The joint fundraising committee of President Trump's reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee released a three-question "Inaugural Year Approval Poll" that offers readers no option to give a negative assessment of the president's first year in office. The only options for "how would you rate President Trump's first year in office" are "great," "good," "okay" and "other." 

Perfect. I could also use some feedback but not too much. So here's a poll:

How would you rate my performance in 2017?
__great
__good
__okay
__other
Suggestions:________________________________________________

Text or email. I am particularly open to suggestions. Thanks.

the staves - in the long run

kid-homemade xmas cards never get old

If you wanna work your mama, dig up an old baby pic and add your awkward handwriting.

I could use a love song - maren morris

If you don't have a sister, you should get one.

I am going to sleep like a rock/baby with a full tummy of lentils dreaming sweetly of pretty penises.

Virgo upshot

If I wanted anything, I would not get it, so it is just as well that all I want is to read my stack of books in peace. But starting today, family start rolling in on top of the boiler that is shot and $thousands$ to replace and everyone wants something different for dinner and please god let the plumbing hold up...

Shawn James - That's Life

Somewhere in the evolution resulting in peacocks, a depressing turn was taken. And it was my fault. I chose to be vital and chose mates to be of so little use that they were ultimately expendable. We women, we all did that. The only thing left that our gods might be is emotionally relevant, having been bred to be nothing else. And that would be ok except they can't hack that either, weighted down as they are by the ass factor that we engendered.

American Gods
By Neil Gaiman

“My last girlfriend was Greek....Greeks,” said the Iceman, with disgust. “And it ain’t true what they say about them, neither. I tried giving it to my girlfriend in the ass, she almost clawed my eyes out.”

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us
By Richard O. Prum

"If a science book can be subversive and feminist and change the way we look at our own bodies — but also be mostly about birds — this is it. Prum, an ornithologist, mounts a defense of Darwin’s second, largely overlooked theory of sexual selection. Darwin believed that, in addition to evolving to adapt to the environment, some other force must be at work shaping the species: the aesthetic mating choices made largely by the females. Prum wants subjectivity and the desire for beauty to be part of our understanding of how evolution works. It’s a passionate plea that begins with birds and ends with humans and will help you finally understand, among other things, how in the world we have an animal like the peacock."

city and colour - wasted love

weekend love horoscope VIRGO

ADAM, a Dutch electronic dance music band, had a great idea for their latest video: To sing their single Go to Go while using a vibrator, trying to keep a straight face, the pleasure building up until they reached climax.

stand the reflection

a million years ago ft chopin waltz op. 64 #2 - adele / david deyl cover

tinush - struggle (ft aretha)  2:03-2:40

you won't - ya ya (ya)

Weekend love horoscope VIRGO: Rest assured, you matter quite a lot to the ones who matter to you, even when they are being too self-absorbed to do the right things.

no more Paris

This was a very thoroughly lousy day on every front. My pluck gave out and even my reservoir of fury is depleted.

I am weepily looking at adorable animals. Defeated.

who knew - you won't

VIRGO You'll be developing a better way of looking at your life and some more supportive self-talk to go along with that new view. What would you tell a friend to help them if they were your position?

"You are not worthless because no man cares for you. You have taken meanness carelessness hurtfulness self-centeredness in men as natural. They put the cigarettes of their damage out on you. So you're covered in burn marks, tracks down your back you've hidden under pretty colors. Do this: Turn your back on that shit."

Lumineers - Angela

Me: I just thought of something - what if we get shot?
Ears: shit why did you say that?
TJ: why would we?
Me: ya know, lonely nutcases, movie theaters, US gun laws - that is toxic combo on a holiday..
TJ: riiiight
Me: we could go right back home and rent something instead
TJ: I am down for that actually, especially if you will take a nap first cz I have a new steamcard burning a hole in my pocket right now
Me: O hell yea, I am always down for a nap. What are we gonna rent?
Ears: ya know what I haven't seen in a while...
TJ: COCK!
Ears: hahahahaha
Me: hahahaha me either
Us: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
TJ: just google it
Us: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Me: stop! my mascara is running
Ears: I was gonna say a Tarantino movie
Us: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

BROS - Tell Me

VIRGO Making other people happy makes you happy. And then when they're not, you're not. And though you really can't control how other people feel, something about the equation will really work for you today. 

Experience suggests that it helps to start with good raw ingredients for the best outcomes. In pie making, in teaching, in home reno, everything.

In the case of making people happy, which is something that makes me very happy to do, it is vital to begin with people who can be happy. If that is possible, I can usually find a way to make it so. If not, the people are human men.

"There's a lot to be thankful for this season...unless you're a human woman." gigglegiggle

Yea um, what happened to men? I've never been molested but did y'all?? Cuz I have conferred with my ladies and it is the prevalent opinion than men are in two buckets mostly: 1 Bad and 2 Hopeless

Which strongly suggests 1 Abused or 2 Dropped on your heads or some shit

Then again, I have the relationship skill of a cactus, only skill is surviving on 1 Hostility or 2 Nothing, so guess I shouldn't talk as if I am above whatever happened. Maybe Cosby put something in all our pudding :/

Jasper loves my manicures

Fried and undersugared, I am

Vague very slight language thing, I wouldn't even say accent, more like a flavor. Idiot savant style knowledge (of roof materials in this instance). A brother and dad another couple 'like a brother' brothers own the business. He stands in the kitchen looking like he is surprised (and super nice but slightly annoyed) to be there once he has told me all that. I can't help it. I think: I like you. Not like he was hot kinda thing, just the particularity of that kind of odd is charming to me.

When he sends me the written estimate (which I accepted) (staying for the winter at least) (and I'm overcompensating for cheating on my house in my head), it has his name on it. Seriously? I had to ask. Greek via Ukraine, he is surprised I noticed, doesn't really remember, grew up here but in an immigrant family blabla.

What is that I like about slightly "off" people who are herdlings belonging to herds *that hate people like me*!? I am wayyy too modern mongrel to be anything but in the wrong. Like how Jasper gets crushed out on cats. I bet Tranwreck's mother prays thank you at every mass to the Polish Jesus that I am no longer in her reality.

Peter Rosenberg re hiphop, "I've always been drawn to loving things that require defense." I totally relate to that sentiment! And I am gonna guess hiphop does not admire you back much for your trouble.

I saw Toni Morrison tonight. 50 years to the day since MLK spoke on that same Klienhans stage..

If, would I want it? As usual I shied away from the question. Answer: Sort of. But I don't really. I like my life. But then again, it feels like it doesn't like me back as much. 

I always think about what it would be like to be haved and held by whatever it is. This is nice. If I took the job probably THEN all of a sudden I would get a much sweeter offer at home. That is the game.

I don't play games very well.

When he is between other women, Trainwreck always thought/thinks the world of me.

While I think that is absurd and frankly awful, to have and to keep shopping instead of to have and hold, I am noting the obvious parallel:

I am channeling the dating that others do (I should be doing?) into house shopping ft nesting instead. That is what I do. I house flirt.

I go out, fall in love for a minute with something new. Then I think about all the effort that anything new always is, I worry there are hidden downsides to the new one for which I will be unprepared (mine isn't perfect but it is KNOWN which I LIKE, I am just not a woohoo new dick/house kinda girl naturally). Then I decide to spend a little more effort on the house I have (paint usually, I like to paint and that doesn't require $$/skill just time/effort and I like chores so). Then I think: I like you after all, House. (I just wish you weren't such a long drive whatever that's bumming me out.)

Then I do suuuuper nerdy shit like look up my home equity and related credit scores lol. Like, looking in the mirror and thinking that I look sexier because my house (dick substitute) loves me.

dammit, I want a perfect 800, so I can win the 'Human Birkenstock Award'

The Hip - Blowing High Dough

More than meets the eye, not a hummingbird. A hummingbird MOTH. Like all moths, driven by pheromones, they fall in love across great difficult distances, flying hard enough to make that bzzbzz wing sound. You know them from hummingbirds by their antennae. And the males are slightly peachfuzzy.

good thing he's so cute cz he hurts like hell, def male

Me (driving too fast to tat from first realtor): Ok life lesson..
Ears: oooookay..?
Me: don't start a tattoo when you have pms
Ears: gigglegiggle - I love how you have SONS to give that to, don't get a tattoo during pms, got it
Me: no no, don't START a tattoo
Ears: hahahahahaha riiiight
Me: riiiiiiight cz now my dumb ass has to get a hummingbird filled in today for what feels like nooooo reason except to torture myself on a random Saturday hahahahahaha
Ears: hahahahahaha your midlife crises are hilarious
Me: right? at least there's that hahahahaha

How do you also sell a house and move and alllll that on top of alllll this already to manage? How did I do it last time?? I wanted the Greek. Desire tipped my scales. This house was both lovable in itself and at that man's feet. And that's how I summoned the oomph. I was fooling myself obviously, but it worked.

There ain't no pheromone pot of gold in Tonawanda to fool myself with. I would get the workbenches he is leaving behind in the basement that smells like sawdust, the quintessential mansmell, another ghost.

VIRGO There's no time to waste on hating the experiences that led you here. That will cause you to fall back. Instead, affirm: Here you are, shaped by what happened and also by what might happen. Fall forward.

Swiped yes today. New directors of teacher training undergrad and grad. That felt better than godfuckingno. Especially the undergrad one, I need to make sure they offer her a living wage (cheap Catholics) with her contract tomorrow. And I like that, being able to get people treated rightly when I can. Then a young man chased me down the street screaming about beauty and trying to start a flash mob but he only got one other guy in a truck to beep. Which was okay, not so much that it scared me, just a Buffalo thing. Buffalo is like that, grungy playful wackadoodle, pro urban farming and beauty and bike lanes.

I asked my tarot deck a question. It said no.

So, back to houses.

I have never had a tinder account or whatever it is the thing where you swipe left or right. But I know about it because everyone at work makes fun of me for doing it. Fall is interview season. I spend whole days saying 'nope'...'nope'....etc. Swipeswipenowayjose

If people were houses I would like more of them. Look at that sweet thing. Somebody built that kitchen (for her) with love in his heart (or pants, whichever finefine)

Dear diary, Today I did nothing except talk to a friend all day about houses.

Where do you want to live and why? Can you? How can you? Why would you or would you not? Pros and cons. That is the kind of shit I want to talk about. I just like to.

Outside my friggin blog, I don't talk about sex and death 24/7. UNDERNEATH, like semiconsciously, everything is really about those essential things - anyone with opposable thumbs knows morality and mortality are the biggies duh right? But that lives INSIDE everyday shit, like granite or butcher block? Pros and cons. Block, is my preference, because it is both bold and warm. But it is harder to care for. And that is just like me, right? To prefer wood for those reasons despite that cost? In these many small choices, we know who we are. So that is why I like to talk about and make such choices.

I think I might buy this. It has been on the market a few minutes. Close to a lot of faculty friends, who are making that area the new 'Phd ghetto', like my big red double used to be in Parkside. The agent sold my last two houses, like a shark that guy is, but he likes me and I like him. His gaymean humor is fantastic. We share aesthetic opinions (Italian aging, the hair, ya gotta invest in your hair). So he texted me right back and I have an appointment to see it next Sat, sooner than the open house and same day I get my tattoo finished colored in. Is that a sign? If it has a clawfoot tub, that is definitely a sign..

There is nothing keeping me here necessarily. Nobody would be sad if I left. What is here is ME, this house, what I made of it, the safespace dog den feel of it. But I make that wherever I go. I am that.

“You are a good man,” she says. “You are beautiful.” She runs the back of her hand over the sparse fur of his chest. She lets a tiny crackle go, a prickle at his hair’s ends, glowing faintly. It feels good. Every line of his body is coming into focus as she touches him, as if he hadn’t really been there at all, before. He wants to be inside her; his body is already telling him what to do, how to move this thing forward, how to take her arms, how to bring her down on to the bed, how to consummate. But the body has contradictory impulses: fear is as significant as lust, physical pain as strong as desire. He holds himself there, wanting and not-wanting. He lets her set the pace. It takes a long while, and it is good. She shows him what to do, with his mouth and with his fingers. By the time she is riding him, sweating and calling out, the sun has risen on a new day in Riyadh. And when she loses control as she finishes she sends a jolt through his buttocks and across his pelvis and he barely feels the pain at all, so great is the delight. ~The Power, Naomi Alder

It is cold and dreary. I don't want to go out. I want to have gotten married at 25 and it worked out and I will have Sunday morning sex with him tomorrow early and ignore him this evening while he is puttering or out with his friends and it never crosses my mind to worry about trusting him while I read this borderline vampire porn with Jasper on my legs until I drift off. So that is exactly what I am doing. I am cuddled in with fuzzy pants on under a fuzzy blankie, drinking pms tea, chuckling at this girly Fight Club novel, listening to drizzle hit the window in a quiet house. It is exactly as it would be if I had lived happily ever after. Except the husband died or something. Saving a baby from a burning house (since I am making him up, why not?). And I am carrying on in a dignified fashion.

The Chainsmokers - (Don't) Let Me Down (Acapella)

VIRGO. Because misinformation runs amok in the world, people you trust could accidentally lead you astray.Your skepticism is healthy. Do your own research.

ddhd

"dreams don't have deadlines" but they do


Late Tragically Hip frontman records vocals for "The North" in clip for posthumous album, 'Introduce Yerself'

VIRGO  It's not like you're searching for tenderness and friendship in this harsh and competitive world, but when you accidentally stumble across it today you'll realize how much you needed it.

Oh I know. I need it like hell. I just know also not to count on any such thing.

And here is a weird thing about adulting: don't break it to others, that they should probably recalibrate their expectations lower. They are still persons of faith in humanity even if you have become cynical, and they might never be disappointed if you yourself do not disappoint them. So keep your burdens to yourself, and espouse faith in people and in God and/or in abstractions of goodness (justice, kindness, etc.). That is the real load to carry as a grown up. It isn't paying the bills or whatever, that you can do or not be able to and then be able again, that is hard but is not the Hard part. The Hard part is faith. Being an adult is acting like you have faith convincingly, even if you've lost it, for the sake of those who have not lost it yet and who have faith in you.

Faculty Council week.

Last text wawawaing at me was 9:54 last night. First one this morning was 4:12 a.m.

TJ at 6:20 a.m.: grunt
Me: grunt
TJ: I am so over high school
Me: I am so over college
TJ: the coffee is already cold..and what the hell are you doing?
Me: making dinner because I know by dinnertime I will be out of energy and if I eat one more slice of pizza I am going to beat somebody to death with a pizza
TJ: what time did you get up?
Me: 4:12, first complaint text came in
TJ: Faculty Council is like your job gets its period
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OMGTOTALLY LOLOL if only some chocolate and wine would shut them all the fuck up
TJ: yea man, show them Seinfeld reruns and let em all cuddle shih tzus
Me: HAHAHAHAHA

The current Scorpio sun is conducive to doing things you might not think to do at other times of the year. There's a certain intensity that comes with this soulful passage and a mood that drives people to discovery. So how is the passionate energy of the next four weeks best applied? Consider adding one or two of these ideas to your list:

1. Uncover a family mystery.

2. Go deeper into certain aspects of a religion.

3. Think of the world as it was 100 years before you were born.

4. Dream about what the world will be like 100 years after you die.

5. Write an appreciative love letter to your mother.

6. Change your radio station to absorb a different kind of music than you've ever gotten into before.

7. Solve a crime.

8. Love someone you've known a long time in a new and deeper way. (ha hem)

9. Give up some aspect of media or technology you've become addicted to.

10. Consider different lifestyles and what it would be like to live them.

You don't have to make any changes. Just thinking about them might be enough to broaden your horizons.

LP-Switchblade

VIRGO You care. You try. Whether or not your efforts land as planned, your good intentions will shine through. You'll either get what you set out for or attract the kind of help you need to do it next time.

Good morning Bedhead. We have the day to ourself so ya don't need to brush that mop or bother w liptint etc. What ya wanna do? We could make love to ourself all morning except that we dared ourself not to. Why did we do that? A guy on the radio said it improved intimacy. With whom? Good question. Let's go to yoga, Paul is teaching today. That isn't going to help with the dare at all. Truth, he is so hot he can rock a manbun. And he likes the new tat, always admiring our bow pose. Snort.

Paul (at me during my bow pose): Looking good G.
Me: You're looking good too Paul (everyone in the studio incl him and his wife cracks up)

Okay that felt fantastic, I love to sweat! But. Right, but. The punchline to 'what is bigger than a breadbox?' Is not supposed to be 'my clitoris'. Right, and we are telling ourselves jokes like a lunatic so there's that. Let's go to the juice bar and read that new collection of feminist fairy tales. Yea, what could be less sexy than a spinach smoothie and feminism?! Nothing!!

In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them.

I see the muscles of his neck and upper back, how he fairly strains out of his button-down shirts, like a day laborer dressed up for a dance, and I run slick. 

I am a good girl. But he is a little craggy, in that way men sometimes are, and I want. He seems like he could want the same thing. I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanatorium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it? I have always wanted to choose my moment, and this is the moment I choose.

He is hard and hot and dry and smells like bread, and when he breaks me I scream and cling to him like I am lost at sea. His body locks onto mine and he is pushing, pushing, and before the end he pulls himself out and finishes. I am fascinated and aroused by the rhythm, the concrete sense of his need, the clarity of his release.

I shimmy off my pantyhose, and on my hands and knees offer myself up to him. I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them. I hear the metallic buckle of his pants and the shush as they fall to the ground, and I feel his half hardness against me. I beg him—“No teasing”—and he obliges. I moan and push back, and we rut in that clearing, groans of my pleasure and groans of his good fortune mingling and dissipating into the night. We are learning, he and I.

It is not normal that a girl teaches her boy, but I am only showing him what I want, what plays on the insides of my eyelids as I fall asleep. He comes to know the flicker of my expression as a desire passes through me, and I hold nothing back from him. When he tells me that he wants my mouth, the length of my throat, I teach myself not to gag and take all of him into me, moaning around the saltiness.

Bent over the kitchen table, something old is lit within me, and I remember the way we had desired before, how we had left love streaked on all of the surfaces, how he relished in my darkest spaces. I scream with ferocity, not caring if the neighbors hear, not caring if anyone looks through the window with its undrawn curtains... ~Her Body and Other Parties

What the hell kind of feminism is that? He does take her head off and kill her in the end. Is it worth it? Good question.

The Killers - The Man

Took the day off to go for my annual physical. I am a terrible patient. I never agree to tests, never take anything they give me, never finish it if I do take it, and never answer the questions straight.

Dr: Are you sexually active?
Me: Define active.
Dr: haha I only mean do you have any pain associated with sex?
Me: psychological pain? yes.
Dr: haha
Me: My vagina is fine though, last I knew.
Dr: hahaha

I am in perfect health. Except for my personality.

"On June 2, 2015, my husband, Brooke, and I celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary. We chose to spend it in Yellowstone. We rose before dawn in the Lamar Valley not far from where wolves were reintroduced twenty years earlier. A silhouette of coyotes feasting on a bison carcass, surrounded by bald eagles and ravens, appeared in our binoculars. As the light grew stronger the coyotes became nervous and left. The eagles flew. The ravens vanished. A large gray wolf entered. Morning light illuminated the bison body, now more bones than flesh. We watched the wolf disappear into a red cavern of ribs. He emerged stained. In the several hours we watched, the wolf’s stomach expanded with each mouthful of bison ripped from the scaffolding of bones until he stopped eating, looked over his shoulder, sniffed, and walked back into the woods. At dusk, we returned to the Lamar Valley. We wondered whether the wolves might be back on the carcass. Instead, two coyotes were picking on bones covered by a buffalo robe. The coyotes disappeared into the shadows with the last light of day. An indigo sky deepened. A mile away, a herd of a hundred bison or more grazed unconcerned. Seven left and walked single file toward the remains of the mother bison. They circled her twice, sniffed her, nudged her body, and tightened their circle as they lowered their heads. They stayed with her until twilight. Then the bison left as they came, walking single file back toward the herd—save one lone bull who stayed behind." The Hour of Land, Terry Tempest Williams

I heard her last night at a distinguished speaker series. I cried.

it's scary

I heard that At an All Time Low song and this conversation on NPR within hours of each other. Like God heard me listening to that song and answered.

Dante. About autoeroticism (and porn, i.e. strangers, to make it work), there is serious truth in what he says. To get out of prison, you have to get over yourself and care for another.

This cracks me up ... 
.....hahahaha  

I dunno how anybody does this every month like the hardcore people do.  (Can you imagine?!)

As a game, well yeah. If you can purposefully withhold physical pleasure for a spell, then the rebound intensity of pleasure that you can bestow is mindblowing. Like shaking a champagne bottle before uncorking it. There are real upsides of having a lover who admires and rewards selfdiscipline.

But any exertion of selfcontrol for its own sake is a kick in the face.

I am having mixed feelings. On the one hand, why would anyone do this??!! But on the other hand, I DO admire selfcontrol. Displays of it are hot. To a point.

norah jones - broken little hearts

"tough customer"

Lovely the Band - Broken (oddly catchy)
Tightrope (acoustic) - LP

Weekend love horoscope: You will not be making love to yourself, which is hard in the short run but is a move in the right direction.

crazy bright moon 

Harvest moon tonight. Landing in October for the first time in a decade, it's a lucky one. It will be huge and bright especially at rise (around 630-8 pm est). Look up. Reap what you've sewn. Sit and think: what have I got (inventory)? Then take a risk with some piece of it, in the categories of love or commerce particularly (investments). It should feel a little scary, exposing, if it is a real risk. If you make an offering of risking something, you will be lucky in the next month.

Yesterday, offhandedly I said I would embark on a 30 day no fap challenge. It was that song, "you are the reason I'm alone and masturbate". I thought: my ex is not a reason for my puss anywhichway (god damn it). Since I had rubbed it out already, technically today is day one of the challenge. I cannot imagine how that could bring luck, but that is the point of self-imposed discipline. You can't know what you can get out of yourself until you leash yourself and find out.

Beyonce - If I Were a Boy (ft You Oughta Know) - sing loud in the car

Walk Off the Earth - All Time Low (cover)

LP - No Witness

presenting....Dame Wantdog

If the guy were black, entirely different coverage. If the guy were an immigrant, omg, entirely different coverage. As it is, the American public will have a quick drive-by unintelligent conversation about mental health as if the mentally ill are hostile rather than helplessly suffering, then we will jerk off first responders (who, for the record, are adrenalin junkies who can too easily disassociate from the suffering of others). Hrrrmph

Sunday morning cartoons

The past is a powerful place that takes up more and more space/time. But even though it takes up so much of the horizon, it is still somewhere that you can't go. (repost)

Memories - Chaos Chaos , the episode's premise is that you can tell real people from alien projections by the memories you have of them - mostly shitty memories are what you have if the people are real

Turtle magic, home is wherever you are.

VIRGO It is foolish to make decisions based solely on logic and intellect.Feelings have real-world effects that are often more impactful than any intellectual reality.

I feel like leaving. I feel like shutting the door and never coming out. I feel like going to the back of the closet with my hamster like I did when I was a child, and nobody can find me so even though I am trapped I am free, as free as I can get.

Wow I am tired. Too busy to stew. Almost. For a second yesterday, I micropouted that on top of everything I have to do this week, I also have to hug myself if I want one and make dinner every night. Then the next thing I had to do was attend the inaugural Mission Integration Medical Ethics Symposium, which was about the ethics of withdrawing care from newborn babies. Want to stop pouting fast?, see a slideshow about fubar babies.

Want to live in such a way that you get reminded daily that pouting is for pussies? Work at a Catholic college. If you need it, there is always some kind of work you can do that will remind you that the world is brimming with people who are suffering more than you ever have.

The Mercury-Saturn tension is still going strong. For some it causes an ache of desire. Desire isn't born out of loss. It's not a longing for what we lack. We all lack many things that we don't feel desire for. Desire isn't about lacking something; it's about wanting extra — a buildup of energy that magnetizes a particular focus. Fortune favors bold action.

Too tired. I feel worn to a nub and it's only Tuesday.

VIRGO You'll call a few key shots. It's because a lot seems to fall under your jurisdiction these days. You really aren't going out of your way to run things. This is a natural result of just being who you are.

Snort. Ya. My boss calls me Bosslady.

Faculty Council week. First of the new year of all new VPs. And the moved the whole thing to the big fancy pharmacy hall. They are going to start recording and live streaming it, God help me. Then the week ends with the Klienhans gig and the inaugural gala over the weekend. By Sunday, I am going to feel like I had a high colonic of professional grade white people.

Finefine. I will have zero time for existential crisis this week. Stay tuned for the rebound urge to run for it into the northern wilds. In the back of my mind, the camper from the Frazy Ford video is stuck...

There are some people you choose because they fit the situation. They work perfectly in the context in which you need them. Then there are those who are bigger than the context. You would choose them in a hundred contexts over a hundred lifetimes in a hundred worlds. Those are the people to focus on during this Mars and Neptune opposition.

Godspeed.

Frazy Ford - September Fields

Autumn equinox is when day and night are balanced in time, symbolizing the scales of justice. From here out, you reap whatever you have sewn for the year.  The harvest is what it is.

I have sweat a lot. Simple pleasures and solid Goods, that is where I put my energy this growing season. Sweating is one of my favorite simple pleasures. I swam until my sweat glistened on the surface of the water. I hiked for miles and returned to hotHOT yoga. When I am dripping sweaty wet and bright pink, muscles trembling, I feel like I could slap the snarky smile off the face of Fate. And afterwards, cooled and clean, it feels good to rest and feel Well.

But I like having some ass and tits too. When I walk around the house wearing nothing but Alive, I feel like this Canadian lady looks attitudewise. Jiggling my glitter. Frazey Ford - Done (I love her butt.)

So I bake bread. And smear my homemade jelly on it when it is still warm.

I like the woman things that I know how to do.

VIRGO  The circumstance of the day may have you feeling like a new adult, entering the workforce astounded at the drudgery of some jobs, wanting to be free like a child again.



What ways are there to figure a life out? People depend on me. What THEY need are the deciding factors. But now one of their needs is for me to decide things based on my own needs, alone.

That is harder than you would think.

And I don't have anyone to talk to about it, really. Because I have nobody around me with the same problem. Sunshine hisses at me, for instance, always between jobs and broke, trying to make money with Youtube videos about vudu dolls. That is a very different problem, obviously.

For a long while, I missed Trainwreck and was still sick with open wounds of betrayal. And I knew someone with that same problem. Now the person that Trainwreck was when he was with me has fluttered out. And my wounds have healed into hot pink scars that will presumably fade over time. I will become less unsightly on the inside, maybe even compelling like a cowgirl with the marks of hard adventures written on her.

My new problem is: This is it. Now what? And it is a rare problem on this planet. To be a woman with the privilege of that problem.

The Girl told me a story yesterday: On Facebook, a woman had run an experiment. She didn't get out of the way for men, like while walking in hallways or through doors. She got smacked into something like 40 times so far. I never get out of the out of the way, they move and I stomp by, it would have never crossed my mind to run that experiment. 

I have been this way, and here it has gotten me. I own the island of my life as far as a regular person possibly can. The only thing I can't have is a sane stable lover who could talk to me of all of life while I run fingertips over his skin (apparently). So. I look at what could be had, and think: Now what?

I dunno. Until I figure it out, I work on the committee that's trying to put a free health clinic on the west side (refugee central), etcetc. I fill my time and try to be helpful. But in my head, to be honest, I just have no real idea what to Do With Myself.

"Inner beauty can fade too." 300 Arguments, Sara Manguso

I had this theory: What was best inside a man, if you had an eye for it, you could pour love on it and, like oxygen does a fire, that admiration for it would make that inner beauty grow.

I am not sure that is true. (If beauty is in the eye of the beholder.) But if it is true, to whatever extent it is, the withdrawal of that loving eye would make that inner beauty fade too, flutter and flame out.

"There’s things that move a man. Like currents of water inside. Things he can’t help. Older I got, the more I found it true. Getting grown means learning how to work that current: learning when to hold fast, when to drop anchor, when to let it sweep you up. And it could be something simple as sex, or it could be something as complicated as falling in love.." ~Sing, Buried, Sing, Jesmyn Ward

‘The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.’ Theodore Roosevelt

No Man's Land

The 1975 - Somebody Else

"Emotion stripped of emotion." Devotion, Patti Smith

"Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same thing.

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day.

But when you stop and really think about it, conventional life advice—all the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the time—is actually fixating on what you lack. It lasers in on what you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already be, and then emphasizes them for you. You learn about the best ways to make money because you feel you don’t have enough money already. You stand in front of the mirror and repeat affirmations saying that you’re beautiful because you feel as though you’re not beautiful already. You follow dating and relationship advice because you feel that you’re unlovable already. You try goofy visualization exercises about being more successful because you feel as though you aren’t successful enough already.

Ironically, this fixation on the positive—on what’s better, what’s superior—only serves to remind us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but failed to be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she’s happy. She just is. There’s a saying in Texas: “The smallest dog barks the loudest.” A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s confident. A rich woman doesn’t feel a need to convince anybody that she’s rich. Either you are or you are not.

And if you’re dreaming of something all the time, then you’re reinforcing the same unconscious reality over and over: that you are not that. Everyone and their TV commercial wants you to believe that the key to a good life is a nicer job, or a more rugged car, or a prettier girlfriend, or a hot tub with an inflatable pool for the kids. The world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is more, more, more—buy more, own more, make more, fuck more, be more.

You are constantly bombarded with messages to give a fuck about everything, all the time. Give a fuck about a new TV. Give a fuck about having a better vacation than your coworkers. Give a fuck about buying that new lawn ornament. Give a fuck about having the right kind of selfie stick. Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more stuff is good for business.

And while there’s nothing wrong with good business, the problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. It causes you to become overly attached to the superficial and fake, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage of happiness and satisfaction. The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important." ~The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Mark Manson

VIRGO Your analyzing mind has solved many problems for you and helped you excel in many areas of life. That said, it's not the right mind to heal emotional wounds. Employ your heart and body to that task.

pic removed

KFlay-Blood In The Cut 

The emotional full moon in Pisces offers a depth of feeling beyond ideas and sensations..blabla..throw a knife.

"Outercourse", a personal list: monogamy for starters (multitasking and sex don't go together well for me, sorry if that's too limiting for you); reasons to wear cute dresses/shoes/underwear, before taking them off, slowly or quickly-partially; doting in many small ways, odd little gifts and attentions, and I don't want to be made to feel like a dumbass doormat for bestowing them!; shared nerdiness, such as liking underused words like 'drivel'; laughing (giggling, guffawing, chuckling, snickering, cracking up); familiarity, like rereading books and rewatching movies, there are favorite parts and always some small thing you didn't catch the first time too; freedom, not to fuck other people (see item one) but to do what I want and need to do without my man's insecure nose up my ass every minute which is only going to make me suspect he can't be trusted (see item one again); secondary sex characteristics, for god's sake don't shave anything!; ...the rest of my list is private

reviving the art of the mixed tape, v.1

LP-Lost On You. redheads (eyeroll)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

joywave - someone new

 Then she kissed him. She ran her tongue over his teeth and his lips. She sucked on his mouth and kissed him harder, and placed his hands in her blouse and then she was pushing herself against him, feeling the solid feeling in his pants right by his zipper, and something was there behind those barriers that was hard and powerful and she pushed against it all, this package she wanted to spring open and unwrap under a tree on a soft bed of duff, and she was pushing him down and trying to open his package, and that heavy belt came first, that impossible bolt and rivet, that zipper with rusted teeth that wouldn’t budge, and there it was, there it was. ~The Portable Veblen

Coleman Hell - Fireproof

VIRGO  Wisdom isn't glamorous. It's typically depicted by an old scribe on a mountain or a short green alien. Ryan Gosling wouldn't play Wisdom in the movies. And yet, "wise" is the most attractive thing you could be today.

Ok but this is the reaction to sanity and wisdom, in my experience. I clean (act like an adult) and Django is here demonstrating the part of henpecked. Hiding, lest I might nab him, like his ass doesn't show.

“Remind me, what is the stoic glacier method?”

“It’s the slow process of shaping someone’s behavior by force of one’s own personal stoicism.” (“If you wish to be loved, love,” said Seneca, a Stoic of note.)

~The Portable Veblen

VIRGO Remember when you felt helpless? If you could have only known that help was on its way, how much easier the moment would have passed. Remember the lesson. Trust that there are forces on your side.

They say that whatever you do during an eclipse is like planting a seed – you’ll get more of it whatever it is.  So I’m trying really hard today to be okay.  I sent my youngest kid into the hinterlands of Germany overnight, by himself, for a ‘save the environment’ mission trip.  A plane, two trains, one bus, all in German.  It is hard to describe how you feel about a youngest child.  It is not that you love them the most, more like you love them the hardest.  They are the most likely to be not-ready when you die, stuff like that occurs to you, and in whatever way you find yourself wanting to protect that one the most.  So, being how I am built, I send him the furthest away so that I know he will be okay.  And, to be honest, I cried most of the night in terror that something might go wrong, and cried most of the morning because nothing did and he doesn’t need me anymore ish.  Once there, he texted that all was well, except he is with 9 other teenagers and none of them speak one another’s languages and it’s super awkward.  “I feel like a newly divorced dad or something, lonely in a new place with nobody and a single bed.”  I snapped a pic of myself where I am sitting at work – all those other teens have mothers too, at work somewhere missing them too right now, and everyone knows how to say “Mom”.  Start there (and then come back Boy…)

pic removed

Life is an eclipsing of things, one over another over time.

The elusive camera-hating prince charming. My mother naming him after Idris Elba still cracks me up. For scale reference, that is a 4 inch potted plant he is sitting next to. You'd think, given he is the only pretty prince in my pond, that I would see him ruling the roost at his leisure fairly often, but he almost never lets me get anywhere near him. Wary and ambivalent to the bone. Only Jasper can sit next to him.

upshot

I love my job. Being a teacher is the shit. Even when it's a nightmare.

VIRGO Pleasure can serve as an anchor to the moment. It keeps you from skipping ahead in your mind and missing the good parts. Tune in to your senses. The pleasure is there. All you have to do is take it.


That's a lot. But not enough.

People use their bodies far too lightly for my taste. A tattoo should mean some serious shit. It's forever on the only self you've got.

I have one tattoo of the names of my children written in an alphabet that one of them made - child hieroglyphs, is how I think of it.

I wanted to put an eye tattoo on my back. I kept thinking, "I have to watch my back." Over and over, I thought it, like a trauma mantra. I paid an artist to design something for me. Black/white line drawing I wanted, for emphasis on no bullshit. She never got it right, though. It was either flirty girly looking or evil-eyed ugly. Then I dropped the idea. But all the while the betrayal times were 'over', my gut was telling me different.



I am the only self I've got. If I can't trust it, how do I live?

So then I returned to the idea of the tat, after. But the design(s) I had paid for weren't right. And I felt really shitty for a really long time also, and I didn't want to put shittyfeeling on my body forever. But I am stronger now, so I went to see Sunshine's artist (how does she know evvveryone??). She sees him once a month so that she is 'forever a work in progress'.

Sunshine: A Work in Progress

His waitlist is normally 6 months and he usually only does huge pieces, but she talked him into hearing me out. I told him the whole story, Grandpa Ott and all, even about the sun in the water of the magic pond, the un-inverted feeling. "I want something that watches my back, but more like to TRUST MYSELF than to mistrust others. I need to listen to my own eyes."

He doodled as I talked. He turned tears into a water droplet, a tiny pond just big enough to reflect an Ott flower blooming above it.

Not that they (Ott glories) can't live in harmony, given the right offer. They like to coexist with throrny roses, for instance. And they glow-bloom before dawn, attracting hummingbird moths, not birds at all but butterfly-bees. Both the glories and the moths are more than meets the eye.

Add a discerning eye and ta-da...

While the mentality of our culture is deeply entrenched in competition and the survival of the fittest, such a mindset ultimately leads to a hostile society in which nobody will want to live. Venus and Neptune form a visionary trine. Look for softness, chivalry and compassion. If you don't see it in the world, imagine it and you'll help bring it into being. (Think globally, act locally.) VIRGO weekend love horoscope: It's not just about who they are but about who you are when you're around them. Do they bring out the best in you? Define best: Flourishing/Sexy/On Solid Ground. (Right?) (That what I bring out in you?)

Walt Whitman, "A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."

Their name is that of my actual grandfather, for whom Ears is named. And as lovely as the tiny blooms are, glowing in the center of deep violet velvet, it is their tendril that makes them special. It is thinner than a standard tendril, more like curly hair than vines. And they will kill any plant that tries to shade them out by wrapping around and squeezing - think strangulation with a piano wire. They look so delicate, and they are, but also damn near impossible to win a fight with let alone to kill. It'd be better to make peace with them, if you can.

I didn't use any kind of filter, I didn't even autocorrect the exposure, this is exactly how it looked. It had just rained heavily. Then the setting sun came out. The reflection hit the glass surface of the pond and rays of the sun rose up out of the water. For all the world, you would swear that the sky was the reflection and the sun lives underwater of that pond in reality.

When I am there, I feel un-inverted just like that. As if the rest of the time, I seem to live in the world more successfully than most people do because it is a trick I have perfected. Like "magic". But the real magic hides me Away.

real magic

VIRGO: Life takes courage no matter which choice you make.

Tawista woods - Minerva NY

I remember when I played music a lot. Ya grow out of soundtracking your life after a while. I did anyway. Whenever I hear this cheesy song, I remember exactly where I was and what was going on and how I felt when I first heard it. A childhood memory kinda. (Thank god it wasn't 'Your body is a wonderland')

Karaoke version (an excerpt). Don't judge, it grows on ya.

pic removed

my gma's squash blossom, mine now

speaking of magic

VIRGO You'll be asked crazy questions and presented with people's problems as if you were some kind of magic fairy whose job it is to make everyone happy. That's leadership for you!


Uh huh.


Premise: People are lazy a LOT (and tired and discouraged and lame). They want what is easy to get immediately. The less challenging and cheaper the better.  In everything from little stuff like what they are eating for lunch to big ticket items like their work and lovers, they go for whatever happens to be at hand. So. In a world wherein many people can't hold a damn thought, of course it is powerful to hold an intention, and the people who can do so have magic. This American Life - "To Be Real" (armscrossy)

VIRGO You want one thing and you need another. You know a lot about the former and very little about the latter. When a need is filled that you didn't even know you had ... that's magic.

I need to want (for) nothing.

Mapping Transcendentalism to superheroes, it is wild how that is catching on like a wee curriculum fire. The class itself now includes faculty taking the frigging thing plus a waitlist as of this morning. Everyone wants to get out their childhood collection of whatever or brand their own meme T-shirt. And it isn't even a full idea, it's just, 'Ever feel like a secret midcareer moody superhero named, o, something like Vindictive or?' - you ask nearly anyone that and they are like o hell yes then get all happy just to put a name to it. It is the damnest thing. Funny Fuck It versus Status Crapquo. Finally, after struggling to understand the mojo of superheroism for over a decade, like a loop that goes back to Fuck It stronger and stronger, until I can no longer deny what I really am..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.






Nuts. That is my superpower.