I miss Katchoo and Francine.

www.strangersinparadise.com

About Last Night...

I had a seriously, serious hissy fit. I lost my cool and that ain't cool.

I feel much better now. So much better in fact that I could pee my pants. Why? Because I do not owe taxes. That's happened before and it's worse than awful having worked my butt off just to pay more taxes. Did you know that when you cannot pay owed taxes that you can pay in installments at 28% interest? Yeah.

Money is tight, but it's not extinct and it's not everything. I have a roof over my head, clean running water, clothes on my back, friends and family to love and who love me right back... I have my health. I have a great job. Heck, if food is that scarce I can plant a vegetable patch in the front yard and teach myself the craft of canning.

I will not live in fear. I choose to connect with my fellow countrymen and people of the world through love, or something, anything but fear. We each have our challenges and opportunities.

The possibilities are absolutely endless. No more fear.







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N9m_F8ryfc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBlwU0MlUSk

KMFDM and Mother F**king Taxes

There is something seriously fucked up about working this hard only to lose $500 bucks in my '08 tax return. Lost it to what? Social Services? The Arts? Public Health Care and Education programs? HA! Losing $500 bucks that meant the difference between food in the cupboard and bus fare to work, clothes on my back or paying my rent on time in April. Having been relieved of one of my part time jobs in November I've been trying to find the good in all this. It's a good thing that I no longer work 65 hours a week, right? For one it made me feel dead inside, without creative or spiritual energy; for two it made me feel like I am nothing but an endless debt that never gets paid down; for three it leaves nothing at the end of the day for gardening, drawing, fucking, loving, walking, playing, breathing, napping, cooking, joyfulness or beauty...

On September 11, 2001 among the many conflicting and horrifying things I felt was one tiny-enormous feeling: a connection to my countrymen that I had never, ever experienced before. For the first time in my short life I knew that coast to coast the nation held it's breath, shed it's tears, voiced it's rage as one. Though our disagreements would follow I had glimpsed something amazing... to perceive this whole U.S.A. as connected, to sense for the first time a national identity.

As I sat at my dining room table this afternoon filing my taxes I had this experience again. Across the country people are feeling the same horrible, gut rotting thing: What now? I know many people are not making ends meet, are making cuts in already strained budgets, telling themselves to take a deep breath and keep focused on the moment; trying to tell themselves that it will pass before they lose the house, before the next round of layoffs... What the fuck is this? Is this who we are?

I know I'm not the only one who can't see beyond the next paycheck.

I scrimp and try to wear my shoes and clothes until they have holes in them. I skip buying groceries because the $25 will get me to work for the next week. Seriously? $25 for groceries?

I know that this rant means nothing and even contributes to the cacophony of fear, but filing my taxes makes me feel trapped! I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here, working in a capitalist society with a president who may have said what he meant or maybe not! Sure, I could give up my internet and save $90 a month but it's the one thing I splurge on. That and $6 a week at the little Cuban place across the street from my apartment: coffee and blueberry pancakes can maintain anyone's sanity.

I made 5 grand more than I did last year but my return will be a whole $18. Yee ha, maybe I can go get that IRA started at last.

Fuck this passive-let's-be-calm-and-take-a-deep-breath-and-live-in-the-moment-bullshit! I'm having a beer and blasting KMFDM and MIA, praying to God I don't completely lose my fucking mind tonight trying to hold on to what little I "have."

Lovely doesn't begin to describe this...

www.pbs.org

French 19th Century Blue Opaline Snake Paperweight, Appraised on Antiques Roadshow July 2003

Oh, Sweet Frabjousness!

It's been an awesome day: I slept in! which is no easy feat for me as I've been working at what my friend Beth refers to as "sparrow fart" - an hour so early you can hear a sparrow fart! - for the last ten years. I thought sleeping in was a thing of the past... It was a quarter to ten when I rolled my ass out of bed for breakfast at Victor's Cafe with friends Ruby and Miya where we proceeded to feast on a mango pancake and sub cuban toast;) Then on to some random snow sculptures in the uptown neighborhood behind Lund's that Al and I found totally by accident last night on our way home from said Lund's.

Onward to the Open Book Center where we happened upon artists hanging the new show for RosaLux gallery - sweet pen and ink by a guy who's name escapes me at the moment; pencil on paper by the other guy who's name I never got. I must go back and see it all put together! Then right next door to Big Brain Comics (yes, I am a GEEK!) where I found the best illustration magazine called Hi-Fructose and the latest installment of Terry Moore's Echo.

Once home I sat down to my computer and realized with frabjous joy that my blog has a follower! OMG, yo! So I started surfing... found some very cool sites... hifructose, phantasmaphile, amysteinphoto.blogspot, drawn.ca, thomglick.blogspot.

Now I'm eating chips and drinking a beer saying to myself that it's quite alright and not so bad to live happily and well.


*photo by Miya Rostein