here's one more take on polygamy and that's it for me.

The Day Polly Gamy Married the Whole World

Polly’s lips are naturally red. She doesn’t need to wear lipstick because she kisses all the time.
She kisses boys, girls, dogs, brick walls, ice cubes, radiators, fingernails, hot coffee, newspapers, pencils, dolls, birthday cakes. Polly doesn’t really love anyone more than a brick wall, not her parents or her dog or her little brother or her nana. She loves the brick wall most of all because it kisses back by making your lips tingle.

One day when Polly especially bored, she decided to marry everything. She ran up into her bedroom, took of her shoes and put on her long, white nightgown. She grabbed her little brother by the scruff of his neck and dragged him down the front stairs of the house and into their front yard. She ripped a ripe patch of grass out of the blinding green lawn, kissed it and stuffed it into her brother’s hand. “Hold this!” she said. She ripped another patch out, kissed that and put it on her head.

“This is what you have to say,” she told him.

“Do you, Polly, take this lawn to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I don’t wanna say that, Polly. You’re stupid.”

Polly curled up her fist like a little red rock and pointed it in the direction of her brother’s tiny nose.
“Say it!” she ordered.

He whimpered a little and recited, “Do you Polly take this lawn to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“Now say this. Do you Polly take Mom and Dad and me and Nanna to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“Do you Polly take Mom and Dad and me and Nanna to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“Do you Polly take boys, girls, dogs, brick walls, ice cubes, radiators, fingernails, hot coffee, newspapers, pencils, dolls and birthday cakes to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“Do you Polly take boys, girls, dogs, brick walls, ice cubes, radiators, fingernails, hot coffee, newspapers, pencils, dolls and birthday cakes to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do, I do, I do.”

Getting a little giddy from the supposed game, her brother, with a smirk added, “Do you Polly take the dog’s poo to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“Of course I do,” she answered.

“1 million fire ants?”

“I do.”

“The fattest man alive?”

“I do.”

“Boogers.”

“I do. I do. I do. Now shut up and take this!”

She ripped another patch of grass out of the lawn and handed it over to her brother. Repeat after me and hold this up to my lips, “You may now kiss the bride.”

“You may now kiss the bride.”

Polly leaned over and put her lips to the soft grass and kissed her most deepest kiss.
THE END

At home sick today. Yuck. But that's besides the point right now. Today's word is polygamy. What a doozie. I'm not even really sure what to say about it, or maybe I have too much to say about it. The ironic part of this (this thing seems to be filled to the brim with irony) is that I just spent an hour on the couch reading Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller, who really are the quintessential (sp?) polygamists, or the quintessential literary polygamists, I suppose. Let me whip something up. This is going to be hard.

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I'm back after my day of yuck sickness. Apparently, I was wrong yesterday when I referred to Bukowski and Miller as literary polygamists. According to Wikipedia, "Polygamy is usually used to refer to multiple marriage, while polyamory implies a relationship defined by negotiation between its members rather than cultural norms." Literary polyamorists is more like it. It's funny how monogamy is used to describe married and non-married relationships with two committed people. Should we be referring to them as monogamorists instead? I like it, just because the root wood is amor. Makes it sound a little more romantic.

Last night while thinking of polygamy, I ended up just posting a picture of a pen and ink drawing I did of two scantily clad lovers in bed. There's only two of them though. So I guess that doesn't work. I also thought up a character named Polly Gamy who's sort of an updated version of Polly Styrene except with a lot of husbands. Maybe her husbands can all have quirky/obnoxious names too like Tux Edo and she can have a female lover name Jela See. Eeer, that's lame

I also sat down with a pencil and paper last night and tried to draw polygamy. It's harder than it sounds, believe me. I got sidetracked and drew a picture of a creature with a woman's body and an alligator's head spitting a heart out her mouth. Next to her I wrote, "Bouncy, bouncy bally. Lost the head of my dolly." Any ideas on how this may relate to polygamy (because it beats the shit outta me)?

Tux Edo: Polly, do you want a cracker?
Polly Gamy: I do, I do, I do.
Jela See: Polly, do you want to be my wife?
Polly Gamy: I do, I do, I do.
Tux Edo: Polly, do you want a nice house?
Polly Gamy: I do. Can I have two?
Jela See: Isn't one enough?
Polly Gamy: No.
Tux Edo: How about three?
Polly Gamy: I do, I do, I do.

--what little Mormon girls sing when they play jump rope.

Friday, finally. Woo-hoo. Luckily, I don't think I'll be too busy today at work and I'm in the mood to write, so look forward to another long entry today. My band has a show tonight and I'm pretty psyched for it. It's a very bittersweet psyched though since our keyboardist is leaving and it will be one of her last shows. It's always sad to see someone go, especially from a creative project that you hold so near and dear, but we'll get on. We'll just have to play even harder for these last two shows to make it count.

On another note, completely (or maybe on a similar) I'm going to pick my word for today. Cross your fingers and hope it's not warthog. Yow!

Today's word is: type.

Well, my first thought is typography. Hmmm...let me think about this. Be back soon. Maybe a story where the characters are actual characters, as in letters? Hmmm, that really gives new meaning to the phrase "A-B dialogue." Stay tuned, dudes.

OK, I'm back but I guess I had more work to do today than I thought I would. Yuck. I have been thinking about type all day though, and here's what I have to say about it. Not really about typography, more about just playing with letters and words and it's actually strangely inspired by the classic Peter Sellers movie The Party:

What Should I Wear to the Alphabet Party?

A. aching dress, cracked shoes--stand in the corner and glare
B. bug dress, loud shoes--drink grasshoppers and make passes at everyone
C. cunty dress, stopped shoes--pee pants and laugh
D. drive-by dress, humble shoes--pretend you don't recognize anyone there
E. easy dress, damned shoes--lavishly compliment the host while talking shit behind his back
F. frou-frou dress, captain shoes--elegently save a nerd from drowning in punch bowl
G. gidget dress, milky shoes--start a surf party in the hot tub
H. heirloom dress, mudslide shoes--wear lots of jewelry
I. it's-too-late-for-that-dress, ruffle shoes--dance the way your ex-boyfriend fucks
J. Jackie O. dress, fat shoes--put a tiara on the dog
K. kamikaze dress, eyes shoes--burn a couple people (accidentally) with your cigarette
L. lovely dress, cookie shoes--bring gifts
M. my mother lives here dress , blizzard shoes--freak out and tell everyone they need to leave
N. no way jose dress, penny shoes--tell the eager beaver dancer you're not interested
O. oh, 1234 dress, wooden shoes--start a Ramones sing-a-long and stomp on the floor
P. political dress, spanked shoes--start an iron fist revolution
Q. queer dress, robot shoes--sit down and watch "The Man Who Fell to Earth"
R. rubber beak dress, runny shoes--dance the chicken dance
S. smelly dress, half-full shoes--go naked
T. turn around and look at me dress, paper shoes--make nametags
U. ugly wallpaper dress, dusty shoes--tell everyone the attic is haunted
V. virgin dress, right on shoes--experiment
W. walkabout dress, tissue shoes--cry on the back porch
X. xtina dress, empty shoes--pretend you're beautiful
Y. ya-ya dress, pink shoes--only talk in french
Z. zap dress, octopus shoes--come dressed like an astronaut

So heres the basic idea. I've been wanting to create a blog for awhile now. I've even been practicing in private. The only problem is: my personal life is pretty mundane for the most part. I've decided, to make things more interesting for myself and for any possible readers, I'd come up with a gimmick. Gimmicks always win, right? Every post/story/musing/photo/doodle/joke/rant I make in this blog will be inspired/influenced/directly/indirectly related to a word I pick at random out of the Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary sitting on my desk at work. There's no cheating, I swear.

Ironically enough, I picked my first word yesterday for my first blog ever and it's farewell. It does give me hope though that this will be a cool project and I'm psyched to have landed on such a provocative word on my first go around. Thanks, finger!

Anyhoo, the following is a short story of sorts. Yesterday on my day off, since it was so rainy and muggy, I spent most of the day on the couch flipping through Big B's copy of

Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion : An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural
by Arthur Lehmann, James Myers, Pamela Moro.

It's a textbook he had on the bookshelf at home from an anthropology class he took in college. I was reading this article about death rituals and how different cultures treat their newly dead as opposed to their ancestral dead. One tidbit I was especially tickled by (well, I guess tickled isn't the right word but it got my creative juices flowing) was a paragraph on this mother and daughter in a native African culture (I'll have to look it up again to be more specific) who's father/husband had died and instead of burying his body, they took his skull and hung it over the doorway in their kitchen. They would talk to the skull, ask for advice, all the while addressing it as "Sir Ghost."

Farewell, And Please Pass the Butter, Sir Ghost

Sir Ghost died 6 months and 8 days ago. He was 58 when he died. First he had Stroke #1 and lived. Then he had Stroke #2. Stroke #2 was the end of Sir Ghost. We found him on the kitchen floor by the sink. He had been chopping onions and a thin layer of onion tears covered his closed eyes. Ms. Ghost and I had been out in the garden picking peppers for dinner. She was holding the peppers in a bunch, using the front of her purple apron as a sack. I tiptoed in behind her with the rest of the peppers, careful not to let the kitchen door smack me in the face. When she saw him laying there, Ms. Ghost gave a yelp that sounded like our dog when you accidentally step on one of his paws. She dropped the corners of her apron and let the peppers fly. She grabbed onto Sir Ghost's face and her pepper tears fell and mixed with his onion tears.

His name is not really Sir Ghost. Ms. Ghost and I started calling him that soon after that day in the kitchen. We had a small ceremony and buried him out in the backyard next to the garden so as to avoid any fuss. After five months of pensive waiting, we dug him up again, carefully removed his head and hung it on the wall above the swinging door in our kitchen. Ms. Ghost told me this is what sonless mothers should do when their husbands die, to protect the household and her daughters from harm and neurosis.

Yesterday morning, I was at the sink and I heard a soft rustling sound. I looked up at Sir Ghost and he was struggling to move his jaw. I ran over to the kitchen door to his skull and looked up. He kept rustling and struggling to move his jaw. Nervously, I put my left hand over the doorknob of the kitchen door and held it shut, fearing that Ms. Ghost would walk in at any moment and start yelping again at the sight of me communicating with an assumed dead Sir Ghost.

I heard a creak like a pair of rusty scissors opening up and a soft voice coming from the cracking jaw in Sir Ghost's skull.

“Farewell,” he said.
“Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell Farewell.”

He just kept saying it over and over, waiting for something. My response?

"What is it, Sir Ghost?" I said.

"It is lonely," he said.

"What is?"

"Being dead."

"What does it feel like?"

"You just hang there and watch them eat breakfast, watch them sit in silence, watch them cry when no one else is around. They forget you're there and sometimes they wish you weren't there."

"Do you want me to take you down then?"

"No."

"OK then. Would you rather I pretend you're here or not here?"

"Both, I suppose."

"Well, in that case, farewell. And please pass the butter, Sir Ghost."