My life is a cliche Monday, July 30, 2007, 9:06 PM I laughed myself hoarse for hours tonight over a bunch of funny cat videos on youtube. Didn't even realize so much time had passed. Fricken youtube. This is my favorite (turn your speakers on): Oh my dog! My youtube adventure began with Taylor Mali's The The Impotence of Proofreading. I all about through my back out laughing. I kept clicking on cheesy videos, having a whale of a time, and then all of a sudden I had to pee like a racehorse. Talk about putting a crimp in my fullness of time. I deleted the I'm a Simpson in Paradise post because it was annoying me. Not only was it taking the page forever to load, I was walking too argen fargen slowly. I got ants in my pants waiting for my poker face to come out from behind the tree. Plus, my body looked stiffer than a two peckered billy goat. Which brings to mind how unhappy I am with my flesh and bone body. I've been off my meds (and off my rocker) for two months now. No happy pills. And now I know what the difference is, at least for me: on a pill=don't worry, be happy; off a pill=ugly as sin. Since I did little to break out of the protective Zorb I rolled down the hill inside, maybe I'll do something now that I feel like a rat in a cage. Like, really working out. Like, writing and feeling that sense of accomplishment. Well, hope springs eternal. And dream big, win big. Meanwhile, I'm trying my hand at writing sentences with words that all begin with the same letter because I'm a witless, weirdo writer who was weaned on Wheaties and Whoopers (the candy, not the burger). Beware, the thesaurus. Several suspicious suspects suggest sex. Fido's fleas feinted fleeing. She sneezed snot, snuffed, shuddered. Too tired to travel. Which means it's time to make like a banana and split.  
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Critiquer's poll Bridgett Jones Not only is she a reporter, she has her finger on the pulse of all things female. Hmm, I think her remarks would be kind, wacky, and would totally clean my system out . Yoda Do or do not, there is no try. I'd be inspired. Talking and thinking in riddles, but inspired nonetheless. Sam Kinison, comedian He was married for two whole years. Hey, he'd tell it like it was. And then I'd have to kill him. (Oh, wait. He's already dead.) Hermoine of Harry Potter If anybody's going to come up with the perfect solution for your something wrong, she will. I want a wand. The Jack and the Beanstalk giant Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! He sure has a way with words. Probably my best best, because he's all about action.
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Beth and Teely Below is one I did last week; an exercise about showing a descriptive scene of a girl put in a strange situation, meeting someone she otherwise wouldn't. It took on a young adult theme, which surprised me. ~*~*~*~ Yesterday Beth had read about the disappearance of another girl. Like the others who’d gone missing, the girl was shy, studious, overweight, and had no friends. Just like she appeared to be, Beth told herself. As the unrecognized lead reporter for the school newspaper, she'd decided to investigate the disappearances, to break the geek's mold the rest of her classmates thought she fit into. After all, it might be her life she'd save. The thought made her nails dig into her palm. God, she was so excited she was terrified. Or was she so terrified she was excited? "I know-way who's-way akingtay the irlsgay," the voice on the phone had said. Beth knew him as Teely. He gave her a headache by talking in pig Latin. One of the girls missing was his istersay. Beth wondered why he insisted on meeting at the school after everyone had gone home, wondered where he'd gotten the key he'd shoved in between the slats of her locker. He was definitely razycray, but if he had a lead, it'd be worth it. Someone cleared his throat behind her and Beth spun around in the chair. The soft light of the aquarium in Ms. Barnom's classroom painted what had to be Teely's pointy-nosed face in blue moodiness. "Oodyay etterbay ave-hay come aloneway," he whispered. ~*~*~*~ That's where I left it because generally, you're not supposed to spend more than 15 minutes on a prompt. It's kind of strange, though, that Teely and Beth keep popping up my mind. How does he know what's happened to those missing girls? And is Beth really in danger? Labels: Beth and Teely, writing samples
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Only Umpteen Or to anyone driving behind her. I don't remember who came up with the idea of the poster, but it consumed my every waking moment for days. How should the poster look? Should I even dare? Would Oog be mad? Did I have enough talent, enough Xs and Os to pull it off? There was also the knee-slapping hilarity behind the poster's intent, about how turning forty saw you standing with one foot in the grave, practically daring Death's odds. When you're umpteen-years-old, forty seems seems an impossible age, especially when the days between Easter, your birthday, Halloween and Christmas druh-druh-drag. So it was mid-August, but Oogie was turning forty and the colors of black and orange seemed like the right, gooly kind of thing to do. Egged on by a devil's imp, I drew a gray-haired lady dressed in a black dress with a white lace collar. She's laying on her side with her head propped up on her hand. Her other hand is holding an umbrella-shaped cane at a cocky angle. The perspective is off and the drawing looks like she's having an epileptic seizure, but people still got the drift of the message. Honk your horn! the message said. Today I'm 40! I imagined Oogie driving to work befuzzled and shocka-fied over the car honking going on. Nevermind that Oogie isn't the wide-eye type or fooled for long. Us kids knew she had eyes in the back of her head, a mile-long stare that made even the neighborhood bully squirm, and was unbeatable at Scrabble. Plus, she wore high heels, underwire bras, and heavy black eyeliner, the better to stare us kids down with. (But almost anyone could make her heart go squish if they tried hard enough.) Oogie said later that she saw the sign taped to the back of the car before she even got in the car that day. She'd suspected something harey-carey afoot all along, but decided to be the bigger person about it because that's just the type of person she is. I know now she was a bit embarassed about the poster's message, about the honking, but she never let it show. She still has the poster. I found it last November in the spare bedroom behind the stereo bookcase thing.
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Day 368 "Lollygaggers," he tells me with sigh. I grin at the pained look on his face. "At least it's not raining," I say. Which is a joke because it's always sunny in Los Angeles. As I pass by the cafe, I smell onions. In the morning, the scent of coffee reigns. All the outdoor heat lamps are shoved together at the side of the restaurant. I think they look like a group of long neck geese wearing Chinese bamboo hats. A long car honk draws my attention and I see a 1980s Porsche going front bumper-to-bumper with a black sedan. I see the Porsche almost every day. Its color reminds me of Thousand Island salad dressing, the ketchup-mayo combination Mom used to put on my lettuce. The Porsche, non-conforming and ugly, stands out against all of the Lexuses, Acuras and Land Rovers. The speed limit is 35 miles per hour, but cars pass by me fast enough to blow the bangs off my forehead, so I'm surprised the two cars haven't crashed into each other. The drivers glare at each other for a few more seconds before the sedan turns onto the side street with a squeal. Eff you, it seems to say. Giggling, I reposition my sunglasses on my nose as I walk across La Cienega Boulevard. I'm wearing pink Mary Jane sneakers, listening to Enigma on my Ipod, and enjoying my sense of freedom. Who needs a car?
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Don't swallow that pill Anyway, I finally saw Babel this weekend. Most of the movie made me feel like I had ants in my pants because I just couldn't believe what was on the screen. Good frigging grief, don't give your kids a rifle! How old is that kid? EIGHT? And he's MASTURBATING? (I wonder how embarrassing it was during the filming. Poor kid.) Ah, Moracco doesn't look anything like I thought it would...no stone buildings with pointy windows, no water canals...just bumpy desert rock. (Note to self: go to Colorado instead. And if you ride the bus, pick an aisle seat.) Put your panties back on! No, idiot! Don't swallow that pill from a boy you just met ten minutes ago! Idiot! Don't take those kids into Mexico without the parent's permission. Don't do it.... I just know something bad's going to happen. Stupid music. I can't decide if Amelia is a good woman, or a bad woman. Hah, that's a good way to get out of seeing the dentist. Uh oh, I think that was a REAL chicken. I can't take this any more. My head was pounding before I got to the middle of the movie, but I made it through the entire thing. I guess I liked it, even though it pissed me off so many times I lost count. Maybe that's the point. Not being heard (understood) would give anyone a headache. Only it almost gave me the runs. I am SO lucky I live in the USA.
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Oy read Dickens! I used to snicker when I saw sidebar photos of book titles leading to Amazon or Barnes & Noble pages. Ew-ee, ew-ah-ah, yaay you, I thought. You're reading something called An Abundance of Katherines; and Quickies: The Handbook of Brief Sex Therapy and The Bell Jar. You must be learned. Learneded learned. It seemed so pretentious, as if emblazoning the latest Harry Potter book on your blog or profile page was a statement about how open-minded and currently hip you are, yet if you dare listed More Oral Sadism And The Vegetarian Personality, you'd damn near proclaim yourself the sexually-repressed Neanderthal everyone in the family suspected you to be. God forbid you select a romance novel, not when Thong on Fire: An Urban Erotic Tale hints at sexual disatisfaction. And let's not overlook how Mississippi Sissy might show an uncomfortably irresolute prevarication, oh my. But then I realized how revealing those wee slips of Amazonian advertisements are because I came across this one page...a profile of a reader/writer/dreamer who laid my snotty, half-baked idea under a 100-watt Wolff tanning bed bulb by simply asking me the right question at the right time: Why does it scare you? (My idea, by the way, got sunburned, was diagnosed as a Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberan, and is now a biohazard spec floating in space, oh yeah.) So I've recently read Adversary (a story called Stiff Shorts, and yes, it's about what you're thinking), Stephen King, Michael Critchton and Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Does this mean I'm consumed by blood, gore and sex, or just ecclectically interested? It's interesting for me to think about. The whole frigging point. ~*~*~*~ I swear to God, someone's smoking weed in the building....
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Writing about not writing I don't know why this is; I know I'm durn good at it. (Writing, not talking.) So I've decided to try and help myself. Heal thyself, slow to non-writer. In between thinking about writing, talking about writing, dreaming about how I should be writing, writing about not writing, and in actually working on my writing (the work in progress), I will be writing my own 12-step program. I'm going to call it Rewriting Procrippledicts Anonymous (RPCA). Its aim will be to help rewriting pros/cripples/addicts (me, in particular) get past the desire to edit work to death, and just frigging write the damn story already. Except, hm. I need a better mission statement.
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Apartment story It's three a.m. right now and you know what? Someone is doing laundry and the guy who lives next door just got home with a bunch of groceries. There were bags and bags and he had to leave most of them out in the hallway, so he went in and out of his apartment four or so times. I'm considering staying up for the rest of the [new] day. I've never made it through an entire 24 hours without having to sleep. There are stories that if you do, you'll have hallucinogenic epiphanies. I don't know if I'm going to make it, but I'll try because I don't have to get up early tomorrow or be anywhere. The experience might make my forture some day. God knows I can't count on beating the California lottery odds; there's more people playing than bacteria on an avacado that's just been sliced open. 11:30 a.m. Update I didn't make it. Around five, I found Confucius standing in my shower. "Only time will tell," he said and burst into a spray of water. That's when I decided hallucinogenic epiphanies must be better experienced with a mushroom and a friend.
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