You're no good for me, im no good for you

more than just American Woman-guised anti-war talk. Though it's true with that too. ENOUGH WAR! BRING TROOPS HOME, AND DEOCCUPY IRAQ! ok.

Cold weather is coming.

It's chilly here. i hear it's really cold and dark in Champaign now

Leaving work a few hours ago, I passed more people on 5th Avenue wearing coats than not. From June until late September, New York nights are beautifully balmy, short-sleeved affairs. You could sleep on the roof through early fall if you didn't mind being woken up by those little kids in one of many windows of one of the many surrounding buildings who yell "Hey, white lady!" "Hey, Chinese lady!" at you almost every time you're up there.

Tonight at the Lotus, there is not a bare arm in sight.

i've been working late a lot lately. It is a big job. And i am a Sissiphus in the City. After at least three months strewn with way too many 9 and 10pm check outs, I am going to make a point to leave, from here on out, by 6:30 at the latest. Capricorn and stupid futile idealism aside, i should give only so much of myself to this effort.

i was thinking today about how they let you smoke in airports in Spain. There are signs and periodic announcements that ask you kindly to consider only doing so in the designated smoking area, but no one pays any mind to them. People walk through termials trailing smoke, while others create small personal cirrus clouds over themselves in slow moving ques. The chairs in the central taped-off smoking areas sit empty, looking stikingly like evidence-cleared crime scenes. To cross the line seems like it would bring with it an assured indictment from society. Spain, with strong anarchist streak, is a smart country made up of independent thinkers. They're not buying it.

I guess I bring this up because i miss smoking these days. New York has effectively outlawed the sale of all French cigarettes, so, though I partake in less than 2 cigarettes a week on a normal, no-visitor week these days, being cut off to my supplier has fucked up my stability and made me a little desparate-feeling. My original plan, soon after Jolie passed away and i decided to give up giving up cigarettes, was to go back to only smoking foreign fags, since, based on no research at all, they get less cancers there. Now, my brand is banned. And i think of Spain. And of her. And of weird things.

Tomorrow, probably, i will close my bedroom window. This summer, the tree next to our flat grew like wildfire. and some mutant, tenacious branch moved from just barely crossing into my fire escape to snaking its way past and through my open window. Up until last week, the bough worked its way through the poorly affixed widow screen into my bedroom. From there, it climbed up the inner window frame, and moved quickly across my ceiling. It was pretty amazing, growing inches every day, and pushing its way into possibly interesting spaces, like the bookshelf. It was a curious foilage. Unfortunately, it also scattered a ton of dead leaves everywhere. My housemate's shopping habits find us with more than enough fruit flies in our apartment to feel the need to welcome in other tree-bourne critters. So, with some effort, i cut the bough back. The main branch dropped a bit in the process. What's left on the other side of my window now covers my nakedness to the outside with a really nice arch of leaves. Looks really lovely.

Leaving Pleasantville with Woody Harrelson

Leaving Pleasantville with Woody Harrelson

So, im on the Metro North train earlier this afternoon, going from Chappaqua to Union Station, when Woody Harrelson walks on with a young kid. Yeah, Woody Harrelson from Cheers and later of stud movie fame (which i always found weird).

It's 2 in the afternoon on Wednesday, the last day of summer. As one person to a row goes, the train is pretty full. Everyone's reading their New Yorker mags and newspapers, taking up their line of seats, and keeping to themselves as we pull away from the Pleasantville, NY station (this is really the town's name).

Some glance at the pair as they walk by. Only one passenger gives a double-take. Nobody says anything.

Woody sits down in the first row of the car, the one closest to the lavoratory. Kid tumbles in behind him. The train glides on, passing trees and ambling fences and patient glossy black Jaguars at the crosstracks. Just another day riding the rails with Woody Harrelson.

i think the ride to the city would have been kinda grossly self-ingratiating and cosmopolitan-feeling if, after a few minutes, we didn't have our attention called out of our own space by Woody Harrelson, himself, who had left his chair as is pounding on the bathroom door.

BAM BAM BAM!! "What are you doing in there!" he bellows, in that way that you would imagine Woody Harrelson bellowing, all puffed chest and coke-eyed and heady whine.

He waits a second, then returns to his seat.

After a moment, a growling voice from behind the bathroom wall calls out "Who's knockin?" This taunt from beyond noticibly startles the car -- i see the shoulders raise and brow furl on the man across the row from me, as he pulls his Wall Street Journal closer.

To this, a young woman seated across from the facilities responds "Me," as Woody jumps up and moves back toward the door. "I'm knocking!" he sing-songingly swagers in return, again with the whiney bellow. "There's people waiting out here. You've been in there for like an hour. What the hell are you doing in there?"

"Changing," the male responds, his voice a bit more quiet and much less growly now than when he first addressed the car.

"Changing?" Woody repeats, and pauses, shrugging his shoulders and looking around with a look of sheer alacrity. "You're changing?" No answer comes. "Well, that's great, now. You're changing," he shoots back at the door, tugging at the collar of his baby blue t-shirt and swaggering side to side, squaring off his stance. He is the only one in the car standing. The only one speaking. i feel the train car shrink around him as he continues. It's a morphing akin to what cameras do to gun fighters before "draw!" is called in the showdown scene-- zooming in quickly down the negligible ghost town street until only the fighter fills the screen. Woody Harrelson is larger than life at the moment. And he's ready for a fight.

"That is just rude. You can tie your tie out here. This woman has been waiting patiently out here forever while you're in there changing?" As he speaks, the pitch of his voice raises in clear anger.

He's now yelling at the door, and has moved in so close that it nearly touches his forehead.

"You know what? You're rude." "You're a rude asshole!" he calls as he turns and sits back down in his chair and returns to the beeping electronic game he's been playing with the kid. "Rude asshole," he calls.

This is, now, undeniably a full-blown "scene." A full-blown "scene" featuring Woody Harrelson.

"A rude asshole is in the bathroom right now!" he announces loudly for the last time as he adjusts his position and leans back, twittering video game sounds adding an other-worldly, off-beat punctuation to his final proclamation.

It is at this point that i scan the train looking for a film crew. This seems just too, too weird to be happening on its own volition. i mean, i know everyone has a right to act or act out within the public sphere, famous or not. And it's absolutely lovely to see someone stand up in defense of somebody else. This needs to happen more. But this is just over the top. Well beyond the scope of how normal interpersonal rapport goes, especially in over-crowded New York where things that piss you off are always there, but are usually rolled with or ignored. It's so confrontational, it seems like it must be fake.

Yeah, by this time, i am pretty sure all this is staged for some "how i embarassed my famous friend with the help of gratuitous Hollywood access to public spaces and utilities" punk'd-like show. It's also possible that it's all for an even more contrived plot- or character-development driven scene in a flick about an ex-steroided athlete/on-the-surface angry guy who, underneath it all, is really a very human teddy bear of a softie just waiting for Drew Barrimore's character's lovin.

If that's not happening, though, i am sure that at any moment someone is going to burst out of the bathroom with a machete and hack each of us into little pieces. This is still New York.

i am unable to locate any cameras, so i slowly repack my reading material, gather up my bag, and ease my feet back into my heels, readying myself to flee whatever craziness is sure to follow in the wake of this molitov cocktail-styled diplomacy.

i need to note that, besides the train motions and this increasingly dangerous-feeling exchange, the car is absolutely still. No heads turn or pop up to look over other chairs toward the commotion or, at any time, at Woody. No voices join in. Nobody stirs. And, though this is the case, while most of the seats in this section face away from the lavatory, i know that everyone around me is aware of the action goin down. It's all in this very urban-feeling mode: while it is obvious everyone is listening, they continue reading, looking ahead, and keeping firmly within their own space. The whole car is staying out of it, not moving in any way that would signify that they are slightly interested in taking part in this hoo-haw.

It is almost like they are willing themselves to fade into the backdrop, to an innocent, separate, clearly uninvolved part of the setting.

"I'm not here. I'm not here."

Everyone transfixed in this concertedly feigned mass disassociation. Its contribution to the feeling of fear in the car is palateable to me, who, unlike the others, is not nearly so very city slick, and who, by now, is perched up on folded legs with neck craned to watch the interpersonal carwreck unfolding over my headrest.

After a very short while, a tall guy slides open a crack in the bathroom door and immediately darts through it, heading in the other direction. I only catch a quick glimpse of his left shoulder as he jets around the corner. "You ought to be ashamed!" Woody yells after him as tall guy hurries down the aisle away from us. The heavy metal door to the next car moans as it is pulled open, then slams shut with a solid click. "Asshole," Woody breathes. Beeep, zip, beeeep beeep, zup.

Nobody looks up.


Maybe they're just used to it.

! LISTEN CREAKY FORT FAB

Some posts i put here i wanna put there.

Some posts i put there i wanna put here.

im hoping i will get back to a more regular writing routine that will let me not always double dip. Now that my computer is fixed, i think this will happen But, for now, if you will pardon my less than pure blogging manners, i will be sharing a certified pre-owned entry.

Happy Monday (almost).

The girls go to Mars

Posted for Amalier:

Thanks, Tornadia. -a

To get the candy bars.

Yeah. My Labor Day wasn't too stupid. Thanks for the thoughtful wish.

Last weekend, though, was a certain delicious degree of craziness.

Coming back on the plane from a long weekend in LA that included a really nice day of surfing with my bud Andy, i decided i really wanted to go camping and surfing out here on the east coast before cold weather took back over. On lovely lady atlantic. In New York. Yeah.

So did some checking around, pulled the tent and sleeping bag we used for Spanish camp outta the closet, and wrangled my roomies into coming along for the weekend.

While originally i had wanted to go out to Montauk (zoom out to see where it is. it's so pretty there.), we decided to go, instead to Fire Island.

No cars are allowed on Fire Island. A soft white sand beach and a thin strip of cute lumpy land cobbled with dunes separates the placid waters of Long Island's Great South Bay from the pummeling coastal waves of the Atlantic. Most people come to the island for the day to swim. Camping is very limited -- 3 sites allowed from the north check point, 4 from the south. It is hike-in/carry-out camping, with the closest site about 2 miles down through dunes or over sand from the ranger's station.

We all decided we would go a few days before the weekend. At that time, since neither roomie had surfed before, we had planned to take a 7am surf lesson on Sunday morning offered by one of the local surf shops. At work on Friday, I called to confirm that the lesson was on. It was. But stopping to get some wine on our way out of town Saturday, I decided to check back again to make sure things were a go, and was told lessons were cancelled due to the rip tide. Blast! .Ophelia.

While rip tides are bad news for beginners, they fill the dreams of hardcore surfers. No teaching would be happening the next morning because all the instructors would be out in the water.

Though this was really sucky news, we decided to stick with our plans.

We got to Fire Island National Park, and checked in with the gentle volunteer ranger, who explained to us a bunch of things that, in choosing to camp, we need to know about. As he thoroughally explained the potential hazards and considerations we had ahead, he wrote down each item on our camp form: "Mosquitos." "Tics." "Poison ivy." "No cutting grasses..." The list went on, with an friendly yet intense reverence and seriousness given to each consideration mentioned and listed. Being happy "Grizzly bears," "Sharks," "Snakes," and "Verbose republicans" were not among the cautions listed, we accepted the list, and were told we could camp anywhere past a certain point behind the first dune off the beach. "You are basically going to be in the middle of nowhere," the ranger stated, and then told us what to do in case of an emergency. Ok. We were ready.

We thanked him, and got back in the Philmobile to take care of some biz. Stopped back in town to get some non-DEETed bug spray (decided on DEET-filled. in the end, the extra toxins were probably a real good choice), checked into the surf shop to make sure no one might reconsider teaching the next morning (nope), or rent us stuff (nope), and headed back to park, gear up, and begin our treck.

After first planning to pitch camp two miles in, we were moved by the savagely mosquito-infested dunes to quickly change our plans near the two mile point, and hike in four miles down the beach to get to a place where Phil knew of a clearing that might house less of the bird-sized blood-sucking swarmers. After a long and increasingly plodding hike along the coast and past the last randomly sunning mahoganied bear nudist, we decided to sit and rest. Facing out at the ocean, sun high and fierce overhead, we dropped our jugs of water, tents, and backpacks, and plopped down upon them to stare out in silence together over the endless water. Huge waves built and quickly broke with brutal downward force in the distance, and directly upon the shoreline, assembly-lined monsters rolling in three times faster than any surf I've seen. CCCRASH! CRAAASH!! CCRRAAAASH!! pssss (sea spray). Just pummeling. We sat under a brilliantly insistent beach sun and just watched. I like my room mates.

After some minutes of very lost-at-sea feeling decompression, we strapped on our supplies and started back, moving from the higher loose sand to the somewhat tighter pack and frequent sea spray near the shore, where we combined our walking with occasional quick scampers up the beach to escape from the frothing Ophelia-bourne runaway wakes. Sideways-running spastic ghost crabs darted from our path like stuck computer cursors, scurrying transparently out of dark holes to slide under delicately Sodona-colored wave-smoothed rocks.

We rested once more, and eventually reached the spot. No such luck with the clearing. Mosquitos undeniably ruled the land. And Ophelia, we clearly saw, ruled the water. We knew we would not fare well with either at night, so we chose to break one of the rules, and camp illegally on the sand. When the last sun bathers packed up and left for the last ferry back to the Long Island mainland, we got to work setting up camp.

Fire Island is a national park. In walking in, once we passed the randomly strewn nudists, we had a good two mile stretch with no one around. Where we landed after passing camped, however, had a bit more life during the day. The Bay side of our campground featured a dock for people to boat in or ferry in and hang out at during the afternoon. A lifeguard is even on duty at the sparcely populated ocean-side beach during the day. At night, though, it was all us. Pretty awesome.

Seeing how randy the surf was on the way in, we considered the possibility that we might get swept out to sea in our tents as we slept when the tide came in at night. But, somehow, that seemed more appealing than the mosquitos waiting to blanket us as we set up camp in the dunes, and buzz in our sleepy ears on off-bites, so we took the risk. We pitched tents, made dinner, drank wine, watched the brilliant stars fill the sky, then went to bed to sleep the sleep of the shipwrecked travelers, far from home.

We were ok and dry in the morn.

Ok. My computer is dead, and im outta the office next week til thurs. i'll write more then. In brief, though:

As mentioned, there was a rip tide, so no surfing was to be done the next day. This was probably for the best, because, the ocean, she was AAAAN-GRY! BIG, HUUUGE waves. And lots of WHAM! KSSSSHST!! crash. CRASHHH! (pssssht.)

After the morning air warmed, Phil and i decided to go for a swim. While Phil got out well, lady ocean atlantic would not let me past the breaks to swim at all. At ALL!

Phil paddled around in deeper water and watched as, four times in a row, HUGE wave walls grew and broke right on top of me as i tried to work my way in, tearing me from my bobbing stance, throwing me backwards into the surf, dragging me head-first in upside down circles across the ocean floor, and holding me down in the calm lower waters as curling, foaming tongues of seething wake lapped towards the beach from above. i could kinda tell what it would be like to drown. Sorta like my vertigo: clear and peaceful and matter-of-fact. Not scary or frantic. Sounds dramatic, and, from what my roomie said, looked pretty awful, but was actually nice (which i do realize is probably not the best instinctual physicial response to perhaps drowning).

Uh, it literally tore my swimsuit off of me twice too. The lifeguard had to come get me out. i felt way wussy getting a lifeguard outta his chair for struggles encountered in the shallows, but it was only Phil and me swimming (well, trying to swim), so my sitch was pretty hard to miss seeing from the shore. An the ocean was seriously kicking my ass. Getting dude's help was trickier than it sounds, though, cause his appearance coincided with one of my suit-losing moments. He called to me to try to stand up. In hearing this, my thoughts in response went something like this: "Hm. Risk drowning in the next wave, or emerge from the waters bottomless?" These are the good, simple questions nature whittles it all down to.

i still have sand in my hair. And up my nose. i also still have both pieces of my suit, too.

Gah. The computer headaches spreadeth... My computer is not posting on Blogger today for some reason, so Tornadia has graciously offered to get this on up. Tornadia -- my hero!

Thanks, T!

Happy weekend

September 12: Life's a Beach

Saturday I decided to fend off stressed-outedness and an impending cold by going swimming at the beach. It's crazy warm these days, and how many chances will I have left, right? So I drove and drove and drove, through Amish country, past the Dollar General with a hitching post (complete with team and wagon), through S-double-A's hometown, till I finally found my beach. Aaaaaand...it was closed. Having driven all this way, I went back to the other beach, which I had feared would be too crowded. Ha! There were maybe seven other people there. Peace and quiet at last.

I swam around some, but found the water too fishy and dirty and sort of slimy to be really enticing, so I went back up and just sat in the shallows, letting the water push me around Eventually two girls, both about 11 years old, came over and started talking to me. And talking, and talking, and lying through their cherubic preadolescent teeth. Both had nearly drowned, they said--one of them has apparently nearly drowned seven or eight times, to hear her tell of it, but she can hardly be blamed for the time the alligator kept pulling her under water by her swimsuit straps. She just kept on talking:

Girl: One time, when I was little baby, I actually did drown, basically.
Tornadia: Mmmm.
Girl: I was like, [baby voice] ooh, fishies! And I took off the life jacket, like you know, this? And I jumped in the water and nobody noticed. And then I was just sitting on the bottom of the lake, 'cause I was a baby, I didn't know you couldn't do that. I was just sitting like WAY down on the bottom, looking at the fish, and I totally drowned. I like stopped breathing and everything. And everybody was freaking out.
Tornadia: Wow. That's...
Girl: But then my uncle? He got this stick that was like floating by in the water, and he like pounded on my chest with it, and I came back to life.
Tornadia: Oooh, look! Waves! You should totally go play in them.

At some point, Girl B--the non-alligator-drowned one--ran up to get something from her beach blanket. A minute later she came rampaging back down, splashed into the shallows, and said "Um, no offense, but we're not supposed to talk to strangers." I agreed that was a very sensible rule, while Girl A--Revived With A Stick Girl--insisted I was no longer a stranger. "Oh yes I am!" I chirped. "You don't even know my name! Or where I live! Really, a stranger! I'm going to go swim now." So I did. And when I finished paddling the length of the slimy gross water a couple of times, the girls' mother and her boyfriend had rejoined them in the water, where moms was now announcing VERY LOUDLY that she didn't care if it was in CHURCH, because even in church people could turn out to be CHILD MOLESTORS, and she knew there was a CHILD MOLESTOR around because there was a CHILD MOLESTOR at a church in Springfield, I mean of course it was a Catholic church, but they could be anywhere.

So....great! I'll just sit here, watching these boats! Trying to look as non-molestery as possible!

I know I shouldn't take it personally, that she didn't really mean to say that I AM a child predator, just that I COULD BE. Which is, in its most theoretical, entirely true. I kept kind of looking over at her when they first started talking to me, in part because I thought she might rescue me from them, and in part because I thought she'd surely notice and call them off. But she didn't, for a good twenty minutes or so, while she and her skeevy boyfriend made out on the beach.

And the more I though about it, the more it kind of bugged me, because A, she probably IS right that there could be child molesters and children shouldn't talk to strangers, but on the B hand, I was minding my own business when her lying little brats started pestering ME. So how about "Don't talk to strangers, because you might be bugging them? Because seriously, parents of the world should know: When your kids walks up to a stranger sitting alone at lunch, or browsing in a store, or on a beach, and starts yammering away about this one time? when they were little? and they were driving down the street and there was a tornado and it dropped a tree right on top of their car and cut it in half, but it went right between the front seat and the back seat and their mom kept driving and didn't even notice the back seat was chopped off?--well, statistically, the odds are much greater that she just wants to go back to her lunch or shopping or daydreaming than to take your tale-telling kids off your hands.

Oh--and if your kid has nearly drowned, like, 30 times? Or is even just telling people she's drowned? You might want to keep an eye on her at the beach. Or keep a nice life-reviving stick around, I guess.

September 8: Dallas, in brief

I am returned from Dallas, or the Dallas metro area anyway, where I:

* Watched The Little Mermaid three times
* Sang "The Wheels on the Bus" three kazillion times
* Watched my sister clip and organize coupons for five hours. FIVE. Not hyperbole.
* Attended a princess party for a three-year-old
* Walked the kids to school with all the moms and dads and stroller babies from the street
* Visited the Grassy Knoll of Kennedy assasination fame (infame?)
* Learned to swim the breaststroke, which it turns out I already knew
* Went to a show at a venue called "Billy Bob's," about which you will hear more soon
* Got searched by security in a very hands-on fashion (actually, that was in Bloomington)
* Tried, and failed, to find Airport CNN in an airport bar, or terminal
* Learned this joke: Why did the turkey cross the road?
Answer: Because he's stupid!

Hope your labor day was not stupid.

September 1

When I was kid, HBO did a special on Nostrodamus. The part I remember most was the ghoulish prediction of a draught so severe that "man would become...a man eater." It still freaks me out.

I keep thinking of that every time news comes in from the New Orleans Convenction Center.

The first time I went to New Orleans, Jackay was going for a neuroscience conference at the Convention Center. It was one of my first stops in the city. Now there are thousands of people there without any water. There are dead bodies, whose pictures are up on CNN. A pre-adolescent girl was allegedly raped. An NPR reporter who had just fled the convention center was on the phone with All Things Considered while the FEMA director, simultaneously on the radio on another line, denied that there was a problem there. He kept saying that those people should go to one of the distribution points, without mentioning that they'd been sent there in the first place because it was a designated distrubution place.

Everybody else I talk to finds it just too grim to bother with. Are they talking about it in New York?

It's so hard to fathom, being here where I have a clean dry bed and loads of food and access to my bank account, not to mention 24-hour radio, television, newspaper, and Internet access, but these people have had no information about their own city for four days. They haven't seen the footage. They haven't heard about the rescues, or the attempts to fix the levees, or the conditions at the Superdome. The just know nobody's come to help them. They're walking and swimming through waste water, expecting the people on the other side to have something. Imagine the shock of swimming past dead bodies, leaving your loved ones who can't swim behind, and then finding there's still no water, no food, no busses, no police. Just shooting and looting and mayhem. I'd be carjacking, too.

A lot of people are asking me what they can do. If they're asking you, too, here's what I've found out:

* They do not want people to donate clothes or food at this point. They have no place to distribute them and would tie up people and resources that could be used for getting people out.

* They do want money. The American Red Cross and

* A call has been made for blood donations.

* The message boards below also feature places for people to offer up their spare rooms for refugees.

* As evacuees arrive in Houston, they'll need information. Phone cards, cell phone batteries, laptop batteries will probably be useful in a couple of weeks. But for right now, unless you have a rescue helicopter, just send money and all the good karma you can.

* In the meantime. . . If people are looking for info on loved ones in the affected areas, here are some places to find lists of survivors and missing:
NOLA.com, which is posting text messages from people trapped in attics
Craig's List
Gulf Port News survivor database

* Every time something like this happens, I pledge to get trained in CPR and first aid. I did it in high school, but don't remember enough to be of any use. No excuses this time.

I'm off to Dallas tomorrow, where the presence of little children will prevent me from watching too much CNN. Unless something else happens, I'm going to stop posting about all this, and turn towards the light. Have a safe and easy labor day weekend. Go to a parade if you can.

EDITED TO ADD: Here's a really cool thing: somebody's organizing people to relay messages from survivors and evacuees to their loved ones. You take a text or phone message saying "I'm okay, please call Mom at 314-xxx..." and we, who have long distance and cell phone batteries, can keep trying until Mom gets word. If people are actually able to send messages, that's a fantastic idea.