R.I.P. Steve Jobs

If you put your brilliant mind to it, you could have created this:

she sang Lullaby by Shawn Mullins in a private karaoke room to me and only me and we cried the last verse together into one mic

But you didn't. Still, I like my MacBook.

P.S. Below is a screenshot of the suggested videos to watch après Shawn Mullins. Yeah, thanks YouTube. Like I need somebody to tell me the lyrics to "Jumper."

My Most Awkward Years: Musically Distilled

This is a mash-up of a bunch of songs from the 90s brought to my attention by a fellow wild child of those halcyon days—days that are just as bleak even veiled by nostalgia.


Nineties FTW (Wick-it's 90's Rock Nostalgia Overdose Mashup) by Wick-it the Instigator

If somebody with ProTools was able to similarly condense my existence spanning the years this music was made, the resulting song would entail a machine-gun staccato of crying, masturbating and taking Accutane for my acne. It would sound akin to a Joanna Newsom live album.

This summer went by quickly. I know that sentence makes me sound like a schoolteacher lamenting the return to the classroom, but I am not a schoolteacher because: a) what if anyone found this treasure trove of closet skeletons? and b) I do not like children. All of a sudden it's fall in New York and the sun is setting earlier and I am getting crankier but also reorienting myself with some direction. The blurry summer passed, a shot of methadone focus is definitely in order. Primarily, I am resolving to eliminate negativity (and sources of negativity) and only fight for and with that which fulfills me. My first thought after writing that sentence is to sell all my belongings, quit working and eat cheeseburgers and fried pickles every day until my heart explodes with joy and hypertension. Although that's one path to a greasy form of enlightenment, and Buddha is always depicted as a chubby fellah, it isn't really what I meant. I aim to seek out good people who appreciate my talents, encouraging and inspiring me, and not waste any time with or for those who do not.

Two quotes from one story by the incomparable Southern writer Barry Hannah struck a chord today:

Wretched hesitation ... is what embalms our lives, and that was what age demanded of you more and more, to get less and less life.

I've seen peers accept "less and less life" for the past ten years and it's a been a terrible thing to witness. People who used to seem so full of life are both aging toward boredom and personifying it. Their unnatural progression makes me want to quit Facebook. Ten years ago we flung ourselves toward excitement both haphazardly and erroneously without care or regard for the consequences, only a yearning for escape from suburban drudgery. I only assumed that my partners in crime would just grow older and choose wiser ways to get our fun, our "adult" kicks; instead of sneaking past our parents with a flask of whiskey we'd be vaulting past the rubes trading years of fluorescent office imprisonment for a chance at eventual freedom—retirement at 65, provided they live that long—with a freewheeling jaunt toward success without boundaries. And it hasn't happened. And as much as I'd like to think that they're the only ones who've given up, I must admit to my own struggles with "wretched hesitation."

Another:

I was desperate and would have been throbbing in shame but I was still drunk enough to ignore it and was majoring on the theme Whim of Fortune, and I believe trying to attach myself to a woman of such low estate that the two of us would destroy ourselves in spontaneous combustion at an impossible diving speed.

Now this quote is not quite as introspective as its predecessor, but knowing Hannah's life I think it's more than semi-autobiographical. He's at the pulse of a feeling I've had once or twice or ten times in the past, and evoked with the dexterity of a F-15 fighter pilot, fingers flying Mach-1 over the keyboard. As a young writer, Hunter S. Thompson typed the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald to get the flow of his hero's writing. To get his rhythm. I only hope that typing Hannah's words can move me in similar ways.

So was that mash-up above the soundtrack to my most awkward years, or have the songs to that time in my life even been written yet? I don't know. But after surviving my first earthquake (yes, in Brooklyn) and a hurricane that shut down all public transportation in the city and called for evacuations in the same week, I biked down to Greenwood Cemetery for a few hours of wandering mental clarity.

And then I grilled cheeseburgers. Everyone deals with mortality differently.

Flying Rabbit x Blaxsploitation

Not much to say about this, other than I wish I had shot it in better quality with my camera phone. At least I'm sort of learning video editing.


The Bearded Lady Flies Again from chris barry on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Taunting Craigslist Missed Connections

I am no stranger to Craigslist. I have successfully negotiated the purchase of electronic equipment — not stolen — and did not die in the process. I have also found two roommates in this manner and neither killed me in my sleep (though one roommate's cousin did, I believe, want to partake in some late-night funny business with my handsome sleeping cherubic self).

Craigslist is also where I go to not find work. The job boards are criminally depressing, time-and-self-worth suckholes that bog me down in mire and shame and depression. Eyes glaze over, sexual appetite wilts, brain liquefies, body becoming a gelatinous goo of worthlessness, I am a Madam Toussaud's wax figure of myself under a McDonald's heatlamp, and if only I had a little more fry-o-lator experience, I could get that job at McDonald's.

There is one place on Craigslist, however, that does not disappoint: Missed Connections. Eyes search for daddy issues and latent low self-esteem with pinpoint accuracy, sexual appetite becomes voracious (easy prey, I'm perverted, etc.), brain is sharp, body feels muscular as everyone else seems so weak, I am AWESOME. (By comparison.) I could be president! And what a tyrant I would be!

I never respond to these posts, primarily because the sad/shy/chubby girl in question is never talking about me. And then I cry. Also, because, would you respond? Do you really want to meet up with somebody who was too scared/lame to talk to you the first time around, but now armed with their stairway wit they go on to Missed Connections to reach you? And, on top of that, not only are YOU so lame that you're reading Missed Connections, but you stumble across one and have so little in the way of social obligations that you'll respond, maybe even go on a date based on an email sent to an anonymous reply-to e-mail address?

Who cares. Check out what I found the other day:

In case you are blind and reading this on your braille computer (or it's reading it for you, I guess is probably more likely) here is the text:

when i saw you behind the mcdonalds counter on broadway..... my heart dipped into what seemed like a melting sundae. your hair color reminded me of the hot fudge as i was letting the spoon graze my sun soaked lips. everytime i see a mcdonalds commercial, i envision me sitting on your face as you yell im loving it. i wanna say it was the hot weather that made me so wet but then id be lying. as i watched you stack the cups into size order, i pictured you licking the sweat from the pores of my body. i hope you don't have your sexual education certificate because i'm about to certify the shit out of you. 

For the first time ever, I felt compelled to respond. No, I HAD to respond. First of all, who was this hussie not only swimming in my infinite pool of personal sadness (that helps me cope with the "success" of working about 8 days a month), but also peeing in it, degrading the true missed connections with the blatant mockery? Second of all, this is pretty funny, and one good turn deserves another. So I signed in to Gmail with my Tuesdays With Maury e-mail address and banged out the following letter from my phone, since my computer has been down for days: *Ahem*

I knew it was going to be a scorcher today, that's why I set my company issued visor at a lusty tilt. You've got Golden Arches, girl, and I ain't talkin' bout dat ass, though it's a stunna: Naw, I'm a foot man. And even though your tight tourist figure came struttin' up to the counter wearing some crusty Rainbow flip flops, I knew dem feet was the apple pie to my value meal. You know how they invented that spoon that also makes the McFlurry? The same magic put me on this earth to caress those toes of yours. I'm gonna dip em in all the sauces, even mixtures you haven't even fathomed. You're the one who's gonna get an education.

You saw me stack those cups, huh? You see how gentle I was with the supersize? Yeah, you gotta finesse the big ones in.

Also, just looked at the e-mail to get the text of the letter. Realized that I must have registered that "anonymous" Maury account under my real name.

I stand by my words.

Sadly, however, it is I that missed the connection. I haven't heard back from my lusty wench of both McDonald's and cyberspace. Here I thought I was gonna have this like Sleepless in Seattle (or You've Got Mail? I didn't see either) Tom Hanks–Meg Ryan fake internet romance based on the most important factors in any relationship: Humor, Sarcasm, Sex and Junk Food.

And I still kinda need a job.

Smells Like Tween Spirit

It all started on Monday. I bought a rug for my bedroom as somewhere nice for my feet to fall when I step out of bed. Martina Van Buren, my lionhead rabbit/devil's advocate/beloved roommate/perpetual antagonist/~8-year-life-partner, took to the rug immediately by pancake-ing herself down, stretching into lounge mode and laying down a few "this is my rug now" poos.

It's like diss:

clearly i am not in control of this situation

And like dat:

The thing is, she has her own rug in her pen. It's a $5.99 dollar store treasure, and she seems to be confusing my rug for hers when I thought that I had clearly indicated the difference. I need to show I'm boss. But if I retaliate in a way she'll understand — by pooping on her rug, for instance — I still lose, because she will just stonewall me into cleaning up the mess myself. She's very persuasive. So I don't have a solution yet.

But as the week progressed, things got weirder than the battle over rug ownership. She was racing in circles around my feet, honking at me like a little goose baby and demanding constant an immediate attention. Wherever I went, she followed, circling my feet and standing on her hind legs to stare at me. At first cute, last night the behavior became insane.

Martina would not leave me alone. Usually when I am working in my lounge chair, she will leap into my lap and sit for a few minutes, and I will move my laptop, put my work on hold and torture her with love and affection. Then she'll get restless and hop down, go eat some hay or my shoes or a wire or plot my untimely death or whatever it is that she does when I'm not looking. But not last night: She hopped into my lap probably ten times over the course of a couple hours and just stayed put, getting herself comfortable and buzzing at me, demanding affection. I also began to notice a smell in my room, not unlike the cloud of body odor wafting around Bonnaroo this time of year, but a little sweeter, and probably more beneficial to our society. After determining that the smell wasn't from my armpit or my dirty laundry, I started to ponder the bunny connection. The smell was wild and strange and mildly intoxicating, kind of like in that gasoline/turpentine way. It was then that I gave my shirt the sniff test, where she'd been nestled all night, and the odor was all over it. Perplexed, I turned to my Savior, the omnipotent omnipresent omni-sexual Internet, for advice, and came across this:

It was then that I realized what I had suspected: My baby has become a little lady, and it was time to release her into the wild. I opened the door and let her run out onto the patio, where she was swiftly dispatched by a large hawk that had been ominously circling overhead. I exclaimed, "that's nature for you" and spent the rest of the evening in a leather wing-back chair, smoking a brier pipe and reading Darwin, content in my actions. and she was flirting with the "man of the house." I then set out to find the corniest version of a certain Neil Diamond song to play over and over for her (and me), and I think I found it:



I am not unfamiliar with female advances, but 96-percent of them come in the form of doe-eyed flirtations from overweight black women in the Duane Reade check-out line, where I'm patiently waiting to buy blueberry yogurt pretzels. It happens often. Back home in Atlanta, I'm the WASPy love interest for the cashiers at Kroger — and the sketchier the neighborhood the better. But this was my first inter-species flirtation, and it kinda stunk.

I started reading more. Too much, actually. I saw things I can't unsee. I read things I shouldn't have read. Nature is weird and so is the Internet and so are people, so the trifecta was intense.

not all trix are for kids

This was seriously on a rabbit owner discussion board in a spay/neuter thread. It is terrifying.

I was going to say that things have calmed down, but for the last 30 minutes she's been in my lap. Every time I reach forward to the keyboard, she nuzzles my wrist up over her head to be petted. I am still not the boss.

Besides finding the above pornographic cereal mascot, I've found lots of useful information. Apparently this behavior is a good indication that it is time for her to be spayed. I don't really want to spay her, but it is in her best interest in terms of health and longevity. Hopefully she'll stop flirting with me once the spaying is complete; besides, even though I love my now-grown-woman bunny, my heart belongs to someone else. FREE DELILAH!!! I'm waitin' for ya baby.

 

Wait For It

Some stuff about me:

• If you're a skateboarder over the age of 30 and you don't have a video game or a show on MTV, I'm judging you, and you've got a big hole to dig yourself out of for me to like you.  

 

• I want to start a website called etsy-wetsy.com. It will be the result of me and my rabbit going to craft fairs and peeing on kitchy, handmade items.

• If you're a girl walking into my bedroom and you see one side of the bed is piled with clothes, magazines, drawings, pamphlets, empty shopping bags and newspapers, I didn't expect you to be here.

• My life's Catch-22 is that I am good at everything but monotonous work, and monotonous work seems to be an essential part of the American Dream. Of course, this is what the American Dream looks like, so screw it:

redeemed by the cardiologist

• I am seriously considering getting an online personal assistant from India or Bangladesh or whatever's cheapest because I become paralyzed by the most mundane, simple, routine tasks. This includes mailing a letter and writing a check. Or "paying rent."

• I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really think it sucks that every time someone returns a pair of Tom's to the shoe store, they take a pair back from a needy child.

• That being said, what a dream job.

• I made this drawing. I call it "Jack Hannah-bal Lechter Goes To Australia." I probably need to color it in to show Jack's khaki shirt and koala blood.

• They say cell phones cause brain cancer, but I feel like I'm safe since I pretty much text only. But then I realized I'm walking around with a $90-per-month asbestos cannon sitting in my pocket just two inches from my scrotum.

• I overheard the following statement recently: "That's what sucks about autotune — it takes no talent."

• I recently saw the best license plate I've ever seen in person, and risked death to get this photo:

the search continues

• I think the term "runner's high" is nonsense, but I like to think of a "walker's high" as old people pushing their carts around stoned on pain meds.

• I think abstinence is stupid. Who wants to sit around hearing someone brag about being an experienced virgin?

• I not-so-secretly think it's okay to be pretentious (or at least educated) about almost everything — clothes, food, architecture, design, music, art, literature — but you should also understand that I wear my underwear and t-shirts until they literally disintegrate.

• In my two years in New York, I have witnessed some weird stuff: two people getting urinated upon by bums, two fat old people make out — like, seriously go after it — in a thunderstorm, getting drenched all the way down to the control briefs and massive bra, heard countless stories of masturbating hobos on the subway flashing their crusty weiners at girls I know, but nothing could have prepared me for watching a woman hike her skirt and diarrhea in the street in broad daylight. Actually, that isn't true. I was prepared — I had my camera phone ready:

you see, the socks are protecting the sandals from splashback

I think this is all I have for today. I've been sort of manic-depressive lately over the completion of tasks and looking toward the next one, and to completing one thing before moving on to the next. I need to believe that I am, indeed, doing what I should be, even when sometimes it's very stressful and seems to be leading nowhere. And sometimes I just need to relax, and not be some damn high strung.

My good friend sent a text yesterday (that likely blasted my balls chock-full of cell phone radiation) telling me I'd been slacking on this blog, which gave me a little motivation to write a few things down that have been stuck in my head. Sorry they're all crazy...

5.21.2011: John Cusack is Tardy to the Party

quote the cusack, nevermore

It has come to my attention that if you are an evangelical christian, the world is ending this year in October, but since you are an evangelical christian doubtlessly following the teachings of Jesus then you get to fly up to heaven with JC himself THIS SATURDAY!!! There is a guy named Harold Camping who predicted that the world would end in 1994, but after "re-evaluating" the scriptures, he came up with May 21, 2011. I guess if you're a heathen or a Mexican (Aztec, Inca, whatever) or John Cusack, you probably think it won't happen 'til 2012. But I think this trustworthy-looking talking paper bag knows a little bit more about the end of the world than some fancypants Hollywood know-it-all, don't you?



My buddy Eric has been following all the latest developments of the last 1980-ish years since Jesus was washing poor peoples' feet (ew!) by diligently accepting whatever fliers poor people with dirty feet were handing out in the Union Square subway or the tunnel to the 8th Ave. E train, plus documenting anything posted to a light pole, anywhere:

the suspense is going to kill me (before the earthquake does)

the lady that hands these out also sells delicious, homemade churros... i assume

Now that we know what's going to happen, what do we do? Listen to Rebecca Black a lot, obviously, and look forward to Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday which come... after-wards. We we we so excited. But I also decided to look for some more scholarly advice on some Judgment Day blogs:

buy visine, check.

ignore accusations against priests, check.

use my turn signal, improve parallel parking skills, check.

rent a zipcar and go to Costco for BagelBites and bottled water, check.

cancel and get refund for ticket on richard branson's virgin SpaceShipTwo

So, not being a particularly religious person myself, I have been doing what any rational, secular human being would do in preparation for the rapture: Watching cult recruitment videos on YouTube. The Heaven's Gate cult, the guys who committed mass suicide so that they could fly up to a spaceship that was trailing behind the Hale-Bopp Comet, have some pretty killer vids. In the recruitment tapes, Marshall Applewhite, the leader of Heaven's Gate, basically tells the same story as these Rapture people, that the earth is going to be reborn soon and the chosen ones will need to leave earth before it happens; that they possess the knowledge of how to escape; and that they will return once it's all over. Here's one of many on YouTube that I watched last night to induce strange dreams and more bed-wetting.



They filmed a bunch of stuff before swallowing drug-laced applesauce (which seems like an egotistical choice by cult leader Applewhite) and blasting off to outerspace. The thing is, they all seem really happy in their pre-suicide tapes. And so does "paper bag head" in his other videos. 

So, whatever: I say let 'em have their fun, and I'll see y'all on Sunday... which comes after-wards.

For more reading about crazy earth conspiracies, search "inner earth." It's a theory that says there is an earth inside the earth, with its own hovering sun and a portal somewhere near the north pole. Here's a map. Seems legit. See ya in hell/McDonald's for Sunday Brunch.

Bad Dweams and Double-Trouble With Asian Massage Parlours: A Tuesday in May

So I have this kind of active imagination.

Since I have a picture, I know I did not imagine this:

Lionhead Rabbit Convention: let the judging begin

No, I'm not going to explain this photo. You have to interpret it on your own. Just know that it took a few moments to get the perfect shot and I got it.

One downside to my infantile brain is that sometimes, usually when overheated and sleeping, I have weird, not-so-happy dreams. It happened to me last night. And to make matters worse, I woke up from my urine-soaked nightmare right as my alarm went off, meaning that I couldn't just pull the rubber sheets off my bed, throw them in the washer, and go back to sleep and forget the whole thing and pretend like mom and dad won't have one of those hushed talks when they think you're in your room doing your homework, one of those talks when they ask each other "when is he going to stop doing that? Surely he should have outgrown it by now" and then they notice you are standing there but try to pretend like they're not talking about you, and you wonder the same thing and don't have an answer and you're 17 years old now go back to sleep and forget it. It was one of those dreams where you feel helpless, and it put me in this weird funk, a spacey, unsettled mood for the following six hours or so.


Cue relaxing Asian massage number one: I left work at about noon to go across the street to one of those Qi-Gong massage places that are basically everywhere in New York City, offering massages for roughly $9 for every ten minutes of rub. I have been pretty loyal to Ma's Body Work in Greenpoint for a number of reasons:

1. it is across the street
2. they offer a stamp card, and theoretically I will someday acquire enough Chinese characters for a free massage (or an edgy yet Zen-inspirational tattoo)
3. it is the only one I've ever been to
4. both of my kidneys are still (theoretically) in my body, which, after 7 visits, makes it seem like they're trustworthy enough
5. even though its batteries are now dead, it used to have this cool gold waving cat in the window that was quite welcoming (he's still there, just not as friendly anymore, now that he no longer waves but instead gives kind of an eerie Nazi salute)
6. and probably the most important point here, being an ignorant Southerner by birth and therefore uneducated xenophobe, I thought "Ma's" must be a family business — the strong matriarch a cornerstone of their family trade and therefore providing the massage parlor's name — and always assumed that the oldest woman on the premises must be "Ma" and therefore the most skilled masseuse, going so far as to request her by name or offer to wait for her, not realizing until recently that "Ma" is a pretty common name for Asian people and that it's probably their last name and I am, as suspected, a total jackass.

Needless to say, the massage totally pulled me out of my funk, gave me 20 minutes of deep, uninterrupted thought that resolved my dream-related depression, and released lots of tension from my shoulders. (There is really no way to make this "relaxation" not sound like I was given a handjob, but I promise, I don't like handjobs from strangers. Anymore.)

But there's a new kid on the block, so to speak, in the form of another massage parlor about 200 feet away that I've heard from a couple of people is "better" than Ma (the old woman at Ma's). So I figure, what better way to find out than a little head-to-head comparison?

Now I don't know the name of this place but it's on the same side of the street, it has white curtains and a VHS tape of a gooey-looking back massage playing on loop on a 13" TV/VCR combo in the window. I appreciate their no-nonsense approach to deterring funny business:

I have to deduct a point for the narrow stalls, as disrobing was cramped. But what happened once I was on the table can only be described by the following series of noises and tactile descriptions:

The staccato sound of flip-flops flipping and flopping into the chamber. How long? Twenty minutes, please. Inner monologue: Ouch, damn, she's strong. I'm having a hard time breathing, but in a good way. Don't fight back, don't resist, absorb. Breathe. Exhale during pressure. Wait, did she just? Yep, she's up on the table. What a little spider woman! What a ninja! Ugh, don't be so predictable. Ninja. Yeah, you're real creative. Raccoon? Very sneaky, eyes shielded in disguise. Cat burglar? Ooh, that's a bad knot there. How did Ma not find that one? Her name isn't really even Ma, dummy. Maybe you are racist. Shit, she's on the table again, this time perched on the side so she can work the left side of the back. How does she know to favor the left side? She's very intuitive, this one. Ugh, 'this one'? Really? Okay you need to take it down a notch. I wonder if Film Noir video has "White Dog" (Ed Note: CLICK THIS LINK!!!) on DVD? They have all the Criterion Collection stuff, they've probably got it. Okay, now she's on my right side. Damn, I've never had anyone really get into that... what are those muscles called? "Traps"? "Delts"? It feels good though. Time's up. I wonder if they do a little extra after the... ahhhh... buzzer, they, DO! Flip-flop-flip-flop very fast, hot towel, all finished.

It's better than Ma's; I admit it. And I took the Pepsi Challenge this afternoon to prove it.

On my way home, I ran into this girl who has a blog called "Babe City Babes", which is a blog of photos and commentary about guys she and her friend think are hot. I learned about her blog when I ran into her at an Easter party a few weeks ago (or whenever Easter was...) and she took my picture. I found out today, however, that they had already featured me on their blog a couple of months ago, and they don't like to do duplicates... so I went looking on the site for me. What I found made me laugh for roughly 10 minutes:

If this isn't the most quintessential, perfect, amazing photo of me, I don't know what is. Apparently I look hot when I have a confused look on my face, a four-pound bag of rabbit hay in my hand, and I'm standing on the corner in front of McDonald's, probably going to the bodega to buy a kombucha or vitacoco. Should you want to read the full commentary (which is hilarious), it's here.

Yo, much love Mina, you sneaky devil you. It's hard work being this much of a babe.

Things That I (Mistakenly) Think Will Make My Life Complete and Make Me A Real American: May 2011 Edition

I had everything planned out: Ohio hotel with lenient pet rabbit policies, cheap car rental, Spaghetti Warehouse banquet dinner tickets, everything. I had found a rental car online for only $18 per day if I just went and picked it up at JFK airport. And then the American economic system (in the form of an double-chinned, age-undetermined woman wearing some sort of pantsuit) almost ruined my trip. This curly-haired gremlin troll told me that although I had reserved the car online, and although I could (theoretically) pay for the cost of the car rental, she could not rent it to me because I have chosen not to have a credit card because I think they are stupid and a middle-class trap and I'm not sure I am enough of an adult to handle having money at my disposal whenever and wherever I want it. So I ended up having to rent a car from another rental agency for about 5 times that price because they would rent to a debit card, and all they had left were expensive SUVs. That being said, it all worked out but it was over my planned budget for the trip.

It got me thinking though: If I got a credit card, would I just buy everything I covet and it at home with my possessions and never leave the house and develop a vitamin D deficiency and lose all remaining scraps of social skills? If so, that actually just sounds like what I've been doing over the past 6 months in cold, dreary, horrible, the worst, New York City winter, except that I would have cooler stuff. Let the patriotism begin (with a crippling amount of debt)!

1) I want a yellow lamp. I don't know why but I need it.

from west elm ($69)

Or this one:

from etsy ($89)

2) I need an alarm clock because my rabbit chewed through the power cord of the one I've had since I was 4 years old, which also electrocuted both her and me one night at 4am.

from etsy ($85 plus shipping from a tiny Chinese man)

Or this one:

from etsy ($28)

3) I need blue shoes (I do not need these at all but if I had good credit I would own them then not be able to pay for them and therefore have bad credit and live the American Dream).

from Yuketen via Woodlands Supply Co. ($275)

Or these (because the brick sole is cool):

from Eastland via Epaulet ($185 on sale)

4) I need a kilim rug for my room and for my sanity.

from kilim.com ($900)

Or this one:

from kilim.com ($1,100)

5) I need a footrest or an ottoman (because I am too cool for stool wah wah wah):

from moss ($455)

Or this:

from The Future Perfect ($393)

6) I need an industrial-looking table for my turntable and vintage amp because right now they are sitting on the floor:

from World Market ($330)

Or this, since I have free credit money:

from Get Back, Inc. ($unknown)

7) I need a place for indoor plants to replace the pitcher plant I had last summer that I named Ru Paul that died shortly after I bought him/her:

from Manufactum (~$40)

Or this:

from etsy ($35)

This could go on literally forever, so...

Let's all be New American Patriots and get into credit card debt! Yayyy! (We killed Bin Laden! click link for an awkward celebration in my awkward neighborhood — thanks Jasper.)

I Am Sleepy

And this is the most childish commercial I have ever seen.

 

Is she "grumpy mental patient" from iStockphoto.com? I imagine her doing a baby talk voice saying "I got cwub foot so I cwalled won-eight-hundwed-bad-dwug" then turning her back and stomping off the stage.

This post is not helpful, nor relevant, nor anything. Just found this picture while looking through my screencaps of Maury episodes and scolding a rabbit.

Just When We Were All Feeling Bad For Japan

I'm not what you might consider one of those "current events" type people, those types that are always in the know about the latest catastrophes/natural disasters/presidential elections/Lindberg baby abductions. So I didn't know that the "Sing-A-Ma-Jig" is a toy from Christmas season 2010, I just thought it was a Japanese sex toy gone horribly wrong that had been incorrectly labeled and imported into the United States under erroneous falsified documents and somehow wound up in a Rite Aid in Brooklyn and subsequently found its way into my clammy masturbatory hands after I stood in line to pay $13.97 for it while wondering if I'd be less embarrassed to be buying the Trojan Vibrating Ring that was going for roughly the same price in the "impulse buy" section near candy and gum and playing cards and Abreva. I bought it solely to make the worst video ever, which I think I have done. Enjoy.



I want to make it into a "Feature Length Film" so please donate to the project on Kickstarter so your money will go to a good cause which will be me buying several more plants for my apartment, probably air plants to put in the eyes of my new cow skull hanging on my bedroom wall, or to fund some of the other meaningless whims and temporary obsessions that govern my so called life.

In other news, I have a big weekend coming up: I will be attending the North American Lionhead Rabbit Club's 2011 National Show in Columbus, Ohio. It's only a 9-hour drive from Brooklyn through Pennsylvania and Ohio; or, if you're going to be in the area, you should come too! I don't think there is any entry fee if you're just an average rabbit-loving obese person (like me) and don't have a bunny to show ($7.50 if you do), so you can just come in and walk around and judge rabbits on your own and drink Tab and eat olive loaf bologna sandwiches (snacks unconfirmed). Maybe you'll bid on a show-winning lionhead like one of these, all up for auction! Maybe you're just going for the $20 all-you-can-eat "Italian-American" banquet at Spaghetti Warehouse (15-layer lasagna) and the cheap hotel room with a vibrating bed (unconfirmed) and pool (unconfirmed) to escape New York for a weekend.

Maybe you want to see pictures from a recent Easter photoshoot starring my rabbit and Carlen's shiny rapist rabbit who, thankfully, has been neutered.

like a virgin

touched

for the very first time

(No rabbits were harmed during the taking of these photos, although I was hit with a tsunami of rabbit urine on my lap which, for the second time recently that I have been peed on, I thought was just the animal getting cozy and warming my body with its undying love...)

Speaking of "undying", Happy Easter everybody! Hopefully Zombie Jesus's cannibalistic search for human flesh didn't have him walking across water to eat your brains. Because I think that's the true meaning of John Carpenter's classic 1977 film "The Resurrection", a powerful film in the Catholic educational movie canon, although I haven't been to Sunday School in quite some time and my knowledge of Christian theology is shaky at best and tinged with disbelief and Hollywood and insanity.

I Mowed The Yard In My Sleep, And I Failed

I spent a long time on the phone last night, talking to my parents, who are currently very occupied with kitchen renovations. My house, changing. I have never felt emotional about alterations made to my childhood home until now. Or, that is to say, until I woke up this morning. When I was on the phone I just tried to envision the new layout, offered advice when it was requested, let them talk. Yes, them: My parents both pick up the phone when I call home because my mom thinks I will tell my dad things I won't tell her (true) and doesn't want to "miss anything." But I talk to her about things I don't tell my father, too, so I don't really know understand that argument; in the end, I guess it's nice I don't have to repeat myself.

I had a dream later that revolved around cutting the grass in my backyard, and I was failing. I had mowed the yard to perfection for years and now everything was wrong. I was pissing myself with green inability and yet certain in my head that what I was doing had to be right even though I knew it wasn't. Standing out there, for some reason putting the blade setting far too low and doing one stripe around the perimeter of the yard, almost scorching-the-earth short, bald even, my dad looking down from the deck with a look that mixed shock and disappointment, he himself knowing that I was better than my performance. Dreams often don't make sense but I woke up disappointed in myself anyway, because I know what it was: I know it's a subconscious metaphor for the sometimes overwhelming inadequacy I feel as I try to write this book about my grandmother's childhood during World War II. It brought tears to my ears briefly this morning; it is again now.

And you want to know another reason why? I love cutting the grass and I take pride in it. I would cut it every week for my dad and also for my neighbor, and I even sometimes helped my friend Blake with his lawn mowing business. And I had style, too, nobody did it better than me: I had always made two passes around the outside — and never with a change in grass height — before doing either vertical or diagonal stripes across the inside bulk of the yard. That little bit of creativity and focus, vying for perfection in those stripes, was part of what made the mundane sublime. I would have done it for free, so the extra cash I made was a solid deal.

It's the smell, I think, that I like the best. Two-stroke engine fuel, the little bit that spilled while filling the tank wiped on my T-shirt, mixing with sweat and dirt and grass; the exhaust hangs heavy in the humid summer Georgia air that's already sweetened by flowers full in bloom. Gasoline, especially the oil-gas mixture that is two-stoke, is such a narcissistic odor, just like permanent markers and rubber cement and your own farts in bed: you know it's bad and you have to smell it anyway to satisfy yourself.

clip-art adds credibility to my glue addiction

But the noise is nice, too. It's fulfilling, that droning engine, a small muffler barely hushing the violent processes powering that sharpened fan blade whirring inches from your feet. I've heard some quote that I'm not going to bother looking up, but it's something along the lines of "meditation is the art of automating the body so the mind can work." The combination of droning sounds, intoxicating smells and physical focus provided me with this wonderful alone time, completely within my own head, nothing to shape my thoughts but the direction they took on their own, and a feeling of blissful contentment I yearn for on a daily basis. I get a taste of it from a long, purposeless walk through the streets of New York, my thoughts wandering like my feet, but it still isn't the same. 

That's why on days like today, overcome by wind and rain and gray dreary insanity, deprived of my walk of serenity, I write crazy stuff like this around midnight. I feel nostalgia for a hot July Georgia day. I recall being ten years younger, home from college for the summer, working for my friend's uncle doing custom woodwork and renovating rich peoples' homes, working myself to physical exhaustion through the day, taking a quick shower and heading off again to sit in lawn chairs in somebody's driveway at night with beers and girls and music and fireflies.

I had forgotten that dream over the course of the day as I worked hard on the book, researching and writing and doing. And then I read this and it all came rushing back. I need to get back to work now, to prove I can.