Frantik Girl
Thursday, July 31, 2003
The Reverend Turner's All Natural Head Oil Treatment
I used to wash my hair every day. It was just something I did, never questioning; the same way I never questioned washing my underarms or crotch, it was just something you did. But then I started thinking: my hair produces oils… those bad oils that make your hair flat and greasy looking. Bad, bad oils. So instead, I’m supposed to wash my hair to remove those oils and then replace my bad, bad oils with good, Proctor and Gamble synthetic oils. If my hair gets too dry, then I can use Alberto VO5 hot oil treatment to give my hair back the lustrous shine and healthy body that I just removed with shampoo.
I furrowed my brow, which was greasy with natural oils. Logic had overcome marketing at long last. Not wanting to become a white chick with dreadlocks and stinky patchouli scented scalp, I decided that every other day was sufficient for adding soap to my hair and scrubbing away the genuine dirt. Initially, the experiment didn’t go so hot. The days I didn’t wash my hair were disasters… my hair looked like it was covered in Crisco. I could very nearly tease it up into a 1950’s duck tail. So I just didn’t leave my house every other day, or I wore a hat. However, as the week wore on, my head began to understand the new order. It had been producing extra oil for decades, because the silly brain beneath the scalp was washing it away. Now, it no longer had to make as much, because it stayed in the hair where it belonged. After two weeks, my hair was lustrous and shiny, yet still smelled as clean as a douche commercial.
That’s why I fully endorse: The Reverend Turner's All Natural Head Oil Treatment™. You’ll never need conditioner again, with this remarkable product. Just apply shampoo every other day, and watch as The Reverend Turner's All Natural Head Oil Treatment™ penetrates each and every strand of hair to make it stronger, silkier, healthier. Split ends will be a thing of the past with The Reverend Turner's All Natural Head Oil Treatment™. How much would you pay for this remarkable system? Ladies and other ladies, I’m offering The Reverend Turner's All Natural Head Oil Treatment™ through this web site for only $10 for a year’s supply. That’s right. More beautiful, wavy, shiny, sparkly, fresh hair for just $10. You cannot afford to pass this up!
Monday, July 28, 2003
Will No One Show Me Blessed Mercy and Take This Infernal, Accursed, Hateful, Spawn of All That is UNHOLY, Air Conditioner From Around My Neck Where it Hangs Like a Bloody Millstone?
Kenmore Room Air Conditioner... yours for only $175 (or best offer).
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Wicked Humbugs Have Turtles for Ears
I’ve felt off lately. I’ve been listening to Billy Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald… old Cole Porter standards and jazzy numbers with that muffled trumpet sound that gives my cat an ulcer whenever it bleats and moans from the stereo. It doesn’t matter how snappy the song, that music sounds sad to me. It must be nostalgia for a time I never experienced… it’s the same disease the Republicans suffer from, the desire to live fifty years in the past when both men and women wore hats, the dresses were designed by Erte and things had to be sparkly to catch your eye because the world was in black and white. That was before everything had been done… beat poetry was taken seriously and you could buy an original Picasso for ten cents and a doughnut (or rather, a pain au chocolat).
I would like to be a mixed race blues singer living in Paris ten years before the big war. I want to be a wild haired writer with nicotine stained fingers beating away at my typewriter (that sometimes looks like a giant insect) on the left bank. I’d like to originate a novel concept, like feminism… or gravity. I would like my misery to be the result of too much sex, rather than too little. I want to offend the status quo, and be seen as a visionary by the next generation. I’d like a gaggle of too clever bon vivants who all hang around and say witty things, that someday aspiring writers will long to emulate: “…our writer’s group will be just like the Seattle Wicked Humbugs…”
In summer, Seattle is full of t-shirt and baseball cap mannequins that pretend to be tourists. They take tours on the ‘Ducks’ amphibious open air busses that meander around downtown, playing ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’ over their loudspeakers and encouraging the mannequins to blow duck calls at the natives. I must be a native now, because when I walk outside people in plaid shorts want me to take their picture and point them toward the Pike Place Market. I want to be acidic, point them to the scummy drug market and homeless pits instead of Pike Place; and to steal the really nice digital cameras… teach them that you can’t trust city folk just cause they’re white and clean.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Word of the Week
After reading a lovely piece in Salon about how blogging is related to the lesser essays of George Orwell, I feel that it is a little unworthy to write a filler entry about my favorite word of the week. More and more often, I've been at a loss for what to say in these pages; both because I believe I have no audience beyond family and freinds, and because despite this, these words are commited to posterity and for good or ill, are added to my living body of work. You might say that on the body of my work, they are the love handles.
Still, I'm trying to reach out. I haven't been doing this very long, and I don't have an audience with expectations. However, if there's one thing I'd like to be known for, it's a love of words... squishy, sloppy, sweaty, flaggellating tongue love; and here's the word I'm in love with this week:
Passersby: noun. I've heard it said that the most beautiful phrase in the English language is 'cellar door.' I like 'cellar door;' but 'cellar door' is like the French supermodel of beautiful phrases... despite her humble origins, she's become narcissistic and bulimic.
To my mind, passersby is the young, Audrey Hepburn-esque upstart. It's quirky and free. It reads poetry and shows up in Rasputina songs. Passersby doesn't bother to follow the conventions of English, it's got a style all its own.
It is the plural of passerby... simply people who pass by. I'll use it in a sentence: The passersby ignored the bleeding man sprawled across the sidewalk. I know what you're thinking... that word cannot be correct. It should be 'passbyers' or worse, 'passerbyers.' The 's' should be at the end of the word. You want to at least hyphenate it to 'passers-by' but no, it's correct just the way it is. Don't you dare hyphenate it, or you'll remove all the magic.
The magic comes from '-sby' coupled with the soft double 's' in the middle. Say it a few times and you'll find that the word evaporates on your tongue like fine Swiss chocolate.
Friday, July 18, 2003
Katherine Turners Unite!
So today I had a pleasant surprise. I got an e-mail from another Katherine Turner. This one lives in New York... I know nothing else about her, except that she sounds a little sad, like maybe things in the Big Apple aren't all rosy cheeked and sweet, with cinnamon and nutmeg and a crumbly brown sugar topping.
Being a writer, I've often thought that my garret should be located in New York, rather than the Emerald City. New York is, after all, the place where publishers have thier hearts removed and hung up on the office wall next to thier English degrees. If a girl wants to get published and read by more than just her family and friends: New York, New York it's a hell of a town. But I also know something else about the City That Never Sleeps, which I think Katherine Turner can confirm: that being poor in New York is about as much fun as getting jabbed in the eye with a sharp stick.
Besides, in a city of only 30 billion people, is there really enough room for two Katherine Turners?
New York asside, meeting another Katherine Turner has given me a Katherine Turner appetite. Someone else is bound to google her name, find me here babbling away like a ninny and feel some small connection... like seeing an alternate lifeline for yourself. Who would I have been if I'd been born with twelve fingers and blonde hair to polygamous Mormon parents in Idaho? I don't know, but I'd like to find out.
What's in a name? That's the question. I hereby call upon all Katherine Turners to submit your life stories here. I will collect and publish them here (don't worry, the copywrite will still be in your name) for the betterment and amusement of all the people not named Katherine Turner.
If our lovely New York sister turns out to be the only other Katherine Turner who writes... then I'll just make shit up.
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Why I'd Like to be a Pirate
I could be the one pirate in all the seven seas who still had clean healthy teeth. They would see my smile and elect me the pirate queen... and I could sing, "I am the Pirate Queen!" After a few years, I'd have leathery skin and crow's feet that you could hide gold doubloons in, but my tri-corn hat would distract from the wrinkles.
Friday, July 11, 2003
Faces
I had a strange experience in Downtown today. I was walking to the library to drop off a couple of DVDs and pick up a new one. The sun was warm, I was sweating but glad to be out of the house, if only for a short walk. The noise, however, was getting to me. Since I moved into this little cell on the third floor, I’ve been surrounded by noise from the street, my life is simply loud, my senses sometimes overwhelmed. I was noticing it more then usual on the way to the library, underneath the Washington State Convention Center’s massive glass vault, where the cars and chattering people reverberate and multiply. So I was feeling a bit over stimulated.
At the stoplight just before the library, there was a woman, young, maybe early twenties. She was perfect, meaning, she was perfect for the cover of a magazine. Her hair blonde and multi-hued, her clothes spot on, showing her smooth shoulders and toned skin, she wore good pants and the shoes to match, and her feet were planted widely on the sidewalk as she chatted on her cell phone. She was plucked from the cover of Cosmo and plopped down in front of the library. I stared at her for a moment, some cog in my brain slipped and I said to myself, “So what?” My eyes slipped from her featureless skin, she didn’t matter, she wasn’t real.
I looked for other faces, and this being the city, there were thousands to choose from. Suddenly, I felt hungry for faces. I looked at a scruffy Indian sitting on the library steps. He had wiry bristles sprouting from his upper lip, a large, slack mouth, yellowing eyes and fleshy, swollen cheeks… he was exquisite. Then there was a portly man in a t-shirt, with squinty, black little eyes, and a mouth lost in the folds of his cheeks… amazing. I started staring at old women with thinning hair, men with large noses and receding chins, women with acne scars, dirty people, clean people, statuesque black men with chiseled onyx faces, round, apple cheeked Latina women, wide browed professional Asian men, people with folds down the crease of their mouths, heavy bags beneath their eyes, mousy features and unremarkable hair and so on and so on. I was staring at them, I wanted to stare longer at each one, trace the imperfections of their faces with my fingers, memorize the freckle constellations on their skin. It was a compulsion, a thirst that I’d never felt before, but which now seemed as important to my sanity as water was to my body.
This was just after stepping through the library doors. I slipped into the bathroom and sat down in a stall. I took a few minutes to cool down and think about what I was feeling. I realized that in the practical sense, I was walking around Seattle, my head turning as I followed the next face, trying to drink in as many of the unique features as I could before I passed them. This could be construed badly by some, I realized. Partly, I though this strange compulsion would be gone again by the time I left the bathroom, and partly, I hoped that it wouldn’t be, because whatever it was, it was entirely new to me.
I left the bathroom and walked toward the counter to get my DVDs. It wasn’t gone. There was a line of people, and as I passed each one of them, I rapturously watched each of them, each strange and beautiful, each wearing a different emotion. I came to the woman who held my DVDs for me, and as I spoke to her, I smiled and watched her face. She smiled back… she wasn’t my type, but I found her attractive anyway.
My DVDs in hand I hurried out. I let myself watch faces, but a disquiet was growing in my mind. If anything, faces were becoming more sweet and alluring to me. If there was an attractive person walking next to an unattractive person, I found myself attracted to the unattractive one precisely because their face was more interesting. The unattractive masses, usually invisible because they were so common, suddenly became stunningly visible to me. I was seeing humanity, and I was enjoying myself. Of course, they noticed too. People nodded, some smiled, some looked back with a ‘what are you looking at?’ glare. Every person turned my head and I couldn’t stop myself. While I wasn’t worried about the wrinkled old tourists, I was worried about what the creepy men might think. I couldn’t help but come on to them… they were usually the most distinctive looking.
Now I’m home. There’s no one here but me and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’ve begun seeing people… I see them everywhere. I don’t know if this is unusual, of if everybody sees people and I’ve just been missing out until now. This could be why I have trouble getting dates, or it could be why I’ve not been in any fistfights. Something changed for me today, and I hope it continues. I feel strange, I feel like a freak with a new superpower. I don’t think I’ve explained it very well, but I do think that this may just be the beginning of something.
I don’t feel crazy…
Saturday, July 05, 2003
Not Panicking
They just cut my unemployment from a whopping $191 a week to a useless $119, which is not enough to pay my rent even if I had no other bills, don’t rent movies, didn’t have to buy fresh cat litter, didn’t have to eat. This could be good for me though, a new diet sensation… ramen noodles for every meal. I’ve always hated ramen noodles and being something of a gourmand, I’ve never settled for them, even during my poorest times. But this may have to change, because my savings won’t last forever.
Food stamps are an option, one that I will look into on Monday. I’d sell my body, if anyone wanted it, I’d sell my soul, only it’s atrophied from a lifetime of atheism. I’m selling an air conditioner for $200, if anyone living in the Seattle area wants it.
The poverty in America, as experienced by a white, liberal person is characterized by the unswerving and unfounded belief that this state is inherently temporary, like puberty. This is characterized by the oft repeated phrase: “I’ll look back on this time and…” The poor person assumes that in the future, she will be better off, have more money, a career, a life; and that this is the natural progression, that to be poor in America is an amusing diversion: something that educated liberals do in their twenties before settling down and making money working for the ACLU.
I can tell my self that I’ll make it out of this eventually, with the corollary thought that it can’t possibly get any worse; but of course it can, and routinely does get worse for millions of people every day. I’m not crying out in sympathy for the starving children in Africa… the worstlifeinAmericaisbetterthanthebestlifethere theory of society. I’m saying that I could be a starving child in Africa, only in America, and not a child. I’m saying that there’s absolutely no guarantee of anything, despite our common delusion of safety and prosperity.
