Lucy's Spleen

Google Doodles Puked on My Shoes

Spare me your canned answers, kids. Granted, the question suux, but come on! Your world revolves entirely around junk food and boy/girl cooties/relationships, and not at all around using Google "to search for the peace." Please don't expect me to buy your moralizing about ending racism and reversing global warming. The world will never be "full of magic and fairy tales." As a matter of fact just your mentioning that has caused the Chinese/Tibetans/Israelis/Palestinians/Rwandans/Anarcho-Syndicalists to communicate with one another using American Sign Language even less often than previously. And after all those rainbows and flowers there was not one mention of homosexuality in any of your spiffy little ideals; don't the teachers who put you up to this think that fags might want to live "in a world where prisons are empty and churches are full" too? I wonder if there were ever any doodling crusaders for controversial issues, or if- ahem- Google just filtered them out before putting the entries up for voting. Either way, I can't help but notice there's no Google Doodle entry about "what if there was a world with no female genital mutilation."

Anyway this whole exercise seemed so censored and disingenuous it wound up exasperating the hell out of me, so I went back to the K-3 age group to try to get fucking real already. Long live the weird science-y kid who thinks it would be cool/possible for humans to live underground someday! I voted for this:

"What if we live inside the Earth also in the future. It will give us a lot more room. We can have air vents for oxygen, tunnels for transportation, food storages, drinking water generators. We can use a lot of energy from the Earth's core."

Runner Up goes to the kid who believes that people will all be happier if they can just rock out the way they like to rock out:

"I think that the whole world would be happier if they rocked out to the music they love."

Living Under the Sea is not a bad idea, but loses due to a lack of specific ideas regarding means of execution and to major demerits for cheesedick rhyming.

 

Winner for grades 10-12 is the kid who wondered what if "we distorted our flesh to the extent that so little remained of what made us human that we became but a twisted, robotic caricature of our former selves." Now that's what I call a plausible adolescent fantasy. The rest is all bullshit.

Runs deep and builds on itself

So, how's your Christmas guilt coming along? I'll tell you, mine is totally banging. I've only procured/shipped maybe a third of the gifts on my list so naturally I'm furiously self-flagellating because, you know, it's all about the presents. How will folks know I love them if not via a mountain of UPS boxes piled up at their doors? I don't know when I developed the deep urge I have to go overboard for birthdays and holidays. I do recall Christmases and birthdays of my childhood feeling like periods of glorious excess, so I suppose my urge is partly to uphold the tradition, but there's also a component of guilty overcompensation. I start feeling compelled to give objects to people  for deep emotional reasons entirely unrelated to objects: I will never be able to repay my parents and Stan's for all they've done for me = I should at least try to buy them stuff; I am awful about returning calls and emails from friends and family = I need to host the birthday party, make the decorations, buy a beautiful gift and bake the cake from scratch; I am selfish and think about myself too much = I need to give socially responsible presents like locally-produced goods or, better yet, my own artily handcrafted items. This guilty need to give has resulted in some occasions of buying my way into a financial problem; other times, finances being prohibitive from the get-go, I've overdone it with little "amplifier" gifts that wind up feeling totally meaningless once given.  Of course, finances are always prohibitive so that is a special reason to feel guilty in and of itself.

My partner has the same problem, both with the guilt and the finances, but he has a very different way of dealing. Whereas I tend to want to overdo for holidays, Stan prefers to pretend they don't exist. Thus I am able to adopt additional Team Guilt in virtue of our affiliation, and assume responsibility for wanting to overdo on his behalf, as well as my own. So obviously the only way to assuage all this guilt is to make hand printed, ribbon-festooned, sequined, origami pop-up Christmas village holiday cards with a gorgeous picture of us wearing beautiful white-toothed smiles and get them all out in the mail with an eloquent personal message to every single person I've ever met for delivery no later than October 17th. Everyone knows the most heartfelt greeting card will be rendered null if the sender didn't have it together enough to make sure her good wishes for a joyful holiday and a happy New Year were delivered before Christmas Eve.

This is a very time-sensitive season, you know. I believe Hallmark has actually patented a design that causes any cards still in the mail on or after December 26 to spontaneously combust. Same goes for gifts, you can buy your nephew a Wii but if it doesn't arrive in time for Christmas you will find him calling you up on Boxing Day, with your sister prodding him in the background as he grumbles, "ThankyoufortheLincolnLogs." 

Alas, timeliness has never been my strong suit. I am the guy who buys all the materials to make the cards, then either gets too busy to make them or becomes paralyzed by the prospect of so overwhelming an ambition. And so every year I grind along in this awesomely self-propelled guilt cycle: a year/lifetime of guilt makes me want to go overboard for holidays, I get stalled up  by trying to be a perfectionist to make up for all the reasons I'm guilty and next thing I know I'm out of time, Christmas is over and I never got my shit together, thereby planting the first seed for fresh guilt that will bloom in the New Year. Happy Holidays!

You know that feeling?

That feeling when you're like, "Damn, it's only Wednesday night. Maybe I shouldn't have had that last shot of absinthe?"

Me too.

Confessional

Um, so I didn't exactly truly donate all those books, as such, but rather actually foisted my used literature on the library by anonymously sneaking them into the bin along with my mondo stack of overdue returns. While I'm at it, it's probably also misleading to categorize any of the volumes that fell victim to my unsanctioned book-dump as "used," unless you count being packed in boxes and removed from boxes and obsessively shelved alphabetically by author and according to category as "use." Because I certainly never actually read any of the books I gave away, are you kidding me? I am a pack-rat! I come from a long line of exceedingly earnest, nose-to-the-grind pack-rats! I kept all those books not because I had read and loved and re-read them, but because I like walking past and seeing them on the shelf. Sometimes I stop and wave, or give a little wink to my books! It's nice to know they're around for me if I need them, because you know I might (possibly, maaaaybe) consider reading them one day- like if I had zero friends in all the world and became bedridden and there was no such thing as the Internet and I had memorized every last US Weekly magazine and Plow and Hearth mail-order catalog from beside the toilet and the backs of all the cereal boxes- then, if I didn't opt to just lie very still and die instead, I might read one of the books that I illicitly imposed on the library yesterday. (By the way, most of the give-aways I acquired out of politeness at an office book swap a number of years ago. No fewer than three of them were Chekhov plays in paperback with no front covers on and another four I suspect had been required reading on the syllabus for a co-worker's Contemporary Chicana Authors 102 course which, if I recall correctly, said coworker wound up dropping when it turned out Contemporary Chicana Authors 101 had already provided more than adequate depth of study in that genre, after all.)

But, conceivably, I could have needed them! Which is why I had to move them from box to box and shelf to shelf and apartment to house to apartment to apartment four times in the last two years! How would I be able to effectively continue not reading the books without having them around to remind me that I never would want to read them? Riddle me THAT, all you people who manage to not always have far too many possessions. Do you even dare try it?

Finally, regarding the Poe and Longfellow red-and-gold hardbacks, they were at least alleged to have been used. Or anyway I assumed that prior use was implied when I purchased them at a used book store because their covers matched. My personal use of them during our tenure together consisted entirely of placing them beside one another on a shelf so that they looked, "nice," next to a couple of other matching volumes, usually with taller spines, possibly in blue. I figure I've got all the Poe I'll ever require readily available in the Norton Anthology I've been hanging onto since high school and, as I mentioned, I was never really all that enamored of Longfellow, anyway.

Angst is Funny

• Right after I wrote that post about being so sad and sukky I started cleaning out a box of random shit and came across this piece of sound advice given to me by my best friend on my 20th birthday:

So thank you, Lolly, for the timey remindler because you are not wrong.

"Dear Emily, What do you do all day?"

I sit around drinking tea, herbal tea, sometimes black tea with sugar and milk.

"What else?"

I also drink wine.

Don't Do It At Your All-Day Go Away Party!

And by "it" I mean this:

I just wouldn't be me if I didn't achieve a very grave sprain just in time to have to move like nine million boxes up and down (mainly down) the three flights of stairs to my apartment! These pics are from before I re-destroyed my ankle/life this "Halloween Weekend" (that's what we celebrate here in Utah because there's no partying on Mondays); the colors are much more vibrant and exciting now!

This is the second time in two years that I've rolled my right ankle seriously enough to require crutches, and the second time I've had no idea how it happened. As my boyfriend said, "Flip-flops, sunglasses and blackout drinking are the perfect combination to achieve such an injury." Pretty savvy for a guy who was 900 miles away at the time. I don't recall taking the step that caused this harm, but I do remember the flurry of activity that followed and all the lovely people who tended to me.* They do that for you when it's your Go Away Party, you know. Anyhow since apparently I was not around when my ankle injury occurred, I feel lucky when someone asks me what happened to be able to turn expectantly to my brother, and he'll provide a description of events; like how I stepped like that and my foot went this way. Or something. I'm just happy somebody was around to see it.

 

One of these things is not like the other, but hey- the party was fun! A new picture gallery will be posted soon, but not too soon because it won't be til after we get there. Okay!

* Thanks: JB and Pablo (or Dan?) for carrying me into the house; Doc and Sparky for cleverly suggesting ice and elevation; whoever brought and applied the ice; Tessa and you-know-who for holding my hand and wiping the tears I didn't know I was leaking; JT for the four Ibuprofen and the whiskey with which to down them; Derek for helping me get up and dance when I was ready; Allison for sitting at my side on the sofa; Teaspoon and Johnson for the party- prep and cleanup.

6 pm - 2 am

Well, I just hugged my way out of a parking ticket!

Yucky!

At 4:30 this afternoon I parked at the curb between two yellow signs stating 10 MINUTE PARKING DRIVER MAY LEAVE VEHICLE. I got out of my car, passed a guy smoking at a table, and walked into a shop. Not two minutes later the smoking guy popped his head in the door to inform me, "You just got a ticket on your car." I ran out, saw the telltale pink envelope on my windshield and approched the Meter-Man as he sauntered over to the next car, protesting, "Hey! What about ten-minute parking?" "What ten-minute parking?" he asked, looking at me blankly, so I told him, "It says on the signs! 10 MINUTE PARKING DRIVER MAY LEAVE VEHICLE! See?" and the three of us walked over to one of the signs to have a look. Then Meter-Man pointed out that what was actually on the sign was this:

10 MINUTE PARKING

DRIVER MAY LEAVE VEHICLE

6 pm - 2 am

It may have been then that I appeared somewhat miffed.

And THEN Meter-Man opened his arms and kind of shouted, "Give me a hug!" And I was a little bit flustered and the smoking guy was still standing around acting kind of encouraging and so I just did it. I hugged the Meter-Man (and may I add that my boobs look particularly enormous today). And then he grinned and said, "Oh that's not really a ticket! That was just a test!" or something like that; and the smoking guy said, "That is not a real ticket. Do not pay the ticket." So I took the ticket off my car and I looked at it, and it was a real ticket. I tore the ticket up and I got in my car and as I drove away Meter-Man and the smoking guy stood on the curb and waved.

And now I'm wondering if I wouldn't have rather just paid the ten dollars, you know what I mean?

Spleen is experiencing technical difficulties.

Please bear with us while we work this pynch out.

Inner Space: Premier Coup d'Oeil

I took a first peek tonight. It's not looking pretty in there. I'm afraid it might be a bigger mess than I expected. Rats and reptiles. Sometimes it is very hard to like oneself as much as one should.