JOIN ME AT THE INN

OUTLIERS INN



xodt

It's time to get ill - Beastie Boys

This one goes out to Chag. To the common blogger he's Cynical Dad. I've known him and believed in him for 4? 5? years. I've never met him. I'm not sure I even know his christian name. I happen to know him as Change Agent. He's Cynical because he's a Dad. He's a Dad because somebody's kids have to save the world. Check in with me right around 2020 and I'll let you know exactly what his kids are up to.

Hey Chag! I'm not selling anyone out, I just finally have enough passion to buy back my value.

* * * * *

The dress rehearsal is finally over.

I'm about to get psych-ward-worthy crazy. I figure if I warn everybody who's waiting on the world to change, t a l k r e a l s l o o o w, and then start from the top, we can absolutely preempt any calls of a three-digit nature. See? An old dog can learn a new trick just like that! Bow? Wow!

These days, everlong, the world is my laboratory. Dude's hard-earned ad dollars generated by the "consumer's" purchase of Coca Cola and Old Spice and anything else that America's great independent ad machine can peddle comprise the just-about-adequate grant that funds my operation -- which is to say YOU do. What he's doing with your money as we speak? Ironically, blogging. Adding emotional value to an emotionally bankrupt world. He claims even the LA Times thinks so, but I'm not so sure.

Instead of bringing you sugar in your Coke, he brings you everything you didn't ask for. Because it's pretty good to look at, you don't notice the message (p.s. there isn't one) but you enjoyed the entertainment. As mentioned previously, ad nauseumly BMC-style, I never sold ad space or sold my story or sold myself or sold out. I do everything for love, not money. Which is to say I do everything for passion, not power, position or prestige. I was born entitled to all that shit, and I can assure you the batteries of passion are not included with that luxury package. Nor is a sunroof.

In my world PASSION = MONEY, thereby neutralizing the all-consuming power of either.

I'm going to stop here, because I have also learned during my short tenure as the interweb's resident unrehabilitated crazy, I scare people. I am manufacturing little white flags to hand to people before I start the crazy machine up.


I've taken to secretly predicting the outcome of any and all interactions with the world outside my head regarding the basis for my experiments in the lab of my life. According to the professor, I'm rockin' an A average, and can kill a pop quiz in a hot millisecond.


If you're here watching from the other side of the DMZ (Divorce Mesmerization Zone), do join me for tea and bedlam at the Inn.

The exit's to your right, I'm headed left. To the coast. For good.

See you at the Inn,
xodt

it's time to get ill

this, my dears, is the moment we've all been waiting for. i'm finally done talking, thinking, trying, failing, crying, screaming into the ethers, and always winding up along -- as if there's something wrong with that. weary, but more aware than ever, i know now that until i actually DO something that's worth infinity times its weight in the value and power i am accused of poaching from its rightful owners, nobody (and he knows who he is) will hear me. possibly my only fear. my only only fear.

the more i reach out for a line of communication to those who once had a mind-body connection within themselves about my vision and my potential, the more i realize, it takes as long to shuck the stink of crazy when you aren't in fact crazy as it does for the average person to process one of lifes more insidious losses. take your pick: death, divorce, job loss, loss of self.

on mother's day i tried to do the one thing ever mother is hardwired to do: bring peace and balance to my family. and because i've taken to predicting on paper the outcome of every interaction i have with the people to whom i am bound the tightest, i have learned that i am right often enough about who is going to do what when under what circumstances that i am here right now.

i'm standing on the edge of the ocean. literally. i'm about to drown in it, metaphorically, because that's what i have to do to convince you and me that it is possible for your average human to walk on water. it all depends upon what you believe about water. not what you think you know about it.

so i'm going to start from scratch. with everything.

starting with transparency.

i am on the oregon coast. i am here to finish what i started on april 6, 2009, which was nothing short of a revolution. it's taken me miles of pacing in circles to parse out the form of this declaration of independence. some people would call that crazy. i call that all balls.

so i'm just warning you all now, since i was way too fucking subtle last time i decided (as opposed to having it done to me or for me) to get lost in my mind and bring passengers on the long road to ruin* a front row seat to my program.

(High) Cinco! de Mayo de Freddy, via ebox

My Mom sent me this and of course I thought of you.

Possibly there is a reason I seldom drink soda....glad to see that beer wasn't mentioned in a negative light!!


Water or Coke?






WATER

#1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.
(Likely applies to half the world population)



#2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak
that it is mistaken for hunger.



#3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one's metabolism as 3%.



#4. One glass of water will shut down midnight hunger pangs
for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of
Washington study.



#5. Lack of water, the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.



#6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of
water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain
for up to 80% of sufferers.



#7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term
memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on
the computer screen or on a printed page.



#8.. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of
colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast
cancer by 79%., and one is 50% less likely to develop
bladder cancer. Are you drinking the amount of water
you should drink every day?



COKE

#1. In many states the highway patrol carries
two gallons of Coke in the trunk to remove blood from
the highway after a car accident.



#2. You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of Coke
and it will be gone in two days.


#3. To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the
toilet bowl and let the 'real thing' sit for one hour,
then flush clean. The citric acid in Coke removes
stains from vitreous china.



#4. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers:
Rub the bumper with a rumpled-up piece of Reynolds
Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.


#5. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour
a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.



#6. To loosen a rusted bolt: Apply a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola
to the rusted bolt for several minutes.



#7. To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into
the baking pan, wrap the ham in aluminum foil, and bake.
Thirty minutes before ham is finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.



#8... To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of Coke
into the load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run
through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen
grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your
windshield.



FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

#1 the active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid.
It will dissolve a nail in about four days. Phosphoric
acid also leaches calcium from bones and is a major
contributor to the rising increase of osteoporosis.

#2. To carry Coca-Cola syrup! (the concentrate) the
commercial trucks must use a hazardous Material place
cards reserved for highly corrosive materials.

#3. The distributors of Coke have been using it to clean
engines of the trucks for about 20 years!

Now the question is, would you like a glass of water?


or Coke?

The people I know and love now are vastly different yet equally aware as me; as equally and oppositely as the person I loved most and hardest (but maybe not the most passionately, after all) and who knew me not at all. I am finally in the right family.

There's a backlog of drafts in waiting.

Mercury's in retrograde again, so you know that stems a prolific bitch's flow. But it's my main priority to set those brain droppings free, at altitude. Without a braindump there can be room for no more rightness of such grandiostic magnitudinum.

i for one, don't drink canned killer chemicals laced with nostalgia and shame. i likes organic tragic lemonade. homebrewed.
xodt

p.s. i think i gave literal birth to metaphoric baby unicorns. even rarer than the original size, but way more concentrated.

Three days strep/flu/whateverthefuck got me so good my restauranting associate took her position as my In Case of Emergency contact and literally brought a medical doctor to my couchside armed with a literal tool box. Questions, tongue depressors, antibiotics, admonitions, excellent assumptions and sweet relief. I'll take big pharma from my deathbed. That's not hypocrisy, that's laziness.

My trusty suspect of a pal knew the warning signs of impending doom when I was entirely nonplussed by offers of late-night lemondrops chasing pickle-peppered cheeseburgers. She found me on my couch, incoherent and uncomfortable, but not in my usual everyday way. I will say this:ZOOMCARE SUCKS. SUCKS. SUCKS. SUCKS. In the years that I have attempted to use them on my behalf or those of my children, it's a shitshow. Misdiagnoses, not open when posted, can't make an appointment, can't get a human on the line, can't get a doctor only a nurse practitioner (often fine, but not when i want the doctor who's advertised), failure to call with test results, forgotten prescription printouts or call-ins. So not worth it.

Not one to need urgent care services (unless they're foisted upon me) often, I succumbed to the achey overwhelm and spent 50% of the shutdown crawling in and out of the tub, 50% of the time wishing I had the energy to clear out a walgreens, and 50% wondering where the power went. Total grid shutdown.

The last time I was shut down for three days against my will was -- this is me pointing the microphone at the crowd so you can spare my lungs. Dave Grohl rips through my chakras when I hear this song, always right on time

This is a black out, don't let it go to waste

This is a black out, I want to detonate

Sometimes I wish that I could change

I can't save you from my poor brain

I had to shut down to get back to not shutting the fuck up. I always retreat to what I know. For you that means more words on the screen and fewer out of my mouth, which my associate will be glad to hear.

One thing I know is that I'm lucky these horoscopes showed up in linear order right before I posted a major gut-says-no-no post about my daily antics. I could hear The Hook kicking my ass and she would have been right. But I don't think I can't sit on all this juice 'til my unemployment checks run dry. It's not fair to you. But for now I will keep that comical to myself.

Time for me to power down. Because apparently I have some things to tackle tomorrow. And you kids know these bitches can't lie.

* * * * *

supreme confidence, and other crimes of passion

for once, everything in my head makes sense. i know who i am, where i fit in, why i'm here, who i'm here for, and why i do the things i do. i make sense to next to nobody, which makes perfect sense to me. you say money, i say passion. you say sacrifice, i say but, why? you say stay strong, i say i've been pretending to lift these weights for years. you say bitchy, i say yep. you say funny, i say packaging. you say alimony, i say unemployment check. you say crazy, i say "if you say so." you say "i get it," i say you either do or you don't. you say writer, i say thinker. you say parent, i say mentor. you say shame, i say "nah." the tiny little bread trail of memories i left for myself seemingly haphazardly along the path i've been stumbling along all these years just jumped out of the bushes and reminded me of the one thing i know most for sure: everything i know.

you say "get a job, " i say "this is my job."

last week i was ispeaking with fospo (yep, back to that one. can't come up with an appropriate title for his majesty going forward. suggestions welcome!). we were having a shitty little text battle when i childishly told him to enjoy his run to nowhere. texting by iphone whilst jogging? in case he needed to hold a meeting in his mobile office? likely. at any rate, his shitty retort to me was something on the order of, "that's amazing coming from the king of nowhere."

what was intended as a lead bullet hit me like a golden arrow. the amateur archer turned alchemist.

to understand failure, you must be very intimate with risk. to be intimate with risk means you respect the passionate urge while holding no grudge against whatever outcome ensues. if you take no risks, you can have no failures. if you have no genuine life-forming failures, your capacity to understand that visceral place that drives one to risk for the sake of conviction, but without the promise of reward, is limited. deeply. you can have no empathy for those who challenge risk to cough up its rewards. by the time we meet our well-known successes, their years of failure to succeed have been cleared off their value bankruptcy statement and the ordinary man reveres him as if he were a success all his life. and maybe he was. but not if he didn't think so no matter the size or style of his "failure."

the only value in failing can be discovered once you've managed to get back up only to do it again and again and again. because once you've learned to fall, you start paying better attention on the way down and pretty soon you're just a stunt double to yourself and falling's just a job. when you fall publicly, voluntarily, that's clearly some stunt double footage. most of us like to keep our most glorious failures trapped in a vault, and that is if we have any to hide in the first place.

this is what i do. i fall down. i get up. i type about it and then stir the simple syrup of irony into my musky cauldron of tragic lemon compote and see if i can convince anybody it's kool aid. drinking of my cruel aid means that you might just have it in you create to that very delicate pairing of anchovies, cold fruity sugar water, and the ground-floor perspective of just punishment for committing a crime of passion -- which is what taking a big risk is when the motivations are genuine. it's some fun shit. they call it life.

you know how they say there's no way to fly if your feet never leave the ground? you say 36 years, i say running start.

xod

* * * * *

all that said, inertia outside my brain is the order of the moment.
granny's birthday was tuesday. we're celebrating alone this weekend.
my restauRANTing associate was out of town for a week. that eff'd our flow. both kids have been sick -- two days of much-needed mother/mentoring. i missed those mofos because i had to move the last of my worldly possessions out of the house that hasn't been a home for a year and some pocket change. what was supposed to be a 4-hour scenario turned into an unfortunate, 3-day test of my will, but now we're really bursting at the seams of this little apartment. the scapegoats kids are getting walk-up fever and so am i. we're ready to find our home together. it feels like its coming soon, but only because it's been getting nearly all of my attention lately. the house is in foreclosure and the banks are suddenly on my johnson, so the divorce finalization is on hiatus, apparently. i'm sick of ex-husband euphemisms, legal bills, those without inspiration, being root-bound in tiny spaces where there's no room to grow, and wondering what i'd be by now if i had taken my life's biggest risk sooner. cookies are calling. crabby chic couture is calling. restaurant smoke jumping is calling. jacket copy is calling. getting the fuck on with it is calling. the professional amateur is standing by to take those calls. but not until she returns all the ones she's been dodging for the past year, finds a home and gets all moved in.

30 days or less? a ridiculous goal. which makes it totally worth pursuing.

Please Stand By.

I have not disappeared forever. Things are nutser than usual, is all.

While you're holding, Patricia of TO, I'm holding the Coffee + Xanax apron for you. Send an email to getnicecakes@gmail.com to let my money-matters associate hook you up. We're offering my readers $25/apron + shipping ($13 to canadia. ouch.). Buy 5, get one free. Use DANA IS CRAZY in your subject line, and she'll ship that sucker off to you just as soon as the ca$h hits the paypal.

Misfit Hausfrau and anyone else who covets overpriced aprons made of passion -- here you go. But do me a favor and don't buy it off of Etsy because we can't control the pricing that way. And to reiterate, we're offering my readers $25/apron + US shipping ($4.75) (canadia = $13 for priority). Buy 5, get one free. Use DANA IS CRAZY in your subject line, and she'll ship that sucker off to you pronto -- just as soon as the ca$h hits the paypal.

I hope that clears up where I've been. When I wasn't making aprons and logos and hangtags and giftcards and websites and pretty pictures and all the right publishing contacts, I was working things out with the skittles. Bub's had a few cooperation challenges, and Foo is next to impossible to convince into a Hooky Day anymore. Harumph. At this rate, she'll never learn to fuck off properly. So we asked her dad for a few spare hours over the weekend to make some badass Ts.

So much to talk about, no time to type. Not ideal for a writer, but way ideal for a lady living her best revenge.

Be back soon/eventually/possibly even later today.

xodt