scandalous scandinavia

i'll admit it, i'm presently obsessed with vikings. subsequently, i've been reading up on scandinavia. yesterday, i was strangely fascinated when i noticed that scandinavia's wiki was under dispute. mini-modern-marauding? i felt i had to share this news, spread a bit of passionate interest in information to the world, and so i told um maybe three people to go look at the page. wouldn't you know it, the very next day they settled the dispute and removed the under-dispute tag on the wiki. i seem to be an agent of peace and accord, but you can review the history of this small war on the talk page.

even more moving than the heated debate on finland, was my complete revelation that scandinavia is unarguably shaped like a penis.

the more we get together

please stop hurting.

rebus loves me this i know

i went to sea in search of vikings

King of Chalices ~ The Fey Tarot
"With maturity, emotions do not vanish but become more removed and deeper. Just as waves in the sea are more difficult to see** when the sea is deep, so are the great emotions of the king. They run deep but envelope every fibre in his body."

sans maturity, that seems to be more of the same*. perhaps i should set my sights higher.

mountain men?

http://www.hikeclub.co.uk/

*"Originating in the 1830s, hunting dogs in the United States were often fooled when chasing after small animals like raccoons. The small creatures would climb up one tree, then jump to another...leaving the hound to mislead his master into thinking they were in the right place." it appears that barking up the wrong tree is a truly american slang, only in the united states are our dogs this easily confused?

**"Please slow it down/There’s a secret magic password/That you only notice when you’re looking back at it/And all I wanna do is turn around/I'm going down to sleep on the bottom of the ocean/Cause I couldn’t let go of the water at the setting sun/Cause I couldn’t let go of the passing moment gone." white daisy passing, rocky votolato.

the bees knees

bees do not have knees. go look up that expression for me, gentle reader. share it with others via a comment.

i am eating hot chocolate so-called because it is supposed to be hot and it is a chocolate bar. it's nothing compared to some chili chocolate i brought home from montreal. i want that chocolate--chocolate so hot i could only take one small bite a sitting, and i needed to drink water. that's the kind of chocolate that burns one into feeling they have a heart still.

i'm listening to my favorite artist, ill lit, right now. i must share my favorite words. now.

and you've got your endurance, make sure that it's working.
stay a little longer, show her you're worth it.
the list of understandings and
arguments is inside.
well, every hip girl i know these days likes
suicide.

i was beat with an elder stick, crooking my neck but i grew it thick.
there's always fog at this height.
with all the ghosts you swear
you need the ones condemning who you'll be. i'll be the one setting them
free but you can't tell them from me.

break yourself, it won't hurt a bit.
even always cold, you're never used to it.
and all the weather's for you to help you adore her.

i miss your understanding.
and all we have is this time.
you told me everything
that i believe will save me tonight.

i can't think of a line ... except maybe that andrew bird one ... that hits me harder than "break yourself, it won't hurt a bit". i am not sure why, it doesn't seem that complicated nor half as pretty as the elder stick lyric, another favourite. but i guess i want more people to break themselves.

the heartlock

Jonathan: maybe you're looking for the wrong thing from men.
Gwendolyn: i guess.
Jonathan: obviously you need physical contact from people. so first and foremost, take up wrestling.
Gwendolyn: k
Jonathan: secondly, you need people to talk about their feelings, so join a support group for wrestlers and the people who love them.
Jonathan: finally, you need some mental stimulation. so start a scrabble club within the support group for wrestlers and the people who love them.

todd, you're brilliant...

i wouldn't give a fuck but the love here is such a long walk

preface: this post is not at all educational or entertaining. if you visit bluestockingism for such things (and i really hope you do), please come back soon.

it's thanksgiving and although i am not sitting alone in a cold, dark room all day, i am struggling to remember to be thankful. aww, winnie the cat just made himself more comfortable and stretched a paw over my thigh. this is one reason i think there could be a god--moments of self-pity inevitably interrupted by the smallest of graces.

i'm sad today. i don't have any sense of family much anymore, and it makes me feel very lonely. someday i'll sit down and write my "i'm not all shits and giggles" post about some of the issues in my family, but not today. today it suffices to say holidays where everyone goes off to be with their families make me feel a little empty inside, and i begin to miss not only this family that isn't working out but everyone through the years that felt like family. i'm tired by things that end or fail.

i'm tired of things that fail to meet expectations. i have to say i am thankful that in a few minutes i'll be going out to dinner with my friend Allstar (the one with the bird in her apartment, for you regular readers). i love Allstar. both of us have had lives where people from a very young age have not met even the most basic of expectations, and we learned to take care of ourselves and of others. yet, people can still let us down. sometimes i think it would be wise to switch to being one of those people without expectations and who can't ever be let down, but i haven't figured out how to achieve that without giving up something i feel quite integral to my sense of self -- caring. in the meantime, i try to live up to and exceed the expectations of anyone that bothers to form some real ideas of how i can contribute to their life. Allstar has some good ideas of how i fit in, and i of her. so i have a best friend again, and i appreciate the opportunity to try hard.

so here's to my cat and to Allstar (and to evan for writing, and to everyone of the regular crew who i know had a passing thought of me today, and to the person i'll brave the cold for, and to the stranger who called to make sure i wasn't sitting alone in a cold, dark room): happy thanksgiving.

told you so friday: i am not polish

people often try to tell me i am polish, they either tell me that my facial features or my last name marks me as polish. my father is named stan, and i have never really met anyone named stan who is not polish. but ever since a very lovely polish girl, who came from poland to chicago, once gave me a facial and told me i wasn't polish-looking i've always scoffed at these attempts to pinpoint my rich and complicated ancestry. it's not my nature, however, to scoff without really knowing. so how rich and how complicated is my ancestry?

it seems natural to begin this quest through a simple process of elimination combined with an examination of what i do know about my family. hmm, i don't really know much about my family since my paternal grandparents died before i was born and my dad doesn't talk about his family or um anything really. my mother says we have a genealogy in the basement somewhere but it's buried amidst the piles of her obsessive-compulsive disorder and she won't let me go digging. she says it says we're prussian. fuck...prussia hasn't existed for a really long time and it was very, very big. so let's go back to poland. wait, where is poland*? for a better answer to that question than i could ever give, might i suggest you check out a copy of "A Polish son in the motherland: an American's journey home" by my colleague Leonard Kniffel from your local library.

let's try this again. my last name is a Variant of eastern German Prillwitz, a habitational name from places so named in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. if you check out that link you'll see how in 1920 my clan was concentrated in ... wisconsin! given that right before the turn of that century 1 out of 3 mecklenburgers emigrated, it would seem likely some of my relatives were part of the mass exodus.

did you see how my ancestors were known as mecklenburgers? we shall now briefly detour back to wisconsin to talk about burgers, because you know i can never go too long without thinking about my belly. read a whopper-sized history of the hamburger here, or just skim the excerpt below:

1885 - Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, Wisconsin, at the age of 15, sold hamburgers from his ox-drawn food stand at the Outagamie County Fair. He went to the Outagamie County Fair and set up a stand selling meatballs. Business wasn't good and he quickly realized that it was because meatballs were too difficult to eat while strolling around the fair. In a flash of innovation, he flattened the meatballs, placed them between two slices of bread and called his new creation a hamburger. He was known to many as "Hamburger Charlie." He returned to sell hamburgers at the fair every year until his death in 1951, and he would entertain people with guitar and mouth organ and his jingle:

Hamburgers, hamburgers, hamburgers hot; onions in the
middle, pickle on top.

Makes your lips go flippity flop.

The town of Seymour, Wisconsin is so certain about this claim that they even have a Hamburger Hall of Fame that they built as a tribute to Charlie Nagreen and the legacy he left behind. The town claims to be "Home of the Hamburger" and holds an annual Burger Festival on the first Saturday of August each year. Events include a ketchup slide, bun toss, and hamburger-eating contest, as well as the "world's largest hamburger parade."

i am proud to have called wisconsin home, i imagine the hamburger is too. and maybe this foolish quest for my roots need go no further, might i be satisfied with my kindred, meaty brethren and ketchup slides?

no. i want to tell you more about mecklenburg. actually i just want you to read that history because it will tell you about the university in 1419, the adoptions of many different official religions, the numerous divisions and reunifications of my motherland, and the land lendings and occupations. but what is the best part about mecklenburg? this!

Mecklenburg was occupied in the sixth century by the Wends, a Slavic people. The Mecklenburg dynasty was established in the 1100s when the Wendish ruling family accepted Christianity and German domination.

i rule!

from now on, please address me as mare vendicus. i own finland too. i wanted to find myself and instead i found an empire.

* i'd intended to skip sharing polish lore, since as you now know, i am not polish. but i was reading about poland and this guy casimir (the last king of a purely polish state and the adopted last name of someone ... pole ... where was i ) and the polish people in general, when i came across this gem: "Their women, when married, do not commit adultery. But a girl, when she falls in love with some man or other, will go to him and quench her lust. If a husband marries a girl and finds her to be a virgin, he says to her, "If there were something good in you, men would have desired you, and you would certainly have found someone to take your virginity". Then he sends her back, and frees himself from her. " ouch, that's a double-edged sword if i ever!

can you hear what my watch is saying?

well shucks, that did not work. i am having a bad day and i wanted to talk to someone. it seemed briefly like it could be a good time.

guess what! i think i finally have a missed connection that applies to me. i doubt me in particular because i usually ride the bus. but i am wearing the same pants as last night and they are jeans, how sensible is that.

big butt blonde girls - m4w - 30

---

Reply to: anon-108175459@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-11-01, 3:42PM CST


Each and every delicious one of you.

To hell with the skinny executive wannabe too-perfectly-made-up Clark/Division snobs, the bitchy bovine Depaul girls getting on at Fullerton, the hipster queens at Belmont with their gigantic sunglasses -- no thanks.

No, it's you with the shy eyes and slightly unsteady walk, thick gorgeous thighs longing to be caressed straining against the sensible pants you were wearing last night (you have no idea how hot you made me) blonde hair cute sweet open face begging to be kissed.

You know who you are. Bring that big butt over here and say hello.

this is in or around red line

too close for comfort

too close for comfort was a television show from 1980-1983. an actress from the warriors (our halloween costume inspiration, see below), who in the warriors had "a mattress strapped to her back", starred in this television series. the series also featured the cosmic cow. check out bob's comment on cows.

later that night, the high hats grow in numbers!

we were the baddest gang in town for one night, but now it's time for something even scarier! this marks the official end of scary disclosure week. it's been great and i think i will definitely be a more reliable blogger henceforth. i feel safe in saying once a week. but to provide a fittingly stunning conclusion to sweepsweek, i've decided to do something a little scary and a little special.


today's special was also a television show during my formative years (1981-1987). it was in fact my favorite childhood show of all time. i will at some point in the future explore my fondness for movies, shows and books about mannequins come to life. for now, my point is served by mentioning that i loved muffy and muffy loved cheese and i love cheese and this is most likely why my leg is not broken (also note sam has a cat named penelope). today's special was canadian, and speaking of broken...

i have a new friend, his name is ed. ed is funny, this is demonstrated by his saying the following: "i was concerned though that you saw my red button....and that it was actually a red wall with a red circle and a line through it." you might not get it, but trust me that it is brilliant. ed has someone that he wants back, and i hope that he gets her and that she treats him better too. in my humble opinion, people do not tell each other often enough they are being idiots when they are walking away from something good. we tell each other this when we are holding onto something bad or someone who doesn't want to be held onto, but who's there on the other side saying "hey don't be a dingbat, look at what you've got!" wendy, that's who. so girl, you should think. ed has some work to do, but i think he's willing to try. people who try are in my good books.

ed is imperfect, as we are all. he had a zine made about him to immortalize his transgressions. it is called "goodbye ed" and the author has a cat named wendy. if you read "goodbye ed" and your name is wendy you might feel very odd when the narrator remarks mid-zine "wendy, whatever should i do?". you might scream out, "holy heck, this zine is talking to me!". you might think it's like that time in the voyage of the dawn treader (your favorite in the series) when the painting comes to life, or like that time when you were reading house of leaves (your favorite novel to date) and you noticed three times that "pieces" was substituted for "pisces" and you felt the author?narrator?house? wanted to tear your piscean self to pieces*, or like that time in south park when cartman pitches the idea for the crab people...alright that last instance isn't relevant, it just allows me to link to metareference and to segue into a discussion of a certain cancer.

"Cancer is a class of diseases characterized by uncontrolled cell division and
the ability of these cells to invade other tissues, either by direct growth into
adjacent tissue (invasion) or by migration of cells to distant sites..."

everyone who is smarter than i might know that cancer is actually the same basic disease whereever it strikes a body and that we call cancers "heart cancer" or "breast cancer" simply on the basis of where the disease is first discovered and diagnosed in the body. i learned this when i researched cancer after precancerous cells appeared simultaneously in my dojo and under my armpit.

i've been obsessed with a cancer for many years, and some new cancers too that strike up the same old disease. it's like the time my sophomore year of college when i kept getting stung by bees. that was the only year of my life i was ever stung by a bee and it happened three times over a couple of months. each time i was stung anew, the site of the old sting would react as well leaving a track of swollen parts. i welcome a medical explanation or refutation of this phenomena.

last night i spoke for forty minutes with a cab driver while sitting outside of my house after a day visiting with ed. i saved $4 on the fare as a result of sharing banter. in my case, i guess talk does come cheap. the conversations of the day and evening left me with a complicated mix of emotions. ed's discussion of his obsession of course encouraged me to think of my own. then i met a cab driver who insisted post-dialogue, that i was "smart, hot, a role model for all the women of chicago." i asked him to share this PSA with the men of chicago, or of the world (dum dum dum). keep in mind this cab driver thinks that hillary clinton is the hottest woman alive. the cab driver was nice and he asked me out. i was not interested. good thing too as he doesn't believe in love or marriage. i do.

the cabbie, a non-native speaker, endeared himself to me completely when he talked about how "putting all his eggs in one basket" really hurt him when "things started to go south" in that relationship. i love idioms you might notice. he said he never wanted to be hurt like that again. it seems i have heard this information from men before. i have also heard from men, quite a few men, that the only woman they've ever really loved was someone who was 1) suicidal/really screwed up/abused/abusing drugs, and 2) sexually unresponsive. interesting. it seems i have so little hope for love on so many counts. i'm not bitter at the moment, i just do wonder sometimes if i am too keen on being happy (note not necessarily happy, but aspiring to it), healthy (in terms of sex at least, i should eat less hotdogs and jump around more), and an equal in economic, intellectual and emotional wealth. rubbish, i am not paying attention to the right sorts i presume.

more important than that, as i can't really help being who i am and i don't think it seems at all smart to try to be more screwy, i don't want to be someone who stops trying because i've been hurt. i have been hurt 4.5 times now. i have little inclination at the moment to get to know more about people because i am scared. someday i need to get over this. in the meantime, i will let other people get to know all about me...because scary disclosure "week" was ONLY THE BEGINNING.

muhahahahahahaha! happy halloween,bonhomies.

*if you read the wiki on house of leaves, you'll notice under "typographical and spelling errors" that the pisces mistake is listed and that it does indeed occur three times. when i wrote my comment above i had not yet searched wikipedia for the novel but recalled the three references from memory. they honestly scared the shit out of me. i also from memory recall the inclusion of the definition of uncanny.

these boots were made for walking, these fingers for talking

this is my leg. this is my leg on stairs.


one week ago i fell down my back stairs as i was walking, in sensible shoes, down to put my laundry into the dryer. it was raining. my knee also has a large bruise and a scab. this is less remarkable than my shin shiner as my knees are bruised about 70% of the time. i fall down a lot. so much so that a mean friend might say that:

falling down is "pulling a wendy"

did you know that more than 8% of the u.s. population may suffer from restless leg syndrome (an overwhelming urge to move the legs usually caused by uncomfortable or unpleasant sensations in the legs)?! my leg is currently uncomfortable and suffering from unpleasant sensations but it is also apparently unbreakable. yes, i just had to go there.

go where, you ask? maybe you didn't follow that link. my decision to use so many links in these blog postings has been questioned by well-meaning readers. to this i respond

i am a gateway drug

i really don't mind if people navigate away from my blog.

"Admittedly it is an outer husk: its face, in all its featureful perfection of imperfection, is its fortune: it exhibits only the civil or military clothing of whatever passionpallid nudity or plaguepurple nakedness may happen to tuck it self under its flap.

Yet to concentrate solely on the literal sense or even the psychological content of any document to the sore neglect of the enveloping facts themselves circumstantiating it is just as hurtful to sound sense (and let it be added to the truest taste) as were some fellow in the act of perhaps getting an intro from another fellow turning out to be a friend in need of his, say, to a lady of the latter s acquaintance, engaged in performing the elaborative antecistral ceremony of upstheres, straightaway to run off and vision her plump and plain in her natural altogether, preferring to close his blinkhard s eyes to the ethiquethical fact that she was, after all, wearing for the space of the time being some definite articles of evolutionary clothing, inharmonious creations, a captious critic might describe them as, or not strictly necessary or a trifle irritating here and there, but for all that suddenly full of local colour and personal perfume and suggestive, too, of so very much more and capable of being stretched, filled out, if need or wish were, of having their surprisingly like coincidental parts separated don t they now, for better survey by the deft hand of an expert, don t you know?

Who in his heart doubts either that the facts of feminine clothiering are there all the time or that the feminine fiction, stranger than the facts, is there also at the same time, only a little to the rere? Or that one may be separated from the other? Or that both may then be contemplated simultaneously? Or that each may be taken up and considered in turn apart from the other?"

isn't that brilliant, intriguing and perhaps orchidal? it is a re-translation into english of a japanese translation of finnegans wake by james joyce. i really think you should read every last bit of that most recently linked item, hark that siren's call sirs.

in another odyssey, our halloween as the high hats was an amazing adventure. stay tuned for the pictures.

postscript: i could look into ways to list what i'm currently listening to. in case you're curious it is pavement's "stop breathin'" off the record crooked rain. write it on a postcard. did you know that my father is named stan and my sister is named penelope? did you know that the boy i try not to be obsessed with once made posts about love & lust in libraries and going to see a stars concert with a girl named penelope? if you like reading about individuals equally obsessed with fate-based self-identity, might i suggest you check out what my book group recently read.

told you so friday: here you go way too fast

told you so friday: celebrating my right to be right each and every week

you might have noticed how earlier this week i remarked that the world is moving too fast, i am right. while not everyone may be as sensitive as i am to have recognized this fact, we're all currently moving faster. in the words of Mr. T Experience, don't slow down you're gonna crash.

it's all relative*

around its own axis the earth is spinning on average over 1000 miles per hour, fastest at the equator and slowing to near nothing (linearally) at the poles [we're also rotating around the sun at roughly 18 miles per second all while our entire solar system is moving at a velocity of 155 miles per second around our galaxy]. as long as we're moving at a nearly constant velocity, we feel nothing because our bodies actually sense accelerations or changes in velocity. do you know that we're speeding up? i do.

because our path around the sun is an ellipse, the speed of the earth varies throughout the year. our speed is fastest when we're closest to the sun (the perihelion) and slowest when we're farthest (aphelion). the aphelion occurs in july (no wonder cancers can seem so distant), and currently we're speeding up toward our highest velocity in january. i'd like to write a love poem to my perihelion, but i haven't met him yet. in the meantime, take a look at my analemma, and no this has nothing to do with seepage.



the analemma is the great big figure 8 etched by the sun in the sky. if you read more about it, you'll learn about the equation of time and how the sun drifts around helter skelter, and you'll learn that at certain times of the year there will be an 8 minute difference between your watch and the position of the sun in the sky. which tells you how utterly foolish it is to wear a watch, and may explain why i've been thinking so much about the white rabbit lately. whatever is a girl to do in this topsy-turvy world?

fall back

remember to turn your clocks back on sunday, at least those of you that live in my same temporal reality. when i was wee i trusted daylight savings time quite implicitly, i also thought that summer seemed to move so slow [this is because i was a nerd and eager to return to my studies, and because time is moving slower in summer as we know...so there]. i know now that DST should not hold the faith of a little girl, controlled as it is by old men. it's entirely complicated as to whether we're actually saving energy or saving lives with this tradition, and i wasn't around in 1973-74 to let you know how that attempt at restructuring time really felt. i guess i will find out in 2007. in the meantime, since they've always messed with our daytime by changing our spring forward date, while fall back has consistently occurred this last sunday of october, i would say it's ok to be happy that we have this extra hour of sleep.

please slow down and sleep a little, you're making me tired.

*i like einstein and i feel we are kindred spirits. like me, he was wrong about some things "in some very special circumstances. But he was also very, very, close to being right, and probably always will be." incidentally, einstein is also a pisces.

the sweetest thing

people might be wondering after yesterday's penetrating post, when i might be talking about lovely lady-parts. well someday i hope to complete the entire section of my website dedicated to my womb, in the meantime it remains a gaping hole. that part of my website. i used to think i was going to do my doctoral thesis on the va- sound (think vagina, vacuum, vacant, vapid, etc.), counterbalancing its negative association with emptiness in western culture by cross-referencing it with eastern theories of sacred sounds all while furthering my feminist agenda. i haven't gotten around to getting a phd in etymology yet, but in the meantime i suggest you read this column on the linguistics of love [dave franzese, i want your job or maybe i just want you].

before laying my hands on it, i must wait until i can give this subject matter the fullest of my attention (and serious academic study). hence in lieu of a discussion of my anatomy, i'm opting to share how i put this baby to use.

i am vanilla

in case you're not from this planet, let me explain that the term vanilla refers to what a society regards as standard sexual behavior. according to that wiki, vanilla sex is "often interpreted as sex that does not involve such elements as BDSM, kink, or fetish". this is indeed how i interpret it. the term derives from the use of vanilla extract as the basic or most popular flavouring for ice cream, and by extension meaning "plain" or "conventional". thus, the term "vanilla" is sometimes used as an insult to describe someone who is overly conventional or unwilling to take risks. a few things:

1. vanilla was made for sex (much like me).
it's really, really sexy so let me ennumerate its charms. vanilla flavors ice cream and ice cream is good, you can also if you so desire spread ice cream over every inch of your body. depending on your mood, you can simply enjoy the pleasurable sensation of its melting, or you can invite a friend to lick you clean. vanilla in its pure form is known as vanillin, derived from orchids in the genus Vanilla. the name came from the Spanish word "vainilla", diminutive form of "vaina" (meaning sheath), which is in turn derived from Latin "vagina". in case you don't know what a vagina looks like, please scroll up, and scroll down for an orchid:


notice the dew. are you hot yet? in old medicinal literature, vanilla is described as an aphrodisiac and a remedy for fevers, but these purported uses are now obsolete. vanilla is not boring, we've just forgotten how to use it.

2. vanilla is complicated and versatile.
raw or pure, what's your preference? natural vanilla is an extremely complicated mixture of several hundred different compounds, versus synthetic vanillin which is derived from phenol and is of high purity. however, it may be difficult to determine the difference between natural and synthetic vanilla flavoring. vanilla flavor in creams, cakes and other foodstuff may be achieved by adding some vanilla essence or by cooking vanilla beans in the liquid preparation. a stronger aroma may be attained if the beans are split in two; in this case, the innards of the beans (the seeds), consisting of flavorful tiny black grains, are mixed into the preparation. good quality vanilla has a strong aromatic flavour, but foodstuffs with small amounts of low quality vanilla or artificial vanilla-like flavorings are far more common, since true vanilla is much more expensive. if you ask me, either way you slice it, vanilla has its merits.

3. vanilla offers a world of possibilities and supports your lifestyle.
did you know that the Coca-Cola Corporation is the world's largest customer of natural vanilla extract? when New Coke was introduced in 1985, the economy of Madagascar crashed, and only recovered after New Coke flopped. the reason was that New Coke uses vanillin, a less expensive synthetic substitute, and purchases of vanilla more than halved during this period. so how did they fix the problem? they went back to coca-cola classic (and created vanilla coke, now with even more vanilla). vanilla can support whole countries, save an industrial giant and please the taste buds!

or in my case, it supports a wide range of pleasing sexual encounters that will afford me a greater range of experiences over a lifetime. think about it this way: if only mint chocolate chip gets you off, you'll never be satisfied with anything else and you'll be eating mint chocolate chip for the rest of your life. dear god, what if later in life they invent a new flavor and you've conditioned your palate so that you can't even give it a chance. what if your local store doesn't supply mint chocolate chip? i mean i rarely just eat my plain old vanilla, on any given night i can add fudge and nuts but i don't need them to enjoy my tasty treat. so if you come along offering me fudge and nuts and more fudge and nuts the next time and more fudge and nuts, i'll soon be feeling like i have an ice cream headache. plus, that fudge and nuts gets expensive. i don't mind if you like your fudge and nuts, dear friends, it just doesn't make my orchid dewy.

go ask phallus

one pill makes you longer, and one pill makes you small and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all...

good morning, boys and girls. today's lesson will feed your head, it will swell your spirit, and it just might blow your mind. so let's skip the foreplay and get right to the meat of it -- i want to talk to you about the penis. penis - it's my antidrug!

you know that there are 47,600 results for a google image search on "penis", in comparison to a mere 13,000 for vagina and but 4,490 for pussy -- a word that can refer to human anatomy, cats and a plant and yet provides only 1/10th the online visual fodder as a wang. but for all of its out-there-edness, how much do we really know about the penis and the ways it shapes our world? screw the writer's addage of show, don't tell ... let me tell you what i think about how the prevalence of the penis in our periphery has messed with our minds.

if men could talk

do you think they might admit en masse that public urination is just bizarre? almost every guy i've dated has at one point or another mentioned how uncomfortable they are about using urinals. the strange thing to me is the sense of disclosure [ding ding ding i said the secret word] that accompanies this "admission", as if they were sharing a secret flaw. i want to go on record right now and say there is nothing wrong with not wanting to piss in public, boys. even this therapist admits he's got urinalphobia and yet he too treats it as a condition --

Irrational fears, or phobias, are commonplace but seldom addressed. The sheer expression of them creates added anxiety. To overcome a phobia, it must first be acknowledged. With this in mind, I'm taking the first step in my quest for mental health. To be exact, it is with dread that I relieve myself in a urinal. I do not think I am alone in this fear, although I have had only one patient in 27 years of counseling present this problem, He was indeed a brave soul. I am hoping that my disclosure will open the floodgates of discourse about urinal phobia. Perhaps a seLf-help group entitled Urinalphobics Anonymous (UA) will emerge.

i'm relieved that there's a growing body of literature on this subject, but find it sad that all but the most scientific of it mainly treats it as a problem of the individual. why do men have to pull their penises out in front of each other, i ask? especially if millions of them are bothered by it. i suppose maybe men don't understand they by and large determine our society since generally it's been set up to pander to their every need and if at all possible avoid making them worry their pretty little heads. but really, if you don't want to pee in front of each other, why don't you start talking about this and maybe drip the first drops to a torrent of change.

if we were back in the glory days of hitching up our skirts and dropping a brick in the middle of the street, it would be different. but we don't have to do our business in the street anymore, supposedly we evolved away from that to live longer. currently, the clear gender discrepancy between our public restrooms makes little to no sense, and while i am deeply suspicious as to why we're set up to hide womens' already shrouded and scary privates (please pronounce that as priv-its) even more, it seems we ladies are much happier with our bathroom excursions. so much so we invite each other along for the good times and the memories. ah i remember that time in paris, what was her name...

what is normal?

revealing your sex organ in public shouldn't necessarily be normalized, nor should be infant mutilation. this really isn't a laughing matter, but i do want to giggle when i ask my boss for time off next genital integrity awareness week. not having my own penis (at least not to speak of lately but i remember that time in paris, ah what was his name...), i didn't think about foreskins until relatively late in life. it was probably right around the time i first saw one up close and personal. shortly thereafter a friend had a baby and discussed his decision not to get the lil boy cut. in case you are ignorant, let me summarize by saying that non-religious circumcision was most likely created to inhibit masturbation and decrease sexual pleasure and that this idea that it's healthier and cleaner to be cut is mostly malarkey. i have found that after washing, the uncircumcised penis responds quite healthily to being masterbated. it also is less taxing on the wrist and leaves one with a pleasant minty aftertaste*.

so hey, leave those kids alone. please! because circumcision is the reason men have no feelings. thanks to NORM - the national organization of restoring men - there's hope they might some day feel again:

I've been restoring for almost two months and it's hard to believe, sex with my wife is getting better. I actually have more feeling. It's great. -35 yr old man, CA

I'm a 17-year-old male who is circumcised. I got to thinking, what am I missing? It makes me sad because I'm not whole as I was intended to be. Circumcision has deprived me of the most sensual receptor on my sexual organ. -B.J., Oregon

I can only describe the restoration process as a METAMORPHOSIS of body, mind, heart and soul. The changes to me as a person have been dramatic - I am not the same person as I was when I began this process. I have been given the opportunity to heal probably the largest wound in my life, a wound that up until a few months ago I never knew existed. The last few months have been a journey of self-discovery like no other. I have begun to access feelings and parts of myself that are new to me - perhaps they were always there, but I believe that the trauma of the circumcision pushed me into a more mental/intellectual realm to deal with this extreme pain. Only now do I have an inkling of the extent of my feelings that are coming through, and the most exciting part is that it is only the beginning!!!

clearly just the tip of the iceberg!!! i hereby recommend that we let men keep their foreskins and that we give them stalls. and then if any of you restored types want to come talk about your feelings with me, perhaps we'll finally have a true meeting of the heads and of the minds.

*alright there's no minty aftertaste, but here's more from those wacky mothers against circumcision: "We do not pull out our teeth to prevent cavities -- we brush them. When your son reaches puberty, he should retract and rinse during daily bathing. Brushing teeth is more difficult than cleaning the intact penis." speaking of cavities: "Smegma lubricates the cavity between the foreskin of the penis and the glans, thus allowing smooth movement between them during intercourse. ...The adult stage follows with its period of maximal sexual activity. Sexual intercourse becomes a regular feature of life and the function of smegma for lubrication assumes its full value. Women also produce smegma, quite a bit more than men actually. Smegma is not dirt. Interestingly, in ancient Greek, smegma means ‘soap.’"

our bodies, ourselves

in the spirit of scary disclosure a few questions, gentle reader:

1. am i full of shit?

i've swallowed my gum for 25 years ( i can't remember when i first was given chewing gum but i imagine it was around age 3). sometimes i think about how much gum could be lurking along my innermost tracks. i do often feel i'm a twisted and convoluted person, couldn't that gum get lost? could i be backed up? do i need a colonic right this minute?!

much time was spent this week in contemplation of the best course of action. which means i basically sat on my ass while an equally concerned friend researched colonics and asked our doctor and it turns out they can cause infection and tears. not tears like pretty drops from the eyes but holes, holes in your poop-chute people. i am not getting a colonic, and i can keep swallowing my gum.

but should i really sit idly by on my ass, never paying my behind mind again? or is that why i possibly have...hemorrhoids!!! maybe the gum in my colon was a pipe dream but most of you know that i have seepage. yes clear stuff sometimes comes out of my sweet little backdoor to heaven when i eat too many french fries. for the love of god i cannot find any explanation online for this beyond roids and gonorrhea. and why the f*ck are these words so hard to spell? and why do they all have -rrh- in them:

The extra -r- is also found in those words that come from the same source as catarrh, diarrhea, and logorrhea. This source is ultimately the Greek word rhêin 'to flow'; the various prefixes used tell us what is flowing, and how. Catarrh, which is as you say an inflammation of the mucus membranes, is from elements meaning 'to flow down'; diarrhea is 'to flow through', for obvious reasons. Logorrhea, or excessive talkativeness, is a jocular formation from 'flowing words'.

Most of the words from this source are indeed medical terms. Some you might encounter are amenorrhea 'absence of menstrual flow' (a condition often found in female athletes) and dysmenorrhea 'abnormal or painful menstrual flow'; gonorrhea; hemorrhage; and hemorrhoid ('flowing with blood').

i firmly believe it will be found that i only suffer from logorrhea. i've left a message with a nurse and i will once and for all get to the bottom of my anal mucous. stay tuned for what we hope will be the far from lugubrious news next told you so friday.

2. do you like my body?

i love my body, seepage and all. but do you know who doesn't love my body? well, besides the supreme court and target? the chicago chapter of NOW, that's who. if you don't know what NOW is, go look it up now. chicago NOW, we are breaking up. i have given you so many chances and you just keep showing me again and again how little you want to make this relationship work. i need you to learn how to COMMUNICATE. seriously, i am so sick of there never being ANY events posted on their website and i am sick of them not planning anything in conjunction with national advocacy events. and now we're going to celebrate Love Your Body day with an open mic ONE WEEK after the rest of the country, and you still can't manage to post that news on your website. i won't go off on the fact that you're holding the open mic at filter except to say, huh? i'm so disappointed in you right now, c-now. let's all come together now, now and um change NOW:

Chicago NOW Seeks New Board Members for 2006
The Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women is looking for new board members. This is your chance to have an impact on the lives of women and girls in your community.

• Education is the foundation to all empowerment
• Raise public awareness of women’s issues
• Start a dialogue that promotes equality
• Enjoy collaboration with your feminist sisters.
  
• Be a part of it: Don't sit around waiting for good things to happen. Progress for women is more likely with your input and effort. If you are interested in becoming a Chicago NOW General Board Member or if you have any questions, please send an e-mail with your resume and cover letter to cnowweb@yahoo.com.

3. am i in touch with my inner lesbian, or is this my inner gay male?

yesterday, my friend the selfish hedonist said he was my beard. i had no idea what he was talking about. to spare you experiencing the same shocking sensation of ignorance mingled with shame, i suggest you go read this entry on beard and stroke [look for that pesky -rrh- again]it. stroke your beard, if you have one. trying to figure out how the selfish hedonist could be acting as my beard frankly makes my head hurt. so let me just tell you about his beard, and how he's growing it until the sox win the series or there's an indictment in the plame game. there, i told you and now here's a picture:

bird is the word

you could call me a bird brain today and i wouldn't complain.

lately the world's been moving far too fast and there's been flutterings in my mind. i'm trying to pull all these thoughts together and lock them up (also it's scary disclosure week on bluestockingism--even though i lack a graphic for it--and so i must try to record everything i think in order to have enough subject matter to keep you fulfilled, and scared..it's driving me batty). turns out i am not one bird short of a flock, just because there are so many bats in my belfry. pretty bird wants a cracker.

Exhibit A
thanks to gmail and its convenient search feature, i can tell you all instances of the word "bird" in my emails of late!

• Oct. 14 [email from "Scenery"] tells me he has seen three dead birds while walking, thinks of me.
• Oct. 13 [series of emails with "YA Fiction"] kills multiple birds with a couple of stones: "happiness won't leave me alone says the bird in his nest"(silver jews lyric); tri-multaneous reference to the golden goose of willy wonk, wild goose chases and snipe hunts; discussion of the andrew bird song; reference to my currently listening to bluebird by ELO.
• Sep. 30 [email entitled "non sequiter" sent to camping trip companions] shares an article on the most challenged books of 2004 to celebrate banned books week, and references no. 9 --""I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, challenged for racism, homosexuality, sexual content, offensive language and unsuited to age group"
• Sep. 8 [Scenery emails] discussing a decoy case he's reading in law school about some birds and questions whether birds can smell, to which i respond with "For years ornithologists thought that birds had little or no sense of smell. The matter is still not settled, but modern data indicates that all birds have and use their sense of smell. Recent studies have proven that even finches and sparrows* have a sense of smell not unlike that of rats and mice. Experiments with Mallards have shown that when the female is ready tomate it releases pheromones in the oils that it uses to clean its feathers. Male Mallards become sexually active when they smell odor. When the male sense of smell is impaired, sexual responses are severely reduced." i didn't cite my source in the email or i would have saved us both a lot of time and space just now.
• Jul. 15 [email "special k" entitled "it was all yellow"] to share with him the definition of giallo as we begin our giallo film festival on my couch. heir to the giallo crown is Dario Argento whose most straightforward giallo films include 'The Bird With the Crystal Plumage', 'Deep Red', 'The Cat o' Nine Tails', 'Tenebre', and 'Opera'. incidentally, special k is starting a new band now called Bird Ate My Doughnut.
• May 3 ["Friendly Fire" emails] i tell him how much i love the andrew bird song (which he has placed on the first mix tape he makes for me), i also note in this email that a friend (can't remember which friend, but i bet it's todd) has invited me to see andrew bird but i have missed it. friendly fire tells me bird's coming to columbus. i tell him that strangely enough the consumption of eggs has been on my mind and share a half-hatched theory on how pro-lifers should not eat eggs for breakfast. let's move onto exhibit b now...

Exhibit B
did you read the post from sweetest day? cuz you know you only have to scroll down. in this post you will notice i subversily linked to the wiki on the selfish gene by dawkins. if you know me you very well might know how much i hate that book, so much so i burned it after reading it in college. according to the wiki, "A crude analogy [to the concept of the selfish gene] can be found in the old joke -- A chicken is just an egg's way of making more eggs." i consider this statement to be incubating my half-hatched theory from exhibit a. meanwhile, back in the post from two days ago, i decided to name my mix "birds walks in circles", which of course meant i had to google the phrase. here's what i found:

"Gotta Fly," the Woodcock Says
A friend recently told me that woodcocks never call while flying. The birds nest near my home every year, and I can hear their calls from my yard coming from different directions. It sure sounds like the calling is done in the air. -- Diane Miller, Romeo, Michigan

American Woodcocks have an interesting vocal array, which includes a peenting sound that is made only by males. They deliver the call from the ground prior to launching into the air to commence a courtship flight display. The birds walk in circles while they do it, changing the direction and intensity of the calls, perhaps making it sound as if they are peenting in the air, especially if the sound bounces off an object near the ground. The peenting sound made by woodcocks is also extremely similar to the sound made by Common Nighthawks, which vocalize in the air. If woodcocks were displaying at the same time nighthawks were flying, it could easily create confusion.

Exhibit C
my friend "Allstar" tells me this morning that she's found a bird in her apartment and that before leaving for work she's tried in vain to get the bird out. she ends up having to leave with the bird still in residence, the poor thing is actually tuckered out and napping, and a couple of windows open. i reveal to Allstar a childhood secret - i am a bird wrangler and have mastered the fine art of removing unwanted winged creatures from homes (it's a simple matter of a tennis raquet and a bucket). if you want to know how this story ends you'll need to keep reading all this week.

*Young Pilgrims Lyrics
by The Shins
A cold and wet November dawn
And there are no barking sparrows
Just emptiness to dwell upon.

scary disclosure [project] week

have you ever heard of too much information? i work with librarians, i therefore reject this concept. and i hereby desginate this week SCARY DISCLOSURE WEEK. the week where you get to find out everything you wanted to know about me but were afraid or perhaps never even really inclined to ask. for instance, do you know that i lost my virginity to someone who believes strongly enough in UFO conspiracy theories to have become a regional rep for the disclosure project. uh huh, it's totally true.

it's scary, it's disclosure, it will last a week

so let's have a motherbleeping contest!!!

CONTEST TIME
i'd like someone to draw an animation/make a banner for my SCARY DISCLOSURE project. "scary disclosure" will be the theme all this week of my seriously underwritten and subsequently underread blog, because you know it's halloween and stuff. i will talk about anything and everything and post at least once a day. this is a kick in the pants for me to become a blogging force to be reckoned with and a chance for your original art to be displayed.

HOW TO ENTER
1. Make an image with SCARY DISCLOSURE WEEK (the use of the word "week" is optional, and actually if you want to think of a better tagline for me while you are at it, feel free) featured in it.
2. The image should be no more than 500 pixels wide, just to make it CRAZY i won't put any vertical limits on it, yeah you heard me NO VERTICAL LIMITS!!!
3. You should email it to me before Monday, preferably in the next three hours.
4. Stick figures are cool, so are fake news style banners. The sky is the limit*.
5. All entries will be displayed in some fashion, but the winning one will be used in every blog entry. Maybe I will give additional prizes too.
6. Everyone is encouraged to enter.

*but please keep the sky under 500 pixels wide.

news flash from the future
no one fucking entered my contest. you people suck. but since i am a forgiving soul who gives second thousand chances, please feel free to submit a drawing anytime.

exorcise your cells till you're bereft

selfish gene sent angel flowers for sweetest day. angel is the mother of my friend, and selfish gene is a man who knew her nearly 50 years ago. they were teen sweethearts, but their parents didn't approve of this mismatched affair between the catholic good girl (really good, she becomes a nun) and the greaser. she, being the obedient one, ended things. to "help" him get over the grief of first love lost, his parents decided it was "best" to tell young gene she was dead. gene moves on and eventually marries, but thinks of her as his guardian angel only to discover 50 years later as he's serving on a middle school reunion committee that his angel lives! (and angel has lived, she's entered and left the nunnery, married and lost her husband, mothered two sons, and done some excellent work for moveon.org during the 2004 election). naturally, gene contacts angel and discovers her widowed status, he then sees fit to inform her that not only has she been his guardian angel for half a century but also that he hasn't had intimate relations with his wife in quite some time. aptly dubbed angel tells gene to hold his overtures until christmas (i'm assuming a divorce is perhaps in the works?), but gene considers flowers on sweetest* day appropriate. and so while i am at times a hopeless romantic, i'm calling a spade a spade and henceforth this man will be known as selfish gene.

this is the second time i've written about selfish gene and angel. the first time was in a post on my website-- a post where i was trying to exorcise my own endless lover so that 50 years later i wouldn't be pining over him. he found my post and asked me to take it down. operation exorcism aborted.

the only thing i can think to do is make a mixed tape. people make mixed tapes for lots of reasons, sometimes people even make movies about making mix tapes like my friend jefferson did. jefferson needs to get himself a webpage so he comes up in google searches, unless he wants his press to speak for itself, because google searches are crucial. oh snap. if you know me but haven't been speaking to me recently you might not be aware of my new propensity to inappropriately go "snap" at everything. for instance, you tell me my shoe is untied, i go "oh snap". it's endearing, right?

without further ado, here is my mixed tape. it isn't really organized as anything but a snapshot of my favorite songs right now. the ones i have to listen to over and over when it's nighttime or raining. songs that pull on my insides. songs you can put on a mix for me in fifty years if you want to remind me of young love.

birds walk in circles

• nervous tic motion of the head to the left - andrew bird
• autumn sweater - yo la tengo
• prestonhood - ill lit
• (hospital vespers) - the weakerthans
• postage stamp world - rogue wave
• the other man - sloan
• wendy under the stars - odds
• staring at the sun - tv on the radio
  
• my number - tegan and sara
• goodbye horses - q lazzarus
• blue moon 3 - the blood group
• diner girls - ill lit
• are you giving me back my love - sloan
  

* most everyone i know thinks of sweetest day as yet another hallmark holiday. i did too. but in actuality it was a candy company conspiracy, not a greeting card coup, that we have to thank for sweetest day -- "Sweetest Day observance originated in Cleveland in 1922. Herbert Birch Kingston, a philanthropist and candy company employee wanted to bring happiness into the lives of orphans, shut-ins and others who were forgotten. With the help of friends, he began to distribute candy and small gifts to the underprivileged. Primarily a regional observance celebrated in the Great Lakes region and the Northeast, Sweetest Day is gradually spreading to other areas of the country. Ohio** is the top state for Sweetest Day sales, followed by Michigan and Illinois." i perhaps inadvertantly celebrated by participating in National Make a Difference Day. actually, i don't think the highschool kids we took into the woods to chop down buckthorn and to infuse with the spirit of volunteerism were forgotten or particularly underprivileged, but candy was involved...

** what is it with ohio and things that go "buck" (if you followed the buckthorn link you'll know how bucked ohio is)? if it weren't for his complete lack of faith in such concepts, i'd think friendly fire and i were star-crossed lovers -- he's from the buckeye state and he did remark that reading buckwild was like a opening a present. actually, it's aight fire, that was one of the sweetest things anyone's said to me and i'm glad we're still friendly. here's your shoutout for being my most avid reader. thanks also for that comic, the andrew bird song, and my pizza cutter.

told you so friday: i'm 73% pure nerd!

told you so friday: celebrating my right to be right each and every week

hey guess what, kids! i'm going to be purely successful. told you so, comic book geeks.

Pure Nerd
73 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 30% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables
How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 82% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 25% on geekosity
You scored higher than 48% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

run, run, run

did you know i can go back into the past? i can, and i will! so be sure to occasionally scroll through my blog and look for new posts magically appearing in the annals of bluestockingism.

in other news, yesterday i had a spectacularly crappy day, but my friends came through with a range of amusing internet sites to distract me. there's this thinggeemacgee that will tell you what sitcom star or dictator you're thinking of, it was right for me both times but of course i had to go for the obvious like the girl with braces and roller skates living in an all girls' boarding school and the car that talks. while i enjoy artificial intelligence, mocking hipsters in a sweet and mild way will top the ghost inside the machine any day -- so you MUST CLICK ON THIS LINK.

that whole website is my cup of tea, but if you're looking for something more universally guaranteed to make you smile i think you should watch the "a million ways" dance, even if you don't like ok go. and by no means do you need to like ok go.

i'd also like to plug AccuRadio's super stream, i particularly enjoy the High Fidelity station. this morning it's played tracks from phoenix's alphabetical; some artist on the secretly canadian label who was singing about "loving butter but wanting to love another", either that or he was "loving mother"...i kinda like the butter version; and a song by firewater who i'd never heard of before but who has the interesting album title Get Off the Cross (We Need Wood for the Fire), read the review of it in german, it's not to be missed.

brain drain

just in time for halloween comes this pretty scary story. gee, i'm glad i only wasted time in idaho:

9 Cases of Brain-Wasting Disease in Idaho
BOISE, Idaho - From the moment Joan Kingsford first saw her husband stagger in his welding shop, she wanted two things: His recovery and to know what made him sick.

She got neither. Alvin Kingsford, 72, died recently of suspected sporadic
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal brain-wasting illness. The disease can be conclusively diagnosed only with an autopsy, which did not take place.

State and federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine reported cases of suspected sporadic CJD in Idaho this year. Sporadic, or naturally occurring, CJD differs from the permutation dubbed variant CJD, which is caused by eating mad-cow-tainted beef and has killed at least 180 people in the United Kingdom and continental Europe since the 1990s.

"One thing is very clear in Idaho — the number seems to be higher than the number reported in previous years," said Dr. Ermias Belay, a CJD expert with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "So far, the investigations have not found any evidence of any exposure that might be common among the cases."

Normally, sporadic CJD only strikes about one person in a million each year, with an average of just 300 cases per year in the United States, or just over one case a year in Idaho. Over the past two decades, the most cases reported in Idaho in a single year has been three.

Until this year.

Of the nine suspected cases reported so far in 2005, three tested positive for an infectious disease of the nervous system, though more tests are pending to determine if the fatal illness was in fact sporadic CJD. Four apparent victims were buried without autopsies. Two suspected cases tested negative.

Still, federal and state health officials are stopping just short of calling the Idaho cases a "cluster," waiting for final test results from the victims who got autopsies.

the article goes on to discuss the reluctance by pathologists and mortuary workers to autopsy and embalm the victims [which incidentally reminded me of the book stiff - highly recommended reading]. as much as we might want to poke fun at idaho as a state, this is really horrible news and i hope they put every effort into investigating what may be causing the disease. i know that idaho has a lot of beef manufacturing - "Livestock and livestock products account for over 35% of annual agricultural income. Cattle, sheep, and pigs are raised primarily on the S plain. Idaho typically ranks first nationally in potato production and is usually third as a producer of sugar beets." - according to the almanac.

but supposedly this variant of the disease is not mad cow disease. hmm. in the meantime, i shall protect my brain from other grey-matter munching by doing my sudokus!

whatever i do what i want

my god i am sick of not being able to keep up a blog. so yeah a lot of interesting stuff does happen in wisconsin and it was really nice for awhile to think i would be keeping track of it. nice, but unrealistic. and a reader commented that my blog confused them because it seemed like i was still living in wisconsin.

good point! time to stop living in the past [sidenote, i read on my friend from college jeremy's friendster profile the cutest self-analysis, and i must say it describes me too. i think jeremy stole my "i stay crunchy in milk" self-description one time so i don't mind stealing his identity for my own now - "I live in the past, and commute to the present. The nostalgia is cheaper that way"]. and live in the now now now. maybe this will revolutionize my life, that'd be nice. i'd like a revolution.

so henceforth my blog will be loosely organized around the topic of "my life in links" - namely anything on the internet that somebody sends me or i go look up or whatnot. why not construct my identity through a series of internet sites, i mean at least in terms of my blog identity. also this gives me a chance yet again to quote great expectations:

"that was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. but, it is the same with any life. imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

"pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come."

i share those same two quotes on the love life section of wendybuckwild. redundancy makes the world go round.

signed "maladjusted in madison"

aren't we wisconites romantic...and a little deranged? yes.

Man Says He Got Idea to Kidnap Wife from Dr. Phil
PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. (AP) Aug 10, 2005 10:15am
-- A Wisconsin man says he wanted someone to kidnap his wife just to scare her, and he got the idea from watching Dr. Phil. His attorney says Ronald Schueller thought his estranged wife needed a scare "so she would see the error of her ways. "He's accused of trying to hire someone to knock his wife unconscious and lock her in the truck of a car. Authorities say it never happened because the man Schueller tried to hire was actually an undercover sheriff's deputy.

Investigators say Schueller came up with the idea after "Dr. Phil" said on his talk show that people sometimes need "a good scare" to snap them out of their delusions.

Schueller has been sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to undergo mental health counseling. He's also been told to have no contact with his wife, who filed for divorce last year.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

what's sad is that i can for the most part sympathize with this guy. if i really wanted to get back together with my estranged wife and thought a non-violent ride in a trunk might woo her my way, i'd do it.

wait, no i wouldn't! i'd think about it but i would definitely not do it. i mean i've thought about being kidnapped ... ok i've never thought about being kidnapped (although i think my mother has because of that one horrible time she uttered the words "everyone has fantasies, some girls even fantasize about rape" la la la i cannot hear you) but i do sometimes think about getting non-fatally hit by an SUV --namely everytime i cross the intersection of wabash and huron -- and what that might do in terms of rekindling old flames. perhaps it's my female sensibility that has me considering scenarios where i am the victim, whereas i can't quite fathom thinking it appropriate for me to arrange to victimize someone else in order to get what i want.

i'm also a girl that wouldn't call someone who wasn't interested in me 5-20 subsequent times after he clearly told me he never ever wanted to date me. or send them a postcard two years later from a foreign country, especially if we only dated for a week. i understand the impetus, totally, but why would you have the nerve and the complete and utter lack of pride or perhaps i should say perception?

i clearly have no pride, i've sent in a request to appear on a TLC Show for crimety's sake. but even if i've dated someone for years, if i think my contacting them after we break up is going to make them think ill of me or personally upset, first i feel like vomitting and sobbing and then i do everything in my power to will my mouth shut as much as it breaks my heart to do so.

maybe i just need to hire someone with a very large trunk for a long weekend and move the fuck on. now i finally understand what closure means - it's a restraining order!

i'm just a mean green mother

guess what, it's not all sweet creamy goodness folks--plants are blog-worthy too, especially if they're large, phallic, and smell like rotting meat! it's been amazing week for wisconsin greenery, and next week might be even better...

By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press Writer Thu Jun 2, 8:23 PM ET

MADISON, Wis. - Big Bucky's back.
The rare, big and extremely stinky flower that caused a sensation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when it last bloomed in 2001 could become the world's largest flower when it blooms again next week.

The titan arum stood at 6 feet, 4 inches Thursday in a UW-Madison greenhouse, on pace to rival the world record for cultivated flowers when it blooms and releases its trademark roadkill scent in the coming days.

Botanists hope it will surpass the record of nearly 9 feet set by a titan arum in Germany two years ago.

The university is bracing for thousands of curious visitors hoping to catch a glimpse and even a whiff of the rock star of the botanical world, known as the "corpse flower," native to the rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia.

On Thursday, computer technicians were figuring how to run a Web cam broadcasting the flower's progress, botanists were recruiting volunteers to staff the greenhouse for extended hours and the curious were getting an early sneak peak.

In 2001, Big Bucky's bloom drew some 20,000 visitors who waited in long lines to see the spectacle and caused the university's Web site to crash under an onslaught of visitors seeking live updates. Botanists were disappointed when the bloom fell just three inches short of the world record, which at the time had held since 1932.

"We didn't know how people were so into a stinky plant, a monster, a beast," said Mohammad Fayyaz, director of UW-Madison's Botany Garden and Greenhouses.

more at: http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/11257.html

feed me seymour, feed me all night long!

in like a fool, out like a tool

i'm finding it really hard to compose this post when i know there are homemade oatmeal raisin cookies down the hall. i might not like the ice cream, no matter how hard todd bribes me with free massage sweepstakes information, but i do love those cookies.

but it's time to take a quick look back at the major news story of april -- no, not jonathan's birthday-- the great ms. wheelchair wisconsin debate.

Published: April 01, 2005 10:35 AM ET
APPLETON, Wis. (AP)
Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin has been stripped of her title because pageant officials say she can stand -- and they point to a newspaper picture as proof. Janeal Lee, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a scooter, was snapped by The Post-Crescent of Appleton standing among her high-school math students.

"I've been made to feel as if I can't represent the disabled citizens of Wisconsin because I'm not disabled enough," Lee said Thursday. Lee, 30, of Appleton, had planned to go to the national pageant with her younger sister, who also has muscular dystrophy and won the competition in Minnesota.

Students at Kaukauna High School, where Lee teaches, raised $1,000 for her trip to the national pageant. The move by the state pageant officials, led by coordinator Gina Hackel, is supported by the national board.

Candidates for the crown have to "mostly be seen in the public using their wheelchairs or scooters," said Judy Hoit, Ms. Wheelchair America's treasurer. "Otherwise you've got women who are in their wheelchairs all the time and they get offended if they see someone standing up. We can't have title holders out there walking when they're seen in the public." Hackel said Lee should have been aware of the rules.

The crown now goes to first runner-up Michelle Kearney of Milwaukee, who will travel to New York.

after a month of media attention,

APPLETON, Wis. -- The Kaukauna teacher who had her Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin title stripped away from her has a new honor -- Miss Disability International. Janeal Lee is the charter titleholder of a new competition the World Association of Persons With Disabilities is launching. A group official said the association is focusing on abilities.

hmm. anything i'd have to add to this conversation would probably make me feel a tool. for example, i'd like to point out that i was a little surprised by the lack of people-first language in the articles on this story, i.e. "people with disabilities" versus "disabled"...and nowadays i tend to just say "people with different abilities" because some of those different abilities--like being able to roll yourself around in a chair--have led to inventions and accomodations that have benefited all of us, like curb cutaways! see, i am a tool.

want to know if you're a tool too?! take the wisconsin media review quiz:

1. Wisconsin attracted national attention and became the butt of jokes because of a controversial proposal to legalize the shooting of these wild, free-roaming mammals, estimated at a million-plus statewide.

2. The University of Wisconsin held a daylong celebration for this 4.4 billion-year-old object. Under the watchful eyes of a police guard, spectators used a microscope to inspect the guest of honor, which measures less than two human hairs in diameter.

3. What have thieves been making off with in Portage and Waushara counties? Hint: They are sometimes used to make jewelry, watchbands and belts.

4. This Wisconsin Democrat, who has made a name for himself nationally and is often mentioned as a presidential candidate in 2008, announced his plans to divorce his wife of 14 years.

5. Judge Scott Woldt ordered an Appleton woman convicted of theft to make a heart-rending decision: Either spend 90 days in jail or donate this to the Make-A-Wish-Foundation as part of her overall two-year period of probation.

6. One was spotted near the Manitowoc-Sheboygan county line, one in Cedarburg and yet another was nabbed in Wauwatosa, miles away from their natural Wisconsin habitat.

7. Why did Janeal Lee, a 30-year-old Kaukauna high school teacher with muscular dystrophy, have her title as “ Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin” taken away from her?

8. Wisconsin school districts took five of the top 10 spots in Expansion Management magazine’s 2005 rankings, “Best Metro Areas for Overall Quality of Public Schools.” The monthly magazine, which looked at 362 metropolitan areas, targets executives that are actively looking for a place to expand or relocate their companies. What district ranked second best in the nation behind State College, Pa.?

9. Why did “Late Night with David Letterman,” “Good Morning America” and at least 20 radio stations interview University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student Johnny Lechner in April?

10. After a 15-hour standoff at his home on French Island near La Crosse, a man who had shot his neighbor in the shoulder surrendered to police. What did they find in his freezer?

if you bothered to read upside down, YOU ARE A TOOL!

quandairy - we all scream

it seemed to me that everyone had ice cream on the brain today. three different coworkers left the office in search of it (granted, i work with middle-aged women so it's not that unusual), and then, bananners and i were sitting there after lunch contemplating our unsatisfied hunger and our conversation went a little like this:

bananners: i'm still hungry.
me: me too. i am kinda in the mood for ice cream.
bananners: ice cream good mmm...
me: good yeah mmm. there's that stone cold creamery place i suppose.
bananners (making face): it's not very good, it's overpriced.
me: yeah, i heard that.
bananners: yeah.
me: too bad that ben & jerry's on chicago closed. it closed, right?
bananners: yeah.
me: too bad.
bananners: it closed a long time ago.
me: too bad.

imagine my surprise when i returned to my desk to find the following email from todd the bod:

Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 11:55:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Scream
To: "gwendolyn p."

> If ya didn't know, today is free scoop day at Ben and
> Jerry's.
>
> I recommend Oatmeal Cookie. I know what you're
> thinking: "I don't really like oatmeal cookies. And
> 'cinnamon ice cream' doesnt sound that good." Well
> stop listening to your brain and start listening to
> ME. Get it.
>
> todd
>
> --
> GET OFF THE INTERNET!

todd does not tell a lie (though he'll obnoxiously correct your spelling of the word "quandary" at the drop of a hat)--april 19th is free scoops day 2005, the 27th annual free cone day to be exact. did you notice how he mentioned the brain and ice cream?

his essay alludes to the clearly misguided notion that the consumption of ice cream, and one might presume that misconception encompasses all dairy products, is somehow in conflict with the exercising of intellectual powers. we must work to overcome these assumptions, as time and time again a direct link between a diet high in dairy and superior intelligence has clearly been demonstrated, or has it...

We didn't find any Web pages matching the following criteria:

• Containing this query term: "dairy and intelligence"
  

Suggestions:- Check your spelling.
- Try more general words.
- Try different words that mean the same thing.
- Broaden your search by using fewer words.

but i digress, the point of today's post is that everyone was thinking about ice cream, and while some people might note that it was the first warm day in awhile, i've got my own theories. and sadly yesterday the owner of the first dairy queen in wisconsin passed away.

APPLETON — Merlin Liebzeit of Appleton, the owner of the first Dairy Queen in Wisconsin, died Monday. He was 84.

He opened the state’s first Dairy Queen June 4, 1950, at 2000 S. Oneida St. in Appleton. Liebzeit’s second Dairy Queen, on N. Richmond Street, opened Aug. 29, 1953. Nationally, the first Dairy Queen opened in Joliet, Ill., in 1940. Liebzeit is survived by his wife, Erna, two sons and two daughters. His son Steven continues to run the Dairy Queens in Appleton.

merlin! how magical and how tragic, but i think a little bit of his passion was released into the ether and perhaps we're all a little bit sweeter today for it. may he rest in peace, and i'll be pouring out a melted quart for him tonight.

i can only take heart that we have the next generation to look to as beacons of light in these seemingly dark times. the torch will burn bright.