Marina Rose Martinez

TheJunkenstein: @Marinaisgo Write exactly about your writer’s block, your relationship with writing, what has put you in a dry spot. Go for the feelings

I have 5 drafts sitting in my blog archives right now, all different things I’m trying to put together, or figure out. None of them are happening and I’m kind of stuck. I want to write about the failure of identity politics, and my personal relationship with my birthday, and the concept that transgender issues can easily affect cisgendered people, and a hundred other things, but so far I’ve got shit.

If you’ve ever carted wool, which you probably haven’t, and which I actually only vaguely remember doing myself (it’s been about 17 years), you’ll understand when I say that writing for me is like carting wool. You take the clump of gross, almost sticky, unpleasant raw wool, so fresh from the sheep that some of it still has shit on it (it’s washed, but some things persist), and you mash it onto one carder (which looks like a wire dog brush), then rake it from one carder to another in a methodical repetition that breaks apart the fibers and makes it suitable for spinning. My feelings, experiences and ideas are the raw wool, my draft process is carding, my final draft is spinning and the reader finishes the process by weaving or knitting (or whatever) the final piece for themselves.

So I’m not really having writers block, I’m just in the unpleasant beginning parts of far too many things for me to be happy or comfortable with. With crafts or art it’s easy for me to start, and go wherever I want, but writing seems to have more significance, especially when it goes on this blog that everyone can see. I know that I’m a skilled writer, if not a good one, so I expect a higher quality from it than from any of my other creative outlets, especially when the subject is serious, like the subject matter for all the blogs I have in the works. When it’s something with less perceived impact, like these twitter blogs I’ve been doing, there is a lot more room for error, and it feels informal.

So the issue is that while I can bang out a twitter blog and not think about it, those other blogs stay with me for months sometimes. I’ll be doing dishes, working, or driving home and running the subject matter over and over in my mind, slowly, methodically, separating each fiber, making it more and more suitable to be something else. Because as it is, there is nothing separating the emotions from the experiences, the reason from the passion, and I feel very frustrated at my inability to take these ideas straight from my head and have them make sense.

I want people to read them and like them–and like me–but I have to organize everything first. And the anxiety over being misunderstood, or misrepresenting myself only makes the process more difficult.

I put the call out on twitter for a blog subject and this is what I got:


cherryfizzy: @Marinaisgo about why your pants are awesome?


I don’t really get this once since I tend to avoid pants like the plague. I have a very high waste, and I carry my fat in the front, so wearing constricting fabric all up around my fat stomach has never appealed to me. Not to mention the fact that pants bother my vagina. Also, my lack of ass and hips in relation to my stomach make me look ridiculous every time I wear them.


When I was in highschool and college I wore pants constantly, but they were always far too big for me and I would sag them down around my hips. At the time I was either thin enough or retarded enough to think this was a good look, but once I started trying to be taken seriously as a professional, educated woman, I knew that pants had to go.


Every so often, on a weekend or on an extremely casual day at work, I’ll dig out my old cargo shorts, and try to relive the glory days, but I know it’s over between pants and me. My gross old Cartman gut hangs over my awesome cargo shorts, and no matter how many or various different shirts I wear on top of that, there’s no way I could lie to myself and say that it looks okay. So i put a damn skirt on and I go about my day.


I have to admit that I miss pants terribly at times. I don’t like the vulnerability of skirts, but they’re infinitely more comfortable than pants, so I stick with skirts and dresses most of the time. Although I do have a secret wish that my weight loss will continue at least until I can wear pants again and not look like a fool and feel like a sausage.

I put the call out on twitter for blog suggestions, and I got this response:


@moopigmoo: @Marinaisgo Boobs.
@Marinaisgo: @moopigmoo Can you be more specific?
@moopigmoo: How awesome they are despite their vast variety of shapes, sizes, color, firmness, etc.


And the suggestion was seconded by mikesmith916, so here you are, a blog about boobs.


First of all, I want to say that boobs are great because of their staggering variety, not just despite it. I once had a friend tell me that, for as many different shapes of drinking vessels there are, there is a boob out there of that shape. Just like people, breasts are so different from each other and so perfect, and beautiful. In fact, genitalia of all kinds can be used as an analogy for the human condition.


There’s really no wrong way to be a private part. The taboo nature of genitals have allowed them to develop relatively unscrutinized by the mono-culture, resulting in no major standard for what’s considered ‘pretty.’ And while I’m sure that’s going to change, it hasn’t got there yet, and while we’re all engaging in the international debate on what makes an implicitly attractive boob, we can at least bask in this sliver of time where any boobs are good boobs.

I’ve been a fan of the various multimedia ventures of Keith McNally for awhile now. His taste and ear for popular music is only less enviable than his encyclopedic knowledge of it. If you go over to keithcourage.com, you’ll see and hear some good fun stuff, ranging from shitty comics to well composed and edited videos.

So when McNalley announced his latest venture, “XO, an Internet Show by Keith McNally in the Style of This American Life,” I was interested to hear what he had to offer. I was a fan of “This American Life” for years, and I remember wishing there was something else like it in the world. But that was before I started to get more and more annoyed with the continued fake-ness of celestial radio, the perfect cuts and the slightly pompous, over-important sound that most radio has, including “This American Life.”

By the time “XO” came on the scene, I had been bored with “This American Life” for awhile. I was over their traditional 3 act composition, I was over their smart indie music, I was over their articulate, sensitive and quirky staffers, I was even over the well produced and eerily ironic TV show.

But “XO” has ignited my love for things ‘in the style of This American Life,’ despite my dispassionate objection to the actual show for so long now. So far, 7 episodes in, McNally delivers everything I liked about “This American Life,” and everything I like about podacsting in general, while leaving a lot of the apathetic, over-edited bullshit I left radio for in the first place.

Since music for me can sometimes make or break a show, let me say up front that the music selection is the kind of considerately chosen, perfectly variegated pastiche of sound and meaning that I’ve come to expect from McNally’s work thus far. But unlike his earlier show “I Have a Ham Radio,” where the music was clearly the main event “XO, an Internet Show by Keith McNally in the Style of This American Life,” places the emphasis on the story, using the music as a compliment to the narrative.

The meat of the show is the real life audio, mostly recorded by Keith in different everyday situations. The magic of McNally is that he has the genius or the arrogance that it takes not only to put the mirror of unfiltered observation against his own life, but that he has the testicular fortitude to reproduce it for all of us, and leave the dirt in, with full knowledge of his actions. There’s a part in one of the shows where Keith contemplates editing out some earlier section where he felt he was being petty, and unreasonable. But in the final edit, the petty audio remains, and so does this on air rumination on the future editing process.

So many things in life advertise themselves as genuine, and yet they rarely are. XO makes no such claim, in fact, with a subtitle like ‘in the Style of This American Life,’ a potential listener almost expects an imitation, absolving the subject from any obligation to reality. But what I love about XO is that it is so honest, and so brazen, without sacrificing quality. This is not to say that there isn’t windy audio, or fuzzy audio. The show is recorded during the course of a man’s actual day-to-day living. What I mean by quality is simply that: the impeccable transitions between music and talking, the fact that the music so often matches the tempo, the tone of the language as if they were made for each other.

If you like “This American Life,” you might like “XO.” That would depend largely on what it is about the show you like, and what you’re looking for when you’re looking for a show. In “XO 006 Alcohol Rant,” Keith says “I’d rather continue to alienate the people who aren’t on my wave-length in order to feed the people that are.” I think that’s as good a philosophy as any. I look forward to more of this fledgling show, and I recommend anyone who likes to be early to the pop-culture party to watch Keith McNally and his future endeavors. I think there’s a lot more people out there who are on that wave-length than he might yet know.

So I saw these two images on ffffound.com





Now, I know what you’re thinking. Love connection!!!

Me too.

Once again, an image off of ffffound.com with additional banter by yours truly.

The image of the glass and the workbook style quip/blank is something I pulled off of Kind Over Matter. The snark is mine. I’m sure it’s been done before. It’s not that original or creative.

Anyway. Nothing’s new in my life, nothing’s interesting or especially in need of analysis as far as I’m concerned.

After about a month of being off the air, I’m back to recording my podcast, I Love Lard again on a basically weekly basis. Of course, now that I’m saying that, I don’t have a show for this week, but hopefully I can get one out. Probably not, though. You know how I am.

In domestic news, one of our rats, Tomato, has been off balance and her eye is all goopy. After this morning’s trip to the vet and $150, she should be better. The vet said that probably (hopefully) it’s an infection. She got a shot this morning and we have to administer 7 days of antibiotics, and then to call the vet again.

I hope she gets better, not only because I like her and don’t want her to be sick, but also because I don’t want to spend any more money. Also also, the exterminator is coming to our house next Monday to kill our roaches and we have to take both rats to Ben’s friends’ house, which means that they have to be in the same cage as each other, and since Tomato’s sick, we’ve been keeping her in a different cage so that she doesn’t give it to Peanut. And so she doesn’t have far to fall if she pitches off the top level, which she has been doing—but in the small cage it’s only about 5 inches.

I told an old friend of mine that the exterminator is coming on Monday to kill our roaches and he told me “man, that’s fucking gross.” The problem with telling an old friend that they’re gross for having roaches, is that they know your ass. All I’m trying to say is, yeah, maybe I’m gross, but you’re gross too, dude. Maybe you’re trying to be all fancy by living indoors and shit now, but I remember you.

Just kidding, James. Yeah, roaches are hella gross. (Seriously, I’m not offended—if you ever read this, I just thought it was ironic is all—don’t be mad.)

Clearly, I have nothing else to add. This blog entry has become a rambling collection of my up-to-the-moment thought process. Bye.

Young scientist loves birdsong, builds machine outside lab window that will give food when birds sing. Over the course of a lifetime, teaches birds not to hunt, but to sing. Scientist dies. No-one to fill bird feeder. Birds sing themselves to death. Possible alternate ending: People think birds dying are somehow a tribute to their great friend.

This is very Ulysses dog waits in trash heap until his return, dies happy.