song of the killer whale

on the open seas
just the seagulls and me
searching the surf for something to eat
stomach turning topsy-turvy
in cycles bound and guided by the tide
tempt the mermaids with my style
flash keen eyes and killer smile
line them up in single file
from sweet, to salt, to sour
so flavours change from hour to hour
a devil "fish" with ferocious power
to lust, love, and voraciously devour
but this hunger is insatiate
with passion free to fluctuate
and there's no way i can compensate
or let desire dissipate
for it is my nature, my assumed art
beget to me from doomed start
when i lost myself, my piscatory part
to carry mammal man's unwieldy heart

eight is infinity

on the 710 to spend some time with long lost friend
the city lights blink and blur with bicycle signs
and my eyes take a ride on the sly
when they should be planted on the path
looking for curves and pins and miles directing me to end point

rounding corners, navigating one way tracks
i slow the commotion in my head, turn down the traffic
for a second's pause there's calm until there you are
approaching with delicate step, tender from getting wrecked
and holy shit! face-to-face again since forever
eight is infinity

detour for drugs, medicinal purpose
deaden the pain and clear the fog
before finding ourselves parked
outside strange asian borders

so nice to see that face, hear that voice, the laughter
we diss on the dishes, dish on the disses
and the speech comes full speed just as i remember
racing to catch up because eight is forever
and i'm so sick with delight i could vomit
in your mouth
hold that smile

whisking me through tales held by tangential thread
i'm sitting there loopy as ever
loupes and perls, loupes and perls
as this fabulous fabled tapestry
this close-knit connection leaves me in stitches

the locusts buzzing around our chatter
scatter and return with fish-covered platters
and we savor the flavor of "bad" foods and good times
we put them away like champions or chairmans
an unbeatable team of synchronized eaters
and reward ourselves with medals of mochi
sweeping the field with three different colors
yes, we're that good

coming to closing ceremonies
we celebrate the past, present, and future
document the moment immemorial in memoriam
with digital snapshot
we make still the surroundings
capture the scene - complete with salmon cheeks and nether reaches

and as the perfect end to perfect tale
a diagram "end and entry" scrawled on filthy pavement
for you to pose with rockstar pimp style

and we vow
not to let it be so long in between these scenes
because eight is infinity

mess with me, you get double punk'd

so my boss decided to leave me some mischief this morning. we have this childish thing where we say "oh _insert person's name here_" at designated hours of the day to annoy each other. and if we say "oh _person's name_ outside of that hour, it's supposed to be a calling out of sorts. like you're trying to start shit with them.

we've also got this thing where we write down words containing the naturally-occurring sound of our names in them (well, we also stretch this to be words containing sound-alikes, but it's supposed to be naturally-occurring) on the dry erase board.
for example: pirHAHNa. cRIEtive. or hypotheCHRIS.

so apparently, after i left work yesterday, the bossman decided he'd play a little trixie on me by writing a really big "oh, ****" on the dry erase board over our lists of pirHAHNa. cRIEtive. or hypotheCHRIS type of words; thereby posing a bit of a dilemma for me. if i erase the "oh, ****" i would have to erase the lists of the other names along with it. very trixie. luckily for me, i don't really care that much about it. it's kinda funny. a good prank. but what he doesn't realize (RIElize) is that i have half the day in this office to myself. and can make a lot of mischief before my co-workers arrive.

so what i've done is "wrote" using gaffers tape in ginormous letters on the wall "oh, *****."
i could have made it bigger, but thought it was enough to do the trick. i'm also thinking about projecting "oh, *****" on the wall by placing a lighting gel with those words sharpied on it over one of the overhead lamps. but i got to do that quick because he'll be arriving in a couple of hours and i should really do some work before he gets in.

muhahahahahah

when will these people learn-- mess with me, you get double punk'd.

so excited!

a friend of mine from chicago is in town until wednesday. and i'm supposed to meet her for dinner tomorrow. wooo hoooo! i've only met her once. and that was eight years ago. (mother-fucking-god that was a long time ago! ) but it was crazy because we just clicked, and it was like we knew each other for ages. i hope that same magic happens tomorrow. maybe we should totally relive it all and go back to johnny rockets on melrose. hahahahhaha

sooooo excited i can't even explain.

good things happening all around me

i had an awesome day from start to finish yesterday. went to breakfast with penquin, isobel, and one of penquin's "underlings" "the scot" at this place called auntie em's in eagle rock. i got the french toast, the others got the pancakes. and we all got the taste slapped from our mouths, it was so good. bonus points to the place for playing radiohead while we ate. the scot and i got to exchange our music interests and concert stories. penquin had mentioned that's we'd get along on this front, and he was right. except for that whole business with him poo-pooing the cure. *scoff* heh :)

then drove to work which kinda sucked because there was some festival or something that blocked santa monica for several blocks. i hate when shit like that happens because the traffic gets fucked up with people wondering if they can turn left on a particular road. so while i wasn't late to work, the delay put an extra 25 minutes to my commute. stupid fucking festival type deals!

******

went to korean bbq with my co-workers for dinner. i had it the day before with penquin, and still i was up for it. ahhh, the tantalizing power of korean bbq. there's just something about grilling meat at your table. eating the little morsels with several servings of kimchi and all those yummy sides dishes, wrapping them in those white noodles, and plopping them in your mouth in one bite.


******

after work i headed out to vox pop, another britpop club that held some fairly high expectations for me and the rest of the britpop bunch. i had cajoled them into going to a couple other horrible excuses for the real deal and was down to my last strike. and i'm happy to report that this place lived up to everything we hoped for and wanted. (short of our favorite britpop haunt of yesteryear, popsuperstar, coming back, that is.)

i walked into the place and there were glyphic and gentleman drinker at the bar sipping on their drinks. and the music was what i've been dying to dance to. and i got all super giddy and smiley, because here i'm this club with rad music. my britpop peeps are coming out to represent, and for once! it's going to be o-k.

i think that was the best dancing i've done in a long time. even if we did have to dance on my broken beer glass. even if we were the only people on the dance floor! (well, and the other 2 couples) but we had great fun! there were grins aplenty. we even got to request songs from the dj! how awesome is that?

here's a couple more things i want to jot down lest i forget:

- free cigarettes, or rather the "greed" experiment
- getting another one of my beer glasses knocked over
- MPP naming all the hobo smokes he saved from the floor
- getting free shirts
- some people getting free buttons (how did i not get any?)
- free balloons
- being "fully" ok to drive

ahhhh, fun.

yes, the good things were happening all around me. my days should have more of this kind of leisure.

signs of disaster

my stupid calf muscle cramped up again last night. cramped up three times! not as strong as it had been before. but three small ones. like aftershocks to an earthquake.

my body, showing signs of disaster.

planet of sound

the very first concert i went to was just like heaven. it was 1989, my life was heavily influenced by the music of that time (still is), and i had 10th row seats (10th row!!!) to see my favorite band, the cure, at dodger stadium. if that wasn't cool enough, the opening bands included shellyann orphan, the pixies, and love and rockets. how fucking amazing is that lineup! to this day it remains one of my favorite shows of all time.

i counted myself as one of the lucky few (amongst my friends) to have seen the pixies play together live before they broke up the band in 1993. and years later, before the pixies announced their reunion, i would sit around with people talking about how great a band they were, how influential, how original; and wish that we could see them play live again.

so last year when rumors were going around about them getting back together, i was super excited! and when tickets went on sale for their 2 stops in l.a. i bought several tickets for both nights.

unfortunately my enthusiasm wasn't equaled by everyone else. or maybe it just seemed that way because i'm older now and the kids of today don't realize how awesome a force of rock this band is. (the lack of enthusiasm might also be blamed on $50 ticket prices and the fact that they played the coachella musical festival several months before their solo tour dates thereby trumping the sales and impact of their real reunion tour.) but c'mon pilgrims, it's the fucking pixies!!!

so true to my nostalgic devotion, i trekked up griffith park to see the pixies at the greek theater last night. (and it really was a trek cause gentleman drinker and i parked way down the hill from the venue.) penquin, isobel, gentleman drinker, and a couple people from work who were nice enough to take the tickets off my hands at the last minute joined me in our own personal row of seats. [now here comes the old geezer bit of the entry where i exalt the location of our seats: we had pretty cool seats -- nothing like 10th row -- but cool in that north terrace section kinda way where the seats are elevated and a little bit to the left of the stage, the section is smaller so has a lesser maximum occupancy, and we were close to beer and the restrooms (which seem to go hand in hand). here endeth the exaltation.]

gentleman drinker and i caught some of one of the opening bands, the thrills. god they sucked. all their songs were the same, their lyrics were irksome and repetitive (honestly the guy just sings three phrases over and over and over again), and the sound grated on my eardrums. (i think if the pixies had chosen a better opening band they might have gotten a lot more excitement around their shows.)

but as soon as the pixies took the stage, as soon as you heard that familiar strike on the guitar string, that reminiscent rhythm of the drums, and steady sexy bassline, you forget the little annoyances and remember how much the pixies rock. and the pixies still know how to rock! sure they're older and a little worse for wear, but black francis/frank black/charles thompson iv/or whatever-the-hell-he-calls-himself-now can still fucking wail. and while kim had some issues reaching some of the notes in her harmonies, her earnestness made up for it.

hearing the pixies play live again you become hyper-aware of just how many hit songs they had. wave of mutilation, debaser, bone machine, where is my mind?, monkey gone to heaven, gouge away, nimrod's son, caribou, there goes my gun, tame, hey, gigantic, etc. it was just one song after another of rock & roll canon. they just kept bringing it on! like, "hey, remember this one? yeah, ok well here's another! what about this?" it was really fucking cool.

yeah, that was a good show; like an older version of youthful punk rock partying and sentiment, like being stopped between two stations where the soundtrack remains the same, like a fantastic time-warped diversion to a planet of sound.

today, thus far

really mixed up day so far. got to work and had to sit through a long meeting about the company's questionable irresponsibility for airing a show about over-the-counter drug abuse. kids are taking cough and cold medicines to get high.

some people objected to the glorification of the high, and the ease with which it can be obtained. others thought we presented the dangers of this type of drug abuse fairly, maintaining the balance of reporting on an issue that teens relate to while being mindful of our audience's impressionability. it's just one of those topics we have to be considerably more careful about reporting.

then i got back to my office to find that MPP's fish has finally succumbed to whatever ailments he was suffering from. poor little thing. he's just floating sideways in his container now. and starting to smell. it's kinda icky really.

and i don't know if it's better to call MPP and tell him his fish is dead, or let him enjoy his day and only mention the fish just as he's entering the room, or not say anything at all and just let him find the fish on his own. what's a girl to do?

i don't know how to deal with death or sensitive situations. what can i do except offer my sympathy? i guess that's all i can do. say i'm sorry and maybe just listen or be there or something. perhaps it depends on what his reaction will be. i can gauge his reaction and develop a proper response from that.

i also don't want to be held responsible for the death of his fish. i don't think he'll blame me, but it's always hard to be the bearer of bad news, especially since i kept telling him to just get a new fish.

(although yesterday i genuinely was upset and appalled by a trick MPP played on me regarding his fish. we were joking around about throwing crap into its tank because he was dying anyways, and what did it matter if we polluted his water with spongebob gummis and crackers. so he took this sour gummi and put it in the tank. i told him that was mean and that he sucked, and then he removed it with a spoon or knife and then started swirling the water ferociously with it. i thought MPP had gone crazy! this guy loves this fish and here he is swirling its water like a madman!! i was so upset it turned my stomach a little and i stormed away. and then MPP started laughing saying that his fish wasn't in the tank and how he got me good. and blah blah blah. i guess it was a good trick, but it was pretty mean-spirited. but i guess he was getting me back for all the mean jokes i pulled on him.)

so that's kinda weighing heavy on my mind.

but i'm also proud of myself for helping one of the editors with a project. normally i would wait until after 2pm and assign the project to someone. but today i thought i'd give it a shot, see if i could figure out a solution to his problem, exercise a little of the knowledge i've "learned" by osmosis. so i hopped on one of the machines, poked around some files, and approximated what i thought would work for the editor. after a few other minor fixes and adjustments the graphics magic/mischief that i created worked! i was so happy about doing something without having to ask someone how or ask someone to do it for me. it felt really good. like i really earned my paycheck this week.

(i was inspired to tackle today's plea for help because yesterday i created something for another co-worker who desperately needed something from someone in my department who wouldn't be in until later in the day. and i picked up the pieces for this co-worker and was able to deliver a project for him that he said was better than what he would have gotten from the original person. [i realize this is all very vague and confusing, dear reader. but i'm almost finished.] what it really boils down to is that i like feeling like a hero. i like the acknowledgement from my peers that i've done a job well done, that i've saved the day. hooray for me!)

i'm personally having a stellar day. but i know it may have to be reined in out of respect for other people's feelings.

and that's where i am today, thus far.

zach braff: not just another funny name for a funny guy

lk turned me onto zach braff's blog.

i knew i liked him from scrubs. and his movie, Garden State, was pretty good. but the guy is real-life funny!

overwhelmed by his silliness and charm, lk and i were compelled to post a comment on his blog today. (see if you can find mine. there are soo many comments already)

*sigh*

i want zach to be my real-life friend.

musings from missed connections

a friend at work sent me this funny message he found on craigslist. so i started browsing their section called "missed connections" for something just as amusing; and there's some really funny shit there.

like these:

RE: I miss you and I'm horny - m4w
Reply to: 2004-09-21, 10:39AM PDT

I miss you too but I'm a dick. You were supposed to hate me by now. Why don't you? What do you see in me? I don't know if I can live up to it. Can I have some initials?

***

July3rd Avalon Party - Cute college guy I made out with in back row - m4m - 30
Reply to: Date: 2004-09-21, 8:48AM PDT

I can't stop thinking about you! You were so cute. We met just passing each other by, both rolling. :) I had my shirt up over my shoulders, and white pants that were hanging low. Long brown hair. We then went upstairs to the far back row of benches. You undid your pants and let me slip my hand down them. The party ended though and you were going to come back to my place but we never ran into each other outside. If your reading this give me a reply. I'd LOVE to meet you again.

****

Ralph's Sunset/Fuller 7pm cute blond with hella-cleavage - m4w - 26
Reply to: Date: 2004-09-21, 8:19AM PDT

You: Blonde.. think your hair might even have been wet. Cute, gigantic boobs falling out of your shirt. The lines were long so I'm sure I wasn't the only one staring at your chest. I had a hat on, we made eye contact for the couple seconds. I think there was even some smiling going on. It be cool to hear from ya!

HAHAHAHHAH these people are hilarious!

now i have something new to entertain myself with.

the crows

the crows around my neighborhood are huge
not obese, but large in that purely muscular sense
and they're kinda scary with their broad beaks
like they can split your skull open if you looked at them the wrong way
or get cross with them for their obnoxious morning vocal stylings

the other day there were dozens of them on an electrical wire
(maybe it was a telephone wire)
but there they were, sitting side by side by side by side
their black forms creating menacing shadows on the street beneath them

and i thought of them as a group, a murder of crows
a dangerous collection of ravenous scavengers
with hunched shoulders covered in feathered capes
and it sent a chill down my spine

they were convening, congregating so conspicuously on the wire
what sinister plot were they devising?
who next to ridicule, assault, kill?
how many victims to fell and devour?

and that's when the brilliance of epiphany --
that blinding connection and revelation --
brought to light my narrow sight
it was all in my clouded mind
obscured by obstreperous thought
and poisoned with prejudiced presumption

how much more threatening these birds than a targeted population?
a wire is a stoop, is a street corner, is a crowded bus
and pulling in closer, retreating upon oneself, a trained reaction
something bred out of fear and otherness and ignorance

then a flood of abominal assumptions crashed through my brain
all of those crows, those dark-plumed birds
all of the admonishable associations fluttering about my head
making me sick with sense

and the crows followed me in random places
haunted me in public spaces
an upstart reminder to be more aware of misplaced danger

unconsciously i've kept the message to heart
stitched to my chest is a scribbled crow
above it penned this word: "heavenly"

and just tonight
i spoke with a friend who read that in shaman culture
crows were messengers to be respected and minded

well, i'm here to tell you,
"i'm listening."

welcome to autumn

well, hopefully.

it's gorgeous out there. the breeze is cool. the sun is shining, but it's not at all oppressive. it feels good. it almost feels like autumn. not quite halloween or thanksgiving. but there's a sense that sweaters and scarves might see their way into the scene.

can't wait!!

i feel infested

i feel infested and i blame glyphic.

his cats have fleas. his home has fleas. and i was over there last night and now i feel like i have fleas. i sure do have the bites to show for it.

there are probably a dozen or so itchy red bumps on my skin. and they're probably going to scar now because i've been scratching at them.

great. just what i needed.

i hope he bombs the place before we party there tomorrow night. cause i sure don't want to get the blood sucked out of me anymore.

wah!

soooooooooooooo very itchy!

two to go

phew! i only have two more pixies tickets to sell/get rid of. panic was really settling in. i didn't know how/when/if i was going to pull this off. but i have! well, mostly.

so now i've got two more to go and i'm feeling pretty good. smarty may buy them from me. maybe. but he's worried that both of us might not be able to escape work. which is a shame cause he really wants to go. and he should.

he's already had to deal with all the bullshit they throw at him. it's about time he just did what he wanted and not feel guilty about it. lord knows they will try to work their own ways around the situation anyways. those bastards. heh

right.

any of you interested in case smarty can't make it? it'll be fun. c'mon, you know you want to rock out with me.

right.

anyways, two more to go.

hooray!

pity me

today i woke up in a spasm of acute, excruciating pain. every now and again this shit happens to me. i'm in bed, content to be semi-conscious, when my left calf muscle squeezes into this rock hard orange-sized ball. it tightens and holds for what seems like a minute, although i'm sure it's much less than that. and there's nothing you can do to hurry the pain along. you just have to wait it out with clenched teeth and teary eyes. it absolutely fucking sucks.

i asked my doctor about it a while back when the pains came more frequently. and she said it was my muscle reacting to a deficiency of potassium. pretty much it's just a super strong charley horse. so i took a vitamin this morning. one of those "one-a-day for women" that's supposed to be packed with calcium, iron, potassium, and all that other crap the female body needs. i took the vitamin because i can't stand the texture of bananas and wouldn't want to get my vitamin K through them all the time. one-a-days are a lot easier. plus there's all that bonus stuff.

but i wonder why, if it's just a potassium deficiency, the pain always comes in my left calf. and always in the morning. i've been drinking lots of water to counter dehydration, which tends to aggravate the problem. i guess it's not enough. i hope it's not a sign of some other health issue. like, i hope i don't have a blood clot or something. it's frightening. i don't want to die!!

so i'm kinda sad today. and worried. and maybe by the end of the day i'll be so morose that i'll just lay down and cry cause i'm dying. and the paranoia and anxiety my ailing body imposes on me will somehow snuff me out.

meanwhile my leg is incredibly sore and tender. *sniff* pity me.

104

that's how many pages into The Fermata i am. and all the things i found somewhat enjoyable about this book are slowly turning into points of annoyance.

a co-worker saw me with the book yesterday and inquired about it cause he liked the title and thought maybe it was one of those books that is chock full of life-altering profundity. when i told him that it's basically about this guy who has the ability to stop time and move about in the paused world to undress women and otherwise act out his sexual and non-sexual fantasies, he was really disappointed. disappointed because with a title like The Fermata you would hope that it had more to offer than playfully penned semi-erotic ramblings and escapades.

and so it started me thinking, "this book is disappointing." and i've become more aware of my reluctance to spend time with it. i bring it to work and it sits there on my desk for hours at a time, untouched and neglected. it occupies the passenger seat in my car when i take it back home; like a hitchhiker i pity but who i refuse to make small talk with.

but maybe i'm looking at this work too critically. or not accepting it for what it's able to share. because it's not really the story that's so entertaining as it is the subtlety of the text. the music of the language is what's important here. and so each repetition of libidinous experience serves to hold baker's masturbatory language in an indefinite sustain. yes, that should be what the fermata really represents.

so now i can go to 105 and beyond, happy in the knowledge that what i'm doing is more like sight-singing to an unfamiliar song than mere reading. and so the pleasure comes from hearing where the melody is taking me and not how the song impacts my life.

kinda random. kinda beautiful.

so i don't know what it is about my daily route home from work, but i saw something last night that made me pause and reflect on the beauty of simple sights.

flying above the roof of some really dirty, dilapidated building were two white birds -- doves -- criss-crossing each other playfully, threading the sky with their shifting forms.

sometimes it takes very little.

it's decided

there will never be another britpop club as good as popsuperstar.

i went to this place called "fancy" on saturday night with the usual britpop crew. isobel and i got there early and thought it was very promising. the venue is clean and air-conditioned. (had to be for a ballroom at the ramada inn). the bathrooms well-apportioned. plenty of mirrors so you get a full view of your outfit in one glance. there are plenty of places to hang out and drink and watch disturbing television show clips, random music videos, and movie highlights.

but these things mean very little when the music selection sucks, when the djs forget the britpop classics for "britscure" horrors that make you cock your head in a disaffected puzzlement.

when we first poked our head in, they were playing pulp. "hooray!" we thought. this is already better than that nightmare of a club, hang the djs. but once we stationed ourselves onto the sofas and chairs all of that promise evaporated or was shooed away by the empty dance floor. i want to blame gentleman drinker and glyphic for encouraging the dj to play the crap world pop and cacophonous electroclash bullshit. they got onto the dance floor after an hour and a half of waiting for something worth dancing to. but when it never materialized they shook it to the sounds of whateverthefuckitwasthatwasblastingthroughthespeakers. and so their sultry magnetic moves seduced bystanders into joining them. it went further downhill from there.

it seemed like the only time they actually played something for me to dance along to was when i threatened to abandon the club, leave it like a scorned lover who is tired of mind games and empty promises.

so it's decided: there will NEVER NEVER NEVER be a britpop club as brilliant as popsuperstar.

just can't get enough

as long as octopus keeps their half-off sushi anniversary special going, i'll probably end up there once a week. that's dangerous.

went again on friday night with penquin and gentleman drinker. then went to barnes and noble to buy more books that i know i won't get to for a while. got a couple of memoirs. one called Reading Lolita in Tehran, and the other Running With Scissors. they sound pretty interesting. i'll most likely end up doing some kind of book review once i finish with The Fermata. so far The Fermata is an enjoyable read. you can tell the author is fond of language and description. he's playful with it. good stuff.

finished off the night with some double apple tobacco at the local hookah joint. i love the spicy sweet flavor you get from drawing on the hose. it feels clean. so you trick yourself into thinking it's not bad for you. may end up going back there. just gotta make sure you're in no rush to get anywhere cause the service is very inattentive unless you're of the middle eastern persuasion.

honk if you're hornless

so here's an embarrassing car story for you.

friday afternoon i'm driving with my folks to some air-conditioned location. i'm on the freeway where there's only a moment's pause to merge with the traffic. i'm stuck behind this car that's exiting at a snail's pace. so to avoid running into him i have to slow down to merge. this car behind me sees my turn signal on, sees that i have to get over or else run into the boundary where the exit splits from the rest of the freeway, and decides that he is going to try and slip his way around me and back into my lane. but he's not going fast enough to pull off this maneuver and almost sideswipes me. so i honk at him. not a little "beep beep ahem you suck." i honk furiously at him. pounding on my horn for a "BEEP BEEP WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM, YOU ASSHOLE!" and then it sticks. and so my horn is blaring non-stop. and the car that i honked at is looking back at me like "wtf?" but whatever, he totally fucking deserved it.

and so i'm driving around glendale seemingly pissed off at the world. and i start laughing because the horn just won't quit. and i have to throw my hands up in the air every now and again so that the people i'm driving behind understand that i'm not being an impatient bitch, that there's really something wrong with my car.

i stop in the parking lot of a 7-eleven and turn the car off. the horn is still screaming. fuck fuck fuck. now this is really embarrassing. so i decide my best bet is to drive down the brand boulevard of cars to the toyota dealership and service location. and as i'm driving the horn is continuing it's relentless holler. and i wonder if people think that i'm part of some obnoxious promotion or parade.

i finally get to the toyota dealership. and they're staring at me, glaring at me. and once again i throw my hands up in the air to show that the situation is clearly beyond my control. i pop the hood and run out of my car. and the noise is much much louder with the hood up. this dealer guy comes over and pops something out of somewhere, a fuse or something, and the horn dies. i offer him my gratitude and he says that i need to get the horn checked out and replaced. turns out the quick fix of this auto-surgeon was to break the offending part. seems a bit drastic. like shooting a horse for having a splinter in its neck.

yeah. so that sucked.

now i don't have a horn, no honking abilities. and i can't even honk if i'm hornless.

well, i guess i can still brake for stuff.

so it goes

true to the stars, thursday proved a day suited for capriciousness. during the downtime at work i watched the dying sun fade behind a hillside littered with hollywood homes. the pink orange light filling the crevices between structures like some kind of syrupy lava - fruit punch flavor - a new sugar coat for a faked sickly sweet life that rots your insides.

when i got back to the office the stage folk were doing "live shots" of jagermeister. so i took one of the styrofoam cups, filled it a fifth of the way and sipped. i couldn't take it in one shot (although that might have been wiser given the unappealing taste of the liquor). i hadn't eaten anything substantial in several hours, so i got a little loopy. what the hell were they doing jager shots for anyways? crazy people! maybe there are more virgos amongst us than i know...

then after work i went to the good luck bar with "smarty" and "hungry, hungry." it was pay day. it was our friday. and we thought why not. it's rare that we get these moments; especially now that i'm on a different schedule than everyone else.

we talked some about blogging. the different kinds of blogs out there, the various ways people use them. for some it's an experiment with creativity, for others a way to share stuff they find on the internet. still others use it to document the passing of their lives. often it's a combination of all these things.

it also takes a certain type of person to share their blog with the world. i wonder what kind of person i am. can someone who doesn't know me discern from my writing the things that make my brain tick? can someone predict my reactions based on the babbling in my blog? perhaps. really, this shouldn't even make much of a difference since i probably don't have very many readers lurking here.

so it goes.

here comes the sun

stupid sun. stupid sun of a bitch. why'd you have to rear your hideous head again. now it's hot, and i'm hot-headed.

if you make another gorgeous sunset all will be forgiven.

but please please please give it a rest for a little bit longer. and i'm not talking nighttime slumber either.

singin' in the rain

another quick thing to jot down because i'm here with the laptop on my, well, lap.

my green mini ipod seems to have conspired with the outside world. it's kinda creepy. but also a nice surprise. shuffle play seems to be finding a lot of rain themed songs for me.

current song: "stormy weather" - the pixies

before that sondre lerche doing a live version of "night and day" where in the intro he sings "...the drip drip drip of the raindrops when the summer shower is through."

and some other songs that mention rain.

i wonder what else my ipod will play for me so i may be that madwoman singin' in the rain.

wrapped up in books

so i'm reading The Fermata by Nicholson Baker. i've had this book on my shelf for a few years now. and i know i've picked it up and started reading it several times in those few years. but for the life of me, i can't remember if i've ever finished it.

so here i go all over again.

and this time i will get to that last page.

exceedingly good stars

check it out:

Virgo
Your day's assignment is to mingle. Getting glued to your computer or the TV or a book will leave you feeling empty by the end of the day. Take breaks, call friends, make plans, visit and welcome others into your life. A nose-to-the-grindstone mentality will not sustain your spirit. Celebrate life and life will surprise you. Friends are waiting in the wings for just a word from you. Outsmart your mind for a change and abandon yourself to capriciousness. There is often more wisdom in doing something silly than there is in breaking your back to meet a deadline.

hmmmmm, maybe i should join the gentleman drinker and the dudeness monster for happy hour after all....

happy when it rains

i suppose there's something to "ask and you shall receive."

prayers for rain

we just might get it today. it's cloudy. it's humid. it's time for the rain to come.

i felt a few promising drops while on my walk around the park this morning. but i want it to really come down. in great fat tears plummeting to earth. so i can dance around in it like a madwoman.

amen.

suck day. good night.

wow. i've had a pretty good end to what seemed like was going to be a suck day.

got to see an absolutely gorgeous sunset on my way home. it was breathtaking. the kind of sunset that moves you to call everyone you know because you want to share with them its beauty.

the sky was ablaze in treasured tones of passion and glory; casting it's fiery hues on the clouds, on buildings, the mountains in the distance. and i imagined this was what a heart exploding with love might look like.

in an attempt to capture the moment forever, i snapped a few pictures of it. hopefully i'll get around to posting them.

then - i won the kitty in culver city!!! woo hooo! i heeded my silly poker superstitions. wore the lucky green cat shirt. watched at least one great hand of poker on one of the many poker shows out there. tonight i happened to watch a killer hand. paul darden vs. gus hansen in the WPT (World Poker Tour) "bad boys of poker" night. darden had about $30k in chips, hansen was the chip leader. darden puts in half his chips with 10d or h and 8s. hansen has A6o. hansen puts darden all-in. darden calls. the flop comes something like 567 all spades. so darden's looking pretty happy, he's got an open-ended straight draw, flush draw, and that rare, ever-elusive straight flush. the turn shows 4s. he's made his fucking straight flush and doubles up. river is a 4h. crazy hand. and after seeing this i get really excited about tonight even though i'm fucking tired as hell.

i ended up more than doubling my money tonight with $13.50. i gotta say it felt pretty good winning the big pots, raking in all those chips, and making nice even stacks with them. a lot of the time when i'm up i start to worry about playing hands because i don't want to give back what i've won. but i was getting pretty good starting hands. a couple times i had cowboys (granted, i lost with one of the pairs to glyphic who pulled out a flush. dammit). but i was also getting things like KJ, KQ suited, big slick, middle pocket pairs that hit a set on the flop. and one of my favorite hands of the night was taking in a giant pot with two callers seeing me to the river where i made a full house on the turn - aces full of queens. penquin had the nut flush and mike mucked. it was pretty awesome. i don't think i've ever won this big with hold 'em before (excluding my second place showing at the last poker tourney). so it felt really fucking nice.

yeah, it really did make my day.

and with that, that's a good night!

consider this

"Anatomical dissection gives the
human mind an opportunity to
compare the dead with the living,
things severed with things intact,
things destroyed with things
evolving, and opens up the
profoundness of nature to us more
than any other endeavor or
consideration."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
German Poet


i like this. especially the line "things severed with things intact." this quote was used at the Body Worlds exhibit. it's also on the postcard you can fill out to find out more on being a body donor for plastination.

but i don't think i will give my body to this science.

not even jail

this song won't let me be.

i cannot sit still and smile serenely. it refuses me this simple appreciation.

in fact, it threatens me to violent outburst.

when i hear those sirens it sets my foot to tapping. my arms come up to my sides in a slow stutter shake of rhythmic convulsions. my head nods in time to whip my hair about my eyes and face. i'm arrested by a crescendo pulse that keeps building on a simple beat until my tiny fists are drumming furiously onto my desk, the steering wheel, the air, whatever is in front of me.

there's a filthy seduction hidden in the sound. like being hit on by someone you know is trouble, but who, all the same, you cannot resist.

and so you're in this hungry, sweaty embrace with the song. and you're sucking hard to draw breath. and now you're feeding on the tempestuous frenzy, acting the slut with your soul until it leaves you crumpled with corruption.

when it's over you've got bruises in all the places that don't show.

and there's nothing to stop this from happening all over again.

not even jail.

the toy collector

i reread The Toy Collector by James Gunn over the weekend. i needed something i could count on to restore my love for good story-telling after the bitter taste of that other book.

this book is full of nostalgia. not that sappy, sentimental nostalgia, but that stinging sadness of trying to hold on to a life and time you know is slipping from your grasp. it's about the forged friendships of your youth, the indestructible connectedness between playmates who served as a surrogate family.

there's beauty in loss. there's rage born from impossibly tender innocence. there's savage and sadistic wit to enlighten achingly raw vulnerability.

it's so precious with its heartache and humor, i hate closing on its pages.

inner out-of-body experience

saturday was one of those brutally hot days where the sun beats down on you to burn away at your skin and bleach your very bones. it was the kind of day that makes you seek out air-conditioned refuge of any kind - whether it be the reliable room of a darkened movie theater, your grandma's dank mildewy basement, the meat locker of your neighborhood butcher shop, or similarly, the Body Worlds exhibit at the california science center in exposition park.

i had heard some positive things about the exhibit. and i must admit that it piqued my morbid curiosity. but it really doesn't seem like something you do as a "recreational activity."* all the same it was quite an experience.

i walked into the first room of the exhibit and thought it really did feel like some strange amalgamation of a meat shop and museum. there are cases of sliced meats like you would find in a deli. there were the thin-cut pieces of prosciutto, the ring of fat circling an amber stained-glass cross-section of someone's thigh or arm. blocks of breast peppered with tar deposits. slabs of ribs splayed like windows of wings. muscles dried out and flattened into the texture of jerky. there were innards and the edible vital organs like livers and hearts. and for the more exotic and adventurous - tongues and brains, spleens and kidneys could be culled and cured. indeed, it was a veritable cannibal smorgasbord.

but it was also a museum exhibit offering, literally, a different perspective on the human form. for several hundreds of years, we have been fascinated by the body. the beauty of its outside form, the curiosity of its deformity, the mystery of its inner sanctum. through a process called plastination we are able to see these things up close without the fear of contamination or the horror of death's stench. the bodies on display in the Body Worlds exhibit are sterile, odorless, and fixed in such a fashion that you can view the body beneath its multi-layers. you can inch under the skin and see how the veins and capillaries run through the entirety of the human form, the synapses a complex transportation system of thought and impulses. or else peer deep into the cavities of the body to see how the perfect proportion of heart and lungs allows one to draw breath and sigh. and if you've ever wondered how one's limbs and muscles can contort and contract in complicated movement to music, to the course of even the most mundane collection of gestures, you are likely to find understanding from the fixed and formed flesh statues in this extraordinary exhibit.

Body Worlds can be a disturbing display of death/not-death in stasis. so i was surprised at my ability to look at all of these specimens with a detached mind (and stomach). and maybe that should be more of a concern. but to gaze upon these dissected bodies, these carved up cadavers, didn't really gross me out. it may be that my moral judgment is on recess. or perhaps i saw the exhibit in broad perspective - as a valuable learning experience - and so then had little time to think that these plastinated persons used to walk around amongst us, breathed like i do, moved about as i do, had feelings as i do. it was something akin to having an inner out-of-body experience.





*apparently this is exactly the kind of recreational activity that marilyn manson enjoys. i saw him, his girlfriend, and some other friend at the museum. first i noticed his girlfriend who was dressed up for the occasion wearing a summery floral printed dress and neat green shoes (i wish i had her shoes). then i saw that she was accompanied by a tall fellow garbed completely in black. he was wearing a hat and light shades and tall creepers. he has a sinister looking profile. then after staring for a little bit i realized, "hey - that's marilyn manson!" so i surreptitiously followed them around through some of the first room. his girlfriend seemed to take an intellectual interest in the exhibit, while marilyn himself was content to fuck around with his friend, pretending to poke one (actually, he tired on a couple occasions) of the models in the rectum. heh. what a fucking idiot.


if you intend on going to the exhibit, please stop here.


otherwise, i will tell you more about some of the other displays.




last chance.




spoilers:
some of the other highlights included the "giant" on the bicycle, the real life madonna with child, and the horse riders.
there were also lots of diseased body parts. black lungs. clogged arteries. enlarged hearts and spleens. tumor-filled stomachs. lots of gross shit that should make you want to take better care of your health.

highway hijinx

on my way home last night from work i was witness to some bizarre sight. and of course it probably wasn't intentional, but i imagined something beyond the surface.

all along the stretch of the 101 that i travel were vast quantities of toilet paper. rolls of it. streams of it. tatters of it. it was clogging the lanes and clinging to tires in embarrassing fashion.

and i thought, wouldn't it have been great if this were not just an accidental slip off a truck but the work of some mischievous prankster-artist. a little highway hijinx.

and this caused me to smile at the sillyness; erasing the annoyance of backed up traffic.

sometimes it's nice to have these disruptive moments. they bring a change of perspective. and you might even get something fun out of it.

time and space with midnight movies

went solo to another free gig at amoeba last night. this time saw the "spacey, sexy, psychedelic art-rock" band midnight movies. i only heard about them because on my last visit to amoeba to see rilo kiley, i received one of those promo packs of music stuff from filter magazine. and in it was a sticker for midnight movies. i kinda liked the design of the sticker and so decided to look them up. and i liked what i saw and heard.

they're a three piece band where the vocalist is also the drummer. (i know you're probably thinking you can't be into this because there's that one drummer/singer that everyone loves to loathe.) but this one is different. she's good. and even the music guy at work who hates female drummers said so. this woman sounds like a cross between the stereolab people and kim gordon from sonic youth. and hearing them play live last night solidified that assessment in my mind.

i heard other song samples from their debut album (which was released yesterday) and thought it was ok. but i really liked the two songs that their site has video clips of. and i figured this is one of those bands that probably sounds better live than on record. and i was happy to hear that this assessment was likewise solidified in my mind. they have a frenetic noise that builds (even if it does get a little too loud at times) that i'm not sure you can get off their album. and i wasn't going to buy the album, but then decided, why not. i have a gift certificate and sold back some other cds for credit. so let's rock. [i have yet to open the cd, but will probably do so after listening to the used cds i purchased last night (roxy music's avalon and the six parts seven's everywhere and right here).]

also - i ran into robin (who i seem to run into at a lot of these things) and she told me that there's a club that will be opening next saturday (i think) that used to be in the space that club "par avion" used to occupy. and that this new club will be --- a britpop club!!! wooooo hoooooo!!! so she's gonna send me info about it. and i think i need to go to give me hope that there is still more britpop dancing to be done out there that doesn't involve waiting around until 1 in the morning, dancing for an hour, and then being bitter about it afterwards. (damn you hang the dj's!!) so yeah. very cool.

anyways, thank god for amoeba's free shows. otherwise i wouldn't know much about new music out there. and if you feel like it, you might want to enjoy some time and space with midnight movies for yourself. they're playing the troubadour on sept. 11.

rabbit, rabbit!

i hope you said it this morning. i did. supposedly if you say "rabbit, rabbit" when you wake up on the first of every month it's good luck. (at least that's what isobel told me from something she read sometime long ago.)

and my stars said that september is supposed to be an amazing month for virgos.

we'll see....