I'm Gonna Dance and Dance

I love Muhammad Ali. He is a magnificent man, beautiful in every sense of the word. The rope-a-dope I think is pure music.


If you've never seen, you can watch some of it here:




And if you've never read Toure's "What's Inside You, Brother?" before, I also highly highly HIGHLY recommend you CHECK IT OUT right now. It is also pure music.


(Also worth checking out if you can track it down: Larry Neal's "Uncle Rufus Raps on the Squared Circle.")

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Please Welcome, The Newest Addition to My Harem

Jason Schwartzman.

He is a manifestation of everything that is good about hairiness. Were we to meet, I would knit a large sweater out of his hair and wear it. (Secretly, my adoration of him may just be an extension of my envy over his ability to grow hair in such massive quantities and shapes. But also, I think he'd just be fun to hang with.)

The 'stache







The shadow







The beard

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ALERT! ALERT!

I must admit, yesterday I got kind of excited when I realized


IT'S ALMOST
"OLD GUY NEIGHBOR SEASON"
AGAIN!

I must admit: I've kind of missed him.


*Cue Cinderella's "Don't Know What You've Got (Till It's Gone)"*

You will be happy to note that he still calls both my cats Frannzy.

Prepare yourself for new tales.

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The Talking Eggs

When I was little, my mom had a fat ragged book of folktales, each one written and illustrated by different people. I remember exactly how my fingertips felt tracing along the rough thick pages, how the turquoise spine was slightly curling at the top and crumbled off against my fingertips.

My favorite story was "The Talking Eggs." The accompanying illustration was a crudely drawn picture of an old hag, her body headless, her head resting in her lap so she could pick the lice out of her hair. Talk about kid-friendly.

In the story, there is of course a good girl and a bad girl, also, of course, named Blanche and Rose. They both are asked by the headless hag to cook her supper and then to scratch her back (which is ragged with pieces of glass all over). The good girl helps without another word. The next day, the hag sends her into a barn and tells her to take the eggs that say TAKE ME and, no matter how hard they beg, to leave alone the ones that say DON'T TAKE ME. The girl obeys her, and as she throws them over her shoulder on her way home, she is rewarded with riches and new clothes.

The bad girl, on the other hand, laughs at the hag's requests. Despite this fact, the next morning the hag still sends her out to the barn with the same warning: Take the eggs that say TAKE ME and don't touch the ones that say DON'T TAKE ME. The girl, being greedy, of course assumes that there must be something more valuable in the eggs saying DON'T TAKE ME, so she grabs them all and begins to toss them over her shoulder on her way home. But instead of jewels and clothes, she is chased down the road by whips and snakes, screaming.

Bad fucking ass.

Fairytales and folktales are seriously the best.

What is most interesting to me about these types of folktales in particular is how they get cleaned up over the years. In the more benign tale that I've linked to below, the whips are just toads and mosquitos. Instead of picking lice out of her hair, the woman braids it. No one has glass in their back. It's kind of like how we used to play on steel monkey bars over blacktop when we were little and every once in a while someone would break an arm or knock out a few teeth--it was just the natural course of things. And now everything is round edges, woodchips, and plastic. But even in its newest embodiment, the bizarre imagery that fascinated me as a child is all still there--arms fighting arms, disembodied heads headbutting other disembodied heads, axes fighting axes, talking eggs.

My brain feels like it's full of those eggs sometimes.

(Check out the cleaned up version HERE.)

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Cat Toys Rock

This is my favorite cat toy of all time. His name is Creepy Frog Man Bear, for reasons mostly obvious.

Is he creepy? Yes. Is he a frog? A man? A bear? With all of these, I am uncertain.

I love that, amidst the collection of otherwise benign and obvious furry animals he came with, his species is completely mindboggling.




I consider him to be, in many ways, the My Defective Life mascot.

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Why It Is Dangerous To Read Too Much of the Pushcart Prize Anthology In One Sitting

I realized last night that I was walking around narrating my extremely mundane evening in my head so that it sounded like it could conceivably have been part of one of the short fiction pieces I was reading. When I opened my freezer and thought, "She had taken to eating expired food, perhaps not out of fearlessness, but because she feared death with a ferocity that astounded her," I figured I should probably take a break.

The book supported my choice by unexpectedly omitting 53 pages out of the middle of it for no apparent reason, so now I'll never know what happens to the girl with the father in jail in the Joyce Carol Oates story. This is the second book I've read in the last year that had 50-some pages inexplicably missing in the middle of it. I'm starting to think the government has assigned someone to tail me and, when I head out to work for the day, carefully extract 50 pages out of every 33rd book I attempt to read.

"She leaned in her chair, cradling her head in her hands, realizing that this omission of 53 pages was like omitting the heart from the body--what anthology can pulse with lifeblood when its chest is 53 pages short... of LOVE?"

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Tim Seibles

I posted this before (about three years ago) but had such a craving for it last night that I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out where the hell the book snuck off to. So I post again. And you will like. Again.

          Commercial Break: Road-Runner, Uneasy

If I didn't know better I'd say
the sun never moved ever,

that somebody just pasted it there
and said the hell with it,

but that's impossible.
After awhile you have to give up

those conspiracy theories.
I get the big picture. I mean,

how big can the picture be?
I actually think it's kind of funny —

that damn coyote always scheming,
always licking his skinny chops

and me, pure speed, the object of all
his hunger, the everything he needs —

talk about impossible, talk about
the grass is always greener...

I am the other side of the fence.

You've got to wonder, at least a little, 
if this could be a set-up:

with all the running I do —
the desert, the canyons, the hillsides, the desert —

all this open road     has got to
lead somewhere     else. I mean,

that's what freedom's all about, right?
Ending up where you want to be.

I used to think it was funny — Roadrunner
the coyote's after you      Roadrunner...

Now I'm mainly tired. Not that 
you'd ever know. I mean

I can still make the horizon
in two shakes of a snake's tongue,

but it never gets easier out here, alone
with Mr. Big Teeth and his ACME supplies:

leg muscle vitamins, tiger traps,
instant tornado seeds.

C'mon! I'm no tiger.
And who's making all this stuff?

I can't help being a little uneasy.
I do one of my tricks,

a rock-scorching, razor turn at 600 miles an hour,
and he falls off the cliff, the coyote —

he really falls: I see the small explosion,
his body slamming into dry dirt

so far down in the canyon
the river looks like a crayon doodle.

That has to hurt, right?
Five seconds later, he's just up the highway

hoisting a huge anvil
above a little, yellow dish of bird feed —

like I don't see what's goin' on. C'mon!

You know how sometimes, even though you're
very serious about the things you do, 

it seems like, secretly, there's a 
big joke being played,

and you're part of what
someone else is laughing at — only

you can't prove it, so you
keep sweating and believing in

your career, as if that
makes the difference, as if somehow

playing along    isn't really

playing along as long as you're 
not sure what sort of fool

you're being turned into, especially
if you're giving it one-hundred percent.

So, when I see dynamite
tucked under the ACME road-runner cupcakes,

as long as I don't wonder why my safety
isn't coming first in this situation,

as long as I don't think me
and the coyote are actually

working for the same people,

as long as I eat and 

get away       I'm not really stupid,

right?    I'm just fast.

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On Laura Ingalls Wilder & Amputation

Cute little stuff cutes me up real big sometimes.

Case in point:

I had an appointment with Chiroman yesterday. (My knee is f-ed up, and I figure I best take advantage of the student discount while I still can.) Anyways, my crush on Chiroman has long-dissipated, thankfully. Crushes are like unscratchable itches sometimes, and them's the crushes I'm more than happy to part with.

So we're standing in his office, and he's having me do these weird knee exercises with what basically is a large rubber-band strung around my shin. And I'm all wobbly and shit, so he says to me, "You can hold my hand if you want."

And in that moment, the way he said it sounded all cute and Laura Ingalls Wilder and shit, like he and I had suddenly become twelve years-old, stretched out barefoot in the long-grass near a stony creek, staring at clouds, freckles darkening in the sun, and then him bashfully reaching out his hand towards mine and saying those words.

I slipped my hand in his, and then, of course, promptly destroyed the moment by suggesting we amputate my leg above the knee.

Because that, my friends, is how I roll.

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Why I Will Never be a Disciple or a Stand-up Comic

I cannot remember the punchlines to jokes to save my life. It's bad. Especially since I like a really bad joke now and again.

On Saturday, I was at the coffee shop down the street from me, studying, and a guy sitting a table over struck up a conversation with me. Turns out he's a yoga instructor, and we have this really intense conversation about breathing-focused yoga and how, physiologically, it just makes sense that focusing on your breathing and increasing your oxygen intake can make you feel euphoric and tapped into something bigger. He has me do a brief breathing-exercise with my eyes closed in the middle of the bustling coffee shop, and I comply. It feels good to get back in touch with my body for just a few minutes. I bring up the topic of the Breath of Fire (which I find fascinating and reenergizing) and he shares with me an allegory that gets me all giddy and shit because IT MAKES SENSE. It is simple but profound in its simplicity, and I pack his words up carefully in my pocket to take home with me.

Later that day, I'm talking about this shared moment with a friend, and I go to recount the allegory he told me, and midway through the story, I realize I CAN'T REMEMBER THE KEY MOMENT IN THE TALE. I'm telling her, "There's a monk who's trudging along barefoot, carrying an enormously heavy bag of grain, and a man stops him and asks, 'What is enlightenment?' The monk drops the bag. Then the man asks the monk, um, the man asks the monk. Ah shit! I can't remember what the fucking man asked the monk! He asks something, and in response, the monk picks up his bag, and he heads off again on foot." I am withered and angry at myself for being such a senile asshole.

The long and short of the allegory is that, as the yoga instructor explained to me, he had spent all this time amassing new yoga techniques, learning and learning and learning as much as he possibly could until one day, he just realized that no matter how many techniques he got under his belt, the truth was, it all came back to this simple act of being in the body and focusing on that small simple breath moving in and out. Point being: sometimes it takes all this journeying and searching to get you to understand that it's this very simple truth you started with that is the root of all things.

Seriously, though: what an asshole I am. I have this really wonderful bit of wisdom imparted upon me unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon, and I can't remember the f-ing punchline.

Could you imagine the ensuing disaster if I *did* start rolling as a disciple?



The Gospel According to Lindy Loo

Me: And, um, God came down and said to His disciples, "All you need is love."

Disciple #2: "All you need is love?"

Me: Yes. God said, "All you need is love, love. Love is all you need."

Disciple #2: Isn't that The Beatles?

Me: No. So sayeth the Lord.

Disciple #2: No seriously: Magical Mystery Tour.

Me: (sighing) Fine. God came down and said to His disciples, "A midget and a hooker walk into a bar..."

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Macking on People at La Biblioteca Only Works If You've Actually Read the Book, Dude

[Clean-cut, suit-wearing fellow leans smarmily against the counter and eyes me and my books.]

Mr. Smarm: Crime & Punishment huh?

Me: Yup.

Mr. Smarm (boastfully): Yeah, I think we read that back when I was in law school.

Because apparently he went to the Dostoyevsky Law School of Sending People to Siberia.

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Mr. Bellmer

I was recently flipping through a heavy book of surrealist artwork, reigniting the old flame I have for ye ol' grandmaster of surrealism himself, Salvador Dali. (I have a wicked, long-standing crush on the man, though I think this may partially be because, as evidenced in The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, he is just so delightfully strange, strange enough that he would, as a child, rescue a dying bat, return to it the next morning to find it dead and swarming with ants, and then bite into it. Such tales! And I like that either a) he was a weird enough child to do such a thing, or b) he had balls big enough to have completely fabricated such a story and passed it off as truth. And also, of course, because of his moustache. If I had the capability, I would SO rock out with the handlebar.)

Anyways, I am still floored by his art every time I see a piece hanging in an art museum. His artwork is so iconographic and prints of his works are so mainstream that you tend to forget that the real things actually have brush strokes, tiny little crazy little brush strokes, involved, and being reminded blows my mind every time.

Anyways, I was flipping through this book, and I faltered when I came to a section on Hans Bellmer, whose work I'd never seen before. His life-size "dolls" center around the concept of the ball joint, and apparently he'd create all the parts to a single doll and then take her apart and reconstruct her in a variety of different eroticized poses again and again to photograph for a series. And the results are just DISTURBINGLY beautiful.






Which left me wondering, should I be weirded out that I'm attracted to disturbing art that is kind of the equivalent of staring at car accidents and mangled bodies on the freeway? Or that desire you sometimes feel just to put a cigarette out on your skin to see how bad it would hurt? Or having that thought that pops into your head while you're driving that ONE twist of the wheel and you could so easily send yourself plunging off that bridge?




For most of us, something stops us from the follow-through. So maybe that's why it's so strangely and horrifyingly appealing to see someone who doesn't have these impulses in check. To see someone who clearly looks at women as objects--tits and limbs pieced together to pleasure--and isn't afraid to put that cigarette to his flesh through his art and not roll down his sleeves to embarassedly hide the results.




I'm a big fan of artwork that is viscerally unsettling, slightly haunting, in form or content. I like being made uncomfortable through the destruction of the expected. I like to see form carefully exploded. But with Bellmer I'm torn between admiring this ability to give in unashamedly to impulse and feeling angry towards what is clearly a disturbing misogyny--the female form dismembered and reconfigured by male hands again and again.




So I'm a bit bothered that I'm so goddamn viscerally attracted to his sculptures.




But the subconsious likes what it likes, right? Right??







(Please to pat me on the head and mutter reassurances now, thank you.)

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How to Tell You're an Irreparable Book Nerd

Your brain shouts, "Hurray!" when it finds out that the 2008 Pushcart Prize Anthology is finally in for you at the library.

Not "Cool."

Not "Boss."

Not some nonchalant and hipstery affectation of indifference.

But "Hurray!" With a fucking exclamation point!

Because apparently your brain still wears jelly-bracelets and those moonboots that change colors in the snow (which actually were kind of boss and cool now that I'm thinking about it).

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Seriously: God Bless Spam

My new fav:


-----Original Message-----
From: curtis clyde [mailto:bertieboozie8@syssrc.com]
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 4:01 AM
To:
Subject: lory


see antipodeable may abalone



[If "antipodeable" isn't an actual word, it really should be.]

----------
Past fav spam mails can be perused HERE. If you DO choose to peruse, be sure to do so antipodeably.

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Things That Amaze Me About the Human Body (Excluding Things Like Consciousness, Existence, The Brain, Etc. Because Duh)

• That the heart has its own electrical system and is self-starting. How beautiful and metaphorical is that?



• That the pupil is essentially the asshole of the face. An eye-anus, one might say. Think about it.



• That essentially we already ARE superheroes. We have the ability to transcend the temporal realm in moments of high stress, like during a car accident, where the brain somehow unravels the structure of time so that we can experience everything at a slower pace, giving us more time to analyze and react. (If only it did that in other useful situations, like when you're trying to think of a comeback to something assholey somebody says to you. That would be a kinda sweet and Six Million-Dollar-Man-like moment. Even moreso if both car accidents and bad-ass time-transcending comebacks were accompanied by the following sound effect: ABILITY-TO-TRANSCEND-THE-TEMPORAL-REALM-IN-ORDER-TO-THINK-OF-A-GOOD-COMEBACK SOUND-CLIP.)



• The way that live music thunders up into your ribs, vibrating them and tingling your heart and lungs, and making your whole chest feel tympanic. I think the physiological term for it is "bone-shakery," and it's terribly sneaky and sensual.



• Sight.



• That the brain has a system of nerve cells to keep us from feeling. Their job is to essentially keep us from being constantly bombarded by sensations that are constantly present to us, so that we don't spend the day thinking about things like how our underpants feel.



• That probably the inside of our nose smells like something, but since we adapt to a smell within seconds, until we no longer notice the smell of that something in our presence, we'll never know what it smells like. *Devastation*



• And most of all: that the body has its untouchable mysteries that we'll probably (hopefully) never be able to reduce to science, such as why a certain song can make us feel crazy-love fiery energy inside us (but not someone else) or why the way the paint moves itself along a canvas can make our heart break.

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A raise of the glass to the Clevelanders who keep stumbling upon my blog while doing a google search for "Robin Swoboda Nude Pics."

You kinky weirdo freaks you.

-------

Ack!

I've been getting a decent amount of sleep lately (for once), which means I've been dreaming like CRAZY.

And I just remembered that I had a dream last night that I spent an evening goofing around in bed with Jonah Hill (from Superbad). Not *fooling* around, but just being totally goofbally and wrestling and pretty much just acting like 5-year olds.

It was the most fun I've had in forever.

So thank you, Dream Jonah Hill.

I only hope you're half as much fun in real-life.

-------

I was also thinking this morning that I wish my DivaCup came with a little vag-alarm that would let me know when it was almost full.

How sweet would that be if I was standing there talking to someone, and from deep within the recesses of my vagina, a tiny little alarm began to sound (one that preferably sounds like the alarm that goes off when a schoolbus is backing up), causing them to look confusedly around while I excused myself discreetly to use the restroom?

A vag-alarm would UNDOUBTEDLY attract me a boy who'll long for me, wistfully and heart-breakingly and from afar.

-------

I was thinking this morning that it really *is* about time for some boy to start longing for me, wistfully and heartbreakingly, from afar, in that kind of way that deserves its own Elliott Smith song, while I go about my day, accidentally snubbing him because I don't even realize that he's longing for me, wistfully and heartbreakingly and from afar, in the first place.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd GO!

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3-19-2010

I think I've mentioned before that my answering machine has a penchant for telling the absolutely incorrect time and date. No matter how many times I reset it, I always return home to messages that sound like they were left on my machine from people living in the future.

Well, apparently other electronics in my apartment are also starting to revolt now. My computer has taken to placing newly-downloaded photos into absolutely randomly-dated folders. Downloading pics on the 6th of March? The computer pops them into a folder dated 2-28-2008.

Apparently my apartment must be built on a large temporal vortex or something. And/or also an Indian burial ground.

Ok--not really.

'Cept for the vortex part. Which is 100% true.

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THINGS I DID THIS WEEKEND MIXED IN WITH THINGS I DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO (BUT WOULD'VE LIKED TO)

• Shoveled out all the walkways in my yard. Felt like She-Ra. Then felt like an old lady once all the aching muscles kicked in.



• Madeout in the snow.



• Peed a cuss word into the snow.



• Walked down to the bagel-shop in a limited-visibility blizzard at 7:30am on Saturday morning and, upon realizing that there was absolutely no sign of life on my walk (no cars moving, no people, nothing), pretended I was in an apocalyptic (and snowy) zombie movie the rest of the way there. Never actually got attacked by zombies.



• Decided I like sesame seed bagels.



• Completely rearranged my living room.



• Thought about going out to buy a couple bras.



• Got pistol-whipped in the nose and bled all over my nice new shirt.



• Wore a sweet 1970's insulated-vest out in the snow to shovel.



• Checked on the stray cat (who--thankfully--took to my kitty shelter) about every three hours or so to make sure she hadn't gotten snowed in.



• Ran through the snow as fast as possible so as not to get tons of snow in my boots and wished my boots literally made the sound GLOMP GLOMP GLOMP as I ran.



• Had Peppermint try to put the moves on me. Was forced to reject her. Did so kindly.



• Studied the structures of the eyeball.



• Watched a tiny wiener dog in a hoodie try to bound through 3-feet-deep snow. Laughed my ass off.



• Got my tongue stuck to an icicle when I tried to lick it.



• Confirmed the fact that I still think Good Will Hunting is a really good movie.



• Helped push a couple stuck cars out of the snow.



• Wore pajamas all Saturday and Sunday.



• Went down on your mom.



• Pegged an innocent bystander in the eyeglasses with a snowball snapping them right across the bridge of the nose.



• Criticized the new Altoids commercial in my head for using "A SNAP TO THE CEREBELLUM" for their catch-phrase when the cerebellum has to do with voluntary motor movement, equilibrium, and muscle tone, and doesn't have anything at all to do with thought processes or epiphanies. WAY TO MAKE NO SENSE, ALTOIDS!



• Watched Cops.



• Watched p0rn.

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Strange Conversation from Yesterday

Cashier at Petstore (referring to the 4x1-foot package of styrofoam I was lugging around with me): So... what is that?

Me: Um. Styrofoam?

Cashier: It's just... styrofoam?

Me (pausing to look at him quizzically): Uh. Yes.

Cashier: Just, like, sheets of styrofoam?

Me: [Pause] Uh huh.

Cashier (sounding slightly disappointed): Oh.

[I leave wondering if perhaps a) he thought that I was trying to very obviously shoplift enormous and awkward 4-foot sheets of styrofoam from his petstore right in front of his eyes, despite the fact that I'd just waited in line for 5 minutes to pay for 20-cents-worth of cat toys, or b) he thought maybe there was secretly something else awesome and MINDBOGGLINGLY fascinating disguising itself amongst what clearly could be nothing other than large sheets of styrofoam.]

-------

I feel good today. Like I licked a sunbeam.

It's about time, dammit.

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Just a Few

• While watching The Brave One (of all things) the other day, I was overwhelmed by the compulsion (inspiration) to write a poem. A poem about a pedestrian who had been hit by a car. Inspiration is a strange and wonderful thing. Kind of like a reverse diarrhea of the brain. <---Think about it



• In the process of arguing with someone yesterday over email, I was told this: "I'll leave the ball in your court, I know that's how you like it anyway." And despite my sour mood, I had a hard time not laughing because it was so unintentionally pervy, and because it was also a scarily accurate assessment on the non-pervy front.



• I think I'm going to get supplies to make a cat-shelter today since we have a RIDICULOUS amount of strays in our neighborhood (and since one of them that I keep seeing was sitting under a van yesterday, trying to avoid the icy pellets beating down from the wonderful Cleveland weather). I wish I would've thought of this at the BEGINNING of winter, but better late than never.

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Alec Motherhumpin' Stuart

"Don't try and catch me,
I am way too fast for that.
You're gonna have to kill me
if you want me
that bad..."

(Alec Stewart, "The Death of Narcissus")

I wanted to post a song by the incomparable Alec Stewart as the "Song of the Week" in my sidebar, but alas: his music is only available through his myspace page. (Alec, if you happen upon this post at some point, that is my subtle hint that YOU NEED TO CUT AN ALBUM ALREADY, IF NOT JUST FOR ME, THEN FOR THE GOOD OF ALL HUMANITY.)

His music is such good good shit. Like chewing on gravel and heartbreak.

So I send you there instead, with a sense of urgency. Go go. And listen in particular to the song whose lyrics are featured above:

[[ LISTEN ]]

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The Horror, The Horror

So yeah, this past Saturday, the Bread Lady at the West Side Market told me that apparently Robin Swoboda *DID* air my segment on her show.

And apparently I did not give her as much bad-ass smacktalk as I'd remembered. In fact, I was downright amicable.

Then again, they *DID* cut out much of our interaction.

And even the Bread Lady admitted that she was amazed they used both our footage, since it was abundantly clear that we both found her annoying.

Nonetheless, enjoy:

[[I removed the link for the sake
of non-stalking anonymity--if you are wiley enough, you
should be able to track it down on your own.]]

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"I am out here studying stones
Trying to learn to be less alive
Using all of my will
To keep very still
Still even on the inside..."

(Ani Difranco, "Studying Stones")

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