| Last updated: 29 September, 2001 at 3:03 pm oo la la! vital information the past |
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| 9/29/01 2:58 pm Every morning that I wake up, I wake up to the sound of crows. Big, black squaking crows outside my window. I cover up my head with my quilt so they can't peck out my eyeballs. They scream for about 10 minutes, and then there is a pause. Five minutes perhaps. Then they start up again, only softer, like they've flown far away. I asked my roommate Karen if she had ever heard them. Then something really strange happened. Something, as David Blane Street Magician would say, I don't think I really understand. I saw her thoughts form above her head like a cartoon. And what she was thinking was "You're crazy but you can't see that I think that through my grin." But what does she know anyway. Then, she laughed, and said "are you sure it's not just your alarm clock?" Bam. Ha. Duh!. It comes from the window, my alarm clock is in the window. It wakes me up, that's what my alarm clock is supposed to do. I hear it for 10 minutes, then a pause of about 5 minutes, then hear it again. Roughly like the process my alarm clock goes through when I hit the snooze button. It's seeming pretty clear to me now. And to think all of those scary dreams I had about the crows, for nothing. Ha. What an imagination I have. She was wrong though. we both heard them this morning. i've got a whole lot of reading to do. woo! |
| 27 Septembre, 2001 6.09pm Today I got a letter informing me of my student advisor. Who just happens to be... Mike Flynn, my linguistics professor! Woo!. At work today I was greated by my supervisor Corey who waved scissors and the packaging that reams of paper come in in my face telling me I had to pick one. On the inside were printed all of these smiley faces, and he had one taped to his shirt. I got one too. Yesterday we had pie night on our floor. we were going to make 5 kinds, but only 2 were made: lemon merangue and apple. soooo good. more to come soon. that's all for now. |
| 1 August, 2001 1.42 am The room was dark with one lamp, pointed straight at me making a perfect circle of light, just beyond a steaming bowl of spaghetti-os. Night was the room, the moon was the lamp, and the spaghettios were the queasy heat of the evening as well as the haze in front of the moon. Johanna and I ran in the alley behind the brycc house looking for the meatballs. First we found an old couch where we both won gold medals in the gymnastics division of the "special" olympics. (We've secretly been in training for days.) Then just beyond the complete mac parking lot was a puddle with slime in it that reminded me of the teenage mutant ninja turtles. It was algae maybe, but it was huge, it was bubbling, and it was gooey. "Eeeeeeew" I said and stopped dead in my tracks. I looked up at Johanna, who had already seen the thought bubble forming above my head before it had popped and been absorbed by my brain. Within a smile I had scooped up some of the slime on my hand and chased her down to wipe it on her arm. Then I walked back to the brycc house like a champion. The slime was cool feeling, just like you imagine it would feel. I had always wanted to touch some. About 20 minutes later, Johanna talked me into buying some fries. I hadn't thought I was hungry, but before I knew it I had eaten about a third of them, and there was grease and little bits of deep fat fry all over my fingers. My toungue was mid-air licking them off when I remembered the pond scum incident. current mood: fantizastic. |
| 31 July, 2001 9:42 pm most of this is fabricated.... Earlier, Wayne chipped off a hunk of ice and started going around stabbing people with his new ice dagger. Then he gave me an ice tray that looked like it had been in the refrigerator since ice was invented. I turned it into my own personal airconditioner. I ate some of it too, and let me tell you, it tasted like fossils. It reminded me of when I was little and we would fill up garbage bags with the hose and go swimming. I think I will do that tomorrow. A couple of summers ago, towards the end of july, my brother and I were sitting around being bored shmoes (I think our internet time for the month had run out) and we some how combined our ideas of what was fun into taking ice out of the freezer and putting it on the counter. Then we would take the biggest knife we could find, go into the next room, then run into the kitchen as fast as we could and chop it to bits while screaming "ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION!!!" We did this every night for about 2 weeks. Human beings sweat a lot. It's pretty funny when you think about it. I wish I was in a garbage bag full of water right now. sigh. |
| 29 July, 2001 12.52 pm I had just finished zipping up my pants when the rain started coming down even harder. I looked up at the ceiling. It kind of reminded me of an igloo. I stared at the door of the port-a-potty for a minute, then unlocked it and looked out at the muddy scene pouring down in front of me. The lawn of the water tower was a painting but the artist had mixed in too much water, and the colors, towers, people and trees were dripping down the canvas before they could dry. I closed the door again really quickly, trying to decide if standing in a porta potty for 15 minutes was worth staying relatively dry. My eyes shot around the closet sized space like I thought the walls were caving in, and slowly put my arm down on the toilet paper roll cover. It was at elbow height. "This is the perfect height for leaning," I thought to myself. Then I reprimanded myself for being so stupid. I spent a moment staring at the lock on the door trying to decide if I should make use of it. "Well.... it is occupied" I thought. I went ahead and locked the door. About 3 or 4 minutes later I decided the walls actually were caving in and opened the door to start walking towards the tents where i thought everybody was. I got about 5 feet before i heard a rather loud "PSSSSST!!!" Luckily, all human beings are equiped with the ability to determine the direction from which sound approaches, and I turned my head towards the sound in question. If I had been in a commercial, the shot would have frozen (rain drops mid air and all), and the cameras would have panned around using that 3-D effect that was cool only the first time I saw it. I saw a mess of black wet hair grinning at me from the handicapped "stall." "Come over here" it said. I checked my back, then walked over there slowly. The door opened to five people, only 3 of whom I knew. The other 2 girls were from Illinois. Or Iowa or something I don't remember. Being in a Port-a-Potty with someone kind of dampers the conversation. We just stood there eating, and the two foreigners stood in the corner talking to eachother not really paying any attention to us. Until I looked up and said "hey! it's a port-a-party!" . They stopped mid conversation and glared at me. I felt like a mouse that had stumbled across two vultures, who had been talking, but killing me was much more important than gossiping. I made a mouselike noise and looked down at the corner. I saw a penny in a puddle and thought about pointing it out to jason, but the girls had gone back to gossiping and i didn't want to raise the tension level again. There's not much room for tension in a handicapped port-a-potty already housing 6 people and a toilet. So we just stood around eating bananas and throwing cheetos at eachother. It was probably just a coincidence, but when Phil said he had to pee the two girls decided they should go play in the mud. One of them said to Jason as he opened the door, "okay we're going, but if we change our minds and knock you have to let us back in, okay?" Jason looks at them not laughing, but with that face he makes when he's being sarcastic, and goes "sure" and whips open the door. Our friends walk out and jason yells "SUCKERS!", slams the door again, and locks it, laughing. 1.58 pm I've been doing a lot of cleaning, and what follows is a story I found that I wrote for english in 7th grade. Time Square It was New Year's Eve, and everyone in the world was getting ready to watch the ball drop in New York. Everyone that is but Magnum 144. If you have not figured this out yet, he is an FBI agent...wow. Even though he was an FBI agent, he was not out on a daring case. Actually he was a computer agent. He would do research on cases, and write up reports on them. With the exception of his really cool name, he was somewhat of a secretary. Well, back to the story. He was not out on a daring case. He was in the bathroom, taking a shower. It was getting closer and closer to midnight, until finally the countdown started : 5-4-3-2-1-HAPPY-NEW-YEAR! The ball started to drop into the square, where thousands of people watched from below, when suddenly (GASP) it-it-it stopped! Nobody noticed though, because all those 21 aand over were too drunk to tell, adn the little kids didn't care. All was well, until tomorrow morning, when Magnum's friend Bob called to see if Magnum was still coming to his New Year's Eve party. Magnum was confused. "You are planning a little early this year are you not?" said Magnum. "Not really," said Bob. "After all this i New Year's Eve! Duh" It was then when Magnum remembered a report he had written up about an old man - who everyone thought was crazy - and how he told everyone that the ball that dropped into the square was what made the year change, and if it did not completely fall one year, the year would never change. Then the only person who could fix it would be someone who did not see the ball drop. It was then when Magnum decided to save the world. The next day, he decided to see what was wrong with the tracks for the ball. He asked one of th guards, and she said that one of the tracks had the nest of the last living moose-tailed dove on it, and if they moved it, it would die. Because of that, they had to stop the ball for it hit the nest. Then, Magnum found out who was doing the ball drop, and went to her house disguised as a doctor. Then he told her that he had to give her a shot to be sure she was in perfect health for the night's event. After he told her that, he gave her a shot that would give her the flu, and she called in sick. Then he changed her name with his, so he could do the drop. That night, Magnum went in a little early to his job, and removed the precious bird. Then, when it was time to drop the ball, Magnum decided to get the square renamed Time Square in honor of this memorable event. He got an award for saving the world, and he did get the square renamed Time Square, although people incorrectly call it Times Square. The birds died. This is the end |
| 25 July, 2001 11.53 am for the past four or five days (except for two times that i can think of) i've felt like an empty fish carcass. the only reason i'm up is because i have to be, i smell, i don't really know why i'm doing much of what i'm doing, and so i just sit there with my eyes and mouth gaping open. that's me, the dead fish nailed to a board. hang me on your wall for $29.95! current mood: dead fish carcass |
| 24 July, 2001 12.20pm Last night, I saw some papers floating around on the sidewalk outside a laundromat. I peared in to see if any one was there, but it was closed. (It was 11:30 or so.) So I walked down to the next business I saw, which was a chinese restaurant called LCC KING. It was in just a regular house, on a residential street. I walked up, and an old man came to ask if he could help me out, because they were trying to close up. "Do you have a broom? To sweep?" I said. "Ah, yes, sit here, just one minute" he said. I sat down in this chair by the wall, and realized he was moving around in the kitchen. A few minutes later, he brought out a styrofoam bowl with the weirdest looking, best tasting food I had ever eaten. He had thought I had said "Do you have some food? To eat?" not "a broom to sweep." Satisfied, and forgetting about the broom, I walked over to the brycc house where ella was kicking out a homeless guy. He was saying "I'm sorry ma'am, I just want some food." Ella looked him straight in the eye and said "We don't have any food, and you're creepy, so get out." That was my dream last night. Isn't it funny that someone misheard me in my own dream? |
| 23 July, 2001 2:48 pm Today I got a postcard from my dad. He was in WA a week ago or so. He goes out of town all the time because of music workshops and has written to me maybe twice before this. It says this: "Dear Beth, Well, this is where I hung out last week--pretty neat, huh? Now I'm writing this card to you while you are upstairs. Love, Dad" Awesome. |
| 18 July, 2001 12:47 am It was hot outside and we had been running around, but we couldn't stop because we were on a mission. When we got to Johanna's house, we ran up the stairs, two at a time, excited, and were about to give eachother a high five, when we stopped midair, looked at eachother, and both leaned backwards about 3 feet to look into the neighbor's window. It was 10:30pm. The lights were all on, and two or three guys wearing big white suits and gas masks were washing the windows, in slow motion, like they were in space, like they really couldn't breath the air, and what they were doing was Top Secret, Confidential. We stood there for about a minute and a half without moving, then both slowly walked into her house. We never really discussed this. |
| 17 July, 2001 2.14 am The green of the countertop in the concession stand isn't truly green. I guess it's closer to green than any other color but I have as a hard time calling this color green as I have a hard time referring to Cheese Wiz as cheese. They are both a little too creamy for me to think of them as what either approaches. I usually don't notice when someone comes to the concession stand more than once in a night, because I hardly ever really look at the people. I stare at the top half of their left ear because, when some one is trying to talk to you and you stare at their ear, it really throws them off balance and they often forget what they're trying to say because the majority of their brain is trying to figure out if you are listening or not--they can't tell if you are looking at them or passed them. It's this game I play to make life worth living. Today a man came up wearing a black Star Wars shirt and glasses. He reminded me of the comic book store owner on the Simpsons. Only with short curly hair and glasses, and no beard. And I think the guy on The Simpsons has a lot more of my respect. The first time he approached the counter, in his hand was a five dollar bill, and he was holding it in front of him like a gun. He was singing a song about it. It went "I've got five dollars, five doooollars." It was an incredible tune. His eyes were the size of lollipops. I don't remember what he bought. Afterwards, he told me a story that I couldn't really hear, and I just looked at him like he was a painting I didn't understand. He left. He came back two more times to tell me the same story. I don't think he remembered telling me it already. Maybe he did. At the end of our last two "conversations" he held out his hand and said "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name." I looked at him like all I saw was a headless puppy whose owners had trained him to "shake," and, although it had been decapitated, and its neck was still spurting a little blood, it was reaching its paw out to me. I looked at his hand. I looked back at him. I looked at his hand again. I reached out slowly, and shook his hand. I didn't mean to offend him, and I hope I didn't. But he was a little creepy. |
| 15 July, 2001 12.04am so today. we went to bowling green. and let me tell you, woo hoo. On the way there we passed a humongous year-round flea market that had painted on the side of it "THE MOST AWESOME FLEA MARKET IN THE WORLD." Haha, whatever, every one knows that title belongs to the Leur de Flea. So bowling green is incredibly wack and boring. I think dayna was afraid we (and by 'we' i mean just me and johanna) would embarass her..... At least we didnt wear what i had wanted to. So we spent a lot of time not on campus. We went to the mall. Wowee. Johanna and I played the "pretend to be store models" game. When we fell into the Gap store, we temporarily became greeter there, until we saw the bubble gum machine. We ran there, and darn fast. Bowling green has a steam boat refuge store. They were having a big sale. We didn't go there, but I looked at it through the windows of allison's xtremeMobliex. I wanted to ask them, "how and what do you save from a sunken ship? huh?" but i never got the chance. At the Goodwill, I bought a tape called "Chamber of Horrors." When i grow up and have a house, it will be playing in the background at all times. I may even invest in a self-flipping tape player so that, when I have guests, I don't run into the embarrassing dilemma of having to halt conversation to get up and turn over the scary music background tape. It cost 53 cents. Bowling Green is apparently the center of totally useless crap. I don't remember what all there was to be said about this... but there sure was a lot of crapola down there. At the Dollar Tree (this was my first time to a real dollar store-i don't see why anyone would shop anywhere else), I bought chocolate twizzlers, and 6 crowns. Johanna and I are going to go back to buy the "magic towels" one day. They are like those little sponges we got as kids, that grow in hot water. We are going to have a magic towel party. Wow I'm boring. So just quickly, in the car on the way back, we took turns drawing eachother dead. They look totally real. You would be surprise that we are alive, due to their photographic realism. |
| 13 July, 2001 12:45 am. He squeezed his tiny eyes shut. The night was big, the stars were small. He had been laying perfectly still for so long that he felt acquainted with every spring in the mattress his dainty 6-year-old body garnished. A car passed, its light whipping across the room, touching through his eyelids, but only for a moment. He was pretty sure he could feel all one million tons of the sky crushing him, falling directly on top of him, he couldn't breath. Until he remembered the springs. They still pushed the same. Relaxing, he felt his legs getting longer. His toes tingled with life, and he could feel new cells adding themselves everywhere. 1:11 pm>BR> remember a day, about 6 months ago, when I was exhausted. It was one of those stinging winter days, when every one is tired just from being awake, when looking out the window at people fighting the wind makes your eyes water, and all you want to do is dissapear. When I got off the bus at Broadway, and was waiting to cross the street, I saw the 23 pass right in front of me. My jaw slowly opened in disbelief, and I kind of reached out my hand, like I thought it was some kind of joke, a 3-D image like they used to print in the newspaper which had appeared when my tired eyes had unfocused, but if I reached out to touch it, it would disapear. Just like the 3D images in the newspaper. "Aw shit.... were you waiting for that bus too?" said the man next to me. So he saw it too. Great. I looked at him and nodded. "Motherfucker I hate it when that happens" he started to say, but the wind picked up his voice and threw it away. Close to the river in January, the wind could knock you over. And it's cold. I looked at the man's name on his shirt. It said "LeRoy." It would be roughly half an hour before the next one came. I started to wonder whether LeRoy and I would talk much more, if I would hear a story about another time the bus came early and it made him late to where he was supposed to meet his girlfriend, he was going to propose to her but since he "stood her up" that day, she wouldn't speak to him any more. The light changed and we crossed the street. We were both too busy cursing at the wind to talk to eachother. As always, a car turning left onto Broadway almost hit us as we crossed the street. My back hurt and I was freezing, and not in the mood to start running just so this car could be on Broadway 3 seconds earlier, so my pace stayed the same. The car of course assumed I would run fearful from it's Power, and had pulled up within inches of me. As by then it was obvious to the driver that I wasn't going to bow down to his glory let alone get out of the way any faster, he slammed his hand onto the horn. In a way it was all I could hear, and in a way I didn't hear it at all. I turned to look at my enemy, the machine that I was prey to, and could see the heat leaking out of the windows and all of the edges of the doors. While part of me wanted to throw rocks at the windows, the other part longed that I would recognize the driver and could dive in for a warm ride home. I didn't recognize him, and I could feel myself start to cry. I bit my lip and kept walking. We waited for the next 23 for about twenty minutes. Every time the wind picked up I felt like I was being hit head on by a truck. Unfortunately I wasn't, and every time I opened my eyes I was still alive. Finally the bus came. It was warm, but fairly crowded. I was feeling a little better, I was almost home. About two blocks down Broadway we pulled over, and a dog climbed up the steps. He was followed by a man, 70, with black jeans and a thin jacket, stevie wonder sunglasses, and a hat. I could see a few elderly women at the front uncomfortable at the thought of a dog sitting near them but they tried to hide it. Every person was staring at this man and his dog. We tried to do it sneakily until we realised there was no way in hell he could see us. He had sat down near the front, and was talking to the driver about where the YMCA was. His dog had sat perfectly between his legs, was sitting on his tail so that it be out of the way, and the two of them sitting there looked like a jigsaw puzzle with three pieces: the bus seat, the man, and his dog. And it was glued together. From his profile, we could see that he didn't have any eyes. He must have been in an accident, or had a disease or something, because that part of his face was caving in, and his sunglasses just barely hung on by his nose and ears. No one but him said a word the 5 blocks he was with us on the bus. The man talked to his dog. With the precision of a clock, his withered hand pushed down on the top of her golden head, slid backward about 3 inches, and moved to the top again. The dog, although seemingly pretty happy, had a blank doggish look on its face, and the part of her head the man was stroking looked darker, a little greasy. "It'll be alright sweety, we're almost there" he kept saying to the dog. Maybe the dog nodded. Then the bus pulled over to the right. No one pointed it out but we all noticed that where we had stopped was not technically on the bus route. The bus driver called the man's name, and told him to cross the street and walk 3 blocks, and he would be there. With his head pointed in the direction of his dog, the man asked it if she had heard what the bus driver had said, waited a moment, and replied "good girl." They walked slowly towards the door. As they started to go down the steps, the man said to his dog "Okay two more... one more... that's good... there we go." As the man and his dog crossed Broadway, the collective head of the 3:45pm #23 bus followed the couple. The bus didn't move until he was completely out of sight, behind a building. The whole way we could see him "comforting" his dog, telling her everything would be alright. |
| 14 September, 2001 (1.46am) It's been quite a while hasn't it... my bad. Well, I may be transfering this to my Carleton webspace so you don't have to deal with pop ups, and I'll let you know if'/when that happens. Until then, check out 'oo la la!'. |
| 10 July, 2001 (12:52 am) HAPPY BIRTHDAY! So I've been planning to do this for a while. I figured since you two gave me a digital camera for Christmas, it wouldn't hurt me to put a picture of your two kids up on the web every few days, you know, so you could see us and all. Expect me to work on this like mad for a couple weeks, and then probably forget about it for awhile. But hopefully it will serve this purpose: let you feel like I'm not just electronic words in an email, or a voice on the telephone. I'm going to put stuff that I write up here, messages to you, pictures, schedule, contact information, etc. etc. (see examples below). I hope it will be a useful resource. I love you. Happy Birthday. |
| 6 July, 2001 (2:40 am) I think being small makes one naturally very timid. I've heard other people say this too. (Other small people.) Whenever I consciously avoid a situation, it's usually because of the repeated mental image of one/all of my bones snapping in half. I think it's one of those inherent protectional thing, like knowing not to eat mysterious plants or jump off tall buildlings. Also my joints are really loose. I dislocate very easily, and just about anywhere. I could be the next carnival game. Get 500 points to dislocate my shoulder! Anything that looks like it could hurt me makes me very uncomfortable. High voltage. Semi-automatic trucks. Tough guys. Thunderbolts. My name is Beth, and I am genetically wussy. When I wake up in the morning I generally talk to someone before this becomes an issue, but every once in a while, I'll either stay upstairs for too long, or no ones home, or something, and I suddenly realise that I have been awake for 3 hours and haven't said anything yet. Then I start to think about what the first thing I will say that day will be, what will break out the old vocal chords. What is actually pretty much the least important thing to happen all day starts to become the most important moment of my life. I think about it for minutes. Sometimes I wonder if I have lost the ability to talk over night, but usually I feel that that is not true. (Probably because this happens so often. But everytime it seems just as important.) Sometimes I pick up a bottle of shampoo and read something out loud off the back. Sometimes I just pick a common phrase and say it really fast, just to get it over with. I've never used my name. Or anyone else's. Usually though I just cough, or hum something, or spit out the word "hey" or "hi." It's pretty akward. Sometimes I'm relieved to know it's over with. Do I make too big a deal out of small things? |
| 5 July, 2001 (5:40 pm) All this talk about the operation here in louisville kentucky that gave a man a robotic heart has got me to thinking about Political Correctness. Throughout history, the human heart has been a symbol of emotion, considered the center of love and feeling, the essence of being human itself. Far more important than any other part, the heart was the keystone of organs. The brain was a useless lump of muscles. I mean, come on. This man's heart was replaced with a bunch of machinery, which in the eyes of popular myth renders him an emotionless robot! And I haven't heard one measly joke about it yet. Not one! Think of the possibilities this gives his family. His teenage daughter, swerving out of the way of a poor defensless puppy, runs the car into a tree. He becomes furious. The daughter just smirks and says "aww... come on dad, have a heart. Oh... my bad. I mean, it's just a piece of metal, unimportant bulky metal, don't have a heart attack. Uh... sorry, sheesh." Stupid media. current mood: dissapointed |
| 2 July, 2001 (4:06 pm) i was just lying on my back playing with the flat bed truck that sonya put on my birthday cake, when i noticed on the back it says "made in canada." This made me think to myself "hmm. A lot of things are made in canada nowadays." This was immediately followed by the thought "wait--no they're not." When I looked again, i realised it said "Made in China." |
| 19 June, 2001 (12:48 pm) When i lived on princeton drive everyone still called my brother cricket. our neighbors, the gardners, were very old and had a teeny tiny dog that was also named cricket. one day, Mr Gardner was walking Cricket the dog, when a car drove by. In the car was a pit bull. The dog barked and barked at Cricket the tiny dog. The car pulled up about 2 or 3 blocks farther and parked. As soon as the door opened, the pit bull made a bee line for Cricket the dog, and bit him in half. My neighbors were moving at this time. They happened to exchange a word or two about this over some boxes as well as their daughter Kate Eldridge who was about 4 at the time. They said something like "Isn't it so sad that cricket was bitten in half." Until 3 or 4 years ago, Kate thought my brother was dead. She thought that he had been bitten in half by a pitt bull. This was the story i got from the orthopedic surgeon I went to see today, Jack Eldridge. I used to play hide and go seek with his daughters. They took x-rays and apparently my hip is just about perfect. He gave me some excersizes... apparently it's fairly common and it has something to do with a tendon I think. I figured out why my arm is sore today. It's from playing the accordion. Ha ha. Who'd have thought it could injure you..... |
| 17 June, 2001 (1:38 pm) I was sitting in the black chair in the back room reading the comics. I just took a shower. My dad walks in, looks at me for a second, says "brrrrrrriiiiiiing," walks over to the telephone and picks it up. His back is towards me. Into the phone he says "what? oh yes, i can do that, sure.", hangs up the phone, walks over to me and says "I'm supposed to do this." Then he snatches the newspaper out of my hands, and walks off giggling. Happy father's day dad. |
| 16 June, 2001 (10:25 am) As i woke up today I was thinking about fossil fuel, and why petroleum works so well. I figured it must have so much energy because it's so unbelievably old. Then I though "Aha!! The sun is old also, and energy can be begotten from it!" However, solar energy usually has much less power than gasoline. But that can be explained by the sun's distance from the earth, and the fact that it has been giving off energy from its beginning instead of storing it up. It seems strange to me that we rely completely on one standard energy source that is obviously being depleted. So I think to myself "what is just as old (or older) as oil, closer to the earth than the sun, doesn't give off energy all the time, and of which there is an unending supply." The answer fom all sides points to dirt. Dirt is our only hope for the future. Because, when you really about it, why not. |
| 29 May, 2001 (1:44am) at the valumarket today we were standing in line behind a woman with 19 cans of cheap coffee. i was in the process of counting these cans when jason leaned over and said "look at that" . in front of this woman was another one, about 65 years old, in a nursing shirt, with white chopped up hair, leaning over her cart. she looked like she had a bad back. and there was a penny in her ear. just chillin. not stuck in, or placed in, just wobbling back and forth without a care in the world. (1:28am) the concept of an army of skeletons has always been way over my head. skeletons have no muscles or tendons. they shouldnt even be able to walk let alone push canons and throw boulders. then again, maybe the same power force that allows them to see with out eyeballs and talk without a toungue, vocal chords, or saliva helps them walk. something else that has always bothered me is how the opposing army always spends so much energy gathering weapons to defeat the skeletons. throwing a bunch of sticks and rocks at them is going to have the exact same effect as shooting them with arrows, etc but it's a lot easier. they are already dead, so all you really have to do is break apart their bones. Sheesh. |
| 21 May, 2001(9:50 am) i remember having a garden but i don't remember the specific flowers. i remember a vague notion of dirt and bumblebees, but not much else. i think there were tulips. for some reason every kid i know can draw a tulip, and most even do it the same way. i have no idea where we all learn this stencil for drawing tulips. tulips aren't even that pretty. they look like it in our drawings, but in real life they have three or four big black stems coming out of the center. (9:43 am) Every once in a while I completely lose the ability to park. This is happening right now. About a week ago, I seemed to be surrounded by the curb, and it was closing in on me like the walls in the Egyptian pyramids that come closer and closer together to pulverize the intruders. I was getting more and more frustrated, when I looked over at Johanna, in the passenger seat, who was kind of looking at me like with her teeth showing but not smiling, and her eyebrows raised, almost worried but not thinking about it. I grabbed my head and screamed “AAAH what do I do!!?”. I was trapped about a half an inch away from the car parked in front of me and the curb keeping me from going backwards at all. She turned to look at me, leaned in closer, raised her eyebrows a little more, and whispered “accelerate!!” We have laughed about this all week. |
| 17 May, 2001 (11:30 am) Toast On a Public Broadcasting Service show once, a few years ago, I saw a segment about a man that made art out of toast. He put tinfoil over the parts to be “light” and left the other parts open. Then he put the toast in the toaster, and burned it. He pieced it together like a mosaic, and I guess it was a mosaic. He made many pieces of his own design, as well as artistic toast versions of The Last Supper and The Mona Lisa. I have heard nothing about him in the past few years. I don’t think he ever really made it in the art world. The sun rose like orange marmalade, sticky and dripping down through the window. I sat up and stretched, tasting my mouth, wondering what words would break my nightly silence that day. I sat peacefully, staring at the wall but not looking at it, considering the weight of my head. Still not having broken the day, I remembered that Johanna was still sleeping in the room next to mine, so I got up and walked over to see if she was awake. She heard my footsteps, or maybe the sun got her too, and she turned around, eyes struggling open, sticky, and sweet. Eventually we made it downstairs and sat around thinking about food. Maybe it was the sunrise, or maybe the Easter bread left-overs, but we decided to have a Toast Party. The bread crumbled under the knife, and we ate a few shards before putting the falling apart pieces into the toaster oven. This accomplished, we went to find jelly. My family has eight jars of jelly in the refrigerator at any given time, all from Kroger, with the same orange-yellow cap: cherry, raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, orange marmalade, apricot, and [sometimes] grape. We pulled these out and put them in the center of the kitchen table, which was shining, the sun had already spread it with orange marmalade. We got out some mugs, and filled them with water. We heated them in the microwave, and put tea bags in, watching the red tea swirl out into the vibrating water like the Arora Borealis I had been dreaming about the night before, that I have always wanted to see, and one day we would see together, when we drive to Alaska, or the Yukon. Somewhere, anyway. Somewhere north. The toast was done, and we piled it on our plates, putting a different kind of jelly on each piece. We have always had these eight jelly jars in our refrigerator, in the shelf under the egg holder, next to the mustard and ketchup, but I had, heretofore, only tried three of them. We finished our breakfast, and cleaned up our mess, trying to figure out would happen that day. We used to make plans (or at least we thought we did), now we now how to find them. Or let them find us. We sat at that table once, bored. We wanted to leave. Leave town. For a good long time. A couple of hours even. We thought about how close Cincinnati was, how it was 4:30, we could be there by 6, walk around for a couple of hours, and be home by 10:00 or 10:30. Easy. Johanna was serious. I know she was because she can’t fake many emotions, not to me anyway. Her eyebrow wasn’t twitching, and she looked sincere. That’s one thing she can’t fake, sincere. She’s tried, and I know what her fake sincere looks like. She pulled out 8 one dollar bills she had crumpled up in her pocket, and about 73 cents in change and lined them up on the table, like graves in a cemetery, like desks in a classroom. “Gas money,” she said. I nodded. I think what happened next was the phone rang, and I went to the kitchen to answer it. She followed. Passing through the doorway into the kitchen, our escape plan was forgotten. But when we returned to the table, we saw the 8 one dollar bills and 73 cents in change sitting there, just as we had left them saying “you are silly girls with silly plans.” We looked, shocked at the table, remembering, then looked quickly, embarrassed, at each other, then looked away. Not looking at the table, Johanna slid the money into her pocket. Then we got the hell out of that room to make other plans. Which is what we were trying to do after our Toast Party. Eventually we realized we had agreed to meet some friends somewhere and, deciding we had had enough fun for the day with our toast, gave up making alternate plans and left to meet our friends. The left over tea swirled down the drain of the kitchen, like the Arora Borealis that I dreamed about, but I was happy with my teacup plans and my teacup day. Soon we will take on the sky, we will conquer the earth. But for now, I’ve got my teacup friends and my toast memories. That’s all we need to be happy. |
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