cooking up taffy, teach, not heroin

this is the best tale from middle school by far this year:

Okay, one of my daughter's homies lives next door to the establishment pictured here to the left. Lyle is an enterprising young man. Back in sixth grade (two years ago), Lyle had an idea. He began a covert candy delivery service. Call him a candy concierge, if you will.

This little industry has been humming along undetected by the adults at the school for going on its third year. (Imagine the horror for the sixth graders who have grown accustomed to this service, who will be deprived of it once Lyle graduates middle school this May. Next year will be a desolate, sugar-free wasteland unless Lyle hands off the business to an underling willing to kick some $ up to the Godfather). But I digress.

It seems that Lyle was busted this week. The math teacher caught him in the hallway with a list of names and code words next to the names like "pixies" (as in "stix," not fucking PCP), "red" (as in licorice, not downers) and "black" (as in not black beauties, idiot) and of course, the paper sack stuffed with cash, all small bills, was the icing on the cake. Yes, Lyle was busted for dealing drugs. The teachers were convinced. Until they did a raid on his locker and found a huge stock pile of Lemon Heads, Atomic Fireballs, chocolate covered raisins and peanuts, gummie bears, Whoppers, Hot Tamales, Sweet Tarts, Pop Rocks, Airheads, etc.

The candy train has come to a screeching halt. For now. Schmoopie tells me that Lyle is regrouping, he has a new plan for delivery. He has customers, after all, and they need their fixes. He is, after all, The Man.

this is my favorite post on today's postsecret site.

I didn't write it. But I could have.

why I am a bad journalist

I have some ethics.

Okay, not all of them. But some of them...

admit it: you want to eat me

Yes, I do. If this makes me sad, pathetic, weak, a pound heavier this week, so be it. I wish I had some self-discipline, but I don't.

karma. again.

this is what I get for bragging about how our weather is perfect and yours sucks ass. Everyone in my house has come down with a respiratory sludge that meets the criteria for a rocking case of "Captain Trips" ala Stephen King's apocalyptic tome The Stand (which the kid is now plowing through at raging speed). We all are over-producing gallons of mucus and sneezing and aching and feeling generally wretched and wanting to die.

Except that I am not having dreams of the Walking Dude calling me West or the sweet old black lady who is setting on her porch just-a-rockin' away in her rickety chair and telling me to stop by for some sweet potato pie. No, I have chills and a fever that comes and goes and the dog keeps getting into bed to comfort me and I keep waking up with tufts of matted black furballs stuck to the side of my face from where I drooled as I slept while she snuggled.

I swear, I think if I cough any more my throat will just prolapse and fling itself out of my mouth in permanent protest--a new sort of angry auxiliary tongue. I have been wearing the same sweat pants and OJ-stained t-shirt for three days and I don't care. Not pretty.

I did get up for a bit today because I had a (short-lived) burst of energy and thought (delusionally)I wanted to clean and tidy but I ended up with stacks of stuff(really important stuff) and realized I was just walking in circles around my piles and I had no more energy. So now I am sitting and staring at my stacked piles of esoteric shit. What is in these stacks? Me. Little bits and pieces and chunks of me. Stuff that reminds me of days and boys long past. Some of them are good reminders, some stuff I would run over with the car or burn if I cared or had the energy (which I don't anymore because I am old and it's all over for me anyway) and other stuff is just, eh. whatever. Did I mention I'm sick?

Here's what I do know: it's fucking Girl Scout cookie time people and I just may have to bribe the guy in the boxers to put on some pants and and run down to Publix to get me a box of thin mints because I HAVE NO OTHER REASON TO LIVE RIGHT NOW. That is all.

Douchebag of the Month

Meet Mr. February (the flaming asshole judge presiding over last week's Anna Nicole embalming/paternity/cluster fuck hearing). Hands down, no contest. No elaboration needed. No wonder the Europeans think we're a bunch of ignorant horse's asses.

the annual tourist rant

the weather may be sucking ass where you are, but down here in the sweet southern sunbelt, the Blue Jays are hollerin' and the azaleas are in full bloom. Suck on that. The only truly sucky thing about winter and spring in Inferno (Florida) is that we are invaded by gorging locusts--Canadians and Michiganders and dolts from Ohio and Pennsylvania who apparently cannot figure out how to dress themselves or accelerate beyond 25 MPH in the fast lane. They are cheap and tip for shit and are rude to service staff. They clog the restaurants, malls and golf courses and the beaches are awash in white-bellied old farts. God, I wish they would go home. Now.

this is what $3,000 looks like. The kid got her braces off today. Bring on the popcorn and bubble gum.

nothing says "baby, I luv you" like a little clap. Happy VD y'all.

hugs and kisses,

ell

my mailbox yields no news of you. if you (ever) sent me a card, it never found me. i must not be your valentine after all. maybe this is the universe's way of punishing me for burning the one and only (it turns out)other one. The one that was glued shut. so many signs, so much room for interpretation. and rumination. and sitting with my toes in the sand. yes, room for this, as the sand goes on for miles. just like all of this, you and me. now i have a headache.

when I was a kid and my grandfather wanted me to shut up, he would insist that unless we were very quiet, we would not hear the sizzle when the sun slipped into the sea at sunset.

Sometimes I forget the heat and stop bitching about the tourists and traffic and overdevelopment long enough to feel privileged to live here at the edge of the coast, where the sun slides into the sea every evening.

Here at the beach, folks customarily gather just before sunset. Sometimes it's a smattering of people up and down the beach, pausing for a moment. I like that best. Sometimes it's larger groups, arriving purposefully, beach chairs and cameras in hand. I like watching the older folks who casually stroll the sand hand in hand and I wonder if my beloved and I will do that when we are old. They slow and look over their shoulders at the sky as it flows from purple to orange to pink and they smile. Sometimes I tell myself they are smiling sadly or wistfully. But I'm probably reading more into it than there is.

A pod of dolphins is almost always heading southward past the beach at the end of the day and if we're very lucky, they will drift close to the shore for a spell as they feed and play. It's always such a gift, that glimpse of glistening fin silently slipping in and out of the water.

And the sunsets...always so gorgeous, no matter the weather. Once colors recede and darkness has fluttered down over the beach, blanketing it in darkness, the people gathered on the beach always applaud, be they locals or tourists. Schmoopie asked me once why we were clapping. We're thanking, I told her. Who? Who are we thanking? She asked. All of it, I said. All of it.

I think we're gonna have a lot of fun in the pool with this baby this summer.

If it lasts that long. It sure took a beating last night. Um, Yeah.

all my best girlfriends now know where their g-spots are. It was a really good girl's night out.

I just bet he did.....

This just in from the UK pulication the News & Star:

Prince praises community spirit
Published on 02/05/2007

Prince Charles meets Sir Chris Bonington today

PRINCE Charles enjoyed a pint of Great Cockup during a two-hour tour of Hesket Newmarket on a visit to Cumbria today. Bright sunshine and a small crowd greeted the Prince of Wales on his third trip to the village when he toured the Crown Pub and Fellside Stores. The Crown is the only pub in the country owned by a co-operative and the prince heard how the shop could soon be run in the same way.As he unveiled a plaque to commemorate his visit, he said: “I was so impressed last time I came, by all the progress and community sprit.“I do pray that the shop project is a success.”

why she won't win

Three words: She's too angry.

Let's face it--on a man, the hostility factor can be a huge attribute. It can come off as commanding and ballsy. We want a man who takes charge, dammit. I know I do. On a woman, it has serious ick factor. Hillary's hostility will make the penises of men everywhere shrink up into their bodies like frightened little turtles. An angry, scorned woman in power? Yikes. The more she pounds the podium, her upper lip curled in disdain of those evil republicans, the more the shrinkage will spread across the U.S. And we can't have that. A woman who was humiliated on a global scale by a philandering husband becoming president? It's payback time on the scale of Nightmare on Elm Street for every guy who ever even contemplated getting a hummer on the side. Which is 100% of the men in the U.S. Oh, no, it's just too fucking scary for American men.

Hillary's anger will sink her. She will be called a harpy, a ball-buster, worse. She is already coming off like a bitter, shrill shrew on her campaign stops. If I'm already weary of it, where will I be 21 months from now? And I swear, I want a woman to win the White House. I do. But Hillary is going to burn everyone out to the point that the sound of her voice will make us all want to retch come November 2008. I already can't take any more of it. My prediction: she will not be the first woman president. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

A poem for February

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it.
And one. Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Seamus Heaney

why writing for a living (and writing well) is a bitch

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat."

William Faulkner
Stockholm, December 10, 1950

PS--how timely. and how sad that the mental state we were in at the height of the Cold War persists today, albeit in a different form but no less foreboding and oppressive. Yes, William Faulkner was a crazy bastard. But aren't we all?