This just in: fifth graders have mastered dialing a phone, math scores expected to rise accordingly

There are soooo many things wrong with this story. I'll let you have the fun of discovering them all for yourself.

{Update 9/2: Geheimbundler over at Subintsoc synopsizes the major issues with the "hero" story, and offers a possible answer:

"There was $168,000 in cash just lying around the apartment of this Mr. Hossein, who is "holding it for friends and relatives?" And these robbers happened to know it was there?

Sounds like hawala to me."}

*sigh*

This story, via Blogfucker, literally broke my heart.

The good news is I've created a cure-all remedy that is made from the testicles of bear poachers. Look for it in your local Duane Reade in the Fall of '04.

I'm not listening to your conspiratorial clap-trap. I've got shopping to do.

Feeling confident that the recent blackout was just a fluke, totally clean of any link to plots of terrorism? You're probably right.

Did I mention that the lights just went out in London?

But don't worry, It's not like America and England are, you know, connected in any way. Not enough to be singled out as targets for terror or anything. Thank godness!

Well, sleep tight!

It's pronounced kar-oh-kay.

(Arena rock voice) This one goes out to you, and you, and you, and you, and you! (Crowd goes wild.)

Rock over London, rock on Chicago
GE, we bring good things to life

Wouldn't it be fun if his running mate's name was Jan?

Here's what a few local folks have been saying about the Dean rally last night in Bryant Park.

I, regretfully, did not attend and have no excuse. Well one; whenever I'm in a large group of people I become overwhelmed by an urge to make percussive fart noises with my armpit. That or yodel. I might try to tell you it's a by-product of mild Asperger's Syndrome, but the truth is I just want attention. And heck, it was Dean's day.

Hey Big Spender!

Monk is wondering about wishlists on websites. Personally? I think it's the epitome of tacky to ask total strangers to buy you presents.

That said: I'll have this, and this, and three pair of these. Medium, please.

Phonetiquette: A guide for the masses

It has been brought to my attention --through the six to twenty wrong numbers I receive each and every single goddamned day-- that the vast majority of my fellow Americans have never been instructed how to use a telephone. My caller ID can attest many of you have figured out how to dial a phone, but appear to have no clue as to how to proceed afterward; particularly if your dialing caused you to reach the wrong party. I think I may be able to help you. Don't be embarrassed! This phone stuff is tricky business. The telephone has only been in use for a little over a hundred years... now honestly, is that enough time to master such a complicated piece of modern technology? How could anyone blame a case of simple ignorance? However continued bad behavior might indeed drive a person to lose their shit, hunt you down, and pop a cap in your ass; and that would be unfortunate. So let's take a moment to go over a few basics, it just might save your life.

The most important lesson you will learn here is to listen for clues. For instance, you want to phone your sister. She only speaks Cantonese. You only speak Cantonese. When you dial her number a male voice answers "Hello" in English. That is a clue. You see, your sister is not male, nor does she speak English. You might have a wrong number! If you ask for her in Cantonese and the male voice answers something in English you do not understand, something that might sound like "I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number" you need not call back twenty five times in order to be certain of the mistake. Perhaps you erroneously switched two numbers, or your sister actually hates you and gave you fake digits to get you off her back (you are obviously prone to being a pest). Either way, it is not polite to continue to harass a man who has nothing to do with your screwed-up family affairs, nor is it safe. Believe me, he was thinking about killing you the second time you called back, but by the twenty-fifth? That's motive, plain and simple!

You are trying to reach your doctor. It is 9:30am. A groggy voice picks up the line and says "Mmmhmm?" Already, a clue. Normally when you call a doctor's office you are greeted by a voice that says, "Hello, Dr.______'s office." but the voice said "Mmmhmm." Not 'good morning', not 'how may I help you', but "Mmmhmm." Now totally inept receptionists are not unusual (which is mind-blowing considering how much we pay to see a doctor) so no one would begrudge the question, "Is this Dr.______'s office?" However if you receive the answer "No, you've reached a residence" you may NOT go into a tirade about how you need your prescription filled, and how you KNOW you dialed the right number, or ask them where your doctor's office has moved...the clicking you hear in the background might be the greasing up of a 30-odd six. You'd sure need your doctor after that person found you! The best (and safest) move when disturbing a stranger is to apologize, hang up, and call information.

A special note to the angry women hunting down cheating men: Not everyone on the other end of the line is sleeping with your baby-daddy. When you phone a home at three in the morning, rouse a person out of bed, and then (without so much as a hello) demand "Where's Michael at?" you have outed yourself as both a rude bitch and a dirty preposition mangler. You will garner no sympathy. No wonder he's stepping out, hell, you might even inspire someone to go fuck Michael just to piss you off. That's not what you wanted, is it? See, proper phone etiquette not only saves lives, but helps to keep relationships intact.

The next thing I need to address is answering machines. Clues abound in this area. If you dialed what you believe to be your doctor, your sister, your child's teacher, your car service, your dirty, cheatin' man who won't even cough up ten bucks for Similac and diapers, but instead arrive at an answering machine that says, "Hello. You have reached the home of _____ and ______. We are unable to come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message for either _____ or _____, we will get right back to you" and (this is important!) neither of the names mentioned on the machine match the name of the person you are looking for --don't leave a five minute message. You have a wrong number. The clue here is found in how we they clearly state our their names and mention that it is their home, which, and here's the tricky part, is a different name than the person or business you are seeking. A hard call for the untrained ear, but easy to recognize once you've learned to read the clues!

Finally, the golden rule is one call back. If you dial a number and do not reach your intended party, you are allowed ONE call back to see if you dialed in error, followed by an apology. After that, you are on your own. Remember, good phone skills are a key ingredient to a safe and happy society. Not everyone is as kind and understanding, as helpful and concerned for your safety as I am. Remember there are wackos out there who have ways of finding you. I shudder to think what a lack of common, everyday telephone etiquette might drive them to do.

Occidental Limey

Our corner bodega guy, J, asked me if I was British. He didn't mean 'of British decent', he said "Do you come here from England?..." which suggested he was pegging me as a fresh-off-the-boat Limey. My boyfriend, G, was not surprised.

"Maybe he thought you were from England because you ordered bangers and a packet of crisps."
"I didn't order bangers or crisps, I'm telling you it's because I look English, that's all."

I get asked if I'm from England (or Ireland or Scotland) about twice a month on average. I used to think it was because the people who ask are most often emigrants from sultry, warm places like Portugal or Ecuador or India, countries where exposure to people who look like me --pallid redheaded people with freckles and bad teeth-- is often limited to tourists; from Britain.

But G tells me it's not the way I look, it's the way I speak. I don't have or assume a British accent or anything, it's more word choice, phrases, slang; the direct result of living with British grandparents part-time during my first, speech-formative years, and on weekends thereafter all the way up to my pre-teen years. He picks on me about it, calls me 'his little Brit' whenever I blurt out something a bit out of synch with the American lexicon.

"I know you think it's how you look, but I bet it was something you said. Humor me, take me through your conversation..."
"Okay, I walked in, said hello, he said hello, he said it finally stopped raining, I said 'Yes it has...it's just lovely...I cant wait to get to the garden', I put my drink down, he said 'Is that all?' and I said 'No, I'll have three Tootsie Rolls as well', you know, from those little containers on the counter?...and then he asked if I'm from England. I said 'No, why', and he said he just thought I was. Then we said 'Have a nice day' to one another and I left."
"There you go."
"There I go?"
"Yeah, there you go."
"Okay, tell me what's so British about that exchange..."
"People generally don't use lovely to describe the weather, they say it's a 'nice day', or 'nice out'. And we don't get to the garden, we garden, or do the gardening. And then, you know, there's the as well..."

I don't know how to explain it fully, it's a subtle, underlying, uncontrollable by-product of my childhood that plagues and embarrasses me. Because even though I come by my speech honestly I know how counterfeit it seems and I hate it. There's just no way an American-born girl from upstate New York can use British turns of phrase without sounding like an affected asshole. You've met them, the Ivy Leaguers, the Martha Stewart's, that colleague who normally has a thick, Jersey accent, then --after returning from a vacation in London-- comes over to show you snaps of their smashingly brilliant holiday. Madonna. Who the hell wants to sound like Madonna?

It was even worse when I was a kid. By now all but a few Britishisms remain... but back then? Kindergarden was a freaking bloodbath. Hell evidently hath no fury like a five year old whose just been asked if someone could "have a go" on their inchworm. And could you blame them? Since I wasn't in fact FROM England (but talked like I was) what kid wouldn't want to beat the freak-show out of me? It's almost like they cared, wanted to prepare me for the larger and exponentially more cruel world that awaited, more than I could say for my parents. They thought it was cute, they thought they were raising a bilingual child, that somehow saying 'windscreen' instead of 'windshield' gave me a leg up on life, a superior air. Air, I might add, easily squeezed out of you by Timmy "The Crusher" McNeal (bloody Irish).

"Maybe you have a headache because you've been taking too much caffeine."
"Taking caffeine, my little Brit? Here in AMERICA we don't take caffeine, we drink caffeine."
"No... You TAKE drugs, caffeine is a drug..."
"All-right Mz. Doolittle. You're right. I have been taking too much caffeine as of late, and I certainly haven't been taking enough exercise..."
"Stop it! I know I say that as w...too. But it's the same thing! You take a swim, you take a bike ride, you take the dog for a walk...you take exercise!"
"Mmmm-hmmmm."
"It's true."
"Mmmm-hmmmm."

And that's the very worst part. My language is not only seemingly affected and certainly odd, but it's just... bad! As in incorrect, wrong. See, my grandparents --the ones who programmed this whole mess in the first place-- were poor, uneducated Midlanders. Both hale from a small hamlet north of Birmingham, or as they affectionately referred to it "The Armpit of England." When they came to America neither one of them had made it past the equivalent of the sixth grade. Even with higher education, the Queen's English didn't grace the public schools or social circles in their neck of the woods. Their vernacular was so regional in fact, the few times I went to England to visit our relatives I had to have my grandmother translate for me. Literally.

Aunt Ida: "Gaw! Right wisp of a 'fing, eh Irene? I fink oy might av'a tie a line to 'at 'un whywl bavin'"
Me: "hugh?"
Grandma: "She says your thin dear, she was joking that you might go down the drain in the shower."
Me: "Oh."
Ida: "'Edin' up ol' Brum ar yeh? Am yow gooin on th' booze?"
Me: "No, I'm not drunk Auntie."
Grandma: "No dearie, she asked if you were going into Birmingham, and if you were taking the bus."
Me: "Oh."

I'm not clever enough to make that up, trust me. It wasn't until the week we spent up north in the lake district (with the Navy-brat relatives who were taught English at a French private school) that was I able to hold a conversation without an interpreter. I admitted to them that I always thought Monty Python was funny because of those crazy 'made-up' accents they used, until I met Aunt Ida. They laughed. They made me feel better by disclosing they didn't understand a word she said either, her or that whole side of the family.
"Met ol' Warren yet?" said Nigel, my dreamy cousin a million times removed (which was important because when I found out it was okay in the eyes of The Queen and God I spent the week trying to seduce him with my stellar knowledge of Pretenders lyrics).
"Nah, why?" I asked.
"Oh brother, " he chuckled, "I don't even think your Gran could figure him. She'd need Ida to translate to her, then she could explain it to you. It's all 'thrup the apples and pears' with that lot, you know, real cockney shite. It takes all night to pass the bloody peas."

I end up looking like, as G pointed out, Eliza Doolittle at the Ascot Derby. People look at me with the same mixture of intrigue and horror as they did her while she told the story of her Aunt's demise: "...and what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I say is, them that pinched it, done her in." Do you see what I mean? Take exercise? Sometimes I can almost hear people thinking "Look honey, if you wanted to fake like you were English to make yourself feel better than everyone else, you should have tuned into PBS when Blair was addressing Parliament instead of watching The Young Ones"

All I want is your extra time and your...

My pal M and I were talking about one's first kiss, real kiss. Her kiss story was great, epic really, in the way all things pre-adolescent are.

She loved him. Totally. He loved her too, as evidenced by (a) the special Valentine's Day card he gave her and (b) his remarking that she was "the most not-sucky girl he'd ever known" and (c) the lack of protestation when she referred to him as her "boyfriend", even in front of the guys.

They kissed behind a ferris wheel, the center attraction of a traveling carnival that had been plunked down in a parking lot shared by a Buster Brown's, a diner called Hungry's, and the First Episcopal Church of our Lord. The Church protested. Not the kiss, the carnival. They said rides and gambling and tattooed carnies do not contribute to a Christian atmosphere; that a carnival with all its garbage and flashing lights would "ruin the integrity of the plaza and surrounding environs", like that's possible. Come to think of it they probably wouldn't have approved of the kiss either. Anyway, M and, what was his name? Brian? had loved each other since February so by July (when the carnival came to town) it was like they were married already, for fifth graders.

The kiss was preceded by much talk of the kiss. When they would kiss. How they would kiss. Who would tilt their head in which direction. Whether or not tongues would come into play. How tongues come into play. When they agreed to go to the carnival together it was a foregone conclusion the kiss was going to happen, in their minds the carnival came to town for no other reason than to provide a good backdrop, well, and to piss off the Episcopalians. Yet he was nervous. Cute. He kept begging her to ride the ferris wheel one more time. And then the tilt-a-whirl, and then the ferris wheel again. She thought he was going to put the moves on her during their last ferris wheel ride, so she applied a little more Bonnie Bell cotton candy flavored (fitting) lip gloss --the kind on a rope, the kind we learned to wipe OFF in expectation of a kiss as well-seasoned teenagers, until they invented the Revlon Colorstay stuff that rocks through a kiss like a champ-- but he didn't kiss her then, he waited for the ride to stop. He led her behind the ferris wheel and held her hands in his. "I guess we should make-out, huh?" he said. "Yeah" she said. And they did. Right there in front of Buster Brown and God and everyone.

See? Epic.

Jump Up

Today is the birthday of my first (fantasy) husband, Declan Patrick McManus. If you recognize the name you are, most likely, one of his *other* (fantasy) wives, a freak monkey, and probably someone I already know. Histrionic pining will begin at my house at seven. Cake follows.

[Update 2/26: to prove my point, another person I already know recognized the name and, therefore, is a freak monkey. He would, however, prefer to be cast as 'fantasy nephew"]

Wesley Willis. Dead. I encourage fans such as myself to raise a toast: Goodnight you big fat smelly crazy bastard! I will leave you with the lyrics to one of Willis' most popular tunes, "Cut the Mullet", you will not doubt his genius ever again.

"CUT THE MULLET"
Do something about your long, filthy hair
It looks like a rat's nest
Do something about your mullet
Get out the hair clippers, jerk

Cut the mullet, Cut the mullet, Cut the mullet, Cut the mullet

Get the rat's nest off your head
Get that crazy-ass mother off your skull
Take your ass to the barber shop
Tell the barber that you're sick of looking like an asshole

Cut the mullet, Cut the mullet, Cut the mullet, Cut the mullet

The mullet is the reason why people hate you
They are sick of looking at your nappy weed-sack
Nobody wants to look at you with that mullet on your head
Why don't you cut that mullet, you numbskull

Rock over London, rock on Chicago
Insure One, it's the insurance superstore

Blame Canada

Now you might find yourself saying "hmmmm... THAT doesn't look like Canada. It looks like New England" and you'd be right.

Really long story as short as possible:

Saturday, pm, G and I decide to take a spur-of-the-moment vacation. Montreal. Por Qua? 1) he's never been to Canada. 2) G speaks French. 3) we wanted to apologize to Canada in person for being blamed for the blackout of an eighth of North America when it was Ohio's fault all along. 3a) Nose thumbing. Dollar voting. Two bird with one highly politicized stone killing [in regard to] 3b)America's newfound anti-Canadian, and the larger and more publicized anti-anything-French, attitudes. ( I know, I know, how liberal and EDGY of us...how punk rock.)

At first we were concerned that G does not have a current passport, however we were assured by some helpful wag at Amtrak that passports were not necessary for this trip. That Canada is, and I quote, "A Soft Border", that licenses and credit cards and other picture IDs would be just fine. So we booked trains, reserved hotels, travelogued. However when we arrived at Amtrak Sunday morning, bleary eyed from packing and arranging all night, me high on motion sickness pills and he working two hours sleep, the man who inspected our bags said there was a very good chance G would be turned back at the border. Post 9/11 precautions and whatnot. What to do? Risk it?

No, what you do is freak out, argue a bit, decide not to go but refuse to go back home defeated, check out other trains to other destinations. Finally rent a car and start driving east until you hit water, which is not that far from New York, thankfully.

I'll tell more tales of the trip later. A teaser: one story involves catching crabs, the body kind.

je suis d'ici

I tried to fix my website...and I hit a wrong button, and all the lights went out. 52 million people. Jeese.

I'm really sorry. No really.
I'm sorry about all the rotten meat, and spoiled milk, and dvd rentals. I'm sorry about the hot and the lack of take-out and the dreaded ennui. I want to make it up to you.

So I'm going to Canada. No shit. I'm going to hide out in French Canada where they understand that a person can want to be different yet enjoy all the comforts of a capitalistic system. Where you can hit a wrong button and fuck up a whole quarter of the country and still be irie.

I can be reached at the Rue Guy. But just till Wednesday. I'll be back to do more tinkering then.

I'll bring back pictures. And tarts. Both kinds.

Adieu!

She will have her way

There's some things I've been meaning to do around here. By 'meaning' I mean 'too lazy' and by 'here' I mean this web log and by 'things' I mean, well I'm not sure yet. I just know that it took five days to get this meager page up and running lo those many months ago, and I've been shit-scared to change or add anything since. You have to understand that until a brief google search this morning, I thought HTML was waitress shorthand for "hold the mayo & lettuce".

So If you stop by over then next few days and find that my suffragette is upside down, or all the posts have disappeared, or that your mind is being controlled by a flash graphic with subliminal messages...it's only temporary. Do not adjust your screen. But don't question that mysterious urge to send me money (antigeist[at]earthlink[dot]com, paypal friendly).

In the meantime my buddy Monk started a weblog you should read. But don't listen to any of his hoo-ha about how I bullied him into it; all I did was grab a Moveable Type template, stick his name on it, and threaten to post a series of stalker-esque odes to Richard Hatch if he refused to post content of his own. Although I'm sure I will regret it... it will only be a matter of days before you realize he is infinitely more talented and interesting than I am, and abandon the ol' Antigeist for good.

Anyway, I'm off. Now go give the Monk some lovin' dammit.

"ad nauseam"

Okay, enough is enough. It's time to end this tired-ass Karaoke-night description competition once and for all. Despite what Maud and Cowboy Sally and Zeebah and JonMC and the Vidiot and all you other folks have to say on the matter, I am the sole person truly qualified to shed light on the events that occurred last monday. Sure, I was the only sober one of the group --not by my choice mind you, I fully intended to get duly, embarrassingly hammered, however each time I purchased a drink and set it down at the 'blogger' table it disappeared QUITE MYSTERIOUSLY before I could drink it (*cough* sally *cough* cowboy sally *cough cough*)-- but sobriety is not the only reason I lay claim to the truth, the fact is; I am the only one with access to it. I alone hold the all-day, neigh all-lifetime pass my friend...because what those folks don't want you to know is...[expurgated material at the hand of an anonymous person to whom I am quite grateful, particularly for returning those long-lost negatives chronicling my backstage, um, "introduction" to the Beastie Boys in 1991, and the thought-to-be-destroyed 'art' film I made with Sigue Sigue Sputnik in Amsterdam in '87 ].

Um. Ah. What was I about to say? Oh yeah; Karaoke is fun! Fun for all who...love to have the, um, fun.

My favorite Marxist

A big shout out to Karl Liebknecht --lawyer, Marxist, cofounder of the Spartacists, antimilitarist, war-oppositionist, king of the Commies... and one hellova guy-- born today in 1871. To celebrate the day of his birth may I suggest that we cup our hands to our ears, listen intently, and delight in Karl's screams of "I told you so" from the grave. Happy Birthday Karl!

Awwww...they're so cute when they fast!

When I saw this picture I began talking to the screen in the same voice I usually reserve for my dog..."Aren't you da cooootest diddle fryew I eveh did see! Isn't ums? Isn't ums? Why ums is!" But then I found out the Minister General forces the brothers to have their photos taken at the Sears Portrait Studio, and then they have to airbrush the wagon wheel/bales of hay/tumbleweeds backdrop out of the photo themselves.

(and yes Monk, I was googling "monks" for your site)

Scarlett Letter for the new millennium.

Zeebah's got three words for you right wingers:

Cheap. Labor. Conservative.

Well, she has other words for you too but I promised to try and stop swearing so much.

Open letter from my dog:

Why, if you're so AFRAID of dogs, do you instantly behave like either my natural prey or a predator the second you see me? Why do you trade in walking erect for barking and lunging, or scampering and making shrill noises like a wounded bunny --you know, the kind of thing I'm hardwired to track and eat-- why do you do that? I do not want to hurt, maim, or kill humans. Humans love and feed and care for me. I would, however, sink my teeth into a wounded ground crawler if I happened upon one, as is my instinct. And since all creatures are provided with SELF PROTECTION MECHANISMS any living thing will attempt to protect itself from a deranged human who appears to be threatening its life. With this in mind: when you find yourself in the presence of a dog, why do you choose to behave like either prey or an aggressor or both? Why do you do that? Are you just a stupid asshole? Or a stupid asshole who is also misinformed?

I'm sick of being kind-hearted and forgiving about this, apologetic and understanding of bad behavior that is not my fault. Just fuck off, all of you, but before you do know some facts:

First, if you behave like such an idiot because of a legitimate trauma --like having been attacked by a dog-- and you are forever physically and emotionally scarred; call a lawyer. An attack by an unprovoked dog is a crime, as long as you were not commiting a crime when it happened (like breaking into my owner's house). There are laws to protect your right to walk freely without the threat of harm from anyone or anything. If there is a dog with a history of aggressive behavior running around biting people in your neighborhood, it's called battery, there are laws against it. The city will happily remove that dog from the owner's posession, whereafter the owner can be sued for damages, fined, and possibly jailed. I repeat: If there is an dog in your neighborhood attacking people without being provoked to do so, it is a crime. However my sniffing a garbage pail twenty feet from your all-day stoop-fest is not. Know the difference.

Second, if you want to actually get the bastards who train dogs to be aggressive and allow their dogs to harm people, stop teaching your children to scream, run, flail their arms, taunt, tease, abuse, goad, and confuse animals. Dogs in particular. If what you want is to stay away from me and have me stay away from you, exhibiting erratic or threatening behavior is not the way to do it. I have a brain the size of a walnut, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say yours is larger. So, therefore, you must be able to understand that when you or your children begin to LEAP AROUND AND BARK THREATENINGLY at me as I pass, I will either think your child wants to play, or wants to hurt me. Either way I'm gonna run right toward your little cherub which is what you claim to want to avoid. I might mention at this point that if I rip your little sweetie's face off after he or she has barked at me, jumped out at me, or punched me while I lay outside a store waiting for my mommy, that would fall under the heading of "provocation" and you would be shit out of luck in a courtroom, particularly due to the fact that I have no history of voilent behavior.

Third, dogs are domesticated yes, but still animals. We are unpredictable and unstable and potentially dangerous, even the most well-trained and well adjusted; kinda like your snot nosed, dirty, stupid little children. There are many unseen perils that await all of us, our job is to have a fucking clue and pay attention so that we may minimize the dangers in our lives. My point is, go back to point two. If what you want is to keep yourself or your children away from potential danger, stop teaching them to be on the offensive every time they encounter a dog. It's beyond stupid, it may not only provoke an animal to attack, but would ruin your chances of legal retribution if they did. Think about it: Would you attack someone who had to walk out of their way to punch you in the face while you lay there unaware? I thought so.

That said, now you may go fuck yourself.

Woof.

put your eye out, schmut your eye out

Being an aunt rocks. I can't thing of many things I'd rather do than hang out with my niece and nephew, who are my cousins actually. (Insert "dueling banjoes", envision a double-wide and a few cars and boats up on blocks and you've conjured up my family's humble beginnings...got it? Okay.) And any curse word teaching, kid-riling, sugar pushing, stay-up-all-night-letting, drum-set giving aunt or uncle will tell you it's the most perfect relationship to be had in a family. You get all the benefits of having kids without the drag of having to bear them and raise them and educate them and pay for them; not to mention the biggest perk of all (beside the adulation and worship): the ability to finally get back at your sibling for all the shitty things they did to you when you were kids. It's sublime.

Within an hour of my arrival my niece was sporting Snoop Dog braids and referring to the use of the bathroom as "having to take a pa-zizzle in the ta-zizzle". My nephew had taken off his shirt and was delighting the crowd (at my behest) with a newly invented dance move combo: rolling his abs, shaking his (what do you call it aunt Kd? My tail-feather?) and folding his eyelids backward while I sang "Get up off of that funk" at full voice. I hadn't even broken out the case of Jolt yet, the warmup alone had my sister so nervous she --quite contrary to her character-- downed three fingers of vodka. "I hope you're ready for this" she said.
"Oh I'm ready." I replied. To prove my determination I broke out a slide whistle, a few pots and pans, opened the piano, and suggested a little something I like to call 'jam session full contact music wrestling'. My niece screeched with delight at the mere description, my nephew ran to the piano, and my sister poured another drink while quietly repeating the mantra "she's only here for two days, how much damage can she do in two days? she's only here for two days..."

She's got her Catherine Wheels on

A snapshot from my six day trip upstate from which I just returned. The blurry stuff in the picture is not rain, or sleet, or low-laying clouds, or fog creeping up on Mr. Xavier and Splodey Girl's back porch (who were kind enough to invite me to stay and where I took the picture). Nothing earthly and interesting like that. It's just ghosts. They sort of hover around whenever I go home.

See that one on the left? That's my grandmother, the only reliable thing I ever had in life, my best friend, who died suddenly of an inoperable brain tumor Christmas before last. She's right there in front of my maternal grandparents who died of natural causes at reasonably advanced years, more or less (the ones who took me in at six month's old when my mother decided that a guitar player/heroin addict named Fred, marijuana, and fronting a rock and roll band were infinitely more interesting than her husband and child). They're almost obscured by the ghost of my truncated youth, but you can make them out, grandma's the one in gardening gloves, grandpa has the pipe. Next to them is my failed marriage, my ex-husband, and a fully restored victorian-colonial house we finished six weeks before he left for good. Just below the house are the two children (siblings) we were in the process of adopting when we split, see them right there? right beside their truncated youths (at the time of my last inquiry that had not yet been adopted, were wards of the state, had been separated from one another, and were doomed -- because of their age and race-- to be shuffled from one temporary foster home to the next). The puff in the corner are the cats I had to leave behind when I moved to New York, the business I ran with my father which I also abandoned when I moved to New York, a few ex-lovers, several friends with whom I've lost contact, innumerable misplaced goals, and the ideal of what a family should be; to each other, for each other.

But believe it or not, apparitions and all, I had a good time --thanks to my friends. But more on that later. Now I will unpack my things and make some spaghetti and hug my dog and wait for my boy to come home.

I was so much older then...

This is the scene at my house last night. Two eighteen year old boys (a cousin of G and pal) who arrived on our doorstep two days ago, unannounced. Well that's not true. We did get a call the previous night saying they were re-directing their journey to NYC after being detained and ultimately denied entry into Canada for reasons I cannot disclose. Did I mention they are driving cross-country (from Austin) to attend a Phish concert in Maine tomorrow? Phish?

As you can see they are jamming, Phish tunes of course, and there is tie-dye. And Berkenstocks. And white boy dreads. I made them hide the beer so I could send the pictures of their stay to their mom. Yes I gave them the beer since, well, let's just say I'm cool like that.

You know what makes you feel the most like an old lady when you spend two days with eighteen year old boys? Because you'd think it would be the clothes (my parents were wearing almost forty years ago) or the music, or the newness of the world for them, the 'wow, that's soo cool' attitude they sport like a lucky charm; no, it's the urinating. Teenage boys never have to urinate. Like never. I spent two days trolling around Manhattan hopping from coffee-house to fast-food joint to use 'the facilities' while these lads patiently waited outside. They didn't go once. All day. Each day. I finally understand why my Grandparents were constantly haranguing me with, "are you suuuure you don't need to use the washroom?" whenever we traveled. They weren't afraid I'd wet myself. They were jealous of my ability to sit in a car for seven hours and not have to go. I get it now granddad, it makes you feel hell-old. I know I'm old enough that driving across the country to go camping at a music festival with a hundred-thousand other youngsters sounds like utter torture to me (even if it wasn't Phish), or that simply having a beer is no longer a thrill in itself, but I had no idea how much of my life is consumed with being near a toilet.