Tuesday, October 5, 2010
it speaks for itself
whatever the fuck. I drank too much wine and didn't notice it until after I drank too much wine. My face feels like someone stuffed cotton wadding between my skull and my cheeks. My forehead is dressed like a grey padded room. My stuffed cheeks are reinforced with chicken wire. I haven't had a cigarette in 11 days. I haven't had sex in plenty more than that. Twenty? It hadn't even occurred to me to think about sex until a fucking transgender acquaintance suggested I masturbate because I admitted to being in a bad mood. The one person on the planet who is probably lacking the equipment to whack off properly recommends masturbation as a sure cure. What the fuck ever.
Learning to talk
As most parents will, mine were considerate enough to teach me how to talk. Thanks to their vigorous and dedicated efforts, I was fluent in German by the age of two. There was only one small fly in the ointment: I lived in Novi, Michigan. So, while other young children my age were experiencing their first major "Aha!" victory over the world around them by finding themselves finally possessed of the keys to effectively communicating with it, I found myself with a proverbial car that wouldn't start.
The emotional free-fall gap between between the massive exhilaration of finally being capable of communicating with other people, and immediately slamming up against a sudden, stunning brick wall of realization that GERMAN IS NOT THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA must, in hindsight, have been filled with considerable mental distress for me. The only people who could understand me, and whom I could understand -- by their own insidious design -- were my parents.
My mother tells me that I was so traumatized by this that when an American came to visit, I'd go into a literal paralysis. Wherever I happened to be when the American arrived on the scene, that's where I'd be rooted, utterly motionless, in some cheap parody of a California redwood. My mother tells me she'd have to carry me out of the room like a wooden tree trunk.
Just in case this wasn't enough for me to be FUBAR'd for life, my mother also saw to it that I spent my first day of kindergarten wearing a dirndl (think St. Pauli's girl outfit), which she had painstakingly sewn by hand just for the occasion.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm exaggerating these claims. But the irony here is that I don't remember any of this. My mother told me these things. If anything, the culprit of a story has a tendency to underplay the consequences of his or her actions. My mother was the culprit of these stories. I was too traumatized to remember any of this. What I write here is what she told me. No more and no less.
The emotional free-fall gap between between the massive exhilaration of finally being capable of communicating with other people, and immediately slamming up against a sudden, stunning brick wall of realization that GERMAN IS NOT THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA must, in hindsight, have been filled with considerable mental distress for me. The only people who could understand me, and whom I could understand -- by their own insidious design -- were my parents.
My mother tells me that I was so traumatized by this that when an American came to visit, I'd go into a literal paralysis. Wherever I happened to be when the American arrived on the scene, that's where I'd be rooted, utterly motionless, in some cheap parody of a California redwood. My mother tells me she'd have to carry me out of the room like a wooden tree trunk.
Just in case this wasn't enough for me to be FUBAR'd for life, my mother also saw to it that I spent my first day of kindergarten wearing a dirndl (think St. Pauli's girl outfit), which she had painstakingly sewn by hand just for the occasion.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm exaggerating these claims. But the irony here is that I don't remember any of this. My mother told me these things. If anything, the culprit of a story has a tendency to underplay the consequences of his or her actions. My mother was the culprit of these stories. I was too traumatized to remember any of this. What I write here is what she told me. No more and no less.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Urban Walking
When I lived in Chicago, I developed and perfected a method of walking that, every time I do it, I feel defiant and free. It's the ambulatory equivalent of telling the world "I don't need you to define myself; I don't even need you as a point of reference for my actions; I am completely independent of you and your moods"; or alternately, "Fuck off. I got my own thang".
The technique is based on the idea that I won't slow down or stop for anything or anyone. Nothing is allowed to get in my way, and my every motion, not matter what it is, is as deliberate and premeditated and fluid as a cat's. No matter what I just did, "I meant to do that".
That means, no slows or stops for traffic lights, other humans, cars or any other possible distraction. I am going where I am going at my own pace and nothing and no one shall interfere. You are all invisible to me. Better yet, you do not exist.
There is of course a significant amount of strategy involved to pull this off seamlessly. Traffic lights, if I am to create an illusion of not acknowledging them, must not only be noted many yards ahead, but their patterns anticipated well in advance. My course must take into account the arbitrariness of a light turning red or a light turning green at the exact moment that I appear on its intersection. If I know the light will be red, I have two choices: immediately adjust my pace so that my arrival coincides with it turning green again; or use the green light at the opposing corner as an opportunity to turn left or right. Either way, I do not wait for the light, and the trick is to make it magically appear (with careful foresight and absolute premeditation) that the traffic patterns part like the seas before Moses. I don't go with the flow: I create the flow; and I am immune to its vagaries.
This is how a cat dances in the city streets, without ever being detected.
The technique is based on the idea that I won't slow down or stop for anything or anyone. Nothing is allowed to get in my way, and my every motion, not matter what it is, is as deliberate and premeditated and fluid as a cat's. No matter what I just did, "I meant to do that".
That means, no slows or stops for traffic lights, other humans, cars or any other possible distraction. I am going where I am going at my own pace and nothing and no one shall interfere. You are all invisible to me. Better yet, you do not exist.
There is of course a significant amount of strategy involved to pull this off seamlessly. Traffic lights, if I am to create an illusion of not acknowledging them, must not only be noted many yards ahead, but their patterns anticipated well in advance. My course must take into account the arbitrariness of a light turning red or a light turning green at the exact moment that I appear on its intersection. If I know the light will be red, I have two choices: immediately adjust my pace so that my arrival coincides with it turning green again; or use the green light at the opposing corner as an opportunity to turn left or right. Either way, I do not wait for the light, and the trick is to make it magically appear (with careful foresight and absolute premeditation) that the traffic patterns part like the seas before Moses. I don't go with the flow: I create the flow; and I am immune to its vagaries.
This is how a cat dances in the city streets, without ever being detected.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Brainstorming -- mom's childhood
Brainstorming:
The Bad Jew: the old man being beaten by villagers: a "bad man" (Jew)
Dad saving his dad from the American soldier
Mom's parents' death
Mom -- childhood pleasure moments: bomb shelters and stealing potatoes
her good shoes too good to wear; then she outgrew them without ever having worn them; then her stepmom cut holes in the front for the toes to hang out
Dad picking blueberries in the forest
Mom's village: The Snob: violin case with potato peels inside it; falling into the plumpsklo hole on a dare
The Bad Jew: the old man being beaten by villagers: a "bad man" (Jew)
Dad saving his dad from the American soldier
Mom's parents' death
Mom -- childhood pleasure moments: bomb shelters and stealing potatoes
her good shoes too good to wear; then she outgrew them without ever having worn them; then her stepmom cut holes in the front for the toes to hang out
Dad picking blueberries in the forest
Mom's village: The Snob: violin case with potato peels inside it; falling into the plumpsklo hole on a dare
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Almost Inbred
Almost Inbred
When the Nazis came to my mother's village to do their mandatory census, they were nearly overwhelmed by the task at hand. Not because there were so many people to account for: back then, Wolfshagen factually only had a population of around 2000 (and since then, it's only grown to around 2500). Rather, the Nazis were overwhelmed because the inhabitants of my mother's village, having been relatively self-contained since the 10th century or so in the Harz mountains of northern Germany, only had a grand total of 3 surnames in the entire village, which, not unlike a number of other limited resources (including, but not limited to, the family jewels), they all shared amongst themselves.
That made for approximately 666 individuals per last name. Which was only an unlucky number to begin with, but more importantly, a total administrative nightmare for the Nazis, whose task was to confirm every individual's status as an untainted Aryan by tracing their respective family trees at least 150 years back.
Technically, this should've been relatively simple, since everyone in the village seemed to have, by and large, the same family tree. However, the centuries of careful Aryan breeding had also taken their toll: a good percentage of the fish in that murky DNA cesspool that they'd called home for more than a millenium had developed receding brains, perhaps accounting for Darwin's law that the species will, over time, adapt to its environment.
From the stories I've been told and from my own observations when we'd visit, it seemed that few of the people in my mom's village could string a coherent sentence together, let alone spell or write. Sure, they were Aryan to the core, but proving it in writing would be another task altogether.
The village of Wolfshagen did manage to produce one world-famous name in its long history -- a name which, by the time the Nazi census was taken, had already disappeared from the town's public charters: Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, later to be known as Henry Steinway, founder of Steinway & Sons, was a native son of my mother's birthplace. However, after he secretly managed to build his first Steinway piano in his own kitchen (due to the strong proscriptions against such behavior by the organ builder's guild, of which he was an apprentice), he went on to emigrate to NYC, Americanize his name and change the course of piano history.
He had also been previously orphaned at the age of 15, which helps to explain why there were no Steinwegs left in Wolfshagen after he split for New York.
So the Nazis, who have since become well-known for their pragmatic approaches to world domination, racial genocide and other pesky political bugaboos, figured out a brilliant solution to the conundrum: they decided to give everyone in Wolfshagen free license to change their own last names to whatever they wanted. That way, they'd pass the "redundancy test" of having to fill out endless scores of meaningless paperwork that would all look eerily similar at the end of the day while avoiding the inevitable reductio ad absurdum conclusion that the irreducible minimum of racial purity fostered a culture of blonde-haired, blue-eyed inbreds.
I've thought about this many times: what if you could change your last name to whatever you wanted it to be? You could give yourself a regal-sounding surname; or you could opt for something simple yet effective, in terms of opening doors, such as "Kennedy" or "Onassis"; or you could make it rhyme with your first name, or you could name yourself after your animal totem or your hero or anything else you aspired to.
The people of Wolfshagen, in their own way, also gave free reign to their creativity in this unprecedented venture. Their choices reflected not only their deeply personal dreams and aspirations, but perhaps even more importantly, their own cultural Weltanschauung. One guy renamed himself "Alte Hose". That means "Old Pants". My mother's mother ended up marrying a guy who had renamed himself "Bauerochse". That means "Farmer's Ox". That means that my own mother's last name was, for a while, Farmer's Ox.
There's something to be said for divorce, after all.
The stories I grew up with are the stories of what I've come to associate with what's at the core of being German, of the German experience, if you will: stories of incredible, unspeakable violence and gruesomeness, counterbalanced by a present-day reality, their intrinsic orderliness, predictability and simplicity and "just so"-ness being the best concept I've ever had to symbolize security, a sense of place, and a sense of home.
When the Nazis came to my mother's village to do their mandatory census, they were nearly overwhelmed by the task at hand. Not because there were so many people to account for: back then, Wolfshagen factually only had a population of around 2000 (and since then, it's only grown to around 2500). Rather, the Nazis were overwhelmed because the inhabitants of my mother's village, having been relatively self-contained since the 10th century or so in the Harz mountains of northern Germany, only had a grand total of 3 surnames in the entire village, which, not unlike a number of other limited resources (including, but not limited to, the family jewels), they all shared amongst themselves.
That made for approximately 666 individuals per last name. Which was only an unlucky number to begin with, but more importantly, a total administrative nightmare for the Nazis, whose task was to confirm every individual's status as an untainted Aryan by tracing their respective family trees at least 150 years back.
Technically, this should've been relatively simple, since everyone in the village seemed to have, by and large, the same family tree. However, the centuries of careful Aryan breeding had also taken their toll: a good percentage of the fish in that murky DNA cesspool that they'd called home for more than a millenium had developed receding brains, perhaps accounting for Darwin's law that the species will, over time, adapt to its environment.
From the stories I've been told and from my own observations when we'd visit, it seemed that few of the people in my mom's village could string a coherent sentence together, let alone spell or write. Sure, they were Aryan to the core, but proving it in writing would be another task altogether.
The village of Wolfshagen did manage to produce one world-famous name in its long history -- a name which, by the time the Nazi census was taken, had already disappeared from the town's public charters: Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, later to be known as Henry Steinway, founder of Steinway & Sons, was a native son of my mother's birthplace. However, after he secretly managed to build his first Steinway piano in his own kitchen (due to the strong proscriptions against such behavior by the organ builder's guild, of which he was an apprentice), he went on to emigrate to NYC, Americanize his name and change the course of piano history.
He had also been previously orphaned at the age of 15, which helps to explain why there were no Steinwegs left in Wolfshagen after he split for New York.
So the Nazis, who have since become well-known for their pragmatic approaches to world domination, racial genocide and other pesky political bugaboos, figured out a brilliant solution to the conundrum: they decided to give everyone in Wolfshagen free license to change their own last names to whatever they wanted. That way, they'd pass the "redundancy test" of having to fill out endless scores of meaningless paperwork that would all look eerily similar at the end of the day while avoiding the inevitable reductio ad absurdum conclusion that the irreducible minimum of racial purity fostered a culture of blonde-haired, blue-eyed inbreds.
I've thought about this many times: what if you could change your last name to whatever you wanted it to be? You could give yourself a regal-sounding surname; or you could opt for something simple yet effective, in terms of opening doors, such as "Kennedy" or "Onassis"; or you could make it rhyme with your first name, or you could name yourself after your animal totem or your hero or anything else you aspired to.
The people of Wolfshagen, in their own way, also gave free reign to their creativity in this unprecedented venture. Their choices reflected not only their deeply personal dreams and aspirations, but perhaps even more importantly, their own cultural Weltanschauung. One guy renamed himself "Alte Hose". That means "Old Pants". My mother's mother ended up marrying a guy who had renamed himself "Bauerochse". That means "Farmer's Ox". That means that my own mother's last name was, for a while, Farmer's Ox.
There's something to be said for divorce, after all.
The stories I grew up with are the stories of what I've come to associate with what's at the core of being German, of the German experience, if you will: stories of incredible, unspeakable violence and gruesomeness, counterbalanced by a present-day reality, their intrinsic orderliness, predictability and simplicity and "just so"-ness being the best concept I've ever had to symbolize security, a sense of place, and a sense of home.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Birth
I was born in the US to German-speaking parents. My first language was German. I was born in Bellevue Hospital in Niskayuna, Schenectady, NY. The irony of the hospital's name is not lost on me: I am well aware that Bellevue Hospital was also the name of one of the better-known insane asylums of our time.
"Bellevue" of course means "nice view" or similar. Nice view, my ass. My mother has told me more than once that my birth was the most painful thing that ever happened to her. I like to think I can remember it, and believe me, it was the closest thing I can imagine to original sin. I fucked up her birth canal like nobody's business. As soon as those contractions started squeezing me out, I made like a tunnel rat in Saigon, struggling for air and space and a chance at another day before a Viet Cong grenade took me out for good. I fought and squirmed and flailed mercilessly in a battle to the death, trying to get my head above ground, just going for that gasp of air that would separate me from the other corpses littering the ground behind me like a sordid Hansel & Gretel trail. By God, I wasn't going to let those gooks get me, at least not without a good fight for my life.
That was birth. Yay. Mom screamed; I cried; and the first snowfall of the year gently blanketed the ground outside.
The next funny part was that I was a girl. Don't get me wrong: I'd had lots of experiences with girls before. I just hadn't been one in a while.
My dad thought a good German girl should always have her hair combed nicely for a picture. Part of a good hair comb was a perfect side part, with more than a passing resemblance of Hitler's own famous side part. When I say "perfect", I mean that literally not one hair was to be out of place for the photo op. In order to ensure this, I believe he regularly went to the trouble of personally slicking my hair in its proper place with his own spit.
I enjoyed eating. I thought it was fun (and still do.) My mother, being inexperienced (I was her first child) and also a product of the Second World War, indulged me and never restricted my food intake, believing a healthy appetite to be a sign of a healthy child. Back when she was a young girl in post-World War II Germany, my mother had been cursed with a lithe form. Her parents received a lot of flak for this, as it was generally believed that my mother's waif-like shape (which would one day be the envy of other young women and, in combination with a Sophia-Loren facial structure, would launch her career as a successful model in Barcelona) was attributable to the fact that her parents couldn't afford to keep her properly fed. So, in order to keep up with the Joneses of their time and place, her parents force-fed her oatmeal porridge every morning till she was just about to puke, in a desperate attempt to fatten her up in order to avoid further rumors of a failing financial portfolio.
I got so fat as a baby that strangers would comment to my mother on my "full figure" (at the ripe old age of 9 months). My mother would explain to them that "German babies are made that way". In my prime, I boasted 8 rings of fat on each arm and each leg. I was the original Michelin baby.
I love my baby photos. They depict a fantastically obese infant with a Hitler haircut in a white, frilly dress. My smile is huge. I appear to be laughing at the camera, but really I'm laughing at myself. The hilarity of the situation does not escape me. My ear to ear grin is not a cute, girley smile. Nope. More like an absolutely amused, belly-deep guffaw, like I am laughing my ass off at the incongruous combination of fat rings, slicked-back Hitler hair and white lace that my parents lovingly referred to as their baby daughter. I knew even back then that I was completely off.
No one seemed to know I was an Undercover Brother, not even my mother. Holy shit, the possibilities. I loved it. I think I knew even then that I had a lot to look forward to.
"Bellevue" of course means "nice view" or similar. Nice view, my ass. My mother has told me more than once that my birth was the most painful thing that ever happened to her. I like to think I can remember it, and believe me, it was the closest thing I can imagine to original sin. I fucked up her birth canal like nobody's business. As soon as those contractions started squeezing me out, I made like a tunnel rat in Saigon, struggling for air and space and a chance at another day before a Viet Cong grenade took me out for good. I fought and squirmed and flailed mercilessly in a battle to the death, trying to get my head above ground, just going for that gasp of air that would separate me from the other corpses littering the ground behind me like a sordid Hansel & Gretel trail. By God, I wasn't going to let those gooks get me, at least not without a good fight for my life.
That was birth. Yay. Mom screamed; I cried; and the first snowfall of the year gently blanketed the ground outside.
The next funny part was that I was a girl. Don't get me wrong: I'd had lots of experiences with girls before. I just hadn't been one in a while.
My dad thought a good German girl should always have her hair combed nicely for a picture. Part of a good hair comb was a perfect side part, with more than a passing resemblance of Hitler's own famous side part. When I say "perfect", I mean that literally not one hair was to be out of place for the photo op. In order to ensure this, I believe he regularly went to the trouble of personally slicking my hair in its proper place with his own spit.
I enjoyed eating. I thought it was fun (and still do.) My mother, being inexperienced (I was her first child) and also a product of the Second World War, indulged me and never restricted my food intake, believing a healthy appetite to be a sign of a healthy child. Back when she was a young girl in post-World War II Germany, my mother had been cursed with a lithe form. Her parents received a lot of flak for this, as it was generally believed that my mother's waif-like shape (which would one day be the envy of other young women and, in combination with a Sophia-Loren facial structure, would launch her career as a successful model in Barcelona) was attributable to the fact that her parents couldn't afford to keep her properly fed. So, in order to keep up with the Joneses of their time and place, her parents force-fed her oatmeal porridge every morning till she was just about to puke, in a desperate attempt to fatten her up in order to avoid further rumors of a failing financial portfolio.
I got so fat as a baby that strangers would comment to my mother on my "full figure" (at the ripe old age of 9 months). My mother would explain to them that "German babies are made that way". In my prime, I boasted 8 rings of fat on each arm and each leg. I was the original Michelin baby.
I love my baby photos. They depict a fantastically obese infant with a Hitler haircut in a white, frilly dress. My smile is huge. I appear to be laughing at the camera, but really I'm laughing at myself. The hilarity of the situation does not escape me. My ear to ear grin is not a cute, girley smile. Nope. More like an absolutely amused, belly-deep guffaw, like I am laughing my ass off at the incongruous combination of fat rings, slicked-back Hitler hair and white lace that my parents lovingly referred to as their baby daughter. I knew even back then that I was completely off.
No one seemed to know I was an Undercover Brother, not even my mother. Holy shit, the possibilities. I loved it. I think I knew even then that I had a lot to look forward to.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Lesson 2: what to write about
Lesson 2: here it is.
Take what you wrote in Lesson 1 and distill it. Make a list of the key recurring subjects areas or themes you wrote down in Lesson 1. Distill the list into its essential elements.
What is the common theme of these elements?
That's the subject matter of your book.
That was easy, right?
If it's the right subject, it will pass the test of being an endless fount of information that you can write freely and authoritatively about. There's your story.
Congratulations.
Take what you wrote in Lesson 1 and distill it. Make a list of the key recurring subjects areas or themes you wrote down in Lesson 1. Distill the list into its essential elements.
What is the common theme of these elements?
That's the subject matter of your book.
That was easy, right?
If it's the right subject, it will pass the test of being an endless fount of information that you can write freely and authoritatively about. There's your story.
Congratulations.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Lesson 1 demo, part 2: what I am good at
I am now going to take my own advice and do what I said to to in my last post on how to write a book. This is Lesson 1, part 2, applied to myself.
"2. What areas of life are you an expert or authority in? For example, you may have some technical training or background which makes you an authoritative voice on that subject. However, this is a VERY limited example for this question. What I’m getting at here is this: what area of LIFE can you weigh in on with the experience, background or closure required to fully understand it? We are looking here for areas that you can say “I KNOW about this”; or “I can OWN this; this is MINE”. Areas you may personally consider mundane or even uninteresting, if only because you are so used to it that you don’t recognize it may be of interest to others."
The areas of life that I am an expert in:
1. How to make people laugh, by pointing out the absurdly obvious
2. How to get a man and make him mine
3. How to have a terrible relationship and make it ruin every aspect of one's and one's associates' lives.
4. How to misjudge a book by its cover; and how not to.
5. How to have an excellent relationship and make it improve every aspect of one's and one's associates' lives.
6. Growing up German as can be in the USA.
7. How to never completely fit in unless you want to.
8. How to survive on a few pennies and a lot of wits.
9. How to hitchhike across the USA.
10. How to be a hippie.
11. Real estate survival (barely)
12. Life as a wayward college student in Chicago.
13. How to never let go of one's dreams or one's right to invent alternate endings and realities.
14. How to tell a story of tragedy and still make it funny somehow.
15. How to cook an amazing dinner by color and smell alone.
"2. What areas of life are you an expert or authority in? For example, you may have some technical training or background which makes you an authoritative voice on that subject. However, this is a VERY limited example for this question. What I’m getting at here is this: what area of LIFE can you weigh in on with the experience, background or closure required to fully understand it? We are looking here for areas that you can say “I KNOW about this”; or “I can OWN this; this is MINE”. Areas you may personally consider mundane or even uninteresting, if only because you are so used to it that you don’t recognize it may be of interest to others."
The areas of life that I am an expert in:
1. How to make people laugh, by pointing out the absurdly obvious
2. How to get a man and make him mine
3. How to have a terrible relationship and make it ruin every aspect of one's and one's associates' lives.
4. How to misjudge a book by its cover; and how not to.
5. How to have an excellent relationship and make it improve every aspect of one's and one's associates' lives.
6. Growing up German as can be in the USA.
7. How to never completely fit in unless you want to.
8. How to survive on a few pennies and a lot of wits.
9. How to hitchhike across the USA.
10. How to be a hippie.
11. Real estate survival (barely)
12. Life as a wayward college student in Chicago.
13. How to never let go of one's dreams or one's right to invent alternate endings and realities.
14. How to tell a story of tragedy and still make it funny somehow.
15. How to cook an amazing dinner by color and smell alone.
Lesson 1: demo
I am now going to take my own advice and do what I said to to in my last post on how to write a book:
"1. Is there something you obsess over mentally? Is there something you keep coming back to in your thoughts? I am not talking about those little “demons and voices” many of us have that warn us or act as naysayers. Forget about them. They will be shut up and silenced as a result of your book. No, I am talking about the recurring thoughts, questions, ideas that you and only you have that seek to find a voice and to be heard. I am talking about your dreams, your desires, your hates, your loves. I am talking about that thing inside you that you keep coming back to because it wants to be expressed fully. I am talking about the collection of experiences you’ve had that seem to reflect you more natively than anything else. I am talking about the experiences you treasure, you abhor, the ones that you consider have helped shape you and your viewpoint more than any others.
Write them down. Don’t think too much. Don’t worry if your thoughts go all over the place. We are not looking for anything more than literal brainstorming here. What are the thoughts you keep coming back to? What are the ideas that form a central theme in your life? Stop thinking: just write. We don’t care about grammar, tense, person, manners or form. We’ll have a look at where theses ideas are heading later. For now, just get them out of your head and onto the page."
What do I obsess over mentally? Weird question, lady.
I obsess over the injustices committed by others that weren't deserved and should have never been allowed to pass in my perfect world. I obsess over the fact that karma is a lazy-assed bitch and needs to be hurried up. Over the fact that life isn't fair, not any more fair at least than what little fairness we are able to impose on it/our limited stake in it. Over the vast chasm between where I want to be and where I am; what I consider myself capable of and what I have produced to date. I obsess over the inability but willingness to reconcile my inner life with my external realities; to make sense and happiness out of my present fortune by increasing my own ability to appreciate all the good that's actually there and not always bitch about what isn't there and not take the good for granted; about how to actually encourage myself to live up to my own expectations of myself; about how to control my life into the direction I want it to go in; about how to overcome barriers not of my own making.
I obsess over liars and criminals; over my own previous stupidity when it comes to having placed my trust in the wrong people; and over my unwillingness to stop believing in the prevailing better nature of man and my own difficulties in being mean and hard and cruel when I probably should be. Maybe the bad guys win more often than they should because of the good guys' unwillingness to bring a knife to a gunfight. It's highly likely that this is the case.
(This pisses me off: I wrote more but it disappeared into cyberspace)...
I obsess over beauty, and art, and the ecstatic experience available through good art. I obsess over my connectedness with other life-forms and other beings, and the web that we weave which ties us together and often entraps us in its entanglements; and the sorting-out of these entanglements and replacing chaos with order and function and good sense.
I obsess over traveling: my love of travel, my lack of travel, my ability to substitute travel (to some degree) by freeing my mind to the pursuit of creative endeavors; my love of wide open natural spaces; my love of biting salty wind off the coast of Portugal on a ketch on the Atlantic sea; my love of crisp northeastern autumn air; my love of brisk walks in bracing temperatures in the English countryside. My love of photography, and my wonderment that in spite of all the love I have for art, I haven't dedicatedly committed myself to any of its various media, because I was raised with the idea that it's a waste of effort to pursue it professionally; that art isn't really a profession, and that being an artist is something that you do on the side.
Well, ain't that a load of total fucking bullshit. LIFE is not something you "do on the side".
On a more mundane note, I obsess over my waistline, the tendency of my arms to aspire towards thickness, and my inability to shop with wild abandon at Neiman Marcus like I feel I am actually entitled to, simply by virtue of being me and being an excellent dresser and having the ability to look absolutely stunning in the clothes I pick out for myself.
I still find it confusing that I should have to earn a living by selling shit I don't really give a shit about. It surprises me, the amount of passion some people find in the jobs that they do. I couldn't really give two shits about what I do for money. This isn't entirely true of course, but I don't live to work; I work to live. My biggest dream still is to be able to transcend the need for a "day job" by becoming a full-time writer, and by actually churning out some highly readable shit that pays well. Then I actually WILL be able to shop at Neiman Marcus and do all the things I feel already entitled to, simply by virtue of being me, and expressing that to others.
Why would anyone want anything different than that for themselves? I can't even imagine. I doubt anyone does. Or does this mean that I am an artist?
"1. Is there something you obsess over mentally? Is there something you keep coming back to in your thoughts? I am not talking about those little “demons and voices” many of us have that warn us or act as naysayers. Forget about them. They will be shut up and silenced as a result of your book. No, I am talking about the recurring thoughts, questions, ideas that you and only you have that seek to find a voice and to be heard. I am talking about your dreams, your desires, your hates, your loves. I am talking about that thing inside you that you keep coming back to because it wants to be expressed fully. I am talking about the collection of experiences you’ve had that seem to reflect you more natively than anything else. I am talking about the experiences you treasure, you abhor, the ones that you consider have helped shape you and your viewpoint more than any others.
Write them down. Don’t think too much. Don’t worry if your thoughts go all over the place. We are not looking for anything more than literal brainstorming here. What are the thoughts you keep coming back to? What are the ideas that form a central theme in your life? Stop thinking: just write. We don’t care about grammar, tense, person, manners or form. We’ll have a look at where theses ideas are heading later. For now, just get them out of your head and onto the page."
What do I obsess over mentally? Weird question, lady.
I obsess over the injustices committed by others that weren't deserved and should have never been allowed to pass in my perfect world. I obsess over the fact that karma is a lazy-assed bitch and needs to be hurried up. Over the fact that life isn't fair, not any more fair at least than what little fairness we are able to impose on it/our limited stake in it. Over the vast chasm between where I want to be and where I am; what I consider myself capable of and what I have produced to date. I obsess over the inability but willingness to reconcile my inner life with my external realities; to make sense and happiness out of my present fortune by increasing my own ability to appreciate all the good that's actually there and not always bitch about what isn't there and not take the good for granted; about how to actually encourage myself to live up to my own expectations of myself; about how to control my life into the direction I want it to go in; about how to overcome barriers not of my own making.
I obsess over liars and criminals; over my own previous stupidity when it comes to having placed my trust in the wrong people; and over my unwillingness to stop believing in the prevailing better nature of man and my own difficulties in being mean and hard and cruel when I probably should be. Maybe the bad guys win more often than they should because of the good guys' unwillingness to bring a knife to a gunfight. It's highly likely that this is the case.
(This pisses me off: I wrote more but it disappeared into cyberspace)...
I obsess over beauty, and art, and the ecstatic experience available through good art. I obsess over my connectedness with other life-forms and other beings, and the web that we weave which ties us together and often entraps us in its entanglements; and the sorting-out of these entanglements and replacing chaos with order and function and good sense.
I obsess over traveling: my love of travel, my lack of travel, my ability to substitute travel (to some degree) by freeing my mind to the pursuit of creative endeavors; my love of wide open natural spaces; my love of biting salty wind off the coast of Portugal on a ketch on the Atlantic sea; my love of crisp northeastern autumn air; my love of brisk walks in bracing temperatures in the English countryside. My love of photography, and my wonderment that in spite of all the love I have for art, I haven't dedicatedly committed myself to any of its various media, because I was raised with the idea that it's a waste of effort to pursue it professionally; that art isn't really a profession, and that being an artist is something that you do on the side.
Well, ain't that a load of total fucking bullshit. LIFE is not something you "do on the side".
On a more mundane note, I obsess over my waistline, the tendency of my arms to aspire towards thickness, and my inability to shop with wild abandon at Neiman Marcus like I feel I am actually entitled to, simply by virtue of being me and being an excellent dresser and having the ability to look absolutely stunning in the clothes I pick out for myself.
I still find it confusing that I should have to earn a living by selling shit I don't really give a shit about. It surprises me, the amount of passion some people find in the jobs that they do. I couldn't really give two shits about what I do for money. This isn't entirely true of course, but I don't live to work; I work to live. My biggest dream still is to be able to transcend the need for a "day job" by becoming a full-time writer, and by actually churning out some highly readable shit that pays well. Then I actually WILL be able to shop at Neiman Marcus and do all the things I feel already entitled to, simply by virtue of being me, and expressing that to others.
Why would anyone want anything different than that for themselves? I can't even imagine. I doubt anyone does. Or does this mean that I am an artist?
Lesson 1: my own feedback & brainstorming
My own feedback on my own lesson, as applied to myself:
Part 1 was definitely easier for me to do than Part 2, in terms of fluidity. I found it much easier to start talking (writing) about what I like, dream, think about than what specific areas I can consider myself an expert in. Interesting that my voice started to emerge on Part 1 and that I found no lack for words or ideas. In other words, it flowed like I like it to. It was natural; it was me. That was the voice, right there, that I want to continue into an entire book.
I also found it interesting that the voice I consider most mine, most authentic, most genuine, is not a particularly happy one. It is a voice fully capable of happiness and humor, but it is not in itself there yet. Rather, it contains a relatively high degree of irony (but not bitterness, thank God) and it expresses an ache for the actualization of more, better, higher. It is a voice of hope, tempered by the blade and not-so-glamorous grit of actual experience. I like it. It has a fair degree of maturity and it is honest, and it is able to tell it like it sees it. And it is in fact quite bold. Good on me.
Part 2 was where I felt I was getting into pretentiousness, to the degree that the list I was making seemed somehow separate from me and my own interests. None of the things I read on my own list has any particular hold on me. Which is a potential problem, because I am trying to figure out here what the FUCK is going to HOLD my interest for 300+ pages.
One idea I had along the way, before I forget it:
A largely autobiographical story, but each chapter ends not with the actual reality, but with (in italics, to keep it separate), my "dream" or cartoon reality. Yes. that would really be therapeutic, if nothing else. One chapter devoted to a section of my life that bears recounting; and the ending is how I would have constructed it in the real world, if the real world accepted my druthers and I was Queen of the Universe.
The more I think about the above, the more I like it.
Where truth meets fiction.
Where my inner world intersects with my external world.
Where, at the end of the book, my ultimate dream of being a published writer is achieved, in the real world. That would be a declaration of victory, and the ultimate revenge against the travails of life that my innermost being rails against, in every sense that I can imagine right now.
So for today's conclusion, I'd assess the following:
At the end of the day, I am an expert in my own life. Writing is where my inner life meets my external life, head-on. No one knows the story of my life like I know it. No one is more qualified to write about it. No one is more qualified to judge it. I don't actually want to judge it. I want to tell it like it is, like it was, and like it will be. I want to be the author of my own destiny. Literally. I think I'm on to something very real here, something that could keep me going for 300+ pages, in my own voice, and not bore me or my future audience. I want it to inspire me and others. I can do that, with this as a subject.
Probably a little more on this later.
If you are reading this, try Lesson 1. Let me know your own results. This could become a forum for aspiring writers if enough people read this, and try it for themselves.
Part 1 was definitely easier for me to do than Part 2, in terms of fluidity. I found it much easier to start talking (writing) about what I like, dream, think about than what specific areas I can consider myself an expert in. Interesting that my voice started to emerge on Part 1 and that I found no lack for words or ideas. In other words, it flowed like I like it to. It was natural; it was me. That was the voice, right there, that I want to continue into an entire book.
I also found it interesting that the voice I consider most mine, most authentic, most genuine, is not a particularly happy one. It is a voice fully capable of happiness and humor, but it is not in itself there yet. Rather, it contains a relatively high degree of irony (but not bitterness, thank God) and it expresses an ache for the actualization of more, better, higher. It is a voice of hope, tempered by the blade and not-so-glamorous grit of actual experience. I like it. It has a fair degree of maturity and it is honest, and it is able to tell it like it sees it. And it is in fact quite bold. Good on me.
Part 2 was where I felt I was getting into pretentiousness, to the degree that the list I was making seemed somehow separate from me and my own interests. None of the things I read on my own list has any particular hold on me. Which is a potential problem, because I am trying to figure out here what the FUCK is going to HOLD my interest for 300+ pages.
One idea I had along the way, before I forget it:
A largely autobiographical story, but each chapter ends not with the actual reality, but with (in italics, to keep it separate), my "dream" or cartoon reality. Yes. that would really be therapeutic, if nothing else. One chapter devoted to a section of my life that bears recounting; and the ending is how I would have constructed it in the real world, if the real world accepted my druthers and I was Queen of the Universe.
The more I think about the above, the more I like it.
Where truth meets fiction.
Where my inner world intersects with my external world.
Where, at the end of the book, my ultimate dream of being a published writer is achieved, in the real world. That would be a declaration of victory, and the ultimate revenge against the travails of life that my innermost being rails against, in every sense that I can imagine right now.
So for today's conclusion, I'd assess the following:
At the end of the day, I am an expert in my own life. Writing is where my inner life meets my external life, head-on. No one knows the story of my life like I know it. No one is more qualified to write about it. No one is more qualified to judge it. I don't actually want to judge it. I want to tell it like it is, like it was, and like it will be. I want to be the author of my own destiny. Literally. I think I'm on to something very real here, something that could keep me going for 300+ pages, in my own voice, and not bore me or my future audience. I want it to inspire me and others. I can do that, with this as a subject.
Probably a little more on this later.
If you are reading this, try Lesson 1. Let me know your own results. This could become a forum for aspiring writers if enough people read this, and try it for themselves.
upcoming lessons in how to write a book
Upcoming lessons to writing your book:
Lesson 2: Establish the subject matter of your book
Lesson 3: Give it a whirl: start brainstorming on content under the subject matter you've determined for yourself.
Lesson 4: Chapters as the framework: write down the chapters of your book
Lesson 5: Beginning, middle and end: establish a theme or a main idea that takes you through the book and binds it together into a comprehensive story.
Lesson 6: Heroes, Villains and other sundry folk: the people in your book
Lesson 7: Character sketches of the people in your book
Lesson 8: Major conflicts: establishing the barriers that have to be overcome (life as a game of freedoms, barriers and purposes)
Lesson 9: Freedoms: establishing the outer bounds of what you want to embrace with your book.
Lesson 10: Purposes: establishing the reason for the book.
Lesson 11: Revisit the chapters and establish them more distinctly.
Lesson 12: Stepping stones: Sketching out the chapters.
Lesson 13: Start writing your book: Chapter One
(interspersed throughout: feedback/revisions)
Lesson 2: Establish the subject matter of your book
Lesson 3: Give it a whirl: start brainstorming on content under the subject matter you've determined for yourself.
Lesson 4: Chapters as the framework: write down the chapters of your book
Lesson 5: Beginning, middle and end: establish a theme or a main idea that takes you through the book and binds it together into a comprehensive story.
Lesson 6: Heroes, Villains and other sundry folk: the people in your book
Lesson 7: Character sketches of the people in your book
Lesson 8: Major conflicts: establishing the barriers that have to be overcome (life as a game of freedoms, barriers and purposes)
Lesson 9: Freedoms: establishing the outer bounds of what you want to embrace with your book.
Lesson 10: Purposes: establishing the reason for the book.
Lesson 11: Revisit the chapters and establish them more distinctly.
Lesson 12: Stepping stones: Sketching out the chapters.
Lesson 13: Start writing your book: Chapter One
(interspersed throughout: feedback/revisions)
Lesson 1.5: finding a common theme
I looked at what Lesson #2 is supposed achieve and my immediate reaction was "not ready for that yet". Here's a sub-step between proposed Lessons 1 and 2 to make the transition to Lesson 2 easier. Chance are, I'll be adding this as its own distinct lesson.
For now, my next task is to analyze what I wrote about in Lesson 1 and see if I can narrow it down to a common theme, or at least a few common threads.
Injustice/betrayal/justice/karma
Right/wrong
Aesthetics
Humor/tragedy
Bad guys/good guys
Trust/distrust
Kindness/meanness
Goals & dreams vs reality (and reconciling/integrating the two)
Taking control of one's life/success
Pursuit of happiness
(dreams/goals): Art, beauty, truth
(dreams/goals): Travel
Mundane vs. sublime
Shopping/fashion/style/weight loss/girlie things
Living the dream
Me
The common denominator is me. The themes are as old and classic as the human condition. Nothing new there, except whatever new insights I can lend them as colored by my own experiences.
I go back to what seems easiest for me to write about: me, my life, my experiences to date, the things I've learned through experience: certainly not always by being a good example, often by being a horrible warning. No one else has the same story or viewpoint as I do, and there's no harm in taking the path of least resistance when it comes to writing my first book.And besides, I could probably blab on endlessly about myself. Hopefully I won't bore myself to tears while doing so.
For now, my next task is to analyze what I wrote about in Lesson 1 and see if I can narrow it down to a common theme, or at least a few common threads.
Injustice/betrayal/justice/karma
Right/wrong
Aesthetics
Humor/tragedy
Bad guys/good guys
Trust/distrust
Kindness/meanness
Goals & dreams vs reality (and reconciling/integrating the two)
Taking control of one's life/success
Pursuit of happiness
(dreams/goals): Art, beauty, truth
(dreams/goals): Travel
Mundane vs. sublime
Shopping/fashion/style/weight loss/girlie things
Living the dream
Me
The common denominator is me. The themes are as old and classic as the human condition. Nothing new there, except whatever new insights I can lend them as colored by my own experiences.
I go back to what seems easiest for me to write about: me, my life, my experiences to date, the things I've learned through experience: certainly not always by being a good example, often by being a horrible warning. No one else has the same story or viewpoint as I do, and there's no harm in taking the path of least resistance when it comes to writing my first book.And besides, I could probably blab on endlessly about myself. Hopefully I won't bore myself to tears while doing so.
Monday, August 30, 2010
You're better off dead, pal
In the latest breaking news of my cartoon reality, the dude whose initials are BS has finally been killed in a tragic car accident (due to a lack of mighty tornadoes in Florida, there were no flying houses present to flatten him with his feet sticking out at an odd angle from where the house would've landed on him, so I settled for a tragic car crash). No others were injured and there is no immediate known cause for the accident, although toxicology reports are still pending.
Alternately, the dude whose initials are BS was found dead in his home by a friend. His heart had exploded in his sleep and no foul play appears to have been involved.
I will play maudlin for a while, since it appears at first sight to be an unspeakable tragedy for someone so inextricably linked to my own life to be swept to the bosom of his Maker at such a relatively early age; and after all, he is the father of my child.
I will of course attend his funeral and be more than helpful to his mother and other next of kin in the distribution of his estate and assets (of which, of course, there are none to speak of. Thank GOD I am not financially or legally bound to him in any way, shape or form: now it will be up to his mother to bail out those financial debts which survive his untimely death).
His mother will be moved, of course, to provide amply for her half-orphaned granddaughter, and in addition to setting up a trust fund in her name, will also cover her health insurance and provide a generous monthly stipend to cover her immediate needs. In order to help me and my daughter overcome our grief, she will also send me a check for $100,000 to help us during this difficult time. Meanwhile, probate court will agree that Bill's estate is also indebted to me for an additional $120,000 or so as a result of an audit performed on his financial records.
I will pack up the household and immediately move to Cyprus with my family, where our sponsor will provide us with a beautiful house on the beach at no cost and where my gorgeous, able and generous husband will learn to be a trader for our sponsor while I laze away the afternoons in our beautiful beach house and write my first, second and third books, which go on to become very successful and establish my new career as a professional writer. The children will grow up in a privileged environment, receive excellent educations and enjoy much travel throughout Europe, Asia and Dubai, as well as frequent visits Stateside.
Yay.
Alternately, the dude whose initials are BS was found dead in his home by a friend. His heart had exploded in his sleep and no foul play appears to have been involved.
I will play maudlin for a while, since it appears at first sight to be an unspeakable tragedy for someone so inextricably linked to my own life to be swept to the bosom of his Maker at such a relatively early age; and after all, he is the father of my child.
I will of course attend his funeral and be more than helpful to his mother and other next of kin in the distribution of his estate and assets (of which, of course, there are none to speak of. Thank GOD I am not financially or legally bound to him in any way, shape or form: now it will be up to his mother to bail out those financial debts which survive his untimely death).
His mother will be moved, of course, to provide amply for her half-orphaned granddaughter, and in addition to setting up a trust fund in her name, will also cover her health insurance and provide a generous monthly stipend to cover her immediate needs. In order to help me and my daughter overcome our grief, she will also send me a check for $100,000 to help us during this difficult time. Meanwhile, probate court will agree that Bill's estate is also indebted to me for an additional $120,000 or so as a result of an audit performed on his financial records.
I will pack up the household and immediately move to Cyprus with my family, where our sponsor will provide us with a beautiful house on the beach at no cost and where my gorgeous, able and generous husband will learn to be a trader for our sponsor while I laze away the afternoons in our beautiful beach house and write my first, second and third books, which go on to become very successful and establish my new career as a professional writer. The children will grow up in a privileged environment, receive excellent educations and enjoy much travel throughout Europe, Asia and Dubai, as well as frequent visits Stateside.
Yay.
How to write a book: Lesson 1
So, you want to write a book? All right.
The first thing you need to establish is, what will your book be about? What story needs to be told? What story is interesting enough to not only keep your readers going for 300+ pages, but also to keep YOU going. It's going to be a lot more work writing the thing than reading it.
One question that will need answering: fact, or fiction? Or a colorful combination thereof?
Another question: what tense or person will it be written in?
I personally have a hard time inventing something more interesting than my own sphere of experience. Others have inner lives that are so creative and colorful that the pages of their stories are canvasses for things we could never experience otherwise. Either way is fine, as long as it's what's real to you. But what is real to you? How do you write at your most fluid, and real? When the ink of your pen becomes your own life-blood, what general style do those words embrace or reflect? That will need to be established before you even set your first word on the first page of your first book.
That's the voice you need to capture: that's the voice that will tell your story in your book.
However, the biggest problem most aspiring writers face is in fact, what will they write their book about?
This will be the first, and possibly even the most important, hurdle for us to confront and conquer, as all future actions in this course will depend on having successfully discovered what story most needs to be told.
We still start by brainstorming.
Think about these questions, and answer them completely:
1. Is there something you obsess over mentally? Is there something you keep coming back to in your thoughts? I am not talking about those little "demons and voices" many of us have that warn us or act as naysayers. Forget about them. They will be shut up and silenced as a result of your book. No, I am talking about the recurring thoughts, questions, ideas that you and only you have that seek to find a voice and to be heard. I am talking about your dreams, your desires, your hates, your loves. I am talking about that thing inside you that you keep coming back to because it wants to be expressed fully. I am talking about the collection of experiences you've had that seem to reflect you more natively than anything else. I am talking about the experiences you treasure, you abhor, the ones that you consider have helped shape you and your viewpoint more than any others.
Write them down. Don't think too much. Don't worry if your thoughts go all over the place. We are not looking for anything more than literal brainstorming here. What are the thoughts you keep coming back to? What are the ideas that form a central theme in your life? Stop thinking: just write. We don't care about grammar, tense, person, manners or form. We'll have a look at where theses ideas are heading later. For now, just get them out of your head and onto the page.
2. What areas of life are you an expert or authority in? For example, you may have some technical training or background which makes you an authoritative voice on that subject. However, this is a VERY limited example for this question. What I'm getting at here is this: what area of LIFE can you weigh in on with the experience, background or closure required to fully understand it? We are looking here for areas that you can say "I KNOW about this"; or "I can OWN this; this is MINE". Areas you may personally consider mundane or even uninteresting, if only because you are so used to it that you don't recognize it may be of interest to others.
I want areas of your life which are preferably NOT works in progress. I want areas that you can speak about with full knowledge and depth of understanding. To use an extreme example, let's say you're a cancer survivor. You've seen the battle through, from beginning to middle to end. Now you're done with it and you've moved on. Good. That's an area you KNOW about, from the inside out, an area you can own from start to finish.
Another example might be taken from where or how you grew up. Or from your experiences in the auto or sales industry. Or a string of crap relationships or behavioral patterns that you've managed to identify and get through and over with. I want any areas of your life and experience that you are an authority on, because you've been there and you've lived the life and you understand it and you have real insight and knowledge of.
Don't judge yourself while you write these down. That will come later. For now, any areas that are unique to YOU, your viewpoint, your understandings and experiences with, that you can authoritatively OWN. These areas may not even be that interesting to you, but they may be interesting for someone else. We'll decide that later.
You are the only "you" in the world. What can you bring to the table that is authentically yours?
The first thing you need to establish is, what will your book be about? What story needs to be told? What story is interesting enough to not only keep your readers going for 300+ pages, but also to keep YOU going. It's going to be a lot more work writing the thing than reading it.
One question that will need answering: fact, or fiction? Or a colorful combination thereof?
Another question: what tense or person will it be written in?
I personally have a hard time inventing something more interesting than my own sphere of experience. Others have inner lives that are so creative and colorful that the pages of their stories are canvasses for things we could never experience otherwise. Either way is fine, as long as it's what's real to you. But what is real to you? How do you write at your most fluid, and real? When the ink of your pen becomes your own life-blood, what general style do those words embrace or reflect? That will need to be established before you even set your first word on the first page of your first book.
That's the voice you need to capture: that's the voice that will tell your story in your book.
However, the biggest problem most aspiring writers face is in fact, what will they write their book about?
This will be the first, and possibly even the most important, hurdle for us to confront and conquer, as all future actions in this course will depend on having successfully discovered what story most needs to be told.
We still start by brainstorming.
Think about these questions, and answer them completely:
1. Is there something you obsess over mentally? Is there something you keep coming back to in your thoughts? I am not talking about those little "demons and voices" many of us have that warn us or act as naysayers. Forget about them. They will be shut up and silenced as a result of your book. No, I am talking about the recurring thoughts, questions, ideas that you and only you have that seek to find a voice and to be heard. I am talking about your dreams, your desires, your hates, your loves. I am talking about that thing inside you that you keep coming back to because it wants to be expressed fully. I am talking about the collection of experiences you've had that seem to reflect you more natively than anything else. I am talking about the experiences you treasure, you abhor, the ones that you consider have helped shape you and your viewpoint more than any others.
Write them down. Don't think too much. Don't worry if your thoughts go all over the place. We are not looking for anything more than literal brainstorming here. What are the thoughts you keep coming back to? What are the ideas that form a central theme in your life? Stop thinking: just write. We don't care about grammar, tense, person, manners or form. We'll have a look at where theses ideas are heading later. For now, just get them out of your head and onto the page.
2. What areas of life are you an expert or authority in? For example, you may have some technical training or background which makes you an authoritative voice on that subject. However, this is a VERY limited example for this question. What I'm getting at here is this: what area of LIFE can you weigh in on with the experience, background or closure required to fully understand it? We are looking here for areas that you can say "I KNOW about this"; or "I can OWN this; this is MINE". Areas you may personally consider mundane or even uninteresting, if only because you are so used to it that you don't recognize it may be of interest to others.
I want areas of your life which are preferably NOT works in progress. I want areas that you can speak about with full knowledge and depth of understanding. To use an extreme example, let's say you're a cancer survivor. You've seen the battle through, from beginning to middle to end. Now you're done with it and you've moved on. Good. That's an area you KNOW about, from the inside out, an area you can own from start to finish.
Another example might be taken from where or how you grew up. Or from your experiences in the auto or sales industry. Or a string of crap relationships or behavioral patterns that you've managed to identify and get through and over with. I want any areas of your life and experience that you are an authority on, because you've been there and you've lived the life and you understand it and you have real insight and knowledge of.
Don't judge yourself while you write these down. That will come later. For now, any areas that are unique to YOU, your viewpoint, your understandings and experiences with, that you can authoritatively OWN. These areas may not even be that interesting to you, but they may be interesting for someone else. We'll decide that later.
You are the only "you" in the world. What can you bring to the table that is authentically yours?
Friday, August 27, 2010
gotta start somewhere
So I decided to start this blog for reasons two- or three-fold:
1. To have a place to rant my fucking head off;
2. To have a place to express myself with no particular restraints caused by concerns of being caught out by someone who knows me and to whom I am socially indebted in some manner, be it familial, social, professional or some combination of the three;
3. To have a place where I can write on a daily basis and simply have a way to literally collect my written thoughts in one place, with the idea of organizing them into a beginning, a middle and an end at some point in the future and actually writing a book. But first, I need to do (1) (2) and (3) so I can really take a step back and go "that right there, that's me; that's the voice I know and love and need to strengthen and define into my own personal weapon of truth"; and "that's the common thread -- now it's clear to me what my story is and what my book is about"; and so on. And also the reverse, like reading something I wrote and going "that is total, disingenuous, pretentious shit. Who do I think I am?"; or "that is completely overwrought" or whatever.
Oh -- there's one more reason I decided to start this blog, and I admit it's a compelling one: there is some shit that I sincerely hate, and don't know what else to do about other than make my opinion heard. There are factually some people I think are better off dead than alive, and as long as they don't agree with this assessment, there isn't much I can do about it in the real world. But you see, there's this other world, this "cartoon reality" as an ex used to call it, where all the rules are mine, and where I can enforce them, and where the good people win and the bad people get their heads chopped off and put in a jar and kept alive so their dirty little souls can't escape, at least not till I say they can. That's the world I can write about without restraint but not act on otherwise. And it's therapeutic to write about it because then it becomes real to that degree and I'm over it and moving forwards. See, I'm already having second thoughts about the head-in-a-jar justice action, if only because I removed the inhibition from expressing the thought. Instead, maybe we could bring back the pillory as a compromise.
1. To have a place to rant my fucking head off;
2. To have a place to express myself with no particular restraints caused by concerns of being caught out by someone who knows me and to whom I am socially indebted in some manner, be it familial, social, professional or some combination of the three;
3. To have a place where I can write on a daily basis and simply have a way to literally collect my written thoughts in one place, with the idea of organizing them into a beginning, a middle and an end at some point in the future and actually writing a book. But first, I need to do (1) (2) and (3) so I can really take a step back and go "that right there, that's me; that's the voice I know and love and need to strengthen and define into my own personal weapon of truth"; and "that's the common thread -- now it's clear to me what my story is and what my book is about"; and so on. And also the reverse, like reading something I wrote and going "that is total, disingenuous, pretentious shit. Who do I think I am?"; or "that is completely overwrought" or whatever.
Oh -- there's one more reason I decided to start this blog, and I admit it's a compelling one: there is some shit that I sincerely hate, and don't know what else to do about other than make my opinion heard. There are factually some people I think are better off dead than alive, and as long as they don't agree with this assessment, there isn't much I can do about it in the real world. But you see, there's this other world, this "cartoon reality" as an ex used to call it, where all the rules are mine, and where I can enforce them, and where the good people win and the bad people get their heads chopped off and put in a jar and kept alive so their dirty little souls can't escape, at least not till I say they can. That's the world I can write about without restraint but not act on otherwise. And it's therapeutic to write about it because then it becomes real to that degree and I'm over it and moving forwards. See, I'm already having second thoughts about the head-in-a-jar justice action, if only because I removed the inhibition from expressing the thought. Instead, maybe we could bring back the pillory as a compromise.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Boyfriend #16B: Andy R.
Andy worked 4 jobs. (1) He was a waiter at the Mc Cormick Center Plaza, which is where we met. (2) He worked at UPS unloading boxes from trucks. (3) He cleaned a bar every morning. (4) He was a hired thug for different gangs.
Andy had at least 4 girlfriends as well. None of them knew of the others’ existence. It wasn’t that he was particularly clever; they were all particularly stupid. He had an infant son with one of them. Because she was black, his mother wouldn’t allow her or the baby inside the house. Because he was half Italian, he still lived with his mother.
His mother, although married to a Mexican and clearly a minority in her own right, was extremely racist, which is why she adored me. He brought me around to show me off to her a few times, and she was not inhibited about her dying wish being a holy union between her son and me. Not that she was dying; she simply had a dramatic streak a mile wide.
Over time, I had the opportunity to meet all of Andy’s girlfriends. They were all very sweet and each one of them confided in me that they suspected he might have “someone else”. I was very sweet in return and assured them I hadn’t seen any girls in Andy’s company, with the one exception of whomever I happened to be talking to that day. For some reason which I do not know and would probably not be proud to find out about, I personally was above suspicion.
Andy was quite the charmer. He had a mustache like Heraldo Rivera and the first time he ever met me, he promised me “I’m gonna lick you DRYYYYYYYYYY”, which I found rather amusing, if not completely endearing. But, like most good one-liners, it ended up getting sweeter with time/sinking in on me, and over time, the oft-repeated phrase became a reliable refrain of comfort and consistency in my otherwise manic routine.
In spite of his racist upbringing, Andy was an equal opportunity thug. He and his friend, a very large man with nondescript features and whose name I forget, were like the "Equalizers" of the Chicago gangland community, providing street justice to all -- for a fee. Not to negate their own strong work ethic and spirit of entrepreneurialism; but what really made them a hot commodity was the fact that between the two of them, they owned two coffins.
The basic drill was this: some homey needed some other homey to be taught a lesson. Andy and his friend's paid service was simple yet very effective, and in continuous high demand: they'd follow their target and knock the person out with a baseball bat. When the guy woke up, he'd find himself inside a closed coffin. Then he'd completely freak out and repent, at which point he would be released back into the wilderness of Gangland.
According to Andy's own clinical field studies in the matter, people tend to change their ways very rapidly when they wake up inside a coffin.
What worked for Andy, worked for me. He was the only guy I knew who seemed to be able to afford to buy me steak for dinner on a regular basis, and I truly respected that gentlemanly quality in him. He kind of came across as a pretty nice guy on a number of different levels, as long as you ignored the 4th job, the 4 other girlfriends and his partner's claims that he made and ate cat roadkill pizza on a regular basis. I didn't like to think of myself as "easy" or having low standards; rather I preferred to think of myself as having an open mind and an open heart, and from that point of view I'd say there were worse guys out there that I could've been dating.
Andy had at least 4 girlfriends as well. None of them knew of the others’ existence. It wasn’t that he was particularly clever; they were all particularly stupid. He had an infant son with one of them. Because she was black, his mother wouldn’t allow her or the baby inside the house. Because he was half Italian, he still lived with his mother.
His mother, although married to a Mexican and clearly a minority in her own right, was extremely racist, which is why she adored me. He brought me around to show me off to her a few times, and she was not inhibited about her dying wish being a holy union between her son and me. Not that she was dying; she simply had a dramatic streak a mile wide.
Over time, I had the opportunity to meet all of Andy’s girlfriends. They were all very sweet and each one of them confided in me that they suspected he might have “someone else”. I was very sweet in return and assured them I hadn’t seen any girls in Andy’s company, with the one exception of whomever I happened to be talking to that day. For some reason which I do not know and would probably not be proud to find out about, I personally was above suspicion.
Andy was quite the charmer. He had a mustache like Heraldo Rivera and the first time he ever met me, he promised me “I’m gonna lick you DRYYYYYYYYYY”, which I found rather amusing, if not completely endearing. But, like most good one-liners, it ended up getting sweeter with time/sinking in on me, and over time, the oft-repeated phrase became a reliable refrain of comfort and consistency in my otherwise manic routine.
In spite of his racist upbringing, Andy was an equal opportunity thug. He and his friend, a very large man with nondescript features and whose name I forget, were like the "Equalizers" of the Chicago gangland community, providing street justice to all -- for a fee. Not to negate their own strong work ethic and spirit of entrepreneurialism; but what really made them a hot commodity was the fact that between the two of them, they owned two coffins.
The basic drill was this: some homey needed some other homey to be taught a lesson. Andy and his friend's paid service was simple yet very effective, and in continuous high demand: they'd follow their target and knock the person out with a baseball bat. When the guy woke up, he'd find himself inside a closed coffin. Then he'd completely freak out and repent, at which point he would be released back into the wilderness of Gangland.
According to Andy's own clinical field studies in the matter, people tend to change their ways very rapidly when they wake up inside a coffin.
What worked for Andy, worked for me. He was the only guy I knew who seemed to be able to afford to buy me steak for dinner on a regular basis, and I truly respected that gentlemanly quality in him. He kind of came across as a pretty nice guy on a number of different levels, as long as you ignored the 4th job, the 4 other girlfriends and his partner's claims that he made and ate cat roadkill pizza on a regular basis. I didn't like to think of myself as "easy" or having low standards; rather I preferred to think of myself as having an open mind and an open heart, and from that point of view I'd say there were worse guys out there that I could've been dating.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
HCG Day 2: Lardass
I decided to try the HCG diet if only because (1) it's so totally crazy that it makes sense (kind of like when something is so ugly it comes full circle and it's cute again) and (2) a number of my friends have lost the collective weight of 2 elephants while doing it.
I was concerned I wouldn't have the extreme discipline that it takes to follow this diet successfully, but my fears have since been allayed by my own behavior for the first two days of this diet (also known as the "loading" days, or Phase 1). My job for the past 48 or so hours has been to eat as much fattening food as possible. Don't ask me to explain why because I'm just doing what I'm told here. The point is, I've been pigging out religiously and have managed to prove to myself that I do in fact have the discipline it takes to stick to the rigorous precision of this particular diet. I'm so fucking fat now that I can barely make it up the stairs, let alone fit into the stairwell, and I am actually looking forward to starving myself for the next three weeks. To cap off my 2-day gorge, I ate the fried skin of a chicken, half the chicken, a baked potato saturated in butter, cheese and sour cream, and now I am making cinnamon rolls for dessert. For health purposes I also opted for some red wine (the theory being that this will cut through the cholesterol and prevent a heart attack before I start Phase 2 tomorrow).
I'm feeling pretty upbeat about this diet and although I look like a monolith, I expect that by tomorrow at noon latest I'll be getting calls from Kate Moss's agent. My diet goal is the same as it's ever been: to look like a heroin junkie waiflike thing. Wish me luck.
I was concerned I wouldn't have the extreme discipline that it takes to follow this diet successfully, but my fears have since been allayed by my own behavior for the first two days of this diet (also known as the "loading" days, or Phase 1). My job for the past 48 or so hours has been to eat as much fattening food as possible. Don't ask me to explain why because I'm just doing what I'm told here. The point is, I've been pigging out religiously and have managed to prove to myself that I do in fact have the discipline it takes to stick to the rigorous precision of this particular diet. I'm so fucking fat now that I can barely make it up the stairs, let alone fit into the stairwell, and I am actually looking forward to starving myself for the next three weeks. To cap off my 2-day gorge, I ate the fried skin of a chicken, half the chicken, a baked potato saturated in butter, cheese and sour cream, and now I am making cinnamon rolls for dessert. For health purposes I also opted for some red wine (the theory being that this will cut through the cholesterol and prevent a heart attack before I start Phase 2 tomorrow).
I'm feeling pretty upbeat about this diet and although I look like a monolith, I expect that by tomorrow at noon latest I'll be getting calls from Kate Moss's agent. My diet goal is the same as it's ever been: to look like a heroin junkie waiflike thing. Wish me luck.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Eddie Love, Part II
Anyone who still has questions about whether there’s alien life on this planet has not met Eddie Love.
When in motion, it was beyond question that Eddie was, in fact, an alien. In a non-ambulant state, Eddie’s looks were certainly passable: a large-ish, hawk-shaped nose (on a good day, a Roman nose; on a bad day it was a Jewish one), warm, sincere brown puppy eyes, and a not overly short build that could certainly pass for somewhat muscled and sound.
Once he started walking, it was all over. To my well-trained anthropologist’s eye, it was evident beyond any reasonable doubt that Eddie had only very recently joined the human race. Clinically speaking, he definitely displayed a number of symptoms characteristic of arrested evolutionary development. He still had proverbial egg yolk behind his ears.
Eddie’s body lacked not only definition, it seemed to lack perimeter. He had a slow, methodical gait best described as something between lumbering and plodding. It was less one foot in front of the other than like one of those wind-up toys whose feet sort of mechanically loop, or rotate, in front of each other.
Although he did not, I could never shake the eerie impression that Eddie had webbed feet. Especially with his toes turned slightly inwards, he walked almost exactly as if he were wearing scuba flippers.
But the worst part about Eddie in motion occurred above the waist, not below it.
Eddie stuck his ass out when he walked. I don’t mean a little bit. I mean he put Black Ghetto Mama to shame. He had a fairly sizeable ass for a white human male, and if he’d worn it tucked somewhat in, it could have even have been considered an attractive physical feature. However, Eddie walked his ass around as if there were peacock feathers sprouting out of it.
But like I said, the worst part of Eddie in motion was above the waist.
What I’m getting at is Eddie’s hands. When Eddie walked, he tucked his elbows up and wore his hands at just above shoulder level, wrists extended back to expose his palms gleefully facing front. From the waist up, his body language was a perpetual expression of a pleasantly surprised Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Maybe he used his hands to counterbalance the weight of his hyper-extended ass. But it was very, very certain that Eddie was simply not used to inhabiting a humanoid form and that he just didn’t quite know how to pull it off.
After a few weeks of watching this, any possible remnants of novelty had worn off and all that was left for me was the grating chafe of embarrassment of being associated with a half-hatched human amoeba. Eddie wasn’t one to take subtle hints: if he were, he would’ve noticed that my tendency to walk on the opposite sidewalk of him when we were going somewhere in public bespoke of an underlying situation that would require eventual address. After all, I lived in Southside Chicago, and any reputational considerations aside, it was an actual safety hazard to be seen walking down those streets with a white man who walked like a blissed-out, oblivious fag.
I tried to enlighten him; to appeal to his senses, as it were. “When we walk down the street together, you are supposed to protect me from real or potential threats”, I lectured him. “This is how you walk” (I imitated a large bird with a spear stuck in its ass). “It does not make me feel safe and protected to walk with you”.
I allowed a few minutes to let the weight of my words penetrate, visualizing a brain deep inside his skull of a consistency, density and color not unlike the ancient peat bog from whence I imagine he had emerged. (In spite of how amazingly dense he was, I was to find out later that Eddie had a genius-level IQ, which made him the closest thing to an idiot savant that I’ve ever dated – or known otherwise). I then launched into the first of what would become a series of walking lessons for Eddie.
My only real goal was to teach him how to walk like a human male, not even so much out of self-interest or to “change him” than for the purely altruistic goal of helping him escape detection for a few more years until his work on this planet was complete. It was painfully obvious that Eddie was new at this human thing, and it was my job to do right by my expensive cultural anthropology degree to teach him our ways so he at least had a fighting chance.
Every woman wants a guy to make her feel special. Eddie definitely did this for me. I felt like he was an important project which, once complete, might change the course of human history as we know it. For the first time in a long while, I felt historically relevant, probably not unlike Rudyard Kipling, when he expressed his sentiments towards his responsibility for the civilization of savages in his famous poem titled “The White Man’s Burden”. Eddie was my savage little alien, sent to me for reasons I had yet to fully understand.
When in motion, it was beyond question that Eddie was, in fact, an alien. In a non-ambulant state, Eddie’s looks were certainly passable: a large-ish, hawk-shaped nose (on a good day, a Roman nose; on a bad day it was a Jewish one), warm, sincere brown puppy eyes, and a not overly short build that could certainly pass for somewhat muscled and sound.
Once he started walking, it was all over. To my well-trained anthropologist’s eye, it was evident beyond any reasonable doubt that Eddie had only very recently joined the human race. Clinically speaking, he definitely displayed a number of symptoms characteristic of arrested evolutionary development. He still had proverbial egg yolk behind his ears.
Eddie’s body lacked not only definition, it seemed to lack perimeter. He had a slow, methodical gait best described as something between lumbering and plodding. It was less one foot in front of the other than like one of those wind-up toys whose feet sort of mechanically loop, or rotate, in front of each other.
Although he did not, I could never shake the eerie impression that Eddie had webbed feet. Especially with his toes turned slightly inwards, he walked almost exactly as if he were wearing scuba flippers.
But the worst part about Eddie in motion occurred above the waist, not below it.
Eddie stuck his ass out when he walked. I don’t mean a little bit. I mean he put Black Ghetto Mama to shame. He had a fairly sizeable ass for a white human male, and if he’d worn it tucked somewhat in, it could have even have been considered an attractive physical feature. However, Eddie walked his ass around as if there were peacock feathers sprouting out of it.
But like I said, the worst part of Eddie in motion was above the waist.
What I’m getting at is Eddie’s hands. When Eddie walked, he tucked his elbows up and wore his hands at just above shoulder level, wrists extended back to expose his palms gleefully facing front. From the waist up, his body language was a perpetual expression of a pleasantly surprised Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Maybe he used his hands to counterbalance the weight of his hyper-extended ass. But it was very, very certain that Eddie was simply not used to inhabiting a humanoid form and that he just didn’t quite know how to pull it off.
After a few weeks of watching this, any possible remnants of novelty had worn off and all that was left for me was the grating chafe of embarrassment of being associated with a half-hatched human amoeba. Eddie wasn’t one to take subtle hints: if he were, he would’ve noticed that my tendency to walk on the opposite sidewalk of him when we were going somewhere in public bespoke of an underlying situation that would require eventual address. After all, I lived in Southside Chicago, and any reputational considerations aside, it was an actual safety hazard to be seen walking down those streets with a white man who walked like a blissed-out, oblivious fag.
I tried to enlighten him; to appeal to his senses, as it were. “When we walk down the street together, you are supposed to protect me from real or potential threats”, I lectured him. “This is how you walk” (I imitated a large bird with a spear stuck in its ass). “It does not make me feel safe and protected to walk with you”.
I allowed a few minutes to let the weight of my words penetrate, visualizing a brain deep inside his skull of a consistency, density and color not unlike the ancient peat bog from whence I imagine he had emerged. (In spite of how amazingly dense he was, I was to find out later that Eddie had a genius-level IQ, which made him the closest thing to an idiot savant that I’ve ever dated – or known otherwise). I then launched into the first of what would become a series of walking lessons for Eddie.
My only real goal was to teach him how to walk like a human male, not even so much out of self-interest or to “change him” than for the purely altruistic goal of helping him escape detection for a few more years until his work on this planet was complete. It was painfully obvious that Eddie was new at this human thing, and it was my job to do right by my expensive cultural anthropology degree to teach him our ways so he at least had a fighting chance.
Every woman wants a guy to make her feel special. Eddie definitely did this for me. I felt like he was an important project which, once complete, might change the course of human history as we know it. For the first time in a long while, I felt historically relevant, probably not unlike Rudyard Kipling, when he expressed his sentiments towards his responsibility for the civilization of savages in his famous poem titled “The White Man’s Burden”. Eddie was my savage little alien, sent to me for reasons I had yet to fully understand.
Eddie Love, Part I
I first met Eddie Love on my way to a Grateful Dead show. Between swings on a swing (where else), we arranged for my transportation issues to be solved by means of an available seat behind him on his motorcycle. This seat is generally called “riding Bitch”, but it beats walking and in my opinion also beats the front seat of a motorcycle and its attendant liabilities of snagging bugs with one’s teeth.
Eddie was a postgraduate student of Business Administration at a college (THE college) in Madison, Wisconsin. He had graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in Physics. He seduced me with his ramblings about how molecules under a microscope do the beautiful dance of the universe and other far-out platitudes which grooved very nicely with the overall pre-Dead concert vibe.
And I’ve found it to be true that motorcycles generally tend to add a point or two on a guy’s hotness scale ranking. I have many stories about motorcycles. Not all have ended well, but so what – they had a motorcycle, and I had them, which invariable makes for a great start. In fact, I could write a book about men and the art of relationship maintenance. But I digress. Which I generally do when encountered with a man and a motorcycle.
After Eddie’s Dead show motorcycle chauffeuring of my super-friendly, peace-loving white ass, he started visiting me in Chicago on the weekends. He’d ride his bike through sub-zero temperatures to my cute little studio apartment in Hyde Park (he could handle the cold – Eddie was a self-described “Bronx Baby” who explained to me that if you don’t resist the wind and the chill, it doesn’t stay inside you, it just kind of goes through you) and we’d have sex and sleep in and in the mornings, he’d walk over to the European-style deli and come back with orange juice, a fresh baguette, smoked Gouda and occasionally, when they were available, an avocado. Then, still camping out in bed, we’d pig out on these delicacies, always to the extreme delight of my taste buds.
Eddie and I didn’t talk about the future or the past. We didn’t make plans. We didn’t take steps to step up the relationship. I enjoyed the simplicity of the arrangement. He’d show up, we’d have a good time, he’d leave and chances are, we’d do the same thing the following weekend – but we never scheduled our time together and we never planned for it. Very basic, simple and free-lovey – a perfect recipe for a young nubile eighteen year-old college student who was more interested in the theoretical negative space of astrophysics than in boys. Boys were a dime a dozen back then. Call it “sex for retards” – literally a no-brainer. It was easy to follow, a convenient mutual pleasure, and we both enjoyed it for what it was and no more and no less.
The most memorable part of the whole thing was the smoked Gouda. That discovery kind of changed my life.
On one weekend, I made the mistake of releasing Eddie into the wilderness of my college partying network. We got drunk, as was generally called for by the social environment. Nothing unusual about that. This was, however, the first time that I was together with Eddie in a social setting with people other than myself present. I left Eddie to his own devices, and he left me to mine. He didn’t make it back to my place that night, but I did not consider this a cause for alarm.
The next morning, I got a phone call from my friend Chandra telling me to pick up Eddie from her place. Her tone of voice betrayed that there was a bit more to the scene. I got the distinct impression that if I didn’t get my ass over there posthaste, her next call was going to be to the Humane Society.
It turns out that Eddie had a proclivity, or penchant if you will, for pissing. He literally had pissed all over Chandra’s room. Everywhere. Every last corner. Eddie had pissed on her bed. He had pissed on her pillow. He had pissed on her floor, her curtains, her clothing, her furniture. From all appearances and from the results of my own amateur forensic investigation of the crime scene, he had spent quite a bit of time diligently hosing down, in excruciating detail, everything my friend Chandra owned. It was almost mystical. I mean, we are talking gallons of the stuff – everywhere. If he’d been around when the Chicago fire started, no one would have ever heard of the fire.
This was the thanks Eddie had given my friend, in his inebriated, dog-like state, for taking him in when he was too out of his head to know where he was supposed to go. According to Chandra, his manic micturations were also not enough to dampen his more debonair side, and at some point between whizzing all over her carpet and her bedding, had also offered to satisfy her every sexual whim, which, under the circumstances, failed to impress her or fill her with longing.
I played a very stern hand with Eddie at that point. Eddie was already well into the self-mortification ritual of a million “I’m sorry’s” before I arrived on the scene, but let’s face it, sometimes “I’m sorry” doesn’t quite cut it, and this happened to be one of those occasions when a little more action was called for before he had any chance at obtaining forgiveness. He was the embodiment of hangdog. He spent the entire day scuttling back and forth from the laundromat with mountains of urine-soaked clothing and bedding, like an apologetic and massively hung-over (Jewish) coolie. After he finally finished cleaning whatever could be cleaned, I sent Eddie away in true German “don’t fuck with me” style, with my finger pointing to the door. On the one hand, how was I supposed to know that the guy I was having a sexual liaison with peed everywhere the second he was released into public? I mean, this is one of those things you can only learn the hard way. It’s not as if he’s going to disclose such a fact to you, and it’s not as if it’s one of those questions one think s of to ask. Although my own father had surprised me in the past with the in-depth nature of the grilling interviews he subjected my romantic prospects to (before I learned to never bring them home, that is), asking pointed questions such as “What is your GPA? What’s your major? Here’s the remote: you have 3 seconds to find the sports channel; What do your parents do for a living? What is your estimated net worth?” not even once did he ever ask the burning question: “When you find yourself in a somewhat delicate social situation, do you consider saturating all available surfaces with your urine within a ten foot, 360 degree radius as a valid form of stress relief?”. I guess you just have to fuck with one eye open, and monitor your guy’s urination habits for a while, an eventuality I was simply not prepared for at the time.
My momma never told me that just because a guy's lovemaking skills are no guarantee that he is housebroken.
That was the last time I saw Eddie. For a few years, anyways. Until we moved in together, that is.
Eddie was a postgraduate student of Business Administration at a college (THE college) in Madison, Wisconsin. He had graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in Physics. He seduced me with his ramblings about how molecules under a microscope do the beautiful dance of the universe and other far-out platitudes which grooved very nicely with the overall pre-Dead concert vibe.
And I’ve found it to be true that motorcycles generally tend to add a point or two on a guy’s hotness scale ranking. I have many stories about motorcycles. Not all have ended well, but so what – they had a motorcycle, and I had them, which invariable makes for a great start. In fact, I could write a book about men and the art of relationship maintenance. But I digress. Which I generally do when encountered with a man and a motorcycle.
After Eddie’s Dead show motorcycle chauffeuring of my super-friendly, peace-loving white ass, he started visiting me in Chicago on the weekends. He’d ride his bike through sub-zero temperatures to my cute little studio apartment in Hyde Park (he could handle the cold – Eddie was a self-described “Bronx Baby” who explained to me that if you don’t resist the wind and the chill, it doesn’t stay inside you, it just kind of goes through you) and we’d have sex and sleep in and in the mornings, he’d walk over to the European-style deli and come back with orange juice, a fresh baguette, smoked Gouda and occasionally, when they were available, an avocado. Then, still camping out in bed, we’d pig out on these delicacies, always to the extreme delight of my taste buds.
Eddie and I didn’t talk about the future or the past. We didn’t make plans. We didn’t take steps to step up the relationship. I enjoyed the simplicity of the arrangement. He’d show up, we’d have a good time, he’d leave and chances are, we’d do the same thing the following weekend – but we never scheduled our time together and we never planned for it. Very basic, simple and free-lovey – a perfect recipe for a young nubile eighteen year-old college student who was more interested in the theoretical negative space of astrophysics than in boys. Boys were a dime a dozen back then. Call it “sex for retards” – literally a no-brainer. It was easy to follow, a convenient mutual pleasure, and we both enjoyed it for what it was and no more and no less.
The most memorable part of the whole thing was the smoked Gouda. That discovery kind of changed my life.
On one weekend, I made the mistake of releasing Eddie into the wilderness of my college partying network. We got drunk, as was generally called for by the social environment. Nothing unusual about that. This was, however, the first time that I was together with Eddie in a social setting with people other than myself present. I left Eddie to his own devices, and he left me to mine. He didn’t make it back to my place that night, but I did not consider this a cause for alarm.
The next morning, I got a phone call from my friend Chandra telling me to pick up Eddie from her place. Her tone of voice betrayed that there was a bit more to the scene. I got the distinct impression that if I didn’t get my ass over there posthaste, her next call was going to be to the Humane Society.
It turns out that Eddie had a proclivity, or penchant if you will, for pissing. He literally had pissed all over Chandra’s room. Everywhere. Every last corner. Eddie had pissed on her bed. He had pissed on her pillow. He had pissed on her floor, her curtains, her clothing, her furniture. From all appearances and from the results of my own amateur forensic investigation of the crime scene, he had spent quite a bit of time diligently hosing down, in excruciating detail, everything my friend Chandra owned. It was almost mystical. I mean, we are talking gallons of the stuff – everywhere. If he’d been around when the Chicago fire started, no one would have ever heard of the fire.
This was the thanks Eddie had given my friend, in his inebriated, dog-like state, for taking him in when he was too out of his head to know where he was supposed to go. According to Chandra, his manic micturations were also not enough to dampen his more debonair side, and at some point between whizzing all over her carpet and her bedding, had also offered to satisfy her every sexual whim, which, under the circumstances, failed to impress her or fill her with longing.
I played a very stern hand with Eddie at that point. Eddie was already well into the self-mortification ritual of a million “I’m sorry’s” before I arrived on the scene, but let’s face it, sometimes “I’m sorry” doesn’t quite cut it, and this happened to be one of those occasions when a little more action was called for before he had any chance at obtaining forgiveness. He was the embodiment of hangdog. He spent the entire day scuttling back and forth from the laundromat with mountains of urine-soaked clothing and bedding, like an apologetic and massively hung-over (Jewish) coolie. After he finally finished cleaning whatever could be cleaned, I sent Eddie away in true German “don’t fuck with me” style, with my finger pointing to the door. On the one hand, how was I supposed to know that the guy I was having a sexual liaison with peed everywhere the second he was released into public? I mean, this is one of those things you can only learn the hard way. It’s not as if he’s going to disclose such a fact to you, and it’s not as if it’s one of those questions one think s of to ask. Although my own father had surprised me in the past with the in-depth nature of the grilling interviews he subjected my romantic prospects to (before I learned to never bring them home, that is), asking pointed questions such as “What is your GPA? What’s your major? Here’s the remote: you have 3 seconds to find the sports channel; What do your parents do for a living? What is your estimated net worth?” not even once did he ever ask the burning question: “When you find yourself in a somewhat delicate social situation, do you consider saturating all available surfaces with your urine within a ten foot, 360 degree radius as a valid form of stress relief?”. I guess you just have to fuck with one eye open, and monitor your guy’s urination habits for a while, an eventuality I was simply not prepared for at the time.
My momma never told me that just because a guy's lovemaking skills are no guarantee that he is housebroken.
That was the last time I saw Eddie. For a few years, anyways. Until we moved in together, that is.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Random musings
-If men were left to rule the world, there’d be no one left to rule the world.
-The only medium that can encompass the terrific depth and breadth of life is the experience of, and participation in, life itself. There is no substitute for living out loud.
-A true artist has the ability to actually become something or someone else, to rise up to a level of KNOWING the object or subject of one's art, to where one has the ability and willingness to embracively BE it. It's a higher level of grokking something than "merely" understanding it. I think this is true for any medium a true artist excels in, whether it's writing, music, painting, etc. Your thoughts?
"Daddy Gio, I want my mommy". "Why?" "Because I like her". (5/18/10)
My 2 year-old's GI tract never ceases to amaze me. (5/17/10)
Definition of Purgatory: sitting in front of a blank computer screen, waiting for the page to load. (5/17/10)
If you need some ideas for fixing a nagging problem, watch a few Road Runner reruns. The Road Runner just cheerfully turns whatever is aimed at him back at his aggressor. It's so zen. (5/17/10)
It's hard not to become a racist after visiting Walmart. Every time I go, I become super prejudiced against white people. (5/17/10)
When I was 5, there was a kid in my neighborhood named Carl Gunderson whom I did not like because he was dirty and his buttcrack hung out over his brown Toughskin jeans. So I devised a plan to rid myself of my enemy: Being that he was a dirty boy, it was only logical that he would like dirty things. So I made a brew of mud and sticks and bigs inside a pail and put the pail in the middle of my back yard.
The plan was, Carl would come lumbering through my yard on his way back from school, see the pail with yucky stuff in it, say "yum yum" and drink it all. Then he'd die. The logic was impeccable and the plan seemed absolutely flawless. When it didn't happen exactly like that, I couldn't believe it.
Carl survived. He never even walked through my back yard as planned. I was so taken aback that my perfect plan had been foiled, I'm still in a bit of a slump over it. What's odd about this incident is it totally stuck me in this utter disbelief when it didn't pan out exactly as I had planned it. I'm still obviously not over it. (5/16/10)
Just yelled at my kids because it's obvious they can't hear my "indoor voice". (5/16/10)
Hard Rock Cafe my ass. More like Fat F#@% Cafe. I don't get it. Made me want to become an expat postehaste. (5/15/10)
Drove "all" the way to Tampa Whole Foods to buy my favorite soap in the world. Realized at the cashier that I'd forgotten my wallet and only had $15 in cash. Unloaded the entire cart --
"just the soap, please". The soap came to around $23 -- for a few slices, mind you. I left the store $9 poorer with 2 slivers of the pr...ecious stuff and with my tail between my legs. Retail therapy backfired. (5/14/10)
My daughter proudly informed me this morning that she "got out the big fish!". I went upstairs to investigate and said fish was flopping around on the dining room table next to a spoon, clearly not enjoying himself. Inside the aquarium were a salt shaker, a suction cup and two rubber duckies. I rearranged a few things ...and am happy to report that the "big fish" seems to have survived his little adventure quite well. (5/13/10)
I feel like a human blotation device. (5/12/10)
I don't beg to differ. I'll just differ. Differing away after a busy busy day (5/11/10)
Survey question for Italians: is my fiancee the only Italian guy who hides a few pounds of imported Parmesan cheese in his desk, or is this some common Italian thing? (5/11/10)
"Mommy, are you and Daddy Gio getting married?" "Yes". "Oh. But mommy, I want to marry you". (5/10/10)
-The only medium that can encompass the terrific depth and breadth of life is the experience of, and participation in, life itself. There is no substitute for living out loud.
-A true artist has the ability to actually become something or someone else, to rise up to a level of KNOWING the object or subject of one's art, to where one has the ability and willingness to embracively BE it. It's a higher level of grokking something than "merely" understanding it. I think this is true for any medium a true artist excels in, whether it's writing, music, painting, etc. Your thoughts?
"Daddy Gio, I want my mommy". "Why?" "Because I like her". (5/18/10)
My 2 year-old's GI tract never ceases to amaze me. (5/17/10)
Definition of Purgatory: sitting in front of a blank computer screen, waiting for the page to load. (5/17/10)
If you need some ideas for fixing a nagging problem, watch a few Road Runner reruns. The Road Runner just cheerfully turns whatever is aimed at him back at his aggressor. It's so zen. (5/17/10)
It's hard not to become a racist after visiting Walmart. Every time I go, I become super prejudiced against white people. (5/17/10)
When I was 5, there was a kid in my neighborhood named Carl Gunderson whom I did not like because he was dirty and his buttcrack hung out over his brown Toughskin jeans. So I devised a plan to rid myself of my enemy: Being that he was a dirty boy, it was only logical that he would like dirty things. So I made a brew of mud and sticks and bigs inside a pail and put the pail in the middle of my back yard.
The plan was, Carl would come lumbering through my yard on his way back from school, see the pail with yucky stuff in it, say "yum yum" and drink it all. Then he'd die. The logic was impeccable and the plan seemed absolutely flawless. When it didn't happen exactly like that, I couldn't believe it.
Carl survived. He never even walked through my back yard as planned. I was so taken aback that my perfect plan had been foiled, I'm still in a bit of a slump over it. What's odd about this incident is it totally stuck me in this utter disbelief when it didn't pan out exactly as I had planned it. I'm still obviously not over it. (5/16/10)
Just yelled at my kids because it's obvious they can't hear my "indoor voice". (5/16/10)
Hard Rock Cafe my ass. More like Fat F#@% Cafe. I don't get it. Made me want to become an expat postehaste. (5/15/10)
Drove "all" the way to Tampa Whole Foods to buy my favorite soap in the world. Realized at the cashier that I'd forgotten my wallet and only had $15 in cash. Unloaded the entire cart --
"just the soap, please". The soap came to around $23 -- for a few slices, mind you. I left the store $9 poorer with 2 slivers of the pr...ecious stuff and with my tail between my legs. Retail therapy backfired. (5/14/10)
My daughter proudly informed me this morning that she "got out the big fish!". I went upstairs to investigate and said fish was flopping around on the dining room table next to a spoon, clearly not enjoying himself. Inside the aquarium were a salt shaker, a suction cup and two rubber duckies. I rearranged a few things ...and am happy to report that the "big fish" seems to have survived his little adventure quite well. (5/13/10)
I feel like a human blotation device. (5/12/10)
I don't beg to differ. I'll just differ. Differing away after a busy busy day (5/11/10)
Survey question for Italians: is my fiancee the only Italian guy who hides a few pounds of imported Parmesan cheese in his desk, or is this some common Italian thing? (5/11/10)
"Mommy, are you and Daddy Gio getting married?" "Yes". "Oh. But mommy, I want to marry you". (5/10/10)
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
A Girl's Checklist for a Hot Date Night
________ Clean the house.
________ Do the laundry.
________ While doing the laundry, select your wardrobe for the evening. Decide on something cute, somewhat revealing but only in an "accidental" sort of way.
________ Realize you should have done whites, not colors, and now you need to handwash your favorite "lucky" panties.
________ Blowdry your favorite panties while listening to loud music, dancing to it while occasionally using the blowdryer as a microphone..
________ Realize you have just accidentally browned your lucky panties with the blowdryer. Duh -- you weren't gonna wear cottons, you idiot -- polyester is flammable, remember? Decide they are still your lucky panties because it could've been much worse and you might have burned your eyebrows off.
________ Go to the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of wine to get over the trauma of the burnt panties.
________ Re-select your wardrobe for the evening based on a new set of panties.
________ Pour yourself another glass of wine to help you decide on your new wardrobe.
________ Decide on something racy, sophisicated and splashy.
________ Realize you are starting to run short of time and you haven't even showered or done your nails yet.
________ Prepare for your shower. Hang up the silk shirt in the bathroom so the moisture will straighten it out, as you no longer have time to iron it.
________ While showering, loofah your entire body, paying extra attention to your hindquarters. Scrub furiously in an attempt to increase circulation to a degree where any and all cellulite will completely rub out on the spot.
________ Shave like there's no tomorrow. Re-shape your pubic area into a perfect arrowhead.
________ Apply body oil or something fragrant and emollient to your entire body before you step out of the shower, a New Woman in body and soul.
________ Wrap yourself into your brand-new luxurious Cornflower Blue towel.
________ Curse like fuck when you realize you look like the Cookie Monster because the new towel has left blue fur all over your freshly oiled body..
________ Get back in the shower, rinse the shit off while cursing profusely..
________ Realize you have no fucking towel.
________ Tear through the house to the linen closet, get an "Old Faithful" towel, and dry off while remembering to curse profusely in an effective Turrets-Syndrome simulation.
________ Put on your outfit. Model in front of the mirror and practice assuming the body pose which is most suited to flatter your choice of clothing. Repeat to yourself "One must suffer to be beautiful", even if it's hard to say multiple times with your tummy sucked into your spine.
________ Pour one more glass of wine and consume it upside-down while simultaneously blowdrying your hair from the roots down, smoking a cigarette and rocking out to a poor choice of music.
_______ Apply hair spray, in measured amounts (don't want the hair to appear sticky when Man runs fingers through it) -- just enough to give it a spot of lift and fresh kick.
________ Use curling iron painstakingly to create a "natural", "windblown" effect, meanwhile smoking a cigarette to ease the anxiety of running ruinously late.
________ Decide you do not want to come across as a chainsmoking aging whore and apply more hairspray to mask the cigarette odor.
________ Go into an absolute panic when you realize you have sealed in the cigarette odor with the hairspray.
________ Decide that if He is Somebody, he will appreciate you for who you really are. To confirm this decision with yourself, light up another cigarette and touch up your hair with the blowdryer, meanwhile being very careful to not "pull a Michael Jackson" by igniting your hair with the combustible combo.
________ Apply make-up. To steady your nervous hand, pour another glass of wine. Crank up the radio. "Get into the Groove". Slip up with the liquid eyeliner and go into another Turrets Episode.
________ In spite of what you told yourself earlier, you are not going to risk smelling like his grandmother if and when he sticks his tongue down your throat. Gargle 1-1/2 times the recommended amount of Scope for 45 seconds while dancing seductively to '80's music. As an afterthought, swallow the lot in a desperate hope that somehow the Scope will filter into your lungs and elimate the source of the odor.
________ Dance one more time in front of the mirror while bearing your breasts in an attempt to get an objective impression of what he will see later tonight. Revise your pose to accommodate nudity. Put your hands on your thighs, shake your tits and hips and go into an agony of self-doubt. Hope that the idea of ill-lit rooms turns him on immeasurably. Realize you are absolutley drunk and can't walk so well in your favorite hooker boots. Opt for a size-down in heel length.
________ Brush your teeth.
________ Re-apply lipstick, which came off during the toothbrushing incident.
________ Acknowledge to yourself that you look like Bette Davis in her more demented moments due to a severe mis-application of lipliner.
________ Re-apply lipstick and lipliner.
________ Settle down on the couch and pretend you are calmly reading a magazine.
________ Go empty your bladder. Rejoice that you have probably just lost another pound.
________ Don't wipe; dab. Remain conscientious of the possibility that you will be getting oral sex tonight and you don't want him to catch his teeth on a piece of "TP".
________ Return to the couch.
________ Have one last Turrets Episode when you realize he's already 24 minutes late and hasn't even called.
________ When he arrives, greet him graciously, radiating obvious pleasure in his appearance. Make a feeble attempt at clever, witty and bright small-talk. Allow him to escort you to his vehicle. Have a mental Turrets Episode when you realize that in spite of your earlier downsizing, he is still shorter than you in your heels.
________ Realize you never did your nails and blame this for the disaster you see forthcoming.
________ Do the laundry.
________ While doing the laundry, select your wardrobe for the evening. Decide on something cute, somewhat revealing but only in an "accidental" sort of way.
________ Realize you should have done whites, not colors, and now you need to handwash your favorite "lucky" panties.
________ Blowdry your favorite panties while listening to loud music, dancing to it while occasionally using the blowdryer as a microphone..
________ Realize you have just accidentally browned your lucky panties with the blowdryer. Duh -- you weren't gonna wear cottons, you idiot -- polyester is flammable, remember? Decide they are still your lucky panties because it could've been much worse and you might have burned your eyebrows off.
________ Go to the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of wine to get over the trauma of the burnt panties.
________ Re-select your wardrobe for the evening based on a new set of panties.
________ Pour yourself another glass of wine to help you decide on your new wardrobe.
________ Decide on something racy, sophisicated and splashy.
________ Realize you are starting to run short of time and you haven't even showered or done your nails yet.
________ Prepare for your shower. Hang up the silk shirt in the bathroom so the moisture will straighten it out, as you no longer have time to iron it.
________ While showering, loofah your entire body, paying extra attention to your hindquarters. Scrub furiously in an attempt to increase circulation to a degree where any and all cellulite will completely rub out on the spot.
________ Shave like there's no tomorrow. Re-shape your pubic area into a perfect arrowhead.
________ Apply body oil or something fragrant and emollient to your entire body before you step out of the shower, a New Woman in body and soul.
________ Wrap yourself into your brand-new luxurious Cornflower Blue towel.
________ Curse like fuck when you realize you look like the Cookie Monster because the new towel has left blue fur all over your freshly oiled body..
________ Get back in the shower, rinse the shit off while cursing profusely..
________ Realize you have no fucking towel.
________ Tear through the house to the linen closet, get an "Old Faithful" towel, and dry off while remembering to curse profusely in an effective Turrets-Syndrome simulation.
________ Put on your outfit. Model in front of the mirror and practice assuming the body pose which is most suited to flatter your choice of clothing. Repeat to yourself "One must suffer to be beautiful", even if it's hard to say multiple times with your tummy sucked into your spine.
________ Pour one more glass of wine and consume it upside-down while simultaneously blowdrying your hair from the roots down, smoking a cigarette and rocking out to a poor choice of music.
_______ Apply hair spray, in measured amounts (don't want the hair to appear sticky when Man runs fingers through it) -- just enough to give it a spot of lift and fresh kick.
________ Use curling iron painstakingly to create a "natural", "windblown" effect, meanwhile smoking a cigarette to ease the anxiety of running ruinously late.
________ Decide you do not want to come across as a chainsmoking aging whore and apply more hairspray to mask the cigarette odor.
________ Go into an absolute panic when you realize you have sealed in the cigarette odor with the hairspray.
________ Decide that if He is Somebody, he will appreciate you for who you really are. To confirm this decision with yourself, light up another cigarette and touch up your hair with the blowdryer, meanwhile being very careful to not "pull a Michael Jackson" by igniting your hair with the combustible combo.
________ Apply make-up. To steady your nervous hand, pour another glass of wine. Crank up the radio. "Get into the Groove". Slip up with the liquid eyeliner and go into another Turrets Episode.
________ In spite of what you told yourself earlier, you are not going to risk smelling like his grandmother if and when he sticks his tongue down your throat. Gargle 1-1/2 times the recommended amount of Scope for 45 seconds while dancing seductively to '80's music. As an afterthought, swallow the lot in a desperate hope that somehow the Scope will filter into your lungs and elimate the source of the odor.
________ Dance one more time in front of the mirror while bearing your breasts in an attempt to get an objective impression of what he will see later tonight. Revise your pose to accommodate nudity. Put your hands on your thighs, shake your tits and hips and go into an agony of self-doubt. Hope that the idea of ill-lit rooms turns him on immeasurably. Realize you are absolutley drunk and can't walk so well in your favorite hooker boots. Opt for a size-down in heel length.
________ Brush your teeth.
________ Re-apply lipstick, which came off during the toothbrushing incident.
________ Acknowledge to yourself that you look like Bette Davis in her more demented moments due to a severe mis-application of lipliner.
________ Re-apply lipstick and lipliner.
________ Settle down on the couch and pretend you are calmly reading a magazine.
________ Go empty your bladder. Rejoice that you have probably just lost another pound.
________ Don't wipe; dab. Remain conscientious of the possibility that you will be getting oral sex tonight and you don't want him to catch his teeth on a piece of "TP".
________ Return to the couch.
________ Have one last Turrets Episode when you realize he's already 24 minutes late and hasn't even called.
________ When he arrives, greet him graciously, radiating obvious pleasure in his appearance. Make a feeble attempt at clever, witty and bright small-talk. Allow him to escort you to his vehicle. Have a mental Turrets Episode when you realize that in spite of your earlier downsizing, he is still shorter than you in your heels.
________ Realize you never did your nails and blame this for the disaster you see forthcoming.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Laundry Tip Of The Day
Monday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
Should you happen to run out of laundry soap, an excellent substitute is dishwashing liquid. Put 5 quick swirls of the stuff into your washload and it will work just as well as any expensive laundry soap. Tough on grease, gentle on hands (if you happen to be doing a load of those), and 10-20 times cheaper.
Try it sometime on a load you're not too worried about. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Tuesday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
Ready for a change? Is your wardrobe looking old and tired? Liven things up with a few drops and spritzes of straight bleach! Guaranteed to transform just about any clothing item into a capricious splash of pure summer fun! Cautionary tip: take advantage of your new wardrobe quickly. The corrosive properties of bleach will lend a porous quality to your clothing which, while temporarilty enjoyable, does shorten their lifespan and will fail to keep you comfortably warm in the upcoming fall and winter months.
Wednesday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
When expecting company of the opposite sex, DO IT (the laundry, that is, Gentle Reader). An overflowing laundry hamper communicates slovenliness and out-personal hygiene, and could give the 2D prospect concern that their undergarments may disappear forever if left unattended during a visit.
For Bedding Laundry Only:
Recommended timing is that bedding is stripped and washed one night prior to male prospect's actual arrival. This will ensure the bedding is fresh and clean, while giving it one night to absorb the pheromes of the female, which will "personalize" its olfactory signature.
Thursday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
Do not paint laundry. If attempting a paint project, stash all in-use linens in a closet. Do NOT remove linens from closet until paint has dried thoroughly, especially if the closet doors were included in the paint project.
If you do end up with paint stains on your linens, the following will remedy it: decide it was meant to be and that the new lines on your bedding are runic ciphers from an ancient forgotten tongue which you will one day, on your path to enlightenment, come to understand the true meaning of.
Friday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
If you need to rid yourself of an unwelcome guest of unwanted memories and associations, scrupulously hunt down every scrap of laundry you can possibly drum up and get busy washing it, drying it, folding it and hanging it. Then put every last item in its correct place, and exhale. Now get on with it, whatever "it" may be.
Saturday and Sunday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
If you find yourself doing laundry on the weekend, get a life.
Should you happen to run out of laundry soap, an excellent substitute is dishwashing liquid. Put 5 quick swirls of the stuff into your washload and it will work just as well as any expensive laundry soap. Tough on grease, gentle on hands (if you happen to be doing a load of those), and 10-20 times cheaper.
Try it sometime on a load you're not too worried about. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Tuesday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
Ready for a change? Is your wardrobe looking old and tired? Liven things up with a few drops and spritzes of straight bleach! Guaranteed to transform just about any clothing item into a capricious splash of pure summer fun! Cautionary tip: take advantage of your new wardrobe quickly. The corrosive properties of bleach will lend a porous quality to your clothing which, while temporarilty enjoyable, does shorten their lifespan and will fail to keep you comfortably warm in the upcoming fall and winter months.
Wednesday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
When expecting company of the opposite sex, DO IT (the laundry, that is, Gentle Reader). An overflowing laundry hamper communicates slovenliness and out-personal hygiene, and could give the 2D prospect concern that their undergarments may disappear forever if left unattended during a visit.
For Bedding Laundry Only:
Recommended timing is that bedding is stripped and washed one night prior to male prospect's actual arrival. This will ensure the bedding is fresh and clean, while giving it one night to absorb the pheromes of the female, which will "personalize" its olfactory signature.
Thursday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
Do not paint laundry. If attempting a paint project, stash all in-use linens in a closet. Do NOT remove linens from closet until paint has dried thoroughly, especially if the closet doors were included in the paint project.
If you do end up with paint stains on your linens, the following will remedy it: decide it was meant to be and that the new lines on your bedding are runic ciphers from an ancient forgotten tongue which you will one day, on your path to enlightenment, come to understand the true meaning of.
Friday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
If you need to rid yourself of an unwelcome guest of unwanted memories and associations, scrupulously hunt down every scrap of laundry you can possibly drum up and get busy washing it, drying it, folding it and hanging it. Then put every last item in its correct place, and exhale. Now get on with it, whatever "it" may be.
Saturday and Sunday's Laundry Tip Of The Day:
If you find yourself doing laundry on the weekend, get a life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)