i talked with bran recently. the oscars flash on the screen to my right, billy crystal's jokes so empty, it seems.

you know, i remember exactly what i was doing right now a year ago, at this hour when the tilted planet was aligned just so....

don't you remember the urgency, the unsettled expectation, the concern and worry that infused last year's awards? what happened to all of that? how numb have we become as the year(s) tick(ed) by? news of death "over there" has become as status quo as hearing of more destruction on the gaza bank. it's taken in with a pained cringe, and then a hardening almost stiffness. of course. this is the way the world is.

i'm a little lonely tonight. reassured by the presence of the feline curled in my lap, happy at the clicking sound of the keys as i type, a bit dismayed at the mess that is my fridge. how can there be so much food in there and nothing to eat?

last year i spent this evening hollering at the television, sucking down cap'n and coke w/ damon in the dark of his huge living room, muyo quietly stalking imaginary prey on the over-finished hardwoods.

someone indicated that i look innocent yesterday. so strange.

i don't really have much of substance to say. feeling like crap. wondering if i should get up and actually clean my apartment, or eat something. pick up caputo. pick up the phone.


i think owen wilson and i have the same hair.

seldom does a film grab me so completely. go see it brandon!!

(kucinich is amazing.)

the democratic candidates are having a round-table discussion. god bless sunday morning television :)


------
go see in america.

here's the trailer.

i loved it. loved it.

i love my life.

images from the past month or so:

two things i learned this week:

don't use a salt scrub after shaving your legs
do not fall asleep while steaming an artichoke.


that is all.

i talked to my dad last night. i'm still struggling to figure out how such an emotionally intelligent man can be so damn fundamentalist.

he's vehemently anti-gay. not that he doesn't love the sinner, but he believes in full "rehabilitation." and is anti-civil unions/gay marriage.

he did think me the clever one when i asked why the hell the government is involved in holy covenants like marriage, though. i could almost hear his brain working, all a mix of "my daughter is bright!" and oui oui! and thinking this through.

and then we argued about leviticus and jesus' "new covenant-ness" and had a gay old time.

sheesh.

-------

so i need to check on my aunt. she's going through some intense cancer treatments, and from what i hear is losing her hair. it's serious enough that she actually seemed happy to see my dad at a recent family gathering in florida. (they kind of have a complex history. she bailed him out of jail when he was in for not paying child support and he went to live with her. the arrangement didn't last too long.)

i was telling my father about the valentine's day snow and he said

the last time i saw snow was on valentine's day! i was in jail. they took us outside for exercise.

and so i asked him what it was like. i hated him so much during that time that i never really thought about it.

how long were you in there?

51 days.

wow. he answered without hesitation.

it was strange to hear stories of his cellmates, the amphetamine cooks who'd discovered he had a degree in chemistry, and so tried to bribe him with cigarettes into dehydrogynating their stash.

he noted the strangeness of being freed, the feeling of not being protected.

my dad is crazy, though. a right little martyr. i'm sure that for all that he hated it, a part of him really enjoyed it. my brother visited him during that time and says he seemed upbeat. i asked dad if he sang hymns a la paul and silas and was rewarded with a burst of laughter, pure and delighted.

-------

and so continues the remarkable experience of forging a new relationship with this parent of mine....

happy anniversary!

today i've been with bbbooks for two years!
(it's also been one year since i reconnected w/ a certain mr. hopkins at a "pizza joint" on an icy evening)

q. why did the chicken cross the road?
a. because he sure as heck couldn't get into oklahoma!

(a little humor from our friend leah.) we were just talking about the chicken flu in texas; i heard on npr that oklahoma has closed its borders to texan fowl.

wow, i'll bet my sister is flipping out right now. (she has a certain vested interest in the state's agriculture.)

bastard bitches like to cut funding from everything except abstinence-only programs

via salon

During President Bush's tenure as governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000, for instance, with abstinence-only programs in place, the state ranked last in the nation in the decline of teen birth rates among 15- to 17-year-old females.

Last year, the Minnesota Department of Health evaluated the state's five-year, $5 million abstinence-only program and found that it hadn't reduced sexual activity among teenagers at all. Instead, over a year, the rates of sexual activity among students taking the abstinence course doubled, from 5.8 percent to 12.4 percent, which corresponded to the rate of sexual activity among teens statewide.

According to a 2001 study published in the American Journal of Sociology, students who'd signed public "virginity pledges," a key component of many abstinence-only programs, had sex an average of a year and a half later than their peers. Yet when they did have sex, they were a third less likely to use contraceptives.

By age 18, Wagoner says, 70 percent of young people in the United States have had sexual intercourse. "What relevance do these programs have to young people when they stress abstinence until marriage? Less than 10 percent of Americans are virgins on their wedding night," he says.

...the teen pregnancy rate in Texas remains one of the highest in the country....

i'm in the midst of post-caputo (post post-post *) musings.

an evening like tonight makes me wish for a bit of nanotech, something like a tiny computer embedded in the folds of my brain matter, recording the thoughts that spin off from each new direction the conversation takes.

right now i'm overwhelmed. rather than scramble to record it all, i'm going to go enjoy the thoughts. it's as though they are aswirl, playfully darting about the wooden rafters of my ceiling, and all i have to do is reach up over my head and grab one, look at it and release it to grab another... i'll sit on the couch opposite the stereo that's pushing over the rhine into the 500-some-odd square feet of this space...

thanks kaus and leah, d-n and joshua and trav for the conversation this evening.








*sorry

i have no idea who the fuck cthulhu is. i do know he looks like a green dr zoidberg, and that sf geeks like to wear his image on their t-shirts.

certain expectancy outside

watching nader on some sunday morning politics show (he appeared after an interview w/ the gov of california)

i'm telling you, i wonder(ed) what the hell he is doing running.

but i really love nader. most of what he says resonates with me. he speaks with the conviction of a camp meeting preacher (without the spitting and bible waving, of course), and i think that confuses people. his concerns about corporations seem to hinge on paranoid to hard party-liners.

but fuck, he's right.

i have more to say on us being so desperate to get rid of gw, and the immediacy of this, the "first war" of my adulthood.

and clinton bombing the hell out of people.

but when i turn posts-in-the-making into drafts here lately they disappear.

so here are these incomplete thoughts; i hope to revisit and expand my ideas on this....

there was so much activity in fair park last night (some event was winding down; there were many many loud sirens) that i gave up trying to sleep and read the golden compass till three.

so what the hell am i doing up before seven? i wake up with the sun, guys. i just got up to actually close the blinds so i can get more shuteye before heading to richardson when the urge to share this became overwhelming.

so here i type, all bleary-eyed, and i owe many of you phone calls and emails that will have to wait. for now,

To surrender to the other, to love the other, means to go over to the other without passing the threshold of the other, without trespassing on the other's threshold. To love is to respect the invisibility of the other, to keep the other safe, to surrender one's arms to the other but without defeat, to put the crossed swords or arrows over the name of the other. To love is to give oneself away to the other in such a way that this would really be giving and not taking, a gift, a way of letting the other remain other, that is, be loved, rather than a stratagem, a ruse of jealousy, a way of winning, eine vergiftete Gift. Then it would turn out that the passion for the impossible would be love.

Caputo, p 50

It is only when you give yourself to, surrender to, and set out for the wholly other, the impossible, only when you go where you cannot go, that you are really on the move. Anything less is staying stuck in place, with the same. Going where you cannot go, going somewhere impossible, constitutes true movement, genuine coming and going, since going where it is possible to go is only pseuo-motion, the "paralysis" of a "non-event" (Sauf, 94/ON, 75). When you go to the possible nothing much happens. The only event, the only e-venting, or in-venting, is to go to the impossible. If the posible spells paralysis, the impossible is an impassioning impetus. If the possible means the paralysis of the programmable, the impossible is the passion of decision.

(p 51)

-------

i feel like the first paragraph is kind of my response to trav's comments about this quote from nowhere in africa

"One always loves more [than the other], and the one who does is vulnerable."

just got in.

i've got tons and tons to say, but the bed is calling me in a most desperate way. so, in no special order, here are some thoughts

------------

my grandparents' best friend is a man named donald ray, from louisiana. he was in town visiting once (if i remember correctly, this was one of the times he brought his son that everyone was trying to set me up with. shudder.) while i was looking for a car under $3k.

i took a look at this old celica that had been traded in at the local dealer, and they let me drive it out to cleburne to have it checked out.

donald ray popped the hood and had me rev the engine several times.

when i got out of the car he said, "you smell that? that's the smell of death."

i, of course, said, "what?"

donald ray has a crazy thick cajun accent, and i often find myself nodding like i understand him or saying "what?" after each sentence until i've been around him a while and get accustomed to the cadence of his peculiar english. but what he said sounded something like

"dat be da smell o' death"

he then explained that, yes, he understood why i liked the car. it had fancy alloy-ish wheels and looked shiny and cool -- but that was a pretty good sign that the previous owner had been driving like a racing maniac.

that, and the moonroof stopped working on the drive back to arlington.

so i didn't buy the car.

* * *

just read leah's post on sf conventions.

she fucking loves them.

while her energy is infectous, i still feel like a run-down toyota celica at the end of a day in the dealers room.

you know, this metaphor sounded a lot better when i was driving home from the squires. something about me feeling like a ton of sf geeks have taken up shop in my body, running me ragged with fucking stupid fantasy series pitches and the like, and the whole time i'm smiling and bubbly and seething inside. no, lady, i don't want to talk with you for a half-hour about why you hate the chicago manual of style. (she actually went to her car to pick up the copy of her favorite out-of-print style guide, and insisted that i look at the section on possessives.) most people are so hell-bent on hitting on me, or trying to get their shit published, or talking at me in all their crazy cat lady solipsistic splendor. there's an overweight african american man who sneers at us each time he passes our table. he makes the cross sign at us and mutters. wtf?

and i sit and smile like i'm enjoying this.

and what sucks is that in the midst of this i do manage to somehow have fun -- talking shop w/ jeff, hat time with leah, the parties (sometimes), actually talking w/ the odd customer or fellow dealer about books and life.

it's just not enough to balance out. i hate what these events do to me, spewing all this negative horrid crap about human beings. i never knew i was capable of being so... mean.


------------------

tonight chase and annika were both hyper-emotional and out of control. we were trying to play a board game and annika kept crying,

i want my mom

even though her parents hadn't even left yet (they were still getting ready).

chase was being helpful and sweet to his sister in all those small ways that count, and then she said

i want my grandma

and then his face screwed up like judah sitting in snow and they both started crying.

my grandma's in the hospital
my grandpa died and my grandma's in the hospital

oh good lord.

i pushed yahtzee aside and pulled both kids into my lap. (their grandfather passed away a little over a year ago.)

annika stopped crying when i told her we could make her grandmother a get well card. chase stopped crying when i told him that i hated to see him looking so despondent.

what's despondent?

we were well into drawing a rainbow on our homemade card when i discovered what she was being treated for: a broken arm.


----------------

holy hell. it's 1am.

i was going to share some caputo quotes from my readings earlier today, but that will have to wait until the morning.

night.

the worst thing about hotel ballrooms is that they have no windows.

the best thing about dfwcon? calle diez

i also met a man who makes clocks when he's not selling various wares at cons and ren fests (he learned the craft when in scotland w/ the navy), dined with jeff turner, robert pickering, bad andy and co., sold a total of one book today, ate some pink m&ms, longed to purchase a wooly mammoth puppet (and the cute owl, too), attempted to count the number of crazy cat ladies in the dealer room, inhaled second-hand smoke from the unventilated bar that is smack dab in the center of the hotel lobby, went to the dollar store and actually didn't buy anything, there are ants all over my couch,

i'm going to bed early.

good night.

yankee vs dixie etymolgy quiz

i'm 83% dix, acc'd to this

curious how the expats rate, and those who've left tx for places like, oh connecticut?

just woke up from a dream

i was in prison
and they were doing a fashion photo shoot... beautiful models vogue-ing amidst the backdrop of morose women in blue jumpsuits.

i happened to see them instructing a beautifully coiffed blonde model to pose on the telephone, you know, the kind where there's glass between you and the inmate. they asked me to go around to the other side, to be in the photo.

it turns out that the photographer was my boyfriend from eighth grade, j.!

"j.," i said, "is that you?"
"shnn? what the hell are you in here for?"
"i'm not sure."

damn dreams. i at least wanted to know what i did to land myself in a maximum security prison.

i told j. off. no, i wouldn't be in his damn photo. why in the hell was he here exploiting these poor incarcerated women for some bizarre zoolander fashion thing?

he said, "what are you in for?"

and then i made a suggestion that would change all of the dream-characters' lives forever.

why don't you involve the inmates in the process? switch roles? etc?

he had all this camera equipment shuttled in, and then the prisoners were taking pictures of the picture-taking going on. the crew gave us tips on lighting, shutter speed, etc. i heard that they'd set up a dark room in one wing of the prison and some were learning to develop the film. the whole entire damn thing ended up as an exhibit at smu.

i asked my jailers for some pen and paper to write down my thoughts (the simulcra at play here?), and was begging for someone to bring me baudrillard.

i woke up wondering if inmates are allowed to journal.

------

i've been trying to get 8 hours of sleep/night, and the result is a lot of vivid adventure dreams. night before last i dreamt that spike (a la buffy) took me out on the town to get my tattoo.

Joy!

I was sitting in my car at mockingbird and central, behind a beta in a bmw when it hit me...

roll your windows down!

it was all i could do to steer my car to work, instead of driving back onto the highway to join the wind in welcoming this day.

it's supposed to hit 80 today, folks. leah and i are dining at cosmic cup, outside. in february.

everyone in the office is in great cheer. the day is good.

From The Weekly Standard:
The Wrong Culprit

In stopping proliferation, the problem has been political will, not faulty intel.

...the clamor for more specific proliferation information is wrongheaded. Washington's problem isn't its sorry supply of good tactical intelligence on covert strategic weapons programs. Such intelligence has rarely been good and is unlikely to get much better. Instead, the challenge in nonproliferation has been the dearth of senior officials willing to respond to the generally sound strategic warnings our intelligence agencies produce years before any proliferation becomes a crisis. Far from heeding such warnings, policymakers often wish them away. This unwillingness to act on early intelligence warnings is the exact opposite of the problem everyone is now focusing on.

Teen surfing Web learns he has been abducted

Authorities arrested the mother of a 17-year-old boy who saw his picture on a missing children's Web site and discovered that he was allegedly abducted from Canada 14 years ago.

no... more... remains....
(the ms. i've been editing tonight)

i'm taking a reading break to blog, email and eat a tomato. and then, i might just go to sleep. i'm that crazy.


----

bran just sent me the god wall file.

i was telling leah the god wall story, and wondering how a door with sticky notes became known as a wall at all. leah, ever the wellspring of quirky wisdom said, "well, god door just doesn't sound right."

and so, a couple of quotes from the god wall in the buehring-mcgee-coy household:

I’m so bad I kick my own ass twice a day

I can sing like two of the Bangles … but I choose not to.

If you think the Trinity river is disgusting now, wait until it’s BLOOD - God

P.S. Armageddon’s a Bitch!

The Bitch - The Broom – And the wardrobe

I think all porn sites should end in .cum instead of .com

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire… NETMUG nipping at your nose.

----

in the process of an ongoing email discussion on non-dualistic worldviews, i managed to describe the mindset of bruised back's ideal boyfriend (in addition to the stipulation that he be vegan/veggie and ~6'2")

---

balance. spice up life with a dash of crazy reverse
cowgirl lovemaking, take chances, experience the sore
numbness you feel in your ass from sitting too long
meditating. take a chance. sound the prayer bell. take
your dick out. grab the irreverent and lift it up to
g-d, a sacrifice of your fear and limitation and

then sit quietly in a room on the floor in a corner,
close your eyes and creep through the passageways of
your fucked up mind. touch the shiny core of mystery
and dare to reach for the impossible.

----

at the same time i wrote this, bran was penning the following:

I need to add "non-dualistic worldview" to my list of boyfriend characteristics. I think he was intimidated by my continual toying with and deconstruction of profane/sacred. It was too much for his binary head to deal with ... it was as if I was directly challenging his anthropomorphic, blue-skinned and bejewled Vedic God.

----

this glimpse into bran-shan discourse is brought to you by the letter [a].


post script: bran recently read kausar's delicate treatise on arrogant religious fuckheads

it was most appreciated.

we need more flags with pillows on them....

feeling accomplished this morning; yesterday was so damn productive

i spent a good few hours working, did five (!) loads of laundry, swept and mopped, cleaned the kitchen, turned the mattress by myself (i think i'm getting stronger -- it only took five minutes this time), breakfast'd with friends, and then laughed over drinks and fries at the meridian room. damn, their irish coffee is good. (and the stewardess wasn't too mean to us, either;)

all this, and i was in bed by 11:30.

now i'm just enjoying the clean space, happily anticipating the beginning of the week. i know i complained that today isn't a holiday for us, but i actually look forward to going in to the office today.

life is good when you love your job.

i hate to acknowledge this with any sort of response.

but,

New scholarship created for whites only*


Evidence of bleaching will disqualify applicants....

----

this sort of response to affirmative action is reprehensible. it's hurtful, and frankly, stupid. it focuses only on the problems of affirmative action, rather than the problems that this practice attempts to correct.

i don't believe that affirmative action is efficacious; it only helps a few (who, from my experience, are thankful). i think the answer lies somewhere in better primary education -- the same quality of education despite geography, race, class, etc.

and, you know, in more state (and federal?) -funded grants and financial aid.

that said, i don't think that we should simply do away with affirmative action. we should keep the programs that do something while engaging in dialogue that will hopefully lead us to better solutions.

-----

hmm. our confounded "robin hood" education funding system only pisses everyone off. it's too complicated, too random.

what if there were a national base salary for teachers (a decent one?), and a set system of raises that aren't based on test scores? --- what if education weren't funded locally?

when i hear about all the pet projects that are tacked onto different federal funding bills (a city in montana wants a swimming pool; an arkansas town wants a pig museum, etc.) i get so damn mad. if only we could take that bs money and put it towards paying the stewards of our future well. providing decent benefits. (include link to david here)

i know. crazy socialism shnn. i don't know enough about this system, and acknowledge that i'm throwing out some ideas in ignorance. but what we have doesn't seem to be working. we should be talking about this.

i think that i am an interesting demographic, someone who should be involved in this conversation, given that i don't have kids. i find that parents are so often (understandably) unable to think past their own children's welfare.

example:

i grew up in a rural setting. you had to drive through the "bad" part of town (which, now that i think of it, didn't mean that there was crime there, but that there were poor minorities there) to get to my house.

i was supposed to go to erma nash elementary. the school was in disrepair. their state test scores were low. the majority of students were minorities, with a sprinkling of caucasions who tottered upon the poverty line.

mom was able to fight to get us into a different school (through a long drawn-out process. basically, we were smart kids and alice ponder elementary had the gifted and talented program. given our intelligence and mom's arguments that we'd likely be involved in those programs, she was able to convince them to allow us to attend there. crazy.)

(and even more strangely, my brother never was involved in those programs. though his IQ is/was a good thirty points above mine, he never participated. his ADHD proved too problematic)

often self-interest, concern for one's own family eclipses a greater calling....

we should fix this. get creative, stop arguing and brainstorm up some solutions.

one shouldn't move to a neighborhood based on how good the schools are. i can't believe that this is such a huge factor in the decision about where to move.

schools should be altogether of the same quality.

and now i think, you know, of how i was proud that i attended "good schools", even argued w/ folks from grapevine over mansfield's reputation.

----

*the funny, strange thing about this:

(the scholarship) was for $50 until two donors came forward to add $100 each during the weekend

Hey, it's the Sun!

all the melting snow from our roof seems to be cascading onto my window (that's what you see in the second picture there)
sort of a gift from the building -- i missed the snow but here it is! saying goodbye as it lightly sounds the drum of my window, an occasional splash watering the plants and my tv....

it's funny how so much of our pain stems from our desire to control things
to own them

for instance,

i woke up from a quick nap to find all the snow sliding into the gutters as rain, and inexplicably wanted to cry.

change is a scary thing, because often it means loss.

you can't communicate with snow, renegotiate your relation to it, discuss its presence or absence

i've found most relationships to ultimately be of this nature, as well.

hello, snowfriends. let us give each other weather reports.

and like that, the snow goes

current mp3: must i paint you a picture -- billy bragg (thanks trav!)

it's a great feb 14 snow song.


i'm so content... at peace this morning as the snow swirls outside my window.

-----

(later)

a family is laughing in the courtyard below, scooping snow from the green tables and lobbing the slippery melting missiles at one another.

this year i was fortunate enough to frolic in the snow -- first alone and then with friends.

my solitary forays into the calm white beauty outside:



and with kristen, leah and judah:

tonight:

yago. writing. conversation with brandon.


oh yeah, and the world ended and nobody noticed (except for theyblinked, of course)

hi.

i'm a recovering arrogant and ignorant religious fuckhead

luna was shining down in a particularly brilliant shade of bright last night. now the ball of a sun is beginning to arc its way across the sky. it just rounded the corner of the fireman's museum and berkley is doing her customary sun-worship on the window sill.

i got to see david and melissa's new place. turns out it's just a couple of blocks from my family doctor.

i had a good time, people liked my barbecue sauce and there was plenty to eat despite there being no fake meat at my local grocery store. perhaps minyards thinks that no african americans are vegetarians? i had a great time singing with beth in the frozen food aisle, and have a little more courage to shop there in the future.

i know it's all cliched, you know, "shnn finds out what it feels like to be a minority" -- but in that social space i'm so aware of skin tone and its connection to class.

it's a strange reversal, given the four years i spent at smu being hyper-aware of the class above me. see, but these folks seemed unaware of their privilege. they tended to regard me with genuine bafflement. the middle class was this vague concept to them, never really tied to someone real who they'd met. they looked at me as they would an inner-city street kid or a homeless man at a streetlight on 75, except our discourse wasn't conviently scripted for them. they couldn't hand me a dollar and drive away, or "get me off the drugs" or volunteer for a week at a christian coffee shop, have their experience and move on.

i found that, more often than not, i was just ignored. no, i mean not seen. i wasn't attractive enough to hit on/rush for their sorority, and i didn't fit into their world view so they just didn't see me.

i hated that.

i know i've created a big binary, me vs. them. the folks who met in the financial aid office vs the rest of smu's population.

and that's unfair.

i'm actively trying to deconstruct that very well-established binary. it's just that it is so much easier to make fun of them for driving hummers in highland park, to snort in derision in their general direction for caring more about their prada bags than the current political climate, etc.

see, i have to take just as much responsibility for the shitty interaction w/ the people at smu, because of course it wasn't scripted out for me, either. instead of trying to really connect to these people who are real humans with pain and love and such (how can you hate them just because their life experience is so very different from yours?), we sat in dimly-lit rooms and engaged in our favorite pasttime -- "othering" our affluent peers.

i find it particularly interesting that some of my friends who participated in this actually came from moneyed backgrounds. they had just embraced the hipster identity, they shopped at thrift stores and drove clunker cars and told their parents they weren't interested in trust funds....

there is something interesting going on here. but no one is talking about it. instead, we allow the politics of otherness to continually re-emphasize the class divide.

hmm.

side note: did you see the recent headline that explained how an african american family moved to highland park?
the first ever?

perhaps we should have deemed this weekend "judah marathon"
(sydney bristow is compelling, but she's no competition for the cutest baby ever)*





(missed you kaus and em! i feel like i haven't seen you guys in eighteen thousand years. looking forward to melissa's birthday party tomorrow :)

*i still say that syd could kick buffy's ass.

thought i'd make a "places i want to visit" map
it's by no means exhaustive -- but i'd like to plan trips to peru, spain and brazil in the next five years. time to revisit my budget, right?



create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

i think it's really interesting, the way that tears spike your eyelashes into little groups

from bethy:

there's the whole nostalgia thing. i don't miss the life i led when i knew these people, but i do miss the people. it's a shame that, in order to leave a certain way of life behind, we often must leave the people connected to it as well.
---

and i veto secretary, beth.

veto.

just saw lost in translation

i loved it.

they took a great script and filmed it with such a delicate touch
it's a beautiful piece of art.

-----


i found myself wondering
what film stock are they using? in certain shots.

this is crazy, because i know jack shit about film stock. my knowledge on the matter is limited to color reversal film and old black and white film from the seventies that was stuck in some smu vault and unearthed for use in my music video.

-----

this is the kind of film i would have watched with my film major friends at school.

with hiyam.

-----

it's strange. on tuesday we watched me without you, a film about an (unhealthy) relationship between two girls

and i really enjoyed it. period.

it didn't reach its hands into my chest and grab my heart and squeeze
squeeze

so hard that something had to give.

-----

it's like the body is this big sometimes-stable thing -- all the organs and water and blood doing what they do and then something exterior punches you, or makes some section of your hypothalamus fire like fuck and then water comes from your eyes

and every time you inhale you feel the pain in the nerves in your stomach

-----

i miss her, guys.

i can't even tell you what she said to me when she ended our friendship, it's so horrible. and i'm trying so hard to forgive her, and to understand, and to believe that somehow in all that she's the beautiful amazing person i knew.

i'm trying. i'm trying, you guys. it still hurts.

------

they say that one of the hardest things to do is to love your enemies.

i always thought that meant choosing to love those who dick you over in some identity-issue Samaritan way; you know -- like my big mean aohell boss or something.

but this -- this. your most loved, trusted ones becoming the enemy. i can't help but continue to love, and it's excruciating.

i can't help but love my enemy.

ow.

I'm about to be swallowed alive by papers. I just counted six projects that I'm deeply immersed in -- at once!

Crazy.

This whole "me being in charge of getting books to press on time" involves so many intricate details. It's fun and hectic and

thank goodness for Leah and Blue Monster this afternoon.

-----
Reminder/Note to Self: explain how taxes are connected to books going out of print.

what a great night.
been enjoying a quiet evening of reading caputo, damien rice and the rain infusing my gently-lit apartment with song as the cats seem to move about purposefully*.

about to disrupt this sweet cadence with an hour of angel on the WB.



*note that they are able to do so without having read the purpose-driven life

from this salon article on the shocking boob-baring this past sunday:


while we are facing a potential trillion-dollar deficit, the Federal Communications Commission has announced that it will spend our money to determine how Janet Jackson's boob was seen by the Super Bowl audience.


FCC chairman Michael Powell nailed the nature of the protests when he said that the family viewing hour was "sacred," which may be the only time the word has been used to describe a football game punctuated by ads showing Jessica Simpson coming on to Kermit the Frog.

okay, i'll play:



create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide




create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

i think somebody is trying to fuck with my mind.

i keep getting spam from "aphrodite marketing" -- i'm talking several emails a day. they offer a broad range of services, from affordable health care to a free pc health check, and free $50 restaurant cards.

the strangest thing is that each email ends with the following sentence:

"enjoy your postmodern story of the day"

-----

i thought i'd include a few of the "postmodern stories" that find their way into my yahoo account:

-----


I'm cold, you said, staring at the continuation we had to feel through yesterday. I'll tell you what happened next. I'd seen many of the same things I've seen before. I didn't have to say: can we change the meeting from 6 to 11? My kids have a music recital and I dont want to miss it for the world.

But this was a long road, and should I walk down it, I might never come back. We're going to regret this, my friend said. I'd thought it was sad to hate the forest the way she'd done. I'd seen many of the same things I've seen before.

Hi, I said to all the animals. Suddenly, he disappeared. I wished so deeply for the change to come about. Suddenly, she wasn't there.

I wished so deeply for the change to come about. I'll tell you what happened next. The same thing we do every night, he replied. Don't do that, the cat pointed out. (I'm loving the way you walk with me so quietly, contentedly.)

-----

We're going to regret this, my friend said. He extended his hand by way of introduction. There's something I should tell you. (I'd seen something really weird. :)

It was cold and sweet. It was time... to rock. It was time... to rock. We're going to regret this, my friend said.

(Things were looking worse.) I'd thought it was sad to hate the forest the way she'd done. I'd walk down to the stream, look around, and take a deep breath. (Things were looking worse.)

(I'd seen something really weird. :) I'd walk down to the stream, look around, and take a deep breath. Suddenly, she wasn't there. I'm evil. Sounds good to me, I said.

-----

Just tell me your answer, even if it sucks. I didn't have to say: can we change the meeting from 6 to 11? My kids have a music recital and I dont want to miss it for the world. What are we going to do tonight? I asked.

It was time... to rock. I was just thinking. I'd seen many of the same things I've seen before. He wanted to know more.

There were many examples of animals all around. (I'd seen something really weird. :) But under the circumstances, I'd do it again. Are you getting pieces of this? Don't do that, the cat pointed out.

-----

apparently it's some crazy weird loop. wow, next time someone asks me what postmodernism is i can just hand them scraps of paper with random sentences written upon them.

"here. put these into a paragraph."

wtf?

tonglen

i sort of hibernated this weekend. other than babysitting and trips to feed snorkel rudd, i holed up in my apartment. i watched much alias, and bummed a couple of the rudds' movies (best in show and a life less ordinary)

i watched a white bread preacher on tv urge his congregation to request preferential treatment from god, and i talked to bran a lot and had a long meaningful discussion with mom.

i made a freaking huge blue lumpy floor pillow for work and drank a heineken in the new beer glass i bought from wal-mart when i traded in the toaster oven my aunt got me. (i did a straight trade, so none of shan's $ was actually given to the evil empire)
(and crap! they do have cheap fabric.) **

i sat at my computer with a happy kitty in my lap, and i worked on my short stories for the first time in a loooong time.

i missed dinner at cafe brazil w/ kaus and em, and i did not get myself tattooed.

----


**double crap! cuzi, do you still want to venture out one night this week?

is tonight really the superbowl?

all of america is glued to the television, watching padded men bump into each other.

huh.

i spent yesterday afternoon with three young ladies, watching the little mermaid and eating ginger snaps.

all four of us sang along with ariel and sebastian, and they were astonished that i knew all the words

do you own this movie???

--

i was ten when this disney film came out.

i forgot how good it was.

(and tried to hide my disappointment when we switched it out half-way through to watch lizzie mcguire)

--

i was looking through old journals yesterday, and realized that in a couple of days i will have known my children for five years.

that's right -- on feb 3 1999 i pointed my civic towards that north dallas mansion, pulled into the tree-lined drive, and met a cantankerous baby (that's her now in the center) and a helpful three-year old.


i remember when annika first started talking, and only chase seemed to understand. she'd talk, blah blah...

what did she say, chase?
she said she wants to go swimming

and such.

i remember distinctly when chase first said i really love you in such seriousness, looking at me over his curious george book.

and when annika, who disliked me for so long, first greeted me with joy at the front door. dancing in footie bunny pajamas -- Shanna's Here!!

--

yesterday one of the girls said, i wish fairies and unicorns and dragons were real!

annika said fairies are real! what about the tooth fairy?!?

and everyone kind of nodded solemnly. yes, there is the tooth fairy.

as conversation blossomed, they tried to figure out the difference between this particular fairy and fairies in general.

and sofia sidled up to me and whispered into my ear, someone ruined the tooth fairy for me

--

i asked her very seriously
when did this happen?

last year

--

did your mom explain things to you?

yes. parents are good at explaining things.

--

my parents did their best to not lie to me. i respect my parents' candor.

that said, two moments stand out:

is grandmother (who was catholic) in heaven?

------sorrowful head shaking-----

we don't think so, baby


-----------------------------------------

and a night after family prayer, after we'd read some of those big blue bible series books

you mean tippy won't be in heaven?

i was devastated. inconsolable.

don't you tell me my dog doesn't have a soul. don't you tell me that when she dies it's over -- there's no more her

i cried for hours. i don't want my garden of gems. i'll trade my mansion for my dog.

it was the first time i plead with god. the first time i questioned him. the first time i was fundamentally unhappy with reality as it was presented to me.

my parents didn't know what to do with me, crying uncontrollably for so long. we ended up walking out to the dog pen at 2am or so, and i held my dog and cried into her black fur.


i miss her acutely right now.

-----

when i asked my mom for those blue bible books she told me that she wants to read them to her grandchildren.

that touches me in so many ways. i don't know if mom will even have grandchildren.
and the thought of her reading to my children, or my sister's or even brother's children is so sweet in a way i can't articulate.

and then there's "don't you read that crap to my kids"

-----

the thing i remember most about those books is

the final book with last days fun shit. they explained how in the final judgment, all of your sins will be reviewed by god, everyone looking on. they said it will be like a huge tv screen, flashing all your transgressions.

i believed that for a long time.

not only do i have to brave the valley of the shadow of death (and i had a difficult time believing that i would fear no evil -- it sounded very lonely and scary) but i have to endure public humiliation before reaching heaven.

after all that, my dog had better be waiting for me.

maybe throw in a few fairies for good measure