in which silent porno becomes the new black.

for a long time i have watched porno with the sound on. it's an extremely amusing facet of the Motion Picture Of Strangers Having Sex experience. i can't get enough of the fake grunts and the easy listening electronica. i mean, a lot of times the sounds are far more entertaining than the conventional porno acts, carried out with the required absence of interest from any of the physically fit persons on screen. i know, there are plenty of pornos out there that have Real Couples that feign attraction a lot better than the average porn star, i know this. but my local video store carries none of those excellent titles, and they're expensive to order. not worth it. so my realization was that if i turn the sound off and pick my own soundtrack from my extensive and largely scratched cd collection, the porno-viewing extravaganza becomes entirely new and different. and i don't have to worry about turning the sound down on the laptop before my neighbors hear that i'm watching a porno. somehow this is more embarrassing to me than them hearing me actually have sex, which they've indicated they have indeed heard by the Excessive Eye Contact Aversion i have been subjected to on more than one occasion.

because i'm Free-Wheeling and Spontaneous and a Risk-Taker, i'm going to try out this new porno-viewing idea, and see which i like better. of course, they may not lend themselves to comparison. it might be, you know, like comparing pasta with veggie meatballs to beans and rice. they both are filling and have roughly the same nutritional content, it's just a matter of which one you feel like cooking. but either one of those inviting dishes compared to takeout, well, they can't measure up. surely the steep price of the takeout scores big points for the homecooked meal, but when all is said and done, laziness and the desire for a Complete Meal Featuring Real Live Vegetables will always win out. but enough with elaborate and maze-like food analogies. i was talking about porno. silent porno, with absolutely No Appearances Whatsoever Of Charlie Motherfucking Chaplin. that's just gross.

in which pigeons are slightly mistreated.

when waiting for the bus i noticed a Lady holding an alternating blue and white colored umbrella, which i noticed only because it was incredibly sunny. she held it not how you hold a tool, with a light grip, you know, easy going, but how you hold a weapon. her hand clenched tightly around that handle. she was Serious. i started to get nervous, trying to calculate what i might have done to piss her off and exactly how much it would hurt to get hit with an umbrella, when 4 pigeons swooped down and started their afternoon gravel-eating session. they barely had time to fit one sweet morsel of asphalt into their dirty beaks before the Lady opened her umbrella, whose alternating blue and white colors scared the shit out of the pigeons, and they flew to the other side.

this occurrence raises a number of questions about the Lady, by which i mean 2:
1) does she really hate pigeons that much? i mean, to most people they're just a minor annoyance. they don't ever really get that close unless you're next to the pigeon lovers when they decide to unmask their stale bread crumbs right as you're walking by, which can make things a little too hitchcock-y. i wonder what may have happened to provoke such hatred. maybe nothing happened, maybe she just fell on that side of the Pigeon Love Spectrum naturally.

2) how did she figure out the umbrella trick? i wonder if she tried out various tactics, like stomping or shouting, and they all proved less effective than she desired. i wonder what that moment was like for her when she thought, 'hey, i bet if i open this ragged umbrella in their faces if it'll scare them and they'll get the fuck away from me.' and if she felt all smart and accomplished because she figured out a practical and easy way to achieve the results she wanted. i respect that, just thinking about her going through her days getting more and more irritated at the pigeons, until one day she just had to start being proactive and taking the situation into her own hands. you know, refusing to be disempowered by your experiences. and such.

another plus for her was that she automatically had Bus Boarding Shotgun. no one that i was boarding with wanted to feel the wrath of the umbrella, so we all dutifully stepped back to give the Umbrella Lady as much fucking room as she wanted.

in which my Observant Quotient sinks to new lows.

often when i'm walking alone my Observant Quotient is extremely high. i study the faces, expressions, and gestures of the people around me, sometimes with Inappropriate Interest. usually when i'm in those moods i notice people i know before they see me, and so they know i acknowledge them i try to be the first to start in with the greeting. because it's so annoying when i know someone Had to have seen me before i saw them, and they're too cool to be the first to say hi, the damn Snobby Unacknowledgers.

but sometimes i am extremely Focused. these days the Focus is centered exclusively on getting the fuck out of the cold coldness that lacerates my will to live with every step. this is when people start to think i'm a Snobby Unacknowledger, which i am, but not on purpose. it's that i'm Focused. the cold coldness has preoccupied the parts of my brain that ordinarily function to observe the people and things that make up my environment.

which is why just now, i did register that someone stepped out of that restaurant as i was walking by, but i did not have the sufficient Observant Quotient to look and see it was a...friend?...acquaintance?... those lines are so weird. i haven't figured out how to negotiate who falls into which category. remember, i'm socially awkward/inept. anyway, so when he acknowledged me, i wanted to immediately apologize for the very low Observant Quotient i had just displayed, but usually when i call attention to the things i'm completely wrapped up in people start to look at me strangely, because they hadn't noticed them at all. it was a completely nonexistent awkwardness that i'd perceived, but never the quitter, i just succeeded in creating some Anew. so i said nothing.

but i just want to let everyone know, for the record, i wasn't a Snobby Unacknowledger on purpose. for real. 'twas the cold coldness.

whereas you may feel fish sticks and indian food to be incongruous,

you would be wrong. best damn indian food in town. can't vouch for the fish sticks, though. bonus: the pac-man arcade, seductively teasing us in this here picture, functions.

in which dentists are scorned.

i've never been able to get my feeble mind to grasp why a few hours of sleep can dehydrate my body to the extent that it does. i mean, i'm just sleeping. i'm not thrashing around on a machine in a gym or hurtling myself up and down mountainous trails. so when i wake up in the middle of the night and my mouth feels like some evil dentist has had that saliva-sucky thing down my throat for 4 hours, what the fuck is that? i'm not really equipped to make the difficult decision of whether or not to get up and rehydrate myself. i'm sleepy and more incoherent than i am when i'm Alert. it's hard for me to figure out how awake i am and how awake i'll be if i extract myself from the sleepy warmness of my bed, find a cup, fill it, drink it, and climb back under the sleepy warmness. if i'm too awake after all that and it's hard to get back to sleep, it's not worth it. but then again, something really has to be done about this parched-ness. last night i sided with rehydration, which ended up with some choking on the water because my mouth, without my consent, decided it needed that water Really Badly. of course, the extra energy expended on the choking woke me up more than i had calculated, and it took me an undetermined amount of time to fall back asleep. actually, it might have only been a few minutes. but it was longer than it should have been, dammit.

in which Fluorescent Lighting predictably withers souls.

living in an urban area affords many Privileges that members of suburban or rural communities try to keep out of their lives at all costs. for instance, affordable and efficient public transit. the city i loosely refer to as Home is notorious for having overpriced and inefficient public transit, but it soars like a really patriotic-looking hawk or eagle or something above the bus system in, say, harrisonburg, va, where every single line ends at wal-mart. i think they have some deal. please tell me they have some deal.

another Privilege that i cherish in the way that you cherish a well-worn, sweet little teddy bear that has accompanied you in your slumbers since you were an incontinent toddler is the Privilege of Rarely Experiencing The Soul-Withering Intensity Of Fluorescent Lighting. not that it was always soul-withering for me personally. in my youth i had a healthy Immunity, thanks to being raised in suburbia. when i lost the spelling bee in 3rd grade for forgetting the 'a' in calendar, flickering and buzzing tubes of fluorescent goodness watched from above. when i wasn't paying attention to learning el indicativo from my freakishly eager spanish teacher, the fluorescent lights turned off and on at random, providing a much-needed light show for my daydreaming. about jesus, of course. sweet, sweet jesus. when i surrendered my time to scoop ice cream or to help people find video rentals or to fetch steak sauce and an extra baked potato for inane tourists, whenever and wherever i went out in public, it was inevitably to a morbidly obese corporation/chain, which meant fluorescent lights trailed and preceded every single fucking step i took.

but being urban means there's not as much room for multi-mega-plexy-stores, which means to procure Cereal And/Or Takeout and anything else i need i am treated to the soft brilliance of incandescent lighting. this also means that when i do have to subject my soul to withering, it withers really fast. i've lost my Immunity, so that when i had to go pick up a package from a plexy-mega-multi delivery company, i kind of freaked out as everything around me took on this impersonal, sterilized hue. i'd been submerged in a frigid tank of unconnectedness, and the people around me seemed annoyingly unaffected by it. i could do nothing but watch them have a very Serious discussion about packing tape and wonder what in the hell kept me from being able to connect with that kind of Serious discussion.

so i want to publicly apologize to the Lady behind the counter, who politely asked how she could help me. that was an extremely reasonable question, to which 'soul-withering' was not an appropriate response. next time i'll just show you, wordlessly, my ticket thing that the delivery person left on the door.

in which Environmentally Conscious takes a backseat.

by virtue of inhabiting these united states, i am an energy-consuming, globe-warming, redwood-destroying waste of space. i harbor a significant amount of guilt about this. also by the fact that i live in a place where if oil wasn't so damn hard to get off the delicate outer layers of skin, its citizens would shower with it, splash around with maniacal glee, and refer to their bathrooms as The Place Where The Lifeblood Comes Out.

to cope with this overwhelming guilt in a very non-altruistic way, i try to limit the amount of waste i personally am responsible for. often i do this slightly to excess, like when i made the Bad Choice that time i was faced with a two-week old mostly full carton of soy milk. 'but if it hasn't spoiled yet it'll be so wasteful to throw it out.' this is an example of the thoughts i think. coincidentally, this is an example of the thoughts i openly curse when my intestines explode in a fit of boiling hot rage.

another example is that for the past two years i have steadfastly and stridently refused to turn on the baseboard heaters, which are conveniently located directly below The Worst-Sealed Windows In Existence. conservative estimates place somewhere between 85-95% of the heat produced by the baseboard heaters would be used to heat Outside, which, according to the baseboard heaters, 'needs it a lot more than you do.' attempts to explain to the baseboard heaters the complexities of Outside and its relation to Inside have proved unsatisfactory. instead i have been using a very tiny space heater, which requires a body part to be positioned no more than three inches from it to be sure it's really on. this has worked out well for me, as long as i stay in the section of my apartment furthest from the windows which is separated from the other sections of the apartment by a heavy sheet hanging over the doorway, and remain huddled underneath several blankets in my bed. i affectionately refer to this situation as The Cave. as long as i'm in The Cave, i can feel both my toes and my ears at the same time. while i'm usually not very adept at dealing with being confined to small spaces, i made a decision to immolate my need to use the other 3/4 of my apartment for the sake of Environmentally Conscious. also, i'm cheap.

recently i needed to be able to use the other 3/4 of my apartment for undisclosed activities. okay, i wanted to cook. 'hey, why don't you just turn on the baseboards, just for kicks, you know? don't feel guilty, it's just an experiment, to see if they work or if the windows really do have the sucking powers of a commercial vacuum. it's okay, if it gets scary, you can always turn them off, it's really easy. all you need to do is turn that knob right there.' and so forth.

the preliminary findings of the experiment have indicated that if i turn on the baseboards just a little bit more than i have been i can have full mobility throughout my apartment. and while The Cave and i have shared many life-changing memories, i'm sure it understands my need to move on. truth be told, it was kind of verbally abusive, telling me i was a complete dumbass for never turning on the baseboards for two whole years. i really don't need to be in that kind of relationship, you know?

proof that Outside was not fucking around when it pronounced, 'i know the Big Storm was saturday, but who doesn't love a sequel?'

to inform Outside that no one loves a sequel, you may need to take a number and fill out some introductory paperwork provided via clipboard. an assortment of outdated magazines about raising children will litter the waiting area to entertain you, whether or not you have children.

in which Wardrobe Stealing is advocated. also, self-righteousness finds its home.

one of my main reasons for embarking on my journey towards Irreversible Dykedom was the prospect of broadening my wardrobe to include the clothing of my lover(s). stealing clothes is a great (read: free) way to avoid the washing of my own clothes and the (r)evolution (note mocking usage of trendy wordplay) of my Style. my Style is very important to me, in that i don't care at all what i'm wearing as long as most people in a very Scientific poll on my appearance would check the box marked Gender Ambiguous, or 'how come that guy has a pink belt and really large boobies?', or 'how come that girl's so tall and has a strange preference for collared shirts? seriously, she's wearing two.'

this extremely clever plan backfired with the Short One. whereas wearing my 'grove hill elementary' t-shirt results in the Short One appearing Relaxed, Comfortable, and Thugged Out In A Non-Thuggish Pasty Kind Of Way, wearing her frumpy v-neck sweater makes me appear as a seriously misinformed Pasty that thinks that sweater in any way can be described as Fitting Her. the wearing of the sweater generally involves a great deal of Midriff Baring and Sweater Stretching, which if the Short One found out about would start in on a 5 minute Fake-Mad lecturing session. i make concerted efforts on a daily basis to avoid said lecturing sessions, which invariably result in Private Joking. so don't tell her. for real. she doesn't know about the sweater.

once i ran out of socks and thought it prudent to steal hers, but immediately after pulling them on in a non-gentle way i padded off to the bathroom to wash my socks in the tub. the heels of her socks clandestinely lodged themselves in the arches of my feet, and it felt weird when i put on shoes. you try it. feels weird.

so as i travel the dusty and well-worn trails of Irreversible Dykedom, i will continue to search for a tall person that likes me enough to not mind when i steal hir clothing. of course i will give hir free choice of my clothing, that's only fair. but not my pink belt. thing's a classic.

those of you wishing to self-righteously hate on polyamory, you may commence to do so...now.

proof that shoelaces and spaghetti strainers can put Partisan issues aside to form a vegetable steamer.

in which Sickness is explored in breathtaking depth.

often, benign strangers will approach me and politely ask, 'kid, why is it that you never find yourself to be sick?' then those people impolitely posit various reasons for this odd phenomenon. while i'm Half-Ass Vegan (which is defined as preferring to be identified as vegan but enjoying the lusciousness of non-vegan chocolate, eggs, and cheese whenever the uterus erupts or another such emotional/intellectual/physical catastrophe is wreaked upon the body), i don't really eat anything not falling under the category of Cereal And/Or Takeout. so it's not the diet. for a while i thought i was just holding it in until i got health insurance, like i had a special Sickness Respiratory System that was holding its breath and would let it out and get sick once i started monthly laying my sacrifice at the altar of Privatized Health Care. but that happened almost a year ago, and still no sick. it's not genetics because my sister spent most of december recovering from tonsil removal surgery. she's 26. and as the Official Tonsil Removal Guide clearly states, you have to suffer from a Really High number of sinus and strep infections, back-to-back, to get them out after you've passed the age cutoff, which i believe in the united states is 11 years old. obviously i don't come from HealthyImmuneSystem stock.

i thought, 'you are a Popular Kid. you are constantly hanging out with lots of people in public places, where viruses and unhealthy levels of bacteria are known to frequent. it is impossible for you to be illness-free.' hours and one day went by, and then, i remembered. i have not been a Popular Kid since high school, when everyone's a Popular Kid because there's so many of us with nothing to do except join various clubs we don't care about so we can put them on our college applications. all in the name of capturing and claiming as our own the elusive Well-Rounded.

friends, there's no need to worry. the reason i have not been sick in 3 years is because that was the last time i Hung Out. Hanging Out makes you sick. don't believe pfizer when they try to sell you a Pre-Emptive Sickness Fighting Pill. just carefully and routinely become socially inept/awkward. worked for me.

The Asshole can't even reward loyalty right.

all i'm saying is, if i 'donated' $100,000 to the Elect The Asshole campaign, and i got invited to a special Ball for the Flagrantly Rich to celebrate being Flagrantly Rich and how the successful campaign to Elect The Asshole will only result in more Flagrant Richness, and i bought a special tuxedo/flowy dress/cowboy hat, and i had to ride the dc metro with other people that normally ride the metro, especially a hell-bound dyke protester who was determined to untie my shoe/bump into me in a violating way/step on my open-toe heels, i would be pissed. i would think, 'you know, i understand the need to take extra security measures, closing a lot of roads to traffic and thereby preventing my cab/limo/town car from reaching the ball location, but c'mon, the metro? $100,000 and i'm expected to actually handle coin change to purchase a metro ticket? don't you realize how many people that make much less money than i do touch coin change? and how they probably aren't as well-medicated as i am? i might get sick or there might be something sticky on the coin change and then i'll have Sticky Coin Change Hands. the avoidance of coin change was one of my primary reasons for beoming Flagrantly Rich... plus that dyke is really creeping me out.'

not really qualifying as Rallying the Base, there.

proof that snow has the illusory power to make Ugly things look Pretty.

in which music abruptly and with great skill changes from Friend to Maybe Slightly Less Friend.

i am an outspoken fan of electronica, techno, ambient, and the other 48 or so categories of music that are defined by the fact that they are made primarily or somewhat with the assistance of machines. no, really. i like it. if you are feeling the familiar twinges of a disclaimer, you are right. you deserve a gold star for your Astuteness and Clever-Thinking.

the interesting thing about music is the unique anti-music qualities it acquires when it travels through ceilings, walls, and floors of architecturally suspect apartment buildings. in its brave trail through decaying wood, concrete, lead paint, and mouse poo, it disintegrates into a muffled mass of monotone bassline. music made primarily or somewhat with the assistance of machines takes frequent criticism for being Repetitive, Annoying, and Demoralizing specifically in the area of basslines and/or beats. so, while i'm sure the mmmmpp-suh mmmmpp-suh downstairs is very complex, emotionally resonant, and gripping, up here it is interrupting my famously steadfast and unbreakable Train of Thought. by steadfast and unbreakable i mean that i am the easiest person to distract ever.

but while i am an asshole in many arenas of life, i'm not when it comes to music. i understand the need to listen to music, and to listen to it loudly, because most music, especially music made primarily or somewhat with the assistance of machines, sounds better when it's loud. i celebrate the downstairs music listener's love and appreciation for sound. but the vibrations are shaking the laptop, and i can't pump amy goodman's voice loud enough through the tinny speakers that were included free of charge with said laptop to compensate. she can scream all she wants about condi rice, but she just can't compete with the mmmmpp-suh mmmmpp-suh. so we'll learn to coexist. the mmmmpp-suh mmmmpp-suh will continue with all its muffled slathering of monotone bassline, and i will continue to be easily distracted, choosing to redirect any feelings of inferiority arising from my inability to work into a blog post full of disclaimers and whining. how fortunate for us all.

in which big, pretentious words henceforth become ineluctable.

when reading non-fiction, i am very Serious. i take notes not just on the conceptual level but on the vocabulary level, so that i can simultaneously broaden the word choice at my disposal and figure out what the hell the author's talking about. what's slightly pathetic is that i never use the words i write down ever again. they sit on the pages and have really intelligent conversations with one another, but never with me, because i don't care what they're talking about, they're using big words i don't understand. i feel alienated and confused, and to compensate i run out and rent finding fucking nemo, which is more at My Level. my vocabulary has not changed since i graduated high school. it still involves a large amount of cursing, and no words that i've ever found in books have been able to capture the unique essence of a well-placed 'fuck.'

to justify this waste of ink and paper, i will start using the words i learn from donna haraway and/or ann coulter on a daily basis. this almost certainly guarantees that they will infiltrate these blog posts, which almost certainly guarantees that someone, somewhere, perhaps that lone reader in the uk, will think i am a pretentious piece of shit. i'm okay with that, but it's not about manufacturing alienation, confusion, or disgust. it's about learning another, more creative way to say, 'hey, i'm just keeping it real.' or 'wow, i am amazed at how i've managed not to seriously harm myself as a direct result of my overflowing cup of stupidity.'

in which an Earnest attempt is made to behave Appropriately in public.

before attending dinner with a dinner date and after spending 30 minutes preventing several off-leash mongrels from consuming an entire loaf of bread and the contents of a large bag of potato chips, i stopped back by my house to pick up some Things that would be beneficial to have post-dinner date for use with the dinner date. i reminded myself, 'it's cool. you are good at being stealthy and discreet. no one will know the contents of your opaque shopping bag which holds the Things which will be beneficial to have post-dinner date for use with the dinner date.'

often i am delusional. i am neither stealthy nor discreet, as evidenced by how loudly i laugh, by how forgetful i am of things that require stealth and discreetness, and by my gargantuan limbs, which enable me to type this entry while my body is in another room. i know this already. once i accidentally outed my friend to the entire population of people that knew said friend's parents and therefore could have potentially outed said friend to said friend's parents, because i forgot said friend's gay gayness was a secret. this resulted in my complete ignorance of any secrets ever again about said friend or any friends that attained knowledge of the incident involving said friend, which of course was completely justified.

however, my stealth and discreetness seem to have been taking vitamins, because recently they have been much more noticeable, in a stealthy and discreet way. okay, that was a complete lie. but i felt i could pull this off. really, i did. i'd taken all the common sense precautions, like picking the opaque shopping bag instead of the ridiculously transparent blue shopping bag. i'd made an informed choice. or rather, i made the uninformed choice but then caught myself halfway down the stairs when i glanced at the bag and the Things which would be beneficial to have post-dinner date for use with the dinner date smiled and waved at me in all their silicone glory. i retreated, switched to the opaque shopping bag, and that was precisely when i made an informed choice.

the flagrantly stupid choice was when i took my shoes off to join the dinner date at the table in a sushi restaurant where you have to take off your shoes to sit at the table, and i plopped the opaque shopping bag on the floor right next to my shoes and an empty table leaving it Wide Open so that Later, When Two People Entered The Restaurant And Sat Down At The Empty Table They Both Had An Excellent View Of The Contents Of The Opaque Shopping Bag. as did the waiters, most of the kitchen staff, and the father who had just picked up his two kids from their mother's house and was taking them out for a treat, because of my near-perfect choice to place the opaque shopping bag next not only to the empty table, but also next to the mini-staircase that leads to the no-shoes area.

at least the waiter didn't charge us for the tea, probably thinking the entertainment we inadvertently provided was worth about that much.

documentation of inhumane treatment.

in which being a godless freak backfires.

so, i got this book by ann coulter. i know. i know everything that you want to tell me about my very poor reading selection. i know there's only so many books i can read in my lifetime, and that it's a disgrace to reinaldo arenas and donna haraway that i sandwich right-wing propaganda in between their masterpieces. i know all this.

by way of explanation: i spent a lot of time in the good ol' days of my rampant involvement with the southern baptist church trying to avoid thinking, discussing, or reading anything deemed 'bad' by the southern baptist church. this didn't really serve me all that well, in retrospect. so when i caught myself agreeing with the point made in an article saying that the current administration's promise of aid to indonesia is just a ploy to cozy up to the muslims there, to 'win their hearts and minds,' i got scared. because, aid is aid, and the people need it, and really, who the fuck cares if they try to buy people off, it can't actually be done. i was embarrassed by the depths of my cynicism, embarrassed that i made something that really isn't all that political into a piece of evidence to file under 320 in the dewey decimal system of my brain listed as 'reasons to abnormally and excessively loathe the right.' i'm a vigilant hater of slipping into mental habits. in this case, it's where any information that i am given is scanned to see how the right is fucking someone over. it's no different from assuming everything i learn proves that people are godless freaks or that god is an awesome god. it hurt me to write that last sentence. flashbacks of singing in rounds with other pasties.

so that's why ann coulter. my seclusion from all things tv related and from all things bill o'reilly related has kept me out of the right-wing loop, so i didn't know which right-winger to choose. i figured, 'fuck, they're all probably the same, right?' again my ignorance rises up to teach me that i am a person of much ignorance. i wouldn't want conservatives reading arianna huffington to get an example of how lefties think, and it seems i chose the arianna huffington of the right. not to be hating on arianna huffington, i'm sure she's great, noble, and brilliant at lots of things, but she doesn't really present well-documented and well-thought out arguments, from what i've read, which is 1/2 of one book, so i am not an Authority on anything, least of all arianna huffington. i'd want righties to read any column written in the last three years by naomi klein, or listen to five minutes of anything that noam chomsky has ever said. you know, solid, real thought based on facts and shit. ann coulter can't really offer anyone that. i could go on about her really poor word choices, her blatant racism, and other reasons that she induces not anger but sadness in me, but that would be preaching to the converted, and i've already covered how i'm not equipped for positions of Authority.

the search continues for the noam chomsky of the right. and just so no one gets scared, i didn't pay for it. ann coulter in no way profited from my poor reading choice. swear. and yes, i made sure all my vaccinations were up to date first.

proving my extreme ignorance on all things falling under the category of Science.

i really don't see how it's Evolutionarily Beneficial for humans to have armpit hair. we started wearing clothes a long time ago, and most of the fibers we've been using for that time stretch have tended to keep moisture in, not Wick-It Away like the expensive outdoorsy outfits do. (what constitutes Wicking Something Away? what is Wicking? why did we let being outside morph into a leisure activity for the privileged?) when i sweat, my shirt gets wet in the armpit area, as do the armpit hairs, and usually at this time of year i am sweating because i am moving, not because it is warm outside. the cold coldness of the air then aerates around the wet area, and i start to shiver. sweating and shivering.

this makes for an inefficient Body Heat Regulation System. not that i'm hating on bodies, and especially not mine. i'm astounded by its adeptness, agility, and the ease in which it makes sure i have no need to know anything about what's going on with the complex operations it carries out. so i can think about other things, like uppity liberals or ridding baltimore city of french fry fanatics. that's why this is all so confusing, this oddly unproductive wetness in the armpit area. maybe i'm not supposed to be wearing cotton, but did animal wrappings really have any Wicking action? why the armpit hair? why the armpit moisture production that emanates from the armpit hair? alternating cycles of sweating and shivering aren't really doing much to promote homeostasis, just repeatedly sampling two extremes, so that i won't forget what it feels like to sweat, and then what it feels like to shiver.

for the record, body, i already know what it feels like. let's work together on this homeostasis thing. it's the new black.

hindsight...

when the people at the Palace of Processed Food print in bold on the box, 'generously grease the bottom of a 13x9x2 inch oblong pan,' and you know they spent extra cash to put that bold print in there, and it's not the name brand Palace of Processed Food, it's the 'ginger dunn deluxe' brand (and who the fuck are they), and the drawings on the box are such that it had to be an employee's amateur artist cousin or uncle that designed the damn thing for free, so it's clear they're trying to cut costs, but they still felt it was important enough to tell you about how you need to grease the pan, they're really not fucking around about greasing that pan.

baltimore: the city with Beloved and Well-Populated 'parks.'

a personality observation. Not To Be Misunderstood As A Confession.

before we go any further, i want to be sure everyone understands this (note superfluous dramatic buildup): i am a Hypocrite. not in a way that provides acquaintances and immediate family members material with which to gossip about me once or twice a week, and not in a way that lends itself to Harmless Teasing. i am a Hypocrite in a way that no one is able to even think about forming a sentence that would constitute Harmless Teasing, or Weekly Gossip for that matter, because the rushing tides of bitterness and resentment that would be unleashed would quickly become both Inappropriate and Embarrassing For Both Parties Involved. i divulge this not out of guilt, because one who is a Hypocrite quickly rationalizes one's own hypocrisy, just as quickly creates a non-prejorative use of the word, and even employs 'synonyms' for the non-prejorative use of the word such as Multi-Faceted, Complex, and Flexible. i divulge so that besides Hypocrite, an adjective which i agree should appear next to my name on all official documents and be attached to my physical body, the adjectives Liar, UnSelf-Aware, and Unwilling To Admit To 'Negative' Aspects Of Self will not be unjustly affixed to my black jacket and/or bike messenger bag. it's all about fairness.

to take this discussion out of the abstract and to ensonce it safely in the Real, an example:

yesterday when Crossing The Street, ignoring the foreboding solid red hand signal that advocates not Crossing The Street, i noticed a person inside a car honking at me and speeding up as though desiring to hit me. i thought to myself, 'stupid fucking driver. it's cold, doesn't she know that pedestrians have right of way all the time when it's cold because drivers are warm in their cars and pedestrians are exposing themselves to the cold coldness? it's just a rule.'

later, when it was dark, therefore making the cold coldness even colder, i found myself driving, somewhat against my will. a pedestrian engaged in Crossing The Street in front of my car right about the same time the light had turned green, and the pedestrian made eye contact with me. i openly glared at him thinking, 'stupid fucking pedestrian. can't he see that the light has turned green and that it's my turn to go? the light: green. his pedestrian sign: a big red fucking hand. it's just a rule.'

nature vs. humans: humans always lose.

worse than conservatives devoid of critical thinking skills.

are liberals who think they are better than everyone else. by 'better,' they generally mean smarter. can often be spotted smoking their beloved Countercultural(TM) Rolled Cigarettes. are usually white and male and heterosexual. pc to a fault, professing respect and appreciation for people and their Struggles, but act with outward disdain toward actual human beings. enjoy affixing the label Feminist to their black jackets and bike messenger bags, but see no conflict of interest in affixing their eyes to any and all pairs of boobs. refuse to acknowlege that they participate in and profit from the institutions of racism, sexism, and heterosexism. scoff at The Masses and at those who shop at wal-mart, but engage any listener (or 'listener') in their rehearsed tirade against bush's economic policies that create massive job loss, requiring people to search for the lowest prices. support affirmative action but avert the eyes of any person of color that passes them in the street for fear that they will be mugged or asked for money. view all bush voters as lower life-forms, but have never actually spoken with one. excel at abstract thinking but experience massive mental electrical shortages when attempting to apply their theories to real-life situations. enjoy questioning authority, The System, and The Status-Quo, but are incapable of self-awareness or reflection. have an overwhelming need to be The Expert, and go to great lengths to prove that they are the foremost authority on climate change, workers' rights, and the wto. actually believe it was because they were the most qualified when chosen for jobs, for positions of leadership, or as authority figures. relish in deeming words or actions Offensive, completely oblivious to the fact that it is their privileged mindset that produces the notion that they are able to decide what is Offensive, or that anyone gives a flying fuck what they think is Offensive. prone to bouts of Self-Doubt, Frustration At The System, and Righteous Indignation. regularly plagiarize and regurgitate the research, ideas, and beliefs of others more talented than they, especially if said more talented individuals are of color, women, or queer.

the final Resting Place for the four glasses i have broken in the past three weeks.

r.i.p. glasses. thanks for lodging in the heel of my foot. and for cutting my fucking hand.

dear sir,

thank you for grunting to indicate that it was okay for me to sit next to you. i understand that it was early and you didn't feel alert enough to reply with actual words. it also was an effective way to communicate your displeasure with both my request and my existence, while consenting to both.

i don't know if you were aware of this, but immediately following your response, i actually sat down in the seat. or, to be more accurate, i sat down in the three-inch triangle that was not occupied by your left leg. i congratulate you on your large penis thereby requiring the 180 degree angle of your knees. however, i promise you that nothing potentially life-threatening will happen if you close your fucking legs enough so that i can maneuver one full butt cheek onto the seat. my ass is compact, fits neatly in most carry-ons, and would not demand that your legs face in the same general direction.

please move your goddamn leg.


thank you.

preaching to the converted.

on water-hating.

i am a kid of many phases, but the most recurrent and annoying is the one in which drinking anything that can be classified as water becomes an act of inbibing liquid torture. this is also a financially unwelcome phase, because juice, coffee, and tea are all products more expensive than water in fair baltimore. and i try, i really try, to trick myself into drinking water through covert techniques like swallowing mouthfuls in the shower or adding water to cups of juice. one should never water down coffee. but in the end i simply have to wait it out until that one night when as a result of being both cheap and afraid of translucent liquids i wake up severely dehydrated and unable to pry my mouth open. then i squirt an entire gallon of water through a syringe into the crevices between my lips. it's like that scene in one of the Best Movies To Show Five Year Olds To Scare The Shit Out Of Them, wizard of fucking oz, when they have to oil the tin man's lips. except with water. then i'm cured.

an ancient Pasty coming-of-age ritual.

intervention.

folks, one of us has fallen asunder. i mention this not to initiate in Private Joking, which is still not cool, but to break the silence and, hopefully, to start the healing process. maybe some of you can relate to this and find comfort in knowing that You Are Not Alone. maybe some of you have loved ones with this condition, and you also can find comfort in knowing that You Are Not Alone. in either case, someone needs to address this pertinent and important issue.

french fries are classified in the Food Guide Pyramid as 'fats, oils, and sweets.' the Pyramid recommends that Most People should consume these foods sparingly. in that section of the Pyramid, there's not even a picture of french fries, or any other fat, oil, or sweet, so negligible their consumption should be. in other sections of the Pyramid, there are happy pictures of carrots and bananas and loaves of homemade bread. 'fats, oils, and sweets' only get little orange and blue dots. this is to indicate that they at the Food Guide Pyramid Center are really serious about 'sparingly.'

you are Most People.

i say this not to micromanage your food consumption, because that would be both Evil and Wrong. i say this because you are not Invincible, and you experience infrequent but not insignificant Chest Pains. you are 24 years old. you should not be experiencing Chest Pains.

when you are eating a sandwich that you acquired from a pizza restaurant that does not serve french fries, and you drop an onion into the box, and you forget about that onion, and you look at it in the poorly-lit car in which you are eating, and you drop your sandwich, pick up the onion, and exclaim 'fry! score!', this is Not Healthy.

'sparingly' does not mean 'thrice weekly.' 'sparingly' most likely means something more akin to 'once a month, twice a year, or never.'

another Pasty custom involving loud private conversations and an obliviousness to people with cameras.

what i wish i said instead of 'you too, thanks.'

'it's not that i'm rude to strangers or that i don't like you, it's that i cannot physically force my mouth to form the words, much less produce the vocal chord vibrations, that would be audible to you as "happy new year." i've tried, really, been to speech therapy and everything, and The Coach gave up on me. it's on my Record that my consuming dislike for the holiday and all its accoutrements will forever prevent me from speaking that particular phrase. i apologize for my abhorrent lack of ability to participate in benign social greetings. thank you for your time.'

synagogue: 1891-1960. masonic temple: 1960-present.