Le maudit Mo D.

deliberate

It's very difficult to proceed through your day when you know that two people are deliberately hurting your mother. Are going out of their way to hurt my mother. Paying thousands of dollars for the pleasure of hurting my mother. Dedicating their copious time and energy and resources specifically on the hurting of my mother. Fortunately, I did some very good work on PoE today and 2.0 is almost done.

drinking cheerful science

I'm back from West TX. If I never go back there, I am totally fine with that. I ate more McD's and Subway in the last week than I have in a decade, although the one Mexican restaurant I frequented was quite good. I indulged in a McD's shake, which now melts, unlike the one from 1999 which did not. It tasted like cheerful science. Some dude in a lab invented that shit.

I didn't really like driving through 100+ miles of scrub with the occasional longhorn grazing by the side of the road. Give me civilization! Give me variety!

I learned a lot of good stuff, met a lot of talented ladies, and discovered that the major flaw in my novel to these women is that they didn't know what the T was or where Beacon Hill is. I told them that they are Boston things and that we could go quid pro quo on the fact that everyone besides myself and a couple of other people were setting their novels in a small Texas town in the '30s or the '50s. I know what horses are, and general stores, and I have a concept of scary abusive fathers who menace entire counties now that I've heard a slew of stories about them. I may have lived here for seven years, but man, I'm a coastal girl all the way. I miss that shit. Coasts. East, west, I don't care. Someday I'll go back.

I also have the first chapter of Novel #2 which I could not be happier about or more excited about. I am not going to say too much about it, but it is going to kick ass and I have to do some research into Catholic girls schools.

I am so glad to be home.

TONIGHT!
Geegster!
Boys of Summer featuring swarthy Scots-Egyptian
K-REEM BADR of P-graph
Hideout
8pm

marfa wtf?

I drove down to Marfa this afternoon and it was closed. Everything except the Paisano, where I used an antique toilet that they probably haven't replaced because Elizabeth Taylor peed in it, and did a little Jimmy Dean worshiping in the special room they have where a tv runs Giant on a loop, looked at all the white buildings with JUDD painted on them in red, and then drove back to Alpine. There were no open restaurants, the galleries were closed, even the Marfa Bookstore was locked up. There were hardly any people either, except for two young girls who were screaming and pushing each other down the street in an old office chair. S-C-A-R-Y.

Well, now I've been to Marfa!

ponder potter

For the last however many years, Harry Potter has remained off my radar. I read about half of the first book because someone had given my little bro a copy as a present. He could never be bothered to read it. Only now in his teens has he given into the joys of reading, so whomever gave him HP BITD, bad choice. I didn't think it was bad, but it didn't really hold my interest. It had all the elements of great stories, but when you get right down to it, it's just the classic Heroes Journey with wizards.

I have always found the cross-section of HP lovers intriguing, though. On my flight last Sunday, a large number of passengers, be they junior high kids or grandmotherly types, had their noses in a big yellow book. My stepdad, the biggest loser on the planet, who was an elementary teacher for thirty years, only read one work of fiction in that amount of time and that was Harry Potter. Only the first one, though. Because Little Bro got it as a gift. And because it was enormously popular.

It occured to me that of the 8 million + people who have bought the last installment over the last few days, at least a couple million of those folks are people who don't buy books with any regularity, or probably ever. HP books are probably the only books they ever read or purchase. Were it not for HP being a ginormous blockbuster phenomenon, they probably wouldn't read at all.

Since being in Alpine, I've eaten at McDonalds twice. I haven't eaten McD's food since the late 1990s, but here there isn't much to pick from, and it seems that most of my fellow writers head there in the morning for hot cakes, so I've been joining them. Though I still find the smell at McD's nauseating, I must say that their mass-market version of pancakes are quite good. They are sweet, flavorful, cheap, and most of all consistent. From day to day, city to city, they are all the same. Sure, you can complain that they are served on a styrofoam clamshell or that they're full of HFCS, but only I and my snotty overeducated similars think of that.

If there's anything that will hold back my success as a writer, it will be this, the fact that it takes me so long to see the beauty in the things that bring everyone together.

alpiney

The only place on campus that I can get wi-fi is the cafeteria. The SRSU cafeteria is a hoot. There's all this promotional stuff about how health-conscious the food is and how you can get a delicious and healthful meal at all times. Well, here in West TX, there isn't much else to do but eat, so pretty much everyone is somewhere between fat and morbidly obese. I should have no trouble pants shopping here since size 12 seems to be on the low end of the scale. I'm about 10 pounds heavier than I'd like to be but by Alpine standards I'm Kate Moss. This makes sense because the so-called healthy food is this:

oily burger + fries
salad bar with wilty looking produce, plus dressing
pizza bar
entree: roast beef submerged in grease plus frozen veg medley and cheesy-looking pasta product

I asked the toothless fry cook if "y'all had veggie burgers" and lo and behold, if you ask, they do. I was worried he was going to drop the veggie patty in the deep fryer, but he explained to me very carefully his cooking process starts with defrosting it in the microwave and then moving it to the grill where it will soak up some residual beef grease. Yum. I hope to lose some weight this week, but I'm on my way to some big barbecue place, so maybe not.

I do have to say that the air in west Texas is PERFECT. There is not a tinge of smog or pollution, the sky is big and blue and clear, the clouds are fluffy, and it just smells good, like nothing. Like air should smell. It is a little drier here. I find that I am a humidity girl since last night my lips started bleeding for no discernible reason. I'm applying balm like my life depends on it.

I have a writing assignment to complete tonight. But first, I have to go back to my room and eat some dried fruit so I can have those 3am poops that Andrea seems to imply that I'm famous for. Please see entries related to Dirty South last February. I may never live that down.

westas texas

I'm currently in the library of Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Middle of Nowhere, Texas. I flew into Midland/Odessa ("hometown" of GWB) and rented a car and drove myself through a whole lot of pretty nothing today. It's been rainy, so the nothing is green instead of brown, which I assume it is most of the year. Sul Ross is mostly new-looking. Most of the buildings seem to have sprung up over the last decade. From where I sit now, looking out over the Chinati Mountain Range, off in the distance, I see a McDonalds arch.

My cell phone only works on roam, which almost caused me a breakdown. I am finding that claustrophobia works both ways and being in a remote, open-spacey location is making me as panicky as I am in NYC.

Odessa looks like Fresno with oil drills. I'm sorry, oal drills.

I'm in the mood to bitch about my day but will refrain. I will just remind myself that it is occasionally good to get out of one's comfort zone.

I give the conference about a 2 on a 10 point scale thus far. There was little information given out and no opportunity to meet anyone. We just ate a lot of crappy cafeteria food and then scattered. Hopefully things will get better tomorrow.

I thought about driving to Marfa (about 20 mins away) but figured everything would be closed on a Sunday night so decided against it. Thus far, I have no suitemate in my dorm suite, so I can smell up the bathroom as much as I wish.

shiny pies

After seven years in Texas, I finally darkened the doorstep of a Luby's Cafeteria. Yanks might remember Luby's as the place in Texas where some dude went apeshit and shot a bunch of people. Luby's has worked hard to recover their reputation as a safe place to eat dinner, and as such, Bob and I decided to eat lunch there today.

There is a trendy restaurant in our neighborhood called Blue Star Cafeteria. They serve bouged-up versions of down-home American favorites like fried chicken (panko-draped pan-seared bla bla) and meatloaf, only it is served in a sit-down fashion, with a menu and everything. It is NOT a cafeteria in that there is no line, you are not issued a tray and a silverware/napkin bundle, and you don't get to look at all the food before you choose. Bob and I were complaining that we might have gone back to the Blue Star if they did things more like Luby's, to which I replied that we should just go to Luby's. No sense allowing ourselves to be bamboozled by false terminology when the real cafeteria gettin's were right in front of our faces.

Oddly, on our drive to Luby's, we had an absolutely unexpected run-in with my brother-and-sister-in-law, aka The Chefs, who left their posts of notoriety in A-town for Cleveland about three years ago. We had no idea they were even in town until we heard them yell out the window.

So we enter Luby's and I see the spread: WOW. They do such a good job making everything visually appealing. Everything is bright and colorful and well-presented. Bob and I chose tilapia with two sides. My sides were broccoli and mashed potatoes and Bob's were mac 'n cheese and green beans. I was expecting soggy, flavorless broccoli but it was bright green and kind of crispy. Bob's mac 'n cheese was so creamy it tasted like pancakes! I mused that we could get our daily veggie requirement in spades at Luby's. And everything was so colorful! Especially the desserts, where each slice of pie or cake was presented with gorgeous attention to detail. Bob cracked up when I told him that I chose the chocolate icebox pie because the apple pie scared me. It did! The fruit pies looked positively shellacked, they were so shiny. I told him I assumed that they were heavy-handed with corn syrup or some type of food spray. Food spray! I can't confirm or deny the use of food spray. I think I made it up.

I was impressed with my Luby's experience, though I thought the pie looked better than it tasted.

Tomorrow I venture out into the wilds of West Texas for novel camp. I'm sure there will be plenty of glossy pie out there, too.

annoying liberal arts college

Anyone watching that Gawker poll for "The Most Annoying Liberal Arts College?" I'm putting my money on Wesleyan. While a decent argument can be made for Smith being annoying, I spend such an insulated-from-the-rest-of-those-hos 3.5 years there that I don't see how Smith annoyingness can spill over into the world at large. I spent all my time in Big B playing Unrest CDs or at OZQ playing Unrest CDs and hardly met anyone. Of course, it's been a long time since I suffered the fools who spout pretentious victimology like genderqueer and othered by that discourse. I'm also not terribly fond of people who spell woman with a y, but again, those types of Smithies generally don't move to Texas post-grad. Either you're eating pussy or you're not. Let's not split hairs, pubic or otherwise.

I am convinced that a co-ed college has a much greater chance of being annoying than a single-sex one because there's always going to be those dumbbunny girls who affirm their parentally-bestowed sense of specialness by acting simultaneously stupid and superior just to get some unwashed Mamaroneck trustafarian dick. I remember a hell of a lot of hippie-ass white kids from Westchester and Jersey running their mouths about how they were going to stop oppression and suffering from their new Macintosh computers in fucking WestCo.* At Wesleyan, you really weren't cool unless you could tell stories about being beaten by a cop at a protest or spoke openly about irrigating your colon prior to anal sex. I guess it's hard to expect anything else from pampered 18-year-olds, and I suspect that this poll that Gawker is sponsoring comes from retrospective embarrassment on the part of a few Oberlin and Wes alums coming up on their 10th reunions. It's mighty fucking annoying to still be paying for college ten years hence, especially when you look back and see what a dumbfuck you were. Most people who are enthusiastic about voting in this went to these schools.

By comparison, some of the antics of the lesbos I went to college with still make me laugh. I mean, when your housemates are either fucking each other, the UPS man, or the floor, you've got to look back on that and laugh. We were so young. So so young.

*I apologize for pooping on the building where I met three of my most favorite people ever, Dyna, Milkes, and Johnnycakes, but I did have the room right over the stage in Down-3 and was forced to listen to an unfair amount of shitty jam bands.

unlocking the gates

If you, like me, are a fan of Chuy's Tex-Mex right here in the ATX, well listen up because I spent my afternoon cracking the secret code of Deluxe Tomatillo Enchilada Sauce. And according to my panel of experts (me, Bob), my shit was right on! I will now provide the recipe so you can make this junk at home.

Recognize:
1 large can tomatillos (in the Sabor Latino section of your HEB), drained
1 medium can green chiles
1 small bunch cilantro, chopped
three cloves garlic
1/4 white onion
1 jalapeno, chopped
3 tbsp sour cream--or more, if you want the sauce to be super-creamy
salt 'n pepper

Blend in food processor or similar apparatus
Pour over enchiladas, be impressed

and the sky is gray

You've got to love Texas weather. When it rains here, IT RAINS. It doesn't screw around. It was a perfectly gorgeous summer day, though curiously cool. Then, as if a cartoon villain was about to make himself known, the sky turns dark and gray and bullets of rain begin to pound the ground. I respect this. I respect and admire this no-nonsense approach to weather. Rain in other parts of the country is a total tease. In Northampton it frequently drizzles. Dilettante rain. Rain that can't decide whether or not it wants to be pretty or cleansing or helpful to agriculture so instead just becomes an annoyance. A caricature of itself. I want to be Texas rain, mean and deliberate and strong. Of course, nobody likes this rain. I want to be liked, like everyone else wants to be liked.

Outside there is a man stripped down to his boxers doing jumping jacks in the rain. Minus the boxers and plus soap, it could legitimately be a shower, it's raining so hard.

I am at Quacks. I feel a little trapped now, knowing if I try to leave I and my computer bag will get soaked.

simpsonized

people

I ran into Shando and Tami out in the world today. Shando at the BookPeeps and Tami at the C-Marche. I love running into people all over Austin. It gives the place a nice village-y feel.

I miss Milkes. I miss T-square. I miss my old lady friends.

I miss Shiney.

I miss Mo from ten years ago. She had problems, but she had hope, too.

I miss my dad. Today's his fucking deathaversary. I know he'd be gone by now, but I wish he could have stuck around a little longer.

I miss being the perfect kid I once was.

I love Bob. He's the salt in my soup, the marshmallow in my cocoa, and my left leg.

I wish I were above existential crises, but I guess I'm not.

fat liver

I need to go to Central Marche and get me a big fatty slab of foie gras this week. I really don't take kindly to people trying to tell me what I can and cannot eat. I don't particularly care for foie gras, but I want to eat some as a big fuck you to the "activists" (read: loser vegan troublemakers) who vandalized area fancy-pants restaurants in protest of their serving of foie gras.

In California, anyone can put anything on the ballot as a proposition with enough signatures. A few years ago, some animal rights fuckfarts managed to get horse meat outlawed in my home state. I don't think I've ever conscientiously eaten horse before, but damnit, if beef, pork, chicken, shellfish, venison, and other meats are totally legal and available, then why not horse? Horses aren't special. It takes a selfish, self-righteous asshole who takes identity politics way too far (ooh, identity politics! There's a blog topic I could really sink my teeth into) and make personal what other people do. Trying to get horse and foie gras banned is no different than trying to keep gay marriage illegal. It's just a bunch of busybodies trying to force their high and mighty world view on the public and using the law to get their way.

FUCK YOU, FOIS GRAS NAZIS!

brief sfu recap

Wow, two readers have responded to inform me that after Season 2, SFU starts to suck. Here's my take on it:

I just started Season 3. Right after (SPOILER ALERT) Nate has surgery and they jump seven months forward and he's married to insipid Lisa. I like Lili Taylor, but I wish they'd quit typecasting her. I keep expecting her to whip out a guitar and start strumming and singing "Joe lies! Joe lies! Joe lies!" So Nate is a baby-drunk dullard and David and Keith are always fighting (break up!) and Claire is doing the crematorium guy with the questionable taste in tattoos and Brenda is gone and Rico is a judgmental, whiny dick 24/7...hmm, I guess the interesting story line where I am right now is Ruth's friendship with Bettina. I like the show because it has art and death and those two tropes are interesting to me. I've had a wicked fascination with the funeral industry since I spent the entire week my grandfather was on view hanging out with the friendly staff of the funeral chapel and milking them for stories about crazy mourners (that shit does happen).

I really loved and identified with Brenda until she turned into psycho sex addict. I question the writer's need to make every character hit rock bottom at some point--not everyone's life is like that. I predict that things will look up in Season 4 after Lisa gets knocked off and Nate gets back with Brenda.

I am a fan of soap operas, so I don't find the comparison off-putting. If I could pull it together to get back into GH, I would, but for now, I am committed to the SFU characters, no matter how unpleasant they be come.

no more privacy

I installed Sitemeter today after three years of respecting the privacy of my viewers and not using technology to spy on them. Damn, this thing is thorough! I didn't realize that Bob's name appears on the logs every time I log onto my own blog as well as the blogs of others. So be warned: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

A recent update on Joolz's blog revealed that she is installing her mother in an "affordable luxury senior residence" this week. Joolz mentions that a resident octogenarian totally hit on her, and frankly, I wasn't surprised. That dude's probably hitting half the widows in the place and wanted to test his moves on someone younger and less wrinkled then the pickings at the home.

The first thing that came to mind was a NYTimes article from about a year ago about a senior residence in Florida that had a huge problem with the transmission of geriatric VD. People don't realize that when they put their aging parents into these places that they're really no different than the Pearl St. Co-op in terms of lifestyle: bad food, questionable hygiene practices, drugs, and rampant fucking! Maybe the floors are cleaner and they drink better beer than Natty Light in a keg, but most retirement communities have a 4:1 female/male ratio and at least one hot shot old man whose kid got him a Viagra prescription that likes to lay it on smooth for all the ladies in the house.

My dad (1910-1992) lived at one of these places the last three years of his life. Let me tell you, when those old widows see a man with most of his teeth who can carry a conversation without getting hoarse, they start flocking! My dad had several female suitors, most notably a Mormon widow with five kids who were always trying to get my stalwart pinko dad to come to church with them. He always declined, but his godlessness did nothing to sway Mormon Widow. Every Friday night the home held dances. They'd remove the tables and chairs from the dining room and put on some Big Band music and the ladies would knock themselves out trying to get ol' George to spin them around the floor a few times. Mormon Widow tried to lay claim, but once you hit 80, commitment is a thing of the past.

My dad didn't particularly care for people his own age, especially when he got old, but he liked the attention. I remember asking him once why he went around calling his old folks home friends "old fuddy-duds" or "old coots" or telling some old lady "move it, grandma!" when some of them were even a few years younger than he was. "I'm not old. Those people are old up here," he'd say, pointing to his head. "Never get old up here."

My dad was a superlatively cool dude: he married a woman 35 years his junior and managed to stay interesting to her for a long time. He liked Simon and Garfunkel and Dylan, he hated fuddy-duds, and remained foxy to the ladies until the very end. He may have missed seeing me grow up and even more regrettably, the Clinton administration, but the old man had a very interesting life.

gift set!

Yesterday I ordered the Six Feet Under--The Complete Series DVD Gift Set for my own personal home use. Damn, I love that show! Although in the middle of Season Two, shit gets wonky. Brenda's favorite pastime becomes sex with strangers, and I was yelling at the TV "NO!" when she was fixin' to have a threesies with some stanky middle-aged couple. I mean, if you're going to blow your engagement, blow it on someone hot!

My mother has seen every episode via repeats on Bravo, but she has not seen EVERY EPISODE. I asked her if they edited out all the man-on-man sex action and she was like, "what? Man-on-man?" So I will take my box set to Smell Mar the next time I head out there so she can see all the sex and the drugs in their full, unadulterated glory.

I usually don't purchase DVDs since I never seem to watch them again, but I'm making an exception for SFU. The box set also includes a booklet and the music soundtrack, so I can drive down the highway to that Sia song and guess in what year my loved ones will croak.

Popcorn?

Someone made a dance remix of that song "Popcorn." It is currently being played at the 'bird. If you attended Kindergarten in the early '80s as I did, you might have been subjected to this song on a school-district owned vinyl record player. I think we had to do exercises to this song and pretend to be kernels of corn popping. Now it's a hit club song. Feh.

There's a nice write-up about the Geegsters in today's Chronic to promote Boys of Summer and improv in general. Thanks, WAB!

I have jury duty sometime between September 10-14. So don't invite me to your beach house that week, okay?

cookieface

I love Quack's. I eat a cookie whenever I come in here. There have been three phases of my life when eating a big ol' cookie everyday was normal:

1) EARLY CHILDHOOD. How the hell else to shut up a loquacious gifted child? Put a cookie in her mouth. You might be in store for an extended explanation on why said child hates nuts in cookies, but she does understand how to chew and swallow.

2) LADYCOLLEGE. Back when there were ten more pounds of Mo to love, I was hitting daily cookies and packing a serious ass and gut. I think the Ladycollege put out rich sweets on the daily to cope with the latent sexual frustration experienced by 90+% of the undergraduate population. If I were just eating salty turkey slices and Tomato Broccoli Bake and not chasing it with a full serving of Mud Pie or Peanut Butter Chocolate Squares while trying to complete my Baccalaureatum in Artibus in the presence of all those horny, repressed women, I'd have gone nuts. I think this was more counseling service's doing than dining services.

3) RIGHT NOW. I'm chewing a delicious cookie right now. The in-laws haven't left, I haven't gotten any in days, and my creativity and writing is in the shitter, so fuck it. I'm having a ginger crinkle, ass and gut be damned.

I did notice that I'm back in my lower pants size when I tried on uninspiring but affordable clothings at the Ancient Seafaring Branch of the Military yesterday, after eating a tortilla-less bird salad at the Bird.

I started working on the 10th Reunion at the Ladycollege planning today, and Corday, if you're reading this, I'm tapping you to do signs. I think you've got the geisty gift I'm looking for.

six feet four times

One episode of Six Feet Under
FOUR separate sex acts
One hour of television
Including one Latino construction guy on the down-low
and everyone's favorite tribute to the late great Michael Hutchence

I love this show!

VILE

I found a cache of Morrissey/Smith's videos on the VH1 Classic website. It includes my Most Favorite Rock Video Ever, November Spawned a Monster.

I just realized that I am the same age now as Morrissey was when that video was made.

This means absolutely nothing.

Bob was not impressed with the chocolate bar harmonica scene.

stuffed

I am so glad Julie is back in town, not only because I love her and she's awesome and has a better body than I'll ever have, even though she's spooted out two babies, but because she shared with me the stuffed avocado at Trudy's tonight. It was the most sinful thing I've ever eaten: a puck of avocado and chicken breaded and deep-fried to perfection, topped with sauce and cheese, and served alongside beans and rice. As long as I keep eating breaded deep-fried avocados, I never will have a body like Julie's.

The Geegsters had their first Boys of Summer II show last night, starring Bearded as a little boy who contemplated having his penis removed with popsicle sticks. Tonight we rehearsed with He Who Plays Well With Others, Les McG, who was very positive and fun. Next Saturday's show should be really entertaining and hopefully less confusing than last night's show, which offended my in-laws with the neutering and the "let me spin you on my dick" song, which was priceless as far as I was concerned.

07-07-07

Today was a huge day for weddings, if you believe what you read in the NYTimes. Many people want to wed on 7-7-7 for good luck. I got married on 8-13-06. Having unlucky 13 in there will guarantee that Bob and I will stay shackled to each other til one of us croaks. I believe that.

My mom and little bro attended a wedding today. While Bob and I were stocking our cart with dishwasher detergent and 12 oz bottles of sweet tea at Costco, my bro rang me on the celly to tell me that the wedding was boring the shit out of him and that he didn't like the food. Apparently the only other teens in attendance were "douchebags" and our mom didn't want to leave because she had struck up a conversation with a hippie lady.

My novelizing is starting to atrophy. I am at this point in my rewrites where I feel like I'm treading water in the dark. I know exactly what's going to happen but am so hung up on detail and character and "if I'm doing this right" that I can't write straight.

Two weeks from now I'm going to my weeklong writey-camp out in West Texas. The author I thought I was going to be working with canceled, so now I am taking the class with an award-winning author of Texas-themed romance novels. The covers of her books feature barechested men in cowboy hats ravishing stringy-haired lasses in front of the Alamo. Don't sneeze at romance novels: it's one of the few genres where authors can make a decent, consistent living at writing. 33% of all books sold in the US of A are romances. So while I'm not into the hot 'n heavy cowboy thing, I suspect that I will still learn a bit about novel-writing and hopefully make some writer friends and contacts, as well as see me some Marfa Lights.

the horse we rode in on

The Geegsters got their first-ever heckle tonight. I'm impressed that we've gone so many years without some boozed-up show-off telling us mid-show that we suck, but tonight we did some Barprov and the audience was mostly apathetic, save for one saggy middle-aged twat with exposed leathery tits who responded to our request to shout out "something that annoys you" with "YOU!" Meaning that we, GGG, were annoying her, a saggy drunk killjoy bitch with a big mouth. After her brusque display of shitty manners, I saw her turn to her equally saggy friend and smile at her as if to say, "aren't I funny and cool?" No, you're not. (Note to 40+ Mo: even if your life is rife with rejections and disappointments, don't disrepect the entertainment, no matter how much cooler than you they are!) The sound was bad and there was competing music coming out of the speakers. We were abruptly shooed from the stage when our time was up.

I like to think that our special brand of Geegster sunshine touched the heart of at least a few of those nice folks out there supporting a local tradition. I saw Refrigerator Jeff out in the crowd rocking and grooving to our songs, and Improv Jeff recorded our set on his Macbook. So guys named Jeff were out in full force showing us the love.

I am very happy to say that after seven years as an Austinite, I finally located the finest fish taco in town and that is at Polvos. Why I've never ordered the fish taco there before I cannot say, but the blend of white fish, butter, and strips of hot green peppers really made for a pleasurable taco experience that, outside of SD, has proved to be the most superior fish taco in A-town. Viva.

Tomorrow I am having lunch with the recently returned Joolz and finishing up the remaining eight boxes of Brit Lit Twit Shit I've got left at Harry's. And then it's back to Orson and Olivia, kicking my ass and making me feel like shit. (but how much do I love Zaven, my most challenging creation? so much, dude.)

SHOUTOUT TO ANDREAY85. I've got your boobs, lady. Thanks for reading this.

just another fucking phone conversation

"What a crazy psycho fucking bitch! I can't believe she fucking CALLED you and said that! Dumb cunt. I mean, first, she's got no fucking manners, and second, she's calling you fishing for an invitation to come stay at your house. What the fuck is that???"

I realized my mother-in-law was in the next room and that I should probably cut down on the pottymouth. I didn't want to--this is how I fucking talk and fuck everyone who thinks I shouldn't be saying fuck. Then I realized that if she knew who I was speaking to in this vulgar manner, she'd probably be even more disapproving. YES, that's how my mother and I talk to each other. We've been peppering our language with the F word since I was, like, ten, and yes, we do frequent refer to female members of our family that we do not like as "dumb cunts." I love and respect the English language and feel that having sections of it restricted to me is even more offensive than calling someone a psycho fucking bitch.

Besides, if my mother failed to make those words forbidden and taboo when I was growing up (didn't happen), then why should they be now? She's the one who decided we should behave more like peers than parent and child. What the fuck do I care if someone thinks she's a bad parents for "allowing" her 31-year-old daughter say the F-word 238 times in a single phone conversation (ballpark--I didn't count)? Some mothers and daughters go out and max out credit cards together, or scratch out each others' lines of coke.

Both of my parents thought restricting my use of vulgar language was lame and pointless, so I was allowed to let it fly. My little bro had the misfortune of having a father who cares deeply about what others think and made it known that he was the household tastemaker and that we were to refer to human excrement as "a bowel movement' and the act of human procreation as "intercourse" but were not to use their related American multipurpose noun/verb/adjective/modifiers, especially in front of Little Bro, lest he grow up to be anything but an uptight, unpleasant shitheel.

Enough of that shit. Today's NYTimes article of interest: in the African nation of Mauritania, the feminine physical ideal is fat. Teenage girls are stuffed full of fatty camel's milk and couscous like livestock because that's what Mauritanian men find sexy. One hundred years ago in America, being fat was a sign of prosperity. Now looking like you were carved from an old hat rack is the look of the rich. The Mauritanian government is trying to put a stop to the creation of lush, Rubenesque young women, citing diabetes and heart disease. What they should be stopping is the disgusting forcefeeding methods--five gallons of camels milk a day? Yuck! Who could get down five gallons of ANYTHING a day?

I would still enjoy a culture where fatties ruled the day and would love to see some starved-looking woman get denied by a man because she looks like her daddy is the most broke-ass goat herder in the village.

independence day

I don't know if it's the weather or what, but I've been one sad wanny-wanny crybaby lately and I don't know why. I'm at a good point in my monthly cycle, I've been battling the dragon that is Peace Up My Ass (novel), taking vitamins, eating chicken, going to my dull-as-balls research job, getting ready for the Geegster's six week run, and hanging out with the entire Ap Fam minus the two younger Ap Kids, meaning the in-laws are in town. (insert Jaws theme here) I have NOT been yogacizing, getting laid, farting whenever/wherever, and getting enough alone/down time, due to presence of in-laws. Oh, and the sky has problems and is dressed like a battle-wounded Union soldier getting ready to bayonnet his gangrenous leg off.

The in-laws have brought into my home something that I pride myself on excluding from my daily repetoire and that is SNACKS. Not that I have a problem with snacks, but I generally avoid snacking so as to not fulfill my genetic destiny of turning into an ass-heavy Armenian. I am built exactly like my ass and tummy-heavy mother, only I'm a foot taller, so I get away with being a bit ass-and-tummy heavy, but I don't want it to get worse. Which it will, when the aging process rears its ugly head. At age fifty-nine, my mother has all but stopped eating in order to not turn into some zaftig beach ball with tits down to her knees.

Ma and Pa Ap went out and got Sun Chips and snack mix and those waxy little diet cheese wedges that Weight Watchers commands its parishioners to acquire. Having been self-exiled from Snackville for so long, I have been chomping down that shit like no one's business. I must return to my acetic meals-only lifestyle, which of course includes dessert.

That, and I am obsessed with Six Feet Under. I can't stop thinking about Brenda. I am concerned for her safety. I am also concerned for David, who in his confusion and desperation has turned to rough trade. This is the best soap opera ever, with all due respect to the great Patrick Thornhart, bless his Irish soul.