February 26, 2003 at 10:21 pm
(rant)
From the depths of my feverish, cough-syrup fueled hindbrain I gotta toss this one out there - I’m not even sure of the original source of the quote (which was attributed to General Hawley) but it tickled me so much that I fell off my chair laughing and ended up coughing up a wad of phlegm that looked like Nixon. Again with the horking up dead presidents in mucus… whatever. It happens when I get really sick and it settles in my lungs. Okay, enough with the ad misericordium segue… read this and be as tickled as I was:
“‘Violence only leads to more violence.’ This one is so stupid you usually have to be the president of an Ivy League university to say it. Here’s the truth, which you know in your heads and hearts already: Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more violence. Limp, panicky, half-measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully thought-through, professional, well-executed violence never leads to more violence because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead. That’s right, dead. Not ‘on trial,’ not ‘reeducated,’ not ‘nurtured back into the bosom of love.’ Dead. D-E Well, you get the idea.”
Call me bloodthirsty, but the concept of making a first strike the last strike isn’t a new one. And if you’re not making the first strike but instead are in the position of retaliation, make it stick. As my stepdad used to tell me, never be the one to throw the first punch, but always throw the last. (Actually, it was something more like hit them back twice as hard and make sure they don’t get back up even if you have to break their bones to see to it, but that wasn’t as pithy as my edited version and would have betrayed his professional bias in instructing his young stepdaughter in the fine art of self defense.) Not sure why any of this is relevant or interesting to anyone but me, but I’ve recently noticed that about 90% of this blog really shouldn’t be preserved for posterity, so what the hell. Here’s my fluey contribution to clouding the ether.
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February 25, 2003 at 11:01 am
(writing)
My thanks to The Shadow for this article on the occurrance of writer’s block in millionaire authors which asks, “And what, precisely, is it that disappears: the itch or the desire to scratch it?” I’m thinking the desire to scratch is what fades when one is liberally dosed in folding green calamine lotion. Not that I’d know, mind you. I’ve never made more than $500 a month from my writing. So I’ve got that itch and the desire to scratch it - may it never fade too much… well, unless it fades due to that half a million dollar advance I’m looking forward to someday. Hee…
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February 22, 2003 at 4:36 pm
(gah, life)
Thanks to dirtyfez for the groovy linkage to tequila mockingbird - and here’s her latest international reportage.
On an other note, went out last night and drank (for me) copious amounts of Irish beer, including a peculiar but yummy combination of booze called an Irish Car Bomb. Damn, I could suck those puppies down all night. Except for that whole gravity thing. The evening’s combination of alcohol and getting pissed off at a bitter drunk old Irish guy who almost ate my pool cue seems to have burned some of the virii out of my system, that or I’m just hungover and too stupid to realize that I’m still fluey. Am contemplating distractions from having to get all the paperwork together to go do taxes with the semi-hostile, almost ex-hubby tomorrow - kinda appropriate that we get our taxes done on Sunday, ‘cuz my ass sure as hell ain’t stepping into a church. Think I’ll take a bubble bath and read a good book (yeah, I’m geeking out hard).
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February 19, 2003 at 9:50 pm
(gah, health)
Gack. Gravity was listing to port in my head, but now it seems to have gone completely offline. I’ve got a flu thing going on, feels like I’ve been beaten with a horse. Not trampled by one, beaten by one. Wielded by a large ogre with a penchant for punishing blondes. Gonna go get horizontal now before the bastard comes back for another round and I have to kneecap him. Hmm… maybe I should erect a punji-stick perimeter around my bed in case he approaches while I’m passed out and feverish. Nah, I’ll just end up hurting myself. Oh well. My teddy bear will have to keep me safe.
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February 18, 2003 at 3:01 pm
(random, writing)
Nice to know we can all count on Lileks to help us ignore the phallic implications of bananas. I feel much better now. Think I’ll go smoke a cigar. Or maybe get me some of that yummy broiled Yeti penis. Yeah baby, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.
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February 18, 2003 at 2:01 pm
(gah, life)
I’m baaaack. Above ground, out of jail, not on fire - as my dear friend The Shadow would put it. Good conference, met some interesting and informative people, got some good information and feedback, got some decent sleep and drank some awesome margaritas, not all necessarily in that order. The husband-unit has moved out of the house, which was painfully weird to come home to, and my ass is tired. I need sleep and a bubble bath and maybe a massage, again, not all necessarily in that order. I’ve got brownout in some spots in my brain, some circuits are fried and others have blown altogether. My apologies, dear readers three, that this isn’t a more politically-charged or otherwise interesting post…
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February 14, 2003 at 7:20 am
(life, writing)
As far as the question of whether the writer can change the world . . . this much we know: that throughout history, so great has been the fear of the power of the writer, that books have been burned in the belief that putting the flame to the printed word also destroyed the conviction that lived in the word. –Kay Boyle
Heh. Y’all don’t mind me… I’m off to blow up the world at the Southern California Writer’s Conference. Or something to that effect. There may just be a lot of gladhanding and drinking and bashing of each others’ participles… I’ll let all three of y’all know the gory details when I return.
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February 12, 2003 at 9:50 am
(gah, life)
Still not dead yet, despite not posting. Did Chinatown and watched the Dragon Dance parade in celebration of the Lunar New Year last weekend, saw The Recruit, bought a new laptop (in lieu of eating too much of the aforementioned sharp and crunchy over-sweetened cereal) and am beginning to think (in my writerly quest to find a metaphor to stretch far enough to encompass all of this process) that divorce most resembles watching a loved one die of a terminal illness.
Not sure what stage of the grieving process I’m in now - it’s no longer denial as everything hurts too much - but I’m doing a good job of hunkering down and not talking to anyone unless they approach me. Not to shut folks out on purpose… it just hurts. I know that eventually it won’t, so much, and then even more eventually it’ll hurt less and less until finally I can watercolor over the Kodachrome memories and just look back one day and say, yeah, I was married once to this really great guy who’s now a famous artist.
And that will be it.
But for now every day is letting go of one more thing, acknowledging one more last time for something - if he moves out this weekend then this morning will have been the last Wednesday morning that I’ll wake up to greet him over coffee and CNN. And so on, like that. Not sure if it serves me to think of things that way (as my cynical forebrain mutters that it reeks of melodrama and purposeful angst) but at least I’m paying attention, which (speaking from experience) is ultimately better than denying what’s happening in the moment that it happens and then getting whacked upside the head with an emotional 2″ x 4″ a few months or years down the line because I just wasn’t paying attention at the time things were actually happening. I’m too lazy to properly hyperlink any of the pop-cult or other references above… sue me.
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February 7, 2003 at 2:41 pm
(random)
When good ideas go terribly, terribly bad… well, usually when you mix alcohol and explosives. Sometimes it can be fun to point and laugh at the results, though. Or is that just mean? Nah.
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February 5, 2003 at 11:32 am
(gah, life)
Ha - ’tis truly the season (thanks to gnome-girl for the link) and so glad it’s not just me having my 19th nervous breakdown about this whole divorce thingy. Got the actual petition faxed over from the lawyer and have just signed it to mail back to him so that he can file it with the court. Ack. I feel like I should have something Wagnerian playing in the background as I drop the envelope in the mail - maybe the beginning of the Der Ring des Nibelungen. And then I have an alternate reality flash where I feel like a Weeble - you know, the sort that wobble but don’t fall down. Just when I think I’ve attained a momentary state of emotional equilibrium, something whacks me upside the head and I go wobbling all over the place, smacking my forehead against the floor and bobbing right back up again, only to topple over in the opposite direction. I know that this will continue for a while, and that the best thing I can do is to take care of myself instead of eating ten boxes of sharp and crunchy over-sweetened cereal (like Cap’n Crunch, which - per Kat - is primo for lacerating the inside of your mouth no matter how long you let it sit in the milk) but the urge to obliviate in a bad way is always there under the surface. I think I’ll do something to my hair instead - take my trauma out on my ‘do. I think I’d look good about 30% blonder. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Highlighting my hair will make everything all better.
Update: I am now actually 43% blonder, and it worked. Yay. Until I got home.
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