A Day Without Bats

August

2010-08-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

Home is the hardest word
When all you have
Are a collection of things:
photographs
letters
dresses
a secret t-shirt
a bit of wrapping paper
drawings
Which remind you how your heart wants to belong
And not be a pillar standing tall
Over looking this sea of Be Brave, You Can Do It, You're Strong,
Not wanting to disappoint
But failing every day
Because you can't accept that you belong to no one,
And no one calls you home.

Done.

2010-02-16T20:52:00.001-08:00

I've been strong for years now. I've pushed change, I've fought through tough times, I've made hard decisions and I've given all I had to keep things together. I have handled one challenge after the next, sometimes clumsily, but always with enough guts to get through to the other side of things. Although I've made more than my fair share of mistakes, some of them horrifying in retrospect, I've always remained independent and thoroughly in control. I know that this is status quo; this is how people should be. Adults should handle their problems and not expect a gold star. I don't, really, I know that I'm not doing anything above standard but I just feel like I've been doing it for.so.long.

Tonight I feel like I'm slowly breaking down.

I need just one day where someone else handles things and I drift along amicably. I need to not be in charge, I need to be passive and allow another person to take care of me. I have mustered every last ounce of energy I have to work on my apartment and I still feel like I haven't made a dent in the packing that I need to do. I keep looking around at the reminders that I'm moving on, alone, to new things. This is exciting, of course, and yes, breaking up was the right thing to do, but that doesn't mean that the logistics are something I'm prepared for. I am not the kind of person that asks for, solicits or accepts help graciously. I fight it like a feral child being put into a bath for the first time. I don't like being vulnerable or admitting that I can't do something alone. I hate feeling weak. Even more so, I hate feeling dependent on someone else.

Here is what I want:
I don't want to push. I don't want to reach out. I want to be coddled and fussed over. I want to give up the control I forcibly maintain in my everyday life. I want to be weak, I want to be limp and I want to be held until I fall asleep with my mind clear of responsibilities. I don't want this for long, just a couple of days maybe, just a small vacation where I don't have to square my shoulders, grapple with life and come out somehow on top. I want to feel taken care of, my spine supple, my neck slack, my fingers limber, tension just a memory.

In the last fourteen months I have moved three times, endured a break up of my long term relationship, dealt with my life post-surgery, lost 70 pounds, fractured three bones in my foot, had my first major car accident, started a new job, made a whole new set of friends, supported myself and another person, rented out my apartment, spent my first set of holidays without my family, survived H1N1 and learned my way around a whole new part of the state. Yes, I instigated most of these. Yes, they are pretty normal in the scope of life....just not usually all so aggressively paced. I am going to be okay. I know that. I am always okay. I just need a little rest, a little time to unwind, a little time to melt into the surroundings.

Getting all of this out helps a little. I try not to complain too often, as there are so many worse things I could be dealing with, but every now and then it helps to acknowledge that there are such things as "personal worst" and they're just as valid as empirical tragedy.

I think my whining is done. Back to packing.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Storage

2010-02-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

I don't part with things lightly. I mean tangible things. I still have play programs from 4th grade, every stupid notebook I used in high school (which are 1/4 thorough notes, 1/4 half-assed notes and half doodles) and most of the kitchen utensils I've carted from San Diego to San Francisco to Oakland.

I am moving in three weeks. Twenty days. To a real apartment that is all my own that no one else lives in. By myself. Sans room mate. No boyfriend. Just my cat. Get the picture? The only stuff in the drawers will be my stuff, the only clothes in the closet will be ones that I wear, or at least ones that I plan to wear at some point and are really an investment in future fashion. I digress. The point is, it's MY space so I want to be really clever about what I fill it with.

To lighten the packing I will have to do at some point (if I can ever stop watching Project Runway, reading 'Cleaving' and texting everyone I know) I have started being ruthless with throwing out items. I totally tossed half of my crappy spatulas, my rusted whisk, a bunch of kitchen towels and a few pots and pans. I feel saintly and practically Buddhist, my mind is clear of clutter and my worldly posessions dimish by the day.

Except for one tiny detail.

I've been buying a lot of new stuff.

BUT HERE IS MY LOGIC!!!! I had about seventeen knives, all in various stages of dullness and crappiness, that needed to be thrown away. Well, you can't really expect to cook without a knife unless you plan on opening a lot of things ferally with your teeth. So I threw out sixteen knives and bought one perfet new one. Now I have two- one for cutting big things and one for cutting small things. I will not "need" another knife for at least four years. Of course I'm sure I'll purchase one, because I'm a sucker for things that are stabby and shiny, but I have no knife needs.

As I throw things away I realize why it's so hard for me. I imprint on material posessions the way that people look at photo albums. Sure, it's just a half-empty bottle of grapefruit perfume to the casual observer, but to me it's the exact smell of the summer of 2002. One sniff and I am taken right back to how I felt, to what I was doing and to who I was. How can I throw that out? The same goes for the hideous wooden armadillo door stop that my Mom gave me when I moved into my first apartment. What the fuck do you need a door stop for in an apartment, anyway? I keep it because it was so sweet of her to challenge her agorophobia to drive it all the way over to my new place. When I think about throwing it away I feel sick inside. I'm terrible at saying good-bye to anyone or anything. It's even hard for me to finish a book sometimes because it means that the story is over.

So here I sit, surrounded by things that speak this language only I understand, wondering what to leave in an alley and what to find a place for in my new home. Many things are changing. This will be my third move in thirteen months and I hope it will be my last for at least a couple of years. I want so badly to cling to something familar, something comforting but I know that the only way I am going to keep growing as a person is by learning to let feelings happen and not to hold onto things that distract me from pain. It's very sad that I am leaving behind a comfortable life in pursuit of one that is going to be a mystery. It's very sad that I can't fit all of my stuff into my new place. But, as a very wise musical once said, "To walk away, you must leave something behind..."

What am I leaving behind?

A whole collage of images just flooded my head, some of them sweet enough to bring me to tears and some of them nasty enough to make me almost forget about the sweet ones. Everything balances out for the best and I just keep trying to have faith that for every memory that is part of my past, for every heartache that is part of my future that there are new adventures to embrace and new loves to discover. Moving on isn't easy but I know that I'm ready to walk away.

Modern Love

2010-02-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

With Valentine's Day approaching I have been doing an awful lot of thinking about love.

I think about love the same way I think about spiders. I am deathly afraid of spiders and will do all things possible to avoid coming into contact with them. If I see one I will freeze up and panic, like I can feel their little death ray warming up to shoot me with horrible venom and webs and goo and- well, you get the idea. I am not the kind of person who can casually pick up a spider and deposit it outside and move along with my day; I have to kill them. I have to kill them with implements that keep me as far away from their dripping fangs as possible. Necessity isn't the mother of invention, girls killing spiders is. I have used everything from a high-power squirt of leave in conditioner to a Sweet Valley High book to a pizza box reinforced with duct tape. The bottom line is that they're going to die and I'm going to be far away when that happens. After I send the little bastard on to his great reward I feel a silly sense of calm and realize how irrational I am. The corpse is so tiny, how could I possibly be afraid? Then it gives one last spastic death twitch and I run into a different room screaming.

The same thing goes for love. I am terrified of it. When I feel it coming on I start to look around for materials to build a weapon with. Insecurity? Infidelity? Sarcasm? Neediness? What do I have on hand that can sabotage these feelings before I make some horrible mistake and admit my vulnerability? And what am I so afraid of, anyway?

The first thing that comes to mind is how silly I will seem if I tell someone that I'm in love with them. This is a common belief; why do you think people don't just go around everyday telling others how they feel about them? We don't want to be the one to love someone more than they love us, that's like being the first person to jump into a pool before you know how warm the water is. No one wants to come up gasping for air like a sputtering retard. If you tell someone that you love them there is this obligation for them to either:
a. say it back
b. say it back and not mean it and leave you writhing in exposed agony when you find out they lied and it awkwardly ends
c. not say anything and leave you writhing in exposed agony until it awkwardly ends
d. tell you that they "aren't there yet" and, again, leave you writhing in exposed agony until it awkwardly ends

The second thing I'm afraid of it changing the dynamic. If you're getting along great with someone and you suspect that you both have strong feelings for each other, saying "I love you" can totally wreck that. The times I've said "I love to" to a man it meant just that. I worry that it will be taken as "I love you and am ready for a ring and your baby in me and our lives to end in mutual twitching misery and boredom." Nothing is further from the truth but if you try to convince someone of that it just makes it seem like you're protesting too much (suspicious). So why say it? Why put a new layer of uncertainty on something? If you say "I love you" it eventually turns into this thing that you say before you hang up the phone. It becomes a stage of your relationship, and that stage usually leads to that writhing-exposed-agony-

awkward-ending that I spoke of earlier. When I love someone I don't want it to be a closing statement. I don't want it to be a way to sign a card. I don't want it to be these three words that are devalued because of a compulsion to express myself. I want it to be something that I say, and that is said to me, when emotions are so overwhelming that no other words will do. A perfect example would be that moment where you totally give up on a day being good. You trip, you skin your knee, you get caught in the rain, you lose something important, you have a meltdown crying fit when your dress doesn't fit correctly...if someone grabbed me by the shoulders and told me, at that moment, that they loved me I would know it was true. Or if we had a moment where I made them laugh so hard that they almost peed their pants. Those times when another person is capable of making you want to be a better person, or help them in their struggles, or when you're seeing them at their worst and you know that they are still what you want. That is when you say "I love you".

The third thing about love that freaks me out is where it goes. Like a spider that you see on the ceiling and then a second later it's gone- where did the little bastard scurry away to? When are you going to see it again? Is it going to bite you in your sleep? And where does love go once you hang up the phone or spend days apart? I worry sometimes that I don't leave enough of an imprint on people for them to remember to love me when I'm not around. I worry that it's easy to replace me. When a relationship ends, even one that was filled with love, it's like a switch flips. One day the love is there and then its gone and it's replacement is angry texts, back-pat hugs and a sense of unfamiliarity where there used to be intimacy. The change negates everything you trusted and the shift of emotion is so thorough that it leaves you weightless and insecure. Did that love just vanish? And what do you do with the mess it leaves behind? Sometimes I'm so afraid of being hurt that it's enough to keep me from letting love just happen.

My second long term relationship ended a while back. It needed to happen, it is for the best and we're both going to be fine. I have no animosity toward him because I'm not letting the love we had leave me. He deserves to be happy; so do I. He is an incredible human being who just didn't happen to be the "right" one for me anymore. It's hard to come to terms with this at times, as I really thought this was the proverbial "IT" for me, but the fact that it ended in no way means that it wasn't a very special, significant and beautiful relationship. Neither of us did anything wrong which makes it very easy for me to remember all of the reasons why this person was in my life for so many years. As I heal from our separation I feel old defenses start to resurrect themselves. As the prospect of "dating" manifests itself I begin to question everything. I don't want to be afraid of my feelings and I don't want to smash them before they even see the light of day. I am reminding myself that love, and loving people, doesn't have to end in humiliation and heartbreak. I have no real evidence of this but I'm not letting my heart harden. I don't want to be one of those people that hides under a bed, or in a web, or gets smashed with a book but the risk of all of those situations has to be worth what could be waiting for me....right?

Backwards

2010-01-12T21:09:00.000-08:00

I saw a dead body tonight.

It's not the first time I've seen one and I don't know if I was upset, although I was certainly shocked. I've seen a few dead bodies before- mostly family members-and have not seen a lot of dead bodies "in the wild" so to speak.

This one was a man outside of my gynecologist's office. Ironic, right? There was one young EMT covering the body up. My immediate reaction was so inappropriate. I just started laughing. It occurred to be how absurd it was for me to be standing there, drinking a smoothie, starting at a dead person. One the sidewalk. In The Sunset. In broad day light. On my way to get birth control pills.

I walked into the building feeling a little stunned and not yet sad. Mostly I just realized that I don't want to die alone on a sidewalk. I thought about how lonely it would be, the last thing you see a nail salon, or maybe a meter maid.

I reached out and texted someone, felt better, had a conversation, tried to distract myself with a magazine. When I laid back on the doctor's table I stared up into the ceiling, past it into the sky and up into the clouds. I hope I die somewhere I loved.

Pork Only Has One "K"

2009-06-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

I have a few co-workers who are poor communicators, and I spend an inordinate amount of time putting out the little brush fires that they leave in their Godzilla wake of burning tanks and screaming school girls. Their misused words especially grate on my nerves.

Therefore, for the record:

Tenet vs. tenant
-Belief systems have tenets, apartment buildings have tenants. Telling the employee that "a fundamental tenant of our bonus plan...." makes no sense. Are there little people living inside a bonus plan? Do they pay rent and call payroll when their shower is leaking? Do we allow dogs in our bonus plan? If you were to order take-out, where would it be delivered?

Accept vs. except
If you want to accept an award, and you inadvertently except it....well, I think you would notice the difference. So would the person presenting it to you, who would think you were a foul douche for turning down their gesture. So would the job candidate whose application you were happy to except.

Alternately vs. alternatively
The first is to go back and forth between multiple items in turn, while the second is to consider another option. If you that "alternately, we could simply fire the employee....", I really don't think that you mean to fire him, bring him back, fire him, bring him back, fire him...do you? That's kind of cruel. I might laugh the first time but doing it until the poor kid chokes himself on post-it pads and paperclips? Not cool. When you say "I alternatively assign filing to Jane and Tom..." do you mean that you ask your employees to file while wearing a nose ring and a Nirvana t-shirt? Or do you ask them in a new, alternative language- perhaps dolphin?

Rescind vs. resend
Listen, if the union accuses you of bypassing them and asks you to rescind the message you sent directly out to their bargaining unit members, and you then send them out another message stating that you are "resending" the original message...you're keeping me employed. Thanks.

Irregardless.
Oh, my...I just can't. I'm sorry. It's too painful.

Conversate
Look, you can do many things in this grand free country of ours. You can have a conversation. You can converse. You can wear Converse, like I do, if you so choose. One thing you can absolutely NOT do is conversate. Why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T A WORD, YOU STAGGERING PIRATE FART!

Ensure vs. insure
You can ensure something happens by careful planning, due diligence and hard work. You can insure something from happening by purchasing a policy from an insurance company. If you really want your employees to "insure you get your mandatory training done on time...." well, I just don't think you can buy a policy protecting that. I really don't. Also, Ensure is the stuff that old people and sick kids drink. Maybe you COULD ensure a care by dumping a few gallons of the stuff all over it? Although, I don't know what your insurance company would say about the claim to follow.

Biweekly vs. bimonthly
Biweekly means every two weeks. Bimonthly means every two months (you want to use semimonthly if you mean twice a month). Believe it or not, it makes a difference and someone with a literary background reading your memo just might not actually show up until August if you ask them to "report bimonthly". Same goes for semiannual vs. biannual.

Nonflammable vs. inflammable
The first might be safe to hold a match to but the second wouldn't be. Therefore, asking the safety manager to be sure to order the inflammable coveralls for employees in the boiler plant....fuck. If I were one of those employees, I wouldn't appreciate that. Especially after I turned into Freddy Kruger and got knife gloves.

Although not technically bad grammar, typical office catch phrases like "think outside the box", "let's be pro-active" and so on just make me seethe.

Don't even get me started on "literally" and "basically". Because, basically, at the end of the day, when we wrap our arms around the situation while running it up a flagpole to see who salutes, if I hear either of those words used again simply for emphasis, I will literally throw up.

So here, dear manager, is a $5 bill for you to go buy a dictionary. Please, please, take the time to read it.

Present!

2009-06-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

As I was just throwing up in the bathroom something occurred to me....what haven't I done in a while?

Write!!!

Right!

I haven't updated my blog in a gazillion years and it was totally unintentional. Work got really busy and then for the last two weeks I have had the germ. Then I had out of town guests and, oh, it's been a whirlwind!

Let me make this clear: I cannot remember the last time I was this sick.

It started off as a stomach thing that plagued me for a few days, went away and then came back as a viral throat/respiratory infection that a co-worker remarked was the same exact symptoms as swine flu!

OMG, right?

Well, I don't have swine flu, as two hours in the ER confirmed. I do have some nasty fucking virus that has been ruining my life lately. My first Pride weekend living in San Francisco and I will most likely be confined to bed with books and the Travel Channel. This also means I will most likely update with a real entry tomorrow (one that I have already written, no less!).

So anyway, unlike my human husk, this blog will not end up a digital carcass. Im'a pump some life into it this weekend.

Unnecessary Artwork

2009-04-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

While poking around the OSHA website looking for record retention information for my company ergonomic files, I found this little gem of entirely bizarre artwork:
http://osha.gov/OshDoc/toc_FatalFacts.html

I know that safety is important but, really? Do we need meticulously vague renderings of accidents to encourage safety? More importantly, the employees that would be in danger for getting hit with a crane or falling through a roof probably won't see these. If you read carefully, you will notice that "The cases here described were selected as being representative of fatalities caused by improper work practices. No special emphasis or priority is implied nor is the case necessarily a recent occurrence. The legal aspects of the incidents have been resolved, and the cases are now closed."

So why post them? Is this OSHA's morbid scare-tactic to ensure good training. Still, though, the humor is not lost on me. Here are a few of my favorites. They're quite reminiscent of Edward Gorey artwork:

When I Grow Up...

2009-04-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

My last post got me thinking about why I like what I like. If you take a moment and think about something you really, really love (summer, robots, curly hair) and then stop to think about what led you to like it, you might do what I did....waste about an hour and half. I think that its important to be true to yourself. Before I do something major in my life I catch myself thinking: "Would my thirteen year old self approve of this decision?"
I try to be honest about who I am, its not always easy, but I like to think that the young woman I was in my formative years would enjoy the (ahem) woman I am becoming. The things I loved and idolized then are my sources of inspiration now.

So anyway. I was analyzing my own closet (hoping that something amazing and bias-cut would suddenly appear) and I realized that it looks like a dressing room from some sleazy burlesque performer...and that is sort of what I always wanted. I am still in the processing of shedding the weight that will allow me to fit into most of the garments but I admire all of my stuff every once in a while to stay motivated. I ran my hands over the fringe, the gabardine, the satin and the rhinestones, inhaling the scent of estate sales and cedar. I have spent the last fifteen years amassing my collection of vintage dresses and nothing gives me the same sort of thrill that seeing a bit of crepe-backed satin poking out from the Goodwill rack of corduroy and denim. I pulled out one of my favorites- a violet taffeta a-line dress from the mid-fifties that has the sweetest bunch of milliner's blackberries on the bodice. I bought it because...oh well, here is where this entries theme comes in:

I bought the dress because it was very similar to something that a certain fashion icon of mine wore in one of her movies. I quickly Googled to see if I could find a picture of her in it but, sigh, no luck. Then I decided that it would be a good idea to chronicle my top seven style icons of all time. So here goes:

1. Dolly Parton in "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"
A little trivia. I started watching this movie when I was about seven years old. I didnt know what a whorehouse was, let alone what one would do in one, I just knew that Miss Dolly Parton with her Martha Washington white curls was the most epic thing my young eyes had ever laid eyes on. My Mom had a pair of six-inch red Candies and I used to shuffle around in those babies with a feather boa wrapped around my head. If my sister wanted to rile me up, all she had to do was whisper to me during the opening credits, "I get the red dress!"
I would get livid! The "red dress" can be see here on the cover and was an amazing piece of design. As I grew older, I lusted after her metallic saddle bag that she matched with two different ladylike western two-piece suits complete with gold embroidery and matching leather boots. I just recently watched this movie and it occured to me: I really kind of idolize the fashion sense of prostitues. Keep reading...

2. Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret"
My world came full circle when I saw this film. I was fourteen. My Mom introduced me to musicals as a child but didnt care much for Bob Fosse herself; hence I discovered Cabaret all on my own one day at Blockbuster. If my life was a movie, this would be the scene where jazzy angelic music swelled and light burst through the clouds to illuminate my path into womanhood.
When I saw the opening credits, heard the music and processed the eyebrows of Joel Grey I knew that I had finally found my patron saint. I watched the entire movie, transfixed on Liza channeling Miss Louise Brooks (who's haircut I already had). I immediately realized that I belonged in Weimar Republic era Berlin dancing at a cabaret and learning to say "screw" in German. I immediately absorbed everything about Liza- even down to her fierce eyeshadow. I began to notice that others of my older, gothy brethren had been influenced by this film indirectly for years. I bought a ton of 1930's slips from a flea market and wore them to school, much to the confused dismay of my Mom. She finally accepted it but drew the line at my drawn on beauty mark, which she stated had to be a weekend-only thing.

3. Jewel McGowan
I started swing dancing in 10th grade and fell hard for the aesthetic of the 40's. This was well before the internet was in every home so I had to depend on researching late-night movie channels for glimpses of a time when Hollywood Lindy Hopped. I learned quickly that Jewel McGowan (who often partnered Dean Collins) was the shit. Her hips swiveled like an office chair and she is considered to have been the best swing dancer of all time (Youtube her, she is magnetic!)
My friends and I would spend hours hanging on to our door knobs and leaning back to practice her svelte, effortless moves. Not only was her dancing stylish, her wardrobe was so unique! She brought a little taste of Germany (notice a theme here?) to the ballroom in her durndl and leiderhosen day dresses. She dressed to move and it was from her that I learned that one's clothing should compliment one's passion. There was something so clean about her, something that you couldn't buy or copy, that you just had to be.

4. Susan Sarandon in "Pretty Baby"
1917 New Orleans in the Storyville (again with the idolotry of brothel-chic).
White, gauzy dresses and matte red lips.
Finger waves, mint juleps and chaise lounges.
I have always been really obsessed with New Orleans, I'm not sure when/why that started but it bleeds into the music I love (Tom Waits), the movies I watch (Angel Heart) and the eras in history that I most often read about.
Pretty Baby is an amazingly articulate, poetic imagining of what life in the Red Light district of New Orleans was like- I don't know how accurate it was but the clothing was delicious. When I first visited New Orleans (pre-Katrina) I wasn't at all dissappointed- it was exactly the way I had imagined it and the outfits of Susan Sarandon in this film would have been my ideal wardrobe, except it was like two million degrees outside with about six hundred percent humidity....so I stuck to shorts and tank tops that hid the sweat stains (ew)

Well, these first four took me longer than previously anticipated so now I am going to have to brush my fangs and tuck myself into bed so I can be fresh and pretty for work when my alarm goes off at it's ghastly (practically night-time) hour.

I will finish this tomorrow!!

Things That Cost More Than Hookers or Expensive Shit I Can't Afford

2009-04-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

Not that I have anything against sex workers but can you please tell me why I am having a major lady-boner over a pair of shoes that cost more than a blow job and maybe some cocaine?

The answer is because they are so epic that they would scare the rest of your clothes into quivering puddles of wrinkly cotton. If I wore these I wouldn't need sex or drugs or anything else except maybe some Rodarte tights to stretch over my stems, you know, so the shoes wouldn't get cold.
These are Prada. Say "Hello, Prada!"

Now say: "Walk your sweet leather studded selves on over to Oakland and jump into Casey's closet and magically shrivel all of her pant hems to a cooperative length."

Thank you. I will wear them the next time we see each other so you can fawn over how superior my shoes are. They will make you happy just by being in close proximity, like strappy Prosac. I promise not to tart them up with a pencil skirt or a blazer, but will vow to wear them with nasty ripped jeans and maybe an ill-fitting tank top (like the kind that shows your armpits a lot, only I will wear a silver leotard underneath it and do a spazzy dance.)

Now. On to some hi-lights from the recent fashion week fandango (I know, I know- Im SUPER late on this but I blame my job, which I must have in order to afford the sloppy rags I piece together hoping that someone might confuse them for late-90's Betsey Johnson when really its thrifted crap and Target clearance. Shhhh!)

I am not a "fashion blogger" nor do I necessarily have a critique of recent runway goings on, I just know what is fresh and what is a recycled . In my humble, uneducated opinion of course....

So, the only thing that I was really taken with was Comme des Garcons. It was the only collection that I saw that inspired me to create rather than shop, which to me is really the point of fashion. If I could sew I would have the most obnoxious wardrobe complete with bird-cage hats, lime green velvet knee socks and an alligator purse. Rei Kawakubo has this way of taking fabric and turning into second skins that transform you into a kind of Kubrick-esque warrior debutante that doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks about her fierce veil:

Normally, I don't care for neutral colors but there is something so architectural and raunchy about them when Rei does it. I love the classic shapes draped in ghostly gauze, like you just let your wardrobe rot for fifty years and then needed a uniform for your assigned job in the year 2075.

My only regret is that I would have liked to have seen one drastic color- maybe a deep teal or a slick laquor black. But that's what accessories are for, right? Rei knows best and she made something startling and ethereal (I hate using that word because it makes me think of those shitty Sophia Coppola gossamer-summery-girls-in-a-field photography, but in this case maybe I should change it to 'other-worldly', only I've already made a moderately funny Sophia Coppola joke and you don't get to do that too often unless you wanna sound like an art-fag).

The line that Rei did for H&M seems so tame compared to this recent collection, it's almost shocking. Not that I didn't lust after the H&M collection, because I did, but it just lacked the effortless nostalgic beauty that these have.

The dress on the far left?

OMG.
OMG.

Can I wear this every single time I have to be in public? I would, too. I would buy three of them and never wear anything else (and it would even go with the above mentioned Pradas although there is something understated about slouchy socks and snake skin flats). I might even wear it to bed because I lurv it so deeply. Of course, I would probably talk in a fake French accent like some escaped creature from Alain Resnais movie. Then I would be friendless because I would be a self-indulgent mutant.

So that pretty much sums it up. I liked Margiela, I liked Betsey, I liked Vivienne Westwood...but it was just sort of unimportant. It was gorgeous and detailed but it didn't rattle my feathers or ruffle my cage or anything like that.

Anyway, now I have to go do community service or hug orphans for being such a superficial twit for the past two (er, four) hours spent browsing on style.com.

Senseless Narcissism

2009-04-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Nothing can make me swoon like a well-crafted mix tape. Some things come close (the boiler room make-out from My So-Called Life, guys playing guitar, properly spelled text messages) but nothing will ever have the impact of a Sharpie-labeled CD. If I could work out a way not to slice my clitoris off, I might even masturbate with a really good one.

Which leads me to my next point:
I've never gotten a really good one.

Skylar Fisk in sixth grade gave me a mix tape that had Bon Jovi, Erasure, Kid N Play, Madonna and Rush (?) on it. I fast forwarded to the Madonna songs and recorded over the rest with a They Might Be Giants album. I was fickle and he had bad taste. He also had a crush on my friend Charmina Bagasan (side note: she was Filipino and her grandmother wouldn't let her borrow my banana/cherry/rhinestone earrings for a dance because they were "what nasty girls wear". She also gave me a grocery bag of corn every time I went over there) and he gave her a Coke every day for a week at lunch time. She didn't like him either because she was saving herself for Bryan Abrams from Color Me Badd. The night that they did a guest appearance on the original 90210, Charmina and I holed up in my bedroom and screamed at the television until my Mom threatened to put me on restriction. Then we screamed quietly and talked shit about Kelly Taylor.

Anyway, if I was a guy and I knew me I would have a raging hard-on for me based on my music taste alone. I would spend an entire month crafting a CD so fine, so flawless that it would put Nick O'Leary to shame. I would spend hours obsessing over each song, each lyric of each song, just to make sure that it was telling me every insomnia-induced fantasy that I had ever had (about myself, of course). In reality, if a guy did this I might be just a tad creeped out and certainly confused at what I had done to inspire it. I might write a pondering blog post and send some texts to poll opinions about creepy CD guy. I might even dub him that.

BUT...if he wasn't creepy and even just a little cute (awkward cute, preferably, not awkward hipster cute) this is the CD I would hope for. This, actually, could also be a list of songs that I wish had been written about me:

"Clark Gable" by The Postal Service

*I don't care for most of the maudlin whining of the Daddy-group, Deathcab for Cutie, but something about The Postal Service struck me as haunting and maybe on the borderline of too twee/just twee enough. Anyway, I would open the CD with this song because it would be the song I would play if I lost the girl I really loved.
"And I kissed you in a style that Clark Gable would have admired, I thought it classic."

"Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus

*I have a confession. You know that movie Detroit Rock City? That movie makes me want to be a boy. Only boys can have that kind of dirty-jeans-road-beers-class-ditching ease that gets them into wonderful trouble. If I was a boy, I'd certainly be a stoner metal head with Pantera posters and a crush on a girl...well, maybe a little bit like me (except for the fact that I wouldn't share joints in the back of his van with him). I would put this song second on the CD because it reminds me that its the little things that make people fall in love.
"I've got two tickets to Iron Maiden, baby...Come with my Friday, don't say maybe, I'm just a teenage dirt bag baby, like you."

"I'm On Fire" by Bruce Springsteen

*You can't be cute for too long before you make someone forget that you get hot in the pants for them. As a dragged out Wesley Snipes once said: "If you want them know there is steak for dinner, you've got to let them hear it sizzle!" Nothing sizzles like this song. I would put it third, unexpected, no lead up. Just a sudden burst of well-crafted passion. It would convey every hour that I hoped to spend making out in a car, windows fogging up, static of the all-night AM classic
rock station hissing in time to our heavy breathing and unsnapping buttons.
"At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head...only you can cool my desire."

"Pearl" by Love and Rockets

*Maybe I am a little too obsessed with the kind of love we had as teenagers- that kind that rocked you in the pit of your stomach and made you sneak out of your bedroom window just to see someone for five minutes. There was this apathy that came along with being that young, a facade that you had seen and done everything, just so you could be too tough to be hurt. This song would expose the vulnerability felt when someone else breaks through that.
"This is no ordinary girl, I ain't got no jaded feeling"

"Pure" by The Lightning Seeds

*Midway through the CD is a good time to confess that it goes beyond flirting/Iron Maiden/making out. This song slays me, absolutely wrecks me, with frilly love. It eluded me for years before I found out what it was/who it was by. The first time I heard it I thought- holy shit, I want to be the muse of this.
"Dreams of sights, of sleigh rides in seasons, where feelings not reasons an make you decide, as leaves pour down, splash autumn on gardens as colder nights harden...their moonlight delights...and I love you"

"Walk The Line" by Johnny Cash

*If you put this song first it would be cliche and wrong, wrong, wrong. You can't always open with something familiar. Sometimes you have to sneak it in, like a brand-new outfit- 'this old thing? ive liked this for years! see how relaxed i was with putting it mid-playlist?'
Sadly, commercialism has taken away some of the simple, ballsy appeal of this song. The thing about it is, its a really emo song sung by a really tough motherfucker. Any man that can switch gears from gospel to liquor to this has really come to terms with expressing himself:
"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine, I keep my eyes wide open all the time, I keep the ends out for the tie that binds"
I could translate this into: "Im warning you, bitch, don't fuck with me. I will cut you because I am sharing my feelings with you and you'd better take good care of them. And also, get me some cocaine." But it would lose its appeal. You can't really rhyme cocaine to much, anyway (if Jerry Garcia has taught us nothing else...)

"You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Loves You" by Dean Martin

*Everyone has heard this a million times, right? Everyone has also eaten peanut butter a million times- and then one day someone put it with chocolate and POW! Magic. You never looked at peanut butter the same way again.
Putting this song, this particular song, in a playlist intended for a crush gives it a whole new meaning. This song was THE most performed song in Las Vegas from 1946 (when it was originally recorded) through 1951. In the city where money, gambling, murder and sin are the national past-times, all folks really wanted to be reminded of was that:
"The world's always the same, you'll never change it, As sure as the stars shine above, You're nobody till somebody loves you...So find yourself somebody to love"
Ideally that someone should be the creator of the mix, of course.

"The Light" by Common

*In closing, I would like to finish with something that has a bit of an edge. You don't want to end the CD looking like a pussy. I dare you to call Common a pussy- he would slice you like bread, son. That being said, he wrote a ghetto fab love song that doesn't mention baby mamas and/or backing an ass up (not that I have a problem with those things in moderation). Bonus that it has musical references, like being super meta about recognizing that you put together a CD and understand that it will always be this symbol of how you introduced your heart formally.
"It's important, we communicate and tune the fate of this union, to the right pitch. I never call you my bitch or even my boo. There's so much in a name and so much more in you"

Connecting With Strangers

2009-03-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

I found this image on Post Secret today.

I don't often relate to the secrets on there, occasionally one about body image or infidelity or failure will strike a chord but nothing has resonated with me as clearly as this. I would like to know the person that wrote it. I would like to hug them and ask about their dream, find out where they moved. I would like to tell them that I can relate because I, too, have the exact same experience.

I have never talked about this before to anyone except my Mom. After my Dad died in 1998 I started having nightmares. Not regularly, maybe three or four times a year, with no trend in their timing. They were always the same, though.

In my dream my Dad would have faked his own death. He would have spent the last eleven years in a new state living a new life. I would have seen him by accident in a store or a park and then confronted him. We fight, I leave, he follows me. He shows up at the house I grew up in (where I still live in the dream) and explains to my family why he left. I watch the faces of my Mom, my brother, my sister, my aunt all collapse in various stages of grief and anger. He counts on me to smooth things over and I want to, I really want to, but I just burst into tears and beg him not to leave me again. I am the only one speaking. He hugs me and, in the dream, I am aware of his smell. His size. His voice. I remember the last conversation we had before he died (which I cant remember in real life) and I am overwhelmed with the knowing that he is going to leave again.

I wake up and try to hang on to it, to the memory and the feelings of him being alive. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I just smile and move on. Death touches me in a familiar way, even in the most unassuming parts of my existence. I think about him for at least a minute each day, sometimes a lot more. If I was going to send in a Post Secret it would say:

"My top five reasons for wishing my father hadn't died are:
1. He would have loved the internet
2. He would have loved My Chemical Romance
3. He would have loved my boyfriend
4. He would have loved seeing me move to San Francisco
5. My Mom would have a chance of being sane"

Playlist for My Exes

2009-03-25T17:54:00.001-07:00

I recently read a book that made me start thinking that if I divided my life into playlists, chronologically, what would be on them? I could leave these cd's for my kids to look back on and see what I was listening to at various times in my life, like a cooler scrapbook or less annoying home movie. I tried to write one for high school but every song just seemed to remind me of an ex-boyfriend. So I figure that I will start there and then work through other events, sampling the music from years of my life to compile into neat little playlists that I can turn on when I'm feeling like a nice drift down memory lane.
I don't remember dates or times very well, but one song can take me back (with 88 miles per hour Doc Brown force) to an exact moment in my life. I can remember the smell, the taste, what I was wearing and what was going through my head when I listen to these songs:

For Christopher Gagosian, ages 6-10:
"Two of Hearts" by Stacey Q

True, you were never my boyfriend but this song always came on when I was doodling your name on my Trapper Keeper. We caught lizards together and went to each other's birthday parties from kindergarten through fourth grade. I worshiped you with the same kind of fascination that I had for my parents marriage, wondering if two people had ever existed on their own without the other one. I thought that you and I would grow up and get married someday, have kids of our own, although sex hadn't occurred to me yet. You were my science fair partner and we made a potion (which was mostly hydrogen peroxide and pineapple Nehi) that you poured on some ants. Their death-writing made you name the concoction "the ant dancing potion" and I cried for an hour at the pile of bodies. We did kiss once, well, actually we bumped teeth once when we were getting up from a serious game of duck-duck-goose. I thought it was a kiss and you told me that you would never kiss me because I had big teeth. Whatever.

"I never thought that I could ever be this happy, yeah baby! My prayers were answered, boy you came in the nick of time"

I listened to this song every morning while I curled my bangs and scrunched my socks, hoping that you would give me an off-season Valentine that said something better than "lets be friends!" It never happened and you moved to Texas in fifth grade. I saw you on Myspace recently and, even though you kicked my ass at dodgeball, you also peaked in third grade. I was better off without you.

For Josh Wallace, age 12:

"And Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals

Although this song reminds me of you (mostly because Goodfellas was on the tv the first time we met) the ending of our story is much different. If I was to re-write the song it would go something like this:

Well, I met him at my best friend's house in grade eight
I was weird and awkward and had not yet started to date
He suggested Truth or Dare
And in the driveway while I stood there
He got his friend to double-dare me to kiss him

We made out for three more days right after school
I thought he was going to be my boyfriend, which was cool
And in the bathroom on that fourth day
Up my shirt his hands started to stray
I told him that wasn't okay
And then he ditched me.

Bryan Douglas, ages 14-15:
"Into Your Arms" by The Lemonheads

You were my first boyfriend, the first real guy that really liked me back in the same real way that I liked you. My parents adored you because you were a long-haired, guitar playing, vegetarian hippie like they were. I loved you because you played Dungeons and Dragons and taught me bass chords for "Come As You Are". It didn't hurt that your best friend (a psychopath named David who, at 15, had a subscription to Soldier of Fortune magazine) was going out with MY best friend. Our relationship lasted six months- June of 1995 through December of 1995. In that time we spent about nine thousand hours making out on your bed listening to a mix tape that had Hole, Nine Inch Nails and The Lemonheads on it. When Evan Dando sang "I know a place, that's safe and warm, from the crowds..." you would stop, mid-kiss, and squeeze me. I can taste the late summer flavor on the back of my tongue, the sharp chill of stolen menthol cigarettes circulating through the air conditioning in your bedroom.

That relationship was just so simple. You thought I was pretty, I liked your sense of humor and we just let it be. Until Julie Aames reared her over-processed bleached head like some bargain basement Kelly Taylor. You dumped me a week- JUST ONE WEEK- after my fifteenth birthday. I cried for a month over you. I am now sad to find that you're a raging alcoholic and are planning your wedding to your pregnant fiance. You deserved better than that, you know.

Matt Russell, ages 15-17
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and "Number One Crush" by Garbage

We met because I lied to your friend, who was in my driver's ed class, and told him that I slept in a coffin. The pale skin, black eyeliner and ripped fishnet (gag) dress threw him off. He was convinced that I was evil and unholy, so he thought we would be perfect for each other. I am still not quite sure how you two were friends, since he was black and you were a skinhead but that logic evaded me until I was much older (read: just now as I write this). Oh, you were glorious! Our first date- you were so tall and tattooed and scrumptiously older than me, a little Siouxsie carbon copy dolled up and smoking a clove. You told me to tell my parents that you were seventeen when, really, you had just celebrated your eighteenth birthday. You were such a bad kid, kick starting my fetish for delinquents and ruffians. You had been arrested a few times and when we kissed, I could taste whisky on your breath. I think that you loved my entire family and might have gone out with me just to be in a stable environment where you were embraced, fed, loved and, eventually, welcomed to live. My Mom and her strays- everyone else's kids always littering up the living room. I grew up with hundreds of friends who had troubled lives that wound up becoming my brothers and sisters, at least for a few months. You stayed the longest, though.

Love did tear us apart- in the form of my Dad's death. I loved him so much that I didn't think I was allowed to be happy after he was gone and, honestly, I was so tired of your over-protective, kill-for-me proclamations. I just wanted a normal boyfriend that would like me okay enough for hours of video games and the occasional concert. You were talking marriage, which is the kiss of death for every girl from a small town. I knew that if I stayed with you I would end up pregnant, divorced and alone in five years, tops. So I dumped you in the elevator at the hospital. You punched the wall and left a dent. I didn't even blink. At the funeral I could tell that you wanted to touch me but I regarded you with empty eyes. You were the last guy I dated that got to meet my Dad. In a way, you have a part of me that no one will ever get (including the virginity I forced upon you once night in my backyard because I was sick of being pure)- you got to know me as the daughter of a complete family. You got to see me before I grew up. I guess I will always remember you for that (and your tongue ring).

Brian Bauer, ages 19-20
"Believe" by Cher

You dumped me by not calling me on my birthday, which left me no choice but to sneak into a gay bar with my aunt. You were a prick. My aunt and I spent the entire night dancing, mostly to Cher, and had out picture taken...only to wind up in the Gay and Lesbian section of the local newspaper. We were captioned as being the "cute couple, red head in tiger print halter top and buxom blond with nose ring."

I wouldn't include you on here, since you were such a bastard, but every well-balanced mix has to have a queeny ballad that you can belt out in the shower. So you slide in, barely.

Chris
"Hallelujah" by Leonard Coen

This wasn't exactly a break up but it was an epoch in my life that I would chronicle on a mix because of its significant and quiet intimacy. I would like to point out that WE liked this song well before it got sullied by the humping scene in Watchmen. WE also liked it before it was covered by Rufus Wainwright for Shrek. Anyway, it would be a disservice to a fine friend to not include this chapter of my love life. It will get no further details except one (and its gonna be cryptic):
Los Angeles Road Trip

Keith, ages 24-27
"You've Really Got A Hold On Me"

You did, you know, in a painful and sick way. I would have done just about anything to be the kind of girlfriend that you wanted. I did do just about anything, come to think of it, to earn your love. I hadn't heard this song since I was a kid and my parent's band played it. Then one day, about three months before I left you, I heard it on an oldies radio station. It was a Sunday morning in the late summer and even though it was early, it was already hot. I was driving through the neighborhood heading to the flea market. I hummed the first few lines of the song before I felt the tears welling in my eyes. I knew I wanted to leave you but I wasn't sure if I could, your hold was so strong. The past year rushed back like in movies before the main character dies- I saw our fights, your temper, the break down, all of it. I pulled over and stumbled out of my car, throwing up orange juice in the gutter and then curling up face down on the cool, dewy grass of a strangers lawn. I fell asleep for a few minutes and then stood up, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. I felt tired in my heart and tired in my body. I drove to your place and your car wasn't there, meaning you'd been out all night doing who knows what. I gave up. I spent the day curled up in the sun with a book. I didn't recognize it then but the first delicate tendrils of detachment were beginning to unfurl. I ignored your call for the first time that day.

Will Turner, 27-Present
"Take Me Home Please" by Reggie and the Full Effect

Because every good mix should end with a high note, I am putting this song. This song is every amazing, inspiring feeling that my boyfriend gives me. He gets to be last because this is what I want to finish with, this is the song that plays in my head when I look at him. It takes me back to the first weeks we were falling in love and how finally, after tons of boys that didn't want me as much as I wanted them, tons of boys that cheated on me and broke my heart, tons of boys that I left before they could leave me, I had found someone that I could just come home to.
"Please pick up the phone now, I've got to let you know now, how much you mean to me...."

Ikea Instructions Are Like Bicycle Mormons

2009-03-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

I like to think that I am a fairly mechanically inclined person. I can change a tire, I can do origami, I can put on eyeliner and drive (while texting, as I also scoff at laws). This could all be attributed to video games but that's another story...this story is about good and evil. Right and wrong.
This story is about Ikea.
While at dinner last night I was reminded about the grumbling defeat I encountered at the hands of the enemy.
Like all twenty-something on a budget I regarded Ikea as the mecca of interior decorating. When the big box store opened in San Diego I went on the first day and stocked up on preciously foreign purple spatulas and teeny tiny tea lights shaped like cacti. I was overwhelmed with the exotically low prices and enticing minimalism of the whole place. I wanted to live there. I wanted to take it all home. I started with a chair.
Skruvsta was a natural choice. I had a computer desk and no chair (correction: I did have a chair but my cat had decided it was better as a bed and growled at me whenever I tried to convince her otherwise. A chair, I reasoned, was cheaper than stitches.) Skruvsta appeared to be friendly, stylish and spend-friendly. Like an amazing first date where you imagine your wedding, I stared at the swiveling post-mod print fabric with floating hearts pounding from my eyes. I flashed forward, a year down the line maybe, when Struvie and I would expand our Swiss family to include an ottoman, a duvet and maybe even some throw pillows. I marveled at how neutral the colors were, how I could make just about anything work with it, convincing myself by the second that this was a great idea. I read some fine print about self-assembly and, in the grand tradition of puppy love, ignored the warning signs. I hoisted the heavy box into my cart and pushed off into the sunset.
Hours later I sat in a rubble of Diet Coke cans, shredded card board and discarded clothing. I was panting. My mascara was half way to my chin and my screaming monologue of swear words had inspired the neighbor to check on me. I answered the door half-naked, having stripped most of my clothes off in the heat of building, and she eyed me curiously. She asked if I was alone and I shifted my wild eyes around and told her I couldn't talk. I had a chair to conquer.
There were four pieces and a handful of screws. There was one of those L-shaped insubstantial looking screwer-inner thingies and some bolts that were fixed into a lump with super tape. I didn't think it could be as hard as it was. I spent the entire night and a large portion of the next day tinkering with the chair. I would get two of the five legs on and then one would fall off. I lost one of the wheels somewhere in the ordeal and stained the fabric with my sweating cave-woman hands. I stripped most of the screws and stubbed my toe. By the next day I was halfway to nuts before I called it quits. I felt defeated, stupid and slightly sick from the Scotchguard fumes. Was I just retarded? Was I too much of a girl to put a chair together? No. I knew that the real culprit wasn't my feminine lack of dexterity or a shortage of tools: it was the motherfucking instructions.
You buy something from Sweden, odds are that the people who made it are...Swedish. As much as we Americans expect the rest of the world to speak English it just doesn't work that way. In deference to our arrogance, the Swedes know we wont take the time to translate so they provide their cheap, fantastic furniture with pictorial instructions. Which are just as hard to understand and, oh, say a foreign language.
Lets take this picture as an example.
Panel 1:
Clearly the instructions cautions us about playing air-guitar with a rectangle. It doesn't go to eleven and you will just vibrate uncomfortably while your hand gets mysteriously sucked into the void of the shape. This could be called "The Attack of Geometry" if it was a piece of modern art. Also, it would probably be safe to say that this is what a Picasso stick figure would look like.
Panel 2:
Get your thalidomide friend with one butt cheek and Bob Ross hair to come sink his arms into the geo-void as well. By panel two, it seems to be pleasing them. Those smiles take up half of their blopy faces.
Panel 3:
Be gentle with the mystery shape, you dont want to hump it until it cracks. You especially dont want to do it with your hands behind your back. You cant just tumble it like a bar maid, you have to romance it. Sweet talk it.
Panel 4:
Take the brick on a date. Use your magic carpet to fly it to dinner is Azkaban and on the ride home, once you're both good a liquored up, sink your appendage into its wet, tight void while you give yourself a reverse reach around. Don't be fooled, though, this brick is no amateur. It has plans for you.
Panel 5:
Confused by shapes offering you a pamphlet? You aren't alone. They want something and you don't know what. You thought the night of passion with the welcoming mystery brick had no price? Think again. You're part of the family now and you have to prove yourself. They are whispering things, horrible things, that you could never do. You just want to make the voices stop. You just want them to be quiet...
Panel 6:
You have snapped. Square and Slightly Smaller Rectangle have convinced you to teach the world their message . They have instructed you to go to Ikea and call them with their own phone. You read to the customer service associate from the tract, which is titled: "4 Sides Good, 2 Sides Bad."
Your spiral into madness is complete.

I mean, seriously. Are people expected to learn anything about furniture assembly from that smug amoeba? I know that I didnt. In the end I called my brother and told him that he could have a free chair if he could just put it together. He came right over and removed the cursed object. I have to admit, I did feel a little bit like a victim in a fable. I was passing the madness along and preying on the opportunistic cheapness of others. I consoled myself with liquor and a mini-marathon of Three's Company, though, so it all worked out in the end.

The Bloodsucking Work of a Sparkly Vampire Genius

2009-03-07T17:21:00.001-08:00

WHY oh why am I so obsessed with Twilight?
It's not fair.
When I look at the four, fat, thick, shiny black volumes (you didn't think I was going to say volumes, did you, pervo-s!?) on my bookshelf next to such refined things as Kurt Vonnegut and Sarah Vowell I am filled with the shame of an alcoholic that just put cold medicine in the blender with ice to make a margarita. I feel dirty and wrong and not in the sexy ways, in the sad ways where I wonder what I have become that I have such appetites for emo teenage fiction.
(the answer might be that, at 28, Im a bit of an emo-teenager myself- shut up! Its not true! My blog lies! But also its kind of true)
I can just imagine my copy of Breakfast of Champions coughing out dust balls and glaring at Twilight. When it speaks, the sound of its rustling pages sounds something like: "So, you're the new kid on the block, eh? The one she takes to read in the bathtub? That used to be me, you know, until you waltzed in here with your 20% off sticker and your built-it masturbation fodder."
And then Twilight would be all: "Suck it, grandpa-taint, she likes me now. Did you notice that I will soon be made into a major motion picture? Yeah. But you're awfully cute with your hardback cover and stupid illustrations."
And then Dave Eggers would pop up: "But aren't you oozing with over dramatized efforts in teen melodrama and ripe with anti-feminist undertones? I mean, c'mon buddy, Bella Swan can't even walk down the street without needing to be saved!"
And then Sarah Vowell says: "Fo realz! This sounds like an ex-Mormon agenda for the re-telling of new birth through Christ! Bella needs to be SAVED? Edward isn't WORTHY? Bella has no obvious goals for her life apart from turning into a glitter-vamp and becoming immortal with her "spirit" family. With all of the guilt and dry humping I would have pegged you for an ex-Catholic!"
And then Twilight is like: "Fuck you boners! I star Robert Pattinson and hello- have you seen him?"
Then the other books shut up because its true: Robert Pattinson is so good looking that he makes me want to club baby seals because, next to him, they are ugly and FAT.
.
The thing is, I get it. I know what the book is doing, I know how this poison works. You get sucked in by the idea of some beautiful God-like glittering teenage boy loving your old, boring-job, saggy bra wearing ass because you imagine yourself as Bella Swan (who is average-pretty and awkward, so its easy to project your own insecurities about your thighs ). Then you neglect your boyfriend who is fine by real-world standards but would certainly be kicked out of the Cullen family for his distinct inability to make you swoon by blowing on you and also saving you a nillion times. You get sucked in because the love is forbidden and these days the only forbidden things in my life consist of expired Christmas candy and my land lady's underwear drawer. You want to believe that love can still be this super-interesting and overwhelmingly sexy thing that makes you stay up all night just to watch your plain, gawky girlfriend sleep because she is a precious and helpless little lady that needs your strong boy-shoulders and stone erection just to make it through the night.

But real life isn't like that. Real boyfriends don't save you from menacing vampires that want to eat you because you smell like a thousand cupcakes got rolled in chocolate-dipped Christmas presents that are puppy breath and fat-free frozen yogurt. Real boyfriends take an hour to respond to your text messages and make you go see Fantastic Four 2 with them. Real boyfriends begrudgingly watch America's Next Top Model with you when Family Guy is on and then switch over to it real fast on commercials when you get up to pee. Then they forget to change back so you miss the part where Tyra says "Nine beautiful ladies stand before me, but I only have eight photos in my hand-". Real boyfriends use the last of your conditioner so that you have to use the crappy two-in-one stuff and end up with Medusa hair. Edward Cullen just mopes around a lot about how much he loves you and then takes off for a few months so that you get to fall in love with a hot-ass Native American kid that is secretly a badass werewolf and wants to have cubs with you. How bad can that be?
I know that it vastly underestimates the intelligence of young women and sets them up for wildly unrealistic ideals of what boys should be like. No young boy can even compete with Edward Cullen. No young girls should allow themselves to be vulnerable and helpless. It sets up antiquated dynamics between men and woman that cause a misogynistic power shift. I mean, dont get me wrong, as a healthy haver of ladybits I occasionally enjoy letting the dudes be the big strong ones- but I also love knowing that I can take care of myself. At its core Twilight is about co-dependency and the premise that if you really, really love someone its okay to change yourself: its even okay to become undead.
Which doesn't mean that I still dont imagine Jacob and Edward having long, sweaty fist-fights in my drive way while I coat them in mud. I am only human.

I Am Worth A Million Dollars Per Minute

2009-03-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

With the failing economy I think one would find it prudent to begin thinking up ways to supplement waning incomes. Sure, you could cut back on beer, hookers and blow- but then how would you distract yourself from the pile of doo-doo that your fun-sucked life is turning in to? I have had lots of half-baked entrepreneurial schemes in the past (a dating show for developmentally disabled adults that takes place on a bus where they get to do crafts and decorate cookies and see if they like each other...called That Special Someone, for example) but I think that I have finally come up with my best idea ever. Even better than that lame spider who managed to spell "Some Pig" in her web....
HEARTBREAK CAMP!
The idea is fool proof. Everyone has been dumped! Everyone has had their heart stepped on by some reckless trollop. No one gets out of break-ups unscathed. There are the standard comforts- bags of M&Ms, liquor, episodes of Cheaters, random sex with mustachioed men that you meet at sports bars....but what we, the masses of rejected singles, need is a safe haven. A place to reset. A place to immerse ourselves in the comforting arms of peers that understand why we absolutely have to drive by our exes' house forty times on a work night.
Heartbreak Camp would be a place for the dumped- I mean, "Recently Liberated" to convene, heal and return to real life with a sense of closure. No more crying in your room for a month! No more collecting the exes possessions in a box that you keep in your trunk, hoping that one day you will be strong enough to leave in a dumpster. No more emergency appointments with your shrink!
This would make tons of money, I swear. The only expenses would be the following:
1. Location
Retreat cabins in the mountains are not expensive. Plenty of room for camp activities, lots of wide open spaces, rent it out for a three-day weekend. It would be, max, $800 off season.
2. Food
The Recently Liberated would be required to bring certain items to share with the group (to follow). For meals, classic break-up food would be provided Hot Pockets, gin, Mama Celeste frozen pizza, Tootsie Pops and packs of Kool Aid for dipping and cheesecake. It would break down to, like, $10 per person.
3. Insurance?
No. We can make people sign waivers getting us off the hook for cut wrists, stubbed toes and the like.

The campers would be required to bring certain items essential to relationship apocalypse melt-down.
1. Supplies
You must bring two of the following for sharing: raw cookie dough, a birthday cake bought on discount because it has someone elses name on it, several orders of nachos from Taco Bell, post-holiday sale chocolate, Combos, utility-poor-children's-vat of Neapolitan ice cream and/or dry cereal (preferably Cookie Crisp)
2. All possessions/reminders/memorabilia/photos of the ex. These will be used on Day Two.
3. A mixed CD of every song that reminds you of them. Some suggestions are:
"I Will Always Love You"- Dolly Parton
"Separate Lives"- by Phil Collins
"Broken Wings"- Mr. Mister
"Total Eclipse of the Heart"- Bonnie Tyler

Here is a rough break down of camp activities.

Day One: Indulgence
Campers arrive looking weary and woebegone, lugging trash bags with their change of pa jams and provisions. Heartbreak Camp is quiet, warm and welcoming. Everyone groups together in the main room, like refugees, clutching their pillows and nibbling at the crisp-sleeve-crisp crust of Hot Pockets. Once everyone has settled there is a moment of silence for the deceased relationships. The first night is mellow, people take turns playing their mixed CDs and shuffling through piles of relationship shrapnel. Lights are out early and the soothing voices of counselors (mostly my opportunistic and horny friends, mostly mostly Chris) tell people that they are going to be all right. Hugs are freely given and there are some kittens to play with. You can sign up for a soak in one of the lukewarm bathtubs where Patsy Cline music is piped in and the mirrors are covered.

Day Two: Anger
This is the day that the melancholy gets shaken off. Attention will be focused on revenge and spite. Activities will include:
-Stapling exes pictures to targets for archery practice
-A seminar on Wiccan spells for hair loss/impotency/herpes
-Angry Music Karaoke
-A seminar on effective e-stalking
-Physical therapists for make-out sessions with a photographer available to document your tonsil hockey on all social networking sites that your ex might see. Fake Craigslist missed connection posts are also offered.
-Arts/Crafts: Voodoo doll crafting, jewelery melting, label making to cover the exes name on shared mailbox, etc
-Lecture: Surviving The First Run In: Contingency Plan of Emergency Grooming Supplies
-Close of the evening is a bonfire, where all memorabilia not maimed is torched

Day Three: Graduation
The ceremony will begin with everyone announcing themselves as a Newly Liberated person. Then, simultaneously, the exes will be deleted from all social networking sites and erased from all cell phones. Drinking will commence and Girls Gone Wild will be on-site to document all inebriated mistakes for the follow up to Heartbreak Camp- "Screwed: A Weekend of Escape From Things You Regret Post-Breakup".

Office Spacing

2009-02-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

I work in Human Resources, which is both remarkable and boring at the same time.
The remarkable part is that I have absolutely no formal education in HR and usually an HRIS certificate is required for this sort of work. I wheedled my way into HR by sloppily taking over the duties at previous job and Googlin' the pants off everything that I didn't understand (which was a lot). So I guess you could say that I am self-taught, on my resume this appears as "motivated self-starter with superior research skills". It's good work, pretty easy, not terribly dull. It could be a lot worse, you know. I could be a lumberjack.
The boring part is that people in HR typically have very few work place friends. Who wants to have lunch with the lady that can fire you while handing you that think EDD brochure over her cut crystal candy bowl? Who wants to grab a drink after work with the person that has signed your write ups, reviews and raises? No one, that's who. It is a solitary existence in the manner of popes, lawmen and super models. You are an island- you touch no one and no one touches you (else it could be sexual harassment).
The perks are very, very few. These are the best that I could come up with:
1. First of all, actually HAVING a job is marvelous.

2. Not the lowest paid person in the company.

3. Get to plan birthday/promotion/holiday parties which is fun if you're into that sort of thing...which I am.

4. Get your paychecks before anyone else, since you print the damn things.

The downside to this job, besides the isolation-Simon-and-Garfunkel thing is the fact that you're really not allowed to screw up. You can't claim ignorance or poor training since its pretty much your job description to facilitate training and overcome both of those things Take note:
1. You write the handbook and update it yearly. You can't pretend like you didn't know the company policy about not bringing beer to work. You also can't pretend like you didnt know that Internet usage did not include spending half of your day on Hulu and the other half on Myspace (you could try to claim that you were recruiting but its dicey).

2. You cant get away with showing skin, tattoos, your tiny nose ring or a hickey. You have to be a model employee at all times even on casual Friday. This also means no free champagne and karaoke at the Christmas party- hello, Total Eclipse of the Heart duet with Nathan in IT? No. Sucking face for three hours at the potato bar? Nein. Hitting on your office manager's seventeen year old son? Verboten.

3. If you're sick you have to come to work. HR is a small department so if one person is out, it screws everyone.

Not to complain or anything, these are tough economic times even with the new stimulus signed today (would you like me to ramble about how much work that creates for me? We have like fifty people on COBRA that now qualify for the subsidy). I'm lucky that I have a job that doesn't require me to ask people if they want to supersize something. I don't hate my work by any means but I am critical of it- that's just my nature. I have a strong suspicion toward anything that involves me wearing "slacks" or carry a keycard. I do find small ways to buck the system, though, and let a bit of my inner anarchist out. Ready for the noise?
1. I take like, six, bathroom breaks a day. No, I don't have a bladder problem, I have cell phone games! Really fun ones, too, where you get to be a high school boy on a football team and make choices to either royally fuck his life up or turn him out into the prom king (I opt for fucking things up a little worse with each round). When I start to nod off at my desk I scuttle off to the ladies' and spend a few precious minutes in 11th grade (for the third time).

2. Ergonomic desk placement! My computer/desk face away from the door. This, I've found, allows me to hide a book in my desk so that I can read it to distract myself from whatever "work" I should be doing. It should be noted that I read books at work that I wouldn't ever touch under normal recreational circumstances. Most recently it was some trashy airport romance novel with a main character named Eleanor and her on-again-off-again boyfriend Skylar. Puh-lease. Yet oddly, once it became the forbidden slacker icon of all things not TPS report like, I found it engrossing and positively charming! Oh, Skylar! Why dont you confront your fears of Eleanor someday dying like your tragic wife did? Dont you know that its better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all- like poor Eleanor who has spent her life in pursuit of academics and has sworn off men since her one and only boyfriend in college pressured her into have disappointing sex, only to leave her shortly after? She thinks all men are like that and has no interest in sex, you bronzed knucklehead! She needs you to show her that it can be amazing! That spark you felt kissing her a the ski trip wasn't because of the brandy, it was because you can feel again, Skylar! Damn you and your chiseled abs.

3. My iPod+filing= pretend music videos in my head. Most recently it was during "Supermassive Black Hole" that I imagined myself crawling through the filing cabinets like some corporate casual hussy that pulls her hair out of its bun and begins gyrating and mouthing "how long before you let me go...". I was choreographing my routine- rolling my body over the files, throwing them out of my way with reckless abandon as I crawled toward the camera, popping buttons on my sensibly brown blouse, ripping I-9s in half and clawing at the banker boxes with last year's time cards- all while I filed the recent handbook signature receipts. It would be a really excellent video, you know. Kind of like Whitesnake but with alphabetizing.

I am totally NOT telling you to do these things- well, maybe the pretend music videos because no one can see you doing that unless you get way too into it (like I've done). I wont help you pay your bills if you get fired although I probably would take you out for a moderately priced meal. I just think that its such bullshit that we are, like, required to work through various obligations to debt, housing, food, etc. I dont think we are meant for the ol' 9-5 grind...at least Im not. So its important to take a step back and let things be what they are. Just remember, the next time you see your office's HR lady alone at lunch take a minute and say hi...unless she's mouthing the words to "Hot In Here". Don't interrupt, she might be figuring out how to do the splits over the copy machine.

How To Be A Hipster Without Losing Your Soul (part one)

2009-02-10T20:47:00.001-08:00

I am not a hipster, let me just make that very clear. I am chubby, I don't ride a bike, I loathe Neutral Milk Hotel and I enjoy shopping at Target. I have a large collection of non-vinyl, non-underground hip hop music and only three pairs of skinny jeans. I don't have an iPhone, I don't like green tea and I don't dumpster dive for organic produce.
I am not a hipster.
However, I am also really nothing else. I don't fit in with any other subculture (I used to roll with the goths until I got sick of drawing on my eyebrows and pretending not to LOVE Dr. Dre). I am certainly not a frat princess (my ass is too big, when I put those Juicy shorts on it looked like it a fun house mirror word of the day). I am obsessed with music and have a decent knowledge of bookish things, I don't hate activists and I really like hanging out in Oakland...so its either hipsters or thugs and aint no thug gonna roll with a white girl in a Hyundai. I've tried.
But here is the thing...I really dont like the whole hipster m.o. In fact, I basically think its the most obnoxious thing I've ever seen. I am so bad at being ironic and not good looking enough to pull of really hideous clothes in a way that says:
"Im so gorgeous it doesnt even matter what I wear, check out these leggings and this huge t-shirt for example, arent I killing you with early 90s nostalgia?"
I also only have two scarves, so that kind of eliminates the twee factor I could have working for me due to my accidental mullet and large collection of baby animal sweaters (thanks, Mervyns, eight years ago). But, nonetheless, I do get drawn into hipster territory more than I would like. And I need to know how to stealthily move among them without incurring the rage of hundreds of think vegans. They might stab me with their knitting needles.
Saturday night my San Francisco bestie, Marc, took me to a party in Oakland. At a similar party in the same house a year ago, two girls from America's Next Top Model showed up in the middle of an orgy. It sounded pretty promising. I should have known it would be bad, though, when I showed up and found parking right away. In the Bay Area that means one thing:
Bikes.
The entire front yard was covered in an Apocalypse-worthy plague of vintage Raleigh single speed fixed gear bikes in various shades of puke green and motor-home sofa orange. As we walked up I clutched Marc's arm like a harpie and hissed:
"You didnt say this was a hipster party!"
"You'll be so fine," he said. "You're wearing a striped shirt."
We walked up the rickety steps of the Victorian only to see, no shit, about a hundred kids that looked like they stepped out of an issue of Nylon. I rolled my eyes so hard that I actually saw my own brain.
As we squeezed in the front door I noticed a pile of shoes in the entry way. One of those parties. The kind where they leave you a passive-aggressive note about their precious hard wood flooring. Let me just explain something- I am from Southern California. I have partied at some of the bougiest houses in Hollywood. Not once- not ONCE- have I been asked to take my motherfucking shoes off. Honestly, it grosses me out. I dont know these people. I dont want to walk around their house barefoot (I wasn't wearing socks). I dont want to clean their Stella Artois puddles from between my toes. Marc gladly pulled his sneakers off and headed toward the kitchen. I avoided eye contact and steered my Converse right behind him. We navigated around the food table (vegan noodles, bullshit sushi, Trader Joes pizza, Berkeley Bowl produce, the usual indie-rock-anorexia-staples) and headed into the kitchen where more hipsters lingered, barefoot, talking about rhetoric classes. From the basement I could hear the heavy beats of some booty-bass. I clunked down in my rubber soles and was greeted with a powerful punch of body odor. The basement was getting crunk.
A DJ spun ironic hip hop and skinny grad students shimmied around in their dolphin shorts and head bands. Marc leaned over to me and told me that he heard everyone was on E. I stared at my brain again.
I started to get into the music for a second, was thinking about possibly dancing (I can seriously shake my shit) and then I noticed people glaring at me. I mean- not the social-anxiety "those people are glaring at me" where they're really just looking around and Im paranoid- but actual glaring. I assessed myself- black and white striped shirt, black jacket, gray skinny jeans and...oh fuck...SHOES. They were all in sock feet and clearly annoyed with my audacity for keeping my kicks on. I mumbled something to Marc about going off to find Michael (his cousin) and ran back upstairs.
Caught in a maze of electric blue wind breakers and belted sweatshirts, I managed to find my way back to the living room where I saw more of my friends lounging on a couch. Relieved, I approached. I was so elated to have found a safe port in a storm that I didnt notice the small girl sitting on the floor.
"OW!"
"I am so sorry! I didn't mean to step on you," I cried, reaching down to help her up.
"Maybe if you took your FUCKING shoes off.." she started.
I laughed nervously and concocted a lie. "Yeah, see, I just had stitches on my foot from an accident and I asked the hostess if it would be okay if I kept my shoes on, to, you know, protect my foot?"
"Whatever, you fat bitch," she said.
I felt the rage begin to boil. I wanted to rip her feather earrings out of her ears and gouge her eyes out with them. I wanted to tell her that there were other movies besides Garden State. I wanted to steal her bike seat. Instead, I ran out the front door and whipped out my cell phone.
"Marc? Come out front. Im leaving," I said.
I knew it would be a few minutes before he could get out there, so I leaned up against the side of the house, the cool East Bay air soothing my flushed face. I wanted to go home and cry. Among hundreds of people I felt like such an outcast. I felt ashamed and plain and sickened by my absolute inability to fit in. And, of course, they had won because they cultivate an intimidation so mighty that it masks their own insecurities and keeps outsiders at bay. I had let the hipsters get to me. I knew better, I have never had a problem seeing people for what they are, but the simple numbers of their army had taken the fight out of me. I know that Im a cool person. I have a wicked sense of humor, quite possibly the perfect taste in music and I am socially observant and interesting. There is no reason why people shouldn't adore me to an embarrassing degree.
Marc came outside and I quickly (lamely) explained what happened. I told him that I was going home and he was oddly distant. I felt like I had let him down. We hugged good-bye and I walked back to my car. I turned on my newest mix cd (MGMT, All Girl Summer Fun Club, Psychic TV, Aesop Rock and Alice Cooper) and headed home.
I thought about fitting in and what it means to be cool. Although I am far, far, far from perfect I think Im kind of alright. I usually dont need validation from others to have confidence and I certainly dont need to "fit in". I guess we all crave embracing peers, though, and I am certainly not above wanting to be well-liked. But unlike those snotty assholes I wont ever make someone feel guilty for not being like my clique. I wont shun them if they dont know who Angela Chase is, I wont think less of someone for preferring Woody Allen to the Coen Brothers and, most importantly, I wont EVER make someone take their shoes off to come into my home.
I just dont roll like that.

Art for the Sake of "Art"

2009-02-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

San Francisco has me staring awkwardly at all of my creative hobbies like I dont know them any more. Maybe its because I had to be crafting at all times in San Diego lest I die of ennui...and up here I am steeped in things to entertain me. So anyway, I dont have time to make sticker puppets or dioramas these days but I DO have time to finger-bang away at MS Paint at work.
And how fucking rad is MS Paint anyway? I rebuff thee, Photoshop. This is almost as old school as the internets get.
I swear that I am flirting with the idea of printing these babies out and cajoling them into expensive frames and calling it an art show. Or maybe, more realistically, I could just keep doing them and posting them in my blog until I get so sick of it that I stop. Or until I stop being able to draw animals. Right now its just the six- giraffes, dolphins, elephants, ponies, cat heads and deer things. I dont think I can push much harder. Ive tried dogs and they turn into C.H.U.D.s

Rest In Peace, My Filthy Love

2009-02-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

The first band that I was ever obsessed with was Depeche Mode. This was before the interwebs and before Google and before iTunes...if you can imagine life without these mandatory pleasures. How did we discover music, you ask....how did our simple cave-man brains realize that if we liked Nine Inch Nails we would probably love Skinny Puppy? How did we listen to music without an iPod? Well, we held our tape recorders up to the radio to make mixed tapes and saved up to go to the used record store where we could buy one cassette per weekend. But it had to be deeper- when the radio didn't back announce an artist, how did we find new bands?
Liner notes.
First there was Depeche Mode who, in their liner notes, thanked Joy Division. I discovered Ian Curtis (who, coincidentally died five minutes before I was born...same year and everything) who kind of adored up and coming Nick Cave. Nick Cave lead to Lydia Lunch, who led me to The Cramps. When I first heard "A Date With Elvis" my twelve year old brain was addled with their sexual, gruff, twanging rhythms. I re-arranged my tape collection to go:
Depeche Mode, The Cramps, Joy Division (I snubbed New Order, naturally), The Smiths and Nirvana. Like, immediately.
I saw The Cramps for the first time in 1996. I was sixteen, a 34D and teetering in metal pumps that I bought at Gamma Gamma. I sneaked into their show at local San Diego dive, Soma. The first song that they played was Garbage Man and I shimmied and oozed around the dance floor with pompadoured greasers and corsetted girlfriends. I saw Poison Ivy's snarl painted in coral lipstick and her leopard catsuit and fell in agonizing girl-love with her. I am happy to say that I saw them play no less than fourteen times after that night- I was hooked.
Today, twelve years after that first concert, I sat at my corporate desk job in my stupid little suit and logged on to MSN...where I saw that one of the most powerful forces in my musical development had died, at a mere sixty.
I cried when Kurt Cobain died.
I was devastated when Johnny Cash died.
That Joey Ramone chap fucked me up for a good week.
I mourned Kurt Vonnegut and Edward Gorey.
But this...Lux Interior was one of the people responsible for turning me out into a fantastically well-versed musically obsessed snob. His liner notes showed me Iggy and Bowie, who showed me Tom Waits and Lou Reed, who led me head first into the dark, spiraling, dead-rock star smeared world of glam rock and its followers. I became who I am today because of these musicians. I saw their tattoos and guitars, so much like my own fathers, and their wild, swinging, delirious mesh of fuck-me-no-fuck-you attitude.
So I closed the door to my office, stared out at the Golden Gate bridge and sobbed into my H&M jacket.
One more hero is dead and I can feel the weight of my own age so suddenly. My generation is losing the idols that we grew up with, the remarkably unique musicians that have no modern rivals. I highly doubt that anyone will cry when Kanye kicks the bucket or when Fall Out Boy loses a founding member to a drug overdose.
I know I wont.

Significantly Incredible

2009-01-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

This is just further proof that I should jump on my ideas as soon as I have them.

I had been wanting to do a series of Virgin Mary Bea Arthur paintings. I even have some rough sketches with Rue McClanahan as a Mary Magdalene of sorts. With my recent move to San Francisco I just haven't had the time to sit down and slop some paint on some canvass. Now after seeing this I am starting to question if I should even bother. Obviously I will just look like some Johnny Come Lately like I did when I started watching Sopranos two years after the series ended. In my defense, I was rather obsessed with stealing library books and living paycheck to paycheck during the mafia hayday.
So now I am left with a feeling somewhere between empty and awe. I will call this: awempty. That may or may not be a word since it didn't come up under auto spellcheck but Im too busy to Google it. After getting burned with the recent results of my "Betty White plastic surgery" search (and finding this art show) I think I am going to put down the Google Tool bar and back away slowly for the time being.

The Land Of Milk and Honey

2009-01-02T08:14:00.001-08:00

I made it to San Francisco. While this feels like a huge accomplishment I am already homesick.
Who saw that coming?
I kind of did.
It's just because its my first day and I don't have my cats (beloved) and Will and I slept on a wretched futon last night. I think that once my bed arrives and I get settled into a routine the time will fly by. This is the plan, anyhow. I will be busy next week with four job interviews and lots of time to unpack my material possessions- and you all know how fond I am of material things. Especially shiny religious ones.
Will leaves on Sunday and, as much as I hate to admit this, I am so dependent on him. Not in a creepy "if-i-cant-have-you-no-one-can-Lisa-Lefteye" kind of way. In a sweet way that means he is not only my boyfriend but one of my best friends. I want to share everything with him. Except bathroom time because: eww. When he leaves I will be alone. It makes you realize that "home is where the heart is" is not only a country-kitchen staple but rather true. My heart is with Will and the divine kitties. They will be here soon (May) and I just have to be tough until then.
The way I look at it I am setting my family up for a better life. I will work up here, continue to save and in April Will and I will find a new apartment. That way when he moves up I will be working (steady income) while he looks for a job (and reads comic books). Hopefully I can make enough with one of my potentials that I can support us for a month or so while he floods the Bay Area with his magnificent resume (<-- see that, potential graphic artist needers? He is mag.)
Today he and I are going to blow of the responsibilities of cleaning/putting things away and go explore. He hasnt been to this city in 10 years so I will have many things to show him. Here they are:
1. Sutro Baths
2. Haight-Ashbury (with lunch at the retarded good Memphis Minnie's)
3. Golden Gate Park
4. North Beach at night (so beautiful that it will make you punch doves out of the sky)

As soon as things are put together proper-like I will post pictures of my apartment (which is really more of a pocket deep in the belly of a Victorian mansion. An intestinal pocket, if you will)

Swallowing the Sea

2008-12-10T22:39:00.000-08:00

I am facing the fact that 98% of people that I have, at one time, been friends with are now impossibly cool and/or slightly famous. And they have absolutely nothing to do with me anymore. They evolved, I didnt.
I found out that my high school best friend has released four solo albums and is in two touring bands with a huge underground following. We lost touch. I recently Myspaced him and told him about my move (to San Francisco, where he lives) and he was all excited to see me. I felt odd because I went through a long stint of just senselessly lying to people after my Dad died to keep them away. I look back, now, eleven years later and think "What the fuck were you doing pushing so many people so far away?"
All I can say is this:
I was young and unbearably hurt. I wish I could go back with the knowledge I have now but time is hard to convince.
What have I done with myself? Nothing. I have this shitty blog that no one reads and I write some stupid articles in a fey local magazine that dont say anything about who I am. I am too old to start. I do nothing. I feel like all of my talent and skills at recognizing cool people mean that somewhere inside of me is a cool person. However, they didnt stick around long so I guess my cool inner person is outweighed by some vicious character defect that makes people hate me.
I do my fair share of pulling away.
I havent figured out why.
I think I am deeply and serially petrified of true intimacy. I feel so flawed, like I should only be loved in pieces and can only share those pieces with certain people in certain settings. I built myself an island of low self-image, fear of rejection and crippling shyness.
Now Im hanging out all by myself, watching people I used to know sail by as I dig out pictures and letters as if to say "hey! didnt I know you once?"
What would I even do? Im so afraid to challenge myself, so lazy and so very, very uninspired. I keep making these huge leaps in hopes that something will change but wherever I go, there I am (as they say).

I Told You I Would Update, Chris

2008-11-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

My birthday was fine and lackluster all at the same time. I have a wonderful gypsy curse that guarantees me ridiculously bad birthdays every single year. I guess the gypsy wasn’t very creative or all that pissed, since I don’t have boils and goiters and hammer feet and trench mouth and other old tyme diseases of yore. Instead, I just have crap birthdays. I brief smattering of how they have been bad would include the following words:Pregnancy scare, locked in apartment, bees, back stabbing, MC Hammer pants, underage gay bar antics, tiger print halter top, pictured with Aunt on cover of lesbian magazine and Souplantation. True stories. This year, Will tried to make it sweet and did a great job. He got me a fancy cupcake from Heaven Sent that had a slab of chocolate on top that he CONVINCED THE DECORATOR to replicate one of my beyond simple elephants on. I was like “the mouth is wrong but I guess you did okay for your first try BAKER!” I snuggled him, though, and fed him half because of the weird raspberry filling. Who puts raspberry jelly in a red velvet cupcake? WHO? They should be taught a lesson and, at least, scolded a lot. He was so proud of being creative and lovely enough to think up such a decadent treat and I enjoyed every second of it while I watched Degrassi in my pajamas. He also made me a Munny which I will eventually post, along with the cupcake.
.
..
Monday night we went to see The Decemberists. I had missed them several other times and decided that I absolutely could not die until I had seen them perform. I wanted to dress really cute because people in LA actually dress nicer than people in San Diego (people in San Diego=Ugg boots/furry jackets/tans/acrylic nails all of which is just so beneath me, except I would probably do the nails just to be facetious). Anyway, I obsessed about my outfit which started off looking a 40’s circus hooker (perf) and slowly morphed into “You so got that shirt at Target, bitch”. Then I got self-conscious because Ive been trying to convince my hair that is okay to be curly again, after years of punishing it with ceramic irons, and it got freaked out and didn’t know what to do, so it burst into nervous frizz (poor thing)- and not cool runway frizz, like pube frizz. So I wore my blue crocheted hat that clashed with my 40s/Target/tight rope thing AND THEN, the madness! I bitched at Will, shoved my limbs back into a tunic and wore the black skinny cotton pants I liberated from (hush) Walmart. Then I wore a smelly Old Navy cardigan that made my high heel Oxfords look ultra-gay, so I had to stick my toes back into the pointy kitten heel flats. Fine. Whatev. I looked like a hipster reject that just discovered H&M- but it was too late to change. I did manage a few minutes to cover my hat in vintage snowflake/rhinestone broaches. That helped. Anyway, the show was….really disappointing. “Picaresque” ranks as one of my top ten fav albums of all time. It is whimsical and lush, sad and intelligent, captivating and historically erotic. Collin Meloy sure has a boner for sea-faring ditties and they are perfectly displayed with a backdrop of eclectic harpsichords, accordions and violas. It’s like reading a history book that isn’t boring and actually gets you past the Civil-fucking-war. I don’t have quite as many boners for their other albums, save a handful of songs, but I thought that I could still enjoy their show- especially since they sound even better live than recorded (fluke of genetics, I s’pose). Well, after panicking to park, we managed to get inside the Wiltern just as the opening act was ending. We had floor tickets and I wedged us into a really unfortunate spot. While the view of the stage was great at first (we were only about 12 feet away) it soon turned into a line of the tallest human beings I have ever seen that decided to take their 7 foot conga right in front of Will and I. Then, some nameless wretch began picking hot dog out of their fangs and dispelling death-farts through the surrounding area. These things traveled, like, nine feet. I think I saw the makings of a mushroom cloud but thanks to the excellent air conditioning, it never got past the swelling-pants phase. When the band started, I felt like a deflating balloon. They were GOOD but fuck all they were BORING. They played four slow songs right in a row. I was just about to whisper to Will that we should pound sand when a song from Picaresque started. We danced and did old tyme jigs among the fart-smell and had a great time for about five songs. Then it got sad and emo again and I had to take off my shoes because my legs were falling asleep from too much skinny pants. So I was barefoot at the Wiltern and I didn’t even care. The band was retarded good, I just wish they had picked more dynamic songs instead of so many death dirges. The LA hipsters are still stuck in a time where scarves aren’t passé and should totez be worn in 85 degree weather. They also still haven’t gotten over Ugg boots and Monroe piercings. Fneh, I am not longed for in Southern California…which is why my move is only A MOTHERFUCKING MONTH AWAY.
*cheers from parapets and the public*
.
..
And now, in closing, a list of things I hate:
1. keffiyehs (just stop already)
2. moccasins
3. the smell of McDonald’s
4. shopping car wobble
5. serious porcelain collections

If It Looks Good, Chew With Your Mouth Closed!

2008-11-18T22:59:00.000-08:00

Here are some things I would like to say to people I have never met:

1. Andrew Zimmern
"I love traveling, Andrew. I agree with you about most places you visit, I love night markets and I love local cuisine. However, we disagree on one key issue that makes me realize I would never, ever be your friend and would actually punch you: you chew with your fucking mouth open and it makes me positively queasy, I chew with mine closed because I'm not a ghoul. Maybe you should look into how loud your mic makes the smacking of smelt sound, I dont know. Check with your camera crew. I've never met them but I would bet you $5 that they agree with me."

2. 93% of people that write "fashion blogs"
"I love clothing, I love wearable art, I live for vintage and sample sales. I fell in love with the double skirt before Miu Miu hustled it down the runway and certainly before Topshop made a few weak imitations. I feel the thrill of joy when I select a new outfit each day...but my friends, most of you are the most self-centered, egocentric, possibly socially retarded people I have ever met- and I have friends in Mensa! There are a few exceptions, however, and you are a shining few. Maybe the rest of you could take your selves a bit less seriously and not make fun of someone that still dares to wear a hipster scarf or likes hoodies every once in a while. If we are supposed to accept and embrace your diversity, I think you should do the same. Also- if you're like 13, please take a hint from this young lady and dress in fabulous, creative, age-appropriate garments that dont make you look like a prostitute.

3. You, In Front of Me, At the Gas Station!
"After lots of tres Scientific experimenting I have discoverd that it takes me, on average, about two minutes to pump a full tank of gas. Here is my method: pull up, unlatch gas tank, check mascara in rear view, step out, slide card, pump, throw trash away while pumping, de-pump, leave. Write that down. It may seem awkward because you will notice that I left out fussing with a gigantic newspaper before you exit your car to pump, consulting the automatic payment machine for a fucking home loan before you press 'pump 3', going inside the conveniance store to buy lunch for your whole family while your gas finishes pumping and I sit there screaming at you to move so I can get my gas. You will also notice that I left out 'glare like you are entitled when I roll my eyes at how slow you are'. This is because you are probably a prick and I hate you.

Me and the Pie

2008-11-18T22:35:00.001-08:00

Look, Im never going to compete on Top Chef, or be on America's Next Top Model or marry Tom Waits. I know what I can/can't do.
So here is something I can do:
Really stupid drawings.
Im working on an art show. Im going to need a pair of H&M mustard yellow tights, a slouchy hat and some pretentious vintage boots that make my legs look like twigs in buckets. Then I will try to say interesting things and pretend like Im Edie Sedgewick. My theory is that it doesnt really matter that these are pen and ink drawings that I colored in Photoshop, if I look hip enough it wont matter.
Death match time.

Everything Counts

2008-11-14T14:39:00.000-08:00

There is this heat that hovers over our desert, it is still and waiting like the peel of an orange about to burst. I can smell the white sage, the rubber burning from tires headed south and the greasy interior of the other cars parked along the familiar road. I haven't been home in ages.
I drove by the house of my childhood and I wasn't sure if I was allowed to cry. The yard was tacky, there were paper signs on the garage advertising sports and a child's play furniture filled the sidewalk. Where my bedroom was now held the cheap decor of an adolescent. I thought about how many times I drove up that comforting street, how many times I gave directions to turn right on Davidann, left at the top of the hill and then right on Crystal Springs. I closed my eyes and pictured the Christmas lights that once glittered on the bushes, in the trees, around the windows, blinking soothingly while I drifted off to sleep. I spent thousands of hours in that house. I wondered if the carpet in the living room still had the hidden burn from my first cigarette. I can never go home again.
We bought pizza and beer, my flip flops were practically melting to the asphalt. Although we were miles from the lake I could feel its dampness in the back of my throat. Every memory was attacking me at once maybe like an acid flashback or a cardiac arrest or a bar fight. I cant tell. Will bought me Virgin Mary necklaces from the dusty shelf of the the 99 cent store. Their packaging was cool and dry, faith on sale. In the car, I turned up the radio. It was the syrupy voice on Tom Petty with his dry guitar and worn-out Americana. The callous on my index finger started when I learned to play Free Fallin in 1993 on a poorly strung acoustic.
I can never go home again.
Some days I am a prisoner to my past, I want the freedom so badly that I write letters to those on the outside. Do you remember this holiday? What about the time we did this? Did you know how long I spent inside that bedroom? My bed spread was black, I kept it very clean and lit vanilla incense every night. My Mom slept across the hall; Ive been so lonely without my brother and sister nearby. It all comes pouring out like boiling tea. I bubble nostalgia that is bitter and foreign. No one shares this cup with me, I am alone and pointing my finger to constellations that appeared in the canopy over my youth. I am reading signs and smelling our old attic smell and leaning against the door like I use to do, bags in hand and someone to let me in when I didn't have a key. My Mom wasn't crazy yet, Dad was alive and I could still live out of a backpack with carefree immortality. I jumped into our pool once during an late summer storm. The lightning made my slip shimmer like the skin of an eel. The water was at least ninety degrees; my skin sipped. Inside everyone I love was safe. Inside there were dogs and piles of laundry and the family silverware and heirlooms long since broken or pawned. The baseboards of our garage held secret notes and careful coins, bits of grandpa's hand written recipes. I floated on my back with one eye closed, just watching my nose and the sky, hearing the thunder crack with startling strength. The first fat drops to land settled in the divot above my lip and the hollows under my eyes. I drank August.
I can never go home again.
Someone else lives there, someone has been scattered from here to LA, someone has lost their grip on reality, someone has married and divorced a third time, someone has their second baby learning to walk, someone has a drinking problem, someone cant hold down a job and feels more inadequate everyday, someone writes their pain in simple lines with a burning regret in her heart- she misses the drive-in, she misses the longest days of July, she misses the roadside signs that made great targets, she misses the routine of comfort and the life she lost before she knew it was over.
I have a new future to make. My apartment is too small for the history I cant let go. Will is here, we have time to just be. When I take a step forward I cant help but look over my shoulder at what Im leaving behind. I tell him that Im okay, for the most part I am honest. Days like today pinch and twist my heart like a balloon. When I am empty, I am bottomless. When I am full, I am buoyant. There is no equator inside of me for peace to rest. It comes in moments, in flashes like that summer lightening. When it is gone I am left with a smoking strike point where I stand and wonder if it was ever real. What is home, my love? Is it stories and sisters and brothers and mixed mail and dinners and escaping the insanity that increased with every fucking day? Is it the escape into the real world, far far away from the desert's border? Is it Will, my darling centipede that holds me with so many arms? Is it a feeling forever buried with each strike of that hammer into the For Sale sign?
Or is it just the sad realization that life ends in a second? You blink, your joy is gone. You breathe your mind is made up. You sleep and you wake in a new body with pains and awkward appeal. You close the door and arrive in a new climate. You make one dollar and spend a thousand. Everything changes but you, the revolving center in your own nucleus. That is why we long- everything passes us by and the memories we hold on to grow foggier with every rotation. I remember until I decide to let go and then I will dream.
I can never go home again.

Figuring Things Out

2008-11-13T22:30:00.000-08:00

I fantasize about eating foam. I have since I was about eight. You know the thick, yellow foam that mattress pads are made of? That stuff looks like it would feel amazing between your teeth. I can imagine tearing it apart in hunks, like a starving lion.
I had an anxiety about sleeping in my own bed that lasted until I was about fifteen. As far back as I can remember, I always parked myself on the family couch. For whatever reason, my mom was accepting. I slept on the floor of my parent's room until I was ten, which is where the foam-eating came from. I slept on egg crate mattresses, three or four. They were the most comfortable bed I can ever remember having. I would stuff the corners of them into my mouth, sheet and all, and try to hold my breath. The sheets were always clean and tasted warm, like fresh bread and dryer sheets. I tried to make myself as little and quiet as possible to hear what was going on in the house besides my parent's snoring.

I stopped sleeping in their room when we moved in 1991. In our new house, my bedroom was dark brown with wood paneling. My bed was the same white day bed I had owned for years and my mom got me new sheets- I think they were dark blue. That room was a little cave, cozy and private, but I still slept on the living room couch. My bed remained perfectly made and littered with books and tapes.

When my sister moved out years later, I took over her room, which was larger and had two windows. I got a new bed, the same one I have now, made of black iron. I still thought about the foam mattress.
I don't remember if I had nightmares, I'm sure I did, but I continued to sleep on the couch in the glow of late night television. I was kept company by Nick at Night, by horror movies on USA, by public access. When the channels turned to static and cable lost its appeal, I would sneak outside. We had a pool in our back yard and I would creep out there and dunk my feet while I read aloud softly from The Scarlet Letter or Titus. In warm weather I would sit on the top step, half submerged in the peaceful, black water. No one else ever came out, not even when I screamed the time a raccoon startled me. I stayed up so late, my young brain spinning with insomnia. I did math homework and watched movies, toasted bagels at three a.m and called free chat lines just to hear someone else's voice. I hardly ever fell asleep before four. My wet, chlorine bleached nightgowns would be slopped over the patio furniture and I would sneak, naked, back into my couch bed.

The couch sleeping stopped after I started having sex, probably because I snuck boys into my room. My ground-level window was ideal. Some nights I would open the window and wait for the phone to ring, hoping my boyfriend had been able to hot wire his parent’s car for a late night visit. More often than not, I just stayed awake listening to the radio and tracing the patterns of my hair on the pillow. The nights he would come over I would curl up like a cashew against him, staring at my Ian Curtis poster, listening to his unfamiliar breathing. I didn’t even sleep when I was being held, I clutched his arms like a little owl with her talons out and listened to the hours tick away on his wrist watch. I’d wake him around two or three and kiss him out the window. Then I would shower and paint my toenails. I’d fall asleep stuffing my pillow in my mouth, missing something, tasting sea salt in the back of my throat. I was invisible.

Consumer!

2008-11-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

I spent four hours in my closet yesterday, sorting through millions of purses, hundreds of shoes and clothing that I haven’t worn in years. Having worked retail for the majority of my adult life, I have amassed quite a collection of clothing. When you, as a woman, are faced with clothing that you might, sort of, potentially like someday and it costs under $5.00, you are compelled to purchase it. Like an addiction. So I submit, for your amusement, some various items I have unearthed from my fossil-like closet.

The Swedish Bar Maid Costume
-Shorter than underwear, I actually thought that this blue satin and mostly see-through lace costume would be cute for clubs. Having been a product of the goth scene from an early age, I learned me quick that Halloween costumes would always come in handy. I figured I could pair it with vinyl boots and some blue hair extensions and stand out. I ended up wearing for an ex-boyfriend who claimed that I was “too skanky for words”. Though, upon the reflection of passed time, he might not have been talking about the costume.

Mrs. Roper-esque Orange Caftan
-The polar opposite of the bar maid, this floor length cotton monster was purchased for a mere $1.88, I thought it might be nice to do errands in or wear over my bathing suit. True, I purchased this beauty close to Thanksgiving when, even in warm Southern California, bathing suits are nearly useless. I guess I thought of a few errands I could run where I would have to sacrifice my pride as a woman and thought that these ugly yards of fabric would do the trick…however, now I can’t think of any place where I would actually wear this. Oh wait- wait. If I was pregnant, I would wear it to check the mail. Yep. Better hang on to it.

Red Leopard Print Pants (fur)
-True, Peg Bundy was super hot on “Married With Children”. True, I’ve had a large bouffant of red and black hair quite a few times. True, I do like stiletto heels and disappointingly lazy men. However, I don’t really know where my mind was at when I decided to bring these babies home from Hot Topic. Maybe it was the additional 50% off clearance sale that drove their price (after my employee discount) down to a measly $3.65. It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t made of low-pile fur, nearly a velvet, but they are. And that is something I need to have less of in my life.

A French Maid Costume
-I can only assume that I purchased this at the same time I bought the Frauline get-up, an after Halloween sale, however this particular costume has an interesting feature that I’ve only recently noticed. I’m sure that I would have looked adorable in this twenty pounds ago but now my tits spill out over the top like aggressively rising bread dough and the skirt hardly covers my ass. I noticed this when I tried it on to determine which pile (keep, toss, donate) it goes in. This was when I noticed the leotard snap-crotch of the costume. WTF? Just in case you don’t want to wear underwear or you need to keep your wallet somewhere, these thoughtful designers said: “You know what? Let’s add a fun little crotch made out of left over pantyhose. Let’s put a snap on it. I’m sure it will be really helpful!”

148 Bras
-No shit. 148. Some with tags still on them. I just counted. I thought it couldn’t possibly be more than 100, 115 max. Oh, how wrong I was. My tits are never, ever going to go without. I owe it to myself (and my checking account) to get the maximum amount of use out of every one of these things. I might start making quilts out of underwire and padding.

Pink/Yellow/Green Plaid Cotton Overalls
-Who do I think I am? Blossom? Why did I buy these and, more importantly, WHEN? I wasn’t working in 1994. I was fourteen. These overalls are like a really good practical joke. Someone had to have hid them in my closet cleverly, knowing I would stumble across them and curse myself for ever owning anything pastel AND plaid. I would never consciously make this decision unless- oh, I know! They were probably for a costume party, since clearly I don’t own any proper costumes. That’s it. That’s what I will tell myself. I was going to dress up as DJ Tanner from Full House. Or maybe a retard girl on Easter Sunday.

Nine Pairs of Black, Knee High Leather Boots
-Yeah, the exact same pair- NINE times. True, they are stellar boots. They make my legs look long and sultry, like a Bond chick (have a few beers first, you will think Im Ursula Andress in no time). I bought one and loved them so much that when they went on clearance (for like eight dollars) I bought another pair. Which is smart, you should have multiples of items that you really like. Then, when my store got a consolidated clearance shipment from another store, we got more of these boots and I just couldn’t help myself. So now my only choice it to find eight other girls with size 9 feet who want to start an Equestrian burlesque group. I already have the foot ware.

A White Feather Jacket
-It sounded like a good idea, it could have been very cool and sort of David Bowie. I thought that I could certainly find some use for it but now its just something to torture my cats with. Had I been a 6-foot something, thin, androgynous rock star I would have pulled this off. However, I’m a 5’6” girl with an under bite that has to buy pants in the old lady section since my legs are short. When I put this on, I look like an albino baby chick. And its not cute. It’s not even kitsch, it’s just an overgrown lure for when Jezebel decides to hide under the bed.

Black/Green Striped Leather Rain Coat
-For when I decide to impersonate Jimy Hendrix. Except I’m not black. Or cool.

Sixteen Thousand Eight Hundred and Nine Million Pairs of Underwear
-Some are lace, some are satin, some are leather, some are crotchless. They are united in their diversity through one shared trait- most of them are totally unworn. Most of them will never be worn. My ass/giner spends all of its time in sensible, attractive black cotton boyshorts because they match my bras and aren't embarrassing for anyone to look at. The exotic ones, though- I bought them in fits of definace and hope- maybe I will get laid tonight, maybe these will look cute when he wakes up at three a.m and finds me in the kitchen swilling Kool Aide and eating peanut butter out the jar. Maybe lime green lace number with embroidered French poodles on the ass cheeks will blind him to my sick, hungry ways. Or maybe I can use these to tie together to make an emergency escape ladder. Either way, these babies probably won't ever see the light of day, or the streaks of powedered sugar from those little donut gems that I like to eat.

So please, don’t judge too harshly. I was doing my part to stimulate the economy and increase the potential value of a dwindling investment- clothing. Sure, I have great taste and usually look pretty foxy, but as you can see from my confessions I have made some very bad decisions. I guess it’s good that I got out of retail and headed into the corporate world of office jobs. Check back with me in two years when my collection of free pens and desk calendars is over taking my linen cabinet.

Lesbians

2008-11-13T13:05:00.000-08:00

My co-worker is either:
1. A lesbian
2. The owner of a very impolite staring problem

I don’t mind lezzies, let me just make that clear. I had a crush on a lesbian girl for three years even though I’m boring and hetero. I don’t mind if my co-worker is a lezzie and thinks Im fine, she SHOULD think that if she is a lezzie because Im so good looking that it’s actually embarrassing and awkward and I’m so cute that it makes your parents uncomfortable because they are old and also want to have sex with me. What I mind is the mumfucking staring problem. ALL DAY in our meeting she picked at the scab on her chin and stared at me, like right in the eyes. Every time I glanced at her she was picking and staring. It was so unnerving that someone else even noticed it and was like:“WTF? Are you a lezzie with a staring problem?” (Okay, maybe I just said that in my head)
What I really did was stare at my meeting papers and at another one of my co-workers whom I have told about the Lesbian Staring Problem. He laughed and said that she was looking at my rack which made me feel weirder because when I’m at work my boobs don’t exist, I don’t want anyone staring at them. Not even a little. I am a frog that gets itself pregnant and doesn’t need people staring at her boobs. So. I don’t like her apart from the Lesbian Staring Problem. Her feet smell like four day old coffee and ammonia. She is from the Midwest and really likes BBQ sauce and ranch dressing on everything. If people still made body suits and carpenter jeans she would wear them, I bet she looks for them on Ebay and buys them. I bet she still watches Full House but not in an interesting or kitschy way like I do, because I only watch to see what D.J is wearing or what kind of teenage problems she is having because they crack me up and I want to be the parent of a 13 year old. I really do. Anyway, she stares all the time and it bothers me. It makes me not want to talk to her. Is she staring at my tattoos? Has she never seen them before? Does she live in rocks and darkness where people don’t get tattoos or wear hip clothing to work? Maybe. Maybe she isn’t a Lesbian Starer as much as she is woefully behind the times when it comes to hygiene and personal appearance. .
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So, Ive been on a dinner-making kick lately. Last night I made chicken breasts, scalloped potatoes and green beans. Will was like “Fuck yes, Im eating this, you cook like a Mom!” and I was like “three bites and now I feel sick, maybe I will have some more sour candy because that is good for me”. And I did. Then when I watched Top Model I pretended like I eat super healthy and am thin like those girls, I will convince myself I should probably eat something hearty to combat my frailness and then make a Lean Cuisine BBQ Chicken Pizza because that is my new favorite food. Or maybe some eggs and toast, I like that too...I mean, that was what I would have done if I hadn't made Mom Dinner.
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Well, it wouldn’t be a recent update if I didn’t mention my move…Im starting to have serious anxiety about being alone in San Francisco. What if I miss Will too much? What if I have a hard time finding a job? What if what if what if? I still need a mattress, that free one off Craigslist looked like it had AIDS on it.
My move date is bascially set for January 2nd, 2009. Here is a weird bit of X-Files crap- my late father's birthday was 12/9. I am moving on 1/2/2009, or 1/2/09 which really through basic math equals 12/9. Isn't my logic astounding and stuff?