My soap box

I have something very important to talk about today. Cracker Jack. I do not know if the rest of the world has noticed it, but the Frito Lay company has been letting Cracker Jack snacks go to shit. It is a travesty. While the edible product remains the same, it still could use more peanuts. It has always been in need of more peanuts. They do it by weight, a ratio of peanuts to popcorn. They should rethink that. Anyway, The real problem is the prizes. They are not prizes anymore! It used to be that in a box o' Cracker Jack you could get an actual toy. Or a temporary tattoo. It may even be Sailor Jack himself with his trusty dog, Bingo! Today, we have no temporary tattoos, no rings, no baseball cards, no trinkets. Instead, a piece of paper with two perforated holes to put atop a pencil. A piece of paper that folds back and forth between young and older president Lincoln with a few well-known facts about him (Did you know he was shot? O RLY? YA RLY! NO WAI!). So I don't mind teaching the unfortunate youth of today about 19th century history. In fact, I think it's a grand idea. But it's not much of a prize. What's worse--and it does indeed get worse--is that just yesterday, I got a "prize" that was a picture of a kid, the name of a movie, and its release date. A fucking advertisement. And it says, of course, that it is a "trading card." Collect all 10! All 10 ten paper ads for the same movie? As if saying "trading card" could in any way change the fact that it's a prize as thin as a stamp and an advertisement for a movie. Give us a riddle, a maze, or even a logic puzzle; for god's sake, throw America a frickin' bone here, Frito Lay.

Hellcats on ice

I got up at the ungodly hour of five and one half in the morning. My nose has gone crazy. I was sneezing and sniffling in bed and figured I could sneeze and sniffle just as well out in the living room while reading the morning news. Tahoe fires. Gaza strip. Traffic fatalities. Tony Blair hop hop. F-15 crash. CIA family jewels. Heavy flooding. Iran grumblies.

School has begun again. Not much to say about that. I start back to "work" on Monday. Summer is fairly dull so far. My biggest accomplishments seem to be a steady supply of clean laundry and book reading. I should be updating Read 'em and Weep, but I'm lazy (like the rest of the contributors. I refuse to believe they're busy. They're just being tricksie hobbitses).

I read a good poem the other day about an octopus at Safeway.

Oh no, there goes Tokyo! Go go Godzilla!

This past week since being free of school, I have read a number of books: Portrait of My Mother Who Posted Nude in Wartime by Marjorie Sandor, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, The Biggest Game in Town by A. Alvarez, and Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits by Garth Ennis. I just barely started The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time by Michael Craig, and there are so many books I want to reread. People who don't reread books seem strange to me. Not all books of course, but a good amount, at least the ones they enjoy. The people who have books they really enjoyed but almost never read the book more than once are the ones who I find confusing.

Last night I dreamed that I lived in the library. So did my sister, Sarah (live in the library, not have the same dream, though that would be rather interesting). Alos living in the library was Mike Golic, who couldn't leave because he had been accused of murder. My sister was friends with a spider robot. It was a shiny red and black beast, and she would talk to it, hold it, and pat it on the head. The spider robot took polaroid pictures of random things and spit them out; when people reached down to pick up the picture, the picture would burn them. What larks! For the spider robots, anyway. We ate pizza on the 5th floor. Sarah turned the quiet area of the library into a lounge where she watched Anne of Green Gables. As I passed by with a slice of pizza I heard, "You do beat all Anne. Everyone'll think I put you up to it." On the whole it was an odd dream, in large part because I believe there is something just wrong about showering in a library. Even if it has a complete bathroom, it's just wrong.

I often feel rather Victorian. And I somewhat wish I had a pipe to puff upon, complementing the nodding of my head during general agreement in conversation, or for irritated puffing to express my displeasure directed toward those who would do something tinged with evil--like putting Layer Cake in a top five favorite movies list.

I haven't had anything interesting to say in years. No wonder, then, that I blog so f'in' much.

Don't look down

Pepagogy: the art, science, or profession of pep talks.

I went to the land of blinking lights, rows of letters, and puffs of air today to get more contacts. My eyes are the same as before. The blink, they gawk, they set things aflame when my righteous anger is unleashed.

I had a dream about two of my teeth hurting and feeling loose. "I am Vronsky's smiling rows of white teeth." Perhaps I ought to floss more. I should have made a resolution! Unfortunately, it's June, not January, and so it is too late for resolutions. It's a rule, you know. Like "Don't wear white after Labor Day" or "Do not remove this tag or the Mattress Police will come and throw you in the Tombs for life." We like him for the tag theft, Danny? I dunno, Andy. Time to go squeeze some shoes.

Summer musings

Last night I dreamed I had a twin and that we snuck into Saul Bellow's house (It's a sign. I need to read The Adventures of Augie March). Also, that I was in the UK fighting the forces of evil with Loradona. She kicked the crap out of a right dodgy character. I was impressed. Not surprised though. She's the sort who has heart. Red Bull courses through my veins. Via a pump I've snapped onto one of my upper ribs. Yeah, I do all my own surgery. It's one of a short list of talents. Pretending to be Waldo the Myna bird is another. I don't gnaw on any shoulders or anything. That wouldn't be seemly. The lack of direction to this paragraph is comforting, in a random Bruce Campbell appearance sort of way.

My father once had me polish some silver silverware. I had no desire to polish silverware. It seems such an archaic, Cinderellaish activity. To make matters worse, the bottle of polish had a warning on it: "Has been found to cause cancer in mice in California." My father said I was neither a mouse nor in California, and that gloves would protect me. I polished the silverware with gloves; I used as few fingers as possible, though I doubt cancer is so polite as to localize itself to one particular area under siege. I never ate with the silver again and usually referred to it as the cancer silverware. Sometimes I wonder what's become of it. Who has the cancer silverware?

In a fight between predestination and prestidigitation, who wins?! Predestination, of course.

There are power lines in our bloodlines

Happy Birthday to Sydney.

Because Rachel rocks

I began reading my friend Rachel's thesis on the publishing industry in Tunisia. I'm so impressed. I can't even play gin for twenty minutes without getting bored, and here she's put together 50 pages of research and interviews creating something coherent, interesting and with actual meaning behind it. My vast intraweb Ben Ali gives it two thumbs up!

You're no worse than me

I was going to write my paper for Women's Lit, but I started reading the news, which is is a dangerous thing, because once I start reading news I get caught up in it, and I follow links on all the pages to more news, and before you know it, I've wasted hours reading about earthquakes, technology, sports, and people dying all over the world (this includes Ruth Graham and Mr. Wizard, sad on both accounts). Run-ons are my friend. My preciousss.

I switched to new allergy and asthma medicines today, and I feel rather out of it. I received a package in the mail today from Father and Steve, and now I have tea from Korea Town, raisin-pecan turnover cookies, and some voodoo herbal allergy medicine. :) It cheered me. Perhaps I shall have some tea soon in the hopes that it shall calm and focus me.

There's a final paper due tomorrow that I haven't started writing yet. Or rather, I have the working title "Best Fucking Title Ever" (again), and I have written the first half of a sentence that is going no where. Or somewhere. If only I knew. Time lapse. It's up to one paragraph now. Time lapse. Up to one page. Trite as can be. The argument sort of wrote itself after I started plunking descriptions down in the word file, desperately hoping something would just come together without dependence upon any real contribution of my own. It's a bad way to write a paper. Two pages down. Three pages. Page six. Once I start blathering, it all just falls into ugly little places--good enough, but never good enough. There is little in the way of satisfaction. There is, however, a stomach ache from cheap Chinese food.

And the love, whatever it was, an infection

HB.ISMY.ISHYALTA.MINRD.IIONTF.

Imagine Sisyphus happy

The language of uncertainty

makes me foam at the mouth,
пена на губах,
брызгать слюной,
прийти в бешенство.

"They're watching my every sound"

It's spring. The weather is dreadful, my lips are chapped from all the nose blowing, nebulizer use, and detestable sunshine. My lip cracked open the other day. It hasn't really healed yet. I wake up in the morning with blood smeared on my bottom lip. I imagine the stuffed hippos on my bed beating me up in my sleep. It makes me laugh. It used to be that I'd get up in the morning and go to the bathroom where my giant Bill Clinton poster would greet me with a smile, evoking pleasant thoughts of happier days in America. Now, there's only one Democrat in the bathroom. It's every Marj for herself, and I laugh at blood. Sometimes things are better when they are not parallel.

I watched most of Blade Runner last night when I should have been studying for my Women's Lit final. It has such an interesting story and pace to it that I think I might watch it again all the way through tonight, if only this great grammar project were done. It's purple. And boring. Watered down eggplant. The final went uneventfully, but I imagine it could have been better.

File under "H" for "Huh?" 1

Sometimes I'm surprised by the files I find on my computer. I often have vague recollections of having made the files, but very little beyond that. I forget them once they've been shoved away in one of the zillions of folders. Sometimes they seem random. But really, they're all of the utmost importance. Uh, right.

File name: Question
Contents: What is it that Applebee's is not telling us?

File name: Fish
Contents: The highlight of my day so far has been seeing a cute guy wearing orange shoes mailing a fish at the post office. Expressmail (there was no overnight to the fishies destination). $27.00. "Don't shake it!," he cried. "You said it wasn't fragile." "No, but it's a fish."

File name: Here
Contents: "I should like to start a company called Siamese Dream Interpretation," I tell him. He doesn't answer. I imagine he didn't know that I even said it. "You're a phantom," I say, "A phantom. A hornet. A pan full of sand." "I heard that one," he says.

File name: whatwouldyousaytojesus
Contents: I'd like to tell him to go die for someone else's sins. I've paid my debts.

File name: 2007
Contents: I haven't felt pretty since 2002.

File name: Letter to LH
Contents: Dorian Gray would be good on the commercials crusading against drugs. He could take the place of that kid who says, "I'm under the influence of others. And that ain't me." See, that's what we can all English major joke. Not very funny, is it? Oh Lord Henry, you silly man. We like you, but you're a fucking hypocrite. I'm sure I'm not the first to say so.

File name: mem
Contents: demagogue42: goddamnit. rehnquist is dead.
JennEver 42: oh shit.

File name: One way
Contents: I feel like I'm falling apart lately. I want to put the pieces together differently, but I'm afraid they only fit one way.

File name: Food
Contents: -what is this tuna you speak of? --it's fish with dolphin pieces. tuna flesh!

File name: Oct10
Contents: I jump up and raise my arms high in the air, crying, "What shall we do today? What great experiments shall we perform in our laboratory?" He is silent behind his computer screen. I grab the box of Mike & Ike's sitting on the table, popping a pink one into my mouth. "You are not very scientific," I tell him.

File name: Basement
Contents: My sister is angry. There was a man in the hospital with her, and any time someone asked him a question, he would answer, "It's hopeless. It's all hopeless." This was his response to anything. She never heard him say anything else. He was discharged yesterday, but they won't let her out. She thinks it a great injustice. Perhaps his insurance ran out. But then again, maybe everything was hopeless, and it's everyone else who is confused.

I don't like Mondays

I got a C on my Discourse Analysis today. I blame the migraine of last week that I had while doing homework. All I wanted was to be finished with it. Naturally, I missed a shitload of clauses. They were hiding behind the stabbing pains in my head. One of them winked, threw itself against my right eye socket, laughed as though the funniest joke in the world had been told, and disappeared in a flash of light. Somewhere out there is a rerlative clause with a flare for dramatic comedy. The great grammar project is not going well. In fact, it is neither great nor grammarful, as I am having the most difficult time finding what I need. Fuckin' A, I'm tired of this term. I just want to go have quiet coffee somewhere.

I feel as if I'm looking for something, but I don't know what it is, what it looks like, or to what degree it will satisfy me when I find it.

A commercial for cremation services was just on the tv. I pity the person who tried to market that with such upbeat music.

I'm tired of wheezing. Fuck spring.

When you know you've lost

I've been typing for hours. Getting no where fast. I'll never have this done by morning, and I feel as though I'm writing nonsense. Words are losing meaning. Museum. Barnum. Spectacle. Order. Philemon. Spectator. Theatrical. Just how far do you have to go for cynicism to become pervasive?

Crocodile : Hippopotamus :: Spring : Marjorie. Three cheers for shared abstraction, for falling awake and sleeping up.

It's morning. It's not done. It's only five pages in fact. Pathetic. If not for that damn migraine yesteray I would have twice as much. If my hands weren't so busy typing, I would shake a fist or two at the sky despite the fact that I'm right here, so my crazed gesticulations will affect the skies very little, if at all.

I am Jack's complete lack of homeostasis

Today I left work early because a headache was developing. I think I took too many allergy meds, the consequence of which was not the headache (that was already there), but exacerbation of my feeling out of it. Knives stabbed behind my eyes. Everything was bright. The light! The light! I saw the light! So I came home early from work. Steve turned the air conditioner on, and I laid in front of it for hours, drinking great quantities of water, watching David Lynch's Dune (it's still horrible), and occasionally throwing up like I haven't thrown up in ages. It was a decidedly bad day. It's 10:00 pm now, and the headache is just starting to disappear. My 15-20 page draft due tomorrow seems somewhat daunting, but I have created the file and there's a heading AND a title, so I am well on my way. Sort of. A bit. I'm trying to be positive, but inside I'm pretty pissed off at spring. It's one of the worst times of year. Spring and summer.

ESPN has been having spelling bee fun all day long. And Kobe Bryant fun. What's that? You do want to be traded? Oh, no, you don't? Hmm. I think the only thing we know is true is that the Nuggets do NOT want him.