Dumbed Down Omen

Cheers!

Thursday night I had a dream I was laying in bed, just as I was. I was looking at myself from a foot above. I was sleeping on my back, which I rarely do, and a man was standing next to the bed. He put his dick in my open hand, and I was rubbing it, while laying there asleep, for the most part.
When I woke up, the room was just as it looked in my dream. The bedside table lamp was on because I fell asleep reading, and Kiki was laying next to me. But the man standing by the bed with his dick in the palm of my hand was missing.
I was reading The Alchemist when I fell asleep. I read it fifteen years ago, but I didn't remember it being a revelation, so I figured I'd read it again. Before I cracked open my book, I read to Kiki, we're reading The Little Prince. I'm just about overdosing on transparent metaphors for living the best life. The Little Prince is a children's book, although the lessons thus far, are meant for an adult, nostalgic for her childhood.
The Alchemist, so far, has been about reading the omens. I killed a moth in the kitchen yesterday, and immediately regretted it. I have seen this moth around the house for a couple days, and figured there must be an omen, although I couldn't figure out what. I killed it by reaction, It startled me when I opened the medicine cabinet. When he came to rest on the open door, I picked up a pack of baby wipes and swatted it. The death scene looked like a smear of powdery cigarette ash.
If the moth, it's powdery residue, and a sleeping hand job are omens, I haven't the faintest idea what they mean. I need another omen, a dumbed-down omen.

Play Doh Sculpture. I call it, "The hard question: what does it all mean?"

Lipsky is a bit of a Shitzy

The End Of The Tour is a movie based on the book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, a memoir by David Lipsky about his five day road trip with David Foster Wallace. After the book's introduction, where Lipsky assimilates himself, a bit too comfortably, into Wallace's life, the book is a transcription of five days worth of tape recordings.
The book was written, composed really, in the aftermath of David Foster Wallace's death. Based on the acclaim the book and film received, I get the sense that they are backlash for David Foster Wallace not happily running into the open arms of the New York literati. The two works reek of National Enquirer type exposé on the personality of a private person, but they are embraced as high brow works of admiration and appreciation, a pretty good reason why I feel like the book and movie are retribution by a shunned high society, because there is not a chance in hell Wallace would allow Lipsky to write this book, if he were alive. So this movie makes me feel sorry for Wallace, and even face the reality that there is no coming back from death. But, hey, you're dead, so worrying about a human popularity contest, or the maintenance of an image, doesn't tick on the radar anymore.

In the beginning of the film, Lipsky learns of DFW's death, and goes running to the tape recordings from his interview ten years earlier, as if the box was mooing to Lipsky from the closet like a fat cash cow. The movie doesn't hide the fact that Lipsky is capitalizing off the hard work of someone else.  The film starts out with Lipsky reading his autobiographical book to a near empty room, and the film ends to Lipsky reading his David Foster Wallace book to the same room, that's now packed with a receptive audience.
Aside from my ethical qualms, and disdain for the weaselly point of view, the film was enjoyable to watch. Obviously, Lipsky was not DFW's friend. Aside from writing the book, paving way to this movie, the point is driven home at the end of the movie, when Lipsky gets a package from Wallace, containing a shoe he left behind, like fucking Cinderella, hoping for Foster Wallace to come and find him, however, all Wallace does is send the shoe with an impersonal post-it note.

The movie is ultimately about Lipsky's desire for fame and acclaim. Lipsky is depicted as misunderstood by Wallace, who comes across as over-emotional, easily hurt and calculating. Lipsky's unfulfilled desire for recognition is played out as overreaching fandom, slightly obsessive, and an aching need for DFW to acknowledge that he is somehow just as good as Wallace. Lipsky paints Wallace as fraudulent when he discovers Wallace is a big fan of Alanis Morrisette, but he actually doesn't know the title or lyrics of her most popular song. Lipsky hopes Wallace will claim his literary success of Infinite Jest is due to an autobiographical account from real life troubles, or because of his uncommonly good looks, but Lipsky is unfulfilled, and in the end, he has to walk away without Wallace discrediting himself, or giving Lipsky the respect he craved.
The culmination of moments where Lipsky feels he outsmarts David Foster Wallace demonstrates Lipsky's self-fulfilling attempt at grabbing a fallen crown. I'd like to hope the profits from the book and film went to DFW's family, but I'm so sure they didn't, that I'm not even going to bother with a google search. The Literati had their way with DFW, to portray him as unordinary, and show his need to distance himself from the word genius, wasn't genuine, but actually a better-than-thou mechanism because he wasn't enraptured by the prizes and privileges of literary acclaim.
It was good, the movie, but I don't lend too much validity to the DFW accounts, and think of the film more as Lipsky's hour to shine, or claim to fame. Which, I suppose, is the entire point. So I ate it up, and digested it, just as intended.

Me and my dawg!

Low Ponytail

Paul and I have a similar sense of hairstyle

About ten years ago I went to China. On the flight, my sister was fighting a bout of nasty food poisoning she caught from eating expired soy ice-cream sandwiches she found at The Grocery Outlet. I warned her it was a bad idea, but she couldn't pass up the deal, and here she was looking like she's bringing bird flu back, and potentially keeping us from entering the country. The long flight gave her plenty of time to recover.

I wandered around the plane, and found my brother in a galley where he and a group of men were congregating, pretending to drink water while commiserating over being crammed into seats that are too small for them.

My sweat pants were rolled up to my knees, and my hair was in a low pony tail. I looked comfortable, dressing for a long flight. My brother, the funny guy he is, said, "Hey, Paul Revere. You forgot your vest."

I stood next to him, laughing in my cotton civil-war-like trousers and no-frills, functional, biker hairstyle. Then a flight attended told everyone to go back to their seats, there is no congregating in the plane. If only we were on British Airways, then I could have come up warning the group, "The British are coming," but we were on a shitty airline that finds itself in the news because their planes blow up on the runway, and, even worse, aren't equipped with in-flight movies. 

After many hours, my sister recovered, and we landed in China; living to see another day and further tempt fate with low budget airlines and expired Grocery Outlet food.

Work it

Decisions, decisions

Remember that Snoop Dogg song, "Smoke weed everyday?"
Of Course.
Well, it reminds me of being at my parents' house, except I sing, "Eat pie everyday," as I nosh on a dessert buffet they display on the edge of the kitchen counter.
Yesterday, I ate half a pumpkin pie, and today I had two pieces of cake for lunch. I am steering clear of the rice crispies that I attacked on Friday. Obviously. Why eat burger when you can have steak? Pumpkin pie is the steak.
I'm about to take care of the other half. It's five o'clock somewhere!

The spread

Turn It Up

Tahoe Snowfall

My parents watch TV at full volume. The booming noise pushes me to the corner of the room, and they both sit on the couch looking like the Blown-Away Man from Maxell commercials. This probably explains why they are bad at listening and scream during casual conversation.
The kids and I are spending the weekend with my parents for Day of The Dead festivities. We stood around in the cemetery with a box of Franzia and Miller Genuine Draft tall-boys. George was leaping from one tombstone to the next. It reminded me of my grandpa, when he took my brothers, sisters and me to a cemetery in boonies, Nevada looking for Johnny Appleeed's grave sight. My grandfather stomped around raised graves, reading tombstones to find Appleseed. We never found it. I was reading a lot of Goosebumps back then, and was convinced we were disturbing spirits that would drive back with us, and haunt our nights in revenge. Well, all of us, except my parents, who wouldn't hear Marley's rattling chains.
I wasn't worried about upsetting the dead today. Old people love little kids. I figured they'd appreciate little George cruising around, listening to him sing, running and crunching snow.
I talked to my cousin about how she manually shelled three trees worth of pecans, and George wandered off into the woods. After a couple minutes, I noticed he was MIA. Her partner chased George down, and found him set on an Into The Wild adventure. George didn't even act like anything was wrong as we all ran towards him, panting and instructing him to stay near the rest of us. He picked up a piece of snow, and started nibbling on it. Maybe he was looking for Johnny Appleseed.

Guilty By Association

Happy to see these shoes again

I've been listening to the same music playlist while running, and the past two weeks I'm nagged by a need for variety. The memorized playlist is making time seem to slow down rather than go by quickly. I start my run with Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days Are Over." When Florence sings "Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father, run for your children, for yours sisters and your brothers," I usually kick into high gear, and do a jump, punching the sky, as I progress from my warm-up trot to a high paced gallop. 

Since feeling compelled to change up my running music, I didn't dig too deep for inspiration. I simply typed "Running Music" into iTunes, and selected playlists that were created by some person who lives in a cubicle at Apple headquarters. This introduced me to a lot of music I would not normally listen to, unless I decided to finally start waking up early for spinning class, or developed a panache for dancing at da' club.

The music worked well enough because of fast hypnotic drum beats, however, after a while, it gets boring. The fun is in the unknown; what am I going to be exposed to today. For example, Maroon 5 is on an Apple created playlist. It was raining, so I had to go to the gym, and running on a treadmill, while staring at a wall for an hour, makes listening to the lyrics easy. So Adam Levine sang a song called "Sugar" which embarrassed me to red faced blushing that was camouflaged by my red faced sweating. First of all, I have never heard anyone call a pussy "Red Velvet" before, and I think even Bukowski would find Adam Levine yodeling about eating Red Velvet raunchy.

The Apple playlists were not proving to be a longterm solution. I decided to type a familiar artist into iTunes. It was Gaslight Anthem, a group I obsessed over for a couple years, and then abruptly stopped. 

Last June I was hitting the booze hard, and I'd listen to Gaslight on my computer, crying, dancing or secretly smoking out the bathroom window. It was a group I leaned heavily on while going through some emotional shit. Then one day, I chose to move on and stop wallowing, so I cut my ties with that sadness, and I rolled Gaslight into that time, leaving it with the buried baggage.

When I listened to their album yesterday, I remembered, "I fucking love The Gaslight Anthem!" And I didn't feel like shit, or return to my 13 month ago self. Gaslight was guilty by association. I'm happy I went back and excavated them from the severed tie because listening to Gaslight in good times, makes me love them even more.

I looked at other things I shun because of bad times association, and knew it was time to absolve them of their guilt. I pulled my hipster shoes out of the back of my closet, where I threw them after a volatile night out, and put them on my feet. Walking forward.

Candy Pains

Candy Collecting Begins

I've had a headache for two days. I thought it might be from not making my coffee strong enough, but now I think its from recklessly eating Halloween candy. Since Saturday, I've been eating about 20-30 "fun size" candy bars a day. It's turning out to be not so fun, and bordering on compulsive, so tonight I'm throwing it all away. The kids won't even notice because I hide it all on top of the fridge since they would follow my suit, eating it till they made themselves sick. It's weird watching sugar enter the kids' blood stream, it hits them like an alcohol buzz, making them giddy, rambunctious and wild.
I see how Halloween in the 1950's was not excessive. It supplied kids with a candy score that satiated cravings built up over the months preceding, but now we have processed foods, and get our fill of sugar without having to eat candy or dessert.
I occasionally buy Pop Tarts, the organic kind, whatever that means, which means breakfast is on par with drinking a Coca Cola. My kids eat yogurt squishers, the organic kind, again, I'm not too sure how organic sugar is much different. A yougurt Squisher is a tube of yogurt thats equal parts sugar to milk. These foods are the makings of a diabetics wet dream, and they are not candy, but breakfast.

I hope dumping the added added-sugar is going to make my headache go away. Just in case my headache is from weak coffee, tomorrow I'll start the morning with a Venti Black Coffee from Starbucks because if anything is going to cure caffeine withdrawals, that'll do it. Jet Feul.