Got it.

Ah, it's from Shakespeare's Henry IV--and, from what I've found, much overused. So, sorry.

The blue of my oblivion.

That dream is back.

The one where I'm stuck under the ice of some ocean. I can breathe under the water and I spend most of the time just swimming around and chasing lights. A ship is fastened to the surface and I sometimes scrabble at it's belly and look in the windows. There's nothing to see. More interesting is the pod of huge sleeping whales that hang like zeppellins and occassionally blink at me.

And that's it. No point. No storyline. I'm normally scared to death of the vasty deeps (where the hell is that phrase from?), but not here. It's just good, clean, saltwater fun.

The Incapacitation of Jess.

Sorry, mom. I should have listened to the endless sermons about stretching before running, and wearing three layers, and eating bananas, because the day has come. The old broken toe has risen in rebellion. The shins have followed suit. The knees--oh, the knees!--are swollen and throbbing and little pieces of bone are playing touch-tag in the humours.

I guess the only thing a girl can do is sit in a chair with an ice pack and a pencil. And I can't even reach the speakers to turn down Mariah's new cd (now I wonder who turned that on?).
Darn.

Foo Foo.

A little late in coming, but I just couldn't shake the image of peep steeds and their coney knights.

Crazy grandma (in-law) quotes of the week:

Regarding standard poodles: "Well, they were so hyper--they must have been inbred."

Regarding Racheal Ray: "She should really hang something over her butt if it sticks out that far."

Regarding breast implants: "People are now opting for silcone over saline, because it feels better. You know. To the touch." (With hand motions).

Regarding ladies her age: "You hit a certain point and you just start wearing purple."

Regarding me: "Believe whatever you want. It just means I'm going to pray twice for you."

Regarding my grandmother: "No way am I going to church with her. She's a crazy lady."

But we're freeee. Free, free, free!

Embroidered tablecloth? Check.

We threw a surprise seventieth for my great aunt this weekend. Amidst pink flatware and stale, suburban topics, everyone divided the time between nervous preparations and cooing over the only child my family's been able to produce in fifteen years. But I don't go much in for kissing ass (my aunt and I are much alike and have a relationship based on fond respect for each other's terrible tempers), and I've become something of a family joke due to my absolute intolerance for children and their absolute enjoyment of me, so I was left to my own devices.

This ended with me seeking out my father's equally unsociable brother and giving my catty tendencies free reign. Together we wound through the house like greedy ghosts, catalouging my aunt's possessions and divying the goods between us. All of the old green pottery for him, the huge dining room picture for me ("Darlin', you can keep it!"), the pair of marble candleholders for him, the green chairs for me. (The mother of pearl Last Supper was the only thing kept off limits, by silent agreement.) By the end of a diligent half an hour we each had completed our own glittering piles and our own mental checklists and were grinning like dragons.

Needless to say, we yelled our "Surprise!"s with unnatural verve.

"I don't think she drew breath since we left."

Currently trying to blast the droning sounds of poker-playing Italians from my head.

All creative impetus has been sapped. Fingers drained of energy.

Instead, I've tethered myself to the monitor and decided to weather the storm in battered oblivion.

Take a deep breath.

Not since The Kohachi River has there been a crush so profound. His name is Roy Mustang and he's the most recent in the long line of angular, black-haired, anime lads that started with Blue Lion Guy From Voltron.

I can only assume that he has a horrible temper, prefers the pistol to the katana, defies the gods, is torn between a pesky conscience and his loyalties towards the wrong side that he's chosen, and looks best in cornflower blue.

My teeth hurt.

Things I've learned today:

If you plant a Newfoundland in the snow, he will grow.

March flowers bring April showers. (Buffalo likes to mix things up)

Two slices of sourdough bread and a healthy dollop of Fluff does not make for a satisfying lunch.

The Smashing Pumpkins are now on Rhapsody. I figure Radiohead must be next.

Then I stuff you with bread. It won't hurt, cuz you're dead. And you're certainly lucky you are.

Close of Day Three of Puppywatch:

Five failed walks, one discarded towel, a pair of muddied sneakers, four slices of Kraft American Cheese slices as bribery, one punctured finger, and a very terrified, very short-lived flea and the tally is looking sadly one-sided.
Puppy: 13
Jess: 0

It could have been this evening when I nearly walked into traffic preoccupied with thinking: "My eyes itch. If I could take out my eyes and itch them, I would." It could have been last night when, giddy and showered and prompted by the French sea-bass challenge on The Iron Chef, I burst into a lively rendition of "Le Poisson" and wouldn't stop. But the signs are there. The puppy is going to break me.

It's a Doggy Dogg World.

Halfway into Day Three of Puppywatch:

I think I've figured it out. He's narcoleptic. Whenever he's afraid of something, he falls asleep. Tugging him past the garbage cans--falls asleep. Throwing him a stick--falls asleep. Pulling him out of the driveway--falls asleep. On his feet, no less.
It's more amusing than annoying to see a ninety pound, five month old puppy pass the hell out whenever he catches sight of anything larger or more threatening than my winter boots.

Responsibility Shrugged.

Day Three of Puppy Watch:

Though I don't suppose it counts as day three until I've actually made contact. But this morning I am content to let the beast stamp and yowl around upstairs until I am quite ready. I need to work myself into a proper despotic mood.

Echo-o-o-o.

Okay. Maybe I told a teensy lie about not drawing greek myths. But this could be any of a number of mournful chicks. Really, is there a story out there that doesn't have at least one pale-limbed waif that loses it in the wilderness?
(All of the best ones go crazy and they all tend to loosen their locks, cling to the rocks, and slowly fade into the wind or the water.)

And don't feel sorry for Poor Echo. Whatever you were told about her was probably incomplete. She was a master of distraction and would stall Hera with rambling stories while Zeus dallied in the woods with his latest lovely. Big Mama eventually found out and administered appropriate justice. It wasn't until after Echo was cursed that the whole Narcissus-by-the-Pool thing happened.

Or would you rather be a fish?

The first photo of a "confirmed companion to a sunlike star" outside of our solar system was recently taken. The planet is a flaming gas giant that puts Jupiter to shame but really just looks like a punk hanger-on that couldn't cut it as a sun, clinging to the skirts of another star ("Lemme at 'em! I can take 'em, boss!"). I'm still holding out for something blue and solid to chew on.

On a related note. The best place to star-watch in America? Arizona. Along the spine of the mountains that house the Hoover dam. Right before the sky, for a brief plot of space, tips obligingly on it's back and becomes the basin of Las Vegas.

Serj ahead.

System of a Down has a new single out and it's Rhapsodelicious.

It's called BYOB and I've a couple of guesses as to what the last "B" stands for in light of a late-night discussion where I was sneeringly informed that I was "rocking out to an anti-war song".

I've no love for politically themed music, but I do have great love for anything that rocks the effing house. So I will magnanimously forgive and forget, pull down the shades, check the driveway for the landlady's SUV, and proceed to dance and sing like a maniac in the most structurally sound spot in the apartment.

favors for favors, fond but not in love

A vodka-induced gripe from Jessica Bitchface:

So, imgaine. It's ten in the morning--just about the time that I'm picking myself out of my teacup and trying to decide what kind of mood I'm in--when they start. The gaggle of urbanites that patrols our street. They have expensive haircuts and dock martin shoes, but appear to have no jobs--how else could they be out at this ungodly hour, when the only signs of life should be me in my windpants and the crazy gardener across the street with his magnifying glass?

But there they are, oblivious to working day hours. They travel sluggishly, like pack animals, in groups of five or six. They have plastic smiles and platinum wedding bands and dogs with pretentious names ("Come here, Prometheus!"). They only say hello to me when I'm wearing my cool black coat. More often than not, they stop outside the house, blocking the walkway, parking their strollers at inconsiderate angles. And they'll stand in this defensive knot and converse, screaming over their screaming kids, as if by proclaiming their lives to the neighborhood they can convince themselves--"See! I'm happy! Jesus CHRIST, am I happy!"

Needless to say, I find my mood darkening.

I used to call them Power Pellets.

The cupboards are packed to bursting with chocolate and I'm beginning to feel a little threatened by their increased resemblance to a battlefield. The tupperware has all been strategically arranged. The Great Bunny Generals sit in the shadows, directing everything from cellophane tents. Every time I crack the door they open fire with pastel eggs. And once they run out of those, there are always the squadrons of little rabbits to deal with--clad in foil armor, perched on peep steeds...

On the plus side, I believe I just ate a rose flavored jelly belly. It was quite lovely.

Come out, come out.

The sky in this one refused to translate.

I had the image in my head and only afterwards came across an Aesop's that coincided to the letter. Something about a fisherman who tried piping the fish out of the water. When that failed, he picked up his pole and had success. The Moral? Hey lazyass, stop daydreaming and pick up an implement. A lesson I might do well to learn.

So, the myth behind Aesop. He was a slave in Greece, perhaps Ethiopian. He was horribly ugly and hunchbacked. He was employed as a tutor. He earned his freedom and may have worked for Croesus ("as rich as") as an emissary. His smarts got him out of many a pickle. Except for the last, when the Delphians, either tired of his wits or greedy for a sum of Croesan gold he was said to have refused to hand over, pitched him off a cliff.

It's never been said that the Greeks were fair to their geniuses.

Water guns and pussy willows.

I guess it's finally spring. Or the season of perpetual confusion. I stood for three minutes before my run, deliberating in the doorway, in various states of attire. Jacket and no sweater? Sweater and gloves? No gloves, but keep the hat on? These are the issues that plague me.

Also, in the spirit of resurrection, I decided to test my theory that any picture left for more than two days will mutiny and I let the current subject lie for three. We'll see what I find when I roll back the stone.

And here's where I spare everyone my musings on tanists and instead mention the "sexy apostolic singles" advertisement that I came across on a Catholic webpage.

Airborne All the Way.

There was a peculiarity to being an Army brat in Army schools. Moving every year or so meant seeing new places, but not always new faces. The pool was wide, but the nature of Army life itself allowed you the opportunity to recross paths. A new pal in Barstow may have been lunch buddies with an old pal from Killeen. A desk in Fayetteville might sport the graffiti of that asshole bully from Stuttgardt. I once, to my everlasting frustration, played a game of international hide-and-seek with my best friend from Germany. As soon as she left a place, we would get stationed there. It was like being caught in a cruel temporal hiccup--we rode the same bikepaths, wrote on the same chalkboards, heard the same schoolbells--always ghosting over each other but never meeting again.

But we all kept our ears open. We all had our spies and childish methods of questioning. And you learned. That people look the same everywhere, but you never forget a face. That the popular kids are popular wherever they go and that officer's kids tend to act like their parents and sometimes need a fistful of attitude adjustments. And it became easier to adapt. As if all the nerds, jocks, and cool kids before you had forged paths--invisible, but indelible--and you knew where to go and who to find to make things seem more familiar. And sometimes you lucked out.

So perhaps I was unsurprised when yesterday a name I hadn't heard since 1986 popped up on my website email: "Did you go to B_____ Elementary in Ft. L____?" I suppose all of us are still hardwired to The Search and it was really just a matter of time.

And just what are you planning to do with it?

Crazy Grandma quote of the day:

(Ring)
"Hello?"
"Hon-eee? I can't get my feets into my sneakers. So, I need Jello. Any flavor but lime."

Now for Kiki's Delivery Service.

That was the fifth trip. The fifth trip to Blockbuster in eight days and still no luck in renting The Incredibles. At this point it will never live up to the buildup, so we might as well just not see it at all.
But, amidst our guilty wanderings around the store (because you have to get something your fifth time), we stumbled on to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds. Where Pixar failed us, Studio Gibhli has once again been there to pick up the pieces. Not only do these guys always have the most stellar voice talent (score two for Patrick Stewart this week and add Mark Hamill to the list), but they "do" animated flight better than any other.

So, we've been savoring it over the past two days and awing at foreign concepts of fantasy. Respectfully silent except for the stray pause for beer and odd discussion:

"I think I'm going to change my name to Jessicaa."
"Yeah, you've got quite the thing for her."
"Well. Did you know that there's a theory bouncing around that the Nausicaa of Odyssey fame may be the actual poet? That there are obvious differences between it and the Illiad that have made people suspect two different storytellers? Especially since--"
"Yeah, yeah. You are so going as her for Halloween this year."
"Hmph. Well, she's probably the strongest female character I've seen."
"Yeah, watch her end up giving Mr. Princey a blow job by the end of the movie."
"No way. She's going to end up capturing and riding one of those sandworms."
"Bi-La Kaifa."

Dragons. Greek myths. Tolkien.

These are the three subjects I refuse to seriously tackle until I get to the top of my game. It's been my cardinal rule since I was eleven and markers just stopped cutting it.

Now, how will I know when I've reached that point? I figure around the time when I stop bursting into tears whenever I come across Who Stole the Tarts. Until then, I will keep spinning my wheels, cutting back the cravings with half-fast sketches and carefully hoarding my Eowyns, Midgards, and Agamemnons-dying-in-the-bath.

 

"When is a legend legend? Why is a myth a myth?"

Watched Dragons: Fantasy Made Real last night. (Was there really any doubt?) I can only assume that the homeboys at Animal Planet finally caved to their dark-side desires and decided to use the Walking With Dinosaurs technology strictly for evil.

The premise was interesting enough. What would happen if scientists uncovered a dragon corpse? (Aside from me filling my knapsack and heading off to the Carpathians). Pretty cool. Good graphics. Good artists. It was narrated by Patrick Stewart who, though I adore, made me twitchy and uncomfortable with an overly lusty commentary on dragon mating habits. Homeboys so wanted Sean Connery, I'm sure. I would have been happy with Peter MacNicol.

Despite its general nerdiness and the misgivings of others, I enjoyed it. Perfect combination of basic fable, bullshit science, and just about every B-quality, Dragonlance, Dragonbane, Dragonsmack novel out there. Sorry to say, my couch companion was not as satisfied. Probably due less to the show than to the fact that every time I beat the narrator to the punch, I became increasingly insufferable with my "you know it"s and "yeah boy-eee"s. I'm charming like that.

I knew all that Anne McCaffrey would pay off.

Blech.

There's a fine line to walk between imitating too closely and straying too far.

A part of yet another piece that's gone under the knife for harvesting.

Perhaps one of these days I'll gather all of my viciously hacked cast-offs together. Put them in a basket and toss them on the floor like bones. I can only assume they will fall in such a way as to illustrate my doom.

 

That, and I need new gloves.

I decided to walk down to The Lake. I hadn't been in a while. Also, I figured with the weather being temperamental, a lucky cold snap might offer me the chance of seeing some hapless ducks being frozen to the pond.
The thing about The Lake is that I run the risk of two dangers. The first is running into people I know but certainly do not want to talk with. The second is running into strangers who desperately want to talk with me. (The most memorable of the latter was an asian woman named Tam and her chihuahua, Duchess. Tam had commandeered the other half of my bench, proclaimed that only "sad young people" sit and look at water, and insisted on--with no success--ferreting out my "story". I should have told her about the ducks, but alas, it was summer, and I probably would have given the poor lady serious regrets about dumping little Duchess into my lap.).
These thoughts in mind, I took my chances yesterday, intent on a little observation and inspiration. You can learn a lot from watching people and watching birds. But there were no people and no birds. Only flat sky, black thorns, and crisscrossing tracks on a frozen Lake. And me, toes numbing, trying to coax a vision of a Dutch peasant out of nothing and onto the ice, but discovering that all fauna (real and imagined) are in hiding on early evenings in winter. Good to know for the future.

No holding back.

Inspired by the candor of baStart and pushed into frustrated boredom by March repeats, I decided to make a playlist of 'most embarrassing favorites'. To keep it brief, I've limited it to contemporary songs. And I figured that while some sheepishness is involved with my preference for oldies like "Dust in the Wind" and "Silent Lucidity", there is also a level of pride.

With these, not so much.

RHAPSODY Link

It's like playing dressup with really tiny clothes.

God damn, was this fun. I did some idle research on pinups this weekend and came away crazed for them. Like, wanting to decorate the house with them crazed.

There appear to be two schools of style. The first is largely situational. It's the "Ooops, I've lost my ___!", or the "Now how did that happen?", and involves unlikely breezes, dropped accessories, and pesky telephone cords. Nothing profound, but they serve their purpose and are generally hilarious. The second is your classic, come-hither shot. Simple, effective, uncontrived. Just the female form draped in hues.

I think I'm tending towards the second. The George Petty school. This piece was a timid starter--redhead in incongruous asian get-up. I tried putting sticks in her hair to complete the theme, but she then became redheaded martian in incongruous asian get-up.

Crazy Grandma quote of the day.

"You'll be lying in a hospital bed on a commercial."

So. Much. Pink.

I allowed myself to break from Saturday ritual last night and went to a shower. As a result, I stumbled onto some revelations--some surprising, others not as much.

1. No matter how many costume changes I make before going out, I always revert back to the first. This would be handy to remember, as the drunken return at 1 A.M. to a bedroom draped in black shirts and jeans is never a welcome one.
2. The sounds of one girl screaming and the sounds of seventeen girls screaming are much the same. It's as if the first to start serves as a tuning fork for the rest until you have one flawlessly unbroken stream of endless, indistinguishable vowels.
3. Animal crackers have changed! The people at Nabisco must have decided at some point to shake shit up and hire a new artist. Same beloved animals, new swanky designs. All for the cold, discerning child of the digital age. And kudos to them. Nabisco, I mean.
4. The closest I come to being bullied into buying lingerie is to purchase dishgloves and an apron. They were pink. That counts for something, right?
5. Bockwurst has become my new favorite comfort food.
6. My first impulse when surrounded by a horde of five foot women is to play a mean game of keep-away with the chocolate fondu. In my defense, I did refrain from indulging it.

Not everyone can live like millionaires.

After six years in an apartment, I'm finding house-living to be baffling and fun. They are decidedly mercurial entities and hard to pin down.
The closest I've come is to quarter the place off into zones--each with it's own personality, each with it's own rules of engagement.

The Goldilocks Corner: A persistent troublemaker, the thermostat has given us at least half a dozen issues in as many months. If the corner gets too warm (say from someone walking by or breathing), the thermostat shuts off--despite the frigid temperatures in the rest of the house. Likewise, if it gets too cold outside, it goes into its own hibernation and needs to be roused. Two of its more whimsical traits.
The Weeping Wall: Likened to an Our Lady of Fatima or a reverse Ganesha, our bathroom has cause to be proud. The far wall tends to seep brown sticky water through the window, onto the floor, into the tiles. Now whether this is an act of natural melt and condensation or evidence of the warm amber tears of God, I can't tell. But I've left a smelly candle burning for each extreme.
The Whistling Way: The copper pipes that deliver our heat tend to scream in protest when the warm water pushes through. It may be Pavlovian, but I find it charming. It's like a chirrup of happy announcement from the house: "Lookit here! I bring you heat!", and I'm not going to complain.
Big Mouth: The entire front face of the house is like a determined asthmatic. The more we try to plug its airways, the more desperately it tries to breathe in. Currently on plugging duty: a white blanket and an old scarf--fighting the good fight.
The Warrior's Corridor: I'm okay with meltwater from our flooded gutters freezing to make a skating rink between our house and the next. I'm okay with the garbage can wheels freezing into said rink and it taking ten minutes stretching and twenty minutes swearing to dislodge them. I find it cruel and unjust, however, that this same rink becomes a minefield as the roof (in its own battle of freeze and thaw) tends to pitch its grapeshot onto our valiant struggling heroes below.

More to come with the changing seasons.

Ode to a Big Red Blankee

Blankee, oh, Blankee,
the color of jam.
You came to me from a foreign land.
You're proud and you're petted.
You've earned my esteem.
And I can't bear to put you in the washing machine.

Guess it'll just have to wait until spring when I can hang her majesty out to dry.

No namecard, thank you.

The saga continues. Or hasn't begun. Still haven't worked up the minerals.

I couldn't shake the feeling that it at first looked like I was soliciting a prostitute, so I added the table. All better. Now it just looks like I'm buying a dimebag*. From Madame Frou-frou's House of Frou, naturally. Sigh. Well, it's the lesser of two evils, I guess.

*Because I can only assume that they come pretty and pale and beribboned. It's a pastel kind of culture, right?

It's not for me.

I'm at this moment mentally girding myself against a trip to the corner boutique. Before this happens, I will assuredly have had no less than three costume changes, sent a half dozen emails to Durham, NC for information and support, and run through a variety of scenarios and escape routes in my mind. Some of which may require red smoke and telekinesis.

The most likely version, however, involves my big brown boots and a deadly combination of waxed floors and slush as I walk through the door. The shopgirl looks at me and three questions flicker across her face:
1. Is she going to steal something (because why else would I be there?)?
2. Is she going to break something?
3. Is she a he?
Three similar questions are on my mind:
1. Is she going to talk to me?
2. Am I going to break something?
3. Should I just make things easier for both of us and pretend I'm a dude.

The rest of the event goes erratically as I try not to sneeze, blush, or snort my contempt, or an embarrassing combination of all three. I resolve myself on buying something, but can't divine the difference between the hair accessories and the undergarments--and I'm not buying the latter. I half tiptoe, half slip my way between the improbable gauntlet of pink, ice cream flavored soaps and the black stare of my perfectly coiffed nemesis. I grab the counter in terror and relief, scatter the handful of chapsticks that I felt I needed to purchase to preserve my dignity, pay the eleven dollars and forty-two cents, and bolt.

We're going to Target.

Stop, already.

I think Mr. Braff has given the rest of his generation a massive inferiority complex.

I said I was bored.

I have a bookmark that has a drawing of Lewis Carrol. He pretty much looks like what you'd expect a math teacher gone bonkers would--tumbleweed hair, watery eyes, hands that don't know what to do with themselves without a pen or chalk.

He also, it occurred to me, looks a great deal like Gene Wilder. Which may explain why the bookmark is now nowhere to be found, but probably pushed under some heavy books, face downward and wrapped in a tissue. Gene Wilder occupies a lofty position on my top twenty list of scariest images--somewhere between Beaker and Jesus on the cross.

So, moving on to other, less terrifying pairs.

Lord Byron and Robert Downey Jr. (who I'll continue to have a crush on despite the unfortunate resemblence, thank you)
Alex's grandmother and Larry King
Billy Corgan and Eric Cartman (the voices, dudes, the voices)
R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming" and Kansas's "Dust in the Wind"

I'm too bored to think of any more.

That shrewd and knavish sprite.

Considering the subject matter, I half expected this one to curdle under my hands upon completion. But, since it's been sound for a good couple of hours, I'm going to tip my teacup in nervous thanks. And maybe leave a bowl of milk outside.

Also, it's finally dawned on me that a cowslip is not a slender heifer. So no more addled notions of bejewelled cattle.

"Girl, I know it's been hard since he went away..."

We've been experiencing technical difficulties.

Rhapsody has been acting like a little bitch.
The "new" scanner makes all of my stuff look like something pissed all over it.
I've had New Edition's "Sensitivity" stuck on repeat in my head since noon yesterday (I blame Lemon Jelly).
I'm afraid that the alarm on my fifteen year old clock radio may finally be wheezing it's last.

Perhaps it's just a matter of biting the bullet and upgrading.

On a lighter note, I've been in fits of giggles since finding out that Bill Gates was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Party on, dude.

Let's just begin with Sophie Marceau.

Ah, the night of guilty pleasures. Big Red Blankee was yoinked off the bed and onto the couch. The landlady's gone so I howled my approval at Gilmore Girls and Scrubs with more abandon than usual. Pottery Barn's summer preview was propped on the lap, Ovid was handily nearby but given his due snub. There were three commercial break sprints to the kitchen for the customary tablespoon of cool-whip-and-hershey's-syrup downed over the sink.

And now I'm riding the fine line between milk-warm and sugar-high and am ready to get philosophical. Which essentially means stating once again that Bondgirls are always the most beautiful women in the world and daring anyone to disagree.

Say what?

From a little ways back, but it's a favorite. My feet have been dragging on the piece currently occupying the dining room table and I've started getting twitchy with the lag.

Mother Goose had a son. While she rode her gander (make what you will of that), her boy had a goose that laid golden eggs. And there was a house. And an owl thrown in for good measure. It's something of a fresh jumble of characters faded and familiar.

And also whoops and also fries.

I have a confession. All classical piano is in my mind set to Tom and Jerry.

There they go slipping across the kitchen floor to the adaigo. Now for a slew of utensils that impale themselves in timely musical fashion against a yellow wall. Next, the practiced dance of dip-and-swipe-and-wriggle stirring the senses to fever pitch. Then, a couple of gentle mouse-pirouettes, the near escape, the triumphant grab and a close-up on teeth and slavering chops. Closer. Closer. But, ho! What's this? A hesitation on the keys? The smell of burning? Confusion ensues, culminating with a crescendo of yowls and a tail that looks suspiciously like a waffle iron.

I was sparing him the discomfort, okay?

Grocery shopping is Jess-time. The boy is usually coasting on the fumes of an early morning cup and has beat a retreat to the Coffee Counter for Cranky Boys. Which allows me briefly out from under the Shadow of Supervision.

I naturally take this opportunity to assert my dominance over the locals. I coast the aisles propped on my Steed of Terror, its wheels protesting. I upbraid the lunch meats. Sing to the commercials. Send toddlers into fits of giggles or tears depending on their tolerance for crossed eyes and bared teeth. I growl behind the backs of old ladies and then smile winningly as I pass them by, ensuring madness.

I am Great and Terrible and Trivial. And am unmatched except for the rare instances when I occasion upon an old college professor. At which point I run shivering and blubbering to hide among the toothbrushes.

or was it vinegar?

In honor of my brother's impending graduation from police academy, I submit this.

RHAPSODY Link


Also, in the spirit of law-enforcement and -evasion, I am including a recipe for what I've heard* is the perfect permanent graffiti tool:

one part red lipstick
one part red crayola crayon (the big fat ones)
one part nail polish remover

combine ingredients over heat. pour into empty glue sticks. let stand and cool. enjoy!

*11th grade art class, El Paso TX. The barrio gang members--they love the quiet ones.

Awww.

Right when I'm beginning to resent winter, the city rouses itself and puts on a lovely display. I swear, Buffalo is like a corner bum. Obnoxious and underfoot. Rank, no matter how many useless quarters the bleedinghearts pelt at him. But just when you want to kick him in the nuts, he holds open the door to Blockbuster for you and grins.

Whoa, bessie.

Whoops. I let this one out of the gate a little too vigorously and it decided to pay no attention to me afterwards. This is what happens when you give them any small taste of independence-- they go rogue.

As an explanation: It started off as some little known Aesop's about a broken goat horn and degenerated into Little Bo Peep. But a Peep with some grit, and I like her, despite her wayward genesis. No frills and petticoats for this shepherd. Also, no reason as to the goats.

Oh, and just so's you know, she started off as a man, so stop making fun of her calf muscles. Those hills can be hard on a girl.

She feeds him well. His concerns--he forgets them.

We plucked ourselves out of our groove (as in rut) this weekend and headed down to old PA where we settled comfortably into the rut of my parents. It's always nice to hand the reins over to them for a day or two and revert back to childishness--complete with jostling, bickering, and bitching about the radio station in the back seat of the buick.
We went on a mini-tour of Pittsburgh and stared like bumpkins. We had sandwiches piled high with cole slaw and fries (Odd, perhaps. Delicious, certainly). We allowed ourselves to be drugged into complacence with a steak dinner and tricked into walking around SuperWalMart. We sprawled on the carpet and watched Iron Chef.

And then, as if terrified at the speed of our regression, we waved a panicked goodbye, threw the clean laundry into the car, and skirted the leading edge of the storm that chased us home.

Zee Germans

Some fun tidbits about the Deutsche that I picked up at age eight:

The children's sections of the shoestores have slides, dude. Slides.
Women leave their babies outside in strollers when at the butchers'--but bring their little dogs in.
Don't be fooled by the outside of Neuschwanstein. It's not that great on the inside. And its highest turret does not, repeat not, have a spinning wheel.
In summer, the mustardfields smell like heaven to roly-poly kids.
I can only assume that the making of doll furniture is a national pasttime.
Their ice cream is appalling.
Everything runs like clockwork because everything is run on clocks.
If you are ever in the restaurant by the church which hid the old WWII nuclear experiments plant, have the french fries.

B A Start Revisited

I'm such a sucker for the little blue balls of light.
But isn't everyone, really?

I like to think that these particular ones are the souls of the fey.
You know, every time you play a video game, a fairy dies.

(muffled voice): I fucked up the last line.

That hand is going to drive me bonkers, but I was racing to finish it. Think of it as a work in progress. Think of it as the first foray.

Excuses.

Yep. Totally pilfered from Sarah's blog, but it was fun. Go see Dr. Oddbody and its genius cast if you're in New York.

...lifeless eyes. Like a doll's eyes.

After one hour of sleep and a fitful morning nap, I am officially looped out. Maybe it was the six pieces of Mr. Pizza Veggie. Or the alternating freezing and thawing going on last night that sent the house into tantrums. Maybe I was excited to read my new Barnes and Noble purchases.

But, alas. I'm betting it was Carnivale.

I have serious issues with distorted representations of life. Clowns, marionettes, muppets, claymation. I've never seen Fraggle Rock or The Dark Crystal. Beaker scares the hell out of me, as does the Swedish Chef (he has real hands for chrissakes). But at the top of a shamefully long list is dolls. With their damned slack eyes and damned pallid complexions. I used to hide them under pillows, face them at the walls, pitch them at my grandparents in offended rage.

And Carnivale is inexplicably bursting with them.
And now I see them round every corner in the apartment.

Pink Floyd, dammit. You should always guess Pink Floyd.

After four years of parents, we've finally taken back our Saturdays. No more lawn work for us. No more thick sandwiches and the chocolate chip cookies that were used as bribery. No more three hour conversations or CNN or bad suburban pizza.

Instead, we now chain ourselves to the simulated evening of the geek room. Screens flickering, Rhapsody and Play Station duking it out for dominance, we sit half illuminated. We eat when our stomachs tug at us. Any suggestion of activity is summarily batted down. There is a smattering of conversation, seemingly random and cocooned in long stretches of silence:
"I think that the character of Bond should be retired--007 should still exist, but no more James."
"Yeah."
(17 minutes of quiet)
"I am unerringly drawn to suicide rockers."
"I know."
(half an hour of quiet)
"I should get my hair cut."
"Pfft. Yeah right."
(9 minutes of quiet)
"Guess what band this is. You'll never guess."
"Who is it? Who?"
"Guess."
"Who?"
"Guess."

And so on. Until the guilt of sitting for hours in our pajamas drives us out of doors. Most likely in the direction of Target.

But it's better to have a healthy supply of foxwire.

I was hoping to get it in under the wire, but nope.

An Aesop's fable. Fox informs Rooster that King Lion has declared peace among all animals. "Come down and we will celebrate". "Oh, ho!" says Rooster, and points to Dog. "Perhaps he would like to join us in celebrating. Here he comes right now." Fox backpedals, "Well, I dont believe that Dog has heard the news. I must go!"

Moral: Cunning often outwits itself.

Cockamamie

A bunch of fowl musings to celebrate the New Year:

Rooster from "Gates of Fire" is not my favorite character (Polynikes is, duh).
Alice in Chains' "Rooster" is about the songwriter's father--a Vietnam vet.
I just recently found out what a pecking party really means. Ew, bloodspots.
I was twice attacked by geese. First time: 5 years old on a Canadian farm by a white goose. Second time: 28 years old, on a run, by a Canada goose.
Mother Goose rides a gander. What gives?
The rooster is associated with the god Hermes. Because he's such a cock?
In the tenth grade I was awakened every morning by...you've got it--a rooster.

Fat Marti.

When in doubt, there's always photoshop.

Going back a ways, but it's as holiday appropriate as my stores will allow. I'm sadly lacking in vampires.

Oh, yes, and tonight's a dark moon.

Seven in One Blow.

Not as easy a task as one might think. I recently saw seven crows systematically hunt down and murder (no pun intended) a babby rabbit (harry a hare?). Four broke off from the group to distract the mother (did you know that rabbits can shriek?--well they can). The remaining three descended on the offspring (despite the efforts of some doughy yuppie who, at the insistence of his girlfriend, tried to intervene). I ran by the spot the next day to find that the mother had not escaped either. Wonderfully efficient animals, crows. And smart.

I'm no augurer, but I feel that some portent was involved. Too late now to find out, I guess. Maybe just a simple warning to keep your jam covered at all times. Who knows what dark agents will wing out of the sky?

To pasture.

Doesn't look much like a Peter Pan. I may have sabotaged myself with that Little Boy Blue remark.

But I'm not fooling anyone. I know less about Pan than I do about Alice. Not the god Pan. I know oodles about him. For instance, I know one of the many Pan-origin stories has him born of Penelope's infidelities with all of her suitors and that Odysseus, upon his return to Ithaca, turned on his heel and left in disgust at seeing the abomination. Or that he is the son of Hermes. Or the foster brother of Zeus. Or that he invented the pan-pipes because one of his reluctant loves had turned herself into a reed. Or that the word panic may very well be derived from the shout he gave to rout the titans in the war of the gods (okay, that one I had to look up).

But Peter Pan? Forgetaboutit. Something about Kensington Gardens. Or about kidnapping the Darling great-grandchildren. Or maybe that was Dustin Hoffman.

Plea to a pencil.

Dear Ultramarine 8200-120(***),

I know we haven't talked much. You've probably been nursing a small hatred for me as you sit amongst the pastels. I know you've watched your compatriots on the bottom row grow smaller while you languish-- unworn, unused and shamefully long. I know I'm the last person you'd want to help.

But I need you. And am willing to resort to bribery.

Maybe you'd like to have a little run? To be the star in a small monochromatic piece? Little Boy Blue, for example. Or, perhaps you'd like a change of scenery? I'd be willing to relocate you to a more reputable neighborhood. Next to the famed Raw Umber 8200-180(**)? Whatever you want.

Just please don't fail me now.

Love, Jessica.

"Timmy? Can I be a carrier pigeon?"

Got a call from my grandmother today which is something. Agreed to go visit with her tomorrow afternoon which is even more noteworthy.

I'm an indifferent sort of grandchild. It may have something to do with the fact that my only remaining grandparent is certifiable. Like, lock the door when you go to sleep, certifiable. You know how every neighborhood has it's crazies? White Shopping Bag Woman. Potato Salad Lady. That Guy Michael Who Sings Along to his Unplugged Headphones. Well, my grandmother is one of these. Maybe she's Nice Little Fat Lady. Or Buys Eight Twinkies Woman. Or That Whacko Who Brings Apple Pies to Your Door at Four in the Morning. But she's something, alright.

So, I eschew her for her eccentricities. (Never mind the fact that I've very likely earned my own status as neighborhood weirdo). But tomorrow, I will go sit in her very posh living room, surrounded by the busts and collections of untranslated Greek plays that my uncle loves, and have tea and make her cinnamon toast and totally freak the hell out when she tries to use the oven.

I stood up in the middle of a conversation and said, "Let's get the hell out of here."

Buffalo's idea of a classy affair:

Tri-colored tortellini, wall-to-wall carpeting, a palm tree ice sculpture (backlit in blue), and, oh yes, the limbo.

"The icy heights that contain all reason."

Five this morning caught me once again chugging chocolate milk and staring idly at the magnetic poetry, trying to ignore the plunging temperature.

Our house is faint of heart and it and I are at odds. Every night it offers it's effing throat to the cold and bleeds off heat. And every morning we get up and provide its daily ressurrection, filling its lungs and blowing on its fingers in a perverse promethean cycle.

And all in the name of fire. How appropriate.

Why IS a raven like a writing desk?

I dunno why I keep circling back to Alice. I don't even like the book. I haven't even read Through the Looking Glass. I couldn't tell you how often she shrinks or what happens in the scene with the gryphon and the mock turtle--something about reciting poetry, I'm guessing. I committed "Jabberwocky" to memory in the sixth grade, so if I make a reference, it's a good bet that that's where it's coming from.

I'm an Alice poser. That's me.

But I like it all the same. Probably because it can be interpreted in so many ways. And by many ways, I mean dark ways.

Kiss that frog.

I have a compulsive fondness for anything small and green. Hummingbirds, caterpillars, fish, grasshoppers, turtles, frogs, praying manti (isses? ee? ii?). You name it. If it can fit in your hand and is green, it's a go. The brighter the better. Exoskeletons are a plus.

The goal is to have fleets of them at my command. Pulling tiny coaches, playing tiny instruments, decked in tiny finery, dancing tiny tarantellas. All bejewelled and glistening and grotesquely beautiful.

Crooked Man. (2nd ed.)

stile: n. steps used for crossing a fence or a wall.

I didn't know either.

He's a very joyous Crooked Man. Or perhaps his condition only allows for a certain way of walking--head cocked, hand raised, knee askew. I always got him mixed up with something out of "Rain, rain, go away", but I decided to depart from that mental image. More energetic, less sodden. I wanted joints stretched, fingers twitching with impatience. To have him walk the fine line (or the crooked mile) between pain and exultation.

Crooked cat and mouse. Man to come.

Crooked as in untrustworthy?

Nah. I'm taking it at face value.

It had a cat on it. With the word "cool".

Halfway into the second day of my Fruit Lolly, I made a startling discovery. (Yes, I said second day. Yes, it had been sitting out all night amidst pencil shavings and eraser nubs. Yes, I picked it up this morning and, without a thought, began gnawing on it once again. No, I'm not normally this gross--but it's a sucker, man. Being in the very presence of a sucker grants you certain childish perogatives. So, forget the gross.)

As I said, I made a discovery. The stick was plastic, not paper.

Now, anyone who has ever balked at putting the soggy, pastel-tinted remains of the top part of a sucker stick, where the sucker meets the stick, into their mouth knows what this means. It means no more balking. It means no more half-finished suckers.

And it occured to me that this is what science exists to do. To provide ease of mind to the hosts of germo-phobic, slime-o-phobic sucker lovers out there.

Innovation at it's best.

Take off your skin.

I fell in love with Tom Waits long before I heard his stuff. I like to check an artist's album covers before I give them a listen because I'm a book-cover-judger. But with Waits I never got around to listening. Just looking.
And, I tell you, the planes of this guy's face just refuse to alter with age. I'm not saying he's preternaturally preserved, or anything. Just unyeilding. Like he followed his lines from where they started and saw them through honestly. Dealt uncompromisingly with Time. So I loved him on that alone.

And then I heard Clap Hands months later and understood.
So, put on Beautiful Maladies and listen to some uneasy lovelies.

Stopper their ears. Put out their eyes.

Never trust a gardener.

They run with their noses too close to the ground to be honest. They hang too much underneath windows, and around hedges, and behind trees. They are too familiar with birds and other airborne gossipmongers. They handle snakes with suspicious ease. They are always innocently armed and have easy access to entrances and exits and sheds.

One too many daughters, kingdoms, and secrets have been lost due to the Gardener.

Think I'm wrong? Here are a few examples:
Cain
Ascalaphus
Sam Gamgee
Rapunzel's witch
The royal gardeners to Her Majesty, The Queen of Hearts

Thank the Maker.

Call this post sentimental, but I must express my joy at once again having a quality sci-fi show in my life. Since the end of Next Generation there has been a void that I could never fully explain until last night. But there I sat, hand immobilized over the bag of Ruffles, beaming and babbling as the Cylons stepped out of the seventies and into our living room, and it all crystallized.

Perhaps it's something about the improbable sounds tv ships make in deep space. Or the semi-obscure, teched-out jargon that peppers conversation. Or the cast of familiar characters--frayed from overuse, but comfortable all the same. Perhaps it just brings me back to when I watched in toddler bemusement as my dad, barely into his twenties, babbled himself, and smoked over the Chee-tos in front of reruns of the original Star Trek.

Because why do one when you can have two for twice the work?

This is actually a "fuck you" to Michael Hague who I contend has been aping Edmund Dulac for years. With great success at fame and little in quality.

No she didn't.

All right, I take it back. He does some skilled painting with some passable inking. But when I saw a pic for his Beauty and the Beast that was essentially snatched from Dulac's illustrated Perrault I felt that some sort of smackdown was in order. Not that we all haven't done it. But at least give props where props are due, man. I mean, come on.

Arthur, not Mazer, geek.

Why post this heinous piece? Well, lets just say it's serving as grim warning to silly artists who think they can forsake their masters. Serves me right for looking to the French.

Now say it aloud:
"There is no Master but Rackham and Jessica is His protege."

"Buffalo want brains!"

There was a hiccup in winter today. One of those confusing days where everything becomes warm and reanimated for about fifteen minutes. But there's always something disturbing about these reprieves. Something about how the leaves and garbage push through their drifts like rejected corpses. How smells regain their potency and vegetation sputters in the wet. How everything tugs damply at you--your hair, your skin, your sneakers. It's a respite, for sure, but one which makes you cautious and careful as the city lumbers up briefly like a zombie.

Jacks are wild.

Though I'm not so sure. Jill looks like a little hellion. Especially considering that she's about to commit coldblooded fratricide. Are they brother and sister? Has that ever been established? I just always assumed that two kids beating the hell out of each other over a bucket of water had to be related.

Of course, has it ever been established that there was an argument? Perhaps it was simple clumsiness. But, given the nature of most nursery rhymes, I refuse to play it out innocently on my paper.

whoopsie-daisies.

I have a deathly fear of sidewalk ice. The combination of me being nearly six feet tall and completely without grace has been an unfortunate one with embarrassing and painful winter results. But the arrival of the much celebrated treadmill has posed an interesting question: Do I ever need to walk outside again? I say, except for the panicked run to and from the car, no. I'll be that woman, bolting from the passenger's side, one hand against the sun, the other casting rock salt before her like a charm.

...then put your little hand in mine, there ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb.

My mornings are fairly predictable. Lovely, but predictable. They consist of a handful of email volleys, the half hearted run, and a typical breakfast of raisin bran. They may be punctuated by the stray phone call, but mainly they are quiet, beslippered hours, smelling faintly of tea and sweaty running clothes, and set to any of a dozen well-crafted Rhapsody radiostations. Unsurprisingly, they tend to run together in a warm indecipherable mass. I don't really mind this.

Except when things fall a little too eerily close. Like this morning, when I bundled the same pile of clothes off to the bathroom, humming the same two songs that preceded yesterday's shower, fighting the tug of a hangover that felt suspiciously familiar. Just a fold in my universe, I guess, but disturbing nonetheless.

The Princess and the Pique

I can just see how that particular conversation went:

"So, our daughter comes to you, soaked, dirty, without transport, looking for rest and you put a pea under her mattresses?"
"Well, yes Your Highness. We were not quite sure about her identity--as you said, she was a frightful mess. So we decided to test her."
"Test her?"
"Yes. No real princess would have been able to sleep with even the smallest object placed--"
"I'm quite aware of the genetic abberration which prevents bluebloods from sleeping in anything but the greatest comfort. My real concern is this idea of testing."
"Of course, Your Worship, but one can never be too careful in these matters."
"Indeed, one cannot. Which is why, for your assiduousness, I am going to reward you with this firebreathing dragon. He is of good family, comes with his own store of gold, and is quite neighborly. A most enviable possession. And all he requires is a nearby cave and the yearly payment of twelve firstborn girls."

Yesterday I got so old.

The apartment has been laid bare in the mad rush to purge all holiday spirit. As fast as that shit goes up, it comes down even faster. I suppose it's the closest we can come to washing our hands of the old year.

I take a perverse delight in this post-seasonal ravishing. The tree lies like a dead thing on the curb. The walls and corners are pale and shivering and almost indecent. Vince Guaraldi has been replaced by The Cure. We are tipping into the long dark of Winter.
Everything is back to normal. Happy 2005.