this imploding heart

I promise, I'm over-reacting in your favor.

I should have listened to my instinct on this one.

That new club in the old Aerospace/Moes space, Neumos, is utter shit.

Pretty Girls Make Graves is a great band. A great band that I've stood next to Honey Buckets behind a biergarten on a fence in August in a poor-fitting dress to see. I had to go home from that show -where I could only see the lead singers fist punching at the air- because I had killer death cramps of cranky psyco killer ness.

But tonight, I was so annoyed with a ridiculous number of rules, mazes, and flaming hoops through which to jump in order to get our hands stamped. My dear, sweet, nearly 31 year old Patrickt showed the doorman his temporary state ID and a matching credit card. The doorman said if he didn't have his expired ID, he would not be allowed to exit and re-enter.

This wouldn't have been a problem, except that it was 7:30pm. The other acts scheduled to play were all shitty house DJ's and a lip-synching group with PAPER MACHE GUITARS and CONICAL PARTY HATS.

Patrickt managed to get the manager to let us leave even though we had already had our tickets torn, so that we can walk to first hill to get a third form of ID.

The front door setup is 4 steps before one is allowed entry. The bar is built like a mirrored maze, is 3 levels, has one entrance on the far side of the building, and one exit on the nearside. The exit is exit only, and the entrance is impossibly hard to find once you're inside.

We left, had dinner, went back to the club and got patrickts hand stamped. I spotted 7 pairs of leather pants in 5 minutes. 3 tube tops. 4 gothic gowns. and a shitload of lycra clubwear. This was like no Seattle rock show I'd ever attended. Perhaps because they weren't playing any rock music. It was now a terrible MC and some top 40, as the second opening act.

Generally, when one goes to a show, one can expect to see some bands who are, in some general way, similar to the feature band. This helps assure that the audience will fit the performance, and perhaps further the career of the band.

Neumos made the money making choice, I suppose. -Instead of catering to folks who like one type of music, making them feel like their 12 bucks was well spent, Lets trick 2 different groups into coming to a show that they will each detest 50% of the time. We'll get twice the attendance, so who cares if 50% of the group hates the performance 100% of the time? Not us, we're jackasses.-

Pretty Girls were great. As always, energetic, in tune with each other, attentive to their audience, and constantly engaged in making the show great. They found a tactful way of aknowledging the discomfort of half their audience, and made the other half feel better about trudging through the beginning part of the show. And then there was a birthday cake, and the guitar guy who looks like peter pan is growing a beard. I have a little crush on that band.

But the neumos staff were laden with rules, there was unfinished scrap wood on stands for a bar, a hundred foot tall man wedged his body between patrickt and I and remained lodged there for the better part of an hour, an extremely greasy man with mommy coddled hair asked me if my copy of Breakfast of Champions was the Holy Bible, an MC tried to make me say 'Yeah' , then he tried to make me say 'Hell Yeah' several times. He was relentless in his request for me to say'Yeah' and 'Hell Yeah'. Listen buster, I didn't come here to entertain you. Leave me the Hell Yeah alone.

many other things I hated happened courtesy of Neumos. When I'm not so annoyed and altered, I'm going to write my first Old Lady letter.

Dear Neumos,

I almost took my shoe off at you the other night. You better watch it.

nonsensically,

Crazy Old Lady.

In the words of Patrickt "I am a gentle breeze. Ahh. A gentle breeze."

Here comes the girl with the ice cream cone

And I didn't even TELL you about British Sea Force. (Why do I want to spell British Brittish, every single time? Dear The English. Please don't take offense to my adding another letter to your country from time to time. I haven't yet met one of you I didn't like, and thats really saying something.)

I had never heard of them before going to the show. Caroline had said they sounded like something that sounded like something that I knew and liked. It was Tuesday. I'd read 3 chapters of Pre-calculus text and really gotten a firm handle on shifting graphs of functions. I wanted to go out.

We came into the middle of Kaito, who sounded a lot like Le Tigre, but a little less self aware and bored. The lead singer had that rocker girl haircut where her bangs come down to the bridge of her nose like a canopy.

(ALERT! DIAGONAL MOWHAWK IN COP SUNGLASSES JUST WALKED BY! If that's the guy from the hill I think it is, that haircut was a bad, bad move.)

Kaito was energetic and pretty fun. Annoying after a little while, but we only saw 4 songs of their set.

and then. Oh man.

B.S.F.'s tech guy started setting up. You know how some really complicated bands seem to be able to get their shit on and off stage in about 10 minutes, max? Yeah. Okay. BSF had a rack of guitars, 4 mics, a drumkit, and an organ. After all the equipment was on stage and tuned and checked for sound (17 minutes), they proceeded to dress the stage with foliage. A lot of foliage. 15 minutes of foliage dressing. And then 10 minutes of nothing but their equipment guy looking over things, casually, every 3 minutes or so. I was already annoyed.

I've got to admit that when the lights came up and the band was on stage, it looked like they were standing in the woods. It was cool, absolutely, but it wasnt 42 minutes of standing while nothing happened, cool.

And then there was music. Caroline commented after the show that they wear their influences on their sleeves, and their sleeves are jam-packed. This lent them to a really forgettable sound. They were talented musicians. I thought the lead vocal guy had a great voice and knew how to use it. The drummer looked like a slimmer version of Fred from Scooby Doo's Mystery Hour, and I wanted to take advantage of him before he even sat down behind the kit. Fred played the hell out of those drums. Crisp, clean beats with interesting little twists that really kept the guitar chaos in check.

That was the first 20 minutes of the show. I was mostly pleased.

And then the lead vocal stepped up to the mike and said "If you don't know who you're listening to, you can fuck off then. We like you, though."

It was the only thing he said through the entire course of the show. It was also the most emotion to ever cross his face.

Dude, you aint Devo.

The primary reason this annoyed me is this: I go to a lot of shows where I know very little about the band in order to learn about new bands. When bands don't introduce themselves at least once in the beginning and preferably once at the end, I don't know how to get any of their music, because I'm unsure who I just saw. Half the time, no one in a 5 foot radius of me knows who the band is, either.

The secondary reason this annoyed me is this: Who the fuck do you think you are, British Sea Force? Don't be a jackass.

And C: I had chemically prepared myself to enjoy the entirety of the show, but I hadn't planned on that big wait. The preparations I had made tend to assuage my general annoyance with everything, so the longer they went on, the more intense my annoyance became.

And then they started to jam.

And they jammed for 40 minutes.

And after all that musical foreplay, I thought they were finally going to spray guitar string all over the stage, give us a hug and go to sleep.

But they just kept pumping away. uuuuuUUUUUUPPPPPDDDddddooooowwwnnnuuuUUUUUUPPPPPPDDdddoooowwwnn.

And after another 20 minutes of that, I was Not high, Not impressed, and Not interested.

Sorry Dudes! You blew it! Or, if we're to follow the metaphor, you totally failed to blow it.

Patrickt and I are going to see Pretty Girls Make Grave tonight. A band that has yet to leave me hanging. Plus, we get to eat thai food and be done with the whole thing by midnight.

...is the feeling of being free again

It might just be how the Mountain Goats sound like driving in winter on the back roads in my hometown, but I'm feeling particularly Idahoan today. I want to take a pickup loaded with firewood for weight up to the backside of the lake. Past the ranger station under The New Bridge. Past the site where there used to be a bar shaped like a giant aluminum fish. My grandparents used to go dancing there, and my parents drove past it on their entirely lame honeymoon. (My parents went to my DADS PARENTS HOUSE for their honeymoon. My dad was so, so clueless.)
I want to drive past the place on the front tip of the mountain where I suspect my father buried our dogs when they died. It's about 2 miles from the Idaho/Montana border, which is generally unmarked, except for where the trees are interrupted by giant power lines that annoy the birds. When i was 6 or 7, I told my dad I wanted him to bury me on this mountain, "but not by the power lines".
Dad said he had no intention of burying me anywhere. "Cremate me, then!"
He said I wasn't getting the point.

I want to drive lazy one handed on gravel roads with branches whipping against one side of the truck and a 150 yard drop on the other. Overalls, tennis shoes, a t-shirt. A spare gallon of gas, a bald tire, a box of home made tapes. A gun rack, a mesh-back hat, a blister from splitting wood.

she wants to talk to me.

I'm intolerable today. I can barely tolerate myself. So until further notice:

Once, when I was 5, my best friend Sarah and I were sitting on the couch in the livingroom watching afternoon cartoons. My mom was making macaroni and cheese at the stove, which was visible from our spot on the couch. She was calmly stirring the noodles when her pants suddenly fell down.

I only see or talk to Sarah once a year, sometimes less. This story comes up every time, and every time, we laugh until we can't breathe.

no more monkeys jumpin on the bed.

Really kids, I'm still working my ass off during the workday because I can't seem to convince myself to study more than half-assedly during the weekend. It's Products of Functions in one ear and Shared Domain is All That Counts out the other. And don't even get me started on the plight of Japanese Americans in California in 1942. I've got notecards.

Cake is injured. He got kneed in the inside of the knee that's already been entirely rebuilt once last night on the basketball court. Every anxious and invisible finger in me is crossed, because trips to the doctor are expensive. It's so, so swollen.

(Pssst. Pssst, Universe, over here. I know you think all the joking on that kid is pretty funny lately, but if you don't see fit to lay off, could you see fit to either: A: have his knee heal in the next day or so. or B: send the magical knee-doctor-fairy-who-doesn't-charge-more-than-fifty-bucks, not including x-rays. I don't think I'm asking too much here.)

So don't expect to hear much out of me until I can get f(x) and g(x) to make pretty when represented by regular numbers. Once that's out of the way, I can focus on gritting my teeth and wincing when my boyfriend cries out in pain in his sleep, and sorting out why the former governor of california thought American born Japanese were more of a threat than their immigrant parents.

ADDENDUM:

(Universe, that was a tricky and pleasant suprise, that leftover insurance. Now lets just hope that the necessary surgery will be the kind where they just fish around in there with a scope, as opposed to the kind where they will have to open his knee like a flower and sew all the parts back together.)

Sincerely

To all the bads who are mean.

I forgive your sorry asses, and I'm not going to let myself stay mad. I have this belief that everything comes out in the wash eventually, that there's a good chance that you might do something kind one day, and that I should let bygones go by as soon as possible.

So I'm sorry for the weeks I spend wanting to shove my keys in your eyes just because you're bad and old and mysoginistic, dickbrained and tightassed and unable to listen, full of yourself and ignorant of others and not deserving of me. You're not worth that kind of concentration.

And I'm really sorry if you have a family, because at least I don't have to live with you.

And I hope your Professor Doctorhood brings you joy.

But I'm going to try and work under the assumption that when you and I run into each other at that big party after the new Ice Age, that we will clap each other on the back and laugh.

You'll apologize for having your head shoved so far up your ass that it came back out your neck again. I'll apologize for telling my roomate I wanted to hang you with your own large intestine that I obtained by cracking your jaw like a wishbone, reaching armpit deep into your body cavity and ripping it free because you were a bad man.

I'm assuming we're both going to laugh about that.

My love for you is reserved for future use,

Sonya

Oh Spring, You Are A Terrible Flirt.

Get down, get down

I was just hanging my coat and wishing I had an apple when I spotted him. Strolling along on his way to work, flipping off every car that went past. Fuck You Toyota Corrolla, Fuck You All Purpose Freight, Fuck You Metro Bus.

As he passed our mirrored glass window, he got as close as possible. I'm assuming he was looking for more people to flip off, so I smiled big and gave him the finger.

takin' what they givin'

I'm excusing myself from posting every day this week. There's still a good chance I'll end up doing it, but I'm feeling a lot of pressure to finish unfinished things. I have to maintain my 78%. I have to make a working schedule for The Ladies of Annex project. I have to make a million freaking notes and figure out what my thesis is. (options: 'Interning People is Whack', 'Maybe they really WERE going to use that farmland to destroy your airplane, but probably not.', and 'It didn't even seem like that good of an idea at the time, but we did it anyway.')

No matter how you slice it, Cake is Delicious.

Love,

Sonya

Oh, you're wicked.

Shit, yo. I got an entire fucking posse in the house this weekend, and I didn't think of anything fun to do. I'm supposing that we'll go out and get wasted and play darts as loudly as possible. We'll see.

Did I tell you I might not ever drink again? I might not. I'd been off the sauce for quite a while until last weekend. Last weekend I thought to myself, 'Self, when's the last time you got schnockered proper?' and my self replied 'Apparently too freaking long.'

Ooh, my ass got POISONED.

I felt sick all of friday and saturday and a little into sunday.

So maybe no Double Screwdrivers to chase away my Jagermeister shots any more. Maybe never again.

But also, maybe tomorrow.

Happy Valentines day tomorrow, all you lovers. I get to wake up with one valentines spine aligned with mine, and my other valentine sleeping less than 15 feet away, as opposed to all the way across the continent.

"your mother and I counted 150 deer on a 3 hour drive, though. There are a lot of animals up there."

"HELLO!?"

"Um, Hey poppa. How's things?"

"Ehlp(I should note here that my father talks like he works in a sawmill, which he does. so that's fine. For clarification: Ehlp = 'Well' as a beginning of a statement.), a deer hit my truck."

"Really? How bad? What happened?"

" 'S('s is short for 'I was') driving down ole 99 from Thompson Falls when a full grown doe came running out of a driveway, directly in front of the pickup. I didn't even see her until it was over."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm Pissed!"

"I know you are, dad. I mean, Is your body okay?"

"'m fine."

"How are the truck and the deer?"

"Ehhhlllp, the truck needs a new bumper, grill and fender. I'm estimating round about a grand. Aaaand I just got laid off the Montana job, as they're just about finished."

"and the deer?'

"Dead! Impact at Fifty Miles Per Hour! Stupid thing. I feel bad for it."

"any of the meat salvageable?"

"Like I said, Sonya Lorelle, Fifty miles an hour. I know a guy up there at Thompson Falls who bought a brand new ford F150. Bright red son of a gun. Hit 3 deer and 2 elk within 2 weeks."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Thats not even the least of it! Each hit was a seperate occasion! 3 deer on 3 different days of one week ran in front of him, and 2 elk ran into his passenger side the next week! The elk were on the same day, at different times!"

"That's insane, dad."

"Boy, that guy was pissed."

I think I'm turning yes I'm turning

I want the doctor
to take your picture
so I can look at you from inside as well

Remember that paper about the Japanese Americans pre WWII I was writing? The one I got tired of and thought about changing the subject for, then realized that I'd have to do more work, so who cared if I was bored of it? Yeah. That one.

I'm kind of getting into the research, finally. At the very least, I'm learning a lot about the backward ass laws the US has put in place over the past 200 years. For example, the cable act of 1922 ruled that Asian women married to American citizens were not eligible for citizenship. Women who married "aliens ineligible for United States citizenship" would lose their own citizenship.

Special laws for wartime make me nervous.

Know what else makes me nervous?

(JUMPS IN AIR! CHOPS HANDS AROUND AT STUFF!) SUPRISE ATTACK OF THE TOO MUCH INFORMATION! YOU'VE BEEN HAD! I'M BEING PUNISHED BY HADES FOR BEING A WOMAN! I HAVE A URINARY TRACT INFECTION SO PAINFUL IT WOKE ME FROM A DEAD SLEEP!

Ha! I totally got you. You cannot escape from things you do not want to know about but I feel like discussing. ha.

But seriously, folks, I'm having the female plague. If it's gross, painful and limited to women, I've fucking had it, or am about to get it before the week is out.

I woke up this morning because I was having a nightmare that I had been captured by monks, and they were torturing me by not ever letting me pee.

And when I woke up, I discovered that it wasn't a nightmare at all. The monks were tiny and bacterial instead of life sized and Polish, but I am their captive, and they are torturing me.

Shake it

Oh Crapsiclesticks. I got a 74% on my midterm.

Wait! I mean....

GooooOOOOOOO SONYA! Who got a passing grade?! (and from the other side of the bleachers we hear)

MISTAH LUCKAY, MUTHA FUCKAY!

BECAUSE I've decided to approach the whole thing as a pass/fail type of situation. My overall GPA for the class is 78%, which is above 65%, which is above failing

THUS

Getting a 74 is just as rad as getting a 98. The only way getting a 98 would be radder is if it came with a popsicle and a smart slap on the ass.

The fisherman waits to drown

All this time I thought you were catcalling the uncompromising depths.
You told me every day "I'm out fishing, and the ocean has her sights set on me. It's likely I'll be dead before sunset. Make sure you forget me by days end. Promise me you will."

So I spent my days trying to forget you, and failing. My heart was almost broken a hundred times over the rocks, but still, every day, you returned from sea.

I have a closet full of nets.

Every day, after I gave up on forgetting, I'd press my hands against the closet door and imagine the miriad of nets inside. Which would prevent your struggle? Which would hold you without hurting you? Which would enrage you least?

Every time you came home and I was spared the devastating blow, my instinct was to wrap net around myself like a shawl. When you came back with fish, looking for dinner and bragging about how the ocean almost got you, I wanted to throw the net over you and pull you on to the dock. Hide your boots and break your leg and tie you to the file cabinet. Safe and Dry.

but I never opened the closet door.

You woke one morning with a start. You turned to me and shouted, "I hate this bed! I miss the open seas! Why won't you forget, already!!"

And sailor, I thought you meant it.

You pulled on your hip waders and bolted the door behind you. When I heard it shut, I clamped my eyelids together tight and forgot about you as hard as I could. I forgot about you harder than I ever had before. I put on my seagreenest dress and my blackest golashes and walked down to the docks, where I sat on a barstool and forgot about you until I was sick. "He'll be so proud." I whispered to myself. "He'll be so glad I've forgotten."

I came back during the second shift. The time you always say the sea wants you most.

I found you sitting on the floor, with your back against my closet door. I took a deep breath and said what I'd been rehearsing to say.

"Who Are You?" I asked.

And instead of a great smile spreading across your face, you took off your boots. First the left, then the right. I spoke again.

"Who Are You?" My voice wavered.

And damn you if you didn't roll up your pantleg and show me where your skin had been worn by rope burn.

Your voice was low and soft. "I wish you'd forget, but I come back because you never do. I anchored myself to the rail and pulled myself up from under because you wouldn't forget. I sputtered and gurgled and fought under the waves."

"I thought you wanted me to...."

"I do. You never know when this rope is going to give."

You stood, and the your great disappointment settled down around me like a yoke. I crawled into my closet of nets and curled up in the entangled ropes. I could hear you singing.

well the sea won't caress you,
she won't be confessed to,
but she just might undress you,
that lover, the sea.

So this be your love song
'Forget me dear, so long'
For so much can go wrong
when you're out at sea

and the chicago cubs will beat every team in the league

I skipped math last night.

I skipped math last night because I wanted to.

I skipped math and watched The Justice League and ate leftover pasta and flipped through some books about Japanese Americans. Then I dyed and cut my hair in the bathroom, even though I swore I was going to get a professional cut this time.

The back is a little choppy.

When I wrote a friend to get the assignment, she informed me that Mister Sweatervest had asked where I was.

She said I was sick. That's true. I have a cold. But I could have gone to class.

In the weeks since the crippling blow in his office, he has asked me, specifically, every class, once at the break and once at the end, "Are you getting this alright?". And every day, I say "Crystal clear, thank you.", no matter how clear or foggy I am.

I'm functioning on the idea that my teacher options are

1: Myself (with little pushes in the right direction from others) and

2: Mister Sweatervest (with others having to sort out and re-explain everything I absorb from him.)

There are pros and cons to both, but the pros of taking notes out of the book and asking for help from others include: Not Crying and Understanding Pre-Calculus Concepts. As opposed to the pros of mister sweatervest, which include: Weight Loss from Panic and Humiliation Induced Vomiting Spells. (I wish I was kidding.)

And I'll probably go to all of the rest of the classes. I don't mind being there, as he's actually gotten a little better after our little classwide rally about re-explaining. I think he's a fairly pleasant human being who occasionally gets his point across.

But ultimately? I'm blaming him for my being sad on my birthday, even though he was just the wrong guy at the wrong place at the wrong time with a certain amount of wrongheadedness. He owed me one.

sweet and delicious

I really feel like talking about FEELINGS. But I also feel like eating a YORK PEPPERMINT PATTY. So there's a chance that my needy feeleyness is chemical.

I just ate the patty. Lets give it a second.

......

and Miracle of Miracles, my need to TALK about FEELINGS has dropped from a level 9-call every boy I'm still uneasy about and demand that they start emoting immediately-
to a level 3- repress, repress, repress-

That, my friends, is chemical management.

Isn't it weird that our highway signs, the newer busses, and our basketball team all match?

My mom is currently staying in middle of nowhere montana with my dad while he wires a new energy plant. The town consists of a grocer, a hardware store, a library/post office, a bar and a church.

Mom makes dinner for dad and this guy who is also living in the temporary housing with them. Dad calls him "That Seventh Day Adventist We Live With Now"

During the day, my mom goes out to the back of the house and throws a handful of grain. 40 turkeys swarm in from the woods and start eating. She put a bale of hay by the backdoor, and a small herd of deer come by at 3pm and 12am to feed. My dad can hear them chewing while he sleeps. One of the yearlings got hit by a car or something, and it has a limp. My mother is concerned that it will be eaten by an animal. She is also worried that it will be rejected by it's friends.

She's learned to paint from that program on PBS where the lady paints flowers and birds and more flowers, but she ran out of things to paint on. She went to the hardware store to see if she could buy some boards or something. The guy at the hardware store said

"Ehp, nope, nope. No boards here. But you should ask The Dude. Theres a guy who works here. We call him Dude. He goes out to Spokane and gets scrap wood every other month or so. Got a big ole pile of it on his front porch. He aint workin today. Come in tomorrow, or you could just stop by his house and ask him, it' aint but half a mile down the road."

So mom stopped by the dudes house, but it was creepy, so she left. My mom finds very few things in this world so creepy that she won't walk up to them and introduce herself. That's just the kind of girl she is.

So she doesn't have anything to paint on until the dude comes in to work. She's willing to ask him about it there. In the meantime, I looked up the local NPR station, because she only gets 2 television channels, and one of them is the home shopping network.

as you motor away.

Tiny took my scooter to a job yesterday.

It was her first time on it alone, and I was cranky and impatient in trying to explain to her over the phone how to get the lock off and the motor on and the stand up and down. She dropped her phone in a puddle and sounded like she was a million miles away.

She came home at five, windburned and smiling.

"The ride there in the rain was the worst trip of my life, but Sonya, it was so, so fun riding home. I was zooming all over, smiling and singing. It was great."

And I know she's fine, but I felt just like my mother must feel No Zooming! No swerving! Be careful! Wear multiple helmets! You're the only you I've got!

Go to the neighbors house, mommy's a bit tired.

This shit is brilliant.

It was the last thing I'm dreaming of

I spent this entire weekend contemplating my navel, being annoyed, watching the last quarter, and reading aloud.

I spent all of today catching up on functions and the way they fall in love. I have a test tonight.

The good news, though, is this. I'm feeling 40 percent less like dying in a gutter since it's been staying light outside until 4:50 or later these days. Updates on Football, Naked Ladies, Annoyance and Navel Contemplation to follow.