Saturday, July 31, 2004 Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't have to dodge a hail of bullets
...although I do remember once she had to dodge a hail of hailstones.
Last night an accomplice and I were out walking a certain celebrity terrier, when on the way home, just as we were turning off the big main street, somebody decided, "Hell, gotta shoot something!" so started firing out the window of their car on the block where we had been lingering a few minutes earlier. My accomplice reports that they seemed to be aiming for the Brown Center. Immediately, I realized that we had been dancing with death. The gang responsible was none other than the Preservationists, the toughest bunch of mugs this side of the JFX. Their "colors" are oversize tunics and earnest expressions. Usually, an outfit like the Preservationists shoot to kill, but last night's shooting was a message: this is an old building town, and any new jack modern architecture had better "step", otherwise it was "on."
My accomplice argues that it was the work of the Traditional Architecture Mafia, but I'm not so sure. This isn't their turf. For them to come into the BH would be to risk a full-out architecture gang war. There would be blood on the bootscrapers for sure, and no one wants that, because it is an eyesore and lowers property values. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/31/2004 01:58:00 PM
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Friday, July 30, 2004 More on Laura Ingalls Wilder
Maybe I shouldn't mention this so publicly, but after a childhood of pro-Laura Ingalls Wilder indoctrination, I use her pioneer spirit as a way of shaming myself into doing mildly unpleasant tasks.
"Laura Ingalls Wilder would have made an entire pie from scratch, and then she would have had to scour the pan with DIRT," I'll remind myself when I am reluctant to wash the dishes.
I was going to go on with that bit, with something sidesplitting about how Laura Ingalls Wilder would be working on the long list of job-hunt related tasks that was before her, rather than wasting time on the internet, but then I remembered that instead of job hunting, Laura married the first boy with any interest in her and began to live out a life that mirrored the problematic dynamic between Ma and Pa. Also, the pioneers were so dumb that they didn't even have the internet. That's pretty dumb. Even libraries have the internet.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/30/2004 01:23:00 AM
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Wednesday, July 28, 2004 In here, it's always Friday
When I was visiting my parents this weekend, they talked about retirement a lot. My mother just signed up for social security, and she's was saying what a weird racket it was: if you can afford to keep below the maximum you're allowed to earn, then you kind of don't need it, it seems like. Or rather, you're screwed if you can't keep below that maximum.
I said things like, "Yeah, retirement is totally overrated," and winked and grinned, because I enjoy worrying my parents and causing them pain. I insinuate that I'm never going to have a real job again, practically all the time. You should see the looks on their faces! It is like I'm hosting my own episode of Punk'd.
My cultural references are so last year. I need a job so I can have cable again, and also so that I don't chew through the household electrical cords.
It's true. I feel myself on the verge of a case of full-blown employment fever. It's not that I don't enjoy spending my savings or rarely leaving the apartment. I just really miss faxing documents. Like magic!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/28/2004 08:29:00 AM
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Mama mia!
Today I directed an accomplice the wrong way down a one way street, but we survived, and then we had pizza!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/28/2004 01:12:00 AM
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004 it wasn't me
Well, internet, it seems you all think David is a more convincing Cara than I am. He wrote entry #3, Licketysplit or, as she is known on Vomitola, Clamshandy
is the the mind behind entry #2, and I wrote entry #1. I wasn't trying to be especially deceptive. It's just that David was not content to win his own contest, but had to win mine as well. If that isn't arch, I don't know what is.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/27/2004 01:12:00 AM
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Sunday, July 25, 2004 Blog like me
Somebody did. Pick the entry you think is mine.
1)It has come to my attention that Trouble the cat is going to kill me in my sleep tonight. She is upset that the housemates and I have all been away recently. She will solve this with violence. She doesn’t realize that, while killing your giant caretaker will totally ensure that she never leaves you all by your kitty lonesome again, that you will have only a corpse to howl at when you become bored, or wish to be let out in the hall in the event of a thunderstorm. Cats are dumb as crap.
2)I may love you tomorrow, but it's today. The landlord is selling the building that houses the home office. The prospective buyers tend to traipse through at ungodly hours like 9 a.m., while I am still curled in the window. They always gasp slightly and look away quickly.
Later today I am going to get a cup of shaved ice and dump boysenberry syrup on it. Because, you know, free country. By the way, I am obese.
3)I have my grandmother’s nose. When I catch my reflection in just the right way I see it on my face and think something bad is going to happen. The last time I saw my grandmother’s nose on her face was when she was dead, so that isn’t good.The roommates and I continue our relentless quest to ward off death by jogging around the park once every few days. I have foregone every opportunity to buy sneakers because I like the way my sandals resemble pink blurs as they lash out in front of my body and vanish behind me, kicking up BaltiMore sidewalk dust. It’s a scientific fact that when people walk they are in a constant state of tipping forward and only the taking of the next step keeps our foreheads from slamming into the ground. You can imagine what happens when people run. My pink sandals protect me always.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/25/2004 10:56:00 PM
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Consider this:
What if the secret to comedy is actually swearing?
Consider this as well:
Last year when I was working at the awful call center, little old ladies and good ol' boys--from conservative phone lists in the reddest red counties of the red, red states--were telling me to go eff myself when I called doing polls that mentioned Bush by name. They were all upset because young American guys were getting maimed in Iraq and they couldn't figure out why (many of them specified this).
They were also upset because they were receiving unsolicited phone calls.
Today my parents and I took a long car ride through some slow traffic. We talked about politics, and no one got mad at anyone else, or secretly thought anyone else was crazy. This fall, everybody's voting, and (this is key) everybody's voting the same way. No screwing around with third parties this year. No abstaining because one is old and cranky or 2 progressive 4 the electoral process. It is so wild.
posted by Frenzy Lohan |
7/25/2004 12:26:00 AM
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Saturday, July 24, 2004 the secret of comedy
Is it repetition? Or volume?
The investigation is ongoing.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/24/2004 04:07:00 PM
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Tuesday, July 20, 2004 YA
Last week I went to the main library, and I felt a little lost. I checked the children's section and the young adult section, and I couldn't find any of the books that got me through the years before I could drive a car and after I'd gotten bored with sewing cards and Mr. Rogers. No Beverly Cleary, no Lois Lowery Anastasia books (although they did have Number the Stars), No Superfudge or Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and worst of all, hardly any Paula Danziger.
I guess some kid like the kid I was could have gone in with a small truck and gotten all my old favorite books at once, but I don't think so. I checked the library website. You have to go to all kinds of farflung branches to get the Ramona books, yet I bet they have the Bible at all of them!
Then a few days ago, I found out that Paula Danziger herself http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1260530,00.html just died of a heart attack. She wrote books like The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, There's a Bat in Bunk Five, and, a favorite of both my sister's and my own, This Place Has No Atmosphere, which was about a young girl coming of age on the moon. We were used to living on the moon ourselves, so we related.
Here was an author who had incredible talent and insight into humanity, and she used it to write books for creepy little misfit kids and ugly teens. Her audience had pimples and braces, spare tire guts and divorced parents. They had the wrong clothes and no boyfriends. They were hard to like in the way that the painfully lonely always are. Extreme loneliness repulses people so much that it creates a bitey, nauseous cycle, unless maybe some charitable soul comes along and pays a token little attention to the lonely person. Even still, loneliness sees pity for what it is and while pity helps for a little while, it isn't sustainable. The vacuum that pity leaves behind once even it has gone makes loneliness something like a terminal disease.
Luckily, Paula Danziger's books never seemed to be written by someone with charity in mind. Instead, they poured out this empathy for losers that was nearly impossible to find anywhere else, and seemed to make whoever read them just a little bit less alone.
The cultural references in her books are older now, and I can see how they might go over people's heads, especially if those people are very young, but I can't see how the stories and the emotions would fail to age perfectly. She didn't patronize or pander, or write happy endings for the sake of happy endings.
I'm reverse-lonely these days. Instead of wishing for more people, more friends, and more love and attention, I would like everyone in the world to behave like reasonable and civilized ladies and gentlemen for a while, to see how it suits us. I don't wait by the phone, or use it much. If people seem interested in getting to know me, I tend to become interested in getting out while I can. This state of being has problems of its own, but I think back to being a lonely kid, and what that was like, and--Jesus. Just, yeah. Man.
I just hope ol' Paula Danziger knew how much she meant to the secret army of dry-elbowed slouchers with lisps and bad breath who hid out in libraries because we had to. I think she did. I think she knew it perfectly, bless her heart.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/20/2004 11:23:00 AM
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Sunday, July 18, 2004 funnel, funner, funnest
I sure hope it stops raining, because I want to go back to Artscape, which is a party BaltiMore throws for itself. BaltiMore throws it on the median of a big road and closes off a lot of roads around it. Oh, BaltiMore, you are such a prankster! At the party, there is funnel cake, crazy crap for sale (it turns out this is "Art", and I was like, "You made that up!" when they told me that, but nope.) It's like King's Dominion with no rides, because there is fried food enough to kill you in one night if you are determined, and no dress code. If you would like to go to Artscape in your muumuu and curlers, because you are saving your prettiest hairstyle for a more special occasion, that would be fine. You don't have to clear it with anybody. (There was a makeover trailer available, but it was not mandatory.)
One thing that King's Dominion lacks and Artscape doesn't is a dunking booth where a young lady dressed in a two-piece tries to get you to throw softballs to dip her into a vat of milk. What swell, swell visuals those were. Let's play hangman. I will give you a head start. The word I am thinking of is "b-----" and comes to us all the way from Asia. (Note: Let's not play hangman, really.)
The night before last some accomplices and I went to a midnight screening of The Warriors a film about costumed gang warfare. It was Friday night, and the mood was right for drinkin' and yellin' stuff, the crowd decided. In the first minutes of the film, on the screen a massive rally of all the gangs in New York takes place, where a charismatic speaker moves the crowd to a wild time of yelling and fist shaking and foot stomping. It's my understanding that this doesn't happen all the time, but at the Charles last Friday, in the first few minutes of the film, off the screen, a non-charismatic speaker moves the crowd to a wild time of yelling "Man, what did you say?" and breaking a bottle over the speaker's head. At that time on the screen, the charismatic speaker is shot and chaos breaks out.
So really, you can look at the screen or at the audience, and you see people running and yelling and hitting, and it is so surreal you can get dizzy, if you want. What a great movie. What a great town.
As a postscript I'd like to add this: One of my accomplice's co-workers was at The Warriors that night also, and we gave her a ride home. I said something like, "Jesus, they broke a bottle on that guy's head!"
She said, "Yeah, well, it's that kind of town. I mean, sometimes you just get bottles broken on your head. Hell, I got a bottle over the head last month. Did you know that if you wash off the blood, the E.R. won't give you painkillers?"
This is The Greatest City in America, suckas. Can you dig it?
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/18/2004 09:22:00 AM
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Friday, July 16, 2004 Poor Martha
I've made plans to get together and send her some homemade cards in jail, replete with potato stamps and dried flowers.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/16/2004 02:28:00 PM
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Thursday, July 15, 2004 Oh, come on. Bastille day indeed!
A few weeks ago I noticed I had something like 280 posts, and I got excited. I planned out how I would write a really good 300th entry. Maybe some kind of best-of retrospective. But I forgot, and I posted about Bastille Day instead, so welcome to my 301st post, which is not exciting at all.
Today in the park, there was a real jogger. Luckily, they move fast, so he wasn't around to embarass us for long.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/15/2004 10:39:00 PM
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Wednesday, July 14, 2004 How could I have forgotten?
Today is Bastille Day!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/14/2004 02:02:00 PM
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Blogalike
David at Upsidedown Hippo has proposed a diabolical contest where participants try to imitate his blogging style. He'll post the entries next to one of his own, and people try to find the real David. If someone stumps his readership, that's how that person wins the prize, which is an Amazon gift certificate.
It's so arch! He's like the archest person I know.
I don't know if I will be able to imitate him to win the prize.
I've decided, though, that if anyone wants to try and replicate my own blogging style, they, too, can be eligible for their choice of glamorous prizes. These include: A crocheted scarf that reminds me of bumblebees, a selection of vintage ladies' shoes, a mongrel puppy (this prize available to Michigan residents only), or the contents of The Mystery Box.
Entries should be e-mailed by the link on the righthand side of the page under "letters, please!"
That box isn't going to stay mysterious forever, so act now. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/14/2004 12:41:00 PM
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Tuesday, July 13, 2004 The physical challenge
For three days in a row, my roommates and I have gone jogging around the park. I don't have any jogging shoes or endurance. Tonight we went during the Large Local Dog meeting timeslot, which seems optimum.
Sunday we went looking for a new swimming hole, since an accomplice and I had received written warnings at our old spot. (We don't usually go in daylight, so that's why we had not previously received a ticket, or noticed the giant copperhead.)
On the way to the swimming hole, we drove too far, so there we were in Pennsylvania.
Later that evening, my roommates were on their way to a rock show. I was going to skip it, because I tend to be startled by loud noises, and it seemed like a good chance to stay home and work on some pretend projects for a while. Then J. repeated a crude joke one of the people who was going to be present had told, and I changed my mind.
Outside the show space, someone said "You know its's 7/11, right? Free Slurpee day." Suddenly, everyone present wanted a Slurpee. Somebody went and told the people inside, and they realized that they wanted Slurpees, too. Everybody got in a conversion van. On the way, two men crossed the street directly in front of the van. They were carrying a sheet of plate glass between them. The brakes were too good. Goodbye, chance for cinemagic excitement that I will never see again. Hello, not injuring pedestrians with splintered glass, you old stick in the mud.
The wheelman parked, and 19 full-sized people got out! We assembled on the sidewalk and decided to send a scout, to make sure the promotion was real. He came out a second later. He told us it was only a small one, and only with purchase. "Penny candy!" someone yelled, and so the scout and 18 more under-scrubbed people rushed in through the automatic doors.
The clerk was slack-jawed, but judging by his hairstyle and mustache choices, I fear that that was a permanent condition rather than a result of shock.
It turned out that the free Slurpee had to be dispensed into a special tiny cup, and by the time I was within sight of the counter, he smugly said that they were out of them.
Then people started begging used cups from their friends. I didn't do that, for some reason. Instead, I had some of J.'s. It was delicious.
So sweet and it hurt.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/13/2004 12:48:00 AM
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Sunday, July 11, 2004 Sunday morning
Good morning. I'm awake. Even when I stay up late on Saturday nights, the light wakes me up, and I remain awake because I know that if we're all up early enough, we can go to the market under the expressway.
I don't even know why I like it there so much: I don't usually get excited about the opportunity to purchase vegetables. When I lived on the Eastern Shore, I went to the Saturday market in the park in town maybe twice, when I had visitors who needed entertaining in a wholesome manner. When I think about it, some of these visitors would have probably felt just fine about sleeping in, which is entertainment enough for many sane people.
For the past two weeks whatever contingent from the apartment that's gone has arrived too late to see the woman who sells Somalian food and gives you an extra hushpuppy or two if she likes you, but last week I turned my back for a minute and when I next saw her, my friend E.W. was stroking a stranger's chest. Before I died of shame, I did a little fact-checking by means of walking closer, and what she was petting was the giant black rabbit he was carrying with him. He and his girlfriend were taking the rabbit out to breakfast!
Last night some of the rowdier neighbors were setting off some of the fireworks that have been cunningly made to sound just like single gun shots, and then some of their pals, not to be outdone, brought out some made to sound like automatic weapon fire. The real pyrotechnic masters of the evening, though, were whoever it was who had the "screamers" that replicated the sounds of approaching sirens almost exactly. Bravo!
The rabbit was gorgeous. It had glossy fur, and it seemed pleased with the whole situation. If my roommates don't get woken up by the pyschic waves I am sending towards them soon, I will make coffee. If that doesn't work, I will wash the dishes in a fashion that creates more noise than is strictly necessary.
Later, they will read this, and they'll say "You've been doing that on purpose?"
I'm joking, of course, roommates. I'm never trying to wake you up. I'm just clumsy, and the dishes would bang like that even if I were trying to lull you to sleep. Pretend they are fireworks. It is summer, after all. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/11/2004 08:16:00 AM
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Friday, July 09, 2004 in chorus
There's a cat opera on my block tonight. The diva is across the street, locked inside a non-soundproof apartment, and probably in heat. She is howling. All the other cats on the block are either yelling back or growling in their throats in a hostile fashion.
Please spay and neuter your pets. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/09/2004 02:06:00 AM
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Thursday, July 08, 2004 Monsters of Blog
Every day, I keep meaning to point out that there are a lot of (fairly) newly added blogs over in the links section. Today is the day. I just said it just now.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/08/2004 11:55:00 AM
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Tuesday, July 06, 2004 What if I relocated your face, property management jerks?
I sleep on the windowsill, and that's not a huge problem, even though when I moved to The Greatest City in America, I was under the impression that I was going to get a room of my own, at least for the summer. My roommates have been trying to switch to a different apartment in the same building (the one that's laid out in such a way that I would get a bedroom) for months. There's always a new sign that the switch will happen any day now. For example, the property management company will say, "You can pick up those keys on Tuesday: wait for our call." Of course, they never call, and so we call them, and they say, "Oh, the one guy who can possibly hand you the keys is in far-off Rand-McNally today. Please go and die instead."
The windowsill is wide enough for a human to sleep on, and cushioned. If it's good enough for the kitty (it's not, but nothing is), it's good enough for me. Still.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/06/2004 09:58:00 PM
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Sunday, July 04, 2004 PORN PORN OBSCENE PORN
My friend K. was homeschooled until junior high, just like me, and like me, she was media-deprived as a kid. Like me, she had access to her local newspaper and the Readers Digest. This may explain why each of us (neither of us knowing the other) started hanging around churches in high school--to meet boys. The one she hung around involved some sort of calvinist theology. Mine was a coffee and macrame church that didn't enforce any God stuff, and while I got bored and drifted away once I realized that Ann Landers and the compilers of Life in These United States had been steering me wrong when they told me to meet potential mates through church groups, I really approve of one thing about the Unitarians.
Those guys will teach any old body about safe sex! It seemed like every week, we were putting a condom on some kind of suggestive vegtable. It was a good youth group.
But really, that route is not for everyone. The fashion alone keeps all manner of right-thinking teens away.
I write today because it is in your power to allow children to bypass the difficult decision between Unitarian Universalism* and risking death and suffering.
This article describes how those fraternity pranksters in the Bush administration's Center for Disease Control are getting AIDS educators to stop drawing dirty pictures.
The CDC unveiled some new regulations a few weeks ago to shore up the "abstinence only" agenda that right-wing wack-a-doos have been all into for a while.
These new regs require the censoring of any “content” -- including “pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula,” “audiovisual materials” and “pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings),” as well as “advertising” and Web-based info. They require all such “content” to eliminate anything even vaguely “sexually suggestive” or “obscene”-- like teaching how to use a condom correctly by putting it on a dildo, or even a cucumber. And they demand that all such materials include information on the “lack of effectiveness of condom use” in preventing the spread of HIV and other STDs -- in other words, the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don’t work. This demented exigency flies in the face of every competent medical body’s judgment that, in the absence of an HIV-preventing vaccine, the condom is the single most effective tool available to protect someone from getting or spreading the AIDS virus.
Seriously, click the article.
There's a lot more, and it'll make you want to go and hide under the bed. Before you pull the blanket down to camouflague your presence, though, be sure to send an indignant e-mail to HIVComments@cdc.gov. They're accepting public comments until August 16.
*I guess they could go to some other private organization, but I don't know of anybody who's as prophylactic-happy as those Unitarians.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/04/2004 01:48:00 AM
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Thursday, July 01, 2004 Pop pop pop
Here is one way to tell the difference between my living situation in The Greatest City in America and my living situation in Philadelphia last year: those pops I hear are fireworks. In Philadelphia, one of the neighbors had a bad case of high spirits, and a machine gun.
People in that neighborhood kept horses in their yards. Once, when a visitor from another town was told about this fact, he said, "Are they up on blocks?" They weren't. They seemed happy.
This isn't a horse neighborhood. This is a dog neighborhood. Everyone here has 8-10 purebred dogs that glow in the dark and breathe fire. Not really. Just kidding. But the dogs are still fantastic.
David keeps gently reminding me that I have yet to write a song about Goblin, who is probably the best dog in the neighborhood. I refer to all Boston terriers as goblins now, but I realize that this is not enough.
Unfortunately, I am not a composer, so here, instead, is a poem. Here's a bonus, though: Like the poems of Emily Dickinson, it can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
In Baltimore—the Streets are mean.
A Compact Little Dog
After a Squirrel or through some Dirt
Debates if she will slog—
The NeighborHood complains all Day
How dogs are prone to Poo
Jerks like them had better learn:
To love Dear Goblin Foo!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/01/2004 11:39:00 PM
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