"Oh baby baby it's a wild world...."

Cat Stevens.

God Damn.

Let's not pretend to not know where this is going...oh wait this is the "internetz," and the gossamer veil of anonymity reigns supreme. Kinda. Thanks to blogs, social media, and compulsive instant gratification we've come to easily gain information on anyone anywhere. Personally, if you're one of my pals well then you know what happens when I start playing Cat Stevens on a loop. If not a pal, one google, or poking about in the facespace you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. However, if you're like me and happen to put limitations on socially acceptable internet stalking you have no idea what I'm talking about. If so...that's just grand. Swell. Gives me a reason to continue to write this silly little blog.


On the topic of Cat Stevens...it's a tall tale sign that I'm pining away for the people I love the most, they also happen to double as the people who I happen to deem as the most annoying. It's funny sort of cosmic biological joke, that the people that you love the most, parents, siblings, grandparents, whatever...these blood relations are so intricately woven into the makeup of your heart of hearts that it's impossible to not find them annoying. Get it? No? It's that whole idea of loving someone so much you find them annoying and having to live with one's parents for X amount of years well...it's easy to see how you , them, us...we're annoying. But you still love them. You still miss them and all those banal domestic eccentricities.

I miss it...I miss them.

I miss the sound of my Mother running in circles (literally) at an ungodly hour and her passive aggressive way of getting us up in the morning. She bangs pantry doors shut, whistles, doesn't turn on stove all the way so the stove does that blood curdling ticking sound so the gas is the only thing coming out, and then walks away to talk wayyyyyyyyy to loudly on the phone at 7 am! I miss it.

I miss my Dad's paranoia. I do. I miss the look of utter suspicion and indignity he give my brother and I when ever he catches us speaking English. He assumes that whenever it looks like we're having a deep conversation, IT HAS TO BE ABOUT HIM. NEGATIVELY ABOUT HIM! It's not. But he thinks so. I miss that craziness. 

I miss my Brother's know it all attitude. He's 18...he has no idea. I like watching him figure it all out and getting it all wrong. I miss that. Even his gross "mustache."

I miss my Grandmother's sly way to giving me a "jesus" talk. She fears me too progressive and masculine that my soul just may be in jeopardy! It's not. My soul is fine. Although, I love her for being so worried for it.

I'm the independent sort. It's not like I don't miss them when it's not the holiday season, it's just my absence from them is more apparent during this time of year. I won't be able to go home this Christmas or New Years. In fact this is the first time I'm away for such major holiday's. I know...in a functional family such a situation would be terrible, but not as depressing. I come from a classically dysfunctional Hispanic family... as crazy as we all are we're a tightly knit group of crazy.

A few weeks ago I got off the Harvard stop in Cambridge. As I made my way up the escalator to be at street level to meet a someone at Urban..I passed this little Chinese looking lady playing/singing "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano.  This is going to read as terribly cheesy (as if it wasn't already), but fuck...I teared up. That's my favorite Christmas song. It just hit me all at once. No Rosca de Reyes. No aunts and uncles prodding me for information that really is none of their business. No cousins to get incredibly drunk with as we try to pay attention to our mothers recite something that mimics cult like chanting at the feet of one of family members JUMBO sized nativity scene. No kissing a plastic baby  jesus at midnight. No getting yelled at that doing do is like praising a false idol and hence a BIG TIME sin against their suddenly sprung  Catholicism. No wayy to much fun, churros, tamales, bunelos, queso fresco, rosca, frijoles de la hoya, salsa casera, tequila with tio pancho, no fixin' white russian's for the older ladies of the family, no...nothing.

Sigh. So I'm listening to Cat Stevens. It reminds me a lot of my Dad...and then it just snowballs. I'm not helping myself, I know.  Also, UM, soooo not funny whoever is pulling the strings of life! I've noticed this really strange pattern of having the charlie brown christmas song playing whenever I'm tired at work or when I get bad news of some sort. No really...it's been happening. Repeatedly.

It's silly to feel this way about a holiday...I know. I just love Christmas and my family. It's time like these I realize I haven't really grown up at all. It's gonna be rough Friday to Saturday. I think I've done a good job at hiding just how terribly I feel for not being present for the celebrations at home. I think? Maybe? Meh.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

....yep...just think about this and try not to laugh.

Flicking Your Switch! EVERYBODY DO THE ROBOT!

"923 816, is the sound of that flicking your switch..."

-Ladytron

So there's been this subtle theme throughout my life this past week. It's sort of strange how sometimes undeniably so there are patterns or fleeting threads of randomness in our lives. Sometimes we pick up on it, other times not so much. I'm usually oblivious when it comes to other people and their patterns, but I'm pretty keen on internalization and can tell when a particular pattern is developing within my own weird little world.

I'm getting to a point...promise. This past week, even up to the latest moments of me rambling on this my humble blog...the pattern continues. Robots. Robots abound.

Sound crazy? Probably, but hey I don't know why they have been popping in and out of my life as of late. I turn on my itunes to the Dj option. First song it plays is the monotone electronic infused voices of Ladytron. The song, "Flicking your switch." Then I fall asleep yesterday to the sweet sweet come sterile on's of "Gigolo Joe."

Jude Law as "Gigolo Joe," aka....SEX ROBOT!

                                                


Now as I'm all for the invention of sex robots, that's not my point here. He's just an aspect of the bigger theme. So the count thus far becomes 2 robotic renderings that have have popped up this week. The next....KEVIN! FROM SAVED BY THE BELL!

    "Kevin" Screech's robot on Saved by the Bell!

                                   
On Friday early morning before going into work I turn on the t.v. and Saved by the Bell comes on. My love for the mousse laden teen sitcom pretty much tracker beamed me into watching it. It was the episode where the gang forgets, but ultimately celebrates Screech's birthday in Belding's office. Anyway, in that episode we are introduced to the short lived but much loved (BY ME!) character Kevin. Screech's robot/friend. Um....if there is a way for me to have a robot pal I'd like to hear it VERY MUCH! Kevin was awesome, he could crack jokes, had excellent timing, and told time! It's was like having a blackberry and your best friend all rolled into one!  So that's robot number 3 that's cropped up in my life.

Number 4 on the list is.....

"Johnny 5" From the movie Short Circuit

 

So that very Friday I get into this conversation with one of my co-workers about Kevin and how cool it is and then he brings up...JOHNNY 5! J-Cinco as I like to call him is from the movie Short Circuit about this military robot that get's struck by lighting and has this massive transformation for the better! Many touching hi-jinks ensue, I suggest you watch it if you haven't. So on that note I come to my 5th robot reference!

"WALL-E" from er...Wall-e

 

 

Wall-e. I was walking to the T on my way from Cambridge back home before work on Saturday morning and I walked past this little girl pretty much chanting, "WALL-E WALL-E WALL-E WALL-E!" Another cinematic robot reference. Then I realized that Wall-e looks a lot like Johnny 5, long lost brother's maybe? Perhaps. I think the movie Wall-e has been the only movie besides "Simon Birch" that has blatantly made me cry. God-damned robot's in love...just warms the heart ya know? So that's it...robots. Not sure if this is a higher cosmic sign for something, but what I do know is that I've noticed the signs. Robots. Lot's of them. Random.

I do wish these lovely t.v./movie robot's would exist. That would be pretty neat....Gigolo Joe I'm looking in your direction! I keed I keed!

The End.

Insomnia Youtubing

...that last one made me sleepy....finally. Obviously, I was feeling nostalgic.

"We are all in the gutter , but some of us are looking up at the stars."

Oscar Wilde. One hep cat.

Is this going to be an ode to Oscar? No. Just that I've been for one reason or another recently been in the subject of the absurd. A life long pursuit I assure anyone. One of which takes course within the strange undulating confines of sexuality and violence. Granted, it's most of my friends who tend to think me of the constant provender of dark and gross humor. However, I got to wondering why that is. Why is it that I'm so drawn to the absurd, why am I so fascinated with the strange, aloof, and usually unsavory? I grew up perfectly normal, with exception of me thinking I was an alien, looking up pictures of homicides on dial up aol during my childhood thinking I was going to be a real life multi-lingual Dana Scully, and my often rampant imagination. Other than that...I was perfectly normal. I loved kittens, puppies, and even for a while was a totally enamored with fringe Teen heartthrobs. Normal. Then how is it that I find myself laughing at gore? Find the strangest taboo subjects ones I need to obsessively research...the answer? I dunno. I've only just recently began to question it. Keep in mind it's nearly 5:30 am and I haven't been to sleep since yesterday.

Insomnia as of late has been...well....cruel. I read somewhere that high signs of the effects of insomnia is short term memory loss (check), palpitations (check), and sometimes nausea (check check check...blech). I'm thinking I probably have asked myself this questions as I'm so keen on introspection, but I probably just forgot. I've been forgetting lots of things. However, I'm also remembering the strangest most darling things ever as if my own noggin is replacing info with info long forgotten. It's kinda neat. One of which is the perverse. How utterly nonsexual "perversion" is...at least to me.  That my curiosity of why people find it sexual is really what drives me to find out the weirdest things. For example, on one of my late night insomnia nights (yesterday, maybe. or tuesday last week) I was watching this HBO special called, "PORNUCOPIA." Now before anyone goes about thinking I'm some sex fiend or whatever, it was a documentary on the porn industry. Did you know that average career for a porn starlet is about 18 months? Shorter if your not open to some sort of fetish play! It's a multi-billion dollar business! So as I was learning about the business of porn, I randomly remember my first introduction to it.

I think I was in 4th grade and I had done the ever celebrated song and dance to be let out of my classroom and out to the bathroom. I attended a private Catholic coed grade school . Boys in my eyes at that time served only as an annoyance and would never hold a candle to my beloved Devon Sawa (who as it turns out is a wife beater, I bet BOP magazine didn't see that coming). I meandered to the one girls bathroom on the floor. It was strictly to be used for the high elementary grades and as a 4th grader I exercised my right to the fullest when it came to that bathroom. I had played bloody marry in that bathroom and even went in there to hide when from certain teachers and students should the mood strike me. However this one time, as I finished up buttoning my plaid jumper I noticed a magazine pined to the back side of a toilet seat in the stall next to mine. I bent down, fished it out, only to drop it as soon as I saw what was on the cover. It was a Penthouse magazine. I don't remember who was on the cover, but I do remember kicking it open. I wasn't so much scared of what I saw, more like delightfully confused. Everyone in it was so ugly looking to me. So oddly put together. Which was probably right on the money. The page I had kicked open with my scuffed white keds was of this lady with a bad 90's perm and 70's pubes. She was smiling, but not really. It felt so sad.

After that, I hid the magazine right where I had found it. I carefully slinked back into the classroom, I had asked my a friend (a girl) to follow me to the bathroom. I took her to the magazine and asked if this was something we needed to tell our teacher about. She suddenly got so scandalized and explained to me that it was porn that all women when in adulthood would look like that. She picked up the magazine and examined it in a fashion  so opposite to mine. She left and so recess came and I got other kids to look at it. Everyone's reaction was so akin to my friends and not to mine. Fascinating. Why did they get so hot and bothered by it? Why was that relating to something to be coveted when it was so odd to me? I think that's when it all started. I just wanna get it. Porn presently seems to be a caricature of sex. Sometimes it's so ridiculous you have to laugh! I find real people, sexy enough. It could be the way they smile, say the word "Soft," or even the extent of intellectual prowess...that's hot to me. Not porn. It's just kinda silly. So anyway, my point is I've only recently asked myself this question. Only recently have I began to trace it back to people's reactions as opposed to mine as a source of why it is I find certain things to enticing to research for funsies.

Another reason could be a healthy skewed view of death and humanity. Everyone has one. It's really just a coping mechanism that some physiologists and anthropologists attest is due to the survival drive. I think I owe that to my dad. I recently had the best 5 minute conversation with the old man. It went like this:

Me: Dad? I finally got around to watching The Walking Dead...right you're the one who told me to watch it?
Dad: YA! ARE YOU WATCHING IT!? IT'S ON RIGHT NOW!? OOOOOH DID YOU SEE THE GUY GET AXE PICKED IN THE FACE!?
ME: AND SKULL CHUNKS FLEW EVERYWHERE AND THEN THAT LADY AXED HER BASTARD HUSBAND IN THE FACE UNTIL THERE WAS NO MORE FACE!?
DAD:PUES SI! (translations, "hell yes")
BOTH: WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! So crazy!
Dad: You know I love stuff like that! I love zombies, and gory violent movies! Guts everywhere! Sunday is my night for that. First I watch this, then I watch Dexter, then I watch Boardwalk Empire...oooh Did you see that guy that got his knee cap blown off!?
Me: I  WATCH ALL THOSE SHOWS IN EXACTLY THAT ORDER! AND YES I DID, AND THEN THE CRAZY DETECTIVE GUY SELF- FLAGELLATION!? 
BOTH: WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! AWESOME!
Me: Is mom giving you a hard time for watching stuff like that? She always gave  me a hard time.
Dad: Ya. She's steering clear from the living room and watching her Virgin Mary program in the kitchen.
Me: Boring.
Dad: I know. Oh the Zombie show is back on! We can catch up tomorrow and have more zombie talk.
Me: Dad?
Dad: Ya?
Me: I love you.
Dad: Me too mi hija...WHOA THAT ONE ZOMBIE JUST TORE THROUGH THAT ONE GUY'S GUT!!
Me: GOTTA GO WATCH THAT!

Best conversation, ever. But see what I mean, the absurd is funny. In comparison to the extreme my Mother poses...well it makes it all the more funny. I dunno...just silly things I've been thinking of in my sleep deprived noddle. This probably doesn't make any sense. Oh well. Sigh...I miss the weekend already.

***MAKE NOTE DEAR READER I WROTE THIS IN A STATE OF INSOMNIA...I DIDN'T EDIT SO IT MIGHT ALL READ LIKE JIBBERISH.***

Never Trust Birds

So, the sweet masterpiece that you see to your right dear reader is an entity of my creation. Probably not good enough to hang at the MFA, but great to illustrate my point as mention in a prior blog entry. Granted, I did promise to illustrate a certain unsavory circumstance that I found myself in as told through puppetry, but.....I'm lazy and the travel time to get the puppets I wish to cast, well...that just takes an effort I seem to be lacking of a late. Take the time to truely digest my creation. This thought processes really did stem from actual events. Events that prompted me to question what a stranger would do with beloved fantasy litterary fodder. Before I actually go ahead and spill th beans I thought it best to leave the meat of it open to suggestion. Just makes the story better.

I told you so.

Justin Bieber Found To Be Cleverly Disguised 51-Year-Old Pedophile

There's no coast of Nebraska

I really worry about the potential of SAD, you know Seasonal Affective Disorder. As of now, right outside my single dingy bespectacled window...SUNLIGHT! Avast dearest and fair fall! It's beautiful out. The greens are green, the yellow's yellow, and the reds...OH! OH! The reds...are red, but in a red that you only see in your dreams. Beautiful. It won't last. The New England weather is like living outside your means. Nice, until you look at your bank account. Negative space. Grey. For months and months. In efforts to off set said condition that seems to plague those of us who are tender of heart I've decided to compile a list of things to keep my occupied. Along with the supplementary free basing of Vitamin B and D! Take your vitamin's folks!  Here's the list:

1. Take up knitting
2. Take up the Kalimba and become the next Keith Moon on it. Which considering what a kalimba is...hahahaha.
3. Try my hand at a winter sport, snowboarding. Anyone wanna help with that one?
4. Keep up with this blog
5. Learn to embrace the harsh bitchattude of the New England cold, as in take walks when it's bitter outside
6. Try my hand at illustrating or dramatizing various strange things that happen to me (more on that later)
7. 


Seven I've left blank should anything occur to me. On the matter of number six. I'm not sure if there's some cosmic force that predispositions certain people to encounter lives strange people and circumstance. I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "Hey everyone comes across the strange in their life time! Silly pants, stop trying to make yourself feel unique." Well my darling naysayer ass hat...after sharing many stories with people, they seem to be of the consensus that I do in fact tend to have a flux in the amount of strange things I attract. My case in point, what happened to me yesterday. Now as per certain discretionary clauses (No really...not kidding, don't wanna get sued) I can't exactly name where I was or who was exactly was involved. However, I can through illustration as long as I make it ambiguous. What's more cute and ambiguous than puppets!? So for my next blog I'll share with you that strange occurrence. Which is really more funny to me than strange. Er...at this point it's hard for me to note anything as strange, it's mostly other people that let me know how abnormal certain things I experience are. Be on the lookout for what I'd like to title, "Oh Puppetry, Witches, and Hookers."

Til then, lookie this! Heh...so good.  For those of you who suffer from chronic awkwardness as I have since birth:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/awkward-situation-survival-guide.html

Lizards don't have belly buttons.

This is my first blog post. 

I feel like I should report something fantastic or something exceptionally revealing about myself. I considered  what that might be for a long time and decided that that wouldn't be something I would exactly want to read, should I be the one random person to stumble upon my blog. I mean if I give it all away what else is there to keep anyone interested in my humble blog? For example, if I was some secret serial killer masquerading under the guise of a seemingly normal albeit quirky girl, but after midnight I prowl the streets to methodically kill and stuff those who's traits included lazy eyes and a propensity to use spray tans and then went about telling everyone about it while wearing the skin of one of my orangey victims...I'm not much of a serial killer now am I? So I wouldn't be much of a blogger if I just I started posted my inner workings. Not that I really know what those are.

Hmmm...just for posterity,not that I am one. A serial killer. It's also come to my attention that my dark humor may put off some folks. The circumstance causes me to giggle lightly. Mostly on account of my mother reading this. She's so easily disturbed. So I have an off kilter humor...pfft. I tend to easily think of the most terrible things, a nice example being when I saw a child with a super warm looking knit hat. My over active imagination geared up a vision of me pushing the child over and stealing the hat, I run away of course leaving both child and parents in shocked oblivion. Or when bikers whiz along too closely next to you on sidewalks, I usually imagine what would happen if I just pushed them over? Hahahaha or when people come to you with all the pregnant exhaustion of  domestic troubles and say, "Just kill me now." What if you did!? What if when they said that, you just up and stabbed them and said, "Well you just said..." Tee hee. Most people wouldn't find that funny so I temper my humor depending on who I'm with. 

Yesterday in class this man came in to speak to us Grad students about the importance of music in the elementary classroom. A notion I fully support and hope to one day actually do.  He described himself as a "child of the 60's." He went on to play folkie types of song, which I did enjoy. While he had us learn a song about belly buttons (WHICH IS AWESOME AND I'LL POST ON HERE SOON ENOUGH!) I wondered about the validity of his past statement of being a child of the 60's. Was he merely born in the 60's? If he did then he didn't really experience the 60's...he was an infant. What he might of experienced was the afterbirth of it in the 70's. Maybe he was just old enough to remember the 60's,? Perhaps he was10 at it's last throes of hippidom? If so, then he probably  experienced his parents freedom, but it wasn't solely his. Or maybe he really was old enough then to experience the chaos and drug addled beauty of the era.? I couldn't imagination him as a young man, only as he was now. An aging bearded man with a portly hard looking belly with weather beaten skin, but with all the aura of barney the dinosaur. Then I imagined Hippie Man trying his hand at free love on top of some tiny mewing hippie gal, and then I got too grossed out and stopped. 

My imagination tends to be on this constant flux of random tangents.

I recently learned of bot flies. Creatures I wish never to encounter. I've been sharing this with everyone because it's honestly a concern of mine. I hope no one ever has to do this or have this done to them...enjoy:

I've posted the video of the hell spawn right after this post.

The Bot fly.