badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

delurk

Okay -- just so I know. Who the heck is out there? Speak up, you readers and lurkers, just for a second. I keep getting surprised. Also, it's been quiet lately. Too quiet.

go figure

I'm so unvirtuous it's ridiculous. I made all these resolutions about work discipline and priorities this morning and instead, suddenly spazzed out and wrote a 4000 word homeric hymn to Chulita's breasts, my breasts, breasts in general, the divine breast, Hooters waitresses, this girl I used to have sleep over at my house when we were 12 and how I would soap her up when we took showers together, different strippers hanging out with me in dressing rooms, etc. etc. etc. I'm not sure if there's a point to it all other than it being all about boobies. Isn't that pretty much all that's needed?

At least I was at work while I wrote it.

As a sop to virtue, I will now wash the dishes, translate one poem, and take Moomin to the park for a rock concert and playdate with the poor little rich boy, Spam, and his babysitter. Rather than lie here in bed reading victorian porn while Moomin watches a video. That's virtuous... I think...

funny story idea

idea: use the techgirls thing and the "seven pillars of pretty code" to write a ridiculous porn story with a lot of domination and geek humiliation as the techgirl insults the bad code of the techie calling in with the credit card and the hardon. i mean, i could so do this - i've seen a lot of ugly-assed code.

goals

I have been trying to think about narrowing my goals. Even as I do things like start writing enormous novels and the list of projects grows ever bigger. What I realized is that the project is not the goal.

Goals i.e. "what I want" in some broad sense (2-3 year):

get more stuff out into the world
be more known as a writer, do readings in diff. places
it would be nice if people asked me for stuff rather than me having to pimp it all the time
be a more versatile writer
continue being an editor/publisher and get better at that - better at layout, distribution, etc
a book that can bring actual royalties, even a little bit
book of my own poetry not published by me
get up to the goal of 48+ pp. of translations published, so I can apply for NE@ gr@nts in 2005
get other grants or awards
get some more teaching experience
get my possibly pointless masters
talk at more conferences
be more expert in the things I like
speak better spanish

Projects:

1. T@lking D1rty book - (this is now my high priority thing. i should have finished it a year ago.)
2. RP book with Rook
3. translations. stick to the plan of all public domain and immediately send them out. immediately.

4. Finish translating L.V.'s little book - I have committed to do this!
5. annotated bibliography of "flavors of Sp@nish" regional/national dictionaries (for @LTA conf.)
6. research delmira's homie girls from turn of century Urugu@y/Argentin@ (for @LTA conf.)
****
* writing lots of poetry (this doens't need a priority as it happens no matter what else is going on, sort of automatically, but as i allocate more time to it, i tend to like the results better and write more complex things)
* blogging/diaries (obviously, this doesn't need any special effort either)
* Z.M.'s poem cycle. finish translating it.
* Feminary - finish it gradually over time. post the long essay up there.
* b1lingual poetry annotated bibliography, possibly on-blog
* Morrigan book/ event - (i think this gets abandoned. maybe could instead offer J.Gr@hn to make a cool booklet of it thru t0llbooth? a tiny book just for her, like a pocket poet one? i lust to publish that one poem.)
* translation reading series (this, still possible but i haven't moved forward. maybe quarterly, not monthly?)
* teach a rec center class - on making books/zines, on feminism and mythology. one on buildilng characters and worlds. how about on blogging!? o yeah. do in library comp center, make them blog right there as i crack signal whip over their heads.
* publishing more little books
* putting G.H.'s book "Whoregasm" on the web as i promised i would
* reprinting G.H.'s book "Fl@me People" - SO GOOD.
* making c1d corman's wen fu translation in print or web (i have permission from him! and i started typing it up, and I also started recording myself reading it last year... why did i forget this cool project?)
* My own book (M0ther Fr@nkenstein)
* past books - getting them available
* keeping up with local scene, go to p@lo alto slam, w@verley, etc.
* make across the @cheron project realer by calling the publishers to get rights or collaborate with them, hell, get paid by them or something

I was thinking again about teaching writing. I hate the "industry" of it. But on the rec center or high school level it might not be so bad and might not make me crazy. I did notice that I had spontaneous instant advice for McCoot on how to improve his story. it wasn't going to fix the awfulness of the story, but it would have made the basic writing level better. I also instantly came up with writing exercises for him.
I analyzed Professor DJ's teaching style for a year (not in writing, but still) and summed up what he did that I thought worked well - short in-class exercises in 3-5 minute sections and then doing round robin of results and asking for a lot of high-level summaries of difficult material. That was v. cool. It made people feel pressured and insecure but over time they got over it.

Actually I'm liking the idea of doing a rec ctr class on blogging. It would tie in with all my ideas on writing as collaboration and community, and I like encouraging people to have diaries. Must investigate. It woudl be nearly effortless, it's not like i'd have to kill myself making lesson plans or lectures.

I think once i get the MA then all will be reassessed, I'll work on making more money, etc. but this year and a half is going to be all about wedging foot firmly in a few doors - one toe in each door or something -

suckers

It was funny at the M@rine Institute to see Mela, the mom who organized the whole field trip, freaking out because her kid wasn't paying attention.

Moomin's ego was crushed immediately by not being called on to answer the teacher's questions. Also, he had kind of built it up to where he was going to see Scientists, who are the Friends of Animals. Hunters are Bad, and Are Trying To Catch the Whales, Who Are Nice. We are Brave With the Hunters. We are Friends of Whales. I kept trying to explain that we would not see a whale, but he didn't believe me. So he retreated and spent the whole time with Mela's kid jumping off a low wall and climbing up again and giggling. They actually had a whole conversation about pirates.

This was great for him and me, since he usually responds to kids who say "Moomin come and play with me" by frowning and turning away sullenly.

But Mela had a big agenda going. I could totally hear her thinking, "Goddamn it, I busted my ass and took a day off work for you to jump up and down off a 2 foot high shelf? Get over here and appreciate these fucking hermit crabs, OR ELSE. I wil photograph you smiling with a goddamn invertebrate, and you will learn something!" Alas, it was not to be. Her hapless son began clinging to her legs and whining, "I want to go home. I don't want to be here" as Mela gritted her teeth madly. Truly he is a kindred spirit to Moomin.

When we left Moomin burst into tears because he wanted to "stay with the sea animals". He sulked all the way to school, demanding ice cream.

Oh, and I amused myself by telling several little kids that my hair got purple from eating purple grapes and popsicles, and always drawing with only purple magic markers. They totally believed me. I am evil!

backbones and lack of

I'm off to maul some invertebrates in some sort of tidepool petting zoo and lecture to preschoolers. I hope I get to pet a gumboot chiton - they are my favorites! How when you pick them up they slowly mold themselves to your hand.

Of course the petting zoo invertebrates die pretty quickly from the stress of mauling... at least so I've heard from the docents at the aquarium.

Speaking of petting zoos - I am fed up to HERE with tiny little sweaty sticky hands and feet all over me all day long. I was thinking of the year and a half I nursed moomin with an awful internal shudder. It was great in many ways and at many times and I wouldn't do it differently - but oh the lack of physical boundaries and my own body's privacy! and the sticky sweaty hands and the sticky sweaty everything! the under-the-breast sweat was not to be believed. ew. there is a special circle of hell where the demons are todddlers with grubby wet hands, it's always summer, and there's no air conditioning. For an insane moment yesterday I even thought longingly of H0uston and the way everything's 60 degrees all the time indoors and you pretty much, soon, will never have to go outside there, or will have your own personal insulating bubble of expensive, electricity-wasting A/C wherever you go so that you don't get that oven-blast effect when you have to go from your chilly house to your instantly chilly station wagon to the freezing, breezy mall.

I plead temporary insanity.

I'll pass on all that unwanted petting and poking energy to the hapless starfish and sea cucumbers real soon now.

so hot!

It's so hot here I've been walking around in just a skirt all afternoon. And I keep taking showers.

It's just hot hot hot.

If I open the windows, we all have crazy allergy attacks. Tonight there will be a mass taking of extra meds and the windows go open.

I'm chopping that damn tree down! Pronto!

derailed by smut

I sat down to translate but ended up working on the "How to T@lk D1rty" project instead.

Gentle readers, I need help - email me if you want to talk about talking d1rty (god, i don't want the google hits off of this phrase...) I have a whole lot of ideas written down and some sections written and others outlined.

I have figured out from reading Doss's manuscripts that for these how-to manuals you want a mix of theory, ideas, exercises or concrete suggestions to be tried -but most of all you need hot anecdotes. It's like the soft-core formula Rook's friend Rafael has to use in his movies - sprinkling the 3-minute s3x scenes evenly through the movie. You don't want them all together, as with the chocolate chips in cookies - they must be distributed nicely.

Ideas, stories, confessions are welcome! I want to hear your juiciest stories... the ones that begin, "this one old girlfriend of mine and I used to do this weird thing..."

One thing that became immediately obvious when I started this project a year or so ago was that the stereotype is of het relationships where "the guy" wants "the girl" either to cuss during sex, or to tolerate being called a bitch or whore or something. And so the articles I find on it are all directed towards straight women who are a little uptight, and it's often all about packaging yourself and "pleasing your man". The best of them talk about negotiating and try to say that it might be fun to do. But wow, there's not a lot out there that's any good. It's all very C0smo magazine or reminds me of the book "S3x and the Single Girl" by H3l3n Gurl3y Brown. So far, cruising up till around page 10 of my searches, the only sane article I have found is here...

the most ridiculous article had some good ideas, but was all about how to imitate porn movies, and how to make your mouth look and how to breathe. It's scarily hilarious. Because, you know, when I'm having sex I'm actually totally artificial and planning each breath, and saying all my smutty things in careful phrasing with the breathing timed in, like playing the flute. now THAT makes for great sex. hahahah, NOT!

You have the option of breathing through your nose, mouth or both. If decide to breathe through your mouth, you do not want to form a large “o” shape with your lips. Come on, you are not a pet waiting for a treat from its owner. Instead your mouth should be slightly open, no bigger than the point of your index finger. This seems to produce a more appealing expression

Now I know where the porn stars learned it! There is a school where the goofball author of this article teaches them exactly how far to open their mouths to have that really dumb glisteny-mouthed fake-surprised look.

But seriously - an instruction manual that really explores the idea. Wouldn't you read it? One that's feminist and gender neutral and not heterocentric. I mean in my experience I'm mostly the dirty talking one who has to pretty much perform brain surgery to make shy boys/girls say anything at all past a faint moan or an "oh yeah".

It's coming out all sort of cutesy and magazine articley, which actually might be the correct light-hearted tone. but then I start academicking off into other galaxies. I have no idea what tone to take, really. the real idea behind it being not "how to swear while fucking" but how to connect up your verbal bits of your brain to your reptilian hindbrain and the brain in your pants, and stuff, because it makes sex hotter and communication better. It's totally not about swearing - that is only one part of the idea.

If you've ever had sex with me and are reading this, don't worry, I'll try to disguise the anecdotes reasonably, and will check with you before I blow your cover. But it could get tricky.

go ahead, tell me

What other 4 year old would sit calmly on the floor of an office and play for 3 hours without giving a moment's trouble? A few requests for juice or for me to interpret long mysterious words like "B@rtholemew Cubbins".

He's spastic and frisky now. We hung around Stafffnord so he could run around like a mad thing. Despite his goodness I am tired of being stepped on, hung on, having my pants used as hand-wiping material for banana-y hands, etc. Then we grocery shopped (more hanging-on, wild babbling, hand-wiping). at one point in the car he said, out of the blue, "Can you be quiet for a few minutes please? Don't talk to me." I complied. He then did something that I think was reciting a large chunk of the movie "Mupp3t Tre@sure Island"; it had Capt. Smollet, and some sort of crazy action was happening. What was with his request to me? I think he just didn't want to be interrupted.

Now there is going to be a video... i can't take any playgroundiness or anything. I swore two things this weekend: that I would finish 3-5 agustini poems, and that I'd finish translating Liliana's little book by the end of the week. Pretty much no progress has been made on those fronts. Progress shall be made right now - I have decreed it.

Pretty much any time I put a video on I feel neglectful and bad, though everyone I know does it.

all is well

Of course Moomin's school sent him home with "suspected pinkeye" despite Rook telling them it was allergies.

The pediatrician was like "tccch. whatever. idiots, it is obviously not pinkeye" and gave him some new fancy allergy eyedrops that made him feel instant relief from itching. Doesn't that sound like a commercial... but so true. It's some mast cell inhibitor. Fancy! Hooray! I want it too! Mast cells - how I loathe them.

So, it sucked to keep him home from school but I'm glad we went and got the eyedrops because now he's not miserably itchy and rubbing his eyes.

We spent a perky morning at the cafe and I ran into Scarlett's friend Claudia with her kids and another girl St3kphanie and 3 kids, and then another chick who I liked a lot as she was an arrogant motormouth who talked about narcissism and artisticness. she is a painter. I did spout off with her about irritating stepford wives with perfect magazine houses and huge amounts of boringness. and then she revealed that she is like the president of the co-0op nursery school up in Forestside. Oho hahaa. what that means ihave no idea but clearly somethng interesting and gossipy. i rashly invited her to bad ass mamas coffee sometime. i wonder what her paintings are like? her kid and moomin got along okay and i liked her level of intervention and insistence on their politeness to each other. she also told me all about how her burly thug of a kid's favorite thing to do is dress up in pink and be a princess.

Here at McCoot's I am listening to a long, long, long description of the themes and plot and "characters" of his fanfic. Oh dear. I am taking extensive notes on it all so that I remember it next time. Moomin is on the floor quietly reading dr. se3uss and playing with dragons.

Lst night we watched the first half of w1nged migration again (with Acrobat) and I asked Moomin to be totally quiet as Pilot and little Nutella were sleeping. Angelically he was totally quiet and only whispered a few things to me - mostly, things I'd told him in answer to his questions on the first watching of the movie two days before. I liked it when the geese were in the snow and he told me, patting my knee as if to comfort me, "It's okay. They are not cold or scared. They are wild animals. They know JUST WHAT TO DO."

The good thing about being here at work is that I can breathe and my eyes dont' itch either. Air! Pollen free air!

crowd

It was lovely and happy but also really crowded with large sweaty drunk people. And very loud! I forgot about that part. Once we settled at the swing dancing stage it was fairly mellow but then Moomin started saying he wanted to go home. Alas! I had planned to stay with him while Rook went off to his game.

He perked up on the train and got all frisky again. But now he's sleeping off that B3nadryl and I'm at home with him chilling out. His pupils were so big that I couldn't tell any more what his eye color was - I'm not kidding! He was totally stoned. Next time I cut that bennie in half.

They had the playground all fenced off with nasty high chainlink fences... why???

Also I should have studied the map or brought a map. And next year I will just park our asses in the Faerie Village and stay there in the shade and relative quiet, if the setup looks good - because we ended up there and it seemed very pleasant!

Chula looking splendid in pink snakeskin boots, cowgirl skirt, glitter, fishnets. I am bummed about not getting to hear her and the "other" people reading. Also I was trying to find Nada, and her kid, and Doss, but it was just crazily crowded and difficult to maneuver Moomin and the stroller, even with Rook there helping, so it's probably just as well I left.

I kept thinking during the peaceful moments of sitting and just people-watching in a quiet way... how on one level it's just a crowd of people like any other, and I get that creepy "why the hell am I here, what is the point, too many people, skin crawling!" feeling, but on the other hand how happy I would have been at age 11 or so to have seen it and been there and how encouraging it would have been! There were not that many cultural markers for me: I mean, sure, Martina Navrat1lova, David Bowie, and Prince were good and queer but I was not going to get to meet them. I can't remember when I became aware that if you were gay you went to san francisco - probably sometime in junior high. It took until college for me to realize that if I wanted lesbians to talk to me, I had to cut my hair a certain way, and that kind of sucked because I didn't want that one haircut.

all high

I'm all high and bubbly myself! I have a happy holiday feeling. It's pride day! Parade! La la la! Yay!

I was thinking about how I have maintained my queer identity and what that means. I have been called a "college lesbian" before, and I could talk for hours about why that whole concept is evil and no one should get called that because it's incredibly rude and dismissive. I've heard people fall all over themselves apologizing for not being lesbian enough FAR TOO OFTEN.

But anyway I was thinking about how I used to pompously declare and argue my bisexuality even when I was a tiny stringy-haired snotty nosed 11 year old nerd.

The way that my friend Sh3a and I would walk to school together in rebellious-hearted agreement. He was in 5th grade, I was in 4th. This was in Detroit. "Sh3a has a girlfriend, Sh3a has a girlfriend!" "Yeah, he's a boy and he's my friend, I'm a girl and I'm his friend, SO WHAT. Don't be stupid." He and I would staunchly defend our friendship at any opportunity. And I was very glad he didn't hide it because that would have horribly tainted our playing of toy soldiers in his sandbox under the playhouse on stilts, or our eating of fruit loops or kraft-singles grilled cheese sandwiches while excitedly watching G-Force in his basement. I think that considering the serious bans (in this country) on cross-gender friendship for kids that age, we were very brave and queer - isn't that funny?

That time in 5th grade in Texas when for days there was "a rumor" that I was really a boy and had had a sex change and I kept hearing it from different people. Finally this whole group of people headed by some feather-haired girl named Cheryl - she wasn't a popular girl but was one of their gadflies - came at me like a posse headed by the marshal. They were seriously a squadron in formation. She asked me straight out if the rumor was true and said that everyone wanted to hear it. There was a lot of giggling but then things got very quiet and it was just her talking and listing the reasons that I was really a boy. I felt a cold fury. Exasperation doesn't even describe it. I only remember saying some things about how stupid that was, that they were very ignorant, that no one would do a sex change on a 10 year old, and that barely any of us had hit puberty anyway [mad giggles from the breathless crowd at the word] and so it was a dumb idea and how did they think they could tell? I believe one of the reasons I was really a boy was that I didn't wear a bra. "We're in _5th grade_ for god's sake. I don't need a bra, why should I wear one?" This was all lost on the horribly sophisticated crowd. "And if I had gotten a sex change so what, anyway, why would you care?" The incident was notorious and people referred to it even after I had graduated from high school. People in other junior highs had even heard of it. Actually, when I first started school there, it was Cheryl who asked me who I was going with, and who received my fatal, innocent reply, "Going where?" because I had never heard of such a thing in my elementary school in Detroit, where no one wore makeup or high heels.

I could talk about this forever but let me just fast forward through time to say that I have never settled into passing for straight.

Even when married (both times) to a man I don't let my mom say things to me like "thank god you're NORMAL now" without coming back at her and saying that I've always been bisexual and I still am. This, v. funny too because when my mom's friend's daughter came out of the closet and was all freaked out and crying about it, my mom told her something like, "Oh, come on, don't worry about it, maybe it's just a phase, or she's probably just BI-SEX-U-AL [always said as if it's a difficult word from a foreign language]. You'll still get grandchildren. Look at my kids. " And I give her a lot of credit for keeping that copy of "Different Daughters" on her bookshelf and not burning it or throwing it away even when I was totally thrown out of the family and even if she never read it.

Okay the point was lost in here somewhere but it was: I am feeling not only a lovely "pride" feeling but also patting myself on the back for maintaining my integrity as best I could. And I know sometimes this crosses the line into being overly in your face, rudely so or unnecessarily so, or overcompensating, but I can't' help it that that happens at times.

When I think of the things me and Kr1sti went through in high school (and her and Windy, and her and me and Windy)... oh man.

I remember how we would be there under the stairs in the lunchroom (a double staircase with some bleachery things stored under it, looking out over the whole cafeteria) which was where the queers and freaks sat every day, and some jocks would come up and accost me. "You little faggot. You fucking commie liberal." I leave you to imagine the snotty, know-it-all lecture that came out of my mouth on how actually "faggot" wasn't the right term for me. "Fucking little faggot Hemulen reading the fucking dictionary, fuck!" They were vaguely threatening but nothing ever happened. (I remember Jim with the cute standy-uppy mohawk grabbing his whistle around his neck and blowing it and yelling, "Emotional rape! Emotional rape!" at some similar incident. He didn't last long in our school but was shipped off to the Alternative Learning Center. They tried to send me there but my parents blocked it.)

Did other people see that the queer boys always got beat up, actually hit, and the queer girls didn't? I didn't, aside from some shoving or "accidentally bumping into you and knocking the books out of your hands" style interaction in the hallways. And this was in deep Texas.

I watched the LGBT group in the chicago private school I worked at... they seemed to agonize a lot and to face difficulties... but it did seem less or like the situation was a litttle bit better for them. May it keep improving!

Anyway! Happy Pride Day/Weekend/Month!

We will take the train, and we will buy Moomin a cute rainbow tshirt and a little flag to wave, and we will be surrounded by lovely happy people all celebrating! Hooray! And I love parades!

Rook just came in wondering what to wear. hee hee hee.

bubbly

Moomin is cheerful and bubbly. I am off to the store to get some extra allergy meds for him. His eye is not all the way better but it's much, much better and not, like... oozing. I am back to thinking he just rubbed it way too much from allergies and because he got something in there. (it's not even pink/red so not pinkeye)

butt migration

The bra came out very funny. I used the back pockets of some jeans, some ribbon, and some chain to make a halter top. It looks very ridiculous.

"It's like a butt, but it's your tits," said Minnie eerily echoing my very thought. She worked on a dress from a pattern - Pilot and Chefily and Paola and KT made very odd flowery mermaidy bras. The glue gun reigned. the Pilot made many not very serious ogling comments on all the toplessness. KT's bra was particularly horrifying, massed fake curly hair. Serious chest hair! But somehow very creepy.

On mine: there are sheriff badges on the pockets and there's black suede fringe trimming the... the bottom... ugh! hahaha.

We just tried to watch W1nged Migration but Moomin asked questions every 30 seconds. That was kind of cool for me as he doesn't usually ask quite so many questions, ever. But as it was screwing up the movie for Pilot, we left. Maybe not screwing it up, but certainly making it a different experience. "What's that bird? What's his name? Where are they going? What is North? Are those birds cold? Are they scared? Is that bird going North too? Is he lonely? What's going to happen?"

In vain did I explain it wasn't a story, it was just some pictures of birds.

All of a sudden something is totally wrong with his eye - he has had very nasty allergies for days and now has rubbed his right eye so much it's all weirdly swollen. I might take him to the ER tomorrow morning (sucky, sucky, sucky!) if it doesn't improve a little. I'm not sure. I would hate to do that for, like, pinkeye or whatever the equivalent eye irritation is. Must look in kid health book... it's like, oozing, all of a sudden in the last hour. If I had realized it was this bad I would have taken him to the dr. this morning, but no, it had to wait to bust out into true nastiness until the exact time of maximum time till dr. office is open again. Anyway. Maybe something is in there, but I can't tell.

We are making nests and pretending to flap around and migrate in the living room.

***

The book says eye infections are not serious but should get looked at as soon as possible. Of course if I call the dr. they will just say to go to the ER so they won't get sued if there is anything really wrong. Poor Moomin is rubbing his eye constantly now and complaining about it. I don't know anything to do other than blot it with a wet facecloth and let him put an ice cube on it. I read him some stories and gave him a popsicle to console him for leaving the bird movie in the middle.

***

Probably his eye will still be red on Monday and he won't be able to go to school, I'm realizing. Not that it's stopping him from playing or reading or being active, but they won't want any possibly contagious pinkeye thing to darken (pinken) their doors.

fancypants!

The bra-making party commences here at the Nuthouse....

Homies, take note. I whooshed into the S1gona's Farmers Market on a whim, since I was passing by just as a really salsa version of "Frutas de Cuba" came on my radio. I figured it was an omen and I should go buy some luscious organic fruit for the bra party - mangoes or melons for the Pilot, small peaches for me, black figs because I love them, and blueberries in case Roby shows up.

It's been a year since I've been in there and it was completely different. WAY more stuff and fancier stuff. Best of all they had samples of about 10 different kinds of cheese! Cheese I've never tried before - fantastic aged cheese and young cheese and the sorts that are a little bit caramelized so that there are squeaky gritty bits once in a while - oh man. So good!

Wish me luck with my sheriff badge breastplate bra. It should be funny though I'm not sure it will be particularly flattering.

911 and cho

Farenheit 911 was very good. Go see it! I did not like Al Gore much at all, but when the (non) election happened I remember writing him sudden fan mail when he gave his "rule of law" speeches and I also read a bunch of his responses online.

Anyway I can't even talk about this movie yet, but go see it this weekend. Me and C. and Pilot were all crying and nauseous during various moments (my extremest reaction was not to the hideous wounds, but to the guys talking about the music in the tanks and then to this one woman's intense grief) I kept thinking of Riverbend (and Salam Pax but mostly Riverbend and her family). There were many moments of bitter desperate humor where it was so horrible and Moore was so masterful at juxtaposing things that all you could do was laugh...

then, a peaceful interlude in the park, where everything seemed glorious, all was peace, sun, ice cream trucks, kids happily playing, Moomin on his trike, me and Jo eating cookies and trying to gossip about schools and other parents while kids demanded attention for their Amazing Tricks.

This makes me sound way more sporty than I am, but I had fun showing Eliz how to ride a skateboard and how to think about her center of gravity and stuff like that. I would never have wanted someone to explain all that stuff to me, i would have just grabbed the skateboard and gone off to try it and mess around till I figured it out. But she really wanted all these demonstrations and explanations. She is funny, never trying to go off and play with other kids, but wanting grownup attention - understandable... Finally she organized the amazing talent show. Jo did backwards tongue flips. I did Mongolian throat gargle singing that Mongolian skateboard herders use to call their flocks, and the disappearing penny trick. Moomin stood on his tricycle and then a special trick taught to him by Eliz - riding without his butt touching the seat. Sophie balanced on the center bar of her pink bike. Eliz did various skateboard turns.

This is the thing people fight for, for real - these moments of idleness...
... and these moments of movie-making and movie-watching...
... and the right to stand up on stage and say obnoxious funny political things...

It's late but I'll just say briefly that margaret cho is a total hero. But I felt a slight sadness that I was the only person who cheered and clapped when the opening guy mentioned her blog, which is sometimes light and funny, but sometimes profound and touching and just fantastic writing. She is funny and a great performer but the performing doesn't always get across her depth of thought, somehow. (Maybe because it is impossible in that medium and not its point... it's just what i like to see... ) Anyway I laughed till i was nearly sick. It was great. Rumsfeld's pole dance.. bjork impressions... astral projecting... what happens when you give morning-after pills to women and their pussies become hungry monsters...
etc.

working hard!

I am all fired up and happy again, as predicted. Actually I was fine again like 5 minutes after writing that I was bumming out.

And I can't wait to go out to dinner with people tonight and then go see Margaret Cho! Oh boy it will be great and outrageous and silly and fun! Me and Rook and Minnie and X and much of the rest of the geeksv1lle gang. Acrobat and Pilot are babysitting and we totally owe them.

At this point I think of geeksv1lle as a virtual place of its own even if it never will really exist and all those people are scattered now instead of living in sn3akyfrog and g33khaus. they are still a gang, in my mind, even if there is no real-life cohesion other than being all on the same mailing list. I missed some crucial stage of time where they all coalesced by living together and being in various combinations of relationships and they also not incidentally did quite a lot of drugs together which made them get to know each other unusually well I think. Well, I missed all that but it's nice to be on the periphery of such an interesting group of people. I also really like seeing what people do as they get older and to have known people over a long period of time. Even if I'm always reading people incorrectly, I love them anyway to the best of my ability.

I'm listening to the mix tape that chula made for me and it's so great. It's all funky! It's sappy and romantic! It's funny and passionate! It has about a hundred kinds of coolness all wrapped up together! it could not be more perfectly satisfying.

I am working like a maniac on D3lmira translations and I present one to you here though I should really put it on the de Ibar. blog or something:

Fiera de amor

Fiera de amor, yo sufro hambre de corazones.
De palomas, de buitres, de corzos o leones,
No hay manjar que más tiente, no hay más grato sabor,
Había ya estragado mis garras y mi instinto,
Cuando erguida en la casi ultratierra de un plinto,
Me deslumbró una estatua de antiguo emperador.

Y crecí de entusiasmo; por el tronco de piedra
Ascendió mi deseo como fulmínea hiedra
Hasta el pecho, nutrido en nieve al parecer;
Y clamé al imposible corazón... la escultura
Su gloria custodiaba serenísima y pura,
Con la frente en Mañana y la planta en Ayer.

Perene mi deseco, en el tronco de piedra
ha quedado prendido como sangrienta hiedra;
Y desde entonces muerdo soñando un corazón
De estatua, presa suma para mi garra bella;
No es ni carne ni mármol: una pasta de estrella
Sin sangre, sin calor y sin palpitación...

Con la esencia de una sobrehumana pasión!

First of all, notice that it rhymes. I'm not gonna even try to duplicate that. I suck at it. My friend Witter is a genius of translating and writing in rhyme and meter, but I stopped writing in rhyme and meter at like age 16, so I'm not going there.

What I can do is try to make it reasonably tight.

If you read spanish you will also notice that the thoughts and grammar are kind of convoluted and complicated. If you don't then you'll see what I mean in a minute.

Also, the tone and vocabulary. High-falutin'. Weird fun words. Baroque and lush. super gothic/romantic. fancy-pants.

I give you a little bit of C@ceres' translation first (not the whole thing as it would be violating his copyright)

There is no prey more tempting, there is no taste more pleasing;
I had already dulled my claws and my instinct,
When, erected, in an almost unreal plinth,
I was captivated by a statue...

Oooookay, right off, this is really boring as poetry. 2nd of all: the way he phrased it in English makes it sound like "I" the narrator/agustini is "erected" and that she is "in" a plinth. She's not erected, the statue is standing up or rising before her gaze or she's come across it suddenly. And a plinth is just a big pedestal, as far as I know -- things aren't "in" a plinth, they're ON a plinth.

My point is that the way C@ceres phrases things often just doesn't make any sense and you can't tell what the fuck the poem is talking about.

Here's a minor yet important quibble:

"My desire ascended like a fulmineous ivy / Up to his chest"
WTF. Yes, it's literal for "fulmínea hiedra". And in theory the vocabulary-tone is preserved by translating it that way since it's an odd word in spanish and an odd word in english. But I think it's odder in english than it is in spanish. and I like the image and want it to come across. So I made it "my desire ascended like ivy lightning, sudden / up to his chest" Read both lines, mind and C@ceres', out loud and you will see which one sounds like poetry and which sounds like you have a mouthful of marbles and Elmer's Glue.

For all I know, hiedra fulminea is the actual name of a variety of plant, and I thought of looking it up, and I still might, but for now it stands as fulminating = like the way lightning goes suddenly, or the way a fuse flashes, or the way some chemical reactions semi-explode all at once, and it has something to do with mercury and alchemy too.

Here is another crazy-making bit of badness and dishonor to the poem:

Perennial was my desire, in the stem of stone
It has remained affixed like bloody ivy;
And ever since I gnaw in my dreams at the heart
Of a statue, exquisite prey for my beautiful claw;
It is neither flesh nor marble: the dough of a star
With no blood, with no warmth and with no heartbeat...

With the essence of a superhuman passion!

Just try to parse the sense of this, I dare you. C@ceres interprets it like "Ever since I gnaw at the statue's heart, it is the unformed stuff of a star, with no blood, but with passion's essence." If you look back at the spanish you will see that it is NOT that. It is more like "since that time, I keep devouring the heart with MY superhuman passion, though it is the unformed stuff of a star with no blood." Got that?

okay here is my translation. And hahahaha! hahahah! it is public domain! finally I have a poet dead enough so that I can dance around like a maniac as I freely publish their stuff, for free! free free free! no lawyers! i dance on her grave.

It's not like I avoided phrasing awkwardness or formality, but i think this reads way better.

Fierce from love

Made fierce by love, I'm starving for hearts.
Pigeon, vulture, dun deer or lion,
no meat tempts me more with exotic flavors.
I had blunted my claws and my primal drives.
Then, set up on a plinth - almost otherworldly -
a statue dazzled me - an ancient emperor.

And I fed my eagerness; over his stone body
my desire ascended like ivy lightning, sudden
up to his chest, feeding on skin like snow;
and I cried out to his unreachable heart... sculpture
guarding his glory, most chaste, still, and pure,
his face towards Tomorrow, feet rooted in Yesterday.

Everlasting my desire; on the stone body
I've stayed pressed like a living blood-filled vine;
And since then, dreaming, I devour
a statue's heart, prey worthy of my gorgeous claws;
it's not flesh, not marble: the stuff of stars,
without blood, heat, or heartbeat...

I devour it with deep, inhuman passion!

I'm off to see F@renheit 911 with the Pilot and Chefily.

rather exciting

In other, more cheery news, apparently this is L@yne. I love him more than ever for being so excellently fictional, and I totally believe in her the same as always! (guy in top picture). I hope being discovered, if it is him/her, doesn't mess up their real life too much.

Anyway I can't help but enjoy it and be admiring. Friends 4 ever, LYLAS, all that.*

(Luv Ya Like A Sister - what stoner chicks would write on notes in junior high. I liked when they'd write "Luv Ya Dearly But Not Queerly" best as it at least acknowledge the possibility of "Queerly".

***

Oh man, now, reading the comments on various Layne-watch threads -- I can't believe that all the guys who have fallen in love with her from reading her blog now just want to know "who the girl in the picture is". Don't they... how can they... I mean clearly they fell in love with the writer and the writing, not the picture? right? didn't they? they're all scrambling now trying not to look gay. I guess they fell in love with the writer, but they jacked off to the photos.

Also, what's with the people who think that:

- dildos are unspeakably exotic
- a guy who writes a believable female character must "really want to be a woman"
- lesbians could never, never get laid so much (maximum getting-laid density was 3 women in one week - not that difficult, for god's sake, especially in Minneapolis where there's nothing else to do!)
- it is impossible to sustain a "realistic story" for so long (then how do novels happen? DUH.)
- the story was too realistic not to be true because so much stuff happened
- the story was wildly unrealistic because too much stuff happened

Well, I haven't worked like I said I was going to, but I feel totally better again, heartened by the magic world of Layne and Odin!

Dip in road

Somehow I'm on a minor bummer tonight I think just from contemplating Rook's sister, who I really like, but it gets to me to be around someone with giant phd who make a bazillion dollars and is all high-powered. Meanwhile I am just a useless parasite on Rook. At least his sister's house-husband is like, saintly, perfect, neat, responsible, non-flaky, and does all the full time child care for 2 kids, etc. A faint evil voice in me protests that surely he is boring and I am not. However, not being boring doesn't count for much except making one a really great courtesan. I was just whining to Quilty (rather unexpectedly) about how I'm unable to keep myself propped up just at this one moment of time though I know very well that I'll feel all gung-ho again in an hour or two, because I am amazingly resilient and always think of something to do that makes myself feel better about everything. But anyway then she was like "yeah but well, you have had this interesting life and know all these weird things and you know how to have great sex and that all makes you really interesting." "Yes, that is why I make a great whore, which certainly was always one of my ambitions, but still." "Don't knock it, it's not such a bad thing to be."

NOT a good time to go type more of "Across the Ach3ron".

I think in this mood I should stop working the giant long story/novel/thing and do something very short and finish it and feel that something has been accomplished. I will uttterly finish 3 to 5 @gustini translations by tomorrow noon and print/mail or email them off to somewhere.

If the theory is that i am finishing school and sort of working on long term career things like building up publications and applying for grants and stuff... I can keep all that in mind most of the time... but then I just go back to feeling pointless again and like it will be years and years until anything "pays off" in terms of me feeling like any sort of legitimate anything. At least I have my crappy part-part-time secretary job. I guess now that I am watching Moomin from 2pm onward rather than 4pm I have that much more of a fingernail's worth of usefulness in the world and I'm making an effort not to suck at it. But I still do suck at it.

I also left a note for the kid down the street who i think might come and play with him a couple of afternoons a week. This seems reasonable to me most of the time but then I start to freak again thinking that I am awful for not wanting to play with my own kid. I do love to play with him but for many hours a day in a row it's just boring and intolerable and I start to grind my teeth like a maniac. I don't even care what theories are there or what is right, I just can't take it and I start to become a giant bitch.

McCoot now not only wants me to take him to a sf-nerd party, he wants me to invite him over to my house for dinner. This stresses me strangely. He is my boss. I will take him to an sf-nerd party but the point of that was not to be all friend-friend, it was to try to hook him up with people who might want to edit his interesting yet vile book, because I don't want to do it. Can i just be "really busy" for a long time? Do I have to invite him over because he point blank asked me to? It is mildly creepy.

I do pat myself on the back because I wrote all the "query letter" emails that I set out for myself to write this morning and I sent them and now am just waiting to see if anyone answers.

I offered to be on some panels at this conference but have no idea what they are or if they're full or what. And I also thought of a good idea to make an annotated bibliography of dictionaries for a useful handout for the panel on flavors of sp@nish and dialects and regional differences. This is a great idea but I am suddenly terrified because then I will really have to do it and everyone important will see it, which is great and exactly what I want, but I had better make it damn good.

Also I have been saying "we will have the call for submissions for this book out any second now" since January and it is not out. I am poking rook to make time to work on it with me. I have talked and thought too much about this project not to do it and at this point I also just want to get it started so that it becomes Real and not just talk.

I am also freaking a little because i stupidly wrote one of my query letter things to this person recommended to me by the journalist who was interested in my fl0rentino translation but then AFTER writing the letter (this is the stupid part) googled her and realized she is a very specific political activist who is so rabidly pro-Ch@vez that I would feel very weird about being associated with her. I'm hoping now that she recommends me to someone else. Am having these paranoid fantasies that she is part of some crazy secret political cell thing and that whoever publishes it eventually will frame it all to use it for some political ends that I won't even understand. My dad actually warned me severely of this as a thing that might realistically happen. "There you'll be with Hugo Ch@vez pinning a medal on you thinking you're on top of the world and then they'll gun you down. You never know what's going to happen. It's crazy. Assassins. It's better to keep your head down." Thanks Dad! I swear, you would not think that things like that could come out of his mouth - he seems so stable and rational. Then you remember that in his childhood he had to spend a few nights lying on the floor or whatever while bullets whizzed around the neighborhood and presidents fled in long black cars with tinted windows. I mean he lived next door to P3ron in exile and would see him walking his poodles. So I kind of believe him and his paranoid imaginings. Plus, he was just living there a few years ago and he reads their online papers really often. So that's why I'm creeped out about accidentally contacting a fairly major tentacle of the B0liv@rist Circles.

Okay I'm completely aware that I'm spazzing and shoudl go do some real work until I calm down.

Should I even post this? If I only post my happy confident moments I would feel totally fake. that's the theory.

I used to spin in circles like this every night. Over the years it's gotten to where I only really tailspin to a safe height, and only like once in a blue moon.

Oh yeah, and I'm PMS-ing. CAN YOU TELL???

bandana bandit!

Last time i was at the really great thrift store I lost my favorite black bandana with different colored flowers on it. And today while I was there trying on stuff, I saw my bandana all starched and ironed and tagged on a hanger for 50 cents.

Yay!

I also scored a very strange pink velour skirt and a new red flannel bathrobe.

readings

Ladyfest - looks great. Everyone go out and support it! I will be going to the LFBA Litfest. (not reading, just going!)

am also now going to read July 26 at the C@nvas Gallery. I don't know a lot of details but it should be fun.

July something is our big reading for the Cuts book that me and Pastiche and Redhot edited and published in May. Most of the people whose work is in the book will be there for a readaround at W1llow Glen Books in San J0se. Date - I forgot but I'll put it here as soon as I find out from Pastiche.

wowie zowie

Pastiche wrote me a fascinating long letter of his out-there silliness and he ranted a bit about a certain poet who everyone knows I like (Let's call him Bligh) criticizing Bligh severely for his "imitations" Lowell-style - not that Imitations are bad but Bligh is calling them Translations instead.

The wowie-cool part (since despite Bligh's dinosaurian attitude. Oh, it's upsetting, but it's not like I didn't know. Fame and age have gone to his head for a long time.)

Um the wowie-zowie part is that he told Pastiche that he only keeps one book at his house on M00se Island and that is G.H.'s book (that I published). I feel a glow of happiness at being this small footnote in someone else's life, because I have long admired Bligh. I should write to him quick before he dies. Surely he would write back, as he spent so much time doing exactly what I'm doing with the little zines and libritos and should have the proper respect for it. He may not know that I had to pry those poems out of G.H. with many, many psychic crowbars and the feats of derring-do that were done and derringed to make it happen and the way I operated in near-complete solitude (except when Witter helped me fold about half of them and glue on the labels). (Actually, it is comforting to me that Witter knows what it took, as he has known G. for 30 years and was freaking about his slide into alcoholism and dereliction.)

Hmm anyway I feel like I'm always boasting about this stuff. Oh, I hope Bligh reads all the poems in the new Cuts book and not just G.'s. Surely he will notice my entertaining and daring translations of 3 of P@rra's short poems.

Congratulations from the fastest to the highest

Oh joy! I found the book on the X15 that I promised to whump. I am very fond of it not because I care about the X15 (much less having a crush on it like whump does, the pervert) but because it is full of hilarious 50s "scientist" photos of serious looking men in vitalined haircuts holding models of rocketships to show adoring little boys. And cutaway diagrams of the earth and rocketships all very Scientific looking in futuristic 50s fonts. It's actually from 1961, but they're still 50s.

I might have a crush on that "Futuristic Science Diagram" font.

nightwood

Hung out with Chula today writing a little, babbling, listening with half an ear to her doing her day job, talking about writing, then playing with Moomin. Who knew that he could say "Guess what? CHICKEN BUTT!" quite so many times in a row? Chula showed him Ker0pp1 pictures online and explained all about Donut Pond, in return for being enlightened to the Way of H@mtaro. We chilled out in the hammock and ate our pasta and obsessively checked and answered our email. all very relaxing.

excuse me for a minute while I rave in a shallow way about clothing.

(and could she possibly look any kickier and cuter than in her ker0ppi shirt and skirt with like cherries or peaches on it and green and pink maryjanes? holy shit. i kept nearly fainting. i am not sure which i prefer, the angelic goddess in belly-dancer silver jingly bikini, glitter, and white platform heels, or the scruffy person in pajamas and a sweater biting her nails while staring at the computer screen, or the whole punky cute short skirt action-girl look going on. i might have to see them all a whole lot more before deciding. )

before she came over Moomin and I went to the park and then walked all around the neighborhood. I looked for the twins who live 1 street over but could not quite remember which house they lived in. After trying 3 doorbells and no one home anywhere I gave up. Somewhere in hell there is a little corner containing all the tiny scraps of paper i have written people's names and phone numbers on and then immediately lost. I don't even remember the twins' parents' names despite all the times I've chatted with them.

Rook came home from his new Mutant game and we all talked for a while about work things and superheroes and then about relationshippy things a bit which was awkward and difficult but i think also necessary and okay.

Bufffy season 6 dvd has just arrived, so Rook is now lost to the world. I just twisted his arm and made him go back and watch "just one more episode. it's not really that late." Before I even had finished saying those phrases he was sprinting back to the tv grinning the grin of insane addiction!

This post was originally just to say that I am re-reading Nightwood. I started reading it in spanish which was sort of exciting as it has very long rambly literary sentences and felt challenging, like a cryptographic problem. WTF? vienna? Lots of unknown words that must be figured out from context as i refused to look anything up. (then they turn out to be things like "valences" (as part of a fancy bed?) that I dont' really know in english either - llike if you try to read don qu1xote and feel all insecure about not knowing anything, and then realize it's because it's all these archaic words for greaves and hauberks)

But after chapter 1 I got bored and switched to English with some going back and forth to the Spanish too. And the book is just irritating me. I read it when I was around 18 and liked it and associated it with Raquel, my sort of desperate love for her etc. And in fact the character of Robin reminds me of Dirty/Dorotea from ... um was she from blue of noon or from the Story of the Eye? Anyway, Robin reminds me of Dirty who always made me think of Raquel and her moments of excess and wild sadness. But from my perspective now all the people in the book are just irritating jerks who over-idealize the tragic beauty of Robin who just seems like an unhappy, trapped, mentally ill 20 year old woman who doesn't know what the fuck is happening to her. (Not a wilful muse, not the Night, not the spirit of America, or Woman, or any such crap.)

The parts of nightwood I really like are the generalizing bits where Barnes is pontificating a little. I'm only halfway through. She either pontificates as the narrator or through the Doctor. So far i'm very underwhelmed by this supposedly brilliant book. I reserve the right to change my mind...

The lesbian slut in this story had better not die.

I wrote a lot more on my own Buildings story, very very quickly and without thinking very much.

dead trees

Moomin at the park, where there used to be a huge spreading oak tree and now there's a 6-foot-across stump:

"I don't want the tree to be gone. I'm so sad." (repeat * infinity)

"I'm sorry honey, it was a nice tree, but it must have fallen down. Why don't we go and play now." (repeat)

Moomin: Waaaaah!

Me: *deep sigh*

Moomin: Mommy I don't want the tree to fall down because because because it was a good tree and it loved the boy and the boy loved the tree and I don't want it to be a stump! Waaaaaah! I don't like that book!

Me: *lightbulb on* OH. Aaargh. Oh fuck. Um, yeah, I don't like that book either. It totally sucks. Let us go and lay down on the slide and look up at the branches of this other big tree over here. Then we will play castle.

Moomin: *snif* Okay.

Cats, guns, and violence.

"Mommy, how come your shirt says "I'm going out to clear a space in suddenly for you and me, oh purr?"
"Society, honey. It says society not suddenly."
"How come that lady is standing on one leg and she has a gun?"
"Because Diane DiMassa couldn't really draw properly at the time, and she has a gun to protect herself and her cat."
"Oh."

***

I'm just kinda glad I wasn't wearing that "I fucked your boyfriend" shirt. I forsee explanations of words that grownups are okay to say but that kids should not say at least not in public. (Doss explained to me how this works long ago.) Oddly, Moomin NEVER swears. I think he caught on to the principle of grownups do it, kids don't -- just like he realized independently that when words are in all caps in a book, you say them louder.

***

I forgot to mention how Rook bathed the cats the other night. It took a long time, first requiring lots of petting and calming talk, then gradually wetting them by petting with wet hands periodically dipped into a bowl of water. The bathroom's heat lamp was on full blast and the bathtub lined with towels. Rook was nearly naked, on a theory that Trust was necessary and if he dressed in leather boots, pants, and a long sleeved shirt as I did, the cats would sense his fear.

The small nervous cat, Falstaff, was bathed first with no mishaps. Perturbed, agonized meowing, yes, but no freaking out and scratching. It was a total miracle. Rook is truly a tamer of cats. He explained his theories to me: act like a mother cat, remain in contact with the cat at all times, continue petting it heavily, pressing it down (as if by a giant mom-cat's paw) and work very slowly.

I lack the patience and would have either paid somoene to wash them, or stuck them in the shower, turned it on, and hoped for rinsing to happen. I helped to pet and wet the big fat calm cat, Blimp, but then got out of there as my allergies suddenly went berserk. Afterwards I came back for towelling-off. My technique for this was as follows: Lift the cat halfway up so that its front paws dangle in the air - very unorthodox. Yet they seemed limp, relaxed, even in this position. Maybe a few puzzled querulous howls but nothing worse.

The cats are clean and shiny. They still love us, the little sluts. Rook got a small scratch but it was an accident - the cat merely walked over him with its claws out from nervousness and there was no frantic swiping or struggling.

mysterious howling

First of all:

I CAN KICK YOUR BABY'S ASS t-shirts. I hope they make a million dollars. That is a great new-parent gift!

Second:

Why does Moomin wake up crying every few nights? It's not every night. He just wakes up halfway. It's like sleepwalking, but sleep-freaking out because as soon as he is awake enough to talk, he calms down. Usually he just has to pee. But he cries so hard he starts to wheeze with asthma. And I start out nice, and rational, but then I just get frustrated and mad (which actually, horribly, seems to work the best for waking him up - I rudely demand that he ask nicely for a drink of water, or say meanly, "Do you want me to get MAD?", and he snaps to it. Patting him nicely and speaking softly ("It's okay, mommy is here, etc. etc.") and offering things just makes him cry harder. It's very confusing. Sometimes he breaks out into a sweat. Bad dreams? Gas? What? This has been true forever for him. When he was 1 or 2 it happened multiple times a night. Now it's only once in a while but it's almost more maddening now that he has reached the age of reason. It also happens when he has an ear infection or is sick but at other times it seems completely random.

Sorry if I sound horrible or cruel for threatening to "get mad". Getting mad at him, for me, is like once every few months and involves me frowning and saying "Hmph" with my arms crossed - yet even this mild rebuke seems to crush his soul, as if I had slowly tortured some kittens to death in front of him or denied him juice. I believe that about 3 times in his life he has been "sent to his room until he stops crying".

So you'd think I would be able to tolerate the occasional night time freak-out. Even when I act patient I'm just thinking, "God, anything to get him to quit this horrible crying. Should I offer popsicles, completely ignore it until he stops on his own, or yell at him?" The last 4 years have not yet taught me the correct answer.

my truck

My truck is decrepit and battered. I don't know how much longer it will last. When it dies it deserves a glorious funeral as it's never in 11 years had a problem or needed any major fixing other than getting new brake pads once in a while. It doesn't show any signs of dying other than needing the oil changed more often, but just in case it does, I want to treat it right, like a grateful sugar mama. And what every car really wants is a silly paint job.

Should I paint it:

- like a ladybug? This was my plan last year: red with black spots, and leaving the hood black. I must find someone to weld some small antennas on the front.

- black and white checkered, ska-style? I saw a little car painted this way a few months ago and it filled me with joy. It seems hard to accomplish, as I am notoriously bad at straight lines of any kind.

A!

Yes... you heard me. I got an A in the other class too.

Badger "Underachiever" Hemulen now has a 3.9 GPA.

I'm not sure what good that does me, but hooray! anyway.

a postcard from Olive

I got a cool postcard of Laos from Olive, who used to work with me at the Lob School in Ch1cago. I was just thinking wistfully of the fun of that job. It was the rare combination of mellow yet interesting work and a (seemingly) sane boss (1). General Black hired me to work part time on the scammy university plan of "19.5 hours" which means no benefits. I already had benefits from my other job as webmaster for a dept. in the hospital - my big break out of the horrible world of secretarial work, but an incredibly bogus and annoying job (2).

The day before the interview I spastically questioned Rook. "Black jeans are formal enough, right? I mean it would look retarded to go to a techie interview in office lady clothes, even my lame imitation of them. Black jeans, shirt with a collar, that is how men dress "casual formal"? What did you wear at prep school?" To which I got a big shrug and complete incomprehension. I agonized over whether to wear my leatherman. (I decided For. Lo and behold, my interviewers were also wearing them and we whipped them all out to compare varieties. Later, General Black and his BOFH told me they were so happy I had one on (3)).

Up the narrow squeaky winding stairs to the tiny, sweltering attic office in some sort of former bell tower of the old building. It was full of wires and bits of computers and I knew instantly I wanted to work there.

I got to wear a walkie talkie - surely the height of pleasure in any job (4). We had 2 channels and many codes for different occasions. Including busting kids who were surfing porn or mudding in the library (5).

The main point of the job besides tech support was that we were wiring every classroom with 100 base T cable. Woo! 9 buildings. It was a blast! We got to wear headlamps and go in all the tunnels. The BOFH, who was way younger than me, taught me much about mac tech and insane sarcasm. He was cool (6).

Later the General got us a fancy new office. He was doing big power moves. Getting me full time work with benefits was part of his master plan. Then we began hiring college students - Jessamine, who had worked for me in the terrible previous office (who I'd hired there too based on her hilarious resume that listed all her women's issue activism and had basically no work experience); Muscle, who was dour and depressed and a heavy drinker, but always ready to crack a bitter joke; then Olive, whose head was shaved and who was constantly in the paper for protesting something or other or saying something super lesbotronic at a rally. Jessamine had a wonderfully witty advice column and later created a great blog-like weekly email all about her different lipsticks and drinking fancy drinks in every restaurant in Ch1cago, living a life I would never know directly as I couldn't tolerate it in real life. I love her to death! I so regretted being her boss-lady and not being able to really be friends. Olive was clearly smart as cake, I mean, super de duper smart and fascinating. Again... I was not really her boss but also not really able to friend-up, somehow, and they all saw me as impossibly old and wouldn't have like, invited me to their parties or anything. Though maybe if I had asked? I suffered greatly in that town not having any friends (but finally finding the Sk1ffy nerds who were perfectly satisfactory friends). I think I was also suffering from this condition where I was trying not to not be my slutty self, but also not to automatically sleep with everyone, and up to that point I had barely ever (if ever) had a friend that I hadn't slept with. So I had no clue how to make friends without being a sleazebag.

I spent many, many hours in wiring closets with Muscle, peacefully making patch cables and doing crazy things with our Fluke, and learned his whole life history and all about his kind of music. There were fascinating details like how his parents had an entire basement rec room decorated with c0ca-cola memorabilia (7). At some point I began fantasizing about kissing him, because it would have been less boring than hearing him talk about how much he hated his parents and how much his small town in Minnetonka sucked (8).

The whole point of this story was that Olive was so cute and funny in her 20 year old lesbitude. She reminded me of me! And I was only like 6 years older. But I was in stealth mode, as I had very long hair, dressed in my techie boy clothes, and had an obvious divorce and boyfriend. But every once in a while I would say something obnoxious and I went to the high school GLBT meetings once in a while (9). But maybe that just never happened while she was around. So little did she know I had done all that same activism and that my pervy riot-grrl boobies had been all over the newspapers a million times and that I exuded radical feminism through every fucking pore of my body. Didn't it shine out of me? Apparently not.

And so we had this funny encounter where after school I was showing her how to refurbish and brainwash an LC-II for 10 baseT. (slow as fuck, but useable for a 1st grade class) (10). And to the best of my memory, she tried to give me a very gentle and dumbed-down lecture about feminism and how it was a good thing and I should look into it. I think she suspected that I had left my first marriage because of some kind of physical abuse - or she sort of hoped it and thought she would get to educate and rescue me. Whoa! It was so funny! I don't even remember what I said but I laughed a whole lot. I also realized that I was being way too conservative-seeming because of worrying about working in a school. I mean, just vaguely outing myself as bi got me the weird little lectures and some direct homophobia from that psycho closet case English teacher. I don't remember what I did to change things exactly, and I must have been a little more verbally aggressive about labelling myself as bi, but after I had the 1st miscarriage and chopped my hair off, I got treated like a dyke again - it was that simple.

Later I kept in touch with Olive but we never became close at all. I read her email update newsletter pre-blog. I bet she blogs now but I'm not sure where (11).

In all that job, the General never, ever acted like I was a moron for not already knowing something. When I said, "I have tried X and Y and Z and it didn't work, what now?" he would not go and do X and Y and Z again - he would believe me, and would drop everything and come help me figure it out. The usual boss-pattern being to deride and then secretly go look it up and act like they knew it all along. The General was always patient and kind and teachy.

I learned a lot about politics and power by watching him, and thought of the ways that great generals paid attention to their supply lines and flattered people with petty power. I liked how he then used his power, mostly. He would see that things were heading towards "parents and admins panicking about the Internet" and maybe going to cut off all student access to email, web, etc. and he headed it off at the pass with a committee and endless meetings and then an impossibly meaningless set of rules. So that it came down to students getting a very innocuous form signed and then they could have their own web pages and whatever else. To the students, he acted like an evil authority figure, but he was like the philosopher king tyrant with the best interests of his subjects at heart - because I saw him behind the scenes always working against the people who were clearly stupid and evil. I liked his intelligence and efficiency - his ability to cut through to the heart of a problem.

I was perfectly aware that he was lonely and miserable, and only 5 years older than me, and that he had some sort of private struggle with his C@tholicism, and so I respected it that he never brought any of that up (I just grokked it over time) and never tried to cross the boss-friend boundary at all. AT LEAST NOT WITH ME. Why he had to crack by messing with our employee Essie, I have no fucking idea. What a totally bad and wrong idea - she was chronically depressed - so young - had worked for him since age 14 or so - And I think it all happened after I left, but I'm not sure of that, or what-all happened. Enough to freak her out and lose him his job in a giant hushed-up scandal. Picturing how she was affected was horrible enough, but losing my image of the General as a great man quietly doing the best he could in a small sphere of action sucked too. I have thought it over many times and wish that I could hear the entire story from him someday.

I could tell so many more stories about this job and the people I met. For one thing, our department secretary was Jim Anchower. I am not kidding. Whoever writes that column must have known Luke intimately because everything about him was Jim-Anchower-like. He is another example of the greatness of the General, as he pulled Luke up from the lowest possible crap facilities job to a full time with benefits learning-about-computers job. (As for all of us.) Then there were the retired firemen in the basement steam tunnel room doing whatever mysterious things they did and drinking lots of coffee. He took all the bad boys and bad girls under his wing, and encouraged me to encourage the amazing punky genius girl (f0rk-bomb) in her unixy endeavors, and the 11 year old wannabe nerd boy who had a bad rep as a hardened criminal from some dumb thing he'd done in 4th grade and because his mom was a deep-cover narcotics cop (supposedly a big secret but obviously not, since I knew it and like 10 people told me in confidence). I was not great as a mentor, but I was at least nice, and respectful.

Though in retrospect I shouldn't have shown that first southpark xmas card animation thing to those high school boys. It freaked them out that "a teacher" had been giggling with them about cartoon characters saying fuck and making fun of jesus, even if it was like the best thing ever. I also once accidentally told some 15 year old to stop being such a dick. OOPS. I actually took him to the principal's office and fessed up and apologized to him in front of her (while simultaneously getting him in trouble for his having been a dick).

Okay - that's all for now.

Footnotes

1. Only seemingly. I think his marriage was very unhappy or stressed. And at some point near the end of when I worked there, and I didn't find this out till afterwards, he got "involved romantically" with a 17 year old high school employee. Which feelings (I only know tiny details) apparently developed on the occasion of me and Rook's wedding. Ugh!

2. I'm happy to see my humor page still lingers deep in the bowels of their googleable server. The rotating animated gif was NOT mine. Nor was the sideways smiley in the title bar. Fuckers have to mess up perfectly good anagrams.

3. Bastard Operator From Hell. I think I told him once that I was totally proud to be his PFY, and that I was a mere Chekov to his Spock in all matters techie, and he nearly died with pleased laughter. I wonder what happened to him and why I can't find him on the web? And was he "really gay", as all the high school students always said? I think he might have once referred to an ex-boyfriend, but I never asked.

4. Though a later job as the DB admin for the Parking office at UC-Whorevine that I didn't get - I would have gotten not only a walkie talkie but would have had the right to drive one of those little university golf carts all over campus. That would have been even better. With how I love that sort of thing, why am I not an electrician or something?

5. When we caught them, we would punish them by making them work for us, and the more intelligent ones we would keep on as paid workers or sort of nerdy pets.

6. Though he was notoriously smelly. I mean people would stop me in the hallway and whisper, "How can you STAND to share an office with the BOFH?" because you could smell his weird stench from very far away. It was like smelling durian fruit. Later I figured out that it was not that he didn't wash - it was that he kept his clothes all in a big pile and they had some strain of super-mildew in them that didn't come out in the laundry, which was done with terrifying infrequency. My boss even made sure to check with me that it was okay that we shared an office. Actually, I didn't mind the awful smell all that much and got used to it.

7. This, to me, explained his entire combat-boot-wearing, hard-drinking, sarcastic music critic thing.

8. Emo boys, pay attention. This is how you get laid in college. Bring it on.

9. Earning me a little lecture from General Black (he should talk - see note 1) about making sure I knew that I should be very careful not to be alone in the office with our high school employee Essie with the door closed because people would Talk and I would be in trouble, and also I should not take her off-campus to lunch or give her rides to the train at night even if it was dark and stuff and she needed a ride. Apparently 2 or 3 people in the school had mentioned this possible problem to him! Clearly he didn't take his own advice, though he was completely sincere. I still think of him a basically ethical man who cracked hugely under pressure. But he should have totally lost his job and been fucked over for it, because that was a huge crack. And he did lose his job but then got the identical job at the parallel universe Greek School, uptown.

10. And if anyone ever feels like giving me crap over the lameness of the school web page, recall that it had to be fully visible without scrolling at crap resolution on a crap LC-II.

11. I'll come back and add the link if I find out with a little research. You'd think she would have put her email addy on the postcard, but no.

omfg so mad

I'm so furious at Moomin's preschool - as far as I had known, a couple of months ago I circled some option on a sheet that listed various summer sessions for his school (9-2, 9-4, etc.) calculated the whopping great price it would cost, and paid up nearly half of it. I have to go looking for the amount now and make sure. But apparently NO. I thought I was picking him up at 4 but I got there, the doors were locked, and he was off in another room sitting on the floor playing with animals while someone got a private piano lesson from Teacher T.

Arrrgh!

Now apparently they DID make some effort to call me, but not enough of one as I was AT WORK and they have my work number. And I didn't hear from Rook and who knows if they called him. But they called Minnie. Anyway, Teacher T. had a giant fucking attitude towards me about it and pushed the paper in front of my face (that CLEARLY LISTED the options ) in an attempt to prove that it said 9-2. She demanded that I circle where it said "9-2". Okay - it did say that, but it ALSO said 9-4, and I signed a whole other paper where I selected the option, and it had a price and stuff.

Mostly I'm just mad at the giant attitude and attempt to act like I should have known all along. I bet what happened is that they would have had a 9-4 and intended to, but not enough people signed up for it, and then they just forgot to tell me.

And then T. yelled at me that Moomin was late and that he needs to be in by 9 on the dot or else he will miss some special mysterious completely necessary thing. Fuckin A. they always yell at me about this, why don't they yawp to Rook about it since he is the one dropping Moomin off in the morning? (When I say "yelled at me" I mean that I get an identical patient explanation of why it's important and could I please try harder, as the teacher smiles fakily and tensely in my direction, M0ntessori style straight up.)

But the other bad thing now is that I just more or less locked in on having more work for the summer through one of McCoot's buddies. It's not impossible that I still do it, but I had envisioned some mornings writing and then going off to work 11-4 or noon-4. Not hauling ass out of here at 8:30 or 9 and working till 1:30 and then having no oomph left in me for anything else. However i think that's how it's going to be. Possibly. Not sure yet. Rarrrgh. Maybe tutoring woudl be a better plan as I'm not sure how much avuncular old-man-nerd-bossitude I can take and not have a giant meltdown.

at work

I'm at work - am going to try to increase my hours and have a regular schedule this summer.

I have also been thinking about going back to tutoring for the summer. Regular tutoring depends on working afternoons or evenings which I don't want to do. But I could put a shout on the mom-club list and do some writing/composition/literature/spanish tutoring for now. It occurred to me that I could try to develop a relationship with a charter or private school to work part time or even teach just one class. Ideally I would dig teaching a world lit or a myths course at the high school level. I don't want to end up teaching composition or creative writing, I know that for sure. Either one would make me crazy.

Okay.. back to work for McCoot, who is not here, so all is peaceful and I can index his papers quietly for a few hours. Anything amusing I come across, I might talk about a little bit for a break...

I'm feeling way better obviously or I wouldn't be here - still a little shaky and running only on dry toast, but functional and perky again. Huzzah!

***
I'm gonna submit McCoot's rec letter for J3sus (from J--h to B--l) to some magazines. Just think how happy he would be to have it published!

my nose

I have this feeling like having a phantom limb, but it's in my nose. It feels like there's something in there.

Since I'm basically alone and have bad habits, I keep digging around for the booger or scab to get it the hell out. But... nothing.

Maybe there is a single nose hair that has suddenly grown to the right length to tickle the other side of my inner nostril. If so, how do people with a lot of nose hair deal witih reality? Don't you feel it in there all the time, bristling gently?

saltine city

Yesterday I kept slipping in and out of waking and sleep and some horrible in-between state. I was sick with some sort of nasty intestinal thing and couldn't eat or do much except lie in bed with heating pads on my stomach and back.

Rook and Moomin went to see the G@rfield movie (Rook proudly wearing the #1 Dad t-shirt Moomin made him)

Eventually I had 3 saltines, and was up and around for a game of C@ndyland and a lot of book-reading with Moomin while Rook napped.

After Moomin went to bed, we watched the movie "Snatch" - which let me tell you was rotten and silly. I kept snarkily going "Oh, look, that was one of the comedy moments!" as none of the comedy was actually funny. Look, some orthodox jews! Look, some black guys being zany and incompetent! Look, some tricky gypsies! Look, twins! How wacky! How zany, how madcap! Anyway it was strangely un-funny and un-suspenseful for a heist movie. Rook pointed out they kept trying to be all radical and non-linear but only in tiny ways as if they just made a normal movie and then took a tiny unimportant pinch of the plot and giving a little twist and running time backwards. But only when it didn't matter for anything. I'm just surprised this movie got such good reviews for its cleverness! It so was not clever.

Rook has some other movie which looks really great and campy called "The L@st of Sheila". But he won't let me watch it because sometime in the near-ish future he says he will run a murder mystery party game which is based on it. I can't wait - the last one was really fun.

***
overheard yesterday from my hazy state of barfiness:

Moomin: But boys have to marry girls!
Rook: Actually boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls. When you grow up you can marry whoever you want to.
Moomin: No, boys have to marry girls.
Rook: Nope, not true. They can marry girls or they can marry boys.
Moomin: I want to marry Mommy! *sobs*
Rook: You can't marry Mommy, honey, but lots of girls will want to marry you.
Me: [shuffling into the room] Because you are a prince.
Moomin: *crying* I'm so sad because no one will marry me!
Me and Rook: ??? When you grow up someone will marry you. Don't worry.
Me: Maybe a fairy princess.
Rook: Maybe a dinosaur.
Moomin: Noooo! Sillies!!!!

excitement

I am wildly looking forward to tonight's dates!!!! (separate dates with Rook and Chula at the same party) And I have a totally cute cowgirl outfit. Yippie ti yi yay, etc!

Also, Nada is back in town with her wife and 3 year old kid (2? 3? I don't even remember: younger than Moomin but old enough to play with him halfway competently. either 3 or a very verbal 2.) I have abandoned translation for today and am off to do some quick errands - then back here to pick up Moomin and go off to the park with Nada and her kid Rafi. I think hanging out with her will be really good and fun. She must come over here for play dates at the park and meet the B@WOL crew!

***

Last night's hanging out watching Bl@ke's 7 was fun and hilarious. I cooked a nice dinner for Rook and Chula (usual semi-random tex-mex style thing using whatever is in the house + cans of various salsas) and we hung out giggling about the costumes and sets and funny melodramatic lines.

I felt a little awkward sometimes but everything okay. it's a funny thing to negotiate boundaries that are largely invisible of just being sort of randomly cuddly with more than one person (as anyone who has ever done that or tried to must know) Strangely it is completely different from being randomly flirty and cuddly with people at parties, and I'm not sure why, but i think it's all in my head as I have no feeling at a regular party with friends that I have to be at all aware of what Rook is doing or feeling - we tend to just behave as separate people in a social situation and not be clingy at all. So I can be draped across someone's lap while watching tv and not have a care in the world about it because it's all casual or something and I know quite well that I'm going home with Rook in a few hours anyway and he is fine with my being super flirty (and it just makes him like me more, like "damn, everyone's flirting with my cute girl, but guess who gets to take her home"). But when i am super emotionally involved it is like I am waiting for someone to be pissed off, or that the Doom of All Sluts will fall upon me, and I think I just need to get over those fears.

I have noticed that most of the poly essays I see online are about dealing with the feelings of being left out or jealous, not of the feeling of being in the middle of 2 relationships and actually dealing with it well. (It doesn't help when the essays are about someone's nearly uncontrollable jealousy and how they wrestled it down or negotiated boundaries of not showing affection in front of each other or not going to the same parties or something).

How I think about it at this point is: diff. combinations of people have different dynamics and I like to have separate time alone with R. and C. (and obviously this extends beyond romantic relationships as I also like to have separate time with my friends without Rook there or even without each other so that if I'm hanging out with Jo and Squid it's totally different than if I'm just with Jo or just with Squid.) One really great thing about me and rook's relationship is that he can hang out with my friends just fine but does not horn in and insist that he always be around in all my friendships. I can't explain this very well, but I've been involved with people in the past who were so fundamentally jealous that they had to be included in everything I did and I had no space. Rook and I give each other a lot of space to be separate people and yet we are still really intimate. That might be one reason things are working out really well.

One more thing about that "giving space" concept - you would not BELIEVE how many women (always women) I see at poetry readings gasp and marvel and praise Rook in abstract (as they dont' know him at all) for "letting me" go out so often in the evening. I'm not kidding! Isn't that just sick? Like going to some writers group twice a month at the qu@ker meeting house is something i must have negotiated major "permission" for? And therefore that many of them (who are married or whatever) must have had to move heaven and earth to "get permission" to go away from their male significant others, and, like, not cook dinner and fetch his pipe and slippers or something? what... the... fuck... I do feel bad if I am away 3 or more nights in a week, as sometimes happened last fall as I had 2 night classes and then if there was a reading that would be 3 and if i did something with my mom friends, 4, which was definitely too much for my comfort level as I would start to feel all disconnected with Rook. I'm sure it goes both ways with gender stereotypes of who is letting who do what - as all the sort of milton berle/lockhorns type of jokes about wives being pissy about men's poker nights or something would attest... And anyway the worst jealousy I ever experienced was my ex-girlfriend Misha's (though Dr. Dicke's ran a close second) so my point is not to say something about the ways men vs. women express that sort of thing but just to bitch about having to endure the boring and strangely offensive comments of people who thnk they are complimenting me by saying i have good taste in husbands who "let me go out" at night.

***

I ran into Paola in the driveway this afternoon and we had an interesting random deep conversation about all that sort of thing and her relationships and mine and how we were talking with each other and interacting that very moment. She said she couldn't imagine that I was at all neurotic or overanalytical mentally wheel-spinny or ever worried about things. This was pretty hilarious as I am the queen of analyzing situations and obsessively thinking about myself and what everything means, meant, could or might mean or not as if surfing huge waves of mental and emotional ambiguity were my Xtreme sport. I laughed a lot and invited her to dissect my brain with her mad psych skills anytime.

reading morning

A nice morning of browsing around:

various comic books
Djuna Barnes in spanish
British Pony Club horsemanship manual
Polyamory articles

Moomin and Rook and I have been playing castle a little bit on and off. Now Moomin is watching Mu-l@n (unfortunate choice as he has to ask a hundred questions and cries at several points because it's sad)

Now to translate a little...? I want to finish at least 3 agust1ni poems and send them out immediately without any agonizing over it.

The Venez. journalist sent me a really great mp3 of Fl0rentino.

fringe

FYI. There is a sale at the local M1chael's on beaded fringe and they have a great selection!

Now that I am the proud owner of an assortment of beaded fringe sewn onto narrow ribbon, I sort of don't get how you are supposed to CUT the ribbon and use small bits of fringe on a project. Because you cut it and the beads are all on one thread and it's not like there is knots between each beady thing. So it then falls apart?! I am trying sewing it in small sections with a lot of knots and THEN cutting it. but I dont' feel very confident it will stay.

Minnie... in your vast wisdom that came from some months of unemployment and sewing projects and much experience "on the fringe", what should I do? I tried a little spot of glue to help the thread stick. Still, unless i use epoxy or something it hardly seems secure.

I am going to go ask the Pilot as she owns more sewing machines and fabric than I thought humanly possible. She must know!

Maybe a little superglue? Or maybe this is why it was on sale so cheap.

***
I went to ask Pilot. Amazing coincidence - she and Chefily were sitting on the floor in there sewing in eXtreme craftiness. I can't really express the heinosity of Chefily's crocheted halter top made out of the substance of maybe half a muppet-hide, held together with some sort of giant metal conch-ish belt buckle thing with... an eye on it? my memory fails me. But the main thing is that it has bead fringe in which each fringey bit spells out a word out of large silver alphabet cube beads: "PET" "TOUCH ME" etc. Funny as hell. The Pilot's red and black chinese satin overalls were stunningly cool. I am desperate to get her to make me flowerdy black corduroy overalls with a bazillion pockets and straps and things.

Chefily knew how to deal with the fringe problem - nail polish. It works great! And while I have no superglue I have plenty of nail polish with sparkles in it.

hope and fear

A few days ago some guy wrote me and asked me for my Floren. translation. Only a couple of other people have ever asked for it. It's a fairly long poem about a cowb0y who has an improvisational poetry du3l with the D3vil.

I did it in 2000-2001 when we first moved here and I worked full time for Eggcite. I'd take one evening a week and go to Cafe B0rrrone with my giant Vel@zquez dictionary, a verb book, and a thesaurus; and then haunted the Staffnord library for a few Saturday mornings. Thanks to Rook who was encouraging me to have this intellectual life and gave me the time to do it in and pep-talked me into sticking with it.

Working this way was very slow. In fact my spanish was so rusty I had to look up almost everything. And the dialect stuff often baffled me. My dad spent hours on the phone with me explaining things like how a round-up works in V3nezuela and what "naricear" means, or what all the different birds and plants are and what it was like to wake up in the morning at the ranch house or out in camp. It got very interesting and was also a nice way to bond with my dad talking about things that would not make us argue about politics. (Though he did go into several frothing-at-the-mouth frenzies about politics...once he gets started there is no stopping the angry tirade.)

Anyway my point was that I stopped thinking about in like 2001, no one would publish it, the copyright was going to cost me $2000 (and I actually considered just paying for it). But I made a brief web page where I mentioned doing the project. And I also made about 50 copies of it and passed them out to people at the 2002 ALT@ meeting.

This guy who just asked me for it is going to review it in the eng. language Venez. newspaper! and he gave me the addresses of some people who might help me publish it. (Since it is hot just now because of the refer3ndum and Ch@vez). This, as you can imagine, is wildly exciting. But it is also scary. This was my beginning project and I know there are awkward parts, and there are probably some laughable mistakes. I wrote some footnotes, and an essay introducing the poet, the background, the geography, etc. What if I said something that makes me sound like a dumbass? I feel the urge to go rewrite all of it really quick.

But it is too late as I've already sent it off to this journalist. And in a way I'd rather just slam it out into the world and forget out about it and all its flaws, since it's not my current project and I want to be doing new things and not dwelling on this one 20-minute long poem forever and ever. And there is also no way to make it a brilliant jewel of perfection as I don't have the skill of W1lfred Owen to make it all in rhyme and meter. There are bits I am particularly proud of, like this one:

Night veils the plain with a violent thunderstorm; in the lit-up ranch house, exciting, lively rhythms. Inside, the maracas are sounding, outside the rain pounds down; here, the tender strumming of the cu@tro, that heart-beat of cedar wood; nearby, the savanna's muddy breast barely shows through the wild river; further off, wandering cloud-choirs thunder out their black fury, and all the while, the rhythmic jor0po weaves its bittersweet melodies; spikes of lightning make the lone palm tree throw pointed shadows.

a little creepy

Also I forgot to say that the extent of stalking and commenting on Layne has really been getting creepy. It was kind of neat at first but then I realized it was reaching levels of scary and weird. I am feeling bad for the Layne Entity. I not only truly don't care who they are, I worry about them and their reaction to all this. It must be pretty intense.

That said - I'm still reading the threads. This one is particularly intelligent.

many amusements

An afternoon of painting with lots of fancy art supplies in Jo's backyard.

The little girls always shuck off their clothes suddenly and reappear in exceedingly pink fairy outfits with wedding veils and rhinestones and magic wands - complete with declarations of princess-hood and superpowers. It's very odd to be surrounded by tiny people in tutus. I never experienced this as a child - why? Is it a new thing? Did I just not hang with the kids with the dress-up clothes? I recall wanting to have a fancy, slutty, spangled figure-skating outfit with dazzling pom-poms on my skates, but this was never achieved. I'm not sure if I admitted this desperate desire at the time - I acted really cynical about girliness.

Moomin has his royal cloak but doesn't tend to wear it around other kids.

I have many crinolines now... short, long, red, black, attached to dress vs. not.... but no perfect fairy outfit... perhaps one should be constructed. I have lots of examples before me.

Last night I again lost consciousness of where I was or what I was doing many times. The first night i hung out with Chulita I lost my car, having been so absorbed in whatever we were talking about and maybe some surreptitious gazing that I lost all memory of where I'd driven, parked, or walked. I keep doing this and in fact yesterday we set out walking and I assumed she was sort of steering where we were going and she assumed I was steering towards my car but instead we just walked around the block like complete goofballs. This, somehow, very enjoyable. As long as I can maintain consciousness while I'm driving the car...

We hopped off the bus (me feeling amazingly free and happy as we did this as it is one of my favorite things to jump on and off buses and trains at whim) to go into A@rdvark Books. I dissolved into the shelves and came out gleefully clutching a Mongolian phrasebook and a tiny Hawaiian dictionary. "Oh, I learned some Mongolian..." and Chula makes my pants fall off even more by being able to say "I have many books" in Mongolian, having apparently taken a class in it long ago in which the teacher would steal everyone's pens and teach them random made-up things about Mongolian grammar -- then the next week would confess it was all nonsense.

It's so nice to be back home from vacation. There is abundant mac and cheese. There are hot baths. Moomin's friend Iz is over (dressed in an insane pink tutu, of course).

I am, like everyone in/sane who blogs, tormented strangely and not entirely unpleasantly by the Layne situation.

I will not learn any Mongolian but I still like reading it. The Hawaiian dictionary is better for meditative browsing and will join welsh and icelandic in my lineup of tiny pocket language books. what I really love are little phrasebooks and dictionaries from before 1920 or so. They get very weird in the phrases they choose to include. "Woman, wilt thou lie with me?" "More beer!" oddly combined with platitudes about Christ. complaints about diarrhea, and requests for a laundress who knows how to properly starch a cravat.

The Pilot just made me blush insanely by discussing what to do with her make-your-own dildo kit. She wants to find out who around here has the biggest dick and make a cast of it. I suggested T. merely because he likes to whip out his dick at parties and would be easy to persuade. But the Acrobat claimed that Severin is the biggest and that they used to call him "Mule". This threw me for a loop. I mean, I think I would have noticed any super unusualness? As I tried hard to remember, apparently I began blushing beet red.

ew, squicky

this weird thing just happened - a few weeks ago someone asked my advice on a book project and I nattered on for a while about costs of printing. i swear to god that was it. she asked me if i would come answer more questions at their meeting and I temporized. she added me to her mailing list. Now suddenly i see that I am "on the committee for the book" in some giant mass email. and it is a sort of crappy book that I woudl be and now AM totally embarrassed to be associated with somewhat crap people whose work I don't respect at all. WTF. Dammit. how could they? I am outraged. however I guess it means I have attained a certain status where people drop my name. that is so goofy I can't even stand it. I guess it is flattering. But it also sucks because I can't even express how embarrassed I am to be even momentarily associated with the hideous badness of incredibly bad taste. People are going to think i just have my paws in every single publishing project down here to get my name out there in front of people no matter how crappy the project. so untrue. oh, my god.

ID

I went digging in my wallet at the bank and found -- someone else's drivers license. Oops! Home to call up George and Bess and do a little sleuthing. I found the license owner and pestered the hell out of some hungover IQ-50 surf shop guy who kept saying that he couldn't handle mailing my license back and I'd have to call later to talk to the rental person.

Bleaching and super-scrubbing continues apace. Joan Jett sings her heart out.

asthma

Okay, who broke into my house and left me the "asthma is sexy" t-shirt with the profile of someone blowing an inhaler? Oh hahahaha! I love it.

***

Thank god the Acrobat shares my Laynophilia! Finally someone who understands.

to do wed. a.m.

loaf with coffee.
whisk Moomin off to school.
clean litter box
bleach bathroom floor where litter box went wild for the cameras.
email florentino translation to that guy who asked for it. find or write a short introduction.
agustini- type up what I have.

clean out the car
laundry from trip
get groceries? what? bread, bagels, eggs, milk, juice, cat litter.
re-potty train cats (how? staple their tails inside litter box?)
order Dario book.
take whore's bath
go to Chula's.
strew rose petals in her path.
feed her grapes and truffle honey. quote smoove b. whilst doing so.
relax.

Thurs: moomin all day. make a plan.
sneak off at times to play piano and finish agustini translations.

Fri:
mail out probably highly inadequate agustini batch of 5-6 poems. (to where?)
Then start this weekend on Dario.

the half and half

I promised the story of the incident of the half and half and so here it is. In the kitchen of the bed and breakfast in S. Diego I was making my morning coffee and the innkeeper came in to start up the breakfast. I mentioned (nicely, trying to be helpful) that one of the things of half and half in the fridge had expired on May 3rd and since it was now June 11th she might want to toss it. But that the other carton was fine.

She seemed strangely perturbed. "Oh, but, since it's not OPENED it is just fine."

I shot her a look of disbelief. I think that's what happened. I might have sneered, or given her the evil eye, or just looked like a super uptight cunt. I might have blinked in astonishment or raised a sardonic or querulous eyebrow. She seemed even more upset. I couldn't figure out what was the problem. Milk goes old in my fridge all the time. So I have wasted a dollar -- oops. No biggie.

So I went back to the living room and settled with my book and coffee and non-expired half and half.

About 5 minutes later she came in. Super unconvincingly: "Oh yeah! And I just remembered that I just took that half and half out of the freezer! So it's definitely okay!"

Now I ask you. Does anyone actually put half and half in the freezer? Is that not insane, and unlikely? And, if true, totally gross? Maybe you had to be there but it seemed like she had just made that up - for some unknown reason. She didn't have to impress me - I was already totally snooty over the gross, faux-fancy decor and horrid location next to the airport under the flight path of many late-night airplanes and right on a major street and near absolutely no walkable destination. It's not like a bad carton of milk was going to make me decide never to come back - nor, with weird hair and a kid under 5, do I seem like the sort of clientele that an innkeeper would want to attract back.

So what the heck was going on? Pathological lying? A person whose husband in the past would have beaten her up for such a gaffe? Or maybe her present husband, who I think existed though I never saw him?

home again!

Hooray, we're home!

cats still alive. giant piles of cat shit in every bit of laundry that was on the floor near the litter box (this has never happened ever... ack!)

So i have gathered more cat shit than I thought possibly could come out of two small cats. and tomorrow must bleach the whole bathroom. Nassssssty.

I feel more tempted than usual to write an evil parody of "playne lain" because of all the controversy. Should I keep control of my evil urges?

Home has never seemed so glorious. It's all... comfortable... and grandly stuffed with books...

Moomin in the car said wistfully "We will be so happy to be in our home. We will see our cats. And our bunk bed. And our toys and all our stuff. And Auntie Chi. And our friends." He is a Material Boy for sure.

Rook is full of plans for his new RPG character in a sort of xmen-like world and system and future/alternate history (a new game run by G. that I'm not going to be in). We were talking about making him a separatist mutant and wer thinking of good separatists to look at for inspiration - malcom x? wittig? mary daly or someone? as well as mutant-overman stuff like nietzsche. then i thought of zionism. The mutants need a utopian homeland sort of philosophy.

We are exhausted from the trip and the drive. But it was mostly really fun and great.\

***

I wiggged out at Rafel's house as I could not get away from the horror movie sounds even with earplugs AND headphones at once. I had no idea that rook did not realize the extent of my...well.. my actual horror at scary movies. I just can't take it. ANd he knew that but didn't grok that what I mean by that is, I get actual feelings like a panic attack or something, like, my whole fight or flight reflex kicks in and I feel like a trapped animal desperate to escape and can only cope by going away, tuning it out, or sort of purposely disassociating, which I can only do for so long. I kept asking them to turn it down, but then at midnight came out of the bedroom and begged them to turn it off (and they totally did of course.) I wasn't helping anyone by downplaying my being really uncomfortable. I realize lots (most?) people actually like scary movies and that they have various interesting merits. But can't watch them anyway. I have a hard time pinning down what is scary to me vs. what is sort of fun epic heroic violence. I was trying to list out the qualities: a) going insane scarily. surreal is good, eraserhead-scary is bad. certain movies i recall as being on the edge of this "too intense" thing for me - often great movies but i was wildly disturbed and wished I hadn't watched them anyway. b) a certain sort of anger and violence. so, i found the movie glengarry whatever it was, with all the salesguys yelling at each other, nearly intolerable in a horror-movie way. c) rape d) violence that is weirdly rape-like e) scary suspense that is sort of about fear of rape or that sort of violence. so, scary movie about being in the trenches in a war, okay. scary movie where the character is always walking around with creepy insane threatening things happening and with a lot of creepy music, No. f) anything with a lot of people screaming all the time. Well that rules out about 85% of every modern movie, and most TV drama.

But I love ... well, you know, chow yun fat and pirates and swords and armor and stuff. Hell, I just slayed all those orcs yesterday afternoon! But I did it without any creepy music, or making them think they were all safe and then creeping up and scaring them a lot before cruelly and slowly destroying all their illusions, everything they love, and humiliating and killing them. I believe Rook and Rafe were watching Rafe's new movie about like, an army of zombies, and it was all supposedly funny and maybe not like that, but i'm already prone to paranoia enough without being helped along in any way at all by any extra imagery.

I became a little mad at Rafael for trying to persuade me that funny horror wasn't really bad and I'd like it and that if it had a strong female heroine i would also be all empowered. I just won't and don't want anyone arguing away my strong distate. I start to freak out just overhearing all the screaminess of a scary movie and am then, hours or days or weeks later, unable to dismiss it from my mind. There are books I wish I hadn't read (The Shining - FORGET ever seeing a stephen king movie. ha. as if. that will never ever happen.)

What can I say. I am a total wuss. Even just trying to describe what was scary made me go into the whole feeling in a yukky way. though now I am writing about it and feel fine though it's embarrassing to admit the range and depth of what I won't/can't watch. I dont feel like i am particularly strange in this either - but maybe I am? I have no idea.

soon!

I am homesick by the way. i want my wireless. i want my cats and my own lovelybed and to hang out on
our huge couch with rook happily computing and writing. i miss all the food in my fridge that is what i like to eat that I can eat at any time without inconveniencing anyone. i miss chula. i miss acrobat and pilot and their baby. i fret that no one has watered my morning glory as i forgot to ask anyone. i miss having time to myself in absolute peace and quiet. i miss jo and squid. and my sister. i miss reading all the blogs that i like to read. i miss my truck. i miss having all my good spanish dictionaries right at hand.

home tomorrow!

stolen moment

a moment stolen on Rafe's computer whle Moomin watches a video and R. and Rook get take-out food. arrrr i'm so
hungry! moomin has been as always - angelic - strangely wonderful and patient - hauled around from house to
house, city to city, hours in the car, hours in endless restaurants where he sits still and behaves beautifully. how is
this possible?

highlight of today was finally getting him to the beach where he was in heaven. i wasn't sure if he would (as sometimes in
the past) reject the beach as sandy or too dirty or something. but no. he loved it. he took off his pants and shoes and
socks and ran in the waves with me. He kept laughing with joy and saying "I love the waves! I feel so happy! Mommy
I am feelign so happy playing in the waves!" what could be better or more gratifying to me? i wish we could have
stayed way longer but everyone else wanted to go. he liked climibing on the rocks and everything. it was
amazing.

We had a great time at Red's house too though. Red ran us a short d and d game whihc was fun. i have had moments in
life where I have had great cleavage, but this was the best -- I rolled I think 3 critical hits and as I had this
ability "Cleave" if I killed my first orc then I had a free shot at another one. so i kept killing 2 orcs per round and
rather nicely Red made them die dramatically with limbs hewn off and stuff like that. Why is this so satisfying? I don't know.
But for a while I could feel like a brawny, moody, pulp hero. I made my guy named "Stavros, son of Grond Hammerhand"
and based him off of Joshua Norton. I know that is both evil and silly, but certain aspects of him made a great d and d character as I could
imagine his childhood growing up with his father (a drunken, roving blacksmith in the forest of .. um.. some forest)
and how he grew up sort of big and tough and the whole thing of accidentally punching through walls, and being really
smart and a great fighter. My fantasy Ur-Josh slayed a whole bunch of orcs and ghouls and made a bargain with a dying
Warg and saved some people who had stupidly strayed into the Haunted Lands. Rook's guy was slimy, evil,
and intelligent and a sort of private joke based on someone I will not name...

i have manyother funny things to blog that i wrote about offline. I will mock the b and b we stayed at and describe
seals galumphing across the sand. the incident of the half and half will be recorded.

i will muse musingly about the 2nd kushiel book and also about female hero myths
and about virginia w. as while we were at Red's I quickly read Orlando and liked it. it made me think of huysmans
and also i just had this weird insight where i was like "you know, if g@briel garcia M@rquez had written this, everyone
would be raving about how it is Magical Realism blah blah blah. " but as it is, i've only ever heard of this book
described as one of the more boring and pointless and unreadable books ont he planet. this is totally untrue. it rocked
as long as you are not a plot junkie. it was so great. i am going to write a bunch about it later. maybe it is only
great if you are super feminist and live in your imagination or in books about 90 percent of the time? but if you do then it's really good.

vista de nada

driving through the non-chichi part of la j0lla rook was joking that there should be a subdivision called "Vista de Nada" "How would you say "vista del parking lot"? "Um... Vista del.... um... de la area de estacionamiento? I don't fucking know. spanish is weird that way."

moomin just freaked out with trembling joy at the little park in L.J. with the torrey pines. it is like they were created just for him to climb around on as they are super low to the ground from the wind and all twisty and easy to climb. he was pulling a major pout and I felt for him. i knew exactly what he was thinking and how it was all intense. so i took him down from the restaurant to play for a while. he went up into a tree and just lay there murmuring gently about how he was in his Nest and how he had a Friend Porcupine who was there with him in another Nest. he hugged the tree and looked very dreamalicious about it all. we t hen chased seagulls and looked at the waves. His favorite color of the ocean is blue (he did the ASL sign for it while explaining this, kind of cool that he remembers) and informed me that he saw some dolphins (lie, lie, lie!) then back to the restaurant, 15 minute interlude successfully cut off his giant whininess perfectly.

the animal park was great. best part of dino mtn. was the horrible animatronic dino thgat was ripping off the head of another one.

2 crucial things

1) hi speed free wireless in balboa park in front of natural history museum! Rawk on! and electricity at bench at bottom of stairs.

2) i am retranslating Delmira @gustini as of last night. a. c@ceres translates like a dead, retarded robot. Christ. What a travesty!

No, three things.

3) kids when taken to difficult expensive fun places specially made for them, would always rather play in a cardboard box or a tiny empty plot of grass. they Know about these things.