Hearing the Pledge of Allegiance with context changes how it feels. Watching government inefficiency circles it all back to how I orginally felt. America.

The bitch about long-distance relationships is no time to let shit like this sink in and just relax and be. The second biggest bitch is the cock-blocking by his friends who don’t see him enough. It’s all going to be alright, but sometimes some folks without perception keep my nerves a little bit more on edge.

Here’s just a little bit of advice to the ladies out there. (You know what I mean, right ladies?) So, your man doesn’t take you out enough, that’s too bad. You feeling a little fenced in, a little homebound, a little unstimulated, to many days and nights at home? I hear and feel your pain. But, do not, and that is a big, capital ‘D’ “don’t,” do not invite your bad self to my potentially one-on-one, tete-a-tete, we-don’t-have-a-whole-lot-of-time together dinner.

‘cuz you know what a little moonlight’ll do, don’t you? It will make me feel all stabby. Haven’t felt that way in a while, but it is all about priorities.

You ain’t the princess of this here rodeo.

Seriously, though, I know you want to see your old friend. That’s cool. Just slow down a bit and consider what everyone else wants to do.

Now I have truly gone and done revealed the truth. I have proven to the world (or at least the few reading here) that I cannot fully, 100 percent let go of the reins. I know this whole week isn’t about me, but in my head I’m still a diva.

First things first, root canals do in fact suck, but they don’t suck as bad as I thought. I’m jacked on ibuprofen, so maybe I just feel bullet proof. Tomorrow morning may prove rough and achey.

Maybe the root canal didn’t suck so bad, since M. was there to drive me around and ignore my whining. Sometimes I get anxious about relationships (which I guess I should write with capital letters and a soundtrack evocative of forboding). Of course, I’ve fucked up enough to have earned a little anxiety. But, when he and are I hanging out (and going to endodontist offices), it just seems mellow and OK, as though even my worse neuroses can’t destroy the mood.

We had dinner at a Malaysian place to say farewell to the old world. Tomorrow, he’s proud to be an American, and I’m proud of him for achieving a major goal. It’s kind of weird, but as much as this country pisses me off and I maintain my right to live subversively, watching up close someone going through the process of becoming a citizen makes you aware of what’s good here. So, maybe for one 24-hour period, I’ll be proudly American too. (At least until the Pledge of Allegiance, and maybe until I hear that fucking moron George W. say something painful.)

Damn, right now better be one fucking propitious time, or I’m fucked. EVERYTHING is falling apart, so I’m hoping that means order out of chaos, phoenix from the ashes and a goddamn rainbow.

My car’s roof ain’t doing that convertible thing and going up and down; my laptop won’t draw power and may or may not be under warranty; allergies are kicking my ass seventeen different ways; I fucking never made it to the local polls to vote yesterday (because my car and computer both conspired to get me); some shit went wacky with my weblog script so I turned some stuff off, and my place still looks like Dresden post the big war, and M. is due tonight at around 7:30.

Arggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Worst of all, all of my woes are so shallow that it amounts to whining yuppie rage. Oh no, my Powerbook, my convertible, my blog, my condo, life is terrible. Stab me, Tiffany, I think I broke a nail.

I’m stepping away from the ‘puter and throwing my back into making this place inhabitable by the arrival of the soon to be American – Citizen M.

If you know him, me, or us, and you want to shake the man’s hand, here’s the invite I created:

Down below was written way earlier in the day. It never published. I need to sleep, not fight computers.

******

Big shout out to Jenn, who I met last night and who gave me a shot on her corner of cyberspace, aka welcome to mutual masturbatory writing.

I would write more, but dammit my life and my schedule is too fucking full. Today, I am off to a mandatory (if I want to keep the sweet unemployment train running) career seminar. Wonder if I will reveal that I want to die in bitter, unrecognized pain, like many an aspiring writer/performer.

Then, I have to vote in the local city elections.

How do I keep things straight at this break neck speed?

While digging through the rubble of my life, I found a cache of old notebooks, journals, etc. Apart from whining prose making it clear that my life is led not by my head but my, how shall I say, twat, or perhaps more kindly my heart, I found a couple of interesting notes from friends.

(Seriously, though, most all of the ink in any journal I find is pining, yearning, pining, yearning, tortured self-inflicted, man-crazy misery. Bad enough I’ve made some less than stellar choices, but for fucking christ’s sake, did I need to obsess so much?)

Anyway, the point is I normally don’t suck my good friends as directly and specifically as I am about to do. Towhit, Exhibit A:

Liz (aka Lizard) is soon to be (very, very soon) a 40-year-old, grown-up woman. She owns her own home, she owns her own dog, and car, and job and all sorts of pillar of the community stuff. I guess in October 1990 she would have been 26 and a whole lot less pillar-y toward her community.

We still occasionally get into drinking contests. Then, I was in shots of Cuervo dangerous prime. She didn’t stand a chance. Now, children can kick my drinking ass, which is actually fine by me (since it lessens the likelihood of my full-blown, face down in the gutter, alcoholic, homeless, sad ending).

And, Ivan, who was to have or have not gotten blown, I believe remained unblown that day. (Although, our slutty friend at the time, Nancy, was out and about, so that outcome is not absolutely certain.) A couple years later, he suffered some kind of aneurysm or other bad brain thing, but he fully recovered. I think he has a wife and kids. No further information is available, fellatio-wise.

Now that I’ve thrown this devil pact up on the web, I have to decide — Do I email Liz, or let her find it on her own while slacking at work?

When I first started doing comedy, I would go to open mike after open mike, and generally I would see the same faces of my open-mike peers struggling along side me with their own “material,” such as it was. On those nights, someone would be there who had been doing it a little longer and had that much more comfort and that much more editing going for them.

The people in the bar would be laughing good naturedly on a good night and the open mike would be rolling along, everyone feeling OK. Then, the person with a few more nights behind them would get up, and it would click and the audience would be laughing, and it would feel like a real show, not an open mike.

I used to envy in wonder at the relaxation of those folks. I would be puzzled at how their jokes hit and ours, the newcomers, were all hit or miss.

Tonight, I felt like one of the people I used to watch.

(Not to mention the chili dog I inhaled before going up. Among the many, many nervous feelings I thought I would never get over in the early days was the fear of blowing chunks or shitting myself. I even went so far as to carry bland snacks with me. The idea of a chili dog back in the day would have made me cry.)

If you are in the South shore of Boston or always meant to go there, here’s where I’ll be tonight:

Chrissy Kelleher’s “The Bottle In Front Of Me Comedy Tour” Chick’s Only Open Mike at the Backside Tavern, Marshfield, MA
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
No Cover

Directions to Backside Tavern: Exit 12 Route 3, Route 139 south, to 3A south, left onto Snow Road, located in plaza next to Star Market on left side

Backside Tavern
14 Webster Square
Marshfield, MA

I’m hoping my keen observation skills from when I was like 12 and hanging out in marshfield will get me there. Otherwise, I’ll be talking to myself somewhere on some beach.

I shouldn’t be writing here, because I have massive amounts of life’s detritus to move. My place has become the site of a dig so extensive, the Leakey’s would weep and Indian Jones would just get drunk. So much shit, so many civilizations to unearth, so little time, relatively speaking.

The goal for today and tomorrow is to at least create enough space that M. can move about freely when he arrives on Wednesday. It will be a bonus if he is able to discern some postive change among the chaos and destruction.

Today, I will see how many boxes can fit in a VW convertible with the roof down and how slowly I need to drive to Goodwill to ensure household items and clothes won’t be pouring onto the pavement.

One complaint for today, Hallmark and Grisham are responsible for valuable time and brain cells I won’t be getting back. During last night’s dig in the living room, I had this slow-moving piece of shit on in the background. Turns out being an Arkansas cotton farmer in the ’50s wasn’t as glamorous as you might guess, and kids are always witnessing murders.

I suppose the world-aware Internet poster would have (or should have) waxed a little something about yesterday’s date. Honest to god, I couldn’t get it up to join the ranks.

The thing is, yeah, as tragedies go it more than sucked. And, as tragedies go, I, like everyone else, hate them more the closer they are to me and mine. But, honestly, with the war in Iraq and the most evilly fucked up foreign policy since no one before George W. had ever devised, the original tragedy is paling.

The WTC was horrible, and the Pentagon was frightening. This fucking war is irrational, because it was avoidable.

Instead of memorializing the immutable past, lets all worry about the mounting tragedy of 1,000 (and growing) dying on foreign soil and make it stop.

I’m all up in the ebay.

Check out my Pez collection and unicycle.

Buy my shit, man, please. If I know you (or meet you), I’ll use the money for malt liquor, food and other important junk for both of us.

Meanwhile, I’m planning my move to stardom and greatness via an open casting call for extras. Yup, them Farrelly boys is gonna spy my headshot and rocket me into the stratosphere.

Or someone is planting a coffee cup on the coaster that my visage has now become.