what is the word

Last nite, in bed with my hottie of a fuck buddy, I think I was drunkenly mumbling about biches. I guess most Americans don't know what biches are. My f.b. had no clue. I don't even know what the English word for them is. But I'm not making them up. Biches are real. They're basically miniature deer. There were lots of them when I was living in Africa. I remember them being knee-high or smaller, & they sort of prance around a lot, just like regular deer. Some people had them as pets, tho I found a blog entry by someone who ate one (tip: don't scroll down to the charred monkey). Back in Abidjan, the ambassador's family had a pair of biches, named Betsy & Ross. I was envious as hell. My sister & I would pester my father, couldn't we PLEASE get a biche, just ONE biche?
"The dog would eat it," he'd say. "It wouldn't even have a chance."
So we never had any biches, & I never saw much of Betsy & Ross either, the two of them being pretty flighty & scared of humans. Still, I wouldn't mind having a biche now. I could take it for walks & Melly could have her guide horse. The biche would be a total fucking petrosexual called Babette La Biche & the guide horse, naturally, would be named Juanita Valdez. Ah, those will be the days, Melly, those will be the days.
& by the way -- while I was "researching" biches online, Google, after politely checking to make sure I didn't really mean to search for "Bitches," suggested I check out this site. Apparently, "biche" has another meaning in French, because altho this is a simply awesome site, it has nothing to do with deer whatsoever. As far as I can tell it's a site for this really fun lesbian community in Brussels. They have a fuckload of parties & they dress female statues in tee-shirts with their awesome logo & make out with them. There is a section dedicated to women's coming-out stories, and they refer to themselves as biches qui sont sorties du bois, or, "deer who have come out of the woods."
Isn't that fascinating? I can't wait to see what this is going to do to my sitemeter. I feel like it's gonna be juicy.

Post-script. It turns out the English word for biche is "duiker" (pronounced, ironically, like dyke-r). They aren't really deer; they're "pygmy antelopes." Check out the biche-to-person ratio here.

Post-post-script. I like how the initials for fuck buddy, f.b., are the reverse of the ones for boyfriend, b.f. It does seem to fit.

I've been so busy lately, I've barely had a minute to blog, which is really off-pissing. Since I don't have time to write anything I will share a piece of writing I adore, the piece to which the title of my blog respectfully refers. I love this poem. I don't know, quite, if a poem is even what it is, but it is a marvellous piece of anything really. I love the way there is this incredible delicacy behind its veil of clumsiness. It comes closer to mirroring the frustration of reaching for words than anything ever. A must-read for writers. Here it is.

WHAT IS THE WORD
by Samuel Beckett

folly -
folly for to -
for to -
what is the word -
folly from this -
all this -
folly from all this -
given -
folly given all this -
seeing -
folly seeing all this -
this -
what is the word -
this this -
this this here -
all this this here -
folly given all this -
seeing -
folly seeing all this this here -
for to -
what is the word -
see -
glimpse -
seem to glimpse -
need to seem to glimpse -
folly for to need to seem to glimpse -
what -
what is the word -
and where -
folly for to need to seem to glimpse what where -
where -
what is the word -
there -
over there -
away over there -
afar -
afar away over there -
afaint -
afaint afar away over there what -
what -
what is the word -
seeing all this -
all this this -
all this this here -
folly for to see what -
glimpse -
seem to glimpse -
need to seem to glimpse -
afaint afar away over there what -
folly for to need to seem to glimpse afaint afar away over there what -
what -
what is the word -

what is the word

I have about eight thousand things to blog about today. My friend Margo's visit over the weekend, which was insanely awesome; the yummy burger I ate at Peter Lugers yesterday; the passing of Hume Horan, who I have greatly admired; the pouring rain on Friday; making out with someone I really shouldn't have; and various other non-bloggable happenings. What I wish I had done, because I would surely blog about it all day long if I had, was to go see Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza's last show ever in Elizabeth, N.J. Not that I've ever seen any of their shows. But they are fucking hardcore! Matt went. Matt is no fucking joke. Apparently Bad Luck 13 will totally try to murder you if you go see them play, but Matt wasn't even scared. The band was lighting off fireworks & swinging bats at the audience. Bats wrapped in barbed wire. They chucked a severed pig's head at my friend Ory, but he dodged it in the interest of keeping kosher. By the end of the show the rumor was that there was at least one death: a girl who'd been hit by a flying saw blade.
I'm sorta relieved that this was Bad Luck 13's last show. If I found myself in Elizabeth, N.J., dodging pig heads & barbed wire bats, my ass would be at Ikea so fast it would make GG Allin's head spin (in his grave). I would be over there eating Swedish meatballs, picking up a desk lamp & sending Matt a text message like, "Call me when that shit is over."

I remember the first time I ever made out with another girl. I was telling a super-straight friend of mine about it. She said, "It's funny. I'm not attracted to women or anything, but I think Sandra Berhard is hot." Guess she wasn't such a straight arrow after all.

Wow! Posting about what a fucking idiot I am when it comes to pot smoking was the best idea ever. Everybody has been so helpful! Thanks, stoners!
The kids over here have been especially friendly. They are also hot.
I noticed that the first person on the board assumed I was a dude, & dismissed my incompetence. When I unveiled myself as a chick, the mood kinda changed.
Feminists may take issue with this (& I take issue with it when it's convenient), but when you're a woman, admitting helplessness is often the smartest move there is. Even if you aren't quite as helpless as you're making yourself out to be.
In other news, I'm behind the times due to a frenzy of activity at work. But this story (2 days old, at least) made me want to barf. Violently.
Come on, Madonna! You are so embarassing. You are more embarassing than my dad, & he got his ear pierced at age 60. With a gold earring the shape of a fish. While drunk on margaritas in the Keys. Outside his RV that's got white tigers airbrushed on the back. With Jimmy Buffett on the radio. Wait, maybe that's cool. It's so hard to keep up these days.

I got this dime bag I'm pretty sure isn't working. It was only $10, so I'm not that upset. Plus, I'm smoking it wrong. I never really learned how to roll a joint properly, & on top of that buying papers seems like a hassle. Somehow I don't own a bowl anymore either, so rather than get one, I've been rolling out as much tobacco as I can bear to part with from a cigarette & stuffing the empty tip with grass. On top of that, I don't even pack it in properly. I just sort of put some loose ends in there & burn them up. It's almost as bad as what my friend Andy used to do. Andy was everybody's weed guy in high school, so he always had more than he knew what to do with. When he was feeling particularly lazy, he'd break a chunk off a brick of pot, set fire to it, & breathe in the smoke. That's decadent. It's not nearly as decadent as Tony Montana burying his head in a mountain of yayo. But back then it seemed pretty fucking cool. (It wasn't.)

Yours truly spent the weekend over there in Minneapolis dontcha know. My sister & I never tired of saying everything in a Minneapolis accent while there, & punctuating every sentence with a "dontcha know" or a "you betcha!"

Minneapolis has a lot of things New York doesn't. Thousands upon thousands of lakes. Billions upon billions of mosquitos. Bars that serve Shiner. 2 drive-in theaters! I spent a contented evening at one of them, sitting in a folding camping chair under a wool blanket, gorging myself on Cheetos & sipping a Shiner, being disappointed by Anchorman with my friend Michelle. We had a big Citronella candle to keep away the mosquitos & the bright thick flame was like our campfire.

The best thing Minneapolis has that New York doesn't is the fabulous Nye's Polonaise Room.

Michelle & I caught up over beers in the huge black vinyl booths at Nye's. Walking to the bathroom was scary because people were really polka dancing there, leading each other about with great zest & plowing over anyone in their way.

I stopped in Chicago on the way home. My plane wasn't full & I slid over to the window seat, so I could watch Chicago fan out gently below me, a great, soft, twinkling orange grid moving slowly in the distance, as the purple clouds, closer now, raced above. Land & lake tumbling fast away, a bright white sheen glazing the tops of the clouds & everything else darkening, darkening. Goodbye Chicago, site of giddy rainstorms & inflatable mattresses; hello New York, you terrifying old friend, you gleam beyond the clouds. I swear I'll fix everything when I get back to you.

A pretty flight attendant shooed my money away when I tried to pay for my vodka tonic. I drank it & read Cruddy. I underlined this sentence:  It turns out that once your mind gets expanded it is very hard to shrink it back down again.

So it turns out the new owners of Sweetwater are none other than Smith Street superstars Jim and Paul Mamary, of Patois, Schnack, and Gowanus Yacht Club fame. I'm a fan of the Yacht Club & I hear great things about Schnack. But these guys seem way too yuppie (read: successful) to be taking over such a punk rock establishment. Schnack's even got its own blog. According to Time Out, the brothers Mamary will be serving escargot & chocolate martinis, among other things. If you ordered a glass of wine at Sweetwater they looked at you funny. They'd serve it to you eventually, in a highball glass or whatever else was around.
I don't know if I'll be able to bring myself to hang out at the new Sweetwater. I don't know if I'll be able to avoid it either. I happen to like escargot & chocolate martinis. I'm also lazy, & I like going to bars that are right across the street from my apartment. So it's going to be an interesting dilemma.
Is punk rock establishment an oxymoron?

P.S. I may have gotten dumped but I am still a nerd magnet. I got another Friendster message from another lame nerd today! Not a nerd in the good way either! A nerd in the worst possible way. He wears pleated pants & wants to have coffee with me. He said that I made a very "risible" comment about the Golden Girls in my profile! Anyone who uses the word risible in a Friendster message is weird! A friend of mine once told me that a job applicant used the word fecund in her cover letter & he was immediately turned off from hiring her! It's the same sort of principle! Words are very important!
I know I'm nitpicky & neurotic & a little bit mean. I think it's some sort of fucked up survival mechanism that kicked in when I moved to this city.

I had a great time at the Xs for Eyes show last nite at Trash. I was in a good mood & I didn't know why. I got stoned before the show & when I was walking over there I had a lot of not-so-good thoughts running around in my head. I kept thinking about how I got dumped. I kept thinking, I got dumped, & it's all my fault. I was practically begging to get dumped. I'd been acting all dump-worthy. Nobody should have felt sorry for me, because I fucked everything up all on my own, but I felt sorry for me; in a way that was the part I felt sorriest about.
But when I got to Trash this band the Crapenters were playing & they sounded pretty good. They were playing a funny song about wearing the wrong pants to outerspace, or something like that. The lead singer was wearing a ratty green Cubs shirt & they were all pretty sweaty & unassuming. "They've got a certain je ne sais quoi," I said to a friend, who had to admit it was true.
On top of that Xs for Eyes sounded fantastic & Fletcher had these exciting things that exploded when you threw them. I don't know how else to describe them but they made a little spark when they hit something (usually Paul's guitar) & gave off a loud pop.
So that was sort of that for my depression, at least for the evening. I decided getting dumped is a pretty grand thing anyway. Whenever someone feels like giving me their sob story, I'll just say Listen, I got dumped, & hopefully that will shut them up.

For a Grateful Dead nerd (I am resisting the term Deadhead) like myself, this is heaven. In the summertime I lose all sense of shame about how much I adore the Dead. Much as I loathe the words "extended jam," when the windows are open & the sun is shining in, I see nothing wrong with letting a beautiful song go on twelve minutes too long. Nothing makes me want to dance my hippie heart out, & then not shower afterwards, like the jam at the end of Row Jimmy on Dozin'.
People are always asking me whether I like Phish too, because I like the Dead. This is a bullshit question. For me, there is no comparison between the two. I've seen Phish live & one might say they are talented, but other than their categorization as a jam band, I don't think they're anything like the Dead. For one thing, Phish fans can be awfully creepy. Sure, some of them are hippies, but lots of them are ravers & frat boys & sketchy types in general. But the biggest problem with Phish is that their lyrics are shit. The Dead had fucking incredible lyrics, because Robert Hunter wrote them. The Phish lyrics I'm familiar with are annoying & meaningless.
Here is a well-known Phish lyric: Set the gearshift for the high gear of your soul / You've got to run like an antelope out of control.
Whatever that means.
Here is a well-known Dead lyric: Counting stars by candlelight, all are dim but one is bright: the spiral light of Venus rising first and shining best.
That isn't my favorite Dead lyric ever but it came to mind first. My favorite Dead song ever is Saint Stephen. I also think its lyrics are gorgeous.
But nothing's better than this tiny little gem:

Lady Simplicity
Bright like a ribbon bow
Everything everywhere
Just for the show
Believe it implicitly
Love is tranquillity
If you don't know that
Then nothing is known

I don't know why I wanted to write about the Dead today. It's been raining a lot lately & I haven't been listening to them at all. Last nite I listened to Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands about five times, over about five glasses of wine. Yum!

pretty things all around ~~~

Re: sea, rolling up to
That was the subject line of some spam I got today.

"I was born a tiger, I howl with desire, and I thirst for mountains..."
That's a song lyric from the band of my new blog crush.

Et c'était comme quatre coups brefs que je frappais sur la porte du malheur.
That was a beautiful line in the book I'm (re)reading.

he's wearing a white t shirt with black jeans and cut off chuck taylor high tops and a red hat that says 'florida' so im in love with his smile.
That was one sentence of an email I adored but still haven't replied to. Sorry, Lauren. I'll hit you back tomorrow.

How hard does my best friend Melissa rule? So hard she's invented her own holiday, goddamnit, & it's called Take One For The Team Day. Here's her definition of the holiday, from an email she sent me about it:

did i tell you i made up a holiday? the day before memorial day will always be TOFTT Day. Take One For The Team Day. i went to the movies with Skot this year for TOFTT Day as he's been whining about not having seen Kill Bill for about 3 months now so given that it was TOFTT Day, i went to the movies with him. and, for his TOFTT gift to me, he went to Lauren's BBQ even though he had plans with his other girlfriend (Ryan) and then went to dinner with Nicole and Mark and me. i think i love my new holiday. it's a learning experience. i actually liked the Kill Bills and he had a good time at both the BBQ and the mexican dinner. did you do anything for TOFTT Day even though you didn't know about its existence yet?

The all-time winner of TOFTT Day, according to Melly, is Britney Spears, taking one for the team of all humanity by being the biggest idiot of all time: asking a moron with two kids to marry her, getting rejected, & then when he finally proposes, being all stoked about buying her own engagement ring & wavering over the pre-nup. Nice work, Brit! Thanks to your shining example, now we all know what not to do when it comes to marriage. Way to TOFTT! You win!

The international online query demand for loveparade sex continues apace.
What the fuck is it all about?
I'm thinking of changing the name of my blog to loveparade sex. It's à propos, don't you think?
In other news, I am stressed out at work. I'm trying to be upwardly mobile, but no one can seem to satisfactorily answer the question of whether it's ok to go sans pantyhose with a skirt suit. (The satisfactory answer is "No.")
My friend Stacy started a blog. If you read it, she will bless you.

I am officially depressed. I got a message from a boy I don't know on Friendster & it depressed the fuck out of me. He wants to play pool with me, or something. I didn't reply, but later I decided to view his profile again, just to reaffirm my intial impression that he wasn't cute (he isn't). Upon revisiting his page I discovered that, in the mere hours since I'd gotten his message, he'd already changed some of his photos & altered the "About Me" & "Who I Want to Meet" sections.
People who constantly edit their photos & profiles on Friendster depress the living shit out of me. It depresses the living shit out of me when I do it.
When I am depressed there is nothing that will help. I mean, this helps a little. Reading the Internet doesn't help. All it is these days is bloggers telling everyone what they thought of that Michael Moore movie. I'd like to tell you what I think of that movie too, but I'd feel pretty silly about it, wouldn't I, being the eight-thousandth person to do so?
The other thing that depresses me is that I found out Drew Barrymore has a dog named Flossie. Flossie is the name of my future dachshund. It doesn't matter to me that I don't have a dachshund yet, & that Drew has had Flossie (a non-dachshund) for at least three years. It doesn't even matter to me that I originally stole the name Flossie from Nabokov's autobiography. I still feel that Drew stole the name from me.
What probably will help tho, is that tonite I'm going to see Live Girls!!!! at Trash. I adore seeing Live Girls!!! under any circumstances but even more fortunately I'm going to have pulchritudinous (i.e., hot) company at the show. I'm going to try my hardest to not be shitty to be around, for his sake. He's been very nice to me even when I haven't tried hard enough.

PG Wodehouse had a dachshund too. His name was Bertie. That doesn't depress me a bit.

I could so easily, if I weren't paying attention, let my site slip into nothing more than a collection of images of guys I think are hot. However, due to the recent passing of a certain someone, I actually have an excuse for being all lusty & superficial. Here's a nice photo I found. In memoriam, so to speak.

Like about a thousand other white kids in New York, I spent last nite watching Dizzee Rascal open up for The Streets at Irving Plaza. I was more excited about Dizzee initially but The Streets was great too. I don't know why but Mike Skinner reminds me of my friend Booger (tho apparently everyone reminds me of Booger). Maybe it's because they're both named Mike. Or maybe it's cos Mike Skinner was yelling for all the single ladies to meet up with him later.

I didn't see a single person I knew at the show, even tho it seemed like just the sort of place where you're destined to run into about thirty people you don't feel like seeing. I was a little drunk & a little stoned tho, so maybe that's why I didn't see anyone.

Anyway it was a great show. The crowd was fired up. The lighting was perfect, in that eerie, submarine, alien sort of way. The crowd was yelling, the emcees were drunk, & New Yorkers were actually dancing. I guess there was a fight, but I was in the loo & missed it. On the whole a brilliant evening.