Inclusion in America: The Ever-Controversial Lawn Bowling Vs. Bocce Debate

Lawn Bowling Leagues.
White people with white hair
very seriously
clinking their little balls into other people's little balls.
No one claps. No one cheers. Everyone stares.

Friggin Memorial Day. Causing white people who would otherwise be wearing white hair and white hats and white clothing to wear American Flags that have been fashioned into the fashion faux pas of the American Flag Jacket. Hot. Red White and Blue Hot. VERY Memorial Day '06.


There is an entire industry devoted to the enforcement of Lawn Bowling NOT Bocce on not one not two but all three lawns in Golden Gate Park. How very community. What exactly is the difference (besides English Versus Italian)?

So marquitapants and I headed to the beach, where the people are still friendly and the little dogs with the cute little behinds can still poop everywhere.

3:49 AM... Home from PROM

YES. It's true. I was totally against it in high school. I protested it. Shook my fist at it. Boycotted it. Plain old didn't go to it in high school. And not just because people wear uncomfortable shoes. And not just because it is a sexist, heterosexist, classist "tradition." And not just because I was painfully shy and into being counter-culture. And not just because I was embarrassed.
BUT NOW I've been to my third prom. I appreciated the relative modesty of this year's crew, although I could have lived without the plethora of hand-squeezing-butt views I was party to (no pictures, thanks), the attitude, the relative sobriety of this year's staff, my mom's 60s dress (sorry I had to cut the super cute under 18 folks!).... Bal 06.




































The after-party... Back to street clothes and chaperone stragglers and used limes appearing in untouched "rosinis" and touched others and Skinnard and Kenny covers and choppin it up til they turned the lights full blast on us after we ignored last-call forever....

One semester down, two to go

A Short Ode to Grad School

I write haiku to
remain occupied counting
and quiet in class.

Procrastination: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

(well that's for damned sure, since it is 1:56 a.m.)

I could hold a PhD
In procrastination psychology,
This final won't get the best of me,
Though it made me miss Dania's party.

Friday night I fucked around,
Watched 4 Sopranos in Surround Sound.
Did some beading, read short stories,
All defying the coming gory
gouging out of both my eyes
Denial passes prior highs.

Saturday returned a van
Milled home slowly as I can.
Cooked some food and read some email
Even listened to a seashell.

Water plants, desperation grows
Procrastination reaching all-time lows
When, to put this off 'til later,
I even wrote A DIFFERENT Final Paper.

Wait til Sunday to see me stress
Pull all-nighter, be a big mess.

...But for Now....

Still avoiding I write to you
End bad rhymes with a bad haiku:

Thirty pages due.
Research-based blathering. Euw.
Monday comes too soon.

My Favorite Guest Speaker So Far

Nona Casper, Who Has Never Read a Blog

A muppet in motion
Flung hair blooms off the side, like a horse’s tail whips her headshaking face
She's frantic, engaged, boiling over

Her teeth wear ghost braces – I keep missing them.
I think she wears red glasses without lenses.
Her “I” is shifty and continuous, she explains.

She lives a writer's life
Unveiled, crafting, naked, languaging
Finds moments of unbalance in dailiness
(at my school we call that DRAMA-queen)

She reads of minutiae of 15th and Dolores
And wishes she had Jesus. I laugh at intervals.

As she reads
Girls outside slap jump ropes skip chanting.

Sometimes

1. Your professor wants to meet about your writing life. He is earnest and focused while you reply, "Oh that should be a brief conversation, since I don't have one." He sighs. You meet up 30 minutes later in class and he can't meet your eyes.

2. You read your poem about goats to your group and no one laughs.

3. Your drunken ducky nineteen yeared neighbor shows up seeming sober but sans shoe tongues.

4. Your teacher, a poet heart personified, plays opera and reads aloud science textbook passages, sighing, finding profound beauty in the word semi-aquatic.

5. You just gotta laugh over your 11 pm dinner.

May Day Madness

I'm up to one's ears in sunshine surrounded by that crazy sea of white (but not the usual kind) downtown (did ya ever think I would use Downtown and some form of happy in the same sentence?) and it didn’t once feel like drowning (although I have certainly had my fill of US flags, thanks.) Happy May Day - siguiendo la lucha contra HR 4437!!!!