J.R. in Revision

Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

Elizabeth Wurtzel

"But something went wrong—terribly wrong. The calm I had during those years was like a dormant illness or an allergy that doesn’t emerge until later in life, or something you don’t see coming because it’s coming from within: You are making yourself ill. I became seasick with contentment. It was nauseating daily, and I couldn’t still myself against a funny feeling that there had to be more to life than waking up every day beside the same person. To say I was bored would be to misunderstand boredom: I did not need to take up table tennis or ballroom dancing—I needed a sense that this wasn’t the end of the story. The idea of foreverwith any single person, even someone great whom I loved so much like Gregg, really did seem like what death actually is: a permanent stop. Love did not open up the world like a generous door, as it should to anyone getting married; instead it was the steel clamp of the iron maiden, shutting me behind its front metal hinge to asphyxiate slowly, and then suddenly. Every day would be the same, forever: The body, the conversation, it would never change—isn’t that the rhythm of prison?"

- Elizabeth Wurzel

Kirstens2

It surprises me when someone has a picture of me in their apartment.

She has more than a couple of me in display. But I loved her before I knew that.

And the first time I went to her apartment, it wasn't planned. So there was no quick dressing up of the place unless she was psychic of supposedly spontaneous things. I stopped in after dropping them off after an all-night party to bring in the new year. As we chatted and drank the cocktail she quickly fixed, and while fussing at her for trying to clean up because it didn't matter, I did the customary peruse through her bookshelves, the setup of her workstation, the pictures of family on the refrigerator... and then I saw me.

The fridge picture was of the group of us. All four, smiling, chests in various form of cleavagry, the composition and the subjects were slightly unfocused because the picturetaker was also more than a little buzzed. I like that picture. Very much. I've posted it here before. But I've always wanted to wallpaper my own home with my favorited pictures of times with friends. Just never got around to it... There's another picture of us in her bedroom. Just the two of us.

I was doing a search for large paper shopping bags in bulk for my (personal) business, and hilariously the video of Fiona Apple's "Paper Bag"came up in the results. I had never seen the video. Yet the words I know in my sleep. I don't have speakers on my work computer so I added the rough, crooned audio to Fiona's moving lips. So then this turned into a "session". I did the same improvised dubbing  with "First Taste" and was about to do it with "Limp" but then I soon discovered I was getting the remembered lyrics to "Fast as You Can" confused and soon grew lost not knowing which song was what and how either properly went. I couldn't reorient myself by reading her lips because the video was of that sort of languid poses, and forelorn looks in mirrors, and stolen looks to someone possibly imagined off camera. So there were no lips to read just assumed sighs between open, pouty lips and hair... a lot of hair. Not talking about hair in volume but in various shapes and forms and utility. Draped over the face haphazardly. Tight bun high on the head with gentle little tendrils escaping to flirt with the face. Shaken and thrown in wild abandon due to whatever grand emotion that particular stanza and the director du vid dictated. I could be imagining all of this hair porn and remembering the video wrong because frankly I turned it off 15 seconds into it once I got my lyrics lost and so my interests in my personal karaoke moment ended. I closed the window as she poined her face close to the bathroom mirror, putting on red, red lipstick on her lips resulting in an open, pouty mouth. So I am positive I got the pouty and the mirror parts right but none of this is by any means related to my original intention which was to google for where I could buy paper bags. Which goes to show just how quickly one can be wildly distracted by the Internet. *snap!* Just like that.

And, again, completely unrelated to everything, I just want to add that it's damned near impossible to find a paper shopping bag large enough to easily fit the cupcake boxes in (these boxes fit 12 cupcakes just so you know). I even called the major paper suppliers and nothing. So this is frustrating. And the only bags I've seen that are perfect for my needs are the bags from Crumbs. But  that's ridiculous. Can you imagine me using a bag with CRUMBS all colorful and loud all over it to drop off my cupcakes? Okay, I have to admit the mental image is making me chuckle... BUT STILL.

.end scene.

When The Pawn...

Fiona Apple

And I went crazy again today, looking for a strand to climb
Looking for a little hope
Baby said he couldn't stay, wouldn't put his lips to mine,
And a fail to kiss is a fail to cope

And I said, "Honey, I don't feel so good, don't feel justified
Come on put a little love here in my void"
He said, "It's all in your head"
And I said, "So's everything'" but he didn't get it
I thought he was a man but he was just a little boy

Hunger hurts, and I wanted him so bad, oh it killed
But I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up
I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold
Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

Jane Austen

As Mr. Darcy walked off, Elizabeth felt her blood turn cold. She had never in her life been so insulted. The warrior code demanded she avenge her honour. Elizabeth reached down to her ankle, taking care not to draw attention. There, her hand met the dagger concealed beneath her dress. She meant to follow this proud Mr. Darcy outside and open his throat.

But no sooner had she grabbed the handle of her weapon than a chorus of screams filled the assembly hall, immediately joined by the shattering of window panes. Unmentionables poured in, their movements clumsy yet swift; their burial clothing in a range of untidiness. Some wore gowns so tattered as to render them scandalous; other wore suits so filthy that one would assume they were assembled from little more than dirt and dried blood. Their flesh was in varying degrees of putrefaction; the freshly stricken were slightly green and pliant, whereas the longer dead were grey and brittle – their eyes and tongues long since turned to dust, and their lips pulled back into everlasting skeletal smiles.

Teabagging. The word's been overused this entire week. Seriously, and it's only Thursday. 

This may be the funniest development yet in this whole teabagging ordeal. This schoolmarm snipping about propriety from FOX fucking News would be hilarious on its own, but the fact that they didn't even catch it until today?

You know what this is like? Imagine if you convinced your prudish mother that a giant vibrator was actually a hand massager. And then she walked around for a week, just whipping that dildo out at work and restaurants and things — whenever she had a hand cramp — before finally figuring out, to her embarrassment, that it isn't just a *coincidence* that her massager looks like a big, fat penis. And then she comes after you with the wrath of God, all, "Do you know how disrespectful this is?" and shaking her dildo in your face. And, of course, it's all you can do not to laugh even harder because your mom is shaking a dildo at you and it's even funnier and the more you laugh the angrier she gets, but you know that whatever the punishment will be is already totally worth it.

That.

          - Colonial Mustard, Who wins the Internet for the day. Please take care of it...

Lively's new status message - American Idol's "Sing a song from the year you were born" show is getting more and more depressing each year... 

Lively: meanwhile, I'm eating pasta because I only had $20 left to buy groceries with yesterday. I got REAL creative. lol

  Wilted lettuce

1 large bowl of fresh clean garden picked lettuce pieces
8 slices of bacon fried and crumbled. {more if you like}
1 small onion diced small
3 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons sugar

Morning Meeting

In the dark, the view out of one side of the window was brilliant with the lights of the city. On the left side, however, it was pitch dark. Like a page was torn from the giant picture book. No forms at all to be seen. Not one shadow. Come the morning, I pressed myself up against the class and saw the reason: We were at the edge of swampland. Right there below us, marshes, largely untouched and then directly next to the wild greeness was the largely uninteresting banality of Atlantic City lit not by neon, but by daylight.

I squealed in wonder at my realization. I squealed even louder when I strained to look further into the wetlands and I saw wind turbines. Friggin windmills, yo! The girls chuckled at me. ZOMG the bed is sooo comfy! Oh and look! Robes! This place is sooo nice! The hotel was nice. The room was awesome. And the shower was totally sexy! And they chuckled and laughed at me, not only because I was genuinely so excited, but because I was expressing their excitement, they're just a bit more classier than me to not ZOMG at everything. I skipped past the Bobby Flay's and Emeril eateries to the regular folk foodcourt and swore that Fatburger was the best burger ever. ZOMG. And I was captivated over the now long-foreign concept of being able to smoke indoors. Oh this is so crazy!! The pings and chimes of the slot machines. The labrinthine floorplan of the casino that went on forever and the way the lighting never changed so we never knew what time it was. It wasn't new to me. I had seen brighter lights. More ostentacious forms of consumption and temptations. But I was in a different place...and it was all so fun. And hilarious. And exciting.

The girls giggled at my foolishness because they agreed it was all so nice. Incredibly nice. To get away for a couple of days. To be out with your friends. To be on a road trip and bop to the same song on loop over and over and never get sick of it for some reason. To be out of our element yet not feel exposed because we weren't alone. We had each other. To have something to look forward to, whether it be the John Legend concert or the gambling later or even the ride back home. We woooooo'ed at the traffic bumps in the parking garage as Safi zoomed over like we were in a mini-roller coaster. So silly, but what did it matter. It was all a really good time.

And the view from our window that morning answered all my questions from the night before. What looked pitch before was actually far more interesting than I had imagined. I liked being out of my element and finding fascination out of discarded swamps at the edge of excess which was silently finding a repurposing... friggin WINDMILLS, yo! Out of my familiar but I wasn't alone and exposed. And I appreciated what I had a bit more, though I didn't need the reminder.