overhaul / undertow

Sunday, December 21, 2003


I am a Christmas tree

Me as a tinselated nightmare (intended) at Santacon (I LOVE how the hair turned out!!! I wanted to look as much like a tacky tinsel explosion as possible), with my friend Jet Fuel. He chose the Eastsiiiiide, I appear to have chosen the Westsiiiiide (say it like a homie!).

Despite our divergent geographic affinities, we get along so well. Even tho he'd just fielded a pie in the face from a protesting elf (they were picketing the exporting of elf jobs to Asia).

My eyes look weird cos I had red false eyelashes. Hee hee.




12:00 AM



Thursday, December 18, 2003



I suck.


8:40 AM



Tuesday, December 16, 2003


not so bad...

So here's the pics from the burlesque show, also.

I don't know if I'll ever do it again, but props to Normal for taking these pictures--I'll forever have proof that I had the guts to do this.

http://www.main-streets.com/images/micheleburlesque/




I like this one 'cos I think I look badass in it. Heh.

10:57 PM






I am unwell

I'm sick.

Jaylinn calls me up Monday night to see if I want to come over for dinner and tv...I tell her my symptoms. Coughing, and just feeling generally really really horribly shitty.

"Oooh, that sounds bad. You takin' anything for it?"

"Robitussin."

"Whoo, girl. That's about as close to an over-the-counter opiate as you can get!"

"Well...good."




10:13 PM



Monday, December 15, 2003



the Red Tide strikes again

So Santacon was a hit. I had a blast. Here are some pics.




Normal and I gettin' warmed up... and Vanessa (in wheelchair, due to injury), Mattshaw (in fez), and myself walking down Vermont...






...we visit El Ron and cause general mayhem...a little vandalism along the way...and then we pour into the subway...




...more mobbing the subway (there really were that many of us)...emerging Downtown at Union Station and Olvera Street...




...we drink a lot at Olvera Street (even though we'd all been drinking by the time we met up at the House of Pies)...accost some hapless Asian tourists, suddenly awash in a sea of red in the Union Station terminal...





...back on the Gold Line, getting progressively more loaded, we head to Highland Park...some dog likes us...we mob some homie's house (no one still knows who lived there)...





...I was pretty drunk by now so I don't know where this picture was taken...we're really toasted on the subway by now...and then, in Old Town Pasadena, several Santas take one for the team...



...but the best part was giving candy to the kids. :)

And not waking up in a gutter.



9:12 PM



Thursday, December 11, 2003



I want to be a good woman
and I can't stand
for you to be a bad man
this is why
I am lying
when I say
I don't love you no more
-cat power.


Your face reminds me of a flower
Kind of like you're underwater
Hair's too long and in your eyes
Your lips a perfect suck me size
You act like you are fourteen years old
Everything you say is so
Obnoxious, funny, true and mean
I want to be your blowjob queen
You're probably shy and introspective
That's not part of my objective
Every time I see your face
I think of things unpure unchaste
I'll take you home and make you like it
Everything you ever wanted
Everything you ever thought of is
Everything I'll do to you
-liz phair.

[i edited out the parts that felt too extreme for my tastes...]

;)





12:52 AM



Tuesday, December 09, 2003



fruits, flakes and nuts

I wish Whole Foods sold whole and non-whole foods. This is because often I want non-whole foods. Like sugar-free jelly. I mean, it's equally as bad for you as the full-sugar, organic, sweetened-with-the-honey-from-non-abused-free-range-bees-kind is. You just choose your poison: a fuckload of sugar, or nutra-sweet. This doesn�t seem unreasonable to me. But the nutra-sweet in sugar-free jam is "non-whole."

I imagine walking into Whole Foods, saying, �I�m thrilled with this all-natural smooth organic non-genetically-modified nut butter, but can you show me where this is?� and I pull the jar of sugar-free Smuckers I brought from home out of my purse as a visual aid. �You eat�that?� I imagine the skinny, well-coiffed, lightly-pierced stock guy saying, cringing, leaning back away from me as if I�m about to transform into a puddle of ooze. �Yeah,� I say, glancing down at the jar, and then he snatches it out of my hand like a grenade, dashes it against an adjacent wood-frame stand for yoga mats, breaking off the top, and brandishes the broken-glass end of the sad little jam jar at me wildly. �It�s not WHOLE!!!!� he screeches maniacally, and I scream and run out, all of the employees chasing after me like medieval villagers.




11:57 AM



Friday, December 05, 2003



didn't get the memo

So I get a letter in the mail today from the old church I used to attend with my parents. It's a Presbyterian church in the Valley--Northridge, to be precise. Good people. Good, god-fearing, suburban, SUV-driving, soccer-team-carpooling, VentiDoubleLatteWithSugarFreeVanilla-sloshing, private-school-booster-supporting, real-estate-agent-husband-and-wife-team-beaming, heavily-chlorinated-backyard-pool-with-deck-self-poured-by-do-it-yourselfer-husband-suntanning, ...

...people.

I burnt out on church around the age of eleven when my sunday school teacher told me that since I hadn't been baptized, I wasn't as close a part of god's family as the other kids were (my parents had left me unbaptized so I could choose for myself (or perhaps they were lazy and let it slide--as I grow older, more and more I think that may be the case).

Attending Catholic school during junior high and high school finished me off.

The letter surprised me. I've never gotten any correspondence from them. How could they even know my current address? I stopped attending YEARS before I moved out of my parents' home.

Inside, it basically said that if I'd found a new church ("your relocation" it mentioned) I should let them know, as they were about to add me to their "Inactive Members" roster. I thought that was funny, since I'd never really been an active member--I was ten years old, for chrissakes (so to speak).
Then I noticed the handwritten note at the bottom. In elegant, compact cursive its tiny letters read "Could not reach your family to get your new name and address...sorry."
What?
"...Congratulations on your marriage and all good wishes... -M."

The letter was then signed by Ms. Marion Swarthout, Clerk of Session.

Hello? You people know something I don't know?

I mean, you're all talkin' to god and whatever.





9:52 PM



Sunday, November 30, 2003



surface appearances

"You radiate bold confidence," writes a friend to me, today.

That's amazing, because my own perception of things is so utterly different from that, that I find myself wondering if he's joking. But I'm aware he's being sincere, and that makes it all the more jaw-droppingly inane and nonsensical for me to hear: me, bold? confident?

You've GOT to be kidding me.




5:06 PM



Friday, November 28, 2003


dropping a line


Here's an email I sent to a friend, but it pretty much sums me up these last few days, so I thought I'd post it.

~ ~ ~

sorry I didn't write back sooner. The show went well--everyone was impressed, the bands did good, I didn't decapitate anyone with the sword, and my pasties stayed on. A success all around. We actually sold the place out--they were turning loads of people away at the door. It was packed.

It was very difficult for me, though, 'cos I'm battling MAJOR body issues right now (self-loathing girl crap). And it's just plain hard to take yer clothes off in front of a crowd, no matter hwo artful it is, no matter if you've got a badass weapon in your hands or not--even if I had the perfect body it would have still been a horribly stressful event.

In fact, it was so stressful and such a traumatic experience I got a cold the next day and broke out in rashes. :\ I guess I pushed myself too hard--I was shaking when I did it (everyone told me they didn't notice).

I also have been really loath to leave the house. I used to feel like I HAD to do something every night: had to be out with friends, seeing a show, at an event, something, anything, or I'd start to go a little stir-crazy in my apartment. The compulsion to go out was so strong I'd call it neurosis. I was running from something, there was something I didn't want to think about. But after the show something shifted, like I'd just realized deep down that was the most running I could do, and I couldn't do any more--it was literally making me sick. And then I didn't want to go anywhere at all. All I wanted to do was go to work, earn money, and go home and sleep and then wake up to do it all over again. I think the biggest problem I was running from was finance (or the lack thereof), and so now I'm kinda having to face all that.
Other stuff is good. I just wrote my second article for Coagula Art Journal. The LA Alt Press FINALLY paid me for my article on the Brewery I did about two months ago. I want to do as much freelancing as I can so that I can maybe find a staff position or get a regular gig like a weekly column or monthly article--that kind of thing could permit me to quit my current job, which is my goal.

How is everything going with you? You're prolly in the midwest right now visiting your folks for Thanksgiving, right?

Anything happen with *****? Last I heard you two were working some stuff out. As for me, I'm not dating anyone and not interested in anyone. Well,....not really. No. And I'm glad for the respite. I just want to focus on stabilizing my own life right now and taking care of the basics, which I've really let slide.

My ex-boyfriend from when I was in college showed up at the Silverlake Lounge show and freaked the hell out of me. We'd found each other on friendster and had corresponded just a little, and I thought maybe we could be, I dunno, loose aquaintances again. But seeing him in person and talking to him, and seeing he hadn't changed an iota--in fact, he was downright CREEPY, obviously full of venom and anger at me but with this spooky fake smile pasted to his face, and so passive-agressive in every poisonous word he spoke--it brought it home in a way I'd never before appreciated, how deeply and thoroughly he'd abused me when we were together--he subjected me to the worst sorts of emotional and verbal abuse, and I didn't really appreciate the seriousness of it until NOW, looking at him with lucid eyes, with my judgement undimmed by years exposed to his unkindness. I could see how bad it really had been (he's still on all sorts of drugs for depression and anxiety) and I felt my heart kind of break all over again for the young naive girl I'd been back then, eighteen years old, him seven years my senior, and me so willing to be completely broken and dominated. He truly did rob me of some of the best years of my life, and they will never come back--nor will I ever truly be rid of all the cruelty he poured into me. I'll always have to battle that negative voice inside me.

So I've been kind of just coping with that, too, the last week or so. I'm just going thru something big and internal, and I can't quite describe it, but it's like one of those phases you just have to go through once in a while.

Well, all that was a big fat serious mouthful. I hope you're good and that things are going well in all the parts of your life. Drop me a line and let me know; we should go out for beers sometime soon, or catch a show and crack jokes about the hipster kids.

-michele.





2:03 PM



Sunday, November 23, 2003



no translation needed

So for Coagula I had to go interview this gallery director off of Beverly and Crescent Heights ( this one, if you're interested), and review the show he has installed there: Gil Garcetti's photos of Disney Hall, in downtown LA.

Mat, my editor, did a lot of snickering when he assigned me this one, 'cos it truly does at first glance seem smarmy: ex-District Attorney gets hired by highfalutin' building company to document the construction of one of LA's most visible buildings.

My honest assessment: I found the photos to range from okay (artfully documentarian) to good (the photo image creating something truly new and different from the subject matter, and that something being created actually intriguing and involving to look at and think about). I don't think any were really really earthshattering, but yes--some were damn fine photos. I've never been big on photography though, so maybe I'm missing something.

I was talking with the gallery owner/director who really seemed earnestly to love the photos. Which, I guess, helps when you're selling them for 8,500 dollars. In describing Garcetti's approach to the work, the director paused and fixed me with a stare. "My first language isn't English, you know," he said.

I looked at his skeptically. Tall, overweight, graying and balding, with a scruffy unkept beard that didn't conceal his lack of a chin--no way was this guy from Europe. Only an American would not give this much of a shit about his appearance. Those Europeans are always put-together.

By way of explaining, he reminisced about an experience he'd had at a meeting with some fellow small-business owners (a digression: for some reason I never thought of an art gallery as a "small business." "Small business" always brought to mind an auto repair shop, or a catering agency, or a floral shop...you know, like in those credit-card commercials that promise to "get your small business off on the right foot...", with warm sepia-toned images of businesslike--yet motherly--young professional women earnestly potting orchids or baking bread while accepting packages from couriers and looking intently at their laptops...but whatever)...

So he was at this meeting, and the man speaking was a guy who owned a music studio and recorded/produced primarily classsical music--orchestras, big and small. And he was speaking to the group, and as he spoke he gesticulated, with his right hand--up and down, then reaching up towards his face and then extending back out to the audience, and back and forth, back and forth, rhythmically--

Conducting.

His movements were exactly those of an orchestra's conductor, shinking to tiny constricted movements as his speech contracted, then expanding wildly as his words poured out faster and faster. He couldn't think without thinking musically; only then did his brain translate the sound into language, into words, into English. His gesticulating hand betrayed the inner translation, the interpretation from sound to speech going on under the spoken words.

"So, for me, my first language is primarily visual," explained the man in front of me, shrugging. "I have to picture something in my head, to fully understand and apprehend it. And I see this work by Gil, and I can see--he is too. Visual. His modality is visual before speech. It's how he thinks. You can see it." And he nodded back at a large print behind him depicting the undulating walls of the music hall as they abruptly sank into the darkness of shadow, and then erupted into the negative space of the sky.

I looked at the photos, huge hung on the wall, and thought about the director's story. I wondered silently, what's my first language?

Interesting. It's English.

Words. I think in words. Worlds flower and unfurl in expanding rings in my mind, and it's all verbalized, set to speech like music, but in utter silence: just the words, each signifying for an idea, a thought, a substance like ether, nebulous, undefined, expanding to fill space yet with just the right word--just the precise one--you can capture it, distill it, condense it into the most magical transformative potion, pure vital unabashed and wildly exploding life compressed and crystallized into one single utterance.

Garcetti and the gallery owner may think in images before they try to put them into words; that small-business owner may have to conduct an orchestra to give structure and rhythm to the ideas within him; perhaps a sculptor thinks, first and foremost, in tactile sensations, and only then attempts to cast them into speech. Somehow I feel lucky, though. These words come pure and unadulterated, untranslated, no vagaries of interpretation to filter or dilute them. These words are my heart and soul.

The words, the writing, without it I could not live.




7:26 PM







I'm sorry, Eric Schlosser

From the McDonald's website:

"McGriddles� breakfast sandwiches provide an innovative way for customers to eat warm golden griddle cakes (with the sweet taste of maple syrup baked right in), and different combinations of savory sausage, crispy bacon, fluffy eggs and melted cheese in a convenient sandwich."

And then this:

http://nice-n-fun.com/mcgriddle/

My resolve not to eat there, ever, is weakening.



6:32 PM



Friday, November 21, 2003



So...now what?

So I did it: I did my burlesque routine, with the tai chi sword, for the killradio.org anniversary show.

So ends about two months of stress, anxiety, self-loathing (primarily directed at my thighs), compulsive yoga-class attendance, and general freaking out.

I did it, and I'm proud I went through with it, but now I need a break from the world and all its stresses. I'm turnign off the ringer on my phone and not going out at night for as long as I can get away with it.

Phew.

11:39 PM



Friday, November 14, 2003



I'm in a good mood.


:)

yay!

walkin' to the henry fonda thatre now to meet Vanessa for some death cab for cutie rock action.





9:08 PM



Monday, November 10, 2003



Ok, so for a week I'm gonna try to live all clean'n'shit.

No, really, I swear.

Whoo. God, that makes me want a drink.

Okay, so I have to make myself my own improvement project for a week: stop all the drinking, yoga every day, and a walk every day, and more salads and veggies and fewer carbs; sleeping would be good; be around less cigarette smoke and stuff...

I rarely put myself first, I'm always doing things for somebody else, so this'll be interesting.






7:29 PM







Can't get this song off my mind...

I want to be a good woman
And I want
for you to be a good man

This is why I will be leaving
And this is why
I can�t see you no more.

I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever

I don�t want be a bad women
And I can�t stand
to see you be a bad man

I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever
So this is why I am leaving
And this is why
I can�t see you no more

This is why I am lying
when I say
That I don�t love you no more

-cat power, good woman





2:36 PM



Friday, November 07, 2003



a timely haiku

They say drugs are bad.
After trial and error, I
must admit they're right.




8:55 PM



Wednesday, November 05, 2003



Don't post drunk.


2:30 AM



Tuesday, November 04, 2003
wisdom with age

ladies, I'd like to share a bit of insight I've uncovered with time.

A woman ceases to be magical and enrapturing to any man,
when she herself ceases to find joy, involvement, obsession and--yes--enrapturement in her OWN life;
and instead finds it in the lives of the men who love her.

Then she becomes, to those men, a bore and a banal distraction from the other thigns they'd much rather be doing. And she loses both their love and herself.

So, girls, always throw yourself into your own life. Then everything else will find you--not the other way around.
12:11 AM



Monday, October 27, 2003



once again, it's time to stop and save my own life.

no one ever does it for me, goddamn it. just once it would be nice for someone to give enough of a shit that they would do it for me--but no one ever does.

maybe that's just the way life is?

to do:
fix car
see doctor
go back to yoga
stop drinking so damn much
go to work
paint more
write more
stay in at night once in a while
stop living so fucking hard


The last one is the toughie.








1:38 AM



Wednesday, October 15, 2003



little kafka at camp

this is awesome.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/09/16kafka.html

an excerpt:

"June 18, 1897�I've spent the past two days lost in the woods, on what my counselors call a hike. The concept seems ludicrous and they were brutally unsympathetic to my concerns. The first few minutes are bearable, but I begin to sense that we aren't going anywhere, that our destination is the same lonely, rat-infested hut where we begin. I wonder aloud about the necessity of it all, asking why we couldn't just stay in the cabin and cut out the middleman.
"It's called a hike," they say.
"But why are we doing it? What's the purpose? We end where we start. We start where we end."
"You can look for birds and flowers and stuff," a counselor says.
"I don't understand what you are saying."
"It's nature!" The counselor roars. "Stop being such a freaky weirdo."
I ask questions to get closer to some unknowable truth. The distance just seems to grow.

- - - -

July 1, 1897�My Birthday. I have not told anyone and now that it is approaching midnight, I will not have to. The days are nothing but struggle. Struggle to survive. Some boys had to be stripped down. Whipped in front of everyone. They did not understand how wonderful Camp Schelsen could be. They spit on people. They threw rocks at squirrels. I could not look away. The cruelty was too beautiful. It opened up the universe.

- - - -

July 10,1897�In Arts and Crafts, that humid hut, the teacher stops. He looks down. I look up. I am working on something intricate, something simultaneously nothing and everything. It is made of paper.
"I always wanted you to admire my origami," I say.
"I do. I do admire it."
"Well, you shouldn't," I say.
"You're a weird little dude, Franzie."



hee hee hee hoo ha.....




2:00 AM



Friday, October 10, 2003



I was up all night painting.

How do I know? 'Cos my memory is so fucking-up and foggy right now I have no real recollection of, maybe, the last thirty-six hours.

I know because I've begun talking to myself out loud. Can yelling at my peanut butter be far off?





8:13 AM



Wednesday, October 08, 2003



the men who I want to call me,
may not call me,
and I might be alone forever;
but I can paint.
And I guess I can write too; or at least, people are paying me to do it.

I can step back, and look at what I've created, and it's taken so much work and so many years of learning and so much effort and time,
but I've done it well,
and if that is all I ever have,
then well,
fine.

Fine then.




1:02 AM



Wednesday, October 01, 2003


I feel like hunter s. thompson

Saturday: drive to Marina del Rey. Get drunk.
Sunday: wake up hungover after 5 hours of sleep, race to the Brewery with plans to take a trip to the desert, trip is aborted due to friends who are even more hungover than I, start drinkin' at noon, see Radiohead 13 miles from the Mexican border that night, get home at 3 pm, get three hours of sleep.
Monday: race to work to be there before 9. On three hours of sleep. Feel vaguely ill. Leave work at 4 pm because you feel like shit. I wonder why...
Monday night: I have a cold. Have two shots of whiskey--that helps colds, doesn't it? Also knock back some leftover Robitussin. Then go downtown to drink with friends in a seedy hotel bar. Have two drinks. Get pretty blitzed. Get back home, call a boy. He comes over. Get really loaded with him on whiskey with lemonade. Pass out around 2 am.
Tuesday morning, 6 am: Call in sick to work. You really ARE sick. Yes. You have a cold.
You are also hungover, maybe still dizzy, but you definitely ARE sick, ill, and should not be in an office environment right now. No.
Tuesday 10 am: Wake up again, putter around, make eggs and bacon.
Tuesday noon: Cute boy wakes up. Eat breakfast, then drive to beach for coffee. Coffee is good. I cough some. My nose is stuffy. My ears are stuffed up too. I truly DO have a cold. Yep.
Tuesday afternoon: Cute boy rushes off, late for work. Putter around house, feel sick, take nap.
Tuesday night: Woken up by phone call from absolute drunk / brilliant writer whom you fell for and are trying to get over. You have been having a small amount of success at this. He wants a ride to the birthday party for another man you fell in love with and subsequently DID get over, succesfully. When you ask him why he wants a ride he says it is because he wants to get drunk at the party. You can't argue with that. Nap another 15 minutes. Wake up, feel weird, take a Valium.
Later Tuesday night: Pick up said drunkard writer, drive to Barbara's at the Brewery, drink lots of vodka, wear tinfoil hats for birthday party. Laugh a lot. Party breaks up around 11:30. Drive the writer home. He swears he is hammered but seems in complete posession of his faculties.
Really fucking early Wednesday morning: Drink gin and beer with drunk writer at his home while you peruse the internet together. Listen to stories read aloud, discuss writing. Get pretty fucking loaded.
Wednesday morning: Sleep there with the writer. He snores really loud. Ugh. Wake up at six a.m., swig a leftover beer, drive home, leaving the writer there to snore on his own with just the cat. Stop at Rite Aid, coughing, pick up NyQuil and Robitussin and pseudephedrine (decongestant, also a stimulant). Arrive at home, swig the NyQuil and Robitussin, eschew the pseudepedrine 'cos it'll just keep you up. Call work, tell them you'll be in in the afternoon. Your cough is getting worse. Sleep.
Wednesday late morning: Wake up dizzy and swing out of bed feeling like you're waltzing around the room. Wonder how your liver is handling all this. Cough. Call doctor, make appointment. The cough will need to be handled and the only thing that fixes it is codeine syrup, so you have to check in with the dr. for that, as it is a controlled substance. Find your current state amusing, especially since you are reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas right now, and you yourself are seeing things blurrily, squinting to align your vision. Decide it's worth documenting before you go back to sleep, so you write it in your blog.

Sleep again.


I'd also like to confirm that I still have't gotten laid in months. And I'm actually kind of happy about that. So all the "sleeping" documented above really is just that. Sleeping.

For me, right now, it's better this way.




11:20 AM



Friday, September 26, 2003



ah, there's where you're wrong...

Someone wrote this to me: "I like the way you write. You seem to be someone that could talk to me for hours and I would listen, listen, listen and enjoy it."

Never, my friend, equate someone whose writing you like with someone whose physical company or whose conversation you will enjoy. I am very different in person, and it takes a long time of getting-to-know-me before i can begin to trust you enough to talk to you the way I write to...well, to anyone.

I had one horrible boyfriend--we were together for five tortured, stupid years (but in retrospect, after much time has passed, I can see all I *did* get from the relationship, and the parts I played in its dysfunction--but oh well), who told me he fell in love with me when I wrote to him, but that for some reason, sadly, he confessed he never felt that way about me when I communicated to him in person.

Now there's a mindfuck. No wonder I hide behind this computer.

I really shouldn't post this, as you'll all think I'm some mystery creature, comletely divorced from my writing. It's not true at all. The writing is my soul, my heart--the real me. It's my own shortcoming that I am too shy and scared to be as forthright (usually--unless, like I said, I really know and trust you) in person. I think mebbe it goes back to grade school, where I got laughed at for using big words.

Ah well. Life goes on.

-m.







12:58 PM







feelings you can't quite describe

Parts of the following are fiction. But they almost happened. And some did happen. I've begun taking little steps in my writing to not simply re-tell stories but to follow little threads of possibility, to see where they would go, and see if I can keep it honest and real at the same time.

So, here's something that's almost real. It might as well have happened; my state of mind would be no different.

----

After I get back to the office from lunch Trish, my boss�s assistant, walks in to tell me I did not get the promotion to instruct adult classes. �It has nothing to do with your ability,� she says, shrugging over her shoulder in the direction of the portrait I painted of her, hanging on my office wall. �Or with your ability to teach. They just think you�� and she paused-- �you don�t have a consistent enough record yet. They don�t know if they can count on you with the training.�

I sit there and think. They�re probably right. I would hate the training. But I would have done it if they�d let me. Anything to get out of the fucking office.

�Are you ok?� she asked, and I smiled and nodded. �Do you have any questions?� �No,� I said.

I get up after she leaves my office and walk into the staff kitchenette. I buy a packet of M&M;�s from the dispenser. Inside the bag, a sweepstakes game piece announces in bold letters, YOU ARE NOT A WINNER.

I snort. It�s funny.

At four-thirty I ask Trish if I can go for a walk. She says yes and catches my eye to ask if I am alright; I tell her I am fine. I put my socks and boots on, becuse the sandals I'm wearing in the office corridors threaten to slip off my feet and cause me to have to shuffle down the sidewalk. I walk down the long residential blocks to the Korean market. There is no breeze. The air feels like tepid water, and bland. In the market I notice the sweet pickled ginger I buy at Ralphs for six dollars on sale for two dollars. I�ll buy it here from now on, and I make a mental note that now I have an excuse to return.

I buy paper towels and napkins. I have been out of paper products in the kitchen for three days. It wasn�t bothering me that much but when Cheney was over Monday night and I made us eggs I realized I had no napkins and I felt vaguely embarrassed, even though he said he did not care. The man behind me at the checkout line hustles me out of the way, shouldering his purchases right next to mine as I pick up my bags and thank the cashier. She does not notice me.

I am walking down the sidewalk back to the office when the toe of my right boot catches against the asphalt for no particular reason, and I stumble, and then I surprise myself by actually falling down right there, crashing down onto my chest and left shoulder like a tree. I feel enormously stupid but it all feels scripted, par for the course, and far too easy. There are no cars or people around. Only mute houses and beige apartment buildings, and the sound of the freeway a block away, moving past the vacant homes like a river. I look out over my chin to see leaves on the sidewalk. It�s too early in the year yet for them to have changed to golden or red colors. They are a dull dusty green. I roll onto my back and stare at the sky. There is an odd silence, a suspension of sound and the light hangs in the air like haze. I do not want to work at getting back up. The sky is a distant brittle blue, as though it could crumble into powder and blow away, dry and parched. I feel a delicate heat on my left shoulder where it came down on the concrete, and I look at it to see a small skein of red rising up from the abraded skin; but there isn�t really much blood at all, and mostly the area just looks abused. I do not care very much.

I lie there a while, and when my head starts to ache from the hard concrete I put my arms up behind my neck to hold it away from the sidewalk. Newly-planted sycamores frame my vision; the bland shingled wall of a condo complex next to me casts shade over the whole sidewalk. When I do stand up the world feels unnaturally tilted on its side. I untie my long-sleeved shirt from my waist and put it on to cover the scrape on my shoulder. The rest of the walk back, the clouds I was observing from my vantage point on the ground still do not move or change; they lie so distant in the fragile gray-blue of the sky they seem immovable, like permanent scratches on the lens.

I feel some strange emotion balling up in my chest, against my sternum, and I swallow against it, and keep walking. I think I want to scream. I do not.





6:41 AM



Saturday, September 20, 2003



woot woot


I GET TO GO SEE DURAN DURAN AND THE CURE!!!!

I LOVE ART PEREZ!!!!!

I mean, they're not high art, but they're....something.

Nagel-girl hell, here I come!





6:28 PM



Wednesday, September 17, 2003



file under: being a grown-up

I am so endlessly pleased. I have installed my own new brakes and
changed my oil. No more Jiffy Lube wonky weirdness and unnecessary
charges and taking advantage of 'lil ole me.

Good thing too, 'cos the brakes were fucking GONE.



9:52 PM



Monday, September 15, 2003



Just when I think there's hope for humanity, it goes and disgusts me.




8:22 AM



Saturday, September 13, 2003



finally saw it for the first time...

...thanks Ben!!!

"But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."
-holly golightly, breakfast at tiffany's




10:06 PM



Friday, September 12, 2003



morning-after vanishings

I have a tendency to flee the houses of other people--regardless of their relationship to me--before daylight, no matter how hung over I still am.

When I was dating, I'm sure that--depending on how the person felt about me--this was met with either relief or consternation. Now that I'm just crashing on friend's couches from time to time, I'm still pulling the same trick--leaving as soon as my synapses sense the change in the light outside my closed eyelids--and it just leaves my pals kinda nonplussed...: "But don't you wanna get breakfast?"


It's a good thing I'm no one's girlfriend, or this behavior would be inexcusable; as it is, I'm just "self-contained."

I guess.



5:57 AM



Thursday, September 11, 2003



more proof god is sadistic

My love life follows one repetitive and predictable pattern.

If I really like someone,
they do not really like me.

If I do not really like someone,
they really like me.

It's been this way forever. I can think of only one relationship I've ever had where we each were fully met by the other individual's enthusiasm.

Lately I've begun trying to rig the game, not allowing myself to care about anyone who I might remotely be interested in, or have good things in common with. Because, goes my halfass (and largely unconscious) reasoning, if I do not like them, they will like me, and I want them to like me, so I just won't like them, and then I'll be in control, and I won't get hurt for the ten-millionth time.

this is an exercise doomed to failure, I am afraid, and even if it is not, it does nothing but make me sad, and alone. I do not mind being alone (I don't think)--I know *I* am the only person who's really with me come hell or high water on this journey, and any hopes or attempts at finding another constant companion will eventually be thwarted: life changes, people die, shit happens. So you're all you've got, and you try to remember that when you meet someone really neat whom you want to fall into like a waterbed...

Nonetheless, I am tired.




12:22 AM



Wednesday, September 10, 2003



sometimes I feel really weird, as tho I can't seem to negotiate this world with any degree of propriety or correct behavior.

I guess most people would call it socially inept.

yeah. that's me.

jeez. I'll never learn how to behave normally and acceptably around others, will I? I'll be eighty, and still a massive dork.

~sigh.~









12:53 AM



Tuesday, September 09, 2003


I miss my girl

Ah, Normal, I miss you like hell. Where are you now? Still cleaning up the playa? Back in Seattle? Somewhere on the road with the Pod? Where is your wonderful Diva Dog?

shit, girl. Wish I could talk to you.

"What do you do when life gets hard? You ride. You ride the motherfucker."
-Ice-T








2:02 PM



Monday, September 08, 2003


good band alert

Broken Social Scene: horrible name, beautiful music. Kazaa some right now.




8:49 AM



Sunday, September 07, 2003



when you're searching your soul
when you're searching for pleasure
how often pain is all you find
but when you're coasting along and nobody's trying too hard
you can turn around and like where you are
-the sundays.







10:52 AM



Saturday, September 06, 2003


...additionally, while at my parents' house, I discovered letters my aunt--my dad's sister--has been sending us. For some reason dad seems to delay opening them, as if he wants some sort of separate space from her. I wrote down her new mailing addy--the old one is useless, as she moved some time ago--because I want to write to her. I need to know the women in my family--the good ones--before they pass away. So far I've only known my maternal grandmother, and she was an unpleasant woman--although she loved us, she was very angry all the time. So I think I'd like to drive up the coast to visit my Aunt Joellen. She runs a restaurant in the little NorCal fishing town of Trinidad (decidedly different from the other Trinidad, by the way), and is twice divorced. A single woman living her own life.

I like her already, and the last time we met I was maybe six, and all I remember is the fields of blackberries in the meadow in front of her small clapboard house, and how impossibly beautiful the fuschias were that hung on her porch.




9:33 PM








I stopped by my folks' house today in the far reaches of the west Valley, where the wide valley floor narrows to a little stretch of flatness interrupted at increasing intervals by intrusions of low rocky mountains, narrow box canyons, and dry ravines that flood in winter. I hadn't driven through this area in a long time and it felt like someone had given me an injection of something cool and sweet in my veins. I rolled the windows all the way down and careened around the canyon roads for a long time--drove to the small, hidden cemetery where my grandparents were buried, then by the resevoir land with its small chain of lakes and the rollicking road up and down like a rollercoaster to its left--at each dip I lifted my hands off the steering wheel for an infantile "Wheeee!" with the music loud......past the great stone house my grandfather built there on the edge of the lake and then along Valley Circle Road in towards my parents' house which sits on the huge chunk of property--now divided infinitesimally into tiny little suburban blocks and streetcorners that only hint at the bones of what used to be frontier, horse trails, fields of oranges.

No one was home when I got there. My mom has gone to Sedona with her little craft group--they decorate gourds or some such crafty thing, she gets a new craft fetish every few years (thank god she graduated from the geese-in-bonnets meme) and when she left Thursday I almost warned her about how touristy it was there, in Sedona, 'til I remembered I had never told her I'd gone to Arizona. In fact, I straight-up lied when asked to account for the dead air coming from me when she'd tried to reach me during that long weekend...I just wanted that time for myself, and I knew she'd flip if she found out I'd gone anywhere alone.

As for dad, I had no idea where he was, but his old army uniform from when he'd been in Vietnam was lying out draped over the couch, as though he'd been going through old boxes, assessing things. His truck was gone. He is probably out surfing.

I washed my car in their yard and took quarters for laundry.

The clock on the stove in the kitchen there is stuck at 5:52. It has been for years. I think they got it working once, for a week, but then it went back to 5:52 and remained there. It is always the same time--5:52--in their house.

It's such an easy metaphor, I feel cheap even writing with it, so I'll stop now.






6:42 PM



Wednesday, September 03, 2003





fuck postage stamps

Things that, in the aftermath of burningman, I have come home with new perspective in order to find that I collect and did not know it:

bottles of never-used mixers such as angostura bitters and blue curacao
years upon years of photos, all in cigar boxes
unfinished paintings
good intentions mislaid
cd's, of course
books
weird religious crap
unpaid parking tickets and bills

the end.







5:41 PM









excerpted from this site of writing advice penned by Kerouac:


SCOPING Not "selectivity' Iof expression but following free deviation (association) of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of thought, swimming in sea of English with no discipline other than rhythms of rhetorical exhalation and expostulated statement, like a fist coming down on a table with each complete utterance, bang! (the space dash)-Blow as deep as you want-write as deeply, fish as far down as you want, satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive telepathic shock and meaning-excitement by same laws operating in his own human mind.

LAG IN PROCEDURE No pause to think of proper word but the infantile pileup of scatological buildup words till satisfaction is gained, which will turn out to be a great appending rhythm to a thought and be in accordance with Great Law of timing.

TIMING Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time-Shakespearian stress of dramatic need to speak now in own unalterable way or forever hold tongue-no revisions (except obvious rational mistakes, such as names or calculated insertions in act of not writing but inserting).

CENTER OF INTEREST Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in subject of image at moment of writing, and write outwards swimming in sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion-Do not afterthink except for poetic or P. S. reasons. Never afterthink to "improve" or defray impressions, as, the best writing is always the most painful personal wrung-out tossed from cradle warm protective mind-tap from yourself the song of yourself, blow!-now!-your way is your only way-"good"-or "bad"-always honest ("ludi- crous"), spontaneous, "confessionals' interesting, because not "crafted." Craft is craft.



Something about the road trip, the desert, the experiences, and the fact that I'm currently reading an excellent fucking book is throwing me back into writing. My apologies for my continued inaccessibility. Something in me is changing. I am also beginning to like the color purple again, and this is also odd. I am living off of Ralphs Brand chocolate-peanut-butter cookies (six for breakfast, two for brunch) and Crystal Light, haven't left the house all day, and am writing insanely.








12:41 PM










Ladies and gentlemen, we've got pictures.

Me at burningman, post-shoe repair. That thing ain't never coming off now--thanks Tackett!!!





12:34 PM









I'm back from the desert. I'm really not in a mood to talk to many people. Every place I go, every street I drive feels more crowded and random and full of people careening around, living tiny lives.

If you need to reach me please email me at my hotmail addy. My Lycos has been down for the day and will continue to be down for a day or two.


thanks.




12:05 AM



Friday, August 22, 2003
Yeah, so the la alternative press published my article, but has yet to update its website. So if you wanna read the spiel, you'll have to track down a print version--at least 'til they get their act together.





1:14 AM



Thursday, August 21, 2003






I had to come back to this entry and correct all my spelling.
I'm just a spaz like that.

commodifying dissent is lucrative

Shares of Hot Topic are through the roof, kids! Invest in your favorite target-marketed niche boutique right NOW, 'cuz when you grow up Social Security will have imploded upon itself from the glut of your parents and grandparents working their constipated way out the colon of America's job market.

Sigh.






8:58 AM



Wednesday, August 20, 2003







I am competent

I am so proud of me.

Before you get all annoyed and grossed out by that statement, let me just say I am rarely if ever impressed by myself, and if I do anything of note I immediately tend to bury it in an avalance of "you could have done better" so...this is unusual.

I am totally exhausted and am working downtown at the Brewery every night until past midnight, helping others witht heir Burning Man projects and working on my own. Today I learned to saw metal. You know, like with sparks flying off in all directions and eyegoggles and earmuffs and the whole nine metal-shop yards. My shade structure is almost complete, and I've made the whole thing myself.

On an even bigger note of accomplishment, today I cashed a check for $100. That's not unusual. What was new is that it was payment for an article I wrote--my very first ever. Appearing this Thursday in the Arts and Ideas section of the LA Alternative Press (http://www.laalternativepress.com/). I met with the lead editor of the paper and she wants to collaborate with me on a feature, a huge article. I am so thrilled!!!

I may be exhausted and working nonstop, but good things are happening. My life feels so full of wonderful change. I can't wait to go to Burning Man!!!








12:52 AM



Monday, August 18, 2003





red wine is fast
at the lip of your glass saying I'm gonna ruin
everything
everything--
so it's better my sweet,
that we hover like bees
'cos there's no
sure footing
No love I believe.
-neko case.








new prosety too.

thanky.







1:39 AM



Friday, August 15, 2003






OH.MY.GOD.

I knew photos in women's glossies were retouched, but I had no idea it was this obvious:

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html


Thanks for the link, Jake--women, click on it and feel a hell of a lot more normal; men, click on it and stop comparing real women to things that do not exist.




8:21 AM



Wednesday, August 13, 2003
cross-posting prosety from my other site (accessible via the sidebar, too lazy to throw the link in here)...but I never put any poetry up on this blog, so why the hell not?

eh.

-michele.



the value of zero

if nothing is
the quietly growing vacancy of space
interstellar and complete, vast
and broad, whale-wide leagues for millennia,
stars expanding,
old worlds collapsing,
oceans and seas empty and cooling,
if nothing is
at barren altitudes flung so high to the canopy of the stars that the sun would come down,
where wind claws torqued stones to spiraled perfection and makes of plants
silver spikes erected heavenwards at dawn to catch acute-angled light;
if nothing is
the peace we sink to like dry leaves
when all things desert us and we are bereft of
old loves and meanings,
and are instead gravid with lives not yet followed to logical conclusions,
narrations not yet written;
if nothing is
the inestimable value of that Mesopotamian digit,
where our primeval rivers flood over and over to
drown walled gardens, submerge valleys of shadows
and leave behind
nothing
to grow rich and wide with time again and again,
unfurling new worlds like nilotic sails,

then I have nothing to give you, love.
Nothing at all.








1:25 PM



Monday, August 11, 2003
I feel bad

I think I am a shitty roommate.









12:17 AM



Sunday, August 10, 2003





At a party tonight, a boy from out of town--Minnesota, I think--sat down with my friend Kelsey and myself on the balcony of her apartment. It was her going-away party--she's moving to Orange County to live with her boyfriend. I am happy because she is happy--although i cannot relate to wanting to live with a man. I'd be happy if I could just live by myself (sorry Tana, I love you so much, but you know how we both really wish we could have our own places!).

He sits down. His younger sister is with him; she looks to be maybe 20. He has a thick Armenian accent.

"You--are you a poet?" he asks, looking at me. I had been staring vacantly into space to the left of his head. "I think you are a poet."

"Me?"

"Yes. Do you...(he seemed to be struggling for the right words, as though English did not come easily to him) write the poetry?"

I denied that I did, but Kelsey told him that yes, I did write poetry.

I left absurdly gratified by the whole thing, and trying to hide it.





2:56 AM



Friday, August 08, 2003





I'd also like to add that for the first time in my entire life, and after hundreds of aborted attempts, I succeeded last night in making hard-boiled eggs. Now I feel like an adult.

Jeez, I'm easy to please.



6:42 AM









Argh.

I'd like to write the truth about how I'm feeling, but there's too many people out there who know only a small slice of my life and not the big picture I get from in here on the inside, and so if I did that people wouldn't really understand.

why oh why did I ever tell friends and acquaintances about this weblog?

What I'd like to say is that I feel really good today. In fact the last week or so has been, in general, good. Healthy. Honest.

In fact, for months now, despite all sorts of difficulties, I've been stumbling across huge moments of clarity, peace, and self-discovery. Maybe these are happening 'cos my life is having many upheavals. Or maybe it's just time, like plate-techtonics moving things from below, subterranean inevitable inner changes as I grow and age.

I think, however, that there's still proof that I'm neurotic hidden in the fact that I feel guilty about that.

Ok, I think I know what it is. It's that I feel guilty feeling "alright" about my life, about the place I'm at, when I know others who are very dear to me, who I love a lot, are not feeling alright. My good friends have to weather me bitching and moaning a lot about my life and the oh-so-difficult travails I encounter in it. How, now, to tell them that for the last few months, despite all the insaity, I've been spiraling down on the inside to a place where I feel peaceful? How do I say "I feel good," when they don't?

On the other hand, to remain silent about it, when so much of what I do here is all angsty posting, seems disingenuous and kind of a dishonoring of some hard-won work I've done on myself for the last six months or so.

Eh, maybe it's just the yoga.











6:24 AM



Friday, July 25, 2003






off to the desert again, for drinks and roman candle wars and flaming swords and other sorts of asinine behavior.

what, you and your friends don't do that when YOU go camping? Oh stop it.

If I can get a pic of me with the sword I'll promise I'll finally use my BloggerPlus and upload it. 'Kay?




10:33 PM



Wednesday, July 23, 2003






So I've been spending a lot of time hanging with friends at the Brewery. For those not familiar with LA, the Brwery is an artists' colony smack in the middle of seedy spooky LA 'hood, near Chinatown and East LA. The group of buildings fills prolly a few acres and comprises former steel-working plants, warehouses, and several mostrous concrete-slab buildings the original utility of which I cannot fathom. There is also an old Pabst brewery here with a smokestack--hence the name. All have been converted to artists' lofts and apartments. It's not exactly a public place cos it's all off the street and self-contained--buildings dropped down onto the city concrete and blacktop in a haphazard manner, some parking lots--you never see the street or the outside neighborhood from inside here. There is a small central garden with trees and birdfeeders and strange sculptural mobiles. There is a bar that caters to the residents.

I have been lucky enough to make some good friends here. Spending time here, hanging out with them, laughing and soaking it all in--it is wonderful. Lovely, lovely, lovely. My heart is melancholy often, but I do not mind so much, and the air here in this place is calm and still, the city sky seems to shimmer with heat and a semitranslucent quality of light that seems to broadcast hot glass and seething metallic glare,and we are all hung over here, alternately working on projects, lying around immobile, and laughing, and somehow I think I can weather the storm on the inside.



7:03 PM









Someone tell me how to turn off the way I feel about this man, and I will. I fucking will. This is like a sickness, it's holding on to me, I have so much to do but it won't let go.

It fucking HURTS.

this wasn't supposed to happen, and all our hearts are far away from one another, miles and miles.






7:02 PM



Tuesday, July 22, 2003
I hab a code.*



* = "I have a cold," said thru stuffy nose.




12:10 AM








the town without orange

At two thirty-eight a.m. the vent, set to its coolest setting, is
blaring hot air at me. I am seeing double, driving by braille, letting
the little lane-line hamburger-bun bumpies let me know when Ariel's gold
nose is pointed too far to the left, or the right. There are too many
goodamn semis on the road. I can't really see. I stopped trying to
feel perky a long time ago. I have 16 more miles to go. Somehow I can
do math with a lucidity I lack at all other times and calculate
approximately nine more minutes 'til the next offramp. I stick my hand
out the windown to feel if the air outside is cooler than the vent. It
is the same temperature. I cannot fathom how hot it must have been all
day. The earth is exhaling all its heat, now, and I'm driving blearily
through its transpiration, talking to myself to stay awake, observing
the inner dialogues between the different bits of myself.

I reach the green sign, and the offramp. I curve off the highway. The
town is nothing but one gas station, a closed Burger King, and more
18-wheelers than I can count pulled off the interstate, idling, their
lights humming, drivers sleeping. I think. I feel slightly afraid. It
brings me a bit more wakefulness. The sky seems both infinitely distant
and crushingly low overhead. The stars seem to expand into blurry
lakes.

I walk into the gas station. I don't remember if it is a Chevron or a
76. They are all the same. When there are women behind the counter, I
feel a sort of calm, and when I ask and they tell me in a high-desert,
soccer-mom drawl, "Sure, it's safe to sleep in your car here, people do
it all the time" I believe them. When it is men, and I ask, and they
say "Sure, it's safe to sleep in your car here, people do it all the
time"...I do not believe them. My knife is in my shoe. It is now 3 am.

I walk in. The almost inaudible hum of freezer cases, the silent echoey
sound of the linoleum, the hats and postacards for sale ("Get your kicks
on 66!"), the ginseng and vitamin packets for truckdrivers trying to
kick speed, the coffee dispensers I've learned to navigate with a sick
ease in under two days. I always pile up two cups, so the heat won't
penetrate through to burn me.

And then it kicks up, the same damn exchange I've had since I left LA
and hit around Fontana, then streaked out towards the Salton Sea and
beyond.

"Hey now, little lady, how ya doin'?"

"Pretty good, thanks!" [grin big. I am One of the Guys. I am Just
Fine. It's All Good. Yee-Haw.] I notice I am unconsciously injecting
an indiscernible accent into my speech--part British, part yokel drawl.
I can guess why but it takes some explanation.

Then the inevitable:

"Now that's some pertty hair you got there."

"Thanks." I nod my head emphatically. I am One of the Guys. No
Problem.

"Real pertty. What color they call that?"

I pause. The audience in my head is eating this shit up. This is too
fucking funny. This is fucking hilarious. We know this is sitcom
material, here in my head. The audience and its cultured palate is
going fucking nuts.

Orange.

Orange. It's orange.

I say it.

"Orange."

I pause. Wait the requisite beat. I look up. The men here, these two
men, one behind the counter and his friend here, HANGING OUT like it's
the local coffeehosue or something, like this is where it's at, like
this is some happening place, they just look at me, and look at my hair.
They nod. Yeah, yeah, it sure is. It's orange. Wow. Nonplussed.
What a waste. What a loss. I was just fucking brilliant, a genius, and
it was as over the head of this town as the planes people take so they
don't have to drive through it, like I do.

"Well that's real nice. Real nice."

"Thanks!" [Grin. I am Totally Ok. Just One of the Guys. Yes.]

I pay for my coffee. Gas up Ariel. Check her oil, and she's good. I
drive her across the street, check the locks six times, put the back
seats down, check the locks again, roll up in a sleeping bag that's been
in my car since JunkmailMan, and check the locks. Again. Put the knife
by my hand [so it will be both close to me and visible to anyone on the
outside, just in case, bright orange (again with the goddamn orange)
colors on a butterfly saying I am poisonous, don't eat me, I'm
dangerous, but really pointing to said butterfly's desire to just
fucking live through the next day--], the keys in the ignition in case I
have to bolt. I fix in my head the way I want the sky to look when I
wake--imperial violet, stars still shining, a shimmer of light in the
east--and check the locks again. Yes. Put my head down. Will myself
to sleep.

When I wake up, the sky is the way I wanted it to be, cool and silent,
and I vault myself into the front seat, drink the hour-old coffee
(finally tepid enough to drink), and gun it out of there, feeling alive,
alive, alive, and strong as hell, with orange hair that I tie back, as I
hit the onramp, to get it out of my face so I can drive with the windows
down. The rushing air is inexplicably cooler now.





12:08 AM



Tuesday, July 08, 2003




please don't let this mean I'm jinxing it



ok.


I think we're back on again over here.


I love you all. thank you for your patience with me and my neurotic amnesiac heart. She's found some peace of late.

am I finally figuring out how to live right...?




11:22 PM



Tuesday, June 24, 2003
king solomon's mines, exit seventy-five--
i'm still alive
i'm still alive
-tori amos.


so, things in my life are both crazy wonderful and miserable.

I guess it is always such. With me, at least. But sometimes the "intense" thing bogs me down and I wish I could never leave the house--that my time would just be domestic, and small, and not epic or raging at all.











12:48 AM



Monday, June 09, 2003
and now time is my time, time is my own
and I feel so alive yet feel so alone
-spoon.


two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both
and be one traveler, long I stood...
I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
-robert frost.


when I was young I knew a girl
who wouldn't love god as a test,
or gamble with her happiness
and so went astray
she fell away from the sight of the Lord
where she was free to do what she wanted
with gods of her own.
'Cause you're good enough,
good enough
good enough
to make it alone.
-neko case.




1:37 PM



Thursday, May 15, 2003





the overhaul is going down for a while.

I cannot write about this.

I am sorry.




9:36 AM



Friday, May 09, 2003



brain din

I walked again this morning around the streets near my house. It's really quite pretty and I think I'm gonna try to keep it up daily. Flowers that are buds one day blossom on my next trip past.

The houses are all old, Craftsman style and range from bungalows ensconced securely in old growths of trees and climbing vines and intricate gates to large things with huge picture windows I can see in through, and look at people's overlarge livingrooms, where not a thing seems out of place. One clapboard house always exudes a smell of mothballs when I walk by, which I love because it reminds me of my grandparents' old house.

Walking around today I found myself narrating the entire little journey in my head, language in my own brain thinking for me, as though I was telling a story I might read, or write, later. [I wonder--am I doing that now?]

It was a sensation that, once I was aware of it, abruptly became uncomfortable. To hear the cogs and wheels smoothly clicking away between your ears and there seems to be...nothing...you can do...to turn it off.

As I walked it just smoothly went on: "What a gorgeous rose. All yellow with pinked edges. I imagine the rest will bloom by tomorrow. I could never afford a house like this...oh! look at the date stamped in the sidewalk...this one says 1952...I think that's the earliest one I've seen so far...the rest are all repairs from 1992...he's driving much too fast for a little residential street like this, I don't care if he is going downhill...I'm surrounded by so much privelege, and...hey! what a fascinating pattern that gate is made into. I like how they would stylize the old gates as much as the houses...it seems to be an Arts-And-Crafts architectural phenomenon...and..." and on and on and on. I couldn't stop it.

I tried. It slowed to a crawl, and each time it attempted to take off again I'd just gently try to put it away, and let silence fill my head. But the world kept invading with sights and sounds and smells, and even my own awareness of the process made the voice start up again, narrating my own attempts at silencing myself: "No no no, don't start with that...okay, this is what you are supposed to do when you meditate....[and then I'd silence it again, but it would slowly rise up...]...so focus on something else. Breathe. Focus on you breath...[and I'd put it away again]..."

It was very hard, but I arrived back at my door having achieved, for a few seconds on and off, a bit of silence in my brain which, since I began to learn words, has been thinking with such florid and multilayered languages that I barely feel my feet on the ground sometimes.

The quiet was nice, for this girl who thinks too much.





12:24 PM



Wednesday, May 07, 2003




this is peace and nature in Hollywood. It is not so bad.

In the mornings I walk around the block. It is an old part of Hollywood and the jasmine and car exhaust battle for supremacy. These two smells dominate my morning walks.

Right now, at this time of year, the jasmine is winning, even down on Hollywood Boulevard where it tumbles in huge pillowy piles down over the crumbling retaining walls that hold small spans of garden back, moatlike, from pushing past the barriers out onto the road and spilling their carefully tended contents of roses and sweet alyssum, like the gardens are just lunging for escape from their adjacent apartments, doddering and old clapboards and crown mouldings under the dormers and eaves, dating back to the twenties and the blossoming of the city. Just feet away, the street is roaring with the sound of rushing Range Rovers, the crunch and plash of tires splattering the opaque black asphalt.

I see the same people with their same dogs each morning. The dogs are sweet; the people, alarming to a greater or lesser extent.





7:39 PM





would like very much to dissolve these last few days.
am therefore waiting for acid rain.


the saints and the desert use their heads
-the new pornographers.

how come I feel so washed up now
at such a tender age
I�m on a straight line and a man comes around
And tells me I got nowhere to go
Come back and tell me something I don�t know
-spoon.




7:26 PM



Monday, May 05, 2003



things I learned this weekend, or if I did not learn them anew, they were reinforced as true

The desert is sublimely beautiful.
Do not forget your goggles at home.
Shooting roman candles back and forth at other people in the dark is fun.
How to shoot a gun.
Turn right at the old wrecked car. No, not that one.
Don't drink TOO much. Just drink a lot.
Eating is unnecessary when you have the nutritious calories of beer.
I simply must do this more often.







5:07 PM



Friday, April 25, 2003




Die-In At Mr. Noodle

I had never protested before now, but here I was, running down Wilshire at full tilt with some guy I didn't know very well, trying to get audio from a roving breakaway contingent of black-clad protestors at the Westwood Federal Building.

I had been wary of this protest from the beginning. It was at night, unlike the recent marches I'd attended; there had been rising tensions with the LAPD for several weeks now at this location; and for some reason, despite its being the busiest intersection in LA, the cross-streets near Wilshire and Sepulveda seem devoid of the usual safeties afforded by a busy location. Unlike downtown or Hollywood, the buildings and streets in Westwood near the main artery of Wilshire are empty of people when night falls. The marble, metal and granite office-building walls seem to crowd in over the street, making a person on foot feel dwarfed and imprisoned. And if the street is shut down, no one can drive by to see what happens to a little crowd of protestors hemmed in by cops with teargas and rubber bullets.

I told myself this was just some apocalyptic thinking on my part, but nonetheless stopped in at a surplus store and picked up a mask for my eyes and a bandanna, if I needed to cover my mouth. I didn't really believe for a minute that my presence at this protest would make a whit of a difference, but I knew another night of sitting home and hearing reports of impending war would only leave me feeling depressed and impotent. At least I could say I was doing something, I thought, if I went to Westwood.

Once there I almost immediately ran into Brian. Brian works for the same little web-radio station as I, and had brought a mike and recorder for field recordings of the protest, the police (and, it turns out, the sheriffs as well, who had appeared only a hour or so into the event), and anything else of interest. It took us forever to work our way back and forth between barriers, crossing lines of cops and closed streets, to reach the intersection of Wilshire and Veteran where the protestors had congregated.

By this time their numbers had dwindled to a creepy forty or so--creepy because the group looked so small and alone, surrounded by a closing net of police and sheriff officers who clearly outnumbered them. I nervously tied the bandanna around my neck.

Nearby, a balcony of a small apartment building had been hung with a homemade banner reading "Support the troops / Hippies go home."

I do support the troops. I just happen to think a war in Iraq at this time, especially against the expressed wishes of the world population, is bad foreign policy. And I'm not a damn hippy: if I have to hear another fucking off-key rendition of "We Shall Not Be Moved" I'm gonna haul off and clock the next pasty fiftysomething schoolteacher singing next to me.

See? I'm not against violence. I just don't think war is a real smart move right now.

As the police opened the intersection the protestors began to dwindle more, and small groups of them began to break off and wander away from the main corner until almost no one was left. Brian looked slightly deflated. He switched off the microphone: no good audio here, with the cars blaring by and no one there.

We walked east on Wilshire. The cops stood around, nervously shifting, holding their long-snouted rubber-bullet guns with both hands rigidly across their chests. There was no sound. Just cars whooshing. Wilshire here is a wind tunnel.

Suddenly fifty walkie-talkies crackled and spat to life and the cops came unglued from their poses as six cruisers shot by us heading east towards the next major intesection at Midvale and Wilshire. Over the hiss of the walkie-talkies we heard "...breakway....front ot theatre...lying down in....now...several..."

Apparently a theatre nearby in Westwood was hosting a premiere; the diffusing protesters had discovered it, regrouped, and were staging a die-in on the street in front of it, stopping traffic and freaking the well-heeled premiere attendees out. Brian's eyes sparkled: here was some good audio.

"You wanna run for it?" he yelled at me over the sound of sirens as two more cop cars careened by us on Wilshire. "Sure," I yelled right back, and we were off. The mask around my neck bounced against my chin with each stride.

I was running down the street in the middle of normal everyday LA.

Cars were trundling past, their drivers staring at us, nonplussed. Somehow all the protestors had found the movie premiere and it was just us left on Wilshire. I abruptly felt very stupid, melodramatic, and...euphoric.

And then I felt winded. I realized I hadn't run anywhere in years. I'm not the running type. For those who like to divide their world into arbitrary distinctions of "types," I've always felt that there are two types of people in this world: those who run, and those who don't. Those Who Run get up at five in the morning, eat enriched corn flakes, drive smart cars and look askance when someone lights up a cigarette next to them. They consider marathons. They grab a bran muffin from the coffee cart at work. They work busily and when the day is over they stop at a California Chicken Cafe and bring home a nice square healthy meal for their kids, who have just been picked up from tutoring and soccer by their equally industrious other parent (second marriage).

Those who don't run are...well, like me. Face it, people. Running is undignified. We've evolved for aeons to a place where we no longer need to run to ensure our survival. Let's embrace that. Let's go with it. Yay for Darwinism, for enlarged cranial capacity, for more walking and less frenetic spinning of our spindly little legs which, if you've ever seen a cheetah or a horse at full tilt, you will notice are clearly NOT MEANT TO RUN WITH.

I mean, come on, people. As I've always pronounced, The only time I run is if something big is chasing me.

And here I was, running. What on earth was I thinking? My feet suddenly were bricks in my heavy-heeled boots. I found myself slowing against my will. A sharp pain stabbed me in the left ribcage. Not wanting to appear less than fit in front of Brian (who was still sprinting ahead), I kept panting on. We were almost to the corner. I could feel my brain rattling around against my jaw with each jarring step. These running-types--they must be insane. This is not fun. How is this fun? There is nothing good, nothing "zen," about this. It's miserable. I can't breathe, people.

We are now the only visible activists left on Wilshire and, as such, are vulnerable. I look positively disturbing and Black-Bloc-ish in my black bandanna and goggles. A gargantuan forest-green Cadillac Escalade slows as it passes and the man inside leans toward us to shout out his passenger-side window. The Doppler Effect morphs his voice as his speed picks up: "Fuuuuccckkkkk yoooo-ooo-ooo-oo-o!" From a distance he gives us the finger. I feel angry and infantile all at once.

I stopped at the corner. Up the block, back toward us, bravely marched the dinky little batallion of remaining protestors, waving their flags and hand-printed signs, shooting back insults over their shoulders at the cops behind them, further down the street. I notice abruptly the remaining activists--now parting ranks as they swarm around us, apparently headed back where we just ran from--all appear to be under 20.

I stand there panting, my shoulders feeling twenty pounds heavier than they usually do. Brian has vanished. I am worried about the police and do not like that I am alone. I join the crowd and head with them up Midvale into Westwood. At least there are plenty of people here, a factor that seems to dull the agressiveness of the cops.

Brian materializes somehere about a block and a half up. We are quiet as we watch the kids, primarily little punk types, dressed in black with patches pinned to their clothes and inauthentically shiny and clean Doc Martens, mill back and forth in front of a few other theatres. Someone still has a bullhorn and is shouting commands and protest rhymes, but the whole crowd begins to fracture as college students in front of restaurants and bars pass, looking nonplussed.

When the few remaining protestors stage a die-in in front of Mr. Noodle, I look at Brian. He looks at me. "I'm ready to go if you are," he says. "I think it's time," I agree, eyeing the kids as they gingerly get down on the street in front of the noodle house, and the diners sitting at cafe tables out front stare at them, horrified.

I give Brian a ride home and we sit silently in the car as I drive east on Sunset. I pull off the bandanna and mask. I was glad I went. It got me out of the house, gave me something to do other than just sit at home. I am reminded once of how a friend mentioned his assessment that people's political beliefs mirrored their own emotional issues and ways of handling authority.

I wonder what audio Brian got.

I hope it was the Cadillac driver's "fuck you."








2:47 PM



Thursday, April 24, 2003



happy birthday Lola

Went with the gigsville crew to Sanamluang for Thai food last night, and then right across the street to Jumbo's Clown Room (which has to qualify as the most bizarre non-sequitur even to serve as a moniker for a strip club).

It devolved into a huge party as one of their headlining dancers, whose name was Lola, celebrated her birthday that night:

DJ: "...now she's finally old enough to dance here!"






2:58 PM



Wednesday, April 23, 2003




what NOT to do:

Be in a horrendous emotional state because you've had a terribly trying day. It's probably one of the worst days of your life. Get a message on your cellphone from a friend with an innocuous, information-gathering type question. Don't listen to the whole message, so you don't realize that it's not necessary for you to call back when your world is falling apart. Instead, call her in hysterics and demand why she called you. She immediately notices you're freaking the fuck out and is very worried about you because she cares about you. Inbetween gasping sobs, tell her frustratedly that you don't want to talk about it. When she haltingly tells you the question she had to ask, yell out the answer and get off the phone right away, leaving her nonplussed, terribly worried, and upset.

Don't do that, 'cause I can't deal.

Now granted, if you do this, you ARE having one of the worst days of your life and have a helluva lot more to complain about than the fact that you feel emotionally unbalanced after fielding a phone call from a hysterical friend who didn't want to talk to you at all. But still.

argh. I feel all weird now.
7:23 PM







Just say No to drunk blogging.



10:39 AM



Thursday, April 17, 2003


The weird food rundown

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter...Lite: I can.
Shrimp Chips: Un-fucking-believeably Good.
squeezable butter in blue and pink: Wordlessly, indescribably wrong.
SpongeBob Squarepants Macaroni and Cheese from Kraft: Alarming. It looks normal until you mix all the ingredients together--then it abruptly becomes a stomach-turning shade of cerulean blue. It's marketed to parents as being Fun For Kids. What I want to know is what on God's green earth could make it turn from normal "cheezy" yellow to blue so fast? What sick fuck of a parent would want to feed this to their children? And what masochistic exec over at Kraft came up with this one? My roomate brought this home from the 99-cent store, and we had fun watching its amazing transformation.
Green ketchup: Highly disconcerting.
Pheylalanine: An artificial sweetener. Highly addictive. Yum.
Peeps: A reason to live. Probably one of the most artificial-seeming "foods" you can ingest and survive. And so, so so good. Added bonus: after two weeks exposed to air, they become hard, like little chick-shaped bricks of sugar, and are then of infinite use in weird art projects. One could prolly tile their bathroom walls with them in a very Pop-art kind of way. In fact, someone should.
Fat-free cheese: How, I ask you--how do they do it? But it is an acceptable substitute for real cheese.
Wow! Chips, any brand name: The risk of anal leakage is unappealing, yes--but here is a quote from Vanessa:
"I love Olestra. I have loved few things in this life of mine, but one of them is Olestra. I would be their spokesperson, if they let me. I'd love to rub it all over my body. Olestra--mmmmmm."

You heard the woman.

Got any to add? Throw 'em in the comments, I want to compile a resource volume on these things.






1:51 PM



Tuesday, April 15, 2003

I am not alone

The Onion Domesticorner presents

SPRING-CLEANING TIPS
For fresh, disinfected air, pour Lysol into the humidifier.
Have you had it with the drudgery of constantly scrubbing that dirty kitchen floor? Boo-fucking-hoo, Toots.
Once a week, tell yourself, "Man, I really gotta clean up this dump one of these days."
Keep a range-top burner on low flame at all times to eliminate airborne kitchen germs.
Jesus Christ, there's a thing called shelves, you pig.
If you are female, don't clean a thing. Cleaning promotes sexist stereotypes about women.

...and I'd like to add:

That lint-roller for your sweaters works damn fine on the carpet, too.
Gross kitchen floor? Cover it up with your trusty rug.
Got dirt in the corners? Bleach it. That way no one will see it.
If you don't have enough paper towels or 409 to clean the oventop, that's ok. Just wipe the grease in an evenly-dispersed manner over the whole surface. That way it will look clean. And so shiny.
Carpet spot? Scissors cut it out right nice.

and my personal fave, although not household-related:

Shoes scuffed beyond repair? Worry not! One word: Krylon.






11:30 AM








hungover haiku

tired this morning
gay cowboy bars are fun but
not on a work night.






10:20 AM



Monday, April 07, 2003




one of the good ones


Every street is dark and folding out
mysteriously
Where lies the chance we take
to be...
Always working,
Reaching out for
a hand that we can't see...
Everybody's got a hold on hope.
It's the last thing that's holding me.



Look at the talkbox in
mute frustration,
At the station,
There hides the cowboy--
His campfire flickering
on the landscape
That nothing grows on,
But time still goes on,
And through each life of misery:...
Everybody's got a hold on hope.
It's the last thing that's holding me.
-guided by voices.

Someone gave me one of the kindest and most meaningful compliments of my life tonight.
I think I shall spend the rest of my life striving to make it true.













11:49 PM







.even the rain bows down, let us pray...
...dance with a sufi and celebrate your top ten in the
charts of pain...
lover, brother, bouganvillia, my vine twist around your neck as
even the rain is sharp like the day as you
shock me sane...

I can be cruel.
I don't know why.

-tori amos [the queen of the personally-referential non sequitur, but i love her still]











12:21 AM



Sunday, April 06, 2003



the physics of...pasties

Yes, I am.

I am auditioning.

I can't fucking believe I let Normal (aka Danielle) talk me into this. But I gotta agree with her: I've always nursed a shamefully secret desire to do it. To command the attention of a room is one thing--to do it THIS way is another level entirely. It is so formidable, so unapolagetic, so brave, so proud, so ebulliently blossomingly blusteringly aggressive. It truly is an aggressive act, and any woman (or man) who disagrees with me is free to comment.

I'll be using my Chinese sword routine, so that'll be my gimmick. I only have a layman's (laywoman's?) experience with striptease, so I'll have to let the sword be my schtick.

It's quite a schtick (sorry, bad pun), after two years of studious practice.

In semi-related (that is, physically-oriented) news, there's finally a photo of me on the net that I don't hate. i still think I look....fluffy...in it, though.

Here, it's from the Twine show: http://www.monkeyview.net/id/491/twine/index.vhtml we're photo 18...this is my friend lydiadeetz's site. She's awesome. So are Mark and Greg, who I ended up hanging with 'til I comandeered lydiadeetz's camera.

Anyone who can get a photo of me where I don't look fat or drunk (in real life I am not fat, but often drunk), I'll pay you some serious cashmoney. Yo.







11:19 PM



Saturday, April 05, 2003




the thrill and the joy of art openings

Went to a very hipster-ish event tonite, and figured out a clue to how to function in such situations.

In order to succeed at that discussion with random people that is an inevitable part of such events, you must possess the firm belief that what you are saying is Very Interesting.

If you�re worried you�re being boring or crass or mundane or gauche or trite, you will shut up and look like a deer in headlights. You will also feel like one. Then you will drink too much. If there is enough booze left. Which there never is, 'cos you arrived fashionably late.

If, on the other hand, you are firm in your conviction that your blather about your little brother�s difficulties with his bike is Very Interesting, others will believe your little glamour and be unable to leave your side, their attention rapt.

Fascinating. Once again, it all comes down to swagger, and perhaps a bit of narcissism: you gaze in the mirror long enough and other people lean over your shoulder and peek in, sure that you're enraptured by something truly enthralling.

Interestingly, one of the featured photographs on display was one the artist had taken of two of my friends, Sid and LuckyDave, from Fireplay LA. Before we got kicked out of our most recent practice location we'd meet every week to practice firebreathing, firespinning, fire-eating, etc. It was interesting to see that this tres-chic photog had gone to our practice, thought we were cool, and taken shots. And here I was looking at his work, feeling squashed by the omnipresent and stifling Cool in the room.

All in the eye of the beholder. What do they say about glamour--that it cannot exist without the sense of exclusivity?

I'm reminded of the lyrics from a song I heard a long time ago and forgot the name of the musician--forgive me:

LA artist, LA artist
we eat 'em for breakfast, eat 'em for breakfast
Whadda they know? Whadda they know?
Where'd all the dip go? Where'd all the dip go?






10:54 PM






Wait, it's my birthday.

[at least, it was on Feb. 15th. I just got around to posting this, pulling it from my perpetually open word doc on the computer here:]

after working myself to the bitter and teeth-gritting bone tonite preparing for a brunch tomorrow, which people will be attending in honor of my birthday (and then we're heading out to Hollywood Blvd. two blocks away for an anti-war march) I�ve realized some things:

I am certifiably insane.
I am very much like my mother.
I am desperately in need of drugs, a vacation, and time spent alone�not necessarily in that order.





10:37 PM



Thursday, March 20, 2003





The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
-Robert Lynd, 1879-1949

People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.
-Herman Goerning, Propaganda minister for Adolf Hitler

O you who believe, do not prohibit good things that are made lawful by Allah, and do not aggress; Allah dislikes the aggressors.
-Qu'ran 5:87.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
-Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948








2:21 AM



Thursday, March 13, 2003


HA ha ha ha hee hee hoo ha....

From the Orange County Register (about half way down the page):

"Was that really the president of France on KROQ/106.7 FM Wednesday morning?

Members of the radio station's morning team, Kevin and Bean, insist it was. Impersonating comedian Jerry Lewis, KROQ DJ Ralph Garman called the president's office and, after a long hold, was put in touch with Jacques Chirac.

"It was NOT a hoax," Garman wrote in an e-mail. But he said station management had asked him not to speak about it yet; as of Wednesday afternoon, KROQ said that the matter was being investigated, but otherwise had no comment.

Garman had called the president's office and, after a dead-on Lewis impersonation with the secretary, was put on hold. The station then went to commercials and songs. When Kevin and Bean returned, they said that, to their amazement, Chirac had answered and they had recorded the conversation.

Garman seemed honestly flustered during the exchange, dropping any punchlines and simply saying that he was worried about French-American relations. Chirac said he was worried, too, but said that the two countries would always be friends, even if they didn't agree about Iraq.

Chirac - if it was him - initially expressed skepticism that he was really talking to Lewis, but after Garman spoke, Chirac said, "I recognize your voice." At the end of the conversation, the president said he was "a big fan" of the comedian.

If it wasn't a hoax, KROQ officials could be worried about fallout from France, or Lewis, or both. In January, a radio station in Miami was criticized when its morning team used a tape of Fidel Castro's voice to get through to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."









11:19 AM



Tuesday, March 11, 2003




...and in other news, the Senate announces "We don't WANT to be your friend anymore! We don't we don't we don't!!!"

Hot holy mother of god. I can't believe I pay taxes for this shit.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/sprj.irq.fries/index.html

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," a culinary rebuke of France, stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq.

"Ditto for "french toast," which will be known as "freedom toast."

The name changes were spearheaded by two Republican lawmakers who held a news conference Tuesday to make the name changes official on the menus.

Across the country, some private restaurants have done the same.

'This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France,' said Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration."






12:06 PM



Friday, March 07, 2003

Culled from latenite depressed docs. Oh, what fun!!!

...I have read all those books, those self-aware, self-conscious books, where you are supposedly the proverbial onion of yourself, peeling yourself apart layer by bitumous layer, traveling inward towards a center of sorts that you imagine is there, beneath all the translucent bits; through the external parts to the inner, through the Jungian parts and then into the Freudian parts, the ego and id and superego and deeper and deeper, hitting each one as you plan to penetrate further; and then you are supposed to land at an end, an epiphany to end all epiphanies, and that is It. There you are. The world is solved. Right?

I cannot get over the fact that I can�t seem to reach that center; and I worry that if I already have at some point it wasn�t impressive enough for me to even notice, or if it�s one of those bullshit things that �you�ve known all along, in your bones.� Intuitive--right? Well, intuition schmintuition. No "intuition" of existential significance is going to help me get through the night. Why can�t I escape the feeling that there should be more? Further inward to go? A bigger better answer than what I�ve gotten so far?

Maybe there is nothing bigger or better. Maybe I�ve reached the end of the introspection rail line, and the tracks hit a flat wall here like some Road Runner cartoon. Maybe I have plumbed the depths. I have mapped the unmappable, and found it is not so large, not so vast after all, it is a known value, and my story of myself is now reduced to a required-reading book from tenth grade that you read and re-read and analyzed over and over �til you found every clue, studied every nuance, analyzed and debated every literary device, allusion, metaphor and possible theme or patterns; and the book has now been wrung dry, meaningless, to bare bones and powdery teeth, moth�s wing-brittle and dusty and so, so so incredibly sorrowful; it will never hold a mystery again, not a single one, reduced to a childhood map where the treasure�s been found�and you now know years later that your treasure, once so brilliant and depthless and deep green, was really just some pennies and rusty old paperclips and faded candy wrappers.

I hate books for that reason.

They are wordlessly lovely, those worlds built of words--and then they cease to mean a thing, a mirage melting before your eyes, leaving you with the dull and faded day-to-day life you really live.













I harbor a strong distaste for postmodern ironic scenesters, and here's why.


I hate that.
How the homeostasis of the world remains and remains and remains, but I never do. Mold is always creeping back into my shower. The floor is always getting filthy again, the dust always building up again. I hate it. I want to eliminate it from my life.

I thought living halfass was going to be so glamorous.

You know, and we bank ourselves up with irony so we don't collapse. We pile our ironic trash around us. Things like kitschy memerobilia, blow-up dolls, slightly-smaller-than-life-size cardboard cutouts promoting football games by teams we don�t like, things with fish on them, kids� toys, corporate-synergy cross-marketed crap we pick up at fast-food chains, disturbing religious tracts, non-sequiturs, goofy books like �Chincilla Farming,� horribly dated audio equipment, sexist/racist flotsam from years past, stuff from Japan we can�t understand. And we laugh. Like we�re having fun.

But we�re not. We laugh like they�re toys, we tell ourselves we are being playful, wide-eyed and childlike.

We�re actually angry.

We are anything but wide-eyed and childlike. We are so lost, burnt out and cynical that if something genuine came up and slapped us across the face we would be unable to recognize it as anything more than a laughable twist of fate. We are old, old, old, because all this crap we gather into us, all the useless trash, is the sick relics, the flotsam and jetsam of a culture pasted together poorly with things that don�t matter. A small, petty, bitter little culture, where we are tiny and can do nothing large. We are nursed on childhood stories of epics and dragon-slayings, and then loosed into the workaday world to sit down all day long, to buy a house, to scoop out litter boxes. We can�t even become rock stars. We can�t even become football players. We can�t be presidents.

�What do you want to be when you grow up?� I got asked ten million fucking times.

We can�t even be astronauts. We will never be doctors, or firemen. Those dreams of glory die. We work in offices, get 401K�s, tell our friends that the health benefits make the lower pay worth it. We pay bills. We refinance and make dinner plans. We research CARS, for fuck's sake.

So if we do gather that ironic trash in around ourselves, understand. Understand that we are shell-shocked victims, we�re lost our minds, rattling there in the cage: we sit amid the shards of our madhouse, imagining we build an epic and lovely castle, and stare lovingly at our meaningless treasures all day.







12:39 AM



Thursday, March 06, 2003




A little night music, a little morning fog

Went to the Twine event with Mash Up Soundsystem last night at the Knitting Factory...it was great. It was neat to see them in action and the music was incredible. I think it's really quite rare. Breakcore and noise-broken beats-type stuff is pretty new and it was very fun to be a part of such an intimate show, with the dj's and laptoppers hanging off the stage, dancing with the audience...

But two kamikazes would have been enough. That third one, as always, was a bad idea.

So what was it that saved my sorry ass at 9:30 am this morning when I verrrrry sloooowly eased my achy hungover self onto my office chair and stared, drooling, at the up-close detailing of the faux-wood formica of my desk?

Few things clarify the important parts of life and cut thru the morning misery like the Swedish Chef: "Herndee berndee, en dee chocolat, yerm yerm yerm, en de moose...moose? Mooshe mooshe mooshe."

Thank you Kazaa, for delivering the magic of the Swedish Chef to mitigate my hangover. I feel so much better!








10:50 AM



Monday, March 03, 2003



Lord, help me to live a life made more remarkable
by its unwillingness to be crushed by Your will.











5:53 PM







workaday dada


consummately

boring.



live your life in much the way you while away the hours unbowed and unbroken at home, undercover...lights on low and groundcovering, busted and short bursts of activity during which you call yourself

all you ever were meant to be, oh yeah

till the urgency peaks and sinks its soar corrupted, your fall from what you were meant to be
so inevitable, and so complete a reduction,
a loss,
a line lost gone spinnin thru your palms cutting deep leaving you leagues lower and reduced compressed in upon by the space, the space, an increased density of life that is harder to move thru, harder to walk--


live each day like a broken rhyme,
unmetered and
with no good ending.




12:55 PM



Wednesday, February 26, 2003



Shows in LA to check out...

Haloscan is down so my comments are off for a day or so...they are a great company and should be back up soon, I'm sure.

Here's some upcoming shows that should be good if you live in LA:


BENEFIT CENCERT FOR THE AMNESTY OF CHHOM NIMOL
with RADAR BROS.
FUTURE PIGEON
BRAZZAVILLE and
dj sets by RODDY from IMPERIAL TEEN
Sunday, March 2 - Derby - $10 (minimum donation)
"Chhom Nimol, lead singer of a popular local L.A. Cambodian rock band Dengue Fever has been arrested. She was apprehended during the "code orange" terrorist sweep Friday, February 7th returning home from a concert in San Diego. Chhom Nimol is being held without bail in an I.N.S. detention center in San Diego. Our efforts now are to keep her in this country with her family and friends...lawyer fees are expensive. We have planned two events, a fundraiser/party on Thursday, February 27th at the Short Stop bar, and a benefit concert featuring the Radar Brothers, Future Pigeon, Brazzaville, and special guests on Sunday, March 2nd at the The Fold in the Derby. For more information email us at denguefever23@hotmail.com."

FYI, Chhom Nimol is one of the least dangerous people in America and I am disgusted by her arrest. See what I mean here.

More shows:

Spaceland, Feb 26: Biblical Proof of UFOs

Spaceland, Friday Feb 28 $18: TORTOISE, MOUNTAIN GOATS

Tuesday, March 4 - Derby - $7: THE 88 10p

Wednesday, March 5 - Silverlake Lounge - $7: SILVERSUN PICKUPS, PINE MARTEN, SPARKLEJET, END TRANSMISSION

Spaceland, Mar 5 $8/$10: Joan Of Arc, Hella, Molecular

Thursday, March 6 - Derby: DENGUE FEVER (that is, if they let her out of jail...)

Spaceland, Mar 8 $8: Brian Jonestown Massacre

Troubador, march 8: TED LEO & the PHARMACISTS, ATOM & HIS PACKAGE, Aislers Set, Erase Errata
$10 adv � 7:30Doors

Troubador, March 9: DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, THE VELVET TEEN
SOLD OUT [fuck. -m.]

Troubador, march 11: Q & NOT U, ENGINE DOWN, Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower

Spaceland, Saturday March 15th: The Sea and CAKE, Califone
$15 Advance $17 Day of Show

Tuesday, March 18 - Silverlake Lounge: MIDNIGHT MOVIES, UNIVAC

Spaceland, Tues Mar 18 $8: The Hackensaw Boys

Troubador, march 19 $10 adv: PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES

Thursday, April 3 - Silverlake Lounge: THE 88

Spaceland, Tues April 8 $8: The Black Keys

Spaceland, Fri April 11 $10: Nobukazu Takemura

Spaceland, Sat April 12: Angels of Light (Michael Gira of The Swans), Devendra Banhart, WACO
$12 in advance/$14 at the door








1:01 PM



Tuesday, February 25, 2003







Michele is slowly dissolving...

I dyed my hair with Feria on Saturday, a dark red. Now my entire fucking head is swelling up and my glands are swollen and achy. It's actually a little difficult to swallow. It doesn't look weird at first glance, but I can tell.

Apparently there's a chemical in some dyes that causes this. Der.

I can't honestly get all up in arms about this; I can't be all self-righteously indignant, 'cos I didn't do an allergy test with the dye before I used it. And I tend to have sensitive skin. I just never had a problem with hair dye before, and I assumed that this dye job would be uneventful like any other. But with me, nothing is ever that simple. So add this to the list of things I should have known were gonna cause a problem but still did nothing about.

So watch out for things containing phenelenediamine and ethylenediamine. They appear in some red dyes & red paints, some "black henna" tatoos, and some epoxy glues and solvents.

I've got a doctor's appointment later today, hopefully he can shoot me up with some cortisone.






10:26 AM



Monday, February 24, 2003




An Argument for Class Warfare

Dear Roberta and Chris Hanley, who live at Eleven Brooks Street in Venice (and whose phone number is still in my posession and I would post it if I were home), a block from the beach, in a large industrial-looking loft space with modernist furniture and several Basquiats leaned up against the walls:

You are evil, evil, evil. The only positive thing to come from going to your stupid party was that the absolute revulsion I feel at you and your awful peers reminds me, by contrast, of how many genuinely nice people are in the world. You wanted us to play avant-garde sound collage IDM, and you handed me several cd's, but when I asked you which tracks you liked you told me you had not listened to the albums. Or you wouldn't deign to talk to us at all, instead sending your little personal assistant trotting over to tell us what Madame wished to hear: "something you can dance to," even tho we'd been spinning dance music all night. I was disgusted with the video projections you had on the walls, which were shot with someone's hi-8 videocamera and featured either midgets hanging out on the set of some midget-related movie, like they were wacko po-mo curiousities; zooming in on the tits of the women midgets, filming as a beautiful 19-year old model-type girl (of normal stature, in a tight black dress) shimmied and danced in the middle of all the midgets...then you flipped to shots that the mystery cameraman, so obviously present even tho he wasn't in the shot, took of a bunch of young model / actress types as they chatted, zooming in on their crotches and their breasts; the teenage girls giggled and fluttered their hands as they talked, and tried on different designer outfits, the camera lingering in on their legs, trying as much as possible for an upskirt shot. Oh, and video of you two at parties sitting around and talking with other presumably important people, as if to say, Look, we're important enough to hang out casually with other really rich people! And how no one in the entire party full of Hot Young Actors whose faces I recognize but names I don't know, and Beautiful Young Things and Rich Middle-Aged Fashionista Types even watched, they just tittered and nattered on to one another, the volume in the room rising so hugh that the gossipy voices drowned out the music, as though to watch this disgusting spectacle would prove they were interested, and to be anything but jaded and disaffected would be crass, so no one looked; and then you switched to hours of close-up video projections of Vincent Gallo and Julia Delpy just talking. Sitting, and eating, and talking. Your fawning fascination disgusts me. There was no sound; it wasn't about what they were saying. You didn't give a shit. You just wanted to show everyone that you'd had lunch with these people. You're fucking disgusting and the way you treat people is abhorrent. You fucked with the schedule at the last minute, forcing Joe to spin for two more hours than he'd prepared for, and then you tried to pay him less than you'd originally said you'd pay, telling him you were on a budget as you stood in front of a large Basquiat--a work costing near millions of dollars. When I tried to engage you in a discussion about the piece, hoping for a vague flutter of humanity, you shrugged and said that you weren't too sure what the painting was about, but that it was "okay."

I hope you enjoy your brutal isolation in your minimalist fortress with your bouncers at the door who made us take our shoes off when we walked in. I hope you atrophy and crumble to dust in your tiny tiny little world, a world you have the money to make wide and huge and wonderful but instead fill with vapid and meaningless pantomimes of material and social success.

Fuck you. Thanks for reminding me how lucky and how rare my friends and I are to feel deeply, and to think deeply, and to fully inhabit our lives.






2:46 PM



Wednesday, February 19, 2003

Separated at birth?...

...those sexy suit-wearing bastards:

exhibit A: http://theinterpol.free.fr/audiovisuals/visual/london_93_feet_east/index.html...Carlos of Interpol....

and exhibit B: Go see for yourself...believe it or not, he goes to my gym...http://fusionanomaly.net/crispinhellionglover.html.

I swear to god they're related.







3:53 PM



Wednesday, February 05, 2003





Note to self: be more boring

I closed my Hotmail today to be returned to the MSN homepage, where I saw a link called "10 Women to Avoid."

It turned out to be an article for men all about chicks they shouldn't date: chronic cheaters, gold diggers, etc. Good advice, actually. But then there was one: Women With Too Much Personality. Basically, don't date a woman who's busy, interesting, or has a life of her own, I guess.

"Although women with lots of personality can be exhausting, some men do enjoy them. Just be sure you can handle it before you get involved."

mmmmmkay.





5:23 PM



Sunday, February 02, 2003

Congratulations! You are a....nerd





Which OS are You?










1:09 PM



Saturday, February 01, 2003


god, not again.


I was a little child when the first one blew up. School was transformed into a funeral for the week.

Now, today, I had agreed to substitute-teach a class of little kids.

God, what will I say?






9:07 AM



Monday, January 27, 2003




starting off on the right f***ing foot

What are your first coherent thoughts of the day?

For some those come shortly after a shower and coffee, but for me they don't occur until they're absolutely necessary: when I've left the house, and am driving in morning rush-hour traffic through the heart of Hollywood, on my way to work.

LA is a driver's city as well as a driver's worst nightmare: no other American city of such scale has been designed (if LA can even be said to have been designed--I doubt you could really attribute much self-awareness to its spontaneous generation) and built after the popularization of the motor vehicle, and no other city better typifies American social consciousness. You'll find the few rare examples of drivers who let you in or give the "thank you wave," but on the whole it's a town that pays facile lip service to brave-new-world, latt�s-for-all tolerance for fellow man while deep down in its Cadillac-Escalade-gut gunning to ream you right off the road.

Most people's first thought and first words of the morning are some sort of meditation on their dislike for work--one which is predicated on their hopes and dreams for something better, a vivid and lovely alternative to their cubicle-driven existence, a dream close to their heart, that they nurture and hold dear. Others think about getting their loved ones taken care of, off to school / work with sandwiches and themselves off to their own job where they look forward to chatting it up with coworkers. Their first words of the day are something like "Morning, Bob," or "Hi honey, how'd you sleep?" or "I better get some gas," or "Can I get nonfat milk in that?"

My first conscious thought of the day is Getthefuckoffthemotherfuckingroadyoumotherfuckingsonofabitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

or [muttered] youstupideffingmoron;

or ohforcryingoutloud jesuseffingchrist.

I can't help but think this is having a negative impact on my worldview and damping my el�n a bit.








10:23 AM



Friday, January 24, 2003



this is your brain on Crunch Berries

I want a drink. It's been a really intense day at work, probably the most intense day since I began this position.

:)

Yay for the weekend.

I'd also like to state that I plan to watch the super bowl.

I hate watching sports. I also don't have a tv, so this means I will have to go to a bar or a friend's house or something. So why am I watching the super bowl?

The commercials.

This is weird, 'cos I am always ranting about how much I despise consumer culture and it's cheap, trite, lame-ass and overly glib attempts to manipulate me and morph my brain into a consumption machine. But honestly, now, it's been effing forever since I saw television, and I'm hankering for some good old-fashioned brain candy, much in the manner that one might crave, say, Captain Crunch.

Mmmm. Maybe they'll have a commercial for that, too.





3:11 PM



Sunday, January 12, 2003





stir crazy, lead feet

Ever feel like the millions of great ideas you have, all the potentiality in the world, isn't enough?

I drove north today on the 101 to Las Virgenes and out to the ocean to go to the market. I know there are three dozen other supermarkets between me and the one at Malibu, but I needed to get away. I've been wanting more and more to get away now for a while; and it's in response, I think, to feeling my own body grow silent, and quiet; I have weekends off like the rest of the people in this city, and I spend them sitting inside my little box, qietly panicking that I do not know what to do with my time; that those ten million wonderful ideas are going to die, stillborn, because I cannot move to act on any of them.

I spend so many hours of my life searching for that brilliant passion, that madness, that intensity of living; or at least, I spend so many hours wondering why it isn't there. A friend calls it her dragon-slaying moods.

The problem, we've both agreed, is that there are no dragons.

I am craving the desert, the mountains, a forest, anything. A different city, a break into a place where every movement is conscious, every second is lived with vividity.

I remember camping in Death Valley last year as summer waned and the high desert air grew freezing at night; and me and two friends got drunk by a campfire and huddled in our tent, in the thunder and the rain, alone in the middle of nowhere, a sweeping vista of mountains sloping down, extending miles and miles, a lavender-grey haze of distant brush and stones, the black-and-white shatter of the sky as lightning, green with electricity, crackled through the air.

Now tomorrow I have to drive to work again.






6:06 PM



Friday, January 10, 2003






the light here in glendale is astonishing--here, in this little narrow isthmus of land between the san fernando valley and the san gabriel valley--the light hangs in the air, is tangible, alive, touchable--your hands feel it on your fingertips--you could part it like a warm curtain--and every hill is become a luminist painting, every tree a skeletal silver-print hand slid between you and the honey, the apricot sky distant and dredged with clouds, set against the black mountains, the light absent from them as it bends backwards away from us, receding along the round of the earth to the western ocean...







5:31 PM





...inspired to new lows of broke-ness by Tana's money woes?

There may be truth to the "roommates' lives move in similar patterns" stuff--or maybe not, since I prolly couldn't get a loan now if my life depended on it.

I had enough money to cover the rent check in the bank, plus a $700 overdraft limit. So why the bouncy boing-boing-boing?

Ah-ha--listen, grasshoppah--money you put in at the ATM is held for a 24-hour period. Thus the boing.

I had heard of the ATM-hold phenomenon, but it just didn't occur to me that this would trip me up; that the stars and the timing of the whole universe would get up on its side and tilt to the left to allow the little pinballs of serendipity to click, rattle, and finally slow their pendulum-metronomic movement into the parts of the cosmic machine that would fuck me up so effectively.

I can't believe it--if I could go back in time, to that lunch break I took to go to the bank, and just take the effing time to stand it that damn long-ass line, instead of being little miss clever-multitasker and trotting out to the ATM, I wouldn't have a bounced rent check on my record and would still have the cumulative 31 bucks in fees I've been charged for this bullshit!

Fuck washington mutual.

Does anyone know if this kinda stuff goes on a report when a potential new landlord runs your credit?






10:22 AM



Thursday, January 09, 2003



the human mute button

I have discovered that I have a unique talent for immediately stopping all light conversation every time I walk into the kitchen at work.

No matter what sort of banter I can hear from the next room (my office is very close to the kitchen), no matter how ebullient or happy the mood, no matter if there are two people or eight, they all instantly shut up when I walk in.

Am I spooky? Are people afraid of me?

Maybe it's cos I'm afraid of them? I've always been socially inept.

My friend at work, Trish, says that it's because I "really own the space around" me. Is that some sort of veiled way of saying I should lose weight? Heh.









12:41 PM



Friday, January 03, 2003


okay, so I lied. Instead of doing my show I went home and took a nap.

I feel like crap.


4:11 PM







I hab a code.

Blargh. I have a cold. And I am at work. I am at work and I have a cold.

Day-Quil, take me away.

Oh, I will be doing the show today though. Tune into killradio.org at 2 pm.

I'll try not to breathe too much on the mic.





10:22 AM



Thursday, January 02, 2003

trickle-down....something

From the LA Times:

CRAWFORD, Texas -- President Bush said today he will unveil an economic-stimulus package next week, promising a plan that will benefit all Americans and rejecting criticism that his policies are tailored to help the wealthy.

Mr. Bush, so far all your actions seem to follow the classic principles of "trickle-down economics," practices that reached their height during the Reagan administration and continued largely unfettered thereafter, prompting national economic policy that loosened regulations and constraints on large companies, precipitating today's horrendous financial scandals and abuses of corporate power. Are you sure trickle-down economics still works? One day of one of these exec's salaries would pay off all my student loans, all my credit debt, and all my medical bills. Instead I'm struggling day-to-day. Aren't you concerned about my needs, Mr. Bush?

"I'm concerned about all people," Bush told reporters after a lengthy tour of his Texas ranch. "I understand the politics of economic stimulus-- some people want to turn it into class warfare."

Golly, sir, it kinda IS class warfare--waged against the poor, when all your policies are designed to deliver the very same breaks and relaxing of restrictions that could do so much good for the poor--to the rich instead. I'd say you've turned it into class warfare. How am I supposed to feel? I NEVER have any hope of being as well-off as the people you're catering to, EVER. The American Dream of rising up thru the muck of society, the myth of the poor immigrant who becomes a capitalist billionaire, is dead. It doesn't work. We are living in a hegemony. Thanks for making it even harder.

Aides have said in recent days that the president has not yet approved any new economic stimulus plan, and Bush gave few clues about what the package will contain. He made plain, though, that its primary focus will be to create jobs.

"What I'm worried about is job creation, and I'm worried about those who are unemployed," he said.

Riiiight. Hmm. Isn't there an...election coming up? Now's a good time to begin paying lip service to the little people, I guess.

Aides say the package probably will include acceleration of some tax cuts and breaks he won from Congress in 2001 as well as new benefits for shareholders' dividends. There also may be new tax breaks for investors and additional depreciation breaks for businesses.

To avoid a political backlash, advisers say they are likely to recommend that Bush no longer consider speeding up tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Hmm. Good idea.

"Next week when I talk about an economic stimulus package I will talk about how to create jobs, how best to create jobs as well as how to take care of those who don't have a job," Bush said. "I'm concerned about all people."

Keep harping on that populist point, there, Bush. You're on thin ice with the economy as it is right now.

Bush said investors should take heart in the new year, given that the economy is still growing-- albeit slowly-- despite a recession, terrorist attack and rash of corporate scandals.
"And yet the economy still grows," he said. "That's very positive. I recognize there are some uncertainties."

Yeah, like all those reports about how our anemic economy will dip further if we start a war. Maybe you should quit the sabre-rattling, there, dude.

The Labor Department reported that the number of newly laid-off Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits rose by 13,000 last week after declining for two consecutive weeks.

That's 'cos people don't file claims during the holidays, folks. Claims rise right before and dip at holidays; then they go back up afterwards. It's good they've got the Office of Homeland Security monitoring me constantly--even if I am broke, I feel less...alone.





10:55 AM



Wednesday, January 01, 2003
beginning-of-a-new-year-thank-you's

.Jake. For (most incidentally) inspiring this post. For (vastly more importantly) being what the definition of a friend is, even though he didn't know me all that well to begin with. For looking me in the eye and saying that You're trying so hard to understand everyone else's point of view and take everyone's side, but someone's gotta take your side, 'cause you're not doing it. And for being right about that. For opening my eyes not only to social / political injustices in the world outside, but also to injustices and errors I commit on the inside--and for being an advocate through it all. I can only hope that someday it will become a fair exchange.

.Joe. For showing me, for the first time in my life and in all my relationships, that I might actually possibly be deserving of something good, deserving of something whole and of someone kind, despite how neurotic I am, despite how impossible I am, despite how nutty I am. for showing me that things still might be okay and I might actually still get a chance at something good and lovely anyway. You have made me believe I have a chance, when before the future looked like one miserable bout after another.

.Kelsey. For being my absolute unequivocal and always irreplaceable Best Buddy Friend Forever since junior high school. My heart is yours. I have so much to learn from you about bowing down before life's lessons, and about facing everything with less fear and judgement. i cannot wait to be eight-six with you.

.Chris. For teaching me what those buttons do and unintentionally opening a whole new world to me, and for teaching me the needs of the heart and soul as they are writ large across worlds, cultures, lifetimes and peoples. You are my teacher of social integrity. I will always buy you a beer as long as I live.

.Vanessa. I didn't know what would happen to me when I gave you my phone number so you could come over and practice playing pool on my shitty rec-room table, but you're made my life vaster and richer, and made me feel less alone in the world of women. In a sandy desert of featureless normalcy, you are my oasis of wonderful miraculous wildness.

.Tana. For being the most amazing and wonderful roommate ever, and I want to tell you that I am SO, so so so sorry for being a slob all those times and for the evil upstairs neighbor. If I could, I'd set fire to him.

.Ryan Freitas. I don't know you, and you barely know me as a friend of an old friend. But watching your blog every day showed me a new way to let my soul spill out on a page, in a safe place where I could begin to take risks and write without fear. Gangcandy has gone silent of late, and I miss it, but thank you for it; and if I ever write a book culled from my blog bits, or extrapolated therefrom, I will have you to thank for it. Your writing gave me inklings of what an incredible vehicle for self-expression and self-creation a blog could be.

.all the blog pals I've made since. You guys are great. I promise some day I'll update my site with a picture. I swear. No, really.
Honestly, though, thanks for showing me the beginnings of community on the most-impersonal of communcation modalities, the computer. i didn't think it was possible and you proved me wrong.

.Mom and Dad. There are no words. I love you.

.All my pals and friends, near and far. Even to New York and France. yes, you. :) You are my sunshine.

A-fucking-men. Now THIS is how you start a New Year. Wooooooohooooo!

Hope this one kicks ass for you too, dear reader.

best,
-michele.






4:13 AM



Tuesday, December 31, 2002



"Americans are fatter � and drunker"

I love this article and its headline. Let's deconstruct, shall we?

http://www.msnbc.com/news/853415.asp

Americans are fatter � and drunker
MSNBC/ Reuters

[Fatter and drunker than who? Or than when? Than when...we instituted Prohibition? Fatter and drunker than when we colonized New England? That's not news. Everybody knows we were totally emaciated and god-fearing back then. Fatter and drunker than Europeans? Oh sure. Those freaks drink wine with LUNCH. Also, this declaration is almost...celebratory. Is Reuters proud of this? It sounds like it.]

MORE THAN one in five American adults could be classified as obese in 2001, up almost 6 percent from the year before. And more than one in four Americans engage in bouts of binge drinking � defined as five or more drinks at one sitting with the goal of getting drunk � up 35 percent from 1995.
�I guess you could say we�re fat and drunk,� said Timothy Naimi, a researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, summarizing a pair of studies based on a huge telephone survey of more than 200,000 adults.

[Very astute, Tim.]

�We�re a society that is somewhat taken with excesses,� Naimi said.

[Oh c'mon, Tim. You can't seriously be saying we're enamored with the idea that bigger is better, can you?]

The studies� publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association was timed by the journal to coincide with the revelry associated with New Year�s eve.

[You guys suck. Way to ruin a party, AMA. Next you'll be telling us red meat is unhealthy or something.]

DRUNK AND PROUD OF IT
Drinking to get drunk is more prevalent among men than women, with men accounting for 81 percent of the 1.5 billion binge-drinking episodes in 2001, it said.

[Wonder what that has to do with the possibility of being conscripted. Hmm. I don't know about those stats. I bet women get loaded just as often but don't go bragging about it.]

Roughly half of adult Americans do not drink at all.

[Losers.]

Efforts to stem binge drinking might find a parallel in anti-smoking campaigns that seem to be working, Naimi said.

[Note to Mr. Naimi: Why do all my friends still smoke? I'm concerned about your reasoning here, sir.]

Too often, Naimi said, heavy drinking episodes are accepted as a joke or heralded as a badge of courage, and ebullient liquor advertising too often targets the young. The growing fad of �supersizing� bar drinks has become as common as fast-food franchises� expanded portions of fatty French fries.

[Those things are great. I have very little money. I appreciate a good value.]

OBESITY DECLARED A GLOBAL PROBLEM
Obesity is another killer, and its prevalence among U.S. adults nearly doubled in the past decade to 21 percent of adults, the CDC researchers said.
Obesity has been declared a global problem by the World Health Organization, and 45 percent of adults in some oil-rich Persian Gulf nations are obese, study author Ali Mokdad said.

{The World Health Organization yet again makes a strikingly accurate declaration of the obvious. Why do we pay these people?]

�We drive longer distances, everything is done by machines, we spend all our time on computers,� Mokdad said by way of explaining the fattening of some Americans. Eating healthy foods requires effort, he said, while eating a bad diet is relatively inexpensive.

[No shit. Really?]

Excess fat, like alcohol abuse, causes a host of related health problems, the researchers said. �Each year, an estimated 300,000 U.S. adults die of causes related to obesity, and diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death,� Mokdad wrote.

[Gross. Americans need to get their ass in gear. We are the biggest overconsumers on the planet: of oil, water, food, all resources. Get a grip, people. This is not the brave new wonderful world that you see in Visa commercials and ads for AOL. Take off those little Starbucks-logo-emblazoned blinders you've got on and see the world for what it is: its wealth being plundered and its people being damaged so huge corporations can sell their shitty products to your fat ass.
I'm not saying I'm some paragon of physical fitness and responsible behavior, 'cos I'm not. I drink too much. In fact, I am one of those occasional binge drinkers this article talks about. But I don't think the world owes me a tank full of gas and a steak. I try to make responsible purchases, even if it's just the fucking napkins in my kitchen and non-genetically modified food. I try to involve myself with organizations that do good work and improve the well-being of the community.
I also throw out my recyclables though, 'cause it's too much trouble to find a local recycling center. So maybe I'm just full of shit.
Happy new year.










2:08 PM







Auld Lang Syne

from the LA Weekly, their year-end "List Issue." These were the ones I felt like I could have written. Well, these and the one about the ten worst hangovers.

Places I Saw People Use Their Turn Signals, 2002

1. Laurel Canyon Boulevard & Fountain Avenue (twice).
2. Exiting parking lot at Rock & Roll Ralphs (then car sped through crosswalk with mother and child in stroller crossing).
3. Turning into Gymboree parking lot, Sherman Oaks.
4. 101 to 110-south offramp, though indicating opposite direction.
5. Hollywood Boulevard eastbound, turning south on Las Palmas (me).
6. Sunset & Las Palmas, later that same year � Angelyne.
7. Mulholland, turning right (west) from Woodrow Wilson � pretty sure it was Quentin Tarantino, or possibly Queen Latifah.
8. Sunset & La Brea, eastbound black car running red light (and not turning).
9. Mangled Honda on its side, Gardner & Hollywood.
�Libby Molyneaux

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

Home of the Brie: A HATER RATES 2002
By Steven Mikulan

1. Comeback of the Year: Swingers. Just when you thought swingin' couples had gone the way of lava lamps and Nehru jackets, they came back like . . . lava lamps and Nehru jackets. Lurid courtroom details about Danielle van Dam's parents' yen for group sex inside their garage and dirty dancing at Poway's unforgettably named Dad's Caf� & Steakhouse reminded us that carnal swap meets still exist. The San Diego Union-Tribune eagerly sketched the area's swinger topography: "With names like Club Exchange, La Villa and Club CB, they host parties almost every weekend in Oceanside, San Diego, Encinitas, Escondido, Fallbrook and elsewhere. There are two clubs in Temecula, a tract-home community of 67,000 people." Suddenly, "behind the green door" meant a garage entrance to a suburban split-level.

2. Worst Thing Seen at a Movie Theater: KCRW Trailers. These insufferable commercials follow the journey of the radio station's idealized listener-explorer � some dweeb traipsing around the planet wearing a headset that sprouts milelong tentacles pumping him, no doubt, with KCRW's trademark techno-lite, snorey world music and fake rave noise.

3. Cheapest Way To Landscape Pearblossom Highway: Just let people keep maintaining their family car-crash shrines.

4. Most Hideous Sculpture: Any one of the angel statues that littered the sidewalks of L.A. this year and last. The creepy fiberglass figures were sponsored by A Community of Angels, which, for a fee, placed the abjects d'art in front of sponsoring businesses. These painterly equivalents of macram� art are now up for sale: "Full Size 6'4" Angels beginning at only $2000!!!" the community's Web site brays. "20-inch Angel Artist Originals starting at $300." What ever happened to the separation of Church and Taste?

5. Most Egregious Tchotchkes: Interchangeable cell-phone faceplates. (Second place: Interchangeable mouse covers.) If ever there was a reason to bring back 1950s dinner-table guilt, this is it. While much of the world goes to bed hungry with AIDS and within sight of an American PX, we are blessed with the right to spend $35 a pop on faceplates that express our ever-changing moods. "Get creative!" the ads order, and we click our heels obediently � but creatively.

6. Likeliest New Piece of Legislation: Caitlin's Law. Would mandate harsher sentences for the kidnapping of young adults who look like minors.

7. 2002's Most Bizarre "Outing": New York Post writer Steve Dunleavy's expos� of Sammy the Bull Gravano in the columnist's fawning eulogy of John Gotti. Here's how Dunleavy, the Teflon Don's Boswell, suavely attacked his hero's betrayer, who has been accused of committing 19 murders: "Murder No. 19 . . . was a man whose name I will not disclose because of the embarrassment it might cause his widow. It was a man who, it was alleged, had a homosexual affair with Gravano. Gravano whacked him in case the man confirmed Gravano swung both ways." Smooth, Steve � and chivalrous.

8. Most Salutary 9/11 Effect on TV Programming: No more imploding-buildings footage on the 6 o'clock news.

9. Most Paranoid Security Precautions: This year's Academy Awards show. Honestly, you would have thought that Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue had become the president's private putting green � there was that much heat on it last March 24. Still, this year's Palm Sunday Oscars enabled plain Hollywood folk � unemployed ushers, families, drunks from the Powerhouse � to catch glimpses of Russell Crowe and a celebrity impostor named Scoobie Davis, who drove his rented '57 Chevy deep into the Kodak Theater's security maw pretending to be "Owen Wilson's illegitimate brother." Needless to say, this was also the best place to spot the latest cell-phone faceplates.

10. 2002's Most Suspicious Coincidence: George W. Bush's prostate examination and the search for Dick Cheney's missing Rolex.






11:41 AM



Friday, December 27, 2002



I have lousy days too, asshole

There's a blog on Blogger called "Extreme Anguish."

Oh, get over it, fer Chrissakes.



11:18 AM



Tuesday, December 24, 2002


heh.

Crime Watch: Woman doesn't have time for robber

By CHARLES BOOTH
The Leaf-Chronicle

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

A 37-year-old woman on a tight schedule Sunday avoided being robbed of $60 she'd withdrawn from an ATM machine on Fort Campbell Boulevard.

The woman told Officer Linda Caver a man approached her while she made the transaction and shouted, "Give me that money." She said he had a gun tucked in the waistband of his pants.

The victim told Caver she then hit the suspect with her car door and told him she "didn't have time for this right now" before driving away.


2:39 PM





merry winter holiday that celebrates the winter solstice.

woo wee!






12:37 PM



Thursday, December 19, 2002
The US is now interning middle-eastern boys and men ages 16 and up.

Sounds impossible? Antiquated?

Sadly, despicably, disgustingly, no.

Here's the LA Times coverage: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-register19dec19,0,436924.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dheadlines

...and from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2589317.stm

Plus coverage by indymedia sources: http://la.indymedia.org/#349

From the LA Times:

"These people came in voluntarily. They wanted to comply with the law. This is the worst violation of human rights."

Most of those detained posted bail, but now face deportation hearings.

Under the registration program, men who are required to register are photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed. Citizens of 13 other countries -- North Korea and 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations -- will be required to register by Jan. 10. Men from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who are in the United States on temporary visas are required to register in February.

"If they were terrorists, they would not show up to the INS for the registration," said Babak Sotoodeh, a Santa Ana attorney who emigrated from Iran.

"We ran away from the Ayatollah and the [radical] Islam. We are very patriotic in the United States," Sotoodeh said. "Why are we being targeted? It's a total irony."

One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year-old pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe that the registration requirements would catch terrorists.

"His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home � she is losing her mind," said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients.

Jonoubi said that the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said.

Many objected to the treatment of those who showed up for the registration. INS ads on local Persian radio stations and in other ethnic media led many to expect a routine procedure. Instead, the registration quickly became the subject of fear as word spread that large numbers of men were being arrested.

Lawyers reported crowded cells with some clients forced to rest standing up, some shackled and moved to other locations in the night, frigid conditions in jail cells � all for men with no known criminal histories.

Shawn Sedaghat, a Sherman Oaks attorney, said he and his partner, Michelle Taheripour, represent more than 40 people who voluntarily went to register and were detained.

Some, he said, were hosed down with cold water before finding places to sleep on the concrete floors of cells.

"I came to this country over 40 years ago and got drafted in the Army, and I thought if I die it's for a good cause, defending freedom, democracy and the Constitution," said George Hassan, 65, from the San Fernando Valley.

"Oppressed people come here because of that democracy, that freedom, that Constitution. Now our president has apparently allowed the INS vigilantes to step outside the Constitution."

-------

This is revolting.








12:10 PM



Tuesday, December 17, 2002


absolute fucking mayhem

Go here ( http://originalfools.com/denzoner/saintDick.wmv ) to view the awesome video of Santacon. We also took over entire intersections, a Hooters, one sex shop, five bars, Cheetah's strip club, and two shopping centers (the video shows only one of these stops--The Grove off of Fairfax, which desperately needed its consumer-mecca cherry popped). By the end of the day we'd conquered the fucking city.

There were 233 of us, and we were all loaded by 10:00 a.m. We left from the House of Pies in three double decker-busses (plus one coach bus with a bathroom, which we ALL wished we were on by noon) and stopped traffic everywhere. Much mooning and Santa-stripteasing went on from the tops of the busses, especially on the freeways, and despite the fact that we were unabashedly irreverant and NC-17 (many of us bought fun Santa props at the sex shop, including a large blow-up doll who accompanied us throughout the rest of our trip, from Old Town Pasadena to Chinatown and Olvera Street thru Hollywood to The Grove ) many people were still happy to see us and waved like complete goofballs. None of these locations knew we were coming, and it was a critical-mass overrunning of all security personnel and nonplussed shoppers everywhere we went. It's gotta be quite bizarre to by mildly shopping for your bitchy coworkers and your annoying sister's bratty kids, your own child tugging on your arm, and then all the sudden be swarmed by two-hundred and thirty-odd Santas, all of them roaring drunk and obnoxious.

With this send-up of the stupidity of our society's approach to what was SUPPOSED to be a holiday to celebrate faith, religion and family but was transformed into a debacle of consumerism and one-upmanship now complete, we are thinking about possibly another go. Maybe we will all dress up as Jesus for Easter. That would be hella funny.


5:10 PM






New prose on prosety.

I put it there 'cos it's pretty fucking abstract and didn't seem quite as suited for the blog.

luv, michele.



1:05 PM



Monday, December 16, 2002
Currently playing: Levitate pt. 2 by Idaho

LA hunkers down under the rain now.

I drove to work this morning before it started. It is a mild rain. Still, the evening news will yell on yammering about it interviewing the citizenry ("Yeah, wow. I had to turn my wipers on high..." "Yeah, I brought an umbrella in the car today...") and will repetitively feature the same stock shots of suv's four-wheeling it over medians in sloshing intersections.

But LA secretly loves the rain. We bitch, we moan and complain, but we stick to the lurid details on the television, magnetically charged by the shifting air pressures; the city needs constant redemptions and cleansings, its buildings gone grey with dust from too many trucks headed west out of the central parts of our leftward-leaning nation; the manifest destiny, too many of us running as far and as fast as we can and causing the earth to sink and shudder beneath our weight; and every locked-straight streetcorner is screaming for clarity, stumbling on the trail of a confessional, a dousing, with no real river to wash over us--

The city is a desperate pentinent before the rain, and the crazy red flowers in the cemetery, slowly soaking through basketed bouquets of poinsetta and juniper sopping and brilliantly vivid against the gray air, randomly here and there, the single canting christmas tree stuck atop one headstone, slanted and keeling, an incongruous pine iceberg atop a placid damp sea of grass, its tinsel made dull by the clouded low-light, giving the lie to what is beneath.








2:07 PM



Friday, December 13, 2002


fun and entertainment courtesy of The Dumb

"Selected responses from an online petition to Wal-Mart stores, urging them
to continue selling handgun ammunition."

http://ftrain.com/walmart_petition.html

Thanks for sending me this, Jake--how'd you know I'd dig this?

Stupid people and poor spelling: hours of endless amusement.

Color me an elitist snobby bastard all you want. I'm having fun here.


5:38 PM






Hi all. Sorry it's been so long since I posted. I've just been going thru a lot and feeling pretty schmecky. When things stabilize (heh) I'll be back in my usual posting mode.

luv, michele.


10:38 AM



Saturday, November 30, 2002

somehow I feel the last entry was too personal or too much. It's honest. So I feel like I should leave it up there. But I (a) hate being treated as though I am fragile, and (b) don't want to have people get the impression I'm whining to get sympathy. So I may pull it. I'll likely edit it, at the least. But since I'm torn, and since today is such a weird day--my first day of feeling sort of okay, and I've been surprised by an avalanche of moodiness and sadness--I figure now isn't a good time to make decisions about what to trim and what to leave, or if even to say anything at all. So I'm leaving it for now, but it may change.







6:50 PM




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