walking a mile and a half to target to buy weights:

i've had better ideas.

The south. Is home. Is less cold. Is warmer in tone. Is yellow. Is saltwater. Takes its time. Is Scarlet O'Hara isn't Scarlet O'Hara at all. Is my grandfather's house. Is the azalae bushes outside my grandfather's house and in the park in April if not March. Is moss that you don't even realize is there it just is. Is stiff drinks and sweet drunks. Is music. Is pink and gray and green and bricks and shadows. Is cemeteries. Is no liquor sales on Sunday. Is related to itself. Holds the door. Is irreverent. Is reverence. Is 2011. Is a puppet show. Smiles behind your back. Has electricity (it runs on gossip). Likes to dance with strangers. Is tailgating. Is wars and shit (it's history). Reckons. Is old. Is there. Is sunburned. Sneaks out of her house and steals the car. Is beer battered and deep fried. Is which Fogarty are you, Beth's daughter? Is every now and then a confederate flag. Is backwards. Moves forward. Is MLK Blvd. Is dirty. Is magic. Is hurricane evacuation routes. Holds a grudge. Has teeth. Is beautiful and smells like something perfect. Is gravy. Is real. Is far away. Is manners. Is violent. Is Wal Mart. Is stubborn. Lost its ass in a war. Is chicken. Drives fast. Is that time I saw a horse at a gas station. Is old money. Is poor. Is hilarious. Is moribundity in motion. Is history (it's wars and shit). Is Athens in November. Is married at 23. Isn't banjos. Is trouble. Is dirt roads. Is highways. Stings. Doesn't sound like that. Remembers. Is incestuous. Is muttonchops and pleated pants. Is art. Is porch swings. Is nice to your face. Is sweat and the sound crickets make when you're sweating. Is bugspray and the way bugspray tastes. Is crosses and coffee and doughnuts on Sunday. Is chains you can't see. Is words you don't know.

so i moved to chicago

i haven't blogged in over a year. last entry was in 2009. a lot has changed since 2009. i still don't like to capitalize sentences, though. that hasn't changed. so, yeah, i'll recap for you. 2010: the short and dirty version... in april my little sister got married. in may i finished grad school and am now the proud owner of a shiny master's degree in rhetoric and performance studies, which is, for all intents and purposes, really cool but mostly useless. i sold everything in my apartment and moved the heck out of louisiana. (i have a special place in my heart for louisiana, but i don't want to live there.) moved back to savannah for three months before packing two suitcases and moving to chicago with no job or apartment and, like, 2 friends. and now: i have a sweet apartment with a lovely roommate in a douchey neighborhood; i'm back behind a bar working with some of the sweetest, most interesting people i've ever met (i truly love these guys); feel like i've made some incredible lifelong friends; i tutor one day a week at an AIDS ministry; i'm trying to write during my downtime ( looking to join a writing group to help me focus); my romantic life is still a source of constant entertainment; i fell off the exercise wagon and am ready to get back in shape. a lot; i miss my dog; i miss the ocean; i probably drink too much; i love walking everywhere i go; i finally watched arrested development; i buy a lot of books; i still wear black all the time; and there are other things, but i'll save those for other times. right now i have to go eat some popsicles.

misery is:

driving through the florida panhandle.

driving through the florida panhandle backroads.

driving 100 miles through the florida panhandle backroads.

driving 100 miles through the florida panhandle backroads ( i keep trying to write backGROUNDS, ps., so if a G shows up in the next few sentences, you just ignore it) at 35 mph.

driving 100 miles through the florida panhandle backroads at 35 mph, at night.

driving 100 miles through the florida panhandle backroads at 35 mph, AT night, THROUGH the fog.

driving 100 miles through the florida panhandle backroads at 35 mph, AT night, THROUGH the fog, while honking your horn every five seconds because hitting a deer with your car is one of your, like, top three irrational fears in life.

driving 100 miles through the florida panhandle backroads at 35 mph, AT night, THROUGH the fog, while honking your horn every five seconds because hitting a deer with your car is one of your top three irrational fears in life, BECAUSE....wait for it...

your immune system was like, bite me, i'm out, and you got the STOMACH FLU HALFWAY THROUGH YOUR 12 HOUR DRIVE HOME and you had to detour to your sister's house in middle-of-nowhere west georgia.

OH MY GOD that sucked so much.

how many drunk strangers does it take to unlodge an orange cone out from between my car and my front tire?

Three. The answer is three. Three drunk strangers and one seriously inconvenienced valet parking attendant.

what the sicilians have done for me lately: mad props to that part of italy that isn't really italy but is still italy.

(...appropriate Janet Jackson intro music fade out)




Listen. Over the years. centuries. whatever. Sicily has offered us a veritable smorgasbord* of decadent candy**for the eyes, ears, and tummy.



Par example:


1. An exhaustive laundry list of very slippery organized criminals with funny names.

2. A really big goddamned greasy pizza sprinkled with meat. For some reason, whenever I'm even exposed to the word "sicily," I think I smell pepperoni.

3. An outspoken octogenerian with a penchant for punchlines. Running all kinds of amok in Miami with her very tall daughter, a slut, and Betty White. Wreaking geriatric havoc in syndication on Lifetime until the omega of time.

For all these three epically iconic things, Sicily, we thank thee. Grazie mille. For real.

But as much as we all love Sophia Petrillo (and, if you're anywhere near these words and do not share this sentiment called love toward dorothy's mother, you just leave now. I have no place in my heart for the likes of you.), I'm afraid she may have to scooch over a little on the couch of cool shit from the place I am about to take you. Because OH MY GOD I WANT TO SIT NEXT TO THIS GUY:

http://www.italylogue.com/food-drink/sicilian-gelato-sandwiches.html



That's right. You saw it with your own eyes who love you for exposing them to that information. And your eyes went, NO! It cannot BE. They DIDN'T. And the creamy ball of gelato peeked out from its little bread house to look back at you from the other side of the screen and was all, I AM AN ICE CREAM HOT DOG. It's like, taking one of the biggest, most controversial decisions in my life and and making it for me. I no longer HAVE to choose between the two. For now I know they can coexist in sweet, bizarre harmony. Any time of day ever. Being excited about this whole discovery has honestly worn me out today.

So I just want to say, Sicily, that while Italy, that brutish boot of a land mass, may continue to forever kick your delicious island into the mediterranean in a violent scene cemented into geography books in 5th grade backpacks the world over, while those same backpacks are worn on the dorsal sides of children who, despite having taken geography (the dumb ones twice) will grow up to have no idea where the hell you are, while sometimes I still manage to get your name confused with Cecily Tyson's (her name comes up more often than one might think) and vice versa,

Damn it. I don't even remember where i was going with this. Wait. Nope. There was a thank you a' brewin' in that mess.



Wicked thanks, Sicilian people. So wicked are these thanks that they're borderline evil.




And I heart Sophia Petrillo. The end.











* three now constitutes a smorgasbord.
**pepperoni: meat candy.

and it's thursday.

I bought some paper towels on tuesday. So far, they're working just fine. Which is good, because i threw away the receipt.




I'm going to sell the rights to this post to hollywood as a JCVD vehicle.