muffy bolding

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
— Ferris Bueller

— The Carpal-Tunnel horseshit in my left arm and hand has been flaring up something fierce. I had the release surgery done on my right meathook some 13 years ago when my second daughter was one (can you even fucking imagine changing a ten-wipie, all-the-way-up-the-back-to-the-neck, shitty diaper with one hand — and your OFF hand, at that?). The comically tragic part is that all of the women in my family eventually end up with The Carp — must be something about the way we are put together. On the other hand (no pun intended), no one in my family EVER gets cancer; NO ONE. Not anywhere in recorded history, going back for like at least 100 years. Probably due to the hearty, rough and tumble, hardscrabble peasant blood that courses through our veins, we are just cancerless freaks (knock on cocksucking wood.) Our traditional way to exit-stage-left is to either stroke out at 48…or to just go to sleep one night when we are 105, and never wake up. Or, we are shot or stabbed to death in the act of committing some horrible, unspeakable, abominable crime. Either way, it’s a quick fucking go-down, so whatever. In the meantime, I am wearing a wrist brace on my left arm and it is helping immeasureably.

— As for the other chronic condition with which I so fitfully live, it has been fairly quiet lately. Ever since hubby and I marched into Nordstrom’s and procured a fine, chartreuse umbrella for me about 6 weeks ago, my oh, so winsome skinsome has been touched by nary a ray of sunshine…which has translated into zero fucking flares. Keep your fingers crossed that it continues. No matter what my fellow dratted Catholics say, being Our Lady of Guadalupus is a bitch, I tell you. Oh, bother — health issues are just so tiresome as conversational topics. Next.

— I cut all my goddamned hair off. Though I attempted to have it professionally stripped from my locks THREE TIMES, the stubborn black dye of my middle-aged-goth period of the past two years wasn’t going anywhere. So, I calmly strode down to my punk rawk hairdresser (who is in her 50’s and is THE REAL GOTTDAMNED DEAL, vintage 1970’s track marks and all) and told her to just cut the shit off. “How short do you wanna go, honey?,” she asked, smiling and casually brushing stray hair snippings from a full-sleeve of BITCHIN’ MAD INK. To which I smirked and responded, “Tell me, toots, have you ever seen ROSEMARY’S BABY?”

Yeah. It’s THAT short.

I realize that I probably look a lot like a really angry, in-your-fucking-grille Berkeley feminist bookstore owner circa 1977, but goddamnit if I don’t love it. I’M BUTCH!

— It’s official: my husband and I have become the elitist pricks we have always mocked and hated. He now shops for work clothes pretty exclusively at (jesus christ, wait for it…) Brooks Brothers (I can’t believe I just typed that), we are forced to actually give a shit about drivelous, mind-numbing stuff like school districts and neighborhood crime rates (statistics to which my family back home directly and quite generously contributes, I assure you), Gregory has a new car (NEW…as in BRAND NEW, not just new TO US, which is a first, I also assure you. My darling old girl is 10 this year…but she will be with me forever), and we require the services of a dry cleaner on a fairly regular basis — which, to me, was always the litmus test as to whether or not you were an officially grown-up elitist prick. I can so easily remember back to when my ancient washing machine was broken and I was about 300 months pregnant with my first baby and we were too poor to get it fixed, much less replaced with a new one…and I quite literally washed all of our laundry by hand in the kitchen sink, wrang it dry (try wringing a sopping bath towel dry sometime, motherfucker), and lugged it all outside to be hung on the line. My back ached and my hands literally bled. And now, I actually revel in the luxurious services of a dry cleaner a couple of times a month. Christ, what an asshole I have become — and yet, I am still never far from the romantic call of the carnival midway…and my trashy, criminal Sicilian roots.

— I’m furious and desperate, and moreso and moreso as the days pass until December and the release of a certain Disney film for which I have been eagerly waiting nearly all of my life. Allow me to clarify. I consider myself a very generous person. I work very hard at this virtue. However, I have recently discovered something in myself that is ugly, selfish, territorial, exclusive, and downright beastly. I have come down with what I shall henceforth refer to as “Literary Greed”. That is, once I have discovered a writer or piece of work that I adore, they or it instantly becomes MINE — and I resent like hell when it becomes co-opted by the culture at large. It sullies it, it takes the sparkle off of it — it turns it into dookie.

In the frankest terms, because I delusionally fancy that I discovered them long before anybody else (or certainly most people) this means that solely in my possession are the following:

The Chronicles of Narnia; my sole property since 5th grade.
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath; my sole property since 9th grade.
Truman Capote; my sole property since 11th grade.
The subject matter of The Da Vinci Code; my sole property since 1987.

These authors and works are my divine right, goddamnit — so back the fuck off, you interlopers, brigands, shitkickers, and thieves. Yes, I realize this makes me a madwoman — but there it is.

Wow…it just hit me. I really AM losing my mind.

— Ferris Bueller was right. Life does move pretty fast…and sometimes you just have to leap so as not to miss it. So…we are leaping.

And moving to Los Angeles.

“It begins with a gay man who falls out of his mother’s womb…and lands in her high heels.”
— Leslie Jordan

And speaking of my friend, Leslie…he just rang me up to tell me that his one-man show, “Like a Dog on Linoleum”, is coming to San Diego Saturday/Sunday, November 26-27 at The North Park Theatre.

Let me tell you…unless you have seen this show, you just THINK you know what it means to belly laugh — and belly cry. It is the story of a gay man from The Old South…who, seeking fame, fortune, and acceptance, gets on a bus headed for Los Angeles, with all the money he has in the world sewn into his underwear. He finds all that — and so much more: acceptance of himself.

For those of you who know his work solely from the myriad of television shows he has done, you know NOTHING. Because I work and play with so many extraordinarily talented people, I cannot and do not toss this word around lightly, but this guy is a motherfucking genius — and a great friend. He is positively brilliant and I could not love him anymore than I do.

Read and learn — and then go see his show: Like a Dog on Linoleum

The last time he was here, we took him to lunch at Hamburger Mary’s in Hillcrest — and almost caused a goddamned riot amongst all the other delighted queens who were supping there. What a fucking ride, this life.

The Official Website of Leslie Jordan

The following is a piece I wrote in 2003, when this war in which we are currently embroiled was still just a few months old. I read back over it today, and every point I made then is still as legitimate, urgent, and vital as when I was compelled to write it — perhaps even moreso. We are now two years — and over 2,000 lost lives — further down this tragic, unspeakable road…and as many in this nation are only now beginning to realize, on this way lies utter madness.

In honor of the families and friends of the dead of this war — including the five who lost their lives just today — I would first like to quote a portion of the letter written to Mrs. Lydia Bixby in 1864 by President Abraham Lincoln, offering his most sincere condolences for the unimaginable loss of her five sons during The Civil War. No more comforting or eloquent words have ever been written:

“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

I may not agree with the purpose or politics of this war…but I am anguished — and profundly grateful — for all that has been sacrificed in its name.

Thank you…and requiescat in pace.

Armistice Day

by Muffy Bolding

Though it is now officially known as Veteran’s Day, I prefer to call this day of remembrance by its original and much more poetic title: Armistice Day.

This morning I woke, made some good, strong coffee and sat in front of the television with my husband, both of us too young to have ever feared a draft. We watched C-SPAN while an endless parade of senators (all Republicans, for reasons I still haven’t figured out) made four-minute speeches honoring the veterans and war dead of this, arguably the greatest nation on earth.

They stepped solemnly to the podium — many wearing red poppies of remembrance on the lapels of their dark, finely tailored suits — and spoke with great awe and reverence of the veterans of World Wars I and II. They spoke with gratitude and respect of the veterans of the conflict in Korea. And they spoke with a sense of renewed pride and profound regret regarding the treatment of the veterans of the war in Vietnam.

The manner in which we sent those young men to the jungles of southeast Asia to fight and die for supposed American ideals — and then mercilessly turned our backs on them when they returned home — is perhaps one of the most shameful chapters in this country’s history. We offered them nothing, except our contempt. We broke first their bodies, then their minds, and finally, their spirits. Today is a day set aside to perhaps try and begin to reverse and heal the unspeakable damage that has been done. As has been said and written before — by writers far greater than I — there is a time for every purpose under heaven.

Today is a time for embracing.

And, of course, the fact that our country is currently at war was perhaps the main focus of most of their speeches, many of them quite eloquent and moving. One after the other, they invoked the spirit of the current generation of brave, young Americans stationed in the Middle East — who are courageously defending the security and honor of our people. These elder statesman spoke graciously of sacrifices made and liberty upheld. They told of a new generation of Americans who — without a moment’s hesitation — are following in the honorable footsteps of their military forebearers by answering the call of a grateful nation. These modern-day warriors of freedom were offered up the highest honors and accolades that these men of great power could muster — they were called heroes.

However moving as it all may have been, while I listened to genteel men like Senator John Warner from Virginia waxing poetic about patriotism and duty and honor and the sacrifices being made by these young men and women…all I could think about was one thing — and it had nothing at all to do with freedom, liberty, or a war being waged a half a world away.

My one thought was this:

Visit the homes, apartments, and base housing of many of those soldiers that you spoke of today, Senator Warner — those who are stationed over there right now, risking their lives for us all — and open their refrigerators, cabinets, cupboards, and pantries…and tell me what you see.

Or, rather, tell me what you don’t see.

Carefully examine the check registers, bank statements, pocketbooks, piggybanks, and wallets of their remaining spouses. Grasp the reality of the concept “hand to mouth” — and sometimes not even that. See — perhaps for the very first time — what food stamps look like.

Note the year and condition of their vehicles.

Look at the shoes on their children’s feet, Sir. Feel the chill in the air of their playrooms, bedrooms, and nurseries. As you and the current administration surely know firsthand, oil can be quite costly — in more ways than one.

Though it is far from the glamour and triumph of military victory, for most, this is where the truest sacrifice lies. Not on some bloody, glorious battlefield in Iraq — but back at home…in a simple bottle of twice-cut, watered-down baby formula being fed to an infant son by a young mother who is doing her best to keep the home fires burning…while desperately trying to make ends meet on an enlisted man’s salary that is certainly at or below poverty-level.

Let us talk about courage in the face of insurmountable odds, shall we?

You say you sincerely desire to honor our nation’s courageous armed forces on this Armistice Day 2003, Senator Warner? Then start by better providing for the families that they have left behind. Introduce bold and insistent legislation that will immediately ensure that while these men and women are away risking their lives to provide us with security and to preserve the freedoms we hold so dear — that there is generous providence and preservation of what they hold so dear, too. See to it that while they are gone — fighting the Good Fight for us all — that we are here, fighting it for them, as well. Failing to do so is a profound betrayal of everything that they are supposedly fighting for.

As a truly grateful nation…we should now answer their call — and without a moment’s hesitation.

They should never have needed to ask in the first place, Sir.

Do it now.

(originally published at hipmama.com)

Well, it certainly looks like my friend, Leslie, had a GRAND TIME once again as the special guest of honor at the 19th Annual Greater Palm Springs Pride Parade this past weekend. He is now considered such a goddamned DEITY in that town, that he can hardly walk down the street without being lovingly accosted by every fabulous posse of passing queens.

But, of course, she FUCKING LOVES IT.

Man, can that bitch hold court.

Full of pride, enthusiasm
Parade and festival attract about 30,000 to city streets

Kakie Urch
The Desert Sun
November 7, 2005

PALM SPRINGS – It was steadily raining rainbows on Palm Canyon Drive for two hours on Sunday.

Rainbow tattoos. Rainbow Mardi Gras beads. Rainbow dog scarves.

Six men in bright-colored poodle skirts, one for each stripe of the rainbow.

About 30,000 proud people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, heterosexual and others filled the streets and sidewalks for the 19th annual Greater Palm Springs Pride Parade. The cheered on floats, politicians, celebrities, bands, Realtors, drag queens, retired clubs, rodeo clubs, square dance clubs and cheerleaders.

Tom Parent of Redding, who’s retired, says, “I come down every year to see friends and to go to cocktail parties.”

Parent, who has been out as gay for 32 years – more than half his life – said he liked the Palm Springs event because it is still “fun.”

“When I lived in San Francisco, I was ‘prided’ out,” Parent said, as his friends chuckled in agreement. Unlike the San Francisco parade, which feels like it can go as long as 7 hours, Parent said, the Palm Springs event is “mellow,” and not as “political.”

The Palm Springs parade, which featured 144 entries, attracted 25,000 to 30,000 spectators along its route, Greater Palm Springs Pride President Jack Schloeder estimated Sunday afternoon.

“Our numbers are up 20 percent across the board,” Schloeder said in a telephone interview. Organizers had to turn down two dozen entries for the parade and 30 vendors for the festival – spaces were completely full, Schloeder said.

Bob Poulsen, a 7-year Palm Springs resident, who is also retired, sat with Parent and a group of friends on Palm Canyon. He wore the kilt that he bought at Pride London – and a bright pink polo shirt.

Poulsen is a veteran of Pride events around the world – including England’s largest – the Brighton Pride parade that draws 150,000 a year to that British city, he said.

Not everyone there supported the parade. A handful of protesters stood with large signs in front of the Desert Fashion Plaza.

A man with a bullhorn issuing “wakeup calls” to gay people and holding a sign reading “God Abhors You” was drowned out by the LGBT 25-Year Band’s All-American brass section, marching briskly by as the parade’s first entry.

Police in charge of the event reported little trouble with protesters or other problems.

Celebrities ride along

Celebrities were out and about – and in the parade too. Actor Leslie Jordan, who plays Beverley Leslie on “Will and Grace” and Bernard Ferrion on “Boston Legal,” rode in a giant “Q” sedan chair provided by the Q Network. The 4’11” Jordan waved a feather boa, and was as patient as possible with his eight bearers, who were clad only in orange hot pants.

Rosemary Alexander, who played Dr. Eve in “Sordid Lives,” rode in a pickup truck with her husband, actor Newell Alexander, who is also in the film.

Rosemary Alexander said, “We came down for the parade because Palm Springs was so incredibly receptive and support of ‘Sordid Lives.’ It played for like five years down here.”

And William Gregory Lee, an actor who stars in “Dante’s Cove,” on the Here! gay television network on Time Warner cable, rode waving in a convertible.

Good for business, families

Business was good for the many merchants on Palm Canyon Drive who kept their doors open on Sunday for the parade.

Outdoor seating was full at restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops along the parade route.

“It’s the first time we’ve opened (for the parade),” said Tony Morris, owner of the Crosswalk Cafe. “It’s been tremendous. Above all expectation,” he said.

Phyllis Silver, the owner of Tony’s Pasta Mia, expected to open her restaurant at 4 p.m.

She said “This parade is much, much better” than previous versions. “People are bringing their kids. It’s more appropriate, not as outrageous.”

Tim Kendall, who came to Palm Springs from Atlanta to raise money and awareness of the Team Greater Palm Springs effort for the Gay Games 2006 next year in Chicago, wore a brightly colored Gianni Versace vest and a fundraising attitude.

Kendall is a soccer player and coach for Atlanta’s Gay Games team. He’s part of a group of volunteers helping with beverages at the festival and raising money for the local team’s trip to the Gay Games.

“The wilder the costume, the better the tips,” he said.

What’s your favorite…

wine: Jesus christ, I fucking LOATHE wine — and the entire phony, horseshit wine culture. Aside from my intense cultural annoyance, it also gives me a raging skullache within minutes of ingestion. I piss on wine.

beer: I like Guinness.

other beverage: I like me some really good Ethiopian coffee…as well as some ice cold, old school cherry Kool-aid drunk straight from a pastel Tupperware pitcher right in front of the fridge.

hot drink: See above.

fruit: Ice cold watermelon on a hot Summer day. Also, the mystical, magical mandarins off the three trees at my old house in Fresno. I used to use bags of them to bewitch people to the point that they could think of NOTHING else after tasting them…and would sometimes call me at 3 am asking if they could come and pick some more.

vegetable: Steamed Chinese broccoli with a brace of hoisin sauce generously drizzled on top. YUM!

cheese: My husband and I are cheese freaks and are planning to take a trip through Europe tasting cheese as others would sample those bastard wines. Ask me again upon my return!

nut: Andy Kaufman.

ethnic food: Mediterranean, Afghani, or Ethiopian.

fast food: Taco Bell (I would GLADLY eat TB and nothing else for the rest of my life if I had to) and In n’ Out (protein style with onions, no special sauce, add mustard.)

pizza: Pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, and onions from Alexander’s Pizza. It’s TOTALLY like genuine East Coast ‘za, except served up a few blocks from the beach in Sunny SoCal. I was overjoyed when I discovered it.

main dish: Anything hot and cheesy, motherfuckers…lasagna and enchiladas in particular.

salad: A nice spring mix, tomatoes, green onions, beets, artichoke hearts, heart of palm, a little cottage cheese, some crumbled Danish bleu, and balsamic viniagrette. I’m eating this EXACT salad even as we speak!

soup: Soups really are my favorite food group, so it’s rather difficult for me to narrow it down…but if I must, I would have to say the potato leek at our local English pub.

snack food: Pop-fucking-corn.

cookie: The still-warm snickerdoodle on my aqua-colored melamine school lunch tray in second grade.

pie: Aside from a slab o’ pumpkin on Thanksgiving (a MUST!), I am not that big on pie. So, I shall answer a really good New York cheesecake.

ice cream: Hands down — Ben and Jerry’s “Cherry Garcia.” Just thinking about it gives me a woody.

“You dropped your chicken on the floor, man — and you ain’t gettin’ no more.”

— Marianne Faithfull, spoken as only she could, in her jaded, husky, British, smoker’s voice to Sandra Bernhard’s then 18 month old daughter, Cecily, over dinner at Faithfull’s home in Ireland.

Oh, lord, this is juicy.

DISCUSS, motherfuckers:

Coffee Shops Clash With Parents Over Rowdy Kids

By JODI WILGOREN, The New York Times

CHICAGO (Nov. 8) – Bridget Dehl shushed her 21-month-old son, Gavin, then clapped a hand over his mouth to squelch his tiny screams amid the Sunday brunch bustle. When Gavin kept yelping “yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ms. Dehl whisked him from his highchair and out the door.

Right past the sign warning the cafe’s customers that “children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven,” and right into a nasty spat roiling the stroller set in Chicago’s changing Andersonville neighborhood.

The owner of A Taste of Heaven, Dan McCauley, said he posted the sign – at child level, with playful handprints – in the hope of quieting his tin-ceilinged cafe, where toddlers have been known to sprawl between tables and hurl themselves at display cases for sport.

But many neighborhood mothers took umbrage at the implied criticism of how they handle their children. Soon, whispers of a boycott passed among the playgroups in this North Side neighborhood, once an outpost of avant-garde artists and hip gay couples but now a hot real estate market for young professional families shunning the suburbs.

“I love people who don’t have children who tell you how to parent,” said Alison Miller, 35, a psychologist, corporate coach and mother of two. “I’d love for him to be responsible for three children for the next year and see if he can control the volume of their voices every minute of the day.”

Mr. McCauley, 44, said the protesting parents were “former cheerleaders and beauty queens” who “have a very strong sense of entitlement.” In an open letter he handed out at the bakery, he warned of an “epidemic” of antisocial behavior.

“Part of parenting skills is teaching kids they behave differently in a restaurant than they do on the playground,” Mr. McCauley said in an interview. “If you send out positive energy, positive energy returns to you. If you send out energy that says I’m the only one that matters, it’s going to be a pretty chaotic world.”

And so simmers another skirmish between the childless and the child-centered, a culture clash increasingly common in restaurants and other public spaces as a new generation of busy, older, well-off parents ferry little ones with them.

An online petition urging child-free sections in North Carolina restaurants drew hundreds of signers, including Janelle Funk, who wrote, “Whenever a hostess asks me ‘smoking or non-smoking?’ I respond, ‘No kids!’ ”

At Mendo Bistro in Fort Bragg, Calif., the owners declare “Well-behaved children and parents welcome” to try to stop unmonitored youngsters from tap-dancing on the 100-year-old wood floors.

Menus at Zumbro Cafe in Minneapolis say: “We love children, especially when they’re tucked into chairs and behaving,” which Barbara Daenzer said she read as an invitation to cease her weekly breakfast visits after her son was born.

Even at the Full Moon in Cambridge, Mass., a cafe created for families, with a train table, a dollhouse and a plastic kitchen in a carpeted play area, there are rules about inside voices and a “No lifeguard on duty” sign to remind parents to take responsibility.

“You run the risk when you start monitoring behavior,” said the Full Moon’s owner, Sarah Wheaton. “You can say no cellphones to people, but you can’t say your father speaks too loudly, he has to keep his voice down. And you can’t really say your toddler is too loud when she’s eating.”

Here in Chicago, parents have denounced Toast, a popular Lincoln Park breakfast spot, as unwelcoming since a note about using inside voices appeared on the menu six months ago. The owner of John’s Place, which resembles a kindergarten class at recess in early evening, established a separate “family friendly” room a year ago, only to face parental threats of lawsuits.

Many of the Andersonville mothers who are boycotting Mr. McCauley’s bakery also skip story time at Women and Children First, a feminist bookstore, because of the rules: children can be kicked out for standing, talking or sipping drinks. When a retail clerk at the bookstore asked a woman to stop breast-feeding last spring, “the neighborhood set him straight real fast,” said Mary Ann Smith, the area’s alderwoman.

After a dozen years at one site, Mr. McCauley moved A Taste of Heaven six blocks away in May 2004, to a busy corner on Clark Street. But there, he said, teachers and writers seeking afternoon refuge were drowned out not just by children running amok but also by oblivious cellphone chatterers.

Children were climbing the cafe’s poles. A couple were blithely reading the newspaper while their daughter lay on the floor blocking the line for coffee. When the family whose children were running across the room to throw themselves against the display cases left after his admonishment, Mr. McCauley recalled, the restaurant erupted in applause.

So he put up the sign. Then things really got ugly.

“The looks I would get when I went in there made me so nervous that I would try to buy the food as fast as I could and get out,” said Laura Brauer, 40, who has stopped visiting A Taste of Heaven with her two children. “I think that the mothers who allow their kids to run around and scream, that’s wrong, but kids scream and there is nothing you can do about it. What are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a cafe?”

Ms. Miller said that one day when her son, then 4 months old, was fussing, a staff member rolled her eyes and announced for all to hear, “We’ve got a screamer!”

Kim Cavitt recalled having coffee and a cookie one afternoon with her boisterous 2-year-old when “someone came over and said you just need to keep her quiet or you need to leave.”

“We left, and we haven’t been back since,” Ms. Cavitt said. “You go to a coffee shop or a bakery for a rest, to relax, and that you would have to worry the whole time about your child doing something that children do – really what they’re saying is they don’t welcome children, they want the child to behave like an adult.”

Why suffer such scorn, the mothers said, when clerks at the Swedish Bakery, a neighborhood institution, offer children – calm or crying – free cookies? Why confront such criticism when the recently opened Sweet Occasions, a five-minute walk down Clark Street, designed the restroom aisle to accommodate double strollers and offers a child-size ice cream cone for $1.50? (At A Taste of Heaven, the smallest is $3.75.)

“It’s his business; he has the right to put whatever sign he wants on the door,” Ms. Miller said. “And people have the right to respond to that sign however they want.”

Mr. McCauley said he had received kudos from several restaurant owners in the area, though none had followed his lead. He has certainly lost customers because of the sign, but some parents say the offense is outweighed by their addiction to the scones, and others embrace the effort at etiquette.

“The litmus test for me is if they have highchairs or not,” said Ms. Dehl, the woman who scooped her screaming son from his seat during brunch, as she waited out his restlessness on a sidewalk bench. “The fact that they had one highchair, and the fact that he’s the only child in the restaurant is an indication that it’s an adult place, and if he’s going to do his toddler thing, we should take him out and let him run around.”

Mr. McCauley said he would rather go out of business than back down. He likens this one small step toward good manners to his personal effort to decrease pollution by hiring only people who live close enough to walk to work.

“I can’t change the situation in Iraq, I can’t change the situation in New Orleans,” he said. “But I can change this little corner of the world.”

I miss ‘s Friday Fucking Confessional. Fridays just aren’t the same without them.

*sigh*

I am sitting here writing, and the ocean is so incredibly loud and relentless tonight…almost as if it’s a sullen boy trying to wrestle my attention away from my work. It wants me to look it in the eye and confess.

I think not, motherfucker.

Has anyone used emu oil to reduce the appearance of scars after surgery? My plastic surgeon, the god that he is, claims the stuff is damn near magical. So, I am definitely going to get some and give it a go, but was wondering if any of you have had any experience using it.

Thanks, sweet babies.