Oxymorons & Hangovers

Happy Birthday to O&H

Yesterday marked two years here at Typepad for Oxymorons & Hangovers. Considering my layout has only changed once there’s hasn’t been much physical development but I think my writing has evolved considerably. I became familiar with my personal style in a way I wouldn’t have in writing shitty fiction. Not to mention there exists another written account of the day-to-day happenings that no one but me cares about and I’m less likely to forgot the time that Kiddo was my ‘little doctor’ or the time she used apprehensive in a sentence and I subsequently fainted.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll keep it up, but I hope to be here a while.

Three day weekend highlights:
-1 Dodger win
-2 days spent with my younger sister

-1 backyard party with...
-1 awesome cover band
-487 mimosas at champagne brunch
-1 beautiful, heavenly and rare nap

The Dodger/Angel series this weekend was exciting despite my boys losing two out of three. They were all really good games and lest we forget how much they ROCK, they scored 16 runs yesterday. Because showing mercy is for bitches.

I thought it would look super cool if I burned around a halter top and left the awesome ass-white shirt shape to glare off my red skin so Kiddo’s dad and I took Kiddo to Huntington Beach yesterday with every other human being in southern California. Christ, I forgot it was Memorial Day (“Mem-roll Day,” if you ask Kiddo) until I saw the $12 parking fee in the normally free lot. Vendors took advantage of the crowd and set up shop along the strip, right off the pier where I was tempted by exquisite art and handmade jewelry. Having been worn out from the sun (& bronzed a perfect gold, lil wench), Kiddo collapsed into bed and I watched movies, which is all I fucking do anymore. I am addicted to seeing something new as often as possible. Hedwig & the Angry Inch was a free On Demand feature and The Reader had arrived in the mail over the weekend.

Prop 8 is in supreme court right this minute and I’m told there should be results in one hour. I’m going to plant myself in front of the flat screen here at work and chew on my hands for a while.

-Pretty Lush

Letter from a loved one

I’ve actually reached out for guidance in the direction of my fiction. As in showed it to someone. And let them read it. With their eyes. It’s so much easier to tell people that I’m passionate about writing than it is to show it. I feel like the collective reaction is usually, ‘is she for real?’
When I say I need direction, I mean simply a few pointers, not for someone else to tell the story for me. Guide it away from that cliff it will inevitably approach if I get stuck, more or less.

I was very arrogant in the beginning of this semester. I told Ree that I would get an effortless A in speech. And then I got my first test back. And I wasn’t so sure anymore. Since then I applied myself a little harder and then even harder when it came to the persuasive speech and to be honest, my time was 7.5 minutes and I could have gone for eleven more, had I not already exceeded the limit. Tonight I find out my same sex marriage speech grade and get to read the critiques my classmates wrote on whether or not I convinced them that same sex couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples. These mean a lot more to me than I will let on.

Last night I finished the second disc of The Gangs of New York and reveled in the fact that I had successfully completed two whole DVDs in three nights. For six years now, I have not been able to watch a movie in one sitting. (See also: nap, read, sleep late, eat ice cream without sharing.) There’s always something to be done or a certain blue-eyed little bombshell to entertain. All this week as bedtime rolls around, the kid has tucked herself in and all but excused me from her sleepy presence. She usually likes to fall asleep in my bed and while I don’t mind moving her into her own when its time, feeling the weight of her forty-nine pound frame and seeing the length of it draped over my arms reminds me that she’s growing into a big girl. There will be a day that fulfilling my ten grillion kisses a day quota and laying together with our fingers interlocked will not happen and it will be because she’s a big girl and there are some things that are outside of big girls’ league, like affection for mom or silly face contests. Hurray for healthy growth and all that but if it was stunted for one more year, I really wouldn’t cry about it.

The day she stops writing me letters, she will be so grounded.

-Pretty Lush

Celebrating, writing & complaining

  The texts & calls, champagne & egg sandwich breakfast, time with fam and cards in the mail added up to a super Mother's Day. It rocked and my frenz&fam rock for making me feel special.

Me Ma’s super secret surprise was awesome field level seats at the Dodger game on Sunday. We took my little sister and my Babycake McSugarbritches and saw thirteen innings that eventually led to a loss, but it was a damn good game. I yelled myself hoarse when in the extra innings, the Giants scored and Casey Blake came back with the sole homerun of the game to re-tie. ‘Twas very exciting, indeed.

The pic is me and my gorgeous baby sis.

I haven’t been expelling as much drivel at O & H lately because in my free time I started writing fiction again. I am not programmed to do this, as I cannot see a plot to its end unless of course, its end is a crappy, untimely death, and then I will definitely see it through and cry all the damn way. The one thing I did finish in recent years was such shit that had an overall after-school special vibe that I loathed. I still shared it with some folks, hoping for some encouragement or the kind of constructive criticism that doesn’t sting and the only thing that I honestly remember was when, by word of mouth, someone who got off on making me feel like a talent-less shrew told me that their friend said it made him sick. He’s an asshole anyway, but I still refrained from trying for a while.

Though I doubt I’ll finish, the fact that over two weeks has passed and I’m still working out characters and sub plots excitedly makes me really happy. Not like accomplished-happy. Just like, if I’m going to tell people my only passion is the written word, then maybe I should live up to it, even if it is in the privacy of my own PC and all that. Also, eighteen pages and 54,000 word count, BOOYAH.

Kiddo and I went to the beach for a bit on Saturday morning. We had a quick picnic on our towels and when Kiddo tried to narrate our doings, she said, “We’re having a bitch pic—“ and then looked at me like the earth was about to open and swallow her whole, a la Land Before Time, at my command. I said, “Beach picnic. Yep, we are.” Her relief could be felt in middle America.

I sent this little convo to her dad via text, and later, when she was hit by a wave and yelled at the ocean, “What is the meaning of this?!” I sent him that too. He said, “And then she told the Pacific to ‘stop being a picnic. I mean, a bitch.’”

At some point during our tide battling, my septum ring fell out and washed out to sea, I assume. I decided I’m okay with this and will leave it out since it seems my friends and family disagree with my choice in that specific facial piercing anyway, and all I ever hear is that I should get rid of it and re-pierce the side. Majority wins and I am defeated.

Saturday night saw Ree and I at a very small venue not far from our house, taking Captain Morgan shots and waiting for a group of friends to arrive. We met up and got our tickets to go inside. My friend Becky was friends with an opener that night, who was surprisingly good, but it was still totally awkward for me, as this was a rap/hip hop show and Method Man was headlining. I tried to compare the frenzy and excitement the two hundred people or so had to see him with how I would feel about a band/musician I loved but the vibe was lost entirely on me. I try not to be the one to write off a genre, having opened up a lot to underground hip hop and even some catchy, crappy pop (but if the words ‘poker face’ are uttered in my presence ONE MORE TIME I will use deadly force to apprehend the utterer) but I am just not much of a rap fan and never will be. This doesn’t change the fact that the night was a lot of fun but the crowd and overall feel of the place was not for me.

Plus I couldn’t catch a buzz to save my life. I probably would have become a persuaded woman under the influence but there was no such luck.

Oh my god, textsfromlastnight.com is fucking hilarious. (805): she lunged for my junk like it was the cure for swine flu.
Thank you, Jamie!

-Pretty Lush

PS. Art sale over at ShanaLogic. Cute overload, my god.

Just another literary girl crush

I was reading an Anne Koedt essay and was forced at gunpoint to quote the following on bisexuality:

"Perhaps we will finally return to a simpler word like 'sexuality,' where the relevant information is simply 'sex among persons.'"

WELL I'LL BE DAMNED. LOOKIT THAT THUR, KIDS.

On feminism: "I do not think women have a political obligation to the movement to change; they should do so only if they see it in their own self-interest. If the women’s movement believes that feminism is in women’s self-interest, then the task at hand is to make it understood through shared insights, analysis, and experience. That is, feminism is an offering, not a directive, and one therefore enters a woman’s private life at her invitation only. Thus a statement like 'you don’t love women if you don’t sleep with them' must above all be dismissed on the grounds that it is confusing the right to discuss feminism with the right to, uninvited, discuss a woman’s private life and make political judgments about it."

*sigh*

-Pretty Lush

Another example of my protege

Everyone knows it's the Funniest Thing Ever when someone eats shit.

I have this particularly baggy pair of black pajama pants that I bought for an especially long and worrisome flight, worn when cozing around the house always. Twice in the past week, they have betrayed me. In their bagginess, they have all but absorbed my foot when I step forward and taken me down, once landing hard on my shin for an audience and once into the bathroom door that not-so-softly caught me mid-fall. Graceful, I am not.

Ha ha ha. You're welcome.

Last night I sat Kiddo down with a stack of blank cards and a list of people to address them to. I gave her the basic concept of, ‘tell them something nice to thank them for coming to your party.’ One of the notes said, “Are you glad that I love you? Love, Kiddo.” Another said, “Are you happy my party was fun? Love, Kiddo.” Of the six, there was a different message in every one, every word spelled correctly except the one to my brother, addressed: dear unckle. I am blown away by this kid’s ability to read and write every single day. Not to mention THRILLED.

Laura Silverman is flippin’ hot, I realized.

The weather left me in a state of shock yesterday. I haven’t seen such heavy rain in a long time. Multiple times the sun peaked out, only to disappear and leave us in a downpour. Luckily there was no rain during either of my freeway commutes because PEOPLE BE STUPID. A little rain makes for a lot of idiots.

Vegas countdown: eighteen days.

-Pretty Lush

Pretend writer

Technically, I’m not posting twice in one day. Because my goddamned re-write of the last post, since the original was Bermuda Triangulated doesn’t count for shit since I was so pissed when I wrote it. Again.

I was thinking about why I blog after commenting on a post I read that gave excuses suggestions on why people do it. (It is a networking crime that I cannot recall the post to link.) For me, there are several reasons, none digressing too far from any other writer with any frequency. Above keeping friends and family in my foul-mouthed loop, and even more than meeting new like-minded people, and far superior to gaining any notoriety (believe that or not) is that I can’t imagine not doing it.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I played heartbreakee for the first time back in 2001ish. I did it up with all the bells and whistles. I really let it take over me completely and much as I look back and cringe at the melodrama, I’m glad for it. Allowing something to cut me that deep and uproot me so completely, made me retreat into myself and back out again only online, as I still needed some interaction, just please don’t look at me while we do this. I talked endlessly with my friend Katy Jovin, introduced through another online friend, Matt. Katy once offered, very simply, that a good place for really venting to an unbiased audience (because we all want to be heard) was a personal diary website she used. I jumped to the site that she recommended and started writing. I have not stopped since. This May will mark eight years that I’ve been posting regularly. (Unfortunately I don’t have eight years worth of writing, since deleting my first diary, and losing some posts in a hacking that affected the entire site.) I’ve met some of the most amazing people on that website. They know the things about me that no one else knows and see the things that no one else sees. They know the dark underbelly and they support and they’re the best goddamned people that ever happened to me, and writing in front of them is the best thing I ever did.

I still use that site almost every single day. The only reason I ever decided to follow the blog trend as well was because I’m passionate to write. I love to do it and I get urges to completely immerse myself in it. I could never make a living out of it – my creativity is very limited in story telling. But I still want to do it, all the time, every day. It’s like my daughter’s explanation on why she touches herself (whoooole ‘notha post), “It feels good. So I do it.” I simply went public, censored the personal bits (I never use my daughter’s name, although it isn’t difficult to find out, and I discuss my relationships at the bare minimum), and hoped for the best. I don’t need an off the chart stats reader or hundreds of comments or praise or popularity – I just want to fucking write. And I want to reach a couple other kids who want to write and I want to get the occasional criticism or compliment. I want to wring the fodder from everything I do and expel it however I can. It’s therapeutic and cathartic and one thousand things someone else has already said. I took on this outlet to find another side of me, the side that might show if I kept some things to myself, but pulled the cover off of other things. Looking back at my beginning posts, I cringe. I see where I said things I didn’t mean or outright lied because of the truth I was afraid to show. As I flip through the last few months worth of posts, there is very little of that. There’s exaggeration and sugar coating and defense mechanisms like sarcasm and denial, but this is about as honest as it gets with me and I appreciate the hell out of being able to put it somewhere. I can’t finish a story to save my life, but I could ramble on about the mundane events of the last twenty-fours with excitement. I don’t care who sees it or who likes it, as long as no one takes it away.

I wax poetic about my personal diary site and the wonders of writing because it’s all I have. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been remotely good at and the only thing I ever stuck with. Dear lord, if you know me and the amount of things I have started and never finished. If my means to write were taken from me, I’d make new ones. If the new ones failed, I’d find a way because I lack many things, but never the determination to get the words out.

-Pretty Lush

RIP, Katy.

This is how I spend my time

I’m in a good mood, I did not kill my dog yet, and I haven’t dreamt of a celebrity in two days. I’ve nothing more to give, so I leave you with better material than I could have churned out anyway.

Some of the best places I stumbled into this week:

Joe Rogan, on the war and the UFC’s efforts. (such a vague description on my part, but so fucking worth the read. Non-political.)

An old post by the SlackMistress (11/06), an ode to dive bars

Another older SlackMistress post (12/06), on baby’s first f-bomb

You're welcome.

Tales from the lesbian bar to come - wish me some tail.

-Pretty Lush

On fate

I don’t have a motive here. I really don’t.

For the past few years, since I started feeling out my beliefs with my gut and not by the mass’ influence, I’ve said I do not believe in fate. Maybe the feeling stemmed from an unshakeable stubbornness and my being unwilling to sacrifice my faults to someone else’s predetermined script. When I consider the concept, it sounds fucking great. The eternally single are just waiting for their moment in scene forty-seven where they lock eyes over steaming mugs of coffee in a cliché café setting. The unexpected deaths of loved ones and the ensuing days and weeks and months of mourning can eventually be written off as some part of some plan detailed on some blueprint penned by some author and behind it all is that one reason. Why wouldn’t I want to fall back on fate, or look to it for hope? It’s so easy to say, “This happened for a reason. Everything happens for a reason.” It’s also a crutch that I can’t put my weight on. I could pretend but I would always know that thinking too much or dwelling too long on the idea of fate as my hope or my excuse for any one incident would result in my free falling descent, straight onto my fucking face. I believe in fantastic coincidences and positive/negative energy but fate? When it comes to my excelling in anything, or my personal pride, or my lesson learned after making myself out to be the perfect ass I am so good at being, or my head over Chucks tumble after what goes down as a horribly bad decision – I’d rather be responsible for those. I love knowing my own free will is what guides me through this great and hideous looming. Sure, it shakes my bowels loose not having a prop, tangible or otherwise, but in my own rare moments of greatness, it feels so good to be solely responsible. No matter how hard that job is, or how heavy the burden is – it’s mine. I’m no marionette, following a defined story. I’m free to go either direction at the fork in the road and it makes this adventure that much better.

Thoughts?

-Pretty Lush

AKA Twitterpated

A co-worker of mine lent me the book Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. I believe she wanted me to read it because to her, it read strange and weird and a little dark and she associated that with me. I don't think I ever would have picked this book up on my own and so it became a guilt read. It sat in the same spot on my desk for weeks while I finished other books I had prioritized over it. While there are still at least a dozen untouched books on my shelf at home, I picked up Middlesex before going down to cover the reception desk the other day. I'm thirty-four pages in and I can easily say that it is already some of the best writing I've ever seen. I wouldn't call Jeffrey Eugenides a favorite yet, but if this book finishes the way it has started, I might give The Virgin Suicides another shot.

They stood gazing at each other, as Desdemona's stomach began to feel funny again. And to explain the sensation I have to tell you another story. In his presidential address at the annual convention of the Society for the Study of Sexuality in 1968, Dr. Luce introduced the concept of "periphescence." The word itself means nothing; Luce made it up to avoid any etymological associations. The state of periphescence, however, is well known. It denotes the first fever of human pair bonding. It causes giddiness, elation, a tickling on the chest wall, the urge to climb a balcony on the rope of the beloved's hair. Periphescence denotes the initial drugged and happy bedtime where you sniff your lover like a scented poppy for hours running. (It lasts, Luce explained, up to two years - tops.) ...to Desdemona periphescence felt like a lake of warmth flooding up from her abdomen and across her chest. It spread like the 180-proof, fiery flood of a mint green Finnish liqueur. With the pumping of two efficient glands in her neck, it heated her face...

While I don't know about sniffing him/her like a scented poppy or having an urge to climb their hair, I love this rush feeling. I love the concept; the scientific dubbing of the physical/mental overwhelming onslaught of a deep crush and the author's quick description of how the character felt it. If this was my copy, I'd highlight that part as I tend to do. Let's nevermind the fact that Desdemona is looking at her brother...

Transcription

My friend detailed a dream to me. I fictionalized it. Because I'm that bored.

The glowing blue LED lights form 9:32 on the dash. Three hours of dark, dry stretch on the fifteen have rolled behind us. Vegas bound and antsy, we’ve talked incessantly, laughed uncontrollably and finally settled into a comfortable silence. I steal glances toward the driver’s side of the car, wondering if he’s as excited as I am, if it’s apparent in my expression and omnipresent grin that I’m all but bursting with anticipation.

The lanes narrow into one way, each direction. There are hardly any other drivers out and our headlights seem to illuminate for miles. I start to notice the speedometer arrow creeping upward. As we gain speed there ahead looms a slow moving semi-truck. In a minute, we’re only a mile behind it.

I hear a sharp intake of breath.
I see his wide eyes.
He’s lurching forward, stomping on nothing and we creep closer to the truck.

I manage a meek, “Slow down…” although it seems useless. He can’t seem to reach the pedal. What the fuck is going on here? My body is tightening; tensing painfully as I realize a collision may become inevitable. Still he’s stomping, reaching, extending his legs as far as he can. He’s no longer smiling but fumbling, moving faster, kicking his legs under the wheel to a seemingly silent tune, reaching only a black void.

In the exact same moment, we explode into panic.

“What the fuck, I can’t reach the brake!”
“What do you mean you can’t fucking reach it?!”
“It’s not there… there’s nothing there!”
“HIT THE FUCKING BRAKE!”
“DAMN IT WOMAN, I CAN’T REACH THE PEDAL!”

We rapidly draw nearer to the truck. My mouth goes dry and my eyes widen. My shoulders are up around my ears and still furiously, he’s reaching for the brake, extending his torso and fumbling with his feet in the dark nothing, hoping to eventually make contact.

“IF YOU KILL ME, I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN!”
“BITCH, THAT MAKES NO SENSE!”

The world shifts into slow motion. Like we’re under water, I hear muffled sounds but no words. Nothing is concrete and all is fluid. The semi rounds an abrupt bend in the road and I see its back right wheels leave the pavement. It’s going to tip. It’s going to fucking roll. Thousands of pounds of metal and machinery are going to careen down in a cataclysmic split second. I can count the measured seconds it takes for it to be sideways. I keep thinking it will right itself, regain some balance even though it’s clear that the top heavy vehicle is doomed. As it hits the pavement, the enclosed bed of the truck explodes open. I’ve forgotten about our brakes, about our little car on its eighty mile an hour journey toward certain death. From within the mangled remains of the truck spring forth hundreds of glinting metal objects. The truck is skidding, sliding, grinding with deafening metal on metal screams. The objects from within, a sort of miniature cluster of silver, fly skyward as if escaping from the confines of the vehicle. I crane my neck to see them before they begin to rain down slowly. There’s dozens of them, hundreds of them. I can see them up close as they crack the windshield. They’re some sort of micro-machine. Their purpose is beyond me. They’re falling heavily onto our still moving car, pounding down loud on the roof, the hood, the windshield. I’m screaming at the site, the sound of it. He’s screaming, swerving to avoid the disastrous pile of truck before us.

“STOP!”

He jerks from his sleep, waking me in the process. It was all a nightmare.