This Woman Is Dangerous

Paul McCartney: Flowers in the Dirt (1989)

2012-02-02T00:31:00.005-06:00

Here's another very good (and underrated) McCartney album. Not as gritty or flowing as "Ram" as a whole, but strong, still. I've already posted "This One (This Swan)" earlier. Below are my other favorites from the album: "You Want Her, Too" (with Elvis Costello); "Put It There"; and "My Brave Face" (a clip from which I put on my first-ever answering machine back in '89 -- back in the Olden Tymes when you had to hold the answering machine up to the stereo speaker to record your message!).

Paul McCartney: RAM (1971)

2012-02-01T23:46:00.004-06:00

This is one of my favorite McCartney albums. The below link is for listening to the whole album, if you've got the time to sit back and get into it.

Hear especially "Too Many People" (first song); "Heart of the Country" (at 20:30); and "Back Seat of My Car" (at 38:43).

Spring!

2012-02-01T18:14:00.009-06:00

I'm going to have a good spring, dammit, and here's partially why: These cheap canvas shoes! They were only $35, but they are padded and comfortable and they look cool, and I wore them today (when it was an ungodly 80 degrees on a February 1!) with khakis and a black T and felt really cute. I can see myself wearing these come April at an outdoor cafe, and coming home late enough so that I don't have to listen to the sloppy hippies next door haw-hawing in their backyard until 4 in the morning! One can always dream. At both ends of the spectrum, loud hippies and loud frat boys are usually only tolerable if you have someone of your own with you.

Until I find someone of my own to be with me...God bless Amazon! I've now ordered 5 pairs of shoes from their sellers since after Christmas (ranging in price from $35 to $99), and all of them fit just fine (no returns), and I've had a BLAST shopping from hundreds and thousands of styles rather than having to rely on the crappy selection in nearby stores. (Seriously, it's depressing when you have an idea of what you want and are unable to find it in a physical store -- especially with no car; I can't just jot randomly all over town!)

Familiar (chatoyant)

2012-01-30T00:26:00.006-06:00

A couple of nights ago around 10:45 pm, I kept hearing "meow, meow, meow" outside my window. I'm up on the 2nd story, so I was wondering where exactly the mews were coming from... I peered out and couldn't see; kept hearing mews, so turned off all of my lights and computer and TV to see... There was a cat perched on the tree closest to my 2nd-story window, looking in at me! :)

What a pleasant and welcome surprise, a cat visit! (Since my cat Gracie died on April 15, 2009, I haven't had another cat, and miss the cat spirit so.) I talked to this visiting cat ("Hi honey! You sure are a pretty cat! What are you doing up there?") for about 20 minutes before she disappeared again...

FAMILIAR: "a spirit often embodied in an animal and held to attend and serve or guard a person."
CHATOYANT: "to shine like a cat's eyes."

(The cat was sitting in the nook of the tree pictured here.)

Cool job application

2012-01-28T03:08:00.006-06:00

A marketing firm just advertised the following temp job (only 2 weeks!). What I liked about it was the last part:

"...If you are interested, please tell us something about you and, as a skills test, please write your own 1-sentence witty sayings (like what would be found in a Fortune Cookie) about the following 5 topics and include them in your email...

(1) organic farming, (2) golf, (3) the ocean, (4) Saab and (5) sales."

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I already sent in my "skills test" but I'm curious: What would you guys have written for the above 5 items?

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Later note (February 1):

After ZERO responses to my above, I'm mad at myself for asking anyone on the Internet to actually respond. People who read this blog tend to like to lurk and get off on what I write but not want to contribute themselves. Boring as shit.

Anyway, what I ended up turning in to the job application:

(1) When life gives you manure... farm it!
(2) See what suits you to a tee.
(3) Today you will make waves.
(4) A Saab story to make you smile.
(5) There's a bridge you should see...

I can amuse myself. Trust me. I lived completely isolated during my formative years. I learned to amuse myself.

Sunday Morning

2012-01-26T03:03:00.003-06:00

'Round Midnight

2012-01-26T02:22:00.002-06:00

Family Values

2012-01-25T23:32:00.019-06:00

When did "family values" start coming up as an actual electoral issue among Republicans? It's not so big this year, except with Rick Santorum, who has made "family values" a big thing for probably more than a decade now.

Santorum and other religious people define "family values" as a "man married to a woman." These folks say that "a man married to a woman" equals a happy family life AND a good America.

I beg to differ.

My mother and father were married for 15 years (1962 to 1977). I was born in 1965. During their marriage, I remember very little but hate.

One early memory was when I was 4, and my dad was trying to teach my mom how to drive a stick-shift. They didn't have a baby-sitter, so I had to go out with them... He screamed abusively at her constantly. After a few driving sessions and listening to him, I remember screaming myself at both of them: "I don't want to go! I don't want to go!" I still had to go.

That was at age 4. There were dozens of shitty things and moves in between then and the end.

The end of the marriage came when I was 12: Dad went out for the evening in his suede jacket. Came home. Wanted my mom to go to the bedroom and have sex with him. She refused. I was ordered to my room. Peeked out to see them grappling, her pulling his gold chain off, her on her knees before him and him then ordering her to PICK IT UP.

The next thing I knew, my mother was running off into the woods while my dad shot after her.

I closed my bedroom door that I'd been peeking out of. I got lucky that my drunken father went and passed out rather than choosing to shoot me.

How many families has something like this happened to.

To Rick Santorum and any other asshole claiming "family values" just because there was a "man and a woman" in the equation: It has NOTHING to do with "man and woman." Male/female marriages are at the 50% rate of failure. How dare anyone say that these things, just because they're "male/female," are what anyone should be aiming for? (Especially when what I knew as a kid as "aiming for" was my father shooting at my mother?)

I will never forget the night that my father shot at my mother. Aside from that most-major trauma, I will also never forget the time that my father gave my mother a black eye because she got home late from the dentist. I will never forget every possibly happy thing that he did with me that he turned into shit:

Like a high-school football game that he took me to... My dad taking me to a game! Only, he spent the whole time pointing out which girls looked like sluts.

And then there was my dad driving me to a skating rink: Per his instructions, I had to keep my hair in a pony-tail and I had to keep my coat on the whole time.

And then there was the one Dallas Cowboys game I got to go to: My dad got drunk by the end of it, and I, at age 12, had to steer the car home because he was so fucked up.

And the above were the supposedly GOOD things that I experienced while I was a kid. I'm not talking about the times he hit my mother or the times he terrorized me.

So don't talk to me about "family values" featuring a positive male figure. I had the shittiest male role model imaginable. That political figures are claiming that such "male-female-marriage" is automatically the ideal is psychotic to me.

She's different

2012-01-24T02:36:00.002-06:00

Loving Nixon

2012-01-22T01:10:00.024-06:00

Spent most of this Saturday night watching the Republican returns from South Carolina! Which reminded me...

In the summer of 1980, when I was 14, I stayed up til all hours to see who Reagan would pick as his VP (back when such things were excitingly up for grabs 'til all hours): Gerald Ford or George H.W. Bush. When the decision was finally made, my mother -- with whom I'd been noshing in daylight hours -- was asleep, yet I was so excited that I slipped a piece of paper under her door, so she'd see it first thing in the morning: "IT'S BUSH!" (Imagine getting excited about such a thing!) :)

From Wikipedia RE what was going on that night in 1980:

VICE PRESIDENTIAL SELECTION:

Ronald Reagan's choice for vice presidential running mate had been a subject of speculation since the end of the primaries. When former President Gerald Ford revealed in a CBS interview with Walter Cronkite that he was seriously considering the vice presidency, Ford garnered a great deal of interest. However, after Ford suggested the possibility of a "copresidency" and, in addition, insisted that Henry Kissinger be re-appointed as Secretary of State and that Alan Greenspan be appointed as Secretary of the Treasury, negotiations to form a Reagan-Ford ticket ceased. Less than twenty-four hours before Reagan formally accepted the Republican nomination, he telephoned George H. W. Bush to inform Bush of his intent to nominate him. The following day, July 17—the final day of the Republican National Convention—Reagan officially announced Bush as his running mate.

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I really do seem to get off on stuff like this. For instance, when I was 3, my mother notes in my childhood scrapbook that I would --- as a 3-year-old --- stop and watch Richard Nixon whenever he was on TV! (At 3, I was apparently a weird savant of some sort.)

By the time I was 9, I was watching Nixon's resignation on TV and later writing the man a sympathy letter...

My only later political claim to fame came in 1984, when I was 18, driving in the motorcade of Gary Hart when he appeared at UT-Austin. The pollster Pat Caddell (now on Fox) rode in my back seat. Wooo!

Begrudgingly semi pro-Gingrich

2012-01-20T01:02:00.009-06:00

From the FOX debate in South Carolina on Monday:

[FOX NEWS REPORTER JUAN] WILLIAMS: Senator Santorum, the Obama administration has not specifically addressed high levels of joblessness and a 25 percent poverty rate in black America. They say they want to fix the economy for all, but given the crisis situation among a group of historically disadvantaged Americans, do you feel the time has come to take special steps to deal with the extraordinary level of poverty afflicting one race of America?

SANTORUM: It’s very interesting, if you look at a study that was done by the Brookings Institute back in 2009, they determined that if Americans do three things, they can avoid poverty. Three things. Work, graduate from high school, and get married before you have children. Those three things…
(APPLAUSE)
SANTORUM: Those three things, if you do, according to Brookings, results in only 2 percent of people who do all those things ending up in poverty, and 77 percent above the national average in income....

This was followed only a couple of minutes later by Newt Gingrich's now-famous standing-ovation moment in response to Williams asking Gingrich if he was somehow "belittling" minority teenagers by suggesting that they work at any menial job. (Gingrich points out that his own -- white -- daughter worked as a janitor when she was 13 to earn money.)

Santorum was right, and Gingrich was right. Hate to say it. I hate both men's ignorant views on gay rights (and I dislike Gingrich back from the '90s when I was a huge Clinton fan), but their views on why some people are poor are right on target. It's not racist, it's just a fact that blacks, for instance, have a higher rate of unwed mothers, have a lower rate of high school graduation, and have a higher rate of unemployment than either whites, Hispanics, or Asians --- regardless of the current economic conditions of the country as a whole. As Santorum pointed out with his stats from the Brookings Institute, if you drop out of school, get pregnant while a teen, and don't work... you're most likely going to be poor. Duh.

Juan Williams asked Santorum if "the time has come to take special steps" to deal with the "extraordinary" level of black poverty... Not sure what he meant by "the time has come"! How long have we had "Affirmative Action" in the US now? Maybe the "time has come" for people to understand the cause/effect relationship of their actions: get pregnant while a teen, drop out of school, don't work... poverty. Why should the government be even ASKED to take "special steps" to help with a continuing problem that's based a good deal on personal behavior?

As for Gingrich's speech a minute or so later: We lower-middle-class whites started out working minimum wage jobs without complaint. I personally wasn't a janitor, but I earned the same minimum wage working numbingly boring jobs at a local drugstore and then the local K-Mart as soon as I turned 16, up 'til I graduated high school. Once in college, I worked a minimum-wage job at the school library to help pay for school. As Gingrich points out in response to Williams' suggestion that Gingrich was somehow "belittling" minorities by suggesting they -- gasp -- WORK: What's so insulting about suggesting that kids learn responsibility from working?

And then on to Gingrich on Thursday's SC debate... Again, I'm not a Gingrich fan, have never been; I was around when he, as it turned out, hypocritically went after Clinton in the '90s for fooling around. I saw him, rightly, voted out of power by his own party members. But... In the below he has a very good point: CNN's John King opening a presidential debate with a question about an ex-wife's allegations from 14 years ago is COMPLETELY ridiculous.

In both of the Gingrich clips, I admire his balls for calling people on their BS. It's a huge dilemma for me. I can't vote for Obama in 2012 simply because he's done a terrible job. Bush was bad and inept (I have never voted for Bush); Obama has continued the trend of bad and inept. Except Obama is more well-spoken, and, kind of, tows the accepted social line ("kind of" but not actually for gay marriage, for example) so he gets points... but why? His money-men are exactly the same money-men who back the Republicans. (Only, the Republicans admit it, while Obama does not. Obama is especially creepy because he pretends to be "purer" than the Republicans, who just outright admit their corporate loyalties! With Bush and the Republicans, you at least knew/know exactly what you're getting!) I can't in good conscience vote for someone who's allowed the country to deteriorate EVEN FURTHER than Bush did.

But who's the alternative? Romney, I think, would make a very good manager of the economy. And that is, actually, what we need... Kind of. But it's beyond a "good manager" problem right now. Things really have gone off the rails. Outsourcing is a serious problem for American workers, and Romney did just that with Bain. (As Obama has also allowed.) I'm all for "cleaning up" and "tightening up," but...no one is mentioning that Americans are losing jobs because we're allowing corporations to outsource jobs to foreign workers who earn $2 an hour!

Romney/Obama/Gingrich are all pro-corporation. Ron Paul, whom I like the best because of his intellectual honesty, is pro "let capitalism be capitalism" and is against "big capitalism" --- But, even with him... If we "let capitalism be capitalism," then we'll likely all (unless we're shareholders of a corporation) be making $1.00 an hour unless the government somehow checks their innate greed! (Seriously... When have workers EVER received a slightly-more-than-living wage under a capitalist system? One is post-WWII in the US and in Europe. The only other that I can think of is after the PLAGUE in the Middle Ages, when so many people died and the worker shortage was so acute that the plebes finally had a little leverage!)

Ghost of a Girl

2012-01-18T05:40:00.021-06:00

Hi, Gin. Thanks for your spirit visiting me Monday night. I needed you.

There's so much we missed together. (I don't know if YOU missed, but I missed.) I wish I could have grown up with you and experienced Austin with you. It ended up a Wasteland for me.

I mourned you for 5 years before you died. Found out you had actually died when I called your Georgia house in November of 1988. Your father said, "I thought we told all the Azle people."

You were a Libra (October 11) and wore Lauren perfume. And liked Heart and Prince. And listened to my Lennon when you didn't really want to. Thank you for the matchbooks you sent me, after a song we wrote together. And for saying that I looked like Marilyn when I posed above the heat vent that blew up my dorky nightgown.

You ended up not loving me, but for a brief time I loved and knew I was loved in return. I am grateful.

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GINNY Q (July 29, 1983)

I see you, my funny friend
And my heart laughs
Glad to be close again

A soul-mate comes once in a lifetime

So I'll run with the chance
To smoke and dance and sing
And let you know
that nine out of ten
are always there for the breaking!

It's a tug of war...

2012-01-16T04:56:00.002-06:00

This Swan

2012-01-14T03:18:00.014-06:00

Bad Meat!

2012-01-13T20:02:00.008-06:00

When the below study was released today, I was especially freaked out by just how bad processed meats were for you. I mean, I KNEW they weren't GREAT, but... just a serving a day can raise the cancer risk by 20%? Ick.

I just took a look around my fridge, freezer, and cabinet: sausage, hotdogs, all kinds of pizza, deli turkey meat, Beenie-Weenies, Lean Pockets, frozen beef burritos, canned chili, a frozen enchilada dinner... The only "real" meat I have around is hamburger meat. [See below about red meat.] I feel kind of nauseous thinking about it. I guess I thought that since I also eat vegetables and drink orange juice every day, they'd counteract the nastiness of the processed meat, but that's really "magical thinking"!

I don't really cook, but I guess I do need to focus on chicken, fish, tuna for meat when I HAVE to have meat (often beans/rice or a baked potato or spaghetti/non-meat sauce or a salad are fine with me)... Just seeing the above list of crappy meat in the house was really gross.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/30661

"...[the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm] found that eating at least 120 grams per day of red meat ... was associated with an almost 30% increased risk of pancreatic cancer in men ... Red meat didn't raise the risk of pancreatic cancer in women, and the researchers said that men generally ate more red meat. That could mean there may be an association between the highest levels of red meat intake and pancreatic cancer risk, they noted.

Processed meat, on the other hand, was associated with a significant increase in pancreatic cancer risk all around. For every daily 50-gram standard serving [2 pieces of bacon, 1 sausage], relative risk of the disease rose 19% ...

That increase is likely related to the nitrites and N-nitroso compounds found in processed meats, which have been shown to be carcinogenic and to induce pancreatic cancer in animal models, the researchers wrote."

S. Said, S. Said (1966)

2012-01-10T02:38:00.013-06:00

She said "I know what it's like to be dead.
I know what it is to be sad"
And she's making me feel like I've never been born.

We Can Work It Out (1965)

2012-01-08T05:29:00.004-06:00

John and Paul are so cute together! :)

It won't mean a thing in a 100 years.

2012-01-08T03:59:00.012-06:00

I was in a sandwich shop on this pleasant Saturday, and this was one of the piped-in songs while I was waiting. I started crying. (I mean, not loudly "boo-hooing" but tearing up!) :) From 1990, when I saw things more philosophically rather than drearily, as of the past two years!

(Wonder if the sandwich shop chose this song because of the "my hunger is real" lyric?) :)

The sun is warm as the day is long
I just got the feeling I can do no wrong
I've got a long way to walk
Can't afford my next meal
I tell a few lies but my hunger is real

And it won't mean a thing in a hundred years
No, it won't mean a thing in a hundred years

Mademoiselle tell me do you play
Well, if she shakes her head, well then that's okay
I watch her walk away in haste
There's just no accounting for some people's taste,

And it won't mean a thing in a hundred years
No, it won't mean a thing in a hundred years

Big angry man in the doorway there
Just keep on walking like I don't care
Why you giving such an evil eye
Could it be you were ignored by every passerby

And it won't mean a thing in a hundred years
No, it won't mean a thing in a hundred years

Play in the park for tobacco and food
Then I excuse myself but they think I'm rude
Tourist don't want me to end his show
But this colorful attraction got places to go

And it won't mean a thing in a hundred years
No, it won't mean a thing in a hundred years

Sit at the pier watch the sun go down
Another lost little boy in a big old town
I want to laugh I want to cry
But no matter how hard I may try

It won't mean a thing in a hundred years
No, it won't mean a thing in a hundred years

It won't mean a thing in a hundred years
No, it won't mean a thing in a hundred years

Republicans on a Saturday Night

2012-01-07T22:50:00.003-06:00

Just finished watching the Repub debate on ABC. Last Q was what each would normally be doing on a Saturday night...

Rick Perry would be at the shooting range. (yee-haw/fake super-butch)
Huntsman would be on the phone with his two sons in the Navy. (yawn/fake super-patriot)
Gingrich: "I'd be watching the championship basketball game on TV. I mean -- football." (Even if you meant "football," Newt, the college championship is Monday.)
Santorum: "I'd be watching the championship game." (See above.)
Romney: "The football game. I love football." (See above.)
Ron Paul: "I'd be with my family, and if they went to bed, I'd read an economics book." :)

Thank you, Ron Paul, for the only NON-PHONY answer of the bunch! (I don't even mind the stupid "shooting range" and "Navy sons" answers in comparison to pretending to be into football when you're obviously not. Ugh.)

Like Kites

2012-01-07T01:02:00.012-06:00

Today smells like kites,
mesquite trees, tumbleweeds; my spying the secret fort
(from the one two-story house on the block),
wrecked within weeks after I'd told and told.

Ice-cream, too. The Dairy Queen man, with his wife and kids,
ordering me a "secret" cone, despite my own sundae.
He stared to make sure of his gift, which I threw away.

And it smells like the rocks that I picked and picked
from our two-story front yard and tossed in paper bags.
Neighbors mocked: "You'll never get rid of all of those!"
I did, we did. Grass grew. And then we moved.

I like the smell of kites in January, a month
used to strings of things still hanging around, useless.

In Passing

2012-01-05T04:18:00.021-06:00

Back in the early '90s, I'd been in and out of college for years. Partly for money reasons -- I often had to drop out and take a full-time campus job to survive -- but also because I had a Romantic childhood notion about what I'd thought was "The College Experience." I.e., a "Great Enlightening," both intellectually, spiritually, physically (via sensitive college-boy lovers and/or professors). As I slogged on through school, I began to realize that there was no "Great Enlightening" gonna come. It was all a myth, like there being no Santa!

And so I sat down and figured out exactly how many credit hours I needed to graduate, and then just did it. Just slogged it out just to say I'd gotten my degree.

Same thing with grad school. Even after the whole drab undergraduate experience, I STILL Romantically thought that my writing grad school would be different: In a different town, I'd meet people serious about writing; we'd all gather after class to talk about writing; etc. In San Francisco, I'd really have a "Great Enlightening" in every way! Nah. It was more slogging out. The students there didn't particularly care, the professors weren't profound. (Blatantly liking only the type of writing that THEY wrote or, worse, writing that fit their "theory" of writing. Famously, one gay male professor initially mocked me for saying I liked Norman Mailer. He then ignored me for the first couple of classes. Then I mentioned in a poem something about being gay... After that, I was his favorite. Same with a female professor who disliked my verbiage in my poems. One day, I went to the library to look up her own work -- extremely stripped down. So, for fun, I edited one of my poems to look and sound exactly like hers... After that, I was her favorite.) Just slogged this bullshit out to get my Master's degree and say I had one.

RE all of the above: What if marriage is exactly the same way?! You initially, as a kid, start out thinking being with someone should be some sort of "Great Enlightening"... and then you figure out that, no, it's not, but perhaps you should just do it... just to say you had, just to show you'd jumped through the appropriate hoops. Just to make your everyday social life a little easier.

I gave in and did with college what I didn't feel, just to say I'd done it. Got some satisfaction out of it at the end, just the fact that I had degrees. So maybe I should give in and just do "the couple thang" now with whoever, just to have someone to go to movies and cafes with? It won't feel exactly right to my soul, but I will, at the end, have someone intelligent to talk to and there will be some everyday social satisfaction and comfort out of it: Here I am, WITH someone! We're a couple! AND I have a Master's! :)

What a hit. Especially at holidays. OK Santa?

New Year's Eve and Sex with Rick Perry

2012-01-01T01:49:00.037-06:00

On the afternoon of the New Year's Eve, I did useful stuff: went grocery shopping, returned library books, went and got some little stuff from Marshall's with my $50 Christmas gift card ($4 worth of Jelly Bellies, a bath-mat for $5). Then came home and took out the trash, did dishes.

While I was out, did mind tricks: "What if I were out doing errands on the day of New Year's Eve and actually looking forward to something to do that night, too..."

Thinking "what if" put me in a better mood.

In actuality, I did feel relatively good. But I expected some brou-ha-ha, being New Year's Eve. Last night, for instance, the neighbors in the 2 houses next door started shooting off fireworks around 11:45pm, going on for the next 2 hours. I called the cops, I got so sick of it. Then tonight on New Year's, I called the cops again because the neighbors started their fireworks around 8:45pm. And went on. And on. And on. Not just little Black Cats, but loud stuff jolting me out of my chair!

There's an Austin ordinance against fireworks in the city limits. Matters not, apparently, since the cops never came, but at least I'm on record about being disturbed. Obviously, would much rather have had something to do tonight other than being at home and being officially bothered by neighbors!

Oh, re "sex with Rick Perry": The night before New Year's Eve, had not just one but TWO dreams about having sex with him! Have never liked him, not a Republican, etc. But the sex dreams were hot! ;p So much so that the next day I turned on C-SPAN just to see SOMETHING, ANYTHING with Rick Perry in Iowa!

Oh my god, I have indeed, in my utter isolation, gone completely mad! ;p Well, maybe not so much: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney sex dreams are still (barely) within the realm of normal, I suppose. (Hey, I did briefly have a Mormon boyfriend in high school.)

If I, in the future, report anything at all sexual about Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, however... Ewwwww.

p.s. Just looked up both Perry and Romney on Wikipedia: Pisces, both. Their eyes. Sex.

p.p.s. Just yelled out the window at the assholes next door shooting off fireworks at 3:30am: "Shut the fuck up, you asshole frat-boys, it's 3 am!" (They're asshole wimpy HIPSTERS, so I thought the "frat-boy" thing would get their goat.) I got one yell back: "RELAX." To which I responded: "It's fucking 3 am! Shut the fuck up!"

I enjoyed going NEW YORK/NEW JERSEY on their dumb Austin asses. They're not used to screaming and confrontation. Just try me, stupid, loud fuckers. Just try me. I've called the police twice tonight. I'm just dying to go over there myself. God, I'm so mad and just drunk enough. Rick Perry-sex mad and drunk enough to fight because I have nothing at all better to do.

ppps: As of 4am: No other noise...

I do, though, think that in the very near future I need to be fucking -- yes, fucking -- some older, good-looking, take-charge Texas man. This silly Internet stuff for the past 3 years with so-and-so has been ridiculous! No more wimps!

pppps: I do like the fact that Rick Perry's favorite movie is apparently "Immortal Beloved"! That is sexy. His pick, and the others below, came from the conservative "Washington Times" from a story on 10/30/11:

• Newt Gingrich — Casablanca
• Michele Bachmann — Braveheart (Or Saving Private Ryan)
• Rick Santorum — Field of Dreams (among others)
• Ron Paul – Ron Paul does not really watch movies
• Mitt Romney — O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Barack Obama has listed Casablanca, The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as his favorite movies.

-------------------

Aside from "Immortal Beloved," I must say that I'm most enthusiastic about the non-generic choices of "O Brother, Where Are Thou?" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"!

Wow! I'm the loud one!

2011-12-30T01:21:00.009-06:00

A very handsome black man with dreds and a British accent just knocked on my door at 1am:

"I'm not sure if you're the one, but I live below and I think your music might be too loud." Now THAT is how to ask!

I was blasting K.T. Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope" album, with "Another Place to Fall" at that moment. Happy to be feeling so loud. But then also happy to be a good neighbor and politely turn my stuff down.

Sinead O'Connor's recipe for love

2011-12-28T03:19:00.017-06:00

Just heard on Fox News (of all places!) that Sinead O'Connor has just divorced her 3rd or 4th husband (or something) after 16 or 18 (or something) days. This in light of her recent September 2011 call for a fuck on her website:

16.09.11 Revised advert for boy (man) friend.

Having at first in humour used words like "hump" , "banana", "yam, "aubergine" and "difficult brown" when advertising to find boy (man) friend I have attracted only the type of men I might catch crabs from even purely by e mailing them, so I now wish to make a clearer advert concerning exactly what it is I seek.

1. A man not under 44. NON-NEGOTIABLE

2. Has to live in Ireland. NON-NEGOTIABLE.

3. Preferably Dublin or Wicklow but other counties will be considered due to appalling desperateness of shit-uation.

4 Has to actually be single. NON-NE-FUCKING-GOTIABLE

5. Preferably sterile. (The lady doesn't want any more pregnancies)

6. VERY physically affectionate. NON-NEGOTIABLE (the lady needs lots of affection and will reciprocate. The lady HAS a lot of affection and wishes to give it)

7. Funny. (The lady is funny)

8. Eccentric. (The lady is a looper)

9. Interested in and capable of sex at least once a day.. (If the lady feels like it).

10. Sexually must be very loving, cuddly, affectionate, sweet, funny, and also reasonably filthy. (The lady is all of the above and will absolutely reciprocate)

11. There must be a LOT of kissing before during and after love-making (The lady likes kissing).

12.. Must provide me with Fry's chocolate cream bars (NOT a euphemism for anal sex) at least once a week and do all he can to ensure the Fry's people never go out of business. (The lady loves Fry's chocolate creams. Crunchies, peanut m+ms, and chili-chocolate may be substituted if Fry's are sold out)

13. Re-iterate.. Has to be blind/mad enough to think I'm gorgeous.

14. Has tell me I'm gorgeous at least ten times a day. (The lady will reciprocate)

15. Re-iterate.. No Nigels. NON-NEGOTIABLE

16. Re-iterate.. No hair gel. Hair dryers, or general hair faffery. NON-NEGOTIABLE

17. Must be hairy. No waxed or buffed need apply. NON-NEGOTIABLE. ( bald heads are however, acceptable as the whole man looks like an erection. Especially if a tiny 'eye' is painted on top of head)

18. Must be stubbly. ABSOLUTELY NON-NE-FUCKING-GOTIABLE

19. No after-shave. This ruins the delicious smell of stubble. (The lady LOVES stubbly man-smell and beard rash)

20. Must be employed NON-NEGOTIABLE. Re-iterate.. No vehicle clampers.

21. No pierced nipples.

22 No addictions other than sex, cigarettes or coffee (the lady loves all three)

23. No jealous psycho exes NON-NEGOTIABLE (the lady has had enough of those)

24. No homo-phobes. NON-NE-FUCKING-GOTIABLE

25. No 'right-wingers' of any kind.

26. No accountants (boring)

27. No stamp collectors (flaccid)

28. No Knob-cheese.

29. Must, when lady is 'moody' or 'cross' dis-arm her with love-making. This is the secret key.

In return, the lucky man chosen will be given the vast quantities of love, affection, kisses, cuddles, sweet-nothings whispered in ears, friendship, support, encouragement, compliments, and most importantly, regular sweet and filthy, loving sex.

The lady is a woman FULL to the brim of love and affection. And un-happy at not having a man to give it to. So if u are out there please hurry. I'm lovely. U want me. U deserve me. I'm worth it. Oh.. And I smell really good too. And am a CHAMPION cuddler and giver of tenderness.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite all of the sad above... When Sinead O'Connor first came out in the '80s, she was startling and wild and interesting. What's happened to her in the meantime--marrying multiple times and having multiple kids and now begging for dates--is embarrassing and a shame. Here's how she was when I knew her, bringing her real, inspirational self to the self-satisfied Grammys in 1989. (She certainly ain't so inspirational 20 years later!):

These SHOES are dangerous!

2011-12-27T19:45:00.009-06:00

I just bought these gorgeous $229 Sesto Meucci shoes for $92!!! The only problem with having something beautiful like this in my wardrobe...now the rest of my stuff looks shabby in comparison! (NOTE TO SELF: Get job. With job comes money for GREAT SHOES--not just "sustenance shoes"--on a regular basis. Hmmm.)

My favorite post-Christmas stuff...

2011-12-27T01:17:00.011-06:00

My mom called me today, the day after Christmas; she'd gone to the Monday sales and bought a BED-PAD for me since I'd been complaining about how harsh the springs were on the bed that I'd bought for cheap just last year. (Seriously, all of my adult life, I've bought nothing but cheap mattresses, which have never bothered me at all, but the set I bought last year upon moving into my one-room apartment has been the worst EVER! The springs, after only a year, have literally poked through the fabric and have been constantly poking ME while I've tried to sleep!)

When my mom arrived with her gift bed-pad and I asked her to "feel, just FEEL" how bad the springs had been, her first thought was, "They're bad. But since the springs were that bad, why didn't you just turn the mattress over? This mattress isn't that heavy. You probably could have lifted it by yourself."

Aaargh! Yes, indeed, I could have! Why I didn't think of that, I do not know! :)

So we turned the mattress over, got the new thick bed-pad on, and... VOILA! A nice new comfy bed! (Or so they say; I haven't slept on it yet. We shall see, and I'm sure I shall report...)

After the bed-pad was on, I didn't want the fun to end, so I asked my mom if she wanted to go to the close-by thrift store, just to be out and doing something on this pretty day... OK!

And there I got ALL of these books for only $2.50!! Shopping for books is like shopping for SHOES to me -- extremely psyche-satisfying... Except when I just went shoe-shopping last week, I spent $210.00 for 3 pairs ($100, $70, and $40), while when I went book-shopping today, I spent... $2.50 for 7 books!

The Horses are coming!

2011-12-26T00:47:00.012-06:00

When I first heard this song, I immediately thought of Sylvia Plath's "Elm." Terrible when the horses have gone off, but... In this song, how wonderful the idea of them on their way back... How missed and still possible they always were/are.

On the Eve of Christmas Eve

2011-12-23T22:11:00.035-06:00

Well, this certainly has been a year of doing nothing but treading water!

I was just looking over old blog entries for December of last year... There was stuff in late 2010 like, "Woooo! I just earned enough money for January and February rent!" (Exactly like I just posted a few days ago.) There was stuff last year about not having anywhere to go for Christmas Day itself, since we were having our celebration on Christmas Eve before my bro/wife/boys all went to Houston for her family on Christmas Day. (Same again this year.) There were gripes about a relationship that wouldn't work out. (Same again this year.)

At least last year, though, I was finding some holiday "sparkle" in shopping at Marshall's (with the store's perky Christmas songs). When I went to Marshall's yesterday, there was no music at all! And when I took a bus to downtown Austin this afternoon-into-evening, there were no Christmas lights on Congress Avenue! What the hell, people? Is everyone THAT poor that they can't afford even piped-in Christmas music or lights on the main street of Austin? Come on!

I also don't even have any mildly humorous stories about dilapidated Christmas lights from my mother... This year, just put up the old dollar-store wreath and ribbons that I bought last year. Ho-ho-hum.

Last year's Christmas o' 2010, and the weeks leading up to it, were, for me I guess, semi-worth commenting on because it was my first Christmas back in Austin, after being forced back against my will in March 2010 for financial reasons. I wanted to note the adjustments. But this year, 2011, has just been more of the same crap! Not just Christmas, but everything! A few moments of excitement with work gigs that paid the rent momentarily, but nothing else. No new love, no new creative projects, no new full-time job to enable me to get out of this one room. Like I said, just treading water. Not sinking, thank god, but... dang. This one-room life was kind of interesting for the first 6 months (how I used to live 25 years ago as a student...how would I cope at 45?), but is quite a drag at this point! Doable, but boring!

Next yearly milestone up: New Year's Eve! Last year, spent it lying on my bed flipping between Anderson Cooper on CNN and Andy Cohen on Bravo. Not horribly depressed, just horribly BORED. And vowing then that the next New Year's Eve would be NOTHING like 2010... Ha! I'm pretty sure it's going to be exactly the same! ;p Sigh.

I know there's plenty to learn from being humble. But... I used to be better than this. "Better" meaning, I used to almost constantly have some kind of forward motion, SOME momentum, in my life.

Yes, yes, I get it: Better learn to be "content" with what I have, however stagnant. What I've learned over the past year: I can find stuff to appreciate in Austin: the library, downtown, going to the grocery store, working UT games, buying new socks, the trees outside the window of my one-room apartment. And I appreciate the sporadic jobs.

I GET IT. Can I move back ON now????????????????? I'm sure that outburst is not how it works, but...

Universe, I ain't gonna lie (as all the shirtless, mulleted males say on "Cops" as they're hauled away): I's bored to death with the high point of my day being a transient on a bus telling me I'm pretty after I've shopped at Marshall's for a 3-pack of new socks and am in the process of bussing home to write about it (the socks AND the transient) on my blog. Really now, Universe! Can I get a break and just move ON from this particular "life lesson"? Frankly, socks-n-stuff have grown quite stale.

How 'bout surprising me with something fresh-n-new? (I'm referring to "love" and "a decent job" as opposed to "cancer" and "death," in case you were wondering what "fresh-n-new" meant to me, Universe.)

Punk/Soul/Vegas = America!

2011-12-22T03:20:00.002-06:00

Happy Holidays

2011-12-22T02:55:00.003-06:00

RAIN! ("Who's gonna destruct me?")

2011-12-20T02:30:00.002-06:00

Done!

2011-12-20T01:20:00.007-06:00

First week of December (plus the last part of November) = 25 hours freelance (at $27 an hour).
2nd week of December = 40 hours in an office ($12 an hour) plus 25 hours freelance ($27 an hour).
3rd week of December = 32 hours in an office plus 32 hours freelance.
Today, the 4th week = Finished 6 hours of freelance. Tomorrow, do the last 2 hours of the project. And then........ FREEEEEEEDOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Well, at least for the rest of the year!

I just worked my ass off all month! ;p And now rent and bills are paid for January AND February!!

Merry Fucking Christmas --- I made it, goddammit! I got money to buy Christmas presents for loved ones, and then rent for the next two months!!!!

Houston?

2011-12-18T02:27:00.001-06:00

U.S. "Defense"?

2011-12-16T05:40:00.008-06:00

On Chris Matthews' MSNBC show Thursday, he closed by stating that the United States was NEVER an aggressor (!) and only reacted militarily when it was attacked, thus the name, "Department of DEFENSE." And Matthews is a Democrat, on a heavily liberal MSNBC!

I'm not that knowledgeable about the subtleties of American military interventions prior to WWII, but I do know something about what all we've done post-WWII.

Below is a handy outline that I copied and pasted from Wikipedia, which in basic form lists all of our country's ongoing military activities and interventions since post-WWII.

I'm curious: In which of the below was the United States acting "in defense"?

2.15 Cold War era (1945–1991)

2.15.1 Postwar Military Reorganization (1947)
2.15.2 Korean War (1950–1953)
2.15.3 Lebanon crisis of 1958
2.15.4 Dominican Intervention
2.15.5 Vietnam War (1955–1975)
2.15.6 Tehran hostage rescue
2.15.7 Grenada
2.15.8 Beirut
2.15.9 Libya
2.15.10 Panama

2.16 Post–Cold War era (1991–2001)

2.16.1 Persian Gulf War (1990–1991)
2.16.2 Somalia
2.16.3 Haiti
2.16.4 Yugoslavia

2.17 War on Terrorism (2001–present)

2.17.1 Afghanistan
2.17.2 Philippines

2.18 Iraq
2.19 Libyan intervention

-----------------------------------------------------------------

As someone pointed out a few months ago: We're ALWAYS at war. The United States has been CONSTANTLY at war for over 50 years now. There's NEVER a break from it. It's like the fucking Orwellian "1984" scenario!

I'd like a fucking break from the constant fucking Perpetual War, please!

And I thought my NYC story was sad...

2011-12-13T23:00:00.004-06:00

A fellow temp worker, a 60-ish woman, was talking with someone else about being from New York. So I piped up with, "I lived there for 3 years! I looooooved it!" Then I mentioned that I came back to Austin because I couldn't find steady work and couldn't afford the rent up there, that I really missed it, etc. etc.

Well, HER story tops my Mini Tale of Woe, that's for sure...

She'd lived in NYC all her life. Born in the Bronx, moved to the East Village over 30 years ago. She and her 12-year-old daughter had lived in Stuy Town, a historic rent-controlled building that just about no one can get into any more. (When I worked in the Union Square area, I once spent a lunch hour walking to Stuy Town, since it had been in the news at the time after being sold to a major developer, and I wanted to check it out.)

About the same time I was having trouble finding work in NYC, she lost her longtime, relatively high-paying job (academic support staff). And then struggled along with temp work for a year or so... She ended up having to declare bankruptcy. And lost her prime apartment. And was going to end up on the street until a friend of hers in Austin said she and her daughter could come stay with her. She's been here for about 3 years. At one point had a full-time job at UT but was just laid off several months ago and is again temping. She now lives in a generic, cheap mega-complex way south. No little neighborhood shops and restaurants. No place to walk...

Her story puts my bitchin' and moanin' about my "loss" to shame. I was basically just an extended visitor to New York City before the economy forced me to leave. She, on the other hand, is a real New Yorker, with her whole life and roots there. She'd been in her historical, cheap Manhattan apartment for over 10 years... When I had to leave, I came back to a town that I'd lived in since the 1980s, to a neighborhood that I'd known for the past decade. My immediate family lives within 2 miles of me. I may not LOOOOOVE Austin, but I like it, and I know the place... She, on the other hand, was forced to leave everything she knew for a random city across the country that she had no connection to other than the one kind-hearted friend who offered a place to stay. My sense of "loss" of NYC was mainly aesthetic and psychological (it represented beauty and excitement and wonder to me); her loss was a much more real one.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

2011-12-12T01:19:00.012-06:00

Originally written in 1933 by Kern/Harbach for an "operetta" called "Roberta," and first appeared in the '35 film based on the same, with Irene Dunne singing it.

I like this Platters version best (1958).

Even more than the Bryan Ferry version from '74. Though I'm guessing that Ferry's version is probably closest in sentiment to the original, which then had to be cleaned up for the film, etc. etc. And the Ferry version plus any Roxy Music was my soundtrack of the summer of '91, a miserable summer, which Ferry captured completely in all of its awful hurt and masochism combined with a life-affirming desire for some, ANY, sort of beauty and order. Aw, hell. I really do like the Ferry version the best.

You know you're really old when...

2011-12-11T00:54:00.004-06:00

...you go Christmas shopping at Marshall's and, after the scented candles, the next thing that catches your (bleary) eye is... discount READING GLASSES! And the knowledge that you can also get discount reading SUNGLASSES! Wooooooo!

Jesus.

Well, I am excited about the candles. My place has smelled of smoke for the past 2 months, since I've been unable to afford any candles. It's only one room, and now that it's cold out, I only crack one window at night, when I do most of my smoking. When I leave during the day, I open both windows to air the place out, but it still stinks!

Once I got a new paycheck, the first thing I thought of after getting Christmas presents and a haircut was: CANDLES --- Pine-tree, peppermint, and cinnamon. I want CHRISTMAS SMELLS around me, dammit! And now I have them, at last.

As for the reading glasses: I'm actually pretty happy about finding those. On sale, 3 for $9.99. Up 'til now, I'd had one "good" (aka "semi-stylish") pair that I bought last spring and have been hauling along to job assignments, and then the one horribly ugly pair (given to me from my mom's '80s-90s collection) that I used at home. Now I have a whole boatload to disperse around the one room and the bags I carry to temp assignments, etc. Did I say "Woooooooo" earlier? ;p

In Memory (10/9/40 - 12/8/80)

2011-12-07T23:01:00.002-06:00

BELOW: A poem for myself, pre-Lennon's death.

RINGS

once I walked in clear blue sky
waiting for the bus
my cheek against the ice-cold pane

Mama didn't work
she watched me at the stop
tearing the curls
she spent all morning fixing

who liked my dress?
all the boys, Mama
they give me their nickels
their jackets to wear

Raymond, Danny, Sylvester
we fly kites together
they walk me home
giving me rings
to wear forever

HELLO!

2011-12-07T00:49:00.015-06:00

Makin' Friends

2011-12-05T22:29:00.002-06:00

Working at a temp proctor job today, my supervisor asked me to proofread a long list of names and corresponding ID numbers.

I enthusiastically replied, "I love this kind of stuff. Aside from temp work, I'm actually a proofreader!"

She said, "I'm sorry. I really don't have time right now to learn more about you."

How bizarre! :0

Dumb Blonde (Dolly Parton, 1967)

2011-12-04T07:06:00.002-06:00

Don't try to cry your way out of this
Don't try to lie or I'll catch you in it
Don't try to make me feel sorry for you
Just because I'm blonde
Don't think I'm dumb
Cause this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool

When you left you thought I'd sit
And you thought I'd wait
And you thought I'd cry
You called me a dumb blonde
Ah, but somehow I lived through it
And you know if there's one thing this blonde has learned
Blondes have more fun

You flew too high up off the ground
Hit stormy weather and had to come back down
But I've found new thread for my old spool
Just because I'm blonde
Don't think I'm dumb
Cause this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool

The poison just didn't take...

2011-12-03T06:09:00.004-06:00

Here is what I failed to add to this post and picture of a couple of days ago. For the Daisy pup.

"So I say Live
and turn my shadow three times around
to feed our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst,
blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift."

The Merriest

2011-12-03T04:04:00.007-06:00

God, it's mean to pay me $27 an hour for three weeks! The old spoiling comes back: "I once earned that much regularly, so why shouldn't I now -- ALL the time!" :)

What this brief $27 an hour means to me, though, is... CHRISTMAS!!! A week ago at Thanksgiving, I was apologizing in advance to family members for the presents that I wouldn't be getting them for Christmas since I was completely out of money... And I was utterly depressed at not being able to participate in Christmas shopping... That has been a lot of the fun of the season for me over the years --- the thinking about what to get people, and then being out in the stores amidst the piped-in Christmas music and festivity!

And this $27-an-hour gig --- pays EVERY WEEK, Baby! :) No waiting for months. Just got my first installment Friday... HO-HO-HO! (And new haircut to come next Friday for the first time in three months!)

Merry Christmas!

I'd like to fix this bag of tricks
and hand it out with a fleeting greeting:

Smiles for the frowners
Salutes to the uppers
Boosts for the downers
May the day be the bowl of cherriest
And to all, the Merriest!

Hope you swing during the season
Hope your days go great
Hope you find plenty of reasons all year long to celebrate

Sun for the mopers
A laugh for the criers
Luck for the hopers
To the strange and the ordinariest
Me to you, the Merriest!

Thoughts for the musers
A cheer for the winners
Breaks for the losers
To the Beats and the debonariest
Greetings like the Merriest!

Hope there's oil under your rosevine
Hope you get that raise
Hope you hope everything goes fine
the next 300 and some odd days

Friends for the loners
A song for the singers
Grins for the groaners
make the day the nothing can compariest
have the most, the merriest!

Alma Mater

2011-12-03T02:29:00.005-06:00

One thing that I'm appreciating about being back in Austin and doing temp work on the campus of my alma mater, UT, is the chance to rediscover the place. I got my BA in English there in 1993, which took me longer than 4 years! I kept dropping out to work full-time because I was sick of being broke, then going back, then dropping out again. Finally, after all of my friends had graduated, it dawned on me that if I didn't just buckle down and get the damn degree, I was going to wind up working at K-Mart or someplace! (Funny, I'm making K-Mart wages nowadays anyway! Oh well.)

After getting the BA, I immediately went off to grad school in San Fran. After graduating there in '95, I came back home, and couldn't find any other job at the time than supervising at the UT library where I used to work... Ugh. I was sick of the low-paying library, of the campus. When a publishing company hired me full-time in 2000, I never wanted to see the campus again. And I basically didn't. From 2000 to 2010, I didn't step foot there.

Why? When I first went to UT in the mid-'80s, it was a haven for frat boys and sorority girls. All rah-rah loud and running in packs and conformist and hateful-seeming... I didn't intellectually like what they stood for, but they also just scared me. I'll never forget the time I stood on the Drag watching a parade of UT floats... I wasn't out of the closet yet, but when I saw the float for the gay students go by, I got goosebumps and felt proud of them and happy... Until a frat boy next to me yelled out, "Fucking faggots!" Similarly, during this time, there was an AIDS quilt displayed in the entry of my library, with a guestbook where anyone could leave a message. I saw too many "Die, fag" messages there to count.

It wasn't just the anti-gay stuff, it was the whole atmosphere: I was depressed by the huge, impersonal classes that had to be taken. I was depressed by teaching assistants offering me "A"s in a class in exchange for "coffee." (Happened twice.) Depressed by the "friends" I had then who only wanted to go out to 6th Street frat bars and/or generic country dance places, when I was dying to explore the punk and live music scene. Depressed because all the library people that I worked with seemed like big losers who had given up on life in favor of being shabby and pseudo-hip. Depressed because I didn't like the boys who liked me. Or the older men that I had to keep "double-dating" if I wanted to go out because my closest "friend" was always sleeping with some guy in his 50s and he always had a buddy... (I never slept with any of the "buddies." I usually ended up in a living room of a cheap borrowed apartment, making polite conversation with the friend, while the other two fucked loudly in the bedroom. My most unpleasant memory was of being drunk and throwing up in a restaurant bathroom one evening; when I came out, still reeking of vomit, I'm sure, the "buddy" was so desperate to make out with a college girl that the fact that I'd just thrown up didn't deter him at all... he insisted on kissing. Yum!)

It was just all a big downer. I couldn't wait to get the hell away from that. And for 10 years, I did.

When I moved back to Austin from NY in 2010 and was faced with the prospect of working around the campus again, I was psychologically horrified.

But... After my one-month gig there this past summer, the angst dissipated. There weren't right-wing frat daddies marching around, just a lot of kids with messy hair in T-shirts wandering around talking on their cell phones. They all looked incredibly young and un-put-together and non-scary. And the campus was nice. I liked my lunch hours people-watching under the mighty oaks. (The massive trees, I had not appreciated before at all! It wasn't until moving to NY and seeing different pretty trees and loving those that I opened my eyes to how interesting the prevalent historically big oaks in Austin were!)

This past week, I had another temp gig on campus, this time for just one day, being a test proctor for 3 accounting classes. I passed out the tests, walked up and down the aisles during the testing to scare kids off of cheating, then checked their IDs at the end when they turned in their tests. I used to feel paranoid and claustrophobic when I myself attended big classes like these. And I remember even being afraid of the proctors back then, assuming that they were all Ph.D candidates or something, there to sniff out anyone even THINKING of falsity (either intellectually or on the basic peering-at-the-neighbor's-test level)! :) It was funny! All of these messy-looking babies with their backpacks, some forgetting-their-pencils-and-calculators; the whiz kids turning their tests in first, then the masses flooding up, then the stragglers at the end... The complete lack of attitude, just the concentration on the test, the occasional unnecessary -- but cute -- charm thrown at the proctors! :)

Are kids different today, or was I just completely paranoid back then?! Most likely the latter! :) Working this test, like working the UT football games for the past couple of months, has been psychologically healing.

Free Will Astrology

2011-11-30T00:13:00.004-06:00

While I usually like Brezsny's weekly "Free Will Astrology" column (intricate and psychologically helpful, published in many alternative weekly papers like the Austin Chronicle), I tend to dislike Brezsny's Facebook page, which is much more "lowest-common-denominator" and PC. A recent post of his on Facebook:

Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology
"5 techniques to increase happiness: 1. Keep a daily gratitude journal, listing items for which you feel grateful. 2. Perform a meditation in which you reflect on something that made you happy. 3. Make a habit of sharing the highlights of your day with someone close to you. 4. Practice forgiveness routinely. 5. Construct a list of experiences that relax and rejuvenate you."

To which I responded:

In actuality, the above activities don't work at all, just act as stand-ins while you're waiting for something real. (Seriously, I tried the above for over 5 years: being grateful for found pennies, weeds blooming through cracks in pavement, et al. I sincerely appreciated these things intellectually, but they still rang extremely hollow, along the lines of enjoying a good TV show. Truth is, LOVE is necessary. And that usually comes in the form of a person, not a penny.)

"If you want to know the truth..."

2011-11-29T22:42:00.018-06:00

"...as we flaunt our escapades,

swallow down our portion of whiskey and dex,
salvage the day with some soup or some sex,
juggle our teabags as we inch down the hall,
let the blood out of our fires with phenobarbital,
lick the headlines for Starkweathers and Specks..."

-------------------------

"...I have visions --- sometimes ritualized visions --- that come to me of God, or of Christ, or of the Saints, and I feel that I can touch them almost...that they are part of me. It's the same 'Everything that has been shall be again.' It's reincarnation, speaking with another voice...or else with the Devil. If you want to know the truth, the leaves talk to me every June."

--------------------------

Poor Kayo didn't know what the hell he was getting into! They were both 19 when they married. 19! Who is 19 when they commit to anything serious? And who knows at 19 that their wife is actually a seer and psychic... eventually earning a Pulitzer Prize to top it off, to assuage all your suspicions about her laziness --- but still not actually explaining her incredibly bizarre behavior at home!

Fight-Club Boy At Door

2011-11-28T00:24:00.011-06:00

Last night after 5 hours of music blaring through the walls, I finally went over at 11:45pm to the neighbor's to tell him to PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE.

He came to the door in a towel, said sorry, quieted down after.

This evening, got a knock on my door. It was Fight-Club Boy. Drunk to the gills, slurping from a hard-lemonade tall-boy that he spilled all over the place, with another in a plastic bag. Wearing an embroidered apron.

He was sorry for last night. He couldn't tell when he was loud or not. He could tell from talking to me now that I wasn't a cunt, though he thought I was a cunt last night.

I told him I appreciated his coming over to talk. I was sorry for being rude by coming to his door last night. By the way, what was that "Fight Club" shit going on at his apartment last month? The "friend" sounded like a psycho.

He said his "friend" was a faggot. When I told him I was gay: "Oh, you're gay? I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

I said his "friend" didn't sound like a "faggot" but rather like a straight guy trying to drum up his butchness, and that his inciting my neighbor to fight was disturbing and weird, and that I'd felt like sliding a note under his door telling him to avoid that guy!

My neighbor thanked me for caring. He drunkly hugged me, twice. Then, listening to the sounds of my TV beyond my doorway, said he heard his own voice coming from my TV. When I said I hoped not, since I'd been watching "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" and which Atlanta housewife he might be, he acted a bit embarrassed.

Folks, if I'm murdered in the next few weeks or months, it was this neighbor!

Murder aside: You know what's good about having a man around? The above kind of thing filtered out. By this time, I've seen enough of it. I can handle it. But... I'm tired of "handling it." I think perhaps straight men can handle "faggot" and "cunt" and drunken hugs from strangers and spilled drinks on the doorstep...

But I personally, sans man, am tired of having to psyche myself up to all of it. At 46, I shouldn't even be around this type of thing any more. (If I'd had protectors, I wouldn't even have had to have been around this at 26.)

Good Used Heart

2011-11-26T07:14:00.012-06:00

Two Hoots and a Holler, in 2011 (top) and 1991 (below) videos. I think of Rick Broussard circa 1991 as the soundtrack of my youth in Austin. In 2011, Rick is a bit less fucked up and pretty, as am I, but his music is still great. ("Good Used Heart" is an original song --- great lyrics!)

Killer Queen

2011-11-26T05:08:00.025-06:00

More Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T03:24:00.013-06:00

One reason I really like being around my nephews is because they think in unusual ways. I guess most little kids are like this; I can't tell quite yet if they're going to grow up to be the same. I also like being around their overt affection and desire to share themselves with me!

The older nephew is 9. His mom has a nice smart phone, and he wanted to show me how it worked; we went to his favorite game sites and listened to the ring-tones. And then I made him look up "Joan Crawford"! :) (On the main page of the site, he recognized a photo of a '50s ad for "Peter Pan bras" that I happened to have framed in my apartment!) I also liked his sharing his "Calvin & Hobbes" book with me. And his understanding of the difference between the words "literal" and "figurative"! (RE whether an action figure of his actually had clothes on or not!) And then, during dinner, his promotion of the canned LeSueur Baby Peas that I like so and that everyone else mocks: He made a point of choosing the LeSueur peas over the fresh peas, and then we nodded about the right way to mix them with the mashed potatoes! :)

The younger nephew is 6. At one point in the evening, he pointed to his dad and said, "You have a long chin." I felt bad for my bro and so then pointed to my nephew (trying to give an example): "You have messy hair!" The nephew then pointed to me and said, "YOU have messy hair! And you have yellow teeth -- because you SMOKE!" Me: "Well... you have spaces between your teeth because they're baby teeth!" "I don't care! At least my teeth aren't yellow from SMOKING!" (All the grown-ups in the room laughed; he'd made his point!)

Later this nephew smushed my face against his. When I yelled "OUCH!" he said, "My friends don't mind when I do this." I asked him, "When you do this, do your friends SMILE [giving example of a nice smile] or do they GRIMACE?" "What's a "grimace"?" When I gave an example of a grimace, he admitted that sometimes they grimaced, rather than smiled, after being smushed! :)

He also showed me his school things: One, a picture that he'd drawn of his family, calling them "nice" and "cool" and "funny." And another from his teacher, saying how good he'd been that week. I admired them, and I felt happy that he wanted to show these to me. I also felt happy later in the evening when he was drowsing off during football and laid in my lap...

It was neat how comfortable the nephews felt with adults. I never felt like that as a kid. When I was growing up, our family hardly ever had adult friends over. There were my parents, and then there were teachers at school. And no actual human "interaction" between. I was taught to be "quiet" and "respectful," that's it. Though I had many thoughts of my own, I was almost always immediately shut down whenever I "dared" to express them, sometimes physically "shut down" -- even for something as mildly "radical" as "daring" to watch TV and write in my journal at the same time. (Got dragged down the hall by my hair for that one.)

Certainly not useful when I got older and needed to know how to actually talk to adults (and/or earn their mentorship)! Once I got to high school and college and needed to know how to present myself and interact intellectually, I had no clue. All I'd learned was: I couldn't reveal my true self to adults because adults would be mean and shut me down. I had no game. That background of mine was a real struggle in college, where I found out that thought was actually appreciated!

I envy my nephews and their ability to interact with a variety of people, including grown-up people. I'm proud of them. They have good parents who have let them be themselves.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T03:56:00.005-06:00

Things just keep getting worse and worse for me in general, but on this Thanksgiving I did have a nice respite -- being around family members.

The whole dinner was pleasant, at my brother and sister-in-law's house, with her parents, my mom, the nephews, and me. Everyone's pretty low-key, none of the "drama" that commentators on television talk about happening on Thanksgiving.

We watched the Cowboys, ate, chatted. I watched my brother and the boys play tag football in the back yard (and thought it was mightily cute whenever the nephews looked over at me when they'd made a good play!).

Then we all played the card game "Apples to Apples": Everyone gets 7 cards with words/phrases and one person's the judge each time -- the judge overturns one card with a theme word like "Sharp" or "Glamorous" or "Wild." The rest of us pick a card from our hand that we think the judge will choose. First to five wins. I personally think my brother fucked up the game by picking "John Philip Sousa" as the winning definition for "Sharp" when I had put down "barbed wire" and one nephew had put down "diamond"... but that's just me! :) (His rationale: "To be a bandleader, you've got to have an acute, sharp sense of music!" -- everyone groaned. Just as we groaned when the judge for the word "Wild" picked "golf-ball-sized hail" over "rednecks" and "rock-n-roll"!) :)

Then my mom went home, my sister-in-law's parents went to sleep, the nephews drowsed on the couch; we three grown-ups left drank cheap wine and watched and cheered the Longhorns as they beat the Aggies in the last seconds of their very final game after 100-something years...

I felt like a normal person for the first time in months.

Blood on the Tracks (1975)

2011-11-23T01:53:00.015-06:00

Tangled Up in Blue

Early one morning the sun was shining
I was laying in bed
Wond'ring if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like Mama's homemade dress
Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough
And I was standing on the side of the road
Rain falling on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I've paid some dues getting through
Tangled up in blue.

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam I guess
But I used a little too much force
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out West
Split it up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best
She turned around to look at me
As I was walking away
I heard her say over my shoulder
"We'll meet again someday on the avenue"
Tangled up in blue.

I had a job in the Great North Woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Working for a while on a fishing boat
Right outside of Delacroix
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.

She was working in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer
I just kept looking at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear
And later on as the crowd thinned out
I's just about to do the same
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me "Zimmy, don't I know your name?"
I muttered something underneath my breath
She studied the lines on my face
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe
Tangled up in blue.

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello" she said
"You look like the silent type"
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue

I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue.

So now I'm going back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter's wives
Don't know how it all got started
I don't what they're doing with their lives
But me I'm still on the road
Heading for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue.

----------------------------------------------------------------

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

I've seen love go by my door
It's never been this close before
Never been so easy or so slow
I've been shooting in the dark too long
When something's not right it's wrong
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.

Dragon clouds so high above
I've only known careless love
It's always hit me from below
This time around it's more correct
Right on target so direct
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.

Purple clover Queen Anne lace
Crimson hair across your face
You could make me cry if you don't know
Can't remember what I was thinking of
You might be spoiling me too much love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.

Flowers on the hillside blooming crazy
Crickets talking back and forth in rhyme
Blue river running slow and lazy
I could stay with you forever
And never realize the time.

Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud
But there's no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.

Yer gonna make me wonder what I'm doing
Staying far behind without you
Yer gonna make me wonder what I'm saying
Yer gonna make me give myself a good talking to.

I'll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now I know
But I'll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.

US kids: Are you an Important Person?

2011-11-23T01:08:00.003-06:00

Just watched an interview on PBS with David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times. One interesting thing that he mentioned was a survey taken both recently and 50 years ago.

50 years ago, when high-school students were asked, "Are you an important person?" only 12% said "Yes."

Today, over 80% say "Yes."

Brooks's point was the decline of both humbleness and a sense of reality. I agree.

Ron Paul

2011-11-22T23:32:00.006-06:00

At the Republican debate tonight on CNN, Republican/Libertarian Ron Paul made a few salient points:

1) RE the infamous US "War on Drugs": "Prescription drugs kill more people than illegal drugs." Which is completely true. Not to mention how many people alcohol kills, both physically over time and because of momentary outbursts.

2) RE the US imposing a "no-fly zone" over other countries: "We wouldn't like it if China put a no-fly zone over us. We need to mind our own business." Which is completely true.

3) RE the Taliban attacking us: "The Taliban only attacks us because they want us out of their countries. Just like we'd want THEM out of OUR country." Which is completely true.

One thing about Paul I must know before I support him: his opinion on outsourcing --- American corporations sending their jobs to countries with especially cheap labor markets, like India, for example. Given his Libertarian principles, I don't know that Paul would support American corporations being punished for shipping out jobs to non-Americans to save a buck.

But as an American who has been constantly employed for the past 30 years since aged 16 --- up until the last 3 years, after which I became a scruffy freelancer against my will, purely as a result of various publishers outsourcing... I want a candidate who demands that the American companies COME HOME AND EMPLOY AMERICANS.

Naif that I am, I just e-mailed Paul's website, asking for his position on outsourcing.

To SS: Art Jobs

2011-11-21T23:08:00.003-06:00

On Craig's List for your town, check out these listings (in the Art/Media jobs section):

11/2: Art Instructor. $20 hr. See also www.pinotspalette.com
11/8: Art Instructors Needed. See also www.paintingwithatwist.com
11/21: Part-time Art Teacher. $10 hr.

The first two sound especially interesting.

(Since our e-mail communications are sometimes... STYMIED... just wanted you to get the above info!) :)

Stand and Deliver

2011-11-19T01:44:00.010-06:00

1981. I was 15 -- my ultimate idea of "sexy" and "decadent"! But then, I'd hardly ever seen ANY video up until then. I think it still stands up 30 years later, both musically and video-wise. Wish, though, that Adam Ant had played it straight rather than "winking at the audience" the whole time. Scare 'em properly! :)

Big in Brussels

2011-11-17T04:55:00.007-06:00

Sometimes when I think I'm doing Joan Crawford a favor by perpetuating her image and reputation online, a picture like the above grounds me. From 1966. In Brussels. She was no longer a huge cinema queen. (Her last big hit had been in '62, with "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane," and that was still only an homage to her former glory.)

But Brussels, hardly a "small town," recognized her in the "off-year" of 1966 for what she by that time after 40 years had proven herself to be -- a perpetual star. Worthy of filling the city streets.

The Emperor's New Clothes

2011-11-17T04:02:00.005-06:00

Whatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace...

-------------------------------------------------

It seems like years since you held the baby
While I wrecked the bedroom
You said it was dangerous after Sunday
And I knew you loved me
He thinks I just became famous
And that's what messed me up
But he's wrong
How could I possibly know what I want
When I was only twenty-one?
And there's millions of people
To offer advice and say how I should be
But they're twisted
And they will never be any influence on me
But you will always be
You will always be
If I treated you mean
I really didn't mean to
But you know how it is
And how a pregnancy can change you
I see plenty of clothes that I like
But I won't go anywhere nice for a while
All I want to do is just sit here
And write it all down and rest for a while
I can't bear to be in another city
One where you are not
I would return to nothing without you
If I'm your girlfriend or not
Maybe I was mean
But I really don't think so
You asked if I'm scared
And I said so
Everyone can see what's going on
They laugh `cause they know they're untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace
Maybe it sounds mean
But I really don't think so
You asked for the truth and I told you
Through their own words
They will be exposed
They've got a severe case of
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes

Anne Sexton's Typewriter

2011-11-15T18:17:00.013-06:00

I love this view, being able to see what she saw. And Austin's Harry Ransom Center has it! They also have over 200 of her UNpublished poems (!!), and archives of photos, letters, etc. PLUS her whole personal library! AND, if you request in advance, you can just go in there and TOUCH the stuff when they bring it to your table... I can't even imagine TOUCHING HER STUFF (and reading UNpublished poems)!

It's all been at the HRC for years, but I'd always vaguely thought it was restricted from the general public. Nope, it is not. I must make an appointment and go.

It's not as though I really need you

2011-11-15T02:29:00.010-06:00

REM, 1984

Looking at your watch a third time waiting in the station for the bus
Going to a place that's far, so far away and if that's not enough
Going where nobody says hello, they don't talk to anybody they don't know
You'll wind up in some factory that's full time filth and nowhere left to go
Walk home to an empty house, sit around all by yourself
I know it might sound strange, but I believe
You'll be coming back before too long

(chorus)
Don't go back to Rockville, don't go back to Rockville, don't go back to Rockville
And waste another year

At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend
I don't care that you're not here with me
'Cause it's so much easier to handle
All my problems if I'm too far out to sea
But something better happen soon
Or it's gonna be too late to bring you back

(repeat chorus)

It's not as though I really need you
If you were here I'd only bleed you
But everybody else in town only wants to bring you down and
That's not how it ought to be
Well I know it might sound strange, but I believe
You'll be coming back before too long

Comfortably Numb

2011-11-15T01:32:00.012-06:00

My sophomore year of college, I used to sit around the dorm room missing Ginny, listening to "The Wall" over and over and over, writing down the lyrics, thinking how profound it was in its depiction of sorrow and loss. I just now listened to this song again on YouTube for the first time in more than 10 years. Still think it's profound. (Though I can't imagine WALLOWING in the darkness today like I did back then; back then it was kind of "interesting" -- today, something to try to avoid!)

Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now,
I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again.
Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.

(solo)

I have become comfortably numb.

O.K.
Just a little pin prick.
There'll be no more AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
But you may feel a little sick.
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working. Good.
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to go.

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

The Start of Something

2011-11-14T19:35:00.000-06:00

She's getting very
close to where
the heart meets
bone, which beats back

Two steps backward, a couple forward...

2011-11-14T19:01:00.005-06:00

...so I end up pretty much in the same place! But at least not horribly bummed out.

The two backward things:

1) I had a job interview last week. Way on the other side of town. Duties: Writing blog posts for various legal firms. Hours: 8 to 5. (So I'd have to get up weekdays at 5:30am or so to catch 2 buses to get there on time, and wouldn't get home 'til 6:30 or 7pm.) Pay: $12 an hour. I wasn't excited about it. After taxes, I'd be bringing home about $1600 a month. That's a yearly salary of $19,200. That's what a high-school dropout can make working at a supermarket. Yet... Despite all of the above, I was still hoping to get the stupid job! (A stupid job being better than no job and getting evicted next month for no rent payment!) I did not get the job. I could not even get a crappy job that I didn't really want!

2) One of the many temp agencies I'm signed up with called me today with some news: A long-term temp job once scheduled to start today but then pushed up to November 28 had decided on who they wanted for the job; I was "3rd backup." (!) Meaning, if 3 of the ones they actually picked failed their drug tests, etc., THEN I'd be called to work. Pay: $10.55 an hour. And the temp person informed me that since I was on their list, I needed to come in to the office for paperwork, a drug test, etc. Now, I've already been into this particular agency's office TWICE already for various paperwork and office-related tests. This time, I just balked and told them NO. I said that if the company decided they wanted me, then I'd gladly come in to take all the tests that very day, but as 3rd BACKUP, I wasn't going to make yet another trip by bus to their office for nothing. Admittedly, not a real "can-do" spirit, but... Really. All the bullshit for a $10.55-an-hour job that I'm only a backup for? I still have a little dignity left! (I may not have an apartment left next month, but... I've got my pride, dadgummit!)

The above all reminded me of "The Bell Jar," when Elly is unable to focus on her thesis and so thinks of just quitting the whole honors English program at her Ivy League school and signing up at her mother's local college. Only to discover that the requirements for the local school were actually more strenuous than those for her elite school: "Now I saw that the stupidest person at my mother's college knew more than I did. I saw they wouldn't even let me in through the door, let alone give me a large scholarship like the one I had at my own college."

Same here: I condescendingly "stoop" to apply for low-paying jobs, but... they're even harder to qualify for than the high-paying ones that I've been working at for the past 13 years!

Luckily, some good things also happened today to counter the crap.

1) I got an outright offer to do some temp work from home for 2 weeks for $27 an hour!
2) Found a publishing company to freelance for that I hadn't known about and did well on their test. (THIS kind of test, I don't mind!)
3) Applied for a job in my old stomping grounds of Weehawken, and the HR person called me right back! (I had to explain why my resume was coming from Austin, and how I'm definitely looking to re-relocate!) This one's a long-shot, but still: It was nice to be contacted immediately and told how perfect my resume was for their job. And the pay's $30 an hour! And I can still smell and see Weehawken!)

I'll Be There

2011-11-13T04:22:00.012-06:00

Watched Michael Jackson's final 2009 "This Is It" performance tonight on VH1. At one point, he sang songs from his Jackson 5 years, including "I'll Be There."

The first video below (from 2002) especially breaks my heart. I'm sure Michael knew exactly what he had lost and could never regain. The second video is the original song from 1969.

You and I must make a pact, we must bring salvation back
Where there is love, I'll be there

I'll reach out my hand to you, I'll have faith in all you do
Just call my name and I'll be there

I'll be there to comfort you,
Build my world of dreams around you, I'm so glad that I found you
I'll be there with a love that's strong
I'll be your strength, I'll keep holding on

Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter
Togetherness, well that's all I'm after
Whenever you need me, I'll be there
I'll be there to protect you, with an unselfish love that respects you
Just call my name and I'll be there

If you should ever find someone new, I know he'd better be good to you
'Cause if he doesn't, I'll be there
Don't you know, baby, yeah yeah
I'll be there, I'll be there, just call my name, I'll be there

(Just look over your shoulders, honey - oo)

I'll be there, I'll be there, whenever you need me, I'll be there
Don't you know, baby, yeah yeah

I'll be there, I'll be there, just call my name, I'll be there...

Censor Yourself!

2011-11-13T02:18:00.009-06:00

OK, late-night on the Internet after 6 or so beers, I myself often am incapable of mental and written self-censorship. That's another story. What I'm talking about right now is PHYSICAL self-censorship.

Part of it is just being fat. Like one woman at the UT mock jury last Thursday sitting next to me.

(1) She was so fat that she intruded on my personal space. Our jury chairs were close together, and her Self was touching me, which it shouldn't have been had she been a normal size.
(2) As the mock trial started, she started zipping and unzipping her bag, loudly rattling papers while the judge and lawyers were speaking. (Censor yourself!) I kept looking over at her, wondering what the hell she was so distractingly digging around for. Turned out, it was a Snickers candy bar, which she then proceeded to unwrap loudly and then scarf down loudly. Yes, we were all only in a "mock" trial situation, but can you please refrain from EATING (and so rattlingly loudly) during what is, despite its pseudo-ness, a quiet, serious enactment? (Censor yourself!)
(3) After the extremely annoying rattling candy-bar incident, I started studying this person more closely out of the corner of my eye: Her flats were olive green, her shirt turquoise, her eye-shadow lime green. That psychotic lack of color coordination is also not acceptable. (Censor yourself!)

In short: If you're big and fat, perhaps you should be self-conscious about that enough as it is... And maybe you especially shouldn't be so loud, scarfing down candy bars and rattling papers in a quiet public setting. And maybe you shouldn't wear lime-green eyeshadow in and of itself, much less try to match it up with turquoise and olive. (Censor yourself!)

I probably didn't look so hot at the mock trial myself, but at least I sat and watched quietly and politely in no-need-to-coordinate red-and-black, sans candy bars and rattling and rubbing up against others! Seriously. Censor your public self. Please.

Louboutins!

2011-11-11T01:36:00.014-06:00

At a UT mock trial Thursday that I got $10-an-hour for attending as a mock juror, I could not stop looking at the student defense attorney. She was insanely movie-star-looking: chiseled features, dark red hair, the proverbial "alabaster" skin, about a size 0...

Before I sat down in the mock court-room, I'd been hanging out in the hallway, where I'd seen her walk by and wondered, "Who in the world is THAT?" It looked like she was wearing a cocktail dress -- sleeveless, extremely form-fitting. By the time we were both in the mock courtroom and I realized she was going to be one of the lawyers I'd be critiquing, she'd put on a conservative jacket... and pearls... over the cocktail dress, but one thing remained the same...

The Louboutins, with those famous red soles! I'd only seen them on TV, but never in real life!

Oh my god!

Once she opened her mouth to present her case, a little of the lustre wore off: At first, she was a little mush-mouthed and didn't make a lot of eye contact with the jurors. She really seemed like a stereotypical 1950s Upper East Side society girl (who also looked like a model from a 1952 "Vogue" -- NOT "stereotypical" at all for 2011 in Austin, I suppose -- where does this girl come from?)! But after a bit, she kicked in and was actually arguing good points and making a few mildly sarcastic asides (which her opposing student attorney always called her on before the judge, and which the judge, at the end of the trial, admonished her about: "Juries don't like sarcasm." Oh, but I do!)

In the end, we jurors all voted unanimously in her favor. Because of the FACTS, of course! :)

When the judge sitting in (actually a real-life judge doing the law school a favor) asked us jurors for opinions on both the presentation of facts AND the personal style of the attorneys... I didn't want to knock her publicly, so kept quiet. But the truth is: I could not stop looking at her Louboutins the whole time. Maybe she should tone it down a bit for real-life juries in the future? Or maybe just continue to be a real visual treat and distraction, plebes be damned... What a dilemma for her career... :)

Beans!

2011-11-11T00:22:00.014-06:00

I love pinto beans. (Not the canned kind, which always taste weirdly sweet and gooey and never hit the spot, but the home-made kind.) And for 46 years now have relied primarily on my mother to provide them for me. (Even today, every couple of months or so, she'll make a big batch and give me an old cottage-cheese container full of them to take home. Which I always finish off in about a day and a half.)

I once tried to make a bunch for myself, back in '96 I think it was, but they turned out crappy, mainly because I KNEW that they needed to be soaked overnight but I didn't FEEL LIKE soaking them overnight.

Last week, I saw a 1-lb bag of dry pinto beans in the supermarket for 75 cents and was suddenly inspired: What the hell; it's been 15 years; give 'em another shot...

This time, I SOAKED. For LONGER than 24 hours. And the next day I didn't try to boil them fast because I was hungry for them, but instead ate something first and THEN started the cooking... 2 hours of simmering for those things! It was like waiting for Thanksgiving dinner or something!

I didn't have any spices to add, except for salt and pepper. I don't think my mom ever adds any other spices, though she does always add raw BACON to simmer, which makes for great flavor but that I always have picked out when done to avoid the yucky fat-back-ness. (Plus I was just too lazy and cheap to buy a big thing of bacon just to add a couple of cut-up slices.)

At any rate, I soaked for 24 hours, I simmered for 2 hours, and at the end of it all, the beans that I made myself actually tasted GOOD, even without the bacon!

Only now: I have a lettuce-container full of ONE POUND OF BEANS to eat!

JC, 1934

2011-11-10T23:56:00.001-06:00

Happy Birthday, Anne Sexton (November 9)

2011-11-09T02:22:00.010-06:00

CIGARETTES AND WHISKEY AND WILD, WILD WOMEN
(after a song)*

Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for quickness
and yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockade
or taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires underground
where none but the dolls, perfect and awful,
could be whispered to or laid down to die.

Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was --
a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
I find the effort useless.
Do I not look in the mirror,
these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?
Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?

I kneel once more,
in case mercy should come
in the nick of time.

-----------------------------------------------

*The song is "Cigareets, Whusky and Wild Wild Women" (1947 by Red Ingle)

Voting 2012

2011-11-09T01:18:00.003-06:00

Ya feel like a mean, racist bum going against Barack Obama. The 2008 election drilled that into our collective head. (Full disclosure: I voted for McCain in 2008, the first time I'd ever voted Republican since I was first able to vote in 1984. Why Republican this year? One, I was pissed off about Hillary and how she got completely sideswiped. Two, McCain, though he ran a crappy campaign in 2008, I still remembered from 2000, when he challenged Bush's bullshit in the Republican primaries. I also liked McCain's Senate record of attempting sensible reforms: campaign and immigration, for instance. Obama, on the other hand, hadn't done a thing. He spoke well and was also historically black, but he was also all surface and no depth.)

For 2012: Obama remains a good speaker and a pleasant, thoughtful man. But he's as incompetent as George W. Bush was. No, he's worse:

Unemployment rate: (US Labor Dept.) October 2008 = 6.6%. October 2011 = 9.0%
National debt: (CBS News) 2008 = $10 trillion. 2011 = $14 trillion.
Wall Street bonuses: (Wall Street Journal, 2010) "Pay and benefits at the top 25 publicly traded banks and security firms on Wall Street hit a record of $135.5 billion" in 2010.

Also, Obama is reported (from the liberal "Washington Post") to have received more Wall Street contributions than any other Presidential candidates from both 2008 and 2012: "According to The Post’s latest revelation, bank employees, hedge fund magnates and others in the finance sector have contributed more to Obama and the Democrats than any of the campaigns of the GOP candidates. Largely to thank, says The Post, is a number of Democratic financiers who aided Obama in his 2008 bid to reclaim the White House from the Republicans that still give money to Obama and the DNC today.

Between both his own campaign and DNC contributions, the president has been responsible for raking in around $15.6 million in contributions from the financial and banking sector. By comparison, Texas Governor Rick Perry, still considered to be in the top-tier of GOP candidates, has pulled in only $2 million from the same pool."

Given the above, I'm puzzled about the "Wall Street Occupiers" occupying Wall Street and other city centers. Saying nothing about President Barack Obama's own extremely strong Wall Street connections. Not marching on Washington to protest both the President and the Congress. Calling Obama himself on his crap would be much less popular, huh?

On a personal note: My mother is a big Obama supporter. And I've been railing against him for the past few years based on his poor performance (and on my own unemployment for the first time in 30 years). But I just recently calmed down a bit and said to her, "I hope I'm fully employed by next year's election, because I want to make my decision rationally instead of just being pissed off because I'm unemployed."

But being long-term unemployed is, indeed, part of a "rational" decision. As are considering the National Debt and looking at the Wall Street bonuses being handed out during Obama's term, despite the earlier crash.

And Obama's foreign policy? The US "rationale" for invading Iraq was completely invented by Bush. I hated that, and I liked Obama while he was campaigning for saying the Iraq invasion was wrong. But... How has Obama's foreign policy been ANY different from Bush's? With Bush... a snake is a snake. The Snake pretty much said what he planned to do from the beginning. Disagree with it as you will, the Snake stated his intentions. Obama, on the other hand, acted reasonable while campaigning, then spent billions of US money targeting Libya, for instance. (What the fuck? Khaddafy hadn't been a threat to the US since Reagan put him out of commission in the '80s.)

In short, Obama, by his own actions, is a Wall Street hack and pseudo-Republican on foreign issues. Yet... he poses so much better than that...

Even if I have a nice job in the fall of 2012, I don't see how I can vote for him.

Who I Look Like

2011-11-07T01:45:00.020-06:00

On Saturday while working at the UT game, a certain Brit bartender told me that I looked like an actress... who was it... Annette Bening! (!) That's certainly a new one!

And then the same girl asked if I was a dancer... To which I responded with a completely retarded made-up tap-dance, complete with jazz hands. (You had to be there. She laughed instead of cringed, which was good!) :)

And later, she kept telling me, and the people standing around us chatting, how funny I was! :) (OK, I'm sometimes kind of funny when I get on a roll, though you wouldn't know it from HERE, where I only seem to record the depths of my angst!) :)

Gosh. Someone I've had a secret crush on since last week thinks I'm amusing! :) When was the last time that I entertained anyone other than my nephews?? :)

The "Annette Bening"-thing reminded me of who people over the years have told me that I looked like:

Lauren Bacall (a random guy coming on to me at the K-Mart where I worked in high school, and then a 50-something-year-old man that I was sleeping with in the 1990s)
Erica Jong (my mother, from the book-jacket of "Fear of Flying")
Molly Ringwald (guys in college when I had bobbed red hair)
Sylvia Plath (me)
Bette Midler (Ugh! My least favorite -- sorry, Bette, but you're not that cute. From a girl in a gay bar.)
Jenna Elfman (a girl in a gay bar)
Cate Blanchett (my older nephew while watching the Oscars a couple of years ago: "Is that Aunt Steffi?")
Draco (the littler nephew, earlier this year while I was always wearing my blonde hair in a pony-tail)

After all of the below photos, I STILL think that I look like Plath the most! (a p.s.: Some Germanic people have the same expression in the eyes and the same bridge of the nose... me, my mom, Doris Day, and Plath, to name a few!) :) As for the other photos: There seems to be a trend of "squintiness"! I beg to differ! When I talk and laugh and EMOTE, I squint my eyes, but other than that...I look NOTHING LIKE Bette Midler...dammit! :)

Marker

2011-11-03T20:58:00.018-05:00

Just wanted to note a dream I just had (@8pm Thursday, November 3) so I can look back later and see if it meant anything about The Girl, or The Cancer:

In the dream I was in an apartment, and arguing with everyone around me (surprise), including old friends and a big male neighbor. I was extremely verbally rude to the neighbor, thinking, what could happen? He took it and took it, then threw a 4-foot-long staple gun through my window; it lodged in some bookshelves. Then the neighbor and some of my former friends kept milling about outside my window, peering in and laughing. I was outraged, trying to get some sympathy for myself, pointing out what he had done...everybody thought it was kind of funny. I called the police, thinking at last or at least I'd have some "justice"... they kept me on the phone talking and explaining, not taking the thrown staple-gun very seriously, and not coming.

At one point after this the neighbor passed by my apt. window and made fun of my not having a job. How did he know this? I'd told some street-looking women who had been milling about earlier, thinking at the time that it would bond us, but they just ended up turning over the info to the neighbor. At the job comment, I screamed at him and started screaming at everyone else -- basically trying to get their sympathy against him, to no avail.

The dream venue then spread out to a convention-type area, a public place where some sort of festival was going on. Here I was walking around among a bunch of strangers, occasionally running into some people I knew (including some of the "friends" from around my apartment). I was still very upset and panicky by what had happened at my apt., just wanting to clear the bad vibes and make ordinary contact. I saw one old co-worker and we had a pleasant brief conversation, her showing me some poems in a notebook (she wasn't a writer in real life). She had her son with her, about the same age as my oldest nephew. It made me feel good to see him, but I was also irritating him, and he was cranky with me. Then his mother spotted someone she said was "Morrissey" (the singer) leaning against a wall with a couple of other guys -- the man looked like a 20-something Austin hipster with a scruffy beard rather than the British singer, but apparently it really was him, and the friend/mom got his autograph.

Dream venue now still at the convention-center-type place, but this time there's a huge prom going on, with a lot of my old friends from high school (and more of the "friends" from the apartment) milling around. Most are dressed up in prom gear. By now I have run into a random young man, about 16 or 17, whom I'm friendly with and hanging out with. We go up and up and up some spiral ramps, passing suites where my old high school friends are partying and having fun. People look at me but don't acknowledge me. When I and the kid finally get to the very top of the ramp, there are two suites there. Turns out Morrissey is in one of them. My teenaged friend starts talking with him and I feel like a third wheel. I tell him I'll wait for him downstairs. I go back down and down and down the ramp, and stand in an open area at the bottom and watch dressed-up, happy people go by (all old friends from real life, none acknowledging me), looking up occasionally to see if the teenager is coming back down. After a long while, I realize he's not coming. I feel a clean sort of loneliness ("good for him") and decide to keep walking around...

A young Irish-looking woman with short, dark red hair and a veil-type thing on her head (not a real veil, but a bachelorette-party kind of thing) comes up to me, standing a few inches away and looking intensely at me. She says, "Do you remember me?" I do. (In real life, she's a girl I met at the UT game a couple of weeks ago.) Her body is giving off great heat. We start kissing and then making out. Complete warmth and comfort emanating from her. I tell her about what had just happened to me earlier, how the apartment people were mean, how nobody would talk to me. She kisses me some more, then touches the left side of my face and my left breast (my left, to her right) and tells me that I have cancer in those places. I can't figure out if I'm going to die from it or not. At the moment, I'm not worried about it, I just, very much, want her to go home with me. (Though I guess if she's symbolic of "Death," I'd be going home with HER!) :)

And I pick this moment in the dream to have to go to the bathroom! I REALLY have to go. And the bathroom is like any club bathroom --- toilets overflowing to the brim, toilet-paper and pee and water all over the floor, dressed-up girls putting on makeup at the mirror. I try to get situated on a toilet without letting my butt touch the poop that is floating at the very top. And the poop keeps overflowing, and a young black woman outside my stall, wearing a dark-blue dress with white polka-dots, is accusing me of causing the literal and figurative crap to flow out from under my stall door! I keep trying to simultaneously defend myself to this woman and just GO, so I can get back to The Girl outside...

And in the middle of all of this, I can hear the Death/Love Girl talking to my real-life junior-high friend Debbie (who is dressed in jeans and a red-and-black flannel shirt, unlike the other prom-attire). To my happy surprise, she's telling Debbie that she really likes (loves?) me... At this point I wake up, still trapped on the dream-toilet unable to "go" because of all the surrounding filth, but feeling deeply happy that The Girl is waiting outside...

-----------------------

95% of the stuff above was explicable via Freud: I'm not getting along well with anyone right now and feel very isolated; I just a couple of days ago had to call the cops on the big neighbor next door (though I had no personal contact with him); I can't find a decent job and am embarrassed about it; the temp gigs working big football games have put me in a festive setting (with spiraling ramps) surrounded by well-dressed people that I'm apart from while being in the middle of...

I'm interested in this Dream Girl, though! I met the real-life version (in looks) at a UT game last month: I was posted in a chair guarding the stairwell against rich people trying to sneak out for a smoke; she was a bartender in the suites right across from me. For only about 20 minutes --- I was a "floater" without a set position; my job was to walk around and relieve regular stair-guarders for their breaks, so I only got to be near her post/suites for those 20 minutes.

During my time there, she was mildly irritated because she'd put in a call for Bloody Marys over 15 minutes ago, and the drink runner hadn't arrived with the drinks, and her rich people in the suites were getting irritated at her! Since we stair-guarders aren't allowed in the suites, even after-hours, I was mightily curious about what went on in there --- not so much what the rich people were doing (the doors are open, and I can see that), but what exactly the bartenders had to do and how they did it. So we chatted about that while I was there, in the middle of her drinks finally arriving, and her going back and forth to serve them, et al. She was very Irish-looking (I tried and tried to think who her looks reminded me of; finally came up with... the short-haired girl singer in "The Commitments," played by Bronagh Gallagher), but when she opened her mouth, she had the most beautiful upper-crust British accent! (I suppose, with a bartender, I was expecting Cockney!) It's kind of trite to find that accent sexy -- who doesn't?! -- but... it really was very sexy! :)

And then I kept watching her move: Normally I'm not that attracted to girls who are shorter than me (I'm 5'8" and she was about 5'4"). And normally, I am often more attracted to "willowy," graceful girls, and she was sturdily built -- not fat or "stocky" or "muscular," but "compact"... And she moved "with purpose." (Yeah, because she had drinks to get out!) :) The type of energy of her movements was something I hadn't particularly noticed or found attractive before in general, but she herself was interesting to watch "in action." UnRomantic as it sounds, her movements said "competence" and "safety" to me, and I liked watching her. (A girl that can bartend has seen the world and can handle the world. I myself have seen large segments of the world, but cannot yet quite reconcile myself to how things and people and myself really are.)

The highlight of our 20 minutes for me: She offered me a "drink"! Not a "drink" drink, but a can of soda, which the bartenders (but not us stair-guarders) had access to, and that she had to sneak out to me! How cute is her sneaking me a Dr. Pepper! :)

Anyway, as I said, this post is a "marker." Events, both real and dream, all most probably fading into the ether, but just in case I get cancer or run off with a Brit who looks like the Irish girl below... you, and I, heard it here first! :)

Just ain't gonna do it

2011-11-02T01:03:00.008-05:00

Tuesday morning one of my 7 temp agencies called me and offered me a job for the whole month of November. $8 an hour.

The minimum wage in the USA is $7.25 an hour. The MINIMUM wage. For high schoolers working at McDonald's, et al.

If I accepted an $8-an-hour job, at 40 hours a week, I'd make $1280 a month. That's $15,360 per year. BEFORE taxes.

I turned it down. And there was guilt. Why was there guilt? Well, because I should be a "real go-getter," willing to do ANYTHING to make it...

$8 an hour is slave wages. I made $1200 a month 25 years ago when I was a kid. Before I'd earned any degree, before I had any work experience at all.

I fucking REFUSE this vampiric bullshit. (Watch out! Before long I might be out on the "Occupy" front lines!)

Fight Club Austin

2011-11-01T19:58:00.016-05:00

The loud-music next-door neighbor of July and August has been gone for months, and in his place came a huge, heavyset black guy with short dreads who's been pretty silent for the past 2 months. I'll see him in the hall every now and then and say "hi," but I hardly ever hear him. (Once, a few weeks after he'd moved in, he had his door open, and when I walked past I didn't see any furniture, and it looked like there was trash strewn around on the floor. So I wondered how often he was even using the place.)

Today, though... So much for the silence! It was a pleasant 75-ish day and everyone's windows were open. I was lying on the bed after that day's strenuous task of grocery shopping when I started to hear voices waft over from next door:

"Don't be tormented by death, man! Close your eyes!"
[mumbled something]
"I said close your eyes! What are you afraid of? Close your eyes! Everything does not die."
[mumbled something]
"I ain't gonna do nothin'! I'm not gonna hit you! I swear, man!"

By this time I had hopped up off the bed and had parked myself right next to the window-screen to hear more of this "philosophy"...

"You should see this barn, man. You're gonna love this!" Then came a whole series of instructions on various fighting positions and strategies, ending with:

"When you're in a fight, you never expose your back." [some scuffling]
"Never turn your goddamn back in a fucking fight!" [bumps and scuffles]
"Come on, man."
[mumbled, probably "I'm not gonna fight"]
"Why not? You were sitting here crying about life being long a few minutes ago, and now look at you! Look out the window! It's a beautiful day. The birds are flying. They birds aren't afraid of death. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Life is beautiful! I feel like boxing!"
[mumbled something]
"No, not YOU! Let's go to a boxing match!"

It was about 3 in the afternoon, so I wasn't quite sure where they were going to find an actual boxing match. In the course of the above, the heavy metal had gotten turned way up, and the one guy doing most of the arguing had said he'd been smoking and drinking since he was 10 and he still went to "Fight Club" and could still hold his own physically. And he didn't need Xanax or "no mind control" like that!

I think there were 2 guys plus my neighbor in the room. My neighbor was the quiet one telling the main loud guy that he didn't want to fight. And I suppose the neighbor had been going through a depression lately, because the main guy kept telling him that he didn't need the Xanax, that he just needed to get out of the house... and FIGHT! He just had to experience it, man! They could go to that barn, and then there was a dog park by the one guy's house, and it didn't have "no" dog shit, so it was perfect late at night...

I was fascinated by the incongruity of the main guy's occasional words of support like, "You're a talented musician, you're a smart person, you're, like, my best friend, dude" (I wrote that one down immediately) -- which apparently the feeling-low neighbor seemed to need to hear -- almost immediately leading into ways to start Fight Clubs and trying to get the neighbor to hit him! (The psychology was so crude... after hearing the "you're, like, my best friend" I wanted to, right then, run over and slip an anonymous note under his door: "These guys are NOT your friends! Be careful!")

The heavy metal "fight music" kept up, the loud personal exhortations waxed and waned. Things would be quiet for a few minutes, then there'd be more "instructions" on fight moves, then more attempts to get the neighbor to practice them; when he refused, the "psychology" would kick in. I wrote the following down, almost verbatim:

"Good! You're crying! I made you feel! You feel something! When I came over here, you didn't want life, and now look at you! You're a person! You're a person! You're a person! Feel! Feel! Feel! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Hit me, man, hit me!"

[then... bam-bam-bam, bumps and slams against the walls, stuff falling on the floor]

After 2 hours of listening to all of the above, I finally called the police when this slamming started. Initially, I called "311," which is just for minor stuff like noise complaints. But the 311 people switched me over to 911 when I told them about the fighting sounds I'd heard after the "hit me, man"...

But they were puzzled: "Is it guys playing around, or is it a serious fight? That makes a big difference in how we respond."

I was puzzled myself: "They sound like they know each other, but they keep talking about death and Fight Clubs and telling one guy to hit someone, and now it sounds like they're really hitting each other and knocking each other around the room. Have you seen the movie 'Fight Club'? [911 had] It's kind of just like that! It may be serious or it may not be... I just can't tell."

The police showed up within 10 minutes. Immediately the music was turned off. I didn't hear the other two guys leave; I wonder if the police escorted them out of the apartment immediately. There was no yelling or protest from them, belligerent as they'd been. Then I heard the police talking to my neighbor alone. They were quiet, so I couldn't hear much, except for my neighbor saying, "Sorry. We were just rough-housing." Complete silence after the police left.

Ironically, my calling the cops on the so-called "boys just being boys" was EXACTLY the kind of "stifling" female/"societal" mind-set that the movie railed against! I certainly don't think I would have called the police over a little heavy metal in the afternoon (absolutely nothing compared to the stereo of my former neighbor) and a few bumps, if that had been all I'd heard. It was the creepy "man-love psychology" that shoved it up to the next level -- the "I love you, man, life is beautiful" followed by the "hit me, man" and goading the neighbor into an actual physical fight ... allegedly as an antidote to his depression, but more probably because of the one guy's desire to manipulate another -- physically, emotionally. It was sick to listen to.

Way too much YANG, man... Reminded me of the creepy "Promise Keepers" -- the right-wing Christian guys who used to get together en masse in stadiums to "encourage" each other in their "manhood"... Obviously, a real man doesn't need a GANG to hype him up into manhood. (Though, to be fair, too much hyper-femininity/passivity/YIN is also equally warped. SLS a great example of the "uber-victim.")

On JD and SLS

2011-10-31T00:17:00.007-05:00

From the new bio on director Nicholas Ray ("Rebel Without a Cause," "Johnny Guitar"), quoting Ray on actor James Dean:

"The drama of his life was the drama of desiring to belong, and fearing to belong... It was a conflict of violent eagerness and mistrust, created very young... The intensity of his desires, and his fears, could make the search at times arrogant, egocentric; but behind it was such a desperate vulnerability that one was moved, even frightened. Probably, when he was cruel or faithless, he thought he was paying off an old score. The affection he rejected was the affection that had once been his and found no answer."

8

2011-10-28T09:28:00.011-05:00

I think here's a secret: Who we are at 8 is who we are. Those who truly love us later on are also channelling our weird little interesting 8-year-old selves.

Happy Birthday, Sylvia Plath (October 27)

2011-10-27T21:40:00.024-05:00

The last 2 sections from "Poem for a Birthday":

6. Witch Burning

In the marketplace they are piling the dry sticks.
A thicket of shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit
The wax image of myself, a doll's body.
Sickness begins here: I am a dartboard for witches.
Only the devil can eat the devil out.
In the month of red leaves I climb to a bed of fire.

It is easy to blame the dark: the mouth of a door,
The cellar's belly. They've blown my sparkler out.
A black-sharded lady keeps me in a parrot cage.
What large eyes the dead have!
I am intimate with a hairy spirit.
Smoke wheels from the beak of this empty jar.

If I am a little one, I can do no harm.
If I don't move about, I'll knock nothing over. So I said,
Sitting under a potlid, tiny and inert as a rice grain.
They are turning the burners up, ring after ring.
We are full of starch, my small white fellows. We grow.
It hurts at first. The red tongues will teach the truth.

Mother of beetles, only unclench your hand:
I'll fly through the candle's mouth like a singeless moth.
Give me back my shape. I am ready to construe the days
I coupled with dust in the shadow of a stone.
My ankles brighten. Brightness ascends my thighs.
I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light.

7. The Stones

This is the city where men are mended.
I lie on a great anvil.
The flat blue sky-circle

Flew off like the hat of a doll
When I fell out of the light. I entered
The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.

The mother of pestles diminished me.
I became a still pebble.
The stones of the belly were peaceable,

The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
Only the mouth-hole piped out,
Importunate cricket

In a quarry of silences.
The people of the city heard it.
They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate,

The mouth-hole crying their locations.
Drunk as a foetus
I suck at the paps of darkness.

The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away.
The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
Open one stone eye.

This is the after-hell: I see the light.
A wind unstoppers the chamber
Of the ear, old worrier.

Water mollifies the flint lip,
And daylight lays its sameness on the wall.
The grafters are cheerful,

Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers.
A current agitates the wires
Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures.

A workman walks by carrying a pink torso.
The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.

My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber.
Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
On Fridays little children come

To trade their hooks for hands.
Dead men leave eyes for others.
Love is the uniform of my bald nurse.

Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.
The vase, unreconstructed, houses
The elusive rose.

Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows.
My mendings itch. There is nothing to do.
I shall be good as new.

Something there's been lost

2011-10-26T06:27:00.005-05:00

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness a creature void of form
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Suddenly I turned around and she was standing there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Now there's a wall between us, something there's been lost
I took too much for granted got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker he blows a futile horn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I've heard newborn babies wailing like a mourning dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question man is it hopeless and forlorn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

In a little hilltop village they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation and they gave me a lethal dose
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well I'm living in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge someday I'll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I wasn't born to lose you

2011-10-26T04:20:00.003-05:00

from "Blonde on Blonde," 1966.

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it's not that way
I wasn't born to lose you
I want you, I want you
I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.

The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep
They wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask for me to
Open up the gate for you
I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.

Now all my fathers they've gone down
True love they've been without it
But all their daughters put me down
'Cause I don't think about it.

Well, I return to the Queen of Spades
And talk with my chambermaid
She knows that I'm not afraid
To look at her
She is good to me
And there's nothing she doesn't see
She knows where I'd like to be
But it doesn't matter
I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.

Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit
He spoke to me, I took his flute
No, I wasn't very cute to him - Was I ?
But I did it because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
And because I ..
I want you, I want you
Yes, I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.

I didn't realize how young you were

2011-10-26T04:07:00.006-05:00

from "Blonde on Blonde," 1966.

And I told you, as you clawed out my eyes
That I never really meant to do you any harm.

I didn't mean to treat you so bad
You shouldn't take it so personal
I didn't mean to make you so sad
You just happened to be there, that's all
When I saw you say goodbye to your friends and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you'd be comin' back in a little while
I didn't know that you were sayin' goodbye for good.

But sooner or later one of us must know
You just did what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you.

I couldn't see what you could show me
Your scarf had kept your mouth well hid
I couldn't see how you could know me
But you said you knew me and I believed you did
When you whispered in my ear
And asked me if I was leavin' with you or her
I didn't realize just what I did hear
I didn't realize how young you were.

But sooner or later one of us must know
But you're just doing what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you.

I couldn't see when it started snowin'
Your voice was all that I heard
I couldn't see where we were goin'
But you said you knew and I took your word
And then you told me later as I apologized
That you were just kiddin' me, you weren't really from the farm
And I told you, as you clawed out my eyes
That I never really meant to do you any harm.

But sooner or later one of us must know
But you just did what you're supposed to do
Sooner or later one of us must know
That I really did try to get close to you.

THE EMPRESS

2011-10-23T23:08:00.003-05:00

S. and I had talked about the Byzantine Empress Theodora years ago, tossed around the idea of a screenplay. The idea, as with everything else between us, petered out. But I still kept thinking about Theodora. I'd first discovered her after watching a History Channel show on the end of the Roman Empire. (The Eastern part of the Empire, headquartered in Constantinople, lasted centuries after the fall of the Western part in AD 410.) And was struck by the TV-show account of Theodora's singlehandedly standing up to the hordes at the Hippodrome who were trying to overthrow her husband (the Emperor Justinian). In the midst of the chaos of the revolt, she convinced her husband and advisors to stand and fight, when they were all ready to give up and take flight. Thanks to Theodora, they did make a stand, and Justinian's rule was saved.

Who the hell WAS this woman?

I did a little research at the time, and learned that she was born the daughter of a bear-keeper at Constantinople's Hippodrome. When her father died when she was little, her mother guided her 3 daughters onto the stage in order to make money for the family. ("The stage" at that time included prostitution.) A young (not-yet-Emperor) Justinian met her while she was performing, and the rest was pretty much history...

Interesting to me. But then after I shared the idea with S. and the idea went nowhere, I let it go. A couple of days ago, though, when I was at the library, I typed in a search for "Theodora" just for the hell of it; apparently there's a brand new 2011 book out about her that the library's still waiting to get. I put myself on the waiting list to check it out. And then found another book about her -- "Theodora: Empress of Byzantium" by Paolo Cesaretti (2001), that I hadn't read yet. This author fills in a lot of historical detail that I didn't know about. I'm only a hundred pages into it, but he's already provided several striking occurrences in her life that made me think of A MOVIE.

One scene is: After Theodora's bear-keeping father died, her mother took her 3 daughters (Theodora the middle one) to the public Hippodrome before all the masses to beg a city official in the stands that the bear-keeping position be continued with the new step-father in their family. (Otherwise the family would have been destitute.) The city official (who had officiated at the funeral of the father; both he and the father were members of the "Green" team of the Hippodrome -- one of 4 stadium competing teams, who fought lions and bears, etc.) stared at the kneeling mother and daughters and then pointedly turned his head away from them. The crowd was silent; the kneeling mother and her daughters were humiliated. Until... a call came from the other end of the stadium... from a rival team, the "Blues." The leader of the Blues called the family over to join them.

How frigging dramatic and screen-worthy is that? The betrayal of the Greens, her father's team, and salvation by the Blues... ESPECIALLY knowing that, years later, Theodora would again be confronted with the Hippodrome teams when trying to publicly save her emperor husband...

After reading this kind of stuff, I started taking notes on a screenplay: Main Characters, Historical Notes, Important Plot Points...

A couple of years after the above public Hippodrome humiliation and temporary salvation, Theodora's mother started to pawn off her daughters sexually for the family's financial survival. Here are the notes I wrote about that under "Important Plot Points":

Mother guides daughters to perform on stage, for financial survival. [Actresses considered barely better than whores; they often performed nude or nearly nude and were expected to have sex with rich patrons.] Oldest, Comito (then around 15), becomes actress/courtesan, with Theodora (around age 12) appearing in Comito’s retinue as a boy. Both must perform sexual acts. (Since Theo too young to be considered a “real woman,” she, per her “boy” appearance, is allowed to be sodomized.) Comito, as a beautiful woman and featured performer, has sex with upper-classes, while Theo must have sexual relations with lower classes. [This will come into play later when Theo is in power --- though she is a relatively fair ruler, she will, however, force many “ladies” in her court to marry working-class men.] During this time, Theo known for being somewhat of a clown, overtly sexual, not a great actress, more of a “pal” (i.e., “fuck buddy”) than a real actress/temptress. [Her sister Comito takes herself and her “art” seriously; Theo does not.] Procopius bitchily reports that during this time period, Theo often after a show dined with 10 upper-class youth, having sex with them, then – allegedly unsatisfied – finishing the night off with their slaves. He also reports that Theo publicly wishes for more orifices with which to satisfy her lovers. (!) [I see this as part of her “whatever” attitude – she’s in a horrible position, forced to make the best of it, and she takes it to the extreme.]

That stuff is too powerful. And not made up! And just the first third of the movie! She hadn't even met Justinian yet!

Just what I needed: some inspiration. I have always not minded working crappy jobs as long as I had a creative project to come home to.

Pygmalion

2011-10-22T05:33:00.010-05:00

Your AstroCenter horoscope for October 21, 2011

It's possible you could meet someone today, who will act as a kind of Pygmalion for you. You need to be surrounded and encouraged by people who believe in you, STEPHANIE, and it is good for you to have one or several people around to support you. If you do meet this kind of person, don't be a show off, and listen to what he or she has to say to you. It is for your own good.

-------------------------------------------------

You know what? If a Pygmalion had come along that said anything that I knew was true and/or true to myself, I might have listened. As it was/is: Any "authority figure" I've been around in my entire life -- parent, teacher, boss -- has always been primarily full of bullshit that I could easily see through. (I will never forget my thesis advisor in grad school... One poem that I'd felt particularly close to and worked particularly hard on, she said didn't like and that she'd read it while driving to work... When I told her that I couldn't respect her opinion if she'd only read the poem across her steering wheel, she got mad at me. SHE got mad at ME!) I've never had a Pygmalion, a real role model. I've always had to raise and instruct myself. For better and worse.

Should such an insightful person who believed in me show up in my life and show me support, I would of course be extremely grateful. Who wouldn't be?

Kiss and Tell

2011-10-21T23:10:00.023-05:00

From 1977 to 1979, I was a huge KISS fan. (Thinking back, I'd assumed my obsession lasted a lot longer than it did, but in reality it was only from 7th grade through the first part of 9th grade.) Thanks to my "cool" friend Debbie for getting me into them. Debbie was so cool because when she was 12 she was already reading "Creem" magazine and getting to stay up late to watch "Midnight Special" on Friday nights and "Saturday Night Live." (I, on the other hand, still had to go to bed at 9pm on school nights and 10pm even on weekends; the only time I got to watch those shows was when I spent the night at her house.) And she had quite the interesting, mature rock record collection for a junior-high kid -- stuff like Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones and Patti Smith and The Runaways, along with KISS -- while I was still just coming off of the Bay City Rollers and Shaun Cassidy. (Though I've got to "out" Debbie -- my mom accompanied her and me to our mutual first live concert ever in 1977, and it was...SHAUN CASSIDY!) :)

At the peak of my KISS fandom, I had a Gene Simmons-face birthday cake one year, 2 KISS T-shirts, a KISS belt buckle, tons of posters covering my walls, and a membership in the KISS Army. Debbie and I would frequently don KISS makeup at her house (with me always Gene and her, Ace), and then I exported that habit to the more prosaic kids in my own neighborhood during summers, with me still Gene and my next-door neighbor/friend Marla being Ace and us enlisting our little brothers to be Paul and Peter. Before we figured out that the band used something called "greasepaint" and that this could be purchased relatively cheaply at the Fort Worth mall's pseudo-head shop "Spencer's," we invented our own makeup: The white part was toothpaste spread all over our faces for stickiness, with baby powder then thrown on to it. The black part was... magic marker!! :) When we put on concerts to "Alive II" in my bedroom, the guitars were tennis rackets and the drumsticks, pencils.

The picture shown here is from my 14th birthday, 1979 (when I for the only time switched over to being Paul -- though I still kept my Gene T-shirt -- and we all had real greasepaint), with some "straight" friends from school who weren't that into KISS whom I persuaded to get made up just for something to do at a slumber party! Funnily, there was a fourth friend at this particular sleepover... but her religion precluded her from dressing up like these alleged "devil worshippers" -- at that time, there was a rumor rampant that "KISS" stood for "Knights In Satan's Service" and she didn't want to take any chances! :) (I'd invited Debbie to this same party, but she made up an excuse and didn't show at the last minute; I was crushed! I hated her for dissing me for a long time and only later figured out that she just didn't feel comfortable with this group of people, though they were all very nice. Maybe the "nice" was the problem!)

I never owned all of their albums (my weekly allowance was tiny, and birthdays/Christmases only came so often), but at one point I had:

Hotter Than Hell (bought for me at the mall by my dad after the parents' divorce; when I brought it home, my mother was angry at him about the suggestive pictures on the back cover!)
Rock and Roll Over
Love Gun
Alive II
The Ace and Gene solo albums
Double Platinum
Dynasty

By the time the bad/disco-y "Dynasty" came out in '79, and today, KISS was/is thought of by some to be a gimmick band, but prior to the solo albums, they were pretty raunchy and dark. Gene dark, especially, with songs like "Goin' Blind," "Watching You," "God of Thunder" (written by Paul but performed by Gene); and raunchy, especially, with "Calling Dr. Love," "Ladies' Room," "Plaster Caster," "Christine Sixteen." Paul wrote or co-wrote and performed more of my favorite pop-y and anthemic and sometimes equally sexy songs ("C'Mon and Love Me," "Do You Love Me," "Shout It Out Loud," "Detroit Rock City," "Comin' Home," "I Stole Your Love"), but Gene was the one whose songs we -- Debbie and I -- listened to much more solemnly, via candlelight after midnight on those weekend sleepovers, as I'm sure many Beatles fans solemnly listened to "Sgt. Pepper" and the White Album in their day... There was something semi-spooky, something "deep" about "real life," going on, and we wanted to get down to the mystery of it...

A p.s.: Debbie moved away from my town after our sophomore year, around 1981. I didn't speak to her again until 2007, after I'd moved to NYC and found out she lived in Brooklyn. When we met up there, she told me, in KISS-related news, that she'd gone on after high school to be an actual groupie for a time (mainly hanging around heavy/death metal bands, but also some '80s hair bands like Motley Crue) -- and... she'd slept with Gene Simmons!! Of course, I was impressed! She said he was a dick, though. Why?, I wondered. Was he mean to her? No, not really. And he talked to her about her going back to school. Never could get it out of her what was so dick-like.

I feel uptight on a Saturday night
Nine o'clock, the radio's the only light
I hear my song and it pulls me through
Comes on strong, tells me what I got to do
I got to

Get up
Everybody's gonna move their feet
Get down
Everybody's gonna leave their seat
You gotta lose your mind in Detroit Rock City

Get up
Everybody's gonna move their feet
Get down
Everybody's gonna leave their seat

Getting late
I just can't wait
Ten o'clock and I know I gotta hit the road
First I drink, then I smoke
Start up the car, and I try to make the midnight show

Get up
Everybody's gonna move their feet
Get down
Everybody's gonna leave their seat

Movin' fast, doin' 95
Hit top speed but I'm still movin' much too slow
I feel so good, I'm so alive
I hear my song playin' on the radio
It goes

Get up
Everybody's gonna move their feet
Get down
Everybody's gonna leave their seat

Twelve o'clock, I gotta rock
There's a truck ahead, lights starin' at my eyes
Oh my God, no time to turn
I got to laugh 'cause I know I'm gonna die
Why

Get up
Everybody's gonna move their feet
Get up
Everybody's gonna leave their seat

She's a dancer, a romancer
I'm a Capricorn and she's a Cancer
She saw my picture in a music magazine
When she met me, said she'd get me
Touched her hips and told me that she'd let me
I took her hand, baby this is what I said
I said baby, baby, don't you hesitate
'Cause I just can't wait
Lady, won't you take me down to my knees
You can do what you please
Come on and love me

I'm a man, I'm no baby
And you're lookin' every inch a lady
You're good lookin' and you're lookin' like you should be good
You were distant, now you're nearer
I can feel your face inside the mirror
The lights are out and I can feel you, baby, with my hand

So baby, baby, don't you hesitate
'Cause I just can't wait
Lady, won't you take me down to my knees
You can do what you please
Come on and love me
Come on and love me

Dead Animals, OHIO-USA, October 2011

2011-10-20T00:47:00.018-05:00

Why the mass slaughter? Idiotic Ohio policeman interviewed on TV: "We didn't have tranquilizer guns." (DOH.) I feel sick. GET some tranquilizer guns, you stupid, stupid human buffoons allegedly in charge of "law and order." p.s. Love the way you scumbags in Ohio laid out the dead afterwards as trophies for everyone to look at. Are you really proud of yourselves for this? Really? I just read that Ohio has the most wild animals in captivity of any state in the Union. Really? And no tranquilizer guns on hand? Why that dichotomy? Why, if your citizens are known for keeping wild animals, are you, the state, not prepared to counteract said citizens' poor decisions, other than to slaughter any animals that might escape? Ya think maybe BANNING the keeping of wild animals might be a good decision to begin with, to at least avoid the below horror?

A sailor's only daughter... (1976)

2011-10-19T23:52:00.007-05:00

If never I met you
I'd never have seen you cry
If not for our first "Hello"
We'd never have to say goodbye
If never I held you
My feelings would never show
It's time I start walkin'
But there's so much you'll never know

I keep telling you hard luck woman
You ain't a hard luck woman

Rags, a sailor's only daughter
A child of the water
Too proud to be a queen

Rags, I really love you
I can't forget about you
You'll be a hard luck woman
Baby, till you find your man

Before I go let me kiss you
And wipe the tears from your eyes
I don't wanna hurt you, girl
You know I could never lie

I keep telling you hard luck woman
You ain't a hard luck woman
You'll be a hard luck woman
Baby, till you find your man

I have counted every day...

2011-10-17T06:25:00.005-05:00

I have counted every day since you've been away
It seemed like a thousand years
and at na,na,na,na,na,na, late at night
na,na,na,na,na,na late at night
I'll sit and count the tears

I have counted all your lies all your alibis
I'm a guy believes just what he hears
and at na,na,na,na,na,na, late at night
na,na,na,na,na,na,late at night
I'll sit and count the tears

She's gone and found somebody new
He may be happy now but soon

He'll be counting every day that she's been away
It'll seem like a thousand years

and at na,na,na,na,na,na, late at night
na,na,na,na,na,na, late at night
He'll sit and count his tears
He'll sit and count his tears
He'll sit and count his tears
He'll sit....and count his tears

LESSONS IN HUNGER

2011-10-16T00:58:00.020-05:00

by Anne Sexton

"Do you like me?"
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
but blackness filled my ears,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.

Do you like me?
How absurd!
What's a question like that?
What's a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

------------------------------------------------------

When I first read the above poem, I was a kid in high school, and didn't think any such cruelty existed. I'd seen first-hand such cruelty, witnessing my parents' behavior, but nonetheless thought it all surreal, even when Sexton said it, even when I personally witnessed it as a kid. It was between them, not me. My kid-self shut out the awfulness. Once I got out of there and had my own life, it would all be better...

Today, at 46, nothing's been better. There have been variations on the bad, but... nothing's been better. My whole life since age 12 has been "Lessons in Hunger." I've achieved societal things like degrees and getting jobs. But I've never been loved and cared for by someone that I love. In patches, that kind of lack and accompanying independence is rather liberating. With long-term emotional deprivation, though, the seeming freedom of self becomes a burden. A point constantly proven, already! :)

Come early. Be loud. Stay late.

2011-10-15T22:31:00.008-05:00

Not always the best prescription, but in this case, it mainly worked!

As I've bitched about maaaaaaannnny times before here, not having regular work makes me a slug. A lying-around-the-room, watching-TV-12-hours-a-day, drinking-into-the-early-morning-hours slug. Not proud of it. But it's just how it turns out, having nothing else at all to do.

In this instance, haven't had a day of work in 2 weeks! (Despite being registered with 7 -- count 'em, 7! -- employment agencies and calling in my availability weekly or daily, per their requirements. With that, and applying for any available jobs that I see online, what the hell else am I supposed to do? Can't think of anything...)

Friday morning, I'd gone to bed at 6 a.m. or something. Heard the phone ring at 10 a.m. Was too hung over (or still drunk) to get up and answer it. When I finally got my groggy ass out of bed around 3 p.m., I listened to the message from one agency: Did I want to work the UT Longhorns game this Saturday? I was almost afraid to call back, 5 hours after the fact, and almost just negatively blew the offer off... but when I did call, there was, luckily, still a spot for me...

It turned out to be a fun experience! Number one, ANYTHING to get out of my apartment and earn a little needed money is a "fun experience." Number two, though, this really was a fun, exuberant, invigorating environment to be in. Just the fact that the Longhorns had gotten creamed so badly last week by OU and needed to make amends, this time playing a team just as good as OU, set the stage for a bit of excitement in the air...

And then: In all my years at UT, both as a student and an employee, I'd only been to ONE Longhorn game, back in the '80s. Had seats high up in the rafters, didn't really enjoy it that much. This time, though, I was assigned to work as a "floater" on the floor with the indoor suites --- i.e., where all the "rich folk" gathered. I'd initially hoped to get a great view of the game, which didn't happen, except when I was stationed outside a suite door, where I could peek in and down at the field. (Since I was a floater, I had the freedom to run to said doors whenever I heard a huge roar from the crowd!)

It was also interesting to get to watch the "elites'" behavior: I'd been told by staff regulars to get a load of all the alcohol constantly schlepped in to the suites, so I was expecting/hoping to see some Bacchanalia! No such luck! :) I did get to see the President of UT and Wife walking around, along with other UT luminaries, but... no one was doing anything weird or obnoxious! In other words: Nothing to make outraged social commentary here about! :)

OK, so every single person that I saw in the suites was white. And, of the various staff members, the majority, 80% or more, were Hispanic or black, with lil' ol' me in the 20% minority. What, at this point, can I even say about that racial breakdown? It's all been said before. And I think, had I been 26 rather than 46, I might have had sensations of, "One day, I too will have such a suite!" But, being 46, I didn't really care. Mainly because the suites and what was going on in them and what the people in them looked like and their view of the playing field wasn't THAT envy-inspiring.

A lot of 50-60-year-olds (the women with nicely coiffed hair) and their grandkids. A few suites dominated by 20-somethings, the boys looking like fresher-faced versions of their rich fathers and grandfathers (you knew EXACTLY what the boys would look like in 30 years), and the girls -- in their miniskirts and accompanying cowboy boots and long straight hair and fake eyelashes -- looking like Austin's only slightly differing version of LA/Kardashian girls as seen on TV. Completely nonthreatening visually, psychologically, what-have-you. They just were what they were: middle-aged and young people drinking and watching a football game. (I always love judging. And I'm usually at least somewhat paranoid. That I got no bad vibes at all from my surroundings Saturday was a pleasant thing! All I basically came away thinking was that these people were good-looking! Better looks are one thing I'll grant Texans over New Yorkers, for instance!) :)

(Oh yeah: UT lost to OSU, 26 to 38.)

A good day, in an exuberant setting, plus I earned a hundred dollars just for sitting around. I'm thankful for having the chance to do it. Another chance for me to reconnect with Austin, which I suppose I didn't do properly during my first 20 years. (Never once going to any public library then, for instance; or never walking around downtown during the day, seeing things other than clubs after midnight.)

Fox and Friends

2011-10-14T03:29:00.010-05:00

"Poor Mike is 5'9" and Cindy isn't paying any attention to him at all..."

I was liking Fox News for its straightforwardness after the snarky, extreme left bias of MSNBC... until seeing the below ad on Fox! Seriously... If the only Fox viewers besides myself are creepy little men with Napoleon complexes... ugh!!

The $15.50 Chinese Dinner

2011-10-12T03:35:00.002-05:00

Craving fast food, having no car, and having 2 miles to travel (either walking or waiting for a bus) to get either a Whataburger or Taco Bell meal, sometimes I just have to go with the menus that have been delivered to the doorknobs of my apartment, mainly national pizza places (Domino's, Gatti's) and local Chinese joints (China Palace, China Kitchen, Oriental Express).

Last night I settled on "China Kitchen." It, unlike the two others, only had a $10 instead of $15 minimum order. All had a $3 delivery fee.

So I called for a $7.50 dinner (Lemon chicken, deep-fried, with two scoops of rice, two egg-rolls, and soup -- egg-drop). And ordered two extra egg-rolls for $2.50 to meet the $10 minimum.

Let me just start with: In NYC, some Chinese places also offered burritos and other Mexican food. NO. Chinese and Mexican food don't mix. And at Austin's Dobie Mall, a Chinese place is called "Oma's Kitchen" --- it doesn't offer German food, but does offer burgers along with the Chinese food. NO.

Similarly, tonight when I called "China Kitchen" for the first time... A deep male BLACK voice answered, "Yeah?" From a couple of years up north, I just gave him the number off the menu: "Can I have the #3. Egg-drop soup. For delivery."

"I don't have the menu in front of me. What do you want?"

So, because he didn't have a menu, I then had to explain about the lemon chicken and how it's deep-fried, and about the rice, and about the egg-rolls, and about the soup... and about how I wanted an extra $2.50 order of egg-rolls to make everything add up to $10.

Did I want some crab-cakes? "If they're free crab-cakes, then sure, but otherwise, no..." "Heh-heh-heh. $15.50."

OK, the meal was $10. Tax on $10 is less than 10% here. The stated delivery fee was $3. The whole thing should have been under $14. When he said "$15.50" I spent the next 45 minutes worrying about whether to give a tip or not. Absolutely did not want to, and ended up not giving because the total amount was so much.

When the meal arrived, it was a huge amount of food. Minus the extra $2.50 egg-rolls that I'd ordered, though. In NYC, you'd get the same ton of stuff for $7. In Austin, it was $15.50.

I'm going to try to stretch it out for 3 or 4 meals, and can probably do so, so it won't be such a waste. But still... $15.50 was a big fucking waste of money. I could have gone to a decent restaurant for that price.

Main Lesson: Don't order Mexican or burgers from a Chinese joint. And don't order Chinese from an African-American joint. It just doesn't work out well.

Rainbow Bridge

2011-10-10T09:08:00.012-05:00

POSTED ON FACEBOOK -- by a "Friend," NOT ME! -- about the death of his cat, followed by an exchange starting with me:

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Author unknown

-------------
ME: ...Are you kidding with this "Rainbow Bridge/Special Friend" stuff? Hey, I loved my cat Gracie A LOT and was VERY upset when she died after 10 years... but the above is pretty creepy, a la Baptists mourning for Jesus to this day.

MC: No I'm not kidding Stephanie, and at this point you are just becoming obnoxious with your constant negative comments on everything....I can see why at this point we have no more mutual friends.....ugh, get a life!

ME: The below that you wrote [referring to the whole "Rainbow Bridge" passage] is one of the most fake, false things I've ever read. I've loved some pets deeply, and the below doesn't do them any justice at all --- It's like some Southern Baptist preacher wrote it.

SLL: MC, who ever this person Stephanie is, I wish you would block her from writing on your wall. Clearly, she's not a nice person.

ME: SLL: OMG! Because I said our dead pets are not frolicking after death in a place called Rainbow Bridge with happy kisses raining upon our faces?? What's next? We humans are going to Heaven to play harps with angels? Come on.

MC: steph....i feel sorry for you at this point....i'm sure most people are seeing you the way sharon and myself see you at this point...you just like arguing, that's something i've come to realize....sometimes you need to know when to shut it. i'm sorry this post had to be ruined by your insensitivity.

ME: I remain amazed: You guys REALLY think there is such a thing as "Rainbow Bridge" where dead pets and their former owners frolic and exchange kisses? Seriously? I feel like I'm going crazy right now. I am not "insensitive" in the least. I've mourned pets deeply. But just not in this weird "I'm going to frolic with you later" way. That is really bizarre to me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Am I fucking crazy?????? Seriously, half the time, Facebook people make me think as if I am fucking mad. There's no Rainbow Bridge! There's no Big Jesus in the Sky! Barack Obama isn't the Savior (my old Austin/NYC left-wing acquaintances). Barack Obama isn't the Devil (my old right-wing high-school acquaintances). I want to stop relying just on books and turn to real people for communication... but... REAL PEOPLE ARE FUCKING CRAZY and, WORSE, they're STUPID!!! (Give me crazy over stupid any day!)

I'm frigging serious... On Facebook, if you don't sit there and give kudos to every dumb-ass post, then you (well, maybe just I) get shit like, "get a life, you're obnoxious, I feel sorry for you" ----- WHY do people feel sorry for ME???? :) Because I say straight out that there's no frigging "Rainbow Bridge"????? What in the world are people wanting? (Well, I know what they're wanting: "Tiger loved you. You will see Tiger one day soon on Rainbow Bridge." Oh dear god. I just figured out what Sandra wanted me to say to her: "Jim loved you. You will see Jim one day soon on Rainbow Bridge." If I don't tell the truth, I get points for sympathy. If I tell the truth straight out, I get hated for telling the truth.)

I live in a land --- both real and virtual --- of total Zombies.

Ideas of the Ancestors

2011-10-10T06:47:00.014-05:00

My great-grandfather's brother, German psychiatrist and opponent of Freud:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hoche

He also published poetry under the name "Alfred Erich," though I could find none online.

Paul McCartney got re-married...

2011-10-10T02:46:00.008-05:00

... for the third time, Sunday, October 9. The news said that during the ceremony in London he sang for his bride 3 songs: Let It Be, Let Me Roll It, and a new song written just for her.

I've always liked the sexy "Let Me Roll It," from the classic 1973 Wings album "Band on the Run":

You gave me something, I understand,
You gave me loving in the palm of my hand
I can't tell you how I feel
My heart is like a wheel
Let me roll it
Let me roll it to you
Let me roll it
Let me roll it to you

I want to tell you
And now's the time
I want to tell you that
You're going to be mine

I can't tell you how I feel
My heart is like a wheel
Let me roll it
Let me roll it to you
Let me roll it
Let me roll it to you

-----------------------------------

Here's the thing, though: What bride wants re-tread songs? OK, it means something that PAUL MCCARTNEY is singing "Let It Be" and "Let Me Roll It" to you... but... only if you're a fan or something! He wrote those for other women! Let's hope the one new song was a good one! :)

p.s. October 9 is John Lennon's birthday. While Paul had probably forgotten, I'm sure Yoko will send him a note reminding. And in upcoming days: Sandra's mother died on October 11, and Ginny was born on October 11. I doubt very much that S. will remember. And I think that Ginny's parents will very much remember.

LEAVES THAT TALK

2011-10-08T06:39:00.003-05:00

I told someone once how they called to me,
sang to me, and that someone fled.

Bukowski's "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man"

2011-10-05T22:46:00.003-05:00

One thing I miss about working at the university library (which I haven't done since 2000) is being able to go on massive "writer kicks" -- reading every available book by and bio on 'til it (he or she) is all out of my system. Back when I was floor supervisor and trapped there for 8 hours a day, I'd get all the work done in 2 or 3 hours, then have the rest of the day to just browse the stacks and discover.

At some point in the late '80s or early '90s, I had my initial Charles Bukowski kick. It has now been around 20 years since I first read him, 'til I just found his "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man" (2011) last weekend at the city library. (He died in 2004; these are all essays/sketches/stories published in non-mainstream magazines from '67 through '84.)

The guy puts me in a good mood and makes me feel good about life!

Here's from a funny sketch about a groupie who'd come to his house unannounced:

She put down her bottle. "You are a great writer," she said.
"That's no reason for coming to see me."
"Yes it is, yes it is. You see you fascinate me, you write this way and you look like, you look like --"
"The trashman?"
"Yes, or a diseased gorilla, an undergrown aged gorilla dying of cancer. And those goddamn eyes, slits of eyes but when you finally OPEN them for just that second -- shit, I never saw eyes LIKE THAT, that COLOR, that VICIOUS FIRE --"

They end up doing it on the rug; afterward, she says "ooooh ooooh ooooh I liked it, I liked it I liked it, you filthy greasy pig," and then she leaves while he's in the bathroom.

I was fascinated by that sex (which I'm guessing really happened): It kind of turned me on to read, but then when I started to think about it, and ME: There are some writers, however much I admire them, that I have no actual desire to have sex with, and Bukowski is one of them! :) Yes, just based on the fact that he looked like a trashman/diseased gorilla! I don't think that I could have, unlike the red-haired groupie in the sketch, ever gone beyond that external analysis, despite his writing and his "goddamn" eyes! But... now I feel like I've been missing out! :)

That whole passage made me think about exactly which writers I like that I'd want to sleep with: Bukowski, noooooo. Kerouac, noooooo. (Both too sloppy.) Mailer, maybe. Fitzgerald, probably not (too neurotic). Hemingway, yes. Plath, no. Sexton, yes. Ted Hughes, yes. Rilke, Yeats, Eliot --- noooooo. (Though I'd like to stay up very late drinking and talking with Yeats and Rilke, and all of the above, I suppose.)

Back to Bukowski's writing, though: I like the fact that he writes about a lot of rough stuff and about a lot of dreary, mind-numbing day-to-day stuff (both of which I've experienced too much of), but with insight and humanity and detail. Like Raymond Carver's story about having a guy friend over to hang out and drink; a few hours into the evening, the main character sees his friend kissing the main character's wife in the kitchen --- it's a stunning, potentially life-changing moment... and simultaneously, as he sees the kiss, the main character has just spilled some beer on his new Hush Puppies and is worried about the stain coming out... Life is LIKE that. I've had a hundred moments like that. It's so hard to capture in writing.

One Bukowski sketch in this book that I liked a lot: He's at a camp out in the wilderness with his girlfriend and a bigger group. His girlfriend seems kind of distant one morning, so he goes off by himself to write, wondering about the "inconsistency of woman"... And then gets lost in the woods. He wonders around for hours, eventually truly scared, to the point of abandoning his notebook... After about 8 hours (and contemplation about his potential demise), he finally winds his way back to the camp by chance:

"My god I'm glad to see you! I thought I might die..."
His girlfriend's callous: "I think you got lost on purpose...I thought maybe you went over the mountain to get a drink... Now you'll have something to write about."

As they're trudging back to their tent: "We had to climb between and over old barbwire fences. I got stuck in one, three or four barbs stuck into the back of my shirt. My arm was too tired to reach up and pluck myself free. I just stood there between the strands. Linda waited. I couldn't move. She walked back and lifted the top strand off my back and I got out and followed her."

I laughed out loud about Bukowski idiotically being semi-trapped in the barbed wire. And then laughed out of happiness at Linda's kindly, despite her pique, lifting of one strand to "free" him. Yeah, there's symbolism there, but it was also just a very cute moment of a real-life dynamic between a couple. That kind of thing is very hard to put into words. And Bukowski, and Carver, could do that so well.

Finally: In this book, I also enjoyed Bukowski's recollections of libraries and the idea of solitude:

"After sitting in [LA's] Pershing Square and listening to the boys argue about whether there was a God or not I would walk over to the library... I found myself in the Philosophy Room. Those boys had some style. They talked about what mattered... One of the things they talked about was the need for Solitude. That made sense to me. That need. I mean, when I was sitting at a table reading a book and somebody came to my table and sat down it disturbed me. Why sit near me? And when I looked about and saw other empty tables, I felt really repulsed. I know that I am supposed to love my fellow man but I don't. I don't hate him; I often dislike him; I just don't want him about. I feel better alone.

I loved Solitude. Still do. I grow when I am alone. People diminish me. Especially men, they seem quite unoriginal. Women, at times, are useful. Also they are funny and tragic. But too many continued hours and days with them leads to madness."

from The New Yorker, 10/3/11

2011-10-05T21:42:00.017-05:00

GENDER BENDER
by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Evolution settles for a while on various stable balances.
One is that some of the girls like cute boys and some
like ugly older men and sometimes women. The difference
between them is the ones who like older men were felt up

by their fathers or uncles or older brothers, or, if he didn't
touch you, still you lived in his cauldron of curses and
urges, which could be just as worse. They grow already old,
angry and wise, they get rich, get mean, get theirs.

The untouched-uncursed others are happy never needing
to do much, and never do much more than good. They envy
their mean, rich, talented, drunk sisters. Good girls drink milk
and make milk and know they've missed out and know they're

better off. They might dance and design but won't rip out lungs
for a flag. Bad ones write books and slash red paint on canvas;
they've rage to vent, they've fault lines and will rip a toga off
a Caesar and stab a goat for the ether. It's as simple as that.

Either, deep in the dark of your history, someone showed you
that you could be used as a cash machine, as a popcorn popper,
as a rocket launch, as a coin-slot jackpot spunker, or he didn't
and you grew up unused and clueless. Either you got a clue

and spiked lunch or you got zilch but no punch. And you
never knew. It's exactly not anyone's fault. If it happened
and you don't like older men that's just because you like
them so much you won't let yourself have one. If you did

people would see. Then they would know what happened
a long time ago, with you and that original him, whose eyes
you've been avoiding for decades gone forgotten. That's why
you date men smaller than you or not at all. Or maybe you've

turned into a man. It isn't anyone's fault, it is just human
and it is what happens. Or doesn't happen. That's that. Any
questions? If you see a girl dressed to say, "No one tells me
what to do," you know someone once told her what to do.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow. Part of me wants to quibble with the suggestion that non-abused women are duller than their abused sisters, which reminds me of the rather self-serving, smug quote -- was it by Dorothy Parker? -- "If you weren't molested as a child, you must have been an ugly kid." (I must disagree with the latter: I myself was really pretty as a child, to the point of adult male friends of the family wanting -- and being allowed to -- have me on their laps while they brushed my long blonde hair; strange men at Dairy Queens buying me ice-cream -- while I was sitting there already eating an ice-cream; men at my dad's office telling him that I was "the prettiest girl" they'd ever seen. I think I was never sexually abused because I was a very verbal, opinionated tattle-tale of a child rather than because I was not pretty.)

But that quibble is just a quibble. This is still very powerful psychologically (not as good as Plath, of course, but...like a Plath who'd gotten tired of speaking enigmatically in terms of history/art and decided to just come right out and SAY IT). I love stuff like, "They...won't rip out lungs / for a flag. Bad ones write books and slash red paint on canvas; / they've rage to vent, they've fault lines and will rip a toga off / a Caesar and stab a goat for the ether." I like the whole fifth stanza.

And the last 2 lines are especially for me: "If you see a girl dressed to say, 'No one tells me / what to do,' you know someone once told her what to do." I was not treated very well, emotionally, when I was a child, and nearly every second of my freedom after age 18 has been an attempt to not ever, ever have to be so trapped and degraded again. I've often failed miserably in that attempt (especially in the last year or so!), but nonetheless recognize that the innate desire for autonomy after 18 years of entrapment is a driving psychological force of my adult life.

Ruined as I may be from constantly rejecting... there are few poems or epigraphs written about those who did NOT give in, despite the pressure. The cute girls who simply DISMISSED the older men's comings on, thought them pathetic, and then moved on. I refuse to give any real credence to girls who say they were sexually abused simply because they were unable to say no to the creeps that they might have disliked at the time but thought they'd go ahead and mess around with anyway because they were ever-so-slightly fascinated.

Sunshine Maria

2011-10-04T02:50:00.015-05:00

The anonymous black cat that I've seen a couple of times lying below in the next-door-neighbor's scruffy, rented yard looking up at me while I looked down at her from my 2nd-story apartment window is apparently named "Sunshine Maria." And this morning she didn't want to come home.

The plaintive calls for "Sunshine Mariaaaaaa...." started about 10am. Then some whistles. Then some more "Sunshine Maria"s and more whistles. After 15 minutes of this, I got annoyed and looked out the window for a bit. Saw nothing, went and laid back down. After more calls, got up again: This time I saw a black cat jumping off my apartment roof to the roof of the shed of the property next door. (My own now-dead cat Grace was a big roof-jumper, so I thought this was cool.) Kept looking. After the jump, couldn't see anything. Went and laid back down. But then the calls for "Sunshine Maria" kept up so, annoyed still, I got back up and looked back out. In time to see SM making her way down off the shed via trees and then onto the path joining the property/shed of the house next door to my apartment complex. Her owner kept calling and calling. SM kept inching forward and then stopping just short of the fence dividing the property of the house from the apartment complex. I finally saw her owner come into view, on my apartment side of the fence: "Sunshine! Here, Sunshine! Come here." SM, just inches from the dividing fence, looked at her and didn't move. And didn't move. And didn't move. And didn't move.

How both cool and annoyingly cat-like was that cat! :) (Cool for herself and annoying for the owner.) And how annoying were the owner's cries, at least to me, semi-trying to sleep despite her ongoing cat-calls and whistles! (And what's the story behind naming a black cat "Sunshine Maria" -- I highly doubt that the naming was with any knowledge of Edison's "Black Maria" film studio! Or... was it? Am I just a misanthrope?) :)

The owner finally gave up. I, on the other hand, kept watching out the window. Sunshine Maria finally crossed under the fence over to our apartments, long after her plaintively-calling owner had gone.

Sexy (Poor Franchot)

2011-10-01T23:44:00.014-05:00

Just Kids (No Glitter)

2011-10-01T21:08:00.007-05:00

Just finished reading "Just Kids," Patti Smith's 2010 memoir of her young life in NYC with her best friend Robert Mapplethorpe.

A few things that I noted:

"In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

Robert trusted in the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus influence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination."

----------

"In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? ... I craved honesty, yet found dishonesty in myself. Why commit to art? For self-realization, or for itself? ... [Robert] never seemed to question his artistic drives, and by his example, I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged."

----------

"It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical life-breath. The artist animates his work as the child his toys. Robert infused objects, whether for art or life, with his creative impulse, his sacred sexual power. He transformed a ring of keys, a kitchen knife, or a simple wooden frame into art."

-----------

"He put his arm around my shoulders and walked me home. It was nearly dawn. It took me a while to comprehend the nature of that trip, the demon vision of the city. Random sex. Trails of glitter shaking from muscled arms. Catholic medals torn from shaved throats. The fabulous festival I could not embrace. I did not create that night, but the images of racing Cockettes and Wild Boys would soon be transmuted into the vision of a boy in a hallway, drinking a glass of tea."

-----------

"The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation."

-----------

"Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply. I got over the loss of [Robert's] desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortes. Yet I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo."

------------

...I stood there and looked at him. So peaceful, like an ancient child. He opened his eyes and smiled. "Back so soon?" And then again to sleep.

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.

-----------------------------

I cried and cried when I was finished. For Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe and their youthful wrestlings with Art and The Universe. For them having each other. For Smith's understanding of and empathy for him and his creation process. For her thoughtful contemplation of what art and god are, how they intertwine, how their life-force are so important. Recently, I'd forgotten the latter. Her words helped me get back in touch, however briefly, and I'm grateful.

I suppose I also cried (and am now crying) for the one true friend of my youth, Ginny. The nearly matching off-the-shoulder sweatshirts with Japanese writing that we wore around Azle in '83, prompting a 7-11 clerk to ask us, "Y'all ain't from here, are you?" Our exactly matching "Frances Lives" T-shirts, bought after watching "Frances" at a local cineplex. Our sneaking around to visit various churches to learn about god, having to lie to her conservative Baptist parents when we tried but failed to find the -- to them disreputable -- Unitarian church in Fort Worth. Our driving trip with her parents from Texas to Georgia, giggling over our "secret language" culled from the glossary at the back of Burgess's "Clockwork Orange" ("groody yarbles" = "balls" was a favorite). On that road trip, having to share a room with her parents, us in one bed flipping through TV channels with the sound turned all the way down, getting a secret thrill from watching the mild sex scenes in "Blue Lagoon" and hoping the snorers in the bed next to us didn't wake up. Our attempt at songwriting: "He's a Geek of the Pencil-Necked Variety" (inspired by "She's a Refugee" by U2); when I left her to go to college in the fall of '83, she had matchbooks made up with that title on the cover and sent them to my dorm...

The last time I saw her was in September 1985. By that time, she'd found a new "best friend," whom she brought with her to Austin. Ginny'd stolen 100s of cassette tapes from the Fort Worth mall record store where she worked and thought selling them in Austin would be a good idea. I remember the three of us approaching a crosswalk on the way to an Austin record store to sell the tapes, she and her other friend engrossed in conversation and me tagging along slightly behind. The crosswalk sign was flashing "DONT WALK." I stopped. She and her friend walked on, not even noticing that I wasn't with them. Broke my heart.

That same fall, I was in a poetry class taught by David Wevill. On November 6, 1985, I wrote a poem that I just now dug out of a box at the bottom of my closet. At the bottom of the poem I'd written, "for Ginny and 'Skippy'" --- Sandra, who was in that class, was "Skippy."

NO GLITTER

...and she loved her street in passing
her neon name,
the sweet fame-glint of the glistening walk

she was careful where she stepped --
the puddles were hers, too,
diamond sax for her pleasure --
all wind and grit and dream for hire

loose, the girl without her shoes
had graced the night, had
made her peace --
and she smoothed her well-worn list,
kissing the names for warmth,
watching them wash in cool dissolve
rearranging to a clue
that would soon mean nothing --
nothing she would ever need to know

cold and wet, the streets may starve
no glitter -- though her
face glows

-------------------

Ginny died in 1987, of cardio-pulmonary failure. I found out when I tried to call her in 1988, at her parents' home in Georgia, where they'd all moved a couple of years earlier. Her dad answered, and there was an embarrassing silence when I asked for her, then: "I thought we'd told all the Azle people... She died 6 months ago."

Haven't I the right...

2011-09-30T04:48:00.005-05:00