pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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JUST MY DOG AND ME ON THE EDGE OF THIS HERE BRAN

(No. 271 � Tuesday � 11:30 PM � 1 November 2005) Fifty-three years ago today, our country exploded the first hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands. What process of elimination led us to drop a bomb on these (apparently) expendable islands? And how many species evaporated because of this decision?

I spent today on much less serious stuff than evaporating species, but the day nevertheless exhausted me. I completed myriad administrative tasks (yawn) while trying to catch up while asking myself if this is what I received my MFA in poetry to do while wondering if I would ever be caught up enough to update this poor neglected blog again while pondering whether or not I need to abandon this blog in favor of a new (and actually anonymous) blog that I won�t tell anyone I know about, maybe one on LiveJournal (gasp).

I want the anonymity I used to have so I can speak freely (I'll still tell Cybrarian about my blog though) and don't like my words to be blocked with a password.

And lawsie lawsie me, I hope the new production manager at work makes my work life a little more bearable because I would really like to stay in this position for a few more years (because, let�s be real, there are worse things than retiring from the state after taking free courses at the university while pondering if and when the legislators will give me another raise.

(Disclosure: Yeah, we got a 3.5 percent raise this year, but they increased our parking rates, decreased our health insurance coverage, and increased our deductibles, so I�m actually make less than I did last year. Assholes.)

Meanwhile, the news about Shrub�s newest conservative SCOTUS nominee is sobering, even if I don't much have to worry about ever needing an abortion. And let�s not forget the inspirational, taking-that-hard-stand-for-justice Methodist Church (motto: we only like people who are just like us), which kicked out an openly lesbian minister who is in a long-term, committed relationship but reinstated a straight southern minister who cast out a gay parishioner. Gives new meaning to loving those that persecute you, doesn�t it?

But maybe I'm rushing to judgment. I mean, who know, maybe the Methodist translation of the Bible includes qualifiers that the Unitarian tome edited out eons ago�something along the lines of whosoever straight person who doesn�t make heterosexuals feel uncomfortable in any way by deviating from the agreed-upon Ozzie-and-Harriett norm shall believeth in me shall not perish but shall have everlasting, vanilla, pablum-enthused life.

We also know that many of the so-called normal people fantasize about someone with the same anatomy or wearing diapers or being whipped or any number of other never-to-be-spoken-aloud fantasies. Course casting queers out into the wilderness allows the bigots to pat themselves on their milquetoast-freakin' backs and say what good Christians they for suppressing their natural longings.

I think it�s high time for new ring of Dante�s hell. A rings based on one's level of homophobia.

Where a blowjob from Fred Phelps qualifies as the worst form of torture.

Although the sign I saw in DC

Would someone give this man a blowjob already so we can impeach him?

�

So yesterday a friend received some disturbing but inconclusive medical results that require follow-up surgery and, possibly, more surgery after that. Her girlfriend is out of town but wisely told her that she needed to be distracted because, otherwise, she�d just go home and obsessively google tumors and convince herself of all the horrible things wrong with her.

Well, distractable I am and distractable she was. We went out for Delmonico steaks�which she wound up paying for because I walked out of my house with no wallet, but I�m good for the money�then hung out in my living room and caught up. Had our usual good conversation and then got high, which I haven�t done in seems like forever.

Then, somewhere in the course of the evening, I pulled out some old Social Text issues for show and tell. I produced this sex and culture studies journal back in the nineties for an academic press and told her all about picking up the phone while working on a S/M issue and hearing a lovely British voice say �Well hello again Bird. It�s Mistress Vena.� (Oh be still my beating heart.)

Mistress V also said a line that I will never forget� particularly because I sized and placed a wonderful photograph that confirms the accuracy of her statement: �My slave is as big as the world.�

Oh fine mistress, show me your leather. Do.

All of which brings us to the topic of Dr. Randall of the Harvard University physics department (and they said pretty girls can�t do science). Now if you happened to read the Science section of today�s New York Times, then you already read this intriguing sentence: �But Dr. Randall and string theory had their own kismet� and you already saw a photo that confirms that the fine doctor is not only brilliant but also drop-dead gorgeous. So yeah, for the curious, here's confirmation that my entry title is an obscure reference to Dr. She-wants-me Randall and string theory, which posits that our uni(multi-, actually)verse is a brane [as in membrane] or, as She-wants-me puts it, an �island of three dimensions floating in a sea of higher dimension, like a bubble in the sea.�

Add an obscure Bee Gees tune about �my dog and me on the edge of the universe� and, bingo, you�ve got today�s title.

Anywho, Dr. She-wants-me climbs mountains and absorbs the world around her deeply enough to ask questions that never even occur to other physicists (or most people) to ponder. (And she wants me. Bad. I�m certain of it.)

So yeah. Ahem. So. I need to re-read this intriguing article after I�ve absorbed some of the new theories for a few days but can share this confusing typo-infused sentence from the once venerable New York Times in the interim:

Dr. Randall is intrigued by that fact that her results, as well as other results from string theory seem to paint a picture of the universe in which theories with different numbers of dimensions in them all give the same physics?

(Oh for the LOVE of GAWD hire a goddamn copy editor already!!!!! If a southern state can afford one, you�with your annoying pop-up ads and SPAM cookies�certainly can.)

�

And now it�s Wednesday afternoon. I had a 10 AM appointment with my gorgeous doctor, who warned me that she was running far behind. Finally saw her at 11:45 after fasting after midnight so cannot say with certainty whether that hollow feeling in my stomach was hunger or desire. I also can't say with certainty whether she heard my heartbeat in between all my stomach growling. And it's a good thing she is gorgeous with deep blue eyes that Ican swim in because I am hardly a patient girl....

And, finally, here�s what I now know thanks to the Oprah magazine that Dr. C left in the waiting room: Happy consumers can go to dresszing.com to learn all about a fashion coach (!) who is �devoted to helping women and men develop their personal style.�

Now I ask you, what sort of vacuous person has to BUY a personal style?

A psychoanalyst in the same magazine said that

the task of adulthood is to remember and resuffer what we couldn�t really suffer as children because it was too painful then.

(Maybe hiring a fashion coach is how some people resuffer the pains of their youth, huh, purge those memories of bold-striped soccer shirts with khaki chinos and docksiders once and for all so that we can escape our sad argyle- and I-zod-haunted high school existence forever?)

Today I�m wearing a lime green linen blouse, dark green slacks, a brown leather jacket, green polka-dotted socks, and brown Joseph Siebel double-strap-on shoes. What would a fashion coach say about that? (Somehow I think it would be exactly what my basketball coaches always said: Run five more suicides, Bird. Then maybe you'll learn to follow my orders.(Doubt it.)

But back to my adulthood task of remembering and resuffering all that crap I couldn�t handle as a child ... which segues nicely into the film Capote. Yep, I saw it this week after my dear friend Zulu recommended it highly�yes, the same Zulu who knows damn good and well that I have PTSD nightmares every time I see people shot in the head. (Try three such scenes plus a slit throat and see how twitching and hyperventilating ensues.) I tried to close my eye,s but still saw the room my mother shot herself in right up there on the big screen and damn near hyperventilated too.

Lordie. Lordie. It was a good movie though and the woman who played Harper Lee was perfectly cast (as was Capote).

Finally, some copywriter who is clearly not paid enough money wrote this ad copy for an article about women married to men who use viagra: �Read about women who run with the pharmaceutically enhanced wolves.�

3:16 p.m. - 2005-11-02

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