31 January, 2006

Showing Skin

...If I had a day that I could give you/I’d give to you a day just like today....

He calls me from the beach to gloat, because I love the beach and he does not, but the weather is not bad here, so his Schadenfreude is mitigated by my lack of gloom.

Silky fog wraps the neighborhood, until golden glow beams through to kiss sun starved skin. I still have not officially resigned myself to wearing socks for the season.

The porch is warm and bright. I spend two hours in a row outdoors, for the first time in three months.

It’s faint, but I have a tan line from my v-neck sweater.

In January.

Life is good, oh yes.

(Sunshine On My Shoulders; John Denver)

30 January, 2006

Hello, back.

...are you gonna take me home tonight/all down beside that red firelight/are you gonna let it all hang out....

I walk FrankenDog, wind chapping my lips, hair tucked under what The Prince has dubbed my RastaHat. A black man slows his BMW to lean out the window and tell me, “YOU are BEAU-tiful.”

Now, I am accustomed to black guys (yes, it’s a Black Thing; white fellas are either less admiring or less verbal), even ones in Beamers, slowing down to make appreciative remarks out of windows. But this is different.

Dude was looking at my FACE.


(Fat Bottomed Girls; Queen)*

*I have been informed that this officially cannot be 'my' song. Maybe if it was spelt 'phat'?

26 January, 2006

Untimely Injury

...my eyes beheld an eerie sight/ for my monster from his slab began to rise....

The dog(not my actual dog) has been Frankensteined. It's creepy looking. I wish he'd chosen a different week to have an emergency. My husband's birthday and my mother's are the same week, which entails cleaning, shopping and food prep, already my favorite things, right? And so the dog picks Monday to have some weird injury that made his head swell up like he's Pachycephalo-sirius, and he's been to the vet twice so far, and now looks as though he's had brain surgery.

If I were clever, I'd post some Photo-shopped monstrosity, but I'm not. You'll just have to use your imaginations.

(Monster Mash; Bobby Boris Pickett & The Crypt Kickers)

18 January, 2006

Excuse Me...

Okay, I know I left the car unlocked. I know it's cold. But please, this does not mean it's okay for you to hop into my car and fire up a joint, just to get out of the January wind.

Really, people.

14 January, 2006

Light Reading

....chapter two, I think I fell in love with you....

Over the holidays I’ve been doing some reading. I like books as gifts even thought they sometimes don’t fit.

For instance, I mentioned to my father that I generally like the sort of stuff N.’s got lying around the house.

So my dad and stepmom send me a Kitty Bartholomew’s book, Decorating Style. An excerpt:

Hands-On Project: Distressed Curtain Rods, Finials and Brackets

1. First, you want to create nicks, gouges and indentations in eh wood as if it has been around for decades. You could start by striking it with a garden cultivator or other tool to create what looks like wormholes. Don’t just hit the pieces straight on; hit them at an angle to create gouges.

2. For another kind of indentation, whip the wood with a chain. Most of us worry about marring a soft wood like pine. But here you can use the soft wood to advantage. It’s easy to nick and mar. To make even deeper marks, I also hit the pieces againsst a sharp metal post.

3. To add another dimension to the distressed wood, pour strong coffee over the pieces and watch them soak it up. This is especially helpful if your pieces are made from different types of wood that might take the wax slightly differently. The coffee helps equalize the tones of different woods. It will dry quickly.

4. Next, roll your pieces in gravel and dirt. You don’t need a box of gravel like a show here- just some dirt and gravel. Roll the ietms in the gravel and really grind the dirt into the wood. The dirt gives the wood added color and texture.

5.Let this whole concoction dry, and then wipe off any loose dirt or gravel.

6. Finally, polish the pieces with Briwax. I used a light brown Briwax, rubbing it in with a soft cloth. Apply two or three coats, letting the wax dry for 20 minutes between coats. Then buff the pieces to a glorious patina. You want the darkness of the wax to be obvious. Why make faux wormholes if they’re not noticeable?



Why, indeed.

Not what I meant, obviously.

From my sister, as requested, The Edison Gene, by Thom Hartmann. This is just some really yummy stuff about weather patterns, geology, evolution, and the anthropologic bottleneck that occurred some fourty thousand years ago. And what the genetic pattern that leads to the divergent attentiveness known by many as ‘ADD’ has to do with all of that.

The Grim Grotto, by Lemony Snicket, who hides critical reading and writing techniques in the body of each work. Fluffy has Book The Twelfth of the Unfortunate Events series, The Penultimate Peril, but he won’t let me touch it until he’s finished reading it. And he only just started The Grim Grotto. Grrr. Hurry, little man. HURRY.

For the second time, (another gift from my sister), Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, the man with three first names. Someone mentioned ‘literary bragging rights’ in conjunction with this book, and I’ll admit it’s a Reader’s Reader sort of read, highly engaging, inscrutable, requiring a high degree of sticktuitiveness.

Shadow, by Bob Woodward, about the effect of Watergate on the next several presidencies. And no, I didn’t rush out and buy Secret Man. Regular CrushWorlders know how I feel about that whole situation. And regardless of whether or not Bob Woodward is personally a putz, it is mere fact that he doesn’t have the engaging writing style of a Lemony Snicket or a David Foster Wallace.

This week’s CityPaper, which contains not one, no nary a one, Nixon reference, not from The Political Animal, not from Tom Tomorrow nor from The Pain...When Will It End? and it’s getting pretty bleak, boys, I have to tell ya.

There is good news, though: Booby Smooth’s veto of the Wal Mart Bill was overturned, and that’s the most encouraging news I’ve heard all year. Well, in the last fourteen days, anyway. And CityPaper does make mention of the lovely Imogen Heap, who’s got an Edie Burkel-esqe voice and a face like (a young) Joan Jett.

Lest you think that Primarily Decorative has turned toward the dark side of Pure Intellect, let me assure you that not only did I watch South Park the other night and laugh, yes OUT LOUD, but in the next day or two, I will buy Candy Girl by ex-stripper Diablo Cody, which I’m really looking forward to, as I’ve loved her blog for a long time.

On deck is Rob Breszny’s Pronia is the Antidote for Paranoia which is a large smooth trade paperback, packed with words to lift my spirits, stir my senses and energize my eros.

Not that my eros ever needs much help, really.

(Every Day I Write The Book; Elvis Costello)

12 January, 2006

Damn Dream

"...it was totally inappropriate and utterly delicious...." --Steve Carell

In my dreams, I am often younger than I am, or much older. But I never worry about losing five pounds in my dreams.

I dreamed a poem in my sleep last night. I didn't know I was dreaming at the time, so it's gone.

Perhaps not as gone as I think, if I remember having dreamed it.

Dammit. I will be chasing after this dream poem all day, and it probably will turn out to not have been that good.

Although... even in the dream, it wasn't so much like a poem as it was a pithy observation that would really need some work to make a poem, even not a good poem but just a so-so poem. I mean, I remember thinking that in my dream.

Always a critic.

10 January, 2006

Touch, Melt

...wish that we could lose this crowd/maybe it's better in this way...

His hands slide under my shirt, first from the neckline, then from the hem. It rides up dangerously. His palms are smooth and cool against my skin, magical fingers long and touching with just the right amount of pressure. Ahhhh.

"You could sit down."

Yes, maybe I’d better.

He hits a particular spot, and I groan.

"You’re carrying a lot of tension in your back...here...and here....oh, and definitely here."

His clever (oh, I had forgotten how very clever) fingers search out sore spots I didn’t know I had. I’m melting on the table, purring, hair spilling around shoulders and pooling on knees. My fur jacket slips to the floor.

I'll not have enough tension left to stand when you’re done with me.

He continues.

He looked at me, cocked his head to the side, asked, “Headache?”

In fact, yes. And by the way, it’s somebody special who can look at me and see my pain.

And then he started to work. Without being asked. He just turned me around to face away from him and began. It is this sort of careless intimacy that might lead people to believe there is ‘something’ between us. Well, that and the sounds I’m making.

Lia said she was bringing me a drink but at this rate I won’t need the drink. I’ll need a cigarette instead.

He smiles, a secret sort of ‘maybe we both will’ smile. His partner snaps another blackmail shot of the two of us.

We are in a restaurant, with nearly a hundred people I know or sort of know or almost know or used to know.

It doesn’t matter. I’m probably safer for their presence.

Probably we both are.

(Careless Whispers; Wham!)

07 January, 2006

Warm Fuzzy

...I once knew a girl with a funky doo-wop/Spent all her money just to look like a mop.....

The wave of warmth in Red Emma's hits me like a hug as I step down and in. I sip a two-handed soup-mug full of Molotov, listening to reggae/trance/latin hip-hop. The scent of freshly toasted bagels surrounds me.

Tonight brings me home to the Chesapeake Arts Center and many close friends for the Hack and Slash Christmas Special, featuring my beloved Broon, and my long-lost pal Clark, owner and operator of both Ded Bob and his dummy, Smudge.

"I used to have such a crush on Cybele. Last I saw her, she was running with some guy named Wolf, or something."

"Right, Hawk, and she married him, and they made those." That Girl points to the two well-scrubbed, well-behaved, somewhat bored, pajama-clad urchins on the stage.

"Your kids are so adorable. Makes you want to run up and hit 'em with a stick." An expression of true admiration from Jim Greene, the Ratman. Chris Davis the Renaissance Man will be here tonight, the Pyrates, Michael Rosman,and Steve and Stephon as the Pickled Punks, or, I'm not sure, themselves. The Zucchini Brothers are here. I'd forgotten how funny they were.

Don't bother showing up tonight. I'm wearing not a beret, but my black satin pajamas. And there are no tickets left.

Not entirely because of my pajamas, either.

(Yo Mama's A Pajama; Spin Doctors)

06 January, 2006

Foreign Humour

...No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women/ No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark....

So you think your cousin in (name of state not your own) talks funny? Maybe you just don't understand his regional monkey language.

Speaking of Japan, a Sushi Tutorial. Thanks to ButterflyMan for leading me to it.

By request, linkage to the Ninja song, and though it's not Japanese, it's still RatherGood, yes, it's Soupy George.

How do you feel after all that soup? Thank you, Martin, for allowing us a post-prandial release.

(Turning Japanese; The Vapors)

04 January, 2006

Better Late

...as I recall it ended far too soon....

New Year's Eve being second only to my birthday in terms of kissing opportunities, I kind of wish I had spent mine with more people. In fact, I was tickled and kissed by several husbands that were not mine, (plus one that was) and do not feel deprived, exactly, nor precisely shortchanged but perhaps as though I failed to maximize potential.

And yet, someone I missed kissing on New Year's Eve stepped close to me last evening, whispered, "Oh, and.....Happy New Year," and kissed me first.

Oh, ah; just like that, the New Year turns around.

As I blushed, I considered how many people I haven't seen since the year changed, and the possibility that each one of them now owes me a New Year's kiss.

You know who you are.

(December 1963 (Oh What A Night); Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons)

03 January, 2006

Seeking Silver

"I feel extremely comfortable allowing my wife to express herself in her underwear." --Hawk

I drive through the crows and cows and grain silos and double-wide trailers of Cecil County trying to determine if the landscape is
a) dismal
b) dreary

or

c) desolate.


Naked trees lean over the highway, reaching for my car with knotty fingers. I crane my neck and wonder if the flat grey on the horizon is the choppy plain of the Chesapeake Bay or the seething surge of the Susquehanna River. The engulfing murky sky is neither smooth enough to be serene nor chunky enough to churn.