badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

There's no such thing as too much information

The uterus piñata: a large balloon in a plastic bag with paper towel tubes duct taped to it. Ovaries are bunched up newspaper. The plastic bag is crucial, as you can't very well duct tape things to a balloon. Then, paper mache over it with newspaper, water, and flour. Don't forget to embed a string, rope, or duct tape handle into the paper mache. Let it dry at least 1 day. Last time everyone made fun of me for putting like 3 layers on it and we could barely break it open. This time there is only 1 layer. We'll see how it goes!



Nolly has her doubts about the whole proceeding. Don't let her fool you; she has also had plenty of wine and some ideas about a "splat the sperm on the egg" game.



Rook is a bit perturbed by the frilly crepe paper. You must get the kind that is crinkly and comes in a roll. Without unrolling it, cut it into fringe (about 1/2 of the way through, and the closer-space the fringe, the better.)



Minnie and Nolly are very serious, hard workers!



We thought of a red jello placenta sealed in several layers of ziploc bag, but realized there were things more disgusting than jello placentas --- and less likely to burst open on the floor. What if it burst open and ruined all the good candy in there? But will anyone want to eat the candy after seeing the other stuffing of the pinata?



Oh, I can think of someone who would eat the candy!

We discovered it's best to use nail polish rather than paint. It dries faster and is way more glisteny. Also, it looks more realistic if you use red, then put some big purple blobs and some brown is also good. Okay, "good" is maybe not the right word.



Around and around and around with the rolls of crepe paper and the tape. Maybe I got a little crazy, and bossy, wanting it to look just perfect, with my insisting on taping it about 6 times every round? Sorry, I got out of control, it was the inspiration of the moment. Besides, it is especially poignant and meaningful if the object to be bashed with baseball bats and ruined in 5 minutes is constructed with loving care.

Note the way Minnie made the long fringy bits at the end of the fallopian tubes overlap the ovaries! Lovely!



All four of us are now piñata-making professionals!

undersea

I have just come from an underwater paradise having helped to create a kelp forests in Jo's dining room aka the "computer and art room".

I also wish to add that as soon as she left the house for a few moments, one of her darling offspring began asking ominous questions about "those two things you mix together an then they sort of, like, explode, and that makes helium? Can we put it in the balloons? It would be like a scientific experiment." Being who I am, I know that she is thinking of mixing baking soda and vinegar and is feeling hopeful about separating water into O2 and H2... I leave the room to check on other screaming kids (Moomin and Sophie) and send them to their corners... back into kitchen where vinegar has been found and there is something happening with a jar and a balloon... This not a good time to create more chaos and we must return to taping kelp streamers to the ceiling. I go back to the other guys. Sophie has somewhere obtained a sharp, tetanusy object that is sort of like a miniature Sophie sized ripsaw. You could murder someone with it. I remove the object...

Then all was quiet and there was no more nonsense for the next half hour. Go, me!

I was impressed with Eliz.'s analytical and persuasive powers. I had drawn a diagram of my plan for kelp-stringing on a paper, and she drew a completely legible counter-drawing of HER plan and coherently explained the plan to me.

I have a mad yearning to go to radio shack and buy some crap and do the hydrolysis experiment with upside down test tubes. maybe my dad will send me my old voltmeter thingie... if they still have it?

The Perils of Pristeen

A great archive of cunt sprays and douches. I can't decide which one is my favorite! They're all so persuasive. Maybe the Lysol one.

On further browsing about this is a museum of menstruation and it's really great!

and another thing

I know it's pointless to carp on this book, but I couldn't help thinking during the stupid "men have ritual sex with women so that the men get a direct line to god" speech in Davinci Code, well, what do the women do? and why do the women care - if they are so in fucking touch with god, why do they bother to play telephone line (telephone hole?) for the men? Very stupid. "Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit - male and female - through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God." Oh please, what crap!

It is beginning to drive me crazy - the thought that anyone would think that they just learned something profound from this book... a bit like the horribleness of the book "J0nathan L1vingston Seagull" which is one of my most hated books ever.

a firm hand

We signed a bazillion mysterious house papers today. I think we should get the keys and all next Tues, Wed. or thursday but it's up in the air which day.

I have procured 2 fabulous sounding strippers for the baby shower and they said they are excited about participating in something so strange. I am minorly worried that the boys of our crowd will not behave properly. I will lecture them. After the way the girls showered cash (properly so) upon the greazy dude for the bachelorette party a year ago, I think it will go well. Our fabulous baby shower strippers offered to be completely nude but I opted for "keep the thongs on" mode.

Dr. Maxstinger the allergist yelled at me for even thinking for a second about ripping up the carpet in the new house. "Don't even think about going near the house while the day laborers that you will hire and drop off there do all the work and haul it away." He actually shook his finger at me. Then he lectured me some more about dust masks and gave me the fistful of assorted steroids that I requested. apparently my blood oxy was not all it should be. i like the powdery inhalers much better than the aerosol ones.

Allerg1sts and dent1sts! They get so pissed off at us for not flossing and for owning cats.

Druidsquirrel's sister seems to have the same thing I had with the Xtreme headache and stiff neck and strep together etc.... ow!! I hope she will be okay.

gringismos

fue a mi clase de español... pues soy gringa estupida o mis orejas comprendan todo pero mi boca está demasiado ...lenta? Se me olvidó las palabras... se me olvidó las conjugaciones etc. Que raro es que puedo leer y traducir de español a ingles, pero no puedo hablar normalmente en español. Que verguenza tengo.... Voy a blogear en el espanglish de vez en cuando para mejorarme. Pues en la clase anoche fui timida para unos momentos y entonces fue contestando las preguntas del profe facilmente. entonces sentí mucho mejor.

Ayyyyyy,.... y los putamadre mujeres muy yuppi (?) acerca de mi que nunca, nunca se callaron.... siempre estaban hablando blah blah blah unas a otras cuando hablaba el profesor. Me haces loca!

No voy a consultar mis diccionarios para ese blogging, debo escribo cualquier cosa que está en mi cabeza... solamente palabras y gramatica (muy mal!) que recuerdo, como si en conversación. coño! que inglespañol!

I am a geek

Well, duh. Mildly amusing though heterosexist...

You are 59% geek

You are a geek. Good for you! Considering the endless complexity of the universe, as well as whatever discipline you happen to be most interested in, you'll never be bored as long as you have a good book store, a net connection, and thousands of dollars worth of expensive equipment. Assuming you're a technical geek, you'll be able to afford it, too. If you're not a technical geek, you're geek enough to mate with a technical geek and thereby get the needed dough. Dating tip: Don't date a geek of the same persuasion as you. You'll constantly try to out-geek the other.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

russian roulette for kids

Okay... Dear Japan... please... no more!

kaba-kick

notorious

As we were looking for strippers for this baby shower... especially lingering on Miss Muffy... Moomin came up. "What are you looking at Auntie Minnie? What are you looking at Mommy?"

"Um... pictures of sexy ladies, dear."

"Oh." *wanders off*

Oh dear.... heh heh heh...

new social thing

I am fascinated with Orkut, the "new improved friendster". If nothing else it has led me to an interesting new blog: Just Kristin. I can't link to my blog from Orkut as I use my real name.

If only they'll take my suggestion and add the "slam book" capability... so that I could check a box to allow or even request for people to make negative comments about me! Maybe no one would have the nerve, and anonymous comments would lead to pointless mean spamming. but, like, what if all my friends were secretly, all of them, thinking, "for god's sake, woman, brush your teeth more often! And sit up straight! Quit picking your nose! Get something done! Quit spinning yer wheels you narcissistic dorkwad!" Maybe then I'd quit picking my nose. It would be a useful thing!

Or I could just hang out with my mom more often and invite her to nag me. Hrmm. I guess the outcome would be the same. I would ignore it.

the secret

Dav1nci code is enjoyable if you are a connoisseur of trashiness. I am on chapter 30 or something like that. There is indeed a templar-like society and there are the Bad Catholic Conservative Sexists and the Good Liberal Catholics including the (fictional, post-current) pope. Again, the geniuslike super-advanced cryptographer demonstrates her genius by solving a retardo-level anagram. I ask you. Again, the genius-like "history of thought" prof proves himself by knowing something rather mundane, like what a pentacle is.

If the deep, dark, world-shattering secret that the secret society is trying to protect turns out to be something on the order of "Jesus was a girl", I will scream with laughter.

Doesn't anyone read science fiction?

Why doesn't anyone read The Crying of Lot 49 anymore? It was a funny, sarcastic, gemlike book with all the required elements of a conspiracy.

Just because I'm making fun of this book doesn't mean I'm not eating it up. Because Jo was right, I don't want to put it down!

Oh, the style. It has all the literary sophistication of a Nancy Drew novel.

running around

An exhausting day of running about campus trying to get everything together. Office of one dept. Filling out of forms. Office of 2nd dept. Where is the La Raza dept? No, there is no La Raza dept any more. Office of 3rd dept. I bolted a sandwich. Office of 4th dept (trying to track down some other form and they kept sending me on to other places). Prof's office for signature. He wasn't there. Back to Office 4 to check his office hours. An hour and a half to kill. to the library! Rummaging in the stacks. Note-taking. Line-standing. Book-checking out, but wait! I lost my student ID. Nice librarian bucks the rules to hold the books behind the counter for me. Back up to prof's office to wait.... la la la. He never comes. To the ID-making place. Waiting in line. Back to the library. My registration hasn't registered. Nice student worker lets me use computer to log in and prove I'm registered. It is a virtuous act to refuse to enforce the rules of a bureacracy. My mom says and thinks it is not fair that I always manage to bend the rules - How? why do I think I am entitled? Because I am an elemental force that exists to tear down institutions and build new ones - the bureacratic cogs can sense it, and give way, guiltily, before my certainty. I have my books. Hurrah!

I then drove rather randomly around SF trying to get the best way to the strip club near City Lights and failing to find it. got there. miracle parking spot right in front. But no, they will not work parties! I like their T-shirt, "Under Nude Ownership". Home, James.

Piñata making was prolonged and silly. I can't reveal the crowning touch until after Sunday. It is amazingly revolting! S.N. and Minnie and Rook did a lot of work on it.

I am most certainly not better from meningitis because near the end of each day I fall completely apart and my head aches mercilessly and I want to cry. I long for peace and darkness, or peace and a quiet book. All other people are jarring to me for no reason.

me, cryptographer

I wear no cream colored irish cable knit sweater nor does my burgundy hair swing softly on my shoulders. and I am not a French cryptography police expert. However I know a fibonacci sequence when i see it and I see through one of the clues immediately. And I have an inkling of what it means. Psssh! Or maybe that's just what they LITERALLY want me to think.

Encylopedia Langdon shall fear me, for I am a mentally anarchic punk Sally who could kick his ass across the Louvre just by reciting the alphabet backwards. Take that, Bugsy!

hilarious

Jo and Ep are making me read The Davinci Code. I've heard it slammed by so many people that I got curious. what's going on?

It's pretty cheezy... Literally, it would annoy the literal hell out of Minnie by misusing a certain word. And I mean that literally!

The main guy and the other characters and the omniscient narrator say "As you probably already know, Bob..." every other sentence. Gawd help us. And I mean that literally. As I'm sure you are already aware, Paris is a country in France, where, literally, people behave all French, and stuff, and they're all, like, literally gazing at famous French things a lot, but in case you don't know, I'll let on that they're famous French things.

hahaha. It's so bad!

I understand now why my friend Chris was particularly annoyed since he writes about the history of occult philosophy. Literally.

Unlike Chris and the book's other slammers, I'm enjoying it so far. I also enjoy eating nachos made with Velveeta.

impeach Bush

I don't understand why the Democrats aren't howling for blood. Impeach the fucker! He obviously lied, lied, lied. I hope some of those fucking hypocrite republicans who led the whole Impeach Clinton for Consensual Sex thing will WAKE UP.

spiritual counsel and relief

I have turned, tonight, not to Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, but to my other deities: those who play loud punk rock music, ska, and grrlness. Tell it Joan Jett! Tell it Roxanne Shante! Exalt my soul, Skasmopolitan! Waft me away o Raincoats. Bratmobile, make me whole.

It is not a night for the quiet blues or the false nostalgia of llanero cuatro y arpa.

A bit of Ministry would not go amiss.

"Don't Be Mean" is one of the best songs ever. Its lush complexity.

I am drinking cheap port and filling out change of address forms. Thank god Rook is home now.

My nice computer speakers are plugged into my laptop. I am in bed. I feel a surly teenagerish satisfaction in my blasting obnoxious music.

bite in the ass

Jesus fucking christ. My advisor just emailed me that I should be sure to bring the giant packet of papers she lent me last semester. The what? I dimly remember that while I was on vicodin throwing away papers last week I came across a big packet of stuff. I stared at it dimly for a while and since I had no idea what it was or where it came from, I exercised my will and forcefully like a hero, threw that fucker away into the giant bags of recycling.

I am now going to have to spend my evening going through wet, smelly bags of paper that have been rained on for a week under some pizza boxes. Maybe I will find it and maybe it won't be ruined or I'll be able to xerox a copy of it.

Remind me never to borrow anything ever again.

This is all rather a blow to my noble effort to stop being a filthy pack rat. See? See!? I knew there was a good reason to keep everything.

Next my bank from 5 years and 4 moves ago will call me to tell me that if I hadn't just thrown away all those bank statements I would now be able to prove my rights to an unexpected million dollars in interest.

Just when you think you know your child

Moomin in the truck as we listen to Chopin preludes: Mama, I wike this music.
Me: Me too. It makes me think of beautiful things.
Moomin: Yeah. Wike swans walking on the piano keys.
Me: *choking up at the thought that my son is a tiny little proto-poet* Yes, honey, it is rather like swans walking gracefully on the piano keys.
Moomin: (dreamily) Yeah. (pause) And I would FIGHT them with my sword, fight fight fight, and I would tell those swans GET OFF DA PIANO, pshoo, pshoo, PSHOO! *fires imaginary laser blaster in wild excitement*
Me: Um... heh.

I can see where this is going. In preschool he will be get up to "share" during circle time.
Teacher: Moomin, do you have something to tell the class for sharing time?
Imaginary Moomin: *bashfully* I wike kittens.
Teacher: Oh really? That's nice. What do you like about them?
Imaginary Moomin: *whispering* I wike dem.
Teacher: Speak up please, we can't hear you.
Imaginary Moomin in loud demon-growl voice: I WIKE TO DWINK DEYR BWOOD!

more on squalor

I remain sort of emotionally devastated and full of self-loathing.

I almost just gave up on school and decided not to re-register in my feeling of helplessly being overwhelmed and losing my grip on what should be done.

I feel that failing to get my shit together to run my own classes and schedule for the next few months is very likely. I've never managed it before. On the other hand I had never gotten good grades in college either and now I have a 3.85 (two As and two A minuses). Yes, I berate myself for the minuses.

I had to make myself drive up to C@ñada college and register for the conversation class. Drove around for a hwile looking for parking. started driving off thinking "Oh well, here is where i just flake out and fuck off, I won't do it after all". I drove around the circle thing but decided not to leave and came back and looked again for a spot. There was no spot. Then I was trapped by the one-way street and would have had to go roundabout again.

I just pulled over for a minute and felt hopeless. I had forgotten my jacket and it was pouring rain, all cold and foggy and windy up on the hill. I looked behind the seat thinking there might be an extra jacket or hat... then was just revolted by all the crap back there and the mold growing on the floor of the truck in the carpet where the leaky a/c drips its water. At that point I forced myself to drive off, but then on impulse crammed my truck into a partly illegal spot, went in and registered.

This is so unlike me. Usually I am fairly sanguine and feel like I know what I'm doing. I'm unlikely to become frustrated by some minor thing like parking or rain and flounce off in a petulant huff, quitting. It doesn't happen. But it almost just did.

I am making myself a tight schedule for the rest of the week.

This afternoon, change of address cards and thank you notes to parents. Tonight, the throwing away of at least one more bag of junk.

tomorrow, SFSU and registering and returning of library books. Thursday, working for McCoot, allergist appt, signing of title company papers for house. Friday, I have already forgotten. By Monday, I must have gone to Kinko's and prepared and printed a detailed syllabus for my 2 independent study classes and I will email it to both profs.

Tuesday we might very well have keys to new house!

Our landlord here is being a dick. I thought that by avoiding confrontation with him it woudl turn out okay, but apparently not. I am going to have to write a letter threatening to sue him and list all the things wrong with the house and formally break the contract. JUST what I wanted. But you know, nearly every landlord ever has screwed me over and it STOPS HERE.

I should be getting my shots right now and I'm fucking off. Maybe they will shoot me up on thursday when I have the yearly evaluation...? I hope they aren't jerks about it. I also need some steroid inhalers and leukotrines for the next month or 2 with all the moving dust.

I wish there were just 1 thing at a time to do.

while I was considering the "oh fuck it all " option it was a tempting thought that I could just get a permanent half-time secretary job at Stanfnord by shmoozing around the comp sci dept. if I gave up on school. It's a day for dreary despairing thoughts, somehow. why am I like this? what is going on? I just want to lie in bed and cry. Everything is irritating me and Moomin seems absolutely repulsive with his snotty crusty nose, general ice cream induced stickiness, snuffling, shrill repetitive questions, and constant leaning on me or else running about injuring himself. I started lecturing him in the car as I felt I was going to scream if he continued lisping like a baby. He is almost 4 and should be able to say the letter "L" by now.

Why? Why am I insane today? I am never like this! It's horrible. I don't feel like me.

thrown away just now

Well, put out on the porch, really. I'll load them into the truck tomorrow. I don't care how many trips to the dump are about to happen.

• three old pairs of converse hi-tops with holes.
  INCLUDING my red and black plaid ones. I don't know if I can recover from that one. I mean, they may have holes but they look so cool and I'll never, ever find another pair. I feel deep pangs of regret
  
• Two broken black suitcases on wheels that I have been using though they have been broken for years.
  
• the aforementioned three broken ink-jet printers
  
• A bag of useless clothes for donation. Note to self, quit buying sexy trashy sleazy clothes for private wearing as housedresses. You have ENOUGH. There is no need for more. No black lacy shirts, no little plaid miniskirts, no more skin tight velvet tanktops, no weird pink see through bedjackets discarded long ago at garage sales by dead or dying old ladies who wore them in the 40s. No more hot pants for wearing under miniskirts for the 5 times a year I wear a miniskirt. Just stop it, Badger U. Hemulen. Until the existing lingerie has been torn off my body by brutal pirates, space alien slavers, and my own struggling victims, I shall not buy more.
  
• Many socks with holes. Boxers with holes.
  
• Shoebox full of pens, pencils and colored pencils for donation. No, I do not possess the strength of will to throw them away.
  
• jeans with giant holes in them.
  
• Three half-empty large plastic boxes of generic diaper wipes from over a year ago.
  
• Random bits of paper.
  
• I don't even know what-all. A lot.
  

Things that I can't bear to part with:

• Black ginger-rogersy danskin high heeled strappy tap shoes, with taps, that fit me perfectly. Acquired for 2 bucks at garage sale. Never worn except to admire myself in them, grinning foolishly and vainly at my feet while doing totally fake, unbelievably klutzy tap dancing in secret.
  
• a bunch of business cards of people I am not even sure who the heck they are anymore but maybe they were once important. (WTF?)
  
• The nicer pens and pencils.
  
• the size 14 and 16 jeans that I might once again be fat enough for.
  
• A very large amount of cool t-shirts that I don't really wear, but like.
  

Maybe I should set myself some goal of amount of trash bags filled and disposed of, and then I get to buy myself these or these. Converse, why do you know so well how to fill me with vague yearnings?

I am a squaloholic

Wow cool, a 12 step program for people like me: Squalor Survivors. I used to just kick a new path through the knee-deep junk, a few years ago. And I didn't have any furniture except a bed and bookshelves. I now have furniture, but it very, very rapidly becomes extra surface area for squalor, which I now read is evil and dangerous.

And I thought it was kind of nice to be providing homes for all those roaches and rats! Damn!

I'm doing great if it's just papers and books with no dirty dishes mixed in. I hope Rook appreciates this... or he might secretly be a member of the Mates of Messies support group?

When other people's houses are squalid, I feel comfortable... perhaps I am a rat.

Seriously. The glass jars have got to go. I do have kind of a problem. I'm cleaning up a pile of papers and things and can't bring myself to throw away even a paper clip or a stray screw or button. It must go into a special box or bin of "things that belong somewhere else" that in theory I will sort through later. Later most often never comes and in my garage I have boxes and boxes from former moves and cleaning frenzies full of "things too important to be thrown away but I don't have time to put them away".

At this moment after:
1 full truckload taken to the dump
1 giant trash bin full of trash and now overflowing and several weeks of excess paper recycling from all my sorting-out
1 giant garage sale
A half-truckload taken to the family shelter to donate
A half-truckload taken to goodwill

My house is still full of crap unsorted and un-thrown. 3 broken ink jet printers. A milk crate full of cables (this is how you can tell I'm doing way better than I used to: there IS a place for the cables and I do put them there)

There is still stuff in my truck, and stuff in my driveway. I feel about the disgusting end table (that's warped and has been out in the rain for 2 winters, and was ugly in the first place) just the same as I would feel for an unfortunately diseased or crippled stray kitten.

When I see a piece of furniture out on the curb, I feel sad for it. I want to put it in my truck and rescue it, and find it a home.

Inspired by the squalor survivors site I have just filled a large trash bag with stuff from the kitchen. It took me less than 5 minutes. This plastic egg, that will be so useful for Moomin's birthday egg hunt in 2 months, if only I could find the other plastic eggs I've been saving since last year, and could then on the appropriate date find them again? How could I toss it? This wicker thing? Ugh. Why do I have it? Where did I get it? I don't know. This box that checkbooks come in, so useful as a drawer organizer or countless other things? This moldy hummingbird feeder? This bottle of pedialyte formula that I bought 3 years ago when Moomin had a cold? These cookie tins? I will not mention the bits of kleenex and trash and stuff that I found. the trash bag now holds most of the contents of the shelves and milk crates under the kitchen counter. I build them for a specific purpose, so that Moomin could have his dishes down there and some food and could get at them by himself, and within a week I filled it up with crap.

Serious resolution time here. I am throwing away screws, paper clips, etc.

Then I find a really nice purply qu@hog shell... and a whole book of stamps... A stapler (probably the 10th stapler in the house, but where are they?). Some binder clips. Um. Well. I just now put those things into a box to be sorted out later. God forbid I should throw away a stapler.

I really want to change how I am about things like this.

Then I will have more room for books.

oh the trauma!

I forgot to say that while we were playing our Sunday night rpg, Moomin watched Snow White for the first time. I monitored the beginning bits and sat with him for the scary parts. He hid under his blanket for the "lost in the forest" scene.

But... I forgot the end of the movie was snow white DYING and everyone being sad at her funeral. Major Moomin Meltdown!!!

things not thrown away

I now wish I'd catalogued the junk for future amusement. There were things I couldn't bear to throw away. They were given a last-minute reprieve.

- A horrible large photo of some 70s looking pop star who I've been told is Neil Sedaka, but I wouldn't know, in a clunky wooden frame.
- A pop-up infant toy with farm animals that got left outside and is all dirty; the kind where you turn dial or flip a switch and an animal pops up. Attractively non-electronic.
- A whole box of books on learning chinese, russian, danish, japanese, and french (spoils from my pack-rat boss's home office)
- A "voice of the world" shortwave radio (also from cleaning out boss's office)

Thrown away, with regrets:
- a lot of Mac floppy disks carefully organized in a disk box
- my ugly comfy white flannel nightgown that's all ripped
- some of the wrapping paper

Sold:
- panda bear in convict uniform
- non-working miniature tape recorder
- possibly non-working dustbuster
- "What Einstein Told His Cook" aka The Book of Evil Incarnate
- "Once Upon a Potty" ("Everyone Poops" is way better if you want a potty training book)

Still in driveway:
- slightly warped large computer desk (Free!)
- large bookshelf with only 3 shelves
- lots of books on russia. some science fiction
- A small white rolling TV cart with useful slots for dvd and vcr (come! take it!)
- an ergonomic chair

Gazed at fondly and preserved or filed:
- giant suitcase full of art and craft supplies, lost in garage for 2 years and newly found
- bad poems written by my Grandma Hemulen

Actually I must preserve one of those poems for all time.

A "Do It Yourself"

I looked in the mirror
and what did I see?
I couldn't believe that
it really was "me".

I'd spent all the morning
dying my hair,
Testing, and mixing,
and daubing with care.

At the results, I was
truly appalled.
Instead of red tresses:
Good Grief! I was bald!

Note: I just looked up Neil Sedaka but he seems to have left out the photos of himself with long fake-afroed hair, an unbuttoned shirt, and dark, hollow-looking raccoon eyes. Perhaps he prefers to forget the 70s. I can't tell for sure if it's him.

junk in my trunk

I did too much today and my head is hurting a little. But it was a good day.

I got rid of a lot of stuff at the garage sale and made 180 bucks. At the end someone came to get all the leftover kids' books for donation. I hauled a load to the family shelter... mostly clothes... Moomin helped me. People were still driving up and taking the free stuff out of my driveway when I got home.

I enjoyed talking to people. Some were obvious garage sale addicts and would try to bond with me by complimenting the quality of my junk. I heard some interesting stories and was often mystified by their choices (an ugly painting in a wooden frame, a book on Hitler, a stuffed animal, and a 10 year old two volume set of Who's Who: mysterious!) the first to arrive were NOT the retired hoarders that I expected. Instead I had a professional book buyer who was trying to hide that that's what he was, and a parade of Homies. I am totally serious. The Homies came to my driveway in their monster custom trucks, low rider pants, chunky gold jewelry, prison tattoos, gomina-ed hair and/or knit caps, and their nonchalant pimp walks; in succession they bought all the actually valuable electronics and then a guilt present for their non-custodial children. At least that was my interpretation. My inglespañol was tested out and not found wanting. Then the Homie would sidle nervously up to the part of the driveway with the baby clothes and toys and look at it in bewilderment, picking up tatty stuffed animals and putting them down again like hot potatoes and finally settling on something at random. Absolutely radiating bewilderment and, touchingly, hope.

As I was packing the back of my truck, my customer #1 from 10am came back. "I called my sister and she said my nephew would go crazy for that dino-phone and I was an idiot for not buying it." I got it out of the back of the truck explaining that I was just going to donate it anyway so he could have it, but if he wanted to give me a dollar that's cool. He scuffed his feet and gave me a ten! Kind of nice.

Unfortunately Moomin saw this transaction and we drove off in my truck to the sound of "That man tooked my dinosaur! " Oh fuck! He seemed to accept it but was morose. I lamely said that the dinosaur was going to have adventures. Then I apologized.

We dropped off the truckload and I asked where he would like to go. "The Farm!" He used to request this destination a lot; not a real place but an archetype with a red barn and one of each kind of animal as seen in picture books. So I took him to the run-down Stanffford ranch. Miracle, the kid who owns the little white pony that we always pet there was THERE and spontaneously invited us into the pony corral to pet the beast and feed it. She was 6. I felt that she was definitely pitying us as we stared, starving, through the bars at her.

Last night Ms. D. asked me a funny question as we were talking: "Do you always analyze everything you do at this level?" This made me laugh. Unfortunately for me and everyone directly around me, yes... kind of... I mean I enjoy sitting in my chair at the suburban garage sale thinking about junk and its meanings...

And at other sales I go to I always think of the person who just died, if it's an estate sale. I like to try to figure out what kind of person they were from what kind of glass tchatchkas they collected.

My great-grandma left very few things and I was with my grandma as she basicallly went through her mom's underwear drawers. I took all the long black slips and wore them for sleazy lingerie for years. I still have some. Also some silk scarves and some of the lacy triangular widow shawl thingies she always wore on her hair: two black ones and a white one. Buried in all the widow granny clothes was this mysterious thing: a sort of gleaming multicolored spangled rhinestoned thing that I can only call a gypsy hat or headscarf or maybe a turban. My grandma was completely taken aback and said she had never seen it before. But it was clearly a sentimental thing, a memento my nana saved to the end of her life.

When she started to get alzheimers the first year she gave me some stuff, a china teacup and some sort of other china object and a china praying hands thingie. I like to keep the gypsy hat where I can see it. It's not like I was close to her or anything, but that is the point. I just like to try to imagine what it might have meant to her. Her tiny apartment before she succumbed to the Alzheimers and was in a nursing home was full of junk that made me like her; those china things, and a wall that was all postcards from all over the world. From who? I do not know.

weasel

A crazed weasel has taken over my body and used it to clean houses all day. Instead of drudgery it feels like pleasant healthy invigorating exercise. It's less boring than staying in bed!

The living room still has the horrible smell. I now think it's the heating vent. Covered heating vent, opened window - time will tell.

We began construction of the uterus piñata... it looks magnificent.

never again

It feels good to be physically active.

However.

I will never ever leave a bunch of crap out in the back yard to get rained on in the rainy season so that it gets all ruined. And so that anything concave fills up with leaves and garbage and water and ferments into slimy fetid swamp water.

planets and 70s hippie books

Moomin: "Where do you live?"
Me: Um, here in this house.
Moomin: No, what PLANET.
Me: Oh! The planet Earth.
Moomin: Me too! But sometimes I live on the Wump World.
Me: Cool. *reading mortgage contract*
Moomin: The Wumps are my friends. They were scared and they runned away from the pot-bellied monsters. They were hiding. I was not scared. I am brave. I will fight them! Ho, ha, ho, ha! Fight fight fight! *waves plastic sword*
Me: Ah... you would protect the Wumps, huh?
Moomin: *more crazed fighting of imaginary polluting corporate aliens*
Me: *mildly perturbed* Um... that's nice. I think the Wumps don't know how to fight. That's why they had to hide in the cave. They're gentle and peaceful.
Moomin: Yeah! They're my friends! I will save them! And my friends are Sophie, and Merlin, and Iz, and Pierre, and Sonora. The Pollutions and the pot-bellied monsters are NOT my friends. They are like a different kind of dragon.
Me: Yeah. They're space ships. The Pollutians are like litterbugs who throw their trash on the ground.

My son... future hippie and eco-terrorist...

The funniest part of that book is the flag of the Pollutians, which on first glance is just some stripes but on second glance is smokestacks with dirty smoke billowing out to make the horizonal stripes...

getting there

On the bright side:

I feel much better today! A little grumpy. Snappish. A little headachy. But alive.

How the Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin is very good, well written, soothing, stimulating. It's right at my level of reasonably intelligent non-scientistness, that is to say, in places over my head but never obnoxious about it. I'm not scared of a few equations as long as there is English in between. It's lovely! I recommend it. Scientific American used to be nicely at this level (though rarely this poetic) in the mid-80s before they got all stupid and forgot that they aren't Discover magazine. Thanks Janna!

culture of fear

I don't want to write this but here goes.

At night when alone I am subject to irrational terrors. If Rook were in the kitchen I would be fine. But alone in the house, even on the 22nd story of my old high rise with security and a doorman, I felt the fear. I am sure you people know what I am talking about. I would be going about my regular business happy and safe and unsuspecting and then some irrational madman would leap out from hiding and get me. They would have been watching me like a stalker. I have trouble going to sleep until someone else is home and it's tough to do something like take a bath as then every little noise freaks me out, the cats running about or something, or the water's running and Rook comes home but I don't hear the door open and suddenly there is just a looming in the door or a footstep in the living room and I wig out.

It is much worse to come home when the house is dark and feel the nasty feeling that someone could be in my closet or hidden in my bed under the blankets. I have to be steeling myself and reminding myself to be rational every minute, or lose myself in a book as much as possible.

Another bad one is that in the night in my well lit room suddenly [ugh, i can barely stand to write these words] up against the window glass, A HIDEOUS FACE might appear. Then it would disappear so that I'd doubt my sanity. I believe this is straight out of a Sherlock Holmes story. I always skip that one when I read the collected Holmes, and the one called "The Speckled Band".

I have almost never lived alone because of this. At the same time, I need a lot of space and like privacy. Also, it's not like anyone I've ever lived with could have driven off an intruder; pansies, geeks, marshmallow butches, bookworm femmes, bourgeois and non-pistol-packing, non-punch-throwing to the core. So it's not really about physical safety.

It never happens during the daytime. It's only at night that my haven of home is vulnerable. I've thought about this before but just now it burst on me with mind-blowing clarity.

Like with tidal waves, I plan my escape route, which is now made more complicated by the question of whether to detour bravely for Moomin or to leave him to the mercies of the madman as I sprint to the front or back door clutching my cell phone.

More mysteries

Abuse of Power - by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. Nauseatingly bad. I couldn't take it, and just skipped to the end, which was stupider and worse than I had predicted. Nasty! Irritating! Maddening! Rapesploitation! Who lent me this book? throw it away immediately.

The Nature of the Beast - Frances Fyfield. Looks bad from the blurb. I'll give it a chance, but one more power-hungry beautiful rich bitch and sociopathic alcoholic man and I'll fling the book across the room unless it's a work of fabulous genius.

Various by Patricia Cornwell - No. I just can't handle the cornball "oh I'm so cutesy let's be all southern wad-chewing fuckfaces" flavor. What dreck. Good god. Back into the bag it goes. I feel soiled and never want to read anything from the 20th century ever again. Worse than awful fantasy novels recently encountered - way worse. Worse than mary sues. Worse than those godawful sciencefictiony fan books that everyone thinks are so funny, but aren't. From page 1 of "Isle of Dogs": "Unique was a petite eighteen-year-old with long, shimmering hair that was as black as ebony, and her skin was translucent like milk glass, her lips full and pink." Um. It's not like that's the worst of it, but... right on page one!

Oh lordie lordie lordie.

That reminds me. I have to go out on the porch and give a certain book a brief reprieve from garage sale execution just so I can quote something amazingly poisonous.

***

What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained. by Robert L. Wolke. With Recipes. For fuck's sake man. Just bitch slap me, throw me on the floor and fuck me. Remove my shoes, knock me up, and give me that lobotomy, so that I can bear to read a whole book where page one paragraph two is as follows:

(You'll be seeing the word molecule frequently throughout this book. Don't panic. All you need to know is that a molecule is, in the words of a first-grader of my acquaintance, "one of those eentsy-weentsy things that stuff is made of." That definition, plus the corollary that different stuff is different because it's made of different kinds of molecules, will stand you in good stead.)

How can any self respecting human being continue after that little gem of condescension? The whole book is like that. "Yo! moronic housewife, ye who are my target audience! I'm going to use big words, but don't be alarmed! You don't need to understand them! It's all about COOKING, which you understand instinctively! Just as long as you remember that I'm superior! And I have a Masters' Degree... in SCIENCE!" It goes all big wordy and then gets all falsely jovial and folksy, like the most horrible of fluff pieces from "Parenting" magazine.

Yo Einstein, cook this up your ass!

I love a useless bit of trivia as well as the next person. I _would_ like to know the latest research on juicing limes. But not at the expense of my IMMORTAL SOUL.

My dog has no nose. How does he smell? Awful!

What is the horrible smell in here?? What? It's in every room. Did a raccoon die under the house? It smells of decay, and cat shit... maybe the cats have poop stuck to their butts, and are always next to me?

*checking cats under their tails*

Nope. It's not me, I just had a shower!

***
Now there is a strong smell of pot smoke. Maybe it's the hole in the window.

sudden housewifely brainwave

A peculiar insight that came to me as I was cleaning out a closet just now and fretting that I save wrapping paper to re-use. Can't help it. Pack rat. Useless substance yet somewhat required in life and so, recycle it.

The brainwave was: Keep the bits of wrapping paper with the xmas ornaments in their box. Then when xmas rolls around again and I need wrapping paper and bows and ribbons, it will be there when I take out the box...

I'll be signing up for my lobotomy any minute now, because i was impressed with myself for figuring this out. I don't think I can claim any longer to be an intellectual and a scholar. Next, I will be removing stains with vinegar instead of just throwing away the crappy shirt from goodwill.

shipwrecked

Day 9 on my island. I've begun marking notches with a stick.

Rook has written rather a brilliant essay and I am proud!

This hot pillow has been saving my life... it's the pillow shaped like a horse collar. can go over eyes, over whole top of head, around the back of my neck. And can go on both ears at once. Or if I am on my side I pile it like a heavy snake on top of the up-facing ear. 3 minutes in the microwave refreshes it. If only it did not stink of lavendar, it would be perfect.

Polished off several mystery novels:

Cry Dance by Kirk Mitchell. Okay. Bureau of Indian Affairs guy. Southwest flavor with native american-ness. middle aged guy and younger woman petite, tough but naive who gets rescued. Long black hair.

Partner in Crime by J.A.Jance. Southwestern flavor. Girly sheriff, petite and tough. Long red hair. Older guy who must be her cop partner. Do I sense a theme here?

Dead Midnight by Marcia Muller. What a random title! San Francisco flavor. Clearly the author had a great time writing this as every other scene is set in a fancy SF restaurant; she must have done plenty of "background research". Tough, non-petite detective Sharon knows everyone useful as if she had +10 contacts in some mystery novel role playing system: people who can tell her who to pick locks or disable alarms over the phone, people who know how to recover deleted material from a hard drive, people who can give her secret info about everything, comic relief gay people. Bonus points to Muller, as I don't remember the hair, eye color, or weight of her detective. Detective's boyfriend travels a lot, sends roses, very neatly disposed of.

Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr. Southwestern flavor. 40-ish park ranger detective with nice but visibly aging body (examined and described while she is in the bathtub). Hair in ponytail or braids, worn "down" and brushed during non-hiking moments. There is much tough as nails hiking and surviving in desert and muscley grunting as she falls off cliffs and rescues herself and breaks bones and stuff.

Lonely grief over dead husband, attractive boytoy lover, sudden strong crush on a super femmy southern girl (mad points to Barr for realistic treatment of their relationship, the detective's dealing with the attraction). The boytoy lover was rather hilarious as he was a virile, heartbreakingly handsome ecoterrorist and southwestern interior decorator who wants to have sex with her every second and who begs her to marry him, but you know perfectly well that she would never.

This book, though the shortest of the lot, was the best for the protagonist's character development and general intelligence. Independence and competence combined with loneliness and realizing she wants to care about other people again after long grief.

Also, it was great simply because there was no old wrinkly veteran daddy cop calling the shots as a foil for the young tough petite perky-breasted chip-on-shoulder spunky proving-herself fuckable feminist girl cop and then they have sex. Thank god as there is just enough of that crap in the movies and everywhere else.

I no longer remember which of these books are Jo's and which are Ep's. I should have marked them!

Most of them displayed something new in cheesy novels - a vague awareness of computers that wasn't done completely wrong. There is usually a (younger) bright hotshot or secretary or junior assistant detective who "looks it up on the Internet". Very good! Welcome, mystery writers, to the real world!

notes

michael j. vaughn novelist, poet

Dear virii,

Welcome! Why don't y'all just settle right in. The lining of my brain is very comfortable about this time of year. I hear the dura mater in particular is cosy and warm. My inner and middle ears, as well, are known far and wide as amusing playgrounds.

If you would care to invade my sinuses, they seem to be unoccupied and I'm sure would love to have you.

Come on in! Make yourselves at home!

Signed,

Badger Hemulen

resting but awake

This whole meningitis thing has gotten me using IM chat. I hate the phone, and it still hurts to hear too much noise, even talking on the phone. Even hearing myself talk.

I'm using AIM so... ping me at badgerbag8... a bit lonely and bored and discouraged at not being better yet. I'm in this state where I'm just waiting for people to update their blogs. (Hurryupandblogifornia?)

Back to my book now.

mild activity

Puttered around house today. Rested. Sorted papers. "Don't push it," warns Rook. I went outside. I moved a few flowerpots, picked flowers with Moomin, and did some laundry. I even cooked dinner. "Don't do too much Badger. Are you listening?" "Oh let me just take out this one last bag of recycling."

Then suddenly found myself standing in the living room feeling very odd, having forgotten what I had been about to do. I must have looked peculiar because: "Badger. Go to bed. Now! Go! Go lie down!" Rook told me sternly as if talking to a dog who'd just peed on the floor. I went.

Suddenly my head is all pounding again and my brain feels like a yolk rattling around in a very bruised egg.

Rook very competent... I could just not be here and he would manage everything... adaptable fellow. Not the best dog trainer, but hey.

so strange!

Moomin is the most strangely virtuous child.

Me: "I think it's your bedtime, Moomin!"
Moomin: "Yaaaaay!" *hops into bed*

???

It's true, he now defies us occasionally, but still.. on the whole...

Has he been reading Confucius? Seriously now. Sneaking into my philosophy section and boning up on filial piety.

Oh man

The beauty of this imaginary girlfriend thing is that one could just accept all the auctions in some clever way and send them the same letters. Hmmm. And could use any imaginary picture.

I like the t-shirts!

Wow, I could so, so, easily do the imaginary girlfriend thing. Love letters? no problem! Skimpy thong dropped into the mail? Hell, you can get them 3 for 5 bucks in the Macy's sale bin. (And annie sprinkle used to do this - mailorder (used) underwear.) Imaginary breakup? Oh, that would be the fun part. It would be more interesting to do no thong, and the "strictly wholesome" girlfriend.

The brilliant thing would be to photoshop me and the guy into a picture together. Then his friends would believe it! I'd have to use a photo of me from some years ago when I had long hair, I guess.

On 2nd thought I could market it as "your imaginary geek girlfriend"...

status

At this point I just feel a bit raw and fragile, as if I had a hangover.

But my ears feel weird. A little painful, and just... weird. Mild vertigo comes and goes without warning - and the feeling like when you've been in the ocean too long and the wind is whooshing across your ears and then about 2 hours later, water runs out of an ear onto your beach towel.

WTF mate? I'm only on antibiotics that could clear a giant kenya-sized petri dish of elephants. This ear thing only just started last night. How? How? Why? and What?

Today: a little mild laundry doing and garage-bustling. Moomin-tending. I don't know about my tolerance for noise. Rook might have to take over at some point.

Tomorrow: driving?

future me

I really like the future me site.

I've written letters to my future self before, and in a way everything I write especially in private journals is a letter to my future self. I am somewhat obsessed with the thought that I don't want to forget who I was, because I might betray my past self or selves and her/their ideals.

Seen at Fairyland in downtown Oakland

You have to have a small child with you in order to get into this place.

baby got front

Damn. I thought it would be really easy to find a pregnant exotic dancer. But Noooooooo. No responses from craigslist, not even pervy fake ones!

I'll try the women seeking women category. Maybe that will bear fruit.

what I can see

This might be mildly amusing. The books that happen to be on the shelf next to my bed.

Take Care of Yourself - a cheesy health care book
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Marcus Aurelius
Another Marcus Aurelius translation
Nicanor Parra, Poems and Antipoems
Ways of the Hand - a book about piano playing and improvisation. awesome!
Another translation of Marcus Aurelius
Canaima
Anima Poetae - Coleridge
Amo, Amas, Amat - a handbook of Latin phrases
Ben Jonson's aphorisms ("Timber")
The Anatomy of Melancholy - 3 vols.
Water Birds of California (Minnie's?)
Baudelaire
Antologia de la poesia peruana
Apuellius The golden ass
the Bhagavad gita
Wittig - The Lesbian Body
Wittig - Across the Acheron
Lyra's Oxford
Wittig- the Straight Mind
Wittig - Les Guerilleres
" in french
Collected Poems of Yeats
MLA handbook 6th ed.
Tao te ching
Cicero - On the Good Life
Leather Rogues
Lust in Leather (Oh, blush)
Seneca- Moral Essays vol. II
The Odyssey
Arms and the Women (unread)
A fish dinner in memison (half read)
Comp. Lit. in a multicultural age
Extended Sexual Orgasm (a book on how to have hour long orgasms)
Agni 58
Polit1cs, Persuasion, and Pr@gmatism
The Faerie Queene
With Fire and Sword (half read)
The Encyclopedia of Amazons
Von Humboldt - Personal Narrative
Aristotle, Horace, Longinus - Classical Lit Crit
Learn to Crochet
Loteria de mi tierra (boxed)
Stories of Vikramaditya
Parkman - vol. II
Obras Completas - J. de Ibar
90 degrees south
The Little Drummer Girl
Two Little Women
Microworlds
Tabaré
Pippa Mediaslargas
Salam Pax book
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera
Fountain and tomb - Mahfouz
The bijak of Kabir
book of children's poetry
Yeats
George and Martha
The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World (good!)
Introducing Barthes
american favorite ballads
Crit. terms for Liter. Study
Ariel - Rodó
Levi-Strauss (overdue!!!)
Maudie
The Pretty Women of Paris
Venus in India
Two Flappers in Paris
the Whippingham Papers (oh dear)
Teleny (so good!)
2 shelves of my own binders and journals

beaterz

It's just too good.

When Trekkies go insane.

It doesn't seem insane to me... maybe insanely attractive. Oh, to go cruising in the shuttlecraft! Or just to sit in it! I wonder if the inside is all fixed up?

Thanks to essays and effluvia for the link. And the fabulous link to beaterz.com

enough!

You know, sometimes I am overjoyed that information is right here at my fingertips.

I was just wondering, "What is a uvula for? I mean, other than being a funny word, and useful to grab onto if one is being swallowed by a giant animal in a horror movie?"

Well. I give you the results of this dangerous wondering. Imagine for a moment that we are in a happy garden, and I am Eve, and naked, and offering you the luscious fruit of knowledge.

It might not be a good idea to click here. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Don't look here either. Did I just say "swallowed"? That was unfortunate.

Or here. "flopping around on my tongue like a beached whale..."

Finally!

warts and all

If you were the Mars Rover, where would the Sorting Hat put you? Why?

reading

This afternoon I read 3 of the "Ladies' Detective Agency" books. Fluffy like cotton candy. I also sorted through a lot of papers and put them in the correct folders and binders. Perhaps the garage sale can be this Saturday.

Things are looking up!

I haven't finished the Mars Rover Mary Sue story yet. Maybe I'll do that tonight.

notes

chandrasutra's blog very intelligent and lovely posts

gotta get blogroll back up and running soon... and organize my sidebar.

notes from fire and sword

notes from a while back - messy and disorganized but useful. to be fixed up later and for now just transcribed. Am still in the middle of the book.

***
fire and sword

pan yan (Skshetuski)
works for prince Yeremi - princess, two young princesses zbaraskie
(lubei castle)
volodyovski - loves Anna princess zbaraska nice of prince yeremi.


Hemelnitski (outlaw) ran off with the starosta’s wife Main bad guy of rebellion. in cahoots with Tugai Bey

Pan Longin - tall guy. Podbipienta (3 heads with one blow guy)
shield of Zervikaptur Lithuanian

Pan Zagloba - sort of the comic relief

Wallachian embassador Pan Rozvan Ursu

starosta Chaplinski - gets humiliated in bar

at Rozlogi:

Princess Helena
Princess widow of Prince constantine kurtsefich bulyga
elder vassily kurtsevich prince - confident of late pricne michael
sons - simeon, Yury, Andrei, Nikolai, and (oldest) eyes put out adopted Bogun (el Bad Guy).
***