Dry September - The Sound and the Fury of a Writer

040.) A Lesson in Perseverance -- Sort Of.

2010-01-27T05:40:00.000-08:00

If I haven't already mentioned it, I am a staunch supported of the West Memphis Three (also here and here). I have been known to stalk people through the aisles of my work establishment, brandishing my little orange strips of protest and berating them for not being willing to even set foot in the library to gain access to free internet service -- and beating them with couch pillows when they get snarky.

Okay, not really. But I do hand people those aforementioned strips of paper whenever they question me about the dog tags round my neck. So, in effect, they deserve whatever reaction they get from me concerning the case and their indifference to it; how does no one seem to know or care about these three men?

Obviously, this is something I'm very passionate about -- and while it might not come anywhere near my feelings of love and adoration to a dead man and his ideals (the truth to Jon Krakauer's lies can be found here), I do still have a whole heck of a lot of fight in me for three Arkansans I have never met.

Among other things, I have sent a letter a month to the President. Well, one to that git and all the rest to our current President. October through July or August, I can't remember. So it wasn't quite a year (which must say a lot about my character, as I seem to have been struck with a condition at nineteen that has left me nigh unable to finish anything I start (more on that here) -- or perhaps I take on far too much (like the four books I'm reading, and the three novellas and half a dozen novels I have planned, and the play I can see only one scene of, and the quilt I want to make though I cannot sew...). Anyway, I wrote the letters and clipped them to the mailbox and become completely downhearted when I didn't receive a response to a single one.

Then what happens?

I gather the mail yesterday to find a simple white envelope, return labeled "The White House". There my name is, beautifully written by an unknown hand who knew not that the abbreviation for Wisconsin is not WO but WI).

The envelope was not thick, nor was it a fancy cardboard thing hinting of a hand written response one should frame immediately.

I opened the letter anyway, with my special golden sword letter opener (this was a special occasion after all).

I was a little saddened to see that it wasn't hand written, but then I perked up when I saw the signature. "Barack Obama". Maybe it's a stamp, but it looks true. There are even tiny puddles where the pen paused to breathe.

He calls me "Dear Friend" in his letter, though I'm sure he calls everyone that, and while he doesn't specifically mention the West Memphis Three by name he does inform me about his agenda to completely overhaul the criminal justice system.

So it's a form letter.

I got a form letter from the President of the United States of America.

How cool is that?

039.) Words Fail Me.

2009-11-09T06:04:00.000-08:00

I actually won.

38.) Why Is This Not Working?

2009-08-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

So, I've joined this site Authonomy dot com with the intention of posting "Side Order of Fries" there and being seen and heard, right?

I create my profile, upload an older picture of myself and start setting up the book. All of this goes very well - right up until I'm asked to start posting chapters.

First I'm asked "How many chapters?" would I like to upload.

So I choose a number, any number, between one and fifty.

Then I go down the line (after saving each and every chapter of my mystery novel in a different format, in its own separate file), naming my chapters as I go, and then I hit "NEXT", assuming that I'll now be going to the "GO LIVE" section of the process and start peddling my work.

Of course this doesn't happen.

Apparently, neither my Word nor Rich Text Format documents are valid documents.

Apparently, these are still not valid after re-formating, re-saving and re-saving my chapters again. And then again. And then for the third time.

Even trying to upload my chapters one at a time is no good.

I dislike technology with great intensity.

037.) Baseball and Tears Go Hand-in-hand

2009-08-22T07:35:00.001-07:00

Sodding Yankees.

At least we're holding onto the Wild Card - barely.

036.) Meditation at the Tattoo Parlor, Part Troix

2009-08-21T16:32:00.000-07:00

(source)

Like any other session day it began on the bench reading a book ("Requiem for a Dream") without actually reading the book, for I was far too consumed with what was to transpire inside once the signs were flipped and the parlor opened.

It had rained earlier; the wooden slats of the bench's seat were damp. So, of course, as I sat there with an ever chilling ass, Dropkick Murphy came out of the shop. We exchanged greetings and for a while I reverted back to my book, wanting to finish a paragraph before I went inside. By doing so I must have been in Dropkick Murphy's way. He lit up on the sidewalk, obviously waiting for me to vacate the spot on the bench nearest the ash-bucket (and without a broken slat).

When finally I did move away from the bench, I cast a pathetic glance at the OPEN sign in the window, lamented the shyness which dominates my very existence and said:

"I know I sound anal-retentive for saying this, but your sign is crooked and it's bothering me."

It really wasn't, not badly enough to mention it, but I was desperate to say something. I would very much like to be a social butterfly.

I went inside to sit on the couch in the lounge.
Pete Kugel (also here) was guest spotting in the parlor (and if you haven't - buy some Wisconsin Skinny merch now. I mean now. This very instant - you can come back to my blog later). Or maybe he just booked the day to hang out. Either way, he was already tattooing the back of a very large man (but that's fine because he didn't appear to be a child rapist or axe murderer or anything; a nice man) with very exquisite tattoos.

Meanwhile, the artist slaving away over my insanely tedious work placed third at the Milwaukee Beer City Tattoo Convention in the Men's L competition for a backpiece he did. Congratulations to him!

When Dropkick Murphy finished his cigarette break, he pulled back the black blinds to straighten the very crooked OPEN sign.

It was bothering him as well, or so he said.

I wasn't about to tell him that the "CLOSED" marker for Monday's business hours seemed to be peeling away from the sign in an almost moth-like way.

Speaking of winged insects, as I sat on the couch reading my book a blonde woman came into the parlor. Not having raised my head to see who had walked through the door, I at first thought she was someone I knew (the voice was familiar); however, she was simply a random stranger who wanted Dropkick Murphy to cover up an existing tattoo that she hated with quite a bit of passion.

Dropkick Murphy proceeded to explain that in order to cover up the tattoo (which I thought I heard her say was a Celtic cross) he would need to make the new work larger and darker - and even then,

"You know it's there, so you'll still see it."

He then asked what she might like.

"A flower."

Not being one to read minds, Dropkick Murphy gently asked what kind of flower - because

"There are a lot of flowers out there."

To prove this statement, or to help the woman along, he turned to the computer and commenced an image search. He rattled off a few genera of flowers.

The woman then announced that she would be fond of a cross (or, rather, another one to cover the old one) or a butterfly.

Dropkick Murphy took a picture of the offending tattoo on the woman's arm. He then wrote down her name and phone number, explaining that he would need to draw out a design but would get in touch with her later.

"Like an hour?"

I would have liked to have seen the look on his face, but I was too busy trying to hide behind my book. It would have been rude of me to laugh.

The woman said that she would stop in in a few days, a week, and was politely refused.

"I'll call you."

One cannot rush an artist after all.

He then left for his station before I could comment on the woman (and how bleeding hearts or another type of vining flower might go well - but, then again, what do I know?).

After this, I met with Renoir who once again did a superb job. I'm so much closer to being complete.

But one thing worries me.

If Renoir opens his shop in West Bend like he's always intended to (I heard that might be in October) and passes down this tattoo parlor to Dropkick Murphy and Körperpiercing... I know that they're capable of doing fine work because if they weren't I'm sure they wouldn't be working where they are, but still.

The last thing I want is to kick Körperpiercing in her pretty face if she's the one to work on my feet.

What about Dropkick Murphy, then? Do I want him tossing obscenities at my chest while he slaves over a chest piece I have yet to envision? Or gnashing his teeth as he figures out a way to stretch a line of text from ribcage to ankle without it getting wonky over time?

I needn't freak out. I am just slightly resistant to change, that's all.

035.) Both the Bane and Lifeblood of My Existence

2009-08-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I keep typing, even if what comes to the page is from no known language on earth, hoping that the sweet sound of clacking glass-covered keys and 1940s-era chiming bell will spark something deep within me - something of a magnitude hitherto unseen in literature.

Other times I simply bang my head against the mocking "Royal" decal.

034.) Keepsakes In Other People's Suitcases

2009-08-15T08:52:00.001-07:00

At my job I often rescue quite a lot of things from certain death. Solid steel typewriters from a bygone era (one of which I have sitting beside my bed and use to write my novel before transferring those rough copies to the computer, a typewriter I shall post pictures of at a later date), books, handbags, bed linen (with a slight tear or two easily remedied by a needle and thread), freaky yet awesome miscellaneous items and too many other things to name.

One of these many other items I rescued is this:

A farmer's suitcase from a long, long time ago (that's a genuine Bakelite handle there, folks!) which I've dressed up with equally mature postcards, the majority being from my own ancestry. Sadly, the suitcase did not come with a key so I do have the occasional nightmare of finding the latch closed and the precious contents inside forever lost because I would be loath to destroy this handsome piece of engineering (and the family photographs, postcards on it).

The precious cargo inside the suitcase?

Among other things, I have:

An "I Rock With Obama" t-shirt which should not at all be in a wooden suitcase. (I cast my first ever Presidential vote and nearly died from the pride of it all - and Obama still lost this county in which I live). But, the other day I came across a brand new, still in the package "t-shirt frame". Very soon will this cotton slice of American history be showcased in a proper place. Where, I haven't decided; I haven't the wall space.

Three ornaments from one of my late Grandmother Alys's themed Christmas trees. This is the same grandmother who collected lawn gnomes (by that one guy who stuck a penny on the gnome's underside) and who collected so many that they were everywhere. Outside on the lawn, on benches, in the garden, the dooryard, the concrete patio, the driveway. Inside on the fireplace mantle, on side tables, in bedrooms.

I have had a horrific fear of lawn gnomes since my infancy.

An empty toilet paper roll from the slumber/"Bon Voyage, Lora!" party which took place my freshman year of high school. Topics of this party included but were not limited to The Burning Bed (purchase here or here), "Teaching Mrs. Tingle", houses which needed to be and were toilet papered, and a single question asked by Ms. Burning Bed regarding a certain school wrestler who reciprocated my feelings of adoration in kind (though I realized this far too late in that bitter gift of hindsight; at the time, all I did was blush and revel in my clinical depression, resulting in this crush of mine turning ornery and hateful).

Also, a plastic bouncy ball from the local Chinese restaurant where I went with Apt Teacher (9th paragraph down if you'd be so kind) and a boy who I thought I loved (because he somehow reminded me of that wrestler in the 9th grade).

A soda bottle from the first and only car pool to MATC for the Graduation For Dummies Class scheduled Career Profiling. We drove in a mini van, ate pizza, and drank these Black Bear sodas bought at Pick 'N Save from the kid who reminded me of that 9th grade wrestler. Said kid fell out of the van. I still have the pictures taken of that fall...

And you may notice the writing in blue ink behind that soda bottle. It reads

BILL KLEIN
RFD #1
NEWTON, IOWA
PHONE 2533W

So, Mr. Klein or any surviving heir(s), I have your suitcase. It is serving me very well and I promise to take good care of what was once yours. Thank you, Sir.

A signed -

Yes

SIGNED head shot of Ellen Burnstyn. The Ellen Burnstyn. I sputter just looking at that picture, which some idiot decided to get rid of at a tag sale (the plastic document sleeve the head shot is stored in bears the disgusting price of "$3.00") and unbelievably poor signed Ellen Burnstyn didn't sell at the tag sale and went to the thrift store from which I snagged her.

She is even stored, in her plastic document sleeve, along side of

President Lyndon "Let's-Go-Kill-Your-Husbands-and-Fathers-and-Children-in-Vietnam" Johnson. Notice the location of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My mother went to college for 40 years at Pennsylvania State University, some 91.6 miles away from Harrisburg at University Park. I wonder if she went to that gathering? I wonder if this gathering was anywhere around the time her college sweetheart and first husband was murdered in that war no one belonged in?

So that's it then. A peek at some of the numerous items I have crammed into Bill Klein's suitcase.

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

2009-08-14T05:34:00.000-07:00

It's a bit overdue, but I thought that I'd wait around before posting this to see if the light bulb above S'ven's head would ever go off.

As of yet, that light bulb is dimmer than an over worn pair of undies.

And in case you haven't the slightest clue as to what I am talking about, please jog on over here.

S'ven was thrust into the UFC spotlight a little sooner than he'd expected, for one guy ran for the hills before that guy's match ever began and S'ven was called up to the ring two weeks early. Naturally, he thought this was a wonderful thing because the man must obviously think himself the UFC's answer to

CM Punk (and really I just desperately wanted an excuse to post a picture of that man and his fine, fine lines. photo source. Fine, fine, fine...).

So, inflated ego in hand, S'ven entered the ring touting all of the moves he'd learned in any number of basements (these moves not being anything extraordinary). He did not tout very long, however, as the kid he was fighting quit not long into the match.

S'ven won by default.

He's going back this Saturday to fight and surely he'll be thinking that he's unstoppable - right until his head is handed to him.

032.) Meth Chemist Bunny Killers and a Haunted Duplex With Awesome Flowers

2009-08-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

The neighbors to the right of me are meth chemists. Or producers of pornography. Or the soulless killers of fluffy bunny rabbits. But whatever they happen to truly be, they cannot for the survival of their very souls (or the abyss of those aforementioned missing souls) rent the upper apartment of their duplex.

I moved in across the fence from them, oh, four years ago. At that time they had one tenant and that tenant was a rather beefy single mother of a few tiny tots. She and her kids moved out maybe a year after my arrival to the neighborhood (an arrival lacking completely any "Welcome to the neighborhood, mind the bodily fluid secreting drunks" Post-it noted tin of brownies from any damned one of the people on the block - or even just the Post-It shoved into the crack of a riser on the porch steps). This heavy blonde woman with kids had bought a home of her own and got the heck out of Dodge.

These bunny killers have not been able to keep anyone in that vacant apartment for more than six months.

(but they do have these awesome kooky flowers on one side of their house, as pictured below)

In the three years since Blonde With Kids left, there have been only two occupants and one of those doesn't count on account of because - while he and his girlfriend did purchase a sofa from me at the thrift store and while they did move it into the apartment - they moved it right back out again less than a week later.

I have a short list of theories as to the whys of this utter inability to rent out that apartment. They are, in no particular order:

The rent is astronomically high, even for this city's standards.

I know that my co-workers' neighbor just three houses down the street is asking for $900 a month. There are some places around the city demanding no less than a grand, and while I pay only $550 I highly doubt that the Bunny Killers are anywhere near that number.

The Bunny Killers are impossible.

They live on site, in the lower apartment with their three teenage children, two dogs and whatever else might be stashed inside the place. They throw parties, waste hundreds of dollars filling a pool only they are permitted to use (which they hardly ever do) and for Wisconsinites they aren't very friendly at all. I mean, I live so close to them that I can count the sun damaged creases on their faces and yet they never so much as twitch a facial muscle in recognition of my presence. Granted, they could be lovely people - as lovely as bunny killers can be.

The upper apartment is haunted by the gruesome ghosts of a grisly murder-suicide.

If that's the case, why the heck am I not living there?

I mention all of this because the adorable piercer/tattoo artist of the parlor I frequent - the one with the sugar skulls on her forearms and the glinting facial piercings? - she came by to look at that habitually vacant apartment with her boyfriend. I casually looked out of the living room window and there she was, holding onto the rent forms with one hand and saying good-bye to father Bunny Killer with the other.

I wanted to scream like a maniac out of the window at her and her beloved, but there was still a reasonable doubt that it was indeed her.

But, if it was her, even from far away and with that weird looking-down-and-over-from-the-second-story angle - she is so adorable.

031.) Sweet Home Chicago, Part IV

2009-08-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

(part III)

Utterly despondent over my leaving the Art Museum, I went without much feeling to Millennium Park.

The faces on The Crown Fountain weren't working properly, yet they did occasionally "spit" all over the little children hanging out beneath them. The girl sitting beside me on the concrete bench had been talking at her cell phone since before I'd arrived and since I'd sat down she'd said good-bye three times. The water puddle on the bench next to me was creeping ever closer, facilitating my decision to get up and take a walk.

I first went to the Cloud Gate, managing to feel only slightly nauseated as I sauntered around and under the giant metal bean.

Heading east, I soon arrived at Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Because words can never express the sheer wonder and interest of the concert venue, I will not attempt description.

The Lurie Garden, however, I can and will paint with words. A cozy, beautiful place possibly created by Muse herself, the garden somehow deflects the noise of the city. A trickling stream winds its way through the garden, refracting the sunlight overhead like a thousand diamonds strewn against pale silk. My feet clomped beautifully against the wooden footbridge.

Were it possible, I would have divided myself in half and spent my time equally between there and the art museum. But I could not. Disappointed, I trudged back to The Crown Fountain. No, I did not cross the BP Bridge. Perhaps I should have, but with my luck I would have found myself hopelessly lost.

So, after gathering our things, we proceeded down The Magnificent Mile.

The Magnificent Mile is magnificent. Hundreds of restaurants and stores, the latter of which boast a wide array of goods at ridiculously high prices made even more ridiculous by the sales tax.

I'm not usually one for shopping, either, but I did stop into H&M. It was overcrowded (mostly by teenage to twenty-something women on the ground floor, mothers with children up the funky steel staircase at H&M Kids), but by this time I wasn't very surprised. The queue at the dressing rooms, however, did shock me. And the pleasant heart-attack waiting for me at check-out? Please!

One t-shirt, one black corset dress and one corset-like tank top. Three items set before the rude gay man (or, rather, the rude man who just so happened to be overtly homosexual) running the register to the immediate left of the middle register being bombarded with piles and piles of clothes (trash bag after trash bag after trash bag) handed over by an apparently very, very wealthy blonde girl.

I say wealthy because my three items, which had totaled a mere $60 or $70 in my rounded up calculations, came to a demented and completely deranged final amount of over $100.

The rude cashier sighed and rolled his eyes melodramatically when I asked to put back the tank top. He did not wish me good-bye.

With this episode playing in my head, I only went to one other store because Apt Teacher's son insisted that we stop by the Disney Store. I bought an Eeyore mug from the clearance wall. It's so cute, that mud. It says "Smile".

In doing all of this without much hassle, we were due to get lost next.

Apt Teacher wanted me to see Navy Pier. For whatever reason, we hadn't stopped by after the Shedd Aquarium when we were on that side of the city. Naturally, we walked up hill and down dale without finding a way to cross traffic. Hope was all but dead when we stumbled upon a group of nurses just off shift.

To get to Navy Pier we had to go underground. Literally, underground. Through a dark, dank tunnel.

From what I witnessed there, it wasn't worth the effort; Navy Pier is nothing like Coney Island. After a few pictures with the bronze statue of Bob Newhart (which is sodding awesome and made up for the less than spectacular experience just beyond the gates of the pier) and some dinner, a ride on the Ferris wheel and a quick look around, we traveled back to the heart of the city.

I stepped inside a record store whose name I've forgotten (though I'm sure it had something to do with a pineapple. Maybe a banana). I do know that it smelt warm, as most small record stores tend to do, and it had a balcony. Alas, I could not go to the balcony because I was soon pulled back outside by a frantic Apt Teacher. She was waving the Metra schedule in her hand.

Our train home left in eleven minutes.

We were 25 blocks from the station.

Running ["as if the very whips of their masters were behind them"], we arrived at the train station with only a minute to spare before our train left.

And then Apt Teacher could not find her ticket.

But we did get on the train and some time later (I don't know how long. I know I didn't fall asleep and yet that ride back is nothing more than a black hole in the universe of my memory), quite a bit later we were tossed out in Kenosha.

Then, of course, we got lost on the way home.

Driving through the yawning maw of the night, empty roads all around us, trapped somewhere between Kenosha and Milwaukee, I thought I'd never see my bed again.

I did. Eventually. Some 18 hours after the Chicago Trip of 2006 began.

All in all, Chicago is nice. It's very clean and [some] of the people there are lovely. The culture is absolutely amazing and there are enough things to do in a one block radius alone to last one person a lifetime.

If I were deaf, I would love Chicago.

I, however, am not deaf.

030.) Sweet Home Chicago, Part III

2009-08-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

(part II)

My near death experience hadn't done much to heighten any sense within me; I was escorted across the street by the nice folks on scooters with only one thought ping!ing around inside my skull. That thought was not "Jeepers creepers, I've just cheated death" - oh, no - but "I'm a wee bit peckish".

Off to food it was, then. My companions and I continued on to Michigan Avenue, passing by an area slowly evolving into some type of festival. My hunger the ornery Viking that it was, I did not stop to ask what the street was being prepared for. I walked on, passed the south wall of The Art Institute of Chicago, and came on on The Magnificent Mile.

The first thing I noticed about the Mile was how loud it was. Sirens sounding ceaselessly; people talking on their cell phones or to each other, or both; cars sitting idle on the congested streets, horns blaring.

The second thing I noticed about the Mile was how many restaurants lined the place. These numerous restaurants stood like books on a library shelf.

Apt Teacher, her son and I went to the only familiar place: Subway. We had to cross the avenue to get there, merging with the migrating herd (and I do mean that with the purest sincerity) of people converging on the crosswalk.

I looked to the cars waiting impatiently in their stagnant queues. Why didn't they walk, or take the few hundred buses dotting the sea of pavement far as the eye could see? They'd get to their destinations more quickly. Yet they sat in their cars, bemoaning the city and its people. They were still sitting in their cars, bemoaning the city and its people, when I entered the long, impossibly narrow Subway and ate my lunch.

Those cars were still idling in the street as I migrated back across and went into the Art Museum.

I won't sit here and explain how much I in love with that place I am because that would take days to do. I will say that my mind boggled at the amount of artwork within, that the photography exhibit I visited was exquisite and that I still own the "Ghastlycrumb Tinies" shirt I bought at the gift shop.

I wanted to chain myself to one of the benches and never leave.

029.) Get Down With the Sickness

2009-08-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

This:

is not what a severe head cold feels like. No happy, dancing bears for me.

I'm living in mortal terror of a nosebleed.

028.) Sweet Home Chicago, Part II

2009-08-02T08:11:00.000-07:00

(Part I)

When we finally arrived in Chicago, I could not wait to get off of that Metra train. As I pocketed my ticket (which perhaps I should not have done) I watched Itchy, the checker-shirted red-head who'd sat way too close to me for comfort, leave his seat - giving me a spectacular view of London Calling.

The middle-aged punk rocker, wearing a black t-shirt so small the design printed on the fabric was hopelessly and grotesquely disfigured, stuffed his book into his bag. This simple, mundane act is only worth mentioning because of what he had to remove from the bag in order to return the book.

London Calling had been traveling on the Metra line since Kenosha with a little pink bunny rabbit in blue pinstripe pajamas. If that poor bunny hadn't looked so bedraggled, if London Calling hadn't been an overweight balding man too much in love with the eighties for his own good - I might have laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Unfortunately, the oddity playing out before me was of such magnitude that all of the neurons in my brain began to fire at once, leaving me a twitching mess.

When eventually I did get over the episode, Apt Teacher, her son and I ventured out into the train station.

There was a moment there, as we wandered about aimlessly in a sea of jabbing elbows, clicking heels and generally rude souls, when I had been absolutely convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that I had entered Hell.

(source)

Or at least Purgatory; we were lost (and not for the first time on this long trip).

By some stroke of luck we were able to find our way to the surface of the train station and into the jarring noise of the street. Never have I been surrounded by such noise. Never before or since have I been attacked - brutally raped and pillaged - by such NOISE.

The taxi we scurried into gave us no relief because, while the noise was quelled if only minutely, the stench of the vehicle was enough to subdue even the Headless Horseman.

That cab smelt of all kinds of death - none of them good.

Saying that the inside of that taxi was rank with the horrid stink of urine does nothing to convey the sickening strength of the odor. Saying that under the horrific smell of urine was something softer but no less terrifying - fecal matter, decomposing flesh? - cannot possibly explain to you the nightmare of that taxi ride across town to the lake. To this very day, over three years later, I still find that stink haunting me.

I fell out of the taxi, gasping-grasping-hacking for the sweetness of lake air.

Apt Teacher debated the fare, accusing the taxi driver (rightly) of driving to the Shedd Aquarium the long way in order to bleed us of our money. She relented for fear of the driver taking off with her belongings still in the trunk. He did begin to drive away without giving back her change.

Finally rid of that man, we walked to the side entrance of the aquarium because it's a bit difficult to wheel a child-filled stroller up an impressive set of stairs.

After waiting in line with all of the other people who either could not or would not ascend concrete steps, I got my admittance

( I apologize profusely for the eye-straining blur to these photos)

and headed inside.

It's a wonderful place, the aquarium, with a lovely Pacific White-sided Dolphin show that I was unable to watch because of the three idiots in front of me. Orange Cornrows (a female, mind), Pink Bra Straps and her most charming loverboy Mid America Bank. Splendid people, them, flailing about and talking loudly throughout the entire show.

I did, however, walk down and over to the Beluga whales. Funny-looking creatures, but how they ooze affection. Had I a camera at the time, I would have taken many pictures.

After the aquarium, having bypassed the Field Museum due to lack of time (I was most unhappy about this), we took a stroll along the lake. I nearly froze to death, while inland the temperature hovered close to 150 degrees.

I was also nearly run over as I crossed the street en route to Michigan Avenue. If it hadn't been for the trio of city workers on scooters, screaming into walkie-talkies about the dysfunctional traffic lights, I would have been ended far too early.

027.) Sweet Home Chicago, Part I

2009-08-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

I really should be working on my novel, but instead I am sitting here listening to an old Sister Hazel song (and no, I don't know either - I think it's the infectious beat), bobbing my head enough to rattle the notion in my skull of writing about the trip to Chicago I went on once upon a time.

By "once upon a time" I mean a good three years ago.

I figure I should get it down in one place (rather than the twenty piles the bits and pieces are scattered now) before I completely forget about it. Not that that would be a horrible thing...

(The following has been complied from the nigh unintelligible scribbles in a notebook, a letter to a kid I once thought handsome and whatever flecks of memory I could scrape from the mementos I was able to shove into an overstuffed handbag.)

"I've been awake since 4.27 in the morning, not so much excited for this not-so-much a senior trip but, I suppose, dreading it. This outing to Chicago was all my idea, and what I wouldn't give to simply shove my foot in my mouth and go crawl under a rock."

So began my deplorably written letter to Anarchy (in the USA) on the morning of 6 June, 2006. I sat on the concrete steps in front of my house, half of my brain still asleep and the other half wondering what in the world I was doing up so early in the morning. Yes, the Chicago trip had been my idea - but I was the only student actually coming along with the teacher and her son. Why hadn't the outing been given up as a bad job? Why weren't we instead heading over to a wild night of fun and greasy pizza at Chuck. E. Cheese?

Sitting there, fretting not only about me (an East Coast native who's spent more than half of her life in small-town Wisconsin) going to a big city, but also about the ants wending their way ever closer to my backside. I don't like ants. Fact is, I might be slightly terrified of ants and the thought of even one of these tiny bug crawling on me -

I turned back to my letter, "... in efforts of forgetting the fact that the only big cities I've been to I can't remember, I was too young". This worked quite well - until my teacher pulled her car up to the curb.

(It might behoove me to stop here and clarify. For reasons I shall not get into (for it's a very long story but essentially: I left public high school after my freshman year because if I didn't I would have done some very drastic things, then tried a homeschooling program which was fulfilling college level stuff but also horrendously expensive, so - ) I spent a year in what I lovingly call The Graduation for Dummies Class. Through this course I received my high school diploma. I also was gifted with a wonderful teacher who completely made up for all the inept and indifferent schoolteachers I'd ever had. Said teacher was like the cool older sister who actually wanted to do things with you.)

Packing my letter into the handbag I had converted to a seam-splitting harbinger of all the useless things I would soon find out I didn't need, I got into the car and settled in for the long ride to the Metra station. In Kenosha. An hour and a half away. In a car with a rattling object in the dashboard and a silent radio. The latter was easily dealt with, for my teacher was the complete antithesis to me - she liked to talk. So, as I sat shotgun and listened to her speak over the soft snoring of her sleeping little boy, I looked out of the window at the rising morning along the highway.

There is nothing to look at on the highway, at least not on the one we were traveling down. Just cars and concrete and maybe the backs of vanilla buildings; it was a very long car ride. I counted one Wendy's restaurant - three counties south of where we started and five short blocks from the Metra station.

The station was sterile in the absolute purest sense of the word; there was not even a peanut packet to be found for sustenance. We should have stopped at the Wendy's we'd passed, but then again I wasn't hungry. I was tired, having woken up at 3.00AM and having woken up at 3.00AM my stomach was doing that thing it does when I'm forced to wake up anytime before 6.00 - it cramped.

With a cramping stomach and a mind screaming out ravenously for sleep, Apt Teacher, her son and I walked to the train platform. This platform was not, as you might be imagining, like something out of the Harry Potter series. There were no brick walls or magical creatures, nor even handsome trains. No, this train platform was on the roof of the sterile station we had come through. I wondered briefly how much time would have to pass before the roof gave way in a wondrously grisly display of steel, wood, and asphalt.

I wondered why there were no guardrails around the roof-top platform.

I wondered which one of the small children in the growing crowd would be the first to play "Touch the Face of the Speeding Train".

Once on the speeding train (settling into the second level), "I almost feel like Jonathan in Bram Stoker's Dracula, on his way to certain madness and severancy to the undead". I was sitting right above a man who insisted on picking at his teeth in a very nasty way, and to the left of another who had stared quite intensely at me while getting into this particular train compartment (a man who looked a little too old to be staring at Russian moon-faced (then) 19-year-olds). The same man who out on the platform had been keen on breaking the things packed so tightly in his bag.

That man had a complex, I think. He was all jazzed out in London Punk: Doc Martens (and has anyone else ever found that a tad bit ironic/amusing/[insert adjective here]?), cargo shorts, black beret and a t-shirt three sizes too small. London Calling, as I named him, was studying a book I've been reading for the past two years.

"I'd try to look at that tiny shirt of his, see what band is so important his beer gut needs to be unmasked, but that might draw too much attention".

If it hadn't been for fear of London Calling thinking I was attempting to hit on him, I would have chanced leaning over those two seats between us. I would have dealt with the almost absolute fact that when the train stopped I'd fall to the floor and break something; I was far too tall for the tight quarters of the second story. With my feet hanging down through the railing, I'd nearly clonked the conductor in the head when he came by to check tickets.

I made a remark in my letter to Anarchy (in the USA) about our third stop (Lake Forest, Highland Park - all during which Half-Suit, a man nestled across from us and wearing half a suit conversed with Apt Teacher about things which I did not pay attention to, though at one point I did care enough to learn that Half-Suit was actually Cooky).

Our third stop was Glencoe, Illinois.

"Glencoe. What the hell kind of name is Glencoe? Sounds like some sort of

(Cooky is married and a big cell phone talker. He commutes to Chi-town from Kenosha, works at Palms)

steroid company or something. It even has a stone marker.

(Cooky grew up in West Bend. London Calling looked at me again when I noticed "Glencoe, Ill., home of the best 'roids this side of Barry Bonds's ass!")

Now leaving

(picture: ripped and overly tanned dude, head the size of the Universal Studios globe. Big Smile)

"Glencoe!"

(tink tink of light against bleached and veneered teeth)

for Winnetka. Sweet ol' Winnetka."

I looked over what I had just written. Drunk on lack of sleep, I thought it was the wittiest thing I'd ever read in my life. How wrong I was.

(I inserted that dismal display because the shame might remind me to never think too highly of anything I do again)

Shortly after this, a man in a checkered shirt sat down in the seat immediately to my right. He scratched his head quite frequently. I pondered whether or not I should be worried.

Apt Teacher's son then had to pee. Badly.

And some guy began talking rather loudly about expanding bowels and other things one should never speak of outside of the doctor's office or morgue.

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

2009-07-30T05:58:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-07-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-26T10:01:00.001-07:00

(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...

2009-07-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

(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

2009-07-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-21T06:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

(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.

2009-07-20T05:11:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-07-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-18T04:38:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-16T05:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-07-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-06T18:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

(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.

2009-07-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

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.

005.) Who Would Have Thought Snow Patrol Could Say It Best?

2009-06-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

In my mind an old song prevails,

"I find it easier to sit and stare
Than push my limbs out toward you right there.
My heart is bursting in your perfect eyes,
~~As blue as oceans and as pure as skies.~~"

He does indeed make me numb and I'm not sure why (he is not my type). Perhaps I might finally tell him this when next I see him. Perhaps I'll bring a paper bag along with me, give it to him in efforts to spare him injury from tripping over the swooning bodies.

Suddenly, I now find myself once again in love with their other song "Run", though I believe so long ago it was called "Light Up"?

004.) At Least No One Peed in the Dressing Room - Again.

2009-06-27T17:17:00.001-07:00

Let it be known to all that I do like my job. I like my job very much, in fact, so it does not bother me at all to find myself on register duty on a Saturday - not in the latter of our two buildings, however, but the former.

The first store where I cannot listen to my own music (however "old folk friendly" it has to be) but must listen to B93.3 (and while, yes, they do play U2 and Queen and... they also won't shut up about Michael Jackson - and while, yes, it might or might not be a shame that he's gone, he also molested little children (got away with it because of his name) and did I-don't-want-to-know-what with/to his "biological" children, and there are other important people who have died or are dying that deserve a tiny, passive mention). The first store where there really isn't a whole lot to do other than organize the jewelry wall, an impossible feat and yet I try so hard and surely that is the definition of madness. The first store, with its counter too short and the popcorn machine which works in fits and spurts. The first store, where customers neither shut off the light to the bathroom nor wash their hands (because there's very little toweling in the trash can for the amount of people who go in and out of that restroom).

At least I don't have to deal with certain coworkers complaining about certain other coworkers, right?

Or the young teenager who does nothing to hide the long stares he gives me from his spot on the floor by the videos (whose fancy is adorable, but I really don't want to have to procure a Rita Hayworth poster and a rock hammer)? That polite white boy with the syntax of 50 Cent, who for once was not bound to his "Pops" and the confines of the second building and its video tapes? Yeah. He stopped by with two of his friends (and how I would love a rich, silken complexion such as theirs). All three of them were dressed nicely, as if they were on their way to work at a country club golf course. Whatever they were dressed for, Blondie was wearing too strong an aftershave.

Most assuredly, in this first building I don't have to deal with the exceedingly creepy and off-centre gentlemen who buys things he doesn't take home (there are still things of his sitting out on the lawn more than a month after he bought them), the exceedingly creepy and off-centre gentlemen who repeatedly mispronounces my name and once asked me out for ice cream - and here I quote - "Boy, you look interesting! I'd love to escort you down to - " [a place I've never heard of] " - for ice cream." The man is a least sixty-five. I thought he was joking. He was not.

Back to my original train of thought:

It doesn't really matter where I am because the difficult people always find me. They hunt me down like a wounded gazelle. They fly to me like moths to a flame. No. They orbit around me in wondrous arcs like planets to the Sun.

These difficult people come barging into the store before we are open, as if they own the place or are royalty or are so hated by the rest of humanity that they must pull stunts like these in order to save themselves from a lynching (in which case, why don't they order things on-line? It works well for those afraid of the "market", those few who would not show up for the highly anticipated lynching of these hated eager beavers even if they were promised money, and a lot of it).

These difficult people complain about the prices of everything. No matter how cheap something is and therefor how utterly stupid they'll sound they will always try to talk the price down, apparently thinking that they're at a tag sale and not a place of business. Seriously, do they do this at Kohl's?

These difficult people will stand in the line and sigh dramatically if things aren't moving quickly enough - then they'll come back later on with their carts loaded to heaping, demanding that each item be placed in a certain bag because they obviously don't have the time or patience to do all of that themselves when they get home.

These difficult people saunter into the store five minutes to closing - "Oh, I'll be quick!" - and take their sweet, sweet time. Even when we shut the lights off, even when we make a few hundred closing announcements, even when we explain to them that we really need to be closing down and, yes, we do mind if they use the dressing room - even when... they shop. The difficult difficult people don't buy a thing; they're waiting around until we all leave so that they can break into the building and take what they want (and thankfully Mullet Man doesn't stop by anymore, not since we installed that fiendishly simple latch on his beloved breached door).

Most customers are good people, though. They have their moments, but they're good.

These aforementioned moments typically involve my tattoos - because, obviously, I am a walking art exhibit. My tattoos are, of course, not my own but the world's. Please, by all means, gawk and comment. Please, poke and prod and ask questions about what they mean - as if they are meant for you, as if they hold significance for you. What am I but the canvas they are painted on?

A lot of people nicely ask what my left arm says, or what the banner on my right arm reads, or what's going on with my right upper arm. Mainly it's the text on my left arm. Usually always it's the text on my left arm, and when I read the tattoo aloud to these curious people they look at me as if I've just sprouted a second head. They don't get it.

A few people will yell, "Stop moving! I'm trying to read your arm!" (in a nasty tone of voice, as if I've affronted them somehow by, I don't know, doing my job and ringing up their items). These people don't so much look at me as a sideshow freak with two heads, but merely blink.

I can hear the cogs turning in their heads. I can see their thought, each individual word shooting up into the air like blooming fireworks. They do not think, "I just accosted you for this thing which I do not understand? I'm so sorry!" but instead, "I just took an extra minute out of my life for that? What the hell is all that supposed to mean, huh? I don't read. I wouldn't know that this came from a poem even if Robinson Jeffers himself crawled out of the grave and bit me in the ass."

Of course, they only smile and tell me "How nice."

Fewer people still simply grab me.

I'll be handing them back their change and one beefy hand will come flying toward me as they grab my wrist. With quite a bit of force they'll do this, grab me and pull me forward so that they can read my arm whilst also taking my blood pressure (for they haven't at all relaxed their grip).

It never fails that the grabbers will then sneer and say something along the lines of, "That stuff don't wash off, honey."

Here I reply by feigning shock. "Well, at least the coroner will have something to look at," I say because I cannot spit. I cannot maim or yell or beat. I cannot say "Suck dirt and die", though I want to so badly.

At least no one peed in the dressing room - again.

I mean that seriously, and if you are sensitive to this breed of things here is where you might want to stop reading.

Once upon a time, the restroom in the front building was not in working order. Not having the strength of bladder to walk the short way to the next available bathroom, a customer grabbed a small wooden barrel from our eternal Christmas display and somehow sneaked into an open dressing room with this small wooden barrel. In this unlocked dressing room, the customer urinated into the barrel.

How this individual was able to do this, pee into a wooden barrel in a small dressing room with walls that do not extend all the way to the ceiling -

(note how the ceiling does not meet the door frame)

- how this could be done without being heard is beyond my comprehension. How this individual could then simply leave that used barrel under the stool of that first dressing room is also beyond my grasp.

Worse yet, the urine must have been sitting in the dressing room for quite some time - at least long enough for it to acquire scent, long enough for that scent to grow into a foul stench strong as a pair of hands around the throat.

All I know is, I was the only one to notice that something dastardly was afoot. At 3.00. An hour before the store closed, six hours into the working day, and I'm the one (called up from the other building to help close) who has to stick her head into the first dressing room and all but vomit from the odor.

How can you be working up there all day and not notice the repugnant, viciously atrocious, disgusting odor of piss in a small wooden barrel? How can you be a customer and not say something? How can you be a customer in that dressing room and not faint?

How can you pee in a dressing room in the fist place? What kind of person does that? I mean, if you have a medical condition we can deal with that - you can use the employee bathroom - but to do that? Have you no soul?

003.) Ghosts and Dog Crates

2009-06-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

During my break on Tuesday 23 June, I watched two hippies (whom I have affectionately named Shaggy and Scooby) spend at least thirty minutes attempting to attach their dog carrier onto the roof of their car. Scooby did most of the work, whereas Shaggy stood by overseeing. She also repeatedly pulled up her jeans, which must have been at least two sizes too big for her tiny frame.

They were dancing with twine before I went on break, during and a good five minutes after - but eventually they went on their merry way.

I wonder how far along the highway they went before the dog crate flew off the car?

I wonder why I must be so cursed as to find myself constantly accosted by individuals from a past I'm not willing to revisit?

Let me explain: Around two O'clock on this same Tuesday as Shaggy and Scooby, as I'm walking back to the register in efforts to find something with which to dust the store, I am met with a ghost.

Nearly tripping over my own feet, I stopped and did what some of us might do when met by a specter such as he: I gaped.

I pointed and asked him a simple question, though the effort of getting that question out was not simple at all.

"Do I know you?" I asked him, this ghost and if indeed he was a ghost it perhaps was not wise of me to be talking at him. "Yes," I said, "I do know you." It was at that point when I left him, awash with a myriad of old emotions tasting of that stagnant film draping homemade pudding.

This ghost did not leave me alone, however. He bought a t-shirt and a belt I wish I had seen a lot earlier (meaning I would have prevented this geist from procuring such an item - because why would a ghost need a leather belt with an ornate metal buckle?).

When finally he did leave, I did not say good-bye (rude, yes, but I did have another customer to attend to). I dared not speak his name, for fear that be him a mere ghost his name would bring about a resurgence of his existence.

002.) Meditation at the Tattoo Parlor

2009-06-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

The following passed through my mind on Friday, 19 June, as needles melted the world down to a simple hum, vibrant conversation and rockabilly music:

I can barely deal with wisdom teeth removal. I am horrified of certain plaster lawn decorations. Yet I love the feel of a tattoo needle breaking open my flesh and staining me with eternal color. What is wrong with this picture?

001.) Introduction.

2009-06-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

(it was 100 degrees. I was sweating. deal with it)

I'm not much of a blog person, let me tell you this right now and let me tell you that I know this because I've had quite a few.

As a teenager (eight years seems like such a long time ago) I was not immune to the razzle-dazzle of internet blogs and created one on UJournal with a backward pen-name which did nothing to hide my state of psychotic obsession with death and disease and disorder (but aren't all kids like that?). I wrote about nothing and somehow out of that nothing came a flurry of entries, all written in the short hand of a fourteen-year-old who could neither type nor spell. I can't remember what exactly I wrote about, but I do remember that I managed to scare at least one person with my blog entries, a slew of "OMG hes so cl and cut a i l0v3 him" I am sure and I do not blame him for running away at the very sight of me, his feet pounding the tile high school floor with the weight of sheer terror.

I moved on to Blurty after that, where I learned two very valuable things:

1.) It's always best to make your posts friends only. That way, if somewhere down the line you forget your password and your e-mail account fades away into the nether from lack of use - well, a friends only blog will save you a whole heck of a lot of embarrassment.

2.) It's a wise thing to do, especially when in high school, to not tell your friends that you have an internet blog. This is an optional rule of thumb, of course, but if you do have friends who leaked your UJournal account to the new, freakishly tall boy in your class (who later quaked at the mere mention of your name) it's not a bad thing at all to leave those "RL" friends out of the loop and meet new people on this new internet blog environment.

On Blurty I did just that. I also took up role playing, often finding myself playing male rock stars because I could not play a female all that well. Never did I consider that a strange thing, being a lady and playing a man, because I was too busy learning about HTML. In the blogging word, HTML refers to (and I may be wrong) the art of layout design - and, boy, did I burn through a lot of layouts. Every three days, a week at the most, I would have a new background image and scroll boxes and embedded music and images on my "Friends Only" post. I went layout crazy. I created an account for the sole purpose of storing my poetry (poetry I'm ashamed and horrified to admit is mine), I created a few hundred role play accounts under the name of any celebrity I could find pictures of on the internet and knew just enough about to sound convincing in the game. All so that I could have fancy layouts.

And then I started making icons. I must have created thousands in the lifespan of my blogging years (roughly five), the early models all covered in blurred text.

In spite of my forays into the art and design of my numerous blogs, my writing grew as well. I still couldn't type and my spelling was atrocious, but I wasn't writing about nothing anymore. Granted, my life wasn't all that interesting, but I was going through enough turmoil to vent on a daily basis. I was going through enough dung, in fact, that when I learned about LiveJournal and GreatestJournal I created accounts there as well and closed down, boarded up, all of my Blurty accounts to move to the latter site (there's something about LiveJournal I've never been able to warm up to).

On GreatestJournal I again created multiple accounts with multiple layout changes. I made a valiant effort to change my layouts only once a month in order to focus on my writing - after all, that is what a blog is for, is it not? - and my writing did improve. So much so that instead of being five characters at once in an RPG I played only one and if I do say so myself I made a wonderful Billy Martin. (Sweet mother of - that was a long time ago).

I also began to write fan fiction. I wasn't very good at it, but I wrote a lot of it and joined fan fiction communities on the blog and joined fan fiction websites as well. I wrote so much of the stuff, so often and on so many sites and in so many different categories, that I fell into that cozy little world of the blog.

Still, regardless of the cocoon, my blogging began to suffer. It wasn't that I was too busy "in RL" or that my life had lost the deep stinking pit of manure to write about. It wasn't even the ever increasing love I had toward fan fiction writing and the time I took to write it.

I just stopped updating my blog. Long periods of time would pass, days to weeks, weeks to months, before I felt obligated to write something down and fill in my friends about my life. I moved three times, I went back to school, I moved again and got a job. Years passed. The thought of a blog rarely entered my mind.

I've always been like this. As a kid I would get diaries and then stop writing in them after a week. The longest I ever went in a physical diary was three-quarters the way through my freshmen year of high school (and even that was sporadic at best). The longest I went on a single blog was on GreatestJournal and I can only guess that that was three years or so.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this blog is a stupid thing for me to attempt.

My MySpace account? Dying, if not dead already. My Facebook account? Deactivated, reactivated, deactivated again. My Twitter account? That might survive for a while, if ever I get the hang of it. Even my other blog on this site, dortamklavier, would be in big trouble if I wasn't putting my mystery novel there. I can't even guarantee that.

So, I'm going to try this.

I'm going to write about my life, about my plans for my novel(s) and my writing in general. I'm going to attempt to scribe my daily observations and complaints, hopes and fears. I'm going to do all of that and more without icons, without layouts or polls or music or the dreaded friends list.

If I'm going to do this at all, I'm going to do it without any distractions.

Thank you and have a good day.