Crab Nebula

I feel angry, a bit. Twitchy, teeth-gnashy, dark animals pawing at my innards. Not sure where this is coming from. PMS has run its course. The boy is appropriately attentive. I am directing two shows before the holidays. A recent writing endeavor has been recieved favorably and will be developed further next spring. My weight is at its lowest since the seventh grade. Compliments fluttered around my new haircut. Credit will be repaired by May.

But I'm reading Bill Bryson's "A Short History about Nearly Everything," spasming, with every turn of the page, at the sheer size and scope of the universe. Travelling at our current, fastest, man-propelled speed of 35,000 mph, it would take you ten thousand years to reach the edge of the solar system. Most large celestial bodies are at least 20 million years apart. If another intelligence lifeform from our nearest galaxy had a telescope strong enough to see our faces, it would see light from 200 hundred years ago. This means that it would be seeing slaves, the Ottoman Empire, and Thomas Jefferson.

Of course, we know this. Any big-thinking person has been attacked by the reality of the unreality of it all. We, as humans, cannot comprehend infinity or a light year, we can't even comprehend a distance above 600 yards (subconsciously, this is where we place the horizon). We can, however, comprehend that we cannot comprehend - and that is terrifying. We tell ourselves we don't understand football because we aren't athletic, or we don't know the molecular compound of a vitamin, because we didn't go to medical school. But what we do not know, we can learn; what we have not experienced, we can. There is safety there, knowing knowledge is easily attainable.

Comprehension is something differnt...a powerful, cognitive force we take for granted. Comprehension can not be learned, it can only be used; instinct for our frontal lobes. When you are literally unable to comprehend something, it is like being in the desert holding a steel sphere full of water, with no opening. You can only imagine how quickly frustration could turn into madness.

Anyway, thats how I feel today. I'm near dying of thirst, with only a steel ball of water to save me. I can hear the water swishing inside.

Single Again: A Blessing in Disguise

My boyfriend and I just broke up today. Well, it was interesting while it lasted.
I'll tell you though; I really am proud to say that I didn't fuck this one up. I really gave it the old college try...I mean, I really tried to do things different, tried to listen and talk more; tried to be patient; tried to let go of some of my control issues or having to always be right.

At least now I can look forward to a few things: like having good sex again, having intellectually stimulating conversation about something besides family guy, and not having to listen to elevator jazz music. I don't care what anyone says: Spyro Gyra is not jazz.

What did I learn, kids?

1) Don't date a man old enough to be your father, who is as mature as your son, and whose health makes him actually old enough to be your grandfather.
The man is one twinkie and a cigarette away from a heart attack...perhaps that's why he has so many sexual problems.

2) Just because someone says they are trying to be a gentleman, it isn't always so.
He really isn't...If he was, he would have had the courtesy of informing me that he couldn't deal with the issues I laid on the table, and that we would have to break up...instead of my finding out by looking at his new "single" status online. He used the whole thing of "trying to be a gentleman" as an excuse to avoid any kind of physical intimacy...which was due to inability for emotional intimacy. We were in the honeymoon phase of the relationship and I felt like I was Edith and he was Archie Bunker. Wow, that's hot.

3) When they tell you "I love you" very early on, and you have red flags, really pay attention to the red flags.
Sure, it made me feel very special that he seemed to care so much, and I got swept up...but taking me on trips and buying me things doesn't mean jack shit when you have problems even kissing me.

4) Don't date recovering coke addicts/alcoholics unless they have gone through enough therapy and are really able to take responsibility for their lives/mistakes and also get beyond their intimacy issues.
Enough said.

5) If they leave things out before they meet you: i.e. that they smoke (and they know you're a non-smoker) and that they are dry drunks/sober cokeheads -- and leave that info out even after you've been talking to them for over a month on the phone...it's probably a good sign that something's not right

6) Don't date people you meet on MySpace

7) If they show no interest in reading your writing, viewing your creative work, even though you ask them to, there's a problem.
First of all, if someone is first dating you, they should want to know about your creative aspirations, should be interested in sharing your work that makes you happy. He liked my pictures because he takes them and can just look - but he never read my writing or went to my blog sites.


If anything, this dude should thank me - I begged him to go get a checkup because his health seemed really bad and the fact that he smokes like two packs a day and has horrible eating habits (eggs and sausage every day, milkshakes for snacks) and he finally went in; and he found out that he has serious health issues that he needs to deal with - and if he takes care of them now, he will be okay.

I wanted to help him with this if he just could get the intimacy thing dealt with - hell, I was going to support him regardless, but he had to go and act like this...
I mean, it's his m.o. : avoidance. That's what having intimacy issues is. But I don't deserve to be treated like this. He couldn't even tell me that he had decided to pack it in.
He has yet to return my phonecall or emails. To say I'm pissed at being treated this way after being sexually/emotionally deprived for two and a half months is an understatement.

In fact, I'm fuming...I'm so mad...I wasn't even going to write this blog right now, but I had to get it out or else it would eat me up. HOW FUCKING DARE HE TREAT ME THIS WAY!

I really feel like sending him a care package...in honor of his trying to quit smoking this weekend and lower his GodKnowsHowHigh cholesterol, I would like to send him a carton of cigarettes, a few packages of twinkies, a loaf of pound cake, a bottle of scotch and an eight-ball and a few straws.
Here's your parting gift, you FUCK. What's a few addictions and cholesterol points? Go to town - on me.

He smokes Old Gold - who the fuck smokes those? Only fuckers who are either old enough to have been around when cigarettes were first made, or people who think it's cool to smoke cigarettes that make John Wayne look like a queen.

In Honor of My Divorce Going Through: For Tim

In honor of my divorce finally going through, I would like to post a poem I wrote during last fall, when it finally began to sink in that sometimes you really don't stay close friends with your Ex anymore.

My divorce finally became official about a month ago, but it has taken a little time for that to sink in. I suppose that although I make jokes about my ex-husband or write sardonic amusing anecdotes about my past marriages, the bottom line is that when you love someone and it ends, it can be very painful and sad. Regardless of the circumstances.

My preference to deal with things that make me sad is to first be mournful...and then get humorously bitter; a combination, if you will, of David Sedaris, Dennis Miller, and my friend Liza Linder - but in my own way.

Fellow Ornery Woman writer Carol Maric invited me to join WritersCafe.org, and in doing so, I started to go over my poems I have written over the last three years. I re-read this one and began to cry - and realized that although I am glad the divorce went through, it is still a very sad thing...and ultimately, as many (most?) people who get married do, I had thought it would last forever.

Although I am thankful for our ability to call it quits and remain polite to each other, the empty space of where a friend once stood at times seems very large indeed.


For Tim

I let the book of
Poetry by Hardy
Rest in my lap, my finger
Wedged in the crook of the first poem's page,
And I can't go on.

Their love is over,
The two on that page
By the autumn's dying tree
Dead smile playing on her lips
Dead like an animal run over
In the road.

Their love is over,
And so is ours; funny thing
I had thought it already was
But had forgotten the ghost
Of what is called friend
Or what is taken for granted
Late nights, feverish from hospital stay
You took me home to get well,
Slept on the sofa
And I knew I could count on you -

No more.

The notes of our tune are fading out
The last stanzas of a song played too long
Yet one that was played well
Can you still hear the echo
Strains of some old jazz score
Like the one you sang a capella
In the bar where we met that night
Or like the Burning Star
Sung to me under stars
On a damp campus field
At the end of summer days.

I wish you well; you can sing those for her now.

Funny how you don't realize how much
You miss a friend until you know
That you cannot really call them friend
Anymore.



If you care to, you can read more of my poetry at www.billychic.blogspot.com

and soon you can read some over at WritersCafe.org (I just joined and I'm adding my work piecemeal...I hope to add some of my fiction at some point:



Please be sure to stop by Carol's page as well.

Say what?

Sometimes when I listen to my students speak, I wonder how the hell they ever passed English class. Forget my students, what about a whole chunk of society?

I’ve always paid particular attention to how I say things. I don’t know why, but I have. Maybe it was that I was a language major in college and listened carefully so that my “new” accent couldn’t be detected when speaking with a group of natives.

Maybe it was growing up on Long Island. My ears still prickle when I hear that nasal sound when words like talk were morphed into tawk. When the show “The Nanny” became a hit on NBC, I cringed listening as “Fran Fein” laughed and showed the world her insanely nasal speech. It so hurts my ears!

Forgetting the accents, what's happening with the English language?

I mean, think about it, adults are supposably here for kids to ax questions so we can lead them in the apopriate direction in life and help shape them into successful and functional members of society. It’s disgusting when I listen to people conversating in everyday situations – not necesscelery just here at my job – and hear the same crap being used as if they were acceptable, REAL words.

Anotherwords, our language is falling to shit.

There is one thing, however that gets me. Someone told me that sherbert isn’t a word. It’s sherbet.

WHAT?

I was convinced they were wrong. So, me being me, I went to the liberry acrosst town to check it out.

Know what? It’s NOT a word!

Fuck it. I’m still gonna use it. It sounds better than sherbet. Even more, when it’s my birfday in Febooary or I’m out to dinner for Valentime’s day, I’m gonna order sherbert. No one will notice.

Stephen Baldwin Prays for Tom Cruise As They Both Wait for Mothership

OldFart54 sent this tasty article link to me today during work...

In a recent interview with Radar Online, the youngest (and soon to be most overweight) of the Baldwin brothers, Stephen, who is supposedly born-again, claimed that of those stars in Hollywood that he prays for, "...Tom Cruise is probably Number 1...I'd love to break bread with him and pray with him."

He'd probably also pray that Tom gets him a gig.

Photo: Defamer.com

Even if Tom is out on his ear, he's about as much of a freakish curiosity as Joseph Merrick, Michael Jackson, and tragic road accidents. The morbidly curious Roman in all of us will always buy tickets - and so, although Paramount may have finally come to their senses, the public still salivates...and so even being in the same room with Cruise might sprinkle a little fairy dust (ahem) on Baldwin.



He could use it. I have a feeling that his new book, The Unusual Suspect, which is all about how a womanizing coke whore saw the light and became born-again, (no, it's not about George W.; it's about Baldwin himself) might not be a best-seller. And let's face it; of all the brothers, he was probably the least talented...at least at acting.

What is really hilarious, though, is that during his interview, despite all his newfound knowledge of the house of God, he could only come up with six of the ten commandments.

Hey, that's better than me. I just know there's something in there about not boinking your neighbor's wife while trying to kill someone as you say the lord's name in vain.

My Man Would Rather Hump A Pillow: And Other Ways My Self Esteem Has Gone Out the Window

The gentleman I'm dating has no desire to have sex with me at all whatsoever. I have no idea how this happened. When we first went out, he was all over me, trying to find a way into the inner sanctum like Indiana Jones on Safari. But once I showed him that I was going to allow him access to the keys to the kingdom...he just bowed out like an ROTC Young Republican at a Pride Parade.

Are there certain men that, when they feel they have conquered what they need to, just move on? Before they even actually have sex? They get that bored? Hell, I'd think they would at least hang out long enough to use the merchandise a little before they moved on to the next new thing. I would use the old saying "I'd like to get kissed before I get fucked!", but that can't even really apply in this situation. I can't even really say that he used me and left me - I'm honestly not that lucky.

Now, getting lucky isn't all that I'm after...oh, no sir. But wouldn't it be nice to even get a little dry hump now and then? A little "gee, let's play high school" (oh no, wait, actually more like middle school nowadays) and get to somewhere between 2nd base and a home run? I even miss the good old days of the equivalent of blue balls for women - yes, we get them, too, guys - something I like to affectionately coin "blue clit."

He's not gay, so that rules that out. Most of the time he's a gentleman. He's very kind and tries to show me his affection in other ways...buying me things, etc - but it really doesn't cut the mustard. I don't want things, I want him - and I've tried to talk to him about it, but he avoids intimate conversation like a verbal aikido warrior - deflecting all talk about anything deeper than the latest episode of a favorite television program or where we're going to dinner.Okay, not that lame, but certainly not anything serious or meaningful or...well - sad. Not like I want to walk around like Sylvia Plath and open an artery or stick my head in an oven during every conversation, but every time I start to talk about anything that's not "cheery" it seems he immediately steers the conversation to something less scary to him...like the weather.

Literally.

And of course, that means that any talk I want to have about our sex life (or lack thereof) is also not a possible topic of conversation.

I'm just not too sure how much more of this I can take. I really care for him, but he obviously has serious intimacy issues and I can't seem to penetrate his walls. Any suggestions?

At least I can visit places like MyPleasure.com...

Life's Mulligans

Last Thursday we went to a memorial for my husband's friend, Paul Nelson. Paul was no relation to me (that I know of) but we did have a few things in common. His first love was music and he made quite a career of not only writing about it, but also had a knack for finding extraordinary talent and then championing the cause of that talent with a loyalty and devotion that was (and still is) quite rare in this world. He also loved films and spent his waning years as a bit of a recluse, eschewing the music industry to work as a clerk in a Greenwich Village video store, which is where he befriended Dave (my husband).

His memorial was rather surreal, as these two very separate worlds collided. There was a long list of speakers, many of them the rock critics and icons we grew up reading in the pages of Rolling Stone, Musician, Cream and other rags that were once our main connection to the music world, before television and the Internet changed the landscape. So it was a bit freaky to hear my own dear David speak at a podium shared by the likes of Dave Marsh, Kurt Loder and David Johansen. However, these people came together to skillfully paint a vivid picture of this man's life via their own reflections. It became clear through their reminiscences that Paul was revered by his music industry colleagues, but that he made a conscious decision to pretty much sever all ties to that world and establish a new life that was lived on his own terms.

We caught a cab home and as we were driving over the Brooklyn Bridge, it occurred to me that I also have made a similar choice. I decided to abandon a good life. A life that appeared nearly perfect to those on the outside because the flaws and cracks were buried deep within. But I have successfully sown a new life. One that roots in solid ground and bears sweeter fruits. Of course it is not perfect, it could never be, but it is so much more rewarding and full that I can only rejoice in the fact that I am content. Who would have ever dreamed that driving over the Brooklyn Bridge on a Thursday evening would be a routine matter for me? Certainly not this small-town gal. Sometimes it astounds me... the way I threw myself out into the great unknown and came up smiling.

There were many at Paul's service who knew him only in his "first" life and couldn't comprehend why he would embrace obscurity the way he did. But it makes sense to me. Life is far too short to waste it being unfullfilled and discontented.

Why Did You Waste Your Time?

Created From Nothing, One Is Horrified In The Glass of A Compass, Exhausting Categories Of Change Or Inertia In A Whale’s Breath, Whose Fecund Utterance Wandered And Trailed, Speaking Of The Lunar Incubation And Reflexive Arc of Empirical Knowledge And Its Electric Signs--Of Which An Owl Without (Quotation Marks) Would Have Been Spitefully Perhapsed, In These New Depths Of Distractions. To The Roots Of Impenetrability, Ever Knowing Anything Of Inconceivable Scripts Of Sleeping And Waking Against The Calendar, Worms Walk Off, In Modern Light, On Those Grounds, In Freest Modus Operandi, And Swinging; Encounter These Bodies And Their Full Effects, All Their Wonders And Riots Of Living Phenomena Passing Afresh--A Call To Be Thinking.

Of A Meal : Through The Marketplace Massacres Of Capitalistic Flattened Time Perpetuated, I Saw (As One Who Looks Directly) It Burst, That Which Was Intolerable, In Its Nakedness, From A Cemetery Plot Of Raped Human Skin, As Deep As Sepulchres Trimmed With Armed Extinguishers, Who, At Risk From Banqueting, After The Starvation, Took All The More, Evening Over The Pavement--In Dante’s Time.

As Country X’s Growing Arrogance Became Manifestly Intransigent, Squads Of Soundless Lone Miners, Between Eras Of Opposing Continental Shores, Mastered Seismic Trawling Dilation; Losing Was A Forest That Spring (Of Blood Away), Wherewithall, A Language Digested--Making Coexistence Impossible. On The Earth Stood A Glass Coffer Inlaid With Sandstorm Membrane, Containing (Behind The Passions) A Rejection Letter From Was (Who Committed Suicides), Next To The Singer, Whose Exposed Throat Hovered In Paroxysm--Forming All Of The Unknown Derivatives Of :

Apotheosis! Apoplexy! Apogee!

--Outside The Library, Above An Open Book Of Chess, Archaeology, And Museums.

© Carol Maric
All Rights Reserved

Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)

This is a hilarious blog that I came across while going through the great list of gals who blog with BloggerChicks (of which Ornery Woman and my personal blog, Voodoo Jive, are a part of).

With a title like that, I simply had to look; what I found was a goldmine of hilarious commentary on everything from politics..to..well, shaved snatch, and everything in between.

I am going through a tough time - on of my pets is in the hospital and it's not looking good for my little girl, the Orneriest Little Lady you'll ever want to meet who's also an angel: my little girl Nina.



This blog, Campaign for Unshaved Snatch made me laugh my ass off - and that's a miraculous feat tonight, because of what's going on.

I salute the author and recommend you all go check her out. She's one Ornery Woman, without a doubt.

Speaking of Unshaved Snatch, I've been thinking about posting about the horrors of brazillian waxing, the joys of pube razor shaving in the shower, and the thrills of near-clitorectomies at the hands of my sissors...I will have to return to this in the next day or two - and perhaps bring in outside assistance with a new addition: the occasional male POV from some very pro-female (or at least respectful enough to give us info from the other side of the fence), intelligent, and sometimes rather hilarious male bloggers - when they have a post that is a reflection on a topic being discussed here on Ornery Woman.

Anyway, please send your thoughts out to Nina, my little kitty (my cat, folks, not my snatch) who is in the hospital and trying to survive an undiagnosed diabetic condition; undiagnosed until I found her unable to walk or eat suddenly.

If you have pets, remember to give them an extra hug today.

Happy Labor Day! Roy Wood, Jr. Style: Ornery Woman in Alabama

Wait - that is the holiday this weekend, right?

Whoa - I need to seriously take a break. Sorry to be MIA for a couple of days - I'll be out of town, but will try to get online at some point...

I leave you with a prank phonecall made by Roy Wood, Jr., a hilarious comedian whose shenanigans include doing prank phonecalls from radio stations, pretending to be outlandish characters.

The people he calls, however, are the ones that are the real characters.



This one is my favorite: when he pretends to work for the government and calls a woman in Alabama to tell her that her Social Security check is going to have to be reduced...and just listen to the shit hit the fan.

She is the ORNERIEST ORNERY WOMAN I've heard in so long...

This is some seriously hilarious shit.

I present:
"MY CHECK"

Or, you can just play it here - just click the play button (if it comes up correctly in your browser):


"I'll skin yo' ass like I skinned that catfish last night!"

An Ongoing Speculation In Progress: Theory of Physical and Spatial Proximity In Regard To Human Interaction

Humans have tended to initiate relationships based upon physical proximity: in the cave, the neighborhood, the school, the workplace, and so forth; from a purely objective glance at this phenomenon, I find these relational bonds quite similar to those of molecular, particulate behavior, in that there is a gravitational pull from any particle involved--a dance of movement, within a relatively fixed orbit, with variances in temperaturement (driving them to move away or closer in their orbit), and other such parameters. Groups of people exhibit these ties, as do molecules comprising a particularte entity, such as a defined organ in one’s body that serves a specific function--for example, the particles comprising a human heart.

Associations are usually “forced” upon us in some way--the main mode being sheer propinquity; with any precise “object” to be found in materiality, this circumstance seems to be analogous; even when people avoid one another within a set situation, they are still in interaction and proximity to one another, but the gravitational pull is of a different nature of magnitude and force. Even when cancer cells overtake neighboring cells, they “know” and imbibe those closest, in their immediate vicinity first.

When particles are extracted from their former environment, and set into a fresh one, they begin to exert force within that new context, as they are transformed by those elements surrounding them as well; it is more difficult to sustain continuity with the former “molecules,” no longer being bound by former context, because the gravitational pull is weaker (although, I have read that human heart cells, when separated, still beat in unison rhythmically--but for how long?), and the pull of the new environment is thus more powerful; therefore, one must exert a stronger force to maintain relationship with that which one wishes to keep in “contact”--through willful thought, foremost.

All matter has some relationship to all other matter--even if one might be perceived as the “loneliest” molecule in existence.

To apply this theory to the extension of physical travel (away from geographical proximity): the various means of transportation afforded to humans within the past two centuries especially--and specifically, to the rather recent revolution of travel, via computers--this is where the analogy changes, mutates, expands: proximity undergoes a more universal meaning, but still within the confines of relative orbit (being our Earth’s, in this instance), aided by the tools of travel, machinery commonly known as the computer, the cell phone, the fax, etc. Now, people congregate in various configurations online, emanating from diverse “states” and “countries” all over the world--allowing chance meeting to no longer be a matter of purely physical geography; “Matter” of “Mind” exerts more force than ever before, and has altered modes of association: we orbit, as particles, around one another, within orbits of gravitational thought patterns now--willingly, and not out of physical, proximate obligation. This fairly new development is a harbinger of an evolution in human interaction and contact that is more reflective of our increasing understanding of the expansion of the Universe, in which our planet Earth is only a tiny particle.

May we each exude the most evolutionary, expansive force, of which we are most capable.

© Carol Maric
All Rights Reserved