The 35th Precinct

Last night was filled with strange, melancholy dreams.


Last night was also the night we made a nocturnal visit to Walmart. Walmart is generally very quiet after seven PM, but this night, they were hosting a summer block party in the parking lot. Thus, my hopes for a peaceful shopping experience were thwarted by a cavalcade of screaming toddlers and oblivious shoppers with their noses buried in their smartphones. I lost count of the times I was nearly rammed by someone steering their cart with their elbows while they texted their BFF about their Labor Day plans. Inevitably, they would look up at the last second, mutter an insincere apology, and veer around, eyes already descending to the screen again. I know communication addiction is a terrible thing(I get antsy if my Internet craps out for more than a minute), but is it really such an imposition to watch where you're going in a crowded store? If you just have to reply to a text right now, then for the love of God, pull the cart to the side and stop until you hit SEND. I'm fairly sturdy as far as invalids go, but there are many infirm or elderly people who can be badly injured by a fall caused by a bump from a cart. Trying to explain to some remorseless, pimp-suited lawyer that you ran over the doddering cancer patient because OMG, you just had to tell your BFF to go with the red pumps instead of the maroon ones for her big date with Kale, will not be a pleasant experience.

And why do so many parents drag their toddlers scarcely out of short pants to stores at nine o'clock at night? Children that young should be in bed, not crammed into a shopping cart and buried beneath an avalanche of Great Value frozen dinners and Kotex tampons while Mommy browses the DVD section. Overtired children can be cranky scream machines, especially when confronted with bright lights and crowds. In some cases, it's a matter of necessity--Grandma can't or won't babysit, and Daddy is working the night shift--but I saw a few families there in their entirety, Mom and Dad meandering through the aisles while four kids below the age of nine were shepherded by a frazzled older sibling who looked like he'd given up fantasies about fondling Miss September in favor of hot daydreams about going a whole five minutes without hearing, "OWWWWWWWWWWWWW! STOOOOOOP! Mama, he's touching me! STOOOOOOP! WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Why is it that so many people who scream so loudly about the sanctity of family values are so bad about actually exercising those values? "I love my children and must protect them from the gay agenda and the dread liberal scourges of tolerance and critical thought and common sense not gleaned from a book that thinks women are property and stoning is a perfectly reasonable method of punishment, but I'll gladly keep them up hours past their bedtime so I can shop for cheap DVDs, and I will scream and hit the infant when he expresses his discomfort by crying or saying, 'Mummma,' in a piteous, beseeching voice as he reaches for me."

So we picked up some soup and money orders for bills and a few DVDs with the intention of holing up until the holiday and the upcoming wet weather pass.

Today, we augmented our trove of soup with some ground beef and bought a phone card in order to keep our prepaid cell active. It's a ridiculous expense given that the balance remaining is quite healthy, but the agreement dictates that since we don't use a contract, we must add funds on a regular basis. Failure to add funds will result in the phone being turned off and the number reassigned. And so, because the phone has proven its worth in New York and Vegas and during a roadside emergency, we dutifully add to a balance which creeps ever upwards. Under current terms, we could call information and leave the phone unattended for days and still have funds remaining. We could solve the problem by signing a contract, I suppose, but why? No one calls us, and we have few contacts. The phone is essentially for safety and traveling, and we don't travel enough to justify another monthly expense.


I know this will likely irritate Picture!Richard, but Dero is just too pretty to ignore:




He's still not as pretty as Richard, though.

Welcome to the Universe. I found this while looking for any Oomph-related fiction. The sex just wasn't my bag--rough, meaningless sex never is--and it was hilarious to have Dero hung like a SALT missile, but the rest of it was quite readable and engaging; my only regret is that it seems to be the only like of its kind, and I will never see if the authors were going anywhere with the seemingly-casual aside about Dero's vulnerability and lack of intimacy after sex.

Still, it was a fun read, and leagues better than the dreadful fic about a fan flashing her boobs at an Oomph! gig. That was as far as I got before I was scrabbling for the BACK button. Sometimes a paragraph is all you need.

twelve-year-old solves burglary. This should tell you all you need to know about the sad state of law enforcement in rural Georgia. I'm sure many rural cops are good men devoted to the job, but there are also many who took the job solely for the small-town prestige afforded by the badge, and they don't give a rat's ass for the duty they swore to uphold.

I'm still undecided as to whether her reported snark of, "I did your job for you again," is bratty or sublime.


Dear Rammfen,

Richard is forty-four years old. His skin is going to sag a bit. It's part of aging, and it's vastly preferable to the glossy, stiff, overstretched Botox look of so many celebrities. He's still an amazing guitarist, and he's still sex on legs. It's not the end of days.

And I'd still tap him like an Oktoberfest keg.


I'm grinding along on Sprache XVII. Writing the experience of falling in love from the perspective of a forty-year-old man who's been hurt before and grown jaded as a consequence is hard when you're a starry-eyed woman in your thirties who has scant experience with romance save for a disastrous love affair that exploded spectacularly, and who still resolutely believes in happily ever after even as she drifts along in her comfortable yet decidedly platonic relationship.

But it keeps my mind active and my pecker up, and mayhap someone will find some simple pleasure in the reading.

And now, a bum pageant:


Our first contest, Dero Goi:



Nice, indeed, but I think there's still room in that trunk for a bit more junk.


Our second contestant, Richard Kruspe:




Here, Mr. Kruspe demonstrates the proper fit, as well as the optimum arrangement of junk in his magnificent trunk.

Please leave your votes in the ballot box to your left.

For anyone who might not know, FuckyeahRammstein has changed its URL.

I know I'm customarily a Rammfan, but this photo I found on Fuckyeahderogoi is so damn pretty:




Dear Dero,

Why does your outfit from 2010 so suspiciously mirror Richard's LIFAD pants from 2009 until now? You know, since Rammstein are such Siegfried-and-Roy frauds and all.



Just wondering.

Dero, your voice is amazing, and it's obvious that there's a formidable intellect inside your head, but your butthurt about Rammstein is disappointing and unbecoming. Pray tell, what horrible German caricatures and stereotypes are the Rammgents perpetuating? That Germans are fit? That they like to have fun or think about sex or have more depth than a bunch of stuffed shirts? Enlighten me.

As for the criticism of their stage show, I really don't know. I love the fire, of course, and find it perversely beautiful, but it's the music that holds my attention, the chemistry of the six men creating the music. I think it's petty and unfair to compare them to the gaudy, hollow spectacle of Siegfried and Roy, two showmen in sequined suits who churn out the same performance night after night, right down to the rehearsed banter. He knows damn well that music is a living thing that changes according to the mood of its creators. To compare the artistry of Rammstein to the processed, pre-packaged pablum of a stage show put on by a pair of tottering, Botoxed horrors is petty shit-flinging. The fire might be gaudy, and it is certainly superfluous to the music, but it got them noticed, got their foot in the door to many international markets, and while it might be true that many people were initially attracted to the spectacle, it is also true that many of them stayed for the music. The fire is eye-catching, to be sure, and I will always love the dragon masks, there is only a certain number of times one can watch flames explode from a flashpot before it loses its luster and acquires a certain sameness. I was attracted by the fire and the exoticism of the German tongue, but I stayed for the music. So he can take his sniffy artistic superiority and musical martyrdom and wipe with them.

I do, however, wholly empathize with his seething frustration at the inconsiderate knob who keeps opening a squeaking door and barging through the interview room while he's answering the questions put to him. He's a cooler head than I would have been. It reminds me of that interview in which Richard is trying to conduct an interview backstage and someone starts thumping and banging about, so he excuses himself and marches off to rip someone a new asshole. Then he comes back and resumes that interview as though he didn't just wander out to stomp a pissy mudhole in some unfortunate tech. I wish I had thought to favorite it.

Woe. My favorite Dero videos have been yanked from Youtube because the account to which they were attached was terminated for too many third-party infringement reports. I suspect that the Dero clips I so adore were the copyrighted material in question, but damn. His voice was so soothing on a bad day; his German was so relaxing, like listening to some froofy meditation CD after a thorough massage or a good doob. Boo. ~grump~

Dero might be gone, but Richard has helpfully offered to fill the void with his mammoth pretty.



He looks like a Cirque du Soleil performer. The black makeup against the white pancake lends an air of erotic exoticism that makes me want to press my forehead to his and let my lips hover millimeters from his while his breath tickles my philtrum, the tantalizing promise of a kiss yet to come.

Yes, I have thought about this too much. I have nothing better to do, and no, I am not sorry for it.

Roomie is beginning to think that I'm blossoming into an Oomph! fan. Not so. Aside from a handful of tracks--"Gekreuzigt", "Sex", "Augen Auf", "Krueppel", "Gott ist ein Popstar", and "Eine Frau Spricht im Schlaf", I find them pedestrian.

I am, however, besotted with Dero Goi. Sure, he loves to hear himself talk, and he clearly never met a mirror he didn't seduce, fuck, and leave a logy, sated mess amongst the bedclothes, but he has such a sense of whimsy mixed with his reserved sense of humor. Last night, I found a video of him poking fun at the self-important literary establishment by conducting a "serious literary critique" of a "great novel for our times, which turned out to be a German children's book involving a penguin. When he started comparing the events of the book to themes in Faust, I laughed until I nearly choked to death. It's all rather dry and probably of little interest to anyone without a minimal knowledge of German and years of suffering silently through those interminable college lit courses wherein some failed auteur waxed philosophical about weighty tomes like Hardy's Jude the Obscure or the collected works of James Joyce and tried unsuccessfully to draw labored comparisons between those narratives and current events, so I won't repost it, but I'd laughed any harder, I'd've prolapsed my asshole and regurgitated my innards like a startled sea cucumber.


( Fuck the Language Police )



Congratulations, Rammgents! According to Ticketmaster, the Rosemont Horizon is sold out. Let's hope the rest follow suit.

( Separated at Birth? )

Separated at birth, y/y?