New order.

Brittle Lemon has entered the monastery.

Posted at 11:35 PM ||

 
You can thank me later for putting that song into your head.

What I've been up to recently, and why none of that up-toness involves posting on this blog: well, mostly I've been curled up in a corner, singing "la-da-dee, la-da-da."

Okay, that might be a tad much, since I'm not really a homeless gypsy woman, but I'm getting there. Closer -- maybe a week away -- to becoming homeless, that is, not to becoming a woman. Or a gypsy, for that matter, although I'm certainly a little wild-eyed nowadays. The housing situation has developed quickly, and not in a good way. Friendlord has had to hurry back, because things between his parents have been bad because of various illnesses. Yes, it's very sad for him, but let's talk about how it affects me. Friendlord needs to separate the 'rents, and move his mom into where I am now. So I will soon be out on my ass. Obviously, I'm not buying a place in this short time, but looking for an interim solution (which should be distinguished from "moving back in with my parents"; that one is called "Plan H"). But all this is also happening during a period when work has been hell, full of deadlines that all happen to be Oct 1.

It's stressing me out.

Hopefully I'll check back here a while after the month ends.

Posted at 2:55 PM ||

 
Stick up the ass.

I love listening to the way high-strung, over-achieving parents talk to their spawn. Every moment is an educational opportunity, a chance to improve their kids' vocabulary by one. More. Word. You never know when you could succeed at pushing the offspring over the line into genius territory. "This is velcro. VAL-CROW. Velcro holds things together. See? VAL-CROW..." "Yu Gi Oh!!!" "...so the umbrella will stay closed. See? VAL-CROW..." "Ooh Yi Gee!!!" "...the sticky side, and then the other bit..." "Kaja Goo Goo!!!" "Velcro. Velcro. VALLLLL-CROOOW."

Posted at 11:51 AM ||

 
I'm not intrepid that way.

Hi! If you're one of the people who got to this blog by googling "ken jennings lost," then...sorry, you shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque. Yes, I used that phrase, like two months ago, but I'm not psychic. Well, actually I am, because -- spoiler alert! -- I did know that Ken was going to lose eventually. Anyway, easy mistake to make, but I just thought I should tell you that I'm not the blog that broke the news.

Posted at 7:29 PM ||

 
Sella! Sella! SELLA!!!

My hairdresser seems a little fed up with my head.

I'm a little tired of my head as well, but I don't want to miss the point. What my hairdresser appears to be a little put out by is the frequency at which I go see him. I get my hair cut once every three weeks, although it could just as well be, and sometimes is, every two. My current hairdresser -- who used to be a stuntman, although that's neither here nor there -- comments on this. "Hello! Is it time again for your cut? Your hair does grow fast, doesn't it?" I usually respond with the half-joke that I've used with other hairdressers. "Yes! I sometimes wish my hair growth would slow down -- although I'm sure I won't be saying that when I'm 50!" Ba-da-bum!

I'm wondering if I can blame my pituitary gland, which I've just found out "sits in the middle of the head in a bony box called the sella turcica." Excellent name; sounds like an actress who has just snagged a recurring role on The Sopranos. I saw that the gland secretes a "follicle-stimulating hormone," which you might think is responsible for hair growth, but a closer reading says that it actually stimulates my testes, for which I'm grateful. And my ovaries.

Anywaaaay. It's one thing for a hairdresser to comment on how often he sees you, but when the haircut begins to center on strategies to correct that, it does get a little worrisome. "Maybe if I cut the sides a little shorter than usual, you might be able to come in less often?" "Perhaps more off the top?" "How about a Stone Cold Steven Austin cut this time, followed by an acid treatment to ensure that nothing, including new skin cells, will sprout in the next year?" Or maybe just cut it to look good, and I continue to come in frequently, which does result in more money for ya?

Posted at 6:56 PM ||

 
Always giving in to it. Do you love the monkey or do you love me?

This was in a room of the building where I work. No, I have no idea. The entire monkey is carved out of a single coconut husk. What I love most about the whole thing is actually the arrow, pointing to the primate in question. Just in case there is any confusion about which monkey we're talking about, you see.

Posted at 5:42 PM ||

 
PS.

And now the space bar on my laptop has gone wonky. It sticks a little, so sometimes hitting it producesnoresult. I have no space! I need to find a new one! Is that a metaphor?

Posted at 11:50 PM ||

 
This is home, Shirley.

So, the thing I've learned in the past week or so is that nature's metaphors are always going to be better than mine. Hell, I'm not even sure my metaphors deserve to be called that, since they're so anvillicious. Although, to let myself off the hook a little, the anvils are really authored by my subconscious, and I hear that I can't be held responsible for that thing.

I don't usually remember my dreams, but the disappointing edition from last night did remain in my head in a jumbled, nebulous form. It more or less involved my being back in college, going to a college reunion, or at least being in some sort of dormitory situation. Actually, now that I think about it, I may have been attending a writer's colony or retreat. Which is frankly ridiculous, because I never write. And I hear that the food at those places is crunchy and healthy. Anyway, when I got to wherever the hell I was, I found the living situation to be just terrible. I was expecting to be by myself, but instead found myself in a small room set up for three. One of whom was right there, in my dream: a sniffling, bespectacled man wrapped in a blanket, and sitting at a desk hunched over his laptop, scowling at me. The room itself had a row of three equal-sized closets, and at the end of the row was a toilet. And there were three squarish picnic tables, which mysteriously were supposed to fold out into beds. (Wait -- was I Goldilocks?) I wasn't happy. Back in the real world, I wasn't happy either, because the anxieties encoded by the dream were so blindingly obvious. Also, I was going to be late for work.

Much better than my subconscious are the workings of nature's pathetic fallacies. One day last week I came home, walked into my kitchen, and had a sense that something was different. I couldn't immediately put my finger on it, though. I had a wild suspicion that someone had snuck into the house and stolen my blinds. As absurd as that sounds, it wasn't too far off the mark: I realize that the kitchen was much brighter, which was because some public maintenance crew had come by and trimmed the overgrown branches of the tree that stands outside my window. More light, although the change was quite imperceptible, something that I had to get used to seeing.

Oh, yeah: about two weeks ago my friend and landlord wrote to say that he's moving back to the country for good. Soon. Like, in a few weeks. He needs to be closer to his parents -- although not that close, since he would like to move back in here, as opposed to back into his parents' house. Friendlord says that he would be happy to share the place with me, but as far as I'm concerned, the apartment is too small for that to be a permanent option. Plus, you know, I would quite like for us to remain friends. So, given the recent, well-timed change in governmental restrictions about who can and cannot buy what sized flats ("Public Housing: Not Just For Zingerbore's Procreative Breeders Anymore!"), I decided that I need to start looking for a place to buy.

I know. Major. Trauma. It's going to be a long process, so I'm sure you'll hear more about it, whether or not you want to.

Posted at 9:24 PM ||

 
A little unclear on the concept.

"Good grief. How many credit cards do you have?"

"Yeah. A lot. I hate them, though. They give me such unrealistic credit limits."

"Really? Low?"

"No. High. It's always, like, twice what I make each month."

"How is that 'unrealistic'?"

"I always pay my balances in full, so when am I ever going to charge twice the amount I make?"

"But the point is that you could. The point of a credit card is to allow you to do just that."

"But I'll feel that I'm in debt."

"Honey. That's what credit is."

Posted at 9:42 PM ||

 
The sum, the parts.

I was a little distressed to notice, when I was at a favored chocolatier the other evening, that they have...potato chips dipped in chocolate.

I like chocolate. God knows I love potato chips. So together, the two things should be...great? I'm frankly afraid to find out.

Very few refusals to accept the perennial "sweet or salty?" dichotomy haven't ended in tears and a little bit of bloodshed, as far as I'm concerned. I can think of two, or maybe just one-and-a-half such efforts. The "one" is mango with sticky rice, that marvellous Thai dessert that brings together vaguely salty glutinous rice with slices of sweet (and indeed, sometimes even slighly sour) mangoes, all to excellent effect. The "half" is chocolate-covered pretzels. I'm taking off half the points because the pretzels used are not so much salty as they are, like, blandly neutral. It's really more like crispy dough covered in sweet chocolate, isn't it? Plus, I much prefer pretzels covered in white chocolate anyway, which is so sweet that the saltiness never emerges.

Right. I'm off to eat some salted fish dusted with confectionery powder. Oh, don't make those noises, it's just a light dusting of synesthetic sugar.

Posted at 11:39 PM ||

 
Flannel or flâneur?

Am I a male lesbian? Let's find out, using this scientifically devised lesbionic meter.

1. According to esque, the fact that I've been listening to Feist's Let It Die suggests that I am a few steps away from buying Michelle Shocked's entire back catalogue. It's sort of true that Ms. Feist has her folkydyke moments (not that I'm calling her an actual dyke; she did appear, esque tells me, on Peaches' album as "Bitch Lap-lap" after all). The opening track of the album, "Gatekeeper," in particular, would go down a bit of a storm at a Michigan women's music festival. (+10 points)

2. However, it's really the torchy numbers on Let It Die, of which there are more, that I love. And liking breathless French(-Canadian) chanteusesque stylings are rather faggy, n'est-ce pas? (-8 points)

3. "N'est-ce pas." (-5 points)

4. Case in point: I've been listening to Jane Birkin's rather fabulous Rendez-Vous album. There's a duet with Francois Hardy; somewhere in Paris a queen creams in his pants. There's a song reminding us that how sad it is when canaries are caged, and somewhere in New York a drag queen (with cutting edge taste in music) reworks his routine, replacing the dated Mariah Carey-butterflies-are-free-cum-Glitter parody. There are duets with Etienne Daho and Brian Molko, and Bryan Ferry shows up to do a version of his ode to a blow-up sex doll and to sweep his hair back. (-15 points)

5. But then again, I'm also playing k.d. lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel. And I really like it. It's sort of a brave album, because along with her move to a smaller record label, k.d. has also made a quiet, unfussy album (recorded over just five days) filled with songs which she defines as "hymns" from Canadian songwriters that show an "inherent understanding and incorporation of nature," but which detractors which might call "dirges." Sure, "One day I walk" is a little too hicky for me, but her covers of Neil Young's "After the gold rush," Ron Sexsmith's "Fallen," and Jane Siberry's "Love is everything" are stately, lovely. (+18 points)

6. I much prefer Rufus Wainwright's version of "Hallelujah" to k.d.'s, though. And while Rufus's version isn't exactly overwrought, it's certainly more...wrought. (-4 points)

7. I hate birkenstocks. (-12 points)

Final result: -16 points. Not a male lesbian. A little gay. (Which does explain why I was strangely compelled to watch Hungary win the water polo Olympic gold.)

Posted at 10:36 PM ||