Respiratory Functions Normal

... and well, that' s about it.

There are a thousand stories, like how we ditched the inauguration curled up in our snot tunnel. Or how we watched Priscilla Queen of the Aegean, I mean Troy and howled for the duration. We could inventory the unholy amount of liquids that we have imbibed over the last five days. How we have single handedly made Odwalla Juice company's first quarter windfall. But that doesn't merit 1000 words.

We could discuss Kleenex, but I'd rather not.

Or we could tell you about the dream that we had last night, rather the (ahem) tail end of a dream. We dreamt that we were a man with an enormous penis, and we were having sex -- with ourself! And because I was a man I was concentrating on the heavy girth that was my great cock. I was completely enamored of it's movements, and couldn't keep my hands off of it. And I remember thinking when I woke up that the male orgasm was the inverse of the a woman's orgasm.

This is the second time that I have had this dream. Has any one else had a sex dream where they were the opposite sex? And what does it mean?? I suspect that the moon is holding it's sway, it's a waxing moon and it's nearly fecund.

What else, since this is a filler post, since my brain is still clouded with residual mucus and I am waiting for the tub to fill...

Shoes, I spoke with Pinpinette tonight who assures me that it is colder than the oldest, croniest witches left tit in New York which is where I will be on Tuesday afternoon. And being the aforementioned Californian pussy, I have a selection of sling backs and useless pointy toed boots and cutesy trainers. Pinpinette asks, don't I have a pair of Uggs (sp?) and I say wash your mouth out girl, what the fuck would I do with a pair of Uggs (sp?) slag wear of SoCal demi-hookers returning from a hard day of watching the surfers. She cautioned me against my pointy toed boots, then again she knows my record for injury when I am in New York. So when you see that thing clad as the Stay Puft guy from Ghost Busters trundling down the street trying to make a meeting, it's just Emma, just trying to get there in one piece.

But secretly I hope it snows again. I would like nothing more than to see the installation of Christo's gates under the snow. Is there anything quite as magnificent as the silence of a city bound to the cold, cold, clean white layer of snow, when the traffic disappears and suddenly you have disappeared into one of those snow globes, pick your city, enclosed in a monument and some hapless tourist shakes up all those bright white shards of plastic. I know, I've got the Eiffel Tower next to my bed, I often think that I'd like to disappear there.

And no one would ever find me, there I would be under the cover of the ever falling scraps of plastic, all white, always, turning pirouettes like a ballerina in a music box, never cold, always white. Maybe I'll get lost in Central Park, maybe I will be buried in a deep drift of scraps of white plastic, maybe I'll get sozzled and wind up in the nether reaches of Brooklyn, or maybe I will slip on the ice somewhere in the vicinity of W. 91st street, and bruise my ass, which of the above possibilities is the most distinct.

Wads and Wads of Soggy Kleenex

And those punk rock boys, alas, are rather toothsome. But in the end, it didn't matter. X rocked hard, as least as hard as they did in the years of my misspent youth.

But in those days, I was inhibited, and in these days I don't really give a flying fuck. So if my compatriots in rock knocked three drinks out of my hands, I doubled my losses, and if I slipped in my shiny boots and landed ass flat on the dance floor, it's a lark. All those toothsome punk rock boys are still doing a variation of the Dead Head Shuffle, but with less arm flailing, and I am concerned about maximizing my fun quotient. I came home drenched in other people's liquor, on a seventeen year old's adrenaline rush, full of big, loud chord deliciousness.

fait accompli.

Saturday was dedicated the consumption of sparkly, sparkly bubbles in honor of my dear friend P.

And then midway through the holiday yesterday a sneeze erupted and a great gout of snot was ejected and oh fuck, thought I. Sure enough there was the telltale tickle in my throat, and by the end of the business day I think I would like to be trussed and spun on a spit to put me out -- sorry, gigantic sneeze -- of my misery. My eyes are twitchy and buggy and Pantagruel is parked on my back, I am going to eat some vicodin and sit in the bath. I have a big week, and I am off to NYC next week, where it is seriously cold and I don't own any fucking gloves...

And I spent most of the day, besides evacuating the sloppy and vastly irritating gouts of snot becoming increasingly irritated with the misdeeds of our fine govt. for I fine head exploding read I suggest a visit to Salon, check out the 34 scandals of the first four years... and feeling like stink on shit I just want a warm house. Naturally my fickle heatereater has blown itself out and I am hungry and no one is answering my calls and I heat up some soup, but I can't taste it, and that is one of the shitty things about being alone, I don't want to be the ideal patient, because I am not, but if the house were warm, if I had thirty seconds of commiseration and a cup of tea brought to me, I might feel a whole lot better.

As it stands, hello bath, hello vicodin.

P.S. I know I have said it before, blogger spell check bites big balls, how is it their spell check can't spell "snot"

Fear Not Internets

I have decided to install a breathalizer on my computer.


Tonight I am going to see X, I hope those punk rock boys haven't gotten too long in the tooth...

Why it is not sage to drink with the gays on a school night, or why Emma is un wisely posting, or why we like extra long titles in bold

As promised, or vaguely promised, the semi sort of drunken post, and I had it all laid out in my head in the cab home, about how I crossed the bar tender that I made out with, and how he liked the way I hooked his leg in mine, and how my grandfather pulled the trigger on a 45 caliber rifle with his toe, and how my grandmother kept it secret for five months blackmailing my father with his lover while my mother was freezing in a farmhouse in the South of France with a truffle snuffling pig, and I was busy learning to curse and fuck in a strange language, as I had only begun to know how to curse and fuck in my native tongue.

And there was an awkward dinner, and the pepper steak was inedible, and then there were the tears that no one could muster and the rage behind what was unshed.

And this was five months later mind you, and I still don't know where he is buried and it's probably better that way. Because the only thing I have ever done in graveyards is make out, or mourn, and I prefer the former.

And I celebrated my seventeenth year with a car accident.

I was having a party and Sophie had forgotten her bathing suit, it was hours before the guests arrived and my mother was making canapes and leant me the Renault 5 to fetch the suit, 10 miles down a road I had driven a thousand times before. It was May, it had rained and then ripened into one of those expansive kind of days that have rainbows and pots of gold.

I had on my seat belt, she did not, we were following a red car. I followed the red car into a turn and that is where I lost control. The red car took the turn on the slick road by breaking into the turn, I did not break until I was in the S part of the curve.

I was seventeen, a rookie driver.

I took the curve and skidded towards the embankment on the right side, I over-corrected and skittered across both lanes, the little Renault 5 plunged over the the left emankment, flipped over once, flipped over twice and landed upside down in a vineyard. That this was for a bikini was not lost on me.

What was...

Was, Sophie was hanging, she hadn't but on her seat belt, she had hit the dash board at a velocity and half of her face was hanging off and she was half upside down. Somehow I had lost my shoes. My sternum was bruised from the steering wheel, but I had not a scratch despite the fact that all of the windows were blown and the car had flipped twice. . She was semi-concious and I was terrified to leave her, but we were a good thirty yards from the road. No one could see us. Mind you, this was way before cell phones, a fax machine was a novelty. Somehow I managed to belt Sophie in and pushed the car over onto it's side so that, I thought, she wouldn't bleed to death in that position. And then I scuttled up to the road and I started to scream. And I screamed and screamed until my voice broke and a farmer came to our rescue.

Meanwhile my mother had a housefull of teenagers, until the call came though that her daughter and her daughter's friend were being ambulenced to the hospital in Draguignan. All I can remember of that trip were the flies, the flies that gathered on Sophie's face it was May, it was warm and they swarmed, they were ravenous, and the ET's were impervious and I kept telling them in English that they needed to keep the flies off of her.

We came back home, it wasn't late, but I felt old, my 14 year old brother had kept the party going in our staid. I don't know what happened to my mother but I got into the pool with my torn up feet and my guilt and my stitches, I had on a white tank top, my boyfriend at the time took me in his arms in the shallow end and said it would be all alright. And later it was. But there will always be a woman in the South of France who has a jagged scar down the left side of her face and people will always ask her, and maybe she's gracious about, or maybe she's not. The fact remains that on my seventeenth birthday I was feeling reckless and immortal and I took the turn too fast and all I lost were my shoes and all she lost was everything.

Because Sometimes What a Girl Needs is a Trampoline and a Well Heated Room so She can Bounce and Shriek Orgy-Porgy! Orgy-Porgy! Orgy Ever Lovin Porgy!!!

Perhaps nekkid while she's at it.

Now that my molehill of irration has morphed into a belching, oozing volcano, perhaps I ought to give an explanation and perhaps that will help assuage it.

I need a change, have needed a change. The change presented itself at a Christmas party form of a charming homo who wanted to recruit me for a job. I consented, I was excited, have been through rounds of interviews, have resisted letting hopes get too high for fear of getting dashed, while remaining optimistic. This is evidently a toxic combination of emotions. For when I arrive here at the Massive Bank my skin starts to crawl and I become Emma, wearer of cranky-pants and complete bitch on wheels. And it doesn't go away, and I fight it, try to keep it at bay, but if I were my boss, I would fire my ass for my wretched attitude, and I feel guilty about it.

It's the waiting, of course it's the waiting that is unbearable.

So I am going to toddle down to the Ferry Building with two of my favorite fairies for a good stiff drink, or two, no more than three.

If I have any more than that I will probably end up making a drunken post, and I know how much I regret that in the morning.

Further Irritation

And suddenly this pop up saying my virus thingy was out of date, and again, and again, and again. It's fucking new fer chrissakes, what, out of date since yesterday??? Hindering my ability to surf naughty sites. I can't wait for DSL, trying to look for titallating porn on a 56K dial-up with a some crack addled pop up informing me I am in for a never-ending download is an infuriating buzz kill.

gah.

I am going to smoke cigarettes and sulk in the bath.

Wave of Irritation

as hummed to Wave of Mutilation by the Pixies, but then I think that might be a wee bit insensitive... But it is true, I have been irritated these past few days.

vexed

peeved

deeply annoyed

I suspect that I know the cause and it is rooted in impatience.

The cherry on my irksome sundae was my dinner. Some silly girly website had breathlessly gasped that this new restaurant in my neighborhood was just the best! I had put off trying it out of spite, since it opened in the place of my favorite Tuesday taco and margarita joint. But since my day was taxing and then I got lost in Amoeba records and confused in the bookstore, I decided to try this new Moroccan place on Haight. The margarita was correct, but that where correct ended. Service, crap. Food, astonishingly bad. I was awed that they had the verve to cheerfully place three little ramikins of regurgitated dog food before me, after making me wait forty-five minutes. Fortunately I picked out Manhattan Transfer at the book store as (don't snigger) I have only acquaintance with Dos Passos and tranported me to a begrimed New York in 1920-something.

My neighborhood is vexing me, because it is becoming unfamiliar. Have I been wearing blinders these last years, all of my favorite haunts have disappeared to be replaced by cheap shops selling Britney wear and fifty kinds of schlock. The meth kids have doubled their numbers, all of the drunk hippies have died off or gotten sober. In the space of my four block walk home I was panhandled six times and offered some form of narcotic eight times, who buys drugs off the street?

Some of the old guard are still around. There was a woman up here a few years back, she had an impressive mohawk, two gorgeous dogs, a fabulous body and tatoos on her face. She had a mighty swagger, and the junk she was shooting reduced her to a sallow wraith and then she disappeared. I saw her a few months ago, apparently clean, the dogs are gone and so is the mohawk, and her boyfriend looks like a mummy, but I am glad she is alive.

And then there is Buff Man, cue Simpson's soundtrack, it's Duff Man. That's what my brain chimes in with everytime I see him, which is every morning as I am sprinting to bus stop, ever late. Buff Man is indeed, buff. He only ever wears tank tops, regardless of the weather Buff Man is sweeping the sidewalk in front of People's Cafe with his gorgeous arms on display, he seems impervious to the elements.

My previous posts have irritated me, I sound too pat, I sound as if I need a good hard slap, or maybe I just need to get laid, that must be it. But in the spirit of regretting the things that I say I just let them stand and bare up under my loquacious hair shirt.

Fucking Breakthrough

In that I am sitting on the couch as I write and I owe my gratitude to The Buck, 'puter wunderkind who helped me so. You see, Pere Em ma Claus gave fille Emma a shiny new lap top for Christmas, and it has been sitting in it's pretty black bag as I had no idea how to make it function... To the degree that when I took it from it's bag this evening and turned it on and it quickly went SPLAT I had no idea what happened and thought it was broken.

It wasn't broken, the batteries were dead.

And so I rummaged around a bit in the bag and came up with a charger, or appeared to be a charger but the inserty parts didn't match any of the orifices (orifi?) in my computer... again panic, The Buck is on his way, it would look really poorly if I were so inept as to not be able to turn on my new shiny silver lap top... Eureka, I found a plug and a cord and I went all puzzler on the innies and the outies and managed to plug the damn thing in all the while hoping that it wouldn't blow up because I hadn't fully charged the battery.

And so here I am half blogging half watching a movie, as I am multitasking (and I really ought to retract that last statement before I get condemned for employing the verb "blogging" and "watching" (in this case a craptacular movie) - OK maybe it's the second time that I am watching the Bourne Identity, but I would just like to point out that I don't have television and I am very fond of car chases.

speaking of...

Babble On

And so the sun peered out for 45 seconds today and lo we were blinded, and then it promptly began to rain. It must be stated that Californians are pussies when it comes to weather, less so in the Northern reaches where snow happens and from whence I come. But after a decade in San Francisco the only thing I can remember are glorious days spent careening down mountains in shorts and the greatly prized ski boot tan line.

Two weeks of incessant rain are making me batty and paranoid, already slices of our crazed neighbors in the South are surfing the mud into the sea and I am waiting for the cataclysm in my drenched city, the US Geological Survey explains that the earth is still pinging like a school bell and doomsayers are saying that all the San Andreas fault needs is a nudge.

Swell.

I have just come from the bath as my feet were cold and now they are not. I was reading an old book that P gave me, My World and Welcome to It, by J. Thurber. Sweet, but dated and also so un-PC as to make my lefty eyeballs fairly sizzle, I did come across a vignette about the old magazine Punch and I realized that Drudge was Punch in a previous life, one again illustrating that the more things change the more they stay the same.

Pleasure and Ire, Fire and Spite

I would like to thank the God of New Boots, from the bottom of my patent leather heart for having a gine-normous sale at Macy's at 50% off, I would like to thank the God of New Boots, Stewart Weitzman and my Brit Boss who-kissed-me-somewhat-inappropriately-but-I'm-not-sure-that-I-minded for the gift card for my faux aligatory boots that I am sporting as I write whilst sitting in my knickers.

I would like to thank my little heater that could for making my apartment into the tropics ensuring my comfort as I sit in my knickers and write.

Check with me tomorrow on the boots as I break them, like horses! They are awfully tall, but soooo shiny, if at any point I require stitches, well, the internets will be the second to know.

I would like to take umbrage with the 71 Haight Street bus, as I hate you with my hate~o~rater. Every time I board you, you are full of crazy people, adolescent girls yakking on cell phones, and aged Chinese ladies in mixed knits bound for the outer avenues. The other morning I boarded inbound for the financial district and I swear to God the ratio of crazy to sane (and that's deceptive) was three to fucking one. I actually said, outloud, sweet jesus, I'm on the crazy bus again and moved to the rear. After 12 years of being the reticent MUNI rider, I know from experience that the crazy people congregate in the front, it's the servile adolescents with bad grammar who gravitate to the rear.

I would like to sing the praises of my claw foot tub, it is deep and resides above the stage of Club Deluxe. Not everyone can have a tub above a stage, if I hold my breath and lie still the water vibrates with the band.

I would like to take issue with the weather, that's nice, you can stop now. We've had our quota of water from the sky and to compensate for fog that comes in June and stays through August I would like my sunny, placid January back, thanks.

I would like to spit fire at the asshole who nearly ran over me in the red Mercedes this morning, slow down fucker, I predict a keyed paint job in your very near future.

I could go on, but I'd rather stew in the tub, hold my breath and watch the water vibrate.

Onward and Upward to the Maudlin

Pour out the dregs of the bottle, light a cigarette, light a candle. Lie prone on the sheets, arrange your limbs, gather your wits from agog. Remain not aggrieved, for your chances of a fine romp in the straw are as forthcoming as our Feckless Leader buggering a cockeral on Fox News.

Which is sad, sad, indeed.

Sediment settles in the glass, smoke pools on the ceiling, the night is still young, sleep gathers.

Thirty-three years old, an empty bed spanning miles and miles of sheets, a chartered heart, a sextet, a compass, a field for ripe tilling, a field fallow for fodder.

and the wine is always running out, and there is no more money and so we beg by the East transept... but we don't, only in our fecund imagination.

What is real:

We four women, clad in black, two in broaches, two in scarves, two baring cleavage, one birthday girl. It it New Year's Eve, the year is gasping towards it's end, only to be reborn as a phoenix rising as only Time can. And as it exhales it's final breaths we are happily ordering vodka and soda's, but the bartender doesn't know us so well and her pours are meager and unsatisfying.

We arrive at the party, we are clearly over dressed, but it matters not, as there are two cases of Perrier Jouet to be tackled as only a broad of a certain caliber can tackle. And we did. With Zeal.

And as I previously alluded to, I did indeed get that coveted bump, and my companion in illicit substances set about mastering chopsticks on the piano in the corner. At some point I flitted onto the roof, in heels, under the rain, to watch the death of 2004 mourned in the bright firework colors of the sweet meth drenched passing of 'ought four to 'ought five. And there on the rooftop, under the light rain, with a gracious gentlemen named Spike, I was certain that I had never seen anything quite so profound, and he set his hands on my shoulders and said, look out, look there, it's a brand new year. Then again, it could have been the drugs. Suddenly I wasn't myself, suddenly I was talking to myself in the bathtub, suddenly I realized that the umbrella I in my possession was not my own, suddenly I awoke from my waking dreams with a scarlet headache and thus I welcomed the New Year.

Emma the Pointsettia Slayer

But first a report on the weather, or rather the light. It mostly has not rained today, and the light is soft and difuse. Another storm is rolling in and the darker clouds bank against the emptied clouds, it's celestial bumper clouds, all is silvery somnolent. Except that I just noticed a bright pink building in China Town that I hadn't noticed before.

Now back to relaying the flower (plant?) slaying. My boss has tasked me with undoing the various Holiday Themed Decorations that Massive Bank feels obliged to display in keeping with the season, so that the poor drudges can look up while chained to their desks and gaze upon the pointsettias and contemplate their Massive Bonuses and inwardly chant BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, or whatever European Luxury automobile they fancy. Pointsettia's are poison, fuckers, watch out.

And since 2004 hacked it's last whooping cough and expired and was reborn as spritely and slightly hung over 2005, it's time to dispose of the holiday detritus, which meant that I had to savagely dump all of those still lovely pointsettias into the trash.

And I feel guilty. I tried to foist them off on the admins but to no avail. I put a living thing into the trash and it's almost enough to turn me into a tetchy vegan, except for the no chicken, bacon, steak, pork chop thing. Which reminds of the horrible story of D and I throwing the lobster away, because, here we are two accomplished people (well, I was the more, and remain the more accomplished person in the kitchen...) and we pussy out on boiling the lobster, because we are two Gine-ormous pussies, so we bury it, I repeat, bury the lobster in the trash to suffer horribly. I can still hear the fucking thing scrabbling about in the paper bag... Mind you, this was years ago, and I still feel pangs for not slaying the fucking lobster as he would have undoubtedly made a tasty dinner.

And so, well, there is Emma in that special part of hell reserved for slayers of poinsettia's and negligent homicide of lobsters as well as having mocked the nice ladies with mullets wearing the green sparkly smocks for singing the dreadful Annie and her lover song last Christmas... But I am content, as I suspect that part of hell will be comfortably balmy with a clear window into the inner circle where I intend to watch Feckless Leader and his band of Fucking Evil cronies do the Danse Macabre on their blackened limbs, with their singed, misshapen jiggly bits, especially you OverLord Dick C. dancing on the hot fetid winds for all eternity. Can't. Hardly. Wait!

Which brings me to Christmas Trees, of which I am not guilty of slaying, but am guilty of getting weepy over them as they are cast out of warm living rooms, onto sidewalks, still festooned in tinsel and browning with bitterness. I realize that as an adult, I should not anthropomorhize the trees but I was scarred by the children's book (I tried to google it, but there are about ten thousand Christmas Tree books) about the tree that never gets picked, finally gets picked, is thrilled, is decorated, is loved by small children, only to be abandoned on the sidewalk and then scooped up by the horrifically evil Garbage Man and thrown in the FIRE! Scarred, scarred I am.

Last year when the City misguidedly thought it might try putting round-a-bouts all down Page Street....I don't know why they thought it was a good idea, because it was bad, very, very bad. American drivers don't know what to do in a round point so they speed up and pray they don't hit any drivers or pedestrian. Leave le rond point to the French. Anyway, after Christmas, when the disgruntled denizens of Page Street started BURNING their poor, poor abandoned Christmas trees in the round points the City took them away and everyone breathed a sigh of relief and went back to making California roll-through stops at the stop signs and all was as it should be.

And now I will cease to ramble.