October 2005 Archives

from the "are you fucking kidding?" section of NOW's mailing list:

Referred to as "Scalito" for his philosophical resemblance to Justice Antonin Scalia, federal appeals court Judge Alito is a clear opponent of reproductive freedom, protections for workers, and other individual rights. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Alito authored a solo 1991 dissent supporting a state law that required women to inform their husbands before being permitted to obtain an abortion. In his opinion, Alito brushed aside the concern that battered women could face serious consequences if forced to discuss abortion with a violent spouse, saying that the evidence "provides no basis for determining how many women would be adversely affected." The Supreme Court rejected his position in 1992.

Judge Alito's lone dissent in Sheridan v. E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Company indicated that he would add difficult evidentiary hurdles for women who sue for sex discrimination in the workplace under Title VII. His dissent in Bray v. Marriott Hotels was described by the majority opinion as an attempt to "eviscerate" use of Title VII in race discrimination cases by imposing almost impossible evidentiary burdens on plaintiffs. Sadly these are just a few of Judge Alito's many opinions which confirm our conclusion that if Judge Alito ascends to the Supreme Court, civil rights and women's rights will be in peril. Alito's record is also replete with decisions attacking the separation of church and state, and permitting discrimination against people with disabilities, seniors and immigrants.

we hope, we can breathe for a sec.

i don't know how to make the pink highlighter stop.
my computer exploded in the kitchen, like the meth lab behind matt and leroy's house. legal, but lethal in its own way.
then jessica, my best friend, sent the hit it or quit it company emac via post.
all is back in order. i can look at the internet again. the pony sticker on the mast of the monitor is my spirit guide. totally riding an american quarterhorse through the web's windy cloisters. free, free. you can tell we are free because our hairs are flailing.

shall return after i catch up on 200 hours of work and 1500 emails. but i just wantchya to know:

as of monday, out the trunk or on the subway, i will be offering issues of the eighteenth volume of HIT IT OR QUIT IT magazine to NYC and boroughs. dial j for fire (julianneshepherd@yahoo.com) if you desire a copy.

JAY Z & NAS IN '08

[a pristine manifestation of '05 late-stage capitalism "squash beef / get paper"--merger mentality!-- and post-G-UNOT, up was the only way to go--but if we love jay more than either god, the god, or the sitting gov't, how important is it that rap's president and the VP from QB made a good-faith move in the midst of the "real" president's quicksand hour? This particular mending feels so big because the rest of the house is in shambles. Jay and Nas: THE NEW COVENANT.]

while i slept, and while my computer was fritzy, my blog was redesigned. I woke up and the saintly glimmering vision of Jona was there, or here rather, wielding gradients of pink and brown and weird dog photos and pictures of annie oakley, the autodidactic sharpshooter, who is not actually from wyoming, but whose name is "synonymous with firearms and entertainment." My name is synonymous with lighting fires and edutainment so we're dovetailin.

mi pdx aorta-crew, 31knots, hits glasshouse in bklyn 10/27, playing with the planet the and new england roses (brendan "barr" "positive force" fowler, jd samson, sarah shapiro). come meet the fam. they practice their guitars every day, sometimes twice. and jay w. consumes ONLY frozen pizzas, yet has miraculously never contracted scurvy.

was the original title, but in the same way Sonic Youth's "goo" was initially titled "blowjob?" after a raymond pettibone piece, we knew it wouldn't fly but had to try. context. alas, the suicide girls piece! coscribed w/ the honorable j.hopper. writing it was funtimes.

because David Stern requires it.

It's also nice to know that in Mo Cheeks' absence, the Blazers' new coach is adept in the art of denial. maybe the dudes would chill if john nash wasn't such an asshole?

Rasheed Wallace Google Alert, you treat me so good.

1976. It requires a certain complexity of emotions to sing an optimistic number about your divorce while the ex-husband in question plays the bassline, but Christine McVie did it in '76 with "Don't Stop." I think everyone was getting divorced in the '70s, not the least of them five different members of Fleetwood Mac, so it went to number one; "Don't Stop" also nicely captured the ginger exhale of the Carter era, the thoughts of a country resigned to broad optimism, in lieu of imagining what could possibly be next.

In 1976, Vice President Dick Cheney was but a glimmer in the devil's rheumy eye, back in “doubleya-why-yo" ciphoning gas from military commando death-squad tankers or some shit.

I was born in WYO in '76, which has everything to do with the fact that I spent all summer dreaming of that cheerful eulogy, "Don't Stop," crawling beneath its fingernails for this "project" I'm "doing" which "jumps off" in or before "the year 1991," the year Bill Clinton and James Carville repurposed the song (and its implications) for the campaign. After August, I thought I was through with that song, cause I was reeeeeal sick of its 4/4 bobbleheadedness after the 178th listen--but it came on the stereo in the coffeeshop on Sunday AT THE VERY MOMENT I was reading Judith "How do I live with myself?!" Miller's essay in the Times about her grand jury testimony, aka "How I learned to stop worrying and GIVE WHIG A FREE PASS BACK INTO THE SHADOWY CREVICE OF HADES."
WHEREUPON "Don't Stop"'s biting social meaning on Oct. 16, 2005, hit hard in the last paragraph, WHEREIN Scooter Libby is described as "MISSING" Miller's REPORTAGE. Which part was he missing--the part where he fed her false information about yellowcake, or the part where she disseminated said information to the american people via the Times like an airborn pathogen--information which Libby (and crew) then recycled to drum up public support for an unjust war? That, incidentally, made their bosses' clicks astronomically wealthier? Gosh. In J-School they might deign to label that shit "DISINGENUOUS."

Reportage.

I cried.

Then I laughed. On the preceding page, the Times (paper of record/paper of ill repute) had printed a "charticle" detailing the "satisfaction" of workers in various government agencies. The employees at the Department of Homeland Security clock in a score of 19.2% job satisfaction on a scale of 100. The General Services Admin., however, is fucking STOKED at 68.1.

Today, though... today I know no irony. Only joy.

"Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,

Don't stop, it'll soon be here,

It'll be better than before."

Word to Atlantic Ave, Rumors and the look on the little man's face. Somebody gimme a megaphone: NATRONA COUNTY 4EVER!

JUST NOW:

Juelz Santana on Hot 97: "'A! A! A! That slogan's gettin real big. Everybody's saying it. I'm gonna come out with the 'A' shirt real quick."

Angie Martinez: "How do you spell that?"

Juelz: "it's just an 'A.'"

Angie: "Alright alright."

Juelz: "Yeah, slogan's gettin real big. I was down in Atlanta and Usher introduced me like that--he said this is my boy Juelz... 'A'!"

Angie: "Well you were in Atlanta."

Juelz: "I didn't even think of it like that."

as of oct. 1, if you're a mexican expatriate living in the us you are now able to pick up yr ballot to vote in the mexican elections. "Undocumented U.S. residents" who "presumably will not want to be seen anywhere near consular offices" can request a ballot here.

Here's the question of the century(/ies): "Respondent moved to the U.S. and achieved U.S. citizenship because the Mexican system was totally corrupt. Why vote in a fixed election?"

Por que? "The Banco de México, the nation’s central bank, just announced that remittances sent home by Mexicans living abroad (mainly in the U.S.) rose 18 percent for the January 1, 2005 to August 31, 2005 period. Through August the amount rose to US$12.956 billion, compared to US$10.972 billion for the same eight-month period in 2004. It should also be noted, that if not for crude oil prices being sky-high the remittances would be Mexico’s number one source of foreign exchange."

karl rove! always smokin that la la la! scooter libby always smokin that la la la!

"love in fear," a patiently written heart-meditation by the constantines, totally listenable here, is today's official jam: the "love despite the strange wind's blowing when we love in fear." then something about making out on heavy sheets in ontario despite the oppressive cold. i think tournament of hearts is a concept album about doing it for 246 days straight in the arctic w/no electricity, before being rescued by a pack of superintelligent wolf-dogs and whisked away to a magical underground cave-slash-sustainable farm where you're fed edible flowers and valued for yr tenderness. but i haven't listened to it enough to know. the last lyric on "lizaveta" : "be sensitive/you were born to live" yeah!

in other news, the final tracklist of the remy ma album is missing all the really sweet sensitive affecting and/or personal numbers... leaving the ones where she articulates her desire to take everyone out. further, it seems the track she wrote about abortion has been sacrificed to the same pyre that ate jean grae's track about the same. which is understandable, i suppose, but disappointing nonetheless.

in other other news, a radioactive spider bit me on the face last night while i slept.

exo reminds us: the untold story of emmett louis till opens wide in american cities tomorrow. nyc: it's playing at the magic johnson 9 lowes in harlem. you know the story: emmett till, 14-yr-old black kid from chicago, horribly beaten and shot to death by two white men for allegedly whistling at/talking to a white woman in jim crow mississippi. his killers were acquitted by an all-white jury; the murder helped jumpstart what would become the civil rights movement. this very documentary prompted the justice dept. to reopen the case last year. Part of proceeds go towards Katrina relief. let's go.

it's been like two years so it's ok to reiterate the joyous time-vacuum that is the iTunes celebrity playlist. how else would we learn Stephen King's (correct) opinion of Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" ("The Beach Boys song to which all others must be measured") or that jared leto does not apparently listen to music past my so-called life era top 10 alt-radio (The Cure's "Fascination Street" makes him want to put on "lipstick and fishnets, 'nuff said"). Or Cowboy Troy loves "Baby Got Back" because it is the "most popular song in the clubs I've come across" or that Goapele loves both Common "Faithful" and Bilal, whose album "didn't get the attention it deserved" (i accidentally saw bilal play the other night and it was, indeed, like wrapping one's self in chiffon and hang-gliding slow from a mtntop, if you, unlike jaguar wright, are still ok with marrying neo. shhhhhhhhhhh)

Gus Van Sant loves Joni Mitchell "Free Man in Paris," as do I. This is late, but if you have the music issue of Interview magazine lying around, from a couple months ago w/Pete huffing Doughtery on the cover, there's a terrific conversation between Joni and Camille Paglia, who breaks down some Joni work in her new book "camille paglia reads poetry" ( title not to scale) which i read, partly, and is dense and sharp--we like camille paglia better on the lit-crit tip than basically--anywhere else.

This, on the other hand, makes me wanna run around the block waving a neon-rainbow windsock to the Neptunes instrumental from "La La La (Excuse Me Miss again)". Cheney, dark father, just "chilling" at WHIG meetings. Some of which may have included Judith Miller? Hmm. Isn't that a little strange? To paraphrase John Gregory Dunne (RIP): in nations less fastidious than ours, willful deception of the American people might be construed as an impeachable offense.

If you have a used karaoke machine you want to sell, email julianneshepherd@yahoo.com.

HarrietMiers.blogspot.com has been rendered obsolete by the actual documents of the actual Harriet Miers, which hit the smoking gun today: funnier than fiction. Harriet rocks with that Anne Geddes stationery like "whatever."
When I was living down in the Bible Belt, a midsize city smack dab in tent-revival territory, often the Miers type of evangelical churchlady would stop me on the street, say hello, then breathlessly inform me she'd "pray for me," if I appeared sullen or depressed. There was no motive for conversion; it was presumed I was already Christian. It was more like a borderline-exhibitionist expression of godliness (and, by that token, the inherent superiority of la vida pura) in a city where "Jesus" loomed at all times and how down you were with said Jesus was your prime well of cultural capital. Where your steadfast affiliation with god defines your social "value," making godliness a particularly frightening kind of social contest. (Hence the doling out of prayers like Jay-z flings dollar bills: baller status depends on how unfuckwithable your roll. The deeper you go with Young Jeezy, the better the odds of building with the god when he comes out of retirement. Et cetera. Sorry.) So these interactions were fairly common, and infuriating... but I was obsessed with the telephoto absurdity and well-meaning condescension of women who cared enough to ask Jesus for my moodiness to subside. Many of the women I knew there were clearly harboring some deep, neglected emotional pain, numbed by their blinding devotion to Jesus. But the same evangelical nice ladies will shank yr ass with a tract real quick when you tell 'em how you feel about abortion, premarital sex, communism, the book you're reading, living "in sin," et cetera. (As an aside, people get married RILL young in the bible belt, I think mostly cause they wanted to have sex but still "be Christian." I had a cache of acquaintances who'd been married and divorced by 21 for this very reason.)

I feel like Harriet Miers has some of those qualities... though she burns at low-wattage, she seems like a "nice person"... her character judgement of bush based on his chauvinist dictatorial charm rather than his chauvinist dictatorial policies... numbed by her blinding devotion to Jesus... hence, uh... the sheer terror of Dr. and Mrs. "Best Governor Ever" directly affecting our lives for the next 32 1/2 gazillion years. Obviously, I would not like to see Harriet Miers, official presidential mouthpiece, wielding any kind of judicial power. I would maybe like for Fox to give her an Everybody Loves Raymond style sitcom that I could watch only once, before flipping over to the Discovery Channel special Chimpanzee Behavior in Relation to Humans as narrated by Pharrell Williams.

So yeah we do know about Ms. Miers' abortion stance, courtesy Bush's hearty touting of her commitment to her conservative right-wing religion (unless WHIG planted the story, that is). P.S. Karl Rove and James Dobson in a room together alone for any length of time is another scary fucking thought.

According to tiny.abstractdynamics.org, the weblog run by my best friend and colleague Jessica R. Hopper, the new issue of Hit It or Quit It magazine will make a satisfying snap sound when it hits your front stoop by Halloween. Hit It or Quit It magazine is America's only feminist music magazine (inclusive of hip-hop and men), and it is edited by Hopper, myself, JR Nelson, Miles "Standish" Raymer, and the Ghost of Chris Ryan. Release party in a phone booth on the Seychelles sometime around Nov. 1, also if anyone wants to sell a karaoke machine, we're still buying. My roommate has already magneted her list of potential karaoke jams to the fridgidaire--"Im a Woman," "Heartbreaker," "Don't rain on my Parade"... "anything by TLC, Suzanne Vega, or Hole"--written in cursive letters with a kelly green pen on notebook paper. How can you resist such a document of hope! Sell us your karaoke machine! It will be "Cool!"

fire up the wood stove and turn on the cider dudes

FAITH EVANS' A FAITHFUL CHRISTMAS
SET FOR OCTOBER 25th RELEASE

Album Features Two Original Songs And Nine Classics, Including
"White Christmas," "Santa Baby," "O Come All Ye Faithful" And Songs
Penned By James Brown, Donny Hathaway And Frank Sinatra


Leave it to the first lady of R&B to put some soul back into the holiday season. On A Faithful Christmas, due in stores October 25th, Grammy-winner Faith Evans wraps her legendary voice around such standards as "Merry Christmas Baby," "White Christmas," "Santa Baby," "Christmas Song" Sinatra's "Mistletoe And Holly" and the beloved Christmas carol "O Come All Ye Faithful." But she also includes several gems that haven't been as widely recorded: "Soulful Christmas," which James Brown co-wrote and recorded in the 1960s, "The Day That Love Began," which appeared on late '60s/early '70s holiday records by Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and "This Christmas," written by Donny Hathaway and Nadine McKinnor. A Faithful Christmas features production from Todd Russaw, Kowan "Q" Paul, Gil Smith II and PJ Morton.

Evans further salutes the godfather of soul, sampling Brown's "Soulful Christmas" on her cover of the song and his version of "Merry Christmas Baby" on "Christmas Wish," a new song that Evans co-wrote for the album. The collection leads off with another original - "Happy Holiday," written by Evans and Chyna Griffin. "Happy Holiday" is rooted firmly in the present, celebrating the season yet acknowledging the ephemeral nature of happiness and the plight of those who are literally left out in the cold at this time of year.

2005 has been a remarkable year for Evans. The First Lady, her Capitol debut and the follow-up to her 2001 Platinum release, Faithfully, has turned out to be the highest-charting album of her career (it debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 in April), leading to appearances on 'The Late Show With David Letterman," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "Today" and "The View" and yielding three hit singles - "Again," "Mesmerized" and "Tru Love."

mi friends eric johnson of pulseprogramming and e*rock of e*rock have started a record label called frykbeat. please watch the panther video, which features charlie salas-humara assuming the panther persona, a creepy falsetto pop-star strung mighty high, residing in a home of cardboard. If I am not mistaken, this track is about a psychiatrist, but i could simply be mislead by all the twitching.

i once witnessed charlie plug a gorilla amp into an outlet in Pioneer Square, portland, and hijack bewildered downtown for three whole songs. remains one of the funniest moments of my life.
All his lyrics are "like that."

Today my mom taught me to say some curse words in Spanish, the old ones from the '50s when she grew up, and she was giggling like she was going to hell. "Hijo de la chingada," hee hee hee, "that one's the worst! Don't tell anyone you're cursing with your mother on the phone." Such a pleasure, it was. So familiar, that crossroads: reverent, so Catolica!, but reveling behind the proper mask of piety.

Sandra Cisneros in Woman Hollering Creek:

Virgencita de Guadalupe. For a long time I wouldn't let you in my house. I couldn't see you without seeing my ma each time my father came home drunk and yelling, blaming everything that ever went wrong in his life on her. I couldn't look at your folded hands without seeing my abuela mumbling, "My son, my son, my song..." Couldn't look at you without blaming you for all the pain my mother and her mother and her mother and all our mothers' mothers have put up with in the name of God. Couldn't let you in my house.

That you could have the power to rally a people when a country was born, and again during civil war, and during a famworkers' strike in California made me think maybe there is power in my mother's patience, strenght in my grandmother's endurance. Because those who suffer have a special power, don't they? The power of understanding someone else's pain. And understanding is the beginning of healing.

This is a story about control.

The statue: a rendering of Alison Lapper in the rotating place in Trafalgar Square, historically the domain of generals and monarchs; Lapper, born with the birth defect phomocilia syndrome which left her armless and short-legged, is depicted nude and pregnant.

The crux: several British art critics and some of the passersby deride the statue as "repellant," "uninteresting," or "like overused soap." They want it replaced. They insist it's not her lack of legs or arms making them uncomfortable. And they're telling the truth: it's not. What frightens them is the sight of a pregnant woman; particularly, a limbless one assuming a throne in a hall of men who've maimed. The sight of life, extant and defiant, in the face of those who would harness and suppress it. The power of a woman with a wombful despite her inability to walk: David Whiting, "stepson of Lord Dowding, a hero of the Battle of Britain," cannot even fathom this powerful-ass mystery. Pregnant woman fear = on some hate yr own mother tip!

Related, if laterally: Ghostface got my heart. Just before "Holla," throng'a main Wu players (cappadonna!!) holding rowdy court: "Can I get the blue light?" [Blue spotlight on his face, baby getting all romantic.] "Hear this music? I was born in 1970. My parents used to fuck to this music. Respect. If you don't got soul, you don't get me."

Introducing his son, who rapped a coupla verses: "This my son. The son-god. He came out my dick."

You knew this, but Ghosty drops his gauzy je ne sais quoi like a blunt object.

The following is the artist's rendition of what last night felt like:
*(**&^%&^%$^%#%$%^&&^%^%$$@#%#$%^%^&*&^

Baby's getting all romantic: City was everything. Last night looked like the year we all bit placenta. Just born and on the come up. And the average age of the dudes in the front was like 18, and most of them were actually 15, untethered on a Sunday, the day before a holiday, no school and buoyed accordingly. I was injected, tooken back 8-9 yrs yet fixed in molten now (DAYTONA? BE EASY? Either way, it's KEEPING us ALIVE). Cause I can't do shit without the weight of this: It was total time-stop time, and again I found solace and hope in remembering what livin was like before GW, before uncorroborated plans by "al-Qaeda" (hiding out in... Iraq?! ha ha) to "bomb" trains with "baby-strollers", before the Army recruiters posted up in the lobby of the 4-5-6 station at 125th and Lex and wrangled the babies selling MetroCard swipes at the turnstile to sign here. I saw that with my own two eyes. Hoping these moments can point us toward the exit sign of this nasty labyrinth.

What it'll be like is like (*@*&(*&^&%^@^%^$%$^%!%^&!@&%^&%^!^&&^!%&%^^&%!^&

Ghost, pon de exuent, said "God put me here to take care of y'all." Man I was wondering who the messiah was gonna be. Frankincense & myrrh, fried fish halibut and Heini: Black Jesus. What's up.

'sole news but fuckit: jessica sendeth the funniest shinola ever: Harriet Miers' blog: I think you can probably tell who came out on top in Miers v Six Vodka Tonics! My first case and I lost it!! LOL

conducted an exceedingly amazing interview today with a certain purveyor of ice creams & clipse tapes. Contender for best quote not included in final copy: "The DaVinci Code is a great book... But I’m an A&E, Discovery Channel, History Channel mobster. If I’m not watching like, the animals and shit, if I’m not watching baboons fighting and shit, chimpanzee behavior in comparison to humans, I love a lot of those discovery shows and history shows and ancient mysteries of the bible. And when I’m not watching that? It’s definitely SpongeBob, South Park, you know what I’m saying? With a fresh bowl of Cinnamon Toast or FruitLoops or some shit."

This has the stench of a "cover your ass" story. Ship is sinking! Let our hearts be free again!

Keep it in your memory: Ethan Swan, an awesome fellow, sends a link for donation alternatives to the Red Cross.

Some people have just published their first books, which are surely genius. Your favorite multitalent, VJ/professor Josh Kun, for instance. And his book Audiotopia: Music, Race and America. Out November 5. I am pumped to read it--Josh can make theory sing, an academic writer whose prose is immensely pleasurable. He is even funny!

From the homo hip-hop party I attended tonight:

* People actually dance to that DTP cut off the shawnna & dtp records--you know, the one where ludacris' tagline on chorus is "get 'em/what!" (the name escapes me--"RPM," that's it--but i cannot dance, or even bounce, gracefully to it. main problem: everyone DJss the indiscernable clean version, the censorship of which eviscerates 55% of the lyrics and mystifies an already-petulant rhythm pattern.)

* Juelz Santana's "mic check" cleared the floor entirely, except for one exuberant dude in crispy white business button-down, who vogued and arabesqued to its end.

( jeezy, on the other hand... the freaks came out en masse. And freaked. snow, so titillating? )

* Mounted televisions aired slide photos of Remy Martin in four separate poses, superimposed over psychedelic fractal backgrounds, a la the "buffalo stance" video (or paperrad aesthetics). The DJ is apparently loving Remy as queer icon; he will love her more, perhaps, after hearing the song on her new record which talks about strapping on a dildo and pegging "your man" as a way to get to "you."

Yesterday. in that little bookstore on Court Street, my coffee cup burst open violently and unexpectedly onto the biography of Truman Capote, the cover of which now depicts "Philip Seymour Hoffman as." I dreaded the book's ruin, or the potential for its ruin--not because of the particular book, but because the bookstore itself is special (though mostly i just like its scent)--and before the clerk arrived with paper towels, I sopped up the mess with my white running thermal.
trying to make friends before the apocalypse.

It's like, Court & Bergen. They have the requisite number of Benjamin Kunkels in stock, but also carry independent presses and chapbooks of neighborhood denizens, and the occasional creepy Cobble Hill-indoctrination kids book, such as "Urban Babies Wear Black" (urban babies wear black... urban babies drink lattes... urban babies attend the opera--in a boardbook meant for kids ages 1-3? solipsism-- i mean, let the kid have a fantasy life for just like, three seconds before you pass on the jaded accoutrements of the manhattan sophisticate, sheesh.

2:17 am 10/10/05*******good god CAPPADONNA***

Serendipity. On the Jewish new year, I was playing good Catholic girl for the first time in a lunar cycle, wearing the Virgen de Guadalupe emblem on the bust of my pink tee, reading about Mighty Guadalupana Coatlaxopeuh Tonantzin, and clicking Hail Marys off an imaginary rosary, for reals, when I heard the dude. He was manic and conspiratorial, a subway train chatter, white cat reddened by sun or inebriates, hissing see, see, like Jimmy Cagney, or people weaned on Jimmy Cagney--like my mother’s generation, like how mom’s best friend Inez Monjaras (god rest her soul) sprinkled perfect staccato sees and so I sez in her natural speech, unself-conscious and rambling out like a Chevy.

So he sez:

Read about your government! He's holding onto the pole but his arm whooshes up; tobacco flicks out from the half-smoked roll-your-own in his hand. Read about your government! IT’S ALL THERE…

IN REVELATIONS.

The N train’s bumpy over the bridge, but this guy was just tipsy. He pitched over crooked and stuck his face near an eggy but fancy, palm-headed fellow with an iPod, plaid shirt and specs, early twenties, sez he's a graphic designer. Tipsy Tobacco man 1-2-stepped to the bench, looked in iPod’s face, and he sez,

I’m a goddamn engineer and I haven’t worked in months! I’m smarter than most people on this train! Fucks in the government never did shit for me! This shit is over! Don’t you think all these fucks in the government, don’t you think they should all be [unintelligible]

iPod’s scared and makes no eye contact. He’s tryin, trying hard to, tryin hard to look disengaged, stoic or distracted so Tipsy Tobacco will go away—but, poor guy, it’s so obvious, you could mash up his schlumpy fear like a warm Twinkie. And anyway, Tipsy is tipsy but calculated, and he is smart in a certain way—I can tell by way he says REVELATIONS wry like a punchline—and his is not a preacher-mission for apocalypse or left. Tipsy T is curious whether iPod dude, in particular, thinks the fucks in the government should all be [unintelligible]

“I don’t, I don’t," iPod stammers to the end of his thought. “I like some of them. I’m not sure.”

Fuck, man. Governmental uncertainty. Not. Cool. ,. Dude. This right here is a polar engagement! Tipsy starts talking much, much louder.

Me, I’m nosy and lately I been meeting people. I’m nosy, and I want to talk to Tipsy Tobacco. So I’m all the trifecta of Virgens can wait, shove the book in my bag, send the rosary back to the heavens with my abuelita, and I peer through the oblong metal poles, across the doors, I smile, I stare. I am willing Tipsy Tobacco to direct his monologue my way, 'cause his monologue cut the subway in half, and he's the first real practitioner of passion I’ve seen all day. He may be drunk, he may be crazed, but he’s a man of the spark and right now I feel it. Come bless me with that train-wasted, art bell curandera shit! Crack an egg, dog! But no, I’m not the chosen one, and it's our stop. We all get off at Pacific and fan out in three directions, iPod relieved, Tipsy T still talking but not to me.

lemme tell you bout the baddest chick i know

Flanked by an absurd seven-foot-tall wooden racquetball racquet that Miles had leaned against the bookcase and which made me feel like the incredibly shrinking woman, hit it or quit it's editorial braintrust stood today, together for the first time ever since Michiganfest 2002, in jr and miles' living room, and read verse aloud to one another from such books as the "left behind" series and the spin alternative record guide. impromptu salon or standup comedy?

j.r. recited some of hunter s. thompson's gonzo letters, including one tearing apart tom fucking wolfe and his honkey white suit, gallivanting in italy on a thousand-buck per diem, while hunter shits away in a mountain range avoiding the tax man, in perpetual 32-dollar exile, or something to that effect, with spikier words and a more finely targeted stream of vitriol. j.r.'s face flushed red when he got to the tax-man part, and jessica said "you could make a living reading thompson's words aloud." so you should hire him for that.

then he pulled out the ole back issues of forced exposure and read steve albini's road musings from big black's euro tour in like 1986, which appropriately detailed fucking, chicks, his unelaborated-upon disdain for french people, and fucking. of note: an archetypal rockstar proto-god-complex moment in which the groupie in his fantasy would call him "mozart" mid-climax. he also wrote of homosocial belgians in lederhosen who, reportedly, copped noticible boners in the front row for big black's set. "whatevs dot gov" is what i say to steve albini's 1986 penis fixation.

now we're making dinner. i had to ride jessica's bike to the supermercado for garlic and ginger cause we forgot, but yesterday we scored the last of the late-harvest peaches in all of chicago from the farmer's market. WHAT!

i just mashed some celery root with a whisk!