Speaking of Jacksons...

So my nephew Chase needed help with his Calc homework the other night. Which meant I had to reteach myself. While it's kind of a Captain Obvious statement, unless you are like a scientist-y kind of person, you really aren't going to be using advanced math that much. I told this to Chase. He was relieved.

But sometimes we do learn things we'll use. Sometimes, we do have moments, lessons, that end up defining us. They just aren't mathematical. Well, not for me. :) For me they are "shifts" where my world perception changed. Where yellow became sunburst and red became crimson. We all start out with the same 8 crayons. Me? I keep wanting to upgrade. Get more colors. Get a bigger box.

In 1st grade I was given permission to go to the "other side" of the library. Beyond the Berenstain Bears and into the Dewey Decimal realm. I was allowed to use the Encyclopedias. The Reference Room. I was reading before kindergarten so they thought I needed more of a challenge. The first thing I did was look up 'stars'. I wanted to read about celebrities. I ended up starting a love-affair with astronomy, constellations, and, from there, Greek mythology. My life changed. Within a year I was obsessed with Alexander the Great and thought up my own stories.

In 4th grade I was assigned to read "A Wrinkle in Time" for my book report. Good Lord, it was if I had never really existed. Following the mad-crave that Madeleine L'Engle unleashed, I started writing. Putting carbon to paper, childish smudges where chubby-hand and pencil blended. Two years later my 6th grade teacher asked me for stories to take to her Master's class. I had an audience, attention, and stroking. I was hooked.

The next moment took a bit longer. It took some crawling out of my small town, some binge-drinking, and, sadly, some really really bad poetry written backwards, with dry-erase markers, on my suite windows to get me there.

I was 22 when I first went to Manhattan and went to the Met. I went up some stairs in the modern art section I took a right and there was "Autumn Rythm (Number 30)", Jackson Pollack's 8ft high, 17ft long, drip masterpiece. No fake-drama. I started crying. Thankfully there was a padded-seat to lessen the public display. Suddenly things made sense. This 50yo painting did something nothing else in my life had ever done. It put a peace in me. Controlled chaos. It explained so much. Chopin. Dostoevsky. Pollack. Humanity was, again, for me only maybe, controlled chaos.

If you've never been moved by music (and if you've read any of my blogs recently you know I'm not a music elitist in any sense), literature, art or philosophy or any of the other beautiful outlets we are gifted with, then I'm sorry. I can't fathom an existence without such passion. Without such reaction.

I think that is part of what Koka calls my "wanderlust". The drive that keeps me unsatisfied. The push to get a bigger, brighter Crayola box, sharpener in the back. Sometimes I do wish I didn't have it. Sometimes I think it would be simpler, easier, if I could just be happy with a comfy job and seek out the house and kids. But those are just moment of weakness. I can't imagine not crying before a painting. I can't imagine not wanting more and believing it is still possible. Suppose I just can't imagine not being me.

Normies and bunnies. *pfft* You ain't got nothing on me. :)

Damn, Miss Jackson -Is it just a spoke in my cycle, or am I really such a populist?

Arggs! NKOTB. New Freddy K. movie. K T Tunstall goes all cover on "Walk Like an Egyptian" and now I can't get this damn song out of my head!!! What a week so far.

I like Radiohead. Really I do! And I can so go punk-a-punk with you. I've exchanged rent money for David Bowie Madison Square Garden tix. I've traversed hipster Brooklyn neighborhoods for Sarah Vowel readings, TMBG secret shows, Dave Cross improv, and avant-garde shit involving silence, a strobe light, and two guys dressed like Sendak creatures reciting "Jabberwocky" over slowed-down, barely recognizable N.E.R.D tracks from "Fly or Die".

All it takes is a nasty hook, pulses, and Underworld-style black-slick to undo all my assumed credentials. Maybe I should just embrace the contradictions and stop the analysis. *sigh* F'n existentialism and ethos.

Go ahead ... Enjoy .. No one is looking. Go ahead... Download. Your player won't tell.

My head just exploded ... NKOTB? Holy Freshman Year, Batman!

I know I shouldn't be this excited. And honestly, cubbies, I wish I wasn't. I wish the news glided over me with just a whimsy of nostalgia.

That being said ...

OMG!!!! Break out the banana-clips, girls, 'cause it looks like Jordan, Donnie, Joey, Jon, and Danny are going to be getting out on that floor and doing The New Kids Dance.

As described to some friends, I am dancing around like I just got a Butterscotch My Little Pony, still in the original packaging (prrreeettty). As Mark wisely observed, I'm so retarded and I'm unashamed.

And to think I normally do verbose blogs citing the influence of Rousseau in episodes of "Married With Children". Kristy is a complex-critter.

I'm upside-down, victory pose on the sticky stripper-pole that is pop-culture. Throw some dollar bills, ya'll. Make some noise! Are you tough enough??

Enjoy..............

When your grrrl-power is running a little low ....

So yeah... I was down today. Beaten and bruised by the grinding of life. Me cigarette. Life big old shit-kicker of a steel-toe.

So like a modern girl with high-speed internet and time to spare, I sought out motivation. Not from the Bible. And not even from Oprah. Oh no. I need my go-girlfriend to come from a TV show. 'Scrubs' to be exact.

When this first aired I remembered thinking, "A-motherfuck-yeah". Eloquent I know. Putting that Rutgers education to use.

But I challenge any girl out there to not have this moment in their head. Where they shake off the little and razor their ends and get all rocked out. Ok, and I'll even fess up this is the haircut I started with, though it's grown out.

Boys got their Wiis and their Guitar-Hero. I'll take an Elliot Reid make-over any day. Tom Petty suh-weet bonus.

Enjoy!

Random, Useless Discourse 27: Faking It-When You Care Enough To Send the Very Least, But Still Want Some Credit

also posted 12/13 - www.myspace.com/chief_reindeer

Lying gets a bad rap. Let’s face it, somewhere between your mom, your teachers, your pastor, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, and those 2-tons-of-fun the Ten Commandments, lying is publicly flogged like a tired Clinton joke. It’s the whipping post of our sub-conscious, and it isn’t really fair.

Of course lying about a crime is wrong. You should admit those things. “Yes, I stole that." “Yes, I embezzled that.” “Yes, I stalked and hacked up my girlfriend, strategically placing bits of her along the landmarks of this fair city that came to represent our poisonous-hate filled-I-could-have-changed-for-her-really relationship. Careful, that over there is where we first confessed our love, the lying bitch. Guess what's buried.." – These are all confessions we should make. Especially the last one. Really. I’m not condoning that kind of conduct.

Yet the good-kind of lying, the sort of lying that rounds the edges of our daily lives, that’s the type of faking we should be a bit proud of and we aren’t. We toss it high onto our guilt-pile where we’ll drink it, snort it, or eat it into numbness.

What we are missing is the fact that we are bothering to fake it. Caring enough to lie means that you cared in the first place. Embrace that.

Okay, sure, your significant other is crying and you really, really, really want to feel something. But instead you don’t. You aren’t evil. You’re just tired. Either your day at the office also sucked or, well, you’re just tired of the crying. Whatever. They look up, all crystal eyed, and you freeze. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO? (A) Yeah, that’s too bad, Alicia, I really want to help, I do. But honestly, you’ve started to bore me and, ya know, Janet wasn’t being a bitch after all. You were. (B) Make a sad face. Reach over and hug them, promising it’ll all be better. And agreeing to everything they say. - - - Obviously, unless, you know, you like drama, you choose B. Which is selfish, yes, because you avoided a fight and possible physical harm. But hey, step back, and think that out. Put the self-preservation aside and look what else you did. You didn’t laugh did you, Big Boy? Nope. You didn’t switch on the TV. Smart move. You knew that would hurt her feelings. So you faked it because you cared. Uh huh. Breathe it in. You got a win-win there, Sport. Drink it deep. Sometimes we just don’t feel it. We can’t muster up the sympathy or the empathy or any pathy what-so-ever.

And it just isn’t in our relationships. Work is all about the faking. Not because we are lazy, but because that’s the game and we care just enough to do it. Oh, come on, you’ve feigned a laugh at yet-another-story about the boss’s precocious sugar-plum-princess. You’ve cluelessly nodded in a conference room. And you’ve went with the flow when talking to a co-worker with a thick accent that you can’t follow because you’re too embarrassed to have them repeat.

It’s okay, people. We don’t have to always be honest with each other. We don’t WANT to be honest with each other. Did we want Jennifer Love-Hewitt to be truthful with us when she went swimming? No. We want to be lied to. We NEED to be lied to. I need to think my boyfriend hates the same nasty bitches I hate. I NEED my Hollywood celebrities to be flawless, size 0’s because if they aren’t , well that’s one less thing to hate myself for, and really, I’m kinda lazy and don't want to go looking for or creating a new self-hate.

So go ahead, Jimmy-Jack, lay back, grab the remote, and wrap your arm around your girl. Soothe her and tell her it’ll be okay. It might not be all real, but hey, you are caring just enough to fake, and you should get something for that.

Random, Useless Discourse 26: What My Two X-Chromosomes Get Me

- also posted 12/3/07 - www.myspace.com/chief_reindeer -

This is not some grand academic exercise in post-modern feminist deconstruction of popular culture or media. If you want that, start with the basics (de Beauvior, Betty Freidan) and work your way up to Camille Paglia and Cristina Hoff Sommers. And I don't mean that as East Coast liberal as it sounds. Really, you should read that stuff.

And I must state, for the record, that I have been threatened with vaginal repossession not once, but twice. First by a dear purse-dropping friend (Turtles, you know the one, sweetie darling) who, upon hearing my dislike for f'me stilettos proclaimed, "That vagina is going back to the store because you just don't deserve it." The other time was in a classroom at Rutgers where I could no longer suppress the humor I was feeling. Seriously, there are few things more enjoyable than listening to a spoiled kid, who only 6months ago was angsting-it-up to Avril Lavigne and skipping school to stand outside the 'TRL' window, regurgitate that one semester of Feminist Theory with all the passion her 'I'm-just-experimenting', Ani DiFranco listening soul can muster. Dude, it's freakin' awesome.

But seriously, there are some things being a girl gets you that are, well, not fair. Don't get me wrong. It isn't easy being female. We have it comparatively pretty rough out here. I mean, other than figuring out how to sit down without crushing my very vital and precious organ, I think being a guy is suh-weet. Ya'll got it made-in-the-shade. And if you are Caucasian? Pfft. Fuh-getuhabit.

For example I can watch Lifetime and not be hassled for it. For some inexplicable reason, I find myself watching, often in writhing torture (remember kids, self-destructive) those stupid, stupid, stupid emotional movies. You know the ones. The stories of women coming back after being beaten down (often literally). Girl power for the menopausal. It's where 80s sitcom moms go to age gracefully in between their QVC appearances for their line of seasonal sweaters and stirrup pants. I swear, last night, I heard Meredith Baxter (don't call me Bernie) deliver the following line, with all the sincerity of David Spade helping you disembark, "It's a Christmas miracle that we are all together this year". Priceless. And very gay if you are a guy. Even if you are gay and a guy, it's pretty fucking gay. And as we all know, things that are pretty fucking gay will get your ass pretty fucking kicked.

Also, I get a pass when I do something stupid or manipulative. Ugh, cramps. Ugh, mood swing. Ugh, PMS. Sorry, Officer, just having one of those crazy girl moments *giggle giggle*. Air quotes included.

Yesterday I changed shirts before going to the store because I didn't want to wear a shirt I had bought to the store I had bought it from. When I told a friend this, and stated I already knew it was weird, he just laughed and said, "silly". But I'm a girl and that's ok. And it's kinda cute.

I'm not saying being a girl is all about emotion or clothes or quirks. It just is for me. I also told the same friend yesterday that I am my own emotional Indy 500. I see a brick wall and I want to run into it. Full speed. For the thrill and to say I did it. The bruises will heal. But I f'n did it. I'm out of control. I'm up and I'm down and, dear Lord almighty, I'm frequently side-ways and spiraling.

I'm a girl, though. So it's all ok. I don't have to be stagnant. I don't have to be constant and stable. It isn't fair. And I don't _mean_ to abuse the system. But I can't help it. Just like I can't help that I've lost the last 2hrs of my life waiting to see Judith Light locate that love-child she gave up 30yrs ago when she was 16 and scared. I think that is the name of it, btw, or it should be – "Sixteen and Scared: The Carrie Whethers Story".

My XX chromosomes can get me a lot of things. Unfortunately, though, no genetic preference can restore wasted time. Arggs! Now I'm late. Oh well, I'll just tell them I got caught up watching this movie. They'll understand. They are probably watching it too. Such girls!

Random, Useless Discourse 25: Playlist Your Life, M’Fer! Part 2: Red-n-Blue Tuinals, Lipstick Red Seconals

(also posted: 11/23/07: www.myspace.com/chief_reindeer)

In case you don’t know me very well, first off, hey, how’s it going? Good. Good. Excellent. Glad to hear it. I’m well. Thanks for asking. Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

Oh, and before we get too far in, I’m a self-analyzing non-medicated freak. If you are still reading, well then, allow me to lay out the mat, and usher you into this lunatic parade (thank you, Scissor Sisters).

I’ve blogged about playlists before (myspace: 11/29/06 post: RUD #9 – Playlist your Life, M’Fers!) and music at other various times (myspace: 4/7/07 post: RUD #18 –If Justin hadn’t brought sexy back, would we know it was missing?). So none of this should come as a surprise.

I love making playlist. Few things are more satisfying. Straight-into-the-vein junk. G-sweet, candied self-pleasuring. Look at me world! I’m so awesomely eclectic. I’m soooooo fucking cool. - The act is on par with blogging. Combine the two and you have all the self-pity of a Dickens orphan. Fingerless gloves, muffler a-wrapped, rags on your feet, asking for more. Please, sir, validate me.

Playlisting, like most public acts, are little more than expressions of the person you want to be. The person you see when you look in the mirror, eyes closed. They aren’t entirely honest, and by that, they are always false. Playlist are smart, referential-tartans to cover our less-pleasant naked underside.

I don’t lie on my playlist. Every song on there is among my favorites. I truly, truly do love Lou Reed (“Transformer” – go download it NOW… I’ll wait) and I truly, truly do love the Judds. But I must admit, the fact I have both “Heroin” and “Grandpa, Tell Me About The Good Old Days” on my current myspace playlist, makes me feel good about myself. Makes me feel clever. And, I’ll tell you Susanna and only you, Kristy really loves to feel clever. Kristy needs to feel clever. – Yeah, I know I’m referring to myself in the third person. I’m an egotist. Classic with self-destruction tendencies (myspace: 9/30/06 –RU#6 – Destruction for the sake of reconstruction: Pleasuring the masses) and narcissism (see people’s exhibit A: my myspace). I’m working on it.

But c’mon, dude! Show me some love! I put David Bowie’s cover of Pixie’s “Cactus” over the Pixie’s own version. That sooo deserves like a 5minute make-out session, right? Tongue optional. I also tossed in “Where is my Mind” and “Hey” to get your Pixie fix. I resisted adding the Stooges because, you know, that would have looked desperate. Actually, the shark would have been catapulted over if I had included Boontown Rats or New York Dolls.

See? I know how to play the game. This cock knows how to work the walk. I got all my bases covered. I got not one but TWO Elvi (mmmmm ‘Elvi’). I got Beasties. I got your Arcade Fire, right here, gummy-gumdrop. I’m the pusher and the crack I’m selling is my fine cut Tennessee-Kristy.

So please, check out my mysp playlist (www.myspace.com/chief_reindeer). See how cool I am. How cool I want you to think I am.

If you don’t have the time, that’s okay. You read this blog and that’ll stroke me through. But do both, and I’m shuttering to the floor, grinned and sated. And wouldn’t THAT make YOU feel good? Cool and clever, that’s you, rockstar-bitch.