Inblognito

Bloody Hell

I'm frantically trying to scrape important shit off this hard drive before gutting the thing. No time to blog. Besides, if I tried to blog, my computer would probably just die again, right in the middle of a sen

Dead Air

In the middle of the night last night, my home computer died. The sudden prevalence of unusual silence woke me out of a sound sleep; instead of the gentle lull of the hard-drive's white-noise whirrings, I heard my husband coughing in another part of the house, a big truck lumbering down my street, and the dog scratching himself.

I don't know what's wrong with my computer yet - it's a fairly new machine - as I didn't have time to look at it before coming to work this morning, but the symptoms it is exhibiting do not induce optimism in my black little heart. I can't blog regularly from work, as my ouevre is edgy enough to cost me my job, if I were discovered. I'm nervous about even checking my e-mail here.

So - I'm off the air until further notice. I will, of course, be back as soon as possible. Ciao, you freaks. I adore you all.

Shroomage

Circa Bellum posted about his experiences with psychedelic mushrooms, back in his younger days; reading it brought back some heady memories, I can tell you. I remember with all the clarity of daylight my first experiences with organic hallucinogens. As hallucinogens go - and I'm not good with most of 'em - shrooms are the primo shit. No nasty chemical side-effects, and you're done in six hours or so. Best of all possible worlds, if you're a fucking druggie.

During my freshman year of college, I lived in an all-female dormitory, as befitted my station in life. In the spring of the year, I dated a hippie; real good-looking guy, but with a shade too much fondness for Che Guevara posters and tie-dyes for my long-term taste. Plus, on closer inspection, he smelt of ass and pit. Needless to say, this relationship was short-lived. But I digress.

One fine Saturday evening, Hippie shows up with a bag of shrooms. His also-hippie roommate was coming over with his intensely-hippiefied ultra-Nazi-vegan girlfriend, and we were going to split the bag four ways before going to a party at an apartment complex a few blocks away. We planned to crunch 'em up manual-like, by mouth, none of this labor-intensive tea stuff, and smoke a bowl afterwards, to "clear the taste" from our delicate hippie palates.

Hippie boyfriend, hippie roommate, and hippie girlfriend were firmly ensconced in my dorm room in short order, and we followed the general plan. I choked down my portion of the shrooms, fighting the urge to gag and thinking mostly about the animal shit the nasty things grew in, and hoping, unenthusiastically, they'd been washed before packaging. The Dead played Sugar Magnolia on the boombox - bootleg cassette, of course, Alpine 76. Incense curled over our heads as we smoked our bowl and listened to hippie girlfriend's lecture about the evils of organ meats.

Finally, we left for the party. Now, to my recollection, calling this gathering an actual "party" was a major stretch - twenty or so hippies laying around on pillows, beanbags and futons, by candlelight, toking on a hookah, does not a "party" make. The scene was only slightly more animated than an opium den, but they had food and beer and Jimi Hendrix music. My hippie boyfriend and I settled on a futon in the corner, rolled a joint, and commenced to socializing.

The next thing I knew I was giggling. Stinky hippies were funny. Ha! That goth-looking girl over there is getting yelled at by vegan-Nazi hippie girlfriend for eating a double bacon cheeseburger in front of her! Ha ha! Look at that stoned dude try to find his lighter! Ha ha ha! Wow - white guys with dreadlocks are soo silly! Ha ha ha ha ha! And look at the little faces on the carpet fibers! Hilarious! Ha ha haha hah ha ha ha ha...

I couldn't stop. I got my gigglebox turned over, in the worst sort of way. The mostly-quiet hippie conclave found this behavior annoying, until they were informed that we were shrooming, after which I was given a wide berth and lots of encouraging smiles. One thing you can say for hippies - they're tolerant, kindly, even, towards those who are visibly in an altered state.

I laid there and laughed my ass off, occasionally raising my head to point at someone and mutter incoherently about beaver pelts before launching into renewed peals of merriment, for five hours. When it was time to go home, my hippie escort practically had to carry me to the car; I was weak from laughing so hard and had no equilibrium, no sea legs, with my shroom trip. The walk from the apartment to the parking lot was enough to make me light-headed and seasick; I had to stop behind our ride, to bend over and vomit between uncontrollable spurts of giggling. My hippie date was, to his credit, a very understanding young gentleman; people sometimes puke from drugs, and he was prepared for it. Any stoner worth his salt can handle a puking date.

As I stood there, hunched over and gagging up chunks onto the asphalt, a couple of swaggering frat-boys drifted by, towards the building. At the sight of us, the fat one looked pointedly at me, wrinkled up his nose at the stench, and asked, in a loud voice, "Damn...what'd she have for dinner?"

Challenged, I stood up straight, wiped the barf-strings off my chin, and smiled gaily through the flecks of used fungus on my incisors. "Mushrooms!" I managed to state, before cracking myself completely up and dissolving into the passenger's seat.

At that moment, I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever said.

I don't do hallucinogens any more. Even shrooms. It's a rule.

Comment Issue

Somehow, somewhere on the central mu.nu server, someone ran blacklist. In doing so, he or she has inadvertantly banned the expression "http:'" from usage in the comments. So, if you are trying to post a comment, both a) leaving your blog-address in the URL field, and b) posting a URL in the body of the comment itself will result in your comment being rejected for "questionable content".

I'm sure that mu.nu will resolve this problem with all possible alacrity, but for the time-being, leave off your URL's and the comments should function as usual.

Jealous

I just talked to a friend of mine in Atlanta and she says they are buried in an inch of ice. Not snow, but ice, the invisible, treacherous bastard. If I had known all the meteorological predictions for that area would actually come to pass, I would have gone to her house for the weekend - they've got gas for heat, hot water, and cooking, and as of five minutes ago they still had power with no flickers. My friend is busy making up a savory, meaty stew for dinner, and baking a loaf of home-made bread to go with it. They don't have to go anywhere. Her well-mannered and impeccably-turned-out kids are rosy-cheeked from ice-sledding. They have a big, roaring fire. They have a bag of weed. They have a case of wine. They have hot chocolate. They still have their fucking pajamas on, for God's sake. Doesn't that sound heavenly?

Meanwhile, in Lower Alabama, the same shit falls out of the sky into a pane of just-above-freezing air, onto a not-cold-enough-to-freeze ground, making mud and gunk to spatter your trousers. No ice. No snow. No stew. No weed. No picturesque views, unless you count rain dripping off the eaves of the Seven-Eleven as picturesque, which I, for my part, do not.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a bitch, but not a total cunt. I do feel for those folks who suffer from the ice and snow business - tree damage, car accidents, loss of power...all that sucks. But - and this is a big but - when that shit doesn't happen, an ice storm, or a snow storm, is lovely.

Sam will be over to kick my ass in a minute. Gotta go!

Jumpy

I have a muscle in my right shoulder that has been twitching nearly constantly for the last two days. It's a weird sensation, and it's strange to look down and see your blouse jumping around when you know damn well you're not moving your arm. This muscle has not rested, therefore my arm is tired. Really, noticeably tired. I feel like I've been lifting a five-pound weight with my right arm, all night long. Intercessory curling.

Don't you think this calls for a muscle relaxer? I could swear this calls for a muscle relaxer.

For Momma

She wanted me to bring it up - all but triple dawg dared me - and girl, you know it's true:

Everyone fucking hates a suck-up.

Unless, of course, you're the one getting sucked at any given moment. Then the suck-up seems pretty cool, because you're the suck-recipient, the one being verbally or textually serviced. But to the casual, outside observer...? They thinkin', "brown nose" and "target".

I can say it. I've sucked up. I've been sucked up to, in my day. I have experience in these matters. Everyone sees it; suckupage is transparent like that.

I'm not talking about anything or anyone specific, you understand - God forbid that I be accused of casting aspersions. I don't even know any suckups personally. But there are certain undeniable patterns of human behavior, some of which Momma and I discussed in a telephone conversation this afternoon. We got to thinking. And she dared me to post on it.

So, yeah. Suck-ups. Love. Hate.

Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

SUCKUPS, REDUX:

I see that I need to clarify my suckuppance position: this post was not a cryptic reference to something that other bloggers aren't "in" on! My blogmomma and I got to talking one afternoon, about some of the commentors you see on the Big Dawg blogs - the ones that allow comments, that is. Ninety percent of folks are nice, complimentary, friendly, normal, nine percent of folks disagree with whatever it is that the Big Dawg is barking about, and then there are the one-percenters - the suckups.

You can tell the suckups - which are mercifully few in number - from the nice, normal people, because the suckup gushes. The suckup models his or her own blog after the Big Dawg, hoping to attract via emulation. The suckup will toe the line in head-bobbing agreement, with whatever the Big Dawg posts about, whether that be masturbatory fantasies about Nazis and duct tape to off-the-wall speculations about whether or not Karl Rove has a weather-controlling device. Finally, the suckup will dump your ass cold when a Bigger Dawg comes along to suck up to.

And that was the point of the whole thing - that suckupage is noticeable, and everyone hates it when they see it.

This is not to say that any of my beloved visitors are suckups. Hell no; I appreciate each and every hair on your precious little heads. This is not to cast aspersions on anybody. If you asked me to name a suckup off the top of my head, I'd be at a loss. But - they're out there, people. You've seen it, I've seen it.

I ain't trying to be mean, and I don't have someone in my sights. I'm trying to be scrupulously honest.

Answering Sam

Sam asks:

Do you blog for yourself, or do you blog for what you believe others will think of you?
Do you want people to read your personal thoughts and opinions, or do you want the traffic?
What do you hope to gain from blogging?

At the outset, lo these many years ago now, I used to blog for myself. Over time, through search engines like google and mainstream media attention, everyone I knew seemed to find one of my old sites, and I found myself swept up in a tide of misperceptions with regard to my personality that it was to my advantage, for a time, to perpetuate. Then it got old. Now, I'm here, I'm inblognito, and I say what I damn well please. So I guess I'd fall into the "blogging for myself" category, at long last. As for the traffic, the same rule applies: years ago, when I started blogging, the traffic was a big thrill. Now I could care less. What I mean is, it's nice to get traffic, but I don't think of myself as actively seeking it, like I used to. If traffic were my main concern, I'd never have gone underground - other sites I "administer" have much higher turnover than this disused little ramble.

What do I hope to gain from blogging? Writing practice, just a daily sharpening of my language skills, not unlike solving a crossword puzzle (which I also do every day). Beyond that? It's not so much what I seek to gain as what I seek to regain. A sense of self? A measure of sanity? A shred of self-respect? Blogging is very therapeutic.

Queenie Does Washington

My irascible old uncle Robert wrote a post the other day that rang familiar bells in the Queeniebellum; he describes the potential furor over the multitude of skeletons inevitably unearthed from his various closets were he to run for public office. I've often had such thoughts myself; believe it or not, in my real life I do not appear to be such a loon on the surface. Oh, no, no, no - that would never do. One has to dig deep to find the bag-lady within. But, all this is only tangential to the point I was trying to make, which is that, strange as it may sound, I have been encouraged to run for public office several times in the past, by several unrelated gentleman of a decidedly political bent. While I look very attractive on paper, I never considered it seriously, being who and what I am. These gentlemen I reference were sweetly hopeful for my future, being friends of my father's and only cognizant of my official resume, and therefore also completely in the dark with regard to Queenie's, erm, colorful preferences, proclivities, and pleasures.

If I ever ran for office, it would have to be on the "Everything You've Ever Heard About Me Is True" ticket, the "Yep, I Done That, Too" plank. I mean, seriously. If it will change your reality, your attitude, or your latitude, I've smoked it, snorted it, drunk it, dropped it, eaten it, shot it, or put it up my ass (dilaudid suppository, anyone?) If it can be fucked up, I have fucked it up - cars, credit scores, and contractual obligations. Yes, I probably slept with that guy over there, too. Oh, and her. Hey, hon! How y'all been? Yes, I've nailed a politician. Yes, I've nailed a rock star and lived to tell the tale, after several thorough courses of antibiotics. I've never stolen anything, never been arrested for anything, have no police record whatsoever, other than a few traffic violations...but I sure as hell have engaged in some stuff that would get my ass locked up in most of the countries in the free (and unfree) world. Hell, if I was a muslim, they'd have "honor" kilt me years ago. Or stoned me, maybe, and I don't mean stoned in the good way.

Personally? I don't care. I'd just as soon shout it from the housetops: hey, look at me! I'm a highly successful, motivated, and energetic punk rock stoner freak, and I live next door! How you doin'? I don't give a rat's ass...but I know that my mother and father would die of humiliation behind that sort of revelation. My husband wouldn't give a rat's ass, either...but my kids might, someday. I have to remind myself sometimes - earth to Queenie - you is not the only person up on this planet, biatch; somebody else might have a opinion, too....

You know - and God forbid that this come to pass, knock wood - if my parents weren't around to feel the carnage as my private life was laid bare, I might would just try it. Running for office, I mean, on the "I Done It" approach. After all, my existence - since 1998 - has been almost blameless. Moreover, there's a precedent. George Bush had a drinkin' problem, sobered up, and look where that landed him. Teddy Kennedy is an infamous rummy who fucking killed a lady through cowardice, and the people of Massachusetts keep on keepin' on with him. And besides - run for office, tell the truth about all my various and sundry foibles, right up front...nobody could ever say I was out of touch with the American people, now could they? Because, and I really believe this, you know 75% of the American people are, despite all the above, waaaay more "out there" than I've ever been.

No, really. I'm only an anomaly in that I tell the truth.

Since Everyone Else Is Doing It...

...I'll fucking cave and post that I'm a Sober Emotional Constructive Leader.

You are a SECL--Sober Emotional Constructive Leader. This makes you a Politician.

Of the 83558 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 7.3 % are this type.

Happy now? Bunch of horseshit. Hah! Ask Key just exactly how hell-bent I am on "pleasing" other people. And sober? Riiiight. Bullroar.

Watch

Wow.

Thanks, Joe.

Tsunami Joke

So today I read all about this morning radio crew that got "suspended" (whatever that means) for playing a "tasteless" and "offensive" song mocking tsunami victims on the air. Being the inquisitive little ferret that I am, I could not rest until google laid at my feet, like a foxhound with its quarry, a (limp and bleeding) mp3 of the tsunami song and the five minutes of air time that preceded it. I wanted to hear this allegedly offensive song, to judge for myself; I'm a complete asshole, really, so I often find extremely tasteless crap just as funny as all get out. I thought perhaps I could make the case, intellectually speaking, that these people were being mistreated. A trampling of the first amendment, and all that good stuff. I thought it might be one of those things where laughter and the certain knowledge that you are going straight to hell go hand-in-hand.

I listened to the mp3. What a bunch of shitheads. I mean, can I say it any plainer? These people are just nasty, trashy, overtly racist, foul-mouthed, egotistical little prima-donna bitches; this "tsunami song" is so rancid that even I couldn't see the humor in it. It wasn't even well produced, or well thought-out, or well-executed, or well anything - it was just stupid, irritating, home-made crap that also happened to be offensive to even a thick-skinned old battleaxe like me.

Nuh-uh. That radio station has every reason to pull 'em off the air. Nobody's rights are getting ridden rough-shod over in this instance; individuals and corporate entities have the right to distance themselves from acts they find repugnant and contrary to their personal code of ethics or their mission statement, whichever applies. If I found that one of my employees had used company resources to produce and distribute something that might damage my shareholder's value, I have an obligation to take care of the situation. No. Case closed. These particular "shock jocks" are just buttheads.

I toyed with the idea of posting a link to the article, but that's just too much trouble (bad Queenie! Bad!) - suffice it to say that I saw it on CNN dot com and not at another blog, otherwise I'd probably take the trouble, just to shine in on the old blogging ethics thing. Likewise, I was going to post the audio clip...but I just can't bring myself down to the level necessary to perpetrate such an act on my own environment. It really is gross. If you want it bad enough, send google after it, like I did. In my opinion, that'd be a colossal waste of your fucking time, but hey. Judge for yourself.

Last Quivering

The constant, droning prattle in the television media on all this snow in the northeast is working my nerves. I remain totally unmoved; after all, here it is, Lower Alabama, cold as shit (just wrong on so many levels), colder than the proverbial witch's titty, and I would sell my soul for a snow day, a day to legitimately lay out of work (a tree fell on my driveway, sorry!), drink hot cocoa by the family hearth, with my chirn, and schlump around in my pyjamas all day long. Winter fucking wonderland! My slacker fantasies, realized, in a very concrete way.

Earlier today, The Weather Channel was predicting a "wintry mix" for my house on Friday night. That forecast lasted all of seventeen minutes; now the prediction for my zip code is "nasty cold drizzle". Shit. Typical.

Snow day. I know, I know, you yankees don't get snow days. Well, fuck all that, you're yankees, you knew what you were getting into when you decided to live up there. Do you think we get "heat days" off down here, during the summer? No, we do not. My people drive poorly on slippery cold stuff, producing news footage of jaws-of-life level auto wreckage that your people laugh at. Your people die like flies in heat that we experience on a daily basis in the summer, and we laugh at you pussies, too. It is the way of things. That doesn't mean I can't be just the teensiest bit jonesy for some of your weather. Just a day or two. That's all I ask.

I'd even settle for an ice storm. Okay...hail?

Paean

Velociman brought up Lileks in the comments section of a post below. I remembered I hadn't checked up on ol' Lileks in a while. So I went, I perused. I cackled, I spiritedly guffawed, I threw back my head and roared. Now I need to go change my unders.

I'm sorry...if you don't find shit like this hilarious, I don't know what to do for you.

Everyday Haiku

I'm in a haiku frame of mind. Plus, once I've had this much wine, it's just easier to think in this meter.

winter skin itching;
unkempt nails claw at the breast
titties is too hot

look! way over there
asshole hammers wood by night
wake my chirn and die

"middle class wage slave"
you can whine like a pansy
or get up and work

crocodile city
scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch whimper
my shit still itches

sneezing releases
all sorts of sinus demons
orgasm for face

body spreading out
white flesh over white sheets
to sleep a deep sleep

Inblognito

Speculation with regard to my "real" identity was a given. Just bound to happen, people being what they are, right? No biggie, in the scheme of things. I am sure there are plenty of people who've sussed me out by now, and ninety-nine point seven of them have been cool about it, even happy to see whichever one of my identities they "know" online having a good time. Shit, two or three of you nailed me, like, the first day I posted, back on blogspot. You sent mails. We bonded. It was good.

Know this, though: some very public speculations, however wide of the mark they may or may not be, are not winning any friends or influencing any people over here. I hate that shit; immature online strivings to appear "in the know" are a) pitiable, in an adult, and b) pissing me off. If you just have to wonder, wonder via e-mail, won't you? Or, alternatively, couldn't you just be content to enjoy the occasional show, to let me have a little fun? What do you do for good times, anyway...go around telling four-year-olds that Santa Claus is a big, fat, lie?

The anonymity thing is part of the whole thrill. You want to fuck that up for me? Then go right ahead, you destructive ass. You sure can do it, if you feel you have something to prove. As for my part...you bust me out? To my family, to my community? I will never forget and I will never forgive. I will despise you in some measure until I flatline, and do everything in my admittedly somewhat meager powers to make your life a living hell from now on.

So just cut it the fuck out already.

Set In Stone

What can I say? I love a man in cuneiform.

(I've been waiting for a chance to use that line for, like, years. Thanks, Dong.)

Dammit!

Can't you people just cut it the fuck out already?

I mean, really. It's embarassing. What, all the souls were saved, so you had to find something else to fill your time with? All the hungry children in Africa fattened up? All the crime, all the hate, totally wiped out by everyone's perfect knowledge of God's Love? No, take a minute and ask yourself if you really want to stand here and try to tell me that the most important thing you could be doing with your time, your pulpit, and your massive, capital-generating, faith machine is to pick nits with a cartoon character?

Don't you have any idea how ridiculous you're making yourselves look, now, at a time when any fool can see that your faith is under massive attack, when those who espouse your beliefs in any sort of public argument are immediately dismissed as Jesus freaks, right-wing nutjobs, a bunch of fruit-loops? Unbelievable. Shit like this is, for the Christian faith as a whole, like the Dukakis helmet picture, or the snaps of Kerry in the blue NASA cleansuit, looking for all the world like a French sperm. It's bad PR. Makes the whole idea of the church a focal point for derision.

I understand that a lot of Christians are morally opposed to any perceived permissiveness with regard to homosexuality; I don't agree with that position, but I admit that this is an issue where reasonable people disagree. If, however, preachers insist on standing up and making broad proclamations on the topic, I wish to hell they'd do it in a manner that shows some forethought for how this advances Christ's work as a whole - is what I do now going to reflect well on my faith? How will the media be inclined to portray it to the millions and millions and millions of unsaved they service? Will my actions bring souls to the Lord, or push them away? I'm sorry, but picking an argument with Spongebob Squarepants is just doomed to failure; even if you're right, you still look like an asshole.

Dumbasses. Fucking fiddling, and Rome a complete tinderbox.

Pound Foolish

How do you spell relief? Well, if you're me, tonight you're spelling it b-r-a-k-e j-o-b. After flying by the seat of my pants and relying mainly on the handbrake to bring my vehicle to a stop for weeks and weeks, I've finally handed my car over to the ass-rapers mechanics for a brake job and oil change. I cannot tell you what a load off my mind having brakes again will be; when you're the mother of three, life suddenly becomes mighty inconvenient when you deem your own car too unsafe to carry your children. Mister MacFarland was getting mighty sick of chauffeur duty, too.

This morning, on the way to work, my car barely ground to a stop at all, and the noise it was making was downright embarrassing. I know that every male in a mile radius would have taken my husband out for a horsewhipping, if they could have located the man who was "responsible" for that noise, for "letting" me drive around like that, as I was "obviously" a deaf, dumb, and foolish skirt who had no idea the car screeched like a banshee at every tap of the brakes. My own cash siphon mechanic was shocked that I made it as long as I did. Whatever. Blame whoever you like; I was not using that bloody credit card, and would brook no discussion on the matter.

Hey - fortune smiled upon me this time. And I will pay no exorbitant credit-card interest on this brake job, either. When the man hands me my keys back, I will hand him a wad of honest cash, instead. My plastic remains on ice, and I have once again avoided spending a got-damn dime more than I have to.

Yeah, I'm a cheap Scot bastard. I make an Abe Lincoln scream in agony on a daily basis. It's a lifestyle thing. Debt scares me.

Diverse Membership

On the evening of my seventeenth birthday, I lost my virginity. I was a junior in high school, and had been dating the perpetrator of the act for a number of months; as high school romances go, we were lifers. We were in loooove. We spent hours on the phone. We spent all our time between classes and at lunch together, every possible second of extracurricular fraternization was wrung from each and every day. We drove to school together, we went to church together…it was an affair straight out of a John Hughes movie: New Romantic girl with money meets Punked-Out working-class boy in a Theater course, wacky hijinks ensue.

Months and months and months of making out, of getting all hot and bothered in the back seat, all while holding a symbolic dime between my knees…it finally proved to be too much for Queenie’s burgeoning young womanhood. I gave it up, after much agonizing. I capitulated.

My boyfriend and I drove out to the river side, out in the country, to a sweet, dark bower made of kudzu and tree-roots. He’d picked the spot earlier in the day – knowing that he was about to finally lose his, too - and he’d made sort of a nest there, with layers of blankets and pillows, ringed with candles. Really, as feminine virginity-loss tales go, it was pretty fucking cool. I won’t get graphic – who, me? never! – but there was no blood and very little pain and the whole experience was one of those “the earth moved!” things that puts you in a goofy daze and makes you walk bowlegged for days afterwards.

Although that boyfriend and I broke up when he went off to college, I never regretted the experience. I wasn’t an especially promiscuous person; I only throw in the “especially” as a nod to those who will be horrified by the idea that I lost my virginity at seventeen. By modern standards I was practically a nun; it was some while before I went out and found myself another boyfriend to love on. Until my marriage in 1998, I was a serial monogamist.

At any rate, up until I was nearly twenty, this young man was the only “grown” man I had ever seen up close, naked. Ever. So understand that my, erm, perceptions of reality were somewhat shaped my that one unique experience. Also, remember that this was in the eighties; porn wasn’t everywhere the way it is today. There was no internet to see this shit on. I had no brothers, my father was an exceedingly modest gentleman…and we were churchy people, anyway.

Two years pass between the first penis and the second one. When I am presented with the second one, only the years of friendship with its owner and months of heavy-petting horniness kept me from hollering out loud from shock at the sight of it. What the hell was wrong with the boy? Did he hurt himself, or something? Where’s the rest of it? I was upset. I went through with the act, and everything was fine and dandy, but my mind wasn’t there at all. I went through the motions, mind running in circles, making cartwheels, training for the Olympics, stunned at the penile diversity that had just now, at the age of twenty, occurred to me.

Only by puzzling out this deeply personal topic with my best girlfriend did I understand what was going on, much to the merriment of the girlfriend in question. Boyfriend A was uncircumcised, and, apparently, Girthzilla to boot. Boyfriend B was cut, and just a nice regular size. I’d had no idea; I had no frame of reference, no clue what either one looked like, and, contrary to popular belief, girls don’t come pre-equipped with a mental sizing chart. I just could not believe that two penises could be that different. Penises sure were funny things.

Lo these many years later, I reflect on those early sexual experiences with not a little humor, as well as with a small measure of pride. I was sheltered, dammit. My parents did about as good a job protecting the Flower of Southern Womanhood as anyone could have, especially when that flower was dangerously determined to swing from the rafters. My girlfriend has been telling this story, laughing at me these twenty years, for having to ask her about it, and I am still grumbling with every retelling, and calling her a slut for knowing.

NSFW

Just now, while browsing Electric Venom, some small mental alarm began beeping as I noted, in passing, that Kate, kindly, warns her readers when she posts something "Not Safe For Work". I don't think I've ever done that. I think I probably better start. After all, you don't want your head tech guy finding my stories in your cookies. I can't be held responsible for what happens to your sorry ass after your boss finds out. Come on, people. Drunk and coked-up cracker artist's model attempts to fuck tranny Irish photographer? Dangerous, cranked-out bikers watching porn and slipping mickeys on innocents? Incoherent ravings, punctuated with foul language and writ large on a parchment of illegal activity? Oh, man. Bend over, 'cause you can kiss that ass goodbye.

Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe it would be easier to just change my tagline. "Inblognito - NSFW".

Triple Happiness Blessing

invisible blog
a girl strains to write a line
ghost in the machine

silver tower looms
pyramid of Diet Coke
OCD is cool

promises broken
cigarettes are demon-things
smoke curls heavenward

google sits right there
fountains of distraction in
Anna Nicole Smith

king size pillow top
down and soft cotton beckon
Queenie say "sleep good"

Whoops

There was a post there that wasn't supposed to be there. Draft-mode pity-party. It's gone now. Move along. Nothing to see here, folks.

In and Out

Excuse the blog silence, won't you? I usually try to do my bit to keep the blogosphere alive on the weekends, but not this week. Yesterday I was feeling poorly, today I am packing, and from tonight on will be out of pocket until at least tomorrow night, maybe another couple of days, depending on how much of my ass gets handed back to me in the first meeting. Business trip, you know. Boring, but there it is.

I really dread this trip. It's a short one, but I don't like to travel for business anymore, unless I absolutely cannot fob it off upon someone lower on the corporate totem pole than yours truly. I've already played the road warrior game, traveling for business twenty-one days, or more, a month. I did it, for several companies, for several years. I know what it's like to come home to dusty sheets and believe me, it ain't glamorous, and it isn't all that enjoyable, either.

When you tell your friends that you're going to exotic and potentially fun places, like Paris or Honolulu or New Orleans, they usually throw back some lip like "nice work if you can get it!" or "damn. sucks to be you.", all dripping with sarcasm. What most people don't realize - unless they, too, have done a lot of business travel - is that you don't get to actually enjoy any of the fun shit while you're in cool places on company time. Every minute that you spend on-site is a dollah bill, shareholder value, ticking down the drain like sands through the hourglass. You go from office to hotel, hotel to office, perhaps stopping to eat. Yeah, sometimes you get cool scenery - when you aren't in Paramus for a week, that is - but nobody's going to let you go home before the sun sets just so you can lay by the pool. You don't have time to go to that museum you've always wanted to see. You're too fucking exhausted at the end of the day to go to that four-star restaurant across town, because you've worked since six in the morning. Business travel is, largely, annoying, tiring, and tantalizing, in that order. Unless you have an obnoxious spouse at home, or something. Then, I understand that business travel is the nectar of the gods. I wouldn't know about that; me and Mister MacFarland get along pretty good, comparatively.

So. If I were eighteen, here is the place where I would mumble "peace out" and slouch away. I am not eighteen, as my stretch-marks and crows-feet can testify, so this is the part where Queenie say bye.

Disclosure

Just so's you know? Karl Rove and Michael Moore are both paying me to blog. Oh, it isn't a political thing - I think the checks keep coming because I never seek to judge. Briefcase Boy likes it tight and dirty, but Jabba the Slut over there just has a diaper fetish. What can I say? They dig it. And the cash ain't bad, either. It has to be, really - have you ever see Mike Moore in a Huggie? Combat pay, for psychic scars.

Really. Comments at Instapundit? Hell has frozen over.

Nader

Not my choice of a political candidate, but a uniquely southern expression for "tornado". I was four years old the first time I ever saw a funnel cloud, and the shape has informed my nightmares for the last thirty-odd years. The tornado is, to mankind's residual cave-man-level instinct, the incarnation of Nature; the Sky God taking a shape out of formless chaos to descend and rape the swan, the almighty Hand of an angry deity forming in the sky, right before your terrified animal eyes. Don't pooh-pooh the nader's intense scaring power, either, not until you've seen one come out of the sky yourself. That's an underwear change, people.

We were out on Pappy's farm in North Carolina. My mother and father and I were there for Sunday dinner; it was early spring, and the first green things were beginning to poke exploratory shoots aboveground, to test the air. We'd eaten around my grandmother's huge dining-room table - my little nuclear family unit, my aunts and their husbands and children, and my grandparents - and the adults were enjoying the ritual post-prandial retreat to the withdrawing room. Cigarettes were smoked, waistbands discreetly loosened, and a baseball game roared (Pappy was mostly deaf) on the Curtis-Mathis, a circa-1970 television in an ornately carved wooden casing the size of a light truck, with a 20" screen.

We children were turned out into the front yard; screaming hooliganism was strictly verboten in my Gram's withdrawing room. Somewhere in the back of my mind I made note of the darkening sky, but rapid climactic changes were far less interesting than the game of Red Rover my cousins were putting together. We played, slamming into each other's arms with as much ulna-snapping force as possible, being mean little rednecks; we lost ourselves, as children do, in the game.

The next thing I knew my mother was running towards me, screaming my name, a paralyzed look on her face. She dragged me into the house, and as I looked back over the farm field, it was clear: the awesome shape of a funnel forming in the sky, dipping lower and lower, towards a spot not too remote from the farm. It wasn't raining on us, but the rain falling from the wrathful cloud was clearly visible, as was lightening. We heard the sound of thunder.

My family survived that day intact, of course. All the family herded into the cellar until the storm passed; Pappy didn't lose so much as a fencepost. It barely even rained where we were, but underneath the storm they had a gullywasher. Lightening strikes and hail, too. The tornado we saw actually touched down over five miles away.

Later, when my family first moved to Lower Alabama, the nader experience became more common for me, if not the sight of the naders themselves. Small and brutal - not like the magnificent cat-five whoppers in the plains states, the ones in the movies - Lower Alabama tornados were common offshoots of the nasty thunderstorms that marched through town in the summertime. I vividly remember one particular sticky-hot summer in the late seventies, because it seemed as if there was a tornado every weekend for a month. My parents and I spent so much time in that little niche below the basement stairs during tornado warnings that I equipped it with books and snacks, just in case. Invariably, a terrible thunderstorm would blow up on Saturday afternoon, a tornado or two would touch down at dusk, and then we'd ride through the trailer-parks after church on Sunday, surveying the damage. Seeing who needed what, out of Christian charity, and gawking at the carnage for the pure entertainment value.

While Mister MacFarland and I were dating, years ago, a tornado came down the very street he lived on. We slept through the whole thing, with the windows open, no less (well, it was a nice night, before the tornado hit) only to be awakened at six in the morning by a phone call from his mother, demanding to know if we were okay. We stuck our heads out the front door, and saw the news crews picking their way through cars flattened by falling trees, the wreckage of the awning for the neighborhood tennis enclosure, live, downed power lines, and other hazardous storm debris. We were amazed; neither one of us heard a damn thing.

The high winds and rain have stopped now, for the most part, save for a light drizzle that wouldn't hurt a flea. We were spared the wrath of a nader in this particular thunderstorm; so may it be forever. Even so, I think I've heard the word "tornado" one too many times today - thank The Weather Channel for that. I know that tonight I will have tornado dreams, where funnels slip menacingly through lowering, blackened skies, chasing me and my bags full of neuroses with far more intent and malicious purpose than a real tornado ever could.

Dream tornados can be much scarier than real tornados. If you let them.

Status Quo

They do say that when the Lord closes a door, He opens a window. While they're not exactly fungible quantities, the Lord, in His wisdom, has taken Kelly, but brought back Kate with a Venomous Vengeance. Not only is the Medusa of the Blogosphere back on the mainland and blogging like sixty, she's already started up with her excellent little daily linkfests. Delicious nuggets of informative, entertaining text, for your digital perusal. Isn't that why you're out here in the first place? Go!

It's a stormy afternoon in the deep south. Really, really stormy. Like, you'll be seeing trailer parks on The Weather Channel shortly, stormy. Inspired, I started working on a long story about tornado weather, but the power is in and out down here. Hopefully I'll be posting it later, God willing and the creek don't rise, spoken literally.

Work

My workday was of a liberal mixture of the Good, The Bad, and the Horrendously Ugly.

The good part was that I got to drive the forklift; that rocked. Hey, don't laugh; I'm pushing forty and I've never driven a forklift before, and I found it really, really amusing. I found that I'm a fucking forklift natural. I had no trouble with it at all, moving a half-ton widget onto an ABF truck late this afternoon, out the back of the warehouse. I like doing "extras" around the office; when my area is slow I often wander down the hall and volunteer for someone else's shit-work. You learn a lot that way, and sometimes they let you use the power tools. Yee-haw. Queenie is nothing if not Value Added.

The bad part was that I was late as hell in getting to the office this morning. My youngest spewed grits all over the sidewalk in front of pre-school at the a.m. drop-off, so I had to take the little projectile-vomiter back to the house. Mister MacFarland had to be shaken from his heavy, scotch whiskey-soaked dreams, propped up bodily, and made to understand that he was now On Duty. Mister MacFarland, incidentally, enjoys a cushily flexible schedule, so he was able to nursemaid the poor child for the day. After arranging Mister MacFarland's black coffee IV to the satisfaction of everyone involved, I finally hit the road. I haaate being late. This was discussed earlier in the week, at Momma's. I am a punctuality Nazi, so this whole morning was an abject violation of my values. Moral dissonance, if you will.

I struggle with these things.

Finally, the Horrendously Ugly. The reason that I got to drive the forklift is that the guy who usually drives it had to go home early. At lunch, his mother called; his two-month-old baby nephew, his pride and joy, died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) this morning. He was destroyed, hysterical; the poor, poor, man. This is a good family, folks, good country people who pay their bills on time and would give you the shirts off their backs. Nobody deserves to lose a precious new member, and this family least of all.

If you're praying-type folks, do say a little one, for strength in the family. If you're not, that's cool, but nod your fucking head anyway, just out of respect for the loss.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a cocktail, something green, a bathtub, and a book, in that order. I need to wash some of this day off of me. Read through the archives, if you're bored. Try this one, assuming you haven't read it before. It's a favorite, according to my stats.

How Did He Know?

Via Catfish comes the funniest, most heartwarming thing I've seen lately. Right click, save as. I'm going to be just like that when I'm her age. Hell, I'm just like that now.

NOW, WITH EVEN MORE!!: If you enjoyed the Fruitcake Lady, you can see more of her here. I would especially like to call Acidman's and Velociman's attention to video number two, as it specifically addresses the, erm, point in question. Mwahaha.

Sorry?

Today I discovered that a woman I know is waiting for an apology from me. She thinks she's owed a "sorry" because I called the dumb twat out on her shitty interpersonal behavior, and mercilessly cut her from the "friend" list.

Man. I hope she ain't holding her breath for it. She's going to be waiting for a very, very long time...

LATER: No, Nosey Parker, this isn't an internet thing, and these aren't the droids you're looking for. Just a passing comment regarding an actual, real live person, not a cyberfight. Thankyouverymuch.

Migraine

I started the day with a light migraine headache. I call it light, because there have been times in the past when I had a migraine and I could not even stand up, it hurt so bad. This wasn't one of those. I could walk, I could talk...my left eye was squinty for most of the day, but I trudged my butt to work anyway. Precautionary measures included leaving the light off in my office all day, avoiding the areas on my to-do list involving looking at a computer screen, turning the volume on my phone to its lowest setting, and taking the majority of my pain out on my co-workers. I was fucking surly today. I was there, but that was all.

In the midst of our afternoon meeting, when one of our salesmen (who has a voice like a corncrake) was at his loudest and most braying, his voice bouncing in palpable waves off the walls of the conference room, I must have shown a trace of weakness, or a wince, or something. Old S.W. called me outside in the hall, told me to open my hand, and shook a prescription bottle over it. She gave me two little green pills, one for this evening, one for in the morning if I still have the headache.

I took one when I got home from work. Damn! My head is still hurting, but I don't care anymore. I'm mellow, man. Nothing short of an H-bomb can harsh this aloha. And shit on taking the other one in the morning. I'm gonna save it for a fucking occasion.

Aphrodisia

Last night, I had to run a cross-county errand. Down here in these parts, we have some fairly large counties, so I spent about two hours total in the car, if you combine the coming and the going. On my way out, I stopped and bought one of these, strictly on the recommendation of the aforelinked blogger. Oh. Mah. Gaah. Let me repeat - Oh. Mah. GAAH. Am I vibrating? I think I've still got the shakes. My teeth feel all jiggly.

A warning to people who still go to Starbuck's for plain old coffee - all four of you - this "beverage" (I used the term loosely; you could stick a dowel in it and call it a hot popsicle) contains no actual coffee. It's just chocolate, thick, hot, melty, gooey, dark, bitter, chocolate. It is, however, a totally different animal from "hot chocolate"; calling a Chantico a "hot chocolate" is like calling the recent tsunami "a wave"; yeah, they're both moving water, but one wets the hem of your trousers rolled, and the other will knock your fucking house down and maim you for life. The Chantico is hot, and it's chocolate, but there the similarity ends.

The best description of the Chantico I've seen calls the experience "like drinking a truffle". That about covers it; my nipples got hard, I shit you not. Whichever brain receptor plugs in to both lust and chocolate was flooded; in that moment, that first sip, I was sated. Slaked. Nerve-endings dragging on the ground behind the car. It took me the entire two hour cross-county drive to drink one Chantico. It's not a large beverage - comes in a little tiny cup - it's just incredibly rich.

Bear in mind, this is coming from someone who can handle her chocolate. I like spicy food - I mean, spicy food, hard liquor, and rich desserts. When I say it's rich, I mean it. I am no Body Nazi. If you don't like chocolate and sweet, sweet things, give this one a pass. Seriously. It would make you vomit.

Me, the hardened chocoholic - color me impressed. I think I got high off that thing. And I swear to God, my head is still vibrating.

In Dreams

Lately my dreams all seem to take place in motels or hotels. For some unspecified reason, my deepest subconscious has me living in a rented room, in an array of cities that has as yet included Auckland, Tokyo, Denver, New Orleans, Miami, New York, London...well, you get the picture. Sometimes I've flown to my hotel, other times I've traveled by boat or by car. The actual circumstances of the dream change, the events, the tone and the setting - all fresh, every night. Everything changes...except that one constant, the hotel room.

What's up with that? Is there a dream analyst in the house?

Question...?

Do you visit my site from a bookmark or favorites, rather than from a blogroll? If so, is there suddenly a neat little icon-thingy showing up next to my site-name in your bookmarks, favorites list, or address bar, an icon different from the standard Internet Explorer or other browser-logo thingy? How 'bout y'all on Firefox and Netscape products? Can you see it?

If you're using a bookmark to reach this site, and you can't see that little icon - which I think is quite cool - would you do me a favor? Would you delete your current bookmark and re-bookmark this page, and see what pops up? I can't figure out whether I've got this whole favicon thing working yet, or not. Let me know. Thankee.

LATER: My thanks to everyone who chimed in. I'm looking at how exactly to go about making my favicon render in more browsers, but I'm glad that it seems to be working in so many. I had so much fun doing mine I did 'em for Momma and Daddy, too. Check it out.

Really...

This has been a rough Saturday.

I have that not-so-fresh feeling. I'm going to bed.

Hero Worship

I read a lot. I quite literally cannot remember a time, in the last thirty-five years, that I haven't been reading a book. I'm reading a really, really fun one right now, one that I'd recommend to you in a heartbeat. I'd like to post a scene from it, if I may? Just so that you actually get some decent writing on this blog, and also to illustrate for Mister MacFarland exactly why Neal Stephenson just got put on my improbable-famous-people-I'm-allowed-to-fuck-if-they-show-up-on-the-doorstep short list:

***

He reports, as ordered, to Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C. It's the Corps's oldest post, a city block halfway between the Capitol and the Navy Yard, a green quadrangle where the Marine Band struts and the drill team drills. He half expects to see strategic reserves of spit and of polish stored in giant tanks nearby.

Two Marines are in the office: a major, who is his new, nominal commanding officer, and a colonel, who looks and acts like he was born here. It is shocking beyond description that two such personages would be there to greet a mere sergeant. Must be the Navy Cross that got their attention. But these Marines have Navy Crosses of their own - two or three apiece.

The major introduces the colonel in a way that doesn't really explain a damn thing to Shaftoe. The colonel says next to nothing; he's there to observe. The major spends a while fingering some typewritten documents.

"Says right here you are gung-ho."

"Sir, yes sir!"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Sir, it is a Chinese word! There's a Communist there, name of Mao, and he's got an army. We tangled with 'em on more'n one occasion, sir. Gung-ho is their battle cry, it means "all together" or something like that, so after we got done kicking the crap out of them, sir, we stole it from them, sir!"

"Are you saying you have gone Asiatic like those other China Marines, Shaftoe?"

"Sir! On the contrary, sir, as I think my record demonstrates, sir!"

"You really think that?" the major says incredulously. "We have an interesting report here on a film interview that you did with some soldier* named Lieutenant Reagan." *A deprecatory term for a fighting man not good enough to be in the corps.

"Sir! This Marine apologizes for his disgraceful behavior during that interview, sir! This Marine let down himself and his fellow Marines, sir!"

"Aren't you going to give me an excuse? You were wounded? Shell-shocked. Drugged. Suffering from malaria."

"Sir! There is no excuse, sir!"

The major and the colonel nod approvingly at each other.

This "sir, yes sir" business, which would probably sound like horseshit to any civilian in his right mind, makes sense to Shaftoe and to the officers in a deep and important way. Like a lot of others, Shaftoe had trouble with military etiquette at first. He soaked up quite a bit of it, growing up in a military family, but living the life was a different matter. Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I'm not going to bother you with any of the details - and your half of the bargain is that you better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living. The implied responsibility placed upon the officer's shoulders by the subordinate's unhesitating willingness to follow orders is a withering burden to any officer with half a brain, and Shaftoe has more than once seen seasoned noncoms reduce green lieutenants to quivering blobs simply by standing before them and agreeing, cheerfully, to carry out their orders.

***

Cryptonomicon. Great book. Run, don't walk.

Queenie Does Religion, Again

I used to be religious; I was raised that way. My family went to church most Sundays (and lived like normal people) up until I was about six years old. In the early seventies, though, my mother had an experience with the Holy Ghost and started speaking in tongues. As a result, she came to Know Christ in a very deep way. She began to attend Bible studies in which people sang with their hands raised, to hang around in Christian bookstores, and to likewise drag me to church every time the doors were open, for the next ten years. My father, too, Saw the Light, some two years after my mother's radical awakening, and we three became an intensely religiously involved trio for a good majority of my childhood.

When I say my family took its religion seriously, I mean we took it seriously. I grew up thinking - by inference, I guess - that I would go straight to hell if I dropped a Bible on the ground. My father told me to respect that Book with my life, and I took him literally. When Jesus came around, mother and daddy stopped smoking, stopped drinking altogether - they'd never been big drinkers in the first place - and attended Church or a related meeting at least three times a week. We ate bland food, because the body was a temple. Rock and roll was verboten, because if you played it backwards, it contained Satanic Messages. We prayed over everything. We turned it over to Jesus. Both parents taught Sunday school. Daddy sang in the Choir. We went to endless missionary meetings, revivals, and viewings of religious history programs, such as the traveling "Shroud of Turin" exhibit. At all times, Jesus's eye was upon me. I grew up believing that Jesus wanted you to toe the frickin' line, buddy; if you're going to be a Christian, you have a lot of work to do.

My childhood understanding of Christianity was histrionic and twisted and very, very Southern. I remember one time, back in about 1974, my mother had been sick for a week. Siiick as a dog, with vomiting and fever and the whole nine yards. I was doing my best to take care of her - my father was away on one of his nine billion business trips - but mom was getting wacky, dehydrated, delirious, and I was still pretty young. We had these clay plaques hanging on the wall in the living room, three of them, stylized representations of our astrological signs: Cancer for my mother, Libra for my dad, Sag for little Queenling. It was the seventies, after all. Mother, in her delirium, became convinced that those things were evil and that Jesus wanted them out of the house.

Mother mumbled something about not suffering a witch to live as she staggered down the hall from from bedroom to the living room. She yanked those plaques off the wall, took 'em out in the driveway, and beat them to powder with the hammer she had me fetch from Daddy's tool-box. When she was finished, she sagged back up on the porch and into the house, whispering weakly for me to hose off the pavement. I was flabbergasted. Pictures were evil?

Of course, when her flu subsided, it was getting rid of those astrological Tools of Satan that made her get better. Oh, yes; I had a bizarre religious upbringing.

I was raised on the works of Jack Chick, probably read every tract the vile little man ever wrote in the seventies, comic books and all. Hey, I knew it was some weird stuff, even as a child, but it was the only "kid-friendly" reading material in the Christian bookstore, where I found myself spending more and more of my time. Jack Chick, while scaring the fuck out of me about the tortures of Hell, also introduced me to homosexuality, Wicca, sado-masochism, the concept of racism, the idea of drug abuse, and the reality of pornography. Some effective material, that...as you can see, from my blog. Ahem.

As a child, I was terrified of the knowledge contained in Revelations; the Rapture, the Number of the Beast, the Tribulations. Most kids are afraid of monsters in the closet; I was afraid of a pale horse with a pale rider. I was convinced that I was a sinner, and that God was going to take Mom and Dad, leaving my hell-bound ass behind to face the music with the Beast and the World Government Stormtroopers. I actually used to hide stuff under my bed against the day that I'd be on my own; aspirins, canned food, batteries, radio, flashlight, matches, water purification tablets, New Testament - I was an expert in Rapture Preparedness.

As an aside, I don't know why I was always convinced that I was going to be left behind in the rapture. My parents certainly didn't tell me I was bad, and I was a little kid, for God's sakes; my combined sins wouldn't have filled a thimble. As I grew up I learned to examine my life for flaws, out of fear, looking for sins, looking for them like a monkey looks for nits. Offenses to God. Reasons that I'm Bad. Example - I popped a terrible leg cramp one night, in bed, while furtively masturbating under the covers. I couldn't have been more than nine, and I'd just found out that the soothing self-abuse I'd discovered years ago was a bad thing, a sex thing, a sin. Eww...Anyway, I get this cramp. I'm convinced it's a punishment from God. Terrified, I don't masturbate again for years. True story.

And did I ever mention that I was Bible Bowl Champion of Methodist Alabama one year, in the seventies? Oh, yes, I was. My church threw a dinner-on-the-grounds, just for me, to celebrate. I'm telling you; I was in to it.

Of course, later in life, things changed. The eighties came and mother and daddy's fervor cooled. They're still religious people, but they became disillusioned with the church, started playing tennis on Sundays instead. I went through a period of time, as a teen, during which I fancied myself an atheist. I had an intense year or so of New Age Spirituality and Gaia Love, followed by years of celibacy and training for Catholic conversion, while I majored in something closely resembling western religious history in college. I chickened out on the Pope, though, and became a Nothing. A Queenie is Too Lazy To Be Religious (thanks, Sam).

Looking back, it's obvious to me that I was raised on the religion without really understanding most of it. It scared me. In my childish perception, Christianity was a set of rules to be followed, a precise hopscotch of Thou Shalts that, with proper repetition and serious study, could grant one admission to the Pearly Gates or send one spiraling straight to the Lake of Fire. If you're good enough, you won't get left behind. Oh, sure, you had to Love Christ - but in retrospect, I see clearly that I didn't know what that meant. Sadly, I don't know how much further along I've come with all that, in the last twenty-five years or so.

Is this what you had in mind, Circa Bellum?

I've had modern Christianity on the brain for days. Let me share a piece of beautifully specific language with you - may I? It's English at its clearest. Poetry:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

If I believe anything, this would be the closest approximation of it. And that's all I have to say about that.

Los Comentarios

The comments are down; it seems to be happening all over Munuviana. Thanks to Val for bringing it to my attention. In the meantime, feel free heap your abuse on the e-mail address linked at left. I'm in the mood for love.

Ouch

Can't blog - too busy frantically searching the house for something stronger than Darvocet, with which to kill the butt-pain from the ass raping I just took at the hands of my friendly neighborhood auto mechanic. Anyone got a Tuck's Pad?

I told you my car died on Monday? Fuel pump. Kablooey. European car, special parts, etc., ad fuckitum. Seven-hundred and fifty dollars ad fuckitum, that is. Seven-fifty, I remind you, just three months after I drop seventeen hundred on a new transmission. Now, my brakes are shot. I've known that, really, and I was planning to have 'em done next weekend. Not anymore; I won't be able to get them done until the first of February. Not and, you know, actually pay for it, too.

Oh, yes - it is an all-cash economy around here, folks; all my credit cards - and Mister MacFarland's - are frozen in blocks of ice in the freezer, where they will remain. We are, and we stay, virtually free of consumer debt by one rule and one rule alone: unless it's a house, if we can't pay cash for it, we can't have it. Umm...hello? MacFarland? Cheap fucking Scot? Me. So, no brakes for now. Right? Tough love.

Before the mechanic would let me leave with my car, I had to sign a special waiver saying that the proprietor had notified me about the dangers of imminent catastrophic brake failure, and that in the event of my being burned beyond recognition and maimed for life, I agree not to sue, blah, blah, blah. I signed; when I handed him his pen back he looked at me, knit his brows in a worried frown, and sighed sadly. "If you was mah wahf," he said, "Ah wun't let you drahv that car lahk it iyus."

Sweet sentimental lad; I bit off my totally reflexive rejoinder - If I was your wife, you'd probably cut the brake-line yourself. Instead, I just thanked him and handed him the check.

Fucking brakes. I'm going to be so pissed if I end up having to defrost a Visa over this.

Queenie Does Religion

Unless this is your first visit to Inblognito, you've probably guessed that I'm not what you'd call the most religious person in the world. Yeah, I've got beliefs and I've got ideas, but I'm not big on dogma. Okay, let's just face facts and spit out the truth: I'm too lazy to be religious. No matter which religion you pick, more than likely they're going to want you to get up early on a weekend day, dress up, and come be judged for your fashion sins by a coterie of that particular faith's Mrs. Grundys. I just can't handle that; if you ask me I'm saying I'm Church of the Brethren, because from what I've read they just go to a friend's house and think about God for an hour. This, I can handle.

With that off my chest, could we cut it out with the Christian-bashing, already? If I have to see one more smarmy punk blog comment about "Jesusland" or the "stupidity" or "racism" or "illogic" of Christians and their beliefs, I'm going to barf. Christians might turn the other cheek - but I just got done telling you, I'm not a very good Christian, and I am going to lose my shit all over the most egregious offenders from now on. It's bigotry, pure and simple - look it up, you weak-minded hypocrites - for those of you who paw the dust and pull your peasant forelock to the "exotic" beliefs of Muslims or Hindus or Zoroastrians to then turn right around and belittle the Christians in your own back-yard.

These fools call anti-abortion Christians "wackos", but smile on in tolerant amusement as wife-beating is condoned by an entire sect of an "exotic" religion. They'll shake their fingers in the faces of those who oppose gay marriage, but quietly ignore the fact that open homosexuals are subject to brutal torments in some "non-western" faiths - and then they want to call Christians incapable of logic? Please.

Hey, I can say it. I'm a big, fat, sinner, and I don't oppose abortion (in certain circumstances) or gay unions. I am unrepentantly irreverant, and I tend to laugh at really off-color jokes about the priest and the rabbi who go into a bar. You don't see me parading around, all holier-than-thou; I feel reasonably certain that, unless you are Mike Tyson, you are probably holier than me. You don't see me attacking people purely on the basis of their faith, either. I might be a cunt, but I'm not an unmitigated asshole.

I don't do politics here - no, really, I don't - and I don't really want to start a politically charged discussion. This, though, goes deeper than politics, into the realm of a marked cultural trend towards personal incivility - which, as anyone who knows her Heinlein will tell you, is the mark of a dying culture. When you denigrate another's voice - openly, flagrantly - purely because you disdain their religion, you're worse than a bigot. You're laughing at their God, and you suck for it.

So just cut it the fuck out, already.

MOMENTS LATER: It must be in the blood. Momma and Daddy both kinda posted about religion tonight, too! Supernatural.

Removal

I hated to do it - it's against all my blogging instincts - but I had to move the post "The Ballad of Sad Howie" into draft mode. Buh-bye. The real-life subject of the post has gone ballistic, as I suspected he would, and the whole thing may boil down to litigation at some point. So - better to leave the whole thing undescribed. One mediocre post isn't worth the risk that Howie might Google himself right to my self-incriminating front door some day. My job is a big huge deal; I'm keeping it, thanks.

Nice

fucking mormons
high conical breasts
ashlee simpson ugly implant
dixie mafia
pictures of crystal meth
lust
girlfriend dominatrix corset
shaved pube vs. non shaved

These are the things that bring people to Inblognito. Hello, Google! Hello, freaks!

Is This Thing On?

You people can comment, you know. I don't bite.

Later: Whoops! You are commenting, MT just "lost" my e-mail address for a minute. Sorry.

I still don't bite.

Bad Day

My car died today. I mean, died. It acted normal all day, running smoothly to work and back, but after I picked my youngest up from preschool this afternoon - as soon as I pulled out into oncoming traffic - the old fucker just pooted out. Put-put-put-puttUH.

Luckily my baby and I were close to home, but we did wait on the side of the road for an hour before a tow-truck could make it to tow us the mile down the street to the auto shop. We were actually sitting in the middle of the road, cars flying past us mercilessly, but a good Samaritan - in the form of a stunningly chiselled, six-foot-five African American man in a Benz and a bespoke suit - showed up to help. That man blocked traffic with a snap of his fingers and a dirty look, allowing me to roll my vehicle off into the turn-lane on the side of the road. He ran off before I could catch his name, but I will be visualizing him in my now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep this evening. Thanks, sir!

We got towed. We made it home. We ate dinner. I put my brood to bed, mixed my husband a drink, and came upstairs to look at all the pretty blogs. I note that my middle kid - a boy - has been on my computer IMing with his girlfriend...and...what's this? This URL in my address-cache? Her blog? She blogs? WHAT? She's done drugs and she's slept with boys and she's a mean girl, half her site is devoted to mercilessly mocking the "vaginastank" (sic) of another girl in her class and the other half is a TMI version of "A Hundred Things About Me"? Holy shit, and one of her "turn-on's" (sic) is a PRETTY PENIS????? She's fourteen, for Chrissakes! Even I wasn't tripping the light fantastic at fourteen!

Holy shit. This is a first for me. Let me think about how I'm going to handle this, and get back to you. I need a cigarette. I need a tranquilizer dart, a high-colonic, a good trepanning. After, of course, I deal with my youngest, who's just showed up with blood dripping out of a recently entubed year. Yes, sweetheart! Mommy's coming!

(dammit)

Sheesh

Kids today are such pussies.

LATER: Okay, so maybe they're not all pussies.

Why I Love Google Image Search

Do I have to say more? Hours of entertainment, people.

Omens for the Annum

Okay, so what if I overindulged last night? So what if Mister MacFarland and I started the day off with a fight? It was his turn to get up with the puppies he sired upon me, not mine; when said chirren came yelping for their breakfast and he wouldn't move, I forcefully and nastily ejected him from the bed. He screamed at me that I was the ugliest white woman in creation in the mornings, stalked out, and slammed the door. Hello, 2005!

Luckily, the day improved, mostly when I woke up enough to put out. The first day of the year is shaping up to be not-so-bad, actually; they say that whatever you're doing on the first day of the year foreshadows the rest of it. If this is true, Queenie will be fighting, fucking, vacuuming, eating fried chicken, collards, blackeyes and cornbread, getting high, drinking wine, and taking long naps all year long. Hey, it could be worse.

It has been worse, actually, much worse. I recall New Year's Day of 1990 with a shiver of remembered dread; I'd been to a huge bash at the home of a Local Celebrity, haunting the open bar like a fucking specter out of an Anne Rice novel. I was drunk and I was dressed to the nines; cocktail dress, silk stockings, four-inch heels. In my thoroughly hazy mental state, I decided that it was a good idea to leave with a bunch of people I barely knew and go snork up keybumps in the car. Through a chain of decisionmaking that I don't even remember, we ended up driving to the edge of town, to the track-sitting shotgun shack of a smacked-up local musician instead, so as to do actual lines instead of those miserly keys.

Our gracious host was a total hippie, thrilled to open his home to Greeks Bearing Gifts. I was too tore down to think about it at the time, but everything about him - from the pungeant tang of patchouli and armpit that pervaded his person, to the total lack of sanitation present in the house, to the constant stream of "visitors" he took into the back room - screamed probable cause. Silly me; I was more interested in getting trashed and having fun than I was in that pesky-ass "still, small voice" telling me that I had made a tactical error. I had no exit strategy for this one.

Oh, yeah, we horked down most of our nosey treats, smoked some big hog-legs, shot some tequila - party, party! - but the cops showed up before the last lines were laid, while our hippie host was negotiating a deal in the back room. To add danger to insult, I'd come to realize that the hippie's shack was bloody packed with Schedule Ones; weed, coke, smack, pills gotten illegally, crank, acid - it was like sitting on a pharmaceutical time bomb, and the good Law Enforcement officers knocking on the door were nothing but a lit fuse.

Queenie say bye; I was in the john in seconds. I swarmed out the bathroom window like a boneless Houdini, my only object to put as many yards between myself and those blue lights as possible. I sprinted to the treeline one hop ahead of the beam from a police issue flashlight, and rapidly lost myself in the woods.

Honey, I spent all night navigating those woods and that railroad track, fucked out of my mind, in a torn cocktail dress and four-inch heels. I don't know what the official temperature in Georgia was that night, but I can tell you that it felt like forty fucking below. No coat, no gloves, no hat. Just me and my pocketbook.

I didn't get caught, but it took me over four hours to get back across town to my car and get home, for there are no cabs in the sticks that time of night. It was miserable, my shoes were shot to hell, and my dress was ruined. I had deep scratches all over my legs, some of which required stitches they never got, becoming infected weeks later and leaving several nasty scars. Besides all that, my New Year's Day night presaged a year from hell. 1990 blew syphilitic old French man-whores. It sucked.

What? I ain't glorifying it...take it as a cautionary tale, kids. This is your brain on drugs. You wanna end up like me?

Resolved!

The champagne is Moet & Chandon "White Star" - way better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. The chocolate is Ghirardelli, little cordial-filled squares from the Premium collection, delicious. Behind me, on the television, Anderson Cooper drips prematurely gray irony on the New Year, and if I'm lucky I might just be able to scrape together a Smoky Treat. Happy New Year, glasshoppahs.

I've got resolutions for 2005, but one of them is not to get too ambitious, so as you can imagine, they're mostly rather low-key.

1) I'm quitting these fucking cigarettes. Ole Massa can kiss my ass; he has taken enough of my money and my lung capacity over the years. If I do nothing else, I'm going to do this. Fuck you, Ole Massa. Find yourself a new Ontee, a new sugar-tit.

2) I resolve to try not to be too much of a cunt. I can't make any promises, but I will try.

3) I resolve to get a raise. No shit. Old S.W. will be coughing up with the dough in '05, or find herself a new maid-of-all-work. No, really; I am convinced that when I draw her a chart showing her all the revenue stemming directly from my gilded butthole, she will be putty in my hands. Mwahahaha!

4) I resolve to be nicer to Mr. MacFarland in 2005. He takes some egregious shit from me; I should cut him some slack. I will cut him some slack. Or at least give it up more often - I feel certain that either would be fine with him.

5) I resolve to answer e-mail. I am a real e-mail loser, I warn you now. I love getting mail. I live for it. When you ding my inbox, I am thrilled to the skies. However, I suck at reciprocity.

6) I resolve to smoke more reefer, iffen I can find it. Just damn!

7) I resolve to force myself to drink more. Even Jesus drank wine every day. Who am I to argue with the Son of God? Nobody, that's who.

8) I resolve to hit a blogmeet, and hit one hard. Watch out, Jawja crowd. Hurricane Queenie is coming. It mayn't be pretty.

9) I resolve to gain a little weight quitting smoking, but have it off again by 2006. I'd rather be fat and live than svelte and dead of lung cancer. Skeletons are skinny.

10) I resolve not to kill anyone in an uncontrollable spasm of Road Rage, unless they provoke me with Celine Dion records first. Celine Dion makes me nuts, like red to a bull. Add Celine and I can't be held responsible.

I think that's it. Happy 2005, everyone. Health and prosperity upon your house.