I might... might... be getting royally sick of things breaking down inside me.

Just for the record.

I remember when we were doomed,
listening for the booms in the night,
the flash that meant everything ended
and the world would burn, then freeze,
then nothing at all -- pockets of humanity
huddled around trashcan fires eating
food from cans and waiting for your skin
to slough off while the fire burnt your brain.

I remember when we were doomed,
our fate loomed over our teenaged lives
where we survived by luck and belief
that no one could possibly be so naive
to believe we could win that war.
We swore and drank and fucked in the night
avoiding the fright we pretended not to feel.
We drank in warm summer breezes
waiting for nuclear freezes
not stupid enough to feel anything like hope.
You coped day by day and called it life.
The strife and grief on the streets
in the evenings after drinking too much.
We had fun. We had to. For tomorrow
we'd be dead. Or if not tomorrow,
then the day after.

Today I'm middle aged, surrounded by kids
born after the end of the world ended,
we pretend that things like that could never be,
and talk about how terrorists could strike
and blight our way of life,
never admitting that at least we would live.
We gave that gift to our children--
who are not doomed, and we hope
they never will be.
But we see
willful ignorance
in the stance
of small men
and women
who were once doomed
and don't know any other way
to live.

I'm getting a little concerned about the albums that are being passed through to Member Review.

Oh, I'm not complaining that anyone passed through is undeserving. Far from it. Anyone who chooses to take that kind of ultimate step into fun and liberation and everything else that comes with it deserves their chance.

But a lot -- I mean, a lot -- of the sets that go through to Member Review should have been accepted in the first place.

Take Arien. Besides having a cool name, she also has everything you could ask of a Suicidegirl. She's beautiful (seriously -- just look at her eyes. For that matter -- and this may sound weird -- look at her skin. She practically glows in pictures). Her attitude is spot on. (Not to say there's only one way to be a Suicidegirl -- but the way Arien is clearly counts.) And as for her work:

Well, take Pinup Calendar Pages.. This isn't just a well shot set of a beautiful girl. I mean, it is a well shot set of a beautiful girl, but beyond that. It's a clever concept. It takes an expectation from the title and subverts it. It's fun, and it's funky, and it's cool.

Why in God's name did that go to Member Review in the first place? Why wasn't that just bought?

If the concern is 'one hit wonder' Suicidegirls, then consider Americana. A very different set -- in a lot of ways, a more traditional set. A set that shows Arien's versatility, and shows that she's able to support a lot of different settings and moods.

Why didn't Arien just get the thumb's up? Why go to us for judgement. And given that we've enthusiastically affirmed Arien's... well, Suicidiness™? (Both sets are at 96%, one's broken 1000 comments and the other 1200 as of this typing.) Why are they being held off on? Is there some magic that happens at 1500 that wasn't there at 1200? Doesn't two 1000+ sets with 96% ratings constitute enough of an affirmation to let one of them go pink?

Look, I can understand sending some of the long time Suicidegirls to member review -- if a girl has 15 sets, then it makes sense that you might want the validation of the community in regards to her standards being maintained. (Though 1500 comments is still silly.) Priscila doesn't need the immediate validation for Symphony. She has tons of validation -- and the community is going to re-embrace her with little question. And on the other side, borderline cases -- sure. I can understand someone who's not quite figured out photo composition, or has submitted a bog-standard "Girl gets naked in her bed while looking coy" set. Or who's just far enough off the Suicidegirl 'ideal' that you want to poll the community and make sure they'll embrace it. (Though honestly, I think we need 800% more diversity there too. Alt.beauty isn't all thin and tattooed.)

But for women like Arien, or Mermaid, or Mitska (my God -- she has multiple sets, each one better than the last, and the last one is over 1700 comments at 97%! What does she have to do -- paint Missy's house?) there just shouldn't be this kind of question. Right now, they're putting amazing sets up, which people like me get to enjoy, without any kind of compensation going back to them. Validate them. Accept them. Accept that a set that's fun and pretty and well shot and different -- with a model who's beautiful and poised and that Suicidegirlishly kind of sardonic -- is worthy of the front page and compensation.

On the whole? Things are okay.

It's... surreal to go to a wake where most of the music that's played is Styx and Rush. It's a reminder, beyond even the life of the person we celebrated and mourned, that I and mine are middle aged and getting older every day. That this was one of the early ones (though not the first), but more and more we will find ourselves sitting with friends we haven't seen -- sometimes for twenty years or more -- who have changed immeasurably while off screen, even though your mental image has stayed the same and it feels like just months since the last time you were together... and prog rock that stopped being cool before we stopped being cool plays in the background and you drink gin fizzes and talk about the person you knew and loved and threw up next to and who you never actually will see again.

That's all. Just... surreal.

Sitting in a too hot classroom too near dawn
Listening to the bored man boring students
Rubbing tired eyes while watching green chalkboards
Having works scribbled on them in powdery off-white
I put my head down on my notebook
Next to the incoherent ink that is my handwriting
Which parrots the semicoherent words of my teacher
Who told me poetry was imagery,
Bitches.

It may not be the most popular sentiment, but sometimes I really have to wonder about the Member Review/Hopeful system.

Suicidegirls was the bastion of non-traditional beauty, where women who didn't conform to the Playboy/Sports Illustrated Swimsuit/High Fashion/Bikini Model/Airbrushed ideal could find acceptance and -- yes -- celebration, reveling in their own beauty and their own skin, no matter what they chose to print on or pierce into that skin.

I know that a lot of that went by the wayside, as the 'suicidegirl type' appeared -- thin-to-skinny, small busted but not too much so, tattoos and some piercings. And I know that Member Review was supposed to be the chance for the members to veto the owners' decisions, to get some non-traditional beauty in....

It just really bothers me to see a beautiful person putting herself out -- quite literally exposing herself -- only to get a score in the seventies because she's forty, or ten pounds over the ideal, or beautiful but poorly framed.

And then, to see a number of models get large numbers of 'yes' votes and comments and still not make it onto the Front Page....

I don't know. It makes me sad, is all.

Sitting here seeing time
ticking and clicking on the hands
of the old analog clock I put in
so like the ones from when I was young
in schools waiting for life to begin.
Hiding in an office I make
as close to those schooldays as possible.
I used to wait for tomorrow,
and now I ape yesterday
while trying to hold onto today
one second at a time.

How am I today?

Sing it, T.S. Preach it to the masses:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

There is little as much fun as trying to explain to 15 year olds why Wikipedia isn't working today. Enlisting the 14 year olds to help -- they get it.