"telephone's ringin, it's your second cousin"

madeleine peyroux - looking for the heart of saturday night

so pick your risk and take it la la

from :11-:12.5, the look on her face ["What the?!"; "Wow that was quick."; "Welp, at least it was quick."; "I'll take the lil' bundle of dopamine, you can have the assholic personality."; "Do Over!!" . . . ]

"The Body's Only Rental," Katie Dill- like this

At New Years "best songs of the year" lists get posted all over. An upside to the crap cold time of year, I spose. Another selection: Jesse Malin - NY Nights (high rec, I'm listening to this again, it's catchy)

the day after christmas is when winter becomes pointless. from this day forward, I will Want spring with Mounting Disquiet

Justin Nozuka - Down in a Cold Dirty Well

In July, the sale on Lego Bionicle castles with a buttgillion pieces looked like a really fantastic deal. I swear there must be some douchenozzle in China who’s in charge of leaving out 3 crucial pieces per box.

for virgo this week: The desert-dwelling creosote bush can survive for centuries on little water. In the Mohave Desert there is a ring of creosote, named "King Clone," whose age has been carbon-dated at 11,700 years. The hardiness of this low-maintenance wonder reminds me of you, Virgo. You sometimes entertain the fantasy that the less you need, the stronger you'll be. The downside of this attitude is that you may unwittingly make it hard for people to give you their gifts. The upside is that you've learned many secrets about how to nurture and take care of yourself. But in 2008, I foresee you making a shift away from the creosote bush metaphor. You're more likely to resemble a tomato bush that gets watered regularly. (o brother)

[Bush: 1. The only presendent of the United States of America to be all most assassinated by a pretzil. see dumbass
Oh my god he must be a dumb fuck!!!
Tomato: 1. A term used to describe someone who is denial of his homosexuality...because even though you think a tomato is a vegetable, it's really a "fruit" 2. A sexy curvacious woman, usually dressed in a manner that invites men to try and fuck her]

self help reading + [more] music

"You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."
- Gone With the Wind [Rhett Butler]

for virgo today: There is a huge amount of Earth energy in the air today and you will spend this Christmas Day feeling content, secure and positively grounded. That special person in your life will be only too happy to enhance your mood. A very romantic surprise should be in store!

jose gonzalez - fold
a voice you can curl against, sleepless - love this guy
feist - the park

meg baird – do what you gotta do
sue foley – make me a pallet on your floor
joy denalane – be real

"he asked for a discharge without conviction"

"I Must Be In A Good Place Now," Bobby Charles. We got a tree, a little blue spruce that my small spot in the world makes appear larger - you could see its self-esteem rising as we lit it up. The neighborhood birds have just found Doug's feeder, which I hung outside the window in back of where the tree sits. They're swirling around, looking through the window at the purple ornaments, and gold lights, and one black ribbon. I could win the lottery without batting an eyelash I am very certain, but this ounce of sweetness stuff takes my breath away.

La la la La la la . I can’t help it playliiist:

Tony Bennett: Chestnuts Roasting

Dean Martin: Baby It’s Cold Outside (w Doris Day)

Dean again: Let it Snow Let it Snow la la la

Bing Crosby – Dreaming of a White Christmas

Marilyn Monroe – Santa Baby (link removed)

Frank Sinatra – Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas (next year all our troubles will be miles awayyyy la la la)

for virgo this week: "Life is a punishment," wrote poet Robert Frost. "All we can contribute to it is gracefulness in taking the punishment." That's the opposite of my philosophy. I say life is a miraculous gift, and the best way to express our gratitude is to be fountains of generosity. Where do you stand on the issue, Virgo? Even if you've had a view like Frost's up to this point in your journey, I think you'll have good reasons to convert to my perspective in 2008. You will, of course, have to be open to that possibility in order for it to happen. If you're addicted to believing that life is punishment, you'll miss a flood of clues contradicting that quaint notion.

from bro-in-law this trip: arshkavey, which is German for "tramp stamp" and translates literally as "butt antler" for its customary shape, plus douchenozzle (as an insult, like dickhead [only better, obviously])

+ life's a punishment - are there any of double-amputees trying to jerk-off (?) I wonder, cz it seems like there are plenty enough douchenozzles in the world slated for unfortunate reincarnations to make such a category logical enough ; that dog looks like a guy who took his lover for granted in his last life, no?

last fish he ever caught

I dragged ass bouncing through Detroit home – I hate that trip, 6 hours just to take two 40-minute flights, stinky airplane air bluck—wondering how mourning works exactly. I mean, I get grief. But that's not the same thing. And I'm not sure what the difference is. My grandfather was one of those "greatest generation" guys who, thus, got the honor guard, the flag thing, the soldier salute part, the (free!- God, my people do love anything that's free) tombstone from the government, and this seemed to help a lot. It was as if the whole world stopped with us for a minute and also noticed that he had died. And the baby, she helps - funny stories about my boys, the new puppy-maybe, etc etc etc helped turn my mother's mind "to the living" as she put it. Even my grandmother, she went down the hall to have dinner in the dining room for the first time (they stayed alone together ALWAYS in their room) and took a seat amidst the ladies - she chews shyly, looking with poised hostility left and right lest one of the other widows says something stupid or starts talking about tatting or something that'll make her head pop off annoyed. She looks a hell of a lot like TJ in kindergarten, big time.

In the end, it was just as my sister said, they were instructed to tell him it was okay to go, and they sooo couldn't, not one of them - my mother HOWLED no no NO! (Santa is an asshole, NO!) by her own description. When they bundled g-ma up and "hauled her ass over there", she did it. She told him (not unkindly, but certainly not howling), "Go on Doug, I'll be along in a little bit", and he nodded like O Okay and then went to sleep.

The hospice people also told my mother to cut his hair off, bc often people want that later. My mom tells me this, sitting at my sis's this morning, we're drinking tea and I ask, "What's in this envelope?" on the table, and she tells me it's his hair and I can't help it, I say "Why the hell would anyone want that?!" She says, "That's exactly what your grandmother said." (lol) Well?? People who were Victorians kept lockets of hair, she says. (pause) (LOL) Are you a Victorian?? We start laughing and she's crying but we can't stop laughing. I laugh until I'm snorting, THAT IS SO GROSS!! Then we sober up and she says, Well you might want that sort of thing ya never know. (LOL) And we're off again giggling like hell, Geod No mom I will never want to pet your corpse hair -Do you want me to pet your head NOW?, cz that'd be okay I guess. (I pet her.) Laughing and laughing, while she cries off and on. And I think hmmmm: Mourning. I suspect that mourning will be one of those things that will turn out I had no clue how to do in any normal way, so I'll have to wing it totally.

Now I’m home, and feel like I am walking travel-crud. I’m gonna take a long hot bath in my deep old tub with one of those ugly oatmeal deals, water the plants, make a shopping list, wrap some presents, hope FPH can show up as planned and haul an xmas tree or maybe just lay around whatever, and as I think about that I’ll imagine(smell) a pine tree and I’m going to feel relatively glad to not be dead at all. So far, mourning feels very specific to the person who is missing, who in this case was the happiest person to catch a fish or to see a cardinal on a birdfeeder (every time) ever. Like a dream you wake from and can't remember except that it was good. Like a sentence fragment. An evocative inherently incomplete thought.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Charlie Haden, Hank Jones

she's at the separation anxiety stage (who isn't!? [no seriously]), and since I'm the only person who leaves for weeks at a time, when I leave the room she goes bonkerinos WAAA! - if she could email me a buttgillion times a day, she totally would

For Virgo this week: At Free Will Astrology, we love to turn things upside-down and inside-out every now and then. It keeps our mental hygiene sparkling clean, and yours, too. This week, in order to incite a purifying ruckus, we're offering you a challenge from psychologist James Hillman. Please suck the following thoughts into the deepest recesses of your understanding, and enjoy the brainstorms they detonate: "By accepting the idea that you are the effect of a subtle buffeting between hereditary and societal forces, you reduce yourself to a result. The more your life is accounted for by what already occurred in your chromosomes, by what your parents did or didn't do, and by your early years now long past, the more your biography is the story of a victim." What I'm trying to tell you, Virgo, is that it's a fine time to rebel against your genetic heritage, your upbringing, and your conditioning. Imagine a life for yourself in which you don't believe that those factors control what you're capable of.

Sometimes they are the only [right] choice, but I’m not fond of upheavals at all – they’re a Big Wedgie. It has been a hell of a week. Burst into tears like a kid who very much does not want to sit on Santa’s lap, no no NO get offa me.

The person who is writing this is sheltering another person who thinks Santa looks like some kind of weird scary asshole (NO!) and who sleeps with one eye open so that she can keep hold of her pet hamster at the same time (ALL NIGHT - and they're nocturnal, so that's no easy feat lemme tell ya) etc. . . . . I keep telling her "everything is OKAY” but when she's shaken she stares back at me, suspicious and skittish, clutching her psychic hamster close. I just have to wait her out.

Chris Smithers - Killing the Blues
Allison Kraus & Robert Plant - Killing the Blues [I still like the Colvin best but I lost it along the way - always love that song, just about at "I am guilty"]

(?)

Anarchy is an expression of insupportable pain and/or Total Bullshit. [thus]Rule/Principle: I like what I Know (as long as it doesn’t Utterly Suck).


Last night my tv blew. Right in the middle of “House”, which the boys and I watch on Monday nights at 8 p.m. and they ask all sorts of questions about anatomical disease and at the commercial breaks assert “He’s Going To Figure It Out!!”, yes yes, and then kerplunk. We stare at the blankness. What the?? We press the buttons. We stare. We give up and wander away from the television as if it has died on the Trail of Tears and there’s nothing to do but move on.

We spent this evening pretending it has always been this way, reading books they got at the book fair this week at school and Doing Whatever.

Then Ears says, We could try whip cream.
Whip cream?
Yeah, I’ve never tried it.
You’ve never had whipped cream, seriously?
No, really – have you ever served me whipped cream on anything?
(I think about it)– Well no, I haven’t – what about like at the ice cream parlor?
I always get cones, don’t I?
Yes. Huh.
(So we go to Wilson Farms and buy whipped cream and I make Ovaltine and warm it up and spray it on there and we drink it.)
This isn’t so bad!, says Ears.



There is a Rule/Principle lying around here somewhere nearby, and I’m looking for it. Is it
[upgrade: . . . what I know, as long as it's Pretty Good/(undefined potential)] .? It's something about setting the bar higher than "Doesn't Utterly Suck" without tripping over into chaos (which Sucks).

Feist--"It's Cool to Love Your Family"

Baden Powell - Consolação

woe is me

FaintedInk posted that image on her blog and for some reason it totally cracked me up. So I decided to break silence, I spose: Doug’s gone. I don't have a soundtrack or anything to add.

I usually haven’t really gotten poetry at all
Not any one poem
The whole thing in general
I am supposed to understand it
I am supposed to like it
There are a lot of things I was supposed to have.
If you can’t get from one end of a sentence to the other then FUCK! is the place where it broke down, trying to make sense, and then I guess if you keep writing anyway you fill up the FUCK! hole with lettuce, and that’s poetry
Or there is a poem about a bluebird
Or whatever
In which case, why? As in leg warmers and breakfast sausage that takes like fish – WHY? Why do that?
If you don’t know where to put commas, then express yourself in some other way.
And stay out of language.
I preferred, in retrospect, his craggy hands smokey smell to anything he said, but
If I hadn’t been too stupid for too long, I would have
Asked him the secret before we ran out of time:
How were you always so happy?
Like to see me?

"Like You'll Never See Me Again," Alicia Keys