What Would Elvis Do?

I had to post this for everyone's enlightenment...

My father shipped a box of goodies to my kids for Christmas. The part of the package that stood out the most to me was what was given to my son, Malachi.

I should state here that Malachi waivers between atheism (when he's wanting to see who's goat he'll get) to reverent agnostic beliefs, but always filled with challenging questions that could rattle the Pope. My father, on the other hand, sits firmly on the side of evangelical, born-again Conservativism, don't-question-what-you're-told sheepdom. He sees Malachi as a "tester."

And for those curious onlookers, I named him Malachi not for the OLD TESTAMENT reference to the prophet Malachi who foretold the coming of Christ... and not for the evil red-headed kid who did Isaac's bidding in CHILDREN OF THE CORN... but for the simple fact that it had a bouncy ring to it everytime his father and I said it. And for further reference, Malachi's real life personality tends to waiver in between the prophet and the evil henchman mentioned above, oddly enough.

So I watched this year as Malachi unwrapped what turned out to be a metal Russel Stover's candies tin with an image of Elvis on the lid. Then I noticed as my son's face twisted into a puzzled frown when he opened the candy box and pulled out... no, not candy... but a book. A "WWJD" book, to be precise. (for clarity's sake, WWJD=What Would Jesus Do)

Shoved inside the book was a card. Malachi read the card quickly, then shrugged and simply tossed it on the table. I asked him what the card said and he replied, "Just some Jesus stuff again." He looked really disappoined. Although he did get 2 gift cards that he could use later on, I could tell he was really looking forward to the candy.

I never read the card until just today, as I have been sick with a 104 degree fever, a crouping cough that sounds like sea lions mating, and so much mucus that there simply aren't enough tissues in the world to contain it all... adding up to what I believe is some version of Bird Flu, because I had been visiting a couple of pet shops and I cooked chicken the other day and 2+2=4 ... I'm no dummy. I know this administration has been looking for it's opportunity to rub me out! Well, I'm still here, suckers! I'M! STILL! HERE!

So anyway, in my feverish fog, I never thought to read all the children's cards until today, when I was tidying up and about to throw all holiday reminders into the trash. That's when I noted that my card, as well as my other two children's card, had no other note but: "Have a Blessed Christmas!" from my father and step-mother. But Malachi's card... well, Malachi's card solves the mystery that has lingered with America for like a quarter of a century:

Why did Elvis die?

Read for yourself!





Of course! Now it all makes sense!
The King of the Jews ... The King of Rock 'N Roll.
One and the same! Jesus = Elvis
And Elvis died for our sins too!

Why hadn't I thought of that before? I'm sure someone else has a whole theory on this. Probably South Park. Or Mojo Nixon. I'm glad that I've finally been enlightened. Now I get to share this theory with Malachi when he gets back from his dad's house in a couple of days. I can't wait to tell him all about them both being "the King" and how dying on the cross is akin to dying on the toilet.

Amen.

Cowboys in the Mist

On Saturday night, I went to see BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN at the only place in town that it was playing: the Midtown Art Cinema. It was, of course, completely sold out for each and every showing, and we had to wait outside in the drizzly, frozen rain for about 30 minutes in line just to catch our 10:35 showing. All I have to say about the film itself is: any awards it gets, it totally deserves. If you go, bring tissues.

Being that the movie was preaching to the choir in this area of town, I'll be interested to see it again when it comes to Larryville in a week or so. If you haven't been reading my blog very long, I'll refer you to last year's entry, "Me thankful? F**k off!" once again for a review of local reactions to cinematic cornholing. I don't think I can do it justice, but I love to see those 'necks squirm.

As for the previous night's screening, I stumbled upon a new favorite audience-wide reaction: a multitude of gag sounds when seeing raw meat. My guess is that about half of the audience were vegetarians of some sort... I said VEGEtarians, not VAGItarians... yes, there were a handful of lesbians in attendance, but the overwhelming majority of the gag sounds were male.

My guess is those sounds came from the bird-chested indie rocker gay boys and not the muscular preppy jock types. There was also the awesome catty arguements overheard while waiting for the film to start. The best one came from the row in front of me, where about 7 khaki-clad "all-American" passers were seated next to 2 scrawny indie boys... all of them were gay, that wasn't in question... but was in question was if they were all together, which I soon discovered they weren't.

The 2 indie boys decided to drain the lizard before the movie began and thought they could save their seats (chairs, you perv) by draping their scarves over them. No sooner had they walked away, but another of the jock boys waiting for an open seat and watching the whole thing simply lifts the closest scarf off the seat and tosses it over onto the other scarfed seat with a kind of arrogant disdain.

That's when all of his friends started to berate him, telling him it was so "uncool" of him and that those other guys were just going to the bathroom and were trying to save their seats. They tried to get their own friend to move to a different seat and he simply refused, over and over, stating that you can't save seats with a scarf, blah blah blah. His own buddies were really upset and about to force him to move to save their own embarrassment, when the seat-stealer finally trumped the whole argument with, "Besides, it was a striped scarf." At that point, they all calmed down and agreed that he did the right thing then.

I don't get enough of this kind of fun banter in my daily life anymore.

Silverback Mountain

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I feel like I've been on a great rollercoaster ride tonight! Yeah, I just came from seeing KING KONG... and as I predicted, it was indeed geek porn. My nipples got erect as soon as the fog hit the ship and didn't go back to normal until ...well... nope, still not yet.

I've read some shitnick reviews where the critic was too full of bile to like the ride, saying things like, "Our response to the ape's doom, once touched by authentic tragedy, is now marked by relief that this wretchedly excessive movie is finally over." Fuck you, Richard Corliss of Time. You people have been on my shit list ever since that piece you did for the 2000 election, using me as your lead in and making me look like a poverty stricken moron. Now, you're dead to me. Dead, I say!

First of all, did you ever actually see the original? There was no sympathy for the beast in that one. He was pure spectacle and sympathy was waaaaay down the list of what you would have felt for him at the time. And if you didn't feel sympathy this go-round, then I'm gonna guess someone wasn't breastfed as a babe. Aside from that, this pic is full of nuggets of goodness and if you were over-powered by all the "excessiveness," then maybe you're just not man enough for this film. Scratch that... you're not WOman enough for this film.

Jackson is a reader, plain and simple, and he will put homages to his favorite influences everywhere he can possibly put them. He also knows that his fans are readers and he hides these nuggets in the frame every chance he gets. Were you just paying attention to the obvious Joseph Conrad book that you missed all the Melville? Did you miss the subtle movie posters in the backgrounds that were actually tributes to the original writers, Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace, and director and cast? Hell, he even threw in references to his own silly movies... Sumatran Rat Monkey, anyone?

"Even if this were the first gorilla-in-love movie ever made, audiences would come away vaguely dissatisfied, suspecting there was an intriguing idea buried somewhere in here, but it didn't quite come off." What do you want, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronical? Perhaps you missed a key line in the movie and were watching the film as Ann had read Jack's script... "it's in the subtext," dork. Just because the CGI is a spectacle doesn't mean that Jackson thinks he has to hold your hand through the fucking epic. Think steel industry and next time count the number of uses you see. Ever hear of the "robber barons?" Andrew Carnegie ring a bell? How about J.P. Morgan? Cornelius Vanderbilt? John D. Rockefeller? They were industry monopolists AND bankers at the same time... a time that established the class system we have today: when ten percent of American businessmen controlled over 90 percent of US wealth. Who financed the first 2 world wars, do you think? Now, what context does that remind you of today.

Want to read more into the new context that he's created between "beauty and the beast?" I'll spare you the lengthy contrasting comparisons and let you make up your own mind, along with the whole "Schrodinger's Cat" principle, love and its consequences, and what he's trying to say about our relationship with nature. You all need to have something to discuss on your own after you see it, right? Or not. Whatever.

Regardless of my geek rant above, there is a part of me that was hoping for some luggage abuse. Or perhaps a giant crap fling... a la GHOSTBUSTERS when the Stay Puft Marshmellow man's melted remains falls on the bad guy from the rooftop way above. C'mon! Crap from the Empire State Building! You know you've all thought about that yourselves. Hell, he could have taken out several planes in one fecal curveball!

Anyway, to all you crap flinging critics out there, my guess is you're just posturing to Jackson's alpha male, chest-pounding movie skillz. To that I say: Go get a real job, poopieheads!

6 Days, 7 Hours, and some change...

No, not until KONG is released.

I'm talking about the time left until my 35th birthday, which is December 12th.

And this year, I'm expecting that pony, dammit!


"Probably the worst thing about having King Kong go rampid in your town would be the huge, monster genitalia." --Jack Handey

Misery Loves Lompany

I've been spending the last 4 months moping and depressed that every day I try to find a job in my field and every day I've faced some sort of rejection (no one returns my calls... no one acknowledges that I even submitted to their application process... etc.) I finished a Masters degree thinking there'd be jobs gallore just waiting for me and guess what... I get the old "over-qualified" cold shoulder instead.

In addition, my parents (and frankly, everyone I know who doesn't understand this phenomenon on a first person basis) have been bumming me on a daily basis by their attempts to tell me that this situation is all in my head and I'm just not trying to find anything. Yeah, right. YOU try getting in touch with potential employers who could give a rat's ass about you and don't even acknowledge your existence with a "thanks, but we've already found someone" response... let's see how many it takes before you're depressed as hell too.

Quite simply, Atlanta's job market sucks right now. All you people who keep moving here... GO THE FUCK BACK HOME! Turn around and just go back to where you came from... please. There's just not enough job expansion in this town for all of us.

To stave off the impending financial doom that I've found myself facing, I took a go-nowhere temp job the day that I walked out of the bank while sobbing (see Tina Fey story). It's a filing job. That's it. Not answering phones. Not entering data into a computer. Just filing. For the same pay that I was making when I temped back in 90-91 before I ever went to any college... and it's equal to what teenagers are getting at McDonalds (that ain't a joke). The first temp job I ever had was went I was 19 and it was also a miserable filing gig... I quit after the first week... like I was tempted to do this time. It's a group temp project (16 total) and none of us are allowed to talk the whole time. I was reprimanded the other day when three of us were told to, "Save the talking for your breaks." And there's no headphones allowed either. Just the silent shuffling of papers and the quiet deadening of our souls.

So we sit all day, day after day, sorting, alphabetizing, and filing the payroll records and job reviews (but we're not allowed to read them) for the local school system (the largest in the state of GA) and there's about 3 years worth of unfiled material for some reason. It seems unending. No one smiles... occasionally we forget our own names... on breaks, we all sit zombified and looking like we've come from the pit of despair... in the mornings, we each dread returning. Several have just simply not shown up again, but were immediately replaced by unwitting fresh faces ready for the soul-sucking operation.

I'd worked there for several shifts before it occurred to me that I should probably try to at least be part of some sort of conversations on those 15 minutes of breakroom bliss. The funny thing turned out to be that I'm not the only over-qualified, over-educated, under-used smarypants in the bunch. One of the guys in the group who has seemed like a kindered spirit from day one turns out to have his whole Juris Doctor degree complete... just waiting to pass the bar and can't get any law firm to hire him until then, and can't get a university to hire him without Ph.D. instead.

And then there's the girl who is filing along side me in a narrow little tomb turns out to be a fucking rocket scientist. Last summer she interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Cali. No shit. And apparently she was in the process of finishing her degree in Louisianna when Katrina interrupted. Now she has to wait until the next semester to get into a school here to finish up... and in the meantime, she's over-qualified for some jobs, and under-qualified on the degree side. So here the 3 of us sit in existential limbo... purgatory... too smart for our own good... too good for the only kind of job who'll have us: temping.

On the bright side, the job is only temporary. It's got to end sometime. And it's only a 3 minute drive from my house, so I don't have to face any of the shittiest traffic on record and I can come home for lunch to check my email. So there's that. And it's still not as bad as as the Del Taco job I had when I was 16. Still, the daily intimacy that I've had with papercuts and their sheer variety has led me to fantasize in those mute hours about the multitude of ways that I could kill my supervisor with merely the thin edge of a page and perhaps a well-crafted and well-placed paperclip shiv.

It also reminds me of the brilliance of Cindy Sherman.

Yeah. A Bit.

So I was at the bank today, talking to the guy working at the info desk about my account issues, when right in the middle of what I'm saying to him, he stops me and says "Does anyone ever tell you that you look like someone? Because you remind me so much of that really funny chick who does the news on Saturday Night Live."

"Tina Fey," I say, nodding.

"Yeah, her! She's hilarious. You must get that a lot."

"Yeah. A bit."

The odd part was that I was sobbing at the time (as I usually am at the bank), pleading for him to have mercy on my soul, and apparently it was then that the guy was reminded of the hilarity of SNL.

"A new poll shows that 66 percent of Americans think President Bush is doing a poor job of handling the war in Iraq. And the remaining 34 percent think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church." --TF, SNL, 10.29.05

What Did I Eat for Lunch Today?

How nice of you to ask!

1 can of Norwegian sardines in olive oil

1 bowl of banana bread flavored oatmeal

2 large tutti-fruity flavored marshmallows

5 large gulps of blueberry-pomegranate juice

Why am I bringing this up?

Because every time I burp,

which I'm doing a lot of,

I'm reminded of the combo.

Owattador Kiyam

Okay, so some of my blogger friends were posting this a while ago and I'm just now getting around to reading it... been a bit distracted. The subject of their blogging was: the Science Fiction Film Canon, based on the reviews of a guy named John Scalzi. Apparently he's been a film reviewer for the last 15 years and he wrote a book called The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies. This, in his opinion, is THE canon... or in his description of these titles: "the 50 science fiction films you have to see before you die."

My friends decided to mark the titles they had already seen with bold fonts and leave the ones they hadn't seen in plain italics. I've followed suit and these are my results:

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)

Are you seeing what I'm seeing? If you are, then you'd be looking at the movie watching habits of a woman who may very well have never had sex in her nearly 35 years of life. EVER. In fact, if I didn't have the 3 kids, I'd be highly suspicious of my own accounts.

That's by no means ALL of the sci-fi flicks that I've seen. Hells no. This list is but the tip of the cyber iceberg. For all I know now, I've really never had sex and have made it all up as a cover for the small androids I've created out of hundreds of latex condoms (tossing the packaging around to look as if I've seen action) and spare Commodore 64 parts that I've been saving over the years. Or maybe I'm just a human version of a tribble. They are born pregnant, after all.

I've said enough. Time to go feed the unicorn. (Is that a new euphemism?)

Little Known Facts About Me

Not many people realize this, but in the 70s I was abducted by gypsies and forced into a world of slavery and prostitution in the woods of Eastern Europe.

(that's me in front-right)

Tragically, we were attacked by wolves one fateful night. The other girls did not survive, but I recovered fully and a few months later gave birth to healthy triplets.

(that's me in the back)

Creepy Cravings

I'm craving a big, hot bag of boiled peanuts and a tall, frothy root beer.

So, naturally, I'm almost certain that I'm possessed.

The She-Creature Shuffle

Thought I'd post this bulletin response here for the helluvit. Here was the challenge:

1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the shuffle command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurrences. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten songs with five artists, you can if you'd like.


So out of 15,000 songs that take up 70 gigabytes and could play for more than 40 days and 40 nights without repeating anything, this random selection is surprisingly better than any playlist that I could have put together myself (although it could do with a dash of Tom Waits)...

01 - The Smiths - Paysted Way
02 - The Impossible Shapes - Always the Way
03 - Portastatic - The Angeles of Sleep
04 - Damien Jurado - Intoxicated Hands
05 - Arnold Schoenberg - track 9 from "Pierrot Lunaire"
06 - Jo Ann Castle - Tico Tico
07 - The Cure - Boys Don't Cry
08 - Sun Kil Moon - Pancho Villa
09 - Warren Zevon - Model Citizen
10 - The Rolling Stones - She's a Rainbow

Hmm, I'm feeling a little WFMU-ish right now. I should have my own Podcast, shouldn't I? Does anyone want to know what the next 10 would be? Okay...

11 - Sloan - Everything You've Done Wrong
12 - The Wolfgang Press - Cut the Tree
13 - Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
14 - Great Lake Swimmers - Bodies and Minds
15 - The Wipers - Up in Flames
16 - Maserati - Ambassador of Cinema
17 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Loverman
18 - Gary Numan - Dream Police
19 - Steve Reich - Drumming (3)
20 - William Shatner - Spleen

And then I decided to keep going to the next ten... they were:

21 - Red House Painters - Long Distance Runaround
22 - Cursive - Art Is Hard
23 - God in 3 Persons - Service
24 - Thelonius Monk - North of the Sunset
25 - Rilo Kiley - Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight that Surrounds You
26 - Sam Phillips - Standing Still
27 - Deerhoof - L'amour Stories
28 - The Misfits - Dr. Phibes Rises Again
29 - Danielson Famile - Sing to the Singer
30 - Tom Waits - Black Wings (Live at the Raven Theater)

And after that I realized it was 4:20 AM and I'd been listening to music for a couple hours. So that's a perfect place to end. Nite!

Urine Gone!

So tonight I'm minding my own business, cringing while watching tv as I often do when I realize I'm absorbed in yet another reality show. I have an excuse this time though: it was ABC's HOOKING UP about online dating, and as you all know from my previous posts, I can relate to the horror of it all.

So, right smack dab in the middle of the show about 11 single women in NYC is a commercial for a product called URINE GONE*, because... I guess there's... uh... a lot of urine involved with online dating? Or a lot of lonely, single people with too many cats and not enough litter boxes watching this show? I can vouch for both of those guesses.

If you haven't yet seen this beauty of a marketing campaign, I'm not sure that I can do it any real justice here. I tried to search for the commercial online, but only came up with stills for this product, like the ones that follow (photos by Greyhawk68):

See, I'm not kidding. This is for real.

But the commercial is so bad that it begins parodying itself almost immediately. It's shot in typical infomercial/as-seen-on-tv/hi-cheese lighting, with added "scientific" blacklight segments to show the unseen urine and various other organic stains. Remember those 20/20 specials where they go into hotels and show you with a blacklight all the places on the comforter/chair/wall/mirror/ceiling that bodily fluids have been squirted? Well this commercial is rife with that kind of gross-out factor!

I found myself smirking just a bit when it first came on... then a bit more... then giggling... and before long, the giggles turned into guffaws, particularly when I saw this screen:

Not only was I laughing so hard that I nearly wet myself, which ironically would cause me to need this product (and thus had me seeing the genius behind the advertising campaign), but at this point I also became thoroughly confused.

I mean, you tell me: are we supposed to understand this as a substance that "works on" actually removing troublesome "wood, tile, concrete, linoleum," or is it a cleaner that gets that pesky urine out of your "blood, feces, organic matter"? Urine Gone, don't leave me hanging! Inquiring minds want to know!

Despite my confusion, I love this ad. It's true. I love you, Urine Gone commercial! With every ounce of "organic matter" in my body! Indoors & out!

(* Urine Gone is not to be confused with SEMENEX**.)

(** And Semenex should NEVER be confused with SEMENAX.)

Dear Abby:

I feel really, really ashamed of this... but I've just got to come clean. For the last year or so I've been avoiding someone... someone I've known forever and a day.

Now don't get me wrong. I've known her since we lived next door to each other in 7th grade and I love her to death. She's a sweet, caring, wonderful person... who just happens to have the creepiest taste in men. I mean it's worse than my taste in men often is, and that says a lot. (If you're on my friends list and think you're one of those men, you're not, okay!)

Anyway, T is on her second husband right now and I haven't known this guy all that long... only a handful of evenings spent hanging out at their house, just the three of us. What creeps me out about him isn't that he spouts off Rush Limbaugh diatribes or has really short arms, it's more than that... I don't really want to put my finger on it, but I guess I will.

Her husband completely creeps me out. He's a close-talker (likes to sit hip-to-hip when talking to me even though their couches are huge), he's always talking about which neighbors of theirs are swingers, and he's always suggesting that I should stay over at their house no matter how much/little I've had to drink and no matter that the drive home is only 40 minutes. I mean, he won't drop it... I'm on my way out the door, getting in my car even, and he's still saying: "We've got plenty of room here, really."

There's also the topic of his favorite party trick: the human heart beat.

Every time I'd hang out with them, he'd bring this up and how he loves to find some unsuspecting person at one of their neighborhood parties and surprise the poor bastard. Why is this creepy, you ask? Because this "trick" consists of him asking if you've ever seen "a human heart beat" and when the uninformed victim inevitably says "no," my friend's husband proceeds to drop trou and do something with his ballsack that makes it simulate a pulsing heart.

My first thought is: "Sweet Jesus, WHY?"

My second thought is: "What kind of delusional megalomaniac would think that anyone (much less a whole room of party goers) would want to see this dude's groceries?"

I've not witnessed this sight, thankfully. I was warned in advance by my friend that her husband liked to do this thing, then got all the gory details as he proceeded to recount the glory of his pulsing nuts.

After a couple of times of this coming up too eagerly in conversation, however, I became afraid that if I were to go back to their house that I might finally fall prey to this trap. Like he'd be hiding around every corner of their house, balls to the wind, waiting to pounce. And forget about me ever sleeping there! No way. I just know that I'd wake in the middle of the night to a pulsing sensation against my cheek.

The last time that I hung out with them, I requested a public place (a mall) and felt slightly more assured that he wouldn't risk it there. I even tried to get it to be a "girls day out" kind of thing, but the nut pusher came along anyhow. Apparently, he just doesn't let her leave his sight. And since then, my friend has emailed me several times, inviting me back to their place for various parties and festivities and I've always had an excuse. Recently, I've gotten so tired of giving excuses that I haven't even answered her last couple of emails at all. It's terrible, I know. But I haven't the energy to fend off the offers anymore.

The question that remains, given that I'm truly a shy and introverted person, is how do I tell my friend of 23 years that her hubby is too creepy for me to ever want to come around again? Do I just let her ask me why I won't come out and then reply, "Your husband's nuts," and let her figure out the double meaning or what?

Signed,
Allergic to Nuts

Girls simultaneously shout "DUH!"

Orgasms: a real ‘turn-off’ for women

17:54 20 June 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Michael Le Page, Copenhagen

For women, it seems, sex is a big turn-off, reveals a brain scanning study. It shows that many areas of the brain switch off during the female orgasm - including those involved with emotion.

“At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings,” says Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

His team recruited 13 healthy heterosexual women and their partners. The women were asked to lie with their heads in a PET scanner while the team compared their brain activity in four states: simply resting, faking an orgasm, having their clitoris stimulated by their partner’s fingers, and clitoral stimulation to the point of orgasm.

The results of the study are striking. As the women were stimulated, activity rose in one sensory part of the brain, called the primary somatosensory cortex, but fell in the amygdala and hippocampus, areas involved in alertness and anxiety. During orgasm, activity fell in many more areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, compared with the resting state, Holstege told a meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development in Copenhagen on Monday.

In one sense the findings appear to confirm what is already known, that women cannot enjoy sex unless they are relaxed and free from worries and distractions. "Fear and anxiety levels have to go down for orgasm. Everyone knows this but we can see it happening in the brain," he explains.

Extraordinary behaviour

From an evolutionary point of view, it could be that the brain switches off the emotions during sex because at such times the chance to produce offspring becomes more important than the survival risk to the individual. Holstege points to the extraordinary behaviour seen in some animals during the breeding season, such as March hares, when the urge to mate seems to override the usual fear of predators.

But Holstege cannot explain why there is such extreme deactivation in so many areas of the brain during orgasm. Only one small part of the brain, in the cerebellum, was more active during female orgasm. The cerebellum is normally associated with coordinating movement, though there is also some evidence that it helps regulate emotions. “We don’t know what activation of the cerebellum corresponds to,” Holstege admits.

His study also revealed clear differences when women were faking an orgasm. Part of the brain involved controlling conscious movement lit up, and there was none of the extreme deactivation.

Next the team hope to look at what happens to the brain in the minutes after orgasm, as well as in patients with sexual problems. The team has already done a similar study involving 11 men, which revealed far less deactivation during orgasm than in women. However, Holstege says the results are probably unreliable and need to be repeated. The problem is that PET scanners measure activity over two minutes - and in men it is all over in a few seconds.

About My Thesis Film...

I fucking PASSED, motherfuckers! Woot!

At some point I'll have it up on the internet for all to see. Unfortunately, it isn't this form of genius that was asked me by my friend Tom:

"so how did the film go? you didn't make a film about a film masters student showing her work to a hostile thesis advisor that happened to display negative personality traits just like your own did you? i guess that much fun should never be had at ones own expense."

No, but unfortunately, too, I'll have to make a number of tweaks and (slightly major) changes to make my thesis committee happy. I should be done with that in... oh... six more weeks or so.

What's She Building?

Everyday, people will write me to check in with the same question: "Hey, She... what have you been up to?"

Well, I'll tell ya. I've been working on audio design for my film and getting almost no sleep because of it.



I have just 11 hours left and I am in crunch mode, so what do I do? That's right. I stop to blog about... well... what I should really be doing instead of blogging.

I've also been severely congested for the last several weeks and think that I'm now getting very attached to Afrin Nasal spray. I love you Afrin. Breathing is the second best thing to having sex... the first best thing being sex, of course.

I'm not complaining about any of this, because I decided after my last whiny blog entry that I would try to look on the bright side more often. I may not have time to get to the grocery store, but that's okay as long as I have some kind of sustenance in the house.

So to end things on a positive note, let me add that I've basically been living off of Diet Coke and fried eggs for a while now, and the resulting 3-days of diarrhea has been fucking awesome! As a matter of fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'd happily recommend this weight loss technique to anyone else too busy or lazy to get their ass into the local gym. Feel the burn, people. Feel.The.Burn. Awesome, I tell ya!

Okay, I'm done reporting in now.
More sound, less chatter.

Miss Me?

You may have been wondering, like quite a few others, why there haven't been many posts from your She-Creature pal here, and you've been doing a very supportive job of emailing and cajoling me with gentle praise and flattery. I thank all of you for your support.

I've been dealing with a lot of work and bureaucratic bullshit the last week or so, basically having to do with my graduate thesis project. It's so boring that I will not go into the details here, other than the fact that I have a useless thesis advisor who I am beginning to believe is actually just jealous of my creativity. I was told a while back by another student that he has this problem, then another student told me that too, and yet stupid me kept him on as my advisor. Little did I know that he would be subtly (and not so subtly) undermining me all the way through.

To make a long story short, I have come very close to a breaking point and truly understand why some grad students suddenly go postal. Not that I will, mind you, but that doesn't stop the fantasies from playing in my head. Like this one, for instance:



That's enough of that. Hopefully all the BS will pass and I'll have my MA soon. Then I will be able to more regularly concentrate on the more important things in life. Like blogging.

Also, I was without an internet connection for a few days last week. Yes, sad but true. Wanna know why? Because Earthlink is a total scam, that's why. I decided one night last week to change local phone companies from Talk America to BellSouth to save about $8 a month. It was simple, I did it online and of course you keep your same phone number with no disruption in service.

On the day that I got the email from BellSouth stating my account was active with them, my DSL rather abruptly stopped working. I called Earthlink support and after 2 hours on the phone with the tech guys, they finally discover that someone put in a disconnect order with them. So they patched me through to the accounts people, where some other person (the 4th one in that call) looks into it and says that I ordered the disconnect.

"Um, no I didn't. I just signed up here a few months ago. I have a 1-year contract."

"Yes, you do. I see that," she tells me.

I explain that all I did was change phone carriers and then that starts another confused line of questioning.

"You switched from BellSouth to Talk America? No wonder you don't have a connection. We don't work with Talk America at all," she tells me.

"NO, I switched TO BellSouth... TO THEM. When it was working 2 hours ago, I was still with Talk America."

"That's impossible. Let me put you on hold for half of your life," she should have explained.

When she came back, she tells me this garbage about "reprovisioning the line" every time you change companies, and they have to pay the different phone company a fee, so they pass that fee onto the DSL consumer. She then matter of factly stated, "That will be a $50 disconnect and early contract termination fee, and a $99 reprovisioning fee to get your account reinstated with BellSouth. I can get your account back up and running in 2 to 3 days."

My voice went up 3 octaves and 10 decibels as I shouted, "WHAT?!?!?!?!"

I argued with her for an hour, she finally waived the $50 early disconnect fee, since she agreed that I was not technically terminating my contract, but she refused to waive any of the "reprovisioning" fee.

When the account was finally running, I had to get the tech guys to reconfigure my modem on the phone again, then call my router company and have them help me reconfigure that too... but not before Earthlink tried to convince me that my "old" router (3 months old, mind you) would not work with this system and that I should buy their wireless router for just another $149. Fuck you, Earthlink. That guy had the nerve to ask me at the end of the second 2-hour call, "Have you found this call to be helpful to you?" I shouted, "Hell no, not when I just wanted to save $8."

Just now I saw a commercial for Earthlink on tv, all these diverse, meltingpot Americans saying that they're Earthlink and they live to help their customers or some shit. Funny, but everytime I called and no matter how many times I was transferred to someone else, every single person on the other end of the phone was from India, but I didn't see a single Indian face in that Earthlink commercial. That made for some great language barriers too as I got angrier and angrier, but then wondered if I was just getting angry at some poor schlep who was going to go back to a hut and kick the neighborhood holy cow.

I don't want any hate mail, people. Of course I know that isn't the case. Oddly enough, they all had names like "Joe" and "Bob" and "Susan" and "Laura" and "Mike." That just made the frustration levels even more Outer Limits for me. Anyway, poop on you, Earthlink... for your scams and for your outsourcing.

Mother's Day morning was spent in a groggy hungover blur of wrangling the kids and my mom at 9:00 to "beat the crowds" at the local Golden Corral buffet.



The sign just screams "quality."


It was already packed, even at our ungodly early arrival time. YES, I said UNgodly, you damn early-riser, churchy types. We wound around in a snaking line of wonderful smells, like "old person," "too much perfume," "poopy diaper," and "not enough deodorant." And I think that was all coming from the one person in front of me.

The length of this line made me giddy for a moment thinking that perhaps Space Mountain or Splash Mountain was at the end, rather than the hastily prepared breakfast foods that still eerily smelled like lingering "old person," "too much perfume," "poopy diaper," and "not enough deodorant."

After filling to the brim with our fair share of grease-laden samples while crammed like sardines into the corner next to a window with broken mini-blinds and the morning sun blazing in on us, I now know what it feels like to live in a convection oven.

While some of the gang was helping themselves to ice cream and pastries, I noticed that my 9-year-old had barely touched his stack of bacon. He'd plowed through several sausage types and apparently just stopped and pushed it away... quite unlike him. Suddenly, he starts clutching his stomach and moans, "Oh, ow, ew, I'm gonna puke." I spout off "I've got him! We'll be at the car. Meet us when you're done."

I nervously ushered him out of the bustling maze of tables and old people to get just outside the doors for my son to make an urping, coughing, gagging"noise and hurl himself straight toward the awaiting line of newcomers. I shouted "OH NO YOU DON'T!" and grabbed his hand to run him to the vehicle, which was luckily around the back corner of the restaurant. I wasn't as worried about him puking on the queue as much as I was worried that his vomit would set of a chain-reaction in me, with my combination hangover and angry stomach lining.

We got to the back of the building and he leaned against a maple tree while he continued to moan and sputter and gag for another 15 or 20 minutes until my mother finally came out. Luckily nothing came out of either he nor I, though his antics made at least 2 couples change their minds about eating there. I saw them get out of their cars, look at him in horror and return to their cars with a "let's try somewhere else." After that, he and I had a heaping helping of TUMS for our dessert and we were both fine.

Then I took the kids to Target so my daughter could pick out 53 different Barbies that she wants for her birthday on the 25th. I didn't buy any, because we were really just killing time before the next running of HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. I had already seen it opening night last week and immediately disliked it, but the kids' dorkiness doesn't fall far from the tree, so they insisted that I take them anyway. They seemed to like it at least. Thankfully there were no odd movie-going experiences to report. It all was pretty smooth this time.

I think I've run out of things to type, so I'll end here.

Goodnight, you princes of Maine... you kings of New England.

I don't know why I typed that.

Sexy Friday Night

What does a hott, sexxxy, sinnnnngle laydee like me do with a whole weekend to play?

Well, first she straps one on and then she begins to make noise and gyrate all over the house... doing it in every room, in fact... for FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT! I'm an animal, I tell ya!

And now you want photos, don't you, you dirty birdies? Okay, I'm not one to disappoint.

Here's my strap-on... ain't she a beaute?

And I really know how to push her buttons. Hottttt!

This pic just makes me ache...

...thinking about how her straps dig into my shoulders.

That's right, I dusted off the old accordion and totally went to town. We polka'd, we rock'd, we even samba'd a bit, I think.

Well, it sounded like a samba.

Taxation

I started doing my taxes at 11:30 PM.

I just finished at 3:30 AM, 4 hours later.

And to think, there once was a time when I loved doing this.

My other accomplishment today: I slept for 15 hours. Not straight... I slept from 9 PM to 1 AM on Friday night on the couch, then stayed up until 5 AM watching cartoons on TBS; then I slept for another 11 hours in my bed and woke up sometime after 4 PM Saturday afternoon.

I had good reason, I'd stayed up the whole night before shooting 3 reels of footage (3 - 40 min DVcam tapes, roughly 13 small 8MM reels on each) and fighting with 2 ornery projectors and losing several feet of footage to burning and other damage... funny how most of my filmmaking involves use of a screwdriver and tweezers to remove the broken celluloid from inside the projector housing.

So the 15 hours of sleep, when thought of in relation to my total lack of sleep the night before, actually equal a more normal amount of sleep that I almost never get: 7.5 hours per night. I just slammed it all together for a marathon, that's all. But now I feel completely disassociated from the rest of living civilization... more like a living zombie. And now that I've done my taxes, I feel disenfranchised as well. I'm also flat broke, but the state seems to think that I owe them $421. Ugh.

To end on a positive note, at least I'm regular.

My Dog Has Diarrhea

(...and Other Shitty Tales)

Today sucked. It just plain sucked.

Why? I'll TELL you WHY?!

1. Being woken up at 6:00 AM by hot dog breath after passing out on the couch at 4:30 AM and blearily walking to the back door to let the pack out, only to discover that we've all... all 6 of us, have trod through turds.

2. Still bleary-eyed at 6:01 AM and having to clean dog shit out of the pads of 5 sets of dog feet, as well as wiping off my own.

3. Getting in the shower and discovering that all shampoo bottles are empty and there are no more bars of soap in the house. "That's okay, I'll just pretend I'm French today."

4. Coasting in to the gas station on fumes and having to fill up the mammoth tank of my ridiculous minivan at the price of $2.49 per gallon. Total bill: $44.96

5. Driving downtown to a university "campus" that charges $5.00 or more in every nearby lot, even though my entire visit to said "campus" was 42 minutes long.

6. Coming home and deciding that since the afternoon is still young, I shall catch a flick at the local multiplex to destress. Getting popcorn and a frozen Coke and settling into a seat that is one row ahead of my favorite spot, because a pair of loud-talking (probably Doctor Who fanatic) freaks are already in my spot.

7. Having a hard time relaxing through film, because nerdboy behind me in my favorite seat keeps making sound effects every time someone gets punched or decapitated in this flick. (It was Sin City, so his number of "oohahs" and "zeeeeings" were countless).

8. Finally relaxing after the sound effects subside... 2/3rds of the way into the film.

9. Tensing up again after discovering that the sound effects were only being momentarily displaced by a whole different set of more subtle sounds: the nerd couple were making out. (Let me pause a moment and paint a picture for you using cinematic references: imagine "Doc" in Back to the Future making out with the mother from What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and then you will understand why I cannot get that image out of my head, even though I caught it out of the corner of my eye.)

10. Almost becoming completely unhinged upon realizing that there was some "heavy petting" going on based on the sounds and ...ahem... the smells. Yes, smells.

11. Lasting for a total of 11 minutes and ending with what sounded like a long, sucking wheeze, the sounds (and smells) subsided, only to be replaced by the gut punching sound effects again.

12. Racing out of the theater, not staying to watch the credits as film freaks like myself love to do, and getting to my vehicle in time to quell the nausea by "huffing" the hanging car freshener. (It's berry, in case you're wondering.)

13. Returning home after being away for 5 hours to let excited doggies out once again only to have them all stop short before traversing the 8 square feet covered in doggie doody between us and the back door. (Guess they didn't enjoy having their feet washed this morning by a grumpy, myopic bitch.)

14. Herding them around the mess in the mere square inches of un-shat-upon flooring and spend the next hour cleaning up. (By this time, I'd figured out who the sicko was.)

15. Locking up sick fido, letting others have free range.

16. Spending the next 7 hours cleaning up liquid mess from the cage and feet of the sicko.

17. Realizing that the whole house smells like ass... which is only slightly less repulsive than what wafted my way in the theater earlier today.

18. Being too terrified to go to sleep now even though it's 2:00 AM, for fear that the image of those *shudder* two will permeate my dreams in some fucked up way... like suddenly I find myself sandwiched in a menage a trois with them.

I could go on, I'm sure, but I think I grossed everyone out enough for one day.

Too Much Noise Makes the She-Creature Go Mute

Dear Jan--

Where do I begin?

The past 10 days or so have been truly eye-opening and wonderous in so many ways, really they have. I had no idea after talking to you for over 40 hours in the course of 8 nights would just be a prelude to the marathon weekend I was about to have with you. My head is spinning now. But not enough for me to take a moment and write this letter to you.

From the very first phone call, when you yelled "HA-LO SHEDDY!!!" into the phone, as if trying to get my attention across a crowded room, I thought your personality might be bigger than life. But after that, your voice was so much more reserved and quiet, except for your laugh, which boomed into my ear and forced me to hold the phone away from my head. I thought that was quaint in some ways, because exuberance can be stimulating.

Indeed, the phone conversations were stimulating, and in no way predicted the course of this weekend's time with you. I wonder now if I can go back and see any signs, but I really can't think of any as yet. Let me explain.

When I first saw you on Friday night, I think I was stunned and taken in by your attractive features, which your photos did no justice in depicting at all. For the first time in the history of my blind dates, I was meeting a man who was far more attractive than he presented himself to be online.

As I sat and looked at you across the table, I saw that you had the intense eyes of Viggo Mortensen and the full lips, jawline, and nose of David Duchovny. Both of those names probably mean nothing to you, but I know that any women I mention that to would swoon at the thought. On top of that, you suavely kissed my hand when you greeted me (and then again at the end of the night), also making for the swoon factor to rise.

So what could go wrong, you wonder? Let me recount the ways...

The date as a whole seemed to go well, except that it went on for 11 hours. In the course of those first 11 hours together, you made for very entertaining company... with the exception of the occasional racist joke. When it first happened, I thought it merely an error judgment on your part and put it out of my mind. But by the fifth racist joke (and my continued lack of laughing at them) in the span of an hour, I was silently praying for you to not say another word, so you'd stop ruining the mood. Luckily, the fifth joke was the last... for that night, that is.

Unluckily, it wasn't the last of the racial remarks. I understand that you came here from another country and couldn't speak the language and now you have your own business, but to complain about Equal Opportunity Employment and educational quotas when you really aren't familiar with the history here doesn't go over well with me.

Yes, it's true that being forced to hire someone less qualified for the job just to fill a quota isn't fair to the employer and may make for a subpar product, but this is more of a case of "one bad apple spoiling the whole batch," and in that I mean what you couldn't understand. If some people were able to choose only white men to be hired for jobs and for education, then they did just that... it was those bad apples that I'm talking about, not the subpar product that has happened occasionally after the new laws.

One would think that you --as a man who wasn't Communist in a country run by Communists for so long, and who was kept from acquiring an advanced education and higher jobs due to his political beliefs-- should be even more acutely aware of that kind of discrimination. But in this country, you are of the political majority and seen only as a white male, and so you are not held back in ways that others have been held back here based on color or gender.

Unfortunately, your sketchy grasp of this language makes it impossible to express this to you accurately, though I do believe that you are intelligent enough to understand if perhaps I spoke yours.

I'm generally a forgiving sort, though, and figured that maybe because it was around 4AM when you were speaking those words (and because we were sitting in a booth across from two pimps, who were openly boasting about their "bitches"... again, bad apples only), that perhaps the lateness of the hour (and the negative example sitting across from us) was causing poor judgment in the conversation on both of our parts. Perhaps I was judging your words too harshly, just as you were judging those with brown or black skin too harshly, too.

We had started our date at 8PM and were finishing it at 7AM, after watching the sun come up. I felt that it was not so terrible that I wouldn't want another date with you, and so I accepted your offer.

You called me at 4PM and were raring to meet immediately for another marathon dating session. I, however, had only managed to get 4 hours of sleep and needed time to regroup and get ready still. I met you at 6PM and again you took me away in your car. That might have been my first mistake of the night, but how do you tell a man so set in his ways that women are perfectly capable of driving too?

You began this second date by driving me past your old house where you'd lived with your ex-wife, and proceeded to get more and more aggrivated as you recounted the time you were last there with her... almost frothing at the mouth as you stated your desire to see "the house burn down with her in it." Here's a tip: this is NEVER a good way to start any date.

Then as we drove downtown, you got on the phone with your Czech buddy and began speaking... nay... shouting so loudly in Czech to him that I thought the windows of the car might shatter. (I know my eardrums nearly did.) At that moment, I recalled your very first "HA-LO SHEDDY!!!" phone greeting to me, and that's when I realized that maybe that really was your regular volume, rather than a nervous exuberance at that moment. Every time the phone rang and you answered in that booming voice again, I shrunk smaller and smaller into a ball, it seemed. Before we even made it to dinner, I had shut down and stopped talking entirely.

Oh, yes... your driving. That's another issue.

You drive like an 80 year old drunken tourist with cataracts. And that's you completely sober. I can't imagine how bad it would be if you'd had a drink or two under your belt. As we puttered along in the far left lane of the interstate at exactly 55 miles per hour --cars flying around us like we were standing still and drivers beeping and cursing like they wanted us dead-- I gripped the armrest handle for dear life, thinking that you were surely going to cause an accident, while I pleaded with you to go faster or at least move one lane to the right (please). You refused and laughed at all of the other "jerk" drivers. I am truly surprised you didn't get pulled over for driving under the limit half of the time while you crossed first the left lines, then the right lines like you were hoping to be tested for a DUI.

At least on the interstate I wasn't in fear of my life that an angry motorist would get out at the next light and beat you and I to death for your city driving, which is far worse. It was "not unbelievable," as you like to mis-state, which is somewhat cute (unlike your driving). Slowing down a half-mile before you come to a red light is not a good idea. Neither is driving in the left lane all the time when you're going 20 miles an hour in a 45 mile per hour district. I am not going to assume that all Eastern Europeans drive like this, because I have only one sample. I just hope if they do, they at least don't die as often in accidents, because they're all going well under the speed limit.

To make matters worse, you started talking about your racial "issues" again and tossing the N-word around like it was no big deal. I should have asked you to take me home at that point, but I kept hoping I could diplomatically point out why that was the wrong way to think and sway your opinions. Nothing I said worked, though, and I continued to grow quieter and quieter.

Maybe you were just talking to fill up space, because you're uncomfortable with silence. As we sat in your car, we could have quietly looked up at the stars or something, but you insisted on going on about your past divorces, even pulling out the voice-activated tape recorder you used to gain evidence against those women... WITH one of the tapes still inside(!)... the one of you and your last ex discussing why you two stopped having sex (again, NOT a good thing to do on any date EVER). Thank god the batteries were dead when you tried to play it.

To get you to shut up about that, I almost grabbed you and kissed you, but then stopped myself as I remembered what happened the last time I did that with someone, I ended up having sex with a wannabe dramaturge who didn't step out character of his "virgin fantasy" the whole time. Even when using sex as a distraction, I cannot end the idle chatter. So thankfully nothing physical happened between us at all.

However, in case you didn't catch it at the time, trying to crack-wise with me about the girl at the coffee house with the bright red hair was another moment where you not only put your foot in your mouth and refused to remove it, you actually shoved it in deeper.

When I told you the first time that my hair was that exact same color until last December, you should have stopped there and shut up about it. But no. Instead you tried for a total of 4 times to ask me, "Why does someone do that to herself? Get all ugly like that?" I assured you that the ruby barrette that I was wearing perfectly matched my hair just a few months earlier (same as hers) and tried to tell you that self-expression is everyone's right... perhaps she's an artist, perhaps she likes to subvert the dominant paradigm somehow. Your final assessment of, "At least you got over that now," didn't help your case. Perhaps that was just passive-aggressive payback for my previous comment about your music.

Yes, I did ask you rather snarkily if you could tell the difference between those songs, but you saying "Maybe you can't hear it good," and turning the volume up louder to convince me of the subtle beat differences --like where one song goes "doot-deet-doot" and the other goes "deet-deet-doot"-- didn't help me enjoy them more... especially not after being peppered with them for 2 nights straight. Regardless, I do apologize for the tone. It was a weak moment and I was beginning to crack.

I felt hijacked for the 9-hour marathon that was our second date. On our first date, I'd jokingly teased that maybe you were really a vampire and that accent was actually Transylvanian just pretending to be Czech... but by the end of the second one, I think I may have been onto something there. You had sucked all the energy out of me and were ready for more and more, while all I wanted to do was go home and retreat from the experience.

By the time morning came around again at the end of our second date, I was physically and mentally exhausted, and all I had to show for it was that I'd wasted 20 of the last 30 hours of my life with a obnoxiously loud, horribly racist, terrible driver.

You wanted to take me to dinner again today, but simply I couldn't stomach it. Somehow now I have to break the news to you that there will not be another date in our futures. On a slightly more petty note, I am relieved that I won't have to listen to more Euro disco beats any time soon.

As a final insult to an injuriously long weekend, I just finished eating one of the Czech candy bars you gave me called Tatranky. I can't understand what the ingredients are, but for some reason my whole body has just swelled up into a giant, splotchy, puffy mass of hives. Awesome.

Do I recall myself saying "Those Czechs love the absurd," a few weeks back? I think I did, yes. Guess I should have known better.

I still believe I have more in common with Europeans than I do with most Americans, but perhaps not so much in common with Eastern Europeans... though I'm not willing to judge a whole area of the world based on this one experience. There are ignorant people in every nation and, apparently, the possibility of me dating one of those people is much higher than anyone could imagine. Call it my gift... my curse.

So I will take my leave of dates for a little while, I think. It's a shame, too, because I have a total of 3 whole weekends free from kids here at the house and I could have a fantastically fabulous romp with the right person... but I haven't met him yet.

--She...

Survey Says...

1) Name the Last Four Things You Have Bought:
a new 8MM projector from eBay last night, THE INCREDIBLES dvd, dog food, and bottled water

2) Name Four Drinks You Regularly Drink:
water, tea, coffee, Miller Light

3) Last Time You Cried?:
a couple of weeks ago while sitting on my front porch and calling it quits with the recent man of my blogs; but I also welled up again last night hearing about a friend's struggle with post-partum depression... it took me back to my own

4) What's In Your CD Player:
one of Bill's mix cds

5) What's Under Your Bed?:
gigantic roll-out tupperware bins filled with shit I haven't bothered to look at in years... and monsters

6) What Time Did You Wake Up Today?
8:00 AM, then again at 8:00 PM after a much needed nap

7) Current Hair?:
I'm assuming this isn't a dirty question... so, uh, reddish-brown, medium long, and curly... just like a poodle's ass.

8) Current Clothes?:
who said I'm wearing any?

9) Current Desktop Picture?:
none; just realistic-looking fish swimming around

10) Current Worry?
lethargy, thesis, and bills... oh my!

11) Current Hate?
"our" current Administration, Atlanta's fucking rush-hour that lasts all damn day long!, and the fact that I'm wasting the peak sexual years of my life left to my own "devices"

12) Favorite Place To Be?:
empty movie theater in the middle of a weekday afternoon; or, inside my head, where music and unicorns play 24/7

13) Least Favorite Place?:
alone in a packed movie theater on a date night; or, alone in bed

14) If You Could Play An Instrument?:
having already mastered the skin flute, I'll say the accordion sitting in my bedroom and gathering dust would be a good start

16) How Tall Are You?:
5'11" ... 5'5" without the afro

17) Favorite quote:
"Probably the worst thing about having King Kong go rampid in your town would be the huge, monster genitalia." --Jack Handey

18) One Person From Your Past You Wish You Could Go Back And Talk To:
there are so many people I've lost track of and wish I could find (and believe me, I've tried)... I guess I'd have to say Roberta Ross, who was my first best friend... where are you Berta?

19) Favorite Day?:
Arbor Day (trees need love too)

20) Where Would You Like To Go?:
since I've already been to Hell and back, I'll say Denver to see my friend's new baby, Korea to see another friend, and DC to visit yet another

21) Where do you want to live when you get married?:
happily ever after... I don't care where

22) Favorite food?:
sushi... hell, just give me some seaweed wraps and I'll roll just about anything up in them and eat it (I said "just about anything")

23) Color of most clothes you own?:
mostly black; also dark purple, dark red, and brown

25) What do you wear when you go to sleep?:
kids home: whatever I pass out in, sometimes I manage to get my pants off; kids away: depends on whether or not someone else manages to get my pants off!

26) What were you doing 12AM last night?
ending an IM conversation with someone intruiguing

27) How old will you be in 10 yrs:
308 in dog years

28) What do you think you'll be doing in 10 years?:
still working in film/television, traveling a lot in my free time

29) Do you have braces?:
not in the last 20 years, no

30) Are you paranoid?:
only the paranoid survive

31) Do you burn or tan?:
I rarely ever go in the sun anymore, but when I do, I have the ability to tan so darkly that other ethnicities mistake me for one of them

32) What is the brand of your wallet?:
who buys branded wallets? my "brand" is called "free" as in it's the free one that came with some purse I once bought, which itself was only slightly more expensive than "free"

33) First piercing/tattoo?:
Ears, age 7... when I grow up, I'll get a tattoo

34) First enemy?:
I don't try to make any enemies, but they do seem to find me from time to time... I think the first one was a girl named Marsha who told everyone in my neighborhood some viciously stupid stuff about me when I was 7 or 8... I told my mom, she got mad and called Marsha's mom, Marsha's mom marched Marsha's freshly tanned little butt over to my house to give me an apology... we were friends again a couple months later... girls can be so stupid and cruel to one another.

35) Last person you yelled at?:
probably one of the kids just to be heard over their constant din

36) Last crush?:
it's been a while since I've had any crushes... other than that constant fantasy that I'll one day end up in the middle of a Viggo Mortensen/Vince Vaughn sandwich

37) Last thing you ate?
some ham and carrots (boring, I know). come to think of it, I'm pretty hungry again.

Thots on Bots

So yeah, I went to see ROBOTS on its opening Friday night, rather than go out drinking with friends. What can I say? I'm just THAT secure with my hipness, dude.

The film itself was cute, well made, and yet empty. It stole from every movie possible, but in a quaint "homage" sort of way. Unfortunately, that was the only thing that made the movie worth seeing, because the story wasn't there. I would just like to take a moment and admit that my absolute favorite part of the whole thing was the fart scene... but then, I'm a big softy for fart sounds, what can I say. It brought a tear or two to my eye... after I laughed harder than I ever expected.

But as any of you know, I don't review movies. I review movie-going experiences. It's a small niche market that I'm trying to cover myself, whether any of you give a shit or not.

I went to the theater that night not alone, as my other blogs have depicted me, but with my younger two children. If anyone was wondering, their reviews were, "It had funny parts;" "I'd watch it again, I guess;" "Can we go now? I gotta pee;" and "The big thing in the lobby for HITCHIKER'S GUIDE was cooler than this movie... can we go stand and look at it for a while?" And we did.

One extremely rotund nerd decided to sit directly behind us. I love the seats at the local AMC, because the backs are so high that you can't see the people behind or in front of you. But I learned that this particular specimen was behind us because the gravitational forces began to alter and when I spilled some candy, the pieces immediately joined the other satellites he had circling his girth.

I'm sorry. That's just petty and snarky.

How about some more? Okay!

He was extremely excited to be at this particular film. He chatted animatedly to all that sat near him, even though he came completely alone. I soon found out why.

Of course, this ROBOTS movie had the trailer for the new STAR WARS movie, which meant that it attracted full-on, hardcore nerds to fill the seats... like the one sitting behind us. He "oohed" and "ahed" the whole way through, and when it was over, I think he may have wet himself. He also gave this odd high-pitched laugh, though the trailer was not funny, that sounded like, "nyuk nyuk mmmmnyuk nuh uh.... uh."

During the 'Bots flick, the laughter from this huge guy increased to such a frenzied pace that it sounded like a squeaky sounding, conjuring images in my head of Flipper mating with Chip 'n Dale. He stopped laughing about halfway through the movie. I wondered if anyone checked him for a pulse... I later heard him snore, so I guess he was okay.

The fun part of the night was watching the exodus of nerds BEFORE the movie started. I'm talking about the variety who pay to see a movie only to catch the new trailer, in this case... STAR WARS. My 9-year-old son heckled them as they snuck out. I quietly reprimaned him with, "Your older brother will be just like those nerds some day. Learn some tolerance, my man."

I'm such a good parent... nuture them when they're present; make fun of them when they're away. Jeez.

There's really no point to this "movie review" entry, which makes it truly perfect for the movie itself. It was the cinematic equivalent of a twinkie, and on that note, I'm going to scavenge for snacks.

Wait, wait, wait... did I just hear there's a new Monty Python movie coming out?

Damn, there goes my nerd-dissing credibility. I guess here is where I should admit that I sat through that intolerable OC show on Fox Thursday night just to catch the STAR WARS trailer for the first time before it hit the theaters... sitting there, hanging on every fucking commercial... waiting for a mere glimpse or hint that Lucas may have NOT screwed up this last ever episode... hoping to see some more baaadaaasss Yoda butt-kicking action... wishing I could have worked on any of the films, regardless of their aaactual badness.

I need a 12-step program.

I Can't Make This Sh*t Up

So last night, I go out with Bill to his favorite dive bar. Aside from getting some of the best/worst pick-up lines ever from one of the bartenders there, who totally hooked Bill up with the drinks... I mean, between us we had about 15 beers and 4 Pootie Tangs/Booty Calls (Jager and shit) for a final tally of only $33. There's no way that we only did $33 worth of damage last night. Where was I? Oh yeah, so one of Bill's friends brought some Absinthe with him too and kept it out of in the car and I was asked if I'd like to try some.

I ask you people... do you think for a second that I'm going to do stupid shit, like go out into a dive bar's parking lot and sit in the car of a guy I do not know and drink from a bottle of Absinthe (or who knows what) after I've already had 2 shots of Jager and a few beers?

The answer is yes, yes I am that kind of stupid girl.

So last night I had about 3 shots of Absinthe. We sat in the car and tried to do it up right: slotted spoon, sugar cube, lighter, trying to carmelize the cube. Guess what? Bic lighters suck for that. Where's a REAL druggie when you need one? As we sat there, I imagined a cop pulling up and tapping on the window and me saying, "Honestly, officer, we're just carmelizing sugar... stick around, cuz we're making s'mores next!" I wondered if anyone ever caught Julia Child doing that in her car late at night.

Long story short, even with 2 shots of Jager under my belt, there were no hallucinations at all. Of course, Absinthe has wormwood which containes thujone, but really so does vermouth. There is absolutely no reason for this stuff to be banned... except that it tastes like shit. I did have an instant numbing of my gums and throat, and when I took a sip of beer shortly afterwards, it curdled. Tip: don't follow Absinthe with Miller Light. Another tip: Absinthe tastes like S.H.I.T., did I mention that already? Like black licorice soaked in men's Polo cologne.

Alas, no weird things happened last night as a result of drinking the bright green liquor.

Now, that said, I am having some weird things happening today that I'm wondering are due to whatever the hell is in that firewater. My vision has been totally fucked up today and I kept having flashes of what looked like videotape drop out occasionally when I blinked. Oh, and my right arm and leg both kept alternating going numb. Also, everywhere I went today, shoes or no shoes, I keep getting shocked by everything metal. Maybe that's just part of my normal weirdness though.

In addition to all of that weirdness, one of the many dating websites that I've put a profile on has freaked out on me today. This makes the second time it's happened, only the first time was at Snatch Rot Bomb and that's how I met my last beau... when a glitch in the system activated my hidden profile there and people started to write to me, including him.

This time, it's at a different place and on a much grander scale. I mean, in the course of today alone, I've received over 80 emails and free winks from men saying, "I got your wink... WOW. I'd love to hear more..." blah blah blah. It's fucking weird. I've been browsed there over 3000 times today alone, so that tells me that there are far more men who got the same thing from "me" and haven't even responded. I'm thinking that quite possibly the whole population of men on that site received something from "me" today. I posted a message on that profile there telling them about the glitch (or possible hack job) and yet the messages still keep rolling in from them. It wasn't a site that I was really all that keen on using, so I may just have to delete myself from there.

Never a dull moment.

No Sleep and Yet I Dream

No sleep. One too many in my bed, that's why. They all roll over and one falls out. Awkward sleep. Stilted. Agitated. Uncomfortable. Too many in my bed. You ask me to hold on and I ask you to let go...

And yet, I must have slept some during my fitful night, because I did dream again. It's been so long and they seem so rare these days. But last night I did actually dream, even with the crowd in my bed.

I was at a university campus, one that I didn't recognize, like I was the new kid in the school... just like every time I was the new kid in a school when I was growing up. But this was a university, not a school.

I was sent to a room, a science lab-slash-office. I had missed the previous 6 weeks of classes and I was told to report to this room in order to keep my student status.

There were a handful of others there, all much younger than myself, all busily attending to various experiments and making up for their missed work. No one told me what I was supposed to do, so I sat down on a stool.

After a while of watching the students, they all looked at me and one asked what the next lesson would be. "Um, I'm not sure. What did the instructor say?" They all looked at me very puzzled and one asked, "But you're the instructor, aren't you?"

"I guess I am," I said. "But I think I'm only the TA and I haven't been given any idea of what you're working on right now. What would you like to do next?"

They began to mutter things in another language, seemed Eastern European of some sort. Then another instructor walked in and said to me, "We're late. You need to be there by now, you know." I had no idea what he meant.

A girl walked up to me and said she knew where I needed to be. She reminded me of myself 15 years ago... all possibility and bright and full of life, yet extremely calm as if she were in no hurry to make any rash decisions... very sure of herself. She told me that she could drive me to the place.

We got in her car and it was a 1970s Saab... the kind that I'd always wanted when I was her age. Was she the me whom I was supposed to be? The me I could have been? She drove me just 2 blocks and dropped me off at a building that seemed to be a theater and told me to go in, there'd be a person inside who'd tell me what I needed to do there.

I got out and closed the door. She reached over and rolled down the window and said, "Find the Aussie guy. He can help you." And with that, she drove off into traffic and I proceeded towards the large golden doors of the gleaming white building. I had to squint as the sun was hitting the front of the building and the brightness was blinding me.

When I got inside, it was very dark and it took me a while for my eyes to adjust. No one was there to guide me. Everyone was wearing name tags that identified them as instructors and teaching assistants. I realized that I'd left my tag back in the lab/office and asked if there was a chance to go back. No, no one was allowed to leave out of respect for the guest of honor.

Instead, the others pointed me towards a podium at the back of the theater audience. I searched through the piles and mine wasn't there. Then I saw another scholar friend of mine there... he was waiving me over to some seats.

I went over and joined him and that's when I noticed that we were in a truly big audience, the size of the Fox Theater, packed full for a funeral. There was a casket on the stage, closed. I couldn't tell who was inside and I didn't ask.

I saw one of my former thesis advisors there. He was preparing a speech about the deceased and didn't notice me saying hello to him. In the meantime, there was a band performing at the front of the stage. I realized that the band was Animal Collective and they were performing Tom Waits songs for some reason. It was actually quite good, though they had put their own spin on all of the tunes.

I could also see that there were several other acts and speakers waiting in the wings for their turns on the stage to perform and to eulogize.

My friend was thoroughly enjoying the show and I noticed that he had even gotten himself a drink, so I turned to see where I might find the bar. Not spotting one in my sights, I asked my friend for help and he directed me past the podium and down a hallway. The hallway opened up to a statuary room... no bar. I must have taken the wrong turn.

By the time that I walked back to the funeral, everyone had gone. I never did find out what or who was in the casket. That's okay. I know why I was there and it was only important that I had been able to see.

There was no Australian man in the dream to help me, but one of the messages that I received last week was from someone called "aussieone" something-or-other. Perhaps that's what she meant?

Baby, It's Cold Outside

I'm feeling a bit like I'm coming down from a high right now, having companionship withdrawals. It's too quiet here, even before the kids went to bed tonight. And so I blog. Again.

What a marvelous weekend: trapped inside with a lover and no kids... nothing to do but watch movies and mess around and watch more movies and mess around some more... and take a treacherously slippery walk to the convenience store and back... and drink some beers and eat chocolate and watch more movies... and mess around some more... and take a nap... and shower... and did I mention messing around?

Yep, thirty-six straight hours of sweet decadence. He arrived here at 9pm on Friday night and by Saturday morning, the roads were too dangerous to leave... so he stayed until 9am Sunday morning. I didn't lose power the whole time until about 8am Sunday, so instead of messing around, we went outside and chipped away at the ice encasing our minivans for about an hour until they were free and we had to part and go back to the reality of being parents again... my kids at my mom's, his kids at their mom's.

Is it weird to feel content having someone to sit next to you on the couch at night, even when you're not in control of the clicker and there's nothing but crap on the tube? I guess I've been in control of my own remote for far too long. Or is it weird to gain a sense of satisfaction just having someone sleeping next to you in bed, even when he is taking up too much room? I woke up in the middle of the night last night and realized that he was lying in the center of the bed and I was barely clinging to the edge. But rather than wake him and ask him to move over, I felt supremely satisfied that he was there sharing the night with me, so I just rolled over to face him and put my arm around his middle.

It turns out that it's the things like that -- the little day-to-day things that most couples take for granted and even let themselves get annoyed by if they have control issues or have lost a sense of the big picture -- that I'm finding joy in right now.

After my divorce, it wasn't really the sex that I missed, it was the simple companionship. But I never fully enjoyed that companionship with my ex-husband... there just were too many power struggles between us and too many passive-aggressive dishes coming from him, served up with a side of cold shoulder from me. Sure, it was good some of the time, but ultimately I was dissatisfied the majority of the time and there were too many other problems between us to ever feel content just "being" with the ex.

"S" and I have been dating for almost a whole month now. We met the night of January 2nd, so it's been four weeks exactly. Things are shifting and changing and reality is creeping in, but that's because we're inviting it. We both are eager to find out how well we do together in other situations outside of our own private row-to-hoe. We know we do so well in and out of the bedroom as just the two of us, but we also want to get a feel of ourselves as a couple in other formats... double-date... maybe a party... things that make us feel more real. We're making the private public, and we are becoming a real couple, when before we were only made of "would" and possibility.

We were supposed to have a double-date this weekend, in an effort to open the perfect little bubble we've created, but that has to be rescheduled to next weekend because of the ice storm. Last week, we opened the bubble a bit, as I let him meet my litter. The first night went fairly well, until my middle child acted out at the end of the night... getting angry at his brother as he sometimes does when he gets frustrated playing video games and then topping off the outburst by yelling "you bastard" at him. It didn't help that I let them stay up a little too long, so the meltdown continued while I tried to have them get ready for bed. There’s nothing like an angry, overtired 9-year-old boy throwing a temper tantrum to almost spoil the mood. Of course, not even sitting on a block of ice can cool the heat in these loins, so that damper didn't last long.

The next night, the same child made another vulgar stand by punching his sister full-force while we traveled to my mother's house to drop them off for an evening out together. "S" stepped up immediately and stopped it, as he's more than capable of dealing with 9-year-olds and their combative outbursts, and I pulled the van over until the outburst subsided, but it made me feel mortified that my middle child can't just behave in a civilized manner like the other two (for the most part) do. Instead, he has to be the challenger. I think he was testing everyone's limits, especially mine and this new man in my life, trying to get attention by any means and trying to find out how much he could get away with too. That moment almost spoiled my mood for that evening too, but I recovered eventually. A little time and some charming company really do wonders for my soul.

Of course it's not going to be all smooth sailing for us. We have real limits as well. A good example of that is when we went to see a movie in the middle of the afternoon last week. I didn't realize that the theater that I'd picked was right near his estranged wife's place of work... if I'd had any idea, I would have picked anywhere else at all. He didn't mention the problem and never complained, but I knew as soon as I accidentally drove past her place of work as I tried to find the theater that I'd compromised his sense of well-being for the day. And when I got to the theater and he was waiting inside for me rather than outside, I knew he really was feeling uncomfortable. And afterwards when we walked to have some tea nearby and he didn't hold my hand along the way, I knew he was feeling so guilty. And when we said goodbye and he didn't try to kiss me in the parking lot and nervously cut the hug short, I knew he was torn and filled with pain and sadness. I knew all of that, but I also wanted him to not feel any regrets.

He has no reason to hide these things. He's not having an affair, because he's officially separated and out on his own, but he still suffers from guilt. Most people would wonder why? His wife left the vows of their marriage behind ages ago, so why, after being forced out of the nest, would he still feel guilt and fear of getting caught? For the same reason that he wears his ring. If he takes it off, if he shows he's moving on, his wife will react to it and suddenly he'll have to deal with all the emotions that will boil over in that regard. It will bring them even closer to the big D, and that alone is a scary thing. I know. I've been there.

At the same time, he knows where his happiness lies. He knows that avoiding the inevitable is not going to make it hurt less. Sometimes you just need to rip that bandage off, rather than slowly and painfully working around the edges. You're going to have to deal with all of those emotions that come up anyway, but you have to ask yourself which is better: miserably dragging it out over time or dealing with it head-on all at once? He's already been mourning the loss of his relationship for nearly a year and a half now... the final bonds of trust and respect were broken that long ago. Psychologists say that it takes most people two full years to really recover and rediscover themselves after divorce... some less, some more, but two years is about average.

All I want from him is to finally put his own joy first. But first he had to find it, because if you asked him what his hopes and dreams for the future are, he really couldn't tell you. That happens when you lose yourself in a relationship. Bad relationships tend to be all-encompassing. It's like asking someone living in a third world country whose life is stricken with poverty if he/she is happy... they really don't know, because they've never allowed themselves to think about it, they only know how to subsist from day to day. It's how you learn to survive.

He's been bearing his wife's cross for far too long and when I met him he was stooping under its weight. Whenever I see him now (with the exception of the movie day last week), he stands a little bit taller each time. Life as a cuckold does not suit him. He needs to make choices of his own and feel safe doing it; he needs to have the freedom to express himself and still feel supported and respected; he needs to follow his heart and the rest will finally come easily. We all need that, but when you go without it for so long, you forget where you were going in life and get focused on surviving from day-to-day.

But once the absence of happiness is pointed out, it can no longer be ignored.

He talks less and less about the possibility of going back to his wife, and more and more about the possibility of "us" working out in the future. He now sees the big D as inevitable. He thanks me for helping him see it, but I really haven't done that work for him at all... I've just held his hand and let him take the time he needs to see things for what they are.

It's his own feelings that have done that for him, and the freedom and acceptance that I've given him to go through that process for himself. I may have my opinions and will share them with him, but I also freely point out when my opinions are being swayed by my feelings for not wanting to see him hurt and when they're being formed by a more objective perspective. And I don't disagree with all of his X2B's feelings either. I just disagree with the very egocentric way that she expresses them without taking responsibility for her own actions.

The thirty-six hours that we spent together this weekend ran the gamut of emotions and revelations. The ice storm was cathartic in many ways. It froze time long enough for both of us to examine what we both want in our lives. The outside world was cold and treacherous, but inside was safe and warm (and occasionally steamy HOT too). We held hands during the whole walk to the store and back yesterday, despite the freezing temperature and our lack of gloves... and though the ground was slippery and sometimes difficult to traverse, we never fell once during the whole journey. During some of our quiet moments of our walk, I thought about how we were helping each other so naturally and how I really didn't notice the cold at all.

It was such a grand metaphor for what I've always been seeking: the freedom to venture out into the world, the companionship to make the experience more fun, a hand to hold to steady myself or help me up if I should fall, and the reassurance that there's a whole lot of warmth to share back at home. We're both still trying to discover what our futures hold, but more and more I'm hoping that we're able to explore that together.

Bread and Soup

The stuff that dreams are made of . . .

You've been having a lot of them lately, haven't you? And they're filled with grand metaphors and upheavals, like the suppression that has long ruled your life has finally given way and your subconscious is spilling all over the place with sign after sign after sign.

The one you told me of before, while we were lying in bed together... the one where you were driving in some car with your dad and you had a 3-D map of all the states, but one of the states had a hole in it and you were trying to fill it with bread, and there was a road sign with words that were too blurry to make out... that's such a good example. It even had an actual sign for you to read.

Me: Why bread?
You: I guess that bread is money and my concern about my job.
Me: Isn't bread also food... sustenance?
You: Yes, it is, isn't it.
Me: You're in a state with a hole in it and you're filling it with something you need to exist.
You: ...Bread, sustenance, affection... you.
Me: [laughing] I'm your bread!
You: You are. You're my bread.
Me: And what kind of road sign was it?
You: Sort of a divide... a fork in the road.
Me: A choice ahead of you.
You: Yes. But why would my dad be in the car?

[...some time passes...]

Me: Didn't you tell me the other day that on the day of you were married, your dad said to you in private, "If you want to back out now, it's not too late; I have a car waiting outside," before you walked down the aisle?
You: Yes, that's true.
Me: Maybe you've finally gotten in that car?
You: [laughing] You are such a clever girl.

I haven't been having many memorable dreams at the moment, maybe because my waking life has been so dreamy of late. But recently I had a deja vu of a previously recurrent dream that I'd had over the course of most of last year.

Before I had the first dream, I had been going to bed each night and saying to myself, my subconscious, my guides, whomever or whatever was paying attention to my brainwaves, "Please show me my perfect match... my 'soul-mate'... my whoever or whatever you call it so I'll know him when I'm with him." It was a bit of a mantra I had with myself every night before visiting slumberland... a bit of an experiment to see what might happen.

What happened was the recurring dream that came back every 2 months for the whole year of 2004... maybe about 5 times total. It's been since October that I'd had the dream and it had almost slipped my mind.

In this dream, a man came to me from out of darkness, just appearing before me. I already knew him, or so it felt, but I couldn't recognize him because every time I tried to focus on his face, I instead saw my own face through his eyes. I only knew he was not much taller than me, and parts of our bodies were strangely equal in many ways, but he was definitely anatomically male. It felt as if I were meeting a masculine version of myself.

Without words, our clothes came off quickly and we made love. As he exhaled, I inhaled... and as I exhaled, he inhaled. We were in perfect rhythm... a perfect circuit. As we kissed, the circuit was complete and the orgasm became electrical in quality, with me feeling both my sensations and his. I tried to see his face many times during this beautiful dream, but all I saw of him was entirely in shadow and always quickly switched to a vision of my own face looking at him.

The dream orgasms were so strong and so real that my own moaning woke me from my deep sleep... only to find myself in a velvety flush of my own making. "Underpants soup," as I call it.

Thinking of this now makes me smile and sends an electric thrill throughout my body, into my fingertips as I type here, making me *sigh* aloud to release the charge.

I'd forgotten about this dream until this past weekend, when we were locked in a similar embrace and I looked up your face as it was half-obscured in shadow by the darkness of the room, half in candle light, but I could see that you were gazing at some far-away place in your head. In our heat and shadow, I attempted to bring you back to me by whispering, "There is nothing more perfect than this moment." Your sadness seemed to lift as you kissed me, while images of that dream flooded back into my brain.

[...interruption as cell phone rings...]

I just hung up the phone. You called me at 2AM, right at the moment that I was typing about you. The sadness in your voice made my eyes well up without even knowing why. I sensed that you desperately needed to lean on me... that if you were calling me so late it was because something had happened since last we'd spoken and it was weighing so heavily on you that you couldn't sleep.

The people who read the words that I write here cannot fully understand how hard it is to go through what you are going through right now... what I went through 5 years ago... unless they've been through it themselves. In this case, I really hope everyone could be blissfully ignorant. The power struggles and pain of a failed marriage are some of the harshest lessons in life.

I can give you pro-active advice, and I can tell you about the mistakes that I made, but ultimately my only real role is to provide you with emotional sustenance while you take the wheel and steer your own vehicle. I hope you're wearing your seatbelt. Try to read all the signs carefully. And when you need me, don't be afraid to ask me for directions. I've been there before, so I can point out all the landmarks and warn you about the bumps ahead.

I started this blog because I'd been thinking about you as usual. I hope you can get some sleep, but I imagine that it will be difficult. My insomnia started during the crumbling of my marriage and it hasn't improved over time. Now I stay up 'til the wee hours of the morning to write about you for the world to see... but mainly as a record for myself of this moment... to discover the stuff that dreams are made of.