Things I love about Summer:

• Not wearing a coat.


• Wearing adorable summer dresses.


• Rollercoasters.


• Going swimming.


• Lying in the sun.


• Street fairs and art festivals.


• Wearing adorable dresses to street fairs and eating fried foods while lying in the sun.


• The beach.


• The smell of the lake, the feel of the sand, the call of the gulls.


• The smell of suntan lotion.


• Drinking root beer from a paper cup on the beach with crushed ice and a little sand in it.


• The Case Book Sale


• Eating ice cream in the sun.


• Being hot.


• Laying on my bed while a cool breeze blows the curtains over me.


• The smell of fresh-cut grass.


• Barbecues.


• The smell of barbecues and the sound of people mowing grass while I lie in my bed with the breeze flowing over me.

Things I love about Winter:

• Christmas.

Spoiler alert to the last human being to know this: the villain is Khan.

What, dear readers, is the defining characteristic of the movie version of Khan? Do you recall The Wrath of Khan? Then you know. It is the CHEST. The bare musculature of awesome.

*SIGH*

Really, Benedict? You couldn't tear your shirt a little? Have you no respect for the ROLE?

Ahem. The movie had some merits - it hurt the pretties quite thoroughly and the Bromantical moments were intense and frequent.

I do so love a good beat-down, and our leads each got to experience one. nom nom.

But the fan-service and references to the original movie were so heavy-handed it made me embarrassed, and if I'm going to be embarrassed by a movie, I want it to be by the overt male sexuality, thank you very much.
(In short, the minute Nimoy appeared I had to cover my eyes and whimper to protect myself from the awful, pointless fanjob.)

So...

Man Candy: 2.5 (Half a point just for having Carl Urban! Lots of lovely men, but so little nudity. This score could easily have been improved!)
Hurt the Pretty: 4
Feminismishness: 1 (Only because Uhura got to kick ass. Minus a point because apparently girl-phasers don't stun as well as boy-phasers?)

So, Friday was National Bike to Work day, which was an event celebrated largely by businesses offering freebies to people who show their bike helmet. Hey, I'm all right with that, since it directly benefits me.

I posted on my facebook wall "Happy National Bike to Work day! Did you bike in?" and got, well, rather a lot of comments along the line of "I can't possibly ride my bike to work here are all the valid reasons!"

Seemed a bit defensive, if you ask me. I was just asking, in general, you know, if I had any friends who chose to bike in who don't normally. I mean, dude. I'm well aware that our culture is built around an unsustainable sprawl that forces people to drive insanely far to their jobs. (Personally, I think a few Green Laws would help, but I digress. This is not my America Needs Green Laws rant.)

I chose, very deliberately, to live near where I work. And then I chose, very deliberately, not to seek employment further away when I lost my job. I only applied to jobs on the east side of Cleveland. Seems crazy, huh? But that was my choice and I took it. I'd have worked outside of my field to stay close to home. Because I never have and never will commute an hour to work. It's my opinion that that's just too much of my life.

That said, I know people who do commute over an hour to work - by bike. Shelli bikes from Lakewood to University Circle. Phill walks from Richmond Heights to East 9th. WALKS. Well, he likes to walk, and its worth it to him to take longer on a commute.

See... the point is: we all choose what we do. It's easy to say "I had no choice", but ultimately, there's always some choice. And I choose to ride my bike to work.

And here's the thing people gotta get: I don't like it.

Well, that's not true. I've gotten so I freakin' love it, but when I started bicycle commuting, it was a big fat horrid BOTHER. I had to get up early. EARLY! Inhumane. And I had to get dressed twice. I have mild panic attacks on every other day when I have to pick my outfit - now I had to do it TWICE, one outfit for biking, one for work. And I get sweaty. And it's cold. Sometimes it's cold and sweaty at the same time. FUN. And I have to wash my face and re-comb my hair when I get to the office. And that hill really does suck balls.

I don't do it for the exercise. Not really. I despise cardio. The one real reason I do all this is that I know I am guilty of having a huge negative impact on the earth, as all first-world citizens do, and I want to mitigate that a little.

That's it. That's the whole, entire motivation. It's why I bring a mug and a recycled bag to the coffee house every morning for my mocha and pastry. It's why there's a plastic fork and plate in my office cabinet that have been washed 98 times. I'll get up in the freezing-ass morning and put on clothes I don't like and stuff my backpack full so I can get sweaty and dodge traffic... just so I don't burn another gallon of gas.

And if you live within ten miles of your workplace, I really, really think you should try it, too.

There's a belief that really, really wanting something is valuable. That our desire will help. "The other team wanted it more," a losing coach might say.

But wanting something so badly you shake for it never helped anyone overcome a gap of skill.

It was in a comparative religions class that I first read about the Buddhist concept of achieving enlightenment through the removal of desire - even, in the end, the desire to achieve enlightenment. That hung with me and buzzed around my brain for months. You have to let go. Drop the wanting. You can't even get what you're looking for if you really really want it.

"But isn't that sad," thought young-me. "What's the point of achieving anything if you don't WANT it? Where's the climax? The glory?"

We want life to be the highlight reel, but it's mostly the stuff that doesn't make it in. You lose a lot by focusing on that narcotic moment of bliss that may not even come.

What's bringing this to my mind is the Hessler Street Poetry Contest. There was a time I really, really cared about it. I really wanted to win. I'd won lots of poetry contests in High School. On the High School scale of poetics, I was awesome. But the bar for "awesome" in high school poetry is somewhere just above "this wasn't totally painful to read."

I wrote a lot of poems ABOUT Hessler Street, in the hopes that they'd get in. They didn't. I wrote some really killer stuff for my graduate poetry class - they didn't get in. And then I sort of gave up. I missed the deadline for a few years in a row and just forgot about how much I really really wanted to win that contest.

This year, I saw one of my writing workshop friends was involved in the contest, so I resolved to send something. I casually sifted through my recent poems and tossed them three. In the process I re-read some of my old poems and shook my head vigorously at myself for ever thinking they were any good. "Hell," I thought, "These new poems aren't any good, either. But they are better."

When I heard I'd made the cut for the anthology, I was somewhat surprised at my lack of emotional reaction. "Oh," I thought, "Well, that's nice."

I just didn't care anymore. I don't know why I stopped caring - maybe my opinion of my own poetry has reached a certain clarity that doesn't require outside validation? Maybe it's just that I'm a published poet now, with actual cash monies to validate me? I dunno. But I went to the reading mostly concerned over what to wear, since I had been sick in bed and I wanted a chance to dress up. I sat and listened to many anguished and confessional poems and thought, "They'll never give a prize to my silly little thing. It's so light-hearted and short. It's hardly anything."

I enjoyed standing up to read - I always do - but it wasn't the thrill it once was. I guess because I wasn't afraid at all. And when they announced I had won third prize, I was momentarily confused, having so thoroughly convinced myself I wasn't in the running. "Marie Vibbert? Why is that name so familiar?" And then, remarkably calm. The second prize winner asked me, "Why aren't you excited? I'm so excited?" And I had to say something like, "Oh, I am. I'm just not very expressive."

But really, I was quietly proud of my lack of caring. Of one more weight of worldly desire that dropped from my greedily-clutched horde, leaving me lighter.

I've been sick and it's making me feel like a fat glob of something fat and globular. No energy, not doing anything, not ACCOMPLISHING.

All I want to do is eat candy, and then I feel guilty because eating candy will make me rather more fat and globular.

I need to exercise. I need to write. I need to not feel like I'm breathing underwater any more!

*flail* *flop*

That is all.

Wednesday I won third prize in the Hessler Street Fair poetry contest! Yay! The fair itself is a week from this weekend - May 18th and 19th. I'll be reading my poem on the 19th during the day. (The organizers are notoriously lax in scheduling but they say 'around noon'.)

I hope the weather is nice! Come see me read "The Mermaids of Lake Erie".

And now I should really post a poem. I was looking through my poetry before the reading and feeling a lot of 'wow these poems are bad'...

Which is good. I'm learning.

The Jalopy

In a world of hybrid mini bikes, Liz Mangan drove a Ford LTD.
Nineteen Seventy Five wide and Four hundred fifty-five cubic inches of
No replacement for displacement VROOM.
Fees and permits and a fuel cell for the city streets --
New streets are too narrow, mostly, built for vehicles built around us,
Technology so unobtrusive now. It doesn't need to drag itself.
But when she slams into her two parking spots
Twice the necessary speed with a controlled fishtail -
Men half her age gaping in admiration
No replacement for displacement!
You don't ask if the cost is worth it.

Maybe it's the cocktail of sinus and cough medication I'm taking, but I teared up when I saw Hyperbole and a Half is back. Her last blog entry was about severe depression and then nothing for months. I mean... not hard to connect the dots here. The poor thing!

Her whimsical blog posts gave me the idea to start illustrating my blog a bit, and she's way nicer to read than The Oatmeal, who always feels a bit... mean to me. (Sorry, but he does - to the point where I feel kinda guilty when I find something he writes funny.)

Anyway, I feel like I should put an illustration in this blog post. Because yeah. Also, I've not been blogging all that regularly, have I?

So have a unicorn.



I'm not a very good unicorn artist, despite having devoted first through third grade to the study thereof. Perhaps I should have kept up with that. *cough*

Yesterday I slept all day, until almost 4pm. Solid and deep. Felt good. I was healthy and fine for the poetry reading at Mac's Back's last night, where I was quite stunned to get third prize.

Today not so much with the healthiness but I came to work.

Going to poetry readings, winning prizes, drawing unicorns - I feel like I'm back in high school. Oh, and I'm going to college this summer! heeeee!

*cough cough*

1. Start strong. It only takes one song to get to the top of the hill. Keep pushing. You'll be there before "Summertime Blues" ends.

2. UGH potholes. City, these lumps of asphalt are NOT HELPING. Maybe if I go on the gravelly edge?

3. Is this a road or a stream bed? Does the silt build-up here indicate water slowing because of the turn or because it's slightly flatter here?

4. It's not flat here.

5. Tweed suit guy is right behind you, Marie! Don't let him pass you! Smug spandex-wearing fast cyclist could be right on your heels! Push!

6. This totally counts as an off-night workout. Coach would be pleased.

7. Feel the burn! Fourth down! All the way!

8. That landmark is half-way.

9. I'm so full of it. That's not even a third of the way up. The next landmark is half-way.

10. That's not half-way. UGH. Well, I know when I hit the end of the houses...

11. Oh god I'm being passed! NO! NOT AGAIN! GAAAAAAH. Stupid standing-up spandex narrow tire jerk...

12. I wonder if I could use this to get out of conditioning at practice?

13. I'm hilarious. I should totally blog this.

One of my friends posted the age-old "Women only date jerks and put nice guys in the 'friendzone'" trope on his facebook page. I commented snidely, assuming he'd only put it up to make fun of it, and then found out that he was actually shocked by the negative feedback his joke got from his female friends.

"But... I'm nice to women and I never abuse them and they don't date me - but they do date abusive guys."

The man sees a pattern in his life, from his point of view - and feels like it's indicative of something wrong with women. But it isn't. And look at the bias of the viewpoint. The narrator judges who is nice and who is abusive - and his sample set? I doubt he's making a statistical analysis comparing percentage of men who don't abuse women and do have girlfriends to those who are abusive and don't have girlfriends. (An abusive non-boyfriend would be like counting when lightening doesn't strike, wouldn't it?)

Let's get this part out of the way: Women choose their mates the same way men do. The exact. Same. Way. It's part luck and compatible interests, big time what makes your lizard brain get jiggy.

Seems to me there's a basic disconnect between men and women - and I do mean only a certain set of men and women - we'll call them "gender role normals".

Let's say a woman is attracted to a guy in her general friend circle. She's nice to him, flirts, tries to maximize contact, does small favors for him, all in the hopes he'll come around to wanting more. He doesn't. He turns her down flat and asks that they remain "just friends."

The woman then thinks, "What's wrong with ME?" She either wasn't pretty enough or smart enough or, well, something. She'll redouble her efforts to make herself more "date-worthy."

Now let's look at the same situation reversed: a man is attracted to a woman in his general friend circle. He's nice to her, flirts, tries to maximize contact, does small favors for her, all in the hopes she'll come around to wanting more. She doesn't. She turns him down flat and asks that they remain "just friends".

The man thinks, "What's wrong with HER?"

And then goes around telling all his friends how unfair it is that he gets to be friends with this woman he desires. No doubt it's because he's just so gosh darn nice. They'll all agree and go about nicely making every woman in earshot feel like crap for not dating them.

I don't understand why anyone would be upset to get to be friends with someone. Isn't it nice to be friends? Why do you want to not be friends with me? Are you only friends because you hope it will lead to something more?

Maybe it's our fault. We tell guys we want to be friends sometimes when we don't even want to be friends - maybe that's why 'the friend zone' becomes such a negative concept. I tolerate 'friendships' with several men who outright creep me out. They're over-friendly, violate my personal space, and generally make me want to run away whenever they're near. But I stay 'friendly' because I was taught not to be mean to people.

Thing of it is - this causes real damage. I was so messed in the head by all the men around me espousing stuff like this that I honestly felt that I could not say no to any guy who asked me out - it was mean and horrible to turn men down! I saw that in all movies, books, tv, and in the general conversation around me. Our culture is steeped in this idea of male privilege where women are prizes awarded automatically for good behavior.

This shit gets women into abusive relationships. This shit makes them stay in abusive relationships. Let me tell you, my first boyfriend WAS abusive. And he himself would say he wasn't and is a nice guy - and if I outlined point for point every time he was abusive to me, he'd just think I was being crazy. Every 'asshole' you see a girl dating? THINKS HE'S A NICE GUY. And she thinks he's a nice guy, too. That's why she's dating him.

Guys say "Well, why are you upset? People accuse me of being shallow when I date a prettier girl." It's not the same unless you have purposefully dated only ugly girls for, oh, ten years because of the pressure you felt for being told that. It's about the power of the message. It's about how it controls us.

So no, I won't treat it like a harmless joke, because it isn't.

Our football game on Saturday was played here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Stadium

The wikipedia pictures don't quite do it justice. There was a definite sense of neglect and dilapidated grandeur. It took us a bit to find the field at all, tucked away as it was in the back of a fairground. We drove past roller coasters, abandoned (for now?) and forlorn in the grey, rainy light.

The field surface was astroturf, a material properly relegated to history - sort of like a low-pile all-weather carpet, and it was a bit worse for wear. The far-side stands were retracted for baseball, presenting a worn slatted wall and giving us a huge sideline. All around the sideline were holes of forgotten purpose, covered with astroturf plugs. What worried me were the large holes in the field for baseball, open sand-boxes with the metal base-stops still in them and a raised lip around the edge. The refs kicked at the base stops for a bit while we warmed up, but must have decided just to keep an eye on them.

The sound system kept cutting on and out, sudden disjointed bars of music or half of an announcement. "We will we will... click... buzzz... ball on the... buzzz." Silence predominated under the light of scattered old bulbs. The precarious press-box hung vacant under the shed roof, and it felt like a ghost might be up there, trying to talk to us but his intangible fingers couldn't turn the knobs.

The large, ancient scoreboard had the patina of a tobacco ad on the side of a barn. It was not working or just not in use, a cartoon bird watching us balefully beside the empty sockets where our score should go. The game had a timeless quality, I guess. We had no idea when in the quarter we were, or how much time was left. Our final score had to be gotten from our stats keeper after the game. The ref just said, "I don't know, it was a lot to a little."

Final score was, incidentally, 40-0. So I suppose for the home team, it really was a haunted stadium.

I kind of want to write a story about that... a haunted football game. Kicking around ideas in my head for it.