Recently in miscellaneous pathology Category

so i was gonna sit here on the porch & upgrade my MT but you just know the damn cheapass mofos would interrupt me. hmmph. comin' to my g.r.o.j. (get rid of junk) sale insulting my uglyass old lady dining room table & such with offers so low you could use 'em to scrape the mousey dung of'n the legs. i happen to know it's a very fine piece of uglyass furniture & people pay big money for uglyass shit all the time. i mean fuck. offers so raggedy i could use 'em to chase them black widder spiders out of that 'antique' card table holding up that cool yamaha keyboard, it has a whole orchystraw inside it somewheres and it gots some fancy edjumication module, it'll teach any idiot how to play lit'rally whole buncha cheesy songs for crimeny's sake, same model right now on ebay goin' fer a hunnert fifty bucks, all i'm askin' is seventy five and i'll go fifty it's sunday & all i sold so far is a slow clothes dryer, coupla shelves, some fat pants & a frog tool, it is sunday & i find i have a hankerin' i mean i am settin' here on the porch positively pinin' for some tightwads to come insult me like they did yesterday early, i woudn't be near as fluffy about it today.

taking into consideration the deep dip in my prices as the time has passed, & figuring that at least some & mayhap most of the folks who go garagesale-ing understand the psychology of desperation, i'm figuring the offers will be considerably more insulting, here in the middle of sunday. especially the way my sign's looking, i figure they can smell the desperation at least a couple hundred feet away, if they know what they're smellin' for. and if they do, i assure you that they will be entirely accurate in that olfactory assessment.

i will have to take a picture of my sign. it is quite likely the world's worst-taped piece of public information ever affixed to a power pole, i shit you not.

and since the flow of penny-pinchers has slowed to a trickle that is, well, nonexistent, i may as well run that upgrade.

"you're not one of those people who are afraid of high places, are you?"

she asks me this as i'm swinging the second leg over the windowsill and dropping softly to the roof below, a nice flat bit of roof a good 4 feet wide at least.

"up until last year i couldn't even stand on a chair. i would edge along second floor apartment balconies as close to pressed up against the wall as possible, because it felt like i was getting sucked over the edge."

she grabs my hand to steady me, "i didn't know!"

i gently pull away, tell her i'm fine, no way to express just how good this is, this standing here on the first roof of my whole life, picking up the two errant window screens and (as instructed) tossing them onto the patio below.

i'm surprised i hadn't told her, i've certainly recounted the story countless times, how i conquered my fears of heights and spiders by climbing up on furniture with my camera. now, when i say conquer, i don't mean conquer like clobber, crush, lick, master, overcome, prevail, surmount, trample underfoot, trash, or vanquish, not like that. no, my story has more of a conquistador vibe: travel to undiscovered lands, glance around nervously, claim some shit i have absolutely no right to, run home. sit around talking long shit about my journey to the cobwebs and beyond. and boring the living snot out of anyone who would sit still looking like they might be listening.

it's gonna be even worse now. i've been on a roof.

so you know, when you're driving along & doing ... i dunno, something, *not* picking your nose, but something involving some vigorous hand-related activity in the vicinity your face, something like maybe rubbing your itchy nose (externally) & you accidentally jam a finger right up your nose & it happens to be one of the ones with the actual fingernails & it hurts like a mofo & so then you're driving along sniffling with your eyes watering like mad hoping your nose is just running & not actually bleeding, thinking damn why is everything a metaphor for my life?

yeah.

so there was rammstein. there were the four boys playing PS2, by committee apparently, loud to be heard over the game itself, which was way too loud. just not loud enough to drown out the sound fucking rammstein taking themselves way, way too seriously. overlooking the fundamental absurdity of everything in general & teutonic manic industrious industrial march metal in particular. i considered being amused by the irony of it all but that would mean thinking & i was fading fast

my captors continued to torment me, using one of the most lethal psychological attacks ever invented: being a room full of small boys. i mean, it catches you by surprise, again & again, you look at their shiny little faces & think, oh, it can't be that bad, sure a little annoying, but harmless. oh yeah they're real harmless. oh. yeah. shiny happy faces holding your MIND in their grubby little hands because they are that special kind of annoying that wears you down in the most remorseless relentless manner imaginable oh don't let this happen to you run run while there's still time
i cracked, man, i mean i lost it, dude. there i was with some pudding & a doll arm with a hand eye stuck to an ex bottle of glitterpolish & some pudding. ok not stuck to the pudding so much as stuck in the pudding.

butterscotch.

conversing with a six year old:
kid: what kind of games did you like?
me: oh, monopoly, clue, stuff like that.
kid: on playstation?
me: no, we didn't have playstations.
kid: on computers?
me: we didn't have computers.
me: we didn't have video games, we didn't have computers, we didn't have cable tv. we had three channels and we had to get them with an antenna on the roof. sometimes we couldn't get them.
kid: ... what did you do?
me: we read books.
kid: oh. i guess you were really smart.
me: yeah ...

so remember in jurassic park when jeff goldblum says "life finds a way" (& then it turned out somebody used frog dna & sure enough, a butterfly farted in tiannanman square & so forth, right?) riiiight. anyway.

i find a way.

notice the modem perched from the three inch long phonecord. notice the hairbrush holding up the upside down plug because that's the only way i can have the modem & the puter both plugged in (it was complicated, okay?)

reptiles don't need frog dna. we just find a way.

fuck i love earthquakes.

never underestimate the power of an audience.

showed up at my kid's school with my new neon coiffure & came away glowing at the sensation, from the double takes to the kid who actually came up & had to touch the hair, to the kid in the maybe third grade sporting full leather who admired both the hair & the shoes, showing me his own docs & asking if i had any that high (10i from the looks of it) & i had to say no, but i have some 8i's at home. & the kids from the bus yelled from the windows & i waved & by then the day had turned all the way around & reminded me ...

[sometimes exhibitionism means a different sort of shameless]

flasback: when i was fifteen i was an exhibition square dancer. this may be a little different than the downhome hoedown the words square dancing might conjure in your mind. think satin & sequined halter dresses with the shortest possible poufy skirts & (yes we put our asses out there when we danced) elaborately choreographed routines involving much-practiced lifts & spins & gravity definitely got a workout when we danced.

now i was then as i am now, not a tiny girl. at one hundred thirty whatever, i was a bit of a challenge at times to my partner. we had a performance scheduled at the oakland auditorium, in front of a convention sized crowd, & were performing a brand new routine in brand new satin outfits in front of six thousand people. the routine went off flawlessly, nervously but flawlessly, we were breathtaking i assure you, although you had to be there & you were not so you will have to take my words. & at the finale, we were lined up in a row, twelve couples one by one doing the "bottoms up" lift which involved the girl kicking up under her partner's arm, coming to rest with her hip on his hip & one leg pointed perfect at the ceiling, the other bent. my parner & my fat ass were first, meaning he had to hold me there for a full sixty four counts. & as we did our lifts we revealed, yes our asses, & written across them on our not-at-all substantial matching knickers, the name of our group (the stardettes, with a star on each end).

the standing ovation lasted all sixty four counts as the applause & the voices saying 'woo' & things of that nature swelled in volume & according to my partner i did not weigh anything at all at that point in time. gravity didn't stand a chance.

it feels like woodshavings innocent woodshavings when you step in it but it's really termite poop. & the ocean is all fishpiss if you think about it, & if fish indeed piss. in any case every thing (& everyone) is made up of molecules that were at one point part of something that was once digested by some organism & subsequently passed out the assend of it. & i'm not even going to mention the monkey poop coffee.

everything, in other words, is shit.

i'm not particularly fond of waking up finding i've partially swallowed one of my favorite shiny things, but it is comforting knowing the circle k at the corner carries a full line of body jewelry.

shiny things make me happy.