As far as moles go, I don't have a tremendous number, but I've had one that is rather prominent in locus, if not in dimension. One small brown mole has been on the apple of my right cheek since I can remember, and it's always been flat, only slightly darker than my skin, and mercifully free of spirals of black evil hair flapping in the wind. I generally have good skin, and a light layer of foundation diminishes even this minimal appearance. I rather fancy the mole may go unnoticed by friends, acquaintances and toll booth clerks as they are transfixed on my captivating eyes, my heaving bosom or my soul patch of dark hair that happy trails on down below my bottom lip.
About a year ago, I noticed something peripherally sitting on my cheek, and I reached up to brush it away, only to find it was attached to me. This mole turned out to be a sleeper cell, finally rearing its ugly head after nearly two fifths of a century had elapsed. My attitude on my moles is much like the fighting philosophy of the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal - one of the most ferocious creatures in the universe, and the stupidest: if it can't see you, it reckons you can't see it, and will not attack you, thus the intergalactic hitchhiker must carry a towel to cover the beast's head so it will remain docile. Anyhoo, if I can't see a mole, it doesn't exist.
I'm not particularly fond of this mole, but if it had remained flat and smooth, I would never have interfered with it. However, about a month ago I noticed the texture had changed dramatically, in addition to jutting up like Ayer's rock above the plains of the Outback. This was not bad enough. The mole, she slap me lak zees wees 'er glove, and shallenge me to a duel. A molelet had erupted and sat flipping me off in the mirror. So, I brought it.
Today I went to visit my world-renowned dermatologist, Dr. Alan Menter. He's so amazing that he always has young interns like ducklings trailing around after him eager to learn from his vast knowlege. This must be why his examination rooms are so large.
I prepared for this insanely early 8am appointment, and got my shit together. I checked my look in the mirror, and reasoned I don't need make-up - I look much younger than most women my age - Dr. Menter will prolly even compliment me on how great my skin looks in comparison to others. Lookin' Good! Feelin' Good!
I get there, and the Dr strides in, followed by a new batch of young doctors apparently culled from a Banana Republic catalog. Smug gits! Dr was so focused and serious that my comment that my twin was erupting on my cheek falls utterly flat. Ho hum. I described my problem, and he looked through a magnifying glass at the offending growth, and proceeded to talk about my "crusty mole" to the young men, repeatedly mentioning the "crusty mole," as if anyone might not have heard the first 40 or 50 times. By the way - did I mention I have a "Crusty mole?" This was not enough, he insisted they all take a look through the magnifying glass and when that carnival of horrors was over, he insisted they step right up and cop a feel. Yes. My "crusty mole" has been felt up by hot young doctors. I'll bet they'll be fantasizing about this for weeks, seriously. [There must be a porn fetish site devoted to petting crusty moles, but I digress.] So, I feel like I'm sorta not in the room, and this bitch on my cheek is getting all the attention. I finally got to axe a question, and I asked if this thing will get bigger, and if it will keep tossing out appendages. He said yes, most likely it would get larger, and most likely the little tags would continue to erupt. Dr grabbed a metal cylinder thermos-thingie and asked if I want to keep the mole, or if I'd like to freeze it off--after all I would have a scabby sort of thing on my cheek just in time for Christmas. I asked if it would leave a scar and he said no, so I said "we're definitely removing it today." So he zapped the little devil right then and there and I'm waiting for it to turn black and fall off.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy. 1844–1881

Ode

WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

Recently on the news I heard a man home on furlough from Iraq. He said the trials and pressures of everyday life now seem so trivial, and that he was eager to be back there, fighting with his fellow soldiers. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter.
Hamlet ACT II, SCENE 5

Latonia was in town debuting as Micaela in Carmen last week at the Dallas Opera. I think she debuts as Mimi next season at the Met. Her voice is more spectacular than ever - much prettier than I even remembered it,and the crowd cheered more for her than for the other stars. We went to lunch a couple times, and she kept saying that I need to pursue my singing. I admit I feel wistful and heartsick about opera. It generally makes me blue to go see one. She told me something I remember hearing a long time ago, which is that you don't see singers of my voice type really working before they are 40 anyway, because opera companies don't like to hire a Queen of the Night(magic flute) or Constanze(seraglio) with young chops - dense orchestration with tattoo-needle stratospheric vocals - a young voice doesn't have the steel to cut through it all. My coloratura still works well, and obviously I still have a powerful hankering to do it...

In retrospect, the electronica on the radio in the early 1980s was brilliantly prescient. Gary Numan's "Cars" is simply a great song, its iced-laser symmetry of tones and beats a primer for the dawn of an age of wires and wirelessness. Here in the 21st century, we're not all dressed like Spock or Seven of Nine, but our lifelines are comingled with machinery in ways only Sci-fi ever anticipated. One of the great things about leaving one's home used to be getting away from the telephone. That is now an obsolete mindset with the advent of cellular technology. Caller I.D. is the ultimate in passive agressiveness - we always look before we answer, don't we? We feel we've lost our tether if we drive away from home and leave the cell phone on the desk or in the bathroom. We rushed headlong to meld with our machines. And it's no wonder--people feel alienated from those around them - via the internet, there is some hope of finding one's tribe. Ah, blessed be.

"Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars..."

If mediocrity is one's only option, best do nothing.

Ponder the popping weasel.

Coming home from dinner Friday night I sat at a red light, watching the convo between the skinhead in the vehicle ahead of me and his date. He was speaking in an animated manner, maybe trying a little too hard, and she had sorority girl hair--wondered how on earth these two hooked up. Then I noticed the bumper sticker on his vehicle: 'Join the Army. Travel the world. See exotic places. Meet unusual people, then kill them.' He was driving a Jeep. Irony, anyone?

I can now say I have sat in my pajamas, bowl of oatmeal in hand, watching dawn spreading across quaking Mount St Helens, updated every five minutes, all from in the cozy confines of my studio. The internet and webcams: good shit.

When times are good it is easy to be blissfully ignorant and casual about life and not tally the moments our daily joys string together like a garland of flowers. It is when things seem bleakest that time leaps at us in bold relief and each tick of the clock holds censure and menace. At those moments, the triumphs of life seem as remote as light seen from the bottom of a well, its impassable curve shooting upward toward an arctic pinprick of light, tauntingly hinting of illumination no longer attainable, of sun that will never again warm the chill of bones who understand the grief of living. Grace is easy when things are good, but perhaps the only moments of true grace and nobility are times that seem bleakest. Much of life is mundanaity punctuated by brilliant highs and stultifying lows. Maybe the trick is splitting the difference - limning our agonies and joys with the knowlege that most will balance out, and appreciating that giddy pleasures can only be fleeting. I fritter much of my time, but my mind is always working, shuttling the warp and weft of ideas and seeking patterns to explain all. The one assured pattern I have discovered is this: though we may crave the daylight, we would never see the stars if not for the blackness that night affords.

Time (Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour)
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

Breathe (reprise)
Home, home again. I like to be here when I can.
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire.
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Gawd, has it been that long? This, then is my August post. Hectic, no time, summer primarily spent getting about the serious business of lolling in my swimming pool in the house I just bought. On my deathbed will I say "I should have spent less time in the pool and more time cleaning/unpacking?" Naaah.

The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.
Florence King

From 3AM girls in the British tabloid Mirror.co.uk--

BEN Affleck has told how he felt when he found out ex-fiancee J-Lo had married crooner Marc Anthony.

The 31-year-old actor - who split from Jen in January - told Radio 1: "It's the sort of vague calm you get after vomiting, when the unpleasant bit is over and you get a kind of strange peace."

[I'll bet. What a purge that must have been!]

Semi-workie/neighborhood weird occurence alert. This is creepy shit.

I lived in a building in South Dallas for about 6 years in my early to late twenties. I loved the building and only moved when I was about to get married and had some hare-brained notion that I wanted to check out neighborhood living. Eleven years later and I'm back in a loft in South Dallas. *ahem*
anyway. The building had 13 units and was about 100 years old with giant sliding freight doors that residents would padlock from the inside or outside. There were weird acoustics in the building and sometimes inside my loft you could hear a cute girl up the hall named Ginger having knock-down drag-outs with her girlfriend. Sometimes the girlfriend would take all the telephones from the apartment and padlock the door from the outside and leave Ginger locked up for a cooling-off period. Sometimes the police came. It was very strange. I'm sure this acoustic phenomenon must have worked in reverse, although I'm sure I never gave anything so interesting to listen to as pugilistic lesbian antics.
The apartment I lived in last was #13. It was a strange apartment, but had a large basement room that stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. I think of golden times in that space--my sister and I lived there together-- I would get home from the graveyard tour at work as the sun was coming up, and we'd space out and watch the light shift and warm the space while we listened to gorgeous music--the splendors of the new day dawning and anticipating the languorous naps that lay ahead. The upstairs space was painted a wonderful mottled olive-to-dark green color by the previous occupant, and I loved the feel of the room--its high ceilings and tall windows. The basement antechamber was a boiler room(my sister's bedroom), but had some windows and natural light. The main basement room(my bedroom), however, was a concrete bunker and had the makings (unrealized during my occupancy) of a bona fide sex pit. Very dungeons & dragoons. Meow.
I remained loosely in touch with two neighbors from the building - one who is in Houston now and another who manages a restaurant in London. I knew from them that an architect moved into my space when I moved out, and years later someone told me the architect still occupied that space.
Flash forward these eleven years, and the little job I am working has put me in close proximity with that architect. His name is Larry. Larry has been doing some work for my boss, who is planning some townhomes in the neighborhood. I began seeing his name in paperwork early in the days I began working this job, and someone mentioned he lived on Harwood street, and I finally realized that he was the man living in my old space. I was eager to know of the old place and if any of the old-timers were still around there, and though he was generally not talkative to me (more on that in a second), one day he was waiting for the company head to arrive and I asked about the apartment. He told me a Cliff notes version of how the building's community had evolved, and I was pleased to hear news of it. Still, even after that conversation Larry never seemed to warm up to me, which was a trifle offputting. I did admire Larry's energy and passion for Dallas - he was very involved in local urban planning, and maybe his veneer of arrogance sprang from a feeling of self-importance--moving all the little people around like pieces on a chess board. Nice of us all to show up and give him an occupation.

I didn't look at Larry and immediately think he was a gay man, but I came to recognize he had a certain air of a very loathesome stripe of man: The flip side of the coin that says "women are only for fucking" which is the side that says "women only exist to make more gay men for me to fuck." He wasn't a snide or preening ponce in that way--just icily indifferent--no use for women, really, and no need to stoop to petty niceties such as greeting the other human in the room you have just entered if that human is female. He may have been a great guy, but I never saw that. Oddly enough, icily indifferent is how the company head could be described 4 out of 5 days, I'd say. I saw Larry at the office on Friday and it was as if we had never spoken--as if he were following the golden rule of subways the world over: "thou shalt not make eye contact." I shrugged it off, as ever, not taking it personally. After all--was I given the opportunity to choose my gender?

Sunday night my dad called me up and asked if I knew a guy named Wheat from my old building. I said yes, and he said he was talking on the phone when he saw my old building on the news, and that some guy named Wheat was beaten to death in his apartment late Saturday night. Dad said he knew that was our old space they were talking about. Neighbors saw Larry enter the apartment with another man, apparently calmly as if nothing untoward was going on. Then they heard a commotion from within the space and Larry screaming for help. The visitor left the apartment smoking a cigarette, and the neighbors had called police already. Apparently Larry was dying of a head wound even as the ambulance arrived.

There is talk and speculation, gossip and paranoia. Nests of yupstarts and artists dotted about this rough transitional tract of town are roiling with the intrigue and despair of tragedy our gated communities always seemed to insulate us from. Sure, people are living and dying of drugs and cruelty just beyond our cloistered existence, but our usefulness to society is an insulating factor. Having escorted the man into his home, the obvious thing to think is that Larry picked the guy up for a quick piece of tail, and things went horribly awry, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, etc. It's a tough old world to be a horny single person on the make. Neighbors got a good gander at the murderer, and hopefully that will be his undoing.

Monday at work I came across an invoice from Larry to my company, and thought of the nearness of it all. I thought of that beautiful place so dear to my heart and the unspeakable horror that happened there. I thought again of the warm glorious mornings there, of the concrete floor where my doggie puked up the half-pound of butter she gobbled while I was bringing in the rest of the groceries (butter puddles are a bitch to clean). I thought of evenings sitting on the sofa or in the courtyard talking to my beau - now husband - and thinking I could move on in the world and move forward with him. I thought of guests and dinner parties and sparkling moments that in no way foreshadowed what would happen there.

It's chilling to think of the murderer going about his life--be it in a home or on the street--inwardly giddy from the shocking thrill of killing someone. It's difficult to conceive of how someone can commit such an act to begin with, let alone stand himself after the fact. In his heart bloom the flowers of evil, fragrant with the stench of a powerful secret. I'm abivalent about the death penalty, but in cases like this, I'll be ok with the chair. I hope they catch the bastard and make him a crispy critter.

The composite sketch of the perp shows a bowl-cut time-warped from a Three Stooges film, rendering a sublimely ridiculous aspect to the unbelieveably tragic. Imagine the bizarre breach of taste that wrought this double-standard: He couldn't deign to talk to females, but would take his chances with a Moe Howard-pated homicidal maniac. But that is unfair of me, isn't it? Larry probably only wanted to show the guy his etchings...

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

There's so much I love, but I hate the way we struggle through a life we are not meant to survive.

OK OK. Don't start worrying about me. Those last 2 entries are way too macro for this gal. Don't succumb to the fear that I'm going to go all political or big-picture on you. This journal is about 3 things: Me, me and me! Don't worry that this disposable bit of fluff is going to boil down to an icy rock of vitriolic lead. Me and my double D's is on the case. However, we reserve the right to bitch about the Machiavellian among us... ...Two days ago I went shopping for panties. It was a glorious orgy of panty acquisition. Seriously, I filled the basket at TJ Maxx with a vertable crayon box of panty selection. Woohoo. New drawers are a thing of wonder and beauty-they make one feel all swishy-sassy. Then I wended my way over to the shoe aisle, and found a Spanish sandal I rilly rilly loved. I bought 4 pairs of identical sandals (different colors) and about a dozen panties. I'm channeling Imelda Marcos. Peel me another grape, Ferdinand. Let them eat cack.

My response to a chain-letter email I received trying to drum up support for Michael Moore:

I remember hearing a story on the news telling of Michael Moore's hoax to stir up publicity by decrying Disney, so when I received your email about poor little Michael Moore vs Goliath Disney, I googed "michael moore disney hoax," and I have quoted below the link some info from the article which sheds light on Moore's methods. Michael Moore lives in a $4 million dollar Manhattan pad, and it's a little fatuous for him to pretend to keep playing the "little guy" a la Roger & Me. He has integrity issues of his own. Perhaps I could have a fabulous Manhattan pad and all the best and finest for my kith and kin if I did a documentary exposing his specious tactics and flagrant dishonesties. Fact is, he couldn't stand up to the brand of stacked-deck scrutiny he deals out. Hope you find it educational.

http://www.antimusic.com/news/04/may/item20.shtml

Update: Michael Moore made a big stink earlier this week when he accused Disney of pulling the plug on his latest film, “Fahrenheit 911”. He decried Disney’s decision not to distribute the film as politically motivate censorship. However, Moore was crying wolf. He admitted in a CNN interview that he knew almost a year ago that Disney would not distribute the film, according to a report from independent.co.uk.
Moore told CNN, "Almost a year ago, after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it."

Re: Abuse of Iraqi prisoners. One of the most interesting quotes I've ever heard from a man-on-the-street type interview: Marty D. Hitchins of Cumberland, MD, said, 'You don't see pictures of them multilating our guys and dragging their bodies down the street.'

Easy Virtue... A word about my teeth: Vanity. Weight fluctuates, hands and feet show the care and wear of the years, eyes and hair look bright and dull in equal measure, but my little pearlies have never failed me. This is an easy vanity, as I have merely cleaned and flossed regularly and been blessed with very good enamel. My teeth have never been completely straight, but their slightly askew stance against the world suits my own disposition. Dentists and orthodontists have told me that I need to have braces, and even that I need my jaw broken and re-positioned surgically and I have never taken this advice seriously because my teeth are something I've thought of as wonderful about my face. I have always had about a 1.5mm gap between my eye teeth, and I rather like being a gap-toothed woman. In the middle ages, women with this dental phenomenon were thought of as loose and wild, and though my life rather resembles that of June Cleaver more than I would prefer, somewhere buried in all these folds of tedium and propriety lurks my inner Hellion, pawing the earth like a randy bull and ready to upend the china shop at any moment. Whether I feel like hot shit or not, I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, and one day a few months back I suddenly noticed the gap between my teeth had widened considerably. Now I like a little gap, but I don't aspire to eat corn off the cob through a picket fence, so I asked last time I went to have my teeth cleaned. My dentist recommended a superb orthodontist who seemed more competent and knowledgeable than others I'd seen. I went to him on Wednesday, and he diagnosed my need for braces, etc., but he is the first among them to say the surgery may not be necessary. He did say that my teeth have arrayed themselves according to the bone structure of my face, and that because my bite is so uneven I may have cracked molars soon because they have borne the brunt of biting/chewing/tearing all these years without the help of my canines or incisors, which don't meet. The threat of losing my teeth is something not so easily shrugged off--to suddenly have a lot of tooth-related pain is not something I'm going to be able to abide, I fear. He also said the corners of my mouth turn down because of this. I was shocked when he said that. I said "I didn't know the corners of my mouth turn down--I thought I looked cute." I was kind of reeling from this, actually. It made me wonder if I look like I smell something unpleasant all the time. [If you've read much of my blog, you know I have a nose which is easily outraged, but I don't want to look like I'm outraged all the time!] I feel like a hideous little puppy that doesn't know it's ugly. This has all made me think about how I'm perceived by others rather more than I would prefer. It's too easy to be self-obsessed and constantly rearranging oneself to meet with the approval of people who (should) have no bearing on one's existence. I curdle at the idea of tugging and snipping away nature to reveal the inner plasticene goddess because it is so fucking false. Look at Courtney Love's original face in the film Sid & Nancy, and look today at the latter-day punk priestess-cum-Gloria Swanson blinking like the Bride of Frankenstein in an unflatteringly lit courtroom near you. We're so pretty, oh so pretty vacant. Oh, yes, I'm getting the braces, but if you ever find me running off to shrink myself in cling-film in attempts to meet some standard of beauty that is in opposition to my physiology, please do me a favor and slip me some hemlock.

I had just drunk the Last of the Mojitos, and communication skills were at an ebb, when...

Wow. Last night all the neighbors and a few visitors were hanging out on the deck at my apartments, and two idiots started trying to out-do each other with gross-out/taboo jokes. What is UP with that? Where is the sport in that? They were all groaners anyway, none of them laugh-out-loud. It was ugly and unkind , until one of them told a joke about black people, and then half the group laughed heartily, and the oxygen was sucked out of the room (which was the great outdoors) for the rest of us. *gasp* It was very uncomfortable because it was so unkind and uncalled for, whether or not there was a black person present, which there was. He sat like a statue, not dignifying the idiocy with a response. And the joke had come from a woman I would never in a million years have expected to hear that from. To make matters worse, her visiting friend brought it back up minutes later saying "that black guy joke was so fucking funny!" A blunt, clever neighbor retorted loudly "I don't know why you say it that way - why don't you just say 'nigger?' That's what you mean, and yeah, nigger jokes are really fucking funny." The black man high-fived the blunt woman, and I think they will probably be friends for life, now. I don't know if the drunk joke-tellers will remember the rebuke, but I wonder how you recover from that. I suppose we'll all learn something from it. I wish I had been bold and clever enough to front her at the time it happened, but I had not all my faculties. Disappointing, but satisfying that someone could at least point out the insult eventually.

um. OK. I'll prolly come back and edit this post later, but for now I've got to get this down: Two films are slated to be made by competing studios depicting the life of Janis Joplin. Think of who in Hollywood has the looks and chops to carry it off (begging the question will they be providing prosthetic natural looking teeth for the role? Sick of unnatural looking teeth in film. Sick to death of it. Like fake tits, people in general seem to have lost touch with what looks right on humans - It'll be unsurprising when people start buying veneers for their dogs and cats--what nature endowed couldn't possibly be adequate for optimal attractiveness.) OK. Janis was an earthy looking woman and wouldn't have been described as a natural beauty. I'm thinking for sheer acting chops alone the obvious choice would be Kate Winslet, who no doubt could throw herself into that role believeably, even though she's never bordered on less than ravishing. Even as the dowdy Iris, she was ineffably lovely. Perhaps a touching tribute would be a ruggedly beautiful portrayal by such an actress. OK. Scale it down a bit. Think Pink. Think Renee Zellweger. Yep. WTF??? I swear I'm not making it up. Um. [shudder mode "on"]

New wave of fleas is afoot. bastards. My one-woman show is up in a gallery this weekend, and I'm nervous. I feel so unprepared. Note to self: must change my lazy ways.

Someone tried to steal my truck a couple nights ago. About 1am a drunk homeless guy came to the gate and started telling my neighbor Jason he ditched his truck in the parking lot when he was running from the cops, and now he needed to get back in so he could get it. He was holding a giant key ring with dozens of keys on it. Jason said "which truck is yours" and he pointed to mine. Jason said "really? You have the key to that truck? Let me see." So the guy put his arm through the gate and Jason deftly took the big key ring and called 9-1-1. Of course, the guy took off, and it was all kind of funny, but a little creepy... A new development in our neighborhood is the man who is pimpin' on the front of our building. I saw a very dark-skinned lass with him Wednesday in a baby blue get-up that was not at all flattering, though it was the perfect complement to the white platform sandals she was obviously suffering from. Now this chick was not a tiny girl and the ensemble was some knit material and extremely tight. If you put a razor blade near that, there would have been hind-end all over the place. The high price of keeping it real.

Last night was karaoke madness. My dearest friend and I made a delicious hash of "Tainted Love" (it would have been much better if it were just her singing without me) and her fiance has sworn that next time he'll do "Genie in a Bottle." I can't wait. I love to sing, but I hate singing into microphones--it's annoying.

A close friend has gone over the edge, apparently. Sadly. Being home in the daytime I see a lot of the comings and goings in the building. Don't start thinking I'm like Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched - meddlesome neighbor. It's just that my huge window is right by the stair, and a crackhead neighbor who used to live above me would come home on his lunch break for about five minutes every day, and I began to realize he wasn't coming home to whip up a tunafish sandwich. In fact, he lost a lot of weight and began acting a bit jumpy and less personable - much out of character. Finally, he moved to another loft in the area, and when he did, a much more beloved neighbor began hanging out at the guy's new pad. I can be a bit blunt, on occasion, and today I was bringing up the subject of gossip with another brutally frank neighbor, and she said "oh, were you going to tell me that jameson is on crack?" Having no intention of the kind, I was floored by this statement. Jameson is a lovely person who grapples with demons, but I've always held out hope he would get a grip and just be himself and learn how to be happy. I think he wants to have a different life, but is pinioned by the fear of wounding his backwoods Baptist minister father with his lifestyle choices. I asked her what she meant - if she was serious, and she said that she smelled some burning chemical wafting from his open window a few days ago, and that besides he has a smell like crackheads get - she knew this because a friend's mother and another friend had been addicted and she recognized the odor, which seems to ooze from his pores 24/7 lately. (and here I thought it was just the beer and chain-smoking that made him reek) I wish Jameson would just embrace his gayness and pinch off the downward spiral. I'm the last person to judge someone for choosing their own poisons, but dammit-- he's not even having a good time! He drinks the shittiest beer imaginable to a state of stupefaction nightly. He obviously is self-medicating and needs to deal with the real problems in his life and get on with it before he pisses it all away. I realized in December he had gone to the dark side of stupid when he made a crap comment to me, and I honestly believe he intended the comment to be helpful. I must have had a look on my face like I was about to give birth to a litter of yaks, because after flattening me with his unwanted advice, he began to cry and beg me to please not be mad at him because he just wanted to be helpful. Jameson has been a dear friend for five years and I found myself looking into his eyes and thinking "who is this motherfucker?" Anyway, I was too flummoxed at the time of the revelation today to remember that I had predicted Jameson would also become a crackhead when he began spending a lot of time at the crackhead's loft. Husband reminded me of my prediction later. I wonder what the future holds, but it's hard to imagine anything good coming of this. I wish I were wrong, because this feels like watching a fatal car crash in slow motion.

I've always heard that men are visually oriented as opposed to women, who feel their way through life. If this is true and women and competitors are sized up by men visually, then is it possible for a man blind from birth to be sexist? How do men blind from birth know if they are gay or straight? Do they have to taste test both to determine? OK, taste may be a poor choice of words, but...

Two guys lived in a loft in my building and they built a half-pipe in their space. They had two ill-cared-for large dogs who always seemed demented. Now we know why. They were recently evicted after various violations of property rules. The space was left open Sunday, denuded of half-pipe and all their worldly goods, and the neighbors were all sitting around on the deck drinking beer as usual when Jules came over with her boxer, Noodles. Jules lived in that same loft before the skater boys and said "I wanna see what the old place looks like" and she went in and Noodles followed. She came out thirty seconds later saying how bad it smelled and the boxer came out onto the deck and started bucking like a wild bronco with its nuts in a vise. One of the neighbors said she was covered in ants, but on closer inspection they realized that the wretched beast was covered in fleas from that apartment. Now the entire property is infested and my little white dog is starting to chew and groan constantly. I bathed her as soon as I heard the story, but to no avail: she suffers the torments of the damned. We are going to the vet tomorrow, and in the meantime I am dismayed by her discomfort. I should have known something intense was going on with the fleas when I saw one leaping in and out of her coat like a dolphin. I grabbed the little bugger and dropped it into the liquid wax of a burning candle I happened to have handy. [Here's a tip for fun with ticks if you don't just enjoy keeping a mason jar of alcohol around to collect their carcasses like my grandpa in Arkansas has always done-- stick the tip of a straight pin into the wet wax of the candle and then quickly tap the back of the tick with the pin, and the wax will glue him to the pin. Then put the tick near the flame, and the tick will puff up and explode like a mini piece of popcorn. Of course, it is sick and rather cruel, but I conveniently choose to believe that ticks don't have feelings anyway, so why not enjoy ourselves on their dime?] I have been searching flea remedies online, and I looked up diatomaceous earth and here is a description that made my seat wet: Diatomaceous Earth is a natural, non-chemical product. It appears to be a powder, but it is actually razor-sharp crystals to fleas. It blocks and cuts the fleas' gills, and they die. I'm all aquiver. Fucking fleas.

The office I'm working in has glass windows on three sides, and yesterday it rained so hard that it looked like the office was traveling through a carwash. People who move away from Texas say they miss the torrential rains and intense electrical storms. I can understand missing that - there's no better weather for sleeping late or vegetating and staring out the window. It's crap to drive in, though.

Reunions in my family are always worth attending simply for the novelty of being around apocalyptic white trash (thank you Sandra Bernhard). Once the family rented a pavilion at a state park in Arkansas for the annual gathering. As it happened, Arkansas didn't shut down the entire park to the public, and many unfortunate souls came by along the path wending between the gigantic springs of the park and the pavilion. I wonder if the woman in the wheelchair thought she would be communing with nature that day, breathing the fresh air and escaping the cruelties of life, if only momentarily? She made her way slowly, laboring to scale the gradual incline of the path. Her legs were both removed above the knee. In a just world, she could have made her way unhindered through the glories of nature, but then again--in a just world, my family and all its tangled strands of DNA would never have existed. It would have been a mercy, too, if the woman could have glided by unmolested by Colton and Austin, my cousin's two young sons. Colton and Austin have the developmental level of a three-year old baboon, with equal communication skills. Austin ran up to the woman shouting "Hay Colton! Come look! This lady ain't got no laigs! Hay lady! What happened to yer laigs, lady?" Uncle Billy (the proud grandfather) said "them kids are gonna end up dead or in prison." Quite.

It's one of those divinely nasty days I'm always telling you I love. Running an office errand, I cut across downtown Dallas in my pickup truck and headed down Fort Worth Avenue. It's great driving a truck--the only vehicle in which one's earrings and boobage can swing comfortably. Flipped on the radio as the darkening slickness of the streets mirrored head and tail lamps of people hurrying home from a hard days'. Normally, I'd flip to another station, but the skating rink organ of "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley just seemed so right with the weather. Funny how I hated that song when I was a girl--it seemed so dark, ugly and pessimistic. Now it seems so true that it's banal. I chuckled about that. I could have saved myself some hard lessons if I'd just cut to the chase in 1984 and became a bitter hardened cynic right out of the box.

It's been sitting for absolute ages, neglected for weeks at a time, so I asked my sister today if she would like my piano for my niece and nephew to begin lessons. She was ecstatic, as was my 7 year old niece, so just like that it is finished. Even though I barely used it, as long as it sat here I could think of it as potential energy stored in a battery, all coiled up and ready to spring alive with vibrant tone, but to let it go spells the end of my favorite chapter of my own unremarkable story. A kindly neighbor helped husband move the piano into the truck for transport, and we leave in mere moments. Letting the piano go is me saying firmly that the dream I labored over so many hours and years of my life--aspirations of an opera career--is utterly finished. I can barely breathe. I can't see evidence of the metal bands that have strapped around my rib cage, but I can feel them forcing the breath and water up out of my mouth and eyes. This is the feeling of my heart breaking.

Back from another whirlwind trip out to Arizona to visit me gran.

A few words on harmonica pedagogy. the Who. I never got that. The Kids are Alright is on IFC and Roger Daltrey is performing a lewd act on a harmonica, eyes rolling up to make contact with the audience, but instead having the effect of the rolling eyes of a stuck hog hanging from a tree branch and bleeding dry. Erm, uh. Not sexy. I'll give Pete Townsend the benefit of a doubt for now, and use this opportunity to bring up the Uber-icky Gary Glitter. Now Gary wrote some great stuff, but what a perv! Not good, yummy perv, but revolting, wildly un-sexy perv. He was actually thrown out of Cambodia for perversion. Child-sex tourism is common in Cambodia, so I'm wondering--just what exactly does one have to do to be called perverse by the Cambodian government??? On second thought--I don't want to know.

OK. Today was the second day of new job, and it is going so much better than I expected. I do expect I'll have gargantuan annoyances to bitch about toute-de-suite.

I have sort of accepted a job helping out in an office, and I am wondering what the fuck I have gotten myself into. I detest boring busy work, and I fear I am going to have that shit aplenty dumped in my lap for the scant hours I will be working. I will only be working two afternoons a week as a relief for the full-timer at the office, and it will be a challenge to keep the bullshit at arm's length. You WILL be hearing about it, no doubt. Work starts at 1pm tomorrow. I dread it, but I need furniture for my work studio and for organizing the apartment. I'm the classic creative type who loves disarray--sometimes when things are a jumble I see unexpected combinations of elements that are brilliant, and that is vital to keeping my creations fresh, in my opinion. On the other hand, I have never in my life had adequate storage for all clothing, shoes, etc, and the clutter of this apartment is actually beginning to wear on me. Wish me luck.

Last night i dreamt I was in someone else's house and there was a huge sliding glass door and out the window about half a mile away was a giant tornado with another nearby, and the house was flying apart around me, and I ran to a closet which was suddenly mere boards swirling and I went deeper into the house, into a closet in an inner bathroom, and suddenly all that was evaporating around me, boiling up into dust.

Heigh ho! I just found a cd in the parking lot whose track listing includes 2 Are you the motherfucker with the banana and 4 Farts are jazz to assholes.

Today is gloriously rainy and glum. My favorite weather. Exceedingly rare are my headaches, and only then the day after drink, but I haven't had a thimble full in over a week and today I feel like a pig shat in my head. No matter--there is no keeping me indoors when the firmament bursts forth so. I hopped in my pickup truck and wended onto a rain-slicked freeway by downtown and northward on errands, the very tallest buildings on my left swallowed up in mists. I flipped on my radio and nothing could have been more perfect to hear than Time from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. That sound is mournfully lovely, like the forced slow cadence of marching leaden feet through treacle... I am thinking of Spalding Gray, and how he was reported missing by his wife on Saturday. At 21 I saw Swimming to Cambodia, and I marveled at his raw and bristling honesty. So very much of what is served up as entertainment is contrived and weakly conceived, that when someone reaches deep within themselves and says "here it is: this is me and this is why I'm fucked up and although it's tragic, isn't some of it hilarious?," well I just find that deeply stirring and it makes me feel less alone. Life has no easy answers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't question. Here's to you, Spalding.

An animal lover with 3 large dogs and 5 cats moved into the loft down the hall from mine. Heaven knows I adore my little bitch, but I do have my boundaries. When the new neighbor met my little terrier, she put her face up to my dog's and said in a 'tard voice "give me kisses," as my dog stared at her blankly. "She won't kiss me," the woman said and I just shrugged. From the earliest stages of puppyhood, I did not allow doglet to lick me in the face, and so it baffles her when she meets someone who has that expectation. It's funny to think someone might think my dog just is picky about who she licks in the face, rather the fact that I take a dim view of swapping spit with dogs.

Speaking of the doglet--she humps legs--isn't that peculiar for a spayed female dog? Because she is small I have tolerated more bad behavior from her than I would have of a larger dog. She never has accidents in the apartment, and she is sweet and cuddly. I have learned not to leave the apartment with pungent things in the trash, because she will disgorge the can of its contents. Recently, a friend came over and apparently left a soiled tampon in my bathroom trash. That evening I was puzzled to find the bathroom dustbin toppled and its contents scattered. All became clear when several days later doglet struggled a la childbirth to poop, and finally produced a turdpon. After a protracted struggle, the offending tampon fairly leapt from her arse only to dangle gracefully by the string for an instant, at last falling earthward. THAT is why one should not allow dogs to lick them in the face.

my hands are shaking as I apply a fresh coat of lacquer to my nails. My husband got me a very nice gift for our tenth: a white diamond and yellow sapphire ring. Ab fab. I've wanted something nice with yellow stones for ever so. Anyway, excited about picking it up in a wee bit, and want hands to look purty. Thanks bb.

I wonder if you can tell when you start smelling old? My breath has been really bad (to me) lately, but my husband says he can't smell it. But that's just bad breath, not old smell, thank the big-tittied goddesses for that. You know when old people have a certain smell? Perhaps it's less attention to oily areas like the ears because they are old and not likely to need them properly cleaned for a good nibbling session, or maybe it's because arthritic joints don't allow for a wide enough range of movement to scrub all areas. Hmph. My policy is that if we can put a man on the fucking moon, there must be enough products to ensure that my naturally curly hair looks great at all times and that I smell good, dammit! My imagination works overtime. I see brilliant period costume dramas and imagine how rotten the real people would have smelled. Ew. Kinda spoils it for me. Just think of it: people in early England probably smelled as revolting as, well, modern-day France. If some major life altering event occurred, the survivors of North America would have a major adjustment to a lo-tech existence which might limit access to personal flower-smelling products. Heavens to Betsy! I am as adamant about smelling good as the next person, but we've crossed some nefarious line when maxi pads and garbage bags have fragrances you can choose. I'll know we've arrived and can climb out of the handbasket when they market a pc with an aromatherapy feature. The little fan can blow out fragrance as it cools the brains of the operation.

My sister and I talk on the phone every day, and she usually cleans like a madwoman when she does, in addition to chasing about after her two small children. For Christmas, I got her a cordless hands-free phone she could clip on her belt and not have the permanent neck strain of clutching the phone between the ear and shoulder. Actually, the clip is pretty inefficient, and like I do, she usually ends up stuffing the unit in her sports bra. She has forbade all in her household from using her lovely new phone. She calls it "my precious."

It seems like shit in this world spools so out-of-control that there is no point in being aware of it. Evil and oppression are so common that it seems all I can do is have a mute sense of tragedy about it all, particularly the erosion of freedoms in my own homeland. I used to always be critical of people who don't know what's happening beyond their narrowly personal sphere, but now I'm beginning to believe they are the smart ones. If I can't do anything about the bad things in life, what is the point of me knowing and worrying about them? Life will continue apace, and I'll write my inane little blog and things will happen or not in the world whether I'm aware or not. Shutting it out--maybe I'll be happier.

OK. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Any love songs unless they are sung by Nina Simone, and only then because they are utterly devoid of saccharine and are generally bittersweet, anyhoo. Hers always seem mournful and sad to me, so that is ok. That is appropriate.

Have I told you lately that love songs make me positively ill? Seriously. Fools! Why do they fall in love? Why? Why?

Once before I paid the damned thing off, I farted around and waited until the last day to make a payment on the Discover card, so I went to a Sears store in Dallas to remit at a cash register. I generally detest malls and loathe Sears in particular, so I plastered on a smile that was two tics from a grimace, so as not to belie my discomfort to the sundry unfortunates loving their grand day out at the mall. The register was about 30 yards from the door, and I marched resolutely toward it, relieved to see there was one person being waited on and no line behind her. Ahead and to the right, I noticed a couple noticing me, and hastening to the register also. I slowed my pace and allowed them to take their place behind the woman who I could now hear was struggling with the English language whilst emphatically questioning the cashier about a returned item. The couple appeared of Latinate extraction, and shuffling out from under a clothing rack came (no! not goblins!) two small children who looked as though they and had been used to tidy up the floor at a porn cinema then dipped in flour and cinnamon, with the issue of sinal lavage ever streaming down their crusty upper lips. I tried to breathe shallowly, knowing that tuberculosis is rampant in third world countries. The woman stood the required distance behind her man as the fruits of their loins squealed and soiled merchandise far and wide. A tall rack of fedoras stood to my right, most of them adorned with feathers, until at last the little demons noticed them. The future felon and incubator came over to the rack and began plucking the feathers from the hats. I must have gasped, because the woman turned around and looked at me, and I pointed to the male pup and said "Is that yours?" She spoke to her man, and he chastened the hellions, who simmered down immediately and looked at me with ovine stupidity. That's right. I'm "the man."

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.

Samuel Johnson

turn your head away from the screen, oh people.

it will tell you nothing more.

don`t suck the milk of flaccid bill k. public`s empty promise

to the people that the public can ignore.

this way of life is so devised,

to snuff out the mind that moves.

moving with grace the men despise, and women have learned to lose.

throw off your shame or be a slave to the system.


i see you take another drag,

one more lost soul to raise your flag.

the sky is a landfill.

Jeff Buckley

26 December 2003
Driving deep into the night across West Texas. The crescent moon was a companion as we left the plains for the mountains. It sat like a cup on its back, blackness and stars spilling from its upturned bowl. Its arc followed our progress westward until finally it wafted earthward like a great celestial toenail clipping. Now filtered through more layers of atmosphere, the moon donned an orange glow to match the approaching lights of El Paso.

Civilization is like a train in the desert: we're big, loud and and make a terrible noise, but in the end we are as temporal as anything. Only the tracks we leave will note our passing.