Greeting cards

Several years ago, my friend, Randy, had an idea for a series of greeting cards that he called "Get Bent" cards to mark the more mundane events in life. His were infinitely more funny than mine, but here are the ones I came up with. (The first line is the front of the card and the second line is the inside of the card)

Friendship/Relationship cards

You know how you always accuse me of being condescending?
-----------------------You're completely wrong as usual.

I'm holding your CD's hostage
-----------------------Submit to my demands or else.

Was that something guys just have to say?
-----------------------I don't need this shit.

Quit playing hard to get!
-----------------------I'm good enough for the likes of you.

You talk the talk...
-----------------------But do you fuck the fuck?

Okay, here's the plan...
-----------------------Do what I tell you to do.

I was going to wait until something interesting happened with my life before contacting you again...
-----------------------But that never happened

You're a great talent!
-----------------------Too bad you're such a mediocre human being.

You know Sam Kinison's famous oral sex technique of spelling the alphabet with his tongue?
-----------------------I want you to do differential equations on me.

Interracial romance

Hey, I don't care if you're black
-----------------------Come on over and bust up this here chiffarobe

To Old Boyfriend/Girlfriend

I'm confused...
-----------------------Why would anybody want to marry you?

It's a good thing you moved away
-----------------------'Cos I feel like spitting in your fucking face.

Workplace

So, here's the thing...
-----------------------We're hoping you retire early

Family

Do what I asked you before I end up back in the hospital
-----------------------This is what is known as a guilt trip.

Holidays

My dick is kosher.
-----------------------Are you inviting me to your seder?

In the things-my-parents-got-right department...

1.I retrieved my baby-book from deep under the bed to look up my time of birth, so a friend could do my star chart. Noticed I was vaccinated for small pox back in 1969. Hurray. I thought I wasn't vaccinated and was convinced I'd be the 1 out of 100 who'd die from the vaccine if I had to get it. Kudos to Mommy for keeping track of this kind of junk.

2.My dad was right about Golden Toe socks. They're comfy and they last and last. I don't think they sell them to women, but I have a pair of my dad's that got mixed up in my laundry long ago. Must go to the mens section of dept. store...

I'm starting to like General Clark, but has anyone else noticed that, during debates, he hardly ever blinks?

I watched him press the flesh in New Hampshire on C-Span the other day. Sometimes you couldn't hear what people in the crowd were asking him. He used the phrase "beat the shit out of him" to answer somebody. It made me feel all fuzzy inside.

Merry Solstice, sports-fans. The following is an email exchange between me and my friend Tim M. circa 1994. I still find some of Tim's insults amusing...

Tim: I read that article on "Multiculturalism: The New Racism" that you copied for me. I'm not sure where to start. I guess I didn't find it as inane as you did; just kind of alarmist and shrill in tone. I do think Multiculturalism is a topic and situation to take seriously and I think some of its credos have been accepted without the proper amount of examination and questioning.

Mun: Alarmist and shrill are good adjectives. I don't see multiculturalism as needing to be attacked. If it's an ideology, it's one of inclusion, not exclusion as the article suggests. The scenarios that writer presented were really unlikely. I've never read any multiculturalism manifesto. I thought that article was such bullshit.

Tim: Actually Multiculturalism has had a big impact on campus here and elsewhere.

Mun: I see it more as a trend than a movement. Where does the ideology come from? I think it's more a factor of groups wanting to be represented and making their voices heard than those at the top actively wanting to have those groups represented and making a multicultural policy.

Tim: On campuses and in the arts multiculturalism is well represented . Policies are changing for sure because of it--I'm sure you would say for the better, but I think much of it is debatable. Multiculturism is the norm in many ways. Anyway who wants to debate: you're just a weasly Jewish American Princess anyways.

Mun: Yeah, who wants to debate Mr. Mick Wonderbread.

Tim: Look who's talking Ms. Heeb Finklestein

Mun: Mr. O'Whitey.

Tim: Ms. Feminazi Israelite.

Mun: Mr. Eurocentric Potato Eater.

Tim: Ms. New Age Zionite

Mun: Mr. Bag Pipe Playin' Gentilophile

Tim: Ms. Kosher Korrect

Mun: Mr. Goy Toy

Tim: Semitic bitch

Mun: Oversized leprechaun

Tim: Simple minded Goldstein

Mun: Overprivileged Trojan

Tim: Underprivileged no class, can't pay your stinkin' bills Bruin

Mun: Pastey-faced, hunt-and-peck loafer

Tim: Jelly fish, 'gina drippin, slut faced Sheba

Mun: Smegma oozin, bicep droopin stud puppy

Tim: Yeast fermentin', blood drippin' , let's make the whole damn country Ellis Island Red

Mun: Caucasoid Floyd

Tim: Ms. Jerusalem 1994, Dawning of the Age of Aquarious Neo-Liberal Natch!

Mun: Mr. Guinnness-sippin' Disney Robot

Tim: Ms. Utopia-dreamin wet-back-luvin', can't take your own side in an argument Leftie!

Mun: UberWasp

Tim: Heimifemme!

Mun: Yid-hatin, scrotum-totin' vanilla-head!

Tim: Estrogen-packed, foreigner-lovin' jewqueen!

Mun: Mr. Country-Clubbin, Four-Leaf-Clover-wearin' Anglo-rot

Tim: Ms. Knee-jerk, let-all-the-immigrants-in, luv-em-all Shylockess!

Mun: Mr. Knee-high-socks-with stripes, blue veined, button nosed lime-head.

Tim: Ms. Folklore, working-man, proletariet, masses-upliftin', can't we all get along Comrade!

Mun: Mr. William F. Buckley-quotin', genocide-promotin', tax-loophole-findin', gold-watch-windin', white-wine-sippin', painted-toenail-clippin', leech to society

Tim: Oliver-Stone-acolyte, Edward-Kennedy's luv mama, George McGovern praisin', Yassar-Arafat-huggin' , Jew-traitor

Mun: Martin-Luther-King-snipin', In the closet , Barry Goldwater's asshole buddy.

Tim: Justice Blackmun's sugar baby

Mun: Elizabeth Dole's luv papa

Tim: Christopher Dodd's mooch pooch

Mun: Orrin Hatch's honey-pie

Tim: Knee jerk, card carryin' Ted Kennedy-luvin', Noam Chomsky supportin' Yentl

Mun: General Westmoreland-kissin’, crimson-necked war monger

Tim: Gore Vidal admirin', abortion a week whorin', limp-backed bull dyke

Mun: National Review subscribin', Fish on Fridays, rosary-fondlin' chicken Hawk

Tim: Tikkun-browsin, veggie eatin', Sierra hikin', dirt-bike hatin', PC believin' Trotskyite

Mun: Steroid poppin', middle-name-is-Rush Peckerhead

Tim: Limp wristed, flag burning, date rape victim, flower child West Banker

Mun: Farmer's tan, starch collared, detail oriented little Mr. Perfect

Tim: No morals, no standards, everything is beautiful, dill-flavored Cunt

Mun: Gray templed, mother-datin' muff suckin’ lunk

Tim: Black-luvin, Wop-luvin, dyke-luvin, Wet-Back-luvin, luv all the foreigners and want to go to bed with them all Jewess Ho

Mun: Fruit of the Loom wearin', toy gun manufacturin' wet nightmare

Tim: No briefs at all, hairy arm pits, gypsey maven PINKO

Mun: Homeless slightin’, fancy pasta bitin', herpes-blightin' Boys Club member

Tim: Bitch!

When I was a kid, sometimes I'd look at a restaurant menu and order a huge meal that I wouldn't be able to finish. My father would say, "Your eyes are too big for your stomach."

Sometimes I think my eyes are too big for my whole body.

Segalit works in the evidence room at a police station. She's my only friend who can say things like, "Wednesday's no good. It's the only day I do fingerprinting. Thursday we destroy the drugs. Friday we deposit the money and melt the guns."

August 21, 2002

Flight from L.A. to Charlotte

Sat next to guy whose job used to be maintaining machines in a candy factory. Some machines were so old and you could tell at one time they were hooked up to steam engines. He would eat a pound of candy a day but didn't gain weight. He says hot candy just made is the best. Would pop a 150 degree mint in his mouth. If you move it around with your tongue it won't burn. What makes candy sticky? Water content. Hard candy is put in a vacuum to get the moisture out. When you put it in your mouth it gets water in it. The taffy puller is to put air in the taffy, otherwise it’s hard. He's seen 100 pound blocks of taffy hit someone in the head. Throw it in the giant taffy puller and it might sling back at you.

He thinks things are getting way too computerized. He bypassed the computer in his 86 Ford truck to make repairs when no mechanics could do it. He's got other stories too about falling off a small cliff and the subsequent surgeries.

When this plane lands and I look for my connecting flight, I see candy man head to the bar in search of others with which to - as my dad would say- shoot the shit. Maybe it doesn't mean much, but I'm glad for such people to exist.

My classmate, Neal, is a lawyer who specializes in Indian Tribal law. He told me that the Navajo tend to think it's rude to point with one's finger, so they point with their lips. Isn't that adorable?

Today's password:

Chunk_Light_Tuna

Shrinkie the Bear says:

Why do you feel the need to lord your physical superiority over others?

The funniest words ever spoken in the English language were uttered by Jamie of the Australian Broadcasting System at Pacific Television on Motor Avenue in 1995. He had purchased a cup of unnaturally pink ice cream at the AM/PM and said, "It looks like Miss Piggy shat in here."

Saturday was a hot day. Crisp, cool fall days are a rarity in Pasadena. Amanda and Dick and I piled into the car with their costumes in bags so that they could change quickly later, just pulling the outfits over their lightweight regular clothes. Amanda was going to be a mermaid in a satiny, sequined green skirt and a bright green headdress, a sort of tiara with shiny seaweed hanging down to her shoulders. Dick was going to be Spider Man, as were most of his friends; originality did not yet rank high in their scheme of things. I wasn’t going to dress up, but I had a box of small prizes from the toy store for the little fishers; a committee had brought some already, but I didn’t want to run out and have disappointed customers. The treasurer would reimburse me later: she had enough to do running around giving people change and counting the money earned by the day’s end. When I say major fund raiser I mean several thousand dollars collected in just one day. I bought the scrip for admittance to the booths and went to my post at the prize-fishing booth.

After a couple of hours of constant motion in the sun I was pretty tired and was glad to be relieved by one of the other mothers. I showed her where the extra prizes were and set off in search of food and drink and a shady spot if any was to be had. I knew where both Dick and Amanda were since the booths were all on the open playground and nearly everybody present was plainly visible if I looked around. I waited in a longish line for a grape pop and a piece of pizza donated by a neighborhood restaurant; indeed, it was the owner’s wife who had relieved me at the booth. Laura was a practical sort who believed that women owed it to themselves and their husbands to be as glamorous as possible and was so herself, blonde, slim, leggy and dressed to the nines. She was fond of lecturing me about this duty when she was able to catch me.

Pizza in hand, I worked my way through the crowd to a section of tables with benches in the shade of a pergola. There were a few vacant seats near the wall opposite the outer edge. As I began to move in that direction a figure came from behind and made passes at knocking benches over, causing both annoyance and hilarity. No one panicked, even though it appeared to be a werewolf, no one but me. The creature came up to me and tried to grab my piece of pizza from my hand. “No, no, NO!” I shrieked, completely unnerved. Through the holes in the mask, I could see laughing blue eyes.

“Aw, darn,” it guffawed and lurched away. I was panting as if I’d almost been hit by a truck. I must get a grip on myself, I promised silently.

Dick came running up. “That was good, Mom,” he enthused. “You looked really scared!”

“I was,” I replied, out of breath. Fortunately someone had just gotten up near me and I sat down; I didn’t think I could ever have made it to the back row now.

“You know who that was, don’t you?” Dick whispered loudly so that everyone nearby could hear, “Mr. Millsaps! Ian told me before.”

Colin Millsaps was the wolf man? My best friend’s husband was a voyeur? It was impossible. I must be crazy to imagine any such thing for even a moment. I ate my pizza, almost choking on it in the process, and swallowed down my drink. I had another two hours to go on the booth, but then I would get out of the general cleanup after the fair was over. I felt relief as I trudged back to the fishery;no wolfman could impinge on that little world, surely. Or could he?

From "The Watch"
by Sari Mittelbach

"Two events loomed on the horizon, requiring attendance, and in one case a considerable amount of work, the school harvest moon festival and Fred’s dean’s annual fall party for staff and graduate students. The school festival was essentially in honor of Halloween, but was masquerading as a more innocuous autumn party: Pasadena doesn’t have any harvest moons to speak of, but some full moons seem larger than others. I think I’ve read somewhere that that’s really true. The other party required me to dress and make up to look gorgeous, and to remain charmingly calm. I thought I’d rather carve a thousand pumpkins.
Pinegrove’s PTA president, Rosella McPhee, had to have several board meetings before all the work for the festival was properly allotted. It was one of two major annual fund raisers and so was deemed worth all the talk and effort. I volunteered to be in charge of the fish-for-a-prize booth. Everyone liked that booth because everyone who tried to fish won a prize. It attracted mainly younger children since there was no challenge, but they were all cute and it was fun to see them grasp the miniature poles and strive to hook something behind a screen decorated with pictures of waves, shells, and starfish. Few people who volunteered for anything escaped Rosella’s enthusiastic graspings of forearms, but most of us enjoyed being part of a group attempting to do good for the school and our kids, and if we were less anxious to do good for Rosella McPhee, we gave it little thought."

From "The Watch"
by Sari Mittelbach

After happy hour with Dicky Bird and Loriver, we noticed a neon sign across the street that said "Psychic." I've never gone to a professional fortune teller, so I went to get my palm read as a lark. The psychic made my peeps wait outside. She told me not to share the reading with anyone, but I didn't think to ask why. She was kind of intense. I'll tell you this much though: I'm supposed to have a long life. Thrillsville. I was not prepared for the hard sell at the end when she tried to entice me to purchase some strange,very expensive spiritual healing services involving a candle. Do I have "Sucker" stamped on my aura or what?

Things I'm not fascinated by for some reason:

architecture
the Olympics
California history
fashion designers
restaurants

I've tried to open my mind, but these things won't come in.

Hey, did you hear that news story about how a frog was discovered in India that's, like, prehistoric and belongs to a new family of frogs? Oh mama!

Check it out! http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_829079.html

More tiger attacks in the news the past couple of days. Milo and Inky are giving me looks that say, "Just do what we tell you and no one gets hurt."

You know how if you donate money to the ASPCA or the Human Society, they send you further solicitations that include things like personalized note cards and return address labels? I dreamed I got a wrinkled letter from the Kabul Zoo thanking me for my donation and it included kitten-themed wrapping paper, but it was really crappy quality, thin paper.(It reminded me of the icky periodicals from Pakistan we used to get at the library printed on some weird, gritty, insecticide-sprayed paper. I guess they don't have nice redwoods to chop down and make paper with like we do.) In reality I never donated anything to the Kabul Zoo, so now maybe I should.

Speaking of decimated zoos in countries the U.S. has invaded lately, I can't believe my tax dollars are probably going to the medical care of that idiot soldier who stuck his arm in the tiger cage at the Baghdad zoo. The news story said they shot the tiger. Too bad it only got the guy's finger. Can you say "dishonorable discharge"?

I also dreamed the other night that there really was a colorful insect called the Lovebug. Its wings had the texture of pipe-cleaners. It was like the quetzal-quatl of bugs. I've always felt cockroaches would be a lot more tolerable if they were rainbow colored. Darla Hood says, "The Lovebug will get you if you don't watch out." I'm not sure I believe her.

Our Suburban Sprawl

Living life every, every minute is not what it’s cracked up to be
Sometimes you get a kick out of a song on the radio
Or witness a surprise move in an extreme fighting tournament
But a lot of the time you’re thinking, I’m trapped,trapped, trapped
Or you pass by slums with a pronounced feeling of not belonging
and cry like an old biddy at a wedding when love fills your heart
To do life, no fudging, deal with the crux?
Sentient being is for the birds

Instead make life one big, empty action sequence,
cultivate self-ignorance,
treat other living things like props
increase your web presence,
mythologize your experiences and generate hype about your achievements,
make up apocryphal stories about how it all went down
and generally blow smoke up your own ass

Follow your piss, like Joseph Campbell said
It’s running down the hill on the side of the road
Shining in the terrible moonlight
Gawd,the stars in the desert are beautiful

Shrinkie the Bear says -
There's a fly in your logic.

Like a light-skinned black person who "passes" for white, I am reminded I am a nerd passing for normal. Thanks American Splendor!

Shrinkie the Bear wonders -
What is going on in your tiny mind?

Kittens. Kittens who need mittens...are the luckiest kittens in the world.

After this horrible flu, I'm finally up to blogging. I think I am de-toxing from years of the 'trieve (That is, I'm quitting my full time job at a company that became poisonous two or three years ago when it was sold piece by piece and management was taken over by weird, contaminated devil-robots).

I think I was also completely immobilized over the weekend because Gawd wanted me to watch the entire Jerry Lewis telethon. They've really gotta update the talent that performs on this thing. It's nice to see Don Rickles though. After all these years, he's finally funny to me. Jerry Lewis oughtta start grooming Jim Carrey or somebody to replace him. Not sure how much longer he's going to be around. There was one girl who was diagnosed with Friederich's Ataxia at around age ten (I'm very suspicious of this diagnosis because she was diagnosed in one day and I think genetic testing is required to make such a diagnosis.Maybe the facts weren't presented correctly) As this kid grew older, the ataxia miraculously disappeared and she's a totally healthy teenager now.The National ambassador for MDA was a delightful kid with mitochondrial myopathy named Mattie. What if aliens from inner space live in our mitochondria and are fucking things up with pollution like we are doing to the earth? The Whos down in Whoville need to get they ass kicked.

I also had a very exciting couple of days watching Crossing Over with John Edwards. Unless the people in the audience are total plants, I think this shit is for real.As you may be aware, Mun Mun herself has had visitations. I wonder if he can communicate with dead dinosaurs if he sits with a can of penzoil though. Or do you need to be a sentient being?

You know, no one ever talks about or gives the advice of "Slow and steady wins the race" nowadays, but I can tell you for a fact that a runaway tortoise can be a speedy, little bugger. They cover a lot more ground than you'd expect.

I need more cream of wheat. Fuck. I just realized I shoulda taken my antibiotics 3 hours ago. I blame you.

Nawlins I


Mishlin and Luis live in a magenta house filled with masks, fetishes, and velvet drapes. They run a witchcraft mail order business and a bed and breakfast that Darcy found through a book called "New Orleans Voodoo Tarot." It was hard to find. Street signs are missing because, according to Luis, criminals take them down at crime scenes with hopes the police won't find them. Mishlin wants other pagans to start B&B's so they can network.

Purchased some pecan pralines as a souvenier for Margaret.
Saw numerous Uncle Tom & Mammy salt and pepper shakers. Why didn't I buy them?

"Yes we remove hexes" In window of voodoo novelty shop.

At the statue of Louis Armstrong in the park, the sculpted mouth-piece of the trumpet is missing. Ripped off. At least I think it was a trumpet. I never could tell the difference between a trumpet and a coronet.

Darcy meditates to the tarot cards. I always thought of Tarot cards (and all methods of fortune telling) as fun & games, so this is the first use for them that makes any remote sense to me. When she first tried to meditate she tried to empty her mind, but that doesn’t work anymore so she just lets the thoughts flow.

After Mockingbird swamp tours, read article on the wall about a man who fought an alligator under his house. When he knocked on his neighbor's door, he was bloody from head to toe and had to get 200 stitches.

At the bar, a couple who had a son who died at 17. Drowned. They are wrecked.

Don't know why, but I'm wrecked too. Only there’s no corpse to show for it. Unless you count the bodies that litter my dreams. All murdered. The kicker is it always turns out I'm the murderer.

I can't stand up straight. Try to meditate to the Jungian archetype tarot cards. Try to meditate to the meaningless hoax.

Eating Margaret's pralines.

NAWLINS II

It's weird to be in a place where you are the one with the accent.
"You're from Los Angeles? I got a brother in San Diego."
Dragon flies are mosquito hawks here.

The calliope on the steam boat is playing "Deep In the Heart of Texas," and "Alabamy Bound." On the radio, songs mentioning Louisiana, New Orleans, and the Bayou keep playing.
"Love Potion Number Nine," "Brown Sugar." Songs I never noticed had anything to do with New Orleans before.

Talked to a woman from Florida in Preservation Hall who survived Hurricane Andrew. The eye of the hurricane lasted 20 minutes.
Apparently some people think when the eye comes, the storm is over, so when they walk out of their houses they get swept up and away. The wood from her carport was never found. They found pink siding in her yard and no one in the neighborhood has pink siding.

On his break the jazz bassist pets a stray cat. "I'm playing him," he says, "You can tell from the way the tail's moving."

Outside a street musician is cleaning his mouth piece,"You got to practice safe sax!"

Down further is a rasta clown with a red nose and corn rows.

More novelties.

NAWLINS III

We check out the the Piazza d’Italia by architect Charles Moore, built for a World’s Fair here that went bankrupt. It’s in shambles. A place for homeless to sleep. Fountains clogged, tiles broken, neon turned off. Card board boxes on steps along with Chapter 11 bankruptcy manuals strewn about.

A group of men in polo shirts walks up just as we do. "…This is probably only of interest to architecture students now."
They are building an aquarium in Denver and came to look at the Aquarium of the Americas. To see its problems. Since they are in the area they dropped by to see the Moore work as well.

Charles Moore designed the Beverly Hills civic center and I’ve heard grumblings about the interiors. The librarians and civil servants say it’s drafty and surprisingly cheapo. Just like this.

It seems my childhood dream of becoming a full-time dilettante is not to be. The new dream is to have the most boring life ever imagined.

Stupid August.

Last night I had this dream that was just like the last five minutes of the movie The Others, only in my version, Nicole Kidman gets to eat an entire cake.

Dog Days

The house is settling
along with Fritzie's ear upon my cheek
She doesn't want food from me
She's just sleeping
Once in a while I check to see if she's breathing

It's always hard to latch the doors this time of year
They droop in the heat
So, nothing stops Fritzie from bursting
through my door at six thirty.
to announce another morning
has arrived

My feet feel the bathroom floor tiles swelling
I watch the fuschias wilting in the window box and
notice Jesus Christ's face in a stain in the marble near my toe
The gardeners rake the cement outside
It's the kind of day that makes you think nothing will change

Across the street from Super Yarn Mart
by the vending machine that still sells Bubble-Up
on a collision course with civilization
There you are
Are you ready for me?

I was re-reading this dictionary of New England expressions called "Yankee Talk,"by Robert Hendrickson, and it mentions even more cryptozoologic animals than I remember. I meant to pass the info on to Margaret, so here it is. (I'm actually not too sure when a mythical creature crosses over to cryptozoological, so some of these may not qualify)


1. Shagimaw

An imaginary creature of the woods with two feet like a moose and two like a bear.

2.Side-Hill Ranger

A mythical animal of the lumber camps. Cited as a common term in George Allen England's "Rural Locutions of Maine and Northern New Hampshire," Dialect Notes, Vol.IV (1914)

3.Champ

A fabled water creature said to reside in Vermont's Lake Champlain, the American counterpart of the Loch Ness Monster. Samuel Champlain first sighted the creature in 1609, describing it as a "barrell thick monster...[with a] horse-shaped head." Descriptions have varied since.

4.Lucivee

A "half-mythical" kind of wildcat also called the loup-cervier or Injun devil. Cited in George Allen England, "Rural Locutions of Maine and Northern New Hampshire," Dialect Notes, Vol. IV (1914).Pronounced lucy-vee.

5.(my favorite) Tree Squeak

An imaginary creature of the Maine woods, so named because it is said to squeak like tree limbs in the wind.


Don't that beat all get out? Incidentally, Milo and Inkblot are still alive. Maybe Milo is like a glam rocker of the cat world. He already has natural eyeliner.

Rock on, foo-foo head.

Okay, now I'm really having a nervous breakdown. On Saturday Mary calls me and says she went jogging at 7 am and at the corner of Tennesee and Prosser there was a dead, mutilated cat. It had its intestines wrapped around its neck and was laid out on a lawn. The Animal Regulation people show up and says it's the 4th mutilated cat they've found lately. The officer says that the way the bodies are found, it looks like a human is doing the damage but they are still investigating. (He said he thought it might be a cult doing it).The officer takes photos and Mary hears someone coming out of their house saying, "Where's the cat?" Ugh!!!!

I contacted the Westsider (that little newspaper) to prod them to cover this story. The reporter found out that there have actually been 5 cats found mutilated starting June 13th (Friday the 13th). Four were found in the 90025 and 90064 zip codes and one was in Crescent Heights. So, I've been keeping the cats in at night and changed my whole schedule. Milo used to spend all night outside, so the first couple of nights he meowed for hours. I don't think he'll be able to take being kept inside all the time. I'm in a state of perpetual anxiety. I'll probably have to go back on fucking Prozac.

I'm dying in this town!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't help myself. In light of the imminent conquest of the dollhouse, I have absconded with Doggie and we are blasting off to Kicksville, USA. (I left Edward-Dog behind in the hopes Doggie's absence won't be missed). Doggie is in good spirits and riding the ferris wheel on top of G-ma's barristers bookcase if you ever need him.

Things to be thankful for even though the world is falling apart:

1. People don't get heartworms.
2. The rat Inkblot brought in at 2:45 this morning was not alive.
3. Thai ice coffee exists

To Maggie

Let’s take some time
to revel in our dysfunction
Why not? It’s three in the morning,
The peacocks and mythical rabbits
have absolutely wandered across our doorstep
and made themselves at home,
Despite our misery and baseness
violas and alyssum have sprung up in the refuse,
byproducts of your pain machine

I love you, poor creature,
We have no one else cheering us on
Those that might have are dead or gave up
Our gifted friends are building boring gypsum
mountains of personal achievement
You have a gold vein in your crappy heap of dirt
Get it all -
You can even start writing in the middle of the goddamn notebook
You’re lucky that way

Dreamed my cat, Milo, was an opera star and I had to drive him to various engagements in Germany and France in the middle of the night. In reality, Milo's more of a lounge act. Heh heh.

Jehovah's Nitwits
Dream 10/3/93


I am Dean Martin for the most part. Jerry Lewis and I get off the train in Texas or somewhere wearing black hats. We're either penniless jugglers heading for our gig at the now-cancelled-due-to-weather county fair or escaped convicts that used to be a comedy team travelling incognito.

Some well-meaning Christians have summoned two rabbis to their small town to participate in a religious conference dedicated to reaching greater understanding among the people. The rabbis have missed their stop. One of the smiling red haired Christians sees us sitting on our suitcases.

Jerry starts to have a panic attack, so I try to calm him down and explain how our plight is all a part of chaos, one of the laws of the universe. I get on a tangent. I'm trying to explain fractional dimensions to Jerry and I draw the beginnings of what is called the Koch Snowflake in the dirt, a fractal that initially looks like the Star of David. We're surprised when the Christians mistake us for two rabbinical scholars, but we play along either to con money off them or so that our identities aren't revealed.

In the car, Jerry starts to remember the snippets of Talmud instruction he had as a youth and begins to pontificate, enlightening them on Judaism, throwing in some made-up parables of his own, that to me sound like cleaned up Farmer's Daughter stories, but on another level are curiously insightful and thought provoking. They take to us so strongly that they ask us to sit on a float in their parade.

Being Dean Martin, I'm at the end of my rope and start drinking and fucking all the young women in the town. I'm on top of this somewhat inexperienced naked French girl and I start feeling her up. She's pretty much lying there like a statue while I maul her. She finally moans for me to enter her, not realizing I've just prematurely ejaculated.

Meanwhile, Jerry has found his true calling. He magically disperses an angry mob of antisemites in the town using only his wits and some very wise words. Some of the Christian women in the town witness this and are so struck by him that they convert to Judaism and Jerry starts his own synagogue. He starts to grow a beard and wears his glasses full time.

As for me, I take a few slaps in the face, and end up hooking up with a woman closer to my age who is the proprietess of a restaurant in town with red checkered table cloths. She puts me to work in her garden and I stop drinking. Now months go by when Jerry and I don't see each other.

And we thought nothing could ever break up the act.

Dream 4-30-93

Someone hands me a ten cent copy of the Socialist Worker
and there it is in black and white,
Cat Stevens appearing today and a lot of other words inside a box
For some reason a fatwa has been declared against him by the muslim leaders and he must constantly be on the move
Just like Salman Rushdie, the irony of it
I suppose the publisher figured anyone reading the Socialist Worker would not be an assassin, as capitalist bounty hunters tend not to subscribe.

I sit down in the back of this airport hanger-type place
and wait breathlessly with the rest of the lucky few
who saw the small announcement, and here he comes,
His hair is long and a lot straighter than it used to be and he is answering the grave questions from the grave audience about his plight and after a while, I finally get fed up and yell,
hey, how about a song?
and he begins to sing us a new one
but I've heard it somewhere before
Camel in an egg
Camel in an eggshell

Antidepressant Cocktail

Prozac didn't do the trick
but kept the bottom from falling out I guess
Zoloft made me a robot
Started reading Business Week and couldn't feel
Wellbutrin made me stutter
though my psychiatrist doesn't quite believe me
(it's not on the list of possible side effects)
Like Sees old-time-candies
Desipramine made me hop out of bed
but needed a little more oomph
Dexedrine like a quick cup of coffee
but the kick doesn't last, sustained release or no sustained release
New fangled Celexa and Lexepro
made me too sedate
and cry all the time anyway, what's the point?
Somewhere along the line
Concerta,Serzone, and Buspar,
most chilled my libido along with the ruminations
Ambien, always a delight

Now it's back to Prozac plus a smidgen of three others
The dreams I'm having!
I don't want to wake up
and I feel like killing everybody at the office
Our clients are Bristol Meyers, Eli Lilly, and the rest
They're relying on us to complete their dysphoria research
People say that living well is the best revenge,
but I can't seem to do that
I can get an “A” on any test, but an “F” in life
What will be my vengeance then?

Milo

Did you have a nice time running around in the crazy darkness?

It's such hard work not caring about anyone
So, what a relief for you to be so dear to me
out of all the angels ever bred

At night if I can't be alone,
a sentry watches over the museum in my head
I'm not sure if he's protecting my dreams or just my skull,
but no amount of safety glass, or prescription drugs can turn him off
He's why I never get any sleep at a slumber party
He might be why I wither around attractive men
But he's gotten used to you being close
even though it took a while

If I can't be a worldly success at anything else
at least there's this:

I have a cat loaf
I have an Australia
I believe I've reached a new level of disgust with my own filth

Occasionally I have gentle, angry humans
We're people that for some reason don't seem that special
Sometimes we touch each other like algae floating in the ocean
That's all

Dreamed about getting out Daddy's weak-ass microscope to try to look at the human cell, but all I could find was guinea pig shit smashed onto a glass slide. Opaque guinea pig shit at that!

Danilo's Ninth Symphony

The god of this 'brane
can't be some fairy tale Jesus-type
Things diverge, but meet up again
like Vietnamese civets on the road to Beijing
What happens if you let someone drown?
The day of reckoning is at hand
when the shiatsu woman stands
on tiptoe with all her weight
on one point in your shoulder
Will it go down?
It may be time to renew your passport
Ask the old women how
Keep singing after the world turns on the radio to drown you out

Shrinkie the Bear says

It's so cute when you act out like that.

Lines in my head after waking up the past couple of days:

She gets all her news from the crows.

Can I say "Hello" to you? Hello! Hello!

That was a good idea until you ruined it with your penis.

Do you ever see ghosts of people who are still alive?

Dreamed I woke up with a uni-brow. Maybe this has something to do with Danilo's illness since I gave him a picture book about Frida Kahlo (and her childhood convalescence) for his birthday. Or maybe I'm becoming a werewolf.

Let the identity thieves come
Take my detritus
my penchant for snacking
my stuffy nose
My size 9 feet with hairy toes
My hyper-mobile spine and arthritis
My inability to return unwanted merchandise
My fear of calling the landlady
My poor circulation
The ease with which I become overstimulated
My need to please
My problematic mix of flipflopping gullibility and deep mistrust
My insecure physicality
My cluelessness at flirting
My stupid dedication to slaving away at work
My loose lips

Maybe I'll shred my deliberation receipts
and my confrontation card applications
so they can't assume my grooving accounts
So they can leave me the mothering of noisy cats,dogs,and guinea pigs
the aunting of good-hearted children
the capability for rational thought
the sometimes guts
the powerful humping
the mobilizing anger
and the tearful, last goodbyes

What up, Groovateers?

Please accept this hickory smoked, bada-bing bouquet. I've missed the sweet fucked-upness of not being on anti-depressants. Now I know why schizophrenics go off their meds. Enjoy the hating while it lasts.

Does the brain tell the stomach to growl or the other way around? Maybe the stomach tells the mind to growl. You probably can't tell by my mannered performance, but I'm dying vicariously through you. It feels like Maoris singing, which in case you didn't know simply cannot be captured by recording. It fills up a room.

Sometimes I can't wait to be alone for the rest of my life or at least for a few hours.

Like clockwork,
Mun Mun

R,
If aliens came down to earth and had a machine that could show them what's in a human being's mind's eye based on neural firing patterns and brain waves, they would see me giving you a swift kick.


Ha ha.

A couple of months ago at my job, we had a company luncheon catered by Hooters. I presume this was the idea of the morons on the Employee Activities Committee. Today I emailed the vice president of our department and asked if the next luncheon could be catered by Schlongs, a new restaurant where the waiters have 12 inch penises. Let the games begin.

Dreamed Margaret said Mommy was psychic. Mommy could start a fire with her mind. She showed us how on the poinsettia tree. Fergie was 20 years old and trotting around. Woke up and remembered even the pointsettia tree is dead.

Hey, Pow Wow Groupies,


UCLA's annual Pow Wow happens May 3-4. Are you feeling the spirit?

Dear Miss Fluffmonger,

You are most beautiful when you kill and eat spiders. Just don't play with them first. They might get away.


Mark me.


Mun Mun

If there are vegetarians, are there any fungitarians?

Spotted the other day on a pro-war demonstrator's sign, "Honk if you extremely dislike France."

Maybe I'll add a line to my peace sign, "Honk if you're even mildly attracted to me."

I wonder what I should write on my placard when I march for peace. How 'bout "Stop the Borg" or "Oil Schmoil"? Ideas?

Like my dad says, "When you live in Shit Town, don't take a crap."

I coined a new phrase after seeing the movie, "Laurel Canyon" last night. "The Feel Up Movie of the Year." God, I'm witty.

Shrinkie the Bear says:

Magical Thinking will get you nowhere...or everywhere.

Did you know that Venice, Italy was founded by people evading Attila the Hun and his crew by hiding in the marshes? There's a place like that in my mind, only it's called Fritzie.

The other shoe keeps dropping. How many feet does this thing have anyway?!


Mun Mun

Shrinkie the Bear says:

Remove the pennies from your eyes.

Hello,
In keeping with my mother's penchant for keeping tabs on all threats to one's survival (i.e. "Oleander leaves are poisonous. You will did if you eat them."), I now issue this Mommy Alert:

According to the Los Angeles Times, a tropical Brown Widow spider has been discovered in Torrance as part of an ongoing spider survey by the Natural History Museum. Twice as poisonous as the black widow, the brown widow can grow up to one and a half inches long and has an orange to yellow hourglass design on its underside. Its bites are not normally fatal because they inject small amounts of poison when they bite.

So, do what you must. I recommend running through the streets screaming.

Shrinkie the Bear says:

Your contempt for others' weaknesses is showing...and it's incredibly unattractive.

Shrinkie the Bear says:

Consider evolving.

Shrinkie the Bear says:

In case you didn't know, your lust for power is completely transparent.

Confidential to long, lost friend who will never read this:

You showed your true colors. I'd like to say they were bloodless like a gray-scale, but they were in fact vibrant. Oh, well. Other rainbows do appear in this world.

Shrinkie the Bear says:

Act as if there's going to be a tomorrow.

Dear Miss Evilkins,

Sharpening your claws on Eeyore last night was the wrong move. Don't you know he's the spokesdonkey for PETSA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Stuffed Animals)? He's likely to have you extradicted to the Hague.

I long to stroke your silky tail, but I'm stuck here at the stupid worky place.

Mun Mun

Dear Inkblot,

I know it was you who pissed on the floor. Don't blame it on Milo. Face it. We are in an abusive relationship. The nightly chomping incidents must cease. If not, I will crush you like a walnut. I love you, you gorgeous piece of fluff.

Mun Mun