So I have been reading advice columns recently. It's a phase I go through, and I found a comm that like, posts stories from these columns and discusses it which is pretty much my Platonic ideal of funness with those.

Which is why I decided I was having a moment of insight--a very useless one--while reading about one that was like, (example, not true) a woman marries a guy with three kids who try to kill her and their mutual child tortures cats and now the mother in law moved in and makes everyone sleep in teh living room and she's not sure what to do about all this.

...actually, maybe I actually read this, but not the point. The point is, advice columns seem to have a high proportion of stupid, stupid-crazy, stupid-scary, and boggling. There are very specific types that write to them, and in theory, I always thought it came down to three types: 1.) ones that want confirmation of something they already plan to do (and will do even without confirmation) 2.) people who just really want attention and 3.) really dumb. But I don't believe that anymore. I think there are actually four types. And the fourth type is what I call the WTF people. Because they aren't writing in due to being stupid, attentiony, or just confirmation, though they can be all of that. They are literally stumped on how the fuck they got to this, because they feel this isn't normal, but they don't know at what point they boarded the crazy train, because they've just been on it that long.

I'm going to explain this in the language of personal anecdata.

( this is probably everything that no one ever needed to know about me, but may explain a lot )

You know, at this point, I feel the need to lie down and reconsider my twenty year old self's relative decision making capabilities. I remember being stupid, but I'm now wondering if I was like lobotomized briefly and there was slow but steady regeneration.

So I had this dream about tree-squid.

Wait. It's not that kind of dream. But I think it mostly is; I had a dream where there were tree-squid and scaly cats and I have no idea why this makes me giggle, but it does. Why I remember is because it was a nightmare, the way that a nightmare is when nothing terrifying happens, but you know that everything's wrong and you're not sure why. Well, that and having tree-squid thrown at me. I woke up utterly freaked out and blinking suspiciously at every tree I passed.

It still makes me giggle. They were squid the size of small dogs, like something out of Super Mario.

No, I'm not high. I'm just awake. And actually, I woke up an hour or so ago after a dream that lasted years. I was dancing because when I fell asleep, I was remembering a post by hetrez from a week or so ago.

Put Me in a Package and Send Me There:

I've been thinking about this lately, and talking about it a lot, because I am struggling with sexuality, with the question of whether or not I have one, and I feel strange desiring touch when I don't have a corresponding desire -- the words "touch" and "body" seem hypersexualized to me sometimes, they seem loaded with a meaning that I don't want. If I am friends with someone, I want to put my hands on their face -- my fingers twitch, I have to rub my palms against my jeans, because it's weird, you know? Touching someone softly on the neck, at the corner of their jaw, behind their ears, and hoping that it will be anything else to that person besides a signal that I want to kiss them.

Heh. I don't know. Come over here, let me play with your hair. I promise I won't try anything funny.

It's been simmering for a while, I think, but so much moreso tonight, and I'm not sure why. The elegance of expression is part of it; I love the fit of words that flow together like the textual manifestation of touch.

I thought of this tonight, feeling fingers in my hair and on the back of my neck, and wonder.

( lighter )

svmadelyn, from the goodness of her heart, overloaded me with fifteen of the most depressing songs in the history of civilization. Well, twelve of them, one with one murdering her husband, and one with memphis involved. Which honestly, I feel that the second you mention Memphis in any country song, it's autojerk to assume it's about someone drinking themselves to death in a bar somewhere while listening to Hank Williams.

Part of this is that I grew up around a bar. Not the nightclub kind--the rural kind, where everyone and their families went after work with their kids and their parents and their grandparents, where all the kids learned pool early on and played outside during summer. Good times. It was farmers, third, fourth, fifth generation. My dad, a painter. Landscapers, construction, name it and have it live in rural Central Texas, represent. Unfortunately, the jukebox was stuck in the late seventies even when the nineties happened, so my early music tastes were formed by Willie Nelson and Waylan Jennings and God help us all, Patsy Cline. I don't remember now--but a song can come on the radio and suddenly I'm singing without any clear idea what I'm singing. If I don't catch myself, I can make it through the entire song. If I realize what I'm doing, I forget immediately. It took me until my very early teens to discover rock and pop, and I made my first mix tapes with my first stereo with nothing but pop--sadly, I just missed falling for New Kids on the Block (my sister wanted to marry them all, and I melted the hair of Donnie Walburg once). I remember Madonna and Paula Abdul and the first time I saw a music video.

I love music, in a very non-discrimatory way. I like it dramatic and quiet and painful, and I'd prefer to cry through it. I remember my first crush was set to Oceans Apart and the first time I was hurt it was to Madonna's I Remember. The last time I fell in love didn't have a soundtrack, but the last time my heart broke, I spent six months with Alanis Morisette. I still have that entire CD memorized. I was twenty, so that has to excuse most of it. I remember feeling with music--play the right time, and for a few seconds, I'm there, and it's all brand new.

I played clarinet and still remember Nimrod: Enigma Variations, haunting and beautiful and deceptively simple, rippling through every instrument. Flute and clarinets trading melody, countermelody like running water beneath it, silky and rising, a crescendo like a shock and hurting when it ended.

College the first time around was Sheryl Crowe and Live and the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. I made out to the Cranberries Zombie my freshman year and I learned to dance the waltz to Bryan Adams Tell Me Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman and how to two step to Clint Black. I don't listen to dance music unless I'm dancing, and then I don't care what it is--something with a hard beat I can feel up my calves and in my back that melts me like wax, where my body's mine and moves the way I always thought it should. I sing to Phantom of the Opera and wrote my first novel to Drops of Jupiter. When I was seventeen, I fell in love with Roxette and Pet Shop Boys playing in teh background. I still have those tapes, hidden in a box, hand labeled by the first person I ever loved.

I look for my life in almost forgotten lyrics, sets of four beats, snatches of melody in a grocery store playing in tinny speakers. I heard a snatch of Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes in HEB and I felt a start of recognition--I know that, this feeling, this second, this moment--but I don't know why. My mother is Aerosmith and George Michael and Wham and The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Nadia's theme, Christmas caroles she taught herself to play on our old piano when I was growing up. My dad's Hank Williams Jr and classic country music on the radio in the jeep. My sisters are rap and R&B and Eminem. Friends are hung around with lyrics and drip slow beats, play in inaudible memories in my head. Katie, long gone but not forgotten, is VH-1 and Gin Blossoms and Collective Soul, stroking my hair and pulling herself to pieces while I watched. Loni's Depeche Mode and Erasure played on repeat when I fell in love the way I never have since, and the way I broke myself when it ended, when she held me while I cried. Vannezsa's industrial rock, German and Russian bands with thick beats and Metallica, The Matrix soundtrack.

I don't understand it, music--why simple melody can break me or inspire me, why the right playlist can keep me up for days and the wrong one reduce me to tears. I don't understand teh combination of notes that makes Appalacian Spring shiver through me and Bolero wake me up. Don't Let It Go to Your Head I'll sing outside at work with my ipod playing in my ears, a twirling in the parking lot under trees and wondering if anyone can see me out the windows, feeling alive and fresh and like everything's new all over again. The Boys of Summer makes me want the beach like I want air, and What About Everything makes me stare at the sky in wonder at how much is left for me to see.

I'm always surprised when I find something new, always amazed how it can reduce me to silence inside my head, flattening thought and tuning the world out, everything turned inward to absorb what I hear, like all of life is captured in three minutes, thirty seconds, everything I am and was and everything I'll ever be. It's breathtaking, every time.

Everyone who was unfortunate enough to remember when I talked about how I unwittingly plunged my mother into halawa obsession--well, we got it to work. Not with sugar, oddly enough. Honey.

Alternate recipe requires honey and lemon. I have no idea how this occurs, except the smell is like some kind of cross between a slow death by sugar suffocation and desperation, the kind of desperation you feel when you realize your mother and sister plan on using you as the test subject for cooked honey.

Suffice to say, I shave everywhere that can be visible in a bathing suit on pretty much a daily basis, and let me tell you, me and my razor have reached that bonding stage where i can do calf to hip in thirty seconds flat braced against the bathroom door the second I come inside and realize I smell *burning sugary substance*. That's almost three feet per leg, yo. I have *skills*.

Wait, I should go back and explain.

Apparently, the sugar process is really, really, really delicate. Think puff pastry while standing on your head singing epic poetry. We did about six or seven trials with the sugar/water/lemon thing before Mom ran across the honey thing--expensive, but it allows a little more in the way of flexibility, and the second batch, the results were spilled out to cool and be used. And it *is* really intersting, in a 'wow, I have a lot more love for my razor than I knew, when the other option is ripping it out with this tiny golden ball of sugary sweetness' way. My sister volunteered and I was in another room, but the bloodcurdling scream of Friday the Thirteenth, the Hair Revolts, was someting to hear, and brought me in to see that yes, it works, and wow, it also *removes skin*.

Let me say this again. SKIN.

But worth it, despite the screaming--and y'all who have had children, yes, *that* kind, I'm so not kidding, but there were flashbacks to my labor-and-delivery that you would *not* believe--they got the job done and yes, six weeks, no hair growth. Whoo and fucking Hoo.

I immediately absconded to the bathroom and made eminently and thoroughly sure that there was no fucking way I could be chatted into doing that to myself. This continues. Electrolysis is looking good, and sadly, for once, it's not even my vanity speaking. This is *self-preservation*.

We will never discuss this again. There is a massive thing of sugar in the kitchen and my sister is hinting she's ready for another go this week.

I'm going to make cookies this week. A lot of cookies. Two ten bag pounds of sugar lot of cookies. Or hell, marzipan at this point. Whatever works.

*grits teeth*

ETA: fixed spelling of halawa so you, too, can consider the horrific ramifications

Computer and I bonded. His name is Brian. First person to mock this, I swear, I'll find out your most hated pairing and write about it. Maybe even epically. Even if it's Clark/Lana. Yes, EVEN THEN.

*grins* I'm such a nerd.

Yesterday, amongst other things, I went to Christmas lunch and part of the school concert at my son's school. This sounds like the beginning of a Very Long Boring Story, and it IS, but I'll spare you the "oh cute" moments I had with Child, 'cause I went over those ad nauseum with family, and skip right to the moment where I started feeling *really* weird.

( stronger than time )

Stupid Cheese Tricks

Years and years ago, like many a human being, I worked in fast food.

In some ways, worst job ever, but in one very, very important way, a way that still makes me mildly nostalgic, it rocked.

Endless creativity with food prep. No, I don't mean spitting on the food. Lettuce, tomatoes, use of sharp objects to cut them--and I can STILL cut a tomato so fine you can almost read through it, a skill my boss never really appreciated. Something about the customer wanting to TASTE the tomato or some such nonsene. Pshaw, I say. But anyway.

There was the cheese thing.

Short version--you get these huge blocks of sliced cheese. The job, should you choose to accept it, is to restack the cheese for easier grabbing for the burgers in minimal time. The normal method is to turn every other piece sidewayish, so on, and that's how I learned it. Basically making an eight point star pattern, over and over and over. Very boring, or so you'd think.

But never underestimate a bored girl at two in the afternoon after the rush is over and thre's a brand new thingie of cheese.

At first, traditional way. But then spirals appealed to me, so I'd only angle abuot a quarter of an inch each time I laid down a slice. After a few weeks, I could make some very, very fine spirals and keep them at a sharp vertical, no sweat.

But no, that's not how it ended. There were eight blocks of cheese this one hot summre day, over a hundred slices per block. And I was Very Bored, Very Hot, and apparently, Not Very Well Supervised.

So I got creative.

Hence to the Cheese Arch Experiment.

Here's something you may not know about the average slice of cheese.

Now, it's fairly sticky. I could get the cheese to do a Tower of Pisa thing if I was very careful and had enough of a base to balance. Not for LONG, but well, I say if it stays stable ten seconds, you've got a masterpiece going there. Anyway, whilst experimenting with the equivalent of I think ten pounds of cheese, I wondered, can I make an arch by stacking cheese?

The answer is--yes.

Now again, cheese slices are STICKY, so this does actually work. So I started off with two pillars, angling them inside a little farther with each spiral until they almost met, then starting the top slices to make the upper arch. This took, I think, an hour fifty, whilst my coworkers mopped, swept, and organzied around my feet or took naps in the refrigerator (did I mention the air conditioning sucked? Which also helped the cheese slices stick). Anyway, I'm not exactly famous for having a real knowledge of what's going on around me, and I forgot this wasn't my personal home cheese project. Though it sort of scares me now that I want to try this again.

Anyway, there's a sudden flurry of activity from napping coworkers. Customers! Tons of them! Everywhere! So my boss yells for me to bring all the stacked cheese.

Okay, now here's another little fact about cheese slice arches. They don't really MOVE well, especially if you built them on wax paper on a metal counter. Becase a nice, solid counter is MUCH more stable than the cheese tray thing, and colder.

So I stare at it, trying to figure out how to move it, because damned if I was disassembling this feat of engineering architecture without a fight. My boss comes back, the better to discover what on EARTH I've been doing, and stares at the empty box of cheese and the glorious concoction on the counter.

Seriously. Double take there. I'd never actually seen him look like that before.

Well anyway, despite my protests in the name of art and culture, he took off the upper arch of my Cheese Arch and vanished with one of my pillars to fill an order. Dejected, I've never tried it again.

Damned customer nonsense.

Except when I met Children's Legos in a small family restaurant in Austin. Near the door. With my boyfriend, best friend, her brother, and another friend. Where the kids can play.

Seriously, legos ROCK for spirals, arches, and pretty things.

But I digress.

You know, oddly, I have no idea why I remembered this so vividly, except we just got a brand new package of cheese today, NOT the individually wrapped kind, but the sliced but in a block kind.

Now, should you choose to do your own Cheese Arch experiment, a few tips.

1.) No air conditioning. Sweating cheese is sticky cheese that won't try to collapse.

2.) Weight is everything. Do a good distribution, and the balance works. The Cheese Tower of Pisa, I theorize, COULD be pulled off and stay stable if the cheese is stacked just right. If anyone manages, do tell.

3.) Patience. Just because the cheese tips over the first time does not mean giving up. Or the eighth.

4.) American cheese all the way. Cheddar I just don't trust, do you?

5.) Wash hands frequently. The smell is appalling after a while. You keep thinking you'll be able to tune it out, but if you do not wash every few minutes, at the end, that smell will be on your hands for DAYS, no matter how many showers you take or what kind of brillo pad you have.

6.) Look BUSY so you don't get assigned prematurely to do something useful and productive, like mopping. Complain every so often so you sound like a disgrunted employee. Mumble, though, because saying you're cheese sculpture isn't working isn't what you want them boss to hear. The appearance of industry AND unhappiness is key here. Looking like you enjoy your job WILL get you reassigned. Hence the fact I lost my tomato privileges.

I still don't believe I sliced them too thin. Please.

*****

Recs

Melt by bexless Oh dear GOD. Hot. And cold. *grins* *nudge* Trust me, you really want to read this RIGHT NOW.

Pass by Tim Ian. Huh. Now this I didn't expect, though I'm not entirely sure what I did expect when I started reading.

Excerpt:

Clark,

During the era of open discrimination, pale-skinned blacks would occasionally hide their ancestry and live as though they were white. This phenomenon was known as "passing." Those that passed felt this strategy to be their best chance at avoiding the bigotry and persecution inflicted upon their brethren.

It takes a certain kind of bravery to live as something you are not, just as it takes a different kind of bravery to be punished for who you are. Both choices exact a price.

Read this now. Extremely good, thoughtful, and different.

Okay, that covers it. Going to go try and remember new boring anecdotes to share.