équilibre

Bravery
Adventure
Loneliness
Altruism
Neuroses
Consciousness
Ego



Jean Louis Forain
French, 1852-1931 //
Tight-Rope Walker, c. 1885 //
Oil on canvas
18 1/8 x 15 in. (46.2 x 38.2 cm)

I am drawn to this painting because the ballerina, often a symbol of femininity and elegant dexterity, maintains an equilibrium above a crowd of people so engulfed in their own personal missions that they don't even notice the grace displayed upon a mere upward glance. Maybe if we take a minute to recognize another person's composure once in awhile, we could learn something. Not to get deep, but someone else's personal equilibrium and collectedness presented on the daily can sometimes be an inspiration for achieving our own, whether it is realized or not. Be kind to a stranger today; their problems could be worse than yours. If they don't complain about them, may their grace be noticed and smiled upon, as it once just tiptoed over our heads without appreciation. If this rings true for someone you know, thank them or give them a hug. It could offer perseverence on both ends of embrace, and if we can't help each other, what's the point?

Dwindler's Lists

Due to a pretty busy last month-or-so, I've not been posting as much as I'd like. My time seems to be running away as if it's in a boozey, stressed out hourglass. Note: actual hourglasses scare the shit out of me. I think it's the childhood affinity for Wizard of Oz and fear of the Wicked Witch. She melted away like my dwindling time as of late, and both cases are worthy of spooks. In lieu of using higher brain power, and for practice for some other writing-goodies I'm weighing out and bagging up elsewhere, I have some lists to share with you and yours* (*intellect, privates, pets, loved ones...but probably not moms unless they're Roseanne-y). Feel free to smear your own shit-lists in the comments, or just mutter them to yourself if you feel no one else cares. That's how I feel, but I'm a rebel like whoa, so I got this here blog to share. Sometimes when I write I feel like the old lady in Billy Madison; "are there any horse socks? is anybody listening to me?" Whatever, fuck yo couch, here's some crap anyway.

Things im currently into (and/or may or may not always be into):
1. turkey-pastrami. hands down the best lunch meat.
2. free beer
3. the dude who put himself in a balloon on tosh
4. champagne, especially the big guys
5. answering "i dont know, it must have been the roses" to any question
6. sandwich makers, props @ Antony Demekhin
7. Paul Simon: One Trick Pony on vinyl
8. sunny-ass november
9. fart machines
10. dunphy's, et al
11. making fun of people at beaumont's/continental on a tuesday at 3am...myself included, where applicable. there's two types of people at late-night bars: drunks and horndogs...some are both. play the guess-who's-who game with your friends, or just join in, that's more fun. that's also when you make fun of yourself. WIN/WIN/barf.
12. ben folds, all over again
13. friends (the people, not so much the show)
14. good dick attached to dudes with souls, brains, and/or homes.
15. hair-hanging (real life)
16. re-reading a box of notes received by me as a 14-yr-old tease. Winner: Sam Snedaker signing every note with a giant Wu symbol. I swooned.
17. calling stupid small dumb barkie dogs dickheads (b/c they don't speak English)
18. adverse plants.
19. black comedies with foot fetish references: 90% + guarantee.
20. iphone autocorrect. Pure comedy. Winner: tie. One great gal I won't name texting a friend, "I just got dos'd" (someone gave her acid for all you squarrs/nonwooks). Friend texts back, "are you having fun?" She responds, "yep," but types "yelp" and autocorrect hollers back with..."help." Phone dies. GOLD. Tie goes to Erin Cassato for trying to text "geez" and having it show up as "gems" ...because that's a thing; "gems, i know!"

Stuff that's dumb:
1. Right hand rings - fuck you, wear a ring wherever you want. people put them in their tits, a right hand is hardly alternative.
2. AT & T.
3. The dude's shake weight--FOR REAL!? It might be so dumb it's awesome. Not sure.
4. Assembling your own furniture. Seriously? After spending like, 100 Ikea bucks, which is relative to twenty normal bucks for quality purposes, I have to fuck up my shelves too? Talk about screwing the pooch.
5. Non-HD even being an option on HD tv's.
6. Misspelled sexts including: tuck, liss, stooge, and flooperman that snow.
7. The kid on Who's the Boss not being down w other dudes' manparts?
8. Birthday packaging. Ditch the ribbons and dumb wrapping paper, just buy me a pack of cigs if you want to throw your money in the toilet.
9. See-through advertisements for raking money out of lonely elderly. I may be a general asshole, but I love olds. Leave them alone, marketing thieves.
10. Blaming everything on your "generation." either get off your ass or don't, but don't blame it on your parents' youthful and arbitrary fuck patterns.

I love lists. For someone as freestylie as me on the mic that is life, it is a paradoxical kinship. As a wise woman once told me, when you jot a quick list, always start with tasks you've already accomplished so that you're always off to a good start. So next time when you find yourself burning a Manny Ramirez jersey in the street at 2 am, "getting resourceful" and making shots out of warm juice, sweet tarts, and old vodka, "knee" deep in the middle of a 3-way with good friends, sinking on a pontoon boat full of pals at 6 am- but being excited about "turning into a submarine," or batmanning out of the bar because you're just too drunk and can't tell, don't worry. It just means you'll have lots to cross off next time you make a list. Check!

blah-blah-blah-BLECHHHHHH!

I like making small talk about as much as I like the Entourage themesong. Let's get to the point; let's get to the Grenier-banging and partying. Same deal. The only "precursor-activity" that's worthwhile is either oral sex or maybe rolling j's before concerts. To me it's about the value. Orgasms and lighting up mid-floor during a Zeppelin cover offer lofty benefits simply not found in weather chit-chat or some raggedy-ass second-grade picture of your kid. I used to be able to fake giving-a-fuck, but it seems my distaste for mundanities has surpassed falsified politeness.

I ran into this bro from an old job on the train last week at about 8 a.m. and it was just awful. Murderous, even. Like, the kind where I wanted to murder myself just to escape. He wouldn't stop talking about sales goals and business hierarchies to which I never even really paid attention to when I worked with him, let alone on this hotass morning while I'm curdling booze through my system and trying to get in some good tunes before sidling up to my dumb desk** all day. **I know I keep saying this. It really is a very stupid desk. It's a shitty old monitor propped up on an OfficeMax paper lid. Guess who propped it up? Me. Myself. I had to crawl and put wires back into the right spots in the back. I mean...this couldn't be stupider.**

Amidst this suited auto-drabble, I wondered some things. As he swirled his always-be-closing hypnoses into my eyes, did this dude pick up my yearning to vomit apathetic bile upon his small doilie in that weird pocket? Stifled in my esophogous, each mention of commission tiers or outbound calls curdled the yellow liquids and they started to surface. I focused on Old-Man-Mural as we departed DePaul as if it was the horizon, and tried to calm my disgruntled insides. We swept south from Fullerton and it was my turn to talk. Great. I had soooo much to say and my iPod was so not dangling from one-ear. You know the one-ear move. The, if-I-just-leave-one-earbud-in-they'll-only-talk-for-just-a-minute-and-get-the-hint-...-oh-shit-they're-not-stopping, blues.

I told him about my shitty desk and said I was "keeping busy." As if idle hands really were the devil's playground, he literally patted me on the back, and just like a baby over Momma's shoulder, I felt the upheaval en route. Full-knowing that I worked downtown and since we were only approaching the Armitage stop, he weird-waved goodbye to me as I burst through the train-doors, exiting like a salmon in a mid-Autumn rush to drop eggs against the current, and completely barfed everywhere. Like...everywhere.

I tried to find a trash can, but they all had those pointless caps on top. I started to revolt last night's conventions into one at first and got legitimately sprayed back in the face, to which, i just lost my shit. Barftown, all over this platform. I spun dizzily to catch a breath and balance over the railing at the edge of the deck, only to go for just a few more rounds of bile-dislodging. Don't worry, the construction site below wasn't populated yet because it was too early, but those gents had a real treat coming their way when they showed up strapped in.

The most revealing part of why I'm fucked up, is that I thought the worst part of all of this is that, in the aftermath, since I was going South to get to work and bailed off my ride, I was on the WRONG SIDE OF THE PLATFORM to go home. Duh, I wasn't going to work. I had puke in my own weird pocket (sans-doilie). Truth be told, and small-talk aside, I hated this stupid monkey-job and I saw this as a clear opportunity to go home, pack it up, and watch Bill and Ted.

I called off work, and it ruled. Not long thereafter my contract expired and I decided not to go full-time since ... well, obviously I didn't belong there. They fucking loved small-talk there. When the job->drinking -> hangovers ->small talk induces vomiting -> calling off work ->happiness...i think we can just skip the middle-man altogether and go straight to drinking and happiness. Well, a girl can dream. I'm poor as shit! But I don't have to talk about the Accounting lady's son's first gay pride parade (snoozer), Millie's cat (dumb), or (no shit)"how awesome Chicago summer is" with nerds, and that alone is worth its weight in gold. Auf Wiedersehen, small talk; you've always been an asshole.

coptalk

"Great. I have to go to a meeting full of cops. I hate cops, this is gonna suck."-4-wheeler-driving Chillicothe, IL Sheriff with a dashing white mustache

This week my dumb CTA card stopped working. For out-of-towners, CTA stands for Chicago Transit Authority, and they are the keepers of the trains and buses. Anyway, their cards are shitty and I took my lunchbreak to get a new one. The building where i work is comprised of a weird layout, marble-infused fountains, 70 floors, and a shitload of important Capitalists. They wear their CEO badges on their BrooksBrothers, trade stocks at their $30 lunches, and hail cabs to go 4 blocks in the summer so they don't break a business-sweat. For this reason it was a breeze to have the doorguy, mistaking me as one of these people, whistle a taxi and send me off on what would be one of the most bizarre adventures a gal could never expect.

Normally I'd never take a cab to get across the loop, but I'm paid by the hour and it made mathematical sense where: time=money. This driver was the rare-breed, older white man cabbie who seemed to be both sober and intelligent. This human and occupational composition is pretty much as unheard of as abstinence. We swapped CTA trash-talk and I jumped ship at its headquarters where I totally backstabbed, smiling and complimenting all the workers. I've learned the hard way you have to do that...those people fucking hate their jobs. This got me the hook-up with a nice old lady who speedily processed my order free-of-charge and released me into the wild, wild West Loop where I could finally take the train and avoid joining the round-trip, sunny-day, cross-loop cab fraternity, Duchebag-Duchebag-Duchebag. If you know me you know that nothing is ever really that simple, and could probably guess that, yes, I did make a 65-yr-old, black and well-built male CTA employee friend named Chris on my way to the train which was about 50 yards away.

In the four-minute exit from that fated building, I felt like I knew more about Chris than anyone in my entire life. His wife, his side job with the White Sox, what all those packages were that he was carrying, his passion for fireworks after a rainstorm, you know...the ushe. He carried my bag and escorted me up the Clinton Pink line platform and asked me tons of quiz questions about safety. Do you carry mase? Do you walk alone at night? Do you get blacked out and spend days piecing together your actions (regarding to safety)? Do you always carry a cell phone? Don't worry, he said, you'll be safe with me. And then magically, the inbound Green line chimed and deposited two uniformed police officers and their canine compadres who clearly were straight-BFF with Chris. They did a sweet-Chicago-union-brotherhood handshake and sure did stand right with us waiting for the Pink Line to the loop. Just me, Chris, 2 Cops and their metal-muzzled K9-unit dogs. No big deal for me, or whatever could maybe be in my purse, bloodstream, or most fearful nightmares.

I ancily hung out like the falsified-good-citizen I had been taken for all day, but inside my tie-dyed paranoia had me twisted. I played it cool as a maybe-crackhead limped over to the officers asking if the dogs were for, "drugs or bombs." Not laughing at all, or at all worried about my future, I managed to look at the guys with a straight face. Unpleased, they muttered that the dogs were basically well-suited to bust anybody toting either of the above, or even sense their fear. I, again, was not sweating or nervous at all as they asked if they could join us for our trip back to Financial Village. Due to my loyal allegiance to Chris (<3 <3 <3), of course the answer was yes.

So, as I boarded the train metaphorically holding hands with my hodgepodge gang of state employees, I felt like I was on the wrong side of the tracks (aka...the right side of the tracks). Residents on the train from the community in which I normally reside, comprised mostly of romantics, lost souls and overall scumbags-to-the-likes-of-Loop-workers, knew I didn't belong, changed train cars, and shot me sympathetic glances as I made small talk about the weather and if the Sox could pull off a win tonight. Finally the cops and their, ...eh...fuzz mutts?, exited swiftly and took dear Chris with them, two stops before mine, giving me enough time to slow down my heartbeat, appreciate my freedom, and swear to be a better person deplete of any drinking or drug use ever again, as I headed back to my shitty desk next to the Sears Tower. Thanks to that crappy CTA card, on this day I'd made some friends, talked some government shop, and shat my pants only once. All in all, I think we all learned something. DOG COPS ARE FUCKING SCARY!

What's in a name?

"Fiction writers as a species tend to be oglers. They tend to lurk and to stare. They are born watchers. They are viewers. They are the ones on the subway about whose nonchalant stare there is something creepy, somehow."-David Foster Wallace

I have a problem. I'm so curious about every damn thing. I'm also kind of restless. Especially in small, confined spaces such as airplanes, unintoxicated dance club visits, or traincars. After the first few times commuting by train during rush hour, any city girl gets the blues. At my height I'm destined for nose-engulfed-armpits and breath on my face. BREATH. Sick. Upon this realization, I did what every logical babe does and said F U to rush hour after almost three years of its beastiality preying on my innocence. Nope, didn't start going in earlier...just quit my job and got one that afforded me more train-related comfort. I'm going to call this responsible, and you can lick my clam if you think otherwise. Well, not if I don't know you...come on, ya freaks! The point is, I can finally sit down on any of the rarely-incoming Brown or Purple lines to the loop and I don't have to wake up early. I totally win.

Now that there is more room for me to observe at eye-level, I've realized that my insanely piqued curiosity takes me straight to the dick. All the dicks. I can't stop staring at Junk on the Train. Doesn't even matter if I'm sexually attracted to them. Black guys, white guys, Obama-looking-somewhere-in-between guys, healthnut guys, not-sure-if-you're-homeless guys, fat guys, tall guys, skinny small white trash guys, Filipino guys, trying-to-guess-if-they're-circumsized guys, Mexicans, tattoo guys, soccer-playing guys, CEO guys, guitar guys, long-haired and short-haired guys, sunburnt should-have-worn-some-sunscreen-on-the-boat-this-weekend,bro guys...all of them have dicks and I apparently want to see, well, all of them. The only reason I even realize I possess this malady is because I keep getting busted. Once I looked up from a sideways-seat and a dick cloaked in Dockers was just right there, its owners arm supported by the pole attached to my seat. When I realized I'd been analyzing the bulge for the whole backside of The Fruit That Ate Itself, he smirked down at me with eyes reflecting visual allegory from Debbie Does Chicago. While I fancy myself a non-cocktease, I didn't even know I was subconsciously offering a teaser in the first place. I lost him in the Washington/Wells shuffle, platform-quickie averted. If you're going to scope shaft all day, don't make it so fucking obvious...lesson learned.

"Other" powerwomen ogle and judge each other's Louboutins, Kindling Kindles, and text, text, text away, while I'm fake-reading The Dolliver Romance, peering over top, lost in an unrestrained fantasy land similar to that of Jonah Hill's character's in SuperBad. It's not even that big of a deal, something like 8% of pervs do it. If there's one thing I've learned from my weird, round-trip voyeuristic voyages downtown, it's don't judge a dick by its cover; this guy is Asian. Til next time, creeps.

who will give me surgery hugs?

As the fated date approaches, July 13th's countdown ticks loudly and instigates my anxiety for tomorrow's 9 pm (CT) closing ceremonies. Aged almost in parallel, I have grown into a woman alongside LC, Lo, KCav, and Ceiling-eyes Partridge. We've made hard choices together and I've stood by them through horrible hangovers, post-meth-addiction dating struggles, and countless surgeries alike. Tomorrow, when The Hills comes to an end, so will a part of my youth.

As the girls gossip about the past and chat unknowingly about the future, I will sit in a bittersweet cloud of present tense; happy that these potentially-strong females can finally live life freely off-screen, and sad that I can no longer laugh and judge to make myself feel better in some twisted sense. Sure, I wasn't birthed onto the Pacific shoreline with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I'd like to think my general positivity and drive to succeed (whatever that means) makes me pretty okay. Watching these hoes unravel adult reality and cry about it has been pretty hilarious, if not encouraging, that the rest of us less-fortunate assholes actually have had something going for us all along: a life not cloaked in veneers, perhaps. When you learn early that nothing is perfect, what you want you may not get, and that insecurities are healed from within, there is something vindicating about witnessing these lightbulbs go off for someone else. Especially as her surgery-jaw prevents her from chewing a sandwich and the permanance sets in, rolling down her face.

I told you...it's twisted. But it is for all of us. Isn't that why we watch? To see that even the glamorous "celebrities" have faults and make mistakes? To see that even the most bodacious maneater around doesn't always get her man? To see that the smart ones knew when to walk away and capitalize on a book tour or clothing line because they didn't want the light at the end of the tunnel to be another humiliating camera flash?

As our Hollywood friends descend from popular culture tomorrow night, I will toast Andre to them all from my small two-bedroom apartment surrounded by my own version of girlfriends. The kind that don't start sex-tape rumors about me, but instead destroy the evidence, and the kind that would never, ever, under any circumstances, let me marry the crystal-weilding mental-case Spencer Pratt. One thing is for sure, however; from the Hollywood Hills, to Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, women everywhere will gather in gaggles, making puppy-dog faces and swapping surgery hugs with the ones they love as the clock strikes game-over for our frenemies out West. Godspeed, and thanks for the memories.

puzzle reincarnation

Some say that close enough will do.
To me that sounds like a decision
Between friction or misalignment
Altogether.

Some say that fit should be without aperture.
To me that sounds like a decision
Between perfection and constraint
Altogether.

Astray or in array
never or someday
patience.
ambition.
happenstance.
order.

mc-soundtrack malfunction

I've said it once and I'll say it again: the music at McDonald's makes me want to off myself more than the hangover that brought me there in the first place. Is a barely-got-there- 10:29 am-number 11 really worth having to endure The Chipmunks do Glee? Glee is the worst as it is, but reallllly we need to cover them with autotronic rodent garbage voices? What the fuck are people thinking? Alvin does some shitty actor in Glee doing Dionne Warwick? Who's ok'ing this? Who's buying this and playing it? Is this just a ploy to keep your table turnover high, McD's?

Even the crosseyed homeless dude would rather sweat out his choices on Van Buren than rectify his bodyheat in the cool, cool A/C of the golden arches. He's real...he searches for all the Marines he can find downtown and shouts out "HOO-RAH!" Their girlfriends are not from the city and are always real creeped out, but most of the jarheads give him a fistpound and support his revelry. Best one I've seen was yesterday, this lipsticked straight-haired wide-eyed Betty just screamed and ran away...into McDonald's, while her uniformed boyfriend acted like a true gent and even appeased the bum by swapping service allegories and offering him some change. While charming, it was short-lived as his sweetheart darted out the revolving doors of McDonald's screaming longer and higher-pitched than the last time. Guess the Chipmunks didn't do it for her, either.

haiku for the sun

Good to see you, sun
embodying all hope.
but i know the truth...
you might be bright now,
and while my time preceeds yours,
we are both burnouts.