Things she said while watching Schizopolis…

One of a number of posts orphaned as drafts over the years.  Were there supposed to be 23? Did we even finish the film? Will I ever hear from her again?  A round up of more recent errata en obscura can be found after the jump.

1. That was weird. (Office phonecall)

2. That’s random. (Faces in the bathroom?)

3. Does this movie have a plot?  Or is it just  all random thoughts? (Hm, back in the office)

4. Was that a golf ball? (Golf ball bounces by)

5. That was funny. (Text/subtext conversation)

6. Publically sanctioned? (Racehorse press conference)

7. ‘tha fuck? (After “happiest man in my pants)

Anger she sours, glowering in whiny misspelled horror

There’s no priest in this dream

All the leaves are brown

Think I’ll go out to Alberta

I don’t care how many letters they send

Lie to me; I promise to believe

Here is a coil

Because now is a question whose atom of an answer is continuously sheared across the diluted electronic landscape, when hundreds of people I know have their given names written in a magical box in my pocket, and somewhere in some other cloud of electrons is another list of chosen names revolving around the nearly 15,000 messages they and I have shared.  In this era of networked instantiation, my location is a long rope of places where I can be reached, all various distances from the swirl of electrical impulses that is my own very head.

Ailments of the Rotting Donkey

1. Or Brother Mule, if you prefer the nomenclature of those that misquote Mr. F from Assisi.
2. I’ve eaten half a bag of snow peas, and I expect to see the dividends later.
3. I’ve gotten used to getting old enough to find the benefit of that sort of daily review.
4. After all, I’m a growing boy. Growing hair where there wasn’t as much, that is.
5. On the back of my hands, in particular.
6. Though I’ve been masturbating less, all told, not counting the last half-week.

Following the breath, tracing the sinew

Yesterday the fella that runs my local 7-11 in the morning asked me where I’d been…  It’s been a double handful of weeks since I sped through for my 15 ounces of coffee and 8 ounces of starbucks slosh in a 24 ounce cup…  Flattering and alarming that he noticed, though perhaps that’s always how it feels the first time you’re recognized as a regular.  There’s a guy down at Farmer Joe’s who knows me for buying the peanut butter cups… Nobody has spotted me today, I don’t think, though the bagel and cream cheese and coffee and banana/blueberry smoothie at the stand in the middle of the oil-change place might get me back a few more times…  That’s enough elipses, isn’t it?

A Cascade of Shoes

So many are dropping.  Yellow and pink and white stripes up and down 11 months of phone calls.  All of our laminated cards and proof of coverage in splotchy black and white, enshrined in some little folder behind the glass door.  I don’t begrudge our new dauphin, mostly because I was one once, in a far away fiefdom, and someday I might be again.

Expected Surprises

I get it now–she’s wearing a red hoodie because she’s little red riding hood.  Except she’s the wolf.  Which is to say that Hard Candy  is every bit the taught psychological fable of abusers and victims and tables that turn which I expected when I first thought it was a movie by Andrew Vachss, who wrote a book by the same name but with a different set of victims and wolves and tables.  There’s no relation, in fact, but I think Vachss must love this movie anyhow.  It is ugly and brutal and filmed in a lingering and loving way that ratchets up the viscerally disturbing plot to the point where I was quite glad in the end that I wasn’t watching it alone at my apartment.  And watching movies at my apartment but not alone…

A Matching Catastrophe

1. We’re going to spend 45 minutes or so now to discuss all the things I need you to do to cover up for my incompetence.
2. In addition to providing you some insight into the job I should be doing that you will now have to…
3. I will also be explaining the things you will have to play catch-up with because I wasn’t doing my job to help you keep up to date this year.
4. Guess what? There are lots of things that will be harder this time because I wasn’t smart enough to advocate for the easy way.
5. The one thing I did get done is to stick my nose in your business so I can point out ways that you have let me down.

The story of an irritable dragon (from once upon a carpool mixtape)

For years it has plagued me but now I know–the tale I heard in the car on the way to Hebrew School was Michael Hutchence’s The Green Dragon, from the movie Dogs in Space.

Once upon a time there was a green monster and he ate a whole train full of obnoxious people.
Of course he got a very bad case of indigestion that lasted for many weeks and so he eventually decided he needed some medicine.

Changing plans to show no change in plans

I should have done as Lee (or Grant?) said and improvised from the moment I walked in the door.  Instead I stuck to the script I came up with a week ago; walk in, throw something down on the table, say “to hell with all of you,” and walk out.  But thanks to the timing of a comment about genital bacon, the unasked gifting of hand-me-downs, and the unexpected gifter, it all looked like a different kind of drama.  And I intended the lady none of that, nor any distress, and thankfully got to make it up at least part way after taking a slow amble back from around the block.  Note to self when speeding away from the scene of a little social havok-making: