Demolition Derby: The Cars Prove That If They Ever Become Sentient, We Are Totally Screwed

I didn't get my license till I was, I don't know, 21, 22? We took buses everywhere always, through out high school and college and Phoenix. My parents couldn't get me one and I didn't save up for one. I just figured why bother getting my license at that moment in my life if I didn't have a car? When I finally ponied up, I remember my friend Margaret let me use her car to take the driving test the second time. It was a beat up old light blue hatchback, and it died as soon as she parked it at the beginning of the course, in front of the instructors. I don't remember actually passing my test, but obviously I did, later, at some point. It wouldn't be till years later that I would buy my first car. And even more years till I would think of spending more than 500 dollars on a car.

My very first vehicle was an '85 Celebrity. It had no working speedometer, and I was dating David at the time, who told me it would be good for me to learn how to tell how fast a car was going just by paying attention. He was always overly positive like that. I did learn how to go about the right speed, and I never got a ticket, but it was terrifying. I did not love my first car.

There was another car in between there somewhere maybe? I don't remember, honestly. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't.

Then I bought my first used car from a JD Byrider, which is where you go if you work at a record store and have bad credit from that 500 dollar credit card you got that one time at the student union and never paid off after you blew all of your limit on beer and hemp beads. I picked my Sonata over the Taurus because it had less miles and a CD player. It meant I had to make car payments for the first time, which was my first experience with a bill that I had to pay no matter what, if I had a job or not. There was no leeway or moving back in with my parents once I had that car payment. Within the first year, the engine blew, and it was still under warranty. I am still a huge believer in warranties. Maybe that sounds stupid, to "believe" in warranties, maybe to everyone that was always obvious, but I labored under the impression they weren't worth the money till exactly that moment.

I still have that car, and it's about to die. Poor thing is all beat up, no hubcaps and a hood that's peeling off all of its paint. A giant gash in the quarter panel where I hit my parents' fence. The alternator has been replaced a couple times. It had a power steering leak. I replaced the radiator and the brakes. I've bought tires a couple times. The suspension is just shaking apart, and there is some chirping noise coming from the left front wheel that squeaks every time I hit a bump. I will probably bother to fix it really soon, but what I'm really worried about is the transmission, which will someday leave me stranded in nowhere Ohio on a back road with limited cell reception. A couple of times, me or other people have started driving with the emergency brake engaged. I have no idea what that does, but I know it's not good. The inside of the car is full of junk and filthy, because I'm constantly throwing stuff in the back seat. Like, right now it's full of beach stuff, books, and a bag of clothes I had to move from the trunk when they replaced the taillights. There is SO MUCH stuff in the trunk. I should just throw it all out, since I haven't needed any of it in months, but like, there's probably stuff in there I need. My winter coat maybe, I'm not sure.


This darling beautiful wonderful car has taken me so many places. It's trucked me out 2 hours to the office and back in winter blizzards. It's gone through tornado chasing, and hail, and me just driving it around the potholes of East Cleveland aimlessly for hours. And when it gets nondriveable, just simply dangerous and not okay and not worth fixing, I desperately want to shove it into a demolition derby ring and ram it into other cars until every last inch of that frame is ripped and torn and falling off. It would take five minutes, cause that piece of junk body is like foil.



I saw my first demolition derby at the Lorain County Fair this weekend. It was a lovely day beforehand. I met my friends out in Wellington, which is one of my favorite places, it's so pretty and random to drive out there. I have adventures in Wellington, every time, storms and elk and catfish and reservoirs. We met that day at one of their parents' houses, where two goats stood cautiously on the wide green lawn watching us talk by the pool, and chickens huddled under pine trees going to sleep. The fair was right around the corner, which out there means a 4 mile drive. The parking lot was big, and full of trucks. A giant inflatable American eagle stood guard over the entrance. Immediately inside, we looked for fried cheese on a stick, and then wandered around looking at the farm animals. When it was time, we got up into the bleachers, and sat waiting for the derby to start while the finest of rural Americana paraded past us in t-shirts and tank tops, clutching lemonades and nachos and ice cream and children. I felt like maybe the sundress I had worn was cut just a bit low, because in every direction nice looking older ladies were glaring at me. Then it started.



It took me a minute to adjust to what was happening. I knew conceptually what to expect, but actually seeing it, well that's like every live event is. Football fans, horse racing fans, everyone will tell you the same thing. You don't understand it until you're there. The funny thing is, that doesn't mean it's better than what you thought. For one, it was much slower than I was expecting. But I hadn't also thought of how that slowness, the mud and the falling off wheels, contributed to the momentous feel of these giant machines crashing and creaking into each other. The air was full of crunching. The crowd was surprisingly well behaved, like real church people. They let out whoops and screams when something really cool happened, but mostly everyone just sat on the metal slats and watched intently. It was, if our ears hadn't been filled with the roar of cars, very much like tennis. Imagine each tennis match had multiple players, and each player could randomly start to play against any player he had a clear hit to. And the players were barreling hard rough machinery fighting desperately to the death.

It's like a tournament, right? So there were three matches, and the cars left "running" after each match graduated to the finale. Even the winning ones ended up getting pushed out of the ring by miniature bull dozers. There were several volunteer firemen just standing around watching from the platform in their uniforms . The announcer was affable and joking. The carnival rides all spun around behind the backdrop, shining silver and gold in the setting evening sun. The derby cars were covered with words, scrawled across in bright spraypaint ads for collision shops,chiropractors, salvage yards, pizza places. A few of them had R.I.Ps and In Memorials on their doors, grandmothers and friends who had died in car accidents on the country roads in the dark after parties. My friend sat next to me and we talked about what it was like to grow up in Wellington, the churches and the derby contestants. Apparently, everyone dies in Wellington. I suspect the same is true in small towns all over Ohio. Everyone dies and everyone has babies, and they just keep trying to balance the whole thing generation after generation.


You have a different relationship with a car once you rely upon it solely. Growing up in the city, I had the advantage of being able to get a ride, or catch the bus, if something happened like my car was suddenly stolen for parts. But when you live 20 miles from anything useful, and there are no buses, and your closest family members are in Elyria maybe, or North Ridgeville,I mean, you need that car. You are in that car all the time. You know that car. The car is a major contributing factor to the quality of your life. There are no dates without a car. There is no shopping, or picking up people, or going places. There is no spontaneity.

And me, not only do I use my car for exploring, road trips, shows and the beach and lightning storms, but I also talk about cars all day for work. I talk about their broken pieces and their worth to people, emotional and physical. The first moment one car exploded the fender and hood of another car into a miracle of welded bent catastrophic steel, I felt this cathartic rush in my chest, and all the stress and pain of the work week melted. The laugh that came out of me when a car's whole entire tire flew off over the concrete barrier was pure and sincere glee.

I think that means something, the love and hate for cars as an extension of ourselves, and the desire to smash them violently to bits until they're dead. Drive them until they can't go any further down the road, and then let them fall fighting.

As we were waiting to leave, standing in the slow moving emptying current, my friends decided to hop down to the lower boxes, which involved a quick jump over the poles and stepping on some wooden folding chairs. A lady in a pink sweatshirt saw me about to go over, and said quickly "but she's wearing a dress!". I smiled sweetly at her and said "it's okay, I'm wearing leggings", and we ran off to look at the glowing dregs of the rest of the fair in the falling night.

I'm warning you right now that at some point in the future this blog will degenerate into me just posting Britney songs. It's impossible to say when exactly. I need my own Britney doomsday clock for the sidebar.

The Last Saturday of August

In the beginning, it was a different world, but this does not take place in the beginning. It takes place at the end, when the beginning had finally given in, and started the slow crumble, a stumbled crawl to its finale. If you have ever watched a building slowly die, the gradual push of earthly forces, the creeping shimmy of moss and bugs in the wood, that's the best way to open your eyes up to the erosion which eats at all things open to air and wind. Make some allusion to the sands of time here, that's probably appropriate.

I don't personally understand the fear of hurricanes, because I've never experienced a full on one myself. In Ohio, we just get the dregs. Sometimes we have big storms, and occasionally roads and cities get closed down because of snow. In general though, we're the most temperate place in the country. A good light mix of phenomenon, just enough to keep you on an emotional high, a little uncomfortable and a little too happy in the summer, a little too desperate in February. Point is that when we have hurricanes in other parts of the continent, I feel that pull to go there and see it. I want to be in the storm. In a storm, parked in a car watching, with the heat on, is the best place.

No, of course it's not. But that's just it, I lack understanding on these matters. I sympathize with the storm surfers.





Last night I saw the movie City of Life and Death, which is about the Rape of Nanking. Rape is not metaphorical in this sense. It's not a movie you can feel comfortable saying you really liked, because it's just scene after scene of horrible nightmarish violence. There is a beautifully coordinated segment of simultaneous mass executions of chinese soldiers. It is very serious and long and epic. It will create, by the end, a feeling of heavy traumatized numbness in your chest. You will never be tempted to just turn it off, or walk out. But you will be stuck.

The Cinematheque projector was down, so they were using a backup projector, and had to reload something or other halfway through the movie. There was a black out pause, everything just stopped, for a few minutes. Nobody in the theater moved or talked. We just all sat there in contract with each other, still, waiting for it to start again. It occurred to me, as I waited listening to people shift around in their creaky seats somewhere in the darkness behind me, that I am able to withstand much more violence in a movie when it is in a historical context. Wars, documentaries, ect. I don't cringe or turn away like I do at horror movies. I'm the worst at scary movies. I flinch and gasp and close my eyes. But I don't have any of those responses when the violence is about something that actually happened. I have a completely different reaction when it's violence that is currently at this moment happening. Then I can still keep my eyes open, but they fill up pretty quick.

All these pictures, by the way, are the original facebook group like.

I'm finding it difficult to write this past week, ever since I got the new computer. I was sort of slowing down before that happened anyway. It's just the end of summer, and doing anything that involves sitting around inside seems...well it doesn't seem anything, because it doesn't occur to me. I have like twelve day trips I need to take in the next 2 months. And I didn't get hardly any buildings this summer, which sucked. I miss the version of Jere that didn't work Mondays. Sundays just aren't the same, I feel much more exposed. I prefer it when there are lots of cars and workers around, seeing how the whole place functions. And it's very hard to find people you can just ride around in the car with for long periods of time. Still a great summer, but I spent it all at the beach and now it's a little colder and I'm starting to remember the other things you can't do in the winter.

This is definitely an "I" post. I guess they mostly are, it's the nature of the thing, but I'm (i i i i i i i i) I'm starting to feel the burn of facebook and twitter muscles worked too hard. I'm becoming a hardcore twitter watcher. I love getting even just a tiny glimpse of the crazy pre apocalyptic group think. If you chipped a hole through a giant skull ten million times bigger than you, you would see just one little part of the pulsing beating wet brain muscle, but it would still give you a feeling of the enormity. That's Twitter. I want to put my hand in the middle of the oozy gooey mess and feel it breathing. The other day, there was a topic trending, Aaliyah'sAirplanePlaylist, and when I looked at the other posts they were nothing but condemnations of the topic, but no one was actually offering up suggestions, just ranting about how awful a trend topic it was, how offensive, how Twitter ought to ban it. A topic that was only trending because they themselves were perpetuating it. That's crazy! That's what Twitter is dudes. It's crazy shit like that, and then your actual friends sometimes saying something funny, and all the time a scrolling list of people who have died in the world thanks to the Breaking News feed. Bombed here, famine here, car crash, no power, helicopters down. Twitter is the most Vietnam thing ever.

On Twitter, we make jokes about hurricanes so that the gods will spare us, because nothing really tragic can happen if we are joking about it right? Twitter is how Man laughs at the Gods now. Nervously. Edit: As proof I offer up the Humanoid Robot who Tweets from the Space Station. And has a gold helmet head. And will never come back to Earth. Maybe they will someday give him legs.

I had no idea Aaliyah was this kind of tragic folk hero either. I knew like three of her songs, but I thought she was just a mid par pop star, a three album girl. Apparently she is like, a 90s Buddy Holly or Selena. Also, I completely forgot she was in Queen of the Damned and now I want to watch that right now.

Man, Seriously Dayton, C'mon.

I consider my ability to enjoy doing everything at least once to be my selling point. I think by the time you are my age, there's no shame in being able to identify your selling points. Like the proverbial job interview, here are my strengths and my weaknesses. I am messy and irresponsible and emotional, but I know how to have fun no matter what. I'm good at that. Its delusional, but a delusion I believe in.

One consequence of this eagerness to love everything new is that I somehow convinced myself I loved everything about Ohio. Thankfully, Dayton exists.

We went down there to see an old amusement park, but they had sold off all the rides and there was a guard and it was really exposed and it just wasn't a good bet. That was outside Middletown. Then we tried an old abandoned Carnegie library, but it turns out a ton of people were playing bingo on the lawn outside it. Both of these things were horribly disappointing at the time, but really, it says something about the town that both their abandoned spots were taken care of and cared about. The only other thing of note about that place was that every bar seemed open at 5:30am, one assumes because of the steel mill there. Which was also not abandoned.

So then we tried to go to Dayton, just to look around. You know how a lot of fantasy worlds always feature some country that is made up of nomadic horsemen, and its really flat and plain countryside, with lots of tall grass? And their capital city is a collection of wooden huts, but like, really complicated wooden huts? Dayton reminds me of that. Only instead of horsemen, its all nomadic tech people. But the land especially is flat and full of low lying rivers with super grassy shorelines and weird white and beige concrete structures crossing the empty metropolis. Also, there were an inordinate amount of signs for piano stores. So possibly there's some weird underground piano war happening in Dayton.

I was frustrated already from the morning, so as we drove through deserted Sunday afternoon Dayton, looking forlornly around for some place to try, I developed an unreasonable hatred of the place. Like, it was just so boring. SO boring. And that's just it, I'm not a person who bores easily. I get bored by almost nothing. So, I'm just saying, what kind of place does that make you?

I will be going back at some point soon though, I hope, to go on a tour of this place which looks amazing. So I guess, I'm not entirely uninterested. I wonder if my desire to stay happy is so strong it can be activated by a better mood and another try? It makes me want to test it, and just keep going to worse and worse places until finally one day I just can't find one single good thing to say about a place.

Hiatuses..eses

1) my personal computer bit the big network in the sky, and is in rehab right having it's hard drive replaced. Thank you, 3 year warranty I felt like a sucker buying 2 1/2 years ago. This means I will not be updating for a while, because writing a post on a phone sucks. 

2) Yesterday was so weird. It started off in an awesome warm gray rain, and I drove to a friends storefront apartment above a sunday morning Lorain Avenue for brunch which was great and relaxed and matched the rain perfectly.  Then I ran off to meet Jere and his daughter at the art museum. Agatha showed me her favorite abstract paintings, and I glowed a little at the contemporary landscapes photography exhibit, which had fantastic views of trees and nickel waste rivers and bomb casings. We sat in the glass sculpture room and watched the rain. Next we all drove to Legacy village, which is like, the most offensive place on the planet. It's one of those rich people malls set up to look like fake village streets and old victorian facades. It was still pouring and we tried to dry off in Starbucks before sitting as judges for a chef challenge, and I'm not even sure how that happened but somehow I ended up speaking into a microphone about Jonathan Waxman's crab corn spaghetti, in front of Waxman himself. Then we got frozen yogurt, and dropped Agatha off at her mommy's. Jere and I didn't really know what to do at that point, so we drove to the Valley to look for seedy bars. Geo told us to meet him at a strip bar called The Happening, down the street from the Ernest Angley Cathedral Buffet, in a brick storefront with the hallway behind the locked door lit up like a siding installation business. It was closed and we hopped across the street to some sports bar which didn't have a fucking sunday liquor license and instead we ended up in the strip we always end up, at the Matinee talking to graphic design students with white ear plugs and Geo and Jere told crazy stories about the crazy teachers at the crazy super christian high school they both went to. Jere talked about his "prophecies" class, and how he announced to everyone he had interpreted Daniels prophecy as the fact that the moon was a giant egg and it was going to hatch into a dragon. Then Geo told me about the time Jere traded him a samurai sword for an electric typewriter, which turned out to be covered in dried blood I was told was from stabbing rats in the wall. I mean, truth? Who knows. 12 hours before I had no idea I was going to be drunk in Akron listening to them arguing about means of production. I had reached a point of acceptance. Truth was relative. Jere drove us home and we talked about secret stuff. Then a few short hours later I woke up, picked up Carrie at the market, and went to Washington Place where they were filming a food network show, Curious Eats? I don't know, there's just film and tv people crawling all over Cleveland this week. People keep sending me pictures of explosions from the Avengers set. The crew all had the very cutest sneakers, one girl had bronze Prada ones. I had awesome scallops and the cameras watched us taking bites of food which made us instantly forget how to chew like human beings. I don't eat seafood but somehow I ended up eating and enjoying a lot of it. Then we had donut bread pudding and as we were leaving the valets talked about karma and one of them hugged me, but not the one who pointed out that karma was a newtonian principle. 

3) So as I will not be updating here for a while, when you are wondering what I'm up to,  it's stuff like that. 

The Where I'm From Post

Elly did this on her blog, which she got from here, and I like it, so I'm going to do it too.

------------------------------------------------------

I am from the rocking chair, from lightbulbs and guitars.

I am from the house on 54th, small and surrounded by the double yard, with the triple barn garage full of old tools and millstones and what I imagined when I was little were blacksmithing weapons, because the smithy used to be that foundation of bricks the strawberry patch and peach tree were in now. I am from another house later which was bigger and older and came to us with amateur murals of cherry trees on the walls and was to be filled with dead gerbils and photogenic dogs.

I am from architectural posters and medieval history books about plagues, from Tom Wolfe novels left on bookshelves outside the bathroom and pictures books about How Things Worked. National Geographic map inserts I stashed away.

I am from the willow tree that towered above the houses, and the daffodils that covered the driveway sides. The giant tree that stood on our tree lawn until it grew so tall and strong and thick it pulled up the street plumbing and they butchered it.

I am from a need to be funny and a tendency to disagree, from Kowalski,and Soltys, Cahill and Callahan. I am skilled at talking people down.

I am from a rustbelt migration that stretches from Eastern Europe to Cleveland.

I am from the tight lipped look of disappointment and the cooing hum of surprised approval.

From French fairy tales translated by Germans that were told at bedtime and the foibles of first generations off the boat that were told at holidays.

I am from the Catholic Church. Which taught me how to stay quiet and when to volunteer for things, and how to tell when things were beautiful and what saints I should seek solace from.

I am from Akron and Philadelphia and Latrobe and steel Youngstown and rural Maryland and Poland and Ireland and Wales. From corned beef, and Christmas pierogis, Dad's liverwurst sandwiches and Diet Coke, Mom's wheat thins, sardines, and sweet gherkins.

I am from the bright colored collection of cast iron pots and skillets brought back from Europe we burned scrambled eggs in.

From the basement gym of St. Wendelins and the school yard at St. Malachis where we played foursquare. The box of colored pencils Mom used for her Grays Anatomy coloring book in nursing school. Riding the Green Line to Shaker in the snow, and shivering in our underdressed high school outfits while waiting for the buses home on Public Square as the wind caught our giant backpacks and tried to topple us, and it was always dark before we got home in the winter.

I am from the newspaper pictures of Dad young and earnest and Mom's big round glasses and multicoloured J Crew sweaters, all packed away in large tupperware storage boxes, somewhere in the attic under disintegrating sociology essays and homeopathic textbooks.

A Name! A Name!

Mom went and got another dog. We told her to get a very large dog that would be protective, but also too big to run around a lot, and not very energetic. Instead she came home with a beagle/spaniel mix which strongly resembles a jack russell on steroids, and barks like one too. He is very lovable and friendly though, so I guess maybe he can stay, I guess. I guess he already knew how to sit in order to get treats from me, and how to fetch, and so I guess I'm already in love with him. Oh ingratiating species! Here are the names my mother, my sister and I threw around while eating tomato sandwiches and drinking moscow mules on the porch last night, because I think its amusing and shows you about my family and what we are:

Bojangles
Oliver
Henry
BJ
Grendel
Lancelot
Percival
Oberon
Puck
Captain
Churchill
Iago
Fortinbras (this one is my personal favorite, because it was the name of another dog in a book I love very very much)
Opie
Gellert
Buck
Inspector
Poirot
Benedict
Peter
Agamemnon
Romeo
Jupiter
Apollo
General Lee
Patton
Jane
Gatsby
Indiana

Of course, he came with the name Byron. So we'll see. Indiana was last in the lead, but Gellert grew on me overnight. Poor Gellert, who killed the wolf and was then punished unjustly by his master. And obviously, this isn't my decision at all. Mom has probably already named him something completely different.

The Various and Important Dangers of Ohio Beaches

The Various and Important Dangers of Ohio Beaches

1) They will not let you stay on the beach at night. First a man will make an announcement, the very minute slash second that the sun goes down he will say "The beach is now closing." If you do not leave the water immediately, first they send a patrol in a sand buggy with headlights careening down the coast towards you. If you refuse to come in from the water, the frogmen are deployed from the base underneath the lighthouse. If you positioned yourself correctly at the far end, you have ten minutes to hide. The frogmen have underwater propulsion packs. If you manage to get out of the water undetected and into the treeline, your best bet is to head for a high tree. See #2.

2) Night monkeys. All Ohio beaches are infected with night monkeys, a particularly hostile and territorial type of squirrel monkey. During the day they are benign and dormant, but at night they are vicious defenders of their nest, and have no aversion to eating meat. Once they start to swarm, you are out of luck. Even if you drop out of the tree, they will continue to pursue you, dozens at a time. Your only mercy is that these vermin are slower on the sand than up above in the foliage, so make for clear sand. But then of course, frogmen. Enslavement in the salt mines has to be better than being eaten by monkeys though. I think.
3) Death by rocks. Swallowed up by the rocks. Cut and poisoned by rocks. Beat to death under the water by rocks. Seduced into the rocks' worldview, which includes suicide as a viable way to get out of paying taxes. Tripped by rocks and hurled face first into the wooden picket fence. Accidentally eat a rock and have really good digestion for a few years, but then die because you ate a rock. Accidentally eat a rock and don't die, but then go on a talk show and later get your own TLC show as the girl who eats rocks, be unable to live with your fans constantly sending you baskets of gravel, die on a cocaine molly binge drowning in a kiddie pool in your backyard naked.

4) Pirates. Vagabonds. Marauders. Dogs. All things that travel in packs and want to eat your intestines. Pretty easily avoidable though.

5) Kidnapped by shadow people and forced to breed with them, in their attempt to make their species take corporeal form. Shadow people have barbed genitals, like cats. Also they only drink lake water for sustenance. When a shadow person is born, it chews it's way out from utero. To protect yourself from being taken, never engage a shadow person in funny little dances or miming for your friends. Always carry a torch with you. Don't let them get behind you. Travel in groups.

6) Yeast and Algae monsters. Banished most of the year to the deeper parts of the lake, these terrifying blooms of filthy nasty toxic teeming bacteria are sentient and naturally mean. On very hot days, they like to swim inland to bask in the radioactivity of our dying sun, and this is when you must watch out for them the most. Have you ever had a yeast infection? Now imagine a fully body yeast infection. Or bleeding from your eyes. Or developing alien strength, speed and gills. Never eating solid food again because your body produces energy by photosynthesis. Their tentacles reach deep under the water, to grab at your ankles, and all it takes it one open hole in your body, a cut or your mouth or the inside of your eyes, and you're infected. Done for.


7) Sand Sharks. Sharks that live under the sand and eat your spare change, flip flops, blankets, wallets, tshirts, bikini bottoms, also your piggly wiggly little toes and your feeling of well being. Their teeth are rounded like herbivores, but their jaws have the force of giant construction machines, and you can hear them coming by the grinding of their molars and the shaking of the dunes.

8) The Illusion. The thing that happens when your mind refuses to accept that you are not at the beach all the time, and will not function in any other mode. You may be at the office, but you are at the beach. You are in bed, but you are at the beach. You are standing in line at the DMV but you are at the beach. The flashes of disassociated sun will get more and more frequent, until the afflicted slips into a permanent beach coma, where they are unable to stand upright, and may actually sunburn without exposure. Sometimes you will hear them humming in their dreams, a back and forth tide sound. When you stand in the ward surrounded by them, it becomes an actual wave, sshhing and swooshing on their tongues.

Buster :(

My mother's dog Buster got run over by a truck a few days ago. He ran out into the gravel farm road to chase an Amish buggy, and a truck sped up to pass the buggy and hit him. Then kept going. So if you are that person, who just left a dog in the road, you are the worst kind of asshole, I hope you know that. I hope you are still thinking about what a dick you are. If you believe in God, you should know my mother does too, and right now she's got more points with him.

Buster was a dog's dog. He chased deer and horses and goats. He killed things that came into his yard. He hated doorbells. And he loved Mom so much. I hate that she's all alone out on the farm now, and that there isn't much I can do to make her feel better. I want to go out immediately and get her another puppy, but I know you're not supposed to do that. She'll pick out another dog when she's ready. I'll miss him too. We were just starting to love each other, me and Buster. I have a scar above my knee from when he first arrived, all scared and knee jerk. The last time I saw him, he was happily running around the woods, and just wanted to be pet and scratched and then run off again. He was the best sort of animal I would want guarding my mother.

Any way, so that happened. Poor Mom. Poor Buster. It was quick. I tried to tell her it was like a wolf dying during a hunt, when you're a hunting animal, you don't die of old age usually. And so we'll say he died the sort of death an honorable dog might wish for, the quick confrontational warrior kind. A dog's death.

Girls on Film

The art school cinematheque put on a "vintage" night at the Norwalk movie theater. It happened the same day as a pool party on the opposite side of the highways, and I almost didn't go because I wanted to get back into the pool, but I did really want to see Barbarella on the big screen. So Collie and I hopped in my quickly falling apart car, and drove the hour fifteen to the Firelands, blasting Shakira and fucking ourselves up on caffeine. I've since moved onto a Weakerthans kick, which is a bi-annual thing, usually late summer and then early spring. But its good to remember that Shakira deserves a place in your heart.

I hate when people tell you they have no type. Everyone has a type, and most people who are not you can see what it is really easily, your type I mean. People have a hard time identifying their own type. They think they are into some particular things, but over and over again there are other more important qualities/flaws.

I thought about types while watching the movie, because movie stars try to be everyone's type right? That's their job. Even the not so attractive character actors, they have to have charisma. And the girls especially. I mean, that's the whole point of having weird categories like ingenue or femme fatale or girl next door. They have to find their particular charisma and hone it like a sharp knife, keep it glistening and professional. I like Anne Margaret for that best honestly. Jane Fonda does a pretty impressive imitation of her. It's unfair that any one is born looking like those two.

What's weird is how ugly all the men are in the sixties and seventies. I mean, okay, not all of them. There are the timeless ones. But most of them, even the attractive ones, look terrible in those styles. Okay, not terrible. Just...not appealing. I think it's the hair I don't like I most of all. Is there a rule that with trending styles, womens' hair can be great or mens' hair can be great, but never the two together at the same time in the same place in history or the entire fabric of the universe will split like a chlorinated strand of blonde tress? I think I'm still bitter about what the Rachel did to the evolution of the art form. Bitter and in awe.

There was some dating site going around which matched people based on their facial structures, and matched you with someone who looked most like you. It seems laughable at first, until you go on facebook and stare at the profile pics your friends have of them and their significant others, and it starts to seem logical. Like, the two people most in love will have the same noses, or the same expression in their eyes. Same crooked smiles or arch to their eyebrows or ridge of their lips. Then apply that to the guys you are attracted to the most - the broad shoulder Irish eyed close cropped ones, or you know, whatever. So, is that how I think I would look closest to if I were a guy? Maybe. I know I like people who have eyes that look like mine. Every once in a while though someone completely different sneaks in, right? And then you're like, whatever, I don't HAVE a type.

I think that dating site is genius though.

I'm really glad I saw Barbarella for the first time in that theater though, it was worth the drive. I don't think it would have been the same at all if I had just watched it in someone's living room. The colors mostly. The colors were great. Tomorrow night, they're playing a "surprise" movie, which is some old Hollywood comedy, and I'm such a dork, I'm so excited. The nice thing about movies is that you can forget about inviting people or organizing plans or meeting up. You can just go by yourself and sit there, and be still and silent. I think I like going by myself now more than with others. I guess I shouldn't have said that since my friend is going with me tomorrow, and now maybe he'll take offense. Point is, I'll be so fucking sad when it snows again, and I can't drive out to the beach and then the movies again without dealing with crappy roads. Man. It's August already. What the hell happened there?

Every time I drive around looking for new places, I somehow end up in Norwalk. I think I've come into Norwalk by every conceivable road imaginable. It's actually getting too familiar for me. Like, who would have thunk Norwalk would become my sister city in Ohio? I would have totally guessed Toledo first, right? I love you Norwalk. Even the sad parts of you. Especially the water tower and the park.

Quickie

I have a couple posts coming but even though I sat down here with the best of intentions, my laptop battery is dying and it just started raining but its still very sunny out, which you know means there's a rainbow out there somewhere. So I just can't sit here. Sorry, it's summer, do I really need an excuse? Do I need to be accountable to you of all people?

I went to my friends house yesterday to hang out, and one of the girls there brought garlic chocolate chip cupcakes, and marshmallow filled cupcakes, and chocolate beet cupcakes. The garlic ones were amazing. So since I respect the hustle so much, you all should check out Rosy Girl Baked Goods. If someone would like to buy me some Earl Grey cupcakes, or chocolate cherry with fennel frosting? I would not turn that down. I may even say thank you, once I stopped having a mouth full of cake. Now I have to go drink a bloody mary with my sister and do some laundry and probably watch more Mad Men at some point today after the sun goes down. And I just want to note that an alien would never be able to hide in Ohio, because we would know something was wrong the moment they couldn't open a freezee pop with their teeth.