The Ballad of the Laser Cowgirl, and Other Stories

The Nobility of Failure

2010-06-14T00:56:00.005-05:00

So that last thing I wrote? Big old problem with it. Big. And I don't mean the pretentiousness, because that's just a part of me, and someday somebody is going to find it endearing.* That's beside the point. The point is this:

Many, many jokes will fail. A few won't. A few will be beautiful, or they will grow to be. And if you kill them because they aren't perfect immediately, or because you're not sure they will be, that's a terrible loss. Try everything. Offend people. Fail huge. If you never fail, you're aiming too low. Keep going.

So, not a retraction, exactly. An expansion? An addendum? Something in the addendum genus.

This stinks of something I should be applying to life at large, but I'm sleepy and let's pretend this is all strictly business, okay? Okay.

-L

*I hope.

On the Razor's Edge, and Walking It

2010-05-14T23:52:00.007-05:00

Why do we joke about the things we joke about?

There was a time when those in power - the wealthy, the pious, the politically influential - were so generally respected they were considered beyond reproach. To joke about them was shocking and crass (and potentially even illegal or hazardous to one’s health). This made those jokes edgy and powerful.

So why a trend lately towards, for example, rape jokes, or racial jokes, or gay jokes? My theory is that political correctness has designated minorities, women, and other traditionally discriminated against groups as being beyond reproach, and subject to the same deference in speech that made those in power an appealing target in the past.

So it’s the same impulse, but the problem here is that people who have traditionally been abused or discriminated against are, in fact, often still abused or discriminated against. Plus, these squeaky-clean turns of phrase we’re meant to use were, for the most part, assigned by the majority. They clutter and impede the way we talk about things, and misdirect our resentment/suspicion of the powerful.

So is this absurdity a valid target for comedy? Absolutely. Comedy is a medium suited above all others to delve into the uncomfortable and ugly parts of human existence. Consider the collateral damage, though. Are you attacking the system, or those subject to it? It’s a tricky line to walk. You’ve got to be damn good (something to keep in mind when throwing around names like Hicks or Carlin). The difference between a genius and a jerk is not what they talk about, but how they talk about it.

So by all means, be subversive. Be smart. Be excellent. But do it for real.

.

A Short Note on Love and Architecture

2009-09-27T22:58:00.007-05:00

People talk about pillars of strength, or being put on pedestals, but all I've ever wanted is one half of an arch, and I would be the other half, with loving respect as the keystone.

A gothic arch, even, because then it'd be like we're high-fiving.

_

The Heart On My Sleeve Is A Decoy.

2009-06-20T01:26:00.008-05:00

When something Good happens, my gut reaction is terror, which I rationalize by doubting the goodness of the Good Thing, which leads (in the functional sense) to nothing Good ever happening, because I'm too busy trying to be Right, when I should be taking risks and and opening up and letting things be Good.

Which, ahhhhgh.

AHHHHGH.
_

Where Do They All Come From?

2009-06-18T03:17:00.015-05:00

I've related this story in person a couple of times, but thought I ought to write it down anyway. It happened a little before Christmas.

An older lady, sixty-something, shuffled into the store where I work. She stood clutching a shopping bag and waiting for the thick plastic expanse of her glasses to defog, eventually wiping them on a small patch of sweater clear from appliquéd pine trees. Reaching into the bag, she removed a box of greeting cards, along with a neatly folded receipt. The picture on the cards was, of course, kittens in Santa hats.

"I'd like to return these, please," she said.

"Was there anything wrong with them?" I asked.

"No," she said, "I just didn't realize when I bought them what they said on the inside."

I read the greeting off the back of the box: "We wish you a Meowy Christmas."

So Santa kittens were great, but puns that depended on an implicit speech impediment were crossing into territory so disgustingly cutesy that even this sweet old lady, blinking-nosed Rudolph pin and all, was unwilling to transgress. I could respect that.

Then she continued, "It says 'We.' I live alone, so . . . "

With a resolutely casual shrug, she broke my heart.

Art versus Life versus Living

2009-05-09T03:45:00.005-05:00

When you analyze a story or a film or play, you look for the themes and motifs and patterns and symbolism, all that good junk. When you look at life, though, do you (for example) see a child let go of a balloon and think to yourself, as it bobs away toward outer space, “that must represent my youth slipping away”? I think that way sometimes, though I’m sure it’s silly. Because the idea that things happen simply to symbolize meaning in my life is so profoundly self-centered it makes me worry about becoming some kind of sociopath. I suppose it doesn’t have to be selfish, though. Just because the balloon means one thing to me does not exclude it from being meaningful to others. To the child who let it go so she could cross the monkey bars, it was the realization that she needs to let go of the past to embrace something new. To the estranged father who tried to buy the child’s love with it, it represented what an ephemeral presence he's allowed himself to become. These overlapping, interlocking meanings might hold us together like some kind of cosmic crossword puzzle. Maybe god is Will Shortz. Born on an Arabian horse farm in Indiana.

Has it ever happened to you where you learn about a thing you’d never heard of before, or had never bothered to think about, and suddenly it’s everywhere? Is this a dramatic device, a coincidence, or is it just that now that you’re aware of this thing, you are consciously looking out for it? Is it because somehow everyone noticed at once, and it’s spreading? Is this why contemporaries in the sciences tend to arrive at similar conclusions at similar times? Is there an underlying structure we are conforming to, or an overarching one we are building for ourselves, or an imaginary one we are desperately clinging to because patterns equal meaning to the human brain, and we want to be meaningful?

These ideas always seem to creep up when I should be sleeping. Maybe it is because my brain knows I should be dreaming by now, like I missed my hotel checkout time, so it’s throwing out my suitcases full of heavy subconscious nonsense. I remember someone telling me that 3 A.M. is when man is at his weakest. I seem to recall this person meaning it in the spiritual sense, but you know, I don’t actually remember.

Memory is powerful. Say you bumped into a guy on the sidewalk. It’s not a big deal; you get on with your day. Then you see on the news that a person has gone missing, and they show his picture, and it’s that guy you bumped into, and you remember him – now that event is meaningful. So the present effects the past as much as it does the future. And interpreting the past always changes it.

We have reached a point in society where huge chunks of our reality rely on our collective imaginations to keep existing. Money, for example. If everybody stopped putting their faith in the idea of numbers, our monetary system would simply cease to exist. Facts are that way, too. If everyone behaves as though a thing is true, then functionally, it might as well be true. A lot of the –isms get by on this principle. Sexism, for instance. If the commonly held perception is that a woman can’t be an astronaut, then she won’t be allowed into astronaut school, and then she can’t be an astronaut. This is also a way in which people weasel out of accomplishing things. They decide it would never succeed, so they don’t try, so obviously it doesn’t happen for them. Whatever it is. Often a novel.

Write your novels, is what I’m telling you. And telling me. Godspeed, and goodnight.

I Can See Clearly Now

2009-01-25T17:20:00.003-06:00

So folks, it turns out that if you go six years without visiting the eye doctor, your eyes can change, and you may need glasses. As I now do. Picked out frames on Wednesday. I almost picked a different pair, and about an hour later I saw a little old lady wearing those exact ones, so I feel that I have chosen wisely. I’m not old, and as my great-grandfather put it: “All ladies are women, but not all women are ladies.” Ahem.*

I used to need reading glasses, but apparently since I did not wear them consistently and am a giant bookworm nerdface, my eyes overcorrected and I am nearsighted now. This sounds made-up, I know. It sounds like I’m that one person you sometimes talk to:

Them: Then blah-blah happened to me, isn’t that weird?!
You: Yeah, something similar happened to my cousin –
Them: But it happened to me WAY WEIRDER. I am SO WEIRD. My life is SO WEIRD.

That person makes me crazy, always trying to prove some nebulous something to everyone. I am not being them on purpose. The same eye thing happened to my optometrist’s daughter, so it can’t be that unusual. It is just what happened. Sometimes, weird things just happen.

And all that’s really funny, because that disclaimer was just me trying to prove something to you all. It drives me just as crazy when I do it, if not more so. And I don’t know why I do it, except that I want everyone to like me all the time. Which is ridiculous at best, and toxic at worst, because there are times I’ve compromised myself to be X thing for X person, and X person, therefore, doesn’t actually have a clue who I am. Which is maybe the point – if X person doesn’t like me, who cares, they didn’t know me anyway.

You can’t lose a race you don’t enter. But you can’t win it, either, or even get a participant ribbon, or fall and skin your knee and be tended to by a sexy concerned citizen and fall in love and have his sexy concerned babies or whatever. Yet here I sit on the sideline with my fake twisted ankle, cheering on everyone else and hoping that if I’m happy enough for them maybe it’ll overpower the way I feel for myself.

Part of it is trust. Trust is a tough thing. The people I really, truly trust, I could probably count on one hand even if I were a three-toed sloth. And I would not make the cut. I second-, third-, and thirty-fifth guess every decision I make.

Let’s take a sec and contemplate those few I do trust, though. Trust doesn’t mean I think they’ll never stumble or fail or do anything to hurt me. Trust means knowing that they won’t hurt me on purpose, and that if they do hurt me they’ll try to understand so that it doesn’t happen again; that their mistakes are only that, mistakes; that when they fail, it won’t be for lack of effort. It’s knowing they’ll know the same things about me. It’s not an expectation of perfection. It’s accepting someone. And it’s accepting their acceptance of you.

So probably it’s hard to trust others BECAUSE it’s hard to trust myself. Once again, I am my own Step One. It’s so easy to write that out. Why is it difficult to act on? How does that change happen?

Now’s the part where I tie it in to the title of the post! Do you know that song? It is in the motion picture Cool Runnings, and also Grosse Pointe Blank. There is a line where I am not entirely sure of the lyrics, and that is the line that makes all the difference.

“I can see all obstacles in my ...”

A) Way, or B) Wake

If it’s B, well, good for that guy, nothing bad will ever happen again, he’s Cinder-fucking-ella. Great. But! If it’s A, that’s another story! He can see what he’s up against, and it might be really rough, but he’s going to make it anyway.

So, that’s it. That’s me, letter A. I see now what I’m up against, and it’s going to be a bright, sunshiny day.

*The following are things I partake in that would probably be unladylike according to my great-grandfather:

Chewing gum
Wearing denim slacks
Speaking out of turn
Painting my face with makeup like a brazen hussy
Leaving the house unaccompanied by a chaperone
Slingshot-ing my underwear into the laundry basket

So This Is Christmas

2008-12-25T14:49:00.003-06:00

I used that song as my FB status too. Cut me some slack, it is one of the three and a half Christmas songs I actually like. A lot of Christmas songs suck. A lot of Christmas stuff sucks.

The thing I do like about Christmas, though, is the free pass it gives you to tell people you love them without having to explain so much.

Maybe the explaining isn’t really necessary anyway. It just seems like such a scary word to a lot of people, like you have to muzzle it with all these other words and convince them it’s not going to bite, just so they don’t run away.

So don’t run away, okay?

I love you.

-Your Laser Cowgirl

Materialmystic

2008-12-04T23:15:00.007-06:00

So when I'm feeling insecure about life stuff, one of the urges I get is to buy things. How gross is that, right? Stuff is just stuff. The only time it means much of anything is when it comes from someone else, and then it's not the thing itself that has meaning, but that it represents someone thinking of you. But even if the object is lost, the feeling and the memory remain.*

So why does a shiny new piece of junk make me feel better every once in a while?

I don't know. But you guys, I totally want this necklace.

Not as much as I want, say, a loving home for every child and a cure for every chronic disease. But still.

Okay. Until next time. Be well, everybody!

*When I first wrote "remain," I mistyped it as "remaim." The memory re-maims. May my eyeliner be revoked and The Cure albums broken if that's not the gothiest thing I've ever accidentally typed.

For Posterity

2008-11-15T21:10:00.003-06:00

Baby Sister:

. . . So he's having a party, and he has a fondue pot, and his roommate has a fondue pot, and they're trying to find more people who can bring fondue pots so they can have different kinds of fondue.

Me:

Do they need a fog machine?

Baby Sister:

I don't think it's that kind of party.

I have my books and my poetry to protect me.

2008-11-09T14:17:00.004-06:00

Okay, you know that Simon & Garfunkel song “I Am A Rock,” right? I know you do. Of course you do. I bet at some point you’ve thought that song was about you. I have. Wow have I. Especially lately.

See, I’ve never been good at establishing ties. Or, put it this way – it’s been pretty rare that I’ve meant as much to anybody as they have to me. (Or the other way around. It would be unforgivably narrow and self-pitying to pretend I’ve never hurt anyone by just not being able to match their feelings.) Things change and people move on, and I get that part, it’s okay, it’s just – some people you go forever without seeing, and then you do see them, and the connection is still there. Then there are people you’d expect to have that connection with, but you see them and there’s just nothing. And you don’t know how it’s going to be until it happens. Which is why the whole “If you love them, let them go” cliché makes some sense I guess. But I digress.

What I’m really, really trying to say, I think, is that I can deal with missing people. I do it all the time. What tears me up is missing things that were never really there to begin with.

My best friend all through high school was this girl Katie. We spent so much time together, all kinds of adventures and secrets and things shared. One time she'd been doing this this thing where you count seven stars for seven nights, and on the last night you dream of the person you'll marry. It was the sixth night, and it was so overcast she couldn't see any stars, so I drew her some and she counted those instead. We were that kind of friends.

I graduated a year before her, but since I went to the local university, I was still more-or-less part of her senior year. We still talked, if nothing else. Then she graduated . . . And stopped returning my calls.

I still don’t know why. It’s not like she went out of state or anything either. We were at the same damn school. There had been some conflict between me and another friend of hers, but I never asked her to take sides. Maybe I didn’t do anything, and she just wanted to start college with a clean break from her high school people. In any case, she never told me, and I’ve only run into her maybe twice since then. It was awkward and artificial trying to make small talk. You’d never have known I used to think of her as a sister. All my other friends were her friends; I didn’t see much of them either.

So all that time we spent, the depth of feeling I had for her, does it even matter? It’s like my past is this dead thing I drag along with me, this phantom limb.

My friendship with Katie is a case study in my difficulty forming real bonds with people, even knowing that they care about me - because they might only care right now, or only seem to care at all. It’s like I’m always waiting for them to give up, but trying to hold on tighter at the same time. I end up feeling alone a lot.

Which leads back to the song – it’s bullshit, is the thing. Because I'm not the only one who's dealt with this, am I? You’ve related to that song, haven’t you? So have I. So we’ve related to each other, whether we meant to or not. So we're islands maybe, but we form an archipelago. Pain doesn’t make us special; it makes us the same. How can we possibly be alone?

And there are a few people I do trust in. If our ties are real, the pain of being apart is nothing. Guess I’ll find out.

So here’s to all being alone together, and to the risk of being hurt. J’y gagne, à cause de la couleur du blé.

Existential Baking

2008-09-25T01:52:00.004-05:00

When I was in college, one of my professors told a story about when he was in college. This is what I remember of that story.

His professor was talking about the idea that a person has creates his or her own destiny – that is, you can do anything you want, and furthermore, if you find what really makes you happy, you should do it.

“That’s really nice,” said a student, “but what would make me happiest would be going to Paris, and I’m broke as a joke. So you’re wrong, people can’t do anything just because they want to.”

The professor responded by offering the student a blank check, if she promised to walk out of the classroom right then and use it to buy a plane ticket to Paris. Which she did.

The point of the story wasn’t that pursuing your dream is easy, I don’t think. It’s more that, there are more ways to make a thing happen than you could possibly know, so stay open to what’s around you and don’t give up.

Which makes me think of a different story. This one is from the rector of the church I went to, back when I was still doing the whole church thing. He may have heard it from someone else. Also, it is a fable, as opposed to the last story, which was supposed to have really happened. Okay.

A city had suffered a terrible flood, and one man in particular had climbed onto his roof to stay out of the water, and was stranded there. A woman in a life jacket floated by, and called out to him.

“I have a spare life jacket. You can have it, let’s swim out of here!”

“No, thank you,” the man responded. “God will save me.”

So the woman floated away to safety on here own. Then, a family in a boat paddled up.

“Get in our boat,” they said, “we have room, we’ll get you out of here!”

“No, thank you,” said the man. “God will save me.”

So the family paddled away. Next, a rescue helicopter flew by.

“Grab the ladder,” shouted a rescue worker, “we’ll fly you out of here!”

“No,” said the man, “thank you. God will save me.”

So the helicopter flew away. Eventually, the man on the roof died. When he got to heaven, he went to speak with God.

“I waited for you!” said the man. “I had such faith! Why didn’t you save me?”

“What are you talking about?” asked God. “I tried! I sent you a life jacket, a boat – even a helicopter!”

This story is the same as the other one, really, except it throws an omnipotent being into the mix. The idea that opportunities are there, but you still have to seize onto them – that part’s the same, regardless of where those opportunities come from.

But what if what you want, or what makes you happy, is someone else? The problem with that is, if it’s not mutual, then it’s sad at best, or at worst, creepy and gross. So maybe it’s not even valid as a source of ultimate happiness.

It gets said a lot that, to be truly happy, you have to be content and complete unto yourself. It makes sense. I just don’t know how it’s done. I don’t really have a clear idea of what I want. And the things that do make me happy are so stupid and small, like seeing really clever graffiti, or people with headphones on who sing along to songs and don’t realize it’s out loud, or finding pants in the frozen food aisle. None of those things constitute a vocation. I have interests, but not passions. I just keep doing things, because you have to do something, right?

So if a partner is just the icing on one’s cake of happiness, than I am trying to bake that cake without a recipe to follow. Also, I’m out of flour, and the light bulb in my EZ-Bake is the wrong wattage. So what I’ve produced up until now is more of a lumpy cake-goo. But is it really so wrong to borrow a cup of sugar in the mean time? What if all I have is a bundt pan so there’s always a hole at the center? What if my eggs go bad before I figure it out? What else goes in a cake anyway? Butter?

And there it is, my threshold of sense-making.

Be well, everybody.

Life is hard, fish are neat.

2008-09-12T00:48:00.005-05:00

I was writing something else but it came out all mopey, so instead, enjoy the deep sea:

Part One
Part Two

I am a little miffed about the narration calling these animals "monsters" when they are just doing their thing, but that does not mean I would ever, ever, ever personally climb into a tiny submersible to go visit them, because, yeah, they are pretty much terrifying. But awesome. Really, wow.

Apocalyptic Peevishness

2008-09-10T23:59:00.006-05:00

So, the Large Hadron Collider was just activated. However, nothing has collided yet - that's planned to begin in October. Since the collisions are the part of the experiment that would produce anything interesting, articles like this one annoy me a lot. Short version, it's a list of doomsday predictions that didn't come true - but every single one on the list is religious or superstitious. So, not only is the article sounding the all clear before it is fair to do so, it is likening the perfectly legitimate possibility that Hawking radiation doesn't exist to the belief that a comet is coming to carry one's soul away.

Now, do I think it's likely that the LHC will produce micro black holes, which will become stable, grow exponentially, and consume the Earth? No. Do I think it's possible? Certainly. Does my opinion, as someone whose BA is in visual arts, mean anything? Probably not. Do I have an anxiety disorder that makes the small possibilities of terrible things seem far more important than is probably healthy? Yes, yes I do. Despite these worries, do I believe the experiment should continue? Yes, and I'll tell you why, on the artsy philosophical level that I'm qualified to talk about it.

At best, the LHC provides a tremendous opportunity to learn about the make-up of our universe. And even if the worst happened, if life as we know it had to end, I for one would feel better about it ending in the pursuit of knowledge than, say, through negligence in caring for the environment, or in some stupid war. Which leaves only the question, if the Earth is destroyed in a poetically ironic way, but that destruction is absolute, does it make a sound?

If the LHC turns out to be safe, none of this speculation will matter. If it doesn't, we're all screwed, and again this speculation doesn't really matter.

What I mean to say is, don't panic. Carpe Diem. Just like you should anyway.

I'm going to try to take my own advice.

Until next time,

T.L.C.

Tiny Note

2008-09-09T16:39:00.004-05:00

If I ever get married, I want the bridal march to be the theme from Jurassic Park. It is epic and beautiful, plus that movie rocks balls.

All Grown Up

2008-09-06T00:30:00.006-05:00

This is another story that starts on the bus. What can I say, you cram so many people into a rolling sardine can, things are going to happen. Or in this case, be overheard.

I happened to get on at the bus stop just after a high school, right about when school let out, and sat in the sideways-facing seats at the front. This placed me across from a couple of kids who were fourteen, maybe fifteen years old – a girl who looked Ellen Page-ish, and a boy who was almost the platonic ideal of a little nerdling: ill-fitting t-shirt with an ironic slogan, big glasses, a little chubby, and he shh’d his Ss. His name was Bert. I got the feeling they were strictly bus friends; the kind who wouldn’t acknowledge each other while actually at school, but who’ve bonded on the ride home through forced proximity. Their adorable conversation was already in progress.

“I’m just such a freak,” said Ellen. “He has to think so, I’m just so dorky around him.”

“You’re not as bad as you think. You just stop talking around him. He thinks you’re cool,” replied Bert, who clearly also thought she was cool.

“Did he say that? I can’t talk to him because I blush too much, it’s embarrassing. He must think I’m a freak,” said Ellen, who had trendy bangs and willfully miss-matched shoelaces.

“You’d have to say something really freaky for him to think you’re a freak,” said Bert. “Like, ‘Braid my pubes!’ Or something.”

“Ew,” said Ellen.

“Yeah. That’s what I always do, I go all tourettes around girls. I like this one girl. You wouldn’t know her. Her name is Claire.” Claire, while perhaps a real person, was obviously being used in a fictional context. “Yeah, my friend is going to set us up,” finished Bert.

“Oh,” said Ellen. A pause. “Did he really say I was cool?”

“Yes, your name has come up,” said Bert. “Also, he knows you like him.”

“Oh crap!”

“It’s okay. There are three girls who like him right now, but the other two don’t go to our school, and they’re creepy.” Bert was trying hard to walk that line between being a Nice Guy, and letting her get too attached to the other boy.

“Creepy, like how?” asked Ellen, seeking knowledge of her enemies’ weaknesses.

“One of them we call fetus girl. That’s really all you need to know. The other one just calls him all the time, like, ‘Are you seeing anyone? I’m not seeing anyone right now. I wish I were dating you.’ It’s creepy.” Bert adjusted his glasses.

“Oh, okay,” said Ellen, filing this knowledge under What Not To Do.

“You really should just talk to him more,” suggested Bert, in direct opposition to all the evidence he’d presented that silence was the way to this guy’s heart. Dreaming, perhaps, of being there to pick up the pieces when Ellen was shot down.

“I just get so nervous talking to him,” said Ellen.

“Oh, yeah, I’m the same way with Claire,” lied Bert, “but my friend’s going to hook us up, so it’s cool.”

“What’s your cellular device number? I want to know if he says anything more about me. I love the word cellular device, don’t you? Cellular device,” said Ellen, flexing her theatrical whimsy muscles.

“Actually that’s two words,” said Bert, who had apparently never watched Garden State and didn’t realize that cute girls who talk nonsense are super deep, and that the appropriate response was “I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

“Oh. Well. What’s your number?” she asked again.

He told her, and then it was her stop. They said goodbye for the weekend with a genuine fondness that may or may not still exist on Monday. I've got my fingers crossed for them.

Their conversation made me remember when crushes were epic, and fraught with equal parts strategy, lust, and sincere emotion.

It was last week.

I'm worried that it's not adorable any more.

The results are in!

2008-08-11T00:15:00.002-05:00

I'm sorry, Zach. You're a very funny man, but not quite as funny as a handjob.

2008-08-07T03:11:00.003-05:00

For some time now, I have been playing chicken with cigarettes. Every now and then – maybe once a week, usually not even that often – I’ll smoke one or two, enjoy them, and then be done for awhile. It’s the only way to prove I’m not addicted, you see. If I never smoke, that’s giving them some kind of power over me. Like how living in fear is letting the terrorists win. That is my (Healthy? Sane? No.) rationalization. I’ve been lucky so far, in that I still have never felt the need for a cigarette. Mostly I enjoy having an apparent reason to be somewhere – I am outside because I am smoking, not merely hovering at the fringes of other people’s conversations like the big bundle of social retardedness that I am. Other times I just feel lamely self-destructive.

I was in more or less the later mood a couple of nights ago, as a friend was driving me home.

“Do you care if I smoke?” I asked, implying with my world-weary tone that this was a ledge she should talk me down from.

“Sure, whatever,” she said, “Just close the vents first.”

So I did, and I smoked, and pretended I was someone cooler, maybe someone in a band, who could transform this emotional rut into a stunning artistic breakthrough. And when the cigarette was spent, I tossed it out the window.

The wind tossed it back. It was not as dead as I’d thought, because from the backseat wafted what smelled like a bonfire with a couch in it. Quick thinking super-genius that I am, I unbuckled my seatbelt, lunged into the back of the car, and crushed the glowing ember out with my fingers, thereby burning the shit out of them. The seat of the car was, amazingly, unblemished. Not so for my hand. Blisters formed on the tips of my thumb and first two fingers, and I had to pop a couple of ibuprofen so that the pain would subside enough that I could fall asleep.

All I could think was that I deserved this. This was the universe punishing me for smoking, for wallowing and being self-absorbed, for not being able to get over things and move on with my life like everyone else in the world. For littering.

Earlier in the week, the world’s shyest evangelist had approached me.

“Do, um. Have you. Do you know . . . who Jesus is?” she mumbled, fidgeting with her stack of pamphlets.

“I think so,” I said. She glanced up at me from behind her hair, with something in her eyes like panic, but more sad – like a puppy tied to a tree by the side of the road as its owner drives away.

“Oh,” she said. “Uh. Good. Um, I mean that’s, he died for you and, um. Um.” She was wringing the pamphlets now, face red, voice quavering with barely restrained tears. Usually people trying to sell Jesus annoyed me, but by now I was kind of rooting for her.

“Did you want to give me one of those?” I asked. She blinked, and followed my gaze to the now mangled pamphlets clenched in her fists.

“Oh! Yeah!” She thrust one at me and I took it. “You should read that,” she said, and fled down the street.

In a fit of boredom, I had read it. Now, lying in bed, waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in, its contents came back to me with new relevance – Hell was a very real place, its fires smoldering at the tip of an errant cigarette butt. With that image in mind, I fell asleep.

Days have passed, my fingers have stopped hurting, and I no longer feel that the universe is shaking its metaphorical head at me in disappointment. If anything, I figure if there is a God, he let me evolve a brain for better reasons than contemplating all the ways in which I’m inadequate. At least, I hope so.

Democracy At Its Finest!

2008-08-02T02:07:00.007-05:00

The more astute among you will notice I've added a poll over on the left. I mentioned in my previous post that I find The Handjob to be the most amusing sexual favor, which Zach somehow interpreted as a contest, and I'd hate to disappoint him, so now it is one.

So what's funnier - a handjob, or the unspecified act* I've arbitrarily termed "The Yakety Zach?"

Remember, this is a question of hilarity, not quality.

*You'd have to ask his wicked hot girlfriend for details - if you want details, you perv.

New Dieting Strategy

2008-08-01T00:58:00.011-05:00

Ladies and gents, I've developed a brand spankin' new diet, destined to rival The South Beach, The Master Cleanse, and even The Atkins. Like all the great diet plans, its core principles are simple, yet could be stretched into a book that middle-aged suburban Oprah disciples who live in terror of the day that their hips become bigger than their hair would clamor to drop $29.99 on. Of course they will try to pay less by claiming to remember a coupon they got in their e-mail last week that would have given them 60% off, and can't possibly have expired by now, because how can a coupon expire when it only exists in one's head? But I digress.

As I won't have time to write this book for weeks and will probably have forgotten about it by then anyway, you dear, lovely blog readers get the more concise version. Behold:

THE FRINGE DIET

Step One, acquire $12. Conveniently, this is the going rate for handjobs* at the Midtown lightrail station. I've heard. Ahem.

Step Two, daydream about the ten burritos and cup of weird blue Mountain Dew from Taco Bell you can now afford, because you are classy.

Step Three, oh snap! Remember that your friend has a show in the Fringe Festival and it's happening right now!

Step Four, fork over your hard-won $12 to see your friend roll around in a bedsheet, singing about how evil George W. Bush is to the tune of Happy Birthday while a clown tap dances and weeps.**

Step Five, be poor and starve.

Voilà! You just Fringed yourself skinny! Hopefully you will all reap the benefits of this ground-breaking system. I intend to - with a vengence!

See you around the Fringe!

*Are handjobs the funniest sexual favor? I think so.
**For the record, all the shows my friends are doing look great and I can't wait to see them.

What Goes Around

2008-07-30T05:31:00.007-05:00

One of the places people tend to go wrong is a failure to recognize patterns in life. On the other end of the spectrum, compulsively detecting patterns where there are none is a symptom of mental illness.

Examples.

If a person gets drunk and has sex with someone, wakes up and finds this someone less interesting than they’d thought while drinking, then decides to ditch this person in favor of getting drunk and meeting someone else – failure to see the pattern.

If a person finds a tails-up nickel, taps it three times against a lamppost, kisses it, buries it under a rose bush, then goes out and has a sexual encounter they believe to be the direct result of the business with the nickel – crazy.

With that in mind, consider this: Every relationship Person A has been in has fallen apart. Then Person A meets Person H. They hit it off, but Person A stays distant and keeps looking for the end, because with Persons B-G there was an end.

The question is, is Person A doing the smart thing, recognizing the pattern and protecting themselves by not getting too attached? Or are they imagining a pattern that, due to the infinite variables of individual personalities, can’t possibly be real? Or is this construction of barriers a pattern in itself, making the whole thing a self-fulfilling prophecy? Will this all be irrelevant if Person A can just hang in there until they meet Person I or J and find themselves sucker-punched by happiness? In the mean time, will these issues be passed on to Person H, who’ll pass them to Person K, and so on, until we’re all connected by an arbitrary alphabet of broken relationships? Should that make us feel better, knowing we’re never alone in our aloneness?

How about the thought that every relationship you'll be in will fail, until one doesn’t?

It’s after 5 in the morning. Did any of that make the least bit of sense?

Okay. Bed.

The Perils of Womanhood

2008-07-22T14:33:00.008-05:00

Just to clarify, I am the kind of person who has a uterus. A baby could totally grow in me. Cutting through the jargon, I’m a lady. This means a lot of special things I won’t go into detail about. I will, however, give you a couple of examples of what it does not mean.

One, it does not mean it's fair game to stare at my feet and make yummy noises. This means you, creepy fat bald man-baby-looking guy at the bus stop. He just stared and licked his lips and made little mumbled observations about them, and kept trying to shuffle in closer. Clearly, he knew nothing about social conventions. That kind of shameless behavior is what tits are for.

Two, it does not mean that I need to be taught about Batman. Attention, chatty fellow next to me in the theater before Dark Knight. I know Jack Nicholson played the Joker in the Tim Burton Batman, how that film provides him an origin, and that said origin is not the same in the film we are about to see. So he really could have kept his condescending, let-me-tell-you-something-little-girl tone to himself. Especially when I brought up The Long Halloween, and he could only stare blankly and change the subject. That’s when I moved to a different part of the theater, to watch the best film of all time un-hassled.

Now I have to go mow the lawn. Not making a point or anything with that one, it’s just the truth.

Until next time!

The One-Legged Man

2008-07-20T04:37:00.005-05:00

Today on the bus I sat across from a man with one leg. Though otherwise clean-shaven, he had muttonchops so long that you could have braided them. He was the ZZ Top of muttonchops. A plush toy frog was strapped to his wheelchair, and he explained to me, though I did not ask, that this was because frog is an acronym for First Rely On God. He also kept an angel with him, or rather an A.N.G.E.L., because angel is an acronym for A Nother Guy Everybody Loves. He said that the doctors who removed his leg were A.N.G.E.L.s, and told me that every morning when he woke up, even though he was in pain, he gave thanks.

“Some days, though,” he said, “I feel like I’m on my last leg.”

And he burst out laughing. My face went red, and I tried to laugh enough to show that I got the joke, but with a little bit of a sad tone, so it didn’t seem like I was laughing at him. It came out every bit as self-conscious and strangled and horrible as it sounds. He reassured me, “It’s okay – it’s just my cock-eyed sense of humor.”

He thought it was funny, so why couldn’t I laugh along, uninhibited? Because I have two legs? That’s not my fault, any more than bone cancer had been his fault. Maybe it wasn’t leg-survivor’s guilt, then, but the fact that, to a degree, I actually was laughing at him – not at his pain, obviously, but at his sincere absurdity. This guy was an amazing character. I wished I had invented him. But instead I just met him, because he was a real person, and he was in real pain, and it was terrible, but he was so interesting, and that was wonderful. It was like a Möbius strip of conflicted emotion, and as a Minnesotan, this obligated me to squirm politely and ignore him as much as possible without making it obvious. Which didn’t stop him from talking to me.

“Hey, don’t you worry about me,” he said. “I’ve got a new job lined up. It’s at a pancake restaurant.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he said, already chuckling at his own joke. “IHOP.”

A Re-Posted Miscellany

2008-07-20T04:07:00.005-05:00

This was originally written back in March, but it is the best introduction to the way my mind works that you could ever hope for (if that's something you'd bother to hope for), so I thought it would be a good first post. Here you go.

***

The song I've been stuck on lately is "Dog Problems" by The Format, who have recently broken up. It is my hope that each member of the band will start another band and that the excellence will grow exponentially.

When I was a small child, PBS shows might have done a little too good of a job with the whole "families come in different shapes and sizes" deal, because I started hoping my parents would split up. Then they could both remarry and I could have a bigger family, with step-siblings and half-siblings, etc. The painful side of it didn't occur to me until later.

Fact: I've never dated a guy whose parents were still married.

Also fact: Nearly all of the Jewish people I know are atheists. My first couple of years in college, most of my friends were Jewish. I flirted with conversion, briefly, except that I had no real reason to believe I'd be any good at it. In fact, there was more evidence to the contrary: Without fail, the word Kosher made me crave a bacon cheeseburger. What I really wanted to convert into was a non-practicing Jew. It wasn't as shallow as it sounds. I just wanted a sense of community.

Life feels like a jigsaw puzzle, one you'd find in the crawlspace of your grandparents' house that's missing a few pieces, and has pieces from a couple other puzzles mixed in, and some Monopoly tokens, and is in a shoebox so you can't even see the picture of what it was supposed to look like.

Sometimes when I think of something a little clever sounding, I worry that I heard it somewhere before and only think I'm making it up.

I'd give up a limb to be musically talented. Unless it was a limb necessary to the expression of that talent, because ironies like that just kill me.

I used to wish that I could fly. As I've gotten older, I've realized this was a silly wish, and have become more practical. Invisibility would be way handier.

And that's what I've got. 'Til next time.