there went a tumbleweed...

descend to bed, dear erica
its five thirty a.m.
your mind has some secret sense
but its all frozen
your neck is doubting
your eyes forsaking
the dark is gone
now
your lovely life
can be extended
by just
a little more
sleep...

i fucking hate that i can't remember everything. i wish i could remember what i ate last week. or what i wore or what i thought about. i wish i could remember all my dreams. i wish i could remember everyday of third grade and what in the world me and my first friend linda joyce kenimore and i giggled about, i honestly have huge gray areas of my childhood that i would be interested in revisiting, now that i'm an adult. i just wish every detail of my life was written down, so that i could keep it.

not keep it to live in the past, which i think happens to people who are afraid of forgetting. they'll relive things over and over until it's engraved on their souls. and because they're thinking about it so much, they can't move on to new things. i'm afraid of living in the past. but i'm just so much more afraid of forgetting the past.

i think that's what started me writing in the first place. capturing things on paper seemed to make them real for me.

i made so many memories this week, but the finer points will be eventually lost. this upsets me in a way i can't express. this is why i prefer writing to speaking. i'll never remember all the wonderful things people said to me this week, they were said, they were lost. but the fact is that they were said. which means, somewhere in the universe the sound waves and echos of those words are still bouncing around.

maybe god really is up there just listening to our conversations. if so, i wish he'd write them down for me.

anyway, i think some things are easier to remember than others. tastes are easy for me. because they're connected to the olefactory senses (smell) which are the strongest sense memories in the body. think about it, it is virtually impossible to forget what vanilla tastes like.

ah, me. well, blog on, good buddies.

vhee she sneeze-a it feels su guud. Bork bork bork! 1/18th ooff un oorgesm. cuoorse- sumeteemes she throo her beck oooot. Um de hur de hur de hur.

neopolitan ice cream.
-or is it neopolean?-
she could eat buckets of it.
all night.

too bad she's allergic.

is it better to WANT or to be WANTED?

and what is that we want, anyway? is it, as someone very clever puts it, simply ATTENTION?

there are three main types of attention. mental, physical, spiritual. erica suggests that all three are just stepping stones to the attention that we're all really trying to get at: SEXUAL.

sexual attention. because it's a colmination of all three. knowing that someone wants to fuck our brains out as much as we want to fuck OURSELVES. that's what it is, right? and how do we achieve that? you all know how. the text book answer is confidence, right? more correctly, it's knowing what you want. which requires knowing yourself well enough to know what you want.

each of the three attentions can be engaged to fulfill the ultimate attention. rarely do we find a person that can hit all the right points. those are the keepers.

in many ways, we communicate our sexuality with every person in our life. we have to. we're compelled to. every motive seems to lead to "what will make me most fuckable?" where did this come from? sex isn't a basic need. it's an urgent form of individual expression. it's something to pass the time. or maybe just maybe, it fulfills our need for a lot of ATTENTION.

EVERY person in our life.
we may find someone that stimulates our mind, generates endless fantansies, makes us think about ourselves in a sexy way. MENTAL. we may know a person that we just can't keep our hands off of, no matter the situation, they are just a comfortable extension of our sexuality. PHYSICAL. what about that person that really listens to and responds to us in the way that we don't even understand we need? the person that honestly cares about you? SPIRITUAL.

erica goes fucking crazy when she doesn't get enough of the right kind of attention. her right kind of attention, she has to admit, might not exactly fit into the norms of propriety (for an extreme example, see the piano teacher) but it's there nonetheless. and it's all based on the desire to want and not be wanted.

but whatever the norms of propriety are is not what this blog is about.

WANTING. or BEING WANTED?
what does it for you?

in every scale in every relationship, one person seems to always want the other one more. think about your own, past and present. have you been lucky enough to find an equal BALANCE? if so, how did it end?

for erica, being wanted by someone she doesn't want more viciously feels like being dead. there's not enough air in her chest to breathe. the first time this happened was in third grade when danny munson wrote a secret message under a sticker on her valentine card which he urged her to read. even at that young age, she somehow knew that it was something that she dreaded. unwanted feelings stop her cold. they always have. ask jayc, who had to flat out ignore her to finally get her attention. (and in some ways ignore her more to keep it. clever lad.) most recently another friend that had to get thier feelings off their chest ellicited nothing more from her than frustrated pity for people's lack of DIGNITY and how easy it is to be misunderstood.


YOU ALL. her friends that read this blog to the very end. you know who you are. she's sees so much beauty that you're creating. of special note, the blooming romance between jo. and de. watching you stimulate each other in so many ways has made her feel cheesy and optomistic. it's simply beautiful. and tj. she just can't get over how you and am came together. it deserves to be immortalized in some form of fiction. fucking incredible.

thank you all for sharing your ATTENTION with her. she is inexhaustibly inspired by all of your pursuits of self expression.

she wants you. no expectations attached.

and it came to pass that erica finally made an end to her sayings.

the initialed ones
sit with their sony
testosterone builds
screams at the t.v.
startle her system
what is this magic
man versus a.i.
why does it make her
so invisible
she makes them cookies
asks them trivia
gives a full foot rub
hoping to appear
like she still exists
manhood transcending
the battle goes on
a fist up an ass
the stats off the charts
she kneels in front
with nail polish
politely waiting
for impossible
woman attention.

do you have violet? he asks.

okay, so erica's been watching her brothers wedding dvd over and over. not because she's so tight with jay, but because she can't get over how good her hair looks!

the general consensus is that it's your turn to write the next blogstrology blog. send your personalized horoscopes to misseserica@lycos.com no later than sunday to avoid future castration. also come up with a spankin hot astrologer name.

she is suspicious of the number 23, but you all know that. bad things always happen to her on the 23rd, bad things like pianos falling out of buildings on her head. but so far, her day is turning out pretty okay. nothing bad enough to note. well, except for burning her spinach omelet and starting a small fire in the kitchen.

i am severely disappointed in the substandard quality of women's restrooms at strip clubs. when you can eventually find these secretive little rooms, you walk in and get a major case of the willies. the paint is chipped, the sinks are sloshed with wetness, the mirrors are smeared with what appears to be crisco. there is never enough light, or a line, only one or two tired dancers sitting on a puke-smelling couch rubbing their elbows with freesia lotion and talking with nasty language about their boyfriends being callous cold sons of bitches. running out of toliet paper is never a problem though, because stall number one also doubles as a stock room.

on the other boob, from what i can gather, the mens rooms at these places are pallatial resting lounges, complete with warm hand towels, bright cheerful lighting, and minty gum handed to you by a guy that quickly becomes your best friend by the third trip to relieve the overpriced beer pressuring your bladder. i hear they call him the doctor. he also performs the service of making you smell fresh. like you've not been at a titty bar all night instead of working late, like you told your wife.

what's going on here? i understand that men make up the majority of the clients at these places. but they wouldn't be coming here if it wasn't for the feminine puntang in the first place. so i suggest to strip club owners everywhere...let's not treat our dancers and female tagalongs like the whores they may be. let's add some carpet. let's add a little asian woman to powder our noses and tell us "you so hot, you hot like fiya." let's add a big velvet chaise lounge and complimentary lighting and other things that will make us feel like princesses and not sexual refugees. thank you.

why, oh why, did she not suggest a rousing round of big bootie in the hot tub?

she is made up entirely of rain. hurricane birth. rain on playgrounds. weeping puddles. an all around gray childhood. color happened when she skinned her knees which she did frequently. god what a seductive red she bled, a scarlet ribbon, a cascading shred. age seventeen. rain on steamy car windows. kissing kevin salcedo like it was the second to the last day on earth. there was some color there too, red kissing rash, mostly, which she got frequently. god what a seductive red she said, a scarlet betrayal on her face to dread. and now the desert. nothing but sun. and neon. her womanhood defined. a final escape from all things wet. she thought. and there it goes again, THE DESPARATE NEED TO MAKE COLOR! life awareness rains through her body mingles melancholy with passion, promises to cleanse, threatens to flood. rain in her heart. slippery when wet. she skins her soul frequently it seems. but god, what a seductive red she fled, that scarlet letter held on by a thread...

where did i get this bite mark?!?!

it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteres are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Yuo're all a bnuch of mokneys and i lvoe you.

today her beloved woke her up dancing and whirling his socks over his head and singing along with the worst song from the worst musical in the world. you guessed it, it's a hard knock life from annie. he just kept dancing and singing until she got her sorry ass out of bed and turned off the t.v. what happened to the good ol days when people just dumped water on each others head?

the reason she started an "evil" blog was to capacitate her need to speak in first person. she's quite happy that none of you want or need an evil blog. but why the sudden urge to proclaim that you don't? she never asked you to copy her!

make semi-sweet love to me
chocolate muffin
i long to taste you again

back at playmill theatre, west yellowstone montana, erica decided to name all the toliets in tribute to all the dead johns that she had loved. stall one was Lennon. (she used that one the most) stall two was Candy. stall three would later become Denver when his plane crashed on the way to disneyland. this week she ran out of toliets when Cash and Ritter decided to take the big flush at the same time.


...i'm just sitting here watching the toliet paper go round and round...i really love to watch it roll...no longer riding on the merry-go-round...i just had to let it go...

thank you for casting christian bale as the new batman. i think that calls for a truce.

sincerely,
erica stoddard

a friend of hers points out the jeckell/hyde quality her evil blog has taken. well said indeed. she wishes she could write as honestly and openly as her friend. it's a brave thing to do, you see. to say things honestly. let's try.

she avoids television on september 11th. it makes her sad. and a little annoyed. and reluctant to live her life at the fevered pitch that cnn wants her to. it's true erica has taken a lot of refuge in various conspiracy theories in the last few years. and she knows she's dangled a few of them out there, trying to see if anyone else caught the vibe. are they just another one of her phases? who knows. all she knows is that certain conspiracy theories are comforting. they make it easy to place blame.

another truth. aging. tonight her husband said "we're going to age miserably." yes, yes they will, she thought. their hearts are already ancient. their minds were always leap years ahead as children. they were both first borns who turned their desperatly needed selfish time into ways to postpone growing up.

erica once went through a phase where she was convinced she was an old lady. her joints ached. her walk slowed. everything became trivial. she always found herself at the end of hallways pretending she was walking toward the light. new impulses hit her, like the urge to play bingo. the urge to sleep in a sears craftmatic. she was only 80 years old for six months but she'll never forget what she learned. or the look on jayc's face in the housing office, when she tried to explain it to him what her coffin should look like.

another thing that she should set straight. erica has two faces that are frequently confused. her neutral face, and her sad face. nine out of ten people agree that her neutral face looks like her sad face. not the case. her neutral face occurs when she is disengaged. when her deadly boredom is kicking in. she's not thinking about the parakeet her mom let fly away. she's honestly not interested in anything going on and is simply trying to remember the last time she was stimualted. it's true also that erica has had bouts of melancholia in the past and will probably have more to come. but if she's not in one of those moments, please please please don't ask her why she's sad.

now if she can just drop the whole third person thing! hugs and airkisses to all the friends that made it to the end of this post!

can we please have more movies where hugh jackman takes off his shirt? thank you. also, i'm getting really annoyed with movie trailers that are just miniature versions of the actual movie. do you have to give the entire plot away? and what, oh what where you thinking when you greenlighted The Order? whose scrotum needs to be shaved for that piece of rubbish? ...although a movie with heath ledger AND hugh jackman taking off their priest robes would be a good idea. just think about it.

sincerely,
erica stoddard

where did that bruise come from?

my head is groggy. i was up at three and not getting any sleepier. so i paid a visit to my little blue friends. i was addicted in college. to my little blue friends. the insomniac's curse. i want to sleep. i'm hungry to sleep. it alludes me. so now i suffer the consequences of too much of it. it's 2:43 pm and i just woke up. kitty was hungry. hey. when did blogster get a spell check? i'm going to use it now....okay back. remind me to never use that again. it was having a freaking cow that my sentences aren't capatalized. dumb spell check. well, i must go and find out that my propsal has been rejected. the rest of the board meeting is will bring boring tears out of my eyes. there's a reason it's called the bored.

erica spent the afternoon watching excruciatingly bad auditions for the k.o.knudsen talent show as a special guest judge. among the highlights were a kid knocking himself in the head with a nun-chuck, two nerdy looking girls dancing to 'nsync, and a belly dancer who decided to pull out a big ass pirate knife and balance it on her head, scaring the piss out of the teachers and their "zero tolerance" policy. most of the tryouts were prepubecent girls dancing like the future strippers that they are, with way too much skin showing and way too much smut in the lyrics. since when did sexiness become a prerequisite for sixth grade? maybe it always was. let's just say that after the tenth jailbait act, erica was just praying for a fat girl with a flute to come in.

today on the bus a chinese guy told me he wanted to "go down" on me. i actually did one of those blinky cartoon blinks. i said "what?" and he pointed at himself and said "go down." "i'm sorry i have no idea what you're asking me." i said. he pulled out a little electronic translator and again the words "go down" appeared. i was so offended that i turned around in my seat and stared out of the window. the bus stopped and the next stop and the chinese guy got up and left. apparently he was asking me how to stop the bus...how to "get off." he wanted to get off. the bus. not on me. thank god. i chuckled at my behavior and decided to make it up to the poor guy by having chinese food for dinner.

erica is finally comfortable enough in her body to walk around naked in her apartment. sometimes the blinds are open and she doesn't care. she's on the second floor anyway. this is not the same erica that i remember. young erica was what people like to call a "late bloomer." like most sad insecure people, her habit of modesty was born out of shame. in junior high she came up with four different ways she could change out of her p.e. shirt without flashing skin. she just knew that some girl wold point and laugh and tell her that she belonged in the boys locker room.

let's talk about training bras. what the hell? what did she need to train her flat chest for? there was no training there. up-down-up-down-good-now-breathe-in. no. training bras were a device of mercy. flat chest? wear this. you'll fit in. later, when no ones looking you can stuff it and walk around like you're dolly parton. you see, having boobs was a permanent fashion trend. the ultimate assessory. the problem was you couldn't just go to your mom and beg for them, like they were the latest international news sweatshirt. you had to wait and pray to the boob fairy to shower you with favor. years came and went. no boobs. not even a sign of them. despite her mom's ample bazoom, young erica consoled herself nightly with all the "you can't force a rose to bloom" shit you can think of. it didn't help that her little sister started wearing a bra in fifth grade. it was enough to make her down-right bitter. well, the growth spurt finally happened as a junior...in high school, that's late teenage hood folks, then stopped. then happened again at 21 after she got married.

erica has long since stopped believing that another spurt might sneak up on her. but happy to say, she's long past hoping for another one. she's finally gotten past all the negative programming and started celebrating all the things she likes. come to find out there was a lot more to like than she even knew. and as for Jiggely, and Poof...she is glad to announce that they've become two sweet little friends. much love and thanks to jayc for hugging her inner teenager and making her outer woman always feel sexy.

jealousy. i can already feel it coming. take doc, our proto-type child. i change his stinky litter. clean up his cat vomit. i feed him. i groom him. i scold him when he eats my house plants. he ignores me. jayc comes home and he runs to his side. sits by the computer. jayc plays string with him and he purrs and meows and pretty much worships him. fine. i'm not jealous. at least i get to be present when the cat does something really stupid, like falling into the bathtub full of water!

erica's not sure if it was training a gun or angry bowling yesterday that made her arm feel like it's going to fall off, but it is...any second now...

i like the word fuck. i like telling people to fuck off. i think fuck is the fucking best word ever fucking invented. it makes me want to make love.

SPECIAL MESSAGE for MR. JOeL P. WAYMAN:
remember back in college? that writing group? we never did settle on a good name for it, did we? i think we just called it the group. well, now that you've joined us the gang is back together again. and this time, the bitchcake is going to fly!

posted by erica griffin  # 11:40 am 0 comments

you quicken my memory-
nostalgia leaks through tiny holes
like wet macaroni
in a green plastic collander
with just one waggle of your head-
the childs brain hiding inside of me
smiles

I really do. I really really hate her. I know she's the only voice of reason on the simpsons, and maybe that's why she's so damn annoying. I always wonder if the lady that does her voice secretly feels like she got the bum deal. Honestly. I'd quit my job as lisa simpson's voice the second i had to utter a pretentious line about some damn cause she's getting a petition for. and what is up with her head? is her head the shape of a star? is she bald? or does her hair just match her skin? stupid lisa simpson. i want to kick her little yellow ass.

Strindberg. Ahh, Strindberg. So perceptive.

"Look here-for the last time-what do you want? Am I to burst into tears? Am I to jump over your riding whip? Shall I kiss you and carry you off to Lake Como for three weeks, after which...What am i to do? What do you want? This is getting unbearable, but that's what comes of playing around with women. Miss Julie, I can see how miserable you are; I know you're going through hell, but I don't understand you. We don't have scenes like this; we don't go in for hating each other. We make love for fun in our spare time, but we haven't all day and all night for it like you. I think you must be ill. I'm sure you're ill." --from Miss Julie

nymphos unite!

cocuntry music is god-awful. when i find out someone likes country music, my first instinct is to point and laugh at them. but really, i feel very sad for these people. they will never know how substandard their taste is. poor stupid fuckers.

except for you, robb. you're okay.

todays rant is about people who promote themselves. alright, i'm with deanne, on a tram, in zion national park. we spent the day hiking the narrows, which means our socks are soaking and our feet are itching and we just want to get back to the campsite and change our shoes. sitting in front of us is a cool couple, black guy white girl looked like the outdoor type. if we had looked closer we would have seen they were phonies...both had one of those stupid zion national park walking sticks complete with leather strap. but anyway, i doze off and wake up to...A CAPELLA. this guy is singing boyz 2 men. poorly. but to the rapt attention of a swarm of talkitive girls behind us. "it's so (warble) haaaaaarddd, to say (extra long warble) goooooooooood byyyyyyye, to (eggregiously long warble, slightly out of tune) yeeeeessssttererrrrrrdddaaaaaaayyyyy. fine fine that's cool. what gets us is that the girls are asking these phony questions and he is gleefully answering them. for the next thirty minutes. his answers are chalk full of pretentious references. "back in my STUDIO..." "i'm a singer/songwriter" ah, yes, we are going to puke. his girlfriend chimes in "he won our high school talent show with that one." puke puke puke! needless to say when we get to our stop, we practically run off the tram screaming. squishing back to the site, we relive the excrutiating conversation and laugh about how he reminds us of someone. from that point on, he was known as chakras kublin.
how about this? let your talents speak for themselves. stop telling people how great you are. they'll figure it out.

he's an insult factory
bringin down austin
happy to be an ass-clown