Coffee Spray

I am so fucking trumped

2009-05-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it, I'll fucking give in, my blog is far far insuperior. I just learned how half of Twitter works over the past month. The other half, I'm not so sure of how it works. Sometimes I believe I am responding to myself. On one end, that isn't half bad. Now when I make idiotic 4am comments, while ridiculously drunk, I am simply talking to myself and not an audience of twits. (That is the name for those who twitter, right?).

I also admit to not knowing what @whateverthefuckthenameofthepersonis means. I think it means 'at', as in @homeboy, being at homeboy or @Ididyourmomlastnight meaning 'at I did your mom last night'. Which to me is incredibly stupid and ridiculous.

I also hate myself at the moment because Diablo Cody, a person whose name I despise because it was so obviously contrived, and who has talent about writing about prego teens in a funny, sarcastic manner, managed to outhink, outdo and outwrite me in of all the fucking things, TWITTER.

Her gem: "Inspired by the Bellagio fountain, I applauded for my own sprinkler system today."

Damn fucking good line. I swear to god. My best one this week:

Another Person: "See, the rich always fuck the little people"
Me: "That's why I want to become rich, so I can fuck little people."

Diablo Cody:

"Watching Ace of Cakes. I want to drape everything in fondant and create a world-sized cake simulacrum."

Uses Simulacrum in TWITTER. I want to know, Diablo, El Devil, Evil One, I WANT TO KNOW, how much time do you spend thinking of what you Twitter. I think you stare at the screen counting up and down the number of letters you have in this modern, vile version of a haiku, and how the hell do you come up with it all?

Are you a poet?

Cause your shorthand is good. But I'm gonna be honest, Cody (Can I call you Cody?) I thought Juno wasn't all that. It was ok, but not worth the fame. You rode Superbad and the dying fumes of Arrested Development and the teenage need to see themselves reflected in a much cooler glow. But I have to say, damned good step up from stripping. Nice choice.

I want to face off with you in a knife fight, if you are actually El Diablo, you will win. Otherwise, I think I might have a shot. You choose the knives, I choose the location:

Olympic sized pool at 12 am.

all the rest of you buggers, wait until I lean out my car and flip you off.

Elevator Issues

2009-02-24T11:22:00.000-08:00

Alright, I know I’ve been remiss in my bloggage duties. (haha, I said duties) I have been uber busy at work dealing with brainless matters and spending my evenings with the brain-heavy LSAT prep work. It is scary to know one day I may have power within the legal system. (And according to my sample scores, it may be sooner than later)

However, I am back with a very disturbing mock news event, which I feel I must share with all of you.

Woman Accosted by Lift May Not Survive

Charlotte, NC

A woman in the Ballantyne area was pancaked today by a heavy set of elevator doors in the Richardson Building of the Bissel office complex. Bystanders were shocked as they viewed the young woman become trapped and pressed by the three-inch stainless steel doors.

“It was horrifying,” stated Barbee McGee, an

employee of Global Compliance, “She was walking into the elevator and it suddenly began to shut on her, there was this crunching sound…” McGee then had to excuse herself to phone in a report of the incident to the Global Compliance Horrible Event Hotline.

“I have often had issues with the elevator,” stated Susan Sontag, an employee at SOS Intl, “It has repeatedly tried to eat a foot or a hand as I attempted to catch a ride within it.”

The phones within the whole building were shut down by the calls of employees to various reporting hotlines, preventing a call for emergency services from getting out for over ten minutes.

(Elevator Before)

“It is the duty of any Global Compliance employee to report any incident of little or no significance at any time, day or not,” said Bob the Compliance Man, a

spokesperson for the company, “We cannot be held responsible for the over thirty minutes she spent trapped between the doors screaming for help. We can, however, provide authorities with complete documentation of the unfortunate occurrence.”

(Elevator After)

The pancaked woman required the jaws of life to pry her from the elevator doors. She was rushed to the nearby Carolinas Medical Center, and is still in critical condition. Suffering from a crushed ribcage and multiple breaks of the arms, legs and pelvis, she is not expected to survive.

“When we arrived, the scene was very grim,” stated Wayne Dude, a local fireman who participated in the rescue, “The woman was still screaming, and the elevator was definitely in an agitated state. The other elevator simply refused to open for emergency crews and we were forced to carry the gurney down the stairwell.”

The elevators within the Richardson Building have several complaints on file against them from Global Compliance employees, many of which state ‘irritability’ ‘hostility’ and ‘bad work attitude’ as issues with their on-site performance.

It is not clear as to whether criminal or legal proceedings will be lobbied against the elevators. Both elevators declined to comment on the event, forwarding all questions to their law firm.

We must take these issues seriously, as elevators are responsible for all deaths by pancaking in the United States.

(We Can Fight Back)

Actual footage of girls taunting an elevator:

Warning: DO NOT PERFORM THIS STUNT AT YOUR OFFICE/HOME!

These girls were incredibly lucky to not have died in taunting said elevator. An angry elevator will not only make one pee their pants, but can also cause heart infarctions, pulmonary embolisms, brain tumor, mild cases of flatulence, diarrhea, chlamydia, brief stints of erectile dysfunction, and in some cases, death by pancaking.

Concept Art

2009-02-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

So today we had the weigh-in for our big weight loss challenge. I have to say, we have largely succeeded. Our success has centered around the sabotage area of the game. Three of the four of us managed to gain weight. Only one has lost. However, the past two weeks have been filled with chocolate, brownies, pizza, and numerous other temptations passed by our noses. I have to gain more strength of will.

So today I want to bring up something a little more serious. Not sad, angry or bash-you-head-against-the-wall serious, but just less goofy than the general content of the blog. I was skimming through YouTube videos the other day (this is how I start serious content) and I got to thinking about aesthetics, the elements that interest us in one thing over another. What really got to me was the feeling, which I think is universal, that happens when you see something that really blows you away. After skimming through the online thesauruses (thesauri?), I was still at a lack of a good word.

The specific sensation I’m talking about is when you see something that really catches you, it feels like a shiver and stimulation and fascination all at once. A tingling, happy, elated feeling touched with a bit of wonder. See, I’m throwing out all these words, but none of them truly define it. But I think most readers will know what I’m talking about, or at least quit reading the blog out of boredom. Either way, I will forge on…

While Blue Man Group is now considered ‘trendy’, once upon a time when I was in high school and troglodytes wandered the seashores, I went to New York City to see Blue Man Group in a somewhat small Off-Broadway space. They blew my mind. For a NC girl whose best exposure to theater was the random musical chosen by Blumenthal to drag in the NASCAR fans looking for something on the non-race weekends to do, it was absolute coolness in a performance. So I have a soft spot for the BMG.

This video epitomizes the statement I am trying to make. For me at least. Each person is different. My father says he gets the same sensation from listening to Silent Night around Christmastime. Odd choice for a Jew, but it’s his thing. Now, Video:

*I think I just Blue myself*

Well, other than the statement that I want that dress, I guess I’m still trying to pin down the intangible and continue blathering on about this topic. The sensation is something I think of as a product of fulfilled potential. I feel as though something great and powerful has been accomplished, and by watching, or being there, I got to be a part of witnessing the success. This is why so many people came to watch the inauguration was because Obama had succeeded, and the better part of America wanted to be a part of that success, to feel that wild excitement, that tingling of potential fulfilled. They wanted to stand and watch a political procedure just because it made them a part of something great.

There’s also another element, there’s this—and maybe it has something to do with me being an artist—feeling of creativity. I think the best art spawns more art. Like an infection, good art pushes others to create art of their own. I watch that performance and want to make, to comment, to have something come of the experience. Sometimes the products are useless, unnecessary. Sometimes, as in the case of this second video, they are much more interesting.

See the product of two chicks getting wowed by Daft Punk’s ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’.

Permanent Marker $1.09
Roll of Tinfoil $2.57
Cardboard Boxes $0.00
2 Sets Black Sports Bras & Underwear $36.99

Making a viral video that has actual creativity and art in it instead of someone falling down or eating something disgusting: Priceless.

Well, I’m not sure if I was entertaining, but this was something I wanted to say, and if anyone thinks differently, please comment, let me know. Or you can even share your own bits of coolness if they can be loaded in the comment windows.

Alright, enough serious stuff, down to today’s Top Ten:

Top Ten Ways of Wasting Time On Purpose:

1. Write a musical about a ridiculous subject and perform it for co-workers (I’m working on Sex Offender: The Musical)

2. In lieu of shaving, pluck the hairs from your legs individually.

3. Create a small army of animals from paperclips and lead an assault on the great evil paper sorcerer Toth.

4. Make a notebook of lists combining your first name and the last names of any person you might ever marry.

5. Become the world champion at Snood.

6. Composing a list of how you will spend lottery winnings.

7. Conjure of elaborate practical jokes to torture coworkers and drive them insane. (Just wait….more to come.)

8. Leave a comment on every wall of every Facebook friend.

9. Attempt to cover your entire body in pen tattoos.

10. Writing Top Ten Lists.

Alright, I wasn’t feeling the top ten tonight, but I hope the following media of the day can be some fun for y’all. If nothing else, it covers one of my favorite topics:

ManEaterz

2009-02-04T23:28:00.000-08:00

I have been remiss in bloggage for some time. In fact, I’m been pretty much absent from a lot of things. Here is the summary update:

A. Sprained my ankle badly.

B. Used large amounts of pain meds and watched movies for four straight days.

C. Allowed the guys at work to get me addicted to World of Warcraft.

D. Am now official dork/geek level 45. Upside, nerdy intelligence factor up, downside, coolness factor down. Will never date again.

E. Found out my shrink is leaving for Africa for two months. She wants me to keep a book of happy things. I want to tell her to shove her bastardized western Buddhist philosophy up the backside of a gazelle.

F. Actually working at work: Figuring out how to rewrite one document over 50 different ways, each way tailored to another boss’ personal preference.

G. Am considering collectible cases or protective plastic coverings for my growing collection of bosses and people with authority over me.

H. Had insane dreams for over one week. Thinking about compiling them into a book entitled: ‘Specific Things That Horrify, Turn On or Horrify/Turn On Samantha.

I. Need to thank Tricia Helfer for appearing in my dreams. I placed the request last year but don’t mind the wait…you know about dream world bureaucracy…all that red tape.

Well, that’s the short version. The long version includes attending a knockoff of an Andy Warhol Warehouse Party, hanging with crazy drag queens, and having a romantic dinner date with not one but two people at the same time. To say the least, I continue to be terribly awkward at dating and have to find the right way to say: No, you can’t bring your friend on the date with us.

On a merrier note, Susan and Camille and I were out at the smokebrella the other day (the smokebrella is a giant blue umbrella where all the smokers at work gather like a gaggle of flaming geese, all a-chatter and puffing. It is the modern water cooler.) and we got to talking about the men in their lives. While I could not offer much personal input as to the men in my life (I had boyfriends sometime back in 1040 A.D.), I agreed that there is an epidemic that strikes only men. Thus I was urged to draft and submit the following letter in order to address this problem. I have enclosed it so you dear readers can be aware of the dangers and protect yourselves, especially the men.

ATTN: Typhoid Mary
Director, Center for Disease Control Personnel
STATUS: URGENT!!

Ms. Mary,

I am writing to inform you of a concern rising amongst the female population of Charlotte, North Carolina. Recently we have witnessed a series of cases that we feel are not isolated incidents of inopportune infection, but rather the beginnings of a serious epidemic which, if not addressed, could lead to widespread infection of plague-like proportions throughout the American and possibly worldwide population.

While we have not performed the necessary research to confirm the existence of this threat in surrounding counties and states, when in contact with individuals outside the Charlotte region, we have heard reports of similar cases that have added to our growing concern.

The threat of which I am writing solely affects the male segment of the population. Few if any reports of female infection have been noted. However, we feel it is greatly significant that over 50% of the world’s population could be at risk presently.

The infection, medically termed Assolulous Maximus, does not currently have a medical test, but rather presents a specific set of symptoms unique to masculine psychology. These symptoms include but are not limited to:

· General misconception of self-worth, often bordering on a God Complex.
· Inability to communicate properly, specifically in matters of returning phone calls and imparting honesty in communication.
· Anger management issues, especially in relation to other males who are considered to be invading territorial zones.
· Consistent expansion of comfort and territorial zones.
· A sense of ownership expanding to almost everything within these zones.
· Overwhelming sense of entitlement.
· Compulsive tendencies toward infidelity and dishonesty.

While these symptoms alone are simply signs of personality complexes, the combined grouping seems to be appearing more and more often in what many observers (generally women) colloquially refer to as ‘Asshole Disease’. This condition is extremely disruptive, constantly laying waste to positive social and romantic relationships, leading to verbal and physical fighting, and creating an uptick in frustration and depression rates amongst women.

There are several elements that tend to exacerbate the condition:

· Consuming alcoholic beverages in large amounts.
· Grouping or ‘packing’ of large numbers of males.
· Hardcore rap or rock music.
· Violent video games, movies, or other media.
· The presence of one or more attractive females.
· Expensive cars, motorcycles or boats.
· Sporting events which combine violence with sport (i.e. boxing, football, hockey, etc.)
· Women (attractive or unattractive) who lift themselves, move about, or in any way interact with a pole.
· Any form of ‘daring’ or challenges to masculinity.

The condition, once contracted, is incurable. No scientific breakthroughs have been found to stop the spread and eventual takeover of Asshole Disease. Once a subject shows symptoms, it is simply a matter of time before the condition overwhelms the subject’s personality and leaves nothing but symptomatic reactions to any form of human interaction. Once the symptoms have taken over personality, the subject is labeled an ‘Asshole’ and is utterly and completely beyond rehabilitation.

While not all men are inflicted, they are all vulnerable to infection. In Charlotte, North Carolina, cases of Asshole Disease are rampant, affecting a projected 98.5% of the male population, with 75% of those afflicted already being declared fullblown ‘Assholes’.

We feel that it is time for the CDC to take this matter under serious consideration. Without proper research into containment and cure, we may be faced with a 100% infection rate, possibly putting a complete stop to all forms of human reproduction, as few females are willing to spend much time around an ‘Asshole’.

Our only bastion of hope if full-scale infection occurs is the small population of females (about 10%) that seem to be uncontrollably attracted toward ‘Assholes’. These women could well be the only chance society will have of procreation if the epidemic reaches critical levels. However, these women often self-destruct due to pressures of being around and involved with ‘Assholes’, so they are often left unfit to care for children and often opt for abortion after symptoms such as infidelity and dishonesty emerge during early term pregnancy.

Please consider the gravity of this situation and assign a task force (preferably all-female) to look into this volatile issue.

With Gratitude,

The Women of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Like I said, we must address the issue, but first we need ribbons. I’m thinking black with little white skulls since red is already taken.

Alright, now for today’s Top Ten.

Top Ten Worst Things to Say to a Woman:

1. Your sister is way hotter than you.
2. That ain’t my baby, we’re taking this to Maury!
3. When you make that face, you remind me of an asthmatic elephant.
4. If you really loved me, you’d do anal.
5. There’s a party in my pants, and you’re invited.
6. When you talk like that, you remind me exactly of your mother.
7. Rape isn’t really a crime.
8. Man, I feel awful, I have an awful headache. (actually said to my sister by my brother-in-law as she was giving birth to a child)
9. Oprah is full of shit.
10. Cunt.

Remember, only girls get to have the Big C. That’s it for today, and just in case you’re wondering, I am not a man-hater. This blog entry, however, might be.

For our final visual of the day: A Real, Live, Asshole....

Well, Ass in a Hole.

Hooray for Oldness

2009-01-28T14:56:00.000-08:00

Everyone celebrate! It is my friend Camille's 21st birthday. Now all but one of my friends are 'of age'. I find it funny that in America, coming 'of'age' has little to do with sexual maturity, with the movement of responsibility within society. No, our 'of age' is the ability to drink oneself into a stupor without worrying about getting a ticket for hitting the vodka. In Europe, drinking is practically a part of childhood. Wine is served in sippie cups. In Europe, people rarely kill each other when someone cuts another person off in traffic. Perhaps this has something to do with it, everyone maintaining a nice buzz and whatnot.

Well, since my friend turned 21 and became an official adult, she has consumed less alcohol than I have. In fact, at midnight she had one drink at a bar and left, while myself and another friend tucked away a six-pack each and then ended the night. She is by far the most responsible 21 year old I have ever met, considering most of my friends when they came 'of age' ended up face down in a pile of vomit and bar snacks.

So, in honor of one of my best buds, here is the top ten of the day:

Top Ten Worst Birthday Gifts:

1. Herpes

2. The Bold & The Beautiful Complete Series Set of DVDs

3. Divorce Papers

4. ‘Hair Doll’ made from the discarded hair of ex-lovers.

5. Purses made of odd animal flesh. (This one a la toad)

6. Man-eating pet lizard.

7. A date with Ron Jeremy. (Shudder)

8. A bottle of Baby Mice Wine. (Yes, it's real and it's Korean)

9. A dick in a box.

10. John the Baptist’s Head on a Platter.

Happy B-Day.

My favorite part of today's B-day lunch convo:

Susan: I sound like a man when I sing
J-Man: No you don't
Susan: I do, I sound like a man and I think you should respect and acknowledge that
J-Man: Fine, you sound like a man.
Camille: Do you beatbox as well?
Susan: No, there's a spit element, I find it unsanitary.

Some names have been changed to protect the innocent. I find it entertaining that Susan, who is one of the more fun and imaginative people in the office (and that's a feat to attain), when posed with the chance to pick any pseudonym on earth, immediately shot back the name Susan. While a fine name itself (My sister's name is Susan), I would expect something more flamboyant. Well, it's your choice, Susan, and I respect that fully.

Until tomorrow.

For the People, By the People

2009-01-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

Well, I have been absent for some time. Not only was there a weekend, but I also damn near managed to snap my ankle this weekend. Yes, it is the luck of the Samantha, the unique knack I have for damaging myself. This time I was having a rip-roaring good time heading to my post office box at 4am and I managed to step 'funny'. Considering the pain involved, I found the step 'not funny' on many levels. I also did not find it all that 'funny' to be crawling back into my apartment, or the almost 10 hour wait to get my brother on the phone and over to my apartment so I could get to urgent care. In fact, even discussing this is not all that humorous.

What is apparently funny is the way I look when I walk with a cane. While I wish I could get compared to House, I have been compared to a sailor today. I am not exactly sure of the connection.

Anyway, on to more important things. In an effort to save money, our company has stopped production of our promotional Slinkys. In lieu of the Top Ten, I give you my honest reaction, the Slinky Manifesto:

While I have a formatted version (message with an email if you want a copy) I cannot get it to upload in a readable form. Here is the text:

The following is a manifesto, by the common folk of SOS Intl. While we are not individuals of great authority, but the very laborers of this great nation, we demand of the crown specific considerations, which while we consider to be self-evident, have been gravely overlooked by the ruling class.

Of the utmost concern to the proletariat of SOS Intl is the dwindling supply of a vital business implements. We speak, in defense, of the Slinky.

The SOS Intl Slinky, whether rainbowed or encrusted in paint symbolist of the world we tread, whether blue and green or multicolored, whether clear in plastic or opaque, is the hinge-pin of the great society within which we toil.

The suggested termination of Slinky production is tantamount to distributing chaos amongst the very cubicles of our association. The pillars upon which this great company is built would but crumble from the loss of a fundamental implement such as the Slinky.

The importance of the Slinky to the working class is four-fold:

One, the Slinky can walk down stairs, either alone or in pairs. This is a sign of our duality within the company, our individual accomplishments toward success and the necessary collaboration and union we all must hold dear to breed success and profit within today’s economic and corporate struggles.

Two, the Slinky is a spring, a spring, a marvelous thing, which makes a slinkity sound. How oft does the common man have access to marvel in ones life? When is he or she afforded the ability to create, to imagine those words, which do not exist? Our Slinkys are our very source of wonderment, our inspiration, our only outlet to the original and inspired which cubicle-dwellers are so universally denied. To take our Slinkys is to wrench away the freedoms we imagine we have, to diminish our faint hopes, which force us through our daily duties.

Three, a Slinky is a wonderful toy, and is fun for a girl and a boy. In a world where the equality of the sexes is but a dream, this is the uniting factor, the equalizing element that allows man and woman to stand on even ground and work together, in harmony, for company greatness. To disavow us of this aspect is to create an atmosphere of sexism and bias, which would crush the very institution in which we work.

Four, Everyone knows the Slinky. The Slinky is not unlike the concept of God, a familiar element, a welcoming bastion, a staple of life, which we all collectively recognize. The Slinky is what ties women and men together, what drives them and pushes them to strive. To deprive us of the Slinky is no less than to kill God, and to do that would be to undo the workings of the commercial enterprise in which we live during business days and working weekends.

In closing, to remove the Slinky from the masses is to eliminate the heart of our company. Slack jaws, dead eyes and lifeless spirits will walk the halls of this Ballantyne office. What was once the great institution of SOS Intl shall become a shell, a faint memory of the happy, working days of times past when the Slinky was plentiful.

This is why we, the undersigned, demand of the aristocracy with this manifesto, to Save Our Slinkys. It is not without trepidation that we sign; yet it is with a firm conviction that we declare,

Give us Slinkys, or Give Us Death!

We, the assembled Representatives of the Company of SOS Intl, do solemnly publish and declare that the Save Our Slinkys Manifesto is of paramount importance, and hereby endorse the statements within.

Signed:

The employees of SOS Intl.

Intelligence is Tantamount

2009-01-22T12:12:00.000-08:00

This is a pre-post. Waiting for more brilliant ideas (they often come hand in hand with the bourbon), and when they arrive, I will edit in more blog. But for now, the Top Ten:

Top Ten Uses For A PhD.

1. Show it off to your friends, stun and impress them with your knowledgeness.
2. The ink in Ph.D.’s has hallucinatory capabilities. Roll a doobie and double up on your pleasure.
3. Dominoes, Chili and other participating restaurants offer a 10% discount and other promotional offers to Ph.D.’s.
4. Join MENSA.
5. Send copies as a warning to enemies. They will flee from your smartnocity or bow to your superiority.
6. Use in lieu of cash during a high stakes poker game.
7. Stop global warming with your sheer brainpower.
8. Use it to add a little spice to your favorite dish.
9. Write a list of important books you’ve read on the back of it. Show it to colleagues so they know how much better than them you are.
10. Use it to lure young uneducated coworkers into your office/home/bedroom/Ballantyne Hotel and have wild, torrid affairs with them.

And the worst idea on earth:

null - Watch more free videos

Listed Offenses

2009-01-21T23:58:00.000-08:00

As yesterday was a snow day, I received the day off, so today's doubling up the Top Tens. Today I had a mix of the most exciting and horrifically boring days one could have. I spent the hours between 7:30 am and 5:30 pm in the 'All Hands Meeting', and during that time nearly killed myself with a spoon in a desperate attempt to avoid any more droning meeting topics.

While I respect and am happy to work with my fellow co-workers, I am not partial to hearing long, endless explanations of work projects I am already fully aware of. I certainly never again feel the need to hear a stilted, two-hour presentation on how to work the timesheet system ever again.

While contemplating the possibility of escape via bloody coup/co-worker uprising, I did two things: One, I wrote the following Top Ten lists, and Two, I noticed one of our contracters had his hand down his pants. Well, I guess that's a way to stay awake...

Top Ten Most Boring Lecture Subjects:

1. The Mating Habits of the Asexual Mole Weasel
2. The History of Carpet: Threads and Fibers
3. Pitch Darkness: A Visual Presentation
4. Basic and Advanced Corporate Speech
5. How to Calculate the Vectors of Geothermals
6. Filtering Water: Safe Practices and Procedures
7. Proper Use of Rulers: Straight Lines and Measurements
8. Filibusters of the Past
9. The Presidential Run of Fred Thompson
10. Cost Accounting/Time Reporting

Top Ten Most Exciting Lecture Subjects:

1. Big Explosions: Detonations and Results
2. Puppies!
3. How to Properly Perform a Bank Heist
4. The History of Hunter S. Thompson
5. The Mating Habits of Hollywood Starlets
6. Winning the Lottery: A Failproof Plan
7. Why Pimps Don't Commit Suicide
8. Tom Cruise's Candid Thoughts on Psychology
9. Flesh Eating Diseases: A Visual Presentation
10. Girls on Trampolines, With Pillows for Fighting

Now for the excitement of my evening...

After I got out of work, I headed home to get ready to go back out with the people I work with for a work-related dinner. There's a lot of work in that sentence, right? Well there was a fuck ton of work in my day. Feeling like I'd been ass-raped by the Steal-your-free-time fairy, I open the door to find my entire apartment filled with smoke.

Hooray.

I just spent the whole day bored out of my mind while my apartment began to smoulder from a distant sense of my rising mercury and I'd mentally set the place on fire with my heavily repressed rage.

Actually my exact thoughts were: Holy shit I somehow set the apartment on fire. My deposit's gone, my shit is burned to hell, and my cat is dead.

Once entering, I realized the smoke was something else, since it didn't smell like the raging fires of my earthly possessions. Instead it smelled a bit like the time I killed a vacuum cleaner by sucking half a tablecloth into it. The engine burned out and filled my place with much the same smell. But as I wasn't vacuuming throughout the day in an attempt to fumigate my apartment with the reek of frying electronics, I figured it was the heater. So I called my landlord.

The landlord is a very nervous Indian man who wandered about the apartment looking for things I could have done to make the smoke and finally he called the heater guys. During the time he spent at the apartment, a friend of mine came over because I had called and said my apartment was full of smoke. The ringer on my phone was off for the office meetings, so I didn't catch her three frantic calls on the way over. While I was watching my ever-pensive landlord get up on chairs to whuff the heating vents, she was imagining how she would have to kick in the door and pull my lifeless corpse from a burning building.

Don't I have rock-star friends? Man, she would have done some total action movie shit to save my ass. As it was, we instead shared a glass of wine and went off to the work dinner wherein I managed to sit down to eat with one of the more offensive men I have ever met.

We'll call him Dino.

Dino is an older Northerner with little sense of decency and a penchant for making sexist and homophobic jokes. While I'm out at work, I don't flaunt it in front of our contractors as most of them are good ole boys and I just don't need to be dealing with that shit when I'm trying to get final reports and other data from them. Well, Dino proceeds to compare me to Blanche from the Golden Girls, Laverne from Laverne & Shirley, and then call me a debutante, all while making gay jokes at another co-worker of mine sitting next to him. Oh what fun.

Meanwhile, further down the table, my boss was discussing the Hollywood gays, and suddenly became self-conscious, worrying that she had in some way offended me. While I don't think the discussion of which men in Hollywood are gay can be in any way homophobic, I wish she could have heard Dino making cracks about how my coworker could manage his 'coming out'.

The crown jewel of the night, I was trying to set a plate down and I said, 'I don't know where I can put this.' Dino proceeded to follow up with: 'You're a debutante, I'm sure you can find a place to put it." Then he winked.

Dino was the man with his hand down his pants.

On the upside, the food was good, at least three of us in the weight loss challenge ate tons of it and downed the wine, and the tiramisu rocked. Also, tomorrow I have no meetings.

Finally, I must take the time to bemoan the trees. Because we are living in a green world and I have not taken the time to cry for my sister forests. In memoriam, today's video:

Cancer Sticks Give You Cancer

2009-01-19T13:51:00.000-08:00

Today marked the first day of the all hands meeting at my work. While I think the phrase 'all hands' sounds a bit kinky...like the beginning to a session of group sex or something, it is in fact a very long sit-down with everyone in the company to discuss everything on earth.

Case in point:

Today we were discussing the new Employee Handbook and somehow the conversation turned to Third Hand Smoke. Now I know what you're thinking: You have a new Employee Handbook?! What was wrong with the old one?

Instead of answering that burning question, let us discuss Third Hand Smoke. This is apparently a pressing situation wherein scientists believe that smokers leave traces of smoke on their clothes, carpets, and household pets. They are unsure if stainless steel is also a victim of Third Hand Smoke. However, when one puffs around Fluffy, the smoke fills his tender terrier hairs and then Fluffy becomes a yapping tromping cancer demon ready to give all non-smokers who near his doggy presence the Big C.

I was unaware that my entire collection of clothes is actually a biohazard that can induce the uncontrolled replication of cells in other people.

I feel a bit like an X-Man.

So, for today's Top Ten:

Top Ten Things to Do with Third Hand Smoke (THS) Items:

1. Roll up THS curtains, light them on fire and inhale the nicotine stored in them.*
2. Send THS clothing to enemy countries as a slow-working form of bio-terrorism.
3. Use THS items to build a protective wall about your home/apartment/lean-to/cardboard box to prevent non-smoking thieves from entering.
4. Finally get rid of that aging relative whose inheritance you want by sending them THS items as gifts.
5. Utilize a THS flag as a protectant against avid non-smokers.
6. Bring THS items into a California bar in order to create mass hysteria of non-smoker health nuts...the soapboxes will fly.
7. Encase yourself in a cocoon of THS cloth, remain there for two weeks, and emerge as a giant cancer butterfly.
8. THS items are the perfect way to commit a slow suicide and still let your family cash in on that life insurance policy.
9. THS frying pans, bakeware, and cooking utensils get that extra smoky flavor into food.
10. Use THS tampons as easy abortion tools. (WARNING: Must use repeatedly or otherwise you will end up with a low birthweight baby)

Well, I'm not sure about the validity of THS, but I do know one thing:

Well, that's it for smoking. However, instead of the picture of the day, I'm going to deliver some video, since I absolutely love this commercial:

Plants and Vegetables

2009-01-16T12:27:00.000-08:00

Today is Day One of the 'Withdrawal Diaries'. I made it through last night, no drinking, no smoking, no processed food and no high fat content. I stayed up all night drinking herbal tea and trying to think about all sorts of charming things other than how much this whole thing sucks. What's even better is that when I got in today, I found my competitors already chowing on the fast food breakfasts and hitting the typical lunch spots. I made sure to let them know I had left ice cream in the freezer for them. Yay for competitive spirit.

Well, the fish in the office are dying at an alarming rate again. About once every few months there is a massive fish die-off in one of our aquariums. Six have gone to visit the porcelain god, and now the water has clouded up and the fish have numbered days. In trying to save them, a coworker began emptying the tank and replacing the water. To my disgust, the emptied water was poured into our office plants. Office plants are houseplants our bosses' wife attempts to kill and they are brought back here to be nursed back to health. Our office has a small potted jungle that will undoubtedly, if this water disposal goes on, end up smelling like a fishmarket after the apocalypse.

We at the office were also blessed with a colorful Christmas bonus: each employee was given a poinsettia. Most are still present, and somewhat alive. Mine has a few leaves left and if A Charlie Brown Christmas had A Charlie Brown Poinsettia, mine would be it. One employee has managed to keep hers vibrant and it is flowering and growing, and will soon need to be re-potted. As of now, though, our office has a number of dying fish and poinsettias.

Hence the need for today's top ten:

Top Ten Uses for a Leftover Christmas Poinsettia:

1. Whittle the stems down and use them as mini-spears in your war against the Lilliputians.
2. Poinsettia Bread.
3. Utilize the juices to temporarily blind your enemies (It works).
4. Save until next Christmas and re-gift.
5. Arrange nine of them in a pyramid and commence to Poinsettia Bowl.
6. Arrange the flowers into a bouquet and bring them to your next date.
7. Poinsettias + Scrapbooks = Work of Art.
8. Poison all the dogs.*
9. With some festive gourds and a few fern branches, poinsettias will make the perfect centerpiece for your weekend meal.
10. Poinsettias are actually a vital element of the ‘dirty bomb’. By arranging dynamite, household bleach and a kilo of cocaine around 12 poinsettia plants, one can create the equivalent of nuclear detonation.

* This item submitted by Catherine Holland

In looking for something for the daily photo that could run in the theme of today's poinsettia top ten, I found a use I never thought of, and never ever would want to try. Look upon the horror of...

Poinsettia Sex!

Good lord, are they not aware that poinsettias are worse than poppies? They can kill! These are deadly plants that can blind with a single foul move....

Also, are those both men, a man and a woman, or two women? I honestly have no clue, but they are danger dogs by all means, willing to risk it all for an orgasm in a field of Christmas Joy. One day the bards will sing of them....

With that, I wish you all a happy Friday. Find something better to do this weekend than doing it in a traditional holiday jungle.

Shocking New News (And Redundant Redundancy)

2009-01-15T14:05:00.000-08:00

Today was the beginning of the Weight Loss Challenge. I weighed in prettttty high, but that means I have all the more to lose. The games began immediately, with my coworkers sending out pictures of fattening food, discussing the best oil and sugar filled dishes at local retaurants, and I sent out videos of people frosting cakes. Tonight I go for my first run of the challenge, and I'm actually looking forward to it. I will also bake a homemade apple pie to place in the office and tempt the others.

Today was not all goofiness, I got some work done, hence today's top ten:

Top Ten Inappropriate Song/Moment Combos

1. “Bitches Love Me” by Mindless Self indulgence at the NOW annual gala.
2. “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails while having sex for the first time with your virgin girlfriend.
3. “Guilty As Charged” by Dewey Cox just before the jury heads in to deliberate your guilt.
4. “Two Pina Coladas” by Garth Brooks at an AA meeting.
5. “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” at your mother-in-law’s funeral.
6. “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa when Dubya is pondering the nuke button.
7. “Rape Me” by Nirvana in a men’s jailhouse shower room.
8. “Fuck da Police” by N.W.A. right after getting pulled over.
9. “Don’t You Want Me Baby” by the Human League during divorce proceedings.
10. “Jungle Fever” by Stevie Wonder at the Presidential Inauguration.

Last night I had the joy of witnessing an almost gas station robbery. That's when two guys try to pull the till out of the register and an off-duty cop goes after them with his fists. It was all very exciting, and I don't want to be a part of something like that ever again. It was quite awkward, especially since I figured chasing after the guys was not the cop's best choice as he had no gun and they might have. I did not have a gun, and stayed next to the juice I was about to buy. I did not end up buying the juice.

On the upside, while messing about today since I could not focus, I found this charming photo:

Are they flashing The Shocker?!! Two in the pink, one in the stink....And yes, that is Dubya in the middle. Favorite presidential press photo ever.

Return to the CoffeePot

2009-01-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

So I'm back, with much more interesting stuff to say. At least what I think is more interesting. I have a desk job now, I sit in front of a computer and diligently work at my daily tasks. However, when I finish that, I have many hobbies. First and foremost, the Top Ten.

A couple days ago, I realized that Top Tens were a fantastic way to spend excess time. It all sprouted from a conversation about what a friend of mine would do if one of her lusty paramours crossed the line and decided to pop the question.

Here goes:

Top Ten Ways of Turning Down an Engagement Proposal

1. Sorry, but I'm already secretly married.
2. I would, but I'm having 'feminine problems'.
3. No thanks...I'm good.
4. I would, but tomorrow I have to catch an intergalactic ship to the Alpha quadrant.
5. Thanks, but my suicide pact goes into effect tomorrow, so I'll be otherwise occupied.
6. I think you're actually my brother.
7. I don't want to get married, but you're welcome to join my harem.
8. Now isn't the best time, but you can have your chance when I go on The Bachelorette.
9. Sorry, I'm saving myself for Flavor Flav.
10. Honestly, I'd rather be the leading victim in an episode of CSI.

Number two came right along the next day:

Top Ten Ways of Letting Someone Know You Might Have Given Them an STD

1. With Flowers.
2. On the Digimax during the halftime of their favorite sporting event.
3. Make a toast at their mother's/brother's/sister's/cousin's wedding.
4. Two words: Text Messaging.
5. Whisper it to them after a night of great sex.
6. Post it on their Facebook bulletin board.
7. As a shout out on the radio.
8. Billboards aren't just for advertising.
9. Have their mother/father/significant other break the news for you.
10. Don't.

I'd like to share the third list, but it is a dangerous piece of writing that could likely offend, so I will refrain from blogging it to the world. Instead, you can message me and I'll send it out. Small bit of info: if you don't work at my job, you likely won't get it anyway.

Well, on to other ventures. The time has come for me to do something creative and daring. Since I'm generally not daring, I figure I may break a bone doing whatever I do. Instead of trying skydiving or shark swimming, I will accompany a straight friend of mine to speed dating where we will begin a challenge to see which one of us gets the most mens' numbers.

For the unaware reader, I am a lesbian, and not the Katy Perry type. Also not the Kd Lang type, but that's because suits and short hair look really bad on me. I think this exercise will be great fun and if any of you dear readers knows how to set me up with a hidden camera, I would love to get some candid footage of me hitting on men.

Another fun challenge I am involved in is the office weightloss betting pool. Three of us here have a few extra pounds and we're each tossing 20 bucks into a pool to see who loses the most over 90 days. To win, since I am competitive and must win, I am giving up processed foods, refined sugar, alcohol, cigarettes and going for two two-mile runs a day. This all starts tomorrow after weigh-in, which will occur around 2pm.

Everyone, look forward to the Withdrawal Diaries, the desperate writings that will undoubtedly follow as I remove several of my favorite vices from my life.

Well, as I still have a couple of marketing documents to complete (Those brilliant, illustrious works of penned art), I must say goodbye for now, but not without the photo of the day:

New Office

2008-08-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

So I have a real job now. I work at a small office for a small corporation called SOS Intl. We sell training to power professionals. If that sounds boring, it's because it is. I am very bored, but I'm making quite a bit of money, which is good, until you have to pay your bills.

Today I am having a little experiment at work, as Fridays are pretty dull and empty. I am downing the coffee and waiting to see how long it takes before the different members of the office figure out that I am insanely amped on caffeine.

One of the receptionists noticed at about 10:30 when I hopped back and forth past her desk on my way to the bathroom. My pee officially smells like coffee.

I will update the experiment as time goes by.

Also, a bit nervous about lunch as my parents are taking me to a nice restaurant and they might notice my rapid speed of talking. Let's see what happens.

Perspective

2008-04-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

So I took some time off. Well, not some, a whole crapload. I've been taking time off for two months, and I can't really tell anyone what I've been doing because I myself am unsure of the contents of these past days.

On reflection, I operated at the most basic:

Get out of bed
Eat
Go to work
Eat
Leave Work
Eat
Drink
Watch TV
Sleep
Repeat

This process went on for almost 60 days with nothing remarkable other than the overwhelming grief of missing my son. I mean overwhelming because I hit the point where I no longer had movement, action, anything other than the aversion and immersion of that sensation. Depression was non-existent because I was too devoid to be depressed. I was robotic, continuing with each computation of my day as if it was a process, an action/reaction that simply was performed.

When I came out, it was like realizing I was part of the world again, but I have to say I'm ashamed I was a bit disappointed that I had come back. I was working to acceptance, and I could not get there, mainly because my son's presence in my life was restored and suddenly emotion returned, I returned, all became light and life again. Well, light tinged just a bit by dark...because my ex is still a pain in the ass.

Something horrible and hidden in me wanted to stay stuck just long enough to accept my loss and start over. A fresh beginning is something I understand I will never have the chance to afford, but for a second, I thought I might have a clean break, I know...horrible...but I was almost excited.

I of course gave this bit up in therapy, and for a moment I realized why I pay her. She listened to my admission and said something really damned smart:

You don't need to accept his loss, you need to accept the roller-coaster ride your ex keeps taking you on. He'll never be gone, but she will always keep taking him away and returning him."

She's right. For so long I've been trying to find some way to accept loss, and I have a much harder job of accepting constant frustration.

The next step is teaching myself how to not to get frustrated, something I think God himself would have an issue with if he were dealing with my ex. But at least I have an organic concrete step to making it somewhere other than where I was.

Hurricane of Shit

2008-03-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Somewhere along the line, somewhere in the great depths of history, my soul, the dirty rag I carry around which keeps getting reincarnated, did something terribly wrong. I am at the point where I no longer have to divest myself of personal responsibility, because the world has done it for me. There is no preventing the shitstorm I have been sailing through in the past month, no alternate path, no choice but to move straight through, find the eye, breathe for a moment, and then dig my heels in and try to walk out of it.

Karmically, I am screwed. Not because I do bad, shit, aside from cussing, I've pretty much done right by people. I was always too busy getting screwed to screw back. I can say I've taken a lot of hits, and man, my friends would agree...in front of or behind my back.

Before this month, my life had been a mess. Now it's even messier. I have four dead people in my life, like little corners of grief to surround the grief masterpiece building for years within my life. My kid is going to Florida with my ex. I haven't seen him more than once in the past three weeks. I've been alternating patterns of denial and depression but can't even manage to get angry anymore.

I'm just skimming the top of life these days, preferring the buzz of a couple beers to trying to start over and do something with myself. Even as laid back as that is, I still seem to attract finishing touches of nastiness, like the brush strokes that really make the trees stand out from the forest.

My old sin, women who hate me, who cheat on me, who treat me badly, this is back. One woman, helping me through this, was solid, I saw something to hold to, and find out just as I'm about to lost cool over my kid, that she's been lying as well, or lied in the past couple weeks and feels bad for lying so is putting up with me. Man, I am one lucky fucking soul.

The worst is that I'm still functioning, and that makes everyone think I'm ok. I'm making it to work, I'm doing my job, hell.....she must be ok. I don't think I've had a friend even try to talk with me about it in person, they just want to cheer me up, take me drinking, watch a movie. I'm losing a damned child and I need someone who sits with me and helps me deal with that. But even my parents can't do that. They take me out, feed me, play scrabble, bullshit about and when they leave I sit in my hovel of a room and try to suck it all in.

I'm always disappointed by people, always let down, but I always hoped that if I really needed it, the people in my life would be there for me. I secretly thought it might happen, if something horrible came along, that I might have one person just to be there.

Guess I was wrong. We all do go through this alone.

Man Not Woman

2008-02-17T20:36:00.000-08:00

I get into a conversation with a good friend last night, we're talking about our love lives, life in general, and our success in it. We get into gender pretty quickly, and the conversation gets odd. "I think I would be happier as a woman," he says, being fairly honest despite his tendencies to say things specifically for reaction's sake. He's not gay, a very straight, pretty masculine guy, but he appreciates style, likes make-up, knows how hair should be worn.
"Well, I've always said if I could take a pill and be straight, I would." It's my response, somewhat on the same level, wishing to be someone I'm not. "Don't say that," he says, but I know he knows why I say it. I am a woman of simple dreams. I want someone to support me as I raise the kids. I want a white picket fence, children, a big fluffy dog, a nice house, one of those jogging strollers and a coffee group at caribou. I want to be a trophy wife, but I don't have the trophy body and I don't like the dick.
"I might make a great man," I say, just mulling it over, and he nods absentmindedly, we're both in our heads now, and mine's thinking about life with penis, how it might be to be a man, to take all that is masculine in me and let it take over. I have never been attracted to the masculine, never wanted that for myself, always avoiding the butchy girls, always wanting the long-haired bombshells in short skirts and high heels. I would certainly get more of what I want if I were an attractive, or even decent-looking man.
However, I can't imagine enjoying life with a penis, I can't imagine not strapping on a nice pair of heels again, or straightening my hair before a night on the town. I like smelling like Victoria's Secret body spray and I would miss having breasts, which work wonders on all aspects of life. I would not miss periods, shaving my legs, shaving 'down there' or worrying about every ounce of fat on my body.
What I can't get over, is that I think in the whole damned world, the most beautiful sight of a person is two gorgeous females kissing with utter passion. The moment, shared between two women, not of sex, but of need for one another, for connecting, I think is amazing. I don't want to be a man kissing a woman, I don't want to be a woman kissing a man, I want to be a woman kissing a woman, and that's just in me, cemented inside like some infallible compass for my sexual and personal relationship choices. Perhaps I was born with it, I think I was...that it is ingrained in my very DNA, written into my soul. Even if it isn't, there's no way to change it.
That's why there will never be a pill, a shot, a treatment for being gay, because it is something to do with personal aesthetic, the way things are seen. Just as there is no way to treat someone for having a specific taste in art or literature or food. You can't change it, and if you do, eventually it is rejected, pushed away by the inner person who knows what they like, what moves them, what pushes them to excitement and satisfaction. For me, it me, a feminine woman, kissing another beautiful woman, and that is it. Even if it means that my dreams may be cut short a bit, perhaps I can find something to allay that loss. Perhaps she will be beautiful and kind enough to make me not care about the color of my fence or the fluffiness of my dog.

Beyond the breakers

2008-02-12T21:54:00.000-08:00

I made a mistake somewhere down the line.

I don't know when, perhaps sometime between thinking that the Princess Bride was the epitome of love, and finding myself in the cuts of Magnolia, I lost reality and ended up somewhere confusing and far too edited to be life.

I see love as a plotted, scene-by-scene thing, begging the perfection of celluloid, needing the silver and shine of film. I am lost, in the need for a dramatic moment, a safe space in the dialogued and choreographed life of film. I need those moments, like I need air, I live off of them, tanking them, sucking them quietly to preserve them for a moment when I am dry. I need the romance, I need the hope, the pure and simple hope that love can arrive immediately and serendipitously to me. I am lost in this mess that desires true love.

It is why I watch the L-Word, the most delicious, decadent and obscene of lesbian obsessions, the great guilty pleasure of women who love women, it is why I catch the teenie-bopper romances, tuning in to the great 80's flicks like Breakfast Club, Sweet 16, Pretty In Pink. I need to curb myself, but I'm still stuck on the concept of finishing together.

At some point, I must let this go, must make an escape from the mess that is my concept of love. I must accept that love is not a tornado, but a slow wind that comes in and changes things despite its subtlety. I must find my peaceful monsoon. But for now, I'll allow the wild torrential rains of life to take over my life, because I am still young and need something to conquer me.

Perhaps when I'm older, I will find the quiet and still, but the big waves beckon me, and I am paddling out...

LOST

2008-02-05T21:31:00.000-08:00

So I took the Lost quiz today, and when I started, I tried to think of which one I was most like, then I took it from two different places, and what the hell?

One Result: Kate Austen

"Because you are a smart person you can
manipulate people into doing almost anything. You tend to get into trouble because you do not like to follow rules. "

Another Result: Hurley

"You're always around as a less dramatic person to talk to and relieve otherwise serious tension. You like being around other people a lot, but if they ask you what you think, you've got no trouble saying exactly what's on your mind. Friendly, good-natured, and loyal, everyone likes hanging out with you! Advice: avoid playing the lottery. "

Seriously, two totally different freaking characters. I mean, really, now I realize these tests are BS, and I'm asking myself why I didn't realize it earlier. The vain person in me, though, is saying...you're really Kate, but I know I'm the Hurley.
The freaking truth is I'm neither, I'm me, and why on God's green earth am I taking tests to find out which damned Lost character I am when I haven't taken the time to finish a single short story in sixteen months?
I could blame the internet and society, but the truth is, I need withdrawal, I need computer crap re-hab, I need something that shuts off the internet and keeps me from blogging myself to death.
That's the truth, and I'm sticking to it.
*yeah, right*

Something To Think About: The Big Block

2008-01-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

Today I was complaining about my writer's block to my therapist, stating that my recent writing had some major issues. Her response:
"You say your writing is disorganized, highly emotional, and lacking meaning...perhaps that is because your current life situation directly reflects that."
Damn. Did my shrink just call me out?
I wonder if my writing has always been a reflection of my life. If so, then why do I attempt fiction? Why not work at non-fiction? Why am I trying to write at all, if all it consists of is an examination of self? Isn't that very self-absorbed of me, or is it some half-handed stab at enlightenment? All I know is the writing isn't going so hot and I am stuck like two teenage lovers with braces.

Turning Around In Circles

2008-01-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

I was so proud of myself recently. Granted, being proud of oneself is always a massive risk, because eventually you'll find some disappointment, in the same way you eventually find flaws in the people you date. Speaking of dating, that is why I was so proud of myself. You see, I finally went on multiple dates with a single individual. I broke the two-date record I'd been holding for some time and actually made it to third, fourth, fifth...came close to losing count.
For those unfamiliar with my situation, I hate dating. I have barely dated in the almost two years since I broke it off with my ex. My ex was first in all ways: first real girlfriend, first engagement, first person I ever had a child with, first love (at least I think it might have been love, it made me very uncomfortable at times, and I think love and indigestion have quite a bit in commmon...how else does one explain the butterflies in the stomach feeling?), first to break my heart, first to snag all custodial rights of my kid, first to drive me nearly insane, first to give me a true sense of loss....lots of firsts.
To say the least, I was reluctant about starting over. I have bad taste in women. They tend to hurt me and I tend to let them. Numerous women have cheated on me, used me, all the crap that I could blame them for, but it was my own damned fault for choosing them and allowing it all.
So, after a couple years of introspection, after digging deep and finding myself, after reading stupid self-help books that often contradicted one another and generally abused eastern philosophy, I was ready to date.
One conclusion I had made was my standards were guiding me towards destructive women. Generally I date very attractive girls. My ex was a model at one point, other dates (especially the ones that cheated) had modeled at some point. I like them thin, attractive, hungry-looking. Granted, I will go for anyone with a brain and a sweet face, but these were the types I tended to catch, and I made a concerted effort to not date the slim, sexy, dangerous types. I was equipped with this single standard and went out to the singles' club searching for a somewhat average-looking gal who might make a good girlfriend.
I thought I had failed one particular evening when around 1pm I was still alone looking at a lesbian club filled with butches and 40-year-olds (ok, so I kept the age standards). Then a decent-looking gal who was about a foot shorter than me beckoned. Fantastic, I though, I don't even have to do the work, she's calling me out, so she obviously likes me, if she can get past my abysmal dancing, I might have a shot at getting a number.
Turns out I did, she was a lovely Peruvian woman around my age and we set a date for coffee later. "I will call you as soon as I get home," she said. Of course she forgot, but I got the call eventually and showed up at the Caribou.
First date, we drank coffee and I met five or so of her friends. Second date, dancing with her friends. Third date, coffee again with friends. I got confused. I'd been out of the game a bit, but were friends supposed to accompany every date. Well...I asked the friends when she went away to the bathroom if she was into me, the gay guy friends said yes, I'm good.
Damn, I was so proud, I even told my therapist I was dating again. I mean, look at me, hanging out with a nice, smart, funny and charming gal who I was attracted to despite the difference between her and my previous dates. Here I am going ahead with my life: the strong, healed, much-improved me who can take on the world and search for love despite past heartbreak. Here I am taking my life by the reigns and preparing to date continuously until at some point we actually have a date without her friends and then maybe we'll even get to make out.
I was gloating from within.
So the great thing in the atmosphere that guides and eternally fucks with my fate decided to send me a wake-up. It started snowing, rare occurrence here, so of course I text the girl to tell her to look outside. The romantic in me was dutifully imagining both of us staring out at the fluffy white from our beds, peering out into the night, united in the beauty of a snow-dipped landscape. She responded with a positive reply: Yes, the snow is beautiful. Great, she was up, so I told her we should chat, she should call me, thinking that would unite us in vocal recognition of the snow, a through-the-phone-lines connection that would just make us all the closer. I was a romantic of epic proportions.
Her response was unexpected and very unromantic: "I can't talk right now, my girlfriend's here and she might think something's up."
"WHAT?"
"Oh I told you a million times I had a girlfriend"
"I didn't catch that"
"Well I did, I have witnesses my relationship is different, I'll explain tomorrow"
I love text messaging. She managed to communicate all this without saying one word, and everything I wanted to say to her would take way too long to text. Plus, I needed the aid of intonation to bring across my sincerest feelings, and to exude the drippingly sarcastic insults I felt like hurling at the time.
How could I have become the 'other woman' again? I mean, I thought this was something left behind to the days of high school and some of college. I was done with this, long ago graduating to the more complex role of caretaker, insult absorber, and now super-dater, woman who found people with minimal mental issues and next to no drama.
I was back. Back to myself, back to the person I had hoped I had gotten away from. There was no rhyme or reason for this failure, for my inability to change my bad taste in women through a new selection standard. I thought to the pretty girls I had avoided to spend time with this average one who often spoke of her high colonics yet never seemed to make clear that she was cheating on her girlfriend with me. How did I end up at the beginning of the tunnel after walking all the way through to the end?
Perhaps I blinded myself to the possibility that she was dating someone else. The protective friends, the slow progression of the physical elements, the fact that sometimes she would mention that her 'girlfriend loves this song' or her 'girlfriend went to that restaurant once'. But the term girlfriend is in and of itself a form of confusion. After all, my straight friends call all their friends who are girls girlfriends. I figured she was referencing her friends who were girls. It wasn't as though she was saying 'my girlfriend loves this particular kama sutra position'.
Perhaps it's because I've been dwelling in the world of the straights for too long and somehow lost the concept that many lesbians find themselves comfortable with dating multiple people, having serious relationships stacked on top of flings, piled onto coffee dates and dancing out at clubs, hips grinding with someone other than your live-in girlfriend.
Maybe it was my bad, but somehow I feel I should have been taken aside and told: I am with someone else. I am attached, taken, not to be had by you, or if I am, you are the floozy that I'm screwing around with. After all, I was clear that I was a parent, that she played second fiddle to my kid in the same way that everything else in my life does, something that many dates do not want to hear, but in a way need to.
Now she has called and left no messages. Texted to ask where I am. She is wondering why I'm not cool with what has happened. She is confused as to why I flipped out to find that she has a girlfriend out there who might flip out if she knew about me. She must not be as smart as I assumed she was, because she should be fully aware of why the only message I've sent her states 'how different is your relationship?'
I am here, now disappointed in myself for turning in circles, wearing down the mats with my incessant repetitive motion, a destructive circle I can't seem to break where I date girls who are destined to screw with me. I'm not sad, more pissed and and dissatisfied. I should be doing better. I should be fucking Super-date. I should I should I should I should....
I'm going out to a concert tonight, going to find a damned intelligent, funny, and beautiful girl, and if she dates me and fucks with me, I'm going to dump her and go out and find another one. Fuck it, let's do this trial and error. Any takers?

Finding Home

2008-01-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve been spending the past eight years of my life searching for my place as an adult. Between college, partnership (hell, it was marriage), raising my son, trying to be a writer, trying to be a lover, trying to be a grown-up, earning a grad degree, divorce, custody issues, moving home, working through the demons that arose, and everything else that comes between 18 and 26, I think I lost my way. I never found my new home, my place, my life as a mature individual.

While I act, think and live as an adult, the very issues of career and homestead separate me from truly separating childhood from now. Granted, in a few short years, I lived a lifetime of stuff. I became a stay at home parent, a contract writer, a grad student, hell I was inches from the white picket fence. Then I managed the break-up, the arguments, the mess of a wrecked love. But all that work left me behind the line of where I’m supposed to be by societal standards. I don’t understand, but the rules are there even if unclear.

Now I’m seeking home, where it exists, where I am comfortable in just being me. Some have suggested a temporarily solitary existence, a one-bedroom apartment and me and some pets wending away the time. Others have suggested a cubicle, a place where I sit and work at others’ plans, forwarding my bankbook and possibly meeting new and interesting cubicle people.

I’m not sure what I want. I’m hoping for some sort of internal compass to kick in, send me to the X, take me to my destination, the realization of me. It’s been said that true realization is an internal quiet, but I doubt that. My life has in its own way been quiet, hours passing by unremembered because I was alone, empty of thoughts, shutting down to heal, recover from life and what it had dealt me. These moments, while I’m sure peaceful at the time, are not a life.

So now I’m looking for the more vibrant life, with the colorful, meaningful things, memories that are worth holding close, keeping for life, relishing when things go ill. I remember times like that, prior to being removed from my life as a parent, as a homemaker, and I want new ones, not to replace the old, but to accompany them. Something that acts as proof I have moved on, but also just to have and make happy with.

Now I’m beginning again, trying the positive outlook. I’m unsure, unprepared, but willing. The one thing I know for sure is something will change, it always does.

New Years Bash (And The Importance of Apology)

2008-01-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

This New Years was supposed to be cheap. And not cheap as in bad, cheap as in: my friends are all showing up in my city and we're drinking at home playing poker and having a blast cheap. No driving, no taxis, no clubs, no bars, just four guys, me and a shitload of rum and possibly signs posted that state: "No tampons in toilet or you pay Roto-rooter" Last year one of my guys ended up wandering around with one of those signs proudly taped to his chest.

Like all my pipe dreams, this one went the way of the toilet as well. I get a call from my best friend telling me we have to go down to Atlanta instead. I couldn't afford it. He said it was important. I'm a sucker for my presence being important, so I borrowed some money and postponed a few bills and got in the car. Our destination: His new true love, a gal with black hair and red lips who was his future and I had to meet her and help him make a good impression on her because otherwise it wouldn't work as well.

These are moments when one should suspect something. After all, why am I playing a part in his getting laid? Shouldn't I be attempting to get laid on New Year's? After all, he gets a new gal each week, I haven't had one since...well long enough for me to be pathetic.

Also, trip to Atlanta. Why was I going to Atlanta? I don't even care much for the place, but at least there might be more gay people there, right? I mean, there had to be one good looking ATL lesbian, right?

Well, we never made it there. See, apparently there's a suburb of the big ATL called Carrollton. Carrollton is the kind of pathetic college town you hope to god your kid never goes to. It's like a cross between podunk and more podunk. The gas stations were trashy, the houses looked like something out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and we ended up at an apartment building that on 9pm Dec. 31st, was entirely dark and quiet. Even my suburban house in Charlotte had to be plagued by bottle rockets and sordid illegal SC fireworks.

We met up with our other friends, who both stated immediately, "Why the hell are we here?" Exactly. Why aren't we in Atlanta? Why are we in a town that sounds like it was named after a favored grocer? Well, of course, because you guys couldn't make it to Charlotte. "Of course I could, Charlotte's way easier to get to than here." WHAT!

No, we were all in Crapass, GA so my best friend could hook up. We were there to help him get a girl. We seethed upon realization that this was some fucked up ploy for pussy. We wandered into the apartment and hit the rum, none of us having the poker chips since said friend had forgotten to organize the game.

Later that night, we ended up at a bar called Miller's, the most upscale joint in Carrollton. It was packed with faux yuppie couples, we sat outside, freezing our asses off, taking turns asking why we were there, as our plotting pal stated, "I'm perfectly happy here, and I'm staying until my girl shows up."

New Years hits and we force our way in. It takes me 20 minutes to order a drink. No one kisses me. I am anger, dripping mad, pushing the hairy man who keeps hitting on me out of my way. I walk outside and complain, then get introduced to the gal. I politely respond. Apparently not well enough. He points to some butch girls entering the bar. "Look, lesbians, follow them." His gal's no Betty Page, and I'm having a moment.

I want to tell him off there, but I'm just sober enough to wander to another bar. I should have smacked him for being such an ass. He can be a real jerk.

In the end, I manage to make out with a rather ugly girl, the kind I would only make out with if stuck in Carrollton, GA on New Year's Eve.

Finally, we go back. The guy gets the girl, and they head upstairs. We plot to ruin it all, to screw it up for him. Then we remind ourselves we're his friends, and do the confrontation thing. All goes well for the guy friend. He gets a genuine apology. He goes out, has a cigarette and guy talk and walks back in pleased as punch. Me, I get yelled at.

Called selfish and a pain in the ass and self-centered and here I am thinking, "I'm in crappy-town USA celebrating New Years practically alone so you can get laid and I'm the selfish prick?"

Long story somewhat less long, he apologized the next morning. After furiously ruminating on the evening's events, after fighting the urge to blog out my hatred, after wishing I could call him all the names that rushed around in my head, and even planning an early retreat from Georgia and this mess, his apology worked.

What is it about those we care for that all we ask is a decent "I'm sorry." I would have held a grudge for months if he hadn't pulled me aside and said what he did was wrong, I would have stopped speaking with him, I would have always remembered that evening in future arguments. (Ok, I'll probably still bring it up to win the next few fights.)

Maybe it's because I've been on the other side before. I've been wrong and it's been damned hard to say, yes, I fucked up, I treated my best friend like crap. I've had my embarrassing moments where I've shown my ass and had complete disregard for him. Hell, if I'd gone off on him the night before in front of the new girl, I would have just had another. I guess what I'm saying is, when it's real, when it means it, and when you're not coming up with it too late, an apology really has an amazing power. Without it, he and I would be back in the stages of rocky arguments and clashes that seem to create their own unique vicious circles.

Perhaps that's why my brother and I can't stand one another. I hardly remember him ever apologizing to me. In fact, he only sent an apology through my parents for disowning me during wife #2 (she was the Methodist preacher), and I suspect the apology was created by a mother desperately hoping to see two of her children in a room together again. He's beat me, yelled at me, embarrassed me, made rude drunken comments at me, and knocked everything I do and care about. Yet I could let all that crap slide somewhat if for once he could apologize to me. Just say, "hey, I was a dick last night, I'm sorry."

But that won't happen with my older brother. It won't happen with my ex. It will happen once every few years with my best friend and it will come at an extraordinarily vital time. He may be a jerk, but he's got damned good timing.

I wonder if I'm being a pushover, allowing a small set of words to make up for numerous misdeeds. Perhaps I am, but I tend to befriend strong personalities. I'm attracted to the clash, and if I chose to not listen to apologies anymore, I might well lose most of my friends and family. By allowing a couple words to make up for a horrible evening, I can let the New Year's shit go, I can walk away from it and see my best friend on Thursday and have a good time with him. Or if I wasn't such a pushover, I could argue with him about how he should treat me better, get angry at him for getting angry back, and get frustrated for expecting him to be someone he isn't.

The people we surround ourselves with are never easygoing. That's not the nature of humans in long-term friendships. I believe all families are at least slightly dysfunctional, and when you can accept an old friend's dysfunction into your own life, you're extending your family. In that twisted way, I think me accepting an I'm sorry for a horrible night makes me a better friend, and makes what he and I have a stronger friendship.

And anyways, long-term anger is no fun if you actually care about the person you're being angry at. I'd much rather spend my time hating Mr. Sperm Donor, the Wonder-Bum.

Crappy New Years

2008-01-01T02:53:00.000-08:00

Never make a New Years celebration center around getting a friend the perfect guy/gal for him/her. He/she will just screw you over and leave you in bumfuck nowhere Carollton, GA broke and pissed off.

A Note On Writing

2007-12-30T21:08:00.000-08:00

As I was writing an email today, I realized what I was saying had some merit outside of the person-to-person communication I was performing. So, as ugly as it can be, I'm re-posting a segment of said email:

"It is hard to keep the main characters fun, especially when they seem bored of you as you're writing them.I think that's the danger in spending so much time in another person's life, is that you may become entirely disillusioned with what you see. I guess the magic to my writing is I let the disappointment take over the text, infusing it with a sort of humane desperation, and dragging the characters to awful depths. Or perhaps I'm just torturing them on the page because I'm tired of what they have to say. Either way, I find writing to be at least slightly cathartic."

I want to take a look at my writing style now, specifically, because I find myself unable to write. Perhaps my block is due to a lack of scrutiny on my part. I have never focused largely on the elements that craft my work, instead producing my pages like a mad scientist, pounding away at sudden creation. As I was writing said email, I noticed that in this statement, I had a little bit of the concepts that drive my work, and perhaps if I can realize and accept them, I will again find the inspiration and drive to utilize them.

What I finally saw is the absolute violence and cruelty of my work is powered somewhat by a need to put my characters under the hot lights and see them sweat it out. Whether an awkward social situation or the actual dissection of a human being, I make my characters suffer their way through the work, flowering them into fully-fleshed creations via this painful journey. Without the horror and disparity of their lives, I cannot see them as human. Therefore I see that I cannot understand happiness and satisfaction as full, realized elements in a character. And if I cannot see characters as human if they are happy and pleased, how can I ever see that within myself? Can I understand the self as happy if I cannot understand a figment of my imagination as existing when in the same state? But this digresses...

I see that in my writing, I require the downward spiral in order to tell an effective story, and even the light at the end of the tunnel is just another, lighter tunnel. I guess it's the fact that I see humans as largely in pain, at least in this day and age, and without pain the happiness is not real. And after all, isn't all happiness tinged with some sort of unhappiness? The old you can't see light without the shadows crap. I just guess I want to see the dim light seem so fucking bright when shown in absolute darkness.

Quotes from the back of my mind...

2007-12-29T01:34:00.000-08:00

I feel in my life I have lost so much to the slack-jawed squinty-eyed stoners with shaggy hair and half-grown beards. I feel as though I’m owed something for that. And all I want is to be the skin that she is touching tonight.

Christmas Joy

2007-12-25T21:51:00.000-08:00

I understand why people drink at Christmas. It's a natural way to cope with an unnatural situation: families sharing company, often for the only time in the year, and trying to be nice to one another. Hell, even when I lived with my family members year-round, it was hard to keep us from killing one another. Now that we've found space, my family tries all the harder to murder one another whenever company is shared. Case in point, I spent time with my two brothers before Christmas. My older brother attempted to lure me outside for a fistfight. My younger brother retreated to the kitchen to ignore the both of us. And I tried to decide whether or not I wanted to fight in the ghetto (my older brother lives in Cracktown, USA. It's a joy). My need to break his nose over calling me a rich, spoiled kid was deflated by my younger brother's sudden litany about how, while he and myself were raised as wealthy spoiled children of rich Jews, my older brother had the poverty raising of a Catholic in a potato field. As I laughed, I grabbed my younger brother and fled the house, hoping my older sibling would forget the argument by today, when we were forced to have dinner with his soon-to-be mother-in-law and my parents. The food was bad, I was tense, my parents and his g/f's mother were ridiculously loud, and I think everyone was thankful for the wine.

Even more annoying were the events attached to my ex and our son. I managed to get him on the way home from Christmas Brunch. She whined, saying she didn't feel at home spending Christmas with us, because I didn't treat her like family. Bullshit. She loves drama, she loves making me suffer, and I knew this was a little sleeper cell waiting to explode. Sure enough, I told her she was welcome and then ceased to worry about her. I took my son home, and sat with my parents as we watched him tear into some awesome presents. He would stop with each one, requiring the twisty ties and plastic connectors to be removed so he could play with them individually. We set up a Scrabble board for these intermissions, and finished four full games as he opened and messed around with all the stuff we'd gotten him.

Then, around 11pm, she calls. She wants to know if we can still do Christmas. My parents are ready to sleep, I don't really want to spend time with her, and my kid's so amped about getting new toys I know he'll say something that makes her go haywire. So may dad tells her it's too late, we'll do it tomorrow.

Boom.

Woman comes in and complains about the gifts. My parents bought him a game system incompatible with his other games. I shouldn't have gotten him a Nerf Gun, why can't the toys return home with him? I calmly let her know not to look a gift horse in the mouth, the Nerf gun can stay here so he won't shoot children at his school, and why would I let her take the toys home when she either throws them away or locks them in a closet in some psychotic form of punishment for my son acting like a four-year-old. She says she's not part of the family, I say she is and her isolation is due to her own action, I usher her out the door and think fondly of the nice bottle of Scotch I bought myself with some of my Christmas bonus.

My father walks up to me, pats me on the back, and says, "Hey, that turned out pretty good. It could have been so much worse if she'd shown up earlier."

Exactly.

The weird thing is, with all the stress, all the crap, the need to have a stiff drink at the end of the day, I still want my family around. This year we failed to cram my kid, my two brothers, my parents, my older sister and her husband and my other older sister and her husband and four kids and even my ex into one room to eat and argue and inflame one another to no end. We were spread across the East Coast, and the most family members we managed in any combination was four. No need to search for fifteen chairs to cram around a too-small table, all the table were far too large. I missed it, the hassle of cooking for a crowd, the wild banter in the kitchen as too many cooks, kids and animals all hinder the finishing of the turkey. I missed having five siblings and all their counterparts and offspring attempting to pas gifts about a tree in a room you can't walk around in because you'll step on a present. I missed my family this year, even after swearing I'd off myself before I brought us together again.

Had it been a typical Christmas, right now my younger brother and I would be drinking shots or incredibly strong Egg Nog while watching movies we'd gotten as gifts. My sister and her massive family would be snoring, and waking up with nightmares, and wetting the guest bed. My other sister would wake us up early in the morning to hit a sale or do a craft, something my brother and I would be terrible at with massive hangovers. My older brother would already be banned from any future family events...a ban that would no doubt lift before Passover.

Instead I'm blogging. And this is why I didn't want a blog, because I shouldn't be spending time tapping out my life's events while my life goes by. And here I am tapping out something that is an omission of life, a lack of event, a waste of a holiday that, if my kid hadn't been here, would be downright depressing.

I suggested to my folks that we have a holiday Christmas next year.

"Only at your place," my Dad said.

I'll need a really big place. Possibly with a full bar. Maybe a few bars on the windows. After all, the neighbors won't want my family members roaming the streets.

Friends and 'Friends'

2007-12-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

Recently I have started to look at the people I hang out with, all my 'friends', and try to figure out which ones are truly friends. After all, no one truly trusts everyone in their social circle. There's always five or six people that you know are great for hitting the club or doing body shots in a dorm room, but aren't going to stick around when your cat gets hit by a car and you're baking 1200 muffins because cooking is your way of coping with death.

Usually there are about two, maybe three people that do this for you, and that's ok. You can't have 45 'best' friends. But you also can't believe that everyone who meets you at the bar is going to support you. It's naiive.

So now I'm looking at a sort of grade or continuum that friends exist on. There's the ones you cry to, who stick around at the worst, who are essentially family and sometimes better than family. Those are the 'best' friends, the true lifers in the friend game.

Then there's good friends, the ones who may never see you cry, but will tolerate the bitching and moaning and endless gushing about the new date and endless whining about why the new date didn't call back. They might even tolerate repetition of stories, suffering through bad movies with you, and hearing the plot of your new novel even if they secretly believe you are an awful author.

On an aside, say awful author out loud. It's got a lovely little way of rolling around in your mouth.

Good friends are great. They fit well in your life, work well with your family, and sometimes match your wardrobe. The problem comes about with what I term 'acquaintances'. We all have these people, they might think of you as a friend or even a good friend, but they're so freaking bad at being friends that you'd never call them that when they weren't looking. They may have made too many passes at you, gotten stupid drunk too many times, or just plain annoy you, but they're people to hang out with, someone who might be good for a game of pool or a hike in the mountains, but they aren't ever introduced to family.

I'm in the process of weeding these friends into their pile. Recently, I've gotten to know a lot of new people, and I have to place them so I know how to manage my time. This is very logical because that is how I deal with everything these days. Emotional issues...apply logic. Not sure if your friends are good for you...apply logical classification. Not sure whether you want Taco Bell or KFC...apply logic and go to the combo Taco Bell/KFC restaurant. If only it was also connected to a Sonic....

So, I've decided that friends who are only for drinking are classified as acquaintances. If I can't imagine being able to hang out with an individual without a beer in my hand, then they certainly aren't a friend. I want more friends that go shopping with me, and sit and watch shows together and can carry a conversation on the phone. So like the chickies from college who would crush random pills and snort them for fun, the woohooing alkies are getting tossed aside. After all, I don't want to be thirty and still making lame conversation with slurring stumbling grown up frat rats. It's time to clean house a little.

Furthermore, I'm tossing out the people who have stopped caring entirely, the ones who only want fun me, and not me in a bad mood, or me eating a sandwich and not talking much or me stuck in my head again. I also want smart friends, so the ones who can't have deep conversation, or the ones who don't read have to go.

What strikes me is how self-absorbed this sounds, but in a way it needs to be. For so many years I've focused on living for others and now I want to live for myself and that means weeding my friends so my life can turn into what I want it to. After all, if I'm dragging along people who don't want to be where I am now, then I'm just going to get left behind with them. I want to grow up and I need friends who are working toward it. I'm not sure where I'm going here, but I think it's good, or at least something necessary.

Hell, I'm off in tangent-land, I know it, the original aim of this post is lost forever but here I am spouting about how I'm trashing friends left and right but the reality is after this house cleaning I see myself with about 10-15 good friends, 2-3 best friends, and a good number of really cool people to hang out with. I'm ripping off the bad influences that participate in my procrastination of life, and I'm finding the type of people that are perfect for doing all sorts of things with. Except running buddies. I have no friends who run, and I desperately want a running buddy. So I guess that's my goal. I've got to begin the quest for a running buddy.

Anger and Indifference

2007-12-22T15:49:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about the use of anger, and why it's such a prevalent emotion. There's the fact that it's so closely connected to the Id, that it's a passionate thing, something volatile that is hard to control, but there's also the smoldering, lingering anger that is a large part of any sort of hatred.

I've had a lot of time to be angry in my life. Between the injuries, the troubles getting work, the issues in my personal life with my ex, the hardship in getting time to see my son, and every other screwed up thing that has happened, I've been pretty mad. I've yelled and screamed and cried and left nasty messages on my ex's phone and thrown eggs in the street, and somewhere along the line, I gave up with it. None of the anger worked, none of it got me what I wanted, what I needed. My anger never protected me, it did not keep me safe and it did not change things. Even more interestingly, neither did my grief.

If anger is a necessity, if it is part of our nature, why is that? Animals have rage, but they expend it and continue on. They fight for food, or to protect their young, or for dominance, but always for an evolutionarily sound reason. Why do we fight over who has the prettier napkin holder or who said something that made someone else feel fat or who is the best liar?

These fights do not preserve us, make us better, do anything other than irritate and sometimes physically damage us (i.e. heart rate, BP goes up, creating medical conditions over time). Why, from an evolutionary perspective, do we bitch over the little crap in life?

If it's a release, why does anger seem to multiply like Tribbles on crack? It doesn't work in release, it comes back with its friends and a big old keg of hatred. It smolders and waits and releases toxic substances into your body that make you fat and sick and unhappy.

Somewhere along the line, I started asking this and realized, why get angry? Perhaps I'm giving up, but I like to think of it as a form of indifference, a survival tactic if you will. So my ex takes my kid to Florida for Christmas and I don't get to see him. What did I expect? She's never been decent or kind before? It's not like she actually allowed me to see him on his birthday. Just shrug and ask for him another time. Explode? Assure yourself a week or two of no kid.

So some dick is suing me for injuries when I didn't even damage his car in a fender bender. Angry letters? What's that gonna do? He's gonna toss it and take his payoff and wipe out his credit card bills.

I've just stopped caring about shit that should upset me. It's easier, it keeps my blood pressure down. I'm not grounded, but I'm ignoring it, accepting the crap in life as part of it. I can't make sense of anger, but man I am getting denial. Now that's an intangible concept that I can really wrap my mind around. I can pretend that things are shiny, perfect, and you know what, when they don't turn out to be, I can pretend that tomorrow it's all gonna work itself out. After all, doing that just deludes me, it doesn't make me angry.

Two Girls, One Cup

2007-12-21T02:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, there's a video out there, and it can't be as bad as it is in my head.

How many times over the past two weeks have I heard the phrase: "Have you seen two girls, one cup?"This is inevitably followed by a graphic description of said video, because I always admit I have not seen said video. In fact, I never want to see it.Each time the video gets worse in description. At first it was poo in a cup. Then the poo migrated to the mouth of some unfortunate soul. Then it became vomit which entered another unfortunate soul's mouth. Somewhere along the line Aunt Fanny was getting molested by a monkey wearing a man suit.

All I know is it is incredibly awful.In my head now, from all the recitations of what two girls and one cup can conceive, is a wonderland of the perverse. Can you hold rape in a cup? If so, it's there. All the isms, sado, maso, bestial (if it can be an ism), bondage, shit, I can make up isms to fit the shit in the two girls, one cup dolly parton wonderland that has taken over. If there was a plaid pants, out-of-tune-accordian, foot-fetish-ism, it would have a home in my own personal youtube vision of what this damned video showed two girls doing.

I tell you, an open-ended story is like crack to a creative writer.As is, I'm sickening myself. I can't see or think anymore. I have to watch the video.My ex suggested I tape myself on my first viewing, because there's a website for people taping themselves watching this particular awful piece of nasty poo smut. I say to that: What the hell?!

Who tapes themselves when they know they're going to watch something subhuman?!

Where did our culture go?!

Why does Caligula come off as an art film these days?!

Why do I seem to enjoy the question mark, exclamation point combination?!

All I can say is, if there are videos branching from videos of women pooping into and eating from the same cup, that is awful. We are a dying empire, my friends. We have spilled over the contains of excessive and moved on into flatulent gross indecency and gluttony.

We are useless.

Sex and The Ex

2007-12-20T21:33:00.000-08:00

I got to talking with a friend today about breaking up and its repercussions. She's recently (a month or so) out of a relationship and I'm about two years out. We were trying to figure out why, after a break-up, there is that blatant awkwardness when the two of you are around.

Ok, obviously there are good reasons, but what are they specifically? Why, even when you are the one doing the breaking up, are you infuriated by seeing him/her with the new girl/guy? What the hell makes you suddenly unable to attract others to become your new girl/guy? Why the hell when you meet them unexpectedly at a bar can you suddenly feel that shitting your pants in front of an audience would be less uncomfortable than that moment where they introduce you to the slut/gigolo that they are now dating?

Most amazing to me, is I would be more likely to bathe in radioactive goo than sleep with my ex again. Sex with her was about as much fun as a bad Lifetime movie: I didn't really enjoy it, much of it was painful, there was a lot of weeping, yet it was on and was something to do.

I understand now sex can be more pleasant than that. However, I have become somewhat of a prude because it's also a rather big bother to try to find a partner who's clean, won't steal your shit afterwards, and will stick around for the snuggle time.

Anyway, that's a different thread, back to the matter at hand: why does the ex's sex life matter so much after break-up?I was stumped. There was no reason I should care that my ex suddenly had a nice piece of Venezualan ass. In fact, I didn't dislike the girl, I found her nice enough. In fact, I felt sorry she was going to be stuck in the suffocating web of self-destruction that is my ex. However, better her than me.

My friend was in an even weirder position, hating a woman she'd never met or seen, egged on by friends mentioning her ex out with 'the new girl' "oh, honey, she's not half as good as you, you just keep that chin up." She wasn't buying it either, her ex was just like mine: If the girl wasn't good-looking, she wasn't date material.

And then, it hit us in conversation. Dually, we noted: We want that sex. Neither of us were getting any. Shit, we're both working our asses off, trying our damndest to find our post-break-up identities, and pushing ourselves to single some sort of career and meaning out of the day-to-day. There was no time for sex, and even more disconcerting, no one. The root of it was simple jealousy. I didn't want my ex back, I wanted what she had. The grass is greener and I wanted her littly pretty fly because I don't build webs to catch my own. Here I am, being the 'good guy' and she's getting off each night while I finish last, or not at all (as is the present case).So the root to at least that bit of uncomfortability is jealousy. I have that, I understand, I want what's hers.

Knowing this doesn't make me want it less, but I am aware, I'm conscious of the reasons if not capable of quelling the emotion. So I decided to pamper myself tonight: bath, glass of wine, book (and not that damned self-help book, I'm picking up a classic), and perhaps a facial if I decide to slip out to wal-mart to buy a nice scrub. Tomorrow, maybe I can toss this mess and figure out another reason why it's hard to deal with a break-up.

Or maybe I'll wake up and realize that it's all hard. Break-ups are hard, you don't need to know the reason, in the same way you can never really explain death. It's all hard, if it were easy, we'd be bored, and I hate being bored.

Perhaps I'll just wake up and have the kind of day you have when you find someone you might actually feel comfortable having sex with.

Injury and Insult

2007-12-18T00:35:00.000-08:00

There is an interesting new-age philosophy that is irritating the hell out of me lately. People have been bringing it up off-handedly and it's an obnoxious way of attempting to place blame in blameless situations. As far as I can tell, it started with the Celestine Prophecy. Granted, since much of that book was pilfered from other writers and great thinkers, this annoyance is probably ultimately attributable to some other individual, I still enjoy blaming the self-indulgent ass who wrote said book because he brought it to the forefront.In the book, a character injures his ankle. Now everything that happens in this damned book must be explained as some overarching metaphor, and I mean thoroughly explained. This isn't the gentle ministrations of a well-penned work bringing the reader to a conclusion that is both enlightening and entertaining, it's the awkward fumblings of a green author attempting to spout his philosophical soapbox idealism through his weak and vapid characters. Even those who love the philosophy of the book admit the writing is crap, but this guy puts it a bit too far.

See, the ankle is seen as a symptom. The poor ass trips, falls, and turns his ankle, and his spirit guide or whatever the hell this dude is says the ankle issue is a deep-rooted force of negativity within him that continues a cycle of turned ankles. That something in his childhood led him to believe that turning his ankle was a way to solve a problem and cope with stress, and that if he found the route to this issue, and coped with it, his ankle would heal. In short, it was his own damned fault he tripped and if he cleaned up the mess of his childhood psyche, he'd magically hop about the woods without ever catching his foot on a root again.

This is a load of horse hooey, absolute bull crap.There is no way your past mistakes and issues tie directly to accidental occurrences in your present life. I mean, unless it's your gun accidentally firing, or your house accidentally setting itself on fire, or your wife accidentally running into the knife in your hand fifteen times, then accidents really aren't rooted in the psyche. You slip and fall because you got off-balance, because the ground was wet, because you're clumsy. Shit happens, and people want to point a finger at something and blame it for shit happening, when that something is just some innocent thing minding its own business, and not participating in the world's accidents.

When people allude that I do it to myself, that my breaks and sprains occur at opportune times, or that they seem to be some karmic punishment, it irritates me to no end. These injuries aren't little life lessons or ripples from my muted past, they're freaking bumps and bruises that come with living life, and with being active, and with having bad balance. I don't cause my injuries, they're accidental, I don't screw with my karma so I'll turn an ankle while attempting a 360 kick. I turn an ankle because I landed funny, because the grass is wet and my shoes didn't have ankle support, and most of all, because I accidentally lost balance and heard the familiar crunch-snap of my tendons getting ripped apart. And if some higher power is screwing with me to teach me some life-lesson by messing up my ankle two years running, I certainly hope one of the greater gods eats him/her in an all-out deity war.

Sick Again

2007-12-17T01:48:00.000-08:00

I seem to be getting sick once every couple of weeks these days. It's irritating, and I fear I've got some antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection because it's always the same symptoms. This is very cheery.Anyways, I'm here, sitting in bed, wishing I had something to write. I've been almost a year without writing much of anything, and I look back to when writing was the release, the thing that emptied me of the stress and crap of day to day. Now, it seems writing has become another stress, another irritant of my life, another thing that went wrong. I don't know what to say about it, because if I did, I would probably write it. Perhaps I've run out of things to say, or maybe I just have streamlined, become so normal that I have nothing to put down that discerns me from the crowd. If that's the case, I have to seek out originality, but if uniqueness is sought, that would be a futile kind of effort, wouldn't it?

I know I'm rambling, and I'm trying this live journal thing despite my utter hatred of live journals. I never read them, and I wonder why people do, but we are alive in the time of Blogdom, so apparently every odd thought that people tap out onto the internet is worth a look or scan, or a video response. Damn, another horrible idea, video responses. Who talks to a camera about what they thought about a video of someone talking to a camera? I hate the absolute plethora of technology we have, and the abuses we make of it.Ok, sick and tired, in many ways, so I'm going to crash out. I hope this is blog-like.