Tess = ArithmeTICKED OFF

I often confuse left with right. I understand the concepts of left and right perfectly well in theory, but in practice I turn a lot of circles. Scholars of my existence have identified a recurring motif: I'll misspell "ie" words with "ei", call Doug "Dave", shift to reverse when I mean to drive, yadida. I've accepted this as a glitch in my brain and I'm okay with turning a few circles occasionally, but I'm not fucking doing math anymore.

If you tell me I can excel in math by just trying harder, I'll blow up your house with a bazooka. I know I can excel in math, but I can only do it if I constantly flagellate myself and invest all of my energy into working against my natural weaknesses, and in that amount of time I could achieve three times as much doing something else. It's a waste of my effen time - so don't invite me to your math parties; don't take me on a math cruise to Math Island. I don't have to go, and I won't. Fuck your math.

Tesscribe

I write. Similarly, I poop. I've been pooping for as long as I can remember. I poop because of a process that I don't completely understand, and I don't have an intimate emotional relationship with my poop. I poop with relative predictability, but sometimes my pooping is impeded indefinitely, which has an understated but paralyzing impact on my life. Sometimes I create epic poops uncontrollably, and sometimes when I try desperately to poop my efforts are rewarded only with a few pathetic little bits of par-digested fecal matter. Often I can't stand the stink of my own poop. This is gross and offputting, right? This is something you really don't need to know about, right? Such, in my case, is the creative process.

When I've been complimented on my writing, I generally don't know how to respond beyond the default thanks. I'm vaguely flattered but mostly embarrassed and vulnerable; I've been caught on the toilet with my pants down. I really can't take much credit for my writing anyway. Beyond maintaining my diet, I barely have any control over the caliber of my poop. I can't explain what makes my poop how it is, whether or not other people think it's good for some reason. My body creates my poop, and my soul creates my writing - not me.

Tesstionaire (Work in Progress)

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Art Tesstory

I'm taking an art history class at the local community college, which has a reputation for attracting delinquents and underachievers from our school district. Predictably, this is true, but not completely true. I was surprised to like community college - but why shouldn't I? It has all the resources of college, ironically without the obligation to community. Every student is an island by default, and the pressure to crash together and form continental cliques is absent. Most people that end up at community college have deviated from the beaten path to get there... we're hitchhikers all; lonely, but united by an unspoken bond of the road.

Art history classes have a reputation for being obscenely boring. Again, this is true, but not completely true. Art history is one of the richest subjects that can be studied; I think the best way to learn about history is to learn about its art and vice versa. With that frame of mind, I don't hurt myself with my feverish, obsessive note-taking. But if I forget why art history is cool, it's very easy to be bored by videos about Romanesque architecture. My point is: everyone should take an art history class. My other point is: remember not to be bored in art history class.

Tess at Twilight

Twilight sucks, you guys. Well, it sucks just as much as any standard paperback romance, but yet millions seem to think that it fell out of the heavens' great literary vagina. Here: there's nothing wrong with liking to read Twilight, just like there's nothing wrong with liking to read paperback romances, as long as you can recognize them all for what they are: lush fantasy stories basically designed to get you off.

I enjoy reading Twilight because personally I get a big arrogant kick out of its shitedom, and I'm minimally entertained by it, and vampire romances make me horny. Reading Twilight is like eating Cheetos; it's indulgent, satisfying, guilt-ridden and utterly lacking in nutritional benefits. Go ahead and eat your Cheetos (I'll eat them for you if you don't want them), but don't tell yourself you're eating fine cheese on crackers. My beef with Twilight doesn't pertain to its immense popularity, but to its reputation as being totally fucking great, because that is false. Twilight isn't Great; it's not Gourmet, it's Cheetos. The writing is mediocre at best, the story is simplistic, the characters are hollow, the plot is vapid. My guess is that the raw allure buried underneath the crappy crap made everyone so goddamned horny that they grew to associate Twilight directly with intense pleasure, which might have led the layman to believe that Twilight is totally fucking great.

I'm not booing the vampire fad - in fact, my other beef is out of respect for the vampire fad. Vampire stories inherently evoke a motherload of sexual tension and symbolism, which is further pursued by the vamp-human romance. Someone setting out to write a vampire story has a lot of deep shit to work with - sex, passion, temptation, love & hate, life & death, right & wrong, what have you - but yet Twilight is so maddeningly shallow and empty. Twilight reads like a fanfiction of its own story, because Stephenie Meyer writes like a drooling fangirl. (Indeed she is, actually - she's a fan of her own dream.) I mean, you can't just stick an apple on the cover and call the deep shit dunzo. Boy, is there a difference between fandom and artistry, and stories as rich as those of vampires deserve to be portrayed artfully.

Now I'm going to deliver this verdict without a trace of bitterness: if you want a shallow, empty and cheaply arousing vampire story, read Twilight. If you want a sensual, thoughtful and intriguing vampire story, watch True Blood. Vampires are dead, long live vampires.

It's Tess, Bitch

I'm not a bitch in any capacity. It's not in my nature, nor was my bitchiness ever nurtured; insecurity has crippled my initiative to learn assertion. This has cut out a lot of potential conflict from my life, which is superficially relieving, but ultimately the only result is that I've become an excellent doormat. To become an excellent doormat, one must achieve a passive and flaccid state of mind, which results in grotesque plasticity. I've noticed myself warping my personality as situations vary just so I can avoid the minimum amount of conflict. Pathetic? Embarrassing? If you say so.

On the contrary, you'll notice that bitches are rigid. A bitch is a bitch no matter where she goes. In my opinion, every woman is entitled to harness bitchiness. Bitchiness is raw power (which is mostly recognized in the context of being used for evil). Bitches are strong and secure, and are thereby capable of great accomplishments. I'm not talking about cruel sophomores who pick on the fat and ugly, because they're just mean, and are actually the opposite of true bitches. Similar misconceptions make true punks hard to identify. Here's a hint: true bitches and punks are rare amongst teenagers, since adolescents are plastic by definition. Another hint: yes, there is a significant overlap between bitches and punks.

I need to learn bitchiness. To be a functional adult, one must be a bitch. My time has come. Bitches, I salute you.

Tessevision

When I think about all the television shows that are worth my time, the length of the list corresponds to how shite I feel. I'd love to be one of those people who stick to a precious few favorite shows, because their TV intake is limited by their interest. But alas, I have genuine interest in all of the following and more: Metalocalypse, 30 Rock, Mad Men, Weeds, Project Runway, South Park, the Simpsons, Venture Bros., True Blood, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, America's Next Top Model, Flight of the Conchords, Freaks and Geeks, Futurama, Strangers with Candy, Planet Earth, Arrested Development, House, the Sarah Silverman Program... and now I feel like some sort of jelly-brained agent of Tha Man. I care so much it hurts. Thankfully a couple of those shows are over so I don't have to face the doom of continuing my devotion indefinitely.

But wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on a second now - what's inherently bad about TV anyway? Yes, it tends to be vacuous/offensive/brainwashing/addictive/etc., but what about the good stuff? TV is the medium of the age. It has incredible power to unite people worldwide, and it has its own unique artistic merit. It's not lowly and backwards, it's refined and modern. (Try not to think about Jackass while reading this.) As viewers, we'd be stupid to let TV govern our lives, but that would be true of anything, and it reflects a problem in us rather than in TV. So: screw you, hippies; marry me, TiVo.

Mysterious Ways

A local girl just killed herself a few days before her high school graduation. For me, as for lots of other people who didn't know her well, there's the blunt impact of realizing that the quiet girl who recently compelled me to buy a used copy of Six-String Samurai on Amazon probably didn't want to be alive at the time that we talked. (Misery, I've found, is either deafening or horribly quiet.) But I know some of the few people who understand the torment that defeated her, and what troubles me most is that for all of her unique problems, the world will only see the crater left by a girl who smiled in pictures and stepped in front of a train. No matter if you're plagued by nightmares or emptiness, cancer or celebrity; there's only one way out, which is through the fingers of everyone you've ever touched. One can only hope that peace exists after the last of their probing. What more cruelly fitting memorial than her Facebook profile, freshly swarmed with messages from people who liked her and loved her, but couldn't possibly understand her?

Then there's the selfish recoil that systematically follows the impact: take me, for example, shaking and sweating on the drive up to my boyfriend's house, unaware that I was one of the last people to hear about the suicide of his close friend, thinking that I'd have to break the news to him and having the nerve to think about how miserable that made me. I should be grateful to have been spared all but a bit of the pain that's just been unleashed. When my mom called later that day and asked how I was doing, I blankly said "Okay" while somewhere in a foggy part of my mind, I was thinking "What the hell does it matter how I'm doing? Someone else is dead." But this is the nature of the human beast, self-centered and delicate: something terrible happens and instantly we think of ourselves. When we join together in the aftermath of a suicide, holding candlelight vigils and compiling our memories, we don't act for anyone but ourselves. We embrace each other to alleviate our own grief, and when we mourn, we mourn not the pain of the dead, but our personal loss. Suicide is the most selfish act possible, and it in turn inspires great selfishness; in the end, the dead and the living turn their backs on each other, and we are farther away from the suicide victim than ever before.

When people end their lives, hardly anyone can understand how it could happen, because the equation is baffling (especially when the people in question are apple-cheeked young folk): on the one hand, there's friends and family and love and music and sunny days and laughter and the exciting promise of the future, and on the other, there's the abandonment of hope, the lonesome scary trip out of waking life, and the hellish aftershock of nausea and tears and scarring that is left behind. The choice of the latter is unfathomable to healthy humans, which is proof of good evolution. This hopeless oblivion haunts those who are close to someone that opts out of life (what's more disturbing than realizing that someone who seemed close to you was really very far away?), but the farther away from ground zero one gets, the more comforting the oblivion is. As the proverb gnomes say, "what you don't know can't hurt you". But depression taught me a very sick sensibility which led me to understand how the scales between life and suicide can start to even out. Never did mine tip critically, but being miserable generated the theory that life isn't always worth living. The trick to that equation is the element of dehumanization. For example, just like a bedridden cancer patient who is kept alive less by flesh and blood than by sterile hospital equipment, a depressed person is stripped of that which makes them human: happiness, love, empathy, feeling, spirit. What's the worth of life without humanity, the simple rhythm of the heart and breath? Humanity is what we cherish above all else. Life isn't inherently beautiful; life is a constant gamble between happiness and unhappiness, and happiness is a gift.

Evidently, I've been able to get close enough to this suicide story to be able to bash my head on it rather thoroughly. This is partially due to the absence of comforting degrees of separation, and also to a new sensitivity which I attribute to my experience with debilitating depression. Eerily, sickeningly, I feel closer to this girl as a suicide victim rather than a living acquaintance, having watched her reach the end of a track upon which I barely set foot. While her friends are struggling with feelings of alienation from her, I've had the shock of realizing that we were probably much closer than I thought: and now that I'm suddenly so attracted to her, she's been permanently deleted from life. As I watched her be buried, I tilted my head for a perpendicular perspective and thought "There goes someone I should've known". I suppose this potently strange sort of loss is just another card to be dealt in this endless game of five-card-stud we play... Some fold, condemning the cards in their hand to impotence, isolation, and eternal mystery.

Tess's Five Fears

Drought, head trauma, losing what I love, unwanted pregnancy, old age.

[Edit: I'm also afraid of pressure - in the abstract and concrete sense - and I have a phobia of closed shower curtains.]

Tess Everlasting

Now what's the deal with this business of eternal love? Humans are so fucking pompous to think that we can even grasp the idea of eternity in the first place. It's not enough to have something as wonderful as love; we want to make it last forever, too. Goddamn.

I'm pretty sure that the odds are overwhelmingly against eternal love, anyway. For evolutionary purposes, chemical love only needs to last long enough for procreation to happen, and when it comes to rearing families I'd bet that other instincts are mostly responsible. Look, imagine you get a tattoo that you love when you're 18 and you live to be 80. Do you suppose you're going to love that tattoo every single day of those 62 years? There are bound to be times when you at least feel ambivalent about it, and every once in a while you'd look at it and honestly hate it. One day, someone looks for the entrancing depths in their lover's eyes, and they see nothing. Call me a cynic, but shit happens.

And teenagers - teenagers are the last people who should be preaching about eternal love, and yet we hear a lot on the subject out of the mouths of babes. Teenagers are fucking maniacs, totally blitzed on a triple dose of love hormones, busting out Shakespeare porn after the first date. Teenagers want to propose to the hamburger they ate for lunch. That's fine, if mostly disgusting, until the notion of eternity starts getting thrown around. Yeah, you think your lab partner is The One when you're 17, and you think Eggos are the Best Food in the World when you're stoned. After you pop your last pimple and come down off of the hormone high, your lab partner is probably going to look a lot less special, and you're probably going to regret having bought 8 boxes of Eggos.

I'm no pot calling the kettle black; I, friends, am a kettle. I've often fallen deeply into that myopic brand of infatuation, and even now as a relatively self-aware idiot I still entertain my swollen dreams of happily ever after. And you know, with magical grace, sometimes those dreams eventually fit the bounds of reality. Reality, however, doesn't spontaneously become dreams. By no means should those dreams be censored - they should be as lush and sweet as satisfies the unconscious, but only if we can wake up afterward. People of Earth: make the most of love while you have it, but don't write it into your postapocalyptic calendar, advises this humble observer.

Tess In Space

Ahh, newblog. It already feels so homey. Why am I here (at this internet location instead of the old one - let's not get more complicated than that right now)? Because I am Tess, and this is my blog; I realized that that's all there is to it. Took long enough. Lately I've been trying to untwist my knickers and not be so serious about stuff, because most of our earthly stuff is trivial. I'm overcoming the habit of taking myself very seriously - if you were to call me up a few years ago, I probably would have been too busy chiseling my crappy poetry into marble to come to the phone. But here's how it really is: I yam who I yam, I do what I do, I think how I think and it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong or stupid or glorious, it just is, and is nothing more or less. Hence Tessblog. Love me, love my blog.

Now I'll try to explain why I indulge in the generally ludicrous habit of blogging, and I'll have to talk about my brain to do it. (If you have no interest in the way I think, never visit this site again.) One unbecoming trait of my brain is that it is a shite storage facility. I call myself a writer because I actually need to write stuff down in order to think properly, lest my thoughts end up with all the socks that the dryer eats. I'm also the type to develop an inner monologue, and if I kept it up, it would probably make me crazy. I used to lose sleep by narrating my own thoughts. Writing in a diary didn't get my thoughts far enough from my brain for me to really believe them - because in order to validate them, I'd try to ask myself if they made sense, but my own answer was meaningless since my personal reality is so plastic. So my thoughts ended up here in the industrial labyrinth of the intertubes. No one has to put up with them or give a shit (bonus if someone does), because the security of planting my thoughts in a shared reality is enough for me. I figure if my thoughts are here where everyone can read them, they must be real. The blogging thing is definitely about self-importance, but in my case that's a measurement of how much I should care about my thoughts, not everyone else. Blogging is, with rare exception, an egotistical pastime: that's why my name is everywhere, 'cause this shit is about me me me me me me me. Maybe sometimes it looks like it might be about something else. Nope. Me.

So here's my shit. If you don't like it, you can suck it. If you like it, you can suck it too, if you so desire. In conclusion, me.

Tess For Peace

I've got these bikini bottoms with peace signs all over and they make me feel like a big salty douche. Goddamn, they are so ridiculous. Okay, well, in my defense, they were the only bikini bottoms in Macy's that didn't make my love handles explode over the waistband like Pillsbury dough, and I dig the pattern, all meaning aside. But it is pretty freaking ridiculous to advertise peace on your clothes, let alone all over freaking bikini bottoms. I mean, chances are if you're purchasing clothes that advertise peace, you're in a place where you're not going to change any minds. For example, here I am in the Bay Area, spitting distance from San Francisco. I'm not going to get anything done by advertising peace on my swimsuit here. It's not like I'm parading my ass around the leaders of the world until they all agree that peace is the answer, then get stoned and listen to Dark Side of the Moon.

Chances are also that if you're purchasing clothes that advertise peace, you probably haven't put a whole lot of thought into the matter. Chances are that you dig the Lucky Brand neo-hippie look, are generally into love and peace, and have smoked weed at least three times. And if you have actually sat down and thought about peace for a long time and carefully reached the educated conclusion that peace is the answer, what in the sam hell are you doing spending your time and money at the mall? Wouldn't you rather be contributing to the cause in a more direct manner? If you want to legitimately campaign for peace, you'll be lonely amongst hordes of twats in peace-sign bikini bottoms, and wearing peace signs on your clothes isn't going to do much. Even if you fly out to Baghdad wearing a peace-sign pin, you'd probably just get shot a little more promptly than others. Now the peace sign is just like the Abercrombie moose.

It's not doing much for me, either. Maybe people will like my butt more if they see that it's a peaceful butt. I'm conflict-phobic; does that count? What am I going to do if someone calls my bluff at the beach?

"I see you're into peace."
"Uh, yeah."
"That's radical, man."
"Uh, yeah, thanks."

Oh man. I am a toolie tool.

Tess Read a Booky Wook

Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun,
If the sun don't come you'll get a tan
from sitting in the English rain.
- "I Am The Walrus" by the Beatles



Russell Brand is a punk; his whole godforsaken life has been about being incendiary and disgusting. Let me tell you that there is probably nothing more punk than showing up to work dressed as Osama bin Laden on September 12, 2001.

Russell Brand is so punk that he even rebels against himself. His memoir reads like a scathing exposé of a notoriously vile human - which it is, except the author and the subject happen to be the same person. This accounts for the aura of detachment that coexists in the writing with a profound sense of intimacy. Brand will reveal the darkest, most nauseating and unbecoming parts of his existence to you, and he will do this with complete honesty and absolutely wicked humor. His autobiography (in effect, his life) displays a total disregard for his audience's standards and preferences: Russell Brand doesn't give two flying fucks if people want to read a happy ending, or if maybe they don't want to hear about his diarrhea or the babysitter that whacked off in front of him.

The only book I've ever read that compares to his is Marilyn Manson's autobiography; they both calmly contend with extraordinarily unpalatable subject matter, and actually the two characters are remarkably similar. Both are articulate, egomaniacal punks with warped psyches, traumatic histories and an insatiable taste for the perverse, and neither has much hope for becoming a functional member of society. (That's being a little harsh on Brand, but not at all for Manson.) However, there is one paramount difference of attitude that distinguishes one from the other: Manson's autobiography reads with a sick sense of pride, whereas Brand's is written with humility that's on par with shame. Manson says "This is my life and everything I've done, and it's made me who I am today" (who, to his obvious delight, is an Antichrist Superstar). Brand says "This is my life and everything I've done, and it's made me who I am today, and frankly it's all horrid". Both of their autobiographies could be called The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, but only Manson's is. Which name did Brand settle on? My Booky Wook. Fucking five-year-olds want to pick up a "booky wook". This is the sort of duality that makes his memoir so compelling.

Manson is relatively one-dimensional, because he's a big fat freak with very loose ties to humanity. Reading his book is like paying to see a freak show: it's done to seek entertainment from the incredible strangeness that exists among us. No one expects to relate to the deformed conjoined twins, nor to holding in enemas with groupies for sport, which is one of the many colorful items on Manson's resume. Au contraire, Brand tends to behave like a freak, but he's undeniably human, and in countless other ways embodies yin and yang: he's miserable, but he's a comedian; he's a womanizer, but he's a romantic; he's fiercely heterosexual, but behaves like a gay guy; he loved his dog, but tortured it; etc. Alongside his despicable tales exists an incredible pathos, and so the experience of reading his book is completely different. Brand's dualism lets the reader absorb his outrageous material while maintaining sympathy for him - relating to him - which makes his memoir deeply impressive. Manson devoted his memoir to his sickness, whereas Brand detached himself from his sickness to devote his memoir to comedy. Both Manson and Brand are walking the long hard road out of hell, but Manson loves it, like a freak would, and Brand hates it, like a human would. Ay, there's the rub.

So who is the greater punk? Manson, in his spectacular eternal fight against all God's chillun? Or Brand, who, torn apart from himself, is punk when no one watches? We report, you decide.

Tess Fought the Law

I like a lot of punk music, but I really shouldn't listen to it. My theory about punk is that its stylistic foundation is in being offensive. Punk is a force of revolution against how music should sound and people should act, and is definitionally incendiary and disgusting. If that's true, then I'm a total disgrace to the punk movement. I don't believe in anarchy, and I'm a wimp and a peacemaker, and having spent lots of time gravitating happily towards conformity, I certainly can't call myself a rebel. Here's the worst part: I listen to punk because I like how it sounds. *facepalm* That's exactly as wrong as possible. Punk at its best is shite music played by people who are too intoxicated to use their instruments as anything but symbols or weapons. Not only am I not supposed to actually like it, but it should be impossible to like.

Here's more about what this crackpot theory entails: the Sex Pistols, an obscenely ugly phenomenon, are the best punk band ever. The Ramones, with their radio-friendly riffs and matching outfits, may be the worst punk band ever. They are, though, one of history's greatest pop groups. The Ramones were rarely offensive (on a historically significant level - except when Dee Dee sang) or incendiary; au contraire, people love the Ramones. No one loves the Sex Pistols, because there's no place for love in punk. Plus, the Ramones demonstrate a small spectrum of emotions in their catalog, from energetic joie de vivre to lovesickness to melancholy. Punk doesn't leave room for emotions, either.

This theory portrays punk as a philosophy rather than a genre of music, therefore punk can be found in surprising places: Rage Against the Machine is absolutely punk, M.I.A.'s strange sound and behavior is punk, the startling cacophony of Modest Mouse's early days is punk, Beth Ditto is fucking punk, Lady GaGa is punk, Nirvana is plain punk (grunge was born of punk), Andy Warhol was punk, Brunelleschi was punk, the women's suffrage movement was punk, even Lil Mama is a lil punk... I'm not about to call her Lil Rotten, but the rebellious spirit of punk is reflected in all of these places, accompanied by a subtle threat to listeners' standards and preferences.

Whatever else they may tell you, true punks must have enjoyed high school, because it's the best place to be punk. Punks are warriors, and high school is a battlefield. I'm not nostalgic for it. I didn't like being so oppressed by fear as to sneak a water-bottle pipe behind the train tracks to smoke weed, or dropping a 12-pack and running from the cops, or lying to my parents to cover my tracks. I raised my middle finger reluctantly. Ironically, the high-schooler's fight against the law eventually ends in compromise: "Okay, now you can stay out late and drink, but I'm still not letting you smoke weed. Truce?" Yes, for some, including me.

I will always love the Ramones, and I will never love the Sex Pistols. Punk is a scary place, and my heart isn't anywhere near it. But I will gleefully crank Never Mind the Bollocks while driving my mom's Prius, chanting words that mean nothing to me with a snarl that isn't mine.

Tess is Super Serial

I like That 70's Show even though it has a laugh track, which is amazing. Why? I think everything I like about it is summed up by its being set in the 70's. Choosing to set a sitcom in the most ridiculous decade of the century creates a solid foundation for endless tongue-in-cheek humor. That 70's Show isn't innovative; its humor is unabashedly retro and garish, but it's very self-aware. It doesn't take itself seriously, and it's much easier for me to enjoy television if I don't bother trying to take it seriously (example, America's Next Top Model; exception, Metalocalypse, which I consume with deadly seriousness). Plus, it's actually funny. Plus, I have a huge crush on Laura Prepon. [Edit: Nope, I was wrong. That 70's Show is definitely innovative. Its humor pays homage to the garish style of the time, but it has a modern sensibility. I still have a crush on Laura Prepon, though.]

Taking things seriously is not a favorite hobby of mine. I dislike most euphemisms because they demand to be taken seriously despite their literal absurdity. "Passing on" is something done with a note that says "Do You Like Me? Yes - No - Maybe". "Making love" makes me think of Keebler elves icing heart-shaped sugar cookies. Blech. Do couples that "make love" flatter themselves that the sweaty mechanical interaction of their genitals is conjuring some magical attraction? They're probably confused about the chicken and the egg, too. In the unnecessary event that love and sex are related, love makes sex, not vice versa. [Edit: That was narrow-minded of me. Sex definitely precedes love sometimes, but not enough to justify the euphemism.] The closest I've gotten to "making love" with someone is especially tender cuddling, when I felt the distinct possibility that love between us was actually being created. I think euphemisms are like using rubber-tipped bullets to break up a riot: a cowardly method that smacks of douche. (Smacks of Douche, my anthology of feminist poetry, will be released later this year.) I can, however, definitely be caught using ridiculous euphemisms on purpose, especially when sex is involved. And kids, when you make whoopee, remember to wrap your willy.

Tess Lets It Be

Yes, I do "love the Beatles". Their oeuvre and history entrance me; I bought a illustrated book of their lyrics used on Amazon; I won't claim that I could listen to their music continuously, but I believe I could listen to it forever.

I love the Beatles like I love their song "Across the Universe", which is relatively new to me (Let It Be was one of the last of their albums for me to listen to completely, which I first did sometime last winter). I was surprised to have gone without hearing the song so long, since it usually pops up amongst the big songs associated with the Beatles. I even watched the movie Across the Universe (more about that later) without ever having heard the original song. Such impertinence! I was pretty convinced that I, as a Beatles fan, was doing something very wrong by not having associated with this particular ditty.

When I first heard the song, I was disappointed: it sounded strange, and I couldn't understand why everyone was so enamored by it, which was disappointing per se. It had been overhyped to the point that disappointment was inevitable. Discouraged, I resigned myself to the "C" grade I deserved as a fan. I heard the song many more times before I noticed that the opening twangs of guitar were lingering in my head; later I would come to crave the moment that the singing starts, the sentimental melody, the potent rhythm of the lyrics, the unearthly ambience. Eventually it was obvious that I was in love, and I was relieved until I realized I had no idea why I was in love. I'd never paid enough attention to the lyrics to actually listen to them, and when I did, I was unimpressed. Clearly I was oblivious to the true meaning of the song and had been seduced on an empty, superficial level, and I became disappointed again.

I decided to give up on my aspirations of sagacity and greatness as a fan, instead simply indulging my id by playing the song over and over again. I found this less stressful and more rewarding... and when I recognized that, the epiphany struck. I wasn't in love with an elaborate philosophy, I was in love with the song because of how it made me feel. The song really has no concrete meaning; in fact, the lyrics are distinctly abstract, connoting fluidity and rapture and illusions. I wasn't missing out on the meaning of the song because of how I loved it - my love encapsulated the song itself.

In the clarity of this enlightenment, I understood my love of the Beatles similarly. The Beatles are a transcendent phenomenon, a timeless source of love and illumination for the people of the world. (I assume this to be fact, and any arguments of that fact should probably be directed to the authors of the encyclopedia.) This limitless undying love shines around me like a million suns, and now I can see no point in trying to intellectualize the situation or straining my eyes to see who else has been captured by the light. My only obligation is to sunbathe.

About Across the Universe: I'm glad I saw it and I'd like to see it again, but I can't fully appreciate it. I respect the ambition and passion that went into it, but it relied on a concrete interpretation of the Beatles' music, which is contrary to my belief of how the Beatles are best experienced. Also, musicals creep me out.

Tess in Love in Cherry

I'm besotted with my first boyfriend; I guess it had to happen sometime. Our relationship could be measured from the time the germs of mutual attraction sprouted (about a year and a half), or from the time we determinedly first touched lips (five months), or simply by the intense karmic pulses that encapsulate the whole union.

The symptoms of love are humiliating: earnestly firing off sentimental text messages, reflexive head rushes begat by the slightest waft of a scent reminiscent of theirs, empathy with some of the worst love songs ever written, a treasure-box of shared memories that swarm the ether of consciousness... I can't even bring myself to describe the gallery of facial expressions associated with infatuation. Truly, the whole process is nauseating.

When in love, trying not to talk about it is like trying to stuff Jello into an envelope; the soggy paper rips and saccharine goop spills everywhere, and Jello should really make anyone want to vomit - the flavors are abominable, the texture is scary and besides, the shit is made of horse hooves. Why even go to the effort of stuffing it into an envelope? It should be left in the fridge indefinitely, preferably in the basement where it won't intrude upon everyday meals. The deeper I submerge into love, the more I want to kick myself, but I usually can't manage it because it's very hard to move within Jello.

In its defense, though, Jello is fun to make. This is probably because the preparation process is stupidly easy: heat some water, mix it with the powder (for extra credit, make sure all the powder is dissolved), mix that with cold water, and refrigerate. Seriously? The hardest part is waiting for it to firm, unless the bag of powder is especially tricky to open. A kindergartner could make Jello; your grandmother could make Jello; my little brother could make Jello and he can barely keep his pants on all day. If this gratuitous metaphor is making you sick, go lay down with a cool compress and start thinking about how you're going to deal with life, and please let me know if you figure something out.

Tess Got Stoned

Through a joyous collaborative effort, a scale of highness must be invented. Highness will be measured by symptoms. Here are some I can name offhand:

"I am swallowing rainbows"
"I am making puppets by dipping my fingers in hummus"
"Maybe I'm dead"
"Reggae is so good"
"Why can't everyone just love each other?"
"No one likes me"/"Everyone is only pretending to like me"
"My mouth is a desert where moisture comes to die"
"My body is a metropolis and I am its god"
"Everything is so significant"
"I am too scared to go to the store to buy cookie dough"
"Am I peeing my pants?"
"I only know that I am having a serious discussion about something"
"Everything I say is totally ridiculous because I'm high"
"I can't be in public right now"
"Do I always think like this?"
"This is fucking hilarious. Why didn't I notice before? Maybe I took it for granted when I was sober"
"I am utterly alone because no one can possibly understand me"
"What if I never get sober?"
"Time is like a series of Venn diagrams"

These are generally cohesive enough to lump into categories. I don't think this is a linear scale, but maybe one like a bullseye with sobriety in the center.

Tess Watches the Watchmen

Watchmen is a big fucking deal. Both the book and the movie make me cream my britches (the movie slightly more so, probably because everyone's hotter). The highly graphic novel is a masterpiece; the actual story is extraordinary, but Watchmen is less about the story than how it's told. The artistry makes the most of every technique that is unique to the comic-book medium. It busts out of all the trappings of inferior comic books, such as old plot lines, trite dialogue, shallow characters, unrealistic settings, and boring graphics. There's nothing like it. Fittingly, it operates much like a clock, all the carefully constructed little pieces working together to keep the story ticking along. I don't think I can properly convey how completely awesome this is without sounding stale or drooling on my keyboard, so I'm done. Here's the thing: Watchmen is the perfect graphic novel (big whoop, wan-na fight-a bout it?), which is the biggest problem about making a movie of it. What makes it brilliant is the way the story is told, so what happens when it needs to be told in a totally different way? How is the perfect movie made into a short story, or the perfect poem made into a symphony? Shit is complicated, son.

Trades have to be made when movies are made of books. Description is exchanged for direction, usually some content has to be cut, and sometimes the movie thwarts the author's intention for the book in order to sell better. It gets right down to interpretation, and we readers have to cross our fingers that the movie is either interpreted simply to adequately put the book on screen (e.g. Harry Potter) or that the interpretation is appropriate (e.g. Fight Club). The makers of the Watchmen movie were really caught in a celluloid jam, because it's impossible to transfer the comic straight to the screen, but the movie is primarily a vehicle for the comic. Well, shit. They had the same story to work with, and they could take some visual cues from the book, but beyond that, they had squat.

Paging Zack Snyder. This guy really cinched the movie for me; he treated the story with the same type of innovation, grace and attention to detail that made the comic so hot. Watchmen is so goddamn intimidating that an attempt to get it on screen could easily have been blasphemous and sloppy (fundamentalist fanboys would probably say that the effort is definitionally blasphemous), but the movie was made with genuine doting care. Therefore, I approve. No way is the movie good like the book is good, but it couldn't have been. (The novel was punk, the movie wasn't.) Yeah, yeah, they cut stuff, they changed stuff, but with minimal offense except to purists. It's just about as good as Watchmen on screen could be.

There's a scene where the character that's been acting towards what he thinks is right in the big picture is left alone and hated by two characters that have been acting towards what they think is right in the small scheme, who are united by love and a common cause. (That sounds chunky, but I ain't spoilin'.) Watchmen is great because, like this scene, it proves that the small scheme is just as important as the big picture: the story operates on a stunning scale, but as it unfolds, each little piece of the puzzle is outstanding. It addresses the whole of humanity - life itself, even - but is equally attentive to the tiny complexities of human relationships. I'm gonna pee my pants just writing about this. Watchmen is boss.

Tess Redux

What do I have? I have lived 17 years and 32 weeks and 2 days, I know I have loved one male human and I believe I loved one other, I have sex, I have only kissed one person with tongue, I have questioned my sexuality, I have been incapacitated by depression, I have experienced complete bliss and its opposite, I have a familiar acquaintance with marijuana, I have handled alcohol irresponsibly with humiliating consequences - but on no more separate occasions than I can count on my fingers, I have smoked cigarettes, I have taken salvia and ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms once each, I have made art, I have mostly matured since my last birthday, I have only lived in one house, I have temporarily left college after one semester, I have prematurely completed compulsory education, I have trouble following my own advice, I have sang and spoken and slammed poetry into a microphone, I have been fat and ugly, I have a spectacular collection of scars, I have hurt myself accidentally and purposefully, I have been to Spain and France and England and Japan and Mexico, I have juggled others' affection, I have two moles on my left and right thighs that are nearly symmetrical, I have painted my nails, I have ruined shirts with sweat, I have bitten other people, I have circled the continuum of laughing and crying, I have peed in my pants and peed outside and peed in my pants outside, I have walked and ran and skipped and jumped and hiked and biked and scootered and swam and rollerskated and kayaked and ridden horseback and used a wheelchair and driven and ridden the bus and train and subway and monorail and flown in a plane and parasailed, I have shoplifted, I have had surgery, I have been professionally pierced eight times for reasons I don't understand, I have dyed parts of my hair pink and purple and blue and teal, I have been an excellent friend and a negligent friend, I have significantly influenced my younger brother, I have a tendency to use pretentious language, I have generally behaved as a vegetarian for more than four years, I have created fiction, I have only had the potential to become a fully formed person since my freshman year of high school, I have been to public school and private school, I have vowed to say what I mean and mean what I say, I have spent countless hours of my life crocheting, I have accidentally seen the Mars Volta live three times, I have obsessive compulsions, I have eaten my boogers, I have been well suited to my committed romantic relationship, I have habitually broken the law to have more fun than was otherwise available, I have forgotten the password to my old blog, I have a detached and hazy memory of my past, and a fickle perception of reality, and hardly any understanding of my future.