tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41315572009-07-03T20:54:02.109-04:00Unruly hair and opinions to match since 1979.Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.comBlogger256125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-23830697568765909202009-05-28T21:22:00.005-04:002009-06-16T01:10:05.107-04:00

In an effort to reduce paper waste and maximize efficiency I signed up for paperless billing on all my bills. Then I created a separate email account for all the bill-paying reminders to go to, so my regular email account would not be tainted with such unpleasantness as bill-paying. I also use this account for Netflix and Amazon and anything I suspect might send too many emails not filled with

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-91798629162141185582009-05-27T01:43:00.004-04:002009-05-27T11:30:13.446-04:00

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.-Ecclesiastes 1:9Brutus bought it last night. When it sunk in that he'd been defeated at Philippi by the combined forces of Mark Antony and Octavian Caesar he grabbed a sword and marched down the hill, snapping the ties on his breastplate. By the time he reached the enemy army on the field below

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-37431016443451965742009-04-25T11:30:00.000-04:002009-04-25T11:32:47.604-04:00

Here are some essays about things that are over. O-V-E-R. Not just over, but SO over. They are so over they ended a long time ago. They include:Williamsburg, the governorship of Eliot Spitzer, and my employment by those other than myself.It's a beautiful day for senseless ranting and pointless grudges against the long-forgotten crimes of all the big three: gentification, the government and

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-45789491927118611992009-04-25T10:56:00.004-04:002009-04-25T11:26:39.294-04:00

It continually surprises me that it continually surprises anyone that politicians screw whores. Or, for that matter, that they screw interns, movie stars, other men's wives, their secretaries, their daughters' friends, the women they meet at parties or the men they meet in public restrooms. They always have. They always will. Surely the jaded American public must know this. Surely this is not

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-87930429375934170972009-04-25T10:36:00.002-04:002009-04-25T10:55:33.791-04:00

The L train is doing that thing where it glides very slowly and silently under the river in slow-motion. There is no noise coming from the tracks; at this speed the wheels don't clatter and the machinery doesn't rattle. There's just that low whine as the weird stuff on the walls of the tunnels slips by, signals and then reflectors and striped bits of plastic, arcane technical markings and bursts

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-83154151001302617962009-04-22T13:30:00.004-04:002009-04-22T23:28:53.619-04:00

I have finally been (re)-published with serifs on my letters. This occurs here. Rather than serifs, I actually wished for serfs, but I have been misheard by the gods. What next?

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-13509138553599100972009-04-02T01:07:00.006-04:002009-04-22T13:28:05.952-04:00

I do not know why every time I am published elsewhere it is in a Sans Serif font, but it has happened yet again. The fine folks at Identity Theory (sounds like a seminar you may have taken in college but in fact is a thought-provoking literary publication) have given me sanctuary and a very lovely illustration. You read it here, now read it there.

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-38042516767135819092009-03-06T13:03:00.002-05:002009-03-06T13:07:54.039-05:00

I was little, before my brother was born. Like most little kids, I woke up early. In an attempt to wrangle a few more minutes of sleep, my parents tried to convince me to amuse myself before I woke them up. They left me a banana on my kid-sized play table.The first morning, I woke up, tried to crack the stem of the banana and smushed it. I ran into their room, holding the impenetrable banana,

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-65342518262761079382009-02-06T21:08:00.004-05:002009-02-06T21:16:07.072-05:00

I.The problem with the noise was that it silenced the silence. Now, in the spaces between sirens and garbage trucks and screams and shouts and machinery heavy and light, in those places where there should have been silence, there was only more noise.It wasn't a loud noise, but it was a constant noise. It was the kind of noise you might notice acutely only if it stopped abruptly, but since it

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-64080907200699319922009-02-03T17:48:00.003-05:002009-02-06T16:37:55.965-05:00

I wanted to want to fire the gun. I wanted to be prepared for the revolution, when it came. I wanted to be an agent of praxis, the unity of theory and practice. I read about it in college, underlined, made notes in the margins. The theory was that we could liberate ourselves and overthrow them, all of them. But if all our talk really came to action it would require instruments of liberation.

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-3220918185136741132008-12-12T17:13:00.007-05:002009-02-03T17:52:42.743-05:00

My Grandpa Sam died on November 19. He was almost 90. This is what I read at his funeral. "Emily," my Grandpa Sam would say, "I have something very important to tell you." It was always either one of two things. "Stay the course!" he'd say sometimes. "Muddle through," he'd say others. I often pondered the relationship between these two seemingly disparate pieces of advice, until I

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-5003464889224529332008-07-23T13:47:00.002-04:002008-07-23T13:53:59.240-04:00

I am currently elsewhere and so are my words. You can read me over at The Morning News today.

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-54114814038856171372008-07-14T17:25:00.007-04:002009-03-12T11:33:30.296-04:00

In England, where for the first six months of the millennium I lived and ostensibly studied but largely smoked hash and enjoyed an unprecedented and never-to-be repeated dominance in intramural basketball, all the swans are the property of the Queen. Arcane British laws make it illegal to kill, eat, stuff and even transport the remains of any swan anywhere within the British Isles. Nevertheless

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-44688147234706524362008-07-11T19:34:00.000-04:002008-07-11T19:34:51.467-04:00

I am breaking my record-breaking silence to bring you some news.First of all, a short essay appears in an online publication called Killing the Buddha. It is here. There will also be a reading on Tuesday August 5 at Pacific Standard at 7 p.m, where on Tuesdays they have "various $3 drink specials."It's been quiet for some time on SuperLefty, but not because I have nothing to say. I have been

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-37558834949486527452008-04-18T19:14:00.013-04:002008-11-07T19:05:46.326-05:00

IThere is only one place that hasn't changed in my entire life, and I am in it. I am in the country.My grandparents own a country house about an hour outside the city, near a lake called Lake Celeste. When I was a kid, we called it, simply, "the country." It looked like the country in books. My grandmother doesn't call it "the country." She calls it, grandly, "Celeste."It's really not the

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-58165984064959653622008-03-15T13:28:00.003-04:002008-03-21T16:14:22.418-04:00

I coughed for a month. I coughed until subway cars and restaurants emptied. I coughed until the parents of my charges came running into the room to find me doubled over, one finger aloft, wait, wait, wait. I coughed until one mother, regal, Indian, slippered and pashmina'd, came running with her two Thai maids, bearing a succession of silver trays. They gave me a shallow bowl of cough syrup, a

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-62453029338431731952008-03-02T18:34:00.010-05:002008-03-03T11:43:16.118-05:00

I'd been coughing for a week when I gave in and went to the doctor. As I opened the door to the office I began an operatic coughing fit. By the time I approached the reception desk, the doctor's numerous assistants were peering curiously around the glass divider. Just as I stepped up to the window the grand finale welled up from the depths of my chest and I barked out a few more notes."Jesus

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-59641265665197055112008-02-09T14:15:00.001-05:002008-03-28T12:51:28.530-04:00

It is not given to everyone to take a bath in the multitude; to enjoy the crowd is an art . . . That man who can easily wed the crowd knows a feverish enjoyment which will be eternally denied to the egoist, shut up like a trunk, and to the lazy man, imprisoned like a mollusc. The poet adopts as his own all the professions, all the joy and all the miseries with which circumstance confronts him.

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-49685953517622962532008-02-04T12:15:00.000-05:002008-02-09T12:55:53.686-05:00

Interesting weekend around these parts, more excitement than we've had in a while. Went to see the show and gave myself up to the pit. I've come to believe that the sweat of teenagers is a fountain of youth, and if I bathe in it I'll never grow old. As I hoisted myself on the shoulders of my neighbors the better to see what I was hearing, one of the kids linked his hands and offered me a step up.

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-59091294570333251622008-01-20T23:50:00.000-05:002008-01-21T00:01:17.482-05:00

Wrote this a whileago, but just posted ittoday, hence it's here.

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-5354480474995373982008-01-20T00:59:00.000-05:002008-01-20T01:26:35.299-05:00

TP Health LtdPacific HighwayBallina NSW 2478AUSTRALIAJanuary 20, 2008Dear Thursday Plantation:I am a frequent chewer of your Tea Tree Australian Chewing Sticks and carry a box with me at all times. Recently I removed a box from my pocket and opened it to find half the sticks missing and in their place a partially smoked marijuana cigarette. This is the third or fortieth time this has happened

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-73240436177395727132008-01-05T02:52:00.000-05:002008-01-06T03:01:35.603-05:00

There we sat in the fourth-floor waiting room of Columbia Presbytarian, my grandmother, mother and I, the matrolineal straight shot. Three women who somehow branch from my grandfather's staunch maleness of shorts, of swim trunks, of overcoats and hats, one for tennis, one for winter, caps for every season in between. Not represented are Nettie (his long-dead but long-lifed mother; she lived to

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-11717079090084993762008-01-01T22:39:00.000-05:002008-01-02T13:47:45.935-05:00

The ocean is my home. Can you find me?

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-74940496906877737012007-12-11T22:23:00.000-05:002008-01-26T15:17:12.622-05:00

One of my more difficult kids today, champion eye-roller, adenoidal whiner, one who feels the indignity of being sixteen more acutely than most and takes it out on me. Probably doesn't even need a tutor, seems to pick up a decent understanding of the material from class, but highly unmotivated, vulnerable to that oldest of parental ruminations, not working up to her potential. Just getting

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131557.post-47276546552575254922007-11-07T10:44:00.000-05:002008-01-15T10:26:27.616-05:00

Teenagers, I have discovered, are like alcohol or drugs. Many of them also like alcohol and drugs, but that is another matter. I am herein concerned with the glaring similarities in my own life, between teenagers and that most famous of drugs, alcohol. Lately there have been more teenagers and fewer alcoholic beverages in my life, and I'm surprised to note that they are nearly interchangeable,

Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407582310200603122noreply@blogger.com0