cracked lips? make 'em cracker-ier

yeah, it's true. i haven't written in some days. i have been here, there, everywhere, trying to find some normalcy amidst the chaos. i will return to you good people again soon with some pseudo-profundities about the pursuit of enlightenment, my apathetic avoidance of learning to knit, and why eating red meat is so tasty tasty. (the latter is my half-hearted attempt to test the allegiance of my vege/pescatarian following who, despite their best judgment, still listen to my rambles even though i take every opportunity to preach the goodness of the animal flesh & bone.)

but i come to you today with a very small little treat, a discovery that sounds both mind-blowingly delicious and stomach-flippingly gross: cheez-it lip balm.

could this cracker-flavored cosmetic be the answer to our prayers? could this be the prevention we need for excessive lip locking, or would it encourage more promiscuity among the cheezingly inclined demographic? if we melted one of these bad boys down and slathered it on ahmadinejad's kabob, would he suddenly think with the mind of a sane, cheez-loving pacifist, pass the crown to moussavi, and come march in the gay pride parade?

if only world peace were so simple. but in the meantime, maybe you want a piece of this to get you through the day. with this tube of lip lather, suddenly your plain tube pasta becomes mac 'n' cheez. it's going for $4 on ebay (OBO) so, lactards, this is your chance to get that flavor you've been craving in the worst whey.

suitcase closed

packing, you are so simple and easy, yet i loathe you. you were invented by the devil to wear down his opposition. you bring out my most deep-seated commitment phobia and force me to think ahead and plan for times beyond this one. why must i determine now what i'll be doing then? this has never been my forte. for this same reason, i don't pack my lunch; deciding what i'll be eating any time before 12:01pm on the day-of contradicts my instincts of gastronomical satisfaction. i find immense comfort in the ability to make a fresh decision at any moment; having my fate sealed and predetermined is oh so unsettling.

as i sit here staring at my suitcase, ajar, much like a door wanting to be closed or a mouth awaiting food, filled halfway with meaningless and irrelevant clothes, i wonder why it even matters? i couldn't care less about what the contents of my travelpro will be, yet it has become an insurmountable obstacle that stands between me and my coveted sleep. and then i realize that this is the case for so many things: a school essay assignment, an unassembled ikea dresser, a house-cleaning mission on the morning after a party that has left vague evidence of war. our mind initially clings to the notion of a task, rather than the task itself, and, within moments, after repeatedly reminding itself of the need at hand and the ticking of the clock, the otherwise reasonable task has promptly morphed into something entirely abhorrent. the first inch of the notion is what holds us back, as if to push out a hand in our face and say, "don't even think about coming any closer".the hand is our own, and so is the face. we rule both sides of the rivalry: our artillery, our soldiers, fighting against one another. devil vs. angel? something like that. but the beauty of this is that, since we control both sides, we can manipulate either or both parties to our liking. we can pit them against each other to perpetuate the inner struggle (indecision and bipolarity), we can let the devil win (masochism and procrastination), or the angel (motivation and persistence).

in the end, the only way to reach a conclusion is for the two to make some kind of plea bargain so the job gets done. we are each a hybrid of some goodygood and some [d]evil and the unique mix thereof helps determine our specific trajectory. which leads me to wonder: do horned angels and haloed devils all sit around playing poker together and drinking tequila?

...or is it gin?

wisdom of the K E Y B O A R D

quickly words enter, rush to you, underscoring ideas or prophecies.

and soon, days fade, growing hazy; jokers keep laughing.

zealots, xenophobes create victims beyond natural measure.

the (writer's) block is hot

i'm not gonna lie to you, trusty blogosphere populous. it aint always so easy to piece together letters --> words --> sentences on cue. if i'm gonna do this right, then i have to somehow trick the laws of physics into letting me borrow some of that sexy momentum i keep hearing about. i need to develop a pattern, find ways to always formulate commentary (no matter how unwarranted it may seem) and hit my blogging stride. none of this "writer's block" garbaaaahhhge. excuses are just a way for people to enable their own inadequacy. or a way for people to get out of a blind date before the meal comes.

that said, i have been struggling with how to formulate the next word stew and decided that i would stop at nothing to get the flow in check. since i used to blog many years ago and didn't seem to get tripped up on any sort of consistency issues, i went and dug up a few old classics that i figured could be remastered to once again see the light of day in their shiny new v2.0 state. these snippets that i may share in the coming days are courtesy of my trusty blog archive from the myspace days of yore when i had seemingly endless chaotic words coming out of my ears, mouth, mind, and a lifestyle that allowed for such words to be converted from mental mush to 1's and 0's and emblazoned on the expansively woven interweb, appearing on a few monitors of some of the 'spacers to which i was connected, perhaps my top 8 and some change. but this was circa 2004-05, and, by virtue of moore's law and various other geeked out data points around social media trending and technological advancements, it can be understood that the playing field for such activities has transformed exponentially. what was pee-wee leagues is now the majors (and it is somewhat mind blowing to imagine how much further it'll go in our lifetimes alone, but i digress.)

so this brings us to now. and i am by no means a front-runner in the game, knowing the ins and outs of the netscape, on top of every trend before it pops and an early adopter of the latest gadget, widget, app, crap. but i am at the very least on it enough to know that with facebook, twitter, and a much more complex and flavorful blogland, it is time to take the weakling of a journalistic inspiration and set it to run free in the wild wild world wide web. the bonus is, along with the advancement of the mediums, comes the advancement of the scribe. the 4+ years that have elapsed since my first foray into rants and rambles have included a myriad of deliciously unique and awkward scenarios that will no doubt fuel a great deal of the trash i throw out for you to rifle through, hoping you find at least some of it to be treasure. just please not the cauliflower casserole or the old socks. i mean, don't be disgusting. have some class for god's sake.

so now that i have talked up my past prose and poetry beyond any possible reader satisfaction, i have opted to save those bits of verbiage for another time when perhaps i can sneak them in without you knowing the time of their inception. i had planned to introduce those dated pieces in hopes that reading my retro words would awaken my inner rambling badass and soon form avalanches of greatness so intense that they'd propel me into the corner of some shanty in no man's land with nothing but a rusty typewriter and a dreeeeeaaam. and a really good bottle of scotch. point is (as i'm sure i've lost you long ago), the reason for this post was a selfish one--i am freeing my mind in hopes that the rest will follow (en vogue, anyone?) but the next one will be for you, all you. but the irony, as i have just noticed, is that once i start writing about the inability to write, i can't contain it. it is like a river flowing without a dam. a river made of melty cheez. mmm, mmm, cheez.

and with that, the problem has been solved.

i

am

free.

the start of something semi nebulous and entirely mediocre

welcome to the sordid and muddled (sorduddled, sorta) mind of the sheez.

my intentions for this place are entirely unclear at this time and may remain so, but please don't let this discourage you from peeking in the window as you walk by. internet & voyeurism are like fred astaire & ginger rogers. but with more nudity and less tap dancing.

i was dubbed delsheez on a mild spring day in the early-mid 90s. i was wearing converse and a plaid flannel and probably some pants. the events of that day are insignificant, as (arguably) were a lot of things in middle school, but the output, small as it may have been, stuck. that fine, fiiiine day, i woke up a lauren and went to sleep an int'l [gawky] girl of mystery.
as i am a hybrid of two worlds, i had been given a surname from a far away land that was--though disyllabic and seemingly simple--uncommon in california, at least among progressively hip (?) socal tweens. in that circle, at that time, everyone was an "eez". and thus the delsheez was born.

so who is this ever-so-humble delsheez? what kind of freak exists behind this blessed decade-long alias? it is my hope that the forthcoming nonsensical words/tales/rants/run-on sentences will begin to illustrate the contents of such a meticulously deranged mind.

watch this space.