The Neon Zee

Terrorism: a comfort food story

Dear Winter,

I just inherited a 100 year old black seal fur witch cape. I kid you not. I can't ski through you anymore, but I sure as hell can cut you with a macbeth curse and a wicked silhouette!!!!

LOVE FROM,

THETHENEONZEE

 the madre told me something strange today:

so, she and I have this special chocolate chip banana bread recipe, right? And, my dad is best friendsies with the former U.S. embassador to Costa Rica, right? Well, my mom served him and his wife (a good friend of my mom's as well) some of our banana bread after a ritual old-man-faux-bro surfing excursion

and well..my dad's buddy is THE FORMER embassador because he was the embassador under the Bush administration.  underwhat circumstances was he nominated to the position, you might ask?

well, he is Bush's Texas Ranch neighbor. yep. when people were voting for Bush cus they thought he'd be an excellent person to chill and drink beers with, my dad's buddy pal was doing exactly so resulting therein, AN EMBASSADOR POSITION IN COSTA RICA. (don't get me wrong. this guy is awesome. moderate. very intelligent....a lovely friend to my parents...etc. BUT SERIOUSLY?!!!)

and you know what? OUR RECIPE WAS SO GOOD that the former embassador's wifey took it. and the place she took it to was the Bush Ranch.

and it was well recieved by the Royal Bush belly.

This development makes me uneasy. Who knew your kitchen experiments could result in Bake for Blood? 

(once we were taking a shuttle to the main chairlift in Taos ski valley and Rumsfield happened to be on the damned thing and my mom yelled, "HOWS IT GOIN' OVER THERE?") (once my 76 year old grandma marched in front of Rumsfield's Taos ski cabin with her girlfriends resulting in a 5 year "no fly list" placement.)

(condi likes to go to San Francisco Opera events and my grandfather has made a habit of cornering her every time she turns up. he likes a good audience.)

I could go on.

the world is fucking small.  
 

(In 2004 I was in Boston working as an event coordinator bitch-work bitch in the convention hall at the world's MOST BORING DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION OF THE CENTURY. that is until Obama took stage and wowed the crowd thereby making Kerry look like a floating turd of charisma. That night my "no fly grandmother" drunk dialed me and said "I can't wait to see you vote for Obama in 2016!")

(and to think that the greatest non-impact on on politics I will EVER MAKE is in hastening  an inevitable heart attack by clogging the arteries of a former president/alcoholic.) (fresh butter is the secret to every good recipe, DONTCHA KNOW?! it'll fucking kill you.)

but my cinnamon curry pumpkin bread is BETTER!!!  im proud of its complex and exotic flavors. the banana bread is just a comfort food.

pound it!!!

(that last line was a three fold pun! im so clever. i deserve to pat myself on the back. thats the point of this blog, right? a daily self indulgent salute to verbal back pattage? if you read this, god bless you.)

1 YEAR AND COUNTING

GIVE ME GRADUATION BLING OR GIVE ME DEATH

aahhhh....tis fate being broke, blinged out and without practical career options. Like I always dreamed.................

“Aseptic and razor-sharp as our customers hipbones. These women shop for lunch! Labels are their only sustenance! Their skeleton legs in Manolos have worn trenches down the pavement … Their arm sinews have just enough muscles left to lift up a credit card.”

-patsy stone

I've finally mastered Bro Talk

"Give me a pound. Lock it down. Break the pickle. Tickle, tickle."

 

awww just forget it! etcha sketch!! ksh ksh ksh kshhh!!!

Just finished the beyond stupid movie "The Love Guru"

Mike Myers improvs like a (obviously better) anal fixation male version of me. Except he actually pulls of his awkwardness. I love it. 

Im not proud of it, but I giggled like a lunatic while watching this. 

p.s.

if you want to do something kinda freaky (well, freaky to me, atleast) type "theneonzee" into google images and then all of my most popular posted images pop up!!!! its so weird! like a year in review in pictures!!!

CLICK CLICK

choice quotes

(on my cousin's two little rat dogs) "I like oreo better because she doesn't eat anything!"

(upon arriving back at the house after a grocery run and parking too close to the house) "good thing im thin otherwise i wouldn't be able to get out of the car!!!"

(friends visiting) "i like suchi the best because she's tiny"

my mother is infintely charming.

and for the record: i like to go streaking. i like to be topless. being naked DOES NOT PHASE ME. but I will NEVER let her see me in a bikini. i'll be on my death bed before that happens. and her ghost will still be skinnier than my skeleton, so she'll still have something critical to say.

we have an outdoor shower here and I only shower with my clothes on. and even then, she still thinks of EVERY excuse to come back to where the shower is when im taking one(chores, laundry, etc) and she just looks me up and down the entire time. i feel like a piece of meat thats begun to stink.

furthermore, you can't brag about a daughter who writes poetry. only one who gets "athlete of the year" and MVP. only one who recieves palpable awards that you can display on a mantlepiece or show videotapes of to your friends.

(truth be told, my entire thesis reading is on youtube...but i won't show it to them because it will bore them and then they will say "it. was. nice.....")

i have curves. and i write shit that rhymes. and that is all. if you don't like it, keep your mouth shut.

Jim Moore, MIchael Bonner,  Jesse Lehrich, Ginny Rider (poet's name is VIRGINIA though, we decided!) Sam Johnston (my big bro,) Eric Hanks, Becca Von Trapp and yours truly.

my poetry in this thing isn't so good. I had to choose the stuff that they thought fit into the narrative of the reading. I do like how I read the last piece...but I was a little toasted for the rest of it.

ha!

theneonzee does canadian tuxedo

this is my grandma's jacket from the early 80s purchased in beijing and my grandpas patagonia jeans are, once again, from the early 80s, i think purchased in the Seattle patagonia. i cut them off and made them into, not boyfriend shorts, BUT GRANDPA SHORTS. or, in my case, papa shorts.

my dad's computer is a microsoft or whatever, so it didn't have photobooth. i had to find one on the internet. i had 1 second between the consecutive snaps so i did the best i could!!!

i just think this is the best canadian tuxedo. it cannot be repeated. unless i repeat it myself. there. hows that for ego?

the pearls were a gift from my mother before we moved to shanghai (from shanghai.) they were a bribe.

the bangles are from kyla from india.

LOTS OF LOVE,

ali

time to make a cobbler!

old fashioned blackberry cobbler and Will to Power

tastes like childhood to me. probably the first thing I ever baked on my own at about 9 years old. my sweet tooth was unquenchable, so i was left to my own devices sometimes.

usually, this recipe is the ONLY untouchable recipe. I do not allow myself to alter it. the reason being, we get buckets full of fresh blackberries in washington ONLY ONCE a year. and I am a merciless blackberry picker. I have many scars from climbing brambles and doing back bends to get the best fruits. as in all things, I consider it a labor of love. and who the hell wants to eat a dessert with store bought berries when you've only EVER eaten the version containing THE FRUIT OF THE LAND? thats right. NOBODY. THUS, the recipe is sacred. However, recently, I've discovered that the addition of a single large bar of chile dark chocolate (by lindt) balances the flavors perfectly and provides a more decadent experience.

ingredients for filling:

2 tbs cornstarch

2 tbs lemon juice

1/4 cup water

4 cups of fresh blackberries

1 unevenly chopped bar of chile bittersweet dark chocolate by lindt

ingredients for topping:

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 tbs butter, melted

DIRECTIONS:

-in a saucepan, combine the cornstarch, lemon juice and water. cook over low heat. 

-fold in berries.

-pour into browniee tin-like dish

-FOR TOPPING: combine all ingredients except butter. sprinkle the mixture over the berries. drizzle the butter on top.

VOILA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my favoritest desert of the whole wide world! BESIDES PUMPKIN RUM PIE!

-------------

New recipe variant:

add to filling: 3 vertically chopped peaches, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla extract.

add on top of topping (instead of into filling): one pack of heath bar crumbles, chopped up lindt chili chocolate.

lately i've only been watching biopics of the lives of female artists. they all have the same ending. alone. famous. successful. in isolation and beauty. the female artist never attains the regular sort of happiness that most people expect to see during the fading decades of their lives. she is too proud. too rebellious. too singular. crippled be her acute sensitivity, inevitably worn by the troubles that make a lifetime.

either that, or she kills herself because she can't handle the air pressure of that isolation.

I've come to this realization myself. though I rebel against it sometimes. I need to learn to be at least partially satisfied with isolation. Sometimes it hurts. but I think im strong enough  to bear it. I need to be in order to accomplish what I want to accomplish.

I do want children and a cozy future. but when I think of the future I only see a cold stretch of time with a single shining objective.

that cozy future is, for me, like chocolate to a diabetic. 

a luxury that I once tasted but can no longer afford or process. the memory of that luxury makes my internal life all the more potent.

its possible that im just being melodramatic right now. but better safe than sorry. I have no expectations for my life except to be a poet. I can't ask for anything more than that. it is enough for me.

ego too big? well I think thats the only way to make it. Im growing my ego. I need every possible strength to survive the jungle of intelligentsia assholes who won't understand my aesthetics. these strengths include stubborn-ness, ego, pride and single mindedness.

If im going to succeed I need to start thinking of myself as successful. this is not exactly the definition of humility, but im willing to risk it.

you know what REALLY! PISSES! ME! OFF!!!!

the automatic bad taste any female artist conjures. any feminist edge. any girliness.  FEMININITY. any romantic (with a lower case r) tinge- DISMISSED as inferior art.instinctively. subconsciously.

female musicians/vocalists/entire package/lady gaga/ANY WOMAN MUSICIAN jumps through the ringer of hoops. it takes them so much longer to get "cred" unless they are packaged as demure young ladies. Even I have this problem. I automatically assume that any female I hear on the radio is a plastic nip tucked airbrushed synthesized production and not a genuinely talented human being.

This is pathetic because I genuinely LOVE female vocals. and of course relate to many things that a woman artist has to say.

I find myself defending my tastes to MYSELF but also to pretty much anyone.

it extends further than that. People are so quick to pin me as a feminist in my poetry- a thing that, until recently, I had not come to understand, so instead MOCKED. well, I've reached the point of no return. I am OFFICIALLY FUCKING PROUD to be interested in and affiliated with gender issues. There is no use fighting it, because I certainly do not wish to fight against it (if that makes sense?)

BUT

this automatically makes my art just a little bit UNCOOL. I don't blame anyone or anything or even the world for this.

GIrl art is uncool until it has pushed the limits and proved itself as uncontrived, self aware, not taking its mission seriously, prepared to kick you in the face with its masculine girl hot-ness, etc.

I wish someday in the united states, as in Japan and France, that we might accept feminine bubbly girly girls as artists, but until then,

I will fuck you up with my intensity. and you will sit still and beg for it like a fucking costumed poodle lapdog.

you FUCKERS. you  hate me BUT i'LL DO MY JOB OF SPOON FEEDING YOU LONGING

and i prromise you, it will never be watered down.

never.

 

(this song was one of the fixtures of my room sophomore year. some remix though. don't remember who it was by. Robyn is ridiculous. ly cool.) and I dare you to shake your ass at the appropriate pace to this. I tried and failed.

JK. just tried again during the making and processing of this blog post.

I WIN.

THE END. thats all folks.

out of time, out of mind, I don't mind

Been rowing about 5 hours a day. rowing through storms in the huge canal waves is just about the equivalent of skiing moguls...just with your arms and not with as much speed. also.  I am contemplating wheel chair skiing. the last week has been interesting because I sprained my right ankle. apparently I walk favoring my right leg WAY more than I realized. Without it, I hobble around like a drunk sailor. stupid left knee has collapsed numerous times.

and did you know how sensual rowing through massive waves is??? TOTALLY sensual.

this song is so sexy. I row to it. to the beat. surfing over waves like a pro.

THIS IS ALSO SEXY:

LONG LIVE THE MOMSEN!

QUOTE FROM THE PADRE:

"you're just shampooing the buffalo...!!!"

"dad, WHAT?"

"YOU KNOW, its an intel quote...trying to make something that eternally stinks SMELL GOOD"

Tavi and Jane are feeling the NOSTALGIA (marc jacobs TM?)

and SO AM I! BLIND FAITHFUL AND DROOLING FASHIONISTA zombie

 

 

 
 
 
 

 


 SIGH

 
 in minutes, the dryness of taos air, the occasional day waking up feeling the need for an alter ego (of which, at that time, there were three: fancy smancy girl, goth girl and IMA GREEN (green wig and all green clothes,)(i dont have any NON alter egos anymore,) the STINK of comfort in wet dog fur, the hood canal and the salt and the crab and the cigar smoke and the sea and THE KINKS dance parties, all of my family, in one place. ONE FUCKING PLACE.

its been good, childhood. im ready to move beyond what happened after now. that feels good too.

I COULD FIND THE WHOLE MEANING OF LIFE IN THOSE SAD EYES

Dear Baby, I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that's all they do. They don't pull away. They don't look at your face. They don't try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms without an ounce of selfishness in it. (The Waitress)

without an ounce of selfishness? I wonder if its possible. no no...im too stupid to be so cynical. I don't wonder for a second. Somewhere on this planet there is a moulin rouge scene for its every miscreant inhabitant.

I've been writing alot lately. and am currently at the Hood Canal, Washington State. this place brings out my inner hunter gatherer. I was never meant for these times anyway but I think that makes me better equipped to report upon them most of the time. ANYWAY i try to only eat what I catch out here. including salmon, crab, oysters, clams and only blackberries for dessert. god they are sublime.

you know what defeats sprained ankles? hula hooping and 4 inch heals. just gyrate through the pain. thats what rockstars always do, anyway. but my way has less STDs.

p.s. did you know that granola is the oatmeal for fatties? I AM DEVASTATED. I do not eat oatmeal or granola for the most part...but labeling somebody "granola" has become one of my guiltiest most favoritest of pleasures. ALMOST as bad as eating granola and adding even more fucking sugar to it, which, truth be told, is the only way you'll get me to eat granola. I did grow up in Japan after all. Nothing is too sweet. And everything must be sweetened. UNLESS it must be spiced up. and god forbid, if you touch that beautiful piece of fish, I WILL SMITE YOU with all of the Japanese heritage I possess.

which, arguably, is at ground zero. because, I am blonde, check check check and 8 feet tall, check and lumbering, check and totally uncouth, CHECK PLUS.  very very white.

heres some poems.

Summer is Sometimes Over

part 1. Beneath my bed

The year gone,

I find nothing beneath my bed

But dust

And disharmonious scattered plastic

Ice

Packs, the remnants of abandoned

Attempts

To cool the internal friction

Of tearing oneself,

The scars to which now provide

A scarecrow’s smile.

I swivel my head

And a carpet of cheap white glitter

Glows blue, flashes pink, growls blue, flickers pink

And the discharge of pens.

-the abandoned mothers of lonely haiku.

-the baron old blood of  royal scheming

This monstrous residue,

Fermenting beneath my sleep.

The initiative caught fire

Upon waking.

The product of the days end,

A boneyard beneath my bed.

 

Part 2. yearning for poetry in daily conversation

 

I want mountains

That tear the clouds

With capped teeth.

And cold air.

And then balmy summers

For the ducks to cluck at,

To dip my toes in a stream

As the mountain flowers become tangled

In flyaway hair

and hairs fly away in the cold air.

To be free in a place called home.

 

Part 3. mother

 

The pens are abandoned mothers of haiku

And the haiku

Whisper of my broken

Mother.

Sometimes the dark earth

Is a brutal lover,

Sometimes,

A cold mother.

The year is gone

And I still know

Just this:

 

----

    SOme of the laws of the 48 laws of power:

Law 3

Conceal your Intentions

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions.  If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense.  Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

 Law 8

Make other People come to you – use Bait if Necessary

When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control.  It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process.  Lure him with fabulous gains – then attack.  You hold the cards.

 Law 9

Win through your Actions, Never through Argument

Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory:  The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion.  It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word.  Demonstrate, do not explicate.

 Law 16

Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor

Too much circulation makes the price go down:  The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear.  If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired.  You must learn when to leave.  Create value through scarcity.

 Law 22

Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power

When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead.  Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane.  Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you – surrender first.  By turning the other check you infuriate and unsettle him.  Make surrender a tool of power.

 Law 25

Re-Create Yourself

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you.  Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience.  Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you.  Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

 Law 28

Enter Action with Boldness

If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it.  Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution.  Timidity is dangerous:  Better to enter with boldness.  Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity.  Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

Law 34

Be Royal in your Own Fashion:  Act like a King to be treated like one

The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you.  For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others.  By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

Law 37

Create Compelling Spectacles

Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power – everyone responds to them.  Stage spectacles for those around you, then full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence.  Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

Law 48

Assume Formlessness

By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack.  Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move.  Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed.  The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order.  Everything changes.