The shaft that you fall down.

Sometimes you just want to take a pill. I would like to take a pill right now, but I don't have any. I don't even have any prescriptions for pills. I have ibuprofen . . . but unfortunately I don't think Advil relieves psychic pain. If it did, they'd have to change the commercials. So what's left? Breathing? Breathing is taking so much time. Sleep? I'm still working on my sleeping-while-appearing-awake shtick, because that would be highly useful in my day to day life. The desire to run screaming from the building is like an itch I just can't scratch.

I need numbing cream for the brain. Like icy hot. A soothing icy hot brain feel. All I would need to do is perform a trepanning on myself and squirt in the icy hot with a calking gun like filling a wall with that foamy insulation stuff that puffs out all gooey and yellow looking from holes in a wall. I'd have a head with a gooey hole. And more importantly, I would have relief. I need a break like I need a hole in my head. Really.

Cyclone: The World's Blender

The people in Myanmar won't think this post is funny. And of course I don't think there's anything funny about a cyclone that has so far accounted for upwards of 22,000 deaths in a country with no real emergency notification system. Myanmar is one of the least developed countries on earth. Because of that it is home to oodles of natural resources, like precious woods and stones, that haven't yet been harvested merely because they lack the infrastructure and the means to do it, and the military junta that holds the country in a steely grip is pretty good insurance that progress isn't forthcoming.

Anyway, Myanmar is the most recent example of the World's Blender in action. Just take low-lying land, protected by aging, breaking dikes, or by nothing at all, then add tidal waves, press the cyclone button and boom! Disaster Smoothie!!

How will this mess be cleaned up so that the wounded and missing can be found and aided? Well, we're certainly not going to be helping much. The U.S. has promised a paltry $250k in aid. I'm sorry, but that's pathetic. The European Commission is kicking down 3 million. China is supposed to be on the way with another million. Thailand's kicking down too.

Hail!

Hail to the oyster that never opens, the little sleeping one at the base of the skull that occasionally pipes up in its puny voice a reminder of its existence. Inside the oyster is a pearl, a pearl of solutions, grand schemes, breakthroughs, exalted thoughts and a million tiny multiplying pearls of wisdom that if released would nest in your brain inducing an illuminated, trance-like state.

Hail to inspiration that waits in the wings while dark cloaks parade on the stage and the audience sits dully, blunted by pharmaceuticals, ego mania, caffeine exhaustion and world weariness.

Hail to small thoughts that become big thoughts that become things, something between covers, something that comes out of a mouth or out of a pen or from the tips of fingers or from the tops of heads.

Hail to the evening that jubilantly supersedes the workaday and basking in its glory forgets the tepid coffee splash drops drying and crusting in the glow of the omnipresent screen and the click, click of keys and the ring, ring of phones amid the symphony of the mundane.

Why I Am Cooler Than You

Because I'll do anything to be cool. To be bad. To be rad. To be hot. To be oh so mutherfuckin grooooovy. I'll watch network television until my eyes bleed. I'll go to Jamba juice just to try the new granola thing. I'll cross the street only at crosswalks when the light thingy says so. I'm so cool I'll do your taxes, correspond with your great aunt and become friends with your cats. I'll even call cardio aerobics, find spandex at the thrift store and film my own fat people work out video. With cupcakes. It will be called "Cup Cakes and Dumbbells, the Zen Approach to Health".

I am cooler than you because I don't care about your deep seeded motives, your love life or your childhood. I don't think tone of voice is important and I'm not going to read anything into unreturned phone calls, your love of phone sex or any other tele-perversions you might be down with. Are you into slings? Do you litter on the highway? Do you spit in other people's food? Okay. How about peanut butter? Do you like peanut butter? Me too. Let's be friends.

I'm cooler than you because I believe the world is a simple place filled with simple people and complicated dogs.

I'm cooler than you and your friend because I don't dress up to get down or vice versa.

I'm cooler than you because I can touch my toes and I know what to do with hazelnuts.

I'm cooler than you because watch this hair. I said watch it. And these legs. Oh, baby. Just watch.

YAKATTACK!!

Why I Want a Pet Yak

1. Because bovine is in my nature, and rather than being ashamed, I am proud to admit that. There is a reason, for example, that the cow is sacred in India, and unlike my canine pets here in the US, a pet yak in India would probably be allowed to accompany me to restaurants and other public venues. I can see it now . . . me and my yak, lounging around and munching on a salad. I wonder if yaks like cilantro and chilies.

2. Because I could save on my heating bill. I could just build a barn and sleep in there among the glorious soft tresses of my beautifully soft yak. Yak fibers are well known for being downy soft . . . which leads me to my next item . . .

3. I could spin, knit and sell yak fiber. Just think of the niche market for yak hats and yakkats.

4. I can dress up my yak for holidays and also just for fun. I looks like they like it!


5. Because yaks are our friends.

6. Because I can finally participate in the sport known as yak racing. No, I did not make that up.

Live From La La Land

Sometimes I look at the statistics of who, if anyone, might be visiting my ill-tended little blog, and today looking at the details of one individual who stopped in here by accident left me feeling a little sickened. This person had been directed to Barbiturate Bimbos via Google by employing the following search words: homemade euthanasia cocktail for dogs.

This does not portend good things, folks. It's just plain bad. I love my dogs. I love dogs in general. I'm a touchy feely animal lover. I don't want to think about nefarious dog killers even taking a glimpse of my blog . . .it sullies my cyber aura. So, in the figurative tradition of taking a pill to make the pain go away, I've created a little alternative explanation so that I can feel a less creeped out. It goes something like this: Someone has a dog with a terminal illness. They're low on funds because they've already spent oodles of cash on treatments that didn't cure their pet, and now, well, they are turning to google for a painful solution. Understandable, right? (Except for the part about how only someone with a little medical knowledge and access to appropriate chemical compounds would be able to achieve a humane euthanasia, which hints at torture rather than euthanasia, which by in Greek means "to die well").

But wait. I've brought this on myself. Barbiturate Bimbos . . . sodium pentothal . . . euthanasia . . . see where I'm going with this? This is what you get for dabbling in the dark arts or the perverse fun of laughing up the shadowy underbelly of the macabre stuff around us all the time. Sooner or later it becomes more serious, more concrete. Sooner or later it's no longer a joke . . .

A weekend of promise and why we never learn . . .

A trip to the zoo. An ice cream cone. Saturday, Sunday mornings in bed. Langorous bouts of coffee drinking. Still life with backyard. A book in hand. A talk. A friend. A taste of freedom. A partridge and a pear tree. A dizzying orgasmarific fun fest.

Oh fellow boring sufferers, why do we never learn? Why must we continually ache for those things which are mere ephemera? Because hope springs eternal, or more likely, we blissfully, willingly fall prey to our short-term memory? Alas it is too much to bear.

To cope with the ever eluding weekend, the weekend that passes in a hazy, unsatisfying blink I suggest an antidote. Plan a horrid weekend. One filled with a distinct lack of promise. Trips to the DMV if you can. Purposefully cold and congealed oatmeal. A painful lack of caffeine. Certainly narry a cocktail, nor an herbal hour in sight. Deprivation and the maintenance of longing: let them become the order of your weekend. Your King Deprevation and Your Queen Unrequited Longing in the Kingdom of Unsoftened Sorrow.

Cold baths. No friends. Stale cereal. Taxes. Dusting. Broom closet organization. Removal of corns and other pesky calluses. David Lynch's Eraser Head. Nietzsche auf Deutsch. Telephone calls to an insurance company . . .

In adhering to the tone immediately above one can ensure an escape from the delusional, hazardous weekend ephemera so commonly found among the more gullible, the pitiably soft among us. Time to stand straight and tend to the sock drawer!

Discovery of Size Difference Between British and American Cadbury Egg Size Sparks Violent Riot!!

Monday – San Francisco woman writhes in fury and indignation upon discovering that Cadbury Eggs produced in the United States are smaller than their British counterparts, which, unlike the American candy eggs, are manufactured in Britain. Unbelievable. In the land of super-size me we're being cheated. How are we to maintain our enviable girth in the early spring if we're being deprived of the fuller, more fabulous Cadbury eggs that the Brits get to nosh on?

So, business proposal/plan extraordinaire: Go to Britain. Buy many, many Cadbury Eggs (including the exotic mint and orange flavored crème eggs). Sell. Become rich enough to build a fortress entirely out of British Cadbury eggs.

Bolivian Citizens Save Water for Whales

The Office: A Room Without A View

Shameless Alcoholic Names Daughter Vodka (Son Named Vladimir)

Fashion Victim Dons Green Cloak

These and other exciting headlines are forthcoming. My brain just bubbles headlines, a veritable headline spewing machine, so I'm going to put them here where they can cure like fine wine in their anonymity.

This is the mind without ventilation. This is all I have to offer here. I can hear the lonely unpinging ping of million mouse clicks diverted from this important stop on the scape of cyberspace. Cyberspace. One day kids are going to quake with laughter at such an already-antiquated-sounding phrase. Oooh. Groovy. Cyberspace. The internet will just be referred to by its first and last letters: it. That's it. For Now.

Magic

Sometimes only a poem will do. Just some leaves from a tree, or some shavings of bark, but certainly not the branches, the trunk and all the many twigs in their entirety- together all of these things paint too clear a picture.

Here is the procedure: you sit in an empty room.
You wait, with the clicking of the clock, and its little echo.
The inconsequential presses your shoulders down, forward,
your neck bending too,
until your eyes are staring in your lap
and you feel it, the small cool thread, lifting that perilous thing
out from the crown of your head, pulling it out, like a magician's scarf,
upward toward the heavens.

A sudden halt and your head snaps up.
It is sudden waking from a dream, and the prickly voice,
the one that asks you to stand tall,
the one that asks that you use your voice
and ask for admiring eyes
is gone
all gone.

A Bird's Eye View of Life

Last night I came home and discovered that one of my dogs had escaped. For the third time in three weeks. She pushed open a window and busted out the screen and then went off gallivanting sometime not too long before I made it home. A sickening pitch of panic set in as soon as I realized she was gone again. I came down from my adrenaline wave when I received a phone call from a woman several blocks down the hill who had my dog.

The night before last as I walked home from the bus I saw a deer get hit by a car. Its hind quarters were struck by a Jeep Cherokee and it lay quivering in shock and pain on the side of the road as I stood there horrified, flummoxed. Finally I got my wits about me and tracked down animal control who came and got the deer, most likely for prompt euthanasia, which sure beats out a slow and painful death on the side of the road.

I am almost afraid to go home this evening for fear of seeing what travesties await me. Will there be a burst pipe under the house as there was a few months back, with water pooling around our boxes stored in the basement? Sewage on the front step from a burst pipe? A rejection notice in the mail that dashes all my hopes for a year and sentences me to another summer of studying to take a standardized test? Would a pleasant surprise be too much to ask? I guess there's always the mild thrill of getting a Netflix in the mail, that is, when they're not throttling me, i.e. purposely slowing down the rate at which they deliver movies to my mailbox, a practice that they now disclaim per the terms of a law suit over the matter.

So silver lining, I seek thee out. Art thou the friendly swarming of my dogs around my legs when I arrive home (if they haven't already escaped)? The comfort of my couch and the relief of removing heeled shoes? A glass of wine and a seat on the deck with a view of the city? I cradle now, these fragile little pieces of enjoyment. I suppose I could imagine myself like a bird, or some other indifferent, aerial animal, surveying the trivial wreckage and treasure of my day-to-day. That's what I need: a bird's eye view on life.

God Love the Holidays

Today is very workaday. It feels like the beginning of a dry period. It is the holidays, a time that always feels like a music video, with days like flashing images, one after the other, like Moulin Rouge- bright colors, frenzy, singing (but less romance and fewer beautiful people). It is the Monday after Thanksgiving and people have a sort of bloated silence to them. I haven't personally spoken to one coworker today. Everyone seems to be cloistered in their offices, numbly tapping out emails as they sit hunched in front of the computer.

Soon, the constant stampede of Christmas parties, and harried holiday preparations will begin. And it all makes me wonder: what the fuck happened to slow Christmas? You know, the Christmas where you ponder the snow, where you lazily bake sugar cookies and sip apple cider in front of a fire. It seems only to exist in the perfectly lit world of holiday movies and commercials, the supreme distillation of a collective holiday fantasy. Or it exists for children, because children get Christmas break (without preparation for finals) and have little responsibility in the way of gift buying, Christmas tree procuring and holiday party and food preparations. And to add to this conundrum is the implied guilt one must feel for not enjoying all the hubbub. Never mind your twelve hour day and the filthy kitchen- YOU BETTER MAKE SOME GODDAMNED COOKIES!

Yeah, I know. Scrooge is tired shtick, a pose aped by many. But I can't help but clinch my fists in anticipation of being put through the Christmas Grinder once again this year. Despite resolutions to forego the anxieties, to shun the trivialities and focus on the higher virtues of the holidays, like family and merriment, peace and graciousness . . . hot buttered rum (I'm not religious, so I only give Jesus a passing thought), I inevitably succumb to last minute panic when I realize I have not, as usual, planned sufficient time for making all the homemade goodies and buying all the wrapping paper/bows/bags/tissue/cards/ribbon/dazzles/frillies/boxes/candies . . . somehow or other, I seem to remember to buy something for a little liquid holiday cheer. I'm not stupid, after all, and one good strong drink seems appropriate in dealing with the hyper-glut fest and poverty-inducing gift exchange that typifies a Christmas gathering for my family.

So now that I've unleashed all that dread into the blogosphere I can continue on in my less-than merry way and go through the motions with a stiff upper lip, after all, there's a Christmas tree to be put up tonight.

The Existential Papaya

I am plagued by paper. I don't know why clerical tasks bring out the existentialist in me, but there you go, existential mocking popping into my brain like a jack in a box, except even more obnoxious (if such a thing were possible). I feel as if I'm being punished, which I acknowledge is juvenile at best, hopelessly self-pitying at worst. What a jumping off point! What joy-inspired words!

In order to perform the tasks at hand I surprise myself with the wish to drain myself, like a bottle, of all vestiges of humanity or primordial spark and to become. the machine. that I am. supposed to be. I imagine my speech changing to flawless monotone . . . like the rhythm of a roll call: paper here typing here killing here with a here noose here arsenic here soul mutilation here vivisection here

In some places the heart, the mind is only a disease, something sickly to be gauged out with a surgical tool and placed in a biohazard bin. And if only I didn't have it to begin with, I wouldn't miss it when it's gone. But I do and I did.

Okay, so maybe this is my blue period. The worst kind, so that if you glance at it, instead of the word "blue" you see the word "bored". It is not blue, but beigey grey. The color of milky vomit mixed with mercury. In contrast, I appreciate the verdant: the drippy dewy green of close up photos of grass blades, the rich, crumbly chocolate of garden beds and the provocative pink moistness of strawberry papaya flesh cupping little eggy black beaded seeds. You see? This is proof that I've lost it.

One brain, two brain, three brain, four.

So, I'm not in an uplifted mood today. More like a Debbie Downer day. I hope that if anyone is looking for a little dose of negativity to temper their unwarranted happiness, that they will visit my obscure blog. Obscure almost makes it sound cool. Like something rare that someone is looking for . . . but no one is looking for my little inane ramblings. I know that.

So here's the reality: we are not as smart as we think we are. Most of us. Really. I mean, there are some really gifted people out there (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE . . . though why you would be reading this puzzles me), but so many of us can be described by the very loathsome word "average". I'm average. There, I said it. Average person. Average intelligence (sometimes). There are a lot of us folk out there, but despite that, I feel like I keep getting surrounded by the "above average" folks. They kind of make you want to kick trash cans or take a bong rip. So what? You've got more dendrites in your brain? That's what I feel like saying. Like everything, so much of intelligence is luck. And so much of "intelligence" also counts for nothing. You can be smart, but your life can still be a wreck, and well, would you call that smart? You see where I'm going with this? It's fucking tricky.

Now, I know what you balanced, spiritually and emotionally evolved world view people are thinking: what's intelligence? That's actually a good question. I don't know. And I certainly don't think it's an ability to perform well on standardized tests, though, all things being fair, really, really bright people usually don't have a problem with those tests. Unfortunately for me, law schools know this (though the jury's still out on whether or not these bright people will also be good attorneys).

I just want a way out of the paradigm sometimes- the "what is valuable and what is not valuable" paradigm, and the "what is talent/intelligence and what is not" paradigm. To hell with it all! That paradigm has taken up root in my brain, and I'd like to extricate it. I imagine a surgical procedure, and a neurosurgeon delicately pulling something dark and slimey out of my brain tissue . . . and then poof! It would be gone. I would awake from surgery, bald and full of bliss . . .

But for now I'm here. And there's work to be done.

The problem with being über-important . . .

I don't want to be a bitter, nasty person. Really. I want to see the delusions of grandeur of others and slough it off and not take it personally even when I'm directly confronted with it. I want to laugh. That's what this entry is all about. Laughing it off.

I'm surrounded by the über-important robots. They march, march, march down the hall. They hold their heads very high and don't say hi. They are appropriately somber and boringly dressed. They are a black cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup. They are hard-boiled wannabes in their twenties, thirties . . . only a few in their forties like that. It seems a lot of people get a little older and wiser and stop taking themselves quite as seriously. It's a sign of character. Some, however, will be a caricature till the day they die. They need it. It's part of their composition, their identity.

I think to reject softness, kindness shows true weakness. It takes courage to be vulnerable and it takes confidence to not have the need to prove how important, how powerful you are.

And so, if it weren't so irritating, I would feel sorry for these people. Yes, ironically I feel sorry for these people who probably feel sorry for me, because they probably see me as weak because I don't work hard to appear strong or to hide my idiosyncrasies. I can be quirky, make odd comments and wear inappropriate clothing. It's easy and it comes naturally. Maybe these folks don't have quirks or odd desires. Perhaps they truly are the robots they seem to be . . . the thought petrifies me.

And now, instead of laughing, I feel like running for the hills!

Conventions and drinking competitions

Okay, so we know that our brains have a kind of visual patterning auto-pilot system that tells us what we see. If you think about this logically, it would seem that our brains don't like anomalies: it doesn't want to recognize something different or take in a lot of new information unless the scale of newness is such that it can't be avoided.

My question: is there a way to loosen that system a little? Because I'm a little bored here. I'd like to notice something I haven't noticed before. Even something small.

So, I start looking, and I'm not turning up much. There is this apathy that I keep trying to shrug off like a heavy wool blanket that's tucked into the mattress, and I struggle against it its confines in spurts before finally collapsing, exhausted, no longer interested in trying.

We are habituated to our daily lives. That much is very simple to understand. The conventions, the constructs of daily life are like the breath our body measures . . . by and large going unnoticed unless a dramatic interruption is effected. To be stripped of all those conventions then is perhaps the way to conquer the apathy, to see the new small details, or the larger ones, like "you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

So to find something extraordinary without dropping free fall from our comfort zone we seek out alternatives. Unfortunately altered conscious states have a hefty piper fee. And one can't help but feel a little skeptical of say, an all night session with a bottle of vodka- there may be revelations, but will they be remembered?

It's almost Halloween.

Sometimes I look for proof of human existence, because the evidence isn't always compelling. I see people walking down the street, filling elevators, riding the bus and wondering down the halls, but they don't necessarily exist. They could be ghosts, figments of my imagination. For some reason, when I see people interact with other people, I am a little more convinced that they may not be a ghost or an aural blip on the screen of my brain, because something tells me that ghosts don't talk so much to each other; they are not interested in the world they inhabit, but the one they don't inhabit.

I am utterly confused by the days in which I feel like a ghost. Perhaps there are days where we emit no energy, where we pass through most of the radar of human perception undetected. It is, perhaps, a facet of the little known art of not being seen. Some days I must have a knack for it. Other days are sore thumb days.

But back to the other ghosts, the other people. I almost feel like when I see these people I expect no shadow to cross over them. And I write this here because I think if I told people they would think I'm crazy . . . no need to add fuel to that fire.

Relief on a grey morning . . .

There is nothing elucidating about this morning. Though surely it must be my imagination, the Monday morning faces on the bus seem more creased, more severe somehow. Monday for so many of us involves the pain of realization: the necessity of resuming whatever it is we do with most of our waking lives.

So there is a search for little things that offer relief. I always forget that there's something comforting about the whirring quiet of my sterile office when the lights first flutter on. I sometimes dread coming to that office, but like so many things, once you're there, it's not so bad. Emails, papers, the soft clicking of keys and the blanketing brightness of fluorescent lights . . . but I particularly hate fluorescent lights. Ironically, they make me feel like I can't see as well. And they make me a little dizzy, or at least dazed. I would like to ban fluorescent lights from office buildings. That some people choose to have them in their home is incomprehensible to me.

But back to relief. Well . . . the biggest relief to Monday is its ending, really, because on Monday it feels like there is no moving forward- only a halting timidity, a stagnation. One is afraid to hope for relief, even.

Animals on drugs, standardized tests, doing what you don't want to do, liver abuse . . .

My dog ate some chocolate crackers while we were gone. She usually never gets into food or trash when home alone, but I guess she decided to make an exception for the hearty tub of cat-shaped chocolate crackers sitting on the kitchen table. Maybe it was the cat shape that drove her over the edge- cats and chocolate!! PAAARRRTY!! Supposedly, chocolate is like speed for dogs. I don't think there's a whole lot of credible research that goes into that theory, but admonitions abound as to the woes of chocolate munching canines. But my girl is fine. Besides, what she ate was nothing compared to the half of the catcher-mit sized solid chocolate bunny that my childhood dog snatched and licked away. He kind of acted nuts for a while, but he recovered and lived to be twenty years old. Maybe chocolate, like heroin for people (if you don't overdose) has an age-defying effect . . . it's probably only a matter of time before there are chocolate face creams.

In a similar vein of careless joie de vivre, I've decided that I am done with standardized tests entirely. I'll take licensing exams, I'll take regular tests that assess real knowledge and achievement, but I don't think my soul will survive another standardized test. Ever. Just wanted to put that out there . . .

And so that is one area where I am refusing to effect compromise (it's not the only one). It's scary how we learn to do what we don't want to do. We do things to make people happy. We do things expecting some kind of reward far off in the future, like what I tell myself when I want a sticky bun with my coffee . . . that I want to continue fitting in my clothes. But ultimately, I think that doing too much of what we don't want to do leads to some kind of excess in another area of life. Hence my current state of liver abuse which will have to be toned down now that I'm outta the woods of standardized testing hell.

Self Portrait

I'm giving myself carte blanche today. I love saying that. I get to write in the zeros. I could do something crazy or something mildly subversive, like take that weird, piss fumed tunnel in the transbay terminal rather than walking through the homeless gallery. The sad thing is, as I sit here thinking about what things I could do to steer myself out of the neat little work-eat-sleep groove I've carved for myself, I'm drawing blanks. It's like I'm trapped in a Skinner box. I have specific responses to specific stimuli. Sitting at my desk in the morning means that I will seek out a cup of coffee. Predictably. What if I reversed things? That would mean a cocktail in the morning and coffee at night. And this simple theoretical reversal would be part of the explanation I give just before I'm fired, which would effectively carve a new little branch (unemployment) off the afore mentioned groove. It's amazing how one little subversive act can lead to another . . .

You see, our brains want us to stay the course. It's a neat little safety lock system that our brain has so that it doesn't have to do a lot of work. For the brain, it's evolutionary genius. It's like the difference between going to a different job everyday and having to juggle learning new tasks with performing your job and just going to the same job everyday and confining your activities to a finite range of tasks. Something like that. What would you rather do? I'm boring, so I would prefer to have more auto-pilot time. Besides, it's frustrating never to have the chance to be good at something. To stretch the analogy to the breaking point, imagine, for example, that one day you're a police officer and you don't even know how to shoot a gun (which you probably wouldn't use that day anyway, but you know Murphy's law . . .) and the next day you're a cook and you don't know what "de-glaze" means. That would be frustrating, but at the same time, think of all the cool skills you would acquire. I just wish my brain wanted to acquire some new skills, but instead I have to revert to force and conscious effort and all that boring crap.