I wrote you a haiku and filled out a survey. Friends?

Please forgive me for my neglect. Pretty soon I'm not going to have any readers at all because I suck suck suck suck ass at posting lately. My bad. To make you feel better, I thought I'd write you a few haikus, which I have recently discovered I am very good (read: terrible) at.

First, a gentle introduction to my skills:


It's not as easy as it looks, and this is proof

You might think I joke
about my haiku writing
sucking, but I don't.


And now, for the main course: A walk down memory lane via haiku. We'll call this series "Portrait Series I: College Roommates '99-'03"


College roommate I (the bizarre one)

She said "You mind?" when
I caught her borrowing my
underwear. "Um, yeah."


College roommate II (the skanky one)

She said "So what?" when
I caught her borrowing my
date; she had me there.


College roommate III (the best one)

One time, high, we ate
a whole box of cereal
sitting cross-legged.


That's enough of that for today. I'm sure there's more to come, though. Just give me the holidays with my family to refill the bank of crazy people to haiku about and I'll be back with "Portrait Series II: Woe is My Gene Pool".

In yet another show of laziness, I am now going to repost a survey I filled out on MySpace because somehow these two mediums have been running together a lot lately as I've been preoccupied by the holiday season, craziness at work, craziness in my personal life, and doing some serious writing which I'm too shy to ever share here. That means you get whatever is left over, and based on what I've been giving you lately, you're probably trying to locate an expiration date on this carton. But let me assure you: I'm still good... I just need a little time to age properly. So hang in there, and I hope something I've left you with today makes you chuckle. In the end, I'm starting to think that's what it's all about.

On to the holiday survey -- Liz on Christmas in 28 questions:

1. Hot Chocolate or apple cider?
Coffee. Coffee should definitely be listed as an option here. Coffee is a holiday staple -- something like $4 bottles of champagne, Advil and candy cane particles in the bottom of my purse.

2. Turkey or Ham?
Whiskey-Crab Bisque, actually. Turkey is for thanksgiving and definitely not ham. Pigs eat their own doo and each other and whatnot and Im a vegetarian. Sorry its just not going to happen.

3. Do you get a Fake, real from a lot, or you cut it yourself christmas tree? Fake. Times two. With lights lights lights everywhere. And spray-pine scent. And cheesy ornaments, like my miniature Vibe (thanks, mom) and a little snowman I made in the third grade. Guess my parents didnt want to hang on to that one and now Im stuck with it.

4. Decorations on the outside of your house? This year? Yes. But they came at a price because on the klutz scale Im a 10. All you who know my story about knocking myself out and simultaneously flashing my neighbor while plugging in Christmas lights can have a good laugh now at my expense. The scar on my head is hardly noticeable.

5. Snowball fights or sledding?
Love and love. Unless the snowball fights are with Kyle McGee (resulted in a black eye) or any boys who throw at the head region or whitewash. Thats just bad manners. (But Im allowed to do both, just to be clear).

6. Do you enjoy going downtown shopping?
I love the mania. Suits me fine.

7. Favorite Christmas song? Easy. Last Christmas by Wham. Followed by O holy night sung by any lady with a big voice.

8. Worst Christmas Song? Anything by Celine Dion. That lady is an obnoxious waste of thinness.

9. How do you feel about Christmas movies? We have a close personal relationship.

10. When is it too early to start listening to Christmas music?
Um, never. Clearly. I usually take a hiatus through spring and then start round two right around groundhog day.

11. Carolers, do you or do you not watch and listen to them?
Definitely. Its best when theyre like 30 and drunk and its the middle of the night and theres 3 of them howling and slurring in the middle of the street, though. Those are my favorites.

12. What is your favorite thing to do at Christmas?
The new gift swap/hunt for a hideous tree/drink mimosas all day tradition with the girls is tied for the favorite position with my annual geek dinner/gingerbread house party with the nerd-squad from 8th grade. You know who you are And I love you and all the memories!

13. What is your favorite holiday smell? Car exhaust. Honestly, these questions kinda suck. What do you THINK my favorite holiday smell is? Christmas trees. Duh.

14. Favorite Christmas memory? The year my whole family decided to sing the 12 days of Christmas and it took us like an hour because everyone was tipsy and kept laughing and forgetting to sing and forgetting what day we were on and the FIIIVE GOOOLDENNN RIIIINNNGGGSS part took easily 3 minutes every time we sang it.

15. Favorite Part about winter? Looking at Christmas lights, singing xmas songs too loud in my car and not caring who sees me, being able to see your breath, waiting for snow, acting like a 6 year old moron when it finally snows, free candycanes EVERYWHERE, those ever-cheerful door-holding-bell-ringer-people

16. Worst part about winter? Every year when I slip on ice in public and take 3 friends, an ornamental tree and an old person down with me, being cold, having to dress sensibly, static, and the fact that its dark when I wake up followed by 4 hours of dim daylight and drizzle and then gets dark again somewhere around effing lunchtime.

17. How do reindeer fly? For once Im not going to B.S. you. I have no clue. Mexican food, maybe?

18. Do you like to give or recieve? Yes. Yes, I do.

19. Do you send holiday cards?
Call it paranoia, but I think my Mom might have written this quiz knowing I'd fill it out just to ask that question and make me feel guilty. She's a conniver, that one.

20. Ever kissed under mistletoe? Nope. Im turned off by cheesy fumbling predictable attempts at romance.

21. What goes on the top of your tree? My cat, usually.

22. Thoughts on Eggnog:
WHY? Its like the lunchmeat with the pimentos in it: a bad idea, but no one's saying anything. It's like the inventor is a member of the mafia or something. I am a little grossed out by the fact that youre basically drinking sweet, frothy raw eggs, but if you add alcohol to almost anything Im in, so I guess Im not really that offended when you get right down to it.

23. Certain person you want to kiss under mistletoe? Again why mistletoe? Totally arbitrary and boring and predictable. Id seriously rather kiss under a very full roosting pigeon or a fast-moving train.

24. Person who's throat you would like to shove the mistletoe down?Im more of a yeller than a beater. I prefer ascerbic comments muttered under my breath to actual acts of violence.

25. Favorite christmas movie? Mixed Nuts (act like you know) is tied with Christmas Vacation. Nice tree, kinda full, lotsa sap little sappy in here!! That theres an R.V. "THE BLEESSSSIINNNNGGGG!!" Who doesn't love that movie?

26. Best Holiday company party story:
I'm an optimist, so I'll say that its coming up this Wednesday. Im the crappiest bowler on the planet. The coworkers have no idea whats coming.

27. Think the holidays are overrated?
Absolutely. But so is Shaq, shopping and sleep, and Im still a big fan of all three. Sorry, it's true.

28. What do you want for Christmas?
Im pretty torn between Peace on Earth, one million dollars, a president with a higher IQ than mine and love at first sight. So I'll just leave this one blank, OK?


Best wishes this holiday season, whatever that means to you. Thanks for sticking with me. May the new year bring new friendships; the acceptance and embracing of solitude; and personal successes tempered by the compassion to share them with others. (Also, I wouldn't turn down Peace on Earth, one million dollars, a president with a higher IQ than mine or love at first sight.)

Cheers!

Is Christmas "Constitutional"?

As we enter the season best known for promulgating many an idealistic nicety including but not limited to "peace on earth" and "goodwill" and "joy" and whatnot, I am somehow not at all surprised to learn that we have found a way to continue to ruin everything -- even the holiday season -- by insisting on political correctness to a degree of complete insanity. I am referring to a slew of recent articles in major metropolitan newspapers, about a recent, very public, legal battle over the word "Christmas". Proof of this nonsense comes after my rant, which begins here:

Look, I call mid-Dec to early January the "holiday season" not because I'd be offended if specified Christmas or Kwanzaa or Hanukkah or the month of Bodhi, but because I recognize that different people do different things this time of year. I'm OK with that. I grew up knowing and celebrating this way. I like it. And even now, as a Christian (OOOoooh. Bet that's a bad word to some of you, huh? Well, to pre-empt the inevitable emails about this confession, I'd like to make it clear that I'm of the "golden rule" variety, and am not big on the "fire-and-brimstone" mentality, so take it easy, OK?), I observe more than one religion's celebration during this season with my diverse multitude of friends and family. I have decorated an admittedly pagan Christmas tree and sung carols about a baby born in a barn and lit the Minorah, too. Somehow I seem to navigate this apparent conflict of interest rather smoothly and with no objections from my conscience. Granted, I'm in the majority 77 percent of Americans who are Christian, which probably gives me a slanted perspective, as someone else's savior isn't being sung about in every mall I go to. I'll give you that. But really, that's not the issue here.

What I'm not cool with are people fighting major legal battles involving everyone from minimum-wage workers to worldwide corporations over some semantic bullshit like what we call those trees we stand in our living rooms and town squares and decorate with lights and balls and garlands to announce the arrival of the *whatever* season.

I am even more not OK with a credible news source wasting ink on this crap. I'm in the news business, and as each day goes by I am more and more disheartened by the steaming piles of garbage our journalists report on. TV is the WORST. Don't even get me started, because then we have to discuss why they're reporting it (which is a complex, painful, other topic) which is because it's newsworthy. You might object, but according to most standards, "newsworthy" it is: it's gotten lots of folks riled up and it's actually happening and there's lots of money and corporations and organizations involved and it's relevant to the season. Does the chicken proceed the egg or vice versa? All I know is the chicken lays the egg, so I guess if we start waving signs and calling stores and hiring lawyers and hollering at anyone who will listen, we can expect the egg to hatch and spread the word... but I digress, again.

::takes deep breath::

Here. See for yourself. Here's a good one. This article was followed by a slew of op-eds and followups including this funny Q & A session with a crazed right-winger.

Please, read with a sense of humor. I found that after reading the first article, I felt like I had stepped into the twilight zone or an inbred Christmas movie. It's like "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" bred and gave birth to this mess. My favorite are some of the "sources" quotes. Here are a few:

* Reporter: "Given the fact that "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World" play endlessly in every store and that Santa Claus and trim-a-tree shops are everywhere, do you really believe that the holiday is endangered?"

* Wacko: "...About 95 percent of the people who are in your store are there for the birth of you-know-who."

* Lawyer: "What we are going to do is educate that it's OK to say `Merry Christmas,' Christmas is constitutional and in those egregious cases where there's blatant constitutional violations, we will litigate."

* Random lady: "No angels here!"

* President of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association: "This is about goodwill and glad tidings... let's get over it and get on with it."

Ever seen "Mixed Nuts"? You must. These people could all be characters right out of that movie. (Which is, by the way, one of the best holiday... er... Christmas movies of all time).

Happy *whatever*, everybody. Or not. I just don't really care, to be honest. Well, I mean, I do, but I'm just so very *over* it all. I don't even know what side I'm on. I just want it all to go the hell away. So, in the fitting spirit of irreverence, let's have a little laugh, shall we? I think it's become clear that we could all use one. Here's a Christmahaunakwanzika song or two just for you.

Enjoy!

Food for thought... literally.

Let's spend Friday evening talking about the universe, as explained by food. OK? Super. Here goes:

"Fractal forms--complex shapes which look more or less the same at a wide variety of scale factors, are everywhere in nature. From the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation to the coastlines of continents, courses of rivers, clouds in the sky, branches of plants and veins in their leaves, blood vessels in the lung, and the shape of seashells and snowflakes, these fractal or self-similar patterns abound... some of the most pleasing patterns in geometric art exhibit exact or almost exact self-similarity. These are patterns which are composed of smaller copies of themselves ad infinitum, or at least until some limit where the similarity breaks down due to the granularity of the underlying material."

What does all this mean? Well, here's a visual, edible example. The Romanesco Broccolli/Cauliflower: This little bugger looks the same in super-zoom mode as it does to the naked eye. This is an example of a fractal form -- though they abound. What makes this really cool is that it is, in essence, a physical representation of a mathmatical equation -- a computation. What's crazy is that there are theories out there explaining the universe based on this computation; modern thinkers seem to like applying this computation to describe forms on our planet.

"It seems like the universe just wants to compute. Of course, there's a tendency for thinkers in every age to model the universe in terms of the predominant technology of the day. To the Pythagoreans, all was number and geometry. In Newton's time, the universe seemed an intricate clockwork mechanism. Later, in the age of steam, thermodynamics and heat death dominated models of the universe. Today, surrounded by computers evolving more rapidly than anything in natural history, what could be more natural than regarding the universe as a great automaton performing some kind of cosmic computation?

And yet, there may be some truth in that viewpoint, and insights to be had by pursuing it, just as earlier worldviews provided frameworks for further discoveries. Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science and Rudy Rucker's forthcoming The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul (excerpt) argue that many of the processes we see in nature are indeed computations."

Very cool. And from a social perspective, isn't it true that we're routinely both both enlightened and blinded by our own experiences, which are the parameters with which we define our own existance and response to our unique world? This is proof that even the most intelligent people on the planet have a difficult time seeing the view for the window.

Have a good weekend!

Fiona rocks, rugby fan freaks... RATS!

Sometimes when things like, say, work and life and bills and small paychecks get me feeling a little sadistic, I like to seek out stories of those more unfortunate than me, just for kicks. Such a scenario brought me to this story about a gentleman who was playing "hide the polska" with someone other than his wife, and was tattled on by a parrot who is clearly more intelligent than he. I imagine that was quite a blow... to the marraige, you perverts.

A completely unrelated story also currently posted on Ananova describes how some Russian men were eating a large bag of potato chips and discovered a whole dead rat at the bottom of the bag. Apparently the rat had been cooked and seasoned like a chip and had somehow made it into the package. Even with cooking and seasoning, I imagine the rat was still unappetizing enough to put them off chips for a while and onto another potato-based Russian staple: vodka. I say the rat may have done them a favor. Vodka beats chips any day.

Rats in food are no good -- and either I'm a magnet for rat-in-food stories or this happens more than we'd like to imagine. I have a colleague who swears she found clumps of rat hair in a Subway sandwich and has since refused to eat at the establishment. She actually bit in to the sandwich, chewed and swallowed before she noticed that there were what looked like clumps of brown rat hair baked into the bread.

And peanut butter, according to my junior high school biology teacher, is FULL of rat feces. This is really sad news for me, as PB is a staple in my diet. The long and short of the story is that peanuts are approximately the same size and shape as the doo of the rats that crawl around on, eat, and doo in, the piles of peanuts in the field before they're transported to the processing plant. So I guess the doo falls in the crusher/baker/blender along with the shelled nuts. No wonder it's so high in protein...

Gross. Subject change.

I saw Fiona Apple at the Moore Theatre last week. My seats were the worst in the house. No, really. I was up at the veeeerrrrry top --exactly 3 rows from the highest seat in the building. This was painful for me, as I had initially been under the impression that a friend of a friend of a friend was going to be able to get me in early and put me in one of the front rows. But although my seats nearly gave me vertigo (it really was scary way up there), the concert was flawless. That woman is just fantastic, even if she is a little eccentric. You absolutely MUST download/buy Extraordinary Machine. Listen it to three times in a row, suspending judgement until the third. You will love it if you have any taste in music at all. If you don't, you should probably pull a Van Gough because you're worthless. Click below for a sampler:


I have never understood crazy, violent rugby or soccer fans. This is just another (painful, unbelievable) example of why.

Vibe

**This was written for the 7th Poetry Carnival, hosted by Garnet with the theme "music".**

Vibe

In the dark I am one of many, fingers to lips just so,
exhaling my melody into the throbbing, smoke-filled room

where bodies warm with swaying nodding tapping lilt behind
the meter of the spotlit island's tight blue cadence.

Ice clinks in short glasses while I tap my thumb;
frosted ashtrays slowly fill with perfectly timed conversations.

My words scat along the bar now, rythmic and stacatto;
my heart pounds, crescendoing, in twos and fours

trading eights with yours across the table.

Maternal Instinct Schmaternal Schminst... well, you get it.

So today I was clicking around on Myspace through my friends' friends for absolutely no good reason when I stumbled across a girl who looked like this girl I went to elementary school with who used to always pick her nose and wipe it on the bottoms of classroom chairs, but who was also really, really good at finger painting. No joke. Anyway, I clicked on the girl's profile and went right to her profile pictures to see if she was who I thought she was. Well, she wasn't. But what I discovered while nosing around was much, much more interesting than if she had been who I thought she was.

What I'm referring to is this:



Yep, it's a closeup of 3 little porcupines lined up in the palm of her hand.

And if you're currently saying things like : "oooh! cute!!" or "I WANT one!!!" or something similarly affectionate, you are the very reason I'm writing this post, convinced I'm predisposed to be a bad mother.

You see, all the comments under this photo were about the "cutesy wittle babie-wabies" and other cheesy shit like that. Meanwhile, I've recoiled from the computer screen in honest-to-God horror.

All I can of while looking at this photo is how much these horrific God-awful little things look like three totally dangerous spiny anuses all lined up giving birth to tiny hairless aliens. Seriously. I find them scary and basically fucking disgusting.

Do you think that means there's something wrong with me? Or that, because I'd rather step on these little guys than bottle-feed and name them, I lack maternal instincts? Why don't I find these nasty little critters adorable, or even walking the fine but definite "ugly but cute" line? Why is it that those three helpless babies are haunting me as I type this, preparing to give me spiny-asshole horror-flick nightmares? I'm a generally nurturing person... and I love animals and am a vegetarian (which I obviously just mentioned for bonus points, because now I'm worried you all think I'm a porcupine killer).

Anyone?

It could certainly be worse -- a little.

Yesterday...

was a comically bad day.

Of course, I should have known it would be when I woke up an hour late. I never do that.

But I didn't realize how everything was aligned to go wrong as I swung my legs out of bed to stand, which is why I was suprised by this funny feeling that the ground had fallen out from under me, or I was falling to it. The suprise was followed by the unmistakeable THUD of my body hitting the carpet next to my bed. So it turns out I WAS falling, and my legs had fallen asleep overnight, unbeknownst to me.

Of course I was still optimistic at that point, thinking of it as a hilarious freak accident, and spent a good 3 or 4 minutes laughing hysterically while laying on my carpet in a tank top and undies clutching my now-tingling legs, until I was distracted from them by a telltale headache from hell. That was when I started to get suspicious that the day would be a little different then every other day this year.

It was like my brain was old growth and was suddenly the hotspot for a new strip mall. I was all buzzing and sawing and thumping to the forest floor up there, and let me tell you - the spotted owls had flown the proverbial coop.

I also lost the ability to put subjects, verbs, and objects into phrases, sentences... really anything of meaning, much less eloquent groupings.

Anyway once I arrived at the office, I proceeded to fall UP the stairs and bruise my knee. Then I threw away a file I needed later, lost $1 to an evil Pepsi vending machine, spent two hours trying to find a parking spot near the bank and missed lunch (which wasn't healthy, considering I'm stressed out anyway and have been spending way too much time at the gym). And I was further stressed by my worry for my grandmother, who last weekend broke her neck, (can you believe that?) and I hate to bother anyone by talking about it (and once one breaks up with the boyfriend, there goes the built-in support system -- but you'd think I'd be used to it after 3 months, wouldn't you?) and so I spent the day a tightly-wound, hungry, anxiety ball.

Oh, and then someone used my least favorite word in the universe, and our computer system was being fixed so I was unproductive at work, and when I got home, my cat was sleeping on my PILLOW (which is not allowed, FYI) and the house was as empty as a tomb -- an emptiness surpassed only by that of my fridge. Which was bad, because I just wanted to cook and dance around in my slippers and not go to the grocery store to face humanity and the very small balance in my checking account.

And I can still hear those damn loggers in my head, even though all that was yesterday.

But it's OK, because I've come to a realization: I just need to tip over my T.V. tray life, spilling out all the stupid trivial crap that sits in it, packaged in little plastic cubes in a soggy cardboard box. It'll fall right on the carpet in the middle of the family room, and I'm just gonna leave the mess sitting there for someone else, for once.

The T.V. guide and all it's little black and white blocks of wasted time will lay there, pages spread all caddy-wompus like broken wings of a magpie (don't feel bad, magpies are annoying). The little cardboard spoon that came with the sick-sweet dixie cup will be broken under the weight of the main course -- a frozen block of gray brown ice -- which will fall on top of it - dead weight - something that used to be animal.

I think I'll hang on to the tray, though. The tray I like, because on it I've painted an ocean scene which I like because I like the ocean.

Also, T.V. trays are handy if you ever need a table for a spur of the moment picnic or a place to play Scrabble (which I love) or somewhere to let the leaves you picked up in the fall dry out and crinkle that rusty red brown that looks like it has to smell like every fall since the beginning of time...

And after that's done, I'll smile and sleep on a plane headed somewhere far away -- maybe the East Cost, maybe the Far East -- and let the maid clean up the mess that isn't mine anymore in my family room hundreds of miles away.

Really, a vacation COULD probably fix almost anything, minus world hunger and whatever's wrong with that guy who invented the bologna with the pimentos in it, right?

Thanks for being my hostage. You may go now.

I wish you everything on the list of good things the rest of the week (you know... that one on the right?) :)

I feel much better, now.