Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Feminist Fatale

2011-12-20T18:35:00.000-08:00

I was not aware of being a girl for a long time. In her book Bossypants, Tina Fey has a very funny story about the “when did you realize you were a woman?” question, which she uses to talk about victimization, and naturally forces the reader to ask that question of herself. It took me days to settle on an answer, but I did, and here it is.

My second year of college, I was in a David Mamet play called Oleanna. In rehearsal the director was required to explain to me (repeatedly) why a young woman in college would falsify an accusation of attempted rape against a well-meaning professor. This had never happened before, as an actor I mean, because I was an internalist and got along fine making my own character decisions. But in this case my instincts were all wrong, and in the process of correcting my performance the director explained to me what being a woman is. If I may project for a moment, I believe he was more baffled by this need to explain than I was.

The previous year I had played Benvolio in Romeo & Juliet without difficulty. Apparently, at 20 it was more natural for me to play a young man of 16th century Italian gentry than a contemporary college girl.

This illustrates the heart of what makes the new feminism different from its previous incarnations, at least for women like me. I had socially progressive parents who didn’t care about gender norms. I had friends in the goth and theater communities who rejected them outright, in the 90s when androgyny and queerness were the lifeblood of alternative culture. That’s how I made it all the way to 20 with the sensation that my gender had less impact on my identity than my hobbies, my intellect, or my politics. Which is to say, none at all. Aside from the question of hygiene and who would or would not kiss me, I might as well have been a boy.

Of course, I was aware that gender norms existed, it just didn’t occur that they applied to me. Don’t want men to stare at your tits? Then put them away, or better yet, hang out with different guys. Don’t want to get raped? Then don’t get drunk at a frat party, don’t date assholes, don’t act like a helpless kitten all the time. Don’t don’t don’t. But those girls were girls who I hated, because they treated me badly. They treated me badly because shame is the weapons girls use to maintain those same gender norms I thought did not apply to me. I was not like them, they knew it and I knew it, so screw those girls. Clearly my decisions were better than theirs; men stared at my tits only when I wanted them to, and I never attended a party or dated a guy where there appeared even the slightest hint of rape. It hurts now to think about how I thought then, as though there were things a woman could do which relinquish her human rights.

Today my work and my hobbies are all in fields dominated by men: IT, film, and nerd culture. Sexism in these fields have a flavor not unlike the distaste I had for women before I realized I was one, and it is probably the case that my gravitation toward them was largely possible because I was immune to the general anti-feminine miasma in which they are engulfed. Without intention, I obtained my emancipation from sexism by learning to eat my own.

Now that I know better, my next step is not about reaching out to women, but to men. Among young men I know, especially on the internet in nerd and skeptic communities, there seems to be consensus that feminism is an unnecessary vestige from a previous time. It somehow escapes their notice that this consensus has been reached almost entirely among men. The few women within the enclave are by-and-large outside the conversation or do not really identify as women, the way I did not when I was young. Women outside the enclave are dismissed as crazy man-eating bitches. This dynamic alone is sufficient evidence that the problem is real.

Feminism is not dead, but it is different than it was even 10 year ago. It’s not about teaching little girls that they can grow up to be whatever they want, we’ve done that. It’s not just about wage equity or rape statistics, either. It’s about erasing the ideas we have about the way girls are. And the way boys are, too, for that matter.

If I think of a way to do that, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Christopher Hitchens and the Passing of the Old Guard

2011-12-16T18:02:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens was infinitely quotable. This fact has slipped the authors of some of his media memorials, notably at NPR where their tepid-temperedness barely concealed - indeed, was likely the cause of - a distinct distaste for the man. But among his fans this fact was never lost, and now on news of his death he is quoted as warmly as Hitch himself quoted Wodehouse (though with somewhat less laughter). It's so very hard to choose a favorite, but today this is mine:

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity... the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

I had a brief-but-violent paroxysm of grief when I heard that he'd gone. I have a half-composed letter, expressing appreciation for his work, and posing a few questions I had never heard him answer. Only my own laziness prevented me from finishing that missive three months ago, and mailing it, though I suppose it might not have been opened in time. I understand he gets... got... no gets a lot of mail. No doubt it's still coming, even as he departs.

I am learning today how many in my immediate circle were fond of Hitch, to some degree or other, and it surprises me to learn this now. Why on earth didn't we talk about the man while he lived, when we might have gone together to see him chew on some unsuspecting pundit or clergyman?

There are two dominant tropes about his passing. They are:

1. (MILD) I didn't agree with the man, and he sure was a jerk, but I respect his writing/ brain/ taste in whisky.
2. (HOT) I am distraught, for we shall never see his kind again!

My response to both of these is the same: WHY THE HELL NOT? I've listened to all, or at least most, of his recorded debates and several of his Sunday talkshow appearances, and I never heard him lose an argument to anyone. Doubtless it has happened, for it seems that he argued all the time, but to Hitch a defeat is an opportunity to refine not just his argument, but his thinking. His opinions were subject to revision in the light of new evidence, his thinking precise, his logic sound, his moral stance unshakable. Resolute. Chemically inert. I find it difficult to disagree with Hitch and still be thinking at all - upon reflection I usually discover that I must agree.

The second expression caused me first to sagely nod and then mournfully agree, but I've gotten over that now. True, there is no figure in the public dialogue today with his intelligence, his easy wit, his glittery-eyed viciousness, but I see no reason to think this is a permanent state. Do it yourself. This has been my personal project of late, to think critically and to say what I think. I'm finding it difficult, especially in Minnesota, especially as a woman, but I'm unwilling to allow myself excuses. And the more I say, the more I find I have to say.

After all, that was what I was trying to say to Hitch in the letter I tried to write. To thank him for teaching me the importance of criticism, that the fight is worthwhile, that being likable is not as important as being right. I can't ask him those questions anymore, but I stand a much better chance of answering them myself.

Administrative Change

2011-11-10T07:36:00.000-08:00

Hey all.

I have disabled Anonymous commenting on this blog. It was a tough choice, as I don't like hurdles to speaking one's mind.

But, as the comment string in the last post demonstrates, it becomes very difficult to have an intelligible conversation between multiple people who are all named "Anonymous."

If you would prefer to remain Anonymous, in the sense that you don't what to reveal your real world identity, then I suggest you give Google a dummy ID. It's not hard to do. I promise not to accuse anyone of cowardice if you choose to do that; ideas are more important than identity.

That is all. Carry on.

Tough

2011-11-09T06:17:00.000-08:00

I have more essays in progress, but for now, a quick update.

Much of my support for the Occupy Movement comes from our personal difficulties in May -- the tornado and my layoff. The layoff was cruel and hurt more, at the time, but the tornado has proven to be much more persistent in its tragedy. We were lucky, because our house was insured. The insurance company, while sluggish to come evaluate our situation, finally paid out more-or-less fair. Sadly, the story does not end there. Recently we've experienced the following revelations.

- Property values have been cut in half. That's a 50% drop in one afternoon.
- Our Homeowners insurance rate has trebled, and is now equal to a little more than 50% of our mortgage.
- Empty homes where families fled or were evicted are valued so low that banks have begun knocking them down rather than repair them. This isn't flood or fire damage; we're not talking irreperable damage. We're talking new shingles and window panes and the cost of clean-up. $15-20k, less than your average bathroom remodel. But the bank won't do it, so now there's a hole where a house used to be.

In short, we're paying twice what our home is worth, three times more for the same insurance, in a neighborhood that is dying all around us. So don't tell me how the invisible hand of the market will make everything right. This how the private sector treats people who have suffered a tragedy.

OccupyMN, Day One

2011-11-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

Observations I made the first day of the movement. I posted this essay on 10/14/2011 on Facebook, but this is where it really should have gone.

I was sitting at lunch today, in my 99 shirt, when Mark says to me, “So what is it you want out of this movement, when it’s all over.” It’s an excellent question. I had no answer.

A lot of hay has been made of the Occupy [ ] demonstrations (which I will now refer to as the “99 Movement,” because I like it better) having no direction. I can testify to that. There is one subject on which all voices seem to agree -- large corporations are getting rich on the backs of the rest of us and that has to stop -- and all other concerns seem fairly one-off. Today, the first day of the Minneapolis demonstration, I saw signs for 9/11 Truthers, marriage equality, human rights, anti-war activism, Unions, and some non-specific “love is the answer, man” fuzziness.

There’s one sign that sticks in my head, perhaps because it does play to (what appears to be) the movement’s core message:

They say “Let Them Eat Cake”? How About “Off With Their Heads!”

Held aloft by a very motherly-looking person, the sort of gal you expect to see at the Hallmark Store picking up a ceramic teddybear in a graduation cap for her youngest daughter. Not that it matters, except to illustrate that this was not the appearance of a radical or a stoner, just someone who feels strongly and is badly in need of a history lesson.

Ah...the French Revolution. It sounded so good in 1789. The oppressed majority throws off the shackles of servitude, with every intention of creating a glorious new society where all men (and women, briefly) were equal, looking after each other as brothers (and sisters, briefly), marching forward into a future of democracy, peace, and stability. And that is exactly what didn’t happen. It didn’t happen again Russia a hundred years later. Why? Because* they starting cutting off heads.
*and some other stuff too, revolutions are profoundly complex, blah blah blah

In fact, Thomas Paine was sent to be executed for suggesting, in 1793, that they not shorten the King. He wasn’t the King anymore, after all, why not just deport him to America? How Tom, probably the most articulate revolutionary in history, survived that death sentence is a super interesting story, you should ask the internet about it later.

I don’t have any proof that the bloodthirst of the wronged what makes the difference between a revolution that ends in greater social justice, and one that ends in totalitarian nightmare. It’s just this feeling I have. After all, in the greatest democratic revolution the world has ever seen (ours) the offending bourgeoisie were an ocean away, a good safe distance from any American revolutionaries who felt like drafting designs for a mass-murder device.

So I’m standing in the middle of the “People’s Plaza” looking at this Marie Antoinette/Queen of Hearts sign, and weighing the message against the admittedly amusing nature of the language. Hey, at least she’s quoting two women. And I don’t believe for an instant that this middle-aged Minnesotan has it in her heart to pull the cord that drops the blade, no matter whose head is dangling over the basket. But...y’know...that’s today. It feels so good today, to be out on the street with other people who have known for years, or even decades, that something is wrong with our democracy. I don’t have a list of demands (yet), but there is something that I want. I want the demonstrations to work without turning ugly. And the more of us there are of controlled passion, rational conviction, and courage -- in other words, the more democratic the movement -- the more likely that is.

Fogo Your Weight in Meat

2011-10-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

Apologizing for the lack of content on this blog seems silly, since no one really reads it. This time I have a really good excuse though. A tornado hit my house. Then I got laid off. Then I did a bunch of art, and now I work somewhere else. I thought for a long time what I would write about the big personal tragedies of 2011, and right now you should be super sad that I never got around to it because it would have been epic and insightful and awesome -- all assertions I cannot support, because I forgot what it was I had to say. I'll try to record it if I ever remember.

Why am I here now? Because I alone in the office of my new employer after a ridiculously long day, I'm fried, I'm starving, and in 20 minutes I'm walking to 3 blocks to Fogo de Chão and probably eating twice my weight in meat and men in gaucho pants. I just wanted to let you know that, so if tomorrow I'm found unconscious and amnesiatic (amnesious?) in the middle of Hennepin Avenue, one of you will put 2 and 2 together and come bust me out of lock up. That is all.

RECIPE: Fish Stew

2011-03-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

It's Lent! I'm not catholic or anything, but Lent means cheap fish at the grocery store. In Minnesota, in winter, all of our fish started frozen so I buy it frozen (except for the mussels, of course, which are still alive) and don't even fully defrost it before it goes in the pan. You can't do that with everything, but it doesn't hurt fish a bit.

Fish Stew

Software:
Frozen shrimp (pre-cooked) - 10 per person
Walleye fillet (skin on) - 1 per person
Mussels - .25 lb per person
Canned Tomatoes (whole, no salt) - 2 cans
Leek (large) - 1
White wine - 1 cup
Garlic, Ancho powder, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper

ANCHO is a heat-less pepper, it adds a richness and chili flavor without making the dish spicy. Paprika works well for this too, or you could use hot chili powder but be careful - there's not a lot of fat in this dish to anchor the heat.

Hardware:
Large mixing bowl, strainer, large skillet (at least 8", 10" is better, an inch deep or more)

Prep:
- Leave the mussels in the fridge on ice until the last possible minute.
- Put a large mixing bowl in the kitchen sink, and fill it with hot water. Drop the walleye fillets and shrimp in there to melt.
- Chop the top off the leek, halve it, and wash dirt out of top of the outside layers. Quarter and dice.
- Mince garlic, however much you want

Cook:
- Once the walleye is thawed enough to be floppy, pull it out of the bath to drain. Then put your largest skillet on medium heat with 2 T of oil.
- Season walleye with salt and ancho powder on the flesh side, then drop it in the pan flesh side down. Cover for 5-7 minutes, flipping when you see the skin start to pull up.
- Meanwhile, pull the shrimp out of the bath and remove all the tails. Set them aside for now.
- Remove the walleye when it's a little undercooked - it should be flakey on the outside but still a little jelly-like in the thickest part.

- Wipe out any skin bits that stuck to the pan, add 3 more T of oil and toss in the fresh garlic and leeks, + pinch salt. Reduce heat to med-low, stirring occasionally.
- Meanwhile, examine the cooked walleye fillets and carefully remove any bones you can find, then scrape off the skin. Flake it apart into spoonful-size pieces and set those aside with the shrimp.
- When the leeks are starting to pick up a little color, add a cup of white wine. Stir up all the little bits off the pan and let simmer.

- Open up both cans of tomatoes, drain the liquid into the pan, and then gently crush the tomatoes, just in your hand one at a time, into the pan as well. You can also chop them ahead of time if you prefer, but I find this is faster. Add ancho powder, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper. Bring the heat back up to medium and simmer.

WASHING MUSSELS
Eating dead mussels can make you very sick. That's why it's so critical to keep them cold -- a living mussel will close up tight in the cold but open when they warm up. So, dump the water out of that mixing bowl, and then drop your mussels into it, ice and all. Run a little cold water, but OUTSIDE the bowl, not inside - being marine creatures they will die if submerged in tap water. Wash each mussel with a vegetable scrubber under the running water, check that the beards are removed, that none of the shells are seriously damaged, and that they are all closed. Discard any that have busted shells (a small crack is okay) or aren't closed. Or at least very close to closed, I swear some of them are just curious and have to peek.

Okay, now that your mussels are washed and inspected, and your soup is simmering, put the mussels in the soup. Spread them out in a single layer, just resting them on top. Stick a lid on and don't touch it for 5 minutes. Now is a good time to put in toast or set out bowls or whatever.
When four minutes have passed have a look. You know a mussel is done when it has opened wide and (often) the meat had detached from one half of the shell, but not all of them will be done at the same time. Remove the lid and pick up the mussel with tongs and pull out the meat with a fork. Set the shells aside. Add the fish and shrimp back to the pan, stir it all up, and replace the lid for another 5 minutes. Repeat the mussel procedure, any that have not opened 15 minutes after going in the pot should be discarded.

Give it one more good stir, then kill the heat and serve it.

About Cooking, and Cooking Blogs

2011-03-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

I cook a lot. I have decided to start recording what I cook, so I can look things up again later. The kitchen notebook is handy for resolving "what do you want for dinner - I don't know - I don't know too" situations (roll a D20!) but hey, it's the internet, where all the knowledge goes.

I hate places like AllRecipes. There are fifty-billion recipes for everything, and most of them are trying to be clever but are really the same, and nearly all of them rely (heavily) on packaged food. I can't pretend to be a from-scratch diva - I don't make my own corn chips or my own cheese (yet) - but I do believe that the closer to Food your meal starts the better your meal will be.

I don't diet. After many years of various nutritional experiments, I've finally joined the Fat Acceptance movement. I'm not going to say anything more about it, except that there are no calorie counts here and never will be.

The upshot, really, is that I like to share, I want to document the food that I make at home, and I think there will someday be people on the internet who Google "fish stew" and use my recipe. That's pretty cool, so I'm gonna do it.

Some things worth knowing about the way I cook:
- I never measure anything, so the seasonings and oil and such are my best estimates. When you're seasoning, taste it until you get it right. When you're cooking with oil, just put enough in the pan to cover what you're going to cook in it.

- "Done" means crispy/golden brown on the outside and hot all the way through. "Done" is a tricky science, and you may like your's more Done than I like mine. It's not a crime to serve something (like, say, chicken thighs those sneaky bastards) discover that it isn't done, and then put it back in the pan (oven, whatever). Even when you have company. Serve the drinks, cover the plates if you have to, and get on with it.

- I never cook with cooking wine, but I do cook with cheap wine. If the final dish actually tastes like the wine you used, you're doing it wrong.

- I cook with really beat up old non-stick because that's what I have. It shouldn't matter all that much, but if you're cooking on cast iron or stainless steel you might want to keep that in mind.

Okay. First recipe, coming right up.

The Podcast of Ice and Fire

2011-03-02T10:35:00.000-08:00

Hey look, I'm on a podcast!

http://podcastoficeandfire.com/?p=134

If you haven't read the Song of Ice and Fire novels, and think you ever might, stay the hell away. There is no attempt to be spoiler-free. We talk about 2 chapters near the end of Book 1 (Game of Thrones), discuss Arya v. Sansa, speculate on the extent of Maester Luwin's occult knowledge, and dig in to the infamous "Heir to the North" theory.

We had a hell of a time getting my headset working correctly - for some reason the gain is cranked way up on the mic so if it's pointed near my mouth I'm too loud to hear. For this recording I had the mic up over my forehead, so the clarity is not awesome. I really enjoyed podcasting though, even more than I thought I would, enough to bother figuring out how to do it better next time.

While we're on it, there's some fabulous marketing happening around the HBO series, and this week they've added PUZZLES! You can make an account at http://www.themasterspath.com to solve the first of 5 puzzles, the reward for which is a supposed "link in your maester's chain," but is actually an extended clip of footage from the series. I am sworn to secrecy not to reveal it, but I promise it's a scene I've been looking forward to seeing.

Dear AMPAS: My time of not taking you seriously sure is coming to a middle.

2011-02-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

I grew up watching the Oscars at home, and it was an event with friends over and ballots and dressing up. I once proclaimed as we were leaving Titanic that it was a dreadful film, but we had just seen Best Picture (an exotic opinion, for a teenage girl in 1997). It was my first brush with skepticism of the Academy's wisdom, but it didn't dull my fervor. Then, from 2004-2006, I spent 60 hours a week working in a movie theater and suddenly going to the movies wasn't fun anymore.

And then I got myself a super sweet home set up, with a projector and surround sound, and there really seems to be no point at all.

I went to see The King's Speech, though. I have a (very) soft spot for Colin Firth from his costume drama days. I enjoyed it, it was a good movie. It was not a great movie. I find is fantastically unlikely that it was the best film of 2010, with a caveat that I haven't really seen any of them.

It's obvious Oscarbait -- an untold story from the most well-trodden dramatic ground in the 20th century. A powerful man with a debilitating problem (I do and don't mean the stutter). The acting is all very good. It has the Queen Mother when she was cute. It's just SO obvious, and in every other way so unspecial, that I didn't really think it had a shot.

Well, I was wrong, and it did. Why?

Frankly, The King's Speech is a balm. Here we are, with our decade-old wars, our broken down economy, a corrupt political landscape where this year is forever worse than the last. Here we are, watching a story about well-dressed people suffering through a time more difficult than ours, with the horrors of imminent war safely off-camera, and by god they will make it. Come hell or high water, etc etc. They have to, most of the film's target audience remembers seeing half of these people on TV.

There are no surprises, no moments of excruciating beauty, no big laughs, nothing that makes this film exceptional. It was good. I enjoyed it. But it was vanilla to nearly the point of boredom, and I could have recited 30% of the screenplay in time with the actors on the first viewing. I know that Hollywood is running out of ideas, but there was fertile ground here - is this really the best we can do?

Puzzle Quest: Minnesota

2011-02-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

I love MN0 Puzzle Quests. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, none of your questions will be answered here. Imagine one of those adventure puzzle games you can download from BigFish, only on foot and in real life. There are math puzzles, language puzzles, spacial puzzles, crypts and codes, wretched puns and some seriously twisted and strenuous thinking required. To everyone's shock (especially ours), my team won.

The prize for winning a Puzzle Quest is getting to organize the next one. "Getting" to - as challenging as they are to play, they are even more challenging to write. We have time on our side though - we won in October, and no one really wants to run around the streets of Minneapolis in winter. What with Trivia Weekend in the middle of February (and everyone on the PQ team also in HOI) we threw around a bunch of ideas around Thanksgiving, made a couple of simple decisions, and then adjourned to first enjoy Christmas and second to take 5th in Trivia.

Now here we are again with the rapid onset of Spring and a lot of work ahead of us. None of us has designed a puzzle before. So tell me - what is it you want in a puzzle game?

ReDesign

2011-02-18T11:03:00.000-08:00

I upgraded my publishing platform, which was overdue, but now things aren't quite the way they used to be. Pardon me while I get details like text color worked out with Blogger.

And then we were 5

2011-02-17T11:44:00.001-08:00

I'm being pestered. Thank you for pestering, SCH, you're my hero.

What's new. Let's see.

1. KVSC Trivia Weekend was last weekend. We took 5th of 71 teams, which is pretty magical. The whole team really turned it out this year, and I feel especially proud for research I did that landed us 2 of the 4 big point questions. Next year we're making it to the podium, and I don't care if I personally have to capture and immobilize members of Pull-Start Diesel to do it!
(If Google leads anyone from the team Pull-Start Diesel to this blog, please know that I mean that in a loving way.)

2. We've been hit by the Thaw of All Thaws - almost a week of 40s and 50s - so we've got the tap in the maple, and I've got planting on the brain. New in 2011: NO TOMATOES. They don't like the soil we have here (the black walnut, probably) and are plentiful at the farmer's market all season anyway. Also, I have a dreadful slug problem. More on gardening as spring gets closer.

3. This summer's vacation has been planned: June 30-July 3 we have tickets for CONvergence, which is steam-punk themed this year! Costumes are inevitable. Then, July 6-10 we'll be headed to the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Gabe has never been. 4th of July is in the middle there somewhere.

4. Hey, speaking of Gabe, he's almost finished writing a game which will be available for download at the Xbox live store. I'll post more about that when it's complete.

5. Finally (for this list - there's more), this Sunday I'm guest-hosting on the estimable Podcast of Ice and Fire. The episode should go live around the end of February, and (again) I'll post details on that when it's free for download.

I have a cute little netbook now, and I'd like to do more writing so I hope to be back soon.

Book Fail

2010-09-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

Huh. Well that happened.

So, I got engaged, went to Burning Man, moved house, got married, and saw 53 shows in the Minnesota Fringe. Forgot about blogging entirely, and my apologies if you give a damn.

The book thing...oh goodness. I read, y'know, like a normal person, but I was not at all ready for the scale of that project. I think Sarah almost finished though, which is AMAZING since she's a thousand times busier than I am.

I have some other things I'd like to blog about now. Gardening and food. Puzzles and Trivia (still). Game of Thrones is filming right now, and that's amazing.

I'll be back. Winter is coming, so I'll be trapped inside.

Note: I...didn't actually mean for a Thrones tie-in there. It's Minnesota. Winter comes. All over your face.

Book 4

2009-01-20T06:56:00.001-08:00

Do women all over the Western world really identify with Bridget Jones? I found her appalling. The book is occasionally funny -- funny enough to make me laugh out loud -- but not often enough to make it worth while. Certainly not enough to compensate for the suspension of disbelief required to think a woman weighing 126 lbs is fat. Even if she's short. It's just sick, and it makes me wonder what Bridget Jones would think of me. Sick.

Starting to become irritated with the Inauguration coverage. "Having the traditional morning coffee." That's news? For real? Jesus Christ. Cheney confessed to a war crime on national TV, and we have to hear about Michele Obama's coffee? I hate the press.

Book 3

2009-01-12T20:37:00.000-08:00

Finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH this evening. My reading rate has slowed since I got well; while the early start means I am not technically behind, I need to keep my pace up. That's a scary thing to have to say the second week in January.

Next I almost picked up Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea, which my father has been on me to read for more than a decade, but because it starts with New Year's Resolutions, I chose Bridget Jones's Diary instead. It should be an entertaining bit of fluff -- I'm hoping to rip through it in a couple of days and get my average back up. Then I can settle into something heavier. I even have some unread Tolkien laying around (thank you Justin). I must be judicious with the Tolkien -- if I get four days into one and realize there's no way I can finish in a timely fashion, I may have to cut my losses. I'd hate to do that, for certain.

Remind me to tell you some time about DragonStar and their lurching bin of live blue crabs.

50 Books in 2009...give or take a couple days

2008-12-30T21:20:00.001-08:00

Sarah had a book that she wanted to start before the precise tolling of 2009, so we agreed to start a little early.

She may regret this move. I promptly got sick, and suddenly had nothing to do but read. I started two books on Saturday (12/27) and have since finished them both. They're on the sidebar.

Why I Hate Saturn is a graphic novel, not my favorite genre. Most likely the only of its kind on my list. But, somewhat to my surprise, I did enjoy it thoroughly.

The Secret Adversary is my first Christie. I hate Agatha Christie plays, so I figured I'd hate her books as well. Gabe talked me into it. Turns out that the most likely reason I hate her plays is that they're so popular...and like most phenomenally popular theater, it's guaranteed to turn a buck...and like most reliably profitable plays, they are mostly produced by low budget theater companies. Nearly all the shows I've seen have been small time community theater or student directing projects. I suppose if I saw, say, Walking Shadow or Hardcover do an Agatha Christie, I might find it wonderful.

Hard to say.

In other news, Trivia is coming up again. We have the images...and I have a new secret weapon that's helping me make clean work of the Visual Trivia this year. Of course I can't say what...there might be someone sneaky out there who'll steal my idea. But it's working, and I couldn't be happier. Despite the illness.

Happy New Year!

Gravity

2008-10-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

I would like to believe
that the bigger I get
the stronger my pull.

A fat little planet
ringed in moons
that pull the oceans dearly.

I have tides.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

I'm doing some illustrations for a book. Remind me to post some when I have them uploaded.

Also -- I was working box office for Walking Shadow this weekend, when I saw an old friend-of-a-friend I hadn't seen in 10 years. Looking for reviews of self-same show, discovered he's a local playwright now, which is neat to me since he wasn't particularly arts-minded when I knew him back when. We're all adults now, and I wonder if I ever surprise people the way Jim surprised me.

I have so many projects right now that I don't want to work on any of them. I think I have to formally pull away from Bedlam's show -- they're not counting on me for anything, and the work is all volunteer, so it's not a disaster -- but that is the project I was most excited for. But Gabe's book needs me more, I need the painting class more, and Sarah's house needs all the help anyone can give.

What shocks me is that I can simultaneously start paring back in order to save my sanity...and feel like I'm accomplishing nothing. I need to get more involved, I need to do something with my life before I die poor and lonely. It doesn't make much sense.

Oh honey, it is so on....

2008-10-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Sarah and I are going toe-to-toe in a 2009 50 Book read-a-thon. Is it possible for two full time working part time artists to read 50 novels in a year? If they're named Sarah it is!

See my updated tally in the side bar. Books started prior to Jan 1, 2009 do not count.

Also, I should apologize. I was offered a steak last night, and I did not accept. I do not regret my choice, for my dinner was excellent and the company divine, but I bid farewell to that wayside steak and hope maychance we meet again.

Also also, I'm already gearing up for Trivia. This is gonna be a *good* year.

ZOMG

2008-10-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

I'm quoting Sarah. :) Not me, the other Sarah. No, the OTHER other Sarah. Sarah Catherine. She's excellent, you should know her.

So, I seriously doubt anyone reads this anymore. I quit posting mostly everywhere about a year ago. Here's my major stats:

Job: Is still excellent, even when it makes me angry.
BF: Bye-bye. I'm dating someone else now.
Wgt: Up. Goddammit.
US: Voting again. Not that it matters or anything.
Reading: Fell way the hell behind. Thinking of starting over next year with a goal of 50 books.
Film: Halted. I hate filmmakers.
Theater: Good. Did a Fringe show all alone. It was excellent. Taking a break to get fat.

More when I'm not at work and trying to make it out the door by 5:00.

Things I have in common in French astronomers

2007-03-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

I occasionally return after a long absence chasing stars. Unlike a French astronomer, I have not returned after an eleven-and-a-half year absence to discover my relatives have had me declared dead with intent to disassemble my blog and sell it off piece-meal to pay off gambling debts. At least, not so far as I know.

That astronomer was Guillaume de Gentil, and I read about him in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I am enjoying greatly. Will update sidebar reading list...sometime.

First, some housekeeping, followed by a tremendous bit of funny that was my impetus to stop in and say hello.

1. I have a new job. The museum was wonderful, but didn't pay me nearly enough. I now work for a healthy-sized internet production house, doing a job that I cannot adequately explain. I had no clear picture of what they were hiring me to do until I started to do it, and now that I'm doing it...well, it really requires face to face description. I need to read your facial expressions to communicate it properly. But, suffice to say, I'm making more money now. A LOT more money. I mean, whoa. Student debt? Who needs it? Not me!

2. I'm up to my elbows in a feature-length script, the details for which will remain necessarily fuzzy for some time yet. It's good work, and I like it, and I have confidence in it. Unfortunately, the burden of jumping career planets and several income tax brackets has shoved that off my plate for a solid week. I'll be getting back on shortly, doing some work on it this weekend, and hopefully pick up my "hour an evening" habit again.

3. I'm hiking again! I'm going to Winnipeg this summer, and the INDIGO GIRLS are playing this year. That's really it for big news.

And now, what you've been waiting for...

Apparently, Senator John McCain, 2008 Presidential Hopeful, is using MySpace as a way to communicate with young voters. Not a bad idea, John. But if you're going to maintain a web presence, don't jack someone else's code template, suck up his bandwidth, and then remove the crediting tag. First lesson in teh intarwebs, John: Never piss off the guy who owns your code.

End note: why does blogger think that internet spelled without a capital I is incorrect? Since when is it a proper noun?

The Snow

2007-02-25T14:16:00.001-08:00

I'm sure we've all got our "here's how the storm pooped on my weekend" stories. So here's mine.

It didn't poop on anything at all! I stayed in. I wrote some. I washed out my bathtub with comet and scrubbed the grout with bleach. I laundered the bedclothes. I listened to a lot of MPR. I made rinotta (a vegan garlicky nutty cheesy spread -- thank you pizza luce for its invention), which I am currently enjoying on a toasted roll.

This morning I got up and started digging. We untrenched my car which Josh then took to work, as his car is drifted in against the dumpster at the end of a long and narrow, and totally unplowed, car park. Then he drove off, and I helped dig out three more cars. One of these belonged to a poor girl from Texas who was standing in her canvas shoes with a tiny little scraper, working every last fleck of ice from her windshield but at an utter loss for what do to about the 18 inches of plow curl crushed up against her driver's side doors. Myself and a gal from Apt 7 showed her how to clear a path, dig out the tires, and rock the wheels out without spinning. Then I wandered off up to Kyle's convenience store (thing I love about Mpls -- convenience stores without gas stations attached to them) for a Red Bull and some Diet Coke w/Lime. It was so damn nice out, and I was so damn hot from the digging, so that I just sat on the bench in front of Gigi's Cafe for 20 minutes in my t-shirt and snowpants (YAY SNOWPANTS!) with my drinks stuck in the snow.

And tonight's Oscars! It doesn't get better than this.

2007-02-21T16:01:00.001-08:00

Happy! Happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy!

Happy happy! Outside yea happy happy! *bounce bounce bounce*

!!

!!!!!

!

Thank you. That is all.

Pardon this huge picture.

2007-02-13T18:17:00.000-08:00

Life is Trivial

2007-02-09T09:28:00.000-08:00

www.kvsc.org

Catch you cats on the flip side!

House of Insanity -- get committed!

Ich habe das Free Market

2007-02-06T16:32:00.000-08:00

Okay, I want to talk about Ireland.
Specifically, I want to talk about the Famine.
About the fact that there never really was one.
There was no famine.
See, the Irish were only allowed to eat potatoes;
All of the other foods -- meat, fish, vegetables --
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England, while the Irish people starved.

My favorite thing about music is catharsis. This post is not about catharsis.

My second favorite thing about music is its remarkable capacity to communicate a lot of information in tiny packet of time. Everything I know about the Argentinian revolution I learned by memorizing the soundtrack to Evita. It's probably not entirely accurate, but it's a damn sight better than knowing nothing.

After last week's revelation over pop-starlet-cum-flash-in-the-pan Jill Sobule's Vrbana Bridge, I got curious. Having just inherited a positively crushing quantity of music (30 gigs) from my friend David, I went diving for a song I knew he had and wanted to hear again: "Famine," by Sinead O'Connor.

After my third listen, the half-Irish in me got real curious. So here, in a nutshell, is what I've been able to piece together about the Great Famine in Ireland.

To start with, the Irish owned nearly none of their own land -- that belonged to the English. They paid their English landlords rent for the privilege of being permitted to live in their own native country. Their plots of land were so small that they took to feeding themselves largely with potatoes, since they provided a lot of "nutrition" (albeit incomplete, but they didn't know that in the 19th century) in a small package, and a small plot of land. The potato is a delicate little beast (this I can attest to, having grown them), but when all you're doing is working the landlord's fields and growing potatoes, you get pretty good at it.

Then came the Blight in 1845. It was a shocker, a new form of potato blight that left the greenery lush and healthy looking, but turned the starchy root in to black goo. The 1845 crop was a 50% failure. No problem for the English, who didn't live there, but a big problem for the Irish. Forced to buy food, they had no money left to pay the rent on the land. There was a petition in the Parliament to help the Irish, lest they starve to death. It was rejected; you want to know why?

Because in the Free Market Economy, that poster-child of Victorian economics, they claimed that helping the Irish would make them dependent and degrade them as human beings.

Man, does that sound familiar.

So what did they do instead? Demanded what they were owed! They were already shipping most of the good food out of Ireland, and now they took whatever the Irish had left as payment for the lein against the land they lived on, but couldn't get food out of.

In 1846 the potato crop was an utter failure. A little monetary help came this time -- the English decided to pay Irish families IF they sent their children to English schools and refused to teach them Irish. The Choctaw Indians donated $710 and some sacks of grain. They repealed a law forbidding the import of maize. This would have been a good idea, as maize was incredibly cheap, but no one thought to consider what the Irish would do with it, for (being a country that didn't eat a lot of cereal grains) there were no mills on the entire island. They tried boiling the corn, which made it chewable, but they lacked the Meso-American technique of boiling it with lime to release it's nutritional qualities. Eating the maize did them about as much good as eating grass.

The total failure of the 1847 crop was the last straw. 1 million people died. Another million were evicted from their lands for failure to pay, or simply left them deserted. They emmigrated to England to work in factories, abandoning the way of life they'd known for a thousand years. They boarded ships for America in such tatters that the Red Cross had to clothe them before they were permitted to disembark. It's estimated that by 1851 Ireland's population dropped by 25%. When they teach history in Ireland's public schools, they call it Black '47.

Can you imagine what might have happened if England had decided to set up soup kitchens in 1845 instead of force the peasants into manual labor building roads and digging wells for their bread? No, they waited until '47...and then failed to fund them properly, so they were shut down. Never again will I hear a Free Market argument -- for defunding social security, for privatizing education, for ending public welfare -- without thinking about what brought my people to America in the first place.

There were politicians in England who argued that if the Irish were wiped out by their Famine, it was merely the weak being culled from the herd. For whatever you may say in its favor, the Free Market will always be one part Social Darwinism, and that will always turn my stomach.

Democracy

2007-02-02T15:44:00.000-08:00

Excellent new play down at Park Square Theater, in St. Paul. Yes you have to cross the river. Yes it's worth it. This is only the third time this play has ever been produced in the United States.

The year is 1969. Take two men. Well, first take about eight men, and put them all in business suits. Then take two of those men -- make one Willy Brandt, a progressive visionary politician and newly elected Chancellor of West Germany. Make the other Gunter Guillaume, the Stasi spy whose unexpected promotion as Brandt's personal secretary makes him the most internally conflicted male character I've seen on the stage in many years. Especially since Gunter is clearly in love (sexually or not) with Willy and his revolutionary vision of a united Germany.

It's worth noting that, while the politics of the play are very clear and dynamic, and I've personally experienced Michael Frayn Historically Accurating his audiences to sleep...this play left out something really, really, REALLY important: that although the Guillaume Scandal forced Brandt to resign as Chancellor, he remained leader of the Social Democratic Party in Germany until 1987, less than two years before the Wall came down. Now that's something worth knowing about a man.

Incidentally, I've only ever seen two other Frayn plays. "Copenhagen," which was the one I slept through part of, and..."Noises Off." I still fail to understand how the man who writes such serious history plays can turn out something as ridiculously delightful as "Noises Off." Especially when "Democracy" is utterly devoid of both doors and sardines.

So much for job security.

2007-01-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

Computer writes fiction.

New Features

2007-01-23T16:32:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed a slightly different look here. I'm experimenting with my rudimentary knowledge of html and rearranging my sidebar. At the top are some links useful for the TRIVIA MARATHON, which is a mere two-and-a-half weeks away. I will be using my blog as a homepage from which to launch my trivia escapades. If anyone out there knows of a good source of obscure data, send them my way! Especially things that Google will have a hard time finding (and keep in mind that I am the Googleninja).

Momently I will be adding another sidebar. I heard issue forth from a friend of mine recently the following phrase: He's the most well-read person I know. The tell-tale "he" probably tipped you off that my friend wasn't talking about ME. I would have taken this as a personal affront 8 years ago, and that brought to my attention the fact that I don't read as much as I used to. Nowhere near as much. Therefore, I'm setting a goal for myself: in 2007 I will read 25 books. 50 is a common challenge, but I'm an unbelievably busy gal. I'll keep a running total on the sidebar, so you can see what I've read and what I'm working on. Also going to see if I can connect this up with "Shelfari"...but not all the books I read are books I also own.

Oh, and while we're on the topic, I've found the best porn page.

(psst...it's work-safe)

In the words of my good friend and hero, Conrad Zero...

Blog on,
~spoon

What happens when girls go away.

2007-01-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

They do shit tons of film stuff, and never talk to anybody.

AND

HBO buys to Rights to their favorite series of novels.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117957532.html?categoryid=1236&cs=1&p=0

Which is worse, referring to one self in the third person or in the plurality?

JAN 31st -- Fearless Filmmakers, Oak Street Cinema (I'm going, you should too)

"Fear of Girls 2" (and other local shorts)

Go here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7521044027821122670 for the original "Fear of Girls," an entry in the Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project some years ago.

Sorry for not hiding my links. I'm a bit rushed this morning. HI EVERYBODY! BYE EVERYBODY!

2008

2006-12-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

And let the race(s) begin.

John Edwards declared. AND on an anti-war platform (not the Dems "I'll get elected criticizing the war and then support a troop increase" platform).

How many third parties you think we'll have this year?

Some answers

2006-12-21T15:46:00.000-08:00

So, those plans I had the other night?

1 -- Deathly ill.
2 -- Also deathly ill.
3 -- Was in a car crash.

No wonder no one was answering their phones.

Alone in the Land of Cancelled Plans

2006-12-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

Hi there. I've been busy. How are you?

Seriously, I've been running apeshit for at least two weeks. But I had two disperate plans this evening, and then nobody would answer their phones. So now I'm home. Alone. All by myself. I feel a Green Day song coming on.

I should do a mix CD exclusively of songs about masturbation.

Anyway.

Still sick. Sickness still preventing me from seeing Darin and Cathy's new baby, and that makes me sad.

Aw, you're sad too? It's that time of year, huh? Here's a picture to cheer you up.

And another one.

As Requested....

2006-11-29T20:34:00.000-08:00

Pictures of the new family member.

Isn't she a doll?

And she's definately the smartest cat I've ever met. It's not even a contest. I watched her puzzle out how to get up on the bedroom windowsill without anything but the bed to jump from...from quite a distance.

She was a four-year-old stray found outside the YWCA. And she's only 6.5 lbs, way tiny for a full grown tabby. See? She almost fits in a ball-cap.

It's mostly her legs, which are too short for her body, and shorter in front than in back, which gives her this weird bulldog-like gait when she walks. Apparently short-leggedness, in more extreme degree than our little girl, is a rare and sometimes sought after spontaneous mutation. Her legs aren't *that* short, but they are short enough to make her look a little funny. It's hard to capture on camera, since it's most noticable when she's walking.

Her name is Needle. Careful, she's sharp.

+4 Diet of Shrinking Spoons

2006-11-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my life, I'm on a diet. In that "on a diet" sense. Not the "my clothes are getting tight so I'm cutting back on the cheese" sense. Not in the "you're a vegetarian, so aren't you already on a diet?" sense.

No. I'm on a fucking diet. The Hacker's Diet. I should be at my ideal weight by about August. At which time I plan on making my mother buy me a whole new wardrobe of clothing, because I haven't been at my ideal weight since 1996, and GRUNGE IS OUT.

Okay, so I'm not going to "make" my mother do anything. But when she offers I'll say yes. ;)

The first thing I've discovered is that my self-conception as a weak-willed person with no self-control is utter bull-hockey. I just had to decide that losing weight is something that I want to do, and am willing to spend some of my incredibly valuable units of attention on. Although none of my money. The only thing we bought was a bathroom scale.

I've been doing pilates/yoga every day for more than a month.

And I'm only going to eat pasta I've made myself. Two reasons, the first being the elimination of a "snack" with as many calories as a meal, and the second...it takes an hour or more to make pasta by hand, INCLUDING 15 MINUTES OF KNEADING. Have you ever tried kneading anything for 15 minutes? And it's not like this is bread dough, all soft and pliable. It's a lot more like wedging clay, except clay isn't elastic. Oh, and the third reason is that it's TASTY.

AND...Darin and Cathy had a baby.

AND...I adopted a kitty.

AND...I'm growing my hair out.

There. Now I feel better.

Here, stick this in your ear

2006-11-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've been uncomfortable lately. I've had what I'm 90% certain is a sinus infection for a week and a half. My evidence is persistant, acute headache that is temporarily relieved with nasal decongestants and robitussin, even though I have no other symptoms of being sick.

These are the days I wish I had medical insurance.

So I thought I'd kicked the damn thing, until I woke up this morning with another headache. A shot of robitussin and a hot shower later and I'm blowing my nose (good) which causes pain in my right ear (bad).

So, scanning the stations of alternative medical culture, I investigate ear candling. Also called "ear coning," this method is one which places "a paper plate on the ear, and then a paper or linen cone into a hole in the center of the plate and then lighting the other end."

For some reason I just could...not...picture this. Every discription I found of the proceedure described it precisely the same way. And then I learn that the "candle" is about a foot long, not an inch or two like I'd imagined. So...do you stick the skinny end in your ear and then the flame wicks around the top of the cone? Or do you like the skinny end and then put the cone over the top of your ear...but then what's the paper plate for?

Then I saw a picture. IT'S NOT A CONE. It's a cylander. A rod, if you will. A tube. Not a fucking cone.

Oh, and by the way, it's a really bad idea.

Thank you. That is all.

KIWI!

2006-11-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

In the words of one blogger...

...if this doesn't well up your eyes, you're made of stone. Or something.

Adventures in desktop animation.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

2006-11-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

Remember Remember the Fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know no reason the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Having a little hometown pride (for once)

2006-11-02T06:38:00.000-08:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

And why does EVERY joke about the Minnesota accent have to bring up Fargo? I mean, I get it that it popularized what was until that time an unknown and extremely distinct regional dialect, but Fargo plays it up. My grandmother talks like that. I do not.

But I digress.

The Unforeseen Side Effects of Halloween (and Other Things)

2006-11-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

***THE FOLLOWING IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT***

Do not eat the Halloween bagels!

I repeat: DO NOT EAT BLACK THE HALLOWEEN BAGELS.

Hm. A black bagel you say? Was it chocolate? No. Pumpernickle? No.

When one bites into a bagel so black you just assume it was made out of plastic...and yet it is yummy and delicious (and very, very black) it ought to arouse one's suspicions. I immediately bolted into the bathroom to see if it had turned my mouth a funny color.

Nope. So I finished it. And about three hours later, I ate another one. And all was well. For about 16 hours.

Never before in my life have I had to fight the urge to take a photograph of my poop and post it on the internet. Because it was this color.

Imagine waking up to that first thing Wednesday morning. For three whole counts I thought I was still asleep.

And I fucking hate teal.

Halloween and Other Things

2006-10-30T07:27:00.001-08:00

1) Cathy's baby shower was soooooo cute. I got her a book she got from someone else, but she refuses to let me return it. However, having looked at every edition of "The Velveteen Rabbit" in print, I'm confident that mine has the best illustrations. So nyeh.

2) Alumni Night at the UW was about 1000% more fun than I accounted for. The play was...well, next time you see me I'll tell you. And I sat next to a fat old gentleman who informed me at intermission that he'd left his insulin needles at home. And that he has congenitive heart failure. Explains why his breathing was louder than the actors, and sounded a bit like he was giving birth to a wrench, but why me? Am I the spry one in the row? Is there a code word I should know? He didn't think that was funny.

And then we went out for drinks, and I got buzzed on $2.50. Ah, Wisconsin. Came out smelling like an ashtray. Ah, Wisconsin.

AND THEN we went back to the theater to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I screamed myself hoarse.

3) Won the costume contest at Jess's house! Whoot! Got a super awesome votive lamp with a stained glass shade. Feel a little guilty, since I stole it from Christina, whose costume pulled in second place but was both more elaborate and uncomfortable than mine. Next year I'll really earn it. ;) Answered my least favorite question repeatedly - so are you still at the library? Yes. And I love it, but it's not permanent.

Halloween and Other Things

2006-10-30T07:27:00.000-08:00

It's hard being a movie star

2006-10-16T11:26:00.001-07:00

Our favorite illiterate bespectacled K-grade horror star Tara Reid is the victim of a badly botched plastic surgery.

Oddly, I think I like her MORE now than I did before. At least she's got the balls to be like "I felt like my looks were starting to go, so I had a bunch of surgery done. Wouldn't have been a big deal if the doctor hadn't fucked up so badly." I'm paraphrasing here. I vastly prefer that to women who get an overhawl and then do everything in their power to convince the world at large that they really are shaped like Jessica Rabbit. It takes a certain strength of character to admit to being vain.

And now I have a cramp in my diaphragm....

2006-10-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

All thanks to the Gallery of Regrettable Food.

Go ahead. You can thank me later.

(I especially recommend Knudsen's Very Best series. When I say ROFLMAO, I mean a had to lurch myself out of the computer chair and lie under the desk before I asphyxiated myself with laughter. The neighbor's dogs started howling. No, I'm not kidding.)

Why Psychologists Should Learn to Read Tarot

2006-09-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Go here. I stole it from Allegra, who I met Tuesday, but I got two right. More than the other people who've taken it, and presumably know her better. I attribute this to my Training in the grand fake out that is the tarot. It's not magic kids, it's a ten minute psychological evaluation. And reading cues.

Other things that happened to me this week:

Foods Cooked:

APPLESAUCE
Pros: "Cook it until it falls apart" is good by me.
Cons: Delicious...but every bite is the same as the last one.

STUFFED SHELLS
Pros: Cheese + Red Sauce = Pro!
Cons: Recipe adapted from Emeril Lagasi = Gah!

EGGPLANT
No reviews yet, because all I've done is purge it. But I did pull the rack out of my oven to supplant the baking rack which I don't own, which qualifies as brilliant.

Book Review:
Still struggling through "Sword of Shannara," wishing the plot would pick up a little, and it was less a blatant rip-off of Fellowship. Josh is making me keep reading. But he did that with Eragon too, and I got all the way to the end without ever getting to "the good part."

Work Update:
Still no word when I'm done at the Museum, but one of the librarians said today she was going to "get back in the habit of picking up the mail," which tells me my days there have numbers on them...I'm just not being told what they are.

And hey, why does every conversation I have with a curator (or curator's assistant, for that matter) end awkwardly? Like, they just keep talking like they think I need them to continue explaining something I understood after six words, and I keep not quite walking out of their office because...well, they're still talking.

Did you click on that link yet? Here it is again. And then set one up yourself, because I find this really fascinating.

America's Hottest Boy Band, "Brimstone Knights"

2006-09-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

Just when I vowed to never, EVER get within a quarter mile of the Xcel Center again, they get a group I just can't miss.

Unfortunately, I'll never get tickets.

The Zen Art of Spin

2006-09-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

Of all the giggle-inducing things regarding the Former Governer of Texas I've read in the news, this Chavez fella really takes the proverbial cake.

Some observations: News Sources

My first source: Lefty Internet Based News Service

1) Chavez called Bush the devil and said his administration is trying to take over the world.

2) Some people in the U.S. have been saying this for years.

Second source: Image-conscious National American Newspaper

1) Chavez called Bush the devil and accused the U.N. of rolling over while U.S. policy takes over the world.

2) This comes at a time when the President's poll numbers are at an all-time low.

Third source: Neo-Conservative News Mecca (yes, FoxNews)

1) “The United States empire is on its way down and it will be finished in the near future, inshallah," Chavez told reporters, ending the statement with the Arabic phrase for "God willing."

2) "Chavez held up a book by American leftist writer Noam Chomsky "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" and recommended it to everyone in the General Assembly."

Most importantly, FoxNews was the only news agency that failed to report the most interesting bit of headline in the story...that Chavez walked up to the podium and stated that it still "smells of sulfur" after Bush stood there the previous day. Now that's the kind of imagery I want out of my popnews!

Happy 19th of September, Arrrrgh!

2006-09-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, once again, it is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. A holiday invented by Sid Meier?

You decide.

Will someone please poke holes in my jar?

2006-09-14T16:18:00.000-07:00

Dear God(dess)(es):

1) Why am I hungry all the time?

2) Why does being in debt make me feel like I'm drowning, and the only answer is to get more education and then have more debt?

3) Why does it take two weeks to lose five pounds, and two days to put it back on?

4) How come I always have too much clothing and nothing to wear?

5) My skin still hasn't cleared up. What's up with that?

6) When do I get to stop being young and not pretty enough, so I can start being middle aged and not worried about it?

7) Thank you for sunsets and poppies and large bodies of water.

2006-09-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

7,658 people have taken a "test" that I wrote for OkCupid's website.

If I could tally one person per second...it would take me two hours to count them all. Even if I could count. Which I can't.

something we all have in common

2006-09-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

No matter who they are,

where they come from,

what sort of music they're into,

or what their politics are like...

...all of the men I've dated have really liked Sarah MacLachlan.

A lot.

Coincidence?

Food as Metaphor

2006-09-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

My grilled cheese sandwiches are always burnt on one side. I mean carbonized, from crust to shining crust, fucking BURNT. And I always eat them anyway.

I find this oddly profound.

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Something else I've been burning lately is popcorn. I got this super tasty "heirloom popcorn" where the kernels are teeny wee tiny, and (like all purebloods) need some coddling. My solution for this is my solution for everything in the kitchen: PUT MORE FAT IN IT! So my last batch of popcorn, for Mythbusters Wednesday, had so much oil in it that every time something popped the lid was showered with oil, which in turn showered the side of the pot. I was horrified by this at the time, but seeing that there was nothing to be done that didn't involve aborting the popcorn mission (NEVER!) I cringed and pressed on. And afterward, well!, there's popcorn to eat!

I am rather fond of popcorn.

Fast forward to last night. I'm sitting in My Chair trying to accurately draw a paper bag in chiaroscuro without lines, and Joshman is boiling water for Thai noodles. But not right now, because right now he's at the computer doing something very Joshlike, and the stove is boiling the water all by itself. Josh goes to the kitchen to check on it.

From my reverie, I hear...

"Oh dear."

"What's up babe?" Scribble scribble scribble.

"You got oil all over the burner."

"Ooooo, I forgot about that. Sorry." Scribble scribble. "Is it okay?"

"Well. It's on fire."

I look up, and there is an intense, but very pleasant, flickering orange light in our tiny galley kitchen. And sure enough, there's a foot or more of flame erupting from the front burner, and spreading across the stovetop.

Josh says, "Huh." I'm wratcheting through my brain looking for the "how to put out a grease fire" file. Fortunately or not, Josh found his first. He grabs the bag of wheat flour from the freezer and sprinkles it, almost lovingly, on the flames.

The flames go out.

A heartbeat later elephantine plumes of smoke come stampeding out of the flour.

And the smoke alarm goes off.

And then all the smoke alarms in the building go off.

And we go out to eat, instead.

America's most Wanted man

2006-08-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

"When I went up to the passenger's side of the vehicle I noticed immediately he was eating a salad...that made me real suspicious," Officer Dutchover said.

Belief is a slippery fish. Warren Jeffs is wanted on two counts "for arranging marriages between underage girls and older men." I can't find what he's actually charged with, just that arranging marriages is what he did wrong. And it landed him on the Most Wanted List.

Of course, you've got to dig to find even that much information. The headlines don't mention it, and neither to the top paragraphs of most stories. I think it's clear what Warren Jeffs is being held for.

But polygamy isn't actually illegal.

Now, I'm not defending this guy. They're calling him a cult leader and...well...I'm assuming here because the news won't tell me...he's guilty of several counts of statutory rape by proxy or something. He might be a very bad man. The Fundi Mormons might make their wives go barefoot and live in stalls. Whatever. This is America, and if a woman wants to be some heretic's sixth wife, let her. Plural marriage, in a legal sense, doesn't exist in America, but polygamy, polyandry, polyamory are practiced by many, and lots of them are happy. Oh, and one more time, for those of you who only read the headlines: POLYGAMY IS NOT ILLEGAL. And don't let the news convince you otherwise.

But I'm just another one 'a them salad eaters, so what do I know?

Iron(ic) Chef

2006-08-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Iron Chef Joshman vs. Challenger Jess

"And the Secret Ingredient is...Gummy Bears!"

august showers

2006-08-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

"Hey Mom, I have to pee."

"Bathroom's right there, babe."

"I didn't think I was, like, allowed to go in there."

"It's just a dressing room. Y'know Joey Ramone peed in there."

"Really?!"

"Well yeah. They played here. That was their dressing room. He probably drank a lot."

"I think I have to go pee in there."

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I hate nightclubs. I hate them more now that I know what they look like during the day. Light floods in through those second storey windows at First Avenue and reveals something so disgusting I didn't want to sit down on anything. Not even the barstools. Especially not the barstools.

We're talking a layer of broken beer bottle and urine cocktail on a bed of foot grime that the mops didn't so much clean as glaze. There were standing pools of muddy water on the second floor, I have no idea where they came from. I am taking a leap assuming they were water.

Thus is the wake of the Wu Tang Clan.

So I stayed there from 10am to 1am, a grand total of 15 hours. We got...I'm going to say 7-8 hours of footage, just last night alone. There is a chance, I'm hoping a small one, that it will be useless from the non-existant lighting.

The entertainment was excellent. The crowd, a disappointment.

I hear thunder.

As it Says in Revelations

2006-07-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

The End is Near.

I don't think I want to make movies anymore.

Okay, strike that. I don't think I want to make movies for other people anymore. Takes all the fun out of it. Josh told me that Colin and Conrad had decided a while back that when their Fun Music Project stopped being fun, they'd scrap it. I think film for me will never be more than a hobby.

I think I'm okay with that.

IN BETTER NEWS --

Trivia 2007 has been announced. YES! Next year's theme is...

Around the World in 50 Hours

I've already redecorated the Yahoo site. :-D

Conspiracy Hour

2006-07-21T11:13:00.000-07:00


This short movie was an entry in the June 2006 Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project. Oh yeah, and I directed it. If you like it, go to google video and rate the film. We like that. :)

The Longview

2006-07-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl,
but she doesn't have a lot to say.
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl,
but she changes from day to day.
I want to tell her that I love her a lot
but I gotta get a belly full of wine.
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl,
someday I'm gonna make her mine
oh yeah
someday I'm gonna make her mine.

This isn't a meme, I promise. This is just something that occured to me in the car.

Five years ago I was painting the walls in the first room I ever bought for myself.

By bought I mean rented, of course.

It was this really cute little house on 8th and East Maple St in River Falls. It had a big backyard, where later we installed a giant trampoline. The room itself was absolutely tiny, but because I was living with older girls (they were 23, I was 20) I was stuck with the worst room. No closet at all, butted up against the staircase, a teeny little window, low on the wall and facing south. When we rented the place it was Wrigley's Spearmint Green.

That was August. Moria had somehow convinced the guy who owned the place to let us move there in stages throughout August, paying no rent at all. It had no living room with three of us there, but a big kitchen with a walk-in pantry and south and east windows from knee-height to the ceiling. It was cramped and shitty and beautiful. I lived there for two years.

It was evident that I would have to paint the room. It was simply too ugly to be endured, and made anyone in it look sickly. So I bought three buckets of paint and three brushes. I was working nights stocking shelves at Target in Shoreview, so I had to drive out on my night off, but it was so sweltering hot that I'm certain I never could have done it during the day. I wore a bra and swim trunks, and orange booty socks. I borrowed a chair from the kitchen, and I painted that room three colors of blue, swirled together.

I still miss that room. It was like sleeping underwater.

I started my first library job that September. We were four blocks from Campus, which meant that the kids driving in from outer parts of town parked in front of our house. We strung white christmas lights in the grapevine that grew up over our side-door. This will sound terribly cliche, but I can't think of anything more wonderful than coming around the corner from the alley, walking home from the library at night, and seeing your own stoop lit up and leafy like that. There were better stars in River Falls than anywhere else in the universe.

I was single (generally) the whole while I lived on Maple Street. I'd been quasi-sorta dating (i.e. occasionally making out with) a friend from back home that whole summer, but when 9/11 happened that fall we had a major falling out and he started seeing someone else. He married her this year. I had my first one night stand, my first heart-gripping love, not to mention my first actual sex, on nights I didn't go back to that room. When I finally moved out, two years later, it was to launch myself cross-country...whereupon my whole world changed. When I came back, nothing at all was the same.

That was 2001-2003. I think of that now as the flowering of my life. I can't give you the smallest inkling of how it makes me feel to remember lying on that big trampoline outside at night. Or sitting in that kitchen in the morning, having tea and toast because that's all we could afford. Living with Moria, the most vibrant friend I ever had and who, sadly, is no longer my friend. The goldfish shower curtain. Cutting my hair short. The Alice Neel print on the wall. The parties. The walks home. The boys I kissed, and those I wanted to but never did. Driving out to Darin and Cathy's house on the weekends to play D&D and drink Cherry Coke.

I think my depression has been, at least in part, missing that part of my life. There was something magical about it, which totally evaporated at 22.

These days I feel like it's waking up again. It's living in the city, at least in part, and making all these news friends. It's watching women I know grow large with child. The heat this summer hasn't felt like heat to me, not the way it used to. There was a time when the summer heat shut me down completely. But not on Maple Street, and not here. I am absorbing the heat, relaxing in it. I'm doing, I am becoming, I am stronger and more beautiful this year than last, and I will take the memory of Maple Street with me and know that my life has been perfect and will be again.

I just have to be ready for it.

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If you're curious about the song, ask me to tell you sometime about my special relationship to "Abbey Road," particularly "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window." You might not know it, but that's my song.

Con

2006-07-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't had that much fun in a --really-- long time.

The key to geeks, by which I mean male geeks, is that their inherent fear of girls leaves them helplessly open to attack. Look them in the eye once and smile, and they will (I'm not kidding here) stop in their tracks to turn and follow you.

Wow. Holy wow. I had the below conversation...seven or eight times:

"Wow. You're amazing. Who are you here with?"
"Sabra. The gal in the white dress." (She was the only gal in a white dress)
"Incredible. So...you're single?"
"Oh no. Not at all."
"Oh." Pause. "Well...where is he?"
"At home."
"So, he's not here to get in our way, is he?"

At which point I smile and walk away.

I'm terrified of people, but every once in a great while I get to be the life of the party. And it's so much fun. So much fun.

I'm an evil heartless bitch. But I'm so cute you'd never know it. ;)

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JOSH! He's 25 today. Give him all your lovin!

Can it Really Be That Simple?

2006-07-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

I started taking St. John's Wort last week. Didn't notice a shocking change, but did notice how much crap I've been getting done. The idea of taking something that needs done and just DOING it suddenly became...possible.

I forgot to take it yesterday morning, and it really hit home. I felt awful. Didn't want to get up, didn't bother to eat, even answering business emails (which I had been so excited about the previous day) just wasn't worth the effort. I watch Animal Planet and cried a lot.

Took a SJW pill around 6pm, felt a little better. Got back on track this morning and I feel great.

I mean...is that it? Am I just depressed, and a traditional over the counter anti-depressant fixes it?

Amazing.

Gross.

2006-07-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

The water in our apartment tastes awful.

I assumed that the nasty water was unreleated to the smelly bathroom.

It looks like I could be wrong.

You see, I figured we had rusty pipe issues. We get red stains in and around our faucets, and the first time I turn the kitchen water on rust washes out from around the drain. It's gross, but I filter the water I drink and live with it. Not like Iron is BAD for you.

Iron bacteria are another story.

They're also benign...but infinately more nasty. We keep getting this yellowish substance -- uncannily similar to really thick snot -- around the drains, faucets, even where the toilet meets the tile floor. Turns out, there is a certain kind of bacteria that absolutely LOVE iron-heavy water, and can proliferate so badly that they clog up pipes with their mucousy grossness and create, here's a kicker, an "unpleasant odor."

Yeah. Unpleasant. You don't say.

Looks like cleaning the grout didn't solve the problem after all. What's to be done? Yeah, nothing. Removing iron from the water source. As though I have control over that.

Exercise in Patience

2006-06-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Doing impulsive things almost always bites me later.

I let Star Tribune talk me into three months of Sunday papers for $12.87. When the chick asked if I wanted to pay right now over the phone, I said NO. My credit card is actually a debit card linked directly to my bank account, so I never give it out over the phone unless I'm the one making the call. I forgot to pay the bill when it came...a couple of times. This was during the holiday season at the theater, when I barely remembered to pay my regular bills.

Time passes.

We move.

At the new address, I receive (forwarded from the old address, and almost a month old) a letter from a collection agency regarding the $12.87. Oops. So I get on the horn and call Star Trib, which is closed. The notice is set aside. A week later I get a second notice. This time I tape the notice to my computer monitor and call them during regular business hours. I pay the bill. Just in time to prevent a report to the credit bureau.

Two weeks later, I get another notice. I look at it and say, "But I paid that. Huh. They must not have been contacted by the Strib before the new batch of letters went out." I throw it away.

Today I got a fourth notice. And if I don't pay this bill tout-suite they're calling the Big Bad Men.

But I've paid it. WTF!?!?

There is no contact phone for this place -- I mean, who wants to answer phones for a collection agency? So now I have to WRITE A LETTER, send it IN THE MAIL to these people so they'll stop trying to collect on a debt that I've already paid.

And, because it bears repeating, all for Twelve Dollars and Eighty-Seven Cents.

If I go to jail for this I'm going to be very upset.

Ephemera

2006-06-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

Katie was the kind of person who had so many friends that you could identify which art "click" a new person was from based on what they called her. Katie Bluehair was very specific to the UWRF Theater community, circa 1999-2001. And yet she never thought she was very popular, or had anyone she could talk to. Amazing. Just amazing.

As...you may know, I "own" a small "production company" (cough) in Minneapolis. We recently did the 48 Hour Film Project. Before that we did...some other stuff. This "production company" is called Arkenstone Productions, of which I am Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer (cough COUGH).

Arkenstone Productions is hiring quasi-volunteers for a legitimate gig.

Anybody wanna come play movie the weekend of August 12th? It includes admission to a Burlesque and Band event at First Avenue! I'm looking for videographers. Access to camera a Big Plus. Tolerance of hippies required.

A Red Day, E'er the Sun Rises

2006-06-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine died on Saturday. Katherine Doyle. Katie Bluehair, or Katie Blue, or just Blue.

We were very close some four years ago, in college. The three of us -- Blue, Moria and myself -- hung together all the time, even lived together for a while. Moria and I had a falling out and haven't spoken in a very long time, but she emailed me today. She didn't figure there were many folks who'd think to tell me, since I'd only seen Blue a few times in the last year or two.

She was the one who got me "in" at the library.

When no one gave a shit about the Oscars my sophomore year, and I wasn't speaking to my parents who'd always watched with me before, Bluehair came over just because she didn't have anything more important to do. We smoked pot in my dorm room and slumped around on that nasty institutional bed and made fun of celebrities and their stupid speeches. And ate microwave popcorn.

She painted, she made her own clothes, she told stories about her crazy dreams. Like the one where she took a shower with her Christmas tree. She taught english in Japan and learned to play the fiddle in Ireland. She lived in the North Wisconsin woods for a whole year. I never knew, until just now when I got off the phone with JJ (our super at the library) what happened that year. It was also the year I stopped seeing Katie.

The whole point of living in the woods with a bunch of strangers is shedding your material life. You bring nothing in but your clothes, and have nothing that you don't make or find. Katie Bluehair was always crazy, so the fact that she wanted to do this wasn't so surprising. We didn't know she was actually crazy. In the middle of winter that year, they carried her to the nearest road (10 miles) and flagged down a driver to rush her to a hospital. She'd had some kind of psychotic episode.

Life was a lot harder for Blue once she came back, I knew that just from seeing her once in a while. She had absolutely no sense of time, had trouble focusing even on a conversation. But she was vibrant and kooky, so it didn't seem like anything was really wrong.

They've had her in and out of hospitals for a few months now. She was taking a host of medications, anxiety meds and anti-depressents and anti-psychotics, but nothing that stopped the "racing thoughts." She'd been out for ten weeks solid when her boyfriend Ryan took her camping last weekend.

She woke up in the middle of the night. Ryan remembers her leaving the tent and saying she was going for a walk to calm down. She made it all the way to Hwy 61. The trucker says she came through the fog out of howhere.

Her mother says the medication made her disoriented and this is a tragic accident.

I imagine it was one of those terrible moments when you would give anything to make the chaos stop, and the opportunity presented itself.

Either way, she's going to make someone one hell of an angel.

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I was thinking today about how I was going to post about what a shit-rotten day I'd had. Assholes at work, a $34 parking ticket, house keys lost somewhere in Minneapolis, and I hit a biker on the corner of 32nd and Bryant. Learning this made all of what I had to deal with today seem very very small, and while that is a miniscule consolation for the loss of a stunning beautiful person, I'll go ahead and decide it's evidence that...well...there are no accidents.

How I Know That Jesus Loves Me

2006-06-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

The cat has finally meowed herself hoarse.

Sleep, it is my friend.

Pussy

2006-06-15T17:41:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to teach the cat independence. *snort*

She cries all night long because no one is paying attention to her and she gets scared. She needs someone to hold her hand. So she cries and cries and wakes us up and jumps on the bed and stands on my butt and cries some more, and the second I get up to do something with (to?) her she runs off like everything is fine.

I haven't been sleeping well. (yawn)

Jobs, etc

2006-06-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

(1) 48 Hour Film Project = raging success. Our team drew Sci-Fi. (!) Our film is both passible and funny. It will probably be better than most. If I'm any judge. Not that I'm any judge.

(2) I'm working (on a temp assignment) as the assistant librarian in the library at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A better job for me does not exist. My assignment now is to make them hire me for real.

(3) Finished "A Feast for Crows." It's a massive disappointment, BUT, there is a disclaimer on the last page (before the 40 pages of index) that states - and I'm paraphrasing here - "I know what you're thinking, you're mad that your favorite character(s) wasn't in this book. I decided to tell you all the boring stuff in this one, so the next book will be the most captivating book you've ever ever ever read. Be patient."

(4) Joshie's been a rock star today and cleaned the whole apartment. Tomorrow we're borrowing Robin's cat for two weeks, and I am SO excited. I love cats. I mean, I fucking LOVE cats, and I haven't had one in seven years.

(5) I've decided that The Seven is pretty much the best religious model I've ever come across. It's like classical mythological paganism...only WAY less complicated.

So...things are pretty okay. How are you?

Ze valls, zey are clozink in...

2006-06-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

I think I might have some sort of anxiety disorder.

I'm trying to do a very simple thing. Find a job. No big deal. Decided yesterday that I didn't want to work for US PIRC for almost no money. Logical. Rent is due today. Also logical.

Well, Josh lost his check book. Since I already gave Josh my half of the rent money, I don't have enough left to foot the bill. So J-man goes to the bank and gets a bunch of cash. I go to the SAME bank later in the day (it doesn't make sense, I know, we weren't really awake for half of this nonsense) to deposit the money so I can write the check.

So I drive down France into Edina, where the bank is, and traffic is absolutely horrendous. I wind up pulling off into random parking lot a block and a half away, and when I get close I see...oh, the stoplight outside the huge bank building is out. And unlike everyplace else I've ever been when a stoplight goes out (where the cars politely take turns), is a FREE FOR ALL. Hence, the back up. So I cross on foot, dodging traffic.

I get into the bank building. It's one of those big glass office buildings with glass doors everywhere. I've never been inside before. I turn around in the atrium a few times. It's surprisingly dim, and I can't seem to find where the bank should be. I well-dressed woman in heels carrying a fax machine passes me and gives me the hairy eyeball. I smile, and she looks away. I follow her, and she goes up the stairs.

Up the stairs?

I head back the way I came and squint at the bank of glass doors lining the atrium. Associated Bank. Bingo. Why are all the lights off?

Note: Closed due to power outage.

Fuck.

So I walk back to the car, fight traffic all the way home. And now here I am. I have no clue what to do. There's nowhere to put the rent money, even though we're supposed to give it to the caretaker. I'm not just going to stick $650 in cash in his mail box.

But get this -- the walk from my front door on the ground floor, to the caretaker's door on the 3rd floor was terrifying. I was afraid of waking him up (at 4 in the afternoon). I was afraid he would demand a check that I can't give him. I don't know what I was afraid of, but I was SO scared I couldn't knock on his door.

Looking at it now...this doesn't seem entirely normal.

Joy!

2006-05-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't taken a photograph, outside of Darin and Cathy's wedding, in some three years.

But I have a new toy now. :)

So, here I am, moments after figuring out how to turn the thing on and which button to push. No make-up, unwashed, uncombed. This is what I would look like if you knocked on my door some night. If I took my glasses off.

If you look close, you can see the little marks from the nosepiece.

I welcome myself to the world of photo bloggerism.

Pimp My Wardrobe

2006-05-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

#1 birthday thanks go to Jessica, who bestowed upon me gouchos, a skirt, a lacey blouse, and a sack full of her old shoes. The express intent is that I quit dressing like a slacker. May I be the first to say that I look better already. :)

From Josh, a book on photography techniques and tennis raquets, which we have already used to embarrass ourselves on the court. Apparently, Uptown makes you hott by osmosis...but it takes awhile.

Dan and Kim gave me the most beautiful card I've ever seen, and a gift certificate to a local uber-geeky bookstore that I have never been to...which may have been very cruel indeed, being that I have limited funds (i.e. birthday money) to spend on books, and am generally lacking in self-control.

Mom wins. She gave me this.

Oh yes. It will be mine. In 3-5 business days. And I will post pictures of my shoes. :)

2006-05-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

Why does it take me so long to decide what I'm going to wear on my birthday? Shouldn't I wear whatever I damn well please, and if anybody else doesn't like it -- tough, it's my birthday?

Second Verse, Same as the First

2006-05-18T17:20:00.000-07:00

Well, they "offered" me a job. Which is to say the gal in charge had a truckload of positive things to say about my qualifications. And then she was like, "So...based on your background...why are you applying here and not at, say, The Guthrie?"

"Because the Guthrie isn't hiring," quippeth I.

So I asked her if there are a lot of numbers at this job. She was confused at first, said that it's not an accounting position. "But the filing," says I, "are all those documents alphabetized, alpha-numeric, what?"

Turns out there's 1.6 gazillion die-plates and they all filed NUMERICALLY. Part of the job they would hire me to do is take a job order and collect all those die-plates. And that would be what I meant by "a lot of numbers." So I tactfully revealed my quasi-learning disability, and we agreed that although I am "highly qualified" (her words, not mine) that would be an unfortunate additional challenge, so they and I will continue looking. Have a beautiful afternoon.

I actually feel really good about this. I've never walked away from an interview without a job offer, but a dark little seed in my brain suspected that this was a direct result of the level of job I'd been applying for. I had the confidence today to turn down a job that was MORE money (per hour) and MORE skilled than my last one. So...that makes me wonder. If I am indeed "highly qualified" to run an office for a company that die-cuts metal widgets...why couldn't I jockey a desk behind the scenes at...MIA? Children's Theater? I mean, after all, with my background why on earth would I come to them for a job? They've sent a billion and a half widgets into space, but have no use at all for my considerable fine arts skills.

Although, I must say, because of my background in communications they were going to have me handle their international sales and billing. I think I'd like making phone calls to China.

Somewhere in Vadalia County

2006-05-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

There's an onion farmer who's very happy this time of year.

I just brought home 8 LARGE sweet vadalias. They're currently sliced up and in the electric skillet, because I'm making French Onion Soup. Why an electric skillet, you ask? Because Alton Brown told me to. He's my new hero. I'm about to pop over to MySpace and add him to my hero list.

Did you know he used to be a cinematographer? He did that for about ten years and got bored, so he left Hollywood to go to culinary school in (guess where?) Vermont. And now he's my hero.

Oh yeah, that interview thingy. Turns out it was with a placement agency. So I sat some tests and talked with the gal who runs the place, and she's really nice and even if this posting doesn't work out she would love to place me SOMEWHERE. So I came home all fuzzy and waiting to hear about a "real" interview at this machine shop that needs another secretary.

DOWN SIDE: Working for Spacely's Sprockets
UP SIDE: They haven't had a job turn over in more than five years. Which means people stay, and there's gotta be a reason the people are staying.

Sweet jesus I just stirred the onions. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

btw - it's my birthday Sunday. We're going to be having a luncheon, either on blankets at the park or sat down someplace in uptown. Sign up if you wanna come!

p.s. - Corpse, if you're back in time I'll make everybody sing happy birthday for you, too.

Oh. My. God.

2006-05-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

Becky, Look at Her Butt.

My fingers are ice cold, but that's really okay. The internet is up and running. I've been gone a good long time. But I'm BACK now.

I am back.
I am BACK.
***I*** am back!

The last 48 hours of That Job were too awful to be worth reliving for archival sake. They sqeeeeeeeeeezed me and treated me with anger and resentment (not everyone, just the boss). It mattered to me at the time and I cried a lot, but now...it just doesn't matter.

I woke up that next morning - Friday morning - with a little glowing spark inside. You know that spark? It wasn't dead after all, just lost in the world of my Hope burning up around me. The fire is out now, and I am reborn.

I can't even begin to describe my joy.

The move was difficult. It was raining, and we didn't have a lot of help. THANK YOU to Junathen and Conrad (King of the United States) for turning up despite the hour and the icky weather. We got to the new place and found it had flooded some days before hand. The caretaker had gone so far as to...um...open the window. And the carpet mildewed. Brand new carpet in our brand new place, and it smelled like your grandmother's basement. But after I was done with That Job, it didn't matter either.

Now we live across from a beautiful park and miles and miles of hiking trails through the city and around the lakes. Lake Harriet is ten minutes away by foot. There are rose gardens and rock gardens, a "Peace Garden" with rings of stone for your contemplation. But if trees and flowers aren't what you want, an equal walk in the other direction brings you to the heart of Uptown, Calhoun Square, the Lagoon Theater, and all of the associated swanky bars and restaurants, boutiques and outdoor cafes. There are three coffeehouses within four blocks, including Gigi's cafe and deli, where we saw the guy from The Firm (the workout video, not the Tom Cruise/Clancy movie). So bumping into some quasi-famous guy two blocks from your house is...pretty cool.

So now I'm making the very most of my unemployment -- redecorating (which has consisted mostly of framing art and painting shelves), reading, and relaxing. Did a little writing the other day, too. I worked 10 months with two three-day weekends and no vacations. I'm making it up to myself this week.

And yes, *sigh* I have an interview tomorrow. Nosey, aren't you?

Stop 23 on the Self-Doubt Express

2006-04-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

I have an ego problem.

My salvation might be that it's the same ego problem everyone has - I'm me, and therefore I'm more important than you. How can anyone not look at my resume and think it's awesome? My hair uncombed is interesting, not ugly, and look how artfully I wear my glasses over it like I don't even care what you think about what I look like.

The other side, of course, is the scared little girl who walks into every room and thinks people are staring. That's ego too, but a different kind. It's ego minus confidence.

The truth of it is I really Don't Matter. On a large scale. In order to matter, I'm going to have to do things that matter. This is the part where I'm supposed to get inspired. I'm supposed to change the world, right, that's what I'm here. Isn't it?

I've discovered today that the real reason I'm here is to eat ice cream, depend on my mother, feel bad about not losing weight, and spend what time is left feeling self-important. And today was such a good day, too.

I tried to write my resume. And I'm looking around online, all head-hunter style, for places to submit it to. Not a lot comes up - I'm not qualified for the interesting stuff and if I was interested in taking a job that I'd hate, I'd stay where I am and save myself the trouble, thanks. I come across "we'll evaluate your resume for free (and then try to convince you to let us fix it for money)" site. So I submit. Why the hell not. And, y'know, I didn't even THINK about what the Word doc LOOKS like. I was imagining the printed page (as shown my by Print Preview), and it looked pretty neat. The response I got was, "Well, your formatting is impossible to read and you've said nothing interesting at all. Give me $100 and I'll fix it for you."

Well, that made me feel about this tall ---> :

BUT I'M SO INTERESTING! I wanted to scream. I'M SMART AND FUNNY AND I WORK HARD AND CARE ABOUT MY JOB AND OTHER PEOPLE AND NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS WOULD NOT HIRE ME! I actually considered (in my defense - briefly) calling the contact number for the particular guy who evaluated my particular resume and explaining myself. I didn't consider that recruiters today look at the file and not a hard copy (even though I know that my office has gone 99% paper-less, just like everybody else). I do have valuable skills, I just didn't list them (WTF?!?) because I...don't really know what they are. I mean, I do. I am excellent at finding solutions to problems -- i.e. "Problem-Solving"...but that's too vague so what ELSE do I call it? Do I fill up the first 1/3 page ("hiring managers don't scroll") with how I fixed the token machine with a screwdriver and tape to save the cost of calling the repair guy? Or that I'll always walk a Mom's concessions order out to the theater with her when Dad and the Kids abandoned her at the stand to find seats -- EVEN WHEN WE'RE BUSY? I mean, how do you cram that stuff into bullet points? I'm not an executive or a salesman on commission - I don't have numbers that prove my worth.

But I guess that's what I have Brian at ResumeDoctor for. Call (802) 865-4243 if you're interested. In the mean time I'm reearching how I can make money (FAST!) by taking surveys online. So far all I've scored is a free box of Jiffy Pop Microwave Popcorn -- as though I needed more popcorn in my life. The irony, it blinds me.

Warning Label

2006-04-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT UNDER "NO" CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD AN EMPLOYEE UNDER THE AGE OF 18 BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE THIS MACHINERY.

--------------------------------------

Who exactly are they quoting, anyhow? The company president? The manufacturer? Your mother?

So I quit my job the other day. Go team. I'm still serving time through May 6, but the noose is off and I can breathe again. And then I saw this Oprah where they were talking about the Working Poor, and my insides sorta turned to water. And in "Friends With Money," which we saw last night and it's excellent, there's a character who dabbles and now she's 40 and broke and so miserable that she steals face cream from some lady whose house she's supposed to be cleaning. It's like I have that on one side, and on the other I have still being there in 3 years, rapidly gaining on 30, and turning into Linda.

I guess what I need is a different job. One that I don't hate. And maybe winning the lottery would help, too. They seem about as feasible at the moment.

lag lag lag lag lag lag lag lag lag

2006-04-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

McAfee, which came pre-installed on our new Little Darling, suddenly prompted me to do and Administrator set-up today. I almost expected it to ask for my SSN, driver license number, birthdate, bank account and credit card numbers (for verification purposes, of course), because I know there are people out there dumb enough to fall for that. I see them at work everyday.

Well, I went ahead and "registered." The only piece of sensitive information I gave up was the make and model of my first car. So now I'm ultra-secure!

And it take three years to load an image. Any at all. The like fucking B for Blogger up there in the corner (see it)? That little bastard took -- in all seriousness -- 1.5 minutes to display.

And now I understand why you can't run an NLE and anti-virus together. Like, ever.

I am rapidly approaching the climatic conclusion of "Crash of Kings" and I have to force myself to not read it when I should be doing other things. Like, eat.

Resume builders

2006-04-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've added something to my list of Things to Never Say During the Interview:

"It says full time, but I can do part time if that's all you've got. I have another source of income from my child support. And don't call that number, my phone got cut off the other day, but I'm being evicted from that place anyhow, so here's my mom's number, she'll know how to get ahold of me."

I'll file that fourth, right under:

"I'm 16, but I can work days. My school kept saying I was suicidal and sent me to this other school, but I don't go there anymore."

"I didn't put my birthdate 'cause I didn't know if you would hire me. I know you don't hire 15-year-olds anymore, but I'm 14 so is that okay?"

"'Argument with management' means I got fired 'cause people were stayin' stuff about me that's not true, and then I told my boss but he didn't do anything about it. I didn't hit him, though, if that's what you mean. I got a copy of the police report so I can prove it, I never hit him."

Everything old is new again

2006-04-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

This is an update on the myspace adventure. I didn't think there'd be one, but lo....

The myspace concept is to "network." "Networking" always makes me think of Enron. Nevermind, that has nothing to do with anything.

So you link up with people you know, who do the same, and eventually it's this huge real-life diorama of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. So the first thing you do after you get your little life-pod put together is pick up a string and start following it...

...until you run into some people from far flung corners of your personal past. Like, everybody from highschool. College roommates. That guy that you made out with at that party your sophomore year. A gym teacher. Your cousin you see twice a year. Oh, and Nicole. Hi Nicole. :)

Trust me...it just gets weirder.

oh, I almost forgot....

2006-04-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

If you can't beat 'em...

hit 'em where they live.

www.myspace.com/newecliptic

I know. I can't believe it either.

Smooth sailing to the healing beach

2006-04-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

That's what is says on the side of the SpongeBob Squarepants band-aids box in the medicine chest.

Joshers had two of his teeth out today. He's been sleeping for most of it, but then the Vicadin made him hork. I made him take a second one because he was moaning in his sleep. I also made him eat the yogurt that came up. So now I feel bad and am becoming increasingly certain that I should never bear children.

Conrad also did an evil thing and lent us EverQuest II. My soul is no doubt saved by 1) not having enough RAM (oops) and 2) not being able to register again for a Station. What's a Station, anyway? Looks like it's back to the text adventures for me.

I'm not kidding. I'm going to go play some text adventures, and then make some mashed potatoes for dinner. With heavy cream, and Josh's behest (at this point, if he'll eat it, I'm all for it. Especially if it stays down.)

The KT Underground

2006-03-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

I'm not one of the cool kids. Everybody kept telling me that it wouldn't matter anymore after highschool. Then after college.

They were wrong. It matters FOREVER.

I was doing computer stuff at work, which is what one does on the Floor, and somebody been all over the map on the drop down menu. I had to look around for the link to the thing I had to do. And I see...MySpace?

MySpace is for kids, said I. But apparently I was lotsa wrong. Turns out the Cool Kids all hang out there, even at 27. Or 19. Or 24. Whatev. There's even a webring for all the boys and girls who manage Kerasotes and are a) young and b) oh, so cool.

Here's one of the drawbacks of being as-good-as-married. You're...just...not...cool. You drop off the planet to the Flamboyently Single and never have any fun. Or if you do, it's Couples Fun, which involves slightly less drinking, somewhat less flirting, and much less waking up not knowing where to are. And couples ALWAYS designate a driver.

I guess the good news is that I'm more amused than...say...*hurt* that I'm not In enough to know about this. As in all things, I took my job way too seriously at the on-set and look about five years older a work than I do at home. I never get carded in my work clothes, but always do in anything else, isn't *that* strange?

IN OTHER NEWS:

-Dad had a minor heart attack this week, followed by a minor stroke. He's just fine, but pretty shaken. Mom says he's been quiet, and dad is NEVER quiet. I guess he just felt like he had really terrible indigestion one morning and laid down til it went away, then at work later on he was on the phone and all of a sudden got these terrible shakes and his mind totally gave out and he stopped mid-sentence. That too passed, and none the worse for wear. He's brooding now, which I understand since he's the one I got my brooding from. Looking down all sorts of demons I imagine, now that 60-some years of meat and butter and hard drinking (not to mention the hard drugs) has finally come calling. Doctors say he's not in immediate danger. They're going to have a look at his whole system and tell him to do stuff like eat more fiber and (surprise!) less meat. Maybe Mom will be able to use that vegan cookbook I gave her for Christmas.

Temp Kitten

2006-03-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

I've hired a robotic cat to temp for me until such time as a full-time kitten can be procured. Her name is Flax, and she's very good at Kill the Red Ball.

And now I'm going to go to the grocery store for dinner supplies.

Things I did this week:

-Spread 5 gallons of ice across a tile floor.
-Cut myself with my own fingernails, twice.
-Dressed up pretty in borrowed clothes (Jess, I love you)
-Bought a *series* of books.
-Put in an app for an apartment in Uptown, which are suddenly affordable. Thanks, no doubt, to the 40% spike in violent crime in the last year.
-Chickened out of putting in my notice. One of my co-workers is on PTO and I couldn't bring myself to talk about leaving when we're trying to hold together a Saturday with two managers. TWO. We're supposed to have four, maybe five.

Some good news, while I'm at it. I saw Imtiaz, and his vision is slowly returning. He will never drive again, that's for certain; when the ambulance took him to Regents Hospital, the state got word of how bad his vision has gotten. He may or may not be able to read, but he can tell where you are when you move around, and he's got color. He's taking a course in braille this summer, and is working with the university to invest in some voice-recognition/read-back software, preparing for the day it goes and doesn't come back at all. And he's a hell of a lot happier than he was when he called me.

And his parents are staying with him for 3 months. They are...very very interesting people.

mememememememe mine mine mine!

2006-03-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

At last the 16 hour Shift from Hell has passed, and my illness has relapsed. Shocker, that one.

Here are some things that have happened this week that I've really wanted to write about and then...just...didn't.

1) We bought a new com-pewt-or. Ta-da! Flat panel LCD monitor, quiet(er) box, "emachines" generic brand, which I'm sort of amused by. This is my first ever purchase of a "major" electronic device, and there's a quarter mile of receipt sitting in My Chair waiting to be divvied up and mailed to five seperate addresses with copies of the barcodes and receipts and ON AND ON so I can get back that extra $400 they surprised me with at the check out ("479.99? Oh no dear, that's the price after mail-in rebates. That'll be $852!") Okay, that's not really true, I found it in the fine print first. And I was irate, but I bought the thing anyway because, well, the one we had just wasn't working and it was standing directly in the path of Josh doing his freelance sound work. Hey, now maybe I can output copies of Cope to send to all those people who want one and never got it.

2) Imi's blind. "My eyes have totally collapsed" were his words. He knew it was coming, the other shoe, so to speak. He's my brilliant Indian (dots, not feathers) philosophy professor, the one I grade exams for. It's tragic this happened when it did, but I get the feeling he felt it coming. He's been distant and distracted the last few times I've talked to him, and when he called to give me the news it was like his soul had been sucked out through his eyesockets. He was writing a book, outlining a grand philosophy of ethics, a "value theory" that proposed the only Good thing, the only thing that is worthwhile on this earth is "Resplendence of the Human Soul." He'd been publishing this in pieces in trade magazines for a decade, gathering up the accredations a doctor of philosophy needs to publish a book, and much of the work he was doing was taking the artificial academic dryness out of the esays that he had to impose to get published in the trades. He didn't see the point of writing a book if no one would read it. It was his life's work. "Once this is done, there will be nothing left for me," he said once. Now he doesn't think he'll be able to finish it. He can't read, he can't write, he can't go hiking which was a daily ritual for him even with his poor sight. More than that, I think this final blow - in a life that's been uniquely cruel - has finally taken the wind out of his sails. "It's over for me now," he said when he called, "why continue when there is nothing left for me." He's been working his whole life to foster the idea that unbounded Joy is the only reason to live, and the joys of his life have been taken away -- reading, walking in the woods, films and plays. He doesn't even know how he'll be able to teach. It makes me more sad than I care to ponder for long.

3) Josh and I have decided to move to Uptown/S Mpls. We're looking at a place on Bryant tomorrow. On Thursday I will tell my boss that I'm leaving. I'll call Julianne tomorrow and let her know. This last year hasn't been a good one. If next year isn't better, we might pull up stakes for Portland.

2006-03-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

I've been sick. *sniff*

ADT called my house at one o'clock in the morning and made me get dressed and drive through a snowstorm to the movie theater because the alarms went off. False ones, at that. I'd been holed up in bed for the better part of 48 hours, trying desperately to sleep off this head cold. Why me? Because mine is the only household that answers the phone at 1am.

It's St. Patrick's Day, so go drink some green beer and lynch your friendly neighborhood pagan! Light a fire in the yard and burn your Harry Potter books! Hurray!

(/sarcasm)

Although, I have to say...do I like green an awful lot. :)

I'm off on Sunday and I have some shopping to do for the big meeting on Monday. If you're free, ring me.

to put a little something into perspective

2006-03-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

WED
work 9am-6pm

THURS
work 5pm-2:30am

FRI
work 4pm-2am

SAT
work 4pm-3am

SUN
work 4pm-2am

MON
work 5pm-1:30am

TUES
do box office schedule at home, because although you worked the last six days, you never had time to do it at work, 12:30pm-2:30pm

WED
preview movie 10pm-1am

THURS
work 2pm-midnight

FRI
work 5pm-2am

SAT
work 4pm-2am

SUN
pick up four cases of water, salad mix and three cases of muffins for meeting 2pm-4pm

MON
work 8am-6pm (meeting)
work 7pm-2am

TUES
work 6pm-2am

For those of you who are wondering why you can never get ahold of me, or why I have a hard time nailing down plans...here'd be why. I hardly ever see Joshie, even, and we live together.

2006-03-11T12:51:00.000-08:00

There wasn't time for the gym this morning, so Joshers and I had a lovely walk. The ground is spongy. It's grey, but in a comforting fertile way, not the sterile grey of winter.

We're expecting a violent storm season. I can't wait.

2006-03-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

Okay,

this

is the funniest thing I've read today. Like, whoa.

Besides, isn't that guy wanted for murder in Indiana?

AMPAS can kiss my...well, you know

2006-03-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

Strangely enough, the only category that had me a-titter this year was Best Actor. I was torn deep down between David Straithairn (Good Night, Good Luck) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, for Capote, and who I absolutely love. Joshers made a good point in Target yesterday, that of the crew Heath Ledger was the only among them who fabricated a character on his own. Three other nominees played historical figures (Truman Capote, Edward R Murrow, John Cash) and Terrence Howard played himself.

The rest of it was schlocky and terrible, almost unwatchable. Except Jon Stewart of course, who kept it just edgy enough to keep us awake.

I've been watching the Academy Awards for all of my life that I can remember. I come from a Filmic household. We had a "big party" for the Oscars this year. I invited something like 30 people, Josh invited some folks from work. A total of four people came; two of them were my parents, who asked if they could come when I told them that it looked like my friends were all gonna no-show. But hell, the house looks nice, left over party food has been nice, and there's still champagne in the fridge which is always nice.

Feeling slightly abandoned, but getting over it quickly.

It gets under my skin when folks who really ought to know better dis on actors for being actors. I mean, I can dig on shitting on people like Jessica Alba who have trouble with the prompter. It's a symptom of the unequivicable downfall of Hollywood that she even got an invitation, nevermind as a presenter. But, as someone who's wanted to be an actor for 12 years, I gotta stand up and say that doing it *WELL* (here's the Modifier that Matters) is just about the hardest thing I've ever done. Film acting differs from stage acting most significantly in two ways -- first, you do it every day, all day, and out of order (which fucks up your whole character arc thing something awful) and it's much harder to be convincing up close. No, they're not curing cancer, and in most cases the fame has gone straight to their heads...but what they do is as important to a film as the director, the DP, the boom op, or the guys who lay down the score. So the question is, I suppose, is *film* important?

That's really just a personal question.

My favorite moment was Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep presenting Robert Altman's Honorary Oscar. My least favorite moment was Sid-whatever-his-name-is Chairman of AMPAS wandering out and making a speech that he clearly thought would single-handedly save the motion picture industry. I agreed with some of what he had to say -- sitting in a theater with strangers is not the same as sitting at home on your couch -- largely because I agreed to the same statement made by Walter Murch. But the cloud of billowing self-importance veered out of control at that point.

And then "Crash" won best picture, and I knew deep inside that it's over between me and Oscar.

Next year we'll have to watch the Independent Spirit Awards with Robyn. Besides, they're on a Saturday night, when I stand a snowball's chance in That Hot Place of getting my friends to come over. Or maybe next year's they'll broadcast the Razzies.

And now it's starting....

2006-02-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

Can you smell it, that springishness? I want to throw open the windows, but I refrain being that it's only 36 degrees. Not a warm 36 either.

Time to start thinking about my garden.

I saw D&C on Friday. I can't believe how long it's been; D spent the better part of half an hour touring me through the house and everything they've done to it since last I was there. It was a strange feeling; two years ago I was there so much I got my own room.

D gave me something I really needed, a proverbial bitch-slap to the soul. (Are there any proverbs with bitch-slaps?) Time to get back on the fucking horse, you quitter, and kick up some dust 'cause no one's gonna live your life for you, babe. That sort of thing. Well, that and Tiki Bar.

So I picked up a book on incenses and oils, and I'm going to plant those herbs I can't buy in a store. Josh and I are hunting wild mushrooms come warm weather, and find a hiking path near the house, probably along the river.

But, I mean, they're just little pieces of paper. They don't tell you anything meaningful about your life. Right? They're chosen totally at random. Right?

Five of Cups (mourning)
Heirophant
The Hanged Man
The Devil
The Tower
Death
Eight of Swords (bondage)
Four of Swords (the crypt)
-and-
???? (the blank card)

It doesn't take extensive knowledge of tarot to gleen what this spread has to say about Sarah's world at the moment. It takes a bit more skill to see that this is not, in fact, a proclaimation of my certain death. It's just a tunnel. I gotta keep walking to make it out the other side.

It also means I have to landmine my habits. Pretty much all of them. Well, I'm game if you are. Who wants to spend an afternoon with me, a pot of tea, and a seed catalogue. In the words of Amy Ray -

You can grow what you want
but one day it's gonna rise up,
so plant what you need
to make a better stand.

Tag

2006-02-27T00:47:00.000-08:00

Thanks, Conrad for the tag. I feel like feeling a little self-important. ;)

Four Jobs I've had...
- Librarian
- Graveyard Stockroom Grunt (Target)
- Projectionist
- Adult Video Clerk

Four movies I can watch over and over...
- Bullets Over Broadway
- Harold and Maude
- All About Eve
- Fellowship of the Ring

TV shows I love to watch...
- My So-Called Life
- Animaniacs
- Firefly (little spent on it lately though)
- Mythbusters

Four places I've been on vacation...
- Cortez, Colorado
- Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
- Albequerque, New Mexico
- Kennebunkport, Maine

Four favorite dishes...
- Taco Soup
- Chili Rellano
- Mongolian Mock Beef (Evergreen Taiwanese, Nicollet Ave Mpls)
- Hashbrowns, the really crispy kind you get in diners

Four websites I visit daily...
- gmail.com
- the blogs of everyone in the side bar
- yahoogroups for trivia news
- imdb and/or rotten tomatoes (usually work-related)

Four places I'd rather be...
- on a farm
- on Mars
- on a boat
- at your house, drinking orange juice and playing Scene It

Techtica

2006-02-23T12:06:00.000-08:00

I am now the proud owner of a Motorola V276 flip phone.

Verizon is now the proud owner of one-eighth of my soul.

I must say, a Motorola V276 flip phone is somewhat more useful than a soul. I'm not certain my soul was still this shiny. When I had it, I mean.

I dub thee, oh shiny tool of convenience, Horcrux.

Horcrux, meet the gang.

Up and running, running, running, running, running....

2006-02-22T18:56:00.000-08:00

A quick post before I disappear into the kitchen to throw together my thaijapachinese tofu creation (I've been chopping for a good while now). We'll throw this one together news-style for y'all I don't see every day.

1) Yes, blog is functional. Yes, it was broken before, but I fixed it. I had to reset my template as Blogger Help was No Help, which means I've lost EVERYTHING. My links, everything. NO CLUE WHAT HAPPENED. No, I won't get to putting it right for some time, as I'm using my day off (today) to chop things and be a general layabout. So poo.

2) Had a close that went until 5am this week. After 13 hours counting twenty dollar bills, they all start to look, well, the same. It was my fault, but only insomuch as my boss fed me to the wolves and then walked away. He didn't apologize when I came back to work that afternoon, just asked what went wrong.

3) I will be leaving Kerasotes Theaters very soon, hopefully for a fulltime cashiering position at the Wedge. Joshers brought me an application. I know, I know -- it's a step backwards. In this case, backwards is not the wrong direction. I'm too young to spend ALL of my energy at work.

4) Oscar Party is ON! I'm not sending invitations, as promised. Guess what, I don't have the time. I'm also getting exams from Imtiaz next week, which means I double won't have time. Yes, you will be getting an email with details. As soon as they're hashed out.

5) Josh and I are buying cell phones tomorrow, hurray! I'm gonna get one with a little camera so I can take pictures of things, since I've stopped taking photographs almost entirely. My camera weighs a ton.

Oh hey, go visit Conrad (conradzero.com). He lost a furry family member this week, and he needs some lovin'.

Blog On. ;)

Something is busted

2006-02-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

You're probably not seeing this. You're probably seeing jibberish. Someone (I assume, I'm currently mystified) has gone into my template and changed it all to nonsense code. Or so it would appear. I am confused, but working on it.

For Josh, who puts up with me.

2006-02-14T19:02:00.000-08:00

This is the first day of my life.
Swear I was born right in the doorway.
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed;
they're spreading blankets on the beach.

Yours was the first face that I saw;
I think I was blind before I met you.
I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been,
but I know where I want to go.

So I thought I'd let you know
that these things take forever -- I especially am slow --
but I realized how I need you
and I wondered if I could come home.

I remember the time you drove all night
just to meet me in the morning,
and I thought it was strange, you said everything changed.
You felt as if you just woke up.

And you said,
"This is the first day of my life.
I'm glad I didn't die before I met you.
Now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you
and I'd probably be happy."

So if you want to be with me,
with these things there's no telling
we'll just have to wait and see.
But I'd rather be working for a paycheck
than waiting to win the lottery.

Besides, maybe this time is different
I mean,
I really think you like me.

(--BrightEyes, "First Day of My Life")

2006-02-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

So Cal is where my mind states,
but it's not my State of Mind -
I'm not as ugly-sad as you.

Ends

2006-02-03T11:42:00.000-08:00

I've been spending money lately. I hesitate to say "too much" money, because it's not all that much in the longview and it's not negatively impacting my ability to spend money on other things. But it's beginning to make me uncomfortable.

I bought some Rose Tea yesterday, which is something I enjoy greatly. It's Republic of Tea, and it's only around during Valentine's season. "Tea for the Queen of Hearts" it's called.

I'm listening to Faith and the Muse. Hob i Derri Dando. Makes me aware that there's something in me I've been ignoring. My spiritual life, I suppose. Yesterday was Imbolc (or Candlemas, your choice) and I put a few candles in the West Window and lit them at sundown. But I didn't, I don't know, prepare them at all. It felt like cheating. Like Catholics who only go to Mass on Christmas.

I've been the subject of a pervasive sadness. I cover it well, when I'm at work or on the telephone with friends. But when I'm at home I'm consumed with this lethargy. I keep thinking it will help if the house would just be clean and uncluttered, but it's a constant war. I clear the floor, and then there's more shit on the floor. I clear out the dishes and the trash, and then BOOM there's more dishes and trash.

I know I have seasonal depression, so this sort of thing is pretty common for me. February is a hard month, the cold and the grey.

Had an email from Keiser this week. It was crazy; I've seen the guy a couple of times, at Ren Fest and the like, but we haven't spoken more than passing niceities in...oh something like five years. He's disentangled himself from Erin, which is just as well. Resurfaced, if you will.

My relationship to Keiser was always very strange. Brotherly, affectionate but never sexual at all. He was with Michelle, 9 years ago when I met him. Then he was with Nicole off and on for years. But even though these girls (women now) were (and are, in Nicole's case -- she'll be here in an hour) my very best friends, he and I would spend whole days and nights together and just...I dunno. Not talk much. We could always get together and Not Talk, and that was fine. He really, really understood me. When I was 16 anyway.

I'm extremely aware that it won't be like that again. He won't ever be the friend who just shows up at the door, without asking or calling to see if I'm home, and takes me trainspotting. Or driving around at 2am. We were both the children of alcoholics, though we never really talked about it. We knew how much it meant to not be home just after bar close.

So let me hope for something new and good, since hanging onto the past isn't good for anyone. I hope he and Josh get on well. Maybe he'll be Arkenstone's cameraman - he's an exceptionally wonderful photographer.

In any event, he knew me at my happiest, my sparkly best -- the summers when I was young and stupid and full of juice and almost never went home. When I'd work at the theater all day and then run around the neighborhood at night, communing with trees. I was certain of myself. That's something drastically missing from my life at the moment.

This is Very VERY Important!

2006-01-30T14:36:00.000-08:00

DAN! KIM! EERO! YOUR PHONE DOESN'T WORK?

How the hell am I supposed to come over and make you food if I can't call your house and find out what you want to eat? HUH?!?

------

On a related note, Joshers and I went to the Y today. I sweat up a big ol' storm. But the cool thing is that I stopped by the scale on my way out the door. I don't do that much, as scales generally tell me things I really would rather not know, but today I felt like playing with the weights. It's one of those medical scales with the weights and the little slots. I'm weird, I'm sorry. But I got a treat for my inquisitiveness.

I'm 165 lbs.

Last time I got on a scale I was living with June, and I was 196 lbs and it made me cry.

BTW - 165 is a little more than I weighed when I came home from Vermont. My mother was shocked by my appearance ("My God you're so...TAN!") and made me get on the scale. And in case anyone cares...my goal is 145. So, y'know. Here's to pleasant surprises.

The Other Shoe

2006-01-28T11:07:00.000-08:00

Well, it didn't go well and I got a migraine. I will not elaborate, as per my goal of being less negative this year.

I am also - and officially now - looking for a new job. I really don't like this phase, the interviews and such. But I've received notification that May 5 - July 16 is a Blackout period. That means I will work every weekend during the nicest weather of the year. No Winnipeg, no trip to Vermont to help Kim with her fundraiser, no Birthday for me, and no Birthday with Josh either. I'm done. Time to move on.

Steeling Myself for the Battle Ahead

2006-01-27T11:33:00.000-08:00

This is going to be quick because I have to sit on the couch and watch "Undercover Brother" and eat microwave popcorn. It's urgent. It's my shield against sitting in a room that buzzes with florescent light and counting dirty pieces of printed cloth long into the night.

The General Manager and my Trainer (my boss and his boss) have just assumed that I'm good to go, and spend my training sessions wandering in other parts of the building talking about improvements and operation. Thursday was sort of a mess, I didn't get home until 3:15. All the numbers matched, but I had to get the Changeorder ready (we give most - but not all - of our money to the bank, and the bank sends us change). I just sort of made it up. Eh, whatever. There's $5,500. Hope you're happy with it.

Tonight the quantity of money I handle is likely to quintuple, being that it's Friday.

Hm. I think I better run to the store and get come sodapop too. And maybe some chocolate.

Not that I use food as a crutch or anything. But I can't post about that just now. There's a terrible film beckoning me to the comforts of the living room.