Tourists are a strange breed. They may be perfectly normal human beings at home, but once they step foot in Vegas, they become something else... something... inhuman.

Case in point. As Tony and I wandered through the Venetian shops on Saturday (really, there wasn't anything else to do), we came upon one weird little sight. In the middle of an open area, surrounded by benches and atop a pedestal strewn with dollar bills, stood a living statue - one of the Venetian's "shoppertainers." No, no, no... that's not the brain-twisting part. After all, we see them there all the time: these men and women drowning in Roman, standing robes perfectly and eerily motionless.



No, what was strange were the tourists who had gathered around him on the benches and walkways. They, too, remained motionless, staring, seemingly numb to any sensory input around him. They sat transfixed. They stood mesmerized, as though they simply could not believe this man could stand still for so long.

My guess: the Venetian pumps a valium/prozac cocktail into their air ducts.
No other way to explain it.

Well, until you realize that tourists are funky little monkeys.

Damnit, Jenni. Move back.

{or}

I'm now accepting applications for people who want to take me bowling.

Boredom. Is a cancer.

That's it.
Tonight is officially the fourth night in a row that I've laid awake worrying about work.
I need a new job/winning lottery ticket/rediscovered, fabulously wealthy old relative.

Seriously.

We don't get rain often in Vegas, but when we do, we do it right.

If any poem were worth reading to stir some angry blood against the bonds of capitalism and plutocracy...
Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Mask of Anarchy

'Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold -

'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -

'Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

At my parents' house, I fell into the couch and waited for the usual dinner menu suggestions that parents are always so eager to feed their flown-away children when they come hobbling back after a hard day at work or college.

Instead, I heard...

"Ah, all grown up. Look at what work will do to ya." My mother said it with a smile and the soft pseudo-sarcasm rich in nearly every word she says to me.

And it hit me, not that she was right and that damn, growing up sure does suck monkey balls, but that her idea of adulthood was one of accepted slavery, this never-ending 9 to 5, or in her case 5 to 3, this life where living is coming home to a TV that will coddle and soothe and numb and blind you if only to forget about how hard and long was your day at work.

"No," I said, finally, my stomach growling with annoyed abandonment issues. "I'm not grown up, don't think I ever will be."

I didn't mean maturity. I didn't mean age. I meant it the way she meant it. I responded in kind, in the way she would understand. No, I would never be her version of grown up. I would never painlessly accept defeat and welcome suburban autonomy into my slowly hardening heart. I would never accept "Everybody Loves Raymond" as an escape or Fox News as a fair and balanced way to catch up on all I missed while I was earning my "oh-so-reasonable" $12.00 an hour. I would never come home after ten hours of selling my soul and act as though nothing had happened while I numbly finger the remote.

I just wouldn't.

"It'll happen sooner or later," she said before finally going on to the expected, "Can I make you anything to eat? Are you hungry?"

But her "sooner or later" still echoed through my eardrums like a sad gong on a daytime game show. Is it true? Will it happen with time? Will I be beaten into submission just as she had, just as my father had, just as each one of my relative's has been?

At times I feel it now. I feel the boredom and the commonplace just brewing in my chest waiting to come shooting out through my throat in the form of, "Let's just stay in and watch TV." It scares me, and I choke it back. But I'm afraid there'll come a time when I can hold it back no longer, and it will come inevitably, like war, to tear down the ruins of my mind.

I only hope when it does that I'll be prepared to fight.

Ahem, dream request.

Let's see... for tonight... I think I'll have an appetizer of political intrigue, followed swiftly by a basket of slapstick clown action (and not the scary kind, either, I mean it). After that, I think I'd like to try some of that resurfacing of repressed memories, and then, if it's possible, move on to a main course of sexual misadventure.

Oh oh... and if we could finish up with a small helping of lucid character interaction, that'd be great.

Thanks...

Mmm mmm, time for sleep.

9 hours. 9 hours. 7.5 hours.
In a row.

I know why Americans are more homicidal than any other country:
It's because our souls have been worked into oblivion.

More than any other industrialized country, America's culture of puritan self-enslaving work ethic has created a system where people have so little time to think or feel or live, just to come home with a paycheck that barely gets them from month to month. And many (millions) wouldn't even be able to see a doctor for fatigue from it all due to lack of health insurance.

When I was in grade school, I gladly recited the pledge of allegiance hand to heart every day.
But that was before I knew what a shitty country this is.

And now I have to go get ready for work.

It's at the end of August in Las Vegas when you start to believe that it will never get cool outside again.

Never.

It just can't be possible.

Can it?

Let's take a ride, shall we? Time for another...
Psychomusical Mood Of The Moment

Damien Rice - Volcano
"Just another phase of finding what I really need..."
Maybe it comes with feeling so disconnected from myself, this feeling that part of me is too far gone to see. But this song feels more real to me than all the tangible things I've touched in the last 24 hours. And when I find out why, maybe I'll tell you.

Smashing Pumpkins - Bodies
"...in the darkness of my dreams, in the spaces in between us..."
Cold air 1AMs, windows down and volume high, leaving behind yet another night, wasted on things too wasteful to give credit.

Bright Eyes - Something Vague
"And I hang like a star, fucking glow in the dark..."
When I was five, I believed the fireworks were all for me. Things change.

The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
"They will see us waving from such great heights. 'Come down now,' they'll say. But everything looks perfect from far away..."
There are days when it seems I can't get far enough away to make anything look perfect. But last night, in a single moment of solitude on the road, I passed the moon slung low in the sky, and this song was there to guide me home. And now, if only for fulfillment...

My God. There are people out there driving cars who were born in 1987.

(shakes head)

That boggles me. Entirely.

There's something in the way a bird can flap its wings seamlessly in time with the song on your car radio...

Plato would laugh if he could see us now,
sitting in this cave that we call civilized society,
staring at the shadows on our great big stony wall.

Here and there we point and smile,
as though our sight
could really see
what's really there
what's really real.

But our House is just the echo
of some old paper in a case,
wrapped around money,
deep inside the pockets
of old and empty men.

And Plato would laugh if he could see just how
we cower and obey and allow it all,
allow it to keep flowing on,
this parade of right-like shadow things.

Until few of us will dare to look
and peer just over shoulders hunched,
to see if what we've seen so far is all there is to see...

When blindingly the light comes through,
we squint and blink and finally know
that what we've seen isn't it at all.

But how do we, then, turning back,
tell the others left inside
to leave their wall of twilight lies,
open their eyes,
and make them see
what's really there,
what's really real?

'Until' and 'when' are shining words
too bright for us to see,
still squinting, still blinking, still shielding our eyes.

How Plato's laugh will echo through
our echoes of reality
as year by year we lose the drive
to turn around and be alive,
as year by year we watch our show
on our great big stony wall.

Flightless but feisty

The penguins at the St. Louis Zoo have not yet begun to fight. Their first targets: passing zoo patrons.

I handed him the page and lost all interest, like dropping one toy to run to another. I can do that, you see. I come specially prepared for the task. He looked at me as though he didn’t know. Liar, I thought.

“It happens,” I shrugged.
But his eyes kept wavering, falling over words they didn’t understand.

The concrete pushed back at my feet. I would fall through the ground every time he looked at me with that fear.

“Yeah, well, okay… I should go.”

No less loquacious than I was repentant, I turned my attention to a cloud passing before the sun that looked a bit like tire-beaten cat.

Will she or won't she?
We must consult the Magic Eight Ball!

As always... the following is an actual conversation with an actual magic eight ball
and may be an actual waste of time.

Jenny: How's it goin' there, MEB?
MEB: My reply is no.
Jenny: That bad, huh?
MEB: Concentrate and ask again.
Jenny: Actually I had more important questions to ask.
MEB: My reply is no.
Jenny: Well that's kind of harsh. Don't you think I could actually have something important to say for once?
MEB: Better not tell you now.
Jenny: Ha ha. Back to my questions... Should I drag myself to work tomorrow?
MEB: Yes, definitely.
Jenny: You really don't think it would be alright for me to call in sick?
MEB: Reply hazy, try again.
Jenny: (Sigh) You never give me the right answer to that question.
MEB: It is certain.
Jenny: You're a sadistic little bastard. ...Anyway, more importantly... Will tomorrow fly by smoothly?
MEB: Concentrate and ask again.
Jenny: Meh. Just tell me... Will I at least get some sleep tonight?
MEB: It is decidedly so.
Jenny: Well that's good. One more thing: Moldy grapes, toxic?
MEB: As I see it, yes.
Jenny: That's what I was afraid of.

Actual extracts from a Home Economics Textbook, printed in the early 1960’s:

"Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed. Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch-up your make up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking.

He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little upbeat and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it....

Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first; remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours."

"...his topics of conversation are more important than yours."
What the hell?

At once hilarious and disturbing, this advice makes me appreciate being born at the end of the 20th century rather than in the middle of it, mostly because I probably would have had to kill my husband had I been expected to follow this regime of submission. ...And I really don't think I'm suited for prison life.

.words scribbled to the unnamed.

I feel real when I think about you, in the honest hours of the morning and the treacherous times in the dark. You come in minute films passing grainily behind my eyes, and I see you when you were at your best, when you glowed in the dark and I held you above my head. Remember the blankets sewn with grass? Remember the hours we wasted on our hunger? Remember the time we looked straight at each other and lied? I do. And when I think of it… the time, the masochistic decisions, the fumbling toward realities we never wanted to believe… when I think of you, I feel older and I smile without using my lips.

Today is sliding through my hands like so much water, stagnating and useless.
Keep me from falling. You may just be able to...

Pointless day, pointless test-taking.
Accurate, nonetheless...
I mean, damn.

Conscious self	Overall self

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Loving the little things #4:



Augusts... come and gone.

Inside, the night was ending. Malibu and Smirnoff bottles lay stacked precariously in a too-small trashcan, and the bathroom light coming through the cracked door cast the bedroom in seedy hotel room shadows.

But she stood outside, watching the sky fall by the drop. Every few seconds, one would slap against her cheek, and her eyes would wince involuntarily. The breeze picked up, as though trying to keep a schedule, pushing strands of wavy air-dried hair into the raindrops beside her pale lips.

“This is just perfect,” she thought, in the hopelessly romantic places in her mind, still swimming with what she told herself was a good time.

God bless the Daily Show.

"The President questions the President. Republicans around the world go 'Whaaaaa?'"

I think perhaps the best thing about this clip is the sound of the audience reacting in the background. Bush's 180 degree turns in policy and promises seems to be truly shocking to them. Go figure...

Being one of the 41 million who would have to suck it up and perform surgery on myself if I were to sever a limb in a car accident, the news that US doctors are pushing for hard for a Canda-style national health insurance plan comes as a welcome beacon of hope.

The group says problems such as waiting lines, causing problems in Canada, could be avoided by maintaining the same proportionate amount of spending on health care that the U.S. now lavishes on its inefficient and unequal private system.

"If (Canadians) were to put the same amount of money as we do into their systems, there would be no waits," says Dr. Marcia Angell. "For them, the problem is not the system; it's the money. For us, it's not the money; it's the system."

Now... whether or not the legislature can shake the bonds of the private insurance lobbies and pharmaceutical compaines is another story entirely... Until then, I've got my uninsured little fingers crossed.

if you want me, i'll be in the next room.
just get up and ask...

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"
-TS Eliot, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock-

I've known it for years, and for years it's been in my top five favorite poems of all time... but it's not until the passing of 600 TV nights, 600 "What do you want to do"s, 600 early bed times, that I finally come to realize that I am J. Alfred Prufrock.

Some of us are amazing only in the depths of our mediocrity. And I am one, swimming in a great sea of just-too-warm blankets under an eternally 1:00pm sky.

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool."

What is it about our cars that comes to us in emotions too strong for any other inanimate objects? We ooh and we ahh and polish and primp these little boxes of metal and cloth that somehow become pieces of ourselves. I'd like to think it has to do more with nostalgia than social posturing, but that may only be me. After all, my car is a healthy nine years old, in dirt-covered blue-green, upholstery tearing just so. And you couldn't even use it to race a Gremlin, but it gets me from here to there. None of that matters.



I have a friend who transports the "soul" of her car from one to the next whenever she buys a new one. "Mojo's soul is once again packed up, leaving his jolly white round uninspired ass to become sexy, blue, and new once again," she said after trading in her VW New Beetle for a VW GTI. At first, I thought it was just silly anthropomorphizing, but now that I think about it, a car's "soul" is really all that matters. All the baggage, the memories, the experiments and exploits.... especially the exploits. These are the things that make cars more than steel boxes on wheels.

The reason we love our cars shouldn't be in the horsepower, the leather, or the 5.5 liter gizmabobs we installed last month. It should lie in the late night spontaneous trips to other states that don't pan out, but you have fun getting there anyway. It should be in the fast food runs with friends that end at empty lakeside parks with swings. It should be in blasting those stock speakers until they can blast no more. And it should be about a passenger seat someone can settle into and smiling say, "Let's go."

So I had this vision. And you understood, without asking, like I wanted and had hoped. You were here but not too close, not too close to feel more sarcastic than real. Because love can make even the tightest lips crack. It’s all so absurd. But this vision I had, was more real than even that. Just a fantasy. Just a lark. Just a whimsical joke. That was everything for 4.2 seconds, that was everything in the time it takes to fold your arms.

There should be a law against how quickly weekends pass.

An open letter to Cedar City, Utah:

Hey there, Cedar City.

First things first, if you plan on calling yourself "Festival City USA," maybe you should try developing festival accommodations. There's a little thing called supply and demand. People demand hotel rooms; you supply them. See how that works? And don't even try to pull that whiny, "Well, the town fills up during the Shakespearean Festival" excuse, because you've been doing that for how long? More than 40 years? Get your head in the game, damnit. I'll admit that coming from THE hotel capital of the world, with over 123,000 rooms, we may be a bit spoiled. But that's no excuse to drop the ball, Cedar City. If you continue this facade of being "Festival City USA" without being able to back it up, I'll have to drive back over there and kick your ass. And this time I'll have a room waiting for me in St. George.

Yours Truly,
Jenny
On Five Hours Of Sleep
After Driving Through You
In Vain At 1:00AM

I'm awake, but just barely.
And my problems I can almost solve.
The fog around me is lifting, slowly.
In a while I might just dissolve.
It's the morning that makes me say this.
Later on I might just forget.
But until the day wipes me clean,
You never know how close I'll get

Pigtails, camping, huge family gatherings, fishing in bare feet, happy parents, generous grandparents, 9,000 cousins playing tag in big backyards...

Damn I had a great childhood...

That's awesome.

You can't explain some pictures.

I hate baseball.

It may be that between there and here something soured me. Maybe it was sitting through my dad's four hour softball games with a seven year-old's patience. Maybe it was getting it smacked in the face with one of those less than soft balls at a family picnic. Maybe it's just because the whole sport is boring. as. hell.

Who knows?

Little Jenny smiles and poses with her bat... Less-little Jenny would rather hit people with it.

Ahh... how we change.

My dreams... They're getting more subtle in their cruelty. Last night's ventures inside my head had a biting finesse to which none of the stabbing/shooting/strangling violence of past nightmares could compare.

This has to be the hardest dream I've ever tried to explain to you... so bear with me.

Kudos to my subconscious for playing on my omnipresent hypochondria. The first "scene" (if you will) of this nightmare had me opening the mailed results of a phsyical I had just taken. I scan down the page:

Health: Poor
Diagnosis: Acute Lymphatic Cancer
Prognosis: 17.34 hours to live
Plan of action: Sending flowers

Brilliant and painful. Thanks brain.

My nightmares have always been more immediate than this. More "Oh my God! That guy has a knife and he's going to kill me!" spontaneity. Now here I was, faced with a countdown for the rest of my life... and as I probably would in my waking life, I wasted time and ignored the issue.

Between the time that I opened the doctor's envelope and finally succumbing and opening my eyes, I slept two hours, walked with Jenni in a Chicago park for two hours without once mentioning my condition, began to feel weakened, indulged lengthy coughing fits, and watched TV...

Never once did I arrive at the epiphany that would make my life and death meaningful. Instead, I indulged my childish needs to be mothered and told everything would "be okay."

And throughout... a terror gripped that was both silent and screaming... a terror more real than that of any other murderous or self-destructive nightmare I've ever had... one that hasn't gone away now that I've woken up....

{Jenny checks the clock.}

We'll see.

Summer Thought #7
You know it's hot when you get into your car and your body starts to hurt, not because the seat is hot, but because the air is baking you alive.

Summer Thought #19
In response to the questions I heard from tourist customers today:
No, you don't get used to it.
Yes, it can get hotter than this.
And no, I can't make the swamp coolers work any harder.

I'm beginning to think that if you tugged on Joe Lieberman's face, a mask would slough off revealing the brain-hungry zombie of Strom Thurmond.

No, really. Check it out.

The man attacks things like responsible fiscal policy and supports Dubya's mad rushes to war.
Tell me again, Senator, which party are you running under?

...still dead.

Check back later.