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.

The Tell-Tale Stench

We went to California in October for a relative's wedding. In the days before departure, I was dashing all over the place trying to get my ducks in a row and thus I ate a lot of fast food and threw the bags on the floor of my truck. I meant to dispose properly before leaving town, but I never got around to it. About two hours into the drive to California my husband said "your truck is gonna smell like a french fry when we get home." I confidently retorted "naaaah, I don't even order french fries when I get fast food."

For the entire trip, I didn't drive a single time, and I spent endless butt-numbing hours riding around in the suburban. Oh, we saw wonders--Yosemite, Sequoia National park, The Golden Gate, IKEA --but no seat is that comfortable for that long. I was thrilled when we returned home and I could drive my own little jalopy again.

The first morning home, the air had that crisp clean bright-blueness that is ideal fall weather, and my feet felt positively bouncy as I strode up to my truckie and opened the door, only to be flattened by a hideous odor. I was baffled--this eye-watering stink was not french fry in origin--this emanation was clearly animalian in origin, dead in condition. WTF??? I drove across the parking lot to the dumpster and disgorged the cab of the bags, one by one, wary of any wet sludgy bits I suspected were lurking. To my dismay, at the bottom of the pile was a container from KFC with partially devoured chicken carcass within. Not just bones, but lots of meat, too, rotting its little anaerobic brains out. Nice. The bottom of the container was plastic, but that seemed to matter not at all to the carpet, which greedily sucked up the olfactory aspects of the festering ooze. Two months later and my truck still stinks. Occasionally I will douse the carpet in Febreze and for a few days it will smell all detergent-perfumey, but then the miracle of modern chemicals loses the battle and the odor extends its putrid tentacle to announce its presence. "Yoohoo? I'm still here." Where is Edgar Allan Poe when you need him?

Two people of my acquaintance died Tuesday. Both were under 40. Their wakes and funerals are at the same time, which seems an appropriately sad conflict. Today grief feels like my head wants to split open to liberate the tears my eyes refuse to cry.