"how can he be clean that is born out of a woman?"
-- job 4:4

that's a pretty funny one.

the obvious truth is that everyone born out of a woman is pretty filthy. television offers the viewer with a wide spectrum of baby cleanliness.

the highest occurance of clean babies occur on network tv sitcoms. true, they don't actually show the baby being, uh, birthed(?) but the next thing you see is the doctor is handing the baby wrapped all cute in a blanket, clean as a whistle to mama.

on medical dramas (also network tv) the babies tend to have a grittier look to them. i once read that on ER, that former hit nbc medical drama, that they spread jelly (i like to imagine it as raspberry preserves, seeds and all) all over the babies, and when i say spread i really mean slather. they slather those babies in raspberry preserves to give those netowrk tv babies that straight-outta-the-womb look.

by far, the most realistic babies just born can be found on pay cable. the home of ass and nipple shots is also home to babies who look like a complete mess. these pay cable shows love to show a scene where the slimy, slimy baby (raspberry preserves and molasses, perhaps) is cut from the umbilical cord and crying! oh, the crying! then there is a shot of the mother in a purely anguised, happy, teeth-baring smile (if she survives the child birth, that is) and the doctor says "let's get that baby cleaned up!"

network tv babies are the cleanest, hands down. 

i know i am cheating cause this is supposed to go
me - terence dee - me - terence dee

but i finished writing comps today and i HAD to post it -
like a little kid on x-mas morning
like a little bratty kid the night before you go to disney
like a phd student who - with the help of a decent defense - is about to become abd -
i had to yell

"i'm done!"

comps - they are a comin'


so i am about to take these two tests that i have been freaking out about for about 6 months - they are technically called 'comprehensive examinations' - but who doesn't love to abbrev - i mean seriously - comps just sounds way more fun - right?? though i sometimes wish they were called my qualifying exams - comps just doesn't have the ring of 'qualifying'- i mean - i like the idea of qualifying for something - at least at the end you can clearly say that you either qualified or you didn't - but we can't be picky when it comes to our phd's now can we -

so back to my shitty comps situation - the thing is that i feel like a high school kid the night before the exam - and i say 'the' exam because it doesn't really matter what exam you are taking - the night before is always when you really accept that you are in fact fucked - which is why i feel like i am in high school - because i genuinely feel like i am in fact fucked - now everyone is going to say that i am being self depricating and having no confidence or whatever - which is what i have heard for the past three months when i have been the most public about this freak out - but there are times when i wish that people would take my bullshit seriously and just say 'you know what diana - you are totally right - you did jack shit for these tests and you are going to bomb - good luck with that!' -

i didn't actually do 'jack shit' - which is why everyone thinks i will do fine - but doing what is adequate to pass and doing the work and mental labor that i have done are two very different things - i suppose we will see how different they are though, won't we -

mostly i just think that i am going to have a nervous breakdown during these exams - i really do - thats part of what the whole emdr was about - to ward off any serious mental freak outs - i still think it might happen though - its hard to say what will set off this comps bomb - but its certainly a possibility in the near future - maybe i will just fail - or maybe i will pass and realize that once again i feel like i have just gotten by under the wire - maybe i am jinxing myself - maybe i should shut the fuck up and just take the fucking tests already -

so if this blog tends to be tdog for a while then you know that i have self combusted and am sitting in a pile of my own insanity somewhere reading catcher in the rye over and over and over and over - while only eating cheerios and soy milk and wearing a blanket -

off to comps land until august 30th -

there was a sun shower on thursday.

i was leaving my work to go and pick up some fly traps (the sticky, coil kind) and just as i was about to open the door i see a torrential downpour in broad daylight.

i say to my co-workers, "hey! check this out! it's incredible!"

i run and grab my camera and the photo to your left is the first one i take.

the woman laughs a sweet and playful laugh after the snap, as if she is saying to me, "this is pretty fucking cool, right?"

that laugh justifies my split-second decision to grab my camera.

my diet has consisted lately of hebrew national 98% fat free beef hot dogs, weed, camel light cigarettes (i know, i know), water and beer. i have to say, despite the gospel truths of my diet, i look pretty good.

i am still in that in-between. i don't really mind because the truth is, in-betweens make a pretty sweet quilt when the real fucking world starts blowing frigid air into your spaces.

i'm going to leave you with a song my older brother and i wrote when i was in kindergarten and he was in fourth grade.

jack frost, he's a real ace
he rapped on my window and
i shot him in the face

replace jack frost with anything that's giving you shit in your life and you might start coming up aces and roses. 

hmmm - the in betweens - i hear that - i have felt like almost everything i have done in my life and continue to do in my life is part of some process to get ready for something - what that something actually is...i am not sure - but something is coming... at least i think it is -

but i am with you here terence in that the in between feels like i am in a catatonic state - and this waiting has me dicking around doing stupid shit until then - at least i used to fill my time with better things - but i am not even having any sex to be talking about here (sigh...) - now i fill my time with phd crap that is not even really satisfying at the moment for whatever reasons - when i am going to get to the good stuff - when is the magic going to happen?? when are you going to feel ten times as much gravity or ten times as little?? when when when?? maybe that's all that life is - waiting for something - first we wait to be born and then wait till we walk and talk and wait till we are old enough for school - then junior high then high school - and then i waited for college (or University for you canadians) - then i waited for grad school and moving and waiting and waiting - two days ago i waited in line at the DMV (which is the Ministry of Transportation here..MTO - it somehow sounds better to me than the DMV) - waiting for therapy to work - waiting till i finish my stupid stupid stupid comps - waiting until i feel at home in canada - waiting until my cookies are out of the oven - waiting till i graduate- and even waiting for a time when i will need that inspired feeling i got when i went to that sarah harmer show - bottling it up and saving it for when i feel worst is actually the best thing to do with it - but it still makes me wait - and waiting is something i am no good at - old captain impatiento - that's me

but alas - at least something new and random has entered my life - something interesting to report back to team public jerks - something that might even speak to mr terencedee here and his wanting to feel a different kind of gravity - which in some ways is a different relationship with what keeps us stuck to the ground - so here goes

- I had a two hour intensive session of therapy yesterday where we did a new kind of therapy (new to me - but also relatively new in the world) called EMDR - it's an acronym for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing - fancy title, eh? - it's a pretty contraversial therapy that's used for a ton of things (and by things i mean psychological problems of sorts) - my therapist thought it might help me with my 'performance anxiety' which i kind of have for these exams i will be taking in a couple weeks (more to come on that later) - what the therapy actually is will sound fucking strange when i explain it - but sit back and bear with me friends - i am not making this shit up - so you start with capturing a moment - the moment of trauma, freak out, or in my case - mental block - you find a moment and describe everything you are feeling in that moment - both physically and mentally - and this is where you begin - this is the part that gets weird - ready - ok - so i took my moment and thought about it - and put on a headset and held onto two little vibrating things and just sat silently for thirty second thinking about my mental block moment while i had beeping noises going in my ears and these vibrating things in my hands - seriously - i am not kidding - it sounds crazy but this is what i did - and then after thirty seconds my therapist turned it off and had me report back what i got out of it - and then at the last thing that i said - she would turn the machine back on and say 'go from there' - and back to the buzz buzz- buzz buzz -beep beep - beep beep and away i would go into my own thoughts again - and we did this back and forth with me silent with the machine for thirty seconds and then report back for a half and hour - and i kid you not it was the longest half an hour of my life - it felt like ten fucking years - and do you know what - at the end - i seriously seriously worked through some shit - i mean it felt like 6 months worth of therapy packed into one little session - it was crazy - i have never felt or seen or lived through anything like it - i am a new person today - i really am - i think it helped that the frame for how you are supposed to be thinking about your moment or moments is that you are supposed to be on a train passing by these moments and looking in on them without actually living through them or stopping either - it sounds pretty cheesy and therapy like - but looking in on yourself while imagining you are on a train is a pretty fun thing to do - i recommend it t people - maybe i am just a control freak and i like the idea of being able to look away or that the train will eventually move past whatever it is i am thinking or looking at - but it's a pretty solid way to reflect on things - but the thing is that you start with that moment you have blocked but then you just take off from there and everytime you report back you just keep going from where you left off- and so i was thinking and talking about my entire life in that half an hour - the whole picture was there - why i am in school - my insecurities and where they might come from - my friends my parents - who i am as a person, academic - where i am where i want to go what i want to do - i used the word existential at least 4 times while i was 'reporting back' - and i guess it was a pretty existential experience in a way - but i wasn't lying when i said it was amazing - i am seriously a different person - no joke -

i think the philosophy behind it is that your cognitive mind helps your emotional mind get through whatever has made it get - for lack of a better word - stuck - i think that having things stimulating your cognitive mind while you are working through your emotional shit somehow makes your cog side help your emo side along - i have no idea why this works - or exactly how it works - but i don't really understand how this computer works or how the internet works - or hell how my phone works or tapes or CD or my own bodies ability to heal itself and all that shit doesn't keep me up at night - so if EMDR can get me through my comps without me having some massive freak out - then so be it

i wish i could order one of those machines - because even though its not like new gravity it's certainly something new - and it feels weird T -dog - weird but good - and thats better than just plain catatonic -

what to do with this amazing and wonderful inspired feeling i have before i lose it???

good question.

i'd recommend canning these inspired bursts, this way you can eat them up when you feel all bugaboo creatively or just as a snack in the middle of a mild depressive state.

easier said than done, kiddo.

it's hot. i got a haircut on saturday, but sometimes i feel like i should have kept it longer, thus handing me a forehead mop when the air you walk through weighs 87 lbs.

i've become a daysleeper for the most part.

i work until 1am most nights and get home too wound up to fall asleep. sex and weed used to clear my head out really well, but now i find that the sexual acts merely get rid of one of the sources of frustration, the weed just fogs up the rest. i lay on the couch in a catatonic state, processing commercials (there;s a new hummer ad with a man buying vegetables and tofu and another man buying pounds and pounds of good ol' american red meat. the tofu guy freaks a little, but then he sees an ad for a hummer. he buys one. the tag line? RESTORE YOUR MANHOOD. it has since been changed to RESTORE THE BALANCE) and watching poor programming.

i think what i keep wanting is for either a) to experience zero gravity for at least ten minutes or b) to experience gravity times ten for 10 seconds.

i'm tired of the inbetweens.