Things that make me saddish.

So, I've hit day four of The Funk. And day four of The Funk has hit back. Hard. Right in the babymaker. Except not. Ew.

In honor of my inexplicable doldrumitude, I'm going to share some things that make me feel even more Eeyorish than I would normally. Sigh. Thanks for noticing this list:

1. People sitting alone in restaurants: I mean, I do it all the time, generally with a good book. But I'm talking, like, elderly people... sitting alone... not surrounded by family... probably remembering the good ol' days before Hank/Betty died when they would eat together... probably wishing that that girl with the clearly fake red hair who keeps peering at them from the next table would either say something conversational or learn to mind their own damn business. Kids these days! No respect for America's finest generation. Meh.

Anyway, despite the fact that they seem to judge me so harshly, I feel sad for them.

2. Kids that get picked on in school: And I know it's everyone. But kids are ANIMALS and some kids get it worse than others. Ugh. I can't even think about this one. Move on.

3. CHRISTMAS: Christmas turns me into a pathetic, quivering, sobbing, snotty, temperamental DISASTER. Seriously. I generally start my drinking oh, maybe Thanksgiving? And don't stop until the last stocking has been emptied of it's plunder and the tree is nestled safely back in it's box in our attic.

I hate the music, I hate the lights, I hate the Santas and the creches, I definitely hate how perky everyone gets and I strangely enough don't really enjoy getting presents. Giving, always fun for me. Getting, not so much. I also hate how incongruous the lights and festivity and general feeling of ho ho ho are with the fact that it's pitch black by 4 pm. Yick. And for some reason, all Christmas music (From "Don't They Know It's Christmas Time at Home" to "What Do You Give a Wookie for Christmas") makes me think of all the poor children who don't get Christmas presents because they're POOR. Ugh. I need to become a communist and get it over with.

And need I mention that Jesus wasn't born in the winter and that most Christmas traditions are pagan? Not like I mind- oh, no- but still. Christmas. Ugh.

Wow, this has been really cathartic for me. Let's move on to:

4. Dead/sick/abused animals: I know that everything has to die, but not necessarily under a tire. Sigh. And I think that people who abuse animals should have pieces of their body forcibly and painfully removed. Just saying.

5. Buying a book at Barnes and Noble and thinking, wow, this looks intriguing, but then finding out it wasn't worth the $17.27 you paid after your member discount: This is really getting to be a strain on the budget. But books are like Pandora's Box to me... I have no self control. I hate disappointing books. I hate not finishing a book out of boredom. Sigh.

6. Child Abuse: I think the only punishment for sexual abuse of a minor should be castration. Make it happen, people.

7. Being easily forgotten: I really think that's my worst fault, is that I'm virtually impossible to remember. And it makes me sad.

8. People dying their hair blonde: because, seriously? WHY?

9. One-legged puppies: because they've got the heart of a champion. Oh, Li'l Brudder.... I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I'm thinking about male modelling... or high finance.

10. The fact that I use my blogspace to make long personal lists about myself: Isn't there something else I could be talking about here? I'd better wrap this up.
Ugh. I'm blue like jazz, man... I'm going to eat some more Chex mix (so I can be sad about being fat, too) and maybe pretend not to notice myself in the mirror.

Why I disturb myself sometimes.

I've begun noticing more and more lately the tendency of people to harbor, whether they admit to it or not, a sick, twisted fetish for the grotesque and macabre. The same disturbing curiousity that makes you slow down to peer at a ugly car wreck on the highway (hoping you'll see something, praying you won't) also compels you to pick up the remote and flip to American Idol or Shot of Love with Tila Tequila. How can something so wrong seem so right?

So, It made me wonder... what unlikely things make me go hot and cold at the same time? When my schadenfreude sense starts tingling, these are a few of my favorite guilty pleasures:

1. Jack the Ripper/Other Faceless True Crime Serial Killer types: Mmmmm, true crime makes me giddy. Jack the Ripper is, in my head, no less than a Victorian Mr. Darcy; imagine, a look of titillatingly evil glee on his handsome face as he wields a scapel and some basic anatomical knowledge and slices confidently through the pox-ridden whores of Whitechapel with an irresistibly unreadable gleam in his eye and a leer curling his lips. Being trivisected has never sounded so hot.
Not like I think murdering people is acceptable. No no no. Well.... no. But still... his lack of identity and ability to escape detection in as many as eleven murders (even in the days pre-CSI) has turned him into a daring, rakish (albeit bloodstained) cavalier of romance and bloody intrigue in my fevered world. Well played, sir. Very well played indeed.

2. Frat boys: You know the ones I'm talking about... deliciously awkward, horridly blonde spiky highlighted hair, Abercrombie t-shirt, baseball cap, God's gift to... anyone too unconcious to resist them, usually saying, "I'm SO totally waaaaaasted right now, dude" or chanting someone's name in between primal grunts. You know that guy. You see him in Chili's... you see him outside Walmart late Saturday night... you almost want to have pity sex with him so he'll stop trying SO HARD. Then, maybe he'll fall asleep and be quiet for a while. Hmm. That's a thought.

3. Awkwardness of any kind. Mmm. Awkward people, awkward product placement, awkward lesbian beverages, awkward dates, awkward silence, awkward pimple constellations... I'll take it! Saying awkward and irrelevant things? My spiritual gift. See how my natural ability feeds my creepy fetish for awkwardness? It's positively serendipitous.

4. Getting in front of wretched impatient obnoxious ignorant bitchfag drivers on a highway and slowing down when they have no way of passing me: Speaks for itself. Try to tell me you haven't done it too. I feel no remorse.

5. Anything bad that can happen to someone in Hollywood: Oh no, Paris Hilton is in jail? Nicole Richie looks like she jus crawled out of Auschwitz? Britney Spears is still alive? My confession: TMZ.com. Shameful, I know. I just want to know what crazy sexual hijinks celebrities got up to this weekend, and who might have had to miss that party in Vegas because they ran over a child south of the Valley. Heeeeeee. And now they're all spawning! Now there's a new generation of overpaid, really really ridiculously good looking trained monkeys to amuse me with their sex tape scandals and DUI's. Wouldn't it be so totally awesome if Jamie Lynn Spear's kid was cruising with, like, Nicole Richie's CelebuSpawn in her Barbie DreamYukon and got pulled over for DUI? Now THAT's comedy.

6. The Other Sister: Go out and rent it but don't you dare judge me if you do.

7. Any instructional video made to introduce adolescents to the brave new world of puberty: Periods 101, What's Happening to my Body, etc. Hormone-driven teen awkwardness? Yes, please.

8. Facebook stalking: I never saw myself as Creepy Peeping Tina, but with the advent of Facebook and it's constant information feed, it's now entirely possible for my to spy on people's conversations, know where everyone is at all times, know everything about who everyone is dating... oh my god, the great and terrible beauty of it. Skulking is an important part of life, people.

9. Physical pain: I mean, check the bullwhips at the door... but I get an insane pleasure out of chewing on a hangnail or papercutting myself in the finger. I think it's the Irish in me... I want to cause pain as well. I only wish there were English around to fling potatoes at. You walk aLONE, English!!!!

10. Playing strange music at work: I love some Bollywood and some Greek music, people. So, now, apparently, I'm a terrorist and I play terrorist music. Or so they tell me.

That's really the tiniest drop in the great big sloshy bucket of things that disturb me about... me, but I've wasted enough company time on blogs and theonion.com, and I really should get back to making stacks of paper into other stacks of paper. Hee!

An ode to a perfect art form.

Behold, I say unto ye:
How perfect is the pancake?
See how it lies upon the plate, docile, ready...
An existence created solely for the purpose of being consumed,
But retaining it's sweetness nonetheless.

How perfect is the pancake?
It comes in many forms...
Sometimes shaped like Mickey Mouse,
Sometimes sublime in it's simple oblong...ness.
Sometimes dripping with butter, sometimes sprinkled with chocolate...
It matters not to my stomach. I crave it all.

How perfect is the pancake?
Oh pancake, how I long to ravage you,
How I long to consume you
Whether you are mine, or I have to sneak nibbles off someone else's plate,
You are still perfect and fluffy.

How perfect is the pancake?
And how complete my love for it.
Selah. Let's eat.

On the much-argued gender identity of God

So, I've heard so much discourse on the sex of the Almighty, and my conclusion has always been... it doesn't matter. I mean, God is God, he or she or it or all the ambiguous abstract territory in between. Doesn't matter, sagely said I, with a nod to impress the listeners that I had delved into the deep well of my soul and my subconcious and fished out a shining gold coin of profundity.
But, you know what? I really do think it matters. The interaction of the sexes is an all-critical part of how every human lives each day of their lives... it would be irresponsible for me to shrug off such a crucial moment of understanding with a cavalier, "Doesn't matter."
I, personally, have always associated the Supreme Divine with the male sex. I was raised by Christians and always took the idea of Father and Son for granted... what the Bible and the preacher say, selah. Fair enough.
However, I got into a discussion with a friend of mine once, after we participated in a particularily awkward responsive reading at a religious institution at which we both worked over the summer. In this reading, we learned that God reconciled the church to Herself. I was a bit uncomfortable... not only is that a large leap from the conservative dogma under which I had spent the better part of my life, but... pushing for a female deity in a responsive reading treads very close to propaganda. Or is it agenda? Either way.
So, over lunch, we discussed the use of male/female articles when describing the Lord. He argued that the only reason that God has been referred to as a he for so long is because the Holy texts of the Abrahamic religions (the Bible, the Torah, the Talmud, the Qur'an) were written by men in patriarchal societies.. therefore, the idea of God as a male was because of the sexism of the patriarchal viewpoint. A very reasonable argument.
I countered that if you believe in creation as set down by the Abrahamic religions, mankind was created as a reflection of God's own character, and, thusly, the patriarchal state of the Abrahamic religions was a reflection of God's character. Not that God is strictly masculine, I think, and made the majority of civilizations on the earth to reflect that. No... I feel more as if God in the masculine sense is a reference point... a visual image for His people on earth. Besides, if the God monotheists associate with Creationism were actually meant to be percieved as female, would the vast majority of civilizations on the earth be predominantly patriarchal? I don't really see a woman God creating people and then making them "mankind". There are a few notable exceptions of truly stunning women being remarkable leaders in their time- Elizabeth I, Bouddicea, Hapshepsut, Joan of Arc... and women are ever becoming a powerful force of leadership in the world. But that's only after centuries of cultural evolution...
Does this make God a male-dominant sexist? No no no. In fact, I feel that in the Abrahamic sense of creationism, God established the ultimate checks-and-balance system. Men have traditionally been in charge of the human race. However, women have always borne the responsibility of continuing that race. Really, I think it's like when two children are splitting a sandwich and their mom makes one cut and the other choose...
Anyway, so ALL of that having been said, why does it matter?
Well, I've broken with my old church crowd and church-going ways.... I'm more of a freelance monotheist than anything else. My thoughts on the issue? I think it matters because God should be approached not because of who He is, but who you are and what you bring to the relationship. And it is a relationship. But let me not digress into THAT right now. Wait, no... maybe I will.
I believe any relationship is defined by what the people who are involved carry with them from before. The woman whose husband left her for a younger woman... the girl or boy whose father sexually abused them... the girl who was shy and ignored... whether it's good or bad, every person carries a planeload of baggage with the into every interaction they have.
However, an interaction with an abstract concept such as God is trickier... whereas you can look at me, talk to me, touch me, and know for a fact that I'm a girl, my voice is squeaky, I'm however tall, my hair is whatever color (red, as it so happens)... communicating with the Divine? Subtle and open to opinion, guesswork and a healthy dose of imagination. Do you see God in the beauty of a sunset? Do you hear Him in an encouraging word or feel Him in a hug? And on a deeper (to me) level... do you see Him as a man? Do you imagine God as a nurturing Mother? Are you incapable of worshipping a God connected to either of the sexes because of past experiences? I know girls who cannot grasp God as a father because of what their own fathers did to them. Are they wrong to reject Abrahamic principles? Or should we then start to grasp that God is not petty enough to reject those who refuse to bury themselves in tradition, and endeavor to accept God for themselves and not for everyone else? I don't believe He cares how He is approached or what He is called... I think He respects us when we try.
I reject that it doesn't matter if God is male or female, because it matters, because everyone matters, and that's why it shouldn't matter, because I don't think it matters to God. Is that what I meant to say?
I'd better quit now and go find some caffeine. Except that I gave it up. Damn it.

Existential meltdown in 5-4-3-2-AAAAH!

I wish that my tale begins with my mother, a wild Valkyrie of a woman lying, spent, on a bed of green leaves in a tautly silent forest, holding my newborn body up to the soft golden glow of a new moon and, with her last breath, whispering, "Give 'em hell, toots" before flinging me to a waiting she-wolf, to be suckled by her and raised as her own cub. I wish I could tell you that I grew up wild and strong, like my mother, with a careless sneer of a smile and the alc0hol tolerance of an entire German border village. I would love to say that I cut a wide swathe across the earth with my merrily wicked ways, and that all who looked upon me loved me and trembled... And it would give me no end of warm fuzzies to end the tragic comedy of my life story with the retelling of a glorious, Thelma-and-Louise-esque finale, or even a stirring climax of eleventh-hour redemption.

But, um, yeah... that never happened.

I think the bitterest pill to swallow is that a life is only as boring as the person living it. I'm so tired of these Bergman days! So, here is my Anti-Mundanity Manifesto, as written down by I, the Prophet of Lizlam, in my 25 and 11/12th year (may she live at least three more years, and may her name ever be synonymous with the word "fabulous"), and so let it be done:

Decree 1: I miss the days when I wasn't weakminded. So, break out the Ginko Biloba and call my brain back from the Sandals resort in Cancun! And get me a copy of Dostoyevski's The Idiot. And... Gone With the Wind. And... some Dora the Explorer. Stat.

Decree 2: Time to quit everything not keeping me alive. Coffee, sleeping pills, oral fixation anything... it's all gone. My god, I'm so healthy.

Decree 3: Write a book or achieve world peace or something useful. No, wait, I know... form a Mayan Apocalypse Suicide Cult! Ok, so we're meeting in Palenque in... 2012. Bring blankets, patio furniture, picnic food, we'll provide the purple Kool-Aid... I mean, the drinks.

Decree 4: Strike all manner of blahness from my life. Update: My blonde hair is finally gone, may it rest in peace, and has been replaced by a fiery red man of utterly Irish fabulousness. See? My manifest has taken control already!

Decree 5: Have at least one conversation per day that does not involve the person I'm talking to taking on that familiar, ever-horrible glazed-eye look. When did I become so boring? I was never obtuse as a child... or perhaps I was, and I never knew it. Either way. If I can't say anything that won't send my listeners plummeting into a comatose state of no return, then I'd better remain mute.

Ho hum. I believe that's enough decreeage for now. Especially as I'm not likely to ever invite anyone onto this blog, and thus have no reason for all this needless cathartic post-internal monologue.
A brave new world, people. Let's make it happen.