My Culturally Rooted Tangent

I sang at choir in the church basement tonight. Please, laugh away.

Yes, I'm a good Irish Catholic lady who practiced with fellow choir members for two and a half hours -- less a twenty minute break in which we drank wine or beer and ate hors d'ourves. (You can refill your glass at the end of break so you have sustenance for the second half of practice!)

Since I am grooving on my catholicism tonight, I shall make confession. I love singing! It's challenging fighting all of the complications of harmony (so appropros on so many levels), it is so challenging fighting all of the bullshit of organized religion -- but somehow set it to music and I feel it. So many conflicts, but goddammit -- I'm still a fucking catholic!

Excuse me, Irish Catholic.

See, that differential is significant. I don't buy into that political pope crap. I also grew up with several guys who killed themselves because they were destroyed by the tragedy of being raped by priests. I imagine one of them as a significant image in the Jungian Archetypical Heaven now. He was golden and beautiful and Michelangelo would have painted him as the Archangel Michael. And I was taught to practice catholicism by 13 years of catholic school and my Irish catholic grandma and Jesuits and a book of the saints. So really and obviously, I'm an overanalyzing, superstitious woman. But aren't those the qualities that keep religion solid, stable and historical?

The point I was trying to make a minute ago is I don't pray to Jesus or God. I think pure, unsinful beings are unapproachable (and a load of misogynistic, hallucinogenic bullshit). I am the product of faith passed on from the oppressed -- pray to your mother and your friends and family, the Blessed Mother and the saints.

And the name is also significant. I was not taught to pray to the Virgin Mary; I was taught to pray to the Blessed Mother. Recite both of those names to yourself and see who you want to call on to assist you in your petitions. Tonight I stood on a bridge that rocked over the Chicago River while singing "Gentle Woman" to a a gift of urban nature which always blesses me. Blessed Mother, thank you for your children.

And tonight I also sang with the church choir -- even "Danny Boy" (yuck) which according to the music notes was published in "Londonderry" rather than Derry. I hate "Danny Boy". Over-played and praising saccharine martyrdom to The Man.

We should sing "The Wind That Shakes the Barley". It's a more valuable theme and it relates better to the times.

"Twas hard the woeful words to frame

To break the ties that bound us.

But harder still to bare the shame

Of foreign chains around us."

Today, the foreign chains are made of different steels. In this millennium, foreign does not refer to other nations and cultures, but rather, multinational corporate persecutors. We are cuffed by different oppressors but we are all still trapped.

And now to quote a catholic from a different culture: "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

So let us pray.

Caliber

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

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 home

Sing you

Purify

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

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.)

Fin Agains Wake

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

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.

"Don't ask, tell...

...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.

"If I Only Had a Brain."

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.

Muscley Mama

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?

Ironically Craving

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.

Caverns

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

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.)

Cram It

I like this picture. I ganked it here.

Fashionably Late

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.

"There is no Sanctuary!"

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.

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.

Tightly Clichéd

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.

Touch Me, I'm Sick

Touch Me I'm Sick

(one, two)

ooh

wow

ooh

I feel bad, and I've felt worse

I'm a creep, yeah,

I'm a jerk

Come on

Touch me, I'm sick

wow

I won't live long, and I'm full of rot

Gonna give you - girl - everything I got

Touch me, I'm sick, yeah

Touch me, I'm sick

Come on baby, now come with me

If you don't come

If you don't come

If you don't come

You'll die alone

wow

ooh

I'm diseased, I don't mind

I'll make you love me 'till the day you die

Come on

Touch me, I'm sick

ahhh

Fuck me, I'm sick

Come on baby, now come with me

If you don't come

If you don't come

If you don't come

You'll die alone

Now, I'm never bored when I'm killing for the Lord...

All across the world

The holy armies on a tear

Ripping through the planet's faiths

Population's running scared

Christianity's all around

Zealots they abound

I wanna blow them to pieces

Cause I...I'm

[Chorus:]

Killing For Jesus

Killing For Jesus

With god on my side

The holy armies gonna ride

Go on a rampage

To rape, plunder and pillage

Insanity's everywhere

Must be something in the air

I wanna blow them to pieces cause

I...I'm

[Chorus]

I'm never bored

When I'm killing for the lord

Now I've seen the light

Hail Mary! I've got Jesus on my side!

Insanity's everywhere

Must be something in the air

I wanna blow them to pieces cause

I...I'm

[Chorus]