Cluttered Computer Desktop Mirrors Troubled Hallways of The Mind

I like to "organize" my computer desktop because it makes me feel productive and it involves no body movement. I can't fully express the feelings of confusion/desperation left by the sordid nuggets uncovered during tonight's long-overdue desktop cleaning, so I'll just post them here for you to squint at or ignore. First off, there are these pictures to your left, which defy description or explanation. Is this somebody's dad? IS THIS YOUR DAD? We must now assume that there is a video of your dad on the internet where he is the proud owner of a high-stepping Palamino or Polar Bear (it is blurry, isn't it?) and then has to make a quick getaway in an alternate pair of pants. How well does anyone really know his or her parents? Then there was this list, titled "Business Ventures," which serves as a lesson for me, namely, that I should always collaborate with others or at the very least ask for a lot of advice whenever I get bit by the entrepreneurial bug.

1. Make Flesh Toned Scarves
cons: from afar, makes neck look like it has a growth
pros: ?

2. Van That I Wash Dogs In
cons: I can't drive and I don't like dogs that much so every day I'll crash into a fire hydrant or garbage can while wet dogs bark at me
pros: ?

H1N1: The True Smmr Bmmr, everything else ok

Greetings Earthlings,
I have returned, not entirely unscathed, from a weird vacation in the Pacific Northwest, a vacation with, as far as I knew, one objective: attend the SMMR BMMR music festival in Portland, providing hometown support to friends appearing in various bands (MOM, Ganglians, Mayyors) by drinking cheap swill and sort of bopping around near them as they played. I write you this blog post from my sickbed. Let me explain:

After slipping into the late-night travel delirium vortex found between an SUV, liscensce plate "BOOMPY" and a motel room floor in Grant's Pass, Oregon, where Sharis restaurants are pronounced alternately SHARE-iss or Chairs, and a fictional musician named Carlos Fiancee plays rumba versions of your favorite songs at dinnertime, we shook free from our sleeping bags and drove to Olympia, WA, where our friends were slated to perform. Olympia is just like the Santa Cruz-Sacramento hybrid familiarized in dreams, only more haunted and less familiar. The show begins not long after arriving and immediately the origin of the puzzling garbagey stench plaguing the car for the last 800 miles is revealed when MOM, mid-performance, unleashes the unsavory contents of her suitcase: dead frogs and spoiled milk. Mystery solved and let's get her in a different car on the way back! We track rotten milk and dead frogs in and out of the house all night. Meanwhile, as I'm pleasantly sipping on a stout, trying to avoid both getting pummelled by some 7 foot tall avid Mayyors fans and slipping on a frog, our teenage acolyte Dylan is downing vodka in some totally unsupervised zone, and our fearless driver Liz is struck down by the flu. Dylan pukes, drinks more-- I'm making that Marge Simpson noise and frowning but am otherwise inert and waiting for the houseparty's lonely and attention-starved stragglers to quit talking about what great sandwiches they make so that my bf and I can roll our sleeping bag rig onto the spoiled milk and mud stomped carpet and just LUXURIATE in this unique aromatherapy opportunity. I put most of my clothes from that night in a scented garbage bag that I stole. ROCK! We all wake up in the morning and go to an adorable breakfast restaurant staffed by cute girls with dirtier permutations of my own foolish haircut, all except Dylan who doesn't wake up at all and has to be dragged into the SUV. Idle talk of buying him a big gallon of water at one of over 74 gas stations stopped at amounts to nothing, and he stays in the car as we ascend the stairs into SMMR BMMR land to begin smoking and drinking copiously out on the charming back patio of the venue. We were sloshing around and conversing and dancing and were not sober. About 15 hours of this rolls pleasantly by when Holy Smokes we forgot about Dylan. We find him with his feet hanging out of the car moaning. The BF and I, in our feeble fashion, decide to rescue him first by trolleying out little glasses of water from inside for him, then with tater-tot casserole in a paper cup and finally by finding a real adult to go take care of him. The OhSees played on the back patio, which was rickety and elevated several feet and covered in hundreds of bloodthirsty white people with haircuts. "We're going to die!" Julian turned and said to me, and "Yeaaahhh!" was my reply. Enough has been written about the transformative powers of sweet-ass rock n' roll and I will leave it to the professionals, but those transformative powers were present. Then it was over, all of us disappointingly intact. Through strategic artistry and a convincing decisiveness Liz rustled all of us into cars dumping us off at Eat Skull's house, a largely undecorated home of unspecified Oregonian time period where everyone smokes indoors and no one goes to bed/stops yelling till 5AM. I dreamt that night that everyone laying on the living room floor there was connected to a giant masterlung through tracheal tubes. As we slept, the lung was failing. I woke up with the flu-- aches so severe that I burst into tears at a dim breakfast restaurant called My Father's Place. The Ganglians and The People who Live In the Eat Skull house all went to go swimming in the river even though it wasn't even 90 out, probably having a sun-drenched and by all cases romantic time, basking in the glow of the magnetism that is Rob of Eat Skull, and we non-band members stayed behind, wandering onto Hawthorne Street which was reminiscent of Haight Street but less bummy-- a vanilla time was had by most. The Romance Partner and I continued to wander the through the luxuriant verdure of the neighborhood, mainly to avoid the house because a) it was gross, b) we felt as if we were imposing c) walking is free. As we passed through the frontyard foliage we heaved a collective sigh and shared a shoulder shrug over the supposed magnetism of this city. As a 24 year old white girl in a rayon 90s hawaiian shirt obsessed with my own childhood memories and the creative possibilities inherent in their reification, no other city has ever needed me less. It also rates high on the too good to be true spectrum, with the lush overgrowth tending toward permaculture Garden of Eden smorgasbord status (herbs! fruits! free and in the street!) and outrageous affordability for seemingly all things leaving me asking, "What's the catch, Portland?" When we left it was really time, most of us having caught some incarnation of the flu, all of us having woken up at some point with the smell of Pall Mall's hanging thick in the air, the sound of unmitigated puking ringing out like perverse churchbells to herald another day of much the same.

So that's how I got the swine flu. It's not going away.

Puberty Revisited, Pt. 1

I really love the songs "I've Got My Mind Set On You" by George Harrison and John Lennon's "Jealous Guy." I first heard these songs in the movie Look Who's Talking Too, which reminds me, today is the 12th anniversary of puberty's onset! Let's revisit my singular, all-consuming obsessions of tweenhood in several easy to digest installments. Let me explain about the talking baby movie.

An obsession with John Travolta meshed with a watching-movies-repeatedly-in-order-to-memorize-them obsession and coincided perfectly and inexplicably with my first hormonal rush. Why I chose John Travolta as my initiate into carnal preteen lust I still don't fully understand, but the issue was compounded by my discovery of a copy of Look Who's Talking Too in a friend's family room, unreturned to Blockbuster many years prior, which I pilfered. This VHS quickly became the cornerstone of a ritual which I performed nightly, at around midnight and with my parents' bedroom door closed. The opening scene involved some muppety-looking sperm fertilizing a similarly muppety egg to the tune of "Sea of Love"-- pretty innocuous stuff, but not when I was 12. I was convinced that I was watching an Adult Film. I would then proceed to watch certain Travolta-laden scenes in the movie over and over again, rewinding seemingly hundreds of times until the dialogue became unreal and musical, and I felt dirtier and dirtier. So, in effect, Look Who's Talking Too, a comedy about 1)talking babies voiced by Bruce Willis and Roseanne 2) a crumbling marriage and 3) oldies functioned as a sort of pre-pornography for me and I still feel weird about it. Have I shared too much? Furthermore, have my habits even really changed? Your answers in the comments field will be much appreciated and immediately deleted.

Concise, Mildly Derisive Analysis of Great Work of Literature, Pt. 1

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence:
What a mama's boy.

Directionless Youth? Not A Problem! Bizeewerks 4 Kidz

Parents, if you're like me, you're constantly wondering (in my case many many years in advance) what to do with the kids when school is out. You have a few choices, all of which come up short. There's the classic summer camp in the woods- kayaking, vaguely native american crafts, hiking-- that sort of thing. It also comes with collect calls to complain of homesickness, bug bites that could wind up in medical journals (who wants that kind of infamy?) and learning repetitive call-and-response songs with parts involving funny accents and maybe even spitting that will no doubt be sung, often and at deafening volumes upon returning home. Your other choice is signing your progeny up for a summer program at say the YMCA, wherein they'll be treated to regimented weekdays of nonstop summerfun activities--usually to indoor soccer fields and water parks on special discount days only accessible through the presentation of numerous Pepsi cans, etc. You'll be required to keep track of a dizzying array of release forms, permission slips, neon wristbands, bus passes, id cards, water shoes, epi-pens, matching "Summerfun at the Y" teal oversize t-shirts with your child's name sharpied onto the namespace provided, and Austin brand orange crackers with "peanut butter" in the middle. Who wants the headache? You also have the option of providing no structure for the children, allowing them to idle in front of the video game consul of their choice, a box of Tofutti Cuties melting beside them into the carpet with occasional sugar-fueled breaks to jump all over the new Lovett's sectional while your back is turned. You have not yet made the 3rd easy payment of $79.95 on that couch-- you must find a better solution! Lucky for you, I've got it.

I've invented a Summer Activity Center for Kids designed to provide daily structure and also prepare them for the kind of jobs they'll most likely get if they decide to pursue Literature degrees in college. It's called Bizeewerks 4 Kidz. The logo will be in bubble letters in alternating primary colors and some of the letters will have tufts of hair and eyes looking in different directions. Fun! Here's an example daily schedule:

7:00 AM Punch in, log into obsolete PC, Starbucks shooters, make label of own name
8:00 AM print out various forms, make 12 copies, write in office journal that 12 copies were made, get supervisor to initial
9:00 AM to 12:00 fill as much of the forms as possible
12:00 Lunch- Chipotle!
1:00 PM - 3:00PM resume filling out packets
3:00PM in a spreadsheet, log packet progress,
4:00 make 3 copies of Packet Progress Spreadsheet, place one in a folder with the unfinished packet, place another on the desk of your supervisor, shred the 3rd copy hastily.
5:00 Write a series of post-it notes with cryptic one-line reminders, stick them onto PC monitor, shred Packet, Progress Spreadsheet, folder, name label and post-it notes, log out.

The whole process will repeat itself daily, with subtle variations on Thursdays when an additional label is made. Your children will be very tired. Very tired. Now accepting registration for Summer 2010!

Impersonal Apology to Everyone I Scolded Previously About Their Caffeine Habits After Having Developed One

I was talking to my friend Cassie today after a prolonged absence (distance to blame). When we shared a coast (oh those halcyon beachside days!) I'd chastise her for living a life built upon the habit of drinking what seemed to be several pots of coffee a day. I had to mention in that confessional of a Facebook chat window that I'd started drinking coffee recently. "I understand the appeal finally," I said, "it's like i'll be moseying along, and then suddenly it all CLICKS into place and I am A BRAIN and I become IDEAS... and then i have to poop." I feel brilliance, and also my bowels are hotwired to a paper cup in a cardboard sleeve. Sorry you-- all of you-- for all the guff--I didn't understand before.

"the dreaming energy of the california mind"

"Like all exceptional realities, the image of California has been distorted in the mirror of the commonplace...The failure of understanding that has resulted is based on the difficulty of avoiding the hyperbolic in describing a reality that at first seems weirdly out of scale, off balance and full of fanciful distortion. For there is a golden haze over the land-- the dust of gold is in the air-- and the atmosphere is magical and mirrors many tricks, deceptions, and wondrous visions."
from California: The Great Exception by Carey McWilliams

the pictures are from Carla's flickr

Frank Sinatra: Indulge Me Not

Sometimes I wish I could just swagger onto a stage to the sounds of an orchestra swelling, the twinkle of my pinky ring competing only with the twinkle in my mischievous blue eyes, a swirling tumbler of bourbon held aloft in one hand and a cigarette pinched deftly by the thumb and forefinger of the other. I start feeling this way in mid June. Like werewolves and their full moons, the scent of gardenias and jasmine suddenly induce a terrifying transformation; I must have a scotch and soda, I must have a tiny orange kerchief poking out of the pocket of a white silk shirt, I must take up residence in a bungalow with a kidney-shaped pool in Palm Springs, I must forge contrived mob connections, I must alternately speak/croon, I MUST BE FRANK SINATRA.

Last week yet another best friend of mine fled my clinging desperation loving arms and moved across the country, causing me to wonder, self-centeredly, what I do that is so damned repellent before remembering both that not everyone's (no one's) major life decisions have anything to do with me and that lists of my more repellent qualities can be found with ease in the archives of this blog . I wanted to provide some kind of ceremonious goodbye, some means of expressing the gravity of this move and the meaningfulness of our long friendship, but as we hurtled towards the Sacramento airport that night, I could think only of "New York, New York." Under the delusion of a misguided sense of situational appropriateness, I allowed the beast to emerge. The imaginary suit closed around me. I felt the silk lining. I belted out, "Start spreading the news, I'm leavin today..." with an unpopular encore of "Come Fly With Me." Farewell: ruined!

Hide your grandpa's record collection, your Seven and Sevens and your soft summer nights, I'M ON THE LOOSE!