Muscles, and how they ruin everything

This morning, during one of my normal post-alarm pre-work activities, I think while I was brushing my teeth, I was suddenly overcome with pain. What felt like a muscle spasm on the lower left side of my neck made me nearly fall over, as I reacted physically by flinching into a contorted body position to try easing the agony.

After a few minutes of rubbing and stretching, the vengeance that marked that first painful spasm went away. But the hurt stayed. For eight hours I haven't been able to turn or tilt my head to the left, or flip my hair (what if I get pulled over by a cop? What will I DO?!), or raise my left shoulder more than a couple inches toward my ear.

It's not debilitating, but it's irksome. It causes pain. It causes problems. For example, I had an idea for a post this morning, but I was too irritable to write it, because of the muscle spasm. So I'd like to offer a rebuttal to Bryan's Sun Theory.

Howard Dean: "I had composed a temperate and well-reasoned concession speech, however, went I went to give it, the muscles in my neck suddenly spasmed in terrible pain, and so instead I said YEEEEEAAAAAAAARGH!"

Michael Jackson: I would never, under any circumstances, consider sleeping with children. However, when my vision is spotty because of the pain caused by a random muscle spasm in my neck, they look like buxom blonds. And that's totally what I'm into, HEE-hee.

Peyton Manning: Sorry, I totally don't know who this is.

Martha Stewart: I never engaged in insider trading. On the day in question, I was suddenly hit by a muscle spasm which caused my fingers to hit the keyboard and mouse in random sequence as I writhed in pain, making the transaction without my knowledge.

Bryan: I had a really witty and insightful post all written today, but then I read about a burst of charged particles from the sun, and now my muscles are in painful spasms.

asfajsjRAGEkjds

The post I just wrote a minute ago, before the browser window closed itself, was really good. Just to let you know.

This is very much like the scene in that Adam Sandler movie with Drew Barrymore, where he calmly walks away from the altar at which he was jilted and into the pavilion where calm and cool give way to raging, roaring mirror-smashing.

Excuse me.

What am I writing about?

[The writer] was, if nothing else, a deeply romantic man. He took great pleasure in admiring aesthetic beauty, in appreciating good fortune, in lamenting bad fortune, and in indulging his overflowing emotions, be they happiness, fear, grief or any number of others. Reading his “records,” one observes that [the writer] was a man who felt and thought very deeply, and out of that feeling came an urge to set down his feelings, and the thoughts about which he was passionate, with some permanence. Fervently effusive in his telling of things, from the bliss of marriage to the serenity of isolated locales, he evidences no motive for writing besides a pure interest in releasing his abundance of thought and emotion onto paper. No ulterior motive is apparent in the text. His references to national life and societal norms are subtle; he merely writes within the context he knows, not deliberately providing progeny with something to light an unilluminated subtopic of what will become history.

* * *

It was a paragraph in an essay about a book written in 18th century China. It wasn't supposed to sound like it was about blogging.

Enough

Okay seriously. Who do I need to sleep with in order to get this worm to cut it out.

iSpend

Getting a new keyboard is kind of like getting a present! Except that I bought it myself, and it cost me almost fifty bucks, and I had to do it because I spilled like 6 ounces of Diet Coke on the ill-fated last one.

What I really want to buy is a little black dress. Or a new president. Wait, that one can't be bought. Right? (Winky face.)

Workplace etiquette

When someone in your office thanks you for a favor by emailing "Wow, rapid response!" and then you reply, "Must have been the coffee I had this morning," and then he replies, "Leaded, right?"...

...you should NOT continue the exchange by saying, "Laced with speed, actually."

Real World Middle Earth

I only saw The Return of the King a week ago. Shut up. I do everything last. I didn't get a computer until 1999. Anyway, at the end - I mean, the last end - of the movie, my friend Stan whispered to me, Where do you think they're going in that boat?

Aslan's country, I replied.

He shook his head and said, I think they're going to start a superhero club or a crime-fighting agency.

Fast forward to today: I went to the Quicktime website to look at the Mystic River trailer and got stuck there for half an hour watching a dozen or so others. I saw the one for the new Aragorn movie, and it looks like the bastard child of Little Big Man and Seabiscuit, thrown onto the set of The Mummy.

I was telling this to a friend over dinner, and then I sighed and said, "I think Aragorn should just stick to playing himself." "How could he do that?" my friend responded. "Do a sequel?" And then it came to me: a reality TV show set in the castle at Minas Tirith*.

It would answer the question of what the LOTR folks would do after the end(s) of the movie. It would be the logical next step for two of America's favorite obsessions over the past two years, horrible reality television and hot men with swords The Lord of the Rings. It would combine fantasy and reality. It would prevent movies like Hidalgo. Think of the hysterics and hilarious mishaps! Legolas accidentally walks in on Arwen changing and finds things weird with Aragorn afterward! A cook puts something funny in the stew and everyone throws up! Faramir and Eowyn get together and go through that awkward courtship phase! Aragorn sings in the shower! The hobbits come for a reunion party and everyone falls victim to the open bar and karaoke machine! There's a dwarf!

Hey, I'd rather watch that than My Big Fat Greek Annoying Average Joe Apprentice or whatever it is.

* I had to look up that name (actually, I had to look up most of the names, sorry) and I didn't bother checking more than one source**. Hopefully that's right.

** That one source, however, was the official website***, so it's probably accurate.

*** I feel I should mention that I just spent several minutes looking at that website, and the only thing I remember about it is that a lot of those LOTR actors are really hot in real life.

Christinas

I was the only Kathleen in my freshman class of high school, but there were two Christinas. There were probably more, actually, but there were these two in particular. Come to think of it one of them was Christine, and the other Christina, but that little difference was lost in all the similarities. Both were tall for 15-year-olds, around 5'7", with brown hair that was long, straight and perfect. They were slim girls, and stylish, and by most standards beautiful. The nice Christina, whose name really was Christina, had smooth, flawless features and a smiling manner. Her jaw was defined without being sharp, and her hair was full enough to soften its perfect straightness. The other one, the one whose name was in fact Christine, had cheeks that sunk in and hips that jutted out. Her nose, too, was prominent, narrow but arched in a slope that seemed to get bigger every year. She looked like an Abercrombie and Fitch model. A&F model types are hot property in the Pacific Northwest. Christine was hot property.

Christina had a locker by the northwest corner staircase, on the third floor. I'd spoken to her there before, met her there actually, introduced by a common friend, someone I'd known since I was a toddler in church, where we ate Skittles in the back pews. Not that that's important. She introduced me to Christina while we stood on the third floor in the northwest corner by Christina's locker.

When I came up the stairs the next day and saw Christina there, with her back turned, I called out her name and waved hello and only when I saw the confused, maybe disdainful expression did I realize it was Christine, not Christina. They both had that long brown straight perfect hair and I'd mistaken her. I was supposed to feel sorry for Christine because two years ago, when we'd all been seventh-graders, her older brother had died in a skiing accident. She had friends all over the place and they all cried about it, not just then but every year on the anniversary of his death. But I couldn't feel sorry for Christine when she looked over the hump in her nose at me and choked out an automatic "hi" at my mistake. I only felt embarrassed. My cheeks flushed hot and I hurried to class.

The weekend's various and sundry, updated at will

• I'll believe in heaven if you tell me that while I'm there I can take showers for as long as I want without getting wrinkly.

• I saw Britney's new video, and I have nothing to say. I have no more opinions on pop artists trying to out-sex each other for control of the market. But I'm willing to watch them until they sex themselves to death.
• I'll believe in heaven if you tell me that wihle I'm there I can subsist (subsisting in heaven, hee) on cheese and wine for as long as I want without getting fat and gross.
• I may be $40 further from my next vacation, but I'm one Cat Power album, one Postal Service album and one collection of short stories closer to happiness.
• I. Love. Making. Mix. CDs.
• Hold on, Cat Power was totally The Album To Buy in the spring for hip indie-slanted bloggers. And Postal Service was totally The Album To Buy for the same people a little later in the year. That's not on purpose, guys, I swear.
• Whoa, hey, I hit 20,000 today. Let's see, what can I say about that? Hm. Nope, nothing.
• When the phrase "the shackles of hesitancy" flows forth from your pen, PUT THE PEN DOWN. STEP AWAY FROM THE NOTEBOOK. GET SOME REST AND WRITE THE DAMN CHAPTER TOMORROW.

What you want in a lover

I have a headache. It started off little, like a pebble in my shoe except it was more like a pebble behind my eyeball. And then, probably urged on by the pounding on the roof and the jackhammering in the driveway and my inability to hydrate because our water was unexpectedly switched off, it grew. And grew. And now my head is like an exedrin commercial, throbbing fuzzy red zones all over.

I can feel in my neck and shoulders and upper back where the tension wants relief, but that part of my body is angry, angry at being poised at the computer for so many hours a day, and remaining stubbornly stiff and cramped.

This is right about the time I start thinking, "It would be nice to have someone around who would give me a backrub and knead out all the knots and soften all the angry tense muscles, and then after I felt like a person again instead of piece of plywood I could just lie there and appreciate the presence of another body as I closed my eyes and felt the wonderful nonheadachyness.

And then I think, "I don't think I deserve that kind of companionship until something BESIDES WISHING FOR A MASSAGE makes me want it." Damn it.

Workshopped

When I'm told that I've written an unreliable narrator in a story, by someone who doesn't know that the narrator is basically me, I have to laugh a little and think, "You don't know the half of it."

This message brought to you by personal confusion.

I wonder what cave men

I wonder what cave men looked like when they tried to get stray eyelashes out of their eyes.

Treasure trove

This weekend, I was compiling a list of mix tapes and CDs I've made, and ones made for me, when I came across a tape my sort-of-kind-of-basically-boyfriend-figure gave me when I was 16. Or maybe 17. I think it speaks for itself.

side a

1. red hot chili peppers - scar tissue
2. guns and roses - sweet child o' mine
3. pearl jam - elderly woman behind the counter in a small town
4. fuel - sunburn
5. orgy - stitches
6. smashing pumpkins - here is no why
7. red hot chili peppers - under the bridge
8. beck - loser
9. beck - the new pollution
10. blink 182 - dammit (growing up)

side b

1. dave matthews band - ants marching
2. bob marley - no woman no cry
3. bob marley - stir it up
4. eve 6 - leech
5. eve 6 - open road
6. green day - good riddance (time of your life)
7. creedence clearwater revival - fortunate son
8. mxpx - move to bremerton
9. ozzy osbourne - i just want you
10. lit - zip loc
11. eric clapton - tears in heaven

For the record, in order to find out what songs many of these were, I listened to a few phrases of each, then punched whatever lyrics I could understand into Google. It was kind of comforting to know that I hated eve 6 and lit before I even knew it was them.

I AM SO ORIGINAL, WRITING ABOUT THIS

Well, it's that time of year again - the annual Remind Yourself Why George W. Bush Is a Big Jerk speech. Here are some of the thoughts that ran through my head while I was watching it:

• When the Speaker said, "I present to you the President of the United States," W. seriously looked so happy, I almost started to believe he'd JUST FOUND OUT he was chief executive.
• Bush constantly looks like he's picking up chicks, no matter what he's actually saying.
• Bush said, "No one can now doubt the word of America." Right. People used to doubt us, but now that the administration has gone all crazy with the truth-telling, those doubters sure look stupid!
• Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction related program activities"? Isn't that kind of like saying that a file clerk at the company that subtitles The Golden Girls for Czech television is in the filmmaking related business?
• Did you hear the cat-calling? What the hell congressperson was all, "WOOOOOOOOOO!!" at so much of what the president said?
• Ed Kennedy, I challenge you to an eye-rolling contest.

Now go read something funnier about the damn thing.

Who needs sad movies...

...when you can watch George W. Bush give the State of the Union address?

The Owlies are a hoot!*

I won an Owlie! Finally, someone recognizes my COLD BLACK HEART and the EVIL THAT DWELLS THERE! Reason #innumerable that I love Krissa.

* This terrible, terrible joke brought you to by Greg.

OBITUARY

TRAGEDY HAS STRUCK.

My jean miniskirt shrunk to unimaginably small proportions in the dryer cycle this morning. As such, unless I lose at least two inches of thigh length, it must be retired.

SNIFF.

Jean Miniskirt, you were muchly loved. You were loved by London and New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, San Diego and Spokane. You were loved by Creepy Emcee in Brooklyn. You were loved by Hootin' 'n' Hollerin' Guys on St. Mark's Place. You were loved by Camden Town Drunkards. You were loved by the Bad Pick-up Line Federation in Hollywood. You charmed english and american alike. You worked your magic alongside fishnet, paired with many a sexy top, atop many a tall tall boot.

I will miss you, Jean Miniskirt. I will miss being partners in crime (and by "crime" I mean, of course, "seduction"). I will miss the way you made me look sexier than I actually was. I will miss having someone so very comfortable and yet so goddamn hot.

Jean Miniskirt, this one's for you:

You'll always be a part of me
And I'm part of you indefinitely
Skirt, don't you know you can't escape me
Ooh, darlin', 'cause you'll always be my baby

And we'll linger on
Time can't erase a feeling this strong
No way you're never gonna shake me
Ooh, darlin', 'cause you'll always be my baby

Rise of the machines

This afternoon, our washing machine tried to escape the garage, with Kellie's clothes inside.

I'm the first person to use it since. I just put in a load of laundry, and then placed a concrete block on the ground, firmly against the front of the machine. But I'm not afraid to tell ya, I'm worried that in its eagerness to scamper off mid-wash, it'll trip over the block and fall flat on its face. Who knows what disaster scene will await me upon my return.

I wonder if this is karmic punishment for making fun of the guy in my writing workshop who told someone she should liven up a scene by personifying the furniture.

Highlights

Hey, remember "Highlights" magazine?! It was cool, wasn't it? "What's wrong with this picture" ... "How many of this object can you find in the picture" ... other puzzles having to do with pictures ... Anyway, everyone loved "Highlights" as a kid.

But now, looking back, you've realized that it kind of sucked, right?

My new highlights page is nothing like "Highlights" magazine.

One small scoop of potatoes, lots of butter, four peas, and all the ice cream you'd like to eat

Or, Why I Like Secretary
By katekinks

I don't know that I identify with and find myself captivated by the masochism so much as the tension. Sure, when I'm watching a quiet, trembling James Spader spank the nerves out of Maggie Gyllenhaal over a piece of paper with red Sharpie circling a typographical error, I kinda like it. But more than I like the spanking bit of that, I like the spasm of bemused pleasure that hits her face. I like the way I can barely hear him speak. I like the finding of eroticism in a sheet fresh from a typewriter.

And I identify with the tension: the hair's width between wanting and doing; between interest and lust; between passionate restraint and guilty indulgence; between thinking you should stop, and stopping.

From the clickety clack of the typewriter to the silent injection of nourishment into a purple flower, from the sashay of her hips to the precision with which he handles a red pen, from her beautiful, colorful, fantastical self-love to the rawness and twistedness of his, sex is everywhere in Secretary. And if that weren't enough, to keep things interesting there's also pleasure, guilt, embarrassment, pain, innocence, conflict, and Maggie naked.

When I'm watching Secretary, I find myself wondering whether my face betrays me to another person in the room. I don't know why I wonder that, because I don't know what my face would betray. But while engrossed in a movie that's a tsunami of pleasure in discomfort, it feels good to get a little apprehensive.

Temporary retraction

I know I said all that crap about trying to make myself cry by watching emotional movies, but Secretary is really hottt. And I own it. I'm watching that tonight, crybabies.

On another note, I read Girl With A Pearl Earring yesterday and today, and the movie better as hell be less of a freaking TEASE. (It also better as hell be better in general, but that's another issue, and one resolved neatly, I think, by something that starts with "S" and ends with "carlett Johansson".)

More audience participation, please?

I can't think of a movie that makes me cry.

I can think of movies that made me cry in the past, because there was a time I was a weepy teenage shit romantic. Which isn't to say you're a weepy romantic if you cry at movies; not at all. It's just that I haven't cried at one since my emotional make-up was just so.

This makes it difficult for me to fight it when I'm accused of being cold and emotionless, which happens more often than you might think.

So I'd like to test myself. I'm going to watch all the films that make other people I know cry, and see if I get at all teary myself. I tried Shakespeare in Love last night, and nothing. Next up is Room With a View. I'm going to keep doing this until I either A)cry; or B)decide I'm dead inside.

What else should I watch?

...oh, books and songs that cause tears are also accepted.

Hitting the roof

You know, instead of a notice that says, "We're going to be doing work on your roof for a few days, so please be prepared for the noise of hammers," why not one that says simply, "Your life is going to be very unpleasant in the near future"? I mean really. Let's cut to the chase here.

...results still coming in on that Bladerunner thing, by the way, and just starting to get interesting.

It's sixteen miles to the promised land...

It's funny that Jennn mentioned Rilo Kiley recently, because I found my copy of The Execution of All Things two days ago after living without it since September, and immediately put it back into nonstop rotation. Yesterday I was thinking that "With Arms Outstretched" is the perfect singalong song. Today I modified that thought: it's the perfect indie singalong song. Happy; catchy; has hand claps; makes you want to put your arms around people and sing along at the top of your voice; and most people have never heard of it.

When I get home tonight I'm going to upload it so you all can know what I mean. Here! Hear for yourself!

Ballot box

I had a debate today with someone, and I want to hear your take on it. Cast your vote in the comment box. The issue: is Bladerunner better than sex, or vice versa?

I won't tell you my position, but I will tell you that I'm not a completely informed voter, because the only time I watched that film was during my freshman year of college in my dorm suite living room with a group of friends, and my boyfriend and I left in the middle so we could go to my room and have sex. So.

Hey.

Remember how a few months ago, maybe earlier in 2003, there was that guy Jonathan Lamb who kept leaving strange or offensive comments on blogs everywhere?

And now there's this guy Bryan Lamb who's plagiarizing material from blogs everywhere?

Weird. It's just a little coincidence, of course. I only thought of it because both of them, after picking up on the blog world backlash, bragged about the number of hits they got in a short span of time. Like, oooh, I got traffic, I bet you respect me now, dontcha?

So anyway, if your last name is Lamb and you're starting a blog, I'm automatically going to be suspicious of you. FYI.

Du-u-u-u-ude.

Check this shit out.

Off my chest

We didn't kiss for long, but there was something - maybe the trembling exhalation after our lips pulled reluctantly apart to hover millimeters from each other until they collided again with soft but undeniable magnetism - that keeps the recollection of it floating at the watery surface of my memory like it was only a day ago that I forgot there was more to my body than the lips that tugged thirstily at yours for a few seconds.

Now let me concentrate on my work.

A Christmas present of uncertain implications

If you could see what's above the ankles in the pictures below, you'd see what my mother sent me for Christmas.

A slinky silk nightgown. Red. Not revealing, but really lingerie-ish.

I love those sorts of things, and I love it. But it struck me as a strange gift to get from mom. On the other hand, my mom loves nightgowns, and maybe she thought of it as sleepwear, rather than lingerie?

But no - buried in the message she scrawled on the accompanying card is the sentence, "If you don't like the lingerie, you should be able to exchange it blah blah blah." So she knew what she was doing.

Why would my mother send me lingerie? I've joked around with girlfriends about how long it's been since the last times we had sex, and if it's too long we laugh and poke fun at ourselves, but (please don't make any assumptions here) am I somehow sending out sex-starved vibes? And are they so strong that my MOTHER is receiving them? Is my mother at home thinking, "I think Kate really needs to get laid"? And if so, does that mean that the next time I sleep with someone it will be unintendedly at my MOTHER'S BEHEST?

Why couldn't she have sent me an iPod?

Okay then

Two new reasons for living:

Yeah, I know my legs aren't as gorgeously tan as that last chick's. I have better toenail polish, though. (Obviously, "better" means "redder".)

A girl's best friend

I like shoes. Not as much as some people, but enough that I've bought three pairs of black heels in the past two weeks with very little dent in my conscience.

So I kind of wanted to see pictures of really great shoes that people own, and I was going to start things off by posting my fab three. But then I thought about the fetishists, and the weirdness of posting pictures of shoes, and I started feeling a little self-conscious about the whole thing. I dunno. Are people interested in seeing pictures of hot shoes like these?

Stumped

I'm starting a novella next week. I wonder what it should be about.

I went to London and all I brought back for you was this lousy post

Wiser women than I once spake that a fantastic vacation is paid for with an abysmal return flight. Well, the paper I read Sunday morning before lugging my suitcase to Heathrow airport told me that there was a HUNT FOR UK TERROR CELL and that BRITISH AIRWAYS REFUSES TO EMPLOY IN-FLIGHT ARMED GUARDS and that somewhere on the loose was a HIJACK GANG, and after swallowing those headlines and then thinking back on the vacation I thought, "Sounds about right."

One friend described the past three weeks as having just enough drama to keep things interesting, but not enough to make them traumatic. You might also say there was enough alcohol to make everyone schedule deliberate detox days, but not so much that anyone slept drunkenly in a doorway or disappeared into recovery for more than two days. I'm happy to say I can describe them as the vacation during which I purchased the best shoes I've ever owned in my entire life. No matter how you dress it up, it was one of the best vacations ever, and my mom totally didn't know how drunk I was when I called her on Christmas day.

I went to shops and markets. I bought dresses and jewelry and stilettos and a Vespa tee shirt. I went dancing. I drank a double vodka tonic paid for by a chinese midget. I wore fishnets. I saw a striptease. I dined on french (cafe) and indian (restaurant) and chinese (£5 all-you-can-eat buffet). I didn't use an umbrella. I visited Shiv's 17th century cottage in the countryside. I took a hot steamy bath with bubbles and scents and candles and wine and I touched the shiny metal faucet with my toe and felt like the whole world took a deep breath. I told people I loved them more than they knew.

I paid one pound to take the #24 bus to Tottenham Court Road, through Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square, past 10 Downing Street, down Whitehall, by Big Ben, the houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. I saw Eddie Izzard on the last night of his tour. I opened gifts and I gave gifts. I took walks. I got used to the grey and the San Diego sunshine is now really freaking me out. I paid the juke box for Dee-Lite. I rediscovered The Bends and David Bowie. I fried bread every morning instead of sticking it in the toaster. I cried a little bit and I took tissue from the bartender. I sang along to The Darkness and Bo Selecta.

I met the lovely Stuart and Dave and went to a dinner party with Mark that was thrown by D and Pix and attended by a whole host of bloggers and we cracked jokes of poor taste. I FINALLY met the inimitable, wonderful Karen and her delightful arm-decoration, Pete. I cooed over Estee and skimmed through her thesis on blogging.

I lapsed into a quasi-Australian accent while drunk. I wore a lot of black and white. I took pictures. I tried to fix something I couldn't fix and then I watched it fix itself. I had good conversations and the best hugs and kisses.

I probably deserved an airborne tragedy, after all that. But no, I'm home safe and sound, and none the worse but for some good old-fashioned chaos to make being apart from some of my most treasured friends just that much more painful. I'm happy to be back, but I miss you, London!

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Oh my GOD I'm tired