muffy bolding

Oh, fuck it…because I am feeling particularly weird habit-addled tonight — FIVE MORE:

1) I sleep with a soft, pink blanket I have had since infanthood. It is called “The Pink Softie” (pronounced “saw-fee”) and it has traveled with me to hotel rooms all over the world. I can’t sleep without it. It’s on my lap right now, as a matter of fact. It’s not a security thing; it’s a tactile thing.

2) I absolutely, positively CANNOT walk barefoot outside — even two steps out the front door onto the painted wooden porch to retrieve the mail. To walk barefoot on asphalt would quite literally result with me requiring hospitalization for textural and psychological trauma. Even padding around barefoot in the house kills me. And further, I cannot understand how people wear shoes inside the house. It must be the Asian in me, but there is something almost disrespectful about wearing shoes indoors. And for those of you who think I am totally insane because these two oddities are in direct opposition to each other — I always wear slippers when inside. Always. It’s a tactile thing.

3) I have a very difficult time actually touching pizza. I require the use of a knife and fork to eat it. It’s not an eating disorder thing; it’s a tactile thing.

4) I am a classic synaesthete and have been since I acquired language (I am on official medical record as having spoken in FULL sentences at just over 9 months old. How fucking SATANIC is THAT? I’d be mixing some holy water with that Similac, goddamnit.) I frequently see and smell sounds…and numbers each have their own corresponding color. When I am writing, I see “strings of light” in my head onto which words, shapes, sounds, smells, textures, and (oddest of all) various people and their voices are suspended for my use and perusal; for some reason, the lights are particularly bright when I am working on poetry. Also, much to my amusement, people frequently assume I am some overachieving academic with a graduate degree, and are almost always tickled to find that I am, in fact, a high school dropout who spent her entire senior year blissfully truant at the Fresno County Library, quite literally starting at one end and working my way through. Oh, yeah…and the cherry on top is that I have almost zero grasp of anything above about 4th grade math. My brain, she don’t work that way, I am afraid. I am a mathematical moron.

5) I cannot watch any old television show or movie without immediately knowing the real life names of each and every performer (even secondary and supporting), director, producer, and/or writer associated with it. And their entire life story. And their spouses and lovers. And the names of their children. And when they died and how. And any scandal or skullduggery with which they might have been associated. In other words, I have pretty much total voracious yet pointless recall when it comes to anything I have read or seen and in which I am interested — including film or television credits that may have rolled before my eyes when I was 5. I call myself The Font of Useless Knowledge. My husband calls me a Mousiant Savant.

The name of the game is “List Five of Your Weird Habits”.

Here mine be:

1) I use baby wipes for EVERYTHING. Remember the old guy with the Windex in that big, fat, Greek wedding movie? That’s me, except with baby wipes. Baby wipes can be used to scour the counters, mop the floors, shine your shoes, swipe a bunghole, wash grubby foots, cleanse a cute face, dust a desktop, disinfect a wound, polish jewelry, clean the keyboard, remove makeup, sop up load, swish the toiletbowl, and get a Starbucks stain out of a cashmere sweater. I carry a package in my purse; I am never without them. Baby wipes are KING.

2) I wash my hands somewhere in the range of 50 times a day. It’s not a germ thing; it’s a tactile thing.

3) I absolutely, genuinely relish the smell of asparagus pee. Though it may seem facetious, my literary bio speaketh the truth.

4) When I am kindly asked (or traumatically induced!) to go to “My Happy Place” — because it has been my ultimate dream since I was very young, I almost always go to Merry Olde England (or sometimes HERE) — a place, which in actuality, doesn’t really even exist anymore except in the wistful imagination of a little girl from Fresno. At any rate, it’s either London or the green, green countryside — it doesn’t really matter; it’s in my ears and in my eyes. I long to be there.

5) Whilst driving, I frequently talk out loud to the sweet grandbabies I shall someday have — in a heavy Scottish brogue. “Angus, Malcolm, Hamish, Fiona, and Argyle — come give Grannie a snog! Forget that nasty old Mummy and Daddy…Grannie loves you!” And, yes…I do this while driving alone.

Fuck it. I’ll just play through.

FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
Bookseller
Actor
Writer
Mother

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
What’s Up, Doc?
The Way We Were
The Godfather
A Hard Day’s Night

FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN
Rochester, New York
Fresno, California
San Diego, California
Coronado, California

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
The Young Ones
Jackass
The Sopranos
Get a Life

FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION
France
England
Transylvania
New York City

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY
Live Journal
Huffington Post
gmail
IMDB

FOUR OF YOUR FAVOURITE FOODS
Aztec Salad
Popcorn
Lasagna
Green salad with every little gottdamned thing

FOUR PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW
Disneyland
The Languedoc
Neshobe Island
London

One of my favorite poems in the whole world is one man’s love poem — to his suit.

For …and his jacket — whom I know will both fully understand its profound benediction of true love.

Ode To My Suit

Each morning you are waiting,
suit, over a chair
that fills you,
O my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body.
I scarcely
emerge from sleep,
and urinate,
before entering your sleeves,
my legs looking for
the hollows of your legs,
and so held
by your unitiring fidelity,
I go out to tramp the pasture,
I enter into poetry,
I look through windows.
Things,
men, women,
acts, and struggles
go on shaping me;
they go on making my face,
building my hands,
opening my eyes,
wearing out my mouth;
and so,
suit,
I keep on shaping you,
pushing out your elbows,
breaking your threads,
and so your life grows
to an image of mine.
In the wind
you ripple and wave
as if you were my soul;
in bad moments
you stick
to my bones.
Empty, in the dark
of night, dreams
people your mind and mine
with their fantasies.
I wonder
if some day
an enemy’s
bullet
will stain you with my blood,
and then
you will die with me.
Or perhaps
it won’t be dramatic
at all,
but simple,
and you will get sick,
suit,
with me,
growing old
with me, with my body,
and together
we will enter
the earth.

Therefore,
each day
I salute you
with reverence, and then
you cover me and I forget you,
because we are one,
and we will go on being one,
facing the wind, the nights,
the streets, the struggles,
a single body,
perhaps, perhaps someday, inseperable.

— Pablo Neruda (translated by DeWayne Rail)

“The thing I find by far most emotionally difficult as I travel through Africa, is meeting with the women, stricken by AIDS, who know they’re dying or soon to die, with two or three young children, and they ask me, frantically, ‘What’s going to happen to my children when I’ve passed–who will look after them?’ And then they add, without using these exact words, but the meaning is clear, ‘Mr. White Man, you have the drugs to keep us alive, but we can’t get them. Why? Why must we die?’ And I want to tell you: I don’t know how to answer that. I have never in my adult life witnessed such a blunt assault on basic human morality. In my soul, I honestly believe that an unthinking strain of subterranean racism is the only way to explain the moral default of the developed world, in refusing to provide the resources which could save the mothers of Africa.”

— Stephen Lewis, Kofi Annan’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, in a speech in Nairobi, Kenya, June 10th, 2002

Though, aside from any transgression against or unfair treatment of my children (for which said offender will be fucking brutally MURDERED ON THE SPOT and DISMEMBERED WITH MY TEETH) it takes me FOREVER to get angry. Truly. It’s almost comical how vehemently I am allergic to drama of any kind. Start causing a scene in public, and I am gone, baby, gone. That sort of horseshit is just undignified.

You are the color red. You are the most
controversial of all the colors. You are often
easily angered, but as easily as you got
excited, you come down. When angered, do you
have the tendency to be malicious? Afterwards,
do you end up begging for forgiveness? Maybe.
But you’re incredibly generous, and, odd
enough, needy. You love to hate, and
sometimes, you hate to love. This color
describes you as generally edgy. When in a bad
situation, you’re pessimistic, and when you’re
in a good situation, you’re extremely
optimistic. You’re painfully tempermental, and
sometimes it hurts the ones you love. But with
an exciting and stimulating attitude, you enjoy
talking to people and being social. But aside
from your bold and outgoing attitude, you’re
attention-needing and attention-getting. This
color is associated with lust and desire–and
you are both lust and desirous. You’re a
protective person when it comes to the people
you love. You’re incredibly sharp-witted and
powerful (not to mention intelligent!).

What color are you? (Amazingly detailed & accurate–with pics!)
brought to you by Quizilla

The following is a list of all those things in my life for which I am thankful — followed by a list of those things for which I am not. Darkness and light, baby. As that satanic priest said in “The Omen”…”For everything holy, there is something unholy. This is the essence of temptation.” And speaking of The Temptations…I need to add the song “Bernadette” to my list. Oh, wait…that was The Four Tops. Oh, whatever — they both fucking rule.

Happy Thanksgiving to all those whom I adore.

Things for which I am thankful:

Carmex
Hoisin sauce
Dresses and skirts
My chartreuse umbrella
Really good cocoa butter
Ducky Dale
Drag queens
Wagner played at mindnumbing decibels
“Spinners” on wheelchairs
Lavender essential oil in cold weather, Tangerine in warm
Quiet
Platinum jewelry
“Dear Prudence”
1000 threadcount bed linens
Lance Henriksen
Hot water bottles when it’s cold
1967
The Jackals
Joan Miro
Gregory
The Chateau Marmont
Witch hands
My Pixie haircut
TiVo
Gomez Addams
Liddle Kiddles
Taiko drums
Rosemary’s Baby
Zoe Oldenbourg
The Babies
In ‘N Out burgers
Peter Bogdanovich
The Breeders
“To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything…Julie Newmar”
Teenagers
Arts and Crafts/Mission style cherry wood furniture
Baby corn
England
Red corduroy
Red beads
Red glass
Red pens
Red lentils
Lee Krasner’s Bangs (the name of my new band)
The word “stampede”
Dangly earrings
Antiques Roadshow
Tupperware
Church bells
Casinos
The sweet viniagrette smell of baby feet
Making movies
Watching movies
Discussing movies
Reading about movies
Dreaming about movies
Neshobe Island
Mary Poppins
My darling ex-husband, Dennis
Violets
Zines
Cosmos
Charm bracelets
James Spader
The smell of napalm in the morning
Ol’ school Sailor Jerry tattoos
Sandra Bernhard
My working class roots
My son’s buttcheeks
Trees
Comfy schmatas
Left-handed men
Cherry cheesecake
Wabi
Old school MTV
The original black and white art from Alice in Wonderland
Hearty, sturdy luggage
Soup
Kabuki
The Godfather
The Dakota
My lj friends
“Get a Life”
Uncle Butchie
Yearbooks
The Rick Steves Empire
Maggie Atwood
Cheesy British Royal Family collectibles
Crystal Light
Jon Stewart
Thrift store old man cardigans
Belly laughter
The Chronicles of Narnia
My library card
Smushing, with my finger, the little fleshy part right above Gregory’s upper lip
Disneyland
“Bernadette” by The Four Tops
The inner voice of Traci Jean Burns

Things I can’t like:

Rheumatoid Arthritis
All makeup, aside from lipstick (which I LOVE)
Uninteresting people
Fishy-tasting food
Skin eruptions
Vicodin
Musty nuts
Discord of any kind
Tanning beds
Ernest Hemingway
Other people’s dog poop on my lawn
Car trouble
Bounced checks
The name Linda
Born-again Christians
Scuffed white pumps
Gambling
Bickering siblings
Housework (except doing dishes, which I LOVE)
The Dave Matthews Band
Mushroom soup
Skunky beer
Golf
Incarcerated relatives
Easter
Fried foods
Cameltoe
Tawny Kitaen
Paper cuts
Three Dog Night
Teenagers
June bugs
Impressionistic art
Keeping fever/temperature logs
The smell of cat piss in the morning
Frat boys
Dry skin
Drama of any kind
Dirty liars
Hot weather
The Simpsons
Reggae music
The Smurfs
The rubbery mouth of Meg Ryan
Okra
Films based on comic books
Comic books
Wine
Kramer from Seinfeld
Lambchops
Raspberry anything
Nausea
Skanky muff
Scientology
ADD/OCD
Big, slobbery, flouncing dogs
Current MTV
The Black-eyed Peas (goddamn, those motherfuckers are NO-talent)

You’d have to know my husband, Gregory, to adequately understand the full depth and gravity of what I am about to tell you, but I shall nevertheless try my best to provide you with all the details you’ll need to properly appreciate it anyway.

First of all, Gregory is Jewish. Not necessarily nebbishy, but certainly more nebbishy than butch. He is an intellectual who was borne to upper-middle-class intellectuals — Harvard-educated, Nobel Prize-nominated, National Academy of Sciences lifetime membership sort of intellectuals. He himself has a Masters in Music Composition from Cal Arts. He loathes the heat, the sun, and most outdoor activities. He is most happy when drinking a cup of really good coffee and reading The New Yorker…or savoring a David Lean epic…or aimlessly wandering through Shakepeare and Company with me when we are in Paris. He looks like Gene Wilder. He is left-handed — and all that that implies. Aside from the swanky background, the formal education, and the bloodline of The Royal House of David that courses through his tender, Hebrew veins — he is the male equivalent of me.

He doesn’t like Budweiser, deer hunting, or Hank Williams, Jr. He has never watched — much less actually attended — a NASCAR race. This is a man who thinks that Dick Trickle is the symptom of a really nasty STD…not a championship race car driver at Talledega who is sponsored by STP. He has the supple, genteel hands of a concert pianist — not someone who pumps gas or cranks wrenches for a living. Trust me, the only camshaft this man pulls is his own — and that’s only to somewhat artsy nude black and white photos of indie-type girls with no make-up, messy bobbed hair, and unshaven pits; no cheesy, teased, bleached Frederick’s of Hollwood dames named Misti in red, satin, crotchless panties for this old boy.

So, with that said…yesterday my sweet husband with the soft hands and sharp intellect arrived in Denver on business for his tech company. He was most likely wearing one of his really nice Brooks Brothers button down shirts and a pair of their fine, flat-front khakis. He probably stood around waiting for his luggage whilst wearing his gorgeous, old school penny loafers…and then walked those down to the Avis desk, where the car that had been rented for him was waiting. He signed the papers, got the keys, and lugged himself and his bags out to the vehicle, probably eager to get to his hotel suite, check his email, watch “The Daily Show”, and relax a bit. I imagine that he walked confidently through the brisk, snow-swirled Rocky Mountain air…to his waiting car.

It was only then he must’ve realized that, he — my husband, the love of my life, the artistic, highly aesthetically discriminating, intellectual elitist Charles Emerson Winchester Bostonian bastard that he is — would be driving all over the greater Denver area for the next four days…in a MOTHERFUCKING PT CRUISER.

(cue the music!)

We’ll get some overhead lifters, and four barrel quads, oh yeah
Keep talkin’, whoah keep talkin’
Fuel injection cut off, and chrome plated rods, oh yeah
I’ll get the money, I’ll see you get the money
With a four-speed on the floor, they’ll be waitin’ at the door
You know that ain’t shit when we’ll be gettin’ lots of tit in greased lightnin’

We’ll get some purple French tail lights and thirty-inch fins, oh yeah
A palomino dashboard and duel muffler twins, oh yeah
With new pistons, plugs, and shocks, I can get off my rocks
You know that I ain’t braggin’, she’s a real pussy wagon – greased lightnin’!

I have never laughed so hard in my fucking life, and I am beginning to believe there just may be a god, after all – and that he exists solely to entertain irreverent pricks like me.

Honey, you are my sweet middle-aged Danny Zuko, and she really is a pussy wagon. Have fun and don’t break any hearts.

Oh, and hurry home to us…we miss you.

The sweetest little Goat Girl that I ever did see.