Full Release

So, uh.... my divorce is final. According to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I am "at liberty to marry again". I am also at liberty to stuff my belly button full of ground sirloin and go taunt a Doberman, but the Commonwealth will forgive me if I take a pass on both super-fun activities.

(I'm being disgustingly facetious here. The other day, I caught myself tearing up to - wait for it - "I'll Be", by Edwin McCain. How humiliating. I don't care if you were [wooed/engaged/married/freaked nasty] to "I'll Be"... it's still crap. It's the auditory equivalent of a CIA special-ops team... it materializes out of nowhere (in this case, immediately after "Freebird"), invades your ducts, forcibly extracts any tears present therein, then applies electrodes to their testicles. Um... wait. Tears don't have testicles. Except perhaps Chuck Norris's.

Point being: once again, Liz Phair is right. I DO want a boyfriend. I DO want all that stupid old shit, like letters and sodas.

Damn, I hope my boobs are nice enough to make up for my gun-shy disposition and stress-induced forehead wrinkle.

[Gives boob exploratory jiggle... hrmn. Not good enough to negate ALL emotional baggage, but good nonetheless. That'll do, tit. That'll do.]

On the left : the kind, compassionate and wonderful Menita has been there for me throughout the past year. I'm glad she was there with me when I received the news that my decree had arrived. And I'm REALLY glad she was holding a camera.

On the right : this is more representative of my mental state as of late. Introverted. Contemplative. Wistful. And kinda... rouge-tinted. Someone needs to bat the ever-present bottle of dye from my hand before I either go bald or start to resemble a bigger-titted Ron Howard.

And What Kind of Tree Would You Be?

Damn it to hell! I didn't realize that my answers to Le Feral's interview were supposed to be posted on MY OWN MUCH-IN-NEED-OF-AN-UPDATE SITE. Yeah, I am the humanoid equivalent of fruitcake: unbelievably fucking dense (also sticky on the inside, also much-improved by repeated bastings with rum).

If you'd like to view my responses to my ACTUAL questions, they're available in the comments here. To compensate for my feelings of inadequacy and, erm, dumbness, I took it upon myself to answer five MORE (originally posed to other Gone Feral habitues. I stole your questions, nyah nyah nyah nyah-nyah!).

What are three random things that make you happy?

1. Running in hot weather and getting all sweat-dewy and imagining all of the other humans throughout time who have used and tested their bodies in exactly the same fashion. Also, imagining dragging cute fellow runners into the underbrush.

2. Muse's "Starlight". Greatest falsetto since The Darkness! When that guy sings "hold you in my arms", he is NOT fucking around. Some other singers might just want to, you know, "sit in relatively close proximity to you on the davenport", or "put my hand in the popcorn tub at the same time as yours", or "not make a disgusted face when you swig mouthwash directly out of the bottle rather than using the cap which was not just designed but specifically demarcated in milliliters for such a purpose"... not the Muse guy. There is no question as to what he wants to do, and that is "HOOOOOOOOOOOOLD YOU INNNNNNNNNNNNNN MAAAAAAAAAAAH ARMMMMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

3. My sister Pixie's newly-developed Theory of Coping With Nonconsensual Prison Intercourse (when we're talking, such topics crop up with alarming frequency): "I'll betcha if those guys just RELAXED and LET THINGS HAPPEN, it wouldn't be so bad!"

What (or whom) would you die for?

I wouldn't die for any cause, principle, person or thing other than J.Q. (for whom I'd die in an instant... biology + maternal love = powerful stuff). I see no nobility in sacrificing my life for anyone else's. So if you're standing near me when the shit goes down, I suggest you move, because I am gonna be one reluctant fucking human shield.

My feelings are much the same re: enduring pain and suffering for another. I'll do whatever I possibly can to spare my loved ones any sort of trauma. But a friend and I were recently discussing the "1984"/"Room 101" situation (when confronted with the thing you fear most, would you allow said thing to be inflicted on a loved one if it meant you'd be spared?). I was like, "Fuck yes! It wouldn't even take THAT MUCH TORTURE! Winston took FOREVER to get to the 'DO IT TO JULIA!' point. I'd instantaneously be like, 'HELL YES you can do it to Julia! And can I have some of that fancy contraband candy?"

(Ed. Note to any family members who are reading: the above was an example of "patent falsehood for comedic effect".)

(Ed. Note to any potential torturers: NOOOO! NOT ME! DO IT TO THOSE BASTARDS!)

Under what circumstances (if any) would you commit murder?

To prevent an extremely close friend or family member from dying or being permanently incapacitated.

This should probably be qualified, because I just realized that it could also encompass a hypothetical situation such as "father needs kidney replacement; go out and whack histocompatible donor in close proximity to local hospital!"

Which is actually kind of clever... um, horrible! I mean horrible!

Baby Jesus has come to tell you you’re dead. But Satan says you can pick any year of your life and live it again one more time before you sleep the big sleep. Which year do you re-live, or do you say, to hell to with it, I’m dead?

The past year... the most eventful, emotionally-brutal, sexiest, scariest, craziest year of my life. I was going to say "the first year of J.Q.'s life", but he's WAY cuter now. I mean, c'mon... he calls a flashlight a "make-sun"! If cuteness were an acid, "make-sun" would be capable of dissolving a rhinoceros carcass in ten minutes flat.

What do you dream about?

My ability to remember my dreams has declined greatly in recent years. I used to be able to vividly recall several dreams each week; I haven't had a single memorable one in the past few months, however. Bummer. Especially because my dreams were invariably of the "hellaciously weird" variety... like the time I dreamed that I was kidnapped by a weird terrorist cabal whose evil nature was manifested by the fact that they only permitted their captives to have a quarter-cup of ice cream with dinner each night. Oh, and the dream where a friend of the Former Mr. Thumbscrews caught me cavorting with a transsexual hooker in a sleazy hotel room. When confronted with evidence of of my (highly unusual) adultery, I solemnly replied, "Oh, THAT? That was just research for this mystery I'm solving!" Man, if I ever need to weasel my way out of infidelity, I know which excuse I'M using.

And now my question for YOU, dear readers... would anyone like to be interviewed by moi? And would you like Barbara Walters-style gentleness, or hard-hitting, "female journalist brutally taking down Frank 'T.J.' Mackie in Magnolia"-style toughness?

The Ice Storm (Uh, Not The "Key Party" Kind)

Good : coworker poking their head into your office and saying, "What the hell are you still doing here? We're closing early!" Dewey Billem Fivehundredbucksanhour & Howe NEVER CLOSES EARLY. Not for snow, not for hurricane-force winds, not even for the time police found a bag of "mysterious white powder" at a local hotel (I can recall what it WASN'T [anthrax / ricin / Botulicious Neurotoxin 'n Shake Mix], but have no idea what it WAS [cornstarch? Gold Bond? A drug with some deliciously alluring "location/descriptor" nickname, like "China White" or "Poughkeepsie Fuck-You-Upper"?).

Not So Good : torrential sleet whipping into your face like icy buckshot. Philadelphians' inclement-weather driving techniques (screaming, "BUT IT HAS TRACTION CONTROLLLLLLLL!" as they skid across six lanes of traffic). Stepping in a puddle and feeling your Docs fill up with something remarkably akin to a Slurpee, only a lot less sweet and a lot more likely to make you scream expletives in the middle of Market Street.

Worse : "Wow, this came out of NOWHERE! It was pretty warm this morning! I even put the baby in a spring-weight jacket before I dropped him at daycare!... oh, crap."

---

Good : Baby's seasonally-inappropriate wardrobe means only one thing: agonizing guilt. Oh, screw that. It means BABY GAP TIME!

No So Good : Baby Gap employees not amused by intro line of, "So... who do I have to blow to get some heavily-discounted winter garments in here?"

Worse : struggling to hold a heavily-bundled toddler, a purse, a bag full of recently-procured Baby Gap goodness and a perpetually-inverting umbrella while being pummeled by aforementioned freezing rain.

Really Freaking Awful : one of those items can now talk.

J.Q. : "Cold, mama! Cold! Scary!"
Jul : "I know, J.Q., I know, mama is sorry, we'll be inside soon..."
J.Q. : "Soon!"
[After thirty more minutes of slogging through Hell on Ice]
J.Q. : "Inside... soon? Brrr!"
Jul : [affixes sign to toddler reading "FREE TO MORE COMPETENT PARENT", curls up on icy pavement and dies of guilt]

---

Good : hallelujah and pass the Annie's Cheddar 'n Tiny Semolina Anarchy Symbols, the market is OPEN!

Not So Good : the market contains yogurt raisins.

Worse : due to overwhelming parental guilt, by the time we reach the check-out, J.Q. ALSO contains yogurt raisins. All of them.

Really Freaking Awful : [the following morning] "It's WHITE?! What the - ? Oh, yeah... damned yogurt raisins."

---

Good : the kind, lovely and musically-discriminating Kateri provides us with Dylan-style shelter from the storm.

Not So Good : our shelter contains three children. By the time morning rolls around, one of these children will have crapped enough times to send Mr. Huggies' children to a very nice graduate school indeed. One of them will have experienced a "night terror"-style bad dream (complete with the type of bone-chilling screams capable of stopping the heart of every mother within a five-block radius). One of them will have decided that the ideal sleep position is "draped across nearest adult's face" and woken up in annoyance each time they were moved.

Worse : It's 10 AM. I'm exhausted. Kateri is exhausted. The previous night was harrowing enough to make even the bravest woman's Fallopian tubes spontaneously twist into tidy little knots. When J.Q. starts rooting around in my purse and chirping, "Makeup! Makeup!", neither of us feels motivated enough to stop him. Trust me, this will be important later.

---

Good : a sleepy and eyeliner-smeared J.Q. actually consents to ride in his sling.

Not So Good : he winds up riding in it for about an hour and a half, which is how long it takes us to get home (public transit, hurrah!).

Worse : [while rummaging in purse] "Why do all of my lipsticks have bite marks in them? And WHERE ARE MY KEYS?!"

But Not So Bad After All : we drive to New Jersey (my car keys being kept wisely separate from my house keys). J.Q. is spoiled rotten by his grandparents. I take a sojourn to the local Beauty Emporium Not Strictly Intended For Those of the Caucasian Persuasion and pick up a box of the reddest hair dye I've ever seen (I'm never going back to Lady Clairol... Creme of Nature rocked my lily-white ass). We all enjoy some vegan General Tso's. And Junket* is kind enough to replace my AWOL keys with fetching animal-printed ones. I'm trying to come up with a little saying to help me differentiate them... "Okay, so a CHEETAH would be capable of eating a DALMATIAN, so... oh, screw it").

* For this act of sisterly kindness, I am willing to forgive her for not agreeing that "LOCKSMITHS DO IT 'TIL YOUR PINS ALIGN AT THE SHEAR POINT" would be a good t-shirt.

Fool For a Client

One of my favorite aspects of my genetic heritage is the ability to hustle. It beats the hell out of "likelihood of developing Furby-sized malignancies" and "periodic desire to smear entire eastern seaboard with Nutella and devour it, in order that I might survive the harsh Siberian winter".

My paternal grandfather was by many accounts a cantankerous little bastard. He was stubborn, argumentative and hot-tempered. Had he been French, his ass would've been banished to Elba in a heartbeat. He was, however, Ukrainian, and used his unique form of cantankerous bastardry to help his family survive one of the blackest periods in that nation's history.

The great Ukrainian famine occurred from 1932-1933. It was not the result of natural causes, but rather the Soviet Union's agricultural collectivization campaign ("Together, we shall produce a wealth of grain for the motherland!... just not for you, or your kids, or anyone in your miserable little village"). Under the guidance of everyone's second-favorite insane mustachioed tyrant (ladies and gentlemen, "Genocidin' Joey" STALIIIIIIN!), millions of Ukrainians were displaced, starved or murdered. My grandfather, his wife and two small boys survived, eventually washing up in America (I'm sure dyeda would be immensely proud that his granddaughter is using her family's hard-won freedom primarily to make dick jokes on the Internet).

"How the hell did they survive?" I asked my father. "All those people were wiped out, but this tiny little dude and his entire family managed to make it?" "Your grandfather was... a hustler," my father explained, "He knew how to get things... and he knew people who knew how to get things."

I don't claim that my wiles even approach those of my grandfather. I doubt that I'd be able to single-handedly save my family from the horrors of Stalinist Russia. Hell, I can barely make it out of Target without getting hopelessly lost (and tempted to lure my meatier fellow patrons into sporting goods in order to cannibalize them). But I do see seem to have inherited a glimmer of my wee forebear's craftiness. I connive. I scheme. I fix what's broken. I may not know people who know how to get things ("Erm, excuse me, uh [peers at name tag], Jonathan? Do you happen to know where I might be able to get a jar of pickle spears to accompany Mr. Q-Tips and 12-Pack of Charmin over here?"). However, given sufficient time and Googling, there's very little I myself cannot obtain.

Including a divorce.

The average American divorce costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000. And that's for a simple, uncontested case. For a more contentious split, the figures skyrocket.

My divorce cost about $250. A goodly portion of that was due to the fact that there was a 7-11 right next to the courthouse (Taquitos: official grease-scepter of the hungry litigant!). And how did you manage this, Jul?, you may or may not be asking. How did you sever the bonds of holy matrimony in a fair and expeditious fashion sans counsel? And what flavor were the Taquitos?

Jalapeno cream cheese, my friend. Jalapeno cream cheese.

Your Defensive Terrapin Style Is No Match For My Complaintive Mongoose Style! : Jul's In No Way Advisable Guide to Being Your Own Divorce Lawyer

You've heard the saying "All men want a virgin in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom"? Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it's misogynistic crap. However, when orchestrating one's own divorce, it is necessary to be a spitfire at the negotiating table and a total fucking idiot at the courthouse. Confused? Let me explain:

1. You do not pay a divorce lawyer to ensure an equitable dissolution of your marriage. You do not pay them to look out for your best interests.

You pay them to look stupid on your behalf.

I've ambled down to Family Court approximately 70,000 times over the past few months. I've come totally unprepared, and I've come hauling briefcases full of legal bad-assery.

The only thing which has made a goddamned bit of difference is my willingness to act like a total dipshit.

At first, I tried to play it cool. I had all the right forms. I had them signed, sealed, notarized and copied in quadruplicate. It didn't matter.

Me : "Okay, so I have every form you requested last time, plus every other form available on the court's website, including the really freaking obscure ones, just in case."
Court Employee : "Huh, let's see... motion to blah blah blah... request for blah blah... application for a rhinoceros license... temporary permit for colorful street festival and/or impromptu West Side Story-style "rumble"... okay, we can't accept any of this. You don't have an Amendment to Redact Aforementioned Mentionings."
Me : "There is no such thing! You just made that up."
Court Employee : "Nuh-uh."
Me : "Yuh-huh!"
Court Employee : "Oh, would you look at that, it looks like there's a problem with your affidavit of consent, too."
Me : "No, there -"
Court Employee : [rubs meticulously-prepared affidavit on rear of poly-blend slacks, flings to the ground, walks away chortling]

Desperate times called for desperate measures. I hadn't whipped out The Dumbness for a number of years. Why, I cannot say... it's a marvelously effective technique. The last time I'd done so, it had netted me a replacement fish tank in under five minutes.

Fishamajig Industries Customer Service Rep : "Well, it SHOULD be filtering... are you SURE you've checked the impeller?"

Me : "YES I AM SURE I CHECKED THE IMPALER!"
F.I.C.S.R. : "No you didn't! You just called it the 'impaler'!"
Me : "I'm holding it in my hand right now! It is... uh... tiny! And full of fish poop!"
F.I.C.S.R. : "Oh, christ. You'll have a new tank in 4 - 6 weeks, okay?"

The next time I visited the courthouse, I did so with a twinkle in my eye and a "duh" on my lips.

Me : "Um... so... I can get this done today, right?" [holds out sheet of construction paper with "MOSHUN FOR YOU GUYS TO GIVE ME A DIVORSE THINGY" scrawled across it in "Mango Fandango" lip gloss]
Court Employee: "You poor woman! You poor, stupid woman. Let me see what I can do."

2. However, when dealing with the erstwhile Mr. Thumbscrews, I found it best to scoop up that spare cognitive capability and cram it right back in my cranium.

Me : [deposits immense stack of paperwork at Mr. Thumbscrews' feet via forklift] [beep... beep... beep... beep...]
Mr. Thumbscrews : "What the fuck?!"
Me : "Oh, it's just your standard Complaint in Lieu of Forcible Contusion of Defendant's Testicular Region, a Waiver of All Possible Recourse, Countersuit and Hope of Salvation, Addendum to Complaint Granting Plaintiff Sole Possession of Entire Marital Library (With Supplementary "Except For Tom Clancy; Fuck Him and the Submarine He Rode In On" Clause)... you know, the usual."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "Huhhhhhh... ?"
Me : "Oh, just sign up and shut up."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "These don't give you permission to change J.Q.'s name to Bitey Bodhavista and raise him on an ashram, do they?"
Me : "Not explicitly, no."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "Oh, okay." [whips out pen]

The Artist Formerly Known as Mr. Thumbscrews is not an unintelligent man. He is, in fact, rather bright. However, when confronted with 30,000 pages of legal jargon, most people tend to clam up faster than Mrs. Paul's. As I had exhibited no prior Betty Broderick-style psycho-bitchiness - and, more importantly, seemed to know what I was talking about without charging him $200 an hour for the privilege - Mr. T. deferred to my judgement. Hope you enjoyed your corneas, honey... they're MINE now.

No! Our settlement was entirely fair. Which is the point: I could've attempted to forcibly violate my ex with a long, hard, enormous... court battle. But that was deeply offensive to my pride. Where was the challenge in hiring a pair of lawyers to attack one another like inbred bettas? It was far more unusual - and more satisfying - to finagle a mutually-agreeable split from the materials at hand - a few T-bills, a couple of Taquitos and a healthy helping of shrewdness. When viewed from outside the swirling shitstorm of emotion, our marriage was, at heart, a broken thing. It was a situation which needed to be fixed, and fix it I did. And I didn't even need to check the impaler.

Better or Verse - "M-80"

[Ed. Note: when fucking around with poetry {which is about ALL I can be said to do with it}, I go for mood rather than comprehensibility. There's nothing to "get", per se. It's like I told J.Q. this morning - "NO! NO! NO! SOAP IS FOR CLEANSING THINGS, NOT EATING!" Ahem. Poetry is for feeling things, not understanding.

But lest the more literal-minded of you get your Hanes Her Ways in a bunch... this is basically "Possum Kingdom" making out with "Only the Good Die Young" on the lawn in suburban New Jersey. This is the second thing which was going through my head during a recent late-night run through my childhood 'hood, the first being "AIIIIE SCARY FASTER FASTER DON'T WANNA DIE".]

One of those humid restless tangled-sheet nights
I went out back
Deconstructed your mind
Laid it out across grass in need of a mow
Like damp sandy towels
Or lawnmower parts

As it ought to be
I took things slow

And do I get the thanks of a grateful nation?
A lungful of Love's Baby Soft
The last biscuit from a drive-through box
Remuneration, meaning
A lil' something beyond
Eyeful of cutoffs
Quick grab of frustration

And, as the kids say, and I use the term fully ironically,
The shaft.

The dark sleeknesses that softly slide
Across the sides of new black pickup trucks
Could be headlights
But once I've trained your eye
Could be things murkier and more seductive

Petty vandals or
Translucent sprites
That drift on the bottom of swimming pools at night
And cling to you without your knowledge
No consent, but lesser harm
And much later, trickle happily away
From your hair, your skin, everywhere
As you sleep
They liked the warm

There must be something that I've earned
Light your eyes as the middle of a firefly
Show you where taxonomically-unidentifiable
Juiciness grows
Guide you through thickets that are best traversed
Without your clothes
Not for my sake, naturally
You should really let some things sleep late
Lest they drag you into the treehouse
Or your bathing suit snag on their claws

You go back to school in three weeks
The algebra, the too-high laugh
The trials, tribulations, two sharpened #2s
They're all you
But not walking too close to the tool shed
Shapes shifting in back of the sprinkler
Staring down the night with the lawn on your back,
the earth on your fingers,
galaxies in your eyes,
those words in your ear
Admit it or not it's all mine

XENOPHOBIA : REASONABLE PRECAUTION :: DR. ABUTOU MUGABE : ?

Halfway down ETS' GRE registration page, there's a rather interesting blurb:

"For security reasons we are not currently accepting online registrations for Nigeria. [...] Credit cards will not be accepted for Nigerian registration fees. This includes anyone who is requesting a Nigerian test center or who has a Nigerian mailing address..."

I feel kinda bad for any poor Nigerians just trying to advance their education... but I also feel that it's kind of bleakly hilarious.

Interpreting English Literature, Standard Test:

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Interpreting English Literature, Nigerian Version:

DEAR SIR,

IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WRITE TO YOU AFTER MY MUCH CONSIDERATION, MY NAME IS MR. INVISIBLE WORM THAT FLIES IN THE NIGHT. I AM EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF INTERNATIONAL WEALTH TRANSFERRING AT FIRST LAGOS BANK OF THE HOWLING STORM. I AM SEEK A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY BUSINESS PARTNER FOR MY LIFETIME INVESTMENT. I AM LOOKING FOR A BED OF CRIMSON JOY WHERE I CAN TRANSFER TWENTY FIVE MILLION ($25,000,000) AMERICAN DOLLARS (ALSO SOME DARK SECRET LOVE)...