Wednesday, February 28, 2007

I can hardly believe it in the telling, but I experienced some old-fashioned, straight-up, show-biz-for-ugly-people Voter Pressure yesterday. Just a lil. A guy came up to me outside work, asked if I lived in the area, asked me if he could drive me to the polls. At least two, maybe three times. Any other fuckin city in the country that'd be the come-on line to end all come-ons, but he was serious. A little too much: he looked like a total operator, with a long black leather coat and one of those cellphone headset thingies. He would say things, then kinda look away while they were still hanging in the air. Very we-ask-the-questions. I asked him in my usual dumb compulsively curious way if he was a hired gun and why he was acting like he was in a Chandler novel and if he had been rounding up people in bars (he barely smiled; just lifted the corner of his mouth)--I think I would have gotten more out of him if I had been less entertained.

I shouldn't find politics in Chi so hilarious, but they really are.

- - - - -

I was looking forward to reporting on just What's In the Smoothies I Make, but the thing is: it turns out smoothies are immediate expression of one's mood. They change. They are also an immediate expression of how much fun I have dumping things in a blender and seeing what happens. I really do love it; 'tis a very close activity to putting paintbrush to paper.

The smoothies are also gettin nastier-looking, with more bizarre textures and colors, the 'healthier' they become. Still works, though. For the bizarro world kind of picky eater I am, it works. In today's: flax seed oil, wheat germ, flavored seltzer, frozen strawberries, unsweetened applesauce, Emergen-C packets, The Wild Green Powder (see image--doesn't it look woo-woo?) and a substance that is just so silly I can't mention it here, but it helped sweeten things up a bit. Okay, a tiny dusting of strawberry Jell-O powder. I figured it went with the strawberries and the strawberry-flavored Emergen-C, right? Gave me a lil gelatin? Helps with nails and skin? Makes things a little less hopelessly Green?

The resultant mix is the color of your brush water after painting all afternoon. Browny green. I am on my second highball glass of it and feel pretty damn hyper. We'll see. It's been already a tough weird week and lord knows the infrastructure could use some bolstering. This isn't that kinda blog, but oy. Work and doctors. Not sure I'm going to need to eat for next 72 hrs.

- - - -

NOPE.

A non roman a clef story.

They are at the same restaurant, and comfortably engaged in the Dance of the Glances, back and forth. Oh he's looking at me, she thinks, I smell boy, and looks up a solid beat later to see him watching her, completely at ease. His head down. Hers down. His up. Up, down, up, down, a beat between each. Easy. What are you eating, are we having the same thing? Thai food in Chicago. Curry or rice or noodles. I know I don't need chopsticks they're not Thai but I want them.

At one point she picks up her purse to get her credit card but also fiddle prettily with her hands and self, flitting through various items. He watches as she pulls out of her bag and languidly begins reading a:

prescription.

The End.

Monday, February 26, 2007

lil kvell

So, how did I ever miss the joys of the chili dog? All of my life I was wandering in the dark and now...chili dogs. But they gotst to be Portillo's. Love the Portillo's dog (no onion). The squishy bun, the savory/slightly sweet chili and the cheese...somehow the combo of textures really works. The bun keeps resquishin around the dog and the cheese provides this essential element of restraint on top--you wouldn't think it does--but it does. It kind of holds in the chili, too but really it's just about the flavors. And the chili itself is not overly-complicated, which I like. It's not trying to be a salsa or pomodoro or something stupid--it's just that right chili con carne sweet/tangy carnivorous flavor. It's very...elemental, this chili dog joy. Sloppy slippery savory meaty steamy satisfaction.

Friday, February 23, 2007

There are the songs you excitedly confab with others about...then there are the songs you download on iTunes a lil sneakily, somewhat shamedfacedly, despite the fact that you know the term "guilty pleasures" means nothing in this day and age. You know it doesn't mean anything, you'd loudly defend your preferences if pressed, even, and yet...you linger over the "Buy" button, just a lil. But then, suddenly, with a click you own the thing you've been wanting, the whole thing, not just 30 secs worth. You hit "Play" and the sounds of a certain pervy British popstar of Greek heritage crooning away fill your house, and you...chair dance. It is good.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Water floweth again. As you were.

thoughts on modern sanitation.

9:00 last night. Came home to find:

...a toilet so stopped up that they are going to have to REMOVE THE WHOLE TOILET from floor to get at blockage. I have no idea how this happened, although plumbing has been strangely unenthusiastic the last few days. Perhaps one of the cats knocked a bunch of furry toys down the loo and then tamped them down with a wooden spoon to make sure they stayed put (wouldn't put it past them), but let me say, as delicately as I can... There is nothing like seeing entire days' worth of, oh, say, effluvia, that you never hoped to see again--in fact were counting on never seeing again, which is, indeed, why you pressed "flush"--augured back up by a grouchy maintenance man who manages to convey, with that kind of beleaguered exasperation they can have, that these things Just Don't Happen, that it has to be something you did. Yes, because I WANT to be spazzing out, moritified, mad and completely frustrated, wondering if I should pay a 24-hr plumber money I don't have, and, now that I can't use the loo, fighting a constant sense of having to pee. Very mortified.

Fun. We're on Plumber Visit #3 right now. I understand they have to blame something, because something did Cause This to Happen. That is true. I want to find the malefactor as much as they. In fact, I'm starting to look forward to the blame process, because that'll mean it's fixed. I'll be the goat on the stake if need be, that's fine. I plan on giving everyone fistfuls of cash when this is over out of sheer relief/joy.

Just had confab with mother; feeling better knowing that there are at least two literary turns for this to take when it's all over and Funny again. And when I've slept.
K Cobain: captain of the ship we thought we were on.

?

Monday, February 19, 2007

For the life of me, I can't strike the right tone in that interminable essay below. It is difficult, partly because there are different "audiences" in my head for it. I will be editing it until the end of time (must be a term for the way one writes around topics, yes? Eventually getting closer and closer? Circumgraphication?)

The point is: I'm a fat girl. I have a fat face. Let it rip.

There, that's the michaelpollan take.

I had Elizabeth Bishop in my head all afternoon after the William Blake. It's poetry for President's Day! Pardon the lack of indenting...just won't stick. Also the lack of leading. Driving me nuts.

CASABIANCA

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

It all started because of a really bad rip-off that started sing-song-ing through my head, where I was the Ed Bradley from Sixty Minutes trying to recite "juicy peach" [or "ripe peach"--whichever he quoted at Lena Horne in his 60 Min interview], which was the juicy peach that Lena Horne said that was...I forget how it went. Not as good as EBishop.

This poem brings us to the great beach read The Love Letter. And the person who gave it to me. I am thinking of you, especially as of 23 min ago. xox

Double-chins. DOUBLE-CHINS.

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.


William Blake, "A Divine Image,"
from Songs of Innocence and Experience

Self-acceptance, when you're presented with or present yourself with the challenge of it, definitely happens in stages. Some aspects demand harder work. Some bits are much tougher to reach. Nothing ever magically floats away, dislodged by a phrase or sudden realization, however intense. Usually things are worn away, bit by bit, the occasional inspiration flaking off slightly bigger bits than normal. Things you do, things you say, things you see. Ideas that percolate for years, gestures that energize. Stuff goes away, comes back, goes away for good. Mostly.

As a fat girl accepting her fat body, I have been through a million cycles of self-acceptance, different over-lapping layered stages, and have found toward the "end" of it all (there is no real end: you figure out Fat--more or less--you get to Aging! There's always something) that the stubbornest set of challenges, for me, has been related to the human face. This makes sense. Faces are our body's currency, we carry everything there.

That is, although it's on the one hand by definition impossible, did you know it's also actually possible to pass, as a fat girl? At its root it has to do with not letting your body be seen in any way that challenges body standards, with a kind of deep-down Hiding (this is a whole other essay), but the key tool for passing is a thin face.

I am one of those folks who, fat or thin, has a basically fat face. Jowly, double-chinned. Fleshy. And my fat face means I can't pass--in person. Nobody ever looks me in the eye and thinks I'm small. Which is fine. I don't want to pass anymore.

But I used to. Then I didn't, but I still didn't want to do it at the "expense" of having a fat-looking face. Now...it's just my face. There is something ruthless as well as sweet about true self-acceptance: what are you going to do, in the end, except accept? Love? There aren't a lot of ways to do this except to do this.

When we talk about faces and fat, on some level we are talking about photos. It's where you can hide, or try to. In my case, not only do I have a fat face, I happen to have the kind of face that photographs big, especially in candid: the fleshy parts move forward, the facial features retreat. I have fat friends with similar faces whose faces do the exact opposite. Being photogenic in that sense, I've come to realize, is as much a throw of the genetic dice as eye color or height. To a certain degree it's nothing you can control. I look at photos all day for my job and am well aware of how photos work/what they show/what they don't/how people's faces present differently. It's fluky. I once had to calligraph ex Illinois governor Jim Edgar's name on hundreds of photos and learned anew, looking at all those (bizarrely similar) images with his sharp jawline and prominent features, how much being photogenic plays into...popularity. Being dominant in politics or anywhere. Being seen, period. Being seen a certain way.

I've ranted here about this before, I think, but the point is that photos can lie, do lie, that's kind of what they're for, in their own very odd set of ways. They tell the truth, but by reaching for one version of it, they commit to the opposite, to the mystery of things they don't include. Being photogenic is one particular kind of lie. And I, beyond everyone's normal desire to be seen in a good light, certainly have flirted hard with the Big Lie that is not showing the Chins. Somehow this was the area where I couldn't completely make my peace with my fat body, allow things to look the way they do, let the chips fall. I didn't want to look "fatter than I was"--which is the kind of fat face I have, how it photographs. It was amazing how far I had come, to still have the fears I did in this one area.

The very particular world of fat girls and those who self-identify as fat girl-likers played an interesting role. In general, it's been a helpful tool for self-acceptance for me. I have found the community of horndog folks who (bless their heart) like big girls very validating. It’s not just about fat--everybody likes something, right? Everybody does, trust me. It works both ways. For every Thing, somebody is into it. Fat body parts, skinny ones, long hair, short hair, too much hair, not enough. Whatever. It’s very equalizing. And the fact that it lives in the realm of the physical is part of its strength. I don't want anyone assuming I am lazy and stupid because of my size...why do I want them to assume I'm wonderful because of it? I'd rather they were just warm for my form and take it from there--like anybody.

But it turns out the fat girl-liking world has its own set of evolutionary problems too. Because while many men who like fat women accept, even like, even really like, a nice double-chin or fat face, there are many men, still, who think the perfect girl is one with a body much bigger than others might like, but with the same kind of thin face others worship miraculously screwed on top. (There are other issues that play into this phenomenon; generic unresolvable problems of objectification, for instance, and, in one small corner, the fact that there are men who not only want women to be larger, they want them to be Getting Larger, so a body that contains both states within—small and big—is exciting to them.)

It really pisses me off. There is something deadly annoying about men who want a big goil--not only that, men who might deeply understand some of the pressures and prejudices a fat girl might deal with--but still build this ideal fat woman without a fat face. Nobody has pop-on parts. You want a real big woman to hold and squish? Well...chances are good she'll have a face that's fat. There's a bizarre hint of liking-it-in-the-sheets in that kind of denial.

That was an unexpected lil barrier; I had to notice the phenomenon for what it was. Get mad. Cast it aside. (Please note: this is not all men, just some.) But then it was still back to my own issues. And it wasn't just me--I see lots of otherwise self-actualized fat hotties doing it, over and over. You can spot those photos in half-a-sec: taken from above, with the arm well-extended, faces carefully whittled down to that first Skrebneski plane. I’m getting to the point where I can immediately guess what somebody really looks like from seeing a thinface photo. I have the formula--within constraints--for figuring it out, because I did it too! Oh did I do it. Click click click. Wrapped scarves around my neck. Took every shot from above. Looked up from under my eyelids at the camera.

Eventually I more or less stopped. I got to the point where it felt more dishonest than flattering to show myself as a magically shadowed person who had no chins. Don't get me wrong; I have a ruthless eye for a good photo vs. bad, but there was a disguising area in which I was no longer comfortable treading. Even when those super-"flattering" photos occurred unintentionally--the way they do--when lighting and angles align and suddenly you're a big click away from yourself toward being somebody else--I would feel tempted, but think: no. I had to believe that my face was pretty when it was fat, had to remember that people saw it all day as it was, not some idealized version of it I carried inside. I did believe that, it turns out. Who knew. I had to remember that I was never passing anyhow, that the same rules that apply to learning to love your fat ankles or fat belly or fat upper arms apply here, even when the stakes feel higher. You live through your face, experience the world through it, but it's amazing how much you don't see it. Or think it's seen. Maybe there's something very Final about accepting one's fat face. Nowhere to hide.

I can't lie, I do sometimes wish I had one of those sharp jawlines and less fat necks. Just do. For vain reasons...every once in a while. Because I would have an easier time breathing at night and dealing with anaesthetics. And because Southwest Airlines reps wouldn't think I need two seats, right? People constantly judge body size by face fatness. (Patrika Darbo--many actresses of "size"--are good examples of this. Round-faced=fat.) It is breathtaking--and heartbreaking--how often, in how many ways that happens, and how FAR people take it. Eating disorders have great play in this area. The media and how it Decides Fatness. A bizillion things. Insert a bizillion essays here. Having a fat face--not passing--means I'm always fighting whatever fight there is to take on from the beginning.

In general, though--maybe in part because of that last idea--these days I'm comfortable with photos that show me much more as I really am, thank god. The big jowly candids still show up all the time, but that often happens because I'm laughing, a seriously double chinny activity, and that's better than not laughing. That sounds a little trembling and climb-every-mountain, but it's true.

I'm supposed to have an epiphanal tale here about how I learned to love my fat face, but I don't. All I can remember are mile-makers along the way, not lights that suddenly illuminated whole stretches of the journey. Photos were a tool in the end, despite all their pitfalls and mercuialness. It's good to see lots and lots of photos of yourself, get to know what you might be looking like when the bulb goes off. It's good to demystify photos, know you can't control them as much as you want, realize that people see things their own way anyhow, realize that some people look good in photos, some look bad, whatever their size. Also a tool was an endless supply of SAYS WHO?s to distribute to myself and others. So was acknowledging a poignant truism: like many body parts we all rail against--such as bellies--how, in the end, can you hate something that provides so much pleasure? So was time. So was getting older. So was touching my face nicely. So was remembering what I knew, leaning on how I already felt about other parts of myself and the lessons I had already learned. So was a sense of getting out of my own way. So was noticing other people's lovely fat faces. So was noticing others noticing others' lovely fat faces. So was an eventual willingness to let the chips fall, let the pixels do what they're going to do.


Friday, February 16, 2007

My moods are v. mercurial this week. Fightin big waves of (hormonal?) inside-out pissedness. Right now I feel ornery & rassless. Wrasless.

As I walked in to work one of my coworkers was sitting on the chair you sit on in the restaurant on our ground floor while you wait for your takeout (and those around are dining at tables). I was thinking how it feels to be sitting in that chair, but that I didn't realize until now how much it looks like one is sitting waiting in an infirmary. Looked like a little lost child waiting for parents after bravely facing a tonsillectomy.

This keyart for the new billybob movie...I don't think I've ever seen anything dumber. Except maybe the stills from this movie. Can they possibly be serious? It looks like a takeoff of a farce of a parody of a skit of a sketch of an SNL short. Have found myself barking with laughter looking at their stupid stills all day.

Strangest news today? A press release forwarded around work announcing a musician's death. Turns out it was someone I went on a date with, around...5? years ago. I think. He was only 33.

We had one pretty comfortable date, made plans to make plans the next weekend. He called around noon that Saturday to check in, we decided to talk later before we met at a certain time but...foof. Poof. Vanishment. No call. I think I called and yelled at his voicemail about that. And since he was a musician...of course I had his CD to "remember" him by, which really annoyed me, an emblem of careless musician ego. And now he's gone. Very strange little intersections in life.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Happy Valentine's Day!

Have a luvly pinky day!














This is a lil image from my card...tis on its way!
I dunno, looked like a blizzard here yesterday to me. All I know is that I trod inches of salty snow into the hems of my flowy pants. Flowy pants: not so good in the Sno. Much better are these normally nerdly ones w/ elastic at the bottom.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!! Pretty pinkness in the mail, just a little late this year.

Monday, February 12, 2007

skimmings

Three recent random personal ad responses I've gotten (copied verbatim). Cover yer eyes.

1.
Hi there!
Yes, Chicago is a great city.
As for more than that, you know all us men only look at physical. You are veery nicely that! Sit on my face please type woman!
Anyway, I better leave now!
T***


2. (from UAE)
Hi,
I know this is really long distance. Please look me up anyway. I promise I am not AlQaida!
S*****

3.
. . . I am so Intrested in getting to know U becos i saw ur profile on here and ur profile was quite intresting and unique to me and i guess having a nice chat with u wont be a crime or something becos the greatest gift to my eyesight is having my eyes set on you and Only God's creations can compare to the beauty that I see in you! If you wanna see my pics,i can send them to you as soon as i hear from you Ok.
T****

salmon à la last night

To accompany:
- Lundberg three-rice brown rice blend cooked with chicken stock and a little butter
- Broccoli florets with absolutely no signs of the stems because I am an adult and can do this if I want, boiled lightly then tossed w/ parmeggiano, lemon juice, a little butter and pepper

The salmon:
- Grilled in nonstick pan with (no!) a little butter, lemon juice, balsamic, rice vinegar, dustings of cumin and dry mustard. Really needed some booze: wine, beer, something, but I didn't have any. The middle of the fillets wasn't cooking fast enough, of course (I just don't like valentine's pink rare salmon) and then I thought: hey. Instead of trying to preserve this item's integrity, I'm going to flake it up and cook it fast -- that's the eventual state it'd end up in anyhow. There's no beautiful searing/brown grilling going on here, so I'm not losing anything.

I ended up with a bitchin bowl of really sweet, tender, flaked-up, bite-size salmon and chewy brown rices with just-right-sized broccoli flowers, each part individually seasoned, including the salmon in the glaze that resulted from its cooking. Really good. And for dessert: a slice of toast with Nutella.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Just to say this one more time, in case I didn't emphasize it enough below: Anna Nicole Smith is a Mansfield, not a Monroe. Not even close.

Finally saw The Queen this weekend. Found it kinda unnecessarily obvious! Didn't expect that; thought it'd be a subtle verbal pavanne (PDJ). But nay. A lot more stated-not-shown than you'd expect from a bunch of insiders like those who made it. Also: same plot as Mrs. Brown. That is, if you had to write the four-word review: COME DOWN FROM BALMORAL. But I still enjoyed. In large embarrassing part due to the adorable walk-ons by the quartet of Corgis (clearly the name of new book) who would scamper on and scamper off, leaving a trail of moonbeams and love in their bobbling wake.

Other nicenesses this weekend included some serious champagne that I will probably be writing about more/later, Popeye's chicken in a warm bar on the same freezing cold night, good Thai take-out, the chance to sing along idiotically to Digital Underground. Chicago is very cold and salty right now, dried-up white, and we contain our glamour to tarted-up lips floating above our parkas and scarves.

I really like David Holmes' "69 Police." A lot.

Photos....various shots of the Royal Corgis getting on/off/being carried on/off royal planes. Bwah.

Friday, February 09, 2007

I am stricken this morning by the kind of tiredness that passes for aphasia and also makes me giggle. I walked out of my building, hailed a cab, got in, and gave him my home address. Hah! Then on the way to work I was fairly sure I saw a license plate frame that said I'D RATHER BE FUCKING.

This blog--dear reader, did ye know this? did ye know I do this?--is not for the super-personal, the intime, the hopelessly divulgent and ranting and thoroughly unflattering as befits--for me--my super-well, semi-private journal--but I feel the urge to say this--because it may help others: Gravity Will Have Its Way. Oh yes...it will. I am starting to feel nostalgic for the days when (so it feels now) I floated through life like a Botero sculpture. Sic transit. Not that I'm in too bad a shape, but damn. Time like an ever-rolling stream mumblemumble boobs mumblemumble.

So, smoothies. SMOOTHIES!

I am all about the smoothies this week as the number of things I want to be ingesting for various health issues increases unwieldily. It feels a little Californian and woowoo to be standing in my yuppie kitchen making Food out of Fudstuff--it's so uncool from a whole foods POV--but as somebody who has a hard time eating often enough (people don't believe this of fat girls, but it's my biggest problem sometimes), adores anything that halfway resembles sorbet, and has major textural issues, it rocks. It also is deeply connected to a childhood love of Playing Potions, which meant mixing things together in ____'s basement and seeing what we got.

As I perfect my mixture I will probably be writing more about it. There are several things to note now, however:

• More often than I'm willing to admit I feel like Shirley MacLaine in Postcards from the Edge while I'm whirring stuff up. I always really liked the way she adds the vodka at the end, it's a very good moment, the way she does it.

• I am hitting the very expected crucial taste/nutrition balancing ratio problem. Gotta keep that nassy edge out. We'll see.

• My acupuncturist (I've seen her twice, but) recommended this groovy woowoo food-based nutritional green stuff that I'm trying. I got it in the mail yesterday and it is just...nuclear. I dunno how to describe it. It's this incredibly intense powder that has the texture/qualities of POLLEN, in fact the first thing it made me think of was a Wolfgang Laib piece. It's smeary, it stains, it's not anything you can blow away. Has this pernicious, anthrax-like ability to immediately contaminate all nearby surfaces. You can tell this, because it's green. And everything starts to get a muddy green. Anyhow, I am seriously considering drinking it in Mountain Dew to cut down on flavor/color issue. We'll see.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

The firstish thing I thought when I heard ANS had died was very pop culture, 26 times removed: this news will not surprise John Waters, and indeed might make him happy, although not in any mean way (I thought). In the celebrity-experiencing/digesting sense, not to mention because think about the hoo-ha to come over that no-father-knowing-yet 6-mo-old daughter. Because it's all very Jayne Mansfield, and John Waters is someone who likes Mansfield better than Monroe, enjoys the self-promoters. And this story has all the shape and size of a bad sad hollywoodbabylon mess. And then I thought, why are we suprised that anybody who slurs her words and can't talk coherently like she did at the AMA show is dead, especially as the rest of the time she is a jittery, staring, starving wreck. And I don't feel surprised anymore. But I sure did, at the very first.

Embarrassed beyond recognition to be commenting on this here, yet
what the hell, we're all human,
I remain

Yours sincerely,
E.M. Tamny

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

houseparty again. again.

I realized (re: the previous post) when I thought about it that a good 60% of all my muttered fired-up chatterings come from House Party. Partly just loving Robin Harris RIP. Yeah! So, scuse while I go fanboy with my favorite quotes:
  • l'll break my leg off up in your ass so far you'll shit sneaker for a month.
  • Do it, do it! Go, go, go! Wait, wait. OK, now!
  • Why they name that boy that African name? Knowing they from Cleveland.
  • All the commercials they showin nowadays. God. Every TV station. Cut the television off, comin through the damn walls.
  • lt was so hot in here last night l saw the devil sittin in the living room.
  • Every little step you take will be around this bedroom tonight.
  • l don't even appreciate how you treatin me.
  • I might cry two tears in a bucket. Fuck it. Let's take it to the stage. (that'd be George Clinton. YAY!)
  • l'm from a small town called Fresh Off a Cop's Ass and you're makin me homesick.
  • And when it's done and said and said and done, Play's gonna be the victorious one.
  • Because the Kid's much more than hair and a smile. There it is, the hype shit.
  • Look at him, already a has-been. Let Uncle Play say a rhyme that'll tuck your ass in.
  • Once again, the boy blows smoke about what he want to be, but it isn't and wasn't, and it ain't never gonna be.
  • Step to the stage--too late, l blew it up.
  • You didn't play, you just got played out.
  • A beat-down's a beat-down.

Monday, February 05, 2007

good bad language

Some things I say to get myself fired up:

Illegitimi non carborundum est

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke
(Who "them" is, I don't know, but it scratches the itch. I would like to pretend this is unrelated to The Big Chill, but it's not. Came at a formative time.)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh no motherfuckers, not today
(From Prince's "The Pope"; has a very distinct meter to it. Good to yell at vending machine when it's got your potato chips trapped.)

I ain't scared of you motherfuckers
(Also sampled in "The Pope," but more famous as Bernie Mac's seriously crucial line on Def Comedy Jam)

Coraggio!
(That's mom)

• Onward and upward! Bigger and better!
(That's also mom)

Faint heart never fucked a pig
(
Usually muttered to self as "faint heart never..." By whatshisname.)

Life is short

Fuck this shit

• Don't fuck with me fellas, it ain't my first time at the rodeo
(Oh...you know.)

I'm forgetting others. Sorry about all the fucks!
What the hell. Happy Monday!
I didn't do anything this weekend except try to get healthy (encroaching sinus infection, this creeping office Fug, some chronic health issues--insert small essay here) and get my life in order, so I have nothing exciting to report but a fount of nerdful bubbling satisfaction making me feel pleased and content. That will go away, I know from a great deal of experience, leaving a helpless sense of watching entropy take over as my life gets more and more busy and the phantom to-do lists foment. I have one actual to-do list, and about 10,000 intermediary ones in my head, and then one very unmanageable one with things like "Be Great Artist" on it.

I got to putter a lot this weekend, one of life's great joys, but it did get subsumed a bit by cabinfever. Note: I did not attack the severe cold the way I did in my unthinking college years, when ohmygodmusttellthisstoryagain there was one day my freshman year when we were literally the (according to the news) coldest place in North America at that moment. Something like-60/-70 with the windchill. So what did we do? Trudged up the hill on our campus to go see a movie--Head, actually, the Jack Nicholson/Monkees movie. I can still remember that feeling of my eyes freezing as I blinked. Did Skip write about this recently too? I can't remember, but it's one of those stories that comes up all the time, because it really happened.

I also spent an inordinate amount of time playing with fingerling potatoes. First I boiled them, then let them properly steam/rest in a cloth-covered pan. Then the next day I sliced them in half and fried them in my not-really-nonstick LeCreuset nonstick pan that I will use to kill someone if they break into my apartment, it weighs about 70 lbs. They got beautifully brown, but I don't think there's enough starch content in fingerlings for them to have that really good fried potato taste. So then that night I browned some organic ground beef, added the fried fingerlings, which I had drained very thoroughly and cut into pieces, and made a kind of saucy hamburgerscramble, adding chicken stock to reduce and Worcestershire sauce and stuff like that, mashing the potatoes with a potato masher into the mix. Cold weather comfort food and it was very good, especially with pumpernickel toast. Oy! But what a journey. Fingerling...heh.

Friday, February 02, 2007

On Futurama tonight: (I dunno why this cracked me up. It was the delivery.)

Fry: "Tell her she looks thin!"
Zoidberg: Okay. "You seem malnourished. Are you suffering from internal parasites?"

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I had two very different shoppin experiences today (reward for blurggy earlier appts--very short version). First one: the newly-committed-to-extracting $-from-fat-girls Lame, I mean Lane Bryant. (I often call the LB Lame Giant but frankly other people doing it makes me nervous.) Nice new store on Wabash across from Macy's I mean MARSHALL FIELD's, wood doors, the biggest bra dept ever, prettiness everywhere. Same ol place, but nice.

Then: Old Navy. I wheeled my shopping cart through a sea of people wearing parkas and low-rise? half-pants? and jackmcfarlands buzzing in their headsets to the super unfantastic "womens plus" section. It was crammed in the corner, no mirrors, no traffic flow, all the way at the back with the most depressing parts of the concrete floor showing through the chipped-off paint. I'm such a bitch; I smiled fakily at the headset girl and said, "AH! the GHETTO!" as I wheeled my cart into the small space. But seriously, what the hell. Shades of the Lazarus Department Store in Columbus, Ohio, circa 1985. Doubleknit polyester and shame. Funk that.

Not to mention all their clothes are held together with spit and floss, so whether or not they fit is a total crap shoot. Most things looked like I had pulled them out of the lost and found. But the two tank tops I got (they seem okay) cost less than one bra at LB, so there you go.

I hate, with a vicious passion, stores that like it between the sheets (will take your money) but not in the streets (keep you in the fat girl ghetto). This is one reason I will never and for the last few years have been actively boycotting stupid J. Jill. They make more than half their money from plus sizes, but won't carry it in the stores or show large women in the catalog because it 'sends the wrong image.' Amoral avaricious skankitude. Completely unconscionable and wicked, really wicked. I won't even look at their catalog.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Good article in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine for teachers (Teaching Tolerance) about fat kids in school and all the discrimination they face...how to deal with it, teach size acceptance.