what i think...

i refrained from commenting since i feel like we all on overload and this whole america-as-empire situation isn't my country or my people (yes, i taking my 1 american and running for the islands as soon as we can- friends are more than welcome to join us, and i think you may need to because this place is sliding deeper into the shitter and the stink is suffocating) but this says it succintly.
walk good.

bad again and still and continuing

i had to say something just so i wouldn't go directly from 1 flash fiction friday post to another, with nothing said all week in between.
it's been a busy one, with us working on the kitchen while preparing to have the bathroom redone while i'm in trini and he's in chesapeake next week (which means i'll continue being a bad blogger because mom called and said her computer's down, so the week in trini i'll be incommunicado) but the kitchen looks great and is so much closer to being done, and when i return the bathroom will be somehow magically lovely, with the effort on my part a full week in the past. and believe me, this effort has been huge and exhausting and i can't wait to forget it as soon as i reach the airport, so when i see the new bathroom, i'll have no recollection of this past week and the kitchen+bathroom will seem to have been done by elves in the night.
now i'm off to return the first tile we bought, before we found the perfect one.
and as a side note, you don't ever want to carry cases of tile upstairs to the guest room next to your bathroom for the contractors. it's very shitty. and thus, soon to be forgotten, so i say that for my own future benefit, as well as yours.
walk good. and if i'm inspired before i leave for trini on saturday i'll make some flash fiction.

new fff

closed captioning for flash fiction friday provided by: jj, the purgatorian.

Hell bent for leather and ugly as a dirt clod... i put down my head and charged. they made me angry, and i’m ugly when i’m mad.
those 3 fools never knew what hit them. which was my intent.
they were all standing there, discussing me as if i weren’t right next to them. talking about me like i didn’t exist.
now, i don’t know how you do, but i don’t stand idly by and let my future be decided for me by people who don’t know nothing about my life. they don’t know how much i do- the feeding, minding the children, pacing, worrying about what might happen next, or tomorrow, or the next day, or any day after that in our immediate future (or sudden lack thereof). this here’s a very stressful existence.
and after all the time i spent in the struggle, they were just gonna put me down, with no concern for my babies who needed me; no concern for how much i gave them all, including the fools deliberating my death sentence. they didn’t even know they couldn’t do nothing without me.
so, as much as i didn’t want to do anything that might confirm their diagnosis, i had to take drastic action. once i knocked them down (i do admit that my success was partially due to their shock at the attack- i’m no raging bull, but i did a pretty good impression) i took off. i called for my babies and we were a mini-stampede, running for the hills.
i’m cool though. as they say, no use crying over spilt milk.
some wild herd’ll take us in.
mad cow disease, my ass!

walk good.

fiction #10- "presents aren't promises/kisses aren't contracts" part3.

jj's intro for flash fiction friday hasn't been posted yet, so in the meanwhile, here's another installment of the already-written work:

"But then just as you have her ready to drop everything and come over, you almost change your mind. Something makes you realize that she won’t satisfy you any more than the one who just left did. Maybe what you need is to talk to your wife. But then maybe backpedalling is the last thing you should do. And something about the voice in the phone reminds you of her anyway, so maybe you can make do with a sound-alike. You can hear that voice on the line, asking if you’re ok, and in that second you decide you have nothing to lose. Even if she doesn’t satisfy you exactly the way you want, you can adjust the mood of the scenario to suit your purposes. And maybe it would improve this otherwise shitty day you’ve been having so far.
You re-enter the conversation, smoothly reassuring her that you are more than alright, that your momentary pause was one laden with excitement at the thought of her making herself an actuality at your door and a naked reality shortly thereafter. She inhales it as fast as you can spout it and tells you she’ll be right over. So much for finishing her workday before playtime. You’re reminded of how good you can be when you make the slightest effort. It didn’t take much to hook a wife and it takes even less to hook a casual sexual encounter.
While you wait for the slut to arrive you briefly contemplate bathing or cleaning up in some way, then you realize it doesn’t matter whether you look sharp or not. She’s already on the way and once she walks in she won’t walk back out without your permission. You will be more than magnetic enough to compensate for not cleaning up. So instead you visit your bar for some social lubrication, which will only increase your animal magnetism anyway. She’ll never notice the smell of the previous woman on you through all your charm.
She takes long enough that you have three screwdrivers – no ice – before the doorbell rings, thinking the whole time about her voice and how it reminded you of your wife. You’re hoping that the similarity will be just enough to draw you in, without making you feel like you’re living a deja-vu. You’re imagining her as the physically perfect version of your wife, firm and smooth in all the right places, and mentally more malleable. The more you consider what you need right now, the more it seems that what would make her absolutely wonderful is being eighteen – the right age for body and mind in your world. And if she could keep the talking to a minimum too, then you might even let her stay awhile after you use her. At eighteen, she’d be good for some time yet.
You’re conjuring pictures of her in all sorts of tantalizing lingerie, posing just for the camera in your head, and you almost love her by the time you hear the chime of her arrival. Your doorbell may have never sounded sweeter, even with the customized tones you paid so dearly for. You walk over to open the door, realizing for the first time that she may not measure up to the way you’ve cast the role in your head. It would be sad to have the performer unable to fill the part at this late stage in your show.
You hesitate, thinking about how you’ll handle her if she’s not what you want, because right now you don’t want something else, you want the thing itself. You are unwilling to negotiate because you’ve already been disappointed once today, and if she is wrong you’ll take care of yourself, and then call your wife tomorrow. It would hurt to admit that your wife is the one you need, even for just one romp, but not enough to abstain. You know you are not up for dealing with second best right now.
You inhale, exhale, and open the door. And standing in your doorway is just right. She does remind you of your wife in a good way, so even if she is obviously much more than eighteen you think you can work with this. The more you look at her, the more she reminds you of the thing itself, so you’re glad – you won’t be making the phone call of shame."

walk good.

postscript...

when i posted earlier about needing a job, i forgot to mention the irony of my having to turn down 2 gigs in the past 24hours- the one i really wanted because i'da loved it i had to turn down because it pays little enough for 2months work that i can't afford to do it (freelancers must always think about how much $ is made for the time each gig takes away from other $making gigs), and the other one woulda paid good, but it was a tour, which defeats the purpose of my being here only to spend time with grims, whom i continue to adore, in spite of his country having some shitty, shitty weather, and it clashed with the australia trip and my shakespeare gig, which i love and pays good but not until late january...
oh well...
walk good.

i need a job so we can pee without puking

yesterday, a dude came over @ 8am (yeah, pretending i'm a real grownup) to give a first estimate of the cost of redoing our bathroom. keeping in mind that this bathroom is all of about 10'x8' big (and i'm being generous), you may understand my horror when he quoted me $11,334 (and that was after i said that to cut cost we'd stick with a shower curtain instead of the glass door to enclose the clawfoot tub this house came with, that we trying desperately to work with).
after my initial shock wore off, i remembered that somebody else told me on the phone previously (before informing me that they weren't licensed to work in dc anyway, just va) that it'd cost $10-$20,000 (calmly, as if that price range weren't big enough for our new car to fall into) so it seems the estimate may not be that far off the mark.
i have somebody else estimating today and another tomorrow, and i really hope somebody can rid us of the diagonal-striped pastel vinyl flooring and aqua-seafoam shame that is our bathroom, for less than $100/square-foot.
so anybody who needs something written (or said with a cool caribbean accent) and can pay a little for it, anybody who needs a stage manager, anybody who needs a short, black, dreadlocked+tattooed (ink easily covered when necessary) actress, anybody who needs a taster/smeller (not for poison, just to tell you if you should have some)- i am your whore. because i need my favourite husband to be able to shower without hunching over, and we need to bathe together again, after 3-and-change years of marriage.
if you haven't seen our bathroom, believe me when i say it's almost as ugly as the pizza-thief from my last fff entry.

in other peeing news, we spent a great 2 days in delaware with friends last week, and since mike's a brewer @ the dogfish head brewery, we got a private tour.
now i don't generally like beer- the only thing i drink from that realm is royal extra "the lion" stout, or mackeson or guinness (royal's best, but not available everywhere, neither is 2nd best mackeson)- but i'm an information junkie, and mike is a good pusherman.
he told us everything about everything, and the brewery was so cool! i especially liked the whirlpool thing that separates the fermented liquid from the hops and whatnot (and i learned that i really really like hops a lot- they smell good). and we got to taste stuff in various stages of fermenting and hopping and shit, straight outta the big tanks in the brewery. but the best thing was that i actually found beer i like! of course, i liked the shit that costs $32 for a 4-pack, but what else should i have expected, right...
dogfish head makes a "raison d'etre" with raisins in the recipe and it was ok but still beer to me, but then we tried their "raison d'extra" (much deeper tasting version, 18% alcohol) and it was superb! a sipping beer, if such a thing exists. you have to take it easy or you get trashed without realising until you try to stand up because it's 'just beer'. it was also very cool to know that they've only brewed 1 batch of "raison d'extra" so far, so we drank of the only stash that exists.
the other one i like was much lighter than i thought i could get into (the reason i like certain stouts and not any other beers is that beer always tasted like watery piss to me- and i've tried a lot because people keep saying "if you like stout, you should try this") but it was delightful. it's "the midas touch" and i think the novel ingredients do the taste right for me- they analysed the contents of a goblet found in a tomb believed to be king midas', and used what was found in it as the base recipe for this beer. it has saffron in it. it's brilliant. and expensive, like "raison d'extra". but i like 2 new beers, the tour and drink was damn good, and i can get more because dogfish head's opening breweries and/or brewpubs in the dc/md area soon (we also had lunch @ their brewpub in delaware which makes its own rum as the only legal distillery in the state, and it was the only truly good brewpub food i've ever had- great pizzas, amazing desserts, of and course, beer i like, finally).

alright, i'm all typed out and gotta go find a way to pay for our bathroom.
walk good. and that means you, chrissy.

fff entry

almost didn't make the deadline, but here's my flash fiction (from friday), as set up by jj, the purgatorian.
my entry (which sadly, isn't as nearly as good as the first version i wrote, and lost when i hit 'save'):

If only I had been able to retrieve the slice before that awful... woman got her hands on it...she didn't deserve a single bite of that delightfully extra-cheesy, ham-and-pineapple covered, bacon-bettered pizza. and perhaps more importantly, she didn't need it.
only 15 minutes prior, mistress porky had been gushily (and was there any other way, with her) extolling the virtues of her "atkins-vegetarian-combo-diet" that'd lost her 63lbs in a matter of weeks (in fact, the understanding that before her presumed loss the sight would've been 63lbs sloppier was the only thing preventing her triumphant clutch on that coveted slice of flavour and warmth i'd been 2 fingertips away from claiming from being the worst ever witnessed).
i'm still not sure precisely what set me off.
i'm usually such a genteel person.
but watching her shoveling my intended slice into her gaping, leaky maw, her slackly slapping jaws pummelling rather than chewing and tasting the meal-in-a-mouthful that is each magnificent bite of a pizza somehow made my brain break open, and the words i'd been trapping behind the retaining wall of my polite upbringing spewed forth:
"who the fuck do you think you are? you must be solely responsible for 9 in every 10 starving children in burkina faso, and you can't even have the decency to contribute anything but lies that you won't have any, when the group's ante-ing up the cash that funds your self-congratulatory, edible reward for not eating! fucking heifer!"
in the subsequent silence, as my brain caught up with my mouth i knew there was only one way to make it all right. i snatched the mangled remains of the slice of pizza from her greasy grasp, smushed it into her fat face, wiped off my hand on her hamhock-sized epaulette, then turned and left them all staring after my 252lbs backside.

walk good.

fiction #9- "presents aren't promises/kisses aren't contracts" part2.

i have no shakespeare this weekend so we off to rehoboth for a short, and i don't know if i'll post until next week, so i figured i should at least put up some more fiction before i run off. my goal is to post again just in time to enter this week's flash fiction friday, since we have until noon monday to complete the mission...meanwhile, here's the next 'chapter':

"As soon as she walks in, you start on her, but it’s her first time like this and she doesn’t like it. She puts up a fight and you can’t decide if that makes it better. But then she breaks away and runs out, shouting something about not using her like she’s your wife.
She didn’t give you what you wanted, and now you’re unsatisfied. Angrier. You want to call your wife and tell her send her new man home to his mother because you’re coming over to claim what’s yours. But you resist.
You’re developing a headache, interspersed with flashes of a thought that’s trying to establish itself but having trouble coagulating into a firm image. You start to feel incoherent in a way you haven’t since your last migraine. The headache isn’t quite at that level but the flashes that make no sense are causing enough confusion that it comes close to those day-and-night-headaches of nothing but pain, in a strange, once-removed kind of way. Maybe you need to sit. That would help. Your doctor's always telling you trying to relax would help keep the migraines at bay.
As you sit, the pictures in your head make a renewed effort to come into focus. You close your eyes and let your head hang back onto the top rung of the chair, allowing the thoughts to come. Through the headache fog you recognize her, looking like the first time you saw her, coming to comfort you. You tell your mind to stop playing tricks because you still have enough clarity to know she’s not in the room with you. But you still let the thoughts come. What else can you do with a headache anyway?
She approaches and stands in front of you, smiling. You imagine that you feel marginally better with her just being there. Your mind takes you to that wedding anniversary in the hotel with the rose petals, back when you pretended to be a romantic for her. You remember her lying on the bed, glorying in all of it, and you standing there, almost wishing she’d open her eyes and see your open disgust. But she didn’t, and you stayed together for years without her being any the wiser.
You think of her face with the red handprint that covered so much of it so easily, and her crying aloud about what she would tell her mother. You remember her choice later to say nothing, and avoid all questions by staying home for a day or two. You remember how satisfied her new look made you, and your subsequent choice to always slap her that way, so you could revel in it for days after. You think of her face on the wedding day, so clean and pretty, and in retrospect, you think you wanted to slap it even then, but you aren’t really sure if you knew that feeling yet. All you know is, if you saw her that way now you would save the kisses for after.
The phone rings and you try not to answer it, but reflex finds you walking over and picking it up. A female voice on the other end is trying to sell you something and what seems to be the same reflex asks her to come over. You point out to her that you are not buying whatever she’s selling, but you would be willing to buy something else that she usually gives for free, so how could she lose...
She’s taken aback and pretending horror at your audacity in that way that makes you think you may have a winner. She sounds like she’s intrigued and you know how to play that to your fullest benefit. You are the international man of mystery. This may be the most profitable telemarketing call ever answered. You’re using your MoviePhone voice and she’s eating it up. You know if you work it right, she’ll be over as soon as she gets off work. And if you employ all your skills, she’ll leave work early."

walk good.

showing knol...

go to this site.
walk good.

nerd general supply store

in case anybody out there ever needs ducks with attitude, a pig catapult, a can of bacon air-freshener, jesus gift-wrap, a cat-buddha, a ceramic smoking baby, a deluxe pirate umbrella hat, a meat shower curtain, a pope innocent iiii action figure, a tub of poison-dart frogs, a psycho shark, a latex platypus, a tub of mini brides+grooms, a cornered rat, a gefilte fish plaque, a 22" latex leg, bible bingo, a jewish old maid, windup sushi, a swedish ear syringe, a tickles tapeworm desk set, a pound of dogs, miss cleo's tarot cards, a cat acupuncture model, a 17" latex vulture, a krishna lunchbox, or a set of stylish mustaches, go here.

and how did i know this? i'm a:
Pure Nerd: 65 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 26% Dork.

For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=9935030990046738815

THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST (via jenn, although i must note, it kinda weirds me out that 65%+26%+26% doesn't add up to 100%...)

walk good.

word verification

letting you know that in just one week, the magnitude of spam commenting wore me down and i'm now using blogger's word verification for comments on my blog. you can still be anonymous (although, of course, i'd prefer you didn't, in case i'd like to address your comment) but i needed something to stop my having to go through and delete a million spam comments every day.
thanks.
walk good.

more

while reading other entries for flash fiction friday i found a link for oneword which i like. go try.
walk good.

flash fiction friday entry

set up courtesy jj:

The most embarrassing thing... wasn't faking losing her virginity to her boyfriend of 6 years, knowing as she screamed his name in unreal ecstasy that she'd thrown it away, wasted it on a whoring bastard who didn't even allow her the respectability of being his full-time outside woman.
he didn't know the difference, believed the rumours untrue after she swore, looking deeply into his eyes, that it was just ole talk, resulting from the jealousy so many harboured against their long-term, loving relationship.
the most embarrassing thing was the ruin of the we-finally-did-it story she'd always imagined sharing with her girlfriends. they'd heard and knew there was no reason to doubt: the first-time, main event had already happened in the bathroom of a club that people joked had a floor so sticky you couldn't moonwalk on it, her ass uncomfortably pressed against the edge of the urinal and one of his boys taking advantage of their location just 3 drains away, while his eternally horned child-mother tapped her foot anxiously, arms crossed impatiently across her still-lactating breasts at the bar, wondering if he was fucking some ho right then, embarrassing her once again.

walk good.
ps: each flash fiction friday is set up by this guy and discovered via this other blog. this is fff#6.

i like:

spinning girl
hope you enjoy.
walk good.
ps: her disclaimer reminded me that i meant to make it clear that i consciously don't blog about the news unless i have something i absolutely can't bear to not say, because i think we're bombarded by media already, and nobody needs my 2cents. and thus, failure to mention katrina, or cindy, or terry, or that chick lost in aruba, or people dying in iraq, or rwanda, doesn't indicate...

post-posting-addendum: i also like the dude in purgatory who sets up flash fiction friday.

fiction #8- "presents aren't promises/kisses aren't contracts" part 1.

so since i don't celebrate my b'day except for dinner and doing it with grims, i decided to start the next short story today, both because the title alludes to gifts, and because b'day fetes supposedly commemorate bringing new life into the world, and my fiction is the closest i'm getting to childbirth right now.
so again, nothing like the previous fiction. hope you enjoy:

"When you find yourself bludgeoning the woman you promised to love and cherish forever, you need to stop, step back, and think about what has happened. When did this become what your life is?
She tells you that she never thought she was meeting the man who would abuse her the rest of her life. And then one day she finally says no. Stops accepting. And she walks. And she says she never wants to see you again because she suspects that time does not heal all wounds. And you secretly suspect that her suspicion is correct.
You persuaded her to convince you that you were the one.
That was back before the first fight, when things were nice and you thought settling down would be the thing to do. And it was nice for awhile. Then she left. She made a big fuss about it like it was so bad, but really, she was just making the most of the drama. She liked it when she had something to be upset about.
But back in the day before that first fight there were other first things, like the first meeting, the first date, the first kiss. And she made sure to resist too, like she should. It was almost like it had been written, it was so perfect.
The first fight was about nothing. Bills and life were getting to be a bit much and you picked a fight to blow off steam. But when you saw her reaction, you loved it. It made you want to push it further than you originally intended just to see what she’d do. Or what you’d do. This was uncharted territory for you both and it was exciting, the way nothing else had been quite as exciting since the wedding. Pre-marital sex all over again.
So you kept pushing until she stamped off into the bathroom, where you followed, not knowing yet what you would do, but knowing you wanted to do something radical. You walked into the bathroom, saw her wiping tears away and somehow that made you furious enough to lash out. After the slap sent her stumbling backwards, as much from the surprise as the force, you stepped closer and grabbed her arm, pulling her to you. And suddenly it was sex. It was good. With your head back or eyes squeezed closed, it could have been somebody else. And that somebody was a giving submissive.
After she walked out for good you heard she swore off men. You heard that after you, there could not be another.
You had already exhausted every means to keep finding her interesting. You believe what they say about men being naturally predisposed to polygamy. Once, she was thrilling and willing, but now you’re singing like B.B.King.
You’re glad to move on; so many women, so little time. And it’s even better every time you think of her celibacy. Sometimes you think of her when you’re fucking other women, and in that context, she excites you again. This seems like a win-win-situation. You’re free of the ball-and-chain, and now she’s so much better for you in her absence that you can think of her fondly again, without needing to hurt her to enjoy her. And you know she’s not having nearly as good a time as you are.
You can’t figure out though why people insist on telling you everything they hear about her, as if you need to know. They don’t realize that it doesn’t matter to you what she does, because you already used the best of her. But you hear all about it anyway and just tune it out, until the day you hear that she’s seeing somebody. The first other man in her life since you met. And now it’s not all good anymore.
You find yourself angry. How dare she have another man? She is, after all, your wife. Forget all your women, she said she couldn’t handle it and walked – she doesn’t get to be happy again. You’re infuriated, but even as you pace the room in your rage, you notice a feeling you haven’t felt in a long time. It’s that particular thrill that comes from being angry with her and knowing how you’re going to make yourself feel better. That feeling you got your first taste of in the bathroom, that you recreated so many times, past the point of her enjoyment. And you allow that feeling to develop and grow, thinking that somebody else will suffice when the time comes to satisfy it.You make the phone call and wait for the understudy to arrive."

walk good.