circe

You know what I overheard at the park this morning? During my daily hike? Some guy was in a little narrow, like, canoe boat, fishing and stuff, and another guy was calling to him from the shore.

The other guy's all, "Are you using one of those rubbers? The spider ones?"

And I stopped dead in my tracks. Even Fraction froze. Because I had no idea that arachnid-styled  prophylactics even EXISTED.

I resumed my hike, but my imagination was running wild. SPIDER CONDOMS! Do you think they come in different colors? Different species? Like, a daddy-longlegs style? A TARANTULA? (Outch.) Are they, like, ribbed with eight little legs? (For my pleasure?) The possibilities seem endless.

My experiences with sex have been lamentably more lucky than safe, but if I had known that there were SPIDER CONDOMS, I would so, so, so have been all Ms. Safe Sex of the Eighties and Nineties.

You know.. if I were more fertile and less celibate, and also had a lot more time/money/energy, I would so, so want to have a whole bunch of brainy, cute, secular babies* with PZ Myers. 


*That's not to say the babies I have now are not all brainy, cute, and secular.

My new modem just arrived. Which is amazing, since I ordered it late yesterday afternoon. I'm all, "Well. That was fast." And Sierra's all, "That's not just fast, that's CREEPY FAST."

Now my question is this: If I plug it in, am I going to have to get Verizon dsl tech support on the phone and then remote access to reconfigure the connection signal for my whole herd of computers? Because I'm not in the mood right now...

I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am not your expectations no no
I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am a soul that lives within

(India.Arie)

***

Bad day yesterday. I accomplished virtually nothing. I'm fighting with my computer (it just returned with its third replacement hard drive in 6 months), I'm going crazy over my dumb dsl modem  randomly and frequently shutting down, and I can't quite decide what woman musician to do my dumb powerpoint final project on.

It's driving me insane. I started one on P!nk, I started one on Billie Holiday, I started one on India.Arie, and nothing is working out. Nothing feels right. Maybe I should do the Indigo Girls (and by "do" I mean of course "do a powerpoint project on them").

I don't know. I'm all frazzled.  Everything's making me crazy. I finally self-medicated from the hideously cheap box of wine that's been languishing on the counter for four or five weeks, isolated myself (and by that I mean, "continued to isolate myself"), in my room and watched the netflix Hannibal Rising.

In retrospect, perhaps not the best idea.

What a flipping SAD movie! They ate his sister! I mean, I read the book, so I knew it, but geez, I probably didn't need to be REMINDED of it last night.

Though I'm thinking about becoming a serial killer.

You know, a totally sociopathic prolific killer.

Don't laugh. If I didn't have this pesky quasi-agoraphobia and my Ew-I-can't-stand-touching-people issue, I'm completely sure that I would become a serial killer.

It would be, like, putting my Soc major to good use, right? And I would only kill the people who get on my nerves. (Hence, the "prolific" part of "totally sociopathic prolific killer.")

Actually... it's starting to sound like a lot of work.

***

So I'm mad at myself for drinking a wine cooler last night because I had vowed to not drink until after August 7. Until after my classes are done. Because I feel like I'm in some kind of training, like for the Olympics, heh, or something. And all I do is work-work-work-work and wine has no place in the equation.

Eh.

I don't suppose a wine cooler will kill me. Especially as I had no Diet Twist-Up to use as cooler and had to use, ugh, Diet V8 Berry Splash. (Oh yuck. It sounds worse in writing.) (Much worse.) (Maybe it WILL kill me.)

***

See the thing is, I certainly understand and appreciate what you're saying via email, but it's like, I don't care if my mind is ready to process or deal with stuff. It's gotta do it. I don't want to shirk, I don't want to be weak, I don't want to be a coward.

It's like, I probably wasn't ready to take three difficult classes in eight weeks (yes I was), but it had to be done, it had to be done now, and so I'm doing it.

If something is bugging me so much that I'm going from diurnal to nocturnal, that I'm having tantrums about my freaking modem, that I'm paralyzed over a flipping powerpoint decision, that I'm drinking cheap boxed Burgundy mixed with DIET V8 BERRY SPLASH (oh gawd), and wanting to cry about Hannibal Lecter... there's an issue that I need to deal with.

***

See, I typed to AAG yesterday that I think it's my fault. That there's something wrong with me.

And I do think that. There has got to be something wrong with me that causes stuff to happen. There has got to be something about ME, something that is my fault. And even though everything I'm talking about happened in the Eighties, early Nineties, I still think I have this something-wrong-thing lurking within me. Like malaria. Never really going away.

Sometimes I think that besides celibacy, besides choosing celibacy and apparently sticking to it because of my understanding that my manifestation of sexuality weakens rather than strengthens me,  I should just kind of... never speak to another human again in my whole.entire.life.

Though um... This may not be entirely practical.

But see, what happens sometimes, most of the time, most of the time but not always, is that on the phone or in person, interacting with others, I'm not the me I want to be. The me I know I am. The smart, strong, capable me.

It's like another Achilles Heel. 

I'm going to be talking to Karl on the phone today, over a totally computer-related issue, and I already know what's going to happen. My voice is going to rise, I'm going to be all stammering, everything I say is going to raise in inflection at the end, like everything I say is some kind of question, and I'm going to sound dumb.

You know, if you talked to me on the phone or met me in person, you would think I'm an idiot. You would never guess I'm this smart, tough, angry, well-vocabularied woman.

It makes me mad. At myself.

***

But I gotta go. I need to hike three miles with my trusty terrier companion. I was going to post my cell number here. As a kind of "Does Circe Sound Dumb?" social experiment, but I'm thinking I may want to give it a little more thought before I do it... 

Okay. I can't stand it any more. New email: circesmith@yahoo.com

Though I thought I hated yahoo too...

And I freaking hate change. And I've accomplished effing nothing all day, I've just been fighting with this computer that refuses to download powerpoint templates  and my modem keeps shutting itself off every half an hour or so and I ordered a replacement modem from Verizon but I don't know if this is the problem and my vacuum has been gone for a fucking month and I've been without tv in my room for a month and I'm sweating to death in here and I can't get a single thing done today.

I'm so angry.

Is anyone else having trouble with gmail? All summer I've had trouble. In the middle of chatting with Karl and AAG (not, um, together, because that would be wrong...), I lose my gmail page. It wont come back. I keep getting page load error. Even when I reload, even when I close the page, google it, and try to get a new page. It's like gmail completely disaapears. A while later, it'll come back. It's extremly annoying.

Is it me, or is it gmail? Because I don't lose any other sites, just my gmail...

I've got to get an earlier start hiking this morning. The temps are so high that the news is like, warning people.  Yesterday I didn't start until ten and after a mile and a half I had to call it off because the heat and humidity were just too much.

Rainy wants to go somewhere and so does Trin and they're both going to have to wake up and get ready because we've gotta get going.

I'm pretty sure I like this new blog (new, I mean, to me), Flinging Dust. After last week's Soci course discussion board I could use all the secular thinking I can find. (And by that, I mean "find online," because I'm completely surrounded and overwhelmed here in Texas.)

I'm thinking I'm a textbook cliché. My World Lit class friend comes out about her rape, I start thinking about the odd reaction I have to rape and sexual abuse, and next thing you know, I'm not only convinced that I'm dying from a weird disease, but I'm up until one a.m. fighting with idiots people on the Soci class discussion board.

I mean, aggression and fear, right?

Though, well, those fools people in my Soci class needed to be confronted on their ignorance intolerance bias bigotry statements.

It was appalling. It was disgusting. It was completely insane. And I flipping flung myself into the fray. Even though I knew I wasn't supposed to and I'm wondering how it will affect last week's participation grade ('cause my participation, it was extreme...).

People were all going on and on about homosexuality being an abomination, how marriage is created by God and therefore DOMA is right to outlaw same-sex marriage. People actually said that it should be against the law, AGAINST THE FLIPPING LAW, for homosexuals to show any public affection. This poster was going to show, heh, "Christian mercy," she said, and only make it a misdemeanor and not a felony. Another person said that homosexuals should have restraining orders to keep them from ever being around children and if a lesbian happens to somehow give birth to a baby, the state must take that baby away and let a heterosexual couple raise it. A handful of people went on and on about homosexuals deliberately choosing a life of evil and how hell is waiting for them. A ton of people went off on the dumbass argument that same-sex marriage will lead to people being able to marry their dog, or a tree, or their children and that same-sex marriage will lead drectly to incest and sex with animals. (I think the word they were looking for was bestiality... though you know that even if they woulda known the word, they woulda spelled it wrong...)

So, my blood pressure sizzling, I waded in. Because I couldn't take it anymore. And I decided that I'd rather risk losing my weekly 5 points than sit back all silent and passive. Because if you-all haven't checked lately, I'm effing sick of silence and passivity. Sick of it. I think literally sick of it.

So, well, I went all Secular Slayer on their dumb asses . 'Cause that's what I do. And by one a.m. I had actually collected a couple fangirls. Which was kind of odd, because I was kinda thinking it was all Me versus The.Whole.Entire.Class, and I didn't quite know what to do with my fangirls because it brought me up short, having people posting that they completely agreed with me, that something I had posted was "wonderfully put," having a woman actually thank me for my post.

How weird is THAT?

And how weird is it that I go into nearly everything just expecting to be alone and attacked?

Anyway, my fangirls didn't even cheer me up very much. Neither did the fact that I got the last flipping word on every argument I participated in. (Fear me! Fear me, my vocabulary, my mad reasearch skillz, and the fact that I'm more than willing to argue until one a.m.!)

See, what I'm saying is, this was an outlet for me. I mean, I'm not saying it was bad (even if I lose my 5 points). I was a zillion percent right and they were a zillion percent fucked up. And I kinda appreciate the fact that I seriously believe that, as Martin Luther King Jr., said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."


(Yeah. Of course I used that in one of my arguments. As well as Loving versus Virgina. Even a quote from Thoreau. 'Cause I'm never happy unless I can throw some Thoreau into an argument.)

But blah blah blah, right?

Nothing I say is going to change the minds of those Soci class bigots students. And I probably don't have some kind of PBC dread disease. (OKC? Do I? Do you think I'm dying from PBC? Or something? Because it's possible that I am? Do you think?)

I just don't wanna focus on what's on my mind. I'd much rather fight and fret ('cause it's what's COOL).

And now I gotta go hike and sweat.

Later

Okay. First: Hi Elizabeth? Satin Slippers seems like a zillion years ago. I just figured out that Karl had made me another site solely for my fiction. (Who knew?) Apparently I have this site, a site for my fiction, and a site where I can potentially publish the "Secret C," stuff that I had on a covert blog a long time ago. (Y'all don't wanna read it; it's all Levitical abomination, messy sodomy and stuff.)

So here's the fiction site: http://www.moronosphere.com/circe/words/archives.html

I guess I could blogroll it.

I haven't written anything since... What? 05? And you know what that means. It means that I automatically hate everything I wrote way back then and even though I haven't written any fiction in three years I am convinced that if I were writing now it would be much better than the stuff I used to write.

I know.

Hang on. Lemme go read the last thing I wrote, the Techno Pagan one. Let me see if there's, like, some hidden message in it, something that will explain why I never wrote anything after it. Let me see if it sucks as much as I'm convinced it's going to...

***

Omg, omg, omg... GRAMMAR ISSUES. It's killing me. I'm only about a third of the way into it and the GRAMMAR ISSUES are slaying me!!!

***

Crap! Kill me! The errors continue! I'm going to unblogroll my own fiction!!!

***

Oh. Oh my. I just remembered who I was pretty much thinking about when I wrote this story...

***

Wow! Check it out; I predicted my own celibacy.

***

"It's carnality that fuels our genius. To feed our intellect, we must first feed our flesh. Aestheticism without desecration in an abomination, an atrocity, and a breach of both your contracts."

Well okay. That's a pretty good line. I don't totally suck. (Not anymore.)

***

Heh. Okay. I sure do like me some adjectives, don't I?

The grammar issues are still killing me. I need to go back and fix them. Fix everything. Fix, like, every grammatical error I ever made. In my life. Or, well, at least in my blog and fiction.

It would take me a while...

So I found my fiction. After frantically emailing Karl, convinced that all my fiction was lost in the digital wilderness. Now I can re-read it and try to figure out what's wrong with me.

Because this isn't what this entry is supposed to be about.

I know!

Again!

And it's funny that Elizabeth from Satin Slippers should show up and ask about my fiction because just the other day I went back in my unpublished blog archives (yes, I know...), and dug up an old unfinished, quasi-poorly-written semi-fictional story.

See, it was a story based on, you know, fact. And it was all violent and disturbing and I wanted to re-read it to try to figure out what I'd set out to accomplish by writing it. Because of this stuff I've been thinking about. The stuff I wrote about the other day.

And I would post it here (because tmi is not a concept with which I am apparently familiar), except, well, while I think parts of it are very well-written, it has some structure issues and well, you know me, I'd rather sacrifice the entire thing than have someone be all, 'Wow. Circe really doesn't write all that well, does she?'

***

Anyway, this is way too fragmented. Probably because I normally don't blog at 10:38 at night. 'Cause I'm all diurnal and stuff.

Let me just update a little bit on my criminal driveway freaking issue.

No. Never mind. I don't want to get myself started. Because you all know that I'm paranoid, I have a chip on my shoulder, and I think (possibly correctly), that my whole entire town is out to freaking get me. (I really, seriously think they are.)

I called that old guy who did my septic and graveled my driveway last year. 'Cause remember? I always liked him and stuff. I mean, I almost, as they kids say, like-liked him.

And he was as happy as pie to hear from me. (How happy is pie, exactly?) (Pretty happy?) And he's going to come out and take a look and figure the whole thing out. ('Cause I'm all helpless and damsel-y and culvert-impaired and stuff.)

So.

I just hope it doesn't freaking cost too much. Because the fridge and the small chest freezer set me back fifteen-hundred and I wanted to hang onto as much money as possible from that seven thousand for as long as freaking possible.

But I think I'll go to sleep now...

Okay. Here's another diversion, but this is something else that SERIOUSLY makes me crazy.

My Soci class. It's taking months off my life. I was like completely freaked-out-mad last night at the stuff that was showing up on the discussion board. I was like, losing-my-mind mad. I was so


Never mind.

The flipping city just came by. My driveway is in violation of something and I need to spend fifteen hundred dollars to get a new culvert thing put in.

Fucking shit

I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
If he wants a fight well now he's got one
And he ain't seen me crazy yet
He slap my face and he shook me like a rag doll
Don't that sound like a real man
I'm gonna show him what a little girl's made of...
Gunpowder and lead

(Miranda Lambert)

***

It's too hot. It's too hot and I hate everyone.

Well. Maybe not everyone.

Maybe.

***

I did my three-mile hike. During the course of my hike the temp went up six degrees. It's freaking broiling. At one point I started feeling dizzy and briefly considered putting down the seventeen pounds of rocks I was carrying.

But I didn't. I couldn't. I was unable to put down my rocks, leave them for another day because...wait for it... I was afraid that someone would take my rocks.

Yeah.

As Trinity would be happy to tell you, I got issues.

***

I weighed my rocks when I got home on my new and hateful scale.

Seventeen pounds.

***

You know what bugs me? I mean, you want to know one of the zillion things that bugs me? And I know I've said this here before and not too long ago, but it seriously bugs me that I hike fifteen freaking miles a week, carrying massive amounts of freaking ROCKS and I don't lose an ounce. I haven't been drinking alcohol this summer, I don't drink soda or eat junk, I drink my coffee in the morning and then eat one meal a day in the evening after I'm done studying. (I know, I know, but I've gotten used to only eating once a day...)

And I don't lose any weight. At all. I mean, I know it's one of those lame things, women blogging about their weight, but seriously, it's making me crazy. I try so hard to exercise and eat right and IT.DOESN'T.MATTER.

I mean, I may as well be swigging beer and eating cheetos all day, never-ever exercising. The results would be the flipping SAME.

It's making me seriously insane.

It's making me think, 'Hmmmm... meth maybe? Bulimia might be a welcome change...'

Not that I can afford meth. And who has time for bulimia?

***

You know another thing that's bugging me? After, like, a long stalemate with the freaking roaches in which they never went away but they weren't nearly as bad as they used to be... they're back with a freaking VENGEANCE.

They're flipping EVERYWHERE. In my bathroom, inside my books, everywhere.

And you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking I may have made a mistake in getting rid of my mousies.  Getting rid of my multitude of mousies. (And by this I mean that I poisoned them all.) (I know! How COULD I???)

I'm thinking now that my mouse infestation may have been controlling my roach infestation and by that I mean I think my mice may have been eating my roaches.

See? And by killing off the mice I disturbed the delicate ecological balance that existed primarily within my kitchen and now I  am reaping the non-reward of no mice/zillions of roaches.

And this raises the natural question: What would you rather have invade your home? Mice or roaches?

I think the answer is obvious and I've made a terrible mistake in murdering my mousies.

***

But of course this isn't what I should be writing about. Mice , roaches, and weight non-loss is just a diversion, just something I do to keep myself from writing about what's really bugging me.

And now I've run out of blogging time.