red state/blue state

i am so sick of the election. and it isn't going to be over in a week, no this one is going to be in the history books, the longest election ever. everytime i turn on the radio all they talk about is how messed up everything is going to be on nov. 2. someone is selling their vote on ebay. some guy in ohio was paid in crackcocaine to make over 300 fraudulent voter registeration forms. he was paid in crackcocaine. word to describe the state of affairs: bleak.

when i was in oregon over the weekend it was all anyone talked about. i saw my first john kerry and george bush tv ads. bush's ad showed the destruction from 9/11. i thought that was too easy. there aren't any polling places in oregon. everyone votes by mail. my aunt and uncle were going to drop theirs off after we had lunch on sunday. my aunt said my uncle doesn't sleep anymore; he just stays up reading articles about he election on the internet, all night long. my aunt was going to go to florida with my mom for a vacation next month but she cancelled because if bush wins she and my uncle are moving to canada.

they are doing electronic voting in florida. they take a state with a population that doesn't even know what a computer is, and they put in electronic voting. this election is never going to end. they are already planning the law suits. why can't it be done right? what is right?

remember when there was one good and one evil and everything wasn't so blurry. and the good always won, no questions, hands down. there was mustafa and there was scar, and clearly, you were supposed to hate scar and clearly, mustafa was going to win. i just hate it all now. i'm tired of it all.

i tried for an hour today to rip myself away from dawson's creek so i could get some work done. once i finally did and i was on my was to starbucks to work (i can't work at home i get distracted by cats and dogs and all my children) and I realized i had forgotten my headphones. this meant i would have a harder time ignoring people and being ignored in return. sure enough an old guy ended up show me photos of his 2 year old nephew who he claimed already knew how to read. it wasn't so bad. maybe i try to ignore people too often.

when i got back my roommates dog was following me around so i took her outside. there is a huge puddle in the courtyard of my building, about three inches deep. this is what she pooped in. so now there is a three inch deep puddle with dog poop floating in it.

crush

i like the boy with the freckles...and the red hair. he brings his lunch to school everyday, a boloney sandwich, bbq potato chips, and a some ants a log (celery sticks with peanutbutter and raisins). my friend marge likes the other boy. the one with the la gear and the rat tail. the boy with the rat tail and the la gear gets hot lunch. and when we have mashed potatoes and gravy with turkey he makes a big mess with his food. i think he is gross. sometimes the boy i like needs to blow his nose and he wipes it on the sleeve of his shirt. i see him do it sneakily, when he thinks no one is watching. i see him. my mom told me that that is gross and rude. but i do it too sometimes. sometimes i stick my tongue out and make a big sniffle and i taste my snot. it tastes salty, like ham. this is how i talk to my crush:

"want to play tetherball?"
I am not very good at tetherball and he wins. He yells, "I won." And wipes his nose with his sleeve.

"want to play four square?"
I am good at four square and I win him. I rub it in that I won him.
"I won you. I won you."

try to impress him with cool things you have or are going to have.
"my daddy is getting me a big trampoline."

"yeah, right."

"no, he is and you can't come over and play."
this makes him really mad.

"i don't want to play with your stupid trampline anyway."

"fine. good. cuz you can't."

then challenge him to a swing jumping contest and when you jump and he points and laughs and says, "ha, ha. i saw you underwears." just ignore him and say, "so. maybe i wanted you to."

then walk away with you nose in the air and find marge and go get some chocolate milk.

and we're back...

i'm recovering from a weekend at home in oregon.

more cat photos...geez

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Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

this picture isn't very clear but it is my older cat mateo licking salvador. sal looks like he likes it, but mateo has licked me and i can testify: her tongue feels like it has shards of glass on it.

kids

we spent all night looking at old photos that my mom had haphazardly thrown into manila envelopes and written the word "kids" on. we were. we were kids with smiles with teeth missing, bangs that started too far back on our heads, and cabbabge patch kids we drug around scraping their faces against the pavement. we held up barbies that were birthday presents proudly. we smiled at the camera, naked in the bathtub.

with each photo pulled out we cooed and said, "oh, you were so cute."

the 8x10 of my grandpa as a baby, fat and happy, already thick hair parted down the middle. my mom's friend said,"i look at that picture and i think about how sad it is...what happens to us."

about john and tabby

Johnathan and Tabitha lived in a recently named "bohemian" area of a major city, up on a hill. Down the street from their hardwood floored aparment there where little taco stands and liquor stores amid bars full of hair cuts.

Johnathan was a musician. He also wrote children's stories and he dabbled in alchemy. Tabitha was a ballet dancer, and a painter. She also made short documetaries about performance artist whose acts include baked beans.

They both believed in changes and progress and both had lain down in the street in protest of the war. the night they did they drove out to Westwood. Tabitha drove because Johnathan had a headache from working on a song all day and not writing enough on his new child's book idea, a story of a young sapling who who watches his father, a grand old oak, get chopped down. They stopped in at DiDi Riese and got icecream sandwiches then went to the intersection where the protestors were gathered. They lay down in the intersection as cars honked and police screamed and the noise of the world was so loud and ugly and they ate their icecream sandwiches with their backs against the asphalt.

When they got home they stroked each other and told each other how they were changing the world. how what they did was so important. They drank wine and Tabitha put together a cheese plate. They invited their friends over so they could tell them all about lying down in the street in protest of the war.

litterbox deficient

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Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

his name is salvador. he likes to pee on couches.

rain in the valley

we lived in the cheap three bedroom on woodman for a year. we moved out because we didn't want to live with our other roommate. in her room she had a dresser she had painted lavender and stenciled silver stars and moons on it. she slept with a misquito netting over her bed. she always left tuna noodle cassarole on the stove to get hard and stick to the pan. Her boyfriend practically lived with us. He had a cat named Shoalin and he danced on Soul Train. His head was shaved except for a patch on the tip of his head that he kept braided. He also worked at the wax museum.

We moved into a two bedroom on coldwater between oxnard and victory. it was right by grant high school and every weekday at three kids would fill the sidewalks. the boys wore baggy jeans and i didn't like walking on the sidewalk with them. i felt like they were staring at me.

there was a pool in the back, right next to the river. the woman who lived next door to us was old and smelled like urine and told us she had lived there, alone, for fifteen years.

the night we moved in we moved all of our stuff by ourselves. we tied our mattresses on top of our hondas and drove the two miles at a slow pace. when we where done we went to taco bell and got seven layer burritos and baja chalupas with no meat and no beans.

the apartment was clinical. everything was white. we didn't have a dining room table, so off of our kitchen clean white linoleum streched out to the window. all we had, before we got a couch, was my tv and tv stand. we would lie on the living room floor and watch reruns of beverly hills 90210 and talk about how much we hated donna and her fake breasts. the carpet was new and stiff.

our balcony was huge, wide and deep, with ledges on either side. we could sit out on the ledge and smoke cigarettes and watch the traffic on coldwater. when it rained puddles would form and stay until they evaporated. there was no drain.

rain in the valley, 2nd installment

when it was raining again the streets looked slimy and dirty. tara and i sat in our apartment with the windows open, smelling the rain. we ordered thai food, vegetarian pad thai with tofu, extra spicy, and watched the x-files. the rain made the air smell clean. it washed away all the dirt of the city. the dirt on the streets, and in the air. while it was raining everything was clean, but once it stopped the whole place was dirty again.

"i like the rain. it makes everything clean." i told tara.

"yeah, but it never lasts."

"but it reminds me of home."

tara didn't miss home like i did. she missed her mom, and free food, and her cats. i missed all those things too, but i missed the place as well. tara didn't miss the place. i envied her for that. she was able to be detached from it. i always felt like i was a permanent visitor, but tara, i could tell tara really lived here.

my kitten

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Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

this is my new kitten. he doesn't have a name yet.

pacifism and sibling rivalry

i have been reading a lot about pacifism lately and i really believe it is something that i could practice. something i could believe in. at first i thought, this is easy. but then i did something and i realized that being a pacifist would be harder than i thought, or maybe i am more violent then i thought i was.

i was bored and so i was playing with my roommate's zen rock garden. it is really just a shallow wooden frame filled with white sand that looks a lot like cocaine that she bought at border's. it comes with this little rake, pusher thing. i am pushing the sand around for a long time, making it smooth, poking little holes in it. i am solely concentrating on this zen sand box and i really start to feel it. my mind clears, and i feel lighter. i am really getting into designing my sand garden and reaching zen when by brother comes up and sticks his finger in my design and moves the sand around. i follow my gut reaction and i turn and punch him in the stomach.

all he did was ruin my zen and i punched him in the stomach. i don't know if i am strong enough to be a pacifist.

don't worry my little brother is fine. and he isn't really little, he is 21. he should know better than to ruin people's rock gardens. oh, and he punched me back.

i'll give you christmas

it was on my first flight home for christmas. the day before fires had been raging near pasadena. it was my first experience with the annual fires. on the news they showed the 134 closed, flames licking at its railings. my flight was leaving from burbank, early, around 7:30am.

due to the fires the plane had perform a special take off. the santa anas were on full blast so the special take off used extra gas to fight against the winds.

the woman sitting next to me looked like she was made of leather. she was wearing a pink t-shirt with fringes on it. the fringes had beads on them. when the beverage chart came around she ordered a miller light. it was eight in the morning. she complained to me about flying. everything was so slow, she said, it took too long. so when the captained announced we were landing in oakland to re-fuel she was pissed.

we landed and she complained the whole time we were on the ground. her voice was raspy, probably because she if she weren't on the plane she would have had a marlboro light permanently affixed to her lip. this is taking too long. i need another miller light, she'd cough.

the man in front of us joined her in compaining. he stopped the flight attendent and asked what was taking so "damn" long.
this their exchange, i am not exaggerating:

"whats taking so damn long?"

"i'm sorry sir, we are letting some people on the plane so they can be with their families on christmas."

the man raises his fist and shakes it and says, "i'll give you christmas."


christmas always brings out the best in people. as we were landing one of the passengers went into cardiac arrest and we had to wait on the plane while the paramedics came on and rescued the poor man. the leathery lady was pissed about this too.

scavenger hunt

on the corner of 24th and vermont in the window of terrell's cleaners there is a sign, with a woman on it, smoking, looking savvy, that says:

i have taken the pill,
I have hoisted my skirts
to my thighs,
dropped them to
my ankles,
rebelled at the unversity,
skied at aspen,
lived with two men,
married one,
earned my keep,
kept my identity,
and,
frankly...
I am lost.

when people start being real

my friend alexis is using my computer to edit her real world audition tape. so i hijacked my brother's. alexis is eighteen and has braces. on her real world video she had me say, "alexis is cool, but she has braces." she also has my brother saying that she hates gays and my brother's boyfriend who is black saying that she hates colored people. i think alexis would be really entertaining on the real world, but i don't think they'll pick her. she isn't perfectly plain enough and she doesn't look like she belongs on a sitcom.

alexis started her own t-shirt company. she has sent out multiple emails to oprah and ellen about doing a show on young entrepenuers. she was raised by her mom. her dad directs porn.

i think all of these things make alexis worthy of the real world. unfortunately, the real world isn't really about being unique anymore. its about being just like everyone else.

ROT GUT

all i ate today was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. i blame this on my american lit. professor. if he hadn't cancelled class (no advanced notice, i drove from the valley in really bad traffic), i wouldn't have gone to denny's and drank the coffee that ripped my gut apart. if i hadn't drank the rot gut coffee i wouldn't have lost my appitite. i choked down that peanut butter and jelly sandwich. i had to work at the sideways premiere directly after school and didn't eat until i got home at nine. that is twelve hours with only battery acid coffee and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my belly while i stuck stickers on theater seats and handed tickets to semi-celebrities (you know john heder, aka napoleon dynamite, as well as harry lankin, crazy carl from billy madison). you know what would have fixed my entire day:

IF MY AMERICAN LIT. PROFESSOR WOULD HAVE LET ME KNOW THERE WAS NO CLASS, THEN AT LEAST I COULD HAVE EATEN A GOOD BREAKFAST. ASSHOLE.

the leaf storm

the wind is picking up. the leaves, the ones that have fallen, the ones that are brittle and dead, swirl around and fly at the windshield. it looks like snow. the leaves twirl around, the force of the wind behind them, and they bump into the curb, or a house, or a windshield, or a person walking. they slide along the street like hovercrafts. each time they scrape against something, or run into something they break a little. because they are brittle. then the wind moves these broken leaves until they hit something else. and so on, and so forth, so the leaf is broken down into tinier and tinier pieces. so it is no longer a leaf, but just particles, being pushed by the wind.

i need a job.

water soluble

when she watered everything down it could almost make sense. the false starts, the second guesses, they were normal, expected. but in concentrate she couldn't understand any of it, wouldn't even try too.

i don't think i'm smart, she told him.

what? of course you're smart, he said.

not like you.

no. not like me. you're not me, you're not suppose to be like me.

then what am i supposed to be like? she thought.

and when they went out she thought, now, now i am supposed to have fun. i will have fun tonight. but in the end she was always left thinking, is this what fun is supposed to be like. dinners, movies, talking...you're too serious, he'd tell her. too morbid.

her clearest memory of childhood was when she realized she was going to die. she was eight, watching stand by me. in the end they found the dead body. she had never seen a dead thing before. and she asked her mom, mom, will i die?

her mom paused and sat her down on her bed in her room with the pink walls and the red shag carpet.

yes, sweetie, we all will.

you?

yes.

and dad?

uh huh.

what can we do to stop it?

we can't stop it. we just have to live the best life that we can.

it seemed easy, when she was eight, sitting on her four-poster bed with her mom to live the best life that she could. and she tried hard. but she was still scared she wasn't doing it and she would lie awake some nights, blood racing, heart pounding, worried that this wasn't the best life that she could. she tried to forget about it, or maybe accept it.

and then things dissolved, quickly and easily. what she thought she knew, she didn't know. anything that had been important, wasn't. and she felt fooled and she wondered, is this the best life i could? and when she was honest the answer was resoundingly, no. but she didn't know how to change anything though, how to stop anything.

judging books by their cover

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Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

there is something so cute and innocent about george bush. he has this childlike quality that makes me want to give him a hug and makes me think he would be really good at freeze tag.

i love watching his reactions during the debates. he just sits there and blinks and its like i can see him thinking and trying to figure it out.

there is something in his face that is so human. it is no wonder he is able to pull the wool over so many peoples eyes.

john kerry looks like a pteradactyl. don't his eyes remind you of the dinosaurs eyes in "the land before time."

rain in the valley

the first time it rained in the valley I was happy. it reminded me of home. it was late january and i looked out at the courtyard of my three-bedroom apartment that was only $950 a month and was glad i didn't have to go and do anything, glad i could just sit in my apartment. or step out on to my wet balcony and smoke a cigarette in the rain.

tara and i decided to go and see magnolia. we went to the general cinema on van nuys and milbank. i think it was the first time i ever ventured west of woodman. on the screen john c. reilly lost his gun in the rain by an apartment in the valley and he is on his knees searching and he begs jesus to find his gun for him. i felt connected for the first time to this place that is a million times bigger than anything i had ever known.

a year later, late january, it was raining again. the streets were flooding. "urban flooding" they called it. i drove through a puddle on coldwater and water sprayed in the open window and tara got all wet. the wide streets of the valley turned in to rivers as water rushed along and over the high curbs. i still liked the rain though, it still reminded me of home.

a year later, late january, and it was raining again and it was the first day of school. i walked on campus with no umbrella and my jeans got wet to the knees. everyone else had an umbrella. no one at home used because it rained all the time. they were used to it raining all the time. tara moved to san fransisco. before she left we posed as robots and dane took pictures of us. we were both wearing our glasses, smiling robot smiles, in the doorway of her room. we rented her room to someone else, and forwarded her mail, and told her we didn't want to keep that ugly ceramic cat with the rose painted on it.

it didn't rain late last january and i forgot tara's birthday.

two white cats

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Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

okay. i promise once the blogging it back i won't photo blog. i'll keep it basic. this is my favorite band, two white cats, rehearsing. i wonder if i can hook up music links....

I [heart] photo blogging

Eruption

erupt
Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

When it first erupted she hadn't been born, she was swimming around in her mommy's stomach. The top blew off and ash rained down. For years she had seen little jars with white pieces of paper taped to them that read: Mt. St. Helens Ash, May 1980. And she would see the mountain in the distant when they took long car rides, large and majestic with its top cut off.

"What happened?" She asked her mommy.

"The mountain blew it's top off and that ash covered everything."

"Like when it snows."

"Yeah, like when it snows."

"Was school closed?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't have to go to school."

"I wasn't in school. I was pregnant with you."

Then when she was older, a teenager, she saw a picture of her mom, skinny and youthful, posing on a mountain wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt and holding her long pigtails out from her head.

"Where is this?"

"Mt. St. Helens, before it erupted."

"How old were you?"

"I don't know...seventeen. Your dad and I hiked it."

"You look so young."

"Yeah, well, things change."

Then it erupted again. She was older than her mom had been when she had climbed to the top of it. The news program interrupted her soap opera and showed smoke plumes billowing from the top. She ran to her window to look for the falling ashes, but there weren't any. She called her mom.

"Mt. St. Helens errupted again." She told her.

"It did? I don't see anything outside."

"Yeah, me neither. Where is the ash covering everything?"

"Well, things are never as spectacular as you want them to be, or expect them to be," her mom told her.

"No, they usually aren't," she said and hung up.

are you gonna eat that?

For breakfast:

Conversation about the eighties obsession with ghosts spawned by hearing "unchained melody" as we sat down to eat. What is ghost sex? did demi moore have sex with patrick swayze through whoopi goldberg, essentially having sex with whoopi? i never understood it. Then there were the ghostbusters. And perhaps the oddest ghost phenomenon of the eighties was the story about the ghost being caught on film hiding behind some drapes in three men and a baby.

I ate the breakfast special: two eggs, poached, bacon, homefries and wheat toast.

For lunch:

A long, fruitless drive to Century City. The fruit was supposed to a screening of Sideways, the new Alexander Payne movie. I was misinformed though and a week early. Before I left I ate a polish dog from Costco. $1.50 gets you a dog and a 20 oz. soda. But what happens to your soul?

For dinner:

Beck's Oktoberfest, chicken, mac salad, potato chips and the new episode of Degrassi (sorry Billy, I already went there). Watching it makes me want to move to Canada. My sister lived in Victoria for a while and I spent New Year's 2001 there. We went to a pub called the Sticky Wicket and outside there was a sign requesting no "rotten looking" jeans. I'm already getting hungry again.

Maybe I'll get some popcorn if I got see Motorcycle Diaries.