10.31.2003
Letter to Walmart, evil corporation #666,666,666,666,666,666,000:
I will absolutely never shop at Walmart until you remove the bullets that are used *only* to kill *people* from your shelves. I am appalled at the hypocrisy with which you censor the popular music and books that you deem wholesome enough to display and then refuse to remove these weapons from your aisles. I wonder if any of the Walmart company's decision makers have ever been a victim of violent crime themselves. Surely not. Or I wouldn't even need to write this letter. I have been at the receiving end of a handgun. I have had one pointed at my spleen as two young kids took my husband's wallet just two blocks from my house. I have seen how instantly someone can make a bad decision and end another person's life. Surely if any of you had ever had this happen to you you would not allow these intruments of terror and death to go through your turnstials in the shopping bags of potential murderers.
I will boycott Walmart and encourage everyone that I know to do the same until you remove the handgun bullets from your shelves.
Bowling for Columbine : Get Involved : Wal-Mart Takes Aim
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10.30.2003
Ok, I'm not very blog-savvy, and so I don't know how to link to the specific blog entry that I want you to read, but scroll down to the October 24 entry on Bus-riding adventures of the savvy commuter.... Aimee's work of genius about horn-honking is a hoot!!! **that rhymes with toot**. Beautiful. It had me laughing, crying, and dreaming of the streets of southeast Asia, where the cacophony of horns is so intense that it could be the main character for my novel-in-a-month.
hmmmm..
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Why are San Franciscans always portrayed like this in advertising? Hey, look at me, I wear Banana Republic 24 hours a day and have cosmetic teeth and shiny hair and am always holding wine glasses and standing in front of windows overlooking a night skyline of San Francisco with a bridge in the background somewhere and big black shoes and laughing with my beautiful, perfectly racially mixed group of friends that is sure to include a white person, African American person, and an Asian person and leaning into each other and sometimes when feeling crazy throwing my arms up in the air and dancing my hips a little. And always drinking coffee from the white cup with the green circle ratface when not holding the wine glass at night in front of the big window with the lights of the city. Yep, that's exactly what it's like here America.
They're having nasty thoughts of Gavin Newsom wearing nothing but a tube of hair gel.
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10.29.2003
Resurrection of Christ
-Giovanni Bellini
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Starting November 1, I am going to be puking in a bucket and passing it around for everyone to observe the contents, a.k.a. writing a novel in a month for NaNoWriMo!! It is National Novel Writing Month. I have no idea what the novel will be about or what the title will be. I do feel that it will be a very cathartic (hance the puking) experience that may leave me vulnerable and raving at times, composing my work as I walk down the street, getting lost on the way to the corner store.
I will be in Kentucky visiting my mom and dad and sophie our dog. I have figured out that it breaks down to about 1,666.6667 words a day, and I am full of so many words that they are pressing on the walls of the dam, causing it to bulge just ever-so-slightly outward with a teeny, itsy, bitsy, eensy crack just right there on the middle of it... I could probably tackle that word count in as little as an hour a day! My insomnia and agorophobia will be a great help to me as will sitting and contemplating the river, climbing trees, and actually seeing leaves change color and fall. And the endless, meditatively repetitive throwing of the Flippy Flopper dog frisbee for sophie.
I only hope that I can write something not like anything else that has been written. I don't care if it is horrible or if it doesn't flow. I just want it to be my own. I'm sure that it will be full of influence from authors that I respect and love to read, but I want to hear my voice yelling out at me through the words.
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10.24.2003
I wrote this Sunday.
It's funny because it's true...
Today started with an earthquake. I had just finished writing an email to my brother when my apartment started making that creaking, shifting sound that I now know as earthquake. I yelled for Mat, and by the time I got into our room he was half-standing, half-kneeling on the bed like the sides of a letter A. His hair was sideways, and his face confused and barely awake. The earthquake had stopped.
A peaceful morning, I cried my way through a church service so beautiful that it broke my heart in two several times, my lungs filling with incense as I felt surrounded by love, nonjudgement, acceptance, peace. The Episcopal Church has confirmed an openly gay bishop, and the national Episcopal community is splitting in two. Resentment and anger rear their ugly heads throughout the country with some churches threatening to leave and seperate the church into two camps, but these are feelings merely **discussed** at All Saints this and every morning that I go there. This little church in the middle of the Haight has accepted and loved openly gay priests, choir members, vestry members, and regular churchgoers for years. Their doors open, the only criteria being that you are interested in learning what Jesus had to say.
So, it was with great suprise and an intolerably rapid shift in "vibe", if you will, that we encountered later in the afternoon a crazy-looking guy who seemed to be doing something shady on our recently frightening Page street. He actually threatened us as we stopped to look at a handwritten sign proclaiming "Lost Siamese Kitty" -- who, by the way, we believe that we saw yesterday dueling Matrix-style with a grey kitty who lives in our house. "What are you looking at? You better move on quickly for your own safety." What the FUCK!?"!?!?! We were rattled yet determined as we marched with our tennis rackets around the corner to take the long yet safer way to Buena Vista Park. I was shaken to the core for the second time in the day. What is happening to our city streets? I felt angry. I wanted to get some steel toe boots so that I could have kicked him in the nuts and told him to step up, assface. What are you gonna do, buddy?
Determined to enjoy this beautiful day and move our bodies and play some beginner tennis, we kept going. Within the hour we encountered a young guy huddled on the sidewalk babbling incomprehensible sounds to himself and shaking his head and a woman who appeared to be not just talking, but carrying on conversations with the squirrels and birds in the park. OK, I feel like doing these things somedays, but come on. I can't handle the extremes of obvious neuroses all over our neighborhood. I have enough of them within myself. I had had enough at this point but was determined to not let them chase me inside. Then some bitchy troll lady screamed so loudly at a passing car that both Mat and I jumped out of our skin and looked at each other and said, "Let's just go home." On the way home, we watched a guy get totally agro as he was driving, yelling at the car in front of him because they stopped at a stop sign. He screeched off as soon as he could.
This city is aggressive. Anger and rage are infecting the city. I think of 28 Days Later. What has happened? I know that I am extra sensitive always and that that has been multiplied since our run-in with the armed about a month ago. Also, it is the weekend, and my general policy is to never go out and about on the weekends in this city. Too many people out with pent-up frustrations. But really. My brain cries out for release from anxiety -- maybe I should start smoking again. Maybe I should leave the city. I am tired. And I don't want this resentment, anger, vengefulness, hate, and rage running rampant on these streets to seep into my very core. I need San Louis Obispo (SLO). I need to be outside.
But for today and at least the next six months until our lease runs out, I will sit on the fire escape four floors up from the insanity and watch it all calmly with Bikini Kill blaring through our open windows. And I'm in the market for some steel-toed boots and anything black with studs on it. Self-defense class and push-ups. I will kick this city's ass right back if it doesn't stop messing with me. If only in my head. And then move to San Louis Obispo. Take your anger and your rage, I want some fucking garden gnomes.
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10.21.2003
Narrative Magazine is so excellent it makes me want to wear a monacle and smoke a pipe in front of a roaring fire while sipping good scotch and discussing Chaucer.
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Yesterday I rode my bike up one of the most insane of the steep hills in this city without walking it. I can't say which one because it was on my way home from procuring Mat's Birthday Extravaganza present. All I know is that the last time I tried to ride up this particular quad crusher, my tires completely stopped, and I started to fall sideways like an old-fashioned cartoon that I once saw where a man ran into a mailbox or something on his bike and then fell over. I was schooled by this hill and had to walk.
This time and for the last few weeks, I have summoned such strength from my physical body that I have been left wondering what happened. In an otherwise timid and afraid time in my life, my body is brutishly powering itself and performing feats of mulish endurance previously unknown to me. I have even been running and preferring to do it uphill to the headphone symphonies of The Clash, Le Tigre, Bikini Kill.
I couldn't believe that I conquered that hill. I would have never thought that I could do it.
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This is a hoot. An absolute and total hoot. Scroll down a bit and read "A Letter That Seems To Be From My Garden Gnomes" by Michael Knox. Sheer genius.
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10.19.2003
Each night in my sleep
I kick and I bite, I gnash my own teeth
as I witness our death
coming out of the sky as cartoonish red bombs.
Again and again my body prepares.
I scream goodbye to Mat.
My mind rushes through prayers.
It's morbid and horrible. The images tear.
It's not real, it's a dream.
I gasp and I sweat, clawing and clenching
I'm finally up for air
to a world of reality, "it's safer up here".
The devil himself rules our land with a fist.
His pointy ears and beady eyes, a smirk of pride
as he bows his head to his own vengeful god
whom he has created to further his cause
of conquering and changing, of spreading the west,
the pursuit of money, of power, US is best.
The whole world hates us and what we represent.
Greed and revenge pumps the blood of the men.
Over here in america, the kids sing the song
sweet land of liberty, but only for the strong.
We march across the globe all in the name of God.
Whose god, i don't know, for mine speaks of love.
The hawks eat the doves.
The bombs they will fall
as other lands decide it's "destroy them"
or all of their people will suffer so that they too can be "free".
I walk into the world and through the fresh air.
At 6 am there's no sign of terror.
My jaw is loosening from my night of "rest".
I'm ready to face a different kind of test.
I enter a place where the children scream,
where bone marrow betrays and tumors spread
their murky fingers through delicate skin
sapping it of color and the blood of its strength.
Our good fight fails, and another flies home.
Dust off your hands, and move on to the next.
No time to be sad. That isn't your job.
I must comfort the parents, absorb their sobs.
They play in my head as my heart digs them up
as a soundtrack to go with the horror of dreams
of impending doom wrought by the man with beady eyes
and his own angry god whom he has perfectly designed
to drum up support for the end of the world.
If he can't posses it, then no one will.
He'll accept an end to the march when our country is charred
for he has done it all in the name of his very own god.
--Harper Honan
September 15, 2003
***General Clark, Howard Dean, Dennis Kuchinich, WHOEVER IT TAKES in 2004***
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10.14.2003
I am obsessed with baseball. I don't know what happened, but this sport has wooed me, captivated me, and suddenly I am spending entire beautiful sunny afternoons in front of the television totally absorbed. I dream of Cubs vs. Red Sox world series.
Baseball is a thinking woman's sport. I am learning all the rules and superstitions (**I love that!**), batting/pitching strategies, what is ERA and RBI. Mat is giving me a cram baseball school condensed into my weeklong love of the sport. It is so psychological!! You can feel the tension as you watch the pitchers nearly have a nervous breakdown out there on the mound. The camera work is also very well done and captures various players, managers, even fans chewing their fingernaills off, lots of huffing and puffing and blowing. Heavy sighs if you will. Also lots of stomping and kicking of dirt, spitting, and lots of testicular readjusting.
I love the D-Train even though he is a Marlin. I know that Jeff(?) Lowell had testicular cancer and that his wife had ovarian cancer and that they have since had a baby girl. I know things. I know that the Cubs haven't been to the series since 1945 and haven't won it since 1908. I know about the Green Monster. I love!! Pudge. He rocks. The other night he was sitting on the bench eating a sandwich or something.
I am so in love. I love baseball. I have even found myself writing the times for the games on my calendar so that i won't forget to watch them, reading the sports pages, and shedding a tear or two at those "I live for this..." commercials because suddenly yes, i do live for this.
But now i have to stop typing, because the marlins just put in the D-Train.
Go Cubs!! Go Red Sox!!
I'll be watching...
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10.3.2003
my mom always wore a velvetty velour(?) robe, usually of pink or peach color varieties, and smelled of coffee in the morning. i rubbed my face against it with her strong arms encircling me, folded into the tan skin of her. she was always there, always up in the mornings with her coffee and her robe. she made me french toast sticks and poached eggs in the little blue and white mary alice hadley bowls with the cute little lamb on the bottom when you ate all of the golden yolky goodness.
she made my lunches, rigid in their requests at times of my life subsisting solely on highly preserved pork products.
** childhood lunch option #1 = two (2) pieces bologna (oscar meyer with the red thing which goes around the bologna circle that one time i ate and discovered that the body does not digest. at all) with Hellman's mayonnaise spread liberally on each one and then cut into little bite-sized triangles. they had to be triangles. no bread.
**childhood lunch option #2 = two (2) hot dogs cut into bite sized pieces with
ketchup on the side. no bun.
when i went through a later chef boyardee with meatballs only phase, she would actually gag as she spooned the mass of enriched macaroni product with orangey tomato sauce and beef balls into a bowl for me. that is true love. after all, i was young, and she could have told me that chef boyardee had been kidnapped and that he had to stop making his fine pasta products.
my mom gave us a huge basket of her groovy sixites and seventies clothes that were fabulous. i wore big skirts with flowers and green and white swirlies with brown stripes, gold lame shirts, gigantic clip on earrings and leather purses that looked to be made from elephants. a skirt with rainbows on it and sunglasses that swallowed my face. they smelled like her. we adored them.
my mom has big hands and plays the piano. her hands are strong and have huge veins pumping up her arms. she could kick most people that i know's asses.
my mom laughs in the dressing room of tj maxx when we go there, and we always get the big one that we can both fit in. we will wait, mill about in the store, check out the bath products or the shoes, always with one eye on the dressing rooms so that we can when whoever it is (sigh) that is mistakenly in our dressing room will just get out. we try on everything in the store and laugh at each other and at ourselves, and she is the only one who can make shopping fun.
my mom spent a fortune i'm sure mailing me a package of metamucil to chiang mai in thailand. she sent me a tiny new testament that fits in my pockets just so. she sends me jack o'lantern candles for halloween.
she was always home when i got home from school. she made me slice and bake cookies.. and chicken dianne (?). she shuttled me from school to swimming to piano to cheerleading to softball (hee hee that was a site), friends' houses, the pool, the mall, always prepared with change of clothes, bathing suit, caprisun, and cheese-on-wheat crackers.
she made home-made dog food with meat that churned her stomach for our dying dog who had refused to eat. she cooked steaks for him. she has given daily injections to a blind springer spaniel with congestive heart failure and diabetes inipidus. she held me when my lizard had rigor mortis.
we talk nearly every day, and she is one of my best friends in the world. she broke my heart probably the instant that i broke hers as i got into the car with my brother and all of my belongings to move all the way out here to cali. she said to me, "you can do this..."
and because that has told this to me all of my life, i have done lots of great things.
happy birthday mom, my friend.
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I rescind my previous endorsement of Andre (Ice Cold) 3000 for president. I feel differently about him since i saw that the back of his cd insert has a very "sexy-looking" smoking handgun. It's the fun kind coz it's all in hot pink and everything. really cute.
guns sell i guess
have they replaced sex?
was this possibly a statement against them? oh please, let it be so. i did so want to love him.
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10.1.2003
welcome to the world hannah...
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Andre (Ice Cold) 3000 for President 2004
"Don't want to meet yo daddy
just want you in my caddy."
--maybe one of the best song lyrics ever in the whole world ever. although closely rivalled by "shake it like a polaroid picture." both by The Outkasts in Hey Ya
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"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors."
--excerpt from remarks by george bush sr. at the dedication ceremony for the George Bush Center for Intelligence
26 April 1999
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