theology&geometry

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

2008-07-21T00:52:00.003-05:00

I reckon I've packed up all the stuff I care about, and I'm taking it over here. It sure would be swell if you'd join me by updating your links and/or your feed reader. As I explained over there, I've still got some kinks to work out, but so far everything seems more or less functional. If you encounter any weird browser issues, please let me know so I can run around with my hands in the air like the stove's on fire and I'm too excited to put it out.

I just made an honest woman out of myself

2008-07-19T00:59:00.002-05:00

Well, I did it. Today I happened to notice that theogeo.com was free (it was occupied the last time I checked ... a couple of years ago), so I snatched it right up. I've been squatting here at Blogger for five years now. Five years! Does anyone remember when I used to have theology-and-geometry.com? Yeah, this will be a hell of a lot less letters to type.

My informal plan is to move all my posts to Wordpress and go from there. In reality, I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing. I'll let you know as soon as the new site's up and running. Until then, we're blogspotting, baby.

+1 skill point

2008-07-18T00:48:00.002-05:00

All the doorknobs in my apartment look like this.

The apartment is old and the building's foundation has shifted enough times that most of the doors don't actually latch when you close them.

Jack has caught on to this and has made it his mission to figure out how to open the doors around here, many of which stay "closed" but not quite closed.

His technique? Standing on his hind legs, stretching as far as he can, and hooking one singular claw into a vacant keyhole, letting his weight and gravity do the rest until the door swings open. He's surprisingly effective at this, and when I catch him trying to do this to the doors that actually do latch, I can't help but laugh because the doors don't budge, which means he just gets stuck there, his one little claw extended to its limit, his weight baring down so that he can't retract it. He tries to fake it like, Oh, hey man. I was just ... hanging around. Pretty nice day out. Saw some dustbunnies float past a minute ago and I just heard you fill up the food bowl. But I'm hanging out here for a while. Sniffing the breeze. Catch you later, man.

But I know. Dumbass.

Me vs. the machines

2008-07-18T00:20:00.002-05:00

Some time this year (last year? the year before? hell, I don't know; life is what happens when you're blogging about your cats), they replaced the soap dispensers at work with the fancy kind that magically sense a dirty hand and noisily crank out sanitary foam for your handwashing pleasure. These machines — there are two per bathroom for optimum convenience!!! — have a mystical set of standards for occasions on which they will actually dispense soap to the dirty-handed. Hold your tongue to the roof of your mouth, stand on one foot, use your toes to speed dial your mother, and sing "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll" to the tune of "O Tannenbaum," and you might coax the thing into giving you a dollop of foam. Every other Thursday or so.

I've endured my share of farcical battles of wit with those machines and have spent more time than I care to recount bitching at them or about them or in their general vicinity to anyone perched on a porcelain throne nearby who may or may not care to hear my ranting. My favorite move is the one where you hold your hand out beneath the dispenser for five minutes, waiting patiently, and the instant you pull away, hey, here comes a little foam turd for you and now it's on the counter. Awesome. It's especially insulting when I fail at my quest to get soap and wash my hands simply in plain water, and then go to dry them, only to be rebuffed by the automatic paper towel dispenser as well. The paper towel dispensers — there are two per bathroom for optimum convenience!!! — usually aren't nearly as finicky as the soap dispenser (although I have spent many, many minutes of my life waving at them like they're long-lost friends, trying to get them to recognize me and help a sister out), but they are quite often simply broken and/or out of paper.

In other words, I fucking hate these machines. They are a perfect example of machinery created to make our lives easier that, in fact, only complicates things. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the manual dispensers we had before. Sure, you had to touch them and some people get weirded out by that, but come on. What's more unsanitary -- touching a soap dispenser's handle -- which is giving you soap with which you will then wash off your hands -- or going without soap altogether half the time because the frigging things aren't even working?

Oh, and here's the kicker. I found out from a co-worker yesterday that part of the reason why the damned soap things don't work sometimes is because they run out of battery power and just sit there, unusable. They especially tend to run out of batteries on the weekend. So people working Saturday and Sunday often go without soap. Co-worker said the maintenance staff was going to start checking the batteries on Friday afternoons to make sure we could make it through the weekend.

How ridiculous is that? It makes me want to scream when I think of all the little double A batteries (hell, those stupid things may use C batteries for all I know) we're burning through and then sending to landfills for no fucking reason other than perceived convenience. I don't know. It just ... ugh. It's a bit much for me, and I'm pretty much the shittiest environmentalist you will ever meet. (Case in point: Weeks and weeks ago, I bought two of those Schnucks bags meant to be reused to replace the plastic bags, and I have been back to Schnucks exactly once with them. All other times ... of which there have been many, many ... I have managed to forget them, and returned home with a carload of plastic bags. Yeesh.)

So my plan is to buy a big bottle of dollar-store soap and bring it in this weekend for the weekend crew to use and refill it as needed. Maybe it will be just me using it, maybe not. Whatever. I don't care. But I am not fighting with those fucking machines again.

Thanks, Fritz, for the brain worm

2008-07-14T23:56:00.003-05:00

My pal Fritz over at the Manhattan Project posted this video a bit ago, and now that I've let the song thoroughly infect my psyche, I had to go buy the whole Santogold album.

The video's kind of dark, even if ironically so, but the album mostly features upbeat, shoulder-pumpin' music that I hope will set the tone for my week to come. I don't need another week like the last one, you hear me, Universe?

Bad news for public-radio fans

2008-07-14T15:33:00.007-05:00

NPR is canceling the Bryant Park Project, the program that published the audio slideshow about my Project 365 last year.

This sucks; the BPP is one of the rare mainstream public radio programs that really embraces the web and all it has to offer.

Memphis' own Radio Sweethearts has a few suggestions for anyone wanting to pass along their disappointment to NPR.

Best wishes to everyone involved, but especially Laura Conaway, who hails from Mississippi and was so wonderful to me while we were putting together the slideshow. I'm rooting for all of you guys.

Born to blog

2008-07-14T00:26:00.005-05:00

This morning (I'm being generous; it was 11ish) I hopped out of bed like a little sprite and sprang into cleaning action. Last night I had stopped by Rite Aid to ready myself for the cleanliness rapture and stock up on cleaning supplies. My apartment has been filthy and crammed with random crap for a very long time now, and I really only spruce it up on the surface when I have people over. But it's been a long time (read: probably never) since I really cleaned it.

I brewed the world's tiniest pot of coffee (my new $8 coffee maker from Fred's is among the most adorable appliances I have ever laid eyes upon) and proceeded to down two black cups as I worked my way through the kitchen and bedroom. I meticulously scrubbed the baseboards and moulding. The air conditioner got a nice little rubdown, as did my dusty dresser and nightstand. But my magnum opus today? The closets.

My closets have always been prone to abuse. Call it a walk-in closet and I will eventually treat it like an offsite storage unit, crammed to the brim. But lately I've been feeling so insane and so suffocated by unseen forces that every time I opened my living room or bedroom closets, I fantasized about saying something dramatic and throwing myself off a bridge. Yes, it got that bad.

So today I was ruthless and just started chucking stuff and piling everything else up to take to the Goodwill. My old stereo, DVD player, desk lamp, printer, feather boa, phone, answering machine, beaded curtain, you name it. If it was in my closet and I haven't touched it in six months (aside from my old Dell and my box of old drawings and journals, which I'm still not ready to part with), it's gone.

Kind of. It's all sitting in my hallway right now, but that's only because I want to drop the stuff off during the Goodwill's business hours. And I also kind of figured I might unload some of the electronics stuff to people I know. But by tomorrow evening, that shit is outta here. I feel a hundred pounds lighter. Not in my ass, unfortunately, but in my heart. I just lug so much around with me that sometimes I can't breathe from the weight of it.

Does this mean I'm done with being a slobby packrat? Hell to the naw. That's in my genes. And besides, if I wasn't a packrat, would I be able to up and produce a gem like this letter I wrote to Dear Abby when I was twelve? I think not. Behold! A twelve-year-old's infinite, pithy wisdom: completely uninformed, yet full of opinions. And to think I've continued that legacy to this day. Amazing!

[This is funny on its own, but to think that just seven or so years later, I'd be writing something like this? Priceless.]

Yeah, I laughed

2008-07-11T19:04:00.004-05:00

Overheard:

Dude 1: Hey, did you hear Obama might be sponsoring a car for NASCAR?

Dude 2: I guess that means he's going to play the race car.

Trippin'

2008-07-11T00:17:00.004-05:00

Today I took a little tumble in the liquor store. Literally. You know, I've spent enough time rambling about my stupid life on the internet that I just about had myself convinced that I couldn't really be embarrassed anymore. Ha. Nothing like a good old-fashioned falling down to pour a nice little cocktail of humility and shame over your head.

Still, it made me laugh. Once you recover and move far, far away from the epicenter of the ordeal, you can't help but imagine how you must have looked to everyone else. First, to your shopping companion, who's turning to say something to you, only to realize you're not there anymore; you're splayed on the floor with your knees spread jutting in opposite directions, your torso hovering awkwardly above the linoleum as you grasp for something, anything, near you, a look of pure terror on your face. Then there's the people behind the counter, who, just a split second earlier had been nodding to greet you upon your arrival to their fine shoppe and suddenly see you drop out of view, as if plummeting through a trap door, thoughts of lawsuits flashing through their heads.

Of course, no fall would be complete without The Save.

"Wow, that's REALLY slippery!" you might announce as you try to right yourself and carry on with your shopping, which hadn't even really begun because you had just, JUST stepped into the store before gravity and the rainslicked floor joined forces to suckerpunch you. But everyone just gives you that wincing look of pity, the one that barely masks their desire to laugh. I know that look because I can never get it quite right when I witness someone fall. I usually guffaw before thinking. It's nothing personal; I'm just twelve years old and pratfalls greatly amuse me.

So, yuk it up, chumps. I'd laugh at you too.

Good god in heaven, I'll just go ahead and say it: It's been one of those weeks. One of those weeks where your brain is a cord of wood and the world is a flock of woodpeckers just fucking going at it, so fast they're in slow motion, boring holes in your consciousness, rattling your eyeballs, and making you want to scream the loudest scream that has ever existed.

Sounds dramatic but it's not, because everybody has had a week or two like that. Maybe a month. A year, if you're real unlucky.

I thought I was going to fucking choke someone Wednesday night. I felt like the Hulk, only not quite as chartreuse and way more passive aggressive. I don't know where all that bile came from. Some of it carried over from the weekend, which was not altogether bad, but had its moments of anxiety and anger. Some of it came from the phone call I got from Phil early this week telling me that Felix is really going downhill in his old age and we need to think about the near future, when he's going to either suddenly die or get sick and have to be put down. Sprinkle some guilt for being the deadbeat parent who only sees him every other week or so. Add some frustrating requests at work that will, of course, get worked out in due time but that still stress me out. Fold in the sight of two failing/ailing long-term relationships in my friend group/family, both of which came to a head very recently. Toss in, for good measure, a hunk of anxiety about the year being officially half over and my twenties eclipsing fast and my general uneasiness about exactly what any of that means and why I feel so compelled to worry about it incessantly. Garnish with a filthy apartment and an empty cupboard. And what do you get? A pissy-ass bitch pie.

What is that sound? Is it the wahmbulance? Good, because I called it three frigging days ago.

100 percent less pukey

2008-07-09T11:37:00.004-05:00

I've been asked by a couple of people how Jack's doing since his copious-vomiting incident last week ... or whenever it was.

See for yourself:

I persisted in giving him his antibiotics for two days, at which point it became clear that he didn't need any medicine; he had just needed to barf up everything in his stomach and start all over. He's totally fine and back to destroying any and all paper items he encounters, including this large and moderately expensive Christmas bag I had stored in my closet but removed briefly so I could retrieve something stored beneath it. One second I'm rooting through a musty cardboard box, and before I know it, I hear the startling explosion of a cat entering a giant paper sack at full speed, fast enough to bust through the bottom and attack the ragged edges, leaving spit-soaked paper shreds in his wake.

Right now he's wrestling the shit out of Sally and she is making her bitchface at him as he bites her neck.

So, yeah. He's good as new.

How would you feel if you saw a pattern on the inside of a log that resembled your face?

2008-07-08T18:49:00.005-05:00

Just ask this guy.

Bonus: This came from a tree in a graveyard.

I dunno, I think I'd be a little freaked out, but this old timer has probably seen a lot of crazy shit in his day.

One definition of 'treacherous'

2008-07-08T13:54:00.003-05:00

In the shower, attempting to shave your legs, which are spotted liberally with the obligatory summertime mosquito-bite and chigger scabs, while wearing no corrective lenses (provided your sight is as craptastic as mine).

Woo-wee.

Slow and steady wins the race, I've found.

What's stuck in my head today

2008-07-05T14:32:00.000-05:00

Bozo the Clown

2008-07-04T01:01:00.003-05:00

Like most normal people, I don't care too much for clowns. Thanks, Pennywise.

Seriously, though, my thing with clowns goes way back. I remember being a really small kid and having this Bozo the Clown doll that had a drawstring you could pull and he'd laugh maniacally, like something out of a nightmare. He was soft and squeezable everywhere except his head, which was made of hard plastic. Hundreds of curly red hairs sprouted from his skull.

I remember being tormented by that doll, and my family laughing every time his crazy laughing would send me into frightened fits.

I liked the TV show, though. Especially the part where the kids had to stand at the line and throw little white balls into little red (or where they blue?) buckets.

Weird to think that the Bozo who died today created an army in his likeness.

Sweet dreams, kids.

Uh, yeah, me neither

2008-07-03T00:04:00.001-05:00

Do you ever wonder if your cats are reincarnated versions of your dead relatives?

Another reason not to blog while drunk

2008-07-01T12:27:00.004-05:00

On the drive back to Memphis yesterday, I cooked up the beginnings of what could have been a lovely post about the nature of clouds and religion. Yep. And then last night I got drunk and started talking 'bout clouds, using aborted bits of ideas from the drive home, and I ended up stumbling around and messing everything up. Like a klutz in a flowerbed.

So, here's a photo instead.

'Nearest ban on allcaps' ?!?

2008-07-01T09:43:00.002-05:00

Dear world: Even I don't know what the hell I'm talking about half the time. I was clearly intoxicated last night by not just the bottle of pink bubbly I bought, but the new computer I've got.

Behold!

This purty thing will make anyone speak gibberish.

City blood

2008-07-01T00:43:00.014-05:00

"Want some of this?!" I yell to my brother over the shaky din of the front-end loader as he hauls his Dickey-clad lower half toward a location on the family farm that will make him some money. I shake a bright orange can of mosquito repellent at him.

He looks at me like I'm some sort of communist.

"NO!" he shouts at me, shaking his head. It's like I've suggested that he take out twenty percent of his paycheck to solve the mystery of why men leave the toilet seat up and why women always think they can change a man.

"They're eating me up!" I holler as a means of explanation for the intricate aerosol dance I'm performing as I glance at my bare legs. I scowl at the throbbing patches of skin where enterprising mosquitoes have already staked their claim. I squint my eyes, fan myself, and cover my limbs in sticky chemicals that supposedly will keep blood-sucking parasites at bay. The dogs, previously nosing pressingly into my creases, back off.

"You've been in the city too long," my brother tells me. I don't know what to say; I hardly consider Memphis a city in the traditional meaning of the word, and instead think of it as one big rural neighborhood with pizza delivery. I shrug off his comments and douse myself in chemical. The following day, my mother and I will spot a clandestine colony of honeybees constructing honeycombs out of sight behind plywood covering what used to be the door to the only bank in town and I will creep ever closer for a glimpse behind their buzzing curtain, but for now I will smack at a buzzing pest hovering near my thigh, wondering what's in the repellent that keeps the blood-suckers at bay. The sky contracts. The clouds pulse silently and lower to cover the horizon in a full-court press. I smile, content.

This is my home, even if I'm the only one in the entire family that the mosquitoes still bother.

The mosquitoes, I remind my brother, have always eaten me alive.

[][][]

Today the clouds hung low and common like weightless glaciers, suspended in the sky above and beyond me. I kept my gaze trained to them all day, mouth slightly agape like some kind of developmentally disabled infant with her hands pointed toward a mobile featuring the skies. I say that because a big blue sky like that makes me feel dumb and happy. It didn't seem real, the scale of it all. I wondered what it must be like to look into the near horizon and see an honest-to-god mountain or two. Every day. How that might affect perception for someone used to a flat plane. I think I might feel constantly watched if anything other than sky ever crept up around me. Or do the mountains push an illusion of privacy? I have lived in the flat lands of West Tennessee all my life and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to answer that question.

[][][]

We watched a movie this weekend, a cautionary tale: Don't let the machines evolve faster than we do. Wall•E is a Pixar flick with a calming political influence mapped in its bones. You watch it and you can't help but want to say shucks, we fucked it all up, and then feed and clothe the lowly artists who have to cope with the mundane storytelling and shading of each animated post-apocalyptic form. I watched with great interest all the sci-fi homages. Johnny-Five and Hal, yes. And likely more that I did not tap into or have forgotten or am too lazy to mention.

[][][]

We buried two small, quaint bundles of treasure today. Stickers and typing-paper explanations. The geocaching community in Saltillo is no doubt fledgling at best, but could be bolstered by the unbridled enthusiasm of two pre-teens, a millenial, and a baby boomer. Funny to think that I'd never given geocaching a single thought until this past week when a soon-to-be-honeymooning friend mentioned it and suddenly the world skidded into silly relief in relation to the idea that people were hiding tiny treasures all over town. I don't know; maybe it's easy to ignore that fact and remain happy but as far as I know, you ought to seek shelter under the nearest ban on allcaps and just enjoy the summer from then on out.

[][][]

Would it surprise anyone to know that I was totally drunk as this post was going up?

[][][]

Update, from the future!!!: I sobered up and edited this post ... extensively. Didn't edit out the stupid, though. That's going to stay for posterity. Honestly, sometimes I am amazed at the random shit that I will say or write once I've got a couple of drinks in me. I get mouthy when I drink. And lately I've been reading a lot of fiction, which tends to make me wordy when I write. Drinking while writing, well, I get mouthy and wordy and messy and then have to answer for it to my sober self the next day.

No comment required

2008-06-30T13:11:00.002-05:00

Me: Man, I wish Savannah had some actual real, decent restaurants.

Oldest nephew, completely sincerely: You mean like Arby's?

'Lame' is my middle name

2008-06-29T00:12:00.001-05:00

I just turned down an invitation to a social gathering because, ahem, "I'm already in my PJs."

Sweet Jesus. I am eighty years old.

Homage or ripoff?

2008-06-28T23:31:00.004-05:00

I'm finally starting to tuck in to Jeanette Winterson's newest novel, The Stone Gods. I don't want to say too much about it yet because I'm just a couple dozen pages in, but a passage struck me last night with such force that I have to write it down here so I can mull it over and pose the question in the title to the universe.

Winterson writes:

Step into that water and you remember everything, and what you don't remember, you invent.

That simple sentence reminds me so much of this passage from Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig:

There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.

I'm almost positive that Winterson is at least familiar with Wittig's strange and wonderful feminist dystopian novel (some people call it a feminist utopian novel, but I argue otherwise), so I can't help but assume she's tipping her hat somewhat to Wittig's narrative. Still, it's a little weird to see a similarity like that just jump out.

I love Winterson's writing style and I can certainly see where she's influenced by Wittig in many ways. If you've never read Les Guérillères (pronounced "Leh Gary Air"), I must politely nag you to do so. It's unlike anything you've probably ever read before.

Sometimes vanity Googling is good for the ol' self-esteem

2008-06-28T20:33:00.002-05:00

When it turns up stuff like this.

I encourage everyone to buy one or two or twelve.

Q. What would make me super happy right now?

2008-06-27T02:01:00.000-05:00

A. A Kid Rock-shaped punching bag.

Obligatory cat digestion update

2008-06-24T10:19:00.002-05:00

Jack and I just got back from the vet. The clinic on Central and East Parkway was kind enough to squeeze us in even though we're not regulars. I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from the last time I dealt with Eastgate, so I am happy there's a clinic closer to my apartment than way out east. Plus, four or five blocks of mewling vs. twenty minutes of it? I don't even have to explain. Also, gas prices. Etc.

Anyway, Dr. Mitchell peered in Jack's mouth, felt him up, and stuck a thermometer in his butt. I described the barf-capades and the bit of rubber and was told that even an x-ray might not show if there are any little bits of rubber in his stomach, because rubber just doesn't show up on x-rays very well. We'd have to do something fancy with barium, which is very unpleasant for everyone involved, apparently, so that would be a last resort if he keeps technicolor yawning (yes, I plan to run through every vomit euphemism in the language).

So in the meantime, we're on antibiotics to clear up any lingering yuckiness (he really enjoyed the two shots he got; they made him dance with rapture) and I've got to shove pills down his throat twice a day. I also can't feed him until late tonight. That should be the most fun part of this challenge. He just stares at me with those hungry yellow eyes. I am weak.

Book cover musings, v. 3,223

2008-06-24T01:46:00.003-05:00

How nerdy is it that I lust after book covers that I can't have?

For instance, I FINALLY got around to buying the new Jeanette Winterson book, The Stone Gods, and I was Googling the book to pull a jpeg of its cover for my sidebar down there, and lo and behold what do I see? A much cooler cover that is probably for the UK version of the book (at right). Bah.

Something's up with Jack

2008-06-24T01:20:00.003-05:00

That's not cat hair all over my comforter. It's just a fancy comforter made of expensive fur from endangered animals.

I woke up this morning to find a lovely grapefruit-sized splatter of cat puke on my beloved brown and darker brown hallway rug (the one KHall and Jimmy gave Phil and me as a going-away present when we moved to Memphis). It was thick and chunky like clam chowder and I decided quickly not to bother cleaning it out of the rug, which is of the shag persuasion. I mean, that rug has had a good go of it and is filthy and urine-stained and full of ferret smells. But there's no way I can possibly clean cat puke out of it. I don't have my own washer and dryer and therefore don't feel comfortable putting my cat's puke in a communal device, even for $1.50.

Anyway, I wouldn't normally be worried about a little cat pukage (I know it's normal, but I had entirely dodged the cat-puke bullet until now), but I witnessed Jack heave three more times in the early afternoon — all gooky foodstuff puke and not mucusy hairball puke — and then came home in the late evening to some crusty semi-fresh food puke in my bedroom (and on my shorts), and then just now I watched as he horked up still more internal goodness (this time a little less chunky with food and a little more watery, because I didn't feed him at his usual time because of this puking problem we're having).

What makes me worry is this: I found a little pen cap-sized bit of rubber in one of the puke pools. It's rubber from my rubber computer-chair mat, the one he has taken to chewing lately. I knew he was chewing on it but I never imagined he would actually swallow the bits. I give him too much credit, I know.

So I'm worried that he's got a bunch of rubber nonsense floating around in his belly that's going to require surgery to remove. I'm not sure what else could be making him puke up his food so suddenly and so often. This is not a hairball issue. This puke is for real.

Obviously we're going to the vet tomorrow.

Yet another outlet for the awful thoughts my brain produces

2008-06-19T13:44:00.004-05:00

Lately I've been having some pretty epic conversations with my friend T-bagz (I hesitate to use his real name because he is scared of the internet) via someecards.com, because, damn, that place has a card for every flatulent sentiment in existence.

Well, almost. Here are a few that would be useful but that I've not found on the site, so feel free to click and download and send to your pals if the occasion arises.

Hurry up before I get sued.

(^^that one's for Dave)

Synergy, OR How I whored myself out at multiple blogs

2008-06-19T01:50:00.004-05:00

I've posted, like, a fabillion blog entries here today. I don't know what's wrong with me. I thought for sure this robot I programmed to "blog" for me while I vacationed in Latin America would keep it to one post a week, but clearly I got the coding all wrong and now R2Dumbass2 has gone all nutty and is just hitting "publish" on every stupid vignette.

Anyway, I just nibbled off a thumbnail while trying to write this book review, so I figured I might as well advertise its existence here in the off chance that I could drive a scant bit of traffic to The Shelf Life. Seriously, I don't know why I get so worked up about posting over there. I have no idea what the traffic there is like, but it can't be so big that it merits me mutilating my fingers every time I post. Maybe it's that I don't want to be judged by the literary masses. Yeah, that has to be it. They're pretty much the only people on the planet I respect, so I'd really like it if they didn't think I was a moron.

So this book I reviewed: Pretty interesting. I can recommend it to people who make it a habit to read this blog because I'm fairly sure that if you've stuck with me this long, you are a fan of melancholy and the macabre and the essential silliness of existence. And if you've suffered from the guilt that being a moody person often invites, you'll surely enjoy knowing that your worldview isn't defective, but is in fact seen by some people as the most authentic way of living because it strives to embrace the poles of human experience — the low lows and the high highs.

But let me know if you can get through the floridly poetic din without wanting to punch Eric Wilson in the kidney just once, for being so in love with his words that he couldn't edit fifty pages out of the manuscript. I mean, I understand totally; I can't self-edit worth a flip. Me wanting to punch him? That's just my melancholy nature. It's just who I am.

I can't stop listening to this lady

2008-06-19T00:19:00.004-05:00

I love it when music finds me at the right time and I don't have to do any work. I was getting sick of all my CDs and suddenly my friend Ay swoops in with a disc of ditties that I've not been able to stop listening to for two straight days. I've not even been able to pause it for long enough to listen to another CD she made me.

I sure hope that if you were in Nashville tonight (the 18th), you saw Thao Nguyen at The End.

Conversations with the Rite Aid clerk — famous actress edition

2008-06-18T23:48:00.005-05:00

Clerk [as I place a bag of cat food and a half gallon of skim milk (the official purchase of cat ladies everywhere) on the counter]: You look like the actress Karen Allen! I saw her on TMZ the other day.

Me: Oh, really? Thanks! [stops to think of who Karen Allen is and comes up with the squeaking sounds of a vacant cranial mouse wheel] Uh, is that good or bad? I'm not sure I can think of who that is...

Clerk: Oh, you look like her when she was younger. Like when she was in Shoot the Moon.

Me: ... [blank stare, credit-card swipe] Uhhh, was she one of Charlie's Angels? No, wait. They were...

Clerk: No, that was Cheryl Ladd, Farrah Fawcett, and ... oh no, this is really bad.

Me: Was there a Karen? No, a Kate!

Clerk: Kate Jackson!

Me: Yeah!

Clerk: Yeah, no. Karen Allen was in Shoot the Moon with Albert Finney.

Me: Ahhhhh! [feigning recognition] That kind of rings a bell.

Clerk: Well, Karen Allen is at home now having babies. Being a housewife. I just happened to think of her because I saw her on TMZ the other day. [hands me receipt and my bag] Give my love to your kitty cat!

Insurance

2008-06-18T08:41:00.005-05:00

The Nationwide insurance lady is coming over in a bit to give me money. Yes, this stupid saga is finally getting resolved (knock wood). Good old Nina B. from Spotslvania V. finally got her ass in gear and filed her accident claim with her insurance company (the aforementioned Nationwide) at the end of March. That's a full three months after the accident, if you're playing along at home. You might also recall that I had to go ahead and buy a car in January, you know, because I have a job and enjoy being independently mobile. So this thing has been plodding along at a snail's pace (including a laughably low offer from Nationwide the first time around: $350, hahahahahahahahaha), and I just want it to be over with. For good.

I don't know why the insurance lady has to come to my place. I asked her where her office was and she replied that she could just come out to my location. Now it's like I'm preparing for the world's earliest and most boring date. Like, is she going to want to come in or can we just get this over with in the parking lot? Do I even need to put the pillows back on the couch, or hide the three hundred beer bottles scattered around the apartment (none of which are mine, but still make me look like a drunk)? Should I clean the litter box and sweep? Do I need to put on pants, for God's sake? This is a lot of trouble for a check that could have just been mailed to me. But then, I suppose, she couldn't make it sufficiently uncomfortable for me to gloss over the fine print when I sign whatever release she shoves at me.

Trust me, lady, I would sign anything at 9 in the morning as long as it got me one step closer to going back to bed.

Photobucket is down, and so are my images

2008-06-17T23:47:00.002-05:00

I'm too lazy to transfer my banner and my background pattern to Flickr, so use your imagination until Photobucket's back up and running.

I can't possibly be expected to get any work done from this day forward

2008-06-17T23:33:00.006-05:00

The Spore-izing of my life begins ... now.

This here's my first try, aptly named Darwin. (If I had to guess, I'd say probably half of the first batch of Spore creatures will be named Darwin. Originality never was my strong suit.)

And this here's Scrap Heap:

Download the Creature Creator trial version here. Unless you've got a slightly old Mac (my four-year-old dinosaur doesn't stand a chance). Then you're screwed!

Check out the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Trogdor!

You had to be there

2008-06-16T01:10:00.002-05:00

While playing Apples to Apples tonight, the green apple card called for "cruel."

Someone threw in "Martha Stewart," which is funny for its own reasons, of course. After it was all said and done, the youngest nephew explained why he had done so: "Casey had told me that she was going to ban hunting!"

My sister did a spit-take.

The importance of proper letter spacing, vol. 2

2008-06-11T01:32:00.004-05:00

It's not as bad as this, but it makes me wonder if there is an epidemic of church signs with questionable letter spacing. Which, yeah, obviously, I'm sure there is.

I'm trying to figure out if there's some play on words I'm not getting, or why the words would be arranged this way, and I've got nothing. All I know is that telling people they can come be apart of the church family isn't a terribly welcoming way to recruit new members.

Describing Billie

2008-06-11T01:02:00.006-05:00

I've been on a real Billie Holiday kick lately. I attribute this development to something akin to typical mid-twenties labor pains and the fact that it's already nasty hot and it's not even summer yet. Putting a Billie Holiday record on has roughly the same effect on a room as turning on an oscillating fan and taking off a couple of layers of clothes. The only way the setting could possibly improve is if you've got one hand clenched around a glass of champagne, and your other arm wrapped tightly around a man who smells like soap and salt, your chin perched on his shoulder as you two shuffle side by side to the slow, swinging beat, your shadows long from the candlelight.

Early last year, I posted about an NPR segment called "Vocal impressions", where listeners described various iconic American voices. I offered up a description of Al Green's voice at the time that I'm still actually pretty happy with ("A lovesick panther with a shard of glass stuck in his paw").

But Billie? She's proving a bit harder to describe, though I sure would love to pin her sound down.

A fully-grown woman, sipping bourbon while playing hopscotch.

The dew dripping off an old wooden radio, left sitting on the porch.

A hot-air balloon drifting into the sunset.

Homemade lemonade and sweat at dusk.

A trumpet mute made out of daisies.

Help me out.

Hitched

2008-06-11T00:24:00.004-05:00

This weekend I got to witness two fabulous people get hitched in style as the sun set over sleepy Decatur County, Tenn. (site of the last wedding I went to, oddly enough; apparently Parsons/Decaturville is right up there with cinnamon rolls and oysters as an effective aphrodisiac). It was classy and sweet and funny and genuine and all sorts of nice things that made me feel pretty silly for being so (supposedly) unsentimental. I loved seeing the mohawked hipster kids picking fruit and cheese straws from the same buffet as the grannies and the ruddy uncles. I loved sipping clandestine liquor drinks out of red plastic cups prepared out of a car trunk. I loved the muscadine vines and the cherry tree and the white globe lights strung like low-lying linear constellations. I loved the nephews doing roundhouse kicks on the dance floor and the nieces being prim and helpful. I loved stepping away from the white-clothed tables to spray scentless Off! all over my limbs. I loved the silly dancing (which I merely observed for documentary purposes) and the celebratory smoking of Black & Milds. I loved all the laughter and how close I got to getting choked up over all the goodwill in the air.

And I loved the feeling that the whole thing was the beginning of something so much bigger for two pretty amazing people.

Oh, and?

2008-06-04T11:58:00.002-05:00

:)

UPDATE: Um, I was afraid this was going to happen. Note to Newseum: It would be super duper awesome if you'd create permalinks for the daily front page analysis. That way, when bloggers link to, say, the analysis of all the Obama nomination front pages, they don't come back the next day and see that their link now goes to some malarky about hockey. So, anyway, my smiley was a brief and lazy way of saying YAY OBAMA.

While you were sweating

2008-06-04T11:03:00.004-05:00

Holy hell, it got humid fast. I don't care if "quickly" is preferred standard English grammar there or not. When you're talking about humidity, you spit the words out and get it over with and then go back inside and take a bath in iced tea.

Mmmm, iced tea.

Anyway, I would like to sit and write and write about lots of different things, but my eyes are still dilated from the eye doctor this morning and I can't focus on the damn screen. The good news is that my vision hasn't gotten worse in a year and a half. That's unheard of for me. So I may finally be stable enough to consider Lasik. Which means that if I am in a plane crash and get stranded on an island, I won't be the weakest link because I lost a fucking contact lens during the crash. (I know I'm only on the second season of Lost, so maybe that plot device is yet to come, but seriously — where are all my vision-impaired brothers and sisters who would be up the proverbial shit creek were they to land on an island with a pair of broken glasses or no spare contacts? Yes, these are the things I think about when I watch that show.*)

More good news: Yesterday I came in to work only to find out that I'd won a Scripps quarterly design award. Yee haw! I got a certificate and everything. I'm pretty proud. I've had a lot of help this year and been given a lot of freedom to create some pretty cool designs, so I'm really thankful for that. Here are the pages that clinched the win:

Apparently the judges really liked the tornado A1. We were sure to include the backstory with the description of the page. (That was the night we had to hoof it to the basement twice and lost at least an hour of production time and they still expected us to meet our regular deadlines. Oh, and it was Super effing Tuesday, too.)

*UPDATE: Oh, duh. As someone who does not exist on the internet reminded me, Sawyer has shitty vision. Although, they kind of abandoned that storyline real quicklike.

Surreality, cont'd

2008-05-29T01:01:00.009-05:00

I notice that BetteDavisLies over at Complacencies of the Peignoir has a post up about strange encounters of late. (If you're not already reading this blog, may I politely insist that you do so immediately? It's good stuff.)

I have an incomplete and unoriginal theory about the strangeness that periodically seeps through the linen-wrapped Southern spring and summer days: It's all about the heat. We all go a little more nuts the higher the mercury climbs. We try to be still and watch the world move around us so as to not get any hotter and sweatier than we already are, so what usually feels like molasses-as-usual moving around us is suddenly transformed into something completely cracked out. Something like anthropomorphic, slightly mentally unstable dandelion seeds floating in all directions, carried by whims and wind. But just because you remain calm and still doesn't mean those crazy seeds won't find you and implant themselves directly in your slackened mouth.

This weekend my oldest friend Palm Tree, who lives in Buffalo, N.Y., came into town, driven by none other than Lady Sarah Saint. We had less than twenty-four hours together, so we crammed as much of Memphis in as we could. Okay, as Much Memphis food as we could.

Our midday milkshake break took us to Quetzal, where I planned to knock down a Dark Ruby (an unholily delicious combination of ice cream, espresso, chocolate sauce and raspberry). We pulled into the back parking lot and, upon seeing the establishment's proprietor standing with another person at the back door, I decided to pantomime putting money into the parking meter so as to not risk death or, even worse, a parking ticket. (I remember when Quetzal's back parking lot was free and I refuse to acknowledge that it is anything but free now, but I will pretend to put money in the honesty slot when necessary.)

We walked to the door slowly because the proprietor (whose name I know but feel uncomfortable using because I don't know him personally, so let's just call him, I don't know, FRED) and his young gentleman friend were having somewhat of a friendly spat there in the doorway. Both of them were wearing plain white T-shirts and I was briefly worried that we would be violating some sort of dress code were we to gain entrance. Fred put his hand on the young man's neck as if to pull him inside the building and clear the doorway for us, but the young man was having none of it.

He finally followed Fred into the building and cleared the path for us. We followed him down the ramp into the dining room, and I realized, upon tracking his zig-zagging path with my eagle eyes, that he was shitfaced. We kept our pace slow so as to not draw his attention; I don't care to interact with dudes who are so drunk that they can't walk a semi-straight line. Dude was all over the place. So the three of us stood and stared at the menu (I never can remember how to order at Quetzal) and waited for someone to ask us if we'd like to order something. This seemingly painless server/customer transaction took a painfully long time, as everyone there seemed to be completely engrossed in Drunk Dude's hijinks, which included wandering behind the counter and stumbling around in places where no one was standing.

Drunk Dude eyed me, PT, and SS, and asked, squinty-eyed, "How Y'ALL doin'?!"

"Pretty good," I replied, sparing my guests the awkwardness of interacting with a random drunk Memphian. "How are YOU doing?"

Drunk Dude gave me an enthusiastic yet squinty-eyed thumbs up: "I'm doing FUCKING AWESOME."

Finally, someone was prepared to take our orders at the register, but clerk dude balked when I told him our order was not to go. He told us to have a seat, and that we'd get quicker service that way.

My mind thoroughly boggled (I mean, how complicated would it have been for him to take our orders then instead of having us go to a table so he had to walk over to get our orders?), I led the group dejectedly to a table to sit and wait to be waited on. It took a bit, but finally some chipper blonde-haired lady came out to take our orders. We tried ordering various things, only to find out that the place was out of whipped cream AND white chocolate. FOR SHAME. But we rolled with the punches and placed our orders and waited, all the while keeping tabs on Drunk Dude, who was obviously either a current or former employee with a chip on his sleeve and a lack of things to do in the middle of the day that would keep him from coming to work completely drunk.

We got our 'shakes, finally, and they were divine. Truly transcendent. Then we heard the tell-tale whack-tinkle-crash of someone's accidental fuck-up as who knows how many glass items went crashing to the fashionable concrete floor. We're thinking that obviously Drunk Dude has started thrashing about, but I spot him next to the bar and he looks back at me and gives me what is possibly the best fist-pump I've ever seen. As in, Dude, did you hear that fucking shit crash?! Fucking A!

It is at this point that the funk music playing on the PA suddenly gets unbelievably, unbearably loud. Like, they took it to eleven. We were screaming across the table to be heard. I can only speak for myself, but I thought it was awesome because they were playing "Rollercoaster of Love," and if there's one song you need to crank up, it's that one. We start grooving to the stupidly loud music and suddenly it gets cut off and there's silence. The dining room — consisting now of us plus one dude on a laptop, one woman and her companion eating lunch, and three people sharing a computer in the computer lounge portion of the dining room — is confused. The music starts up again, this time playing "Brick House," LOUD. There is dancing. The wait staff is grooving. Our server is booty-dancing back in the kitchen. We're nursing our milkshakes. The three older people on the computer are dancing. Our server dances with another server out on the floor. The music switches back over to "Rollercoaster." I feel like I'm living a moment out of someone's much cooler life.

We're informed that within thirty minutes Quetzal will be closed. We suck down the remainder of our milkshakes and wait on our server to bring us the check. We send her back with a card and wait on the receipt to sign.

Suddenly waiter dude from earlier (the one who told us to go sit down) comes over to our table, caution in his eyes, and gives us a WTF look: "Um, we're closing!" he screams over the music. "Yeah, we know! She's got our card!" we scream, gesturing wildly toward the counter. How dare he make us feel like idiots.

Receipt signed, we grooved our way out of Quetzal that evening, taking note of our fellow restaurant-goers and their hilarious white-people dancing. (We were all doing hilarious white-people dancing.) It was one of the oddest forty-five minute sequences I've ever lived through. Odd in a good way, though.

Then PT and SS and I went to Rite-Aid for Advil and guess who was at the front desk being silly and outlandish with his customers! For bonus points, guess what toothy Australian disco band was playing on the PA.

I'm telling you, it's the heat.

UPDATE: Thanks to my pal PT, we've got a video snippet! If you watch closely behind Sarah, you can see our server doin' some brief rumpshakin'.

Jive talkin'

2008-05-23T11:28:00.005-05:00

I'm convinced that the neighborhood Rite Aid is a magical place after 11:30 p.m.

It is guaranteed that if I go there as midnight approaches, something wacky is going to happen. If these strange encounters keep up, I'm going to have to start up ithappenedatriteaid.blogspot.com (don't any of you bastards steal my idea!).

Anyway, last night's trip for shampoo and gum and face wash was no exception to the wacky late-night Rite Aid rule.

I walked in, expecting the slightly creepy nighttime clerk to greet me, but there was no one behind the counter up front. I perused the face wash section, got what I needed, and made my way down the shampoo aisle. It was at that point that I actually started hearing the lyrics of the song playing on the PA.

Something about America, America ... how awesome it is ... people taking our jobs ... if you see a product that says it's made anywhere but America, put it down ... etc. I stood slack-jawed as I listened, as I was sure it was parody. But, no. I'm pretty sure it was for reals. I've done some Googling to try to find out what song it is and who sings it, but I've had no luck. It didn't even sound like a country song. It just sucked outright.

Shampoo and face wash acquired, I made my way down the beer aisle and said "excuse me" as I walked in front of some youngish dude with long hair who was carrying on a conversation/musical with himself. He chuckled mightily at my passing — I'm not sure if I should be offended or not — and studied the beer case with great scrutiny. I grabbed a six-pack of overpriced sugar beer (cider) and made my way up to the counter, full of anticipation for what the checkout process was going to bring me.

See, every time I go to Rite Aid in the middle of the night, I have to squirm my way through an awkward conversation with the clerk. There was this incident a while back, and there was another incident with the same clerk where he told me I looked like I was twelve and inquired again as to my relationship status, and there was an incident or two with another glassy-eyed clerk who was a little heavy on the flirting and a little too interested in my driver's license. He followed me out to my car when I forgot a bag, handed it to me, and said, "Don't worry, I'm not stalking you!" The next time I came back he told me he thought my favorite cider flavor was Granny Smith because that's "what you always buy." Even though I'd only bought cider once before, and it was the Amber kind. Yeah. Just a little creepy. Just a smidge.

So last night I'm unloading my little basket onto the counter and a clerk I've never seen before comes up and says hello loudly and flamboyantly. He begins scanning my items. I pull my debit card out of the little changepurse I keep it in, and wait for him to total me out. But he's standing there, craning his neck to read what's written on the changepurse. I help him out: "Being rich is awesome," I tell him. "Awesome clothes, awesome pets, awesome friends, awesome teeth, awesome bill payments." (It's some snarky changepurse I got at Spin Street in the sale bin.)

"Oooooh, that's funny," he says. "You know, the other night I saw South Park for the first time since the first season. It was the episode about Paris Hilton."

"You know, I don't think I've watched South Park since about the first season," I say, wondering what his point is.

"Well, she opens up a store called 'Stupid Spoiled Whore,'" he explains.

"Ahhhh. Ha."

"Could you please show your ID for the camera?" he asks.

I hand him my license and he eyes it for a second, then dramatically waves it in the air and hands it back to me.

And here comes the transitional portion of the story where, if I were a better listener/storyteller, I'd be able to remember/make up something to segue into the next bit. But I'm seriously blanking out on how we got to the next portion, which I can remember like it was all uttered three seconds ago.

The clerk is telling me about the time he was followed by the FBI from a downtown building, because it was shortly after Sept. 11 and you had to show a drivers license to get into downtown government buildings.

"I said, 'I'm not an Arab terrorist but my neighbors are!'" the clerk tells me. "Will you be getting cash back?"

I laugh, say no, and he quickly explains that he is serious — his neighbors really are Arab terrorists. At this point, another late-night shopper has strolled through the automatic sliding doors, and the clerk pauses his story to loudly greet him: "WHAT UP, G?!"

I note that the song about America's awesomeness had ended and that the Bee Gee's "Jive Talkin'" is playing. I can barely contain myself. That is an awesome fucking song.

"Anyway," he says to me, "I don't know how they found me because my home address wasn't even on my license, so they had to follow me home that day. Then they showed up on my doorstep. Meanwhile my terrorist neighbors continued to terrorize the neighborhood!"

I smirk. "Wow. Your tax dollars at work!"

"That's right," he says, handing me my bag. "Welcome to Ammurrikuh, young lady!"

I grab the bag and step away from the counter, noticing that there are people in line behind me. "Have a good one!"

"I will," the clerk replies, full of conviction.

If Twitter was a horse ...

2008-05-21T17:01:00.001-05:00

I'd fucking shoot it.

I would have tweeted this nugget of nonsense but, surprise, I haven't been able to get it working all day.

Hello.

2008-05-21T11:33:00.004-05:00

Maybe I am dead. Because this is the first substantial stretch of time during the five years this blog has existed that there's been nothing going on that I absolutely had to write about, even though there's been plenty going on. It proves, at least for me, that blogging is strongly habitual and that if you truly devote yourself to the laziness within, it can overcome anything.

All kidding aside, I've been a lazy piece of shit since getting back from vacation. I always go through post-vacation depression. Always. I think this particular bout of nonsense has been compounded by the fact that I was mind-numbingly busy from mid-April until just this past weekend. I like being busy but once the work/play obligations clear up, it's like coming down off of a drug. There's withdrawal then recalibration. And in between there is a lot of crap food and a lack of exercising. Cue the self-esteem issues, and we've gotten ourselves into a lovely little circular rut.

I realized today while transferring important dates from my 2007 calendar to my new 2008 calendar (yes, I said new; I suck at life and just now got one AND it cost me $6.50!) that the cats were born on April 20, not April 11 like I thought a month ago. I suppose it doesn't matter anyway, but you'd think I would be able to remember that they were born on 4/20. You'd think...

Dead air

2008-05-16T10:36:00.003-05:00

I'm not dead. Just distracted. I think I may have temporarily lost my blogging mojo. It'll probably come back. I just needed a little break.

In the meantime, I must insist that you watch this:

Vacating

2008-05-05T00:06:00.004-05:00

I don't know why I'm still up. Oh wait, yes I do. BECAUSE I AM A GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT. And instead of packing and going to bed like any normal person about to fly down to Florida for a week of beachy funtimes and Radiohead, I'm uploading photos from the weekend to Flickr. And I haven't even gotten to today's MusicFest pictures. I guess they'll have to wait until I get back Thursday and then I'll just do one massive photodump, yay.

Saturday my cousin Keri got hitched. It was a sweet ceremony on the river in Decatur County as the sun set. We were mooned by some boaters (see above; click the photo and then check out the large size for details). No one wanted to catch the boquet OR the garter. Bunch of commitmentphobes, I tell you whut. Anyway, good times in Parsons complete with horribly vulgar things written in shoe polish on the couples' windshields. I hope Keri and Randy are together for the long haul. I'd hate for her to have to put another wedding together. Yow! That's a lot of work.

Okay, enough internetting. I need to pack and clean up the apartment so I'm not instantly depressed when I get back later this week.

Fran quote of the day

2008-05-04T00:18:00.000-05:00

"You know, this stop sign really messes up the momentum."

Borrowed raincoat, borrowed galoshes, and borrowed time

2008-05-02T15:30:00.003-05:00

The teevee tells me that the weather's gone all orange and pink and red. It's disgusting, mixing those colors like that.

About an hour ago I was driving north on Avalon, taking a right onto Madison, when I saw the biggest fucking lightning streak I have ever seen. It was so big because it was seemingly right in fucking front of me, and its union with whatever it struck created the loudest and sickest boom-snap-crackle-fizz in the air around me, and set off car alarms all around the Piggly Wiggly.

It made my teeth hurt.

So, like many other level-headed young adults in this city, I'll be spending the evening at the Beale Street Music Festival downtown on the riverfront, blogging for the Commercial Appeal's MIM blog. I've got Courtney's galoshes, Donna's raincoat, and, if I can sneak out of the office in an hour or two, all night to devote to some mud-stompin', hurricane-drinkin', and music-listening.

Should be a good time. If I don't get electrocuted.

The morning-after pill

2008-04-28T18:11:00.004-05:00

I saw the sun rise this morning and not on purpose. It just kind of happened when I neglected to go to bed last night and instead sat out on my balcony with Sarah and Rebecca, eating brie and blabbing about who knows what, and thinking a little too hard about the stuff I always think too hard about, which means I woke up kind of sad this morning and have spent most of the day lying in bed with the cats. The windows are open and we've all been just lying in the sunlight, smelling the breeze, and listening to soccer practice in the field next door.

Tequila makes me crazier, I think, than I already am. If that's possible. When will they invent a pill that will eradicate the worry and shame you feel the day after you've christened spring with tequila and an apartment full of friends and, at one point, ceremoniously tromped through your living room, asking loudly if anyone's ever, um, lost a tampon? Because I need a whole crate of those pills.

The past few days have been pretty intense. I've barely had time to stop and breathe, but I seem to be happier when I'm busy. Sarah stayed with me for a couple of days and kept me entertained, and Fritz and his Fuckleberry Hound have been in town to visit and we've laughed and laughed at so many inappropriate jokes.

I'm amazed at how many ridiculously funny people I know. Having an apartment full of them makes me get all corny and sentimental. Oh my god, I am such a girl.

It's kind of a bummer that the apartment is empty now, but, well ... shit.

Postlude to a zombie walk

2008-04-27T11:25:00.004-05:00

I'm busy busy busy today but I just have to get in a quick post about the zombie walk. It went off more or less without a hitch and I was again impressed with the turnout and the amazing creativity of the horror-obsessed in this town. I mean, seriously. I love being able to help foster an outlet that is so much fun for so many people. It's corny, but I love that part of it. I love hearing onlookers talk about the zombie walk — "they do it every year," I heard someone say; "there's three ways to become a zombie" I heard some well-dressed young woman explain to her friend as they saw us pass — and it tickles me to no end to think that it's becoming some kind of yearly Memphis cultural staple.

Spring is zombie time in Memphis, Tenn. I love it, love it, love it.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the walk (full set is here), but there are a ton of much better ones in the official Flickr pool here.

Sorry, gotta post one more of this baby. The kid looked absolutely gobsmacked.

Prelude to a zombie walk

2008-04-25T00:08:00.003-05:00

My nerves are all jangly. To calm them, I've mixed myself some ungodly combination of rum and Sobe LifeWater that looks like urine and tastes slightly less repulsive than urine. The nastiness of the drink is taking my mind of my nervousness, which I just wrote as "nervisness," if that tells you anything about my state of mind right now.

I'm worried about tomorrow's zombie walk turnout. Last year was so unbelievably huge that, as I told a friend the other day, I'm afraid we'll experience a sophomore slump this year. It's hard to gauge the turnout on these things; last year I thought maybe 30 people would show up and it ended up being more like 300. This year I'm anticipating a couple hundred and that makes me worry that it will be more like 30.

The potentially rainy weather makes me worry even more. People who would come out for this are pretty hardcore and probably wouldn't mind a little rain, but I figure substantial rain and anything remotely stormy will keep people — especially families — away. Which sucks. I love me some zombie families. Not to mention the tourist turnout on Beale and the foot-traffic turnout for the art trolley tour will be lighter if it rains.

Oh well, it should be a fun time regardless. Or as Courtney likes to say*, irregardless. The Creeping Cruds are going to play at E&H afterward, and I'm looking forward to seeing them. I can't wait to see what kind of pictures I can snag of the whole thing. (Another reason I'm hoping the rain holds off: I don't want to eff up my camera.)

Plus Fritz and his Fuckleberry Hound are coming to town to visit. And Sarah might come into town, too!

So cross your severed appendages for us, please. Actually, you can do one better and come downtown to be part of the madness at 6:30 p.m.

* Hahahahaha! You'll have to wait until Saturday to punch me for that.

The importance of proper letter spacing

2008-04-23T03:21:00.002-05:00

Back in eighth grade, I had a literature teacher who kept me after class one day to ask me a question about something I'd written in my poetry journal. Back in the day, my schtick was to make drawings in the margins of my journals, illustrating whatever it was that I had written about.

On this particular day, I had illustrated myself thumping a bitten-off fingernail. Beside the sketch of my fingers moving swiftly to propel the hangnail across the page was the word "flick," written in uppercase, comic book-style.

Mrs. Yeiser was concerned that I'd written something else there. Something that — even though it made no sense in the context of the drawing — would have gotten me in big trouble had she sussed it out.

I assured her that, no, I really did mean "FLICK," even though, yes, I could see how from a certain angle, it might certainly seem as though I'd written something much more controversial.

Ever since that day I've been particularly keen on the importance of proper kerning.

So when I saw this sign in Saltillo over the weekend, I made my sister stop the car and turn around so I could get a photo.

The Church of Christ needs to work on its sign's kerning.

FRIDAY.

2008-04-22T14:27:00.004-05:00

Oh, fuck yes:

Kudos to Chris Blank and the CA's video team for making this. Very cool!

[The embed code is giving me fits; click here if the video doesn't load.]

I needed this

2008-04-20T22:52:00.006-05:00

The sunset tonight was pink for twenty seconds, and then it dissolved into orange and blue. I know because I was outside -- paying attention for once -- my old softball glove on one hand and one of those pitted practice softballs in the other, readying to hurl it toward my brother, who was intent on hitting it over the bales of hay far behind me and into the pasture.

He never did hit it that far, but he did manage to get it stuck underneath the rusty old white car sitting beside the shed on my grandmother's property. It took four of us -- me, Evan, and the nephews -- hunting for that damn ball for ten minutes before it turned up. I can't believe no one got bitten by a snake.

I have successfully consumed three different types of meat today -- four if you count hot dogs as a type of meat all their own -- and I'm pretty sure the combination of meat and running around like a moron, trying to relive my glory days as a softball player, has rendered me very nearly immobile. I can hardly move. I'm doing the old-lady groan every time I get up. Everyone kept warning me: "You better scoot up; you're not as young as you used to be!" But I threw caution to the wind and hurled that ball from amazing distances of twenty -- no, twenty-two! -- feet.

All the aches in the world are worth it.

This weather is so nice...

2008-04-20T10:54:00.003-05:00

I want to take it out behind a middle school and get it pregnant.

I was just lamenting last night to Ay that I haven't been to a single cookout this year, and just now my dad calls me to tell me that he's loading up the truck with fifty pounts of ground beef, ten chickens, and two hogs*, but that I may need to pick up hot dogs on my way to Saltillo. Along with triple antibiotic ointment for my mom's hand.

Yum!

* slight exaggeration

I think this qualifies as meta

2008-04-20T03:11:00.003-05:00

Behold! Video in which B.Dill talks on the phone — from my apartment in Memphis — with his friends in New York who are (er, were) doing a live streaming webcast art project in which they held various conversations for 24 hours.

Extremely meta from Lindsey Turner on Vimeo.

Whoa.

I'm new here ... and by 'here' I mean 'to Earth'

2008-04-19T21:02:00.001-05:00

[Scene: Walking through the courtyard into work, passing someone leaving the building.]

Cheery co-worker: Hi, how are you?
Me, smiling: Good, how are you?
Cheery co-worker: Beautiful day!
Me, smiling: You too!

5.5

2008-04-19T13:04:00.003-05:00

I've been eyeing my bathroom soap for weeks now, wondering why the hell the manufacturers opted to prominently include the soap's PH balance on the bottle. Almost like it might sway some frantic soap-buyer to pick Select Brand over some other generic crap — let's see, they both come in cucumber melon, but Select Brand's soap has a PH balance of 5.5!!!.

I kept trying to come up with more useful things the bottle designers could have put in that little oval. Maybe that neat Jesus optical illusion ...

... or even the time-dependent Schroedinger equation for one spatial dimension ...

... but then I actually started reading about soap and I realized that liquid soap generally has a lower and more skin-friendly PH than bar soap, so bragging about a PH balance of 5.5 is actually kinda legit, even if casual soap-buyers are oblivious, and all my snark melted away into a sticky pool of new knowledge.

Fucking internet.

Important phone-related update

2008-04-18T01:00:00.002-05:00

This song is my ringtone:

This is the song I wanted but couldn't get:

Okay, carry on with your regularly scheduled lives.

Surgery

2008-04-18T00:08:00.003-05:00

This time last year I was recovering from foot surgery. The doctor's bandaging was bothering me something fierce, so I had my mom, a nurse, re-wrap it. She infused the fresh wrapping with extra mommy goodness and it felt great. Well, better.

In the year since this photo was taken, my mom's hands have grown increasingly useless to her. She's got carpal tunnel syndrome, and has had bouts with its symptoms that were so bad she had to call into work because she couldn't drive (her commute is an hour each way).

She's a phlebotomist, which means she works with needles all day and has to make repetitive pinching and squeezing motions. She lives with constant pain and there are days she can't take it, and the numbness takes over and she can't do her job.

This bothers her a lot.

So she decided to get surgery on both her hands today (Friday) to correct the problem. My dad had carpal tunnel surgery several years ago and experienced initial relief and then some recurring pain and numbness down the road. His hands never became 100 percent again. There's really no way to know if the surgery will fix the problem or not. Usually it helps. She's hoping it helps.

They advise you to do one hand at a time. You know, so no one gets stuck wiping your ass for a few weeks. So in a few hours, she'll be going under the knife to have her right hand fixed.

I'm hoping it all goes well and she's got full functionality as soon as possible.

It's killing her that she can't dig around in her flowerbeds right now.

A new toy!

2008-04-17T02:09:00.002-05:00

Well, just a new feature I found on a toy I've had for a month now.

I was at my friend Ay's house the other night — you might remember her as my samesexheterodate from a couple of weeks back (let's just say we hit if off so well we skipped from first base to sliding into third by getting shooed out of the P&H for heckling open-mic comedians) — when she showed me the neat-o time-lapse movies her Coolpix would make, and in a fit of frame-rate envy, I discovered my Coolpix would not take time-lapse videos but just a string of 16 consecutive frames, which, while not nearly as cool as time-lapse video, still has its own artsy-fartsy potential that I will no doubt milk dry.

So I look forward to running this feature into the ground.

That's Ay's heater in the photo above. From the way she tells it, that damn thing is worthless, as it is always 22 degrees in her apartment.

Nerdgasm alert: What if 'Futurama' was real?

2008-04-16T20:32:00.003-05:00

It might look like this:

Click to enlargify.

HT: Pajiba

A visual answer to Sarah's question

2008-04-15T10:46:00.003-05:00

Miraculously, they look and feel just like they do the day I bought them.

I think perhaps we can credit genetic engineering. Still, I'm afraid to crack them open for the fear that it will be nothing but a maggot metropolis. So, they sit.

I'm the one who makes the hot dogs

2008-04-15T10:41:00.001-05:00

Ah, I miss Opryland.

I remember going there once clad in my finest white spandex shorts.

Unsettling

2008-04-15T00:12:00.002-05:00

Here it is, the middle of April, and suddenly the radiator in my bedroom sounds like it's being beaten by half a dozen sledgehammer-wielding little people who are pissed off that their jobs are being sent to Singapore. All so some heat can be pumped into my apartment.

It's spring, right?

Just checking.

Mission update, for those who care

2008-04-14T17:44:00.002-05:00

The balcony is clean. I am filthy.

Success!

Things of varying levels of randomosity

2008-04-14T13:05:00.005-05:00

• I saw Run Fatboy Run* last night with Courtney. It was funny and oh so very corny — man, the symphony was swelling on the soundtrack — with its storyline about a sad sack dude who shirks his duty as a soon-to-be husband and father by leaving his pregnant bride at the altar, and then five years later decides to win her back by running a marathon. That's a pretty idiotic premise, and I usually love idiotic premises. Anyway, had it been anyone but Simon Pegg in the main role, I might have hated this movie. But I lurve him, and he and Dylan Moran have some fantastic chemistry as well (arguably more chemistry than either of them with Thandie Newton, who boasts an impressive array of pretty but vacant expressions; also, she sported an awesome bead and stone necklace that I will own a badly imitated copy of some day).

Yeah, so. Lots of unexpected man ass in this movie, though. And a blister-popping scene that nearly sent me over the seats in front of us. But mostly it's just Simon Pegg being Simon Pegg and making silly Simon Pegg faces, and that's worth the price of admission. Until I get tired of him, of course.

Oh, and I should mention that the most charming character in the entire movie is the city of London itself. I've never been to London, but I love how so many movies set there make it seem like everyone lives in the same little neighborhood, and every little charming village is within walking distance of a bustling downtown.

And is that building that's shaped like a buttplug (Courtney says it's shaped like a rocket ... to-may-to, to-mah-to) a real building? Is that a question that's going to get me laughed at? Is there a bone in my body that cares? Checking ... ... ... nope!

Seriously, though, I need to get on a plane to London and fast. Who's with me?

• COURTNEY BOUGHT ME A UNIVERSAL REMOTE. The best part? IT WORKS. I'm sorry. When I get excited, I type in allcaps. This means that last night she got her first taste of Strangers With Candy, which I shove on all my friends at one point or another because everyone needs to have a taste of the awesomeness, and everyone needs to know why I say "good times!" all the time. Even in bad times.

• My universal remote also allowed me to watch Paris, Je T'aime, which had come highly recommended to me and I have to say I really did love. It's a movie of vignettes, short little films by lots of different directors (including the Coen brothers and my man Alfonso Cuarón), all of which are about love of some sort. Some are optimistic, some are bittersweet, some are outright depressing, but all of them are quite beautiful in their own way.

I can't watch a movie about Paris — even a freaking cartoon about rats who cook — without giving myself a mental tongue-lashing for never having visited there. It seems absolutely magical. I love the density of the population and the buildings. I love the old streets, old walls, old iron fences, and old trees, and the touches of new that keep the old world and the new forever intertwined. I love the feeling that Paris has always been there and will always be there. I wonder if that's an illusion coming across because of the loving way filmmakers treat the city. There's really only one way to find out, I guess. And that's to get there. So. London and Paris. Someday, I hope.

• I went into Burke's yesterday on the hunt for Jeanette Winterson's new book, The Stone Gods. They didn't have it. But I'm a sucker and can't leave a bookstore without buying a book, so I picked up Leonard Cohen's Book of Longing.

It was the first time I'd been in Burke's since they moved into their new space in Cooper-Young. I have to say, I'm not crazy about the new space. I suppose it's smaller, though I don't know by how much. It seems colder than the old space. Maybe it's a high ceilings and the concrete. I'm not sure. I dug being able to walk around C-Y, though.

• I really need to try out that little restaurant next to Burke's. First I should learn its name.

• There are two tiny pumpkins, a pot of dead mums, countless cigarette butts, and two garbage bags — one full of dirt, the other full of garbage — on my balcony. I'm making it my mission as soon as I hit publish on this meandering piece o' crap post to go out there and clean all of that up and make way for some new plants that maybe I won't kill this time. Ahem.

• I noticed the other day that the roof of Anderton's East has caved in. I wasn't able to get a picture, but you could clearly through the front windows that the roof had collapsed. I don't remember seeing news that they are tearing that building down. :(

*Can we get a consensus on how to punctuate this, please? Rotten Tomatoes has it as Run, Fat Boy, Run and IMDb has Run Fatboy Run, which I went with after a lengthy philosophical discussion with myself involving commas and previously nonexistent compound nouns and OH MY GOD does anyone else in the world give this kind of inane crap any thought?

Testes, testes, one, two ... three?

2008-04-13T02:47:00.002-05:00

Sorry for all the Crackberry shenanigans of late. I'm just trying to figure out a way to post photos from my phone that come across as the same width as other photos I post from my Flickr. All my phone pics are coming across — even on the highest quality setting — as quite smaller than the other pics. It's a small quibble, I guess, but I'm INSANE, which means it bothers me.

I can go into each post after the fact and bump up the file size, but that results in even blurrier pictures. Lame!

Eh, I'm not going to worry about it too much.

At least this whole ordeal gave me a chance to make a Beavis and Butthead joke. Don't even try to act like you didn't laugh.

Filesize test

2008-04-13T02:45:00.001-05:00

Yet another test

2008-04-13T02:43:00.001-05:00

Why did my last photo not come through?!?

Noooooooooooooo!

2008-04-12T00:56:00.002-05:00

I knew it was coming. But, man, I held out an irrational hope that it wouldn't actually happen. And like all irrational hopes, this one was dashed. Dashed!
So, my downstairs neighbors are relocating to another unit in the building because they recently had a baby and it's damned hard to survive with a newborn in a one-bedroom apartment. From what I understand of the parenting world, you need a spare room to occasionally lock yourself inside and scream. Or maybe you lock the baby in there and let it scream. Whatever. Specifics. I don't care for them that much.

Anyhoo, so the neighbors are moving. This is great news for me — not because I don't like them or anything — but because it lets me off the hook for the middle-of-the-night shenanigans that invariably happen in this apartment thanks to my odd work schedule and my cats' insistence upon playing hyper-tag every morning at 3 a.m. So I've been reveling in my ability to walk around without tiptoeing and I've even let my cats wrassle at midnight without spitting profanities at them. It's been great!

Er, was great, until my former neighbor reminded me the other day that their moving also means the cable will be transferred to their new apartment. Which means no cable for me. Perhaps you remember this incident, in which I tried to get cable, but couldn't. The neighbors, a few weeks after I tried in vain to get my own cable, graciously offered to share theirs with me. Which I'm pretty sure is only illegal in communist China, because I TRIED to pay for cable and was told by the cable dudes themselves that it wasn't going to be worth the wait. So for the past two years I've been sharing cable with the neighbors and now they're gone and *poof* so is the cable.

This would be a lot more palatable if my remote worked and I could at least use my DVD player. I've got Netflix envelopes stacking up and a ton of movies/TV show DVDs I could watch. But no. My TV is stuck in cable mode. I guess I need to hunt for a universal remote.

In the meantime, this means no more VH1 countdown shows, no more hilarious rape-themed movies on Lifetime, no more over-wrought episodes of CSI, no more Paranormal State, no more 13-hour ANTM marathons that render me unable to move, no more Real World/Road Rules challenges, no more INFOMERCIALS. You may think I'm better off for it, and you may be right, BUT YOU'RE WRONG. Cable makes me what I am. It connects me to the rest of humanity's lazy contingent. It gives me ideas and pisses me off. Cable is life.

Ha! I'm kidding. I know plenty of people who survive and even thrive with no cable. Hell, I've gone through periods without cable. That summer in Birmingham, the first several months I lived here, the first few months I lived on my own in M'boro, many many months during my formative years (although we did have illegal satellite for a time when I was a pre-teen). I can do it. I can do it.

I just don't want to.

Window washer

2008-04-11T14:59:00.003-05:00

Guess who's a year old today

2008-04-11T13:05:00.003-05:00

Freckleface and Gingerballs, that's who. I tried a to put hats on them but it turned out as you might have predicted.

Let's see ... in cat years, this makes me eighty.

Here's to many more years and many more pieces of furniture that will need re-upholstering.

Another test; tonight's storms rollin'

2008-04-11T01:14:00.001-05:00

Testing the crackberry

2008-04-11T01:08:00.001-05:00

Just to see if it will play nice with blogger mobile.

Soundtrack to this week: Bloody fight edition

2008-04-10T01:41:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Paul's Muxtape, I have a new favorite band.

In which I relent and buy a phone that's smarter than I am

2008-04-10T01:05:00.001-05:00

I'll let you know as soon as I get the damned thing working.

So close

2008-04-10T00:26:00.003-05:00

Felix, in his old age, sleeps a lot. He likes his food mixed with warm water to make it softer on his old teeth. He's skinny and frail and sometimes he trips while scuttling across the hardwood floors.

It's hard to watch him get old.

Monday we had a close call. I made plans with Phil — visitation plans, I guess you could call them, since I hadn't seen him in more than a month — and thought we might take Felix to the park to run around like he used to do.

I won't get into the specifics, but Phil and I got into a curbside discussion about actually taking Felix out. I said we should, he said we shouldn't, repeat ad nauseam. So Phil brought Felix out to the car so I could at least see him.

So I scritched Felix and gave him as much attention as he would take before demanding to be let down to explore the floorboards. All of a sudden, while Phil and I are having still more discussions about other weighty things, we notice that Felix has just sort of splayed out in the floorboard and is drooling and can barely move.

This sets in motion a whirlwind of affairs I'd rather not relive, including hysterical, tear-soaked, speed-limit-breaking visits to two separate vet clinics that refused to see a ferret — even one in extreme distress. Talk about fucking pissing me off. Yeah, they're "exotic," but they're not fucking alien. I'm pretty sure any doctor worth his weight in student loans could figure out how to hook up an IV to a ferret and at least get him conscious again.

So yeah, Eastgate — you with your horrible website and your rude, rude doctors who loudly bitched and moaned about having to see a ferret while we were standing RIGHT THE FUCK THERE WHERE WE COULD HEAR YOU — and that other clinic on the corner of East Parkway and Central? You're both dead to me. Fucking Eastgate — I've been a customer there since 2005 and that's where my cats were fixed. But I'll be moving on to another clinic whose doctors maybe can be a bit more compassionate next time.

Okay. I digress.

The good news is that Felix did eventually come around. It took a while, but he started digging around in his towel and licking himself again. And then he would drink water and eat treats. Just half an hour before, he had been completely unresponsive, limp, and drooling everywhere.

I think maybe he got heat exhaustion. Phil thinks it has something to do with carbon monoxide poisoning. Whatever it was seems to have subsided, as Felix is now staying with me for a little while, and he's acting more or less normal. Right now he's curled up underneath my bed, dreaming little ferret dreams about rooting through flowerpots and tormenting rabbits.

I know he's not going to be around forever. But we got a reprieve this time.

Phew.

It's been a really weird day

2008-04-07T19:18:00.003-05:00

Just a little bit ago, I was pulled up to a stop sign, getting ready to take a left onto Nelson from Cox, when I see this red Echo that's heading east on Nelson screech to a halt right in front of the intersection. I think at first that maybe I'm pulled out too far and the driver thought he was going to hit me, but I look and, no, I'm not out in the road at all.

The driver — a balding middle-aged dude in shorts — gets out of the car, looking pissed off and mouthing to no one in particular, and storms off down the sidewalk, heading south on Cox. He's holding a tiny puppy. Not, like, cradling it like I would hold a puppy, but carrying it like you would a set of keys or a cellphone — just kind of as an afterthought or accessory. Yes, the puppy is that tiny. It's white and possibly a pit bull of some sort.

The old lady in the passenger side gets out of the car and doesn't seem nearly as confused as I do by this whole scenario. She grabs what I assume is a camera and sort of watches the man walks off, their car parked there in the middle of the street while everyone around them makes WTF? faces.

Lukesitting

2008-04-07T14:34:00.004-05:00

Auntie Rebecca and I got to spend several hours with Luke yesterday while Ashley and JD went downtown for a bit of an anniversary celebration (happy five years, y'all!). We halfway expected to be wading in poop and spit-up by the end of the day — and were even warned to bring an extra shirt just in case — but I swear, that kid (once he woke up and got over his initial where-are-my-parents-and-who-are-you-weird-looking-brunettes? hissy fit) was on his best behavior, and just kinda hung out and watched crap TV with us, bouncing in his jumper and laughing at the punchlines of My Gym Partner is a Monkey, this weird little cartoon on Cartoon Network.

We think maybe he was baiting us, and the next time we babysit, he'll be a snotty, pooping terror. But I dunno. Looking at those big blue eyes, it's hard to think he has it in him. (Somewhere there are droves of parents cackling at my childfree naivety.)

I may have been born without a dancing gene...

2008-04-07T13:50:00.004-05:00

... but you can bet your ass I was born with a voyeuristic videotaping gene. Here are the Saturday-night shenanigans at Raffe's Beer Garden you may have missed.

A little Prince rump-shakin' for your pleasure from Lindsey Turner on Vimeo.

Oh, flip.

2008-04-07T13:47:00.002-05:00

My TV remote has stopped working. New batteries, old batteries, no batteries — nothing seems to work. This means I can't flip over to the DVD player and may be forced to watch the Real World awards show five hundred more times.

Halp.

Little things

2008-04-05T10:17:00.006-05:00

• I woke up yesterday with a brand new grey hair. Funny thing is, I can probably pinpoint the exact moment it sprouted Thursday night.

• Our office calendars use the Futurama credit-sequence font for the names of the months. This pleases me to an exceptional degree.

• Speaking of calendars, I still don't have one in the apartment for 2008. I've also decided that I need a datebook so I can write down appointments and meetings and stuff, which seem to be occurring with alarming frequency these days. Actually, I've decided I need a smartphone. I realize there's a substantial price difference there, but I can get a pretty killer corporate discount on several different models of refurbished Blackberries. I'm just not sure that I should get a refurb. Anyone have any strong opinions on that?

• It's not raining right now. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Just kidding. Maybe we'll see some sunshine this weekend. I suppose I could check the Weather Channel, but that would require more effort than a throwaway guess, and this is a blog, therefore that's a big no-no.

• I hate the phrase "big no-no."

• Yesterday I waited in line at Circle K with part of the WMC-TV crew, including a regular reporter whose name I should probably know but don't (because I rarely watch the local news; sorry, but I'm usually working during it). I had hoped he was buying scandalous things so I could come gossip about TV reporters hopped up on No Doz and Red Bull and pork rinds, but I didn't see what he bought so that idea was a bust.

• My managing editor told me they held up my Martin Luther King special coverage front page on CNN yesterday morning. I didn't see that either.

• I dreamed in Pixar-like cartoon last night. It even involved a kitchen at a restaurant, but there were no rodents or French people. It was quite beautiful the way my brain rendered things (for example, a wax-paper bag of beans ... wtf?) and it was almost as if I was kind of floating through the atmosphere, observing the goings-on of the kitchen without actually being a part of the story. Weird. I'll try to collect the memory scraps and post about it over at NA.

• The Tigers play tonight in hopes of making it to the championship. It's weird living in a town where there is such vehement and loyal support for a college sports team that actually wins a lot. Murfreesboro, it ain't. Slowly but surely I'm beginning to understand Tigermania, and I don't altogether disapprove.

Joint custody sucks

2008-04-04T12:32:00.002-05:00

I miss Felix.

I have no idea how people do this with actual human children.

The fish eggs are greener on the other side

2008-04-03T10:39:00.004-05:00

I have a Yahoo! e-mail account that I rarely to never log into. Pretty much the only stuff that goes to that account is a bunch of newsletters I managed to get signed up for during my last couple of years of college. Actually, it's such a short list that I can name them all — Sidelines, Saks Fifth Avenue, Circuit City, SpaLook, and NARAL.

I just logged in to check on something, and had to laugh when I noticed the targeted ads. Check these out:

Mmmm, beluga.

You can imagine my shock at seeing such ads, since I'm used to seeing crap like this in my Gmail, where I carry on my real conversations:

Thirty minutes of April Fool's Day left to go ...

2008-04-01T23:36:00.003-05:00

And I just got Rickrolled for the first time. Thanks, Listening Post.

Dispatches from behind the quarantine curtain

2008-04-01T18:10:00.004-05:00

If you have a weak stomach or prefer to think of me as an entity with no bodily functions, you might want to skip this post.

I made it 45 whole minutes at work today before having to duck out. I don't know what's wrong with me; I've been feeling pukey all day. First person to shout "preggers!" in his or her mind automatically assumes partial responsibility for the enormous child-support burden I will endure when I have the Lord's baby.

So I took a nap and just a few minutes ago woke up with a less toothy version of the headache I fell asleep with. But this version is nagging me to go back to sleep again and see if I can wake up with a version of the headache that DOESN'T HURT, or maybe even with a winning lottery ticket wedged into my bra or something (like on that episode of CSI: Miami I saw last night). The good news is, I'm feeling a little bit hungry, which means maybe I will be able to eat something tonight. I've long since puked up all the contents of my stomach, including the delicious milky yellow stuff that serves as an indication that you're one step away from the dry heaves — the most humiliating of all the heaves.

Earlier today, before work (and to be fair, it was probably around the time that I should have called out rather than pretend I was going to feel up to working), I puked so surprisingly forcefully that a little bit went into my nose. It did not come out of my nose, though. Just into it. It stung a little. And made me laugh, because not only did I have puke in my nose, but I had made a horrifying sound to get it lodged there. And none of this happened on purpose.

Remember what I said about the body being a wonderland? Sometimes I swear to god my body is a neverending spinning clown tunnel.

Ugh, the thought of that makes me barfy. I'm going back to bed.

Does this blog make my ass look fat?

2008-03-31T18:54:00.003-05:00

Here in a little bit I'll leave the musty darkness of the T&G headquarters to meet a real-life flesh and blood person who became aware of my existence because of this blog.

It's a samesexheterodate, of sorts, the hot new trend sweeping through middle America (stay tuned for the deliriously clueless profile of samesexheterodating that's bound to run in the New York Times style section later this month). Samesexheterodating: You know, people of the same gender with no intention of "hooking up" or "going wild," as the kids call it, meeting up for drinks and conversation and maybe, if things go according to plan, some devilish laughter at the expense of the less ironically detached among us.

I won't link to her just yet because I'm not sure if she's cool with going public with our potential samesexheterorelationship. If you're lucky, maybe I'll let you know whether or not I let her get to first base. (In samesexheterodating, first base = talking about your pets!!!)

They'll be looking for you

2008-03-31T11:51:00.003-05:00

The undead are a persistent bunch, you know. I spent last week leaving increasingly desperate messages on the voicemail of the guy who approves or denies events booked for Beale Street (it's a private street, you know, not public, so you can't just do what you want there without filling out paperwork), thinking he was avoiding me after last year's round of last-minute awkward runaround phone tag that nearly meant we didn't get a permit.

Turns out last week he was in Houston rooting for the Tigers — not intentionally avoiding the zombie uprising. So that last message I left him where I demanded that he call me back because it was "very important"? Probably a tad melodramatic.

But just a tad.

That's, like, thisbig.

Just between me and you and that mouse in your pocket

2008-03-30T23:59:00.002-05:00

It rained all day, but I didn't mind it too terribly. I just have to remind myself that the more it rains, the greener it gets, and the greener it gets, the happier I seem to be.

No one rocks the Saturday-night memes like I do

2008-03-30T02:05:00.005-05:00

Megan tagged me! That scamp!

You take each line and replace it with a single word of your choosing. Yes, just one word!! Afterward, tag seven folks…

You’re feeling: content
To your left: door
On your mind: tomorrow
Last meal included: cheese
You sometimes find it hard to: settle
The weather: craptastic
Something you have a collections of: corks
A smell that cheers you up: oranges
A smell that can ruin your mood: litter
How long since you last shaved: hours
The current state of your hair: ponytailed
The largest item on your desk right now (besides computer): kleenex
Your skill with chopsticks: hilarious
Which section you head to first in the bookstore: fiction
And after that?: feminist
Something you are craving: smooches
Your general thoughts on the presidential race: worry
How many times have you been hospitalized this year: zero
A favorite place to go for quiet time: bed
You’ve always secretly thought you’d be a good: bum
Something that freaks you out a little: aging
Something you’ve eaten too much of lately: cheese
You have never: hotairballooned (okay, that's cheating)
You never want to: die

Seven suckers:

Sarah
Tamarama
Tangential
Shane
ML
Brandon
La

'A flatulent rip in the space/time continuum'

2008-03-29T14:39:00.002-05:00

Oh, how I love Pajiba. Regarding Superhero Movie and the Movie movies in general:

So, I'm asking nicely: Stop it. Just fucking stop it. Don't make anymore of these goddamn movies. None. The only thing left, anyway, is a motherfucking spoof of spoof movies, which would be like watching yourself look at yourself in a mirror, which would probably cause a flatulent rip in the space/time continuum, and we'd all be sucked into a wet fart that'd smell vaguely of Matthew McConaughey's underarms and Perez Hilton's swamp-ass.

Reason No. 258 why it's great to work with a real artist

2008-03-29T00:26:00.004-05:00

Because concepts you pitch that start out looking like this

end up looking like this

after he's worked his magic.

To say I have talent envy doesn't even begin to cover it.

Link love: Check out the newly redesigned Shelf Life blog, the book blog from the CA.

Bonus link love: Shane's blogging again!

The body truly is a motherf*cking wonderland

2008-03-28T11:38:00.000-05:00

So, last month's round of PMS was brutal. Bruuuutal. It ranked among the top five lowest periods (no pun intended, okay maybe a little) of my life. No shit.

But this month I seemed to have cruised right past PMS altogether.

Yay, mostly. But still. These inconsistencies sometimes make me feel like my body's doing things behind my back.

Everyone has a birthday in March, I swear

2008-03-27T11:25:00.004-05:00

Happy birthday, Fritz. I would watch Oprah AND The View, just for you.

And for some reason, I didn't even mention the youngest nephew's birthday on the 18th. Here he is, sporting a completely heteronormative tattoo I gave him.

People need to cool it with the mating in late June, sheesh.

Late-night television observation

2008-03-27T01:50:00.002-05:00

You know, Girls Gone Wild commercials have really soured my opinion of the steel drums. Before, I was fairly indifferent about them. But now, any time I hear them, I automatically want to throw up.

I thought it went without saying, but I had to say it anyway

2008-03-27T01:05:00.002-05:00

Me: [to Sally, who has her face planted in Jack's ass] What are you doing? No! We don't lick butts in this house!

Jack: Meow! (translation: and why the hell not?!)

I was going to title this "Birthday bonanza" but I realized that's what I called it last year and there is nothing more shameful than self-plagiarism

2008-03-26T14:45:00.000-05:00

Hint: It's in her mouth!

Someone I know turned 27 today. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that she spent the day in a terrycloth robe, painting her nails harlot pink and snacking on oysters and melba toast, watching reruns of Home Improvement and Designing Women, and occasionally tapping out nuggets of brilliance on her keyboard. At least I hope that's how she spent the day.

Also on the birthday bonanza front, Harmony Brother No. 1 turned 28 today. Go on over to the band's MySpace page and make him pheel bad for being so oolllldd.

I guess you'll do

2008-03-26T14:40:00.000-05:00

HT: Tangential

It's spring!

2008-03-26T14:14:00.001-05:00

The allergies are worth it.

I shit you not, I just sneezed while writing that sentence.

No, really

2008-03-23T17:49:00.002-05:00

Just suffered through a round of "Obama is the antichrist!!! It is prophesied, omfg!!!" at the family compound. Chewed holes in my tongue but managed not to get worked up or say a single word.

Never realized how effing paranoid my family can be. Ho. Lee. Shit.