Gnat Man

I've almost completely washed The Pipsqueak out of my hair...That's all!

Entry Deleted

BECAUSE...I...JUST...CAN'T.

Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

So I met an aging artist, an early experimental filmmaker and video artist, and his young actress (girlfriend?) at their place for tea. It was highly surreal and delightful.

The filmmaker asked me in German if I was a crazy whore upon my arrival to see what I would say. I don't understand much German but luckily have one good expression that I cheerfully threw back, "Nine, danke!" So it all worked out.

He threatened to read obscene poetry that he'd written but never came up with anything too scandalous, to my great sadness. Lots of stories about promiscuous women he'd known years before, presumably all true.

The girlfriend (??) feeling a bit left out of conversation, said she'd won an Oscar when she was a child. She handed me a dirty tumbler with a pink, iced beverage inside that she called wine. There was a perfect imprint of her lips made in crazy-colored lipstick on the rim of the jar.

She said she'd won the Oscar for her role in ET--The original ET, not the version we've all seen.
She'd played "the little girl with blond hair and brown eyes," which must have required her to dye her hair and wear colored contacts.

After that, she was going to continue acting and maybe do some modeling, but had to go to elementary school instead. A very disappointing experience. Although she did learn some science and math and to read and write.

This was all before she became an Egyptian Queen and Esthetician (giving facials) --two separate jobs she held simultaneously.

Well, I'll be!

Birthdays RULE!

I swear to god, Roz might be the cutest thing on two legs! Her birthday party in the back, private room of a local coffee shop with all of us writing and performing our Crazy Poems was more fun than you can ever imagine.

XOXOXOXO

A Better Note

We are living in a precarious time: Let's all be nice.

Control Freaks Who Feel Threatened

If you want to be ruthlessly attacked, assessed and discounted, sidle up to an egotistical control freak.

It helps if they feel a little bit threatened because then they'll be really mean. And in the same breath tell you how cruel you are. Clearly they are not getting some attention and need therapy, but never mind all that. They say they are just being honest; they are just there to help.

They'll blame you for their problems and accuse you of all of the things that they do. They won't look at you or see you. They'll just vent and threaten and talk about your problems, as they'd like to see them--however that is.

If anything makes less sense and is more obnoxious, I'd hate to see it.

The happy news is that there are so few people in the world like this and you can see them coming. They care only about themselves, which is easy to spot.

Unfortunately Los Angeles is a mecca.

Thoughts?

People Will Surprise You

Don't ever think you understand the heart or mind of another human being. You don't and you won't; not completely; not ever.

And if you believe for one second that you can predict what someone will do in any given situation--how they'll react, how they'll feel--well, there too you're wrong.

People will surprise you.

On Film Reviews and Then Some

You should probably never send a review to me unless you're sure its author knows how to write.

In the one I read today the 'writer' hit every film reviewing pet-peeve of mine in quick, musical succession as if he were simply practicing his scales!

When that difficult mission had been accomplished, he then dredged up and trotted out each and every writerly faux-pas he's never even heard of...Because he doesn't read!

If there was a book entitled: A Poor Man's Arsenal of Dreadful Writing Techniques or Grammatical Errors That Kill, this man would own it.

And never have read it. Yet, surprisingly mastered all of its techniques.

I know I'm not innocent of any of this and yet I feel the need to shake this man, from the roots upwards, and scream to a God I don't even believe in:

"Is it first person singular or first person plural that you're writing from, you dumb cluck?! "

The Phone Call and How it Went

Smoking Almonds
vs.
Shitting Glitter

These are the urgent matters we must hurry to discuss before we die.
DNA Rocks!
(with an X)

The Scent of a Nutter

If I created ballots for people to vote on, (not that I don't), I'd see to it that there were some fine and interesting issues put forward and that we all got our say on the matter>

For instance, shouldn't Crazy Persons smell like nuts, so you immediately know them upon arrival and can also tell when they leave?

And if you try to hold a serious meeting but something is whiffy of walnuts, you can save your best ideas for later?

Later, when the room is no longer Pecan Pie Scented, you can get down to some business.

My mom just called and wanted to talk about Smoked Almonds first, I guess just to get that pressing topic out of the way.

Yep.

Dear Librarian, Send Help!

I need help with my research because I want to give proper credit for this...

Years ago, I remember reading an issue of Giant Robot (I think?!) that interviewed an artist about her work and one of her projects was a Shit Glitter pill. It was a big plastic capsule full of silver glitter in a package that said: Shit Glitter. The instructions were very simple.

She said this never really took off as a product though was obviously more conceptual anyhow...

I have been delighted by the Shit Glitter pill since reading about it. I think of it often and fondly.

Not knowing the artist's name, but wanting to, I decided to do a quick bit of Internet research and found this:

http://www.adrants.com/2007/12/if-you-cant-shit-roses-at-least-shit-glit.php

Now either my memory is completely whack or someone is ripping off the original artist and creator of said item. Or maybe she sold the rights to her "idea" to another artist, Tobias Wong, who manufactured the product but as real gold. To be even cheekier.

I tend not to trust my memory, because that's more fallible than hard evidence, but still.

I must know!!!!! Just what is the story of shitting glitter?!!!!

Brunch on a Weekday!

Well I'll be a monkey's shiny, ripe red one!

I've got a Pwang visiting!

Too Darn Hot

Honestly, I don't know if it's the weather or the smell of ripe armpits, despite two showers and four nasty encounters with a deodorant stick turned to pudding by the heat, but I cannot sleep. It's disgusting.

I would melt but I've got (glittered) shit to do. Like shower and fight with Product. And Write. Drivel. To: Creeps. From: Perverts. With Love.

The Shadowy Pervert and Other Diseases

The Shadowy Pervert is the name I give the creepy gray head that you get as your default image when you generically follow a blog on blogger. I've got one myself; The Mark of a Pervert.

It seems to be based on the fellow who goes on a talk show and, sitting in the dark, with an altered voice, will tell you how he or she only dates pedophiles.

I suppose it's designed to haze you into putting up a real photo. Honestly, it just makes me write like a pervert.

Ha.

Not the Energy Drink

Some people just are Rock Stars, swear to god. -- C.E., who met the beard and I at Mahlo tonight is certainly top of the list.

This is a shout-out to C.E., her delightful antics and her little dog too, who she said was given his name because he's a "A Cat Shit Eater".

!!!!

An Embarrassment of Riches

I keep thinking of this term today and I seriously just need to shut the bleeding hell up because, yeah.

If I weren't eccentric, though, I'd still be crazy.
The difference between the two being a roof over one's head.
And a window to throw it out of.

And these late night posts need to get together and protest their author's sleeping habits, which are currently scatter-shot.

Squirrel Soup

Our dear crazy dog loves a good dance number.
I promise you, I was teaching her how to belly dance last night.
We had matching skirts and bras and everything!
I put a wig and some lipstick on her, gave her a few brief instructions on how to stand on your hind legs..

"Whatever you do, try to stay standing," I cajoled.
"It's not bellydance if you don't!" I threatened.

The old girl got it and we were wiggling up a storm, balancing flaming swords on the tips of our noses, pouring each other scalding hot tea from elevated heights--We were moving, we were shaking, we were baking some proverbial chicken...In our minds.
(I don't know, work with me here).

"Whew, " I sighed, "What a workout!"
"Thank you little lady," I curtsied.
She bowed politely and went on her merry way, still a bit riled up from the dance number and tugging on her rope toy, which I forgot to say that we did plenty of too.

She was going a bit berserk in fact and tore outside, barking like the screaming beejesus to prove it.

Not too much later all was quiet and our Canine of Ill Repute was sitting quietly on her cushy little floor throne, when I heard a bearded scream from my roommate.

It seems that after an arduous round of dancing middle-easterly there is nothing to satisfy a pup more than to kill a squirrel and drag it's lifeless little corpse into the kitchen for someone to throw in a pot and add some potatoes to.

We decided, it being a depression and all, that the only forward-thinking thing to do was to whip up a quick batch of Squirrel Soup and carry it door to door, offering a little extra support to our neighbors and friends in this, our communal time of great need.

It was a raging success and we all got stuffed. The end.

Follow The Leaderhosen

I logged into this durn thing late one night in some sort of stupor--I clearly wasn't at my best and should really not have been writing about life, love, those who live it and those who get screwed. Etc.

I'm not sure what I did but realize that now I am accidentally following my own blog under some randomly generated nonsense name that I believe has PB&J in the title.

Happy day: I'm a jelly bread!
Who knew?

Ghost Stories for Young Boys - Part One:

I don't remember how it started but when my brother Ivan was very young, like three or four years old, he was terrified of Abraham Lincoln. Not just any old Abraham Lincoln, mind you, but that special, personal version of our--was it fourteenth president?--the one that lived quietly in Ivan's closet and could only be seen late at night when the door was accidentally left slightly open.

Sometimes when it was way past dark and Ivan was trying to get to sleep, all tucked into his wee tiny bed and the light from the hallway would filter into his bedroom. It would be just enough light for him to catch sight of Abraham Lincoln where he was silently standing--tall and proud--wearing his standard issue stove-pipe top-hat, with the classic bow tie around his neck. Honest Abe never moved so much as quietly loomed, beady little eyes glistening. Needless to say, this scared my brother shitty and he would scream for our mom to come and shut the closet door for fuck's sake already.

My mom would come running to shut the closet door and be smiling slightly in that knowing and motherly way so that it was almost as if she and Abraham Lincoln had been in bed together in the next room and had planned the whole event--you know--for a lark.

Ivan was not amused. Ivan was never amused by the antics of Abraham Lincoln--not the one in his closet and certainly not the mechanical version at Disney World. I can't remember if this was before or after he began the late night house calls to Ivan's bedroom, but we also had a run in with Old Abe in The Hall of the Presidents at Epcot Center. As you are wheeled into the room on the roller-coaster like seats, being horrifically seat-belted in so there is no escape, you see Abraham Lincoln seated on his giant chair, much like his statue in DC. When you are front and center an easy target for the man, Abraham Lincoln, the robot, jankily stands up, cogs popping and wheels turning not-too-smoothly--the man needs some oiling--and his mouth begins to move, slightly off with the words, like the mechanical bears at Chuck E Cheese pizza. But the effect is twice as eerie because it's a dead president, giving an undead speach, his mouth gaping open and shut
like a fish on dry land gasping for water:

"Four score and seven years ago..." That was as far as he got before I heard Ivan screaming from the car next to mine, where he sat with my sister. He tried to unbuckle himself and climb out of his seat, to no avail, and then he began to cry. Eyes shut, mouth wide open to almost the full size of his head, which was thrown back in the most abjectly miserable wail. Now I've never been to the wailing wall, but I'd bet that it had nothing on this...and the band played on: "Our father's fathers..." droned mechanical Abe. And all the rest of it.

I'm certain that there is nothing more miserable than childhood. Unless, of course, it's being haunted by Abraham Lincoln...which you should really hope like hell you never are.

Ghost Stories for Young Boys - Part Two:

So, maybe when Ivan turned five or six, my brother became terrified of Anne Frank.

I'm not sure how it started but I do know that my sister, Andrea, and I thought this was terrifically funny so she and I sat down with a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and armed with pencils, pens and erasers set out to do our worst.

On the cover of the book was the popular photograph of Anne Frank--a young girl with screwy teeth, dark circles under her eyes and carefully attended hair. We wanted to "enhance" this portrait, the way children often do, by penciling a moustache, blacking out the teeth or drawing on a giant mono-brow, as if a bat had just flown into the poor girl's face and died--You know the mischief. We started by taking our mean little pencil-top erasers and scrubbing away the image, we whited out the pupils in the eyes, but we weren't careful so we removed some of the face around them to leave the spooky effect of Anne Frank having wide glowing white orbs where her eyes should be. It was a terrifying effect so we stopped right there.

Then the real haunting of The Diary of Anne Frank began. We would take the book from the shelf and put it beneath the pillow on Ivan's bed. Or maybe we would put it in his sock drawer, in his coat pocket or his lunch box--wherever we could think of.

We didn't often see when or how Ivan would discover the book each time, but when he did he would return it to the book shelf, usually shoved behind some books or buried beneath a stack of others. It was fairly easy to find as he would face the spine inward so you could see only the pages of the book--And it was the only book that was turned around on the shelf, facing inwards.

Once I remember putting the book inside the pajama shirt my mom had put on Ivan's bed for after he came out of the bathtub one night. Andrea and I watched as he discovered the book and, rather than scream or show any alarm at all, he quietly put the book to his lips, kissed the portrait on the cover and said "please don't hurt me, Anne." Then he carried the book down the hall and threw it as hard as he could so it landed on top of the bookshelf. We never would have found it again, I'm certain, had we not seen this ourselves.

You'd think we'd leave well enough alone after witnessing such a solemn moment and for the most part I think we did, but we were mean older sisters and had nothing better to do.

We discovered that the heating vents on certain floors of our house were connected to other ones, so, for instance you could speak into the floor vents upstairs and hear it crystal clear from the rooms below.

This prompted a whole series of mischievous plots, one of which was waiting until Ivan was in bed at night and almost asleep and then we would whisper into the heating vents above his room in low, droning, ghost-like voices: "Annnne Fraaaannnnk...Annnnne Fraaaannnk..."

We would do this until Ivan would jump out of bed and run to find our mom--This barely gave us enough time to make it back to our rooms and pretend to be asleep.

I doubt that anyone fell for this and I'm sure we got into a lot of trouble--It's hard to believe one little dead girl could cause so many spankings.

The End.

Duck and Cover

The most insane noise rattled the house today.
Windows, walls, floorboards--you name it; it was shaking.

I thought a World War II pilot must have somehow escaped the tragedy of his own century and the gas crisis of this one and was about to dive-bomb us all--Flying noisily and dangerously low, moving through space, time, inventing equations that bend both--equations I'm not old enough to understand and wouldn't explain to you if I did.

But no.

It was not one, but two ghetto birds in flight; low-flying and traveling in a pack of two. (That's helicopters to you peeps in Alaska!)

"Safety in numbers, good buddy," one says to the other over the radio and nods meaningfully as they pass each-other in mid-flight--Meanwhile, some dweebish co-pilot in dark shades and a shit-eating grin leans over and gives a thumbs-up.

Fuck it. They were flying close enough for this story to be true--they were flying close enough to have babies. Fuck em.

Two, Four, Six, Eight--Who Does Paul Appreciate?

I like to think this song was written by Paul for Ringo and that he was so drunk he forgot there were four Beatles and thought he was just seeing double.

Which math doesn't really work, but you'll kindly suspend your disbelief when you listen to the song and picture a drunk P. McCartney trying to keep his little R. Starr to himself--all of this magic with two other dumbfounded scuttle-bugs following in hot pursuit, trying to prove that they too exist and are not, in fact, chopped liver.

Beatle pate. How tasty; how rare.

Almost; So Close: a fan, a friend, a guy named Ali

Once upon a time I saw that a man in India I had never met was following this blog--One out of like three people who had bothered to put a little picture of his face up and say, Yes, Yes I will read this thing.

Clearly he'd made more of an effort to follow it than I did to write it.

I was all, "Hello Mister Muslim from Around the World."

I was all, "However you found me and are proudly reading whatever I toss off, whatever random noise at whatever random moment inspires this weird white girl in America, well that Sir--Mister I'm Sorry Are You Hindu, Sir?--that and all the rest of whatever you're up to, not that I have any earthly idea...but ALL of it--it's alright with me."

And then a Led Zeplin song played.

Everything was GROOVY.
ALL CAPS, I mean it with the CAPS.
And my happiness, like these words,
Was,
All spaced out like this;
Like a Poem,
Like a Song,
And a songbird to sing it,
Right in your ear.

And then he unsubscribed from this blog.

He must've thought I would teach him how to plant beets and farm the land. How to purify water and save the people. How to look a cow in the eye and smile from the soul, I don't know.

It never happened.

Led Balloon

the thing about Led Zepplin that makes them my nemesis band is this: Everything about their music and the people who listen to it says, "Oh yeah."

It says, "Oh yeah, here we are, right where we want to be."

Is it? Can't we do better?