La Sirena

Caliber

2011-12-03T17:19:00.004-06:00

I'm coming on a caliber year.

My friend Tom coined the term "caliber year" year. A caliber is the width of the internal diameter of a gun barrel (in inches). Guns are generally designed in a limited number of measures. I can't recite them all off the top of my head but some are: .22, .36, .38, .40, .44 and .50. So when your age is .22, .40, etc., it is a claiber year.

I used to own a .22 rifle as a bonus in a housing move but the cops took it away because it wasn't registered. Too bad, because that house was about a mile via three turns off the gravel road and sometimes coyotes and cougars would do battle around the house in the middle of the night. So I would walk out of the house, shoot the .22 across the corn or soy field, depending on the year. The field was about 20 acres, which was key since .22s have a long range & I didn't want to hurt anyone -- just run off the coyotes and cougars.

Anyway, back to the caliber years -- my .38 SUCKED. No ability to hit a target steadily unless that target moved. I hope my .40 has better aim -- it's less than 6 months away. I'd better start practicing.

Evil Diva, Banshee Bitch

2011-11-07T23:05:00.008-06:00

Evil Diva

This is me

When I flash my tongue, silver

Razor, sing my blood

My gunfire cracks

Through the canyon

Yes, my throat

I am that bitch in sequins and

I am the naked warrior

I lead the battle with my shrill

Sing death home

Home and howl, keen

Through the night

Through the canteen

And whiskey spews through my nose

And love from my lungs and

Wicked, wicked lies

The green in my eyes

The gold and brown

The earth in the shadows

My hips in the sway

In the mist, my lips

Sing you home

Sing you

Wave-particle Duality

2011-11-03T21:27:00.008-05:00

The landlord painted the backyard sewer cap and all of the stray cats are rolling on the fresh white coat and getting high. I'm trying to get the drunky ladies out for end-of-the-work-week Friday cocktails and they sound like the temperance league. My nephew is fevered, my dad is tubed and my son is steadfastly working his way into the 1%. I'm getting unspecific orders via text, PJ Harvey is coming through me and I'm skimming the quantum theory of mechanics on the internet for shiggles.

Seasonal shifts bring out the strange.

Photo by Ted Nelson

Purify

2011-09-25T19:21:00.011-05:00

I am not neat by nature.

Growing up, my mother instituted "Saturday Chores" for my sisters and me. We had to clean our bedrooms and then were each given a scouring assignment: front room, kitchen/ tv room, or bathroom. Kitchen/ family room was the worst. You had to clean the stove, fridge and scour the counter tops. You had to pick up and put away all of the flotsam and jetsam from tvland and scrub the floors. The floors were tough because you needed to accomodate the kitchen floor linoleum and all of its grime then dump your water and work the wooden parquet. Our house was pretty small but ma did a good job embodying every type of housing wing in about 1000 square feet.

The bathroom was grungy but easy. Swipe up the mirrors, scrub down the sink and then the toilet. Change the litter box. Scrub the small floor, then scour the tuband shower walls. Strip down and take your shower while rinsing away all the scrubbing bubbles. Hop out, dry off, throw on your sweats and mop your way out the door.

The living room and hallway assignment was the longest process but the most soothing. The walls were an astonishing bright green and the wall-to-wall carpet the color of the forest. You had to oil all of the colonial wooden furniture and shelves, remove and dust all of the books and knick-knacks and then vacuum the carpets and cloth on the furniture. You also had to vacuum under the furniture -- no cheating! Strangely, cleaning the living room always made me feel kind of Zen.

The motivating beat for Saturday Chores was ma's vinyl. She had splurged on the entire Beatles Apple Collection. Also, there was Steve Goodman, the "Three Legged Man" and Billy Joel. (Trust me, if I never hear "For the Longest Time" again, it still won't be long enough.) I enjoyed dancing & dusting to The Last Waltz by the Band. But nothing beat cleaning to Jesus Christ Superstar.

And now for confession number one. I can sing the entire original Broadway soundtrack note-by-note and word-by-word from the Overture through John Nineteen Forty-One. I once won two tickets to a performance at the Chicago Theater on Johnny B's morning show by calling in and singing a medley from the score. Through the years, I definitely have had some strange wins and losses.

And my losses and my nature have led me to the juice of confession number two. My apartment is a horrible, disgusting dastardly wreck. It looks like it was hit by a dust storm, followed by a mental monsoon and sealed with a hiccuping hurricane. And when you add my nature + earning a master's + a ridiculously menacing cerebral blow, you get Disaster Land.

So today, I put on Jesus Christ Superstar and sang it word-for-word while scrubbing the grease stains and soot out of my kitchen. Mostly. I still have to scour the floor. Damned Saturday Chores perfectionist upbringing.

(Image is "Purify" by Rachel Combs-Gullick.)

Witching Hour

2011-09-19T22:21:00.000-05:00

I am not a nice girl. I am not a sweet woman. The clock just struck truth and madness. I started this mermaid symbology to tap into my inner beauty but my inner beauty is dark and strange. On Saturday I was toted in a bicycle chariot up California Avenue by a potion brewing warrior. We kissed in the shadows and now I finally release my inner mother nature. This year, boys and girls, mother nature is tsunamis and tornados. She is moonstruck coyotes clamoring at the cataclysm. She laps up chaos and laughs at your dismantled structures. This siren sings sailors from their personal bondage and throws mona lisa smirks from her island.

Swim, bitches, swim.

(Credits to Dean and Diamanda Galas for inspiring this train of madness. Also to Tray Mead for the image.)

Diamanda Galás & John Paul Jones - Skótoseme (live 1994)

2011-09-19T22:20:00.000-05:00

She is singing with my soul.

Fin Again's Wake

2011-07-28T20:20:00.008-05:00

One semester I studied James Joyce. We read Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. I mamad with my sister and those bright boys and nights poured jack and bud over class notes singing Patsy Cline and Lynard Skynard. Thus:

That was a tuning fork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, soft and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call.

Long death's call? Oh, singing through all logic lures the sailors to the rocks but the rocks remain. Sailors swim and bleed and minds drown in the song but these scars tissue silver and the siren sings songs not sirens and science. Silence.

river run, past Eve's and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,bring us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

(ps. Image by Velikov.)

These Theses

2011-05-10T21:52:00.008-05:00

I'm trying to concentrate and create my thesis paper, so suddenly every other thing in the world is interesting and intersecting. Which would almost sound raunchy if it wasn't so dull.

My thesis is on cravings. Does treatment with such-and-such device reduce cravings? Unfortunately, the people being rated are already lacking cravings in life which is why they are seeking this treatment in the first place. This muddles the data.

Muddles... data... It's all gone uncertainly Heisenberg on me. It doesn't matter, I guess. I just have to do a remotely comprehensive presentation and then turn in one stack of paper so they'll hand me a stamped one.

Hey, I almost sound like pre-June 2010 Jen, again. I think I'll have to add a picture of a topless mermaid, now. Then we'll all feel better.

I'll work on flowing sentence structure after my thesis.

"Haunted...

2011-03-17T22:59:00.004-05:00

...of your precious love. Of your precious love."

I noticed today that I posted on St. Patrick's Day in 2010, 2008, and 2007.
I don't have much to add today. The world has gone mad & will get worse with the current struggles in Japan, Libya, Wisconsin & Egypt. According to the end of the Mayan Calendar, we may be done in on December 21, 2012.

We all have the true Luck of the Irish. So "may the road rise to meet you and may the wind be always at your back."

"Don't ask, tell...

2011-03-03T22:48:00.006-06:00

...I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell."
-- Charles Bukowski

I don't have the tolerance to swallow the bullshit anymore. I am terrified of the whole I have been breathing through for seven years. I am a pussy. But I endure. I get up and I go to work and I bust my brains and my boss says I am not up to this work anymore because my short term memory is scarred. I am a pussy. My exboyfriend called me a pussy once. I told him pussy was tougher than cock. He said yes. Pussy is like good tires. It stretches and flexibly spreads around the road's barriers. Pussy is the toughest mover and shaker. I am a pussy.

I am not me. I lost myself nine months? seven years ago? I am waiting for my map.

I probably drank too much tonight. Right now, I perceive a level of vision that lets me see through the trauma drama bullshit that I am supposed to live up to... that I could never live up to. Tomorrow I will face my come-uppance when I am pointed out as incapable of fulfilling my occupational requirements. I fulfilled them yesterday and I was still called a failure and they were never my calling or destiny in the first place.

I am going to hell. Thank god, I don't believe in it.

This is not where I belong. I haven't walked the road home in twenty years. Actually, I don't even remember what my house looks like. What home is. I do see my sisters of mercy on the road and I don't want to leave them. I don't want to disappoint them. And I can't find my way back home.

There's no place like home.

Suck it up, bitch. Quit being such a pussy. Go to hell. I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.

Pirate Jenny Is Thankful...

2010-11-24T12:32:00.001-06:00

Pirate Jenny
Nina Simone - Live 1964

Twenty years ago I was gifted with the opportunity to play a whore in Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera. The music was created by Kurt Weill. My name is Jennifer and sometimes I still wish I was a pirate so I like to pretend this song is about me. Nina Simone's version is amazing. My sentences sound disconnected but a cheer rings the air...

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors
And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy Southern town
In this crummy old hotel
But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'.
No. You couldn't ever guess to who you're talkin'.

Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you'll wonder who could that have been
And you see me kinda grinnin' while I'm scrubbin'
And you say, "What's she got to grin?"I'll tell you.

There's a ship
The Black Freighter
with a skull on its masthead
will be coming in

You gentlemen can say,
"Hey gal, finish them floors!
Get upstairs! What's wrong with you!
Earn your keep here!
You toss me your tips
and look out to the ships
But I'm counting your heads
as I'm making the beds
Cuz there's nobody gonna sleep here, honey
Nobody
Nobody!

Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you say, "Who's that kicking up a row?"
And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda
And you say, "What's she got to stare at now?"
I'll tell ya.

There's a ship
The Black Freighter
turns around in the harbors
hootin' guns from her bow
Now

You gentlemen can wipe off that smile off your face
Cause every building in town is a flat one
This whole frickin' place will be down to the ground
Only this cheap hotel standing up safe and sound
And you yell, "Why do they spare that one?" Yes.
That's what you say."Why do they spare that one?"

All the night through, through the noise and to-do
You wonder who is that person that lives up there?
And you see me stepping out in the morning
Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair

And the ship
The Black Freighter
runs a flag up its masthead
and a cheer rings the air

By noontime the dock
is a-swarmin' with men
comin' out from the ghostly freighter
They move in the shadows
where no one can see
And they're chainin' up people
and they're bringin' em to me
askin' me,"Kill them NOW, or LATER?"
Askin' ME!"Kill them now, or later?"

Noon by the clock
and so still by the dock
You can hear a foghorn miles away
And in that quiet of death
I'll say, "Right now.Right now!"
Then they'll pile up the bodies
And I'll say,"That'll learn ya!"

And the ship
The Black Freighter
disappears out to sea
And
on
it
is
me

"Look at the people. Watch them pass but don't follow them..."

2010-09-27T02:58:00.006-05:00

I hate myself right now. I feel like Bukowski only I can't drink, so I'm unable to write poetry or get seduced by multiple women in their twenties even though I am bulging and aging, too.

Why can't I write poetry because I'm not drinking? My friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a performance poet. He told me he quit drinking for six months once and he couldn't write even one poem. Then he said, Screw sobriety. This is pointless! And I think I agree with him.

What is the point of following all of the ragged rules of boredom and convention? I quit bartending and now I file endless reams of paperwork. Also, I have all of these stupid health problems, I weigh oodles more, I'm constantly fighting with my natural sleep cycle and I'm not getting lotsa loving. Everyone wants to fool around with the bartender/poet but nobody wants to bother with the fucking Program Coordinator. Another friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a farmer and says this is Mother Nature messing with me so either I learn precise organization (whether or not I value it) or else I'll drown in the next flood or get strangled by red tape.

When I used to be a young hippie punk mama only using herbal remedies, I was raising my son on bar tips and spending our free time mountain climbing or soaking in the springs. Now I'm a paper file organizer, an excel budget designer, a weight gainer, decreasing in health and memory but caring for people with severe anal missle retentions and more importantly, those suffering from hearing the voices and oddly linked thoughts which doctors try to treat with pharmaceuticals. And our studies are being funded by the pharma companies, of course.

Way back in the day (1000 years ago) people like our patients might have been respected as the shaman of the tribe and although they might live in solitude a mile away from the rest of their people and although their predictions may or may not have been true, at least they valued and trusted themselves and were respected by the tribe.

The prediction of a very cold winter or the tribe needing to do battle with another living down the river may have been heard from the schizophrenic shaman's internal voices or sensed by her paranoia or perhaps even connected with her delusion. Maybe it wasn't a truly divine enlightened prediction as much as a statement of the perpetually obvious in a tone that was cryptic. Or maybe this type of future descriptive insight and understanding is brought on by a perfectly proportional brain?

Maybe enlightenment and psychosis are relational. The words psychotic and psychic are separated with nothing more than an O and T. Separated by nothing more than respecting the differences as opposed to prosecuting them or infiltrating them with chemicals (like when I drink after a bad day at work or an old man swallows viagra or those few people who are still employed take Ritalin or Concerta each morning to make it through the day).

Or maybe I just don't know what to do with myself.

(P.S., I found the picture in this post at a site called My Health Guardian.)

(P.P.S. The title is part of a line from a poem written by a lady I used to work with & for.)

"If I Only Had a Brain."

2010-08-26T21:07:00.005-05:00

In April, an infection was planted in the memory storage space of my brain and by June it exploded into seizures and I forgot how to laugh or cry or even engage in small talk. Now my strength is gathering again and the people who love me seem relieved to recognize me, myself back in town.

On the other side, I can't remember many "professional" terms and phrases we use at the hospital although I am still mostly able to successfully do my work again. I just require a proof reader.

The gift that I have been given by the hijack attack of memory and the loss of professional buzz words is that dozens of smothered scenes from 38 years have burst onto an imaginary cinema screen inside of my skull.

At eighteen, I was enrolled at a commuter art college near Lake Michigan. My major was theater and our department chair was also one of the leaders at Second City Theater and directed many SCTV episodes. I was taking an improv class taught by Marty DeMatt , who literally grew up at Second City because his mother was one of the pioneering founders and directors. Marty was a sharing and saavy teacher and a compassionate, talented artist. Once, Marty stayed home sick and sent an improviser over to cover class for him.

I can't remember the guy's name. I do remember that he told us he had a degree in photography and even though he wasn't a professional photographer, he approached living his life with perspective, lighting and focus so whatever we did -- whatever we learned along the way in school and in life would form our viewpoints and approaches.

Then he split us up into groups and told us to take a few minutes to plan the bases of our improvs to perform for the class. I was leaning against the back wall with my friends Tom & Jerry (really) and he assigned us together. We spent about thirty seconds planning to be three scarecrows in a field and then talked about going to the nickel draft special at the bar across the street after class. We were the last group called up to do our improv for the class.

And I don't know how or why it happened but art possessed us and we suddenly became puppets of enchantment. We were three scarecrows who discovered how to free ourselves from the polls and we happily flopped and danced and learned to walk and Tom's scarecrow pointed to the highway and wanted to hitch a ride but Jerry's scarecrow and mine wanted to stay on the farm. And Tom's said he couldn't leave without us and he helped us back up on our polls because he was the tallest and just then a truck was coming and we said, "goodbye, we love you" and he ran toward the road with his thumb up and we said goodbye again and then the substitute teacher said "scene" and followed up with:

"Sometimes you get a few minutes of harmony and beauty and you can't predict when or how but you were lucky to feel it and we were lucky to witness it. Now goodbye, everybody. Thanks for letting me teach you today."

And the three of us stated briefly and once only over the nickel beers how fortunate we were to have those few minutes together.

I was eighteen years old that day. The same age my son is now.

"You took my joy; I want it back."

2010-07-29T19:43:00.010-05:00

I'm feeling frequently fucked with -- and fat. And forgetful.

Actually, it's weird mind meld and worry, worry, anxiety. But I'm lucky. I developed the following side effect to my MS medication:

progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), an opportunistic viral infection of the brain that usually leads to death or severe disability

***

But I didn't die and I'm not severely disabled although I am a long way from myself still. And I've gained massive amounts of weight thanks to the treatment meds -- which are saving my brain but nobody's tried to pick me up lately; not even on the down low. I guess living and thinking but being chastely fat are way superior to death or permanent retardation... but it doesn't make me enjoy all of the fat fucking chastity and the b.s. from my bosses cuz my memory and efficiency are not up to par and losing my job means losing money and my health insurance. And I had to let my cat move in with a friend (who is one of the best pet owners in the city -- but I'm sad about my kitty being gone). Damn, I am irritable, crabby and whiny. Buh!

***

Also, I became a mom when I was 20 and unmarried. I don't know really how to be an adult without a kid at home to take care of and he's moving to New York tomorrow. And I can't even cry. I can't remember the last time I cried. I think it's when he & I got in an arguement at 11:30 p.m. on a corner in Manhattan last February when we were there visiting colleges.

***

But if I'm dumb, broke, fat and all alone, I'll probably actually attract my soul mate or whatever.

hahahahahahahahahahahah

This image was created by Veronica Pearson & posted on her blog. The title of this post is a quote from a Lucinda Williams' song called "Joy".

Muscley Mama

2010-06-29T21:15:00.004-05:00

I'm slowly getting better. My doctor is giving me steroid infusions for 3 hours a day, I'm starting to remember words and I'm going back to work on Thursday.

********************************

Do you think I'm sexier on steroids?

It makes me 1%

2010-06-17T08:28:00.004-05:00

So a little over a month and a half ago I had a standard MRI for the MS medication I was taking. I received the MRI about four months later than scheduled because last winter I got robbed and the guy who stole from me broke my knuckle in 4 places and the ortho surgeon had to insert a bunch of metal until my bones healed -- which disqualified me from a safe MRI at the scheduled time.

Turns out the mugger probably saved my life because the off-schedule MRI captured a potentially fatal cerebral infection between my white matter and ear very early. That infection has infected less than 1% of the people taking the medication and about 25% of that 1% died from the brain infection. My doctor had me taken off the med as soon as the MRI came back and did a bunch of tests on me and then started me on an antimalarial medication to treat me for the brain infection. After five weeks of this horrific treatment I went into seizures (like 1% of the people exposed to that med) and spent four days in the hospital. My memory is a little impaired and occasionally I am unable to speak with the correct vocabulary. My thinking is fine, except for my memory -- I just occassionally lose my verbal language.

Anyhow, I'm getting better. I have a good doctor but I live in a shitty country in which to have healthcare issues, so I'm looking forward to getting back to work so I can pay my rent and medical care expenses. I'm also using my latest run of odds to buy lotto tickets.

On the positive side, my son turned 18 and graduated from high school. He is moving to Brooklyn for college in August.

Love and miss you all.... LaSirena

Ironically Craving

2010-05-04T20:28:00.005-05:00

craving: an intense, urgent, or abnormal desire or longing

What I crave and what I do are not presently joined. I crave a long sleep on the warm grass but I sit at a desk and read articles about craving. I craft a grant about craving scales as they relate to addiction while I crave sunshine and birdsong and leisure but my arms are strapped with plastic tubes to the keyboard and so I crave as I create an explanation of craving.

I have officially drowned myself in the existentialist sewer.

2010-04-27T02:18:00.001-05:00

" There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it."

-- James Joyce, Ulysses

Episode 15: Circe

Caverns

2010-04-11T14:06:00.014-05:00

I think I've fallen into a cavern. It's very pretty; lots of stalagtites and stalgmites but it's twisty and complicated so it's taking all of my energy and concentration to navigate the terrain. Here are some bits & pieces.

I spent the better part of a week in New York so my son could visit colleges. This was our first visit to NYC. It was very cool and it wasn't the least bit intimidating coming from Chicago -- just a little more cramped but very energetic, so it all balances out. Looks like the kid is going to Brooklyn College to study film production, so I'll be visiting there quite a bit. But I'm not moving there because 5 straight days of me and the kid and nobody else has convinced both of us that him moving far away for awhile really is a very, very good idea. (Is "awhile" a real word?)

Meanwhile, I'm still in graduate school which is intensifying. By the time he leaves town, I'll be able to work about 15 hours a day on all of the research projects around here (including my thesis) plus I just ordered a bunch of Tony Horton DVDs, so I'm intending to counteract empty nest syndrome by co-publishing scientific journal articles and recreating the ass I had before I was a mom. (The ass part probably won't happen exactly like that but it is important to have goals in this world.)

While we were in New York, we went to a taping of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". His show isn't very funny yet but he seems gracious and his house band is the Roots (I think I've previously mentioned my intense respect and attraction to Questlove) so really, the music was the best part of the show. There was a musical guest the night we attended called Liquid Liquid.

Liquid Liquid was a New York No Wave art band form the late 70s that "never quite caught on completely". (That's what lifelong friend of percussionist Dennis Young told me. I was sitting next to him and Dennis's wife and I'm nosy so I started asking questions after eavesdropping.) Of note, Liquid Liquid created the famous bass line sampled by Grandmaster and the Sugar Hill Houseband in that old 80s hip hop standard "White Lines".

That bass line comes from the song "Cavern", which Liquid Liquid played (splendidly) with the Roots on the episode the kid and I attended and that was one of the more spectacular 30 minutes of live music I have ever witnessed. And I have witnessed many hours of live music. So here is a link to the version of the song that aired on the show that night. This is very good but it isn't quite the same as being in a 100 person TV studio with all of that sound wrapping you up in its fingers and stroking you home. But go watch it.

Video: Liquid Liquid Plays “Cavern” on Jimmy Fallon with Help from The Roots

(Not aired was a first taping of "Cavern" and another recording of their song "Optimo".)

(Also, I think there should be a learning curve allowance for late night talk shows. It's a whole different thing than stand up, writing and performing in sketch comedy, etc. And let it be said now that Mr. Fallon has excellent taste in music.)

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"Every Day Is a Yellow Day...

2010-03-24T08:49:00.007-05:00

... I'm blinded by the daisies in your yard."

-- Prince

Margaret, my psychic friend (or friend who is psychic), told me I'm all yellow bursting solar plexus, right now. I'm hiding out at home with a low-grade fever and sore throat and can feel my flesh burn, chill and hum and letting dreamland envelope and possess me on my couch all day, again and again.

Once upon a time, I was a psychic friend. Sad and freaked out people would call the 900 line and they would get to talk to Mia (one of my AKAs) and she would tell them yes, of course, the cards and the stars and my guides say yes, you will be loved again. That's what most callers wanted to know.

Then, I moved to New Mexico because it was new, said so in the name. I used to do romantic things like move across the country to a place with a poetic name and get paid to be a charlatan with an AKA and sleep with strangers named Krishna I met at the river and believe the stars could guide me to my heart. (Now, I'm logical and practical although I still believe in dreamland and evidently my solar plexus has started bleeding yellow in the psychic plane.) Anyway, in New Mexico, I met Margaret an expat Scot who lived in a trailer in the foothills and owned a store called the Lyceum where she read playing cards. Really, she had you pick seven cards and she would hold them to her cancerous breast and recite all of the harder truths you knew but didn't feel like realizing and you could fit them into whichever context you felt you could hold in your palm without spilling them on the floor. Later, she cut off her right breast and started predicting with amazon precision via telephone which is how I learned to always bet on green and that today I am pouring yellow.

Illogical Evolving Equinox, Combat and the Saint Patrick's Day Blues

2010-03-17T00:49:00.002-05:00

The equinox is almost here and my body is conspiring to get knocked up on me again, as it does every year when dark and day share nicely. Sharing perpetuates itself in its selfishness.

St. Patrick was a sharer in another way -- well, first he was a slave and then a priest and then an orator. He christianized the Irish (an act which may be blasphemous) but also convinced them to abolish slavery 1000 years before Columbus dug the Middle Passage. So that probably mitigates any personal gripes I might have with monotheism and organized religion. But still, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular are such BDSM institutions like heroic (modern Western) medicine. This post pretty much seems to be about me opening the assault rifles on any institution I'm supposed to have surrendered to or am currently selfishly sharing with -- so you may want to look away quickly. And recently a friend of mine said it's always combat with me. That must suck, knowing me like that. My presence is never restful or soothing, unless you're an infant or going through a bout of psychosis. I can rock colicy babies to sleep on my knee and I can calm someone experiencing active psychosis. I could describe the steps I take in both of these cases, but it probably wouldn't make a logical pattern -- it's more like when your physics professor tries to teach you calculus or engaging your lover in combat. On second thought, it's nothing like that.

I don't like myself at all today and I'm also thinking one million pornographic thoughts. So maybe ego stroking and self-loathing are an expression of selfish sharing which is quite likely the driving procreational force in humanity.

During finger therapy all of the OTs cryptically discuss amongst themselves how snappy and cruel one surgeon can be. Personally, I find him to be very compassionate and kind of sexy. But I don't work for him, either. Of course today, a second-tier somebody else mentioned in a whisper that Dr. That Guy just really needs to get some. But once you start speculating about what someone else is getting, it might mean that you aren't getting enough either -- or maybe you just want to be the one to give it to them.

Doesn't everybody get turned on by cruelty at some really basic, reptile brain level? And truthfully, all of us guilt-ridden girls just get juiced-up love panties for doctors. We want to marry them and sue them and do what they tell us and then blow them in their exam rooms or maybe we just love surgeons in self-defense because there they are convincing us to let them pierce us to the bone even though it hurts and costs and scars. We let them tie us to the table and slice apart our skin and maybe knock us out and maybe keep us awake -- completely at their discretion and we never, ever question the choice, really. We just surrender.

But then we catholic girls are fed guilt and surrender on toast from baptism and we're told to die virgins like St. Maria Goretti or second best, surrender to the yoke of holy matrimony and pop out lotsa babies in 10 month intervals so there will be more catholics and consequently we have lots of weird sex & worthiness issues because the only ones really enjoying sex in our religion are the child-raping priests since only they can absolve sin which came to earth via Eve, etc.

Probably all of that crazy Catholic sex between Yahweh & Mary (not Joseph) and St. John Bosco & the oratory boys and even Adam & Eve actually happened on the Equinox which can never be a birthday but is often a conception date which is why the pope tells you life begins at conception but we girls know it doesn’t really count until it comes out like the sun, so really its solstice you’re waiting for, Holy Father, you just didn’t notice because of all of that blinding sunshine.

(The top image is a painting called Lady Doctor by John Woodwark. The Birth of the Sun King is by Hetty MacLise. I found it on her blog.)

Happy π Day

2010-03-14T20:55:00.002-05:00

"Would you like some π?"

"I'd love some π."

-- True Romance

2010-03-02T21:23:00.003-06:00

"Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor."

-- Justin's Dad, from shitmydadsays

Muskrat Love

2010-03-01T01:32:00.002-06:00

I have this gnawing suspicion that I am not living my own life. Like maybe I accidentally spliced the tape of my internal soundtrack to a copy of America's Greatest Hits and I'm walking around singing about a horse with no name and Ventura Hwy even though I hate those songs and they aren't even in my key but they stick in my head forever. In my dreams lately, I'm the only one who realizes those people gathering on the sidewalk are actually flesh-eating zombies and the Program Director insists that I bring them in for an appointment right away because they are just a little psychotic. Somehow he doesn't notice them spitting out fingernails and eyelashes. Meanwhile, my supervisor is giving away the last water in the county to these zombies who really are just waiting to snap her neck and chew on her brains and Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't already have and there isn't even a power button on the goddamned sound system. It just gets louder and I'm almost grateful when a crackhead knocks me down and starts repeatedly stomping on my face.

And I'm working on a graduate degree in this discipline and you really can't even think about a career shift during a recession with a kid about to go off to college. So just keep kicking me in the face, crackhead, just keep kicking. Sooner or later I'll either pass out or remember another melody and then I will sing all of the notes to some sick acid rock guitar solo in a perfectly pitched wail and it will drown out all of the Sister Golden Hairs who will hold their bleeding eardrums and slip on all of the shit leaking out of their state-of-the-art septic tanks and I will not document how many days the tank has been leaking and I will not pull the records of the purchase date and I will not write down that their eardrums are bleeding nor the causality and I will not fax a picture of the event to the FDA within 24 hours. I will just laugh and scratch out all of the band America's lyrics with a leaky, puddly pen and I will never, ever initial and date those blobs of ink. I will just laugh and sing all of the acid guitar solos that used to accompany my dreams and also all of the original Tom & Jerry soundtracks louder and louder and louder until we all finally admit that life is just one great, big fat Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- or maybe a Quantum theory of observation -- and if we don't wise up, it's going to seem like the flesh-eating zombies are eating our brains but we still have to get up at 5:55 a.m. and go to work and think about the best way to identify an error correct or how to keep that crackhead clean once he's kicked it.

Of Course

2010-02-20T21:42:00.006-06:00

At work, there is currently a program participant who says "of course" with five different tonalities so that (once you add context) she can make that phrase mean about 8 different things.

Of course =

I would love to...
That's what I expected.
You are correct.
I'm pleased that we agree.
(a verbal wave of dismissal)
Haven't you been listening ?
Do I have to draw you a picture?
You are rude and I am too polite to say it outright.

She's also bilingual. I think I'm going to try to speak Spanish with her to see if she has an equivalent elastic phrase in that language... Por supuesto! She is also a voracious reader and since I habitually ask her about what she is reading, she recently lent me a very large and unusual collection of Bill Moyer's interviewing modern poets. I also like her because she is the first person who ever was truly interested when I started talking about the poet Alejandra Pizarnik and she wrote down her name so she could look her up on the internet. Of course!

Monday Night Purgatory

2010-02-15T21:39:00.004-06:00

I wanted to go to Weeds tonight for the open mike poetry because it was the annual Erotica Valentine's reading but I'm feeling decidely UN-erotic. I've never been very good at writing erotica, either. My work goes quickly pornographic and it doesn't take long to turn completely hardcore. Then Gregorio sent out a message that there would be filming and we should dress up and then possibly fall in love with someone. The pressure was mounting. Then I got my period (see what I mean about the suddenly hardcore) and had to drive to the far south side to visit someone in the hospital. Also, whenever I go to Weeds I end up drinking a bunch of tequilas and the next thing I know it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm getting thrown out of the Old Town Ale House. I wouldn't feel right tomorrow morning asking the patients how much they've been drinking while tequila and lime seep out of my pores and the seven dwarves sing "heigh ho" in my skull while driving sledgehammers against my temples.

I hate working in the mornings. It is decidedly not erotic.

Cram It

2010-02-10T01:32:00.002-06:00

I like this picture. I ganked it here.

Fashionably Late

2010-01-24T16:09:00.002-06:00

I went with my friend to her big work shindig last night. I didn't get the memo about the dress code. Most of the women were wearing little black dresses with tights and shoes very much like the one pictured here. (Call me old-fashioned but I'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to wear hose with open-toed shoes.) I wore jeans and my peely red leather boots. Sometimes I feel like Clint Eastwood. That's probably why everyone was casually feeling out the true nature of the relationship between my friend and me. She and I are friends, not "girlfriends" but still, I refused to debunk that myth. That would be very un-cowboy of me.

In keeping with the flavor of the evening, we slipped away before the dancing and went to the secret bar. There was a cowboy band playing complete with a violinist and a lead guitarist with a 1950s era Fender in virginal white which contrasted nicely with his black pearl snap western shirt. The band was good. The lead singer was Australian but everybody knows Australians make the best rednecks because they're from the Deep South.

I can't remember the name of the band but my friend had to pass the tip jar because she's outgoing, trustworthy and was wearing a nice femme outfit. I guess that makes me the butch -- well, that and my Clint Eastwood glare.

Entropy, Equipoise, Electricity

2010-01-05T23:00:00.008-06:00

Inspiration slapped me upside the head last night but I couldn't locate a computer and then her fingerprints slid down the drain during my morning shower. Then I hardly got anything done at work today but I did learn a new word in class: equipoise. So that's today's theme. And all things being equal, here is a random list.

1. So far, this year is better than last.
2. My index finger is still disfigured.
3. Will you still love me in spite of it all?
4. Will you still love me tomorrow?
5. How the underpants stole Christmas.
6. Men are often quite fragile.
7. It's hard work keeping the species together.
8. It's harder work keeping the civilization together, so call your mother now and thank her for every stupid holiday celebration she put on, even if she was kind of a bitch for the three preceding days and nobody really cared that much if there wasn't any green bean casserole.
9. It may be inadvisable to quit all of your vices at once.
10. Friends or lovers?
11. Friends and lovers?

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T15:20:00.008-06:00

How perfect to end this dastardly decade with a blue moon! Goodbye to the aughts and Happy New Year, everybody. Let's make the world a sweeter place in the teens.

Love to you all from the bottom of my emotional ocean.

-- La Sirena

Happy Solstice...

2009-12-20T22:14:00.001-06:00

Image from Glennie Kindred

"It's a sad day..."

2009-12-19T03:36:00.003-06:00

My son used to say that when he was six. "It's a sad day." I know I'm lucky I don't live in the Khyber Pass and I have a job and even health insurance. And I have a beautiful, witty, funny compassionate, well-balanced child. I am so fortunate. But I am losing my faith in humanity and it is making me so very sad because too many bad things have happened at once.

My coping skills are depleted.
This is me saying; okay god, if there is one, you can stop giving me new challenges. I've got more challenges than I can handle.

Sweet dreams.

(Also... In this painting do you imagine that Hercules is inflicting excruciating pain on himself in order to protect a shred of modesty?)

A Slogan I Can Get Behind

2009-12-08T01:34:00.001-06:00

I just bought a box of these buttons from the Evil Slut Clique. I love it because it's funny, sarcastic and cheap. All of this while celebrating the holidays and making fun of the religious right. Merry, merry!!!
And then after I purchased them BlogHo suddenly posted again. And then an old Smiths' song I hadn't heard in years came on the music station I'm streaming (which doesn't really have anything to do with hoes, but it still pleased me). Oh, ho ho holy angels I have heard on high -- hooray!!!

Make Love, Not War

2009-12-03T00:40:00.011-06:00

Entering the river she was cleaned,

shining like a white stone in the rain,

and without looking back she swam again

swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.

-- Pablo Neruda, Fable of the Mermaid an d the Drunks

Tonight we met at an old school Irish bar and drank drafts and talked too much and had shots bought by a sweet, twitching, crooked toothed aryan from Atlanta. Then we left for a shi-shi restauraunt draped artfully over the expressway and listened to our friend play slide trombone in a salsa band which her husband led from behind his tenor cello. Our friend played muscular horn in a bustier and lipstick and we had only ever seen her in business casual and horn-rimmed glasses before tonight.

I ate red meat and drank tequila which sometimes makes me a hateful malcontent. So I scrunched up my brow and chewed my swizzle stick in lieu of smoking and told myself bedtime stories about the couples around the room.

To my left were the married, childhood sweethearts, ten years later and still in love. They clasped hands and stared into each other's eyes while he brushed her bangs to the side. She wore a brand new silk drop waist top from the Rainbow plus size clearance rack and he wore the widest smile I've seen on a man in years. They whispered sweet nothings and private jokes and their happiness was so palpable I can't even pretend to be cynical about it.

Directly across from me was a couple in their early twenties who had just discovered the mystical joy of fucking each other. They attempted some salsa steps but were more than too happy to simply twirl into each other's arms and smooch and hurry back to the table to caress each other's thighs while the chef seared bistec parrillo on the afterglow emanating from their skin.

I went outside to smoke and experience the dual rush of nicotine and guilt and I realized that I sold myself out long ago when I swapped my joy for an endless chase of contentment. The December rain drenched the shoulders of my wool coat and my cigarette hung halfmast until the wind kicked up and tossed it up the street.

Inside, a father danced with his daughter to the beat of congas and the insistent pulse of electronic piano while Carol blew her horn and everyone went home to full, springing bedfulls of love and 35,000 troops are packing for Afghanistan while somewhere in the Khyber Pass another woman looks up through the rain and we smoke the whole way home, damp and hope for contentment while missing all of that pure, yellow joy.

What's the point?

2009-12-02T00:13:00.001-06:00

No sex, no drugs, no rock and roll. Thirty thousand troops deployed to Afghanistan. And I'm quitting smoking. And I'm on a diet. Thank goddess for low dose pharmaceuticals and Craig Ferguson.

Splintered

2009-11-17T22:09:00.005-06:00

I have a compound fracture in the second phalange of my left index finger. I mean, my knuckle is seriously busted. I tried to google an xray to give you a feel for it but I couldn't find anything fucked up enough. They may write it up as a case study -- that's how crazy this is. Fortunately, I have health insurance and a close friend working in orthopaedic surgery so I'm getting treated quickly and well by a hand surgeon for pro athletes. I go under the knife on Thursday. I'm hoping for positive outcomes and good drugs.

Also, anasthesia = wacked out dreams. That's a plus.

Sleeping by yourself at night can make you feel alone...

2009-11-08T18:30:00.005-06:00

There is a difference between lonely and alone; but sometimes the choice to be alone can be lonely. Although I imagine there are those who feel quite lonely even though they have chosen not to be alone.

Choosing to be solitary does not necessarily mean loneliness nor being alone but sometimes it's just so daunting knowing you need to go home to an empty apartment. There are certain creature comforts that come with companionship. For example, having someone to cuddle with in bed. Of course, then that someone usually expects you to shave your legs on a regular basis, but still, it gets hella cold at this latitude and it is pleasant to have someone keep your feet warm.

So I bought some cozy socks and I still sleep on the couch because your bed doesn't seem so empty when you are sleeping on the couch. But then your bed accidently starts accumulating clothes and turns into a kind of express lane closet and then even if you find someone worthy of visiting your bed, you can't really invite them over for a cup of coffee at the end of the night due to the three or four mountains of clothing heaped on the bed and sorted by degrees of cleanliness.

So I think I'm going to clean my room. But I'm not shaving legs yet. This is a process, you see.

(Oh, and I took this image from George Lindmark's Fantasy Paintings site.)

Fall in...

2009-11-02T20:42:00.003-06:00

Make Me

2009-10-21T02:49:00.000-05:00

I joined a class run by this nurse who will make me quit smoking -- even if I don't want to. Even if the vapors and flavors of burning tobacco leaves are my own personal, private transcendental portal to Krishna's Holy Kiss, she promises to have us all off the nicotine in three weeks... or we don't get to watch the World Series.

P.S. There is homework. I have to go suck down a coffin nail now. Then I have to tell my smoke how much I'm going to miss it when we separate for good in a few weeks before I crush the dwindling butt under my sole. I have to start breaking up with my cigarettes -- that's this week's homework.

My love life has become some weird background pantomime from a Fellini film.

Hallelujah!

2009-10-16T06:31:00.003-05:00

well, maybe there's a god above
but all I've ever learned from love

was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

it's not a cry that you hear at night

it's not somebody who's seen the light

it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

-- L. Cohen

(This link will take you to a nice live performance on youtube but you have to watch a tampax commercial first. Hallelujah!)

Reconsider Columbus Day

2009-10-12T16:34:00.001-05:00

p.s.
The guy with the white shirt and the braids is very sexy.

La Colonia

2009-10-12T13:50:00.004-05:00

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Today marks 517 years of paradigm shifts, slavery, genocide, discovery, la raza, lies, biological warfare, manifest destiny, the first baby steps toward a global economy, etc., -- in other words, the Americas. Good and bad, bad or good; "God is change."

Harvest II

2009-10-10T12:24:00.005-05:00

It is so chilly and gloomy these days. The cold concrete and the layers and layers of clouds and rain are sucking at my soul. (Okay, I tend toward the dramatic, at times.) I have been asked to attend 4 memorial services over 2 weekends -- memorials for good, kind, strong men who still had a sense of humor about the world.

Plus, I was at one of the state psychiatric hospitals for a couple of hours this week, trying to set up a referral service. (It pisses me off how many people can't get health care coverage.) I ran into an old client from my homeless mental health clinic days. I was happy to see her -- that she's still with us (pessimistic, I know, but there isn't much of a life expectancy for folks in that situation) and she was so happy to see me she about knocked the wind out of me. I haven't seen her in 10+ years, I didn't work with her for very long at the time and I was able to talk to her for 10 minutes but I had to go to another appointment and the poor dear is so entrenched in her own idiomatic logic that it was impossible to sit with her any longer than that. How can happy make you so damned sad?

Harvest

2009-10-07T21:51:00.004-05:00

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

-- Willie

"I didn't come here and I ain't leaving."

-- Willie

Oooopps!

2009-10-03T22:58:00.004-05:00

I fell face first into the sauce this weekend. Oh, beautiful booze, that numbs all anxiety and hyper-extrapolation. Forgot I love vodka, too. Good thing mermaids can breathe underwater and drink like fish! Sweet dreams...

(Go to the website listed below for the credits for this image.)

"There is no Sanctuary!"

2009-09-27T11:59:00.006-05:00

Last night I dreamt that I was given access to view an archeolgical site in order to further my studies. I was permitted to fly -- without a machine -- over a kind of stone shelf with intricate carvings and pools. No one exaclty understood what they signified or who made them, but they were vast -- something like a Mayan city stretched flat, but Celtic in it's symbolism (and also somewhat influenced by the aesthetics of Logan's Run which I watched last night). I had to record everything mentally and take my findings to class...

...which was taught by the Franciscan Brother who was my extremely gifted high school philosophy/ theology teacher who was probably one of the most talented educators ever and whose lessons are still "exploding like a time bomb" in my mind twenty years later. He passed away in January. Brother Mc debriefed me before class and it was agreed that what I learned from the stone site was part of the lesson plan. But I was just a tool -- he knew the over-arching theme of the lesson and me and my stones were a mere instrument to be used to advance the lesson as he conceived it. I was to learn the lesson, too. It was like I was a secret weapon against ignorance, but my utility didn't lessen my own lack of awareness. Class was held. I came to realize that the point of this lesson would not be made clear in one class but would unfold slowly over the course of a year. My stones were not mentioned. I was confused.

Then the brother was informed by the mean, ignorant Department Chair (nun) that he would be required to use the syllabus she was handing out as a template. He had to turn it in for approval. He and I understood that the goal now was to continue the class as he designed it but to somehow disguise the plan to fit into the very rigid and useless construct being handed down so he could teach us undisturbed. I was scanning the sheets and helping him edit parts to look like a rubber-stamp approvable plan ... my shoulders ached and my vision blurred and then grew black...

...I was driving a pickup truck through the country. I pulled into a gravel drive between a trailer with an intricate walkway/ deck and a shelf of ancient stone carvings now covered with grass and weeds. About a dozen of my classmates were there playing ball and my task was to get instructions from inside of the trailer that would explain what formation and steps we should take to clear the stones and open them to their ancient, intended purpose. I had to do this before Brother Mc came and none of my peers could know that I knew this. I had to make it seem to happen organically. I climbed out of the truck and up the intricate walkway but every door and window was locked. Then Joey (a weird dream amalgamation character) came over to see what I was doing and I had to pretend nonchalant mischief. I had just figured out (mentally) the way into the trailer and felt urgency because Brother Mc would soon be coming. I heard and felt a rumbling and looked up over the trailer to see the Brother was a 25 foot giant dressed like Paul Bunyan -- he was both Paul Bunyan and Brother Mc. He flashed me the briefest sideways glance of acknowledgement while bellowing about those of us who were content to watch the shadows on the wall. Joey dashed over the walkway and into the field. I used this momentary distraction to enter the trailer from a back window but before I got in I noticed Brother Mc was carrying a hairless, purple rodent -- it looked like kangaroo babies (joeys) when they exit the birth canal and have to crawl unassisted into their mothers' pouches. I did not understand but I was unafraid and glad and then I woke up.

2009-09-21T22:32:00.003-05:00

Last night I dreamt I walked into a storefront and ordered some sushi from the beautiful darkhaired woman behind the glass counter.

While she was fixing my meal, she nodded to the purple fliers on the countertop. They were advertising a special political fundraiser -- a chocolate making, bake sale, love fest being thrown by all of the witches in Chicago. She said we were going to infiltrate the party with decadent deliciousness. She asked me if I could make frosting from scratch. I told her I could; my grandma taught me.

Naiad

2009-09-13T15:32:00.013-05:00

Today is a breathtaking gift of Nature all rolling green with her azure cap and puffy cumulus feathers. Wandering away from my house, I encounter brick-painted, huddling homes from two centuries ago built by immigrant Irish who saved a few pennies and built a new community in a triangle a couple miles removed from the death-stench stockyards of their employment. Today there still exists a few Irish and Poles but now it is mostly comprised of upwardly-moblie Mexican nationals who have yard sales on Saturdays and fiestas on Sundays.

The triangle is bordered by Archer Avenue (formerly the Road to Widow Brown's) which reaches out from Chinatown into the wandering desires of Resurrection Mary. This is the southern border of Mount Pleasant, which settles along the river. The Chicago River is now the home of haunted steel mills and scarred ports. Most of it is vacant although the passing trains graon on their tracks day and night like a grandfather on the porch warning against the transcience of our values.

Here, the river itself is spanned by several suspension bridges still studied today by rapt mechanical engineers. The river, far below me, appears in the sunlight as a chunk of amber hiding in its depths some winged prehistoric creature. With its ornaments of railroad ties and ordered train cars and abandoned factories and graffittied granaries it stands in stark contrast to the lake it flows from -- divorced from natural union by dynamite. Once I visited her here among the broken factories and prarie flowers and I came back with a baby. Once I led a parade to meet her at her contrived lake source and dyed her the color of envy.

I am never far from her for long.

2009-09-08T02:48:00.003-05:00

Today is my first day of school. No really, I start a Master's of Science program. I kept waking up every hour last night because of excitement and nerves.

So back to writing papers and studying and generally trying to behave myself.

I may have to be more sedate but I will not become boring.

(Oh, and this mermaid was created by David Delamare. I like his mermaids and have used them in previous posts although they all kind of look like they're just lolling around, waiting for Dave to creep up and seduce the song out of them.)

Maternal Experiments

2009-09-03T01:50:00.001-05:00

Last night I had a beer with a man who complained about his mother experimenting on him as a child. It seems she made him eat at least one serving of raw vegetables each day. The son is still bitter about this although he is now 75 years old and his mother is dead.

Maybe our mothers – in their roles as nurturers – must play the foil in order for us to develop individual identities? As the mother, it’s painful, though. Nothing like spending the first five years of someone’s life as the center of their solar system only to be transformed into their own private Death Star. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola – Estes described this psychological phenomenon as the “too-good mother” and explains that in fairy tales, nothing can happen until she dies and is replaced by a wicked stepmother, forcing the hero/ine out into the world where magical fairy tale plot lines unfold.

On Tuesday, school starts again and I am dreading my son’s senior year of high school more than all four of mine put together. He is not a morning person but he chooses the early start each year but sleeps until 45 minutes before the bell despite my nagging and then blames me for his lateness. Also, his teachers call me and lecture me about his lateness and nobody knows more about raising children than a woman without them and she will often keep me on the phone for half an hour telling me all of the ways in which I am an inadequate mother. Later, I will discuss the situation with my son who echoes the sentiment. If only I would remove myself from the picture, my son’s entry into the magical fairy tale world would be wide fucking open and disapproving teachers would dissolve like salt pillars in the rain.

No, thanks.

2009-08-26T02:23:00.000-05:00

I don't really care for this reality, right now. I think it's time for a paradigm shift. Gonna go take a nap and wake up in a nicer place.

"...the Hanged Man reminds us that the best approach to a problem is not always the most obvious. When we most want to force our will on someone, that is when we should release. When we most want to have our own way, that is when we should sacrifice. When we most want to act, that is when we should wait. The irony is that by making these contradictory moves, we find what we are looking for. "

Migraine

2009-08-21T04:13:00.000-05:00

The thing about migraines is that they aren't "headaches", although for want of a better description that's how they get explained.

A migraine is more like cliff diving. You know that point when you rocket below the surface of the water and the pressure pushes in on your ears and eyes and you curl your fingers up and hope you resurface before you run out of air?

It's also like when you were a kid and you swam in a chlorinated pool for hours and hours until your fingers pruned up and your eyes burned and all of the streetlights had blue and gold halos when you looked at them.

It's like playing piano but all of the noise in the world are the hammers and your nerves are the strings.

It's nails on a chalkboard or standing next to the knife sharpener. It's your teeth on edge and feeling like your overly sensitized and floating away at the same time.

It's also a whole lot more.

Life Imitates Art

2009-08-17T03:40:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time, I met a man at Scenes. Scenes was a coffee house/ dramatist bookshop/ zine headquarters on Clark Street where you could smoke, drink a bottomless cup of strong brew all day for about $1.35 and tip and talk to strangers about interesting things. Their zine was called Strong Coffee. My friend Sergio had a regular editorial which seemed to focus on wandering around the city in altered states of mind. There was a naughty horoscope column called Madame Zosostris' Wicked Pack of Cards. Once, they were slapped with a cease-and-desist order for their parody of the glurgey comic Love Is... Once I met a guy who had spent a year in Germany and helped tear the Berlin Wall down. He coached me on Bertoldt Brecht which I believe led to me getting cast in Three Penny Opera. He was also a good kisser. But he isn't the man from the first part of this paragraph.

Once I met a man at Scenes. He and I were both in the midst of bad break-ups, as well as aspiring playwrites. We decided to co-author a piece illustrating the arc of the relationship. (This idea was every bit as bad as it sounds.) So when we wrote the meet & courtship scenes he invited me over for dinner. We had a lovely fortnight stand while we tried to outline the plot and when it came time to write the scenes for the break up we had a giant, public fight and didn't talk for a year and so we never finished the play.

I re-read it several months later. It really, really sucked so I tossed it in the recycling bin.

Stuff & Nonsense

2009-08-11T14:06:00.008-05:00

I haven't posted in a very long time but I'm feeling sort of creative in an enthusiastically disinterested kind of way -- so here is some stuff and nonsense...

Yesterday, I stopped by the bodega to buy some smokes and there was a large, thuggish and quite stunningly attractive man buying lottery tickets, but he wasn't buying them the usual way. Instead of handing over a pre-filled card or rattling off numbers scrawled on a scrap of paper, this guy bought seven lottery tickets like so:

Next, the fives and eights -- five, eight, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-five, twenty-eight. Now the twos and sevens -- two, seven, twenty-two, twenty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-seven...

Seriously, this went on for about ten minutes and it was hot as hell in that store. Then as I was walking out, the same guy re-enters (nearly running me over) and seven guys walk in behind him as if by choreography(from the left, from the right, from the left, and so on. I finally had to elbow my way out of the doorway). As, I walked to my car I saw them come out of the store and walk down the street in formation. I started to wonder if the lottery tickets were actually an elaborately coded communication system among extremely organized street crews. Who knows? Maybe I'm just imposing patterns on everything.

Also, three of my girlfriends are moving out of town: Denver, Austin and Amsterdam, respectively. I'm itching to move but the kid's got one more year of school and I promised myself I would make strides toward stability. But there's a joyful surrender in a big move that I really miss. Moving can be seductive.

I read a book by a very wealthy capitalist and I learned some things, like it's nice to have tits and assets and it's really good to earn more than you spend. It was actually quite refreshing to read a book by someone who undestands that an economic system is supposed to be about economics -- not an ethos. Once you accept a given economic -ism as your personal savior, you are morally bankrupt and totally fucked.

Not that I'm judgemental or anything.

p.s. I borrowed that picture from somebody's photobucket account

Fin

2009-05-18T03:56:00.002-05:00

I just can't bitch anymore... after years of telling myself how lucky and fortunate I am, I actually kind of believe it now (and even if I don't, I am over the whining).

So I have nothing cute and snarky nor deep and brooding to share with you.

Just, you know, one foot in front of the other... health and happiness... sing a song ... etcetera...

Later, cats!

nothing...

2009-04-21T02:38:00.001-05:00

Art as Idea: Nothing, Joseph Kosuth, 1968 /Photo: NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

Teabagging... really?

2009-04-16T01:26:00.001-05:00

The teabaggers are protesting. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
Just goes to show that your uber social conservatives are usually the closet kinkmeisters.

I'm not even going to look for pictures for you. Insert your own mental picture.

Conservative tools!

Screw It!!!

2009-03-31T19:37:00.003-05:00

Screw it, fuck it, piss on it, get over it. I don't want to talk about it or hear about it or think about it -- I'm just going to do it, live it, breathe it, eat it, sing it, screw it, fuck it, piss on it and get over it. Right now the only concessiopn I am willing to make for introspection and aspirations and recriminations and all of the trials and tribulations is surrending myself to dreamland while sleeping.

I am not reading any metaphysics or philosophy. I'm not watching the news and I am not interested in any putrid emotional intelligence at the moment.

I am reading a biography of Mae West and the South Beach Diet. I'm smoking cigarettes, cutting out processed foods and somehow getting a whole lot of shit done.

There was a double rainbow over my house today. Maybe I finally found a fucking rhythm. That would be cool.

Lady Day

2009-03-25T03:34:00.002-05:00

Today is Lady Day whence back in the day this was the New Year Day by the reckoning of certain Western European cultures.
Lady Day celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation because it is exactly nine months before Christmas. Of course, this reckoning is wrought with all sorts of flaws -- like Jesus was born in July -- so maybe that's why the tradition changed. Of course, this day celebrated the Lady long before Jesus camped in the desert. (The Annunciation painted by Henry Tanner.)

Lady Day also refers to Billie Holiday. Possibly the name was given to her by Lester Young. Lady Day sounds like all the joys and sorrows and weariness and loneliness and bliss of all the women who ever heard they were with child.

Them that's got shall get

Them that's not shall lose

So the Bible said and it still is news

Mama may have, papa may have

But God bless the child that's got his own

That's got his own

Listen to God Bless the Child

Use Your Words

2009-03-18T00:59:00.003-05:00

The definition of socialism from the Oxford English Dictionary:

1. A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all.

2. A state of society in which things are held or used in common.

When greedy Wall Street motherfuckers and soulless bankers expect the tax payers to pay their multimillion dollar bonuses (not salaries, bonuses) that is not socialism. One could correctly state that AIG received the biggest welfare check ever written in the history of the world. One could correctly call AIG and every other corporate pirates of public trusts THIEVES and TERRORISTS holding America hostage in hard times. But that does not make Obama a socialist. Get it straight. Use your words.

This endless, unaccountable handout to AIG and the continued refusal to bring Bush and Cheney up on charges (for obstructing justice, treason, war crimes, torture, etc.) DOES make Obama and his party a bunch of wimps (especially when Obama tries to "reach across the aisle" to Republicans with their never-ending mantra of tax breaks for the wealthy... FUCK BIPARTISANSHIP AND THE REPUBLICAN FORKED TONGUE IT SLID IN ON. They lost 2 elections in a row by a wide margin. Stop kissing their asses because they have no cachet. You'd be better off reaching out to the Greens and Libertarians and let's all of us together shoot that elephant dead once and for all.)

PS .... The OED is the greatest book ever written and if one insists on reading ONLY one book in their life (which I think is stupid, demented and pathological) then please, do the world a giant favor and make it the Oxford English Dictionary instead of that gory collection of ancient Hebrew myths and the re-working or the Osiris legend as told by the Holy Roman Emperor Constantine to keep an unwieldy empire in check. The OED is much more relevant and much less incendiary. Thank you for doing your part to make a better humanity.

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

2009-03-10T00:56:00.003-05:00

Failure is impossible.

-- Susan B. Anthony, noted American Suffragist and Abolitionist

(Two words that Rush Limbaugh can not define.)

Happy Birthday, Gabo!

2009-03-05T00:18:00.000-06:00

Birthday Greetings to Gabriel García Márquez.

Gabo is 82 today.

He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.

-- Love in the Time of Cholera

This List Is Incohesive

2009-02-25T23:13:00.004-06:00

1. Facebook makes me feel old and stupid.

2. House parties are back. Please have one because I don't really feel like cleaning up.

3. There are very good, concrete reasons why some guys have had to resort to online dating sites. Celibacy is preferable to these men and their reasons.

5. What's so funny bout education, healthcare and sustainable fuel sources?

6. But must we invade Pakistan?

7. Why can't I make fart jokes at work when the employee newsletter refers to colorectal disease as "silent but deadly"? Seriously, this happened.

8. There is something very solid about guys named Clarence.

9. Why can't I tell dirty jokes at work when narcissitic residents give presentations on "erotic transference". Seriously, this happened.

10. Why do I insist on watching the Oscars every year?

11. Why do I sleep through all of my alarms when I'm eating right and exercising? This practically never happened when I was drinking regularly.

12. Can I be a farmer's wife? Or maybe a fireman's? I'm sick and tired of all of this independent rat race bullshit. But maybe that's because I sipped a lot of wine tonight after eating right and exercising. I'm really trying to wake up on time tomorrow.

Moony

2009-02-20T06:59:00.000-06:00

image from Flickr by Dawn Conway

. . . the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Dear Illinois,

2009-02-17T01:43:00.005-06:00

Don't you think it's time we presented a united front? Our president is having a rough go of it with all of his appointees "gracefully" bowing out of their nominations on account of not paying taxes and he has to try and help us through the W muck.

Blago has shown off his crazy in all of its technicolor wonderment -- bright as a baboon's ass -- to every media outlet who would have him, including The View.

Isn't it time for us to stick together now?

Look, we all know Burris came to his senate seat via questionable means, but I do not believe those questionable means included money. Burris was Blago's final "fuck you, Illinois" and I understand that maybe some of you power brokers resent that BUT think about it... Burris took that appointment without money. I don't care what Patrick Fitzgerald says.

We the people elected Burris a number of times -- and granted, none of those times were for senator but he has proved himself a competent administrator. Must we keep hanging our dirty laundry out for the rest of the country? What about our reputation? Do you even care about our reputation as a state? I mean, seriously, Texas and Louisiana have been calling us corrupt. Ouch!

Yes, we are corrupt; but could we maybe keep it in the family? Could you try pulling Burris aside for a little chat, perhaps? I can't see that he's done anything wrong that the rest of you don't engage in on a regular basis. I'm talking to you now, Daleys and Madigans.

Here is a little story for you. My Grandma told me some weeks back when Burris was trying to get the Senate seat that she was praying for him. Now, if my grandma prays for you -- her aim is true -- then you will probably succeed and if you don't, it wasn't meant to be or you didn't deserve it. I don't believe in religion at all or god much, but I will tell you -- my grandma's got a direct line to Whoever.

And we were one Senator shy of a pair. Illinois helped make a president, but we lacked our share of federal representation. Enough said.

And my grandma told me she was praying for Burris because years ago when he was Illinois Comptroller, he insured that my grandfather got his full pension from the Chicago Fire Department.

Now let me tell you about my grandpa. He did not believe in "pay to play", but he did believe in family. He told me once at a family funeral (when I was 19 and knocked up and scared to death) that money was not a sign of success because money was only money -- but a close-knit family signified a good life. In the end, all we have is each other.

My grandfather was offered a promotion to lieutenant once upon a time. My grandfather was a good firefighter. He was the first man to drive a snorkel in Chicago. There are a lot of people alive today because of his skills and bravery.

But my grandfather never got that promotion. He had seven kids and a wife at home but he was told that in order to be promoted he would have to pay a bribe. Pay-to-play.

My grandfather refused the bribed promotion. Even though that was the way things were done then. Even though he deserved it. Even though he had a wife and seven kids to answer to, my grandfather refused the bribe because it was wrong. And wrong is wrong.

A few years later, my grandpa carried a child out of a burning building. The child was on the second floor. The landing they were standing on collapsed. The child survived. My grandfather's neck was broken. He was permanently disabled

He served over 20 years on the fire department but he wasn't qualified for retirement when he was disabled on the job. When he reached retirement age, he would have received only a partial retirement because of the disability. My grandparents would have been financially compromised permanently.

Roland Burris got my grandfather his full pension. He looked out for the disabled firefighters. He isn't a squeaky-clean man, but he understands his duties to the people of Illinois.

And I ask, which among you Illinois politicians is squeaky clean?

Keep it in the family, keep it in the state. Please!

Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors

2009-02-13T18:53:00.004-06:00

I just don't want to see any more movies that leave me with no faith in humanity.

-- My Sister
We've been on a bad rental roll lately and I realized that all of the recent bad selections were set in New York and not so badly made as they were horrifically depressing and without a sense of redemption.

I know, I know; sometimes there is no redemption but anyway here is my list of horrible, rotten, depressing movies set in New York City. It is by no means exhaustive.

1. Raging Bull (This is probably my all-time least favorite movie. It makes me ill and gives me migraines. Screw Scorcese, Dinero and LaMotta for this over-rated piece of oscar-winning poo.)

2. Clockers

3. A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints

4. Bride Wars*

5. 27 Dresses ( "Ugly" duckling secretary Katherine Heigl wears all of her old bridesmaid dresses at home alone while "fantasizing" about her boss, Her greatest talent is knowing all of the words to Bennie and the Jets. Depressing and nauseating. And also hypocritical, because Heigl accused Judd Apatow of sexism for Knocked Up -- which Heigl also starred in -- but this monstrosity truly is a sexist film. )

6. Sex and the City

7. I Am Legend (okay, there is redemption in this one but by the time we got to it I was a puddle of twitching anxiety under the theater seat)

8. Cocktail (The wikipedia entry on this movie is somewhat amusing.)

9. Igby Goes Down

10. Midnight Cowboy (excellent movie, but still)

And just because I'm a nice midwestern lady, here are a few movies set in New York that always make me feel cheery.

1. Elf

2. After Hours

3. All That Jazz (I know, I know; it's about a successfully self-destructive pseudo-Fosse, but there is a sense of joyful redemption mixed with all of that regret and I love this movie.)

4. Moonstruck

5. The Warriors (Not exactly cheerful but can you dig it???)

What are some of your most depressing or most cheering film selections?

(* I didn't actually see Bride Wars but the fact that it exists depresses me.)

Crazy Never Takes A Vacation!*

2009-02-09T18:38:00.007-06:00

Have you seen this woman who had octuplets -- only it turns out she already had 6 kids and she's a single mom living at home with her parents? Did she get invitro fertilization? Yes, indeed she did. She tells us all that she can only have kids with the help of in vitro and so she needs it. She told us all about this on any media outlet that will have her but she has to push the words through all of the collagen in her lips. Her lips are so jacked up she can't even close them. Lady, lay off the optional medical procedures, please!

She knows she is unemployed and living with her 14 children and her folks, but she says it's cool because god will help her take care of her kids.

I got knocked up the old-fashioned way when I was 20 and I have a beautiful son so I have something to share with Nadya Suhlman, the young collagen-lipped woman who lives in a shoe.

Bitch, you're crazy!

Number one, Jesus does not pay child support. God the father is a deadbeat dad. Probably so are all of the other gods but I won't name them here. This isn't Maury Povich. Oh, and all of those church people who worry about all of the zygotes and blastocysts won't help you raise your kids either. They won't send you a few bucks because you put your kids' school pictures in a Christmas card. They are only interested in ultrasounds.

Also, it is a proven fact that never-married mothers make less than 60% of what men earn. (Divorced moms do slighty better. They average about 65% of men's earning and married mothers actually crack the seventieth percentile.) I can tell you from personal experience that this a reality and not a story made up by feminists to give Ann Coulter something to bitch about. I make about 2/3s of many women who do the same job as me in the same institution. I am powerless to fight this however, because I will be told that I am in a different department and things don't work the same there. Besides, this is not the time to be pointing to Lily Ledbetter and asking for a pay raise.

So good luck, Nadya! I really do hope you find a medication that works for you and maybe some dynamic interventional therapy and a very rich man to marry you and all fourteen of your children. Or maybe the idiot doctor who performed the fertilization procedure contrary to guidelines will be forced to feed, clothe and college your little rugrats.

I gotta go watch the president try to get 750 billion dollars for infrastructure so the El quits falling on people's heads and maybe help reduce the 8% unemployment rate in our fair city. The republicans don't like it, though. They'd rather give that money to CEOs and let the rest of us die in floods or train crashes when the levies break and the train tracks wear out. Oh yeah, and creationism and abstinence-only education.

No wonder the poverty level is up...

But according to Tom, it's probably too little, too late.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175023/greater_than_the_great_depression_

*Thanks to the fabulous Sue for the title of this post.

Dulce Veneno

2009-02-02T04:04:00.000-06:00

It's been such a long, hard winter. Three of my friends have been laid off in the last week and a half and a whole lot more are bracing themselves for the inevitable. It is still sooty/ snowy and cold. It did warm up to just over freezing this weekend, so that was nice.

I am trying to be more positive. Here are some breasts to cheer us all up.

Another thing that cheers me ... I like the song Dulce Veneno by Uranio. Unos de los musicos del grupo Uranio -- especificamente, el cantador -- son muy sexy de modo machos paisos, sino no haría dormirlo eso tipo del piso para comer bizcochitos. Mejor, él comería mi bizcochito. They play the song on Mex to the Max on the chicano music video station, which I now have thanks to my digital convertor box.

I am glad we get new channels -- including one that shows movies like It Happened One Night and Taxi Driver and All That Jazz weeknights at 7 pm. That almost makes up for the fact that every time a truck or squad car goes by my house everything pixelates to pieces. Seven o'clock movies are good because they keep me off the booze and cigarettes and men.

Sirena's Sense of Snow

2009-01-26T17:44:00.009-06:00

It sucks!

This is what every corner of the city used to look like. Only now the mushy slush has set, frozen, been packed by weeks of wind and sub-zero temps and is doing it's best impression of paleolithic-era stones.

It is January and this is how January is .... but I am so over January right now.

It's cold, depressing and the winter seems endless and insurmountable. I know that spring will come again -- but at the moment I don't actually believe it.

************

I've pulled Isa out of the velevet rune bag and Isa is my present. It's hard to see beyond the ice.

Smoking Makes You Smarter...

2009-01-23T06:12:00.003-06:00

... and quitting makes you stupid.
_~

I quit smoking a few weeks back and boy, am I dumb! My short-term memory is seriously impaired (no, I don't use MJ) to the point where I regularly have to consult my datebook to see what I did a few days before. I am also checking and re-checking my sent box at work to see if I've submitted crucial emails and I am repeatedly checking my files to see if I've shipped important documents. (I have -- although in one case, I forgot to include all of the relevant attachments. Naturally, that one was going to a federal regulatory department.)

I'm finding it difficult to sit though an entire movie and I love movies! I have started reading 4 books in the last 3 weeks and I can't get past the first chapter on any of them. If I start watching a television show and it goes to commercial, I wander off never to return. I have tried to complete a blog entry on a subject that is very important to me, but I can't seem to construct one complete sentence about it.

I'm hoping this is temporary -- because it turns out that it is scientifically proven that smoking makes you smarter. Ask Albert Einstein.

Now why didn't anyone tell me about THAT? Instead, everyone likes to ponificate on the health and functioning of my lungs and heart -- but everyone who knows me, knows that given a choice between healthy heart and healthy brain, I tend to opt for the brain. Relax, my people, I don't plan to fall off the wagon. But if my cognition doesn't radically improve in the next few weeks, I am going to start wearing the nicotine patch 24/7.

Phew!

2009-01-20T13:50:00.003-06:00

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
--President Obama

Goodbye and Good Luck

2009-01-15T19:18:00.004-06:00

In 5 short days it'll be like waking up in a jail cell with a bad hangover, an overwhelming sense of shame and the need to bankroll quickly and cleanly to cover court costs and attorney fees...

It'll feel almost exactly like that, except a hundred thousand times worse.

I still feel dirty... so should you.

Will Stop For Garage Sales

2009-01-12T01:40:00.000-06:00

Have a Garage Sale for Gaza and generate funds for the people suffering there while bringing the issue to the attention of your friends and neighbors. Go to X-Man's site and learn all about it.

Naked

2009-01-07T23:45:00.003-06:00

I feel stripped down, basic, dried out -- not bad, not empty but I've just shucked so much of my extraneous bullshit, I'm not even sure what's left within...

I am vulnerable to smoking crows.

Beware! More Blood...

2009-01-06T03:05:00.004-06:00

I must be a grownup now, because I'm always bitching about my taxes, but seriously, I don't want anymore of my hard-earned dough going to Israel so they can do this ...

I don't see how the Palestinians are supposed to be such big terrorists when they are the ones getting killed. I saw a Norwegian doctor (Mads Gilbert) on tv last night. He flew to Gaza as soon as Israel started bombing. He doesn't have enough equipment for anything -- not even enough I.V. carts and the Israelis won't call the massacre in Gaza a crisis because they "...suspect the hospital of harboring Hamas terrorists..." Here is a picture of a Palestinian family for the Israeli Government and Joe Biden and George Bush. I want my yearly 3+ billion dollar gift to Israel refunded so my fellow citizens can pay their heating bills and Palestinians don't ever have to take another family portrait like the one below.

Happy New Year!!!

Warning: this post oozes in a way which may make some readers uncomfortable

2008-12-29T05:03:00.005-06:00

As far as I am concerned there aren't enough references to menstruation in this world -- good, bad or indifferent. That's why I co-wrote a play about it 15 years ago. Guys don't like to hear about it, though... I took all the boys to see a show last night and they were completely grossed out by all of the mushy sex and period references made by this particular all-female troop who enjoy discussing all of their particularly female seepages in all of their technicolor glory and divinely crass hilarity.

But alot of women have internalized the male squeamishness with feminine discharge -- bloody or otherwise. I was talking to a female doctor last week (and this particular conversation was the gelatinous zygote that blossomed into this post) and she actually used the phrase "...cookbooks give me the female equivalent of wood..." which confused me and I was sure that I misheard her. Then her meaning very slowly dawned on me and to clarify this bizarrely misogynistic, euphemistic turn of phrase, I said,

"Do you mean to say that cookbooks make you moist? Because the female-equivalent-of-wood would be moist."

So she rolls her eyes and scrunches up her nose and says, "....eeewww, no I wouldn't say anything that inappropriate! THAT is too much information. I just get really, really excited about cookbooks." (Yes, I swear on all that is holy that this woman is a full-fledged medical doctor.)

And right now you need to understand that sometimes I am the female equivalent of Mr. Spock and just must say the most logical yet completely ridiculously obvious thing, such as,

"But you ARE a female and the female equivalent of wood IS moist, so..."

And that was when our hapless mermaid realized that this conversation was a fruitless endeavor and that this self-described "female with wood" was not a peer but a superior on the employment foodchain, although not an acutal supervisor and so our sirena quickly disappeared like morning wood over the toilet bowl.

The evolution of an archetype...

2008-12-24T10:03:00.006-06:00

mala sirena

2008-12-23T06:46:00.000-06:00

I just received a fantastic Christmas present. Rhapsody now has 60 Liliana Felipe songs for my listening pleasure. (I posted about Liliana a couple of years ago.)

Her music may not be for everyone, but if you're a dirty little secret lover of cabaret, then this will be just the thing por El Hábito.

Here is a link to listen to my theme song, Mala.

My Rhapsody Playlist

Here are the lyrics. If you want, you can click on them for my English translation.

Mala porque no me quieres
mala porque no me tocas
mala porque tienes boca
mala cuando te conviene

mala como la mentira el mal aliento y el estreñimiento mala
Mala como la censura
como rata pelona en la basura
mala como la miseria como foto de licencia
mala como firma de Santa Anna como pegarle a la nana
mala como la triquina mala
mala y asesina mala como las arañas
mala y con todas las mañas
mala como el orden la decencia
como la buena conciencia
mala por donde la miren
mala como una endodoncia
mala como clavo chato
mala como película checa
mala como caldo frío
mala como fin de siglo

mala por naturaleza de los pies a la cabeza
mala, mala, mala, mala
pero que bonita chingaos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sweet Dreams

2008-12-18T01:50:00.002-06:00

A tip of the snifter to Chico Banks who died suddenly a couple of weeks ago. I'll miss you, man and I hope you're still getting a little extra in your glass just because you smiled and said pretty please.

brrrrrrr!!!!!

2008-12-15T06:42:00.001-06:00

It is sooooooo cold out today... My little weather pixie says it's 7, but I think it was below zero this morning. It took about 10 minutes for me and the kid to chip all of the ice off the windshield and I thought the wind was going to whisk me up Western Avenue to the land of winter, never to see my family again.

Seriously, I'm STILL not warm.

Not!

2008-12-11T01:45:00.001-06:00

Evidently, selling a Senate seat is not considered a crime in the Blagojevich household.
(If this were the plot of a movie, I would call it ridiculous. Is being Governor of Illinois a prerequisite for attending the Federal Penitentiary? Jeez, Louise!)

Oh, and this was the frontpage of the Chicago Sun Times on July 17, 2008. You can see how popular Blago has been around here -- even the press was making fun of him for "getting tough on crime". And the Daley machine just loves to be called out in public. Ask Blago's father-in-law, Alderman Dick Mell, who gave testimony to Fitzgerald after Blago outed a dirty landfill contract Mell was "consulting" on -- with his nephew. Oh, and Patrick Fitzgerald is a piece of work to. He was nominated to his position as Federal Prosecutor of Northern IL by former Senator from IL, Peter Fitzgerald (no relation) at the request of "Hot" Karl Rove and has been slinging crap at practically every elected official ever since. See what I mean? If you made this a movie, you'd earn 2 well-deserved thumbs down for the story's utter impossibility.

Tightly Clichéd

2008-12-04T01:30:00.008-06:00

I haven't been reporting because I don't feel like being anything but me and lately I don't make for very good copy. Here are some infinitive forms which currently describe my life: to work, to mother, to granddaughter, to daughter, to sister, to aunt, to behave, to economize, to dodge bill collectors, to heal, to be healed, to sleep, to dream, to plan, to laugh, to master, to rest, to renew, to recalim, to befriend, to enjoy the occasional solitude, to not take things very seriously.

As I said, it doesn't make for interesting reading but it makes for good living.

The biggest news is that I'm trying very, very hard (and not so very perfectly) to kick that devil nicotine once and for all. Please, no comments about how the only way to quit smoking is cold turkey. It isn't and all cold turkey does is make me a homicidal maniac. Nobody wants to see that. Nations will declare jihad on the US because of the large, foul cloud of bad vibes and violence emanating from my aura. It would be very, very bad -- as in hell on earth, armageddon, etc.

The other biggest news is that I'm working on an application for a Master's in Science program offered at the university/hospital where I work.

And in other news...

My son now drives and we just spent the holiday at my mom's eating cold turkey and watching a brazillion bootleg movies.
Also, I wish Blog Ho would post because he's practically my last enjoyable vice in this life since I cut back on the booze and the loose men. Practically, not totally or definitely, so please, still no comments about cold turkey. I don't want to hear it.
Have you noticed that many "loose" men aren't "loose" at all, but rather uptight when you get down to it? So the term "loose" is not a very good one when applied to men of leisure and easy pleasure. Let's change it to "tight" since "tight" is the second syllable in "uptight" and "tight" can also slangily mean drunk and/or a really good mesh of skilled and talented musicians during an improv jam session or (mistakenly used in reference to) a recorded song which sounds very good only after about 10,000 takes.
I have some new girlfriends and some blast-from-the-past girlfriends popping out of the woodwork and I've been having lots of fun hanging out with the girls and doing cool things at cool places and not really caring if you think I'm cute while doing it.
Mostly, I hang out with cool chicks, but I do still know some "tight" guys, in case you were concerned about my ability to be heterosocial. In fact, it was a couple of "tight" guys who helped me relocate my super powers a couple of weeks ago at an improv show during which 2 troupes performed; one female troupe of improvisers called Children of a Lesser God and one male troop of improvisers called Uncle's Brother. The male troop contained some famousish people. The female troop was "tight".
Yeah, during the show the one "tight" guy friend started asking me for a bunch stuff because he is not a boy scout, but rather a journalist. Meanwhile the other tight guy friend was suffering from the adverse effects of a reiki sneak attack coupled with acupuncture, allergy season and a musty rug at the IO, which may cause runny nose, sneezing, watery eyes, ague and overall fatigue. Yet somehow all of the symptoms, wacky energy, extemporanea and general hilarity were strangely regenerative, kind of like an eclipse on Heroes or possibly more like the way the destruction of Alderaan and the death of Obi-Wan brought the gang closer together and led to the eventual triumph of rebel forces against the Empire.
So once again, I have the magical ability to pull any necessary item out of my purse at any given time, for which my superheroic alter ego, Single Mom, is rightfully renowned, and if you ever run into me while drowning in a river I promise to dig you out a straw or a self-help manual on survival or somesuch -- or maybe I'll just dig you out of the current so you don't die.
Not on my watch, pal.

Changed the Locks

2008-11-24T01:07:00.001-06:00

Changed the Locks by Lucinda Williams

I changed the lock on my front door so you can't see me anymore
And you can't come inside my house, and you can't lie down on my couch
I changed the lock on my front door

don't worry, it's all about you... yes, you

2008-11-21T01:46:00.002-06:00

Your own arrogance desires
You in all its emotive excesses.
You have feelings, dammit!
You love to display them on formica countertops
Over vending machine cappuccinos and all of
Your friends must cater to
Your “openness,” which is really just
You rebrushing the worn fabric of

Your narcissism.

You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you…
We are always talking about
Your hurts
Your needs
Your worries
Your hungers and
Your feelings are the centerpiece of every holiday.

Your needs are the infrastructure of

Our every plan and if

We don’t stuff
You bursting with attention
You cry, loudly and incessantly. And when
We dare to start anew

You cry foul! Abuse!
You call
Us names.
You cry, cry, cry and

You cry and

You cry and
No one understands how sensitive
You are.
Everyone is mean to
You. Poor, poor pitiful
You.

Master of
Your
Youniverse.

Amen.

High Anxiety

2008-11-13T06:24:00.005-06:00

Shackled and chained

My soul feels stained

I can't explain got an itch on my brain

Lately my whole aim is to maintain

And regain control of my mainframe

My bloods boiling its beatin' out propane

My train of thought's more like a runaway train

I'm in a fast car drivin' in a fast lane

In the rain and I might just hydroplane

-- Black Eyed Peas

So it turns out that I'm an anxious person. In an effort to acknowledge my anxiety and keep it from eating away at all of my nerves, I have discovered that I am anxious a whole lot. Living in this crazy, mixed-up world, working, raising a teenager and his mouth and his father's mouth.

I'm trying yoga, and deep cleansing breaths, kava tea and the occasional xanax. It all kind of works. None of it works really well. Whiskey used to work very well, very quickly -- but not so much these days. That sucks, but then again, I am trying to lead a healthier, more upright lifestyle or whatever.

In other words, I'm very boring and chewed up and irritated most of the time -- ergo, I have nothing much to blog about these days.

Oh, honey hush...

Gotta stop sobbing now...

2008-11-05T22:19:00.005-06:00

Do you remember being a little kid and your emotions would sweep you up like the riptide and you would sob and sob, choking on your own tears howling, sputtering, heaving and convulsing your chest compressing and a stitch in your side? And then the crying would slowly begin to subside and after one last shuddering moan you would sprawl out flat and just lay there, deep breathing. You would just lay there for a minute and savor the release. you might have a headache. You would still be very sad and mad, but in that one tiny instant you felt authentic. You were a scraped-out husk, completely relaxed and ready to crack the spine on the next chapter.

That's exactly how I feel. Like there might be some hope after the horror, like just maybe I'll sleep well tonight.

Yes, We Can!

2008-11-05T06:08:00.002-06:00

Today, I am a very joyful but tired little mermaid because I was out enjoying the celebratory rally in Grant Park with President Obama and 300,000 or so fellow Americans.

More to come, but for now .... hooray, hoooray, hooray, yippeeee and yaaaayyy!!!

VOTE!!!

2008-11-04T02:49:00.000-06:00

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!!

If anyone tries to challenge and/ or prevent you from voting, demand a provisional ballot and use your phone to get video of them.

Do not let anyone -- especially and including anyone working in a polling place -- prevent you from voting.

If you don't vote, the terrorists win.

Brutual Truths on Election Eve

2008-11-03T05:49:00.002-06:00

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I get pretty irate and vocal about the frequency of election theft in the U.S. -- specifically Federal races stolen by Republicans under Bush's voter "reform" laws designed after the Supreme Court appointed him President in 2000. It's a big problem. As Greg Palast says,

Here's an ugly little secret about American democracy: We don't count all the
votes. In 2004, based on the data from the US Elections Assistance Commission,
3,006,080 votes were not counted: "spoiled," unreadable and blank ballots;
"provisional" ballots rejected; mail-in ballots disqualified.

This Tuesday, it will be worse. Much worse.

That's what I found while traveling the nation over the last year for BBC Television and Rolling Stone Magazine, working with voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This we guarantee: there will be far more votes disappeared by Tuesday night than the three million lost in 2004. A six-million vote swipe, quite likely, shifts 4 percent of the ballots, within
the margin of error of the tightest polls.

Go out and vote!!! Go out and vote!!! Go out and vote!!!
(...and let's be vigiliant and vocal about the returns...)

Happy Halloween!!!

2008-10-31T03:19:00.000-05:00

5 More Days...

2008-10-30T11:54:00.002-05:00

...until this sack of election drama is tied off and Bush spends the next 3 months destroying us all.

I did not drink the kool-aid...

2008-10-28T01:00:00.003-05:00

I am very, very tired of being told that I have been brain-washed, or that I drank the kool-aid, or that I think Obama is a savior or that I can't decide for myself sinceI support Senator Obama for President because I think he is the best man for the job today.

First of all, the opposite of the kool-aid rumor is true. Every person who mindlessly forwards these anti-Obama, panicky, who is Barack Obama really??? emails is not thinking for themselves. All you have to do is the littlest bit of research and you can find out everything you want to know about the man.

But some people are too lazy to do research. Some people would rather forward sensational and ridiculous emails than read the facts and make a mature decision based on those facts and not on their personal fears.

Some people would rather stand silently by while election after election after election is stolen from the voters. They would rather be manipulated with and by fear than look the beast in the eye once and for all.

Some people have been drinking an awful lot of the Rove kool-aid for many, many years. And boy oh boy, that Sarah Palin just keeps ladling it out to you in non-biodegradable styrofoam cups and you just swallow, swallow, swallow as you press the forward button on your email again and and again. Forwarding sugary nonsense and plotless ghost stories like:

Is Barack Obama really a man? I've never seen his penis. Hmm... if he's really a man with nothing to hide, why doesn't he drop trow in front of the whole country on Fox news???

OR:

Did you know Barack Obama is married to a black woman??? And she has a funny name the starts with "Mi" and ends in "chelle"? Like that Beatles song??? Was she Paul's lover??? I want to see her marriage license to Barack Obama right now!!! I don't believe that they are really married because Paul McCartney wrote a song about her when she was just a little girl, so clearly she must have been married to Paul McCartney first.

And did you know that Michelle Obama graduated from college??? Two times???? Her thesis is on the google and I have a friend of a friend of an imaginary friend who saw it on the google and it said "white people are sometimes racist" and is that the kind of first lady we want representing our country at fashion shows around the world???? A wife and mother who went to college??? Can you imagine??? What for??? Where is her diploma??? What kind of uppity elite does she think she is with her college and her children and her husband and her house??? Obviously, she hates America or she would have nothing at all and like it!!! Unpatriotic elite college-educated mother!!! Let's see her birth certificate!!! I'll just be she's a robot!!!

I just don't trust that Barack Obama. I don't know what it is... I just don't trust him. I just don't trust him, I don't know what it is... Who does he think he is with his funny name??? How dare he go to college??? His mother got divorced twice!!! If he were for real and not an elite he would have wallowed in misery. How dare the child of a single mother take advantage of the educational opportunities in this country and run for President??? Who does he think he is??? He sure is uppity!!! He just doesn't know his place! Only the rich and inbred are allowed to run for president in my America! You can't trust anybody who doesn't understand that simple fact. Clearly he's a terrorist!!!

And yesterday in Tennessee, the FBI broke up a ring of skinheads who were planning on assassinating Senator Barack Obama and beheading dozens and dozens of African-American high school students. (I will not post photos of ose deluded, attention-seeking sociopaths. Here is a "rendition" of them to the left.)

Somehow, those violent skinheads just didn't trust the good American people and their lying, stupid emails to keep Obama out of the Oval Office, so they stockpiled their firearms and decided to take out the next generation of possibly uppity dark-skinned elites for good measure.

And somewhere in Dubai, Karl Rove types another email while veiled belly dancers serve him tea...

Evidently, I'll Eat Pretty Much Anything

2008-10-21T20:36:00.003-05:00

This is a food meme. I got it from Nigel.

Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
Put in red any items that you would never consider eating.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison

2. Nettle tea

3. Huevos rancheros

4. Steak tartare One of my favorites! Mmmmm, raw, red meat.

5. Crocodile

6. Black pudding

7. Cheese fondue

8. Carp

9. Borscht

10. Baba ghanoush

11. Calamari

12. Pho

13. PB&J sandwich

14. Aloo gobi

15. Hot dog from a street cart

16. Epoisses

17. Black truffle

18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes

19. Steamed pork buns

20. Pistachio ice cream

21. Heirloom tomatoes

22. Fresh wild berries

23. Foie gras

24. Rice and beans

25. Brawn, or head cheese

26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper -- but I cried all over myself! As an ex once said, "Pain is a flavor."

27. Dulce de leche

28. Oysters -- another favorite!

29. Baklava -- I've worked at a couple of Greek Restaraunts -- but I only ate the baklava at one of them. I generally don't like flies in my pastries.

30. Bagna cauda

31. Wasabi peas --I've seen them at Trader Joe's. As much as I like wasabi, these things do not appeal to me.

32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl

33. Salted lassi -- I like the fruit lassis better.

34. Sauerkraut

35. Root beer float --My son would rather have RBFs than cake on his b-day.

36. Cognac with a fat cigar

37. Clotted cream tea

38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O

39. Gumbo

40. Oxtail

41. Curried goat -- There used to be a great Nigerian take-out near one of my jobs that served curried goat with yams. mmmmm.... And yes, pain is a flavor.

42. Whole insects --Chocolate-covered ants AND fried grasshopper.

43. Phaal

44. Goat’s milk

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more -- thanks Pete, Richard and Sam!!!

46. Fugu -- I don't ever need to eat anything that poisonous.
47. Chicken tikka masala

48. Eel

49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut

51. Prickly pear -- the jelly

52. Umeboshi

53. Abalone -- but I can't wait to try it!

54. Paneer

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal

56. Spaetzle -- I had to google it first, and yes, I have eaten it.

57. Dirty gin martini

58. Beer above 8% ABV -- Thank god for the Belgians.

59. Poutine

60. Carob chips
61. S’mores

62. Sweetbreads

63. Kaolin -- seriously, what is this? According to google, it's Chinese clay or an emollient used with anhydrous as an insecticide???

64. Currywurst

65. Durian

66. Frogs’ legs -- When I bartended in the country, one of my regulars went frog giggin', deepfried his harvest and brought them into the bar. Meh..

67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake

68. Haggis

69. Fried plantain -- I love fried plantain...

70. Chitterlings, or andouillette

71. Gazpacho -- Not only have I eaten gazpacho, 3 other women and I did a performance piece in college which involved the creation of a batch of gazpacho as a metaphor for how much La Reconquista shaped Spanish culture.

72. Caviar and blini

73. Louche absinthe

74. Gjetost, or brunost

75. Roadkill --I'd like to say never, but the economy is tight and I'd sure as heck carry a dead possum home for soup before I'd let the family starve.

76. Baijiu

77. Hostess Fruit Pie

78. Snail

79. Lapsang souchong

80. Bellini

81. Tom yum -- very good, but I prefer Tom Kha

82. Eggs Benedict

83. Pocky

84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.

85. Kobe beef

86. Hare

87. Goulash

88. Flowers

89. Horse -- see #75

90. Criollo chocolate

91. Spam

92. Soft shell crab

93. Rose harissa

94. Catfish

95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox

97. Lobster Thermidor

98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake

Rep. Michelle Bachmann is NOT "Minnesota Nice"!

2008-10-19T17:46:00.006-05:00

Meet Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota. She and her BFF are pictured here joyfully stuffing their faces with ice cream. Why are they so joyful? Maybe they're watching video of water board sessions at Guantanamo Bay???

You may remember Ms. Bachmann's Minnesota Nice speech from the GOP convention, delivered while the nice St. Paul police force was arresting journalists from left wing news sources.

Today, Michelle Bachmann told Chris Matthews on Hardball that she wants every "anti-american" member of Congress -- especially Barack and Michelle Obama -- investigated for their "anti-american activities".

Like what?

Is she concerned about treasonous acts like outing an undercover CIA agent in a war zone for purposes of petty personal revenge? Is she referring to suspending habeas corpus? Or maybe the anti-american activities she's talking about involve torturing prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay?

Rep. Bachmann, there is no room for McCarthyism in this day and age. Pack up your bags,lady. There is an election in November and I sure do hope the very nice people of Minnesota's 6th District are about to hand a Representative's seat to your opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg. He reports that donations have suddenly started pouring into his campaign office.

I love all of you...

2008-10-18T21:39:00.002-05:00

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?

--Elvis Costello

McCain moons the U.S.

2008-10-15T22:55:00.003-05:00

Evidently, we voters are all just Joe 6pack the Plumber Butt. Hey, and those folks at Palin's rallies who are calling Obama a terrorist and shouting "kill him" are good patriots, according to Senator McCain. But what really matters is McCain's widdle feewings got hurt when an "American hero" compared him to George Wallace. Does anyone still remember that old saw about sticks and stones?

You know what, I can't even be rational anymore. I'm not giving you links to all of the facts behind this one. Suffice it to say, if you ever forwarded an email about Obama which questioned his last name and rumored "terrorist ties", shame on you! If you ever forwarded an email or repeated the lie that he is a Muslim -- shame on you! (Not that it should matter, but it does to many.)

The fact is, if anyone harms a hair on this man's head because of his skin tone or his name we are all culpable. Every gleeful forwarder of bullshit, fear-mongering emails has an itchy trigger finger. Our national racism has moved long past the "different cultures" phase and is hysterically careening into provoking violence and assasination. Shame on you negligent fact-checkers. Shame on you Rovian toadies. Shame on you emailers of lies. Shame on all of the archetypical Joes. Shame on Sarah Palin. Shame on John McCain. Shame on your goony supporters.

Shame on all of U.S.!!!

2008-10-14T07:53:00.000-05:00

Tuning in...

2008-10-08T01:41:00.002-05:00

I need to tune into another psychic station for a few days, because the state of the world is so not good right now -- honestly, my state of mind isn't so good either. I haven't been feeling well. I am in the wrong line of work. And yet somehow, I feel like I'm on the cusp of figuring something important out -- if only I could break through that final layer of skin, rip off the scabs or something.

Also -- mermaids have very dramatic, passionate love lives but not such stable ones. This is mostly a result of personal choices with the occasional lifestyle consequence thrown in... some of us are not really cut out for domesticity. And don't ever let anyone shame you into being something you are not or wearing costumes that don't fit.

Pirates are sexy and roguish and best of all, impermanent. I am not stupid. I knew that ship would set sail eventually. In fact, I counted on it -- torn between the tight excited flush of eploration and the desire to return to the ocean floor to mull it all over.

Unraveleing a tangle of thoughts, sensations and emotions is a joy unto itself.

Dear Congress,

2008-10-03T01:05:00.002-05:00

Thank you for passing the Bailout Bill with 58 more yeas than Monday. It's been a productive week for you and it always comforts me so much to see Congress lay down like Bush's bitches again and again. Tell me, did it hurt when you had your spines surgically removed in order to keep your Congressional seats? Do you expect to still have jobs on November 4th?

Yes, my friends, Congress passed the Bailout Bill, which means we, the people are up shit creek without a paddle. We will be footing this bill. We will have to keep working until we are very, very old....

...but the good news is that all of the filthy, rich people on Wall Street won't be losing any money. In fact, Congress voted today to fix all of their problems by giving them more money than we've spent on the war and occupation of Iraq since March 2003. Yes, my friends, the Bush family's oil addiction and grudge against Saddam Hussein is officially cheaper than the unregulated, greedy hubris of Wall Street and the Banking industry.

But, let's show some compassion... those CEOs have problems, too. For example, some lost their jobs. Alan Fisher was released from WaMu (woo-hoo!) just 18 days after collecting an $18.5 million sign-on bonus. Alan Fuld is probably unhirable after driving Lehman Brothers into the sub-basement, and all he got after 30 years of service was $500 million dollars.

That's why Henry Paulson (Bush's appointed Treasury Secretary) had to make sure his former employer (Goldman Sachs) was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this Bailout Bill. That's why Congress had to pass this bill -- because we all know that if Bush doesn't get his way, elections get stolen, the terrorists win, things blow up and people die. Seriously.

So can you blame Congress for giving all of our money to fix Wall Street when the market no longer fixed itself? Well, yes... you can and I do. But the truth is that the Executive Office Cabal has everyone so bullied, terrified and tortured that we can't even pass a motion to impeach them. So in this country you might get impeached for having oral sex, but not for treason.

Everybody, be cool! This is a robbery! It's another heist engineered by the wickedest men this planet has ever seen. Are we surpirsed that Congress has once again chickened out and handed our wallets over to the man with the gun pointed to our collective temple? We shouldn't be. "Your money or your life!" Given that choice, please, take my money. As Jesus said, Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser's... hmmmm... I wonder WWJD today....

This post is dedicated to my brilliant sister Meander. She knows why.

2008-10-02T07:24:00.000-05:00

Do you really want to let the jokers in Washington burn your money bailing out Wall Street ?

You can stop the bailout. Call your representative in Congress A.S.A.P!!!

Tell them to vote no on Bush's Bailout Scheme. We have to advocate for ourselves. Step up your game and contact your Representative now.

Go here to find your representative and their digits.