• Ho, Earthling!

    My Coming Out Story

    When I moved to the house I’m living in, I made a decision. I would throw open my blinds, my heart, and my life to the outside passing-by world. No more hiding behind fears of being seen. I would challenge myself. I would join the rest of the world. For keeps. Every day, I see the same people walking by. Sunglassed mothers pushing jogging strollers. The old woman in the plaid shirt-coat who walks as if she’s recovering from a stroke. The Steve Martin lookalike who wears the same royal blue shirt and iPod earbuds every day. The runner who sprints upright down the middle of the street, first this…

  • My Brain On Crack,  Write Like You Mean It

    Dear Anne LaMott

    DISCLOSURE: I suspect I, uh, stole the idea for writing a letter to Anne LaMott from Andy Raskin. Oh, you don’t know Andy Raskin? I didn’t either until about a week ago when his book The Ramen King and I went home with me from the library. I suppose I would have known him if I still listened to NPR — where, apparently, Andy Raskin talks about things — but I haven’t listened to NPR since at least 2005, and in fact the listening to NPR, especially Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (though I saw the movie — was that cheating?) was ceded to the Other Side in my…

  • Ho, Earthling!

    I Hate Your Dog

    Somewhere along the way I must have offended the Dog Gods, because dogs and I have had a hate-hate relationship all my life. And when I say I hate dogs, I don’t mean just any dog. I mean your dog. Dogs have been pissing me off since I was a little kid. When I was three I remember walking down the block from the babysitter’s to the corner candy store to pick up a pack of candy cigarettes. I hated the flavor of these cigarettes — they were a horrid spearmint monstrosity with a powdery coating of cornstarch, not exactly kid-friendly if you ask me — but I adored sucking…

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  • Send in the Clones

    What I Really Need Is A Good Operatic Soundtrack

    Well! So I can write Poignant and Painful! Isn’t that just made of awesome? But! There’s more than one way to skin a cat, which means, well, ew. What do you do with a cat skin anyway? It’s far too small to make anything useful out of. A hat, maybe? A cat hat would be sort of cool. Here, pussy! As long as it’s not the skin of a cat you actually know. That would just be sort of wrong, except maybe as a tribute. You could keep your cat’s head on the skin and wear the hat so it looks like there’s your head, and then there’s your dead…

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