sistine chapel

postage due

"What on earth do you islanders do during the winter?" the tourists used to ask the postmistress.
"We knit seaweed," she retorted.
The postmistress lay in a casket covered with a quilt of hands holding hands yesterday. She had died, rather quickly, of lung cancer. Apparently she smoked the evil weed during those long winters, too.
But for all her tart tongue, she was one of the very few islanders who welcomed outsiders, even foreigners and Jews. She knew everybody, and everybody knew her.
Why I can't stop today: I've got to collect a hank of seaweed.

hip deep in the shit

Some days just bite. Consider my sister's day. She had guests visiting from Chicago, when all the toilets backed up in the house and overflowed. We're talking hands and knees and chlorox. When minor measures had failed, she brought in the experts: The Roto Rooter Men. When somewhat more major measures had failed, they decided to take the most major measure of rooting through the septic tank to the pipe opening.
Then they dropped the septic tank lid into the tank. My sister had the pleasure of seeing two alarmed men leaning over the lip, fishing around in her household waste, before calling in a further army of plumbers and septic systems experts. "Every poop consultant in town had their trucks in my driveway," she sighed. Finally, the men left, the guests left, the carpenters who wanted to discuss molding left, and her husband arrived home to break out the wet vac in the basement.
Why I can't stop: The old intake-outgo problem.

missionary position

Do you know what happens next? Lots of little plastic geckos, that's what. And I'm here to tell you, little plastic geckos aren't what they once were. They harrass big plastic geckos in the supermarket line. "No, no, darling. You can't have that bug candy," say the big plastic geckos. Then they let them get their suckers on the bug candy. Or the little geckos bug the big ones for ipods, or blast- the- insect video games. Then they throw tantrums and get what they want. Or if they don't get what they want, they call Little Gecko and Family Services and call the cops on the big geckos. I'm telling you, little geckos are ruling the world. Little geckos didn't used to be like this. They ate their flies, said thank you and cleaned up their walls. And if they didn't, they got a whuppin'.
Why I can't stop: These little plastic geckos are are going to be big plastic geckos before too long and then what will geckodom be like?

lazigirl

Hammock or plywood? I don't feel like building. I don't feel like cleaning. I don't feel like mowing. I don't feel like reading. I don't feel like doing much of anything. Except smoking.
Why I can't stop: I'm too lazy.

nano, nano

"What a beautiful voice you have," he says. It has almost always worked before. When he gazes at a woman through slitted eyes, they usually cave. And it's his 37th birthday. So what if she's a trifle older. After three beers, all women are desirable. Or, in the words of the old country song, "I never went to bed with an ugly woman, but I sure woke up with a few."
The blood alcohol level is ideal, and the hour is ripe: It's four in the morning. But this time, something's not working.
Why I can't stop: Nano is trying to seduce a dyke.

holy moly

In most motel rooms there is a copy of Gideon's Bible. Where is my Bhagavad Gita? My Koran? My Words of Wisdom from the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Huh?
Anyway, for a little light reading, I checked out Genesis 1, the bone of contention for the creationist fascists. I don't really see their problem: If you change the word God to Unknown Power, it sounds pretty much like what scientists say except for the timing.
"Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. . . And [God] created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind."
Then we get to the part where it looks like scholars made an error in translation.
The text reads: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him."
It should properly read: "So Man created god in his own image. In the image of Man created He him."
Read it for yourself genesis
Why I can't stop: men are gods

pittsburgh, pa

Why I can't stop: Need I elaborate?

i hate school

Have I mentioned this? I hate bureaucracy and bells for class and getting sent to the office and the goodie girls and the jock boys and homework and tests and grades and papers and all the rest of it. Why did I take a job that's just like being in school? In fact, my job right now requires that I be actually in school.
And yet—and yet—I learned a few things today. I guess that's why I keep doing this job. I keep finding out new stuff.
Why I can't stop: I'm never going to freaking graduate.

i'm a bad dog

the motel room

rock on, darwin

So I'm out here in Missouri, right? Beating my head against the wall to try to do a story that nobody wants me to do, because they're afraid of losing their jobs. They're high school science teachers, struggling with "intelligent design" and evolution. School superintendants won't call me back, principals won't call me back, science chairs won't call me back, biology teachers won't call me back, and I'm sitting on my ass in the Ramada contemplating a six-hour drive to God's Nowhere Plus where I might be able to find someone who will talk to me.
Then I get the word: The magazine that sent me out here has been sold. To Bobby Guccione Jr., famous for a dad who started Penthouse and for himself starting Spin magazine. Check it out, dudes and dudettes: He thinks science is a lot like rock 'n' roll. Science has, Bobby Jr. says, "a bunch of people with strong egos and God complexes. That sounds like rock 'n' roll to me."
Is my editor playing lead guitar now?
Why I can't stop: I'm on the marimbas. Naked.

i don't like worms

fluids of life

smokin pa

photograph by oceangurl

news junkie

I'm telling you, it was as much as I could do to keep the wheel from turning south as I crossed the Mississippi River. I passed the National Guard convoys headed, belatedly, down to the disaster zone. I was listening, goddess help me, to NPR for perhaps the first time in my life. I was thinking about my cousin Glenn and her family, safe but exiled from their home in Covington, La. I was wondering if my friend Jed, city editor of the Times Picayune, who, when last heard from in Baton Rouge was headed for his home in the French Quarter, had gotten through the cordons and rather hoping he hadn't—unless he had a hard hat and a gun. I was wishing that I had not quit my job at People. The last time I wished that so hard was on 9/11, right after I quit. Big things are happening, and there's nothing I can write about it.
Why I can't stop: I'm sitting on my ass in the Ozarks and, at the moment, I don't give a flying fuck about evolution.