Ho ho ho. So my sister scored the cherriest fucking job-shadow of all time…Calvin Johnson.

Okay, I know, for those of you outside the Greater Puget Sound Area (and to many within it) that name probably means nothing.

Calvin is this local rock star, d-i-y guy. He has been making music since the early 1980’s and has his own record label, which Beck’s third album came out on. He went to Evergreen State College, which is this fantastic hippie land where they don’t believe in ridiculousness such as “prerequisite classes” and “grades.”

My sister stalked him last summer by going to every all-ages show he put on, and guess who drove her? By the third one, I was standing outside…it was too much Calvin for me to handle.

She’s meeting him down in Olympia on the 17th and she’s only 15 and needs a chaparone…it’s me, of course. I couldn’t let our mom louse this up. It should be really fun. She’s going to job-shadow a minor rock star. I am related to such a genius. I probably would have cold-called an accountant or something, if I was still her age.

I was way into his twee strummy rock as well as his experiments in dub when I was 18 or so. I still appreciate what he does, but I know I won’t go all ass over teakettle when I meet him. Now if it was Jake Gyllenhaal…I’d be TOTALLY worthless.

America! The time is now! (Well, next Monday.) The place is Fox Television!

We must unite in this critical time. Come on people, they fucked us on Joe Millionaire, now’s our chance!

What am I talking about? Married by America, of course. For those who haven’t heard, it seems that we are going to be allowed to dial up and vote for people to get married, “sight unseen”. Fuckity, man, I say it’s better than being Married by the Moonies.

I say we get together and pair up the most awful people they have, at which point my show idea will come into effect: Divorced by Fox.

I see three couples who hate each other, REALLY hate each other…they want to get a divorce so they go on this game show. They have to work together to beat other seperated couples at challenges, even though Bill slept with his admin. and Tammy hasn’t given Carl a hummer in, like, two years. You can see the hate on their faces. The couple who works together best gets a free divorce lawyer, provided by Fuks.

I just love that Fox announcer, don’t you? He never says “Fox,” he always says “tonight, on FUKS!” I love him.

So it looks like Mr. Husband is going to quit his job, much to the relief of all involved. Who knew that office work would pay even less than taxi driving? Not me. He will go back to driving, and to the whores and derelects and so forth, all in the name of making a living.

I am churning out paper after paper, I am on autopilot. I am applying for a grant and we will see, but we are used to being poor so it doesn’t matter if we get one or not.

Two weeks ago I watched the baby while she was eating, and I wanted to shove the food in her mouth and make her chew, so she wouldn’t waste anything. I was skipping meals so that she could eat and I could eat her half-chewed leftovers. Things are better now. I swear I hope that he can get four days a week because I am awfully tired of tofu.

When you were a little kid, what did you want to be? My earliest memory of having an ambition was wanting to be a cartoonist. I would draw, draw, draw all day long without having any increase in my ability whatsoever. If I would have “stuck with it” I just would have ended up drawing indistinct, squiggly-looking shit with scathing commentary in the dialogue bubbles above. I suppose there’s a market for that though.

Then I wanted to be a comedian. We had Career Day at our school, and all the other little girls were running around with stethoscopes or severe make-up and briefcases.

“What are you?” they said. They looked over what I was wearing, which is what I wore everyday–pastel stirrup pants and two pairs of socks that matched the colors of my outfit, topped with what my Dago aunt called a Dago tee and a wildly patterned (pastel) shirt.

‘I’m a comedian!” I said, in what I presumed was a humorous manner. I carried nothing but a notepad and pencil to jot down every vaguely hilarious thought.

“Huh,” they said, not getting it. I have had this problem my whole life. The year all the girls were “punkers” (hookers) for Halloween, I was an alien. The year everyone was a goddam Ninja Turtle, I was dressed as a bag of garbage.

When I hit high school and embraced the more lesbionic side of my nature, I was convinced I was going to be a truck driver. Hell, I had the flannel-wearing, jeans-hitching part down already. I could talk trash, and spit, and take a bunch of pills to drive straight through to New Jersey. Then I really went through The Change and my bladder became the size of a walnut. To this day, I don’t know how to pee into a bottle, so truck driving is still out.

I digress: when grunge came into fashion, to the point where my friend and I walked into Sears and there was a huge sign that said “GRUNGE” above the teen section, my mom was pretty happily unaware of what the foo was “happening with the youths.” I started buying dirt cheap flannel at thrift stores and wearing them everywhere, even in the summer (tied around my waist, of course). I was riding in the backseat one day and out of the blue she glances at me in the rearview mirror and says, “What, are you trying to look like a lesbian?” Ho ho ho, the irony is too much for one person to bear.

After that, I guess I figured I’d just end up being a stripper or something, because I sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to see any of that college money that had been put aside for me, even before I started disappointing Them.

I got a whole line of record store jobs until I got married, and then I aspired to the highest calling of all aimless girls who can’t stop fucking with their own hair: Beauty School. I honestly thought that’s where I belonged, that I couldn’t do any better than that.

Sometimes I worry that they’re going to find me out for the intellectual fraud that I am and boot me out. But in the meantime I am becoming very interested in cataloguing issues (for this five minutes anyway).

But when I get very tired of reading, I really am working on a plan to become one of those dirty female rappers who can rhyme “carpet burn” with “butt plug.” I too will wear nothing but a pastie shell over one of my boobs like Lil Kim.

In Other News

Dear Beef Farmers of America,

I see that you have created a new “sub-tle” campaign to encourage teen girls to eat red meat, specifically beef. Why is this page so damn creepy? Don’t most lil girls see right through this shit? I mean, it’s on the Internet, for christ’s sake. They probably got to this page from a link on a Korean porno site.

Don’t worry, Beef Farmers of America. You will get the elusive 11-17 set back when they grow out of being anorexic, or on nights when no one will be home for hours and they are binging.

From the “Smart Snackin” page: “I make sure I eat a healthy diet sometimes by listing down what I eat each day or remembering what I eat. I’m always careful.” –Judy, age 12.

Any twelve-year-old girl that’s being this “careful” is not eating beef, I’ll tell you that much. Creepy!

Love, SJ

How the crapping fuck could this happen? How can you take a piece of art like this and paint over it in the crappity shitbox 1950s? Oh, I am sad.

I have seen two van Gogh shows, one in LA and one in Chicago. I thought he was pretty overrated before that, since he appeared on everything from playing cards to toilet paper. But I actually stood in front of a series of his works, all hanging together and got to look at the beautiful gorgeous gloppy texture, and all the other gabillion people were there, they had slammed down the money and had gotten into the big sweaty queue, clopping through like cows following closely on one another’s heels, and I knew there was something to it. That is my church, and my pilgrimage.

So to take a work like this eighty crapping years later and paint over it…that’s just not right. Forget about the value, it’s all about the sacriligeousness of it. I say, less painting over, and more nude Australian women.

In Other News

Also, contrary to popular belief, Vincent did NOT cut off his ear. It was only his earlobe. And he did not commit suicide.

Scholars have known for a long time that near the end of his life Vince used to carry his easel, canvas, and paint kit out to a field to paint near the mental institution he was resting up at (on his doctor’s advice). The crows drove him NUTS (ho ho) so he used to carry a shotgun with him, to blast off occasionally to scare them away. He used to carry his things in a big bundle, and as the story goes, one day the shotgun went off, right into his gut.

Vince walked the four miles back to where he was staying, and called for his doctor, who summoned Vince’s brother Theo from Paris. Vincent hung on until Theo got there and spoke with him.

What kind of person commits suicide by blasting themselves in the gut, and then walks four miles to seek treatment? And then stays alive to see their brother?

Art history is full of accepted myths like this, crafty by punks who think that you have to turn a field into some sort of sexy car wreck to get people interested. Some of us are just in it for the pictures.

If someone were to paint over one of my crappity fuckknuckle paintings, it would probably be worth more.

I have always had problems with public bathrooms. I mean, who doesn’t, right? No one sane likes taking their pants off in public, the last time I checked.

Before I hit puberty I always had to go before I left the house, because otherwise my bladder would freeze up the minute I got into the bathroom. For some reason my mother didn’t like to make five trips to the bathroom while we were at the mall, with me saying “Well can you run the water again? Okay, now louder. Quieter. Turn it off!” Clearly I was cutting into her time spent at Petite Sophisticate.

Finally, I had a breakthrough, which I think correlated with the beginning of my drinking career. Come to think of it, though, I didn’t get that much better in public restrooms. It was mostly in the street. When I am falling into a combine because I can’t deal with any more school, I hope the scenes that flash before my eyes are all of the times I’ve peed in alleys, behind dumpsters, and in someone’s yard, alarmingly close to their hydrangeas. Because I’d really like to know.

What is extra-special alarming is the Modern Bathroom. When they made over my school building they put in these horrifying, space-age heads of doom everywhere. They are so efficient that they do not let you decide which facilities and functions you want to use, because they clearly know what’s best.

Want to wash your hands? Good luck with that. There is a whole row of faucets and you better hope they are in a good mood. You cannot bend things to your will in this bathroom, the way you can with older, more feeble-minded ones, for this bathroom runs on those magic sensors that are supposed to anticipate your needs before you even have them. But instead they maddeningly woosh on and off so you only end up with part of one hand wet.

And the toilets flush “automatically,” which means “while you’re sitting on them” and (god forbid) the second you’ve dropped something into one. This means that if the bathroom is not too full you will get that horribly misty breeze effect and the fleeting sensation that the liquid is being sucked out of your body. If the bathroom is full and there is a line, then the toilet will not flush at all, leaving the next occupant to curse you, assume that you are too stupid to be visible to sensors, and that you had asparagus last night.

At this point I actually miss the bathrooms in the art building, because I felt like I could trust them. They were humble. They quietly proclaimed, “Many failed artists have peed here!” I never thought I would say that.

Mmm, okay, yeah, we at the offices of I, Asshole are all better now.

After staying up for too many hours and rocket-vomiting until Jurassic-era strata was unearthed from the bottom of my stomach, I have made almost a full recovery.

Tried to convince Mr. Husband to bring in a largish rock from the backyard to brain me with, but he wouldn’t do it, much to my enemies’ dismay.

In Other News

I am so full of seething hate for the Partnership for a Drug-free America.

In case you haven’t seen it, the newest spot I know of is that nasty one with the couple looking at the pregnancy test which reads positive, and the voice-over is saying, “They are about to have a new addition to their family.” And it pans to the cutey little WB-looking girl who can’t have possibly started her period because her skin is still like a glorious lake of pure milk. (Perhaps her parents got her one of those weirdy skin-clearing shots that are supposed to cause birth defects or something?)

I digress. Anyway, it shows Felicity’s little sister and the voice-over says, “they (referring to the couple) are about to become the youngest grandparents in the neighborhood.”

The commercial concludes by telling us that marijuana can impair your judgement. That’s true. If I was stoned when I was watching that commercial, I probably would’ve smashed my television.

Seriously, this is a weak, irresponsible viewpoint that shows how weak and stupid anti-marijuana crusading actually is. This commercial can be filed with those other recent ones, like the ones with the kids who are hitting a bong and then shoot each other, and the girl who gets raped at a party because she was smoking pot.

I think that Parents (

Stupid List Servs! As if I don’t have enough breast/penis/elbow enhancement shit in my inbox. I also have crud like this to wade through. What follows is a legitimate request from my professor that he calls “fast feedback” about how the class is working. He does this every three weeks, unlike those professors who wouldn’t “piss on fire to put you out.”

And then…the reply from one of my incredibly witty classmates.

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Cool Professor wrote:

> Hi Class:
> First I want to apologize for not leaving any time for fat feedback
> yesterday — and second then I want to remind you to bring your
feedback to
> class tomorrow. The two questions were:
> 1. What’s the best and the worst thing about the class so far?
> 2. What’s distracting/helping your learning?
> Remember that you response can be anonymous…
>
> Thanks,
> Cool Professor

>On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Irritating Classmate wrote:

> Apologies aside I am surprised that we are spending any time at all on
fat feedback. Yes, I know that since early October I’ve put on about
ten pounds (okay…maybe 12 pounds of so) and I suppose I could use some
kind of feedback about just how large I am becoming but still. Is this
really an appropriate use of class resources?

A slightly offended (okay, it is more than a slight weight gain), Irritating Classmate

Whatta Maroon!

Went to the mall, yesterday, of all places. My downward spiral into anti-intellectualism continues.

Ahh the delights of overpriced food, fried cheese on a stick, and nasty-looking after-holiday displays. “Please buy our crappy leftovers while we do inventory!” they scream.

Highlights of yesterday:

-My sister saying, “Man, I love watching you throw food out the window.”

-Buying kettle corn on the street downtown, like Seattle is a real city or something.

-Having perky salesgirls in the cosmetics department put random crap on my hands that I can’t afford.

This made up for Saturday night…someone slashed our truck tires while it was parked on the street. They left a trail of havoc that was at least three miles long, following up the 28 busline and hitting cars at random. I looked for a pattern–new cars? Foreign cars? SUVs? We have a 12-year-old GMC worktruck without offensive (or any) bumper stickers. The car across the street was a Dodge or some such thing, and a little Honda got hit too. Totally random.