Sweetney

I have a horrible, sinking feeling that my "Look" is somehow incomplete

Sweetney — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:00:57 -0700

For your information, achieving "LOOK" TOTALITY involves the completion of a complex, and only partially understood algorithm, consisting of:

5 gallons of AquaNet

Generous application of Wet 'n' Wild Cosmetics

RATT on heavy rotation

= THE TOTAL LOOK MUTHAFUCKAS!1!!!!!

heh.

Aaaaand speaking of things related to The Rock Music, which it seems like the kids are so into these days, I have another one of those awesome Sandisk Slot Radio players to give away! WOOT!

As you might recall, it's a wee thing that comes pre-programmed with 1,000 -- yes, that's ONE THOUSAND -- handpicked songs, so you don't have to bother with burning and transferring songs from CDs or downloading things from iTunes. Kinda cool, huh? Ideal for summer travel and throwing in with beach towels and sunscreen when you're heading out to the shore.

All you have to do to enter to win is leave a comment on this here post (here I'll give you a topic: what's your favorite Summer Jam, past or present?), and I'll randomly pick a winner this Friday, July 10th, around noonish. That's a tight time-frame, so get a-commentin', people!

. . . . .

Aaaaaand we have a winner! Congratulations to Sumo! You shall soon be in possession of delicious music player goodness! WOOT!

And thanks to everyone else who participated. Fret not, fair readers, for I'll have one last player to give away next month, so stay tuned!

Rollerbabies

Sweetney — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:26:31 -0700

I normally don't go for this sort of thing, having never really gotten over the creepy CGI dancing baby of Ally McBeal fame, but in this case I make an exception:

Babies + rollerskates + Old Skool Rap = AWESOMEZ. (Also, I love it when advertising *gets it right* and does something interesting.) Oh there's also a Making Of video!

PS: Thanks, Jamie!

Weather Report

Sweetney — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:02:44 -0700

Him: Are you surviving? I feel a need to airlift you things - booze, music, etc... I know that in your position I'd still be lying in a pool of myself, wondering where the sky went.

Me: Here's the thing. You think you'd be (as you perfectly put it) "lying in a pool of myself, wondering where the sky went." But you wouldn't. It's kind of amazing. I think it's having kids that does it. The 'lying in a pool of myself' thing -- I've done that before, and over comparatively insignificant breakups, losses, pains. But the truth is it's a luxury, being a mess -- something you can do only when you don't have someone relying on you for their sense of reality and stability. Right now, I actually CAN'T be a mess. It's not an option. At all. M caught me crying just a little the other day and that was bad enough, seeing how unmooring that was for her -- I don't ever, ever want her to see me really fall apart. It would crush her world. If I can hold it together I can help her hold it together, and if she comes through this okay I sure as fuck will. Does that make sense?

Which is not to say the falling apart thing isn't happening in other ways, different ways... it is. But it's circumstantial. I've been crazy before -- real crazy, actual nervous breakdown crazy -- and that's different, scarier. This is more like mental/emotional birth pains. It hurts like hell, I feel a bit out of control, I need an goddamn epidural. But then it'll be over -- it's an event. You can go crazy and be crazy the rest of your life, locked in the terror of disreality, but you can't enact this kind of dissolution for the rest of your life. Once you walk through the fire you walk through the fire, it's done. When I'm on the other side I'll be a bit burned, a bit tender, but it will be over. I'll have survived.

. . . . .
PS: I hope.

I swear by all that is right and good in this world that this isn't some kind of covert Disney plug

Sweetney — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:25:27 -0700

It's like motherfucking Wild Kingdom around here these days. WILD KINGDOM OF THE DAMNED.

So here's what happened.

I was sitting in my living room this morning trying to jump-start my brain with epic doses of caffeine, when I heard a very light scratching sound coming from behind our TV cabinet (if you'd like a visual aid to help you conjure an image of the setting for this story, the giant black armoire to the left in this photo is said TV cabinet, and I was seated in the chair visible in the foreground). The scratching sound lasted for perhaps two or three seconds and then stopped, so I shrugged it off. Our house was built in 1914, it makes all kinds of random and unexplainable noises, believe me. I mean, if I got freaked out every time I heard scratching, or the sound of rattling chains in the basement, or blood curdling screams coming from the attic at 3am, well, I'd be freaked out a whole lot of the time. Anyway, a few moments later I looked to my left and saw a teeny tiny gray baby mouse punch-drunkenly climbing out from behind the cabinet over the thick white satellite TV cables strung along the baseboard.

Right about this time, give or take a few stunned, horrified seconds, was when I began running around in circles like a cartoon character, hands flailing wildly, repeating over and over like a mental patient off her Very Important Meds: OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO. Yeah, so basically I'm real good in a crisis and stuff.

I then did what any sane person would do, which was find a bowl, plunk it down over the mouse to trap it, and then proceed to stand there for five minutes with my mouth hanging open staring at said bowl, as if awaiting further directives from the part of my brain containing Reason and Problem Solving skills. Sadly, my brain was all, Dude, I've done what I can. You're kind of on your own from here on out -- I have some equations related to wave-particle duality I need to be working through. I'M OUT! Stupid brain.

At that moment I was standing about two feet away from my desk (and I use the term "desk" loosely -- it's not so much an actual, functional workspace, but rather a shambolic dumping ground for bills and paperwork and other distinctly Not Fun things I don't really want to deal with (an appointment request card from my dentist has been sitting atop one of the several piles that comprise the mountainous terrain of my desk for well over 6 months; my teeth will surely rot and liquify before I make that goddamn appointment now that the card has been consigned to The Desk Of No Return)), so I grabbed the nearest folder and gingerly scooted it, inch by inch, under the now-mouse-filled-bowl.

On a motherfuckin' roll (I AM A WOMAN OF ACTION! TAKING CHARGE OF THE VERY SERIOUS AND COMPLEX MOUSE SITUATION! YEAH!!!!), I gently picked up the folder/mouse/bowl and took it out onto our broad front walk, so that upon release from its bowl-prison the baby mouse would instantly be vulnerable, exposed and clearly visible to birds of prey from the air.

Yeah that's not very impressive.

Okay, how about this?:

DINNER IS SERVED!

Okay, a couple of things to note here:

1. I swear by the power of Greyskull that it was completely by chance that I grabbed this particular folder. Disney had just recently sent an Imagination Movers CD to me (Imagination Movers exist within the 7th Circle Of Hell incidentally, named "Violence Against Art," located just beneath Circle 8's "Pimps, Panderers and Seducers." The more you know!), so it just happened to be conveniently laying atop the uppermost sedimentary layer of my deskscape. Still, that's some pretty sweet happenstance right there, you gotta admit.
2. OH MY GOD IT'S SO CUTE I COULD DIE, GAH! Why do disease-infested vermin have to be so cute, whhhhhy???
3. Okay, and this is the eerie part: it's a baby. Barely had it's eyes open. Was still unsteady as a newborn foal. So you know what this means, right? THERE IS A NEST OF MICE SOMEWHERE IN MY HOUSE. AIIEEEEE!!!!!
4. © Copyright Walt Disney Records, 2009. All rights reserved. OH I KEED!

(Sorry, got a little caps-lock crazy there. Deeeeep breaths.)

So after a few stunned and trembling seconds, baby mouse scuttled off under the ivy surrounding our front porch. Which probably means that baby mouse will be reappearing inside my house within 24 hours. But really, what am I going to do? Feed it to my cats? Flush it down the toilet? Create a baby-mouse-inspired theme park and animation studio and become a bazillionare? Oh, wait...

(The truth I'm trying very hard not to admit to myself is that baby mouse is probably done for. Poor thing could barely walk yet -- he's not going to present much of a challenge to nearby wildlife with the fever for the flavor of the mouses. Can't say I don't feel bad, I'm kind of a pussy about cute fuzzy mammals truth be told, but it's not like we could keep it...)

(Alright, fine, Circle Of Life and shit, I'm over it. Sigh. Stupid life circle.)

Saturday

Sweetney — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:51:54 -0700

There's a dead bird on our porch, he said.

He's always been overly repulsed by the sight of dead animals. And so from our earliest days together it was one of the few critter-related matters I had to take on in our relationship, as he, incongruous as it may seem, has no problem killing hideous eleventy-bajillion-legged alien bugs, or escorting by hand the odd lost ladybug that materializes inside our house back out to its proper place among our garden's hydrangea blooms. But I am the sole Person Who Deals With Dead Things around here, and as such have, over the years, had to dispose of a fair number of hapless former mice, tangible evidence of our retiring housecats' still formidable hunting skills. Anyway, the point is that I knew immediately he'd be of no help in dealing with the thing on our porch.

Where is it? I asked, grimacing.

His left arm flew up, gesturing broadly toward the front of our house. He winced visibly. Over there.

I peered out our front door and spotted it, laying beside our rocking chair. Indeed, that bird is no more. It has ceased to be. It has kicked the bucket, bought the farm, it's pushing up daisies. It is an ex-bird.

I have no idea what to do with it.

And so there it remains. Rife with symbolism so obvious it makes me want to punch whoever's in charge of dropping these metaphoric talismans into our lives squarely in the ethereal jaw for insulting my intelligence with such a ham-handed, amateurish trope. I'm mean come on, universe -- you can do better than that, can't you?

But what do you do with a dead bird? I honestly don't know.

Instant joy

Sweetney — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:30:36 -0700

I'm just going to keep hitting "play" on this first clip over and over again all day long, like a rat compulsively tapping a lever for a dose of opiates:

Extended release formula:

Ahh, better. A fleeting, ephemeral better, but I'll take what I can get right now.

Breathing underwater

Sweetney — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:42:19 -0700

When I asked in Monday's post how to survive this, how to go on, the response from many of you was to just put one foot in front of the other. So that's what I'm doing here, with writing, because I still don't have a clue what to say, but I feel like I have to keep writing or I may just stop entirely, and lose this thread I'm holding onto connecting me to a network of support I know I can't afford to lose right now.

I might end up sounding slightly incoherent. I might sound that way for a while. I apologize in advance for that.

There aren't enough words to thank all of you for your comments, twitter messages, and emails. I'll never be able to respond to all of them, but know that every single one made a difference, makes a difference, and has truly helped me to keep my head above water the past few days. Who knew the internet could be used as a flotation device? For me, right now, it is.

Everyone keeps asking me how I am. My standard answer is: I don't know. That seems closest to the truth of things. Much of the time I feel like I'm underwater. That I've been dropped into this dim, sound-muted alien world, my surroundings rippling in front of me like a mirage, like something that seems real, but isn't. It takes me twice as long to do anything as it did before -- every movement seems labored, the simplest thought like a puzzle I have to break down and process bit by bit. Everything feels strange and different somehow. I don't know how to explain it.

Sometimes I find myself involuntarily staring off into space. I'm cycling pretty rapidly between emotionally dead zombie and flailing, overwrought basketcase. I don't know if that's normal or not, or if there is a 'normal' for all of this. It's weird, the things that make me crumple into the fetal position are oftentimes small and trivial-seeming. I've been busying myself with trying to cut some of my expenses down, knowing that financially we're soon going to be stretched pretty thin, supporting two households, and in the process of trying to see if we could downgrade our internet provider's hosting plan I noted that our account had been created in 2002. And then I was sobbing, just sobbing. It's the year our daughter was born. The year we bought our first home. It's so hard to think of those things now. To think that life became this one.

We haven't yet sat down and talked with M. The thought of doing that, it's like examining a diagram laying out your own personal hell, knowing you have no choice but to create it, to summon into being the worst possible thing you can ever imagine. On the advice of a friend who'd recently been through this, we're waiting until we have a concrete plan in place, so that we can explain to her in very specific terms what this means and how things will be different. In the meantime, we're trying to maintain normalcy as much as that's possible.

But I know she knows something is wrong. Of course she does. On Monday I saw a strange expression drift across her face at one point, and so asked her "What's wrong?" She looked at me blankly for a moment, and then her brow knotted in confusion: "I don't know," she said, plaintively. I put my arms around her and pulled her up onto my lap, and tried not to cry.

Echo

Sweetney — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:52:52 -0700

It probably doesn't matter, but I was thinking of this when I chose the title of today's post. Lines from it have been ricocheting around in my head all day. Somehow, it makes a kind of sense.
. . . . .

Falling

There is a part
of this poem where you must
say it with me, so
be ready, together we will make
it truthful, as there is gracefulness
even in the motioning of those
leafless trees, even in

such motion as descent. Fired,
I move downward through it all again
in an aquarium of debt, submerging
with the flowering electric
company, with March the 10th, 1971,
its darkness, justice and mercy

like clownfish, funnily striped.
Let them both as a matter of policy
redevour the light that
escapes them, Shakespeare
had just candles, lamps,

Milton had only the
dark, and what difference? as
poetry, like failure, is fathered
in any intensity of light, and light
in all thicknesses of darkness,

as your voice, you out there,
wakes now, please, to say
it with me: There
are descents more final, less graceful
than this plummeting
from employment; it is the middle of a false

thaw, the ice undercoating
of a bare branch is
in the midst of falling. Where
can it all be put except
in this poem, under us, breaking this fall,
itself falling
while breaking it? Look
at this line, stretching out, breaking even as it
falls to this next, like a suicide,
the weather singing
past his face, and arising to kill him
this first last line in weeks.

- Denis Johnson

No Possum, No Sop, No Taters

Sweetney — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:38:44 -0700

He is not here, the old sun,
As absent as if we were asleep.

The field is frozen. The leaves are dry.
Bad is final in this light.

In this bleak air the broken stalks
Have arms without hands. They have trunks

Without legs or, for that, without heads.
They have heads in which a captive cry

Is merely the moving of a tongue.
Snow sparkles like eyesight falling to earth,

Like seeing fallen brightly away.
The leaves hop, scraping on the ground.

It is deep January. The sky is hard.
The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.

It is in this solitude, a syllable,
Out of these gawky flitterings,

Intones its single emptiness,
The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

It is here, in this bad, that we reach
The last purity of the knowledge of good.

The crow looks rusty as he rises up.
Bright is the malice in his eye...

One joins him there for company,
But at a distance, in another tree.

-Wallace Stevens

Mark Wagner's Currency Collages

Sweetney — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:27:45 -0700

Woah. Link

[Thanks, Kelly!]

Elevator To Space: Episode 1

Sweetney — Sat, 30 May 2009 09:39:03 -0700

M and I just watched all five episodes of this, and we both loved it. (Honestly, the title sequence is, in and of itself, reason enough to watch this five times (or more!)). Episode 2 (and the others) here.

links for 2009-05-20

Sweetney — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:03:49 -0700

Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

This piece blew my mind.

(tags: psychology science health brain neuroscience memory)
Can I Marry Gay?

Just in case you were wondering.

(tags: society culture law states)
The Best Hair of the 80's Hair Metal Bands

Dude, HIGH-larious.

(tags: hair rock music style fashion)
How not to land a plane

See this is the kind of stuff I worry about. And I have to get on several planes this weekend. GAH.

(tags: funny video humor airlines planes travel)
Photojournalism - Photography, Video and Visual Journalism Archives - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

Amazing new photojournalism blog from the NYTimes.

(tags: photography photos blog photojournalism)
Unlikely Words » Everything Tracy Jordan Said

Everything Tracey Jordon's character said in season 3 on 30 Rock. Brilliant

(tags: quotes culture humor tv)
YouTube - Ozzy Osbourne Meets the New Alias 2

Sometimes people get advertising right.

(tags: advertising humor funny tv)

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises Over Texas Star Party

Sweetney — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:13:32 -0700

The universe is cool.

The rules (No not those. The other ones.)

Sweetney — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:26:58 -0700

I found this site greatly pleasing. Perhaps you will too. Link Also on twitter