Raking the Leaves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

"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

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

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.