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You Make The Water Warm, You Taste Foreign

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cowboy67

:: 2008 23 November :: 9.20am

tori amos
"fat slut" you said
what luck i said
to be stuck in your happy family
don't you dare, i said
judge me
you go and
stick it in somewhere
i'm sick of hearing it
go stick it in somewhere
i'm sick of hearing it

1 Chop | To The Throat


cowboy67

:: 2008 22 November :: 11.27pm

i'm nostalgic

To The Throat


metalhead

:: 2008 20 November :: 3.43pm

The Space Heater, by Sharon Olds
On the then-below-zero day, it was on,
near the patients' chair, the old heater
kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,
like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot
of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost
laughing satire of a fire's heat,
the little coils like hairs in Hell.
And it was making a group of sick noises-
I wanted the doctor to turn it off
but I couldn't seem to ask, so I just
stared, but it did not budge. The doctor
turned his heavy, soft palm
outward, toward me, inviting me to speak, I
said, "If you're cold-are you cold? But if it's on
for me..." He held his palm out toward me,
I tried to ask, but I only muttered,
but he said, "Of course," as if I had asked,
and he stood up and approached the heater, and then
stood on one foot, and threw himself
toward the wall with one hand, and with the other hand
reached down, behind the couch, to pull
the plug out. I looked away,
I had not known he would have to bend
like that. And I was so moved, that he
would act undignified, to help me,
that I cried, not trying to stop, but as if
the moans made sentences which bore
some human message. If he would cast himself toward the
outlet for me, as if bending with me in my old
shame and horror, then I would rest
on his art-and the heater purred, like a creature
or the familiar of a creature, or the child of a familiar,
the father of a child, the spirit of a father,
the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing,
the heat of vision, the power of heat,
the pleasure of power.

To The Throat


metalhead

:: 2008 12 November :: 11.39am

An LJ writing prompt for lack of better subject matter
Some people spend their whole lives preparing the answer to this question: What albums are on your personal all-time Top 10 list?

I took this to mean albums I can listen to the whole way through and never skip a song, albums that will always make me stop and listen for a bit, albums that make me remember. Not really the sort of things I would put onto mixes, just because I think the album in its entirety is so great. Got it? Okay.

Read more..

To The Throat


metalhead

:: 2008 12 November :: 11.31am

"I have wished that each building around us
Was a cedar, a poplar, a pine;
That the men and the women were statues,
An the rain that was falling was wine;
That the lights were ethereal flowers;
That the cars were the nooks in the wood,--"
Ameen Rihani, Lilatu Laili

To The Throat


cowboy67

:: 2008 4 November :: 11.26pm

HOORAY!
i don't think obama will make revolutionary changes or anything, BUT the fact that he won is really exciting to me. michigan approved medicinal marijuana use, massachusetts decriminalized the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, and colorado and south dakota rejected anti-abortion proposals! this is so encouraging to me. i hope that as older, narrow-minded generations die off and younger, better educated people put their two cents in, the U.S. will become a more just, democratic place to live.

here's to hope.

and obama, you better use your power wisely, bitch!

1 Chop | To The Throat


moana

:: 2008 2 November :: 4.38pm

I can't do this anymore.

I want to go home.


metalhead

:: 2008 1 November :: 10.21am

You must begin listening to MGMT!


"Kids"
disclaimer: the losers in this video are not MGMT.


"Youth"
I want this to be in an Obama ad. And in it I want Obama to do this dance.


"Time to Pretend"
I just love these fellows.

So, some guy bought these characters and makes YouTube videos with them. Here's Rock Fire Explosion with Electric Feel.


To The Throat


metalhead

:: 2008 25 October :: 11.35am
:: Music: Bob Dylan - Idoit Wind

Trans for Obama!

From en|Gender:

"The Trans for Obama campaign continues! It's your time to stand up & be counted, trans democrats, independents, and republicans! If you're voting for Obama, why not make your vote count twice?

First, here's a reminder of an event way early in the campaign that has been forgotten by the "they're both against gay marriage" set: Obama made a point of shutting down homophobic sentiments when he could have just let the moment pass. For those who think that them both being against gay marriage means there's no difference between them when it comes to LGBT issues, please remember that McCain chose a running mate who is for "ex gay" therapy.

Then go look at these photos. I love that this photographer just kind of knew - as did Richard Avedon (watch till the end) - that Obama would become President Obama. Look at the one of his shoes. Of him cleaning up the drips from his ice cream. At the faces of the young people listening to and looking at him.

My firm belief is that Obama is an extraordinary president for extraordinary circumstances. [sic] That we are in the latter is in no doubt, considering this week's economic news; there are lay-offs happening in all sectors of the economy. That the former is true - that Obama is the right president for this time - is only something I can be sure of in my head and heart. His decision to run when he did, his unbelievable good planning with making it to the nomination = all of these things, the odds he's beat, tell me that his time is now.

And now it is yours. Go out and vote - early, if you can, to avoid the lines, or on November 4th."

To The Throat


moana

:: 2008 24 October :: 2.11am
:: Music: Interpol - Mammoth

My dad's buying me a Yaris hatchback sometime within the next week or two. It'll be really helpful for me if I get to finally drive myself back and forth between home and university. With my schedule being the ugly mess that it is, is it any wonder I find myself constantly exhausted, constantly waiting or constantly late?

In other news, I feel pretty good about being back in university. My saving graces are four classes in particular that I really enjoy. Four out of six is not bad, so I consider this semester a success so far. One of the four classes I've fallen in love with is a social behavioral science class called "Identity, Difference and Deviation in Society". I absolutely love it, because some of the biggest anthropological studies from about the 1960s and back seem obsessed with blaming social deviancy on repressed homosexual urges. I find it endlessly amusing on the one hand and pretty sick on the other, which means that all in all, I was made for this class, and this class was made for me.

So I guess the short version of this is, I'm tired and overloaded, but I'm relatively happy all things considered, and I'm doing ok. I miss Jay a lot, all the time, constantly, especially in the moments before I fall asleep, when in that haze between dreaming and being awake I reach out to the other side of the bed and am always surprised not to find him there, warm and peaceful and perfect in every way. I'm suffering by being away from him, and it causes a huge massive black hole in my life. In my heart, in my soul, in whatever you want to call it. I'm damaged and incomplete until I can be with him again.

But all things considered, I'm doing ok. How are you?

1 Chop | To The Throat


moana

:: 2008 8 October :: 7.53pm

YOU CAN'T MASTURBATE WITH EMOTIONAL DEXTERITY.

4 Chops | To The Throat


metalhead

:: 2008 30 September :: 2.58pm

"Friday, September 26th ended a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West -- the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail -- were distributed by mail in Ohio. The same day, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain's supporters has led to -- Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil."

And when I googled this event, the only sources that showed this were blogs. No news sites whatsoever. The most remarkable source on the list was this Huffington Post article.

3 Chops | To The Throat


metalhead

:: 2008 28 September :: 3.41pm

Photobucket

To The Throat


metalhead

:: 2008 27 September :: 1.09pm

My mother is getting married.


moana

:: 2008 25 September :: 2.09am

I'm a pathological writer.

I'm in first grade. I'm five. I remember this so clearly, because it was so unusual, but it rained on my way to school in the morning. So my first grade teacher, a spunky American blonde that used to tie my long long braid into a knot whenever I wasn't paying attention, asked the class to write about the weather. And me, I have no idea why I decide to do this, but I write a poem.

"Today oh the weather,
God is very clever
To make the trees so nice and green
Oh, it is a lovely scene!
The flowers blooming, pink and blue,
Mom is driving on and through."

Don't ask me how it's possible I still remember this poem, but I do, every word, every syllable. Apparently, I was destined to be some sort of artist. I remember talking to Ms. Jackie - the spunky blonde - about it, and how she used to tell me I should go for it. Her assistant, a kindly Filipina named Ms. Evangeline, whose favourite colour was blue, told me I was the best artist she ever met. So writing wasn't really a part of the plan. God knows it wasn't a part of my mother's plan for me. No, as far as she was concerned, I was going to be a doctor.

But back to the poem, right?

Well, it gets published in the elementary section of the school newspaper, "The Lion's Roar". Me, I take a copy home and show my mother. I'm very proud. Ms. Jackie and Ms. Evangeline made it sound like such a big deal, the youngest student to get published in the Roar, kudos for me! But my mother, she smiled and said I should concentrate on my work more. So I did.

But skip a couple of years to the future, and really, I don't get along with anyone at home. My brother grows up in middle school and becomes the popular kid. He has fashionable haircuts, and he does Michael Jackson for the Talent Show. Girls love him. He gets me to call their houses and ask for them, in case their parents or their brothers pick up, so the girl doesn't get in trouble for talking to a boy.

My parents, they're getting busier and busier. Divorces take a lot of time and energy, I hear, but me, I'm suddenly eight years old in the fourth grade, and I sit in my room with the door closed and read all the time. At first I read little things. I read Betsy Byars and Beverly Cleary. But then my teacher starts to notice, and in fourth grade it's Mr. Robinson, who always writes on my progress reports that I'm a good student but that I have an unfortunate tendency to daydream. At home I sit in my room while my mother and father scream at one another at the top of their lungs, and sometimes things break, and my mother gets hurt or one of them storms out, slams the door loudly behind them and doesn't come home for the rest of the night. Who can blame me for always pretending to be somewhere else?

So in the fourth grade, Mr. Robinson asks me if I've ever heard of Moby Dick. Then he gives me this big fat book, and tells me to take as much time as I need reading it. I finish it in a month, and then he gives me Shakespeare.

I'm nine, ten, eleven, and all I do is sit in my room with the door closed and read. The house is quieter now. My parents are divorced, my brother goes out a lot - with girls, I bet - and no one really notices me. My mother, she laughs at how easy it is to forget I'm even there. My brother, he tells me I should go out there and get a life. Really, he says, it's too fucking weird that I spend so much time staring at books.

I'm thirteen, and I wear glasses. I cut off the long long braid at last, but I have bad teeth and I'm skinny as hell. I'm much darker than my mother or my brother, and my hair always looks like the product of a bad combination of fork and toaster. Also, my father's wife had a baby girl, and is about to have a baby boy. At this point, though, I'm so ugly being invisible is a blessing. I'm reading Jane Austen and thinking she's not all that great. I finish Pride and Prejudice and I'm so unimpressed, I sit down at the big clanky desktop computer in my brother's room and start writing my own story. In less than three months, I have over two hundred pages full of some action thriller crime stuff with a sharp, powerful heroine that no one ever takes seriously. This is complete trash, and when the computer ends up dying and the book disappears into the magical ether of computer memory hell, the computer has unknowingly done the world a favor. Still, this is something. I realize I can write.

I'm fifteen, and my mother is married and my brother's in Sharjah, failing university. I write a one thousand word essay on Romeo and Juliet. My teacher accuses me of plagiarism. "This," he says, "is college-level work. I won't report you to the principal, I'll just give you a zero for this assignment." Then he smiles and winks, like this will just be our secret. What a bastard.

I'm seventeen and I'm a senior in high school. My brother's moved back home and I'm sending college applications everywhere but Kuwait. I get accused of plagiarism again, but this is no big deal. I'm reading Herman Hesse and Ernest Hemmingway. I have a big crush on the International Baccalaureate English teacher, and I want to impress him. I read Jane Eyre and 1984. I read Wuthering Heights, and I ask him to marry me. He says no, but can he keep the ring? Apparently, he still has it. After I graduate and leave, I start writing another book. I think if I can just manage to become this big famous writer, big and famous enough that he'll come across my book, he'll finally notice me. It's so stupid, I laugh at myself before any of my friends laugh at me, but I write the book anyway.

So I'm walking around AUD asking anyone if they know a way I can reach a publisher. I'm asking everyone, and the English department points me to this guy sitting in an office that looks more like a Simpsons shrine than any sort of professional workplace. I give him my book, and I ask him to read it, and I bug him twice a week asking if he has until he does. Tenacity, I'm told, is an admirable quality.

On my eighteenth birthday, the Simpsons guy says I have a great 'voice'.

I don't really know why I'm surprised at how little I've accomplished, running around looking for someone to read it and then dogging them until they do. I realize suddenly that after all, the biggest difference is that now the grand total of people who have read my work is two. One of my friends gets a poem published in a book of poetry, and me, I'm still wondering why it was so important to me that someone else read it. Maybe I just wanted someone else to tell me I was a good writer.

So I write and I write and I write. By now, I'm living on the praise I got from my first grade teachers for that poem. I'm nineteen, and I'm in China, and I email this woman and ask her if she'll put me in her anthology. And she does.

There's a book on my shelf, an anthology called "The Wonderful World of Worders". I've read Haruki Murakami and Chuck Palahniuk and Erika Lopez and Don DeLillo and Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut and I'm still writing. I have had exactly 150 words published. I am a failure as a writer. No one reads what I write, because it's too intimidating. Somehow, without having ever read what I write, they know what kind of writer I am. They know how important it is to me. They know how long I've been writing. The truth is, writing is the only thing I've ever been good at without trying, just writing and reading. My parents, they're William Shakespeare and Mercedes Lackey. I'm twenty years old and I've read more books than most people I know combined. I read the great classics of literature, and I mock them because I can write better. And I do write, I just keep on writing, one book done, discarded and another book started all over again. Every once in a while, I browse the internet for ways to contact a publisher, but I never follow through. No one reads my writing but me. When I write short stories or thought-pieces, people will comment and say, "I like your style, but you use too many commas." "Your sentences are too long." "You have tons of fragments." "You really shouldn't end your sentences with a preposition." "You're very repetitive."

Everything I write gets discarded, and if some fragment of it remains it gets crushed and recycled and reused somewhere else, too strange to recognize. I reuse it and I recrush it and I reuse it again and again. I figure it can't make too much of a difference. After all, I'm the only one that reads what I write.

So I keep writing.

And I keep writing.

And I keep writing.

And I'm very, very good at it.

4 Chops | To The Throat

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