Kelly emailed this picture this morning most likely to make me laugh, and it did. Sure it’s cute, but I also laugh because he seems to have embraced me for my mad love of hypersweet things, all things candy that he doesn’t even try because it’s too sweet and sweet isn’t his thing…but that I cannot stop thinking of. I used to be sensitive about this and other poor decisions-slash-habits, didn’t want him to think certain things of me, but it’s comfortable now being so, well, comfortable. I’m guessing he’s cool with it.

I’ve had such a predilection for sugar that I actually used to always have it on me. When I’d drive to visit Char or accompany KO to…anywhere, I’d stop for gas and candy. When he drives Jay and I to New Orleans, it’s a given he must stop for candy. I’d keep it in my pocket and in my purse. I was constantly going at it – for years. And, Haribo is my all-time hands-down absolute favorite. This stuff is gold. Gummy cherries come close, but nothing tastes as wonderful as Haribo bears.
Holla.

I know sugar is a poison that has me by the balls, I know. I’d like to quit it…sort of. I read for sugar on all the labels; I find myself purchasing and consuming sugar-free items out of guilt and fear of what I’ve been warned are the effects of constant, low-grade chronic inflammation. (read: AGING, oh shit! wrinkles, HEALTH, my liver, SHIT!) And presently, actually, I consume a ton less than I used to. But instead of candy these days, it’s gum. Right now, on my person, I have two packs of this and one of this. They’ll last me for a few weeks…barring the likelihood I fall into a boredom-fueled belligerent sloth obsession and chew one after another for the continuous flavor in the afternoon at work to get through the 2:30 – 5pm SLUMP.
Which I’ve done before.
More than once.

Jay turned me on to a weekly column by Mark Morford. Some are fkking brilliant and others are just plain rants, but they’re distraction nonetheless so I read nonetheless. I really enjoyed today’s after getting past the first few graphs. (read: paragraphs) I also enjoyed the onion article he threw down on me on his way out of work yesterday. Sure, most things on the onion illicit my pavlovian response to smile…at most things written on the onion. But mainly I’m just grateful they’re out there doing it, making satire of the culture that we’re all drunk on.

I’ve been following this because Dan is one of the ones I’ve met before.  Anyway, it’s a very good quote (and the entire interview) even though he was voted off of Survivor.  : )  Damn he got geriatric in those 15 days.

“To fly in space is the privilege of our age.That is such an amazing experience, to see the Earth from above the sky. It is just so breathtaking, and not just because it’s a visual sensation but because it’s the pinnacle of what human beings have been able to achieve. It’s the technology that our century — and by that, I mean the 1900s — will be remembered for.”   

I search at great lengths but within a small scope.
Within limits that I’ve already learned.
Yet still there.  And still doing it.  Cycloning in the fishbowl.

I want to know things and I want to have things and to do things and to be things, but without the work.
But then that’s not true because I want the work too.
I want that too.
I want the experience for self reflection or perhaps for frame of reference.
To add to my Life [experiences] file.  To do it for awhile.

So perhaps my rub is with the time involved.  With my ANGER that it’s not plentiful. That I squander.  All the goddamned time I need.
So I want of course to rebel. Rebel against the smart and the solid choices (like saving for retirement!) for the dashing new shiny ones. (like buying a benz with my savings; hooray!)

But I still want to save for retirement. 
Because I’m afraid for my future
and I want to be prepared for it.
Readied for that Relishing. 
And fortified for the facing of the unknown.

YES, I did that.
I bought a mercedes.
And now I want my savings back.
I almost reached 10K in almost a year and now it’s transformed into a new [for me] Black Shiny with heated seats and palomino interior.
And now new fear and liability.
Her name is Benzy.
As in benzedrine. But without the actual benzedrine and with the huge mad rush.

(actually not at all for benzedrine, though I would have liked to have tried it. and queluudes.  I would have liked to try those too). 
Mainly because I haven’t named her yet.  She’s just so pretty and I’m just so at a loss.
Like naming the cat “Cat” - no time spent there.  no crafting.

But I digress.
A visionary, hallucinating in a cube to pass the time.
Both real and fictive, visions.
To spite them all perhaps, the broad-faced butter eaters, the hell-bend Jesus-crazed sinner-slappers.
Apropos of nothing.
nothing really.
Silent and kind of narcotized, a tentative manufacture. An investigative explorationist?
But like most things paper, it burns – the tunnel vision – the eyes.

 (hallucinations) (file under: real)

I should thank you for letting me get away with this for so long, although completely not acceptible. Not by my standards. Not by anyone’s really. How polite of us to continue in our silent dance. Lockstep.

What i’ve been needing is some ether.
For me i mean.

ha-HA!

We are moving again, forcibly removed from the place of residence for the third time in this humid town, which yes, begs to question why we stay. But alas we are and continuing the holding pattern. And moving – so much fkking effort. This time with a 12-monthish deadline, but the moving part is like a 3-weekish deadline. We’re staying in Montrose but moving to another rent house. Further from Jay sadly and before they ever finished the Graustark bridge, but closer to Sandy, which I should finally indulge.
Yay. All gathered round, say yay.

Char taught me broken social scene last weekend, so super delicious, so i forced She Wants Revenge down her throat. “New Order – yes! Interpol – YES! Isn’t it excruciatingly so Paul Banksy but with Joy Division beats?!” “yes. for the tenth time; yes.” oh how to share the love?

Before Adult (mmm, snarky) and the new release of Soft Bulletin (mmm, toasty), it was Fraud by David Rakoff. If you like Sedaris, I recommend Rakoff. Edgier but queenier too, which makes for more enjoyable listening in that his rants are bitchy but eloquent. Refined, but dark. An instant favorite.

[Aside] Russ, that’s my only way of doing it at present. Still losing the struggle to read books, I indulged on Audible.com’s free giveaways to those in my life getting new ipods. And there have been a healthy handful of new ipodders. They get the books, i rip their files, i listen to the content while driving around the h-town. (the rest, like you, is scheduled into random fits, late-into-the-morning nights and plane flights).

I like the words Idatarod and kibbutz.

what i’m realizing now, in my MADDENINGLY THICK-SKULLED WAY, is how much you have to craft your life in order to get anything you’re thinking of ever accomplished. i mean, you HAVE TO. certainly i’ve known that; everyone tells you not to waste.  but finally getting it is one thing. and doing it is another. You have to carve it, plan it. with the emphasis on PLAN IT.  I’m good at putting it off for next time, for the libertine first 5 years of my twenties, preferring selfish capriciousness and lazyness; drunk-on-hedonism and at-times idolatry. But whatever, because growing up means getting sick.  growing impatient and exhausted with the no movement and the stale-familiar.  thus making it like you need it, efficient-izing the life and the repetitions, cutting away the fat and the wastefulness and shoring up the regimens.  tightening the mechanism.  The Machinery.  Doing this so that there is time for all of the things we’ve been wanting for so goddamned long. 

It’s a lot of work!
But i’m done bitching about it.
Because that’s perhaps the difference between my youth and my evolvement: get over all the effort already and get to the thing. Get it done with. Get the thing real already.  Humble the id.

The central drama of my life is bemoaning all the damned effort. Like its such a terrible thing or something.