I have bizarre dreams. Sometimes I wake up and wonder whose brain I’ve been inhabiting, or, more likely, what pop-culture obsessed alien has entered my gray matter during the night simply to torture me.

But, then again, I am erratica, right?

Sometimes, though, the little grey (guessing here) fuckers are just plain cruel. Not like scary and bad and monstrous in the traditional satanic boogeyman sense, but more like the nonsensical sort that make me wake up and vow never to mix Benadryl and beer again…

The other night, I swear to you, I dreamt I was in love with Nicholas Cage. And not the Raising Arizona version, but the annoying nasally Scientology one. Eep. I am doomed.

Or perhaps it is simply another manifestation of my inability to commit. Although, could anyone really blame me in that particular situation?!!?

Thinking back at my tortured, er, storied romantic history, however, I’ve realized that while not every freak I’ve let into my life has been totally bad, for the most part they have been downright wrong — for me. And so I’m dreaming of the polar opposite type I’d ever consider getting nekkid with has me thinking — is that a sign I need to look beyond the usual broken boys?

Oh, but aren’t they fun?

Got sucked into the evil electric cable beast again this evening, and, left to my own devices (as all my roommates have lives…) wound up watching some random show on graffiti artists, which sorta’, in my kinetic brain, ties in with the conversation in my head, which goes something like:

“Was it necessarily a wise idea to invite a crew of taggers over to the SF Folsom Street flat many moons ago to help ‘paint’ the livingroom? Probably not, especially as I think the resulting flack induced a nervous twitch and ulcer in the landlord, who threatened to toss us onto the street if we didn’t paint over it.

“But damn it looked good and someday when I actually own something I’m going to bring my friends in to paint as many satanic cherubs, fuzzy pink bunnies, candy canes and assorted other images as I want.”

(And it’s the thought that some dot.com yuppies paying many thousands more than we were in 1998 occasionally get the fright of their lives as they lounge on their Ethan Allen furniture when the light is right and the spray paint pokes through the paint that makes me smile. And someday I’ll find the photos I took.)

Yet back then I was willing and able to spend inordinate amounts of time and energy dwelling on dudes who didn’t give a shit about me, or anything else except the spray paint, bike, paintbrush or drugs in hand. And I wonder if it ruined me.

Am I simply too old, tired and/or jaded to make an effort? Or will it all work out in the end? When even my mother turns to divine intervention to get me off the shelf I’m more than happy to lounge on I have to wonder if I’m doing it right.

Until recently I figured that fate, karma and the universe would happily align once I’d spent my merry time wandering and wondering and figuring out stupid shit like which country I want to live in and what I’m willing to do to pay the rent, and when I’d worked through the bulk of the bullshit would deliver my own personal Mr. Darcy to my doorstep, and I’d live happily ever after, or at least no longer be forced to be miserable alone.

Unfortunately MoDo’s tossed that theory to the wolves with her latest tome, Are Men Necessary?

For those not familiar with Madame Dowd, she writes what she thinks, thinks a lot, has opinions, knows what’s going on in the world, and she’s hot. In short, she and I are practically twins. (Ooookay, I embellish. It’s my blog, I can do what I want.) According to CNN:

“There’s a body of evidence now that the Y chromosome is rotting at such a fast rate that it will go out of business in about 100,000 years,” she said on “American Morning.”

“So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is,” she added puckishly, “you know we need you in the way we need ice cream, you’ll be more ornamental.” (A Times book reviewer has noted that other research indicates the Y chromosome has stabilized.)

She’s biting, looking for trouble, exceptionally well paid, attractive, high-positioned as one of a dearth of female news columnists, and, here’s the problem: single. And it’s a chronic condition for her.

Katie Roiphe writes in Slate:

In the most inflammatory and intriguing passages, she claims that men are put off by women in power, that they prefer the women who serve them—maids, masseuses, and secretaries—to their equals.

She attributes the fact that she is unmarried to her powerful position as an op-ed columnist at the New York Times. Then she notes her own family history of domestic service and concludes that “being a maid would have enhanced my chances with men.”

Oh shit. I’m fucked.

Or am I? Is my doom my own doing? Or undoing?

Because, as badass as I can be, I’m also ridiculously backward in my silly Cinderella visions of the storybook ending. And yet I’ve read The Cinderella Complex, I know better.

Nonetheless, I’m the one sitting here waiting for fate: I don’t need to put myself out there, I don’t need to maybe get up in someone’s face I’m attracted to and force them to notice I exist, the right person will magically float, as if on fairy dust laden air, to my side, and Tinkerbelle will fly by and the heavens will open and drop candy-covered thousand dollar bills and marzipan pigs.

Right…

So I’m torn: Do I chase after those I’m interested in, or do I continue to trust that the universe and fate really are in cahoots, and someone great will just pop onto my radar? I really don’t know.

And it’s not like I’m miserable, or desperate. It’s just, well, the part that worries me is this: Did MoDo, and the women like her who’ve hit the trenches ahead of us, assume fate would take care of it all too?

i think i’m going to change my name to erratica … seems to fit better with my random though-ridden mind!

somewhere in manhattan there is a livewrong bracelet that spontaneously leapt from my wrist when i wasn’t paying attention. i think it’s a sign.

anyone know how to cook a tofurkey? and yes, stick it inside a turkey has already been suggested!

Seems like I’ve been out of virtual touch for ages. I’m happy to report, however, that my aged body seems to be healing, albeit slowly. I told my male coworkers I’d take them out today if they kept pestering me, and I wasn’t talking about a lunch date, so I suppose I’m getting back to my own personal version of normal.

Out there in that big bad ol’ world, thought… sheesh! WTF? Where to begin?

It’s like an early Christmas with an orgasm on top, followed by the news that your dog has just been run over and you’ve got to pay to repair the bumper that off’ed him…

Although it was good to see Emperor Miers scurry back to the Death Star a few weeks back, seems Alito is far worse. When NPR makes mention that his nicknames include Scalito and Machine Gun Sammy, you know every last one of our civil liberties is at stake.

Course, Dumbass Dubya is still out there, whining like the dry drunk ill-mannered smirking spoiled baby he is:

“While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticise my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began,” President Bush told a largely military audience in Pennsylvania, in a speech to mark Veterans’ Day.

Interesting, considering the fact that his very administration seems hell bent on doing just that every chance they get, no matter how absurd and downright stupid it may be. Seems ol’ Scott-tissue McClellan got himself into a heap of trouble for responding, “That’s accurate” to a reporter who stated, “…We know that Karl Rove, based on what he and his lawyer have said, did have a conversation about somebody who Patrick Fitzgerald said was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. We know that Scooter Libby also had conversations.”

The White House propagandists, however, have directed two external transcription agencies, Congressional Quarterly and Federal News Service, to change the quote to, “No, that’s not accurate.”

Watch the video (the fun starts at about 5:30); he’d have to be a fucking ventriloquist to have spat that line out in the timeframe he’s seen speaking in.

I can imagine the conversation behind the regime’s curtain of secrecy post-mortem:

“Scott, you idiot! You told the truth! What were you thinking! You know the punishment.”

“No! Oh no! You don’t mean hauling away the dead carcasses of the everyday citizens Cheney’s sucked the life out of in his eternal, endless and, ultimately fruitless search for a soul?!!?”

“That’s right Scottie boy, but stop being such an optimist. He sold his soul long ago —it’s listed on the stock market just under KBR. It’s their life force. When the pacemakers stopped working, we had to find another way to keep Leader alive. Thanks to secret technology developed in an secure, undisclosed location years ago in Germany, we were able to fuse soft, innocent bunnies, poor minority fetuses, solid gold bars from his Haliburton payout and a few grams of coke from W’s stash and reanimate him. Unfortunately, he requires a constant source of humanity to keep his flesh from falling off and exposing him for the demonic zombie he is.”

“But, maybe we can tell them they just heard it wrong! We’ve spoon fed them for years, why wouldn’t they believe us now?”

“What a good idea! They haven’t tossed more than a few cotton balls at us in the past four-plus years. They’re like a press corps of Mikeys: they’ll believe anything!”

Unfortunately, as our man’s man and sexpert extraordinaire Steve Savage points out in this week’s Savage Love, this sort of behavior is hardly below Republicans. Thanks to modern medicine there is a readily-available vaccine that will prevent cervical cancer. As you may or may not know, it’s a sexually transmitted disease, and the more partners a woman has, the higher the chances she’ll get it. Pretty standard STD stuff, but there’s also the fact that, like many diseases, there’s no clear reason why one woman will get it, and another won’t. Either way, no one should have to die for having sex. Period.

But, that’s not the way the abstinence-only right sees it. According to Savage:

So what the right is saying is this: We’re willing to kill American women in order to avoid “sabotaging” our ineffectual abstinence-only message. Nice.

Unfortunately, it’s not just a bunch of experimental teens who are getting fucked in relation to this issue, as the Washington Post reports:

The jockeying reflects the growing influence that social conservatives, who had long felt overlooked by Washington, have gained on a broad spectrum of policy issues under the Bush administration. In this case, a former member of the conservative group Focus on the Family serves on the federal panel that is playing a pivotal role in deciding how the vaccine is used.

“What the Bush administration has done has taken this coterie of people and put them into very influential positions in Washington,” said James A. Morone Jr., a professor of political science at Brown University. “And it’s having an effect in debates like this.”

“Pardon me, Laura, are those lightning bolts shooting out of your eyeballs, or are you just happy to see me?”

Either that or Chuckles has some, ahem, hidden agenda…

it’s true, i played Frogger and lost… and i’m sick enough to take pics of the damage! ha ha! please forgive the scariness of the leg. i swear i’m not one of those scary fat ladies who have to ride a motorized cart in WalMart!

Or, the case of the post-halloween bike girl (black and) blues.

In my situation, it involves a Volkswagen, a bike, a girl and a lot of bruises.

One week to the day after my run in with the satanic sedan, I was minding my own business, in the bike lane, rolling along to run errands downtown, when a Golf (helloooo, isn’t there a special Golf-owners’ respect or something out there?!!?) pulls out in front of me, causing me to swerve, brake a gaaaaaah! Go flying over the handlebars.

So, somebody please explain to me how, in over 30 years of riding a bike, I can have two face-plants in one week…

It’s embarrassing.

It’s mortifying.

And, this week, it’s painful as hell. It’s a mess. It’s a swollen, non-bendy where legs should bend, ripped up flesh torn up muscles and ligaments mess.

Although, I can say that, after I got done yelling at him, not only could I guarantee the Golf driver would never pull out anywhere without looking in his mirror first, I could also pretty certainly assume he made a beeline home for a new clean pair of underwear tout de suite.

So, my conclusion is thus regarding the trinity of bike ickness (if you count the stick that stuck a few weeks back): I blame it all on Jason.

He was the last one to work on my bikes, and he sucks. So, from now on, no matter how implausible it may seem, anything bad that happens regarding bikes is Jason’s fault.

Kinda’ like many moons back, back, back in the day when a certain other tall, skinny boy found himself on the other end of my like list after taking up with some scary chick who later turned out to be psycho, thus making me feel better and spawning the phrase “bad idea Jen” to explain away a truly dumb move that probably should never have been made in the first place, I hereby coin, “Bad idea Jason” to describe things I never should have tried.

I am the biggest loser ever. Okay, maybe not the biggest, but I am a total effing loser, loser, looooooooooooser!

Why?!?!!?!?!

“Why,” you ask?

It’s Saturday night, the Saturday before Halloween, and what have I done today??? Yeah, rode to the bank. Did some homework for the writing class I’m taking. And…. Oh god, this is horrible! And, I baked super dorky Halloween cupcakes. *sigh*

I know…

I know.

Of course, M Diddy would be uber impressed with the fact that I made the fuckers from scratch — none of that boxed bullshit for me: tastes like plastic ass. (Not that I was sober the last time I partook of plastic ass … er… I mean…. heh.)

And, well, I did get hit by a car Thursday night, so I am, quite honestly, sore as hell.

Now, people around me are shocked … shocked! … when I relate to them I got run down by a sedan on my way to class, especially when I add this is hit No. 7 or 8 — I can’t remember. I’ve lost track. You would too.

All in all, it would have been understandable — if the driver was blind.

It was dark, it’s late fall, the sun tends to go down earlier and earlier, but I had one of the schmancy blinky light doodads on the seat post, and my bag has a reflective strip on it. But alas, that did not seem to matter to Dickhead Driver, who, like Jaws, snuck up behind me and basically side-swiped me.

Only I’m not a several-thousand-pound piece of metal (though there are days… ) and flesh and blood balanced on two wheels against the Four Door of Death … well… I never stood, or rolled, a chance and down I went, face first, hands and shins sliding along the pavement, my bike clattering behind me.

Now, here’s where the story would have been different: instinct No. 1 — get the plate, which I did. Instinct No. 2 — get up, back on the bike, and chase the motherfucker, smash my lock through the window and get face to face with someone who, obviously, has no problem running down hapless cyclists and going on his or her merry way, because I was lucky — next poor sap could wind up six feet below.

Probably also very lucky for me, however, was the fact that the chain had spontaneously leapt from its home amongst the cogs and was useless, so I went back to plan 1, called 9-1-1, and, after laughing with the dispatcher, who immediately asked, “Are you conscious?” (I’ve wondered that before about myself, but never had a stranger wonder the same!), I immediately gave her the plate, explained I was fine just scraped, bruised and shaken, and told her I simply wanted to report the incident.

Now, being the professional, she immediately wanted to err on the side of caution, I can’t blame her, and send a medic my way. To make her feel better I said okay, send a medic, I could use some Advil and probably a few Band Aids …

And as I sat on the curb, explaining to my roommate I might be a little late to class and assuring her I would somehow survive, a wailing siren got louder and louder, closer and closer … my medic, I assumed, feeling a bit foolish.

But that feeling was replaced by absolute mortification as a full-sized ladder fire truck came roaring to a stop at the corner, lights flashing, a handful of firemen holding axes at the ready, I imagined. It sat there. It didn’t leave. I kept wishing it would leave. It didn’t.

Finally, I stood up, limped up next to it, gave a little wave and, when one of the firemen rolled down the window, asked, “Are you here for me?”

“We got a report of an accident.”

“Um, yeah, that’s me. But, ah, I’m not on fire … “

Note to self: next time you get run down by a car, and a fire truck full of firemen pulls up next to you, and, when you explain you’ve been run down, practice fainting. Especially when the medics immediately spring out of the secret back compartment and start feeling you over to make sure you’re not bleeding, broken or actually dead. “Oh, I don’t know what came over me! But you caught me, you big strong fireman you!” (This said with dramatic hand held over forehead, of course.)

Now, not that I’m that sort of person, but, in retrospect, considering the fact that it’s the Saturday before Halloween and I’m sitting in my kitchen making homemade cupcakes from scratch for who, I don’t know, certainly no offspring of mine, when I could be on a booze cruise with my friends, maybe I need to be more of that sort of person.

And, there’s still hope. Tomorrow morning’s the 5K run, and I’ve still got the option of falling over and rolling about on the side of the road in faux (hopefully! knocking on wood!) agony. And, there are bound to be medics there, right?

Phew! Okay, so, getting sick this early in the seasonal coldness sucks. Hopefully this is not a harbinger of weeks and months to come, but I’m staying away from birds and small children with runny noses just in case!

Of course, sickness has never stopped me from a damn good reason to go out — I went to see Allen Ginsberg while attempting to douse a flaming temperature and full-blown bronchitis with ginger ale and diner food when I was 19 (remember Noddy?), and haven’t stopped since.

So, when VIP tix to the Beaux Arts Ball magically appeared, courtesy of Christine, who rawks, I downed the Sudafed, Advil, Tylenol, Robitussin, Vitamin C and Vicks like a trooper, because there’s nothing more fun than dancing around to bad ‘80s music and playing dress-up.

Makes no difference if the actual event is lame.

And, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, and the food was awesome, especially the multi-tiered chocolate fountain, and it took every ounce of willpower in my soul to keep from sticking my head under it and drowning in its sweet, chocolaty goodness.

Some day I will get one of my very own, which will sit right next to the Easy Bake Oven (sometimes you just gotta’ have cake!), uber cappuccino machine and Hello Kitty toaster.

Of course, life continues on post-ball, no glass slippers, prince charmings or even charming pauper, for chrissakes. But, I’d probably just laugh ol’ princy off to some grouchy stepsister anyway, considering the fact that one snippet of conversation between me and one of the rapidly multiplying short (sorry, short=death in dateland for me), obnoxious, trying way to fucking hard to impress men at this gig included, “So, just how small is your penis?”

See, I’m doomed. Singleton. Feral cats. Locked in an attic. Social pariah…

But, the thing is, I don’t care what you do, how much money you have or what purchases you’ve just made, if you’re treating the catering staff like shit and snapping your fingers at them, I hate you, because when I’m broke I work for a caterer, or a restaurant, or any other gig that’s not glamorous and involves serving dickheads who think an Armani suit immediately entitles them to belittle those they perceive to be below them.

But I digress, as I want to mention something very exciting, and while I can usually be found beating the crap out of him, calling him bitch and forcing him to feed me his home made, organic vegan delicacies or face certain death, Justin today surpassed us all and has made the lefty pinko communist big time! Bravo!!!

Park, my friend, when I visit next we shall celebrate: What’re you making?!!?!!?

Rode out to Manyhunks for weekly din-din with the bro and sis-in-law, who reminded me that I signed up to run a 5K next week. Ooops… forgot about that…

 

 

Very fast.

 

Oh, it’s not like I don’t exercise on a regular basis. Although I’ve recently embraced the so-called French diet (a bit too enthusiastically, I fear — it’s unlikely I’d find any French person who’d recommend chocolate croissant, cappuccino and yummy Trader Joe’s Dublin cheese for breakfast. I should probably get the book and find out what the deal is really about… ) the one element of the plan I definitely do not adhere to is the alleged French aversion to exercise.

 

I love my bike more than any man I’ve ever dated. I belong to a gym, and I actually go there (and not just to pick up the current schedule and bolt). Due to a summer filled with jaunts on two wheels and the poverty created by the endless thirst of an alcoholic hanger-on, I put my membership on hold for two months, but I headed back as soon as the cash was debited from the account, thus reminding myself that spinning is really dull on Mondays. To compensate, I imagined my dream sitch: Imax’ed Alpe d’Huez video spinning class. (Think about it, no matter how slow you’re really pedaling, it’d be like riding next to Lance (or Ivan or Jan, depending on your preference…))

 

But this 5K is another beast entirely: I haven’t been running in nearly a month, and back in the day I’d wake up hung-over, toss on the sneaks and plod my way to a 30-ish minute end. These days, waking up and not falling over as I attempt to put on my bunny slippers while simultaneously shielding my eyes from whatever light manages to make its way through my heavily fortified blinds and feeling my way down the stairs to the coffee is a major accomplishment.

 

Oh well, it’s for a good cause, and it’s only 3-point-something miles. Worse comes to worse I fake a cramp, fall over, melodramatically roll about, and then get up and limp to the finish, thus making myself look like a real champ for overcoming the odds of spasmic-muscles “for the cause”! Muwahaahaahah!!!!!