Topics

Where's  the full-sized pic of your moustache, and may I use it in a "LOST" poster?

It is the season. This is my family's single biggest holiday, with the most prep, the most decoration, the most shopping, and the biggest party. It's Halloween. It is also the beginning of the I'm Losing My Mind No I Won't Do That For You season, which starts approximately three weeks ago and extends until approximately mid-December. This is when not only is business ramping up, bills are approaching their seasonal highs, and I have a strong need to be in my studio or otherwise engaged in productivity, but personal and family demands are at their peak. On top of that, I am shuffling documents for both a divorce and a refinance, and all the appointments, negotiations, and stress that involves. I will still be fucking around with various online bullshit, but I am not on the market for any kind of time-wasting. I might be taking a lunch break or a mental health break, but most likely I'm checking posts while I wait for products to upload, labels to print, or stringing beads onto a piece of wire, easily the most mind-numbingly dull part of my job, yet one which requires reasonable concentration.

So, basically I'm saying, I'm losing my mind, and whatever it is, no, I won't do that for you.

If I ignore phone calls, PMs, emails, and even face-to-face requests for my time and attention, this is why. I hope you will understand. I should be a normal person again in January.

Things are weird, and they're getting weirder at a rate that is not so much alarming as bemusing. A man walks into his house, howling. An eyeless vendor serves coffee in the courtyard. In the next stall, a man drips blood onto the floor.

And Mattel releases Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken.



http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/10/mattel_has_lost_their_minds.php

So a couple of weeks ago I got a Multnomah County tax statement wherein I was assessed a fee plus a percentage for late payment of my refund. That they owed me.

Just now, I was taking pictures when I was interrupted by the doorbell. Since I was already downstairs, I checked my mail. In my mail was the following letter:

Dear Citimortgage Customer(s):

Or records indicate your mortgage payment is overdue and we have not yet received it. A payment that is received after your due date is considered late. If you have already sent in your payment, thank you. If you have not mailed your payment, please do so today.

As of today, the total amount due is $0.00 including $0.00 in late charges, $0.00 in delinquency expense and $0.00 in other fees.

If we do not receive your payment within 30 days of the scheduled due date, we may report your account as delinquent to the credit bureaus. Late payments, missed payments, or other defaults on your account may be reflected in your credit report.

...

It's like I'm in Bizarro Land or something.

This is just about the most concentrated stupid I have ever seen in my LIFE. OH MY FUCKING GOD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0c5yClip4o

... why they are always being persecuted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iClHpepBY1I

 

Mark Growden is playing in SLC, she NEEDS to go see him! It's an orgasm a minute! Holy fuck!

http://feeds.artistdata.com/bit2hnrqJ

As soon as I'm caught up I'm buying a half-kilo of each. I'm so excited! FUCK

http://www.sprucepinebatch.com/ullmanX.html

You guys have NO idea. These are what were once known as "Loetz" colors. They are unfuckingbelievable. I am creaming myself over them as we speak.

 

Possibly the unintentionally funniest tattoo EVER. NSFW. Read the comments.

First sentence is funny, the rest not really.

http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/S056015.htm

This guy has the prettiest voice and I have listened to this song maybe 30 times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpywLP6oP1o&feature=player_profilepage

In addition to assorted bad breaks and pleasant surprises, opportunities and insults, life serves up the occasional pink unicorn. The three-dollar bill; the nun with a beard; the sentence, to borrow from the Lewis Carroll poem, that gyres and gimbles in the wabe.

An experience, in short, that violates all logic and expectation. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that such anomalies produced a profound "sensation of the absurd," and he wasn't the only one who took them seriously. Freud, in an essay called "The Uncanny," traced the sensation to a fear of death, of castration or of "something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light."

At best, the feeling is disorienting. At worst, it's creepy.

Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?_r=3

http://www.fox8.com/news/wjw-news-chardon-sunoco-gas-station-fire,0,6496610.story

The guy who put out the fire and lifted the gas pump off the trapped man is a glassworker friend of mine. Holy shit.

Not kidding. It's so cute!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8302535.stm

She just showed me this drawing, and while the drawing itself isn't super-duper-impressive, I was intrigued by her technique.

http://www.ratemydrawings.com/drawings/originals/576767.html

I've never seen anyone draw people in quite that order, before.

YOUR GIANT PUPPETS ARE AMAZING!

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/the_berlin_reunion.html

I BET YOU THOUGHT THIS THREAD WAS GOING TO BE FULL OF CONTENT, LIKE TGRR'S THREADS ARE

BUT NO

INSTEAD I GIVE YOU BOX OWL:




From http://jalopnik.com/5376578/box-owl-is-watching-your-nissan

I decided to go ahead and eat nothing but cheeseburgers this month. I'm kind of still working my way up to it, but I started a blog:

http://cheeseburgerexperiment.blogspot.com/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/

[Part 1]

This happened about 3 years ago, but I just ran across this file and thought it might be of some entertainment value.

Part 1

So tomorrow

Bright and motherfucking early, I will be having my tonsils removed and some "work" (?) done to my sinuses. I don't know what "work" means in this context, I presume it's like a Roto-Rooter type of thing.

Also, I am quietly freaking out because I have never had general anesthesia before and the idea of being unconscious and having people doing shit to me is really disturbing. I mean, with they grubby hands in my mouf and shit. You know they're not gentle when the patient is unconscious. I mean, really. They'll be ranking around on my head like it's a gearstick knob. I'm trying not to think about it, but then not thinking about that causes me to think about how the largest risk of death from complications in most surgeries has nothing to do with the surgery; it's the anesthesia. So I'm trying to think about shopping, or what kinds of things I've forgotten to get done, like is there still wet laundry in the washing machine?

I'm going to be really fried and also narcoticked out of my membrane for the next few days, so if there is laundry in the washing machine, it will smell horrible by the time I get to it. Also I won't be able to talk, or eat anything that isn't some variation on cold and pureed. GOOD TIMES!

The thing is, though, that after I heal from this, I will no longer have a throat or sinus infection. I don't even know what that FEELS like. Having the inside of my neck and head be infected is a way of life. It sounds amazing, impossible, miraculous, for all that to be gone. Like people in LA trying to imagine imagine clean fresh tap water. Hallelujah!


Part 2

Post-op update

Actually I got back last night but I was too thrashed to post anything.

So I was totally not expecting the main part of my surgery to be the sinus thing. I thought that was kind of an afterthought, more of a "hey as long as we're in here anyway" but then it turned out that my left sinus cavity was blocked by a huge cyst and has been filled with festering solid matter for, evidently, years, and my right one was sporting a slightly smaller cyst. In the meantime my turbinates had swollen to like four times their normal size, so he "trimmed" them, which sounds like the grossest thing evar. I think he might have done something to my deviated septum as well.

My nose is all swollen and my face hurts. Also an astonishing amount of blood keeps coming from it, which is apparently normal and fine. It's slowed down since last night; I sat over a bucket last night and just let it flow because I got tired of changing the gauze. There's some sort of plastic framework inside my nostrils, which I get taken out on Monday.

Compared to the sinus reaming, the tonsils are a minimal inconvenience, although solid food would be nice. Veggie broth with silken tofu cubes is really not so bad though. Also I have the biggest goddamn bottle of oxycodone and also, for real, a whole quart bottle of liquid hydrocodone. I am waiting for Moxley to come home with some tofutti and other foods more substantial than jell-o and popsicles.

I didn't really know I was having surgery so soon, BTW. The appointment to have my tonsils just *looked at* was on Monday the 12th, they said "we definitely should take these out, let's look at those sinuses too" and then somehow everything went really fast... everyone I called had an opening that very afternoon, there was a surgery slot open Friday morning at Emanuel, right down the street from my house. The doc got the slides from the sinus CT the afternoon before and realized what a mess I had in there, so he talked to me before I went under to get my approval, and then bam, there I was waking up three hours later! It would have taken a month to get in normally, but somehow I feel like it was meant to go this way.


Part 3

Shunt removal fun

My friend Cori took me to have some shunts removed from my sinuses a couple days ago. The surgeon had called them "a little framework" and said they would "slide right out".

NO. NO NO NO. They were not LITTLE, to start with. They were the size of my nose, but inside my nose. No wonder I looked the way I did! (ie NOT PRETTY.)

My surgeon was in surgery all day so a younger partner was handling the removal. He shined a little light up there, said "OK, let me just check out what he's got going on, this will just take a minute" then had me hold a plastic tray (in case I needed to spit, he said), hosed down the inside of my nose with a little squirty-sucky device, got a little tweezer-thing and started pulling. I started saying "AAAAHHHHHHH" because OMG. No, really. Just OMG. Then he stopped and said "I'm so sorry, it appears that he did stitch those into place - I couldn't see the stitches because of the clotting. I just need to grab a suture scissors real quick..." and he started looking for suture scissors. And not finding them. And sweating. Yes, the doctor. Sweat was beading up all over his upper lip and brow, and he had a very definite "remain calm" air about him as he opened the door and yelled into the hallway "ONA CAN YOU FIND SOMETHING FOR ME?" Ona came in (she is a real sweetie, and so kind to me every time I see her) and started looking for the suture scissors. Meanwhile, I am sitting in the chair with this huge thing half-in, half-out, feeling a lot like it was trying to rip my face apart.

Finally (it was probably only 30 seconds or so) Ona found the scissors, the doctor snipped all the stitches, asked me if I was going to pass out or anything, apologized a million more times, and finished pulling the shunts out. It was... not very pleasant. Also he kept asking me if I was OK, which, you know, I was OK mostly in the "Well I'm not actually IN mortal danger right now" sort of way.

And then he rinsed me thoroughly (while I tried to as hard as possible to avoid looking at the objects in the tray I WAS STILL HOLDING) and told me to come back next week to have the other shunt removed. THE OTHER SHUNT? Yes, apparently there is still one in my head somewhere. I don't know exactly where. He said it should be a piece of cake. Then he told me to rinse my sinuses with saline solution once an hour to flush the clots out, and sent me on my merry way.

I will not talk about the clots right now. I am sure you can imagine just fine and don't need to have it detailed. I will tell you one thing, and that is that after three times in labor and childbirth, I can assure you that I like the labor and childbirth better.


Part 4

(2 weeks later)
I am trying to convince M. that we should start an acoustic folk band called "Shuntcake". So far he's not going for it.

In case you were wondering about the other shunt, it turned out there were two of them and they weren't small. They were WAYYYY up in my head somewhere, and the doctor reached in with little forceps and yarded them out. Oh my god. I don't want to talk about it.

Anyway, then I went to Sacramento, because obviously that was a good idea. While I was there my throat hemmorhaged twice, which is not, I mean really not, as pleasant as it sounds. Basically at 3 am your throat fills up with blood and if you swallow it you end up throwing up blood and if you tilt your head forward the blood runs out like sauce onto the floor or the sink or whatever is in front of you. And in order to get something, like ice water which you might want to gargle to try to stop the bleeding, you have to jam your mouth full of tissues and scuttle in a hunched-over position into the kitchen, where you try to get ice and popsicles out of the freezer without looking up because of the way the blood pools in the back of your throat, and the tissues have absorbed as much blood as they can hold and are dripping a viscous trail on the kitchen floor. And somehow a clot forms, a huge soft choking clot the consistency of liver and the size of a wet dead mouse, and you scuttle back to the bathroom with your ice water and your trail of sauce, so you can gargle the ice water and eat popsicles and spit blood until the clot makes you gag and gag and gag and then it slides out of your throat and splats into the sink, fat and red and unbelievable. You are shaking and completely freaked out but it's all too much, too wierd, too surreal to cry about. So you eat more popsicles and fall asleep and three hours later you wake up swallowing, swallowing, swallowing FAST like you're drinking a glass of milk, and in the seconds between sleeping and waking it seems like you have the most incredible post-nasal drip, but then you realize it's blood, no not again, not THAT again, and you try not to drip on the way to the bathroom where you throw up black and red cottage cheese and start all over again.

And then you are afraid to go to sleep, or ever stop eating popsicles, ever ever. You love popsicles sooo much.

Then I came home and was fine for a week and then hemmorhaged two more times, I think it's something about weekends.

The first time I learned that you should not have sex right after a tonsillectomy. You have no idea how hot it is to be facedown in a pillow having the love delivered right to you and have to say "Hey baby, we have to finish up because there's a whole lot of blood coming right out of my mouth". I think it is, for most people, completely not hot at all. That's how hot it is.

The second time I learned that you should not sit in a chair and read a book right after a tonsillectomy, and the third and fourth times I learned that you should not sleep right after a tonsillectomy, or really even two weeks later. To make sure I don't forget about that, I still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night from dreaming I'm swallowing blood.

But now, now I am not bleeding or even in any particular pain. I can breathe through my nose and mostly swallow. I can eat solid foods and there is hardly ever any blood involved. I'm not completely healed, but I'm close enough. A lot of liver and spinach and collard greens have gone a long way to restore my energy. I think in the long run this will turn out to be totally worth it.

Oh yeah

At some point while I was taking a shower a piece of bone fell out of my nose. Apparently when they correct a deviated septum it involves cutting through some bone and a piece got lost in there and was stuck to the side of my nasal passage with a scab, and when the scab came off I got a nice keepsake.

I finally watched part of this the other night. I was wondering what anyone else thinks of it; brilliant art? Dadaist bullshit? Something else? Something in between?

Some of the sets were absolutely incredible.

IS THAT A SHIRTLESS ALEX TREBEK IN YOUR AVATAR?

WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DO IT TO US, CRAMULUS?

I think I'm going to declare my house a convent. Who's in?

BUT YOU HAVE TO USE LUBE OR THEY DRY OUT, AND YOU CAN'T GET RAPE FROM RAISINS.

Perhaps you should have put a little more thought into the name of your blog.

http://blog.peta.org/

http://vimeo.com/6428069

Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn't the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.

I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper.

Here I've posted a short video made with the photo, the music and the score (composed by the birds).

My friend left himself logged into Facebook on my computer! What should his status update be?

Britspags, only you could come up with a scenario so fucking ridiculous, or wrap it up with quotes so hilarious.  

'If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they'll miss lots of special offers.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214367/Jedi-church-founder-thrown-Tesco-refusing-remove-hood-left-emotionally-humiliated.html#ixzz0RTyrwfAj

So although I paid everything on time (ie in advance), I couldn't get my books done so I filed an extension on my taxes and finally got them in a couple months ago. Today I received a statement from the State of Oregon:

Net tax: 4977.00
Taxes withheld: 2,561.00
Payments received prior to return: 2,483.00
Overpayment: 67.00
Penalty: 47.45
Interest on unpaid tax: 20.85
Balance due: 1.30

So as you see, although I overpaid, I paid interest on the unpaid tax.  

Weekend fun, zombie-style!

http://blogs.wweek.com/news/2009/09/14/zombies-wanted-free-undead-vacation-for-human-targets-seriously/

OMG THIS IS CUTE!

http://www.break.com/index/dumb-cat-cant-figure-out-how-to-drink.html

This is EXACTLY the kind of stuff we should be coming up with. Unfortunately, reality keeps trumping us.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090903/ap_on_re_us/us_shot_in_court

NIXON WAS AWESOME.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?_r=1

We parked on the street that bridges a small woodsy annex to Forest Park, and prepared ourselves as quietly as we could, putting on our water shoes and trying to minimize the clinking of the spraycans in our backpacks. "Do either of you have cigarettes?" Katie said, a golden-blonde haloed silhouette against the dim light shining from one window of the house we were in front of. Jay made a little noise of excitement and riffled through his pockets. "Yes!" he said, "I remembered them!" and proffered her his pack. "That's OK", she said,  "I just wanted them for later on".  He smiled with satisfied anticipation, and pocketed them.

I adjusted a strap on my pack, tossed my street shoes in the car, and closed the door. "Everyone ready?" I said, bouncing a bit on the balls of my feet.

My friends and I walked without lighting down the stairs beside the bridge, occasionally making soft wisecracks that I don't remember at all. The comraderie was thick in the air between us, binding us like the atoms in a molecule. We could hardly see each other in the new-moon night darkness, our descending feet making the metal staircase ring softly. Jay was in front, his lankiness and shorn head just a shadow against the deeper shadow of the park. Katie was behind me, warm and faintly flower-scented, intermittently chuckling softly or saying a quiet "Ooh!" in her enthusiasm for the evening.

We reached ground and made for the grate. It's a huge wooden structure built of 4x10" lumber, straddling the creek that runs through the park to keep large forest debris out of the culvert. "Hold up, guys, I have to pee" I said, and made for the deeper shadow under the big maple that overhangs one of the park picnic tables. I couldn't see it, but I know its location intimately from many daytime visits. My friends made sounds of acquiescence and found their way to other spots near the edge of the park's grassy open, and as I squatted in the dark I could pick out their locations by the rattle of piss on the dead leaves and undergrowth.

I finished, pulled up my underwear and flipped down my skirt. "Done!" I said, and we coalesced out of the darkness and stood at the end of the grate. Even in a night with a bare sliver of moon and the park's lonely electric lightpole, the starkness of beams against the black below made an easy walkway for us to pick our way across to where the gap lay. Going first, I handed my pack to Jay, sat down at the edge of the gap, slung one leg down feeling for the cross-beam below, then braced my hands on the edge and dropped into it. Two steps, one onto the concrete pier and one onto the ground, and I called up for my pack. Jay dropped it down and I riffled for my headlamp as first Katie, then Jay dropped through the gap.

A little reluctant to interrupt the dark with our lights,  we made our way toward the opening with them in hand, turned off. Katie, going barefoot, kicked off her shoes on the little dirt island on which we had landed, and then entered the shallow water, mud squelching between her toes. "Ooooh, I always forget how deep the mud is!" she said softly, her whisper an octave higher than usual. I stretched the elastic harness of my headlamp over my ponytail and switched the light on, inadvertently catching it in her widened eyes before I moved aside.

"I'm going in! Are we all ready? Can we go?" Jay said, ankle-deep in the muddy middle between the island and the entrance to the culvert, an open maw behind him, gorgeous curved masonry six feet high and twelve feet wide inviting the creek to come into it down the two miles it runs under the city before pouring it into the river. "OK, let's do it!" I said, and we sloshed through the muddy bottom and stepped up into the concrete hole. The creek here, in August, is a trickle in the bottom, running over some cables we've guessed at being sensors of speed and temperature. There are bolts emerging from the ceiling here, and the taller ones, Katie and Jay, have to be wary of gouging their heads. I, much shorter, am safe.

We walked a bit deeper in and my friends switched on their headlamps. The pipe transitions from an oval to a round about six and a half feet in diameter, far more comfortable for my taller companions. We were silent at first, but as we make our way down, walking in the cold, shallow water, we started talking; bantering and planning what we wanted to paint. We have made an art project of it, a hidden gallery, and even over our lifetimes there is so much blank concrete canvas that we can't hope to cover it all, so we try to space them so that there is something to see every little while to keep the monotony of pipe and darkness from seeming so strong.

The echo of the water down the pipe, and our own voices, is eerie and seems sometimes to echo back another adventuring party, deeper down the pipe. We've learned mostly to ignore it and not be creeped out, but sometimes, nonetheless, we stop and darken our lights, standing for a minute in silence to try and hear voices from below or above us. Once, doing this, we smelled paint fumes and heard unmistakable voices from above, and we screeched and moaned to make the echoes carry awful sounds back up; when we emerged an hour later, we found half-finished graffiti near the mouth of the pipe. We had frightened away some other adventuring hoodlums, even more scared of the dark and the prospect of meeting strangers underground than we were.

The pipe goes down a steep decline, and the water pools at the bottom almost knee-deep in the dry season. Just past this was where we planned to paint our next gallery; a tribute to sandwiches. There is a curve in the pipe just where the water starts running briskly again, and after we round the curve a straightaway, long, shallow, with blank gray walls. Few vandals, hoodlums, or artists make it this far down, and it begs to be painted. We were primed, eager by this point, rattling the cans in our backpacks with our nervous jostling. "Smoke break?" I said, and we all held close for a moment while Jay pulled out his cigarettes. I slipped my pack off one shoulder and slung it from my arm to zip it open and pull out the pint of bourbon I had stowed. "Oh sweet!" said Katie, "This is perfection!" Jay, quiet, looked pleased and lit us each a cigarette before accepting a swig.

We braced our backs against the curvature of the walls and rested, holding our packs out of the water as we passed the bottle and sucked our cigarettes, listening to the echoing gurgle of the water and the occasional ominous moan from down the pipe, caused by the heavy traffic over the large chamber at the end. That wasn't our destination tonight; Jay is both tall and claustrophobic, and the pipe narrows by nearly a foot halfway there.

Finishing, we stood, stretched, and continued into the dark. Jay, in the lead, stopped suddenly, and I bumped into him. "What the FUCK" he said, and I looked past him into the circular depth. All the hairs on my body stood up. "No fucking way..." my heart was pounding, my brain trying to comprehend what I saw. Katie crowded up behind us, and, startled, said "No shit? What the hell?" right in my ear. Jay pulled out his big flashlight and shined it on the incomprehensible object obstructing the pipe.

It was a guy. In a lawn chair. Just a dude, relaxing in a lawn chair in the dark, more than a half-mile down a water diversion pipe.

Not sure whether it was at all a good idea, we continued toward him, waiting for some acknowledgement or motion or anything to make this less creepy. "Jesus, what if he's dead?" Jay whispered to us, and Katie and I both said "Oh fuck" in unison. As we drew closer I could see that he was wearing a baseball cap, a Hawaiian shirt, and sunglasses. He wasn't dead. There was a magazine in his lap with pictures of very healthy-looking tan girls doing various pornographic things to guys making overly enthusiastic faces. He was a lean man, a bit grizzled, with a moustache and soul patch, and when we came right up on him and stopped, he, not looking at us, raised his hand in a sort of mellow greeting. We all reflexively raised our hands and I said an awkward "Hey". I could see a tattoo on the back of his arm. In upper case, it spelled out the word "PIE".

We just sort of stood there dumbfounded for a minute. Finally, Katie turned slowly around and just started walking away. The man raised his hand again in a quasi-wave, and I stammered a barely-vocalized "Bye" before turning to follow her, Jay right on my heels. We didn't say a word until we were back at the car. "I don't know what to do with that experience," Katie said, "I really, really don't."

That about sums it up.

http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

Aftermath 65, (December 23), is now the holyday known as "Circlemas", on which circles are pondered, noticed, and appreciated. To celebrate Circlemas, you may wish to decorate yourself, your household, or other things with circles and circular patterns, and partake only of circular foods such as cake, pie, and pizza.

Or, you may not.

People who make the awesome calendar .pdf, would you mind terribly adding it to the 3176 calendar? It would be completely fantastic if you would.

This time they will be printed in safety orange on a super gay shade of lapis blue. These are American Apparel men's and girlie T's, and they will be about $12 each this time since I'm not going the el cheapo route. They cost about $4-$5 to ship domestically, and I'll be asking actual shipping costs this time since I'm not rolling in dough anymore.

Here's what I'm asking of you.

If you want one, PM me the size you want, and your address. Even if I already have your address, I want it again, to avoid a volley of last minute "I lost your address" PMs. I am ordering ONLY what people request, so I won't have any extras at all.

If a lot of people want shirts, they will be cheaper because I'll get a discount on printing. I will PM your total including exact shipping when they're ready to ship, and I take Paypal, money order, or personal check.

It is quite evident that Pagan Network is the most racist forum on the internet, or maybe even just the most racist forum of any kind, period.

From some fat bald 54-year-old:

Nikola Tesla? I've got a book of his patent filings. Makes interesting reading, mostly.

My real hero is Ben Franklin. Anyone who could pull off being a preeminent scientist and randy enough to impress the royal court of France has got to be worthy of worship.

There is something about your energy that really calls out to me. Ever been tied up and photographed?

Michael

[Email submissions to raisingeris@gmail.com]

Hello, Discordian parent-types, older siblings and writers! I am working on a book project on Discordian parenting, and after reading the fabulous Intermittens #7 I realized that it would be a far richer project (not to mention far more likely to actually be completed) if it were collaborative rather than solitary. What I am looking for is essays on parenting with a Discordian bent, project ideas for little Discordians, and any other writings (memoirs, songs, games, poetry and recipes) that are Discordian and have something to do with kids.

My goal is to get it in front of as many eyes as possible; the idea of a Discordian parenting book on the shelves at Barnes & Noble cracks me up. A Real Live Publisher will do the best job of that, and while unlikely to lead to fame or fortune, it would be a nice publication credit for everyone involved. To that end, I will pitch this book to Llewellyn press (and if that fails, smaller presses; suggestions gratefully accepted) for big-girl publication in the hope that this will end up on shelves in the big chain stores. If it is not accepted by any third-party publishing companies, I'll self-publish it as Fnord Press. In either case, submissions will be copyrighted to the authors and royalties apportioned equally between all contributors, unless an author specifically wishes to opt out and release their work under a Creative Commons license.

Due to my intentions to submit this book to third-party publishers, I cannot accept previously published work, or work that is licensed under the Creative Commons no-profit license.

Email submissions to raisingeris@gmail.com. Please make sure you include the name you wish to have your contribution credited to. If this goes to publication with a "real" publishing house I will also need your legal name and mailing address for royalties. Your legal identity will be held in strictest confidentiality.

Please repost this far and wide!

I Googled that phrase and was surprised when principiadiscordia.com wasn't the top result, considering how this forum is essentially a cesspool of backbiting jackasses who do nothing but snipe at new users from their ivory towers, plot ways to upset people, and make a point of being total dicks to random strangers on the internet. If this isn't the worst forum on the web, I don't even want to know what is.

I put my name in the title so I can find it again. I know, I'm retarded!

I just put the naked lady painting in the kiln for the second firing. I'm so excited/nervous!

In only 12 short hours I will know whether this worked.

Heartbreak Perfume

The French chemist Luca Turin
writes exquisite descriptions of
scent, in lyrical prose keen as
his sense of smell.

Each time a relationship ends
I buy a new perfume, because
the old one reminds me of
something I lost.

Every man I've loved has his
own half-empty bottle sitting
untouched, gathering dust on
my bathroom shelf.

What made me think it was a
good idea to wear this one for
you, after Turin wrote that it
smells like heartbreak?

The girl I live with is a dumpster-diver, and through her I've become one too. We've been friends for a while now, but I'm not sure exactly how long... eight years perhaps? She is tall and blond, a classic beauty with a tiny waist and old-fashioned ideas. She is from a wealthy family, and travels abroad at least once a year. She is a graduate student of chemistry, and a talented artist. She brings new definition to the term "eccentric". Everyone always said that we were a perfect match, and now we live together in a house that is growing slowly more and more full of things, insane things which we made or found or were gifted to us anonymously by friends passing by in the night.

Mostly, though, it's filling with things from dumpsters.

I know that over time people have begun thinking of us differently. We are building our future out of the things we bring home, a future made out of pieces of other people's pasts. Each dumpster contains an entire story; a bankrupt church with old choir robes, conference tables and a broken organ, or the former crack house with filthy clothes and unsalvageable, vomit-stained furniture. There are some dumpsters that you know, before climbing up and peeking over the edge, that you would need a hazmat suit to climb into.

Some dumpsters tell you, in fragments night after night, about the person whose life is being emptied box by box into it, for portage to the landfill. The mildewed makeshift endtable at first tells of poverty, but soon boxes of toiletries start to tell a story of thriftiness, of always being prepared for the future. An entire case of shampoo; four boxes of Irish Spring. Thousands of tampons. She was a hoarder, the former owner of what is now trash. We guess from her hats and the brightness of her costume jewelry that she was black, and from the beautiful coat with a fur collar that she was imposing in stature. There are no religious mementos... perhaps she was an atheist, or simply not a churchgoer. Perhaps those things were given away to family. In the dozens of romance novels, we find a name written in the front cover. These things come to live with us.

In the neighborhood, we unfold our story as we go out night after night and retrieve pieces of other stories, bring them home to hoard in our history. We can see ourselves growing old, doing this; we can see the overwhelmed look on the faces of the executors of our estate as they say "What are we going to do with all this junk? Should we just get a dumpster?" Those old ladies that lived in that house... the neighbors say they used to go out at night and scavenge through the trash. Their house is full of junk, of strange things rescued from the dump. They always seemed normal enough when you talked to them, but you could see them bringing things home all the time...

Tonight we're visiting the dumpster of a lonely old man who lived on 13th. He was really into Westerns, and his Chinese pornography collection is amazing.

This is the schtick:

"I'm a creative thwarted artist compromising my freedom for domesticity".

We all need to recognize that living our lives, normal lives that include basic amenities like, say, a comfortable home and the luxury of a partner, all requires sacrifice of something on some level, just as having freedom to pursue our artistic dreams fully would require sacrificing something else, like maybe having a partner and a comfortable home. It is a balancing act, for everyone all the time, and all of life requires compromise.

The stifled artist-angst thing is not something I have great patience for. For one thing, I consider it little more than a lame excuse; a cheap out from actually doing the work. If you're an artist, you can be an artist in a crappy apartment alone or you can be an artist in a comfortable home with a partner. Same artist. If you were alone in a crappy apartment, you would simply find another excuse for feeling like a thwarted artist; that blockage isn't coming from outside. That has always chapped my hide... the people who think they're being held back artistically by the comforts of domestic life. It's crap. All of it. And it's lazy, disingenuous crap at best. It may "feel" romantic to be a thwarted artist when you're in the throes of it, but in the end it's unproductive, creatively hypocritical bullshit that leaves you with no art and no fulfillment. It's the fucking Mentos of angst.

If you are a great person and a creative brain, an artist, and you think you are not fulfilling your creative potential, you need to look inside yourself for what's holding you up, not externalize it and project it on your relationship or your job or your life circumstances. Not on your home, your kids, or your partner. You need to recognize that you are not some fundamentally different creature; that others, too, have sacrificed and compromised and sometimes miss the single, free life of intellectual pursuit and hot 3-am makeout sessions and writing and being a star. Everyone does; every single person. Great artists have, and so have non-artists. But we all grow up and we all change the ways in which we pursue those things, and what sacrifice and compromise we make hopefully leads us to the growth of other things or other ways of expression that we wanted MORE.

OR KILL ME.

... For Realness.

I started this page, but I really have no idea what I'm doing. Anyone want to help flesh it out?

http://discordia.wikia.com/wiki/Really_Real_Discordians

What's the status with this? Lots of other projects are being completed, and this one seems to have simply vanished.

...is in the hospital. He says to tell you all to fuck off.

... embarrassing or not. I will likely edit this post as I remember books I'd forgotten.

Formative books I read as a young girl between the ages of 6-12:

Watership Down
The Book of the Dun Cow
Stranger in a Strange Land
I will Fear No Evil
Duncton Wood
Asimov (issue unknown)
The White Dragon
Clan of the Cave Bear
Flowers for Algernon
The Earthsea Trilogy
The Jungle Book
Little Women
Tom Sawyer
Huckleberry Finn
The Tripod Trilogy