HNT: Lean on Me

I'm tired and weary. I needed something to hold me up, and Half-Nekkid Thursday, having become my favorite day of the week (right in front of Dumbass Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) keeps me revved up. See Os for more details.

God's Cruel Little Joke

My hair has always been my pride and joy. I was born with naturally curly hair that has oft been felt up by strangers on the street and cooed over by old ladies in Whataburger. The reason I've gotten hair compliments all these years is because I spend millions of hours and thousands of dollars on products and gadgets to wrangle this shit into something aesthetically pleasant. I'm taking you behind the scenes, bitches. Watch out.....

Freshly washed and slept upon. The curls have been allowed to run wild and crazy with no discipline whatsoever. Because of the sleeping there's sort of a rat nest effect that can't be prevented. Notice the ultra-curly roots. Those bitches are almost impossible to straighten...even with a round of chemical straightener and a flat-iron.



After the morning frying. It's amazing isn't it? It takes great willpower and an anal-retentive neat-streak the likes of which you don't see very often to make it behave.



The moral of my tale: Whatever you think about your own hair, it could always be worse. And God hates my head.

Note: It takes a woman strong in her womanhood to post morning hair and no makeup. I just happen to not care.

Drama Squelched, Assorted Goodies

--The latest and greatest Onion headlines:

• New Strain of Jet Lag Devastates Airline Industry

U.S. Blowjobless Rate at All-Time High

Dave Matthews Not That Into Himself Anymore

--John Irving was on The Daily Show tonight, and he related a story about the time he tried to heimlich maneuver Kurt Vonnegut (his former teacher). When Veonnegut began to choke Irving proceeded to grab him from behind, which he found somewhat troublesome since he's 5'7" and Vonnegut was (is?) 6'5". Since he couldn't get the right angle, he threw Vonnegut on the floor and "proceeded to beat on him from the rodeo position" only to find out that he hadn't been choking at all. He had emphysema. My question being: how could he muster up the balls to tell it on The Daily Show?? I hope they padded his gift basket for giving up that little nugget of embarrassment.

On TV: No, thanksyouvellymush.
MP3: What Kind of Love, Rodney Crowell
Reading: Americablog.com
In my head: Sleeeepy vibes.

Note: Longggg ass day tomorrow. Expect no peeps from me until evening.
Another note: The formatting is wonked tonight...leaving spaces, etc.. It's driving me batty, but ignore it, and I'll try to, too.

The Story of Estella

"Break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!"
--Miss Havisham to Estella

I started this blog out of great pain and spite with a capital SPIT. Spit as in venom and nails. I found myself at the end of a long, hard relationship at the end of 2004/beginning of 2005. It was gory. Bloody. Toxic. All figurative, by the way. I disappeared and some simpering victim appeared by Christmas of '04 and hung around for a couple of months. She wandered around the house, took antidepressants by the truckload, and crawled back toward what was so SO bad for her. She lacked vibrance, opinions, and a backbone of even the flimsiest sort. So many things she had before. She didn't think she was good enough to ever have a decent relationship. She didn't think she could hack it in graduate school.

I took my previous blog, The Wasteland, down because it was frowned upon and stayed away from blogging from around November '04 until February of 2005. December '04 brought with it an occurence that finally dragged me out of my dark hole. I won't elaborate on what that event was, but it was enough. That's all that's important now.

I came back to blogging furious and fractured with the vow to exclude only those things I deem too personal to share or to protect those I feel are worthy of protection. The first name that occurred to me was Estella's Revenge. Estella is a character from Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, that I've always found terribly interesting. Here's a description of her:

Estella is Miss Havisham's adopted daughter and her project in cultivated cruelty. Raised by the old woman to be cruel and hard to men, Estella, a great beauty, entrances Pip. She is mean to Pip for most of his life, although at the novel's end they meet again, and she seems to be a softened, changed woman.

At first Estella seems like the most evil, man-hating bitch imaginable, but she's raised to be. She's venomous out of circumstance. I found myself venomous because of my situation. I wanted to make men suffer. I knew the blog would accomplish that....for at least one man.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to add something to Estella's Revenge. It wasn't only about revenge. It was about a place to vent. A place to be creative again, An exercise in writing every single day. It was about figuring out what the hell I wanted again. It was about talking to myself, and if someone else read it...fine. I came up with Tripping Toward Lucidity (in all its wordy goodness) because that's exactly what I was doing. It's what we're all doing. Just trying to figure out what the hell makes sense.

One thing I really like about Estella is that she softened over time. She grew out of her situation and didn't hate anymore. Didn't torture. It's a small world when you're so angry and vindictive that it saturates your waking hours and your dreams. Estella's original revenge was on the men she destroyed, but the real revenge is that she grew up and became whole.

I'm writing about this now, so long after the fact, because it's one of the biggest stories I've never told. It's still shady at best, but it's a huge part of who I am now.

And, men, you can uncover your penises now. I'm not mad anymore if you didn't already catch that.