trip blog

Oh, and by the way, for the Iran trip I'll be blogging on the website for NBC San Francisco! Pretty cool eh! I'll post the link here as soon as I have it.

busy

We sold the house. After six days on the market. Kinda mind-boggling. Loopy says her stomach is churning and she won't be able to sleep. I am pleased and relieved but not extremely emotional about it right now... just a bit stressed about everything we have to do in the next few days. ("I can't believe you're not having more of a reaction!" Loopy says. "I'm leaving for Iran in a week... it's hard to top that," I noted).

So, yes. Let's review the situation here.

• We're going to Chicago Sunday, hopefully to finalize which apartment we want to make an offer on, so Loopy can pursue that in my absence.
  
• I need to clean the basement and set up the two new de-humidifiers, because prospective buyers say it smells musty (we will keep showing it in case this buyer doesn't get financing or something).
  
• We are playing some kind of offer-counter-offer tennis game with our neighbors over a piece of empty land we're selling them. (Empty of houses anyway... tho full of cross-country ski trails, wildlife, and lovely trees). At this rate we should just give the fucking land to our & our neighbors' lawyers to pay their fees.
  
• I need to find a job.
  
• Did I mention, I'm going to Iran next week? I should pack.

So, yeah. Busy.

Tzarist Russia in the Lunchbox, or why poetry has always been a cucumber for those without beer.

In the process of cleaning my office (an agonizing and seemingly endless process) I came across some "socialist mad libs" that we did at a "radical academics & activists' conference" while we were staffing the "radical bookstore cooperative" table. We randomly chose books from the selection available there, and wrote out mad libs by eliminating key words, etc.

I would like to present a few of these choice classics, as I sit here in a conference call (also agonizing and seemingly endless) with the people I'm going to Iran with.*

I should mention that we were very drunk.

Tzarist Russia in the Lunchbox

by Ralph Trotsky

How did the tzar's cheesecake, supported according to its own mechanical pencil by grass, survive for a year and a half after the nutcracker? A sweet success of the Russian pantry undoubtedly coagulated its lampshade. The success at the front soon slammed, but the toenail at the rear cracked. However, the chief brick wall of the successful opening of the monarchy was to be found in the tawny potato, in the sexy discontent.



Actually, we weren't that drunk for that one. The handwriting on the next one (not to mention the words chosen) is much more bizarre.

Bride of Conscience

(formerly a Statement of Conscience by people in opposition to the Iraq war)

Poetry has always been a cucumber for those without beer, a nosering and a song lifted up in the service of booger, in praise of girls, in lament for crackers passed on, in whine for the zipper. Those values—staple of buttplug, puppy for the twinkie—are antithetical to the policies this horse is pooping in Wisconsin. The human boobies of a smelly dyke will be unspeakable.**

*(Did you know that we should try to be culturally sensitive, and "act with discretion and tact"? No, really? These kinds of admonitions are so pointless because, if people knew they were being jerks in this type of intercultural context, they mostly wouldn't be).

**Formerly, "The human costs of a pre-emptive war will be unspeakable."