On being a "writer"...

I think it's one of the perpetual conditions of most creative people--and I like to think particularly the geniuses because that would confer a lot of glory to me--to be deeply insecure, anxious, passionately devoted to self-loathing, moody, and terrible at self-promotion. Writers in particular, or at least the ones I know, generally think that they suck, that everything they do is sub-par, and that making their point through their flawed but genuine contributions to the existant body of writing is infinitely preferable to communicating with the outside world directly by, say, talking. I assume all these things to be true because they pretty much encapsulate the way I see things from the perspective of a writer. Sure I can be outgoing and fun-loving and confident with my friends or at a bar, but when it comes to showing a professional face as a writer, I either tend to laugh the idea off ("I'm not a writer! I WANT to be a writer! But I'm not a writer! It'll never happen!") or cringe, blush, and back away, mumbling some self-deprecating nonsense about how my stuff isn't very good. I hate trying to present myself as someone who knows anything about writing, much less the topics I write about, and even less about what the hell it is I'm trying to do by writing anything about them in the first place.

And yet, as a ball of nerves with the confidence of a particularly timid country mouse, I have to try to get myself published. In order to do this, and depending on the type of writing being put out, I have to learn to overcome my fears of exposure to do any number or combination of the following things, according to all the forums, columns, advice giving articles, and writer's salons I 've been frequenting lately for advice on the writing and publishing processes: develop a strong platform for each project so that you know exactly what it is you want to say and to whom; find the audience you want and turn that audience into a dedicated readership willing to buy and read anything you publish; develop professional liasons with as many people as humanly possible in the publishing, publicity, and reviewing worlds; write a 40-60 page book proposal with a complete table of contents, sample chapters, and a detailed description of how you will market your project; pitch an idea to and editor by throwing the names of all your publications and people willing to read, review, and blurb your project; attend every publishing event possible to make friends and network with other publishing people; stalk the agent and publicist you want on Twitter, Facebook, Google, and in the pages of every book he/she has ever worked on so that when you pitch it you will know exactly what that agent is looking to represent; find and pay your own publicist; clean up any and all internet presence you already have so that no evidence of your past usage of bad grammar exists anywhere online; somehow get yourself on the roster for public speaking events to add to your CV; develop a CV; demonstrate self confidence to everyone you meet so they'll think you're hip and want to read your work.

There are more. Lots more. Nowhere in there does it say "Write a kickass piece of something or other and let people read it."

Nowhere in there is there a mention of anyone helping you or giving you any credit as a creative individual who might not be The Next Big Thing.

I know the current American reading climate has moved away from fiction and poetry, the genres in which writers are mostly allowed to be eccentric weirdos who wear flannel and live in log cabins in the woods and pee themselves while speaking in public, but as one of those eccentrics... That list up there... I'm absolutely terrified.

I mean it's daunting enough to just write something that bares your very private layers of inner soul and then let somebody see it and judge it and make their assumptions about you based on it. It's soul-freezingly scary to try to shout out your creative vision in the face of the fast-moving, fast-forgetting, writhing, blogging, tweeting mass of the digital age of too-much-information and little appreciation for anything. The quivering hulk of monster that is Your Competition, the reek of its hungry but very picky breath, is enough to turn away even the most courageous.

But the idea of trying to market myself to a world that has no reason to care unless I personally make it care? Or of trying to scrounge up the money to pay a publicist that can actually get me a speaking engagement somewhere other than soapbox in Union Square? Or of "building an online following" somehow by being... I don't know... magically endowed with minion-creation capacities? How the hell am I, this little teeny self-mutilating blob of anxiety and too-high personal expectations, supposed to accomplish the sky-scraper-high list of accomplishments before even finishing my book?

I might as well just pee myself now, in front of all of you, turn off the computer, curl into a ball, and settle into my receptionist-for-a-living lifestyle. Or go back to school to become a nurse.

Shit.

Best Weekend Ever

I am absolutely bone-tired, sore all over, hoarse and sleep-deprived. I hope I never have to drive over the George Washington Bridge again, and I am far broker than I planned on being today. These maladies might sound as if they add up to something bad, but in fact, as many of you know, they are signs of a Kick Ass Weekend of the Highest Degree. See below.

Friday: I was 'sick.' My 'joints were sore,' I was 'nauseous,' and I 'really just needed to rest.' This was code for: 'My great uncle from California is in town for the day to go see the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit at the Guggenheim. He was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesen and Taliesen West from 1948 to 1949, and he is the coolest guy ever, and a very successful architect, so I am going with him to the museum and ditching work.' It was awesome. The exhibit was great and my uncle got a lot of admirers and questions as he would point to an architectural model and say 'This is where my room was.' Pretty amazing.
After I put him and my grandmother (also one of the coolest people EVER) on a train bound for Harrisburg, I set out to Nerd Nite at Galapagos Art Space. We got lost, took a cab to the right location, and on the way learned that there is a walled-off section of DUMBO that contains the crumbling shells of what used to be admirals' mansions during World War II. They are spooky as hell, and right next to the projects.
When we got to Nerd Nite, we saw... the most awesome... I can't even... I don't have words. This guy in the video below did a 20 minute speech and presentation on "Godzilla: History, Biology, and Behavior of Hyper-Evolved Therapod Kaiju" and then performed this amazing song:



It just doesn't get any better than that, friends.


Saturday and Sunday: Oh, wait, yes it does get better! On Saturday morning we rose earlier than we wanted to, 5 of us, and picked up a ZipCar to set off on The Centralia Saga, a two-day journey into the heart of the American Cock-and-Balls Art Dream via the shell of a burned out coal mining ghost town, along the way encountering the mentally unstable survivors of a 47 year old fire that still burns, evidence of demons escaping from hell, grave robbers, and the angry gods' response to our curiosity in the form of flood-like rains as we drove away. We spent a night in the very deepest darkest wilds of Perry County after encountering the natives thereof in their natural boozey habitat, and partook of the diner food nearby, played loud music with the windows down, and survived a harrowing hour-long bridge-traffic ordeal, all to come back to the city and have a smoothie. Truly epic.


Monday: Some crazy guy just came into the gallery and started singing really loud. No words, just noise. And he STARED at me as he walked by. Ahhh, Mondays in New York.

Ok, you know what?

Ignore that last post.

Running on fumes...

Not a lot to report on here at Chez Lynsey. I haven't found any media stories that are a) funny and quirky and interesting, or b) not way too complicated to talk about. I'd love to go into this whole CIA-has-been-lying-what-a-big-f-ing-surprise-that-is thing, but it's just so convoluted and ridiculous, and frankly, my brain has been trying to take the day off ever since I woke up, so I think I'll at least let it idle, if not turn itself off completely.

I wanted to write about this story about a Brooklyn daycare that turned out to be a front for a giant drug dealing operation (by giant I mean ten POUNDS of marijuana and around $100K in cash in the basement) but most of my talking points kept getting shut down by my brain as I thought more about it. Like, at first I was incensed by people's admonitions that having all those drugs around kids was despicable, because, I mean, c'mon it's WEED. Like, I guess I could see there being a problem if the people in charge of the kids got too excited about the book they were reading, "Mr. Bigglseworth Bakes a Pie," and then went to heat up a pre-made pie in the oven and, being high, obviously, left it in too long and caught the place on fire, but really it's pretty harmless with children.
But then I realized that the reason the operation got busted in the first place was because a gunfight had broken out there a day before, when some robbers went in to try to get the cash. So, yeah, having drugs = having cash = having people trying to rob you = having guns around kids. So, not so great. Not much of a soapbox to stand on there, Lyns.

Ummm, so there's that.

Wow, what a blog fail. Oh well.

But I DID see a guy on the subway yesterday who had his cheekbone pierced. Or something. It was wild. He had a metal stud in his cheek, right over his cheekbone. I don't know if it was like pierced into the bone, or just through the skin, or what, but it was crazy.

Oh and also, I discovered an interesting tidbit of information you might enjoy: George Clooney used to have a 300 lb pot bellied pig named Max (I've seen those giant Vietnamese pigs before - they're the ugliest sons of bitches on the planet) that shared his bed with him in the early nineties after his breakup with Kelly Preston. Turns out, Max, like other, more agile animals, could feel earthquakes coming, and woke George up early one morning in a frenzy, getting him to leave the house before an earthquake hit and ostensibly saving his life. Pretty cool, huh?

OH. MY. GOD. And how the media is trying to send us all into a panicked frenzy.

Ok, so when I first read this: Ant Mega-Colony Takes Over World ... I kinda freaked out a little. I mean. C'mon. Takes Over World?? That's a little terrifying no matter who's doing it, but ANTS? I got these pictures of huge 1950's B-movie Ant Monsters the size of 3 story buildings running around in traffic, wiggling their 20-foot antennae and clicking their human-sized mandibles together and doing any number of the horrible scary things that ants do (ever read up on bullet ants? blind ants? fire ants? nasty little buggers, I'm telling you!) on a ginormous scale. I almost peed myself.

Needless to say, this was not exactly the scenario that Matt Walker from the BBC's Earth News was trying to describe. The story itself isn't all that fantastic: basically there's this highly invasive species of Argentine ant that has been spread all over the world by human activity, and that has now established 'super colonies' in Europe, the US, two in Japan, and of course in South America. The ants are currently on every continent except for Antarctica. This is bad, because according to Suite101.com, these ants are among the world's worst invaders of new territory, causing serious damage to ecosystems when they land in new places and start up their monstrous colonies. And while that's kind of so-so on the unpleasant scale (at least for us; I'm sure there's some species of native ant out there lignering on the brink of starvation in little ant refugee camps, huddled around campfires and singing their native ant-farm songs in the night), things got a little creepy when researchers from Japan started putting the ants from super-colonies thousands of miles apart together to see how they'd react - and they got along. Ants are pretty aggressive critters, and as a consequence, when presented from an ant not of their own colony they usually get into fights. But these Argentine invaders (those from the bigges of the super-colonies) had no beef with each other. They basically just bought each other beers and started telling crazy stories about their mutual extended relatives antics at the last Argentine invaders' company holiday party. The researchers, surprised and unnerved, apparently let it slip that ants usually only act this chummy around others from their own specific colony, and that "the enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society."

Well, yeah. Ok. But then the BBC turned these observations into statements like these:
-"billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony."
-"The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination."
-"further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects' global ambition."

Dude. Come on.

Unless you have evidence that someone has actually found a giant underground series of tunnels leading from Japan and the US and Europe to an Argentinian home base with a giant ant-head that glows transmitting doom thoughts to billions of other ants around the world, don't give me shit like this. I'm way disappointed.

BUT! I am published again! My little Rant Rez from the other day went up today on The Whiskey Dregs. I rule!

This has nothing to do with anything, but...

...I just have to write down my dream from last night before I forget it, because I'm sure this is fodder for an excellent story and I have to keep it. Please, don't be scared off. This is the kind of stuff I have to share with the world.

Last night, I dreamed that I woke up in hell. I had apparently passed away and found myself in a large cafeteria, reminiscent of the one I remember from college. There were rows of hot food buffets and people lined up at them, spooning food onto partitioned trays, just like in high school. It appeared to be mostly cheesy casserole food, as it was all stringy and stretchy. Didn't look bad. People were having pretty typical conversations and were wearing whatever they died in, but everyone was a little sweaty because, obviously, it was quite warm. All the buffet sneeze guards were steamed up from the inside and the outside, and the air just had that stuffy sheen of hot weather to it. Very humid.

I set about determining where I was, and within a few minutes I'd discerned that I was in fact in hell, and also that a lot of my friends were already there. Gretchen, if you're reading this - sorry, but you goin' to the big cafeteria down under. And Amanda Myers and few people I work with, I think. All explaining to me how things worked and how it wasn't really so bad, just endlessly monotonous and the food wasn't very good.

So I sat down with people to my first meal in hell, pretty certain I'd never be leaving, if the legend of Persephone had any bearing. Cause that mac-n-cheese looked delicious and I was gonna eat the crap out of it. Sometime during our meal, in which we discussed how people around me had died (no memory of the details, sorry Gert), the Devil got up and started reading out who was to be on what work detail that week. We apparently worked different jobs in shifts. The Devil was Hitler, except he was bright red and had horns of course, but the face - definitely Mein Fuhrer. He seemed to be in the same mood as everyone else. Doing ok, but just kind of tired and worn out and bored. And sweaty, very sweaty. He kind of gallumphed up onto the stage, read his list of assignments, and then shuffled off.

I got assigned with a group of mostly young attractive women. There were about seven of us, I believe, and we all tromped off to the office we'd been assigned to. When we got there I realized that our job was to assist Mr. Pierre Levai, the former (i.e., now deceased) President of the Marlborough Gallery. It WAS hell! I was on a personal assistantship team for one of the biggest pricks ever known to man (except the leader of the Third Reich, of course). He came storming in, all red faced, and started demanding things of us that we didn't know how to respond to - which is pretty much his modus operandi in life. We were all getting flustered when suddenly Kim Kardashian, who was apparently on my work detail with me, came purring up from her seat and somehow charmed him into calming down. At first I was annoyed, because she was being so blatantly sexual and ridiculously servile to him, but after a few minutes she had talked him down out of a temper tantrum and somehow convinced him to leave the office for a while. Go, Kim! After he left, we talked for a while and I came to the conclusion that Kim Kardashian is actually a pretty cool chick. Go figure.

After work detail was over, we all reassembled in the cafeteria. Kim and I went our separate ways, but we had forged a pretty decent working relationship and I hoped she'd be on my detail the next day. I went to sit down with Gert and Mooie, and suddenly, out of a rift in the space-time continuum, Jon Wagner, Josh Baney and Rich Hess (all high school friends) plopped down near us in hell. We explained where they were, and they explained that they had all been on military duty together in Afghanistan (I think?) and had apparently been killed. We went around the table telling our stories, and it seemed that everyone knew where they were and what they had been up to, but not the moment of death or what it was, specifically, that had done them in.

When it came around to my turn, I suddenly realized that I had no idea how I'd died. No memory of anything at all, not even of the surrounding circumstances. I got very upset, thinking I should definitely have known, and I was informed that I had to go down the hall out of the cafeteria to get my memory restored. There was an office down there, they said, where they'd give me everything I needed.

So off I tromped, down the hall, first door on the left, and entered into... the most delicious looking and smelling pastry shop I'd ever been in. The women behind the counter were all in bonnets and aprons and smiley, although they looked a little bit like pigs. They gave me plates full of pastries, telling me exactly what every one would do for me when I ate it, what kinds of memory would be restored and what to expect to feel. They were very supportive, and by the time I left the room my tray was covered with little peanut butter and chocolate tartlets, chocolate cake, croissants, and cookies.

I was walking back to the cafeteria, licking my lips and marveling at how very nice everyone in Hell seemed to be, when I realized that there was no way I'd EVER be able to eat all of my memories in one sitting. But I knew I'd have to. And suddenly I realized the irony of it all - the people in hell weren't nice, they were sadists! And they wanted me to turn into a pig, too!

....somewhere around here I woke up, and although I fell back asleep a few times, everything got disjointed, so that's effectively where the dream ended.

But, good stuff, no? I feel like it's so heavy with symbolism it's practically dripping. Good fodder for a story down the line. I'm very impressed with my brain.

A Rez Rant

Six months of volunteering on the reservation will get you here: parked outside Big Bat’s around 3:00 am while your ex-hookup buddy pukes on the uneven pavement, you retching and trying to hold it back so you don’t have to go near him in your lowered-tolerance inebriation, watching the rear-end of a piebald horse at the gas pump in front of you and wondering if there’s just one funny thing going on in this situation, or too many to count. Given you’re seeing three of everything anyway, it can be hard to keep track.

Being just out of college and stranded in an ocean of ancient ani-misticysim that still makes more sense than the insular ultra-Catholicism of your virtual-strangers-even-after-seven-months housemates can also throw off one’s perspective. Spending most of your waking hours feeling oversized around kindergartners and their tiny chairs can be a little discombobulating for a 5’1”, 100 lb misfit who’s never been bigger than anyone in her life, but leaving the classroom every afternoon for the driver’s seat of a full sized school bus throws things into an even more Alice In Wonderland kind of perspective. Being out here, a hundred miles from anything like civilization and yet parked at a 24-hour convenience mart, just back from the legion hall dance you crashed with your fellow volunteers, waiting for the teetotal-ling designated driver to emerge form the store with some Cheetos, trying to remember what the hell happened over the past three hours, is mind-fuck-quality surrealism.

And then there’s the horse. Standing there, still as a car idling except for a slow swishing of the tail, right in front of your housemate’s Neon, as if it belonged at a gas station at 3:00 in the morning. Refueling. You guess the rider’s inside, probably also buying Cheetos. People out here love Cheetos. Not the regular kind so much as the hot kind. Not sure why, really, they’re pretty distasteful to you. But people here also tend to eat lemons without sugar, and they love – love – pickles. Who knows. They also ride horses around on weekends and take them to the gas station. It makes sense, really; the reservation has one of the highest drunk driving mortality rates in the world, and while a car will take you right into a ditch if you pass out drunk, a horse will get you home no matter what. Unless it comes across Bigfoot or The Tall Man or some other spirit, which according to the locals happens quite a lot and isn’t always a pleasant experience. But so long as you can keep your seat on the animal, which most of the people around here can, having been riding since they were preschoolers, a horse is a safer way to get around on a long howling-at-the-moon night than a piece of heavy machinery.

The horse’s tail swishes at you again. The sound of vomit hitting pavement from outside has stopped. The obvious mental image of the rider coming out of the gas station, pushing a few buttons at the pump, and inserting the business end of the nozzle into the business end of the horse continues to cross your hazy mind, but it seems passé somehow. Too obvious. Yet you still wish you had a camera. Another wave of nausea is coming over you – you steel yourself against the tidal force of bile. God, you think, I hate tequila. Dammit. You’d promised yourself to take it easy tonight – only drink one kind of beer and one kind of liquor to avoid mixing, but the first shot the now-barfing mass outside the car door bought you was Cuervo, and you got locked into a Mexican binge all night. Never a good idea. Nor is busting into the legion hall of a tiny Nebraska town known for its history of lynching the Indians you’re out here volunteering to teach for a year. It was fun at the time, but…

The back door opens and your ex-lover tumbles in, smiling the relieved smile of the empty-stomached drunk. “So where’s Pete with those Cheetos, dude?” His breath stinks but you’re so close to vomiting already that it hardly makes a dent in your confusion and misery. “Dude, I can’t believe you want to eat. You just puked everywhere.”

“Yeah,” he replies, “more room for Cheetos.” You grimace and turn back to the horse at the pump; it takes a moment, but the blurry double-image your drunk eyes perceive eventually focuses into one. Its tail is swishing. A big-boned Lakota woman is climbing up into the Western saddle, cradling her cell phone between her ear and shoulder – you’re constantly marveling at the skill set of people from the prairie. It’s entirely different than what the city taught you about swiping a Metro Card or avoiding other pedestrians mid-crosswalk in front of raging cab drivers.

Your ex watches with you as the animal trots off down the main street of Pine Ridge, South Dakota and into the wild void of the black prairie night. A dog barks in the distance. “So, hey,” mutters Bryan in the slurred late-night tone you came to know during illegal late-night beer binges at his tiny house in Oglala, “I know it’s been kind of weird lately but, we should really…” he hiccups… “get together again before you leave, you know? For old time’s sake.”

You eye him, curled in the corner of the Neon’s backseat, his hands gesturing clumsily as he talks. The high school girls’ basketball coach, now a member of the paid staff after three years volunteering. The only attractive non-Indian for miles around, and an alcoholic. Go figure. You just shake your head and turn back to the night outside the bright 24-hour lights of the parking area. It’s quiet now. You’re the only car in the parking lot. It’s finally gotten late enough for the reservation night to wind down. The Legion Hall kicked you out almost an hour and a half ago and the drive back was interrupted by Bryan’s several vomit stops. You wonder vaguely how Peter, the constant DD, can stand people like the two of you, who drag all the volunteers out into the night to witness your helplessly post-collegiate debauchery. You wonder how this will be remembered. The night everyone got kicked out of the legion hall? The night Bryan puked for two hours straight? Your birthday party?

Too many options, and the mind begins to spin again as nausea bears down on the backseat. If Peter would just get his snacks and get the hell out of Big Bat’s you could make it home without puking, no problem. Maybe one of his students is working the late shift, in which case you probably shouldn’t go in to get him. The sight of a drunken 3 am teacher from the school is a death blow to the reputation at any school, much less one where 90% of the students’ parents are diabetic and abusively alcoholic.

“I mean,” Bryan continues, seemingly unaware of your unresponsiveness, “it’s not like we had a fight or anything. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. It just went weird, you know? We should hook up again. It was fun.”

You stare at him for a moment. A flash to the night he invited you over to the Oglala pad, the night you decided a year of celibacy wasn’t in your future. A mistake, for sure, but one that could be made again for the sake of satiety. His form contorts as a deep hiccup issues from his throat. You roll your eyes and look away to see the door of the store opening, Peter emerging with Cheetos and Gatorade. “Thank GOD, dude,” you say as he opens the door, remembering a moment too late, as always, about how he views taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Sorry,” you mumble as he hands you a blue Gatorade.

And in a moment, with the car interior reeking of processed flour and cheese powder, Bryan crunching away and hiccupping as you nurse your drink and try to hold it down, you’re off again, into the blackness of the reservation night, rez dogs starting up by the side of the road and fading into the dark, the light of dawn approaching greyness from the East. Back up the hill to the volunteer house that’s not quite a home.

Ah, New York. The City That Never Sleeps. The Greatest City on Earth. The Big Apple.

Imagine it, folks: a city of 8 million, closer to 14 million during the day with commuters and tourists. The most overburdened subway line in that city - the 4, 5, and 6 trains - NOT WORKING PROPERLY DURING MORNING RUSH HOUR. No 5 trains, just the 4 and the 6. The 6 is local. Everybody wants the 4. Everybody CANNOT fit into the 4. Imagine you've already fought your way onto a 2 train to transfer to the 4, and it's hot and sweaty and you're tired. You're late for work, but because you're in the subway tunnel you can't call or text anyone to explain why. Imagine you're my size - 5'1", 100 lbs - and carrying a gigantic and heavy purse (for good reason! I'm not a crazy bag lady!). You manage to fit yourself onto the 4 train at what seems to be the last minute, and find a spot right next to the closing doors, against which you plan to lean when they are closed firmly. Then imagine the doors reopening, and two people at least twice your size who come barreling through the opening, running directly into your back instead of simply TURNING TO THE SIDE so they could fit past.

Imagine being very angry. But the doors are about to close again, and the big stupid people have shoved past you and are no longer an issue for your commute. Then, imagine the doors reopening - AGAIN - and another, taller, and MUCH hairier person ramming his elbow INTO your BACK as he boards the train.

Imagine being very, very angry. Imagine catching yourself with a fist flying toward the big hairy man's kidney and stopping yourself inches away from punching him - hard. Imagine being vaguely proud of yourself for your self restraint, but too busy seething in anger at the situation and the people around you.

Imagine barely making it through the rest of the day, visibly shaking with frustration as you get no fewer than ten calls from the same person's pocket, a woman calling from Turkey and asking you the same question at least five times in a row, and an old man standing in front of your desk for fifteen minutes asking inane questions you can't answer but refusing further assistance from someone who CAN answer him.

Then, imagine walking outside underneath a darkening sky, and seeing an old lady bending to pick up what you imagine must be a turd from her teeny little dog, which is running around in circles at the end of its leash. Instead, as you walk by and notice form the corner of your eye, she is literally wiping up a puddle of the most liquid diarrhea you've ever seen. Poor dog. Poor lady.

Ah, New York.

Almost speechless...

I heard about Michael Jackson's passing last night, thankfully after I had already started drinking. I managed to gloss it over in my brain and simply not process it all night - I just couldn't. I mean, the world without Michael Jackson? I just wasn't in any way prepared to deal with it. The thought had never even crossed my mind. It was too far in the future. He was too much of an icon, a mystery, a constant weird but awesome presence.

But then, bam, I got up this morning, put on a black dress, and went to work. I remembered the night before. Random strangers in the park and on the street were talking about it, every single bar we passed was playing his music, most car stereos were blaring Thriller on repeat... This morning the headlines were all photos of his face, as it changed over the years from a precocious crooning child to a stressed and unhappy but still incredible man-thing.

What a strange and amazing life. I was crying by 10:30.

No words. I'm sure I'll think of them later, and they'll come out in torrents about how I wished his life could have been better, and longer, and he could have learned to live more normally and be happy. How I wish he'd ever been able to be happy. How much sympathy I've had for him over the years as sensationalism and accusations followed him around, how I watched footage of him and realized that the poor guy just never learned how to behave like a regular human being, and how sad that made me. How when I was four years old, my best friend had a poster of him on the door of her bedroom and how we used to stare at it and sigh over how dreamy he was. How before I knew his music I knew the moonwalk, and when I heard his music I went nuts. How I went out and bought History the day it came out, when I was finally old enough to buy my own music. How the song "Bad" has always just KILLED me.

Sigh. Such a frantic genius.

And on we go.

David Bowie = Macaulay Caulkin + Nick Frost < Mark Sanford

Laziness is setting in... This week has been unaccountably long so far and quite busy and I'm starting to feel my energy level drop out from under me. Rather than losing it entirely by pushing myself too hard, here are some bits of awesome I've found scattered about on the cluttered floor of the Internetz.

1) From Overheard In New York:

Random hipster: If David Bowie had wheels, how much would you pay to ride on him?
--St. Mark's Place
(You guys know my answer to that question.)


2) I have to find a way to watch this show somehow, even though it airs in Britain. A sample question for the contestants:
Q: Macaulay Culkin is a child, but can you name an adult?
A: This was not as easy as it seemed, as the only acceptable answer was Tom Petty.

3) Speaking of British shows I love, check this out:


4) Taking a break from laziness, can I please just take a moment to ask why this story about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford having an affair is such a big deal that it warranted front page placement in both the NY Times and Wall St. Journal (and probably many others - those are just the only 2 papers I see in physical paper form every day)?? Every time another politician admits to having had an affair, and the media goes crazy, and people start acting as if this is a HUGE story like Atlantis has fucking surface from the bottom of the ocean and our understanding of the world has irrevocably changed, I just scratch my head. I mean... Oh my gosh, somebody is having an AFFAIR? Well, isn't that novel. Oh, wow, and it's a POLITICIAN? Who knew politicians, those upstanding and morally unimpeachable pillars of the community, could have affairs? Isn't it shcoking?

....No, no it's not. LOTS of people have affairs, and politicians have probably more than average. Isn't this common knowledge by now? How many political sex scandals have to break per week for us to get this through our heads? Holy crap, people, calm down. Why should what a governor does with his dick have to have ANY impact on what he does for his state and constituents? I just... I don't get it. Can't we focus on something pertinent to something, please?

/end grumbling