IDQotM--Little Bird

Conceptually, this is my favorite Annie Lennox video. The whole cavalcade of personae pushing and shoving for stage time just tickles me. Plus there's some high quality drag work here. It's not among my favorite songs from the Diva album, but it's fun.

Crack and Cack

From Spiegel online. Click the link if you want to see the picture.

"Henry's whip" is the house speciality at Beijing's Guolizhuang restaurant. It's
a sheep's penis on a stick covered in mayonnaise, sweet cheese, served on a bed
of lettuce.

MMMMM Penis on a stick....seriously...this dish seems like a whole series of culinary cum genital puns...somehow...except the lettuce.

~*~

And from WBZTV Boston:

"Fluffy," a 45-pound alligator snapping turtle, is now living
there on loan to the aquarium's "Killer Instincts" exhibit. Before coming to Boston, Fluffy
actually belonged to a drug dealer in New York who used the turtle to guard his
stash. The aquarium told WBZ this is actually becoming more and more common.

IDQotM--There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)

Live in 1999 with Stevie Wonder.

I've always loved the descant.

Diva

My essay on Annie Lennox will be appearing in Michael Montlack's anthology Diva Complex. It's set for a spring '09 release date from University of Wisconsin Press. I think there's going to be a fabulous roster of contributors.

Coulda Shoulda Woulda

The bleeding hearts' first blooms

Off today and there was so much I was going to do: weed out some beds and get them prepped for new plantings, get a haircut, run to the store and grab some groceries for a proper home-cooked dinner. But--I slept until after 1:3o, canceled it all and just schlepped around the house. I cleared a few things from the flower bed nearest the front door. There's always next week.

Not a total waste though, I worked on poems and put together another submission packet to mail out tomorrow. Flipped through a few books and just relaxed. I haven't even bothered to shower yet.

Like 13

Awkward today. Like my legs are too long, my arms are too long, and all my joints are poorly articulated. Usually I feel like I'm centered in my torso, knotted and tense as it is. Today though, I feel like I'm all extremity--like I'm reaching for a cup but not really sure where my hand is in relation to my body or any fixed point around me. It is not entirely unpleasant.

IDQotM--Would I Lie to You 2000

Two Lips and Happy

I'm going to hesitate before I declare it truly springy here. Sure it was 80 today and sunny and clear and lovely. But that doesn't insure it'll stay that way. Snows in April are not uncommon. But for now it's beautiful. Windows wide open and I don't even mind the twittering birds.

The chartreuse leaved lungwort is coming up in little clumps, so my dividing and transplanting last year apparently did no damage. The purple butterfly bush is finally on its way to being a full-bore shrub. No cutting it back to the ground this year, old growth from last year is budding. Things I don't even remember planting last year are coming up and I can't find my little diagrams to help me remember.

I'm not usually a fan of either: a) tulips once they're out of the bud stage or b) yellow flowers, but these I got last year on clearance for .25 a four pack and bedded are surprisingly jaunty. I think it's the little blush of pinky red

IDQotM: I Need a Man

qarrtsiluni

My poem "Something Got Inside" is up today at qarrtsiluni.

Thanks to Dave for advice regarding punctuation and for cleaning up the audio.

More thanks to Brent and Ken for giving the poem a home.

Especial thanks to Maggie Anderson, Jan Beatty, and Irene McKinney for input and advice on an earlier draft. I also can't forget to thank Aaron for his help and advice when I was sick of the poem and didn't know what to do with it.

Leftovers

Porkchop was back tonight. But not too talkative. I was, I admit, a little bummed.

~*~

Still revising poems, thinking about how all this stuff fits together. My big focii for this round: space, image, sound. Order may vary, products may settle during shipment.

~*~

Tomorrow night, tonight?, I head to Baltimore for a few days with Brian. It'll be nice to get away. Ususally, I go with no agenda--but there's a few things I definitely want to do. The main thing? I want to grab a meal at Cafe Hon. I never knew it existed til B. told me earlier this year. It's now an obsession.

No...Really?

You know it's gonna be a long night when the first person you talk to is a woman who says :
"Hi. I'm Pork Chop. How you doin' this evenin'?"

Afterglow

Yesterday was a good good day on all fronts. Warm and sunny and springy.

Got my Amazon order-- Jan Beatty's new book Red Sugar is marvelous. Just knock you back on your heels good. Also got the new REM album, Accelerate. Much better to me than their last couple of albums. I love "I'm Gonna DJ." Also the new Gnarls Barkley. I'm saving that one to listen to when I roadtrip to Baltimore at the end of the week.

In honor of NaPoWrithe Month, I revised an essay and some poems. I'm not really generating new material. I did enough of that at the end of last year into the beginning of this year. I'm just trying to work every day on old stuff and see how it fits.

~*~

It was especially good yesterday because I got to spend time with Aaron and Irene. Seeing Aaron twice in the same year is like some extra bonus karma. Seeing Irene is always delightful. The luxury of talking about poems and life and all that stuff for several hours in her sunny front room is just simply perfect.

Driving home in the afternoon I was thinking about the fact that I'm genuinely lucky. The most important people in my life have been part of my life for about 15 years. There's a sort of luxury in that--the long abiding affection, the sense of knowing someone, the surprise and pleasure at seeing them grow into themselves.

Ne Plus Ultra--IDQotM: Annie Lennox

Out of all the Inner Drag Queens--she's the supreme. Eurythmics' "Missionary Man."

Bring My Happy Back Again

This song has been knocking around in my head this week. I always loved REM's UP album, especially this track. Back when I did a lot of karaoke, I'd look for it in the song lists--unsurprisingly, I never found it. Ah, what might have been.

The Week that Was

Oy. Vey. Shmir.

Here's a quick recap of the week:

Monday: Bad mail day. Rejection packets. Completed application for a summer retreat went into the mail.

Tuesday: Normalish day off. Fletcher brought a large mole-like thing to the welcome mat. Mucked out the beds a little bit. Worked on revisions. Attempted to track my Amazon.com order.

Wednesday: Got to work, discovered there had been a drug bust in the hotel the day before. Arrests in the parking lot. Attempts to escape, then the dumbass local criminals return only to be arrested in and near the parking lot. Stupid employee fired. Discover that my schedule for the rest of the week is changed and that goes double for the rest of the month.

Thursday: Training new person. INSANITY from the get-go. I didn't stop moving for the first three hours. The rest of the time was just sort of slow and off-kilter. I like her though. She repeatedly called someone I loathe a douchebag. I never feel closer to someone than when we hate the same people. Missed a poetry reading on campus that I'd been looking forward to for a couple of weeks. Repeatedly sang the "Numa Numa" song because of the previous night's South Park episode. Hotel drug bust hits the local media: tv and print. Yay.

Friday: Slept til after 1 pm. Loved it. Played a little with the plants outside. The fire red tulips are blooming like crazy and I snipped a few daffodils to put in an old jelly jar on my desk. I can't remember what half of the plants coming up are right now or when certain ones come up again. I fear I killed several last year when I tried separating and transplanting. Napped a bit after dinner.

Next week looks better. There are several things I'm anticipating. But we'll just have to see how that goes.

Lung(wort) Transplant