Fumbling Through Flash Fiction

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The wind used to make her angry in winter; now, it is her ally. She manages a wry smile. She suddenly remembers the white wreaths, the last thing she'd fought to see through hot, forbidden tears.

The airlock engages. Mist envelops her nakedness and rushes clean upwards.

Freedom close, cold hope surges from her belly.
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Okay, so I'm going off my bitchin' cereal theme again. I just couldn't seem to cerealize this flash fiction and I don't know why. It's like writing poetry, I think.

What am I doing? I dunno. What's my blog doing? Slowly de-cerealizing.

For my 55, I just chose a first line: "the wind used to make her angry," which I got from the name of a favorite song The Wind Makes Her Angry, by The Sisters Euclid. They are a trio in my town who do sweet instrumental guitar music.

So far, these 55 Flash Fictions make me moody. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, I think.
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A Little Sugar Smacks Back Story

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The following is mostly dumb lies. Sorry I even wrote it really, but oh well, it's posted now.

As you may have gathered from my grouchy spoon, I'm always down for some bitchin'. I live in Toronto where people just don't complain enough - they're too busy consuming goods and services and working to live.

One day I was 19 and hating on them all, so I reached for my always-comforting, favorite snack: cereal. Back then, there was nothing like a warm bowl of Shreddies to smooth you out when the Loopy Nut Clusters and Team Cheerios were generally ruining your Life.

I poured out the wheaty goodness into a bowl, like pouring out my heart into the cupped hands of fate.

Suddenly, a huge pre-historic bug with demonic eyes crawled out from the cascading squares and scuttled away on segmented legs into a shadowed corner, not unlike the head-spider

in John Carpenter's The Thing. The flesh rose cold on my arms.

And that was when I knew: bad things can happen to good cereals; they just won't always be there to comfort us. I was on my own in the big city, and far from home.

Me, discovering more "Cosmopolitan" comforts
Over the next year-and-a-half, I almost rose to fame union status as an actress. Unable to make the grade in the gruelling networking and people-pleasing required for acting success, I plummeted down a short slope into a pit of despair; a never-was wandering an abyss of weed smoke and Monopoly all-nighters. I was officially a slacker.

Forty-seven years later, to make a long post short, I dragged myself up out of the hole and now I'm back in school and irritably working between blog posts.

Though I still eat my cereals for breakfast - NOT Shreddies though; shudder to think, shudder to think - these days I get real comfort, in more sophisticated ways, in bars; in ways that can numb me, if I feel like it, to the cold hard facts I learned about the world in my youth.
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Help (An Entry That Taints The Flow Of My Blog But I'm Posting It Anyway. Pphhhhfflll.)

What is the deal with editing on blogs?

If you edit something after you publish it, does it screw up your aggregator feeds for your subscribers (or subscriber, in my case)??

I see little mistakes and things after I post, so I end up editing that post a couple of times before moving on to the next one.

Lame? I don't know! Is it? Heeellp.

What is normal?

Sorry for this lameness, but I'm hoping some nice people, or even cranky people, will help me. It's better to find out early on as they say.

Slithering Mediterranean Oils

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So I'm cleaning up my kitchen counter. The cat litter box stinks all the way from down the hall, because I forgot to hit the No Frills on the way home for litter. I’ve had a lot on my mind, what with having a blog obsession lately, so I’ve neglected little things, like the kitty litter, self-nourishment, and the telecommunications bill (not paying the internet bill: it may be my subconscious ploy to find sweet relief from my own compulsions).

At any rate, I just find myself suddenly cleaning things these days, to feel like I’m accomplishing stuff, to get shit done, do some recycling. As I flick around my bachelorette counters rinsing foil Thai takeout packs and throwing out the piles of, well, just things, everywhere, I'm determined. I'm restless. I'm just shy of angry, in my need to connect with the non-web world. "Got Myself Together" is the song (soundtrack?) crazily swirling 'round my skull, and I'm humming it. I'm multitasking as I feed Emma, stack shit up, and light a stick of Nag Champa to mask the kitty litter reek.

Emma: not impressed with the reek

I bend over to adjust a small piece of cardboard I cut from a box to slip under my shelving unit for balance (not unlike the tradition in your local cafes everywhere. I mean what in fuck’s name is up with the cross-shaped bistro table bases, when a round base will be intelligent? I mean won’t it? Someone just tell me now, why, why won’t they ever stop making those bases. And why do they never fail to take us by surprise? Does anyone ever adjust their cafe table before they sit down with their full mug? I’m not an engineer or a mathematician; I just fold up match packs and stick ‘em under bases, after I’ve slopped a pool of hot liquid all around of course. But it’s a goddam coffee shop. Hot liquids=stable tabling, people, that’s all I know. Jeezus.)

Only, only, my hair can cause the little pokes, such coiffurious abuses, as that which happened next. It was only a moment, but millions of moments make up each week of your exasperating life, dear reader. And one bad moment can mean many more moments of cleaning up the mess the original moment caused. I hate that.

As I'm bent over, my hair snags an open bottle of olive oil, which tips ever-so-obligingly, dumping most of itself on my back, causing me to stand up slowly in my hurt feelings, which then causes all the oil to slither into the crack of my ass.

Not so unpleasant, perhaps, in more hedonistic times. Belieeeve me, I know the joys of the Meditteranean-oils-inflatable-pool combo! But man, I just need to get some functional shit done already, as I whined to you earlier.

Emma stares at me coldly.

I take my freshly cleaned crack out for a coffee to get me in a writing mood, and of course, immediately slop my drink on another stupid, assing, wiggling cafe table.

Fuck.

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For more on Fuck, see here. And thanks Cathy; you started this whole 'f' word thing, woman!
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I'm Hair For You

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Okay, here it is for you: my hair. I've been writing about it, and I shall write more in the future so...g'ahead, touch it.

It's longer and darker now, but this shot really highlights the, uh, highlights! And the fra-shizzle!

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Thanks, Sideshow Bob!

_______________________________________________Yeah, so, uh, I have awesome hair. That’s right; it’s hair that makes you stare; it’s brush-breaking, elastic-taxing, and even Velcro-catching. It’s kinky on top, curly all around and nappy in the back. It is naturally two-toned in the summer sun. It’s really out of this world I have to say. You just can’t know what it feels like to own it, other than what I tell you about it. Trust me.

There are certain wavy-haired ignorami (single-breed people, mostly) who think they know how it is. They like to give me hair tips, telling me, “Oh! Yeah, I know what you mean about curly hair and humidity. I have the same hair as you.” Yeah? How many fingers am I holding up? “Have you tried using conditioner?” Bitches, have you?

This hair is obviously not just “curly”. It is a self-replicating fractal, a springy mass of wannabe dreads living in sin with electrical wire in a house built by Sideshow Bob.

Of course I use conditioner – it is the ectoplasm that allows this coif to walk the earth plane and haunt your ass. I might let you touch it if you’ll go away, just go away as soon as possible.

They really just drive me wild, those wavy-haireds.

I mean really. My multi-breed ass has to fight the urge to flick a hair band in their eye and barrette their lips shut. The elastic won’t be that ouchless kind, either.

Hmph. Curly…

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More About This Blog

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In this blog you may find me screeching like a succubus about:

The man on the subway who ogles me with the enthusiasm of Charles Manson. The indignities of my hair. The miserable transit guy who wants to shit on my world, because his is rumbling away on the tracks of impotency. That hideous timing in the honesty of drunks (which I don’t like even in the best of times).

Politics suck, yet, everything’s political.

Most people hate your light; they wanna put it out in very creative ways; don’t let ‘em shit you about this.

Too jaded for yuh?

Again, I say, get out, and leave us Cranky-O's thrashing in the milk of our discontent, in peace.

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Post #1: No Cheerios Allowed

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Do you love adorable snapshots of kittens? Chubby babies smooshing their first solid meal all over the gosh darn place? Reflective poetry written on trains?

Do you cherish the thoughts of your network of gardening bloggers? Live for your Friends' next home-baked recipe? Celebrity gossip?

Do you enjoy an open-minded, rousing political debate, fishing talk, or reading about “the strange and wonderful” finds on the internet? The hm-hm-has and la-dee-das of talkin' about the weather?

If you were a cereal, would you be Cheerios?

Get out.

Now.

I mean it! Get. Ooouut.

This space is only for cereal types who have been doused with sour milk!

This blog is for the Loopy Nuts, Scare-em-berries*, some of the Freakies, all the Froot Loops and the Halfsies (I am a vegetarian, so I welcome the granolas, although you never quite know how they’ll react to the other cereals)!

This blog, for the record, is not for the Just Rights of the world. Or the Corn Bran Squares, for that matter. Definitely not for the Complete’s, bless their hearts. And Lucky Charms? They just annoy everyone.

Special note to Cheerios, and the more ominous Team Cheerios: keep your distance. I will flick you.

Well, reader, consider yourself cerealized.

And consider yourself fair warned: this will not be a brilliant blog. It will not be a happy blog. But I promise you, if you are truly a miserable human being, even just today, you won’t be disappointed with my keen ability to keep your misery in good company; an ability, at times you may think, painfully keen.

So get your bitch on! It’s all shit in the flowerbed from here on in...


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