lizard :: it's long for liz :: :: lizard gots the bad assitude

last five gallery images

when you are sticking trash to shiny things using crazy glue & glitterpolish, simple & orderly is complicated & difficult; chaos is easy. :: in gallery trash treasure

it's the little things, it's always the little things. :: in gallery trash treasure

dare to be different. :: in gallery ventura

we all went to see the jonathan raffetto band. amanda's friend kristin, and another friend whose name escapes me, jumped up onstage. :: in gallery the amanda files

we've known the band for years, so this was okay. it was probably just plain okay, come to think of it. :: in gallery the amanda files

the sound of sirens ◊

things that bug me:

war
politics
religion
intolerance
the internet
upsetting television dramas (e.r., law & order, third watch, et. al.)
every single person i spoke to or saw today, more or less
my computer
money
the sound of sirens

wait. i can break it down a little more succinctly:

everyone.
and everything.

no wait. i got it. every*one* is part of every*thing*, technically.

so: everything.

space & other wasted things ◊

forty two minutes. unheard of. most of my logins lately clock in right around six minutes — what i get for a quarter. i can spend a quarter. i really start balking at things like forty two minutes (buck seventy five) — and that was two comments, two tagboard entries, and an email.

anyway, hi, i probably owe you an email! i try to compose offline but i’m not configured that way, so it’s a struggle & let’s face it — i’m lazy. i’ll obsess my ass off on things, which makes me look productive, but trust me, i hardly ever produce what i should be producing. usually because i’m obsessing on something else. but anyway.

today i lost a big chunk of my afternoon to a pen. and i wasn’t even sure it existed.

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so i got this wonderful spiral notebook at the ninety-nine cent store today, 5x7 ruled sheets & the cover is hard as a hardback book, and it’s silver swirly holograpic (shiny things! good god i love the shiny things.) and a couple days ago i bought these gel pens. initially i bought them to make custom nail polish colors (the right gel inks, mixed with clear or glitterpolish — magical! & shiny!) but they turned out to be just the best pens. thick points, smooth flow, just a hint of metallic, and the colors! not the standard-issue gel pen colors. had to go back & get some cheap crap-ass gels for the polish mixing, had to keep the luscious rose art pen set.

so anyway. got home with the notebook & i wanted to scribble. so i found four of the pens — no easy task, as i’m in full-on packrat mode (re: shiny things). but the fifth, the fifth was nowhere to be found. now, there is no pen shortage here. there are the shiny pens, there are your standard foo-foo colored papermates (pink, green, purple), as well as several other pink &/or purple pens, and a couple boring regular (blue &/or black) pens i never use, though i have them should the occasion arise. whatever that might be. at any rate, at the time i launched into my phantom pen obsession, i had in my posession no less than a good-sized handfull of absolutely acceptable pens.

but. but. it was the first time i’d really taken these rose art gels for a spin. i switched between the orange/gold, the pink/mauve, the silvery purple, & the burnished teal for effect as i babbled (it’s kinda like a blog but more boring) (b’lieve this is called a ‘journal’). four color monotony scrawled in a fresh new notebook, it doesn’t get much better than that — oh wait. yes it does. for one thing, the fifth pen, the fifth pen was missing, and i missed it. sorely. and i didn’t even know what color it was, i just knew that whatever that color was, it was a color i wanted.

so i searched. and yes, i destroyed. i dug through my prodigious pile, my haphazard hazmat stash, my treasured trash — my *booty*, okay? arr. avast ye …

erm. so anyway. when i say dug, i mean that literally — i burrowed. i excavated. i found stuff i had given up looking for, but i also lost stuff that wasn’t lost when i started — my cigarettes for instance. they come in these useful cardboard boxes that i use to keep my not inconsiderable collection of very very small shiny garbage, i have approximately five such boxes right now within arm’s reach. by the time i was done searching, i had misplaced my cigarettes & had a box full of the innards of cheap pens & radios & shit like that, in my purse.

i searched & i searched. i searched until i was sweaty & disheveled, & then i searched a little more, for good measure, then i had to change clothes (and yes, i’d buried the ones i needed, so i had to dig for those) and then i … took a deep breath, realized i’d blown pretty much all my free time for the afternoon, and then i … searched some more. i began to wonder if there really was a fifth pen, maybe i misremembered the pen count of that particular packaged pen set?

and then. and then. i was walking past the dresser, the dresser which is not a place i keep pens, or use pens, the dresser which would be a place i absentmindedly set a pen down (probably in the process of being distracted by a shiny thing) & there it was. the fifth pen. oooooh, and such a lovely, lovely slate blue, the fifth pen. which is part of the reason it was left carelessly where pens are not kept, or used, because i had initially dismissed it as too ordinary, blue. that would have been before i discovered the general extrordinary nature of these rose art gel pens.

the whole set, complete with caps (!), is nestled next to the shimmery notebook now, and i’ve just been inspired to write … this, one of the long-windiest, what’s the pointiest blog posts … ever. well maybe not ever, ever. but … anyway.

but i am feeling much much better now (*twitch*) & am no longer muttering under my breath about running off & joining one of those baby seal clubs i’ve been hearing so much about.

however i am still a little bent about the events of ten years ago this day. well, the event. dammit kurt. i mean, okay, i understand, not completely of course but i do know that sometimes it is too much. but still. too much is too much but look how much has been wasted now! so much. ten years.

…
so in honor of whatever, ima gonna splurge & upload a whole messload of pictures, some shiny things, some kids playing in a park, some girls dancing …

I’m so happy ‘cause today
I’ve found my friends …
They’re in my head
I’m so ugly, but that’s okay, ‘cause so are you …
We broke our mirrors
Sunday morning is everyday for all I care …
And I’m not scared
Light my candles in a daze …
‘Cause I’ve found god
Hey, hey hey

so much. wasted.

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creative visualizations ◊

i imagine myself discovering newdifferent energies within my imbalanced chemistry, i even believe i’ve already done some discovering, based on evidence that i’ll refrain from enumerating here (suffice to say it falls somewhere between hubris & arrogance, & leave it at that).

is it still low self-esteem if i suspect that my high self-esteem is somewhere between extremely optimistic & delusional, based on actual factual accomplishments? it doesn’t matter, as long as there is a core within which believes in a basis not yet accomplished, even if it consists of some fairly far-fetched dreams. the quirky loser with big plans is always a fun character to play in any good story, and that’s the worst that can come of this, anything else is pie. a la mode. with a cup of really fine, fresh coffee. in a beach house.

somewhere between extremely optimistic & delusional, which is fine by me.

so anyway.

i am sooooo blonde. and you know what? it like, totally fits.

so there’s this wonderful dictionary online, we are talking in-depth reference here, which i heard of because they found kurtwood’s and my photographs on the stock photo site.

they used mine for these: 101, 95, arachnophobia, Born, Brass, buick, busy, cocoon, darkness, darn, daughter’s, decorate, decorated, digging, ensued, fastest, fear, five, halloween, hour, however, hundred, hydrant, inch, kid, knocked, legged, miles, ninety, override, per, regal, saved, southbound, speedometer, spelling, spider’s, spindly, straighten, terrified, today, ventura, vs.

they used kurtwood’s for: grass, hand, worth. they gave us nice credit for it & everything.

hmm. did i have anything else to say? i am soooo blonde, have i mentioned that?

i can’t think of a title and time i$ flying so here we go ◊

i should write i should post i should blog dammit blog but what would i say if i did? i am unwilling to try & explain my life at this point (it would only confuse me) (or you, if there are any you’s left who still come here) and i’m sure i have other things to say however this $2.50 per hour internet thang is seriously impeding the flow of whatever those other things might be. composing offline just isn’t the same, there is something in the connection itself that is a conduit for the expression of any inspiration i may have on hand; disconnected, it seeks other outlets. it’s revived my long-dormant semi-obsessive tendency to frequent the stationery aisles, impulsively purchasing more spiral notebooks & cool pens than i possibly need. i have also been up to my elbows in glitterpolish & crazy glue & discarded things, to the extent that the finished products are less decorative than they are an infestation of sparkly crap covering every flat surface everywhere.

another thing i can’t seem to do offline, is code. i can download code with the intention to modify it & upload later, but when the modem clicks off, so does the part of my brain that had those great ideas for those cool modifications. i am perfectly capable of doing some pretty extensive shit with code & having it right the first time, it’s not like the old days of testing wild guesses, all elebendy kabillion of ‘em, before i had a working finished product, so i don’t really *need* to be online like i did then. well, at least not for that reason. but i do, apparently, need to be online.

there are parts of my brain that are conditioned to work on a computer that is actively switching packets in the background. i can get as far as the first impulse to look something up, & it’s over. i might not need the answer to continue, but the sheer fact of not being able to have that answer till i log back on … ADD … look! a shiny thing!

weeks. it will be a few more weeks, two-ish, until this business with the offlineness is resolved. until then, i am … somewhere between a holding pattern, and a test pattern. i am something filling in spacetime until the real something happens.

& if & when the apocalypse comes, and i survive, you will find me holed up in an abandoned ISP with a case of red bull & a generator, working diligently day & night to get the connections back running. and i know others who are of the same mindset. i comfort myself with this, whenever i am forced to face the depth breadth & extent of my need. there are worse things to be dependent on, than a blast-proof packet switching network that connects me to a mind-bogglingly vast array of things. even if some of those things are parts of my self.

god i love the internet.