a shout-out to the sphere, an unrelated picture, and an offer

Thank you for the small, generous outpouring of support for The Gallivanting Monkey. I feel that I should say that I didn't mean to imply that I was going to kill my blog, or stand by post-less while it expired. Friday was a day where I was mooning around, slumping against things, doing a taffy-pull with my spare angst. My blog isn't going anywhere, for I LOVE TO BLOG. But let it be known that I appreciate the loyalty and patience of my tiny band of readers.

On another note, I have the fever for MS Paint. It's so ham-handed and inviting! I made the above drawing playing around with the different features. So, listen! If you would like to commission a clunky little drawing of the subject/object/which is it? of your choice, leave your request in any comment box you like and I will do, let's say, one a week, more if the spirit moves.

I will fake requests if I have to, to save face.

i feel melodramatic

Traffic is down. Surely you know how I feel. Unless you're, like, Wil Wheaton. Then you DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL! [exit into bedroom, slam door.]

Those who know me will be shocked by the graphic imagery. I can't stand blood. Even South Park blood. So, that's how melodramatic I'm feeling.

Blogosphere, look at me!

Loo-oo-ook at mee-eee-eee!!




Unnh.

my nemesis

I’ve been developing the idea of what my nemesis would be like.

Here and there I run across someone in person or in print that I think would make a good candidate for my nemesis. My nemesis has to be someone that I respect and think is smart, otherwise there’s no use. But there has to be something about this person that I find a little spine-tinglingly wrong, a little magnetically repulsive, something that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I can tell you this about my nemesis. My nemesis is a cynic. My nemesis embraces cynicism not as a last resort, but curls toward it instinctively, like strange dark light. Other avenues have not been exhausted. Oh, Nemesis.

And I can tell you this: My nemesis is trapped in the web of his or her own extensive, intricate intelligence. It’s like a cloud of wires that leads the thinker in gorgeous, stylish circles. My nemesis chases his or her own intelligence like a preening animal playing with its tail. It’s a pyrotechnic intelligence with very little living, warm wisdom in it. Nemesis, Nemesis.

Also, my nemesis appreciates the fewest possible things, most of which are of brutally exquisite quality, with a few specially chosen “lowbrow” items on the list, for spice. My nemesis goes through life assessing things, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, ugh no, no, mmm, maybe, no, NO.”

The charitable muscle in my nemesis has atrophied, so it's easier for my nemesis not to use it. Impressive brain, unimpressive heart, Nemesis!

*edit: My nemesis also has animal-like ears of two different sizes and shapes.

I don’t actually want a nemesis. Lord, no! I can think of few things more stressful than actually having a nemesis! I’m so bad with actual conflict. My heart would be racing all the time, I’d be sputtering in the shower with all the imaginary confrontations with the Nemesis, I wouldn’t sleep well. I’m not someone who can have a nice robust fight and let it go. Confrontation works in me like Ebola, I’m not proud to say. I’ve really had to buck up my ability to disagree in person. I can do it, and I do do it, but I don’t ever love it.

But they’re out there, the...nemesis-al candidates. They're out there, and they're freaking me out.

Tell me about your nemesis, blogosphere.

what wedding crashers was like

a loonie, indeed

We're still waiting for our wedding pictures, so I drew my own with MS Paint.

Note the plaid tie, the iridescence* on the dress. What craftsmanship!

*yes, iridescence. not pollen from the bouquet.

This post will be a medley, a ratatouille of the day's what's what. Grab a ladle and a shallow bowl, my friends. A shallow bowl will be all you need.

*I won second prize in the limerick contest! Now, come on! The hat rabbit and I were driving around this afternoon after I got the good news, and it was all Chicago and Neil Diamond on the car radio - some sweet cheese for my victory lap. I didn't even mind that the victory hazelnut latte the rabbit ordered for me got warped into some frozen victory chai. What the hell! It's all sweet, right?! In the aftermath, I've been giving the limerick contest, well, first of all, a name, but then as the day has worn on, grander and grander names. I'm imagining when I tell my future progeny , "Yes, I remember when I came in second in The Great Limerick Contest of '05...." and, "Back when I won the International Limerick Championship...." and, "Your grandma was the Great Galactic Limerick Vizier of the....".

* Went and saw Wedding Crashers this evening. Damn it. It was mostly very funny, but it had this horrible turd of homophobia smeared on it here and there which means I can't give it my full thumbs up. And it was like a vortex of craziness near the theater, all night. In the women's bathroom, there was a man in a stall humming loudly and tunelessly, providing an aural backdrop for a woman going to town about a spider bite she'd recently received from a brown spider, after which a person has 72 hours to do something about it. And then on the way out from the movie, there was a Belligerent Baby-faced Teenage Skateboarder, who kept smacking his skateboard down right next to people's feet as they walked by. He did it by my foot, and I looked at him and said gently, "Excuse me," and he gave me the nod, like, you're okay. Then a second later a man came up to us rockin' at full speed the worst Canadian accent I'd ever heard, and he said something like

"Heydoyouhavesixdollarswe'reoverthereinGameworksandweoweJordiesixdollars

Ihavealoonieandatoonieif youwanttodoatrade"

and I was very caught off guard and I gave him a dollar, and then he was like, "CanIhavesomemore?" and I said, "Um...no...we're trying to budget." In retrospect, this made me laugh. It's like we have a very strict dollar-a-week budget for crazy tweaking fake Canadians.

*A good thing is that, where yesterday we only had the sketchiest internet connection in our house, today we're rolling in it with our brand-new wi-fi! I can practically access the web on my pillow with my head. It's everywhere!

introducing the hatrabbits

A very sneaky friend of mine had this picture from our wedding rehearsal sneaking around the web. But I Pink-Panthered it. I sleuthed it. I Hercule-Poirot'd it right on to my blog.

Honh Honh!*


*The French sound of, among other things, clever discovery.

for a good time, number nine

Magazine Man told everybody 23 things about himself. Number nine will spread throughout humanity, if we all work very hard.

the start of something big, and not just my hair

Friends, Romans, countrymen. Lend me your EYES! Because I made a picture go in here! I feel like Isaac Newton, like Marie Curie, like ROBERT J. OPPENHEIMER. Oh, it's all up or downhill from here, my friends, depending if you want to see photos of me and what have you or not. The above photo is from a couple of hours before my wedding, when I suddenly decided to launch a hairstyle out of the blue that I'd never tried before. I look placid in the photo, but I am not placid, not at all. I am thinking that I'm a dangerous wiener, that Dave is going to marry a crimped and foolhardy wiener. Luckily, fate intervened in the form of my friend Morgan, who guided my suddenly-deployed, wickety-wack, triple-barreled curling iron to nuptial success.

the hope rope is over no nope, dope

In the post about my honeymoon, I described the stained glass window in the bathroom that had an anchor on it that says "HOPE". I'm realizing that the anchor had a rope draped over what in my heart I know to be the "H", but a cynic in that bathroom could interpret that word as "NOPE". But to that cynic I say, then tell me where the little bottom right-hand part of the diagonal part of the "N" is, sucker! You can't really see it under that rope, can you?

Suck it, cynics of the stained glass bathroom! Face it! Hope beat Nope!

accursed midnight limerick mayhem

Sweet Jesus. Lord above. All I want to do is enter this limerick contest. But Lawdy Lawdy! I've been stuck on a roundabout, trying to post the limerick I've worked so hard on, and each time, SWAT! I've been batted away. I'm sure it wasn't purposeful. Hell, you should go enter it. Why not enter a limerick contest? But Christ-y Christ, it's late, and I'm on my honeymoon, and I just wanted to get my limerick in there and get on with it.

So I'm going to post it here. Please excuse me if one of my links is, er, familiar. I've just gotta get this out there!

This is the post as it would have read on the ol' Nickerblog:

All right. Here goes. I'm just going for the mystery prize, as I'm a computer caveman and don't deserve the fancy TypePad prize. This linkmanship I'm going to attempt might fail miserably.

We've come to the state called Hawaii
to stay in the glass house that's spy-ey.

We've been so much online
I must really opine

that our honeymoon's been kind of guy-ey.

I hope that worked. Also, the above facts have been stretched a bit. The honeymoon is fabulous. So here is a bonus haiku for your consideration.

The headline should read:
Corrupt Wife Sold Man Out For
Limerick Contest

beware of the hat rabbit

Some of what is happening on my honeymoon:

*I am lying on the beautiful tall bed in our bed and breakfast, staring at the big wooden ceiling fan that makes me think of the "Hungry Like the Wolf" video. Then I'm closing my eyes and practicing disappearing. I read about it in a book, and it sounded good -- disappearing out from under my personality, disappearing from my history, disappearing like a benevolently burst bubble. It's ultra-relaxing, this trying to disappear, even though I think I might not be that great at it. While I'm trying to disappear, I hear a gurgly voice murmur from the foot of the bed, "Beware of the hat rabbit." It's Dave, playing online poker under his new screen name, hatrabbit. He got 4 tens. Comments are pinging back to him, like "ouch" and "bang!" and "nice hand!", so he is gurgling proudly down there. It's almost difficult to love someone this much, but I have no choice.

*We're walking down the street in Pa'ia, looking at photos of houses for sale posted in the window of a realty. There's a house in a town nearby called Haiku, and we imagine that you have to give directions to your house in 17 syllables.

past kahului
down scary hana highway
red house? gone too far.

*The new main only thing to eat is mahi mahi. Eat only that. No need to eat other things. Eat it in a curry. Eat it in a crepe. Eat it in a fajita if you're Dave the first time I'm meeting you two years ago in this same cafe, and pronounce fajita "fazheeta" like "zsa-zsa gabor" because you've never had one before. When you do that, that will start the me-falling-in-love-with-you process.

*Now I must go join Dave in our low, sweet, figure-eight-y bathtub with the stained glass window next to it of an anchor that says "HOPE". I mean, really. It's like that these days.

Goodbye! This was a postcard for everybody in the world. I would wish you were all here, but that would be very expensive.

i've got a million of these, i'm afraid

Here's a tiny fantasy I had while Dave and Mrs. M.M.I.L. and I were sitting around talking about travel, and America-shame.

Dave and I are in Ireland, checking into a hotel. Something causes me to speak, exposing my American accent. The Irish hotel clerk asks me if I'm American, and I say coyly, "Maybe I am and maybe I'm not." When the clerk is puzzled and also intrigued, I elaborate, "If you're the kind of person who remembers that there are lots of Americans who didn't vote for Bush, if in your mind all Americans don't fall into a general wash of lardy foolishness, then maybe I am. But - did you watch Seinfeld? [He did.] You did? [Yes.] Remember Newman? Remember Jerry and Newman's relationship? If every time you see me you're going to be all 'Hello, NEWman' with me because I'm American, then maybe I'm not."*

The clerk loves my little speech. You can see a little dawn of relief from his anti-American feelings break over his face. And since Dave's been doing most of the talking, I'm granted a little of Dave's Australian cred. We are going to get on like gangbusters, this clerk and I.

There's nothing better and almost nothing I have more often than a little fantasy wherein someone who's got me all wrong starts getting me all right.

*It's not like I think this is a fabulous speech. Fantasies happen fast, and it was going to have to do. That's also what's great about fantasies. Sub-par shit can fly like an eagle in a speedy little fantasy. It's really more about the imagined reaction you're going to get.

a sad and beautiful world, or something like that

This post fires a muffled, ancient, whispery synapse of what might or might not be Roberto Benigni in Down By Law, maybe saying something about it being a sad and beautiful world.

In any case, a caterpillar has died. Let's bow our heads.

And now, let's run to a baby store and pick out something with a little duck emblazoned on it, for with that caterpillar's death comes the birth of my ability to link within a post.

O the, um, the spectrum, or something like that.

a tiny golden protest

Hello and thank you to everyone who has not given up on The Gallivanting Monkey. I have no internet at my house at the moment, and we have Mrs. Mama Monkey-In-Law staying with us, and since the wedding, when not showing Mrs. M.M.I.L. the sights, I have been mostly staring into space.

I will tell you about one small thing that happened. After which I tell you look not again for The Gallivanting Monkey until the last week in July, even possibly the first week of August. I will be back from my honeymoon, and other grand festivities like the wedding of my friends Pete and Carolyn will then have passed. But then, my five or so devotees, I am going to make it up to you. I will post until my face turns blue and you start pulling your hair out, unable to keep up with the streams of stories, flotsam, jetsam and general rushing whatnot that will be pouring out of your monitor into your overloaded eyes.

After our wedding, Dave and I stayed at the delightful Alexis Hotel for a couple of nights. On the second night, there was a horrible, raging dance party in the building across the street. This dance party was relentless, and so loud it was as though there were massive amps in our very hotel room. M-M-M-MY SHARONA!..........TELL HER ABOUT IT.....WE BUILT THIS CITY!.....on it went, all through the night. Dave and his mom, however, slept like babies, like logs, like FREAKS. I don't know how this was possible. I lay there in alternating states of weary zen and clenched, wide-eyeballed rage. There was no ceasing. I began to see light in the sky. I began to think about sleeping in the bathtub, as far away from the thumping, hideous windows as I could. Finally, I got curious, and took my tiny gold watch over to the window so I could see what time it was. It was 4:30AM. I took a bath.

Later in the morning, I was regaling Dave and his Mom with my story of sleeplessness and rage, and when I got to the part about taking my watch to the window, Dave asked if I was trying to show them what time it was. This struck me as the most hilarious thing I'd ever heard, and I laughed until I cried and beyond.

I love the idea of going and gently tapping a teeny gold watch -- no bigger than half an inch in diameter, with roman numerals, no less -- on a dim, hotel window in the quixotic belief that the hordes of people 50 yards away at some misguided Top 40 oldies rave will catch sight of the miniscule, cranky golden dot below them and suddenly scatter to their homes in silent shame.

Goodbye for another little while. Please don't forget me.