wrong wrong wrong

Whoa. I was not prepared for this. Sweet lordy lordy lord, how awful.

Dude, for a minute there I thought that said "inmate dating."

I was gonna post something serious, right, about Why the hell does every person in psychology think it is their Sworn Duty to Discourage Alle Others from Treading Heare? But as it turns out I'm instead going to write a rant about My Space.

My Space Rant:

1) God, there is about no content on My Space and it's painful to navigate.
2) My Space is completely addictive and a horrible way to spend potential quilting time.
3) Come ON people, post pictures of yourselves that are actually recognizable. Backlit: no. Closeup of your eyeball: no. Taken from 50 feet away: no. How in the hell am I supposed to judge you and your new life if I can't even tell who you are?
4) Dude! These people have kids! Aaugh!
5) Faced with grainy pictures and Friends who I recognize, I cannot think of a single person named "Steve" (or "Chris" or "Mike" or "Lesley") from my relatively small high school class. This is frustrating, though I refuse to pull out the old yearbooks.

Anybody can be a contrarian.

It's nice to know that when I'm running around like crazy and driving places and swearing, so many of you are out there type-type-typing about your lives and goings-on. I'm disappointed when I have a day so busy that I can't read everything that I read, but it makes the next day even better.

I'm more busy now than I was - work is picking up, the energy-sapping sun is easing off, I'm taking a class. Another psychology class, on the calcuation that what I actually want to do is talk to people and help them and if I'm going to do that I should probably take classes so I can get accepted to a program to get a big, towering degree. It is a simple and ingenius plan with discrete and logical steps. It is also spectacularly terrifying, for some reason that I can't quite identify. Possibilities:

a) I've viewed doing what I actually would love to do as such a luxury that I feel spoiled and self-indulgent for actually doing it? Its very desireability disqualified it from consideration until now?

b) Throughout much of my life I've avoided trying too hard so that when I fail (and I have failed, repeatedly) I can be like, well, shit, it's not like I was trying. And so now that I want something and need to try for real there is this unforseen danger of important failure? I've succeeded at some of stuff too, but in most cases it's not like I was really trying or anything.

c) Does anyone else have this? It's an acute awareness of the bad way our culture portrays, um, everything. Women: nag, cry, ask impossible, entrapping questions (do I look fat in this?). Men: scratch, try to fuck you, and break things. Politicians: lie. Teachers: teach because they cannot do. Teenagers: write bad poetry and sulk. Philosophy majors: work at Burger King. Lawyers: are everything wrong with humanity. Idealists: are stupid. Therapists: say and how do you feel about that and charge your insurance $120/hour. Name a group and I can tell you why you should hate them.

It is exhausting, this awareness. It does not motivate; how many times have I thought "I don't want to be..."? MANY. I can't help being a woman, I couldn't help being a teenager -- I could have killed myself, but it was such an adolescent thing to do. So now that it's time to say I want to be, I'm saying I might? Want to be?

And I'm also Doing Stuff to make it happen, but I'm also kind of pretending that I'm not.

I know what I was feelin'* but I don't know what I was thinkin'

Go fuck a sunset, hippie.

These days are very loud commerical radio on sweet ass new buses, and lots of walking even though my recent basting session has left me in serious leg-muscle pain. And very long workdays. This is all I got.


*titties

Half of the internets is broken, but not my half.

Hey there! I recently got to exchange two good buddies for seventeen bajillion beer swilling, racy*-sign making undergraduates, who are currently storming the campus in their Ford Stompers.

But that's not getting us down! We're not begging for a trade-back!

Hey, have you noticed that King George is talking really fast these days? But there are still the jarring screeches-to-a-halt of speech? It's like riding with someone trying to learn to drive a stick shift. It makes me feel each and every one of my nerve endings. Gah!

When the weather breaks and school starts, I will be less exclaimey. Promise.

*Perhaps "racy" is not the best word here, as it implies a bit of subtlety. The signs don't say "I'm gonna fuck you're [sic] daughter" but, um, it's pretty close.

AND STAY OUT

Wow! I am in a place, a mood, a funk. Perhaps it's because the 50 times I heard the weather report today, starting from about 32 seconds after waking up, they said "Tomorrow will be SUNNY!!!" Or "Tomorrow will be full of SUNSHINE!!!" Which makes me full of rage.

Grr.

When the Levy Breaks, That Sure Is Going to Suck

People! Rejoice! The air is cool!

Every year my physiological response to Autumn gets more intense. Autumn, oh baby, yes. It is a mania. It makes me want to read books and wear skirts with wool sweaters and scream with joy in the streets and take a bite out of crime. And stay up until four, mind aflame with some idea or another.

Every season has some music that needs to go with it, but Autumn has the strongest of these associations. Classic rock, from the high school days of rock-bottom gas prices with nowhere to go, yielding hours logged slumped in the backseat of one friend or another's car. Mazzy Star. Mazzy Effin Star. Rain, in sheets, chilly and green.

Bonfires and cold ears.

Intermittent warm days that smell like spring.

The plants all die and I come back alive.

negatively radiant

1) It would seem the country is awakening from the Jedi Mindfuck haze of the-last-thing-the-Dems-need-is-to-take-back-Congress-and-start-investigations-because-boy -that-would-really-fuck-up-their-'08-chances, the-last-thing-Dems-need-is-to-get-Republican-talking-points-spewing-Democrats-out-of-office-because-for-some-reason. Dear everyone, maybe the best source of information about what the Democrats need is not the Republicans (or, you know, Fox News). BECAUSE MAYBE THEY DON'T HAVE THE DEMOCRATS' BEST INTERESTS AT HEART.

GOD.

2) So, I hear Mel Gibson yelled about the "Jews" while I was out of the country. Sorry I missed that.

3) Right now the Mimi Smartypants archive is the only thing keeping me alive.

4) I went to Belize? And it's, like, a really poor country? And, global warming is like really hurting the reefs? And you can't flush the toilet paper down the toilet? If you even have it? And, like, so I wanted to be all good, you know? And like not burn fossil fuels and throw stuff out? But, like, I was already trying to do that, walking places, bussing it to work, stuff like that? So I kind of feel stuck? And evil?

How many maracas does this family need?

To our great puzzlement, someone - the yard guy? - whacked down three of Other's sunflowers and took them away. They were fenced off, obviously part of a garden, and they were six feet tall, hard to mistake for weeds. They were in high bloom, with some buds that hadn't even opened yet. They were red and orange and yellow, and the birds were eating their seeds.

Caring about anything brings a certain vulnerability.

now we're yelling about dishes

Montezeuma's Revenge

While it's true that Belize is filled with spectacular vegetation, wildlife, and natural and archaeological wonders, it also shares some unfortunate characteristics with Hell. Namely, it's unbelievably hot - really really really hot - so hot that eating seems unnatural and disgusting - and there are bajillions of different species of insects that want to feast on your blood. Throw in some moaning of the damned and the two are virtually indistinguishable.

In catching up on my blog-reading, and in attempting to take the dogs outside, I've noticed that most of America is experiencing a massive heat wave. However, instead of cranking up the a.c., imagine yourself, say, hiking a mile up a hill to ruins, or hiking down the beach, beams glaring off of the beautiful white sand. Imagine being so soaked in sweat that your shirt won't even mop anything else up. Imagine that instead of the technological wonder of the (fuel-burning) a.c. (runaway greenhouse effect, anyone?), you rely on the technological wonder of the 15-year-old squeaky fan, or, in certain situations, the sea breeze coming through the door that also kind of smells like the trash baking on the beach. Oh, and also imagine that most of the time you're wearing long sleeves and pants to try to fend off the various things that want to eat you.

"Uhh, I think that's a negative on the pole."

Belize! Wow! It was a great experience. I was lucky to be able to go with a group of nice (never underestimate the importance of niceness), laid-back people, people who would not freak if a van happened to be stuck in a foot of mud in the road in front of us, or if the water taxi's engine happened to stall out three times and require some approximate maintentance half a mile from the coastline, or if the owner of the station we were staying at decided to cut our electricity for three days. I was also lucky to be able to go and experience things that most tourists don't get to see -- night hikes with local guides, research stations and equipment, coral reefs in virtually untouched waters.



I saw a bunch of animals that I had never seen and some that I never knew existed. Tapirs, jaguars and black jaguars, ocelots, agouti paca, coatimundi, a harpy eagle, black howler monkeys, a barracuda (bad ASS), a stoplight parrotfish, a manatee, and collared and white-lipped peccaries. All were very cool to see in person, some in the wild, some in captivity. Here is a tapir: