I have found them all.

If you had Channel One in your high school, you probably feel weirdly close to Anderson Cooper, as I do. I remember him cowering in his hotel room in Iraq during the Gulf War, reporting while half under his bed. In that moment, I loved him. I also have a soft spot for Lisa Ling, and not knowing what happened to Rawley Valverde has made me feel incomplete.

Last night I found him. He's supervising producer of this cable channel called Current TV and host of at least one show on it. I may have pointed and laughed and clapped and chanted his name a couple of times when I saw him. Here's his LinkedIn page. He has four connections. Let's all link to him.

UPDATE: Weirdly, the two correspondents that Bill Clinton rescued like a superhero were from Current TV, and one of them was Lisa Ling's little sister. Talk about current.

Pinch Punch Ch. 14: All I want to do is breathe

It is no fair. The Plus-sized Model(s) won’t let me breathe in their room. They say that’s one way to find out if I’m dead or not: If it’s tough for me not to breathe, then I’m probably alive, but I really feel like there’s more to it than that.

TYRA is so busy performing plastic surgery on herself that she won’t tell me if death is real or not. She says, “Being, non-being, Kathy.” She says, “Self, non-self.” Something about matter not being destroyed, and the soul weighing eight pounds. Something about teacup piglets being so snuggly because they don’t have souls or die. Something about there being no such thing as teacup piglets, which is clearly not true.

Maybe TYRA is manipulating me. Maybe that’s how I got here in the first place. Maybe this is all a construct of my mind. If teacup piglets don’t exist, then TYRA doesn’t exist either. I don’t think I’ve breathed in days.

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venom literati: cincinnati branch

The Cincinnati branch of Venom Literati has officially opened. The literati office is in my backyard, because my backyard is so huge and overwhelming I am not sure what to do with it.

I think we should use the clothesline to hang our writings on, and also collages, and also ourselves when we get too old to live fulfilled lives.

I want to have a party for the literati where we all just roll around in the grass like dogs.

Kathy, see that 1980's-style lawn furniture way there in the back? The chaise lounge is for you. When it gets cold you can bundle up in a blanket and sit in it like you used to do on Sarah and Abby's porch. Don't worry, there will be a fire pit soon.

megan left, i got bangs

dear literati,

today megan left chicago. it was so sad. the literati must unite in these tragic times. sarah and abby, when can we meet at your headquarters? so then after that though, i got bangs. here is a picture of me kissing megan goodbye with them. that is what i look like when i kiss someone goodbye. it's very scary. also here is a poem for megan. walt. whitman.

A Supermarket In California - Allen Ginsberg

There is always an orange cat

In Chicago, there was a cat we called Orange because at first that's all he was. He'd hang out in our back yard and walk home with us from the train station. Later we figured out where he lived and that her name was Julia, so we could call her and she'd come trotting up and collapse at our feet wanting ear rubs.

When we moved there was an orange cat again, who ate voles out of our yard, greeted us on the sidewalk, and visited our real cats in the windows. We called her Julia. We just found out that where she lives and that his name is Seamus.

If, when we move again, there is not an orange cat that we can call Seamus only to later find out his name is Orange, I will be disappointed.

Fashion post!

This woman, Sheena Matheiken, is wearing the same dress every day for the next year as a fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation. This appeals to me for many different reasons, not the least of which is my own comfort with uniforms (and with wearing the same thing over and over).

Click on all the pictures to see the many combinations of tights and leggings. You can waste at least 30 minutes of your day on this.

Pinch Punch Ch. 13: Wait. I’m your muse.

CONFIDENTIAL TO THE PINCH PUNCH RESIDENTS: It has come to my attention that several of you have taken on the role of muse to the more “artistic” of the residents. Those of you that are muses have developed complexes about your lack of greatness, and those of you that are artists have gotten big heads.

There is only one muse in this house, and that is me, TYRA. From now on, all artistic works must be of, for, or about me. Everything you do should be for my glory. If you get stuck, come to me, and I’ll maneuver my body this way and that; the light will catch my cheekbone just so, bounce off, permeate your brain; your hand will move of its own volition sweeping strokes or pushing buttons. Your work will be hung on the gallery wall of the bar.

ANNOUNCEMENT

All amateur muses get 20 demerits and must report to surgery immediately.

NOTE: Works of art are not a form of currency. Nor is flattery. You still have to pay your rent.

NOTE: If you’re not artistic, you’re not worthless. Just not as exciting or flaky or weird as the others. This might make you feel invisible, or worse, dead. Actually, you might be dead because there is little to differentiate those that are from the living in here. If you suspect you are dead, go visit the Plus-sized Model(s) and see if she/they’ll let you breathe on their mirrors.

NOTE: If you’re dead, you’re not worthless. Just not alive.

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You remember everything.

So you know how people can find all this old stuff on YouTube, and then you watch it and feel like some part of your brain that long lay dormant re-awakens, and you remember the whole thing, but there's no way you could have remembered it without the helpful prompt of watching it again? And then you have the feeling that you probably remember everything; you just don't have access. It's sort of like when I was meditating the other day and a crisp image of my Aunt Mary's bathroom popped up unbidden. It was a really nice bathroom. There were two sinks.

Anyway, I saw this skit during a marathon of The State last night, and I sort of freaked out because I remembered the whole thing and even said, "Good-bye, mailbox." at the appropriate time, but if you would have said to me yesterday morning, "Hey, remember that sketch that The State did about the tacos and the mailman?", I would have said something like, "Um.....?"

new blog friend: bianca stone

literati alert: there is a person on the internet that makes beautiful poetry comics. i found her on html giant. because the literati is too busy with top secret missions to mindlessly scour blogs all day, i am bringing her to you. bianca stone. she is so great.

Some people are afraid of conflict

Shared bathrooms and refrigerators are rife with passive-aggressive opportunity.

Why am I reading a book by Chuck Palahniuk?

Sometimes I am a total sucker for plot. Plots are underrated. Next summer I'm going to write a mystery horror novel that's an update of Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Detectives. Don't hold me to that.

C.P.'s plots are all sort of similar to one another, but they're also horrifying in slightly different ways, which is interesting. I like that there's a lady who kills people by bouncing a bowling ball down the street in Haunted, for example. And the idea of a culling song is cool.

Okay, clearly I've read practically everything he's ever written. Apparently I love Chuck Palahniuk and that's why I'm reading something by him. So why am I writing this post? Am I ashamed, so I need to justify it?

Oh, I know: The thing is that I totally hate his voice, and it's one of those voices that gets stuck in your head and affects your writing. I feel like I need to wash my brain after I read something by him. Recommend me something for when I'm done, something that will destroy the urge to write entirely in fragments.

New cable! Hooray for sloth! Oh wait.

My "cable" for the last year has consisted of two home shopping networks, the regular old main networks, two public television stations, and a buttload of Christian talking and singing heads. And AMC, which might as well be called "The Roadhouse channel."

But today, we got real cable installed. I flipped through the channels whilst home for lunch and found: Montel William's health machine is on every third channel; P90X infomercials are on all the rest of them.

If in a month or so I start thinking that I should juice our bountiful crop of collard greens to be drunk as meal substitutions and install a pull-up bar, this is why. Be prepared for my washboard abs to scrape your eyeballs.

Pinch Punch Ch. 12: A Fearless Inventory of Light in All its Forms: Caravaggio and Muse

Deep in the night, just after he has digested my latest stabbings, Kashmir disappears under the floorboards and I am alone in my bunk, the soundtrack of my life’s miniseries drowned in the sounds of the Pinch Punch that float up through the register: all its groanings, squealing, drippings, writhings, stabbings, sobbing…all the sounds of life here enter my testicles like a terrible symphony in the groin. This is as close as one ever gets, in the Pinch Punch, to lying in bed as a child listening to crickets or cicadas. You take what you can get at the Pinch Punch.

The Pinch Punch is not unlike life, not unlike dying on a Mediterranean beach full of malaria.
Have I mentioned that my testicles are the sensitive orbs where all my artistic goo resides? In my former life, they used to tingle when I painted, but now they tingle only when TYRA stabs or slaps them to punish me, which is totally different: there are good tingles and bad tingles in life.
Tonight, a tiny, squeaky, unkempt voice, sloppy as mud but barely there, alights on the skin of my testicles like a mosquito. Under my tongue for thirty-seven years…knitting shawls for the earth… The bite of my muse blooms in the dark. The bite of my muse (the present) eclipses the miniseries of my life.

I am not certain whether I am having an actual conversation with my muse, or if my nightly Pinch-Punch just really kicked my ass this time, but I am thinking about light and dark for the first time since I painted David With Head of Goliath, in which I am both David and Goliath; in which I have just switchbladed off my own evil head and am looking down on it.

MUSE: Bulbed, artificial, glancing off a hubcap or a Tylenol, or the flesh of geriatric Anita; sunlight, twilight, starlight, motion light, really it’s all the same, you try to put the light inside yourself and it fumbles and chokes.

ME: Exactamundo! Just like how the point of all my paintings is that it’s as impossible to light a candle inside one’s own private residence as it is to play Parcheesi in a tiny monkey’s bellybutton. Nobody ever understood that. They thought I was talking about Jesus or some shit.

MUSE: Despite the fact that it’s undigestable, I wish there were more light coming up from under the Pinch Punch's leaves. That doesn’t happen in the city, and if it did I would reject it, just as I do the teacup piglets, in order to make them love me.

ME: You talk about picking through flesh to get to the icecaps. I talk about scaling forests to make a new color of light: the sound and flavor of sunlight through falling leaves, changing with the seasons.

MUSE: It is surprisingly comforting to be of four minds, isn’t it? I feel sort of like TYRA.

ME: Me, too. My effect is spontaneous and meaningless.

MUSE: Um, I gotta run, but I really think you should take a shower. I can smell you through the register.

ME: You are so correct. You are so very correct. Thank you for allowing me to feel the present; I have not felt the present in so long.

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Un-American confession

I kind of don't like fireworks. I mean, I like them when they are in the sky, and some crazy dudes are shooting them out of cannons, and they're relatively far away, but I don't like them when they are in my hands, or the hands of people that I know and like. Or even don't like.

I personally know three people who have lost fingers to fireworks. Two are named Steve.

I am scared of the oven. Grills seem like death machines to me. Loud noises make me tic spastically. Fireworks are like small, deafening, exploding stoves. No thank you.

Exceptions: sparklers and bottle rockets.