Bob Fosse Dream

I dreamed that a Bob Fosse dancer was dancing on my driveway last night. It was springtime and everything was very green. She worn a red sequin bowler and jazz shoes with spats. She was dancing next to my silver Subaru at the driver's side tire. She moved slow at first but was very controlled. She started dancing fast, but the faster she danced, the flatter my tire got. It didn't take her long at all to dance my tire flat.

Seafood Sick

Last night my friends and I went to a fish place in Culpeper Virginia. Everything started out fine. I split an order of raw oysters with my friend and they tasted ok. Then I got a seafood stew that consisted of fish, scallops, shrimp, mussels and clams. I finished about 1/4 of it when I started to feel strangly full,  but I kept eating. By the time I finished half, I felt the way I do when I first start to get seasick. I just wanted to keep perfectly  still.

I NEVER got seasick my whole life until a few years ago. Steve and I went on a whale watch off Proviencetown (which we have done countless times before). Just after we saw the first humpback whale, I felt like I was going to puke. I went to the back and the boat and foolishly hung my head over the side. The wind whipped the orange lobster salad into my hair. After that, I was completely down for the count. There are benches at the back of the boat and I laid on one. I noticed another man on the opposite bench who was sick also. We said nothing to each other. He motioned with his two fingers for me to look at the ocean's horizon behind the boat like some kind of ghost indian guide that appears in movies. We still didn't speak. I tried this but it didn't work. I kept puking. At one time a whale came right up to the boat and as he came out of the water, I was hanging over the side. I'm sure I'm in some family pictures heaving up lobster salad as the majestic humpback breached on the port side. I have never been so miserable in my life. I knew I was trapped for hours on the boat. When we got back to Provincetown, I laid down flat on the pier and did one last grand puke over the side. This one turned out to be the biggest and the loudest in front of dozens of tourists.

Last night was not nearly so dramatic. We left and I keep my eyes closed tight during the car ride back. I know the gob of seafood puke was on the top of my stomach. But when I car ride was over, I could tell it had moved south. I even tried to puke in friends' bathroom, but had no luck. When it comes to puking, it's totally up to my body because I'm not one of those people that can make myself puke by sticking a finger down my throat. Although I really tried last night.

The Eye of the Toilet

A good friend of mine had to take a shit at work. He went to a bathroom that was on a different floor from where he sits. Many people employ this method. The logic being you never want to shit close to the people you work with because you could be tagged with it. So my friend stealthily went to this "secret" bathroom. Even though this bathroom was clean and situated well away from his co-workers, it had one major flaw: a super sensitive automatic flusher. Many times the toilet had actually flushed WHILE he was sitting on it. This time, he beat it. He draped a long piece of toilet paper over the back of the toilet so that it blocked the bright red eye that detects when someone is moving. This brilliant maneuver worked. He shit in peace and when he was finished, he removed the long bridal veil piece of toilet paper from the back of the toilet, and it flushed. Man triumphs over the most advanced toilet technology.

Disappearances

In the first grade, there was this kid who sat behind me and shook all the time. The teacher would hit him with a  long, dirty, yellow ruler. But he wasn't fucking around. He really was epileptic or had some serious issue. He vanished. That same year I remember lots of migrant workers' kids being there. They would come through, pick apples and then move on. The kids were so poor. One of the "apple pickers" stole a stapler and got into a world of trouble. It was just a little kid stapler that was a bright "Laugh-In" orange. Seems she disappeared too.

That same year a preacher came in and told these weird stories on a large board. It was a big board on three legs that had layers of cloth with different backgrounds. He would put these little cut out figures on different backgrounds as he went along. Maybe it was felt. Anyway, he came once a month and would always end with some prayer or moral. Mind you, this was public school.

There was a kid that was REALLY fat. Even by today's standards. He always got made fun of. Little kids are the worst fucking evil creatures there are. They find those weaknesses and jab their ugly little hot dog fingers into the soft spots. Anyway, the fat kid couldn't do any of the physical fitness stuff, and I think they were going to put him back grade only because of that. The fat kid disappeared too.

I remember hearing my second grade teacher was nearly cut up in one of the hay cutting machines. Apparently, she laid low in the grass and it went over her. She had one of those 70's huge astronaut beehive hair dos.

Our third grade teacher only lasted a year. She would put her head down on the desk and cry. Or pretend to cry so we would feel sorry for her. She lived in a trailer behind the funeral home.

The funeral home was great! It was in an gigantic white house just up the street from my house. The parking lot had great hills and we used to ride skateboards there. Behind the parking lot was a patch of woods. You would climb up a hill and disappear in the trees. Nobody could see you. We smoked back there. I don't know why but the back door of funeral home was always open. We went in to take matches, but we didn't venture too far into it's many odd rooms. The room just to the right of the entrance had the machine that sucked your blood out and put the "keep you fresh" liquid in. I never saw the liquid, but I always imagined it being ice blue. I remember hearing during this time that a body wiggled when the new fluid was pushed in. And a side note: if you were cremated, the body would jump around.

We mused endlessly about the bodies that might be there. I wasn't the only one with this fascination. A few years before when my great-grandmother lived down the street from the same funeral home, she watched it all the time waiting for the dead to arrive. When a body did come, she was completely wild. She would stay up all night if necessary to watch lights go off and on in various rooms. She watched the building until the funeral had taken place and the body was gone.

Ambien

I have been on ambien for years. I stopped using it February 2010 and started sleeping normally Then my mom died in March 2010. I have been on it ever since. My prescription ran out this past weekend, and I had to go two days without it. Saturday night, I had magnificent dreams, three long sequences involving Woody Allen, hammers, and circus showgirls. Even though I didn't sleep very well, I woke up feeling like my brain had shaken off a fog, unleashing these dreams like hounds. But Sunday night was miserable. I didn't dream. I slept for what felt like five minutes but it had been two hours, and when I woke up, I was wide fucking awake. Monday was unbearable without sleep. I got the prescription filled and slept Monday night. I would really like to get off it so I can dream again.


Woody



The Official Kilogram Is Losing Weight

Who knew that the official world standard for the kilogram is just outside of Paris and kept under a cheese dome. The real mystery is that it's loosing weight.

The Official Kilogram

Valentine's Day-Heart Shaped Crap and Photo of a Realistic Heart Cake

It is odd that people give each other edible items that are heart shaped for Valentine's Day. I know the "heart" is a metaphor, but I really don't think it does anything but pump blood and stay sloppy. Love comes from the head, the loins and the stomach. The heart just pumps blood to service these areas which are the true sources of love. When people are handing out these sillly heart shaped items they even get the color wrong. Heart shaped goodies are always cotton candy pink or red-riding hood scarlet. The real colors of the heart are more industrial. At least this cake got it right.
But if you are a romantic that does believe the heart is the source of love, and you accept a frilly heart cake from your beloved, then in reality you are eating their heart. You are tearing their heart with your teeth and swallowing it. Didn't some tribes do that to their enemies? Are you eating their heart out so they can't live AND can't give it to anyone else?



These edible bleeding hearts by Cake artist Lily Vanilli are available for people to send to their Valentine this year.