hell's bells

we've been in texas almost a month, and even after the car got totalled last week, i've been doing an okay job keeping my panic about money pretty well tamped down. i was actually still kind of enjoying my joblessness until this afternoon when i got turned down for another library job and brushed off by the same bookstore that had scheduled an interview with randall an hour earlier. it is confounding that i somehow got my clumsy ass into the toughest derby league in the country, but i can't get a foot in the door doing something i actually know i'm good at. something'll come through soon and i'll feel stupid for feeling sorry for myself today, but for the time being i am in need of a pep talk and the money for a case of beer.

less angstily: as of last sunday i'm a honky tonk heartbreaker, and i think my butt might just hurt for the rest of my life. ice is nice!

i'm a texas rollergirl!
shock. shockity shit. wow.

i spent yesterday all upset because my tryout went bad and i was going to have to find some other socially acceptable way to get my iron thigh/knocking people on the ground jollies, but it turns out i just missed the call while i was drowning my disappointment in lonestar and video games. oops.

yesterday i also applied for a job at the ransom center since the one i was gunning for coming down here didn't work out, and randall and i got bank accounts finally. things are totally alright despite the fact that the new fridge keeps freezing our produce and we have a toilet tank full of weird, water-loving ants.

now i am going to go eat migas and drink coffee until my bladder pops.

i am in austin and i haven't gotten hot sauce in my eye even once yet. score!

i will post pictures of our apartment soon. it is impressive not only because of the orange counters and wood paneling, but because somehow we managed to cram all our crap into a place with only ONE closet for storage. we hung the arnold palmer picture before we stocked the fridge and we got dsl before hot water. our priorities are right, i think.

i am alive and not in michigan anymore. happy, happy days!

to do:

1) hijack truck full of RU-486
2) learn kung fu and wilderness survival
3) find foreign lover
4) stop snickering every time someone says "christian taliban." that is important breath that could be spent screaming at the television/radio/computer
5) buy lozenges for throat (see 4)
6) take a huge, nasty dump in ohio
7) buy more whiskey

jaysus. last weekend randall and i came home from breakfast and opened soulseek to find that someone was downloading leonard cohen's jazz police from us. i think jazz police is the only leonard cohen song on our computer. it is there because it sounds like a shitty casio demo and it made me cry with laughter the first time i heard it (and had been drinking w/o sleeping for three days prior).

Jazz police are looking through my folders
Jazz police are talking to my niece
Jazz police have got their final orders
Jazzer, drop your axe, it's Jazz police!

"It took 9 years (1979-1988) for the song to develop and be recorded; a testament to Cohen's well know practice of working and reworking pieces of poetry and songs in time consuming detail."

i hurt my foot. every day this week at about 4:00 i have started to daydream about a bag of ice and three advil. the foot feels tight and squeaky on the inside, and squeaky foot is definitely worse than creaky/crunchy knee or gimpy hip. some intrepid young noise musician should get a contact mic on me and make beautiful noise music from my swollen, undercartiledged pain.

last night i got hit on by an octogenarian. at the time it seemed ludicrous and funny, but not so much now that i'm thinking about how i creak and crack and limp around. pappy and i were both drinking to dull the pain (the literal pain, not the pansy-ass figurative pain) of living. y'all boys ain't even understand.

yesterday i saw myself acknowleged in a book (a biography of voltairine de cleyre!) for the first time. the only slightly disappointing thing about it is that they chose not to use one of the the pictures we provided them of vdc lookin' all homely and making a cat wave at the camera.

this morning i also had to help my first patron who wanted to look at dirty pictures of nekkid wimmins. it has been a banner week.

when i was 14 or 15 years old, my father and i had far too many conversations that went like this:

dad: "i just don't get the music you kids listen to these days. you can't understand the words, and even if you could there's no message. the music i listened to when i was your age meant something."

franki: *sullen stare out the window* "whatever, dad."

dad: "your generation has no john lennon. what are they going to play on the oldies stations in 20 years? none of what you listen to has any lasting appeal. like this. what is this on the radio right now?"

franki: "nirvana. it's nirvana. GOD. you'll never understand me."

dad: "do you think people will be listening to this when you're 40? i can't imagine it. there's no substance."




last weekend at dinner he lamented the fact that nextell doesn't offer BTO's "takin' care of business" as a ring tone.

i went to a wedding reception last weekend. it was sweet and i cried. i am a wedding crier.

i bought the bride and groom a case of two (three here in michigan) buck chuck because i am the classiest friend anyone has ever had. my mom helped me wrap it in (classy) brown paper and was worried that we weren't doing a neat enough job and that my ugly gift was going to be a black mark on the Very Special Day. she told me that it was too bad that the safe sex store in ann arbor was closed and i couldn't get them something there.

i looked at her in horror. "it's still open. you just must not be looking for it when you come for lunch. ... and NO. no. i will never be at the point in my life when i feel okay giving a sincere gift of massage oil. NEVER. no." she said "we'll see," and rewrapped my half of the box.

my legs are pitted with scars from when i was younger and obsessed with scabs and blood. for years, i could not get bitten by a mosquito without clawing a bloody crater where the bite was and cultivating a thick scab for the rest of the summer. i remember sitting in a sun beam in the house where i grew up pulling scabs off my legs and tie-dying kleenexes in blood for fun. i'd often sit and watch scabs form, which is about as fun as it sounds. the point where the blood would just be solidifying and would be like thick pudding was my favorite. to this day i have a hard time leaving scabs alone. the tattoo was torture. those were some good ones -- unique because they were black with ink.

i don't know why i'm thinking about this tonight. i'm tired. maybe i will join some body mod communities because i am obviously so totally into that shit.

Your search - please grant me the sweet release of death - did not match any documents.

Your search - i am going to gouge my eyes out with spoons - did not match any documents.

Your search - if your friend has cancer and it is making you cry please take a sick day and stay home thank you - did not match any documents.

Results 1 - 4 of about 7 for i have never had to pee so bad in my life.(0.08 seconds)

[edited to add: Your search - that pee i took earlier was the best pee ever - did not match any documents.]

i think i skipped the day of vagina school where they taught the class on how to graciously accept a complement about one's weight. that was probably one of the days i left the house, parked around the block, walked home, climbed back in through my window, slept until my mom went to work, and then played daggerfall until my friends got out of school. i pretty much failed vagina school.

does anyone have the notes? i'll copy them and get them back to you real quick, promise! right now i'm just freezing all deer in headlights-like and telling people i've been sick whenever the size of my ass comes up in casual conversation, and i don't think that's the right response.

some fool got into the garbage bags in front of 608 looking for bottles and cans. idiot! all the good stuff was out in plain sight on purpose because all those garbage bags were full of kitty pee. when i went to the house for the last time EVER yesterday, the once blue and now grey-brown with urine bed sheet that caused me to scream in horror when i accidentally touched it in the basement was out of its garbage bag and spread out over the trash on the curb. IDIOT! i would have liked to witness that discovery. half the block smelled of urine.

hey www.annarborisoverrated.com! enjoy the cat pee! we're trying to big city the place up for you, and ain't nothing more urban than a whiff of ammonia in the morning breeze.

hey garbage men! i am so, so, so sorry. really.

actually, just fauna.

we have wolf spiders. i have not seen any as truly ginormous as the one randall claims he took outside on a bubble mailer, but i have seen a couple now and the cat sees them EVERYWHERE. homegirl ran into the wall three times today chasing a leaf that must look a lot like a wolf spider if you are totally retarded with brain damage from running into the wall because you see things that aren't there.

there is a (probably much smarter and less awful and noisy) stray cat with one eye that hangs around the parking lot. eventually that cat is going to come to me when i squat down and make those cloying little noises stupid humans make when they want cats to come to them. i will probably get worms when that cat scratches the shit out of me when i try to give it a little eyepatch and a peg paw. does grog kill cats?

is yeast fauna? there is a case of beer in the fridge. when i bought it some guy said to his girlfriend "aaaallllllllright. black label. she's goin' home to get twisted!" and gave me a double thumbs-up. thanks dude! i didn't get twisted that night though. instead, i decided i was having the world's slowest heart attack. i spent two hours getting in and out of bed staring at my hands to make sure my nailbeds weren't turning blue and freaking out because the phone got shut off and i couldn't call 911 if the chest pains actually started. hah. whoo.

the best thing about alien versus predator was that when it came time to scare the hapless guy, it was not a cat that jumped out of the shadows to startle him. that would have been hackneyed, because that happened way back in alien. this time they used a terrifying penguin! geniuses!

( on sunday i... )

i woke up at 6:00 this morning wanting to get up and come to work really early. there's crazy in the water at the new place, and i don't like it.

( i made this last night. )

yo. the best thing about owning a cat is how i feel very responsible when i leave the house carrying a grocery bag with turds in it.

amazon user reviews of Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm:

Amazon.com Teacher Review
Some people buy Uncle Milton's ant farms out of nostalgia, having been ant farmers themselves as kids. Others are charmed by the odd perspective created as the ants build outsize tunnels beneath a replica of a bucolic little farm. But if you're buying this toy on the pretense that it is, as the guidebook says, "a lesson in nature study," beware. The box says you'll see ants dig tunnels, erect bridges, and plan and construct highways and subways. What they dig are tunnels that connect what might loosely be called "chambers." And that's about it. Without a queen, new births, real food to gather, foraging trips, or other ant colonies to tangle with, what you'll purchase are ants that perform in a behavior-stunting environment. You may feel that all this is of no concern so long as the farm provides a slice of childhood wonder. But if you're uneasy with the ant world you set into motion, and Uncle Milton's green farm begins to look surreal instead of jolly, the feeling may pass from you to your kids. --Jeannine Prince has a Master's in Education. She has worked as both a teacher and a curriculum coordinator in a constructivist learning and problem solving program for ages birth to 5 years.

Please, stop complaining, January 22, 2003
Reviewer: doctormarcin (Rochester, MN)
Dear readers,
I do not understand one thing. Why are some of you so shalow. I do not own an ant farm, yet. However, I will buy one soon and enjoy it, whether the ants die in two weeks or not. After reviewing some of the comments concerning the ant farms, it seems to me as though you help the ants die. You either overfeed them, or knock the farm down, etc. Stop complaining and cheer up. Do you really expect the ants to live as long as you do. Just imagine yourselves traveling across US in a dark box. Ofcourse they will die sooner than you expect. When they do, just go to the woods and find some. Don't complain about them biting. Would not you try to protect yourselves if someone would chase you around trying to capture you. And parents, please be more responsible. If your children are too energetic, do not buy them an ant farm. Go out with them into the woods and show them ant's natural habitat. Your kids will love it, I know. Please do not be angry with me. I just think that some of you negative comments make you look bad.

Whats up with the liberal, May 12, 2004
Reviewer: A toy enthusiast
Boy you Liberals need to take it easy and have some fun. Warning, your child will also become a LIBERAL if: 1]You don't buy him a BB gun 2]you don't get him a mini bike 3]you don't buy him a hatchet and chop a tree down (a tree is a renewable resorce) and 4]Make sure he has been spanked when disciplined, this will make him aggressive, last thing you need is an uncompetitive whimpy, whiny, LIBERAL as a son. OH, and buy him an ant farm, even let him kill the ants himself.

Ant farm subsidies, March 22, 2002
Reviewer: Susie (Omaha, NE USA)
We got an ant farm for my oldest son when he was 10. Then by sheer genius,(he was a very precosious boy) he said: "Hey, they subsidize real farmers, maybe we should subsidize them and tell them NOT to do anything with the 'south 40' for a season or two!" They seemed to quit early and go home when it came to the 'south 40' area anyway,being farther away from their nest and so many obstacles to get through to get there,(we had bits of Lincoln logs scattered around to see the little "he-men" ants carry 100 million times their weight)... so it worked out very nicely. These particular ants were a bit sluggish when we first got them, but with the subsidies, they were able to add some bulk to their wee bodies in the "off season" and then cleaned up the South 40 with a vengeance the next time around. But then like everything, the newness wore off and they started to whine and want more subsidies while doing less around the place, so we took them to the local Ant Shelter. We hope the farm didn't break landing on the concrete floor after going through the pet depository chute. Now years later, the ant farm long gone, we still remember the fun and the learning experience. Yes a very educational toy it is!

today we had a patron who is writing her doctoral thesis on cheese factories. cheese factories! the awesomeness of this more than made up for the loud book collector who was in at the same time bemoaning the fact that certain rare books are here in the library and not out on the market where they belong.

it is pay day. i am going to spend my pay day on booze and black spraypaint and it is going to be sweet.

so far the most notable thing about the new house is the way the cat won't go anywhere in it by herself. i don't know how many days of accompanying her to the shitter i can stand.

we painted half the bedroom red, and it is hott.