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| God's Lonely GirlToday I walked through a city that is not mine, forty minutes bus from a little house in a small town. Neither mine.
Today I had coffee outside a shop in the intermittent sunshine of an early summer day.
Today I watched an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, just close enough to hear that it meant nothing.
Today I was sick, but I walked anyway, in the city that is not my own, far from the little house in the small town that are not my own.
Today I thought of heroin and looked for it. I was wondering whether I would. I didn't.
Today I cried before a woman, who someone pays. Well, you, tax-payer, do. Thank you.
Today I am afraid and insulated.
Today I tried to smile.
Today I rode the bus back to the little town. Then walked up the little hill, a little dizzy from the sickness.
I sat outside the little house that is not mine for hours. Smoking. Listening. Thinking.
Wondering when I find my home again.
I'm God's Lonely Girl.
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| Destiny and Fate after Three Martinis
After a few martinis, some thoughts on the difference between destiny and fate.
Destiny is the province of the young dead; fate is what
awaits the rest of us.
The Latins have no word for fate: The Fates of the Greeks
who wove our intertwining paths together in inexorable pattern. And we are a
society of Fate that believes in Destiny. While our Fore-fathers only promised
us the chance to chase glory, we have come to accept an impossible ideal of
unending Happiness as a right. And even this has become perverted, not into a
search for ephemeral Happiness, but the blind grasp for security.
I wonder if Mac Beth would have pursued the Kingship of
Scotland with such recklessness had he never spoken to the Three Witches? Had he not the false faith in his own
invisibility, would he have acted the same? While he gnawingly questioned the
uncommon fortune with which he seemed to have been blessed, his desire to
believe that he had been given pardon from the inevitable overrode his reason.
And thus he completed his fate.
Do we all do this? Are we all as willing as he to guide our
lives, however our minds may warn us that any such security of success comes
with a catch, upon naïve notions of invincibility? Even as life teaches us
daily the frailty of our flesh? The omnipresence of the monster in the dark,
the deep, the cheap, and the common? And truly, do our worst fears not dwell in
the common? The worse than common.
For the average human, the nightmares of our waking life do
not occur in dungeons of fire, but in hallways with fluorescent lighting, in
sanitized rooms that sound of respirators, in waiting areas where the concrete
blocks of the walls are painted pale blue. I suppose the irony is that these
places are the scenery of our greatest moments of moral triumph. It is the
strength we in find in these places to make the final decision, to comfort, and
to grieve, that represent the modern heroism.
That we are still able to stare down our fate and remain
human, retain our compassion, in those sanitized halls, before the white-coated
bearers of doom, is the redemption of modern man. It is his moment of forgiveness,
not in the afternoon heat of the Crucifixion, but under the ever-present whir
of air-filters.
Our lives have never really consisted of actual moments of
bloody victory over the slain dragon. That dragon, devil, monster, was only
ever the grim imago of our ever-so-mortal journey. Because, no matter how we
busy our schedules or squirrel away our savings, we know deep within the
outcome of life. And it is only in the constant remembrance and reverence of
this worthy, human fate, that we can find the transcendence of that moment of
compassion in the glare of mortality. For this I understand why that Friday is
called Good. For this, I find our insistence on awakening everyday a marvel of
the human spirit.
Our fate may be spun, how we react to it is all.
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| Celebrities Whose Faces I Never Want to See Again
Some people are famous for an accomplishment. Others gain
fame or celebrity for a brief moment and then fade away. This list compiles
those public car-wrecks whose time holding up traffic for media rubber-neckers
needs to end…now.
My dream is that the following names and their corresponding
faces be wiped from the collective-consciousness for all time, with the only exception
being an occasional reference by the creators of South Park.
Need I even speak the name of the young lady who tops this
dubious list? Ms. Paris Hilton has constructed an empire to rival her grandfather’s
by being, what Matt Stone and Trey Parker so deftly dubbed, a “stupid, spoiled
whore.” If Hilton’s gratingly public lifestyle of promiscuous sex, drug abuse,
and bad taste were not enough, this plastic-faced strumpet is making money from it!!! From flaunting her ignorance and lack of
touch with reality on her television program to peddling her line of perfume
(which comes with a free case of herpes), she insures that, while grandpa may
have cut her inheritance to a measly five million, she will be able to finance
her cadre’s insatiable desire to snort coke off one another’s behinds for years
to come. I console myself in the fact that she is well on her way to looking
like the over-stretched mother character in Brazil.
Our next offender belongs to the Hilton-trifecta of
talent-less wastes of the earth’s resources. Must I continuously be assaulted
by this piece of white-trash’s latest hair and trailer-park troubles? Recently
she has been staring with dark eye-makeup from tabloids and gossip magazines over
headlines proclaiming her latest harrowing ordeal. Can we not simply take her
for what she is? A child-star, all grown up with no talent to go? Must we see
her fattening body squishing through fish-nets as she flubs her way through
what are ironically called “concerts?” Whoops, Britney, you have done it one
too many times. Please relegate your life to living in a double-wide and off of
my television screen.
If anyone in the above-mentioned group had any glimmer of
talent at one time, it would be Lindsey Lohan. I enjoyed her performances in
some of her film and TV work. However, perhaps she sensed that her time in the
sun was limited and turned directly to knife-wielding, drug-induced episodes in
London clubs. Maybe she felt she
might as well screw up while she was still ahead, instead of waiting to go
trashy like Britney. Whatever the case, I believe CNN’s Jack McCafferty summed
it up nicely as, while reading from his teleprompter, he suddenly exclaimed
that he was a reporter of the news and refused to say her name on his segment
again. Right on, Jack.
Attention-desperate child stars who have recovered from a
weight/substance abuse problem deserve a special category. Oh, where to begin.
Danny Bonaduce makes a good start. Also in this grouping we can heft (who could
throw her?) Tina Yothers, and the countless other casualties of young sitcom
stardom. Strange how Different Strokes
turned out to be the kiss of death for all it’s cast, while the Cosby kids are
now all lawyers and doctors. Finally, we have to add poor Corey Feldman. Really
his worst sin was simply not dying on cue. He could have had all the sex and
drugs and lived on forever young if he only would have had the sense to
over-dose outside the Viper Club twenty years ago.
Next up on our list: little Tommy Cruise. I have no
objections to his films. What I find objectionable is being exposed to his
weird life and the absolute tabula rasa that is his mind. Whether expounding on
how schizophrenics need not take medication, sofa-diving, or binding his young
wife to bizarre birthing rituals, I just don’t care. I like his movies. I may
see more of his movies, but keep his face off the magazine and gossip shows,
please.
Trashy, rich, big-breasted blondes (living or deceased)—does
that need clarification? They got old. They sagged. I stopped caring.
Over-their-prime rock stars on TV shows! The Osbournes began as a unique twist on
the family sitcom, but quickly degenerated into a show about a senile old man
and his wife’s efforts to maintain normalcy in her family. Now, however, we are
forced to contend with the blatant self-aggrandizement of Gene Simmons. Kiss
never was the creative force that was Black Sabbath to begin with. It was an
ego-centric freak-show, and those are the words that best describe Family Jewels. Plunging further into the talent-less muck, we
are now presented with Brett Michaels’s program, Rock of Love. And I will say no more on that point, as I feel dirty
simply writing his name and sickened that he has a television program.
To complete my list of shame, I present you with a duo from
the same era, whose legacies continue to this day. I give you, Madonna and
Michael Jackson. The Material Girl was never much more than a well-scrubbed
hustler with a bit of smarts. That she continues to reinvent herself to this
day speaks to me not of a creative mind but an empty one. Desperately seeking
not to be forgotten, she continues to morph into new personae and incarnations,
when she reminds me of nothing more than a sad old drag queen who should hang
up her heels. Finally, for the much tried (on the stand and off) Jacko, please
do become the recluse that you have pretended to be. What you have become is
both sad and revolting, and I prefer you keep your freak-show private.
Thank you. Here endeth the tirade.
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| Abilify This...Doctor put me on this in addition to the Lithium and clonazapam for the "manic upswings." I LIKE the manic upswings. Surely, I am apt to make unwise choices to calm myself down, but...at least I never felt like a retarded chimpanzee before. They are also a sight better than the depressive/bed-ridden side. But I still can't concentrate!
Oliver Cromwell was manic-depressive, or "bipolar" as they say now, and look at all he accomplished! Killed the King! Established a republic in Britain! Took over Ireland! I should be so productive. Abilify: it sounds like a word that man (whose name we do not mention) made up in a speech about Mexicans' right to speak "Mexican."
At least I haven't gained weight, yet. Frankly, all it does it make me feel like I can't stand or walk so I have lie very still and crawl out of my skin through my finger nails.
Sorry this is short and badly-written.
I'd Abilify me, baby. I'd Abilify me so hard!
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| Dextromethorphan DreamsCough syrup makes sickness worth the bother. But one must use it with respect. The first rule of using cough syrup is to buy the generic brand generally called "Tussin." It comes in a large, dark bottle with a white label and black lettering. Unfortunately it is difficult to find the sort that has alcohol content any longer, but, as I recommend a fifth of whiskey (not Scotch or bourbon, mind you, whiskey), as a chaser, that disadvantage becomes moot.
Now, out on a damp early Spring day, your nose rivaling the the gutters for your disgust, you may feel the addict's urge to immediately consume your goodies, but that is a mistake. Wait until you are at home. Make yourself a little nest, preferably by a television with cable, some form of music, some snackies, and maybe a book you won't read.
Then, don your ugliest, comfiest, fat clothes--the ones that if someone ever saw, you would be banned forever from sexual relations with any sex, creed, or race--even Russians. Only then you may drink at least three times the recommended dosage for adults. Follow this with a liberal amount of whiskey. Turn on the television on silent, listen to your MP3 player, lie back.
What follows almost makes a cold a good thing. So let the snotty kid on the subway sneeze on you. Bliss awaits.
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