08.19.04

Mater is stumbling around looking tragic. Her complaints are as bitter as radicchio. The generic Vicodin helps the pain, but she doesn't like feeling "fuzzy." She's deep into martyr-mode; doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, and moving piles of paper from one chair to another. All punctuated with heavy sighs, pained expressions, and the occasional deep coughing fit.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Fled the ol' manse this morning as an act of self-preservation. Also starting my "get rid of all the crap" campaign. Sold more *sob* books. Sold a bunch of CDs, too.

I was surprised at the strange places my musical tastes have gone. How many Tuvan throat-singing CDs does any one person need? How about klezmer? Rai? Bollywood musicals? The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black? Six copies of the 1812? (I kept the one with real church bells and cannon.) Couldn't help myself and picked up an Esquivel CD and a Kraftwerk CD. Maybe listening to mellow Esquivel will keep my blood pressure down as I drive. Or I'll be laughing so hard that it won't matter.

They're working on the road in front of the music shop where I sold my CDs. The drivers reacted normally, *cut to stock scenes of stampeding cattle, buildings in flames, the Hindenberg, and pirhanas attacking a cow* but somehow it didn't bother me as much as usual. Maybe it was relief at being out of the house? Maybe because on the way over, several people threw caution to the winds and actually went the posted speed limit? Madness, I tell you, madness. Next thing you know, they'll have figured out how to stop and not continue to creep forward for 500 feet.

I'm just talking crazy, now.

The flagwoman directing traffic at the construction site was a study in contrasts. Her dark brown, tanned (tanned, as in leather) skin, sun-faded tattoos, whip-cord thin, dirty jeans, tank top with safety-orange vest on top, and oddly out-of-proportion hard hat didn't go with her perfectly-perfect, metallic garnet red, filed to exquisite ovals, fingernails. The look on her face said Fuck with me and you're a damp spot on the pavement. Gracious.

I can't figure out why they wear hard hats. Has there been a rash of self-inflicted wounds from the slow/stop signs that they use?

Had to run the gantlet of construction workers eating lunch outside the large, discount electronics store. *sigh*

On to the grocery store, ba-rump, ba-rump, ba-rump.

How did we live without flushable toilet bowl brushes? Or mango-scented, self-foaming hand cleaner? Sixteen different kinds of pre-packaged, cardboard-crusted, all-the-flavour-thoughtfully-removed, pizza? Sixty-seven different types of toilet paper? The shampoo choices alone were six meters wide and two meters high. Ack.

Read a chunk of Ubu Roi while waiting in the check-out line. Couldn't help but see the Star's screaming headline, "SEE WHO'S GOT CELLULITE!" Like it affects stem cell research, the Shrub, starvation, the hole in the ozone, or...hell, anything worthwhile. To steal a line from Kaz Cooke's book, Real Gorgeous, "Cellulite is French for marketing opportunity." Wisely retreated back into Pere Ubu's obscenities and authoritarianism.

Now I'm back at the ranch. Trying to rev up for TRN writing. Not going well, but will soldier through. You know it's bad when your own story can't engage you. *sigh* This is all part of it, right? Please tell me that this is all part of it.

Dang.

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