Laugh out loud.

Just yesterday I was lamenting to myself that I don't laugh as much as I used to. I guess because the older girls have moved out and I'm pretty much alone with the Boo. Who is certainly cultivating the family sense of humor, but you know, she's nine. ROFLMAO just doesn't happen too often when there's no one to laugh with. I have always claimed that it was my lifetime of raucous, unrestrained laughter that kept me both young-looking and feeling and I may not have been far off the money. For the first time in my life I feel my age and I don't feel healthy...

But today something made me laugh out loud. Alone. In my car.

There was a car in front of me with not one, but three of these on its back window:



I'm not sure what struck me as so funny about them, but I literally barked out loud with laughter and continued to laugh until I got to 434 and then smiled while musing about it the rest of the way home.

SARAH! SARAH!! SARAH!!!!!

sheesh...

There was a day when such a sight would have made me depressed or perhaps even angry. Seems like a pretty empty, vacant threat now, though. Still, for the life of me, I can't understand what would make a person not just tolerate this woman as their prospective VP, but LOVE her. What the fuck for? Might as well be REBA! (No offense to Reba, whose political acuity I know very little about.)

But anyway, it felt good to laugh. I need laughter back in my life.

Irreverance.

Whilst lamenting the lack of time to read, I neglected to realize that I can use the time driving back and forth to work and school to listen to a book on cd. So, when I went to the library to vote this past weekend, I also browsed their books on cd and chose a biography of Mark Twain...rather than a Frank Rich book about the Bush administration. It was a tough decision - I love Frank Rich - but, I decided that my peace of mind is too valuable a commodity right now. Besides, I don't intend to waste much time lamenting the Bush administration once they're gone. Fuck those guys.

I've only just gotten through the Prologue of the book and, while I'm not enamored of the writing, I've already learned a few things about Mark Twain that I didn't know before.

Such as...
He was born two months premature.
He was close to my height - only 5'8".

One thing I was already familiar with - and that which has made me love Mark Twain - is his bluntly irreverant sense of humor and the way he uses it to comment more broadly on that which he finds hypocritical in 'civilization' in general, and 'western society' in particular.

For instance, this was what he said upon meeting the man who reviewed his first book, The Innocents Abroad, for The Atlantic Monthly (which at the time [1869] was the preeminent journal of American literary review):

When I read that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby had come white.

This may seem to be a pretty tame comment by today's standards, but coming from a disheveled, 34-year-old, unknown newspaperman while standing in the genteel offices of one of the lynchpins of east coast culture and propriety, must have been quite alarming. And as I have been pondering it off and on today, it has revealed more and more levels of commentary - on race, of course, but mostly on women and the hypocrisy of the day's expectations and taboos.
In one sentence he admits that women of the late 19th century, perhaps even married women (gasp), pursued sex with black men and that they were willing to pursue it even though the consequences could be devastating to their lives and reputations. Of course, people knew this...but they didn't talk about it. And his use of it as a metaphor for his acceptance into what he viewed as the exclusionary and hypocritical American literary establishment is so appropriate. I wonder if he rehearsed it...probably.


I do love this man.

And, as an aside, the man he made the comment to, William Dean Howells, became his lifelong friend and advocate.

atlantodidymus.

I always knew there had to be a word for it...

atlantodidymus [Gr. didymus twin]
A malformed fetus with one body and two heads.

Black Napkins.

blunder.

Overheard in the office at the end of a long, loud speakerphone conversation:

We need to keep this confidential.

Moron.

Azure.

Barack Obama comes to HappyTown.

The most significant impression I have of the Barack Obama rally here in Orlando yesterday is that everyone was happy. Happy to wait in the heat in an unbelievably long line. Happy to overpay the street vendors for t-shirts, buttons and water. Just happy to be there. Happy to have hope. For those of us way in the back of line who weren't even sure if we would make it in or not, getting inside was almost irrelevant. We were just happy to be around so many other people who have hope. To watch the droves upon droves of people arriving who were also happy to take a place at the end of the line, not knowing if they would ever make it into the rally. I think people just wanted to be able to say they were there, that at least they tried to get in. I think people think we're really going to do it this time. And I think they're right.

I've tried to stay out of the political fray throughout this election season and largely I've managed to do so. The 2004 election was just too painful, too heartbreaking. But I have to admit I'm starting to feel excited.

I am proud of Orlando and I am proud of my country and it's been many years since I have said either of those things.

Some pictures:

Ink levels are low.

I had a dream that I printed something and walked away. When I came back I had a message saying that my ink levels were low - which was odd because I had just replaced them. Then I look down at my printer (which is on the floor under my computer table) and there were hundreds of printed pages in the tray.

That's when I realized that I had printed the internet.

And there was no way to stop it.

RIP Adriana

There are moments on The Sopranos that just break my heart. This was one of them.

This show is brilliantly written. Always when you seem to be falling into complacency - a comfort zone - with the primary characters, they write in something so horrendous and chilling that it slaps you back into reality. And they are really harsh realities. And, maybe because I am a woman, they seem to be especially harsh for women. It's pretty telling though, that the same episode in which they murder Adriana for talking to the FBI, Tony lets his cousin Tony B. off the hook for also betraying the family.

I'll miss seeing her. I had grown to really like her character.

I'll have a cat unit of frozen margarita...

...but in a nice frosted glass, please...

cat unit
The amount of drug per kilogram of body weight just sufficient to kill a cat when injected intravenously slowly and continuously.

disorder of the day.

Ganser's syndrome (gan zerz) [Sigbert J.M. Ganser, Ger. psychiatrist, 1853-1931]

A factitious disorder in which the individual mimics behavior he or she thinks is typical of a psychosis (e.g., giving nonsense answers and doing things incorrectly). Although there may be amnesia, disturbance of consciousness, and hallucinations, the individual is not psychotic.

Johnnie & Joe (1957).

I heard this song on The Sopranos a couple of nights ago and I can't get it out of my head. I love the sound of this song...and the video is amusing. The stone age of lip-synching.

the word I was trying to think of...

unc·tu·ous (ŭngk'chōō-əs) adj.
1. Characterized by affected, exaggerated, or insincere earnestness.
2. Having the quality or characteristics of oil or ointment; slippery.
3. Containing or composed of oil or fat.

Scenes from a rendezvous.

My window.

thank you, Phillip...

one more day without...

Dylan 1975.

a good sound.

The sound of acorns crunching under the wheels of my bike.

breathing room.

I just finished the only exam I have this week.

No algebra class tomorrow.

Sexcation in beautiful St. Petersburg this, ehem, coming weekend.

I feel like I can take deep, bountiful breaths.

Drinking it in.

Let's party.

Debate.

Today at work, I watched in horror as one of my co-workers spoke about S. Palin's VP debate as if he were talking about a girlfriend's opening night performance in their high school's production of The Crucible.

I say The Crucible, only because I went to see my sister in a high school performance of The Crucible once, but it is appropriate in more weird ways than I feel like talking about.

Suffice it to say, I was dismayed...

She started out a little nervous, you could hear her voice quavering, but she pulled it off in the end.

Oh. Triumph.

Jesus christ. We are some fucking stupid people. Does it matter if she has any qualifications or seeming capability to be one heart attack away from the presidency?

Making it all the more surreal and brainstem severingly painful was the fact that I am almost certain this young man, my co-worker, is gay.

My world is gone. I give up. Fuck you all. And don't come whining to me when you finally fucking realize Arthur Miller was onto something.

Love,
Me.

I'm sorry...

...but, I kick ass. I really do.

Plus, I feel really good. Better than I have in many, many years.

My life, has been a long, weird, sometimes difficult road.

But, gee, I think I rock.

I'm really tired sometimes, and overwhelmed. But never doubtful.

Now, if I could just get laid I would be perfect.

Lay me. Lay me out.

Actually, that's happenin' soon, too.

I am cultivating diamond mind.

sex wears a suit.

the pussy.

More than the sum of its parts.

Prince Nico Mbarga.

Wikipedia says:

Prince Nico Mbarga (1 January 1950 – 24 June 1997) was a highlife musician, born to a Nigerian mother and a Cameroonian father in Abakaliki, Nigeria.
His music was inspired by the five years he spent in Cameroon during the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960's. He played the xylophone, conga, drums, and electric guitar in school bands and he made his professional debut as a member of a hotel band, the Melody Orchestra, in 1970.

Can you say awesome?