Would You Like a Cup of Tea?

Laura Ingalls Wilder Did This Everyday

2005-10-20T12:37:00.000-04:00

I'm so sad about moving sometimes. Yesterday the terminex man didn't believe my cheerful assurances that our turkey wouldn't bite him so I had to accompany him (the man not the turkey) to our backyard as protection. To be fair, the turkey has been once again misusing his superior poultry intelligence to outwit the chickens. He has discovered that humans often have food and so have deduced that walking up to humans, cooing a few times and then staring at them with hunger in his eyes is the way to go. Now that he's around 25 pounds and taller than your average dog this is a little bit scary.
Sometime next year, after I've persuaded the downstairs vegans, I will have my own flock of golden yellow chickens. Then I will die of bird flu.

Aren't you glad we're alphas?

2005-10-20T00:12:00.000-04:00

The company I work for is corporate but aescetic in that annoying left-wing, luke-warm showers kind of way. We use only donated office space, to save valuable cash for the improvished African children. The people who work out of our CT office get to work in the world headquarters of a certain evil corporation but we here in Michigan get spare cubicles in one of our high schools.
It's a magnet school that prides itself on diversity and draws from the 8 wealthiest school districts in the wealthiest county in the state (and third wealthist in the country)*. It's like a training ground for the future alphas of America.
These kids are required to choose an afterschool activity like Beginning Hindi, Scuba Diving in the Galapagos and Build Your Own Computer, costs of which range from $300-$2500. They, at the age of 15 can boast such resume builders as "month spent in South Africa with family" and "spent 2 years living in Germany" and "interned at prestigious law firm for the summer".
The weird thing is, I always felt pretty conscious of my own list of privileges, a family that paid for college, a good suburban public education, middle-class parents who help me out when money is tight. I unconcsiously but, guiltily, ranked myself amoung the alphas of the world. But spending any time with these kids just proves that I'll still, with all my advantage, never be able to compete with that kind of born and bred alpha-osity.
I dont' hold it against the kids. They are, overwhelmingly good hearted and respectful, hard workers and really want to make the world a better place. They didn't choose to be alphas. It adds a creepy tension to the cheerful rivalry my co-worker and I have over our favorite schools. The Alpha Institute is her favorite of her 4 schools and she is rooting for them. My favorite school out of my three is a in an impovished neighborhood that I love and am moving to soon. Even when we are jokingly comparing her student's 178 hours of community service to my students' 156 hours, there's this tiny unnecesary element of outrage I feel that one group of good hearted 14 year olds has as many advantages as this other equally good hearted group has obstacles.
Pulling down the self-esteem of a high school kid is easy and cruel but I want to find some way of reminding the alphas when they come together with other schools of the injustice that gives them all the things they have.

*it's the diversity claim that irks me the most. Sure the student come from many different countries but there are, at my count, 4 black students. Yeah, that's diverse.

Oh-Em-Gee

2005-10-18T09:50:00.000-04:00

Have you seen our mayor, internet? If not, you really need to take a look, the following anecdote is much, much less funny without being able to visualize him.
Also, do you know he refers to himself at the "hip-hop mayor"? Do you know his entourage is bigger than Britney Spears' and that he spends city money on strippers and lobster and lobster for strippers? Okay, now you do.
So this nice woman came by yesterday and internet, she had really good hair, which is the new standard by which I judge people. There is so much bad hair in the world that people who take the time to have good hair deserve a little extra appreciation. Anyway, this woman with good hair came by and explained that she had arranged a roudtable discussion between residents of Woodbridge and the mayor and council members about issues that specificly affect our neighborhood. They were good issues; development and gentrification, the role of the arts in the city, gay marriage*. But, the art gallery where she was going to have it is so totally not up to code.
So, she wanted to have it at my house. You know, the house that is just one big zoning violation wrapped in black mold wrapped in chicken poop. As cool as it would be to sit on our living room and yell at the mayor for being SUCH A STUPID MOTHERFUCKER AS TO CANCEL BULK TRASH PICKUP. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?, we told her we'd get back to her.
Oh boy, did we giggle at the thought of Kwame Kilpatrick trying to fit his massive, former linebacker self into our tiny bathroom, and wondering how many of his equally massive bodyguards it would take to just fucking break our house.
But we had to tell her no. We'd have too hard a time finding someone to babysit our illegal poultry for the evening.

*This reveals alot about the character of my soon-to-be ex-neighborhood and why it is the Dupont Circle of Detroit.

testing

2005-10-16T22:13:00.000-04:00

blogger, you are such a butt

oh the awkwardness!

2005-10-13T11:28:00.000-04:00

I did my first 4 work-required presentations to 4 classrooms full of high school students this monday. It's a good sign, I hope, that by the fourth I was no longer paralyzed with nervousness.
I am so damn intimidated by high school students. jeebus.
Somehow, during the presentation I was making the senior physics studens the topic veered into Female Genital Mutilation. I mean, god damn. I really wanted to bring it up because it is so relevent to the work my organization does. We've built 15 schools in Mali in the past five years and I really think that advancing educational oppurtunities in areas where FGM happens is the most effect and least culturally imperialist way to stop it. The villages where we've built have 100% illiteracy rate. These are Muslim communities where no one knows how to actually read the Koran so they are open to all sorts of misonceptions and superstitions about what the Koran actually says. Now there's some 20,000 kids who are going to grow up literate and able to look at the Koran and notice that it pretty much straight out forbids this kind of mutilation of women. Plus, we require the villages to commit to educating women and men equally so a whole generation of girls are going to grow up with the tools to stop this from happening to their daughters.
Nonetheless, I will face all the tortures of hell before I will say "clitoris" in front of a bunch of 17 year olds. Damn. Fortunatly, the teacher came to my aid. She has, evidently, no such squeamishness. The 3 girls in the class were absolutly incensed and 2 of them came to the afterschool meeting I held.
Yay.

Breaking up is haaaaard too-ooo-oooo do

2005-10-13T10:34:00.000-04:00

I'm moving at the end of the month. My busy new lifestyle is no longer compatible with the inconsistent hot water, leaky roof and late night heavy metal practices that are a daily occurence at the compound. My new apartment seems so plush in comparison. I'll even have a washing machine! and a claw footed tub! and a kitchen with windows!
But, in a lot of ways, I'm just moving to much larger compound. The neighborhood I'm moving to has been Red Row for the past hundred odd years and the downstairs neighbors are a pair of anti-government militants who I tend to normally avoid because they are too cool for school. As part of my new (school) year's resolution to be more socially active I've decided to give Sid and Nancy downstairs a try. They really are good hearted kids once you get past the attitude.
Also, I've cleared it with my new roomate. She is totally down with getting some chickens.

Notes from the Staff Meeting

2005-10-05T17:02:00.000-04:00

Ug. I threw my back out Busting Blight this weekend. This job rocks, in that I get paid to do community service which I am now to busy having this job to do for free. But, I fucked up my back and I didn't even win the Michigan "Most Disgusting Thing Picked Up at a Community Clean-up Day". I was disqualified when the horrible smell emenating from the dead possum kept me from picking it up. The default winner was a social studies teacher who threw away a pair of dirty panties found on the side of the road.
We had a staff meeting on Tuesday (don't worry this relates back to the panties, I promise). All our staff meetings are done on conference call in a tiny room listening to the senior staff in Conneticut blather on about what is, I assume slightly more interesting than the average staff meeting nonsense. This week it was informing us that our corporate relationship with the Maoist rebels in Nepal was good enough that they promised to warn our groups of high school students to evacuate villages where they are about to get into firefights with the government at least 24 hours beforehand. *Yawn* Really. What do I care. I have youth to empower. Shit.
Anyway, we thought we were moderatly hot shit with the panties story. But the New York crew had their community clean-up the same weekend and one of their earnest teen do-gooders found a loaded gun. We're going to have to find a dead body next time to beat that. We should open an office in Baltimore. I've had more than one person from Baltimore tell me stories of finding multiple corpses just laying on the street.

Hypothetical Sheep

2005-09-21T10:29:00.000-04:00

In my enviromental planning class we've been endlessly discussing the world wide enviromental problem of hypothetical sheep. God, fucking hypothetical sheep ruin everything. The crux of conventional wisdom about hypothetical sheep is that left to our own devices and holding hypothetical land in common, we'll have no judgement at all about how many sheep are too many sheep and pretty we, and our sheep, will be wallowing in eroded mud all day long. The only solutions offered are a) have some powerful government bureacracy regulate how many sheep we can have or b) turn us all into private property owners.
I feel that this is dumb. As a bona-fide wingnut who is trying really hard to be a responsible adult I'm irritated as all get out that really smart responsible adults are convinced that too lousy solutions are all that stand between us and soil erosion. I really don't see why reasonable people can't get together and say, "you know, we have too many sheep. Let's have a bbq."
My planning class is on wednesday; on sunday I went to the barnyard meeting. Ten people in a room, not a single one of them reasonable, discussed exactly how many, totally non-hypothetical, pooping, wool producing, baa-ing, child-trampling sheep we should have. Solution: one more than we currently have.
It's really not that hard.

2005-09-18T23:16:00.000-04:00

Oh man. This whole job plus grad school operation sucks my butt. I spent last week blowing my student loan money on coffee drinks and tofurky jerky as I dashed from work to school. Honestly, the only real problem is that my office is out on like 19 mile or some shit and I can't even tell because that far out in the suburbs they stop using perfectly civilized mile road names and started calling everything after beavers and bodies of water. Perverts.
I had a major moment of joy on thursday, where, in my new professional capacity as a youth development worker, I convinced an appalachian stripper, with promises of beer and backrubs, to abandon her breakfast of dumplings fried in raccoon fat, to give a presentation to a group of high school students. Or at least that's how I'm going to spin the story from now on. The girl in question, Erica, is our new houseguest/future housemate and when she's not snuggling with Keith or skinning roadkill or lounging around in a white lace nightgown and pig tails like something out of Tennesse Williams, is making adjustments to her car, a 1982 mercedes diesel that runs on used vegetable oil.
I think grease cars are cool and I definitly think they are way cooler than informational videos on life in rural Africa. So, using my professional contacts inside the high school I was able to get something like thirty or forty kids to come out into the parking lot and crowd around Erica's car while she demonstrated her modified engine system, totally blase about the fact that alot of the modifications were obviously duct-tape based. The high school kids let out a genuine ooooh of interest when she started the car and the smell of french fries wafted out of the tailpipe.
After we finished and were packing up to go the official high school police officers came mosying over. Before I even had a chance to really start thinking,
oh fuck we're gonna get yelled at they said they'd heard this car ran on vegetable oil and would Erica mind doing the whole demonstration over for them.
As a token of appreciationg for being the guest speaker, the high school librarian gave Erica a keychain and a pen.

As an American I have a Desperate Need for Attention

2005-09-10T01:10:00.000-04:00

I check the blog for the past view days and get no comments. Does no one love me, I think to myself. I decided that once I start talking about roadkill the love and affection will come pouring in.

Save the Animals

2005-09-10T01:00:00.000-04:00

I'd spent the last hour picking u-pick raspberries and getting hi-hi-hello using a pipe carved out of a deerbone by Keith, who is such a litle McGuyver and is totally the one I'm sticking with come a zombie attack. He's also a good sport about taking over driving responsibilities when I'm unwiling; so there we are, Keith, Erica, Sidewalk and I, driving down this dirt road in a far out suburb when we see a dead raccoon lying in the middle of the road where no raccoon had been a mere hour ago when we were picking raspberries.
Keith and Erica carry a plastic bag on them at all times for just these kind of oppurtunies. While I still feel the whole thing is still waaay gross, I have to admit, were I going to eat roadkill raccoon I would eat that roadkill raccoon. It was so fresh rigor mortis hadn't even set in and there wasn't a mark on it; it's neck must have broken is the only thing we can figure.
Just is Erica was about to pick up the tasty morsel by its tail a pick up truck slows down in front of us. I'm about 20% undone with hilarity and about 80% totally mortified. Fortunatly, the roadkill eating thing is a relative secret and this dude made very different assumptions about what the pretty, hippy-looking girl crouched over the dead raccoon was intending.
"I don't think the best vet in the world can do anything for him anymore, Sweetheart." He said.
"Oh" said Erica, "I"m just moving it out of the middle of the road"
Worst. Excuse. Ever. Poor thing, dude must have thought, She's going to go do CPR on that dead animal and cry when it doesn't recover.
They're probably haveing raccoon noodle soup as we speak.

2005-09-04T19:38:00.000-04:00

Things are going pretty good for me, right now. So good that I don't even have to think, well, at least I haven't been stranded on a rooftop surrounded by alligators for the past week while George Bush goes biking. I start school on tuesday and the jobs been working out and Keith is home.
Keith and his sweety, Erica were actually supposed to be home earlier but her car died in Muncie, Indiana on friday. After being told by every mechanic in Muncie, Indiana that they were unwilling or unable to work on a car with a modified extra gas tank built out of punk rock and gumption and which is stalled, almost certainly, because of the partially hydrongenated oils that managed to float loose in the engine, they gave up and hitch-hiked. They arrived just in time to take over my assistent chicken killer duties, something which, in theory, had Erica all excited. I like that girl a lot but she's a damn caveman and a bad influence on Keith. She's got him eating all kinds of roadkill, up to and including bbq rattlesnake and I just don't hold with that kind of thing. When I left I could see her starting to have a change of heart; the doomed chicken was one of our attractive and friendly chickens, and I didn't want to be around to watch it die either.

Have I neglected to tell you, internet, that I have a new kitten? He's adorable of course, blonde and blue-eyed and ferocious. I think my favorite thing about new life, especially when that life is attached to a creature that will never grow up to cut funding for flood walls or leave thousands of people to die just because they are poor and black or start a pre-emptive war based on false information, is the total innocent joy. Some many times lately the world has seemed like a sad, scary, doomed place. It does my heart good to spend time with someone for whome just the opposite is true.
And I mean, dude, he's playing with a ball of yarn.

Oh yeah, did I mention I don't have health insurance?

2005-08-31T14:53:00.000-04:00

I have a sty in my eye so large that as I type I can feel it pressing into my eyeball. In case you're wondering, this is not a pleasant state of affairs. What's more annoying is that I had my first work meetings with the faculty advisors at two of my high schools this morning. I't the first time I'd seen them face-to-face and nothing says "professional demeanor" like a blazing eye infection.
I deal, I deal. At least it's not an anti-biotic resistant staph infection or leprosy. I figure it's hard to hide your identity while doctors race against the clock to stop the progress of your flesh eating bacteria.
Oh boy, oh boy, do I increasingly hate not having health insurance. When the student loans finally come through I am so getting my teeth cleaned. So bourgois. Really, though, if I get promoted enough in this job to ever get healthcare I worry it'll make me soft. Honest. If I ever forget that my primary fear about car accidents and super germs is oh my god i'll go bankrupt then I'll forget how much the American healthcare system fucking sucks.
So thank you eye infection. You press into my eyeball with integrity.

Personal Responsibility

2005-08-30T22:32:00.000-04:00

This whole affair led to a beer soaked discussion about the importance of personal responsibility in anarchy. Part of what is actually hard about trying to live out the idealogy that nobody gets to be in charge of your life is accepting all the unpleasantness of actually being in charge of your life. But that's a boring discussion. You want to hear about blood and guts and drama, dont' you?

So I wake up Thursday morning to hear that one of my compound-mate's dog had escaped in the wee morning hours and eaten two of our most beloved chickens, including Megan christmas hen and, not satiated by that, had to be physically pulled of one of our turkeys.
On the list of people whose repsonsibility this is, I am like, so far on the bottem. It's not my dog; it's not my turkey; it's not my seven year old that didn't slam the door; it's not my job to watch the seven-year old. I'm not even sleeping with anyone who fits any of these qualifications. I go off to work with clean concious, confident the turkey issue will be taken care of by the time I get home. Ha. You can, of course, see where this is going.
I get home around 4 o'clock. The turkey's owner is in Chicago. The dog owners are at work. As much as I don't want to have to drive a wounded turkey all the way over to the east side, I call the vet, who tells me that it's not worth it to do surgery on a turkey. fair enough.
So I sit on the front porch, hoping that if I don't say anything for a while it will become somebody else's problem. Then Patrick comes out with the homesteading encyclopedia in one hand and a cleaver in the other. He says, "if you'll help me I'll kill the turkey and pluck it so it doesn't go to waste." We sit on the front porch studying the homesteading encylopedia and sharpening the cleavers for a while. At some point a crack head wanders up and announces it is his birthday and he needs some spare change. I try to be really polite and friendly to roaming crack addicts, 'cause why not. But I was not in the mood. I was little curt and on the off chance that the he reads this blog; i'm sorry and happy birthday.
I gather up the turkey and carry him over to the chopping block (note: this requires me to walk about 25 feet down the sidewalk on a busy stree, carrying a turkey and following a man with a cleaver) I hold the turkey and Patrick chops off his head, spraying blood all over my sandals, which are fortunatly my Official Poultry Killing Sandals.
We get about half-way done plucking the body when it's obvious that the dog did such a number on the poor guy that he's not fit for human consumption (the maggots and the gangrene smell were our major clues) so we dig a whole in the side lot. I go and pick up the head, because Patrick doesn't want to, "see him lookin' at me" and toss it in the whole with the body.
"Shouldn't we say a few words?" Patrick asks.

"Sorry turkey" I say.

Bal-Ti-More!

2005-08-15T22:30:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure the entire internet knows by now, Cara and I experienced our first Balto-mugging friday night. I won't rehash details because any interested parties can cross reference this with the rest of the internet.
We spent most of the rest of friday night barricaded in Cara's house with a variety of goofy weapons. I, personally, rotated between the big ol' u-lock and the fireplace poker. I felt that it was very much like every zombie movie ever made. After asking Dina if she would be offended if, due to her almost sexual passion for fire arms, I cast her as practical minded redneck, allowing all of us to fullfill Night of the the Living Dead archetypes. I was given a brief opening to expound, as I will do at any given situation, of the total fucking brilliance of George Romero's zombie movies after I commented to Tracy that his archetype would live the longest in a faithfully adapted zombie attacked. "How progessive" He said. Well, sort of progressive. All the women characters are essentially passive screamers who get eaten alive about half-way through. But maybe I'm too critical. My mugger fighting technique was just to scream and scream and scream. I think dude was pretty amatuer, 'cause unlike with zombies, screaming totally worked.

But the mugging was hardly the high light of m Balto-adventure. I attended a fabulous dance party featuring some of the most amazing pants I have ever seen before collapsing in stupor on a bed constructed entirely of milk crates and fouton mattress. I also got to hang out with a certaincelebrity terrier. Oh Baltimore, you've stolen my heart.

your old shoes in your new feet

2005-08-09T21:22:00.000-04:00

My new grown-up shoes have given me blisters, but what the hey, I've got a per diem. I left in a hurry early monday morning and played a mean prank on Keith by leaving him in charge of our finances after I'd moved the finance binder. Her forgave me. I also played a prank on the whole house by fermenting kefir in the fridge. They'll all be living to ripe old age like those peasants in the caucuses so they'll have plenty of time to hold a grudge against me for leaving fermented foods.
I feel like such a hillbilly. During my layover at Grand Central I was so busy staring at the stars on the ceiling that I walked right into a trash can. Lukily I didn't walk right into the terrorism sniffing german shepherd standing 3 feet from the trashcan. Blush Blush Blush. A whole massive building full of people and I'm convinced they are all staring at me.
I'm debating right now whether or not to buy a train ticket to balitmore this weekend. It sure beats sitting around the faux-tudor decor of the Vassar alumnae house on the other hand I'm broke. Tonight's mission is to question my boss as to whether or not any travel expenses will get reimbursed.

Liberals: What's Their Deal?

2005-08-07T23:09:00.000-04:00

I got a grown-up as of thursday, a job so grown up that they are paying for my plane ticket to job training. I found out that I got the job while I was at my current job and was in the process of pretending not to notice my client vomiting all over the sidewalk for no apparent reason other than that she was kind of bored. whee!
I fly out tomorrow morning to go to two weeks of training. I having this inner dialogue with the optimistic and pessimistic parts of my brain:

"It's going to be great! I'll make friends, maybe I'll find a boyfriend!" (optimistic Leah is really into getting a boyfriend lately)
"It's going to suck. You'll be surround by earnest liberals all day. You hate earnest liberals"
"Shut up. They hired us, after all. They must have a pro-wingnut policy"
"Oh goody. I cant' wait to hear how peace is patriotic and how nostalgic we all are for Bill Clinton and how that war in Kosovo was so totally justified and how George Bush is totally the worst thing to every happen to the world and gun control...can't you just wait to hear about gun control????"
"We've decided to be open minded and friendly to all sorts of people, remember?"
"Lexus and the Olive Tree!!! lalala lalala! John Kerry RULZ!!!

Optimistic me is going to win out here, honest. I need a non puke-oriented job and considering that Earnest NonProfit Inc. totally, totally knew what wingnut I was when they hired me, I figure I can't be the only one.
I'm arriving at the training late. They originally had me leaving early Sunday morning but I demured, saying I had, "a few loose ends to tie up". I'm still unsure about exactly how pro-wingnut they are so I didn't mention what those ends were. You see, I needed time to find a substitute goat milker and to rack off my honey wine into glass bottles.

it makes sense if you're really high

2005-08-01T22:28:00.000-04:00

It's been so damn hot this summer. We've been considering throwing enviromental responsibility right to the wind and installing central air. What's holding us back is a) we're broke and b) the compound would explode with that amount of electrical current run through it's original 1890 electrical system.
I have floated the idea of dragging all our matresses into the library and buying a window unit...but the connotations are too creepy.
A relatively well-dress 50-something stopped by about a month ago and treated Megan and me to a rambling monologue about all the good time he had at the compound in the early seventies, probably back when the dumb fucks were dropping acid and doing roof "repairs". grr. About ten minutes into the monoglue he said, "yeah, those were crazy times. I heard once everyone who lived here dragged mattresses to the third floor and just had orgies all day long."
There was a brief dramatic pause, after which Megan replied, " ew. "

A Spider in the Sugar Bowl

2005-07-31T20:19:00.000-04:00

We have a new housemate and jesus is she young. She's so young that if we lived in a town where legally enforced drinking ages were considering anything but bougie-as-shit, we wouldn't be able to take her to bars.
We celebrated by cleaning the house, including the disgusting parts that we usually leave alone because they scare us, like the "spice cabinet" and the "area under the stairs". ew ew ew. No me gusta las cucarachas. I sprayed them over and over again with a bottle of what was advertised to be "nature's neurotoxin" until Patrick demonstrated that the most efficient way to murder las cucarachas with that stuff was to smuch them with the bottle cap.

it's all fun and game until somebody gets stabbed to death

2005-07-30T00:07:00.000-04:00

Were I in the mood to file for 501(c)3 status I'd form my own religious cult: The Followes of St. Linda of the Unwaveringly Reasonable. It's purpose would be to embrace unconventional beliefs and lifestyles while not being a total, irrational wingnut.
Lately, I value reasonableness above all other virtues. I argued passionatly in favor or our new roomate, Louisa, on the basis that she is a deeply reasonable young women. A little before that I said harsh, unkind words to another housemate regarding her story friend who was, she feels, not properly counseled by Planned Parenthood and now has cried every night for twelve years, grieving over her dead fetus. I should not, in retrospect, has commented that this friend is obviously, "a fucking nutcase who shouldn't reproduce". But that's exactly the kind of unreasonable behavior that gets my goat because of the nasty political consequences of someone wishing their every irrational feeling be indulged instead of addressed. Next thing you know the Beatles'll be sending you secret messages to kill Paris Hilton or some shit.
I think the housemate in question has forgiven me my unkind words. After we attended a lecture by this guy, she turned to me and said, "Wow. You must love him. He's so reasonable, and yet such a wingnut."
At least my housemate understands me. Sandorkraut is exactly my kind of reasonable wingnut. I'll frickin' canonize him when my paperwork goes through. Sure, he recomends leaving goat milk on the counter for a few days and then refering to it as "sour cream" but even after much goading from the crowd he refused to endorse any sort of food eating dogma ("I mean, I guess aluminum is not that good for you, but I'll pretty much eat anything you offer me") or alternative medicine orthodoxy (" I take a lot of pills to stay alive and I wouldn't consider sourkraut a subsitute, but you know, it's good for you).

I think we're all pretty inspired by the demonstration. I finally went to the brewing store today to buy the yeast and tannic acid needed to start making my mead. Frugal as I am, I realized, with the help of Patrick, my obsessively frugal housemate, that a full bottle of Carlo Rossi wine is cheaper than the exact same bottle for sale at a brewing supply store. Now the only thing holding me back is drinking a gallon of wine in the next day or so. shit. That's totally unreasonable

Tenured Radicals

2005-07-27T13:59:00.000-04:00

OMG! I am officially a graduate student! Whee! I got my acceptence email today!
I am so goddamn excited, witness the unrestrained use of exclaimation marks!
I am going to be such a tenured radical! I can't wait to start having a legitimate reason to wax philosophic about hyperaccumulators in bioremediation have really firm opinions about which CDC is more, y'know, down. I'm going to be fucking insufferable and when called on it I may be slightly tempted to say things, like, "look I have more college than all of you put together."

my cup of stars.

2005-07-23T15:32:00.000-04:00

egg foo young instead

2005-07-22T14:57:00.000-04:00

There is the life of the farmer and there is life of the drum player in a loud crust punk band. The schedules of the two lives are very different and it is the rare man who tries to combine the two.
After playing a show in Lansing last night the Cap'n was feeling so tired and grouchy that I agreed to drive him to the barnyard and help him with the chores. The Cap'n turkey's are almost adults now and they are just beginning to grow the robin-hood like feathers that will flop in front of their heads. Right now, the spot where the feathers will be are little round nubins on top of their blue and pink heads. Lord those things are funny looking.
I'm convinced they're smart. I figure it's usually mean to rate animals as smart or dumb since a chicken is plenty smart enough to be a chicken and people use that kind of shit to justify mistreating the objectively dumber members of the animal kingdom. Nonetheless, these turkeys certainly seem to have more problem solving ability and awarness of the world around them than either chickens or ducks. They've come very close to learning that a certain amount of obnoxious behavior will cause someone to squirt them with goat's milk and then the only trick is to open their beaks at the right moments. They look at you with their weird dinosaur eyes and I am convinced they know exactly what is going on.
I really don't want the Cap'n to eat them.

cats cats cats

2005-07-21T16:02:00.000-04:00

In a month or so I am going to have a new kitten. Dude, I am such a cat lady. If I had permission from my housemates I would so totally have 5 new kittens and one new cat a month from now.
It's not, I don't think, even that I'm so gaga over cats more than it's that I am a closet misanthrope with the same instinct to swoop in and rescue people from their own dumb lives that permeates left-wing do-gooders. I just want to swoop in and rescue people's cats from those people's dumb lives. This makes me more like Cara's mom who used to sneak into people's backyards and build them Buckmeister Fuller-esque dog houses when she feeled that the dogs rightful owners were neglecting the animals shelter needs.
This could be a big problem for me. I'm torn between feeling like a judgemental college actvist for being disgusted at the casual and utilitarian approach to pets that permeates the working-class neighborhood where I work and just, well, being disgusted. For example: My client's mother has a chow dog which lives in her backyard in a dog house, never, ever enters the human house and because he is never brushed has a tangle of dreadlocks all over his body. Now technically, this dog is not abused at all. He has food, water, shelter and isn't sick. But, I feel strongly that dogs belong in the house. That they deserve constant attention, medical care and to be appropriatly groomed. Many times I've contemplated stealing the dog. Cats get off even worse. My clients mom and several of her neighbors see nothing wrong with leaving small children unsupervised around cats and letting the small children toss the cats up into the air or whatnot, without so much as saying, as I've said, "that cat won't like you if you treat it like that". Then they say nothing when the children smack the cat for "being mean".
Anyway, a stray cat had a litter of kittens in the un-used dog house in my client's grandmother's backyard. When I arrived at work in the morning I was told that the cat was vicious because it kept hissing at my client at the neighborhood children who poked it. The cat, for the record, is anything but vicious. She's barely more than a kitten and purrs while being petted. I was also told that the grandmother's plan for the next six weeks or so was to feed this skinny mother cat bread and milk. I went home and brought some cat food.
Part of me so wants to take this cat and all her kittens home and put myself in charge of finding homes. I hear the family discussing people to give the kittens to, (well they might want another one. they kicked that one they had out of the house for making too much noise) and want to hold the cats hostage, demanding proof of rabies vaccines and nuetering from anyone who gets one. But that's not going to work. Instead I plan to bring more cans of wet catfood tomorrow morning and try and convince my roomate that a cat plus a kitten doesn't really count as two more cats.

Sexy Sadie

2005-07-19T18:20:00.000-04:00

I had the worst day at work today. Details I won't bore you with, internet. But really, I want a job where the issue on which I must stand firm and hold the line is not, I repeat not, that no matter how many times a person crashes her head into the wall while screaming obscenities that person is still required to give me a little bit of token assistence while I scrub the urine stained mattresses (yes, plural), sheets, three sets of clothing and two blankets that the aforsaid person pissed on in an early morning fit of spitefullness.
Malicious peeing is really where it's at and it's something I'm thinking about taking up. God. I am so damn hostile these days! I have totally abandoned my old 'live and let live' policy towards stupidity and antisocial behavior. What if I just started sneaking into the homes of people who bug me and peeing all over their suff?
I've keyed 1 hummer and 2 Candillac Escalades in the past 48 hours. I've scratched "Pig" into their driver's side door. Yeah, I know, how Sadie Mae Glutz of me. But I'm a weenie about vandalism and I can't think of anything equally short that will express a similiar sentiment. I feel pretty justified about it, like it's my own personal throwback to the days of branding thieves and making lepers wear a bell. If you are going to be a goddamn pig about everything then you should have to drive around with a personal reminder of it slowly rusting your sty-mobile and announcing your pig status to everyone you meet.

The Terrorists Have Already Won

2005-07-19T00:40:00.000-04:00

My poor mother has had to retreat from the internet world with her tail between her legs after my stupid, stupid aunt created a personal internet homepage simply to harass my mother. I am so sad. My mother had such a good blog, she writes like she talks, sassy! I sympathize too, having perfect strangers butting into your life is one thing, having much disliked relatives get all snippy at you is much, much worse.
My aunt of course, will win this round, because she has so little activities to entertain herself with that she fill have hours and hours to fill sniping at my mother from the safe confines of cyberspace.
I, however, am boycotting the family birthday outing this year. That'll show 'em.

on mondays we neaten the house

2005-07-18T00:00:00.001-04:00

Except we don't because we are fucking peasants, wrapping ourselves in table cloths and drinking from the single unchipped mug found amongst the debris littering the kitchen floor. Anyway, on sundays I milk the goats.
I like to call animals by cute nicknames, something I never noticed was odd until I moved out of my parents house and had roomates that snickered when I called my cat, "Mr. Buttonpants" or "Pookylu". It's a blessing or a curse that I go to milk by myself sunday nights. I tend to keep up a steading stream of monologue while milking and my brain is turned off during most of it. I came to awareness tonight and realized that when I left off my brain was comforting Tabitha my calling her in french, "my pretty little goat" which is, "ma belle petite chevre" and had spun off from there until my sweet nickname for Tabitha had become "Chevre-Lu". I don't know whether to thrilled or horrified by the Joycean bit of bi-lingual punning my brain got up to in my abscence.
Here are the five people I meet on my way to the barnyard, in order:

1. The old man louging outside 'Adam's Soul Food', which keeps such insane hours I'm certain it is a drug front.

2. The constantly pregnant stray dog that's always trying to chase and eat my car. Her boyfriend these days is some sort of feral airdale.

3, 4, 5: The teenage boys who decide to stand in the middle of the street playing craps at all hours of the day or night. I figure they are pretty harmless because they always move aside to let my car pass into the parking lot. They don't bother to pick up their dice or money so I end up driving right over it.

false alarm

2005-07-17T00:04:00.000-04:00

phew. no worries internet. through some intensive csi style detective work we reached consensus that my arch-enemy has not been able to penetrate this far into the world of cyberspace.

as you were.

Fuck Fuck Fuckity Fuck

2005-07-16T23:48:00.000-04:00

The thing I hate about the internet is, you tell your little stories to all the millions and millions of folks out there and you figure, statistics alone say that among those millions of folks and millions of the sites the chances of your own worst enemy stumbling upon your is pretty slim. But it never is, is it? You fucking worst enemy has tracking skills like a goddamn bobcat and sure enough, there she is popping up on your own little corner of cyberworld, totally uninvited. And she'll say, the next tiem I see her ugly face, "I don't need an invite. This is the internet. You invited everyone". And you feel like there should be some sort of implied "anti-invite" sent out only to those you totally hate hate hately hate. And then you think, well that wouldn't work because if my archenemy sene me an anti-invite I'd be over at their little personal homepage in a goddamn nano-second.

I don't think my nemesis know about this personal internet homepage, so I may still be in the clear. Don't worry internet, my nemesis is nobody you know. really.

love calls us to the things of this world.

2005-07-15T23:49:00.000-04:00

I too, am a just one loud boo from totally losing my shit these days. I can't even see my sister sleep without wanting to check her pulse. Now supposedly she's clean but this is the 4th or 5th time she's supposedly been clean and it's like the movie of my life is The Blob and the title card at the end say, "The end?"
Whenever this is really over, or who am I fucking kidding? Whenever I'm not so damn raw about it anymore I"m writing a memoir. I think I'll call it "through water with eyes like pearls" after that Richard Wilbur poem , because "Elizabeth Wurtzel Can Kiss My Ass, You No-Talent Cunt" is probably libelous. I hate that Elizabeth Wurtzel with such a burning passion. If I ever see her on the street I'll totally punch her lights out.
Not for me, I'm a big first-amendment-believing girl. I don't hold her responsible for the choices my sister made. I'd do it, the punching and the memoir writing, to rise up righteous on behalf of her poor family, whose suffering exists only to remind her how ignorant and shallow they are compared to her. It's an aesthetic objection. I'm tired of her and Joanna Kaysen and dead, overachieving Sylvia being the collective face and female artistry.
It's for Mary, too, who's the Edna Ward of my life story, thin hand reaching out, last word love . She was no Sylvia Plath. All she did was raise to smart, brave daughters and bury one of them. All she did was be decent and forgiving and fill her life with art and friendship and goodness. She, who was such this force of life and love, gets cut down by the vicious disease. I never got to know her like I should have because, with the emotional tilt-a-whirl that is my life I couldn't handle caring for a woman I barely knew as she slowly lost the ability to eat and speak and move and breath.
I'm so angry at my sister and so angry at the writers who inspired her. I'm angry at that 19 year old kid whose parents reported him missing a few hours before he blew himself up on a bus during rush hour and at the september 11th hijacker who called his wife he adored to tell her loved her before getting on the plane that morning. The pope, I think may have had a point. We need a culture of life. There is something wrong with us that we rate emotional depth by one's lack of attachment to all the things of this world, by one's suffering and willingness to destroy oneself.

sticky sticky sticky

2005-07-14T22:57:00.000-04:00

ug. This heat is slowly enveloping my brain, smushing it. I want a pedal powered/solar powered bio-diesel air conditioner. I want to move to sunny Fairbanks. The Cap'n left Megan's dog at the barnyard today. We noticed a few hours later. She was fine and the Cap'n was sucessfully able to argue not guilty due to heat related stupidity.
Tuesday night, Megan and I completly submerged ourselves in the fountain outside the art musuem. It was chilly and refreshing right then but by the time we finished biking home I was again devoured by the heat.

Nothin' But a Heartache!!!!

2005-07-13T20:59:00.000-04:00

When my brother, Nathan, was 7 or 8, my dad took him fishing and somehow they actually managed to catch a fish. My brother, now an earnest scholar of James Joyce was never one of those rought and tumble Dennis the Menace type boys...you know, ever... and my father's attempts to make him more macho are just a series of comic failures.
Anyway, driving back from the fishing hole with a cooler with the still alive fish on his lap my brother decided the fish's name is Petey and starts imploring my father to release Petey. My father refuses. As the song "It's a Heartache" began to play on the radio my brother cried out, "It really is a heartache!" and burst into tears.
When my dad first told me this story, I foolishly asked, "so then you let Petey go, right?" and my father replied, "Of course not! I fried that fish up and ate it."
Now some country bands cover of It's a Heartache is in heavy rotation on the Q country station I listen to during lulls in npr. Now, my dad and I have had a rather rocky relationship in general, and especially in the past year since he's found something he and my sister can really bond over, but I think I'm at the stage where I'm willing to cut him significantly more slack. Now any time I drive anywhere I hear this song that reminds me of one of my dad's jerkier moments and I worry it's poisoning our relationship.
Also, I hate that fucking song.

out into the world

2005-07-12T01:10:00.000-04:00

I have a job interview tomorrow (wednesday). It is for my dream job. All this really reveals is that my standards of what constitutes a "dream job" have plummeted over the years. Now it pretty much covers: Less than 40 hours a week, mostly indoor with little to no liklihood of being kicked or having to have extended contact with human urine not my own.

Dehydration Army

2005-07-11T01:03:00.000-04:00

One: How I learned to Sweat away my worries
I totally won Hive Opening Challenge today, but there were some casualties. Even though I decided to forgo the full bee suit in deference to the 90 degree heat I still found myself in long sleeves, long pants, elbow length leather gloves and knee socks on an asphalt roof in the middle of the afternoon. About half-way through the process, sweeping bees off a frame with the snow brush from Megan's car, I started thinking that getting stung wouldn't be so bad and actually droplets of sweat were falling off my nose.
We ended up getting about six frames out of the boxes, which should add up to about 2 gallons of honey when we centrifuge it out tomorrow. In the meantime, Megan, the Cap'n and I collapsed on the couch and drank iced tea and giggle incoherently, which is making me wonder if heat stroke and dehydration might soon be the new street drug.
Two: How I Sweat Away my good sense and climbed up on a high horse I've been thinking a lot about my fellow Daily Content Challenge competitors and their collective feeling that George Bush is destroying the world. I want to be able to express these idea coherently, but the dehydration is making me stupid so bear with me. It's not that I don't hate George Bush but the feeling that he is the worst thing ever to happen to us ever seems a little bit disengenous...a little bit liberal. It seems like it lets, say, Bill Clinton off the hook for signing NAFTA and welfare reform and being the biggest cheerleader for the WTO or John Kerry for being a big NAFTA asshole or fill in the blank. It seems like if you're looking to politicians to solve this problem you're always going to be disapointed; there's no good guys, I'd say my definition of a good guy is someone who doesn't want the kind of power over people's lives that a president has. They're the problem, not the solution.
There's nothing good or just about presidents or corporations or nation-states or domestic policy and getting mad at governments for controlling people's lives and making war is, to use a favorite metaphor of my mom's, like getting mad a pig for being a pig.

on my rocking chair, shelling peas.

2005-07-10T01:36:00.000-04:00

I realize now why all those seventies back to the land types kept getting busted by the feds for their little hobby gardens; marijuana really does make tedious farm tasks more tolerable. Poor Ma and Pa Ingles, all they had was Mr. Edwards and his horrible moonshine. Lucky me. I know a lot of conspiracy theorists with grow lights.
Today I helped strain the wax and dead bees out of what became 23 12 oz. jars of honey while at the same time peeling the newly harvest garlic.
I'm the "wipe your hands on your pants" type of girl, not the other type, whatever that is. So by the end of this adventure my legs, skirt and arms were covered in a dirty, garlicly smelling coat of stickiness. I also had a medium sized pool of honey collecting on the table. At just the right moment, however, a flock of rambunctious young children came galloping into the room, devoured the spilled honey and, in a bright fit of sugar shock went galloping back outside to go play in traffic or climb on piles of bricks or whatever free-spirited, home schooled youngsters do these
days.
Tomorrow: the Hive Opening Challenge. If I am not stung by a bee by the end of the day I win.

"what about something normal, like eating garbage?"

2005-07-09T00:13:00.000-04:00

Most people who interest me have a book or two that changed their live, for me it's the journal, the Baffler. My brother bought me a subscription for my 17th birthday and it was the best thing that every happened to me.
Following the example of the Baffler and it's editorial suspicion of youth culture and rebellion I have begun, relatively recently to completly embrace the idea of identifying as utterly mainstream. I am mainstream, I have the values of the kindergarten classroom. I want people to share their toys and be nice to each other and think of other people and have fun. I just want everybody to be happy and no one to hurt anybody else.
I've been floating this idea of how mainstream I am to a couple non-internet people. They have found the concept hilarious. "Look at your home!" they say, "What are your opinions on the government, anyway?"
I was never really comfortable being a member of any subculture, anyway, not like I was a beautiful unique snowflake but like I was never good at it. I'm too big a dork. Through no fault of my own, however, I embraced a political idealogy that is not only extreme but comes complete with it's own (loud) musical genre and style of dress. I don't really mind. The music is catchy and the fashion is low maintence. Now fast-forward four years or so and I live in such a subcultural bubble that I can legitimatly think of myself as mainstream because I still think eating roadkill squirrel is weird.
I think the fact that I can live comfortably in my bubble without noticing is* a sign that we are moving, slowly but surely, beyond being just a subculture with a musical genre and way of wearing our pants to a full blown culture culture with values and taboos and ways of interacting that are holistic and workable. I like my culture; after all this I'm still convinced we can save the world.

*besides a reminder of how socially awkward I am

our house on the moon

2005-07-08T22:19:00.000-04:00

The New York Times got snotty last week in reference to Local Sports Team's playoff game. The sentence was (to paraphrase), "Detroit as city so crappy that people are half-seriously considering turning it into farmland". Yeah, fuck you very much New York Times.
Hopefully, the joke will be on New York before it's too late. Patrick's been surveying every garden in the agriculture network so that by the end of the summer we'll know the total acres under cultivation within the city limits. If the agriculture network keeps growing then within ten years Detroit could very well be something we haven't seen on this earth in over 5,000 years: a city that can feed itself. .
I'm not too worried about how fucked we are because necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention and we're certainly experiencing that in Detroit. I really think we can all make this whole "world not coming to an end" thing work out. The solutions are there and there are lots of smart people and wacky crackpots working overtime trying to find them.

a name drop is sort of like a gum drop

2005-07-06T22:07:00.000-04:00

The front door broke on sunday in such a way that it would not open. What happened is that one of the locks, unused since the Bruce Campbell days, broke free of it's duct tape covering and mischeviously locked itself. I had arranged that very day for an earnest little busy bee from 3000 mile to arrange a rock show Cara's touring housemates. Everyone was therefor forced to walk through the theater to reach their bedroom. Fortunatly the Busy Bee gave us all "Band and Crew" laminants. In case you had any illusions internet, we are not the backstage passes kind of a venue, if only because "backstage" is technically the kitchen.
While the other bands were gripping about the lack of monitors (are they fucking serious, monitors would get in the way of the buckets under the leaking roof) the Baltimore crew were embracing the humour of the situation by putting laminants on the cat.
The next day Patrick sliced the mischevious lock in half with a sawzall and all was well.

P.S. I too wish to participate in this Blog-A-Day challenge I have heard of.

Gurus

2005-07-02T01:04:00.000-04:00

One
Megan's have some issues in her relationship. This is prompting her to, out of vengeance, start a rumour that her boyfriend once had a torrid affair with John Zerzan. I am doing her a favor by spreading this rumour, because John Zerzan in one those red-flag, beloved only by asshole types of writers. Like Chuck P. and Ayn Rand and Neitzche.

Two
My spiritual guru was in town the other night; braggin, but only after I asked, about his new 2.5 million dollar government grant to, among, other things, experiment with using mushrooms for brownfield remediation. Oh world I cannot hold thee close enough!
My spiritual guru feels that we should use the fact that a whole lot of people are moving out of the compound this summer to do some serious renovations. I disagree. I feel we should bulldoze the less attractive of our two houses and build one of those enviromentally friendly swimming pools, with a water slide and a diving board. According to my guru anything is possible with a weekend, about 10 people and a carefully controlled flow of beer. He should know, right?

Oh Constance!

2005-07-01T21:20:00.000-04:00

1. We are so very happy

I'm too punk for vitamins, althought I could probably use some, damnit. Instead I'm going to secretly blow up the compound while everyone's away, saving only one cup and plate for myself and a table cloth toga to wear. Actually, I'm not punk enough to do that, so you see my predicamite.
I think I'm just going to vaccum my room real well and make it a pleasant sanctuary inside which I can hide from crowds of party goers that leave me feeling all shaky and unwell.
Things aren't all bad, we are, after all, so very happy.

2.Centrifuge

Yesterday we spun out the honey from one of the 5 hive boxes. We ended up getting 3 1/2 gallons out of it and only two minor casualties. Megan got stung by a bee. I got the worst of it; I was holding down our janky spinner was Keven turned the crank when the gear box flew off, slicing my palm open on its way to the ground. It was one of those really macho injuries though. Y'know, those ones that don't hurt at first so you can say, "it was just a scratch" and then you and everybody else can look down and see blood pouring out of your hand onto the ground and into the vat of honey. Oops. Don't worry about it internet, we'll filter the blood out with the wax an dead bees and honey is naturally anti-biotic so you won't get the sif or the hiv.
We've also been on a cheese-making extravaganza. I'll be spending bits of my teeny paycheck to order feta cheese bacteria from the internet tonight.

3. Ginger Snapping
My sister received a card in the mail from our kindly southern grandmother, herself a 30 year long friend of Bill W. It had a golden retreiver puppy on the cover congratulating my sister on her sucessful stint in rehab. Now, adult me, the one who understands that other people have feelings, realizes that my sister needs are the support and encouragement she can get and appreciates my southern grandmother for her compassion and unconditional love (which my evil bitch michigan grandmother does not have). The selfish adolescent part of me is pissed. I too, have gone at least a month without perpetrating grand larceny against my family or shooting heroin. Where's my card with a puppy on it?

The End of the World

2005-06-26T22:26:00.000-04:00

Basement

2005-06-26T17:32:00.000-04:00

My sister is coming home from rehab in two days. I haven't been back to my house in two days. I feel like this time without her is a vacation and I should spend every peaceful moment of it with my parents. It's been so nice to do things with my mom, to talk to her and go out to dinner without Gina blah-blah-blah heroin talking in the seat next to me or calling my mom's cell phone all indignant because she wants "gas money" or cigarettes or just being worried that she's going to be laying blue faced on the bed with her cat starting to eat her and The West Wing playing in the background.
I don't really think she's going to come home a better person; best case scenario she's the same old narcissistic bitch without the drug addiction. She's lost two years of her life; she's like an 18 year old in a 20 year old's body and I wouldn't have thought that there is a real difference in experience in those two years but I know from my own life how big the difference is. Sometime in those two years you learn a little humility, you starting hanging out with people who are smarter than you and who challenge you to grow intellectually, you start to imagine a future for yourself, however hazy, you make mistakes and you handle them, you get a lousy job that you hate and you save your money and buy yourself something nice.
She's done none of that. She's still an arrogant teenager who thinks she's too good for crappy jobs and who's never bought herself anything nice because all her money got spent on heroin. She's been a drug using hermit who's chased away all her friends and still has to be the smartest person in the room.
We're close to ages Helen and Cara were when they started being friends again. I envy the people I know who are close to their siblings; I've given up hope of ever having that kind of relationship with her.

I'm Learning Mandarin Because It's the Language of the Future

2005-06-25T01:09:00.000-04:00

Thursday I helped the Cap'n supervise a crew of thirty or so suburban high schoolers who came to the farm to fullfill some sort of community service (and not the court ordered kind) quota. The Cap'n got to give a brief introduction where he talked about the farm before we got to work. Speeches are not the Cap'n strong point and I'm used to, at this point, wincing my way through them, but his speech class seems to have done the trick and the Cap'n got through the whole talk without a single "shit", "fuck", or "goddamn".
These kids were great. They were determined to, so help them, do their part for their community! Even if it meant shoveling manure. In fact, they would seek us out to ask us if they could shovel more manure.
There's an evil, self-righteous part of my soul that wants to make fun of these kids for their $200 blonde highlights and tanning booth tans and their charmingly ambitious talk of college applications but I, too, am a child of the upper middle class so I got no right.
I'll you what though, I didn't do no damn community service. I knew then, as I seem to have forgotten now, that community service is for suckers and there are colleges that will accept anyone with a pulse. So why not sleep in on saturdays?

Speaking of which: I think I got into grad school. I think so even though the bureaucrats in the basement lost both my application and one of my reference letters. Actual quote from dude, "well, unless you letter shows up and says you're an ax murderer, I don't see a problem with you registering for class this fall".

Somehow this is kind of a letdown.

It was a joke

2005-06-22T11:39:00.000-04:00

I was kidding, internet, honest. I know all the good reasons why voting is dumb. Please dont' kick me out of the party. I really like the party; there is almost always cake.
In fact, If one were to google my full name one would find a strident editorial about the evils of voting left over from my college newspapers days. But I'm not going to tell you my full name, internet. You'd probably just use it for credit card fraud and to find incriminating pictures of my clumily made leftist knitwear.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

2005-06-22T10:13:00.000-04:00

One

I think that recently the universe noticed that I've been wanting a boyfriend...and decided to play a little prank on me. My new boyfriend is the local schizophrenic, which wouldn't both me so much, except that he's spent the past ten years of so self-medicating...with crack. My boyfriend really wants to impress me and the best way he can think of is by showing off his wood splitting skills. I have this little policy that people on crack shouldn't really be swinging axes, at least in my presence. I also have this policy against making crack using, mentally unstable, boyfriend who are holding axes angry, so my solution is to be gracious and polite in my suggestions, "um boyfriend....that's really really sweet of you but I think we have enough wood to get us through the summer."
He's been taking my terror induced politeness as a sign that I return his affections. And around and around we go.

Two
I'm writing in our neighbor, B., for the mayoral election this fall, even though I exist in this wacky ideological world where we aren't supposed to vote*. B., as far as I can tell, retired young and spends his days wandering our neighborhood soft of like the homeless and crazy. Except, instead of gathering soda bottles and spare change he gathers and distributes neighborhood gossip.
Yesterday, while in the driveway painting tomato cages*, I heard B. yelling from the alley. I saw him holding onto his pants and dragging our stolen goat by some sort of leash. Getting closer, I realized that the leash was actually his belt, which is what necessitated him holding his pants up. Our goat had escaped, and was clip-clopping down the sidewalk when B. had the presence of mind to catch and return her.
After helping me secure the goat pen a little better, B. continued on his ramblings, only to return a few minutes later with one of our baby turkeys, which had also escaped and was standing in the middle of the side-street, peeping for all to see.

Three

The grounds of the compound are starting to get a little too Texas Chainsaw Massacre for my liking. Now that it's summer Keith seems to be moving onto the next stage in processing his racoon hide. This step seems to entail draping it on the picnic table like a warning to any raccoons who may be in the area. There is a large pole sitting on the table next to the skin which is causing me to worry that Keith's overall goal is to hang the skin from this pole like a creepy totem.
It doesn't, of course, help that there is a stolen goat bleeting for attention nearby.

*Voting is said to be unproductive and disempowering, unlike say, shouting at world leaders which is said, somehow, to be productive. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to be either.
*I was painting tomato cages, not because I'm boujie or think the neighbors will care but only to prevent rust, okay?

Braiiiiinnnnnns

2005-06-20T22:59:00.000-04:00

One
Let's just get one thing straight, internet: I am as excited as shit about Land of the Dead and I am no longer ashamed to admit it.
When Cara and I were in college we had this gig driving literary dignities to and from the various airports. Budget be damned and in the face of the logic that they only needed one driver, we both got paid. Alone, each of us was a glorified taxi driver but together we were tag-team comedy gold. The dignitaries, we could only assume, couldn't get enough of us. "They knit poorly constructed hats and are strongly opposed to the policies of the International Monetary Fund, how charming." They would say at the hoity-toity functions they attended and the English department opened its coffers gladly.

So anway, we were assigned to drive the poet, Li-Young Lee, who is brilliant and thoughtful and who we desperatly wanted to impress. So desperatly that we couldn't think of a thing to say. Finally, about 30 minutes into the drive Li-Young Lee said, "so, do you like horror movies?" We sputtered something to suggest that we liked some but not the low-brow ones and won't you please like us Mr. Famous Poet .....untill he interupted us to say, "I love them, especially zombie movies".
It was one of those great ice-breaker moments and we spent the rest of the drive animatedly discussing how we all felt that the Nightmare on Elm Street series is vastly superior to Friday the Thirteenth.

TWO

Tracy was in town today so, in my limited expertise as tour guide took him to the cheapest Mexican restaurant I know of. The menu features, along with $1.25 tacos, an exotic array of meat options from deep friend pork tongue to beef head to tripe. I have only ever gone here with other vegetarians and it's been a small life dream of mine to see a meat eater I know order one of the unusual meats...you know, for humor. Tracy ordered burritos....with beef head!
Puns about 'good head' were, of course, made throughout the meal.

Answer this one, Ethicist. You asshole

2005-06-19T23:08:00.000-04:00

For reasons too complicated to explain, Megan and I had to steal a goat this friday.
Due to circumstances, again, too complicated to explain, Megan came home in a funk; she was faced with two possible courses of action: either break up with her boyfriend (which meant she would have to move out because no way in hell are either of them capable of living together after a breakup, which would in turn mean she would have to find a place to live...a place where she, her 'lab mix', bantam rooster, feather footed bantam hen and three baby chicks would all be able to live) or, kind-of, sort-of (and with my help) steal this goat.
It doesn't really, I feel, count as stealing when you call the owner of the goat in question to inform him that you are taking his goat. It may, possibly, count as stealing when you leave a message on the owner of the diputed goat's answering machine while loading the goat into the back of a Ford Focus*.
I should be blase about the whole thing; this is not the first, fifth or tenth time I have found myself participating in something of seriously dubious legality that involves livestock. But, this stuff just doesn't ever get old. Megan even got out of her funk. Normal people, we agreed, don't know what they are missing.
The goat was sad living alone in the chicken pen and started to baaaa pitifully. Obviously, (and if this is not obvious to you, gentle internet, you have not been following my life as thoroughly as you should) we had to bring her in the house. Somehow, Megan's mom had allowed Megan use of a digital camera for the weekend. We filled it's memory chip with a slideshow of absurdity: goat on couch, goat on Leah on couch, goat eating tea bag, goat in bathtub, goat going up stairs, goat going down stairs; goat vs. dog; exhausted goat collapsing on the couch with her head on the pillow.

*hatchback

My Bags are Packed I'm Ready to Go.....

2005-06-14T23:43:00.000-04:00

My mother's been having fantasies about murdering my sister after discovering she's stolen around $4000 over the past three months. Once the fantasies got to the level of "and then I'll wrap the body in a tarp...." specificity derived from a devotion to Law And Order reruns it was time to pack the little sugar pie off to rehab (again).
It's like a great weight has been lifted off me, having her gone. Just being able to come and go from my parent's house without the fear of finding her corpse or not finding her corpse and leaving it for my mom to discover makes it like fucking Christmas.
This morning my darling was selecting her most fetching tank tops and prompting me to sing, to the tune of "Leaving on a Jetplane" a song about dressing sexy for a new rehab boyfriend. But later tonight she called my parents in a less chipper mood. I'd like to be able to say that we are all immune to her pity inducing cries but damn, nothing does pathetic like a narcissistic junkie and we decided that it didn't strictly violate the new tough-love standards to bring her her blankie...but she's not getting it until thursday.

No Wonder Madonna's British Now

2005-06-10T00:53:00.000-04:00

So, I was listening to Jack White get interviewed on NPR today and y'know, there's just something about the flat atonal Detroit accent that just doesn't say "Celebrity". He can talk and talk about how he paraded poor Loretta Lynn around the Corridor (excuse me, Midtown) to show all his hipster friends but he still just sounds like some dude. And does it creep anybody else out that Meg White never, ever talks? Just "hee hee...giggle giggle".
I'm jealous of Baltimore. All I can do is complain about local celebrities; Baltimore's artistic culture got it a mention on the BBC. Evidently Baltimore cops are trying to combat the popular local DVD, "Stop Snitching" with their own, called, "Keep Talking". It makes me think of the anti-drug "rap videos" we had to watch in middle school sex ed.

Good Weather or Bum Work

2005-06-07T17:53:00.000-04:00

I'm on strike, internet. I haven't done a goddamn thing in three days except bitch about the heat and loaf places. Yesterday I did my loafing at the house we are trying to sell, waiting for the city inspector to come and tell us that it is in no condition to be lived in by human beings and we should just burn it to the ground. I was not looking forward to my encounter with the city inspector who I imagine to be kind of like those robot assassin dudes in The Matrix but like, more slovenly.
I also wasn't looking forward to sitting at the house from 8 a.m to 4 p.m, the time frame within which the city inspector was likely to arrive. So Paul and I called them after much debate, Paul expressing both sides of it. "This is going to annoy them" He said, "But what do they expect. No reasonable human being wants to be told to wait between 8 and 4, of course we're going to call." The bureaucrat was only slightly annoyed but could give us no information.
The city inspetor showed up around 10:30, just as I started to get that greyhound-disassociative state of the truly bored. He was a sixty-something white guy in a ponytail, slovenly, but not bureaucrat I was expecting. I think he took pity on me and realized I was obviously too young and iresponsible and poorly dressed to be a genuine slumlord.
We didn't pass, duh, but we weren't aiming to pass. One step closer to getting rid of that money pit and when we're done I'm throwing a paryt.

Baby Chicks

2005-06-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

We always forget how many brown hens we have which is the only justifiable reason that we didn't notice that one of them was hiding under the wheelchair ramp for at least 21 days. We noticed only when the peep peep of her six baby chicks. Of course all activity has to stop for at least an hour to give everyone a chance to coo, "baby chickens!" and get ferociously pecked by the mama.
The segues (er, gingers) into the topic of the day, which is Mandatory Dicking Around Time; concept named by Cara's high school friend to describe the time that must be alloted for in any trip for: losing your keys; finding your keys; getting a cup of cofee; running into somebody; having to find your wallet etc... Budgeting in the 20 minutes or so of Mandatory Dicking Around Time makes spacy but punctual people like myself much happier.
I have noticed lately the Mandatory Dicking Around Time at the compound is like, quadruple what it should be. You set a goal, you make a plan and then someone comes home with a funny story or the bees swarm or the cat falls through the ceiling and suddenly an hour has passed. Or if you are me last thursday, you make a plan and write a to-do list and then just before you leave for breakfast, Keith says, "how about we split that weed brownie my boss gave me? You forget the rule about grown-ups and the quality of weed they tend to have and 2o minutes later you are lying on your bed listening to the disembodied voice of your 7th grade DARE instructor. You realize then that you didn't have a seventh grade DARE instructor and that the voice is off your roomate, Patrick who is pranking you by speaking through the hole in your ceiling. When you finally get your brain back around night time the to-do list is their, mocking you.

the weather is nice and there's so much to see...

2005-06-03T15:42:00.000-04:00

What a good day.

I did nothing but pet kitties, lounge and file a fafsa. My fafsa came back with the following joyful announcement: Expected Family Contribution (EFC)= $0.

Does that mean I'll get a stipend to cover my living expenses? Oh boy, do I hope so and not only for practical reasons. The government is going to give me money that I am going to give to an anti-government compound? Is that how it works? oh yeah.

Let's Blow Up the Compound

2005-06-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

It's such a good idea. We could turn the basements into swimming pools and build our own individual huts out of the rubble. I got a little bit too drunk at the house meeting. It was one of those. You may not know about those house meetings, internet, because you may have a more civilized way of running your household. But you could be Mormon so you'll know exactly what I'm talking about; like when Wife #4 inappropriatly disciplined Wife #3's child and it's all passive agressive and then Wife #2 over-bleached your sacred underwear. Yeah, just like that.
I planted okra today, and tomatoes. My new gardening technique is unstoppable. I got so much done and still spent the entire afternoon lounging.

Hold Your Breath

2005-05-29T00:02:00.000-04:00

The gay internet just informed me that Chuck Palahniuk is a big homosexual. Huh, that doesn't make me like his books any better since they were obviously written by the worst computer program ever. (C:\violence+pop culture trivia\more trivia\"it was her brother all along!"\trivia) But I know so many macho road kill eating boys who worship at the altar of Tyler Durden that I can't help but think, "what a good prank."
Chuck P earned a reluctant place in my heart with his first prank, where people kept fainting during a reading of one particular story. Cara finally found a copy and the first line read: "Hold your breath while I read this story".

I am a General

2005-05-28T22:28:00.000-04:00

OMG, Internet, I am so high and all I want to do is talk like I'm in the SLA. Death to bourgois parasites that sucks on the blood of the people! My name is Floofypants and I am a general in the revolutionary army! Boy, it's easy to make general when there's only like, ten of you.
I'm totally starting my own revolutionary peoples' army; just me and the cats. Turtle can be a corporal and Charlie, who is named after the Viet Cong* but is a little bit retarded can be a PFC.

*this is actually true.

Dinosaurs Fly Planes Into Buildings for Jesus

2005-05-28T01:20:00.000-04:00

My roomates were discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories and how it makes so much sense to them that George Bush orchestrated, with the help of the CIA, the entire hijacking. I went upstairs to help my more sensible roomates crumple dried catnip so avoid pounding the table and shouting.
I love the roomates and I'm not a shouting, conflict loving person. But I'm finding irrationality so frustrating these days. I don't believe in feeling realities, heart math, that tobacco is good for you, that I have too much metal in my chi or that the CIA controls Al Quaeda and I am so damn annoyed these days by people who do.
It's living in George Bush's America that's doing it to me. It's bad enough listening to left-wingers talk about how their new doctor discovered their allergy to wheat by making them touch a bagel. But then I read the newspaper and learn about the creationism themed amusement park and how George Bush's gut told him all about the WMDs and whole thing starts to feel more sinister.
What kind of society is this that's decided that facts are boring and square? I never used to be so dogmatic about the scientific method or iambic pentameter but now I feel like they are under attack by lazy people who haven't the intellectual energy to actually educate themselves. I don't want to spend my whole life being set up by sixteen year olds who read a couple Herman Hesse books and now think they know the secret of the universe or living under a baptist Taliban of gut-trusting cowboys.
In fact, it's all starting to seem like a conspiracy. Arggggh!

Urban Gorrilla

2005-05-26T20:49:00.000-04:00

My mom has returned to the world of the internet by popular demand. Monday night I spent the night at her house and we watched the Patty Hearst documentary. God, I feel like such an amature left-wing militant compared those teenage wackjobs. It had never previously occured to me how great it would be to protest the Iraq war by brainwashing Paris Hilton. Sadly, the roomates feel the same way about bringing a scantily clad socialite into our house as they felt about me adopting five overweight cats.
Oh boy, oh boy is left-wing rhetoric embarrassing. Listening to twenty-something white girls say shit like "death to the bloodsucking pigs" and other mixed-metaphors made me renew my vow to avoid to stupid anarchist phrases and replace with actual English words.
While listening to Bankrobber Patty's Poignant tribute to the dead SLA members by mom began a voice over replacing them with the names and descriptions of my housemates, "Megan, who was a gymnatistics teacher.....Jesse who had turkeys and loved a good blunt..."
Thanks mom.

Kitties!

2005-05-20T17:38:00.000-04:00

I've been reminded of the Humane Society and how much I love to go there so let me share this story:
When going with my sister to adopt her cat* I saw an old lady and someone who obviously her bored son and grandson come in wheeling a child's red wagon full of enormously fat grey cats. I think there were between four and six but they were all the same color and their stomachs sort of oozed into one silly-putty like pile of cat so I can't be sure. The old lady had to give up her cats to go a nursing home and she was crying, not hysterically but heart brokenly as she waved goodbye to them. My heart went so out to her. What bastard children would force a woman to give up her pets, so beloved they are morbidly obese, to cart her off to a home. I decided I hated the woman's children and which them horrible lives.
I was also reading the sign above the cat room that explained the fees. It went something like,
"Kittens: $80
Cats: $60
Cats Older than 7 years: $40
Cats that are companions: buy one get the next half off,
buy more than three get the fourth companion free"

I realized that, taking this sign to its logical conclusion, I could acquire over 150 pounds of cat for like twenty bucks. I almost did; I wanted to see that poor heartbroken woman's face when I stepped right up to be a home for her poor, chubby, hard to adopt kitties. I explained the plan to my sister and she said, voice of reason that she rarely is, "Your roomates will throw you out"

This could all be solved if I owned a washing machine

2005-05-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

So here I am doing laundry at my mom's house and playing on the internet because the compound's internet is made of coconut shells. Now I've neglected the dryer cycle and am tardy to my weeding date with Stacey. Fortunatly, it's raining.
While in what my father in his phone call sunday night refered to as the City of Brotherly Love* I met Cara's new beau. He was in the thick of some frustrating internet scheme where he had to ask people on the internet questions and they would ask him questions. He had already given up on it by the time I realized that I had a question for him.
I never asked him if he ate garbage. I realized, in a stunning glow of knowledge, that I had simply assumed he did or was at least familiar, before his relationship with Cara, with garbage eating. I realized that I live in such a bubble these days that I conceptualize garbage eating as a "mainstream" activity.

I need to get out more, go to goth clubs or Republican parties.

The Final Part of My Travelogue

2005-05-17T20:39:00.000-04:00

J., who I am staying with, is about to receive $1,500 for two days work. What, you ask, is she doing that will pay her that amount of money in that amount of time?

Well, internet. J. will be arriving at an innocuous Baltimore clinic where she will be given grape juice and a powerful muscle relaxer ("if you get the placebo," said the nurse, "you will totally know") then put unconcious for 20 minutes.

Although the science of anesthesia and how the very legitimate risk of dying does concern J. (a qualifier for this study is having the shape of mouth that enables them to easiliy intubate you, yum) it's the drugs only concerned side effect that intrigues.

Evidently, it is not uncommon to people who take this drug to have an uncontrollable burning sensation in their butts.

I did not put cayenne in the dogs nose

2005-05-16T12:57:00.000-04:00

I went to a show with CiderHouse* last night. There was rock and also roll but really, what the hell do I care about punk music. More importantly there were dogs. Two of the dogs were being repeatedly dressed in people clothes and not just t-shirts. No, thse people were creative. At one point in the night the pitbull was wearing daisy dukes and a tank-top and the "lab mix"** was wearing only a bra. A caveman looking man had also brought his dog, an elderly basset hound named Gunther.
I was undone. I completly ignored all the humans for a twenty minutes whild I squished the basset hound's ear and said things like, "you are the dog with not enough legs" and "you are the dog who is droopy". This is what I say when I am pleased.

*the house I'm staying at is named the Ciderhouse, "y'know because we rule". I realize that some of the internet may not exist in a sub-culture where people must name their houses but I don't understand how you weirdos can have conversations about whose home you are going to....now that I think about it's because normal people tend to only live 2 or maximum 3 to a house.

**The Michigan Humane Society uses the term lab mix to describe essentially any dog with four legs and a tail.

Believe that I am Travel Writer

2005-05-14T20:35:00.000-04:00

Right now I"m reading a book that I selected because I thought it would be a history of women pirates. It is sort of that but more a book of travel writing about a women visiting the various North Atlantic, God forsaken areas of the world and learning about how important the "fishgutting lassies" were to the dried haddock economies of Scandanavia. I was tricked, even though I'm enjoying the book. Travel writing was never a genre I really, y'know, got. I'm too pc, I guess. But anyway, reading this book is giving me anxiety about failng as a travel writer, although my destination, while sunnier than the Orkney Islands is much less exotic.
So I'm here in Baltimore. I rode down with the Eastern Shore housemates on their way to visit their moms.
The only real tourist attraction I wanted to experience while in Baltimore was the odwall dumpster and since we went last night I'm already counting this trip a success. My hosts have always believed that most activites are better with a soundtrack of Aqua and with dumpster diving I'm surprised how right they are. Having the cheerful fast beat of Barbie Girl in the background had every one digging furiously and we had a dance party in the parking lot once all the juice, smoothies and shakes were safely in the back of the mini-van.
This morning the housemates and I decided, really against our better judgement, to go to the local Infoshop for breakfast. We know anarchists; we don't want those people making us sandwiches. We are those people.
So we were frickin' shocked at the competence and respectability of the place. Not a damn thing about the decor suggested punk rock; it had customers and nobody glared at us. I even liked the books I saw on the shelves and food was tasty.

eight year old me would be so happy

2005-05-12T00:20:00.000-04:00

When I was in elementary school I responded to questions about my future career by saying I wanted to be the person who fed the seals at the aquarium.
In sixth grade I was asked to draw a picture of where I wanted to live when I grew up. Under the influence of my flaky aunt, who in her post-EST, pre-Guru Mai phase believed that the great plains would sink into a new ocean by 2010, I drew a commume on the shores of Colorado.
My brother, who is ten years older than me, used to send me comic books explaining things like the IRA and Communism when I was 10 or so. I love them. Since I was shy and we moved alot I played with barbies well into middle school. My barbies would be marxist guerrilas hiding in the mountains of my parents basement.
I read Laura Ingalls Wilder and used to play that I had my own farm. I secretly liked Prarie Home Companion all through my teen years.

What people never got about the Kids when we were a big media deal a few years back is what a wholesome bunch we all were and still are. We did a poll around the dinner table last night and every single member of my anti-government compound owned that "Ten Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth" book and we all militantly cut up plastic soda bottle rings to keep from choking sea turtles. We were the kids who did fundraisers to Save the Rainforest and turned off the water while brushing our teeth.
I knew this guy, a trainhopping would-be eco-terrorist who looked like he belonged in a boy band and made really good hashbrowns. He spent last summer up tree with a guy named CrazyHippyMonkeyDude learning how to make tatto ink in prison. When he was a kid he was a boy scout. He earned tons of merit badges and went on hikes all through the mountains and redwoods of northern california.

I think teenager Leah wishes I had turned out a little cooler, with more makeup and a book deal. But God, elementary school Leah thinks I turned out exactly right.

Alicia Keys, you are so right.

2005-05-11T17:15:00.000-04:00

I tried to make no-bake cookies using Cara's mom's recipe last night. I failed miserably. I burned the cocoa/sugar/oil mix and in the process burned my toes by spilling incredibly hot syrup on them. Now I'm a little bit screwed because all my shoes are uncomfortable on my burned toes and I'd go barefoot but alot of places I go in my everyday live are filled with poop.
I think I was being punished for trying to make vegan cookies with the blood of a slaughtered chicken still on my foot.

Heaven of the Animals

2005-05-11T17:02:00.000-04:00

I tell the chickens that they will be reborn and have much happier lives, that they just have to be brave. I coo and them and try and soothe them before the cap'n slits their throats. I tell them that it's better anyway, because they were so miserable in those cages and that they were too mean to be let loose.
The Cap'n asked me after we'd hung up the corpses if I really believed in chicken heaven. I think I do, at least believe in a sense of restorative justice for animals, especially animals served so poorly by humanity. It wasn't the chickens fault they were fighting cocks and wanted to peck to death every male and rape every female they saw. It's not all those vicious pitbulls that the Humane Society euthanizes' fault that they been bred and trained to kill. The Universe should give humanity another chance or two, those chickens should be reborn as beloved house-cats or golden retrievers so they can see a better side of people.

I Buried Silver Dollars by the Creek

2005-05-09T22:33:00.000-04:00

Digging beds in the sidelot with Patrick meant I had to keep saying, "no! not there. That's where my cat is buried!" and then later, "no! that's my other cat!" It's emotionally difficult to arrange you garden around the graves of beloved pets.
It was harder up at the school where we stopped Paul just before he plowed right over the shallow grave of Snowball the cow's bones. It did not stop him, however from tilling up tons of well crushed cement, probably the foundation of a house.
This is one of the challenges of urban farming.
Andrew was pretty gleeful about it, even though it meant alot of work with the rake to mix up the cement with the compost. "what kind of soil do you have?" he said, immitating a conversation with other farmers, "sandy loam? loamy clay? No, no, concrete and house manure. That's what we have."
Andrew's pretty gleeful in general. He's always having epiphanies and making burritos. His scheme to get pregnant lesbians to spruce up the barnyard area is actually working. They recently painted the hen house bright red with poultry related terms in spanish and english written in yellow.

My Pretty and Your Poor Stupid Little Dog

2005-05-09T21:16:00.000-04:00

I've been neglecting to inform you internet how much my client's grandma is the bane of my existence. B (my client) and her mom, Sonia moved in with grandma just after New Years Eve, when, as an update for those of you who are new to this, Sonia's ex burned down their house. So for the past 4 months or so I have not only had to deal with being punched and kicked and peed on but I have to experience all that while a cruel, illiterate backwoods shrew from hell stood over me and screamed about how overpaid I am and how she suspects I steal from her.
Last week Sonia moved into a house that our collective owns but is in the slow process of selling. I was, to put it lightly, thrilled to imagine that I may never have to see grandma again. Unfortunatly, Sonia's moving process is slow and with B. wetting the bed so often she has to go to Grandma's to do laundry.
Today I almost beat the old hag to death with her own minitiure poodle. Poor B., the stress of listening to her grandmother emotionally abuse her mother tends to make her vomit. While I was hold B.'s head and handing her napkins, Grandma was speaking loudly to her friend about how she "may not be educated" but that for "ten friggin' dollars an hour" we are just making B. worse. "She never used to puke, it's those girls making her do things!"
Yeah...those girls. Did I mention that grandma never bothered to learn our names?

Somebody Got High and Put a Chicken on My Head

2005-05-08T17:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, not exactly.
We were given some $200 dollars by the parents of our housemates who died in a carcrash 2 years ago to have a party. I never knew her and I met her mom once when she was up from Florida for a memorial party so I can't really reveal to the internet why they gave us this money except that they are obviously nice people.
So we had a party with a keg of microbrewed beer and bbq-ed deer. I did not eat the deer but I had to put that fact in here for rhyming purposes, duh. Since I'm old and square I went to bed by midnight, waking up every few hours to worry that the giant bonfire outside my window was going to spread out of control and kill me.
This morning someone was curled up next to the fire pit, sleeping peacefully despite it being noon and us living on a busy street. I was informed by Erin that not long after I went to bed Mr. Passed-Out had a brief moment of notoriety as Mr. Naked, stripping off all his clothes and prancing around the bonfire v. intouch with his pre-civilized self. Gah.
We had decided two weeks ago to ban drunken nakedness from our house parties but this dipshit didn't get the memo. So we gathered up a band of our tamest chickens and put them all around Mr. Naked's sleeping form.

I'm sorry this story doesn't have a dramatic ending. Mr. Naked slept on; the chickens got bored and started to eat worms, and I went off to celebrate Mother's Day.

Bye Bye CULMA

2005-05-06T22:54:00.000-04:00

They are in the process of closing the college that I'm in the process of applying to. ug. It's not as bad as it sounds; the clases and faculty and degree will all be the same but the college is being absorbed into the regular graduate school. It's a bummer because after going to a tiny rural school, I was hoping that a smaller college within a large public university would make the transition. Besides, it was the College of Urban Labor and Metropolitan Affairs, how lefty is that? It even has/had its own library called the Walter Reuther library.
In other bummers, I put on tons of sunscreen to protect my frail, northern european self from the cruel early spring sun. I neglect, and how embarrassing is this, the skin on my but that was exposed while I bent down planting cabbages for two hours. I have a frickin' plumber tan!
In other hilarities: While putting the finishing touches on the rabbit hutch I realized I'd left my staple gun in the barn. I walked in through the front door of the barn and was greeted with the umistakable smell mix of articificial strawberry flavor and marijuana and the sight of several student scurrying away. Now, I have no actual authority at the school so I couldn't have made them stop smoking strawberry blunts in the barn during lunch if I wanted to. I've made a note to jingle my keys loudly and maybe fall down a little before entering the barn in the future. It shouldn't be too hard. I fall down pretty frequently and my keys jingle on my way down.

Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies!!!!!

2005-05-05T20:26:00.000-04:00

Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies
Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies
Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies
BUNNIES!

The bunnies are so cute. The girl bunny is about the size and shape of basketball made entirely of soft fuzziness; you really have to dig down to find the parts of her that are actually her to pick-up. Soon I will post pictures of the bunnies so that you too, internet, can marvel at their adorableness.

OMG I M such a N3rd

2005-05-04T17:49:00.000-04:00

I was going somewhere else with this post, the theme of which was going to be that my roomate, Keith is very much like McGuyver. I'm pretty certain that as I type Keith is building a spinning wheel out bike parts and old crass records to turn our new bunnies fur into wooly mittens. So here I was thinking of an example of Keith's McGuyver-esque powers and I remembered his 4-needles-in-1 tattoing needle which allows for more sanitary tattoing practices and allowed me to have a Joyce Carol Oates inspired stick-and-poke tattoo in the matter of an hour.
It's more that Joyce Carol Oates created a more tattoo ready image; my tattoo is more an homage 20th century womens gothics like The Magic Toyshop and We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Foxfire which I've realized since I've just finished re-reading all three is my favorite sub-sub-genre of American literature.

B-Day!

2005-05-04T11:11:00.000-04:00

stands for Bunny Day, which is today. I shouldn't even be typing this. I should be at Home Depot buying hardware wire, patronizing an evil corporate entity because I'm cheap and have a gift card which reminds of my big revelation last week that the fringe benefits of the non-profit industry do not come in comped champaigne dinners but in $5 home depot gift cards, kale transplants and watering cans. This would depress me into corporate America if I didn't really like kale and watering cans.
And the other major fringe benefits is free angora rabbits. I am so psyched internet, you have no idea. I will brush them and brush them until I have my own fuzzy majorette sweater and it will be awesome.

Yesterday, was T-day, stands for turkey day, not Thanksgiving. We drove up to 31 mile* to the baby turkey store and purchased six tiny birdies marked like pitbulls. I cuddled them the whole way home even though the cap'n kept saying I'd get pooped on. I did not get pooped on. ha!

* I'm only including this detail because while telling the story to Cara she said that knowing that there was a 31 mile road disrupted her world view. "What," she said, "is there a 6,000 mile road in California that only michigan residents can see?" I don't know the answer to this except to say that mile road numbers go up as you go farther north and they are all based on the 40th parrellel which is 8 mile. That's my fact for the day, but I could be wrong about it being the 40th parrellel, it may be the 45th.

Oops!

2005-05-02T13:18:00.000-04:00

Patrick's friends have a created an elaborate internet hoax involving Britney Spears' Oops I did it again. They have created a website claiming that Louis Armstrong is the original performing of the song and recorded a Louis Armstrong-esque version for download.
What astounds be about this is not the idea, nor that so many people believed them nor that people believed them even though the recording sounds alot like Cookie Monster. What astounds me is that by the time they went to all this effort they were surely no longer high.

Brought to You By ICP

2005-04-28T01:27:00.000-04:00

We named the three bottle-fed baby goats Breakfast, Lunch and Annie. Breakfast, Lunch and Annie has been hand fed for the past month or so from milk-filled faygo* bottles with nipples attached. Even though I've been trying to ease "that's so ghetto" out of my vocabulary I feel pretty okay saying that the expression "that's so ghetto" can pretty much be defined by feeding baby goats with a faygo bottle.
Now the Cap'n has got a better, more efficient set-up that consists of a bucket with 4 nipples sticking out so the babies can serve themselves. Breakfast, Lunch and Annie hate the new set up. The feel emotional deprived and show this by sucking fanatically on my fingers while I pet them.
I can't find the beloved faygo bottles or I would have fed them.

*note to non-michigan residents: faygo is a local cheap and wonderful brand of soda-pop that acts as muse to the Insane Clown Posse who a year or two ago bought out the company to keep it from going bankrupt.

I'm so Poor that...

2005-04-28T01:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my second to last day Leaving Children Behind. I was feeling pretty good as the day before I taught the children how to card and spin freshly sheared yarn and they were actually pretty well behaved. I rewarded them with hot cheetos.
It didn't work. Only half an hour in I was dragging my worst, weirdest child whose name is alot like that of Laura Ingalls Wilder's husband, down to the principal. I mean dragging literally. Little Almonzo was wrapped entirely around my left leg screaming hysterically promising that he would never again pull his classmates ponytail so hard he braids loosened.
When I got back to the classroom the remaining children were whispering excitedly and nudging eachother. Finally one of them said, "Miss Wallace, we've been talking about it and we think you might be poor."
Since I figured I couldn't explain class privilege and slumming to children for whom 'not hitting' is an off-the-wall concept and since I was feeling a bit put-upon from being kicked upside the ear during my morning job I told them that yes, I was poor.

The Internet Needs to Know...

2005-04-14T20:20:00.000-04:00

....that the minimum order for mail order baby chicks is 25.

....that a stray cat I let into the house for the night ate one of the baby chickens and so was evicted by the cap'n this morning.

.... that the minimum order for mail order baby turkeys is 10 and the cap'n should be receiving his turkeys sometime this week.

....that 5 adorable baby goats need happy homes or they will be turned into bbq-ed goat this summer. I am very very sad about this because I love to cuddle them but they are inbred and so not useful as milking goats.

....that I currently know how to make paneer, feta and ricotta cheese and that it is delicious

....that Laura Ingalls Wilder's farming plans never involved cajoling a group of pregnant teens whose favorite phrase is "I ain't touching that".

Sin Sin Sin

2005-04-14T20:11:00.000-04:00

The suspense is killing me. I am desperate for some kind of inside knowledge about front runners in the papal election. I would really like to ask Catholic Julie about this but I haven't yet for the following reasons:

1) I am worried about offending her. I really like Julie and I think of her intense religiosity and overall moral goodness as something that makes her rare and fragile and easy to offend by clumsy heathens like me.

2) Julie has already shared so many great facts with me this week that it seems greedy to ask her for more. She showed Stacey and I the proper way to pat a chickens belly to see if the chicken has recently laid eggs. Julie was a blue-ribbon winning 4-H poultry judger in middle school and is a veritable font of interesting ways to poke chickens.

Further Update on the Shame Front

2005-04-07T14:31:00.000-04:00

I have six empty coffee mugs in my room, growing mold. I am deeply, deeply ashamed of this.
You see, ever since I moved into a room 8 feet away from the kitchen sink I have embraced a hilarious self-righteousness about how I *never* have empty cups hiding in my room. I would watch my third floor housemates bring down crates of moldy cups and shake my head disapprovingly. I would particpate in raids on the bedrooms of our most notorious cup-hoarding housemates. I may have even answered our house's most popular question, "what the fuck happened to all our cups?" with a snotty, "Have you checked your rooooooom?"
So, I've been thinking of keeping my six coffee mugs to remind me that I suffer from the sin of pride.

Update on the Cute Animal Front

2005-04-07T14:05:00.000-04:00

1) There were baby goats living in my basement this weekend. We fed them through a faygo bottle with a nipple on it. My cats, ignoring conventional wisdom about their species and curiousity, gathered around, as puffed up as possible, staring the baby goats right in the face. One goat decided that my orange tabby was, if not her mama, then the best mama subsitute around. She followed my cat around, bleating, terrifying the cat and overwhelming us all with the adorableness.

2) The baby chickens have finally left my bedroom and are reaching their ugly adolescent phase.

3) There are baby rabbits in the greenhouse. They look exactly like Spuds McKenzie.

4) I am in heated negotiations with a woman to receive a donation of angora rabbits. I am thrilled. Soon I will be wearing cone-bras and cone-bra enhancing fuzzy sweaters.

Oh My God, Please Fire Me, Please

2005-03-24T14:48:00.000-05:00

I hate the children. I want to leave them behind. I say, screw the $22.50 an hour and a pox on educating the underprivileged.
I called in sick on tuesday simply because my throat still kinda hurt and I knew after three hours of "Dameka stop washing the blackboard. Alonzo don't stab him. Get in your seats. Stop stabbing him" I would be a deaf mute. Last thursday I was trying to explain to the little monsters that my two pet peeves were a) saying someone ewas a 'girl' as an insult and b) saying "gay" as an insult. It took me five minutes because they kept demonstrating other things that I could put on my list of "most annoying behaviors.
They'll never fire me. They only gave me this group of hellions because their previous two teachers lasted a day each. I wonder if I can convince Alonzo to stab me so I can collect disability.

I Really Tried to Connect This to Michale Jackson

2005-03-23T16:30:00.000-05:00

The monastary cat is obviously related to breed of dachshaund kitties that room the parking lot of the Dover, Delaware Denny's. His legs are no more than 2 inches long and his fat belly hangs on the ground. He also smells like diesel fuel and had a hairless paw for a while after an incident with hot beeswax. I really like monastary kitty the way I like all freakish creatures.
Friar Tuck has taken to having sleepover in the greenhouse with monastary kitty, leaving the tell-tale signs of empty wine bottles and a flannel pillowcase. He has taken to calling monastary kitty his therapist.
Patrick likes his job and more importantly he likes Friar Tuck so the phrase, "y'know if they'd just let you have sex...." always stops itself before being uttered.

Flu-Like Symptoms II

2005-03-21T15:26:00.000-05:00

Okay this is totally the flu-like symptoms or the cough medicine talking but:
my internet phrase of the day is : "your mom's a social construct".

ink-pen

2005-03-21T14:52:00.000-05:00

Most of us have ended up with the bland accents of people who watch TV but everybody's got one or two words that bring their accents out. For my dad, as evidently for Cara, this word is "IN-sur-ance". For my sister-in-law, "ed-u-ca-shawn". For me it's the "oh" part of "oh my god!" that makes me sound like Garrison Keiller.
But for my roomate Patrick that word is "poop", spoken with a John Waters nasal twang and a special horribleness all its own.

Flu-Like Symptoms

2005-03-21T14:43:00.000-05:00

I have flu-like symtoms. This means that I could call the flu vaccine double-blind study I did in the fall and earn an extra $25 (plus a 10$) target gift card by letting them swab my throat. Of course, I'd have to get out of my pajamas and somehow 25$ isn't worth that much to me, what with the price of gas and all.
When I purchased what is affectionatly known around these parts as a "rice burner" I thought I'd be laughing all the way to the rice pump, filling my car as well as my body on cheap starches. Of course, I later found out this is a simply a metaphor. My rice burner is actually a gasoline burner, just a smaller, cuter one less like to explode at 100,000 miles.*

*both my apple-pie burners this past year have had at $1200 part literally explode at pretty much exactly 100,000 miles.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Bruce Campbell

2005-03-16T17:04:00.000-05:00

Becky and I are both losing it from lack of sleep; me because I'm working two jobs and covering for her and Becky because her national health conference is in three days. So, we both showed up for work tuesday morning. Our client was gearing up for one of those bang-your-head-on-the-bathtub-scream-kick-punch kind of mornings when I walked in but the sheer novelty of having two of us shifted her into to the happy attention seeker mood that I love.
That and the extreme goofiness that Becky and I get into when it's 7 a.m. and we're jointly cajouling a mentally retarded teenager into brushing her teeth made it an awesome morning.

My Peeps

2005-03-10T17:17:00.000-05:00

We lost power on the second floor of the house yesterday. DTE is having a devil of a time restoring our power; I imagine they have had to call over to the Edison Museum at Greenfield Village* to find our original electrical schematics. Okay, so I'm making that up. But our electricity was installed in 1900 and the only time it's been updated was almost certainly by someone on LSD or possible Bruce Campbell** So, in the meantime I'm the only compound member with electricity in my room. The Cap'n has therfore moved his 6 baby chickens into my room so their heat lamp can stay plugged in.
I am undone! I take every available moment to pick up as many baby chicks as possible and snuggle them. I also invite everyone who stops into our house, including the electric company workers, to see the collection of adorableness I have stored in my room.

* Greenfield village is like a smaller more Henry Ford oriented Colonial Williamsburg. My uncle used to be a tour guide at the Thomas Edison exhibit but got bored and told lies to schoolchildren to entertain himself

** Bruce Campbell used to live in my house. Now that I know this I blame all plumbing leaks and electrical failings on him.

Have a Bob Day!

2005-03-08T10:13:00.000-05:00

I wrote my former thesis advisor wanting a recommendation letter to get into urban planning school. This was his reply:

Leah--

Of course. I'm make up all kinds of good stuff about how you were
always looking for ways to rearrange the buildings on campus and
what good ideas you had for Chestertown, including dredging
canals so it could be called the Venice of the Eastern Shore.

Professor Day

Joy.

It was so not Gothic Monday

2005-03-02T16:15:00.000-05:00

I went to type a grant proposal on Andrew's work computer. This gave me a rare chance to interact with Andrew while he was not high. Sadly, Andrew cannot give me his full attention as he is teaching 10th grade English at the time.
So I type and I type, filling my proposal with amazing rhetorical flourishes (ie. lies) (for example: "Students complete non-traditional tasks increasing their self-esteem and learing real life skills" translates as "Oh my God. Quit your whining. You can totally use a chainsaw while pregnant.") Meanwhile, Andrew is discussing the pros and cons of circumsion, mostly cons, with a deeply skeptical group of about five teenage girls. It's not untill I'm ready to leave that I realize Andrew is theoretically teaching them about Edgar Allen Poe.

2005-02-23T17:19:00.000-05:00

I have class every Saturday morning from now until April and boy am I pleased. I'm thrilled to be a student again because it allows me the stalking possibilities that I had lost when I graduated from college. My new stalking target I will call Miss Twitchy. Miss Twitchy would have not made the grade in my college days because she is technically by roomates' boss (boss to three of my roomates) but I'm less picky now. She has a masters degree in Community Organizing and childbearing hips and always appears to be about 20 minutes away from a nervouse breakdown. Since Miss Twitchy taught this particular class I was able to observe her for hours at a stretch and was amazed to discover that she is able to coast on just-about-to-snap-and-kill-you-all for a three hour lecture. She also blinks way less than a normal human being should.
When not observing Miss Twitchy I read the collection of anti-smoking propaganda scattered around the American Indian Health Center where the class was held. The gist of their message is: a modern American Indian knows tobacco is sacred to her people. Therefore she would never be so filled with self-loathing and dishonorable as to smoke cigarettes. Also, you will get cancer.

No, Ich Ben Ein Charity Case

2005-02-17T13:27:00.000-05:00

The Germans have been studying us, Detroit I mean. They've made a "Save-the-Children" style documentary about our pathetic post-industrial city. They're fascinated. They've written position papers.
I don't know how to feel about this. Part of me is channeling the Apalachian housewife too proud to accept government cheese; part of me knows government cheese is tasty, or government bratwurst, or, stepping back into literal reality: government windmills.
The Germans are giving us a windmill. It's a small 120 volt windmill that we'll be installing over the barn to power the chainsaws and assorted powertools. We have to get the windmill installed and the who barnyard looking alot less pathetic by the time PBS comes in April to film their documentary so we don't end up look like those crude, drunken charity cases that no one wants to donate to.
So yes, I'm going to be famous, sort of.

Ich Ben Ein Pooncheck

2005-02-14T14:07:00.000-05:00

In New Orleans they celebrate the arrival of Lent by drinking and filming Girls Gone Wild videos. Here in the obese, polish midwest we celebrate Pazcki day. Pascki (pronounced pooonchki, singular pooncheck) are jelly donuts made of lard. My grandfather ate 5. I ate none as I am a joyless vegetarian.

No, Ashenputul. You May Not Go to the Ball

2005-02-12T18:07:00.000-05:00

The USDA has program where members of various national agriculture organizations are able to, for a nominal fee, receive a bundle of seed packets and flat of transplants at the beginning of every growing season. To keep costs down, as USDA reimbursment is stingy, the seeds are bought in bulk by these organizations and then some unlucky member must spend the last month of winter dividing the bulk seeds into individual packets.
At my house he accomplishes this task in his pajamas with the physical help of his girlfriend and some measuring cups and the emotionally assistence of some beer. It means I know who to track down when I actually need to know that I have added half-a-cup of flour to my cake recipe but since I usually have to track down someone to finish any complicated recipe it is an improvement.

Sorry, God

2005-02-11T14:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry Internet, I've been neglecting you. Today I helped my desperatly overstressed housemate make sure her Reclaim Your Health conference is not a funny looking white people only affair. I did this by flyering at several black power bookstores and cafes, while projecting an aura of downness. I am soo bad at this.

Where Have I Been, Internet?

2005-01-07T15:00:00.000-05:00

Busy, sick.
The day before new year's eve my client's mother's boyfriend beat her with a hammer. She, though having not heretofor shown very good sense in picking men, having stayed with the boyfriend after he set her car on fire two months ago, broke up with him. Later, a barfight occured that the boyfriend lost, details are sketchy. The boyfriend retaliating for all this by setting the client's house on fire while she and her babysitter were inside.
They got out because of the many, many smoke detectors. We keep reminding the client about the importance of smoke detectors when she gets mopey and obsessive about what would have happened if she hadn't been able to wake up. It's not really sinking in but it's the only thing I can think of that might help her be less upset about this. She's obsessive by nature and has had nightmares and her hair pulling, which was under control is back with a vengeance.
We're helping the mom out with soliciting donations from habitat for humanity and local building companies because it's looking like she can rebuild the house and keep living in it. For now they're living with the client's grandmother who is an evil shrew with a miniture poodle. The poodle is named Pierre; it has a diamond collar...and a sweater. This is the kind of evil she is.
The grandmother refers to me as either "that girl" or "that other girl". I do not like her. I also do not like that she discourages my client from calling the ex-boyfriend a, "fucker" or a "fucking asshole". I think this is theraputic. What do I know?

I Should Have Gone to Art School

2004-12-28T13:20:00.000-05:00

For her final art project K.B. took vaguely pornographic photographs of her roomate and a sparly dildo and then had him (the roomate) write disturbing fan letters on cartoon deer stationary. The one that thrilled me the most had this as its text, accompanied by pictures of the roomate performing fellatio on the dildo, wrapped in a American flag.
"Dear Mel Gibson,
I enjoyed the Passion of the Christ. Immensely."

I went joyfully apeshit over the period placed after "christ" and K.B. was thrilled that I noticed.

This was at cheerleading practice. We did very little actual cheering and instead spent two hours admiring the ironic tchotkes that filled K.B.'s house.

Nermel

2004-12-28T13:15:00.000-05:00

Today I learned that while most people give their pets Christmas gifts, it is abnormal to receive gifts from ones pets. It is extra abnormal to receive, in addition to gifts from ones cats, a pair of pink rubber boots from ones "Barnyard Friends". Also, one will be greeted with howls of laughter upon confessing that one used to receive christmas gives from ones hamster.
*sigh* I feel how our compound's child is going to feel in ten years when he discovered that most kids did not play "Imperialist Agressors and Tribal Warriors".

Get to Your Closet and Pray!

2004-12-15T22:19:00.000-05:00

Le Car is still holding on and has morphed in the final stages of its illness into "The Consequences Car". B. and I are supposedly paid to enforce 'consequences' on our client so that she learns that malicious urination is not the appropriate way to act out ones feelings and that banging one's head against the bathtub does not mean one does not have to go to school. Our client is retarded; consequences are a complicated concept for her.
Rather than allow the client to miss school this morning B. drove her in The Consequences Car, which has no heat and has to be constantly checked for coolant and oil. It is out hope that this vaguely sadistic behavior on our part will check our client's totally sadistic behavior. We aren't getting our hopes up.
In other work related news, I am pretty much universally known as the crazy cat lady these days. The client's younger brother brought me their skittish and neurotic cat, Butterball, yesterday, saying, "Mom says to give you the cat to hold for a while because you're good with cats."
The housemates squealed with laughter hearing this. Assholes. The cats and I detest them.

Aloha Car

2004-12-13T13:38:00.000-05:00

My poor car is terminally ill with a busted head gasket. I picking it up at the mechanic so that it can die at home surrounded by its loved ones, and so I can drive it to and from work untill the weather gets a bit warmer or I get money for a functiong car. I suppose I shouldn't be too sad; it is an '87 k-car so it's not like it's being struck down in the bloom of youth. It was also prone to doing things like having blowouts on the pennsylvania turnpike and having random, non-essential parts just fall off. The mirrors are held on with bungie cords.
On the other hand, in the car's salad days it transported six people and all their stuff to miami and back. It's been to more states than most people. Goodbye car, you've had a full life.

More on How I'm a Life-Long Learner

2004-12-07T23:29:00.000-05:00

My newest job is doing individualized tutoring for a pimp-like referrel service based out of New York. They refer me to parents and in turn take half the money. See, notice how I'm not enough of a life-long learner to see what a scam this is. And I'm the one who's teaching your kids math? Jeebus.
Anyway, I've been having to read up on how to teach kids reading comphrension. One book suggests that I pause in the middle of a story to chirp idioticly about the pictures in my head and how the story relates to my life. My original client B., would know exactly what to do if I tried that kind of nonsense on her: she'd bite me.

I Really Should Write to My Alumni Magazine

2004-12-07T17:24:00.000-05:00

Last night the Girl from Fargo and I went to the local black power bookstore to look into doing a Books to Prisons program with the prison advocacy group that meets there on mondays. I let the Girl from Fargo do most of the talking as she is more exuberant than I am and her Prairie Home Companian accent amuses people into listening to her more intently. Everyone seemed pretty receptive and we left with lots of notes and promises of research help.
Then I went to the Girl from Fargo's house to get high and play her accordian. She demonstrationg the mathmatical complexity of the accordian and gave me a brief tutorial in musical theory. One needs, I discovered: a much longer tutorial in musical theory; longer arms than I have; and an excellent sense of meter to play a genuine accordian, but I was pleased nonetheless. In exchange, I gave the Girl from Fargo a brief tutorial in the wonder and beauty of the semi-colon. I also am considering asking her Jordan Catalano-esque housemate to trade banjo lessons for knitting lessons.
See, I'm a life-long learner.