Hey everyone!

These are two rescue beagles (they appear purebred), young, and sweet. They need a good home! They were found running around the streets, neglected with permanent collar marks and scars. They did not have collars when they were found.

One male, one female-- perhaps siblings, or a breeding pair. They are not spayed/neutered at this time, but have been de-wormed & had flea treatments. They should probably stay as a pair. They are well-tempered (the female is incredibly sweet, the male is a little timid but warms up fast). A bit mischievious, they will probably need a patient new owner, but will provide lots of joy!

Here they are!


Please get in touch via lj if you're interested, or pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested. They need to be re-homed as soon as possible.

So, not only is the National High School Journalism Convention going on around the corner from where I'm staying (I'm a chaperone), but there's the Old School Tattoo Convention happening in the hotel I'm staying at (kinda lame crowd, I don't really think I'll shell out the $15 to go inside), but down the block, there's a Bear Pride convention (I wish I knew what it was called). Pretty fun time to be in St Louis, lemme tell ya.

I also went to the City Museum tonight. I forgot how amazing it is to slide down a twisty slide that is 7 storeys tall. YAY!

12&13th: bff visit!
13th-16th: st. louis!
16th-21st: work it upppp
22nd-?: east coast extravaganza (philly, nyc, maybe dc)

excited!

I had a very busy day today! The best moments were seeing xrobotx and ihatewittynames, riding bikes, and seeing ULTRA PULVERIZE!!!! New costumes ruled, the lead singer now wears this sweet powerglove with an LED scrolling the name of the band the whole time. So fun. I had an excuse to wear my spacey superhero whatever costume (see post from may-ish 2008), dance a lot, see some friends, see some sweet ravers and high school kids with funny sunglasses spazz out, and ride through town, hoping my underwear wasn't hanging out of my thermals with fishnets with leopard print electric blue booty shorts on top. And I was super happy that I didn't get any shit from people at the gas station where I stopped to go to the ATM before the show.

Went to 6th & Oak, danced a bit more, ate some french fries and a grilled cheese sammich, and now I'm on the verge of passing out. I partied a lot yesterday (first friday = lame art & free wine), then the GirlTalk after party (I didn't get to see the show since it sold out). That was pretty fun, this kid from Brooklyn who's visiting found me an acid washed skirt. Hell yes!

I've been pretty happy with my sense of style as of late. I mostly felt good wearing my insane outfit this evening (all the compliments helped)... but I did get kinda weirded out on the way home... some dude was leering at me through his car window. People need to quit being so creepy.

STOKED about the presidential election results!!!!

now I've just gotta keep my fingers crossed about Proposition 8 in California.

and go to work. My history teacher from high school told me that a lot of high school teachers make better money and get better benefits than folks who work for universities as professors. New career path??? I need to make a decision, haha.

I'm exhausted, but stoked that Obama is ahead right now. I hope that when I wake up, it'll be a good morning... ie, that I can get a job at a school I can locate, that the kids aren't horrible, and that we won't have another Republican in office come January. I am pretty confident now that people in this country aren't all total morons. The SD abortion/"personhood" bill's outcome is cool-- yay for keepin' it safe & legal!

Sweet dreams everyone.

I rode my bike all day yesterday. I went to the Ky Museum of Art and Craft to see the Dia de los Muertos shrines, and I put a little drawing on the Friends/Family one. For me, it was a real moment of closure. I had showed up super early, so nobody else was in the gallery with me. Just me, scrawling a little lovebomb alone, crouched over in a chair with a ballpoint pen, sort of meditating on loss and transcendence and energy and its lasting effect on others' lives.

After that, I was going to meet a friend for coffee but stopped at Baer's and got some rhinestones. I met with Dan, whom I met on my Chinese study abroad trip in college, and we walked around and talked and I used up a gift card to get a Jawbreaker cd that I haven't heard in ages, and I also ordered a cd by Eats Tapes, this really computer-y techno group that I like a lot.

Rachel joined us back at the coffee shop, which was nice, I don't see her nearly enough. Then it was pizza time and pie time and, eventually, drag queen time. I am going to Fuzion's amateur night tonight to check it out. It should be pretty entertaining, at the very least.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
xentropyx goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as aeon flux (i wish!).
barbi_n_todd gives you 6 mottled green passionfruit-flavoured jawbreakers.
demonicus gives you 4 dark blue vanilla-flavoured gummy bats.
harperjean tricks you! You lose 6 pieces of candy!
jamie_miller gives you 7 brown root beer-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
jerkus tricks you! You lose 9 pieces of candy!
jimmybuttons gives you 18 blue coconut-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
littlepinkrobot gives you 11 orange grape-flavoured nuggets.
number18 gives you 2 milky white tropical-flavoured gummy worms.
ohdear_b tricks you! You lose 11 pieces of candy!
outrayjus gives you 8 light orange cinnamon-flavoured jawbreakers.
xentropyx ends up with 30 pieces of candy.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

in other news, i just got off of work. i subbed at brown today.

subsitute teaching update: middle schoolers are terrible! if i hadn't had to maintain some semblance of order, however, i would have been thoroughly entertained with tampons flying through the air and a group of boys adamantly defending their respective positions on who is cooler: ace frehley or gene simmons.

So my current pet project, Ask First!, is complete!!! I finished it last night. For now (until I get copies hooked up) I am gonna have to ask for a buck or two donation just to cover printing costs, but feel free to send trades as well! Comment (I'll screen them) and I'll give you my address.

YAY!!!

Now, off to the Deep South End to teach math. Wish me luck!

substituted monday. haven't since, i've been kinda sick. i've laid out half of my upcoming zine. ran a lot of errands. going to out of town this weekend, short notice. i might try and teach again tomorrow, if i can get up at 5.30 in the morning. started my period today, but it's been a trickle. wtf? i just saw mt eerie. it was so good i almost cried a little. i often cry when i have those "oh! there is still good art in the world!" moments.

there was a show last night at ourfarm, this 600-acre piece of land about an hour away from louisville. i rode down early in the day and came back late last night. i went on a long walk with some other folks through pastures and down to a pond full of duckweed and trees. dogs splashed around in the murky water and shook all over us.

then we walked through a field on the crest of this big hill that was surrounded by trees. it was like being inside of a marble. we found our way to the lake and rowed around in a boat. it was really pleasant, floating around, the leaves changing, drifting through the air on the bank.

when the moon came out, i climbed up on the hay bales and watched it rise, and it was dark enough at the farm that i could see the cloudy glow of the milky way. i hadn't seen that in quite a while. i also got to sit around a big campfire surrounded by diy types and punks and rural folks and dogs. my clothes smell like wood smoke.

sometimes solitude is what i need. not often. but when i need it, and i finally get some outdoor solitude, i feel cleansed. it's nice to let all the social junk drift off of you, let the chill of night settle on your body, watch your breath float away on the air in tiny wisps, because it's not that cold yet, but cold enough.

i need to visit the farm more often.

i ran a zine workshop the other day. four people showed up. it's okay though, i don't expect much, and there's little to no zine love in this town.

i am LARPing tonight as an NPC. for y'all who don't know, LARP means "live action role play" (think acting out dungeons & dragons) and an NPC is a non-player character-- i'll get to play bit parts, be monsters, etc. i'm sure i'll come back with photos or at least some fun stories.

the JCPS substitute teaching thing is run by computers. stupid, stupid computers. i hope to begin substitute teaching on monday! wish me luck! and if you have any teacher friends who might need a replacement, lemme know.

so, not only have i obtained a ton of skirt hangers (a precious commodity in my world), but i have also found a sex pistols shirt AND a pair of doc martens boots that fit me. in the trash.

1. i got a biker jacket. at a thrift store. for seven dollars. winter, here i come!

2. i dj'ed last night at my friends' house because we didn't want to go to the lame bar club nights in town. my little speakers did really well until the end of the night, when iggy & the stooges' "search and destroy" came on. and then one of them blew out. i guess i'm gonna have to get new speakers. lame!

3. i have been riding my bike a lot lately. the critical mass today for jen was a success. i think the count was somewhere between thirty and forty attendees; more than any other local critical mass i've done. when we got to the ghost bike, we gathered and took up some of the road to cry and be quiet and let people leave notes and mementos and stuff. we even managed to piss off a cop. the conversation went like this:
cop: "get out of the lane! you're blocking the street!"
girl: "we're having a memorial for our friend who got hit by a car and died!"
cop: "you're going to get hit by a car if you don't get out of the lane!" (wrong answer, dude)
girl: "oh, fuck you!"

we got back on our bikes after that and moved on, but for a moment, i was filled with rage.

4. i need to call the city schools every day next week and nag them into hiring meeee. this no job during the impending financial shitstorm thing is really bumming me out.

i saw two girls that i used to eat lunch with in college. they called themselves george and paul, mostly because they were obsessive beatles fans, i think, but i tolerated it because i like it when people have names that don't seem gender appropriate.

one of them stopped me and said, "can i tell you something?" i nodded. "um, i just wanted to thank you for being right. paul and i were 18 when we met you and i thought i was really smart then but you were so much more radical and feminist and right-on. i dunno. i didn't think i'd see you again to tell you. but thanks."

it kind of blew me away.

life is random and precious. i am very fortunate to be part of a community that has such intense interconnectedness. the circles of friends keep expanding, more stones hit the water, and soon the ripples won't be discernible from each other.

we're accidental creatures, made of luck and swept about by the changes in our brief lives.

i am so lucky. despite all the crap i complain about all the time, the health problems, the drama, the issues... i have people in my life who will hold onto me when i feel like i'm going to sink. and i hold people and let them cry on me and mourn, and hold hands and acknowledge that every moment of our lives is important. because it is. i love them. i love my friends who call me on the phone to check in. i love my friends who send me things in the mail. i love those who i share intimacies with, and those whom i hug and hold because they are important. i love those whom i don't see that often because they're off doing important work to improve the world, through art or activism or whatever. truly. my life is full of love, and i am grateful. my life is full of tribulations and confusion, and it's making me stronger.

love and struggle.

yesterday it finally hit me. and i sobbed with rage until i gave myself a headache. later that night i experienced some of the transformative power of community and support. a few nights ago i was inspired by a show at a space i didn't feel very comfortable in until recently. and i recognize that though some friendships don't get to blossom, they can still impact you in meaningful ways.

she lived a fuller life than most people ever will.

ultimately, it's motivation to live my life, to set things right, to get it together. i'm trying.

Jennifer Ellen Futrell
FUTRELL, JENNIFER ELLEN, 29, died Saturday, October 4, 2008. She is survived by her mother, Barbara Hedspeth; father, James Futrell; sister, Elizabeth Futrell; stepmother, Katherine Futrell; grandparents, Joyce Pearce, of Poplar Bluff, MO and Faye Futrell and great-grandmother Opal Evitts, both of Paducah, KY. Also surviving are the many, many dear friends in her 'chosen' extended family. An avid musician, writer, chef, bicyclist, activist and organizer in Louisville's vibrant alternative arts community, Jennifer (Jen, to her friends) was a passionate supporter of her city. She talked and walked a unique path through life, touching many and always allowing herself to be changed and nurtured by others. The victim of a tragic accident, her last act of giving, aside from the cherished memories of her brief but significant life, was the gift of life to others through the Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates program. Visitation will be 4-9 p.m. Monday at the Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church. A service of celebration of her life will be held there as well on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. Donations in lieu of other expressions of sympathy may be made to Seeds of Peace or Safe Streets Louisville. Rest well, our sweet warrior child. You were and always will be loved and cherished.

i really miss black cherry wishniak. anyone wanna send me some?

i'll love you forever (or until it runs out).

xoxo
cheyenne.

ps. i also miss y'all super bad.