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The scene is a Holiday Inn hotel room. There are two full size beds in the room. The outline of two figures can be seen under the covers of the bed closest to the bathroom.

Michael: [sits upright, the covers slide off of his body revealing an overweight man with a mustache, disheveled dark hair, shirtless] I have such a headache.

TipTop: Well, color me surprised.

Michael: [snags a 1/3-full bottle of Jim Beam from under covers; takes a swig] Do you have any pot left?

TipTop: Well, you are certainly a delight. A ‘good morning’ would be nice. Or….or….
‘happy birthday, TipTop’….(sniffs as tears come)

Michael: Fuck you, Tip Top. Where’s the god-damned pot?

TipTop: [gets out of bed] I’ve got to be at the circus soon, so you’ll forgive me kind sir if I go make myself breakfast. Oh, and my first session with my therapist is tonight, so you’ll be on your own for dinner.

Michael: Now what am I supposed to do here all day alone? Does Holiday Inn have Skinemax? I sure could use some Real Sex … Hey, wait TipTop, don’t leave yet, I’m sorry I was cranky. I’m better now. I’ll tell you what, come home right after the circus, skip the therapist. Your brain is just fine. We’ll do Korean take out.

TipTop: Y’know, it’d be nice to be able to believe my lover and Rabbi, but I can’t.
You promise me Korean now, but I have the hunch it will be like the promise you made not to shave off my beard after slipping me date rape drugs.

Michael: That beard made you look like a woman. Hey look, Tip Top, I tied my dick in a knot!

TipTop: Michael. Listen to me. [Sits on corner of bed] You stole my heart at my bris. You stole it again on our honeymoon in Akron. But unless you can prove to me in the next 40 seconds that you love me, I’m going skip my therapist session and jump on a Greyhound.

Michael: [finishes the Jim Beam, smashes the bottle against a nightstand, stabs his hand repeatedly with the bottle remnants without making a sound; all that remains is a bloody stump]

TipTop: Good! You’re on the right track. 30 seconds left. . .

Michael: [sprays in blood, "I love you more than my fear of death", on the large ovular mirror above the dresser]

TipTop: Well, okay…that’s good too. You’re getting sooo close! My three chambered heart is pounding! Ten seconds to go!

Michael: TipTop, I got you a birthday present. [Michael gets down on one knee, reaches under the bed and snags a small red box]. TipTop McKenzie, I know we’ve been through thick and thin and, wait … how much time to I have?

TipTop: Five seconds.

Michael: Happy goddamn birthday, TipTop! Will you marry me?

TipTop: [opens the box; take out a massive diamond] Oh my Jesus! What the fuck, Michael? Where did you get this? It’s a blood diamond isn’t it? I mean, it’s covered in blood!

Michael: Don’t worry your pretty little ass about that. I love you Tip. Say yes?

TipTop: There comes a time in every circus midget’s life when he must decide between the right thing to do and the romantic thing to do. And my choice is…Yes!

JJ Stein and Ryan McGivern

“The option of quitting has long been undervalued and underused. Advice like ‘Put your nose to the grindstone’ and ‘Give it time’ has all but supplanted the wisdom of frustration and impetuosity. The more-responsible-than-thou, more-ambitious-than-thou, tougher-than-thou attitude of anti-quitters intimidates potential quitters into shying away from risk and proceeding with the status quo. The cozy, smug security of the antiquitter is to be avoided at all costs. Quitters must not be frightened by the potentially cataclysmic outcome of a particular quit. Disaster beats stasis – better to be a rolling stone than a moss-covered rock.” (The Art of Quitting, 9)

It is not exactly clear when I began all this quitting. I am not sure how far back “the year of the quit(s)” actually extends. It could have begun in Seattle when I dropped a crazy crazy man-boy and a job and headed out to NY to go to grad school. I prefer to start the year when I “quit” dating Bipolars, which was maybe a month after the other events.

So here’s the list of all my quits not completely in order, but sort of:

  • Bipolars - I will say it again and again!
  • 35 y.o. men
  • monogamous serious relationships
  • feeling “nice”
  • liking myself as a sweet white girl
  • some really bad paper topics (I somewhere in here quit “seeing” my stepmom)
  • a Colombian that always wanted me to talk dirty in bed and I half the time sucked at it
  • long hair
  • sugar and refined flour
  • believing some people who I really believed a lot A LOT
  • believing people who think politics are superior (prior, whateverhaveyou) to ethics
  • believing that I can date in any sort of competent way
  • GRAD SCHOOL
  • Quit, quit seeing Bipolars
  • Bipolars
  • thinking of ethics in any sort of rule oriented way, almost completely
  • feeling like I need to apologize in any way for my existence even when I don’t feel “nice”
  • 25 y.o. men
  • liking my existence as a non-sweet girl
  • dating
  • OKCupid
  • trusting myself with any sort of decision making
  • and among other things, casuality…

On the positive, I did start getting pissed off. And I currently am interested in the color pink.

  1. [waterfalls] Who misses Left Eye?
  2. [truth] If I were God would you believe in me?
  3. [hammer] What time is it?
  4. [human resources] Was Tony Danza a “good” nanny on “Who’s the Boss”?
  5. [dead presidents] Does trickle down economics feel warm running down your leg?
  6. [Dead Heads] Does that bong water feel warm running down your chin?
  7. [socks] What is your favored masturbation receptacle?
  8. [benefits of terrorism] Shouldn’t 9/11 prove to be an excellent marketing tool for the 911 emergency call line.

DDR

Yesterday I went to the Mall of America and was duly inspired. The heavenly MoA featured

  • more elevators than I have teeth (27)
  • three Orange Julius’s and six Cinnabons to provide unadulterated gluten and sugar coated dreams
  • a Sears the size of eight giraffes taped side by side and four hyenas on top of them, just laughing at you
  • a JC Penny bigger than the world’s largest breadbox (hot mannequinns too)
  • 42 magazine stores that sell pornography with enough porn magazines to stack to the moon
  • A full-time year-round Santa Claus! (good kisser, slow hand)
  • and a plethora of arcades, including one filled to the flask’s brim with only Dance Dance Revolutions!

Before I wandered in the the DDR Arcade I swallowed a four leaf clover.

Lucky little me, it just so happened that the St. Agnes School for Gout Ridden Girls’ cheerleading squad inhabited all but one of the DDR spots — and I got the last spot! Oh my god, it was like winning sixth place at the National Spelling Bee! I have to admit that I am a pretty bad mother on DDR, especially when they play country western or showtunes. I was nervous as hell — I couldn’t let those diabetic diabolical bitch-snatches beat me this time and what if they played rap, or worse yet post 1993 Madonna?

But thank you Virgin Mary, the stars aligned in my favor with the opening twang of John Denver’s “Please, Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk on Christmas” blasting throughout the arcade! I had first danced to this song when I was 6 during the Christmas that my dad switched over to barbituates and weed. The DDR machine was pretty well oiled up from the sweat of the adolescent she-beast before me so I powdered it up with talc, wheat flour and Gold Bond. I danced until 8 inches of colo-rectal came unfolding out of me.

I didn’t win, but I felt like I had won 6th place in a RuPaul “tuck off”.

The Mall of America is surely the best thing to ever happen to Minnesota. Before it, the only thing they had going for themselves was that they weren’t South Dakota.

cactusOkay, I did yell at your mom last night, but I promise by the Statue of Liberty’s right foot that it is not what you think. The evening started well enough, meeting your parents for a candlelight dinner. It was perfectly kind of them to give me that twelve foot cactus; I’ll put it in the dining room next to my Audubon Society “pelican” plate collection. I didn’t realize your dad was so drop dead good looking. I don’t think I’ve seen a man that handsome this side of Mexican telenovellas!

Given my dietary needs, I was thankful that three of the four courses were served in tin foil and contained only organic saffron, and I have to say I’ve never had free range Welsh rabbit before. Those curried floppy ears were delish! On all accounts, this would be the best dinner since Jesus’ last one.

I should have known that reanimating a corpse would come back to haunt me. I just never thought that it would occur during dinner. Now, grant me this: I stayed calm during the forced anal penetration. And to think I had planned the whole evening to propose a hetero-normative marriage to you in front of your made-to-order sexpot Mom and lustfully huggable Dad.

It had seemed so romantic when I got the idea from an episode of “Charles In Charge”. I don’t blame you for saying no. I would probably have done the same if my boyfriend of 2 months was calling my Mother an “idiot’s wetdream” and a “cumdumpster” while my Dad was in fisticuffs with a Zombie Corpse and my cactus.

I think the only mature thing to consider is a polygamous relationships between your dad, yourself, and I. We could try threesomes if you are game wherein we both give fellatio to your father while your mom breaks plates behind us to provide emotional support, or perhaps we should save some face and start slow with you and I getting all sexy like on Monday evenings with the rest of the week reserved for your hot pop and I to try out puppy love, 69 at the aquarium, and, of course, tied up inside your grandparents’ sarcophagus.

adam and eveThere exists a Creation Museum near Cincinnati, a $26 million dollar institution of truth that explores a literal translation of the Bible. The Creation Museum is a Disneyland for Creationists, where lucky visitors can picnic in the Garden of Eden, play voyeur to a three dimensional life-size replica of the Last Supper (make sure you throw your dinner roll at Judas), whistle at Noah at his ark’s construction site, and let your kids play with mechanical sculpted dinosaurs, because, as is common creationist knowledge, the world is only 6000 years old and humans and dinosaurs coexisted. And as if all this wasn’t enough, an official pastor is on staff to answer to your brainwashing needs!

Did you know unicorns are in the King James bible six times, including Job 39:9-10…

9 Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?

10 Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

Unicorns must be true! The Unicorn Museum is collecting donations to place a billboard near the Creation Museum.

unicorns

Good Will

The Goodwill Outlet in Seattle store sells copious masses of materialistic scatology by the pound. Quality and style can be discovered in this haystack, but the disorienting fluorescent lighting design, the windowless warehouse container of a building, and the mothball stuffiness make extended shopping trips a bit unbearable. I shop mostly for encyclopedia, reference and children’s lit books, for collage projects.

A fascinating anthropological phenomenon occurs whenever the staff bring out a new bin of items. A pack of people gather around in rabid red-eyed anticipation, mouths watering, a saliva puddle gathers on the floor below. “Now”, mumbles the employee, who skillfully hops out of the way just in time as swarms of violent arms grab blindly for that pair of Reebok Pumps, the purple tutu, or whatever “treasures” happen to lie within. This bloodthirsty pack mentality makes me slightly ashamed to be both human and American. But shame is an idiotic emotion, judgmental, arrogant and not often helpful, so I should get over myself. I’ve read that more than 1.5 million people make their entire living off of Ebay. I imagine some of them shop here.

My friend Courtney visited the Goodwill Outlet last year with her friend Jenny. Jenny brought along her fancy new digital camera, with a entire memory card filled to the brim with invaluable photos of family and friends. She and Courtney wandered around the Outlet shopping for clothes when Jenny realized her camera must have slipped out of her possession and into one of the bins. She and Courtney looked for it, and Jenny eventually asked about it at the front checkout. She was told that someone had just purchased a digital camera at $1.50 a pound. Jenny was distraught; at that same moment, a lucky Goodwill customer felt ecstatic; all they need is a battery charger and a usb cable.

Cheese dreamsCheese contains tryptophan, an essential amino acid that aids with production of serotonin and melatonin, natural chemicals that regulate sleep and brain patterns. A study by the British Cheese Board surveyed the effects of varieties of cheeses on types of dreams. For example, it reports that of eaters of Red Leichester (nibbling an hour before bedtime), “over 60% of participants … revisited their schooldays, or long-lost childhood friends, or previous family homes and hometowns.” I’ve experimented with Stilton four times now and have been blessed with purely whimsical fantasy sequences that Roger Ebert would give three thumbs up to the moon, grasping its craters like a bowling ball, and aiming for Saturn’s moons. Cheese dreams might be a fine reason for vegans to reconsider the rigidness of their dietary belief systems and permit their lives a bit more color. Link

ToilerToiletWhen I utilize the bathroom excrementally, I often do not lock the door.  “Why?” is a question a wise child might ask.   Two reasons: (1) I relish the danger of potentiality; and (2) if someone does wander in, the expressions and uncomfortablity of the situation are as priceless as a Taste of India buffet . 

Uh huhSo the situation was kinda like this:

I am playing some drunken air hockey with my current lover.

He is moving the puck quickly across the board, too quickly to get any hit in edgewise.

I just stand there.

He is moving the puck violently off the board - it flies off the table maybe five times. We have to run around looking for it. It gets buried under boxes. I help with that bit but otherwise just stand there waiting for a chance to move the puck at all.

He comments on my just standing there and then says, “That’s kinda like you in bed.”

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