Schizophelia Jones

Half Passed

2012-01-10T21:35:00.002-05:00

The toxic kill gravy that juices my tumor into submission (I hope) is pushed through my body every three weeks for about 8 solid hours. At first, I chose to remain as awake and aware of the process as possible...but frankly, the only time cancer is real for me is when I'm there. With a fucking spike stabbing into my left shoulder because the right side of my body is fucking my symmetry all to hell. It doesn't hurt but it reminds me of how fucking NOT ME I currently am. Now, I choose sedation. I don't want to be aware of being NOT ME.

I'm halfway through the hardcore shit and I grow more terrified as the time comes when the uber chemo ends, radiation begins, my tits get sliced off, and I begin a five-year process of a less toxic form of chemotherapy...and hope like a motherfucker this shit doesn't come back.

The beginning was easier because it wasn't real. But the unreality that changed my DNA also changed my psyche. Who am I now? I have no idea.

This post is erratic. Fuck you. It's the cancer talkin'.

This is the Thing...

2011-11-03T13:26:00.004-04:00

My hair has been "my thing" for most of my adult life. When I was a kid, my mother cut it short. I had gorgeous, silky blond hair...but I was never allowed to let it grow. My sister...yes. Me, no. You know how in some families, one kid gets scapegoated? Well, heck, that was me. I was a weirdo from day one...too sensitive for most of my White Trash, beer swilling, loud mouthed family and my mother, being one of the most sadistic, abusive cunts I've ever had the misfortune to know, derived a great deal of enjoyment in making sure I looked (and felt) as ugly as she thought she was. Ok, so yeah, I've still got a wee bit of bitterness tucked away. The logic behind all her bitch ass bitchery was that I looked very much like my Auntie, who was the town beauty and who got all the attention. My mother, who actually isn't really that ugly, still had to fuck for attention. Hence, three kids by the time she was 19, unmarried, miserable, and eventually, an alchy part-time prostitute. With a beautiful daughter that she routinely punched in the face and forced to dress like a boy.

I digress. Sorry folks.

The point of that rant was that now, I am in my 40s. I wear dresses (that I make myself) and had waist length hair, still blond (with just a teensy bit of help), and so fucking pretty I would spend hours brushing it, braiding it, girling it up, etc. I wanted to look like the Princess that I wanted to be as a child...and frankly, I DID. Princess hair, Princess clothes. I was Princess all the way. I still have more hair products in my bathroom than that of a thousand Drag Queens. What a funny kind of rebellion. "Dear mother, I'll show you who's boss! I'll wear a dress! See that? Do ya??!"

Alas, I get to keep the dresses. The hair, however, is now in the hands of Locks of Love.

My oncologist told me that the chemo I'd be receiving would render me hairless in less than two weeks. I cried over it. I bemoaned that that twist of fate. Then...I said to myself, "FUCK this."

I had to think seriously about what defines me. How long can this "I feel pretty...oh so pretty" rebellion really go on? I had to think about it without the bullshit soul-searchy, dumb ass book (that gets made into a movie starring Julia Roberts) kind of way.

So, ok. Cancer might kill me. I accept that as a possibility. But I will not go down without a fight. Fighting means becoming (yes, it sounds cliche) a Warrior. I will look the part (I'm method that way).

So. Tuesday morning, exactly one week after my 43'd birthday, one of my oldest and dearest friends (Tomm) shaved my head at my request. Later that afternoon, I was surrounded by a throng of women (all friends and Warriors all in their own way) at Acme Bodyart where I had a dragon tattooed on my now hairless head, another tattoo on my arm, and a piercing in my upper left ear. Everything except the scalp tattoo was fairly painless. The scalp pain...was beyond anything I'd ever experienced. The artist (Dusty Palmer...who is a wonderfully brilliant inkster) was wonderfully supportive, stopped and re-started when I needed a break...and talked me through everything. He even said that I was a beast due to the amount of pain that I was enduring in relative silence. I've never been called a beast in my life! I'm a delicate sort of gal. Really little...I need help lifting a bag of cat food! And now I'm a beast! I loved it! I could spend hours writing about how positive and professional an experience it was...but I think I've written enough for now.

I feel fairly odd. My body...has been modified inside and out this week.

On an "up" note...I have gotten a gazillion compliments on the tattoo...from (get this) OLD ladies! They love it! I thought they'd be afraid but they all seem to think it's a hoot.

Cancer ladies, I hope you'll consider the non-wig, scalp tattoo as an option. I feel (and look) like a total badass. I loved my hair but losing it did not make me feel like the victim my mother tried to create. It made me the Bitch who isn't afraid of her OR of cancer. Fuck 'em both. Fuck 'em right in the ear.

Irony

2011-10-20T12:09:00.005-04:00

I have cancer. Big, fat, donkey fucking cancer.

Yep. Finding out you have cancer during breast cancer awareness month (not to mention a few days before your birthday) is a total goddamned pain in the ass. Turn any which way and it's all about cancer. Cancer for dinner, cancer for lunch. Cancer coming out my ass. Actually, it's coming out my tits but that's neither here nor there. I've had this shit for TWO years before I knew about it. All I knew is that I was always exhausted. I thought that's just what happens when people get older. Alas, not so much. It's what happens when your jiggly bits go mitotic. So if posts are even more sporadic than usual (which, let's be honest, I'm not a constantly posting motherfucker, motherfucker)it's because I'm trying to stay alive.

I've given a lot of thought about what kind of Cancer Chick I'm going to be. First off, NO wigs. Once the hair starts to go, I'm shaving my head and tattooing it. I thought my head shaving days were long gone. Shaving your head in my twenties and during the nineties is...well, not that unusual. In my 40s...it's just kinda lame. Unless you have cancer, in which case, it's mandatory. So I'll be head-shaved, tattoo Cancer Chick for now. I'll keep everyone updated on any further ancillary Cancer Chick fauna that I attach.

I can't help but make a lot of jokes about it because it's so surreal for now. But I don't want to be "funny" Cancer Chick because she's always the one who dies first in those Lifetime movies. I'm gonna be sardonic for now. Again, updates as things evolve/progress.

P.S. Yes, this does suck.

Cérémonie

2011-05-04T12:19:00.002-04:00

I've been on an obsessive Sofia Coppola train for the past couple of weeks. I've finally decided, after having watched "Marie Antoinette" for the second time in six hours, that the next person who rags on her to me will be the unfortunate victim of a bitch slap.

Seamlessly meshing of my most cherished songs (Ceremony) with the Palace of Versailles...makes me hope that someone tongue-kisses her every single day.

Get On Board

2011-01-06T22:53:00.008-05:00

Meet Andrew Bowen. He has decided to investigate this thing we call "religion" from the inside out, spending an entire year immersed in one religion per month. What a full-on, badass thing to do.

Then again, you might wonder why a guy in his right mind would do this. Actually, the answer to that is rather paradoxical (or at least I think it is, I'm not in his head). ONLY a person in their right mind does this.

If you read his blog from the beginning, he journals his days as he is living within the boundaries of the religion he is practicing that month. Right down to the food they (he being part of "them") eat. We (the batshit masses) can then read what he has to say and chill the fuck out the next time we sit next to a Muslim on an airplane or a Christian at a Planned Parenthood.

Juan Williams, are you listening?

Lots of countries insist that its citizens earn their right to live there. Civil service, a year in the army, or some other such hoo-ha. Since the United States is such a "melting pot" (yes I did type that with a cynical smirk), I think Andrew's mission is probably one that wouldn't kill the rest of us to try. 12 months learning that the other guy isn't going to kill us in our sleep? I think that'd be swell indeed.

Bowen calls this mission "Project Conversion: Twelve Months of Spiritual Promiscuity". I call it fucking awesome.

Monkeys with Car Keys

2011-01-02T21:35:00.010-05:00

"All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys."
-Northern Exposure (1990)

I read (and so should you) a great essay this week. It's all about the film (and philosophy behind) I Heart Huckabees. It's a nicely honed, much less expletive laced (than anything I am capable of producing) way of explaining (what I call) Transcendental Nihilism.

It turns out, a lot of people think this way, though they might not call it the same thing. I'd be worried about being unoriginal if, at this point, I believed it was possible to be interconnected (and I am very certain we all are) and "original". The thing is y'all, we think the same thoughts, often at the same time, but for many different reasons. Our different reasons are usually just by-products of our different experiences. Our different experiences and the cortical pruning that happens as a result, make us who we are. But, as Woody Allen's Grandma said in the classic "Northern Exposure", we're still just monkeys with car keys...sitting on the branches of infinity, chittering subconsciously into our stomach-ears.

I continue to arrive (like I said a couple of posts ago) at the same conclusion: many of our woes are caused by separation anxiety caused by the illusion that we can actually disconnect from one another. At this point, I don't even bother trying, other than earplugs.

Interdependence. It's what makes being life such a fucking hay ride. That, of course, and NyQuil.

Yes, I know I've been wearing Bossy Pants this week. I like to share fun where I find it.

Happy Mewes Year

2011-01-01T16:16:00.010-05:00

More "If you haven't, you should" advice for the New Year: tune in to the Kevin Smith/Jason Mewes Jay and Silent Bob Get Old podcast. Each of the first ten or so, if nothing else.

Beware: this isn't your run-of-the-mill Jay and Silent Bob tale. The stories you'll hear aptly illustrate the similarities and vast differences in the lives of the real vs. film versions of both men. This isn't just what happens when Jay and Silent Bob get old. It's what happens when Jay (Jason Mewes) has a 10+ year struggle with heroin addiction, Smith's unwavering faith and loyalty to his friend (and arguably, his soul-mate), and the cast of characters surrounding them both. If the two of them ever decide to make a film based on their twisty turn down Hubert Selby Jr. Lane, it may finally get Smith the writing accolades he has so deserved for so long.

As far as the cast of characters goes, Smith's wife Jen stands out in his stories, as she did in his Too Fat to Fly tale, as the voice of reason. Sensible and supportive, she is the rare individual with a steely backbone of kindness. I think I might be somewhat in love with her too.

The great thing about this podcast is that it doesn't gloss over the illness but somehow keeps you laughing. It's difficult to put into words how rare it is to be able to grasp that level of desperation when you're trying not to spray your shorts. Or panties, in my case.

It's not child friendly. Dirty, in a John Waters kind of way (yes, you'll hear dick and fart jokes aplenty, very graphic and very descriptive) but I'd think you'd expect that by now. For all us who have been with these guys since Clerks., it'll feel like a surreal high-school reunion.

Rapt in Plastic

2010-12-29T23:11:00.004-05:00

If the cut of your gib is to make plans to do something different from year-to-year starting from the beginning (it's the time of year for that sort of planning, y'know), consider watching the films of David Lynch. Seriously, it's a gift I gave myself years ago and I've never regretted a moment spent with him.

The only man I've ever known (through his art, of course) who actually seems to possess a modicum of compassion and understanding for self-destructive women. He really should be teaching philosophy.

Uber Alles Doesn't Live Here Anymore

2010-12-29T13:14:00.004-05:00

It's official...I've given up hope that my iPod will ever return to me. The last time I saw it, it was swimming in a drawer full of pens and markers. Earbuds are rare creatures in this universe: they carry a special, viral kind of entropy, enabling them to become entangled like christmas tree lights into even the most pristine, uncomplicated environment. The last time I saw them and all my DK bootleg tracks, they were nestled in the back of a dusty drawer. One I thought I could pillage at my leisure.

My poor neighbors. Every day is Dias de los Muertos Kennedys when you have a treadmill and desk speakers.

And happy hour is now enforced by law.

White Girl's Blues

2010-12-27T21:26:00.004-05:00

Portishead's live DVD, watching Lynch films over and over, and re-reading "The Stranger" have provided a scratchy, newsreely kind of backdrop for the past couple of weeks.

This, plus many cups of Earl Grey tea with Irish whiskey, gives me the weekend, Chelsea Hotel taste of a rough patch in life that I'm just getting over. A receding wave and the relieved feeling that marries me to it: no matter how bad things get, I'll never know what it's like to be ordinary. It makes ordinary people look a lot smaller...like the insects they always were, temporarily made bigger by the light they were blocking.

Finally, the end of a year of trying to see my reflection in the dusty carapace of an annoying insect (or a series of them). When faced with the silent glare at the end of that kind of buzzing futility, I tend to seek comfort in the things I forgot to love.

Twin Peaks

Portishead (Click the link at the beginning of this post for a glimpse)

The Stranger (Matthew Ward's translation)

GodotNuts

2010-12-08T04:49:00.015-05:00

Lately, I have a bad week, and then I hear great news that doesn’t seem to have much to do with me personally but helps to restore my faith in humanity. Having even a tiny ray of hope keeps me going most of the time. So I start feeling better and come back to the conclusion (I've been here many times before) that it’s always personal. We try to tell ourselves it isn’t but that’s just cultural and religious wheel spinning. Blow people up, make them into saints and movie stars, it’s all just a big, futile attempt at trying to disconnect from one another and getting pissed off because we can't.

I read a story today about 826 National, a group of tutors (non-profit) who are helping children develop strong writing skills. Any kid (from 6-18) can walk in, grab a tutor, and begin learning English. Those who've already met English can get to know it better. When I tutored writing in college, I learned that people are often either very good at writing or are very good and just don’t read enough to know it yet. Honestly, it’s just like algebra. It’s all variables and brackets and noise. Suddenly, one day, something clicks. You can spout poetry. Either in numbers or in words, the sentences just spill out of you like wedding tears.

This is a lovely thing to do for others. In a time when people are all about martyred entitlement, sighing loudly when asked to push “1” for English, it’s spectacular.

I thought a lot about being connected last month, right around a time when I felt profoundly disconnected, though not by choice. A friend invited me to attend a lecture at Northern Kentucky University (my Alma mater). At first, I felt completely nervous and freaked out, since being in public makes me feel…nervous and freaked out. But then I was aware of the moment, in a weird way, within it, listening to the speaker (Dr. V. Mohini Giri) talk about the millions widows in India, who lose what passed for human rights for the years when their husbands were alive. They are fucked in ways I can’t imagine. I’ve had a hard life. Those women make me look like Veruca fucking Salt.

Dr. Giri literally saved the lives of millions of women in India and continues to work for the rights of widows there. That's what she does. She has been working for over 40 years, teaching the widows not to put up with anyone’s bullshit (though in a much nicer, Nobel Peace Prize kind of way). Her parents taught her that she is as essential a part of the world as water. It was completely out of the question to expect people to succumb to foolish cultural standards simply because they're widows. When they tried to force those standards upon her, she refused. Despite being ridiculed and threatened, she kept her Bindi when they tried to take it away from her, refused to keep her eyes on the ground, and continued to kick ass. Ripley, Sarah Connor kind of ass.

I was very fortunate in that my friends got me into the “after party” or whatever fancy people call it when you get to hang out with people who lecture at the UN. When I saw Dr. Giri sitting by herself, I went to talk to her. I expected her to be like one of those Tibetan monks that you meet now and again at book stores. They’re all about Tibet and their divine right to be the reincarnation of some other guy (never a woman, of course). Admittedly, all I've managed to reincarnate (that I know of) is the same conclusion. I might feel inadequate if I didn't think that essentially, they’re just damned good at marketing the East to ex-Catholics and stoners. They're the cute guy who listens to your bullshit and gives you that "first five minutes of a good beer buzz" kind of confident euphoria. Pretty soon, the cat gets out of the bag. One of you is annoying, forcing the other one to wander off. I kind of expected something along those lines.

I was completely surprised by the woman who sat beside me and talked to me as though I'd known her my entire life. She almost reminded me of a beauty parlor lady from Kentucky. The kind of horn-rimmed, sweet lady with loads of common sense and resolve. She was attaching a string of beads to my glasses (so I wouldn't lose them) and explaining to me that it's all very logical. I am her sister, her daughter, her granddaughter. She told me, without irony or cheese, that she sees the entire world as her family. Obviously, I live in America. I am as jaded as the day is long but despite my efforts to spin this experience in some way that would make it easier for me to hate the world, she was the most genuinely kind, sane person I've ever met. I was (and actually still feel like) part of her family. As far as she is concerned, we all are. I've met people who think I'm not worth their time simply because I haven't finished a graduate degree. People who get angry when they have to push an extra button at an ATM machine. And here is this woman that I simply have no words to describe, telling me that I'm her sister and fixing my glasses for me.

She knows she’s essential in a way that I think many of us find difficult to grasp. We (Americans, I mean) like to think we’re essential because of who we’ve become or what we’ve made of our lives. I think that's why it's so easy for us to buy into Tibetan monks. They've made something of at least ten lives. This woman knows that we're essential because we simply are. You exist, you're in the club. End of story.

Long ago, I gave up on the belief that there were good people left in the world, so getting it back was a damned moving experience. Jesus monkeyfucking christ. It was transcendent.

So there I was, in the throes of a dismal, nihilistic torpor, thinking I can't walk another foggy mile in this Year of the Tea Party, oddly manic depressive zeitgeist, when a shining outpost of humanity sprouts out of a sand dune and I have to admit that hope is my second-favorite four-letter word.

(Fuck is my first favorite. You got that. Right?)

La Vie en Rose

2010-11-05T17:42:00.001-04:00

I've watched La Vie en Rose about 4x this week. I'm not sure this is entirely healthy.

Redshifting

2010-09-19T05:50:00.004-04:00

The world around me, people, their bullshit, their coolness, and how it all zips up together is endlessly fascinating and entertaining to me and I'm pretty sure I've said that a thousand different ways.

But during the 2004 election, when John Kerry stood like a shivering puppy while George W. Bush wiped the floor with him, the air started hissing out of my balloon. And then, like an exclamation point at the end of a very depressing sentence, Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide at the age of 67. 17 Years Past 50. His suicide note said that was 17 years more than he needed or wanted. Relax. This won't hurt a bit.

He only meant that last line for himself.

For me, that day meant that the age of the easy answer is over. All we have now is the choice to confront that like we have some kind of backbone (which is kind of what used to rock about being American) or become shadow effects littering our own dusty sidewalks.

Some days I'm sure the backbone guy will win. Then, on other, much more realistic days, I just see a windmill.

They Get What They Want

2010-09-13T23:00:00.006-04:00

Last year (or something?) I lamented the fuck out of the fact that Indie chicks were boring and stupid, citing the soundtrack of Juno and it's boring, stupid singer Kimya Dawson's pseudo little girl voice as a shining example of what not to be.

I saw the latest Diablo Cody movie "Jennifer's Body" tonight. Yes, it's teenage angst but it's also (in typical Cody style--watch the United States of Tara for a cervical look at that action) witty, relevant, and spot on target with regard to toxic chick relationships. The kicker? The movie ends with one of my favorite Hole songs.

Diablo, I want to make dirty love to you.

Enjoy, bitches. I do.

Stupid Fucking White Man

2009-07-06T19:12:00.003-04:00

Browsing the intertubes today, I noted that a reporter said that the South Carolina killer is thought to have been, ahem, "shot dead".

Why the fuck do reporters say "shot dead"? It's just dumb and annoying. There are two ways in which I automatically interpret this stupid turn of phrase (completely against my will) and neither of them traffic in the kind of creepy that we really want in a situation like this.

First, it's like the dude was already dead when they shot him. Shot dead. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to shoot him when he was still alive, thus being the actual cause of his death? Wouldn’t that have guaranteed their bragging rights? Why wait ‘till he’s dead? Isn’t that just showing off?!

Or better yet, “shot dead” sounds like it’s coming from the yellow-beard encrusted tobacco stained lips of an old man in a tumbleweed town where they have shutters for doors and their names are Dusty, Smokey, or something else that guarantees that its bearer’s skin flaps off his mandibles like a desiccated tire in the lonely Nevada wind. Fuckin' corncob pipes and cataracts.

It’s so fucking annoying when we could be genuinely nudged out of our real-life, bill paying, wine-on-Friday torpor where the bad guy gets his....and then some dipshit goes and blows it with a line like, “shot dead”.

It's like the end of Episode III (Nooooooo!!!) all over again.

Brand Dope

2009-04-10T10:23:00.001-04:00

Hmmm. I'd totally buy this guy dinner.

Projecting

2008-09-23T13:34:00.014-04:00

The lady who lives next door is bitter because she had to take out her own garbage. Three days a week that damned cleaning lady has off. Why does she need an extra day just because her grandchild has the chickenpox? My neighbor tosses her head in anger and tells me that her home (at least this week) is like living in a slum. The projects of Mariemont, she says. I want to bitch slap that stupid fucking scrooged up, purse-lipped, dry grey curl framed face. Bite me, Old Lady Next Door. You've never seen a housing project in your life. I have. I'll bet your cleaning lady has, too.

She's what I've always feared becoming. This is why event-inflamed anger is more of a tool for me than a way of life. If it isn't gone within a month of the actual anger-provoking event, I realize that something is terribly wrong. Not that I don't have oceans of anger. I'm pretty sure everyone does. But bitter...is an oil slick. It prevents the oceans from evaporating into clouds like they should. There is no homeostasis when your life is a patchwork quilt of haphazard oil slicks. Anger should be a catalyst. It makes storms. Bitterness keeps our poles shifty and our periods of calm more unusual than our hurricanes. Where's the fucking fun in that?!

My friend Jason and I used to joke that you slum it in Mariemont until you inherit your parent's house in Indian Hill. Now, here I am, listening to Coltrane's "Village Blues" on my fucking iPod, leaving crumbs of sketch paper on the too-shiny tabletops of the Starbucks across the street from my apartment. Howling in Mariemont. I can hardly stand that the only Afro-American faces I see are sprouting from the necklines of service-job uniforms. It is difficult to swallow how happy I am, despite that. Life sucked balls there for a while. Now, it's a day-long happygasm from the moment I wake up. Sometimes, I can't stop grinning long enough to sleep.

People like that fool next door always remind me that other people are the fucking least of my worries and the reason it's good to NOT be them. Perspective, in this case, is as glorious as the autumn sunset that shines in my face as I write this. It's the math degree I'm getting after a lifetime of my drunken mother spitting her own failure into my face. It's the abusive ex-boyfriend who'll be having sub-standard sex for the rest of his life after me. It is the irony of knowing that winning anything is an illusion but that those people will die thinking that they lost. That irony, my friends, is as bitter as a rancid birthday cake but exactly the kind of sweet exsanguination that keeps me smiling.

There is no such thing as failure. There's only dust that you either brush off or leave to turn into mud when it rains.

Old Lady-Crazy

2008-04-28T10:42:00.009-04:00

I just devoured "Notes on a Scandal" in less than 24 hours. This is the most deliciously obsessive catalog of beautifully rendered rationalization and predation I've ever read. If you haven't read the book and you're into observing weirdos, I highly suggest you pick this one up. Compared to the book (a stew that is thick and warm enough to waft from the page and into your nostrils), the film is like hard plastic.

On the outside, this book is about a couple of teachers, one of whom begins an affair with a student. The other acts as a narrator for the story. After a few pages, it is obviously about the slimy eel-dance between predator and prey and the points at which we allow ourselves to become either one of them.

I loved reading about this old woman combing her existence for traces of other people's lint. I'm on the other side of that coin in that I obsessively try to comb other people's lint out of my experience. For the most part, I enjoy what I've learned from people more than I've ever enjoyed their company. Yep, that is an asshole way of looking at things and I might spend some quality time trying to fix that if this book (bless its little heart) didn't make it perfectly clear that the only thing that keeps us from lingering in guilt is self-mockery. The only thing that makes self-mockery possible is knowing that, without a doubt, there is always someone out there who is way worse than we are.

It must also be noted that mirrors like this come in handy when I allow myself to be comforted by the Sesame Street "my experience is terribly unique" ethos. The truth is, we're all just apes looking to bump uglies and pick off a few bugs until something turns our eye. Therefore, our "selves" are reflections of the things we covet and that, my dear friends, negates any stupid ideas we have of "individuality".

It Only Takes a Camera to Change Her Mind

2008-04-22T09:55:00.006-04:00

I saw Kraftwerk on Sunday! While seeing one of my favorite bands live is a grand experience, when that band is as old as the hills and rarely plays the U.S., it's pretty fucking spectacularly surreal. I'm still hugging my pillow and smiling.

Zombie Abortions

2008-04-10T13:10:00.001-04:00

I have the rare, unfortunate virus that is so baneful, I had to call in reinforcements. Therefore, I am in the thrall of the Big Fuckin’ Q and feel as sedated as a suburban housewife.

Everyone knows that after a good Nyquil coma, there is a waiting period before you regain the use of your arms and legs. The coma last night was exceptional. I woke and lay there waiting for a sign that my head was still attached to the rest of my body. It was then that my spirit animal, a Circus Midget named Johnson Puppethammer, came to me in a vision and led me on a journey that finally unraveled one of the greatest mysteries of the ages: Where Nyquil Really Comes From.

Somewhere, there is a heavily guarded compound where zombies have been genetically altered so that they can breed. The zombie women are impregnated and after 8 months, they are herded into rooms and distracted with the arms and legs of undocumented Guantanamo Bay inmates who failed their Water Board exams. Then the doctors, who are genetically engineered hybrids of my psychotic third-grade teacher and Dick Cheney, extract the zombie fetuses.

The fetuses are hastily whisked away to an enormous room that is maintained at a constant temperature of at 37º C. After being deposited in either green-death or cherry flavored media, the fetuses are left to decompose. After a few days (we didn’t have time to get into a discussion about decomposition variables), all that remains is a thick sludge that is siphoned into large vats, mixed with Holy Water, bottled, packaged and shipped to thousands of convenient locations near you.

Lewis Carroll had the Green Fairy. I have Zombie Abortions. I think I win.

I Want to Throw Up on Kimya Dawson's Shoes

2008-02-22T16:30:00.004-05:00

Having just seen Juno and having loved it, I am pissed off at having to accept I can never watch it again because the music is just so fucking annoying. Kimya Dawson, whose music (both solo and with the Moldy Peaches) is featured vomitously often, is one of those chicks you just know owns "Play-Doh" t-shirts and thrift-store underoos. Beneath the 'fro and multi-piercings, I sense she's just another half-assed indie chick who likes to dress her voice as a little girl to earn the neo-pedophile dollar. Nice market to corner in such a subversive way, isn't it, Kimya? Twice the credit for getting your music in a film about a pregnant teenager. You just can't ask for a better synthesis of product/target-audience marketing, can you?

I miss Junkie Courtney Love. She was chugging Oxy's and Jack before Kimya Dawson used her first organic cotton tampon. She would beat Kimya up with her own acoustic, steal Kimya's ginseng cigarettes, and sell them back to her at twice the price Kimya paid for them in the first place.

When did indie chicks stop being bad asses and all turn hybrids of Patsy Ramsey and Suzanne Vega? When are the barbed-wire, watch-me-bleed types coming back?

Post Haste

2008-02-05T21:29:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post has a lovely little database that allows us folkses to see for our selves who voted when, on what, and how.

This is as handy as a midget with a broom. And I ain't lyin'.

Click for The U.S. Congress Votes Database. Also, if you find yourselves wondering who is paying to get their gal/guy in the Big Chair, you may want to check out the kick ass little site known as OpenSecrets.org.

Screamin' Genitals, Martha, My Pants Are on Fire!

2007-11-06T13:05:00.003-05:00

Let us pause for a moment and reflect upon the joyness which is Jhonen Vasquez. His wit is the sandpaper on the tender skin of the people toward whom it is directed, it's mean spirited and often petty, always articulate and original, and is pretty much my favorite under-ten-buck thrill.

So now there's Jellyfist, his new project with an illustrator named J.R. Goldberg whose own major hootie-ha appears to be this book, thus far. There is a series of frames on a series of pages, much like the comic books of old, except this is the first one that I've read that has commentary. I love reading Mr. Vasquez dancing verbally (I like to think it's like Pigpen from Charlie Brown) around Ms. Goldberg, only to have her swat him away like an annoying fly every ten paragraphs. He DO like to talk a lot and she apparently does not, at least to her audience. Goldberg also has an enormous flair for the grotesque, a point that will be addressed later in this post.

I have to give Jellyfist a thumbs up for a few things (and do not continue from here if you don't want spoilers):

1. The She-Car: A talking car that turns out to be a real woman who was transformed into a car by a weird guy who can ostensibly turn people into machinery that he can use. Another illustrator probably would have turned her into a robot lady. Cool looking, but ultimately cliché and boring. Goldberg makes her look truly...painful. The body of the car looks like a huge, pale, squishy meat plug with wheels. It lacks the shades of wry that would suck the "fucked" out of the up that is the She-Car. Also, as the car-out-of-woman maker drives her around, she can only look down at the pavement passing beneath her. It reminded me of "Gummo" in the slimy way it made me feel. A+, J. Goldberg.

2. Lesssseee....oh yeah, ha ha, bees in a guy's head. It's very strange and freaky and reminded me of a movie called "Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees". Bee heads are one of those archetypal things I don't understand, so they're fun to watch.

3. I love the landscapes in this. The characters are usually out in the middle of a post-apocalyptic kind of place with ice-cream cones and the like. I was watching Bugs Bunny with a kid the other day when she turned to me and said, "Where does he keep getting those carrots?" I'm like, "Dunno..." This is kinda like that.

The problems are few: It is colored in the manner of easter baskets and grandma dresses. Everything (in retrospect) seemed too mintily green. Secondly, the surrealism is often cut off at the knees by the Vasquez' self-congratulatory narrative about his creative process. Again, fun reading but ultimately distracting and pulled me out of vibe.

Two cents. It is what it is, yo.

James GandolFuckYou

2007-11-05T11:32:00.000-05:00

A friend loaned me a DVD of an HBO special called "Alive Day" featuring the stories of Iraq war vets who'd suffered severe trauma. Nothing is more embarrassing and stupid as when someone uses shocking imagery to illustrate a political point that they're afraid to come right out and say. It wasn't even clever ambiguity, it was just splattered guts and half-assed attempts at self-righteousness. You know the movie "Total Recall"? It wanted, at some point, to be an action movie with some clever dialogue in the "Die Hard" tradition. Then one day, they were hammering out the script and (I imagine) someone said, "You know, fuck this. No one is going to care about dialogue if we make blood squish out of a guy's bullet holes like a human blood sponge." Probably some other guys nodded tiredly and that was that. I'm not sure what ideas that they gave up on for "Alive Day" but I'd imagine it had something to do with dignity. I went to a friend's grandma's funeral once and one of the priests was picking his nose (in full view of everyone) during the service. This reminded me of that except it wasn't as classy.

Here are some prime examples of the Alive Day suckage:

The first time we see a soldier cry during an interview, we see a long shot of James Gandolfini handing the soldier a tissue. Ok, they put the box of tissues next to Jimmy boy so that they could get a shot of the tissue hand-off. James, you're a big weiner for that.

A creepy, creepy mom who has been coaching her extremely brain damaged son in what to say when people ask questions. Ok, get this, she coaches him through a rendition of The Marines Hymn, his eyes, lacking focus, shift about the room as he makes lewd gestures that she's interpreting as expressions of happiness and love. This is the most disturbing of the interviews, at least to me. It was a prime example of every shitty way of thinking that got us into the war (e.g., willful ignorance, blind faith, nationalism) all condensed into a freakshow chowder of Oedipal proportions.

A young woman who fears her children may not love her as much if she can't hug them with both arms...the camera lingering on her face while her tear filled eyes nudge the fog of the present aside to get a glipse of the (perhaps tragically lonely?) future. Oh and the topper of that segment is the half-hearted rendition of "Proud to be an American" that she is singing with the rest of her family. Sheesh. That made me shudder almost as much as Marine Mom.

Americans know what's going on in Iraq, they just don't give a fuck. This makes any attempt at scaring us with blood and arms and dead things a completely futile waste of time. What a misguided attempt at scaring up some copy for Gandolfini. Please, dude, next time, bang Lindsay Lohan or something. This other thing was just plain eww.

Our Mother of the Clown Car Vagina

2007-08-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

If only this breeder cow and her pasture mate understood how their attempts at reinforcing the "miracle" of life actually made reproduction seem about as mundane (and American) as a grilled cheese sandwich.

How long d'ya have to wait after childbirth to kick someone in the cooter?

World War Z

2006-11-21T16:10:00.000-05:00

If you get the chance, read World War Z.

I have never cared for movies featuring zombies due to an overzealous, horror movie loving mother who dragged me to see pretty much any movie with scary stuff. Zombies were the worst because back in the seventies, those were pretty much the only ones that had a lot of blood and violence.

The point is, there is a metaphor behind the idea itself and I think that it is only lately, with seeing so many people behaving like zombies, that I can appreciate the subtext.

Great, great book.

Parannoyed

2006-09-15T02:24:00.000-04:00

Here is an interesting article about a truck ad that uses Rosa Parks, 911, Martin Luther King, and the Iraq War to stir the fires of patriotism from within our tiny, Grinchy, jaded hearts. What I enjoy about it is that it's taking advertising to an entirely new level with entirely new points of view. I know I'm a tiny voice in a cacophony of screaming salesmen. This is total proof. Check it out:

1. Big trucks are no longer symbols for men who can't stand having tiny penises. I'm pretty sure that's part of it, don't get me wrong, but the primary urge is (of late) far more insidious. It seems that not buying an enormous truck makes you un-American! Sweeeet. My search for anti-suburban, anti-stupid, nihilistic iconography ends at my front door!

2. Icons of passive resistance should be used side by side along pro-war propaganda because most Americans are so completely clueless that they only know that MLK and RP were good Americans. They only know that because someone made movies out of 'em. However, they only saw the covers of the movies at the Blockbuster before they passed them over for "Armageddon" and maybe "The Great Mouse Detective". But what is important is that these colors DO NOT run. Especially if they're magnetically merged with the bumper of a truck that could house a small band of rogue pygmies.

3. John Mellencamp sucks balls. I'm pretty sure no one will argue this point with me.

The thing I'm beginning to love (at a distance) about advertising is that it is so completely shameless. We are the ambulances and they are the chasers but they have pie-charts and data on their sides, knowing what we want to buy at exactly what time, and worse, what we're trying to forget when we buy it. I wonder if they're honest with themselves about what they're doing? Do they come right out and say that they're going to work these bitches for all they're worth or do they nod knowingly at one another and allow the heavy air to settle on their souls vowing to some day, dust them off and take them out to the park? Is being human something they forgot to finish like an art project? Do they care that Americans are eating their shit up like a dollop of ice-cream on a piece of apple pie?

God this is going to be a good show when people wise-up. I say that laughingly. If people tuned into reality and stopped being a bunch of relativistic fuckheads abusing the perspective privilege, they'd be so depressed at what pathetic jerk-offs they are that they would probably commit mass suicide. And that would be bad for the economy I suppose. Unless you sell Kool-Aid.

Scars Are the Art of Chaos

2006-07-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

jewish people driving german cars
what the cock is that shit?
but maybe it's like take back the night
maybe it's like how bleeding hearts grow old and swing to the right...
maybe it's like patty hearst siding with her kidnappers
maybe it's like south african miner killing diamond wearing gangster rappers

Sarah Silverman (from Jesus is Magic)

I do not understand the public outcry against Günter Grass. The depth of my disgust when I read that people were demanding that he return his Pulitzer and revoke his citizenship for Gdansk (Danzig) was immeasurable. He'd admitted (years ago) to being a member of the Hitler Youth and he has written extensively about the stupidity in which he and his countrymen participated in World War II. Obviously, being drafted is a far cry from actively seeking a position with the Waffen SS. However, we're talking about a 15 year old kid living in the heyday of the Nazi propaganda machine. We're not talking about a guy like say, James Frey who got famous and then infamous in the span of a year through an elaborate hoax. Grass joined the army when he was little more than a child and was later forced to march through a concentration camp, which freaked him out badly enough to change into a person who fought to prevent the kind of behavior that leads to things like concentration camps.

If we do not accept that people can improve themselves, we must simply accept that genocide, wars, and racism are a part of human nature. This is, to me, absolute bullshit and just an excuse for being a bunch of lid flipping entitlement whores.

Nice going, assholes. Why don't you go ahead and shake the hand of the nearest Nazi for sticking with his guns.

I like his scars and I like that he bares them to a world that obviously hates itself enough to disenfranchise him simply for admitting that he is human. He leads by example and I have to stand back and applaud that. Of course, not everyone agrees with me.

Charlotte Knobloch has decided that Grass' admission negates his work or that he's just working our tits to try to sell more books. The first scenario is pretty fucking stupid. Anyone who reads Grass knows how he feels about the war and it's not going to change a fucking thing just because he busted a few more balls. The second scenario actually makes sense at first until you realize that if being a Nazi was a selling point, we'd have fewer crosses and a lot more swastikas.

Most importantly (I'm going to catch all kinds of hell for this) Jewish Halocaust outrage is becoming a boring cliché. Stop whipping the horse, bitches. I can't sit through movies about it and barely got through "Night" because the idea that people do this kind of shit to each other tears me the fuck apart inside; the very fucking idea of hearing people complain about the mass genocide of their own while simultaneously bombing the shit out of civilians in Lebanon makes me want to puke all over them. Of all the people in all the world who could be setting an example, all I see is a constant barrage of "...the world owes me something". Somehow, concentration camp pain (unless it's Japanese "internment camp" pain or "trail of tears" pain; then it's pretty easily forgotten) is somehow more sacred than that of others. Unlike Günter Grass and say, Viktor Frankl, you've failed to set any kind of example of experiential based empathy for other human beings.

Oh that's right, genocide is ok when you're doing it.

P.S. bite my ass

Onward Christian Wehrmacht

2006-06-07T22:52:00.000-04:00

For the socially conservative, watching the marriage amendment fail must be like listening to your favorite song die of cancer. On top of that, in a funny, feeble attempt at pandering, President Bush encouraged immigrants to learn English and history because it (somehow) allows us to remain “one nation under God”. It makes one wonder where he’d stand if people from South America and Asia spoke in tongues, eh? It is becoming obvious that Bush is screwing the proverbial pooch, sans duct tape (because no one believes in that anymore either), and glad-handing his way out the door.

Now, we must turn our accusing eyes toward the guy that is beginning to carve a really good, lasting niche: Michael P. Farris. Of the many socially conservative people I’ve heard over these past few years (because I really wanted to hear what their problem was, exactly), this guy is by far the creepiest. People get pissed off about Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly, when really, they’re just the loud shirts that distract you from finding Waldo. Farris is not the short-bus blitzkrieg that will be the (temporary) downfall of the Christian Right. This guy is intelligent, serene, and is calmly urging his Christian soldiers forward. And it’s working. This is the thing: when I was listening to him speak, he began to make sense. Then the Tin-Man woke me, the Lion, and the Scarecrow up and I couldn’t believe how good this guy really is. The problem here is that he’s so calm and reasonable that it is difficult to counter him properly until you’re far enough away figure out what the fuck that thing was. He's a believer. No, really.

Here is his interview with Terry Gross. I urge you to listen because he broke her balls six ways to Sunday. Pun infinitely intended.

The Ten Thousand Babies Award Goes To...

2006-05-03T18:02:00.000-04:00

If someone at the RIAA had this kind of foresight and genius, they wouldn't be the hated institution that they are today, I may have bought a CD that wasn't from an independent label in the past few years, and a lot of people who don't own computers might actually have the money to buy 'em.

Soderbergh's ideas may never be implemented simply because the film industry could likely do exactly what the RIAA did and refuse to believe the fact that their days of easy money are simply over. Either way, I deeply admire people who are lucid enough to suggest new strategy when they see that the end is nigh.

I Love Him, Even if He's Serious

2006-04-15T09:55:00.000-04:00

My love/hate relationship (one sided, of course) with Vincent Gallo continues. I never know if he is serious. I like this in a person.

*edited a large, glaring typo

And My Brother Makes Me Laugh

2006-03-26T22:10:00.000-05:00

From Mike's website; he a funny monkey.

The Sky is (Not) Falling
Saturday, March 11, 2006

Government: "Oh my God! They're attacking our country!"

Public: "Oh my God!"

Government: "We must identify and root out all terror!"

Public: "Yes! Save us!"

Government: "We shall set laws to make it easier to search your records and determine if you are a terrorist!"

Public: "Please, do so freely! I love what you do for me!"

Government: "We will meticulously search your carry-on baggage and make you endure careful shoe examinations --especially if you're decidedly ethnic!"

Public: "Search everything immediately for I am so very frightened for my life!"

Government: "We will invade a country full of people whose culture you don't understand, thus making it easier for you to accept as a direct threat to America despite having absolutely nothing to do with the attack!"

Public: "I'm sure they weren't innocent...Freedom isn't Free!"

Government: "Look! There goes a bronze-skinned American citizen lingering his gaze at a building behind you...we must lock him up for months on end without charging him!"

Public: "Of course! No true American would grow a beard like that!"

Government: "Ah! Anthrax!"

Public: "Acckkkk!"

Government: "Oh no! Bird flu!"

Public: "Eeeeek!"

Government: "We have another credible threat of terrorists attacking your local supermarket!"

Public: "Raise the threat level, RAISE THE THREAT LEVEL!"

Public: "Look! The Arabs are trying to control our ports, creating a huge threat to our security!"

Government: "Huh?"

Public: "The Arabs! Look! The UAE are going to control our ports!"

Government: "I'm not following what you're saying."

Public: "They used to bed with Al Qaeda and the Taliban!"

Government: "That's the most irrational, racist thing I've ever heard."

Public: "But we must fight the terrorists! YOU taught us that!"

Government: "You're twisting my words. This deal WILL proceed as planned."

Public: "What?!? Are you crazy? Not just no, but HELL NO!"

Government: "I assure you everything will be fine."

Public: "Don't you remember 9/11? Don't you remember when the towers fell?"

Government: "What does that have to with the port deal?"

Public: "You buffoon! Are you daft? We're AT WAR! If you're not with us, you're against us!"

Government: "Look, I don't mean to offend you but..."

Public: "Did I mention I'm a registered voter and you're a lame duck?"

Government: "Okay, okay, we'll call off the deal."

Public: "Hurray! All is well in the land! We're saved!"

Government: "Wait! We just received a threat of an attack on college basketball tournaments..."

Public: "Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Help me!!!!"

Mike

Light the Corners of My Mind

2006-03-26T16:08:00.000-05:00

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman

I've been studying memory a lot lately because to me, one of the things that makes life the most interesting is to remember it in the most objective way possible. There are tricks to doing this correctly. It's hard and takes time and I devote at least one day out of the month to getting it right. I like to know what is motivating me to do the things that I do and I know for sure that the past, while not a place that I like to revist too terribly often, can tell me a lot about who I was and who I am now. There are things that I've done that no one will ever know about that were some of the best moments in my life: total shining examples of humanity. Then again, some of the shit I've done makes me cringe. I realized at some point (actually at an airport in Atlanta) that there really never is an excuse for being as selfish as I was, so I decided that my choices were to do better or die sucking. Now, I never stop wanting to do better, I never stop wanting people to do their best, and I rarely stop expecting that to happen.

I’ve seen some serious hypocrisy in my life. The kind of hypocrisy that made me fear that the person(s) guilty of it would reach some kind of hypocritical mass and explode in a fury of self-congratulatory confetti. I mean, hell, I've yet to be attacked by anyone who didn't throw out my past for target practice and have never, ever been attacked by anyone who wasn't guilty of the same shit that I did. It is because I saw this and the types of people who were very much into it that I forced myself to be as honest as possible without either embellishment or self-deprecation. I was like, "Oh fuck is that what happens when you become too firmly cemented in your own bullshit??!!" Maybe not the finest excuse for an epiphany but it worked. It scared the bejesus out of me and taught me the important lesson of being responsible without feeling guilty. Well, that and Günter Grass.

Our memories unfortunately, tend to reflect an egocentric bias. We want to remember ourselves in the best possible light. We also tend to want to think that our self-serving deeds or failures were simply a reaction to something in our environment. If we're not patting ourselves on the back we're making everything out to be worse than it was so that we can take comfort in self-pity. The truth is that no matter what the provocation, being unkind (even to oneself) is simply wrong. There is no excuse, no provocation that can justify cruelty or smirking indifference to the suffering of another. There is no real excuse for being glad if someone else fails and the only reason we do it is so that we can nod our self-satisfied heads with the knowledge that we were right all along. Good for us. The prize? We lose some perspective because the moment we stop admitting our own failures or excusing our failures for any reason whatsoever, we take the first steps in becoming willfully ignorant. That, to me, is the absolute worst possible fate I can imagine.

True character probably exists in all people, and its strength within us is based on how much we are willing to accept who we are. This is the only way to fully realize who we can be. There are no real martyrs, no heroes, and certainly no saints. There are only those who sleep and those who refuse to eat the lotus. The prize? The sometimes painful but always interesting truth and I like the truth more than I like being right.

Also, if you're going to contradict yourself, change your behavior to reflect your beliefs. Otherwise, you're silly. You're just silly.

Hard for a Pimp

2006-03-20T08:31:00.002-05:00

"You should have seen how some of them were dressed," Bridges said. "Sometimes troopers would wrap them up in one of those yellow blankets used to cover dead bodies."

Magistrate Roy Bridges, describing the appearance of the child prostitutes he had recently arrested.

What a creepy, yet appropriate image. Story is here.

Anne

2006-03-09T20:54:00.001-05:00

Civil rights activist Anne Braden died in Louisville last Monday at the age of 81. I was fortunate enough to have taken a class taught by Mrs. Braden my sophomore year at NKU. At first, it seemed like the coolest thing ever to take a class taught by a friend and contemporary of Martin Luther King. Later, I thought it was much cooler to have taken a class taught by a person who actually worked to help people get a fair break instead of lamenting and waiting for someone else to do it.

If you didn't know her, take my word for it, she was one hella cool chick. No wait, don't take my word for anything! Read all about her!

The Right Way

2006-03-06T20:23:00.000-05:00

And so it begins.

We ladies should take a moment and consider that if abortion becomes illegal across the United States, women who engage in any activity that could endanger a developing organism (human, of course) could be considered attempted murderers. This means that under the right circumstances (pun intended), women could be imprisoned for driving, walking up stairs, taking aspirin, or eating unhealthy foods.

Yes, that's an extreme point of view, probably just as extreme as pharmacists denying women their birth control prescriptions or their emergency contraception. We live in extreme times.

More than "I can't believe this is happening", I've been thinking, "I wonder what will happen next?" Interestingly, I've found that more and more often, as long as it's a convenient anal rape, most people bleat maybe a vague semblance of protest before they simply lay down and spread their trotters. Give me my gas and my valu-menu or give me death. As long as I'm not ensconced in someone's abdomen.

**Update: Hee, wow, The Great 62-2 Ports Deal Rebellion. Bush must be wearing one of those cone thingies around his neck to keep him from gnawing his wounds over this one...

***And then I was all like...Comedy. Fucking. Gold.

Six Degrees of Saturation

2006-02-26T23:10:00.000-05:00

Once again, I am pissed.

I just found a new Schizophelia on eBay. At first, when I saw that others were copying my name, I was flattered. I'm tired of it now. I want to kick each and every one of them in the cooter. Except maybe that one who pierces her nethers and eats babies, I kind of like her. But on eBay?? That's not me, guys. First off, I'd never invent a pseudonym like this and then use it to buy used sundries and haberdashery. I certainly wouldn't use it to send hugs and kisses to anyone in a public forum. Girls, if you're going to be lovey dovey about life, can't you call yourself something less...awesome?

This is frustrating. And it's hard to be nice about it. But try I must. But before that, I must confess that after years of trying to extricate myself from people who seek to co-opt my identity at any price, I would love it grandly if others could go out and you know, experience life instead of making it up or better yet, stealing a piece of mine.

Junky Trouble

2006-02-07T22:49:00.000-05:00

JT LeRoy is not a male junky ho, nor is James Frey a recovering ex-con whose teen drama led to a stint in the hoosegow and a miraculous recovery from addiction. What? You mean they lied to us about their junky pasts?? I’m so…not surprised. But why exactly does a person write a “memoir” that proves to be a total falsehood instead of just writing a work of fiction and calling it like it is? Smart people write books, call ‘em fiction and coyly hint that there might be some truth to them, thus creating a mystique and therefore, a following of curious lifestyle onlookers. Stupid people on the other hand, write books, call ‘em autobiographies and forget that along the way, their stupid, lying asses have left behind a trail of people who can’t stand them and would be more than happy to call them out if they happen to be foolish enough to publish their lies and call them truth. Or better yet, have left behind a paper trail (or lack of one, in Frey's case) which disproves all their tear-stained stories and just pisses people off.

Here's the thing: most people who live the lives that LeRoy and Frey made up aren’t necessarily going to be heard. They’re either dead or in prison. Addiction…is Plato’s cave for poor people.

The truth is just too damned honest. It’s dirty and full of flies and grit and smog. The “happy ending” doesn’t just fade in after a montage, but evolves after years and years and years of sewing and knitting back together a life that was so damaged so early that the person just wanted to throw it back.

Lives rarely just stop sucking unless someone works long and hard to make them stop sucking, which means that some small part of you must remain unbroken enough to have the will to even begin such a monumental effort. That in itself is rare for anyone, let alone those who were born into poverty and abuse. If your atrophied sense of self preservation can keep you afloat long enough, (i.e., if you aren’t totally useless after years of being someone else’s punching bag/fuck toy), you must then build a raft amid freezing, rushing water using broken twigs that happen to float past you here and there. Then you must climb on, but beware of all of the people who want to pull you back down off of your half-assed, hoopty raft that is busy engaging in its own brutal struggle just to support your heavy, heavy psyche. You’ll recognize the hands of the people who are pulling at your limbs because they were probably your best friends at some point. Trust me when I say they’ll drag you down with smiles on their faces and promises of loyalty and puppies made of candy. If by some crazy twist of fate you’re able to get away from the grasping claws of your former associates, you’ll have to (for the rest of your life) walk on a river bank that is covered in slippery mud, forcing yourself not to look back and instead, looking from side to side and ahead all at the same time to make sure you don’t fall down while you’re trying to move forward. If you fuck up once, just once, you will have to start this process over and you will have lost faith in your ability to do it again and to keep doing it once you've gone through the larval stage, leaving you once again, fucked. You'll need to possess a strong will, a great deal of self-awareness (a realistic assessment of how much you rock and how much you suck), and an ability to survive completely and utterly alone on top of the will to stop slipping into the much-easier haze of drug abuse or in my case, insanity. Now, you’ve got that done, yes? Ok, now go write a book and get it published with the grand connections and amazing education you’ve obtained while being a junky. K?

I’m not usually one to place a shocking story into a diatribe because it smacks of grandstanding…but I think this one applies and it always bugs me when I hear people talk about their horrid childhoods which lead to their horrid acts as adults, knowing for a fact that they’re making up stories (if you ever hear the words “recovered memories”, run for cover my friends) because they are just too damned lazy and far too dubious of character to earn any real accolades.

My childhood friend Tracey was found face down in the desert last year with a cardboard box only partially covering her body. The last time I saw her, she was dressed up like a Fairy for Halloween. And this is what I see laying there in the Mojave. An 11 year old with broken cardboard wings and dirty pink chiffon, track marks covering her mottled arms and her stripper’s thong wrapped around her neck where the murderer (who is still at large; no one cares about junky prostitutes) left it. I picture him dragging her out there and pulling that piece of cardboard only halfway over her body, scratching his ass and walking away, muttering, "Aw, fuck it." She never had anything better than a half-assed piece of corrugated cardboard life anyway. Why bother allowing her an ounce of dignity now?

This is how most of the people from my neighborhood ended their lives or ended the lives of others. This is the movie I saw again and again growing up at the Plato Matinee for poor kids. These are the lives that junkys lead and this is not an uncommon event. You won’t see it on Oprah. You’ll see “recovered memories”, James Frey, and many other examples of people who are so boring that they lie or co-opt the experiences of others, but you won’t see anyone from my neighborhood.

And I fucking wish I was lying.

For a much more empathetic view of literary hustling, I suggest Stephen Beachy's article in New York Magazine. He has a different perspective than the one above and it is a lovely read.

Not My Real Name

2006-01-10T22:04:00.000-05:00

After receiving an email that linked to information about the new law against annoying people over the internet while using a pseudonym, I thought it only fitting to mention that you can't go back to Constantinople, now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople, why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks'.

Got that?

Arnie: Savin' the Mutha Fuckin' Day Now

2005-12-12T19:41:00.000-05:00

The jury who convicted Stanley Williams and the actor turned Governor who denied Williams clemency are merely defending our noble country, its noble history, and its noble ideals. Ideals like, no torture (unless you're Middle Eastern), no crime must go unpunished (unless you're old, fat, nasty, white, rich, and need Viagra to screw the hooker your secretary just called), and the full on Jesus love, because we wouldn't have Christianity if we never had capital punishment.

America. Fuck yeah.

*Update:

Jasmyne A. Cannick doesn't seem to get it.
Talk too much about the same thing, you become nothing more than noise. If you talk about the same thing once in a while when you can cite a damned good and commonly accepted example of why something is either right or wrong, you have a fighting chance of proving your point. This is why people were so talky about this particular execution, dumbass.

Bear in Mind

2005-12-07T14:46:00.000-05:00

A fun new form of entertainment: Google "Lewis Libby" and "Bears" together. It's awesome.

Living the Archetype

2005-12-03T11:02:00.000-05:00

You know what bugs me? Well, if you've read anything other than this post, you have a pretty goddamned good idea. If not, I'll tell you right now, A-#1 top o'the list is willful ignorance. I pretty much despise liars too, but they fall under the willful ignorance umbrella because they lie to themselves first (the part you don't see) then start having to defend the bullshit (the stuff you DO see) and eventually center their lives on this bullshit. Like a Copernican cow-patty; that's willful ignorance.

Life has been made easier by technology but that shouldn't mean that human beings should stop evolving. If anything, we now have the ability to decide what stays and goes in our reality most of the time. However, people still want life handed to them in a series of unlikely answers to intangible questions given to us by people who have no clue what the fuck they're talking about. If people aren't arguing over what they can worship they're arguing over how they should worship and when. If it was up to me, no one would be allowed to worship anything in public. Trade literature all you want folks, but no more churches, ashrams, fucking meditation centers, or anything else where stupid people could congregate and blissfully bask in their own mediocrity and willingness to use a pathetic archetype as an example of how to exist. Flip the fucking pancake; breakfast was over 2,000 years ago.

Why this rant now? Because Christians are now embracing C.S. Lewis and non-Christians are freaking out about it. Both sides sound like angry spouses snarling over an only child in the middle of a bitter divorce.

I spent my early childhood in a small nook of concrete in central Ohio. My brethren were but baby steps from snake handling Appalachia and all the churches in my neighborhood were filled with holy rollin', heaven bound believers in the liberatin' power of Jesus' name. No joke. So there I was, third or fourth grade. The teacher liked to read books to us right before lunch time. So she gathered herself up and made a statement that some of the kids would be excused to the library. The rustle of sack lunches from under desks was heard, coats slung on backs, and out marched about five or six kids, full of purpose. Confused, I turned around to ask the kid behind me what was going on. "She's readin' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." "...and?" "They's talkin' animals in it. That's devil worshippin'." "It is??" "Yeah, 'cause in the Bible, talkin' animals ain't Christian." Hmm. I see. Don't believe me? Check this out. Mmm hmm. That's what I'm talkin' about.

This was sometime in the 70's and it was in a place where "holy rollers" were considered the conservatives. The word "satanic" was heard frequently, many of the evil deeds from lost dogs to colicky babies were attributed to demons. Satan, I suppose, sent lesser imps to handle the stuff in my neighborhood, making personal appearances for oh, things like natural disasters and Led Zeppelin albums (played-backwards, of course). The KKK still considered (and might still, since I've lost contact with much of my extended family, I'm not up on current Klan dogma) Catholics to be akin to Jews, and anyone who wasn't all about church was certainly doomed to burn. Concerned parents pressed the teacher to stop with the entire Narnia series because it was considered satanic. The book was even challenged in Maryland in 1990 because it depicted "graphic violence, mysticism, and gore". Hmmmm. I have searched in vain for what type of mysticism was so offensive to the Maryland crowd and thus far, I have found nothing. So I'm not exactly sure if it was non-Christians who were pissed off because of all the god metaphor or if itÃ’s Christians who were pissed off because talking animals are the devils work. This brings me to my point:
This poor, innocent book is getting it at both ends. I think it best to handle this situation with diplomacy and tact.

To Christians, I say, shut the fuck up. You've been bitching about this book for ages. Now, all of the sudden, it's a badge for all that is holy and righteous and good. Well screw you. It's a much more realistic and heart breaking description of the torture and death of Christ, I'll give you that. But kids will only make that connection later. No kid is going to be thinking, "Hey, that dead lion, all coming back to life and stuff? That's exactly like Jesus! I've been so blind...*sniffle*Ã” Non-Christians who want this book banned from classrooms? You shut the fuck up too. Screw you guys for having to fight a bunch of assholes just so we can read Salinger and then turning around and saying that censorship is ok as long as it's batting for your team. I don't want people forcing kids to pray or to say the Pledge of Allegiance but if a teacher wants to read a book about a friendly lion and a neat portal into another world, let 'em. It's not like any kid ponders that book and says, "Hey, I know. This might just be the primer to world Christian domination. I'ma go get saved right now!"

Get a fucking grip and get it now. Both of y'all are getting on my nerves.

Addendum:

I didn't edit anything above but I am adding this last bit because I had a long discussion with a friend about what I'd written. His take was that barring anyone from public worship is the same as censorship. Good point. My take is that it's not like I think that will ever happen, but I'd like it if people took into consideration that congregating (in its best form) would be a group of people hanging out to either thank *insert deity* for their current bounty or to enjoy the company of like-minded folk. Fine. Not my cup of tea, but hey, no one is shitting on my lawn that way, right? But groups, man. Groups are scary. Someone wants to lead, someone else wants to follow, followers tend to be even more self-righteous to prove that they're serious about the thing they're following, and eventually you end up with a megalomaniacal freak (bolstered by the fervency of his/her followers) and a bunch of freaky followers freaking out over nothing.

Home

2005-11-23T00:54:00.000-05:00

Oh happy day! My return to the White Trash Moulin Rouge is upon me.

Apartment seeking is a bitch. It's even more of a bitch than I am, if that is at all possible. But one day, there I was, looking at an apartment in Newport and standing outside the door chatting to my would-be landlord about the last Shellac show at the Southgate house. Turns out he's from Chicago and a huge fan. The show was such a blast. Steve Albini actually paid a guy $20.00 to leave because the guy was being such a pig fucker, heckling Brick Layer Cake and basically making a total fool of himself. If that wasn't classic enough, the guy slunk out of the building surrounded by bouncers, shaking his fists in the air and shouting, "Kurt Cobain would be ashamed of you!" I think that was the first and last time I have ever seen a roomful of people stop abruptly, not quite sure they'd heard what they thought they'd heard, and then start laughing like drunken hyenas. Good ol' cool as a pack of spearmint Lifesavers Steve-O just rolled his eyes and started hammering away at another song. Good times, man. Good times.

So there we were, reminiscing and the Chicago landlord guy asked me why I wanted to move back. As I was trying to tell him how much I loved the eclectic mix of people in Newport, a guy trotted past us wearing a Grandma home-knitted cap, bright red, with a fuzzy ball of yarn bobbing on the top. His head looked quite literally like a fishing lure and he was walking with one of those "crazy people" gaits (leaning a little bit forward, his steps extremely methodical, as though he was counting them as he walked) carrying a huge ceramic Buddha under one arm. Not one of those serene Buddhas with the eyes closed and the lotus action going on but the big ol' fat, happy as hell Buddha, truly the only kind of Buddha with the sense of humor to live in a place like Newport. We quieted as this soul sailed past us and after he was gone, I said, "Behold". The landlord guy just nodded sagely and handed me the lease.

Ahh. Home sweet Newport. The chaotic manifestation of a thousand weary metaphors that have been rolled up, deep fried, and served with a side of What the Fuck. I just love it.

Chicken Shit

2005-09-02T11:18:00.000-04:00

"I am your shit. You should be ashamed of what you've eaten."

"rock'n'roll nigger" marilyn manson/patti smith

According to my friend Doug, the sport of professional wrestling was born of one phrase: "Let me tell ya somethin'..."

In some primordial cave, a scruffy, bearded man (well, it could have been a woman, but let's be realistic here) shoved a disgruntled finger in the face of another man, uttered those magical words, and this sport coalesced out of a people who were amused at their own silly machismo and who understood that people who take themselves too seriously are just really fucking funny.

I am laughing similarly at "us" right now. The us that is America, who didn't (or maybe couldn't) realize that feral nationalism doesn't just separate us from the rest of the world, but from one another. What is happening now in New Orleans is where we have been heading for a long time and the people who have been the most vocal in trying to prevent it have been silenced by the dread words, "Un-American".

Let me tell ya somethin': To all you people who are bitching about your gas prices and the rising fear of an economic disaster, guess what? Fucking DUH. Lots of us have seen this shit coming for years.

The plagued rat of realization scurries through my head of late, chanting songs of Malcolm's chickens and the more I jump around trying to avoid the fleas, the more exhausted I become. In other words, people are fleas and lately, they make me fucking sick.

Through the years, I've been called witch, psycho, bitch, succubus, frigid, and slut. In 1999, I grew tired of being tagged by others so I chose the name Schizophelia. Right now, the one I'm most proud of is un-American.

Damnit, Not Damnit

2005-08-08T01:54:00.000-04:00

I became extremely ill earlier this year (hence the hiatus) after a metaphorical hit-and-run and it gave me some real insight on how easy it is to leave tire tracks on others, driving off in the family wagon, and not looking back. Some weird heart thing manifested and because of this, I lay in a bed for a couple of weeks musing about what was going to happen if I did actually bite the big one.

It seems to me that religion gets knocked around like a crack whore and philosophy is like a teenager's gum stuck on a bed post, something chewed until it becomes a gray, rubbery mass with echoes of some kind of flavor. People who decide not to rely on a god can either deify themselves (the ubermensch, a misunderstood and misused excuse to justify one's own foul behavior and lack of conscience; a good way to deny the humanity of oneself or others), or choose to rely on what people call fate. I think fate is an accidental architect, a dodgy, unpredictable cohort that somehow gets to do god duty when the concept of a creator or master worker is on vacation or better yet, non-existent. Philosophy on the other hand, relies on a mode of discourse that (to me) appears to be as much bullshit as post-modernism. A way for people to feel each other out, take stock of the verbal tenacity of another, and decide whether or not they have the stones to go ten rounds. Forget the point, because it's all either irrelevant or relative...it's just perceptive juju, as ritualistic as a circle jerk but with less depth.

I realized that rising gas prices are more important to many people than rising death tolls. This says so fucking much. Then I started laughing. This is very likely why I fought to overcome the weird heart thing that popped up after what was the most wretched moment of discovery I've thus far experienced. The entire situation and the people involved just suddenly seemed absolutely ridiculous, so utterly absurd, that I laughed until my stomach hurt.

My big realization was that I will never stop being amazed at how casually we regard the basic human rights of others, whether through our beliefs in higher causes, beings, events, or ourselves. Most spirituality is just our monkey way of making sense of this thing called fire and the only redemption on the menu comes from a sincere effort to make right the wrongs we've done, even if it seems impossible.

This is what separates me from most other people and why I'd rather have the perspective that keeps my chin out there (ready for an inevitable sucker punch) than tucked gently into my delicate little wing. Someone may actually succeed in knocking me down briefly, but thus far, they've all turned out to be little more than interlopers, desperate for a piece of my action. As soon as I saw that clearly, I got back up and watched with a mixture of pity and mirth as they slunk back into their holes like the smack talking cowards they are and out of my sight.

Now, I'm having such a great time, I can barely remember why that other shite mattered in the first place. It's a head shaker, folks, why sometimes we think we have to dwell in Oz when those slippers could have chucked us right back to Kansas all along.

Ahem, without further ado:

The Mighty List of Things I Can Recommend if One is Either Laid-Up or Bored

Portishead's "Dummy". I've just bought my third copy of this album since 1994, the other two having been worn out and/or loaned to my sweet little pal, local poet Doug "Bandit" Saretsky. Trip-hop sounded kinda silly until I heard this album. It's all blues and haze with a white chick singer and some weird scratchy d.j. thing going on. It shore am good.

Pefume Tree...the summer of '95 or '96, it's kind of hazy, but ah what a time we had. Ambient Camping at some god forsaken backwoods place in Texas, all of us on acid, cops coming to say we were making too much noise (it was ambient music for fucks sake and we were a bunch of techno-hippies! How rowdy could we have been?? Also, you simply haven't lived until you see a d.j. wearing fluffy bunny-ear headphones sagely reasoning with a park ranger) and Perfume Tree had just released Lifetime Away, one of my favorite albums. It's relaxing, it's girlie, and sounds really good even without the drugs. Which is more than I can say for most people I know.

Neal Stephenson...writer who seems like an ego maniac with a cheesy beard, but hell, he's a great writer so hats off to him. And to his beard.

Million Dollar Baby...it depressed the hell out of everyone but me. I never get bummed out when people do cool shit, even if they only get to do it once.

Vanity Fair...sweet christ I loved this movie. Made by the chick who did Monsoon Wedding, which also rocked pretty hard.

My friend Jay. Weird Korean physics guy who sleeps on a mattress made of bamboo. He says it's more comfortable. Ok, Jay. Ok.

My friend Joe. The only noble person I've ever met. One of the few people I've known with both an ounce of character and an interesting past that he didn't have to invent (yes, as creepy as it might seem, I've met people who are so afraid of being boring that they've invented half their lives instead of living them; probably still out there inventing-not-living, too). Might be as weird as Jay. Does a very interesting puppet show where there are no real words, only gestures and it entertains the hell out of me.

This one guy at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. Oh, how I love him. Ten thousand of his babies kind of love. Plus, I have a grudging admiration for actors. They're attention whores but at least they're smart enough to get paid for lying in order to make people love them. I can respect that level of self-awareness.

Ren...from down under. Such a nice fellow and didn't mind when I got piss drunk at the Sydney Opera House and got weepy during Handel's Messiah.

People who are are not flakes. It's hard to find 'em but they're out there.

---------------------------

So...this is me dancing off into the sunset, till I come back and bitch about something and let me just tell you now, I am so angry that I can't bitch about Robert Novak anymore because haha, who doesn't know what a moron he is. Damnit I hate it when people jump off my list with no warning...one minute, a pompous blowhard, the next, a redneck cursing at James Carville. I feel so empty...*sniff*...

Valhalla Your Pleasure, Valhalla Your Fun

2005-07-29T03:22:00.000-04:00

Maurice: Stevens! What the hell do you think you're doing?
Chris: Whaddya mean?
Maurice: You know exactly what I mean! Das Rhinegold's one thing but if you think I'm going to subject myself to the whole Ring of Nibelung, you're sadly mistaken!

From "Northern Exposure"

Richard Wagner has long been vilified and quite unfairly from my perspective, mostly because the moral kaleidoscope is so often thrust upon us from birth, a distant cousin of the appreciation of art, which comes from a deeper, more primal space within us. The difference is that one of them is chosen for us by other people, the other is a point in the evolutionary timeline of our DNA. Certain preferences, lines, colors, shapes, and sounds are pleasurable to the eyes and ears because a few million years ago, learning to recognize and enjoy them helped our monkey forbearers to survive. Since we are no longer monkeys and have some sense of self, those preferences have dimension and of course, since that dimension is based upon a completely unique set of factors, it's all intensely personal. Moral plates are ever changing, colliding, and reforming around new centers of gravity if we are to believe Nietzsche but when it comes to art, one likes what one likes. Sure our tastes evolve, become more refined. For me, it's always been about color and the mysterious eyes that know how to slap it together so poetically. The red tapestry in so many of Vermeer's paintings, those blue, stiff figures and hilarious perfection in Matisse's impressionism, and my beloved Van Gogh who could somehow exorcise the vibrancy from his paint so that it leaps inside me each time I look at one of his paintings. It's too bad you can't touch them because they seem really multi-sensory.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, the truth of this matter is that the only time art and morality meet is when someone sets them up on a blind date and the result is usually a bastard child conceived after too much cheap beer and sex in the torn back seat of a Chrysler.

At any rate, I'm glad to see that this opera (ok, technically a bunch of them) is getting some well deserved attention. If you're a horn lover (he sure was, and if you have any lingering doubt about his sexuality, you're not alone), this is surely your cup of music.

The art or the artist. Which voice is louder? Probably the one the moves us the farthest in the direction we were headed in the first place.

*edited...because I can.

Ah, Jeunet

2005-07-13T00:40:00.000-04:00

Finally, Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles is available for comfy home viewing. I cannot recommend this film enough. Though at this point, I am quite the cynic when it comes to romance, I wept through half of this film and by the end, I found myself clutching my tissue like a rosary and praying for the conclusion to turn out as I'd hoped it would.

It reminded me a lot of Longfellow's Evangeline except that when you read Evangeline, you kind of get the feeling that you're swallowing something really syrupy with bits of sand in it...unlike this film where you get all the sweetness going down but nothing catches in your throat.

Also, for the Jeunet fans out there, there's an homage to Delicatessen at the beginning.

Vive le squeaky bedsprings and you know, amour and whatnot.

Vegging Out

2005-04-20T00:58:00.000-04:00

It all started a couple of months ago when this guy I knew gave me some green tea . I stopped drinking as much coffee (a feat accomplished only once before after reading a Hubert Selby Jr. novel) and it created an avalanche of clearing out all chemicals.

That made it easier to stop eating meat. I was a vegetarian for about three years back in the day. But for some reason (I still can't remember why but it must have had something to do with living in Texas), I got back on the meat train. I'm not one of your militant meat-is-murder type gals. In fact, if chalk outlines of chickens was all I had to worry about when I feasted on the flesh of non-sapiens, I'd be skipping down gravy lane. But sadly, it's much worse than simple animal carnage these days. It's even worse than Upton Sinclair's horribly, terribly depressing "The Jungle". The exploitation of Polish immigrants is the least of our worries in the ever increasing, animal-shit entropy producing U. S. of hyper industrialized A. My darling girlfriend Terry interviewed Michael Pollan and it wasn't very appetizing. I was rather shocked by what I heard.

I knew that the meat industry was responsible for a fair amount of pollution. I didn't know that the reason for much of the methane gas that cows produce is because cows have a highly specialized (and very interesting from an evolutionary perspective)digestive system that requires them to eat grass only. When they're fed corn (among other things), they bloat, creating infection (hence so many antibiotics in meat), among other, even more yummy side effects. They must often be purged, spewing caustic cow squeezins that then lay in shimmering pools of chemical, nitrogen laden doom around the farm lands, seeping into ground water supplies. Suddenly, tragically, my five minutes of happily devouring another creature doesn't seem to be worth the weeks of torment that a cow has to endure or even the moment of pain that a sweet, tiny, fluffy baby chicken must suffer (I didn't know that they burned the tips of chick's beaks off, which is fucking horrifying), thank you Baraka for that nightmarish, from the bowels of hell image.

So, while I can't logically say that meat is murder, it does carry a higher moral price tag than a trip to Wal-Mart for me and you would sooner catch Pat Robertson nailing Ozzy Osbourne in three different orifices than catch me in Wal-Mart. And now, of course, eating a piece of ex-bloated cow meat.

FeS2

2005-04-15T15:54:00.000-04:00

When I asked one of my friends why cats must always plop down on even the tiniest piece of paper instead of sitting on the bare floor, he glanced over at my overfed and deplorably spoiled feline companion and said, “Because they don’t have pants.”

This, in the weirdest way, sums up the week I’ve had.

Going to Hell Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

2005-04-12T22:10:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, one of my dear friends committed suicide. She had hooked up with a mean mistreater and he’d pretty much fucked her in the ass and left her bleeding. For her, the solution was to down a bottle of pills and wait to die. The next morning, people came to check on her when she was late for an appointment. They found her nigh lifeless body (which has somehow managed to keep plugging away) and rushed her to the hospital. After some doctor magic, they thought she had a shot. Alas, no. She had destroyed her kidneys. She was awake when they told her she was going to die. So she asked a priest if she was going to go to hell since she’d been the cause of her own demise.

My first thought (after the initial shock, this gal was an amazing woman and I couldn’t imagine her doing such a thing) was that if she knew (in her Catholic mind) that she was certain to burn forever just to dull the temporary pain of rejection from a soulless, gutless twerp, why then would she not wish to take him down with her? I mean, what more does one have to lose when they're convinced that one act of desperation means that they're doomed to dwell in the fiery pits of damnation? And especially when they've decided that it's best to just give up and jump ship since someone else keeps trying to push them overboard.

Asking around, I found a surprising amount of hostility in the answers from women. Psycho has become as feared a word as whore these days. The ladies I questioned said that women who spoke up after being treated badly were psychotic bitches. They should just walk away. In other words, if they didn’t just lay back and take it in silence, their reputations were torn to shreds and their rights to be treated with a modicum of dignity were ignored. Sometimes, sadly, by other women who were no doubt fearing that denying these standards would mean that they too were psychos.

In the end, I figured out that a lot of women are afraid to speak up when they are mistreated because they’re afraid of being branded a psycho. The same method of denying women their voices is just as effective now as it was when Greco-Roman writers invented it. By calling women hysterical, they’re basically saying that any intense emotion that we feel is simply a side effect of being female.

This is where my friend found herself. She knew that speaking up would only cause her more pain. So, she threw her life in the toilet, and all because of one man, who probably breathed a sigh of relief that his life would not change because the woman with whom he’d been messing around on the side had shuffled off this mortal coil.

I say fuck that. I say it’s worth it to speak up, if only to hear your own voice in a cacophony of squealing pigs. There are plenty of people out there who are more than happy to deny all of us our voices. If you allow them to do that, even with the threat of being branded a psycho (or better yet, a psycho whore) it means that you agree that you have no right to exist, because what are we if we meekly allow people to trod upon our existence with no repercussions?

Of course, there is something to be said for diplomacy. But there are times when that just isn’t realistic. Sometimes, and those times are rare as I do think that people deserve to be treated fairly, a person proves him or herself to be a predator and must be thwarted before (and sometimes after) taking a bite. I also think that in cases like my friend, not speaking up about a two-timing rat fuck means that you're accepting at least part of the blame for the pain caused later when his significant other figures out his ruse. What other people call a psycho, I call a woman who isn’t going to submit to the rules laid out for us a few thousand years ago by a bunch of stupid men and perpetuated today by pretty much everyone.

So back then, I vowed never to deny myself a voice, no matter what might happen because of it. And a lot has happened because of it. But, in the blanket of reality, I can find my loud ass, psycho self pretty easily. That’s really all any of us truly has.

Apophenia Jones

2005-03-20T19:19:00.000-05:00

I am editing the poo out of a previous post because I either presented a joke too sloppily or vastly underestimated the sophistication of my readership.

I got an email from a friend (which sort of got me on this subject) telling me I had to see a film called "What the Bleep do We Know?" He said, "Wow this film really opened my eyes." Ok, all systems go. I'll roll the dice. There is no fucking way I'd ever link the film and after reading this post, you'll understand why.

So it’s a tale of a photographer who is at an impasse in her life because her husband has left her for another woman. She’s really pissed off and bitter and I think she’s trying to figure out how she could have seen it coming (at least this is how I have stitched the story together within the context of the subject matter that surrounds this woman's journey). So, interspersed with the events in her life are different “scientists” discussing quantum physics and reality and how us monkeys can’t perceive "true" reality, la la la.

So there I am, watching this movie, descending slowly into uncomfortable silence. You know the kind: You're a little afraid that the person next to you is actually enjoying what you're experiencing as a preachy, Jesus-less but still frighteningly dogmatic onslaught. The first hint that it was going seriously off into the whimsical forest of "What the fuck...." was when one of the "experts" in the film claimed that the natives of the Americas couldn't see Columbus' ships approaching because “…it was so unlike anything they’d ever seen before. They couldn’t see it.” No, I’m not kidding. I am not kidding. This, among other gems, like the claim that the sub-atomic world is a fantasy concocted by mad physicists and um, the assertion that a camera "sees a lot more than what is here". Wait, if it's not there...what??

That’s when I began the old lady "quiet-but-agitated muttering". And the highjinks just keep getting higher. By the end, I was shouting at the television. I was also looking forward to seeing the credentials of the people who had done some of the commentary. I mean, if these folks were real scientists, what the fuck had I been studying for three years? As the list went on, I noticed one thing in particular. There was a name: J.Z. Knight. And another. Ramtha. And between the two names? “Channeled by”. Cock of the head, blink blink of the eyes, slow nodding. Ohhhhhhh....

I hightailed it to the computer and uncovered the tragic truth. J.Z. Knight has made lots of money by claiming that she can channel an Atlantean (yes, I said Atlantean) warrior name of Ramtha. Together, she and Ramtha made a movie called “What the Bleep do we Know?” with the help of some of their pals and a dupe from Columbia whose testimony was apparently “creatively edited” to back up their claims.
The pals? Well, where to begin. A rundown can be found here.

What's bothersome about all of this spiritual junk is that there are people seeking truth who turn to people like Knight (among others) because they talk a good game about viewing things from a different perspective. The truth about she and other con people/gurus is that they're like methadone clinics without the methadone.

So, this leads us back to the original post about bullshit.

Harry Frankfurt's book/essay is especially relevant at the moment given the inordinate amount of liars I've come across of late and the creepy acceptance of lying by the masses. Or acceptance of things they'd previously shunned. For example, one of my biggest pet peeves is that some of the former catholics that I have known, who've complained heartily about the Pope (among other "holy men") call the Dalai Lama "His Holiness" without question. If that's not the biggest crock! Remember the good ol' days when you had to stage an inquisition or at least take over the world for that kind of reverence? Now all you have to do is be super-nice and get exiled from your mystical place of origin to score a sweet title like that.

Ahem.

If a person can create a passive audience, he or she becomes their own celebrity. And in a culture where celebrity has become more relevant and valued than integrity, it makes perfect sense that scripted conversation would outweigh objective reality. Junk food for the psyche. Or, people are just so damned apathetic they can't even manage a conversation anymore. Pedestrian answers I suppose. I think the truth rests somewhere in the fact that many of my own peers have either raised themselves or were alternately abused and then given idle "grudge affection" here and there. A lasting bitterness with a desperate desire for validity has produced a generation of selfish beings who are somewhat lost and lack the understanding of how rewarding emotional maturity can really be.

The point of all of this is: Everyone one is trying to make sense of a reality that not only thrives on bullshit, but exists because of it. We're the products of the vast amounts of fertilizer that we create. Making sense of fabrication is difficult at best and some of the roads that one travels in order to sort things out are fucking endless. Now that deities have to tug the rope against shrink wrapped, pop-culture icons, the gettin's good at the id/superego buffet. Simply put, there are more people and lots more bullshit to choose from. Like "What the Bleep" and the Dalai Lama (tm).

I'm also irked that William Orbit let them use one of my favorite songs on the soundtrack of that crap movie.

*edit: This is a fun link...

Someone Needs a Whuppin'

2005-03-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

It began with the murders of Joan Lefkow's mother and husband. It seems to be catching on. The word "kin" is popping up more and more often. So this leaves me with only one question:

When the fuck did we get to Dogpatch??

Burning the Double Standard at Both Ends

2005-03-09T02:01:00.000-05:00

Jamie Lee Curtis “came out” and exposed the kinds of trickery that the entertainment industry uses to make women look more beautiful in film and print. Why? Because at age 40+, she was through being poked, prodded, and starved to maintain a media friendly image. Kirstie Alley is stepping up to the plate to speak out against the same kinds of standards. What do these women have in common? They only chose to complain about these images and standards after they no longer met them. How can we blithely applaud them for their efforts against unrealistic expectations of beauty when they and other highly visible women achieved (and continue to achieve) wealth and success perpetuating them?

The same can be said for every over-forty actress heard voicing her disgust at the lack of juicy roles in Hollywood for women their age. How much effort was made by these women to thwart sexist ageism in Hollywood when people were lining up to take their picture? How many of them turned down roles because they had to play a much younger wife to a sixty year-old, Viagra chugging geezer? Does it occur to either Curtis or Alley that their efforts today would not be necessary if they and other women had not sanctified those potentially dangerous stereotypes to begin with? Those women are not standing up and saying "no" to someone else's stupid expectations. They're trying to sell empowerment because they can no longer sell their young, beautiful asses. Now, they're on our side? Give me a break. I'll let them play in my sandbox when I think it means something, not because it's their only other option.

When we bask in the reflected glory of false bravado, we can easily forget that unrealistic beauty standards are not only reinforced but celebrated because other women agree to meet them. As long as not-so-visible women and former media darlings are the only ones in the vanguard against an entirely unhealthy image of beauty, we're screwed. The world is saturated with images of young women who are so thin that they have to buy breasts. And it's only getting worse.

Fostering the illusion of eternal youth and beauty is worth it for famous actresses because at the end of the day, they know it is bullshit and they're getting paid a lot of money to pretend that it's not. I will stop doubting the sincerity and intentions of these babes when there are fewer shows like “Fat Actress” and more shows like “Thin Gorgeous Actress Eats a Ham Sandwich and Refuses to Pretend She’d Actually Sleep with an Old Skanky Bastard”.

Almost Dead

2005-03-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

My “I can’t believe it” moments of late have been due to really terrible news and the mood resulting from them has certainly been obvious from my last few posts.

On a gray, snowy day in Ohio, good news spanked me into a wonderful afternoon.

There are many reasons to be happy today and they all have names and birthdays. Aside from the obvious, the good news is that we, the country that thinks that it can dictate how the rest of the world behaves, has eliminated at least a tiny bit of hypocritical barbarism from our (cringe) system. I hope (so much) that rehabilitation becomes a reality instead of just a nice way of saying, "Cheap Labor".

Blood Stoned Days

2005-02-22T11:43:00.000-05:00

When looking for an online version of “Fear and Loathing” to use for the previous post (that’d have been a lot of typing and I was sleepy and sad), I found many articles, but the one that really stuck out was “The Rolling Stone Interview”. It was that bullshit "The Rolling Stone Interview" tacked beside Thompson's name. As though reading it required someone to unroll red carpets from those sacred pages straight to my visual cortices. As though “Rolling Stone” meant something more than just an echo of a subversive element in America that no longer exists.

Do you think that anyone there actually believes that anyone else over the age of say, 21 takes that magazine seriously? I hate Cosmo but they’re not only aware of what they are, they celebrate it. I can respect that. But whenever I see Rolling Stone, I think “Hello, we’ll be selling you your youth culture today (which is pretty much a recycled version of your parent’s youth culture), you’ll be empowered more by the imagery, symbolism and superficial envelope pushing than you are by the music, which will later be sold to you on 6 CD compilation sets with clever names like “Doze Wer da Dayz”. You’ll play it a couple of Saturday nights a year and remember your glory days, tell all your friends how you were there first (nothing existed before you found it, and as long as we keep dangling that virgin cherry, those of you who are a little more resistant to our marketing will keep buying what we’re selling), and put it away on Sunday morning, get to your job Monday, which will require you to wear a tie (and you’ll be too broken by that point to argue), and at worst will be at a convenience store, you’ll probably have a couple of kids (but you’re fulfilled!) and your cholesterol levels will be higher than twice your IQ. Thank you, that’ll be $4.95, please.”

The only entities left that have the audacity to take themselves that seriously are writers and advertisers.

*Blood Stoned Days from "Hey Jack Kerouac" by 10,000 Maniacs.

Meat Hook Reality

2005-02-21T02:13:00.000-05:00

*update

The post below was written (a lot of it pasted) at around 2:00 AM on the day of Hunter Thompson’s suicide. I had been awake doing some research and stumbled upon the AP site that bled the news to the rest of us. I thought for sure it was an accident. Then I realized that it wasn't. The suddenness of death makes one feel awkward and stilted and even tears seem trite. And suicide is the only cliché that still takes a bite.

Now, having had a couple of days to ruminate, I can understand why a man like Thompson wanted to end his life on his own terms. Of course, I cannot say for sure whether there was a deeper meaning in his actions. I can say for sure that it was just as I wrote him off as being a hedonistic jerk-off (the first time I read anything by him, which was Generation of Swine), he'd pop out with this incredible, eloquent insight, skewering humanity with an ice pick; the kind that makes other writers well up at the sheer magnitude of the beauty in his perspective. He was one of the few human beings who not only existed within the full range of human emotion, he exploded within it.

SJ
______________________________

The following is an excerpt from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and one of my favorite things that Hunter Thompson (or anyone for that matter) wrote.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the sixties.Uppers are going out of style.This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him...but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn’t deserve it: No doubt They all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create ...a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force —is tending That Light at the end of the tunnel.

Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005

Gay W. Hookers

2005-02-14T22:39:00.000-05:00

I got really irritated after the election. First, I am really disgusted with people who have "No Blood for Oil" stickers on their fucking mini-vans. And they don't see the irony. Secondly, it wasn't so much that W got re-elected. It was (and still is) because some people actually believe what he says. Why not just admit to being capitalistic pigs who want to keep breeding, driving their fat asses around in their enormous cars and wearing $100.00 sneakers made by an 8-year-old whose only other option was to become a prostitute and die of AIDS by age 11? Ok, ok that would never do. Once people (or a people in this case) fully admit to being greedy, selfish bastards, they're kind of obligated to do something about it. Come to think of it, people generally don't admit that they are flawed until they are doing something about it. The point is, people don't tend constructively self-analyze until they've lost the things that distracted them from the fact that they were total shits to begin with.

Something made me perk up today. Something so completely, absurdly funny that I spat hummus on my poor cat before I could contain myself.

That special something was a story that is now all over the internet about a little fellow named Jeff Gannon. You might remember Gannon from a while back when it was discovered that he was a reporter hired by the W's to ask the Big Man insipid, non-fuckuppable questions (ten bucks says that Karl Rove's fingers were crossed the whole time). The shenanigans were revealed...and so was Gannon. Like, in the biblical sense.

So fitting, don't you think?

I try to be very careful about which bandwagon I ride. I figure, if this turns out to be a joke, hoax, or even a lie, it made me laugh about something that usually makes me extremely sad. That's worth getting my pigtails yanked.

Edifice Wrecks

2004-12-29T23:58:00.000-05:00

So far, I’ve received a few e-mails giving me “what for” because I spoke ill of the decisions that our government has made. These days, it seems that not agreeing with every word that spills from the mouths of politicians = not supporting our troops. Allow me to retort.

Politicians are liars. They really have to lie because our expectations are just silly. We expect them to have more integrity than the rest of us and then condemn them for being human. Dream on. No one gets that far without slashing a few tires. And quite honestly, I don't mind lies that make fools out of the assholes who insist on perfection in their leaders. The higher you build ‘em up, the more fun it is to knock ‘em down, I guess. Nothing gets you through the day like driving to work on higher moral ground.

Lately though, the lies are no longer the spit polish that people give to an image to get around the unreasonable and unrealistic biases of most Americans. Now, they’re being willfully ignorant of the consequences that others have to suffer because of their lies. Like most compulsive liars, they’re probably lying to themselves more than anyone else.

I’ve got some personal experience with both types of lies. I used to hate the spit polish kind as much as the big ones, but eventually I realized that I needed to be a little more forgiving of human foibles. People often don't want to deal with the bits of dust that the truth leaves on their clean sweaters. Also, sometimes people can get hurt by the truth when avoiding it won’t really hurt anyone other than you. Big Lies yank you down into a huge hole that you will (and believe me, you really will) eventually think is reality. There's company in those holes. That's the real irony. You find yourself surrounded by a mass of liars and eventually you (if you’re lucky enough) get to go all Plato and decide whether or not you want to stay in there with the other liars or just deal with life. Of course, the real bitch about telling the truth is that you really have to deal with the fact that most people would rather stay in that hole and that once you're honest, you realize which people around you will watch your back and which ones will stick a knife in it. So lies effectively push the good kinds of people away while drawing the worst kinds closer. It all comes together in a nice, self-destructive ball of black fucking misery.

The worst kinds of Big Lies are the lies that are told to inspire others. These are the kinds of lies that sell religion, politicians, and lovers. When someone that you deeply admire has lied to you about something that is important to you, you realize that everything that they ever said was probably bullshit. And once people find out that someone that they really care about has lied to them about something that once inspired them, it makes it more difficult for them to be inspired by anything at all ever again. Add that to your karmic list, dogma boy/girl. Lies are the flame retardant coating of the soul. Once your soul is embedded, you become an impervious, shut-off shell and a waste of oxygen. A parody of the thing you could have been and I'll bet that thing could have been pretty amazing. And probably still could be, if you'd stop fucking lying for a minute and consider that the superficial attention you receive for the lies that you tell is the smack that you shoot straight into your ego.

The two things I appreciate more now than I ever have are honesty and money. Sadly, one of those things seems to be almost impossible to have with the other. It sounds trite but I do not think that I should have to make shit up to sell myself to anyone. I value honesty at this point more than anything else. I'd rather have truth than a nicer car. This year (especially the past few months) has afforded me a vast opportunity in terms of appreciating the value of honor and honesty in dealing with other people.

Trust me kids, I have learned my lesson. It costs me jobs and boyfriends but I'll be fucked in the ass by a tribe of rabid monkeys with strap-on barbed wire cattle prods before I will ever sit by and allow people to behave that way around me again. Of course, this terrifies people like that enough to stay the fuck away from me, thank God. Or Buddha. Or whatever.

Being honest is tough because people really aren’t conditioned to deal with honesty. But it’s far and away better than slithering through life wearing Emperor’s new clothes or waking up one day and realizing you're the joke you played on yourself.

So, I suppose that unrealistic expectations kind of exacerbate small lies into bigger ones, which fuel the fire of another person’s eventual defeat and someone else’s smug triumph. It’s up to one of those people to just drop the rope and walk away before it gets that far. Which is hard, if you like the person, but damn, isn’t it better to have a few real moments in life than a bunch of bullshit ones? For me it is. Lies are the reason that nobody has heros anymore. That blows because sometimes, it's the people that we admire above all others that kick us in the ass and make us become our own heros. Find out one of the people you really admire is a full-on compulsive liar, it not only negates anything they ever said to you that made you admire then in the first place, but makes you a cynical bastard to boot. Liars are the farmers of cynicism in a world full of heaping silos.

I am beginning to think that most of America (if not the world) is happier living in ignorance and lies as long as it isn't inconvenient.

Hope I'm wrong. Bet I'm not.

As for the asswipe who says I don't support our troops: I don't support the fuckheads who tortured prisoners. In fact, I'm pissed at them for making the U.S. look even worse (if that was possible, which is debatable) than it did before. I feel great empathy for the people who will be coming back to the states with post tramatic stress disorder though. Ten years from now, those kids will be in their early thirties. They'll wake up every night in a cold sweat (if they choose to sleep at all, because the nightmares they'll have will be almost as bad as being there again), jump at every little noise they hear, and attack everyone around them because they can't think straight. Some will take drugs or drink to deal with it and die or go to prison because they can't imagine stopping and letting the ghosts of their pasts approach them without some kind of haze clogging their brains. If they don't completely self-destruct and manage somehow to get decent treatment, they'll be kicking around the crazy bucket for the rest of their lives, fighting off the impulse to just let go and jump out a goddamned window. The horrible memories that they would desperately love to forget might manifest as migranes, causing them to spend a few nights a year booting their dinners into the toilet and getting injected with pain killers. The government that is sending them over there will be cutting their benefits and people like you, yes you, asswipe, will be bitching about people who can't get their shit together and how our tax money shouldn't be going towards those who cannot help themselves. You're a fool. A big, fat, blind faith havin' fool. Peddle your assumptions in someone else's e-mail folder next time.

Insomnia

2004-12-23T01:17:00.000-05:00

Once in a while, out of curiosity and boredom, I google my name to see how many gals have adopted it this week. So far, there are three more to add to the pack. And they all seem tragically boring. C'mon girls, make me prouder or get off the boat.

Anyway, I found my name (and a link to my blog) in two of the most interesting places this time. The first one was a Kobe Bryant support site. I pictured all manner of beer totin', machismo havin', closet cases accidentally reading my Kobe diatribe, expecting an impassioned plea for Kobe and then saying to themselves, "Jeez, you mean it ain't right to fuck a woman if'n she passed out?" I bet there'd be about a moment of introspection (as lately, I've started to believe more strongly than ever that most Americans possess the emotional maturity of a larval snail) before they just scratch the beer belly, throw a guilty glance at the bed, and surf on to greener pastures that boast illegal web cams.

The second one was by far the most amusing fucking thing I have seen all week. It's called "Whore-mart". What the fuck? It brings to mind a flock of horny, sexually repressed men with large plastic shopping carts full of gigantic breasted women. And once in a while, a young asian man. I'm telling you, this made my day. And I owe it all to Wal-Mart! Ok, now I'm not sure which part is funnier: the fact that my blog is linked on a page with the afore mentioned web cams or the fact that they would include the word "syphilitic" on a porno site. Are there people who fetishize VD? I mean, is that a thing? If it is, it's a new one on me. I so hope that some fapping moron stumbles upon my site in the middle of a porno frenzy and gets so caught up in reading about the BBC or Günter Grass that the viagra wears off or the wife wakes up to find him with his limp dick in one hand and a dictionary in the other. Dare to dream...

It's full-tilt snow madness outside right now. The perfect time for insomnia because the neighbors (a mix of White Trash and Ghetto Fabulous) are tucked away with the kinfolks instead of shouting and calling the cops on one another. I made a huge pot of organic veggie soup (fuck you, I'm not a hippy) and sit happily watching the storm all night. Quiet chaos. It's what's for sinners. Who are tired of studying for the GRE. And pissed off at the world.

Painting Sisyphus

2004-12-21T23:48:00.000-05:00

It was almost four years ago exactly that I began work on my epic project. I knew from the beginning it would be the coolest thing I would ever do.

But, the joke was on me.

Sometimes, when you stand back and assess something calmly, you realize it’s just not going to happen. You have to put down the paint brush, put the painting away, and call it a lifetime.

Some things look so much better in my head than they do in reality and I obsessed over this painting like nothing I’d ever done before. But even I, the most tenacious woman alive, had to be rational and admit to myself that it was nothing other than a dismal, horrific failure. I talked myself through it, thinking that I’d eventually find a way to make all of those amazing little splotches (that were so much fun to create) connect in a way that ended in something meaningful and balanced. I’m a spirited, cheerful gal most of the time, so it’s not that hard to find the enthusiasm to keep going, even when things look completely hopeless. But when I took a really hard look, I saw a bunch of lines, tiny connections, and empty space that coalesced into squat. There was no meaning in it, or anything that I will be thankful that I saw ten years from now. Just a big lot of nothing special that I’d assured myself would come together in time. What a shit realization, eh? I can’t even say that the process was great because lately, each moment that I worked on it, I felt kind of empty by the time I was done, like each creative impulse I’d put into it was sucked into the canvas, never to be seen again. Every stroke of the brush reinforced the knowledge that not only was it going nowhere, it was looking uglier and uglier with each passing moment. There was no reward for the work and that in itself was a slap in the face and probably the reason I plugged away for so long. I just knew I'd get my props eventually. The final dregs of hope were scraped out from the uterus where the aborted fetus of “almost was” had jettisoned a few months ago. Now, those bloody bits of maybe are festering in a biohazard bag on the garbage pile of my psyche.

When you give up on something that you know had real potential to be legendary, it’s like a huge, black hole, sucking the life right out of you and straight into a cesspool. I think that the better something could have been, the worse it looks when it turns out to be nothing.

Sometimes, failure rests in a dark corner of your life, staring accusingly. It would never admit that it holds your fuck-ups against you and always will, so you force yourself to believe that it doesn’t. Who wants to admit that something really is beyond their ability? You can always roll over like a broken dog, dwell in the dark of blind faith, and wait for Godot. Well, fuck that. Nothing is worth ghosting my way through life especially a nebulous “almost was” like that poor, unfinished painting. Probably some other artist out there will grab the muse from the collective unconscious and channel it into something so nice I’ll want to puke my guts out. And I will eat the still- beating heart from that artists’ chest. Ha, just kidding. No really.

So, off to another year on the tail of the comet of irony that bears witness to what I thought would be my greatest work turning into my most spectacular failure.

I can’t see anything from here and I’m starting to like it. Nothing left to finish, nothing left to be left and praise baby Jesus, nothing to push uphill anymore.

Resolution: Complete. Now, only thing left is ice cream and Nico.

I'm Your Density

2004-12-19T18:01:00.000-05:00

Destiny is the heroin of the soul. A destiny jones makes you act a damned fool.

Take it from me, it's all bullshit. You live, you die, and whatever happens in between is circumstance. The sword in the stone is a useless piece of metal when all the King really needs is a steak knife.

Geneva, Shmeneva

2004-12-10T15:57:00.001-05:00

The Geneva Convention. What is it?

Actually, it's not an it but a they. There are four "Geneva Conventions". The first convention is for sick or wounded soldiers, the second is for sailors, the third is for the treatment of POW's, and the fourth is for civilians during the time of war.

The conventions are over 100 years old, having begun in 1859 by Henri Dunant. Dunant witnessed atrocities in Italy during the Battle of Solférino and organized the local village folk (? I guess village folk? I always think of people outside the urban areas in Europe as "Village Folk") and helped get the dying soldiers medical treatment, at least, what passed for medical treatment at the hands of Village Folk in the 1800's. There was little Dunant could do that day to help much of anyone but later, he proposed the idea for what would later become the Red Cross. Dunant was a humanitarian but he wasn't stupid and knew that Red Cross medics would get shot or worse if there wasn't some type of mutually agreed upon protection for them. So the Swiss government hosted a conference and the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies and Field was created.

It has been changed over the years, most notably in 1929 when it was changed to cover the treatment of POW's and in 1949 (modified in 1977), when the entire thing was overhauled because after WWII, I'll bet people were like, "Wow, someone really set the bar higher, guys." In other words, mass genocide + photographic evidence mean one big bulging rug and a serious lack of excuses.

S'now, here we are in 2004. Iraq is a mess and there are few who can or will even bother to try to deny it. The insurgency is making things quite difficult. Too bad smallpox, a few blankets, and a fifth of Jack won't do the job anymore, eh? So the military guys (under orders, as if that's an excuse) found men (just random sons, fathers, and grandpas) at traffic stops or by just bursting into their homes in the middle of the night (!) and recruited them to "help" the soldiers discover who the rebels were. The Iraqi men did not wish to participate. C'mon, even if they don't agree with the rebels, they still have to live with them after the Americans leave. Who wants to be a narc? So they stuck some of them in Abu Gharib. I'm sure that they're probably sticking them somewhere else now. At any rate, they (the prison guards) took pictures of these guys naked and sometimes forced them to perform sexual acts on one another (they made someone's grandpa do this) and used the pictures to blackmail the men into cooperating. This is in a prison where people had cameras (again, stating the obvious). Now, if that prison was that bad and people were still allowed to not only take pictures, but share them, can you even begin to imagine (I am actually having trouble and I'm glad) what must be going on in Guantanamo Bay? That place is a fortress. Even after reading David Hicks' affidavit, I still suspect that it is much worse if the person isn't just a footsoldier, as Hicks was.

Killing people on one side of the world in the name of an ideal and then stepping all over the very same ideal whenever it's deemed necessary means that there really is no ideal, there are just a series of lame fucking excuses.

The Nazis. Genocidal maniacs, guys who march funny. And yet, even they have a better human rights record with regard to prisoner treatment than we do (officially). I wish that felt shocking.

*This post was pretty link intensive. Since the U.S. has lost its fucking mind and I started writing more about politics, I thought that it was necessary to include source material.

Crazy

2004-12-09T22:14:00.000-05:00

Trying not to be Crazy is like not looking in a mirror before a first date. There are impulses pressing on your skin like the needles of a cactus and ignoring them is hell because the suppression of such powerful urges makes you feel like you’re going to explode. Sometimes, I think that when Crazy people put their hands over their faces, it’s not because they are in despair, but because they are trying to cradle this rabid animal within that wants to spring out and destroy everything that the sane part has created while the Crazy part was asleep.

Crazy is an addiction. It alienates the people that love you and draws the destructive, parasitic types closer. It becomes your only friend and a false sense of self. You can’t see anything but Crazy. It’s the blanket over your eyes, hiding the terrified, sane child beneath it, cowering and afraid.

After you learn to control the Crazy, you look at your life, which makes it extremely difficult to care about controlling the Crazy in the first place. You look at your friends, your family, indeed your entire reality like a person who comes out of a basement after a storm to find their house intact but strewn with intimate belongings. Underwear on the lawn, photographs sprinkled on the floor, broken glass in the kitchen. You hardly know where to start cleaning up but you know for sure you don’t want to pick up the photographs and see the faces of the past, because they will remind you of every moment of erratic behavior and every time you slapped the faces of the people who tried to gently nudge you from beneath that psychotic, ratty little blanket.

I read a lot of things that other people write and they jokingly refer to themselves as schizophrenic or psychotic, as though insanity is a funhouse mood and they’re just along for the ride. But if you really are Crazy, the difference is that it is less like a funhouse and a lot more like a dilapidated slum in the middle of nowhere, with graffiti and beer bottles and peeling paint.

I look upon sanity as an achievement. It is a source of pride for me to walk down a hallway and not freak out because there are people on either side of me. I think that people who find their way out of the maze of psychosis deserve some kind of award. I want to tearfully thank the Academy and all the people who made it possible. I want to be smug with self-satisfaction before all of the people who encouraged my self-destruction and watch them avert their eyes because my newly (relative to the years and years that I was a basket case) sane eyes can see right through their holier than thou bullshit. For everyone else, I mostly want to swing my arms wide and say “Behold!” because they should have seen this place before I cleaned it up.

People that I meet who are still wading hip-deep in the sludge of Crazy ask me “what I did”. Did I take medication? Yes, I sure did. It only made things worse. Did I have therapy? Yes, but therapists are often glorified phone psychics. They lead you down paths that are completely irrelevant just to keep you on the telephone and keep the gravy train chugging away but never going anywhere. The fact is, while other people might have had a hand in exacerbating a pre-disposition for erratic thoughts and behaviors, you can’t give it back. It doesn’t go away. For the rest of your life, every now and then, dark figures will loom in your doorway. You spook easily. You’ll feel your mind slipping away sometimes and you have to lasso it back in. Quite simply, you have to work around it. You just have to look at Crazy as a series of orange cones in the path of your life and navigate carefully to avoid them. If you hit one once in a while, don’t kill yourself over it. Just try to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and hope that no one noticed. And if someone tries to push you down, remember that one of the few guilty pleasures in life is seeing the look of dismay on the faces of a people who know that they've screwed you over but not beaten you.

What made me think of this was a book that I read called “Running with Scissors”. It’s by a guy named Augusten Burroughs and it’s a memoir about his life. I listened to an interview with him on Fresh Air and what struck me is that he was so happy to have had a normal relationship with a normal-but-somewhat-eccentric guy for a very long time. He was so happy because this guy was kind of a grounding presence, which is what every recovering psycho needs. Prince Charming for Crazy people doesn’t come to the rescue as much as he places a reassuring hand on your shoulder once in a while in a gesture of good faith and trusts that your Crazy will never be as important to you (like it once was) as he is.

I know that all insane people can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Brain chemistry can be a bitch. But for the ones who were coaxed under the blanket by child molesters or abusive parents: you really can find your way out. After the clouds dissipate and you’ve mostly cleaned up the messes that you made, you start to realize that swimming upstream once in a while is so much better than lamenting missed opportunities. You may not ever be “normal”, but one of the few advantages of insanity is that you were never normal and it probably led you down paths that people don’t "normally" take.

When I was Crazy all of the time, I sought a pill that would make me “normal”. But normal doesn’t really exist for me. If I had to work my way out of Crazy and have to spend the rest of my life having conjugal visits with it in order to have the perspective that I have, then it was worth it. Search my cavities all you want bitches, so that I can make a mental note of how your fingers lurked in my ass a second too long and write about it later.

I can't see it as a bad thing altogether. So what if parts of me never developed. I still have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy. There was a story about freighters on NPR this morning and I laughed loudly and longly every time they said the word "Seamen".

Coveting the mundane is a hobby that Crazy people engage in, but what most people call normal, I call unenlightened. I have fun sculpting Crazy now that I am far enough away from it to use it as a scalpel and that’s really why I want people to know that they can do the same thing. The world needs more reality surgeons.

Pimpin' The Party Line

2004-12-09T04:12:00.000-05:00

I wonder when journalism will, if ever, recover some of its integrity or how many people actually realize how pathetic it is?

I listen to public radio, unless it’s pledge week, then I listen to Stern. Listening to Howard Stern is like…eating fast food. You feel kind of sick and greasy after you eat it but for some weird reason, once in a while you want to feel sick and greasy. I talked to someone today who finds Stern embarrassing. I agree, but then, I find most mainstream entertainment embarrassing. But sometimes, it’s somewhat enlightening to listen to the absolute opposite of NPR and I can't stand commericals so T.V. is out of the question.

I rarely speak to people that could be considered part of the mainstream. Now that sounds elitist, but it isn't because I think that my cultural perspective is loftier than anyone else's. I just have a difficult time communicating with people who believe everything that they hear on CNN, Fox, etc. I’m truly amazed at how easy it is to get a person to obey just by feeding them bullshit, which is exactly what network and print journalism has become. Obedience to the rules fascinates me because most of the time, if I think the rule is stupid, I refuse to go along with it unless someone gives me a good reason why I should. The funny thing is that when you argue the rules with rule mongers, it inevitably ends with "Because I said so, that's why!" Oh, yeah that'll make me submit, you stupid fuck.

I’ve said before that Jon Stewart was a tremendous breath of fresh air during the pre-election months. You can look at his videos on the net, by the way. Anyway, he sat down with Crossfire’s Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala and he literally begged them to hold open and honest debate on their show instead of doing what they normally do, which is engage in a lot of bell ringing and dancing bear political rhetoric instead of debating much of anything. Actually my theory is that they liked to get each other worked up so they can bump uglies later in the CNN mail room. There’s a lot of sexual tension there. But back to the much less interesting point, what did they do when Mr. Stewart came on their show? First, they ridiculed him for not asking Bob Kerry more serious questions on his comedy show and they sat there like the twits that they are and let a comedian annihilate them and did absolutely nothing to refute the claims that Stewart made about their shilling and hackery. They just interrupted him a lot and shouted and basically looked like spineless twerps. I had to go and research their history after that, to see why my sweet little Jon Stewart would do such at thing. I read some transcripts and this is what I came up with:

Crossfire is basically Springer with suits and extensive vocabularies, but not too extensive, we want the public to feel slightly inferior but at the same time, we don’t want to alienate them. They are like the supermodels of politics, polished enough to scare people a little but homogenous enough to appeal to like, everyone who is vapid enough to be taken in by their bullshit. Robert fucking Novak appears regularly on their show. And people watch it anyway!

So now I wonder how out of hand we’re going to get before things change. There is a fascinating theory that I have been reading about that has to do with a side effect of Groupthink. It is called "Group Polarization". Basically what that means is that individually, people tend to be fairly rational. However, get them in groups and things change. I’m sure that most people know that part already. The creepy part comes next. If the group party line tends toward the conservative (either politically or otherwise, the rule applies no matter what the collective goal or outlook), then the people in the group will be more conservative within the group than they would be individually. The same goes for people taking risks. They’re more likely to risk everything when they’re part of a group of risk takers. Once they’ve established themselves within a group, they check out how everyone else feels. In order to be liked, people take a position that is similar to everyone else’s, but a little more extreme. That way, the individual supports the group’s values but also presents himself or herself in a as a person in the vanguard; a true individualist.

On one hand, lots of people are being manipulated into believing a bullshit ethic and the ones who don’t believe it are going along with it, but in order to convince the group that they’re really loyal, they’re one-upping one another, vying for a nice place in the general structure of things. Then the other side reacts to the first side, and you have your similar types of folk, one-upping to claw their way into their own illusory niche of the pie. And the biggest joke upon which all of this is based is that the original “ideals” that were espoused and tossed around were basically the Nerf footballs of the body politic.

Sometimes, the absurdity is almost enough sugar to take the bitter taste out of my mouth.

nosce te ipsum, yo'

2004-12-07T13:55:00.000-05:00

Andy and Larry have been sued for plagiarism, along with producer Joel Silver. James Cameron also got nods for the Terminator Trilogy. ...the FUCK? The men have been sued by a woman named Sophia Stewart. If she wins, Stewart is going to receive a settlement, supposedly (and who knows how much of this is hyperbole) one of the biggest settlements in Hollywood history for the Matrix and Terminator trilogies. Well!

I read the story from whence it supposedly came. Hopefully when you read it you’ll have some insight that I missed. The Terminator thing throws me a bit because the great Harlan Ellison already sued Cameron and won; his name appears on credits now. That is like, a geek legend. So I’m confused.

I think that one of the most relevant issues in this suit and in Stewart's documented opinion is that people would rather see such a story emerge from the mind of a White Man than a Black Woman. I think a lot of people would snort and deny this right away, but I think she's absolutely right. I know people who think that aliens built the pyramids...now do you think that if the pyramids were built in Greece that anyone would question their origin? Even the origin of the amazingly accurate Mayan calendar is not attributed to anything other than a superior grasp of mathematics and astronomy. That's some freaky shit and very telling. The most open minded people (the freaks who believe in aliens coming to Earth, something I really think is bullshit) still can't get over Black people with the intelligence to design and engineer something so grand. Then again, lots of Black people gloss over the thousands of slaves who died making those fuckers. We sure are bias happy little bipeds, eh? The point is, there is bias based on race and gender and anyone who says differently is full of crap. So Stewart has a good point, at least on that front.

I suppose a film that is the epitome of post-modern science fiction (thus far) will get its share of people saying that it was their idea. Entire passages of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation" appear in the dialogue and the book itself is even featured in the film (right after "Follow the White Rabbit"...the chapter "On Nihilism" is actually one of the more lucid in the book but then, it's hard to complicate Nihilism). I am not linking to a bookstore because I cannot in good conscience recommend it unless you are a full-on post modern junkie. If you go against my super-cool advice and read it, take some aspirin first. This one makes James Joyce look like "See Spot Run" and that's saying something right there. I threw it at the wall one time because it was so fucking irritatingly post-modern.

The list of brilliant science fiction films is long and glorious. Most of 'em were great to watch, but they lead you on like a smooth talking boyfriend/girlfriend with vague what-ifs, maybes, and almosts and never do anything more than stimulate your senses and make you forget that they lacked any real depth, which was fine, until you met “The One”. The recent addition of the amazing "Matrix" trilogy did for the genre what string theory did for physics. Science fiction was no longer simply a tall tale genre. It had really cool metaphor and thought experiments (so often alluded to but never explored in sci-fi films) and added so many new dimensions that we sci-fi fans always knew were possible, but had never seen. For me, it was like a Greek tragedy, where the prophecy cannot be avoided. The only thing that the antagonist had was his own mind, but unlike a Greek tragedy, he actually used it to solve the problem before him. Previous attempts were 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner but they were not terribly appealing to the mass public. They required thought and depth. But the Wachowski's brilliantly assembled a mass of ideas that struck chords in the masses and made them (well, more of them than usual) wish to explore the mysteries of a ton of different "isms" that the general action film loving public would never give much of a fuck about. Plus...I have to be honest, I thought Keanu was a dork before "The Matrix" but a sexy bitch (who would look so much sexier with me sitting on his lap) after I saw it.

I'm taking this one a little personally. The thing that pissed me off so much about it is that if it turns out to be true, all they had to do was share credit with Stewart. I think that many of the ideas (Gnosticism, Buddhism) that were explored in the films are going to be connected with a batch of liars. This opens a much more serious can of worms. Spiritual posturing is the cheapest high on the market and it would blow to find out that the ideals that were used as a base for the "fighting the good fight" ethic in this film were as relevant to the boys who made it as a Papal edict is to, well, me.

Either way, the lawsuit is going to trial and the no-doubt scary Grisham-esque Orwellian law team assembled to counter Stewart's claims has thus far, failed to either pay her off or get the case thrown out. Sounds suspicious...

So when I read this story about the Wachowski brothers, I hoped (and still hope) that it isn't true because I would really, really hate to see someone else miss out on something potentially wonderful because they were as disgusted as I was at the same type of people. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one, kids.

****LONG OVERDUE EDIT: The lawsuit was bullshit.

Jesus is Your Sugar Daddy

2004-12-05T23:18:00.000-05:00

This is long y’all, but it’s cool so if you’re just skimming, find some other blog. Take your time with this one, it actually means something. And Christmas brevity is for pussies.

It is time for my own Christmas tradition. Actually this is my only real tradition.

The female biological entity that spewed me forth into this world was an atheist, which means I was fortunate enough to have never been trapped beneath that lauded, insipid delusion that December 25th was anything more than a marketing scheme, jingling its bell smack in the middle of the fiscal year of our Lord.

My Merry Tradition is reading a special chapter from a book called “The Tin Drum” (Die Blechtrommel). It is narrated by Oskar Matzerath, a 30 year old man in a mental institution, who threw himself down the cellar stairs at the age of three because he saw how foolish adults were and decided he would never grow up. He also decided that he would not speak to them (because they didn’t deserve it) and communicated only through a tin drum, hence the title. In the book, his childhood takes place during the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

The author’s name is Günter Grass. An important note: I do not have heroes. Having a hero means that there is someone above me in the scope of things. That kind of thinking leads to self delusion so screw that. Grass is one of two people who come dangerously close. As a member of the Hitler Youth, Grass was indoctrinated and subsequently drafted to fight for Germany in WWII. After he was wounded at the age of 16, Grass was confronted with the truth about the Reich. Oops. He decided not to do the very thing that had gotten the whole damned country into trouble in the first place (rationalize being total shitheads) and confront and conquer his own demons. And thankfully for me, write about them.

I have infinite admiration for a person who knows that they have done wrong and is not only strong enough to admit it, but strong enough to deal with whatever repercussions that admitting it might entail. Fortunately, and at great personal expense, I have learned how much character that it takes to do something so amazingly brave. When I say infinite admiration, I suppose that is what I would put on the “hero” shelf in my head.

So the chapter “Faith, Hope, Love” is truly the most profound thing I have ever read and I have read a whole fucking lot my friends (good and bad, mind you; you’ll find “Flowers in the Attic on my shelf beside “Ulysses”. I don’t do the literary posturing thing). It is so good that when I read it, my heart actually wants to die because I know that it will end. It’s like the greatest sex your eyes ever had.

So here is the scene: Markus, the man who makes Oskar’s beloved drums, has killed himself, having realized that the Nazis would soon dispatch his Jewish ass straight to the ovens, giving them one final finger and ruining their good time. Oskar finds the toyshop in ruins and the body of the toy maker, Markus, sitting at his desk. The following is an excerpt. If this doesn’t make you weep, I’m afraid you’re not human and must report to me immediately for extermination. Haha, just a bit of genocidal humor to get you in the mood…

Pg. 203-206, The Tin Drum

There was once a drummer, his name was Oskar. When they took away his toy merchant and ransacked the shop, he suspected that hard times were in the offing for gnomelike drummers like himself. And so, in leaving that store, he picked out of the ruins a whole drum and two that were not so badly injured, hung them round his neck, and so left Arsenal Passage for the Kohlenmarkt to look for his father, who was probably looking for him. Outside, it was a November morning. Beside the Stradt-Theater, near the streetcar shop, some pious ladies and strikingly ugly young girls were handing out religious tracts, collecting money in collection boxes, and holding up, between two poles, a banner with an inscription quoted from the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. “Faith…hope…love,” Oskar read and played with the three words as a juggler plays with bottles: faith healer, Old Faithful, faithless hope, hope chest, Cape of Good Hope, hopeless love, Love’s Labour’s Lost, six love. An entire credulous nation believed, there’s faith for you, in Santa Claus. But Santa Claus was really the gasman. I believe—such is my faith—that it smells of walnuts and almonds. But it smelled of gas. Soon, so they said, ‘twill be the first Sunday of Advent. And the first, second, third, and forth Sundays of Advent were turned on like gas cocks, to produce a credible smell of walnuts and almonds, so that all those who liked to crack nuts could take comfort and believe:

He’s coming. He’s coming. Who is coming? The Christ child, the Saviour? Or is it the heavenly gasman with the gas meter under his arm, that always goes ticktock? And he said: I am the Saviour of this world, without me you can’t cook. And he was not too demanding, he offered special rates, turned on the freshly polished gas cocks, and let the Holy Ghost pour forth, so the dove, or squab, might be cooked. And handed the walnuts and almonds which were promptly cracked and they too poured forth spirit and gas. Thus it was not hard, amid the dense blue air, for credulous souls to look upon all those gasmen outside department stores as Santa Clauses and Christ children in all sizes and at all prices. They believed in the only-saving gas company which symbolizes destiny with its rising and falling gas meters and staged an Advent at bargain prices. Many, to be sure, believed in the Christmas this Advent seemed to announce, but the sole survivors of these strenuous holidays were those for whom no almonds or walnuts were left—although everyone had supposed there would be plenty for all.

But after faith in Santa Claus had turned out to be faith in the gasman, an attempt was made, in disregard of the order set forth in Corinthians, to do it with love: I love you, they said, oh I love you. Do you, too, love yourself: Do you love me, say do you really love me: I love myself too. And from sheer love they called each other radishes, they loved radishes, they bit into each other, out of sheer love one radish bit off another’s radish. And they told one another stories about wonderful heavenly love, and earthly love too, between radishes, and just before biting, they whispered to one another, whispered with all the sharp freshness of hunger: Radish, say, do you love me: I love myself too.
But after they had bitten off each other’s radishes out of love, and faith in the gasman had been proclaimed the state religion, there remained, after faith and anticipated love, only the third white elephant of the Epistle to the Corinthians: hope. And even while they still had radishes, walnuts, and almonds to nibble on, they began to hope that soon it would be over, so they might begin afresh or continue, hoping after or even during the finale that the end would soon be over. The end of what? They still did not know. They only hoped that it would soon be over, over tomorrow, but not today; for what were they to do if the end came so suddenly: And then when the end came, they quickly turned it into a hopeful beginning; for in our country the end is always the beginning and there is hope in every, even the most final, end. And so too is it written: As long as man hopes, he will go on turning out hopeful finales.
For my part, I don’t know. I don’t know for example, who it is nowadays that hides under the beards of the Santa Clauses, or what Santa Claus has in his sack; I don’t know how gas cocks are throttled and shut off; for Advent, the time of longing for a Redeemer, is flowing again, or flowing still, I do not know. Another thing I don’t know is whether I can believe that, as I hope, they are polishing the gas cocks lovingly, so as to make them crow, what morning, what evening. I don’t know, nor know I whether the time of day matters; for love knows no time of day, and hope is without end, and faith knows no limits, only knowing and not knowing are subject to times and limits and usually end before their time with beards, knapsacks, almonds, so that once again I must say: I know not, oh I know not, for example, what they fill sausage casing with, whose guts are fit to be filled, nor do I know with what, though the prices for every filling, fine or coarse, are legibly displayed, still, I know not what is included in the price, I know not in what dictionaries they find the names for fillings. I know not wherewith they fill the dictionaries or sausage casings, I know not whose meat, I know not whose language: words communicate, butchers won’t tell, I cut off slices, you open books, I read what tastes good to me, but what tastes good to you? Slices of sausage and quotations from sausage casings and books—and never will we learn who had to be reduced to silence before sausage casings could be filled, before books could speak, stuffed full of print, I know not, but I surmise: It is the same butchers who fill dictionaries and sausage casings with language and sausage, there is no Paul, the man’s name was Saul and a Saul he was, and it was Saul who told the people of Corinth something about some priceless sausage that he called faith, hope, and love, which he advertised as easily digestible and which to this very day, still Saul though forever changing in form, he palms off on mankind.

As for me, they took away my toy merchant, wishing with him to banish all toys from the world.
There was once a toy merchant, his name was Markus and he sold tin drums, lacquered red and white.
There was once a musician, his name was Meyn and he had four cats, one of which was called Bismarck.
There was once a drummer, his name was Oskar, and he needed the toy merchant.
There was once a musician, his name was Meyn, and he did his four cats in with a fire poker.
There was once a watchmaker, his name was Laubschad, and he was a member of the SPCA.
There was once a drummer, his name was Oskar, and they took away his toy merchant.
There was once a toy merchant, his name was Markus, and he took all the toys in the world away with him out of this world.
There was once a musician, his name was Meyn, and if he isn’t dead he is still alive, once again playing the trumpet too beautifully for words.

From “The Tin Drum”

This book served a great purpose in my life. It said, so profoundly, that if you fuck up, you keep your eyes open to it, deal with it, deal with whomever might have been affected by it, and then walk on. You don't have to wear that mantle for the rest of your life anymore than you get to rest on your laurels when you do something amazing. Self actualization is the only true redemption and the only path to true love is walking it with those who have seen you that naked and still hold your hand.

A’frickin’men.

Pissfully Blissed

2004-11-09T14:38:00.000-05:00

All right. We've had almost a week to get a grip on the last election and its impact on those of us who did not wish to see Dubya sleeping in the White House for another four years.

I have spoken to all of the people in my life whose opinions matter to me. I dearly love them all...but there are some things that bug me.

I have gotten three e-mails containing a list that Michael Moore wrote that gives folks reasons to be happy about the election. Y'all, if you need him to tell you what to do, it's no fucking wonder that we live in a country where we can't even have private telephone calls anymore. If you behave like a fucking child, expect to be treated as one. While I have enjoyed all of Moore's films, (especially Roger & Me), he's a blowhard, in the tradition of a Rush Limbaugh or a Bill O'Reilly. He just bats for "our" team. Information is spilling from every corner of our reality now. Blind faith is a choice.

Most of my friends drive SUVs or vans or trucks. I know one other person besides me who drives a plain ol' car. This reminds me of people who say, "I'm not racist, I have lots of Black friends!" If you truly do not want to have people die for your resources, stop consuming so fucking much of them you fucking hypocrites. Sometimes I wonder how many liberal people who whine and complain about us being at war actually step back and look at how their lifestyles perpetuate the need for war. Your 1, 2, or 3 person household does NOT need a big ass fucking vehicle. You need a car that big if you live on a goddamned ranch in the middle of fucking Nevada. This country is as out of hand with the fucking big ass cars as it is with religion and is just as ignorant about the negative impact that they have. If you try to rationalize it by saying that you just have too much stuff to haul around, try having less stuff dumbass.

One of the "get happy" things on the list was that George Bush can't win another term. Get with it, people. This was not a win for George Bush. This was a win for the Right. There is a frightening number of people who believe that George Bush was sent by God. Yes, they believe that he has Divine Right, similar to a King. Wait, no that's exactly like a King. There is a really great speech by a man named John Winthrop. I have a love/hate relationship with this guy. I love that he is a survivor and didn't let anyone stand in his way. I hate it that he was pretty much a cult leader and his cult was the Puritans, who were fucking scary. But they were committed and they survived one hellish fucking day after the another largely because of that commitment. Anyway, his speech, "A Modell of Christian Charity" (sic) is one of the greatest ever written. It is also creepy as fuck. The irony is that it motivated the shit out of the Puritans, made them truly believe that they too were on a mission from God and made them the most successful colony of the New World. From the beginning, our country has used religion and xenophobia to expand and conquer. Thus far, these two tools have proved successful. You want things to change? Be smart, come to grips with what you're dealing with, and start moving some dirt beneath your feet. Taking some social action six weeks before an election simply won't do. You've got quite a job ahead of you so do me a favor and read about what the Puritans had to deal with and prepare your ass for some sleepless nights.

The Right won this time because they scared people. People are afraid of terrorists, first off, but then tickle their noses with the possibility of moral degradation (which of course, is the primary rationale for being the xenophobic pricks that we are) and you've got them sneezing votes into your big, white hanky. It's that simple. It's not like the Right won't have a similar candidate touting the same bullshit that Dubya did with just as much good ol' boy appeal that he has. My instinct tells me that Cheney will not run next time, but that they will find a candidate who is just as rigid as Cheney and just as easily likeable as Dubya.

I know what makes me happy about this election without having to rely on Moore's grandstanding ass to tell me. It's that I saw people who haven't voted for years high tail it to the voting booth. I actually had to wait to vote! Outside the library, there were people holding signs, people being active, people actually taking the time out of their lives to make something good happen. Whether they were touting Kerry or Bush, I was deeply moved that they stood in the pouring rain and chilly wind just to make sure that others knew their choices and what they would mean in the long run. There were people informing others of their rights and giving out pamphlets full of information about whom to contact if their rights were violated. People had a mission! It was so cool. I wish so much that more people had this level of commitment in their lives every day.

Also, I consider that while me and most of my friends (I have conservative friends too...very opinionated and lately, I like them more than a lot of my liberal friends because at least they're honest with themselves about being greedy consumers and resource rapists) are pretty marginalized right now, the other side of the political equation would be as marginalized if Kerry had won. There would still be a huge imbalance in national satisfaction and that just isn't fair. I want, more than anything else, for things to be fair for everyone. The statement that pisses me off more than anything else is when people wave their hands and say that life isn't fair. It is a stupid cop-out used by people who do not have the character to compromise. I refuse to give up that easily. C'est la vie never did dick for me or anyone else. Let your anger and discontent motivate you. The only reason why life is not fair is because we have decided that making things fair is out of our hands when it fucking isn't. Your decisions on how to treat people are yours alone. Treat others with dignity and respect and I'll bet that life becomes a lot more fair than if you use or abuse them.

We have four years to change that. We have four years in which to educate people who fear homosexuals, who think that they are less deserving of happiness and civil rights, and who think that somehow, being gay is immoral or is a deviation in behavior and not just a difference in brain structure(which of course, it is). Four years is a damned long time. A lot can happen if people are willing to chill out a little, try to understand and empathize with these fearful folks. Since we are the minority, the ball is in our court to fight. Kick some ass and make logic work in your favor guys. And please, in the name of all that is holy (or unholy, if that's the cut of your gib) try to be honest with yourselves.

***I got an e-mail last night from someone who was angry that I criticized Mooreites without posting alternatives to his list.

Dude. Did you even read what I wrote past that sentence? My point was that you do not need either me or him or anyone to tell you what to do. Go and take some action on your own and if you do not know how, figure it out! Give yourself some credit, your DNA survived this long on this planet and that means that somewhere within you lies an amazing ability to adapt and change your environment. I can Google the word "vote" and get an assortment of websites that cover important topics that range from how to join a political organization to how I can find tentacle porn. If I can, you can. So shush and get to work.

Holy Water Enema

2004-11-03T14:17:00.000-05:00

So George W. Bush won the election because of his high morals and let's face it, White Christian values. Eleven states voted against gay marriage. The Repubs have both the Senate and the House...

...and a dog will be the next mayor in a small town in Kentucky.

Just putting things into perspective.

BBC Once, BBC Twice!

2004-10-14T08:11:00.000-04:00

misses,
Will ya
Make me tea?
Make love to me?
Put on the telley?
To the BBC!
(Ming Tea)

Last night's debate was only ok because it is getting boring watching Kerry bury Dubya time and time again. Well, boring except for the part when Bush (who usually only looks stupid because he can barely speak) denied having said that he didn't think about OBL when of course, he did say that. On camera. Sadly, I felt kind of sorry for him right then, like when you're watching The Price is Right and some guy spins the Big Wheel and they're like, one little tile off from $1,000.00. You're like, "Aww, dude, you were so close!" In this case, he was so close to getting through a debate without looking like a total ass hat. I totally heard the sweat off Cheney's big, baldish head splash onto his desk when the palm hit his forehead. I named it "The Resounding Face-Palm of Doom".

American debates have become boring because everyone is trying to please everyone else. You have to go to the most polite place on earth for a good debate. If you want to have some real fun, you've got to listen to the BBC. Tony Blair got bus' upside the head with a condom full of purple flour in the House of Commons! You sure won't see that happen in the U.S. of A. Folks barely got close enough to W's limo to lob eggs at it during his inauguration, let alone flour him with an exploding Trojan! At the House of Commons, you can hear old, angry white guys grumbling when the debate is going on (so much more fun than us, who are trying to be polite or those sycophants who run around playing kissy assy with politicians. I think they call them "lobbyists", heh) and it's really fun listening to the Brits get feisty because they're really kind of known for being super-nice.

In Cincinnati, we're lucky enough to have the BBC overnight and (joy!) the station I most often listen to is also available over the internet (as is the BBC.) Watch out though, if you listen to this station in the afternoon, the dj has a love affair with Afro Celt Sound System and while at first, they are an intriguing sound, you eventually figure out that Africans + Irishmen = pygmies and pygmies are evil. Don't encourage them. Best just to listen at night, in the morning, and late afternoon (when my girlfriend Teri takes over).

You just haven't lived until you hear how unaffected and oddly chipper English people are when they're talking about blowing stuff up. Or chucking condoms at their Prime Minister!

BBC Peace!

O, John Kerry You're So Lovely...

2004-10-09T11:41:00.000-04:00

Our times have seen the Looney Toon of all elections.

First, we have our two main characters, Sen. John Kerry and President George Bush who chase one another around like Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. I'll leave it up to you to decide which shoes go where but my money is on Kerry (Bugs) and Bush (Elmer Fudd). To fill out the cast, we have Cheney (Marvin the Martian), Edwards [Huckleberry Hound (technically not a Looney Toon but deemed acceptable by the judges)], The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote can be the conservative and liberal press alternately dropping anvils on the heads of anyone who makes the mistake of breathing. I am stuck on Foghorn Leghorn. Too bad Strom Thurmond isn't around to make fun of anymore because wouldn't that be too perfect?!

The pre-election frenzy is full of extremity like a Superbowl commercial. Sales pitches that promise to deliver the most unlikely of products, sexy chicks, stupid white men (I count Clarence Thomas among them), and fortunately, if you turn the channel, people who are making a lot of sense, but maybe that's because everyone else seems to have lost their fucking minds.

I've compiled a list of stuff that I'll remember for years to come and people that I loathe, people I admire, and sometimes, both.

The Stories and People I have Loved Thus Far:

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to Kerry: "Sure You Saved a Guy's Life in 'Nam But Only Took Like, a Minute!" (with a side note about Robert "I'm a wiener" Novak)

Kerry's hard livin' in Nam has been taken to task by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and that silly book ''Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry''. The lube has dried on the ass of ex-POW and now Senator John McCain, and so it was time to get feisty over yet another Vietnam veteran and (oddly...sarcasm: drip drip) another Bush rival, Sen. John Kerry. What do these guys do when they're not attacking their fellow veterans? Hang out with Lt. Dan?

I think the ink for this book was probably squeezed from the severed heads of a truck load of dead puppies, some bear cubs, and maybe a baby seal. It's just that level of incredulous, pompous, what the fuck are you doing, assholism. First, it was hugely promoted by Robert Novak(who thinks it is a-ok to reveal the names of his sources, even if they are active CIA agents. In other words, he is a fucktard). Secondly Novak's son published this book but Novak said that this particular connection to the book was not relevant! Soooo, ok, lemme get this straight: It is totally relevant to disclose the name of a CIA agent (ruining her career and perhaps jeopardizing her life and the lives of her family) but not relevant to disclose what seems to be a big, fat conflict of interest. In other words, if you were still taking Novak seriously, wake up and put him in the spot in your brain reserved for all of the pig fuckers who have made money from terrorist attacks and the witch hunts (like those guy selling pieces of the world trade center, people who sell t-shirts at ground zero, and Halliburton). In short, a book promoted by a crap peddler like Robert Novak has problems starting right there but this book has "Read Me and Go Straight to Heck" (even without Novak) written all over it. Between the lines that say that Kerry is a creep, of course.

Ann Coulter: You Mouthy Bitch, Come Sit on Mama's Lap

I don't understand why I like Ann Coulter so much. She's awful. She's just terrible. Wait, yes I do understand why I like her. She's so certain that she's right and she's just so opinionated and mouthy, and she talks smack like, from the moment she wakes up to the time she goes to bed! The woman is unstoppable. She also has sexy pictures on her own website right next to the scathing articles she writes because she's a woman, baby. She's like Bill O'Reilly but I think that Bill really wants people to like him and I betcha by golly wow that Ann doesn't care what you think. That's my kinda gal. Also, she helped advertise for the World Wildlife Fund, one of the many places I've worked but one of the few where I didn't get fired.

Seymour Hersh: The Guy I Wish Was my Grandpa

Seymour is awesome and reminds me a lot of my former professor and good friend Ron Hoffman. He is elegantly passionate about all the right things (yeah, ok, all the things I really like) and he really seems to have integrity, which is so lacking in the world today. The thing that I like about him so much is that he shares the same incredulity that I have when I hear about human rights violations. After everything both of us have seen, we're still horrified that people are so cruel. This leads me to believe (though I admit, I could be mistaken) that he feels just as sad as I do when I see people doing terrible things to one another or to themselves. He also offers a perspective of the Iraq war that doesn't seem quite as hideously evil as some of the conspiracy stories that I've heard (that we're only over there to score some fat cash for our already morbidly obese corporations). Don't know that I buy it but it's compelling and the man is brilliant and not pandering or patronizing. I bet he drinks tea and has a "comfy chair" somewhere in his house. Teri Gross, one of the ladies of whom I speak with great fondness,interviewed him on my most beloved of NPR programs, "Fresh Air". Listen to him, he's spiffy.

Jon Stewart: Why Must You Rock so Hard Jon? Why?

It is difficult to say anything good about Jon Stewart that has not already been said a blue-million times over. What sold me on Stewart was an editorial (click on the link and scroll down) he did on the Supreme Court decision to stop executing mentally disabled Americans. Or Retarded People, as he calls them. I am not a fan of the death penalty for anyone. It's just dumb to kill off the people who are (as I've said before) by-products of our system. In all of my years of trying speak to people about my own feelings on the death penalty, it rarely ends with any type of lucid connection with another person, particularly if they're offering an opposing point of view. I think that's why I'm impressed with this one. No anger or hostility, just a wonderful way of making it look as ridiculous as I see it. Here is an excerpt:

Well, it's finally happened. The Supreme Court ruled we can no longer execute the retarded.
The death penalty was the only thing that we had to keep the retarded walking the straight and narrow people! Now, the fox has been let into the henhouse! The keys to the Golden City have been tied to a shoelace and placed around the neck of the wolf! With a note, pinned to his sweater, telling the Little Yellow Bus to take him to the sheep buffet in amnestyville!
By this time tomorrow, I fear, they will be upon us. Smiling. Hugging. Murder on their minds. And all we have to defend ourselves against this pillaging hoard is is our vastly superior intellect, an array of powerful weaponry, and superbly trained law enforcement officials. Lock your doors, people.

Nice. Thanks for making me laugh when everyone else is trying to scare the crap out of me.

Finally, Everyone Who Really Thinks John Kerry is a "Great Guy":

I am obviously, obviously biased. I don't like George Bush. But truth told, I don't like Kerry either. He has just done less to piss me off. Also, I think that there will be less dead people if Kerry is da prez.

Don't be fooled though. If anyone thinks that Kerry is some big hero and is any less the greedy magnate from a greedy magnate family than George Bush is, do your research. Kerry's maternal grandfather is James Grant Forbes, y'all. I'll link it for you but please read about the Opium wars. I fear that very little money in America at this point is bloodless. Kerry merely represents a different cog in the gigantic machine that is devouring the world. While I would love to be romantic and idealistic about Kerry (or anyone at this point), I cannot. I can though, concede that it would be nice to have the world not hating us again. Except the French who will always act snobby but truly, they make xenophobia look really cute and sophisticated.
More importantly, America is not about freedom anymore. We are about hoarding resources, oppressing other people, and happily living in willful ignorance. I know people who call themselves liberals, Buddhists, hippies, and various other counter-culture folk who talk a good game but can't pull a moment of selflessness out of their asses if they saw a kitten on fire. No matter who you are in America, you are a consumer and most likely, consuming more per day that people in third world countries consume in a week or even a month. Our leaders reflect that value and will do what they can to both defend and perpetuate it.

Our presidents, while playing for different teams, are playing the same game in the same league. Don't cozen yourself into being idealistic and later disappointed. I encourage people to vote but more than that, to vote without ignorance.

I am not as angry as I used to be, mostly because I neither have time to be angry and because I kind of try to look at life from a perspective that is less now.
What truly extracted me from feeling angry toward the world as a whole (oddly enough) was a politician named Robert McNamara, the 8th Secretary of Defense for the Kennedy/Johnson Administration. Listening to his memoirs, I realized that what is happening now has happened many times over. Especially during and after World War II. People walked around with surgical masks on their faces because they feared a flu epidemic (this really happened, sound familiar?), we (our country) bombed the crap out of Japanese civilians and that was before set them up the bomb. Then the Cold War happened and millions spent all of their time in fear of the very bomb that was used to off millions of innocent people in a country that we later rebuilt and eventually became the backbone of the world's economy.

Hmm....bombs, nation building, fear, surgical masks...that smells like..why is smells just like NOW!

Don't let yourselves get too distracted by fear or anger. Make informed decisions, not decisions based on fear or revenge or willful ignorance. And don't for a minute just take my advice. Go seek out this information for yourself.

Yes I Know It, I Can't Hellllp It!

Ding Dong

2004-07-03T03:53:00.000-04:00

Now, if you haven't seen this yet, you're in for a big, glistening treat.

Ok, first, this is the most fun you can have with cheesy pseudo-French accent and a tube of Astro-Glide. And that's saying a lot!

Now that everyone has seen this video (everyone I tell you!) maybe someone can e-mail or comment and explain a couple of things to me:

First, is that a drag queen that's sitting to the left of the couch where the two chicks are like, necking or whatever? I can't tell. The person appears to have that weird bobbing smiley action happening similar to what one sees in a person suffering from a degenerative nerve disorder. I suspect it may be Gunther himself in drag. But then I come to my senses and think that Gunther must be far too manly for such folly.

Secondly, d'you think Gunther's lips are like that naturally? I'm curious. I'm rather fascinated by them and think that he must have found some ancient artifact deep in de night in some Finnish cave or something and an uber Viking lip spirit possessed them. They're so radiant and they seem to be the primary focal point of the person photographing the video. I figure the photographer is drawn in by their mystical powers just as I have been.

Answers!

Victims, Again

2004-06-01T16:06:00.000-04:00

Deja fucking vu.

I didn't think about Kobe Bryant's rights when I said that people shouldn't call the chick that he (allegedly) raped a "victim" (see archives 07/01/2003 - 07/31/2003). I was thinking more about her human rights. This does bring up an important (and often ignored) point though. He is innocent of rape until proven guilty. He did cheat on his wife for sure though. This much, he admitted. Does that make him a rapist? Nah.

What makes someone a rapist? I made a list. I like lists. I make lists all of the time. So being the selfless gal that I am, I made a list for you to remember when you hear about a rape, are raped, or maybe even sit on a jury of someone accused of rape:

1. Say you are "doing it". You are in the middle of hot, hot sex and suddenly, the woman feels weird or sobers up. Whatever. She says, "Stop. Now," and you don't stop. Congratulations, asshole. You're a fucking rapist.

2. Say a chick has been coming on to you all night long. She's been all over you like White on George Bush. You get her home. Oops. She just sobered up. Or passed out. Either way, you don't have permission. But...she's been coming on to you! She owes you something, right? Wrong, dumbass. She says no or if she's in no condition to say anything at all and you go on ahead and get your sex on, you’re a fucking rapist.

3. Say you just fucked a crack whore. The crack whore said no, but who gives a fuck. She's a crack whore, right? Wrong, fucker. You're worse because you're a fucking rapist.

4. No matter what the circumstances, unless you're playing a sex game or something and everyone is absolutely certain what's up, if a woman says no, it's rape if you still fuck her. Even if she's just gang banged 29 guys right in front of you. Even if she just did the goddamned donkey show. She says no, you do it anyway; you’re a worthless piece of shit rapist.

I mention substance abuse often because if you don't already know this stuff, a woman would have to be drunk or a crack whore to have sex with your dumb ass.

Also, if you're female, say no if you mean no. Don't say, "I don't feel like it." Say NO. There cannot be room for ambiguity until we live in a world where your vagina is as sacred as his penis. And so far, we don't live in that world.

All that said, yes, Kobe Bryant is way innocent until proven guilty. I hope he is innocent because that is one less woman that got raped last year.

Last Dance

2004-05-29T16:41:00.000-04:00

Saturday April 7, 2001

Timothy Thomas knew he'd been spotted by two off-duty police officers working outside The Warehouse nightclub on Vine Street in Cincinnati. Thomas took off. The officers called in backups. Twelve officers joined in, like you do with a crime lord like Thomas, a 19 year old kid with some unpaid traffic tickets. Police said Thomas jumped fences and darted behind buildings, finally turning down an alley off Republic Street. Officer Steven Roach was in pursuit from the other direction. He saw Thomas walk from behind a building and said that Thomas was reaching for something in his waistband. Officer Roach fired, hitting Thomas in the chest. No weapon was found on or near Thomas' body. Timothy Thomas was the 15th Black man to be killed by Cincinnati police since 1995.

That night, I got off work early from my job as a bartender at Warehouse. I had a stray cat in the backseat of my car (the late Lady Goodman), and since this was before I hopped on the proverbial wagon, two hits of X in my pocket and some acid in my purse. A guy backed into me while trying to squeeze his big ass truck into a tiny spot just a few feet away from the club and cops were everywhere. I had no idea what was happening at that point except hey, pretty lights. I was lucid enough to know that Truck Man was obviously drunk and that if they found my drugs, I was fucked with a capital dick. However, a cop trotted over and told me and the other guy to "Get out of here now..." If there was no damage. He's letting the drunk guy go? Something was amiss but I had to look out for myself and (to me, at the time) more importantly, an innocent cat and most importantly, enough drugs on me to kill us both. Fine with me, Copper. Bye-bye and thank you very much for the huckleberry pie.

The next day, it was all over the news. The shooting, the cop (who had spotted Thomas in the first place), to whom I had served pizza and soda every Saturday night for the previous six months, and the club. Right then, as drug addled as I was, I knew that it was all over for Warehouse. Predictably and as a result of so many other human rights violations on the parts of the Cincinnati P.D. (some of whom are friends and many of whom were disgusted by the Thomas murder), Over-The-Rhine erupted after a (reportedly) peaceful protest was set upon by yet more of the police. There were riots, lootings, and what really is a potentially lovely area was pretty much destroyed. At the time, I didn't know what was more tragic: One man was dead but thousands of lives would be altered because the cops were out of control and the powerless residents of the area had nothing but rage to use as a weapon against them. Ironically, Warehouse was dead center of all the rioting, the reason why Thomas had been spotted by police in the first place, and had remained untouched. Untouched but not unaffected.

Last Wednesday night, May 26, 2004

After years of having put up a valiant, inevitable struggle against cultural evolution and social entropy, Warehouse finally scored its last touchdown. Though it had moved from its location on the most notorious street in the city, it proved too late to unsully its weathered combat boots. It was time for the old gal to roll up her carpet and call it a decade (and some change).

I saw a few people that I used to call friends and truly understood the word pity. Pity is another word for mourning except that you're mourning something that is still somewhat alive. For the most part, my friends were supported by their wealthy parents and for the most part, did doodly squat with their lives yet for some reason, still have the idea that doing nothing at all means something if enough people know your name. And they are NOT drunk.

I do not regret going there or working there though. First off, (and this is fucking sad), it was the only club in town that played music that made me want to dance. It was the only club in the city where you could dance along side (and sometimes with) gigantic, ex-football players who had become beautiful drag queens and not have to worry that some arse with a jock-itch to scratch was going to swim out of the darkness and start causing trouble. It turned social rejects and weak minded fools into Kings and Queens of the Underworld and though many of those Underworld Queens and Kings grew into parodies of themselves, they were great fun to be around in their time. Other clubs caught up later but for its time, Warehouse was the poo.

Secondly, it was where I had a nervous breakdown that cured me of my drug habit and eventually became the springboard for me ditching the aforementioned friends with absolutely no regrets. It is ironic that sometimes, clear thinking also clears up any doubt of why you started needing to tune out reality in the first place. Luckily for me, I had only burned the most twisted and broken bridges and had a Fairy Godfather (probably the last person in the world anyone would suspect has a heart made of solid gold puppies) holding my hand most of the way across the new one.

I was really happy when I left on Wednesday because unlike my old friends, I didn't settle for spending my life trying to recapture or hold on to an illusory sense of power that I'd sifted from the dubious attention of bar toads. Life rarely affords us positive, healthy closure. When it happens, it fulfills a human need for a linear chronology. We get the book ends. We get straight lines. We get to put a thumbtack on the map. It's like a freshly vacuumed floor or a shiny new dollar bill.

The only real goodbyes in life are the goodbyes that come with this kind of closure because they're cathartic without emotional upheaval. They're more like hellos to the future.

Thanks Tomm, Mike Dangers, Kevin, Dave, Kim, Dusty, and J-Bear for making my memories more memorable.

Show 'em The Door

2004-05-24T12:09:00.000-04:00

Joy. I experience the greatest hope for humanity when a small fish decides to take on a bully. The best part of it is when the small fish uses its own tools and ingenuity instead of stooping to building its own Mecha-King Ghidorah. Good luck, Vermont.

Mash the Bataytas

2004-04-28T16:22:00.000-04:00

I'm tired of saying goodbye to artists that I love. Maybe it's a good thing that lots of the artists I love were dead long before I was born.

Once in a great while, someone turns me on to a great artist that didn't yet kick the proverbial bucket. Hubert Selby, Jr. was among those great ones. I was nauseated for at least a month after reading "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Requiem for a Dream" made me shun all types of chemicals for at least two weeks. When someone can kick me in the ass so hard that I won't even touch coffee, he has power that extends far beyond the human realm.

The kind of mind that can transfer that level of human suffering to the page should have been crowned King of the Human Psyche. He doesn't go far into what it feels like to cry but inches slowly through the reasons that people cry. Actually it would be more accurate to say it inches slowly through the reasons that the soul screams in anguish and what happens when those screams are left to bounce around like a ping-pong ball in the darkest caves of life.

I have not found many people who are sensitive enough to read HSJ's books and understand the pain of the characters and still have the fortitude to find out what happens to them. It is pure, emotional torture but if you are capable of feeling empathy, his writing milks it out of you in gallons. Though some may not see HSJ as a Humanistic writer, I cannot help but see his work as a warning. He gives us archetypal poster children who have wasted their potential in their struggle to avoid truth. Sometimes, the most important things to embrace are the things that are the most terrifying and that embrace can free you in ways that unlock long forgotten doors in your soul. If I got one thing out of HSJ's work, it was that life doesn't have to be that way. Don't fucking waste your potential. It's the worst kind of karma you can cultivate.

Teri Gross (My would-be wife) did a great interview with HSJ not long after Requiem for a Dream was made into an incredible film by another would-be member of my harem, Darren Aronofsky. If you haven't seen it yet, please do so immediately.

Memorial two snaps up to HSJ. Thanks for the emotional hell ride.

Wal-Mart: Economic Syphiltic Whore of the World

2004-02-29T15:17:00.000-05:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I despise Wal-Mart. I wish I could have written something as wonderfully succinct as this but hey, someone did and that's what's important.

Wal-Mart is Georgia's largest private employer. Guess what? Georgia's PeachCare for Kids (a health care program for uninsured children) covers fourteen times (fourteen fuckin' times) more children of Wal-Mart employees than employees of any other company in the state.

The way I understand it, the people of Georgia, while saving money at Wal-Mart and padding the already soft pockets of the Walton family, are paying the same amount or more for their products that they would have paid a small business owner because they will be paying for the health care of these children with their tax dollars. This is a lovely little cycle, because the person paying the shitload of taxes resents the poor person who can't afford to insure their kid instead of resenting the asshole screwing both of them over. But think about it. The people at Wal-Mart are figuring out ways to exploit legal loopholes to make sure that other people do not get a fair break in life. And that's just Americans. We're not even going to talk about the copious amounts of jizz that Wal-Mart sprays on people in China and India.

Wal-Mart says that it can offer lower prices basically because of lower overhead. If they stopped with the slave labor, the underpaying of female employees, and actually offered their employees medical, dental, and health insurance, they would have to raise their prices. This would probably place them on the same competitive plane as any other retailer. If that happened, Wal-Mart would cease to be the economic monster that it is and a handful of people would not be disgustingly, obscenely rich. No, that would mean that lots of people had a better shot at being more comfortable. And what kind of crappy world would that be?!

It is easy to assume that ordinary people can't do anything to change how large corporations are ruling the world. But ordinary people are the ones who support those corporations. All a person has to do is go somewhere else or at the very least, do without a two-dollar bucket of pickles. It really is that simple. Wal-Mart is not the only corporate giant that is sucking the spinal fluid out of our economy, but it is (arguably) the biggest wolf sleeping in Grandmother's bed. It sells America's own bullshit back to itself. On one hand, I find that extremely ironic and amusing. On the other hand, speaking as an adult female who still suffers from the effects of severe malnutrition and inadequate health care as a child, my empathy for other children emphatically overwhelms any part of me that can remain detatched from such a wool-pulling.

This isn't even digging that deeply. You can find any number of crappy reasons why you shouldn't go back for seconds at the Wal-Mart Shit Buffet. And bring a shovel from aisle 10.

We'll Have a Gay Old Time!

2004-02-04T13:18:00.000-05:00

My cat has gotten really fat. I did extra yoga tonight to compensate while he crouched in a corner, glaring at me. He thinks I'm trying to make him feel bad for being such a lump of Play-Doh with fur. But I'm trying to lead by example! I don't think he's getting my drift though because he slouched off and walked beneath me when I was in Down Dog and stuffed his whiskers with Friskies.

I thought all they had in Massachusetts were bed and breakfasts and really cute guys in sweaters. With cute dogs. And scones. Wow, they actually did something profoundly moving in the middle of an all out conservative banquet.

Finally gay marriage is legal. I think this is good. BUT there are some who don’t think that equal rights are such a great idea. Since these equal rights seem to be happening despite vehement opposition to them, I figure there’s only one way to stop all this nonsense: make divorce illegal.

This is the best idea since someone said to put “repeat” on the back of the shampoo bottle.

This idea works for me on two levels. First, I can finally have Teri Gross as my wife and she can never get away. Muahahaha!!! Watch out, Teri. I'ma have you. Oh yes, you will be mine.

Ahem.

Secondly, people will shut the fuck up and stop acting like damned fools and I can go to even more weddings and eat free cake and drink a lot.

Gay marriage. Yay!

On the Third Day, God Created Birds

2004-01-23T22:39:00.000-05:00

In April 1663, the Inquisition interrogated Galileo. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest for supporting Copernican theory.

I think Galileo got the last word.

Raking the Leaves

2003-11-26T06:41:00.000-05:00

As loyal readers may have noticed, the title of my blog is different. This is because Schizophelia Jones must make like a tree and get out of The White Trash Moulin Rouge.

See, it all started with my drug dealing neighbor. He is a criminal, which might be cool if he wasn’t a mega small time, VCR stealing, pawn shop lurking creep. I think he’s a closet case because he and his buddies have (what I call) “Weed Whacking Parties” where, from the distinct sounds of vigorous porn and a shout here and there, they are sparkin’ up doobers and fapping together. There is room for doubt though because I have discovered love notes from him on my door BUT they’re written on lavender stationary and well, I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body. Maybe he can sense this? Either way, Dwayne, for that is his name, drags his buddies into my building and they steal from my neighbors and fap too loudly and sometimes go on the roof to behold the wonder of gravity by dropping eggs off the side and watching them explode on the little flower pots below. I once caught Dwayne and one of his “friends” getting their Sir Isaac Newton on. They both managed sheepish grins and lumbered back inside giggling like a couple of children, completely consumed in their own abandon. I thought about what a great discovery I’d made: Ovary envy. Two closet cases (Ok, the “friend” was a little less in the closet. I bet he’s worn a few britches with butt-cheek holes in his day) launching ovum and watching them release their gooey insides on the bunch of luscious flowers below. So, as described, Dwayne is not the most stable fellow and obviously somewhat confused about his sexuality. Sometimes he leaves my opened mail on my doorstep, as if he knows I’m getting mail from ‘other men’ and wants to call me out on it! Keep in mind I’ve said like three words to this guy! I suppose when I said “Hey,” he could sense the heat in my greeting.

Dwayne and his buddies are only part of the equation of course. My neighborhood is being gentrified and the locals, who used to mill about on crack, are stoned on Oxycontin and have become too lazy to line up to sell blood down the street or pawn their grandmother’s wedding rings. Not a whore fight on the street in over 2 months, which sucks because you should hear the stuff they say! I don’t particularly relish that kind of confrontation but I can’t help but be impressed with the ferocity of people who must see the worst things in life yet have the strength to violently defend their own meager slice of the pie. But the only loitering that has been going on has been by people who probably live next door to one another in the suburbs, armed only with a Frappucino and the glassy stare that people get when they have New Money burning a hole in their starched Dockers. My landlord (Whiskey Bloom Santa Perv) is slowly losing control of his one functioning neuron too. When there was a gas leak in my apartment and he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, he instructed his henchman (who never does what Santa Perv says after he leaves but pretends to obey him while he’s around) to light a match to find it after trying to “empty the line” and spewing gas into the entire place by putting a fan in front of the room where the gas was leaking. That was my cue that perhaps I should cut my losses and get out while the gettin’s good.

So this month, I've waved goodbye to many things that were static, old, boring, completely unfulfilling, and all together a drag. I'm ushering in brand new stuff that blows away anything I'd ever experienced before but neither negates my previous experience nor makes it anything more than what it was. Right now, life is a peach orchard and it's the first day of spring.

Frankenreilly

2003-10-12T18:29:00.000-04:00

Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Terry Gross is one of the funniest and scariest interviews on “Fresh Air” since Gene Simmons revealed that he’s not only dumb as a post, but a pluperfect fool to boot. The MP3 of that interview is located here.

I would really love to post my own thoughts about both Al Franken (whose own interview was on a couple of weeks prior to O’Reilly’s) and about O'Reilly but would rather you make your own judgments. Lots of folks love one or the other. I like aspects of both men for various reasons, though I like Franken more because he probably won’t beat me up if I don’t agree with him!

Birthin' Babies

2003-09-25T01:09:00.000-04:00

Because honestly folks, how can we have decent slave labor with no desperate poor people?

Civil liberties are only for Americans. And those dog years appear to be numbered. Send a shitload of money to treat a disease that you then do everything in your power to perpetuate.

I wonder if he used a condom when he fucked Africa?

Whup a Horse's Behind Wid a Belt

2003-08-25T22:05:00.000-04:00

What things are different in people who suffer great hardships and abuse, who turn out in the long run to be people of great worth and character and the people who suffer equal amounts of torment or, for that matter, none at all, who eventually become monsters? People are always debating this nature vs. nurture thing, beating it almost to death then turning the hose on it to revive it for yet more abuse.

I don’t think it’s really either of those things.

We learn patterns and from those patterns, form complex matrices that coalesce with matrices that have been created long before us and will survive long after our deaths. A never ending, cyclical process of over and over again. What are we before we learn these patterns? Is this the true source of character? Is it something that somehow exists separate from the cells that trap it within? And is finding this or struggling against it the real challenge of humanity?

I think it is. I think that your character is something that you’re born with. You can learn to be quick to react because those around you were, or perhaps still are, quick to attack. You can learn to place barriers between yourself and others because you know, perhaps in your subconscious, that those others will claw at you as quickly as a jackal left alone with a baby caribou. You can also learn to play nice but have an urge to crack someone’s skull in for no reason whatsoever. Eventually, with the right twists of fate, or perhaps without them, your true character pulls you out of your niche, especially when that niche has been imposed upon you by others. Now, if you look at molecular biology, you'll know that we all contain programming that tells our brains and bodies what to do and when to do it. However, there are people who are programmed to become addicts, yet some people have the ability to fight addiction through sheer force of will. Ask yourself why.

Wesley Willis. Struggling with schizophrenia, perhaps the most terrifying and misunderstood mental illness of all, died from leukemia at age 40.

I’m severely bummed about this. I liked him because he was such a fighter. He had that instinct that all great people have of taking a problem and finding a solution within his own program. He had fortitude and spirit. He wasn’t mean. He was a scrapper. I liked him. He wrote a song about Alanis Morrisette. I would really, really like it if some day, she covered it. Especially the part about her whupping a horse's butt wid a belt. He also wrote a song called, "Casper, the Homosexual Friendly Ghost". Having seen Casper the ghost, I ask you, how can someone that perceptive be all that crazy?

Bummed as I am, I like to think of Wesley going out right now. Lover Mars (Yes he's a lover! He's got a big axe and he's pissed off all of the time! Who wouldn't want to be in the sack with a guy like that?? You can keep Venus. I like my men sweaty and axe wielding, though a chainsaw will do in a pinch)so close his breath is fogging the glasses of all Scorpios, ushers him out of the Matrix while Pluto (the co-ruler of Scorpio, he's the one that gives us an edge) follows behind, scooping up the dead and taking them to the potato cellar. Since it's so close to Winter, Persephone will be kickin' it Hades style. And a good thing, that. Wesley loves the ladies.

Read about Wesley

Anger

2003-08-24T19:45:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, people catch on to how angry a person I am. Only once or twice a month, when pesky hormones struggle through my neural network, I let the pleasant facade slip away and bare the sword, daring anyone to challenge me.

What I've noticed more than anything else is how often people are denied a voice in their own lives.

The unfortunate introduction of psychoanalysis into our mainstream culture has yielded a petty return of philosophical relativistic induction. Nothing is really anyone's fault because there’s always a reason for why people do the petty things that they do. The reason might not make sense to me because I don't have the right perspective. From what I've grasped from our American culture, the right perspective seems to be hypnotic ignorance and sitting quietly watching the shadows on the cave walls. Tip your hat to Plato my friends; he's all you've got these days.

We live in a world full of spiritual pornography. The louche Franklin Mint Indian-on-a-Horse-Great-Spirit-Bullshit plates hang on the walls of White people who care more for the idea of tribal people than for the reality of them. Whindians, I call them. We see iconery dripping from their walls and from their persons. The same iconery that we saw in their parents homes, albeit exchanging the faces of Jesus and Abraham for the faces of the Buddha and Kali. Their conviction is as convincing as a televangelist and they're in it for exactly the same reasons. Anyone who must insert that amount of showbiz into their belief system has something to prove and when religion or philosophy becomes a tool, it's usually used to hide something. There is no guilt on the conscience of these folks because guilt is a western ideal. How amusing, eh? One must justify one's actions by simply dismissing the moral standards of one’s upbringing instead of questioning the actions themselves or even exploring the concept of guilt. Am I making judgments based on lifestyle here? You bet I am. These same people (and I know plenty of 'em) speak highly of their own lifestyles but not so that they can lead by example or even to prove that idealism can survive in America, but to buff their turtle shells to such garish brightness, it blinds a seeker from witnessing the festering innards bound tightly within. It is a swindle. It is a dodge. It is certainly the last thing I ever expected to see. They cannot be content to allow any person of color their own cultural standards. If it can't be changed, it must be adopted and assimilated just like those stolen Indian babies of centuries past. Nothing is sacred and everything is for sale.

I’ve explored guilt. Because guilt and anger are married or at the very least, living together in sin, I thought it was a good thing to cover. I don’t believe in guilt as it is understood through the eyes of America. But I do believe in responsibility. I think that we only understand the virtue of financial responsibility, which is a good virtue, don’t get me wrong, but keeping that aspect of American existence afloat gives people no inclination whatsoever to regard one another with any real depth, or so it would appear to me. It allows a certain freedom in the characters of the wealthy (whose numbers dwindle) and a lot of restriction in the characters of the poor (whose numbers increase rapidly; can you guess where this is going?). How can you feel good about yourself when you're forced into crime because you can’t eat? And when you get caught, the system encroaches upon you for the rest of your life, braying in your ear that you’re no good. Guilt thrust upon you from every angle, preventing your character from escaping the tiny glass walls in which you’re forced to exist.

When I think of guilt and anger, I always think of Gunter Grass' "The Tin Drum". I love this book. As someone who has not only done wrong but has also been wronged, it offers the concept of responsibility without guilt. Since guilt motivates people, it is used as a tool to move them around. It's the easiest trick in the book. It’s as simple as a Zen parable in its ability to throw people off their game. However, what kind of world would we live in if guilt was not used? If people were expected to behave responsibly and respectfully toward one another and no one had anything to gain except for respect? Oskar, the main character in book, "The Tin Drum" is a fellow who has stunted his own growth by throwing himself down a flight of stairs at the age of three. He’s well aware of the chicanery of the adults around him and wants no part of it. He marches through most of the book speaking not with his voice, but with a Tin Drum, hence the title. The book takes place in Germany, before, during, and after WWII. My take on it is that Grass does not seek blame. He offers no excuse for the German’s behavior, instead, offering the reader the souls of the characters so that we can make our own judgments, if we so choose. Grass (through Oskar) does not seek to point out those dichotomous variables that must be responsible when a wrong is either corrected or committed. No relativistic, see it from my perspective bullshit. He does not vilify anyone, exactly, as much as he points out the foolish blind faith for sale in Nazi Germany and indeed, up for grabs on E-Bay if you know where to look.

We often duel one another with our pistols of sanctimonious righteousness, wielding our index fingers and pointing to the other guy to hide our own guilt. If it's not that, it's hiding behind someone else's philosophy. If not that, keep your bills paid and no one asks too many questions. This is not quite Oskar’s style. He offers no real solution or rationale. He is not ambiguous in his observations as much as he is abstract.

The work, more than any other I have had the honor to read in my life, and reading this book IS an honor, illustrates the plight of the human race. In order for us to have hope for the future, someone else’s future must be in jeopardy. Obviously, this is unnecessary but it seems to be the way in which the human race has evolved.

So, why am I angry? Because I am forced to capitulate to rules I had nothing to do with making. Because no matter how little I have, an opportunistic charlatan lurks behind every corner, jingling and jangling their Tingsha chimes and trying to drown me in their own mediocrity. Because I and many others who have suffered the indignity of poverty must work twice as hard to get half as far while watching privledged children waste everything they've been given and complain because they weren't given more. Because I know too many people who feel too guilty to to admit that they've done wrong. Because people enforce excessive punishment when a person admits to wrong doing. Therefore, why the fuck should anyone admit to anything?

Right now, I don’t hate the world but I hate its wasted potential. The greedy screaming of the masses is deafening and it has been keeping me awake lately. It wants gas, like the Germans in “The Tin Drum". It wants Santa Claus. It wants Faith, Hope, and Love. Everyone wants to be a Star Bellied Sneetch. I’m tired and I want to go to sleep. But I can’t sleep lately. I'm just too angry.

Avoidance Ain't Just A River in Kmet

2003-08-21T21:11:00.000-04:00

A shout out to my buddy Rain, who scared me into a good mood this morning. Two snaps up in the Z formation.

The game is afoot in the White Trash Moulin Rouge. My new neighbor is masquerading as a carpenter but in Real Life, I think he’s a drug dealer. Each time I walk past his apartment, the smell of cheap grocery store incense (Strawberry, no doubt though once in a head shop I saw incense labeled “Pussy”. I’m rather intrigued by that. I wonder if people burn it when they’re rubbing one out staring at cheap internet porn? Certainly, this guy is the type: sweaty, vacuous, and lives alone) inches out of the bottom of his door, doing a very poor job of masking the copious amounts of ganja with which he is no doubt rocking the night away. Personally, I don't care if he's drug dealer. I encourage people to use drugs if it makes them easier to deal with. I used to live with drug dealers. Trust me, some people are much better off stoned. It's the people that come to buy the drugs. They're not nice. No, not at all.

My landlord came by tonight. I rarely see him, mostly because I try to avoid him at all costs. He stares at my tits, not in the furtive, not trying to notice kind of way that most men do but with great relish and enthusiasm. Usually, our conversations end with my arms wrapped around my torso straight jacket style trying to keep the ‘ladies’ hidden. “C’mon,’ I’m thinking, “They can’t be THAT great.” Who am I fooling? They truly ARE that great. No reason to open season on the poor gals though. He creeps me out on that level of course, but there’s something truly disturbing about a man who looks just like Santa Claus with a whiskey bloom in the center of his face that reminds me of those Los Alamos films from the Cold War. Anyway, he handed me a piece of paper that instructed all of us to lock up tight and hold down the fort since my neighbor got burgled last night. This severely cramps my style of late. I was in self-imposed exile for quite a while and I am kind of liking getting out. And my poor neighbor Isaac, the guy who does summer stock in New York every year. He has to come back knowing that some asshole turned his hard earned stuff into ill gotten gains.

Crime outside of prostitution and the occasional fight or two on my street is rare. I’m actually very shocked that it happened. Then again, this does offer me quite an opportunity. I’ve been very, very pissed off at the world, hence the exile. Stayed at home for a few days doing nothing but writing and listening to Freedy Johnston's "Bad Reputation" which is my new theme song. Things are pretty much going my way except for the financial struggle that most students must endure from time to time. This is different though. I got played and played hard. I got pissed because I knew deep down I was getting played but I like to give people chances when they’re sad and down on their luck. Turns out that what I suspected was pretty much true. Often times, when people are sad and down on their luck, they’re seeking a shoulder not to cry on, but to step on to get to the next rung on their ladder. This is the story of the hen, who asked all the farm animals for help planting the seeds, sowing the fields, and harvesting the wheat. When the hard times were upon her, the other animals turned the other hoof. When it was time to eat the bread though, they were sharpening their butter knives.

All this comes down to two things for me: If it looks like a dog, yada yada. The new neighbor really looks like a dog, too. I’m not kidding. And not a cute dog, because no one loves dogs more than I do. A vile, horrid dog he is and a horrid, vile dog is he. He’s not a low down, dirty dog, like the playa I was telling you about. Don’t know which one I’d rather see groveling with my six inch stiletto up his ass. Life’s full of tough choices. I can roll with the punches.

The second thing is the burning hope that some asshole tries to fuck up my scene with burglary or some such shit. I’m really pissed off right now and a lady like me, with the mood I’m in, with a history of a not-so-stable state of mind yearns for only two words: Probable Cause.

Oh please please, please Lord, when’s goin’ be my time?

Victims

2003-07-31T18:59:00.000-04:00

All this stuff in the news about Kobe Bryant and the chick he (allegedly) ass fucked against her will got me to thinking about the word “victim”. The story came out and right away people are on the news or in papers either saying she was a whore or a victim and pretty much the same old smack people always talk when they can’t stand to think that someone they admire might just be dwelling in the garbage can of humanity.

I’ll bet that girl isn’t as pissed off at being called a whore as she is at being called a victim. I hate that word. Victim of anything sucks.

When people say “victim” they’re basically putting you in the same place, over and over. Being helpless is a bitch but being reminded of it day after day after day, well that’s just torture. It also tends to make people pity you. Empathy is someone holding your hand. Pity is someone patting you on the head. Very different, I assure you.

I spent many years (and tortured a lot of boyfriends) believing that being raped is being victimized. It’s not. It’s being told to let some other kid borrow your favorite doll and never wanting to play with it again or finding out that someone you trust has betrayed you. No power, no choice, and most of all, no take backs. All you have left is global anger and sometimes fear and everyone in the world telling you to forgive. Fuck that. That pisses me off worse than what happened in the first place. Forgiveness goes only to the people I love and that’s like, two people in the entire world. Forgiving someone is the most sacred thing you can ever do and the hell if I’m wasting it on some pervy fucktard. The only thing I want to waste on that psycho fuck is a syringe full of Liquid Draino.

The book for every male or female who has been tooled like that is called “Lucky: A Memoir” by Alice Sebold. She’s pissed. She’s as pissed off as I am. She wrote a poem called "If They Caught You", which you can find at the bottom of this post. I suggest reading it because that’s how a person feels when it’s all said and done. Also, I love the way it makes me feel. The poem makes me feel spiky and not like a victim at all. It’s a MIRV missile right in the face of everything we are taught to believe women and men should say or do after the fact. I love that it’s not someone suggesting daily affirmations which always made me feel stupid and that someone who doesn’t know me is trying to tell me who I am. It's the voice of an angry woman whose body was invaded and will never be completely her own again.

My hope is that people will begin to understand that victim is a state of mind. As long as they identify with that word, they’re dooming themselves. Being pissed off about it negates the victim within. With the American media focusing on this guy and all the people taking shots at this woman for having the temerity to accuse him of anything, we girls and guys out there who’ve been borrowed for a few minutes of fun can keep in mind that anger is your friend and can be used to your advantage. Never let the bastards grind you down, spake Margaret Atwood and with her I agree. And next time someone tries to give you the victim-must-forgive sermon, I suggest you give them a little gift of your own: a stiff middle finger.

"If They Caught You" by Alice Sebold

If they caught you,
long enough for me
to see that face again,
maybe I would know
your name.
I could stop calling you 'the rapist,'
and start calling you John or Luke or Paul.
I want to make my hatred large and whole.

If they found you, I could take
those solid red balls and slice them
separately off, as everyone watched.
I have already planned what I would do
for a pleasurable kill, a slow, soft, ending.

First,
I would kick hard and straight with a boot,
into you, stare while you shot quick and loose,
contents a bloody pink hue.
Next,
I would slice out your tongue,
You couldn't curse, or scream.
Only a face of pain would speak
for you, your thick ignorance through.
Thirdly,
Should I hack away those sweet
cow eyes with the glass blades you made
me lie down on? Or should I shoot, with a gun,
close to the knee; where they say the cap shatters immediately?

I picture you now,
your fingers rubbing sleep from
those live blind eyes, while I rise restlessly.
I need the blood of your hide
on my hands. I want to kill you
with boots and guns and glass.
I want to fuck you with knives.

Come to me, Come to me,
Come die and lie, beside me.

Sexo Manifesto

2003-07-29T16:18:00.000-04:00

I’ve had an almost pathological obsession with sex for as long as I can remember. It is laughable when I consider the limited number of sexual partners I’ve had, but quality over quantity is what I go for and if you exclude the hours of self-stimuli I’ve achieved, I can count the number of satisfying partners I’ve had on one finger. My sexual appetites are curbed largely because of my romantic nature, where, as one great mind put it, everything has to be fraught with meaning.

My latest read, “The Lisa Diaries” is the single most entertaining sexual memoir I’ve encountered. It blissfully lacks the self-conscious irony one finds when thumbing through the diaries of everyone’s favorite smarmy noodle head Anaïs Nin, replacing that pseudo-hedonism with depth that I doubt Nin ever felt even in her darkest hours handing Henry Miller her table scraps.

Lisa’s book isn’t marked up for shock profit and it doesn’t try to ruffle any feathers as much as it peeks beneath them looking for something interesting.

The greatest strength of this book and really, of all Lisa’s books is that she writes with such depth that when you’re reading, it’s like eating the tastiest croissant you’ve ever had, with rich flaky layers, something you’ll remember for days afterward. She can talk about going to a porn shop and buying a dildo and make it seem like an odyssey, which, incidentally, it becomes in subsequent pages. There’s a great entry wherein Lisa describes her new dildo and makes it sound like a Freudian amusement park where the roller coasters are made of sweaty skin and latex. Also, I’ve never owned a dildo and have been in very few porn shops, so this is twice as nice.

I’ve found that a lot of people like to use sex to illustrate how free spirited they can be, or how amazingly guilt-free they are for screwing and forgetting about it later. Sexual show-biz, I call it. It’s about as convincing as a chick screaming “Oh yeah!!” in a porno and about as boring to hear. I used to work in a very seedy nightclub where people led others about in chains, which would be interesting if they meant it. Usually, it looked as though they should be wearing signs that say, “Momma didn’t love me” or “Behold, my feigned indifference!” Not to mention it was in the heart of Cincinnati, where one chick spanked people for money while wearing fishnets so tight that her grotesquely obese legs oozed between the holes. The only turn-on there was a light above my head that told me to run like the wind that passed between her enormous ass cheeks.

You won’t find bullshit or inhibition in Lisa’s book and you’ll be entertained AND maybe even turned on. And no grotesque ass cheeks can be found lurking behind strained latex. Not even a little bit.

Buy it! You couldn’t be putting money in the pocket of a cooler gal.

Shooting it in the Vein of the Universe

2003-07-28T03:39:00.000-04:00

I think I have a virus. When I went to go score a Sprite from the machine, one of the junkies looked at me cautiously and said she hopes I don’t have the SARS. Me too, Supernova. I call her that because she's so thin, she looks as though she's going to collapse onto herself. I tried to give her some bread once but she said she wudn’t hungry. Funny thing about her and her girlfriend, they never seem to jones. They always look a bit feral but are quite calm most of the time and really, their faces are always austere. Wow, I live in the only place where we have Buddhist junkies.

They should have t-shirts that say, “Shooting it in the Vein of the Universe”. Jesus, if the Chelsea Hotel was in Northern Kentucky, it would be my building, only not as much now that the closet gay guy and his wife left a few weeks back. What a badass he was. He used to leave the nastiest porn on his computer so his wife wouldn't catch on. She'd just get SO pissed and he'd be explaining away money shots and big tittie sites, no doubt thinking "Heh, psych". She's really nice though. Now a carpenter is moving in. Not nearly as much fun.

As usual when I’m sick, my imagination gets to ride shotgun while the normal, so-called “rational” thoughts are locked safely away in the trunk, where they sniff fumes long enough to be interesting once they get back behind the wheel. The next few says will be the spent in the bosom of NyQuil and blessed comatose sleep. I don't know why the Spiderman people didn't do a Green Goblin/NyQuil tie in. They're both equally unnatural and equally deadly. I guess NyQuil just puts you to sleep while the Green Goblin kinda kills you. Maybe they didn't want the connotations. Plus it would be hard to fit that pumpkin thing in there, unless they did a NyQuil Fall Collection.

Whew, too deep for me. 'Night all.

It's All Over For Us!

2003-07-27T18:21:00.000-04:00

This is about the most fun I have ever had reading about the end of the world! Now, don't think it is merely the text of the article that is so intriguing. No, it's the pictures.

First off, the little nanobots are so cute, I don't know how bad I'd feel watching them devour the guy in the office next to me. He probably wouldn't be sweating my demise either, but that's a different story. Wow, it's like being eaten alive by Sea Monkeys wearing armor!

Secondly, everyone seems to be having a monstrous orgasm on doomsday. Note the "Aahhh's" present in many of the pictures. My only explanation is that Nathan needs to get laid...or at the end of one's life, you get a resolute nod from Mother Nature.

Last but not least, the guy brushing his teeth and seeing the giant mushroom cloud right outside. "Gaahh" is all he manages, as though he accidently overshot his upper teeth and his toothbrush sailed into the toilet!

I want to meet this Nathan guy.

Hate Mail, Shmate Mail

2003-07-27T12:36:00.000-04:00

Yes, I got my first hate mail today. Actually, it was Friday but I got drunk Friday and didn't get up early enough on Saturday to post anything.

So, two great things this week: Drunk enough for the entire party to be remembered as some kind of grey smear, except for the part where I did not sing, no, singing is way too dignified, but shouted the wrong words to Bob Marley songs, thereby completely screwing up the whole "Peace, Love" vibe that we so love from our favorite dreadlock Rasta. Yes, and then to remember that I got hate mail for being such a commie or whatever it is that you are when you're not a lemming with a flag up its ass.

All in all....great weekend!!!!

Al Jazeera Was Criticized and Bullied by The U.S. Government Who Later Have a Change of Heart

2003-07-25T14:09:00.000-04:00

"Last weekend, the U. S. government criticized the Arab network for airing photos of U.S. POWs and dead soldiers. Al- Jazeera says the United States asked that the footage not be shown until families of those soldiers could be notified, and it complied with that request."

Reported in the Roanoke Journal, March 28, 2003 by Columnist Lana Whited

one of many articles mentioning this stuff

And yet, today, Uday and Qusay, Saddam's sons and apparently, his partners in the arts of being warmongering pigs splashed (quite literally) across every fucking website I see AND this only months after they hand Al Jazeera their walking papers at the NYSE AND bomb their Baghdad headquarters, killing one reporter.

I'm so pissed off right now. I'm so pissed off right now.

So, the deal supposedly is that the Pentagon "thought it through carefully" before they decided to publish the pictures and that ultimately, the pictures were displayed only because they wanted to show the Iraqi's that the evil duo really were pushing up dasies. Ok. What the fuck ever, assholes. Like any fucking Iraqi citizen is going to be surfing the fucking web right now? With that over abundance of electricity they have, no doubt.

Now, I'd love to link you to the article where I'm getting this last bit of info but it's showing those pictures and I don't want to be anyone's toll-booth to gross out pictues of dead guys. You can find it if you read Cursor, though.

So, what this entire thing comes down to for me is a situation I've seen many, many times before, on a smaller level and committed by much smaller people: Turn the flashlight on everyone else to keep the rest of the world from seeing your own cockroaches. Hypocrite isn't a strong enough word to describe people like them and chances are, their supporters aren't ever going to allow themselves to see the shitpile around which the flies buzz.

Anne Tyler once wrote, "Free speech, that's all we've got. We can say whatever we want but the government goes ahead and does what it wants anyway. It's like we're on a big ship, headed someplace terrible and you're not allowed to jump off."

I'm going to go autistic for a while and bang my head against the wall.

After calming down for a while (days worth), I've figured out one of the reasons I'm so pissed. I really fucking hate it when people villify others for doing things that they themselves have done. It's bullshit and people try to play that crap because they often think that their reasons for doing things are the only correct ones. The way that I see it, if you're going to fuck someone in the ass with your petty finger pointing, be goddamned sure that you're not guilty of the same crime.

My New Boyfriend

2003-07-22T23:30:00.000-04:00

I don’t know his name. In fact, I barely know what the hell he looks like. I only saw him briefly today, beckoning from within the pizza delivery truck down the street, totally stoned and bearing a striking resemblance to that drooling kid from the short bus on South Park.

I e-mailed a friend yesterday, telling her about him because I think he’s sending me love notes. I came downstairs to buy a soda (this is how we met: the Coke™ machine is right across the street from the pizza joint, directly in front of the cool-alternative scooter/scenester store) and looked at trunk of my car and the word “Tits” was written in the six inches of dust that even the most torrential downpour shan't remove. I wondered what kind of male leaves love notes like THAT? Well, as you’ve read before, Newport boasts a special breed of people, so I suppose one must allow for a certain amount of eccentricity, non? Though I am not positive it was him that wrote it, I am going to pin it on him because it makes him more interesting and more mysterious. And a guy like that really needs a slap with the James Bond glove here and there.

So tonight I’m walking for yet another Coke™ (some day, I’ll buy a 12 pack but I’m just not ready for that level of commitment) and I hear this whistling coming from, yes, the pizza joint. Usually, this guy is doorway lurking, a very compelling pastime from the looks of things on the block, yet tonight he went from doorway lurking to c3, proving once again that pawns can only move straight ahead, just not too far. His whistling got louder and louder until I had to yell at him to stop trying to woo me. I am not sure if he understood though. I think that the voice of the Ganja God was far louder than my shrewish screeching.

Ok, on one hand, a whistle here and there is fun! I like it and in my town, hell, you get whistled no matter what. Yet, with his face so relaxed it appeared to be melting off his skull, I really felt like a manatee being spotted by a horny sailor after a year at sea. Dude, whistle at me when you’re sober or I won’t believe it.

I don’t know what will become of our relationship now that I’ve rebuffed his suit. I did yell at him once before though and that was before he wrote “Tits” on my car.

I think he likes it when I play hard to get.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Being Ripped Off

2003-07-20T12:06:00.000-04:00

I spent a little time deliberating before I posted anything. Probably everyone does.

I thought about how to introduce myself to the one or two people who are going to happen upon my little page while searching for that Schizophelia from Canada, the 17 year old who seems to be angst ridden and miserable, or that Schizophelia with the tattoos who says she likes to eat babies and fuck. I’m not sure if there is a ritualistic component at work there, but I am sure that I don’t eat babies. I do fuck though.

Those are a couple of other chicks who hijacked my name after seeing it somewhere on the web. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I say that until you’re big and famous and everyone in the world knows who you are, imitation is the sincerest form of being ripped off.

No matter. Being ripped off doesn’t have much to do with who I am. The name, however, has everything to do with who I am.

But that’s another story. My story of introduction isn’t going to be about initiating either of the two of you into my cult of personality. It’s going to be about Newport. The White Trash Moulin Rouge.

When I moved to Newport the first time, I was crazy. No doubt about it. I had done a stint in a mental hospital (if any of you other Schizos can produce documentation by a medical professional, you’re in) a few months prior, which really isn’t as romantic as movies try to make it seem. Romantic? Oh, ok, so why wasn’t Angelina Jolie sucking on a cherry in my movie? Or Brad Dourif being a weirdo, mother lovin’ psycho, groveling before a stern ass nurse (who, by the way, is one of my personal heroines; I want to see another movie where the lady dominates the world and lobotomizes asshole 70’s gorilla men like Jack Nicholson) or even a silent Indian standing around being, well, silent. No sir, mental hospitals are no slice of Sara Lee. I’d like to have moved to Newport sooner and saner, because that’s where the romantic mental hospital really is.

I was driving home from the grocery store this morning when once again, I was assaulted with the very vibrancy of this town: Its freaky ass people. This woman was like, almost running down the street but was so large that at first, I thought it was one person carrying another on their back. Then I realized it was only the one lady and then I saw what she was wearing: A little catholic schoolgirl outfit, complete with flat, black shoes and crooked piggy tails. One of them was perched on the upper left side of her head and the other seemed to have been a by-product of whatever creative impulse drove her to make the first one. She was walking with the same kind of purpose that Ophrey had in “The Color Purple” and she (the piggy tail lady) had this contented look on her face like she had just been elected president or had just gone to the bathroom after having to wait a very, very long time. Oh, and the best part was that she was wearing some kind of smock, like the kind women used to wear at dime-stores. It was red and tied at the sides, so I’m thinking that she was either walking to the bus-stop to go or had just been dropped off from her job in the fabric department at Wal-Mart. This woman, like most people in Newport, is incredibly intruging to me. You just want to watch her to see what happens next, if only to watch the faces of those around her. Living in Newport is like throwing pebbles into a different pond every day. I never tire of feeling brand new ripples lift my ass up (like a duck, which is my spirit animal, by the way) and set me back down on the smooth water to contemplate what the air was like two inches above me.

I moved away from Newport for a while, back into the jaws of the West Side of Cincinnati. Bad idea. Good Northern Kentucky people scoff at Cincinnati. The way I see it, Cincinnati is not for fierce people like me and that was a lesson I learned well. Northern Kentucky is for people who don’t exactly want to take life by the balls, but who are the BALLS (or highly fertile OVARIES in my case) of life! I moved to Cincinnati four or five years ago and never stayed in one place for more than six or seven months. I’ve been in Newport for over a year now and really, I don’t know if I’m going to leave. The tempting aspect of great grad schooly goodness is making my intellectual mouth water but how can I leave a place when it is the only place that has ever felt like home? Yes, that’s right, home to me is a David Lynch film, and complete with dwarves (I swear this lady right down the street is only 2 feet tall. The first time I saw her, I thought she was a toddler) whores and pimps [the whores are sickly looking, pale young men, the pimps are large diesel dykes with bad mullets (what’s a good mullet, eh?) and greasy t-shirts] strip bars (Don’t ask about the strippers here. Just don’t ask) and its own special breed of dog, the “Newport”, which is just about the friendliest and sweetest dog in the world (I know a fellow who has one) and can be identified by his cheap suit (dirty black fur with a white spot at the neck, like the cravat of a dead guy who was buried in his butler uniform) and intelligent brown eyes.

If you ever come to Cincinnati to visit, blow it off and come on over the river to Newport. If it sucked, would I have wasted this much time on it?

If a person can be defined by their space, Newport is where you'll always be able to see the bumpy antique window into my head. But exercise extreme caution and please, don’t forget to NOT wipe your feet on the way in.