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.