break out your bicycle

i love satirewire.

On a different note, if this isn't enough to make you consider alternate transportation, what is?

"There's no question gas will hit $4 a gallon," Ben Brockwell, director of pricing at the Oil Price Information Service, said. "The question is how high will it go and how long will it last?"

my word, $4 a gallon just as i'm heading into back-to-school week is scary indeed. it was bad enough last year when the tank took $30 to fill -- with gas prices doubled since then, it will easily be $60 a tank, and i go through that in a week picking up and dropping off. carpooling no longer seems a convenient and friendly thing, but a matter of survival. natural gas prices have also gone up markedly, twenty percent in the last week alone. frankly, i was pretty impressed that the insulating measures i had taken last year managed to render a measurable reduction in my heating bill for the year. the average went down thirty percent, in a year when prices climbed. am i the only one watching the food budget shrink as the oil prices soar? add to that jeep maintenance and dental surgery and the like, and i'm seeing an awful lot of iced tea and soup in our future.

i nearly canceled the new york trip at the end of the month. then i talked with jaime yesterday and found out she was in San Francisco (literally sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time), having just completed her interview with a library in sonoma county the day before. the interview went very well, and she loves the area. she said she isn't going to take the job unless they offer her the upper end of the salary, but i think she is hooked, and they would frankly be dumb not to hire her. she is one of the only people i know who can face their technical services situation (acquisition, reciept, payment, and cataloging of books -- they do 6,000 titles a month) without being overwhelmed. in fact, she's excited by it, as i'm frankly glad to see it; as much as i will miss her, it all sounds very thrilling and to be situated near like-minded. the upshot of this is that we have wanted to take a pilgramage to NYPL since september of 1995. ten years ago, my word! and if we don't do it before she moves to cali, we likely never will. so the ny trip is still on the books. i might have to pass the hat to get there.

but enough grim tales. check out the cubist web site story. i can't figure out why if it's a site for cubists that it's not in spanish, but perhaps they were trying to be all cool and stuff. i'll have a cubist cigar and ponder it while i relax in the oval orafice. i think i'll be needing the tee shirt.

music purge

jax recently wrote about a musical moment in which he purged his soul. most people might find that weird, but instead, i find myself listening to music that does the same thing. li'l nibs keeps walking around my ankles as i type and listen to music (her name is being Officially Changed to Ante [with a silent 't' because she is the kitty]. so, with all due apologies, i tell you that that at that particular time i was a little bit lost. i have been looking for too long for a man who will love me with as little in return as i demand. there are of course my own delusions and sins, certain monstrosities to get beyond, but there are things i want as well. and frankly, there are my fears. but ultimately, there is a short list of what i'm looking for in my own life, in my own spirituality, in my own world:

I want a goddess who stinks.
I’m tired of these tired goddesses
Their shoulders white and sandals neatly tied
Their back quivers and bows
Their lack of men and their pristinely polished shields.
I want a goddess who ruts in the mud,
Back quivering
Who bows to no one but bends
Close to the earth
Who buries her face deep in the dirt and the scent of life
Who gathers life and living close to her nose, nuzzling
Who gathers life up gently and pulls it into her bosom
Who licks it and knows it in the dark.
I want a goddess who holds on
With hair and teeth and claw
With dirt under her nails and hair under her arms
I want a goddess who plays and romps
With twigs in her hair, mud on her toes
Cum on her thigh
Her scent thick about her
Her breasts keeping time to her dance through the woods
The flesh of her butt nestled in a crevice
In a cave as she lights a candle and talks to the albino spiders there
Whispering their woven secrets.
I want a goddess with food in her mouth
Light in her soul
Fire in her belly
Blood on the ground as she cradles the
Life she creates.
Be gone with these sterile, civilized he-women
Supports of your nicely approachable reality
Systemized and sanitized
Beyond recognition
Relegated to the wall
Flowers in your halls of
Destruction, despair and propriety.
I want a goddess who stinks.

and there are things i demand of men as well:

I want a man I want

I want a man who is quiet
Who leads by example
Who believes in respect
And respects belief.
I want a man I want to listen to
Not one I have to.
I want a man who is clean
Whose touch cleanses my soul
Whose kiss is redemption.
I want to believe
in myself more because he believes
all the things that I am
and doesn’t care about the places to which I have
fallen and will fall again.
I want a man to whom I can be
released by surrendering,
In whose waters I can dive deep and come
Up for air with full lungs and a whole heart.
I want a man who can
Support without pedestals
Hold his own in a room
Give without smothering
Accept without embarrassment
Argue without anger
Protect without diminishing
Assist without condescending
Fight for me without forgetting I am
Real and passionate and whole

I want a man who sees me
Whole, disregarding the pieces
The shattered tatters of my soul
Litter on the path behind me
Shivered dust of all the mirrors I have been.
I want a man who romps and stomps and drinks and frolics and explores
with me sometimes as good, sometimes better, sometimes needing his hand
who still cherishes me
Before
During
After.

I want a man to whom I can give
Without giving away
Touch without being consumed
Trust in the darkness
With the sounds encroaching
Have at my back
Build explore create nurture
Hope.

And a decent game of chess would be nice, too.
She is greedy like that.

butmaybe i'm just demanding like that, wanting a surrendering more than a partnership. perhaps this is why i always end up with assholes i get used to.

nothing to show

but this brand new tattoo
(actually, we skipped the tattoos this beach trip.)

hi. we're back. we're tan. we have sand in our shoes (and in our bags, and in our ears, and in our jeep, and in the spaces in our wallets where we once had money). we're as happy and relaxed as can be, definitely in a Beach State of Mind, and even though we've been back for a bit, the neon BUM lights are still blinking merrily over our heads.

we enjoyed five days of wave-diving, body-surfing, and sun-worshipping. i lost my glasses to the pounding surf within fifteen minutes of hitting the water, but even that didn't dampen my mood. in fact, i think it went far to make certain i observed heidi's First Rule Of Successful Parenting: don't pay too close attention. we built a sand castle every day, incresingly more complex, with moats meant to be filled up by the rising tide. our last one was a bit far back, and was still standing and decorated with shells when we left. i wonder how long it will last. it was tempting to set up a web cam just to monitor it, but i couldn't see how to make it work. maybe next year.

i'd love to start a seasonal (memorial day to labour day) vegetarian restaurant there. the more often i go, the more often i wonder why i come home. Dragon doesn't help matters much, insisting on starting sentences with "when we move to the beach. . . " and Tiger chimes in with "When we open our restaurant. . . " *sigh* they are wonderful children. we also discovered a fantastic restaurant with awesome food and live piano music. the martinis there are Just Right, and even though it has elegant atmosphere, the boys didn't seem out of place in the slightest in their tee shirts, shorts and flip flops (the blond hair probably helps). we were Finally Tired Of Pizza (after three days, even good pizza wears thin), and we ended up having to cruise around looking for wany place that seemed suitable: all the places we had called acted as though we were speaking greek when we asked if they served a vegetarian burger and fries. you'd have thought we were asking for the philosopher's stone. the next night, though, our last in the cabin, phillip and i made vegetarian burgers in our little kitchenette, complete with corn on the cob, baked beans, tossed salad, and french fries. we called it Cheeseburger in Paradise menu (phillip had the beer while i opted for chianti; and yes, we had heinz 57 and kosher dill pickles, too).

we listened to Tiger on the way there and then on the way back again; we were all enthralled by the story and can't wait to get Monkey, the next in the series. Tiger wailed "that's it?!?" as i groaned, "it's over?!?!" when the final disc ended. four and a half hours passed in near total silence as we were transported by Jeff Stone. it was amazing, and phillip is to be commended for choosing such a fantastic story without having any previous knowledge of it.

when we were actually in the beach area, we listened to jommy buffet. i'm still humming the songs.

gabriel and li'l nibs are home, and it's good to see them again. we came home to find Raiders of the Lost Ark and the second season of MI-5 in the post office box from netflix. perhaps over the few days i'll shake the vacation mentality and get back to being a Real Person again, but for now it's macaroni and cheese and martini time. i'm still barefoot and the boys are still a bit pink in the cheeks. don't expect wildly responsible behaviour from us any time too soon. Monday at the earliest.

whoda thunnk?

fury called tonight. he recommended that (after a single reading of I Moved To Roanoke In 1978), that i become a writer, an Au-Thor. heh. as if that isn't what i've wanted to be since i was nine (just after i gave up the hope of being the first woman in space, when i found out my vision is hopelessly near-sighted). and that i ought to have a bookstore, preferably a used-and-rare one. i guess i can try to sway jaime to set up our private library in ottowa?

what a whirlwind

this week seems to have flown by, caught up as i have been in laundry (i swear i've done more laundry this week than i have in the past two months), getting a new kitten (named Nibs, short for Nibble, since she likes to play-bite and because she's only half a byte long), and packing up for the beach.

i've taken a break from the nabokov (the commentary section simply doesn't hold up to the poem) to read the truly light-hearted fare of Spider Robinson. I finished up Lady Slings the Booze today, and am beginning Callahan's Key tonight after i pack up the jeep.

wish us well. we'll be back on Tuesday.

laundry

this week, i've done more laundry than i've done in a month. that's an emotional statment as well as a practical one. i hope your summer is going beautifully. we're looking forward to the beach on thursday, even though we're supposed to arrive after some thunderstorms bring in some cooler weather (meaning it will only be in the uppper 80's).

love and peace.

lying

never a good thing. rarely defensible.