50x365 #231: Calvin

Friday, May 9, 2008

I sat in the back of your stripped-down van smoking hand-rolled cigarettes in the dark while you made several stops around the city to unload your merchandise. It was all I could do after sampling it. The swirling in the dark held me against the cold metal like a mother.

I am a participant in x365.

Labels: x365

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Nerd Nerd Nerd Fame Nerd Nerd

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Before I get into this post, may I just wave a big hello to the drug store post office guy I spoke to yesterday. Hello Post Office Guy! Take no offense at what you are about to read!

Yesterday was Wednesday, which meant that, if I mailed a card by the end of the day at the post office, my mother might just get her Mother's Day card on Friday, which meant that I might not get a replay of how all of her friends' children had sent them cards, called them, made them supper, taken them out to dinner, and had otherwise been attentive children, but, oh no, not that this reflects on you, dear.

If you did not notice, that was not a real sentence. Continue not to notice that. Thank you.

Not to say that I would not acknowledge my mother on Mother's Day, which Hallmark has made such a great day for spending and guilt by absentia, but I am not all that good with remembering these sorts of things. I am hard-pressed to remember the Palinode's birthday, Canada Day, or my paternal grandfather's death (which occurred on Halloween, and which I attended. How hard is that?), so I feel that I should be forgiven for being a little less than punctual due to my natural inability to remember numbers on an artificially imposed calendar system.

So, I amazed myself and, in the near future, my mother, by purchasing a Mother's Day card, writing a note inside it, and being at the post office to mail it in time. I felt proud and grown-up and on top of things, in general, until I walked up to the post office counter.

Hello, Post Office Guy (aka POG) said.

Hello, I said back.

I found your blog, POG said.

Gah.

I love having a weblog. I love writing for a weblog. Within the world of weblogs, I think I am doing pretty well. Key words: WITHIN THE WORLD OF WEBLOGS. I do not know why it sounds strange in regular, non-internet life, but when someone approaches me in public and voices the words your blog in front of other people, I suddenly feel like the biggest nerd who ever nerded. In fact, I feel like a nerd who has been singled out as a nerd out loud in a public nerding out that makes me feel nerdy. When they say I found your blog, they may as well say I found your YOU ARE A NERD.

So, POG said that he found my blog in front of a small line up consisting of the guy behind me, and the guy behind me smirked, and the floor wowed beneath my feet. Such is public nerd-dom. The floor will not actually swallow you. Instead, you will want it to swallow you, and then it will promise to swallow you when it dips beneath your feet, but then it won't, because you are a nerd, and if you can be a nerd at the post office, you can be a nerd anywhere. Fuck.

You're Smootsie, Smatzie, Schmootie? Smutsy? Schmootsee?

I raised an eyebrow.

Schmetzie? Schmutzie? POG finally hit on the pronunciation, which few people get right: shmuht'sē.

I nodded along while trying to look like this had nothing to do with me.

Guy behind me? Still smirking. Fucker. I could feel someone spelling out NERD with a laser pointer across the back of my head.

So, I paid for my stamp, and I tried to balance out the scale of Fame (I have been recognized in public) versus Nerd (I have been recognized in public because of my blog) in my head as I left the drug store. By the time I hit the anti-theft security gates at the door, I came up Nerd Nerd Nerd Fame Nerd Nerd.

Damn.

Still, there was that public recognition bit. Not bad. Despite the smirking you-are-such-a-blog-nerd smirking guy. I bet his claim to fame is no-one's-told-me-my-bald-patch-is-way-obvious, which neither fits neatly on a t-shirt nor is quick to type, so there's that.

So, POG? Don't feel bad. You put the Fame in Nerd Nerd Nerd Fame Nerd Nerd.

Labels: the here and now

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50x365 #230: Emily

You pulled me away to talk. You had so many questions. How do you know you who you are? Is it love if it hurts? If you like all genders, how do you recognize love? Will I be okay? We held hands and smoked while you shook like a child.

I am a participant in x365.

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50x365 #229: Tricia D.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

We didn’t play together often, because you always tried to feed me raw wieners and soda water, but I felt so sad when your father drove over your little dog with his semi truck. Nothing was left but a smear of blood and fur, and you hated him for weeks.

I am a participant in x365.

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Five Creepy Commercials

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Kool-Aid: Witness the disturbing, hive-mind feel of children whistling for a drink.




Noxzema Shaving Cream: I can't tell if this woman has an IQ of 40 or if she wants to eat his face later.




McDonalds: Ronald McDonald is introduced as America's hamburger-eating-est clown.




Kinder Surprise: Chockadoobie!




Eastern Airlines/Walt Disney World: Disney characters are cold and distant during one little girl's seeming nightmare.

Labels: the videos

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50x365 #228: Xander

Your mother brought you to work occasionally, and you were so sweet. You’d help her decorate the store or burrow into the bin filled with packing peanuts. One time, you popped up at me out the bin and yelled One! Two! Xander! I just about ate your pink little nose.

I am a participant in x365.

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A List Of Complaints, Oh Sigh

Monday, May 5, 2008

I am always hungry,
but when I eat, even if it is just a little bit,
I feel uncomfortably full,
and my belly distends.
There is this headache, too,
and sometimes it is so shrill
that I become dizzy and exhausted,
but most of the time it is dull and distant,
somewhere indistinct.
The wart on my foot defies all treatment,
and so does this seemingly permanent zit on my chin.
I am so thirsty,
and chilly water is nearly like dessert,
except then I have to pee,
which I find to be an annoyingly endless game of action and consequence.
I have popcorn husks stuck in my teeth
from a bowl of popcorn,
which was unsatisfying to eat
due to its healthful lack of enough butter.
The alarm clock's not gentle,
but then neither are dreams of loss, losing, and departure.
The warm weather is late, summer is short,
and winter is a bitter exercise in remembering to breathe.
The cirrus clouds were ugly today,
like old Halloween cobwebs with no will.
Not even the birds would go near them,
or maybe it was the unpredictable gusts of wind
which blew dust into my eyes that kept them out of the sky.

If only I could love my whining cat more
and afford a maid
and enjoy food and drink without fullness or evacuation
and never have winter or blistering August
and forget dentists
and ban household detritus
and get rid of cheap perfumes that make my eyes swell
and cure cancer
and wander around wherever I like
and get to ride trains for free
and institute three-day weekends
and lie around in a park in the shade of a tree
with a book and a pink lemonade
and watch the baby geese roll like dumplings
as their parents scuttle them away across the lawn,
then it would be that Tomorrow I keep hearing so much about.

Labels: the poetry

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50x365 #227: Anita

I watched you through a window across the street for weeks, fascinated by your skin, your gentleness, the smell on your clothes. I’m sorry I left the way I did. You’ve since become a man, and part of me is left with you out there where you have another name.

I am a participant in x365.

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Things To Point Out

Sunday, May 4, 2008

It's already been up there for almost a week, but it hit me today that most of you never visit my actual site and instead prefer to read the text removed from its context within the fabulous template, which is of my own creation, so I thought I would write a terrificly long sentence to tell you that you should come to my actual website and take a look at this month's masthead. It is raining, but my birdies? They are so happy.

Also, I have this new link right up there under the masthead that leads to the Suggestion Box. You might find me self-flagellating and tearing my hair out (what is long enough to grab a hold of) later when some twits decide it will be all funny to suggest I eat more cock or do something more important with my life like save the Arctic's Layson Albatross from their own stupid habit of getting killed by things while sleeping in mid-flight.

The purpose of the Suggestion Box, though, is to find out what you want to know about or what you want to know more about, and the vast majority of you people are truly very nice and know how to use a person's suggestion box appropriately and with respect, especially when said person's suggestion box is all new and virgin-like and in need of decent treatment so that it does not grow into a bitter shell that balks at the very thought of anyone even daring to hit its submit button. Right now, it is a wide-eyed little fledgling of a thing, batting its eyelashes at passers-by and hoping for lollipops.

Thirdly, I received my bi-monthly e-mail from Photojojo which has the Photo Time Capsule of my photos from approximately one year ago. It made me immediately pissy about the 14°C (61°F) weather that I was enjoying until that moment:

That picture was taken out on a deck at night about a year ago. Last year at this time it was warm enough to do that, but this year, it is still going down to about 5°C (41°F) at night, if not colder, and I doubt anyone is going to be sharing icy drinks outside tonight unless they're homeless.

The weather and I are going to have to have a serious sit-down about this, especially since I already have to close my living room window at 6:22 p.m. because it is getting too cold to have it open, even though the sun is still out. It's fucking May! And I want my deck drinks!

Labels: the here and now, the metablogging

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50x365 #226: Douglas

You drove us up through the Costa Rican mountains to the modest home of coffee pickers who served us gasolina with homemade fruit juice and nodded at our poor Spanish. When we left, the sky was awash with constellations undifferentiated from the houselights sparkling in the blackness of the mountainsides.

I am a participant in x365.

Labels: x365

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