Le maudit Mo D.

Moklahoma

Geegsters and Graphsters heading to Okla. tonight! Big show in Tulsa tomorrow night, 8pm, Nightingale Theater, if you happen to be in the 918.

Yesterday I got brand new Michelin tires. I like the Michelin man. He is French and white and made of tires. Costco now exclusively fills tires with nitrogen. Apparently this is healthier for the tires. Less oxygen means less moisture and better gas mileage. I even got stylish green valve caps out of the deal. It is practically a family tradition to ditch your tires and go for Michelins. Mom seems to think that Michelin tires mean no accidents. She believes this and I don't try to dissuade her.

comparison

Man...I've been down in the dumps, creative-wise, lately. Here, for my edification and yours, is my self-written, very handy tool: WHY NOVELIZING AND IMPROVISING ARE NOT ALIKE!

Improv:
1) Instant gratification! It's a finished product in 20-60 minutes. It takes more time to get glasses at Lenscrafters.

Novel:
1) Been working on the same thing for a year. Most other novelists go longer. I think it's done, but is it ever really done?

Improv:
2) Performed in front of an audience! Instant feedback! Clapping! People telling you what they liked about it.

Novel:
2) "Hi, I wrote this. Please read it and tell me what sucks so I can change it."

Improv:
3) Finite. Cannot go back and change things after it's done.

Novel:
3) Like I said: is it ever REALLY done?

Improv:
4) Me: "Hey, I do improv! With a troupe!"
Other person: "Awesome! Can I come see one of your shows?"
Me: "Yes!"

Novel:
4) Me: "Hey, I wrote a novel!"
Other person: "Awesome! Is it published?"
Me: "No."
Other person: "Oh."
(shift to awkwardness)

Improv:
5) Done with other people! It's social! It builds fellowship! You make friends this way! There are parties!

Novel:
5) Alone. Lonely. The barren landscape of your own damaged soul. All. Freaking. Day.

Improv:
6) A lot of glory through small effort*.

Novel:
6) No glory and a shitload of effort.

In spite of all this, I am trying to work through my Sylvia Period and really do love my novel(s). Philip Horvath is getting so ridiculous and Carol is turning into a huge bully (out of insecurity, of course). I love them.

*I'm not saying that there is no effort put forth in improv. Quite the contrary. For me, though, writing the novel has been a Sisyphean task compared to what I've done in my improv life. A lot of the time I feel like a retard telling people that I've written a novel (like that automatically makes me some kind of hack), but not when I say I'm an improviser.

Boo hoo, tell it to your therapist, Mo.

no subject

This morning I got an e-mail from my editor at the Ladycollege alumnae magazine. A classmate of mine, an Army surgeon, was killed in Iraq last week. She is the first member of my class to pass away.

I didn't know Roselle personally, but she e-mailed me a class note once. She was a doctor, and by all accounts a damn good one. This is a damn tragedy. I don't know if it's right to assign more worth to her life just because she was a doctor and a Smithie, but when we lose excellent, caring, contributing people like this so young, it's just not right.

Here is the best website I could find honoring her memory.

nobody gets a childhood anymore

Lately, I've been mourning the loss of childhood. Kids no longer seem to have a sense of independence, are micromanaged by their parents, are overly protected, and aren't allowed to go out and play the way kids used to. Play is controlled. Outside activities are padded and bubble-wrapped. There's that dumb controversy over cupcakes. (my mom brought cupcakes for my birthday and no one got fat on ONE CUPCAKE) Helicopter Parents stalking their young with Costco jugs of hand santizer and stacks of college applications. Childhood these days just looks like a shitty day at college, only with parents up your butt. Why the shift?

The first thing that comes to mind is Adam Walsh's grizzly 1981 kidnapping and murder splashed all over TV, scaring the bejeezus out of parents springs to mind. The media really got all over that. Saturday morning TV showed creepy dramatizations of little kids getting kidnapped from shopping malls. Diff'rent Strokes even had an Adam-themed episode where that little redheaded boy is forced to live as the pretend son of a bereaved, crazy-assed couple (I guess the producers wanted to skip the sodomy and the decapitation?).

All of this coverage had to have an effect on our parents, who grew up in an era of no seatbelts, no bike helmets and "just be home by dinner." What happened between their childhoods and ours? No one can answer for sure. Did the streets of America really get more dangerous? Was there really more crime? Was it desegregating the schools, Governor Reagan cleaning out California prisons? Or was it fear every night on the daily news?

Also, can't believe it's taken me thirteen years to come up with this:

Northclamton

Come for the clam, stay for Art 100!

Boo-hoo!

Awww....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/fashion/23whopays.html?_r=1&ref=fashion&oref=slogin

Poor, poor things. Dating guys in creative fields who live in Brooklyn is such a drag because they can't keep up with your $300 dinner checks and they feel so threatened by all the money you waste when they just scrape by. Gosh, how put out these ladies must feel. Where, oh where are their male equals? Oh, right.

Good thing the Duane Reade tissue aisle is affordable to everyone.

bomb charisma

It is late and Bob and I were loserish this evening. Rather than take part in the spark and vivacity that is an evening in the joyous presence of the Austin Improv community, we stayed home, read some shit, and ate dinner at an old people's restaurant. It was there that I spied perhaps the largest ass I have ever seen on a living person in my entire life. Elephantine in stature and gait, this woman had chosen to cover her monumental ass with blue striped stretch pants, causing her derrière to resemble a perambulating full-sized mattress. Indeed, one of her butt cheeks added up to both of mine. The poor dear was enormous on the bottom but only regular big on top. She was cruelly mismatched, as if she were assembled by diabolical suburban rugrats who put Barbie's torso on Mr Potato Head's bottom. The entire walk home was spent pontificating about this enormous, gigantic, noteworthy, pitiful, and yet unavoidably public butt! I don't want to be mean, but OMG! BIGGEST BUTT I'VE EVER SEEN!

Anyway, rather than talk about superlative butts, self-doubt, my nose, my novels, Bob, or any other frequently mentioned maudit shite, I am going to refer you to the writings of one of the best minds of my generation, Mr. Shannon McCormick. I have been waiting to hear someone articulate this for years and today I found this on his blog. As someone who often rues her own lack of charisma and leadership in the arts (writing a novel is a lonely, thankless, inglorious endeavor, might I remind me!), it felt damn good to have these fears validated by someone else. I also think that I'm pretty consistent in not laughing or responding favorably if a scene is just okay or less than okay. I am guilty of sometimes saying "great show!" when really it was "mediocre show!" or "anal rape isn't funny, dumbass!" (though I'd only have to use that one if I were at an out-of-town fest)

This is why I love my 30s so much. The best lies of youth are laid bare, right before your eyes. An era of a thousand blinking lightbubs. Yes.

Good show, Shando!

ladies of the schnoz

Last night I was looking at myself in the mirror and noticing that the aging process is subtley taking its toll on my face. I've got a bit of eye wrinkle and a little cheek hang. I also noticed, and maybe this is just me, that my nose was starting to look a little bigger. I already have a big ol' Armenian honker nose, so any further snoot growth is going to turn me into Jimmy Durante. I'm not a vain person, but I have been made to feel self-conscious about my nose my whole life. On The Worst Day of My Life, the day I substitute taught at an elementary school, kids actually came up to me and said that my nose was big and ugly. Rather than sock them in the face or remind them that my tax dollars are going to pay for their future incarceration, I told them that they were being mean or said nothing. My mother actually said to my face once that I was never going to get a boyfriend with this nose and I'd better schedule plastic surgery tout suite unless I wanted to end up a miserable spinster. Obviously, I proved her ass wrong, but still: ouch.

Anyway, holding me back is, of course, plastic surgery is, like, totally against my religion unless you were disfigured in an accident or your septum is so deviated you can't breathe. I guess plastic surgery is a requirement if you work in the adult film industry. At any rate, joining the ranks of dark-complected Glendale armo bitches running around with dainty noses on their otherwise swarthy ethnic faces isn't my style.

Some Armenian plastic surgeon recently ran a "Best Armenian Nose" contest in Armenia. The winner got a free nose job. Here is a pic of the winner:

This is what I'm talking about, Glendale! You can see chicks like these waiting around for their Pinkberry and yakking in Hayeren on their cellphones all over LA County! This woman is, I believe, Armenian from Armenia. Anyway, her after shot is, in my mind, no great example of beauty or the answered prayer that is rhinoplasty.

There have been several beautiful and/or striking women who have totally rocked the Roman nose over the years to great effect. The First is Princess Berar, the last Ottoman Princess. Bitch was a Turk whose family had a hand in exterminating mine, but we are genetically related and therefore share the same lovely nose:

This photo is kind of small, but you get the point. She was known as an "unusual beauty" throughout Asia Minor.

The other big-nosed lady of note that I can think of is British poet (and Harry's collection subject) Edith Sitwell:

Edith was not really known as a great beauty, but words such as "striking" and "unusual" were employed to describe her.

Here is a statue of her head:

Of course, who can forget the career-ending nose job of actress Jennifer Grey? She went from perky, pleasant, and unique-looking star of Dirty Dancing to plain and unrecognizable. Risking ending up like her, or like Miss Armenian Nose Job up above, has always kept me out of the plastic surgeon's office. Bob likes my nose because he says it helps him pick me out of crowds.

At any rate, I have a chest crater that requires surgical attention before I start going after my nose, so this is all just me talking at this point.

encyclopedia brain

My proudest accomplishment for this, September 20, 2007, was cleaning up the Austin Improv Wikipedia article. This bitch can write an encyclopedia entry. As a former and failed lexicographer, I am indeed proud that I could summon my best academic writing skills today and apply them to my most favorite extra-curricular activity and the wonderful community to which I belong! Booya!

Saw a really awful tattoo today. Homejobber blue ballpoint pen teenage mistake nightmare of the flesh. Sad. Maybe the owner doesn't see it that way. I hope not.

Last Tuesday, Bob and I attended the Jonathan Coulton show. Bob is a big Coulton fan and my affections for him grew after he appeared onstage in a Lady Killigrew Cafe t-shirt (which he later changed). The L.K. was where I tapped my Montague Missive of last May (alliteration) and the world's most beautiful outdoor coffee-and-tea drinkery. I also admit that my admiration grew during his masterful cover of "Baby Got Back." Learning he is a Yalie (and Whiffenpoof!) also piqued my intrigue. I've got a soft spot for Elis.

The opening dudes were also quite entertaining and talented and could even harmonize with each other. Paul and Storm are their names and they do a spot-on imitation of TMBG.

judgement days

Enduring some low-level depression/anxiety. Bleh. Reading the mail(er) of Behemoth Man of Letters loses its luster after a few days. Fewer scantily-clad fan photos, more invoices; dull Christmas cards; sparring with NYTimes reviewers. Eyeballs on computer screen for seven hours a day becomes painful. As predicted, the ones who are truly suffering are Orson and Olivia; Carol and Phillip (hell, they haven't seen each other in WEEKS). Novel #2 tentatively titled "Angel in the Snow" after E. Smith song. Novel characters neglected. Reading demotivational self-editing for fiction book. Feeling loserish; hackish. Changed locale from Worcester to Pole-heavy Chicopee, Mass, home of D----- Drive. (My surname Dr.)

Am seriously considering starting my own Ladycollege alumnae mag. Letter today from concerned Ladycollegian who is no longer a lady. I knew this; I broke genderswitch story in Official Ladycollege alumnae mag several years ago. Says, worried won't feel welcome at reunion; might feel excluded like he does when he reads the Official Ladycollege alumnae mag. Sticky old ladies with fat purses might not be down with Ladycollegians who aren't ladies anymore. Endowment might suffer. Still, he should feel welcome at reunion. But I can't control 200 bitches, so I digress.

Complete sentences: bullhonk.

Salt intake ridiculously high. Had for lunch and dinner chipotle-dressinged salads. Mouth hurts. Salt. Need gallons of water. Cured recent G.I. ish with a tub of that overpriced acidophilus goo from C. Market. Antibiotics mauled maudit intestinal flora. Boo.

EKsiLLint coaching sesh avec Beth B. et les geegsters hier soir. I got some extra note-age from the lady herself (a ling of the ground, comme ça) who revealed to me that I go dark a lot. I do? I guess I'm only funny to goths and myself then. That explains my lack of popularity. I thought it was just the high IQ and the intimidatingly large nose. I am turning into Bea Arthur. Thank you.

Sometimes I worry that I lack compassion. Or that compassion shouldn't be selective, when it really is. I can't stop thinking about Ladycollegeman yet ignore or am scornful of a host of other persons/causes, such as:

*up-to-the-minute coverage of stereotypical trust-fund hippie still behaving like a stereotypical trust-fund hippie well into his 30s (providing much guffawing and chuckling here in 78757)
*rejoicing in the news that fois gras sales are up like crazy here in the ATX due to backfiring of vegan vandalism punk-down tactics. i'm not the only "go protest something that affects more than .0001% of the population" flippant bitch in A-town and I dig that.

I planned to bake Duncan Hines spice cake tonight but after mail(er) reading and hip-focused yoga class and the preparation of salty chipotle-style salad dressing, I am wiped, so I will crawl into my soft green bed and sleep instead.

don't hate, relate!

Last night's Geegster show saw me doing one of the best solo songs I've ever done in my 4 years in GGG. It was a TAG LINE SONG with a consistent STRUCTURE! Yay! I would like to record it for Broc-Man's GGG album. It was called:

LAURIE LAURIE

Christmas money, birthday checks
Why do you always turn me into a wreck?
Laurie Laurie
What's your story?
Why don't you love me?

I don't think the show got taped (it was JEWELRY STORE: THE MUSICAL with a snooty jewelry store, white trash diamond miners and a high school love triangle, and yes, Shana and I smooched again, successfully. Someone donate to the Smith Fund, quick!), which means that the original lyrics are lost to the ages.

In other news: I am saddened by the current American folly of mocking Britney Spears.

Granted, I have never been a fan of hers, but it just makes me sad that a woman who is obviously in crisis and in need of some serious mental health intervention is the current punching bag of the American people. Lard-ass Americans who go around calling her "fat" just because she no longer has the same abs she had as a teenager are hypocrites. It is impossible for a woman who birthed two babies in a single calendar year (sheesh!) to achieve that kind of body ever again. Yes, hers was a poor wardrobe choice (she is rumored to have insisted on the bikini get-up over a more modest corset), but wow! What does it say about society when all they can do is diss on a clinically depressed nearly-has-been entertainer? Wow.

Think about how loser-populated this society is. Every day some saggy sack of shit cockblocks a parking spot, doesn't wear deodorant, gets fired from their job at Blockbuster Video, and sits in front of the TV downing Cheetos and Coke. Yet none of us really thinks of ourselves as losers, do we? At any moment, your supposed slide from greatness could happen. Thank god you're not famous, because then your descent into the pits of loserdom would be splashed all over the media. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I guess that's the price they pay, but it seems like we crap on our female entertainers the hardest and for the least amount of supposed wrongdoing Example: Jennifer Aniston. Her punishment for being the bitch who got to marry Brad Pitt was to have her marriage/fertility/fidelity/sanity/career speculated upon at every turn. When they broke up, it was her fault for not being supportive/pretty/baby-making/enticing enough for Brad.

On another level: Everyday American Moms. How quickly we are as a society and as individuals to offer unsolicited childrearing advice or denounce a woman's choices and motivations in regards to her job as a mother. How dare a mother try to work outside the home/pursue hobbies/not spend every moment catering to her child! Dads, on the other hand, can do pretty much whatever they want and are treated like saints for changing a diaper on their own.

Also, people tend to forget that child stars like Britney have never handled their own affairs and have answered to a swarm of handlers and support staff their whole careers. Britney has probably not had a lick of privacy in the last decade yet is probably financially supporting her entire family as well as a team of employees. She clearly has some sort of post-partum depression going on. She made some bad decisions (marrying a white-trash Fresnan for starters) but haven't we all?

errrrrrrr

I spent 6 hours in the E.R. today. CHEST PAINS. I carry a card with me at all times that says IN THE EVENT OF CHEST PAINS, DO NOT RULE OUT AORTIC DISSECTION! This is because of Marfan Syndrome and Denty Chest and Loose Joints and Stupid Bendy Body, of course. So around 2pm I started having serious chest pains, so I ditched work and came home and felt worse, so I summoned my beloved to take me to the ER, where a battery of tests, including Riding the Donut, ruled out aortic dissection, so I was free to come home. My body was coated in EKG stickers, which the nurse did not remove.

My room in the ER faced the nurse's station and when I started to feel better I pretended that I was directing an episode of E.R. and that their banter, which I could hear, was in the script. I believe I gave them bad notes for their rather lethargic response to a Code Blue (I want action! Run faster, damnit! CODE BLUE!) and thought that the flirtatious male nurse (totally real) should have upped the ante a little bit.

Don't worry about me. I think the chest pains had more to do with S3 at Mam's than it did with my aorta. Which is fine, by the way. Whew!

Sock and Snail go to Sao Paolo

Today, in honor my (finally) getting my diamond-encrusted diamond-studded diamondy-diamond one-year anniversary ring and starting my odyssey (paid position) reading the mail (er) of one of the great American Men of Letters, which is like being in the literary CIA, Bob and I took the puppets to their most favorite restaurant, Sao Paulo Brazilian Cuisine! The puppets are pretty finicky eaters, and the one dish they can't shut up about is Bobo de Camarao, so we took them out so Sock would shut his cottony muzzle about it.

Here's the little dudes with the menu:

Here's Bob drinking Sock's mojito. This made Sock angry, as you can imagine:

Sock finally gets his drink on here:

And now, the moment the puppets have been waiting for: BOBO DE CAMARAO!

Snail inspects my Moqueca Bahia:

Snail and Sock fight over the check.
Sock: "That guy's trying to nickel and dime me for the mojito! He's figuring in cab fare!"

Denied dessert, Snail takes a bite of Sock.

Bob and I took care of the bill and they were happy again! Yay Sock and Snail!

They were so happy that they immediately came home and joined MySpace!

BOBO DE CAMARAO!!!!!

Good Deeds

Today I fulfilled my civic duty and appeared at the Travis County Courthouse for some down-home jury selection. I was not selected to partake in today's trial, which had to do with traffic. The judge actually apologized for the case not being a zingy capital murder trial. I actually overheard the defendant say to the judge that he didn't want me--ME--to be on the jury due to my admitting that I had been in an accident similar to the one to be discussed, and since there were 20 people for 6 slots, they gave him his way and I was free to go about the rest of my day, feeling good about donating my $6 juror compensation to the charity of my choice.

I walked down to the bus stop in front of the Hideout to catch the numero cinco autobus home, slurping on an iced tea and thinking happy thoughts about how the Hideout was where I met my beloved nearly five years ago and sad thoughts about how the last time 9/11 fell on a Tuesday, it was THAT 9/11 and how I cried in the Pearl St. laundry room after I found out about it. But my private moments were halted when an asshat of monumental proportions spotted a truck fixin' to back out of one of those spots right in front of where I have been improvising for half a decade and decided that northbound Congress Avenue could suck it because he was going to get that spot no matter what.

The asshat in question was a male in his 50s or 60s commandeering a large, gold-accented Cadillac Escalade. He had overshot the optimum place to allow the truck that was backing out enough space to exit so tried to back up. There was a row of about three cars and one of those Dillo trolley vehicles right behind him, and they were not budging, but that did not deter him. Maybe I am the asshole who would have looked in the rearview mirror, ascertained that my needs and wants were not worth inconveniencing three cars and a bus, and forfeited the sweet spot for the sake of allowing fellow drivers to go on their merry way. Although gifted education taught me otherwise, I do occasionally recognize that I am just a little dot in the great big pot and that inconveniencing others and perhaps causing an accident is not worth getting a parking spot. Maybe that's just me, though.

This man in his gold-accented Escalade(1) would not defer to the social contract and good common sense and kept inching his douchemobile back and back until it was practically touching the bumper of the vehicle to its rear. Meanwhile, the guy who just wants to leave is still not being given a wide enough berth to back out properly.

I try to convey to Mr. Selfish that he needs to let it go by casting a disapproving glare at him and shaking my head no. No, man, just let it go! Cars are honking, drivers are getting frustrated, but he persists. The light turns green, then, red, then green again, and he's still blocking an entire lane of traffic as well as the guy who wants to get out in the first place. Had I been in the car trying to leave, I would have pulled back in, gotten out of my car, and walked away until the douchebag got a hint that I would not allow a selfish asshat take that spot if he was going to fuck over an entire lane of traffic just to get it.

Eventually, the cars behind him managed to change lanes and he had enough space to back up and damnit, did he get that spot. I continued to glare at him as he exited his vehicle. He looked at me sheepishly while I gave him the stink eye. It was then that I noticed that he was wearing a custom oxford shirt with his initials embroidered on the pocket. My granddad wore those. They are a clothing item usually reserved for robber barons and other captains of industry, owing to the fact that they go for around $200 a pop. I felt a little sad, but then remembered how it was that grandpa got so rich: fucking people over. This guy was also short and a little on the greezy side.

Oh, grandpa: if your spirit must visit me, could it be in the form of a bird, or the wind, or the unexplained presence of the smell of your cologne? Why does it have to be some a-hole who works my nerves??!?!? Would you have done that?? Send a bird over and tell me no. Please.

And on that note, I go back to worky-work tomorrow.

(1) Having grown up around the rich, specifically the Retarded Rich who think ownership of this type of vehicle impresses others, I was immediately stricken with feelings of hatred for this guy, for no other reason than it appeared that the Fresno Armo community called and was missing one of their douchebags.

For those of you in the OK

Tell all the Okies that the Geegsters and the Graphsters are coming to Tulsa.

forget your fears and doubts

Last night I started watching "Degrassi: The Next Generation" on DVD. I was a huge Degrassi Junior High fan in junior high. It used to air on PBS in F-town in the late '80s. Degrassi, along with Judy Blume books and Sassy Magazine, was among my favorite bullshit-free media influences. Sure, every episode included a soap-operatic "issue" that a character would confront: drugs, cheating, teen pregnancy, dead parents, car accidents, child abuse, But it was never with any judgment or scorn, thanks to the very wise and very Canadian perspectives of the producers. Three years ago I got to meet some of the original stars and asked them if they ever confronted a-hole censors like the ones we have here in the US of A, and the answer was a resounding NO!

The first two episodes are great because all the original actors are the adults now. The first character you meet is Emma, which, if you're an old fogey like me, you'll remember as Spike's teen pregnancy baby! (somehow, the original Degrassi episode that has stayed with me the most is the one where one of the twins has an abortion and Spike and her skinbird friend take it upon themselves to give her pictures of dead fetuses and write Baby Killer on her locker) The first two episodes are a cringeworthy exploration of current dangers posing the youth of today, namely, Emma getting ensnared by a creepy internet predator who poses as a teenage boy only to lure young Emma into a hotel room where he plans to get oogy with her in front of a videocamera. I found myself yelling, "NO! HE'S A CHILD MOLESTER! TELL YOUR MOM!" at the TV, hiding my face in a pillow. Fortunately, her Degrassi pals are able to break into her e-mail and find out where they went and alerted Spike and Snake (Snake came to Austin three years ago for the Alamo Degrassi marathon), who called the T.O. po-po and arrived just in time to save Emma from further ooginess. A lesson to tweens everywhere: don't meet people from the Internet alone!

I look forward to six amazing seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation, and can't wait to see Emma reunite with her brain damaged bridge-jumping dad Shane. Gourmet Scum indeed!

Choppy Chop

Last night Bob and I celebrated one year and three weeks of nuptial bliss by taking "Knife Skills: 101," an Odyssey in Chopping. I used to get apprehensive using the kitchen in the presence of The Chef, aka Bob's brother. The Chef is a CIA grad and during his tenure as one of Austin's Hottest Chefs, won numerous local culinary awards and was a fixture at any and all Austin food-related events. So picking up a knife and chopping garlic under his expert, watchful eye was intimidating, even after I said to him that doing so was intimidating and he gave me his permission to chop like an amateur.

Bob was feeling much the same way. I guess we both suffer from Gifted Child Syndrome, where if we can't be the best at something, we simply avoid said activity and stick to the ones that we excel at. But the fact of the matter is, chopping and slicing aren't going to exit our lives anytime soon, so why not learn how to do it right? So we signed up for this class and received expert instruction in dicing, mincing, and chopping jalapenos, tomatoes, carrots, and onions. They plied us with wine and salad and then let us have at the cutting board. Turns out, I'd been holding a knife wrong for many years now. I was also made moderately uncomfortable by the instructor's demand that the knuckle of my left hand made contact with the blade at all times. YOUR GUIDE HAND should have a knuckle that protrudes slightly so as to not be cut but also to guide the knife so that you are able to cut small, uniform chunklets of produce.

We learned how to scrape the slimy seed goo from a Roma tomato and created beautiful salsa-ready tomato cubes. We donned gloves to seed and mince a jalapeno. I bowed out of the orange supreming sesh, due to my rampant hatred of the orange and its desire to see me have skin illnesses. I already have one skin illness, which is slowly abating, so I do not need additional illnesses of the flesh triggered by citrus fruits. The very kind and friendly other-chef-guy gave me a bowl of chocolate and vanilla ice cream since the planned dessert was full of lethal supremed oranges which would have caused me a great deal of unhappiness and discomfort.

Bob was very pleased to learn that his homejobber knife sharpening prowess was spot-on. We were not the goobers that brought in a dull knife and had to sit through a brief public shaming. However, the class was a boon to present knife goober company since the instructor demonstrated proper sharpening technique on the goober's dull knife, so they saved $4 by being goobers and not having to take their dull blades to the coolest local business: THE KNIFE SHARPIST! I love hearing the Knife Sharpist's radio ads on Koop Radio, when they list all the amazing things that they specialize in sharpening:

KNIVES! SCISSORS! MACHETES! SWORDS! If it has a blade they can sharpen it! They service restaurants AND tonsorial enterprises. The list is longer than just those four bladed instruments I have mentioned.

The nice knife lady at C-market also offers a Knife Skills 201 course which focuses on the deboning of meats. Students are given a whole fish to debone. This piqued my husband's interest, for his love of meat extends beyond the simple act of eating it. He is consistent with his love of the flesh so for that I applaud him. I love Bob.

In sum, I highly recommend Knife Skills 101 as a way to celebrate a milestone or just for the joy of learning. A.

happy b-day p.o.e.!

Today is my novel's first birthday. I started working on her in earnest exactly a year ago. At present, she is in her third-ish incarnation, some 73,000 words, 254 double-spaced pages. Happy Birthday Orson and Olivia, Roberta and Dahlia. Zaven, you came later, but such a complex guy you are. Goodness trumps money!

Tonight Bob and I are taking a "how to properly use a kitchen knife" class at the C-market. It is my gift to him for our anniversary. He's been talking about taking this class for a long time, so I signed us up. He even gets a new Wusthof knife out of the deal. We will learn to chop and julienne. I went back to sleep after Bob left for work (shingles takes a lot out of a bitch) and had this incredibly vivid dream about going to the knife skills class at some parallel universe C-market. We were duped into being sent to the elaborate C-market basement to enter a controlled area where we were served saucy eggplant chunks and given long surveys to fill out. "I paid for Knife Skills and this is not Knife Skills!" I exclaimed and snuck out, into the catacombs of subterranean C-Market. I passed by a special Kosher Quarantined area where a bearded rabbinical-looking man was giving a lecture on potatoes. There were escalators everywhere. Finally, I found the Knife Skills class, where everyone was wearing a beret and chopping lettuce. I broke down in tears. Bob was still down in the basement filling out surveys. I was walking around with this big machete, too, which I had brought from home. To chop. And fricasee. And julienne.

Oh, the brain is so creative!!

S.LUM.M.

BtB FUN FACT: The festival turned me into a house! With a roof! I gots SHINGLES! AKA Head Herpes, or as Shando eloquently put it, "chicken pox for grown ups." It's isolated to the right side of my scalp and neck and nowhere else, so unless you give me a shampoo, you're not going to touch it. And no, you may not give me a shampoo. I had chicken pox twenty years ago and those dormant viruses decided that the time was right to take up doing improv, so they came out to play all over my head. I feel like someone beat me upside the head. My neck is so sore. I think I'm on the wrong type of medication. What I got is an anti-bacterial, but shingles are viral. Poopers.

Now that the festival is over, I can focus solely on my next volunteer-wrangling responsibility, the Ladycollege Class of 1998 Ten-Year Reunion and Pissing Contest. I'm a member of the Fab Four putting this shit on. Fortunately, these ladies have a sense of humor and are not lame in the least, so the '98s are in good hands whether or not they recognize it. But today is a watershed day, because on our little Myspace message board, someone finally posted something about my greatest fear about this thing. The elephant named Gloria in the room. Oh shit:

"I know this sounds nerdy, but can we have a tea (or cocktail hour, since we're grown-ups now) where we talk about our majors and how everyone tells me that my major was worthless? I'm curious to know what everyone's doing with their worthless majors. Ha!"

Oh, sister. Fuck you. Don't turn my reunion into some lame-as-fuck pissing contest where we all sip tea with our pinkies up and make ourselves feel alternately superior and shitty based on some non-scientific ranking system in which we assign meaning and merit to our life choices up to this point. Because if that's what the people want, then I'm treating it as a costume ball and showing up as a truck stop whore. I'm going to black out my teeth and find some hideous t-shirt that says "Best Blowjobs On Interstate 20!" I will use improv for evil and derail any and all sheepishness/meaningless comparisons/diminishing of life choices/etc

I also want to note that it's never the women who are by all accounts "successful" who bring this up, although plenty of successful women think they're unsuccessful. Life is hard. No one, not even Gloria, thinks they're the shit and have it all figured out. If anyone's the losers it's the women who go to Reunion to brag about themselves and seek to show others up.

Anyway, I have ideas for an independent, irreverent, funny, and philosophically-challenging Ladycollege alum magazine called S.LUM.M. (Smitha LUMnee Magazeen!). The officially-sanctioned alum mag is geared to please everyone, and we all know that "everyone" means "rich old ladies who are requested to leave the ladycollege something in their wills." So while the class notes section will announce this lesbo marriage and that gender reassignment surgery, the articles usually focus on traditionally successful career women of a certain age. They even recently ran an article about dating which completely omitted any discussion of women dating other women, which pissed off the younger, poorer alums but was defended by the magazine as an editorial choice based on "the different challenges facing women who date men" bla bla bla.

S.LUM.M. would be specially designed to acknowledge the fact that most women don't get the lives that the Ladycollege espouses as worthy of praise. I know that plenty of bitches are going to skip my reunion because they're embarrassed about being stay-at-home moms or kindergarten teachers or single or whatever the hell unglamorous and therefore unacceptable path their lives have taken. And I think it's bullshit that an institution that claims to have a handle on empowering women from all walks of life snatches away that power just to protect its image for the sake of prospective students and donors.

I have a short-list of things to write about. And I want Shiney in on this if I do it. I think everyone should S.LUM.M. at least once.

standardized

The theme for this year's Beyond the Borders for me has been Feeling Like Shit. Physically, mentally, emotionally. But let's just talk about physically. Since about Thursday I've had a raging itch on my scalp. It is bumpy and my corresponding glands are swollen. It is sore to the touch and I also have this pain radiating down my head. Of course, this all happens on a holiday weekend. So I go to the overrun Urgent Care Facility, which is overflowing with illin' folks. I like this Urgent Care because they have a separate pediatric area, which is a glassed-in quarantined pen for the sick squeeblers. The grown folks are allowed to languish in their own boring grown-up pen with minimal saliva contact. Anyway, as my latest folly is to apply for MFA programs, programs that require a mastery of 8th grade mathematics to study creative writing, I took along my Princeton Review GRE practice book for study during the long wait (actually, a not-bad 1.75 hours). I figured a germ-infested medical waiting room was as good a place as any to relearn Pythagorean theorem.

NOTE TO DUDES: If you want to pick up chicks in a waiting room, just bring a standardized test study guide with you. It was a chick magnet, and I'm not even a dude or hot or anything. Every person who sat next to me was riveted with my big book of triangles and analogies. I had no fewer than three ladies reading over my shoulder asking me what I was doing. "Uh, I don't do standardized test prep for fun," I explained. Imagine how manly and hot you could make such an interaction! Entrance exams, at least to nerds like me, are rife with unspoken information about one's intellect, goals, ambitions, and conformity to questionable college entrance standards. Or stodginess, desperation, desire to avoid real work, and potential for pretentious words and deeds over coffee or in the vestibules of art museums.

I personally dig nerdy shit, so if I were to see some glasses-wearing nutsack box-of-hangers test-prepping or reading Nabokov, my dials would probably hit 10 or 11. Indeed, I must admit that in the windows of that men's clothing shop at the corner of 6th and Congress (the one that sells suit jackets with UT or A&M-themed linings) there is a window dummy wearing a sweater vest and a bow tie and I have to admit, even though it's a headless mannequin, I always get a little brain-chemical lift when I walk by that window.

If someone were to make the adult film Standardized Test Fuck 4, I'd buy it.

billie jean is not my lover

Parties. I have a love/hate relationship with parties. On one hand, they are fun. On the other, I do not partake in alcohol, so I have to make my own fun. When you are sober like a redwood at all times, drunk people start to seem like lesser beings after a while. Loss of control over faculties, bladder. Feh. Is it fun to be a delta of rivulets? (sweat, urine, blood, spilled ales and lagers) And why are there no effete homosexuals at improv parties? My feet are stinky (just got a whiff; thank you sandals!) but I would like to keep here for personal reference (and public consumption) some funny shit I said tonight.

TRUCKER DICK. I was mad insulting the party for its lack of skanky cum-dumpster hos with their vistas of public-domain titties and Forever 21 nipple covers and all corresponding skinny bitches (i.e. this bitch needs to get filled with mashed potatoes; stuffing; gravy; turkey dinner because eating is cool) and then I stated that I prefer sexual relations with a man whose got a little sum'in to hold onto (like Bob and his sexy beer belly--not that YOU can hold on to it; married to me, Bob is the ONLY man I've had sex with in the last 5 years, so get your own beer belly), not some hammer-hips skinny dude (that's like fucking a box of hangers--no thank you). When I want some meat, I WANT SOME MEAT WITH SOME FAT ON IT. Marbled steak, thank you. Then I was making fictional assessments of people that made no sense and was for entertainment purposes only but said that Jason has "trucker dick," a propos of nothing.

Trucker Dick. What is it? A disease? A state of being? Smell touch taste texture? TEXTURE??? Constricted vas deferens causing sprinkler-style ejaculation? I don't know. It's all made up. No offense to Jason. I should not be conjecturizing on his manhood. That is wrong. But improvisers...what a pack of douchecakes, me included. Especially me. Insult humor ahoy! I don't mean anything by it. I am drunk with love. No beer, just love. Big foamy glasses. Frosty love. Cold. Refreshing.

This sort of behavior would be acceptable WERE I DRUNK, which I'm not because of TOPROL XL and it's relationhip to my Marfan Syndromey heart. I also have WEIRD, HURTY BUMPS behind my ear and on the back of my head. Stress-related? I am like that nasty pustule of a third-grader, tender skin rendered raw and bleedy from repeat visits from infected fingernails. It's all hidden underneath my rich, wavy locks. You'll never see it unless I intercept you and ask you to check me for nits.

sleep slut

I can't stay up past 1am. And if I do, I don't wake up until 11.

I'm the geez of the fest, and I'm only 31. I'm such a sleep slut. I will give up partying for sleep. Every time. I zonked the minute my head hit the pillow last night.