Inglourious Basterds -- did I misspell that correctly?

Sick and gross, first of all. It is a Quentin Tarantino movie. So get ready. I'd like to say you can set that aside and consider the rest of the movie, but the violence, after all is part of the point. Violence we do to each other. Cruelty we inflict, and when do we find it okay. When do we cheer or simply smile smugly? In the end we shoot each other, whether we are already dying or not.

I did smile. I did. Jeff quoted someone else (Mel Brooks?) saying, "it's always funny when a Nazi gets shot." There was a disgusting joy in watching Hitler picked apart in slo mo by bullets. Then, there is the general desire to see some wacky US dudes wreaking terror on the Nazis, tormenting them with the stories of their disgusting rituals.

The winner for best Jeff Toppall quote of the night:

After Brad Pitt gives his wacked-out, violent and non-PC sales pitch to the new recruits, Jeff leans over and says, "Sounds like you at a staff meeting." He would know, but he hasn't seen me in action for over ten years. I have a little more chutzpah now than before. Feel the power.

Honestly, I'll have to see the movie again to stitch it all together. The symbolism is constant, it seems. Time management is amazing. From the old-style credits at the beginning of the movie, QT slows us down to get ready for the lengthy and detailed opening "Chapter." Character development without words, in the faces of the actors, was amazing. The bad guy was really well done. You *knew* him by the end. And you also knew what was coming to him. And it felt good.

Feel the power.

Yes, Yes, O Yes: to remember my toes

I know, I know. Too long without posting! Lack of info, lack of consistency. It's like the rest of my life, things fall apart and I come back later to push it all into a pile again.

You should see my desk. It is an avalanche of paper waiting for a good echo to release it. "Hellooooooo!" Getting my shit together, it seems, is and will be an ongoing project. Honestly, I'm okay with that.

Love and it's complications have arrived. Let us (and by us I mean me) endeavor to keep sight of ourselves (meaning myself and all it's parts... there are many) and making sure we do what is in our best interests. Keep our word, yes. Say the right ones and mean it. Yes, yes. Restate and clarify and then, yes, protect the space.

It is the space I needed, truly. I could probably take more but I too crave the companionship. Alas: I am still figuring myself out. Thank you for your patience. And your honesty and communication. And yes, you did make it thunder, of that I am sure.

Right! Back to me! Ummmm....

O how the mighty have fallen

Or maybe just how they've gotten old. Let's face it folks: I am not 20 years old anymore. I am just not as resilient.

I had to sleep. I pulled over and maybe shoulda set an alarm. I didn't wake up until there was a crying baby outside my window. That'll wake you up.

Okay so it's 7:30 now. I'm relatively well rested after the standard 5 hour nap. I'll miss the Farmer's market on Peoria, but I should be there in time for the Scoggins shin-dig.

Full costume change. Coffee. Rub eyes one more time. Let's go!
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La Vale? MD, about 20 miles from Cumberland

This is one of those towns where all the folks are real nice to each other but not to me. I get the long stare, and then the cold shoulder. Eventually I get the long stare and some sort of interaction, a question maybe. Today, I asked the question, "what town is this?" "It's about twenty 'til..." "No, no. What's the locale? Where are we?"

Where are we?
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Leg 1-a, Metro to airport. Picking up the rental car.

Washington in the summertime: ladies' legs as far as the eye can see. I ain't mad at ya. Metro train gradually fills with suits and skirts. Young gay guy, annoyed at the disheveled proximity. Obvious Jews and those hidden, a brown skinned woman with round features and a subtle necklace pendant engraved with a seven-branched candlestick. Fabulous and fancy, men wearing cologne. If my earbuds weren't pumping Robin Thicke I'd hear four different languages, only two I can identify.

I scoot around slow moving tourists. Not mad at you either. No I'm just getting my adrenaline pumping with a brief jog in flipflops. I'm excited. I grin widely, splitting my cheeks, and just make every connection I need. Effort combined with luck will get me on my way, and keep me as I go. G-d bless.

This is D.C., so varied that I am only one of many brightly colored comments. Mine is not the only head bobbing to personal music, there's a blonde and a dude with twists who's pounding out beats on the hand grip bar.

My city. It accepted me and I took it. A little too buttoned up for most bohemians but a few still camp out here. A little too lefty for the uber-suited, but they've got plans. The grand machinery grinds here. I heard it every night when I slept in the underbelly of Capital Hill, down in the moisture with the bugs.

Here I start, reborn as myself, having found my feet, my root religion. From here I start, going back to Tulsa to meet my past -- the one I left but didn't mean to.
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Srsly?

No really... srsly.

Okay, it's Monday and I've been gone from the office for nearly a whole week. I had a mailbox full of papers to sign, initial or otherwise photocopy and file. I have projects that languished while I was out, delirious with antibiotics from hell. And let me just tell you, I have no motivation. The shit didn't blow up while I wasn't here. Clearly, it's not going to blow up today either.

Maybe I'm just waiting for something to blow up. Like it's just not that interesting around here unless something's REALLY wonky. Or, perchance, maybe I'm just procrastinating again, relentlessly like I sometimes do.

So today I've filled my day with a lot of re-direction of other people, a significant amount of Facebooking, and reading my friends' blogs. To that end, I'd like to promote the cool people I know, and all the cool shit they write.

First, my dyke-buddy Vikki posts at Up Popped a Fox. She's long-term partnered with two kids that actually came through her womb, which I find amazing, in general. A social worker on a mission, Vikki will treat you to the bizarre views of her life, with an occassional recipe for a smashing cocktail.

Another fave is the Cleaner Plate Club by Ali, another college buddy, same as the Vikster. Ali has an amazing way of knitting words together to make a nice snug sweater vest for you, which you can then parade around in, showing everyone else what you've learned. This includes recipes -- for food -- travel details, knitting shit, burying beloved fish, and generally being gentle on the planet and to others. Ali's blog makes me look shit up and check my spelling before I post a comment. And, uh, check my verb tenses. Her writing kinda makes me feel like Keith Haring next to Michelangelo. But hey, Haring was still cool.

(para on Dykes deleted... not his blog! crikey! meanwhile I totally thought Chris was knitting his knuckles off. (shrug) .ed)

Kelly Wickham, at Mochamomma, came recommended from a good friend. I've been following her on Twitter for months. She was the first to get sent directly to my phone. She cracks my shit up all the time and then she writes some shit that blows me away. What could be better than that? Maybe if she was smoking hot... aw damn. The killer trifecta: humor, brains and beauty. Sign me up.

Last, but not least, is the soul-searching poet Jenn Mattern. Breed 'Em and Weep is a comfy combination of self-reflection and universal wondering. Her two girls provide plenty of fodder for funny stories, but it's her brutal honesty, unique lens and lyrical sentence structure that constantly seduce me. Yes, yes, that's what I said. What can I say? I'm at the mercy of beauty and there it is.

Several times over, honestly. Each one of these writers gives me new things to think about, ideas that roll around in my head for days, and with regularity a soul-shock that makes my eyes water and leaves me gasping for breath. It's good stuff. Check 'em out, and don't forget to leave a tip in the tip jar, to give the artist a thumbs up and keep 'em going.

Bless the ones who give part of themselves, YY, whether or not they know we need it. You know we do.

Blind Date Break Down

Here it is:

Was it a waste of time? Absolutely not. The upside of this unfortunate meeting is that I know what I want, and it is not what I have had.

Do I like fiesty women who know what they want? Yes, absolutely. I require someone interesting.

Is there a difference between being fiesty and being an outright bitch? Yes.

I know, I know. Some women "own" the word bitch and it means something good to them. Frankly, if that meaning also means you care mostly about yourself then I want nothing to do with it.

She wasn't rude to the waiter. She was weirdly, silently insistent. All in the eyes. She let the conversation drop, and would stare, simply. She was stilted and asked few questions of me that were of any interest to either of us. Although maybe she wanted me to talk about my job at the same length she talked about hers. Or maybe she wanted me to try to impress her with my vast knowledge of something, like she did.

Largely I didn't like her. But I feel like that's because she was a gorgeous but horrible amalgamation of everything I don't want. Almost like Lauren -- my estranged (still) wife -- in a different body. I'm sure she was more complicated than I might make her out to be. I suggested at the end that she was complicated, which she seemed to find offensive. I also suggested she was strange -- and she is -- which I meant as a point of interest, but again... yeah, who would like being told they're strange? Me, I suppose.

I know what I am. I am strange. I bridge lots of odd polar opposites and cannot be easily defined.

Her ex transitioned from female to male while they were together, after the birth of their daughter. We had an awkward conversation about transgender issues, where she told me what all the words meant, like I haven't been alive for the last fifteen years. The gender bending didn't appeal to her, in fact she's fleeing from it. My own squishy self-definition made her really uncomfortable. What's the line between being butch and being trans? I'm not a transvestite, I contend, because I don't do it for fun. But I don't exactly identify as female, either. Mind you, I want to keep all my parts. That's not up for discussion. The body stays the way it is. The rest is in my mind, and how I define myself. It is just outer appearance? She says yes. I say, I don't think so... it's more important than that.

But you know what? The gender conversation was probably the most real part of the conversation. The rest was... yucky. Yucky attempts at being interesting. Yucky attempts at maintaining control of the conversation.

Yeah. I just didn't like her. When it comes down to it. But there was that fiesty part, the piercing eyes, that I still found attractive. But I know better. I see trouble coming a mile away from this one.

Why? Why am I attracted to this personality type that is just not good for me. Why do I go for women who want to tell me what to do, when I KNOW that's not what I want or need?

Other props to me include being really upfront with her. Ballsy. Not the person that I was before. When she showed up, all late and shit, she walked up as I sat outside texting on my phone. She says, "texting someone?" That's her opening line. Not "hello." Not "nice to meet you." Baby, don't try to be sly. So I said, "Facebooking, yes. Pleased to meet you." I extended my hand and, because I had decided way before that if she was cute, I would express it somehow, I did the pseudo kiss-on-the-cheek. Really more a meeting of cheeks, but still, brash, eh?! (Yes, so forward, Shel. You might as well have goosed her.) Still, she's cute. Fact.

Also a fact, she knows it. Wah wah wah. Total downer. Then! She talks about it! How cute she is, how high femme she is. Mind you her nails were dirtier than mine. At some point I thought, I shaved my chin for this? I shoulda left it stubbly. She probably wouldn't have even had lunch with me if she had seen that.

Yeah. No. Not even. Weird. Weird.

So I walk her to her car. I've got my fly hat on and I say, "So, what do you think? Will you call me again?" Really knowing, hoping she'll say no. She says, "Probably not. I've had my share of gender issues and..." "Yeah," I say, "I've had my share of dominate women, too." "Well that's gonna be a problem!" she suddenly exclaims. "Yep, yep, it is." "You should find someone submissive."

And sure, I'll take relationship advice from you. "Right," I say. The conversation stops and we look at each other for a long moment. I break the silence: "Good luck."

ICKY PEOPLE! Just fucking icky. The unspoken pushyness was really profound. And me, in my medicinal haze, being my usual open, playful, cute self just got ill. Emotionally ill, for a moment.

I told her about the wreck and the infection and the meds during lunch. It held her attention for a moment. I said, "I'd probably be funnier if I weren't on these meds." Now that I think about it, the giggle she gave there was probably as fake as the nervous laugh she made when I told her I had beard envy. Not penis envy, but beard envy. She started to ask me questions, to probe where I was on the gender curve, having been told I have no interest in surgery or hormones. "Would you want to grow facial hair?" "Well I already have it," I said, touching my chin where my mini-Shaggy-goatee was just an hour before. "Would you want to walk around with your shirt off?" "Hell yeah!" I said without thinking.

When I was three I refused to wear a top. This was around the time my mother first grilled me with the ever so open question "do you want to be a boy?!?" What the hell could I tell her at three? At seven? I knew enough at thirteen to lie. And at sixteen when she asked if I was gay.

Back to the blind date grilling. I said, laughingly, "So this is your transgender quiz? Keep going." Yeah. End on beard envy and then the question, "where's the bathroom?" Then, when she comes back, "Are you ready?" Over over over.

Ugly, people. If you've got a sweetie, hug 'em hard and be glad they'll put up with your shit. If they make you crazy, take a good look and ask yourself if it's a crazy you can live with... then hug 'em anyway.

Seriously. If this is what I bring to myself, then what the fuck am I doing? And if you're still reading, what the fuck are you doing? :-)