chris killen is my new favorite comedian

he has videos that everyone else on the internet was laughing at a year ago while i wasn't paying attention. and also this awesome choose your own adventure game. and also a novel called the bird room. do you want to read it for the next venom literati book? or also, i think i have a chapbook that he wrote with shane jones. i could make photocopies. let's vote. i am happy we are meeting at headquarters this weekend. someone please shine a batman light in the sky so jen and i can find our way.

Oh! Oh!

Lecture
Wayne Koestenbaum: The Anatomy of Harpo Marx
#604: Sat, Nov. 14 12:00 - 1:00 PM

Poet and cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum will share his contagious enthusiasm for the silent hilarity of the mostly mute Harpo Marx brother.

Admission: Adults: $5.00, Educators & Students: FREE Where: Chicago Cultural Center - Claudia Cassidy Theater, 77 East Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60202

A gimmick will make me famous

I saw Julie and Julia over the weekend, and anything in it that didn't involve Meryl Streep sucked (by which I mean all of the Julia stuff was good, and I could have done without Julie entirely). Really: That husband with his meaty smacking lips and eating grunts was so repulsive that I really wanted Julie to divorce him on grounds of disgustingness and selfishness so when the inevitable Marital Problem Scene surfaced I just got mad.

Also, I am pretty sure that the parents of writers everywhere are suddenly calling up their kids and asking them if they have ever heard of this thing called blogging. Which will make them famous. All they have to do is find a hook.

Crap. I just looked that dude up on imdb, and he's going to be in An Invisible Sign of My Own, too.

Pinch Punch Ch. 16: The Tiny Monkeys Overhear an Odd Conversation Among the Residents, Re: Who the Fuck is Tyra

“I think she is a robot.”

“I think she is made of fiberglass and plastic.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t make a very intelligent painting: I have already made 36. To look at them is to lower your IQ by fifty points.”

“I think she is the fire that shall inherit Oprah’s forest.”

“It’s true that the chameleonic philosophy of the common man churns in her hair, but there is the bald spot, the flaw, the hunk of pink exposed brain, human as any other: warding off unforeseen desires, releasing the bitter chemicals of loss into her blood.”

“Still, she walks the robot’s walk. Do you choose your robot, or does she choose you?”

“Maybe the chemicals just pile up. Maybe the chemicals char and blacken and harden over the years until you walk like that.”

“Dreams and mothers are just piles of chemicals, too, but what do hers sound like?”

“A child kneeling in a Saharan mirage, scrubbing her face with sand, scooping sand into her mouth to ward off thirst.”

“Just think how pure her blood used to be back then.”

"You know her secret ingredient is moon, right?"

"I hear she rises mornings and claws it down with her fingernails. In her giant’s hands it is bright and tiny like a baby, then she mortars and pestles it to death, scatters it fizzing into the vats: a cremation undone."

"The moon does not resist; the moon does not strive, it only reflects."

"What would happen if she tossed it out over the ocean, into all the city’s orifices like a cure? What would happen if she bathed in it? If we all did?"

"Nobody ever looks into a shot glass before they put it inside of themselves. Nobody sees how the silvered liquid reflects us doing cartwheels across the lawn in unison."

"Only the werewolves know, and only for a minute before the moon recollects itself."

“Um, guys, I think we’ve been in here way too long. Everything is starting to get way too poetic.”

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And plus, this

More faces.

Dag. Like weeks have passed.

So here's a post to get me/us out of our stagnation. Look at this. I am interested in family resemblance because I think it is creepy.

Sex Toy Hostesses Are Surrealists

Clearly I can't escape these things: you know how much I hated that effin' jewelry party? Well, one of Garrison's friends from the climbing gym invited me to a sex toy party. What a way to get to know people. But the party was actually not at all uncomfortable. The hostess lady just handed around a bunch of sparkly liquidy things to try on that were basically all the same lotion that tasted like cotton candy or Smarties. She also handed around this amazing pheromone spray that made your pheromones show off their own unique scent. Mine smelled like burning wood and tabasco, which was hilarious.

The best part was that we played Surrealist games. One went like this: think of the chore you hate most around the house. Think of exactly how you'd describe it. ("I hate ______ because _____.") Now substitute the word sex for the first blank. This is totally the surrealist game where they'd pull the labels off of household products and replace the brand names with "Love" or "God" and then read the descriptions on the packaging as if the products were Love or God!

The other game we played was the exquisite corpse except better. You answer questions and fold over the paper for each one and pass them around. If you could go one place in the world where would it be? Which boy would you take with you? What's the first thing you'd do to him once you arrived? What would he say afterwards? What would you say?

Venice. Anthony Bourdain. Eat seafood off him. I'm hungry. A-ha. I liked mine how it would have been originally if I'd kept my own paper. But those answers got distributed and the girl who read mine didn't know who Anthony Bourdain was, which was disappointing.

What is the connection between sex toy hostesses and surrealism? I feel like I should become a sex toy hostess now.

Mission Literati

Okay, I just found out that one of my personal heroes was born and grew up in the town in which I currently reside. It is now my mission to make him come back here and perform.

The dots, the dots

First there was this spider caught between the storm window and the interior window in our kitchen, and it didn't move ever. I thought it was dead. But after an indeterminate amount of time there was a small brown ball sort of next to the spider that didn't move. This small brown ball was clearly an eggsac, but I am not a handyman, so it seemed like the only recourse for removal was breaking the window, which I did not want to do. I told myself both the spider and the eggsac were dead. And then after another time period there suddenly were many dots. Many, many dots. These teensy baby spider dots also did not move, and were in a sort of exploding star formation around the sac. But they weren't moving, so I thought they were probably all dying, if they were not already dead.

But now the dots are gone. Where are the dots?

Drive-in movies, WK

Do you think that Wayne Koestenbaum goes to the drive-in? I'm pretty sure he does.



I have seen four movies at the drive-in this year; each of them could be considered bad, but there is a hierarchy of badness. To wit, I have ranked them from one Wayne Kostenbaum (worst) to four Wayne Koestenbaums (best). Please do not forget that none of these movies would receive any Wayne Koestenbaums under any other normal rating circumstance.



1. Night at the Museum II. This movie is for stupid people. Not even children, just stupid people.









2. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Abby and I spent the first 20 minutes of this movie asking each other questions like, "Are they in outer space or underwater?" "Is Sienna Miller the red-haired one or the brunette?" "Wait: Is she a hologram right now, or is she really there?" "Is that the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun? He's a slender villain." "Are we in the past?" Granted, most of these questions arose because it was the second movie shown, and both of us were slouched in our seats to the point where we couldn't see helpful words at the bottom of the screen, but still. Also, I kept thinking of Austin Powers for some reason.










3. Wolverine. I saw this movie after Night at the Museum II, it's like Wolverine was an average-looking person hanging out with someone very ugly: It looked comparatively beautiful. Also, the mouthless Ryan Reynolds at the end was actually cool.











4. G-Force. I giggled a couple of times. And the guinea pigs' hands were cute.

Pinch Punch Ch. 15: Oh my god what if I’m not the main character?

Nugget number one: It takes time. Well, duh. Some of the residents don’t think that should count as wisdom, but I always record it with such a triumphant air that they get confused. I spent four days meditating on the roof deck, thinking about it. It is like mu: Has a teacup piglet a Buddha-nature? One spoke to me in Italian on a moonless night, of having been the pope’s shoes in a former incarnation. Even the pope’s feet stink.

The tiny monkeys have taken over the second floor. I woke up and there was one curled around every finger and every toe. Their message was clear: Move out.

Caravaggio and Kashmir perform symbiotic stabbing rituals all night long and wouldn’t let me crash in their third bed. The Plus-sized Model(s) bared their rows of teeth at me and gave me the octuple finger. Now I’m sleeping in the corridor, like a common Edwardian hall boy. Everyone’s started to give me things to do: anaesthetizing kittens, blocking out the moon with my palm, following the marten parade around with a push broom.

It has occurred to me that I might not get a muse.

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Oversmoking

One way to quit smoking is to oversmoke, like chain smoke until your pallor turns minty green, and then you'll be disgusted with yourself and feel sick and not want to smoke at all for a couple of days, during which the nicotine can leave your system, and then, voila, step one is completed and you're practically free of that pesky addiction.

Last night I watched the two trashiest shows on VH1: Real Chance at Love 2 and Megan Wants a Millionaire.

The whole time I vacillated between shame and elation, and I got up and did things during the commercials to avoid spiraling into watching that one show where five women in lingerie rate themselves according to who has the hottest face, legs, butt, etc., and then three dudes rate them, too, and they win money if their rankings are the same as the dudes' rankings. You can actually see self-esteem deflating on that show.

And then I felt depressed because all of the "suitors" on Megan's show were verified millionaires, and apparently you can be both socially inept and kinda stupid and still make at least a million dollars. Because of luck? Or perhaps a high tolerance for risk often is associated with dumbness? Whatevs. It's slim pickings for poor Megan.

I am overwatching, so I can be free of the tyranny of trash television, which apparently I am powerless to resist, except I think this plan has already backfired because I'm kind of worried about Real and Chance and their bevy of strippers with real estate licenses. Will they find love? How will I ever know if I don't watch?

Tonight, nothing. I swear.

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.

10 inches, gone

So I just got 10 1/2 inches lopped off my hair. What do you think it looks like now? Is it:

a. shaved close to the scalp, with a single braided rat tail proving that once my hair was quite long.

b. exactly like Suri Cruise's

c. a "lob," as the magazines are calling this season's favorite new haircut, the long bob

d. the Rachel

e. the Dorothy Hammill

f. a mohawk

g. a fauxhawk

Pinch Punch Ch. 11: Room 4833: The merging

When they went to sleep, there were four. When they woke, they were an indistinguishable amorphous mass of flesh. They’d gone from ferret to wolverine. The Pinch Punch affects everyone differently.

The conjoined Plus-sized Model(s) stretched and her/their twin bed groaned beneath her/them. Eight eyes are better than two. You can see all 15 dimensions and wield switchblades aplenty. Your liver(s) are better able to process the caramel-flavored breakfast mash.

It is surprisingly comforting to be of four minds. Someone always wants something, and the one who wants things the most always gets it.

The skinny men were waiting when she/they descended to the common area, ogling her/their rumples and flow. The men's eyebrows were thin, as if sketched on with dog doo, their backs attractively attached to their stomachs, so visible spine knobs could be seen, interlaced with intestines. Several of them brandished knives, but she/they could eat those blades. She/they could eat those blades, their tooth-fillings, the staples in their shoulders, their nipple rings, their chastity belts, their wedding rings, their spectacles, the iron in their blood.

But think of the flesh she/they’d have to pick through to get to the metal, the stringy muscle exactly the perfect width for getting caught between four rows of teeth. Flossing takes forever.

“Hey hey hey,” the skinny men say, pretending not to notice her eight arms and legs. She/they catherine-wheel(s) to the breakfast bar and prepare(s) to tuck in.

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Other People's Things

Packing other people's things is way better than packing your own things. Today I nearly packed Mis and Trav's entire kitchen. I caught myself getting into arguments with them about things I wanted them to throw away, like a can of asian vegetables, and another can of strange and scary mexican stew. I threw away some things without asking, like a water bottle from the Brookfield Zoo because no one needs that. And a 9-volt battery that was being kept on the off-chance that it wasn't completely dead, but just mostly dead. And a bunch of other things I can't remember now because there were so many, but they will clearly not be missed.

My best friend from high school, another Missy, was in town a few years ago and did me the great favor of throwing away two artworks of birds I had that were made of real feathers. These bird-works were amazing. My ex-boyfriend had bought them for me years before and looking at them made me miserable but I could not give them away. She just said: These are going, and I said, Okay. I am very glad the birds are gone.

On the flipside, I would not let my Missy get rid of Raymond Carver, Aimee Bender, or Lorrie Moore. I just would not allow it. These are important things to keep even if you'll never read them again.

So do not ask me to help you pack. But if you want to clean all the crap out of your life, then ask me. My new career goal is to start a life-cleaning service.

People who you didn't know are basically the same person

It's like that picture where you're all "is that candlesticks or profiles of people about to kiss?" and then it flips back and forth. Elijah Wood, Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp, Elijah Wood.