As in, I've actually felt healthier and clearer and more energetic the last few nights than I have all my tv-watching weeks prior. I think watching television only helps perpetuate my tiredness and laziness. I come home burnt out from the day, and watching television apparently reinforces and excuses me for the rest of the night, allowing me to wallow in and feed this tired laziness.

But these past few nights when I've come home and NOT watched television, well, it's forced me to move around, to be a bit more active (even if just in terms of flipping the pages in a book) and, instead of reinforcing my tired laziness, it seems to be expelling it like a dirty exorcistic poof of stank air. It seems to be infusing the night with an extra burst of energy, even if it doesn't end up being directed towards anything more exciting than washing dishes on a Tuesday when I normally wait for them to build up until Friday.

I mean, so far, over the course of the last few days, I've a) washed my dishes on a Tuesday instead of waiting for my usual Friday Dishwashing Session, b) finished up a Vonnegut book, c) read the majority of The Stranger in less than two nights, d) taken a nice long bath, e) reorganized my cds (and relocated some old ones I thought were lost to the world), f) planted basil, g) whipped up an elaborate sammich at 9 o'clock at night, and h) actually dozed off at 10:30 last night (and subsequently dreamt in my slightly-still-awake state that there was a foreign cat in my house).

I feel a sense of clarity which is nice. And most markedly, I've been surprised at how overwhelming and distinct the quiet can be. I think one of the reasons I like having the tv on is the noise. It's nice to hear busy-ness when you're someone who lives by themselves. But man, is there a lovely heartening purity to that all-consuming quiet that hangs in the air while you're sitting and reading a book or something. I mean, it's so quiet that it's almost loud. I like it. It makes me feel peaceful. It makes my brain feel like a tight-rope walker, focused and balanced. I can hear myself think.

So needless to say, I think I actually may start restricting my tv-viewing, in the hope that perhaps it might even start opening more doors and getting me writing and doing things that make me feel a bit more constructive in order to fill up the time.

And also worth noting: easing off this addiction hasn't resulted in me seeing any dead babies crawling across ceilings or anything.

Thank god.

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Pass Me That Crack-Pipe, Sister

So this week is apparently TV Turnoff Week.

Which got me thinking about how much tv I watch each week.

Which got me thinking about WHY I watch the tv I watch each week.

Which got me thinking about whether it's necessarily a bad thing to watch tv a couple hours each day.

Which got me thinking about whether I'm addicted and those are just the rationalizations of an addict.

Which got me thinking about whether I could give it up for a week.

Which all got me realizing this:

I think I am addicted.

Once I started thinking about NOT watching it all week, despite feeling a sense of strange and buouyant freedom, I immediately thought to myself: Well, what about The Office though? Should I allow that little 1/2 an hour of pleasure to squeak in there or would that defeat the purpose of boycotting? And then I felt the familiar cravings wash back over me: to see the bastardly smirk of David Caruso and to watch him slowly put on his sunglasses, to listen to Michael Scott say something that makes me feel horribly uncomfortable but later redeem himself by doing something obliviously kind-hearted, to listen to Judge Judy chew out some dumbass for being a dumbass. *Jittering and smacking at the crook of my arm out of habit*

It's kind of sick, yes.

But is it really THAT bad, given that I only watch an hour or two a day?

I mean, I know there are those of you who will respond smugly to this question always and forevermore with a "Well, I don't watch tv at ALL. In fact, I don't even own one." And to you I say congrats and fuck off.

I mean, I give folks without a television lots of credit. But just because you don't have a tv doesn't mean that you're not just as big a waste of non-functioning, purposeless blobbiness as those of us who do. If you are FILLING that time with great acts of awesomeness, then all the more power to you. Seriously. You are my hero and all that. But, shit, most of the time when folks say that, I don't see them out saving babies from raging floodwaters or painting great landscapes that are being immortalized on the walls of museums or kayaking through rivers yet untouched by human hands. Most of you are doing something perhaps JUST AS GODDAMN USELESS (or, perhaps, one might argue, just as wonderfully potent and amazing) in the grand scheme of things: playing on the computer. fucking. eating something. drinking beer. going for a walk. partying. etc.

So don't be smug is all I'm saying.

Yes, I own a television. It is large, and it is square. Yes, I own a dvd player, and hell-fucking-no I would never ever ever give up watching dvds. Even for a week. (I'm sorry, folks, but film is good. Film is art. TV, now that's debatable. (At least when it comes to CSI Miami.)) And yes, I watch one or two hours of garbage-television a night. But I do so after returning home at 9 or 9:30, having been gone since 6:15 am, having spent 10.5 hours at work, and having crammed my brain with juicy bits of knowledge for another 2 or 3 afterwards.

I'm drained.

And the last thing I have the ability to do when I come home is read, which is typically my television-alternative. My brain is fried.

That, and I'm just so busy that reading is kinda like weaving a spider web in the crook of a jet-plane. I only am able to grab a quick read here and there, with many large gaps of non-reading time falling in between, so hanging on to a semblance of plot, feeling caught up in the book rather than like I have to stop every short chunk of words to do one of the 1500 other things I need to do, all of these make reading a tenuous effort that, more often than not lately, doesn't stand up against the speed of the wind.

And I say that not as an excuse. I know I have no need to excuse myself, and most of you who know me would agree, because I am a GODDAMN VORACIOUS MOTHERF-ING READER when I have the time. Man alive. When I've got a week or two free, I go through books like beer on a hot and lustful summer's day. They are a pleasurable addiction, and one that I am more than happy to feed.

Maybe this is partially why I can't bear to crack a book when I'm so busy--it just doesn't seem right to the book, to the writer, to the story that I can't give it my undivided attention. And it doesn't seem fair to me to not allow myself to enjoy a book the way I would when I have bounties of free time.

So television. It has become The Answer.

It is the beer at the end of a long, not so lustful, not so humid, mostly just stressful and flaccid and tiring sort of day.

And to me, this is a fairly good reason to turn to television.

But I still don't like it.

And perhaps this self-reflection has revealed to me that I really just need to find other things to do instead. Perhaps I need to not look to reading as the only alternative. And perhaps the spring will afford me a bit more of this opportunity.

But when I don't get home until 9 or 9:30. When I have to get back up again at 5:30 am. When most of my friends are home getting ready for bed (old-fogey nerds!) or aren't around. When I am tired and my coffee-wave is dissipating. When my brain seems to be humming AWAH AWAH AWAH AWAH over and over indiscernibly. When I'm half-drooling and can barely peel myself from the couch. It's hard to not look at the television as a good friend, one that'll make me that cup of tea and some peanut-butter toast so that I don't have to do it myself. One that will TELL me its themes, will SHOW me its images, instead of making me create my own out of thin air and a little bit of spit and wax.

So yeah. There was probably a point in all this rambling somewhere, one along the lines of "yes, addiction--no, not unexcusable--yes, I wish it were different--no, I probably won't boycott" but fuck--what can I say, all that tv-watching has fried my brains and left my mind wandering like that fucking weak signal that makes me spend five minutes trying to jam my antenna into various concoctions of modern art in order to let that technology, that hot fierce sexy speed of digitalness, that oh fuck me fuck me tube of glowing lightness deliver that delicious surge to my veins and let it course through me again, oh yes. Fuck yes. Just like that. Just like that.

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I most be the only person in the world to be geeked to find that someone stumbled across my blog while researching a zombie-film they are making.

(Ok--I take that back... The only person in the world OTHER than Patricia.)

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Notes on a Sunshiny Sunday

1. My neighbors have strewn over their fence the dried fur of (presumably) a deer with an American flag perched unintentionally next to it. I've been dying to sneak into their yard and take a picture of this for weeks but am afraid of getting my ass-kicked as they are a delighful medley of rednecks and drug-dealers.



2. There were like five pigeons on my neighbor's roof yesterday, all trying to cram into the shadow that the chimney was creating, keeping them cool in the blinding midday sun. I don't know why, but it struck me as quite lovely. Until one of the fat ones started ramming one of the not-quite-so-fat ones out of the way so it could fit back in the shade. Then I just laughed.



3. I love my old-guy neighbor, despite the fact that I've had to get used to the fact that I am pretty much ALWAYS being closely observed the whole time I sit out on my roof. (He is in his 70's, doesn't really have anyone to interact with or anything to do since he has a difficult time walking, so his main source of entertainment is, you guessed it, watching me and my cats sit outside.) It cracks me up though because almost EVERY time I have a conversation with the man (which is literally, at least twice if I sit out on my roof for more than a couple hours during the day), he tells me exactly what time (5 pm, 6pm, 11pm) and what channels (channel 8, 3, 5, 19 and 43 at 6, channel 8 and 43 at 10, channel 3, 19, and 5 at 11) the local news is on so that I can perhaps catch it sometime.



4. Yesterday, I decided to make up for my bad-ant-killing karma by rescuing as many of the new bloomers as I could by capturing them on paper and flicking them gently out the window. (Talk about Sisyphusian.) I must've flicked at least 23 of them throughout the course of the day. It is hard to make fun of your old-guy neighbor for his oddities when your day has consisted of a strange little window dance that is probably very well weirding out your own neighbors.



5. Reasons that ant-spray is bad: you will inevitably spray some in your eye on a backdraft (and spend the rest of the evening worrying that you will go blind since a) it didn't hurt, so b) you didn't wash it out immediately), and your arm will also break out in a rash from it.



6. I pretty much never ever ever feel the desire to settle down, buy a house, and domesticate myself, but lemme tell you--occasionally catching a glimpse of my (very lovely) neighbors a) painting the inside of one of their rooms in the reigning dusk, b) sitting outside in lawn-chairs with their legs intertwined while a dog runs around in their yard, and c) watering their garden while the other digs at the dirt with a hoe, for the first time ever actually doesn't make me feel cynical about the idea.



7. I think I saw two wasps either a) wrestling or b) doing it.



8. God bless the spring for keeping my cats entertained. Not only have they been going through food at half their normal rate, but Zooey was so pooped last night that she passed out on my Twister board upstairs in such a way that it looked like someone had dropped her out of an airplane.



9. I like angry squirrel-chatter.

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These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

One of the things that warms my heart the most on a daily basis is the tiny and delicate glimpse of people's humanity I see in folks when they don't know that other people are watching. Sometimes it comes in the form of little moments of exposed vulnerability that occur when people's facades accidentally slip down, before they're aware that they've become exposed and neatly sew things back up, quickly and seamlessly. Other times I see it in the wake of their dailing living--personal items and objects strewn just so, that capture the pared-down individual and what they're like when no one else is around. Both make my heart feel squishy and warm.

I was thinking this last night after someone I know (though not well) parked next to me, and I pictured them peering into my car-windows and looking around, reading all the garbage littering the inside of my car like tea-leaves in a porcelain cup, from the inexplicable box of plastic utensils, to the purple condom hanging from my rearview mirror, to the fact that it's not been dusted in years, to the ridiculous amount of shoes littering the floor.

For some reason, the loveliness of these sorts of moments has been crystallized into one singular moment in my brain, a memory from 6 or 7 years ago which still floats up into my consciousness every once in a while:

Once when I stopped over an instructor's house and, right before I knocked, I could see her through the window, in her kitchen, leaning forward on her tip-toes to reach some dishes high up on a shelf. This, my instructor, who would barrel on and on like a bullhorn about feminism, who was surly and often seemed like she could bite the head off of a chicken, doing something shockingly normal and strangely and wonderfully domestic.

I waited and just watched for a short while before ringing the doorbell.

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I've posted this poem before, but it is a damn good one, so I post it again, in honor of National Poetry month. Or something.



AT NORTH FARM

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

John Ashbery

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Apparently it is that time of year again when I find myself feeling as though I'm "in heat," wanting to rub up against people/places/things just for the visceral experience, wanting to makeout with everything and everyone around me, wanting to wink at people and waggle my eyebrows suggestively, wanting to cram each and every precious moment of living into my mouth simultaneously and then wanting to try chewing on it all without choking while talking about deep things that just sound like "Mwaf in mef mookaw of meenek mow" because there's too much jammed in there for words to make their way out.

Stupid people, places, things that I love.

Stupid spring.

Why must you do this to me?

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One of the Reasons I Heart My Mom

Despite the fact that she sends me lots of chain-mail, she also forwards along little gems like these:

"Women carry the shame of so many double binds: she is denied arousal because she is a slut and a whore if she acknowledges her desire; she is supposed to be alluring for a man, but she is not supposed to plan it because if she plans it, she if full of carnal lust and insatiable; she is denied information and education about her own body, her sexuality and so she must learn as she goes, inadvertently.

Her challenge is to pull all this off while looking innocent and totally unaware of it all. All women have internalized shame concerning sex to some degree which makes it very difficult to address the sexual aspect of adult life and relationships directly.

Any woman who achieves a level of comfort about her sexuality in this society has gained no small triumph."


"The essential quality of a revolutionary is to be able to fantasize."
- Roman Polanski.

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THINGS YOU MAY/MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT ME, PART II

(I decided to do a follow-up simply because several of you weirdos emailed me to tell me that you were delighted by my last list. *couLOSERSgh*)

• I occasionally recall the vivid sensation of what it was like to wiggle a loose-tooth with my tongue, and I miss it.



• The time on my alarm clock is set about 45 minutes or so ahead of the actual time (that way I can fool myself into thinking I'm not getting up quite so early). I set the alarm for 6:13am so that it goes off precisely 18 minutes before I want to get up, that way I can sleep through two snoozes. On work-days, my wake-up time is 6:31am, alarm-clock time (which in real-time is about 5:42). All this makes it very difficult to set my alarm-clock for any other time than work-time, and whenever the electricity goes out, it fucks everything up for like three days until I can figure out the precise amount of time ahead of normal-time my alarm-clock was set for.



• When I microwave items, the time I key in has to be an odd number. I have to remove the item from the microwave before the alarm goes off, and it has to be stopped on an odd number.



• I am seriously not OCD despite sounding like it. I am moreso just weird.



• When I have something important going on for the day (a major test, a trip), I always make sure to put on nice underwear, the kind that I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen in if I spontaneously hooked up with someone or were in a car accident and had to have my pants cut off.



• The random ingredients in jarred, processed salsa still freak me out a bit--I have to do a bit of mind-over-matter to get through certain salsas without poking at and examining all the chunks of things in them.



• I'm not a big fan of cleaning, so when things get cluttered, I tend to just jam them into other things so I at least can't see the clutter. This is why I have an X-mas stocking in my bathroom drawer.



• I don't like to write with a pencil.



• I have a freckle-moustache that blossoms in the summer. I hate it.



• I pick my nose on occasion. Sometimes I worry that maybe my neighbors will happen to be looking up at my window precisely when I do so. And yet, this is hasn't stopped me from continuing to do so.



• I have two pictures of Jordan Knight (from the New Kids on the Block) in my cube. In one of the two, he appears to have his nipple air-brushed out for the picture.



• When I was younger, I had a nervous habit of flicking my fingers while watching movies. I'd go through them over and over, running my thumb over the top of them from the middle knuckle to the bottom knuckle, one by one. My mom used to make me sit on my hands sometimes so I'd stop doing it.



• Once, in middle school, I snuck some of my mom's wine out of the house in my squirt-gun.



• I can't study if there's dirty dishes in the sink.



• I knock on wood a lot when I accidentally think about something I don't want coming true. Typically, I use my earrings (since they're wood), so sometimes you'll see me driving and it *looks* like I'm adjusting my earring, but really I just thought something terrible and am knocking on wood (and trying not to look crazy while doing so).



• Right now I am listening to a Justin Timberlake song, and I LIKE IT.



• I like the word mimple a lot, mostly because my sister made it up. I also like calling people Mimples Mimpleton for no reason.



• I don't really like candy that doesn't involve chocolate. I find it to be a waste of time, to be quite frank.



• I own one pair of victoria's secret underwear. Conversely, I own more than one pair of underwear that has holes in it.



• E's mom has bought me socks for Christmas every year since I accidentally wore unmatching socks over her house one time.



• I don't like to crack my own bones. I *DO* like other people to crack them for me though.



• It usually makes me extremely uncomfortable to walk past places where there are groups of guys standing around. Except for the gas-station at the end of my street, simply because I've been there so many times that one of them usually just hollers a greeting at me from across the street, we all wave at each other, and then I can move on.



• I secretly wish my signature was cooler.

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What is Tuesday but yet another day to accidentally put your underwear on inside out and not realize it until midway through your workday...

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He Has Risen

At midnight on Sunday morning, amidst the blustering snow and streets that were quiet as packed cotton, fireworks exploded disconcertingly into the grey curtain that had been drawn closed across the April sky.

At first I thought that they were from an Indians game or something. But when I realized they were coming from a completely different direction, my heart warmed to think of some crazy drunken folks trying to wipe away the non-spring weather with a delightful burst of summer.

After I watched them for a bit, I shouted up to E, inquiring about who could possibly be shooting them off. He shouted back down that it was probably one of the Greek churches celebrating the start of Easter.

This made me smile, thinking of people happily braving the cold and crazy Cleveland snow, shuffling around in heavy boots, eyes to sky, excitedly shooting off fireworks in celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. I watched the rest of them with a bit of joyous quiet in my heart.

Serves me right for my cynicism last week.

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For those of you who don't know me, I can't burp. I can't make myself burp, and I max out annually at about 10 burps a year (and that's being fairly generous).

Last night, while I could feel probably my third burp of the year welling up from deep inside me, I suddenly wished that I carried a gong so that when it finally took place, I could strike it loudly and listen to it resound in celebration.

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Yesterday, while on the freeway, I passed a car with a bumper sticker that read, RELAX, GOD'S IN CHARGE, and for the first time in a while, I felt a furious and unholy burst of anger. I wanted to drive up next to them, roll down my window, and shout "Are you fucking kidding me, asshole?"

I mean, don't get me wrong--I have no problem with Christianity when not in the hands of tyrannical and pompous sin-Nazis who walk around patting themselves on the back and condemning everyone else while missing out on the point that we're all sinners. (Douchebags.) I really don't.

But seriously, what goddamn holy pomposity for this white, presumably middle-class (and undoubtedly NOT Third World) individual to be sporting such a bumper sticker. I mean, it really must be nice to sit back in your soft cozy La-Z-Boy, cleaning out your fingernails and thinking blessedly about what a wonderful life your God has granted you, and not have to worry about where you're gonna get your next meal, not hide in fear as the sound of missiles ricochets off the walls of buildings surrounding you, not cower in the corner while you're being beaten and kicked for no other reason than that you talked, not have someone shoot you just because they disagree with you on "religious" grounds.

What fucking oblivious pomposity.

To that driver, I say, If you want to claim that your God is in charge of all this, if you want to hold Him responsible for all this crap, all this garbage, all this pointless futile spilling of blood in the world, if He's the one responsible and in charge, well, then FUCK YOUR GOD. He needs to put a fucking leash on things already.

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RIP: My Dreams of Becoming a Samurai

I put these dreams to rest yesterday after finally coming to terms with the fact that there is no way I can attain any state of stealth with a left ankle that cracks like a bullwhip every four steps or so. (I have yet to figure out why it does this--it doesn't hurt, so having it looked into would serve no other purpose than to satiate my curiosity.)

I cried a little yesterday when I reached this realization, but I found solace in the fact that my 2nd-place career choice--vegan feminist ukulele/nunchuck expert--is still within my grasp.

*Playing the "Dueling Banjos" song while attacking my sexist, meat-eating enemies with flaming nunchucks*

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This weekend, I shook hands with and got my picture taken with Marilyn Burns, the main character in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Oh no you din't!

Oh yes. I did.

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