Deliberate Haze

...their eloquence escapes me/ their logic ties me up and rapes me....


I was told by a third party that he claims to be the father of my second child. Well, until it was evident that she was a terror, and at that point he was happy to renounce her.

Why would you start a rumor like that?

"I never!"

She said that you did, you started the rumor. And I wondered what purpose it served, how saying that would benefit you.

"I didn't! I never said I was the father of your child!"

Hm.

I sip my beer, gaze at him. Herb begins to squirm.

Chin goes up, and eyebrows. Head tilted to one side, just slightly. Beer glass rotates slowly on bar top.

"I, I, I, well, I may have said, said something to the EFFECT, of, of, but I never..."

The eyebrows ratchet another notch.

"Okay. What I SAID was, and this is totally true, was that I was living with you for awhile, and your husband kind of wasn't, and nine months later you had a baby. Which was true."

Agreed. All but the 'kind of wasn't', except, no, I guess that was when he was travelling with the IT job he had at the time. So while Herb's responsible for a certain level of culpability in regards to the rumor mill, to himself he can pretend complete innocence.

Later, we argue about what qualifies as an adverb.

Later still, he e-mails me with a definition to prove his point.

Geek.

(Hello, pot? This is the kettle.)

A giant banner grabs my attention:

Stroke Targets By Color

and then, in smaller letters,

Know Where You Stand.

It's good to be aware that you're nearest the blue targets, in case you need to walk around and pet all the yellow ones first.

You'd think that the folk writing for billboards, or the folk paying for writing on billboards, would realize that a message has fewer than five seconds to imprint upon the viewer, and would tailor messages for maximum clarity. Two words in a row that function both as nouns and verbs (and why can I not find a word for that?)is a mistake anywhere but comedy; e.g.:

Doctor Cuts With Bandages.

(De Do Do Do De Da Da Da; The Police)

Party's Here!

...don't wear a frown cuz it's really okay/ and you might try 'n' hide/ and you might try 'n' pray/ but we all end up the remains of the day....


Motion catches the eye: bright balloons tied to the gates of a cemetery, bouncing in April's breezes.

Me, I wonder whose birthday we're celebrating.



(Remains Of The Day; Danny Elfman, from The Corpse Bride)

What Hump?

...lookin' at my lump, lump/ you can look but you can't touch it/ if you touch it I'ma start some drama....


Once upon a time, 'hump' was a noun, used to describe a mound, a tiny hill, a large lump, or the thing on the back of a camel. Or a dromedary. Which is what most people think of when they think of a camel. Yes, that camel you're thinking of? It's actually a dromedary.

I don't know when young attractive humans began to have humps, which were in the past reserved for old crones and hunchbacks, but pretty whatsername seems to be enjoying hers.



I am a self-employed artist, so 'hump day' bears little relevance for me, though I understand the concept. A sign outside a bar advertises "Hump Day Specials", so apparantly 'hump' is now an adjective, as Satur- or Senior Hook are adjectives that modify 'day'.

Some other artists display their works here, in a Washington Post contest that expected only 'a dozen or so' entries. Yes, it's little humps of sugar-covered marshmallow in improbable colors, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Peeps Show!

As the Political Animal points out (WITH a Nixon/Watergate reference, thank you very much!)in today's column, The Post used to publish real news. Now it's all fluff.

From the Well, Duh! Department, this surprisingly late decision by the African medical community.

On the other hand, there's certainly no shortage of humans. Why do anything about AIDS at all? (So says the woman who makes her living pretending to kill and die.)

Emily Flake's cartoon is also ghoulish today, though she makes no reference to a hump of any sort.

I was early on aware of the verb form of the word, which is now so deeply ingrained that whenever I pass a roadside sign emblazoned with the words 'Speed Hump', I take it for a directive- appealing but impractical, as obviously, I'm driving.

And here is all hump, all the time.

In Taro Gomi's fun book, Everyone Poops, the claim is made that "a one- hump camel makes a one-hump poop. A two-hump camel makes a two-hump poop. Just kidding!" Since it's a translation, I don't know whether the original Japanese was 'dromedary', 'camel', or 'fabulous imaginary creature', since I don't know Japanese for any of those words, and neither camels nor dromedaries are native to Japan anyhow.

I also don't know Japanese for 'hump'. In any sense.



(My Humps; Black Eyed Peas)

Silver Lining

...those soft and fuzzy sweaters/ too magical to touch....


The continuing cold enrages me to a fit of shopping: lowcut sweaters to augment outrageous tiny tops that have burst from my closets, demanding to be worn.

Because it is April, the sweaters are on sale.

(.....still waiting for Naked Season.)



(Centerfold; The J. Geils Band)

HotCross Puns

...left the bathtub running over/ stereo on and cookin' bacon/ never came back to tell us why....



I serve breakfast, fried eggs on matzoh. "Mama, could I have some wine?" Fluffy asks.

You want wine?

He means the pear/grape fruit juice the kids drank at Seder, while Mama, Coco and Muzzy got the good stuff.

"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaase?"

Uhhh. Egad.

"Stop whining!" Fuzzy orders, scowling.

"It was just a yolk."





(Hot Cha; They Might Be Giants)

Bienvenue, Weirdos.

...You're all wrapped up in mystery/ So wild so free and far from me/ You're all I want, my fantasy....



The words 'special females here now' ricochet inside my skull without benefit of punctuation or context. I must have read a sign that registered just after I drove past it, and I wonder: crab house or strip joint? The neighborhood I'm in, it could be either one.

As the sky goes from blood-orange to mango to melon, fades from peach to lemon, the air cools. I turn on the heat to warm my feet, but do not pull up my top. Time enough for that when lemon pales to biscuit and smoke deepens to full dark.

It is past four in the morning when I hear the grumbling of distant thunder, only now realizing why I am still awake.

CrushWorld Irregular Featurette Wednesday Linkage: If you've missed 'em, here they are.

For the three or four of you who haven't heard: Rock Star Discovers Unique Family Closeness.

And, speaking of cremains, ashes of the former James Doohan, formerly Scotty on the Starship Enterprise, are about to be blasted into space.

While we're at it, that thirty-year old five-year mission? New 'original' episodes.

(This by way of the Artist's Statement of today's The Pain-When Will It End?, by that fabulous Mr. Kreider, a link especially for meeeee, because Tim loves me.)

Hey, shut up. It's MY fantasy world. Yes, that's you I'm telling to shut up, Mr. De-Bunker of All My Illusions, yes, YOU, Mr. Political Animal, writing this week about weather reports. Well, it WAS a particularly newsless week. Even Primarily Decorative noticed that. All the headlines were Congress Promises To Bring Troops Home, Bush Vows To Fight Congress, and the occasional Hundreds Die In... (fill in the blank). By the way, I recognize that final quote.

She's news, all right. I'm no Hilary-basher, but can't resist leaving you with this scary image.



(Photograph; Def Leppard)

Breaking Stories

...You say smile I say cheese/ Cartier I say please/ Income tax I say Jesus/ I don't wanna be a candidate / For Vietnam or Watergate....

I recently finished Stephen King's Cell, which, for Stephen King, was somewhat sub-standard. It reminded me a bit of The Stand, and I felt as though the characters were shallow. However, I do love King's ability to take something innocuous and turn it into an object of horror. Snarling dog? Check. Poster of Rita Hayworth? Check. Pet graveyard? Check. High school prom? Check. Still, reading sub-par King provides better entertainment than reading the top-notch efforts of many other current fiction authors. Good ones, such as Orson Scott Card, CJ Cherryh and Christopher Moore don't write quickly enough to satisfy me.

Here's a puzzle: Is this art?

(from my NetZero homepage.)

I am wending my way through David Frost's I Gave Them A Sword, which is a behind-the scenes account of the famous Frost/Nixon interviews. These interviews have been made into a successful stage show, which played to sold-out crowds in West End, and is now coming to the Jacobs Theater on Broadway. Ron Howard has already secured the movie rights. Keep me away? Not likely.

I Gave Them A Sword has the honor of being the most hook-y Watergate read I've picked up since Tony Ulasewicz's The President's Private Eye. Now, Tony, by all accounts, was quite the character during the hearings, and his voice was nicely preserved with the help of Stuart McKeever, and so this was an entertaining read in a way that John Dean's Blind Ambition was not.

Maureen Dean's book, Mo, was an annoying piece of fluff, and Judge Sirica's book, while well-written, was not terribly engaging. I picked up Jim McCord's OOP book, A Piece Of Tape, (great title) from Half.com at a real bargain. (I think I got it for under fifty bucks, while dealers who knew what they had were selling it at over $100.00.) After repeated attempts at reading it, I've given up for the time being.

Liddy's Will was fun, if you can laugh at the G-Man's pompous, bombastic style, but I did wonder how much factual information was included. Tricia's book on Pat, again, not bad, but again, not engaging. And okay, yes, All The President's Men was a compelling read, partly because of its immediacy and intimate involvement, but the readablity was Bernstein's doing, I'm convinced, since I haven't made it through a single one of Woodward's solo offerings.

Silent Coup, by Len Colodny, was a dense piece of highly-contested propaganda, but it had a great bibliography, which led me to the incredibly fun- and questionable- Secret Agenda, by Jim Hougan. [Aside: Oliver Stone's film, Nixon is wonderful to watch, but hardly a documentary or even dramatization. 'Heavily slanted' is what I'll call it, for lack of something stronger.]

I Gave Them A Sword , writing-wise, leaves all my Watergate reads in the dust.

...we would make annual requests for the President to appear on the program. The annual White House response had an almost ritual quality to it. It would be signed by Mr. Nixon's press secretary, Ronald Ziegler. Always Ziegler would begin by saying, "I accept your invitation for the President to appear on a show with you." And, always, after "accepting" the invitation, Ziegler would state that the question of if and when to actually make the appearnace on the show would be taken up with the President, with further information to be provided should Mr. Nixon actually agreee to be interviewed.

This touching little habit of accepting pieces of paper on which invitations were written without responding affirmatively to the invitations themselves, I came to accept as wholly innocent indications of Ziegler's ability to render the English language inoperative, even in matters not involving alleged presidential culpability.

I'm not saying you should run out and get this book from the dusty shelf of your local used bookstore. I'm not saying you need to bid on one from eBay, that massive commercial monster who seduces me on a near-daily basis. I'm not saying you should ever read David Frost, watch the interviews, or hear his name ever again. As you know, I'm not so big on 'shoulds.'

But that's some damned fine writing. That's what I'm saying.


I think I know a bunch of kids who (once I forward this link) will clamor to adopt a new religion.

(Thank you to Wil Wheaton.)

I picked up a copy of Stumbling on Happiness, by "renowned Harvard psychologist" Daniel Gilbert(so says the cover flap) because the front cover said this:

"If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me."

Usually, I do not find the words 'trust me' remotely reassuring, unlike the words Don't Panic, which always make me smile. In fact, 'trust me' often raises the same kind of red flag that 'you've got to believe me!' does, the red flag of dishonesty, deception, and overacting.

The quote, however, was attributed to Malcolm Gladwell, which changes everything.

And an update: gallery turns chickenshit; no surprise there, really. Exactly where does the Christian doctrine endorse death threats?

Finally, something so silly it stretches credibility.

Find out your peculiar aristocratic title.

This premise is so absurd that it of necessity must become a theme for an upcoming event.




(Bicycle Race; Queen)