Well now, fine Mr. Fiennes, looks like you and i will have to have a serious little sit-down...

Here's something i might not have mentioned here before: one day i plan to marry Ralph Fiennes~now there are a few minor obstacles in that particular road~perhaps the largest of which is that i have never met the man, but what would life be without its challenges?

Now i realize that proclaiming a public figure you have yet to meet your future intended might sound just a touch insane or some may more kindly call it obsessive but i can assure you i do have my more obsessive and less sane tenancies firmly in check~in fact i rarely mention His Name~except to maybe now and again mention my intention to one day marry the man~hey if you want to call that an obsession or slightly crazy i guess i can’t stop you.

But now we are brought to another obstacle, perhaps major, perhaps minor, depending upon your perspective or your judgement of my relative sanity. A dear friend (who is much more up on Hollywood gossip than i was kind enough to forward me the tale of a poor little stewardess who told of a rather lustful and lecherous Mr. Fiennes who had the audacity to follow her into the plane lavatory and try to force himself upon her. To which her most logical and believable response was:

"Oh, why no sir, this is most inappropriate, i really must ask you to stop."

(this is, of course, how i would respond to such a situation~anyone who knows me~especially anyone who Knew me back in those hazy, crazy club kid days of my twenties~please remain silent)

After repeated protestations, the stewardess left the lavatory, followed by a disheveled Mr. Fiennes, observed by her colleagues.

This, of course, resulted in her dismissal.

Apparently, believe it or not, that wasn't quite what REALLY happened, after she had her initial taste of the media the stewardess came out with a bit of a different (and much, much longer) tale and here's that blow by blow (by blow by blow)~was she taking notes for what she was sure would be future publication???) i added a little extra linkage just to Fiennesse it up a bit.

Air stewardess: secrets of my five-mile high sex romp with Ralph Fiennes

By JO KNOWSLEY in Sydney

Last updated at 21:12pm on 17th February 2007

Qantas stewardess tells how she fell for Hollywood star in Seat 2K...and how after a mad, passionate fling he abandoned her to face the sack...

The attraction had been immediate and overwhelming from the moment they first made eye contact.

But as Qantas stewardess Lisa Robertson leaned over towards Hollywood star Ralph Fiennes to offer him a drink, she could not have imagined how the evening would unfold - or that she would end up in a passionate tryst with him in the aircraft lavatory.

When rumours first emerged that Ralph Fiennes joined the Five Mile High Club in the business-class lavatory on flight QF123 from Darwin to Bombay, Qantas issued a statement from Lisa vigorously denying the allegation.

But The Mail on Sunday can now reveal the truth about what happened that night - how the English actor had unsafe sex with the 38-year-old Australian stewardess on the flight and went on to seduce her in an evening of almost non-stop love-making at his lavish hotel in India.

Speaking for the first time, exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, Lisa, a former high-flying police officer, said: 'It's true. We did make love on the plane that night. At first I denied it because I was so desperate to keep my job and I didn't want to hurt Ralph.

'I know some people will think it's disgusting. And I'm not proud of what I did - it was inappropriate behaviour. But I don't regret it. Ralph is gorgeous and the chemistry between us was amazing. What woman wouldn't want to make love with him? This sort of attraction happens to people all the time. It's just not usually with a Hollywood star at 35,000 feet.

Although Lisa makes no bones about having been an enthusiastic participant in the unedifying episode and is clearly still thrilled to have attracted the attention of an international film star, it is hard not to see her also as his victim.

Despite her tall, trim figure, there is sadness in her eyes, highlighted by the medication she takes for depression since she left a tough front-line job as a detective with an elite New South Wales police drugs squad.

One can't help asking whether Ralph Fiennes didn't spot a vulnerable woman, use her, and then abandon her to face the sack from her job with Qantas.

Lisa recognised the 44-year-old star of films including The English Patient from the minute she went to his window seat 2K to offer him a selection of champagne, orange juice and water.

And she admits she was star-struck. He was dressed casually in beige chinos and a long-sleeved shirt, and as he quietly asked for a glass of water she gushed: 'Oh my God, it's you. I am such a fan of your films. I love your work. I've seen The English Patient 20 times.' She recaptured her composure and added: 'I'm so sorry. This is so unprofessional of me.'

Fiennes, however, looked relaxed and amused.

'He leaned forward, gazed deep into my eyes and stroked my arm as if to reassure me,' said Lisa. 'He whispered, 'It's OK. Anyway, I think you're gorgeous.'

She admits: 'I felt overwhelmed. I felt like you do when you're a teenager. My heart was pumping with excitement. We kept looking at each other and giggling. He was just so gorgeous. I noticed he had lovely soft skin, beautiful hands and wonderful eyes.
'I expected him to be aloof. But he was just so nice. He had a strange kind of vulnerability about him. For the rest of the evening, although I was working on the other side of the cabin, we kept looking at each other. He was watching me serve drinks, staring intensely. He didn't have a meal and drank only a couple of glasses of Shiraz.

'But every time I looked up I saw that he was watching me. We were seriously flirting across the cabin, which is not like me. I've served a lot of famous people, including Shane Warne and Ian Thorpe, and I'm not usually like that at work.'

Lisa, who is divorced, continued with her duties, serving the evening meal before the cabin lights dimmed. There were only 12 passengers in business class that night.

Then, as she was preparing to go on her break, Fiennes made an unexpected suggestion. Lisa said: 'We had chatted a bit about India - where I've been five times - and his movies.

'When I told him I was going for a break, he said, "I might come and visit you for a chat, if that's OK." I was a bit surprised, but also thrilled. I said, "Sure."'

Lisa admits she was smitten by the star, but says she did not make the first move and had no thought of what might happen next.

It was 11pm and most of the other passengers were asleep. Lisa retired behind the curtained crew area, next to the cockpit, took off her shoes and put her feet up. But moments later she was interrupted by Fiennes.

'I'm sorry, were you sleeping?, he said. 'No,' she replied. 'Come in and take a seat.'

Lisa is not proud of what happened next, but she found Fiennes 'irresistible'. 'At first we just chatted,' she said. 'He sat really close to me. He told me he was learning lines for a new movie with Colin Farrell, playing the part of a gangster. He said he was practising his cockney accent.

'I asked him to give me an example. He did and it was really good. I told him again that The English Patient was just the best movie, but he said, 'That was over ten years ago. Why don't people value my later work?'

'I apologised and said I didn't mean to offend him. I guess we talked for about an hour about lots of different things. He thought it was funny that I lived alone with my dog, a Lhasa Apso-poodle cross called Finn.'

Fiennes told Lisa he was touring Indian villages for Unicef to talk about AIDS awareness. He asked what she would be doing in Bombay, where she was staying, and said, 'Do you want to meet up?'

Stunned and deeply flattered, Lisa said: 'Yeah. That would be cool.'

By this point they were sitting so close their faces were just inches apart. Lisa said: 'He held my hands. Then he started kissing me. The kissing was very passionate and his hands were all over me. I just melted.

'He was caressing my neck, holding my head and he started undoing the buttons on my dress. The way he was going, he would have made love to me right there.

'I was very turned on and so was he. I had butterflies in my stomach. I was touching his face and his hair. He had beautiful skin. I was undoing his shirt as well. It was a bit surreal, like a scene from one of his movies.

'But I was afraid my supervisor might pull back the curtain and catch us. Eventually, I couldn't bear it any longer. I just grabbed his hand and said, "Come in here a minute."

'By this time, we had half our clothes off and I didn't care about anything. I led him into the cabin lavatory next to where we had been sitting and locked the door.

'Ralph was a great lover. And I thought if I was going to get the sack, it would be worth it. I knew it was against the rules and wrong but I didn't care.

'I was a bit shocked that he didn't wear a condom. Looking back, I think of it as dangerous behaviour and
hypocritical given that he was going to India to talk about AIDS.

'He asked me, "Have you ever done this before?". I said, "No, never." I asked him the same question and he said, "No."

'The only strange thing was that he kept his eyes open the whole time, staring at me intensely, although we were kissing madly.
'I realised that people would miss me and wonder where I was as my break was almost over. I told him we had to get out of there quickly.

'I helped him get dressed and he told me that when he got out of the toilet he would press his call button to distract the other flight attendants so that I could leave.

'But a male member of staff saw Ralph come out of the toilet and he saw me lock the door after Ralph. When I came out, the member of staff was still there. I prepared to get back to work but the cabin manager wanted a word with me. She asked, "Did you go into the toilet with a male passenger?"

'I said, "No." But she said three people saw me do it. She told me I had crossed the line and that she was going to report me when we got back to Sydney.

'Ralph called me over and asked, "Is everything all right?" I told him, "No,"and sat down next to him. He was very concerned, but I downplayed it and said I would sort it out.

'I knew I was in big trouble. I was ordered to spend the rest of the flight working in economy and I was the talk of the other cabin crew. I was able to talk to Ralph again to reassure him that everything was fine. I wanted to see him again in Bombay. I didn't want him to freak out and not call me.'

Even now, almost a month after the incident on January 24, Lisa still seems to find the events surreal. She claims her behaviour was out of character but says: 'I just had no control over myself. I wanted him so much. I couldn't resist him.'

She has had only one other liaison with a man she met while working on a flight - an American with whom she had dinner and later spent a weekend in New York.

'But that was very much out of office hours,' she said. 'Men travelling business class are always coming on to me. They invite me to go for weekends away to lavish locations and nice hotels and give me their cards. But I usually just throw them away.'

Lisa had a sheltered upbringing with her two brothers in the town of Wagga Wagga near Sydney. Her father Graham, a butcher, and her mother Sandra were so protective that she did not have her first sexual relationship until the age of 20 when she went to the New South Wales police academy.

Lisa recalled: 'My mother had cancer when I was 11. She survived but it was traumatic. I never really had time for boys. I was the only girl in the middle of two brothers and I had a lot of responsibility.'

She also had low self-esteem. 'My brothers teased me about being flat-chested, so I've had breast implants. They said I was skinny and gawky. And I hated being 5ft 9in tall. I never felt attractive.'

She married a fellow police officer, John Duncan, and had a high-flying career in undercover drug work and hostage negotiation.

After 14 years her police service ended due to her suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. And her marriage did not survive.

Indeed, she seems wary of men, saying she has been repeatedly exploited by them. 'So many treat you badly,' she said. 'They're just after sex. They're losers.' Ironically, she thought Fiennes was 'so sensitive, so different'.

Only now has Lisa begun to wonder. She has seen last week's reports claiming that he has been dumped by his girlfriend of five months, interior designer Sirin Lewenden, because of his wandering eye, mood swings and constant demands for sex. Their romance began after he split from his long-term partner, actress Francesca Annis.

On flight QF123, however, Fiennes seemed to Lisa an impossibly exotic lover, very different from the men she usually encounters. And while she says she never expected a romance, she didn't hesitate in saying yes when he asked her if he could meet her at his Bombay hotel.

Brimming with anticipation, Lisa stood next to Fiennes before he left the plane so they could talk. 'He was wearing a funny old white hat and a Kathmandu backpack, which made him look very eccentric,' she said.

'I gave him my mobile number and he repeatedly said he would call me. I was sad to see him go. I just wanted to go with him.'

Lisa had been at her hotel - the Grand Hyatt - for only about half an hour when Fiennes called her. He was on his way to his hotel, the Intercontinental, and wanted her to come over.

Lisa said: 'I had a shower, put on a little floral sun dress and my flip-flops. I put on minimum make-up and had a glass of Sauvignon blanc because I was a bit nervous.'

At the Intercontinental she found Fiennes was checked in, under his own name, to room 663, a lavish corner suite on the sixth floor. After calling the room, she was escorted up by security guards.

She said: 'Ralph opened the door with just a white towel around his waist. He said, 'Hi, how are you darling? Come in, I'm just having a bath. Make yourself a drink.'

'He dropped the towel and was wandering around naked. I was laughing, I thought it was hilarious. But I wander around naked a lot at home, so it didn't bother me. He had quite a nice body. It's obvious he's not a gym work-out kind of guy. For a man he's got quite a slender body, but I was attracted to him. It was a luxurious room - better than where I was staying. There was a bottle of red wine with a note on it saying, Welcome Mr Fiennes. I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

'He changed into a casual blue shirt and chinos and asked if I would like to have dinner with him. He'd heard there was a lovely restaurant on the roof. I said that would be great. I'd thought he would just keep me in the room, make love to me and throw me out.

'But it surprised me that he was a gentleman and he was treating this meeting like a real date.

'I wasn't particularly hungry and he doesn't eat much, so we just had snacks and ordered drinks. He had a Martini. There was a pool and the people around it recognised Ralph. He held my hand and had his arm around me, as if I was his girlfriend.

'He had been in Sydney performing a Beckett play and started to recite bits to me. He asked if I'd seen it. I told him it wasn't my kind of thing. I found that part of the date a bit boring.

'He didn't mention he had a girlfriend. I said I knew he went out with a famous actress, Francesca Annis, and that they'd broken up. He said, 'Yeah, it's been a bad year.'

'From his look of sadness and vulnerability, I guessed he was still in love with her. It was obvious that he was single and struggling with it.

'We had a couple more drinks. I spoke to him about The English Patient and asked him to say that line, 'It's a really plum plum' when the nurse is feeding his character the fruit. He did and I was thrilled. We went back to his room and I suggested we crack open the bottle of red. I poured us a glass each. He put on a DVD - Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels - which he said he was watching for research.

'I sat on the end of the bed. He came over, put his wine by the bed, threw off the top sheet and took off his clothes. I undressed at the same time. There was no conversation and in no time we were kissing and right into it.'

According to Lisa, they made love twice more through the evening - once in the middle of the night. But he told her, before they went back to sleep: 'I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to kick you out in the morning. I've got a lot of calls to make and things to do.'
Lisa said: -I felt fine about that. I understood but I was disappointed.

'I wasn't under any illusions that this would be the start of a romance. He is an upper-class Englishman and I knew it would be just about sex. But I thought we could keep a friendship and that we might make love when he visited Sydney.'

Lisa was woken at 7am by the sound of a mobile phone ringing, followed by Ralph talking. She said: 'He was sitting at the end of the bed. When the call ended he turned around and started kissing and cuddling me. We made love for about 20 minutes. It was excellent, really nice.

'But then he said, 'I'm going to have to kick you out now.' Just before I got out of bed, he said in a sincere, gentle voice, 'Lisa, I really like you.'

'I didn't even have a shower. I just went into the bathroom, tied my hair back and put on my flip-flops. He said, 'See you on the next Qantas flight,' to which I said, 'You will never fly Qantas again.' And he said, 'Oh yes I will.'

'He walked me to the door and kissed me and said, 'Goodbye, darling.' The casual way he said it was like he would see me next week.

'I had mixed feelings as the door closed behind me. I hoped he would call me again. I understood he had Unicef commitments but I was going to be in Bombay for two days, so I hoped he would find time to squeeze me in for another quick love-making session - or even a phone call. When he didn't call I realised I had to get over it. He was never going to.'

Lisa met her flight crew for drinks and confided in one friend, a pilot, what had happened. But she was horrified to learn that everyone seemed to have heard her making love with Fiennes in the lavatory. She says some of the girls were envious and giggled, saying: 'I wish it had been me.'
But Lisa knew her supervisor had reported her. 'I knew I was in big trouble,' she said. On January 26 she flew back to Sydney, where she was told by her management company, airline services contractor Morris Alexander Management, that she had been suspended without pay pending a disciplinary hearing.

On the advice of a lawyer she tried to make contact with Fiennes, leaving an urgent message at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, which had been behind his Beckett performances in Sydney. Within a few hours he called.

Lisa said: 'I told him I was in a lot of trouble and that I had been suspended from work. There was silence at the other end. I told him people had seen us leaving the toilet, but all he said was, 'Nothing happened.' He kept saying, 'We weren't in the toilet.' I told him I couldn't deny it. I said I had to answer the allegation.

Fiennes' reply, when it came, shocked Lisa to the core. She said: 'It was clear he was turning his back on me. He said, 'We don't know each other very well. I'm very sorry, I can't get involved. I can't help you.'

'I was desperate and suggested we said I was doing something like helping him with a contact lens. But he wouldn't agree.

'Then he told me, I've been scarred by an incident about a year ago when my life was dragged through the tabloids. My whole relationship was destroyed. It's ruined my life. You're just a hostess and you don't even like your job. You're not happy in your job. You can get another job.'

'I felt humiliated. It was like talking to a different person. He made me feel like a low-life, like I was asking him for money or something. Then he said, 'Let's have no further phone contact. I'll call you in a month's time, just to show you I'm a human being.' I was stunned.

'I told him, 'You're right. In the big scheme of things, it's not that important. It's just a job. If I do lose my job, it was worth it.'

'I ended the conversation on good terms, but I was angry and disappointed at his attitude and uncaring lack of support and sympathy.

I expected him to take some responsibility for our problem which suddenly became my problem.

'I thought about resigning to protect him. I felt sorry for him because of the speech he made about what he'd been through with the British papers. But I was frightened, I was depressed, I felt completely alone and I had no support.'

The betrayal evoked bitter memories of Lisa's troubled past. On leaving the police, she sued the force for lack of care over her mental health problems, but lost the case and was driven into bankruptcy.

She briefly studied law at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. Then she met a stewardess and thought the job sounded fun. But the hard work and long hours did nothing to ease her depression, for which she still takes medication.

Now, after her fling with Fiennes, she is alone and faces losing her job. Her family have been critical of her and over the past week, since the story first emerged, their communication has been punctuated by fierce rows.

Now Lisa is even more wary of men. 'I've never been lucky in love,' she said. 'I just choose the wrong people. My last relationship, with an Italian flight steward, ended in June.'

Yet bizarrely she insists that, given the chance, she would make love to Fiennes in the lavatory again. 'It must sound crazy,' she said, 'but I wouldn't miss that experience for anything.'

She has convinced herself that Fiennes did care for her, however briefly, and that 'the experience was a lot more than just about sex'.

Does she feel used? 'No,' she insisted. 'We were both fantastically attracted to each other. I am sure he cared about me.

But she pauses, twisting a ring on her finger, as if for the first time considering the more brutal alternatives. 'Then again, she said, he is a very good actor.'

And she concedes that she was stung by his failure to support her story about the contact lens. It was a lie that might have helped her keep her job. 'I am upset by his betrayal,' she said. 'He is a millionaire movie star and I'm a struggling air hostess on £12,000 a year. I have financial problems and nothing to fall back on.

'He could have written a letter giving a version of events which the airline would have been forced to accept.

'What will I do now? Who knows? But I will bounce back. I always do. Maybe I'll finally take some time out to find out what I want and who I am. I should have done that years ago.'

Oh poor, poor Lisa the sky hostess, seduced and abandoned. And she thought she knew him so well...

Now is there anything to be said about that? Did anyone besides me manage to get through the entire text (did anyone besides me care to)? She certainly got a great deal of mileage out of that one. And is it just a british thing to call [something that is clearly not making love] "making love"? How do you get to be 38 years old and still not get it when you're getting it? And did she really expect him to call her let alone come to her rescue like a knight in shining armour? Sex is just Sex baby. Sometimes being unlucky in love (over and over again) equals being stupid in things that are not love. Okay, maybe enough snarkyness from me for the moment.

And how might i behave differently given the circumstances? (well given i am not a stewardess~i would probably not be fired for such an offense) but otherwise i might just keep my mouth shut as it does not shed the best of light on either party. Secondly, i am not quite as star-struck as dear Lisa (and i doubt its the whole two years of age i have on her) i've met a fair number of stars and i certainly wouldn't GUSH over and over again about the film i saw twenty times.

(Personally i fell in love with the ACTING talent of Mr. Fiennes displayed first for a mass audience in his phenominal potrayal of Amon Goth (a true man of evil~and Ralph should have won that best supporting Oscar he was nominated for, damnit!) in Schindler's List and not the rather over-hyped and over-mentioned The English Patient, though of course i own every film he has made, i would NEVER request that he repeat the lines for me, however i would appreciatively listen to something he wanted to recite to me or whatever he was interested in at the moment~tho I never found Becket boring... okay verging on absessive and insane~back to reality...)

In all fairness to my man i must include his side of the story through the official statement of his publicist:

'Ralph Fiennes 'seduced by stewardess'

SYDNEY: British actor RALPH FIENNES was seduced by an Australian flight attendant who acted as a "sexual aggressor" during a long-haul flight to India.

The statement contradicted the version of events put forward by Qantas stewardess LISA ROBERTSON, who said that Fiennes had become amorous with the 38-year-old blonde after pursuing her into a business-class toilet cubicle.

"She initiated the encounter," the actor's publicist SARA KEENE said. "This woman seduced him on a plane. She was the sexual aggressor.

"Yet she said in her official statement (to Qantas) that he had initiated it... and virtually accused him of forcing himself upon her."

"Of course he could have said no. The point I am making is that she initiated it. He didn't force himself upon her." Robertson was suspended from duty after colleagues complained about her behaviour during the January 30 flight from Darwin to Mumbai.

In her defence, Robertson told her employer that the 44-year-old movie star had become "amorous" after the pair chatted together and that he had followed her into the toilet."I explained to him that this was inappropriate and asked him to leave. Mr Fiennes became amorous towards me and, after a short period of time, I convinced him to leave the toilet, which he did," she said.

Keene refused to comment further on what had taken place between Fiennes, the star of The English Patient and Schindler's List, and the air stewardess."I never comment on his personal life. I wouldn't comment on his actions," she said.Fiennes is currently in Belgium to shoot a movie with COLIN FARRELL and has refused to speak to the media about the mile-high scandal.

So there you go.

I got onto the internet today intending to research sinus infections because i think there's a possibility i may have one. Yes, i'm sick again, this one came on sudden and ugly and i was hoping it would leave suddenly too~so far no luck. I have discovered tho that dropping a tablet of Airborne® into the excessively (my ex-boyfriend says it tastes like hot lemonade i say hot salted BITTER~and not in a good way~lemonade) nasty-tasting TheraFlu® does mitagate the taste somewhat.

okay, so i drifted off on a tangent there but, instead of discovering the answer to this question of sinus infection i got ensnared in this sex scandal, so when my mom called to inquire about my health i had to relate the story to her, and after reminding her who Mr. Fiennes was (she not being a big film fan) and debating the whole he said/she said thing i asked if she didn't agree with me that it was rather unseemly behavior for my future husband (well, actually, my VERY conservative, very, christian mother thought a great deal less of it than that). And, as i was wondering why i find myself getting into these type of conversations with my mother to begin with, there was also this little insane, obsessive voice in the back of my head begging the question "What about when i do bring Ralph home and my mother says, 'Now What was the deal with that stewardess..."

Now i know we all have needs to be met (trust me~i'm definitely not one to be throwing any stones) and there isn't any ring on your finger (YET) but you know, Ralphie boy, you and i really must do some chatting about your public image if nothing else and how a little bit of discretion can go a long way (tho i really wouldn't want to scare you away too soon.)

"You can't listen too much to anything anyone says in bed."

In Margarettown Gabrielle Zevin writes with a vaguely Nabokovian flavour that i can't quite place (i'm thinking maybe an earlier King, Queen, Knave Nabokov not an accomplished Lolita voice, but Nobovovian, nonetheless) but i know i absolutely love. Margaret M. Towne (Maggie for short) comes from a town in upstate New York called Margerttown (oddly enough, an ex-boyfriend of mine came from a town in upstate New York called Margaretteville...anyway...) where she lives in a house called Margaron with her family: Old Margaret, Marge, Mia, and May. Needless to say, nothing in this world is quite like any place else.

But before you go getting any ideas, Margarettown is a love story, and an exquisitely told love story at that. It's a true fairy tale. A fairy tale about the nature of love, about the many women inside every woman. And the women that we leave behind when we grow out of them. About how our lovers can never seem to love all of those women (usually they can only love just one of them). And how that is almost always the downfall of love. Or ourselves. And about how history tends to almost always repeat itself.

Do i really need to tell you that i loved this novel? That i loved all the plays on words? All the plays on names? Plus it's an extremely quick read.

Go forth. Read.

I'll just leave you with this closing thought: "...love is usually finite, but still worthwhile for as long as it lasts."

the rest, as they say, is just stuff and nonsense.

who could ask for anything more?

What Type of Librarian Are You?

You are Rupert Giles, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

take this quiz

*brought to you by Quizilla

well i guess i could ask for a little more (like i don't consider myself all that old-fashioned ~does boho hippie count?~, but, oh well, i'm not terribly easy to please now, either, am i?)

(one can always ask for more...)

I am alive in this world

and that alone is a force to be reckoned with

a force unknown

unexpected

ALIVE

ALIVE

ALIVE

INVIGORATED

and i will be here for a very, very long time

to fight

to laugh

to create

to have

F

UN

can you imagine

I AM ALIVE IN THIS WORLD

AND I AM A FORCE IN THIS WORLD

AND I WILL BE SEEN

SEE ME

DEAL WITH ME

CAN YOU DEAL WITH ME????

Did you ever see it coming????

Embrace me

i am here

would you erase your memory to escape the pain?

I was watching Boston Legal the other night, and they had a case involving a sixteen-year-old girl whose father wanted her to take a new experimental drug being used to erase the memory of traumatic events shortly after they occur~because she had been sexually assaulted by the very rabbi who was counseling her for her seeming sexual dysfunction~(actually, the drug itself (propranolol) isn't new~in fact, it's one i used to take as a migraine preventative{i think, if memory serves...actually i do remember that i took this particular beta blocker but i don't remember having any memory problems with it}~just this particular use of it is). I suppose the point is that if you take propranolol within a short enough after the occurrence of a traumatic event it will block the adrenaline and other stress hormones that tend to burn that traumatic memory into the brain and cause nasty things like Post-Traumatic-Stress -Disorder (which of course is something that you want to avoid~but how do you know that you are going to develop it~not everyone does~i haven't).

The idea of erasing nasty memories is nothing new~it's been addressed in countless stories and films (not the least of which is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind~great flick by the by) with varying degrees of endorsement and success~the major difference of course is that this is Real Life.

I tend to cling to my memories as i do my possessions~perhaps it is unwise. But i love all experience and they all make me who i am. Everything i have done, everyone i have met, everything i have gone through, has made me who i am. I am a sum of it all. And i fear losing it. Sometimes, as i feel the twists and turns my own mind makes of my memories, as i feel the fictions it creates of its own accord, i feel the pain of memory loss as if it were a physical amputation.

But that's just me.

*Whateverism or "How can you understand something you don't believe in?"

"In the beginning was the Ocean. And the Ocean was Alone."

. . . "The Ocean created Land, so that it did not always have to be with itself."

. . . "And the Ocean became concerned.

Jason is a fifteen-year old agnostic-leaning-toward-atheist (and, as i like to continually stress, there IS a difference AND agnostics do not go around Wondering/Wandering in the dark about the existence of god they believe that one cannot know!) In Godless by Pete Hautman rather haphazardly and inadvertently (but brilliantly) creates his own religion, when he is punched-out and, in a daze, lying flat on his back, stares up at the silver belly of the town's life giving water tower.

Jason makes his friend Shin the official scribe of their new religion, and eventually they gather a few more unlikely followers to the "Church of the Ten Legged God" or Chutengodianism as the faith comes to be known (once it begins to take on a life of its own). Once it does take on its own life, some of the followers begin to take the church TOO seriously and protestant offshoots even develop. Jason, of course, has no control, although the silly adults, who understand very little of the world or religious ideas themselves (being just following-sheep in their own right), think he is the instigating leader of it all, and want him to halt the whole out-of-control thing.

Much food for thought in this excellent book~If you don't listen to the voices in your head, just Who DO you listen to?

and *whateverism should be MY religion since that is one of my favorite resort-to words.

"Pack em Up and Move em Out"

is a catchy little tune from an old Strawberry Shortcake movie that my little sister absolutely loved and used to watch over and over and over again (among other Strawberry Shortcake cartoons~she was a Shortcake fanatic that one) until i (accidentally, mind you) recorded over her tape with some Days of Our Lives episodes (yes, that addiction is twenty-five years old~thank you very much). My sister still remembers this~nor will she ever let me forget it (tho she does not remember the cartoons i erased~perhaps my penance is the fact that whenever i am moving, putting things into boxes, or in any way starting a new kind of venture i can't get that damn song out of my head~tho i must admit, i do kind of like it...)

Which brings me to the subject of today's post: i've been assigned to another library. Imagine that.

I was late on my very first day of work because Demetra, dear that she is, decided to somehow get herself stuck in the basement wall (something my mother claims is impossible because it is a solid concrete wall and i claim is possible just by the very fact that she did it). I fed the cats this morning, the sound of which usually brings all three running, but didn't (should have clued me into something, but didn't) Then, just before i'm to leave for work, i hear i big crashing noise from the basement; i do a quick head count and start calling for the littlest brat. When she makes no appearance, i venture into the deepest dark, see ceiling tiles on the floor and hear feline cries from above and beyond.

So i crawl atop the perilously stacked piles of stuff and call her name, locate her inside "the solid concrete wall" (just her tiny head and paws are visible) and try to coax her out. She just cries piteously. So i try to help her. This provokes hisses. Eventually she moves further back which leads me to the conclusion that she is not horribly broken and is just trying to ruin my "first day impression". So i decide to go to work and check back on her on my lunch hour (which of course leaves me with periodic guilt pangs throughout the day).

I go home on my lunch hour and there is no black and white cat to greet me, just more crying from the basement. Once i find a stool to try and extricate her she decides to remove herself, after who-knows-how-many hours and for what. I must of course cut my hour short because i was late at the beginning of the day. She is very hungry because she's been hanging out in the wall all day (somehow she seems to act like this is my fault). She appears entirely uninjured. And so it goes... just a little feline interlude for the first day at the new job.

So, here, i am, in my new, smaller, closer to home, (further from any junior-high-school) oddly quiet library, alone at the reference desk (hmmm... somehow that feels a bit familiar...) wondering what to do with myself (well, not really...)

it all feels...

just a bit...eerie... really

Paragon Schnitzophonicia

For some reason i wasn't all that excited to start Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen after reading the reviews about it, because the subject matter didn't sound all that appealing: an old-man protagonist who used to be in the circus back in the depression days (thinking on that i'm not sure why that didn't appeal~i mean back in the day i was fascinated by the Discovery documentary P.T. Barnum: America's Greatest Showman and carried the companion volume around to all stations of the bookstore with me {i couldn't afford to buy it} surreptitiously reading it, until i had absorbed every word, so to say the subject wasn't interesting to me is probably is untrue). But the reviews i read were so positive that i did put it in my (very high) to-be-read pile, and when i finally picked it up, i found i couldn't put it down. I read this its three hundred odd pages in something like a day and a half (it would have been less but the annoyance of work and sleep and other little life details got in the way).

This not-so-pretty tale is told with complete unsentimentality and absolute profundity. As a young man who has just lost his parents to an automobile accident, twenty-three-year old Jacob Jankowski doesn't exactly run away to join the circus, but rather has a bit of a breakdown during his final exams at Cornell Veterinary School, runs from the room and stumbles onto the circus train without having a clue what's he's joined up with "The Flying Squadron" of The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth but of course. Before he knows it he is the circus veterinarian, and, it being the midst of The Great Depression, and him having no other options he decides to go with it.

No romanticism or nostalgiasizing here (which i consider a good thing~and if you really need to know about why elephants and other exotics don't belong in circuses this book might be a good start), but still a tale very well told. I'm still dreaming about these characters.

Where were you when the couch broke?

I was hanging out with all three of the kitties. It was New Year’s Day night, we were on the couch (which is a metal futon) which was out in its bed form (and had been that way for i don't know how long~i had pulled it out once when i was feeling WAY bad and i guess i just never got to feeling much better) when we heard a large clanging/banging sound and CRASH we all went B*O*O*M (and the cats all scattered.)

Now my couch did not look like the one in the picture because it was not all bent out of shape~it was just that many of the bolts had fallen out. It had been given me signals that such an event was imminent for quite some time~making certain creaking noises and such and i had half-heartedly tried tightening the bolts but apparently it did not do enough.

So the point is, that on New Year's my couch broke and at that time i gingerly climbed off of it and decided that it was time to move out of the living room because i didn't want to deal with it at the time. So i went down to the basement to watch the TV down there, and for the next week or so spent much more time in my bedroom and kitchen than i have for quite some time (it confused the cats mightily~"what, we're not living in the living room anymore?"). Things continued to pile up in the living room (and, even more importantly, programs continued to pile up on the living room dvr), my migraines continued to scream at me, i continued to ignore it all.

Last week i got the cover off of the futon to wash it. Today, my mom came over and fixed all the bolts under my (very helpful) supervision. It is very nice to have a couch and a living room again (and it hasn't been an entire month~yet).

Sometimes i really hate this feeling that i can't do much of anything and i wonder how much of it i put on myself, but then when i do try to do something and i am punished for it i know i don't really put it on myself.

oh well, baby steps, as they say (whoever "they" are).

not for the faint of heart

Although the title might be give-away enough, Queer Fear: gay horror fiction edited and with an introduction by Michael Rowe is not for everyone. Like all short story collections the quality of the stories tends to be somewhat uneven, and some of them include graphic sex, violence, and horror (but what do you expect?). If you're willing to take it on, they make for nice little stories to read as breaks between the other books you may be reading (at least that's what i was doing this month.)

My favorites in the collection included Little Holocausts, a beautifully told tale, by Brian Hodge, The Sound of Weeping (set in a morgue) by Thomas S. Roche, Hey Fairy (about an actual fairy who has had enough) by Edo Van Belkom, Genius Loci (a ghost story) by Becky Southwell, and Nestle's Revenge by Ron Oliver (reminds me a little of David Sedaris if he decided to go the murderous route). Goodbye by Michael Thomas Ford was an absolutely wonderful and very touching story but i'm not sure why it was in this collection. Caitlin R. Kiernan's Spindleshanks (New Orleans, 1956) seemed to go nowhere, and David Quinn's The Perpetual was a bit too much (even for me) it seemed to be written to appeal to the prurient serial killer inside the reader and i don't think that's in me. And Nancy Kilpatrick's No Silent Scream was ALMOST like just another day in my life (now that's really scary!)

Just a thought i had as i was reading: if we heterosexuals choose not to expose ourselves to certain lifestyles that is certainly our prerogative, but where does that leave the other ten percent of the population who literally has our lifestyle flung in their faces on a daily basis?

don't you wanna be a brainiac too?

I'm not so sure that i do, at least not if you're defining "brainiac" by the terms of the trivia-buffs encountered in Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings the greatest champion in Jeopardy! history (so far). Jennings, as you may or may not remember, spent six months in a 75-game winning streak on the game show Jeopardy!. Brainiac isn't so much a behind the scenes account of his Jeopardy! experience(s) (although there is a bit of that in here) as it is an exploration of the world of trivia.

Although i found the material somewhat interesting i found the author just the teensiest annoying and the book did drag somewhat toward the end. Jennings humor seemed to often miss his mark (though i'm not sure he knew it) and some of his objects were a bit too near to my heart, for instance:

when the Brooklyn public library system announced in 1946 that it would no longer help patrons answer radio quizzes (due to the success of such programs as Ask Me Another! and Break the Bank) "In some cases, [quiz questions] have resulted in actual impairment of morale," the head librarian sniffed."

"He then returned to his various important card-catalog-related duties.*"

"Salt Lake City's bar scene not being exactly what you would call "hopping."*

"Maybe now I can stop being Ken Jennings, nerd folk icon, and just be Ken Jennings, nerd, like I was before. I have finally, as they say in drama classes and twelve-step programs, achieved closure."*

*These are the direct Jennings quotes that for some reason or other hit a particular nerve with me, i'm not sure why, perhaps if he were funnier, perhaps if her were a little more familiar with his subject (for instance: we librarians do much more than card-cataloging~we do much in the service of trivia information~very little of which was mentioned here~ahem; i have lived in Salt Lake City and have spent a good deal of time in its bar/club scene as well as many other cities Mr. Mormon Boy, and though it may not be QUITE as hopping as some, it is not all that bad and since you self-confessedly have little experience in such areas i think you really should not base your opinion on the going urban legend; though i'm sure they speak of closure in twelve-step programs they never spoke of it in ANY of the MANY drama classes I attended (nor were any of my drama experiences similar to anything you describe~NOT that i'm taking anything in this book personally~REALLY. ☺

(boy that was a bit of a rant wasn't it?)

ANYWAY...

Sometimes i watch the trivia shows like Jeorpardy!, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, 1 vs. 100 and such, and think, oh i could totally do that (i totally need the money, i am so in debt, and that seems SO VERY APPEALING). After reading this book i realized i am really not a trivia buff, for the most part i do not enjoy reading lists of various facts and figures and memorizing them (although i do like leafing through the new Guinness Book of World Records when it comes in~i no longer read the whole thing obsessively like i did when i was a kid, and i also enjoy books of lists and the like) most of the reason that i can answer many of those questions (and certainly not all of them) comes from my actual READING background (why imagine that). Jennings had mentioned that many players of college quiz challenges would sometimes develop an interest in classical music or literature because of the facts they were memorizing about those subjects. I tend to remember the little factoids because of my wide and eclectic reading interests and having been blessed with the ability to retain minute details easily (especially now that i'm making myself blog about each book i read.) Jennings is quick to point out that there are many different kinds and levels of intelligence and that the ability to memorize trivia is not ALWAYS a good gauge of either of those, but that it can exercise those brain muscles.

Brainiac is an interesting read, and Jennings does have his moments (regardless of how i may sound here~i must admit he IS humble~and he even has his moments of witticism). The rest is just stuff and nonsense.

will this be on the test?

I was watching the Tyra show the other day (yes, okay, i admit it, sometimes i watch Tyra . . . and she was talking about taking tests~AIDS tests, drug screening tests, sobriety tests, etc. Now i, personally, have only taken one sobriety test (other than the ones i have witnessed as a passenger of "suspected" drunk drivers and the neurology tests i've been given which seem remarkably similar to field sobriety tests) but, anyway, the ONE sobriety test that i was subjected to ended in such a strange way that i will be haunted by it for the rest of my life...wondering exactly what happened (and also wondering if i actually passed that damn sobriety test...)

This was about twenty years ago, my friends and i had been pre-gaming (as it is so charmingly called today {we had no such names~we just did it)~tho we did it mostly because you couldn't drink in the repressive 18-and-over club we were going to} then drove to a dance club in the small college town about an hour outside of our city~of course with grain alcohol-spiked big gulps for the drive (don't ask me why we did that~we were just strange little drama college kids who liked to go to different clubs every now and again). So i had, i'm sure, mass quantities to drink over the course of the evening, tho i'm sure i also danced a great deal of it off (as well as vomiting a bit of it away), as well as letting quite a few hours pass. So my friends drove me back to their house, where, after a while, i convinced them, i was fine to drive (which i believed i was). And so i hopped in my car (it was probably about 3:00 a.m. and before heading home, decided to do my usual swing-by the sort-of-an-ex-but-i-was-still-carrying-a-torch-for-him-fling's house (this is a strange obsession that late-teen/twenty-something, sometimes even older, girls do~i've never managed to figure out why~i mean we'd just swing by with no real intention~not really full on stalking, and i speak in the plural because i had many friends who also did it at the time and have talked to others who used to do it, oh well~i AM past that now~REALLY).

This little detour was, of course, my fatal (or perhaps near-fatal, or perhaps just eternally-haunting) mistake. Just as i'm turning onto my once-favorite thorough-fair i see the rather familiar blue and red flashing lights in my rear view mirror. I can't remember what the stated offence was, perhaps i took the left turn a little too swiftly, when asked if i had been drinking i confessed to a few glasses of wine with dinner earlier that evening. When asked what i was doing out so late i said i was checking up on a boyfriend.

I was asked to step out of the car. I remember going through the expected tests. I remember being nervous but i felt like i was doing alright.

Then something unexpected happened.

The officer whipped his head around. Then he asked me, "Did you see that???"

I was at a complete loss. I hadn't seen ANYTHING. The four-lane street we were on was completely empty. I didn't know what the correct answer to this question was. Is this part of the test? I stood there looking at him for what seemed like a full five minutes (it was probably 30 seconds or so) and finally said, "I didn't see anything."

The officer starts running to his car, "Drive safely." he shouts to me, before he jumps in the car and takes off (no lights mind you).

I stood there, alone on the street, next to my car, for a while, wondering what the hell just happened.

I'm still wondering.

*Tyra didn't mention anything about any tests like this on her show.

My name is YoSafBridg and i'm a . . .

. . . picture book addict. This problem seems to hit especially hard in winter, when all these cute little cuddly animals appear wanting to cozy up, calling out to me, with their seductive siren songs. I ask you, what's a weak little librarian, like me to do?

There i was today, innocently walking past the picture book display when this adorable little hedgehog (an animal i have always wanted to adopt by the by, unfortunately the cats will not allow me to do so) unavoidably beckons to me from the cover of One Winter's Day (a touch and feel book) by M. Christina Butler and illustrated by Tina Macnaughton.

This is an incredibly cute book as the little hedgehog makes his way through the woods once the wind blows his nest away, playing good Samaritan to every poor little creature he meets. Of course there is a moral (well not really a moral~but it does show that being kind and sweet and selfless and all that will reward you with good karma~maybe saying that life is fair even when we all know that it really isn't) at the end and again i question the wisdom of over-adorableness of wild animals in tales for children but this one just wins over that "awe" factor in me (and tells that cynic to go sulk in the corner for a while).

What can i say?

we should all aspire to such audacity

It's funny how when you read someone whose views are quite similar to your own they often seem to be so very wise (as opposed to someone whose views are so very contrary to your own.) So, admittedly biased, i suppose it is not all that surprising that i found Barack Obama inspiring and that he presented many good ideas in his new book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Although it can sometimes read like his prologue for a presidential bid (and perhaps that is exactly what it is) i believe we end up with worse (and certainly have), i also sense sincerity, enthusiasm, and the hope of the title in his words. He discusses his views on partisan politics, constitutional law, games politicians play (the games they must play and those they might avoid), values, faith, race, opportunity (whether the American dream can still survive), and family. He seems to be a very engaging man. And the book and his ideas are definitely worth a read and deep consideration~i think by every American, regardless of political leaning.

While his constituents worried that he would go off to Washington, get caught up in politics, become jaded, and start acting like, well a politician~that doesn't seem to come across in his writing~or else he has mastered the art of diplomacy, like a true master in the art of politics (after all he was editor of the Harvard Law Review) but like i said, i sense sincerity in him. As for becoming jaded or losing his hope that the American dream is still possible, "I don't linger on such thoughts, though--they are the thoughts of an old man." He still seems to have a great deal of youthful energy to accomplish much.

As you may or may not or noticed, my primary vote lies with another democrat~i've been waiting for the John Edwards campaign since the 2004 election (and i wasn't a HUGE fan of Kerry's saw him as a better alternative). Edwards had somehow not been on my radar before the presidential campaign but as i watched the vice presidential debates i decided that i wanted him as MY presidential candidate because i want someone who can actually BE Elected (and after that terrible, terrible debacle of 2000 which i refuse to talk about because it is SO very depressing...)

Hillary's out, because although i personally don't mind her, and she was quite nice when i met her at that signing at my bookstore (right~the store was crawling with secret service she was actually still the First Lady~what a different world it was then), she is still hated by many, and, in a sense, an easterner. And Obama, i'd love to see it, i'm not sure the rest of America is ready yet...

"You mean it's been consensual all this time? Well, Damn, where's the fun in that?"

okay, this story is just all kinds of sick and wrong:

"12-year-old' is 29-year-old sex offender"

Story Highlights:

• Ex-convict tried to enroll in Arizona charter school, police say

• Man also cons sex partners into believing he's underage, police say

• Four charged with fraud, forgery, identity theft, failure to register

Neil H. Rodreick II fooled two men he was having sex with into believing he was 12 years old, police say.

But this particular part i found rather humorous, here are these two guys who have met a guy over the Internet they believe is twelve years old and they invite him to come into their home; live with them; have sex with them; register him for school so that he may lure and procure new boys for them, and then they find out he is actually 29 years old:

"(Lonnie) Stiffler (61~who had pretended to be Rodreick's grandfather when registering him for school) and Robert James Snow, 43, "were very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man and not a pre-teen boy," Quayle said."

That's okay guys, you're still going to prison.