From the backwards, mixed-up mind of your above-average 24-year-old aspiring musician and provocateur come thoughts, songs, and thoughts about songs. (also, I'd like a girlfriend)
Ladies and Gentlefolk, my goodness gracious I apologize for taking so long to update my bloggery! Unacceptability! You should be aware that I was on unpaid administrative leave at my (putrid, hellhole) day job for reasons of a mental variety that I shall not go into further, except to say that one man's firm and reasoned response to office drudgery is (apparently) another man's 'ear-piercing series of girlish shrieks that disrupt daily business". Can I get a 'whatever!'? The time off gave me ample opportunity to reflect on my art and art-making and further how I can conceive, promote and make money from my art. Mostly this entailed me laying on the futon in my bathrobe and watching a series of putrid television shows while gobbling microwave burritos with the reckless abandon of a feral tree-sprite, which is to say I didn't actually write any songs but my mind is always churning. You know this.
In any case, I start back on Monday and it'll be a good thing. I can't wait to see what my right-wing nutcase teabag lunatic cube mates think about stupid Arizona voting to bodyslam any and all human beings of Mexican extraction as well as the AZ legislature voting to demand a birth certificate from people who run for president. I've said it before and I'll say it again: most people are f*cking idiots!!!
Happy EarthDay my lovely angels! Go buy a garden and eat sustainable cheeses this week!!
I for one was pretty excited about health-care passage last week. You may recall a little bit of germaine info: Taffy McKittrick is a mothereffing artist! And artists need healthcare! In all seriousness it means that I can one day soon - or at least by 2014 - quit this stinking, festering blowhole of a day job, wherein I continue to suffer the indignities that come tied with filing, re-ordering, stocking supplies and the malaise disproportionate to my general well-being and thought streams. In short, I don't like my day job. You read this blog alot so you know this. But I like it even less after healthcare passed and so now I am forced in the break room to listen to Ed McGurkle and Timmy Sparks bleat about teabagging and socialism and how this country is going down the tubes. btw Ed and Timmy are real dumb
if you're like me you ingested that foul concoction on Sunday evening known as America's Elegance Pageant, aka Glory Hole Time, aka The Oscars. This is a time when the famous and attractive and famously attractive don elegant flowing robes and celebrate cinema and themselves and their excellent plastic surgeries with a long booming ecstatic celebration party.
Now I have no beef with the red-carpet coverage (except that it could/should be an hour or three longer) and no beef with the red-carpet hostess duties served nimbly and ably by one Kathy Ireland who employed grace as she held her body at curious angles all evening long and shouted enthusastically at her interviewees, and I have no beef with the charm and elegant double-team of Mssrs Martin and Baldwin as they wove a sonic tapestry of extremely funny jokes and pierced the parts of my heart that had previously lain un-penetrated.
No, none of these things bothered me.
So, I imagine you're asking, what then Taffy, is your beef? Reader, the answer is coming.
Here it is:
There were zero, count them, zero (ie donut hole, ie 'the big abyss', ie nothing, ie not one) award nominations for what you'll agree with me is probably the year's best film, if not the decade's , an soul-shattering and heart-blistering, sweet and tender little gem entitled "Did You Hear About The Morgans?" whose title could be directed at Academy voters but w/ a slight addenda to make it more of a probing inquiry so it goes something like this "Hey, you nearsighted and selfish Academy voter: Did You Effing Hear About "Did You Hear About The Morgans!" Or were you too busy congratulating yourself on tiny movies nobody cares about!!!" I mean really: Precious? (an inner-city story about inner-city problems like drugs and rape? Yawn!) Up? (an old person dies and goes ballooning? Pass)! The Hurt Locker? (wartime and bombs? kind of a bummer isn't it?! ie, who cares!)?! Up in the Air? (George Clooney has sex in airplanes with minors?!) Is this the best Hollywood could do?
If you're like me you were slightly mollified by the inclusion of Transformers 2: Rise of the Machinist in the sound editing effects category (runner-up for most amazing movie of the year!)
But no plug of any breadth or girth can fill the gaping orifice that is left behind by the not-recognition of SJP as Best Actress (who btw can act effing circles around Sandy Bullcock!) and DYHATM as Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Score, Best Everthing, Best Tonic For What Ails Ye! You blew it Academy voters! You effing blew it!!
Sweet reader, the Olympics are gone! The soaring has ended and my gilded hovercraft has crash-landed back on planet earth, sadly into a thicket of swampy, mossy evergreens, from wherein very little light can shine onto me. It was so bad that I had to phone in sick to work yesterday (note: if you are from HR this is a personal blog and you may not employ it for work related persecution!) and lay upon the futon in my own filth and watch Oprah. I didn't even have the strength to get out of my undergarments, bathe and/or play guitar. Eventually evening settled around me like a heavy blanket made of deep-sea fish. Law & Order came on and featured a man killing people with a hatchet but the man was odd because he listened to a genre of music called 'horror-core' wherein clowns rap about dark things. It really got me thinking: I could do a clown rap. Yes I could.I could rap about all things clown-like and clown-related in a manner that was respectful to all species and genders! I started to get excited! I pushed up off the futon and started writing ideas down with my purple sparkly-pen!! Whoohoooo
you are no stranger to my recent burning infatuatory glee at the throbbing sensations provided by that carnival ride in Vancouver (ie, the Winter Olympics!) and you are aware that my attentions are there of late 24/7. But let me share with you the fact that yesterday there was something equally as invigorating: the bipartisan health care summit!! My cube-mate had it on stealthily so I listed to some of it as well and I learned many things, primarily among them that Republicans don't like the 2400 page Congressional proposal or President Obama's 11 page proposal (which can only mean they don't like to read!)! Also, according to that curiously orange-hued man from the House, John Boenher, we have the best health-care system in the world! He actually said that. Well, hold the press(es) sir because at this juncture I would like to jump in and contest with that fact Mr Bohener and I will do so by sharing a story with you:
Now, let's be clear, this did not happen to me but to a friend of mine. This friend was having pains in the backside area rearward, (ie, anus) and there was bleeding when he (or she) defecated. This is not a good thing and there was lots of straining involved. Not knowing what to do my friend went to the emergency room and waited in urgent care for hours (!) while other people who came after he (or she) did got to go in first!! Reached for comment, my friend says: I understand that a kid with a broken arm gets priority but do you not see the man out there pacing up and down and squirming in the plastic seats!!? He is in such discomfort that he can't sit and he's inadvertantly barking at small children "it hurts!, ooh, it hurts!". At long last, they let my friend in to an examination room and he (or she) was attended too by an unkind health-care worker who appeared to sneer at his concern (granted the friend was sobbing profusely at this point) as she said "It's just a hemorrohoid, jeez relax". She then sent him home with a pat on the back and a tube of cream that he had to apply to his parts (ie, anus) in a very undignified manner!
So, that's the tale. It is quite unfortunate! I would urge you to share this story with your Congresspeople and let them know that there are Americans with serious medical issues that demand attention, not disregard and laughter and tubes of ointment. Healthcare needs more than just slathering some medicated lotion on it and calling it a day. No friends, healthcare needs gentle massaging and nudging and probing. Republicans should know that! (note: I am an independent!).
were you to let your gaze fall into the confines of that humid, dark box I call my head you would surely find an endless loop of bounding, leaping, triple-axled, sweaty-bodied mania. That's right: I am still in love with the Winter Olympics! (note: this despite the semi-constant hovering of that elfin creature they call Bob Costas who pops up at the most inopportune times saying things like "let's cut away from ice dancing and go back to Whistler for the men's ski jump flip-o-rama". hey guess what Costas? some of us don't want you to cut away from mother-effing ice dancing! some of us are just now falling in love with mother-effing ice dancing!) Which brings me to my point: I love mother-effing ice dancing!!!!
Yes, you probably thought that with the appearance in my dreams a few nights ago of the shimmering tree-sprite that is Johnny Weir that it was all sewed up, and that I had found my calling (or at least the luring trills of a potential BFF) and that the Winter Olympics had soared to the highest roost possible but my god, after watching a few minutes of ice dancing, my jaw fell into my lap, my skin broke into goose-pimples and I heard myself making involuntary little chirping sounds as a microwaved burrito lay untouched on the paper plate below me. Which is to say: I was transfixed, transformed, transgendered and transported! (note: not literally on the third one). It was a glorious, body-quaking event, one that I felt resonate to the core of my being with such a strength and potency that I have not felt since Christmas time when I saw a double-feature of "Did You Hear About the Morgans" and then a few minutes later "Did You Hear About the Morgans".
Here's what happens: 1)Boy and Girl enter ice rink in fantabulous costumes, some with feathers and boas and straps. 2) Boy and Girl ice dance!!!! and then, hours later 3) Taffy McKittrick lays awake, still quaking with delight.
This morning I am not quick to anger. This morning I am happy to be steeping in the heady brew of incompetence that my day-job supervisor fosters like so many fertile eggs. This morning I am a-soar as I listen to my cube-mates discuss the banalities of their lives. For you see gentle reader, this morning is not like other mornings. This morning I have ice dancing.
the glorious shimmer of the white-hot winter Olympics is blazing in my heart!! Everywhere there are bodies hurtling through half-pipes, slaloming down bunny slopes, twirling in triple-axle fantasy-lands in amazing looking stretch pants! My body trembles and my heart explodes! Last night I dreamt that I was taking part in the festivities. I was rink-side, cheering my best mate Johnny Weir on. He was wearing a large doily with a pink ribbon tied across the waist, making him look much like a hyper-masculine french maid. He skated vigorously and was sweating profusely like a lean water buffalo and then he won the gold medal! Afterwards, he got on the podium and said "I could not have gotten this far without my main man, my shining beacon, my vibrant sunburst: Taffy McKittrick!" (!). Afterwards we both hugged and went out boozing and whoring on the streets of Vancouver!! We drank a lot of drinks and met a lot of nice people but none of them were good enough for us so we left them alone. At the end of the night Johnny patted me firmly on the shoulder and said, in his tender dulcet tones: "Whatta you say we skate awhile Taffy"? and so he and I put on matching outfits and went out onto the rink. And we spun. And spun. And spun. Until I was gooey with bliss, like so much spun-honey!! Oh, this life!!
how long has it been since your hefty eyes have lain upon my bloggery? My witchy words have tucked themselves out of view, between my proverbial legs, where the sun refuses to shine. There are multiple reasons and intersecting data-points to point the blame at certainly. I won't get into all of it but let's just say I needed a little time away from the constant contemplation of my own perceived greatness and also needed time away from the computer because I was googling inappropriate things at work (note: since when is it a crime to google the name of a hot receptionist just so you can learn more about her? bafflement!)...
When last I left you you'll recall that I had dreamt of the glorious she-yeti and then by sheer coincidences befriended her on facebook. things got weird from there. things were said and misinterpreted on both sides but I am happy to report that I have moved on from she-yeti and that she is a piece of dust in the wind to me now and the reason for this, as you can probably tell from my gurgling and excited blog title post: I have olympic-mania!!
As I sit here in my cubicle taking crap from people, listening to my supervisor order a soft-drink dispenser and reading information she's sent about her imminent stroke, I wish I were elsewhere: namely in front of the television, so I could lose my self in an endless ribbon of skating coverage, frosted with so much snow, like dust from fairies world-wide. Can I admit something to you: If I were not a musician and songwriter I would most certainly be a figure skater, a steely man who has charm and elegance and who's masculinity is never in question! Oh to be twirling on the ice, tossing maidens hither and thither into the sky as I bound and leap through the air with all the grace and force of a gazelle eager for a meal! The spinning! The twirling! The sensible but form-fitting pant-suits! Oh it's all too much. I am suddenly transported. My arm is quaking as I type this and I'm afraid that I can't wait to get home to collapse onto the futon. I'll man up and admit this: I sobbed last night watching the figure-skating pairs. If it wasn't for such a beautiful reason you'd probably think there was something wrong with me mentally!!
Hello glorious buttery readership! here again we find ourselves at the outskirts of something ephemeral and quicksilvery, not unlike an herb glaze over a pot roast, and that is, no surprise: another of my blog posts! There are so many lovely things to begin to address but I don't know where to begin.
Let's begin here, with a sentence that will befoul and besmirch your sense of what's possible in this land: I am now friends with She-Yeti on facebook. That is mother-effing correct. I don't know how on earth she found me but she did. Now I will confess here to a slight internal adjument to my inner feelings, call them my micro-sensors, because the She-Yeti in reality (ie Facebook) is a different beast than in my fantasy (ie, dreams/fantasy).
Don't misinterpret me here, she is no less beautiful because she is most definitely still not like anything that I've seen. Ever. But her tone is very playful and aggressive, almost angry-agressive not quite the tender and gentle person (do I say person for a yeti?) that I mated with in my dreams. For a spell I considered that it might not even be her but one of her sisters, cousins, or friends (do all female yeti go by the handle She-Yeti? It can't be answered) but then I came to finally understand this: her public persona had to be coarser so that she could hide the very nature of what occured between us. When two people come together and don't want to announce it to the world they use trickery to pretend like they aren't madly in love. That is what she's doing.
Oh bliss!!! Can I tell you that I am soaring again? I am like the ostrich, flapping wings madly through puffy clouds, squawking and chirping at the fullest capacity of my wing-span, and if you held a translator chip up to my beak you would hear this: I am so mother-effing in love America! So in love am I!!!!
you'll do well to remember that the dream I had about the she-yeti found me mating with the she-yeti. This is a sonic exploration (read: song) of that blissful co-mingling. I have breached my normal etiquette and have included the lyrics of the song so you can enjoy them alongside one another. so, enjoy them!
morning w/ the she-yeti I hope she ain’t forgettin me we mated by the fire however briefly
hairy fingered sweet caress she-yeti’s one who I love best, the rest aren’t worth conquest at all, just she-yeti
a roaring fire she snores awake our eyes they meet and then they break, they take my breath my aching heart, my she-yeti
we dine on squirrels and birds and such and then ingest hugs and heartfelt touch, so much is happening now, and then we’re mating.
when two are one, then one shall be a furry yeti reverie, we roar so loud I wake up in my lonely bed.
at the window in this world of cement and no yeti-girls, I hurl my cereal bowl against these dirty walls
where is she now, those ears those hands those lips, those hips not in these lands, the plans of she and I smolder with the end of my dreamtime mind
and I recall, I always will recall
morning w/ the she-yeti I hope she ain’t forgettin me we mated by the fire however briefly
In this fractured cosmos of time and space we here on the planet earth, like so many homo erectus creatures that came before, find the fragmentary and illusory nature of existing put on our doorstep. As you are aware I am an artist and the concerns of the artist lay mainly with issues of the heart, of love, and with the heart of love but how then can the artist address the necessity of living, which is to say, paying bills. Further, and this is my main point, I don't like paying bills. The necessity of bills is a further means of diminishment available to the establishment to put the screws to the little guy. Put another way, if I'm sitting in my apartment playing guitar in nothing but a soiled bathrobe, it's my proprietary right. If said bathrobe is wide open and a neighbor happens to look in the window as she passes, that an entirely different concern (but at bottom, it cannot be my fault but hers for letting her errant eye-scape wander curiously to the happenings of one Taffy McKittrick). Do you see what I'm saying here? Is it as clear as a sun-swept sky to you? The artist is allowed to do whatever he needs and wants, and this is my bigger point, paying bills interferes with artistic natures and undertakings. If I'm lost in a reverie of songcraft and bill collectors call constantly, then it disturbs my mind, which may have been exploding with a series of deep thoughts, set to music. Ahh, this life!
This morning I awoke to find my body shuddering and my throat squealing with little yaps of what I can only call delight. There is much hesitation in me admitting this out loud, much less in a public forum like the blogosphere (of which I am a noble participant) but here it is: I was dreaming of Yeti. I'll pause a moment to let it seep into your thought process. And then I'll say it again: I dreamt of Yeti. The beautiful hirsute creature that roams the tundras and forests, eating a mostly omnivorous menu of nuts, berries and small rodents, running and leaping off boulders, bathing in fresh mountain streams, occasionally growling at the sky and above all, proving elusive to all photographers except the ones with telephoto lenses.
Now, this is a little hard for me to say but I am going to man up and say it: in the dream I was a male Yeti and I was cuddling with a gorgeous she-Yeti in a cave. It was early morning so the sky was still blue-black. Birds whistled. We lay by a roaring fireplace and I listened to she-Yeti as she snored ferociously, shaking in her sleep, as she dreamt of god-knows-what. Suddenly her eyes opened and she drank me in as if to say "my love, there you are, my handsome Yeti". I will exclude the details of what occurred next for the sake of the faint of heart or the puritanical or the shy but the general gist of it is this: I mated with the she-Yeti. And it was glorious.
I woke up face down on the futon in my grimy apartment. Crumbs of an unspecified previous meal lay beside me. Tear rivulets were wet on my face. I did my daily regimen of 2-3 pushups and walked to the window, looking out at the world, this world of concrete and cement and failed promise. My heart was soaring and broken all at once. Where is she now, I thought. Is she waking up in the woods somewhere in Canada or upstate Michigan, somewhere above the treeline, in a cave? Is she cold and lonely and wondering where I am? I pictured her walking out into her world, eating her breakfast of pigeon or squirrel all alone, remembering the intimacy we shared, however briefly. Ah, here come the tears again reader. As I type this out. Here come the tears...
Dear Lovelies - how nice to find you again, all cozied up with a mug of mulled cider, reading my blog, like a kitten in the arm of a sleeping man! It's that time of year again, which is to say, Happy New Year! I trust that the close of 2009 was as spectacular and explosive for you as it was for yours truly (read: me). In the early hours of the evening I strummed my guitar and googled ex-lovers to see if they were lonely or now tethered to lesser men. Sad to report that none were available any longer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not with those ex-lovers for a reason and the reason is that we were not "a good fit" (at least that's how they put it) but my heart despaired to find that my best hope at reconnection - Rhonda Gumm - has now apparently wed an orthodonist from Milwaukie, WI who specializes in "reconstructive and adaptive dentistry" and who has the unfortunate last name Spanker. Meaning Rhonda (while no longer attractive in the least) is now known as Rhonda Gumm-Spanker. Why should this depress me, while I am still young and vibrant? I'll answer you: It should not!
Hence, my young and vibrant unattached self wandered into the night, to drink down the last of 2009 with a bunch of friendly strangers in a bar near the edge of town. There was pool playing and bear hugs and raucous merriment! There was communal vomiting and unwarranted (but accidental) touches! At the end of it all was me, Taffy McKittrick, raising a glass up toward the spider-web strewn rafters and howling at the peak of my lung capacity: Okay Universe, this is my year!!!
dearest Readers, 
Sweet reader, the Olympics are gone! The soaring has ended and my gilded hovercraft has crash-landed back on planet earth, sadly into a thicket of swampy, mossy evergreens, from wherein very little light can shine onto me. It was so bad that I had to phone in sick to work yesterday (note: if you are from HR this is a personal blog and you may not employ it for work related persecution!) and lay upon the futon in my own filth and watch Oprah. I didn't even have the strength to get out of my undergarments, bathe and/or play guitar. Eventually evening settled around me like a heavy blanket made of deep-sea fish. Law & Order came on and featured a man killing people with a hatchet but the man was odd because he listened to a genre of music called 'horror-core' wherein clowns rap about dark things. It really got me thinking: I could do a clown rap. Yes I could. I could rap about all things clown-like and clown-related in a manner that was respectful to all species and genders! I started to get excited! I pushed up off the futon and started writing ideas down with my purple sparkly-pen!! Whoohoooo 
Beloved Readership,
Dearies, 
