You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2007.
A year ago today, I wrote my first little post on WordPress about the joys of Coke Zero. Beyond discovering an addiction, where was I then?
I was mourning my idiocy of losing a love.
I had just started grad school and realizing the absurdity of the situation I had found myself in.
I was watching my Dad die. That I didn’t blog about.
The night my Dad died, and after I saw him in the funeral home, I sat bathed in a grip of apathetic listlessness that surfaces at the onset of my heavier mental instabilities. I sat under the bright lights of the living room in a recliner moved to the exact place where his bed stood just that morning. I saw his wallet sitting on the table that sat next to his bed and grabbed it, slowly pulling things out of it.
It was a cold reality that he could no longer stop me.
I thumbed through various cards and old photographs of me. From a flap, I pulled out a folded piece of paper. I unfolded it and read the URL to my very first blog that I started when I was 16.
Now, I’m here and I write for something intangible as that. I write to my friends, to my enemies, to my family, to myself… and I think that somehow, most importantly, I’m writing for some unknown purpose that only later will manifest itself. I do not concentrate on that outcome. In theory, I should not only be living to blog, but I should live as I blog.
1. I’m stealing this from D, so even though it’s Wednesday and I should be doing Contemplative Wednesday, I’m doing Ten Things Tuesday. I’m lame…and I’m even more lame to be considering myself lame for this.
2. Man, that coconut cookie did not settle well with the ranch and the carrots. Who would have thought?
3. Gods, I need to get on writing up that aura reading I did with Pearl. I got her business cards and a nice personal follow-up note today too. This has been nearly three weeks ago, officially making me a horrible person.
4. I could care less about critical culture studies at the moment, although I’m eying my book Critical Cyberculture Studies favorably.
5. I should be vegan.
6. No, I shouldn’t.
7. I should be calling up The Barn to go horse riding again, but it always slips my mind and I think that I’m being impolite by not calling and then I think that I haven’t gotten a call from them makes me all worried that I did something wrong… and the vicious cycle of self-incrimination continues.
8. I will prevail on asking this guy out. I think. On the last day of class; seems smart. He shouldn’t be in my other classes next semester.
9. I just need to have D, when he comes to visit this week, intravenously feed me two three margaritas and serendipitously the former referenced person will appear and with my alcohol fueled bravado, plus threats of bodily harm and/or embarrassing retribution, everything work out famously. Or I’ll crash and burn. I believe more in that. But that’s not how The Secret works, right?
10. Fuck The Secret.
This saga starts simply like most of my adventures do – take an idea, take too little research, take a pinch of foolhardiness, and shake. I decided that I wanted to get new handlebars on my bike. This sounds simple, yes? Why did I want them? For an easier reach? Yes, I thought, that would be nice.
(Research now tells me that it doesn’t quite matter since you’re supposed to be partially posting on a bike and not the relaxed aristocratic sitting-back-and-waving sort of position. Well then.)
[Not… that I wave...]
Appetizer
What is your favorite type of art?
I’m still in the college phase of tossing a sarong on the wall and calling it art. Then, I’m not very cultured.
Soup
When was the last time you got a free lunch (or breakfast or dinner)? Who paid for it?
J just bought me pizza even though I was not so nice to him.*
Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how emotional are you?
I would say 8. My ex’s might say 14.75, see the beginnings of my waterworks, and attempt to pacify me with a piece of cake and two boxes of tissues - then creep backwards out of the room. *Or buy me pizza.
Main Course
Approximately how long do you spend each day responding to emails?
That really depends on how close to a deadline I am. I send the best, detailed and flowerly e-mails ever at that point.
Dessert
To what temperature do you usually set your home’s thermostat?
We don’t. We’re very un-green here, usually broiling for a bit until we crank up the AC until it gets a tad bit nipply. Nipples are evolution’s thermostat.
I was having one of those mornings where you just need to call your Mom. Those days where you understand that there are women in the Congo with fistulas and people dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, [Thank you Universe for your helpful night time programming.] but that does not stave off your own ebb of worry and doubt that anything you do will net you something beyond just being a cog in the wheel.
Pre-roll:
Post-roll:
Appetizer
When was the last time you visited a hospital?
When this conversation happened, I was waiting with my Dad to go into surgery to get a stent for his morphine drip.
Soup
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how ambitious are you?
That…depends on the day. I’m split. My manic portion says, “Seven…no, wait, eight - NO! ELEVEN!!!111 Har!” My drained portion says, “Four” and looks around for more cake.
Salad
Make a sentence using the letters of a body part. (Example: (mouth) My other ukelele tings healthily.)
Volvos are just awesome you jerk and yokel.
Main Course
If you were to start a club, what would the subject matter be, and what would you name it?
“Perfect People and Parading Paradoxes - A Support Group For Those Favoring Alliteration” - There would be a lot of glaring and jittery hands grabbing coffee, while spewing out strange prose. It would be beautifully horrible.
Dessert
What color is the carpet/flooring in your home?
It is brown…They were savvy in the fact that brown…covers a lot of stain types.
A conversation via IM prodding me to ask out someone for coffee:
Me: I don’t even have any idea how that works logistically.
E: Let’s see….
E: “Would you like join me for some coffee later?”
E: Possible answers: “Sure, when?” “No, because of this reason.” “I’m sorry, I’m a zombie.”
E: Only one involves losing your brain, and I think it’s exceedingly unlikely in these parts of the world.
So what exactly is Albuquerque? After all, there’s only so many times you can pass through there until you figure out your basic mistake. My guess is that it’s the last moral reference point, a landmark where a left turn takes you to your expected destination, but any other course of action lands you in a cartoon universe of upended physics and random violence.
- Palinode from “A Season in Albuquerque“
My family has always tended to anthropomorphize – that is, give human names and characteristics to – our cars. I’ve been heavily influenced by this practice and tend to ask people, when first climbing into their car, if they’ve taken the time to name theirs.
Our family formula consisted of using the first letter of the brand of car to figure out the first name. So the new members of the family had names like Neil the Nissan and Dick the Dodge and Charlotte the Chevrolet. With the family obsession in the Volvo brand, we’ve figured out that there are only so many first names that start with a V.
I get very little spam with WordPress, thanks in part to the Akismet spam blocker. It filters out comments that I get that aren’t from my loving fan club that contains lines and lines of links. But you know, I think somehow there is sentient life brewing in the bots of the spam world.
From Amenceler, “On your site I found hello yet interesting photos, a password is only pitiful which does not work you threw down. Whip off me the contacts of these girls on soap please.”
I feel like he’s trying to tell me something…*taps head* At any rate, I threw down and he’s cowering like a little bitch and that’s enough to brighten anyone’s day. (Thank you years of high school AP English for the inane interpretation skills you imparted to me.)
The one that struck me the most was from Envedoetendaw, “horror called on it resource and result…. in principle even there is nothing, and all at that free of charge.”
After the links, he says, “comment ?!?”
All I can say is that’s heavy stuff, baby.
Also, let’s not talk about the time I very seriously told D that I saved a submission from the spam folder for PaganQuill in Gmail. [PQ is dead currently. But yes, thanks for asking.] Even over the IM, I could feel him roll his eyes.
“That’s from a bot. It’s like the new spam.”
Rereads, “But it’s so…pagan! And rambling! And…well, this reads like some of the submissions we have gotten.”
“No.”
I say it’s bot discrimination.
Appetizer
Using only one word, how does grocery shopping make you feel?
Goddamn-tired. [Yay, hyphens!]
Soup
What is your favorite part about the season of Autumn?
Well it’s definitely not the seasonal allergies which was my first thought. Hmm, Autumn. I could be cliché and say the colors of the changing leaves, but really, we don’t have many trees that change color here in the desert. What I am looking forward to is getting my new handlebars on my bike, having the temperature reach back into the two digits, and start riding my bike to school.
*slaps ponch* Should help with that too.
Salad
Have you ever had any bad experiences online?
Ebay gone awry? Crazy stalkers? Trolls? No, sadly no. I would dig a stalker though. I’d take applications.
There was the whole online dating experience thing…that’s a whole other post of dismay.
Main Course
Name three things that make you happy daily.
This is a good and needed question for me. I would say… the friends I have that put up with my antics and my whining (look, I am American), my car, and how well my hapless cat tolerates the Momma love.
Dessert
What one household cleansing or organizing item would you not want to be without?
I don’t even know where to begin. Have I already expressed my deep, throbbing love for Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser here? (Oooh, that worked better in a naughty way than I planned.) The Rebuker suggested, during another whining session about hating to clean the tub, that I try the Magic Eraser. It had been sitting in my kitchen for about a year and half after my Dad gave me one and yelled at me for the dirty state of my headlights. I now shudder to think that it lay unused for such a long time. Truly a gift from the gods.
I tell you this because you also may not fully comprehend the importance of condolence cards, Mass cards, e-mail notes, phone calls, even green bean casseroles with the fried onions sprinkled on top. The fabric of civilized society is gossamer thin, and its warp and woof are comprised of threads such as these woven into our hearts in times of grief. Mother Teresa was right when she said that God did not put us here to do great things. God put us here to do little things with great love.
…
I have heard that when an elephant dies the whole herd comes to the body and touches it with their trunks. They then touch each other before moving on. I think they do this because they cannot write, but we can, and we must touch each other before moving on into the jungle.
-Marc Gellman, What I Learned from My Dad’s Death
Editor’s Note: This is a great big thank you and virtual, yet squished boobie hug from little ol’ me at IP for every comment, e-mail and text of condolence that I have received.
