Seems Like Such a Small Thing...

...and yet, it could not be more annoying. Like a toothache.

I posit that silk underwear are not all they're cracked up to be. In fact, they're turning out to be rather uncomfortable. Elastic-squished lady-parts is for teh no.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

UII: Addenda/Update

So two *edit: NO THREE! Three more of the little buggers showed up in my spam-box. I went to the website (which is definitely user-driven), plugged in the card ID code and it said ERROR! The card you have requested does not exist or has been removed by the sender.

Mmmmkay.

Like, you know, whatever.

UII: Unidentified Inbox Item

There it was, sitting in my inbox titled "Hi, an old friend has sent you a greeting card!" Opening the exe file I was terribly curious. An old friend? I thought. Who could this old friend be? How old is this old friend? They can't be that old if they have my gmail addy. Right?

As the flash unfolded my curiosity would go unsatisfied by it's papyrus-scrawled contents:

A friend in need
Is a friend indeed!

(I'm here for you!)

Oh. You are, are you? You're not going to tell me who you are but you're totally here for me. Got my back, right? From a safe distance? Are you next door? East? West? Invisible?

Who the hell is this "old friend" person?!?!

I hate mysteries. Especially when there's no clues as to their answers.

So the most obvious questions at hand are as follows:

1. What exactly are you "here" for me for? The death of my ex? There's a lily in the background of the flash card that suggests such a theme... that's the only real recent tragedy and the only thing someone who hasn't actually spoken to me for a while would be able to publicly discover, I believe. Unless there's some new tragedy afoot I don't know about yet. It's not entirely unusual for me to be the last to know...

Alternative theories:

1.a. This person somehow found out I had to run interference between my grandmother and my aunt at a family thingie last weekend. They feel sorry for me because they know that you've really grown up when you find yourself watering down your grandmother's drinks so she doesn't shoot her mouth off. That's gotta be it, right? And they're going to help me lament the death of my innocence... except... I lost my innocence quite willingly looooooong ago. So maybe that's not it.

1.b. They heard I stubbed my toe. Flowers are forthcoming.

1.c. I was overheard keening the continued coma-state of my sex life. They're here to help.

1.d. It's a regular reader who'd decided my blog had gotten a bit on the boring side and generously wanted to give me something to conjecture about.

2. Why did this person decline to use their actual name? An "old friend," indeed. If you're "here" for me, wouldn't it help to know who you are? Were you planning on revealing yourself at a later date? Is this part of a larger "SUDDENLY SYMPATHY!" sneak attack? Someone is planning on showing up at my doorstep and offering me their shoulder to cry on?

3. Are they aware that the tragedy happened two weeks ago? That I've largely worked my way through it (and by largely worked my way through it I mean I haven't worked my way through it at all but I am possessed of an incredibly short memory and things tend to fade quite fast... until such time as I get completely inebriated one night and something reminds me of him and I end up sobbing like a baby, being utterly inconsolable until I pass out and wake up with very red eyes and a headache to beat the band... so history dictates) and am now dealing with the "I'm speaking to his sibling who is also my ex who I haven't spoken to in more than a year because he drives me kinda crazy" fallout. Which, is quite different and yes, in case you are wondering, I do need consoling for that.

Oy. I'll wait and see if details will be revealed as time goes long. But I wanna know NOW!!! she whined and wailed. Now, now Veruca. Have some patience.

Confessions in Consumer-whore-ism

K: Anthropologie. Third ward. Early 2008. It's official

JA: Fuck. Might as well declare bankruptcy now.

K: I know right. And how wonderful it will be.

JA: Totally. I think we should consider hiding our credit cards and starting hooking. Blog title idea: Anthro-whores.

K: Works for me. We will only accept gift cards as payment for our dirty deeds. Amounts and quantity negotiable.

JA: We'd have to accept cash gifts too - we'd have to parade our fab kits. (What do you think I would have had to do to get the Doyenne boots from this winter?)

K: True. And I don't know. How badly do you want them?

JA: Somewhere between pack o horny midgets & aging swinging hipster couples. I'm not sure, I'd have to see 'em again.







(Retail: $798)












K: Not sure how easy it would be to find a readily available plethora of horny midgets... You might do better with hipsters. But you could definitely earn enough.

JA: OR we could just start a site for other anthro-whores to hook up and get their Anna Sui fix and get all our booty from the ad sales... just a thought.

K: We could be the new gofugyourself girls. Except instead of commenting on other's fashion faux pas, we could make them in the name of quality clothing stores.

JA: AWESOME!! Who would you pick as your avatar? Dude, I have to be Chloe Sevigny... or should I be Bai Ling?

K: Damn. If I can't have Bai Ling, I'd definitely take la-lohan.

JA: Isn't there a tacky Jewess? Well, I suppose nobody gives a fuck about Fran Drescher anymore.

K: Right. I can't think of any but I think we could make la-lohan honorary just for our cause.

JA: Very well. I dub thee la-lohanukkah.

K: Would that make you Bai Lingmas?

JA: I think I'm really more of a Scarlett-go-bragh-less kind of lass.

K: Well played.



Indeed. Amusingly, during the latter half of this conversation I was in the middle of reading an article in the Sunday Styles section of the Times. "Buying Into The Green Movement: Eco-friendly shopping may be fashionable, but critics argue it won't reduce global warming" I had just reached the section about a San Francisco group called Compact whose members have taken a vow of poverty, I mean, uh... they've vowed to live one entire year purchasing only food and medicine. I was just reading about a professional dog-walking girl who counted a new pair of running shoes among her errant purchases.

I hadn't even taken one trick and I still felt like a whore. I thought to myself, "If they knew how much crap I'd bought last month alone there would be a LOT of finger wagging."

Now though, I have a question - if you're only allowed to purchase food and medicine - what do you do if you have a cat? Homemade cat food? Or does that count among your food purchases? Or better still, what about kitty litter? Huh? Spend a whole year raiding children's sandboxes? Well, you can't. Because people caught on that strays were using them for just that purpose and filled everything with wood chips and sealed it over with recycled tires. And it said nothing of toiletries. Licking those girl's ears must be, erm, tasty.

Whatever. I'm sure my "carbon footprint" is dark and indelible. *le sigh* A thousand lashes with a wet spelt-flour noodle.

Revenge of the Montreal Hungarian Blacksmith Metrognome Gimp Drum Circle Gang

So, as my punishment for talking smack the Montreal Hungarian Blacksmith Metrognome Gimp Drum Circle Gang, as I have just now taken to calling them, have left town but not without leaving me a present. I came home last night to discover their treachery. I mentioned in my previous post that I could only hear them in the bathroom. Upon entering my porcelain chamber yester-evening everything appeared normal as I tread the tiled path. Right up until the stepped on the bathmat. I would point out again that everything else appeared totally normal, e.g. DRY. This is not the condition in which I found my bathmat. It was, in fact, utterly sodden. There was no evidence of any malfunction with the fixtures. Pipes are still dusty - check. Le toilet appears normal - check. All beauty-related items sitting on the sink are dry - check. Tub is as it should be - check. So apparently, the Montreal Hungarian Blacksmith Metrognome Gimp Drum Circle Gang snuck into my apartment and made water on my bathmat. And my bathmat only. Oh, but wait! There was another watery casualty - my makeup bag. Which, I didn't figure out until later had been massively moistened in the attack. I would assume this meant war if the front wasn't totally quiet. But perhaps this is their strategy?

Clang the Dumb

I think there's a gimp living in the boiler room of my apartment building. Either that or a drum circle from Montreal has moved in. The last two mornings when I've gotten up there's been this mysterious clanging noise echoing through the building. It's fairly rhythmic, thus the drum circle suspicion. And it goes on forever. I heard it in the bathroom at 5:00am and it was still going on while I was in the shower at 7:00, and even still at 8:15 when I left the house. I usually leave through the back of the building and there's another level to the back stairs that leads to the boiler room - which is where the mysterious "clang clang" seemed to be coming from. I might suggest that it was the heating system but, as the heat isn't on anymore due to the magnificently warm spring temperatures it simply can't be that.

I will work on further theories as the day progresses.

Locational Dysphoria

I know, I know... it's been a while since I was here. Again, the world is a very busy place and I right along with it in that very fashion. Never enough hours in the day.

I come here to share with you a very unusual feeling that I am having. Right now, at this very moment, I feel a stranger in my own land. Here I sit, in my little apartment that I scarcely saw fit to leave yesterday and many days before when evening fell and it was time to leave my desk and venture here, home. It feels familiar, and yet, it doesn't. Like a house sitter. Neither appraising nor critical, everything simply is as it is. As though I had nothing to do with the placement of things.

I did not sleep here last night.

I slept someplace else.

In a dark room, with warm air flowing across my face, a nest of comforters upon the dark-sheeted bed. A door just behind like a headboard- tiny points of light streaming through, the light of the hallway beyond.

At first I felt over-elaborate. Like a Rococo statue in the middle of an urban park. Teams of angels trumpeting down about my shoulders, streams of ribbons and flowing cloth, arm held aloft to the heavens. Eyes up-cast. Park benches of plain plank, covered in graffiti at my feet. Girls in tight jeans and many pigtails secured by brightly-colored plastic bubbles laughing in warm sun.

Yes, I felt... fancy. In my new little shoes nestled in cocoa-colored carpet and my $35 t-shirt. There was a girl sitting next to me, she came with us and stayed for a while until a cab carried her to some unknown destination. We spoke of our cats. They spoke of work. I watched as his eyes darted back and forth between her face and mine.

She has very white skin and those large, clear eyes that protrude slightly. As though taking in the world were too much for them from behind the architecture of the ocular cavities, they needed a front-row seat. She wore a white thermal tee and jeans, her hair swirled around into a low ponytail. When she laughed I thought, this girl has brothers. Her teeth are strong and she is possessed of an animated smile, all pink and white. I don't know what time it was when she left. I never can seem to find the clocks in other people's apartments. They're never where I expect them to be.

After she left we watched a movie, his body stretched out across mine, the bones of his shoulder blade pressing against my bottom left rib. Then he moved across from me, our eyes meeting and catching each other, playing tag, talking as unconsciously and freely as our stomachs seem to do. I spoke, haltingly describing some of my previous evening's happenings, muddling through the story despite a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was saying the wrong things. As though he expected an undesired conclusion, he watched me from behind black-rimmed glasses.

Later, in the dark, an unexplained grin spread across his face. I'm still left wondering. It was a broad, cheshire-cat-ish grin. What was he smiling about?

Now, four hours later I still feel out of sorts. Discombobulated. I know it will pass and that everything will start to feel like mine again eventually but it's so unusual. And accompanied with an antsy-ness, a feeling of not knowing what to do with myself, like I left something important behind. I was totally unable to read the paper I bought before I crossed into this alien territory. This sort of dysphoria seems to be a theme lately. I do so wonder what it means.

Temporal Dysphoria

So I've been having this thing lately, where weather conditions or smells or some such thing are causing me to experience moments of Déjà Vu. Where I feel like I'm someplace else - to wit:

Couple of weeks ago, walking to my car it was early morning and warm, smelled like spring outside, the sun was shining brightly through what little greenery there is and it felt like Madison. That same week I walked outside on another warm and sunny morning, my car was parked far away and it felt like my morning walk to grade school.

A week or so ago, I walked outside, I was downtown, the air smelling of food and paint, it was sunny but cool and I was inadequately dressed for the temperature and it felt like Prague.

Just now, just this very minute I walked out onto my porch - the sky a diffused opalescent shade of blue, cold with my ankles exposed and it felt like Whitewater.

This keeps happening lately and I'm not sure why. It's been kind of weird, kind of comforting, and kind of sad all at the same time.