It is decidedly cold. DECIDEDLY. Goosebumps, nipples, teeth clenching…..hang on a minute. That sounds like good sex. WERD. See how I did that, internet? See how I turned that around? Yeah? That’s called positive thinking. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little surprised I was able to pull positive thinking out of my ass as a result of recent situations, but I did. Woot.

So, after much internal debate, well, external, too, but I really pay little attention to external debate, because I’m always right, I have decided to go forward with grad school. If they’ll have me. Oh, wait they will. Sweet. It’s like going to the grocery store and swiping your card, and Verifone has APPROVED me, I get a little lick. Because, look at it this way, 1 800 HOPELINE, if no one else approves of you, your debit card does….and if it doesn’t, continue with previous planned actions, because you’re broke.

Was that inappropriate?

Alright….so here is my earthshaking point I’d like to make.

Why would anyone want to live in Carrollwood? I mean, REALLY?

Far away enough for Downtown to be annoying, close enough to grocery store to feel like you’re in BFE. BECAUSE YOU ARE. That being said, can we petition for Craiglist to delete all Carrollwood postings? Thank you for your support.

I cant be buggered to write more.

Today was my first day of what I like to call my “big girl” job. Most people give me a puzzled look when I refer to such jobs as that, but if you think about it, my current job, which is serving in a restaurant, is pretty much a dead-end endeavor. Unless I wanted to go management, but, no thanks. Props to those who can work 50 hours a week for a salary and deal with idiots like me. I’m not so brave.

So, today I walked into a world of high heels, classy clothing, coiffed hair, and sunny smiles. I now have a break room, equipped with a microwave that doesn’t have a chart for reheating enchiladas and steaming vegetables on it, cabinets full of girl crap (Splenda, powdered CoffeeMate creamer, and tupperware out the ying yang), and a vault room that definitely has female written all over it. By that I mean it looks like a damn paper nest. There is “stuff” everywhere. I feel as though if a boy worked there, he’d walk into the room, take one look at it, and walk right out. Women are pretty weird in the way they lay things down in a spot and are able to find it a week later. Some women. Not all. Julie loses her keys, cellphone, and earrings on a regular basis. I find her stuff and she finds mine. We work well together that way.

I’ll be working this big girl job and my serving job, to make ends meet, and my end goal is to get my own cheap apartment, where me and my cat can chill on the patio, drinking beer and water, eating kibbles and hummus, and where I can keep throbby lounge music playing while I nerd away at Visual Studio, work on my thesis for my master’s, and make pillows to chuck everywhere I need coosh (coosh is a term coined by either me or Julie, in reference to her dog Toby’s infatigable desire to have somewhere cushy to lay down) which will be….everywhere.

I’m still considering joining the military. The most appealing part of this consideration is the awesome leadership training I will get, because I know for damn sure it will pretty much land me a job where ever I want (Marine Corps officers are some of the most sought-after employees for companies). I’m tossing it around. Or, I like to think of my options as pretty bubbles bouncing around my head. I can blow it up, or let it pop. It’s all in my control.

This past Thursday I was invited to Alex and Kevin’s phat pad, where podcast magic happens in their living room with Kevin’s techy geekness laid out on the coffee table, and whiskey, beer, and cigarettes flow at a nice rate. It was good stuff. I’m more opinionated than I realized, because I had lots of questions about their topics, but was in a non-participatory role for this one. I did get some air, even though I’m white. Oh, jokes. Check it out, should be posted today or tomorrow, I hopes. Grab the Nub

I’m off to Ross to exchange a pencil skirt I accidentally split. I split the slit up the back by spreading my legs too wide. I feel a fashion rename is necessary: Chastity Skirt. Much better.

Ta!

The past 6 months of my life has been all about making decisions. We all make decisions, on a daily basis, but these decisions I’ve been faced with are made without all the required intel. It’s the hardest thing to do. I’d liken it to being an infantry officer in the military. Making decisions, with peoples’ lives at stake, without all the information. Crazy stuff.

I’ve been thinking a lot about mistakes. Is there ever really such a thing? Depending on your attitude as far as regrets go. You can live with regrets or without them. A mistake is the result of a decision you made, like the wrong one. But if you don’t regret it, because you are living your life without regrets, then was it ever really a mistake to begin with? Perhaps it was a situation you learned from, as we learn from all events in our lives. No mistakes are possible then.

So, I don’t know if I actually made a mistake or not. Fate is then part of the discussion. I’m still not sure how I feel about fate.

So, speaking of Mistakes and Regrets, I feel a song reference coming on (Cooey, Damon!)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Wednesday morning I woke early, to help my parents out with my younger siblings. My dad has hurt his back, his L1 through L5 look a little fucked up, according to the radiologist, so he is now in the first stages of pain management. My mum went through this when she had her back injury several years ago. You talk to a pain management specialist, and decide the best route for you. In both my parents’ cases, steroid shots was the way to go.

If you don’t know what steroid shots are, don’t think my parents have the “rage”. Its cortisone, that wonderful stuff that makes the body feel better, just like hydrocortisone cream heals the skin. I have been told this by my beautiful friend Brandi, who is an esthetician, and knows all kinds of fun facts about the human body.

I had to get up early to make sure my brother got up for school, as he is all kinds of nasty when in bed at 7:30 A.M., and my mum wasn’t here to do the job. Then I had to take him to school, make a deposit, buy some smokes, and then I headed off to the gym, where I flailed around, unchallenged.

On the way home from the gym, which is one block away from my house (convenient!), I saw a black dog’s body laying on the sidewalk, with a white dog sniffing and poking at it. The white dog, which I later discovered was a pitbull, was running in frantic circles around the dead dog, in and out of the road. I made a U-turn, pulled into the closest parking lot, and ran over to see what the hell had happened.

The dead dog had clearly been hit by a car, and I say this because blood had leaked from its mouth all over the sidewalk, and the impact could be seen on the road–blood splatter, then tire tracks through the impact spot. I’ve never seen a dog thats been hit by a car before, and before I could really reflect on what I was seeing, a truck pulled over. A man got out and eyeballed the situation, same as I did, and mentioned animal control. I pulled out my cellphone and called 411, which directed me to K911.

K911 isn’t really an emergency hotline, it’s a voicemail that promises to call you back within 30 minutes. Nice. Not.

Within two minutes of thy friendly neighbor stopping his truck, the pitbull that had been whining, sniffing, licking, and nuzzling the dead dog then started to hump it. All over. Butt, face, torso, whatever. Dick had sprung and the pitbull was gyrating all over the place. One of the stranger things I’ve seen. Me and stranger look at each other like “What the fuck?” and then we both try and coax the pitbull verbally to stop doing that, it’s wrong, messed up, oh shit, stop, not in the face, yuck, ew.

After about 5 minutes of us standing there in a quandary over why a live dog would hump a dead dog, a police officer shows up.

He sits in his car for a few minutes, doing nothing, until stranger goes and sees what the hell he’s doing. Oh, he’s calling animal control, so strange man leaves, he has to work. Cop finally walks over and says that animal control is on its way, but for now he thinks we should put the dog in the back of his car. Ok.

Ok. Not really. The dog is some kind of pitbull. Which is fine. I like pitbulls. But, its emaciated, its ribs are sticking out, it has a choke chain and a spiked collar on with no tag, as the dead dog had a collar with no tag also, and its horny and hungry, and it ain’t going nowhere. Even me practically doing cartwheels and showing my carotid artery like I was enticing a vampire didn’t work. I danced, sang, whistled, made baby faces and sang songs….he’d get two feet away from his new necromanic toy and then book it back over there, to do the wild thing all up in the dead dog’s face. I half expected The Horny Necro Dog to start doing the electric slide in the puddle of blood me and the dead dog were in.

The cop mentioned to me that “We don’t know how aggressive the dog will be”. And I totally agreed. Obviously the owners didn’t care enough to make sure THND (The Horny NecroDog) stayed inside, was fed properly, or neutered. To that conclusion, with the spiked collar accents and the dog’s stocky build, I had a feeling the owners were some of the twisted individuals in this world that truly have ‘pets’, as in ownership of a being that you feel owes you something, similar to slavery. Basically, this dog looked as though it may end up fighting at some point. And considering he was horny and hungry, I didn’t know he would respond to us using physical force to come with us and take him away from his new plaything.

Inspired, I asked the cop if he had any food. I did not say donut. I should have.

He went to his car and found a pack of cheezits (Cheezits has not in anyway asked me to namedrop their crappy crackers), which I then opened and got THND’s attention. After I fed him one, I kinda crabwalked backwards, placing a single cheezit every three feet. Until he got right next to the car door, and I was thinking “Victory!” he turned back around and started humping again. Sigh.

I tried this like 3 more times. I have to go home and shower for work. I don’t have time for this. The cop wasn’t trying to force the dog anywhere, the pansy, so I just grabbed THND’s collar and dragged him slowly to the car. He was a stocky motherfucker, too, and trying to make him walk was like trying to shove a boulder. What happens when you cross an immoveable object (THND) with an unstoppable force (Jen)? Cheezits get crushed on a sidewalk.

Me and the horny dog got to the door of the car, but he didn’t want to get in. He actually liked me, enough to his wag his tail happily when he sniffed me and such, and I totally saw him giving the cop evil looks, ha. So I just looked at El Hornio and sighed, and I climbed into the back of the cop car, where there were cheezits waiting on the seat, at the end of the Hansel and Gretel trail. Of course, he hops in with me, wags his tail, and the cop shuts the door with us both in the car. It was a brief moment, lasting only about ten seconds, but I swear that dog looked in my eyes and I looked in his and we both knew what was going to happen.

It was like we were both old, so old, and so tired, and just sick of how it all ends up. We mentally exchanged a thought of “We know whats happening next. Human gets out of the car, leaves me here, don’t have a family, going to animal control, more than likely will never get adopted, because of the way I look, and I will die.” Dramatic as that may seem, when I slid out of the other side of the car, I felt horribly guilty.

I still do. Its not specific. Dogs, cats, bugs, humans. When innocence is manipulated by greed or ignorance, and the innocent suffers the repercussions, we should all feel guilty.

Spay. Neuter. ADOPT. Do not BUY purebred dogs, and then make money off their puppies. That is disgusting. Thats the same as slavery in the U.S. A female slaves gives birth….awesome. In ten years you’ll make a buck.

Realize that when you vote for tax breaks and help with your mortgage, the money comes from somewhere, and it typically comes from libraries, animal shelters, and other GOOD things our local government offers.

And also realize that means that instead of being able to give a lethal injection to an animal, because of budget cuts that YOU voted for, more than likely 20 dogs will be piled into a box and killed slowly with gas….like the Jews in the Holocaust.

I’ll never forget his eyes, his patches of colors on his face, how his paws looked tinted pink from blood, the blood on his legs and face, and the ribs that stuck too far out of his fur.

I’m sorry I couldn’t take you home with me. I can’t afford to buy you food, and give you a place to stay. I’d come see how you were doing at the shelter, but if you weren’t there and I was told you got put to sleep, I don’t think I could handle having my heart broken another time this year.

And I’m breathing and it’ll be ok.

I love Soul Pancake. Good way to get your mind off YOU when thats all that fills your head. The title in this post is from This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A cool cat too cool to use his first name. I’d be J. Helen Harrington. Or J.H. Harrington. I can’t decide which is better. Perhaps I shall design a book cover with both and we’ll take a vote. Because it’s that important.

Today I went to the USMC OSO, and spoke to the OSO. Officer Selection Officer. This is NOT redundant.

I’m considering joining the military for a number of reasons:

1. I’m broke, and tired of serving. And I don’t want to work as a server to pay my way through grad school.
2. I don’t know that I can find a decent job besides serving that will allow me to pay for myself, loans, and grad school.
3. I can fund the travel I do, or be ordered to do it.
4. I’ll have professional work experience, and a lot of helpful training.
5. Awesome benefits, all medical and dental pretty much free.
6. If I was a guy, I’d say I’d get lots of ass falling into my hands. But I’m thinking most men will be scared off by an officer, a female, at that, and will run away. Which sounds good to me!

I’m considering not joing the military for a number of reasons:

1. Loss of freedom
2. I will be owned by the military, always on call.
3. No idea how my sidekick, Ivy, will work into this. If I get sent on a tour somewhere, i.e, Afghanistan….I don’t think she can come.
4. The idea of being 28 blows my mind out of the water. I don’t like to plan that far. I do, but I don’t.

And holy fuck, the sky is blue today in Texas. I didn’t know that was possible in October.

If you’ve been to college, community college, university, whatever, you should know that Wikipedia is the scourge of professors everywhere. No, we may not use it as a source. No, we can’t use it for ideas, even. If we dare mention The Great Wiki in our paper, ten points will be frenchly docked. I say French, because I feel like that’s something uppercrusty/upperhanded a snooty French person would do. Let me enjoy my cliches. It makes sense to me. And I like to create adverbs on a whim.

However, as I and the significant other (I truly know the meaning of “It’s Complicated” on Facebook now) were verbally sparring last night (one of my favourite activities), I realized I may not truly know the meaning of an oxymoron, or a redundancy (verbally). I argued that a redundancy cancels itself out. S.O. told my brother that ‘overexaggerating’ was redundant. Which to me, means exaggerating means overdoing it, so using over with exaggerating is essentially too much, and you cannot really OVERexaggerate. Makes sense to me. S.O. argued that theres no canceling it. We went on to discuss oxymorons. I think he said oxymorons cancel themselves out, like silent scream. But I think they don’t, necessarily, because isn’t silent scream an actual concept, idea, that has meaning to us? Right?

You’re probably wondering what the hell this has to do with Wikipedia? Well, I’m a woman. I have to tell the backstory, durr. Anyhoo, I went to The Great GOOGLE to search what we were discussing, and I was invariably led to the The Great Wiki. Hm, its almost like an internet Houdini. You know, The Great Houdini. And I remembered why I love, and we all love, I think, Wikipedia. It’s like a giant tree of knowledge, perhaps of good or evil? And I’ve spent many nights, as we all have, clicking away here and there saying to ourselves “Hm, what’s that?”, and end up being 20 pages separated from where we started. Almost like looking for high school friends on Myspace, minus the gasps of “You REPRODUCED??” and “Oh, damn, put up WET!” and “Wow, he’s still so hot…”

So, in my search for redundancy, oxymorons, and the etcetera, I learned about Self Refuting ideas, Metaphysical naturalism, Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, and all kinds of goodies. And then I also remembered how much I LOVE words.

It also reminded me of how I love numbers. I am not a math whiz, but there are parts of math, the word I use for all things numerical, quantumish, strictly ruled and fascinating, that I dearly love because numbers tickle me. I had a conversation with a friend about this a few weeks ago at a bar in Irving. Now I’m having this conversation about words and Chomsky-an sentences with myself in Fort Worth, because unfortunately I am not in wordsmith company. Currently there is a dog running in circles around me looking for a possum. Oh, yeah.

But hell, whats a blog about myself for if I’m not going to talk about stuff that tickles? And I am very, very ticklish.

It’s 63 degrees here in Fort Worth right now. Thats a bit ridiculous, dammit. I miss hot weather. One winter here will be enough for me. My brother keeps telling me about AWESOME ice storms, and AWESOME icicles on the tree branches, and cars sliding around the roads, which is also AWESOME.

I mean, I like to live life on the edge, right? Who doesn’t? But more so when I’m in control of the stupid things that happen and keep you on your toes.

So, if Texas and Tampa were in a football game, or any such game where points are tallied, this is where it stands right now:

Texas

1. Long green arrows
2. Hills (they’re hills, to me, goddamnit. Florida is at sea level. If I go up and then down, and can see houses a mile away, thats a fucking hill)
3. Awesome lightning (spider lightning, pink clouds, silent storms and sharp cracks of occasional thunder)
4. Mexican restaurants up the ying-yang
5. Better suburban traffic (3 lane roads through the towns)
6. Awesome vegan diner downtown
7. Cheap gas ($2.22 for 87)

Tampa

1. The ability to take your beer outside when you have a cigarette
2. Road signs that are correct and make sense
3. Separately, when you go I-75 N, you head north. Here you go north on I-35 W. Huh?
4. Rush hour traffic is manageable compared to Texas. In Texas, you just sit it one spot for an hour. And rush hour starts at like THREE.
5. Beach.
6. Moes
7. Einsteins

Oh, looks like we’re about even. Hmm. I’ll have to work on that.

And, this song rocks my sock. It’s from the Twilight soundtrack, which is actually quite enjoyable.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(oh the moon reference….witty….not.)

My friend told me about a site called Beautiful Agony. You have to be a member to view all the videos, but they have some free ones up. What an awesome project. Like a mature version of PostSecret. I also really dig how the tagline for the site is “Facettes de la Petite Mort”, which translates to “Faces of the Little Death”. I’ve always enjoyed that analogy.

I definitely broke my own heart. I wonder if thats harder to deal with than if someone else did it.