you thought that you could outrun sorrow

I have been running back and forth ferrying clients from the waiting room to my desk, my desk back out to the waiting room like a crazy person all morning. With the sun emerges all the people who need to recertify their Food Stamp cases do as well; what you may not realize is that people who ride the bus or have unreliable transportation do not keep appointments on rainy days. I learned this some time ago, and when I wake up to thunder and lightning my first thought is no longer "O Goddamn, I wish I could stay in bed all day," but "Yay, I will have so many no-shows and can catch up on work hardcore." Needless to say, the rainyness of this week has had me spoiled. Not to mention the fact that I called out of work Tuesday based primarily on the uneasy night's sleep I had, which was most notably punctuated at around 3:00 AM by a dream in which my bed and home were completely infested with a particular species of black ticks that had a white dot on their backs. I awoke from this dream scratching my arms and legs and chest and neck frantically, and immediately took the cat into the bathroom to inspect him for fleas. I found none. I believe this dream was a message that I need to buy Frontline for my cats.

But it costs $60 every other month!

But you need to buy it. Or else you'll get fleas. Like you did last summer.

(The sound of hysterical crying)

I have been abstaining from coffee in the morning, which may explain my notable absence from LTA as well as Twitter. When I'm not unbelivably jacked up on caffeine, I find myself with notably less to say.

After several tragic and annoying debacles, nearly every one of our precious tomato/zucchini/pepper/basil seedlings were destroyed. This culminated in our landlord somehow chopping the tender top off every potted plant on our front walk with brutal, careless weed whacking. But you know what I said? I said "FUCK THIS NOISE. YOU CAN KILL ALL MY PLANTS, LANDLORD, NEIGHBOR'S DOG, REGULARLY FLOODED FLOWERBED IN THE BACKYARD, BUT YOU'LL NEVER KILL MY DESIRE TO GROW THINGS." And I went to the nursery and I got an orange pepper plant and a Green Zebra tomato and another heirloom variety, and then I went to Home Depot and I bought some ridiculously large pots because Martha said that when you're growing vegetables in pots, they have to be at least 15 gallons, and I planted them. And I think they're growing. I can't say for sure.

This weekend will be full of fun because Brandon's brother and his fiancee (God, I hate that word I hate that word) are coming to town, and we wish to squire them around and show them why we love Memphis. We're going to the farmer's market and the symphony (free tickets) and maybe to Mud Island. Hoping to hook up with Bette since she'll be in town for Bands Not Bombs. So, Go Away Rain! You can come back on Monday and give me a vacation from interviews.

One more thing: I have been using Tom's of Maine apricot-scented deodrant, and I find that at the beginning of the day, my pits smell like apricot. The middle of the day? Apricot flavored BO. By the end of the day, straight up BO. Which is kind of fine with me, because I think we Americans are an oversanitized lot, and I'm not one to squelch the natural workings of my body. But it is pretty funny to smell like a piece of rotting fruit by 3:00 every day.

MZM 09

Another week, another post with pictures where my words should be.

Last Friday we went to the third annual Memphis Zombie Massacre downtown. Last year I was knee-deep in wedding preparations and couldn't make it. Since my husband is an avowed zombie enthusiast, and I am a fan of odd social happenings that are seemingly pointless, nonetheless compelling, we met at Handy Park after work and stood in line for a couple of hours in order to get zombiefied.


I haven't heard any kind of count, but I know there were at least a couple of hundred people there. Here's some highlights.

This guy was offering a zombie cure of some sort. It was odd because I recognized him from his blog, which I had just discovered that very day. I think he's pretty hilarious, and as I later told Lindsey, anyone who executes an idea like that must be at least one quarter amazing

Do you know what the deal is with this whole thing? You can either go dressed as a zombie or in old ratty street clothes with a duct tape X on them. When the zombies see folks marked with the X, they attack them and they get zombiefied. Which is incredibly fucking creepy the first few times you see it:

This zombie was my favorite. I was near him during nearly the entire thing, and he never broke character once. I was lying. This zombie is really my favorite.

I'll close with the loveliest of all images: Undead Lovin'.

Even more pics here & here, if you haven't seen enough fake blood and wounds yet.

Nothing that this world could bring would hold me back from you

Hey y'all. I have just been dry as a creek bed as far as blogs go. When I post I want to be funny or entertaining. Not boring or bitchy. Even though life's been just fine, I haven't had shit to say as of late. I am pretty sure I will be back, though. I'm just super busy at work these days, spending my days interviewing 6-10 clients per day and working working working to keep up with their cases. But I wanted to pop in and post this exciting and bloody picture to whet your appetite for more of my keen wit.

Lovely, huh? Yeah, we went to Chattanooga this weekend to have family time with B's brother and soon-to-be-wife. We try to visit them somewhat often because we all love each other and get along well, and since the timing was perfect, a few months back I got us all tickets to go see The Avett Brothers at the Tivoli theatre in downtown Chattanooga. I am sure that I have mentioned before that TAB are my favorite band. I am as emotionally and sentimentally involved with them as I have ever been with any current band, and this show was the ninth, count em, ninth time I've seen them. Pretty cool. I know I've bitched about going to shows before, and dear Bette sums a lot of my complaints up in this post, but shows like the one this past Saturday are what keep me buying overpriced tickets and putting hundreds of miles on my small rollerskate-like car. It was gorgeous and worth every penny and every mile; they played nearly every song I ever want to hear, and I want y'all to play this song. I preach these boys to anyone who will listen; I hope you can love it a tenth as much as I do.


But my knee, right? What the fuck am I even talking about anymore? Jesus, the structure of this is giving every English teacher I've ever had a headache. They don't know why, but they have one.

Ok, my busted ass knee: earlier on Saturday, my brother-in-law drove us up Signal Mountain so that we could take a casual little hike. I have to explain that my BIL, G, is very outdoorsy and fit and active. Now, I'm not a total obese shut-in, but I get a little... pant-y when walking up hill for long stretches. Know what I'm saying? So for nearly the extent of our relationship, I have been a little afraid of the day that G realized that I am LAZY and DECIDELY NOT FIT. (Although I am sure he already knows this, he hasn't yet heard the panting). So it was a bizarre twist of events when, nearly as soon as we started our walk on the trail, I tripped and went flying leg-first into this little buddy:

The only fucking sharp rock in the entire vicinity. That is the precious denim from my jeans that got ripped open on the rock. My leg feels a lot better now, a few days later, but we had to go back and I had to drink vodka with cream soda out of a mason jar while my wonderful husband carefully picked dirt out of the bigass hole and flushed it with water and peroxide. Then I had to go to the show with my sore swollen old lady leg and deal with the silent taunts of 17-year-old hardbodies. Fuck you, high schoolers of Chattanooga. Usually I can climb stairs JUST FINE thank you.

A balloon just popped somewhere in my office and I swear to God I heard someone hit the decks.

You can call me "Perky Dumplin"

Last night I when I got home from LT's, Brandon and Alpha were talking in the living room and I took to the bedroom with the laptop with the idea that I'd check my e-mail/google reader real quick and then read. (Yeah right. I never get on the internet real quick.) I saw that Chrystal, my BFF from high school, had a new post and when I started reading it, I began laughing. Quietly at first, then louder and louder. It was a kind of laughter reminiscent of hiccups, rising in small unpredictable bursts, and growing with intensity until I had to go read the entry aloud to the boys in the other room. They thought it was funny, but not as funny as I did, since I have met Mama Ann and heard various accounts of her through the years that I'd define as "tragically hilarious." The blog post reminded me of why Chrystal was my best friend all the way through high school, because she was the most hilarious person I knew, and could tickle my funny bone relentlessly. She was so ballsy about it, and the best evidence I can think of would be the time in which she drove her ex's huge truck into a old car that his parents owned, several times, just to entertain the both of us. I think this incident might have made me pee in my britches a little bit.

We've been taking a lot of walks in the afternoon on days when the weather's lovely. Yesterday was the kind of day that makes living in the South so satisfying. Maybe it would be more appropriate to say it was the kind of day that makes living satisfying, but something about the route we took felt so deliciously Memphis to me. We scrambled up the rise to the train tracks right around Central & Cooper and were happily surprised to come across thick curtains of blooming wisteria, which is heady with the most amazing perfume this time of year. We were right around the area where Brandon took this picture a couple of weeks ago:

There are similar pix from the same day here, if you're interested.

Because I was ingrained with a healthy (unhealthy?) sense of fear by my parents, at first when B suggested walking along the tracks, I was skeptical of imminent death by trains and homicidal bums. I couldn't help but remember the opening of Fried Green Tomatoes, in which Buddy's shoe becomes stuck in the tracks and he meets his maker at the tender age of 17. However, like the many times when my dear husband's lack of fear has trumped my overly cautious nature, we strolled leisurely along without incident and had a lovely time.

Reviewing yesterday, I think it was nearly the perfect spring day. Sunshine, simple delicious food, a reminder of the intellectual & comical prowess of women I am lucky enough to know, and spiritual & physical communion with my dear, dear partner.

Signed, Mary Sunshine

Ree. Dick. You. Lus.

Keywords that brought people to my blog... thanks, Google Analytics. Now I've got approximately 22% less faith in humanity.

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I guess this blog has a strong beastiality/incest vibe.

Why can't I ever get my sugar?

Everyone reading this will be glad to know that I have moved to a new desk at work and am now in the part of our building that can be called cozy. In fact, yesterday afternoon, after I got settled in, if I had wanted to, I could have described the climate in my cube as "stuffy," but after bringing a space heater back from my lunchbreak with me last week, I didn't dare breathe a word of complaint.

By the way, do y'all know where I work? I mean, I'm pretty sure you know what I do, but do you know precisely where I drive to every day to do my clickity-clackity?

That's right, my humble office is right next to the Crystal Palace. WHICH WAS FEATURED IN HUSTLE N FLOW. Yes. We rented the movie not long after we moved here, because I had never seen it, and I was pretty excited for about 30 seconds. I have no idea if the parking lot is as jumpin' on the weekends as the film makes it look, but this guy's Flickr caption is funny and makes it seem like it could be true.

(I just reread this paragraph and I'm pretty sure I have written about this before. I'm like a senile grandmother in the fact that I repeat all my stories over and over again all the time. But I'm pretty sure that last time I didn't go to the trouble of stealing a picture from someone's Flickr to illustrate my point, so Goddammit, I'm letting it ride. Just like a granny does.)

The wedding this weekend was just smashing. The combination of Matt (gosh he looks so attractive in those photos it causes me to feel embarrassed)+ Kerry (the cutest person alive, I'm pretty sure)+ Earnestine & Hazel's really could not be beat though, you know? They had sausage from the Rendezvous. Vivian, one of the people who reopened E&H in the mid-nineties was upstairs telling stories about Ray Charles fucking whores and lots of other incredibly interesting things that I was a tad too buzzed to pay the appropriate amount of attention to. All of my favorite Memphis family of friends were there, except for David and Amy, who are in Goddamned Hawaii. There was a moment late in the evening when Ben made me dance with him and it was a little bit like some mid-nineties teen comedy in which a ugly duckling blossoms into a swan. Except every time I make a 180 degree turn on the dance floor I lose all focus of what my body was doing in the moment before. It is my personal dance reset button. Plus, at the end of the night, when legendary Nate, the upstairs bartender, was going to work, I shook his hand.

I'm sure anyone who looks in on this beastly thing from time to time remembers just a few weeks ago when I was whining and complaining about my job. I hated doing it, but it felt like it had to be done, or else I was going to go batshit ratshit crazy. When that was going on, I decided I needed a creative little project to take my mind off my troubles, so I started working on a zine. I had never made one before, just been the recipient of ones made by cooler friends. So I typed and cut and glued and now it's very nearly done, I just have to stick in a couple of more things and make a trip to Kinko's. As a reward for the pain and boredom you must have felt when reading a middle-class white woman's woes over a career she chose for herself, I am offering you, dear reader, one free cooking zine entitled "Beans & Cornbread," to be delivered to your home via USPS. All you have to do is send me a little email with yr name and address to longtallanimal@gmail.com, and I myself will incur the expense of copying and mailing a copy of the little booger into your open arms. I know that sometimes people charge like $2 for a zine, but who's gonna buy a zine from me? It's not like I'm Kathleen Hanna or something!

I fear this last comment has showed my age a bit. Oh well, I wasn't fooling anyone anyway, was I? By the way, my friend used to be pen pals with Kathleen and the letter she'd received from her would always be written in crayon. Bitchin.

I am off to work some more, and also to listen to some Bikini Kill. I will close with a Youtube video of the BK song "Carnival," one of my favorites of all time. The first mix CD I ever made for B Dill had this song on it, and I think I got cool points for it. The opening of this song is possibly the most compelling thing I've ever heard, lyrically. Heh heh heh. NSFW (the song, not the video).

And I craved I ate hearts of sharks...

I've been getting ready for the wedding of the Radio Sweethearts today (which included defunktifying my feet... Lord God, they were scary!) but I took an internet break and came across this new Neko Case video. Because I believe in beating a musical dead horse by continuing to talk about NC on my blog, I'm posting it. At least Ashley will appreciate it. 

It's adorable!