Gypsies, and Egyptians

Are there any strippers named Phyllis?

Sometimes I like to clean ruthlessly with bleach.

Once during the summer (I think it was my last day at work), the drain smelled horribly foul, and I called up to the office and said, 'Mahmoud, it smells like something crawled up and DIED in there!" and Mahmoud just said, "Pour some more Chlorox in it," on the other end of the phone. Haaa, Mahmoud. He was a great believer in Chlorox. He was such a skinny person, and he liked to feel like a king in his own small kingdom, which is why he had a lot of rich persian rugs in the secret quarters upstairs next to the office, where there was a bed and a shower and a kitchen and lots of secret luxuries.

Margery is sitting in half of the desk chair, and I am sitting in the other half, because we are companions. Although sometimes she is a silly duchess.

Sometimes all we need is a good restorative.

Yesterday in the Medieval Latin workshop, we continued the account of the life of St. Lutgard, and apparently in like 1220, Saint John the Evangelist appeared to her in the form of an eagle, and stuck its beak into her mouth, and filled her with torrents of glorious sweet communion with the Lord (it is true. Medieval people had a really fucked-up view of the world, and mystics did a lot of outrageous things that one would not normally think to do).

And I thought, if an eagle just appeared and tried to do that to me, I would be like, "Damn, eagle, why you all up in my GRILL?" and I might try to pluck out its feathers if it kept trying to stick its beak in my mouth, because how the hell would I know it was Saint John the Evangelist? And that is why I am not a medieval saint, nor would I like to be, because you have to participate in a lot of fucked-up experiences like that.

And sometimes, as happened to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Mother Mary herself appears to you and squirts her breast-milk into your mouth like a serene fountain, and there is even a painting of it. If that happened to me, I would be like, "Girl, you put that shit BACK! You keep that shit to yourself! I am a VEGAN!" It is true.

Back in the olden times, people used to kill ostriches and other birds, and savagely pluck out their plumes, and wear them for decoration.

Also, people thought that Irish people wore nothing but a large unwashed blanket (or Irish Mantle) wrapped around them, and no underwear beneath.

If I had lived in the medieval or early modern times, I probably would have been a tapstress, or worked in an alehouse, and tried to avoid giving birth to lots of children. Although, if I lived back then in England I guess I would also be considered a Moor (since I am part black), or people might mistake me for a Gypsy, or an Egyptian, because people in England back then had a fucked-up conception of the world, and thought that Gypsies and Egyptians were the same thing, and that India and Africa were in the same place. It is true.

Last night I was explaining to someone why it is great to be naked in the privacy of your own home. "We are all naked on the inside," I said, "and plus, we were BORN naked." And then I paused, and thought for a minute, and said, "Well, we were also born with no teeth," and then my entire argument was negated.

Also I learned that over 1 in 4 pregnant women in Kentucky smokes.

Some cats are really interested in looking at people's naked bodies (like Tasty), but others just do not really care (like Margery).

But the real Margery Kempe (in the medieval times) was really concerned about other people's naked bodies, because once she was on a journey back from Prussia, and she was travelling with these poor people, and in the night they all encamped outside a city and took off their clothes (because that was just what they did) and were naked, and Margery Kempe was really uncomfortable, and she kept her clothes on.

Also she had nightmare visions about all manner of priests and holy men and devils exposing their male genitals to her, and it troubled her deeply.

Next quarter I get to take a class in which we read The Book of Margery Kempe in Middle English and I shall force Margery the cat to read it along with me, because it is her origin. Perhaps I will force her to listen to portions of it in the mornings before I reward her with a savoury seafood feast.

My brother and sister used to play this game where their names were Clarence and Penelope, except my sister was Clarence, and my brother was Penelope, because they did not know the proper gendered nature of the names, and my mom thought it was hilarious, and she laughed for a long time.

Sometimes I speak to Charles FitzGerald (my computer) as if he is my slave, and I force him to come along with me.

And that is all.

Cooked Chicken Legs

"Making sure our children have a quality education is a top priority," said George W. Bush in his speech last week.

"Oh, my foot," I said dismissively.

Sometimes appliances really just want to be let alone, so they can recuperate, and restore their energy, and powers. Sometimes when you think an appliance needs to be fixed (which is a drastic intervention in the life of something like a printer), it really just wants to be let alone for a while.

"I never tire of Black Sabbath," I said. In the privacy of my household, sometimes I sing along in a dire-sounding and demented Ozzy voice, and force Margery to participate with me, and even sing in her face.

"Let's gather together a harvest of GARBAGE!" I said to Margery, and we took out the trash together.

Then I tried to make her ROCK OUT with me to Queen, but she meowed at me in protest.

On a Flavor of Love clip, this broad was wearing a skintight pleather silver dress with frightening side cut-outs. "Girl, somebody is not your friend, who told you that was cute," I thought in a black-woman voice. It was also a tribute to Janine, who taught me that saying (once I was high, for I was smoking in my room for a spell, and I heard Janine say in the kitchen, "Somebody is not your friend, who told you that was cute," and I wrote it in my chronicle). And it is a good thing to say. Actually I think it a lot, like when I see certain things while walking around campus,

"You shall allow yourself to be rolled forward like a wheelchair," I said to my laundry-basket-on-wheels as I pushed it out of my room. And then I was a grim laundress.

In the olden times, laundresses were thought of as being sexually promiscuous, and people assumed they were prostitutes on the side, and abused their names a lot, and disparaged their virtue.

Well, when I ran down the stairs of my apartment, the stairwell smelled like cooked chicken legs, but then when I ran up the same stairs several minutes later they smelled like pepperoni pizza, and I was perplexed.

Haa, I went to msnbc.com and saw an article headline that said, "How full is your quiver?: In a new movement, Christians 'open their wombs to God'." "Oh, no!" I said, because it just sounded really frightening, and indeed it was, for it reminded me of religious home-schooled families we had known in the nineties.

Some are rabbis, and others are rabble-rousers.

Apparently manatees are very smart, and we should all respect them, and not catch them in our nets.

Sometimes Margery thinks that life is a great war, and all must take part.

And that is all.

Closets, and Places Unknowable (whoa, that sounds like an essay I would have to read about Queer Theory, except I made it up myself)

"Well, Saddam, that's why you shouldn't KILL," I said to Saddam when the verdict came up the other day. Not that capital punishment is any better, because in the end you still KILL, but that was not my main focus, because I like to talk to Saddam in a personal and reproving way as if I know him, and his nature. Although, like I have said before, I do think he might end up being secretly jolly if he was kept from weapons and chemicals and all kinds of power, but that does not excuse him, or his acts.

"Why must you hide in closets, and places unknowable?" I just said out loud to Margery.

I do not like the voices of robots. They are unsettling.

I saw my keys sitting on the stove and I thought, What if you baked a pie with keys in it as a festive joke?

I threw Margery's catnip mouse at her, but she just looked at it, and then looked away. "WHY won't you be enchanted by petty toys?" I demanded.

"Damn, Santorum has a lot of kids," I thought as I was watching his concession speech online, and cackling with a devilish glee. And on television the Santorum children were all weeping and trying to console one another, and I just felt bad for them, because their last name is SANTORUM.

Although you shouldn't be an asshole, and then be surprised when your name is vilified, and turned into that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter which is the byproduct of anal sex.

Sometimes English grad students go out after class and drink pitchers of beer and talk about anality, and what it means, and how it functions in American culture today. Those are strange conversations.

Also, one should never buy the generic cheerios from Target, for they are nasty, and unpalatable, and not even fit for DOGS (except maybe that last part disparages dogs, and is not correct to say, for it implies that I think of dogs as somehow being lesser individuals than humans, and therefore their lives have less value, which is not true at all, although it does frighten me when some people dress up their dogs in little outfits, and outlandish get-ups. Often there are pictures of Tori Spelling and her dog with the dog all dressed up in a whole outfit, and shoes and accessories to match, and it looks really appalled at what its situation in life has come to, and miserable as well).

In our medieval Latin workshop last week we translated this selection from the Life of St. Lutgard (who was this 13 th-century Flemish saint), and it was all about this one episode in her life where she had a fever, and started sweating (and back then a fever was NOTHING to shake a stick at, for people DIED of fevers), and so she was like, "You know, I'll protect my life, and stay in bed during Matins" (which were the 2am prayers that the nuns of the convent had to do, and Lutgard was like a spiritual leader by then so she kind of was expected to go to them), but then this frightful voice appeared to her (it was the Lord) and was like, "Girl, you get your ass UP, and you GO to Matins!" and she was frightened, and quickly arose from her bed and rushed off to the church, for Matins had already begun.

But then at the doorway of the church appeared the figure of the bleeding Christ on the Cross, and it was rushing to meet her (I kind of imagining it levitating a few inches of the ground, like those fancy magnetic trains in places like Japan, and Germany, although incidentally those are also places we fought in World War II [is that a coincidence?]). And Lutgard was like, "Whoa, Christ," (and she probably also thought she could be hallucinating, for that is what can happen when you have a fever, especially if it is at 2 in the morning in a church), and then he took down his right arm from the cross and embraced Lutgard with it and pressed her mouth to the wound in his side (and it was the famous medieval motif of Christ offering the wound in his side as a BREAST to sinners, where he would be like, "Hey, guys, anybody want to drink blood and water from my wound?" in a creepy drug-peddler voice. It is true. I saw paintings of it), and she drank of the precious sweetness (ugh, that was what the text said) and was magically restored from then on. And everyone in the medieval Latin workshop was like, "Wow, that is a really fucked-up story," but of course medieval mystical and devotional literature is FULL of fucked-up stories, and images.

And after class I did an imitation of Saint Lutgard pulling away and being like, "Damn, Christ, why you gotta be so NASTY?" and not accepting the drink of water and blood from his side. And plus, I am vegan. Although in the medieval times people did fucked-up shit, and doctors tasted their patients' urine in an effort to diagnose what ailed them, which is ALSO a nasty thing to do, and for birth control some broads resorted to vaginal fumigation with special potent herbs, which could not have been pleasant, and also there was a lot of infanticide.

Haa, that is all.

The Seafood of the World

Margery often thinks she is an Imperial.

She loves the Ramones, and her fur smells like baked goods.

Tonight I kept addressing Margery as a Gay Escort (I had been reading the news a lot in the preceding hours, and there was that whole thing about the Evangelist from the Religious Right who bought meth, and the Gay Escort, who talked of going to the gym at like 5 in the morning in this interview I watched), and saying, "Margery, you are a Gay Escort!" and laughing hysterically, because she just kind of pretended not to notice.

Supposedly the seafood of the world, or at least that which we eat, will be gone by mid-century. It is true. I have been worried about that for awhile, because I have a vegan guilt that I buy Margery canned seafood (like Ocean Whitefish and TUNA, or the Savory Seafood Feast, because that is what she LIKES, and she does not like the fowl, or the beasts of the field, by which I mean the cows), and thus contribute to the deaths of the fishes, it grieves me that I am deliberately contributing to the destruction of our great Earth by buying cat food with fish in it, but otherwise Margery would not eat, and end up like Nicole Richie, or some other skinny-ass broad. And that is my vegan dilemma.

The other day I was frolicking upon the shores of Lake Michigan, because it was sunny weather and good for a frolic, and I saw two very large dead fish, with their eyes gone, and holes in their bodies, but I was not surprised because that is a sight I got very much used to on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland. But dead birds and squirrels still freak me out, and appall me, and disturb the rest of my day when I see them lying on or beside the sidewalk. But Margery does not eat birds (by which I mean chicken, or turkey), or squirrels for that matter, so I am not directly contributing to their deaths. Still, it is a grievous thing to see.

"Heed the fire," I said to Margery when I opened the oven. And she obeyed.
Sometimes I used to worry that Tasty or Motor might harbour a secret Hansel-and-Gretel complex, and leap into the oven without warning when I opened it, so it was something I guarded vigilantly against, when I was making Tater Tots, or a glorious squash.

"I've been nothing but good to you," I just said to Margery, and laughed. Although sometimes I make her do rap-arms when it is late at night and I am being a secret rapper in the privacy of my apartment whiel finishing an assignment, and I am not sure if that exactly counts as good.

Some people do not heed the scales of justice.

Heed is a good word, I have decided. I must bring it further into my vernacular.

In class there was a debate over whether cats go through Lacan's mirror stage.

And then at the very end of class (when we were all quite ready to leave) this broad suddenly burst out, "But what is a woman? What is a VAGINA? What is a UTERUS?" and we all just looked her and thought, "Whoa, dude, we just want to leave," but she ranted for a good while longer, and we were like, 'Dude, this is crazy. Is this what grad school is?"

And that is all.

Postfeminism and the Souls of Computers

My lungs have been burnished by the fire.

There is a great good afoot.

"Girl, yo ass is FOUL," I just said to Margery. Haaa. Sometimes I just amuse myself horribly.

Oh how I love to be jolly. One of my professors (she is a medievalist) has a chapel built in her house, and she worships there with her cats, whose names are Felicitas and Oxymoron and Conundrum. Also she wears fantastic red robes with jeweled she-bobs all over them. I am not even kidding. I had seen black women and Indian women wear such robes before, but never a white woman.

"Oh, Margery, your eyes are so soulful," I just told her. Once when she madly ate all her dry food in a day, I was tempted for a split second to call her Largery, but then I felt bad, and didn't. And plus, she is a small but hearty cat.

On Friday night I smoked with a Bolivian whose hair is just the same as mine, except he does not use as much conditioner as me so his is more untamed, and he knows a lot of things about the souls of computers because he has devoted his life to physics and mathematics and quarks and other particles, and we talked for like an hour about computers, and their human attributes, and the behaviours they exhibit.

One thing I do not understand is why computers have to be told things in codes, and why you have to write codes to get the computer to obey your will.

At one point I said, "Well, you know, sometimes I suspect that Charles FitzGerald is trying to connect to the Internet behind my back," and he paused and said, "Uh, that's called MICROSOFT!" and I said, "NO, it's just that my computer thinks he knows what my will is, and he is trying to be helpful, but he is not always RIGHT!" And it is true.

My computer's older brother is Clarence, who belongs to my sister, and is a temperamental 2-year-old laptop who has had a lot of misfortunes (like once he got pushed off a desk by accident, and to him it felt like being pushed off a very tall building, for it was also a very tall desk). So I cannot really blame him, because things like that are not his fault, and probably contribute to the willful things that he does.

I try to treat Charles FitzGerald with more responsibility, and care, and so far I have been quite good to him, as he has been to me. Except there was that time when he refused to access the Internet for awhile, but that was not his fault (I thought an evil spirit had entered into him, as the computer people on the phone had told me, but it turned out that he only needed his modem turned off, and unplugged from the surge protector, and then plugged back in and turned on after 20 seconds, and then he was right as rain).

My father was the one who healed him, over the phone, as he has also healed Clarence many times as well (although sometimes he has to heal Clarence in person, because Clarence is of a difficult temperament).

Charles FitzGerald's name came to me in the summer, when I was high, so I wrote it down, and from then on I was certain of it, and it suits him well.

"I am glad I do not have to lay eggs," I just thought for no reason.

The problem is, I am still trying to figure out what postfeminism is, because I have to give a presentation on it on Wednesday, and I'm just like, "Dude, what the fuck IS postfeminism, and why won't Microsoft Word recognize it as a word? Is Microsoft Word behind the TIMES?" and so that is the theme of my presentation, but dressed up in polite academic language, and structure. But only the first part of that question is the theme behind my presentation, and not the part about Microsoft Word, although we'll probably bitch about that before class, or after.

And now I am getting a pretty good idea but postfeminism is, but I still think it is a strange and unnecessary designation, because Third Wave feminism or postcolonial feminism would work just as well, and be less prone to misinterpretation.

Margery just willfully knocked a library book of recent critical essays on Titus Andronicus off my table, and looked at me defiantly. She behaves like Tasty in that respect, as they both like to challenge gravity and its consequences, and do not always believe in it.

"Yes," I said as I poured the last drop of coffee into my mug. "Every drop is an ELIXER."
Elixer is a good word to use. I have incorporated it into my vernacular over the last few months, and I use it a lot.

Haa, that is all.

Re: The Height of Beatitude

Hellooo, brethren and sustren. I have finally come into a great abundance, and received a great supply of That Which I Love Most Dear. Hence this offering, and installment of the chronicle.

My soul is rising to the height of beatitude.

My lungs are prepared for a great and glorious harvest.

"KNOWLEDGE," I just said aloud to my computer Charles FitzGerald for no reason. It is because I was reading too much feminism and postmodernism over the last several hours. The thing about postmodernism is that sometimes people just get lost in it and never come back, and in that way it is more potent than psychedelic DRUGS.

Oops, I just accidentally blew potent smoke right into Margery Kempe's face, because she was crouching in the dark bathroom and hiding from me in order to spring out and surprise me at a later point in time, because she is a playful cat who loves to cut capers, and chase figments, and play endless games. That is why philosophers do not usually have cats, because cats try to distract the philosophers from the writing of their philosophy. But I am not a philosopher, because I do not have the proper spirit for a lot of patriarchal Western philosophies, like Kant and Hegel and Aristotle and their ilk, so I just read them and get all salty and pissed-off, and do not feel particularly receptive to their ideas, because you shouldn't be an asshole and then expect people to be all receptive to your ideas. It can create discord.

Anyways, what I had started out to say was that I just blew smoke in Margery's face by accident because I did not see her, and she blinked at me and squinted as her head was enveloped by a huge cloud of smoke. "Uh, sorry, Margery," I said. "I did not see you there." She just gave me a look in response. Cats often give looks with a lot of meaning, and import, and expression.

Sometimes (especially in the middle of the night, when I was the only one up), Tasty and I would look at each other and
commune with each other through out looks. It is true.

Although once last winter I was really high and I turned on the tv guide channel and got really excited about what was about to come on television, and I started yelling excitedly to Tasty about it because I forgot for a moment that he was not a person, and I was like, "Tasty, I'm so excited about the great television that's coming on tonight! Can you BELIEVE it?" and Tasty looked at me in alarm and leapt down from the television (where he had been perched) and with his look he said, "Woman, you're scaring me. Calm down," and I was like, "Sorry, Tasty. I kind of got carried away, and forgot you weren't a true person."

In the olden times, people did not have to remember quite as many passwords.

Haa, I hear Margery Kempe madly eating her dry food. We must have hotboxed the apartment by accident (for it is only a studio), for she has the munchies. Haaa. I have corrupted a medieval mystic. On The Flavor of Love 2 , after getting drunk in the limo on the way to the airport, Flavor Flav flopped in his seat on the flight to Belize and just kept saying, "Flav's been InTOXICATED!" over and over and over again in a joyful voice. It was a great and outrageous season, and I am sad that it is over. For although I do not have a television (because it is like a temptress), episodes of that show are available online

A small envelope just fell down on me like a spirit.

"Your eyes are bright with care," I said to Margery when she woke up from her nap, and I laughed.

Margery and I did not come from the same womb, but our souls are still on one accord.
When the radiator first comes on, the apartment smells like burning ghosts for a while, for it is an old and hearty building.

And that is all. There is a lot more postmodernism at hand, but at least it is baked in the delicious spiced cake of feminism.

Haa, Sage Out.

Is the Rectum .... a GRAVE? Haaaaaaaa.

Well, well, well. The Sage has smoked all of That Which She Holds Most Dear that she brought with her from the Promised Land of California, so now she has none, so this is not really a chronicle, because she is not high in the least. And it grieves me. But I promised Jen Sparks that I would send one out anyway. So here we go.

Margery was running around our household with a dollar bill in her mouth. "Girl, this ain't no place of ill re-PUTE!" I said to her in my alter-ego voice. Also, after a few glasses of wine and champagne last weekend, I introduced my fellow 1st-year English students (there are only 8 of us) to my black alter-ego, and now I have them saying, "Bitch PLEASE!" with the accompanying sassy arm-and-head-movements.

Haaaa on my Intro to Graduate Study syllabus is a reading entitled, "Is the Rectum a Grave?"
"A GRAAAAVE?" I howled.

I just ate a bunch of grapes that had seeds in them, because the seeds were smallish and I was not expecting them to be there.

Haa, yesterday I was talking to the electricity lady on the phone, and she said, "What was the unit number?" and I said, "B, as in Barbecue."

One day, I thought, "What if my name had been Troshelle?" (I thought of that name myself, although I am sure it has been used by others), and it made me laugh for a long, long time.
I was reminded of that because I got an email from a broad named LaShawnDa (seriously, that is how it was spelled, and capitalized).

Haa, the printer is shaking as if it is giving birth to twins. If I ever got pregnant with twins, I think I would be somewhat pissed for the first few weeks, but then I would get over it.
And also, if you get knocked up by the Lord (as happened in the case of Mother Mary), does that technically count as rape since it happened without your consent, or are you not able to consent to magical impregnation by a higher power? I have been thinking about that.

Haa, once Tasty growled at my father many times in a row from his windowsill and I thought accusingly, "He doesn't like black people," but actually he growled at a lot of people from his windowsill, especially if they were men, so I don't think race had anything to do with it. And plus, he did live with Janine and me for many months, and we exposed him to other cultural and ethnic and racial persuasions, as well as Flavor of Love and The Janky Show, which also count.

And this pseudo-chronicle would have come sooner, but an evil spirit entered into my laptop Charles FitzGerald and made him unable to access the internet until I get some spyware software installed, which will not happen for another week, and it grieves me that he is ill. I had to spend like 3 hours on the phone with the Internet service people trying to figure out what was wrong with him, and by the end of the conversation I found myself saying things like, "Well, I don't know my computer very intimately," and the Indian guy on the other line (I am not making racist assumptions. He was really in India) kept saying, "That is strange," but was unable to fix poor Charles. After I had hung up the phone, I closed Charles and pushed him away from me and said, "You are dead to me."

And that is all. I literally am reading literature and writing notes on it 8 to 10 hours a day. It is crazy, but then again, there is nothing I would rather be doing, except for smoking pot, so it is a good path that I have chosen.

~UnHigh Sage

The Great Margery Kempe

Well. I have been on a long journey across a great plain, and now I am in Chicago, and I adopted a little cat from the Animal Shelter, and her name is Margery Kempe.

Margery Kempe was this medieval English travelling mystic broad (she lived 1374 to 14-something) who expressed her devotion to the Lord by going on these huge crying jags whenever she thought about the Passion of Christ, or whenever the minister referred to it in his sermon, and she would fall on the ground and twist back and forth and weep and roar, 'I die, I die," and people were like, "Gurl, you CRAZY!" and they banned her from certain towns but she kept travelling anyways, and she made scenes and wreaked havoc all over England and the Continent and even the Holy Land (her travel companions kind of hated her, becuse she was always making scenes when they went on tourist visits to, like, the Mount of Olives, because it brought the Passion to her mind).

So anyways, she got a scribe to write about her experiences in The Book of Margery Kempe, which is one of the defining works of 15th-century English literature, and it is a great work. I read it in the spring for a class, and I loved it so much that I wrote a lot of papers on it.

And so my cat is named Margery Kempe in honour of her. I thought about a lot of names, like Bathsheba, and Beatrice, others, but finally I called out, "Margery! Margery!" from my bed to see what would happen, and the cat came running and leapt up onto my bed next to me, and then she was properly named. So now we live in my apartment together, and we peer down upon the world from our window like queens.

After buying wine the other day, I took the empty paper wine bag and put it over my hand like a puppet and made it say, "Margery! Margery!" in a raspy old-person voice, but she looked at me in horror, and was not entertained.

Only 5 people have seen my most recent tattoo (all were broads), and 3 of them were named Jen. And I did not even plan that.

Haa, some telemarketer from the New York Times just called and addressed me as Mrs. Steele, and as soon as he paused I shrieked, "Mrs. STEEEEELE?" and it caught him off-guard.

Tonight Margery and I listened to Black Sabbath and made broccoli while also smoking, and it was a great endeavour.

That is all.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Sometimes the Internet is just unreliable. And sometimes it acts like it has its own agendas.

Haa, a few nights ago I watched Jesus Christ Superstar with my co-workers Kolina and Victoria, and I loved it, but I was angry that they skipped the part with Barabbas, and other important parts of the Passion narrative. But this version was from the late 70's, so Judas wore flared pants (and he was BLACK), and Jesus sometimes sang in a high falsetto, and he had a reasonably good haircut (usually Jesus has a bad bob haircut).

Also, Pontius Pilate was really high-strung and wore extravagant clothing, and finally he threw a hissy fit at Jesus and washed his hands in a basin.

"My eyes cannot abide violence," I said, so I did not look at the violent scourgings, or the nailings.

My family also owns The Passion of the Christ on DVD, but I refuse to watch it.
And Armando says that in Mexico, the word "colina" means "small mountain" (he drew me an illustration on the order pad), so whenever he sees Kolina, he laughs and says to me, "Small mountain."

Also Armando does a very good Michael Jackson imitation, and a Cher voice, and a Madonna voice, and a general disco voice.

Whenever I pulled all-nighters last spring (for some reason I did that a lot, because I had a lot of papers to write, and they were about things I did not feel like writing about, like Wordsworth, that asshole), Tasty would always stay up with me, even though he hated the written and the printed word, and thought that it soiled the purity of the page, so he always tried to wipe off words with his paw, and it did not work.

Also he liked to sit on piles of paper, like my notes or my copy of Holy Maidenhood, because it gave him a sense of power.

Other Things That Were Beloved By Tasty:
- watching toilets flush
- avocado, or guacamole
- gravy
- watching naked women emerge from the shower, and other things as well
- hookahs

"I do not like to drink anything too hot or too cold," Mahmoud said to me the other day. "Modesty in all things is best." He was being mystical, and wise.

And Armando told me that he has slept with sixteen women in his life, but none since he got married to his wife in his late twenties. "Whoa," I said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14497678/
"Yay, it is a great and glorious victory for the Feminists," I thought. "Well it's about goddamn TIME," I added in an old-broad thought-voice.

And I think the musical Cats is really creepy.

The thing about criminals is that they always seem to drive white vans.

Once Lauren and Janine and I watched the GLAAD awards on tv, and the star of a transgendered documentary proposed to his girlfriend, and our hearts grew many sizes like the Grinch

That is all.

The Hippies at Woodstock

Well, I just spent a few days tearing up the home front, and adding to my written chronicle (the widow's miraculous never-ending jar of oil--that is, my potbook #5--ran out of oil, so Elijah had to buy the widow a new jar of oil [that is, I finally ran out of pages around page 456, which was still a really great miracle on its own, so I had to buy a new notebook, and it is Volume #6 of the written chronicle]).

And I held my friend's 3-month-old mixed baby and played with her, and drank cheap champagne from the bottle (as is my custom) with The Great Magga while watching Cops and CNN and the Cartoon Network while partaking in That Which Is Most Dear To Us, and it was quite great. And also I saw the original Woodstock on tv, and all these hippies were lying on the ground while their stomachs moved like caterpillars, and then they tried to ward off the rain by the power of their thoughts, but it failed.

AND there is a new season of Flavor of Love, which is like the best and most addictive guilty pleasure ever, and Magga and I watched the first episode on Tuesday night, and this really voluptuous broad of the African-American persuasion actually shat herself in front of everyone, and it was outrageous.

Haa, I just saw a headline that said, "Reckless Mascot Overshadows Bush Debut," and I was like, "Whaaaat?" Apparently the Tennessee Titans' raccoon mascot (mascots in general are very creepy to me, because often they seem to hide deviant personalities) was careening around the field in his golfcart during half-time and tossing gifts into the crowd, when he ran over the Saints' quarterback, and he (the quarterback, not the raccoon) fell down and suffered a lot of bruises and had to be removed from the game. "Who DOES that?" I said to my brother.

And sometimes I just really love to eat grapes.

In the restroom line at the Phoenix airport, I heard this older broad say to this younger broad, "Well, you don't want to set your bag on the ground and get fecal matter on it," and I started laughing, and so did they, and we were all very jolly together, and the older broad said, "We've been traveling for too long now."

Haha, that is all.
And I am not a Christian Scientist.

Super Halal

A very pretty Latina broad walked into the restaurant. "Ohh, mamacita," Armando said to me. Then he held up his hands and said, "Hey, I am human," and we laughed long and jolly laughs.

Unlike at other restaurants, employees are not allowed to take cigarette breaks, but if you are Muslim you get to take prayer breaks, which is actually a better deal because you can take 10 or 15 minutes to pray, and take your own sweet time as well. Ramin pretends to be going on prayer breaks and then sits on the roof talking on his cellphone to his wife instead, or making up new raps.

The new floor manager Salaam forbade us from chewing gum while at work, which I will do anyway because I got away with it for 2 years at a private Christian school without getting caught once, and have learned the craft of being discreet. "We should stop calling him Salaam," I said to Armando, "and start calling him SADDAM!"

And in Arabic the word of greeting is also Salaam, and if I ever call out, "SALAAM!" then people get confused and think I am yelling out a greeting.

And people are always trying to talk to me in different languages, some in Arabic because they think I am Algerian or Syrian or otherwise Middle Eastern, and some in Spanish because they think I am a Latina broad, and it is very confusing.

Apparently at this Middle Eastern market called Super Halal Market in DC (apparently halal is the Muslim equivalent of kosher, and the animal's killing gets blessed by a Muslim priest, which I doubt makes any difference to the animal because it is still getting KILLED), this guy ran behind the deli counter and cut off his own hand with the meat saw, and started to freak out (I read about it in the Washington Post).

I said to Ramin, "What would you do if somebody ran behind the counter in YOUR deli and cut off their hand?" (because the deli is his domain).
"Hell, I wouldn't care," said Ramin.

And that is all.

James A. Garfield

A chronicle is a continuing narrative.

I walked into the restroom at work and saw that in each of the stalls, there was a roll of brown paper towels instead of toilet paper. I was appalled. "Oh HELL no," I said, and I turned around and walked back out.

Haa, once Jen and I were watching tv, and I thought I saw a van dragging a cross along behind it as in The Crucifixion, and I could not stop laughing (also I was high), but it was actually an anchor, and a commercial for engine oil. It is because I had a religioius upbringing. But the commercial is still hilarious, because it really does look like a cross.

The other day when I was eating my lunch, I said, "Mahmoud, when I sit here and look down upon the store, I feel like I am God looking down upon His creation" (I said His instead of Her because otherwise Mahmoud would have been appalled, and probably freaked out, so I decided to make a small concession to his patriarchal values).
"You feel like God?" Mahmoud said, and looked at me in a strange way.

Dude, the other night I was reading the newspaper, and there was an article about the assassination of President Garfield (he was from around Cleveland, and for some reason a lot of people are really proud of that fact, and they hail his name), because apparently after he got shot he lived for a little while before he died, and the doctors thought the bullet was lodged in his intestines (which it wasn't) so they wouldn't let him eat solid food. And the article says:

"In mid-August, the doctors insisted that Garfield be fed rectally, and he received beef bouillon, egg yolks, milk, whiskey, and drops of opium in this manner."

Haaaaaaaa. What a horrible thing. Who DOES that? When I read it, I was so horrified that I read it out loud to my mother, who was in the next room, because it was so outrageous and bizarre and disgusting that I had to tell someone right away, in order to share and diffuse the horror. She said, "Oh, that's disgusting!" and later she said, "Well, when I'm old, I hope you don't try to feed me beef broth up my butt," and I said, "MOM! I would never!" And then I cut out the article and saved it, so I could read it at my own pleasure, and laugh.

I really love learning bits of useless and bizarre but interesting knowledge, and then carrying them around with me. Like, about how Hitler was addicted to laxatives, and Stalin's sex life, and stuff like that.

And then Garfield got all malnourished and lost over 100 pounds (he must have been kind of voluptuous beforehand) and died anyway. I am so glad I did not live back then, because doctors were just dumbasses, and abortion and birth control were illegal so women had to use foolish teas and suppositories and dubious methods, and also they had to wear corsets and all these petticoats and pantaloons and other foolish undergarments, and it was just a horribly patriarchal time on all fronts.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness," I just told my brother in an old-woman voice after I cleaned the counter with bleach to kill and deter ants.

This bar lets you take a shot — at the waiter:

Nanjing's Rising Sun Anger Release Bar encourages patrons to take a swing

BEIJING - Stressed-out Chinese can now unleash pent-up anger at a bar that lets customers attack staff, smash glasses and generally make a ruckus, a Chinese newspaper reported Monday. The Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing, capital of the eastern province of Jiangsu, employs 20 muscled young men as "models" for customers to punch and scream at.....Wu said that since he opened the bar in April, most of the patrons have been women, especially those working in karaoke bars and massage parlors. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14224099/ Uh, that is a really terrible idea. It just promotes discord in the world. And whoever heard of such a thing.

Haa, that is all.

Hillary Tells Rumsfeld About Himself

I cannot stand iced tea, but I do not disparage those who do.

I hate iced tea as much as I hate country music, and board games, and raw onions, and the Bush administration.

"Because of the administration's strategic blunders and frankly the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy," said Clinton, D-N.Y., a possible 2008 presidential candidate. "Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14159535/

YEAH, that's our broad, and she just told Rumsfeld about himself in front of Congress. If I had been there, I would have said, "Mmm-HMMM!" in an emphatic black-woman voice, and then added, "Girl, I got your back." But actually I would really hate to be involved at all in politics, because it seems like such a boring thing, and it is populated by such assholes, and a lot of them are patriarchs as well.

Dude, when I saw this headline back in March in the artsci lab in Eads, it made me laugh out loud:

Haaa, who DOES that. I can't decide if I should start boycotting silk or not, because I am not sure how much it harms the silkworms. It is a vegan dilemma.

That is all.