qwanty

sounds of silence

2009-02-21T13:42:00.000-08:00

Daughters are with “writers” and brain scientists young and old are visiting grandparents overnight. I am alone. Alone! With work to do, and quiet in which to do it. And Peter Frampton (comes alive!) And Tom Quinn (does not come alive! as he is pillow-Tom-Quinn and not non-pillow-secret-agent-Tom-Quinn.) And it is springtime in Satan’s Nethers, so I can ride my bike and think exercisey thoughts and then come home and think other thoughts completely uninterrupted. Hooray for cohesive thinking!

It has recently been brought to my attention that the posting around here doesn’t seem to happen that often. It has been further noted that I posted a lot of stuff in September of 2008. This is why: I started a blog on myspace so I could post installments of a tale I was telling about my ridiculous ex-husband – installments that were to be read by my lone myspace friend KRD. But then I realized that I hated myspace and that anyone can have an actual big girl blog and so I told Tom to cram it and decided to start an actual blog wedged into this tiny corner in the internet’s overcrowded crawlspace. This way if my ridiculous ex-husband ever googles “the son of the man whose father owned the oldest piano store in town”, he’ll see my tale and have to choke down the bitter little pill that is my stark depiction of his stupid writing “career”. Hence the frenzied fall transfer of goods! So far the google hits to this wayward pit have consisted primarily of people looking for “lovely labia”, and while it’s plausible my ridiculous ex-husband was one of those people, the only thing he’d learn from the lovely labia post is that I now on occasion eat pork rinds. And that’s actually more of a bitter little pill for me. Pork rinds. Wow.

***

I am deeply conflicted as to what is appropriate fodder for this space. I would very much like to share my recent adventures at local events (e.g., political functions, burlesque shows), but I question the pragmatics of creating an electronic record of such things back here in the internet’s overcrowded crawlspace. People say all sorts of stupid things when nervous/post-coital, and I will feel like a tremendous tool if someday I’m chatting with a politician and freak out and mention this whole qwanty thing and then have to deal with the repercussions of having yammered on about wanton designs and shag carpeted ice jets. One might be given the impression that I am both creepy and irrational. And one needn’t be given that impression! These things are meant to be slowly discovered. They are the creamy middle of the qwanty ding dong.

failure, an epiphany, and a glimmer of hope. but mostly failure.

2009-02-05T18:03:00.000-08:00

1) It turns out that many Ph.D.s are idiots. It’s true! People who know idiots undoubtedly know a couple of people with doctorates. People who spend their days interacting with non-medical professionals who call themselves doctor undoubtedly have days peppered with idiot-interactions. Test this theory! Take a random sample of five idiots. At least one of them has successfully defended a dissertation. Now take a random sample of five people who have successfully defended a dissertation. At least one of them is an idiot. See? Idiots and doctorates go hand in hand, just like train station parking lots and anal sex. Or trains! Wait. A Brain Scientist is now sirening something about logical fallacies and me and commitment or committees or committed or something like that. Really? I see. It seems I am guilty of a logical fallacy with my Ph.D./idiot reasoning. Of course I am! I almost have a doctorate. Quod erat demonstrandum.

2) Even seasoned mothers with twelve years of formal experience with multiple womb fruit can inadvertently fling the entire contents of a diaper right onto the carpet and then not notice it until the baby is merrily squishing shit between his fingers. Now I have to revise my resumé.

3) I have an exercise plan I’d like to pursue, and it involves the person standing outside of H and R Block in the cartoony statue of liberty costume. If I paid that person $15, perhaps he or she would let me wear the costume for an hour and dance around with the Tax Credit! sign. I could bring my discman and listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees and get all hot and sweaty inside the foamy lady liberty (Paging Dr. Freud! – Ed.). I could probably even smoke a pipe while inside her! In addition to whittling my waist, this would put me one successive approximation closer to going to an actual dance club and actually dancing with an actual lady.

4) Hey! I wrote foamy lady up there. I already disappoint many a poor, wanton sap who happens by after googling lovely labia or potsie cock. Now I can disappoint a whole new segment of the population. Or what I suspect is a whole new segment. I imagine the overlap in that Venn diagram is relatively small.

5) It turns out POTSIE COCK! is a very satisfying thing to yell when you realize your child has a handful of shit. It works nicely in non-fecal-fist instances too, but research thus far suggests that one’s potsie cock pleasure is maximized when one has just experienced profound failure as a parent. I imagine Marion Cunningham would say the same thing.

still working out the kinks

2009-02-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

I have developed a huge crush on a local openly bisexual state legislature representative, and am devising an elaborate plan with which to bed her. I’m still a little sketchy on the details, but I know this much: it will require that I start a band. I never imagined that my rock star and lesbian fantasies had the potential to come together with such Wonder Twin power to shape up the form of hot girl action!/political scandal!/groupies! and a shag carpeted ice jet I will use to haul amplifiers and fly slowly past her outdoor speaking engagements. As for Gleek’s useful prehensile tail, we’ll figure that out later. I’m really taking a big step with this whole bang the sexy politician/rock band endeavor, as prior incarnations of the rock/lady combo have been limited to variations of a fantasy in which I give a karaoke performance of a suggestive song (e.g., Centerfold, Jesse’s Girl, etc.) in a lesbian bar that is SO HOT and SO HARD ROCKING that someone lets me feel them up. I first conceived of this fantasy that night I accidentally went to a lesbian bar when it was full of naked dancing women because I thought “Revue Night” meant open-mic poetry. It is a particularly ridiculous fantasy because a) I am terrified of karaoke, and b) I suspect that women who are swayed by Rick Springfield karaoke are few and far between. This new fantasy is far more attainable. Think I jest? Guess who asked me to be her facebook friend? While she may not have any clue as to my libidinous intent, District 27 Representative will at some point be mine, or will at the very least find one of my band flyers stuck to her windshield.

at last, some context

2009-01-31T10:45:00.000-08:00

I wrote a list of 25 “random” things about myself on a social networking site for all my “friends” to “see”. I am posting it here with bonus items. So often I find myself wanting to write something down but realizing the story will make so much less sense than it would if I had at some point bothered to mention that time I accidentally went to a lesbian bar when it was full of naked dancing women because I thought “Revue Night” meant open-mic poetry. Without that kind of background it is often difficult to see what my point is. And so:

1) The first 20 or so items I generated for this list were too X-rated, humiliating, or illegal to make the final cut. Consequently, I had to make two lists. I was plenty stoked about this, because a) I love lists, and b) I love dicking around writing stuff that doesn’t need to be written.

2) I have a secret space in the corner of the internet reserved for stuff that doesn’t need to be written, including but not limited to lists of scandalous activity, stories about my ex-husband, and evidence that my parents were secretly huge stoners.

3) I’ve come to suspect that I experience emotions in a way that is wildly disproportionate to the actual instigating experience. It’s all YAY! BOO! SOB! GRRR! with me, and sometimes the various emotions will combine in a way that is almost totally unrecognizable. It’s confusing to those I love and kind of a pain in the ass for me. 3a) I’m not sure I know how to properly use the word “disproportionate”.

4) I have always been prone to crushes of colossal proportions. Given (3) this should be no surprise. I can’t even begin to think about the amount of time and money I have blown on crushes without feeling kind of sick: time lost due to swooning and weeping, and money lost to the delusion that if I buy enough pairs of earrings, that gay guy at 2 + 2 will suddenly become interested in a 14-year-old me.

5) I have been in love either 0, 1, or 5 times. Maybe 2. My uncertainty in this regard is all a function of (3) and (4). I think I’ve been in love at least once. In fact, I think I’m in love right now. Does being in love sometimes make you want to pull your hair out because your beloved will not stop babbling on about the proper way to execute a down block/a fascinating research idea/his pants? If this is consistent with “love” then I think I’m in love right now. If we go with the most generous estimation of number of love experiences (i.e., 5), then I think I was in love for the first time in high school, and I still get slightly twitterpated when I think of him. Shhh. Don’t tell.

6) Most of the nicknames I use for my children are food-based. My middle has the most nicknames, and they’re all ham-based: Hammykins, Hamtastic, Hamalamadingdong, Ham Sammich, and my favorite, Hambrosia. My daughter is Greenbean and Peanut. I’m still exploring names for the baby. So far my favorites are Porkchop and Puddin’.

7) Nineteen to go! This is fun. Okay. I’m drinking rum as I write this list. Which brings me to:

8) The older I get, the more profoundly socially phobic I become. If it wasn’t for social lubricants I would never leave the house. Think I have a problem? Suck it. You can call me Dr. Has a Problem.

9) I’m way lippier in the written word than I would EVER be in person.

10) I have a disco ball in my living room, and a chandelier in my dining room. The disco ball has an accompanying blue light that I whip out when I’m trying to set the mood for a party/orgy.

11) Okay, I’ve never actually had or even been involved in an orgy. But there’s still time!

12) I must confess that (4) is probably the reason I almost have a PhD in psychology. I had a wicked crush on my first psychology professor. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sprung on a man who I was not openly pursuing. That whole thing really blew up in my face, and yet I still love psychology. That’s devotion!

13) I have received two formal marriage proposals. Both were on holidays (the first, St. Patrick’s Day, the second Valentine’s Day) and both came from men who were kneeling next to the bed I was in/on. WTF, proposing men? PS – One of these men was perched atop a pile a laundry. Double WTF.

14) I had a tremendous crush (surprise!) on a really hot female graduate student when I was an undergrad. A friend once hypothesized that my X-Men power was turning ridiculously red whenever she came around. He may have been right, because I have yet to do anything quite as remarkable…

15) Unless you count gestating tiny adorable X-Men with my Brain Scientist. Our oldest just turned four and is reading, doing math, and using words like “conscientious”. Our ten-month old is walking and starting to say words. It’s both freaky and charming.

16) Ten more to go! I’m fine with watching movies I’ve never seen, but would probably prefer to watch the first two parts of the Godfather over and over again. Up until recently I had serious issues with the third film because of the whole Sofia Coppola thing. It was only on my last viewing that I was able to get past all the obvious flaws and really attend to the story. I have to say, I really love the way it ends.

17) The crush mentioned in (14) caused me to pester my closest friend about going to a lesbian bar until she finally caved in. We went on something called “Revue Night”. I remember being so delighted that the lesbian bar had an evening devoted to poetry. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that “Revue Night” actually meant dancing naked women. Don’t get me wrong – it was awesome and all. However, I will admit that a) I was flabbergasted, and b) it took me some time to find the right balance between looking enough to see the naked woman dancing OVER THERE and looking so much that the naked woman over there felt compelled to come over to dance RIGHT AT OUR TABLE, maybe expecting money or something.

18) I also love watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy over and over again. I love the series, but I particularly love Eowyn in “Return of the King”: I AM NO MAN. That makes me teary and tingly every single time. I also cry every single time I watch “A Mighty Wind”.

19) I always thought I wouldn’t be able to stand the pain of childbirth until I experienced an unmedicated transition on Pitocin while hunched over with an epidural needle in my back. To labor I say BRING IT.

20) It turns out that I whisper when in a lot of pain, and when in moderately extreme pain I sing the Sesame Street pinball song: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.” I never would have guessed.

21) When my daughter was three years old she went on a field trip to a bowling alley. I was a chaperone, and when I was helping other children put their shoes on someone’s grandma decided to give my daughter a ride back to the pre-school without telling anyone. For fifteen minutes our entire bowling alley full of people thought she’d been abducted. That was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, and if I can live the rest of my life being able to say that I will consider myself very fortunate.

22) I once made turkey for an entire third grade. Every year at my daughter’s school the third graders have a Thanksgiving feast. The year she was in the third grade lots of people volunteered to bring gravy and pie, but no one signed up for turkey. I couldn’t bear the thought of all those little eight-year-olds with sporks full of gravy and no turkey, so I bought frozen turkey breasts, thawed them over night, cooked them early in the morning, and hauled them to her school. Being eight months pregnant causes one to do some wacky shit. Come to think of it, the next time I was eight months pregnant I made her class Valentine’s Day cupcakes shaped like human hearts. They were red velvet and filled with red jelly and as frostingly anatomically correct as a baked good can get. They were fabulous and delicious and kept me up until three in the morning. That is only the beginning of the list of ridiculous things I have done for her. Further proof that children can turn you into a total lunatic.

23) Only three to go? Okay. I have nightmares about being forced to skydive.

24) When I am feeling particularly crabby I go here http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/sam and wait. When the Brain Scientist finally happens by and offers an unsolicited opinion (which happens all the time), I click on the box in the upper left and try to look bad ass. Try it! It feels great.

25) Wow. Last one. I have a feeling no one’s actually reading this by now and I am JUST FINE with that. Anyway, finally: I have a pillow named Tom Quinn. He’s a body pillow that the Brain Scientist bought me the last time I was pregnant. He is snuggly and plush and named after my favorite MI-5 agent. But hey! I’m only on season 3 right now, so please don’t say anything about what’s to become of him. Right now my favorite joke is to offer to loan him to the Brain Scientist. I tell him he can flip Tom Quinn over and call him Zoe. Man, that just cracks me up.

26) BONUS ITEM!: Every once in a while I have a day where I wake up and think that Ringo is my favorite Beatle. I’m not sure what’s going on with that.

27) BONUS ITEM!: I had a very difficult time calling this a list of random things. These things are not random. Further, they correlate in a way that makes me seem like a moody, horny degenerate.

such a fine line between stupid and clever

2009-01-10T01:45:00.000-08:00

I am ready to punch Today in the cock.

Wait. It’s Tomorrow. I’m sorry, Tomorrow. I have no issues I wish to resolve by way of violence against your cock.

***

Today was awesome. Awesome right up until 8:30 pm, when everything went to hell in an exceptionally priced handbasket in the middle of the IKEA parking lot. It is Jimmy Page’s birthday. Early today I began a letter to Jimmy Page – a letter in which I expressed my love for him, for Led Zeppelin, and for Robert Plant’s pants circa 1970. But goddamn it! I couldn’t finish it. I couldn’t find the words to ask Jimmy why he is dressed like a box of Tastykakes at their (Zeppelin's, not the 'Kakes') 1970 performance at Royal Albert Hall. Why? Because I am downright belligerent. I AM PISSED. Again the question: Why? That’s hard to say. I know what triggered this whole mess, but I can’t say with certainty what’s sustained it. Perhaps together we can figure this out. I will be Trixie Belden, and you can be my Honey.

First, Jimmy Page. If you are like me then you love Led Zeppelin. Love. I once knew (or know, or am) a girl who loved Led Zeppelin so much that when she received a most coveted Zeppelin DVD for Christmas while pregnant, she tucked it away for a time when she was very much not pregnant and could enjoy it to its fullest capacity. She saved it until New Year’s Eve when, after her son’s fourth birthday party, she and her co-creator shared a pot of tea and settled down sans children to watch Led Zeppelin circa 1970, totally stoked at the magical rock-and-rolliness of it all and what they were about to behold and still not at all expecting the magic which was awaiting them in the form of Robert Plant’s goddamn pants. It may have been the tea talking, but that girl swore those pants were made of nothingness and sex. And I’ve seen the pants – she’s right! Nothingness and sex, which is just about as good as it gets in Pantsville.

So anyway. Happy birthday, Jimmy Page. I love you.

Now, because it is Jimmy Page’s birthday, I decided to celebrate in an appropriate fashion by getting high (on life!) and going to IKEA. Being high on life, I also submitted a manuscript for publication and applied for a job, because I love Jimmy Page that much. The Junior Brain Scientist decided to celebrate by dressing up in his blue and white seersucker suit, complete with linen shirt and tie, and parading around IKEA like a tiny Matlock hungry for the sweet embrace of an exceptionally priced stuffed bird that might have been a flamingo. The Other Junior Brain Scientist (i.e., the baby? Who has no blorum name? Formally known as the person who came out of my vagina?) decided to celebrate by sitting affably in his car seat while we pushed him around the store and waved tiny pencils in front of his face. Finally, the senior Brain Scientist decided to celebrate by being totally cool for the majority of the day and then donning his dick hat right around 8:30 tonight when IKEA put a dog collar around our necks and forced us to smell the glove.

Things went to shit in the parking lot. IKEA has that kind of parking lot. Walmart has the kind of parking lot that inspires people to at long last pour out the gallons of old milkshakes they’ve been hoarding in their cars, which is why I don’t ever go to Walmart and only send someone there on my behalf that one time per child when I have a breast pump emergency at 3:00 am because the bride and groom have whisked off to “consummate” their marriage with my breast pump in their car trunk and I am hammered and still dressed up like a (very heavily disheveled) lusty Renaissance wench maid-of-honor who may or may not have been photographed in compromising positions. IKEA, on the other hand, has a parking lot in which families are destroyed, because who knew that if you put 25 items that are only $7.99 in your cart, plus two that are $40, you will spend way goddamn more than you meant to? Not because you are irresponsible. No. Because you aren’t. You go to IKEA alone and have a list and a budget and do not allow any impulse purchases unless it is an absolute screaming deal, and you don’t really do that very often because a deal has to be screaming at you in a Scottish accent, like Ewan MacGregor, and usually needs to be saying something about The Velvet Underground or quantitative graduate student moms being really, really sexy. And typically that does not happen! And so you do not overspend. But then you go with other people! Impetuous cognitive scientists. Tiny southern attorneys. Adorable babies made of tolerant buttercream frosting. Then one thing leads to another, and there are purple bath mats and – oh my bitter ironic god – some other stuff that I can’t even remember right now, and suddenly you are being implicated in overspending at IKEA.

But You didn’t overspend.

The Collective You overspent.

No big deal, right? Yes, you fucked up, you exceptionally priced toothbrush holder loving whore. And yes, your living room does have a dearth of lamps given its size. But still. Was anyone talking to anyone else about numbers? Who was in charge of addition? Why are you such an idiot? I mean, some of you have advanced degrees. Whatever. You can take something back. But not until after someone has unjustly blamed you and your carefully considered list for the foible. You will take a moment and examine the receipt and point out to your associates that some serious do-re-mi was laid out in an effort to properly illuminate the living room, a series of purchases which was not on your list and was IN FACT motivated by your associates! You will be slightly perturbed, but will remain collected. Unfortunately, very soon something will get all fucked up in the course of the communications and their accompanying emotions and you will get frustrated to the point that you are hunting through the re-usable bags! which are only fifty-nine cents! in order to find the elegantly designed, exceptionally priced item that can be used most efficiently to slap the self-righteous indignation out of the bozo driving the mini-van. And perhaps the bozo will issue lame apologies at some point once he gathers himself and stops being an idiot or notices that you are about to brain him with a LACK end table for which you are also not responsible. But by then it’s too late. You are already wickedly pissed and trying to engage in the skillz you were taught in therapy, but for some unfathomable reason the bozo is saying But WHY can’t you talk about this right now? That’s RIDICULOUS even though you have patiently explained over and over and over again that this is one of your skillz and please show a little respect when you are asked to shut up about something for a while.

Before you know it you are home, and things are being brought into the house. You calmly identify items that could easily be returned. But then – then! – someone criticizes the CD rack you’ve just agreed upon and purchased and then claims they’ve NEVER liked it, but since they’ve told you that the last two times you were at Dr. Sveelgood’s Household Item and Opium Parlor and you still keep asking about it they thought they’d just give up and let you purchase the goddamn thing which will look totally out of place in the living room.

And that’s it.

Suddenly you’re asking they remove the big exceptionally priced metal shampoo caddy that they’d moments before placed in the shower. You’re planning on returning that! You are eager to continue your routine of picking up everyone's toppled bottles while you bathe and answer questions about socks and factor analysis! And when they ask just where you’d like them to put the shower thing – because the whole house is already such a goddamn mess! – you suggest that they put it up their ass. Reconsidering your words a few minutes later, you throw it in the front yard. The shower caddy, not the ass. And then you retreat to a bedroom where you nap with an innocent ball of buttercream.

Later you will wake up and rapidly consume the remaining half of the bozo’s bottle of wine. You will be alone. You will tell your troubles to a made-up friend inside the computer. You will long for a real friend. You will drink more wine. You will lament not being able to see your Jimmy Page Birthday plans to their conclusion.You will curse – fuck! You will curse all things Scandanavian – fuck! get out of the sixties, Ian! You will wish you were a Buddhist lesbian. Actually, you will wish you were involved with a Buddhist lesbian. Because of the whole desire (IKEA)-and-ignorance (CAN’T ADD)-at-the-root-of-suffering thing. And, you know, the tits.

hatched

2009-01-04T17:53:00.000-08:00

Prologue:

It is morning, and we are nursing our hangovers and asking ourselves the age old question: Was that fifth martini really necessary? We are feeling sheepish, because we're wearing a combination of clothes that makes it perfectly clear that we might still be drunk. We are periodically weeping over a movie about talking cars. We are pathetic. Pa-the-tic. We recall many other occasions in which we have made questionable judgments with regard to alcohol, in both the procurement and consumption of. We intend to commit to electronic paper the story of the first time we obtained alcohol, and how that led to us nearly being suspended from school, but how it was truly someone else's bad judgment that time. We attempt to type the following sentence: I've been involved in many an ill-conceived plan. But this is how it comes out: I've been involved in many an ill-conceived man. The salt of truth rains down on the slug of our dignity.

***

I've been involved in many an ill-conceived man. Many of these weren't men at the time, but rather adolescent males who inspired me and members of my female cohort to hatch plans guaranteed to make us look ridiculous. Looking back now, I can't understand what we were even thinking. Here is a sample male:

I recently showed this to a ten-year-old child and was mocked.

Never in all the man plans did one fail as miserably as Plan JK. JK was an intelligent preppy boy (not our illustration fellow, above) who I developed a crush on around my junior year in high school. Plan JK: Defcon 5 strategies involved announcing to any and all that I liked JK, doodling his name in between the Smiths stickers on my pee-chee, and gazing at him through the window that connected our math classes. Had I not lied my freshman year and claimed algebra was too hard so that I could be moved to pre-algebra – I was afraid of two older boys in my algebra class – I might have actually been in the room with JK. Instead I sat next door, enjoying the mathematical stylings of Harley Potampa – which sometimes involved him drawing on his undershirt to make a point – and starring at JK as I developed Plan JK: Defcon 4.

It became obvious to me that the reason I had yet to pique JK's interest was that I wasn't preppy enough. The solution? Wear my mother's clothes to school. My mother at this time wore a lot of crisp, pressed shirts from The Gap and owned penny loafers. These I gathered and began wearing with zeal. One day it was cutoffs, polka dot tights, and a Church of Elvis t-shirt, and the next day it was my mom. I pulled out all the stops, and began to purchase preppy clothing of my own, completely selling out my own fashion sensibilities.

It still wasn't working. I was wearing preppy clothes – I was wearing the fuck out of them. Nothing. It was time for Plan JK: Defcon 3. I needed to actually interact with JK, but how was I going to do that? The answer was obvious: I was the photo editor for the school paper, and I could get him out of class to take his picture. Throwing aside all photojournalistic integrity, I convinced fellow newspaper staff members that we needed to do a center spread feature on the diversity of fashion styles at our school. We would photograph different students who had a "look". JK would be our smart preppy guy.

I have no clear memory of the actual photo shoot. I can tell you this: it did not result in JK taking any interest in me whatsoever. My friend Kristin would later remark that never has anyone ever been less interested in another person. She probably told me this at the time as well, repeatedly, but I wasn't listening.

Plan JK: Defcon 2 was met with similar failure. Kristin would drive me past his house on a regular basis – as in 6 times in a 15 minute span – after school. We would listen to the song The Darkest Blues by Stephen Duffy, over and over and over again, because it contains the following lyrics:

I can't forget you no matter how I try

For every time I see you my heart dies

Every time I see you my heart dies

I am the one that you ignore

You are the one that I adore

Oh won't you come back again?

Nevermind that there was no coming back for him to do, as he was never there in the first place. The ignore and adore part struck a chord that was deafening, and I couldn't hear the rest of the song.

Plan JK: Defcon 1 was really more about retribution for all my wasted time and money. It was simple: I selected the very worst photo from the fashion shoot to print in our center spread feature – the one where one of his feet looks freakishly huge. The rest were flattering, and featured him straddling a chair while using a graphing calculator. The one that was printed was not – it's just him sitting there with his legs crossed reading a book to his big, freaky foot. I include this here, for all the internets to see:

Take that, JK. How do you like me NOW?

candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker (to ignite)

2008-12-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

I broke my core. I was trying to strengthen it, but I accidentally broke it. I thought I was operating once again with a reasonably aligned pelvis, but it turns out I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I went to the doctor yesterday and got shot after shot of lidocaine, and am now taking prednisone and percocet. I can’t really move. I have crutches. Crutches that smell weird. Bad weird, not good weird like patchouli or glue. I’m stuck on the couch. I’m being cared for by a Brain Scientist. It turns out that he was not meant to be a nurse. If you know Dr. BS you will nod knowingly at this point. I’m trapped. I never saw that movie Castaway but I know Tom Hanks talked to a beach ball or whatever and I am like that now but with no balls. All I have is this computer.

I am glum because I can’t bake cookies. Or decorate anything. Or take BS, Jr. shopping. Or make anything. Or pick up my children. The brain scientist is doing these things, though. He was making candy. But then he went outside and was gone, leaving me in one room and a cauldron of candy in the other. When the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen it seemed plausible that stuff had ignited, so I called feebly to Dr. BS and hobbled off to accidentally catch my pajamas on fire. Fortunately it was all smoke and no fire, but by the time I figured that out Dr. BS was in the kitchen giving me a scoldly voiced WHAT ARE YOU DOING OFF THE COUCH YOU WILL NEVER GET BETTER IF YOU… while the smoke detector BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEPED. Are you serious? What am I doing off the couch? Goddamn it, Willy Wonka, I am saving lives. Don’t leave your fucking candy unattended, you everlasting gobstopper.

a tale of pants

2008-12-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

I have entered a pants contest. I have gone out on a limb and told a story about pants in an effort to win a pair of pants. “Out on a limb”. See how I did that? It was an accident. A codeine inspired accident.

Here is my story about pants:

When I was in the seventh grade I had a pair of pants I loved. There were two girls in the eighth grade – one small, freckled, and seemingly harmless, the other large, Aqua-Netted, and aboslutely horrible. They did not love my pants, and they conveyed this opinion to me in the cafeteria by way of stares and shared whispers and zingers like Nice pants. Even as a socially anxious twelve-year-old I understood on some level that their aversion to my pants was utter bullshit. First of all, the pants totally looked like something Elvis Costello would wear, and if you can’t appreciate that then you don’t deserve to even wear pants. Second, the pants were made by Esprit. I knew that you could not simultaneously parade around school in Esprit sweatshirts, carry Esprit bags, and then mock Esprit pants, particularly especially awesome Elvis-Costello-y Esprit pants. Clearly these girls had no sense of style and possibly no souls.

One day in the gym after lunch I was approached by a boy named Greg who wanted to know if I liked Freckles and Horrible. Of course I didn’t like them. Actually, I sort of hated them. Fueled by an irrational devotion to protect my pants’ honor, I said this to Greg. In fact, I went further than that. I told Greg I thought they were bitches. Moments later I saw Greg across the gym talking to Freckles and Horrible. They were all looking at me, and I realized that I’d made a huge mistake.

By the end of the day I’d heard from many a source that Freckles and Horrible were going to KICK. MY. ASS. I wish I had a larger, shriekier font to communicate the magnitude of ass kicking it was rumored I was to receive. We considered running away, my pants and I, and starting a new life together somewhere else. Like any girl faced with this sort of problem, I turned to the person who clearly had the greatest deal of experience negotiating the rocky terrain of adolescent female social situations: my father.

His advice was this: Walk up to these girls, look them straight in the eye and say If you have something to say about me, then say it to me. If you don’t have the guts to do that, then shut up. Yes! This was obviously the solution! Who would possibly want to kick my ass after that sort of display? Have you the guts, ladies? HAVE YOU? He then bolstered my resolve to follow through with this stellar plan by playing Linda Rondstadt very loudly and encouraging me to sing along with lyrics modified to suit my situation: You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good, Freckles, you’re no good. A bully confrontation scene straight out of an after school special? An indignant Linda Rondstadt-fueled rage? There was no way this could fail!

The next morning I returned to school feeling somewhat less feisty than I had the prior evening, but still determined to follow through with The Plan. I told my best friend about The Plan, and she looked absolutely horrified. She suggested that maybe this was not such a good idea, that perhaps I should consider A Different Plan. I didn’t actually have one of those, so had to wing it. As it turned out, A Different Plan consisted of rushing from class to class, trying to blend in to walls, and by fifth period, crying in the bathroom. I was terrified. Horrible really was horrible, what with her black eyeliner and big, big bangs, and I was so small, with my moderately sized bangs and huge pants-loving mouth. And where were my pants now, in my moment of need? At home, curled up in a hamper, where I wanted to be.

Then it happened. The door opened, and in walked two girls – Cheerleader 1 and Cheerleader 2, the two most popular girls in school! Who were friends with Freckles! And Horrible! Who were also cheerleaders! How did I forget to mention this?! And these two most popular girls at school – who had the very most perfect bangs you could ever imagine – found me there, crying into a paper towel while I tried to figure out how to get hit or possibly hit someone else. They asked me what was wrong and I told them Blah blah bitches and blah blah kick my ass. Then they took me into their arms and patted my hair, and told me that Horrible and Freckles were both bitches. Yes! Bitches! I was not to worry, they said. They would put a stop to this. And then they told me I was cute and suggested I try out for cheerleading. And after that, absolutely nothing happened, and I think I learned a lesson, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it was. Hooray pants!

come on y'all, it's time to get nice

2008-10-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

The other day I was in the car with my daughter, and I turned off Centerfold by the J. Geils Band. No, I did not turn it off because it sucks, which might be the motivation of an individual with a more discriminating ear than my own. Rather, I found myself changing stations because I deemed the lyrics to be TOO RISQUE for my eleven-year-old passenger. Suddenly I am Tipper Gore? But wait! There’s more! Rather than sullying our ears (and souls!) with the filth that is Centerfold, we instead opted for the genteel stylings of the Beastie Boys in the form of Brass Monkey, which we listened to in its entirety. Yes! How’s that for judgment? My blood runs cold.

be tween

2008-09-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

HOLY SHIT. I am in the throes of being deeply discombobulated. This is a real time report (or would have been, had I not given up and abandoned it until another day, this day, which is today, right now. Which makes this part “real time”, I guess. Or not. Oh, fuck it.) My daughter, who is twelve, is having her birthday party tonight. I was JUST twelve. Not temporally speaking, of course. But it seems like I was just twelve. And they are doing all the shite I DID as a twelve year old, but they are doing it up Twenty-First Century style. Youtube changes everything. And I am baking brownies for them, because I am The Mom. HOLY SHIT.

Now they are making a video and writing some sort of rap. They are rapping, about God Knows What. Here is an overheard bit of conversation that occurred between two young party guests and Qwanty, Jr., courtesy of the Brain Scientist:

Young party guest: What rhymes with hair?

Other young party guest: Mare!

Qwanty, Jr.: Sare!

The BS reported this to me, confused: How are they possibly going to work that into a song?

How indeed. And seriously, junior. Sare? SARE? Jesus, child. That’s not even a word. It is at best an acronym. And frankly, I don’t think you know that.

add it up

2008-09-17T10:11:00.003-07:00

Although I am pursuing an advanced degree in something I shall refer to today as the “quantitative arts”, I will admit that I have a difficult time wrapping me head around numbers that are intended to quantify things. Hey. I accidentally typed me instead of my. It also seems that the me of the typed word has a difficult time refraining from sounding like a pirate. Arrrr. But wait. I was saying something about numbers – specifically those that are intended to quantify things – being problem for me. That’s no good. I mean, really, aren’t all numbers generally expected to act in a quantifying capacity?

Anyway. Take, for example, the distance from the earth to the sun. I can’t recall the exact number, but I can assure you that is a very large number of miles away. Wait. The Brain Scientist just happened by and informed me that it’s 93,000,000 miles. That’s NINETY THREE MILLION. Thank you, Brain Scientist. I DON’T REMEMBER ASKING YOU A GODDAMN THING. But thank you. That’s a lot of miles.

Another example:

The number 5.

Five. That is the number of Peeps that constitutes an entire serving of Peeps. I read this on the side of the Peeps packaging last Spring, when I was at my absolute most pregnant and desiring sugar coated marshmallows in vast quantities. Even in this rotund, marshmallowy-ravenous state, I was only able to choke down two-thirds of a bunny-shaped Peep. When I bit off its ears I was in heaven, and was concerned that a single package was not going to be enough to satisfy my Peep needs. Despite my initial exuberance, however, by the time I had consumed its midsection, down to the area where its marshmallowy bunny genitals might reside, I thought I might throw up on myself. Yet the good people at Peeps informed me via the nutritional information that I could have FIVE ENTIRE PEEPS and still feel like I was well within the normal range of Peep consumption. That’s a whole four and one-thirds Peeps more than I was able to consume at the pinnacle of my Peeps jones. That’s a lot of Peeps.

Also mind-boggling:

The number 4.

Four. That’s the number of quadruple vodkas John Bonham drank the morning of the day he died. I will walk you through this. That’s four times four shots of vodka, at breakfast. That’s SIXTEEN shots of vodka. SIXTEEN. With ham. Or maybe eggs. And then he went and played the drums. After having sixteen shots of vodka. And HAM. Or perhaps EGGS. And then he drank some more. Now, I have, in my day, consumed some vodka. I have also had some ham, as well as some eggs. And outside of the morning-after hair of the dog bloody mary, rarely have I had them all at the same time in a fashion that was designed to satisfy both my need for an omelet and my need to get drunk. And on those rare occasions that I have indulged in such a fashion? Never have I done anything beyond spending the better part of my day – or perhaps the next day – in a puddle of regret. I certainly haven’t done anything like play the drums. It’s no wonder things ended badly for John. Four quadruple shots. That’s a lot of vodka.

So close:

The number 3.

Three. That’s the number of brothers Gibb that comprise the Bee Gees. I understand that this is also the number of brothers that make up the Jonas Brothers. I have two sons! I just need a third, and I will have the makings of a boy band. As both of the above mentioned bands have demonstrated, it is only necessary that ONE of the band members be vaguely good-looking. I can probably do that! I just need to gestate one more son, and when they reach adolescence I can drape them with medallions or promise rings (promise rings! They just scream Abstinence! And also Unprotected Anal Sex! Hey. Read the research!) and other trappings of boy bandiness and then I will no longer need to worry about my success in the quantitative arts. Hooray!

Perplexing:

The number 2.

Two. That is the number of items that have gone missing from my refrigerator in the last 24 hours. First on the AWOL list is a container of cream cheese, used this morning during the preparation of a sandwich. Second on the list is a bunch of spinach. A box, actually, half of which was used in last night’s salad. WHERE HAVE THEY GONE? Dr. BS denied having any information about their whereabouts. I suggested that he had perhaps absconded with them and used them to create a make-shift vagina for times when he’s lonely (although I didn’t actually call it “a make-shift vagina”. I won’t say what I did actually call it, because, you know, search engines and irrational paranoia and all.) He laughed at this suggestion. Yes, laughed – a little too hard, if you ask me.

Alarming:

The number 1:

One. This is the number of warnings that have been issued to me with regard to the safe deployment of pepper. DO NOT GRIND OVER STEAMING POTS. It is printed on the side of my pepper grinder. I would also like it printed on a tee shirt. Note to all: Do not grind qwanty over steaming pots.

wik-ed

2008-09-17T10:11:00.002-07:00

originally posted July 16, 2008

I have a mental list of things to look up on Wikipedia. It's a very short list though, since my mental area is not a very good place to store things. Here are the two most recent items:

1) Dinah Shore

I'm not really sure what the deal with Burt Reynolds and Dinah Shore was. Every time I see a documentary on Burt Reynolds there is a mention of their relationship. Wait. Every time? That doesn't seem right. I don't watch much television, and it certainly can't be the case that a significant portion of my viewing time is devoted to Burt Reynolds related material. How often can this have possibly happened? Also: documentary? That doesn't seem right either. Who is making Burt Reynolds documentaries? It can't be the case that I am watching Burt Reynolds documentaries. Anyway: Dinah Shore. She and Burt Reynolds had some sort of special relationship. This warms my cockles. It should be noted that my cockles have a very low threshold for what constitutes warming.

2) Vomitorium

I was wondering about the whole vomitorium thing the other day in the car: What were they like? When did they go out of vogue? Why did they go out of vogue? It seems like the process of gorging oneself followed by orally evacuating oneself is a decent idea. I realize that this pretty much sums up bulimia, but I must confess that I see some appeal in that as well, and am a bit surprised that I haven't gone that way at some point in my existence. Shut up. I never claimed to be of the best mental health, okay? Just shut up.

Anyway. I was wondering about vomitoriums, and since I figured I would forget that the subject held a place on my List of Things to Ask Wikipedia, I decided to ask Dr. Brain Scientist:

Vomitoriums, I said. What do you know about them?

Well, he replied. You know I wrote a play called 'The Vomitorium', don't you? So actually I know quite a bit about them.

Actually I did not know that. Or perhaps I did, but I chose to forget.

He went on from there to tell me all about vomitoriums, and also about The Vomitorium. The latter of these was based on his days as a bouncer at a certain local establishment that sold certain types of books and videos, and was also a place that one could come if one hoped to meet a like-minded individual interested in fucking in a video booth at said establishment. Yes! And for a very brief period his days as a bouncer included cleaning, and by this I mean "cleaning", the video booth. It turns out that "cleaning" involves wearing a special suit and carrying a special spray bottle of solvent but not actually entering the video booth for the process of cleaning. Rather, one stands a respectable distance from the doorway of the booth and sprays the solvent in the general direction of the room because one is only a bouncer for Christ's sake and this was not part of the job description. Yes. I agree. Eeew on all counts. How could I, as a person who is ooked out by others' uninvited bodily goo, have possibly gotten involved with a man who was paid to purportedly clean up such things?

Jesus, I need a drink. I mean another drink.

***

Other things I'd like to know, but can't ask Wikipedia:

1) Was there a time in my life when I could go out for sushi and not find myself commanding four times for a dining companion to TAKE THE CHOPSTICKS out of their nose? I feel like there was, but it was oh so long ago.

2) When is Shaggy going to stop singing that Hot Cross Buns song on the junior Brain Scientist's Scooby Doo video game? No, I do not want to buy your sweet buns, Shaggy, no matter how many times you ask me, and frankly, you are making my hot buns pretty goddamn cross. Shut up already.

3) Who drank my beer? Who is going to get me another one?

***

P.S. – The Brain Scientist just read the part of this in which I described his time as spunk swabber, and he wants me to mention that he worked there for several years and that this only happened for a short period of time and that he left the establishment soon after spunk swabber was added to his list of job responsibilities. Do not look down your nose at him and call him Spoo Boy! It is Doctor Spoo Boy.

title: some sort of other title

2008-09-17T10:11:00.001-07:00

originally posted June 25, 2008

The purpose of this is to share with you something that I think everyone should know about. And since somewhere between everyone and no one reads this, I thought I would share it here. This gets around the whole "directly interacting with other adults" thing that gets me so bugabooed. You are probably already aware of this thing I hope to share, as I sense you are hipper than I am, and so if this is the case, please just return to your usual activities and feel free to shake your head in disdain over what a rube I am.

First though, some self-indulgent tripe:

Greeting. Introduction of thing. Me. Me. Me. Complaint. Brain Scientist. Swear word. Complaint. Embarrassing yet ultimately pointless revelation. Me. More me. You? Now back to me. Misspelt werd. Vague attempt at humor. Did I mention me?

List of some sort:

1) Wank.

2) Waaaaank.

3) Squishy sound.

And then me. Ha ha. Child. Child. Vomit. Child. Vagina.

Unnecessary snippet of conversation:

Me: Huh?

Whoever: What?

Me: Yes!

Whoever: Indeed!

Me. You again. Me. Tangent. Reference to something in the nineteen eighties. Return to primary subject thing. More me. Sense that I am going nowhere with this. Increasing loss of interest in thing and stuff and spellink. Whatever.

Lackluster conclusion.

Swear word.

Fin.

***

Okey dokey! Now that we have that out of the way, please take a moment to view all the episodes of Yacht Rock:

http://www.channel101.com/shows/show.php?show_id=152

A very cool person who wears bus guy glasses shared this with me about a year ago at a gathering at my house. It took me some time to figure out what he was talking about because I was drinking tequila while trying to frost a cake:

Him: I said Yacht Rock.

Qwanty: What?

H: Yacht Rock!

Q: Huh?

H: Yacht Rock!

Q: Yurt…?

H: YACHT Rock!

Q: What kind of rock?

H: YACHT ROCK!

Q: Yot?

H: YAAAACHT! Like the BOAT!

Q: Ohhhhhhhh. Yacht Rock. ("Q" appears confused. "Q" eats frosting.)

***

So there you go. Yacht Rock. Gordon Bennett, have at it.

warm fuzzies

2008-09-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

originally posted June 23, 2008

I have some gruesome news not for the faint of heart: There are caterpillars in our bathroom. Dr. BS discovered three (!) the other day, all at once. Three! In the bathroom! ALL AT ONCE. One was floating around in the toilet, expired, one was found smushed under the bathroom rug, and one was CRAWLING AROUND RIGHT THERE OUT IN THE OPEN. And now this morning he found another one!

This is not good. I have an aversion to insects. Okay, not really an aversion, more of an irrational terror with regard to. I can tolerate ants in small numbers, and ladybugs are okay, but anything beyond that and I become a hot, sweaty mess. If my children are about I will try to appear calm and such, because one of my jobs as a mother is to prevent my assorted neuroses from becoming their assorted neuroses. However, if they are not around (as in, not directly in front of me), I will express open panic by way of frantic shrieks to the Brain Scientist or warbled, muted wails as I run, hand clasped over my mouth, to the place in the house that is furthest from the scene of the intrusion. Sometimes I will stand on my bed so that I can appraise the threat of an insect stampede. Sometimes I will do so while covering my ears with my hands, so as to protect them from potential entry by insects. EEEEEEEEEEEEE. I can barely type this.

Yesterday I was in a different bathroom, as I can no longer enter the Caterpillar Cave of Terror, for obvious reasons, and was startled by a cricket that leapt out at me from the shower curtain in a very menacing way. A cricket. I hate crickets. I try to imagine them wearing tiny spectacles and spats and carrying little canes and stuff but it JUST DOESN'T WORK. And because there was no three-year-old in the immediate vicinity to inspire me to police my behavior I called urgently (or perhaps screamed), Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist Brain Scientist! And he came running in, totally disgusted when he discovered the source of my urgent call, not because he finds crickets offensive, but rather because he finds me and my irrational fear offensive. I thought you cut off your hand, he said. There's a cricket! I whispered in the horrified way of one who has just found a severed head. And then the Brain Scientists senior and junior went merrily about wrangling the cricket and escorting it outside, all the while enjoying a fun father-son moment as it tickled their hands and attempted to escape and crawled on my son's arm, covering him with CRICKET COOTIES. AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!

So anyway, there seems to be a caterpillar problem. I would say infestation, because four (!) seems like A LOT of caterpillars for one tiny room, but I'm afraid that some divine power will set my ass straight by teaching me about what truly constitutes an infestation. I fear I would not survive that.

Dr. BS has three theories as to how the caterpillars are getting into the bathroom, all of which stem from an overarching theory that the caterpillars are attempting to escape the ridiculous heat of Satan's Nethers:

1) They have come up through the drain, as we have not run the shower in this bathroom for some time.

2) They have come in on the cat, who hangs out in the bathroom. Early this morning I mis-remembered this theory, thinking that the BS had told me that they might have come in on him. This was a terrible thought to have as I lay next to him in bed – that the Brain Scientist was, unbeknownst to me, the Pied Piper of Caterpillars.

And finally, the most horrifying theory of all:

3) They fell from the bathroom fan over the toilet.

From the bathroom fan. Over the toilet.

CATERPILLARS falling from the bathroom fan over the toilet.

CATERPILLARS FALLING FROM THE SKY! ONTO ME! ONTO MY HEAD!! FALLING ONTO MY HEAD WHILE SITTING ON THE TOILET!!! MY HEAD, WHICH IS SUFFICIENTLY NERVOUS ENOUGH ALREADY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! AS INDICATED BY THE FACT THAT MY INSECT ANXIETY ALREADY MOTIVATES ME TO DO A THOUROUGH CHECK OF THE BASE OF THE TOILET REGION PRIOR TO SITTING DOWN IN AN EFFORT TO AVOID BEING SURPRISED BY A POTATO BUG OR MAYBE EVEN GOD FORBID A COCKROACH!!!!! HOLY FUCK!!!!!!

Of course, this has resulted in a great deal of twitchiness on my part, as I am continually experiencing the sensation that something is crawling on me and that things are falling on my head.

Oooooooh, I need a valium.

Fucking caterpillars.

waiting

2008-09-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

originally posted June 21, 2008

Wednesday night I went to see Tom Waits. I couldn't NOT go, after hearing Dr. BS's enthusiastic telling of The Tale of the Sights, Sounds, and Smells of the Tuesday Evening Show He Attended. Really, it was the smells that got me. He returned from Tuesday night's show all starry eyed and dazed, and it was clear he'd had a concert experience that had not only made his top ten list of The Greatest Concert Experiences of All Time, but also secured the number one spot on his list of The Worst Smelling Group of People I Have Ever Smelt. It should be noted that the BS spent a good portion of his life as a stinky hippie, so he has attended many, many shows, and has been around many, many, many smelly people. Can you see the appeal?

The problem I faced was not having a ticket to Wednesday night's show, much as I had not had a ticket to the Tuesday evening stinkfest that had so enchanted the doctor. You see, Tom Waits has a pretty devoted fanbase – a devoted, fedora-wearing, and apparently stench-laden fanbase. And as Tom Waits was only playing a smattering of shows on the Odor and Doom – oops, I mean Glitter and Doom – tour, we were in competition for tickets with very serious fans from all sorts of states, and these tickets sold out approximately four minutes after they went on sale. This was a sad event in our house, this realization that we would not be seeing Tom Waits. Later the afternoon the tickets went on sale, hours after The Sadness had descended upon our household, I tried again to get a single ticket while I was at "work". Lo and behold, I got a lone ticket in the balcony, and was able to phone Dr. BS and surprise him with the news, even though he had been a bit of a lippy-know-it-all-pain-in-the-ass that day and all I really wanted to do was tell his marrow-loving-blowhard-self to go suck on a bone. However, I like the guy, so instead I just called and told him the good news that he was going to the show.

Tuesday evening of the concert rolled around, and because this was a paperless ticket event, entry to the concert required the credit card that was used to purchase the ticket and valid picture id – I mean ID, as in identification. We were not all required to bring artist renditions of the uncoordinated instinctual trends of our psychic apparatuses. Apparati? Perhaps if each of us had been required to bring a picture of our id, we would at this moment have a better sense of why everyone smelled so weird. Anyway, this paperless ticket business required that the two small boys and I troop downtown to the concert venue with the Brain Scientist and stand in line with him and walk him to the door and wave around my credit card and identification and bid him adieu and troop back to the parking garage and drive all the way home and drink a hearty scottish amber upon our return, because it was 108 degrees outside. Fortunately, Mr. Wright volunteered to pick the BS up after the show, thus enabling the wee-uns and I to lounge around on the couch and watch the Muppet Show and drink a second hearty scottish amber and await his return, rather than venturing out into the dark hotness of Satan's Nethers for a second fun car ride.

Which brings us to the smells. It seems there were many of them. Rather than telling me too much about the actual show, as he was concerned that I might be overcome with melancholy having missed what had been a doozy of a concert, the doctor instead opted to focus on the very unique and offensive combination of smells the folks in attendance managed to generate. It seems that air conditioning was not functioning at optimum capacity, and so the balcony was filled with the smell of whiskey and cigarette sweat, with a touch of garlic. And then there was the dreadlocked guy that the BS stood behind in line at the bar as he waited to purchase a bit of whiskey in an effort to cultivate his own special smell. Dreads claimed to know Tom Waits' uncle. This is vaguely interesting because I knew a boy in my wayward youth named Will Waits who claimed that Tom Waits was his uncle. So I guess this means that Dreads knew Will Waits' great uncle. Small world. Anyhoo, it seems Dreads smelled pretty bad – indescribably bad. Of course, I was totally unimpressed when the BS offered this as an example of the stink. I mean, everyone expects a guy with dreadlocks to smell bad. We are disappointed with guys with dreadlocks who don't smell bad.

The BS then told me about a guy he encountered in the bathroom who was wearing plaid pants (Were they polyester? I asked. They had to be, he replied. The only doubt I have that they were polyester is the fact that this guy seemed like the sort who would wear wool pants when it was 108 degrees. No, they must have been polyester. They had a nice, crisp pleat), a beige suit vest, a grayish, well-worn shirt, and beige jazz shoes. Jazz shoes! Beige jazz shoes! He had a funny wispy beard, too, the sort that many adolescent males have no choice but to grow, and fully adult males, I don't know – cultivate? Finally – and you knew this was coming – he also carried upon his person a strange and horrible smell. I wanted to ask him, the BS reminisced, did you piss yourself after drinking gasoline? Did you throw up in your shoes? That's some smell! And some outfit! Dr. BS confirms this: It was like he caught a fungus from Funky Winkerbean. Alright! Now that's the sort of smell I can get behind, in a purely metaphorical sense!

Inspired by these anecdotes, and overcome with a desire to help the BS relive what was clearly a pretty awesome experience, I went online in an attempt to buy tickets to the following evening's show. It was just before midnight, and I guess some more tickets had been released, because moments later I was the proud owner of two third row orchestra seats. Seeing as there were just two rows ahead of us in the pit, this technically put us in the fifth row. Upon hearing this news, the BS did an excited little dance thing I have never, ever, ever seen him do. It was a side of him I'd not yet been acquainted with. Oh, the anticipation!

I'm sorry to report that Wednesday evening brought disappointment in the form of pleasantly breathable air and concert attendees who had all obviously bathed in the last fortnight. What the fuck? Dr. BS acknowledged that it was a very different crowd, both in terms of overall odor and general attractiveness. Yes, there was a decent fedora showing, but apparently not nearly as many as the night before. We saw Dreads again too, but didn't get close enough to smell him, because he was sitting two rows ahead of us, smack dab in the center, just as he had the night before. Maybe Tom Waits is his uncle. We also saw a guy, four rows back from us, who also had a sad, wispy beard despite that fact that he appeared to be a grown up, and he was playing a harmonica as we waited for the show to begin. Come on, dude, said the Brain Scientist, we don't need this level of detail about your persona. I am still laughing about this. Of course we were surrounded by people from other states who had flown in for the show. The couple next to us were from Alaska, and had spent the day shopping at thrift stores and eating at our very favorite Mexican restaurant. Stupid Alaskans! Stop buying our Tom Waits tickets and cool vintage dresses and eating our chimichangas! GO BACK TO YOUR IGLOOS!

Back to the fedoras. I counted 27, one of which was worn by a lady, and featured an elaborate plume of feathers.

As to the whiskey consumption. Did I have some? Hell yes, I did.

After the show we stood around outside, at least one of us counting fedoras and breathing deeply, hoping that someone would happen by who carried the legendary stink of the prior evening. No such luck. Later, as we started our journey to the car, we ran into the guy who owns one of the local bars that is a popular hangout with the drunken hipsters who inhabit the dry, dusty parts of Satan's Nethers. He was excited to see the Brain Scientist, who was for many, many years a regular patron of this bar. He slugged us both in the arm and offered to buy us a drink at a nearby bar. Of course we went, and over Sierra Nevada he explained to me that times are tough, necessitating that he jerk off the dog to feed the cat. Really?

And the concert? INCREDIBLE. Tom Waits puts on a very, very, very good show. I would get all smelly and run around in jazz shoes – beige jazz shoes – if he wanted me to. And that's saying a lot.

too many cooks

2008-09-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

originally posted May 18, 2008

I volunteered to make dinner tonight, and just spent a bit of time perusing fajita recipes and their associated reviews at epicurious. The following review grabbed my attention:

04/08/08brandyannfoster from corvallis, or
This recipe has some good things about it..the lime and cilantro cabbage topping was good. Unfortunately the chicken marinade needed more spices in general. I may try again with a lot more garlic, some lime juice and some cumming in the marinade.

Huh. I must admit, I've never thought of doing this to liven up a dish. And, as it turns out, Julia Child advocates something that sounds disturbingly similar:

http://www.unknown.nu/julia/sounds/cups.mp3

Who knew? I guess I'll need the Brain Scientist's help after all.

in which i complain, and also mention my vagina

2008-09-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

originally posted May 9, 2008

Hello. What are you doing? I am sitting very still. Today, during a rather raucous display of ambulatory dexterity in which I walked from living room to bedroom, I discovered that I could no longer walk in the manner to which I am accustomed. One moment I was striding confidently along on my way to berate someone about something, one foot in front of the other, legs firmly attached to what seemed to be a fully functioning torso, and the next moment I was attempting to remain upright by clinging to a wall. In between these two moments I said something like Hey, my back really hurts. And hurt it did. It hurt so much that I acknowledged that the Brain Scientist was probably right when he pointed out that a trip to the doctor was in order. So, off to the doctor we went, where it was discovered that my pelvis, which was recently distorted thanks to the small person who came out of – have I mentioned this? – my VAGINA, has not returned to its usual perky, properly aligned self. Instead, it suffers from a fancy sounding ailment and is all lopsided and dysfunctional and requires physical therapy two times a week. It also requires narcotics and anti-inflammatory medications and steroids, none of which I can take because I am breastfeeding the small person who came out of my, well, you know. This all means that I can only take teeny mincing steps at a ridiculously slow rate, and only when absolutely necessary, and even this is no guarantee that I will not suddenly yelp and collapse on the floor in a writhing heap of pain and ill-fitting clothing. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.*

*Spell check tells me that fuckity is not a word, and suggests that I instead try luckily, bucket, or fructify. Fructify, spell check? Fructify?

lost in translation

2008-09-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 27, 2008

Gah.

GAAAAAH.

You know what they say:

If you can't say anything nice, say something by way of back-translation via an online translating device.

In continuing to keep with that advice, I offer to my favorite federally funded grant group a few more sentiments:

The valuable program which is hated, I hate. Stop the fact that I of the surface am struck strongly.

In order to cut my fund thank you. Now my male it is inhale the chicken.

It is the mountain which gives out, one steam of badness of greeting. Me who load your penis of unfairness unfairness it is slow stop the fact that it sticks.

I will give a wee multipurpose tool to anyone who can guess what I'm really trying to say.

And by the way:

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

postscript

2008-09-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 25, 2008

I would like to add the following postscript to the latter letter of my previous post. My attempts to include this as originally intended were thwarted by the fact that the computerized innards of this space are not worldly enough to understand Japanese characters. As such, what would have otherwise been a fine closing sentiment appeared as a string of question marks. To remedy this, I have enlisted the help of an online translator to back-translate my stinging closing remark into my native English. So, Federally Funded Grant Group, I say to you this:

You it is slow, apply your subsidy above straightly.

Take that, you Federally Funded, Trip to Japan Wrecking Motherfuckers.

screwed

2008-09-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 25, 2008

This is a brief note I wrote a few months ago:

Dear Federally Funded Grant Group,

I wanted to thank you most whole-heartedly for your understanding and willingness to accommodate me as I enter the final weeks of my pregnancy. Now that I've been advised to engage in some bed rest in order to hinder any possibility of premature delivery, I am grateful that you have offered to give me time off and stop paying me so that I am no longer eligible for the paid maternity leave I would have otherwise been entitled to had I remained employed for a full 20 hours per week prior to giving birth. Also, thank you for the wee multipurpose tool you gave me for Christmas this year. It makes me feel like part of the team, and the way it is printed with the federally funded project name will always make me think of you, Federally Funded Grant Group. I shall carry it on my keychain with pride. Such a practical gift, too – I'm sure the tiny screwdriver will come in handy whenever I feel like I'm getting totally screwed.

The best to you in 2008,

Qwanty

I never did anything with the letter however, as the situation resolved itself. People intervened, and I was placed in a research assistantship that would allow me to work from home as I felt fit – one that I was assured would fund me until my graduation.

Here is a letter I wrote this morning:

Dear Federally Funded Grant Group,

There is nothing one enjoys more than returning from maternity leave to discover that one no longer has a job. Imagine my delight at learning I would be employed with you for only a few more weeks! Thank you for not mentioning this to me until I asked you directly. It turned the discovery of my upcoming unemployed status into a wonderful surprise – the creamy middle of the stale ding dong that is my academic career. Also, kudos to you on your timing! I have already turned down other positions that would have been able to fill this gap. Furthermore, I was just this evening going to purchase a plane ticket to Japan so that I could attend a conference and present a poster. I won't be doing this now, as I can no longer afford it. Fortunately, one of my collaborators, with whom I live, will be attending also, and he will be able to take over my duties, as his trip is paid for by – get this – a grant. In addition to freeing me of the pesky obligation of traveling abroad, this sudden change in plans will also allow me to be alone on my 34th birthday, when I would have otherwise been in Japan.

Domo Arigato,

Qwanty

ahem

2008-09-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 19, 2008

Um, hi.

This is so awkward. It's been so long. I feel like such a heel. Here I thought I was all devoted to this notion of writing shite down so that I could later remember it and stuff, but when the going got queasy, the queasy got all Fuck this, I'm taking a nap. And then, when the going got big and round, the big and round got all Jesus, if I have the energy and time to write this down, then I have the energy and time to unfold this blankie and take a nap. And then, when the going got particularly cranky, the particularly cranky got particularly crankier, and then took a nap. And then, after all that napping and cranking, a small person up and came out of – are you sitting down? And not eating? – my VAGINA. Yes! Shot right out of it! And then a month went by, and here we are. Here we are, and I never even took the time to complete the time line I was jabbering about the last time I woke up and shut my bitchy pie hole long enough to write something down. God damn me! I didn't even take the time to document the process I went through as I made the ever important decision as to whether I should eat the placenta! Gaaaaaaahhhh!

So, what's up with you? How is your vagina*? My vagina is fine. Thank you for asking.

I'm not really sure where to begin. So much has happened. My children discovered The Dick Van Dyke Show, which the junior Brain Scientist refers to as 'Vixen Dyke'. I wanna watch Vixen Dyke! Can you blame him? Who doesn't love to watch a little Vixen Dyke? The older girl child attempted to straighten him out on this point, explaining It's not Vixen Dyke. It's Dick Van Dyke. And you shouldn't say 'dick' by itself. She really is a good big sister, isn't she? And she knows what a dick is, it seems. My, she is growing up.

What else has happened? Let's see. Ah, yes. The junior Brain Scientist does not like me anymore. He tells me several times a day: Mama, I don't like you. I suspect it has something to do with the person who came out of – did I mention this? – my VAGINA.

Jesus. I've had approximately one thimble full of beer and I can't think of a damn thing. Why am I even bothering with this?

My apologies.

Perhaps I can try again later.

P.S. – SPOILER ALERT: I didn't eat the placenta.

* Or other favorite orifice.

recap, part I

2008-09-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

originally posted February 19, 2008

I'm starting to feel that I've been seriously remiss in failing to document any of the on-goings of the past many months. Why have I been so reluctant to create an electronic record of the exciting time I've spent growing a person? The reasons are plentiful:

1) I would not want the other children to someday look on said electronic record and say Hey! Why is it you cared enough to write stuff down for this kid, but all I have is a box of hair wads and free-floating odds and ends and an almost entirely blank baby book and…what? Is that a pork rind? Shaped like a VULVA? You are a horrible mother.

2) While the things that happen during a period of gestation are all-consuming, they aren't really all that interesting. I threw up, and then I bitched some, and then some other stuff happened, and then I was irrational, and then I had to pee a bunch, and suddenly it was eight months later.

3) I will confess – almost every single thing that finds its way to this space is gin-soaked, steeped in wine, mauled by hops, etc. There. I said it. Without the aid of social lubricants, I've not been able to muster the inspiration to fully do justice to the story of the time the Brain Scientist's friend escaped from rehab with Johnny Winter. Yes. Guitarist/albino Johnny Winter. No fucking kidding.

Hmm. I guess the reasons aren't that plentiful. They certainly aren't compelling. That said, I have begun an attempt to make up for lost time by generating a time line covering the exciting events of the pod period. As with nearly all of my undertakings, I am going to kick this one off in typical fashion: with a grand statement of intent, followed by a period of inactivity, followed by a period in which I dick around doing things completely unrelated to the endeavor, followed by regret for suggesting the endeavor in the first place, followed by bitter attempts to get things underway. This should be fun.

snippet good

2008-09-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

originally posted December 6, 2007

This happened today*:

Lady: Are you having a Christmas baby?

Qwanty: Nope! I'm not due until the end of March!

L: (long silence) My dear, you are having a pony.

Q: Madam! Are you implying I've been fucking a horse?**

* Except for the part that didn't.

** What I actually said was I hear that a lot! This is a lie. I've never had anyone suggest I am with pony.

from the mouths of babes

2008-09-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

originally posted October 8, 2007

I have an eleven-year-old daughter. I know I've mentioned this before, but she doesn't get as much screen time in this blorum because she doesn't see dead people and doesn't throw up on me that often anymore (the last time was almost four years ago, and it was just as I was leaving the house to go out to a department related dinner, and it was primarily up the sleeve of my favorite jacket – the vomit, that is, not the dead people. She just doesn't seem to see the ghosties). She is a delight, however, this daughter – and not just because of the absence of ghost sightings and projectile vomit. These things can be charming as well, under the proper circumstances.

This daughter – whom I shall refer to for the moment as The Qw-"iter", pronounced "quite-er", as she is half Qwanty, half "writer" – says all sorts of things that I never expected to spring from the mouth of someone who sprang from my loins. I like to write these things down, so that I can later reflect on them, string them together to derive some larger meaning, and marvel over what a wee, insightful wonder she is.

Take for example the following:

Oh great. It's a fountain of blood.

Spoken without an ounce of terror, this came about while we were in the kitchen. I was confused, because I couldn't see the fountain of blood, and for a moment I feared she had gone the way of her younger brother and was seeing dead ancient peoples and their dead ancient people garden focal points. Fortunately, this fountain of blood was in the computer game she was playing. Now, taken alone this comment doesn't seem particularly insightful, but just hold the fuck on, you.

Here is another:

You know how sometimes you're eating a Slim Jim, and you swallow it, but there's still something left in your mouth, and it doesn't taste like anything?

Ah yes. The lingering, flavorless mystery that is the chewy memory of the once snappy Slim Jim. I don't think she ultimately went anywhere with this one. As I recall, I told her that I did indeed know what she was talking about, and this was enough for her, and she returned to doing battle around a computerized fountain of blood, satisfied that I too had tasted the ghost of the Slim Jim.

Some time ago, in a somewhat devastating moment for me, she said this:

YOU know who Johnny Depp is?

Yes, can you believe it? ME? Ancient, thirty-three year old ME? And I said to her, YOU know who Johnny Depp is? We stared at each other in a moment of shared disbelief, and then went uncomfortably about our respective business.

***

What's the point of all this? What do these comments mean? Well, for one, they suggest that I am negligent in that I let my daughter eat sticks of "meat". Beyond that, these comments taken together describe the experience of graduate school. If you were to have asked me a month ago to describe what graduate school is like, I might have gaped open-mouthed at you, blinked rapidly, teared up, made a few low, guttural sounds, and ran away to hide in a closet. Ask me now, and I would tell you this:

It's like sitting by a fountain eating a Slim Jim.

One day, you're sitting next to a beautiful fountain, dipping your toes in its cool, misty loveliness, tossing your pennies in and making marvelous wishes, savoring the day and eating – nay, snapping into – a Slim Jim. It's a fine Slim Jim, and it is indeed snappy and zesty and meatish – all the things a Slim Jim should be. All is well. Then, as a few drops of water from the magnificent fountain fall into your mouth, you suddenly realize that the water is saltier than it should be, and that it isn't just the Slim Jim talking. No, there's something WRONG with this water. And then slowly it dawns on you that this isn't a fountain of water, it's a fountain of BLOOD, and you try to scream this thought – Oh great. It's a fountain of blood – but there's something in your mouth and you can't make the words come out! It's Slim Jim, but it doesn't taste like ANYTHING, and there's just so much of it! What's worse, as you're sitting there, flailing about, spattered with blood, gagging on flavorless Slim Jim remnants, some youngun comes by and expresses total disbelief that you could possibly know who Johnny Depp is, and suddenly you feel so old – so very, very old. Then, just when you think things can't get any worse, a woman in shoulder pads dashes by, pausing only to kick you swiftly in the crotch and give you 10,000 Slim Jims that you must eat in a timely fashion.

You lay on the ground, splattered with gore, your mouth full of something that tastes like nothing, clutching your crotch and wondering where the time has gone, eyeing the 10,000 Slim Jims with disgust and trying to remember why you ever thought any of this was a good idea in the first place. Then, as the tears fill your eyes and you reach for Slim Jim number 1, Shoulder Pads comes back and tells you you're doing a great job.

And that's what graduate school is like!

a few things i’d like to mention, in case we get sucked into the television or something

2008-09-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

originally posted August 22, 2007

The day after I posted the Podcast in which I acknowledged that I am with Brain Scientist, I received an email from the head of my program that began with the ominous statement I know that you are pregnant. The message was designed to convey encouragement, but it included an overt reference to her death and a somewhat veiled reference to my own. Although I don't really think she obtained the pregnancy information from this qwanty space, I am a paranoid sort, and so must state the following: I say many things in jest. Please note that I claim to be living under the Devil's scrotum in order to maintain anonymity. Do not hold any of this against me. That said, I would also like to offer the following insight: If you are composing a note of encouragement, be sure to omit any references to the author's or recipient's death, as this tends to overshadow the encouraging aspect, leaving all involved with an ooky feeling.

***

The other day, I was fortunate enough to miss this exchange between Brain Scientists senior and junior:

Scene: The pool, dusk.

BS, Jr.: Who is that?

BS, Sr.: Where?

BS, Jr.: (pointing towards deep end of pool): There.

BS, Sr.: (in hopeful tone) Those are trees?

BS, Jr.: No, not trees. Them. The scary guys.

BS, Sr.: Where are they?

BS, Jr.: (pointing to the bottom of the deep end of the pool) There.

BS, Sr.: What do they look like?

BS, Jr.: Museum guys!

(Cue Twilight Zone theme.)

Do you know what guys are at the museum? Hohokam guys, in a display of Hohokam Indians that BS, Jr. refuses to approach because he is afraid of it. Do you whose ancient village archaeologists are unearthing a half block away from our house? Hohokam guys'. Do you know whose ancient ruins our house is built upon? Hohokam guys'. And now, to bring this full circle, do you know who the junior Brain Scientist thought he saw hanging around in the bottom of our pool? Hohokam guys. I'm hoping he was mistaken, and that it was an early eighties Adam Ant and a Village Person or something.

In any case, if that doesn't motivate one to finish one's dissertation and move elsewhere, I don't know what will.

***

Finally, on a lighter note. Did you know that if you throw a samosa from Dehli Palace down on a plate in a huff while arguing with a Brain Scientist, it will explode like a flaky water balloon filled with potatoes and peas, covering you and all that surrounds you with its savory shrapnel? Well, it will. Please exercise caution when trying to emphasize a point with a samosa.

podcast

2008-09-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

originally posted August 8, 2007

Last whatever, Cognosco and Forget-Me-Now and BS and I went to see Zappa Plays Zappa, which was great fun. Dweezil was wearing funny pants, as you might have expected. And clever us, while we paid for admission for four, we managed to sneak in a fifth, hidden somewhere in the vicinity of Cog's lady pocket (that's the one they usually don't search). Later this week we are going to see Zappa Plays Zappa again, and I am hoping most wholeheartedly that Dweezil will again be wearing funny pants. And clever us, while we paid for admission for four, once again we shall be sneaking in a fifth.

***

My days are an unending cycle of crackers, pickles, grapefruit soda, and ginger beer. I am queasy. I am no fun. I am a pod. While I would ordinarily refrain from sharing this information at this point in the pod period, it has become visibly apparent to people I don't even know, so I might as well embrace the whole pseudo-scientist thing and act like I'm not superstitious and just cop to the fact that I am incubating the next incarnation of Brain Scientist (or Brain Scientists, as an opinionated few asserted today) and quit trying to omit any overt references to this fact. I asked the BS if he thought it was necessary for me to avoid mentioning any of this here so that I might have a better chance of safeguarding things, and he asked me if I would like to go visit a moon doctor and have a handful of crystals thrown at my bosom. I'm not exactly sure what that would accomplish. I think he might have said this to point out that I'm being silly. I guess if something goes awry and I am left without future BS, I'll have to explain to those I see daily why I'm not so misshapen anymore anyway. Plus, were this to happen, I'd probably grumble about it in this here blorum, and this way I'll be spared having to type a long-winded prologue in which I explain the whole pod period that I failed to mention for fear of uterine retribution. So there. I said it. Sort of. I hope this doesn't make me negligent in the eyes of the powers that control my uterus. Or, as these powers might say, 'pregligent'. The powers that control my uterus are big on puns.

salty balls, held for only the slightest of pleasure

2008-09-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

originally posted August 8, 2007

I went to a Statistician's Ball. Well, not really a ball. It was more of a workshop. A workshop led by a man named Hadley. Hadley was from New Zealand, and had a pierced eyebrow with one of those bar things through it. I wasn't expecting this sort of thing from a statistician. I mean, I don't even know what to call the thing that was in his eyebrow, and I like to think of myself as one of your cooler statistical sorts. Note, though, that I do not refer to myself as a statistician. People who do what I do and call themselves statisticians are big posers (or poseurs if you prefer, you big wanker) and should not be trusted with your data. That said, I'm not sure what to call the bar in his eyebrow. If you know, keep it to yourself, you hipster assface.

The workshop was co-led by a woman called Di, who may have also been from New Zealand, and seemed to also be a statistician, although it was clear she was the type that is not particularly proficient with numbers, because when lunch time rolled around she ordered two pizzas to feed eleven people (or 11.1, give or take), most of whom were men and one of whom was German. Maybe it's just that she's not good with things that approximate parties, especially the type that are profoundly lame. In any case, I was hungry.

The Statistician's Ball kicked off on Saturday morning with a rendezvous at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah. For those of you not in the know, this is the hotel that the cast of High School Musical stayed at when filming High School Musical. I won't even bother explaining what this is, but it elicited a starstuck Ooooooh from my ten-year-old daughter when I mentioned it, and she requested a picture of it, because THAT IS WHERE THE CAST OF HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL SLEPT, and we for some reason care about this.

Upon arriving at the hotel, we were met by the others, a colorful assortment of people eager to maul their statistical wangs, most (or all) of whom were not even aware that they were SITTING IN THE LOBBY OF THE HOTEL WHERE THE CAST OF HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL SLEPT. Before long we were herded into a large black vehicle that was to provide our 'VIP Transportation' to the Workshop locale. This was fun, because it was a big, snazzy, black SUV that made it seem like we were an entourage or a posse or someone's peeps or something, instead of a group of people off to explore the quimtastic world of dynamic regression plots.

Once we were dropped off at the building in which the workshop was to be held and the driver had departed, it became clear that we were not in the right place. We were looking for a facility with computers and such, but all that could be found were offices that were gutted and empty, and one office that housed a title company. Hadley and Di were baffled, and expressed so in charming accents. The rest of us were baffled, too, and expressed so in less charming accents. The address matched the address Hadley had. What the devil was going on? Hadley and some of the more motivated others rode the elevators up and down the three floors of the building, looking for something that might be the facility they'd reserved for us. When nothing resembling this was found, the geekiest among us whipped out ePhones and iThings and locating devices and such, and stood about trying to figure out where the fuck we were (Salt Lake City, U-Should-Have-Double-Checked-The-Fucking-Location-Tah), and where the fuck we ought to be (Salt Lake City, U-Have-No-Fucking-Clue-Tah). I took part in none of this, opting instead to subtly fashion a Hadley effigy out of an aspirin bottle and some trail mix, so that I might have a means of inflicting a wee bit of pain on him for not bothering to check out the facility the day before. I abandoned this effort in favor of a Di effigy made out of a tampon and some lint after she merrily made the suggestion that we troop down the street to a Starbucks she saw and conduct our eight hour workshop there. Great idea.

As it turned out, three of the attendees had shown up on their own and thus had cars with them, and one of the attendees had a place of employment on the other side of town. We piled into the cars, formed a pitiful, directionally challenged caravan, and made our way to a pharmaceutical company in the middle of nowhere. Great geekery ensued. I almost threw a handful of raisins at the time-wasting, question-asking, more-than-his-share-of-pizza-eating blowhard across the table from me. Some of us were hungry. At least one of us was queasy. We all learned a little something.

Oh, how I love balls.

I mean workshops.

tiny terror

2008-09-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

originally posted July 20, 2007

Last night at dinner, BS, Jr. pointed to the floor and said very, very solemnly, I saw mama die on the floor. Mama died in the street.

Great. That's comforting to hear from a ghost-seeing, two-year-old brainiac.

Now I must return to the safety of my closet.

heaven knows he's miserable now

2008-09-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

originally posted July 7, 2007

The TCB is back to barking and fevering, as I should have expected. The fever has only been kept at bay by various elixirs and such, and the barking seems to subside during the day, only to return at night when his little head is as close to your ear as it can possibly get, because he is bogarting your pillow. To help with this problem, I sat with him in the bathroom at four in the morning, hot shower running, savoring the steam. When we returned to bed he was very much awake, and launched into many, many loud rounds of a popular child's song, as re-styled by Morrissey and performed by Harvey Fierstein:

If you're happy and you know it, go away.

(Repeat 100 times).

Awww. He wears black on the outside, 'cause black is how he feels on the inside. Poor Mini Moz.

a cautionary tale of absolute tr-oof

2008-09-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

originally posted July 6, 2007

There are really nothing but downsides associated with feeding your child a food that is a novel color not normally associated with that food. I can't really think of all of these downsides now, but I also can't think of any upsides. My point is this – if you give your child gatorade that is electric blue in color, you are eventually going to encounter that gatorade again in one form or another, and you will most likely be surprised. Because you know what'll give you a startle? Bright blue oof.* And it will take you a moment to process why the oof is at all blue, because you will have forgotten about giving the child the gatorade, and your experience will instead be one of absolute horror: OH MY GOD, WHAT IN HOLY…Until you remember. Oh yeah. Blue gatorade…

I had the most horrifying moment of inappropriately colored food related confusion yesterday. The little BS woke up in the morning with a smidge of a fever and the slightest congestion, and by the afternoon the fever was down to practically nothing. However, when he woke up from his nap, he was 103 degrees, struggling to breathe, and barking like a seal. By the time I was on the phone with the nurse he was 104, and by the time we arrived at the emergency room around the corner he was 105. It was pretty quick, this fever. I should mention that this last temperature was taken rectally, a process that the BS, Jr. seemed to regard as absolute bull oof. Anyway, there the little guy was, flopped over my lap, barking and screaming and crying and having a thermometer poked in his hiney, when suddenly he threw up all over me – vast, vast quantities of bright red glop. Everyone in the room was quite alarmed over this development, particularly me: OH MY GOD, WHAT IN HOLY... Until I remembered. Oh yeah. Red velvet cake… And then we all had a tiny chuckle, the medical professionals and our party, once we figured out it wasn't blood that was spewing forth from his wee, wailing mouth, but rather festively tinted Fourth of July cake.

The diagnosis? Croup. Some mist through a nebulizer, a shot of steroids, and today the Tiny Curly Banshee is running around, free of fever and barks, talking like Harvey Fierstein.

Phew.

***

* Oof: (üf), noun, verb. The word once used by my young daughter to refer to all things scatalogical, e.g. Mama, hava oof, or Look mama! Oof! or I oof! Still sometimes used by mama to convey disbelief, e.g., Dude, you are full of oof.

cog tease

2008-09-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

originally posted July 2, 2007

And now, a little sumpin' for Cognosco:

Setting: In the car, listening to the radio.

BS: Who the hell is this? Is this Kiss?

Q: Hmm. If it is Kiss, Kiss wasn't very good.

BS: No. Kiss wasn't very good. But they weren't this bad.

Q: Yeah. This is really bad.

BS: Yeah. This must be Poison.

(Horrible music continues.)

Radio Guy: And that was Poison!

Q: Good call!

BS: Yeah! Hey! We should call Cognosco right now and tell her she sucks!*

(Hooting laughter ensues. Attempts made to high five.)

***

* Note to Cognosco: You do not actually suck. We shouldn't even talk. In fact, we can't even talk, as I am too busy humming Eddie Money, and the BS is still singing Spam Pygmalion.

cock tease

2008-09-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

originally posted July 2, 2007

I have a long history of being infatuated with teachers. There was that substitute teacher when I was in the third grade, the one who subbed for us for, like, three weeks. It was a particularly exciting period of substitute teaching, as it was cloaked in the mystery of why we needed a substitute for so long. It wasn't vacation related – where the h-e-double hockey sticks was Mrs. McMenimen, anyway? I don't remember the name of the sub, but recall that I thought he was really handsome, and I would imagine greeting him after work and kissing him at the foot of our green shag carpeted stairs. I now would probably disagree with my eight-year-old self as to the magnitude of his hotness, just as I would over the issues of the attractiveness of Ponch, Fonzie, Michael Knight, and -- I can barely tell you this -- Potsie. I would also take issue with my choice of carpet – for fuck's sake, it was 1982. Why shag? Perhaps my young brain already had a sense of what that word would come to mean to me…

One of my big teacher crushes came in high school. I fancied the photography teacher. This is not because he was hot. We should probably just get this out of the way right now: While it is true that I enjoy men who are attractive, it is also true that I have been known to enjoy men who are ridiculous. Mind you, it doesn't have to be any particular brand of ridiculous, just as long as I can really sink my teeth into it. For example, prior incarnations of the ridiculous have included a penchant for flouncy shirts and velveteen pants, reams of terrible horrible no good very bad prose, and the decision to adopt the stage name 'Flay'. I cannot tell you the number of times Kristin has muttered the words, That guy goes beyond ridiculous. That guy is ricockulous. RI-COCK-U-LOUS. Yes, it is true -- I loves the ricockulous.

Anyhoo, back to Mr. Photo. I'm not quite sure what his particular ricockulosity was. He was Jewish, and had a big mess of curly hair, and was an old hippie. He told me I should date his son. He suggested colleges I should attend, the ones where "all the flaming weirdos" went. I took this as a compliment. He told me about seeing the Doors perform when he and his wife were young, and demonstrated, alone with me in the classroom, how Jim Morrison held the microphone and moved when he sang Light My Fire. It's coming together, isn't it? Kind of ricockulous. What's even more ricockulous is the way I would listen to Abba sing When I Kissed the Teacher, after school, alone in my room. I would dance about, flapping my arms in the way you do when you dance to this song (Come on. Listen to it. Are you flapping? You aren't? You have no soul, zombie thing.) I would sing along, and modify the words to suit my situation: He was leaning over me, trying to explain the laws of Pho-tog-ra-PHEEEEEEEEE… It was a disgraceful display.

One day just before graduation, a couple of days after my eighteenth birthday, I was alone in the classroom with him and my friend Angela. Pulling me on his lap he said, Now that you're eighteen, I guess that means you can sit on my lap. This I was not prepared for. I think I laughed and sort of scooted away or something. It was that unexpected and horrifying and ABSOLUTELY RICOCKULOUS. I mean, WHAT? Where did this come from? It was all so awkward and strange and inappropriate and not in the damn Abba song. Lap sitting? Me? Huh? And what about the underaged Angela, off there to the side, doing something photography related and looking sort of wide eyed and confused? I was NOT, as Abba put it, "in the seventh heaven".

Many years later I went to see the movie American Beauty with my then husband, a "writer" of sorts (and way beyond ricockulous, and not in a good way, as though you needed to ask.) Anyway, there I was, at a movie about a guy who is hot for a high school girl, between the "writer" and a stranger who was truly enjoying the movie. This stranger was clapping and hooting and really relating to the whole thing, like the way you did when you saw Say Anything or Blue Velvet or whatever. I spent the whole movie being kind of ooked out, what between the content of the movie and all the pervy kindred spirit action going on beside me between this man and the giant Spacey on the screen.

When the lights came up I turned to get a look at the creep next to me (that is, the one I was not married to), and saw that it was Mr. Photo who I was sitting beside. Then Mr. P turned to me, and saw that it was I who sat beside him. Talk about awkward. We stared at each other kind of wide-eyed for a moment. I would like to tell you that I said something dry and witty, a la a drunk Winston Churchill, but I did not. Instead I turned and fled. Well played, Qwanty.

***

There were other teachers on whom I have crushed, but no teacher crush has ever been as important as the one I have now. Additionally, I think I've perhaps finally moved away from the ricockulous. This teacher is a Brain Scientist. You would like him. He recently had this exchange with our small child:

BS, to no one in particular: Wow, Keith Richards really looks like a corpse.

BS, Jr.: I wannarida horse!

BS: There is no horse. I said corpse.

BS, Jr.: I wannarida corpse!

BS: No you don't want to ride a corpse, because it is a corpse, and it is Keith Richards, and it is alive.

Charming, no? And not really too ricockulous. Perhaps a bit irresponsible though – I mean, no two-year-old should be looking at a picture of Keith Richards.

As I've mentioned before, the Brain Scientist likes bone marrow, and might advise you to eat some, and will happily give you a lengthy, evolutionary explanation as to why, and you just try and shut him up. Mmmm. Marrowy. Mmmm. Long winded explanations of marrowy. Huh. Perhaps this might be construed as the teensiest bit ricockulous.

The other day the Brain Scientist mentioned, in a very off-handed and entirely serious way, that he would like to start a ninja college. He went on to explain what he meant, and it was not nearly as ricockulous as you might be thinking. I won't share the details, because I think they might be a secret. I will tell you this: it involves more than merely tiptoeing from class to class in pajamas. Perhaps this is not making the case for my move away from ricockularity.

The Brain Scientist has been in many bands, too, one of which had a song called Fuck in a Pile of Bees. And it was a good song! It takes a certain kind of man to pull that off – one who is perhaps a tad ricockulous, but who nonetheless has a certain panache that is not based entirely in the R. Really. I mean it. Oh, wait. I have just questioned him about this song, and I have been informed that the formal title is in fact Erototrauma (Fuck in a Pile of Bees). I stand corrected.

Speaking of songs, the Brain Scientist serenades me quite often with songs he's been involved in. In fact, this happened just now, in the form of an exuberant verse from Spam Pygmalion.

And I quote:

Spam Pygmalion! Spam Pygmalion! Quiver in the gel of your unnatural birth!

Hmmm.

Well now.

I guess some things never change.

Jesus. Do I loves the ricockulous.

a brief rejoinder, dedicated to the one i love

2008-09-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

originally posted June 17, 2007

Dr. Brain Scientist, you have recently observed that I am at times emotional and irrational, and have further noted that these states of disequilibrium tend to occur in a monthly cycle, peaking just prior to the period during which I am exiled to a hut at the outskirts of the yard. This information was delivered with an air of exasperated authority, blustering forth from your ever-opinionated, wind-ravaged piehole. Hmmmm. Ass-tute observation, Dr. Brain Scientist. Please allow me to retort. DR. BRAIN SCIENTIST, when recently faced with the question of posole or burritos for dinner, you are a man who declared hominy to be THE CROWN JEWEL IN THE KINGDOM OF STARCHES. FURTHER, you are a man who is known amongst friends for his tendency to pontificate at length, at the slightest provocation, ON THE VIRTUES OF BONE MARROW CONSUMPTION. YOU!!! I am the emotional and irrational one? At least I follow a cycle, doctor. Your madness knows no calendar.

sympathy for the devil

2008-09-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

originally posted June 6, 2007

Now that I'm an adult, I've come to realize that my childhood was filled with weirdness. There are so many stories from my early days that I can't possibly tell a person without the aid of a long, rambling prologue to explain, for example, what I was even doing at a polo match, wearing a fur coat, at age five. These are details a person needs before a person can focus their full attention on the story which I am trying to tell them about my run-in with Sylvester Stallone's bodyguard.

A great deal of the hows and whys for many of these stories can be explained by the fact that, for a period of time, my father was "The Balloon Man". You know those giant hot air balloon-esque things that you see from time to time sitting on the roof of an appliance store during a super blowout sale? This was my father's business for a good deal of the eighties. Not only this, but legend has it that he is the "inventor" of this particular means of advertising, but was unable to patent the idea, because it does not count as an invention if you take some things someone else already invented (e.g., a giant fan, the business end of a hot air balloon) and combine them in a novel fashion. This is something anyone can do, but for a period of time, no one was doing it – no one except my father.

My childhood was filled with gigantic rolls of hot air balloon fabric, industrial sewing machines, dangerous fans that I was not to touch, and huge specialty lightbulbs used for illuminating the balloons at night. My father, with the aid of my mother and a few hired others, would design these balloons, cut them, sew them, and inflate them wherever someone needed to say something by way of a 65-foot balloon. Thus, I often found myself in situations not typically encountered by a small child.

I mention this because I wanted to tell you about The Naz. I knew you'd stop me though, and want to know just how someone even makes the acquaintance of a magician on stilts, let alone ends up with an anecdote about living with one. Knowing that my father was The Balloon Man makes it all make a little more sense, doesn't it? You don't even have to ask, do you? It is obvious to you that someone, somewhere, needed a giant balloon, and they also apparently needed a magician on stilts, and thus The Balloon Man met The Naz.

The Naz actually went by the name 'The Naz', and looked like a more devil-y Wayne Newton – all dyed black hair and tiny mustache. One evening my father received a phone call from The Naz, who shared some sort of sad story about how he and his wife were living in a bus station, I think. I guess the business of magic and stilt walking was not a lucrative one at this point in the eighties. During this phone conversation, my mother held up a note that said I feel sorry for them, and so my father invited them to stay with us for a couple of days. Later that evening, while I slept, my father returned home with The Naz, who was stiltless, and his wife. This was a truly bewildering thing to wake up to the next morning. Even as a small child I understood, as Wayne Newton performed magic tricks for me over toast, that we were in for a long visit.

You see, he wasn't a very good magician. This was an impression my parents and I shared, and I was only nine-years-old, which should tell you that he was actually a horrible magician. Nevertheless, The Naz tried to convince us that he was in fact a very good magician over the three weeks they lived with us. He never had much success, though. For example, at one point he requested that we chain him up with the lock and chain from my bicycle, and from these bounds he would escape – TA DA! Of course this was met with utter failure and wrist bruising, which required the application of ice packs. The humiliation was compounded by the fact that The Naz chained up both my father and aging uncle, and they both got out of the chains in seconds. Indeed, he was a very bad magician.

What made the whole experience particularly strange for me was the fact that I'd sustained a head injury just prior to their arrival – one that required a trip to the emergency room in an ambulance. Subsequent to this I became very sick for a couple of weeks, and spent a good deal of time with a fever that caused a number of fever dreams and weird hallucinations. It is at these points that a young person needs the grounding comfort of the familiar and distinctly non-weird. Of course, having The Naz around made me feel like I was hallucinating 100% of the time.

What happened to The Naz? I don't know. About three weeks into their stay, I heard my mother ask my father, in the urgent whisper of a woman who can take only so much magic, Why are they STILL HERE? It was soon after this that my father dropped The Naz and his wife off at a bus station with money to travel to wherever their relatives lived. After this he returned home and hung my mother's note – I feel sorry for them – on our refrigerator door. There it stayed for years, reminding us all never to be kind to magicians.

try a little tenderness

2008-09-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

originally posted June 5, 2007

As I keep telling myself, a real woman knows how to apologize …

Dear Federally-Funded Grant Group,

I'm sorry I yelled at you. Perhaps I was too quick to anger. You and I have spent enough time together that I should know that you're going to do this sort of thing from time to time. You can't help it. I need to rise above this, and when our relationship is faced with this sort of stress, I should remember the good times. Like that time when your colleague from Amsterdam was visiting, and you had the good Dr. Brain Scientist and me over for breakfast. I was charmed by the way you observed that my name was spelled in the exact same way as the name of a particular rock superstar of the seventies, and how you were so interested in explaining this bit of interest to your visiting guest that you actually left your pancakes in order to put on a song informing us that you wanted to put on your boogie shoes and boogie with us. All this, just so that your visiting colleague would appreciate exactly what it was you were talking about. And it turned out he DID know what you were talking about, and this shared experience of seventies disco goodness moved you so much that you both got up to dance in a disco-y sort of fashion. It was at that point that I knew you cared. I must also confess that I can't stay mad at you knowing that you were concerned that Dr. C might not be having a bachelor party, and took it upon yourself to suggest that perhaps BS might help you in organizing such an event. That was sweet. As it turns out, Dr. BS and I had already discussed this issue, and had concluded that we would have a co-ed function for Drs. C and S – don't worry, grant group, we've got your titties covered! Sorry for being a bombastic shrew.

XOX,

Q

***

Dear BS,

You are the best, even when you are not knocking on doors when you should be, relieving me from my watch over The Tiny Curly Banshee and The Shushinator. Thank you for celebrating my birthday with me on multiple occasions this weekend, and taking me out for sushi and – sigh – MORRISSEY!!!!, all in the same night. Thank you for making the absurdly long drive out to the music venue, located in the middle of a retirement community for some reason, and not making too many jokes related to the fact that this is the same place that Perry Como used to play. And thank you for enjoying the show with me. You didn't even flinch when Morrissey ripped his shirt off – the first time OR the second time – even though you probably thought I liked it a little more than I should have. I like the way you asked me if I was excited about the show over dinner, and told me that you were too, and that you were going to call him morbid and pale. You reminded me that my birthday isn't so bad, and that I probably owe it an apology.

Be seeing you, and I mean this in a good way,

Q

***

Dear Local Newspapers,

I've been thinking about this, and I've made my decision. I hate you, and I hate your ass face.

Until we meet again,

Q

***
Dear Birthday,

Why do we always do this? Will we ever learn? I want you to know that I still enjoy you, despite our recurring scuffles. Thanks to you I had an intoxicated gathering with friends, had sushi with a badass BS, saw Morrissey rip his shirt off – not once, but TWICE! – and had many lovely moments with my wee-uns. All this, and I got to learn yet another amazing fact about the BS. You know how he's always surprising us with tales that we are shocked he never told us before? Like the time he offhandedly mentioned that Alice Cooper used to come into a restaurant he worked at and once left him a handwritten note commending his service, but that he couldn't remember the actual content of this note? And we were all, WHAT THE HELL? YOU CAN'T REMEMBER THE CONTENT OF THE NOTE ALICE COOPER ONCE WROTE YOU??? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? and we may have actually said it in a really loud voice like that? Well, he told me another one of those little tidbits. Remember how he used to have those jobs back when he was merely a BS, and not yet a Dr. BS? And one of them involved using his badass karate know-how and bald, goateed intimidation skills to prevent local frat boys from picking fights with men based on their sexual orientation? You know, at that store? On the way home from the Morrissey show a Judas Priest song came on the radio, and Dr. BS mentioned totally offhandedly how a member of Judas Priest (the one usually standing in the middle, in the front) used to come in to this establishment on a very regular basis, and it was not necessarily just to buy books. WHAT???? I said to him. How is it possible that you are JUST NOW mentioning this to me??????? And he was all, "Well, I haven't thought of Judas Priest in, like, ten years." See? He's just so full of surprises! Anyway, sorry for being a snatch about that whole year-older thing.

OOO,

Q

***
Ah. That feels good.

cussin', cryin' and carryin' on

2008-09-07T13:27:00.003-07:00

originally posted May 30, 2007

Every once in a while, a person just has to scream obscenities into a pillow. Some might instead choose to write an angry letter that is never to be sent. Because I am a person who is impulsive, irrational, and foolheaded, I've chosen to combine these two potentially cathartic, non-bridge-burning approaches into one big clusterfuck of frustration that is bound to bite me in the ass in one way or another. Stand back…

Dear Federally-Funded Grant Group,

Thank you for telling BS that your meeting is to be held every Wednesday. I've set my RA schedule around this. You see, one of the things I get paid to do as a research assistant is to be available at particular hours to answer questions related to statistical analytic procedures and stuff. Because, you know, no one has ever written any of this stuff down in a book, so I need to be there to say it to those who happen by. Thank you for deciding to hold your meeting this week on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. I enjoy re-arranging my schedule around you and your federally funded whims. It's not like I'm entering my SEVENTH year of graduate school – two years beyond which students are typically funded without raised eyebrows. I certainly don't need to seem dependable or anything. And thank you for not bothering to tell BS that you decided to go back to the Wednesday meeting time after all. I enjoyed receiving a phone call yesterday from Dr. C, seven minutes before the scheduled start of said meeting, mentioning that there was in fact NO MEETING ON TUESDAY because everyone sort of changed their mind. It sure was fun phoning the BS as he sat all alone in the conference room, wondering why the fuck no one was there. Getting the boy up mid-nap to retrieve BS kicked ass, too. It was especially convenient that this occurred no more than five minutes after we arrived home after swapping the car and leaving BS at school. And then I thoroughly enjoyed re-arranging my schedule A SECOND TIME IN ONE WEEK to accommodate the shift-from-Wednesday-to-Tuesday-back-to-Wednesday meeting. Again – there's no need for me to appear even vaguely dependable. None! And I found the joking email exchanges between you and BS about how I was all cranky about this scheduling gaff and how he was going to have to sleep on the couch over this one and HA HA HA really funny! Oh, and by the way, I wholeheartedly enjoyed entertaining two children on the campus of Ass Suck University for two hours today while BS was at your fun circle jerk, I mean meeting, so that I might have time to squeeze in a smidgen of work in the morning, but not piss away the afternoon driving home, then driving back, and fucking with the boy's naptime and such. Really. CHRIST ON A MOTHERFUCKING CRUTCH! THANKS! I'M REALLY GLAD YOU'RE SO CONSCIENTIOUS ABOUT THE FACT THAT I HAVE A JOB I'D LIKE TO KEEP! FUCK!

Go directly to hell,

Qwanty, M.A.
Graduate Student in Tomfuckery
Ass Suck University

***

Dear BS,

Thanks for coming to my office after your meeting today but not bothering to knock on my door because you assumed the closed door meant that I wasn't there, and was instead merrily tooling about campus with two happy children. You know how the three of us adore the heat, especially when it's in the triple digits. Thanks for not considering the fact that the door might be closed as a means of concealing the fact that a child was within, shrieking at regular intervals. Do you know what the people I work with love? Screaming toddlers! It's one of the reasons they've hired me – because I can be counted on to provide them with shrieking toddler background sounds. I've been told that it really facilitates their work, hearing a small boy cry No I WON'T! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! every time I request he stop waving a pointy pencil in the vicinity of his eyes. The also adore the absurdly loud SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH his sister can generate in response to his defiant moo. They've commended me on the robustness of her shushing abilities, and hope I can drag out my PhD just a bit longer so that they might have ample future opportunities to be sustained through their long workdays with the sound of SHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! coming from my office. I've also heard they're thrilled with their decision to position my office right by the front desk, so that I might share the sounds of my loins with the whole mother fucking place. And when I finally located you from my position way up on the third floor where your meeting had been, but had clearly ended some time earlier, as suggested by the darkened room with no one nearby – do you remember this? You were all the way on the ground floor chatting it up with Dr. C, totally oblivious to the fact that I was about to have a nervous breakdown due to all the shrieking and shushing? And I had to call down to you from the third floor while trying to contain my imminent implosion? Thanks for coming up to meet me and being all pissed off that Drs. C and K and N noted that I seemed cross. That really helped, YOU GODDAMN NO DOOR KNOCKING, CAN'T EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES BS BS! I CAN'T WAIT TO TENDERLY CARESS YOUR ASS WITH MY FOOT IN A THRUSTING, POINTY-TOED FASHION!

Be seeing you,

Q

***

Dear Local Newspapers,

Thank you, the both of you, for running a lovely story about the study that Dr. BS and I and two others are doing with the local fire department. Did you know that I put Dr. BS in touch with the fire department when they were seeking someone to do a study on the impact of high call volumes because I have a grasp of what these people needed? Do you understand that I am acting as a methodology person on this project, and am faced with the analysis of a great deal of data with a rather complicated structure? You should, because Dr. BS told you this and asked that everyone on this project be included in this story because even Dr. BS understands that no BS works alone. Sadly, no one else knows, because you MADE NO MENTION OF ANY OF THIS WHATSOEVER, YOU KNOW, HOW THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THIS AND PISS FUCK SHIT. I'm not in this for any kind of publicity, but it sort of would have been nice to be acknowledged in some tiny way. Maybe you could have fit this in within some of the space you devoted to the three separate pictures you printed of BS looking studiously at firefighting stuff? Like the one where my daughter remarked Look! It's a picture of BS touching his tiny beard! I understand that the public needs to see this sort of thing, to understand that this man IS A MOTHERFUCKING SCIENTIST AND ALL WHO TOUCHES HIS TINY BEARD WHEN DEEP IN THOUGHT, but seriously, we're doing this for free and at this point in my academic career I really need a clipping from The Satan's Nethers Tribune to hang over my desk featuring my name to remind me that there is a point to all this. GODDAMN IT! GODDAMN IT TO HELL! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

A concerned reader,

Ms. Q. Wanty

***

Dear Birthday,

Thank you for coming in two days. I look forward to the way this will finally allow my friend Matt to remind me regularly that I'M OLDER THAN JESUS! THIS WILL BE GREAT FUN!NOW FUCK OFF!

love,

Me

***

Phew. I needed that! And now I need a hug.

show me the money, but please don't tell anyone

2008-09-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

originally posted May 21, 2007

I am ashamed. The other day the Scorpions came on the radio, sparking the following exchange:

BS: Who the hell listens to this?

Q: Some people do. Some people get really excited when the Scorps come on and turn it up and sing and stuff. I don't get it. That sort of thing should be reserved for Guns N' Roses.

BS: Are you joking?

Q: Yes?

I am a liar. What I meant was No. I really like Paradise City.

When I am busy driving around town and screaming at people, a really good radio moment is a special thing. I know we're living in the days of Ipods and burnable CDs and listening to whatever you want whenever you want and all, but when you haven't figured out how to turn on your MP3 player and you own a car that only has a tape deck and said tape deck isn't working because it got tired of playing the same six songs on your favorite Cure tape over and over again and finally said Screw you, sing Caterpillar Girl to yourself. That Cata-cata-cata part HURTS, you miserable twat a good radio moment still means something. It's the very best when 3 of the 4 stations you have programmed into your radio are all playing Phil Collins, and you just can't get away from Phil, and you keep punching buttons and jumping back and forth from Phil to Phil to Phil, but it JUST WON"T STOP and where is REO Speedwagon or Dio or even Cheap Trick? Then, just when you're about to rip out the fucking radio and pitch it out the window to wither in the dry, dusty heat of Satan's Nethers, something happens. Say, Paradise City comes on. And maybe you secretly love Paradise City. Or Fat Bottomed Girls, which maybe you openly love and are playing right now at this very moment. And maybe you get to hear it from the very beginning, and then suddenly you can barely drive because you've begun to dance with the steering wheel and are tapping the brake in time to the music and you almost have to pull over to devote your full attention to this effort and take a moment to reflect on how happy Queen makes you. And maybe, if the song is 'Somebody to Love', you are crying tears of joy. Maybe.

I don't think it's fair to say that I have excellent taste in music. While it is true that I like music that is excellent, it is also true that I like other music as well. I have what I refer to as "kitchen music". This is music that I perhaps own on cassette, but would never purchase on CD to enable living room listening. This is music that is played only on the little radio my daughter gave my for mother's day when she was two, and only in the kitchen. I keep the kitchen music in a drawer in the kitchen, near the radio. It's a sort of humiliating collection. There's Air Supply's Greatest Hits – I love 'Lost in Love'. I have George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. Just Try and Listen Without Self-Loathing. Let us not forget the cassette single for 'Your Woman' by Whitetown. The only justifiable cassette in the whole lot is Elton John's Greatest Hits, Vol. III (given to me by Kristin for my 16th birthday – really, an excellent tape – I once forced Dr. BS to listen to 'Empty Garden', while in the kitchen of course, and it made him weep genuine tears of sadness...)

I've come to mostly accept my love of the KM. What's begun to trouble me, however, are my recent listening transgressions in the car. I have never, ever, ever been a fan of Eddie Money. Never. Not even in the kitchen. Yet the other day 'Two Tickets to Paradise' came on, and I turned it up, before I even processed what it was. It just sounded so good. What? And then – jesus shitballs, I can't believe I'm going to say this – I thought Wow. How romantic. And I meant it. WHAT?! It all happened so fast, I couldn't even censor myself. And now I have to live with this knowledge -- this humiliating little tidbit about myself. It seems I want to be surprised with two tickets to paradise. I want to pack my bags and leave tonight. I've waited so long. Waited so long. Waited so long…

Because I found this little debacle so troubling, I looked up the lyrics to this song, just to be absolutely clear what it was I was jonesing for. You know what? This didn't make me feel better. It turns out there's no actual mention of a plane or any other specific mode of transportation, and no details to speak of – just this promise of paradise and immediate departure. Now I'm thinking that this might just be a big euphemism for sex with Eddie Money, and paradise is in his pants, and these goddamn tickets are fucking free. In fact, he might even pay you to take them. Goddamn it.

It gets worse. As recently as the day before yesterday 'Hollywood Nights' came on the radio and I turned it up because I THOUGHT IT WAS EDDIE MONEY and I wasn't at all disturbed about this until I realized it was in fact Bob Seeger. WHAT?!? Suddenly Eddie Money is OKAY? Again, this all happened before I could process what was going on, and by the time I realized what was happening I was already dancing with the steering wheel and tapping the brake and singing along, for fuck sake, and then I nearly had to pull the goddamn car over, because I was crying. Yes, crying – big old tears of SHAME. Who am I? What have I become? It's all so depressing…

mama fun

2008-09-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 14, 2007

Happy Mother's Day, muthas. I hope you had a lovely one. What did I get, you ask? Well, in addition to the traditional gifts 'n' such, I got a keyboard full of vomit. I so love it when the little ones make things for me themselves. Sadly, I was not there to witness the actual presentation of the gift, but I am relishing the aftermath, which includes 1) a huge stain on the carpet, 2) a keyboard full of eggs and pool water, 3) a computer that no longer functions, 4) a tasty cake of self-loathing made for me, by me, because I am the sort of person who never bothers to back anything up, and thus I have potentially lost all that was on that computer, which was pretty much everything:

a) the final version of my comprehensive exam – the largest academic undertaking of my quarter-century-plus years of schooling. Yes, I already turned it in, but I sort of wanted to keep a copy of it and, you know, not have to re-type 130 equations

b) Hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of statistical analyses

c) Everything non-academic I've written over the past year, which is really not much of a loss

d) Many pictures of my children, and of myself pregnant with BS "Sharp Shooter" Pukington, Jr.

e) Etc.

I had this coming. I really did.

Mother's Day didn't totally blow, however. In addition to the fun gifts and snuggles and stuff, I also got to participate in this little gem of a conversation with my father, which you will not appreciate unless you've been poking around these parts for awhile, and are familiar with the "living room snacks" (and even then, I can understand if you don't appreciate this):

Dad: Do you remember the containers of snacks we used to keep in the living room?

Q: (quaking with barely contained laughter) Why yes, I do.

D: The pretzels and mustard?

Q: (still quaking) Funny you should mention that. I remember them well.

D: We have snacks again!

Q: (tearing up) Mmphmpphhmphmmm?

D: (gesturing with both hands) This time in big containers!

Q: Wow. Those look like some big containers.

D: We have pretzels and mustard and peanuts. In big containers!

Q: (beginning retreat to other room to laugh hysterically into pillow)

D: (calling after Q) And cheese curls! Great big containers!

Wow. That must be some killer connection to necessitate living room snacks in such vast quantities.

**********************************

Now, because this was a day about moms, here is an exchange I had with my mom, circa 1990. This is an interactive one, so be prepared to participate!

M: Honey, your Dad and I trust you and Ryan won't do anything to disappoint us.

Q: Huh?

M: You won't do anything to disappoint us.

M: (Long pause) Honey, when boys get excited, their little thing, well….

(Here's where you join in -- follow the bouncing balls! Make a fist with your right hand. Hold it in front of you, so your thumb side is facing you and your knuckles point left. Now, stick out your index finger and point at that asshat over there. Next, sort of curl your index finger downwards, so that it looks like a limp penis. Got it? Good. Hold that position.)

M: Does this…

(Your turn again. Ever so slowly – painfully, mortifyingly slowly – straighten your finger out until you are pointing to the ceiling, over there in the corner. Does your finger appear erect? Good job – you've done it right!)

Q: Um. (long silence)

M: (long meaningful look over erect finger-penis)

Q: Well, okay. Thanks. Do we have any macaroni salad? I love that macaroni salad you make.

************************************************************

There you have it: Ma Qwanty's Sex Talk. Share it with someone you love. I'm now going to crawl under my desk and cry and hope for the safe recovery of my hard drive, and make finger-penises until I have blue-thumb. Goodbye for now.

10 things

2008-09-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

originally posted May 8, 2007

I have been tagged by Cognosco to write 10 weird facts about myself. It is then my task to tag 10 other people to do the same. Unfortunately, I have no friends, so I may be dropping the ball on that part of the deal. Because some of these will no doubt be annoyingly wordy, I will highlight the important points so as to facilitate the wade through the bullshite.

Okay. 10 things:

1) When I was in high school, we had to form little groups and put on puppet shows in drama class. Kristin and another girl and I decided to do a Barbara Walters special with an interview with Terrence Trent D'Arby (another something ridiculous motivated by a crush, no doubt), complete with the Madonna 'Like a Prayer' pepsi commercial. Kristin made a choir on a stick – an entire choir – with little 'o' shaped mouths. I made Terrence Trent D'Arby out of a fey little beige sock. He had dreadlocks and that hat TTD'A always wore. I wonder where he is now? I ask this with regard to both man and sock.

2) When I'm in need of cheering up, this is what I do. First, I go here:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/sam

Then, I sit at my computer quietly, waiting. I do other things until some well-meaning yahoo (i.e., BS) comes by and offers some unsolicited piece of advice. It's usually not a long wait, because BS is absolutely brimming with such things. Then, I click on the upper-left-most option and try to look bad ass. Try it. It feels GREAT.

3) I can't wink with my left eye, and only recently learned that there are people who can wink with both eyes (independently of one another, that is. When you wink with both eyes at the same time it is called "blinking", which I do with surprising ease.)

4) I have recurring unpleasant dreams in which either a) I am forced to skydive, b) my teeth crumble in my mouth, c) I have a huge slimy wad of gum in my mouth that I must get rid of, but I can neither spit it out nor swallow it, as it is so slimy and huge. Go figure.

5) I used to LOVE Jethro Tull until I saw them live last year and Ian Anderson made a ton of asshat remarks about the sexy female violinist who was performing with them. Seriously Ian, you tooly flautist, you cannot prance around on stage in tights and say things about keeping your young violinist chained up and expect me to ever listen to Bungle in the Jungle again, no matter how much I like that song. Do you understand that whenever you come on the radio I remember this and get all cranky and turn you off? Thank you for ruining you for me. A pox on you.

6) I got busted on the last day of my freshman year in high school for having 14 wine coolers at school. It was part of a poorly executed plan to drink for the first time. Motivated by guilt, I volunteered at a hospital that summer and had to deliver containers of bodily fluids to the lab. It was horrid. I'm not really down with carting around the mucus of strangers. Bleh. All in all, it was a pretty traumatic summer, and I don't really think I learned anything.

7) Jeez, none of these things are weird. It turns out I'm a really boring person. Let's try to sexy this up a bit: The day after I moved to SN, I had an unpleasant interaction in the middle of the day with a masturbating stranger in the parking lot of Trader Joe's, of all places. I thought he just wanted my parking spot, but I was wrong. Eeew.

8) It doesn't matter how much I hate you, if I see you eating alone I will get teary and have warm feelings for you.

9) I feel sympathy for inanimate objects, e.g. mushrooms. Say you are a mushroom that has come all this way with your little mushroom pals, from your origins in a little heap of shit to your mushroom destiny as a key player in a sauce I am making. And say I drop you on the floor or deem you too ooky looking to be a part of the sauce. I feel bad for throwing you away, little mushroom.

10) I have a lovely collection of Ren & Stimpy cards, encased in protective plastic sleeves and housed in a special binder. I will show them to you if you like, and serenade you with the Log song.

There. Done. Now I need to make friends and cajole them into participating. Frack.

i might regret this in the morning

2008-09-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

originally posted May 4, 2007

6:00:00 – Searing uterine pain.

6:00:30 – Vicodin.

6:00:33 – Beeeeeeeeeer…..

6:45:00 – Party with faculty!

So there I was, talking to a woman who had never ridden a bike. She had never heard of Lizzie Borden either. I guess I can see the Lizzie Borden part happening, maybe, but the bike part? I mean, never? Where did I find this person? I'll tell you – at a party full of math computer people and computer math people and (if it happened they were the variety who has been able to successfully simulate human-human interaction) their spouses. And this woman was none of these people. She was a new faculty member from a seemingly normal area where you assume people ride bikes and know stuff. Naturally, because I was full of merriment and substances, I thought it would be a good idea to tell her about my house ghosties and the zombies I fear. I'd already told another complete stranger who complimented me on my dress that I found dresses to be awesome because they are handy for a person like me who doesn't spend enough time doing laundry – you never need pants! It was that sort of night.

I soon found myself at the cheese table. The good BS had interrupted my conversation with the bike-eschewing luddite to present me with a glass of green tea liqueur, which I promptly seized and ran away with. I needed to figure out the alcohol content of said liqueur so that I could establish an appropriate rate of consumption. Standing about the table I found the following:

1) the guy who at some point may have been a philosophy professor, but now is just the guy who shows up at colloquia all the time and asks long, ridiculous questions;

2) the undergraduate guy who manages the pigeon lab;

3) the new-to-us faculty guy who is supposed to a) be a really big deal, and b) be a really big ass. To wit: The whole reason for this party was to lure another big deal guy to come to our school. Earlier in the day the big deal guy we were luring had given what I've been told was an awesome talk in which he discussed affordances – the idea that objects have affordances, and so you look at objects and appraise what you can do with them and such (I would tell you more, but I wasn't there. I just asked BS to tell me about the notion of affordances, briefly, so that I might better explain it, and he's just going on and on and on. I listened for a while, but now I've given up. He's still talking as I write this. Jeez, now he's just invited me to join a reading group because there's an article I might be interested in and blah blah blah. Note to self: do not ask BS stuff.) Anyway, Awesome Talk used as an example a chair. He explained how you could use it as a tool for flinging a rattlesnake off a porch, for fighting off a lion, etc. I've been told this involved him actually picking up a chair and flinging imaginary rattlesnakes around and fighting off imaginary lions and things like that. I've been told that the momentum he'd built was incredible, and everyone was completely enthralled – I mean, do you know how often that sort of colloquium occurs? A colloquium in which there is a really good talk that involves chairs being hoisted in the air and lions attacking?? Not bloody often! So I've been told that just when Awesome was really making his point, and who knows what was about to happen, Guy 3 Smarty Smart yelled out, "What about a CLOUD? A cloud has no affordances!" Thwap. That is the sound of the gauntlet hitting the ground. Consider it thrown. You have been challenged by Guy 3. Of course this cloud question wrecked the momentum Awesome had going and I'm sure pissed the bejesus out of everyone there because suddenly Awesome had to address the issue of cloud affordances and this put an end to the chair waving. Yes – Guy 3 is THAT guy.

Now, returning to the scene: if you are picturing these men and have conjured up some sexy professorial types, or dorky-sexy busmen (ahem, Kristin, I am talking to you), please stop. These men are not those men. Let me help you with your mental image. First, be sure that Guy 1 is carrying a book bag, the sort you get for free in the mail with address labels from the World Wildlife Federation, and be sure the book bag is crammed full of wrinkled papers and journals from 1973. Now, cover the lower half of Guy 2's face with an enormous, bushy beard, and make it red, but allow him to continue wearing the dorky-sexy bus glasses. Finally, make sure Guy 3 is dressed like Bob Ross, and stop imagining him bald and goateed. Rather, give him hair that has been cut by a flowbee. A homemade flowbee. Your image of me is probably already sufficiently developed – remember, I'm the one who never needs pants, and I am sauced.

The conversation turned to me pretty quickly when I approached the table and smiled at this motley academic crüe. I will spare you the details of the actual conversation, as it wasn't that interesting. As you might have predicted, Guy 1 appeared easily startled, Guy 2 was a pleasant pigeon enthusiast who seemed afraid of me, and Guy 3 was a complete ass. Some words were exchanged as we established who I was, what program I was from, and what I studied. I steered the conversation away from me and on to the topic of pigeons, and Guy 2 was more than happy to wax on about the joys of the lab. I was fixing to ask him if he had a paperclip fetish, but then thought better of it. What I actually thought was "Fuck this", and so I began initiating the nice-to-have-met-you-handshake-goodbye activity so that I could leave. I wanted to go back and find No Bikey and engage her in a conversation that did not involve references to popular culture or those new-fangled penny-farthings.

Before I could get away though, there was a wonderful moment of dork-waddery in which Guy 3 distinguished himself as King Dork of Cheesetable – no easy task, mind you, as he was in the company of some of the finer specimens of D, myself included – by forgetting the name of the only female in the group. (Ahem. Me). Not only that, but he thought my name was Merick. Yeah – Merick. I said, "Dude, that's not even close. That's just his name with an 'M' on it." I pointed my finger at Guy 2 (a.k.a. "Erick"), smiled and shook my head sadly at Guy 3, tipped my glass to Guy 1, and wandered away.

It seemed the conversation wasn't over. Guy 3 followed me outside to where I was attempting to hide in a group with BS and other quasi-normal people. I tried to blend into this bunch, but Guy 3 saw me hiding in a chair, marched up to the group, interrupted the conversation and said to me the following:

"So. You're in the quantitative program? Tell me then: in multidimensional scaling, given that it's a linear model, what circumstances would give rise to a toroidal space with a wrap around?"

Jesus. That question again? I should mention that in six years of graduate study, the only time the term 'toroidal' has come up has been during my attempts to plot jumps through hyperspace.

Qwanty: "Yeah, I don't study multidimensional scaling."

Guy 3: "Well, surely you've heard of it."

Q: "Yeah. But I don't study it."

That was all. Flick. Like a tiny, pesky gnat. Get your flowbee'd arse off my arm. I turned and resumed conversation. It was later reported to me that Flowbs looked like he'd been kicked in the chest, so uninterested was I in his little beer spattered gauntlet. Hooray Vicodin!

like lon chaney jr., but without the special shoes

2008-09-02T20:40:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 30, 2007

So I was sitting here making a mental list of people Who I'd Like to Meet, and I remembered that I'd already met one of the people on my list. Thus was born the very short list of people Who I'd Like to Re-Meet, which I submit here for posterity. I vow to re-read this again and again. Learn from this, dammit. LEARN!:

1) David Cross

It happened like this. Dr. Brain Scientist and I went to see DC with friends H and H, and it was after the show. Dr. BS and I were standing around outside at the side of the building waiting for H and H, who were off getting Brian Posehn's signature on a body part or something. So there we stood, all alone, leaning against a railing, when who should approach but DAVID CROSS? Yes. He was going to pass us on his way to go stand in a box and sign things. Not only was he going to be going past us, but he was going to potentially be squeezing awkwardly past us, as we were actually standing on a ramp thingy and I was bulky with a womb full of BS Jr. We were going to interact with him. It was going to be awesome.

So what happened? When DC smiled and was all bashful and charming and made his move to reposition his body so as to avoid my girth as he passed us, Dr. BS said something really clever about us enjoying the show, like "We really liked the show." And me? I said nothing. I didn't even attempt to agree with BS. Nope. Instead, I stood and stared at DC and rubbed my belly.

I waved at him with a hand that was clutching a wadded up kleenex.

I smiled in a panicked, confused way.

I wore overalls.

I was a giant man-child. Hello David Cross, I'm Lennie. Pardon me while I cover my face with my huge paws and bleat with terror.

There was more to the interaction between BS and DC, but I was not an active participant in any of it, unless you consider nervously wiping spittle from the corners of one's mouth active participation.

Bah. I want a do-over.

Learn from this.

Learn.

a shameful tale

2008-09-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 27, 2007

Once upon a time there was a girl who liked to read scary books. She liked the tingly adrenaline feel they gave her, and liked the sense of superiority they fostered in her because she knew she would never do something as completely fucking stupid as living in a house situated over any sort of burial ground. She was quite smug about this point.

As she grew older, she no longer enjoyed these sorts of books because the woman she grew into was kind of a ninny when it came to scary shit. M. Night Shyamalan movies were okay, except for the Sixth Sense – yes, even that was too scary for this big ninny, even though it took her years to see it and she already knew how it ended. Frightening experiences like The Ring were only sought occasionally, like when her tiny, ancient, Korean obstetrician put her on "pelvic rest" during pregnancy, and she was forced to quarantine her pelvis from all visitors and any activity, so she watched a lot of scary stuff instead because she needed to feel something somewhere. Of course, this proved to be a bad idea, as it lingered in the woman's head, and led to her always doing a stupid rapid walk-dash down her darkened hallway every time she returned from the linen closet, because she imagined the Ring girl might be crawling after her.

One day the woman decided to buy a house because she finally seemed old enough and she had sort of a real job. She also had a house-buying companion who had an actual real job, and so together they decided to buy a house in Satan's Nethers. After they bought the house and moved in, the woman watched a movie about zombies, which turned out to be a bad idea, because it made the woman not want to ever be alone in the swimming pool (the house had pool, as lots of houses there did, because Satan's Nethers taint a very comfortable place to live.) The reason the woman didn't want to ever be alone in the swimming pool was that she imagined aqua-zombies might swim up from beneath and grab her legs. She felt this way even in the day time, and even in the shallow end, and the knowledge that zombies probably don't like swimming did nothing to allay her fears.

One day the woman was sitting in the house, probably thinking smug thoughts about something, when she was struck by a thought SO HORRIFYING that it made her cry out and get all cold and sweaty. While she understood at the time of the house purchase that the house was located next to a place where a large tribe of prehistoric people once lived, and she understood that there was an actual archaeological dig going on at this place, the full implications of this had never crossed her mind, because she was a person who had a hard time connecting the dots sometimes. The women realized that, in all likelihood, she was living in a house situated over some sort of burial ground. These fears were later confirmed by an archaeologist who offered to come over and dig up her yard.

Now the smug girl who liked scary books until she grew into a ninny lives in a house over a burial ground. She is secretly afraid to plant trees in her yard because she thinks she might unleash a vengeful spirit of some sort. She doesn't like it when the television gets staticky, because she secretly fears that someone might come scrambling out or someone might get sucked in. She has a small child who has conversations with invisible people situated high in the corners of the room. This small child also smiles at empty air and says "tanka?" The woman doesn't know who or what a tanka is, but the small child also says it when he points to a picture of a ghost in his Corduroy's Halloween book. Worst of all, the small child once looked completely frightened as his gaze followed absolute nothingness as it moved across her bedroom and into her bathroom, where the small child pointed to the absolute nothingness and said "someone?" Then the small child insisted on being taken to the living room immediately. Now the smug girl sees that she really should have been more understanding about the idiots living over burial grounds. Nice going, smug girl. You really had this coming. Have fun appeasing the ghosties, you stupid twit.

The Transformation, part VIII

2008-09-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 25, 2007

Nothing happened for some time. I became concerned that I'd accidentally killed the naked man, so checked on his status in the bathroom. He was not without company. Stationed around the room was a watchful guard of cockroaches keeping tabs on things. I'd anticipated this, and had replaced my fedora with a beekeeper's hat, constructed by my husband following a particularly devastating rejection letter to his only attempt at Orwell. He was in disbelief that a prominent literary journal would not want to publish the tale of a group of brass and wind instruments that rise up to massacre a high school marching band, led in their revolt by a rusty horn. There was only a single survivor in this massacre: the son of the man whose father owned the oldest piano store in town, a trombone player spared because the instruments all recalled how lovingly he'd always polished his own horn. The person who wrote the letter denying publication—who I imagine was surrounded by other persons doubled over in laughter—must have felt strongly in his or her decision to reject, because the wording strayed from the standard 'We're sorry, but this story does not meet our current needs' format, and included the word 'asinine'. My husband spent three days in the basement, at some point during which he watched a documentary on beekeeping. He emerged, proclaiming this to be his true calling, and had fashioned a beekeeper's hat out of an old football helmet, a crusty scrap of sweatshirt, and some brand new pairs of extra tall pantyhose he happened to have on hand. At the time I'd secretly questioned the utility of this, but was now glad to have it around.

The cockroaches in the bathroom did not charge at me when I entered, my Aqua Net and lighter poised for attack. They turned their attention to me, and no one said a word. I saw that the naked stranger was still breathing, and had begun to drool a bit. In preparation for my entry into the bathroom I'd also donned my husband's Walt Whitman beard under the beekeeper's hat, as I felt I needed the added protection around my mouth, as well as whatever extra confidence it might afford me. This was the beard my husband wore when penning his own song of himself, a work I made the decision to never read after he asked me what rhymed with 'scrotum'. Now I carefully placed this beard on the naked man's face, hooking it over his ears to insure it would stay in place to absorb his drool. Still without a plan of action, I chose to take advantage of whatever remained of his nap time and tip-toed out of the room, closing the door behind me. As I left, I thought I heard the faintest of hissing sounds. This time though, I could swear someone said "sssssssssssssslut."

la la la la la, lovely labia

2008-09-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 24, 2007

This afternoon I am lamenting the fact that I threw away a tiny pork rind that looked like a vulva. Not sort of like a vulva, but exactly. I mean, as exact as a nickel-sized fried pork skin reproduction of a vulva can get without the aid of human hands. This was a naturally occurring phenomenon, and I threw it away, with all its perfect symmetry and miniature realistic rind-labia. What stings the most is that I saved it for a year and a half before I did that. I put it on the book shelf by my desk next to the book Dracula – now that I think about it, a space not at all conducive to vulva-drying. I intended to get some shellac and preserve it, but never got around to it, because I CAN'T PRIORITIZE. My daughter found it when we were moving, and she asked me why I had it. She looked kind of disgusted, like she already sort of knew the answer and regretted asking the question. I laughed and was all awkward and tried to act like it was just some wayward stowaway pork rind that had been flung up high on the shelf in a snacking frenzy. In a panic I threw it in the garbage and changed the subject. I couldn't just say, "Honey, Mommy likes to save food that looks like genitalia"? Why?!? I am a weak, weak person.

The Transformation, part VII

2008-09-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 20, 2007

The next several hours were spent doing the sorts of things you do after this kind of morning. First, I washed my hands. Unlike my reputation, my hands had not emerged unscathed from my bout of debauchery. To be more accurate, it was really only one hand, and it smelled like a sewer. The other hand was merely along for the ride, still holding the bottle of vodka but trying otherwise to appear innocent.

Standing at the kitchen sink, I was caught off-guard by the appearance of yet another cockroach. It might have been one from earlier, but there's no real way of telling. The cockroach in the poems had worn a hat much like the one I still was still wearing, and also had a pocket watch, none of which had ever made any sense to me. Where would a cockroach even procure these items? I'd found the notion of a cockroach haberdasher to be preposterous. Now it seemed I'd been wise to doubt, as this kitchen cockroach, like the others I'd encountered this morning, arrived completely unaccessorized. Climbing up from the drain that housed the garbage disposal, it wasn't even wearing shoes.

Despite my display of confidence with the voyeuristic trio, I was becoming increasingly apprehensive about the repeated visits from cockroaches. My skin tingled, and I felt a growing need for a larger, more protective hat. I overturned an empty pan into the sink, covering the drain and corralling the cockroach. "Go home," I told it. From within the pan came the faintest sound of hissing, and then nothing. Peeking under the pan I saw the cockroach was gone.
I gathered some supplies, and then pulled a chair into the center of the living room and sat. From here I could monitor the bathroom for sounds of activity. I felt reasonably safe here, as there were no drains in the room. I had cigarettes and a lighter, and a bottle of Southern Comfort fetched from my closet. This I kept hidden because my husband was a drunk, but not because it fit with any particular personification of competent writing. I also had a can of aerosol hairspray, found high on a shelf on my husband's side of the closet. His days as F. Scott Fitzgerald focused primarily on cultivating what he deemed an appropriate hairstyle, and on constructing a monocle from supplies found around the house. I didn't think Fitzgerald wore a monocle, and when I pointed out to my husband that he might be thinking instead of the little Monopoly man, he threw a roll of saran wrap at me. This period passed without any writing to speak of, due in part to his asthma symptoms resulting from his heavy handed use of Aqua Net, and in part to the difficulty he had writing with one eye shrouded in plastic. Now I had the hairspray ready beside me, lighter in hand, in the event I was suddenly besieged by cockroaches and needed the aid of an impromptu flamethrower.

a note of thanks

2008-09-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 19, 2007

Sometimes one witnesses a display of discourse that is just so magnificent that one must sit down and compose a letter to said discourser. Here is that display of discourse:

1=9246">http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=B0E84C7C-606F-4544-B30F-601C97DC9700&t=s3&f=06/64&p=hotvideo_m_edpicks&fg=>1=9246

and here is that letter:

Dear Sari Locker,

I was just sitting here thinking about how glad I am that you were available to be interviewed on MSNBC, and I had to write you this letter. It was really important that you could be there to speak in response to the recently released federal study that is providing support to the claim that abstinence-only education isn't effective. I know, you're a "sexpert" (your words, not mine!) with a busy schedule of appearing on Montel Williams and hosting television shows and giving sex advice in an internet column and all, but it was really great that you could take the time to show up to the MSNBC interview. I understand that you are known for demonstrating how to put a condom on by way of a banana, and I applaud you for that. I see from your website that you also have a master's in human sexuality, and that guys like to tell you their problems (although plenty want to sleep with you because they think you'll be really wild in bed!). I've seen your press. I haven't seen your vitae, though. You know, that thing where you identify what you've contributed in terms of research and scholarly efforts and stuff. Oh well. I can tell you're qualified though by the way you responded to Libby Mackie of the Abstinence Clearinghouse. After that simpering twit told us about how the study was flawed because the control group was selected from the same school as the intervention group, and how common sense tells us that we should teach our kids to not take drugs, drink alcohol, or have sex, I liked the way you handled yourself. It was good the way you didn't make the point that Ms. Mackie was incorrect in her appraisal of the validity of the study, and that such designs allow a researcher to control for other extraneous variables that have the potential to be more problematic (remember, that was in that quasi-experimental design class you took. Come on, you must have taken it because you were introduced in the interview as a psychologist, right?) And you didn't waste time with the point that it is a bad idea for us to consider the risks associated with drugs and alcohol to be equivalent to those posed by sexual activity, and that adopting a tactic of education that relies on the premise of "just say no" is unrealistic given the fact that we are creatures who have sex. And no one needed to be reminded that a person can potentially avoid drugs and alcohol their entire lives, but for few people can the same be said about sex. And thank you for skipping over the whole fallacy-of-common-sense-thing, and about how we can't ignore data just because it contradicts what common sense tells us should be true. Oh, and the part where you didn't bother to point out how the exchange had thus far focused on consequences of adolescent sexual activity in terms of unwanted pregnancy, but that no mention had been made of sexually transmitted diseases. That was a good move on your part – no one wanted to hear again that young women who sign virginity pledges engage in unprotected anal sex at significantly higher rates than women who don't (remember that whole concept of statistical significance? They talked a lot about it in those statistics courses you took? Is this ringing a bell? Do you remember that study about the virginity pledges? Of course you do – you're the sexpert here!) Really, Sari, thank you for all of that. But most of all, thank you for losing your shit seconds into your part of the interview just because that stupid twat of a "reporter" interjected with a statistic from the study that you felt – I guess – was not representative. I can't say for sure what you felt, because you called her a liar, and then all hell broke loose. You were talking and she was talking and then – I can barely write this – the interview was ended. Ended. And what little you did manage to say? Thank you for making it pro-sex, rather than pro-education.

Well, I'm off to write a letter to MSNBC reporter Amy Robach to commend her on her stellar interviewing techniques – I really felt she handled herself with great aplomb. Keep up the good work!

Your fan,

Qwanty

it's almost 4 20 -- do you know where your parents are?

2008-09-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 18, 2007

My parents smoked pot once. As the story goes, this would have happened around the time I was 11 – about 1985 or so. "Freeway of Love" was big on the radio. We, as a nation, were captivated by Star Search. There was still an abundance of those Frankie Goes to Hollywood t-shirts. Really, who wouldn't want to be high? And what was I doing? Hanging the first of many pictures of George Michael (the musician, not the Bluth) on my bedroom wall, starting a collection that would grow to 124 pictures within two years (one of which would feature my face, glued over G.M.'s girlfriend's face). And what were my parents doing? Toking out – but just once.

They scored their weed from a guy named Dale. I knew him as an eleven year old, and he seemed okay, but looking back now with wise, womanly eyes, I see that he was kind of ooky. David-Lee-Roth-Now-Ooky. (Come on – have you seen him lately?) Dale was that guy, and I don't think I ever saw him wearing a shirt. And from this man came the joint my parents would smoke.

The house we lived in had a smiley face toilet seat in the bathroom in my parents' bedroom. It was there when we moved in, and remained while we lived there. It was on this smiley face that each of my parents stood, blowing smoke into the bathroom fan, when they first partook of the ganja. They claimed they didn't like it, and as soon as they tried it they threw it in the toilet and flushed it away. No fun was had. This is the story.

I was first told about The One and Only Time My Parents Smoked Pot when I was nineteen or so, and at the time I believed it. Now I wonder. I present to you some key pieces of information:

Exhibit A: THE COUCH
When I was a very little girl, we had a couch made out of a shipping crate. Yes, I know. You are confused. A shipping crate couch? Isn't that really more of a meth-y thing to do? A shipping crate, if you've never had a huge quantity of something shipped to you, is a huge wooden crate in which things are shipped. It's like what Lurvey built to transport Zuckerman's Famous Pig to the fair, except bigger, like you'd need if you had a bison-sized pig. This was the base, and the rest was made of pillows – groovy, groovy, velvety pillows. Seriously, there were probably 30 pillows – custom-made pillows. And the shipping crate was charred. Charred because my dad stood over it with a blow torch, charring it, and scrubbing it with a wire brush, and charring it some more. Neat, huh? I have to wonder, though: was there really nothing leafy involved in any of this, ever, from conception to completion? Really? Perhaps. Did I mention that we also had an enormous bean bag that matched the pillows? I didn't? Well we did. All this just because it was the seventies? Okay, I guess can accept that.

Exhibit B: THE LIVING ROOM SNACKS
Situated near all the pillow furniture were snacks. We had a big bowl of assorted nuts in the shell, a nutcracker, and a bowl for discarded shells. We also had a cork-topped jar of pretzels, and an accompanying cork-topped jar of yellow mustard. This was mustard that had been taken from its original container, and had been reassigned to another container suitable for accessorizing a living room. The container was clear glass too, so you could see that it was mustard. We also had a machine that dispensed peanuts. Occasionally a cork-topped jar of cheesy corn doodles would appear. All this, all the time. Who needs this kind of stuff at the ready, by the television, next to the Jim Croce records, because the kitchen is too far away? I'll tell you who: stoners.

Exhibit C: THE DINNER CONVERSATIONS
I recall dinner conversations that were dominated by a parent going on and on and ON about all the delicious aspects of a single ingredient. I remember distinctly my mom being just amazed at how sweet that onion was. Amazed. "That onion was just so wonderful…so, so sweet…I just can't get over it…" That's pretty much all I remember from dinner conversations too, so I'm pretty confident it happened all the time. Do you remember the last time you enjoyed an onion that much? You don't? That's because you were high.

Exhibit D: THE CUTTY SARK BOTTLE
When I was four, my parents had an inflatable Cutty Sark bottle that was taller than I was. You know who else has one of those? Your connection.

Exhibit E: THE PARANOIA ABOUT MY EXPOSURE TO POT IN TOTALLY PREPOSTEROUS SITUATIONS
An example: When I was 12, my friend Shelby invited me to go see G.M. in concert (!!!) and my dad wouldn't let me go with her and her mom and her nine year old sister because he thought there would be pot somewhere at the concert. WHAT? (An aside: He almost didn't let me go see Paul McCartney with my friend Kristin when I was 14, but he did, and guess what the people in front of us had?)

*************************************************************

This is a sample. I could go on. It just seems that the only parents like this who I ever encountered – the ones with giant, billowy, pillowy furniture and inflatable liquor bottles – were more experienced than my own.

I should mention that there is also compelling evidence that suggests my parents' claim is actually true: On two separate occasions over the past couple of months my dad has been to my house and has asked, in a tone that is both jovial and accusing, if I have recently been smoking pot. Correction: the first time he asked me if I'd been smoking pot, but it turned out he was sitting next to a scented candle. It wasn't a pot-scented candle, either. The second time he asked me if I'd been smoking "doobie". Seriously, the word doobie fell right out of his mouth like it was the most natural thing in the world – like it was itself a doobie that had just burned his lip. The doobie smell turned out to be my perfume – also not pot-scented. I said to him, "You don't know what doobie smells like, do you?" This he neither denied nor acknowledged to be true. And then he coughed.

See? I'm flummoxed.

“…whose taint needed to be definitionally excluded from the study of human mental content…”

2008-09-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 17, 2007

This is an excerpt from the abstract of a talk I'm going to tomorrow. So ask yourself: when studying your own mental content, do you find it cluttered with taints? Are there any that need to be excluded? Definitionally excluded? I bet there are...

The Transformation, part VI -- A Very Special Transformation

2008-09-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 16, 2007

I sat on the floor, wearing the hat, drinking from the bottle. I was no more the detective now than I was before the hat, and had yet to solve the mystery, but at least now I had the enhanced confidence of the early morning drunk. Returning to the bathroom, bottle in hand, I tipped my hat to the stranger, who was still crouched in the bathtub, exploring the insides of his ears with his fingers.

"Would you like a drink?" I asked. He hissed softly, and I took this to mean yes. I poured a small puddle of vodka on the edge of the tub and crouched down on the floor in front of him, ready to spring to my feet if the situation demanded. He lapped it up, and I poured a bit more for him. He drank this also. We repeated the process several times, until he finally lost the balance of his crouch, falling back into a seated position. My visitor's likeness to my husband did not extend to his capacity to drink tremendous amounts.

I stood cautiously, somewhat off-balance myself, waiting for him to hiss accusingly. It seemed that his likeness to my husband also did not extend to this realm. Instead he sat, not looking angry, staring at me with eyes that did not blame me for where he was at this moment. His was the face of the man I once thought I loved, back before the letters of rejection and abject weirdness. Granted, it was a somewhat more puzzled face with an excess of eyebrow activity, but it was not festooned with eyeglasses found in the street or framed with an ascot and beret, and this was a welcome change.

His eyes were heavy. His hands wandered over his body, and he rolled to the side, stretching out on his back in the bathtub. I sat on the floor and reached towards him slowly, touching his arm with one finger. He did not flinch. I continued to drink and ask him questions, but could not establish if he was new in town, if he had any weed on him, or if he would like to borrow a sweater. His whisper-hiss continued as he examined his hands, tasted his foot, and ate a hair he pulled from his chest. Drunk and at a loss for words, but feeling brazen in my hat, I did what I like to think any curious individual would have done in a similar situation. Reaching between his legs, I put my hand on the penis he did not seem to realize he had.

I dismissed the voice inside reminding me that there are other ways to fill an awkward silence that do not involve giving a hand job to a potentially demented man.

"Where was this logic when Sacher-Masoch showed up requesting to be spanked with a wooden spoon?" I demanded. "I recall an awkward silence there. And the following week, when DeSade took a spatula to my ass? Again, awkward silence. I went along with it, and where were you? All that, and nothing came of it but a story about his father. And that," I concluded, "is demented."

"But shouldn't you wait for the second date?" challenged the voice. "Why start now?" was my rejoinder.

The assertion that he would probably tell all his friends was met with an eyeroll and the assurance that my reputation would remain unscathed, as it seemed all he could do was hiss, and just who were these so-called friends? "Really," I commanded, "Leave me to my pent up spite."

The voice feebly challenged me one final time, calling attention to the fact that it probably wouldn't really be a satisfying gesture of infidelity given the fact he looked exactly like my husband. "Which is precisely why I won't have to feel too guilty," I explained. "Besides, he is eating his hair, and that makes him different. Now shut up."

I poured a trickle of vodka into his hissing mouth, and a far larger trickle into my own. Then, following a brief display of dexterity that would have impressed Carver and Capote alike, I let the semen fall where it may. He was wide-eyed for a moment, and then my drunken, naked visitor's soft slurred hisses subsided as his eyes drifted shut. Like all good cheap dates he had passed out.

High from the corner of the room I heard a small, faint chorus of hissing. Perched on the wall were three cockroaches, staring down at us.

"Perverts," I hissed at them, feeling protected under the hat. Creeping out of the bathroom, I left the passed out naked man where he was, still splattered with semen, in case he needed a snack when he awoke.

these go to eleven

2008-09-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 15, 2007

Because I study psychometrics and stuff, I often find myself doing psycho-me-tricky things. Tonight I am doing some work with a scale that measures sexual behaviors and attitudes. This means questions about the number of one-night-stands you've had, the degree to which you are okay with casual sex, etc. I know – this is hot, edgy, sexy work. I've run into a problem, though. There is an item that asks how often you fantasize about having sex with someone other than your current partner. There is a response scale that ranges from '0'( never) to '7' (at least once a day). You get the idea. It also seems that there are a number of males who have answered '9' for this item. No, this is not a code meant to tell me they left the item blank. This is a response. They filled in a bubble that was not represented on the response scale, because these guys think about sex with someone other than their current partner SO OFTEN that they can't BE constrained by my PIDDLY LITTLE RESPONSE SCALE! Mind you, '9' is even greater than '8', and '8' wasn't an option EITHER!! Okay. Breathe. And for them to just buck the system like that, and get in the way of SCIENCE (I mean "science"), just so they can communicate to me on the intro psych survey that they think about having sex with someone other than their current partner MORE THAN AT LEAST ONCE A DAY. TWO MORE!! Perhaps all this thinking about sex explains why there are 78 males who responded '4' to an item concerning whether you consider yourself a feminist. You know what '4' is? I don't know what a feminist is. WHAT? You DON'T? And you are in COLLEGE? Okay, perhaps this is a problem of language. On the other hand, perhaps this is NOT a problem of language. I'm leaning towards that. Because you know what? Some other guy responded '6'. And guess what? Not a response option. He must REALLY not know what a feminist is.

Oh, you men.

The Transformation, part V

2008-09-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 15, 2007

Once in the bathroom, I tossed the last bit of the turkey bacon into the bathtub, watching as my visitor climbed in to join it. He consumed it, then took great interest in the drain, placing his face beside it and whispering again, still a nearly inaudible hiss. I wanted his attention, but had no food, so squeezed a small blob of toothpaste on the edge of the tub. He turned his attention to this and tasted it, clearly not enjoying its minty freshness.

From the drain poked the head of a cockroach. "Get the hell out, or I will blast your ass with water," I lisped in my most controlled cockroach voice. Both the insect and the man looked at me, antennae and eyebrows moving, hissing softly. Neither seemed to appreciate what I'd said. I noted that the cockroach did not have a lisp. It seems I'd been completely duped by the girl with the cockroach poems and her inaccurate representation of cockroach communication. The man looked down at his body, and then to the little intruder. Both hissed softly. Then the cockroach descended out of sight, and I quickly replaced the drain's rubber stopper, thwarting any return for the time.

I wasn't sure what to say, so I excused myself for a moment, closing the bathroom door behind me. I ran to my closet, pulling out the bottle of vodka I kept hidden inside a boot. This was a precaution I took to minimize the chances it would be consumed by my husband whenever he was stricken by a case of the Dostyevskies, fueling drunken, poorly accented demands for boiled potatoes and allegations that I am a filthy, capitalist whore. I drank from the bottle, and again considered the situation. I was not sure who this man was, but I knew who he wasn't. I tried to recount the facts. Hungry, hissing naked man. Affinity for cockroaches. Aversion to toothpaste. I simply could not do this. Adopting my husband's tactic for writing, I retrieved a tattered fedora from the closet and put it on my head. It was originally acquired during his Frank Sinatra phase, one that spawned no writing whatsoever, but plenty of empty scotch bottles and observations that I was a ditzy broad in need of a knuckle sandwich, ring-a-ding-ding. It later resurfaced during his stint as a writer of pulpy stories about private detectives who specialized in cases involving piano thefts and poisoned clarinet reeds, or 'private dicks' as he liked to call them. The irony of his use of this phrase bothered me, as I'd often wished he'd had more of a private dick himself.

spies like us

2008-09-02T20:18:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 14, 2007

When I was a young qwanty, back before my q developed and I was merely 'wanty', I had a deep desire to be involved in espionage. I wanted to be a spy. I also had a hankering to be a detective, and had a red telephone devoted to my practice. I had no means of plugging it into a wall though, so I never really got many calls. I also wanted to be a cat burglar. I dallied in imaginary thievery, sometimes accompanied by Kermit the Frog, but more often it was Great Muppet Caper leading man Charles Grodin who whispered the order for watch synchronization. My little girl head was filled with an elaborate world of danger, intrigue, and hats. Hats figured prominently in the fantasy life I would one day not actually lead, both on me and on everyone else. There were few eyepatches, however.

One day my friend Jill and I locked ourselves in the bathroom. We were trapped. I can't remember the exact mission, having been trapped in a bathroom so many times. I can assure you though that it was a dire situation. That day, as little girls often do, Jill and I frequently broke character to discuss the direction the plot was going. This time, we challenged one another to come up with what you would eat if you were trapped in a bathroom. I would eat toothpaste. Jill, it turned out, would also eat toothpaste. Why, we could live on toothpaste and water for weeks! No, we wouldn't eat soap, and we wouldn't eat cotton balls. It was toothpaste and water for us. We were naïve, never thinking of the possibility that our captors might have non-functioning plumbing or just not care about their teeth. We anticipated some of our captors would have false teeth of course, but assumed an accompanying regimen of care that would involve fizzy soaking tablets dissolved in water. This we would drink, our naïveté extending to our belief that this would be nutritionally equivalent to toothpaste. I could not WAIT to be trapped in a bathroom.

Now that I'm a full grown qwanty, I sometimes lock myself in the bathroom. In moments of crisis, this is where I retreat. A hearty slam of the door, a defiant flip of the lock, and I am trapped in a bathroom. I'm no longer a spy though, or a cat burglar, or a detective. I'm not even wearing a hat. I'm crying, or angry, or anxious. Being trapped in a bathroom makes it all feel a little better, though. I sit on the floor, and stare at the lights. I close my eyes and see spots. I think, and I breathe. I do these things until I no longer want to be trapped in a bathroom, not without a beer at least. But of course, by this time I really feel trapped. The downside of storming away in a huff is the eventual shamed return to the scene of the crime, where a guy inevitably scolds you for slamming the door. Maybe it would be easier if he were wearing an eyepatch – it's hard to say. In any case, my desire to avoid this leaves me trapped in a bathroom. What will I do? Sure, there's running water, but no clean glasses. What will I eat? Toothpaste? No. I know better now. I won't eat toothpaste – I'm a savvier spy. Now, challenged with this question, the answer is obvious: if I were trapped in a bathroom, I'd drink the cough syrup, chase it with some mouthwash, and kick down the door. And if that doesn't work, I'll wait for Charles Grodin.

The Transformation, part IV

2008-09-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 13, 2007

I quarantined him in the only other bathroom, the one with the nice towels. This seemed like the best place to stash a mysterious naked man, and was the last room my husband would go into should he show up unexpectedly to pick up his trombone or dab cream on his furtive anus. As I mentioned, my husband's anal affairs occurred downstairs in the grimy basement bathroom under a cloak of secrecy, at least when I was around. In five years of marriage I had acquired no evidence that my husband produced any solid waste, and I was unclear whether he even possessed the organs required to make this possible. All I had to go on was his clandestine collection of tubes of hemmoroidal ointment, which only suggested he might possess an itchy, swollen opening of some sort, but nothing more. Why was it itchy and swollen? Things coming out, things going in, it's hard to say. In any case, the upstairs bathroom was a safe bet, with its small dimensions, high window, and imminently disinfectable surfaces.

The trip from the basement required a second banana, two pieces of turkey bacon, and several stops along the way in which my naked visitor demonstrated a keen eye for filth. Pausing here and there, he would locate and sample the various drips of our existence, consuming a chocolate chip discovered on the floor near the sink, a small shred of cheese near the stove. He also located several dried spatterings of what was most likely semen. My husband's commitment to the secret secretions of his body was not as well developed where his penis was concerned, and so in addition to the piss bottles, I also had to contend with the aftermath of poorly concealed acts of masturbation scattered about the house. His world was one in which the semen flowed freely, falling where it may. It was clear he did not remember where the paper towels were kept in this world of his, as his attempts to clean up after himself were generally limited to swiping at the doorframe with a sock, which I would later find, crunchy beneath the bed. If confronted with this evidence, my husband would deny knowledge, or claim the sock had been soiled in a different endeavor, like noseblowing or the making of homemade paste. Looking down at the naked man patiently licking away the residue, I felt satisfied.

The Transformation, part III

2008-09-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 11, 2007

Upstairs the phone rang. It was my husband. In a slurred british accent he informed me that he was going to his brother's house after work and would not be home that night. As he spoke, I pulled the phone to the top of the basement stairs and shined a flashlight into the darkness. The naked doppelganger peered up at me quizzically. "Did you hear me?" he demanded from the phone, losing character for a moment. "Leave my pipe in the mailbox." "Right, sure thing, Ringo," I replied.

Hanging up the phone, I considered for a moment the situation at hand. I tried to recall any old family stories, raised eyebrows, or stern, silencing looks that might suggest my husband had another sibling who'd been abandoned, sent away, or locked in an attic. Nothing came to mind. This was puzzling indeed. Who was this naked couch-eater? I grabbed a banana and crept down the stairs.

Behind the furnace he sat, knees to his chest. On one knee sat a cockroach. The cockroach moved its antennae, and the naked man responded in kind, using his eyebrows in the same slow, expressive way. He whispered softly, an almost indiscernible hissing sound. I froze, silent, afraid to move, wielding my banana like a spear. I do not like cockroaches.

I remembered a time in high school when I was on the speech team, and lost a poetry interpretation competition to a girl who read a series of poems about a cockroach who liked to climb around on a typewriter, pressing keys with his little cockroach feet and writing little cockroach poems. It was a crushing defeat, made possible because she read the poems in a bashful, lisping cockroach voice, and by the fact the judges were idiots. I attempted this voice now. "Go away, you hideous bastard," I lisped bashfully, addressing the cockroach on his knee. "Oh, please, mister cockroach, go away." The voice did nothing, nor did my request. Shining the flashlight on them again did the trick however, and the insect scuttled away. The naked man of uncertain origins remained cornered with nowhere to scuttle. Proceeding cautiously, I peeled the banana and dropped a piece in front of him. He picked it up and put it in his mouth. Piece by piece, in a wily demonstration of huntsmanship that would have done Hemingway proud, I lured the naked, dusty man up the stairs.

The Transformation, part II

2008-09-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

originally posted April 11, 2007

The morning brought sounds of his departure, off to his job at the piano store. He'd spend the day in the back room of the store in the guitar department, jotting down observations of the goings-on as he'd done for many years, consuming a forty ounce bottle or two of Olde English malt liquor as he did it. His dedication to his craft was far reaching, as was his secret stash of mostly empty bottles behind the furnace in our basement. He cherished the romance of the alcoholic writer, so much that he broke from this routine at the store only to venture out to the bar next door for an off-site drink or two. This may have been a third reason he was a bad writer, this inappropriately timed drunkenness. It most certainly contributed to the reasons he was a bad husband.

Later in the morning, while in the kitchen cleaning up the remains of the previous evening's foiled sexcapade, I heard a noise in the basement. Going downstairs, I discovered him in his office, a dingy room next to the disgusting bathroom in which he hid odd magazines and Preparation H. His libido and anal happenings were mysteries to me, and I suspect this helped to keep the romance alive. I found him naked again, squatting on the couch, chewing on a small tuft of sofa innards.

"I didn't expect you home so early. Who have you been reading?" I asked. His response was atypically non-confrontational and seemingly sober. He looked at me silently, a small fluff of his snack stuck to the corner of his mouth. He then bolted from the couch, bumping past me as he ran out the door to the darkness beyond the furnace, knocking bottles over on the way. I looked around the room for another naked person, hoping his strange behavior could be explained as an attempt to remain nonchalant in the face of an adulterous discovery. There was nothing else unusual in the room except for a vague sewer smell.

I followed him to where he crouched behind the furnace, surrounded by toppled bottles. Some of the newer additions had overturned, and from them dripped the usual stuff, a sticky mixture of old malt liquor, chew spittle, and urine. I don't know why my husband pissed in bottles and hid them behind the furnace. I imagined he either intended to save it, drink it, or pour it on someone. I knew that some of the contents of the bottles had come not from him, but from his brother. This was also perplexing, as I didn't know why a person would piss in bottles at someone else's house. My attempts to keep a handle on this had long been abandoned, but now I wished I'd been more proactive about the whole thing. Sitting naked on the dusty floor, he slowly licked the splattered contents off his arm.

the transformation, part I

2008-05-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

It's difficult to live with a writer, particularly a bad one. I suppose this isn't really a fair thing to say, having never actually lived with a good writer. They might be better companions. Bad writers, however, are surly and sanctimonious, what with their dedication to their craft and all, coupled with their awkward lack of publications. I can be surly and sanctimonious, though, and have published naught. Perhaps I am a bad writer. The word 'naught' should give you a clue.

The bad writer I lived with was bad for a number of reasons. He wrote what he knew, which I suspect is some trite piece of advice instructors of creative writing throw around when they are hungover, or still drunk. Unfortunately, the main thing he knew was being the son of the man whose father owned the oldest piano store in town, a family business that spawned many a story about being the son of the man whose father owned the oldest piano store in town. There were only so many places to go with this premise, and none of them were particularly interesting, despite the lengthy descriptions of the color of the sky and the coat hanger in the parking lot and the well-worn carpet. This might have been the primary reason he wasn't a good writer. He also siphoned creativity from various well known, better writers, although not too successfully. If he'd been more accomplished at this literary dress-up, we might now be discussing him as a mediocre writer. Not so though, and along with his writing affectations came the trappings of those he impersonated, or at least the trappings he imagined they had. One week he'd come traipsing into the house wearing a hat he'd picked up at a thrift store, and his gangly incarnation of Ernest Hemingway would hunker down to pen a story about selling an accordion, rife with unnecessary jungle metaphors. The season of Raymond Carver brought dirty sweatshirts, wry looks, and a bold departure in a story about steak. In the summer it was Truman Capote, mint juleps, and a play about a piano salesman with a toupee, and when it rained he'd fill his pockets with rocks and wander around outside, I assume trying to remember what Virginia Woolf wrote. All said, this may have been a second reason why he wasn't so good.

I'm not sure exactly when the transformation happened. I guess I should refer to it as a metamorphosis, in keeping with how we do these things. In any case, the night I found him naked on the kitchen counter, crouched atop the remaining half of the evening's pizza, I was surprised, but not in the way you might have been. I flipped on the kitchen light, and he looked up in a panic, jumped off the counter, and scuttled to hide under the refrigerator. He was tall though, and couldn't fit. Instead, he turned and fled, stumbling down the basement steps. I closed the door behind him, hoping this new and revolting twist to the affectations would subside within a few days. I wasn't sure where he was going with this, and certainly hoped I wasn't going to have to read a draft of it. I replaced the refrigerator magnets he'd knocked down, turned off the light, and sat outside on the back steps, smoking a cigarette. Upon going inside to our bedroom, I found him decked out in a flannel union suit, smoking a pipe, writing by candlelight. "Good to see you again, Abe," I said. "Goodluck with the Gettysberg thing. Please do not set us on fire." Not as painful as I'd thought it would be. Perhaps the naked pizza thing had been meant as a come-on. Just in case, I slept on the couch.