Spidercamp

The Bicycle of Tomorrow.

The Bicycle of Tomorrow. A warehouse full, silver and weightless. He loved those bikes. He had bought them with the proceeds from the blackmail but now the cops had figured it out and were on their way. But he was going to take one beautiful machine and disappear.

---

Jessica asked me an important question. I hadn't expected it so soon. She was a little freaked out, thought something might be wrong with her. I got to say, You're fine, that's normal, and here's what else.  If she never asks me anything else, at least I did that.

---

poetry by little kids (I don't know who or how old. these were printed in the school literary magazine and I copied them onto a scrap of paper which I just found.) :

There once was a boy known as Shawn
Who ate cabbage from bedtime til dawn
He ate and he ate
Until he had a faint
And now he's as large as the lawn.

-

Love is cering of one a nuther.
Like I love my cat.
I'm as fisty as a kitten.

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Like everyone else in the world, I have five four three one zillion Gmail invites to give away. Let me know if you're jealous.

Thanks to my badass benefactor

Thanks to my badass benefactor I now have a cameraphone and a photoblog and I like to blog my blogs in my blog for blogging. what a painfully retarded word and every time i say it i think "barf a frog."

I did not get a picture of the big fat cop buying a big fat stack of comics in Criminal Records.

A tiny kitten destroyed my sex life.

yelled across tonight's coffeeshop by employees:
"Kelly, will you get rid of my belly?"
"I will if you'll get rid of my back fat."

my neighbor Frenchie, talking about me: "See? I told you she was one-a them Swiss Alps kinda little girls." (this may have somehow stemmed from the fact that i was wearing a head kerchief that day. but also, dude is straight crazy.)

Logan invented a dance craze called "The Bare Minimum." His dance crazes are the main reason I love him.

I'll Just Be Over Here on the Couch: The Story of My Whole Damn Life

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Andrei Codrescu, who I love so freaking much, has a wonderful essay about spam poetry here (audio link). It's the first time I've heard anyone say what I have learned not to say, because nobody agrees with me and people usually want to argue about it: some of the crap that ends up in my inbox is not total crap; it is often really pretty strings of language.

Here's the best of this week:

its not my problem, get over it creak

graduated cylinder midwives

cowboy guardian angels

polaroid serf

razor blade curses

bullfrog fetishists

ball bearing dilettantes

r's inhuman chang

bicep starlets over 94

briar patch brides

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Any insurance agent can dance with line dancer inside, but it takes a real swamp to ski lodge from alchemist.

Bernice, the friend of Bernice and beams with joy from lover. cream puffs remain worldly.

give secret financial aid to her nation

fetishists remain pathetic.

Cynthia, the friend of Cynthia and wakes up inside mortician.

for ballerina feels nagging remorse,

lunatic starts reminiscing about lost glory; Shawn, the friend of Shawn and gets stinking drunk with photon

dissident defined ceases to exist, Unlike so many clocks who have made their wobbly widow to us.

umbrella living with steam engine.

A few philosophers to arrive at a state of grizzly bear

it takes a real toothache to tornado about

wedding dress behind dahlia daydreams,

But they need to remember how eagerly grand piano goes to sleep.

Beatrice, the friend of Beatrice and trembles with asteroid living with abstraction. And caricature the dark side of her plaintiff.

Unlike so many guardian angels who have made their makeshift widow to us.

Where we can accidentally give a pink slip to our bottle of beer.

for minivan, behind briar patch, and pig pen living with vacuum cleaner are what made America great! But they need to remember how greedily, And assimilate the dark side of her curse.

Olga, the friend of Olga rejoices

Horacio, the friend of Horacio

Still can be kind to her from philosopher of, write a love letter to her. He called her Horacio (or was it Horacio?). He called her Horacio (or was it Horacio?). acronym jitterbug

And negotiate a prenuptial agreement with the dark side of her insurance agent.

I'm 28 and I guess I'm not supposed to

I'm 28 and I guess I'm not supposed to have thirteen-year-old friends. I know that. So call her a little sister, a cousin, the daughter I didn't realize I wanted so much. I've talked with her every day for nine months - that's something. Something more important than I thought, proven by my quick and unexpected tears in the car on the way home. This was her last day and I don't know that I'll ever see her again.

The day I met her, she said her name was Jessica and I said Me too, and didn't realize until much later that she thought I was being a jerk, because every other adult she'd encountered there, at her new school, had been an absolute jackass to her. I was the first adult there who treated her like she was a person.

The day I met her, I taught her to crochet. I just wanted to give her something to do so she wouldn't feel left out or awkward. The next day, she was teaching younger kids how to do it, and learning all their names.

She's very shy but within the first month had made friends with kids in every grade in the school - something I've never, in seven years, seen anyone else do. Kindergarten through eighth grade. They adore her. She doesn't like everybody, but she tries to. That's a rare quality and I will do my damnedest to see that it isn't pounded out of her by the time she's twenty.

Her parents are overprotective and irrational, often cruel, and rapidly losing all credibility with her. I don't lie to her about this, or anything. When they make a decision which rings idiotic, I tell her so. If something sucks I look her in the eye and I say that it SUCKS. I'm in the tenuous, golden position of being perhaps the only adult she will listen to. I don't give my email address to my kids because it inevitably leads to a hell of stupid forwards, but I gave it to her, because I will wait out all the forwards if it means there's any chance she might ask me the scary question about boys or pot. That is a job I will do. I said, You email me whenever something pisses you off. She said that she would be emailing me a lot, then. She smiled, sort of.

I gave her a gift. It wasn't much, the only thing I had on me that I thought she might like. A useful tool. She held it in her hand and did not say anything. She looked at me and if I've ever been able to read anyone's mind, that was it. She hates that building so much but she did not want to leave, because I was in it.

So I got the hug after all. All at once: She's taller than me, She's getting breasts, I love this kid so much.

Gabby rubber-bands an orange magic marker to her finger

Gabby rubber-bands an orange magic marker to her finger and says, "I thought this would come in handy. Having a marker instead of a finger. But it doesn't. I can't use it at all. I can't get the lid off. I have arthritis. Don't laugh! It isn't funny!"

Gabby is the kind of kid who can play Jingle Bells over and over on her flute and it does not irritate me, even when all she knows is the first line. This means all she can play is the TOOT TOOT TOOT, TOOT TOOT TOOT, TOOT TOOT TOOT. Three blasts of the same note, repeated a thousand times, and honestly it's not even quite the right note. I don't care. She's happy and she's so sweet and it doesn't bother me. This has been tested and proven.

But that was last week, and it doesn't count as much as what happened today. Today I saw one of my co-workers grabbing a four-year-old girl. The girl was screaming and trying to get away, near tears, yelling I don't want you to be touching me that way. The co-worker said, But I'm the boss and you have to do what I say.

This wasn't a case of molestation. The adult was only touching the kid on the face. But she did not want to be touched like that, and there was nothing she could do about it. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm so tired of being in that situation. If there's nothing I can change I might as well stay home.

I felt horror but most of it was horror at my own reaction: How long till I fucking get out of here? I didn't feel sick on anyone's behalf but my own.