In dark, crowded bars and bright, crowded coffee shops and dimly lit, not-so-crowded underground art spaces, every minute, gentle peepers, someone is getting the kiss-off. You know what I mean, you've done it and had it done to you-- the not-so-subtle trailing off of conversation that lapses into awkward silence, the anxious eye-darting around the room, looking for someone more interesting to talk to (or perhaps an escape route), the weird body tics and twitches that emerge from the depths of your id, and then the final, almost-unacknowledged moment of simply wandering off, leaving your erstwhile interlocutor thinking "hey, wasn't I just talking to someone?"

The kiss-off is not a break up, peeps, although for the rusty-at-heart, it can be almost as painful. Break-ups are obviously more complicated. A break up, at least in my estimation, is the grand kiss-off from someone you've peed in front of. But that's just my personal litmus test. So while the kiss-off is more superficial, it is no less awful at times. Oh, but one technicality, you can get the kiss-off from someone you've recently broken up with, and that one really smarts. Ugh, *shudder*, nail in the coffin...

Clearly it's a complicated beast, this kiss-off. So here is my rough guide to the getting kissed and kissing off, having gotten and given my fair share of it these days. In order from worst to least bad, here are the various stages of the kiss-off horrorshow:

Getting Kissed-Off by a Crush: This to me is the worst. You've maybe recently just realized that you are crushing on someone you've known for awhile but never quite noticed in that "way" before. One day you just looked a little too long at their lips, and that's it, bam, you're crushed. So, some night when the gang's all there you give it a go and make your hail-mary pass. When you get the kiss-off in this situation it usually begins with the person's look of utter confusion. See, they didn't get the memo that the realtionship was changing. (No one sends an ATTN: RE: Have Sex With Me note, unfortunately.) Their surprised uncomfortabilty is compounded by the desire not to hurt the feelings of someone they know and probably like. This one proceeds ahead to the weird-wandering-off phase pretty quickly, simply as a way to diffuse the whole thing without actually being cruel. Follow-up encounters tend to be dicey.

Getting Kissed-Off by Someone You've Done the Deed With: Most people, I think, would put this at the top of the list, and admittedly, it's pretty gut-wrenching. I personally feel the Crush Kiss-Off is worse only because I'm a romantic and the lost-potential aspect, the "whatever happened to a dream deferred" element, really depresses me. But, getting kissed off by somone you've been naked in front of (but not peed in front of, remember) and you know, you've touched it, well, that's pretty horrible. Maybe the earth didn't move when you did it, or maybe it did, but more in a way that made your dog howl and filled you with the instinct to crouch in a doorframe to prevent things from falling on your head-- well, the post coitus kiss-off communicates only one thing. You suck. (Or maybe you don't, and that's really the problem.) There is one saving grace in this situation, though: even after getting dissed by a former lover, you will still, always and forever, be able to say, "Yah. I hit dat shit." The deed, as it were, is never undone.

The Kiss-Off after the Awkward Hookup: So you had one date, maybe two. And you never peed or were naked in front of them. But you can't shake the memory of their sloppy lips or the arm that couldn't quite figure out where it belonged or the total lack of agreement over how much tongue is too much. Yes, the discovery that, while you might both love the Discovery channel, you are totally, incontrovertably, irreconcilably, incompatible. When you see the person again, however, there migh
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be this little twinge of regret and reconsideration. You really did enjoy watching that Alaska documentary together, after all. So with all faith and begorum, you strike up a conversation. And then into the peripheral vision of your psyche comes floating giant drippy lips and clumsy dance moves and political opinions you find inane and all this leaves you but one choice: the one-way trip to Kiss-Off Town.

Getting Kissed Off by a Total Stranger: As far as kiss-offs go, this one is just the price you pay for still hopin' and prayin' and keepin' the dream alive. Actually, the really painful Stranger Kiss-off is kinda rare because generally people are more polite the less baggage there is between them. This kiss-off amounts to the tele-marketing pushy politness of "No thanks, I'm satisfied with my current company of potential hook-ups." You just hope you don't have to keep repeating it: "No, thanks, really, I'm not interested, no, that's a great deal and all, you seem nice, but like I said I gotta go. Yah. In the middle of something. Look! I said I wasn't interested! Alright! Sheesh!" Click. It's more like a Kick-Off then. We all hope we don't go there. This is often the kiss-off that is decidely deserved. The kiss-offer in this case can always claim self-defense. If you are that person pushing too hard, though, even if you have the best intentions at heart, we can only hope you learn something from a well-aimed Kick-Off.

And last but somehow, still, not least:

Getting Kissed Off by Someone You're Not Interested In: Now, wait a dag-gum minute you might be saying, how can I get kissed-off when I'm not really interested in the person, you ask? Maybe the women out there might appreciate this one a bit more. It's pretty sick and twisted. Here's how it goes. Someone has a crush on you, and you know it. You're not that into the idea, but a few times you consider it. You come to rely on their prescence at parties and bars to give you that little ego boost you need to look really hot. And they always linger in your mind as a kind of ace in the hole, well maybe not an ace since you'd want to play that right away, more like the Jack of Spades. He might come in handy if you don't get dealt anything better. So there they are, and they comfort you. And you are so confident in their dedication to you that maybe you even give them the oh-so-painful top-o-the-list Crush Kiss-Off. But they will have their revenge. Oh yes. They too have a power over you that you can't admit to. One day, something mildly tragic will happen. They will give up. Or find someone who won't jerk them around like you've been doing and who will actually appreciate their high-quality humanity. And then, sweet victory comes, when, with all the pent up frustration and confusion you've inflicted on them now warped into a wicked sense of irony, they kiss you off. Ha HA! Who's laughing now? This one always causes you to kick yourself as you drive home alone, thinking that all the picky things you didn't like about the person weren't that big a deal and now you realize how deeply you really and truly love them. Luckily the effects wear off pretty quickly and in the morning you should feel kinda proud of their moxy and well, a bit relieved.

There you have it, dear peeps. Aren't you thankful you know someone who has so much experience getting dissed, so that I can unravel and explicate it for your edification? Honestly, I feel better too. I'll sculpt my pain into art, and ashtrays, an stuff... yah. If you only remember one thing from my musings, though, to comfort you in your times of rejection, it's this simple universal rule, the law of Kiss-Off Karma: the Kiss-Off just keeps going around, and sometimes its gotta land on you.

So, since the party there have been eventful events in my life, that I would like to tell you about, but can only sort of dance around, since I'm discovering that I'm a very private person. Not a good trait in a blogger, eh?

Above you will see my third and final giantess painting, and I think the best of the three. Now that it is done I can invent a whole new painting style for myself, since this style is giving me a cramp. I need looser brush strokes. Anyone else love Lucien Freud out there? He's Freud's grandson and my favorite living painter. Here is a painting he did when he was my age:



And here's a painting he did when he was in his sixties:



And here's a quote from him:

"I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does."

Somewhere in there is what I mean. His earlier painting is like mine: finished, sharp, flat, but somehow emotionally blank. It hides its own making in the smoothness of the paint. But it metamorphosizes into an image of writhing, unruled, impassioned impasto. (Sorry, so silly, alliteration.) In the later painting each visible brush stroke seems to call out "I'm paint and I'm flesh at the same time! Art is illusion, like all attraction!"

This is a metaphor for what has been going on with me, which I can't tell you about, because I'm too private. See, secretly, I'm like the giantess, or want to be. Larger than life, beautiful and powerful, yes. But also isolated and out of place in the landscapes. She doesn't quite fit, literally. She towers and the world, she wishes, cowers. And even though she's naked, is it sexy? Or is it somehow cold, physical in the clinical sense, as if she is in the "physical world" of seventh grade earth science. There's not much passion in her, or in me for that matter. I'm too much like my brushstrokes: taut, controlled, avoiding artifice. While all the while artifice is what makes art, what makes art beautiful.

Hey Folks: While this is not up to the minute information really, here are some pics from the (e:strip) (e:mike) & (e:terry) birthday party. The pics are pretty dark, so some of the delay was me correcting them in Photoshop as much as I could. I refuse to use the flash, but don't really have enough options on my camera to make up for it. Oh well. The shapes are still pretty cool. Maybe some of the photographers out there can offer advice?
Side note: (e:paul), can you make a way for us to do a whole folder upload though. Adding pictures one by one can be a pain. Heh heh. Knowing the programmer has its privileges...

Last night I went over to my friend Maria's house to watch old Bette Davis movies, including "Now, Voyager" which was excellent, and then something where she played two twins, and one was good and one was bad, and the bad one got the man, but then she drowned and, you can guess the rest...

Maria is one of the most fascinating people I've met in Buffalo. We used to work together at the bookstore, and we hit it off pretty much right away. She went to the same college as my sister, Mount Holyoke, and then to Oxford! She's still trying to finish her dissertation on Russian literature. Sometimes she's so smart my brain hurts.

We've been hanging out for awhile, but I've only recently started going to her house. It's amazing. It's like a curiousity shoppe frozen in time. Her grandparents lived in it, and little has changed about it since the early forties. Supposedly they used to have grande fetes there, which you can still almost hear when standing in the large arch-ceilinged hall. The house was originally owned by Buffalo architect E.B. Green, who had the wood panels for the hall brought over from Italy. They're from the Renaissance. Last night between movies Maria let me take some photos, since I've tried to describe the place and just can't put it into words.

The TV room. You can't see it, but Bette's on the tube acting dramatic:


Two ladies:


Two gentlemen:


The main hall (front and back ends side by side):


A Steiff puppy the children used to ride on:


Yup. Suit of armor:


A portrait of Maria's mother when she was young. They also had some Edwin Dickinson paintings of her aunt and uncle when they were little, but the picture didn't come well:


P.S. To all you cat burglers out there, I'm not telling you where this house is. Who says cat burgler anymore?! That's just the kind of antique feeling this place gives you...

I agree with Ajay 100% in his rejoinder [inlink]ajay,88[/inlink] to Paul's post [inlink]paul,1820[/inlink] on what Paul considers unsavory or even dangerous information on the internet. I thought it was so wrong I was just gonna let it pass on by... so thanks Ajay for an evenhanded response. Not sure if you mentioned this, but all Google is is a catalogue. It should be as indiscriminate as possible to the actual contents of documents, and instead limit its catagorization to user activities like linking, etc. Google should be content blind. It's the same as the library. If I were to say that the Anarchist Cookbook or Mein Kamp should not be allowed in the library, then honestly folks, Henry Miller and Huck Finn aren't far behind. Just because the delivery method, facilitated by technology, has changed, the argument about a free press hasn't. The spirit, if maybe not the letter, of the law is the same. You may not like it, but the hope is that the society is healthy enough to buffer itself against the wackjobs who want to use information contained in books like these to harm people. Do you really think it's a terroroist handbook that creates terrorists? Not, say, years of neocolonialist economic policies and one-sided (non)diplomacy? It's not the library or search engine's job to police people's thoughts, it's the police's job (and by that I mean other civic safetynet institutions, I'm just going for the pun here) to protect not only our lives, but our rights to think and write freely.

Bllomberg is offering discounts for peaceful protestors!

"Unfortunately, we can't stop an anarchist from getting a button,"

"The Americans were never really in it."

This is a phrase I heard from Olympics announcers several times yesterday, as supposedly invincible American uber-atheletes fell to teams that were more focused, less cock sure, and just frankly better.

Is it another sign of American obsolescense? For me it begins with the patents thing. Last year for the first time in modern history, America was not the leader in the most patents filed. So much for our famed ingenuity. And now this: the American basketball "dream team", known for an urban warfare style assault on the inside, gets whopped soundly by the Puerto Rican team of more accurate outside shooters and tenacious defenders. The announcer said of our supposedly unstoppable team, "They were never really in it." It's the first time our basketball team has lost a game in the Olympics since they allowed NBA players in. They just looked blase about the whole thing, then surprised, and finally, frustrated and pissy. But did they ever bring any fire to the game? Not really.

Then, later at night, another supposed dream team, the American men's swimming team, scraped by to win an embarrasing bronze in the 400 meter free-style relay. Amid all the hype of Michael Phelps and the USA swimmers, this race was billed as a showdown with the Aussies. See, the Australians had done something which wasn't very friendly by winning the gold in Sydney, ending a twenty-year American streak. Last night, team USA declared they wanted it back, and hit the pool... crawling. Our first lap was the slowest lap of over 50 laps swam in the entire relay. The South Africaans, a real team of monsterously large white men, cut through the water like an armada of colonialist warships bent on world domination... oh wait, I mean like a swim team determined to break a world record. Which they did. The Americans on the podium looked like someone had eaten their last Twinkie, turning up their noses at a proffered bronze.


It shouldn't come as a surprise to find out that Americans are losing their edge in an ever-changing world. I mean, maybe we still lead in collective couch-hours or something. But what is surprising is the look of utter befuddlement on their faces as they're losing it. As if to limply say, "but... but... USA... USA..." If the Olympic competitions are always metaphorical representations of the true nature of politics (think cold war track and field for example) then we're viewing the last days of a waning empire who can't get its head around its growing irrelevance. Oh, unless it responds by playing dirty, throwing its weight around, and pouting when it comes in third.

Keep an eye on the Chinese women's gymnastics team if you want an example of a country on the rise. Focused, precise, creative, and truly united as a team, they may be a glimpse of the world's future.

I have made a page of some more Erie County Fair Pics. We really were like some kind of weird wonky tourists of the future, more bent on documenting than experiencing firsthand. So in case you missed any part of the visual experience, there are more pictures of the fair. I'm jealous of the boys' better camera, though, you'll see why.

But! also! There are pictures of TK's (e:flaccidness) 21st birthday party at (e:rachel) 's house. Follow this to see all of them. Here are some samples:

First things first, you must go out and find The Long Winters album, When I Pretend to Fall . They're on Barsuk Records with Death Cab for Cutie, etc. After hearing one tune on KEXP, I searched the internet, called New World and was like "do you have it? good. put my name on it." The counter boy was impressed by my indy cred I think. Awwwww ;). Anyways, anyone who was even briefly in my prescence this weekend knows that I have been listening to this album non-stop, and probably also agrees with me that it is a brilliant friggin' record! You can listen to some tracks on their (really his, a guy named John Roderick) website. Also, what a hottie to boot... Dare I say, rockstar??



I really really want to move to Seattle now, even more than before. I mean, sensitive guys with marty stouffer beards! My dream come true!

As for the music, to me it's Built to Spill with a byway through Neutral Milk Hotel, add a splash of the Shins, and oh maybe just a little Jeff Buckley for that really heart-bending ole school effect. Or as John Roderick describes it: "This is our new record. It’s made of downtown right as the sun comes out after it’s been raining and a little bit of 3AM city bus in from the airport."

Yup, rockstar.