| Jamais vu | ||||
| March 2nd | ||||
Deja vu is such a part of the English language now that pretty much everyone knows what it means, but jamais vu? It literally means "never seen", I believe, but the translation is the feeling of experiencing familiar events for the first time. It's like walking into your house and feeling like you've never been there before. Jamais vu is one of my least favorite, actually, it is my least favorite seizure. I hate it more than deja vu, more than a full blown bite my tongue in half tonic-clonic, more than the time I got lost on the treadmill, even more than my regular seizure-induced trips to Pennsylvania. Deja vu is no big, because at least everything is "known". You know? I know who I am, where I am, who I'm with, what's going on, what's going to happen (hey, I'm psychic), and all of that. Sure, I'm incapacitated, but I know and I can work with that to emotionally stabilize myself until my brain has slipped back into gear and I'm back with the program. Jamais vu is different. It turns everything into the unknown. Usually, I have a strong sense of who "myself" is, even if I don't remember my name, but that's about it. I don't know where I am, who I am with, what I'm supposed to be doing, where I'm supposed to be going, how to get there if I wanted to. I am completely lost and, intellectually at least, I know I shouldn't be, but I am. As terrifying as it is to experience an almost instant immersion from the known to the completely unknown, what's worse are the consequences of not knowing. Lost, I'm something of a docile, brainless dog. I wander around, looking for the familiar, which can never be found. I don't speak. I can't tell the difference between the sidewalk and the street. I can't even read. I am fully capable of wandering for miles whilst post ictal. That's a fancy term for after the seizure itself, the recovery period between seizure and normal brain functioning. At least, that's what I use it for. I have gotten myself literally lost, nearly. It's not so bad, because I can usually retrace my path. I don't forget what I was doing while post ictal, but the residue of fear and surreality just don't leave. It's why I have a cell phone, I get lost, I find a landmark and call the StudMuffin. "Honey, I don't know where I am, come get me. Please don't panic and don't call the cops. I'm fine. It's Kansas, dammit. I see grass and cows." It's why I thought about getting a seizure dog. I don't need something to predict my seizures so I don't hurt myself, I need something to keep me from wandering around in traffic until I'm back to myself. It's weird how these things clump up for me, especially after a tonic-clonic (that's the one where you fall and jerk a lot). It's like daisy chains of deja vu-normal vu-jamais vu all swirling around my temporal path in CinemaScope technicolor accompanied by sore muscles and this horrid pain in the tongue. Of course, the Bratchild wandered in while I was reading about CinemaScope at Wikipedia and somehow it ended up turning into a lesson on Linnean Taxonomy. Ergo, if I had a point to this, I completely forgot what it was, though I do know what a khaan mckennai is now and the Fourth Grader Bratchild can now use the Linnean taxon system better than most high school graduates. Of course, he can't spell. Grr. |
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2 fortunes  scatter tea leaves |
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Tuesday
| This proves it I'm insane | ||||
| February 1st | ||||
Jesus wept, but that's a bu-fugging weird thing to do. |
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| 1 fortune scatter tea leaves |
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Sunday
| The bathroom's non-circulating library | ||||
| January 30th | ||||
My current stand-off is with this Val Vasilef person. I've never met the man. I know very little about the man. He could be, for all I know, the muscle-bound reincarnation of Mother Theresa. I still hate him. Why? He's on the back cover of Ironman and he's been staring up from said back cover next to the commode for three weeks now. I have covered him with towels, left over Stud-o tee shirts, toilet paper, books ranging from a thirty pound art history tome to one of those serial western paperback books. Every time I come back, he's there, smirking up at the next customer right next to the commode. I wasn't impressed with the "Russian Bear" when I first saw him smirking up from the dining room table months and months ago. I'm sorry, but "TV Action Commerical" isn't what I'd call resume-worthy for someone hawking his own, personal nutritional supplement. He's so friggin phony. He's wearing BDU britches, and a bandana. He smirks like my brother smirks (FYI, smirking like my brother is not sexy, I don't care what anyone else says. My brother is sexy just like a freshly mashed tarantula is sexy). Okay, and to make this all even worse, he's doing this right next to the toilet! Argh! I'm so not stepping foot in that bathroom until I can think about it without shuddering. |
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| 1 fortune scatter tea leaves |
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Saturday
| The sign in the bathroom said "menu" | ||||
| January 8th | ||||
The pool hall ladies room features, in addition to feminine protection vending machines and "novelties" (including condoms that are "slimmer design for a tighter fit". Get a the right size and cock ring, bonehead. Them bad boys break), something called "Unique Advertising". They have a cheap, black wooden picture frame with scratch plexiglass bolted to the bathroom stall wall. Inside is lackadaisically cut picture frame matting. In addition to ads for a bail bondsman, insurance, a quick lube place out on the highway, and the ubiqutuous "Your ad here! Let our advertisers know where you heard about them!"; there was a rather disturbing notice: "City Menu Guide Coming Soon!!!" While I can certainly appreciate the effort to supply reading material in the ladies, I'm not sure that's what I want to read when I'm in there. Then there's the let 'em know deal. I can see me telling the maitre d at the local steakhouse, oh yeah, I saw the menu in the bathroom at the pool hall while I was sitting there wishing the chickie in the next stall would stop talking on her fucking cell phone to her fucking boyfriend, wondered if I could get said chickie to pass me t.p. under the stall wall, and thought, hmm, I'm in the mood for some steak now. There has got to be some inner transcendentalism thing going on here. You know the whole spiel, find deep life-meaning in your surroundings. Well, Thoroeau and Emerson were talking about walking in the woods, but hey, you work with what you got. For me, tight now, it's the pool hall bathroom. The silver lining in all of this was that I spent so long staring at the word "menu" and contemplating the meaning of life, the StudMuffin sent the bartender chick (she's a complete sweetheart) in to find out if I'd fallen in, had a seizure, or maybe escaped through the window and went for coffee. She handed me a roll of t.p. under the door, banged on the stall next to me and told 'Manda to get off the fucking phone in the bathroom. |
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| 2 fortunes scatter tea leaves |
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Wednesday
| Stillness and release | ||||
| January 5th | ||||
I'm sick today, yesterday, too. It's an odd sort of cold/flu thing. I don't sneeze much, I'm not coughing, but my nose leaks and I can feel every breath I take in my lungs. It's cold, dry, and painful. Being a somewhat smart muffin, I'm staying inside with a humidifier and chicken broth. But, looking into my backyard with its pristine layer of snow and the watching the tiny, dry flakes of snow quietly fall, I want to go outside and be with the snow. I want to be with the cold. The snow isn't that deep and the archery target is just sitting there, in the back corner by the fence. I'm new to archery (I've had a grand total of two sessions with my bow) but I've come to really love it. I'm a good shot naturally. The first time I ever fired a pistol, I outshot the StudMuffin who had his expert marksman badge. The thing I loathe about shooting is the noise. It's loud. The hammer whacks the primer, the primer sets off the gun powder, the gun powder explodes and sends the bullet scurrying out of the barrel at over 1000 feet per second, depending on the caliber of the bullet. When you have a charge that's capable of producing an explosion that sends a chunk of metal from zero to 1,000 ft/sec instantly go off, it's loud. Still, I like shooting because I love the feeling it gives me to poke holes in a piece of paper with a bullet. Sounds kind of stupid, actually. Archery is different. For one, you can re-use the projectile. Two, I can do it in my back yard. There's a small creek lined with old hardwood trees between me and the next housing development and at least half a mile between my target and the next house. Add a few bales of hay and a cheap archery target and I'm set up. Most importantly, it's quiet. Even though I don't have a silencer on my bow string, there's only a little twang followed by a muted thunk when the arrow hits the target. Unless, of course, the StudMuffin aka Big Chief Never Shuts Up is around. Nothing is quiet when he's around. It's also hard to do. The gun was pretty much instant mastery, but a bow and arrow are much harder. A gun is static, the sights are the same unless you manually change them, the hammer falls at the same speed and hits the round in the same spot (differences that exist are negligible). With an arrow, you have to learn to shoot the bow consistently. With an arrow, you have to learn to be still. Still is, it's my holy grail. Quiet, peace, serenity, stillness. Still is letting existence happen. Still is letting the snow fall and letting the cold be. Still is those moments with the arrow knocked, string drawn, and letting the body and the bow do nothing but exist together. And when you let go, the snow is a silent blanket, the cold is calming peace, and the bow is a quiet shiver. The StudMuffin wants me to go bow-hunting with him. He has visions of us together in the woods, bagging a deer or a turkey. Sharing is his holy grail. He talks on and off about getting me into shooting competitions and has lately discussed getting me into archery competitions when I've mastered the bow. I don't want to do either. For me, the bow is about stillness and release. There would be no release if the arrow hit something that I would then have to trail as it slowly died. There would be no stillness if I was required to perform for an audience against others. I don't even want to shoot my bow and arrow with him. I suppose that's one of the greatest ways we differ. I'm internally driven, for me existing matters more than doing. I shoot my bow in order to feel the stillness and the release. I have no real drive to accomplish anything. He's externally driven, the doing matters almost as much as accomplishing. He shoots his bow in order to go hunting with it, he goes hunting in order to kill something to put in the freezer. His bow is the tool to acheive a desired result. My bow is the desire result. He needs to accomplish something to be fulfilled, satisfied, content. I need to be still. |
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| scatter tea leaves | ||||
Thursday
| Muffie Goes a-Caroling | |||
| December 16th | |||
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The restroom door said, "Gentlemen." So I just walked inside. I took two steps and realized I'd been taken for a ride. I heard high voices, turned and found the place was occupied by two nuns, three old ladies, and a nurse. What could be worse? than two nuns, three old ladies, and a nurse The restroom door said, "Gentlemen." It must have been a gag. As soon as I walked in there I ran into some old hag. She sprayed me with a can of mace and smacked me with her bag. I could tell this just wouldn't be my day. What can I say? It just wasn't turning out to be my day. The restroom door said, "Gentlemen." And I would like to find the crummy little creep who had the nerve to switch the sign. 'Cause I've got two black eyes and one high heel up my behind. Now I can't sit with comfort and joy. Boy oh boy. No I'll never sit with comfort and joy. Lyrics by Bob Rivers Visit Bobrivers.com *chortle* |
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| 2 fortunes scatter tea leaves |
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Sunday
| Random thought.... | |||
| December 5th | |||
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In addition to being a flaming heterosexual, I don't have enough snack food in my life. Darn it. |
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| 3 fortunes scatter tea leaves |
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| Flaming Heterosexuality | ||||
| December 5th | ||||
Anyway. I'm a flaming heterosexual. I'm in the 95% or more straight depending on where I am in reference to ovulation. Looking at a naked woman is kind of like looking at a stop sign. It's there. It's useful. It can even be aesthetically pleasing if the local hicks had a decent shot grouping whilst drunk. My erectile tissues usually yawn. Nothing against women, they just don't crank my tractor. Men, on the other hand. Hubba fuckin' hubba, baby! I am so a gay man trapped in a big boobied body. My favorite flavor is the raging bisexual kind full of testosterone and machismo. I am so not repentant about it, either. The best thing in the world is that it's perfectly acceptable in my society for a guy to prance around in public without a shirt. Ah, military physical training--in cadence exercise!--is my favorite spectator sport. I get all quivery when football players slap each other on the ass. Damn. I'm drooling. Anyway. despite my flaming straightness and unabashed adoration for the male form, I find myself, every once in while, doing the uttery incomprehensible. At least to me. We went for a bike ride today (FYI: StudMuffin looks fuckin' hot on his Harley) and spent a few pleasant hours on back highways doing 55 mph. For some fucked up reason I got to thinking that it would be kinda nice to have a leggy chick on the back of my bike. I almost wrecked when I realized what was going through my head, but I got over it. The more I thought about it, the more I got to liking the idea of going down the highway with something soft and tattooed behind me. I don't have a back rest on the pillion, so she'd have to hold on to me and it's a dinky lil' ol' 883 Sportster so there's not enough room to stretch out and get comfy--especially if she had a set of long legs, so her thighs would be wrapped pretty tight around my hips. I couldn't tell if I got all nipply about the idea of being squeezed between a set of feminine thighs or because it was all of 55 degrees Farenheit outside with a windchill of about five since I was on the scoot on the highway. And I realized, for the millionth time this year, that Muffie is a pervert. And I think I'm okay with that. I don't know if I'll ever be okay enough with that to get a leggy chick to accesorize my Harely with or not, though. Then again, I might. I've met two women in my lifetime that I've thought about climbing between their thighs. I think I could be quite pleased to have either one behind me on the Harley. |
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| 1 fortune scatter tea leaves |
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Thursday
| Cuisenart o' Culture | ||||
| November 25th | ||||
So I've been reading my new yaoi manga and composing long, flowery notes of adoration to the publishers, but we won't get into that because it's, quite frankly, pretty sickening overall. After reading---I buy manga for the stories, really!---them often enough, I actually managed to tranquilize FangirlyMuffie. So it took hours. I thought I had to mope through life with only Fake to console me so let me wallow in my hawg-trough of joy. Anyway, I did eventually get around to thinking and reading at the same time. The kind of thinking that comes with actual concepts, words, and cross-pollination with other concepts and experiences. You know, something other than lamenting that I have to wait another month for the next volume. The interesting thing I noted is the typical relationship between the seme and uke. Uh, seme (seh-meh, not seem), pitcher, top, fuck-er; uke (oo-keh, not yook): catcher, bottom, fuck-ee. In anime/manga, the seme is almost always taller and usually has darker hair than uke, but not always. Anyway. I was noting the typical relationship in the terribly few yaoi manga I've managed to gleefully expose myself to (and it's never enough). The seme is strong, powerful, aggressive, dominating, persistent, protective, possessive, if gentle, tender, thoughtful, and loving with his uke of choice. He's a real manly kind of man. We're talking machismo oozing out of his pores, jefe. The uke is in denial and generally runs like hell from the seme. He's usually doing the no-means-yes game. You know the one, where he's slapping away at the seme, saying, no, please, don't, stop, stop, stop, trying to get away, but he's thinking oh why can't I resist him? Why do I want him? Oh it feels so good, more, more, don't stop! Most places in the world call this date rape and usually send Mr. Seme-Pants to jail for it. Hell, we have posters all over campus featuring pix of attractive and sexy young men posing with attractive and sexy young women with captions that say things like "my strength is not for hurting her"; "I'm strong because I stopped"; "I understand that no means stop". I read a romance novel by Catherine Creel a long time ago. It pretty much disgusted the hell out of me. I think I was 17 at the time and I got so pissed at the heroine, that I took the thing out into the backyard and burned it. Along with part of the yard and a trashbag of leaves, but we won't get into that either. I was still one of those hate-filled, angst-ridden, violent teenaged girls at the time and the amount of loathing I felt for the author and the character was disproportionate enough to reality that it still sticks with me, like, fifteen or so years later. Um. 33 - 17 =, um, 3 - 7 is -4. Shit, Nevermind. It was over a decade ago when I had the ritual burning of the book and I don't remember what I had for breakfast most days. Moving along. The heroine was one of those women that played the no-means-yes game. Looking back at it, after my years spent reading porno stories on the 'Net and exposure to people into BDSM, I've come to the conclusion that the author was writing out a rape-fantasy / nonconsensual submission fantasy or something. At 17, I think I would have gone all Cujo at the idea that there really are women out there who fantasize about being raped or dominated. I probably would have gone all Texas Chainsaw Massacre if someone had told me that there are women who actually do these things and enjoy them. I wasn't exactly "okay" back then, I don't suppose. These days, I shrug and let it go. Takes all kinds, no? As long as it's consenting adults and no one gets maimed or dead, I don't suppose it's any of my business. Topic, right. Creel's heroine ended up with her typical seme lover guy against her will. He took her, took her virginity, took everything. She was the typical fiery romance novel heroine sort on the surface, you know, the whole flashing eyes, heaving bosoms, spirited lass with a waterfall of gorgeous hair. Underneath, she was submissive as fuck. Me? I would have waited until the bastard went to sleep and then borrowed his .45 revolver and given him a lead enema (it was an American Old West romance novel with indians and cowboys and stuff). She cried herself to sleep and then cuddled him. It was okay because she was falling in love with his manly man-ness and he made her orgasm. He gave her orders and she followed them all the while wondering why she couldn't resist him, why she wanted him, and why, oh why, did it feel so good to belong to him. A lot of romances (novels/movies/etc.) have the no-means-yes game as their basic boy/girl and/or seme/uke conflict. Well, enough do to make this a "typical" sort of scenario. She does the denial of feelings for him and he takes her despite. Not seduces. Takes. I can't help but think about what kind of message this sends about our cultural values. I have a manga that I adore called GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka (if you're looking to check out manga, this is a great one to start with) by Tohru Fujisawa. In one of the episodes, Onizuka is on his way to interview for a position at school and rides a standing-room-only subway or bus (can't remember which) and a middle-aged pervert squeezes the cute buttock of a sweet young thing. What does she do? She cringes and doesn't react. Onizuka beats the crap out of Mr. Perv (nevermind that he was about to do the exact same thing). From what I'm given to understand, in the Japanese culture, she couldn't react to it because it would look worse for her. If some guy copped a grab on my ass on a bus in Bumfuck, Biblebelt USA, Bubba and his Redneck pals would beat the shit out of him simply because I'm female and Mr. Perv is not. Of course, I live in a land where "good" romances include the no-means-yes game. I can say that I don't like reading the no-means-yes game very much. I don't like seeing a validation of the idea that the fuck-er can get successfully get around the lack of consent simply by being orally persistent and quick with his hands. I think I'm in a majority when I say that the idea of a seme/man seducing consent from a reluctant uke/woman is erotic and attractive. There are times when I want to be seduced into it. But, when does this become the no-means-yes game? When does "I don't really want to" go from "seduce me" to "stop"? I suppose that this is the gray area that's fraught with peril for the seducer. I know that the StudMuffin will never seduce a reluctant me. Any sign of negation has him backing off. I can't blame him for it and it's better that way for us, I believe. I'm sufficiently expressionless enough to make it difficult to tell the difference between seduce me into it and don't touch me. I think some women and uke are able to sufficiently express to their partners enough to play the seduction games, though. I think it's romantic to read about it. Sometimes it goes too far in our entertainment materials, though. While I'll never do anything about it, it bothers me sometimes. |
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| 1 fortune scatter tea leaves |
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© 2002-2005 KillerMuffin
| patience | ||
| days past | ||