RS DOING SOME HILARIOUS VENTRILOQUIST SHIT WITH A CRAB WE FOUND ON THE OREGON SHORE

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

Drinking in excess.
Smoking in excess.
Listening to soppy, melancholy music.

In excess.

INSOMNIAC

This week I seem to have successfully given up my diurnal ways for more crepuscular habits.

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT

This weekend has left me pensive. And drowning in atmosphere.

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

A certain memory has been visiting lately. Perhaps if I write it down it will fly from my head. I can only hope.

Once, when I was about seven years old I had drawn a bath for myself, alone. I have had an affinity for music ever since I was wrenched from my mother's womb, so I got this great idea. I would take my tape player plug it into the wall and then balance the tape player on the rim of the bathtub. This I did. I can't impress on you enough how the bath ledge was just big enough to hold the clunky electronic box. One slip, one bump and my little seven year old heart would have fibrillating like a chunk of Jell-O at the epicenter of an earthquake. I took my bath and blithely sang along to some Ernie and Bert duet completely oblivious to the potential danger I was in. When I was finished, I got out and drained the water. My mother came in to floss or something and immediately noticed the tape player. She freaked out, hugged me something fierce and then told me never, ever to do that again. I remember feeling dizzy with fear.

PIT PAT AND THE POLLUTED CAKE

My brother told me about how his roommate bought him a cake for his 29th birthday from a bakery in China Town last summer. They went out for dinner with some other friends to celebrate. When dinner was over, they returned home and had a slice of cake each. Almost immediately his roommate was violently ill, yakking in the bathroom sink. My brother too felt sick but instead of throwing up, he opted for writhing in pain on the living room couch. In any case, it wasn’t a very jocund birthday. Unless, you know, you're into that sort of thing.

Pit Pat understandably upset about this took the half eaten cake back to the Chinese bakery the next morning and demanded his roommate’s money back. In appropriate old world form, they told him to piss off, he probably got sick on something else. Finally he said, “Okay, you know what? If you don’t give me my money back right now, I’m going to eat the rest of the cake and then I’m going to throw it up right here in the store.” I suppose they found this a cogent argument because they gave him the refund.

I love my brother, batshit insane though he may be.

FOR THIS I AM THANKFUL

Pit Pat came to town last night around 11:00 p.m. and straight met us at the bar. This morning we woke up around 11:00 a.m. and arrived at our parents house around 1:30 p.m. The first bottle of wine was dry by 2:00 p.m.

72 HOURS

Why am I doing this again?

48 HOURS

Fasting is great. Suddenly I have all this time on my hands. I don't have to go grocery shopping. I don't have to prepare food and I don't have to cook it. Not to mention all the time I save from not having to eat food and clean it up afterwards. Look I'm saving all this money that would have been squandered on food and I don't even have to wash dishes!

Now I have all this time to sit around and think about how fucking hungry I am.

24 HOURS

Every once in a while when I was a kid, my dad would fast for no more than five days. He would do this for political reasons; causes I couldn't comprehend at the time and haven't asked since. I just remember him sitting at the dinner table with a tall bottle of water while the three of us stuffed our hungry little maws like it was no big thing. Every so often I would look up at him, food hanging from my mouth, and ask what it was like not to eat. He would just shrug his shoulders.

So I decided yesterday that I'm going to fast for 72 hours. Basically, I am going to consume clear liquids for the next three days. How do you like them choice words? Clear liquids include green tea, water, juice, chicken broth,...and beer. There are several reason why I want to do this, none of which I want to explain at this point. It's only been about fourteen hours and so far no big change, although a bit cold in the extremities. But that's not unusual since I tend to maintain the basal body temperature of an Arctic Flounder.

JA-PORNO-ME

I rent my videos through an independent store. It's a huge warehouse room with a very distinct smell and I don't know exactly how many titles they have, but it's a super fucking lot. The owner is a big guy who looks like the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz, chain smoking. One of the managers looks like he was previously a member of the Japanese Mafia. When he works he brings two huge menacing pit bulls* that pace behind the counter and drool on things during his shift. In any case, it’s a great place, very unique although a little worn around the edges….and most of the insides.

So I have been renting videos there for more than a year, and maybe I have never noticed until now, but they have a huge collection of, what can only be described as Ja-porno-me: Japanese anime pornography. I have included some titles here:

1. Sex Friend
2. Slave Nurses
3. Sensitive Pornograph
4. Immoral Sister 2
5. Fruits Cup
6. Stainless Night
7. Sex Taxi

I want to make it clear that I am in no way endorsing these flicks, I am merely laughing at them.

* I think he lives nearby, because I once witnessed him walking these dogs and two ferrets. Well, more accurately, he was walking two dogs and one ferret. The other weasel was tucked into a red fanny pack he had fixed about his waist. Its little strawberry blond head was poking out through the zipper.

BIRTHDAY AT THE VFW

Last night my friend Jamie celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday at the VFW. In this city, that’s where you go for stiff drinks and really good karaoke. I sang Let’s Hear It For the Boy by Denise Williams and then Careless Whispers by WHAM! That’s right, Careless Whispers. You know the words: guilty feet have got no rhythm. The rest of the night I pretty much drank in excess and danced around like a ass fool. About half way through the night I went out back with Jamie’s boyfriend and a regular, Eddie, who was generous enough to share some of his bob hope with us. When I came back inside the music and the track lights were absolutely sublime. Right up until the house lights went on, my friend Jamie kept exclaiming, “Isn’t the VFW fucking awesome? I fucking love the VFW.”

Word.

ORGANIC COMPOUNDS AS JEWELRY

I was such a fucking dork in college. I use to make Hexane out of my organic chemistry model set and wear it around my upper arm and walk around parties like I was Cleopatra the chemist. Kids, drunk and high would approach me and say things like, “Hey…hey, dude, that’s Hexane!”

SCIENCE TEACHER CAMEO

Our local Fox TV station* did a short story last Sunday about people's perceptions of Hummer vehicles. They rented one and fixed a hidden camera inside because they wanted to get video footage of people's reactions as they drove it around town. Now I obviously wasn't polluting my brain with faux news last Sunday, however two of my environmental science students came to class claiming they saw me on the tele giving the ole stinky eye to this video rigged vehicle. As soon as they told me about it, it dawned on me: there was a Hummer parked in the parking lot of my neighborhood whole foods co-op late last week. I recall walking past it and although I can't remember exactly what my face was doing at the time, I'd say there's a 97.26% chance it was looking scowly. Mostly, I remember being confused upon seeing it. It's a tad oxymoronic to have such gas guzzling fatty parked outside a place that sells hemp socks, but whatever. I laughed and asked these students the camera caught me carving expletives into the door with my pen knife.

* By the way, suck my dick FOX TV. Why don't you find some real news to report on?

IT'S TRADITION

It snowed last night. This means I must rent Dead Poets Society and watch it this weekend with a big bowl of kettle corn and a mug of hot apple cider. What can I say, I'm a teacher and it's an inspiring story. Plus, Robert Sean Leonard is something of a dish, isn't he?

Sure he is.

ROOM # 260

This classroom always smells pungently of un-showered boys and Frito Lay chips.

%^$&^^&)(_)*&(*^%&^%$%$# !!

Pit Pat called last night. He told me he had just gotten off the phone with our mother. He told me she said I was acting like a rebellious teenager. I laughed because I've heard her say this before and I think she's spot on. You damn skippy I'm acting like a rebellious teenager, striving for self-reliance and independence. It's just that normal people tend to do this when they are seventeen, not twenty-seven, because normal people have parents that will actually let them go be adults. Those people don't have soppy, co-dependent, mentally ill mothers that hang on them like a herd of drowning elephants in wool sweaters.

WANT TO KNOW ANOTHER SECRET?

Sometimes when I jill off, I hum along to music. I pretty much always listen to music when I have my hand in the honey jar so I figure why not accompany when the moment is just right? It's not like I'm full on singing along with Modest Mouse or Neutral Milk Hotel, simultaneously strumming "air guitar."


*giggles*


It's more like I'm absentmindedly humming along to the pretty parts of an Iron & Wine song or a couple twenty bars from Insides' Euphoria or that wonderful swelling part in Thomas Tallis' Fantasia on a Theme. Music was my first. I don't really feel like I need to explain this.

WANT TO KNOW A SECRET?

Sometimes when I'm bored I'll suck my thumb. Always the left one. It fits better. What can I say, but the obvious: I have a wicked bad oral fixation. I actually remember my parents asking me when I was four-and-a-half, when I was going to give up the thumb. They might as well have been asking a crack addict to give up her pipe. I promised to abjure my dirty little addiction at age five. "Definitely, when I'm five."

*Hermph*

*zop zop zop zop*

Aou lies, ov courshe.

I'M TOO SEXY FOR THE LAW

I'm biking home from work yesterday, coming up to a red light when I sense this person in a car behind me trying to crawl up into my ass. If you bike a lot in the city you may appreciate the unspoken passive-aggressive tension that exists between cyclists and motorists. I hate to contribute to the melee, but to date I have been randomly yelled at, swerved into, and run over. I have even had rocks thrown at me. I know my rights as a cyclist and I'm not going to take any shit. So anyway, I'm turning left and princess impatient comes up on my right in a sleek black car blaring some strident, canned mass produced R&B garbage music. I glance over to find a single, excessively groomed white girl in designer sunglasses. She yells to me in her best bitchy shopping mall voice, "why don't you, like, stay on the sidewalk?" I replied very simply, "because it's illegal." Unfortunately, the whole concept of legality seems lost on her because she then proceeds to take an illegal right hand turn on a red light. To her taillights I say in a plain voice, more to myself than anyone else: Girl, you're making us all look bad.

JAKE RUDH

I went out to an old rough neck blue collar working class bar last night to hear a dj play 80's new wave. I came home around 2 a.m. and when I got up four hours later I was still kinda wobbly legged. I mean, seriously, I was banging around the rooms of my apartment this morning like a top in a skittles game. I was literally knocking shit over until I finally fell down myself. And in the shower this morning, I noticed the following written on my hand in pen:











The first two are movies, obviously. I'm compiling a list and I didn't want to forget these gems. The next two are bands whose music was spinning. S.L.C. Punk, I don't know who the fuck they are. Most likely someone mentioned them and I felt compelled to write it down. The last word is some kind of controlled substance. I think someone recommended it if, say, one were moving one's furniture and needed a pocket full of speed. So there you go.

BEST FUCKING DAY EVER!

I received an email this week about an all personal meeting I missed last week. Apparently gift buckets of cookies were distributed to the staff and faculty and, "would those who missed the meeting please come up to the HR office and collect their cookie bucket, already? Assholes?" I have no idea what I'm to do with a bucket of cookies but I had to get some other things from HR anyways, so I go up. The person I was seeking was on holiday, but I did find an empty cubicle teeming with cookies. I asked the only woman in the office if I could take one; I had suddenly realized I could give them to the homeless guy who hangs out by the freeway. She asked me if I was full time and I tell her, no. She says she's sorry, I do not get a cookie bucket. I'm laughing because she's standing in the middle of this cubicle, quite literally up to her ass crack in cookies telling me I can't have a single one.

As I'm leaving, she asks me what my name is. I tell her and she consults her 'extra special person cookie list' and Lo! I'm on it! I get a fucking cookie bucket after all! Best fucking day ever! I ate one and gave the rest to the freeway man.

WALKING TO WORK

I witnessed an incredible sunrise on my way to work this morning. The clouds over the city were a deep blue felty gray. They were textured like waves. I felt like a starfish underwater looking up at a storm raging in an atmosphere above my own. An atmosphere I will probably never see or comprehend. And the sun. The sun was peeking through a narrow crack between thick clouds and the horizon like some kind of nervous thespian spying conspicuously on his audience.

OR ELSE WE ALL SINK

My therapist once told me that I am standing on a piece of Styrofoam that's floating in open water and my family members are all standing on that same piece of debris. This is an accurate metaphor because when one person shifts, the rest of us have to compensate or else we all sink.

My mother and I have always been very close. Perhaps too close. She was born into a Chinese family and felt unwanted by her parents because she was a girl. Because of her past, she doted something extra on me. This certainly had its benefits growing up, but now I am starting to see the heavy costs as an adult. She's rather co-dependent. I can't seem to live my life without her constantly fretting about my wellbeing. I recognize her good intentions, but her well meaning advice sometimes reeks of judgment. Very often reeks of judgment, actually. Every time I tell her something new about my life, I can actually hear her wringing her hands over the phone.

We (she and I) have been working on changing the old/bad way of relating to each other but it's proving to be more difficult than we had anticipated. Some of this is due to her mental illness. On her planet, emotions can nullify even the tiniest shreds of rational thought. She tends to see things in black and white. For an artist, she has a very narrow understanding of the color gray. Let me give you an example. I might say something like, "I think we could have a healthier way of relating to one another and I think we ought to work towards that." This is what she hears: "Everything is fucked, I don't love you, and I want nothing to do with you again, ever!" It's no mystery that last night's simple conversation sent her into paroxysms of tears and sobbing. I'm so very, very tired of this. Exhausted.

CHICKENS FOR YOU

PET PEEVE #1

I like dogs. Truly, dogs are great. It's their owners I don't care for.

I was walking north on Nickel Avenue the other day when I saw two hipsters biking towards me, their big black dog galloping beside them, lead trailing in the street. I rarely shout things to complete strangers like, “keep your dog on a proper leash!” Only this time I made an exception. Sometimes the moment just moves you and you have to go with it. Anyway, one of them gave me a stinky look like, who the hell are you to pass judgment on me and frolicking Fido?


He tells me the dog is harmless.


Okay, a) bullshit. I was bitten in the leg by a German Shepard two years ago and the owner was almost as surprised as I was. I don’t care how long you have had your pet, animals are unpredictable things. And, b) what about the dog’s safety? Nickel Avenue sees a lot of traffic. What happens if some irresistible squirrel thing catches your dog’s attention and it goes galloping after it into a speeding minivan? What then, eh?
Big dummies.

NOT THAT YOU ASKED

Not that you asked but I tend to like the svelte boys, tallish and lean. No barrel-chested blokes for me please. I also tend to like them pale as vampires, although I prefer dark, crazy, curly, unruly hair. I find bed head completely irresistible, so very pull-able.

Many women are drawn to asses and biceps. I know nothing of these. I wouldn’t know a “cute butt” if it came over and sat on my face. I am, however, a connoisseur of fingers and teeth. I love long, slender piano fingers. Not the ones that taper at the ends. I also like crooked teeth. Not rotten teeth, not missing teeth, but crooked teeth. A little overlapping is nice. A salacious gap is lovely too. Boys in vintage ruffled shirts make me writhe. Boys who use words like ennui, hackneyed, or remiss, make me want to shout obscenities.

Oh christ. I'm all worked up now. Excuse me, while I take a cold shower.

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S CONFUSION

Two of my classes are canceled this morning because my students are taking a fieldtrip. I was quite looking forward to sleeping in but instead I was woken up by a fire alarm and the din of collected confusion in the hallway just outside my apartment. The alarm sang from the corner unit for fifteen to twenty minutes until someone finally called the fire department. Before I got the chance to sit up in bed, sirens and a bright red strobe light filled the room. Okay okay, fuck it! I'm up! I pulled on a jumper and poked my head into the hallway just in time to see three hulking men break into the offending unit and pull out one confounded skinny boy in orange boxer shorts. The hallway quickly filled with smoke. I heard one fireman talking to the boy, asking him if he'd been drinking the night before. The boy said he thought the alarm was coming from his clock radio. Suddenly in the midst of all that chaos, in the midst of black boots and smoke, the boy finally seemed to understand what was going on around him. "Oh my god I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't know."

DO YOU SMELL ROTTING FRUIT? YEAH, THAT'S ME.

I have been drinking a lot of water lately. That's good. I have also been peeing a lot today. That's good too. Only, the repeated peeing and hand washing is really turning my skin into something reptilian. I didn't have any lotion on me so I asked another instructor if she would lend me some of hers. Now my hands although smooth and un-chapped, reek of overripe pears and cantaloupe. And olfaction is an important sense for me. I really get around by sense of smell but now my sonar is all gunked up with noxious Bath and Body Works products. Ech.

THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY

I've stopped eating breakfast in the mornings. Now I just drink black coffee and simultaneously suck on toffee candies. I find it has the same effect as adding sugar and cream. Don't wrinkle your nose at me, smarty.