This quote just LAID MY FATASS OUT. I offer up to both it and Mr. Hitchens the greatest accolade I am able: GODDAMN, I WISH I’D WRITTEN THAT.
“Death will happen to all of us. At some point you get tapped on the shoulder and told not just that the party’s over, but slightly worse: The party’s going on, but you have to leave.” — Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
AWESOME illustration by my komrade and partner-in-crime, the BRILLIANT artist, Danny Hellman
“What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof.” — That DELIGHTFULLY DEAD-ON (and now, unfortunately, DEAD) antitheist Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
Regarding the late Mr. Hitchens: Make no mistake…there is a LOT of what he wrote with which I vehemently disagree — but GODDAMNIT, I admire and even envy the FEROCIOUS FREEDOM with which he wrote it. He was FEARLESS — and that is one virtue that consistently blows my hair back and takes off the top of my head. God, how I wish I could’ve drank with him, laughed with him, argued with him, fucked him.
Next time.
Though I don’t partake myself, I am totally and completely down with the expansion of one’s consciousness through the use of hallucinogenic substances. Furthermore, I would guess that a rather large percentage of the art, music, and film that has so profoundly moved me and informed both my personal, as well as my professional, life was either conceived or created with the assistance of something snorted, smoked, shot, or slugged. Sometimes the only way through is BEYOND.
With that said, I JUST DON’T GET the infernal tripfest known as Burning Man. Perhaps I am old. Perhaps I am tired. Perhaps I am just fucking NO — but let me tell you something, Mein Poppets…if I ever want to go a whole week without warshing my vagina, whilst sitting in a vegan bronze and pleather steampunk lawnchair sipping absinthe in the sweltering, dusty desert surrounded by naked Road Warrior guys with greasy assholes and their nuts painted ochre, I’LL DO IT IN THE COMFORT OF MY OWN BACKYARD, thank you very much — though I have to admit I WOULD LOVE to have the baby wipe concession up in that motherfucker.
BURN ON, BABY…and don’t forget to bury your byproducts after you stagger off and squat in your very own place in the sun.
Perhaps it’s just having the mindset of a writer that makes it so — always humming, murmuring, thinking, mulling over potential titles and monikers — but I have always, even when I was a little girl, been preoccupied with names. In many ways, bestowing a name is the very first act of parenting, the very first gift you give your child — a gift that will, in many ways, help shape how they are perceived in this world.
Back when we were so very young — just babies having babies, really — my best friends and I would spend hours and hours poring over the appropriate baby naming books (Pamela Redmond Satran’s being the biggie) and talking about what we were going to name the beautiful babes brewing in our bellies. And even then, though I was little more than a child myself, I still recognized that bestowing that brandly new being with just the right name was less designation…than it was INCANTATION.
And having now been a mother for nearly 25 years, I know like I know like I know like I know…that giving a child just the right name is not only the giving of an extraordinary gift, it is THE CASTING OF A SPELL.
I knit. Incessantly. Ruthlessly. Relentlessly. Unapologetically.
I make scarves for those I love — and they are always either named, themed, or both, and they always bear a single vintage button on one end, which is wooed, pursued, and specially chosen from sewing notion sources all over the globe. For my East Coast loveys, I make New York scarves — and all that that implies. And for my West Coast homies, I make them LA style — and all that THAT implies. I scour the knitting world over for just the right yarn — best texture, best color, best weight. I spare NO expense in my hunt, either time-wise or money-wise. This all probably sounds very lofty and ludicrous to the uniknitiated, but you must understand: these scarves are intended for EXTRAORDINARY people — so they must be EXTRAORDINARY, as well, as when I am done with them, they will both embrace and adorn someone who is beloved to me.
It took me over a year to find the perfect yarn for this currently in-progress LA scarf — that has a Planet of the Apes vibe…Mid-Century Acapulco Futuristic Primitive, with a single olive-green vintage button I unearthed at the yard sale of a delightful old witch in Pasadena. Its spacey design in conjunction with its retro color and matte surface is DEAD ON and I very nearly wept when I found it. The colors of the yarn are dark and masculine all — conjuring up images of my father’s private study in 1967… that is, if my father had had a private study. He didn’t, you see, as we were Poor Sicilian Trash living above my immigrant great-grandparents in Rochester, New York — but if he had, I just know that it would have evoked these same masculine hues, except, of course, for the very odd, very unexpected, tiny thread of Apricot running throughout, weaving in a tiny tendril of the much-needed Feminine…just like the person for whom this scarf is being lovingly created, one stitch at a time: Miss Jackie Beat.
Knitter PLEASE. Fuck this guy. He’s strictly a goddamned amateur.
GETTIN’ STRUNG OUT ON CRYSTAL AND EATIN’ SOME SERIOUS PUSSY IS JUST ANOTHER TUESDAY NIGHT FOR THE DEBAUCHEROUS JACKALS WITH WHICH I HANG.
“Religion was invented when the first con-man met the first fool.” – Mark Twain
As an oddly sensitive and highly observant little working class girl from Fresno — who regularly saw sounds and heard the silent souls of others — I always knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I realize now this is because some part of me has always known that aside from laundry, dishes, and having babies, I can’t really do much of anything else. Writing suits me and I have been doing it for as long as I can remember. In fact, I recently stumbled upon my autobiography, handwritten by me in pencil on lined binder paper at the very splendiferous age of 9. Apparently, I haven’t changed much in the nearly four decades hence. The opening line?
“I was a breech birth. I often wonder what effect it has on a person to enter the world butt first.”
There have only been three performers in my life throughout whose entire live show I bawled my eyes out from beginning to end and could not stop.
FROM BEGINNING TO END:
Mr. Ray Davies.
Miss Barbra Streisand.
and Mx. Justin Vivian Bond.
muffy bolding 