Sunday, July 31, 2005 One big union
Oh, Baltimore, I cannot hold thee close enough. I've got my Sunday morning mood, which is equal parts "tired as hell" "full of Thai food and tiny donuts" and contented. I have some potatoes cooking in the oven, and I'm typing that because if I don't tell the internet, it's practically a lie, and I would forget to take them out of the oven, so they would burn as well as suffer from mendacity.
Mendacity!
The market was jammed this week. Everyone woke up and realized that they needed to bite the bullet and try heirloom tomatoes. Everyone needed corn. Trucks that I know were full early this morning were down to nothing but a pile of stray husks by 11:30. I am typing this so that it will shame me later: I want to sell jewelry there. Later on, when I am not obligated to spend so much of my day providing content, I will figure out what I need to do. It's probably too late for this year, but shit, next year's coming whether I do the paperwork or not, so I might as well get on it.
Important potato update: they're out of the oven and unburned, so I will accept my trophy now. I am taking them on the journey of their lives in a little while. Bus challenge today involves an unfamiliar line, and I'm a little nervous, but I think the potatoes and I will prevail. One of my co-workers is having people over to her house, which is located on Mars or some other neighborhood I never go to. Tracy is coming too, because he's a trooper.
He and I were like a couple of little Lohans last night. After the party was the after party, and after the after party was the other party we got sucked into on the way home, and after that were birdsongs and the horrible light of dawn.
I wasted most of my teen years sitting in this one twenty four hour cafe in Richmond, eating greasy hashbrowns and making note of the miraculous non-decay of a roach that had been smashed to the floor at the dawn of history. The crowd the 4th St. Cafe attracted in its golden age tended to be dirtier and more delusional than the 3rd St. Diner a block up, and I knew where I belonged. When, for some reason, I was not inside 4th St. and I met someone who I thought might become a friend, I knew all bets were off if they started talking about 3rd St.
4th St. was where I saw a man fall drunk off his bar stool when I was eating breakfast one morning, but he was nobody. When you follow the same routine over and over again, the people whose paths you keep crossing but to whom you never speak turn into something like celebrities. You follow their lives based on the clues provided. You hear stories about them, and come to know them without knowing them, and when you see them, whether they are glamorous or interesting or not, you get a little thrill based on recognition alone.
At 4h St., you could be somebody based on nothing more than consistancy. People began to know my name, and I knew theirs. I could go out alone, grab a booth in the back, and know that if they didn't kick me out for ordering nothing but endlessly refilled coffee, and see crew after crew of my friends and associates come in and out last night. It doesn't work anymore. You can't go home again, and any time I've tried to go back in the last few years, it's just been a shitty diner, but it and it's all-star cast live on in my heart.
A few months back, an old friend wrote to ask how I was doing, where I was living, etc., and I was trying to explain Baltimore to him. I told him it was like one big 4th St. Cafe. I meant that it was dirty and filled with eccentrics, but last night, in increasingly sparse moments of lucidity between bouts of Lohaning it up, I realized that Baltimore is just exactly like 4th St.. We are all each others' personal celebrities. And there are cockroaches here. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/31/2005 01:16:00 PM
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Saturday, July 30, 2005 Tell them apart
Today was the day where I worked all day in the beauty parlor and then came home and went on the internet. Today is the day the weather was cooler than usual, and the day I was tired, and the day an irate customer had words with me which I did not return. Today was the day that I missed the bus (drink!) and had to walk, because there would never be another bus (drink!) again.
Today was the day that on the way home, I didn't notice anything amusing on the ride, but I couldn't stop looking at the the trees and plants that grow between my home and the bus (drink!) stop. Ailanthus, you are my favorite invasive species. You make me feel like I'm walking around in dinosaur times.
Yesterday was the day I worked only half a day in the beauty parlor and then came home and went on the internet. Yesterday was also the day I went to a baseball game (spit out your drink) with Tracy, and the day the only tickets still available that we could afford were standing room only, so yesterday was also the day I paid $5 to stand behind some bars and watch the Orioles lose their baseball recital. Luckily, I had my old student ID, otherwise I would have paid more. The view from behind our bars there in baseball jail was pretty good, but not good enough for me to follow everything that was happening. When they finally invoked the infield fly rule, I was spacing out and missed it. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/30/2005 07:15:00 PM
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Friday, July 29, 2005 Did you hear me, internet?
I tried to post a second ago, just to cover myself for content challenge. I don't know if it went through. I had a bowl of rice and peanut butter for lunch today. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/29/2005 04:14:00 PM
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Thursday, July 28, 2005 One has certain obligations
The bread I took out of the oven a few minutes ago came out surprisingly bread-like. Last time I had a day off and decided to make bread, it turned out dense and hard. I gnawed hunks of it sometimes, and it wasn't bad, but as bread it failed.
Smart people cook with recipes, but I just get so bored trying to follow a recipe. Tbs? You made that up. I'm just like this bohemian free spirit who is wild and free and creative, you know? Can't chain me with your facist dough standards. I am too busy visualizing world peace.
That is what's wrong with me, and that is what is wrong with my bread.
This was going to be a long post about first high school and a teacher who inspired me (she is the one who taught the class where I learned to make bread), but that has to be some Reader's Digest trickling over from yesterday's post. The fuck was I thinking? posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/28/2005 03:43:00 PM
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Wednesday, July 27, 2005 Sucker's Digest
*Life in These United States
It is so fucking hot outside.
*Humor in Uniform
So, you're not content to make them form sexy nude pyramids and walk them on leashes and shit? Now you want to go and "redact" them? Dirrrrrrty.
*Campus Comedy
What's with Hopkin's students? Do the rubber bracelets they've all been issued conceal some kind of house-arrest device to keep them from harming others? Or are these just a sign that they've been tagged and released, like migrant songbirds?
*All in a Day's Work
Today a co-worker and I got into a dispute about whether a certain styling product makes one's hair "crunchy." Someone threw money at my desk, inches from my out-stretched hand. I also swept.
*It Pays to Increase Your Word Power!
So try speaking to me in complete sentences rather than rolling your eyes and turning your back when I ask you if you have an appointment.
*That's Outrageous!
The other day the snowball stand near work was out of marshmallow topping because evidently, "Not a lot of people get it."
*Heroes for Today
My two co-workers, who upon hearing this, went and bought a jar of marshmallow fluff of their own. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/27/2005 04:07:00 PM
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005 This here's called a narrative arc. Ever heard of it?
All day at work, there was a battle royale in my mind between the impulse to get a pizza on the way home and the realization that then I'd have to walk home carrying a pizza. I know that carrying a big cake from Safeway is a big hit on Charles St., and I figured that with a pizza, I'd go heckled-platinum. Also, I am broke, and we can't have nice pizza.
At work today I was able to really make a man excited about buying a sixteen dollar tub of pomade, so in three months, when I receive my retail comission for this quarter, my envelope will be a dollar-sixty heavier. I thought and thought about where to spend it before it came to me: I know something that costs $1.60 exactly!
After work, you better believe I headed for that bus stop. I arrived first. Next came a woman about my age, dressed all in white. She sat at the far end of the bench inside the shelter, and began to moan. Eventually, she spoke. "Batteries!" she said. "Batteries, batteries!" She searched through her bag and found them, after she'd pulled out several things, including a bottle of crown royale. Then she put them in her CD player and removed herself from our non-interaction except for the occaisional burst of song or bout of finger snapping.
A few moments later, I watched a man come staggering across the street. He had a hairstyle that is popular among cartoon mad scientists, and not a tooth in his mouth. He entered the shelter and sat down next to me. "It's my birthday today," he said.
"It is? Happy birthday!" I said.
He nodded, and the woman at the other end of the bench yelled-sang, "Diamonds are forever!"
The man asked me for a cigarette, which I gave him, and he said, "I thank you for your kindness."
We sat and stared reflectively out at St. Paul for a while, and the woman sang and danced while sitting down. "It was a hot one today, wasn't it?" he said.
I agreed that it was, but added that I'd been inside in airconditioning all day, and he nodded politely. Then I felt bad for bragging about that kind of thing to a homeless dude, and I looked down. He was wearing a very famliar pair of white hightops, no laces.
"Do you think the world's going to end?" he asked.
I didn't answer immediately.
"Do you think the world's going end?" he asked again. "With all those solidiers dying?"
"There's my bus!" I said. For a second I was afraid it would leave without me, because in my rush to leave, the strap on my purse caught on a corner of the bench, but I dislodged it and made it onto the 3.
The woman in white got on behind me. She sat in the middle seat of the very back row, and she snapped her fingers all the way to my stop. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/26/2005 09:04:00 PM
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Monday, July 25, 2005 his wonders to perform
There was a pair of men's athletic shoes sitting just outside the entrance to the bus shelter when I got out of work tonight. I just thought of this, but it may be an indication that the rapture came while I was in the beauty parlor. Internet community, please advise. Did this car become unmanned?
It is awkward to transition from the rapture to the jokes I had previously intended to write. I will begin again.
There was a pair of men's athletic shoes sitting just outside the entrance to the bus shelter when I got out of work tonight. I looked them over without picking them up. They seemed clean and undamaged, but I turned up my aristocratic nose at them. All of a sudden, I'm too good to wear shoes I find at the bus stop.
Just kidding. I could tell they were too big, and they had obviously been placed with such care that I didn't want to disturb them for frivolous reasons. Also, if I wasn't going to stick my feet into them and suspend my belief in germs and parasites long enough to do so, I couldn't find the inner strength to touch them.
Seconds later, a semi-ho(meless) man wearing a purple t-shirt and an enourmous silver crucifix on a chain around his neck came muttering up. "Will you look at that! And I have no shoelaces!" he said, joyfully, missing the forest for the trees. He scooped up the shoes and carried them into the shelter. "Hello, ma'am," he said, but he was just being polite. He only had eyes for the shoes. He sat holding them tenderly on his lap. "Well, this is going to present some difficulty," he said. He pulled at the laces on the mysterious shoes. Instead of traditional linear laces, these were technological marvels, a latice of elastic with no discernible way to detach them from their moorings.
"God works in mysterious ways, I say," he said. "Ain't that right, ma'am?"
"Yes," I said.
He took off his own shoes easily, because they had no laces, and held one of them up to one of the mystery shoes, sole to sole. I became concerned. "I don't know if that'll work. It looks like a squueze," I said, since the mystery shoes were obviously substantially smaller than the old ones.
"It might work," he said, "These are a ten and they have no laces, and these are nine." He smiled down at the shoes, and began to jam his right foot into one of them. "Mysterious ways," he said. He tugged at the heel and grunted, speaking between renewals of effort "People--ask me--people ask me, Jimmy--why do you wear--that cross?" One foot was indisputably inside one shoe. "It's because I believe in God," he said, and paused for breath. "Gotta believe in something, and I beleive in God," he repeated. "Met a man one time, and asked him what he believed in, and he said he beleived in the light bulb. I asked, what do you do--" here Jimmy began to address the problem of the second shoe. "What do you do when the lightbulb goes--" he lost the story. The shoe was too much. "This part is...broken? No! I'll stretch it," he said, and pulled the sides of the shoe hard in opposite directions.
He did the right thing, because after that, he did indeed put his foot inside it. "Mysterious ways!" he said. "It matches my pants!" He was right. The sleek black mystery shoes were far more compatible with his tapered-leg black jeans than the white, laceless hightops he had been wearing ever were. "People don't raise their kids goin' to church these days," he said.
I looked down the street for any sign of the bus, which of course there was not. I noticed that Jimmy resembled my also-possibly-psychotic property manager. He took a blue plastic comb from his pocket and thoughtfully combed his stringy blond hair. "Kids gotta have church," he said. "Shame not to."
"Mmm," I said.
"I go to church," he said.
I nodded.
"Do you go to church, ma'am?" he asked.
"There's my bus!" I said, and bounded out of the bus shelter, and onto the 61 that had just sailed out of nowhere to carry me home. Mysterious ways, indeed. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/25/2005 08:29:00 PM
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Sunday, July 24, 2005 This diamond ring doesn't shine for me anymore
The neighborhood where I grew up was mostly free of other children, but I did have two friends. Their names were Kate and Katie, and they couldn't stand each other. Katie was there to slog through the creek with and to play games like Army, where she barked orders and I was puzzled. Kate was there for the Machiavellian nine-year-olds' scam where I would run away from home and hide in the woods behind her house, and she would "find" me once a reward was issued for my safe return. Then we were going to split the money.
The plan was flawless, except it was assinine, and I was out of the house for maybe two hours at most. My mother found me in the little junior survivalist nest I'd made by covering my sleeping bag with leaves to camoflague it. It was damp, because the gallon jug of tap water that I'd brought with me had begun to leak, and besides wetting the sleeping bag, it had also ruined the box of Total cereal that I'd intended to provide me with my RDA of vital nutrients while I waited for Kate to claim the reward.
History does not record what I would have spent a sudden scammed windfall on when I was nine. I was a child miser, and for years, I had a little pile of money from birthdays and petsitting just gathering dust in a savings account (ha ha! Aloha!). I imagine, though, that once I'd bought enough candy to bring on the di-uh-beet-ess, I might have turned my greedy little eye towards a Molly doll.
Molly was one of a line of dolls called American Girls that I understand has grown even more huge and ridiculous than it was when I was nine. The dolls had little story books about their adventures in different time periods in US history to go with them, and little historically correct costumes and accessories. The historical angle made them educational. Kate had Samantha, the prim victorian doll. Molly was the plucky World War Two era doll, who according to the storybooks hated most of the vegetables from the victory garden and knit blanket squares for our boys overseas.
Molly was like, a hundred damn dollars, with every outfit and book sold separately. I knew what she got up to because they had the books at the library, but that was as close as I ever got, because I knew better than to ask my mother for a hundred-dollar doll. Instead, I had Jenny, who was far less aristocratic. She had unfortunate bangs, and they became less fortunate still when I decided to cut them. There were no books about Jenny, and I think she had some merch, but it was minimal at best.
Still, I'd bring my poor peasant of a doll over to Kate's, where we would sit on her floor and sew doll clothes while listening to the oldies station. Kate's mother was a bit refined. She disapproved of my family without saying so, but telegraphed the signals clearly enough that a little girl who was so dense that she thought the running away scam would work could read them. Kate and I played in the woods behind her house nearly every day, but one day Kate got a tick on her from somewhere, and her mother decided that I and mine were responsible, so Kate wasn't allowed to play in our yard.
Kate rarely defied her mother, and had the annoying habit of telling her everything. After the tick incident, sewing doll clothes was one of the few options we had before us.
We listened to the same songs over and over and were always trying to scavenge scraps of fabric from our parents: All the stars were shining bright, and then he kissed me. My mom gave me her old purse, and I think we can use the lining.
We did OK. Despite my unfortunate Jenny-ish tendancies, I was willing to spend a lot of time in Samantha pursuits.
There were things about Kate's life and her family that baffled me, though. She wasn't allowed to watch certain TV shows, and while I related because of the hard line my own parents had once taken, I was puzzled because the rules seemed to be sent down at random. Young Indiana Jones was OK, but Blossom and the Fresh Prince weren't? Did they select for boringness on purpose?
She wasn't allowed to wear nail polish, either, unless it was this special kind that washed off when you washed your hands. It seemed like the dumbest idea in the world to me, but the Jenny within me revelled in painting it on and then letting it dry a little less than fully and peeling it off in little fingernail-shaped sheets. It was red, so we'd stick the dried polish on ourselves. Ugh, augh. I cut my arm. I cut my face. Oh, gross. That is the grossest thing I have ever seen.
What probably cemented me in Kate's mother's mind as an incorrigible Jenny with no shot at being Molly, let alone Samantha, was the night I stayed over. We sat in Kate's room and sewed, but then that got boring, so we painted our nails. That, too, failed to satisfy, so we painted the inside of a little cup, then pulled out the dried paint and stuck it on my arm so that it looked, in our minds, like a horrible gash, and came running out to tell her mother that I'd cut myself.
My own mother would have told us to quit fooling around and not to run around the house in our bare feet, because it would hurt the carpet, but Kate's mother went white and staggered for a second. It didn't even look real, but I suppose she was not used to the presence of a child who would fake horrible wounds for a joke, so the possibilty that we were just fooling around didn't occur to her.
We told her it was OK, that it wasn't real, and look, it came right off. I felt awful. I don't think she even yelled at us. She just gave sorrowful looks. This was so alien to me that I went quietly back to sewing under no protest.
We sewed by hand, laboriously, and kept our pins and needles in a little cushion that I think Kate had made herself. Everything was quiet, except for the oldies, until I got up for some reason and stepped right on the pincushion. A needle went into the bottom of my foot the wrong way, and Kate and I immediately started crying and screaming. She ran into the living room to get her mother. I came hopping down the hall behind her, afraid that I was going to get gangrene and have to get my foot amputated (this is what happens when all the books you give a child are educational in some way), but also embarrassed that Kate's mom would think I was trying to prank her again.
Eventually, her dad pulled the needle out with a pair of pliers, and after everyone was done freaking out, we went to sleep. I never got gangrene, and not too long after that, Kate's family moved to a classier neighborhood that was presumably free of ticks, and I mostly lost touch with her. Later, we ended up at the same highschool for a couple years, and she remained smart and good-hearted, but the Samantha and the Jenny sides of us had won out. I enjoyed smoking in my car during study hall, and Kate enjoyed Shakespeare and wearing hats. One of the last times I hung out with her, it was on a group date to homecoming. We all went to TGIFriday's, and you could tell which one was my boyfriend, because he ordered the Long Island iced tea, and on presenting his ID, received it. Jenny all the way. The other girls in their dresses and corsages were Samanthas, and looked horrified.
My character is what it is, and I don't think that I'm a particularly shiftless person, but imagine, if you will, the things I would be accomplishing, even now, for our boys overseas, if I'd had the historically correct influence of Molly. It breaks your heart, does it not? So, my darling internet, if you love me and you want me to grow up right, next time I come to you asking for something expensive, you better buy it for me. It is the only way I will avoid getting ticks in the future. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/24/2005 05:18:00 PM
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Saturday, July 23, 2005 That funnel cake's not going to eat itself.
Time's a wastin'!
Just kidding. There is an infinite amount of time, and the funnel cake will eat itself. We have the technology.
Oh, man. Good morning, internet. I know it's past noon, but today's a bright new day. My cantaloupe vine is growing in leaps and bounds, and the other clinging vines which I planted by throwing seeds on the ground and then forgetting about them are advancing on the sunflowers and taking them down.
It's a slow motion battle scene, and although the anthropomorphized (I mean, my housemates and I pretended they had human characteristics, not that they wore little waistcoats and danced around or anything) sunflowers were fun while they lasted, now I have to cheer for the clinging vines. Go get 'em, babies. You are my people so much more than those smug fucking sunflowers ever were.
I don't know if I'm myself today. I just got an e-mail from my dad, and those are always a rollercoaster ride. He jumps from idea to idea with turns of phrase that you are not allowed to make until you are several years into your eighth decade (OMG it's like Y2K U start counting at zero, LOL.). He mentions that he doesn't want to go work for the company that's taking over the state job he has now by saying "Who wants to be an outsourcerer's apprentice?" Psychopath. It's great.
I got the e-mail because yesterday was his birthday, and my mother wasn't around to pick up the phone, so I got the answering machine and left a happy birthday message. I didn't call back, because the phone agitates my parents and they just get all wound up. And because I'm a dick and I was in a bad mood for some reason.
I get paralyzed at the prospect of real-time conversation with them sometimes, because they are lunatics and I have an all-flaw character. I understand that this is the case with the parents and children in many families.
ArtScape, a giant collection of tents and fried dough (Just now I typoed "friend dough," and ain't that the truth? Oh, friend dough. We have been through a lot together. Yes we have.) is happening a few blocks away from me, and I have guests to wake up. It's time to leave the internet alone. I just want you to know, that if my dad were writing this blog, he would call the event "FartScape," and it would be the funniest joke you ever read. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/23/2005 12:29:00 PM
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Friday, July 22, 2005 Quarterly report
The night before last, I went with Tracy to the same bar we had gone to exactly three months before, and then the next day, I ate a late lunch with him in the same restaurant where we'd had another historic late lunch. Perhaps three months is not enough time to notice passing without allegations flying that you're acting like a middle schooler. Or maybe you can notice, but you can't say anything about it or do anything but light a tiny votive candle in your heart so that you glow from within and spread joy to all you meet.
It is certainly poor form to post about this kind of thing on the internet, as others have said. The internet is for episiotomies and cat shit, described in exhaustive detail and with attempted humor. Still, although there is a pile of broken furniture and dirty clothes blocking my career corner and an MTA bus in my immediate future, you can't keep me down. I'm not going to jump on Oprah's couch, but I might if she invited me.
This has been a successful quarter. I will prepare pie charts and a power point presentation in time for the next meeting. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/22/2005 08:33:00 AM
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Thursday, July 21, 2005 decoy
My source tells me that in Europe, they don't refrigerate their eggs. My mind is blown, and it's only Thursday. How I'm going to get through the rest of this week, I don't know, except I do. By my bootstraps. With pluck and luck. By not paying attention to my surroundings or thinking.
The other day Tracy and I had an amazing race back to my house. He had a wild theory about a counterintuitive bus stop being closer than the obviously closer one. Ridiculously, he was right. Now I am stuck between taking the route I'm used to, knowing that I am behaving inefficiently, and the new route I am so bored. I am so bored typing right now. Blah blah blah. Type type type. Jesus. You don't deserve this, internet. You've been there for me for so long, and how do I repay you?
I'm ashamed of me.
Let's work this out. I'll mend my ways.
After I was arrested for the first time, I got a room to myself for the night, and then the next day, they took me to central booking so that I could make new friends while I waited to be arraigned. I'm a girl, so I went to girl jail. Before the van left, they flexcuffed me to a woman who might have been in her fifties or might have been in her busted, busted thirties. She had a big, flat, heart-shaped face, like a cat, and thin red hair. She was in trouble for going into Union Station with her boyfriend. For some reason, they'd been banned for life, but they just couldn't get enough of the place, and then they were captured.
She was saying goodbye to him, because he was about to be shut in the other side of the van we rode in, behind a metal partition, and he'd be going to regular jail instead of girl jail once we got where we were going. I'll find you, she said. I'll find you when we get out. Later, I wondered how. She was homeless, and so was he. They each knew the other one had warrants out, all though she hoped--and I noticed this was a shared dream for many at Central Booking--that somehow, there would be an error or a stroke of luck, and the police just wouldn't find them, and the next day, she would be free to go.
"They've got me under my old name," she said to me. "There's nothing on that name, nothing new. It just came up when they got my prints." She bounced a little on the bench next to me. I bounced a little, too, because our wrists were connected.
Later, it turned out that of course her prints came up under every name she'd ever had. Technology. They put her back in the big holding cell after her arraignment, and she was crying, because she said they were going to take her to Virginia on an old charge. Everybody was sympathetic, but there was nothing we could do, and eventually, the marshalls came and put her in another cell where we couldn't see her anymore.
Before all that, when she still thought she had a chance to get out that day, I was mingling, and I heard the blonde woman who'd spent the morning pretending she was deaf, just to fuck with the marshalls, say to her, "You was pretty once, wasn't you?" and the woman with the cat's face snorted. She said, "Yeah. Was." but she still smiled a little.
We were in there all day, and it was freezing. People wore what they'd been wearing when they were arrested, and most of us hadn't exactly come bundled up. DC in August is hot anyway, and the night before there had been a big prostitution sweep, so lots of the women I was in there with were wearing lingerie.
We complained to the marshalls, but they said that to keep it comfortable in the court rooms, they had to keep it cold in the cells. People wet wads of toilet paper, the number one holding cell craft supply, and threw it as hard as they could at the vents on the ceiling, trying to block them. Every now and then a clammy gob of it would fall on someone's head, and she would scream. People tried to climb inside their t-shirts, if they had them. People huddled together with people they'd just met. We did jumping jacks and bounced around singing, trying to keep the blood flowing. People talked about the work they did, and what they were in for, if the two weren't the same thing.
"Is anyone here a murderer?" a woman asked loudly. We all got awkward and started looking around. I wondered if she was some kind of police informant, waiting to get us to incriminate ourselves. I wondered if anyone was going to go ahead and say, "Yes, actually. I did recently murder someone." No one did, and the woman who had asked corrected herself. "I mean, is anyone in here for anything real bad? No, right?" We all agreed. Not one of us had done anything real bad.
By mid-afternoon, people weren't as social. Every now and then, one or two people would get taken out for their arraignments, and the room got less crowed, but there was no clear pattern to who was getting taken when. Every time they came to call people, everyone in the room tensed up, but of course, each time, most people were disappointed.
Everyone was hungry, since they don't feed you in Central Booking, and people had other problems, too.
The woman who wasn't really deaf was telling a couple of us some anecdote about how to spot an undercover, and she stopped in midsentence. She opened her mouth and shut it, and opened it again, and I saw that she was gasping. I asked her if it was OK, and she looked like she wanted to snap at me, but then she forced a smile and said, "Yeah, well. Heroin withdrawal." I looked around, and realized that a lot of people were in the same boat. Lots of rocking back and forth.
It could have been boredom, though. By the time it was my turn to get arraigned, I thought I was going to lose it if I was in there another minute. I'd been staring at the same red-painted walls and shivering all day long, and like I said, people talked to pass the time, but it turned out that even while I was confined and had little choice, I was still shitty at smalltalk.
They lead me into the courtroom, and just seeing the inside of another room was a little shock and a little thrill. The room was warmer. They could have left me in there another twelve hours, and I could have spent that time revelling in the novelty, but they didn't.
They let me go. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/21/2005 04:17:00 PM
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Wednesday, July 20, 2005 Stars! They're just like us
-They come home on an overcrowded bus, and strangers tell them their life stories! (Insiders say: "Damn right it was wrongful termination!")
-They hope the washing machine has fixed itself by magic and begin a load of clothes!
-They come back an hour later to find their clothes wetter but no cleaner!
-They haul a bag of wet clothes six blocks to the laundromat!
-They wash, dry, and fold their clothes! (Insiders: "It takes forever!")
-They sweat and sweat and sweat!
-The sun burns their skin! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/20/2005 05:54:00 PM
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 Skip this part.
My m.o. tonight is to type quickly. There are potatoes in the oven, and when they're done, I can't promise anything to you, internet. You will be adrift and lonely. I am so sorry: I am hard-hearted, by nature. This is just my way.
I watched Bush's Supreme Court nomination speech. I hear on his say-so that the dude he picked is a great guy, because he was a highschool footballist, and was so delightfully blue collar as to work in a steel mill during college. What a guy! Little Jack and Josie! Little Jack and Josie! Mama mia, we are so fucked. I'm haivng like, 8 abortions tomorrow. Live it up!
What else? I have been neglecting my fertilest furrows: no childhood traumas or young adulthood scandals today. Those poor furrows.
Instead:
*Received a free sample hair product at work today
*Bus arrived, like a miraculous unicorn, on time
*Work today was hectic, jovial, fun
*Lunch: a bagel.
*I can't beleive I wrote the whole thing. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/19/2005 09:58:00 PM
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Monday, July 18, 2005 HD 188753, you are planet of the week!
When I was checking MySpace to see if I could find my absent housemates' tour schedule (and for this reason alone. Now that I'm no longer secretly trying to e-score, the thrill of MySpace is largely gone.), I found a bulletin about the discovery of a new planet. The poster couched it in terms like "This is freaky! LOL!1" And I hate to say it, but it is totally freaky. Because it's covered with ape-men and radioactive spiders. Oh, just kidding: freakier.
It has three suns. Damn, damn, damn. One for each sun. I didn't even know that was allowed. Neither did science, I guess.
The article in the bulletin was an awesomely bad ABC news article, from which I will spare you, internet. The reporter obviously took "throw it together from a press release" challenge, and I guess that's understandable, because who wants to talk to scientists?
But: come: on:
>The planet, a gas giant slightly larger than Jupiter, orbits the main star of a triple-star system known as HD 188753 in the constellation Cygnus ("The Swan").
>If you stood on the planet's surface, you would see three suns in sky, although its orbit centres around the main yellow star among the trio.
Emphasis effing mine.
It's a banner day for stupid journalism. When I was waiting for the bus home today (Some people go to church on Sunday: I go in to work for a meeting.) Tracy pointed out an internet-related article on the front page of one of the papers displayed in the machines around the bus stop. It was about how tech-savvy young pioneers were going to change the face of journalism, because the internet allowed anyone to instantly publish! The tone of the part of the article that was visible through the glass was so credulous that I was shocked that they didn't say information super highway.
It's 2005, and I think it's time to stop pretending you don't know the internet, regular journalists. We're here, we're self-involved, get used to it. Write about the internet in some interesting way, or risk upsetting me.
Stand on the surface of a gas giant. Assholes! (Nit-picking the phrasing of a science-related article on one's personal homepage: a.www.some.) posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/18/2005 03:26:00 AM
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Sunday, July 17, 2005 Do not write in this space
Oh, my. I sat down to write, and now I think that I wasn't interested in writing so much as I was hungry. My emotions are very subtle at times. For lunch I'd like something with a bread component. Sandwhich?? I'll let you know! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/17/2005 03:13:00 PM
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Saturday, July 16, 2005 How hot is hot?
So hot that the new scar on my face itches and hurts all day long. So hot that any garment containing an elastic begins to saw through my skin. So hot. I sat in the air-conditioned beauty parlor all day.
All those people! I hadn't worked an entire Saturday in months until today, and I kept making amusing mistakes which stemmed from the joyful irresponsibilty of last night. Did you want to tip your stylist four dollars? Too bad! I rang it for FOURTY! Ah ha ha.
Then in the afternoon, it rained, and things slowed down a little bit. The guy who admits he is no Brad Pitt came in, and he brought his mother, who walked around staring intently at everything and asking people about the kinds of scissors they were using. It turns out that she herself is a hairdresser in her country, and this is her first time in the US. She does eyebrow threading, too, and people started talking about that, and somehow from there the conversation turned to other obscure or semi-obscure beauty processes, and then lurid true tales of tattooed-on makeup gone wrong. I was in heaven.
I had to work today wearing nail polish I'd applied while intoxicated last night. I was embarrassed, but resigned. I am my own little cross to bear.
I thought to write that because I just looked down and saw my nails again. I have to stop typing at this point, because I have to go and take that nail polish off right now. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/16/2005 08:44:00 PM
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Friday, July 15, 2005 Cooler heads prevail
Since it's past midnight, I don't feel bad doubling up on posts to satisfy tomorrow's Content Challenge requirement. I have to say, I'm in a better mood than last time. My personal terror alert level is back down to cerulean. I'm pretty pleased.
I have blessings, you know, that I haven't counted publicly. For example: I kept this from you, the internet, but the other day when I was coming back from my sleep study, I threw myself on the mercy of the MTA, and the bus I caught turned out to go to a different subway stop than I'd originally thought. It went further than I'd dreamed it would, and dropped me off practically at my door. It's like my own giant, unreliable limousine.
The bruise on my knee that I got at tonight's roller derby practice doesn't hurt, but it's like all the colors of the terror rainbow at once. V. beautiful. If I wear the skirt that a sense of shame for conspicuously re-wearing the same pants over and over dictates that I do, then I imagine it will be a major hit at the beauty parlor tomorrow.
Item: I need new pants.
There are so many things I keep meaning to write about in this space. I could keep writing about my family or my dumb decisions of recent years forever and ever, and I know it's probably more interesting than constant bus updates. The sad part is how much I think about things like the bus and my hair. My mental terrorist chatter is pretty much all about logistics and how I appear to others. It also reflects whether or not I am hungry. I can get so many hours of thoughts over where I should go for lunch in a given day, based on deliciousness of food vs. cost of food vs. amount of time available vs. number of customers expected in the beauty parlor vs. whether the employees of any of the reasonable places to eat near my workplace will think I've been coming in too much and that I'm weird. Just because I recognize that certain concerns are stupid doesn't mean I don't have them. They are the concerns that outshine all others.
I worry about writing some stories down. Leah and I have an ongoing discussion of the secret of comedy. For years, she's stuck by the idea that nouns surmount any other component of a funny story. Credenza. Topsy tail. Scrapple. Kumquat. You can't lose.
Some of the things I think about a lot, when I'm not preoccupied with the dumber aspects of my life as outlined above, are so heavy on the nouns and the key phrases that I could knock y'all dead without even bothering with fairness or craft. No offense. It's the same feeling as the one that comes over me when I'm trying to make small talk, and the terror alert is at desert plum, so I'm saying whatever comes into my head and trusting the autopilot to make sure that I'm not going to begin speaking entirely in ethnic slurs and bathroom language, and I hear myself make the stupidest joke that a human could possibly make, and then the person I'm talking to laughs. Then I hate both of us for a second. Until I get distracted and my boundlesss capacity for kindness and love kick back in.
I don't want to get upset over a hypothetical less than perfect blog post, but over the past few months I've begun to ackowledge how much the internet occupies my life. If I'm going to tell any more of my wacky jail stories, for example, I have to get my mind right to tell it. Otherwise, there'll be nothing but nouns, nouns, nouns. It's like prop comedy. What's in this bag that's hilarious??? My dumb life!
I guess that's the deal with a blog anyway, though. It's late, and I need to leave this internet for the night. Someday soon, you're in for a cute story about pets that will open your heart to the tenderness and beauty of the world. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/15/2005 01:37:00 AM
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Thursday, July 14, 2005 Phoning it in.
Soon, I think I'll institute a personal terror alert system, which will indicate to people whether it's OK to have a conversation with me on a given day. Anything above yellow means that small talk should be kept to a minimum. Maybe I'll have prettier colors, though. "Today's personal terror alert color is tea rose. You are permitted to smile and nod in a friendly manner. I will return this greeting, but I will not respond to conversational gambits." "Today's terror alert is burnt sienna. I had better just stay home. Do not attempt eye contact."
Just kidding. I am fun and nice. All of what I just wrote up there is total bullshit, and I was joking anyway. I've never been terrified in my life.
*Can I tell you about my hair? I think the Italians have a term for how it looks: fantastico.
*Today I watched a dog urinate on itself, because it was too lazy to commit to either the elevated leg or the squat.
*Roller derby practice tonight. I will glide like a swan, and everyone will be moved by the spectacle.
*I am only writing this post because of Daily Content Challenge. If not for the challenge, I'd be napping, maybe, or reading what others have written.
*Treat yourself to some "you" time! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/14/2005 05:54:00 PM
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Out on the curb in front of my house, there's a busted-up charcoal aquarium filter, a gently used condom, and a wrapper that helpfully identifies the offending raincoat as a "magnum." I'd imagine this is all historically correct, somehow. Otherwise the neighborhood association would be down on that curb like a ton of bricks.
Leah and I used to play this game in college, "If the rapture came and the poor sinners we left behind looked for clues to what we were doing in our final moments, what would they decide?" I'm loathe to speculate on whatever the neighbors must have been doing before they were carried aloft.
I got so distracted after writing those two paragraphs that half an hour passed. I was supposed to use that time for cleaning my home, but instead, I stared into space and read the blogs of others. Then the summer dog came home, and he was so excited to be here that he bit me. He doesn't mean anything by it.
I'm sleepy: go figure. Last night's portion of the study was less comfortable than the night before. I'm also pretty sure that I'm not going to reimburse for the couple of cabs I took to get there and back a few times before, so the MTA came through for me this morning, but not before I left the hospital grounds in the wrong direction and walked far, far out of my way. I was taking a route that seemed right and natural, but later I realized that it was how I'd walked in on the fateful day I went to screen for the study and had to walk the last half hour of the trip because I ran out of cabfare and had no way to get more. Also, it was 6:30 AM, and people had been shoving things in my nose all night, then coming in and expressing hurt feelings and puzzlement when these things didn't stay in place and had to be re-jammed and re-taped. Perhaps it was passive-aggression that made them rip the tape off with such gusto this morning. They call me Eudora Welty. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/13/2005 04:34:00 PM
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005 You have to get up pretty early in the morning
One of the key risks the designers of my sleep study forgot to outline was the risk of them filling my newly colored hair with some sort of horrible goo meant to hold the monitoring devices attached to my head in place while I slept. Why, science? Why monitor my hair? I had to come back home and wash it, because they do not provide color protective shampoo at the research facility. I was like, what is this, Calcutta?
Then it turns out I forgot my keys, so I had to ring the doorbell to my home until the summer dog had an aneurysm, which meant that his owner came blearily downstairs and let me in a few minutes after seven. Surprise! Good morning. No one here is allowed to sleep.
I tried to covertly take a photo of myself with all the wires attached, before I was plugged into the necessary machines, but I didn't frame it right, and it just looks like I have tape on my face, which was true, but only half the story.
The funny thing is, I feel fine. Rested, even. The researcher got excited about how early I was willing to try and sleep. I told him that luckily for science, I was running on a deficit. You think about a hundred wires and a mask and belts can stop me from sleeping when I'm tired? Oh, science. You are the living end.
The best/most awkward moment was when after I was hooked into the machine, I couldn't reach down to the end of the bed for the blanket, and the researcher tucked me in. What does one say to someone after that? posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/12/2005 08:07:00 AM
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Monday, July 11, 2005 Hatez
When it comes to writing about music, I hesitate, because I'm an ignoramus. My parents preferred classical music or Prairie Home Companion style sing-along folk. When I started school in middle school, I realized that this was one more giant blind spot, so I approached it with the same terrified dedication I applied to my studies. The girls in the class listened to Q-94, and the boys listened to Q-94 or XL102, so after I got home every day, I would turn on Q-94 and concentrate.
Learning every word to every song the played on Q-94 was easy enough, because they played maybe twelve songs a night, over and over. There were the six or eight most popular, and then the obscure hits that tweens in the know would call and request over and over. When the DJs finally played these, it seemed like victory.
I got sick of it before I ever fit in, and over the years since middle school, my tolerance for an onslaught of popular hits has wilted lower and lower. I don't hate pop. Give me Lohan, or give me death. Viva Avril. The thing is, the top 40 station that they often play in my workplace makes me feel like they're doing me like they done Noriega.
Some songs play so much that I'm able to know them intimately. I can look close enough to see their pores. They affect me in such a way that I sit in tranquil moments and think of more reasons that they bother me.
For example, one time, when the song was big, somebody pointed out to me that you could sing any words to Lisa Loeb's "Stay." I don't remember if I heard the routine from a friend or from a professional comedian, but it was hilarious. You could plug in any old dumb crap to the non-tune, and make your voice whiny and girlish, and you sounded just like her. Instant pop hit.
"Somebody told me" by the Killers works the exact same way. I'm not going to type out some sort of humorous parody of those lyrics, because I have honor, but my God. You, the internet, of all people, know how much I love repetition, but repetition and monotony are not the same!
"1985" by Bowling for Soup is the same, the same, the same, but it's worse. Not only can you plug any stupid-ass lyrics you want to into that jock jam for soccer moms, but the band is a step ahead of you, and they've decided to roll with the stupidest, most annoying words they can muster. I'd rather listen to a crying baby. I'd rather listen to a car alarm. Laura Ingalls Wilder never had to contend with this. I'd rather face malaria and sunbonnets.
P.S.: I'm so worried that I'm not going to be able to post tomorrow, because tonight is my first night of invasive sleep study challenge. I head towards the hospital in a few minutes, and then I don't get out 'til early tomorrow morning. I work all day to make Baltimore more beautiful, and then it's back to the tubes and wires. I may have to really squeeze that MTA for all it's worth to get back in time to post that cute story about pets that's been burning a hole in my pocket. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/11/2005 05:40:00 PM
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Sunday, July 10, 2005 Nothing's gonna change my world
Market report: This morning I was impulse-buying some plums, because the handwritten sign on the box said "sweet!". A ten year old boy had just taken my money and was slowly, carefully pulling a plastic bag around the top of the little carton they came in, then upending the carton, then tying the bag. A woman came up on my left while I was watching the kid, and said, "Those little plums--have you had them before? Are they really sweet?" I told her I was gambling, and the kid smiled down at the bag of plums and said that they were really good. I gambled again and ate one on the way home, without washing it or anything, because Laura Ingalls Wilders never washed her produce. It was good.
A man who sold me some green beans wanted to talk about cats for a while. He saw my tattoo of a cat in the puffy-tail arched-back pose that my family used to call "Halloweening", and said that one of his cats did that all the time. His cat's name was Boots, I think he said. "We don't go looking for cats," he said. "We just get them."
"It happens a lot of farms: cats just appear," a woman working next to him said.
I've been thinking more than ever about cherishing normalcy and pleasantness. It holds me back, sometimes. I feel like this is enough, and there's no need to strive for anything else. Did you see that? I just spun total laziness to look inspirational. Climb my mountain, the internet. I have so much wisdom for you.
I am tempted to sleep right now, but I have my Sunday disease of being too excited about minor things. How can I sleep? My cantaloupe vine is growing. Cara-u-star the sunflower needs to be propped up if she's ever going to win against the rival sunflowers. Things! Stuff! Dogs! Weather! Cats just appear!
I'll sleep when I'm paid to, which will start Monday and Tuesday, when I do that study. I'm not really looking forward to it, but you know, sometimes one does things. Sometimes one squanders all her money on big-ticket items like plums, for example, and so the consequence is that one has to sleep while getting a lot of attention. I bet I'll be great. I can sleep any one of you under the table. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/10/2005 11:28:00 AM
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Saturday, July 09, 2005 An idea whose time has come
The sport I was being unnecessarily secretive about in a recent post was the roller derby. It's evidentally a big thing in New York, and now some girls are trying to get a league together here in Baltimore. Until the team has money enough to rent out a rink somewhere, they practice a couple times a week during open skates in some far-flung suburban area that was a total pain to get to. That means that the roller girls have to contend with little children and rowdy teens, and they can't really do drills. On the other hand: skating party. I repeat, skating party.
I went to my first practice the other night, and in many ways it was like the skating parties I remember from childhood. Only girls who were cooler than I were got to have their birthday parties at the roller rink, and these girls could look right into my soul and see that I wasn't one of them. I was a little terrified. I bore up, though. My highlights can beat up your highlights, sister, I kept telling them in my head. Are you ready to rock?
I hadn't been on skates since I was 12 or 14. In those days, I was a stocky but essentially tube-shaped child, and it turns out that hips make balancing on skates more complicated. I only fell once, though, which, in light of the fact that I fall all the damn time when I'm not wearing any skates at all, gives me hope.
I was so tired that day, but I knew that it would be wrong not to do it. God never gives you more oppourtunities to careen around wrecklessly while "Baby got back" plays on the PA than you can handle.
The skating part was incredibly fun, but I still have my doubts about the whole enterprise. I'm afraid that people may be approaching it with irony. Also, even if it's not the cool girls only club I'm afraid it might be (based on my own paranoia and internalized sexism and blah blah blah more than any real behavior on the part of the other roller derby hopefuls), it is a girls-only club. I don't know if I like that. What if a boy wants to be a glamorous roller girl also? When an institution like a roller derby league is so new, it seems ridiculous to keep people out.
I feel guilty, because it's still so appealing. I am easily lead, and while the badass aspects of the sport might be a little contrived, it still seems like something you'd have to be really tough to do. I desperately want to be really tough. I also want to skate around real fast and knock people down, and I want people to react to my answer to "So, what have you been up to, lately?" with shock and awe.
We'll see about how long I stay into this, anyway. If one looks at my track record for following through on things, the smart prophecy is that I will stay all gung ho about it until about one week after I finally break down and buy my own skates. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/09/2005 03:04:00 PM
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Friday, July 08, 2005 Recently I:
*Purchased a candy called "Mouth factory" at 711. The premise is that the consumer chews a blander-than-usual gum while pouring a flavor packet into one's mouth. The chewing action distributes the flavor. I have totally done this, without all the fancy packaging. Big Gum beats the workingman again. How dare you commodify my chewing experience in such a way that I have no choice but to buy your product?
*Talked with Tracy about world events, etc. "We are so fucked." "We are so, so fucked."
*Made an agreement that if somebody did something, I wouldn't use an umbrella until July 17.
*Regretted same.
*Pulled the cat off my pillow, where he lodged himself, purring and rolling around, at 6:30 this morning.
*Got up, fed cats.
*Listened as, less than three hours later, they began to yell for their second breakfast.
*OMG is this Friday Catblogging? I feel so dirty.
*Kept dragging my feet on a project with my sister. I've been doing it so long there is nothing notable about me dragging now, but it's getting more painful. See, if I could ever set events in motion in a non-accidental or serendipitous way, I think I would be an OK person. Instead, I am a sloth.
*Practiced a sport. I can't yet decide if this sport is for real, or if it's contrived hipster bullshit.
*Realized how much I secretly enjoy a lot of contrived hipster bullshit.
*Felt bad.
*Remembered "We are so, totally, totally fucked." Felt like hipster-guilt was irrelevant and dumb.
*Got up early than I needed to, so I could be sure I was covered for today's edition of Content Challenge.
*Made a mockery of the term "content". posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/08/2005 08:36:00 AM
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Thursday, July 07, 2005 How I learned to stop worrying and have a nice life and then start worrying again and was happy about that for some reason
A few years ago my life got flipped, turned upside down. I spent the summer before my senior year of college working on an internship at a small town weekly paper on the Eastern Shore, because the idea was that spending the summer going to town meetings for towns of 300 souls would prepare me to edit others who would be writing about pressingly dumb SGA issues (such troopers they were! There was a reason I wasn't trying to be a reporter. If I'd ever had to write about the damn SGA, my articles would have just said "BOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGG" in 24 pt. font.) and sparsely attended guest lectures ("Excited Crowd Gains New Insights on Mollusks, Enjoys Refreshments").
When my workday of doing those small town journalism tasks easily passed along to interns (fielding calls from certain local crackpots, typing, going to photograph the first ripe tomato of the summer in an adjoining town), I worked on my thesis, which was a novel that was going to make me famous and win me some money.
I had a nice summer, but in August my internship ended a couple days before I had to get out of my summer housing, which in turn was a couple weeks before I was allowed to move back into my regular dorm. I went to DC to visit a friend.
My friend was involved in homeless rights activism that involved making big scenes to make Mayor Anthony Williams' life less pleasant for him. It seemed fair, because there were certain very unpleasant aspects to being homeless. These included lack of adequate services, especially in certain neighborhoods, and death from exposure.
I went down and visited her, and that night there was an Itchy and Scratchy cloud of banners, u-locks, and the musk of anarchy, and after the air was clear, I was riding in a van whose exact destination I didn't know. I did know that three of the others in the van, two grizzled adult full-time activists and one boy I was trying to impress were going to enter a building someone else (still don't know who: wasn't told on purpose) had broken into for us earlier, and we were going to take it over.
We did. We hopped the fence around it with our armloads of banners handpainted on stolen sheets (the mayor with a death's head and trademark bowtie, ripping buildings up by their roots) and snack food and various other pieces of non-respectable activist paraphernalia, and we went in.
The next day, people outside marched in circles in the park below us, and when the cops and camera crews showed up, we dropped our banners out the windows and yelled things (It didn't matter what. No one could really hear us, but they cheered for whatever we said, including "Get a haircut!"), and then every cop in the city showed up, and I and the others got arrested and taken to jail.
The next day I was arraigned and released on my own recognizance, and I had a new boyfriend.
That really set the tone for senior year. My life was different after that, and I may go into it more later, like, "Oh, look, I'm doing prequels now. How very." It was a big year for irrational decisions and getting into trouble. Worst daughter challenge: I missed my mother's 60th birthday because I was in jail again, and she found out why I wasn't there by watching the news. Then I spent New Year's day, 2003 in another holding cell in another state, and that time they set the bail high.
My life has a lot of room for fucking around. It turns out that if one starts with enough priveleges and safety nets, one can screw up and screw up and screw up and still end up more or less OK. I finished college, for example. The school paper I edited was riddled with a few more typos per issue than it should have been, because (now it can be told) I could never get the proofreader to show up when I needed her, so I decided that since I always had to do her job anyway, I would combine her tiny weekly stipend with my own.
Every little bit helped, because I was supporting a parasite who spent his days playing video games and playing with our landlord's cockapoo. He began to brag to me that the dog liked him better, because unlike me, he was just naturally good with animals.
I was also making a completely unnesscessary commute back and forth to school. It was an hour each way. My little remora had got hisself run out of town pretty early on in my senior year, for a crime or series of crimes too stupid for me to mention right now, but it was out of the question for us to live apart.
I totalled my car on that commute, the week before my thesis was due and two weeks before graduation, but I crashed on Leah's floor, and I got that turned in, perhaps more easily than I would have otherwise. I was insured, too, so I could buy a new car immediately and under great pressure, and I could pick out the worst possible car for the most possible money. I could do it with someone yelling in my ear.
ANYway. Booooooorrrrriiiiinnnnggg.
My life went to Jupiter and got more stupider for a good while after that, and somewhere in there, in that quagmire of court dates and freaking out about money and day to day bickering that turned me into someone who threw things at other people when she was angry (because she was a very desperate housewife indeed), I lost my taste for politics.
My veganism fell by the wayside that year, because I was lazy and because it was a fight I didn't feel like having every day. Aloha, casein-free soy cheez. Aloha, Tofutti. I eat dairy now, like Hitler.
I was a super-ultra-mega lefty in my heart, but I had a hard time seeing the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Where I came from "reformist" was a dirty word. A right-wing call center paid my bills, and I wasn't just doing surveys. There were several loathesome push poll campaigns, and God help me, but there was fundraising for repugnant causes. I justified it to myself by researching the specific groups I was "Good evening, [sir or madam] calling on behalf of", and knowing that they were crooked excuses for their founders to get rich. The hated call center, with its bust of Reagan by the door (Neverfuckingmore, all right. Weak and weary.), was the only place we found that would hire me and my shadow without my shadow having to give up his God-given right to self expression through ridiculous fashion choices.
It was important. I was already sponging off my parents on his behalf (What's worse than worst, as far as daughters go? Worst is already an absolute.), and paying and paying and paying my way and a lot of his way, too. I couldn't pay for everything. I needed at least some token help from him, and so he needed a job, and he needed the car to get there, and I couldn't find anything else that I didn't also need the car for and blah blah blah call center excuses.
The politics receptors burned out in my brain. So did my capacity for enjoying debate of any kind. Constant day-to-day battles over everything make debate into less of a party game and more of a boulder to push up a hill.
Things changed again. My life became unbearable, and I scraped off my barnacle, sold him the awful car (for a song!), and went to go be a mess for a while. Everything was hard. I panicked in stores. I couldn't look people in the eye. I felt like I was coming out of a cave, wearing a long gray beard. People were kind to me constantly, and gave me a ridiculous number of second-to-umpteenth chances and free lunches and places to stay, and for some reason, it worked.
It's been a while. Things have been good and getting better ever since I moved to Baltimore. My job is dumb, but I've been able to keep it, and as much as I complain, the nature of the work is very pleasant. My house is wonderful, and so are my friends. I've still been almost wilfully ignorant of politics, but listen to this: a crocus is growing.
The other night, my boyfriend (I link with the title of our relationship, because it is what he did to me a few days ago, not because I have no soul) and I were talking, and the Bush administration came up, and I wanted to talk to him about it. I had opinions, it turned out. We discussed them. Nobody shouted anybody else down. Parts of my brain that I'd shut off a long time ago flickered back on.
I feel dumb even bringing this up like it's some kind of revelation, but yes it goddamn is. Sticking my head deep into the sand for a while may have been necessary for me to get OK, but I am so glad that I am finally able to get all worked up again. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/07/2005 11:28:00 AM
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Wednesday, July 06, 2005 Me-n-irresponsibility=BFF!!!
The first time I woke up this morning, it was half an hour before the time I'd set the alarm for, and I was refreshed, but I stayed in bed on principle. If this goes on, I'll end up awake at 7:00 every day, whether it's useful or not, and I can't have that. Now it is about two minutes before late for the bus o'clock, and still, here I am. I bargained with myself all morning. "I can stay in bed, because I don't need a shower." (False) "I can just wear glasses today. No need to bother with contacts." (True) "I can just wear the first outfit I can think of, which happens to be the worst one I own." (So sadly true.)
So today I look like a little half-blind urchin with unwashed hair from the neck up, and from the next down I look like every hateful stereotype of a middle school creative writing teacher. I live on the edge. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/06/2005 09:07:00 AM
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005 Tomorrow: cute stories about pets!
Yesterday I mentioned Daily Content Challenge to some other bloggers, and they all said they were in, and we arranged our hands in a pile and then threw them into the air, to show that we were serious. Now I come home after a long day at the beauty parlor, and I see that everybody's posted but me.
My first impulse is to be like, "Fuck that." and eat snack food 'til I get the diabetes.
I am too noble for my own, good, though.
Some construction workers were tearing up the alley outside my workplace all day. The floor kept shaking. It was exciting. No one arrived on time, and everyone was disappointed. At around 5:45, a woman came in and said she was looking for an appointment. "I've been trying to get through all day." She looked at me accusingly. "Is your phone even working?"
"Oh, what happened when you called? Did you get a busy signal?"
"Yes!"
"That's because the phone's been ringing all day." Ask. Ask me how I know the phone's been ringing all day, you lady without the power of reasoning. I still got to go home at the end of the day.
The bus driver on the way home admitted that she'd been trying to blow right by my stop. "It was the light that saved you," she said.
When I got home from work, one of my housemates was squinting at the television, which was, through the snow of passively stolen cable, playing an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond." He couldn't explain why. We are going to have to take the buttons off the TV if this goes on. He must've bumped into it by accident, the poor lamb.
I am wiped out. The birth of the nation yesterday took a lot out of me. I had a good time, though. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/05/2005 09:06:00 PM
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Monday, July 04, 2005 I demand sparklers
*One consequence of Baltimore Blog Fever is that if anyone cared to, they could probably interenet-track the whereabouts and activities of quite a few people with only short gaps of unaccounted-for time. In the interest of preserving mystery, I am not going to reveal where I went yesterday, or who kindly gave me a ride there or who else was there, but I think the internet deserves to know that towards the end of the night, I climbed up some giant rocks and then back down. My success surprised even me. I should pose for inspirational office photo posters. Mine will be me, tottering up a shed-sized boulder in my shoes that look a little bit edgy and little bit orthopedic, with their towering soles and sensible round toes. I will be dramaticly backlit by a street lamp. The swirling font below the image will say, "DUMB LUCK."
*A dog is in my house for the summer. I'd forgotten how dogs work. Loudly, loudly, and with great enthusiasm, looks like. Also, with sad eyes and wounded dignity. This dog is notable for its large size, plumy tail, and its stupendous vertical leap. He is friendly, but does a lot of biting.
*My mother wrote me an e-mail that said in part that this year, she's not planting a row of tiny US flags in her front yard fon today, because she doesn't want anyone to think she supports W. She was sad about it, because she loves her little flags. That is the kind of thing that makes my sister's head explode: she is not on the team that approves of flags of any kind.
My mom, once she was of a certain age, decided that seasonal garden flags were the way to go. She enforces this policy for her end of the block by giving seasonal yard flags, some of which she makes herself and are very beautiful for what they are, to all her neighbors. She is a fearsome but loving block boss. If anyone in the neighborhood needs a petsitter, my mom does it. Conversely, if while one is gone, she thinks she can improve your home, she will make that improvement. When one returns from vacation to find a new structure in the yard or one's porch lined with plexiglass, one is grateful--if one is smart. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/04/2005 03:14:00 PM
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Sunday, July 03, 2005 Creative
My new housemate and I went to the farmer's market this morning. 4,000 people live here, if you're keeping count. Sike. She's subletting while three of my usual housemates are doing their summer North American tour. They're playing about fifty shows in the US and Mexico. I forget that this is unusal sometimes, because the life of the household is so tour-centric. They're always planning tour, on tour, or just back. They reminisce about the snack food available in other towns, and they have friends all over the country. I feed the cats, who are so smart that they know to come yelling to me for food now that their main people are away. Sometimes the band and friends call me with updates ("These are some baaaad lands!") or ask for updates in turn, usually cat- or utility-bill-related.
Nobody else who was sleeping in the house this morning dared brave 8:00 AM Wake-Up Challenge, so they missed out. We don't usually go that early, but she had to work at 10:00 this week. It turns out that the market is no less crowded two hours earlier, but the crowd has a different flavor. The people who come at 8:00 are grimmer, and more determined. I love that. They look at the vegetables with such suspicion. What's your story, corn, if that is your real name. Are you the best and freshest possible, provably so by the scientific method? They don't bring their dogs, because they didn't come to fuck around. Some of us just work harder in the pre-season. They bring their kids, but only so that they will learn that life hinges on absolute correctness in all things, including choosing hated root vegetables properly and early admission into an Ivy League school. None of these kids are dressed in tiny dragon or fairy princess costumes, like the hippies' kids sometimes are around 11:00.
My new housemate called it market-church, and she's so right. It is my favorite religion. In all the time I tried so hard to be a hobo, I wondered why I wasn't any good at it, and I got kind of down on myself for not being more fulfilled, so I was a little bit miserable a lot of the time. It turns out that what I like are rituals and routines and ridiculously intimate and detailed knowledge of a few key locations.
I like anything that's completely goofy, too.
A few weeks ago, we bought little sunflowers at the market and named them all after the permanent householders. They're about a foot tall, so it's too early to tell who is winning. M. picked the underdog, which turns out to be struggling still. M.-the-sunflower is propped up with a stick. M.-the-human keeps going out and giving it encouragement. The other day he came in and said, "I gave M. such a pep talk. I even gave him some coffee."
M. the sunflower actually looks better. I had been wondering, though, why the coleus planted next to him suddenly looked like it was dying. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/03/2005 10:21:00 AM
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Saturday, July 02, 2005 I hear you manage a baseball team
Last night I went to see the Orioles play baseball. It's the first time I've ever done that kind of thing, although I went to a sad, slow minor league game when I was a kid. This time, I was sitting out in the heat in another town, and my company was of a better quality. Tracy promised to explain the infield fly rule, if it ever came up, but it didn't.
Some guys gave us tickets, just as I was about to put my college education to use and scam discounted tickets with my old student ID. No matter that the photo in the ID features me with chopped-off white-blonde hair.
The free tickets were for seats that were pleasantly high up, so that I could see the little men running around on the field, and see all kinds of people in the stands, too. A whole bunch of people getting together, especially when I'm not expected to talk to them and they're not supposed to think anything about me, is one of my favorite things in the world.
A woman in front of us a couple rows down clapped for everything, and whenever there was the least oppourtunity to rise from her seat and dance, she did it. Kids all around us had giant foam fingers. "Just take that little girl's. You're bigger than she is," my enabler said. I said that it sounded good. "I'll take it from her, and then you fight her dad."
We eavesdropped, which wasn't hard. A gang of the girls who wear Abercrombie and Fitch and their irrascible male companions sat next to us. Best, best, best quote of the night: "SO! I was going through the yearbook? And! I saw these girls!!! And! I'd always thought it was one person, like, for four years. But it was totally TWINS!!! I got so freaked out."
We stayed for the fireworks afterwards, because mentally, I'm about nine years old in a lot of key ways, and to leave before the fireworks seemed to go against nature. When I was a kid, my family was a "lawnchairs on the river bank across from the stadium" family, so fireworks have always been these distant, muffled things. These were pretty, and loud, and it was nice to know for sure that they weren't gunshots.
Of course, then it was a little late, and after we walked to Fell's and got some pizza, our light rail passes were useless, so we decided to see if we could have a good time there. We couldn't. We tried. One bar snubbed us. The two bartenders who were there to serve us and the four other people, two of whom already had their drinks, walked past the spot where we patiently waited again and again, as footage of some sort of beach tug-of-war contest enacted by girls in bikinis played silently on the flat screen TVs behind them. It was a good five minutes before they grudgingly poured our too-expensive beer. Then Sting came on the stereo. Then they ate our fucking dust, because there are some things that life is too short to put up with.
Other bars had fatal flaws, too: cover charges, extreme dudeliness. One turned out to contain my boss, and there's nothing wrong with that, but my workplace haunts my dreams enough that I like to set boundaries when I can.
We decided to go home and play Scrabble instead, and although we had to direct the cabbie fairly meticulously ("I'm new!" he said.), that's just what happened. The way the game was won nearly made up for the mild (I can't lie to you, internet: I only have so much of a capacity to care about sports) sadness over the defeat of the Orioles. On the last turn, somebody used all his or her letters to make three short words on a triple word score. Now someone else's honor is at stake. Hello, July. Hello! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 7/02/2005 04:50:00 PM
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