THE CAPTAIN WAS HERE

In other words, I have a remarkable rum headache today.

WEEKEND O' DEBAUCHERY

I’m going up north this weekend to visit my old friend, Pollen. We are going to stay with Tillie the Hobbit in her Martha-Stewart-On-Peyote Hobbit Home. We will take long walks on country roads. I will scratch dogs behind their ears and say nonsensical things in sing-songy tones of voice. We will have fulfilling although convoluted conversations about meaningful philosophical things and then laugh at ourselves when we're done. I will interrupt my interruptions. I will tell some good jokes. I will listen to good music. I will smoke cigarettes and practice my French Inhale. Uh-huh-huh.

Here is my packing list:

1 bag Almond Cranberry Oatmeal
1 bag Honey Nut Granola
English Morning Breakfast Tea
2 cans Evaporated Milk
1 Bottle Australian Red Wine
1 Box Hot Tamale Candies
2 Ripe Avocados
1 Tub Fresh Salsa
1 Bag Corn Chips
1 Copy Infinite Jest*
1 Spiral Bound Journal
1 Mechanical Pencil
1 Korean Eraser
1 Vial 0.3 Pencil Lead
1 Swiss Army Knife
Half Pack Trident Gum
1 Tube Bert’s Lip Balm
1 Bottle of Drugs
1 Extra Pair of Socks
1 Extra Pair of Drawers
1 Extra T-Shirt
1 Toothbrush
3 Video Tapes
1 Pack of American Spirits
1 Audio Recorder
Bach Cello Suites (1-6)
Saint Germain (Tourist)

Dear god, is nothing simple?

* I had a dream last week that Hal Incandenza (character of Infinite Jest) let me tour his home and showed me his jock strap. It thrilled me and made me blush like a twelve-year-old girl.

SPOON ME BABY

I love my life reflected in the concave surface of a tablespoon. When I was a college girl I use to get high and walk around my apartment with the shiniest tablespoon I could find (a task more challenging than you might think) and romanticize plots and subplots of my alter ego. I know this sounds terribly narcissistic, but life seriously looks so different on the curvaceous spine of a spoon. This little exercise always gave me a fresh new perspective of my tired old milieu. You should try it. Go ahead, you know you want to try it.

I'll even wait for you.

...
...
...

I believe humans are natural born storytellers. We tend to drink in our surroundings with all five senses and then fill in the missing information with romantic caulking. When I spot an interesting person on the street, I can’t help but spin long wooly tales about them: His name is James. His mother died when he was in eighth grade. He wears size twelve shoes. He forgot to floss his teeth this morning. When he was ten he found a dead crow in his back yard. He felt so terrible for it he buried it next to the doghouse. He takes his dishes from the bottom of the stack so each one gets the same use. He always makes his bed. One time he got drunk on Gin and Tonics and threw up in the sink of a three star hotel bathroom. Sometimes he talks to his plants. He’s wearing a pair of socks that are losing their elastic power and now gather loosely around his ankles. He hates that. It has been two years since he kissed a girl.

Or something like that.

Of course, this romantic business isn’t all pinball and chocolate bars. When it comes to personal relationships, people so often find themselves brooding in disappointment and unfulfilled expectations.

KISS ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT

Brushing your teeth with a new toothbrush is not unlike kissing someone for the very first time. The way it feels in your mouth, surprising at first and then gradually more familiar.

GRETA

Have you ever seen the movie Personal Velocity? Do you remember the second story, the one titled Greta? I was totally agog when I first saw it because it’s pretty much my story. Except for the part where Parker Posey is masturbating in the bathroom. I can’t do that shit standing up, I've tried. And I’m not an editor. But I do carry a similar bustle of family bullshit. I did fall in love with a fantastically creative and eccentric person. I do have a superfluously kind, almost painfully good husband. I will probably leave him...

Whoa. That’s a lot to confess in one entry. Perhaps now you think I am some kind of heartless bitch. But that’s not the whole story. And besides, I don’t care what you think.

WARNING: THIS ENTRY CONTAINS SOCIALIST PROPAGANDA

I was handing out Mayday fliers last night at a bar while pretentious teenage punks got their angst on. An older guy with a professional beer gut asked me if the literature was some kind of pinko communist propaganda. I said, “If you consider the eight hour work day to be a part of a pinko communist agenda, than yes, yes it is.”

Two beers later I found myself engaged in conversation with a drunk-groupie-in-frilly-blue-tank-top about the bus strike going on in the capital city. She’s all, “I’m totally for unions, but he-llo! Health care costs are going up everywhere in the U.S. They’re just going to have to deal with it like the rest of us.” I’m thinking, right on sister! We’re getting buggered up the ass, so they should be getting it too! What the hell makes their butts exempt from buggering?

I also met this thirty something named Tim. Tim was a crazy ass fan of the closing band. He was an interesting guy and I am a pretty open-minded person, but he seemed to walk ever so nimbly about the line between cool and creepy. That’s okay. I’m not afraid of a little tension. So we chatted it up before the show and when the band was finished warming up he was gone. I went out on the dance floor to shake my thang, when I suddenly felt someone squeeze my shoulder. It was Tim. He started to say, “I wish I had a gun,” imagine my butt clenched in terror, “so I could shoot out all these beer lights. It’s a much better show when it’s completely dark.” Whew! Are we cool Tim? We’re cool right?

I have come to the conclusion that going to bars alone equals fun. I knew someone who was going to be there, but I didn’t go with him. So now look at all the interesting people I met as a result! By the way, this person I knew, he's pretty significant. Let’s call him the "rock skipper" and refer to him as RS from here to forever and forever beyond. It had been eight months since I saw him last, and that’s why my nerves were shaking like pair of festive maracas, like a bag of dried chili peppers.

WAITING ROOM

My fingers. How nervous they are tonight. I try to soothe their anxieties. I give them cigarettes to hold. I groom them tenderly about the nail, the way they like it. But all they want to do is crawl down my throat like a pair of frightened wild rabbits.

Idiot fingers.

Someone stuck their swizzle stick in my ice tea and stirred me up.
Someone shook my snow globe.

THIS ENTRY RATED PG13: FOR ADULT LANGUAGE AND REFERENCES TO CAT ASSES

I love my dreams. They’re like previews to movies I mean to see. * Last night I dreamt I was selling caramel rolls from the belly of a dusty red room. The next thing I knew, I was falling out of the sky towards the Hancock building and as I tumbled to meet the lights of Chicago, I was at peace. When I woke up, I thought a little more about caramel rolls. How they are made? How do they get so swirly and so mashed together? Are they cut from caramel roll tubes? Are they sticky before they go in the oven or just when they come out? This went on for about fifteen minutes and then the cat came in and sat on my head.

* Wouldn’t it be wild if I could go to the corner video shop and rent one of my dreams? Although, suppose it were a steamy dream. Then I would have to go behind the green polyester curtain into the adult video room. Perhaps they would be filed in the foreign film section instead. I’d like to think my erotic dreams are more tasteful and don’t belong next to the likes of “Girls of Wal-Mart.”

This Tahiti 80 song says get up and shake it.
And I gots to do what the music says.

“C” IS FOR CORPORATE. THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.

Things were pretty slow at the bakery today. I cannot believe I just wrote that sentence and meant it! Oh, I’m living a dream! Pinch me! Pinch me!

Okay, stop pinching.

So yeah. I have always wanted to work in a bakery. There's just something so irresistibly folksy about baking bread at the butt crack of dawn. At first I wanted to work in a local shop, but mom and pop weren't hiring. So I got this here franchise gig instead. They have things like corporate mottos and patented logos and T-shirts and lawyers and action figures and breakfast cereals. Actually, that’s a gross exaggeration. They don’t have lawyers. Silly. But everyone I work with has long hair and smells like B.O., so it’s cool.

Okay hold on. A rogue gang of house sparrows just kicked some serious birdie ass outside my window a second ago! What a fucking racket!

Crazy birds.

Ahem. When I was hired two weeks back I was given a Confidentiality Agreement, an Employee Checklist, and a Training Outline. It’s all about as stuffy as it sounds, except for the Training Outline, which is full on hilarious. It tries very hard to inspire a vision in the new employee by imparting deep philosophies about the making and selling of fresh bread. This shit is not trivial, people! Or so they would have you believe. And now I would like to share with you, dear reader, some crumbs of this enlightening text:

You are Their Impression of Corporate Bread.

You are it. You are the final step in the long process of making good bread and if you screw it up, everyone else’s work is for nothing. You’re the PR person and you MUST take is (sic) seriously. It’s kind of like the baker is responsible for the final product and a screw up on his part wrecks the work of everyone prior to the baking.

[Notice how they build you up and then break you down.]

The counter person is just as important, because you are the one that makes Corporate Bread a fun place for people to come. It’s a lot more than just good bread. It’s the whole feeling of the place: the happy people, the breadboard, the music, the atmosphere.

[Are you feeling this?]

People are going out of their way to come to Corporate Bread and you are the one who needs to make it worth their while. Make it fun and exciting to come to the bakery. Make it a special place – one that’s fun for them and a place that’s fun to work in.

[I’m basically getting paid to have “fun.” Now you had better get your ass out there and have some fun! Grrrr!]

Bread is the Focus

You need to do everything you can to get bread into their mouth, slightly short of pinning them to the floor and force-feeding them. Don’t take “no” for an answer. People are often hesitant to take a slice of bread. First you need to tell them what kinds of bread are available. And then you may need to work at convincing them that it really is just a free slice of bread, no strings attached. Here’s an example of how it works:

Me: Hi, can I slice you a piece of bread? This invokes a yes or no response.
(We don’t want that.)

Me: Hi, what can I slice for you today? We have hot honey whole wheat, harvest white or this yummy cheddar garlic.

Them: No thank you.

Me: Are you sure? You won’t believe how good the cheddar is – look how the cheese is melting and gooey and it is SOOOO good. Why don’t you let me cut you a slice?

Them: Well, I just ate and I’m not hungry.

Me: That’s OK. I can just put it in one of these bags and you can eat it later when you want a snack. (to be said while you’re already slicing and bagging the piece of bread)

HOWEVER, we don’t ever want to appear to be pushy…because we do not hard-sell out product. The taste sells the bread for us.

Yeah...but don't be pushy! For a really good time, read the hypothetical dialogue above substituting any reference to bread with the words “crack cocaine.”

RANDOM ACTS OF COMPETITIVE ASSHOLE-NESS

I reek of chlorine. I feel so anti-bacterial. I have up’ed my workout to forty-five laps. A woman in the sauna asked me if I swam competitively. I chuckled because the notion is absurd and replied, no. She said that I looked like a strong swimmer. Her comment made me wonder why I don’t go around saying nice things to strangers more often. I mean, it can’t hurt, right? Niceness? Mostly I’m just a competitive asshole in my head, secretly racing the unsuspecting fitness center members. They are all having profound Zen moments on their elliptical machines and I am foaming at the mouth on the treadmill, talking so much shit in my head.

It’s stupid. Furthermore, it’s a ludicrous waste of negative energy. I mean hell if I’m going to focus my voodoo on something, let’s make it something worthwhile. Don’t fucking pick on grandma climbing the Stairmaster for Christ sakes. And lay off of the ladies in water aerobics while you're at it. I know, I know. They do some freaky shit in that class. They displace your lap lane with their bouffant hairdos and their lipstick and perfume are excessive to say the least. Still, just give it a rest. And this is all in my head mind you, because in reality I'm just a shoe-gazer, a self-deprecator, a modest meerkat.

And now ladies and gentlemen, the books on my bed stand:

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Denial of Death - Ernest Becker
The Greening of America - Charles Reich
Europe on a Shoestring - Lonely Planet
The Human Zoo - Desmond Morris
Dishonest Broker - Naseer H. Aruri
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow (a re-read, this one)
200,000 Words – Louis A. Leslie (and this one’s a dictionary)

I have tiny bits of toasted coconut in my pocket. Why?

CAN WE GET THESE DANCING APES ON THE ROAD ALREADY?

I have got to stop dicking around with this webpage! I have been playing with the colors and fonts for hours, tickling the html code and changing the URL like it’s some kind of word scramble. And frankly, it’s a little embarrassing. It’s like I’m floating around here in cyberland with my finger up my nose hoping nobody's looking: Don’t look yet! I’m not ready yet!

Take things too seriously much?
Yeah, I guess you could say that.

But I need this little secret pocket of honesty sewn into the seams of my life, a bubble of anonymity and a place where I can confess that I sometimes pee in the shower. Is that so wrong? But I am nervous someone will recognize me. Hiding a needle in a haystack might be harder than you expect when you’re silly paranoid.

On another note, I’m eating this huge bowl of green peas right now and they taste like they’ve been seasoned with potting soil.

CARE AND FEEDING

Getting an online diary* is kind of like getting a new plant or a digi-pet. You must care for it. You must feed it with words and keep its cage clean of fetid clichés. You must comb out the poor grammar that clings to its fur like ticks and burs. Sometimes you find yourself thinking about it at work. Sometimes you write its name on a piece of paper and doodle hearts around the periphery like a band of herding sheep dogs. And then there are times when it’s scratching at the base of your bedroom door, mewling because it wants to go outside. But you just want to laze about in bed all day, naked, reading books and drinking coffee. So you ignore it. You pretend you can’t hear it. That does not necessarily make you a bad person.

* You will never catch me calling this slice of cyberspace a blog. Blog is an ugly word and I am already resentful about having to type it twice. Incidentally, there are some other words that begin with the letter “B” that I also find repugnant. Boot, for example, and all of its snaggletooth, inbred relatives: boots, booty and bootless.

A BIRD WITHOUT WINGS

*picture removed*

Hi. This is me jumping off a cliff into a river near Vang Vieng, Laos. Do you see how my arms are all blurry? That's because I was madly, vainly, flailing them around. This bird likes to sing, but she sure as hell can't fly.