publish post

"The beginning of it cannot be identified. So slow and small, it started like anything ordinary starts. But after some time, the ordinary nature of it was traversed by its own desire to spread. This is why I cannot put a finger on when happiness began. So much isolation and desolation have covered over the feeling that I wasn't sure what it even was. I can point to the exact time and date of the beginning of the sadness, but happiness, like fog, rolls in on you unsuspecting and only until you are completely enveloped in it can you recognize that it was rolling in on you in the first place. The feeling does not rule out all others, in fact it can sometimes make the other feelings that much more acute when you happen upon them as your stumbling through. But enveloped, as you are, in this blanket, you come to recognize that the reality of everything will be coloured this way. Thank god there are no drugs for this as there are for the opposite feeling. Pure and simple both should be appreciated, even strived for because like twins, Janus, the ideology of mirrors, without one image the other is pale and meaningless."
-one of the broken toys

Wednesday, October 31st, 3:41 am, wide awake,
t____ not awake enough for sex,
decide to stave off depression by catching up on bt's blog,
saved by her fucking brilliance again,

Create New X

The end of it cannot be marked. So insignificant and quick, it ended like anything ends. But after a while, it's opposing twin asserts her need to consume your life at once, as a wildfire swallows a forest before anyone knew it was there. This is why I can't tack my pin on the time line of depression. Was it during one of the world wars? Was it after the civil rights movement? Did we even have a civil rights movement? So much television and electronic music and the arrogance of prose has obfuscated a basic need for a connection to others who will own up to this numbing malady through the conduits of unassuming poetry. It is this Poetry that fibrillates the rhythm underneath a bi-polar order. Sadness lurks underneath everything that causes happiness, from the leaves that burn the autumnal hillside with the brilliance of defying death, to the fog that slows all movement until the first crack in the spring-thawed ice. There is no order without disorder. There is no disorder if we understand the postmodern capital t in True, order. Ensconced in our safety blankets, we fail to recognize that this is reality and not a dicoloured perfection causing false ideologies. Thank modern science for the drugs to treat this order, because our failed twin focuses on the false idolatry of the disease and not the cause in the mirror.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 3:52 AM

"Perhaps that is why I am so much more appreciative of everything now...I had often heard people say that they would give everything if only that thing had not happened to them. For me, I did give everything and it still happened and I am unbelievably grateful."

4:20 am, no pot to smoke,
hate that inane and arbitrary designated toke time anyway,
get up to feed the cat instead,

Perhaps this is why I am so less appreciative of everything now...I have often said that I would give everything if I hadn't done that thing to her, or him, if I hadn't broke her heart, or hers, or his. If I hadn't said that stupid thing that I didn't mean, or that stupid thing that I did mean. I've given nothing but pain and everything has fallen into place and still I am unbelievably ungrateful.

PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 4:22 AM

"Things in my life have taken an interesting turn. I have been more public then I ever have been. Out there and open but still private as my upbringing and background warrants. I have met so many new individuals, I know a good deal of it is one-time-only and tangential, but realistically I would never have had even those kinds of experiences if it weren't for the suffering that had come before...it was a soul ripping hair tearing serrated-edged liturgy into the abyss. You think I am being dramatic, and perhaps I am, but what in your life has made you utterly broken? I have a few instances now and I can say with some measured and humble authority that this was the worst."
--one of the broken toys

5:04 am, t___ still asleep,
no longer innocent,
no longer guilty,
no longer willing to fulfill impossible expectations,
no longer the new girlfriend who lives in boston and wakes me at 3 am to have sex for the 11th time in two days,
no longer the sustenance that keeps me awake during the entire six-hour drive back to new york,
something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

Things in my life never change, never take a different route, and if they do, they get lost with me on a back road in Vermont. I have never been more private than I am now. Closed off as my background and secret as my family history, but out and open as my new surroundings will warrant. I haven't met any new individuals and have ostracized myself from those soul ripping experiences to avoid all the suffering that has come before. You think I am being dramatic, and I admit that I am, because the chaos in my life that has made me utterly broken is the worst addiction. Even worse than the addiction to push people away by ripping the metronomes from their chests and occluding the passage of the pendulum, because this provides the one-time-only and tangential belief that I have achieved facility through the range of my tempi tempered with the temper of my rage. While my sightless counterparts listen to the cite-less authority of wikipedia: "There has been an effort to attach musical rhythm with some innate biological rhythm, although they have not been met with much success. One sparse correlation is that the beats per minute in a song have been known to affect heart rate, and (coincidentally?) fall roughly in the same range of a normal human heart beat. A fast song can make the heart beat faster, while a slower paced song can make the heart beat slower [citation needed," which I needn't bother to cite since the basic premise of wiki is as follows: "Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles."

As someone who helps spread the bias behind wiki's worldwide knowledge, I believe I have the authority to say that this practice of creating authority from one's own experience and not from "specialized qualifications" to cover "existing knowledge" is a frightening mirror image of Fox News and the authoritative regime that controls it. After all, this most noted of all scholarly sources quotes the unknown and discredited scholar, Luke Jeremy, as saying, "Spreading knowledge is worth a donation." Yes, Mr. Jeremy, and so is spreading shit, but you don't see decent writers getting rich now do you? I don't know who the fuck Luke Jeremy is, but I do know Lenny Bruce. Do you know Mr. Bruce, Mr. Jeremy? You should, since you both share two first names as your full name. Here's a Wikipedia entry for you, and this one is on the house...consider it as a donation for the new wikimedia: Lenny Bruce was a comedian who was repeatedly arrested and jailed for using "foul" language on stage, for what he knew to be True--his 'authority' on free speech. He once said, "If you can't say FUCK, you can't say "Fuck the government!" His career was never utterly broken [citation needed for the utterly broken phrase, sounds too good to be this contributor's words], and if wiki had been born during his cursing on stage days, he would have said, "Fuck wikipedia for misquoting me, and fuck the contributor who assumed authority on my life and words." I say fuck you for misleading your readers, and fuck you for failing to temper the tempo of the current rate of a capital-driven deterioration of freedom with any sort of Truth. --author unknown, citation: authorial intent [citation pending].

Perhaps this is what bt means by the suffering that comes before. Any dark age must be followed by an enlightenment. Any dip in human relationships must surrender to a free lift. But what the fuck do I know about suffering? After all, I'm no specialist on depression or human behavior (even though psychology is not rocket science), and I'm certainly no prophetic lyricist.

"I'm living in an age
where darkness is light."
--Arcade Fire

PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 6:12 AM

"Even the cancer (I loathe to call it that out loud or in print, but there it is) that I suffered 10 years ago was not a match for this unbalancing. I have written endlessly about _____ so perhaps we should talk about that cancer. It does give some perspective to the entire episode."
--one of the broken toys

6:23 am,
stunned by bt's bravery,
by her stunning awareness of herself,
by the cunning way I create an abstruse au fait of myself with an arcane list of characteristics and esoteric talk of linguistics

Even the chronic depression, the ADD, the bi-polar disorder (I love to call it that in silent print, and fuck all, thar she blows), I suffer still is no match from this balance of acting like I know what I want and knowing what I know how to act. I have written endlessly about _______ so perhaps we should talk about that fucking daughter of Zeus. She does give some charm to the entire fucking perspective...

PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 6:37 AM

But that was really just the start of it. To tell the whole tale would take a book and perhaps someday it will be in that form, but for now here is a shortened version. My father died two days after I was released from the hospital. I was out from work for 3 weeks. It also happened to be the week my partner decided he could no longer cope with someone who was both quite ill and completely heartbroken over her father's death. The death of his own father haunted him and to be constantly reminded of it was too much. It took one more year for the finale of these feelings between the to of us, but we both look on that month as the instigator.

6:44 am,
fucking A, I/m no believer,
no fucking authorial intender,
nothing in the sheets of my contender

But that was really just the start of it. To tell the whole tale would take a fucking blovella, and perhaps one day it will knock down my short-doored version of my strawberry-shortcaked, paternaled version of my partner's decision that she can no longer cope with someone who is both quite ill and completely crestfallen over her childhood's death. The death of her own childhood haunted her and to be constantly reminded of it was too much. It took more than we could predict for the finale of these feelings between the two of us, but we both look on that decade as the instigator of the power dynamic of the q & a:

Q.i hate teachers and they're everywhere, what should i do?

A. Learn to love them.

PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 7:56 AM

The illness presented itself off and on for another blog. Very high fever of 106, and a body gone haywire and lymph nodes so swollen that a litany of PhDs could only take out the problem with a knife. And the copycat bloggers could only cut and paste with the plagiaristic price of a devilish device.

From forbidden control c's to vanished verified v's, her alliterative wounds would not be barraged with a gauchely gauze. Her open neck nicked neither with stitch nor stichomythia.

PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 8:12 AM

The ending of it cannot be identified. So slow and so fucking small, it ended like anything extraordinary ends. But after some time, the extraordinary nature of it was traversed by its own desire to suffocate. This is why I cannot put a finger on when sadness began. So much isolation and desolation have been covered over by the feeling of happiness that I wasn't sure what sadness even was. I can point to the exact time and date of the ending of happiness, but happiness, like fog, rolls in on you unsuspecting and only until you are completely enveloped in it can you recognize that it was rolling in on you in the first place.

PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 8:33 AM

Depression is like the ending of a great song.
The beginning of it cannot be identified,
until the repetition of that magnificent fucking song
has drilled every decrescendoed note into your head.

PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 9:47 AM

PUBLISH POST X

---

god bless autosave

ok, ok, simmer down, i'll write another blog already

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY CLUSTER
[passive (paternal)-agressive (matriarchy) clusterfuck!]

Persons who act in passive aggressive ways do some of the following:

*Frequently is involved in fibbing, omitting information, or lying to avoid direct confrontation ("no, I don't have my mother's antique furniture stored in that tent,")
'hmm, that's strange, but I thought...'

*Often has challenges paying bills in a timely manner and may have poor credit history. ("Mom, the phone company shut off the phone today. Do you know why they would do tha--but we--yes, but--I--but mom--you didn't--I know, but--but you--but I--can I--would you--could I--would you let me--please, mom, I--but/hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm/beep.
"She," she begins as she moves tenderly toward me, and I interrupt like the slam of a bilco on a cellar door, "--hung up on you?"
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"yes.")

*Will make dates and stand people up.
("How long has it been? "I don't know," she clusters her frustrations.
"Hello?" we hear a voice from the door below our second-floor window
"Hang on a minute," I yell below and turn to Tiff, "or as Ed Izzard says, 'Klammern Sie an eine Minute an,' and run down in a clandestine robe.
"Is G_____ here?"
"Um, she doooeessn't live here, well, she does, I think, that's correct, right?"
"I had an appointment with her at nine am."
"Sorry, I wasn't really awake; it's nine am after all...you mean G_____."
"Yes."
"Yes!"
"yes," she pauses.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, come in, come in...sorry, I'm half asleep, and I had no information about this meeting." [insert sarcasm]
"I'm J____, the clutter consultant," she extends her olive-branched hand.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,"
[insert inner thoughts--oh, for fuck's sake, this explains a lot]
"Do you know when she'll be back?" [insert inner joke: is this a trick question?] "no, but let me check."

[insert song lyrics]
"you come from parents wanton
a childhood, rough & rotton
i come from wealth & beauty
untouched by work or duty
and oh, my love, my love
and oh, my love, my love
we both go down together
[violin solo]

"Hello, G______, this is A_____,

[and my parents will never consent of this love,
but i hold your hand]

"You missed your meeting with J______. If you are there, please pick up," I parenthetically plead with parental ploy. "She's only agreed to stay for five more minutes."

*May be in denial about passive aggressive behaviors, claiming only good intentions.
"Ohhhhh, I meant to be there, but I was at the place~where I had to put the thing~and then I had the~intention~of, and I just forgot to~oh, T____ knows what I mean. I didn't write it down because I didn't have a pen."

*In relationships may complain about partners to third parties instead of discussing issues directly with their partners.
"I hate it when R_____ drinks all day, and he's never motivated to move his stuff, even though I've said, very clearly, 'R____, move you things.' It makes me so mad." [heads nod in conjunction with a disorderly disorder]

*Chronically "forgets" to do important tasks wither for self or others.
{truck door slams, man enters drive....
'hi, i'm ______, here to discuss the propane tank installment,'
"you MUST be looking for G_______."
'yes, yes i am.'
'she's not here,' [enter a sarcastic, under-the-breath, 'as usual']
'where can i find her?'
'you can't,' [enter confused propane man look] 'this is a recurrent theme for her,' [enter confused propane man who never paid attention in english class look] 'i have to go, but you can go up to the house on the hill [enter irony] and inquire with the unsupervised workers who are expected to take care of their needs when they are gone, but are reprimanded when they make a poor 'informed' decision [enter sidestitchig irony].
'when do you expect her back?''
'HA!'
[her, back; her chronic behavior]
"OHHHHH, I meant to do that, I'm sorry, I just forgot."
'me, just fine, just dandy, just fallinginfuckingline...me.'

*Holding back on important information.
'ok, T, this is my non-negotiable, no-holds-barred list of demands:
1. The house is overrun with mice. non-negot-attn.
2. The house has a dangerous mold infestation. same as above.
3. The house has a chimney that is crumbling as we speak. same.
4. The house has no working smoke detectors. oh, you better fucking believe it.
5. The house is run by three little piggies whose brick, straw, & stone may break my bones, but their passive-aggressiveness will never hurt me.

*Sensitive about having requests made to them.
'could we have a working stove?'

*Giving mixed signals: unclear yes and no's
"Yes, of course! Do the research, get the oven YOU want."
'could we have a convection oven?'
"No, yes, no, what d'you want? just keep giving me these chocolate eggs! But the answer is no, yes, but only if you get the oven that I want"

*Wavering on courses of action
G: "Kill the mice, at all costs!"
R: "Don't kill the mice, think of the environment you killers!"
G: "Kill the mice, only if it is cheap!"
R: "Ok poison the little fuckers for all I care, just don't bother me, because I can't seem to leave my small plot of land to do anything, so what the fuck do I know?"
G: "I'll pay for it, but don't get criticize me if I write the check as if I have a mafia-like vendetta against the pen.

*Arguments and temper tantrums coming out of nowhere.
A: "I'm not angry at you, but we need do need to discuss boundaries if T&I plan to stay."
G: "BOUNDARIES! ALL I HEAR ABOUT IS BOUNDARIES? WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? WE'VE GIVEN YOU A PLACE TO STAY, $5.000, AND PAID FOR THE BILLS....

*Lack of commitment.
"We don't mind paying the bills for up to a year, to help you regain footing, and we don't expect anything in return...

*Claim to "do too much" for others.
...AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE EXCEPT COMPLAIN?...

*Angry about being powerless, yet not able to assert this.
*Often lagging in education and careers.
...A_______, GROW UP! YOUR EMAIL MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE A SPOILT [his misspelling] BRAT!

*Submissive,
"oh, that's the rug I gave you,"
on the surface,
"too bad it's discolored."

*I know I promised, but things came up.
I know, I promised a new blog, but things came up.
*I must be approved and accepted, but not controlled or dominated.
I must have the approval and acceptance of my readers, but I'm writing a new blog, despite the fact that I have five readers and, "things came up."

-A_____ W_____, recovering passaggressaholic

---

god bless glasgow's leadership

onymous collective

[roll opening lines]

Do you find yourself sending text messages when you aren't alone?
Do you send more than 10 text messages a day?
Do you assign text messages to a distinct ring tone?
Do you wake up in the morning and check your phone for text messages before hitting the snooze button?
Do you get angry when you miss a text message?
Does your text messaging interfere with relationships?
Do you ever have the urge to send a text message during sex?
Do you send text messages under the table while attending staff meetings at work?
Do you hold up the restroom line in restaurants to hide text message delivery from your dinner companion(s)?
Do you deliver and drive?
Do you use text messages to alleviate depression, anxiety, or any other instinctual reaction to the technologically advanced yet disconnected society we live in?

[roll hook]

If you answered "yes, but only when..." to any of the questions above, you may have an addiction to text messages.
If you answered by laughing in that self-deprecating way, you may be a step above the people in the first category, but your reaction is a telltale sign of using your awareness as a way to create a confidence that smacks of a false sense of security, which could only alienate the people in the first category, who would support your mission impossible if they knew your superiority was actually caused by their own fears of worthlessness.
If you appreciate both answers, then you probably recognize that the motivation behind the addiction is the real addiction and not the substance itself, and you probably know that knowledge itself isn't freedom, but that freedom is providing access to the wealth of knowledge for everyone rather than viewing people as categories, since you know that the "only" box for ethnicity on job applications is still a category. Although you may not have an addiction, you could benefit most from our program, since you have the talent, the awareness, and the freedom to create freedom for others.
Despite what category you fall under, here's your chance to recover the use of your fingers again by "digging down" to ground yourself in our 12 easy steps to recovery:

[roll sinker]

1. Criticize your partner for replying to text messages from friends during a serious conversation about your relationship, while conveniently forgetting all the times you checked your phone during sex to read the latest text message.
2. Deny that you have a problem when you are faced with an intervention but privately recognize that you will never be able to kick this habit.
3. Admit you have a problem when you finally receive your astronomically high cell phone bill, since you didn't sign up for a text plan because of your original criticisms about how nothing, not even the invention of call waiting, is as rude as this new technological distraction.
4. Declare that you are going to fight the urge to send a text for a whole month and send an email to your friends asking them to refrain from sending you texts, and take a deep breathe of freedom.
5.Respond to the text that arrives 30 seconds later.
6.Admit that your fatalistic background has screwed your ability to establish a genuine relationship with reality and your self-esteem, "Whoah there, missy, you're from Alabama, so scale it down a bit," and aim for a five minute chip.
7. Show up at an AA meeting and tell them that their twelve steps are stupid while brandishing a 15-minute collection of five-minute chips in one hand and reaching in your pocket to answer a text with the other hand.
8. Decide to stay for the AA meeting because everyone points at the sign on the door, "Absolutely NO cell phones. Please place your cell phone in the box before entering, and yes it must be turned off, Mr._____.) You may be subject to a strip search for smuggled cell phones, in accordance with Section BS, Article 'wakeupamericatakingbackyourrightsispatriotic, Particle 0dashniner um, did I really win again, damn dick you sure is smart to git all them people to alect me again, yes i met with my grammar coach today, he whooped me at horse, oh you mean that coach, I had him placed in a prison camp for calling me a bumbling moron,' of the United States Patriot Act (this means you, Ms._Watson____ ). Violators will not get coffee OR doughnuts, not even the maple ones that are always left on the tray when the meeting is over, and no, this isn't why they are always stale; we've told you, they come like that from the bakery.
9. Begin your own group with Mr.______, since obviously you both have a problem. Get rid of the "no dating other anonymous members," so that you can sleep with Mr._____.
10. Reinstate the "no sleeping with other members" rule when you and Mr. Hemmingway can't decide between your idea for the group's name, "Texaholics Onymous: The first step is not hiding behind your anonymity," and his, "Text Addicts: Feed all your other addictions so you won't need this one," and he begins drinking at noon and demands sex every time he's tempted to text someone.
11. Break the group into factions, like any great club that people attend religiously, and continue to fight over whether or not cell phone companies should offer text control and free clinics to people who can't control their urges and don't have enough money to pay their bills because the companies failed to properly educate their customers in order to feed their own addiction to capitalistic greed.
12. Say fuck all to the group, despite their undying support for your cause, and run for the office of United States President, promoting a platform of more education and less taxes (banking on the fact that the history of suppressing knowledge will ensure that the American people are too dumb to realize that you can't have one without the other, and on the hopes that you will get both the vote from the working class--because they want their children to have a better life, despite the fact that a PhD won't give them more monetary wealth or the fortune of being an intelligent human being because they will exist in an ironically insular college town, hoarding the wealth of knowledge out of the fear of you and your cronies' ridiculous laws against free speech and the proper use of grammar and punctuation, and from the filthy rich class--because they want to hoard their money in a vain attempt to gain the American dream of happiness with more money, despite the fact that no matter how much money they own, they can never be happy until they realize that you and the cell phone companies, along with the Fox Network, have conspired to flash images of happy people wearing expensive clothes and driving expensive cars to create a false sense of happiness when really these commercial actors are just unhappy artists who take crap roles to gain a sense of accomplishment in a society that devalues art, and when their genius isn't appreciated, they join the tradition of the participatory roles in the status symbol smoke screen. Or, until the rich realize that they create their own net worth instead of the stock market. So you win and distract your citizens from the the real issues (such as the fact that earth's resources will not sustain the insane rate of consumption you promote) with silly notions of hating someone because of their sexual preference, or with declaring a senseless war for the good of the nation because it will protect what little oil supply is left, without revealing that you don't actually intend on sharing a drop, not even the oily-residue, of your wealth with the people whom you claim to represent, according to the initial purpose of the important office you hold, because of your hubris and your own fear of criticism. Then someone at a bar sends a text message while her friend is in the middle of telling a story of great value to her, and the woman sending the text only half listens while demonstrating her deft dexterity with T9 words. It finally hits the friend that this disconnection from people is the reason we are so unhappy and have elected such a terrible President. She decides that now is a better time than any to start a revolution, so she leaves her friend, staring at the flashing screen and nodding to an empty stool, and heads for the bathroom where she flushes her cell phone down the toilet, takes out a pen, and writes, "Want to know the key to eternal bliss? Call 1-800-the-prez." After changing her home number and disabling call-waiting, she answers caller after caller with the same phrase: "As your country's representative, I am vowing to never again imprison your potential by usurping the power you have to create your worth and your reality," and hangs up without further explanation. Then one day she has more calls than she can handle, callers from places she's never heard of, like Hanksville, begging to hear her words. And soon she finds herself managing dozens of volunteers, armed with sharpees, flooding the bathrooms of America with the Gospel of Saint Fearless, and eventually drones of people join her cause, which demands that the rich give to the poor by sharing our wealth of knowledge that we must disarm the unstable and dangerous system that is polluting our ability to maintain life and provide people with equal opportunity. You kindly step down from office without a fuss since you fear what you know to be true, much like a homophobic homo, and return to leading Texaholic Onymous meetings, where you can take out your emotional pain at the expense others on a smaller, more manageable scale.
13. You amend your original twelve steps and add the 13th Amendment Act, which grants you the right to take actions to protect the onymous rights of the twelve-step members, even though this requires that you deny their right to be publicly-known members of a club that really has no need for anonymity since we're all in the same club, whether we recognize it or not, but those pesky AA people told you to proselytize your beliefs in order to get people to change their habits, and so you decide that you must force your beliefs about anonymous behavior without regard to your own members and reveal their identities in order to help the poor, ignorant people living in squalor and sin experience freedom from the chains of addiction, which is really a decision based based on your fear of the mirror and not the narcissistic pomposity that many members claim as the cause of your insanity (sanity, as deemed by psychiatrists who have the same issue, despite their framed credentials hanging proudly on the walls of their expensive office that you only get to see for fifteen minutes a month, long enough for them to write a scrip while sending a text message under the desk). These members form a band of rebels, which you attempt to quietly suppress by using a spy with a beard and a protest sign, but your attempt to thwart their attempts with your predictable, trojan horse plot is thwarted by their cunning sense of awareness. They decide to start an underground newspaper criticizing you for your behavior as an ingenious counterattack, but instead of you take care of this by googling "bad words for people who are smarter than me," and the results include a hotel website and a blog criticizing the reliance on Microsoft Word, created by another greedy genius, for your grammar and spelling needs. This gives you the idea to call your advisers and ask for the teleprompt archives." Anything that makes me look good and them bad," you say. So they do some ten-second research in the annals of their brains and come up with the slyfox move of using the existing pejorative meaning of certain words along with a trusted, major Media artery to report that the "rebels" are attacking the president with "radical" ideas. To escalate the process of squelching the fanfare of these guerrillas and their irregular spelling of the your ancestors' names, you hire a major criminal syndicate to assassinate the leader of the movement and disguise the murder as a suicide by planting a forged note and an empty bottle of pills, but you had to dip into the 13-step budget because the first officer on the scene read your name on the bottle. This forces you to borrow money from AA's petty cash, not because its members agree with your philosophy on anonymity, but because they are known pacifists. Despite your attempts to maintain control of the onymous collective, which you and the goons and Fox tried to negate by re-naming it the "ominous prospective," a member who isn't afraid of criticism or rejection decides to run for office of group leader and wins the vote by a landslide. On her first day in office, she restores the original principles of the organization to each and every onymous patriot.

[roll non-satirical ending]

***

The group remained a success until the stock market crashed and no one could get service on the farm anyway.

[roll credits]

***

Today's programming is made possible by the support of readers like you.

***

_____ bless america

do you want me to flush?

"Oh!, sorry," I back away from the plywooded-plaque/paste-boarded-green mountain clapboarded- capital bathroom doorway, "I didn't know anyone was in here."
"It's okay, come on in," she beckons me as she zips and smiles.
Why the fuck would a stranger ask me in the bathroom with her? "That's ok I can wait."
"Do you want me to flush?"
"Um, there's no need, I guess, saves water," I say like a true Vermonter who runs her car on vegetable oil and bathes in the river when it isn't too cold.
"Ok, then," she glides past me in the doorway, brushing against me a little too purposely.
"Did you want to wash your hands?"
"No, saves water," she smiles my words back into my mouth.

---

"Are you ok?" She messengers me from the back of the room.
"Yes, I just had a weird encounter at the bathroom," I reply, feeling a bit silly IMing her from ten feet away. "Well, maybe it wasn't that weird, considering where we live."
"What happened?"
"I'll tell you about it later. I have to finish this cover letter."
"Don't take the job if you don't want it. I want you to be able to work on your writing."
"I'm not writing anyway, and we're broke. Plus wouldn't you rather hear my voice announcing the Vermont Public Radio sponsors and your time and weather?"
She sends me a smile, broadcasting my regrets across the room. I smile my words across the web before they choke the source in my mouth.

---

She moment agoes me from the front of the stage, "do you want me,?" she question marks my home with a look.

I am in a capital position. The Vermonter/New Englander/Englander's frontal lobe/mountainer's index/image of what I think the left index/pinky/index, and a right index/left middle, finger looks
like when she punches the letters for 'v' 'a' 'g' 'u' 'e'

I don't know/if I miss her or if I am a vague word that broadcasts itself over my world wide mouth.

I don't know anything.

"Are you a student or something?" she questions after I remove my earphones and ask her to repeat the question.
"Oh, no, um, I am working on a cover letter, well, I was working on a cover letter but I can't really think of anything good to say about myself so I gave up. Now I'm just writing."
"Oh, what are you writing?"
"I have a blog."
"Really? Where?"
"Two places. Blogspot and MySpace."
"You have a MySpace account?"
Doesn't everyone, I think but say, "Yes, here it is, I show her my screen."
"Nice, well, I will let you get back to your writing. I just saw you sitting here alone and thought I would approach you."
"Do you see the person sitting in that booth?" I point to the dressed in black, glassed in the back.
"Yeah."
"That's my girlfriend of two years."
"Oh, sorry."
"It's ok, how would you know? I'm flattered but--"
"Wait, why are you sitting at two different tables?"
"It's a long story."
"Oh, well, I will let you get back to your blog. I see that the bathroom is free."
"Don't forget to flush."
"Huh?"
"Long story," I say as she nods and smiles her way across the room.

---

"My pathetic life is one long story," I begin but quickly delete. I begin again.
"do you mind if i'm in an octobered-bathroomed, front-porched forum? a deliberate listener sinister?" I delete. I don't know where to begin.

And so I begin again. I repeat. I plagiarize, "i'll probably feel better if i stay at home and play with myself." I delete the entire damn thing. I don't smile.

---

"Why did you take down that blog?" I smile for the first time in years.
"It sucked."
"Repost it, or I'm never speaking to you again," she empty-threats me from another dream.
I find its remnants from another space.
I repost and broadcast love as an empty trace.

ps - the meth lab down the street blew up this morning... :)

"I gave him a tip, that's why."
"You what, mom?" I leftt-to-right-ear shift my phone.
"I told officer Willis that those people who moved into Dr. Lowrey's home were cookin' up meth," she long-vowels her E with a southern 'gossip without a cause' emphasis.
"How do you know they are cooking meth, Mom?"
"Because you can smell that shit when you walk past their house, Ashley, and I walk around this block every night, since you were big enough to stand, and I know I've never smelled that stench before...they are cooking that shit, I know it."
"First of all, how do you know what crystal meth smells like when it is 'cooking,'? and secondly, how do you jump from narcing to some local goon's flirtations?"
"Aaashhley," she begins her home-brewed lecture of sticks & stones, "any idiot could smell that poison a mile away, and he wasn't just flirting with me because I turned in some druggies," my mother's judgmental tone takes a violent turn as I turn east on 17th toward my Tucsonan metropolitan home.
"Why was he flirting with you?"
"Your mother may be old, but she can still turn heads," she jokes without the joke.
"Well, I guess your lab partners will be turning nothing but glib flattery your way."
"I don't care what they do, as long as that shit doesn't blow up...those meth labs can take out entire neighborhoods, you know?"
"No, mother, I didn't know. I don't read 'Suburban Biddy Weekly.' "
"You hate me, don't you?"
"Yes, mother, I spend my lonely days drawing blueprints of your mental demise by the hand of my mental superiority."
"I knew you thought you were smarter than me!"
"Mother, don't ever use exclamation points, even in speech; it's a pat use of punctuation, and furthermore, sarcasm has yet to register with you...can't you tell when I'm using irony to express my contempt for the general public?" I say before I can fully utilize my mocking tone of ridicule and scorn.
"Ashley, you are so weird, oh!!, my walking buddy is here.., yes we're going to walk by the druggie's house and report any changes."
"Mom, you are 22 across on today's crossword puzzle."
"Whaaat?"
"The clue: person who turns in known drug users. The number of spaces in the puzzle: 4. The answer: NARC. That's what you are."
"I may be a narc, but at least those druggie's are OFF the streets," she yells into the phone, a lifetime NIMBY member re-staking her flag on the property that was always no one's.

---

"Do you want me to stop at this gas station?"
"Yes.,.,.,no,,yes, no, yes,"
"Jesus, what's the answer?
"Well...what do you think?"
"I think you need a decongestant."
"I think you're right. Ok, stop."
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I exclaim with the threat of exclaiming every second of my 90-degree-turn right into the wheel of my misadventured life.
"I love you," she smiles her soon to be de-congetsted smile.
"Make sure you bring your ID if you are buying Sudafed."
"Why?" she marks her question without the guile.
"Because that's what people use to make meth, so you have to be eighteen to buy it now."
"Even in Vermont?"
"Honey, meth labs are all over the country, even in Vermont," I edit, the expert editor who knows nothing except what she hears from unreliable sources and wikipedia articles,
"But, what the hell do I know?" I ask, an earnest target, an unreliable genius.

---

Dear M,

I received your letter and CD today; thank you for the mix. I honestly thought you were on crack when you wrote the letter, but after a second reading, I could finally piece together the random thoughts. I couldn't listen to all of the CD for some reason. Maybe send another copy. Anyway, I don't think I could advise you on your problems with women, as I seem to have my own waiting on my sleeve. Speaking of tough advice, I received yet another rejection letter in the mail for my manuscript. Ah well, there's always theater, right?

Take care, and we hope to see you sooner than next October.
Love,
Ashley

---

"Hello, is Ashley there?"
"This is she," I respond in my grammatically correct response.
"Hi, this is Patrick," he responds in his gay director voice, "How are you?" he ask as his non-obligatory gay choice.
"Fine."
"Good!" he goody-two-shoes his next word, "Well..." and his non-obligatory pause presents the obligatory non-accidental clause, "unfortunately," followed by my preparation for the rejection that hurts the most, "we decided that we couldn't use you."
BULLSHIT!!!! That's a lovely euphemism for, "We are not sorry that we didn't have the balls to cast a young, talented, and budding star, even though I said you were talented and had lots of natural ability."
Instead he says, "Thanks for coming out, and I hope to see you in a future show."

---

"Are you bitter?"
"Has a cat got a fucking ass???"
She laughs.
I mourn.
She asks if I'm OK.
I ask if she's been around for the last three months of my life.
She says that isn't fair.
I imagine my response, just as I've imagined the entire conversation until now. I say, "The entire fucking world isn't fair. If it were, I'd be published or a famous actor, or a member of the Arcade Fire, hopefully one of the strings or accordion players."
"Ashley--"
"What?"
"You know what. You're--"
"What? Talented?"
"YES!"
"Fuck that. If I had a chance to die, I would."
"No you wouldn't"
"Sum, I'm talking to myself right now. How desperate do you think I am?"

---

ps. the meth lab down the street blew up this morning :)

She gently places her smiley face after the postscript, as if it were part of the channel nine morning news's "in other news," or as the musical afterthought of an amateur musician...

---

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry, I--"
"Don't fucking placate me...I don't need a fucking cheerleader right now, OK?"
"Yes."
"FUCK!" I slam the hammer against the cement floor, just as my father would have done as a 28-year-old-unknown-dissident. I throw a fit. I want to slam the metal tip into my temples. I throw the hammer. I throw my love and anger around like a sledgehammer. I throw.

---

or as the one who thinks experience comes after the notes, the director who thinks acting comes after the production.

---

ps. post script. p. I forgot to tell you. s. I don't know how to express how much I adore you

vino fire, arcade fret

"He made fret noises with what?"
"A bottle of vino!"
"A bottle of wine?"
"Yes! Well..,the neck," I correct, sounding repetitive, repeatedly sounding corrected.
"What a waste of perfectly good liquor."
"What?!!"
"What?" she asks, repeatedly sounding corrective, correcting the repetitive sound of..
"What wasted note of sound have you ever found to correct?" I repeat a corrected sound to no one.
"Ashley, do you have to be obscure all the fucking time?" she asks, repeating noises that fret with a pocketwatch pace to the only one who listens.

---

"You saw the Arcade Fire?" she asks
'Yeah," I say, into an Austin Texas blanketed air.
"How did you move your way up front?"
"A third-person omniscient narrator told me about the propane fire in the paper.,.,.,.,do you know what happens next?"
"No." the narrator answers in an all-knowing (nothing) tone.
"Don't patronize me," I Thesaurus fret verb perturb & defibrillate the condescension from my heartless appearance of kindness.
"Do you have to be so ob--"
"--no, I don't need to alarm the deliberate magnification of abstruse texts that only you and your recondite cronies could understand..,,"
"Fuck you! Neither I, nor my 'cronies' could identify your enigmatic linguistics, even if we had the highest paid nerds in the country to determine your verbal cloaks, so don't--"
"Ok, ok, I just wanted to know if you got to see the Arcade Fire."
"Oh..,,.,,.,.,.,well,., .. , , yes.!. !"
"And that's your answer, punctuation and all?"
"I expressed myself without a ques?ion mar? did'? I"

---

"Did you know Gertrude Stein well, while she was alive?"
"No."
"And what did she tell you?"
"I never met her, so how--"
"Were you born in New England, Sir?"
"I'm not a man, so I really can't--"
"Did you tell Gertrude Stein that her language barriers would never get her published?"
"Are you on crack, man? I just want to get home to my wife and ki--"
"Tell me, sir, how you and Stein got mixed up in that scandalous plot to overthrow the government."

---

"A propane fire blasted through Zilker Park this afternoon, leaving hundreds of 'Austin City Limit' fans waiting in ridiculously long lines, some in which their ADD attention spans could not allow a normal waiting time: fast cabs and a few ambulances were called."

"ALL OF YOU WHO WANT TO SEE THE ARCADE FIRE MOVE TO THE FRONT; ALL OTHERS MOVE TO THE BACK!!!!" I cup my earnest palms.

"Um, Yeah, like all of us are here to see the band," she fibrillates her way out of my sympathetic, 'um-yeah' heart.
"Um, Sir? Sir. sir? sir. sir. sir,." I plead, off the recorded record.

---

"Ashley?"
"~~~~~ {}_+{-==p;-=][~ ::'.;[///"
"Ashley, it's time to go to Texas, and--"
"WHAAAAAT??"
"Honey, remember, we're going to Austin to see the ______Fire?"
"Oh, um, yes," I say embarrassed as a an embarrassing misspelling of embarrass.

---

"Peter Bjork and John."
"Peter who?"
"PEE TER BEE YORK and--" ah, fuck it, I brain wave into a white stripe song.
"And? Who?"
"And Whom," I correct a repetitive sound.
"All-fucking-right," she repeatedly sounds the alarm.
"We missed--'. "
"Missed, what?' she coaxes an em-- into an empircal saul bellow book.
"We missed one of the most important bands in history--Peter Bjork and John--"
"I wouldn't say--"
"--I would, and, I'd say that we got to the festival in time, but the propane fire kept us in line for about a half an hour, and then the--"
"Arcade Fire?"
"No, well, yes, we pushed our way to the front for the Arcade Fire, but their brilliance--"
"Like a fire, right?"
"Um,.,., yes,.,but, i, but--"
"I apologize, I seemed to arrived...."
"Now you're plagiarizing Fionn Regan..."
"True."
"True," I truant my noun's choice in verb.

---

"Oh, DeVotchKa, I know that band."
"Yeah, well, it was this sexy tuba player, and her stringed compatriots."
"Don't you mean--"
"--No," I tell my sexy dream companion.
".....it's not your man that your dreaming of,.,.,,you're too tired to be in love,,.,.,.,.,,.,"
"Do you always confuse commas with periods?"
"As much as I confuse periodic comas with periods of comatose love."
"Amore."
"Amor."

---

"Ashley...ASHLEY!!"
"...what,?"
"Wake up, honey, the Arcade Fire is starting in an hour."
"What's the crap band playing before they go on? Nevermind, I don't care, I'll watch anything to get closer."
"Artic Monkeys."
"Never heard of them."
"Thought you might not, Mr. Burns...I--"
"Wait, Smithers? Am I dreaming ag--"

---

"Class, the example given to us in this actpack comes from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Do you know his other famous work, Through the Looking Glass?"

The snickering class does not know. I am awake three states away, looking through a glass-full of vino, listening to the fret noise of a whine-less violin, bottle-necked with an extra dry malbec, asking,

"Why waste wine or music with one or the other?"
"Ashley--"
"Shhh, just enjoy the rhetorical nature of the question.....

end quote

---

god bless the polacks for their stringed instruments, the french for their wine, the dutch for their propensity for natural energy, the scotch-irish for their ballads & whiskey, and the canadians for the bastard music molded from all of the above...

18 minutes to go...

"I've only got twenty minutes on my mac battery."
"So why don't you just post something short?"
"Like...pushing my way up front to see the Arcade Fire live is one of those 'things to do before I die' little boxes that now has a 'now I can die' check in it?"
"Yeah!"
"yeah."
"Title it and you're done."