04.21.03


arizona was good to everything except my nose - i've recommitted myself to brief, brief stays in dry places. paul, our prospero, summoned herds of javelinas to dance for my amusement before everyone else woke up; he also had excellent suggestions for my sestina. joe's parents, in turn, stuffed us with home-cooked meals and reminded me to dye easter eggs - i do love quasi-pagan holidays.

04.18.03



Paul here, telling you about Zachary's pizza down by campus. Big, thick, deep dish, weighs as much as a baby or two. We ordered far too much pizza; Joe managed to eat 18π square inches while Lauren and I managed a paltry 12.25π apiece. Lauren's dining experience was complicated by her decision to order the "Flying Z," featuring spinach, pineapple, garlic, and jalapeños. She claims it's the best pizza she's ever had, but I think she's just saying that. She isn't really bisexual or fluent in Russian either.



I have to go. The woodpecker outside has started whacking his head into a metal sheet again, and it still sounds like gunfire and makes me want to get away from the window.

04.15.03


arizona, yes. i am lucky enough to be requested in several places, but boise, madison, and washington d.c. were beyond what the volkswagen could do in a few days, so here we are. big cheers to paul for taking us in on such short notice; hisses to southwest airlines for refusing to sell reasonable last-minute tickets. they will get me to idaho cheaply; they just don't know it yet.


the biblical storm that chased us from san francisco and tangled us in los angeles became something much more civil when it reached tucson; i started the day with rain chattering at the window and a friendly cat in my face, both good beginnings. paul destroyed me at chess with a tube of chapstick instead of a rook - less auspicious. the afternoon promises thrift stores and a possible leprechaun in the hood screening; wish you could join us.


the concept of babies with blogs doesn't unsettle me, but the fact that most of them update more regularly than i do is fairly humbling. that said, i hope emma marlowe takes the web by storm. congratulations and hugs, steve and amy!

04.14.03


in tucson. details tomorrow, when i've recovered from nine hundred miles of road butt.

04.12.03


stephin merritt rocks my pants - the show last night was magnificent, even though bimbo's has started charging $5 for a bottle of heineken. how does one do that with a straight face? lovely lo-fi renditions of "i'm lonely (and i love it)" and "good thing i don't have any feelings" - i like chris ewen's electro-tweaky EP versions, but my chances to see stephin with a ukelele are few and far between. the eternal youth material was strong; "the world is a disco ball" is becoming one of my favorite claudia gonson songs, and "i'm a vampire", already a cherished topic, had a well-placed daniel handler cameo. i bumped into him on the way out and got to deliver another of my Asinine Comments To Indie Luminaries. i try to remember that it's best to shut up around celebrities, but i'm still interested in besting the girl from my queer studies group who gave the cure's robert smith a first edition of alice in wonderland. it's probably impossible.


another fine link from lauren nyc: all consuming, a database of bloggers' reading lists and recommendations. when i get around to finishing this beckett book, i'll try to contribute an intelligent something.

Finally I [Lowenfels] burst out, "You sit there saying nothing while the world is going to pieces. What do you want? What do you want to do?


He [Beckett] crossed his long legs and drawled: "Walter, all I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante."


(deirdre bair's beckett)


That's a circle of health.


(joe)

04.11.03


sorry about that - i was in los angeles visiting family. the drive from san francisco was a particularly successful mullet safari - i saw a guy in kettleman city with (some) hair down to his waist. i also determined that women at the beverly center average hairstyles roughly four times the size of their asses.


the grandpa archives swelled as well. he told me of a tom sawyer party he threw with a friend in the thirties, when he "got a keg of beer and had [his] friends bring cans for paint...[they] whitened the picket fence, painted fences on the trees, added lanes to the postal road, and gave the girls moustaches and beards." he also mentioned meeting a girlfriend through having dated her younger and older sisters. it's unfortunate, having less game than one's grandparent.


tonight: the future bible heroes show at bimbo's. i'll arrive when the doors open, as usual, but travel scrabble is coming along this time.


tomorrow: finishing a sestina at last, i hope. line endings include typewriter and identical.


and i passed the peace officer thing. good?

04.05.03


the peace officer exam was at least twelve times more fun than the GRE: if my middle school detention squeaks through an upcoming polygraph, i'm absolutely going to pursue this as a secondary line of work. purse snatchers, beware!

04.04.03


stage n of nauseous coupledom, or poverty: the impromptu hair salon. i'm stretching the truth, though - i was brave enough to attack joe with scissors, but he chickened out when it was my turn. i seem to have given myself the pixie shag i always wanted, so i recommend the experiment - provided that you're willing to 1) live with someone who looks silly and 2) shave your head, if it comes to that. come to think of it, i know a lot of people in that situation.


do-it-yourself part two: vegetarian split pea soup. the key this time is liquid smoke and dried porcini mushrooms. forget tofu - i think mushrooms are the key to meatless living. if the chewy fungus part is too much, they make excellent stock.


the city of san mateo is giving me an aptitude test tomorrow, supposedly to determine if i would be an effective 911 responder. written exams are dandy, but i tend to laugh at inappropriate points in interviews. circa march,


1: would you be comfortable with taking a drug test?
2: ...yes.
1: would you pass?

04.03.03


oregon law would jail war protesters as terrorists.

04.02.03


i have a Skullcap of Pain headache, the sort where it feels like the bones themselves are being attacked. aches are rare for me, or i think they are; ever wonder how your tolerance for pain measures up? i'm a champion in tattoo and piercing studios, but that's elective discomfort. ay me, how loud noises buffet the head.

04.01.03ii


for those of you who missed my debut as an eighteen-year-old jehovah's witness from toronto, the short version is that there was a template free-for-all on blogger's servers this morning. if it was a hack, it was beautiful; i'd like to think someone cared enough to build me a rainbow site with umpteen references to the matrix (joe misses the mutating hues - something like the horse of a different color from the wizard of oz - already). sadly, it was probably a coding glitch rather than a poisson d'avril.


on enjelani'n'jen's depression thread:


after seeing a made-for-television movie version of a person i actually know, i had a dream about being cast as myself in a biography. i was a horrible actress - missed all my marks, delivered dialogue as though it had been translated into russian and back, even flubbed my own facial expressions. when i woke up, i sent poems away to a man named napoleon and bought a handful of fizzy candy. take that, noonday demon.


via bellona times, the incomparable hello, tarot.


via the national cattlemen's beef association, real girls eat meat.

04.01.03


The Anableps


At the university's insistence,
the freshmen posted letters to themselves.
Four years later the medical student
received a note on a map of Egypt.
Dream of pyramids, or the anableps.
The mathematician found a message
in a bottle at his vacation home.
Matryoshkas: Zeno's paradox with eyes.
The political scientist awoke
to a blaring radio, a pamphlet
in his nose. Defiance swallows its tail.
The writer financed an apartment
with her collection of found poetry -
Letters: 'That Is Not What I Meant, At All.'
A stain becomes phrases on the carpet.