act III: the lumination

: i fell asleep in the tanning bed and woke up glowing. my eyes are so full of light!




: oh lizzy, you sparkle like one hundred galaxies! your head is a beautiful gleaming orb!



: be careful wit dat sheeeit, yo




: john, cram it. i have diamonds in my skin! diamonds!




: you shine like a nuclear holocaust!




: awww sheeeeeit

Act II, Elizabeth Taylor enters

: Eli, OMG, that sweater is gorgeous. I am so glad we bought matching sweaters at H&M the other day! Also, I'm happy to see you're wearing the BFF diamond heart pendant I gave you for V-Day!

: Oh shut UP and stop asskissing! We're just in a scene together, Wayne! And I also wish you'd stop following me into the tanning bed - there isn't room enough for the both of us in there. Also, for the record, before we begin this scene, may I state how much I hated Slumdog Millionaire? Its half-baked characters, flimsy plotline, and overall nauseating generic-ness? I found it quite yucky, particularly when the brother gets shot in the heavyhanded bathtub of money.

: Really?!?! I sort of loved it. That was sort of my favorite scene. But while we're on the topic of things we hate, I'll have you know that I was NOT at AWP in Chicago, although I did fly to Chicago simply so I could hang out in the hot tub at the Drake all during the conference and get all pruny. I was in that hot tub for 3 days straight. I feel fucking amazing!

: I think I'm more of a cornflower blue, rather than whale-blue. Or a suffocated-baby blue, perhaps? Ooh, that's morbid. Jon don't do morbid. Who am I, anyway? Why am I in a scene with two people who won't talk to me? Why wasn't I invited to read at AWP?

I'm in love with a playwright

You know me. I hate plays. I hate them even when people I love are in them.


But I have been reading Sarah Ruhl plays over the last week or so, and, heck, I think she deserves some serious Wayne Koestenbaums. I think I would like to watch her plays. I think I might even want to play peripheral characters in her plays. That is a weird feeling. Wait. I think I might want to write plays. Let's write a play! Oo, let's! Kathy, you can wear antlers and vampire teeth. Oh wait. Someone already wrote that.


Really though. I miss our collaborations. So I will start:



: You are blue, like a whale because blue whales aren't really blue.




: No, I'm really blue.




Your turn!

it's time to talk about nonsense

who thinks joaquin phoenix is being for real and who thinks it's some of kind of clever actor game. abby, you will know.

i thought maybe possibly he could just be going crazy until they interviewed casey affleck about it (who is making a documentary of joaquin or something) and he was like "...yeah, he's giving up acting to be a rapper. so what." this makes me think they are in the "cahoots."

what do you think.

Separated by handsomeness

Danny Boyle looks like Morrissey's less fashion-conscious older bro.

we need more poetry videos, here's one

Heart attack

Apparently women are dropping like overweight Persian cats due to heart attacks because there are all these new commercials to make us aware that our symptoms are different. Women who look like they are in their mid- to late-30s say things like, "I didn't even have any chest pain. I just felt kind of tired." And then they weigh an old woman, and show us that she weighs 120 pounds, implying that even if you are a skinny little bird a heart attack awaits. Which means...you (the abstract you, the "vous") are about to die.

I took my pulse like 400 times yesterday because I was home sick, the major symptom of my illness being extreme tiredness--I slept for seven hours yesterday during the day, which means that while I was awake my index and middle finger were more or less constantly pressed against my throat. The other major symptom of my illness clearly being paranoia.

This morning I continue to grapple with mortality. I am drinking enough coffee that my whole body vibrates a little each time my heart beats.

Kitties are Trainable, Too (Just not Mine)

Since it seems clear (Sorry Abby) that none of us will ever have children, I have a new plan for our cats when they are not reading classic novels--agility contests! I learned about them while watching my favorite public television show, Nature.

So, they are just like the puppy agility obstacle courses, except for cats. And except that the cats don't want to follow the rules, and they climb over hoops rather than through them, or they get distracted and go check out something else when they're supposed to be competing. And except the owners aren't competitive at all. I bet there is lots of drinking at cat agility competitions.

I wish I had a picture of the Persian I saw attempting to run and jump--it was just like huge ball of fur sort of waddling along and occasionally lifting off to jump like a furry cloud.

Celebrity Crush #814

Rufus Sewell is sooooo dreamy. Here are the reasons why:

1. I cannot stop staring at his face. Abby says this is because he has a skeleton-face, and that is my type. I see why she would say that. This is true. However, I truly don't think he has a skeleton face, and if he does it is a beautiful skeleton face. So there.

2. He has a really good American accent. He is one of the new crop of English-masquerading-as-American-agents-of-the-law on television shows that air in the hour before the news. This is, by the way, the new formula for a hit show: Find an English dude and make him an eccentric genius with a female sidekick.

3. He looks like he's holding something back. He is coy. It is obvious that he has unplumbed (and possibly unplumb-able (?)) depths. His eyes say "I am telling the truth," but his mouth says, "Or am I?"

4. He looks totally different in period costuming. He looks like a dashing pirate, even in armored skirts.

5. Oh wait, his cheekbones are totally skeletal. Hot.

Chapter Three: Entry Day

Chapter one here.
Chapter two here.

I can’t tell if the tiny monkeys are growing, or if the plus-sized models are shrinking. I don’t know why the Howling Girl didn’t plan ahead for the eventuality of her head bumping and plodding along the linoleum behind her as she makes her way to breakfast. She should bind a pillow to her skull.

All I know is that cloudy days at The Pinch Punch are the worst because TYRA has a spoiled child’s version of seasonal affective disorder.

The morning Pinch-Punches are gray and reek of regret and liquid foundation. A profound melancholy settles on the residents, and they half-heartedly smack around billiard balls, hoping that someone watched something interesting on TV the night before so the silence can be broken.

Epileptic seizures abound in the lobby. It is an Entry Day, and a charming new guest’s melodic timbre haywires synapses amongst residents. There is nothing like an epileptic seizure for bringing you down. People say the pants-pissing is the worst, but I say it is bleeding-tongue.

There is a collective unconscious wish for harmonicas and sunglasses. The lights flicker, hiss, and sink. The Howling Girl finally shuts up. Everyone’s got the sniffles; their sleeves crust with mucus, their eyes crust with sleep.

Serious issue

Christian Bale yells with a scary voice. I think he has been working too much lately and might want to come pick me up for that vacation in the tropics we planned so long ago. I promise not to frustrate him.

k+ and I made American Psycho jokes, but so is everyone else. So here's a mash-up with Newsies instead:

NSFW F*ckin Newsies! @ Yahoo! Video

Pinch Punch Ch. 2: puddin’, Tragic Audiodiary I.

Chapter one is here.

“When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray…I cannot clearly say how I had entered the wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path,”

No wait, shoot, that’s Dante. It’s hard to make an audio-diary, but the note in my rollerboard said I have to record my journey or be banished to the Pinch-Punch vats. Crap. I hate the sound of my own voice and I can’t think of anything to say. Crap. Okay, let’s try that again:

How does one fall through a skylight into new life? In the dream I was knitting an endless afghan with which to cover the earth, in which to wrap it, to snuggle it, until all the icecaps I had always meant to scale melted, wetting the earth’s blanky like a baby. In the dream I was also the earth, and also the afghan, which was woven of scraps of paper sack, heirlooms from past centuries, barbed wire, and the fine blond hair of little sisters.

The sign did not say WELCOME. I would not have known this because I crashed through the skylight and landed face-up on the bar, faces of drunks looming above me like funeral flowers. I couldn’t tell if they were laughing or crying. They brutally brushed my hair, so that my scalp bled pleasantly. My whole body bled pleasantly upon my arrival, as if my old life were draining out of my body.

Whoa, audio-diaries are super-dramatic. I think I love audio-diaries. They make my life seem way more important than it is.

“What do you drink in your neck of the country, sister?” said the bartendress. “Cuz I know
you don’t come from ‘round here.”

She was a giantess, with gold fingernails like claws, or switchblades, or switchblade claws. She looked vaguely famous, but I wasn’t sure; I am a knitter; I don’t believe in television.

“Um, I was knitting an afghan in which to cover the earth?” I said.

“Caravaggio! You’re supposed to be barbacking! Paint me up a Pinch-Punch chaser for this freak-ass transient!” She tried to snap her fingers, but her switchblade nails just sort of clacked together.

“Fuck off, TYRA, or I’ll stab your tits,” said Caravaggio in a Boston accent.

He sat Indian-style atop a table in the darkest corner of the bar, wearing a purple wig and wildly patterned swimming trunks. He began fingerpainting a portrait of my dream. In the painting the earth was being smothered, not happily bundled; the earth was suffocating. He made suffocating noises as he painted to ensure that I understood this. He poured the painting into a frosty mug.

TYRA slammed a shot glass full of glowing liquid down on the bar.

“Um, is this a liquer? Because I’m a knitter, and I don’t believe in--”

“Drink up!” TYRA said. “Or Caravaggio will stab your tits.”

“Drink up or I’ll stab your tits,” said Caravaggio. “Cuz that’s what I do for a hobby, is stab tits and play my brand of bocci where I throw the balls at people’s faces. See that broad over there? The plus-sized one? Check out the number I did on her.”

“They call me Ye Old Blackeye of Bloody Tit now,” she said. “I used to be called Sunshine, after the bread.”

Everyone at the bar chanted “Pinch-Punch, Pinch-Punch, Pinch-Punch.”

I had never done a shot before; this one tasted like the sweat of tiny animals, namely teacup piglets. It kicked my ass right off the barstool and onto the floor.