026.) Why Is There Not Mandatory Testing Before Parenthood?

I dislike with great intensity little children who run screaming like banshees throughout the building, dumping (and I do mean dumping, you'd think it had been snowing - ) popcorn and Cheetos all over the floor.

I dislike with greater intensity the inattentive mothers who allow their little children to run screaming like banshees throughout the building and dump popcorn and Cheetos all over the floor - or not pay any mind when their idiot boys bounce rubber balls near highly fragile glass objects (and I do mean "idiot boys", for one of them is at least twelve years old and is so repressed by his equally ignorant uber-religious born again mother that while he can blather on about Jesus -

("walkin' on the water. Sweet Jesus walkin' in the sky")

- he doesn't even know that ".25" means twenty-five cents).

These are the kids who will inherit the world.

Of course, I'll be dead by the time that happens. What, me worry?

025.) Who Ever Said Vampires Weren't Real?

So, my state offers something called BadgerCare Plus to all individuals below the poverty line. I would be one of those individuals, and being one of those individuals I spent some time quite a while ago typing and clicking my way through the application process. I was told that I met all of the requirements for this comprehensive, low- to no-cost health care plan. Naturally, being "poor" and without good health insurance, I was excited to be included in something such as BaderCare.

Then came the "however".

There is always a "however", a rat-like and stinking "however" that likes to rain on my glittery parade.

This "however" came in the simple question resembling something along the lines of, "Do you receive/are you offered health insurance through work?"

I had to click "Yes".

Next festering, pustule question which looked something like, "Have you enrolled?"

Here I told a little white lie. I said "No" when I had enrolled - though, technically, I had no idea if I was yet covered because no deductions for this health insurance had ever been taken out of my paycheck and I hadn't even received my booklet and health insurance card at the time. I also planned on dropping the coverage, assuming I had it, because -

"D.) The coverage was weak, lousy, not worth the time and money put into it and nothing like I wanted or needed" (I expand a wee bit on the true option D).

So, of course, when I get to the end of the application I find that because my workplace offers "health insurance" (a joke, really) I am not eligible for this nice BadgerCare Plus - a plan that would have covered my $600 mole-removal bill (for a mole that was less than one centimeter) and/or my $800 "complete bony" lower wisdom teeth extraction (though the lovely people at Drs. Hawkins, Gingrass and Miller are being very kind and holding the bill for me ($200 after my through-work dental insurance (which is good, by the way) covered what they saw fit).

All of this would have been fine if I hadn't come to work yesterday and learned that the insurance bill had finally shown up in the mailbox.

There are four of us on the plan, at least to my knowledge. Four people who owe $154 a piece (for our resident married couple that's $308) - or $77 a month for our "covered" months, or $19.25 a week. Now, $19.25 is more than twice what we were quoted when the dastardly scheming barker sat us down in a private room and explained all of the "wonderful" benefits to the plan.

Keep in mind that I am below the poverty level of my state. Keep in mind that the $154 dues the insurance company wanted taken out of this week's paycheck (as in Friday 31 July, 2009) is more than half of my paycheck.

Keep in mind that $19.25 is not the "around $9" we were told by this dastardly scheming barker working for a health insurance company quite obviously run by vampires. $19.25 a week is much more than I expected to pay for a health plan that covers nothing. It does not cover the emergency room, so if your arm was mauled off by a rather perturbed squirrel and you had to bleed all over the ER - you would not see a dime to help you with that cost. Sure, you'd get $100 a day for your hospital stay and $55 for the subsequent visits to the doctor's office and a piddly amount toward preventative care. You'd also see your generic prescriptions covered, but - oh, that's right - one of my co-workers found that this wasn't true at all.

We all banded together when Desert Storm (who will now be going to the VA from now on) recounted his harrowing story of going to the doctor's for a serious case of vertigo, getting a generic prescription from his doctor, running over to the pharmacy and being told by the pharmacist that his insurance card, in this case, was not worth the plastic it was made of.

We all banded together as one and dropped our health insurance plan.

I feel sort of bad for our chain of bosses. After all, our GM went through all that trouble of trying to convince the board to give we employees some sort of health insurance and when we finally do get a plan (in June) - it's worthless.

I bet those people at the insurance company would sit in their cubicles and titter at us.

Well, I say to you, who's tittering now?




If there's a bright side to all of this, it's that - referring back to my earlier spiel about BadgerCare Plus - while I can't get BadgerCare Plus I am eligible for the Family Planning Waiver Plan. Also, maybe now that we've all dropped out of the work offered health insurance plan, work will forgo that plan and go after a better plan. That or I could get into the state offered health insurance.




I leave you with a picture that makes me happy when I am, in this case, vexed.

(Michael Palin, one of the great and mighty Pythons, in an autographed photo sent to me after I wrote him a letter. It's sort of blurred and the quality isn't that great, but you get the idea)

024.) I Suppose I Deserve This.

(bench in front garden which greatly signifies how I am feeling this day)

Yesterday was Saturday (an obvious statement - unless you, dear reader, have just taken a rather nauseating trip through the space-time continuum and therefor have no idea what day it is, or even what year (in which case: the year is 2009)). As has been happening lately, I was on Register #1 duty yesterday.

I received my usual amount of gawkers and yellers and people otherwise ordering me to stop moving so that they might be better able to read my arm - or screwing up their faces and asking, "What's going on with your arm, there?" Most of the customers were nice, however, and made up for the rudeness of the others. Because, really, I am not an art exhibit escaped from the Louvre.

Then there was Jail Bait (fourth paragraph down, please). I don't know why I let myself be so creeped out by what happened, but he came in with one of his friends - though at the time I had no idea who it was coming through the door because I was writing down some items in our long running tally for inventory purposes.

ME

(WRITING DOWN THE ITEMS AND THEIR PRICES INTO THE YELLOW LEGAL PAD, TRYING TO DELAY THE INEVITABLE TASK OF CLEARING OUT THE SECOND REGISTER SO IT CAN BE MOVED ONTO THE COUNTER BESIDE REGESTER #1)

HELLO.





JAIL BAIT'S BRUNETTE FRIEND

(WALKING INTO THE STORE IN FRONT OF JAIL BAIT, SAUNTERING IN THAT WAY TEENAGE BOYS SAUNTER)

HEY.





JAIL BAIT

(GRABBING MY ATTENTION BY SPEAKING BECAUSE, OF COURSE, I KNOW HIS VOICE BY NOW AND ALWAYS LIKE TO SEE WHO HE'S COME IN WITH. HIS "POPS" IS A NICE MAN, AND I FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO MAKE SMALL TALK WITH POPS THAN JAIL BAIT BECAUSE - WELL - HOW DO YOU TALK TO A KID WITH A CRUSH ON YOU?)

HEY. NICE TAT.





ME

(ASSUMING HE IS REFERRING TO MY RIGHT SLEEVE, NOW THE MOST VISIBLE PIECE OF ART ON MY BODY AND ONE THAT WILL SURELY DRAW THE OTHERS FURTHER OUT OF THE NETHER AND INTO THE WAKING CONSCIOUSNESS - THANK YOU, MY DEAR SWEET RENOIR (I DON'T MEAN THAT ROMANTICALLY, MIND, MISSUS RENOIR SO PLEASE DON'T STAB ME WITH YOUR SHEARS). HOW WOULD YOU LIKE MY SOUL PACKAGED?)

THANK YOU.

(GOES ABOUT BUSINESS OF TRYING TO DUST THE SHELVES OF THE STORE IN A PENCIL SKIRT WITH AN EYELET AND RIBBON BACKING AND A SLIT PERHAPS TOO HIGH FOR THE CATHOLIC RESALE ENVIRONMENT)





JAIL BAIT

(COMES TO REGISTER SOME TIME AFTER ARRIVING IN STORE WITH A PAIR OF SUNGLASSES (BROWN AS RECOMMENDED BY BRUNETTE, TO GO WELL WITH JAIL BAIT'S BLONDE AND PALE COMPLEXION). SETS SUNGLASSES ON COUNTER)





ME

(AFTER RINGING THE $3.99 GLASSES INTO REGISTER)

$4.21





JAIL BAIT

(HANDS ME $20.25)

YOU GOT THIS JOB THROUGH WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT, RIGHT?





ME

(AFTER A SLIGHT, UNCOMFORTABLE PAUSE DURING WHICH I THINK: "HOW ON EARTH DO YOU KNOW THIS?" AND "YEAH. IN 2006. A LONG TIME AGO NOW. IT WAS A REQUIREMENT FOR MY GRADUATION FOR DUMMIES CLASS THOUGH I WAS NOT ONE OF THE DUMMIES." EVENTUALLY, NODS)

YEAH.

(HANDS JAIL BAIT HIS CHANGE. I MIGHT HAVE PUT THE SUNGLASSES IN A BAG)





JAIL BAIT

(POCKETS CHANGE. SAYS SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF-)

I'M DOING THAT, TOO.






ME

(MAKING A HATCH MARK NEXT TO THE WORD "SUNGLASSES" ON THE LEGAL PAD TALLY)

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

(I MEAN THIS SINCERELY THOUGH IT MAY HAVE COME OUT SARDONICALLY. I CANNOT HELP THAT THE NATURAL CADENCE OF MY VOICE TENDS TO LEAN TOWARD SARDONICISM)






JAIL BAIT

( EXITS STAGE LEFT, LEAVING ME WITH A STRANGE FEELING AND AN IMAGE IN MY MIND OF MY PICTURE HANGING ON THE CUBICLE WALL OF MARY BETH, THE "WOW" DIRECTOR WITH A SPACE IN THE WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT OFFICES INSIDE MATC)

Am I a "Success Story" to be told to all of the Summer Youth Employment Program youths ages 14 to 24?

023.) Going to a Hookie Lau...

(and it just so happens the killer was caught - in this picture! - taken before we even began)

There was a murder mystery party at the local library tonight. The theme was "Lethal Luau" and of course I came completely overdressed. Four-inch wedge heels (making me 6'4'') and a 1940s Hawaiian print two-piece outfit, the blouse tied under the bust so of course I froze solid in the air conditioning. But I was dressed quite appropriately for my role as Holly Day, the third wife of a reclusive billionaire.

I should have taken a picture of my outfit, but Kelly's battery was dying and I could only manage this one shot of the pineapple at my table. Turns out, I got a two-for-one! The killer, Joey "'Bo-'Jo" Breakers, is seated at far right munching on (what else?) pineapple.

There were two tables set up in the community room of the library, each with seven characters a piece. There were times when I could barely hear myself think (the other table being quite rowdy) and therefor missed some of my cues.

We feasted upon dried papaya slices, cookies, cheese and crackers and the typical tropical fruit platter. There was also a very delicious punch of cranberry, pomegranate and soda (I must get the recipe for this).

In spite of the fact that I watch far too many crime shows on television and therefor guessed (correctly) who the killer was before the first round was through - the party was great fun.

Next party is in October. I think I'll sit at the other table and play a man - or at least sit at the other table so that when I go back to the "old" table I can play a man. Yeah. Something like that.

022.) You're Never There, As Cake Once Sang

I am socially inept. I have accepted this as a condition of my breed (Writer) and have made peace with it long ago; however, there are times when all I want to do is sit down and flap my gums and simply... be. With another person who actually exists outside of my head.

So it would make perfect sense for me to listen to "Independently Happy" by Blue October (whose lyrics have graced this picture today).

021.) Go Ahead. Get a Speeding Ticket in the Name of a Lame Musical

I love it when people drive 25pmh over the speed limit, their stereo blasting to a level flirting dangerously with the sound barrier - all so that I may listen to the last few verses of "You're the One that I Want" (Ooo, ooo, ooo - Honey)

Join me, won't you, in my quest to bring subsistence to the masses, whereas "Grease" merely echoes eternally with the sound message of: "Dress like a whore woman of the night and you too can bag your man!"

020.) New Cameras.

I caved and bought a digital camera.





I have christened her Kelly. I know, it's crazy to name a camera - but people do name stranger things. Besides, I have a film camera I call Grace. It was only fitting.


Oh, and hello to my new followers! It's very nice to meet you. I'll comment on your lives as soon as my head stops spinning. I have to leave for work in ten minutes and I haven't even gotten my things together yet.

019.) I Can Finish What I Start, Really I Can. Part II.

(Part I - though Part I really doesn't have a thing to do with Part II)

Some people are connoisseurs of fashion. For others it's fine wine or profanity or potato chips in the shape of janitor's heads. As for me? I run after the simple project - which might be an odd thing to say given my half-finished writing workbook (I used to be ambidextrous as a child, am once again though I stopped using the workbook when I reached cursive), my pile of foreign language books I work through diligently for all of eight chapters before stopping (only to start again from the beginning because I've forgotten everything I've learned) - or the stacks of books I have leaning drunkenly all over my living- and bedroom (99% unread and yet I keep purchasing more, and the ones I do read? I start one, stop, start another and before I know it I'm juggling anywhere from three to five at a time). But a project has always instilled in me a kind of thrill, an almost perverse electric current of unbridled joy.

Most of these projects, enveloped by this quasi-lust reminiscent of mist around a haunted television island, hearken back to my school days - a fact whose irony is not lost to me (for I have always held a great disdain toward learning institutions for reasons both irrational and justifiable).

I suppose I delved into school projects with such passion because it was an escape. I wasn't the kid with the stable home life; however, I wasn't the kid who drank or did drugs or had sex. I wasn't a cutter. I didn't dabble in the dark arts or nurse an eating disorder. I didn't do anything, really. Yes, I had friends - but their motives were muddled at worst and possessed of raging sadism at best. I was far too depressed to do anything about that.

So schoolwork, much as I hated it (much as I could not for the very life of me understand it), allowed a reprieve from everything going on around me.

I cite the following, not only as evidence toward my burning insanity, but also as an example that one day I will complete those German text books - and the Living Russian record course, and the Marilyn Monroe photo collage, and the...

To the list (which is not complete, but a brief overview), which will not only highlight some of my finer accomplishments but remind me that I can do anything that I set my mind to.

• The Cow Book (not actually mine, but bear with me here)

The Cow Book was exactly as implied. A book entirely devoted to the cow, every picture drawn by my father (who could have rivaled Michelangelo and why he didn't pursue a career in art is beyond me). This book alone might explain my lust for lavish and meticulous projects. Sadly, the Cow Book vanished after my father's death in 1996.

• Sugar Cube Castle

Lying dormant for years, heretofore only seen in long, exuberant plays with winding plots soon forgotten, my desire was realized. It was the annual sugar cube castle competition. Going all out, my castle was complete with the tradition bulwark and turrets, yes, but also slitted windows for the archers, a working drawbridge, rolling green hills of that paper grass used in toy railroad set-ups and an orchard of fake plastic trees. All of the children's castles were then, for whatever reason, carried by the lot of us into the school's dark, dank, mold-smelling basement locker room - the very same locker room where we went for tornado drills; the very same, creepy locker room made even creepier when doing the duck-and-cover in the dark.

• Book Report I - R. L. Stine "The Dead Lifeguard" (I think. It is the only one that would make sense)

In order to complete this task I ransacked Big Lots. I came out with two flexi-pose female wrestling dolls and some sort of small Barbie Doll pool made of plastic. I filled the pool with blue-raspberry flavored Jell-o from the dented/nearly-to-already expired or otherwise outdated general store somewhere in Sheboygan County (where damn never everything in that store is $1). Once the Jell-o began to set, I stuck one of the identical twin dolls face down in the pool and the other I positioned at the edge of the pool, her pink bra and tiny cut-off jean shorts indicative to the beach environment in which the book takes place. What I actually wrote about the book I do not remember.

• Book Report II - Caroline B. Cooney "The Terrorist"

Another girl in my sixth grade class was also reading this book (the girl sitting directly across from me no less) and so we teamed up on the report. Really, the only thing I recollect is recreating the scene in which the main character's idiot brother accepts a brown paper package tied with twine, given to him by a stranger in the London Subway, and subsequently becomes the victim of a bomb. One of us read and the other, on the cue of "Boom!" (screamed by a plant in the audience), dropped dead to the floor.

• Book Report III - The Civil War (exact book forgotten because my mother got rid of it, but possible title could be "The Civil War: A History" by Harry Hansen)

I chose this book with the intention of creating a massive display of war injuries (the tome had an impressive catalog of not only every soldier who fought and died in the war, but also the destruction of war). My teacher wasn't very impressed, perhaps because she didn't buy my "Little Activist" routine (I was in fourth grade at the time). What I should have done was do a report on "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo.

• Book Report IV: John Toland "Adolf Hitler" (the old two-volume, hardcover edition)

In a futile effort to understand a monster, I created a thorough report on this book (sans my typical comprehensive visual aid). I might have been in fifth grade at the time.

• Book Report V: J. K. Rowling "Harry Potter and the (whatever it was)"

A not-so-complete departure from my norm: reports on books dealing with death. The class was broken up into teams. Maxwell, Heather, Eric and I were in a group. I believe it was Eric who had the ingenious idea of filming our reports. We went to my house for the movie making.

Maxwell taped Heather and me asleep on the floor (the camera lingering on my ass for reasons I'm still not sure on, maybe it was just big compared to Heather's). Heather walked through the jungle. Eric was not there that day, I don't think, and if he was I can't remember what he did. As for me, I stepped into my role as Severus Snape (the Alan Rickman character the object of my long, deep dark desire - a character who in the book never fails to bring about images of Trent Reznor, and I will never forgive J. K. Rowling for killing Snape off). In charge of the camera, I used my magical powers (and seamless control of the power button) to turn a stuffed tiger into a crystal turtle paperweight.

• Unknown/half-forgotten video project:

All I remember is Brittney's farm (the same Brittney with whom I did the report on "The Terrorist"). It was autumn and I'd neglected to bring a jacket. I sat in the cab of a pick-up truck, my hands frozen even cradled to my chest, Niles sitting on the sleeve of my favorite blue sweater.

I remember standing in front of the camera at the farm, talking at the lens while the horse behind me suddenly decided he needed to pee.

• The Great Egg Drop

Because I could not procure a live chicken, I had to do the next best thing. Place the egg in a marshmallow-filled canning jar. Wrap canning jar in paper toweling and pack in well-padded box. Slice open thumb when retrieving the unbroken egg, the glass jar having absorbed all of the shock.

• The 8th Grade History/English Co-Production of the Salem Witch Trails

I played Tituba, slave to Reverend Samuel Parris's family and the one who was pointed at by the collective finger. I was laughed at, either because my skirt was too large or because I was a skinny white girl (in an all-white school) playing a black woman. But I had the last laugh. Not only was I in the play, playing a rather pivotal role (which was also disgusting; the racial and religious scorn of the Puritans) - but I also helped to build the sets.

• King Cluck - A Group Effort

Like King Tut only a store bought chicken. We loved that thing. We rubbed oils on his headless body and we wrapped him up mummy-style. We placed him in a shoebox sarcophagus. Because the science class was learning about decomposition, we buried King Cluck in the small forest beside the school (the idea being that we'd get back to him in a few years' time). And then some punk kid dug him up shortly after the burial ceremony.

• Disease!

The same year as King Cluck, same 7th grade science glass, we were each assigned to a report on a bacterium or virus. It was supposed to be random. My soon-to-be one-date boyfriend pulled "ear infection" from the chip bowl.

The gods smiled down upon me: I got "Ebola".

• Archeology Dig in Small-town Wisconsin

The teachers all pulled together and got a truckload of dirt shipped to the playground. That mound was almost as tall as the middle school building. I toiled away at the dirt pile for days under the searing, soul searching sun (thank you, Life of Agony, do you have any idea how much I love you?). I didn't find a damned thing.

And my moment of shining glory:

• The Presentation on Your Person of Choice

Chris McCandless would have bummed me the hell out, so I ran to the teacher the day, almost the very moment, she gave out the assignment. In one gasping breath I demanded more than asked her, "Edgar Allan Poe. Is Edgar Allan Poe taken? Give me Edgar Allan Poe!"

So I got E. A. Poe, my favorite author (don't let the blog name fool you).

I lived in the library during the length of that assignment. My visual aid was a grainy photo on craft board, interesting and thought provoking but not the coup de grâce.

My presentation was a complete, unabridged biography of my literary God. I used a pack and a half of college ruled index cards I picked up at the local hardware store (the kind that smelt of that sweet hardware store scent and came in the giant economy packages of 100). I shoved every single, solitary fact about Poe down my classmates throats. I'm sure I even had the number of pores on the man's face written down somewhere.

I gave a full reading of "The Tell-Tale heart".

The teacher was none too pleased. She said it was too long and relatively boring and that I should not have been so excited (to have overdone the presentation as I did).

Of course, there was the moment I graduated from high school as well. That sort of proved that I wasn't as stupid as I though I was, that I actually could accomplish something greater than a presentation on a dead writer.

There are also the signs I make at work which take me half an hour to complete (two days the last one I did, which was on a piece of ply board and painted white and red). And the catalog furniture around the house that I put together (in the end, I always eat the instructions out of blind rage). And, of course, the books I'm writing.

So, yes. If I have the passion I can do anything I want. I can finish what I start.

I can talk to a sodding tattoo artist. I can hand him a paper bag and say, "Here. To protect your fine, fine lines from those dastardly swooning bodies you must surely trip over on a regular basis".

I can get published (Edit 09 November 2009: I will be getting published. A short story at least, with which I won first place for at the America's Haunted Roadtrip Ghostwriting Contest).

I can dye an elephant pink with purple polka dots and name him Fred.

019.) I Can Finish What I Start, Really I Can. Part I.

My main goal, the only true goal I've ever had in my life, is to become a published author.

I've accomplished what other people might see as goals, achievements, mind.

I have a job. A job I like very much in spite of its frustrations, a job which does something for the small part of the world in which I take up space. A job that I possibly do not want to do for the rest of my life, but for now I am happy.

I have a somewhat advanced education without the aid of the pomp and circumstance of college (primary source: a mother who spent more years in college than I've been alive (22 years thus far at the time of this writing) and who was so overqualified for everything (even teaching positions) that the only job that would take her was one answering phones at a battered women's shelter - which would have had to let her go if she hadn't retired before hand). Suddenly I realize I'm more like my hero than ever I could have thought, or perhaps I am crazy and this is all in my head.

I have a canvas of skin I will paint with beauty.

Eventually, though I've never felt hardwired for it, I will find love.

That thought, the one of love, terrifies me even more than not being a writer (because not being a writer is not an option). It's not so much the notion of dying alone, but of letting someone in.

I drift. I enter someone's life and then I leave with the night. It's not something I do with any conscious intent, it's not something I do with the aim to inflict pain or anger - it's just something I do.

As a little girl, I never dreamt of a wedding - maybe because I knew, even then, that I would not be allowed to marry whatever gender took my heart. I never fantasized about a house with a white picket fence. I never wanted children or a car or dog or even a house plant.

I wanted to write. Always, I have wanted to write. But as my hero learned too late, happiness is only real when shared.

Yet I freeze. I'm either blind to the adoration of others, others I could indeed have pictured myself with, or am rendered dumb by my emotions. My heart soars and my soul aches and I want nothing more to speak. Speak, goddammit, but I cannot. I stand there with my mouth open, willing myself to expel this congealed mass of feeling in me, and instead I only stare with a pained longing at something I want so badly but am terrified of.

I am terrified because they will leave.

My father died of cancer. My "step-father" drank himself to death. My mother abandoned the former to carouse with the latter - abandoned me as well, left me to deal with the hard and empty promise of life.

I was taken away from what I recall so fondly as my true friends, the band of three I never seemed to have gotten enough of, and found myself with people whose motives I have given up trying to understand - people who instilled in me a constant suspicion of everyone. But then I made a move. I left those people, those "friends" I had, and I never looked back. I was alone. Finally, I was left alone.

Now, however, I jump between bouts of independent happiness and great unease.

I like being alone, I prefer it, and then I feel my stomach churn with dread.

What is success if I am alone? What is an absolute existence if I have no one's arms, in my state of accomplishment, to run into?

So I guess that settles it then.

Despite what fear it may cause or the awkwardness and embarrassment it might breed, I will make my confession to Dropkick Murphy even if it kills me. If it doesn't work? I've felt heartbreak before, profoundly - paralyzingly - and so it won't be the end of the world. I'll simply pick up the needle and thread and move along.

Holy Till's false phallus, Batman - I wasted an entire entry on that? Two when everything is all said and done?

(Part II - though Part II really doesn't have a thing to do with Part I)

018.) Who Needs to Join in When You Can Observe and Have Just as Much Fun?

We have a tradition in this city in which I live and maybe you've heard of it. This tradition is called Fish Day, held every third Saturday in July (and why a Saturday I'll never know (can't you tell I'm a day behind in my postings?)). It's a big deal in my city, possibly bigger than Pirate Fest and Maritime Fest and the tantrum throwing flip-flopping of that brat Brett Favre (and I know I'll be shot by a renegade Wisconsinite for saying that, but it's an undeniable fact).

Fish Day is such a big deal here that we have a parade (a parade that passes by my house, negating the need to sit outside and burn from the sun) - complete with drum lines which is really the only thing (apart from the classic cars) I sit through the parade for. There's also a walk/run and a craft fair and fireworks, but c'mon - it's really the parade that makes the morning.

I'm mentioning this because I have to explain why there were hundreds (I do mean that literally, for thousands of people flock downtown to eat fish, listen to live music and get drunk) of people lining the streets. I have to explain why my neighbors had people all over their lawn and why, only in Wisconsin, would a beer-bellied man be wearing a backward Packers cap, a Reggie White jersey, pond scum green cargo shorts, grey socks and tan hiking boots. Don't knock the Reggie jersey individually - he was my favorite and I'm not even from this state originally, not to mention the fact that I don't like football - but the whole package which screams cheese eating, beer drinking, "yah der hey"-ing, cow tipping Wisconsin. Which is kind of cool, actually, though I am not usually one to embrace stereotypes.

What could be even better than Stereotype Guy?

Listening to the drunks come home, of course. They'll either walk up from the marina or catch the Fish Day Shuttle (sponsored by Miller Lite) and either way they'll pass by my bedroom window.

A taste of the interesting conversations:

"I told you once, I told you twice - ain't no way those are fucking Converse!"

- said by an anonymous man retorting to a teenage girl, who I hope wasn't drunk and who screamed across the street to this man "These are fucking Chucks!" (the man having made an incomprehensible slurring moan that the girl could decipher far too quickly for comfort as having to do with the brand of her footwear).

What a city.

017.) Meditation at the Tattoo Parlor, Part Deux

Phase II of my half-sleeve today (or, rather, yesterday - I'm typing this from my notebook).

(excuse the flash refracting off of the mirror and making the quality of this horrendous. also excuse the blue bits of flaking flesh)

I walk into the place I love so much to find a murder of giggling teenage girls and a pair of lovers. Brought to mind - "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right..." - and try not to lament my generation as the murder of giggling girls profess in high voices how cute everything is going to look. This murder of giggling girls is surrounding Dropkick Murphy, he of the obsessive need to smoke and the strong liking of a certain band (or maybe not, I could always be wrong).

My cynical nature roiling, I meet the artiste of my soul in the back (which does sound horribly chintzy, I know, but it's the truth - that he is the artist of my soul). He breaks out the masseuse table and I lay myself down, turning my head away from the master in order to look out at the parlor. The jokers/lovers are MIA. The clowns/murder of giggling girls have once again descended upon Dropkick Murphy, one of whom asking "You're getting a tattoo too, girl?" to which my beloved Renoir retorts, "No, she's just resting. She books four hours to lay down."

I do love my Renoir, though I never say so because he is a married man and that would be quite awkward; certain words have a lot of grey area.

So, reverting into the silence I am famous for, I watch a curly haired brunette with a half set of spiderbites sit before Dropkick Murphy. She is getting her first tattoo, a rather large flower at the base of her neck. Dropkick Murphy asks Renoir to check the symmetry of the design and Spiderbite Brunette proceeds to back her bowling ball-printed backside into my face. Dropkick Murphy walks her through the whole thing, occasionally shaking his head at (I assume) the superfluousness of my generation, which runneth over its cup and floodeth the room.

It might be around this time, as Dropkick Murphy works on the outline of Spiderbite Brunette, that Blondie (the girl who asked that rather obvious question about me) ponders the staying power of a tattoo. Wouldn't it slough off, she asks (and she did not use that word, slough), over time given the amount of skin the average human sheds "in a year" (to which Renoir replies, "'A year?'")

(It was also here that "Somewhat Damaged" (by Nine Inch Nails, purchase anything and everything by him/them now) began playing in my head. "... shedding skin succumb defeat, this machine is obsolete...")

Anyway, the experts try, delicately, to explain to Blondie the science of tattoos. They (they being tattoos) are permanent because the ink is placed deep into the skin, whereabouts what Dropkick Murphy calls the seventh layer, and new skin grows and sheds above the tattoo.

Blondie also reveals her ignorance to the band Bad Religion (who she thinks is a movie) and the song "I Fought the Law" (The Clash version played twice on the internet radio in four hours) which Blondie has never once heard in any of its renditions.

Spiderbite Brunette is abandoned for want of food. She also wanders about outside, between outlining and coloring - the tattoo exposed to the bone marrow chilling summer air.

A brunette with checkerboard shoes is next after Spiderbite Brunette with a lyric from A White Tie Affair wrapping around her right ankle (I think: "Cuz you're tragedy, A queen for his majesty, All these plans for me, Your kingdom is crumbling."). She feels faint, has to half lie on the floor and then recounts the brief history of A White Tie Affair (born in Chicago, whose lead singer she's met not once, not twice, but thrice), A Black Tie Affair (how dare they! - ?), the bands playing Warped Tour this year and how she really likes the lyrics around her ankle (which are not from a major verse but whatever) and if she were to hate the band in the future (how dare she!) she'd still love the song.

Meanwhile the wife and/or mother of Jesus is piercing the tongue of a young woman - after a frustrating encounter with a girl, not this current eager tongue but an eager navel with a mother of a different surname, the eager navel only seventeen and lacking anything other than a Social Security Card and a school ID (to which Renoir demanded a birth certificate as proof of age and many, many photocopies). Spiderbite Brunette sees eager tongue getting her tongue done and decides that she must have her own barbell through hers.

When it is her turn, Blondie (celebrating her birthday at the time) gets a simple bit of wording on her left foot. As she gets onto the bench, she leans too far back and lets out an ear-splitting scream - right in Dropkick Murphy's face. Her friends explain that Blondie is not only terrified, but has ADHD.

Free at last, Dropkick Murphy stops by me and Renoir before leaving for Cousins Subs (and the gas station for beer and caffeine for Renoir).

"Fuckin' A," he says at the progress of color of my ladies (my left arm being Death over Chastity and eventually my right: Fame over Death).

I can barely manage a "mm-hm". Not out of pain, which is shooting down my nervous system and out my twitching toes, but my damned shyness.

016.) Spooks Are Fun, Albeit Loud.

I work in a closet - well, that's what we call it anyway. Really, I work in an old trucking building and my "closet" must have been the foreman's office. I say this because there are two sets of doors leading in and out of the room. One set, a pair of french doors, were removed long ago to allow for the heaping shopping carts of clothes to be more easily accessible. The other door leads into a tight hallway with a secondary staircase to the break room, another door to the Doll Lady's workstation (and through that, the store corridor) and yet another door that opens to the front lawn.

No one but the Culligan Man ever uses this wooden door to that tight hallway, and even then when he comes (which is about once a month to replenish our supply of water and salt) he will on occasion go around - ergo bypassing both the metal door to outside and the wooden door to my "closet".

Now, the Culligan Man already came this month.

I'm saying all of this because while I was working yesterday I distinctly heard the wooden door to my office slam shut - with great force. Enough force, in fact, to drown out the radio and shave a few years from my life.

That door slammed closed without ever opening.

(said door which closed without ever opening)

It could have been the GM showing his son (who volunteered) around - but he did that more than an hour later. It could have been one of my coworkers but, one was at the other side of the building running the register, one was at the other building weeding and cutting hedges, one was in the warehouse - yes - but told me he'd never gone to that part of the building with the door (and why would he need to? and if he had wanted to visit me he wouldn't have gone around and back to do it). My boss was unaccounted for, but she's always nice enough to announce her presence. Two of my other coworkers were out ill, and the Doll Lady already put in her one day this week on Monday.

It could have been a customer entering the Doll Lady's office (clearly marked with a bold red sign proclaiming "EMPLOYEES ONLY" and the window obscured by curtains) to steal toys - like one man did with an entire "I found this in the hall and it's not marked" box of action figures - but certainly they wouldn't slam the door with such a passion as to announce their presence.

So, yes.

That door slammed closed without ever opening.

(Thank you, Chris. It's nice to see/hear/sense you having fun)

015.) I Am a Giant. Fear Me.

It's so cute when little Asian men ask me

"What is your height?"

and then guffaw when I respond with "Six feet". I only wish I knew what they mutter in their native tongue...

014.) Burnt Popcorn and Lost Children

I should have known that my Saturday was going to be insert proper adjective here when I experienced something very strange the night before (Did she say, "... the night before?" Yes, I did. Now hold on a minute).

All of my life I have been prone to paranormal events. I know that sounds kooky, like I've been experimenting a wee bit too intensely with brain-altering chemicals or that I'm possessed by Satan - but it's true that I am a lightening rod for queer happenings. I won't go into great detail about these happenings because this entry will be quite long enough, but I will say that I've had premonitions ranging from deep dark things that happened an hour after dreaming this deep dark thing, to mundane and silly things that take anywhere from a week to a month to occur. I've seen ghosts or dead people or whatever term you like. I've had out-of-body experiences when I was an infant (my first memory, actually) and witnesses have confirmed my telling of the event (though they never saw me floating outside my body, they have been able to corroborate the details of the room and the lousy crow which cawed outside of the nursery window, causing me to wake up screaming).

I've also had an entire month of my life revolve around Alaska. The state of Alaska which I've never been, in crossword puzzles and word searches and fill-ins. People who lived in/were born in/visited. On quarters and key chains, bumper stickers and licenses plates, credit cars and hand bags, tattoos and t-shirts. On television documentaries and in books. Bric-a-brac of all manner and beyond. Telephone calls. Everything that could have possibly come up Alaska did. For a month, and then it just stopped. This was not done intentionally and it certainly wasn't an imbalance in my brain, for all of what came about was tangible evidence. Since this event - given the knowledge that Alaska is where my hero died and most of the kooky stuff in my life has happened after 1992, when I was five - I have taken to calling whatever supernatural force is behind these events - Chris. I know it's not actually a dead man doing all of this, but for my own comfort...

Anyway, back to the main thought.

At 9.15PM Friday night (so 10 July), while I was watching the 20/20 General Motors: From Dream to Downfall special, this force I call Chris leaned over the side of my bed and forcefully clapped his hands above my right ear.

Now, this sound could be easily explained away as an object in my bedroom breaking or falling. But upon investigation I found nothing out of the ordinary. Absolutely nothing had broken or fallen or otherwise altered its normal state. Even the closet, on the other side of the wall from where the noise originated, held no answers. The only thing that could have made such an impressive and clean CLAP! (apart from hands) was the snapping of the long, bowing wooden rod in the closet holding all of my dresses (even then that wouldn't be so much a CLAP! but a SNAP!). That rod was still resisting gravity, as was the other ity-bity rod which cuts my closet in half and prevents me from any true use of the closet. The shelves were still in place, as were the items I had placed upon them.

Maybe the sound was from elsewhere in the house? No, it wasn't. Nothing was out of the ordinary in any other room.

Maybe the sound was from outside? After all, I live on the second floor of a 200-year-old duplex and sound carries. The downstairs neighbors were all away. The old woman to the left (or facing my bedroom) is quieter than a church mouse and sometimes I forget that anyone even lives in that house. The people on the right, for that matter in the entire alley, are hardworking people who don't make a lot of noise. Given the location of the noise, the sound could not have been a backfiring car on the main road at the front of the house - that and the sound was a hand clap.

So, yes, when I went to work yesterday in the first of our two buildings I should have known it was going to be interesting.

• Whoever switched on the breakers missed the one for our radio corner. (silly thing to list, but it was a precursor for the things to come)

• Our regular volunteer, who is usually very good with these things (and seemed quite difficult that day, actually), never plugged in the coffee maker. Of course it had to be me, the woman who doesn't drink coffee, who had to empty the steaming hot drink into the thermos to place out on the "FREE COFFEE" table by the shopping carts. I came very close to scalding the skin clean off my hand.

• The popcorn machine and I are not on the best of terms. Typically, the thing just breaks down on me and sprays hot oil and unpopped kernels everywhere. Not this day. This day the first batch of popcorn I make burnt to a blackened crisp because I'm the one who didn't flick the little switch marked "TURN".
  

• When the business got new credit card machines last Monday (I think it was), not only did the company providing the service not activate the debit card option (inciting riots from the elderly who don't seem to realize that the only difference between credit and debit, apart from the wording, is a pin number) - the company also neglected to provide us tape for the machines. Not knowing this at the time, I pulled out a paper roll from a drawer (thankfully the same length) and plopped it into the machine. Alas, the girth was too great. I had to stand there like an idiot, pulling at the tape and collecting yards (I do mean yards) of paper in efforts of making the roll fit into the machine. Seeing all that wasted money in the trash bin, I gave up and assumed that the credit machine would still work even though the tape compartment didn't close. Having myself a temperamental printer/scanner/copier/fax machine at home, I should have realized just how wrong I was.

A man came up to the register with a furniture tag ("large table") from one of our out buildings. He wanted to pay with his credit card. So there I was, swiping the credit card through a machine that beeped at me: "NO PAPER YOU FOOL". Naturally, I yelled at the machine that I just put paper in. So I pulled out another yard or two and finally the compartment closed, though I had no idea whether the transaction went through and am I going to have to charge this guy $10.56 twice? Thankfully enough, the transaction did go through and all I had to do was press a few dozen buttons in order to reprint the receipts.

• We have two smokers stands out front, chained to the metal railings which extend like tentacles from our glass-enclosed atrium. Normally no one gives these any thought (sometimes I think they're even neglected a cleaning). This day was not normal, however, so of course the one I can see through the picture window behind the register, the one that leans so drunkenly, started to billow with smoke. Whoever had last used it, discarded their half-smoked cigarette without properly snuffing it. I had grand visions of the thing blowing up (highly unlikely) and careening like a rocket through the air, possibly taking out a very large bird and a wolverine on its way back to earth.

• Being summertime, the store gets a lot of traffic from the migrant workers. I do like the migrant workers and find 99.9% of them to be stand-up individuals, but there's this one family (and white and purple and green people do it too) notorious for tearing off price tags in order to get things for less. Like: a three piece, brand spanking new (though without the store tags) infant boys outfit - onesie, blue blankie and a mesh bag with a hat, all connected with matching blue ribbon and a silken hanger. I priced that outfit at 6 - 8 dollars. Maybe even 12. The eldest member of this family handed me a tag (completely intact, indicating that it did not fall from the plastic, thorny barb I had used on the outfit because the only way that tag could have come off is if it was torn), a tag that said "2 piece, boys, 2.50". No. No, no, no. Suck dirt and die, lady. Switching prices is stealing.

• Anorexics tend to make me feel ill. Large people I don't really have a problem with, but the chicks who are unnaturally thin sicken me. I myself am tall and slender. I'm not a size zero (nor do I want to be, thank you, I like having breasts and an ass) but I'm thin enough and have had friends who were thin or thinner; I'd like to think I know natural thinness. So when a mother comes in with her two daughters, one of whom are as thin as the mother, with jeans on and a hooker-esque tank top - allowing me to count every single one of her vertebrae - I feel nauseous. When an aging Baby Boomer comes into the store literally all lines and angles, I can't help but contort my face with disgust. And when, this day, a daughter came into the store with her mother and they came to the register - the mother a bit above average height, pleasantly doughy, and the daughter my height but with a sunken face and bones sticking out all over the place and clothes no bigger than a child's 10 and the tell-tale white hair beginning to sprout... I second guessed taking my lunch.

I realize that these people and people like them have a mental disorder and I feel for them, really I do. But as a child I watched my father being eaten away by cancer. Seeing walking skeletons reminds me on a primal, mostly unconscious level of my cancer plagued father.

• A tween to early teen boy lost his mother, or his mother lost him. Such a handsome kid, too, and seeing him running about the store and then the parking lot with his father/uncle/random stranger yelling for his mother in both English and Spanish with that look of torture on his face was saddening. Luckily, after asking him twice, he gave me his mother's name. A quick call and she was found. Madre had simply gone to the other building without telling her son. Or maybe, being 13-ish, he hadn't really paying attention to what was going on around him.

• The only good thing, really: I met a woman who finally understood my left arm. She said, and I quote, "Ah, yes. Robinson Jeffers."
  

013.) Proof of Humanity's Decent into Idiocy! (A True Story)

This is S'ven*. One bright day S'ven pointed to the TV and said, "My friends say I'm good at that". And so, with no formal training in the sport outside of weekend forays in a friend's basement and absolutely no knowledge (none whatsoever) of even the meekest shadow of the martial arts, S'ven is trying his hand at the Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC for short.

S'ven will have his first match, his first time in the ring, on 22 August 2009.

S'ven does not have health insurance.




* (well, no, this is not s'ven because this s'ven here is a stock photograph) name has been changed to Steven "S'ven" Annonymous to protect the sanctity of his silliness

photograph by Ingram Publishing

012.) Ah, Mrs. Gradgrind.

No matter how many times I read Charles Dickens's Hard Times I always come to a screeching halt on page twenty and read the same haunting omen over and over and over again.

"Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind it."

I'd like very much to get that paragraph tattooed onto me, but I have not the slightest clue as to where to put it.

011.) круглый идиот язычники

I should take the advice of Camper Van Beethoven and take the Skinheads bowling. There's an alley not two minutes from the house and the smell of stale cigarette smoke and used shoes might do the heathens some good. Certainly they would acquire the sense to not donate a few dozen boxes of vile propaganda.



UPDATE TO ENTRY 07.06.09 "круглый идиот язычники":

Kallao commented on my blog entry? Kallao our Milwaukee radio god? Or perhaps this is simply a huge coincidence or an evidence of Hugh Everett's parallel worlds (though, no, the latter does not make sense in this situation - but I do love me the MWI).

Either way, because this comment thing is not working for me this morning of the 9 July: Thank you for the comment. I wrote something witty in reply, but it would be lost if I posted it here (something about sparing you snivelling idiots though they would inspire great photographs, in which case I'll be keeping them to myself).

Try as I might, I can't help feeling my inner fangirl squealing and posturing and it's coming out in this update...

010.) The Sweet Stench of Melting Rocket Pops

Comes the summer, as we all remember from the carefree and raucous days of our youth, comes the ice cream man.

Far off in the distance snakes the tinny notes of a tinny, repetitive song and we gather at street corners, salivating madly and all atwitter with anticipation. We gesticulate at the sun, from whose dancing waves of heat the ice cream truck emerges, golden in the late afternoon light (yes, late afternoon - when children's bellies are too full for Mystery Meat and yet starving for sweetly delicious artery clogging delights). We gesticulate and wave, we wave and we yell - and we chase after the ice cream man, who turns our street corner and keeps right on going.

I've bore witness to this often in my relatively short life, in numerous towns and cities (some, admittedly, on the television but, that does not take from the reality of what I see across the street), and I've come to the modest conclusion that all ice cream men are sadistic bastards who rather enjoy the gaggle of small children running behind their small, gaudily painted truck - the gaggle of small children with faces red and slick and glossy from exertion, waving dollar bills in their tiny sweaty hands, small coins jingling psychotically in small pockets.

Or perhaps this is (has always been, though certainly now more than ever) a cleverly run government campaign against childhood obesity. Maybe there aren't any treats at all in the back of the ice cream truck, but broccoli sprouts in popcorn boxes or insects on sticks.

Or perhaps the ice cream truck is merely a ruse, which would explain why the truck goes deeper and deeper into the darkness of the side streets... Windowless vans and cheery trucks have always made me nervous, however; I do have an obscenely overactive imagination.

009.) Put On Your Flag Panties - It's Time to Celebrate

It's the fourth of July, the annual celebration of this nation's independence. This day some 223 years ago the Declaration of Independence was adopted, a paper which among other things stated that America was finally free of Britain's rule.

So what am I doing?

Am I gorging myself on hot dogs and hamburgers and beer? Am I maiming myself with sparklers and/or bottle rockets? Am I hanging around Summerfest doing any combination of the aforementioned things and then some - like Kramp and Adler's Summerfest Bingo?

Hardly.

This day I'm staying indoors, listening to the melodic music of an earlier generation and eating these strange french fry-shaped chips flavored like salt and vinegar. I am trying to write my novel (it should be so easy, I have the entire thing planned out - I only need to fill in the spaces in between) but, instead I am wondering about what on earth I'm going to say on Friday 17 July. That day is approaching fast, so fast I feel as though I might choke on the apprehension and excitement - that or these queer potato chips.



UPDATE TO ENTRY 07.04.09 "PUT ON YOUR BIG GIRL PANTIES - IT'S TIME TO CELEBRATE":

I put down the potatoes chips, turned off the Grateful Dead and did something more productive with my day.

First, I knocked out another chapter of my book, putting me thismuchcloser to finishing. Well, really I'm still quite a ways off but it's nice to think that I'm closing in on the glorious finish line.

I then watched the people downstairs begin the arduous task of building their side porch (again, for the original beast had rotted through). This new porch completely obliterates the sidewalk and overtakes my front stoop.

After this, toward the evening, I put in my video (and no, this is not a slang term for DVD as album has become for CD - I really do still watch VHS) of Gettysburg. Now, I know that the 4th of July is Independence Day and came a good long while before the Civil War - but, honestly, the Civil War was the only thing I ever willingly sat through in history class (after history class, after history class because it seemed to be that until 10th grade we never reached even the first world war).

Gettysburg is a superb film (thank you Maxwell, my old Civil War buff schoolmate who in the 8th grade brought this movie to class and also somehow managed to get the Choir teacher to play Monty Python and the Holy Grail on that bus to Six Flags - but I digress). Yes, Gettysburg is heartbreaking and soaring and vile and superb. I highly recommend it. It is rated PG (or was, anyway, when it was released, though now with the tighter garrote around smoking and violence it might have gone up to PG-13 or even R).

I say this because I find that the Civil War might be the only war I would ever fight in/for - given a much earlier birth or a time machine or greater knowledge at the time about what the Japanese and the Nazis were really doing during the 1940s. We (or they? My family wouldn't arrive in the country for another half century) - we weren't fighting for a lie or for words. We were fighting for life, for the dignity of human life.

And now a Wal-Mart wants to go up near the Wilderness battlefield in Virginia? Great way of pissing on our nation's bloody and painful history, guys. What's next? A Chuck E. Cheese's on Ellis Island? A strip mall along the Trail of Tears?

008.) But We Might See the Face of Jesus in that Mattress!

So often I study the mattresses donated to us at our little thrift shop at the edge of the universe. So often I scrutinize their tired skin and think:

What might be seen if only we had an ultra-violet light!

Then I wonder why my co-workers' faces are twisted into violent displays of horror, their hands thrown into great vats of moisturizing sanitizing gel and their backs twitching from revulsion.

007.) Little Dogs with Big Egos

(Purestock photograph, photographer unknown)



There is an older gentleman who comes by on a regular basis, parks his car in the shoulder of the drive and lets loose his half dozen dogs. These dogs are not so much canines as rounded balls of yipping fuzz with stuby legs. They hop about like toy sheep, the dogs, and proceed to deficate on the lawn. No baggies are pulled from stuffed pockets and no metal scoops are utilized - just the little dogs running wild, yipping, while the man stands by the open car door.

He then calls to his dogs, most quickly scampering to the vehicle - most. There's always one, a tiny brown minute of a thing, that never comes when demanded. The man is thus forced to go collect this one precocious mutt. Inevitably, sometime between the man leaving the car and him gathering the one brown dog in a sea of white, those white dogs scamper out of the car through the open door.

It's a lesson in futility being played out right before me, and yet still the man hasn't learned to shut the car door before chasing after Little Caramel.

006.) Maybe I'll Run Off to the Circus.

I've been faced with many strange questions in my life ("Are you Asian?" for example, thrown at me from an otherwise nice black kid from across the foyer at MATC; "Your kid's?" for another example, brought to me by a not very nice gentlemen who clearly thought I was a mother (W.T.F., I say) after explaining to him that I was missing the [afternoon Red Sox] baseball game [broadcast on Fox]) - but by far the strangest question I was greeted with earlier this afternoon.

"Are you a clown?"

Was it the pin-up girl pigtails? The plaid shirt, the farmhand jeans? If so, since when do clowns dress in such a manner without their pounds of goofy make-up? I don't believe I wear pounds of goofy make-up because I hardly wear any make-up in the first place.

Perhaps, and more likely, it was the twelve rings (no, I only have eight fingers and two thumbs, thank you very much). Perhaps, and more likely, it was of course my tattoos - in which case I am not a clown but a carnival attraction.

More likely still, this fine specimen of a Red Hatter was just another one of the walking callouses I'm dealt with on Wednesday (the one day a week when the older of the species come out in droves, mean and ugly and demanding 10% off their 25 cent purchase), a walking callous who forgot her spectacles.